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2009 Two-Part Riddles Contest
Apr 01, 2009
Fun - Contests
2009 Two-Part Riddles Contest
Due to the great feedback we got from the last one and the level of enjoyment everyone had, the two-part riddles contest is back for 2009!
Part One will occur during the month of April. You are invited to submit a riddle that relates to a person, place or thing found in the Harry Potter books. The contest team will select the best riddles from the entries to have 10 riddles to post. We will also write and post riddles to fill in any needs. From these 10 riddles, a new riddle will be posted in the Contest Corner each Monday and Friday at 9am EDT during the month of May (see schedule below) for Part Two of the contest. All contestants' riddle entries used in May (this excludes riddles created by the contest team) and all people who submit correct answers for all the riddles will be placed into a drawing for one of three Wizard Wood Wands.
General Rules:
- There is a strict PG-13 rating for all riddles
- All work must be original
- All decisions by the judges are final
- Anyone 13 and older may enter the contest including staff members who are not involved in the judging process
- Please refer to our FAQ if you are not sure of something
- If you have any questions not answered on the FAQ, or would like to discuss this contest, please come to the Contest Corner forum on the Leaky Lounge.
April's Part One Rules:
During the month of April, the Contest Team is asking for people to submit riddles. To help you create your riddles, here are a few sources to help you along: write your own riddle worksheet (PDF, requires Acrobat Reader) and writing riddles from ehow.com.
- The answer to each riddle must relate to a person, place, or thing found in books 1-7 of Harry Potter. Please ensure that these riddles are solvable (test them out on friends!), do not have obscure Harry Potter related answers, and, most importantly, are actually riddles (e.g. not trivia questions).
- Please keep riddles no longer than 75 words.
- There is no particular format that is desired for the riddles.
- You may submit up to 3 riddles.
- All riddles must be e-mailed to [email protected] by April 22, 2009 at 11:59 pm (EDT) with "Riddle Entries" in the subject line of the e-mail. Please copy-paste the riddles into the body of the e-mail with the answers and include a name to be used for authorship (real name or Leaky Lounge name).
- All entries that do not include the answers and name for authorship will be disqualified.
- The authors of all riddles used in the second part will be automatically placed into the drawing for one of three Wizard Wood Wands.
May's Part Two Rules:
Every Monday and Friday at approximately 9am EDT through the month of May, the Contest Team will post a riddle on the Contest Corner to be answered via e-mail.
- All answers must be e-mailed with "Riddle # Answer" in the subject line to [email protected] before the next riddle is posted (see schedule below). Please also submit a name (real name or Leaky Lounge name) to be used for tracking and site announcement (if you should win) purposes. Please replace the # with the riddle number (e.g. Riddle 1 Answer, Riddle 2 Answer, etc).
- Please do not post your answer in any form or way on The Leaky Lounge. All attempts or answers will be removed with the person notified as to why the post was removed.
- All answers submitted will be recorded and kept throughout the month for each person who enters.
- Answers to the riddles will be posted after the new riddle has been posted.
- To be eligible for the drawing of a Wizard Wood Wands, you must have all 10 riddles answered correctly. If you miss a deadline, your list of answers will not be counted towards a full list of correct answers. You are encouraged to still submit answers after a missed deadline in case there is no one with a full list of correct answers. If no one submits and/or answers 10 riddles correctly, the next highest amount correct will be used for the drawing of the three Wizard Wood Wands.
Schedule of Posted Riddles:
All riddles are posted on Monday and Friday at 9am EDT or 2pm BST.
Riddle #1 – Fri, May 1
Riddle #2 – Mon, May 4
Riddle #3 – Fri, May 8
Riddle #4 – Mon, May 11
Riddle #5 – Fri, May 15
Riddle #6 – Mon, May 18
Riddle #7 – Fri, May 22
Riddle #8 – Mon, May 25
Riddle #9 – Fri, May 29
Riddle #10 – Mon, June 1
Fri, June 5 – All entries are due by 9am EDT or 2pm BST
Authors of the riddles (Part 1):
Kyle Milka
rowena r
Four people this year got all 10 riddles correct. This year we want to recognize those people.
Fantastic riddle solvers (Part 2):
Amanda Bettens
Claudia Cornelissen
paint it Black
Winners of the 3 wands were picked by a drawing between those riddles that were used for Part 2 from Part 1 and those who got all 10 riddles correct.
Winners of the wands:
paint it Black
The winning entries and answers can be found here.


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Martyr Leontius of the Holy 40 Martyrs of Sebaste
Saint Leontius was one of the Holy Forty Martyrs of Sebaste who refused to sacrifice to pagan gods, and suffered for Christ around 320. Licinius, the co-ruler of Saint Constantine the Great, was a pagan, and he decided to stamp out Christianity in his part of the Empire. As Licinius prepared his army to fight against Constantine, he feared mutiny and so he decided to remove all Christians from his army.
A company of forty Cappadocians, brave soldiers who had distinguished themselves in many battles, was stationed in the Armenian city of Sebaste under the command of the pagan Agricola. When these soldiers refused to offer sacrifice to the pagan gods, Agricola locked them up in prison.
It was winter, and there was a severe frost. The holy soldiers were lined up and thrown into a lake near the city, and a guard was stationed on the shore to prevent them from coming out of the water. In order to break the will of the martyrs, a warm bath house was set up on the shore. One of the soldiers came out of the water to offer sacrifice, and the guard Aglaius took his place.
In the morning, the torturers were surprised to see that the martyrs were still alive, and their guard Aglaius was glorifying Christ together with them. They led the soldiers out of the water and broke their legs. During this horrible execution the mother of the youngest of the soldiers, Meliton, pleaded with her son not to persevere until death.
They put the bodies of the martyrs on a cart and committed them to fire. Young Meliton was still breathing, and they left him to lay on the ground. His mother then picked up her son, and on her own shoulders she carried him behind the cart. When Meliton drew his last breath, his mother put him on the cart with the bodies of his fellow sufferers. The bodies of the saints were tossed in the fire, and their charred bones were thrown into the water, so that Christians would not gather them up.
Three days later the martyrs appeared in a dream to Saint Peter, Bishop of Sebaste, and commanded him to bury their remains. The bishop together with several clergy gathered up the relics of the glorious martyrs by night and buried them with honor.
There is a pious custom of baking "skylarks" (pastries shaped like skylarks) on this day, because people believed that birds sing at this time to announce the arrival of spring. Forty "skylarks" are prepared in honor of the Forty Martyrs.

subset: commoncrawl


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The top U.S. derivatives regulator moved to close off large banks' ability to avoid new regulation by arranging trades in America and then booking the deals in overseas affiliates.
The guidance, released today by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, undermines a legal interpretation Wall Street had found buried in a footnote, number 513, in an agency policy document. Banks relied on the footnote to keep swap deals off electronic platforms and away from the agency's rules that were put in place in the wake of the financial meltdown.
Today's two-page guidance, while not mentioning the footnote, effectively closes the loophole. It tells traders that if they are based in the U.S. and arrange, negotiate or execute a deal -- even on behalf of an overseas affiliate -- they must comply with the CFTC regulations.
Lawyers said the new policy gives the CFTC a greater reach to police the swaps market and makes it harder for banks to keep trades away from tough U.S. regulations, passed in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act. CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler has fought for more than four years to extend his agency's reach, arguing that U.S. taxpayers could be on the hook for overseas blow-ups due to the global nature of the business.
The new guidance "significantly expands the CFTC's cross- border jurisdiction," said Annette L. Nazareth, a partner at the Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP law firm in Washington. "It also immediately throws into doubt the viability of many trading arrangements used by banks worldwide."
Footnote 513
The issue of footnote 513 arose in October after Bloomberg News reported that several Wall Street banks, the biggest dealers ofderivatives, asked their swaps brokers to set up trades in the U.S. while booking them in affiliates overseas. The banks told the brokers that the language in the footnote allowed them to avoid new Dodd-Frank rules.
London-based ICAP Plc, one of the largest swap brokers, disagreed with the banks' interpretation. Other brokers accepted it and have been trading billions of dollars in contracts outside the new regulatory system.
