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Place of (it’s getting closer to) Joy!

As we have communicated, CRF is moving in the direction of obtaining Place of Joy in Cap Haitien, Haiti. It will be the biggest facility that we have. Currently, it is a sad place where children have been abandoned with no food and no supervision. We are trying to change all that. But Place of Joy is much more than a place with tremendous potential—it is full of children with tremendous potential. Find out how you can help us bring joy back to Place of Joy! This is Jeffery.  He is a 12 year old street kid who one day was riding his bicycle and bumped into a car.  The driver got out of the vehicle and slammed Jeffery on… Read more »

How Close is Your Water?

I’m never been more than a few minutes from clean water where I live in Amarillo. Usually I’m only a few seconds from clean water that is free for me to drink. And yet I hear people complain about water all the time. They think that the free water doesn’t taste good enough. So they go and buy bottled water that probably cost more per gallon than their gasoline. But in Labelmere, Haiti—there is no clean water close, and there is none to buy even though you couldn’t afford it if there was. Dorvil Djounio, one of our CRF partners in Pignon, recently went to Labelmere and took some of our short-term mission group from Mississippi with him. It’s over a… Read more »

Welcome Kevin!

God has been preparing Kevin Wasner for all of his life to be the new Executive Director of Christian Relief Fund. My first knowledge of Kevin came when Rick Atchley told me of one of the members of the Hills Church who had written— “Ever since Milton Jones’ last visit to The Hills, I believe I’ve been prompted to get involved with CRF or a ministry like it. The feeling was stirred again when I read a recent CRF newsletter story chronicling Milton’s recent trip to Liberia. I could see, hear and even smell the scenes he was describing, as my wife and I used to live in neighboring Sierra Leone.” Of course, it was Kevin. Rick’s analysis of him… Read more »

Remember the Poor

Remember the Poor. That’s what the ministry is called right outside of Lodwar, Turkana in Kenya. We drilled for water there and helped save the lives of children in this famine area. But sometimes wells break. If you help us to drill a well, we wanted you to know that we not only drill wells, but we also help maintain them. We just fixed the well here, and water is flowing again. Don’t you love this picture? The street boys pictured are of a group of children who have been rescued and rehabilitated from their glue sniffing and other addictions. These former criminals are changing their behavior and learning to love and trust the Lord. You can see by the… Read more »

Thank You, Linda!

It seems inconceivable. It touches your tear ducts. It makes you give thanks for the past. And you want to do the most you can do to honor Linda Purdy. Yes, she is retiring from CRF. But her leadership and love for children will keep on going for years into the future—in fact forever. The plaque that the CRF board gave her says it so well — With our Deepest Appreciation to LINDA PURDY Whose Compassion For Children, Gifts Of Leadership, And Vision For Helping The Poor Have Guided CRF For 33 Years APRIL 15, 2016 We congratulate Linda Purdy on these 33 years of service to Christian Relief Fund. When you think of CRF, how can you not think… Read more »


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Saturday, January 30, 2016

Need to Know Podcast–Episode 95

In this episode I'm joined by returning guest James Eling from Extreme Networks to talk about leadership, especially business leadership. James shares both his extensive knowledge and experience of being a leader both personally and in business. You'll get some great insights here about what skills it takes to lead people and organisations through the process of improvement.

As always, a big thank you to Marc Kean for producing this episode and doing the intro and outros.

You can listen to this episode at:

or subscribe to this and all episodes in iTunes at:

The podcast is also available on Stitcher at:

Don’t forget to give the show a rating as well as send me any feedback or suggestions you may have for the show. I’m also on the hunt for some co-presenters so if you are interested on being a regular part of the show please contact me.

Get Started with the OneDrive for Business Next Generation Sync Client in Windows

Enabling Office 365 Planner

Retaining your OneDrive bonuses

Beware of malware Office 365 statements

Enterprise Mobility Suite

CIAOPS Academy

James Eling

Mastering the Rockefeler Habits - Verne Harnish

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Intersection Maps in AFNI

I’ve recently been working with a dataset that included the same subjects across two studies (here: study1 and study2) that should give us complimentary information.  One of the ways that you can look at data across these two studies is to create “intersection” maps, that show where the brain regions were activated in both studies.  Obviously this also works for two conditions within the same study as well.

