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Cedar Soap Dish

Regular price $ 8.00

Handcrafted in Austin, Texas, our aromatic cedar soap dishes keep your soaps well drained helping preserve their longevity. Locally crafted each beautiful dish is unique. Due to the beauty of nature, the color of each piece may vary slightly. For best results seal with a natural mineral oil.

**this listing is for 1 soap dish, soap not included, just used to show an accurate size of the dishes.

Size: 4x3 inches

Weight: 1.69oz

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I can’t hear the vuvuzela’s yet…

If there was a week when I have been sorrier than ever to be out of Africa, then this is it. To watch the continent erupt with such colour and sound to the starting of the World Cup has reminded me of what makes the place and its people so special and I am glad that the rest of world is getting just a little taste.

It is also nice to note that so far atleast, the many doom sayers have been proved wrong. I will admit to having been amongst those who feared for what might happen when this huge influx of visitors wandered unassumingly into one of the  crime centres of the world might, but so far, touch wood, things seem to be under control and save for a few reminders of how dangerous the roads can be, the whole event looks safe and happy and full of the colour and energy that you can only find in Africa.

Perhaps more surprising to me is how little the build up to the event seems to have captured the Danish imagination. From what I can deduce, despite qualifying in some style in a sport that after the European Championships of 1992 is definitely a national treasure (if not quite to the sacred level that is reserved for handball), the streets seem eerily quiet. The Irish pubs may be packed, but they are full of English and Americans, French and Mexicans cheering on their homelands, not Danes.

Of course, the boys in red are yet to play and maybe come Monday the whole of the city will be bedecked in red and festooned with drunken faces of an equal hue. Being of the Jack Charlton generation and having lived in England through the last two world cups, I was expecting to be engulfed in a three month long nationalistic marketing orgy where ever brand under the sun attempts to wrap itself in the green white and orange or red and white of St George to boost the summer sales. Not so here, where save for one or two Carlsberg posters, the team and the national flag seem to have barely penetrated the commercial psyche, but perhaps this is just a sign of greater nationalistic maturity rather than for a lack of interest or passion.

Denmark it must be said, is a country ridiculously in love with its own flag to begin with, so perhaps it is just difficult for the untrained eye to spot the last few remaining spots on public buildings and private homes where they might be able to stick up a few extras to make a special point for the World Cup. This is also the country that invented the painting of flags on faces (or so I am told) so fingers crossed I am in for a massive surprise next week as the country erupts with passion and the party makes its way from Cape Town to Copenhagen.

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Soccer Fever in the Samba Land

As all the roads lead to the Samba land for the ultimate Football festival, this post is just a humble attempt in letting the world know that I too will be following the beautiful game. Yes, my country languishes at 154 in the FIFA rankings. Yes, in my country, its only about Cricket, which is preceeded by Cricket and more Cricket follows. It doesn’t matter. We’ll become overnight football fanatics during the world cup. When the ball starts rolling, Kolkata, Kerala and Goa will just resemble one of the streets of Sao Paulo itself. Giant screens are set up in the leading pubs and sports bars of Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi. Kolkata will carry over the passion it exhibits in an East Bengal- Mohan Bagan clash, to cheering the Messis, Neymars and Ronaldos. Northern Kerala is already resembling a battle field with the Brazilian and Argentinian fans locking horns. And Goa has gone a step further by sending its ministers to Brazil, apparently to ‘study’ the game.

Kerala- during the World Cup

Kerala- during the World Cup ( from Twitter )

So, what are my memories of the world cup. I do remember, in bits and pieces and crumbs, the Ronaldo phenomenon in France in 1998. About how the bald headed youngster took Brazil into the finals. But the images are so little and is limited to what my soccer crazy Dad used to tell me.

I do remember the 2002 edition at Korea and Japan clearly. The South Koreans kept churning out surprises after surprises in the knock out stages and ended up in the last four.  The ‘Good Bye France’ write-up by one of the fans, was an instant hit. Turkish forward Hakan Sukur’s fastest goal in the history, bagged me vital points in the Sports Quiz competition held at school, a little later. But overall, this world cup saw the sheer Brazilian dominance. We had our first sighting of Ronaldinho, who had a meteoric rise to fame. Then there was Roberto Carlos with his twirling free kicks, the ever graceful Cafu, the veteran stalwart Rivaldo and of course, our very own bald headed sensation Ronaldo.

2006 was very different in its own ways. By now, I had become a loyal German fan. I giggled every time they did well and was dejected when they lost in the Semis. Zidane’s headbutt, Brazil’s below par outing, Christiano Ronaldo- Rooney ugly face off were the highlights, in what is according to me, a very dull world cup. By the way, I didn’t like Italy being crowned the world champions!

Now coming on to my favorite of all the world cups! South Africa, 2o10. Social Media was just about beginning to change our lives. And so the Pre- and Post-match analysis were through facebook posts and tweets. But what made the world cup so interesting was the way the Rainbow nation had organized the event. The African flavour was there to see everywhere. Waka Waka, Vuvu Zela and Jabulani had become household words. The on-field events were equally glamorous. Germany, with its youngsters, displayed a brand of football which was breathtakingly fast and so wonderful to watch. It only failed against the boring yet effective Tok Tok tactics of Spain. Ghana won our hearts and that douche bag Luiz Suarez, perennial brickbats. Messi of Argentina was miles behind in class and form of Messi of Barcelona. And there were stars, in Wesley Sneijder, Mesut Ozil, Thomas Mueller, Iniesta, Xavi and a list of Spanish stars from Barcelona. In the end, as our Ravi Shastri says, Football was the winner.

This world cup offers so much excitement, for it is held in Brazil, the land of Edison Arantes Do Nascimento ( Pele ). It’ll be interesting to see the likes of Neymar, Messi and Ronaldo, along with the German teenagers of 2010 and the defending champions. In the battle between the magic of South American Soccer and the Dour machine like professionalism of Europeans, I hope football fans are entertained to the core. Go Germany, I am cheering for you guys, as usual.


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The Bible in Politics conference

2-3 June, 2017

The Bible in Politics conference was held earlier this month at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, London. St Mary’s has made the videos of the presentations available on their YouTube channel.

Friday 2 June
10.30-11.15am Hugh Pyper, ‘“Don’t Mention the Bible! Religion, Identity and Contemporary Scottish Politics’

11.15-12.00 Christina Petterson, ‘The Politics of Biblical Translation’

12.15-1pm Fatima Tofighi, ‘Paul, the Mystic Who Wasn’t a Mystic: A Reexamination in Light of the Politics of Religious Scholarship’

2.05-2.50pm Tarcisius Mukaka, ‘“Let Every Person be Subject to the Governing Authorities”: Reading Rom. 13.1-7 against the Grain, or a Postcolonial Reading’

3-3.45pm Jo Carruthers, ‘The Bible, Aesthetics and the Origins of the American Self: Islamophobia and Protestant Aesthetics in Homeland’

4-4.30pm Taylor Weaver, ‘Trump’s Bible: Weakening Relevance in the American Political Sphere’

4.30-5pm Chris Meredith, ‘The Bible and the Poetics of Modern Militarism: The Good Samaritan and the UK’s 2016 Airstrikes in Syria’

Saturday 3 June
Erin Runions, ‘Carceral Technologies, Religious Affects, and US Theopolitics’

11.30am-12.15pm Lesleigh Cushing, ‘The “Good Book” in the “Promised Land”: The Bible in Contemporary American Politics’

12.15-1pm David Tollerton, ‘Alternative Facts from the Whirlwind: Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan and the Obfuscating Oppression of the Divine/State’

2.15-3pm Robert Myles, ‘Fishing for Entrepreneurs in the Sea of Galilee’

3-4pm or so James Crossley, ‘Italian Politics, Italian Westerns…and the Bible’

Ward Blanton, “Apostle of the Self-Help Entrepreneurs?”

University of Glasgow Online Theses

The University of Glasgow provides its PhD theses online, including many in the area of biblical studies. The full text is available for most theses, although some recent ones are embargoed until a future date.

The Glasgow Theses Service includes, as examples:

Miller, Susan E. (2002) Women in Mark’s gospel. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Pyper, Hugh Scott (1993) ‘David as reader’: 2 Samuel 12: 1-15 and the poetics of fatherhood. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Stiebert, Johanna (1998) The construction of shame in the Hebrew Bible: the prophetic contribution. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.


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The Bots, leeching And Trap Bids in Blade & Soul

The more you play any game, the more things you will start catching onto, it could either be an “I wish this game has this thing” or a “why is this even in the game?”, usually my thoughts when it relates to those 2 comments with any game stay fairly minor, but with BnS I’ve found my self consistently questioning the thoughts of the developers and why they decided to do the things they have with this game.

The Bots, leeching And Trap Bids in Blade & Soul

Bots, they’re a massive issue in all versions of blade and soul, I’ve found my self thinking 2 main things so far, which is:

– Why have the developers been so adamant on not implementing a proper vote kick feature into the game? so far all players can do is kick an offline player, but the main problem is the online players that you want to kick, mostly it’s kicking leechers which is a very common problem in this game, they will enter into a dungeon and just stand at the entrance, sometimes even “taunting” players to hurry up so they can get their free silver and exit. So what can players do about this? nothing at all unfortunately, not unless they want to leave and try enter another instance only to come across the same problem again, then there’s also the bots entering dungeons and getting their free silvers at the end of each run, further adding onto the problem of how bots are very easily making gold on this game to RMT to players.

