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The Difference Between a Cleaner/Wax and a Finishing Wax
Subtitle: How To Choose The Right Wax or Paint Sealant for your Detailing Project
Finishing Waxes
Have you ever been confused as to which car wax to use? There are so many car waxes on the market and all of them claim to be the best? Some say they'll last through 52 car washes? But are you waxing your car just so it will make it through 52 car washes? Or are you waxing your car because you want the paint to look good again? Like it did when it was new?
Or what if you're taking your special ride to a car show or on a cruise? Do you really need a car wax that will bead water after 52 car washes or is there something better that will really make your car's paint *POP* especially if hundreds and even thousands of people will be looking at it all day long while it's on display?
2- basic groups of car wax
Let me see if I can remove just a little bit of the confusion… There are two basic groups most car waxes and paint sealants fall into, these would be,
• Cleaner/waxes or Cleaner/Sealants
• Finishing waxes or Finishing Sealants
A cleaner/wax or cleaning/sealant would offer some level of cleaning ability using either chemical cleaning agents, solvents and/or some type of abrasives and often times a combination of all three. Cleaner/Waxes are also referred to as One-Step products or All-In-One products. Cleaner/waxes can be used to restore neglected paint to good to excellent condition depending upon how bad of condition the paint is in and the cleaning ability or strength of the cleaning agents in the cleaner/wax.
A finishing wax or finishing sealant would not contain any ingredients with the intended ability to clean or abrade the paint. Products in this category should only be used on paint in excellent or brand new condition or neglected paints that have been previously cleaned and polished and thus restored to new or excellent condition.
Besides dividing products into two groups by whether they have the ability to clean the paint or not, paint protection products are also divided into two other groups or categories and that's car waxes or paint sealants.
Car Wax
Contains some kind of naturally occurring waxy type substance, for example Carnauba wax.
Paint Sealant
Made from synthetic or all man-made ingredients.
So from the above, we can have,
A product that cleans, polishes and protects and contains natural protection ingredients like Carnauba
A product that cleans, polishes and protects and uses all synthetic protection ingredients
Finishing Waxes
A product that offers no cleaning ability with the focus on maximizing beauty with the protection based upon naturally occurring ingredients.
Finishing Sealants
A product that offers no cleaning ability with the focus on maximizing beauty with the protection based upon synthetic ingredients.
There's one more group into which waxes and sealant fall into and that would be the hybrid category. Hybrids contain a combination of both natural and synthetic ingredients.
If we use the loose definition above for car waxes and paint sealants, (For the wax group the primary protection ingredients are naturally occurring waxy substances and for the sealant group the primary protection ingredients are man-made or synthetic substances), then since hybrid products use a combination of both it would seem natural to group them and place them into their own category with both words, wax and sealant used to describe the category.
My comment...
Since no one to my knowledge has ever separated and placed the different products on the market into their own categories I decided to step up to the plate and take a stab at it myself, feel free to create your own categories and write your won article if you feel so compelled.
Let's take an in-depth look at the two basic groups, (the hybrid products will also fit into either the cleaning or finishing group).
Cleaner/Wax or Cleaner/Sealant
Now a cleaner/wax is just that, the formula will contain a blend of chemical cleaners and often times some type of abrasives, either diminishing or non-diminishing.
Together the chemical cleaners and the abrasives will remove oxidation and road grime from the surface which will restore clarity and richness of color. At the same time they'll leave behind a layer of protection to help lock in the shine and of course protect the paint from the elements.
When you go to your local auto parts stores, most of the retail waxes on the shelves do in fact fall into the cleaner/wax category as they are targeted at the average person and the average person is driving what we call a Daily Driver, that is the car they drive back and forth to work each day and most of the time it's parked outside. Over time, the finish quality deteriorates and in order to restore it with just a single product you'll want a cleaner/wax.
A cleaner/wax is also what we in the detailing industry call a One-Step product or an AIO.
AIO stands for All-In-One. AIO products will do multiple processes in one step, that is they will,
- Clean the surface
- Polish the paint to a high gloss
- Leave behind a layer of protection
The problem for the average Joe Consumer is that most retail products don't specifically state what type of product they are? The tell you how to apply it, how long to let it dry and then how to remove it but they leave it wide open as to what the product is and how its best used.
A cleaner/wax is best used on a neglected finish because a neglected finish needs to be cleaned. Cleaner/Waxes, or All-In-One products are designed for a large market which includes do-it-yourselfers and detailers that want to restore a bright, shiny finish to the paint but want to do it in one-step. Their goal is to get a great looking finish without having to invest the time and effort associated with a multiple-step approach which usually includes,
- Dedicated compounding or paint cleaning step
- Dedicated polishing or glazing step
- Dedicated sealing step using a finishing wax or finishing paint sealant
Keep in mind besides the above 3 steps that are the norm for a multiple-step process, there's also,
- The washing and drying step
- The claying step if the car is parked outside a lot and has built-up above surface bonded contaminants. (Most daily drivers need to be clayed).
If we add the above two steps, (washing & drying step and claying step), together with the multiple 3-step approach that would make the average car detailing session 5 steps at a minimum.
- The washing and drying step
- The claying step if the car is parked outside a lot and has built-up above surface bonded contaminants. (Most daily drivers need to be clayed).
- Dedicated compounding or paint cleaning step
- Dedicated polishing or glazing step
- Dedicated sealing step using a finishing wax or paint sealant.
Because the majority of people in this world look at their car as a mode of transportation instead of an extension of their personality, its' easy to understand that most people want and only need a one-step cleaner/wax.
A cleaner/wax doesn't need to be used, and in most cases shouldn't be used, on a car in which the paint is in excellent condition, for example a brand new car or an older car in which the paint has been properly cleaned and polished. For finishes on both of these types of cars the paint would be better served using a finishing wax or finishing sealant.
Another example would be a brand new paint job after the regular 30 days air-cure waiting time. Brand new paint should look great after you pick it up from the painter but most painters will tell you to wait at least 30 days before sealing the paint with either a wax or paint sealant.
After the 30 days have passed, a finishing wax should be used not a cleaner/wax because theoretically, the paint is supposed to be in excellent condition so you shouldn't have to use any product with cleaners or abrasives in it.
Application Method
In most cases, a cleaner/wax type product needs to be worked over and into the surface. Cleaner/waxes are not wipe on, wipe off products. Part of the cleaning action comes from you either working the product over the surface and engaging the cleaning ingredients with the paint or you running an electric polisher and the polisher is engaging the cleaning ingredients against the paint. The worse condition the paint, the more you'll need to work the product.
Finishing Wax or Finishing Sealant
A finishing/wax is much different than a cleaner/wax. A finishing wax either doesn't offer any cleaning ability at all, or at least not enough to be a usable feature of the product.
A finishing wax is just that, it's a wax or paint sealant used to add the finishing touch to a car in which the paint is in excellent condition to start with and/or in situations where the owner has just cleaned and polished the paint to perfection and the next step would be to apply a finishing wax.
If you use a multiple step approach to polishing your car's paint, that is you use a dedicated compound or SMR, which stands for Swirl Mark Remover, to first remove any defects like swirls and scratches, and then follow this with a polish to further refine the paint to show car quality status, then what you want next is a finishing wax, not a cleaner/wax.
Frosting on the cake
After all the hard work of claying, compounding and then polishing your car's paint to perfection is over... it's time to put the frosting on the cake...
Taking your car's finish to it's maximum potential
Assuming the paint on your car is truly in excellent condition, a finishing wax, sealant or hybrid will take your car's paint to it's highest level or it's maximum potential.
An analogy would be,
Like frosting is to cake a finishing wax, sealant or hybrid is to a highly polished automotive finish...
Cake is good, but frosting on cake is better. It's the finishing touch or last step which creates a work of art to gaze upon and a taste heaven that's sweet and delicious...
If you were to use a cleaner/wax after using a dedicated cleaning and polishing process that would be what we call working backwards because you're going back to the cleaning step and you've already done this step when you used the compound, polish or swirl mark remover.
What you should be doing, what you want to be doing is working forwards towards the goal, which is a show car finish. Thus you want to use a finishing wax, sealant or hybrid.
Application Method
- Wipe-on, work in and then immediately wipe off with no drying time.
- Wipe on, allow the product to dry and then wipe-off.
Since finishing waxes and paint sealants should really only be applied to a finishes in excellent condition, there's no need to aggressively work the product over the surface like you would a cleaner wax. With a finishing wax or sealant you would apply and spread the product out of a section of a panel and then work the product gently for 2-3 passes over each square inch just to evenly cover the paint. You would not work the product like you would a cleaner wax with the idea of trying to remove defects.
Finishing waxes and paint sealants are either wiped on, spread around and then immediately wiped off. On detailing discussion forums, these types of products are referred to as WOWO products.
Some manufactures recommends their products need to dry before removing, for these types of products you would apply and spread the product out to create a thin even coating and then allow this coating to fully dry before removing.
No wrong choice
It's important to note that one category isn't better than the other as both categories of products play important roles in the car world. The focus of this article was to explain these two different categories so anyone confused about waxes in general would have a better understanding of the two basic groups. And then the ultimate goal would be to help people to actually choose and use the correct wax for their application and goals.
How To Choose The Right Wax or Paint Sealant for your Detailing Project
The way you pick the right wax for your car's paint is you first evaluate your car's paint and then you evaluate yourself.
Is your car brand new? If so they you probably want a finishing wax.
Is your car older and the paint is looking dull and lifeless? Then you need to evaluate yourself? Do you want to do a multiple step process? Or do you simply want to wash and wax the car and then move on with life? If you want to do a multiple-step process the you're going to want a finishing wax, if you want to reduce your time and investment to the bare minimum then you want a cleaner/wax.
As stated previously, in most cases, a cleaner/wax, cleaner/sealant, hybrid cleaner/wax or hybrid cleaner/sealant, needs to be worked over and into the surface. These are not wipe-on, wipe-off products. Part of the cleaning action comes from you either working the product over the surface and engaging the cleaning ingredients with the paint or you running an electric polisher and the polisher is engaging the cleaning ingredients against the paint.
The waxes and paint sealants in both of these groups can be great products, it just a matter of matching the right product to the condition of the paint on the car, your goals and how much time you want to invest into the project.
List of Paint Protection Products
Here at Autogeek we care a great selection of both finishing waxes and cleaner/waxes, below you'll find a list for both types.
Menzerna Sealing Wax APO 60
Collinite Paste Sapphire Auto Wax #73SS
Mothers California Gold Original Formula Carnauba Cleaner Wax
Poorboy's World Polish with Carnauba (BLUE)
Poorboy's World Polish with 100% Carnauba
Collinite Liquid Sapphire Auto Wax SS216
Dodo Juice Need For Speed Cleaner Wax
XMT 360 All In One Cleaner Wax
Griot's Garage One-Step Sealant
Klasse All-In-One Polish
Duragloss Polish & Cleaner 101
Finish Kare 215 One Step Cleaner & Surface Sealant
Finish Kare 2180 Ultra Poly Wipe Sealant Conditioner
Optimum Poli-Seal
Mother's FX Synwax Paste
Mother's FX Synwax Liquid
Mother's Reflections Advanced Car Wax
3M One Step Cleaner Wax
Finishing Waxes
Pinnacle Souverän Paste Wax
Pinnacle XMT 180 High Gloss Carnauba Paste Wax
Griot's Garage Best of Show Wax
Griot's Garage Carnauba Wax Stick
Finish Kare 2685 Pink Paste Wax
Collinite Paste Fleetwax # 885
Collinite Marque D'Elegance Carnauba Paste Wax #915
Collinite Super DoubleCoat Auto Wax #476
Meguiar's Gold Class Car Wax Liquid
Dodo Juice Supernatural Wax
Dodo Juice Supernatural Wax Machine Stick
Dodo Juice Banana Armour Hard Car Wax
Dodo Juice Blue Velvet Hard Car Wax
Dodo Juice Diamond White Hard Wax
Dodo Juice Hard Candy Hard Wax
Dodo Juice Light Fantastic Soft Wax
Dodo Juice Orange Crush Soft Wax
Dodo Juice Purple Haze Soft Wax
Dodo Juice Rubbish Boy's Juiced Edition Carnauba Wax
Dodo Juice Austintacious Soft Wax
P21S 100% Carnauba Wax
P21S Concours Carnauba Wax
S100 Carnauba Paste Wax
Mothers California Gold Pure Carnauba Car Wax
Poorboy's World Natty's Paste Wax
Poorboy's World Natty's Paste Wax – BLUE
Poorboys World Natty's Paste Wax – Red
Dodo Juice Supernatural Wax, 250 ml. Refillable Hardwood Pot
Collinite Liquid Insulator Wax #845
Mother's Power Wax
Finishing Sealants
Wolfgang Deep Gloss Paint Sealant 3.0
Klasse High Gloss Sealant Glaze
Duragloss Clear Coat Polish (CCP) #111
Finish Kare 218 Poly Wipe Sealant Conditioner
Griot's Garage Paint Sealant
Four Star Ultimate Paint Protection Boosted with Polycharger
Finish Kare 1000P Hi-Temp Paste Wax
3M Perfect-It Show Car Liquid Wax
3M Performance Finish
Meguiar's M21 Synthetic Sealant
NXT Tech Wax - Liquid
NXT Tech Wax - Paste
Liquid Glass Auto Polish
Poorboy's World EX-P Pure Sealant
DP Poli-Coat Paint Sealant
Hybrid Cleaner Waxes/Sealants
Meguiar's Mirror Glaze #6 Cleaner/Wax
Duragloss Total Performance Polish (TPP) # 105
Meguiar's M20 Polymer Sealant
Meguiar's ColorX
Meguiar's M66 Quick Detailer
Meguiar's D151 Paint Reconditioning Cream
1Z Einszett Metallic Polish Wax
Duragloss Wet Look Paste Wax
Hybrid Finishing Waxes/Sealants
Wolfgang Füzion Carnauba Polymer Estate Wax
Pinnacle Liquid Souveran™ Car Wax
Mothers Reflections Advanced Top Coat
Poorboy's World EX Sealant with Carnauba
DP Max Wax
Meguiar's Mirror Glaze #26 Hi-Tech Paste Car Wax
Meguiar's Mirror Glaze #26 Hi-Tech Liquid Car Wax
Dodo Juice Blue Velvet PRO Hard Wax
1Z Einszett Glanz Wax
Poorboy's World EX Sealant with Carnauba
Finish Kare 2685 Pink Paste Wax
3M Perfect-It Show Car Paste Wax
Spray-on Paint Protectants
Spray-on Carnauba Waxes
Pinnacle Souveran Liquid Spray Wax
Flitz Waxx Speed Wax
Griot's Garage Spray-On Wax
Mother's California Gold Spray Wax
Poorboys World QW+ Quick Wax Plus
Spray-on Synthetic Paint Sealants
Wolfgang Deep Gloss Spritz Sealant
Duragloss Aquawax - 22 ounce
Duragloss Aquawax - 128 ounce
Meguiar's NXT Generation Spray Wax
Mothers FX Engineered Spray Wax
Optimum Opti-Seal
Stoner SpeedBead One-Step Quick Wax
Spray-on Hybrids
Pinnacle XMT 360 Spray Wax
Four Star Ultimate Spray Wax Boosted with Polycharger
Meguiar's X-Press Liquid Wax
Meguiar's Ultimate Quik Wax
Mother's Reflections Advanced Spray Wax
Optimum Car Wax
Stoner Bead Max
Wheel Waxes
Detailer's Pride Wheel Glaze
Wheel Wax
Poorboy's World Wheel Sealant
Question: How many car waxes do you need?
"Car waxes and paint sealants are to men like shoes are to women, you can never have too many" - Mike Phillips
Main Store Webpage for Autogeek's Car Wax and Paint Sealants


