text:
Fans of pelvic thrusts are going to love Psy's new single. At a concert in Seoul on Saturday night, the South Korean star debuted the music video — and cheeky dance moves — for his new song, "Gentleman." The show, which kept a crowd of 50,000 on their feet for several hours, was live-streamed on YouTube, the video-sharing site that helped make "Gangnam Style" one of music's biggest ever hits — and where the song's video is the most watched ever. The whole affair was an epic display of showmanship that included, among other things, Psy singing a heartfelt ballad (and welling up) while dangling on cables above World Cup Stadium, and a campy cover of Beyoncé's "Single Ladies," performed in a one-piece, thigh-bearing leotard. (Let's just say we saw a lot of Psy.)
(PHOTOS: Celebrity Sightings: On the Radar)
Beyond the new song (it's catchy) and dance (get practicing), the concert had the feeling of a homecoming. Since "Gangnam Style" went viral last year, garnering more than 1.5 billion views on YouTube, Psy has become an unofficial ambassador for South Korea, performing the hit around the world. Indeed, when Psy, whose real name is Park Jae-sang, met U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon last fall, Ban joked that he'd been replaced as the most recognizable South Korean in the world. Psy, with characteristic modesty, said he was "touched" by the comment. Somehow, amid girls in gold lamé and back-flipping b-boys, the 35-year-old entertainer managed to strike a poignant tone, talking at length about what it meant to be home. He sang "We Are the One," a crowd favorite, against a background of flashing South Korean flags.
In some ways it felt odd to be shaking it to Psy tonight. As anyone who has turned on a television recently knows, tensions between North Korea and South Korea are running high. The international press has been warning of an "imminent" missile launch for days. Just yesterday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry flew into Seoul to talk nuclear strategy with President Park Geun-hye and other South Korean officials. Certainly, having myself awoken at 7:00 a.m. for a tour of the demilitarized zone, I didn't imagine I'd spend the evening watching Psy show Beyoncé how it's done.
But as I learned this week, it seems the further you get from the Korean Peninsula, the greater the level of panic. Americans may be more worried than ever about North Korea, but South Koreans have learned to shrug it off. It's not that they don't care — most care deeply. When asked about the political situation before the concert, Psy called it "a tragedy." "We are the only countries divided right now," he said. But he quickly added that he hoped North Koreans might also like the new single. "My music videos and my choreography, they might enjoy them too," he mused. Perhaps. Either way, the show goes on.
— With reporting by Audrey Yoo
MORE: Beyond Psy: 5 Essential K-Pop Tracks


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By now you've probably already heard that Ingram Content has a new "Standard Color" pricing program that makes self-published color Print-On-Demand graphic novels economically feasible. This means you no longer have to have material out of print. It means you have access to the bookstore market, especially the online bookstore market. You can turn a profit on shorter print runs through Diamond Comics Distributors than you previously could. It also isn't necessarily a replacement for the comics shop or Direct Market and your profit per unit either. I'm going to step through the financials and discuss where this fits in with the world of the independent creator and the publisher. For a Webcartoonist, for instance, this is pure gravy and lets a minimum baseline print availability be established.
Before we get into the numbers, let's talk a little bit about the "Standard Color" format. It's printed on 50# Glatfelter Pixelle Book paper. This is a very thin paper. Ingram's "Premium Color" is printed on 70# stock that seems comparable to what IDW uses for titles like Popeye. Standard color is a little harder to describe.
DC uses a thinner paper for some of the reprint books like the Vertigo Swamp Thing or Hitman paperback collections Standard Color is a little thinner than that. Texture-wise, it reminded me of the slick feel of the newsprint comics of the mid-80s, except this paper is a bright white. If you look closely you can see a little bleed through from the opposite side of the page in some cases. The thinner stock mean less ink is absorbed and there is a little less pop on the color than in the thicker premium option. That may be overly nitpicky, but comics readers can be nitpicky at times.
People that are very into the art aspects may want a premium edition, but this strikes me as a perfectly adequate reading copy.
I showed the samples to Brian Hibbs, owner of the Comix Experience store in San Francisco and he said "It's absolutely satisfactory, with the caveat that I haven't seen a larger, thicker sample of it."
What he means by the caveat is the samples were only 28 pages and in a smaller format than most comics. He'd like to see what a 120-160 trade paperback looked like and felt like in his hands, something I'd be curious about, as well.
The bottom line is, this looks like it's going to work from a product standpoint, so let's get to the financials.
For the purposes of this exploration, we're going to use a 128 page trade paperback. A package to collect 5 or 6 issues that would have a cover price somewhere between $12 and $16.
Before we can estimate price for this graphic novel, we need to consider the size. The standard size of a graphic novel is roughly 6.6" x 10.2". That's not a standard size in the "regular" book world and thus not a standard size in the world of POD. Either you have to shrink a little and go down to 6" x 9", which is considered a "small" book for pricing purposes or up into the "large" category which starts at 7" x 10" and goes up to both 8.5" x 11" and even A4 sizes. Naturally, "small" and "large" books have different prices.
The small category will cost $4.10 to print as a one-off On Demand copy. The large format would cost $5.14 for a single copy. Bulk discounts start at orders of 50 copies and increase to 1500 copies. At 500 copies, a 25% discount kicks in and your small graphic novel would cost $3.075 per copy. 500 of a large format graphic novel would be $3.855 per copy.
There are trade-offs involved with size and some believe that a 6"x9" format will not sell as well in stores, though there is a distinct monetary savings with the size. If you're looking to put traditional comics material in a POD format, you're either going to have to shrink the page or go with the large format. The easiest solution is to go with a larger physical footprint and center the page – you'll just have larger margins.
There are three distribution models for a self-published POD book: direct sales, Direct Market/Diamond and bookstore distribution.
Direct sales is simple—you're selling directly to the customer, be it at a convention or through mail order. The variables are format size, whether or not you've ordered in bulkand cover price. These yield this kind of a profit range on a per copy basis:
$12 cover price
$16 cover price
Small format – Single Copy
Large format – Single Copy
Small format – 500 Print Run
Large format – 500 Print Run
Direct sales is very profitable, but a lot of work.
With Direct Market (i.e., comics shops), you're most likely going to need to go through Diamond for distribution. This means a 60% discount and I usually figure it at 61% to include incidental costs. That means your revenue on a $12 cover price would be $4.68 and on a $16 cover price would be $6.24.
Repeating the variables for the Diamond model, your revenue ranges per issue are as follows:
$12 cover price
$16 cover price
Small format – Single Copy
Large format – Single Copy
Small format – 500 Print Run
Large format – 500 Print Run
In reality, it's unlikely you're going to be fulfilling Diamond orders with a single POD printing, but as you can see, at a $16 cover price, that's going to be profitable every time. This is unheard of. Every time you add a page, the cost of a book goes up a few cents, so you need to calculate based on each individual book's page count. As your print run goes up, eventually you graduate to lower pricing and offset printing. This does prove that it's possible for the individual creator to keep a book in print at the retail level, particularly at slightly higher price points.
For a publisher, this is a mixed blessing. The margins on color POD books are much lower than offset and normal royalty payments will throw off the financials, especially on smaller print runs. A separate royalty agreement for POD books might be necessary.
Finally you have the bookstore market. This is the most complicated. Although Ingram is primarily a wholesaler, they do offer some distribution services to clients, and by using Ingram Content's Lightning Source printing division, you're automatically put into their distribution channels. You also get to select the discount you're offering through Ingram and whether you want to make your books returnable. Herein lies a conundrum: if you offer a high enough discount for bookstores to offer returns, you likely won't be able to absorb the losses from those returns on your available margins.
An alternate theory is to accept that bookstores normally won't order your book for the shelf, and lower your discount to a "short" discount of 20%-25% and focus on selling your books on online bookstores like Amazon.com and BN.com. There's also a theory that you raise the cover price of a book, offer the 55% with the distributor and anticipate Amazon and BN will apply a discount, with the anticipated discount being the intended retail price.
Yes, focusing on the online market can be at odds with focusing on the Direct Market. With the bookstore channel, you don't get bulk discounts. Each book is a single POD purchase. Here are how the financials play out at the full 55% discount, the short 20% discount and a 40% discount (if you want to entertain the possibility that a handful of bookstore might order a shelf copy, but don't want to give the full discount).
$12 Cover Price
$16 Cover Price
Small Format – 55%
Large Format – 55%
Small Format – 40%
Large Format – 40%
Small Format – 20%
Large Format – 20%
As you get away from the lower discounts, this quickly becomes more profitable on a per book basis than Diamond and has the added bonus of being hands free. Ingram ships the books and sends you a check. On the other hand, the Direct Market has a large number of people coming into its shops every week. No one is entirely sure to what extent the online bookstore and Direct Market audiences overlap, in terms of buying graphic novels. And it's this quandary that comic book creators will ponder longer than Webcomics creators.
For a Webcartoonist, selling on their own site and on online bookstores will be the primary channels and the Direct Market will most likely be seen as a bonus, albeit one with a much lower margin.
From a publisher perspective, given a normal discount, particularly with a lower cover price, it is a not a big win. Short discounts can fix this, but also raise the question of whether the publisher wants to create a caste system in the general bookstore market, in terms of returnability and discount rates.
Clearly, the metrics involved here, with the possible exception of the short discounts, aren't the sort of numbers that lend themselves to making a fulltime living in comics. It works for keeping material in print. It allows you to generate revenue on shorter print runs. But unless you're able to sell thousands of books in the online bookstore market, the sales that would constitute a living wage will carry you into print runs where offset printing is cheaper.
All that said, many independent cartoonists aren't making a living wage at comics and this looks like a fiscally viable model for those smaller players with the possibility of greater visibility through the online bookstore channel. There also is very little excuse for books to be out of print with this new POD option available.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Re: Re: problem with Pick
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg78244] Re: [mg78222] Re: [mg78194] problem with Pick
- From: Andrzej Kozlowski <akoz at mimuw.edu.pl>
- Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2007 05:15:53 -0400 (EDT)
- References: <email@example.com> <email@example.com>
On 26 Jun 2007, at 17:30, Chris Chiasson wrote: > On 6/25/07, Oyvind Tafjord <tafjord at wolfram.com> wrote: >> Chris Chiasson wrote: >>> On 6/25/07, Oyvind Tafjord <tafjord at wolfram.com> wrote: >>>> In this case, sel={{},{1}}. sel[[]] matches patt, and so list >>>> [[]] is >>>> picked out. >>>> >>>> This behavior, in which all of list gets picked, does produce a >>>> fair >>>> amount >>>> of confusion, unfortunately. It often shows up in connection >>>> with Except: >>>> >>>> In[1]:= Pick[{a, b, c}, {1, 2, 3}, Except[2]] >>>> Out[1]= {a, b, c} >>>> >>>> In[2]:= Pick[{a, b, c}, {1, 2, 3}, Except[2, _Integer]] >>>> Out[2]= {a, c} >>> >>> Thank you for the reply. >>> >>> You seem to be implying that the above behavior is intended, even >>> though it violates the documentation. I believe it is unintended, >>> due >>> to the following output, which seems to indicate that the matches >>> are >>> supposed to be checked on the first level: >>> >>> In[1]:= Pick[{a,b,c},SparseArray@{1,2,3},Except[2]] >>> Pick[{a,b,c},{1,2,3},Except[2]] >>> >>> Out[1]= {a,c} >>> >>> Out[2]= {a,b,c} >>> >>> If I am wrong, then this SparseArray behavior is a bug, the >>> documentation is wrong, and I suggest that an optional level >>> argument >>> be added to Pick. >>> >> >> In what way does this behavior violate the documentation? It uses the >> statement you quoted: >> >> Pick[list,sel,patt] picks out those list[[i1,i2,...]] for which >> sel[[i1,i2,...]] matches patt. >> >> with the 0-length version of i1,i2,... I agree this is often what >> you don't >> want though. >> >> The SparseArray case is treated differently, in this case only the >> individual elements are treated as "selectors", for optimization and >> usefulness. This could be explained better in the documentation. >> > > Again, thank you for the reply. > > You're trying to have it one way for SparseArray and another way for > lists, which makes no sense given the definition of Pick in the > documentation. Pick should either match sel's "0-length version of > i1,i2,..." or it should not*. > > In[1]:= MatchQ[(SparseArray@{1,2,3})[[]],Except@2] > Out[1]= True > > I'll bet it doesn't take much CPU time to test this, either. Do you > have an example where testing the entire SparseArray expression first > would be absolutely unacceptable? Even if you do, I'd use that as an > argument for Pick to work only on the first level of all expressions > so that it would be more consistent (and, therefore, ostensibly more > useful due to predictability). > > I hope I have been persuasive and inoffensive in arguing for behavior > that is more consistent with the documentation. > > *I recognize there are evaluation vs. pattern matching issues here, > but I think my reasoning is still germane. > > -- > http://chris.chiasson.name/ > It is not actually the case that in this respect we have "one way for SparseArray and another way for lists" because "the way for lists" is in fact the way for most other selectors except SparseArrays. For example, using an arbitrary head f, we have: Pick[{a, b}, f[2, 3], Except[2]] {a, b} which behaves the same way as List. The fact that SparseArray behaves in a special way becoems clear if you examine its FullForm: FullForm[SparseArray[{1, 2}]] FullForm[SparseArray[Automatic, {2}, 0, {1, {{0, 2}, {{1}, {2}}}, {1, 2}}]] Normally, it is the FullForm of the expression that is used in Pick (or for pattern matching) but of course it would be extremly inconvenient if this were the case with SparseArrays. Actually, not only SparseArray but also other atomic expressions are also treated in "special ways", for example: Pick[{a, b}, Complex[2, 3], 2] Sequence[] Pick[{a, b}, complex[2, 3], 2] {a} Note that List[a,b] is not an atom and there is no reason to treat it in any way different from the way one treats an expression with an arbitrary head f. On the other hand, AtomQ[SparseArray@{1, 2}] True and Atoms in Mathematica are generally treated in special ways as far as pattern matching or Part extraction are concerned. Andrzej Kozlowski
- References:
- Re: problem with Pick
- From: "Chris Chiasson" <email@example.com>
- Re: problem with Pick