– How is it possible with how rampant the bots are, that the companys hosting their respective versions don’t have an active GM in the game scouting out all active bot locations and manually banning them? players can report bots just fine, but the time it takes for them to get banned is too long, as most likely the gold from the bots would of been transferred onto what ever character(s) these RMT companys use to actually sell off.

The Bots, leeching And Trap Bids in Blade & Soul

There has been many suggestions on the forums mostly dealing with both leeching players and bots, such as to have a teleportal right before the boss room so that both potential leechers and bots have to make their way in the dungeon, it may not entirely fix the issue, but it may help elevate it. There has been the idea to have it so players have to deal x amount of damage to the boss to be able to bid for items at the end of the run, thus actually forcing any would-be leecher to pull their weight, this would even have boss monsters potentially kill the bots that try to do the boss which could stop them from bidding and getting silver splits.

Another complaint that’s been something of a thing is the firewall that appears as soon as a player attacks a boss, it’s safe to say that this is a pretty poor feature when they could of just easily have created a proper door that appears after perhaps 10 seconds, something similar to what Tera has and has no complaints about it, especially because it doesn’t just outright kill the player that didn’t make it through the “door” before some impatient player bum-rushed the boss.

The Bots, leeching And Trap Bids in Blade & Soul

The bidding system is something I like the idea of, mostly as it can help prevent people just rolling on gear they otherwise don’t need or have no real use for and it helps players to actually get some income with each run as opposed to coming out of a dungeon run with nothing gained. The 2 small issues I have with it is that it has no wait timer in between each bid, so let’s say that someone presses “Y” or enters a custom bid in, there should be some 1-2 second timer before someone else can bid. I’ve seen times where lowbies are spamming the “Y” key to instantly bid and someone has took notice of it, that player would then bid an obscene amount to trap someone into getting the next highest bid and potentially ending up with no money or forcing that player to exit the client before it goes through which could potentially have them kicked being offline and waste their run time.

The other thing would be to have an “are you sure?” notification before you place your bid, there will always be times where someone may not be paying attention and I’ve fallen into the trap my self, thus creating a situation where having both a wait timer and a notification could of saved both of us, the example being people were bidding normally on some low level item, I was going to hit 55 copper to start the bids quicker, I then saw that I actually hit 55 silver and because of the no 1-2 second wait timer before being able to put in another bid, the unfortunate person that happened to press bid just as I put mine in basically got screwed from it.

The Bots, leeching And Trap Bids in Blade & Soul

So many things could be fixed up on this game with just some small quality of life improvements like some I’ve mentioned, having a kick function is also a big one that I personally don’t think should be left out of any game, some people may say that people will abuse the kick function and perhaps boot people out of dungeons for one reason or another, but at the same time people are easily prone to making a massive nuisance out of their self due to no kick function, such as with the picture above from a player on the forum showing some guy stood at the entrance of the cave that’s leeching dungeon(s), then when the dungeon is finished you see they’re clearly not afk as they’re still there to bid on dropped items such as the expensive merry potter recipes, what makes it worse is the idea that this player could be sitting on a ton of gold whereas the players that did the dungeon may not currently have enough to even match the market price, thus giving this leecher his free winnings.

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ATXRaspi power controller now with reboot function #piday #raspberrypi @Raspberry_Pi

Thanks to Felix for sending this in! Check out more info here.

What is it?

ATXRaspi is a smart power controller for RaspberryPi or similar embedded systems running from a 5V input. It allows you to have an external shutdown button to reboot or turn off your target system without a need to login to issue those commands via command line.

To turn ON the Pi all you have to do is press the power button.
To REBOOT the Pi hold the button pressed at least 0.5s and less than 2s. When the reset hold time is met the button LED dims a little bit (after ~500ms). The SHUTDOWN signal pulses shortly and the Pi (via shutdowncheck.sh script) will detect this pulse and issue a reboot. The button LED blinks for up to 1 minute while waiting for the reboot to complete (and BOOTOK signal to become HIGH again).
To SHUTDOWN the Pi you have to hold the button pressed for at least 2 seconds. A shutdown sequence then begins. While a shutdown is in progress the button LED will pulse at a slower rate. When shutdown is complete, the button LED pulses faster waiting for all Pi activity to stop and finally cuts power off.

There is also a “Forced-Shutdown” mode that requires you have to hold the button pressed for about ~10 seconds to cutoff power regardless of any other conditions. This may be needed when the Pi is in an unknown state or has freezed.

Here’s a nice example of how a user integrated ATXRaspi in a home media center.

Read more.

998Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!

Join 4,000+ makers on Adafruit’s Discord channels and be part of the community! http://adafru.it/discord

Learn “How Computers Work” with Bill Gates, Ladyada and more – From Code.org !

CircuitPython in 2018 – Python on Microcontrollers is here!

Have an amazing project to share? Join the SHOW-AND-TELL every Wednesday night at 7:30pm ET on Google+ Hangouts.

Join us every Wednesday night at 8pm ET for Ask an Engineer!

Follow Adafruit on Instagram for top secret new products, behinds the scenes and more https://www.instagram.com/adafruit/

Maker Business — Prototyping PCBs with Particle, a guide from a pro in the field #makerbusiness

Wearables — From mat to hat

Electronics — Even lower power!

Biohacking — Nectome’s Brain Preservation and Backup Service Plan

Python for Microcontrollers — Scott ([email protected]) on the Amp Hour podcast!

Get the only spam-free daily newsletter about wearables, running a "maker business", electronic tips and more! Subscribe at AdafruitDaily.com !

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DynamicFusion: Reconstruction and Tracking of Non-rigid Scenes in Real-Time

Very cool project out of University of Washington. Check out the full paper here. Via prosthetic knowledge.

Computer vision 3D construction project from the uofwa [University of Washington] can create 3D scans of moving subjects with current commercial depth sensor technology. To understand why this is significant, most approaches currently require the subject to be completely still to be captured accurately and without errors.

Read more.

Tumblr nn2gcdn5A11qav3uso1 540

Join 4,000+ makers on Adafruit’s Discord channels and be part of the community! http://adafru.it/discord

Learn “How Computers Work” with Bill Gates, Ladyada and more – From Code.org !

CircuitPython in 2018 – Python on Microcontrollers is here!

Have an amazing project to share? Join the SHOW-AND-TELL every Wednesday night at 7:30pm ET on Google+ Hangouts.

Join us every Wednesday night at 8pm ET for Ask an Engineer!

Follow Adafruit on Instagram for top secret new products, behinds the scenes and more https://www.instagram.com/adafruit/

Maker Business — Prototyping PCBs with Particle, a guide from a pro in the field #makerbusiness

Wearables — From mat to hat

Electronics — Even lower power!

Biohacking — Nectome’s Brain Preservation and Backup Service Plan

Python for Microcontrollers — Scott ([email protected]) on the Amp Hour podcast!

Get the only spam-free daily newsletter about wearables, running a "maker business", electronic tips and more! Subscribe at AdafruitDaily.com !

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Brady’s fourth TD gives Pats 28-0 lead

Patriots quarterback Tom Brady threw his fourth touchdown pass of the game, a 63-yarder to Donte’ Stallworth, as New England took a 28-0 lead with 9:49 left in the third quarter.

It’s the first game of the season with the Patriots for Stallworth, who was cut by New England during the preseason.

The drive went 74 yards in five plays in 1:05.

Ultimate Texans


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Blog.ehn.nu >Microsoft>MCITP>070-680

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Guide Pass Microsoft 070-680 Practice PDF - Blog.ehn.nu

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While Google Earth had its moment, it’s quite clear that it’s lost momentum over the years due to largely being eclipsed by the features on Google Maps and a clear absence of new developments in 3D visualization. Two years ago a new automated 3D viewing system for buildings and geographical features was implemented to replace the outdated, manually uploaded static 3D models. Now the latest version of Google Earth has jumped lightyears ahead of all that, offering an impressive interface from which to explore the world with an unimaginable precision and level of detail, and with added tools for discovering remote places all around the planet.

The visual upgrade comes accompanied by a set of new features that fan the flames of every Googler’s inner love of exploring, offering more than 20,000 points of interest that you can fly over while viewing related info onscreen. Plus, through an agreement with BBC Earth, there’s a new Voyager section offering more than 50 “guided trips” to discover the magic of all sorts geographic sites enriched with added info, with 360º photos put together with static images and views from the 3D interface. And the number of virtual treks is set to increase each week.

The best thing about the Android app is that it naturally meshes with other Google geolocation services, allowing you to alternate between the aerial and street views, plus share data with Maps to use it as a travel guide or to collect extra info via the Wikipedia layer on the location in question.

At the moment the new version is only available for Android or over Google Chrome, meaning there’s no longer a need to bother with installing the desktop client.