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This opportunity requires independent internet research of a local organization addressing an issue relevant to class.
- Choose a topic that we have discussed this semester, or that we will be discussing in the coming weeks.
- Find a local non-profit organization or initiative that is addressing that issue in an innovative way.
- Type up 400-700 word summary (see below)
Summary Instructions
Identify the issue you chose, the name of the organization/initiative you chose; a link to the organization's website. & answer the following in 1-2 sentences each:
- How is the organization/initiative addressing the issue you chose?
- What do you find innovative, useful, exciting and/or helpful in how they are addressing that issue?
- Could this effort be applied to some other form of inequality that we have discussed in class? If so, how?
This opportunity is worth up to 3 pts. If you want to earn all 3 points for your summary, complete the following instructions:
- You must post your response to the blog by Friday December. 16, 2016.
- You must select two categories before publishing the post: 1) "Extra Credit" 2) "Issue-based Local Organization".
- You must include 3 tags for your post.

subset: commoncrawl


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How I teach 2.6 months more of math in a year than the rest of you slackers
A report was recently released which according to some TFA defenders "settles the issue" about the effectiveness of Teach For America teachers. By comparing the standardized test scores of TFA teachers with varying amounts of experience to non-TFA teachers teaching in the same buildings, the study concludes that the students of TFA secondary math teachers progress an amazing 2.6 months more than their non-TFA counterparts. In the introduction to the paper they describe this as follows:
TFA teachers were more effective than the teachers with whom they were compared. On average, students assigned to TFA teachers scored 0.07 standard deviations higher on end-of-year math assessments than students assigned to comparison teachers, a statistically significant difference. This impact is equivalent to an additional 2.6 months of school for the average student nationwide.
As you might expect, this conclusion was celebrated throughout Twitter.
As a TFA secondary math teacher myself, I was torn about how I felt about this. I mean, I knew that I was good, but I didn't realize that I was that good. Then my humility set in and I had to admit to myself that this study's conclusion was pretty outrageous and merited a closer look. And though others, particularly Jersey Jazzman and Julian Vasquez Helig, have examined different aspects of this report and there will surely be others who delve into it more deeply, I will focus on one aspect which easily demonstrates how absurd and really irresponsible this claim is.
The issue I wanted to investigate most is how they came up with the number 2.6 months. When a student takes some kind of standardized tests, lets say it has fifty questions, their score is some kind of raw score, like 24 correct out of 50. It isn't measure in 'months.' So there must


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How do you pull together and show your support for victims of the event who are still suffering psychological and physical trauma? Some of these victims are physically inhibited because of their injuries, including one who still has a bullet embedded in his leg and has had to delay his schooling as a result. Another is expected to be permanently paralyzed. These lifestyles are difficult to adjust to, especially when they serve as daily reminders of the events of the Aurora shooting that came to pass. But the support of the community never falters, and this sentiment has been ringing particularly true as of late: volunteers and the Home Builders Foundation of Metro Denver, for example, are truly putting their best efforts forward.
|Add caption
Rebuilding Lives and Homes
The team has recently been spotted renovating a Denver condo which will soon belong to one victim of the Aurora shooting, who is now in a wheelchair. They've begun gutting a bathroom, widening doorways, and installing new flooring. They've remodeled the entire kitchen to make it as wheelchair-friendly as possible. It's the third renovation the team has worked on, and they insist, "It's the least we can do."
"We think about what it would feel like to wake up one morning and not be able to bathe yourself or move through your home," sympathized Mike Tayloe, part of the Home Builders Foundation. "For us, it just comes second nature to jump in to help on these projects…You hear about it and read about it in the paper all the time, so for us to be able to come out here and shed some positive things that we can do for our neighbors."
The Funds
The labor put into the condo alone has cost a pretty penny - $20,000. The labors, materials, and time, for the most part, are donations from the extremely supportive community. And while these gifts have been more than generous, they still may not be enough – the builders have yet to find anyone to sponsor the hardwood flooring and oven the team intends to install, both of which make for ease of wheelchair access.
Whether the money comes in any time soon or not, Tayloe assures us the project will be finished, asserting that "This is too important to wait."
Sara Klemowitz
About the Author:
Sara Klemowitz is part of team of writers who have contributed to blogs and news sites.
Sara Klemowitz is part of team of writers who have contributed to blogs and news sites.