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The end-of-term strops are upon us! My three primary school aged children, have now officially changed their names to Stroppy, Grumpy & Tired! Towards the end of term it's always the same and I really can't see what they can possibly be getting out of them at school, as it's like refereeing a grudge match at home!
A typical episode goes something like this:
Stroppy has got the pre-teen sulky pout when Grumpy tells her 'Your hair looks really messy at the back!' I then assure Stroppy that it looks fine and there is no need to spend another 10 minutes re-doing it! At that moment, Tired pushes past and Stroppy yells, 'He just ruined my hair, completely!' Stroppy pushes Tired, Tired falls over and dissolves into (unnecessary) floods of tears. I shout at Stroppy, she complains that 'I get the blame for everything around here'. Grumpy leaves the scene quietly, with a rye smile on her face, her work here is done.
Ordinarily, the summer term isn't so bad but I guess the awful weather and lack of sunshine is taking its toll. Though the schools seem to resort to watching Disney films during the last week of the summer term, we are threatened with fines if we dare take our flagging children off on holiday, a few days early, in an attempt to save a few hundred pounds! There must be a better way, for everyone!
I heard in the news, a few weeks ago, a suggestion that the summer break was too long and that having more than four weeks off leads to 'leaning loss' or some such rubbish! I ranted and raved on about how children need to be children and how holidays are educational etc. etc. but then, on further investigation, realised that, as usual, the media had narrowed in on the sensationalising headline and left out the rest! What they were actually suggesting was that two weeks be taken off the summer break and given to individual schools to take as they please- genius! Not only would this change enable families to holiday at a cheaper rate, it would also give our kids some time off when they really need it.
An even braver solution would be to allow schools (or maybe councils- to allow for families with children at different schools) to choose all of their holidays and purposely stagger them. School holidays and term dates were set to suit our lifestyles a long time ago with when it was based on the agricultural calendar. The long summer holiday was given, for children to help bring in the crops or work the land. In the spring they were needed to help with sowing and planting and in autumn for harvesting. It's time someone looked at it again and made some long overdue changes, to bring holidays into line with the way we live now and to best suit our children. I know this is a controversial issue but that is mainly due to the prospect of change. Whenever change happens, someone won't like or agree with it, but that doesn't mean we should be living in the dark ages!
Change is good, people!!
In my opinion, children struggle the most in the autumn term and many private schools and academies allow a two-week break in the October half term to reflect this, and they also finish earlier in December than state schools. I would therefore love to see similar holidays in the state system, even if that meant a shorter summer break. Let's face it, four weeks is plenty of time to get a holiday in the sun and a few day trips in! I'm certainly flagging by the end of it and can't wait to get the little darlings back to school. To be honest, they are usually desperate to see their friends and get away from me too!!
As for the school day itself, there's room for improvement here too. Once the kids are collected from school, we have a variety of clubs to get to, throughout the week. The majority of these extra curricular sessions involve physical activity but there are also tutoring sessions (costing us a small fortune), which are then followed by homework on our return home! The 9-3ish timetable was also based around a farmer's day and designed so that children went home to help with the housework (fat chance of that without promise of extra funds or bribery!) back in the Victorian era. Now, this structure seems ridiculous with both parents working and not many jobs allowing a regular 2.30pm cut-off! I'm not suggesting that academic lessons should necessarily run until 5pm, but that the extra time created, be used for sport, physical activity, music or craft, the things that kids love to do but seem to do a lot less of, than when we were at school. Maybe during this time, children struggling in a particular subject could be helped, therefore reducing the amount of tutoring that seems to necessary these days. Maybe, children who have been recognised as having a particular talent in sport or the arts could be excused at this time to practice with their team or group.
To make changes like these would be expensive. We would need more teachers and they would need to work different hours, which I can't see the unions allowing- but don't get me started on unions, another design of it's time that (in my opinion) has no place in modern society!
I'm not sure that anyone will be so bold as to implement changes of this magnitude, but I've heard whispers and shared frustrations enough, to hope that it is at least, being considered.
What are your thoughts on our current state-educational daily timetable and calendar? Do you think it needs an overhaul or are you happy to leave it as it is?