Google Earth for Android on Uptodown [APK] | Download

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Latest news

Why God of War's ferocious but strategic combat is one of the upcoming PS4 epic's core strengths

We put Santa Monica Studio's upcoming epic through its paces, testing its fighting and RPG systems ahead of next month's launch

6 ways Far Cry 5 is re-writing the series' long-running open-world formula

Creative director Dan Hay tells us how he and the team have worked to re-envision the series’ core ideals

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Effective Reading Scaffolding Strategies for Social Studies

Teresa Morrison
Teresa Morrison
8 Nov
Share this article

With the ever-increasing rigor and expectations in reading and comprehending expository text across all grade levels, many teachers often feel overwhelmed when trying to teach content to their striving readers. So, what’s a hard working and dedicated teacher to do? Try a few scaffolding strategies, of course!

When we first think of the word “scaffolding,” what immediately comes to mind? Whether or not you are an educator, you may first think of construction scaffolding–tall ladders and structures outside of buildings to help construction workers safely access and mediate high and seemingly dangerous areas. Without those construction scaffolds, their work might be impossible! Just as construction workers have scaffolds to help them gain access high areas, educators can also employ (educational) scaffolds to help their students gain access to social studies content.

Request a sample of Pearson High School Social Studies today.

Let’s explore a few effective ways that a social studies teacher (YOU!) can impact the lives of her/his striving students by helping them mediate their text through reading scaffolds. It is imperative that you use the gradual release of responsibility (I do, we do, you do) when implementing any type of new strategy with students.

  1. Pre-teach Vocabulary: By frontloading domain specific vocabulary before you begin a new chapter or lesson, you are helping students preview potentially challenging words and terminology. Then, when they see the word/s in their text, they’ll have an understanding of its/their meaning. Pre-teaching vocabulary might include creating word cards with each word printed on one card (pronounce each word for students, have students sound out the words and pronounce them with you, discuss known word parts, make predictions, create student-friendly definitions, place the word cards in a bag and have students draw one and pantomime what the word means {kinesthetic muscle memory and visual}); and providing pictures or illustrations that exemplify the word. You can also encourage students to draw their own pictures for key terms that are vital to their understanding of the word. Students can reference and practice their words via the word cards during and after reading, as well.
  1. Chunk Text: Full chapters and page long text in thick textbooks can often intimidate striving or reluctant readers. Help students better manage the text that they are reading, by chunking the text into smaller amounts of reading. You can easily chunk by paragraphs or columns. Model for students how to use a marker or a plain sheet of paper to block out the text on the page that they aren’t reading. This helps students to retain their focus as they are reading the chunked text. Reading a little bit of text, then checking for understanding through a quick comprehension, connection or reflection question along the way aids in overall retention and successful completion of reading tasks.
  1. Graphic Organizers: Who doesn’t love a great graphic organizer? Using graphic organizers are effective tools to help students organize their thinking and “hold their thinking” while reading, summarizing or planning for writing assignments or project-based learning and activities. When you first introduce a graphic organizer, it is often helpful to fill in a few of the areas for students and leave other areas on the organizer blank for students to complete. This is scaffolding at its best!

Keep in mind that reading scaffolds, just like in construction, should be temporary. The whole point in using them is to provide help, guidance and structure. But, in order for our students to flex and build strong their reading comprehension muscles, those scaffolds should be slowly pulled away so that our students are self sufficient in their learning and achievement.

What are some ways that you’ve been able to help support your students’ learning through effective reading scaffolding strategies?

Request a sample of Pearson High School Social Studies today.

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We’re Not There Yet: Images, Scripts and Redirects Are Slowing Down the Top Mobile Travel Sites

December 16, 2015 — by Kent Alstad3

It was inevitable: travelers are utilizing their smartphones to research and make arrangements for their trips, as smartphone and data network penetration continues its inexorable climb toward establishing a truly “mobile-first” world.

This will increase as a shared experience among the world’s travelers, with a quarter of the globe’s online bookings for the $2.36 trillion dollar travel and hospitality industry expected to occur via mobile devices by 2019, according to projections by U.K-based market research firm Euromonitor. The United States is ahead of the curve for mobile-based bookings, with half expected to originate on smartphones by 2016.

It makes sense: travel is, by its very definition, already a mobile experience, and now you can research your trip and handle bookings from hotels to planes, trains and automobiles. All this can be done from a device you always have on your person.

But is the Performance of Mobile Travel Sites Going Anywhere?

And yet, while the industry is working to facilitate travelers’ desires to be able to handle details on their smartphones, the user experience is suffering due to poor mobile website performance practices.

We wanted to gauge the real-world experience of modern travelers, so utilizing some of the most popular smartphones, we tested in November 2015 the performance of the top 100 mobile travel sites as ranked by information technology company SimilarWeb, calculated by data aggregation and based on traffic and engagement levels.

Tested sites were accessed using actual mobile devices connected to the AT&T 4G/LTE data network. Each tested site was loaded three times on the iPhone 5 and 6 as well as the Samsung Galaxy S5 and S6. The data from the median of the three test runs was used to report and compare site performance for the following metrics for comparison:

  • Load Time (Fully Loaded)
  • Time to First Byte
  • Start Render
  • Requests (Fully Loaded)
  • Bytes In/Total Size in KB
  • Content Breakdown by MIME Type
  • Redirects

As we’ve discovered in testing leading ecommerce sites for our last annual State of the Union for Mobile Ecommerce Performance, the usual suspects were in play: page bloat, increasing complexity, image size and too many redirects. These all have an effect on latency and slow down page load times.

Key Findings from our Report

Compared with typical ecommerce sites, travel sites for mobile typically are more form-heavy, meaning the initial elements presented are fields for data entry, as opposed to rotating pictures of destinations.

Therefore, the page composition of these mobile travel sites will generally differ from the mobile retail sites we’ve previously tested, although there are plenty of opportunities to clean up the slow sites on an internal basis to increase the performance and improve the user experience.

IMPORTANT: These tests are not intended to be taken as performance reviews of the devices we tested on. Rather, they demonstrate how broadly performance can vary across mobile devices. Site owners need to be aware that this degree of variance exists among their users so that they can prioritize performance testing their pages across a range of devices and connection types.

Among the top 100 mobile travel websites:

  • On all four devices, median load times exceeded the four-second target: The median page took 6.7 seconds to load on the iPhone 6 and 5.5 seconds to load on the iPhone 5. On the Samsung Galaxy S5, the median load time was 5.7 second, with the S6 scoring the lowest median load time at 4.1 seconds.
  • While the median page had 62 requests (such as images, CSS, and JavaScript files), 18 percent of the mobile pages we tested contained 100+ resource requests. Each of these requests incurs latency, which adds up to slower load times.
  • As a percentage of the sites’ total size, images accounted for about a quarter of a page’s weight on average (22.8 percent). Ten percent of the sites had images making up over half their size, going up as high as 86 percent.
  • The mobile travel sites exceeded the ideal total payload of under one megabyte, averaging 1.2 MBs.
  • The median number of redirects was 8, with 43 percent of the sites including over 10 redirects.
  • In general, the slowest sites had more JavaScript requests than the fastest sites, taking a performance hit from third-party trackers. The average JavaScript payload was around 368k.

10 Slowest Sites (anonymized)

Looking at the slowest sites, they generally (though not in every case) had both more requests and larger footprints.

Another general area of woe? Third-party JavaScripts and trackers/analytics tools.

While it’s understandable that the industry would want as much customer data as possible in order to be responsive in its marketing efforts, data trackers increase a site’s weight and up the number of data fetches tasks, leading to slowdown.

Consider this section from the waterfall of one of the slowest sites:

Source: All waterfall charts from

The items in yellow are highlighted as “warnings.” They are related to ad networks and analytics with undesired redirects. The sum total of all the JavaScript elements (with 110 requests), is 60.2 percent of the mobile page’s weight.

(Note: "MIME types" are used to denote the type of information that a file contains, such as .html meaning an HTML page) Source:

Conclusion and Takeaways

For mobile travel and hospitality site owners, the performance hit taken by third-party trackers and analytics tools needs to be weighed against the benefit of the insights gained. Is it worth it?

The abandonment rate for the industry as a whole is around 41 percent across all websites, desktop and mobile included. Anything that can be done to smooth out the experience for users can help combat that.

We recommend you:

1. Consolidate JavaScript and CSS

Consolidating JavaScript code and CSS styles into common files that can be shared across multiple pages should be a common practice. This technique simplifies code maintenance and improves the efficiency of client-side caching. In JavaScript files, be sure that the same script isn’t downloaded multiple times for one page. Redundant script downloads are especially likely when large teams or multiple teams collaborate on page development.

2. Minify Code

Minification, which is usually applied to scripts and style sheets, eliminates non-essential characters such as spaces, newline characters, and comments. A correctly minified resource is used on the client without any special processing, and file-size reductions average about 20%. Script and style blocks within HTML pages can also be minified. There are many good libraries available to perform minification, often along with services to combine multiple files into one, which additionally reduces requests.

3. Defer Loading and Executing Non-Essential Scripts

Many script libraries aren’t needed until after a page has finished rendering. Downloading and parsing these scripts can safely be deferred until after the onload event. Defer as much as possible until after onload instead of needlessly holding up the initial rendering of the important visible content on the page.

The script to defer could be your own or, often more importantly, scripts from third parties. Poorly optimized scripts for advertisements, social media widgets, or analytics support can block a page from rendering, sometimes adding precious seconds to load times.