ICAP asked the CFTC to weigh in on the issue last month. Guy Taylor, a spokesman for the company, said he couldn't immediately comment because it hadn't fully reviewed the new guidance.
The trades at issue will be conducted on electronic platforms, known as Swap Execution Facilities, or Sefs, created by Dodd-Frank in an effort to make prices more public and reduce risk in the system. They started trading on Oct. 2.
ICAP and more than a dozen other firms have registered Sefs with the CFTC, including GFI Group Inc., Tradeweb Markets LLC, MarketAxess Holdings Inc. and Bloomberg LP, parent of Bloomberg News.
Copyright 2014 Bloomberg. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.


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Show that if you add 1 to the product of four consecutive numbers the answer is ALWAYS a perfect square.
Relate these algebraic expressions to geometrical diagrams.
If a two digit number has its digits reversed and the smaller of the two numbers is subtracted from the larger, prove the difference can never be prime.
Given any two polynomials in a single variable it is always possible to eliminate the variable and obtain a formula showing the relationship between the two polynomials. Try this one.
Find all the solutions to the this equation.
If x + y = -1 find the largest value of xy by coordinate geometry, by calculus and by algebra.
By considering powers of (1+x), show that the sum of the squares of the binomial coefficients from 0 to n is 2nCn
Janine noticed, while studying some cube numbers, that if you take three consecutive whole numbers and multiply them together and then add the middle number of the three, you get the middle number. . . .
Pick a square within a multiplication square and add the numbers on each diagonal. What do you notice?
To find the integral of a polynomial, evaluate it at some special points and add multiples of these values.
Take any pair of two digit numbers x=ab and y=cd where, without loss of generality, ab > cd . Form two 4 digit numbers r=abcd and s=cdab and calculate: {r^2 - s^2} /{x^2 - y^2}.
Three points A, B and C lie in this order on a line, and P is any point in the plane. Use the Cosine Rule to prove the following statement.
Take a complicated fraction with the product of five quartics top and bottom and reduce this to a whole number. This is a numerical example involving some clever algebra.
By proving these particular identities, prove the existence of general cases.
The sum of any two of the numbers 2, 34 and 47 is a perfect square. Choose three square numbers and find sets of three integers with this property. Generalise to four integers.
Find all positive integers a and b for which the two equations: x^2-ax+b = 0 and x^2-bx+a = 0 both have positive integer solutions.
Show that for natural numbers x and y if x/y > 1 then x/y>(x+1)/(y+1}>1. Hence prove that the product for i=1 to n of [(2i)/(2i-1)] tends to infinity as n tends to infinity.
The sums of the squares of three related numbers is also a perfect square - can you explain why?
This shape comprises four semi-circles. What is the relationship between the area of the shaded region and the area of the circle on AB as diameter?
Can you find the value of this function involving algebraic fractions for x=2000?
For which values of n is the Fibonacci number fn even? Which Fibonnaci numbers are divisible by 3?
A sequence of polynomials starts 0, 1 and each poly is given by combining the two polys in the sequence just before it. Investigate and prove results about the roots of the polys.
Find relationships between the polynomials a, b and c which are polynomials in n giving the sums of the first n natural numbers, squares and cubes respectively.
Account of an investigation which starts from the area of an annulus and leads to the formula for the difference of two squares.
Choose four consecutive whole numbers. Multiply the first and last numbers together. Multiply the middle pair together. What do you notice?
Jo has three numbers which she adds together in pairs. When she does this she has three different totals: 11, 17 and 22 What are the three numbers Jo had to start with?"
Robert noticed some interesting patterns when he highlighted square numbers in a spreadsheet. Can you prove that the patterns will continue?
Given a set of points (x,y) with distinct x values, find a polynomial that goes through all of them, then prove some results about the existence and uniqueness of these polynomials.
An algebra task which depends on members of the group noticing the needs of others and responding.
A task which depends on members of the group noticing the needs of others and responding.
Can you find a rule which relates triangular numbers to square numbers?
How to build your own magic squares.
Find b where 3723(base 10) = 123(base b).
Brian swims at twice the speed that a river is flowing, downstream from one moored boat to another and back again, taking 12 minutes altogether. How long would it have taken him in still water?
Prove that 3 times the sum of 3 squares is the sum of 4 squares. Rather easier, can you prove that twice the sum of two squares always gives the sum of two squares?
The incircles of 3, 4, 5 and of 5, 12, 13 right angled triangles have radii 1 and 2 units respectively. What about triangles with an inradius of 3, 4 or 5 or ...?
Prove that the product of the sum of n positive numbers with the sum of their reciprocals is not less than n^2.
If a sum invested gains 10% each year how long before it has doubled its value?
Five equations... five unknowns... can you solve the system?
What is the value of the integers a and b where sqrt(8-4sqrt3) = sqrt a - sqrt b?
Find the polynomial p(x) with integer coefficients such that one solution of the equation p(x)=0 is $1+\sqrt 2+\sqrt 3$.
Take a few whole numbers away from a triangle number. If you know the mean of the remaining numbers can you find the triangle number and which numbers were removed?
The squares of any 8 consecutive numbers can be arranged into two sets of four numbers with the same sum. True of false?
What functions can you make using the function machines RECIPROCAL and PRODUCT and the operator machines DIFF and INT?
Several graphs of the sort occurring commonly in biology are given. How many processes can you map to each graph?
If the hypotenuse (base) length is 100cm and if an extra line splits the base into 36cm and 64cm parts, what were the side lengths for the original right-angled triangle?
Derive an equation which describes satellite dynamics.
Can you hit the target functions using a set of input functions and a little calculus and algebra?
If a is the radius of the axle, b the radius of each ball-bearing, and c the radius of the hub, why does the number of ball bearings n determine the ratio c/a? Find a formula for c/a in terms of n.
What angle is needed for a ball to do a circuit of the billiard table and then pass through its original position?


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Which is bigger, n+10 or 2n+3? Can you find a good method of answering similar questions?
When I park my car in Mathstown, there are two car parks to choose from. Can you help me to decide which one to use?
Imagine different shaped vessels being filled. Can you work out what the graphs of the water level should look like?
Here are some more quadratic functions to explore. How are their graphs related?
Can you adjust the curve so the bead drops with near constant vertical velocity?
Quadratic graphs are very familiar, but what patterns can you explore with cubics?
Here is a pattern composed of the graphs of 14 parabolas. Can you find their equations?
The illustration shows the graphs of fifteen functions. Two of them have equations y=x^2 and y=-(x-4)^2. Find the equations of all the other graphs.
Looking at the graph - when was the person moving fastest? Slowest?
The illustration shows the graphs of twelve functions. Three of them have equations y=x^2, x=y^2 and x=-y^2+2. Find the equations of all the other graphs.
There is a particular value of x, and a value of y to go with it, which make all five expressions equal in value, can you find that x, y pair ?
Four vehicles travel along a road one afternoon. Can you make sense of the graphs showing their motion?
Explore the two quadratic functions and find out how their graphs are related.
Position the lines so that they are perpendicular to each other. What can you say about the equations of perpendicular lines?
Here is a pattern for you to experiment with using graph drawing software. Find the equations of the graphs in the pattern.
Four vehicles travelled on a road. What can you deduce from the times that they met?
Alison has created two mappings. Can you figure out what they do? What questions do they prompt you to ask?
This set of resources for teachers offers interactive environments to support work on graphical interpretation at Key Stage 4.
Explore the relationship between quadratic functions and their graphs.
I took the graph y=4x+7 and performed four transformations. Can you find the order in which I could have carried out the transformations?
Two cyclists, practising on a track, pass each other at the starting line and go at constant speeds... Can you find lap times that are such that the cyclists will meet exactly half way round the. . . .
Can you draw the height-time chart as this complicated vessel fills with water?
Charlie has created a mapping. Can you figure out what it does? What questions does it prompt you to ask?
Explore the relationship between resistance and temperature
Alf Coles writes about how he tries to create 'spaces for exploration' for the students in his classrooms.
Various solids are lowered into a beaker of water. How does the water level rise in each case?
What biological growth processes can you fit to these graphs?
Investigate what happens to the equation of different lines when you translate them. Try to predict what will happen. Explain your findings.
Collect as many diamonds as you can by drawing three straight lines.