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Finding the right bank for your banking needs is not typically a simple process. There are a lot of details that we need to sort through and you want to be sure that you've got exactly what you need in order to stay ahead of everything. How can you be sure that you have found the right bank for your needs? Are there options that make more sense than others? Here are some questions to consider when you start the process of looking for a new bank or credit union that you want to take your business to.
Online or Physical?
The online bank vs. traditional bank debate has garnered a lot of attention lately. And there are pros and cons on both sides of the argument. For some people, it's not negotiable at all they aren't okay with trusting all of their bank information online, and so they want to have a physical branch to go to. Other people are okay with a completely online bank. And, there are some people in between, that like doing their banking stuff online, but definitely want the convenience of going to a physical branch when necessary.
What Services Do They Offer?
Knowing the services offered is also important. Do you need options for online payments and money transfers? Are you looking for a checking account or do you need a savings account as well? And do you need things like credit monitoring, info related to loans, and other monetary things that may be on your mind? We all know what sorts of things that we need to have available at a bank. No matter what you need, different banks are going to offer different services, and you want to be sure that you do some research to see what it is that they have available at that point in time.
What Does Their Fee Structure Look Like?
Fees are how banks make their money and, because of that, you need to be sure that you keep an eye on things before you make any sort of choice. You want to look and ensure that they're fair with their fee schedule and that they aren't going to be charging you an arm and a leg to use their services. Banks and credit unions are required to be transparent with these sorts of things, so you will be able to find all of the information that you need in order to make a solid decision.
Look around your area. There are likely a wide number of options that you can explore and consider. You want to be sure that you can find exactly the resources that you need and ensure that you've got everything in order when you finally make the decision as to what bank it is that you are going to choose. Figure out what matters most to you and you can sort out the info that allows you to find the right bank for your purposes.


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A pair of basset hounds named Allie and 'Bama were reunited with their owners, Brenda Travis and Tom Shields, on July 14, more than five years after the dogs disappeared.
The hounds were stolen from the couple's Murfreesboro, Tenn., home, and although Travis and Shields searched for months, they were unable to find any trace of their pets. They didn't expect to ever see them again.
"We would look in neighborhoods and just drive around. We drove around for months just looking," Travis told KSDK-TV.
But a few weeks ago the couple, who now live in Wichita, Kan., got a call from kennel technician Becky Davis of the Paulding County Animal Shelter in Georgia. She told Travis that the dogs had been found in the parking lot of a Dallas, Ga., tractor supply store on July 5.
Related: Blind dog living in trash pile given a new shot a life
Shelter workers used a microchip detector on the dogs and found that one of them had a chip with three phone numbers. Davis tried the first two numbers, but they were no longer in service. The third number rang Travis' phone.
"I asked her, 'Do you happen to have two basset hounds'?" Davis told KSDK-TV.
"And I said, 'No ma'am, ours got stolen five-and-a-half years ago'," Travis replied.
"I said, 'Well, we have them here at the pound'," Davis told her.
That's when Travis said the tears started.
Volunteers from Guardian Angel Basset Rescue helped reunite Allie and 'Bama with their owners, driving the dogs to meet Travis and Shields in St. Louis.
Hundreds of miles and half a decade later, the Basset Hounds are now back where they belong.
Related: Suprisingly clever cat shelters
You can watch a video of Allie and 'Bama and their happy owners below.