text:
Apr 05, 2023
$18.00 - $25.00 hourly
Check out our hospitality company at www.socialanthologysd.com Warehouse in San Diego. Looking for help in loading, unloading trucks and on site delivery and set up for private and corporate events. Manual labor in ware house and on site event element set up. Some minor building applies. Welding/woodworking skills and proficiency are a bonus in pay. Growing hospitality brand priding itself on quality, trust, hard work and efficiency.
To Be Designed San Diego, CA, USA Full-Time


text:
This is how not to handle expense management in your business. Whilst a substantial part of managing expenses can be compartmentalized into how people make claims, and how those claims are processed, there are times when you'd benefit from thinking outside the box.
To illustrate the point, I'm going to look at telephones, the way your business uses them, and the way changing that can be part of an expense management strategy. Many years ago, in another life, I asked a senior manager how much he spent on line rental and calls for the fax machines in his business. He didn't know, and asked his secretary to being in the relevant invoices.
She appeared carrying two large ring binders. Looking at them, he asked her for just the fax machine invoices. She pointed at the binders. "Those are the fax machine invoices," she said.
He had no idea at the scale of the costs involved, and we immediately set about reducing them. And there's the lesson: Show me any cost you're not controlling, and I'll show you an unnecessary expense.
Of course, fax machines are consigned to history with quill pens and carbon paper, but let's stick with telephones; we still use those. Here are some areas in which you might be spending too much for mobiles, (and here's the important part) without being aware of it.
1. Data roaming: Set up a company policy that it should be turned off except for short periods to allow emails to be delivered or sent, rather than being on 24/7. Data roaming charges can be high, and can mount significantly if you have a large number of employees travelling
2. Use one company: Don't have a series of providers. Restricting services to just one allows you to negotiate better deals for new handsets and connectivity
3. Go for VOIP: For office phones there are lots of ways to use the internet to make calls, giving the traditional desktop phone a new lease of life. VOIP stands for Voice Over Internet Protocol, and means there's no need to have a traditional phone contract, so long as you have good broadband connectivity. Providers of phone systems like this will usually deal with you on a rolling monthly contract, and their systems are extremely, so you can add or subtract handsets almost at will.
4. Be careful with perks. If employees are able to use company phones for personal use (and we're back to mobiles here), then that permission should be restricted. OK, make short personal calls, but talking for hours to an aunt in Australia, or streaming a box set to a hotel room in Berlin could soon set you back a considerable – and unwelcome – amount.
5. Don't leave legacies. When an employee leaves the company, make sure to cancel or transfer their part of the phone number, and don't toss the handset into the back of a drawer. Re-use it, or send it for recycling _ once you've cleared any company data from it.
More than just number reduction
Consider the benefits that come alongside mobile phone use, and blurring the distinction between company and private life. When you've automated your expenses by implementing a solution based on business expense management software using an app, everyone's going to need a phone so they can use your system.
Allowing an employee to make personal calls, to that agreed cost limit, might have a payback in loyalty. It might mean they're more amenable to taking a work-related call out of hours, as part of a bit of give and take – but make sure that you track the benefit so that all the necessary tax is paid. There's no future in saving money by cheating the taxman.
Applying this kind of thinking to all aspects of your business can make a significant difference to your bottom line, and be a useful ally to your business expense management software.


text:
Fresh Oil Change
2016 Toyota Corolla 4dr Sdn CVT S w/Special Edition Pkg (Natl)
1.8L I-4 DOHC Dual VVT-i
Estimated By E.P.A.Actual Mileage May Vary
Price $13,900
Jeffrey's Auto Exchange
Jeffrey's Auto Exchange
595 W McClain Ave
Scottsburg, IN 47170
- 1 Owner
- Gas Saver
Choose from a variety of used car options and types including sedans, SUVs, trucks and vans. Whether you are looking for a small or large vehicle, one that's fuel-efficient or one that's big enough for the whole family, you'll find the perfect vehicle at Jeffrey's Auto Exchange!
- 1 12V DC Power Outlet
- 13.2 Gal. Fuel Tank
- 390CCA Maintenance-Free Battery w/Run Down Protection
- 4-Way Passenger Seat
- 60-40 Folding Bench Front Facing Fold Forward Seatback Rear Seat
- 80 Amp Alternator
- Air Filtration
- Airbag Occupancy Sensor
- Analog Appearance
- Auto Off Projector Beam Led Low Beam Daytime Running Headlamps w/Delay-Off
- Automatic Equalizer
- Black Side Windows Trim
- Body-colored door handles
- Body-Colored Front Bumper
- Body-Colored Rear Bumper
- Cargo Space Lights
- Carpet Floor Trim and Carpet Trunk Lid/Rear Cargo Door Trim
- Clearcoat Paint
- Cloth Door Trim Insert
- Compact Spare Tire Mounted Inside Under Cargo
- Curtain 1st And 2nd Row Airbags
- Day-Night Rearview Mirror
- Delayed Accessory Power
- Driver And Passenger Visor Vanity Mirrors
- Driver Foot Rest
- Driver Knee Airbag and Passenger Cushion Front Airbag
- Dual Stage Driver And Passenger Front Airbags
- Dual Stage Driver And Passenger Seat-Mounted Side Airbags
- Electric Power-Assist Speed-Sensing Steering
- Engine: 1.8L I-4 DOHC Dual VVT-i
- Fade-To-Off Interior Lighting
- Fixed Rear Window w/Defroster
- Front And Rear Anti-Roll Bars
- Front Cupholder
- Front Map Lights
- Front-Wheel Drive
- Full Cloth Headliner
- Full Floor Console w/Covered Storage and 1 12V DC Power Outlet
- Fully Galvanized Steel Panels
- Gas-pressurized shock absorbers
- HVAC -inc: Underseat Ducts
- Instrument Panel Covered Bin, Driver / Passenger And Rear Door Bins
- Light Tinted Glass
- Locking glove box
- Low Tire Pressure Warning
- Manual Adjustable Front Head Restraints and Manual Adjustable Rear Head Restraints
- Manual Tilt/Telescoping Steering Column
- Outboard Front Lap And Shoulder Safety Belts -inc: Rear Center 3 Point, Height Adjusters and Pretensioners
- Outside Temp Gauge
- Rear Child Safety Locks
- Rear Cupholder
- Remote Releases -Inc: Mechanical Cargo Access and Mechanical Fuel
- Seats w/Cloth Back Material
- Side Impact Beams
- Steel Spare Wheel
- Strut Front Suspension w/Coil Springs
- Torsion Beam Rear Suspension w/Coil Springs
- Trunk Rear Cargo Access
- Urethane Gear Shifter Material
- Immobilizer


text:
1. Where to Stay
Ask for a balcony suite at the CONDESAdf (from $190), the 40-room India Mahdavi–designed hotel overlooking Parque España. Sooth your hangover on the rooftop terrace on Sunday afternoons with a D.J. set of down-tempo Latin lounge music.
Be discreet at Habita (from $250), a boutique hotel hidden behind a frosted-glass box façade on Mexico City's most luxurious avenue, Avenida Presidente Masaryk. The third floor's minimalist suites are the quietest, but find action upstairs at the rooftop bar.
Feel like you're visiting friends at the eight-room Red Tree House (from $50), the affordable California colonial B&B run by an American set designer and his partner. Rooms in the newly added garden house overlook the patio, and the owners host frequent wine parties for their guests.
2. Where to Eat
Spring for the tasting menu (six courses, $55) at Pujol to sample the range of avant-garde, U.S.-trained chef Enrique Olvera. When his cookbook comes out in May 2010, you'll have already tasted his liquid quesadilla.
Guess what the 30 ingredients are in El Bajío's mole sauce, served over chicken or as a stew. Don a plastic bib before trying the carnitas, which have been braising since 3 a.m.
Eat organic, regional cuisine prepared by the author of the Encyclopedia of Mexican Gastronomy at the unpretentious Café Azul y Oro. Work off the meal with a walk through the adjacent year-old University Museum of Contemporary Art.
Take your taxi to the "drive-in" at El Borrego Viudo (Avenida Revolución 241; no phone), a tiny 41-year-old taquería with an enormous parking lot and carhops.
3. What to Do
Find D.J.'s instead of mariachis at actor Diego Luna's La Bipo (Malintzin 155, Coyoacán; 52-55/5484-8230), the faux dive bar in the artsy Coyoacán neighborhood inspired by traditional cantinas.
Hear cutting-edge electro acts like Kinky or Mexican Institute of Sound at Pasagüero, a recently renovated cultural center near the Zocalo that also stages exhibitions and fashion shows. Indie bands play at the year-old El Imperial (Álvaro Obregón 293, Roma Norte; 52-55/5525-1115), where the downstairs space is decked out in modern baroque with chandeliers and lace-draped columns.
Shake it at Pasaje America, where a roster of international D.J.'s like New York's Tommie Sunshine spin deep house and minimal techno below giant disco balls. Or get down at the legendary Patrick Miller, a cavernous space that has attracted high-profile patrons like Diplo, and is still the favorite spot for high-energy music lovers to battle it out in laser-lit dance circles.
Learn to dance to synth-heavy cumbia sonidera at Buttergold, the megasize disco with five bars and twice-nightly drag revues that draw as many straight folks as gay. The $9 cover includes two domestic beers.
4. Insider's Tip
Considered sacred by the Aztecs, pulque is an alcoholic drink fermented from the maguey plant. You can find it in cans in New York, but drink it out of the barrel at La Pirata (13 de Septiembre, Escandón; no phone), where the floors are covered in sawdust and black-and-white photos of nude women adorn the walls. The pulque, which is combined with different flavors—oats and pine nut are the most popular—costs 80 cents a liter.
5. Oddball Day
Take a taxi an hour south of the city center to the Aztec canals of Xochimilco ($10 for the cab ride), where families and visitors gather at "the Venice of Mexico" for special occasions aboard brightly painted wooden trajineras (flat-bottomed boats). Get out at the Embarcadero Nuevo Nativitas, the busiest of the nine landings, and snag a spot on a twenty-seater green-roofed boat equipped with buckets of domestic beer ($12 per hour, plus drinks). Request a ranchera song from one of the mariachi bands-for-hire coasting by ($6) or enjoy a floating picnic from canoegoing vendors hawking hot soup, barbecued rabbit, and grilled corn. Make arrangements with the boat guide to stop at the Isla de las Muñecas, located two hours outside of the water park. Explore this spooky shrine to a poor girl who drowned in the canal by walking beneath the hundreds of old dolls hanging from trees. Don't forget to leave an offering—a doll or candle—to placate any restless spirits.
6. Links
Chilango.com, the website of the Spanish-language print magazine, lists every bar and antro (or nightclub) in town by genre and neighborhood.
To brush up on your street slang, check out Swearin DF, a manual of communication for English speakers visiting Mexico City.
Flip through the virtual version of El DF's Expat Guide for information on restaurants, museums, and concert venues—and detailed maps to ensure you'll get there.
Still nervous to venture south of the border? The Truth About Mexico aims to balance the negative media attention coming from the North.


