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The award is open to all faculty (including adjunct), staff and students of the University of St. Thomas with the exception of international programs staff members, who are excluded from receiving the award.
The University of St. Thomas Global Citizenship Award honors a member(s) of the St. Thomas community whose personal or professional work brings the concept of global citizenship to their department, classroom, residence hall or student club.
Any St. Thomas faculty, staff, student or alumnus may nominate a member of the campus community (including self-nomination). The 2015-16 deadline for nomination has been EXTENDED to Friday, April 1.
A completed nomination form is required and must be submitted by the deadline. A nomination form can be downloaded here: 2015-16 GCA Nomination Form.
Candidates must demonstrate global citizenship through one or more of the following criteria:
The staff of the international programs is comprised of the offices of International Students & Scholars, International Admissions, Graduate Admissions, Study Abroad, ELS Language Center, and the Center for Global & Local Engagement. International programs staff will select a candidate or candidates from the nominations submitted.
The presentation of the award(s) will be made at the 27th Annual International Dinner that will be held Saturday, April 30, 2016. Recipients will be notified of their award by letter and will receive two tickets to the dinner, where they will receive a certificate and a desktop award globe.
The 2015-2016 awards were given at the 27th Annual International Dinner on April 30, 2016.
Words that describe Karen Lange: champion, supporter, advocate. During her 30 year career at the University of St. Thomas, Karen has been a champion for internationalizing St. Thomas, an advocate in upper administration for international students on campus, and a strong supporter for intercultural learning. Her personal commitment to globalizing the campus is demonstrated by her tireless presence at on-campus international events, her support and funding for Student Affairs staff to have intercultural experiences, her initiative behind cooperative on-campus programming that connects domestic and international students, her participation as a Friendship Family for many years, and her respectful relationships with international students that demonstrate both her genuine interest in learning from others and her belief in the benefits of having international students on campus. She has done an incredible job breaking down barriers and highlighting the value of intercultural learning.
Raymond Nkwain Kindva, an immigrant from Cameroon, is a senior biochemistry major at St. Thomas and an incredibly active student on-campus! He has presented on his country at CultureLink Tea, won the Diversity poster contest through Student Diversity & Inclusion Services, and been involved in numerous cultural student organizations [such as Globally Minded Students Association, African Nations Student Association, Black Empowered Student Alliance, Hmong United Student Association, HANA, and Justice & Peace]. He serves as the Undergraduate Student Government international student representative and within that role engaged in discussions with the administration, including the President, Provost, and Board of Trustees, sharing viewpoints of international students and students of color and proposing changes to better represent them. We recognize Raymond's proactive and globally-minded engagement tonight and commend him for his efforts to cause change on campus and to make this a more inclusive and welcoming environment for all.
During Xiaowen Guan's 8 years as a faculty member in the Department of Communication and Journalism, she has become known for building connections between diverse groups of students and cultivating enthusiasm around the opportunities and benefits presented by a multicultural campus. She has collaborated with the Office of International Students and Scholars and given several presentations and workshops, and she also serves on many committees advancing the university's global mission, such as the Global and Local Engagement Advisory Board, the University Strategic Planning Task Force of Global Connections, and, most recently, the Eliminating Barriers for International Students Committee. She regularly teaches Intercultural Communication on campus and pairs students with the ELS Language Center for language and cultural exchange. Xiaowen's example of global citizenship, demonstrated through research, teaching, and service, exemplifies respect and inclusivity of other cultures and viewpoints. Her mentoring and leadership has contributed to an increased sensitivity to global and local differences at the University of St Thomas.
Please visit St. Thomas Newsroom to read more about 2015-16 Global Citizenship Award recipients.


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"Sex a Sin?" joke
A man wondered if having sex on the Sabbath is a sin. The reason is because he is not sure if sex is work or play. So he goes to a priest. He asks for the priest's opinion. After consulting the Bible, the priest says, "My son, after an exhaustive search, I am positive that sex is work and is therefore not permitted on the Sabbath."
The man thinks, "What does a priest know about sex?" So, he decides to ask a minister. The minister gives the same reply as the priest had given him. Sex is work, and therefore not permitted on the Sabbath. Not pleased with the reply, he seeks out a Rabbi.
The Rabbi ponders the question, then states, "My son, sex is definitely play." The man asks, "Rabbi, how can you be so sure when so many others are convinced that sex is work?" The Rabbi replies, "If sex were work, my wife would have the maid do it."
Not enough votes...

subset: commoncrawl


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Organizations that provide counseling, job seeking assistance and other nonresidential supportive services that help adult and/or juvenile offenders re-integrate into the community following their release from a correctional facility. Use this code for rehabilitation services not specified below.
Key words: Bail Assistance; Correctional Restitution; Court Referral; Day Reporting Centers; Electronic Monitoring of Detention; Ex-Offender Counseling; Ex-Offender Reentry; Juvenile Parole; Parole; Pre-Release; Pretrial Electronic Monitoring; Pretrial Release; Probation; Restorative Justice; Teen Court; Victim/Offender Reconciliation; VORP; Work Furlough; Work Release; Youth Court


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Steele Hill Community Partners Inc. presented the second annual "Making a Difference Community Awards" luncheon on recently at Pleasant Hill United Methodist Church, catered by Leroy Springs Catering. The Clebourne House in Fort Mill was the desert sponsor and event planner.
Five members of the Indian Land community who have "made a difference" through their professional and community service were honored. The honorees were: Lindsay Pettus, Lifetime Achievement Award; Clarence Witherspoon, Servant Leader Award; Brian Carnes, Community Service Award; Clarence McIlwain, Trailblazer Award; and Sonny Cloniger, Partners Award.
All proceeds from this luncheon benefited the Hi-Kee Summer Enrichment Program, which positively impacts the academic achievements and self confidence of children in Indian Land. The mission is to expand the learning time during the summer. Hi-Kee is a curriculum-based, eight-week summer program that delivers academic instruction (including STEM), promotes health and physical fitness and a range of enrichments like chess, sewing and field trips.
Hi-Kee starts the Monday following the last day of school in Lancaster County. The programs averages 55 kids. It is held at Steele Hill A.M.E. Zion Church, 6021 Charlotte Highway, Lancaster. Enrollment is open to all children, but space is limited. For more information visit shpartners.webs.com.
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I would like to personally thank Fred Witherspoon, executive director of this wonderful program, for his hard work and dedication to the kids, and also to the Steel Hill A.M.E, Zion Church and pastor Sistare for letting this great program into the Church.
"It takes each of us to make a difference for all of us."
Jackie Mutcheson, teacher
Have a comment or column idea for Pat? Email her at email@example.com.


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NUT cautions government against planned return of primary schools
The Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT), has cautioned the Federal Government against the planned return of primary schools to local councils, saying that no local council currently has the financial capability to fund education.
National President of the union, Comrade Michael Alogba Olukoya, who said this in an interview with journalists in Abuja, said returning primary education to local councils would be a disservice to the country and the children of the poor.
Olukoya, who noted that in the past, there used to be the National Primary Education Commission, which took care of that sector of education, decried the state of schools in the country, calling on governments at all levels to address the glaring lack of attention that public schools in the country were suffering.
According to him, good learning environment will motivate children to learn "as the working environment for teachers is the learning environment for children.
While also pleading that teachers' salaries be paid as at when due as some states are still owing his members several months of salary arrears, Olukoya expressed the hope that 2017 will remain a strike-free year for teachers.
Insisting that, "There is no way there will be development without the knowledge of the past," Olukoya appealed, "History must not be dropped for social studies, civic studies or technology. The beginning of planting patriotic zeal in an individual is through the teaching of and learning of history.
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In the past when I've taken the boys here, I've come first thing in hopes of giving the boys a chance to run around without tons of other kids to contend with. Well I did the same thing this time showing up right when they opened, but I swear there were 3 daycares there thinking the same thing too! I'm talking TONS of kids! It was madness. I had to stand over Parker while he was in the ball pit to shield him from any kids jumping in near him. That was a little nerve racking. Connar spent a lot of time playing at the train table and even invited himself in to a few groups of little boys playing together. He did a great job playing alongside kids he couldn't communicate with. My friend, Cassie, and her son, Liam, joined us for some Tiovivo fun too!
|C & P were so excited to be there that they were trying their best to fly out of the stroller. Thank goodness for seatbelts! :)
|helping Connar assemble a train track
|Check out those matching suits! They remind me more of a gymnastics team than a daycare group. :)
|He's just not quite tall enough to reach the blocks while standing on the floor.
|No cars to race? We can race ourselves!
|Oh boy! Here comes another daycare!
|And this is what I had to shield Parker from when he was in the ball pit and new groups of kids came running in.
|Off to the market!
|How stinkin' cute is she with her baby scarf?!
|more body racing
|Since you don't wear shoes in the play area, they leave pairs of slippers for you to wear into the restroom (at the back of the play area). Connar obviously had to go to the girls' restroom because Daddy wasn't with us. Cute pink slippers, buddy!
|cute little toilet!
|They didn't have another pair of adult slippers, so I made due with these little girl slippers. If they had a heel, I'd look like Cinderella!
|My mom sporting the adult slippers
|Yeah right, GrammE. You want them to stop playing for a picture? Ha!
|Look, just the fact that all three boys actually stayed within the frame of the picture and didn't run away was a successful photo op for us!
|After playing at Tiovivo, we always ride the elevator up to the 4th floor to change baby diapers and....
|...grab lunch for all of us at Burger King. We get it to go and feed the kids while we walk and ride the subway home.
|Almost home!!!!
|Aren't we cute?! Cold, but cute. :)


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The Ghost of Kurosawa: The Locust enamel pin
by FLABSLAB
and Quiccs
30mm tall enamel pin. Price includes shipping by regular mail to anywhere in the world. International shipping will usually take 10-20 days for the package to get to where you are.
Ghost of Kurosawa
In the desolate world thousands of years after the Third World War exists survivors of our mankind cornered into the shadows, away from the ruling hive-minded race of intelligent machines.
Left with only rare remnants of memories from our distant lost civilization, the hidden dwellers find religion in what we consider today as mere popular culture -- though in its inner cores of fiction they find hope in the recurring concepts of love, rebellion and freedom, from which champions have emerged to lead the resistances against the oblivion of mankind.
The mad men who are sane in the now mad world campaign their peoples' claim to their right to exist, and from these men manifests one enigmatic ruthless messenger of Akira's unearthed doctrines of insurrection and vengeance, the man known only as... the Ghost of Kurosawa!
The 43 Locusts Division
Inspired by the works and the tales of the lone warrior who battles the hive-minded machines, the 43 Locusts are comprised of rebels who dwell in the woodlands of one of the last left safe havens for humans who have trained themselves to fight for the cause of humanity's survival against extinction. They have designed their armours to the same fashion as of Ghost of Kurosawa's, and regard the warrior as a deity.
The 43 Locusts are regarded to be one of the most skilled groups of human soldiers whom have independently fought against the hive-minded machines away from the efforts of the joint forces of other remaining Human colonies.