Since I’m using for my data processing, it conveniently places the results folders in whatever location I tell it to.  In this case I like to put the results for each study within the overall folder for each subject.  So I might have two folders inside each subject, each with all of the preprocessed files and most importantly the stats files:

-- Subject01.study1
---- stats.Subject01_REML+tlrc.HEAD
-- Subject01.study2

In this case I’ve taken care of all of the normalization/transformations to standard space, hence the +tlrc ending.  Now, you should do is use 3dinfo to find the T-Stat sub-bricks for the conditions that you are interested in.  You can then reference those sub-bricks using either the name or the number associated with the name.  I usually recommend using the name so that if you change your conditions around, you don’t have to renumber all of your scripts!

I’m not statistically testing the intersects here, just using them to see which brain regions overlap.  Because of this (arguably lax but useful assumption), I’m not doing anything fancy and simply opting for an FDR correction of the activation at q=.05.  The fdrval program in AFNI can be used to find the necessary t-statistic value for a given number of degrees of freedom to get a FDR q-value of 0.05 by supplying it with the sub-brick of interest and the p-value desired (other options exist too!).  If you wanted to do something a bit more intense you can use the cdf program within AFNI to calculate the t-value for a associated p-value and degrees of freedom and go wild!

Finally I input the necessary sub-bricks and thresholds into 3dcalc and voila, I get a map that shows me the overlap.

study1BRIK='loadSynInt#0_Tstat' #recommend using the name
study2BRIK=17 #if you don't want to use the name, you can use the number

for aSub in Subject01 Subject02 Subject03 #simple loop over subjects
echo $aSub
#compute necessary t-value for a given q-value
study1_tval=`fdrval -qinput $aSub/$aSub.study1/stats.$aSub_REML+tlrc. $study1BRIK 0.05`
study2_tval=`fdrval -qinput $aSub/$aSub.study2/stats.$aSub_REML+tlrc. $study2BRIK 0.05`
#compute actual intersect map for that subject
3dcalc -prefix $aSub/${aSub}_intersect
-a "$aSub/$aSub.study1/stats.$aSub_REML+tlrc.[$study1BRIK]" \
-b "$aSub/$aSub.study2/stats.$aSub_REML+tlrc.[$study2BRIK]" \
-expr "and(step(a-$study1_tval), step(b-$study2_tval))"

Of course what you do with said information is up to you.

Comments are closed.


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My Comparison of the 'Top 5 Content Marketing Platforms'
My Comparison of the 'Top 5 Content Marketing Platforms'

In the first article of this series, we looked at the criteria you might want to keep in mind when deciding on a content marketing tech platform. We looked at three important criteria (organise, realise, analyse) and also talked about how to think about price when you're making your decision on what platform to go with.

I'm going to go one step further in this article by applying the four rationales to some of the most common content marketing platforms in the market today.

This is not to say that you should make your decision just based on what you read here, because each organisation and team has a different set of requirements and I haven't taken all your potential variables into account, but I do think you can use this breakdown as a sort of reference guide when comparing solutions and applying the organise, realise, analyse criteria to your situation.

Some of these may not seem like holistic content marketing solutions or platforms in the strictest sense of the words (AEM and Trello, I'm looking at you), but I've seen a bunch of teams and organisations running marketing programs using these platforms, so I think they deserve a run alongside the others in this comparison.

One of NewsCred's greatest strengths is its ability to organise and manage the processes and workflows that sit behind your content production and publishing.

The calendar and pipeline features are solid and well-visualised and the various views allow you to quickly find and work on individual content items without having to click through endless pages or levels.

When it comes to assets, NewsCred doesn't do a great job of sorting these or making it easy for you to edit the metadata of each item so, if you quickly scale from 100 to, say, 10,000 images and videos, you're going to have some challenges finding what you need.

It's easy enough to write an article in NewsCred, track its progress through a production and approval workflow and then publish to a website.

In fact, the version control and comments view in the platform is so easy to navigate that it can easily become the default way for producers and editors/reviewers to communicate about the progress of content.

In my experience, the ability for NewsCred to push completed content into destinations other than your own website (like your Facebook page or YouTube channel) is not smooth and requires a substantial amount of technical knowledge to achieve and then maintain on an ongoing basis so, if you don't have technical skills available to you, this is a red flag to keep in mind.

NewsCred's analytics solution is comprehensive and deep but has a massive learning curve.

As with any solution, you'll need to integrate it via API into your website, but once you've done that you might find that the platform's dashboards are not super-intuitive and will make you work to surface the most useful data.