Can you work out which processes are represented by the graphs?
How does the position of the line affect the equation of the line? What can you say about the equations of parallel lines?
Two buses leave at the same time from two towns Shipton and Veston on the same long road, travelling towards each other. At each mile along the road are milestones. The buses' speeds are constant. . . .
How far have these students walked by the time the teacher's car reaches them after their bus broke down?
Explore the relationship between simple linear functions and their graphs.
Experiment with the interactivity of "rolling" regular polygons, and explore how the different positions of the red dot affects the distance it travels at each stage.
Investigate what happens to the equations of different lines when you reflect them in one of the axes. Try to predict what will happen. Explain your findings.
Imagine different shaped vessels being filled. Can you work out what the graphs of the water level should look like?
Experiment with the interactivity of "rolling" regular polygons, and explore how the different positions of the red dot affects its vertical and horizontal movement at each stage.
Experiment with the interactivity of "rolling" regular polygons, and explore how the different positions of the red dot affects its speed at each stage.
If you have only 40 metres of fencing available, what is the maximum area of land you can fence off?


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So far so good. The comic appears to be taking a stand that, while perhaps not explicitly opposed to free software in favor of working software, is at least opposed to annoying advocates of free software. It's nice because xkcd usually takes the opposite stance, advocating against proprietary stuff and making jokes for users of open source operating systems or other programs.
As an added piece of evidence that the facial hair character is meant to be the non-sympathetic one, his dialog is much less natural than the regular stick dude. Regular stick dude's speech is probably the most realistic dialog Randall has written in months. This comic is looking good!
(of note for later: the relationship between the two characters is that of a student and a teacher, with the student e-mailing an essay to his teacher. This is not definite, but the fact that one is portrayed as older, with facial hair, suggests it).
Oh man, this comic is turning out great! That guy totally stuck it to that nerd! This is so weird, but enjoyable. And what is awesome is that people are always using those same complaints against Randall and xkcd. I mean, I am not going to accuse anyone of being autistic because that's dumb if it's false and completely obnoxious if it's true, but the "you are only saying X nerdy thing to feel smugly superior" thing could have been taken from the the comments here. Or the blog posts, for that matter. Dang, this comic is full of promise!
but wait - you can use openoffice to both create and read .doc files. So is it really not "open" ? I mean, you can go a whole lifetime making only .doc files (not odf or whatever) and never buy, steal, or use a Microsoft product. So...philosophically, what is wrong with .doc?
Oh, I know, this will probably turn into a joke about .docx, those are annoying. I mean, Openoffice can read them, sure, but it can't make them I don't think, and yeah, that is annoying, along with all the other changes we all hate about word 2007.
wait, what? How is facebook even involved in this? What is going on here? Why is this person being dumb? Why is Facial Hair acting like this vindicates him? Let me list some issues I am having with the flow of this story:
--Facebook may be closed source, but that is hardly relevant to the argument in panels 1 and 2. The problem is stupid people who say "You want all this information? OK!" and then get annoyed when facebook - a for-profit company! - uses that information for profit! amazing. But how is this a problem of open vs closed source?
--Is this comic really trying to say that using .odf in 2003 would have somehow prevent the rise and/or evil-ification of facebook? How does that make sense? I know plenty of open source folks who still have a huge facebook presence. There's no connection there!
--Why did the person who was talking so naturally in panels 1 and 2, the guy who actually sounded like a real person suddenly switch to a particularly terrible strawman? "We handed control of our social world to facebook and they're doing evil stuff" is clearly not something a real person would say.
Sometimes people get annoyed at the argument that dialog is "unrealistic" so I'll spell it out more than usual this time. The guy is mad at facebook, right? So in real life, he would just complain, and the other person would mock him and say "well that's what you get for giving them control of your social world." In other words, he's clearly admitting that he caused the problem in the first half of the sentence, and then complaining (in a simplistic, almost childlike way) about the problem in the second half. It's the kind of thing that only really would make sense in, say, an elementary school play: "I am the King of England, and I think it would be bad for the Americans to be independent because I want all their money for myself!" or "I am the sugary food group. I want to break all your teeth, and I hate it when you eat healthy vegetables!" You know what I mean? It's usually used in strawman arguments like the one here.
--Where the heck was I. OK so here's a thing: Why are the two people acting basically unchanged over 7 years? They are acting like they just are continuing their conversation with nothing having filled in in 7 years. I certainly never went back to my teachers 7 years after I turned in an essay and mocked them for something they said at the time, but then again, I also never called my teachers autistic, so who knows. I'd like to say that maybe they were just friends, but what kind of friends talk like that? No one. This comic wasn't thought out at all, and I'd like a defender of it to explain what the relationship between the characters is for me. I don't think there's one that makes sense.
--Facebook has been doing evil stuff since forever. Remember the uproar over the newsfeed? that was way the heck back in 2006 and people got real mad and then stopped caring. Is it evil? That is hard to say. But is the panic justified? I'd say not. All we are left with, then, is the Beard Dude taking joy in his astounding vindication when really he has no reason to be vindicated. In a month this guy is going to forget he was ever mad at facebook.
--"This is the world's tiniest open-source violin" ?? Is this the single lamest retort in all of xkcd? All that tells me is that the violin is probably not going to work right. Now granted, the concept of telling a person that you are playing a sad song on the world's smallest violin has never actually made much sense to me. Urban Dictionary sort of helped me out but it doesn't really make sense in this context. Why should the metaphorical tiny violin be open-source? Just because the dude was complaining about open-source stuff seven years earlier? What does it even mean for a violin to be open-source? Did a lot of people help build it? Can anyone edit it? And what is the tiny violin playing? That's the way the joke usually ends, no? And isn't it a little dumb to be making your punchline a slight variant of a joke at least 30 years old?
And after all that, the character I liked is shown to be an idiot, and the nerd who was just trying to be smug is shown to be the wisest of them all. Well hot damn. So much for having hope anymore.
relatedly, new member of the xkcd forum for the win. The forums in general on this one are refreshingly honest about the fact that this comic makes no sense. Some folks are trying to defend it, it is MOST amusing.
as long as we are talking, I should point out that the xkcd store is selling something new and it is a thing with which i can find no fault. That said, it may be time for the store's page to get a little better organized - perhaps by product type.
Also, I would be more than happy to stop blogging entirely if I knew that Al Franken would be analyzing xkcd comics on the Senate floor. As it is, I have to settle for him analyzing Tom Toles. I think Al Franken is quite funny so I assume he's being at least 75% ironic here, but it's hard to tell, and certainly other people are going to be less likely to give him the same benefit of the doubt that I have. Weird.


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By JESSICA BASHAM
Backyard Safari
Green anoles, a type of American lizard, are often called American chameleons because they can change color, but they are not chameleons at all.
These anoles are the only native lizard in the southeastern United States that changes color, but it is only from bright green to brown or gray. Usually their change in color is due to stress but also to temperature and mating. Males extend a bright pink dewlap (a piece of skin that unfolds from its throat) when looking for a mate or when warning other males to back off. Their head-bobs are like pushups and show the female and other males that they are strong.
Mating season starts in the beginning of April and continues throughout the summer months. In South Florida, the mating season is a little longer. If you see a green anole bobbing up and down and showing his dewlap, look around; there may be a female nearby. A female lays one or sometimes two eggs every two weeks, usually in dirt or debris at the base of a plant.
The green anole is the only native anole in the Southeast and is found from North Carolina west to Texas and throughout Florida.
True chameleons, however, live in Africa, Madagascar, Portugal, Spain and parts of Asia.
At least two species have been introduced into Florida. They can change to every color of the rainbow because of mood, temperature, habitat, stress, anger and defense. They often blend easily into their surroundings by changing color. Chameleons hold on to branches with their feet and coiled tails. Their long, curled tongues shoot out like arrows to catch prey.
Anoles are small, long and slender. Like the chameleon, they have the ability to cling to objects but only because of a sticky pad on the underside of their toes. Their tails are not coiled but long and thin and can break easily. This is so they can escape predators. When caught by the tail, the lizard squirms until its tail breaks and it can escape to freedom. The confused predator is left with only the tail and wondering where its lunch has gone. Lizard tails will grow back a little.