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Great readings this week! Special selection!
Looking for what women write on creativity and innovation! Enjoy it! Some great works this week: Conceptual Framework for Online Identity Roles by Venessa Miemis I just wrapped up a final project for an aesthetics course this semester, the assignment being to create a "Database of the Self." I chose to make the database as a […]
Looking for what women write on creativity and innovation!
Enjoy it!
Some great works this week:
Conceptual Framework for Online Identity Roles by Venessa Miemis
I just wrapped up a final project for an aesthetics course this semester, the assignment being to create a "Database of the Self." I chose to make the database as a representation of the roles we play in terms of how we interact with information online
Creativity in Business: My Interview with George Pór by Michelle James
Interview #22 in the Creativity in Business Thought Leader Series is with George Pór, co-founder of Community Intelligence Ltd, a London-based transformation agency, the hub of an international network of consultants collaborating on larger projects.
Le Petit Chaperon Rouge by Paula Thornton
Dear @pascal_venier
This is in lieu of an email. I had to write to thank you for your tweet last Friday.
While you offered it in jest, I was touched by it at the time…then it began to to haunt and taunt me. While showering that day (where I do my best deep thinking), I kept repeating "Petit Chaperon Rogue".
9 Sept Innochat Framing – Setting The Culture For OI & Crowdsourcing by Gwen_Ishmael
Ah, April Fools' Day – that 24-hour period when we can play harmless pranks and practical jokes on those who are near and dear to us.
R & D Tax Credits Mean Little to Businesses That Do Not Competently Manage Their Intangible Assets by Jackie Hutter
This week, President Obama will announce a $100 billion proposal to stimulate the economy, where much of the focus is to be placed in the area of R & D tax credits. In addition to making the R & D tax credit permanent, Obama will seek increasing one of the credits available from 14 to 17 percent.
Mentoring: Who really benefits more? By Deb Mills-Scofield
Last year, I volunteered to participate in Brown University's Women's Launchpad Program which pairs women alumni in industry (me) with senior women for mentoring in career and graduate school planning. My mentee, Sarah, was a Mechanical Engineering major from the Boston area and leader on the Women's Crew Team. Our love of Brown gave us an immediate common ground and we quickly found others. We talked/emailed/texted at least weekly for the academic year.
The world needs all types of minds & Temple Grandin by Roisin Markham
Great TED Talk from Temple Grandin whose book Animals in Translation is a must read for anyone interested in people, creativity, diversity and special needs education, opportunities and parenting.
Mico Hassett who runs Kingfisher Tea lent me the book.
What would you choose if you had three futures? By Joanna Maxwell
I've been using a '3 futures' exercise with some of my clients lately. It's been fun – and productive – so I thought to share it with you.
Are You Asking the Right Questions? By Holly G. Green
As a business consultant, behavioral scientist, and keynote speaker, much of what I talk about runs counter-intuitive to conventional leadership thinking.
Thank you! Have a nice week!
A good week! Great readings! »:-)
To read is fun and makes me think! 6 Tips for Open Collaboration by Venessa Miemis This is a crosspost from Alpha Lo's blog, Open Collaboration. Though he had a much catchier title for the post ("What I Learned From Venessa Miemis" – ha), I thought he did a great job listing some of the […]
To read is fun and makes me think!
6 Tips for Open Collaboration by Venessa Miemis
This is a crosspost from Alpha Lo's blog, Open Collaboration. Though he had a much catchier title for the post ("What I Learned From Venessa Miemis" – ha), I thought he did a great job listing some of the attitudes and behaviors helpful when trying to extend oneself, collaborate, and evolve. Alpha's doing some amazing work in creating gift circles on the west coast. Check out the original post and comments here.]
Design Thinking in Stereo: Martin and Brown by Paula Thornton
When the topic of "design thinking" had gained enough momentum for BusinessWeek to devote an entire issue to design in 2004, it was a siren song to me. Newly converted, I digested everything I could find. Design thinking seemed to cover most of the experiential clues I'd been collecting as the means to improve business potential.
Innovation Is All About Behaviors by Stefan Lindegaard
I just read an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal on how the video game industry prepares to launch new technology-based developments such as new motion-based controllers.
Big Pharma Goes Beyond the Blues by Mitch Ditkoff
… The concept was a simple one: help organizations increase teamwork and decrease complaint by getting employees to write and perform original blues songs.
Data-rich, Discovery Poor: Pharma Looks to "Pre-Competitive" Collaborations by Deborah Goldgaber
On the 10th year anniversary of the Human Genome Project it's been re-marked that, while undeniably a huge scientific achievement, results have fallen far short of expectations.
How Xerox Monetizes Non-Core Innovation by Andrea Meyer
Ursula Burns, CEO of Xerox, discussed innovation at her company in an interview at the World Innovation Forum June 9, 2010. She described initiatives to improve the return on innovation at Xerox's research centers such as PARC (Palo Alto Research Center). PARC's ground-breaking inventions like the graphical user interface, ethernet, and postscript as inventions had a large impact on the world but didn't contribute enough to Xerox's bottom line. Let's look at why that happened and what Xerox is doing now.
Why purpose matters by Jorge Barba
A big part of strategy making is differentiating your business from others, being able to help people notice what's different between your product or service and mine. In the beginning of the movie Dark Night when Batman has just fought off Scarecrow and a group of Batman wannabes an interesting conversation takes place:
The future of marketing – changing the game and playing field by wimrampen via Ralph Ohr
How can Service Dominant Logic and its "value in use" mindset be helpful to rethink your marketing goals and approaches?
Enjoy it!
Some great readings in the last days…
Enjoy it! The Power of Meaning by Ralph-Christian Ohr About one year ago, I started engaging in discussions on 'innovation' via Twitter. As a physicist, used to work in product/innovation management for technology-based companies, my understanding of innovation was: creating value for the customer by leveraging technology development. As innovation is accomplished by people […]
Enjoy it!
The Power of Meaning by Ralph-Christian Ohr
About one year ago, I started engaging in discussions on 'innovation' via Twitter. As a physicist, used to work in product/innovation management for technology-based companies, my understanding of innovation was: creating value for the customer by leveraging technology development. As innovation is accomplished by people for people – companies are eventually run by people – I had a suspicion, though, that human nature is likely to play an important role in the innovation process.
MinuteClinic's Service Design Innovation by Andrea Meyer
Story: Some of the best innovations are brilliant in their after-the-fact simplicity. Take MinuteClinic. We all know "an ounce of prevention…" yet most of us still don't go to the doctor for preventative care because of the cumbersome process of a office visit: scheduling an appointment, taking time off work, waiting in the doctor's office for unknown amounts of time, sitting in the midst of other hacking/sneezing people, and being unsure how much the visit will cost
WORLD INNOVATION FORUM 2010 by Mitch Ditkoff
I just returned from the World Innovation Forum in NYC.
My big insight? Thought leaders will soon be a thing of the past.
In their place? Feeling leaders — business savants who have made the journey from head to heart and aren't afraid to let the rest of us know what they've learned along the way.
The Limitations of Open Innovation by Stefan Lindegaard
…often lie in the minds of people. I had an interesting workshop this week working with one of the leading gaming companies and I was once again reminded on the limitations set by imagination.
The power of bringing in an outsider for #innovation by Jorge Barba
Nilofer Merchant, CEO of Rubicon Consulting, argues that if organizations want to be innovative they should stop hiring the same type of people just to meet the requirements of the job position:
It seems to me we ought to also know how to get diverse points of view into the system, because that is what allows us to see things from different angles and fundamentally shift our approach from seeing the problem the way it's always been seen (and thus unsolved, one could presume) and see it afresh to create the shift in viewpoint that allows for a new creative act.
'Oops! I'm deviating from the group; I have to do something about it!' Rotterdam School Via @ariegoldshlager
Rotterdam/Nijmegen, 15 January 2008 — A team of researchers from the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University has conducted an unprecedented experiment that reveals what brain processes are involved in social conformism. It is a well-known fact that people have a tendency to adjust their opinions to those held by others
Biz 2.0: Orchestrated Improvisation by Paula Thornton
Reading Andy McAfee's recent piece "IT's Three Key Organizational Transformations", spurred a personal thinking theme today. I was a bit disturbed (and disappointed) by what Andy seemed to miss in his thought — stuff that 2.0 thinking hinges on (but it wouldn't be the first time, or likely the last).
Innovation & Correspondence Bias – Misunderstanding motivation misreads meaning by Andrew (Drew)
The more we learn about the individual and social psychology misunderstandings at play in organization life, specifically in the development of innovations, the harder it is to identify clear and unambiguous actions we can take to address them. We must become adept at inquiry, observation, exploration and reflection – any of which might be effectively preceded by the word "self". Thankfully these are prerequisites for effective innovation which makes for some strong synergies if we can apply the skills effectively.
Thanks for reading this! There are a lot more! Tell me your preferences!
A lot of inspiration and learning this week!
Why a CIO Isn't by Paula Thornton Chief Information Officer, Chief Technology Officer: What's the difference? Sometimes one reports to the other. How accurate is the title, Chief Information Officer? Do they champion and defend the delivery of information? Really? FREE BOOK CHAPTER: Why Top Executives Do Not Get Innovation, Much Less Open Innovation – […]
Why a CIO Isn't by Paula Thornton
Chief Information Officer, Chief Technology Officer: What's the difference? Sometimes one reports to the other. How accurate is the title, Chief Information Officer? Do they champion and defend the delivery of information? Really?
FREE BOOK CHAPTER: Why Top Executives Do Not Get Innovation, Much Less Open Innovation – and What to Do About It by Stefan Lindegaard
My book, The Open Innovation Revolution: Essentials, Roadblocks, and Leadership Skills hits the bookstores late May. As an appetizer, I am happy to provide you yet another chapter for free.
Innovation Failure Points: Evaluation, Selection and Prototyping by Jeffrey Phillips
Over the last week I've written several posts about the "failure points" of innovation, using the premise that failure is more instructive than than success, and that there are consistent points of failure in the innovation cycle.
Bad Attitudes Can Lead to Good Innovation by Paul Sloane
How can you build a team that is innovative, dynamic and capable of finding breakthroughs for tough problems? How can you avoid repeating dreary routines and find sparkling new ideas instead? One way is to make sure that among your solid citizens you have a good sprinkling of rebels.
Think Like a Biologist to be a Better Manager by Tim Kastelle
The first Archaeopteryx fossil was found in 1861, and it now resides in the Natural History Museum in London. It was an important find – two years after the publication of The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, Archaeopteryx was the rarest of fossils, and one that was quite useful for Darwin's theory – an intermediate form. Archaeopteryx very clearly shows the transition from dinosaurs to birds.
And, Via Ralph-Christian Ohr (Special thanks):
Together We Innovate By Rob Cross, Andrew Hargadon, Salvatore Parise and Robert J. Thomas
WHEN it comes to innovation, the myth of the lone genius dies hard.
Most companies continue to assume that innovation comes from that individual genius, or, at best, small, sequestered teams that vanish from sight and then return with big ideas. But the truth is most innovations are created through networks — groups of people working in concert.
The Best of Inspiring ideas – HSM
…Organizational DNA for strategic Innovation…
And read…more…
Have a nice week!
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Editor's note: This letter was presented to the Estes Park Town Trustees at their Tuesday, June 13 meeting.
Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem & Trustees,
After months of trying to address the shortcomings of a tax-payer funded organization, Visit Estes Park, I find that I have failed to do it in a way that wouldn't embarrass anyone. My only recourse is to bring the issues in question to those who have the ultimate responsibility and ability to address them. Having clearly failed to encourage the leadership of VEP to address what most would agree are legitimate and necessary concerns, I am here to give public testimony on my involvement as a Town appointed Board Member elected by the Local Marketing District Board (Visit Estes Park) to serve as the Secretary/Treasurer to the Board. The issues I have come up against are now becoming more about me rather than the dirty little secrets of Visit Estes Park. Clearly, this is NOT about me when you review the information I am presenting. It is about a publically funded organization and its operation.
This last year I was encouraged by several people to apply for the LMD Board once again because of some of the issues that the last year had exposed. They felt I could help bring solutions to the table and was a good candidate that could work well within a team. I received letters of reference from a former Mayor, to Board Chairs to major business owners. I was appointed 1/1/2017 and by 1/7/2017, I was villainized by most of the LMD Board due to the public release of the infamous "This is Crap" email sent to Mayor Jirsa by Trustee Holcomb. I don't regret making that email public because it was wrong in so many ways, I was sickened.
I did have a plan, a strategy, a direction for improvement but it was derailed the first week. I had spent some time reviewing the bylaws, operating plan and any limited information I could find on the web site prior to my interview. Once appointed January 1, 2017 and voted in as Secretary/Treasurer on January 3, 2017 I immediately dug into the huge white book I was given my first day. It contains the following information:
1) Operating Plan
2) Budget
3) Policies
4) Board Strategic Plan
5) Board Bylaws
6) Board Resolutions
7) IGA's
8) Contacts
9) Handbook & Principles
10) Legal - State Statues
It was obvious, there were many issues that needed attention even in the approved Operating Plan for 2017 - the restricted communication, the core value statement of transparency (or the lack of it) and no organization chart which seemed to disappear with the new CEO.
The Budget section did not include the most important budgetary restriction that the Board needs to approve prior to the expense. There are 3 significant expenses - new web site, Destination Product Development and Agency Planning & Management & Research.
In reviewing the Policies, I had questions and requested a meeting to understand the history of why we had some and why some had been nullified. That meeting has never happened. There are simple typo's, peoples names instead of positions, for responsibilities and some policies conflict with the Bylaws and need to be updated. Policy #17 isn't even dated. Policy on Mission Vision statement is different than bylaws.
The Board Strategic Plan - The last formal one was done in February 7, 2012. Enough said.
Board bylaws - the book I was given apparently had the old 2011 bylaws in it. Although it took 3 months for me to be told I had the wrong set in my book and weeks to receive the 2013 bylaw revision a redline version) which was never signed but approved at the August 20, 2013 Board meeting that had not been posted on the web for some reason. The Chair requested it be posted at the March 14, 2017 meeting it was finally posted after our last meeting on May 17, 2017, almost 4 years late.
The IGA's as discussed with Administrator Lancaster should be reviewed and updated sometime in the future.
Contacts - Just need updated
Handbook & Principles - Both need to be reviewed, more than 5 years old
Legal - State Statues - Great reference
Once I started to work on addressing areas that needed work, I ran into many errors such as the Trade Name renewal not done for months (which we needed to give the Bank with new signature cards) but that didn't match my bylaws. Then the Mission/Vision Statement didn't match. There was no Strategic Plan, no way to review CEO performance, Audio tapes of meetings were lost/machine malfunction, and minutes for the CEO's rushed raise were signed by the CEO herself. That audio tape was requested 6 times, the last being a CORA request by myself. Finally, I was told that the recording was full and failed. Oh and further more as a Board member I was told I do not have the right to make a CORA request. I was not a happy camper on the January 17, 2017 meeting. The Chair had come at me hard and I responded with all the issues I had come across in my first few days. The issues have continued to rear there ugly heads. Those issues include but are not limited to:
1) Chair has taken liberties that are not healthy to a successful board
2) Audio recordings have been lost or unavailable
3) The Bylaws and IGA's have been ignored
4) The Board is dysfunctional and weak
5) Public input has been stifled and chastised publically
6) The relationship with our own newspaper has been compromised by the CEO and Chair
7) Transparency is a myth and worse yet the Chair has requested Board communication secrecy. Perception is that there is something we are hiding.
8) CORA requests are considered an act of transparency.
9) The Board minutes have been edited for years now and the Board then rubber stamps them. The legal history is now in question.
I believe there are things that we are hiding such as the lack of ability to judge the performance of our CEO, the rushed raise prior to a new board, the lack of any metrics for the CEO, the mistakes in administration of the organization and the obvious conflict of interest in the leadership of Visit Estes Park. We now have 3 EALA Board Members and a husband in control of both Visit Estes Park and EALA. That EALA vote controls both organizations now. Really? Doesn't anyone see a problem here?
DirectorVisit Estes ParkEstes Area Lodging
Elizabeth FogartyCEO/PresidentVice-President
Lindsay LamsonVice PresidentPresident
Steve KrugerChairWife is Secretary
Sean JurgensDirectorDirector
The path to a functional board is not a worn path at all. We are here because of the past. This didn't happen overnight. The LMD was created out of the ashes of the Chamber of Commerce (oups I said it) and was the best thing that could have happened. The lodging people that got the organization going including our current CEO and many other strong leaders. That is why it had a great start. Unfortunately over time the LMD Board has weakened and become advisors and followers rather than leaders. The organization has never made the transition to a publicly funded organization with fiduciary responsibilities to the public within the district.
Chair Steve Kruger should step down for the following reason:
1) He blatantly changed, without regard for a Board discussion, the agenda to stifle the Public Comments of 2 people. Disrespecting the public and causing others to stay for the entire meeting to make their statement. Bylaws were also handled in the same manner. Presented to the Board to approve without prior discussion.
2) Most recently, requesting secrecy of Board communications that are obviously general everyday LMD business conversation. He is opposed to email transparency.
3) Non responsive to additions to the agenda by Board members.
4) Unwilling to setup a meeting with the CEO to work out problems requested by Board member.
5) Dressing down an individual from the public after giving public comments - stating that he doesn't care what the public has to say.
6) Aggressive and demanding attitude towards a Board member. Relishes in rehashing incidents that put VEP in a bad light rather than admitting fault and improving the process.
7) Has yet to assign any committees - Finance, Governance, Nominating, and most importantly Strategic Marketing Committee.
8) Has not provided the CEO with the performance goals and objectives due 60 days after the execution of her Employment Agreement (10/4/2016). CEO states they exist but hasn't produced them as yet.
9) Canceling Board meeting - 4/18/2017 & 5/2/2017. For personal reasons unknown. And now June 7 has been rescheduled due to an error in scheduling to one meeting a month.
10) Has not allowed the treasury to perform his duties. Such as signature selection on the Bank Accounts, no purchasing policy for the CEO, delayed meetings with previous Treasurer and Accountant. Has yet to supply Secretary/Treasurer with requested responsibilities and authority to accomplish them - requested 3 weeks ago.
Unfortunately you can't change an attitude and mindset that Chair Steve Kruger has shown now for 5 months. These issues will only get worse with time and it has the capability of ruining a CEO (if in fact the CEO isn't the problem also) in addition to the Board. In speaking with 4 past employees the work place environment has been toxic. We have had a complete turnover of staff in the last year and now have only the CEO, Elizabeth Fogarty's hires working at Visit Estes Park. Their loyalty is understandable and their jobs are important. I believe them to be hard working individuals doing a good job - BUT so were the ones that have quit. Forbidding staff to talk to Board members and if they do report back to the CEO is some sort of strange dysfunctional control mechanism. Our community deserves better - this decision is a tough one but as in any business sometimes the hard ones are a necessary evils to salvage the good work others do.
Solution: I encourage Town Trustees and County Commissioners to invoke their right under Colorado State Statues Title 29, Article 25, 29-25-108, (e). A Member or Board can be removed for inefficiency, neglect or misconduct. Take your pick. I believe there is cause.