It's also very website heavy, so it's challenging to be able to understand how the one item of content has performed across various platforms including social media as you'll need to surface that information yourself and then build out your own comparisons.

NewsCred is one of the more expensive content marketing platforms on the market, if you want something comprehensive for your team to work with.

The basic plans at about $3,500 per month are on the more affordable end of the spectrum, but they provide very little flexibility and depth which, frankly, make the platform overpriced at that level.

The more expensive levels for NewsCred can run up to about $10,000 per month and give you all the bells and whistles but with substantial ongoing maintenance that, in my opinion, necessitates someone managing the platform full-time so your producers can focus on getting their content output right.

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM)

If you've heard anything about marketing platforms, you've heard of AEM.

This thing is the 800-pound gorilla of the marketing world and is part of the comprehensive Adobe Marketing Cloud. Specifically, AEM is the most robust of all content marketing platforms if you are running a massive content program with tens of thousands of assets across multiple countries and in multiple languages.

The platform is excellent at organising content, even down to the individual asset level, and finding a needle in a haystack is easy with AEM's powerful search feature. However (and in my opinion, most unfortunately), AEM makes absolutely no allowances for helping you plan, calendarise and workflow your content.

Anything like a content backlog, editorial calendar or production workflow is not supported without extensive custom development which will quickly see you racking up those agency and development hours both in build time and ongoing maintenance. Ouch.

Because AEM is a content management system, you can write and edit your content directly on the web page and see exactly what it's going to look like while you're building it.

This is super useful as it can cut down QA time and help you take advantage of your page templates very easily. Personally, I've found AEM very easy to pick up for content authors and anyone with a slightly technical or design bent will appreciate the extra control over their content.

The main downside of AEM is that you cannot publish content directly to any other channel other than the site/s you're producing for without buying additional products from the Adobe Marketing Cloud. So, you'll still have to either publish to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube manually, one at a time, or pay for a whole other product to do it for you.

AEM on its own provides no analytics or insights functionality.

You'll need to purchase Adobe Analytics or use a separate analytics platform (e.g. Google Analytics, Mixpanel) and then link the two products together to see any kind of information about how your content is performing.

You can enable some activity reporting within AEM to see, for example, which users are most active and what assets are used most often, but you have no way of knowing if your content is hitting its straps without buying additional software.

There's no way around it, AEM is expensive.

The licence fee is substantial and the requirement for a partner or other third-party to spin up and configure your instance of AEM is generally also pricey.

It's not uncommon for Adobe customers to drop over $150,000 in their first year to buy the software, get things up and running and do some very light customisation, although this depends on whether you buy into just AEM or multiple modules of the Adobe Marketing Cloud.

AEM is definitely a long-term play and requires a commitment from your organisation to keep servicing and upgrading it over time to get the maximum benefit from the product.

The thing that makes Trello so popular for content production operations is how simple it is to start and how easy it is to organise your content factory.

For example, you can easily integrate tools like Slack, Dropbox and Evernote into your Trello operation meaning that your users don't need to learn a whole new system before they can publish their first item of content.

Trello is great if you have a relatively small amount of people working on your content team (anywhere up to five or six) and the workflow and review process is quite straightforward.

Because this platform is actually a project management tool, it doesn't have many allowances for things like storing your assets, searching deeply or keeping an audit trail of where you're at with your content production, so keep that in mind.

Trello doesn't account for any content creation or publishing tools so you won't be able to click a 'new article' button or 'upload to Facebook' option, meaning all your actual production must be done somewhere else.

This could be a combination of offline solutions or another platform that I've mentioned in this piece; whatever platform you go with, you'll have to do a lot of eyeballing from one app to the other to make sure things don't get lost, misplaced in a workflow or uploaded in the wrong place.

Once you start getting into the day-to-day of content operations, you'll quickly see that Trello is a great organisational tool, but not at all helpful for content production.

Like I said above, Trello is a project management tool and, while you do have access to some activity reporting, you will not be able to access any kind of performance data or insights about your content on any channel via Trello.

While AEM is a great production platform for content and Trello is a great organisational and workflow tool, neither allow you to understand how well your content is doing.

So, you'd have to plug in an analytics platform or use in-channel analytics for social and then stitch the insights together yourself and, as you can imagine, the costs (licence/platform fees and head hours) quickly stack up.

Trello's main advantage is that it is cheap, low-commitment and has easy to understand flat fees.