Following these and other best practices can help increase the user engagement for your site. Remember, even a basic-looking page of entry fields can be too slow for users.

You don’t want them asking, “Are we there yet?

Get the Report: 2015 State of the Union: Mobile Performance of the Top Travel Industry Sites

Kent Alstad

Kent is an entrepreneur, software architect, and technology innovator. Before taking his former role of VP Acceleration at Radware, Kent was CTO at Strangeloop Networks, where he was instrumental in authoring all of Strangeloop’s issued and pending patents. Prior to helping create Strangeloop, he served as CTO at IronPoint Technology. Kent also founded Eclipse Software, a Microsoft Certified Solution Provider, which he sold to Discovery Software in 2001. In more than 25 years of professional development experience, Kent has served as architect and lead developer for successful production solutions with The Active Network, ADP, Lucent, Microsoft, and NCS. ”Port View”, an application Kent architected for the Port of Vancouver, was honoured as ”Best Administrative System” at the 1996 Windows World Open Competition.

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Posts filtered on Tag

Tag: Old Ballard

New old Ballard

Fifty years in the same house in Ballard used to make for history, now it practically describes me.

The Viking (1950-2013)

My former neighbor was a regular for a while, part of the “coffee club.” What I remember is looking for him in the tavern when I was locked out of the house. Also that my neighbor always wanted to


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Head-on collision between Honda and dump truck

A man was flown to Harborview Medical Center after a head-on collision Wednesday evening in Covington.

The man hit a dump truck in the 24800 block of 180th Avenue Southeast and had to be extricated from his Honda Civic. The dump truck driver was not injured, authorities said.

Authorities did not say what caused the collision.

Firefighters stayed at the scene to deal with motor oil that leaked from the vehicles into a drainage ditch. A private contractor was contacted to remove the oil, Kent Fire Department spokesman Kyle Ohashi said.

Casey McNerthney


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Oakland man charged with murder in shooting death near former Occupy Oakland encampment

A man police believe was responsible for a November 10 shooting death at Frank Ogawa Plaza in downtown Oakland near what was then the Occupy Oakland encampment has been arrested and charged with murder, according to a bulletin released Friday afternoon by Oakland Police Department spokesperson Cynthia Perkins.

Norris Terrell of Oakland was arrested by Lexington, Kentucky police on Sunday, according to the announcement. On Thursday, Terrell was charged with one count of murder and one count of shooting into an inhabited dwelling, in the killing of Kayode Foster.

Read more of the story by Ryan Phillips at Oakland North.

Connect with Oakland North on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.

Oakland North


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Musk A Love

Yes Alice, there is a Musky Fly Fishing World Championships, and this year it’s in Tennessee. We here at SCOF are proud to be a part of this inaugural tournament populated by the mad max types of the fly fishing community. We’re not sure if this many Musky fisherman have ever congregated anywhere outside of Wisconsin, but we’re imagining it’s gonna be a lot like the first time all the little people got together on the set of the Wizard of Oz…bonkers. Look for a gonzo style feature in the next issue recounting all the ins and outs of this first Musky Fly Fishing World Championships. Does anybody know where I can borrow some wire leader and an Amish outfit? We’ve got a tournament to fish. Click here for all the tournament details.

– dave


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Wooden Pool Deck Built in Westville, Durban

Wooden pool deck builder durban
Click to enlarge

This wooden deck was built in Westville, Durban in September 2013. There are two sections to the wooden deck, one being the deck around the pool and the other being the deck above the pool where the water flows back into the pool and the pot plants are housed.

One way of decking around a pool is to lay all the deck boards the same way. What this results in is two sides of the deck having end grain facing the water and the other two having face grain facing the water. Seeing as water likes to be absorbed through the end grain of wood, it makes sense to try to keep as much end grain away from the water as possible. This will slow down the rotting process to a large degree and you will get many more years use out of your deck. Besides, in my opinion, it looks better this way.

It is more time-consuming however because when you are laying the deck boards you need to run them to the corner at 45º. You also need to make sure that your joists or batons you have laid prior to laying your deck boards are exactly 45º because if this is out then the point in the deck surface where the boards meet will also not be 45º and will result in one side of the deck being wider than the other. So lay your joists very carefully to ensure this problem does not occur because having to re-do work a second time takes a lot longer than planning it correctly the first time. If the substructure is perfect, or near perfect,

Wooden pool deck builder durban
Click to enlarge

then cutting the deck boards for the join will be easy as you can set the saw to 45º and cut. But check as you are going that it is not running out because a slight deviation in the joist will result in the cut needing to be a few degrees bigger or smaller than 45º. If need be shim the side of the joist to keep your join 45º.

Wooden pool deck builder durban
Click to enlarge

The pot plants that you see on the raised deck are actually part of a water feature below the deck and we have decked around them. They do not sit on top and the water flows down the pots back under the deck and into the pool. There is also a rim feature below the front face of the raised deck so that water flows into the pool from under the deck. Trap doors are a necessity in pool decks, as one often needs to gain access to pipes and filters below the deck surface.

There is a rim or fascia board attached to the inside of the joists or deck boards to complete it by covering the gaps below the deck itself. This should always be set as high as possible to avoid as much contact with water as possible, but yet still cover and substructure below the deck boards.

This deck was finished using our normal Timberlife Satin Wood Base 28 with a Mahogany tint, but because the deck boards were a bit lighter in colour to other decks we have done it resulted in a more reddish / orange colouration.

Wooden pool deck builder Durban
Click to enlarge

This deck totalled about 50m². It is always deceiving to try to estimate a pool deck size as it always looks a bit smaller than it actually is. It is always a good idea to measure it accurately before starting to avoid a budget over run.

For a free no obligation quote please contact us on 031 – 762 1795 or use the contact form below.

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Monthly Archive for March, 2014

: March, 2014

The Goodguys show at Pleasanton — the art of the American automobile.

It’s really a feast for the auto-addicted eye: spread over a field at the Alameda County (Calif.) Fairgrounds this past weekend were several hundred wildly-to-mildly-painted cars that, for the most

A 1963 Jaguar sedan — it still looks cool, even fifty years later.

If you’re a regular reader of, you know they have some tasty cars that have been culled from worldwide items listed on eBay, Craigslist and other car-selling sites. Sometimes, there

Awesome watercolor animation about… VW Vanagons

Bus, Vanagon, Transporter, Type-2, Westy, T3, whatever you call it, if you have ever owned a Volkswagen Vanagon or its camper brother, the Westfalia, you likely have a soft spot in your heart for the

The Goodguys All-American car show in California this weekend.

They really are examples of refined sculpture more than just cars. We’re talking about the cars that will be at the Goodguys 32d All-American Get-Together in Pleasanton, Calif., this weekend (March 29

2014 Lexus LX 570 — a comfy, if dated SUV that will take you across the desert. And bring you back.

After a week’s driving around in a Lexus LX 570, a behemoth of an offroad, on-boulevard luxo barge that cossets you and seven passengers to the Nth degree, I’m reminded, a bit wanly, of the ad slogan

Big auction coming up in Monaco — race cars, old Ferraris, a 1954 Bentley.

The kind of cars you find at auctions frequently depends on where the auction is. On May 10 (two weeks before the Monaco Grand Prix), RM Auctions will be holding an auction in Monaco that promises a

It’s still SUV season — and here are GM’s humongous offerings

Writing this from rural Maine, I can look out the window, past the indoor/outdoor thermometer showing 18 degrees, and see a field of snow about a foot deep. The driveway still has ice and snow, mixed

2014 Toyota Highlander — churning comfortably through the blizzard.

It doesn’t happen that often, but when it does it’s glorious. I suppose that can be applied to many, many activities, but in this case it was a matchup between a new all-wheel-drive Toyota Highlander

Used cars — the good and the bad, according to Consumer Reports.

It’s an arguable axiom of the car-buying world that if you have the money, buying a new car is better than buying a used car, unless, of course, you find a used 1955 Mercedes-Benz Gullwing in a shed

Is the Elio three-wheeler the answer to urban traffic woes?

Elio Motors is now taking refundable pre-order reservations for their American-built three-wheeler, but is this really the answer to your urban traffic woes? The manufacturer claims 84 m.p.h. highway,


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Posts filtered on Tag

Tag: new movies

We built this city on Rock and Roll!

Guys.  Seriously.  You may want to sit down for this news.  Are you sitting?  Are you ready?  Okay. They have turned Rock of Ages into a movie. Yes, I know, shock, awe, and amazement.  Are you as

Can you hear the call?

Vampires’ midnight bites are a thing of the past. Embrace the world of the Werewolf! Okay, lots of buzz going on right now as you’d expect with the release of The Wolfman on Feb. 12. Wolfman, a 1941

Another hit movie like “The Notebook?”

From Nicholas Sparks, author of “The Notebook,”  comes a new romantic drama movie. “Dear John,” premiering Feb. 5, is about army enlistee John Tyree who falls in love with Savannah Lynn Curtis while


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Exclusive Interview: Ashley Roberts At Die Hard Premiere

Bruce Willis may be the main man in the new Die Hard movie, but it was I’m A Celebrity star Ashley Roberts who brightened up the red carpet at the UK premiere in a lemon yellow dress. Bruce did not bother to stop to talk to fans or journalists outside the premiere and that meant he was booed. In contrast, Ashley made time for her fans and they loved her for it.