In southwestern Florida, the dewlap may be gray, white or light green. These populations are a different subspecies or race of green anole.
Watching green anoles is easy. Around homes, they hang from walls, scurry across sidewalks and driveways and climb shrubs, branches and trees.
A little anole visits me daily. He perches on a railing outside my office window and bobs his head up and down, showing off his bright pink dewlap.
Anoles generally have a territory, so chances are you'll see one in the same place, day after day.
The one I see is missing his tail.
Another anole in Florida that is not native is the brown anole from Cuba. Many times they are confused with the native green anole when the green anole has turned brown. But brown anoles have obvious patterns on their backs and sides.
Green anoles typically have no pattern, although a female may have a slightly wavy whitish stripe down her back.
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Monday, April 21, 2008
How to Improve My Game?
I'm not sure what it was, maybe it was a bad week, maybe it was because it was the first time I had seen Mount Hyjal and Black Temple, maybe it was adjusting to the speed of their playstyle or maybe it was because my skills are simply not good enough. It's probably a combination of all those factors.
One thing is pretty clear: I need to improve my game. However, I'm not sure how to go about doing that.
Gear and theory-wise, I believe that I am solid. It's more the intangible parts that I need to work on. And kind of honestly, I'm drawing a blank as to how to improve them. Should I do more heroics? Try PvP in earnest?
Any suggestions you guys have would be appreciated.
30 comments:
Quite shocking to hear you been denied on a guild application.ReplyDelete
Not quite sure what to recommend. But I guess if your to improve at something then I can only think you do more of what you want to get better at or do it more oftenti get better at it.
Rohan, if you're having a problem with healing in raids then jumping into heroics and PvP isn't going to solve that problem. The only way you can get better is by doing more raiding. Play to the strengths of your class. I don't know what they asked you to do but I do believe you're at your best when main tank healing with spammed flash of lights.ReplyDelete
Otherwise, poor healing and poor situational awareness doesn't give a whole lot of details. Were people around you dying? Were you dying? Were you taking damage when you weren't supposed to? A lot of it could simply be attributed to inexperience.
It was probably situational awareness that got you mate, and the pace probably didnt help. Its tricky for a pala especially to get out of the fire and heal.
If it was down to raw healing stats then if youre not already using Grid and Clique cast i would try it out. Assign left click to FoL and right to HL (make active only on grid frames) and your away.
Im prot now but can still pawn some slackers using this and a few mana pots when i put the healing gear on.
- Anonymous11:41 PM, April 21, 2008
I'm following you blog since long ago, and I find your comments always very interesting.ReplyDelete
Your's are not usual reassonings, going almost always one step ahead, so I consider you a clever person and for obious reassons a good player (this is a game, not an engineering degree).
Your poor performance must be due to lack of experience and poor team coordination (which is also your teammates fault). How many outstanding players (in any sport) need weeks to addapt to a new team?
I agree with the above.ReplyDelete
Doing as good as or better than the rest of the usual team is always hard when they have played together before.
First time in any place is a lot of: "Oh my god - does this place look cool", "Where the hell is the tank", "My LoS is blocked but to whom?", "Who's the the bomb again?", "WTF - adds from this direction!?!" etc etc.
What I wonder is: Was you on MT heal duty or raid-heal duty? Or some kind of mix? From my pre tbc healing experience, raid healing is a hell of alot harder. Especially since some range dps dont think about positioning that much.
And secondly - how many runs did you attend? First run with a good group is more or less follow mode. To actually see what you can do you should have joined on a SSC run or whatever you have experience with so you could show your spatial awareness since that takes experience. You are still imapired since they are used to each other but you are not. But it would be more fair.
One thing I've noticed in my brief forays into healing is that the best means for improvement is simply practicing in the environment you hope to excel in.ReplyDelete
Although, in my experience, PvP healing will, to some extent, help increase your reaction times and situational awareness.
In PvP, things happen so quickly that reaction time and knowing what's going on around you is absolutely key. But, the mechanics of healing vary quite a bit from PvP to PvE. In PvP, you're going for quick heals, not necessarily mana efficiency over longer periods of time. Why? Faster heals tend to be more reliable for keeping people up in PvP. The heals may be smaller, but by the time a longer-cast/bigger heal goes off, chances are your target's already dead. Also, mana efficiency isn't such a big deal because a full mana bar is only a death away. I've often gotten myself killed intentionally on my priest in the battlegrounds, simply because I was out of mana. You just can't do that in PvE.
There are a lot of differences between the two environments to consider, but if reaction time and awareness are your concerns, then PvP might be the place to hone those skills.
Just my two cents.
- Jarviz3:04 AM, April 22, 2008
I agree with the previous comments. It's really hard to be at your best in a new environment. Where should I stand? What is the boss doing now? The more "brain-time" you need to spend on that is less time healing. Especially for a pally that must stand still and heal 99% of the time. The move-heal-move-heal is hard the first times on a new boss. (Thinking of my first times at Aran, Zul'Jin and others, brrr ;-)ReplyDelete
- Silmarillia3:41 AM, April 22, 2008
From my own experience, having a healing addon (Healbot in my case) makes a big difference in your possible healing output. But you probably already have a setup that works for you.ReplyDelete
I'd recommend PvP to help with situational awareness, reaction times and such. It requires that you max out your class skills as well; use your stun, bubbles, heals, holy shock etc. As others have already noted it's not the same as PvE healing, but it preps you for the unexpected, and that's never a bad thing :)
Aside from that, well, raiding is an odd beast. Some teams work, some don't. You might get into a group where one or two healers are spamming big heals all the time .. meters aren't everything, and many focus on the meters too much.
I have to disagree with Matticus when it comes to heroics too, lol .. heroics are great to hone your skills as well, since the damage input is much greater, things are a tad more unpredictable, and you are the only healer there. No one else will pick up your slack.
Also, playing all three major roles (tank, dps, and healer; i also have a druid, warlock, and hunter) has helped me quite a bit in whatever role I'm in. One gains a better understanding of tanking, CC, and the limits thereof.
Aside from that, well ... seems like they're a bit harsh. One raid in content you haven't been to before? Yikes. Not exactly the best recipe for top performance ;)
- Anonymous4:40 AM, April 22, 2008
Yes, I have to agree with Jarviz.. Making a decision based on a run in a new raid instance (for you) is not a very helpful or fair.ReplyDelete
There is a lot of stupid arrogance with big raiding guilds (I know because I'm in one..) and a tendency to forget that when we first walked into BT we all had poor situational awarenes, poor healing, dps and everything else.
Guilds however want ready made raiders without much patience for training which makes it hard to jump from a T4 to a T5 or T5 to T6 guild.. What I would suggest is trying to find a guild that is itself just learning that instance so you have a little more time to get accustomed to it. Best of luck in trying to find that right guild for you.
Come heal for me Rohan. I'll find you a roster spot =DReplyDelete
Honestly, awareness is about knowing the fights. Expecting someone to conform to a strategy your guild has been doing for weeks on their first night isn't fair and shouldn't be expected. Quickly learning the strategy is though.
If you want to improve, I can only suggest pugging heroics or 2 man heal Kara with the worst possible groups you can find. If you can't figure out a way to push your own game, go find retards that will.
All of these other comments are right - a couple of experiences in new content with a new team is not going to accurately reflect your ability. The best thing you can do to improve your game is not to let it affect your confidence. I'd say you need to find a guild where you can feel among friends and able to stretch yourself at your own pace.ReplyDelete
Someone mentioned Grid with Clique...as an alternative, I would suggest looking at Healbot...I have a hard time seeing grid well. Healbot has a slight larger layout that fits my vision a little better. And has click casting builtin...ReplyDelete
I would say that this just shows everything that is wrong with raiding in general and elitest guilds specifically. Quite frankly its why I switch to only doing PvP where I don't have to go on job interviews to have fun.ReplyDelete
Based on your posts I find it very hard to believe you are not a decent healer and you seem to have a lot of experience with the Tier 4/5 raids. Most likely the newness of the dungeon and unfamilarity with their rush style held you back a little on the healing.