You can get started for free but with very limited options (for example, you can only attach files smaller than 10MB so say goodbye to those beautiful hi-res TIFF files you're using for your campaign) and integrations with other apps.

On the higher end, you'll pay about $20 per user per month (so, for a team of 10, that works out to about $2,400 per year) with many more security, storage, after-sales care and integration inclusions.

But remember, you're paying that just for a project management tool so, if you're going to set up a Dropbox account, Evernote for Work profiles and Slack for your 10 person team to complement Trello, you'll quickly rack up costs that might be over $2,000 per month.

Personally, I think Percolate is great at simplifying the overall complexity associated with marketing in a bunch of different channels (after all, it is a marketing project management platform). Its features designed to help you organise your marketing operations are easy to learn and use and the product has scaled well into other areas beyond just content.

The platform excels at stitching together various must-have aspects of a great content factory like storing and searching assets easily, planning and assigning editorial tasks and creating briefs and templates. Its marketing calendar and marketing project management features are especially useful if you have displaced or location-independent teams and individuals.

Percolate is a beast though, and, in my opinion, out of all the platforms we're looking at here, it can take the most time to come to grips with Percolate. Expect a months-long learning curve with this platform before you and your teams feel like they're in control and pumping out great content.

Perhaps the best way to encapsulate Percolate's features when it comes to producing and publishing content is to tell you what an editor from a publishing company once said to me, "this is basically the ideal tool for a busy newsroom that's under-staffed". And this translates into the philosophy behind Percolate's production and publishing facets: to give as much quick visibility to managers as to individual producers so everyone can see what they want to see when they want to see it.

Again, this means there are A LOT of buttons, tabs, forms and screens to get used to and, sure, if you're just writing articles, sourcing video or checking metadata, you can just focus on your individual cog in the machine, but, if you're going to take that sort of approach, do you need to get this mega enterprise-grade beast of a tool? Probably not, tbh.

If you want a tool that mainly focuses on getting content planned, made and out there, Percolate is way over-qualified.

Percolate has an insights and analytics suite that is very similar to NewsCred in the sense that it is both gargantuan and heavily visual. It's a sort of interface and platform that rewards deep engagement by someone who is intimately familiar with both the content and perhaps even some data science.

Now, I'm not the most technical of data-driven marketers, but I do know my way around an analytics platform and how to interrogate data a little more deeply; I can tell you, hand on heart, that I've found it hard to see what additional value Percolate's analytics suite brings when compared with the excellent and very free Google Analytics.

Some of the visualisation is different, but I suspect you would need to spend many, many hours with this reporting tool before understanding why you paid extra for it.

In many ways, Percolate is closest to NewsCred (in its feature set and content-first philosophy) and AEM (in that it has multiple modules you can buy and plug together if you want to).

Pricing for Percolate is notoriously hard to come by before you're neck deep into the sales process with their consultants but I've heard peers tell me they've spent somewhere around $40,000 to $60,000 for licence and subscription costs and a similar amount in development and onboarding costs.

Many say their first year with Percolate is between $80,000 and $120,000.

Before we start here and in case it wasn't clear, you're reading an article on Cognitives' website. Cognitives has a substantial focus on the entire end-to-end process of content operations, from planning, content creation and asset management through to the distribution and measurement of your content and editorial program.

Cognitives is unique to the market in that it is a content platform at heart, rather than a marketing platform with a 'content marketing module'. It's not a marketing resource management tool, so it's not made to send your campaign emails and SMS offers or run digital display ads like Adobe's products or some of Percolate's features.

Instead, it lets you build out content for multiple channels in the one place and provides flexible features to help you organise and set up your content factory.

These especially broad features include kanban-style boards, editorial calendars, customised workflows and a social funnel tool. Cognitives is up there with NewsCred and Percolate in terms of the breadth of helping you plan for content operations but with a significantly shorter learning curve.

Production and publishing in Cognitives is straightforward and stripped-back; the focus is on enabling authors and producers to quickly create content and move it along the workflow.

It's easy to label and tag content as you go as well as make minor changes at any point in the workflow before and after publishing. This is especially useful as some of the other platforms we've looked at here are more rigid and force you to restart a workflow if you need to change something small (say, the third image in a 600-word piece when everything else is ready to go).

As Cognitives sits behind your content management system, you'll still have to publish onto a website once your content is ready to go but, you can build these sites with Cognitives and then run them alongside sites built in WordPress, AEM, Squarespace or anything else.