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The State of Great
The hotel industry is breaking records, here's what executives attending BITAC® F&B said this morning on how they see the state of the lodging business.
Monday, February 10, 2014
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All hail the upswing! The lodging industry is in record breaking mode. After the depth of the Great Recession it's great to see the amazing heights the industry is achieving. And the best news is there is still so much upside profit potential to be mined during the next few years. People just have to be savvy enough to take their share.
As we have discussed here in the pages of Hotel Interactive® before the hotel business is perfectly positioned in an amazing sweet spot as a confluence of factors play into the industry's favor. More people are traveling than ever before and those same travelers feel wealthier as 401k values and home values soar, which makes them willing to pay more for a hotel room. Plus, supply in most markets is below demand levels. That's keeping hotels filled while investors are just getting started on projects that won't really impact raw supply numbers until 2015 and beyond.
When you look at industry fundamentals, records are being broken everywhere, including most industry revenue ever at $122 billion according to STR. Other records broken in 2013 were ADR, RevPAR, and most room night sold at 1.1 billion.
According to numbers supplied by PKF, final 2013 occupancy was 62.3 percent and is expected to rise to 63.2 percent and 64.4 percent for 2014 and 2015 respectively. It's also expected that ADR will increase 4.8 percent to $115.60 this year and rise another 5.6 percent to $122.12 in 2015. ADR and occupancy increases together will help propel RevPAR from $68.69 (5.4 percent increase from 2012) up another 6.6 percent to $73.10 in 2014 while rising an additional 7.5 percent to $78.62 in 2015.
Even better news is the economy is soaring, both in and out of the hotel industry. The general economy is seeing record high stock market valuations while large type sale items such as homes and cars are doing very well. Plus, more things are being made in America than in a generation.
At this week's BITAC® Food & Beverage East, taking place this week at the Grand Floridian Hotel located at the Walt Disney World Resort, we utilized our advanced real-time polling system to break down some of the persisting myths about the state of the economy, the hotel economy and the travel industry at large.
BITAC® is of course the industry leading one-on-one meetings and relationship building event. This week marks the 46th BITAC® meeting, which is attracted the F&B executive elite representing leading and forward thinking companies. And they're all here to come together at BITAC® to problem solve, network, sign deals and exchange ideas to move forward the quality of experiences for hotel guests, while adding profits to the bottom line. There's even time to cut loose, be social and network in a luxurious and relaxed environment.
Here is what BITAC® F&B attendees are thinking as we get settled into 2014:
How do you feel about the state of the U.S. economy compared to one year ago?
Bullish- 12.5%
It's good – 52.3%
Neutral - 24.2%
A little worried- 10.2%
Freaked out - 0.8%
Do you feel your company is fully leveraged to take advantage of this upswing?
Very ready - 46.6%
Somewhat ready - 37.4%
Neutral - 9.9%
We are not prepared - 5.3%
Just hanging on - 0.8%
How do you feel about the state of the TRAVEL economy compared to one year ago?
Bullish - 18.3%
It's good - 69.0%
Neutral - 11.9%
A little worried - 0.0%
Freaked out - 0.8%
Are you personally feeling more economically confident this year?
Very much so - 29.1%
Somewhat - 59.8%
I'm a bit nervous - 9.4%
I am feeling extremely conservative - 1.6%
Did your hotels break records with key fundamentals such as ADR & RevPAR in 2013?
We broke records! - 47.2%
We were close, but not yet - 28.3%
Not happening for us - 13.2%
Our numbers stink - 11.3%
How much do you expect to see ADR rise in 2014?
1-2% - 32.3%
3-5% - 40.4%
5-10% - 18.2%
10% or more - 5 5.1%
None - 2.0%
ADR will decrease - 2.0%
How much do you expect to see RevPar increase in 2014?
1-2% -21.1%
3-5% - 52.6%
5-10% - 21.1%
10% or more - 0.0%
None - 3.2%
RevPAR will decrease - 2.1%
How do you see the future of hotel markets?
Haves and have not spread further apart - 31.6%
Enough customers to go around everywhere - 46.8%
Disparity of markets continues - 21.5%
What is your perception of hotel owners' approach toward raising rates?
Aggressive - 33.0%
Timid - 19.3%
Cautiously Optimistic - 47.7%
Are you seeing an uptick in new construction?
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Designing the Firefox Performance Monitor (2): Monitoring Add-ons and Webpages
November 6, 2015 § Leave a comment
In part 1, we discussed the design of time measurement within the Firefox Performance Monitor. Despite the intuition, the Performance Monitor had neither the same set of objectives as the Gecko Profiler, nor the same set of constraints, and we ended up picking a design that was not a sampling profiler. In particular, instead of capturing performance data on stacks, the Monitor captures performance data on Groups, a notion that we have not discussed yet. In this part, we will focus on bridging the gap between our low-level instrumentation and actual add-ons and webpages, as may be seen by the user.
Designing the Firefox Performance Stats Monitor, part 1: Measuring time without killing battery or performance
October 27, 2015 § Leave a comment
For a few versions, Firefox Nightly has been monitoring the performance of add-ons, thanks to the Performance Stats API. While we are waiting for the greenlight to let it graduate to Firefox Aurora, as well as investigating a few lingering false-positives, and while v2 is approaching steadily, it is time for a brain dump on this toolbox and its design.
The initial objective of this monitor is to be able to flag both add-ons and webpages that cause noticeable slowdowns, so as to let users disable/close whatever is making their use of Firefox miserable. We also envision more advanced uses that could let us find out if features of webpages cause slowdowns on specific OS/hardware combinations.
What David Did During Q3
September 30, 2014 § 6 Comments
September is ending, and with it Q3 of 2014. It's time for a brief report, so here is what happened during the summer.
Session Restore
After ~18 months working on Session Restore, I am progressively switching away from that topic. Most of the main performance issues that we set out to solve have been solved already, we have considerably improved safety, cleaned up lots of the code, and added plenty of measurements.
During this quarter, I have been working on various attempts to optimize both loading speed and saving speed. Unfortunately, both ongoing works were delayed by external factors and postponed to a yet undetermined date. I have also been hard at work on trying to pin down performance regressions (which turned out to be external to Session Restore) and safety bugs (which were eventually found and fixed by Tim Taubert).
In the next quarter, I plan to work on Session Restore only in a support role, for the purpose of reviewing and mentoring.
Also, a rant The work on Session Restore has relied heavily on collaboration between the Perf team and the FxTeam. Unfortunately, the resources were not always available to make this collaboration work. I imagine that the FxTeam is spread too thin onto too many tasks, with too many fires to fight. Regardless, the symptom I experienced is that during the course of this work, both low-priority, high-priority and safety-critical patches have been left to rot without reviews, despite my repeated requests, for 6, 8 or 10 weeks, much to the dismay of everyone involved. This means man·months of work thrown to /dev/null, along with quarterly objectives, morale, opportunities, contributors and good ideas.
I will try and blog about this, eventually. But please, in the future, everyone: remember that in the long run, the priority of getting reviews done (or explaining that you're not going to) is a quite higher than the priority of writing code.
Async Tooling
Many improvements to Async Tooling landed during Q3. We now have the PromiseWorker, which simplifies considerably the work of interacting between the main thread and workers, for both Firefox and add-on developers. I hear that the first add-on to make use of this new feature is currently being developed. New features, bugfixes and optimizations landed for OS.File. We have also landed the ability to watch for changes in a directory (under Windows only, for the time being).
Sadly, my work on interactions between Promise and the Test Suite is currently blocked until the DevTools team manages to get all the uncaught asynchronous errors under control. It's hard work, and I can understand that it is not a high priority for them, so in Q4, I will try to find a way to land my work and activate it only for a subset of the mochitest suites.
I have recently joined the newly restarted effort to improve the performance of Places, the subsystem that handles our bookmarks, history, etc. For the moment, I am still getting warmed up, but I expect that most of my work during Q4 will be related to Places.
Most of my effort during Q3 was spent improving the Shutdown of Firefox. Where we already had support for shutting down asynchronously JavaScript services/consumers, we now also have support for native services and consumers. Also, I am in the process of landing Telemetry that will let us find out the duration of the various stages of shutdown, an information that we could not access until now.
As it turns out, we had many crashes during asynchronous shutdown, a few of them safety-critical. At the time, we did not have the necessary tools to determine to prioritize our efforts or to find out whether our patches had effectively fixed bugs, so I built a dashboard to extract and display the relevant information on such crashes. This proved a wise investment, as we spent plenty of time fighting AsyncShutdown-related fires using this dashboard.
In addition to the "clean shutdown" mechanism provided by AsyncShutdown, we also now have the Shutdown Terminator. This is a watchdog subsystem, launched during shutdown, and it ensures that, no matter what, Firefox always eventually shuts down. I am waiting for data from our Crash Scene Investigators to tell us how often we need this watchdog in practice.
I lost track of how many code contributors I interacted with during the quarter, but that represents hundreds of e-mails, as well as countless hours on IRC and Bugzilla, and a few hours on ask.mozilla.org. This year's mozEdu teaching is also looking good.
We also launched FirefoxOS in France, with big success. I found myself in a supermarket, presenting the ZTE Open C and the activities of Mozilla to the crowds, and this was a pleasing experience.
For Q4, expect more mozEdu, more mentoring, and more sleepless hours helping contributors debug their patches 🙂
The Battle of Session Restore – Season 1 Episode 3 – All With Measure
July 17, 2014 § 4 Comments
Plot For the second time, our heroes prepared for battle. The startup of Firefox was too slow and Session Restore was one of the battle fields.
When Firefox starts, Session Restore is in charge of restoring the browser to its previous state, in case of a crash, a restart, or for the users who have configured Firefox to resume from its previous state. This entails numerous activities during startup:
- read sessionstore.js from disk, decode it and parse it (recall that the file is potentially several Mb large), handling errors;
- backup sessionstore.js in case of startup crash.
- create windows, tabs, frames;
- populate history, scroll position, forms, session cookies, session storage, etc.
It is common wisdom that Session Restore must have a large impact on Firefox startup. But before we could minimize this impact, we needed to measure it.
Benchmarking is not easy
When we first set foot on Session Restore territory, the contribution of that module to startup duration was uncharted. This was unsurprising, as this aspect of the Firefox performance effort was still quite young. To this day, we have not finished chartering startup or even Session Restore's startup.
So how do we measure the impact of Session Restore on startup?
A first tool we use is Timeline Events, which let us determine how long it takes to reach a specific point of startup. Session Restore has had events `
sessionRestoreInitialized` and `
sessionRestored` for years. Unfortunately, these events did not tell us much about Session Restore itself.
The first serious attempt at measuring the impact of Session Restore on startup Performance was actually not due to the Performance team but rather to the metrics team. Indeed, data obtained through Firefox Health Report participants indicated that something wrong had happened.
Indicator `
d2` in the graph measures the duration between `
firstPaint` (which is the instant at which we start displaying content in our windows) and `
sessionRestored` (which is the instant at which we are satisfied that Session Restore has opened its first tab). While this measure is imperfect, the dip was worrying – indeed, it represented startups that lasted several seconds longer than usual.
Upon further investigation, we concluded that the performance regression was indeed due to Session Restore. While we had not planned to start optimizing the startup component of Session Restore, this battle was forced upon us. We had to recover from that regression and we had to start monitoring startup much better.
A second tool is Telemetry Histograms for measuring duration of individual operations, such as reading sessionstore.js or parsing it. We progressively added measures for most of the operations of Session Restore. While these measures are quite helpful, they are also unfortunately very unstable in real-world conditions, as they are affected both by scheduling (the operations are asynchronous), by the work load of the machine, by the actual contents of sessionstore.js, etc.
The following graph displays the average duration of reading and decoding sessionstore.js among Telemetry participants:
Difference in colors represent successive versions of Firefox. As we can see, this graph is quite noisy, certainly due to the factors mentioned above (the spikes don't correspond to any meaningful change in Firefox or Session Restore). Also, we can see a considerable increase in the duration of the read operation. This was quite surprising for us, given that this increase corresponds to the introduction of a much faster, off the main thread, reading and decoding primitive. At the time, we were stymied by this change, which did not correspond to our experience. We have now concluded that by changing the asynchronous operation used to read the file, we have simply changed the scheduling, which makes the operation appear longer, while in practice it simply does not block the rest of the startup from taking place on another thread.
One major tool was missing for our arsenal: a stable benchmark, always executed on the same machine, with the same contents of sessionstore.js, and that would let us determine more exactly (almost daily, actually) the impact of our patches upon Session Restore:
This test, based on our Talos benchmark suite, has proved both to be very stable, and to react quickly to patches that affected its performance. It measures the duration between the instant at which we start initializing Session Restore (a new event `
sessionRestoreInit`) and the instant at which we start displaying the results (event `
With these measures at hand, we are now in a much better position to detect performance regressions (or improvements) to Session Restore startup, and to start actually working on optimizing it – we are now preparing to using this suite to experiment with "what if" situations to determine which levers would be most useful for such an optimization work.
Evolution of startup duration
Our first benchmark measures the time elapsed between start and stop of Session Restore if the user has requested all windows to be reopened automatically
As we can see, the performance on Linux 32 bits, Windows XP and Mac OS 10.6 is rather decreasing, while the performance on Linux 64 bits, Windows 7 and 8 and MacOS 10.8 is improving. Since the algorithm used by Session Restore upon startup is exactly the same for all platforms, and since "modern" platforms are speeding up while "old" platforms are slowing down, this suggests that the performance changes are not due to changes inside Session Restore. The origin of these changes is unclear. I suspect the influence of newer versions of the compilers or some of the external libraries we use, or perhaps new and improved (for some platforms) gfx.
Still, seeing the modern platforms speed up is good news. As of Firefox 31, any change we make that causes a slowdown of Session Restore will cause an immediate alert so that we can react immediately.
Our second benchmark measures the time elapsed if the user does not wish windows to be reopened automatically. We still need to read and parse sessionstore.js to find whether it is valid, so as to decide whether we can show the "Restore" button on about:home.
We see peaks in Firefox 27 and Firefox 28, as well as a slight decrease of performance on Windows XP and Linux. Again, in the future, we will be able to react better to such regressions.
The influence of factors upon startup
With the help of our benchmarks, we were able to run "what if" scenarios to find out which of the data manipulated by Session Restore contributed to startup duration. We did this in a setting in which we restore windows:
and in a setting in which we do not:
Interestingly, increasing the size of sessionstore.js has apparently no influence on startup duration. Therefore, we do not need to optimize reading and parsing sessionstore.js. Similarly, optimizing history, cookies or form data would not gain us anything.
The single largest most expensive piece of data is the set of open windows – interestingly, this is the case even when we do not restore windows. More precisely, any optimization should target, by order of priority:
- the cost of opening/restoring windows;
- the cost of opening/restoring tabs;
- the cost of dealing with windows data, even when we do not restore them.
What's next?
Now that we have information on which parts of Session Restore startup need to be optimized, the next step is to actually optimize them. Stay tuned!
Souhaitez-vous aider le renard à accélérer ?
July 2, 2014 § Leave a comment
Je reçois régulièrement des propositions de volontaires qui souhaiteraient contribuer à Firefox. Habituellement, je les guide vers Bugs Ahoy – si vous ne connaissez pas Bugs Ahoy, foncez le voir, ce moteur de recherche dédié aux tâches accessibles aux débutants est fabuleux. Aujourd'hui, changement de programme : si vous souhaitez contribuer à Firefox, et plus précisément si vous souhaitez contribuer à améliorer les performances de Firefox, voici quelques manières de participer à l'effort de l'équipe Performance.
Session Restore
Session Restore est le composant de Firefox chargé de sauvegarder l'état du navigateur en permanence pour permettre de récupérer d'un crash du navigateur, du système ou du matériel ou d'un redémarrage intempestif sans perdre de données. Je suis en train de réécrire certaines parties de Session Restore pour améliorer sa réactivité (en le rendant parallèle) et sa contribution au temps de démarrage.
Pour vous lancer, quelques bugs d'introduction, e-mentorés par moi :
- https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1030765
- https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1031298
- https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1029471
Tous ces bugs sont en JavaScript.
File I/O
OS.File est le composant de Firefox qui permet à JavaScript d'accéder au disque à haute performance. Je suis en train de réécrire certaines parties de OS.File pour le rendre plus extensible et pour améliorer la réactivité de certaines fonctions critiques. Quelques bugs d'introduction, e-mentorés par moi :
- https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1023685 (en JS)
- https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=999748 (en C++)
- https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=850636 (en JS)
- https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=986145 (en JS)
Shutting down Asynchronously, part 2
May 26, 2014 § Leave a comment
During shutdown of Firefox, subsystems are closed one after another. AsyncShutdown is a module dedicated to express shutdown-time dependencies between:
- services and their clients;
- shutdown phases (e.g. profile-before-change) and their clients.
Barriers: Expressing shutdown dependencies towards a service
Consider a service FooService. At some point during the shutdown of the process, this service needs to:
- inform its clients that it is about to shut down;
- wait until the clients have completed their final operations based on FooService (often asynchronously);
- only then shut itself down.
This may be expressed as an instance of AsyncShutdown.Barrier. An instance of AsyncShutdown.Barrier provides:
- a capability client that may be published to clients, to let them register or unregister blockers;
- methods for the owner of the barrier to let it consult the state of blockers and wait until all client-registered blockers have been resolved.
Shutdown timeouts
By design, an instance of AsyncShutdown.Barrier will cause a crash if it takes more than 60 seconds awake for its clients to lift or remove their blockers (awake meaning that seconds during which the computer is asleep or too busy to do anything are not counted). This mechanism helps ensure that we do not leave the process in a state in which it can neither proceed with shutdown nor be relaunched.
If the CrashReporter is enabled, this crash will report: – the name of the barrier that failed; – for each blocker that has not been released yet:
- the name of the blocker;
- the state of the blocker, if a state function has been provided (see AsyncShutdown.Barrier.state).
Example 1: Simple Barrier client
The following snippet presents an example of a client of FooService that has a shutdown dependency upon FooService. In this case, the client wishes to ensure that FooService is not shutdown before some state has been reached. An example is clients that need write data asynchronously and need to ensure that they have fully written their state to disk before shutdown, even if due to some user manipulation shutdown takes place immediately.
// Some client of FooService called FooClient Components.utils.import("resource://gre/modules/FooService.jsm", this); // FooService.shutdown is the `client` capability of a `Barrier`. // See example 2 for the definition of `FooService.shutdown` FooService.shutdown.addBlocker( "FooClient: Need to make sure that we have reached some state", () => promiseReachedSomeState ); // promiseReachedSomeState should be an instance of Promise resolved once // we have reached the expected state
Example 2: Simple Barrier owner
The following snippet presents an example of a service FooService that wishes to ensure that all clients have had a chance to complete any outstanding operations before FooService shuts down.
// Module FooService Components.utils.import("resource://gre/modules/AsyncShutdown.jsm", this); Components.utils.import("resource://gre/modules/Task.jsm", this); this.exports = ["FooService"]; let shutdown = new AsyncShutdown.Barrier("FooService: Waiting for clients before shutting down"); // Export the `client` capability, to let clients register shutdown blockers FooService.shutdown = shutdown.client; // This Task should be triggered at some point during shutdown, generally // as a client to another Barrier or Phase. Triggering this Task is not covered // in this snippet. let onshutdown = Task.async(function*() { // Wait for all registered clients to have lifted the barrier yield shutdown.wait(); // Now deactivate FooService itself. // ... });
Frequently, a service that owns a AsyncShutdown.Barrier is itself a client of another Barrier.
Example 3: More sophisticated Barrier client
The following snippet presents FooClient2, a more sophisticated client of FooService that needs to perform a number of operations during shutdown but before the shutdown of FooService. Also, given that this client is more sophisticated, we provide a function returning the state of FooClient2 during shutdown. If for some reason FooClient2's blocker is never lifted, this state can be reported as part of a crash report.
// Some client of FooService called FooClient2 Components.utils.import("resource://gre/modules/FooService.jsm", this); FooService.shutdown.addBlocker( "FooClient2: Collecting data, writing it to disk and shutting down", () => Blocker.wait(), () => Blocker.state ); let Blocker = { // This field contains information on the status of the blocker. // It can be any JSON serializable object. state: "Not started", wait: Task.async(function*() { // This method is called once FooService starts informing its clients that // FooService wishes to shut down. // Update the state as we go. If the Barrier is used in conjunction with // a Phase, this state will be reported as part of a crash report if FooClient fails // to shutdown properly. this.state = "Starting"; let data = yield collectSomeData(); this.state = "Data collection complete"; try { yield writeSomeDataToDisk(data); this.state = "Data successfully written to disk"; } catch (ex) { this.state = "Writing data to disk failed, proceeding with shutdown: " + ex; } yield FooService.oneLastCall(); this.state = "Ready"; }.bind(this) };
Example 4: A service with both internal and external dependencies
// Module FooService2 Components.utils.import("resource://gre/modules/AsyncShutdown.jsm", this); Components.utils.import("resource://gre/modules/Task.jsm", this); Components.utils.import("resource://gre/modules/Promise.jsm", this); this.exports = ["FooService2"]; let shutdown = new AsyncShutdown.Barrier("FooService2: Waiting for clients before shutting down"); // Export the `client` capability, to let clients register shutdown blockers FooService2.shutdown = shutdown.client; // A second barrier, used to avoid shutting down while any connections are open. let connections = new AsyncShutdown.Barrier("FooService2: Waiting for all FooConnections to be closed before shutting down"); let isClosed = false; FooService2.openFooConnection = function(name) { if (isClosed) { throw new Error("FooService2 is closed"); } let deferred = Promise.defer(); connections.client.addBlocker("FooService2: Waiting for connection " + name + " to close", deferred.promise); // ... return { // ... // Some FooConnection object. Presumably, it will have additional methods. // ... close: function() { // ... // Perform any operation necessary for closing // ... // Don't hoard blockers. connections.client.removeBlocker(deferred.promise); // The barrier MUST be lifted, even if removeBlocker has been called. deferred.resolve(); } }; }; // This Task should be triggered at some point during shutdown, generally // as a client to another Barrier. Triggering this Task is not covered // in this snippet. let onshutdown = Task.async(function*() { // Wait for all registered clients to have lifted the barrier. // These clients may open instances of FooConnection if they need to. yield shutdown.wait(); // Now stop accepting any other connection request. isClosed = true; // Wait for all instances of FooConnection to be closed. yield connections.wait(); // Now finish shutting down FooService2 // ... });
Phases: Expressing dependencies towards phases of shutdown
The shutdown of a process takes place by phase, such as: – profileBeforeChange (once this phase is complete, there is no guarantee that the process has access to a profile directory); – webWorkersShutdown (once this phase is complete, JavaScript does not have access to workers anymore); – …
Much as services, phases have clients. For instance, all users of web workers MUST have finished using their web workers before the end of phase webWorkersShutdown.
Module AsyncShutdown provides pre-defined barriers for a set of well-known phases. Each of the barriers provided blocks the corresponding shutdown phase until all clients have lifted their blockers.
List of phases
The client capability for clients wishing to block asynchronously during observer notification "profile-change-teardown".
The client capability for clients wishing to block asynchronously during observer notification "profile-change-teardown". Once the barrier is resolved, clients other than Telemetry MUST NOT access files in the profile directory and clients MUST NOT use Telemetry anymore.
The client capability for clients wishing to block asynchronously during observer notification "profile-before-change2". Once the barrier is resolved, Telemetry must stop its operations.
The client capability for clients wishing to block asynchronously during observer notification "web-workers-shutdown". Once the phase is complete, clients MUST NOT use web workers.
Recent changes to OS.File
April 8, 2014 § 5 Comments
A quick post to summarize some of the recent improvements to OS.File.
To write a string, you can now pass the string directly to
OS.File.writeAtomic(path, "Here is a string", { encoding: "utf-8"})
Similarly, you can now read strings from
OS.File.read(path, { encoding: "utf-8" } ); // Resolves to a string.
Doing this is at least as fast as calling
TextDecoder yourself (see below).
Native implementation
OS.File.read has been reimplemented in C++. The main consequence is that this function can now be used safely during startup, without having to wait for the underlying OS.File ChromeWorker to start. Also, decoding (see above) is performed off the main thread, which makes it much faster.
According to my benchmarks, using
OS.File.read to read strings is about 2-5x faster than
NetUtil.asyncFetch on large files and doesn't block the main thread for more than 5ms, while
asyncFetch performs string decoding on the main thread. Also, it doesn't perform any main thread I/O by opposition to
When using
writeAtomic, it is now possible to request existing files to be backed up almost atomically. In many cases, this is a good strategy to ensure that data is safely written to disk, without having to use a flush, which would be expensive for the whole system.
yield OS.File.writeAtomic(path, data, { tmpPath: path + ".tmp", backupTo: path + ".backup} } );
writeAtomic and
read both now support an implementation of lz4 compression
yield OS.File.writeAtomic(path, data, { compression: "lz4"}); yield OS.File.read(path, { compression: "lz4"});
Note that this format will not be understood by any command-line tool. It is somewhat proprietary. Also note that (de)compression is performed on the ChromeWorker thread for the time being, so it doesn't benefit from the native reimplementation mentioned above.
Creating directories recursively
let dir = OS.Path.join(OS.Constants.Path.profileDir, "a", "b", "c", "d"); yield OS.File.makeDir(dir, { from: OS.Constants.Path.profileDir });