I find it a bit interesting to see all these "Not your fault" comments... implying that the guild were doing the wrong thing when testing you.ReplyDelete
Now, I'm the GM and healer coordinator of a raid guild, we do trials by taking our recruits on raids to our normal-level content as well. We also expect them to perform well there. Sure, we do take them to more runs than one or two, but really, the trials really excel show the first run.
So, since some people can really handle it the first time around, why shouldn't that go for anyone, really? A top-level raid guild is looking for the very best; they're doing exactly the right things to weed out those who aren't as good. And that probably includes failing you if you dont meet the expectations right away.
What do you need to do to improve? Give the WWS link to someone who can help you analyse why you ended up so poorly. Think it through yourself, and maximize your potential in any way you can. Ask someone in the guild even, see if they can provide you with more information on what you did wrong. And practice, really... apply for another guild and keep trying.
Yeah, if you could post a link to the WWS in question so we could look at it in conjunction with your armory it would help in forming more specific feedback.ReplyDelete
Yes, I'd have to see the WWS in question as well.ReplyDelete
For those saying it's unfair that he was denied, how else can a guild check out someone but by taking them along on a run.
- Anonymous9:40 AM, April 22, 2008
As an aside, this might also be the time to look at what it will take to get to that next level. If that top-tier raiding is what you want to do, then it's likely going to take a larger time commitment. If you can do that, that's great.ReplyDelete
But if this is want you want, research some of the top-tier healers out there and get some advice from them.
@relmstein Regarding the elitest comment, I don't think that's fair, as long as they are being straightforward about it. You may not want that kind of pressure, but, as long as they aren't jerks, there's no reason they can't roll that way.
I have a lot more peace with the game when I realized/decided that I don't and will never have the time and skills to be an elite raider or pvper. I can still do well, but knowing my limits and not being frustrated by that is a blessing.
- Anonymous9:59 AM, April 22, 2008
BT/MH is a big change in the role/ability of paladin healing. It is a transition from FoL spam with occasional bursts of HL spam to much closer to 50% or higher HL. In BT/MH raid damage is high enough that paladins' can't/shouldn't be doing raid healing and no longer pwn the healing meter.ReplyDelete
Had you watched video's for the fights and know what was supposed to happen?
Check with the guild and post the WWS as people have requested. You are good at theory craft but have plenty of readers who have more progression experience.
But another thing to note is the WWS is probably not the real answer. WWS is important but I would assume you are significantly behind them in gear so your healing should be low.
- Anonymous10:42 AM, April 22, 2008
Honestly, applying to the best raiding guild when you have little to no experience with BT or MH probably wasn't the best idea.ReplyDelete
I'd recommend applying to a guild that is starting out in those areas so you can learn at a good pace, get geared up properly, and enjoy the experience.
WWS is very telling of performance. As an example, having over 70% overheal with holy light probably means you could have just been flash spamming and been more effective. Sounds like a lot but its happened to some applicants I've seen in other guilds.ReplyDelete
PvP would help a lot with the situational awareness problem. In particular, most healers are too busy staring at health bars to notice environmental effects. Healers do have more to pay attention to than DPS, but that isnt a valid excuse for say, dying to void zones.
A WWS would be telling of what went wrong. I dont think this is a "teamwork" problem. Healing is almost never a teamwork problem, you heal life bars that you think will be going down soon, or those that are already down but likely arent covered by the prior case. Other healers are probably just beating you to the punch for heals, which means you're anywhere from a tad slower or a lot slower in reacting to damage/timing your preheals. This probably puts you at a ton of overheal, and low effective heal. If I were to app for a T6 guild I would be sure to "play the WWS" and heal competitively to stay on top of meters. Its not practical from an actual raiding standpoint, but for an interview process where you will be judged on that sort of thing, its necessary.
If you were a restoration shaman I'm sure they would be more lenient in their recruitment standards, but a holy paladin is a bottom tier healer for T6 content. You really need to be at the top of your game to be considered for gear-up.
While I don't raid anymore, this is what I see my former guild doing(BT farm currently on SWP). Dying to environmental damage is a huge nono and almost always results in an immediate rejection.
Halad - Mug'thol
I find it hard to beleive that gear is not an issue in this case coming from an guild that was in SSC/TK to an Sunwell guild is a huge jump. If the guild you apped for has been farming Illidan for a few months I expect the gear gap to be huge around 400 more healing and 5% more Crit not factoring in the godly T6 2pc and 4pc set bonus. When I first did BT I had to make adjustments and used downranked HLs much more I found it a little mana intensive at first with full T5 but as i got more gear it mana wasnt an issue. I just don't see how gear can not be an issue for anyone with less than full T5 quality gear.ReplyDelete
Also some of the fights in BT are really hard for a Paladin to keep up with on the meters in healing just because of all the aoe damage out in those fights even with full T6 its a challenge to even stay close just because of how much HPS Chain Heal and Circle of healing can put out.
As for awareness a lot of it has to do with knowledge of the fight I know most progression guilds expect you to research all of the fights you do ahead of time so less time has to be spent explaining details to new people.
Besdies that the only other thing
I can think of is were you on top of your game with cleanse, BoPs, and BoFs?
- Anonymous11:46 AM, April 22, 2008
@Grumpy MisanthropeReplyDelete
Sure grid isn't very good for healing with the default setup. That's why its so customizable. Change the layout, and maybe get some of the extra additions and it's great.
I think focusing more on doing your job, and only your job could increase your performance. Too much theorycrafting can be a bad thing at times. Making sure other people are doing their job (keeping FF or demo shout or sunder up) should be the raid leader's job, not yours. I realize you just want everyone to play to their max potential, but it comes at a cost.ReplyDelete
WWS healing and healing meters in general mean jack shit (other than showing ho goes AFK for trash).ReplyDelete
Overhealing doesn't matter. Effective healing doesn't matter (unless that person really did nothing). All that matters is that your assignment stays alive. That is it. If your assignment was alive at the end of the fight and you didn't run out of mana you did fine. Topping meters should never be your goal as a healer; when people try to rule the meters it leads to double dipping on assignments which increases the chances people will die.
I think bringing potential apps to a T6 instance for their trial run is entirely justified. Tier 6 guilds rarely run T5 instances because of gear levels, so it wouldn't do them any good to see how well someone preforms in an instance they seriously overgear. It may be harsh to deny someone after the first run (and personally I would take a new app to Hyjal instead of BT), but I personally can't speak for the guild's management.
The more important question is how do you think you did? Did your assignments stay alive? Did you die often to easily avoidable things? Did you wipe the raid on a Teron ghost because you have no idea what's going on (everyone has done that, don't worry about it)? Take this opportunity to look at what you need to improve and work on that for the next application.
I guess there are several factors, why you did not perform at the top of your game.ReplyDelete
The first is the part where you did not know what to expect. You didnt know how hard the Mobs will hit, you didnt know when to expect burst damage, you just didnt know the encounters. You can only get better by playing the instance a few times. I think the guild "rushing" through multiplied this problem for you.
When i test new applicants for my guild (i am the Paladin CL), i usually try to get them into a run where they have previous experience at least on a few bosses. Thats how i can see how they perform in comparison to our usual members who also know the deal.
Of course this is a problem for you, if you apply to a MH/BT farming guild and have never set foot into those instances before. You can not learn this kinda stuff just by watching videos and reading up strats.
The next problem is the gear gap. If the guild compares you to their other healers, which will be equipped 1 tier above you, there will be an obvious problem for you. I dont know, if they took that fact into account. The 2pc and 4pc T6 boni are an even bigger upgrade then the already strong "non set" items - a Paladin will gain more then 20% HL crit compared to the T4/5 mixed gear you are in.
This leads to the last problem. I would need to see the WWS parse, but what i notice from the applicants we get from "lower tier" raiding guilds is the FoL spam attitude they carry over from those instances.
BT/MH is the end of the FoL spam Pally. Literally. You have to switch playstyles. You have to make the transition to HL11 (with downranked HL7 and the occasional FoL if your tank is at full HP).
I write "your tank" because MT healing is the ONLY thing a Paladin in T6 content is good at. And there should be no Paladin on raidheal duty. It's just a waste of a slot. A single Shaman or CoH Priest could do the job of 2-3 Paladins on raid heal duty.