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Snoop Dogg's now a cool cat.
Hip-hop rapper-turned-reggae-wannabe Snoop Dogg yesterday announced he's changing his name — to Snoop Lion — after receiving the new moniker during a "born-again'' experience with a Rastafarian priest.
"I didn't want to be Snoop Dogg on a reggae track . . . I wanted to bury Snoop Dogg and become Snoop Lion, but I didn't know that until I went to the temple and received the name . . . from the . . . priest," said the rapper also formerly known as Snoop Doggy Dog and nicknamed the "Doggfather.''
Snoop, 40, whose real name is Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr., had visited Rastafarian priests during a February trip to Jamaica to film a documentary about himself called "Reincarnated.''
The California-born singer and open marijuana user said he connected with the island's late reggae king and feels like "Bob Marley reincarnated.''


text:
Just got this link from my friend Marnie--
hmmmm, perhaps I was on to something?
She is selling these at Rose and Radish. Though I can't remember if she was actually the designer of this particular pattern or not. I haven't been able to find the New York Times article they're refering to about these online either.
I like it in the white. Maybe I should crank out some black ones with all that leftover yarn from the stinkin' dropped stitch vest.


text: Elliott Murphy interview by Danny Coleman Photo: Martial Morain "A defining moment? There've been many but, a 1992 Bruce Springsteen show in Paris; I heard he was looking for me and he found me," said the multi-talented man who has been called "An American Troubadour" and that man is Elliott Murphy. "Bruce asked me to do a song with him ... Read More »


text:
If you're the type that foregoes passcodes on your phone in favor of the convenience of quickly turning on the device and getting to what you need to do, then the digital tattoo created for the Moto X will help to combine convenience and security. This way, you can still lock your phone, but thanks to the NFC coils within the digital tattoo, you can tap your Moto X against the tattoo and your phone will unlock faster than you can utter "open sesame."
These so called digital tattoos are just stickers and aren't permanent like regular tattoos. Essentially a wearable device, you're applying a sticker to your arm or any part of your body. According to the company that makes these digital NFC tattoos, each tattoo will last up to "five days of showers, swimming, workouts, and anything else you can think of," with the VivaLnk tattoos sold in packs of ten for $9.99.
At this time, the digital NFC tattoos are only available for Moto X, but if VivaLnk gets enough interest for other NFC-equipped phones, then it might expand the project.
And best of all, if you're geeking out by carrying multiple Moto X phones on your body, these VivaLnk tattoos will work with multiple devices as well so you don't have to "graffiti" your body with multiple digital tattoos. That said, each phone can be linked to a maximum of five digital tattoos.


text:
Little Big Town Announces New Tour
May 11, 2015, Artist News
Little Big Town is pretty big in the country scene. Heard of the song "Day Drinking"? It had almost 4 million hits instantly! These guys really know how to coexhist to make a perfect harmony. The members consisting of: Karen Fairchild, Jimi Westbrook, Phillip Sweet, and Kimberly Schlapman all alterante as lead singers, but only one rocks a Weber mandolin! Jimi Westbrook has been videoed, photographed, and seen live playing a Weber and we have to say, he rocks!
The Grammy Award winners have announced a fall leg ouf their Pain Killer tour. We are happy to share this announcement of their new tour! Little Big Town will be performing their smash hit single "Girl Crush" with country legend Faith Hill at the Billboard Music Awards live from the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas on Sunday, May 17 from 8-11 p.m. ET on ABC. "Girl Crush" is currently Top 20 on the country radio charts and #1 on Billboard's Hot Country Songs Chart for the third consecutive week! Check these guys out!
10/8 Bemidji, Sanford Center
10/9 Ames, Stephens Auditorium
10/10 Milwaukee, Riverside Theatre (On Sale Now)
10/15 Greensboro, Greensboro Coliseum
10/16 Greenville, Bon Secours Wellness Arena
10/17 St. Augustine, St. Augustine Amphitheatre (On Sale Now)
10/22 Bismarck, Bismarck Events Center
10/23 Rapid City, Barnett Arena
10/24 Brookings, Swiftel Center
10/30 Bloomington, US Cellular Coliseum
11/12 Missoula, Adams Center (On Sale Now)
11/13 Boise, Taco Bell Arena
11/14 Portland, Keller Auditorium
11/17 Kelowna, Prospera Place
11/19 Abbottsford, Abbottsford Centre
11/20 Seattle, Paramount Theater
11/21 Spokane, INB Performing Arts Center


text:
Beckley, WV
Shayar (Lenval Jarrett) was born in Ocho Rios, St. Ann Parish, Jamaica in 1956. He had a natural inclination towards music and his bass-playing father was one of his greatest influences. Shayar began piano lessons in primary school. At age 12, Shayar convinced his father to buy him a guitar. He soon knew music would be his career. In high school, Shayar played in a band that worked the hotel circuit along the north coast of Ocho Rios. When Shayar was 19, the famous Jamaican producer Jack Ruby introduced him to Reggae Superstar and Grammy-winner Burning Spear. Over ensuing decades, Shayar has played guitar for Burning Spear on international tours and has also toured with Anthony B, the Itals and Gregory Isaacs. He's played studio sessions with the Mighty Diamonds, Freddie McGregor, Leroy Sibbles and many others. Shayar now focuses on his own original music.


text:
It's winter in our area now, so my thoughts have turned to building a fire in our fireplace, enjoying the glow of the Christmas tree and holiday activities.
However, now that the heat is on in our buildings and cars, it's also necessary to deal with the dryness caused by the heat and what it does to reeds and bassoons.
I use a small humidifier in my bassoon case, wetting it each day to impart some moisture to the bassoon. This helps prolong the life of the instrument, keeps pads resilient and wood from contracting or even cracking.
Other remedies include adding orange peel to the inside of the case every few days and using a string dampit. The dampit should never be put inside the long joint as it may cause mold to grow in the bore there.
Reeds also require special care in the winter.
Some time ago I hosted William Waterhouse for recitals and master classes at Interlochen and Michigan State University. It was January during his tour and I remember him noticing that reeds would dry out in his mouth while playing. Being British, he was not used to this experience due to the humid air brought to the British Isles by the Gulf Stream!
Indeed, there are times in the winter where I have found it necessary to stop during a performance or practice session to re-soak my reed. The dryness closes the tip and inhibits free vibration in the blades.
Humidifying your reeds while at rest is helpful. I use a special reed case with a hygrometer and a small piece of wet sponge in an air-tight chamber to keep the reeds humidified.
A more simple solution is to put the reed box in a plastic bag with a small hole cut in it and add some orange peel to it, putting fresh peel in every couple of days.
With all of these methods, it's important not to overdue the humidity and watch for mold!
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Winter weather and the bassoon
2 comments:
Hello Mr.Stees, I love your post about keeping the your bassoon in care during the winter season. I actually have a question for you. As a bassoonist myself, I purchased a a dampit and was curious how to use it. Which part of the bassoon am I suppose to put the dampit in? It would be really helpful if you could help me out. Thank you!!ReplyDelete
Hi, Walter,ReplyDelete
DO NOT put the dampit inside any of the joints. Just lay it in the case.
Putting the dampit in one of the joints can cause mold.
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)