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Any chance the UN has a spare helicopter on a day Stephen Fry is free? Someone needs to fly him into this Nokia/Apple WARZONE and provide both sides with a box of tissues, cup of tea and a comforting hug.
Still, I can definitely see why Nokia's got their panties in a twist after Steve Jobs smugly boasted they were the world's "largest mobile devices company" on Wednesday, following their patent infringement lawsuit which has both companies countersuing each other.
Mark Squires, the head of social media for Nokia, wrote on the company blog that:
"sometimes there are articles floating around on the sphere that get my blood pressure rising to what my doctor is prone to call an 'unreasonable level for a man of your years/weight/physical condition'. Reading coverage of one of our competitor's much hyped web pad event this week, I was surprised to see that, by revenue, they were claiming in their leader's keynote to be "the largest mobile devices company in the world."
Promising a true "apples-to-apples comparison", Squires snarked:
"The difference between the two companies is even larger if you use the more common measure: the number of devices sold. By that comparison, Nokia has been the largest mobile devices company in the world for a dozen consecutive years."
Before I get too schoolmarm-ish on the two companies, I do hope Apple at least responds to that. [Nokia Conversations via Mobile-Ent]


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The remaining two productions of the 2008-2009 season, Rossini's The Barber of Seville and Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, have been canceled. Ticket-holders will not receive refunds. Singers engaged for next season are being released from their contracts, but the company plans to continue fundraising in an effort to resume productions in the future.
Deborah Goetz, senior director of marketing and communications, confirmed yesterday that Baltimore Opera's board of trustees voted Dec. 4 to file for Chapter 11 protection.
"My heart sinks," said soprano Evelyn Lear, now retired and living in Rockville. She starred in three Baltimore Opera productions during the 1970s and 1980s. "The company had high standards, good productions, a good orchestra. I'm distraught that this may mean that opera is finished in Baltimore."
Famously guided for decades by legendary soprano Rosa Ponselle, the organization was incorporated in 1950 as the Baltimore Civic Opera Company. Its roots go back further; a more loosely organized ensemble, established by conductor Eugene Martinet, began performing under that name in the early 1930s.
The newly chartered Baltimore Opera debuted with Verdi's Aida in April 1950. Two years later, performances moved from the Maryland Casualty Auditorium on Keswick Road to the Lyric Opera House, which remained the company's permanent home.
Stellar singers performed with the Baltimore Opera over the decades, among them sopranos Beverly Sills and Anna Moffo and tenors Carlo Bergonzi and Placido Domingo. Bass-baritone James Morris, mentored in his early years by Ponselle, launched his career at the Baltimore Opera.
Last month, the company reported a major cash-flow shortage, attributed largely to a shortfall of more than $200,000 in projected ticket sales for the season-opening production of Aida in October. A board member had to make a personal guarantee of salaries for last month's production of Bellini's Norma.
In addition, contributions declined this fall, "placing ongoing operations in jeopardy," according to the official statement.
The company, which has faced cash-flow issues for several years, has an accumulated deficit of "maybe $800,000," Goetz said. The annual operating budget is about $6 million.
"We regret the impact that [the bankruptcy filing] will have on our creditors and associates, but we take this action in order to preserve one of the region's most significant cultural institutions," board Chairman Allan D. Jensen said in the statement.
The opera company is the largest casualty among local arts organizations since the economy began its steep decline in September. Due to declining revenue, the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra recently canceled events scheduled for January.
"Naturally, we are saddened to hear that the Baltimore Opera will close its doors for the rest of the season," said Eileen Andrews Jackson, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's vice president of public relations and community affairs. "The BSO is certainly sympathetic to all area arts organizations now being affected by an extremely challenging economic environment. It is our hope that the Opera can turn itself around and re-emerge as a vital contributor to Baltimore's cultural life."
Goetz acknowledged that "there probably will be some challenges" to the no-refund policy for ticket-holders. Letters will be sent explaining an option of treating their purchase as a tax deduction.
The Baltimore Opera board named M. Kevin Wixted, a financial consultant, to the post of general manager. He will be responsible for directing the reorganization effort and future planning. Wixted served as the BSO's interim chief financial officer for seven months in 2007.
Longtime general director Michael Harrison relinquished that job last month to become artistic director. He will continue in that capacity and assist in fundraising. "Michael has been the lead fundraiser for the last 20 years and will remain very much involved in that effort," Goetz said.
She said that James Handakas, who was named acting general director last month, is leaving the company to accept an out-of-town job offer, and that board president Lisa Di Julio Bertani resigned within the past two weeks.
Various educational programs are expected to continue during the reorganization, and "the company will continue to solicit contributions to create an operating account to subsidize future productions," according to yesterday's statement. Goetz said that no staff member "has been let go yet."