So here is my advice: Stack up some spellcrit rating, there are a few items available as badge rewards. A HL build Paladin heavily relies on spellcrit, because HL scales much better then FoL with spellcrit. And then switch your playstyle - your duty is to keep the tank alive and to have Lights Grace always up and running. Of couse you can get back to FoL for trash clears, but even then you should throw in the occasional HL7 to keep up LG and save someone from the burst damage which will happen now and then with a big HL11 crit.
And dazanna is right. Overhealing means nothing. Effective healing is way overrated by most people who look at the WWS parse. Paladins will never be able to keep up in the meters when there are encounters with Splash/Raid/AE damage, which are like 100% of all T6+ encounters.
The most important thing is, that you do your job well, and that means your assigned tank will not die.
- Anonymous1:59 PM, April 22, 2008
oddly enough i think that both parties are right in a way. its not really fair to you for them to expect that you do really well the first time ever seeing a boss, but they probably really want someone who knows the fight, and to them it was fair. I have always known you as a tanking pally, sure we are all called upon to heal, but if you don't do that day in and day out you are going to do poorly compared to others. mods help, other things help, but when it comes down to it, you need what a bicyclist would(or might) call t.i.t.s time in the saddle. you need time healing in a demanding world to become better at healing. also gear wise... i know you think you are strong, but how is your spell haste? i noticed in my raid that there is a pally that can blow me out of the watter healing (1.7k unbuffed + heal and ok mana regen) which is far lower than what i have for those numbers (im running over 2k+heal and nearly double the casting mp5) the thing he has on me is haste, and experience. the haste lets him land the reactive heals before i do, and more importantly he has been doing it much longer than i have (hell a year ago i was 40, and prot, 4 months ago i was prot and 70) so he knows better who is about to take heavy damage...... anyways the point is consider a haste set (look at what the other healers they have, if they are running with haste, then they are going to beat you to the heals all the time)ReplyDelete
as for situational awareness.... thats where i think They are really full of bull to say that your's was poor, you have to have a clue about the situation before you can be aware about it. ask the pally and healing leads how quick they wiped that night they decided to try hyjal once they had finished atunement.
anyways, don't let the man get ya down, apply to another guild, hell reapply to them in a few weeks (unless they are complete asses and its a one time shot sort of thing, and at that point f*($ em AND the mounts they came in on)
but hey what the hell do i know im just a prot pally hiding in a t5 holy pally's clothes
good luck
Honestly, applying to the best raiding guild when you have little to no experience with BT or MH probably wasn't the best idea.ReplyDelete
The situation was a little more complex than that. Skywall had 4 Alliance guilds that cleared BT/MH. There were 2 guilds in the early part of BT, and a bunch of guilds at Vashj/Kael. Since my previous guild was at Vashj/Kael, I was looking at the T6 guilds. Of the two starting guilds, 1 wasn't looking for paladins, and 1 had raid times I couldn't make.
So that left the top 4 guilds. Reclaimed was looking for paladins, and had raid times I could make, so I just started applying at the top. You can always apply downwards if rejected by a potential guild, but it's pretty hard to apply upwards.
As to fair or not, I think it was fair. I wasn't playing at a level that they would need for Sunwell.
Honestly, applying to the best raiding guild when you have little to no experience with BT or MH probably wasn't the best idea.ReplyDelete
It depends on what the guild is looking for: if an already experienced and geared player, or a player with low experience/gear but with high potential.
- Anonymous8:51 AM, April 24, 2008
give me a break with that crap rejecting you cause your not good enough....get real! 25men raid require 7-8 healers, everyone helps out that guild is a complete fool to reject someone whos willing the learned find another raiding guild...o btw 5men dungeon healing require way more skill than 25men healing, if you didn't try alrdy make 3 macros one for target of target heal during trash, 1 for main tanks 2-3 for offtanks you'll be all set in 25men make sure you have pally power, decursive mod thats all you need. healing is one of the easiest job in a 25men raid.ReplyDelete
Hmm, my advice would be to switch servers. You really need a guild that is just entering BT/MH. I've never done T6 stuff, we just started 25mans a month ago. But I am really glad I didn't try to jump into a guild who was farming T5 content, I would have been so lost. As it is, everyone is entering this fresh (or the vast majority of the raid), so I don't have to play catch-up. We downed loot below and loot reaver last week. Which doesn't mean we are uber, just that we're all on the same page, learning the fights together. If you need to switch servers for that to happen, do it. Otherwise...Healing palys should be very useful, i dont see you struggling to find a guild like a hunter (i'm a hunter).ReplyDelete


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Ledyard Board of Education votes to cut school staff, activities
Despite rampant criticism from the school community, the Board of Education voted Wednesday to cut nearly half a million dollars from its proposed 2014-15 budget, eliminating multiple staff members and extracurricular activities.
The Town Council's directive to reduce the school budget by $495,000 came two days after dozens of concerned residents, many of whom said they simply could not afford an 8 percent tax hike, came forward at a public hearing.
With $123,000 in additional cuts to the general government budget, the final budget proposal totals $52.7 million and requires a 6 percent tax rate increase of 1.75 mills.
The remaining increase in the proposed school budget is $535,898, a 1.8 percent increase.
Boys' swimming, golf, freshman boys' soccer, and the high school newspaper all got the axe Wednesday night - programs deemed either cost-inefficient or having low participation numbers.
Nine tutors, two paraprofessionals, two teachers and one secretary will be laid off.
Other cuts include a magnet school bus, some in-town bus runs, and the delay of a technology purchase.
In the two weeks since Strickland first proposed these cuts to the board, a couple of changes were made, including the restoration of $22,000 to various supply accounts in exchange for cutting an additional part-time middle school science teacher.
Comments from a full audience in the high school media center included impassioned pleas from parents who saw their children's lives and prospects changed by sports; complaints over "nickel-and-diming" individual line items; and spirited speeches by students in Colonel gear promising fundraisers to cover the costs of their clubs.
"There's a lot of stuff that means a lot to everyone here," said senior Dan Candler, a member of this year's golf team. "You have no idea who (it) could be impacting."
Mike France, chairman of the town's Finance Committee, encouraged the board not to make the final decision on cuts Wednesday night, and to take more time to consider other cost-saving options.
France exceeded the allotted three minutes for public comments, causing some friction when he stepped back up to the podium to continue speaking after another audience member offered him her time to raucous applause.
Finance Committee Chairman Gordon Strickland defended the district's administrators, whose salaries several members of the community have questioned over the past few months.
Strickland said the current administration is the "most efficient and effective force" the district can have.
"When you look at what the job is, it just cannot be done by a smaller staff," he said.
He also noted that this is the first time in "a very long time" that the board is proposing cuts to extracurricular activities. But with nine layoffs occurring as a result of the cuts, Strickland said, he would rather cut all of the activities than cut the teaching staff.
Board members had their own criticisms to volley back at the audience, asking those with suggestions why they did not come forward when the finance committee began crafting the budget months ago.
"Everybody waits until the night that it comes down to the wire to make the cut," Strickland said.
Seven board members voted in favor of the cuts; board member Joan Disco abstained.
The board encouraged the audience to petition the Town Council during the summer - after the start of the next fiscal year - to make a supplemental appropriation to restore the extracurricular activities. Strickland said the town would save more in insurance costs for the laid-off staff than the combined total of the activities cuts.
"You have been given an opportunity. You have the potential to get back what it is that you desire," Cronin said. "Carry that passion. Carry that desire forward. Show your support for the great programs we have."
Ledyard Board of Education to overhaul policies governing student activity funds
Fitch's Amara Robinson: from broken back to all-state cheerleader
College trustee quits over Nazi uniform yearbook photo from 1980


text: My newest article for Suicide Girls is up. As I mentioned earlier, they've switched me to Mondays rather than Saturdays and I'm now bi-weekly instead of weekly. So if anyone asks if I'm bi, I guess I can say yes now. I'm bi- - - - weekly! This is my first Monday entry. Enjoy. I'd much prefer you post your comments about it on Suicide Girls rather than here.


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While the Dell Venue Pro has been discontinued, we were surprised to see the Windows Phone receive the 8107 update pushed out to the phone. It was equally surprising today to see the Tango update hit the unlocked Venue Pro. While forcing the Tango update on the Samsung Focus S, we connected the Dell Venue Pro up to the computer and sure enough, the update notices appeared on the screen.