The major advantage with Cognitives is its open API which means you can publish to multiple destinations quickly and easily with no copy-paste action needed.

Like NewsCred and Percolate, Cognitives has a powerful analytics platform built in which will help you quickly understand how your content is doing against your objectives.

Importantly, though, the reporting features of the platform are easy to understand and manipulate, with the advantage of having your social media data fed directly into the same dashboard for real-time and immediate comparisons of content performance.

In my opinion, this is especially useful for those creating the content as they can quickly see if an item works across some or all channels, make the required tweaks and optimise what they're producing in almost no time. Expect some time to get up to speed with this facet of the platform, but nowhere near as much as some of the other tools we've looked at here.

When it comes to pricing, Cognitives major difference is that all the various elements of the product (including planning, creation, management, storage, distribution and measurement etc) can be included within one monthly price.

Of course, if you're looking for a tool that does one of these things (for example, something to just manage your workflows or store your assets) then Cognitives offers lower price points for particular features. If you're currently working with two or more platforms, apps or tools for your content and marketing (say, Trello for project management and Dropbox for storage), Cognitives could be a good way to reduce costs and up the quality of your output.

You should expect to pay anywhere from $1,500 per month for their base plan, up to $4,500 per month for the whole kit and caboodle with Cognitives, allowing you to easily scale your content factory up and out for the long term.

So, what now?

Well, like I said at the start and in the first article in this series, you have a specific set of circumstances and business needs to address for your organisation.

This comparison is built on extensive personal experience with these platforms and conversations with my peers who have worked in a range of very large all the way down to very small types of marketing operations.

If you consider the above analysis for each platform as a sort of guide, your next step is to identify which kind of product broadly suits your organisation's challenges and needs and then contact those brands for more detailed information and demonstrations.

Make sure you ask lots of questions, get your end users in the room with the company's sales consultants and try to speak with existing customers to get an idea of the pros and cons of the platform you're thinking of buying into.

Where possible, insist on live demos that reflect your specific use cases and make sure the company also offers after sales support in your country (or at least timezone) and in your language.

Finally, get the product's after-sales team as involved as possible in the onboarding and transition process; this will give you and your team a more robust support network while you're getting up to speed and also help the brand understand how to improve their product in the long-term.

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Jan 20, 2011

PhotoVoltaic Mfg in the USA was hurt by the Recession

 Richard Branson says that in a down economy many solid industries can prosper but in this recession it has been government or defense backed industry that has come thru the best. Witness the big New York banks that got the government bailout or GM that got the government bailout or those firms making things for the US Military in it's many wars.

Sadly the Green economy in the US has been hurt by the recession since much of it's funding dried up with the probs in state and local economies and a less than ample amount for green in the Obama stimulus bill.

However China has taken off in it's manufacture of solar PV. Here's a great article below(sadly we forget where we saw this?)

In 2010, Chinese firms accounted for 72 percent of new photovoltaic manufacturing capacity worldwide, according to a survey by iSuppli, a California research firm. Seven of the top 10 module

 Days after  (USA based) solar cell maker SpectraWatt notified New York authorities that it will shut down its seven-month-old factory and lay off 117 employees, China’s Trina Solar announced Monday that it will invest $800 million in new manufacturing plants over the next three years.
manufacturers are based in China.

As Chinese solar companies like Suntech Power Holdings and Yingli Green Energy have ramped up manufacturing — supported by generous subsidies from China’s government — they’ve cut prices and grabbed big shares of the U.S. and European markets.

Trina, for instance, established its U.S. headquarters in San Jose, Calif., last year and began signing deals, including one to supply utility Southern California Edison with 45 megawatts’ worth of solar panels. (In October, I stood on the roof of a 562,089-square-foot warehouse in Ontario, Calif., that was covered in Trina solar panels.)

In contrast, SpectraWatt’s entire manufacturing capacity is 60 megawatts. On Monday, Trina said it would ship 1,000 megawatts’ worth of photovoltaic cells by the end of the year, an 151 percent increase from shipments in 2009.