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D-Lib Magazine
Gregory Crane
The Greek historian Herodotus has the Athenian sage Solon estimate the lifetime of a human being at c. 26,250 days (Herodotus, The Histories, 1.32). If we could read a book on each of those days, it would take almost forty lifetimes to work through every volume in a single million book library. The continuous tradition of written European literature that began with the Iliad and Odyssey in the eighth century BCE is itself little more than a million days old. While libraries that contain more than one million items are not unusual, print libraries never possessed a million books of use to any one reader. The great libraries that took shape in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were meta-structures, whose catalogues and finding aids allowed readers to create their own customized collections, building on the fixed classification schemes and disciplinary structures that took shape in the nineteenth century.
The digital libraries of the early twenty-first century can be searched and their contents transmitted around the world. They can contain time-based media, images, quantitative data, and a far richer array of content than print, with visualization technologies blurring the boundaries between library and museum. But our digital libraries remain filled with digital incunabula digital objects whose form remains firmly rooted in traditions of print, with HTML and PDF largely mimicking the limitations of their print predecessors.
Vast collections based on image books raw digital pictures of books with searchable but uncorrected text from OCR could arguably retard our long-term progress, reinforcing the hegemony of structures that evolved to minimize the challenges of a world where paper was the only medium of distribution and where humans alone could read.1 Already the books in a digital library are beginning to read one another and to confer among themselves before creating a new synthetic document for review by their human readers.2
Figure 1 shows a simple illustration of recombinant documents. The reader has retrieved a summary of information about a canonical query a Latin poem by the poet Catullus. Although the materials primarily derive from print sources, this view builds on three fundamental components of a truly digital library. First, they have much finer and more meaningful granularity than page breaks: larger documents have been broken down into smaller units aligned to an established authority (in this case, the traditional numbering and lineation of the poems of Catullus, such that "Catullus 1" means the same thing in many information sources). Second, the digital library automatically learns as it grows larger: automated systems scan new documents for references to Catullus; language models update themselves to provide better contextual clues to disambiguate phenomena such as morphology.3 Third, the documents can learn from their users, both implicitly (by examining patterns of use to determine important questions and sources of information) and explicitly. All three features are present in a rather primitive state in this figure, but the ability to decompose information into smaller, reusable chunks, to learn autonomously from a changing environment, and to accept explicit structured feedback from many human users in real time are fundamental characteristics that separate digital from print.4
Intelligent digital libraries can allow a greater number of users to make more effective use of a wider range of their holdings than was ever feasible in print. Traditional finding aids were much more limited in their ability to increase intellectual access; ink on paper cannot speak or search itself; print grammars and lexica cannot generate any translations good, bad or indifferent of text from one language to another; gazetteers cannot convert themselves into databases or display their contents on maps or timelines. The Chinese speaker from Shanghai interested in Greek literature or the English speaker from Massachusetts interested in Chinese should be able to call upon our knowledge of these subjects, converted into their own native languages and structured in ways to meet their own particular needs, whether they are professional researchers or general readers curious to expand their horizons.
But if we must be wary of print-based constraints, the vast printed holdings of our libraries provide the raw material out of which pathways of intellectual life will evolve. We are beginning to see the rise of vast libraries of digital books. The Million Book Project at Carnegie Mellon had as of November 2005 already scanned more than 600,000 books.5 Even more ambitiously, Google has created a consortium of libraries to build a massive digital collection: one of the partners alone the Harvard University Library system contains more than 15,000,000 items. Recent research by OCLC has counted the total number of unique books that will be digitized by the Google Print project at over 10.5 million.6 The Open Content Alliance is offering a more transparent framework for mass digitization, and such industry forces as Yahoo and Microsoft are beginning to develop digital collections with millions of books.7 The European Union, both optimistic about the future and fretful about too much American influence on the emerging digital infrastructure, has launched its own plans for a massive digital library.8
The money seems to be very much available to convert millions of books into digital form. Google has its own proprietary data entry environment, with the Open Content Alliance close behind and other vendors continuing to develop their offerings. Thus no serious financial or technical barriers stand in the way of the world having at its disposal a larger, more comprehensive collection than the best university library on earth because, in fact, this collection would, if perfectly realized, subsume the Harvard Library system.
Other barriers remain nonetheless, and nothing guarantees the arrival of multimillion volume digital libraries. Usage of massive digital libraries could, for example, not support the revenue needed to complete them Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and others surely have hundreds of millions of dollars to invest in profitable endeavors, but it is far less clear that they would write off such sums to serve the public good with a comprehensive, universally accessible digital library of human knowledge. More immediately, rights holders have already begun legal action, and Google will have to fight its way through the courts to realize its vision fully. On the other hand, Google may have so dramatized the issues that Yahoo, Microsoft, and others working through the Open Content Alliance or similar consortia may find it easier to craft workable rights agreements. In the end, we should remember that copyright is an instrument to generate wealth and protect content. If Google Library or similar endeavors promise to produce more than existing mechanisms, then U.S. (and international) law will adapt, one way or the other.9 Sooner or later some form of compulsory licensing, similar to that used by radio stations which broadcast copyrighted content, will probably emerge as a reasonable solution.
We can always adduce reasons why these massive libraries will not emerge, and there is no guarantee that they will emerge in the next ten years, but we also must consider the consequences not only for digital libraries but also for the intellectual life of the human race as a whole if the record of human experience becomes, in substantial measure, freely available online anytime and anywhere. On a practical level, what will happen to print collections, large or small, if large digital libraries become larger, more accessible and more flexible than any university library in history? On a broader level, we are facing a shift that may eclipse the significance of print and approach the impact of writing itself: for writing first stored human ideas outside of our brains and print enhanced the effect. Digital libraries, where books read one another in however a rudimentary fashion, have already begun to separate intelligence and action from the human brain.
Changes in scale and substance
Even in their initial, inevitably crude forms, the proposed massive digital libraries differ from their predecessors by at least one or more orders of magnitude in at least five and probably six dimensions:
Thus large digital libraries promise to change at least five core dimensions of digital collections by at least one and probably more orders of magnitude. Any one of these increases would have potentially major implications. With at least five such increases, each interacting with the others, the probability becomes even larger that we confront a phase shift in how we use, support, and plan for digital collections.
What do you do with a million books?
The ability to extract from the stored record of humanity useful information in an actionable format for any given human being of any culture at any time and in any place will not emerge quickly, but the fundamental tools on which such a system would be built are moving forward. GALE, the most recent DARPA information technology initiative,12 has reduced the tangle of text mining, analysis, and searching technologies down to three core functions: converting analog source to text, translating one language to another, and transforming raw text into data. Three articles in this issue of D-Lib shed light on the issues involved for academic digital libraries:
How domain specialists interact with huge collections
Before we move on to emerging technologies, however, two other articles provide examples of forward thinking work relevant to the development of very large collections now starting to take shape. Document analysis, multilingual technology, and information extraction can be modeled in general terms, but these technologies acquire meaning when they are aligned with the needs of particular domains. Two articles in this issue of D-Lib provide case studies that address complementary efforts. Wolfgang Schibel describes collection development for a digital library on early modern culture (roughly from the first printed books through 1750). Enhanced OCR, machine translation, and information extraction promise to revolutionize the study of this historically central field in which language and cultural assumptions have rendered the primary sources virtually inaccessible to all but specialists.
More interesting from our perspective, Schibel and his colleagues have shifted from digitizing documents to mining those documents for information about people, places, organizations, and various semantic fields relevant to early modern studies. This emerging knowledge base (TERMINI13) will provide the information that will in turn support improved OCR, machine translation, and information extraction. Collection development and all three of the core functions are intertwined and affect each other, with changes in any one affecting subsequent iterations of all components of the system.
Dan Cohen's article describes work building on application program interfaces (APIs) to the large Web-based collections indexed by Google and Yahoo. Cohen's work anticipates what scholars can do when they build upon very large, but uneven, collections already available. His work points the way towards scholarly services and specialized experiments that will characterize research, especially in the humanities, when our research libraries make the transition to a large-scale, integrated digital form.
1. The card catalogue has exerted the most problematic incunabular effect upon digital libraries, with digital libraries trying to replicate card catalogues while users want content. The popularity of Google and the unfortunate demise of classification based systems such as Northernlight illustrated user impatience with catalogue-like approaches. On this topic, see Carl Lagoze, et al. "What is a Digital Library Anymore, Anyway?: Beyond Search and Access in the NSDL" D-Lib, November 2005, <doi:10.1045/november2005-lagoze>.
2. For an excellent review of the potential of synthetic documents within a universal digital library, particularly in terms of solving copyright issues, please see Michael Ian Shamos, "Machines as readers: a solution to the copyright problem." J. Zhejiang Univ. Science 6A, 11, pp. 1179-1187 (Nov. 2005).
3. For a discussion of how language models can be used to date a historical text, please see F. de Jong, et al., "Temporal Language Models for the Disclosure of Historical Text", XVIth International Conference of the Association for History and Computing, 2005.
4. These three features are well established: information retrieval systems that employ user feedback are well documented in the literature and perform all three functions: they can break text objects down into small chunks and return snippets from the whole, they analyze their corpora automatically, and they recalculate results based on user responses. Data and text mining systems combine automated analysis and user feedback to analyze more diverse data sets. Digital libraries such as the Amazon.com commercial web site relentlessly recombine their items in an attempt to create more attractive combinations of objects for their customers. More recently, the Mellon-funded Nora text mining project has begun creating an interactive text classification system that exploits the markup of TEI-conformant documents. Please see, Catherine Plaisant, et al. , "Exploring Erotics in Emily Dickinson's Correspondence with Text Mining and Visual Interfaces." <http://hcil.cs.umd.edu/trs/2006-01/2006-01.pdf>.
5. Carnegie Mellon Libraries: Million Book Project FAQ, <http://www.library.cmu.edu/Libraries/MBP_FAQ.html>.
6. Brian Lavoie, et al. "Anatomy of Aggregate Collections: The Example of Google Print for Libraries." D-Lib Magazine, September 2005, <doi:10.1045/september2005-lavoie>.
7. Open Content Alliance (OCA) home page, <http://www.opencontentalliance.org/>.
8. EU i2010: <http://europa.eu.int/information_society/eeurope/i2010/index_en.htm>.
9. For a comprehensive overview of the copyright issues faced by universal digital libraries, please see Hannibal Travis, "Building Universal Digital Libraries: An Agenda For Copyright Reform." Forthcoming, Pepperdine Law Review, available at <http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=793585>.
10. The Michigan Home page for the Making of America (last change November 15, 2005), <http://www.hti.umich.edu/m/moagrp/>, claims "9,500 books and 50,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints," including 12,007 volumes in all. The Cornell Making of America (http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/moa/) claims "267 monograph volumes and over 100,000 journal articles," representing 955 serial volumes.
11. Harvard College Library, <http://hcl.harvard.edu/libraries/>.
12. DARPA Information Processing Technology Office, <http://www.darpa.mil/IPTO/solicitations/open/05-28_PIP.htm>; GALE - Global Autonomous Language Exploitation, <http://projects.ldc.upenn.edu/gale/>; Say What?: Global Autonomous Language Exploitation <http://www.military.com/soldiertech/0,14632,Soldiertech_Translator,,00.html>.
13. TERMINI, <http://www.uni-mannheim.de/mateo/termini/index.html>.
Copyright © 2006 Gregory Crane
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The rabbit toots to make sure you read this.
Last update: 3-Oct-2011 21:51 UTC
NTP has been under development for almost 30 years, but the paint ain't dry even now. This release of the NTP Version 4 (NTPv4) distribution for Unix, VMS and Windows incorporates new features and refinements, but retaining backwards compatibility with older versions, including NTPv3 and NTPv2, but not NTPv1. Support for NTPv1 has been discontinued because of certain security vulnerabilities.
This section summarizes general changes since the publication of RFC-1305. Specific changes made during the code upgrade of 2007-2008 are summarized in Historical Notes.
There are a few things different about this release that have changed since the latest NTP Version 3 release. Following are a few things to worry about:


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South Korea's military said Thursday it would hold its largest-ever joint air drill with the United States as tensions mount over a series of threats from North Korea.
The twice-yearly Max Thunder exercise — to be held from Friday to April 25 — will be the largest-ever involving 103 aircraft and 1,400 troops, the air force said.
Seoul's F-15K jet fighters will take part along with US Air Force F-15 and F-16s and US Marines' FA-18 and EA-18 aircraft, it said in a statement.
"The combined air forces will strengthen their battle readiness under the current situation when tension rises over the Korean peninsula," it said.
The exercise will focus on "practical scenarios" involving precision attacks on enemies or supply drop missions for troops infiltrating enemy territory, it said.
Separately, the allies are also holding annual Key Resolve and Foal Eagle exercises which last from late February to April 18.
North Korea has slammed the drills as a rehearsal for invasion. In a pointed protest, Pyongyang has launched a series of rockets and missiles in recent weeks, capped by its first mid-range missile test since 2009 on March 26.
The two Koreas also traded fire across the tense Yellow Sea border on March 31, after the North dropped some 100 shells across the border during a live-fire drill, prompting the South to fire back.
The rare exchange of fire came a day after the North warned that it might carry out a "new" form of nuclear test — a possible reference to a uranium-based device or a miniaturised warhead small enough to fit on a ballistic missile.
South Korean President Park Geun-Hye this week called for tighter vigilance against the North, days after its leader Kim Jong-Un warned of a "very grave situation" on the peninsula.


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Just what my family needed in November! A Beach getaway! Loved the view, the place. Everything was very nice and I would love to stay again.