She showed she was really down to earth, just like how she appeared on the TV in the jungle, as she posed for photos and answered questions. Here’s a mini interview containing questions about skating, her love life and fashion:

QS: Did you know that Declan Donnelly fancied you when you were in the jungle?

ASHLEY: ‘I think everything happens for a reason and when my man comes along, he comes along. I’d like to get to know Dec better. It would be nice to go for a drink and a chat.”

QS: How do you cope with judge Jason Gardiner?

ASHLEY: ‘“It’s colourful and it’s fun. I think I’ve officially become the buffer — inbetween Jason Gardiner and Karen Barber. They fight and I’m in the middle.’

QS: Can you ice skate now?

ASHLEY: ‘I’m not on the ice everyday but it’s giving me that itch to get out there. I just see them out there performing and I’m like, ‘I want to get out there and do a performance’.

QS: Where has better shops – LA or London?

ASHLEY: ‘I shop wherever I can. So I might get a top in London and where it with American jeans and shoes I found in Europe. I love fashion.’

Ashley is a girl after our own hearts. She definitely made the premiere more fun and I can’t wait to see her on Dancing On Ice over the coming weeks.

Love Zoex

8th February 2013
Written by Zoe Griffin

Posted by: Lanie Strop 8 April 2013

Walter Bruce Willis (born March 19, 1955), known professionally as Bruce Willis, is a German-born American actor, producer, and musician. His career began in television in the 1980s, most notably as David Addison in Moonlighting (1985–1989) and has continued both in television and film since, including comedic, dramatic, and action roles. He is well known for the role of John McClane in the Die Hard series, which were mostly critical and uniformly financial successes. He has also appeared in over sixty films, including box office successes like Pulp Fiction (1994)…

Take a look at all of the most current content at our homepage


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B-list means first class on Alaska airlines

There’s nothing like seeing some mid-level celebs while flying to L.A. from Hollywood North, which is what us Vancouverites like to call our fair city when discussing our film industry. Upon stepping into the Alaska airlines flight from Vancouver [mbv] to L.A. I was surprised to see Michelle Trachtenberg (Buffy’s younger sister and the girl who slept with Keith on Six Feet Under), leaning over her seat talking loudly about her BlackBerry.

[Insert lewd joke here].

She’s in Vancouver to film an not very promising film called Black Christmas [tvi].

I missed seeing Mickey Rooney, who apparently was also in the good seats on the plane heading from YVR to LAX. Rooney was flying down to L.A. to look confussed by Jon Stewart’s jokes at the Oscars. At least I’m told it was Mickey Rooney, some in the group I’m travelling with hinted that it might have been Mickey Rourke. Goodness knows why anyone would be confussed between the two.

In true star style neither had to wait with the rest of us for our bags to be offloaded, instead limo drivers picked their bags up for them.

Edit: Changed Andy Rooney to Mickey Rooney to better match up with reality, and to make the post make some sort of sense.

2 Replies to “B-list means first class on Alaska airlines”

  1. Um, do you mean Mickey Rooney? Not that they would be confused either, but it would make much more sense to form a joke out of that and Mickey Rourke, wouldn’t it?

Comments are closed.


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Care to help on a humanitarian project?

I’ve got a project for you if you have the spare moment to assemble some items to help a young man give back to the community as part of his quest to obtain “Eagle Scout” rank. Cody Duncan is a neat kid, I have known him since he and my daughter were in kindergarten together. Cody is working to collect items to help his church with their helping the poor in the community. Good cause, great to see people in the community working to make things better for all of us.

The letter he sent me about the project after the jump.

Cody Duncan
Boy Scout Troop 141
Eagle Scout Project
Donation Request Letter
September 2007

Thank you for taking the time to read this letter. My name is Cody Duncan of Boy Scout Troop 141. I am asking for donations for my Eagle Scout Project. My Project is collecting the items for the First Christian Church of Monrovia which co-charters my Troop with the parents of my Troop. The First Christian Church offers a lunchtime meal and showers each Monday, Wednesday and Friday at the Church in the Fellowship Hall. This is called the Matthew 25 Project Benevolence Ministry. Please see the brochure enclosed. The items collected are to be used by those less fortunate in the local area that come for food and showers. This should help the Church as well as improve the health of these individuals. My goal is to collect 100 minimum of each item on my list, 1800 items in all. Any size or brand is ok. Hotel toiletries are good.

1. Blankets New or Used but in Good Condition
2. Bath Towels New or in Good Condition
3. Washcloths New or in Good Condition
4. Bath Soap (Liquid or bar)
5. Shampoo
6. Hair Conditioner
7. New Hairbrushes
8. New Combs
10. Toothpaste
11. Toothbrush
12. Deodorant
13. Disposable Razor
14. Shaving Cream
15. Men’s New Underwear
16. Men’s New Socks
17. Women’s New Underwear
18. Women’s New Socks

People can help with my Eagle Scout Project by donating cash or checks and I will buy items on the list with the money from wholesale sources where I can get more for the money than buying retail. People or groups can collect items from the list and donate it to me directly. I would be glad to pick up items from your home or you may drop them off at my house or at the First Christian Church. If you know contacts in the local hotel business or a retail store that might help me I would greatly appreciate your leads. Please send cash or check donations to: Cody Duncan 328 E. Foothill Blvd. Monrovia, CA 91016. Please write Eagle Project in the subject line. You may also drop off items at the First Christian Church located at 147 W. Palm Ave. at the corner of Primrose & Palm, the big white Church across the street from Library Park band shell or you may call me at (number redacted) for donation pickups. I would greatly appreciate your help. Thank you for your support.

Cody Duncan.
Boy Scouts of American Troop 141

Thanks for reading. I redacted the phone number as it is their home phone and doubt they wanted all of LA to have it. Feel free to drop me a note if you are interested in talking with Cody.


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Things have been rolling along in GNOME Shell land.  We’ve been experimenting and evolving the design as we go.

If you were reading this and this carefully you may have noticed links to a design document for the Shell.  I’ve just put out a long overdue update for that document.

Please read the GNOME Shell Design PDF and let us know what you think.  Higher resolution versions of some of the figures used in the document may be found here.  We’ll be adding these to the wiki soon.

Once you’ve read the document please grab the Inkscape SVG mockups and try to make them better.  I’m sure that you can.  My drawing skills are not exactly legendary.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and seeing your modifications.

As usual find us on IRC #gnome-shell on GimpNet or .

Make sure to try it out too.  It is really easy to use from jhbuild.  See

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 39 Comments

Just leave it on the counter

I’d like to expand a bit on one of the Fedora 12 polish items Matthias already blogged about.  Better Tooltips.

As most of you know, tooltips are the little window-like pop-ups that (hopefully) provide helpful information about a user interface element (widget, control, etc) as you hover over it.  It seems to me they were originally used to provide textual assistance for the case where the user is unsure what a tool will do when activated.  And were particularly useful when the tool had no intrinsic text.  However, since then their use has expanded and become more generalized.  They are used for quite a few different things today and can contain more than simple text.

Now granted, you have probably never been consciously annoyed by tooltips.  More likely you haven’t really thought a lot about them at all.  But that doesn’t imply there is no room for improvement.  I spent a few hours examining my own interactions with tooltips and I came up with a few things that bothered me.  These basically fall into the categories of: color, shape, and position.

The issues with color and shape are fairly obvious.  Yellow! boxes!  right out of the mid 90s.  The issues with positioning are a bit more subtle.

Notice how the tooltip:

  • Obscures what you are looking at
  • Gets all up in your shit
  • Does not appear in a stable position
  • Appears to be more closely associated with the pointer position than the thing that is providing the tip

How about something like…

Thanks Matthias.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | 31 Comments

Blending and Transparency

Things are brewing in the Fedora Desktop community.  Red Hat designers, engineers, and many active Fedora community members have been working hard to make the GNOME user experience great.  Some enthusiasts may notice a bunch of this work showing up in Karmic today (congratulations to our friends on another fine release!).  Though of course we’d encourage you to check out Fedora 12 in a couple weeks too.  We are sure Fedora 12 is going to be our best release yet.

We’ve also been thinking a lot about how we need to improve and where we need to go – and specifically, how we can better serve your needs and improve your experience.  Clearly, we have a lot we need to change and there are many challenging decisions ahead.  But it is my personal promise to you that we will get there and it will be awesome.  Consider this a declaration of intent… to be awesome.

We know what we do well.  We drive innovation upstream.  We have some of the most trusted and talented people around and we are tirelessly producing amazing stuff.  Every day I feel honored to be listed among the rockstars on the Fedora Desktop Planet.  Though sadly, it is our fault that so few know what we’re up to.  And we aim to improve this.  We hope to improve the transparency of our activities.

We know that many of you feel that we’ve been catering to the most vocal members of the enthusiast community and ignoring your needs.  We aim to improve this.  We want to raise our standards and your expectations.

We are one of the world’s most trusted advocates for software freedom.  Free Software runs in our blood here.  But we know that freedom is not enough.

We can’t do any of this without your help.  We need your feedback.  What are we doing well?  What are we doing wrong?  What can we do for you?