There was no need to force the Venue Pro to recognize the update and the previous updates to Tango (7740, 8107, etc) were installed first. Needless to say, it has been a while since my Venue Pro had seen the light of day...
When all was said and done the OS version on the Dell Windows Phone is 7.10.8773.98 and the firmware version is 2250.1800.7720.219. Because the process dealt with several updates, for me, the entire process ran about ninety minutes. If you have been using your Dell Venue Pro more regularly than I, the process may be shorter.
The Dell Venue Pro is a decent Windows Phone (still can't get used to the buttons) and it's nice to see the Venue Pro getting a little update attention.
Thanks, everyone, for the tip!


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|A Young Moffat
We know that previously, they had who took over sorted out before the writing of Series 4 finished. Moffat has also recently exclaimed in an interview that "I'm nearer the end than the beginning", which in itself strongly hints that series 8 is the last.
Lets also not forget about how long executive producers stay for is on average, aside from the rare circumstance, less time than Moffat has already served.
How strongly could this be hinting for Moffat's leaving, or could this simply be due to the fact that they must make up for the recent announcements of (exec) producers moving on, ie. Marcus Wilson and Caroline Skinner? While Skinner does have a replacement announced, Faith Penhale, it is unclear whether she is here just for the 50th or for series 8 and maybe beyond as well.
(This post is purely speculative)
What do you think? Do you want him gone? Would you preferred he reigned supreme for eternity? Do you think he will be gone?


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5:00 pm
Fetch! With Ruff Ruffman "Gearing Up for Getting Ruff's Goat" All of the Cat Grooming shows are competing with Ruff's ratings and he's desperate to find the mythical Helmet of Victory that will reverse his fortunes. Uncle MacRuffmantosh calls with news that he thinks he's located the Helmet on a faraway mountaintop, so Ruff plans to ride his trusty tricycle up the mountain to retrieve the prize. (Unfortunately, the tricycle doesn't work so well on mountainous slopes. D
5:30 pm
Nightly Business Report An historic sale here on Wall Street: The New York Stock Exchange, home to the world's greatest companies, agrees to a takeover by The Intercontinental Exchange. NBR's Erika Miller takes a look at what this $8 billion dollar deal means for the 220-year-old big board. The tone in Washington turns nasty as House Republicans prepare to vote on "Plan B" for avoiding the Fiscal Cliff. D
5:56 pm
NewsHour Promo NULL
6:00 pm
PBS NewsHour NULL
7:00 pm
Doc Martin "Nowt So Queer" Portwen buzzes with the news of the engagement of Dr. Martin Ellingham and Headmistress Louisa Glasson. Several villagers fall ill from eating mushrooms. Bert Large's son Al steps in to help the restaurant.G
8:00 pm
Outdoor Idaho "Working for Wildlife" Professionals and volunteers are in forests and fields - even cities - throughout Idaho working to increase knowledge about wildlife and its chances for survival. Cameras capture "deer tackling" in eastern Idaho; follow scientists and volunteers through deep snows to radio collar the seldom-seen elusive wolverine; and visit a woman raising orphan bears in her backyard in Garden City, adjacent to Boise.G
8:30 pm
This American Land "Ferrets and Prairie Dogs, Hidden Gems, Follow the Water, Island Fires" After being nearly wiped out in the early 20th century, the black-footed ferret is making a comeback. It has taken a complicated conservation effort and a captive breeding program to restore this species to the Great Plains. The health of the population is tied directly to the success of the prairie dogs.G
9:00 pm
Midsomer Murders "Who Killed Cock Robin, Part 1" A horse whisperer disappears in Newton Magna and a long-standing adversary of Barnaby reappears - ex-con Melvyn Stockard, who claims to be a reformed man only concerned with his daughter's impending marriage. Then a member of the wedding party is found dead in a nearby well. Part 1 of 2G
10:00 pm
Vera (Apt) "Silent Voices" While investigating the case of a murdered social worker, Vera finds that a notorious case involving the death of a child appears to hold the key to solving the current crime. She pursues the truth to find the real secret at the heart of Jenny's death, and the killer who will stop at nothing to keep a secret.G
11:30 pm
Charlie Rose NULL


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Posted on June 22, 2009
It sometimes seems to me that I talk a lot about myself in this blog. (See, I just used me, myself, and I all in one sentence. Blog Heaven.) You should be aware of the fact that everybody at the Book Fair is remarkable. For example:
One of our volunteers allowed her name to be used in two different pieces of fiction by Sara Paretsky.
One of our volunteers convinced Kraft Foods that cream cheese was not just an ingredient but also a spread. (He took his bosses to a deli and let them listen to the orders at lunchtime.)
One of our volunteers spent nine months on Ellis Island while his parents tried to convince the State Department they were who they said they were. (They were on a Gestapo death list, and the State Department wouldn't believe they'd gotten away.)
One of our volunteers worked for the architectural firm responsible for the current look of the Newberry lobby.
One of our volunteers picked up a load of books which included a large bust of Benjamin Franklin, which he put in the passenger seat of his car and fastened in with the seatbelt. He says it seemed like a good idea at the time, but he got a lot of strange looks going along the Outer Drive.
One of our volunteers wrote the continuity for the Master of Ceremonies at a tribute to Frank Sinatra in 1946.
One of our volunteers spent part of her time from 1933 to 1976 writing a massive Civil War novel which publishers pronounced excellent but too long. The manuscript seems to have been thrown away when she died.
One of our volunteers has been head of the organization of Women Marine Veterans of World War II.
One of our volunteers was once cited to Madame Ooglepuss of Kukla, Fran, and Ollie as an example of good hairstyling.
One of our volunteers played trumpet and did stand-up for a Big Band after World War II.
I was the third American one of our volunteers ever met. She was whisked off the plane from Poland and hustled over to the Newberry to help set up mystery books
One of our volunteers dons a serape to shovel her roof in the winter.
Two of our volunteers got into an argument over whether Louis Armstrong was an icon of jazz or merely a legend.
One of our volunteers is researching the question "When did Midwestern cuisine get so crummy?"
One of our volunteers got a job in spite, his employers told him, of the fact that his personality test said he was "creative".
One of our volunteers worked for the Manhattan Project.
One of our volunteers worked with Mortimer Adler and reports he chewed with his mouth open. (He apparently didn't think much of her, either.)
The father of one of our volunteers owned a rooming house much favored by vaudevillians on the West Coast. She remembers riding her tricycle up and down the halls in the morning just to annoy the dancers and acrobats who had been working late.
Watch your step around our volunteers.


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For Paul Tawel, senior manager of treasury operations at Canadian National Railway (CN), the solution was SWIFT but the obstacle was scale. The Montreal-based freight carrier, which was privatized in the 1990s and had C$10 billion (U.S. $9.8 billion) in 2011 revenue, needed to escape the inefficiency of using 12 separate online banking platforms to get reports and send payments. But Tawel couldn't justify the cost of joining SWIFT, the cooperative that provides financial messaging for banks, to get a common communications platform for the company's 12 banks.
Building a SWIFT infrastructure in-house was out of the question, and even using a service bureau was too expensive for CN's modest but real needs. "When we heard that SWIFT would be open to corporate members several years ago, we were interested," Tawel says. "But the solutions then were built for companies that used more banks and had more message traffic than we did."
There was a cheaper alternative. In 2011, Tawel invited SWIFT representatives to talk about SWIFT Alliance Lite, the SWIFT-hosted solution for small users. What they told him was a revelation: Instead of adopting Alliance Lite, the representatives suggested CN wait for Alliance Lite 2 (AL2), a new product SWIFT was developing that would be hosted on the cloud, could run without the aid of a service bureau and would have none of the limits on transactions and message types that held back the old Alliance Lite.
CN signed up as one of the first users of AL2, which was rolled out to the general market in September. For the railroad, AL2 makes SWIFT affordable. "It saves us money," Tawel notes. "A service bureau would cost us 25% to 30% more and it would mean relying on a commercial third party. Now SWIFT is our service bureau and we are building in-house expertise to manage SWIFT."