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The Taste Space shared her awesome, vegan Rasta Pasta, that even a carnivore like me can enjoy with gusto.
Erbe in Cucina always brings something new and wonderful to Presto Pasta Nights. This time it's Gnocci with Nettles & Borage... neither of which I've ever cooked with, so something new for me to test.
Teczcape is back with a perfect variation on, probably the best pasta dish for this time of year... especially since I'm sitting here with heavy socks and wooly sweater... Fresh Herbs & Chicken Macaroni Soup. This one is definitely different to the one my mother used to make and I can't wait to try some.
Nummy Kitchen really outdid herself...fresh pasta with Piri Piri Cream Sauce. I love Piri Piri, that spicy Portuguese/Brazilian sauce and... well, obviously, I love pasta, so thanks for the combination.
Pictures of All My Princesses has really shown me up here. I've been meaning to make some homemade pasta for weeks and never got the pasta maker out of the cupboard. Along comes Juli and whips up these gorgeous, toasted homemade ravioli. They look awesome and truly inspired.
Cookin' with Moxie has me drooling with her Orecchiette with Mushrooms, Asparagus & Boursin... which is one of my favorite soft cheeses. I can't wait to whip this one up.
Pasta with Winter Greens, Pancetta & Mushrooms is still a favorite around here. In fact, it's inspired me to start linking to my early pasta dishes over at Presto Pasta Nights. Be sure to check them out.
Tandy of Lavender & Lime will be our wonderful host for the fourth time, I might add! Send your entries to lavenderandlimeblog (at) gmail (dot) com and cc ruth (at) 4everykitchen (dot) com by Thursday February 9
Friday, February 3, 2012
Presto Pasta Night Roundup #249
5 comments:
- Jules said...
Thank you Ruth for your kinda words. It's always such fun to try and come up with something new and then see it in the roundup at the end of the week.
- February 03, 2012 1:10 PM
- Andrea at Nummy Kitchen said...
What an awesome round-up, I see so many inspiring dishes I want to bookmark and try! How neat that you're a fan of piri piri sauce, I had never even heard of it until recently. So fun to try something new.
Thank you for hosting :)
- February 03, 2012 2:49 PM
- tigerfish said...
Thanks for the round-up, Ruth!
Stay warm.
- February 03, 2012 10:57 PM
- Alisha said...
Wow, what a great set of dishes, Ruth! I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to play -- next week though!
- February 05, 2012 10:10 AM
- Graziana said...
great round-up with so many hearty pasta recipes!
- February 06, 2012 5:41 AM
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After months, two surveys and hours of discussion, the Pleasanton school board has voted unanimously to approve a resolution to put the parcel tax up for a May vote.
There were, however, a couple of last-minute alterations to the measure. Board Chairwoman Valerie Arkin asked that a yearly expenditure plan be included to track what the money is targeted toward and where it actually goes.
That fits with what Superintendent Parvin Ahmadi had already planned to do, to address concerns she'd been hearing from the community.
"We would come to the board with a spending plan. We would come back with very specific plans for what we would spend the money on," Ahmadi said. "Hopefully that would satisfy the requests I've had to be more specific."
Arkin also asked that an oversight committee already included as part of the resolution be made up of a minimum of seven people, all payers of the tax, and with no board members or school employees on it. The parcel tax revenues and spending would be reviewed by the oversight committee four times a year.
She also suggested that the board include a commitment to put the spending plan on the district's website, but that idea was shot down by Charles Heath of TBWB Strategies, the company hired to help with the parcel tax campaign.
"You might want to give yourself some flexibility," he said. "Everything you write into this you are legally bound to do."
Heath suggested that opting to put the spending plan on the district's website could be done by a board vote rather than including it on the ballot.
No one spoke at the public hearing on the parcel tax, although several supporters commented later. To date, no opposition to the tax has been raised at board meetings.
Luz Cázares, assistant superintendent of business services, estimates the parcel tax could bring in about $2.1 million a year, even if 50% of seniors opt out of paying, as they are eligible to do.
Board member Chris Grant said the tax could reassure teachers, some of whom have been laid off, then rehired just before school begins.
"The more that we can create a stable base of funds, the fewer pink slips we'll have to issue," he said.
In fact, according to Bill Faraghan, assistant superintendent of Human Resources, the district has been losing teachers because of just that.
"A number of teachers laid off were hired by other districts," Faraghan said, adding he's heard districts look to Pleasanton for highly qualified teachers.
The board allocated $250,000 for the mail-in election, something none of the members took lightly.
"It really is a lot of money," said board member Jamie Hintzke. "To me, it's not just spending $250,000 for $2 million, it's spending $500,000 because we lost last time."
New board members Jeff Bowser and Joan Laursen both campaigned for Measure G, the board's first attempt to pass a parcel tax, which received 62% approval, less than the two-thirds approval needed to pass.
"Nobody likes taxes. I certainly don't," Bowser said. "This is the only way we have to protect schools. This is the only way we have to raise funds."
Bowser pointed out that the parcel tax could not be used to increase salaries. That does not include step-and-column raises that are included in current contacts, although Faraghan noted the district is in negotiations with its two unions.
Laursen said she hesitated making a commitment to support a parcel tax when she was campaigning.
"At that time, we didn't have a survey," she said. With the new data, Laursen said public leaders have been approaching her asking, "How can I help?"
The most recent survey showed 72% approval for a $98 parcel tax, but board members know they still have work to do if they want the measure to pass.
In stumping to get the measure passed, Arkin said "We need people behind us. … We need everyone to step up."


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Installation and configuration with wire is a breeze. To configure the wireless option was much more complicated but not impossible. I attempted to do it myself with the instructions and found it very difficult. I called tech support and had the wireless configuration completed in no time. The camera is very clear and works well. I can now watch my dogs while out of the house from anywhere using my iPhone.
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When buying an IP camera for home monitoring, there two things you should keep in mind.
Image compression mode-There are three kinds of format,H.264,MPEG4,MJPEG,while the H.264 compression gets you the same video quality as the other compression at lower bit rates, which can be translate into less bandwidth and less storage.
Resolution and Lens- In order to get a good quality picture, you need a good lens for good resolution. Make sure you can get a variety of lenses for your cameras for different types of scenes.
It is good for you to have a wireless IP camera, easy installation, save trouble with cables and wires. Data transfer via cable or wireless IP camera is much more stable in comparison to the analog.
Moreover, IP cam supports remote recording, with additional modem, can record all the cameras anywhere. It is properly a good idea for preventing the theft break into our house or office.


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The list below is a framework for the type and approximate amount of expense you should plan for. Please remember to consult your real estate attorney and mortgage lender to ensure the accuracy and completeness of these expenses.
68 North Finley Avenue
Basking Ridge, NJ 07920
454 Main Street
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223 Main Street
Madison, NJ 07940
20 East Main Street
Mendham, NJ 07945
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Bowery Mission Opens Manhattan's Only Faith-Based Women's Shelter
NEW YORK – The Bowery Mission, one of the oldest and largest charity organizations in New York City, has opened a newly-renovated transitional home for formerly homeless women in Harlem this week, providing them further security as they get back on their feet.
Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly were present at the unveiling of The Bowery Mission Women's Center in Harlem Tuesday, as was James Winans, the Chief Development Officer at The Bowery Mission. Winans told The Christian Post that by opening this women's center, the Christian organization seeks to provide women with "one of the practical things that they need."
"We have eight newly renovated apartments for our graduates to live in," he explained, noting that The Bowery Mission has been serving the homeless for 133 years. The Women's Center is currently the only faith-based residential recovery program for homeless women in Manhattan, he said.
"In 2005 we extended our care to women by opening a women's center on the Upper East Side for twenty women recovering from homelessness, addiction or abuse, and they go through a Christian program of recovery," Winans told CP, adding that around 60 people attended Tuesday's ceremony. "When they graduate, they are connected with friends and family, they are clean and sober, they have a job and a place to live – those are our measurements of graduation."
Commissioner Kelly added in a press release:
"I have been impressed by The Bowery Mission's work with women ever since my wife Veronica helped renovate the first Women's Center in 2005. Over the past eight years, they have transformed many lives – not just the women who need help, but also the women who support the home."
The Bowery already provides homeless men and women with temporary dormitories, fresh meals, new clothes, a recovery program and career development services. The newly opened transitional home gives women the "final key component of recovery – stable housing – as they re-enter the workforce."


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The Art of Presentation
Yesterday I was cruising the grocery store aisles for sugar for my morning coffee-fix. From about 20 feet away, I immediately noticed something – the packaging on my familiar brand had undergone a major overhaul. It was bolder, clearer and also included some laughable verbiage regarding 15 calories per serving (come on, we're talking about sugar here).The point is, the fundamental virtues of the product had not changed at all. The only thing that had, however, was the presentation.
In the world of small business marketing and advertising, entrepreneurs are in a constant fight for visibility. If you are one of them, you may feel compelled to triple your marketing budget or maybe do something drastic like revamp your entire product line to attach more customers. Before you go through such measures to heighten your visibility you may want to take a candid look at the presentation of your existing product and/or services.
I recently heard about a published book that sat on bookstore shelves with virtually no movement. Despite the herculean effort to write the book, the author inevitably began to feel as though the book was a dud and began to second guess the book's premise. Before the book was abandoned, it fell into the hands of a dynamic marketer. This creative thinker implored the author to re-release an unrevised version of the book. The marketing strategist did, however, demand that the title and the cover be changed. As a result, this piece of literature skyrocketed to success on account of, your guessed it – presentation.
With that story as our backdrop, take a moment to see if the following points can inspire new ideas for your presentation:
Name ChangeKnow that a descriptive, colorful name change has the ability to shift how consumers think about things. Imagine walking into a bakery to order a pie. Which of the two would sound more appealing: Apple Pie or something like, Orchard Fresh Apple Pie? A name augmentation alone has the ability to raise your product's standing in the mind of the consumer.Highlighting Features and BenefitsI recall buying allergy medication for my son. His doctor clearly stated that the store brands were just as effective as the name brands. However, when I picked up both packages, it appeared that the name brands were better. Why? Their packaging used phrases such as "maximum relief" whereas the store brand did not. In reality, the ingredients and the potency were identical. Hence the name brand wasn't better; they simply had a superior way of detailing their benefits. Be just as shrewd. Though you should never overstate things; don't be found guilty of doing the opposite.
AestheticsAbout a year ago I began to hear the word, "optics" in political discourse. Translation: how does a certain thing look or appear? This is a key question that you must answer as a small business owner. How does your website look? Is your product packaging uninspired and listless? Are your employees and store's appearance unkempt and disheveled? Aesthetics are the very first step in either repelling or attracting customers.
Walter Dailey is a proven creative strategist. He's the lead consultant and executive producer for Dailey Sound Vector, a creative services organization that specializes in jingles, radio ads and music licensing for small and mid-sized businesses. Walter is finally on Twitter. Follow him here: @wrdailey