text:
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Daily Tax Report: State provides authoritative coverage of state and local tax developments across the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, tracking legislative and regulatory updates,...
Virginia is facing a potential $4.2 billion budget shortfall over the next two fiscal years—one of the largest shortfalls in its history. In a bid to close the gap, former Gov. Timothy Kaine issued a budget proposal that calls for a series of tax increases, including a retroactive amendment to a state law requiring the addback of deductions claimed for intangible property and interest expenses related to intangible holding companies. In this article, authors Craig D. Bell and J. Christian Tennant, of McGuireWoods LLP, argue that, based on a standard of reasonableness, the retroactive amendment violates due process and should be abandoned as unconstitutional.
This article is available to subscribers of the Weekly State Tax Report. For more information or to take a trial to the report, click here.
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text:
University of Vermont
Vermont Quarterly
The Invisible Man
- 10-30-2014
- By Tom Weaver
The Invisible Man
by Thomas Weaver
There's a decent chance you've heard David Zweig on National Public Radio or read about his work in a newspaper across the past several months. His book exploring the mindset of professionals who find both personal fulfillment and great success through old-fashioned, humble, quiet dedication to their work has drawn wide attention. That's for good reason — the book feels like a deep breath in this hyperventilating age of micro-celebrity.
Zweig is a man of diverse talents, a musician and novelist in addition to his recent non-fiction work. He is affable and easy-going, but passionate about the lessons in his book, during a phone interview from the home he shares with his wife and two young children in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. It's a recent relocation from Brooklyn for the family as they looked for elbow room; a simpler, quicker commute to Midtown Manhattan for his wife; and, Zweig jokes, a somewhat less professionally in-bred environment for himself — "In Brooklyn, if you throw a stick you hit a writer, which is great but also kind of irritating."
Tell me about the origin of Invisibles. What inspired the concept and how did you develop it into a book?
Zweig: One of my "day jobs" through the years was as a fact checker at Conde Nast for a bunch of magazines, predominantly Vogue. The better you do that job, the more you disappear. As a fact checker, if you do your job perfectly, no one is aware of the work you do. Only if you make a mistake are you aware of a fact checker at all. When is the last time you read a magazine article and thought to yourself, "Man, that was fact checked beautifully.'"
And yet, I found the job really rewarding in a way that a variety of day jobs I'd had over the years never were. I thought, "Wow, how strange to feel rewarded even though no one knows that I'm doing a good job."
The idea was in the back of my head for years, wondering what other professions share the same inverse relationship between work and recognition. You won't forget the name of your surgeon; but most likely if everything goes smoothly, you'll never remember or even know the name of your anesthesiologist.
It is a really odd way for people to go about their work in a culture today where gaining recognition seems to be valued above everything else. I wanted to deconstruct these people in a wide range of fields. How did they do this? Are there any threads that tie these people together?
I just cold pitched The Atlantic on this idea and I was able to break through. The article got a lot of attention, particularly within the publishing industry. A number of agents contacted me, and I was able to secure a book deal with Penguin.
You met and profiled people in a wide variety of professions for Invisibles. What are some of the lessons from their lives that you've personally taken to heart.
I wrote about the guitar tech for Radiohead, who has been with them for two decades; a guy who is in a really buttoned-up field, structural engineer on skyscrapers; an interpreter at the United Nations; among others. All of these people share this ambivalence toward recognition. And a lot of interesting research shows that people who really find reward in the challenges of their work and in the work itself are far more fulfilled than people who derive most of their reward from gaining extrinsic rewards, such as money or attention.
As a writer, I'm not an invisible. My name is on the cover of my book, and I'm glad to have it there. I'm glad to be doing interviews. In the end, though, it is not only about how much you're seen or not seen. In fact, some visible people among us share these invisible traits. You can think about a star quarterback who privately studies game film night after night.
I find what really brings me the most fulfillment is digging into my work. It feels great to have attention, but the reward of that is always very ephemeral, fleeting. If that's your only motivator, then you're in deep trouble.
Your book has gained attention in the business world, and it looks like you're getting around to lecture at conferences and other events. Tell me about that.
The Harvard Business Review asked me to write a 5,000-word feature based on the book that drew a good deal of attention. People are really interested in the managerial and business application of the ideas.
Aside from the personal fulfillment that the people I write about experience in their lives, they are also tremendously successful leaders in their fields. And key to that is their invisible mindset; it is very counter-intuitive. But what I found after researching the book — and this really surprised me — is that there is actually quite a bit of academic research done at top-flight business schools that indicates people who have these traits are successful.
You tend to think to be all the way at the top, to be a CEO, you have to have this big, blustery personality, always tooting your own horn. But the people I wrote about got to where they are by having this collaborative mindset. In the book, I really dig into how that works.
It's the opposite of what all these marketing experts are telling us you need to do — raise your profile or build your platform. I think my book offers the antithesis and the antidote to this mindset that I think so many of us feel like is being pounded into us.
Changing gears, when you look back on your UVM years what has stayed with you?
A big influence, as someone who grew up in the New York City metro area and lives there now, was just being in Vermont. I love the outdoors and being in that environment affects my creativity and makes me think differently. That's part of the reason we've moved up to Hastings-on-Hudson. The Vermont lifestyle had a significant impact on me as a person.
My degree was in political science, which seems outside the parameters of what I'm doing. But I had a class with Anthony Gierzynski that focused on politics and media. He was a great professor, and I felt a real connection with him. His class was the first time that I began to really think deeply about how media affects how we view ourselves and the world. It kind of opened the door to a philosophy I would explore in my novel and that is the subject of my next non-fiction book.
You've worked as a musician, a novelist, and now this non-fiction work with your new book. Have these been simultaneous pursuits across the years since you graduated from UVM?
They really have been more consecutive (or whatever you'd say the opposite of simultaneous is). Immediately following UVM, I pretty much dove into music. When you're young, music just feels so urgent. For me, it was just bursting. I had to do it. And as a young person I also had a higher tolerance for the lifestyle that goes with it — mainly being poor. As I got older, it just became less and less tolerable and practical.
I was active as a professional musician for a decade, give or take — touring, recording a few albums. I was fortunate to get some good press as a musician, good critical reaction, and recorded with some really great producers and engineers. But as far as making it as a living, it reached a point for me where I couldn't grind it out any further.
I'd always loved writing, and I had ideas in my head for quite some time. From working as a musician, I segued to working on a novel. I tell people I like to torture my parents:
"Mom, dad, I'm no longer trying to make it as a musician."
"Thank god!"
"Now I'm writing a novel."
I'm slowly becoming slightly more practical with each step. So maybe a decade from now I'll be an investment banker.
Read an essay adapted from the author's new book, Invisibles: The Power of Anonymous Work in an Age of Relentless Self-Promotion