If AL2 is a service bureau, what does that mean for other service bureaus, which have become the primary intermediaries between corporate treasuries and SWIFT? Companies can link directly to SWIFT, but that's an expensive effort involving considerable IT resources, so usually only large corporates do so. SWIFT lists 14 service bureaus on its Web site, including such major players as SunGard, Fundtech, Fides and Bottomline Technologies, and estimates that 75% of corporates that connect to SWIFT do so using a service bureau.
With the advent of AL2, companies can now "eliminate a third party and deal only with SWIFT," says Matt Monaco, regional director for SWIFT Americas. "A lot of companies don't like to share their data and feel more comfortable with a cooperative like SWIFT than a third party."
Treasuries are definitely interested. "AL2 has companies very excited about the scope of messaging and outsourcing of bank connectivity management to SWIFT," notes Laurie McCulley, a partner at consultancy Treasury Strategies in Chicago. The original version of Alliance Lite, AL1, experienced light take-up because of message and volume restrictions, but AL2 removes those restrictions and makes it possible to avoid using a service bureau as the middleman, she says. "It will interface with a back-office system like a treasury workstation or ERP, and that's really good."
Is SWIFT using AL2 to start replacing the service bureaus it historically encouraged? "We have a delicate situation," McCulley says. For example, "the SWIFT-certified service bureaus are still listed on the SWIFT Web site, but they're harder to find now," she says. "It's hard not to conclude that SWIFT is seeking business they directed to service bureaus until recently."
Graham Warner, client access product manager for global transaction banking at Deutsche Bank, agrees that AL2 is a serious contender for corporate customers since it has no limits on message volume, supports multiple message standards (MT and MX) and is cloud-based. "It is more robust, which will attract some corporates, but it does not yet offer everything that some service bureaus do," Warner says, noting that service bureaus provide continuous access to expertise. If a company has that expertise in-house, it may like AL2. If not, it may choose to stick with a service bureau, he explains.
Kurt Vandebroek, senior vice president of product management for SunGard's AvantGard, also doubts that AL2 will replace service bureaus. SWIFT may yet become a formidable competitor to successful service bureaus but not today, he says. SunGard provides managed connectivity globally through service bureaus in the U.S., France and Switzerland. SWIFT AL2 is now comparable to a traditional SWIFT service bureau, Vandebroek concedes, but vendors like SunGard offer more than a traditional service bureau and more than SWIFT can match today.
He insists SWIFT will have trouble selling AL2 as a service bureau replacement because it doesn't work with ASP-hosted systems. "Most of our customers can't use SWIFT Lite 2 now," he explains, because it requires a hard token and hosting on dedicated servers. "It's easy to sell the Alliance Lite 2 concept until you get into the details." Still, Vandebroek concedes that AL2 is on the move. "It will take SWIFT another year" to develop a product it can sell to a broad market, he estimates.
Jersey City, N.J.-based Fundtech runs a SWIFT service bureau, but its chief marketing officer, George Ravich, says he's not concerned about competition from SWIFT. "The more SWIFT markets, the more business we get," he says. Using SWIFT's AL2 will connect companies to SWIFT but only to SWIFT, Ravich argues. "We connect to other transaction networks as well," he points out, such as CHIPS, SIC, SECOM and Fedwire.
Given a choice between signing up with an established service bureau or helping to develop AL2, Ed Barrie picked the service bureau. Barrie, head of treasury operations and foreign exchange at $2.4 billion Itron in Liberty Lake, Wash., headed Microsoft's pioneering project to adopt SWIFT in 2006.
When he was ready to adopt SWIFT at Itron, SWIFT pitched him on becoming a beta tester of AL2, but Barrie decided to use a tested service bureau, Fundtech, instead. "We had an aggressive timetable and needed to move quickly with a partner that has strong experience in integrating SWIFT messaging with IT2 and Oracle," he explains.
SWIFT offers a communications network and message standards, but "you need to connect the data with the applications that use it, which would be your ERP and treasury management systems," Barrie explains. "That requires intelligence and human expertise built on experience with SWIFT messaging, line of business applications and the banks you are establishing connectivity with. Service bureaus have that experience."
Barrie thinks AL2 eventually could become a formidable competitor to service bureaus but says it's not clear how soon SWIFT will be able to match the mapping and integration services provided by service bureaus.
SWIFT markets AL2 as light lifting, but it's not as easy as flipping a switch. For Canadian National Railway, AL2 is still a work in progress, divided into a 2012 Stage One and a 2013 Stage Two.
"We are using it now, and it is working," Tawel says. "We're sending and receiving MT 101 and MT 940 files successfully." But the back-office integration, primarily to CN's SAP ERP system, is still an IT project, so files are manually uploaded or downloaded. "We're getting statements and sending payments to some of our banks—just five at this point—but we'll have to tackle 12 eventually," Tawel reports. "We started with our smallest, simplest relationships and will add the bigger, more complex ones as we gain experience and work out the integration to our back-office systems.
"Our goal is to have all of our daily bank balances uploaded and integrated in SAP by the end of 2012," Tawel explains. AL2 is easy to use, but implementing it is still complex, and there is a learning curve, he adds.
SWIFT certainly doesn't think of AL2 as an immature product. In the first month or so of availability, 40 companies reportedly signed up, including corporations, banks and market infrastructures. Eileen Dignen, managing director for sales and market development at SWIFT Americas, says 90% of the first 40 users are new to SWIFT and 10% previously used service bureaus. "We continue to gain momentum in the corporate segment with nearly 1,000 corporations connected," Dignen says, up from about 400 in 2008.
Even if service bureaus hang onto their existing customers, will AL2's affordability attract a wave of midsize companies like Canadian National? Don't count on it. Treasury Strategies' McCulley suggests that for many companies, AL2 won't provide big savings over a service bureau. The initial AL2 setup costs about $25,000. Maintenance can top out at close to $27,000 a year for heavy users, compared with $30,000 to $35,000 for a service bureau, she calculates. "SWIFT may be a little cheaper, but it's in the same ballpark as a service bureau," McCulley says.
There's also some evidence that banks are deliberately cutting the cost benefit to middle-market companies moving from proprietary bank platforms to SWIFT. Historically, many banks resisted opening their SWIFT club to corporate members. And now, "something strange is going on," SunGard's Vandebroek reports. "Some banks say they support SWIFT, but they have adjusted their fees so that it costs their clients more to use SWIFT than it does to use their proprietary network. The big Tier 1 corporations have the negotiating clout to make SWIFT economical, but Tier 2 corporations—those between $500 million and $3 billion in annual revenue—find themselves in a trap. They can cut their connectivity cost by joining SWIFT, but other banking fees go up more than the connectivity cost comes down. Free connectivity is useless if it ends up costing you more."
Don't expect to see mass adoption of SWIFT by Tier 2 companies unless participants rethink the business model or banks change their pricing strategy, Vandebroek says.
That's not so, Deutsche Bank's Warner counters. There was a time when banks may have looked at proprietary access as a sticky point in their customer relationships, but now, "we help clients get access to the SWIFT network," he insists. "We do not stand in their way. That's part of how we build value and earn loyalty."
If SWIFT is unchaining treasury operations from banks and their proprietary interfaces, it may be linking them more closely to their treasury workstations.
"In the old days, treasury management systems vendors asked how many bank connections their clients wanted them to build," McCulley reports. "Now they are using SWIFT to make one connection to many banks. This is making it much easier to access SWIFT, but it's also tying treasuries to their TMS providers more than ever."
SunGard has its own service bureau and ECHOS platform, she notes. Reval has partnered with Fides, a Swiss service bureau and data aggregator, and Wallstreet Systems uses Fides as well. IT2 and G Treasury partner with various bureaus, including Fundtech and Bottomline. Kyriba uses a member-concentrator model and is considering other solutions to optimize bank connectivity, McCulley reports.
Dignen says sales of treasury management systems by vendors that operate service bureaus or have service bureau partners are driving corporates to SWIFT.
"About 90% of companies that join SWIFT are putting in new back-end systems at the same time," she says. "After 2008, there was a spike in new installations of treasury management systems and ERP systems, and that benefited SWIFT."
For previous coverage of SWIFT, see Shaping eBAM Standards and Dell's SWIFT Global Connection.