The company did not specify how much additional manufacturing capacity would result from the $800 million to be invested in a new plant complex called the Changzhou Trina PV Park.

blog responses to the above article include:

I have been building machinery and equipment for the past 20Y in the USA. All this hipe about green energy is exagerated by the press and politicians. If you actually see and learn the technology you will find out that they are very inefficient systems and very expensive. Let’s say a 25KW Wind-generator is massive, big heavy steel plate and big machined parts, lots of copper for the retifiers working at low voltages, lots of maintenance to do also. The price installed $500,000.
You could by a comparable generator at Home Depot for $5,000.00
Similar things for solar energy, they are expensive and take a huge space. Just Wind and solar are not reliable sources to get energy, it is a big waste of time and resources. I think the solution goes to hydraulic energy and nuclear sources where the energy is a lot more concentrated. Water moving at the speed of wind has 1000 times more energy plus it could be controlled and stored. By the way the helium ballons for your child’s party are the byproduct of nuclear reactions under ground.

The policy in the US is messed up. I agree with kc10man and axiom321: unfair standards and inefficient programs are enriching China economically at the cost of our increasing National deficit. But there is more to the picture. Investments in R&D do need to be made and devising a market mechanism such as tax benefits can help but they need to be coordinated and complementary. Piecemeal policies that are temporary are counterproductive and encourage behavior that only has short-term benefits for the individuals involved.
Solar and wind production in the US is not as economically sound as coal. However if laws and policies were coordinated they could be. For example, as kc10man suggested, if tariffs were charged on imports that were not produced to US ecological and social standards, the international market would be more fair. And if tax laws promoting R&D in new energy production were written to last 10 years or more in coordination with other laws, businesses would be able to invest with more confidence. Instead we get consumers demanding tax breaks and businesses ramping up to meet their demand. This demand side push is ineffective when it has to compete with the $400 billion in tax breaks for the fossil fuel industry enjoys. We just don’t see the economies of scale promised or the synergistic benefits a coordinated effort would have and we don’t see enough support coming from the military or the national laboratories.
China, with its’ centralized government is actually MORE efficient in aligning its programs to promote industry. The US could do the same thing while maintaining it’s ecological and social standards, but this would require a bipartisan effort in coordination with State programs. But this is more complex than building an atomic bomb or putting a man on the moon and I don’t think the US faces enough of a threat from China to actually work together to outperform them.

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Saturday, 23 May 2009

Get Ready for the Best Match of the Tournament!!!

All of us would accept that the last year finals was the best match of the tournament, last year. But this time around, it might be the semifinals tomorrow that would be more interesting than finals. Royal Challengers Bangalore and Chennai Super Kings are the two favorites among the four semifinalists to win Indian Premier League this year. So expect a great match tomorrow.
CSK Playing XI:
1. Parthiv 2. Hayden 3. Raina 4. Hussey 5. Badri 6. Dhoni 7. Morkel 8. Jakati 9. Ashwin/Tyagi [Pitch conditions should decide this] 10. Balaji 11. Murali
BRC Playing XI:
1 Manish Pandey, 2 Jacques Kallis, 3 Rahul Dravid, 4 Robin Uthappa, 5 Ross Taylor, 6 Virat Kohli, 7 Mark Boucher (wk), 8 Roelof van der Merwe, 9 Praveen Kumar, 10 B Akhil, 11 Anil Kumble

Most Dangerous Players:
  1. Kallis: His batting and bowling will determine the resistance of Royal Challengers Bangalore tomorrow
  2. Boucher: A Great Finisher. Just hoping Chennai Super Kings doesn't give him that opportunity
  3. Praveen Kumar: His bowling against the Chennai Super Kings' openers will determine the score of Chennai Super Kings. If CSK Openers are able to keep their wicket intact for the first six overs, we can surely expect a score at least 30 runs above par.
Royal Contests:
  1. Dravid Vs Murali: Dravid has not lighted up the tournament after his first IPL performance. I am sure he would be inching to prove his worth in one of the big matches.
  2. Morkel Vs Kallis: This contest between the South Africans would be interesting to watch
  3. Dhoni Vs Kumble: Dhoni, the captain would not only be matching his wits against Kumble, the captain but would also have to win the contest against Kumble, the bowler

Favorites: With Hussey coming back, Chennai Super Kings are slight favorites. But anyway it would be an interesting match to watch. Keeping my fingers crossed.

1 comment:

Danesh said...