text:
CubeMap is a software package for the conversion of textures in a cylindrical projection to a quadrilateralized spherical cube projection (a cubemap projection for short). It supports any resolution of input texture, any number of channels per pixel, 8-bit or 16-bit, and signed or unsigned integers. The format of the input textures is raw (plain uncompressed data array). The format of the output texture is raw and/or an array of tiles of different levels of detail in the raw, tga, dds, jpg or png format.
Download: CubeMap 1.06
CubeMap.exe – utility for conversion of textures in a cylindrical projection to a cubemap projection
Glue.exe – utility for gluing tiles into a single raw-file
default_cub.ccf – default configuration file for the CubeMap
default_glue.gcf – default configuration file for the Glue
The configuration file and command line
All parameters for the program are described in the default_cub.ccf file in the program's folder. It is a simple text file that contains a set of lines of the form:
var value #comment
var – a name of a parameter, value – a value of a parameter, the sign # separates comments. A comment can be either in the beginning of the line (then the entire line is a comment), or in the end of line (after the parameter's value). The value can be of four types:
string – a string of characters without quotation marks and spaces;
int – an integer number;
float – a real number;
bool – a binary value: true or 1, false or 0.
Both utilities can work with other configuration files, if they are passed to them as a command line parameter:
CubeMap myconfig.ccf
Glue myconfig.ccf
In this case the file default_cub.ccf or default_glue.ccf is ignored. It is recommended that you associate .ccf files with the program CubeMap.exe in the system, then opening a *.ccf file will launch the CubeMap program. A *.ccf file can be considered as a script for texture conversion with the CubeMap utility. The same is true for the .gcf extension used with the Glue utility.
You can specify paths to the input file and output folder in the command prompt. In this case the corresponding parameters from the configuration files are ignored:
CubeMap [myconfig.ccf] [-i InputFile] [-o OutFolder] [-o TempFolder] [-h]
Glue [myconfig.gcf] [-i InputFolder] [-o OutFile] [-h]
Option -h shows the prompt on the command line parameters.
Format of the planet textures in SpaceEngine
The path to the source cylindrical texture is specified by the InputFile parameter; the path to the output folder for the cubemap texture is specified by the OutFolder. If the path contains white spaces, it must be enclosed in quotation marks: "the path with spaces." The TempFolder parameter specifies the path to the temporary folder, used by the utility to store temporary files. If it is not specified, the temporary files will be stored in the OutFolder. If the folder does not exist, it is created automatically; inside it the subfolders named neg_x, neg_y, neg_z, pos_x, pos_y, pos_z are created.
The source cylindrical texture should be in raw format. The raw format is a plain two-dimensional array of pixels, the size and capacity (bit-depth) of which is described by the following parameters in the configuration file:
InputWidth – width of the source image
InputHeight – height of the source image
InputChannels – number of channels (Grayscale – 1, RGB – 3, RGBA – 4, etc.)
Input16bit – capacity (bit-depth): 16 or 8 bits per channel
InputByteSwap – for 16-bit only: true for little-endian (MAC), false for big-endian
InputUnsigned – for 16-bit only: true for unsigned, false for signed value
InputLatOffset – longitude offset, in degrees
The cubic texture is a set of folders and files which are organized as follows:
cubemap ———– folder specified in the OutFolder parameter
neg_x —– folder of the neg_x face
0_0_0.jpg —– 1 tile of the level 0
1_0_0.jpg –\
1_0_1.jpg –+– 4 tiles of the level 1
1_1_0.jpg –|
1_1_1.jpg –/
2_0_0.jpg –\
2_0_1.jpg –|
2_0_2.jpg –|
2_0_3.jpg –+– 16 tiles of the level 2
2_1_0.jpg –|
2_1_1.jpg –|
2_1_2.jpg –|
2_1_3.jpg –|
neg_y —– folder of the neg_y face
neg_z —– folder of the neg_z face
pos_x —– folder of the pos_x face
pos_y —– folder of the pos_y face
pos_z —– folder of the pos_z face
The cubemap texture consists of six faces, with names given to them in accordance with the semi-axes of the coordinate system, which they crosses. Let the origin be the center of the planet. Then the Y-axis is through the poles of the planet: the North pole is on the pos_y face, the South pole is on the neg_y face. The X-axis is passing from left to right, i.e. the left face is neg_x, the right one is pos_x. The Z axis is passing towards the observer, i.e. the far face is neg_z, the close face is pos_z. In the original cylindrical texture, this corresponds to: the upper bound is the North pole, the lower bound is the South pole, the junction of the left and right boundaries runs vertically through the neg_x face, the central meridian runs vertically through the pos_x face, and the center of the cylindrical texture is located in the center of the pos_x face. A scan of the cubemap texture is standard:
Some planetary maps are not centered on the zero meridian. For example, it may run onto the left boundary of the texture. In this case, you can set the longitude offset of 180°, to "rotate" the resulting cubic texture to the correct position: InputLatOffset 180.
The resolution of the cubemap faces is calculated as a quarter of the width of the original texture, rounded up to the nearest power of 2. For example if the original texture resolution is 86400 x 43200, it will give the resolution of each face of 32768 x 32768 (131072/4).
Each face is organized as a set of tiles. The resolution of the tile is determined by the parameter TileWidth and must be no more than the resolution of the face. For example, if TileWidth = 512, and the resolution of the face is 32768, then we'll have 7 levels of tiles: Log2(32768/512) + 1 = 7. The levels are numbered from 0 to 6; the number of levels is the first digit in the file name of the tile: (0_0_0.jpg, …, 6_63_63.jpg). The total resolution of each level is doubled sequentially, and the number of tile files is quadruplicating. Thus, we will have one tile of level 0 (0_0_0.jpg) with resolution of 512 x 512. It will have the reduced image of the whole face. There will be 4 tiles of level 1 (1_0_0.jpg … 1_1_1.jpg), each comprising a quarter of the entire face image. Resolution of each tile is again 512 x 512, thus the common resolution of level 1 will be 1024 x 1024. Level 2 will have 16 tiles, and so on. The last (most detailed) level (6) will have 64 * 64 = 4096 tiles (512 x 512 each), with total resolution of 32768 x 32768. The second and third digits in the tile's file name are vertical (v) and horizontal (u) indices. Indexing is carried out from the left to the right and from the top to the bottom. Here is the example picture of the first three levels (with tile resolution 128 x 128):
level 0
level 1
level 2
The CubeMap utility
Conversion of the source cylindrical texture to the tiled cubemap texture is performed in several stages. It is possible to perform conversion for certain faces only. This is controlled by the following parameters in the configuration file (setting the parameter to false or 0 disables all stages for the corresponding face):
Create_POS_X true
Create_NEG_Y false
Create_POS_Y false
Create_NEG_Z true
Create_POS_Z true
Execution of any stage can be disabled by setting the appropriate parameter in the config to false or 0 (see below):
ComputeFaces true # process selected faces (compute temporary raw-files of the latest level)
DownsizeFaces true # compute LODs of selected faces (compute temporary raw-files of other levels back to 0)
UpdateEdges true # update the face edges
TileFaces true # split temporary raw-files of the selected faces into tiles
OptimizeTiles false # delete homogeneous tiles
Lets look at all the steps in order.
1) Creating a base cylindrical texture
To perform this operation, the configuration file must have CreateBaseTex true.
SpaceEngine uses a special small cylindrical texture (called "base texture") to render planets when they are far away from the camera. Creating this texture is achieved by a simple downsampling of the source cylindrical texture by averaging the pixels in square blocks. The BaseTexDownSize parameter specifies how many times to reduce the source texture, and BaseTexFormat parameter specifies the format of the resulting base texture. For example, reducing the texture of 10800 x 5400 four times gives a texture of 2700 x 1350. For SpaceEngine it's better to use a base texture of resolution of 512 x 256. But the Cubemap supports only integer numbers for BaseTexDownSize, so not all source textures can be converted to a 512 x 256 base textures. For example, 10800 / 512 = 21.09375, so a close possible value for BaseTexDownSize is 21, which yields to 10800 / 21 = 514. So it's necessary to downscale the final base texture again using a third-party program, such as Photoshop. To save precision, make a base texture of resolution ~ 1000×500, then downscale it in the third-party program to 512×256.
2) Computing the faces of the cubemap texture
To perform this operation, the configuration file must have ComputeFaces true.
The conversion is performed by bilinear filtering: to derive the color of the current pixel in the face, the floating-point coordinates of the corresponding point in the cylindrical texture are computed, and the color is obtained by a linear interpolation of the four pixels closest to that point. This method yields very good results; the artifacts may be noticeable only at the poles. Setting up the DoublePrecision true slightly modifies the algorithm: the result color is obtained by averaging the four values obtained as described above, but with a doubly-detailed mesh.
The program uses a special cache in the RAM for storing pieces of the original cylindrical texture. Therefore it is possible to convert a very large source texture without a complete loading of it into the memory. For example, NASA's texture for Earth, the Blue Marble Next Generation, has an unpacked size (in the raw format) of 86400 x 43200 x 3 = 10.4 GB. The cache size is set by the parameter MaxMem (size in MB). In the current version (1.06) setting up a large value (greater than 512 MB) can reduce the processing speed because it reduces long searches in the cache. The optimum value is in the range of 64-512 Mb, and depends on the size of the source texture to a small degree.
There are two types of cache – the Line and the Quad. Choosing a type is performed by the MethodSide parameter for the side faces of the cubemap (neg_x, neg_z, pos_x, pos_z) and by the MethodPolar for the polar faces (neg_y, pos_y). The allowed values are Line and Quad (without the quotes). The Line method reads the source file by small row pieces, while the Quad methods reads small square pieces. The Quad method should be more effective for the polar faces, but in the current version (1.06) there no significant difference.
A temporary subfolder called raw is created in the temporary folder specified by the TempFolder parameter. Inside it, subfolders neg_x, neg_y, neg_z, pos_x, pos_y, pos_z are created, where raw-files of the corresponding cubemap faces are saved. In our example, each face's raw-file will have a name of level6.raw (because we will have 7 levels, starting from 0), with resolution of 32768 o 32768.
If the TileBorder parameter is non-zero, additional pixels are added on the boundary of each tile. These pixels are a copy of the boundary pixels of the adjacent tiles. The width of this additional border is defined by this parameter. Thus if the configuration file has TileWidth 512 and TileBorder 1, we will obtain the tiles of resolution of 514 x 514. The resolution of the temporary file level#.raw will be increased by 2 TileBorder * cubeFaceWidth / TileWidth, where cubeFaceWidth is the original resolution of the level#.raw file. In our example, level 6 will have a resolution of 32768 + 128 = 32896. These extra pixels allow the elimination of gaps in the landscape or sharp edges at the joints of tiles when rendering the planet in SpaceEngine. For terrain elevation maps, it is important to save the tiles to a lossless format such as 16-bit png. In the previous versions of CubeMap a boolean parameter AddExtraData was used instead of TileBorder (AddExtraData true was equal to TileBorder 1).
The elevation maps (InputChannels 1) can use normalization, i.e. changing values so they implement the full dynamic range of the bit-depth. For example, the 16-bit elevation map gebco_bathy.21601×10801.bin has a minimum and maximum pixel value of -10577 and 8430 respectively, which does not fully implement the dynamic range of 16-bit integers (-32768 … 32767). Specifying the Normalize true enables normalization. In that case, if the parameter EnterNormData is set to false, the minimum and maximum values are searched for by scanning all pixels in the source cylindrical texture. For large textures this can take considerable time, so it is enough to perform this search once, then set EnterNormData true and enter the data that the program derived in the previous launch:
EnterNormData true # true to enter the normalization data manually, false to find them automatically
NormMinValue -10577 # minimum pixel value
NormMaxValue 8430 # maximum pixel value
3) Computing a LODs of faces
To perform this operation, the configuration file must have DownsizeFaces true.
A consequential 2-times downscaling of the temporary raw-file is performed, resulting in the creation of the files (in our example) level5.raw, level4.raw, level3.raw, level2.raw, level1.raw, level0.raw in the temporary folder, with a resolution of 16384 x 16384 to 512 x 512 respectively.
If the TileBorder is non-zero, the resolution of the new temporary files level#.raw will be increased by 2 * TileBorder * cubeFaceWidth / TileWidth, where cubeFaceWidth is the original resoluton of the level#.raw file.
4) Updating of the face borders
To perform this operation, the configuration file must have UpdateEdges true and TileBorder set to non-zero.
If adding of the additional frame pixels is enabled (TileBorder is non-zero), to obtain the correct values of pixels located at the boundary of the face, the Cubemap need to take pixels from the adjacent faces. To do this, all the faces must be computed, operations ComputeFaces and DownsizeFaces must be done for all faces. Otherwise the program will crash.
5) Splitting the temporary raw-files into tiles
To perform this operation, the configuration file must have TileFaces true.
The temporary files are split into tiles with resolution of TileWidth (or TileWidth + 2 * TileBorder, if the TileBorder is non-zero), and are saved to the folder named after the face, in one of the following formats:
raw – 8 or 16 bits, any number of channels, no compression
tga – 8 bits, 1, 3, 4 channels, no compression
dds – 8 bits, 1, 3, 4 channels, no compression
jpg – 8 bits, 1, 3, channels, lossy compression
tif – 8 or 16 bits, 1, 3, 4 channels, lossy compression
png – 8 or 16 bits, 1, 3, 4 channels, lossless compression
The tile format is described by the following parameters:
OutFormat – the tile format (raw, tga, dds, jpg, png)
OutFormat2 – the tile format (raw, tga, dds, jpg, png) for the low-byte, or for the alpha-channel (see SeparateHiLo and SeparateRGBA)
TileWidth – the tile resolution
TileBorder – the width of a border with additional pixels
Out16bit – capacity (bit-depth): 16 or 8 bits per channel (16 is allowed only for raw and png)
OutByteSwap – for 16-bit only: true for little-endian (MAC), false for big-endian
OutUnsigned – for 16-bit only: true for unsigned, false for signed value
OutInvertAlpha – invert the alpha channel for the RGBA images
OutJPEGquality – the quality for saving to JPEG (0…100)
SeparateRGBA – save RGBA tiles as a two separate files: RGB and alpha
SeparateHiLo – save 16-bit tiles as a two separate files: the high-byte and the low-byte
It is necessary to dwell on the parameters OutFormat2, SeparateRGBA and SeparateHiLo. SpaceEngine supports a special way to store RGBA textures for the planetary surface in the form of two separate texture files – a color file for the RGB components and a black-and-white file for the alpha channel. This can be used to save disk space. For example, Earth's surface requires RGBA textures with color specified in the RGB channels, and a water mask specified in the alpha channel. The compressed texture formats which support 4 channels (RGBA) are only png and tif. But files of these formats are quite large, while the color information inside could be compressed in jpg with a sufficiently good quality, and the water mask could be compressed in the lossless png very well. Such a combined set of two textures jpg + png takes much less space than a single 4-channel png. To use this method, set the SeparateRGBA true, and specify the format for the RGB texture by the OutFormat, and for the alpha texture by the OutFormat2:
OutFormat2 png
SeparateRGBA true
With this configuration, the CubeMap will save two files for each tile: the RGB file with the suffix _c and the alpha file with the suffix _a, for example:
For the 16-bit elevation maps, it can also be used for the separation of the 16-bit tile image into two files: a low-byte and a high-byte. Sometimes saving them separately into 8-bit files gives an advantage in size compared to saving in a single 16-bit image (png or tif). To do this, set the SeparateHiLo true, and specify the format for the high-byte texture by the OutFormat, and for the low-byte texture by the OutFormat2:
OutFormat2 jpg
SeparateHiLo true
With this configuration, the CubeMap will save two files for each tile: the high-byte file with the suffix _h and the low-byte file with the suffix _l, for example:
Note: the high-byte file must be saved in a lossless format, such as png. Otherwise, the terrain will have large artifacts! The lower-byte file may be saved in a format with lossy compression, such as jpg, but it also leads to artifacts. Only the combination png + png does not result in artifacts, and sometimes it leads to a better file size; in this case then, this is the recommended method to use.
SpaceEngine automatically detects and loads the dual-file textures, no additional tweaking of the planet script is required.
If the tile files already exist in the folder, they are overwritten.
6) Optimizing tiles
To perform this operation, the configuration file must have OptimizeTiles true.
SpaceEngine supports the tiled cubemap textures with any level of detail at any place. This means that you can, for example, have an Earth texture with a resolution of 6 x 32768 x 32768 (obtained from Blue Marble Next Generation), and in some places such as the Grand Canyon, the level detail can be improved by adding additional tiles with higher levels. Or vice versa, the large homogeneous areas with no detail – the oceans – can have only lower-level tiles (from 0 to 2) with the rest removed, which saves disk space and improves loading time. The Cubemap can try to identify such homogeneous areas and remove them. Thus, it is recommended to use this optimization only with textures with large homogeneous areas such as the oceans; it is not recommended to do it for other textures.
Detecting of homogeneity is done by calculating the variation of the pixel colors across the tile (the weighted sum of the absolute value of the difference between the color of a pixel and the average color of the tile). If this variation is less than the value specified by the parameter MinVar in the configuration file, the tile is considered homogeneous and is moved to a temporary location.
The subfolder called optimized is created in the temporary folder specified by the TempFolder parameter. Inside it, subfolders called neg_x, neg_y, neg_z, pos_x, pos_y, pos_z are created. Any detected homogeneous tiles are moved into those subfolders. They are candidates for removal.
General guidelines for optimization are the next. After generating the tiles without optimization (OptimizeTiles false), start from some value MinVar and run CubeMap with OptimizeTiles true while the rest of the stages are disabled (parameters CreateBaseTex to TileBaces are set to false). It is better to do that for only one face, choosing it by the parameters Create_NEG_X … Create_POS_Z. Next, look at which tiles were moved to the temporary folder. If not you are not satisfied with the results, move the tiles back (manually), adjust the MinVar value, and repeat until you get an acceptable result. Then do the optimization of the other faces using the optimal value of the MinVar you have found.
The current version (1.06) does not use a good algorithm, so errors are possible – e.g. tiles with a small island and homogeneous ocean around it can be considered as homogeneous, while tiles with a slight color gradient can be considered as heterogeneous. Therefore it is recommended to look at all the tiles in the temporary folder and move back those which seem to not be suitable for removal. It is also recommended to save these removed tiles somewhere, so you can quickly restore incorrectly deleted tiles, without having to launch a full conversion process with the CubeMap again (especially if the source cylindrical texture is large).
Optimization is not supported for the dual-file tiles (SeparateRGBA or SeparateHiLo).
The Glue utility
The Glue utility is designed for glueing up the tiles back to a single raw-file. The utility has its own configuration file with the following parameters:
InputFolder – path to a folder with tiles
OutFile – path to an output raw-file
TilePrefix – string, a prefix in the file names of the tiles (the level number)
TileExt – string, the file extension for the tiles
StartU – initial U index
StartV – initial V index
SwapUV – swap U and V indices
TileWidth – tile width
TileHeight – tile height
OutWidth – output raw-image width
OutHeight – output raw-image height
ChannelsPerPixel – number of channels (Grayscale – 1, RGB – 3, RGBA – 4, etc.)
BytesPerChannel – bytes per channel: 1 for 8-bit, 2 for 16-bit, etc.)
ConvertToGrayscale – convert to grayscale (for 8-bit only)
MaxMem – memory cache size in MB
The tile file name takes the form of: TilePrefix_v_u.TileExt; for example, for this configuration file:
TileExt png
StartU 2
StartV 3
SwapUV false
The first tile will have a name 5_3_2.png; the names of the next tiles will be obtained by increasing the indices u and v until resolution of the output texture specified in the configuration file is reached. Using an extension of * indicates that the program should look for tiles in any of the supported formats, in the following order: dds, png, jpg, jpeg, tif, tiff, tga, raw. For example, if the folder contains the two files 3_1_2.jpg and 3_1_2.tga, the first one will be loaded.
If the extension does not match one of the above, the tool switches to the raw-mode: the input tiles are considered to have the raw format, i.e. a simple uncompressed pixel arrays without a title. The extension can be .raw, .img or any other, renaming of the tiles to the .raw is not required. In raw-mode, the number of channels (ChannelsPerPixel) and the capacity (BytesPerChannel) are not limited. It can be used for glueing of arbitrary arrays of data (not necessarily textures), as if they are a rectangular blocks. Tiles do not necessarily have to be square-shaped – thus the separate parameters TileWidth and TileHeight are provided.
The parameter ConvertToGrayscale converts multi-channel tiles (RGB, RGBA and so on) into a grayscaled raw-texture by a simple averaging of channel values. It is only allowed for 8-bit tiles.
General recommendations
1) Placing the source texture, the temporary folder and output folder on different physical drives can significantly increase performance. Performance is also increased if the source file and temporary raw-files are defragmented.
2) Write the information about the format of the source raw-texture in its name, for example: Earth-surface-32k-RGBA.raw is an RGBA texture of 32768 x 16384; Mars-bump-16k-16bit.raw is a 16-bit elevation map of 16384 x 8192. This will help to avoid confusion.
3) Conversion of the texture of any format to raw format can be done in the Photoshop, IrfanView and other programs. Using them can also view the temporary raw-files (if you have enough RAM so that these programs are able to load large raw-files).
4) Save the configuration files for each converted texture, they can by useful in the future. Associate the .ccf file extension with the program CubeMap.exe, and the .gcf with the Glue.exe in the operating system, then double-clicking on a configuration file will automatically launch the corresponding utility. You can also drag and drop the configuration file onto a shortcut of the CubeMap or Glue.
5) The CubeMap can be interrupted by the Ctrl+C combination, and continue its work from the same point on the next launch. For example, if you do not know the format of a 16-bit elevation map, i.e. which values should be specified in the parameters InputByteSwap and InputUnsigned, first you can make conversion of one face and look at the result (tiles). But if the texture is very large, such a test will take a long time. Therefore, you can interrupt the conversion at the ComputeFaces stage, and view the finished part of the temporary file in the Photoshop or another program, or set the ComputeFaces false and run CubeMap again, waiting for the generation of some tiles.
6) It is recommended to view the result of the conversion of the polar faces pos_y and neg_y, and, if there are noticeable artifacts present, try and set DoublePrecision true, or edit the raw-files of the polar faces in Photoshop or another program. To do this, run the ComputeFaces for polar faces only, edit the raw-files, disable ComputeFaces and perform the remaining operations.
7) In order to avoid loss of precision it is not recommended to normalize the height map, the dynamic range of which is "almost implemented": for example (1 … 252) for the 8-bit and (-32000 … 32000) for the 16-bit.
8) If you want to save the tiles into a format not supported by Cubemap, it is necessary to perform the conversion into a lossless format such as tga, and then perform a batch conversion of all tiles into the desired format using third-party software such as IrfanView or ImageMagic.