As with any good partnership the responsibility runs in both directions.  We promise to listen.  But we also hope that the community is up to the challenge of providing high quality – high signal – feedback.  We need real partners in this endeavour.

So please join us.  Show up, and be awesome.

Follow our latest shenanigans on twitter (as fedoradesktop) or our Planet feed.  If you are a Fedora Desktop user, share our goals, and are an active upstream contributor or contribute to the Fedora Desktop user experience and you’d like to be added to the planet, please let me know.

Or, as always, join us in #fedora-desktop on GimpNet.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 5 Comments

GNOME Boston Summit

Things are underway here at the GNOME Boston Summit.   After a quick introduction we took proposals for sessions.  Owen is posting a schedule to the wiki now.  We’re going to be posting regular updates to our Twitter feed.  We’re also hanging out on IRC in #boston on GimpNet.  So, feel free to come on down and talk to us in person – or join us online.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on GNOME Boston Summit

One of the things Jeremy Perry and I have been working on in the GNOME Shell design is a way to make application launching work better.  You can see some of this in the following mockup:

Activities Overview Concept

Activities Overview Concept (drawn by Jeremy)

As you can see there.  We need short “brand” names for the Favorite apps.

So, in preparation for GNOME Shell, a few of us have been looking into how we should handle application names in GNOME 2.28 – since GNOME 2.28 is primarily a prepatory release for GNOME 3.0.  We need to make a decision on this soon.

First, some background.

What is a name?

Applications, like many things, have a few different names associated with them.  Such as:

  • Unique Identifier — rhythmbox.desktop
  • Generic name — Media Library
  • Brand Name — Rhythmbox

This is analogous to what we find in the consumer pharmaceutical world:

  • Chemical Name — 7-chloro-1,3-dihydro-1- methyl-5-phenyl-2H-1,4-benzodiazepin-2-one
  • Generic Name* — diazepam
  • Brand Name — Valium

Note: I’m ignoring differences between INN, BAN, USAN for this.  And also ignoring the fact that generic drugs are usually exact copies of the same chemical substance.
Also see:  this and this.
For both drugs and applications, generic names are meant to be a substitute for a brand name.  They are not classifications, categories, or descriptions.  For example, an alternate for Tylenol may be called acetaminophen / paracetamol but it belongs to the categories of analgesic and antipyretic.

In the open source world, our application naming system is described in a nearly universally adopted specification.  However, the specification does not address how these names can and should be used.  Nor does it address how a name should relate to an application icon.  These are things that we (GNOME) must decide.

How are names used?

Let’s go back to our drug example again to think about how these names are used.  At least in the US, Tylenol is like Firefox (ha, wishes!) in that it is a very widely recognized brand among consumers.  So, for our purposes let’s suppose a new relatively unknown brand of orally administered analgesic: Livernol.  There are a few different ways this name is used:

  1. Local Pharmacy

    Kelly goes to the store with the intention of finding something to ease her headache.  She probably won’t know the name Livernol, she may ask the pharmacists if they can recommend something like Tylenol or that can help with headaches.  They may hand her Livernol and she can confirm from the descriptions on the label that it is will help with headaches and may be compared with Tylenol.

  2. Medicine Cabinet

    Kelly has another headache (she is a designer who works with open source software).  She staggers to the bathroom and grabs the bottle of Livernol on the shelf.  No need to read the descriptions since she knows what it is.  However, she may consult the documentation if she has forgotten how to use it.

  3. Talking to Experts

    Gosh darn headaches won’t stop.  Kelly goes to the doctor.  She tells the doctor that she gets headaches frequently and the analgesic she takes doesn’t seem to help.  The doctor asks her what analgesic and then looks looks up the chemical name and then details about it.  He informs her that this isn’t the best choice for her since it doesn’t treat her specific problem and it has a number of unwanted side effects.

  4. Online Pharmacy

    Now she is looking for something else on an online store since she didn’t find it in the local one (or didn’t trust the recommendations).  The doctor scribbled on a note “napro…” something.  Oh here it is, the store generic Naproxen Sodium.  Label descriptions and reviews confirm it is good for severe headaches.

[Public service announcement: consult your doctor to make sure Tylenol is right for you]

So what does this have to do with software?

In GNOME Shell we want to handle the above scenarios separately.

  1. When looking for something new you can either browse or search through a rich set of information
  2. When you already know something you want to optimize for easy access
  3. When you need help or just want to share information you need to be able to talk about it unambiguously
  4. When you don’t find what you need on your computer, it should be simple to find and access more online.

Matthew Paul Thomas has discussed some specifics of naming on the GNOME development mailing list before.  I agree with what he says there.

So what rules govern the use of Name and GenericName?

Proposed guidelines:

  • When Name is the same as GenericName, the GenericName should be removed
  • The desktop entry Name value, application menu (for GNOME shell), window titlebar (for GNOME 2.x), documentation, and about dialog should all use the same name
  • The desktop entry Name value should be the brand name unless the application is a simple (single purpose), core GNOME built-in and does not have an established external brand identity (web site, online help, etc)
  • Brand names should be considered carefully but can’t be relied on to indicate functionality in many languages
  • Application icons should supplement names of all kinds and are critical to recognizing already known applications

  • It doesn’t make sense for Dictionary or Calculator (GNOME is implied) to be separately branded.
  • It is fairly clear that something like Firefox or Rhythmbox is branded.
  • Totem which actually do bit more than the generic name implies (It is a little strange that Movie Player plays songs and youtube – according to the description) but the name isn’t known outside of GNOME for the most part.
  • gedit is tough because the name doesn’t “read” well and it is a pretty core component. However, it does have an external presence and the authors feel it should be called gedit.

That’s nice but how do we handle this in the current panel?

Frederic Peters made a nice proposal to XDG list to add another entry to the spec to over the case where the two names are used in menus.  The primary reason for this was to try to avoid problem translating the combined use of Name and GenericName.  I was initially in favor of this approach.  However, the proposal was not well received.  After discussing the proposal with Owen Taylor, Matthias Clasen, and others I don’t think we can rely on this solution for a few reasons.

  • We will only need this solution in GNOME for a single release.  It isn’t required for the GNOME Shell.
  • It will take a significant amount of time for all desktop files in existence to be updated to use the new key.
  • We will need to create a fallback solution for desktop files that don’t have FullName.
  • It isn’t clear that translations should fundamentally alter the design of the menu entry layout.
  • It isn’t clear how you can do much better with a translated key than we can with a programmatic layout (given the constraints of a menu and that we don’t want to combine the strings).
  • We aren’t trying to concatenate the names.  The names are substitutes for one another – so articles and grammatical combinations are not needed.
  • There seems to be tepid support for programmatically adding both Name and GenericName to the GNOME menu items using a translated format string i18n(“%1$s – %2$s”) or similar
  • Using a separator isn’t ideal but then the menus are just terrible interfaces for launching anyway
  • After actually trying out the approach in the menus – it doesn’t look that bad

So, concretely, what do we need for 2.28?

  1. We need to patch the panel to support showing both Name and Generic Name to workaround the fact that menus are very poor ways to discover new things.
  2. We need to fix a lot of our desktop files to use Name and GenericName correctly:  GNOME Goaltracker bug, Fedora wiki page.
  3. Consider renaming applications that have really poor names.
  4. Ensure that application names perform well in GNOME Shell

I will bring this up on the GNOME desktop development list.  Discussion should happen there.

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Just because a tool exists that allows you to do something does not mean it is the right thing to do.

Sometimes we realize it was not worth doing in the first place.

Tobacco Smoke Enema Kit

Tobacco Smoke Enema Kit

Sometimes we realize there are better ways to accomplish the same goal.

Olden Shower

Olden Shower

And so it is with widget tool kits as well.

I urge you to avoid using the GtkProgressBar‘s dreadful activity-mode.  You know the one – where the “progress” bar pulses from side to side and back again.

If possible, figure out a way to estimate the duration of an action so you can use the progress bar for what it is designed for.  If you can’t then maybe something like an activity spinner/throbber is more appropriate.  Code that simply calls gtk_progress_bar_pulse very likely needs to get fixed.  We should probably update our Guidelines too.

Unless you have an Anamorphic Equalizer please don’t pulse all over my screen.

(I really wanted to include a Dead Ringers reference but it didn’t quite get the same point across)

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Getting the Message

If you are lucky enough to be with us in tropical Las Palmas and attended Owen’s keynote today you saw a preview of some of the new ideas we’ve been toying with for the GNOME Shell.  One of these concepts, that we think should be pretty fun, is what we’ve been calling the Message Tray.

Jeremy helped me put together a nice animated mockup of what it may look like.  Check it out!  Or you don’t have the magic for that format, you can check out the stills.

Concept design for the shell - click for a demo

This concept builds on an idea that we discussed at the GNOME UX Hackfest last fall and is informed by a variety of prior art and the research of Eric Horvitz and others.