Maybe Joginder Sharma should come in for Balaji


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Climate Change News Roundup

The next round of community conversations for the update of PlaNYC was announced. For more on the update process see my post on PlaNYC 2.0. The schedule for upcoming meetings is:

Upper Manhattan
Monday, December 6th, 2010
7:00PM – 9:00PM
State Office Building 2nd Flr. Gallery
163 West 125th Street, (enter on 126th)
A, B, C, D, 2, 3,4,5,6 trains to 125th
Community Partner: WEACT

Eastern Queens
Thursday, December 9th, 2010
7:00PM – 9:00PM
Bayside High School
32-24 Corporal Kennedy Street, Bayside NY 11361

South Brooklyn
Thursday, December 16th, 2010
6:00PM – 8:00PM
St. Michael’s RC Church, 352 42nd Street,
Enter at Auditorium on 43rd St.
R train to 45th and the D,N,R to 36th
Community Partner: UPROSE

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle is proud that Brooklyn is featured prominently in PlaNYC imagery.

The C40 Climate Leadership Group met in November Hong Kong for a workshop titled Low Carbon Cities for High Quality Living. The group consists of leaders from large cities around the world committed to tackling global climate change.  New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was elected chair of the group. The group’s website includes informative sections on best practices and climate action plans from around the world.

Lastly, in a recent post about the ongoing climate negotiations in Cancún, Mexico, Andrew Revkin (author of NY Times DotEarth blog) mourns the absence of Ted Kheel and his conflict resolution skills.

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Another ground source heat pump update

So… we’ve been living with our IVT Greenline HT+ E11 11kW ground source heat pump for another week or so now and I happy to report that it’s still performing admirably.

The outside temperature is just below 0°C and the house is nice and warm, with the new part of the house with underfloor heating at around 20°C.

The glycol based heat transfer fluid which collects heat from the ground is currently entering the heat pump at 1.3°C and after heat has been extracted from it, it is being returned to the ground loop at -1.9°C.

We currently have the hot water temperature set to 48°C but I’m going to try lowering that to 47°C in an effort to squeeze a bit more efficiency out of the system for no noticeable impact.

I’m also watching the electricity meter and compressor operating times like a hawk but so far my gut feel is that we’re using less electricity than we were over a similar period of cold weather last year.


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Replacing my dead HP ML115 G5

Following on from a previous post relating to the death of my HP ML115 G5 server, I’ve been busy on eBay over the last few days looking for a replacement. As a result, I’ve managed to secure not one but two used ML115 G5s.

The first is exactly the same model as my original with the quad core Opteron 1352 CPU albeit having been upgraded to 8GB RAM and with a new 250GB hard drive to replace the original 160GB drive. It’s in very good condition and looks like it’s been well looked after. I managed to get this for £120 as a Best Offer which seems to be a typical sort of price for a good condition ML115 G5. It’s a little more than I wanted to pay but I don’t mind too much given that it has 8GB RAM which would probably cost £30-£40 anyway.

The second was a last minute purchase which was too good an opportunity to miss. It’s a dual core Opteron 1214 model with 1GB RAM and separate video and sound cards and a Hansol LCD monitor which has actually been used as a cheap desktop machine, but I managed to get this all for the princely sum of only £31. What a bargain! The auction for this started with an initial bid of £30 or a Buy It Now of £50. After a couple of email exchanges with the seller to confirm details of the item I was just about to go for the Buy It Now option when someone actually placed a £30 bid and the Buy It Now option disappeared! Bad eBay timing again! However, as it turned out I managed to win the auction in the end with a bid of only £31, so I actually saved myself £19 on what I was prepared to pay. I will most likely replace the dual core CPU in this model with the quad core from my original and may get an extra 4GB RAM to add to my original 4GB so that I end up with two equivalent 8GB models.

So all in all I’m pretty pleased with how things have turned out.

Next step is to get one of the ML115s configured as my main server again. More on this later…


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星期三, 12月 20, 2006

[Note]IE7的"Open in new Tab" 消失了

安裝 IE7 正式版以後，發現一個問題，滑鼠右鍵點選連結時，應該要出現 "Open in new Tab" 的，可是卻消失了。

某天因緣際會之下，看到了這篇文章：IE7 Tabbed Browsing Q & A ，作者說如果有任何關於 Tab browsing 疑問的話，請儘管留言，他會努力解決，於是我留下問題。

@elleryq, most likely you have an add-on that decided to override IDocHostUIHandler in order to provide a custom context menu. The fix is to look at your add-ons and upgrade or un-install them. Some, such as the Google toolbar, have fixed this in the newest versions.