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Busch Gardens Gay Days Set for Oct. 17-18th During Howl-O-Scream!
June 23, 2014
Read More: busch gardens gay days, busch gardens gay days 2014, DJ Alex Stream, Howl-O-Scream
Details about Busch Garden's Gay Days have started to trickle through and the weekend of Oct. 17th will be the big event!
Personally, I'm pumped to celebrate during the theme-park's Halloween themed events, Howl-O-Scream!
Ticket info is a still a bit further down the line, but here's some more details about the event from the official website.
We are back at it again for our THIRD annual Busch Gardens Gay Days! This year we have moved back to the spooky halloscream season as an hommage to our first year's event but also so we dont interfere with your summer pride schedules! Get excited because once again we will be taking over AMF lanes for an all night kick-off party before a day of fun at the park! Saturday morning , chase your hangover with a bit of Hair of the dog because we are going to ride rides, get scared, and have an awesome picnic in the park with some tracks by DJ Alex Stream and some entertainment by our favorite girls! Lastly, once again a portion of the proceeds will be benefiting an LGBT charity(TBD) so have fun and give back to our community!
Busch Gardens Gay Days originally started as a labor of love by the in October 2012. After seeing events like this attempted in the past, we saw the need to form something more solid and more planned out. We set out to create an annual organized event that would be similar to other large LGBT events. While planning for this event. Busch Gardens Gay Days would benefit LGBT charities and serve as a LGBT community supported and funded event to raise awareness to LGBT issues.
With success of last year's Busch Gardens Gay Days, which had over 700 in attendance and 300 attendees for the catered picnic, We decided to grow this year's event into a full-fledged weekend of events with pool parties, a day at water country and the signature main event still held at Busch Gardens. These additional events will be hosted throughout the weekend at the beautiful Williamsburg Hotel and Convention center.
OCT 17th
Check in to Hotel
Settle into the Hilton, grab a drink at Pitcher's, the hotel bar, and take a tour of all the great vendors while meeting new friends.
Kickoff party!
Due to the popularity of this event last year we are switching it around and making the AMF Lanes Bowling Party this year's Kickoff! Come kickoff gaydays by bowling all night, while listening to hot beats from DJ Alexander Stream.
OCT 18th
Breakfast Available – Harvest Grille
If you are staying with us at DoubleTree, breakfast is available at Harvest Grille. So grab a quick bite before head to the park!
Busch Gardens Williamsburg
Spend your day taking in the Most Beautiful Theme Park on Earth 23 years running. Get ready to be scared with this year's Hallow-Scream event!
Picnic at the Black Forest
We have put together our annual lunch buffet for your enjoyment, so take a break after you brave the Black Forest on Verbolten and join Annie Rexic and friends at our main event! Great prizes, great food, great music and dancing, what could be better?
Hang Out At the Pool!
After a long day at the park kickback at the Hilton pool with drinks, tunes, and socializing
- See more at: http://www.bggaydays.com/#sthash.D2OU7HGc.dpuf
Related Stories
Busch Gardens Gay Days Was Amazing
You couldn't have asked for a better day to be gay at Busch Gardens this past Saturday, June 15th. The humidity was high, but so were spirits, as a little less than 100 folks came out to support Busch Gardens Gay Days. Back in 'The Black Forest,' a full lunch (with booze!) was provided for [...]June 17, 2013
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My esteemed former colleague, Mr. Alex Barnett and I are co-presenting a session at Evans Data Corp's annual Developer Relations Conference.
I attended the DRC for the first time last year, and I'll attest that the conference is high value for anyone in the developer relations field. I returned to Bungee Labs with a sack full of great new ideas, and a refreshed attitude. Alex and I have since gone separate directions from our time working together at Bungee, but we share a keen interest in how to enable developers to be successful with our new companies' API's. (Alex at Intuit, me at Touchatag.) So, we decided to collaborate on a session at the show.
Our session is called, "To Open Source or Not to Open Source…where is the ROI?" and it specifically deals with how developer relations managers can incorporate various elements of code and technology sharing into their strategy. With roughly 40 minutes to cover the topic, I feel that we will barely get started before getting the hook.
Alex and I have established #EDCDRC on Twitter for those who tweet, and those who watch. Since we're attending, we'll try to take copious, disjointed, fragmentary notes of the sessions we attend.
Filed under: Events, Internet & Tech, RFID, touchatag, web apis |