Basically, the HCI literature is full of studies that have found that messaging (in the broadest sense) accounts for a significant percentage of user task interruptions.  But at the same time, messaging (especially instant messaging) is one of the most important applications for personal computing devices today.  One of the most fun too.  As we connect to an increasing number of information sources and friends, managing disruptions has become a real challenge.  The primary goal of the Message Tray is to provide the user with enough information to quickly assess an event but limit the severity and duration of the preemption.  Another important goal is to allow but not compel the user to respond to the event – again quickly and with limited disruption.  Another side effect of information overload and frequent disruption is that it far too easy to forget what we are doing and what we want to do.  So, the tray also provides an important reminding function for messages that the user has deferred addressing.

More specific goals include:

  • permit the user to stay focused on the primary task
  • provide awareness of new notifications
  • remind for unseen messages
  • direct attention to high priority messages and alerts
  • use an unobtrusive display
  • provide a uniform interface for messages, notifications, and alerts
  • allow the user to control the information display

As you can see from the mockup, the design of the Message Tray supports four modes of operation:

  1. Hidden mode – tray is normally hidden off the bottom of the screen and remains hidden if the user is marked as “busy”
  2. Notification mode – shows a one line summary of the notification or message along with an icon
  3. Summary mode – a peripheral awareness (or low detail) mode showing an icon for each Message Source
  4. Detail mode – an interactive mode showing more detail about each Message Source

One of the major advantages this system will have over any other that I’m aware of is the ability to quickly respond to messages from friends and coworkers without breaking my primary focus or switching away from my current application.  In fact, it becomes much easier to talk about your primary task.  We will be able to integrate chat deeply into the core GNOME experience.  At least for me, and pretty much everyone I know, that will be pretty damn cool.

You can read more about this and the rest of the GNOME Shell design concepts in a document I’ve put together to try to explain it to myself and others.  I should emphasize that this is a living document that we’ll try to keep up-to-date as things evolve.  Check it out and let me know what you think.

If you want to help or become involved in this evolution we’d love to talk to you anytime this week and especially at the GNOME Shell design BoF on Thursday.  Please see Marina’s blog post for some details of that.  Or drop by #gnome-shell on IRC or jump on the mailing list.

Are you a designer?  A messaging and chat expert?  A hacker extraordinaire?  We need you!

Please stay tuned for more previews and design discussions in forthcoming posts.

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The Third Age

(with apologies to Toffler for the title – Third Wave has other connotations these days)

In the early days of personal digital computing things were pretty wild.  After all it was the 70’s and California (where much of the [computing] action was going down) was probably a pretty sweet place to be.  Unfortunately, I only know this second-hand – my parents lived near the Morningstar Commune in Sebastapol.  I digress.  So, maybe it was the drugs, maybe it was the spirit of the time.  But, nevertheless, ideas were – flowing!

Among those ideas are just about everything that we currently use to interact with our computers.  Take a look at Brad Myers’ “A Brief History of Human Computer Interaction Technology” for a retrospective.  Eventually, the drugs wore off.  The experimental 70’s came to an end.

Time to get real and sell, sell, sell – enter the corporate 80’s.  The “Office of the Future” was first sold commercially in 1981 as the Xerox Star.  It used a desktop-metaphor to help make these alien computing devices called PCs comprehensible to the humans.  Yup, just like your desk… sorta.  And then this company you’ve probably never heard of came along and made a product called the Macintosh in 1984.

Ok, so that’s pretty much the entire history of personal computing.  Well, not quite.  There was this sorta major event in 1995 that we still haven’t really recovered from.  Windows 95 / AOL / Netscape brought the internet to the world.  But somewhat surprisingly personal computers didn’t change much.

While the PC operating system world hasn’t really changed, the rest of the industry certainly has.  For example, my new phone (a Palm Pre) is a powerful computer, is a powerful Linux-based operating system – and it is beautiful, fun, functional, and damn near an entirely desktop-metaphor-free computing experience.  And I get it.

Well, what about this UNIX and Linux thing they talk about on the TV?  Yeah well, remember that wild and crazy time in the 70’s?  Some of those guys were droppin’ ‘C’-tabs and the trip lasted right up until June 2002.  At that point, Linux began to have a fairly viable desktop-metaphor-based environment.  Just like the rest of the PC gang… sorta.  Don’t get me wrong though.  The people who brought us GNOME 2.0 were heroes and visionaries.  Only it was very, very, long overdue and ushered in a new set of challenges.  Seth Nickell discusses this very eloquently in his GNOME Journal opinion piece “Experimental Culture”.  Check it out.

So, what do we do now?  Will GNOME 3.0 be the beginning of our third age, where we move beyond the desktop-metaphor?  Will a new crop of heroes emerge?  So far, things are looking good.  We’re already seeing some great contributions and exciting new ideas from people who are thinking about and working on GNOME Shell.  People who just get it and know that often a great design is anything but conservative.  Interested?  Stop by and say hey.

Join to participate in daily discussions or get help with running, developing, or designing for the GNOME Shell.

PS. Many new technologies go through very similar growth stages before they realize their own “language” or establish their own idioms.  Somewhat canonical and well-studied examples include film, automobiles, and television that initially used metaphors of theater, carriage, and the hearth respectively.  I’d also suggest that it is very human: childhood (play), adolescence (mimicry), adulthood (expression).  There is a fourth age as well – but once again, I digress. :)

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Words are Water

And then the day came,
when the risk
to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk
it took
to Blossom.

– Anaïs Nin

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been working pretty much non-stop to pick up where we left off after the GNOME UX Hackfest and drive the GNOME Shell / 3.0 designs forward.

I’ve been approaching the problem in a way that, I like to think, is consistent with the very strong goal-oriented design heritage of Owen’s team at Red Hat.

No matter what design process you use (personally I like to blend Design Thinking with the OODA Loop) you really ought to carefully observe the environment and history of the problem – both the failures and partial successes, and perhaps most importantly empathize with the innocent victims of related “designs”.

I’ve posted to the wiki a selection of some of the material I’ve been reading.

If you are new to the subject, I highly recommend the first book listed, “Beyond the Desktop Metaphor: Designing Integrated Digital Work Environments.”  Which is basically a collection and summary of a number of the papers that I list below it – but it adds a lot of context that you may find helpful.

The papers are all really interesting.  I encourage you to read as many as you can.  Doing so will almost certainly help you understand some of the design decisions that will come later.  And with any luck motivate you to get involved!

I should also note that I haven’t made any attempt to categorize the papers.  I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine why.  Hint: read Lansdale.

Something I may have missed?  If you have any suggestions please leave a comment.  Thanks.

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We like to talk.  Sometimes we are willing to listen.  But not always.  Sometimes we are busy, sometimes we sleep, and sometimes we are just sick of listening to you.

I’ve tried to look at some of the ways we indicate these things.  There are clearly lots of applications that allow me to set my status.

Some of the terms defined in rfc2778 may help us understand what is going on here.

Immediately we can make a distinction between the status marker (away, busy, etc) and the explanatory text (“eating lunch”).  As Facebook and Twitter have shown, status descriptions aren’t just for away messages any more.  So, let’s consider that separately.

The rest of the status markers boil down to a combination of:

  1. Can receive a message (online/open/available)
  2. I am not here (away)
  3. I don’t want to see messages (busy)
  4. I don’t want you to see me (invisible)

Some notes on the specific applications

As far as personal status goes, “offline” is pretty worthless.  I’m not offline, am I?  I can’t imagine ever needing to tell the system I’m offline.  Sure, the application (agent) may want to tell me that I’m not receiving messages due to network connectivity but that is a bit different.  The fact that the icon metaphors for offline and hidden are the same tells us something.  Why wouldn’t I just quit?

Also, hidden means something is difficult to find or see.  Invisible would have been a much better choice here.

I’m not sure that “away” is that useful.  More on that in a bit.

“Do not disturb” is not my status.  It is an implementation detail.  In any case, you can be “busy” without being such a jerk about it.  Furthermore, it is really not the sender’s fault if I am disturbed – it is the fault of my software.  It should calmly queue up messages for me while I’m busy.  And if I really meant “do not” then I would go invisible.

Also has the same offline and away issues as mentioned above.

Doesn’t seem to have a “busy” state.  Kind of cool to integrate the music into the message but again that is a bit orthogonal to setting the status.

Has the same old offline and away issues.

Doesn’t seem to have a “busy” state.  Has the same old offline and away issues.

Obviously parroting iChat.

Nothing original here.  Some of the same issues mentioned above.  Not sure what’s up with the ellipses.

Bizarro.  It includes some kind of slut-mode (called SkypeMe!) where all your privacy settings are ignored.

Also, unfortunately, it forces people to choose between “away”, “not available”, and “do not disturb”.  And like others has the wacky “offline” status.

Windows Live Messenger

I don’t like it.

Google Mail Chat

Apart from the custom message stuff I think it gets it pretty much right.  Available, busy, invisible.  Away is only set implicitly.  I like it.

Only offers two states: online, offline.  As with Gmail, “away” is set implicitly.  This model works really well for a purely online service.  There is no way anyone would confuse the online and offline options in facebook with those offered in the local computer’s wireless tool.  Also, since facebook is a purely social experience – I would never be busy there.  I also really like how they separate my status, notifications, and friends.  Nice.

Icon Metaphors

I found this post has a nice overview of the icon metaphors used in a selection of IM clients:

(Apart from the obvious mistake that offline is not the same as invisible…)

The post also includes a description of how he uses each of the states and some good recommendations.