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Course description
In this course you'll join Tim Grey in the Palouse region of eastern Washington State, and gain insights on how he approaches some of the agricultural landscapes and other photographic opportunities in the area. The lessons you learn along the way can be applied to a wide variety of photographic opportunities.
Total Duration: 1 Hour 13 Minutes
Tim Grey is a photographer who has written eighteen books for photographers, has published hundreds of video training courses, and has had hundreds of articles published in magazines such as Digital Photo Pro and Outdoor Photographer, among others. He also publishes the Ask Tim Grey eNewsletter, the monthly Pixology digital magazine, and a wide variety of video training courses through his GreyLearning website. Tim teaches through workshops, seminars, and appearances at major events around the world.
Learn more at www.timgreyphoto.com


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Fulton Memorial Day Salute Poster Contest 2016
The 35TH Annual Memorial Day Salute Committee recently announced the winners of the Poster Contest held to create a patriotic poster in keeping with "Support Our Veterans". Taking first place as the winner of this year's poster contest is Madison Washburn., with second place going to Nora Kingsbury . Taking third place is Shaylee Cealie. Pictured from left are Art Instructor Meredith Williams, Washburn, Kingsbury, Cealie and Art Instructor Jaclyn Tyler. The winners are art students at G Ray Bodley High School. All the posters submitted for consideration will be displayed at the event being held this year on May 28th at the Fulton Community Center.