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In a possible reality, Ranma loses Akane in the battle against Saffron. Leaving his past life behind, he accepts a relative's invitation to visit the Launch Day celebration of the SDF-1. (Adventure) Ranma ½ / Robotech crossover.
Silent Battles won first place in voting for the most recommended read for the month of August, 2001 at ibun no bunko .
|Layout, design, & site revisions © 2004
|Webmaster: Larry F
Last revision: May 21, 2007


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This will probably be my last post until the new year, so here is a wonderfully crisp sugar cookie with a tart cranberry filling that are pretty easy to make. There are many recipes of this kind of cookie floating around out there, so call them whatever you want (I went alliterative). Usually these kinds of doughs are chilled and then rolled, but I don't find any difference with rolling first and chilling later. In fact, I find it much easier to roll this dough first because when chilled it is pretty finicky. The cranberry filling is also a snap. If it does not set up enough to your liking, just boil it again for another minute and retry.
- 1/2 cup refined coconut oil, room temperature (or margarine)
- 1/2 cup margarine, room temperature
- 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/2 tsp almond extract
- 3/4 cup (90g) icing sugar
- 2 cups (315g) all purpose flour (spoon and level flour if you are not weighing it)
Cranberry Filling
- 1 1/2 cups cranberries (fresh or frozen)
- 3 tbsp orange juice
- 3/4 cup sugar
Makes 12-18, depending on size
1. Cream together coconut oil and margarine with a hand mixer, or stand mixer with the whisk attachment, until smooth and fluffy. Blend in extracts. Blend in icing sugar.
2. Using a wooden spoon, mix in flour and bring into a soft dough. Use your hands finish it off if needed.
3. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
4. Roll out dough on a lightly floured surface to about 1/8 inch thick. Using a metal cookie cutter, cut out as many shapes as you can. Using a smaller cutter, punch out the centres of half of them (these will be your tops). Re-roll dough scraps and repeat until dough is all used up. Place on prepared sheets, (using a pastry scraper to transfer), cover, and chill for about 30 mins, until firm.
5. While cookies are chilling, preheat oven to 325 degrees. Bake cookies one sheet at a time for 15-17 mins, until lightly golden on the edges.
6. Let cookies cool on the sheet for 5 mins, then remove to a wire rack to fully cool.
Cranberry Filling
1. Heat cranberries and orange juice to bubbling in a saucepan over medium heat. Cook for about 5 mins, mashing cranberries as they cook.
2. When cranberries are well-mashed, add sugar and turn heat to high. Cook for about 2 mins at a rapid boil, stirring constantly. Filling is ready when it drips thickly off your spoon (let it drip off the spoon when you first add the sugar and you will see what I mean).
3. Use a spoon to pass the filling through a fine mesh sieve. Place in the fridge to cool down.
Make the cookies:
1. When jam has cooled but is not cold, spread on the bases of the cookies. If the cookies puffed up too much during baking, simply flip the bottom cookie over so that the baking sheet-sides of the cookies are in the middle. Don't spread right to the edges, and mound it up a bit in the centre. Gently press a top on so that the jam spreads into the cut out middle.
2. You can store/freeze the cookies like this. When ready to serve, dust gently with icing sugar.
Comment: some people are finding the dough crumbly. The dough is a bit tricky to work with, but it also makes for a very delicate cookie. A few tips:
1. Roll first, refrigerate later. If you chill first, allow the dough to warm up before rolling.
2. Make sure you spoon and level the flour and icing sugar if you are not weighing it.
3. Add some melted margarine if everything is still crumbly.


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Date: Thursday, June 18th, Thursday
Time: 11:00am Pacific Time
Or, 2:00am Hong Kong Time on June 19th, Friday
Windows 7, is approaching fast and from the application standpoint is very similar to Windows Vista. We are going to examine Windows 7 application compatibility not only from the perspective of moving from Windows Vista, but also for those coming from Windows XP. Join us to discuss the most common challenges around application compatibility when coming from a legacy operating system, why changes were made along the way, compatibility technologies inside the OS and methods for getting incompatible applications to run on Windows 7. Along the way we share tips and tricks, demonstrate free tools to analyze and fix applications and answer your specific questions about application compatibility live.
In Part 2 of this Virtual Round Table discussion (planned for later this Summer/Fall), we will discuss the options and approaches for using virtualization tools In depth to address application incompatibilities, including presentation virtualization, desktop virtualization and application virtualization. We will be sending out more details and posting information to www.microsoft.com/springboard for part 2 as the dates are finalized.
Find answers to your Windows client OS deployment and management questions with resources, tools, monthly feature articles, and guidance from subject matter experts and early adopters. To learn more, visit www.microsoft.com/springboard
As part of the Virtual experience, you may submit your questions about Windows 7 Beta to the panel live during the event, or submit questions in advance to email@example.com.


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ATTLEBORO, Mass. (AP) -- A man linked to the murder case against former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez told police Hernandez admitted firing the fatal shots, and a vehicle wanted in a double killing in Boston a year before had been rented in Hernandez's name, according to documents filed Tuesday in Florida that provide the most damning evidence yet against the star athlete.
The documents say Hernandez associate Carlos Ortiz told Massachusetts investigators that another man, Ernest Wallace, said Hernandez admitted shooting semi-pro football player Odin Lloyd in an industrial park near Hernandez's home in North Attleborough. The documents were filed in court by the Miramar, Fla., police department to justify a search of Wallace's home in that city.
Former New England Patriots football player Aaron Hernandez stands during a bail hearing in Fall River Superior Court Thursday, June 27, 2013 in Fall River, Mass. Hernandez, charged with murdering Odin Lloyd, a 27-year-old semi-pro football player, was denied bail. Credit: AP
The documents also say that while investigating Lloyd's killing, police did searches in Hernandez's hometown, Bristol, Conn., that turned up a vehicle wanted in connection with a July 2012 double homicide in Boston. Police say the vehicle had been rented in Hernandez's name.
Hernandez has pleaded not guilty in Lloyd's killing. His legal team did not return email messages Tuesday.
Prosecutors say Hernandez, Wallace and another man drove with Lloyd to an industrial park where Lloyd was fatally shot.
Ortiz told police that, after picking up Lloyd, the four men headed back to North Attleborough. Along the way, Hernandez told Lloyd that Lloyd had been "chilling" with people Hernandez had problems with, the documents said. But Ortiz told police that the two men shook hands and the problem seemed smoothed over. But soon the car stopped, and everyone but Ortiz got out to urinate, according to Ortiz's account.
FILE - This Dec. 25, 2012 file photo taken by a sister and provided by the Boston Bandits football team shows Odin Lloyd, 27, whose body was found Monday, June 17, 2013 in an industrial park in North Attleborough, Mass. Credit: AP
The witness also told police he then heard gunshots before Hernandez and Wallace got back into the car without Lloyd and the vehicle sped away.
Wallace faces an accessory to murder charge in the case and has pleaded not guilty.
Meanwhile, eight search warrants were unsealed in Massachusetts after news organizations sought access to the records. The warrants reveal the breadth of the investigation, with authorities scouring through everything from Hernandez's house to his phone to the contents of his team locker, which the Patriots emptied into a container after they released him.
Police seized a rifle and ammunition found in Hernandez's home.
According to the documents, Hernandez became "argumentative" during his first encounter with police at his home following Lloyd's death. He asked, "What's with all the questions?" and locked the door behind him.
He then returned with his attorney's business card but didn't respond when police told him they were investigating a death.
"Mr. Hernandez slammed the door and relocked it behind him," the records read. "Mr. Hernandez did not ask officers whose death was being investigated. Mr. Hernandez's demeanor did not indicate any concern for the death of any person."
Hernandez came out later and agreed to be questioned at a police station, according to the documents.
The documents also say Hernandez called his girlfriend's cellphone and stopped her from speaking with police after they pulled her over and told her Lloyd was dead.
Featured image via AP