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|Fabian Ezequiel Gallina
|Re: Current state of python.el in the Emacs trunk
|Wed, 16 Feb 2011 04:07:35 -0300
2011/2/16 Christoph <address@hidden>: > Stefan Monnier <address@hidden> writes: >> Now Fabian proposes a third Python mode. It wasn't my plan to complicate things further, it was the approach that worked for me to solve the problem of my not-so-happy experience with the different python modes I tried. If it can help to enhance the current trunk's python.el status to something better then it's good twice. > > I looked at it and I like it. It actually fixes some issues that the > current python.el has, especially when it comes to things like > pdbtrack. I had some issues getting some of features to work (shell > completion, for example) but that might just be because I was using > 24.0.50 and/or using it wrong. > That's good to hear, I fixed some shell integration and completion stuff today, so that probably will do the trick. > I didn't have the time to compare the current python.el with Fabian's > version as far as features go, but I didn't really miss anything while > using Fabian's new mode today. > Most of the stuff in trunk's python.el is there, so (I hope) your feeling remains that way :) Regards, -- Fabián E. Gallina http://www.from-the-cloud.com
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'Guzaarish' first look will be unveiled with 'We Are Family'
Tuesday, August 03, 2010 Guzaarish, News 0 comments
Source: Bollywood Hungama
By: Taran Adarsh
Date: August 3, 2010
Irrespective of how his films fare at the box-office, you can't underestimate the credentials of Sanjay Leela Bhansali. Everyone waits with bated breath for an SLB film to arrive, that's one fact you cannot deny. Right from the first look to the first promo to the music launch to the eventual release, every aspect of SLB's film is keenly anticipated within and outside the film industry.
Now everyone's awaiting SLB's next biggie GUZAARISH to unfold. Well, here's some vital info on the film. The first promo of this Hrithik - Aishwarya starrer will be unveiled with Karan Johar and UTV's WE ARE FAMILY, which opens on 3rd September. The music, scored by Bhansali himself, will be released by September-end and those who've heard the tunes feel that the master film-maker has come up with a super musical score.
The countdown for one of the biggest films of 2010 has begun...


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Project 2000
Advanced Features
First of all note that Microsoft Project 2000 uses new streamlined open and save as boxes to be fully compliant with the Microsoft Office 2000 software suite. These redesigned boxes are really useful to access more directly and quickly to your various storage places. New to Microsoft Project 2000 is the ability to set a default save format like Project 98 by example and a default saving path. Like every good and high end Microsoft Office 2000 compliant software, Microsoft Project 2000 fully supports the COM supplements so you can add supplementary features to the software. As this software is mostly designed for advanced users like developers, etc. Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications 6.0 is included so you can create your own customized Microsoft Project 2000 solution easily, using one of the most comprehensive programming languages in the world that have revolutionized the face of development software by allowing everyone to build its own software in a few minutes. When you want to create a new Visual Basic solution the Microsoft Project 2000 interface will display Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications in a separate window with all the development tools you may need. The left part of the VBA screen shows the project properties as well as the different forms and modules you may have created. Just like in Microsoft Visual Studio the "intellisense" technology will try to guess your code lines by displaying in tool tips the various properties for the code you have typed. Sure you can run your VBA project at your convenience by clicking the play button but you can also debug it using the advanced debugging features of the build in debugger.
Users that don't want to bother themselves creating small software addins using VBA can record macros to execute in a single their most current painful task. Due to the fact Microsoft Project 2000 is a part of the Microsoft Office 2000 family it supports Multilanguage interface easing so its deployment into multinational corporation. OLE DB support has also been implemented to this release so you can easily add Microsoft Project data into third party application like WordPerfect. Project now supports third party accessibility aid through Microsoft Active Accessibility programming interfaces. Printing has never been so easy! The printing feature has been enhanced and Project can now instantly adapt the scale of the document to be printed to the printer layout format. Great feature to print Gantt diagrams that are generally long, long, long… The picture management of Project 2000 was also revamped and you can now create higher quality images with larger allowable sizes and better rescaling. Office Server Extensions support is also at the menu of this new release and you can save to web servers as easily as you would save your project to a network location. This feature represents an other interesting method to share project files through workgroup users. Project 2000 now allows you to delete a planning or data related to a planning for the selected tasks or the whole project. The WBS structure can now be designed by users and numbered to adapt it to the specific needs of their project in order to ensure its consistency. The last new feature of a long list is the addition in customized fields of value list: so you can easily control what values can be entered by predefining them: the data entering process is simplified, as you simply have to click the value of your choice in the list.
Flexible Analysis
It is now much easier to expand and collapse the task outline structure using the show button of the formatting toolbar. You can now affect calendars to specific tasks so you can easily plan events that may affect only the selected tasks. Materials resources are at last supported in this release so you can specify which consumable resources are used by your project like lumber or concrete and assign them to tasks. One of the difficult to understand methods when drawing PERT diagrams with the hand is the cross project critical path. Microsoft has enhanced the critical path feature so you can now calculate the critical path for each inserted project or for all the inserted projects in order to display only one critical path for the main project unity. Another feature that Microsoft Project users have requested is the support of month duration: this is now OK and you can perfectly set month as a unit of duration. Cool isn't it? When designing a project schema you don't always know how long a task will last, so you can now indicate estimated duration by adding a small question mark tag to the task. Sure you'll be able to set the accurate time later. Like in Microsoft Excel 2000 you can now insert formulas into the cells in order to make some arithmetic calculations, but you can even insert condition tests and other advanced formulas. Levelling resources can be done more faster using the new provisioning features like the tasks calendar, a wider range of task priorities, project priority and contoured resources availability. Indeed this new version of Project now supports the contoured resource availability so you can create plans to include time-phased resource availability information. For example you can you can show a resource availability increase from 50% to 100% from one period to another.


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I am not an expert nor a great investor. I am just an ordinary punter who sets aside €100 per month to bet on stocks, shares and forex.
Friday, 3 June 2016
EUR/USD: Todays Spike
I predicted that the Euro would rise in advance of the BREXIT referendum and have a spike, up or down depending on the outcome, afterwards.
Today's spike tells me that the market is growing more confident of a positive outcome (i.e., the Brits voting to stay in the EU). There will be some profit-taking at this point, so the price should, in the next few days, ease or flop back to the shaft of my blue arrow.
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Emily Lakdawalla • May 25, 2008
I am planning a live Ustream chat at 13:30 my time (20:30 UTC). This will be shortly after the first Phoenix press conference of the day. I only plan to stay on for half an hour. click here if you'd like help converting to your local time. The chat will be via Ustream.tv -- you'll see my talking head and if you like you can send messages to me (or other viewers) in the chat room as well, at the UStream website. You can change your nickname by typing /nick newname where "newname" is the name you want to go by. I hope you can join me!
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