text:
Villa Angon is a Sublime villa with it's feet in the water. The villa has a fenced plot of 3500m2 with an electric gate. Number of Beds: 8Ground floor: 2 bedrooms with double bed, 2 bathrooms, 2 toilets.On the 1st floor: 1 living room / stay and 1 kitchen giving on a terrace with sight on the lake, 1 toilet. On the 2nd floor: 1 master suite with double bed and lake view, Italian shower and bath, 1 WC.
The location doesn't come better than, right on the bank of the lake.
Villa Angon is a stunning villa for 8 people located in the Lake Annecy village Talloires.
Superb villa ideally located in Talloires with a private garden and private access to the water. Private garden of 3500 m², terrace and private pontoon and mooring buoy.
Villa Angon has the following rooms and amenities:
Living and dining room with a bar, opening onto a terrace and a breathtaking view of the lake and surrounding mountains
Kitchen with bar,
1st Floor:
Master bedroom with en suite, double bed and a lake view
Bathroom 1: Double sink, bath, walk-in shower, separate toilet,
Lake level:
Bedroom 2: Ensuite double bed 140 cm,
Anteroom with a single bed 90 cm x 200 cm
Bathroom 2: bath, shower, basin, WC
Bedroom 3: Ensuite double bed 140 cm,
Bathroom 2: bath, shower, basin, WC separated toilet,
Laundry with washing machine and dryer
Complimentary welcome service at the villa for your arrival.
Sheets and towels provided
Beds made on arrival
Type of building : Collective dwelling
Living space : 180 m²
Size of the park : 3500 m²
Land area : 3500 m²
View : Lac et Montagne
Exposure : Sud
Location mark : Bord lac
Parking : Yes
Pets Welcome : No


text:
The best car brands are accessible in the marketplace with their different features as well as updated technology. So, it is important to know about the features and conveniences of these vehicles and then prefer your dream car. The gearbox, the engine of the car, body of the car, steering and structure of wheel are very common things for most of the cars though the accessories parts differ from one brand to another.
Music system – The best ones among the different brand of cars installs most modern technology in the music system of the car. In the previous models, the regular music systems are very dull and even the sound is boring. When you require some interesting music in your vehicle then you can prefer the top car brands, as they will surely offer a better audio bass reflex system. The latest bass subwoofer tubes along with speakers are fitted in most of high quality of branded vehicles. The driver can enjoy it as a theatre sound, thus making the driving more energetic.
A fashionable look – Most of the top brands have decorated the metal body of car with zinc and some rust-less shades. Thus they are completely resistant to corrosion. In addition to this, the LED light design and contemporary car lights truly look the best. Whenever a driver get the vehicle and switch on this car light, he would see that these light rays are reflected on the street and the patter is just like a series of diamonds.


text:
Developing & using methods in Java
Module 3: Developing & using methods
Describe the advantages of methods and define worker and calling methods.
Declare and invoke a method.
Compare object and static methods.
Use overloaded methods.
1. Describe the advantages of methods and define worker and calling methods:
Creating and invoking methods:
Let's begin our discussion of methods by looking into the syntax required to declare a method in a class.
[modifiers] -> The modifiers are optional keywords that modify the behavior of a method. Some of these modifiers are the keywords, public, private, protected and static. We will look into all of them in the coming posts.
return_type -> First thing that all the methods should have is the return type. Every method can return utmost one value. If the method does not return anything, then the method must specify the keyword void. If it does return a value, the value can either be primitive or a object reference. For instance, if the method returns an integer, then the return type should be specified as int, if the method returns an object such as String, then the return value should be specified as String.
method_identifier -> This is the name that you assign to a method such as displayShirtInformation.
Then we have the paranthesis and inside of it we have arguments. The paranthesis are always required whether we have arguments or not.
[arguments] -> The arguments are optional. This will be a list of variables, whose values will be passed into the method as input. The method can then use those values to do something with them, such as print them to the console etc.
Then we have the left and right curly brace, enclosing the method_code_block. These are always required.
method_code_block -> These are lines of Java code, that you will want to be executed when the method is called.
Basic form of a method:
Let's take a look at an example of method declaration. Here we have a class called Shirt inside of which we have a method called displayShirtInformation() that's been declared. Notice the optional modifier public specified indicating that this method can be invoked from anywhere, the return type void specifying that the method doesn't return anything, then the name of the method displayShirtInformation followed by a pair of paranthesis which is empty i.e., specifying that the method doesn't take any arguments. Then we have the left curly brace which encloses the code block of Java code that we want to be executed whenever this method is called. And then we have a terminating right curly brace specifying the end of method body.
To the right, we have a class called ShirtTest. Inside of it we have a method called main method. Notice the optional modifier public specified indicating that this method can be invoked from anywhere. We also have static. You can have valid multiple combination of modifiers in the method declaration. We will cover it all in detail in the coming posts. Then we have the return type void indicating that this method doesn't return anything. Then we have the method identifier as main. As we know from before, this is the entry point into a Java program.
Then we have the paranthesis enclosing one argument. We have an array of Strings called args that will be passed to this method. We will talk about arrays in posts to come. Then we have our left curly brace beginning our method body, then we have our lines of Java code that are to be executed whenever this method is called. And then we end the method body by closing the braces.
Notice that on line 9, the code is invoking displayShirtInformation() method in the Shirt class. So in this case the main method is called the calling method or the caller method whereas the displayShirtInformation() method is called as the worker method. When one method calls another, the calling method is called the caller method, and the called method is called the worker method.
Also, notice how we have called the displayShirtInformation() method. We have used the Shirt object reference called myShirt and the dot notation (.) and the name of the method. When one class wants to call a method in another class, it needs an object reference of that class to invoke a method in that class.
Guidelines for invoking methods: Read more…
Using loop constructs in Java
Module 2: Using loop constructs:
Create while loops.
Develop for loops.
Create do / while loops.
1. Create while loops:
The while loop is used to execute a set of code for multiple times as long as a condition is true. Once the condition becomes false, the code block is no longer executed and the control exits the while loop and continues with the execution of rest of the program.
We can see the syntax for the while loop in the syntax figure above. We begin with the keyword while, and then we put a boolean expression inside a set of paranthesis. If this boolean expression is true, we execute the code block between the left and the right curly braces. If the boolean expression is false, then we do not execute the code block and we leave the while loop. This code block will be executed as many number of times as long as the boolean expression continues to be true.
This is illustrated in a flow chart to the right. The boolean expression is tested for true / false. If true, then we execute the code block, and you can also see that we return back to again test the boolean expression after executing the code block, and again the expression will be tested for true / false. As long as the boolean expression continues to be true, the flow will be the same. Once the expression evaluates to false, the code block will no longer be executed and the control leaves the while loop.
While loop example:
Let's take a look at an example of while loop. As you can see from the figure below, we have a while loop that is checking if the variable i is less than 5. If it is, we will enter the code block, and we will print out "Hello Thomas" to the command prompt / console. And then we are incrementing the i variable by 1. We will then again go back to the while loop condition and check if the i variable is still less than 5. As long as it is, we will continue to print to the console and continue to increment i and continue back to the while loop condition. Once its not, we will leave the while loop and continue with the rest of the program. Let's see this for 2 different values of i.
For i = 0:
When i = 0, the while condition is true for the first time, and we enter the loop and print "Hello Thomas" to the console, increment i by 1 because of which it becomes 1, and again go back to the while loop condition and check it again. Here i is 1 and still less than 5 so the whole loop is repeated for 5 times until i < 5 and "Hello Thomas" is printed 5 times to the console. Once i is 5, i < 5 will be false so it will exit the while loop and continue with the execution of the rest of the program.
For i = 5:
When i = 5, we check the while loop condition first, which is i < 5, as we have i as 5, we get this condition to be false. Hence we wont enter the code block, hence not printing anything to the console and continue with the execution of rest of the program.
Nested while loops: Read more…
Exercise 2 – Using for loop in Java
Exercise – 2 for module 2 of Using operators and decision constructs:
This post has the exercise – 2 for module 2 of Using operators and decision constructs . Let's practice what we have learnt. Before practicing the exercise, follow the instructions below which will give you a step-by-step instruction:
You can download the source code (WJ-1103A-module2-exercise2.zip) for this exercise from the Box widget in the sidebar. Follow the video tutorial below if you ever get stuck while executing the programs. Read more…
Exercise 1 – Using while loop in Java
Exercise – 1 for module 2 of Using operators and decision constructs:
This post has the exercise – 1 for module 2 of Using operators and decision constructs. Let's practice what we have learnt. Before practicing the exercise, follow the instructions below which will give you a step-by-step instruction:
You can download the source code (WJ-1103A-module2-exercise1.zip) for this exercise from the Box widget in the sidebar. Follow the video tutorial below if you ever get stuck while executing the programs. Read more…
Analyze a problem & design a solution in Java
Module 2 – Analyze a problem & design a solution.
Analyzing a problem & designing a solution using object oriented concepts:
1. Analyse a problem using object oriented analysis
2. Design classes from which objects will be created
1. Analyze a problem using object oriented analysis:
In this process, the first step is to understand your domain & the domain will probably be the business you are trying to solve the pblm for, or the area to create new product.
Case study:
A company called Direct Clothing sells shirts from thier catalog. We have to develop a product for this company for the same catalog. So initially we have to understand few points about thier shirts
Each shirt has an item identity(ID) – bar code
One or more colors – blue, green etc
One or more sizes
Have description – type of material, style etc
Direct Clothing accepts cheques & credit card payments.
The current system:
During analysis stage, you also have to learn about the current system if there is one. Currently, say there are 2 ways in which a customer can place thier order with Direct Clothing
Call customer care over phone and place the order.
Mail or Fax an order form to place the order.
The proposed system: Read more…