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Well under a buck apiece.
One glance at our ridiculously low prices, and you're probably wondering - how bad are these things? The answer: not bad at all. Made with a traditional 'Cuban sandwich' blend of Dominican and Nicaragua tobaccos topped with a Connecticut wrapper leaf, C'est La Vie offers a smooth, mellow to medium-bodied experience. There's even a slightly sweetened option for an extra bit of added flavor.
I'm not promising much here, but I'm more than confident they'll fit the bill for mowing the lawn or working around the yard. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if you found countless more opportunities to burn one. And the truth is, these are probably the cheapest full-sized cigars we carry….and they're surprisingly good.
Very fast shipping from CI. I am very impressed with their shipping. The cigars are nice; I had to smoke one out of the box, but very nice flavor, good smoke for the price. I would recomend to a friend
The best smoke for the buck. Taste is great, draw is also great and the burn is perfect! I've smoked genuine Cohiba from Cuba and these cigars are not far apart! Everyone's taste, wine, beer and cigars are all different. I took a few of these to the golf course for others to try...so far, thumbs up!
This is my 3rd 20pk of these cigars, and one of my favorites. Mild, nice draw, sweet tip. I will continue to buy these.
A pretty good everyday smoke. I mean it doesn't burn evenly most times, but I don't mind that for the price I paid for these. Overall, never experienced a bite or bad draw. Although it didn't pull me in for more, I'd say if you want to enjoy a small cigar or you are just starting this a good choice.
My wife got 40 of these as some filler sticks for the humidor she got me for our anniversary. I really didn't think much of them by looking at them and she had told me that they were just cheapo sticks. After they sat in the box for 90 days I was in a pinch and broke them out when some buddies came by and we wanted a smoke on the porch. Now I am planning on reordering these "cheap" smokes! They are perfect for a quick walk or drive and after a bit of aging they are better than some of the much more expensive cigars in my box. Well done CI.
Can't beat the smoke for the price. Mild, fast burning, for kicking around.
A great daily smoke.
Burns well, stays together, good price. Not a good smoke though.
Love these cigars. Great deal. Want more, but out of stock. Very mild cigar.
I just started smoking cigars three months ago. I love CAO Gold and Monte Cristos. I gave C'est La Vie Robusto Natural a try and I love them for being good any time of the day cigars. They are a little to mild for me but they are cheap and won't burn your mouth.
Good for everyday. Some tunneling on a couple.
Not a bad little smoke...for the price...thanks CI!
Agree with all the reviews on what a great little cigar this is for the price. Perfect mild to slightly medium strength for kick starting the day.
Took a chance on the robustos, and glad I did. At about 30 into the bunch every one has had a good even burn with a very slight, non sickening sweetness. Good flavor with lots of creamy smoke at a good price. Will buy again!!!
Great cigar for the price! There's a reason they are on the best seller list. Good flavor, very smooth draw. You wont be disappointed!
I bought the C'est La Vie toro sweet ones to try as my everyday smokes. When I received my order I tried one right off the bat and was pleasantly surprised. I am no cigar expert but I know what I like and like these! The burn was good and the draw was easy and flavor reminded me of a Macanudo Café. I can't wait to see how they will taste after sitting in my humidor for a while. I would recommend these sticks to anyone for a everyday smoke at a good price. I have smoked more expensive cigars that didn't taste as good!
Great everyday smoke. A little bit inconsistent in firmness, but always tastes good. Great for mowing the lawn. Will buy again.
Just like the description says, "ain't promising much here." They ain't bad, but they ain't good either. You can smoke 'em, but when you get near to the end you wonder why?
Nice yard or relaxing time smoke - a mild spice and consistent quality for a cheap cigar!
If your looking for an inexpensive good, mild cigar for an every day smoke order them up boys! Dont hesitate like I did, there is no need. I ordered the sweetened Churchills (7"X 50) and was very pleased to say the least. Came packaged well, not one was damaged. Was not expecting much for a buck a stick but they were very impressive for the price. Smoked two the first night they rolled off the truck. For the price it put the Ageing Room Quatro ten dollar stick I had the night before to shame, no bs. Both were consistant, never died out, smooth draw, nice smoke, no canoeing, not too sweet at all. Order the sweet ones, they are not sweet at all especially if you are comparing it to the sweet taste of something like the Drew Estates. Hard to beat for the price! You will be taking these down to the fingertips!
These are very good for a buck,taste more like a higher priced cigar,Best cigar i have bought for a buck
Good cigar for the price.
At less than a buck a stick I took a shot. Bought the 2-fer of the 'slightly sweet' Churchills and was pleased beyond expectations. The sweetness truly is 'slight' and just enough to carry through the smoke all the way to the end. I wouldn't classify it as a 'flavored' cigar though. They're a slightly loose roll with an easy mild draw. Smokes a bit quick but mellow with no bite down to the nub. Great with a cup of Joe on the deck in the AM, or as a day ender watching the sunset. I'll buy again.
Very nice daily smoke. Smooth and even, and well constructed. I really like them.
For a mixed filler cigar all I can say is WOW!!! I smoked one right off the truck. Smooth to the very end. Nice bit of spice, cedar, a hint of coffee flavor, nice even burn and very well constructed. These could easily pass for a 7-10 dollar cigar. I've actually smoked some high end cigars that didn't come close to being this enjoyable. These will only get better with age if I can let them sit that long! Great service as always from CI and a great product! Please don't run out!
This is a wonderful mild cigar from start to finish. It is my favorite in my humidor! Plenty of smoke, nice draw, even burn. I have not found a bad one in the bundle. Beats the pants off of many higher priced cigars!
Cigars were well worth the money! Great taste, CI done it again!
Very pleased. Can't beat the price, mild and smooth. Great everyday, anytime of day smoke, will buy again.
Hesitate to say anything because I fear a price increase. This isn't just a good buck stick...this beats anything I have smoked under $2.50 a stick. This allows me to smoke cigars at a price that rivals White Owls and really love the experience.
The best tasting cigar for the price I've ever had!! Wow, what a smooth draw!
For the price, decent. This was a Two-fer..Decent burn and mild..Good every day sticks...
draws well , good burn , wrappers don't fall off .. what more could you ask for a buck ?
I just received my cigars today, Great job of getting them here, UPS. We had a pretty bad snow/ice storm and what a nice compliment to 7 degree temperatures than a good smoke and a nice cocktail. I bought 4 bundles of Robustos, 40 sweets and 40 naturals. A good deal, what else can I say...... C'est La Vie!
Wow what a deal! For an everyday knock around stick, these almost can't be beat. The crazy cheap 2-fer price grabbed my attention, and had to try them for myself. I chose the sweet toro, fired the first up as soon as they arrived. Nice mild taste, and mine so far are stupid easy to get an even burn. Did notice that the sweet is a little weak, but no biggie. I will be reordering these and trying the natural version this time. Oh, and did find that using a punch works the best on these. The short filler, and looser roll will leave you chewing more than you smoke if you use the cutter. But again no biggie. At least in my opinion.
A great everyday cigar. When working around the garage or walking the dog I make sure to take one with me. You can't go wrong for the money.
Great refreshing cigars for a regular daily smoke - best deal for the price - smooth is not the proper word for the worthiness of these smokes - thanks for the deal - quality product! Sometimes you get more than you pay for - these are one of those times - worth the money - any day!
This was my first legit cigar, amd I'm totally new to smoking. These cigars have a very smooth draw and hold their ash well. They are also very firmly wrapped which I like because I take my time smoking them. Great first cigar. Will buy again.
This is a great everyday cigar. Smooth, mild and favor-ful. Puffing one right now, little more than an hour of cigar-smoking pleasure. Gave one of these cigars to a work buddy new to cigars...he will be ordering some from you very soon! Hope these stay in stock, I'm going to need more myself.
Excellent. Very mild... ordering more now...
Great smoke; you can't go wrong if you enjoy a mild to medium body stick. Took one right out of the bundle when they came and I can't say enough about them. The price is right!
Every day or twice a day, these cigars do not disappoint and the price just can't be beat!
Best little cigar under a buck I've ever smoked...
Keep 'em coming!
Really enjoyable cigar. The burn is very even and has a really mellow flavor that I enjoy. Great to smoke when I'm working in my wood shop. Great Cigar for the price. I recommend to anyone.
Great smoke and a great price!
Very soft and mild. Wish it would burn a little slower or came in a larger length.
These cigars are great for cheap sandwich style sticks. Flavor is mild. They burn consistently. Good everyday cigar for sitting out in the garage. Considering the price, you won't go wrong.
SHHHHHHHHHHH! don't tell 'em how good these are. Every time I try to order them they're out of stock and I have to wait weeks to get 'em back in stock.!!!!
First things first, I bought these for when I want a quick smoke while I am outside either going for a walk or working around the house. I did not expect much, in fact I was very nervous about ordering these. So, after receiving my order of 40 Sweet Robusto's and lighting up the first (right out of the package), my first impression was "Wow, not bad!" I was expecting something that would fall apart mid way through the smoke or have such a revolting taste that I would make it half way in. They are soft, which had me a little worried when I lit it that it wouldn't hold together at all, but it did surprisingly well. They are marked as "Sweet" but I don't taste it. I'm used to the CI Legend Copper Label or a Drew Estate Big Dirt Torpedo when I think sweet. They're not bitter, but I wouldn't go as far as calling them sweet. If you're looking for a nice inexpensive (I will not call these cheap because their quality is better than that) smoke that is great for a shorter walk, working in the garage, or just sitting out on the deck, these are well suited. I will DEFINITELY be ordering these again once my stock gets low.
I'm smoking one as I write, I find them very enjoyable for being such an inexpensive cigar. The first thing you will notice after lighting up is the billows of smoke, very impressive. They have a nice mild to a sum what medium flavor, everyone that I have smoked has had a nice even burn and a soft easy flavor rite to the very end. You can't go wrong with this one, it's no wonder they are out of stock. Mine have been in the humidor for a month or so which may have been a plus. I can't wait to order more. Enjoy.
These are a mild to slightly medium cigar that burn evenly and will hold an ash for about an inch and a half. The outter wrappers are somewhat thin but perfect with a nice cap. They smoke cool and stay enjoyable to the end. The only real drawback so far has been you will find 2-3 really loosely rolled ones in your bundle that practically smoke themselves and a few that could have been rolled a tad tighter. But for the most part (14+ in the bundle) your in for some really nice smokes that even my friends that smoke the higher end cigars find agreeable. I don't like to talk abut cigars in terms of price, either you like them or you don't - and I like these and will continue to order more. I always order the sweet version but I have yet to taste any sweetness on the cap like a Baccarat. Unless, you like the fuller bodied cigars - or like those cigars that are rock hard, you really can't go wrong with these.
Best, cheap, hand-made cigar Ive ever had. Better than any $1 smoke or even $2 cigar. My usual yard cigar is the Perdomo Fresco, not anymore, Ill be ordering at least 2 more bundles soon. CI, please don't run out of these!!!!
These are great garage smokes when your tinkering or watching the game. They smell like a cigar and taste great, nothing complex mind you, they do burn quickly but for the price you can't go wrong.