Icon Naming

The icon naming specifications provide for the following icons:

user-away: The icon used when a user on a chat network is away from their keyboard and the chat program.

user-idle: The icon used when a user on a chat network has not been an active participant in any chats on the network, for an extended period of time.

user-offline: The icon used when a user on a chat network is not available.

user-online: The icon used when a user on a chat network is available to initiate a conversation with.

Seems like we don’t yet have icons for these.  I think that Lapo Calamandrei and others have been trying to find good metaphors to use.

So What?

Ted and the Ubuntu folks came up with some good ideas.  We tried to expand upon them a bit during the GNOME User Experience Hackfest.  Some random ideas include:

  • Automatically set “away” status when idle
  • “Hush” and queue all notifications when busy
  • Keyboard shortcut for switching to busy status
  • Should have some kind of highly visible indication of status
  • Shouldn’t have to set status for each application separately
  • Have a good way to describe what I’m doing
  • Show my status text on the screensaver lock (

What do you think?  Have some cool or crazy ideas?  Let us know!

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text:
Experiencing Data Access Issue in Azure Portal for Availability Data Type – 06/15 – Resolved

Final Update: Thursday, 15 June 2017 19:10 UTC

We've confirmed that all systems are back to normal with no customer impact as of 06/15, 17:55 UTC. Our logs show the incident started on 06/15, 17:30 UTC and that during the 25 minutesthat it took to resolve the issue 6% of customers experienced issues with loading Application Insights blade and running AppAnalytics queries.
  • Root Cause: The failure was due to throttling issues with backend services in our pipeline.
  • Incident Timeline: 25 minutes - 06/15, 17:30 UTC through 06/15, 17:55 UTC

We understand that customers rely on Application Insights as a critical service and apologize for any impact this incident caused.

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text:
Brian's Blog

…one man's contribution to the Weeeeerly Wild World

Energy, Enthusiasm and Willpower

“Energy is a power which meets with an instant recognition by the mind. What the mind of the average healthy person cannot endure for long in monotony, or, worse still, absolute stagnation. The mind lives by action.” – p.1613, Volume III, Arthur Mee’s Children’s Encyclopedia

Yesterday I endured a day of nothingness. And I wasn’t alone in this. I spent much of the day in Second Life and whist I was there I chatted to some friends. It seemed they were either experiencing the same, or had done so the previous day. Sometimes it seems as if the whole planet is experiencing the same stupor.

Some of us repeatedly went afk for more coffee, I myself did this too, but I realised it wasn’t caffeine that was required but simple willpower. For me, one cup of coffee is enough for the day – I’m pretty sensitive to the stuff – so if one cup doesn’t perk me up then no amount of cups will help.

By the afternoon I still hadn’t got started on anything and I said to a couple of friends: “I’ve had my porridge, lunch, a cup of coffee, and two cups of tea and some biscuits… I think I’m about ready to start now being productive today!…” but it wasn’t to be. In fact I think the stimulant that is caffeine is probably counter-productive when we are lacking the willpower already – when telling myself “I’ll get a cup of coffee and then I’ll get started” vs. “I’ll do this task and then treat myself to a cup of coffee”, the latter is probably more beneficial – it not only omits the procrastination technique, but I think the caffeine assists in unsettling the mind: it will be more easily distracted if it is already behaving as such.

The weird thing was, that while I had been simply sat all day yesterday, pretty much doing nothing, my stomach still managed to growl at me at the usual time as if I had used up all the energy from the previous meal. A sure impossibility. The evidence again here, wasn’t a lack of fuel, but a lack of willpower.

Energy … is not enough. It must be directed to a purpose … What is needed, if energy is to achieve anything, is direction.

We cannot make energy. All we can do is to find it, release it, and direct it.

The athlete is what he is by the use of his energy.

Today has been a different ballgame. I’ve done some work, I’ve planed and hung a pair of closest doors (which I had never done before and first involved watching a couple of professionals show me how on Youtube), I’ve given myself a language lesson (again thanks to Youtube… or rather, danke), I’ve done some reading, and I’ve played piano.

Because I’m self employed and I don’t have a set schedule each day (clients phone me up and book me for times that suit them for example) I can go for a few days without any immediate work to be done – it takes some focus to prevent work from disrupting my whole day when I do have a lot scheduled, just as it is important to not let my non-work stuff get in the way of stuff that earns me a living.

Before I started working for myself over ten years ago I had some time out of work, and I remember fondly of how I kept myself busy and active – I drew up daily schedules and made sure I didn’t spend all of my time in front of the TV. I think I had the added advantage of not having internet access at home – I’m trying my best not to let that be an excuse these days (but it is tough). Now I work but I have no set schedule I can stick to, so it has at times felt like a juggle.

However, just recently I have created for myself a new technique, one that can work around any timetable:

I have some slips of paper and on each I write a task I want/need to spend time on, such as reading, writing, language learning, piano playing, DIY, non-paid work work, chores, etc. I have them in a pile on my desk and I work through each in turn, currently aiming to focus on that one task for an hour. Switching my mind off from other stuff (especially what’s going on online) is very important.

If I have a lot of work one day then I might only manage two or three tasks, but on a day with no work to interrupt me I could potentially get through the whole pile. Once the pile is complete I start again from the beginning.

When we fail to focus our attention on one specific task then a number of issues arise, not to mention things like making mistakes, but in particular with learning or improving a skill, when our attention is distracted or our mind flits from one thing to another, the cognitive processes don’t occur so deeply, kind of like slapping on a thin coat of paint I guess. Also, in the process of ‘multi-tasking’ (which some people like to think they are good at) this flitting between tasks also takes time, perhaps this seems to be only slight, but it adds up. For example, if you spend three hours a day talking to a friend online whilst reading a book and watching TV, honestly, how much of the book and TV programs do you think you’ll remember, and how much will your friend appreciate you for only giving them 1/3rd of your attention?! Or if the TV is not entertaining enough to warrant your full attention for an hour, why not cut it out all together? The concept of one half of your brain being aimed at one task while the other relaxes is a fallacy – to really participate in a task the whole brain needs to be available. Sure, one half of the brain may have regions best suited to creativity and the other to more rational stuff, but where true brain efficiency kicks in is with the neural pathways and links between the two halves, and all regions.

The only thing now is for me to incorporate some acceptable flexibility into my technique of maximising my tiem because some tasks are better suited to certain times, and some, like creative tasks can’t always be called upon at will (looking ahead to the next task can help in this regard, but not so much that it distracts the current task). For example, a task that involves mental learning, I believe, is best done before going to bed so that the mind can continue on that subject, but always studying the same thing before bed means other subjects don’t get the same beneficial access to the subconscious. Also, two such lessons should not be done in close succession – perhaps an hour of learning followed by some exercise is a good rule – that way your mind can mull over the lesson while the body is tended to. In thinking about this method of scheduling it makes me think back to my high school timetable and which lessons followed which, like French after Maths – perhaps not a good idea? And then straight home to do homework, before playing out, and then going to bed?

Why do I bother to try and focus my attention at all? Well, I do all this because I impress myself with how much I can get done when I put my mind to it, when I focus my attention on key things. It is amuses me somewhat that every day can’t be so productive and something within, something that controls my will, seems to dictate if I am to have a lazy day instead of a productive one. It is amusing but at the same time I do tend to beat myself up about this laziness and why it goes from one extreme to another. Or perhaps it is my willpower that waxes and wanes.

Further reading:

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This entry was posted on 25 February, 2015 by in Psychology and tagged , , , , , , , , , .
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text:
New Britain resident takes on Sandy Hook fraud

A woman from New Britain spoke this week before a state committee on safety training and turned it into her personal crusade to take on the alleged fraud about the Sandy Hook school shooting.

The website DC Clothesline reports Maureen Crowley spoke at a public hearing of the Public Safety and Security Committee on “SB 1011: An Act Concerning the Training of Security Personnel.”

During her testimony, carried on CT-N, The Connecticut Network, which airs programs related to state government, Crowley attacked media coverage.

“I was, as some of you here are now, I believed every word out of [CNN anchor] Anderson Cooper’s mouth that day. But once the persecution of Wolfgang Halbig began, I wanted to ask why the Newtown Police would send law enforcement into his home in Florida if they did not have something to hide” Crowley said according to a transcript DC Clothesline provided.

Later in her testuimony, Crowley encouraged the committee to watch a video,  “We Need to Talk About Sandy Hook.”  She said it was zero speculation. well thought-out, and fact based.

Timothy Larson, chairman of the PSSC apparently tired of Crowley’s concerns, interrupted her and ordered her to wrap things up, but she continued on blasting authorities and their actions in the aftermath of the attacks.

“I hope you’ll remember my words today, unlike the ten members of the Connecticut State Police who could not remember how they entered the non-commissioned, non-operating Sandy Hook Elementary School that day! You think broken glass would be memorable, at a school that boasted 34 classrooms when it was K through 5, but no mass evacuation captured on a single police dash cam” Crowley said.

Of the responses below the article one commenter named Michael said “There is only one word to describe the reluctance of people to speak up about the truth of an obvious hoax and that word is fear. Fear of a government that clearly wants people to be afraid of it and not speak up against any action the government takes.”

A video of Crowley’s testimony to the commission is available below…

Comments are closed.

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