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Egypt, Islamism, & The Blood Calculus
David Rohde thinks the Obama administration has failed miserably in its response to the Cairo massacres. And:
The message the White House sent to young Islamists in Egypt this week was clear: What jihadists have been telling you about American hypocrisy for years is true. Democratic norms apply to everyone but you. Participating in elections is pointless. Violence is the route to power. Wherever he is hiding in the mountains of Pakistan, Ayman al Zawahiri is likely pleased.
I think he's right. But I also think the Morsi government's behavior in office, and the behavior of many Islamists today, backs up what Egyptians who feared Muslim Brotherhood rule had been saying for years. Here's the latest:
After torching a Franciscan school, Islamists paraded three nuns on the streets like "prisoners of war" before a Muslim woman offered them refuge. Two other women working at the school were sexually harassed and abused as they fought their way through a mob.
In the four days since security forces cleared two sit-in camps by supporters of Egypt's ousted president, Islamists have attacked dozens of Coptic churches along with homes and businesses owned by the Christian minority. The campaign of intimidation appears to be a warning to Christians outside Cairo to stand down from political activism.
Christians have long suffered from discrimination and violence in Muslim majority Egypt, where they make up 10 percent of the population of 90 million. Attacks increased after the Islamists rose to power in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring uprising that droveHosni Mubarak from power, emboldening extremists. But Christians have come further under fire since President Mohammed Morsi was ousted on July 3, sparking a wave of Islamist anger led by Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood.
Nearly 40 churches have been looted and torched, while 23 others have been attacked and heavily damaged since Wednesday, when chaos erupted after Egypt's military-backed interim administration moved in to clear two camps packed with protesters calling for Morsi's reinstatement, killing scores of protesters and sparking deadly clashes nationwide.
Thought experiment: given events of the past three decades in Iran, how much violence do you think the Shah's repressive government ought to have been willing to inflict on pro-Khomeini Iranians to prevent the Islamic Republic from coming into existence? I'm not asking rhetorically, and I don't know how I would answer that question. Just throwing it out there. I have no idea what the White House should do right now, because it is not clear to me that there is any possible outcome in Egypt that is less than horrifying. People who are certain that the US should cut off the military government in Cairo, though, should ask themselves what, in retrospect, the Shah's government should have been prepared to do to prevent the Islamist horror show that has kept Iran bound since 1979. (Or, for that matter, how many Bolsheviks the Tsar's despotic government should have shot to save Russia from the infinitely worse curse of Soviet communism.)
As with the situation in Syria, there are no good sides, only competing evils. It is easy to sit in safety in the United States and say that the Egyptian generals ought to hang for their mass murder, or that the Egyptian generals are saviors of their country. In either case, we don't have to live with the consequences.


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St Nick first turned up in the kindergarten and Daniël was thrilled by the sweets and presents. They made much more of an impression on our little pragmatist/opportunist than people in funny hats.
Matthijs on the other hand is old enough to anticipate the event and use his imagination on it. Along with all his classmates he reached a very high state of excitement as the day approached. Seeing this we are determined to make sure that we plan in lots of relaxation and distraction next year to reduce the madness somewhat, particularly as two exited little boys working each up into a frenzy is equivalent to at least twelve monkeys on strong espresso.
St Nicholas night itself was short but sweet. Though he could not turn up himself, one of his Black Peters dropped a hefty sack by the front door. No huge presents, because the kiddos are already spoiled rotten and have more toys that you can shake a stick at, but lots of books and puzzles and the traditional chocolate letters (which Matthijs can now recognise). They were eventuallydropped into their bath with chocolate letters firmly clutched in one hand but both declared that they had had enough and would save the rest for tomorrow. Marjolein was pleased, but absolutely dumbfounded at this restrained behaviour and suspects them of not being children at all, but aliens. Nothing new there… Still it is good that they eat from appetite and not from habit or reflex.
Matthijs had dived into our "Starting Reading" and "Starting Maths" software and is making great strides. School had prompted him to be more interested in reading and writing and he is very keen on his "exercise books" which we and his grandmother bought: lots of fun puzzles and mazes that just happen to teach fine motor control and forming lines and lettershapes. He is also very fond of drawing and creates ever more elaborate pictures.
This year we decided to send one of his pictures as our Christmas card. He carefully and accurately wrote his name underneath and was so immensely proud of it that he slept with a very crumpled Christmas card clutched in his arms every day for a week.
Daniël continues to amaze. He has fabulous mouse-control and is superb at pattern-matching, shapes and puzzles: very nearly as good as Matthijs. He had moved off the easy toddler software and is currently hacking his way systematically through a hefty "101 puzzles" CDROM that is supposed to top out at four years old… He is also a keen artist. One of the guaranteed ways of getting some peace and quiet in our house is to settle the monsters down with plenty of paper and felt-tips. In the picture you can see that he has a mature pen-hold and is busy creating one of his "monster flowers": he started drawing flowers (petals and everything) shortly after Matthijs' early "flower period" and now adds eyes, spotty noses, fat feet and mouths full of teeth. I cannot wait to see what the child psychologists say about that…
Daniël goes to the toilet regularly but still somewhat randomly. Sometimes he entirely fills a nappy and then lies his head off about it, despite the fact he is waddling around like a penguin. He does know that he needs to go, because he does regularly declare that he is going to do a poop (shouts of "sueeeti taiym" work it out, we bribe him) and does indeed do so, much to Matthijs' satifaction as he shares in the bounty.
Father Christmas somewhat confused Daniël: yet another man in red. He therefore started (because of the floppy hat) enthusiastically greeting all the Father Chrismi (plural) as "Plop the Gnome" (yes it is just as bad in Dutch) from his favourite television program. Matthijs just lumped them together as "Christmasguys".
The school, with typical Dutch pragmatism also celebrated Christmas: Daniël had a nice party in the kindergarten with candles, songs and lots of things to eat. Matthijs got a evening Christmas dinner with a musical remorselessly performed outside in sub-zero temperatures by the teaching staff. Some of the less hardy parents snuk off inside to recover from the frostbite and possibly from the singing. After that the children went to their classrooms and dined off lots of nice things prepared by the parents, while we slunk off to another room and downed quantities of mulled wine. Excellent stuff when your ears are just about to shatter. Marjolein had contributed a delicious but somewhat healthy-looking fruit salad to the kiddo-food which was utterly spurned by the little toads as greasy meatballs and chocolate-chip biscuits were also on offer. We ate fruit salad for days….
It was a good party and we got to know some of the other victims, sorry parents. Matthijs was dressed up to the nines in grey suit and waistcoat, red turtle-neck and glittery bow-tie. He was as proud as a peacock and kept his clothes very clean: quite an achievement under the circumstances.
He has a whale of time at school and is building up quite a social life. It is very much the "done thing" to make play-dates at each other's houses and we have often been suddenly introduced to "the father/mother of X" and expected to start negociating. It still stuns me that a four-year-old can be "booked up" for days in advance… Because of the parent-swapping we have discovered that quite a lot of Matthijs' classmates live close to us, so he will be able to walk and bicycle to them when he is a bit older. He is pretty good on his bicycle: after he dumped the training wheels he never looked back. It looks like he will be able to bike next to us to school when the good weather returns and Falco can sit on a bike-seat.
The second half of the month was rough: I came down with a mystery super-flu that floored me for almost three weeks. I spent lots of time in bed, sleeping and sleeping and sleeping. I did manage to do some stuff with the kids (drop them at school, walk the dog) but it always emptied my batteries and I then needed to drop back into bed. This was tough on Marjolein as she was still recovering her strength after the pregnancy and she suddenly had to take over the evenings, Fridays and weekends, when I generally do the kiddo-whacking. Just as I was getting better my appointment to have a busted wisdom tooth extracted (I am now completely without wisdom) turned up on the 23rd and I spent another week as Mr Useless with a cheek like a basketball and a permanent high from the pain-killers. Fortunately Marjolein's sister had invited us over for Christmas dinner (with easy-chew food) so we did not have to work much. They made us a very nice meal and we responded by providing an exotic British trifle for dessert.
On "Second Christmas Day" (Dutch Boxing Day) we made ourselves turkey, chestnuts and sprouts and roast potatoes, which was a big hit with the beasts. Matthijs helped to peel the chestnuts but I am never going to buy fresh chestnuts again: my fingernails were worn down to the nub. Next year I shall open some nice canned ones with lots of preservatives and colour.
The boys provided table decorations: Daniel had made a very nice center-piece in school with pine twigs and silver paper and Matthijs contributed the candles. The school took him on a trip to a candlemaker and he got to dip his own candles in all different colours of wax. After that it was more (small) prezzos under the tree. There were even a couple for mama and papa!
We finished the month with the funeral of one of Marjoleins' aunts. Not a close relationship but it was important to make an appearance. After some debate we took the boys along as an important experience and because we regard children (even ours) as a hopeful and positive part of all the big moments: birth, marriage and death. Naturally Marjolein prepared them carefully with talks and a book (yes there is a VERY NICE childrens book about burying your relatives). Daniël does not understand much of it, but Matthijs is working things out about death and loss and grief. We will see what they retain. It was also Falco's first exposure to his maternal aunts etc. so he was very much feted and cooed-over. To their great credit both Matthijs and Daniël behaved wonderfly well. They were quiet, polite and respectful: real little gentlemen. We were and are tremendously proud of them.
The end of the year, as always in the Netherlands, was fireworks, "oil-balls" (Dutch doughnuts, no hole, instant cholesterol poisoning) and champagne. Marjolein's parents came over and we watched various comedians summing up the year and waited for midnight. We woke the boys half an hour before midnight so they could see the fireworks and would not be woken up and terrified by them. They came down and demolished doughnuts and drank kiddo champagne at midnight. Matthijs was much braver than last year but did not like the noise of the fireworks much (it was VERY loud). Daniël was less bothered and they both trundled around outside briefly with sparklers in their fists before scampering back inside. I must admit, they have a point. Dutch people go completely nuts on New Year and it always resembles very jolly and colourful total war. I once saw a BBC war report from the top of a skyscraper in Bagdad when it was was being heavily bombed: Dutch New Year is like that but not as calm and restful. Muggins here had bought some ickle-pritty kiddo fireworks and couple of simple rockets all of which were UTTERLY submerged by the massive artillery being fired off around our square. It is much easier and cheaper to just sit back and enjoy what the neighbours are doing…


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So I'm a makeup girl. Always have been, ever since I was 3 years old and my oldest sister taught me all about makeup and how to apply a full face of makeup. [Don't worry, I never left the house with makeup on until I was 12. This wasn't some Toddlers and Tiaras situation.] I don't wear makeup quite as much these days but I still love it. And I was especially in love with this round of The Arcade because of two sets!
The Jolie set from Tres Blah and the Makeup Junkie set from Second Spaces are EVERYTHING to me right now. I cannot tell you how much time I've spent staring at the little bottles and tubes, reading all the words, and just really loving the whole thing. The work that Elle and Julliette put into both their sets is outstanding and I'm so here for it.
The Arcade lasts until the end of the month, so go get your own makeup now!!
Happy shopping!
In This Post:
Skin: Elsie by Pink Fuel [The Arcade]
Hair: Poseidon's Gal by Clawtooth
Physique Body, hands, feet, eyelids by Slink
Nail Polish: Negative Space by Hello Dave
Lingerie: Alicia Negligee by Erratic [The Arcade]
Pose: Yesternight's Dream by Le Poppycock [Slighted modded by me with Avimote]
Makeup Junkie set by Second Spaces [The Arcade]
Jolie Set by Tres Blah [The Arcade]
Lorraine Bed by Erratic [The Arcade]
Spring Living – Love by Tres Blah
Studio Apartment Skybox by What Next


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SUSIN NIELSEN will be introducing the new paperback edition of her GG-winning THE RELUCTANT JOURNAL OF HENRY K. LARSEN.
LINDA BAILEY and COLIN JACK will be launching their new picture book, IF YOU HAPPEN TO HAVE A DINOSAUR.
DAN BAR-EL will be launching his new picture book, NINE WORDS MAX (illustrated by David Huyck).
All brought to you by Tundra Books.


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There are several opportunities for private equity investors, specifically in countries that are already experiencing fast growth in the agricultural sector, particularly Angola, Malawi and Nigeria.
- In Angola, there are enormous opportunities to invest in medium-to large-scale farms in maize, rice, beans, soya and assorted vegetables.
- In Nigeria, private equity investors can support growing medium-and large-scale farmers in cassava production — money that will be invested in new processing facilities to produce industrial starch that will serve the market, reducing the reliance on imports.
- Malawi's poultry and animal feed enterprises, thriving fertiliser industry, production of animal health products, fishery industries combined with adequate food storage facilities make the country a suitable destination for investors.
Together, governments, investors and other stakeholders must pursue new and alternative sources to funding — such as sovereign wealth funds and domestic resources — and to creating incentives for the private sector to make investments.
Source: PAEPARD FEED


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When it came down to a vote, the only commissioner who wanted Clerk of Court Don Howard�s office to keep collecting Okaloosa County�s bed tax revenue was Dave Parisot. The other commissioners shifted the task to Tax Collector Ben Anderson, who had lobbied hard for the job.
No residents spoke up for Mr. Howard during a public hearing Tuesday.
We suspect Mr. Howard lost a good deal of support when he shrugged off criticism that his office�s inattentiveness � or incompetence � had allowed Tourist Development Council head Mark Bellinger to mismanage millions of dollars in bed tax money and BP oil spill grants. His staff had processed Bellinger�s fraudulent purchases. Bellinger committed suicide last May.
Mr. Howard said last month he had reviewed the finance staff�s actions and didn�t intend to discipline anyone. �I can find nothing that happened within the scope of our responsibility � that indicated someone was doing something improper or something they should not have done,� he said.
Sounds familiar, doesn�t it? It�s become a common refrain in Okaloosa County government: The only person who did anything wrong was that dead guy, Mark Bellinger.
Exactly one month after his �I can find nothing� quote appeared in the Daily News, Mr. Howard saw his bed tax collection duties taken away and given to Mr. Anderson.
It�s probably for the best. Mr. Anderson promises to boost bed tax collections by 25 percent during the first year, partly by putting more workers on the streets than the clerk of court�s office was able to. Expect them to track down and confront owners of short-term rental properties who should be collecting the 5 percent surcharge but aren�t.
We can also expect Mr. Anderson�s office to raise an alarm if anything involving the bed tax starts to look fishy. We hope it won�t come to that. The county�s revised TDC ordinance is supposed to have tightened restrictions on the spending of bed tax dollars. But Anderson publicly criticized the clerk of court for not blowing the whistle on Bellinger�s fraud scheme, and Anderson isn�t likely to make the same mistake.
The tax collector�s office will begin collecting Okaloosa�s bed taxes Oct. 1. Good luck.


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News Archives
Keep an eye on our Twitter and Facebook pages since we often post quickie updates there when we're on-the-go.
During tours, we do our best to cover setlists in real-time on Twitter. If you want to tweet a show in, just DM or @ us on the day and tell us to watch your stream that night.
Tori is touring in 2017 to support the release of Native Invader. The European legs runs from early September through early October and the North American leg runs from late October to early December. We do not know if additional dates elsewhere will be added.
We're happy and proud to report that Shannon Lambert, long-time Toriphile and founder of Pandora's Project, an online resource and support forum for survivors of rape and sexual abuse, has been named a 2009 L'Oreal Woman of Worth!
Shannon is one of ten honorees chosen for their contributions to their communities through volunteerism and service. As a direct result of her selection, L'Oreal Paris will make a donation of $5,000 to Pandora's Project.
Additionally, one of the ten women honored will be selected via online voting as the National Woman of Worth and L'Oreal will make a donation for $25,000 to her selected charity.
And this is where we can help!
Voting is easy and fast and doesn't require registration. Just head over to the Shannon's bio page on WomenofWorth.com, enter your e-mail address (only one vote per address) in the ballot and submit. Easy-peasy and it benefits a great cause that is near and dear to many a Toriphile's heart as well as Tori's.
Congratulations again to Shannon and Pandora's Project, good luck to her in the voting and thanks to all of you for supporting her!


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Diabetes Channel
Related Channels
Goji Overdose
At this time, it is not known whether a goji overdose is even possible. Since overconsumption of any fruit can cause digestive upset, it is likely that this problem may also occur with overconsumption of goji. Overdose treatment (if necessary) will involve supportive care, which consists of treating the symptoms that occur as a result of the overdose.
What symptoms can a goji overdose cause? Is it even possible to take too much? It is not known exactly what to expect from consuming too much goji, but it is likely that the effects of an overdose will vary, depending on the source of the goji (through supplements or through food) and the dosage.
If you think you may be experiencing problems due to taking too much goji, seek immediate medical attention.
It is not known exactly what to expect from a goji overdose (or even if an overdose is possible). It is likely that overconsumption of goji berries or juice might cause digestive upset, as would overconsumption of almost any fruit. Beyond that, it is not known if more serious problems could occur.
Many goji supplements contain several different active ingredients. An overdose with such supplements could cause overdose symptoms due to any of the other active ingredients.
It is not known how to best treat an overdose with goji (if, indeed, an overdose is even possible). Therefore, treatment, if necessary, likely will involve supportive care, which consists of treating the symptoms that occur as a result of the overdose.
It is important that you seek prompt medical attention if you believe you may have overdosed on goji.
Goji Berry Information
Written by/reviewed by: Kristi Monson, PharmD; Arthur Schoenstadt, MD
Last reviewed by: Kristi Monson, PharmD


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The Kings have signed 21-year-old left wing Maxim Kitsyn to a three-year entry level contract and 25-year-old right wing Brian O'Neill to a one-year contract.
First, Kitsyn:
His biggest breakthrough came in the 2010-11 season when he won a gold medal with Russia at the World Junior Championships and appeared in the Memorial Cup with the host Mississauga-St. Michaels Majors. He was drafted by Los Angeles in the sixth round, 158th overall, in 2010.
At the 2011 WJC, Kitsyn ranked sixth in tournament scoring with nine points (4-5=9), trailing Brayden Schenn, Evgeny Kuznetsov, Vladimir Tarasenko, Ryan Ellis and Richard Pánik. Here he is finishing off a beautiful Kuznetsov toe-drag to tie the quarterfinal elimination game against Finland with 1:38 to play:
And here he is finding Kuznetsov for the game-winner in overtime:
Russia erased a 3-0 deficit entering the third period against Canada in the gold medal game by scoring five times; Kitsyn scored the goal that brought the Russians within one.
The 5-foot-9 O'Neill recorded 15 points (3-12=15) over 49 games with Manchester in his first full professional season – though "full" isn't quite accurate, as he didn't play between February 17 and March 15 due to injury and also missed time in December.
In March, 2012 O'Neill was signed out of Yale University, where he served as the Bulldogs' team captain and was named the Ivy League Player of the Year during a 46-point season (21-25=46) in 2011-12.
Both players should be candidates to play for the 2012-13 Manchester Monarchs.


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Two For One: Drunk Guys In Miami Test The Wrong One And Get Slept!
Two for one special in Miami.
Posted By Joe
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Today, after Kate and I had exhausted ourselves with I Knit's fab Knit-in-Public-Day Treasure Hunt, we stumbled upon hundreds of naked people riding bikes. Apparently today was also the World Naked Bike Ride which is a protest against oil dependency and car culture. All that was missing was the Queen song.
According to websites and fliers the nakedness serves not only to celebrate "the power and individuality of the human body" but also to raise awareness about cyclists vulnerability in traffic. I have friends who cycle everywhere and they are quite brave. Sometimes even crossing the street in London can be dangerous– drivers often don't give pedestrians the right of way even when they should legally, and the situation is much worse for cyclists. London runs on anger and aggression and this often shows in the way people drive here.
Watching all the flesh speed past, I was lost in reverie. For a moment I pictured an Amsterdam in London, teeming with bikes! It was a beautiful thought.
Of all the things London can be, it is never really a joyful place, and yet today these protesters seemed gleeful, flirty and free. I wondered, cynically, if they were really Londoners at all.