To provide more detail, the problem is that they're loading the IE6 version of the context menu out of shdoclc.dll, which is no longer part of IE, but is still part of Windows Explorer. There was some bad documentation on our part (well, legacy) which suggested loading otherwise undocumented IE resources out of shdoclc.dll, which a handful of add-ons followed.

IDocHostUIHandler was primarily intended to be used by 3rd party browsers such as Maxthon, and not IE extensions. The recommended advice for 3rd party developers is to use standard context menu extensions whenever possible (see the "Context Menus and Extensions" section in http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa770042.aspx) and if you really *have* to override IDocHostUIHandler, load your own resources for the context menus.

所以我照著他的建議，更新 Google toolbar 到最新版，問題就解決啦～

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First Reference company logo

First Reference Talks

News and Discussions on Payroll, HR & Employment Law

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termination for poor performance

Q&A: Reasons not usually required when terminating without cause

Under the Ontario Employment Standards Act, an employer can terminate an employee by providing the employee with either written notice of termination, termination pay or a combination (as long as the notice and the number of weeks of termination pay together equal the length of notice the employee is entitled to receive under the ESA).

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Three popular articles this week on HRinfodesk

Three popular articles this week on HRinfodesk deal with the first international standard on cloud services and personal information protection; age discrimination; and, unfunded LTD plan payment.

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French Sole Sandals

French Sole Sandals

I’m writing this between sips of my ice-cold Limoncello, not far from The Spanish Steps, relieved to be sitting down and giving my beautiful French Sole sandals a well-deserved rest. It seems only fair after all, as these super soft favourites of mine have been putting in some pretty hard mileage these last few days! So many piazzas and oh so many cobblestones! Clearly the descendants of the Romans weren’t thinking of a woman’s needs when engineering their streets.

But as I learnt from my previous visit to this the eternal city, you should think beauty with an emphasis on comfort while considering your wardrobe and when in Rome, do as the Romans! And though I say Romans, I rather speak of the modern romanità, our always immaculately dressed sisters, who give soul to the saying that this urban landscape is really a poem pressed into service as a city. I love how they dress, always so effortlessly chic.

So for my short trip to Italy, taking their lead, I brought along a selection of long rayon and cotton dresses as my day to night à la mode and my French Sole sandals have been the perfect footwear accessory. I may be on a Roman holiday but I most certainly won’t be scootering around this city while straddling Gregory Peck on a Vespa! Rather, I feel more like Russell Crowe in Gladiator, fighting on foot, the tourist hordes, as though they were my rivals in the arena. Yes, I’m sure you’ve heard it said before, the summertime crowds can be a challenge… Oh mamma mia! But don’t be put off making its streets one of your adventures. Yes, it is a busy place but every woman should see Rome at least once in her lifetime, wearing comfortable French Sole sandals of course!

I’m very curious how other French Sole fans are styling their French Sole sandals! Do mention #frenchsoleblogbyamelie on your Instagram and I’ll be reposting the most creative looks on our FS page.

With love,

Amélie Florentine


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Friday, April 8, 2011

So today, April 8th, marks the one year anniversary of the launch of In that time we have put 24 videos online, a couple of which are even funny!

I want to personally thank everyone who helped in any way, from ideas, to acting, to helping with production. Even if you just told a friend or two. Thank you all so much.

To celebrate, here's a brand new short!

This is one of my least favorite shorts we've ever done. It's not a very good joke.

Happy birthday to us!

- Geoff

p.s. There's a reason I uploaded this short even though I hate it. A very worthwhile reason. Do with that what you will.

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Friday, December 6, 2013

We just jumped into happy December, month of holidays, festivities and surprises. It is the time of joy, the time of warmth, the time of good food and drinks, the time of presents, and the time of being together with your loved ones as much as you can.

So to say, December is the time of making memories. And yes, December is also the time of photographs and videos, a lot of them.

All this is great, but it is even greater when we have the chance to take good care of these precious moments of our lives. Fylet is here to help!

Withh Fylet you can transfer your festive photographs and videos to your computer as simple as can be. Reengineered mobile version now works even when devices are in different networks! With redesigned gallery your memories will be easily recaptured.

Enjoy December! Make nice memories!

Let Fylet take good care of them!

Your Fylet team

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Friday, February 21, 2014

Here we are. In 21 century. Surrounded by all kinds of people from different cultures and of course talking different languages. To speak with other nationalities we mostly choose English language. It is the easiest way.

UNESCO Mother language day

But can we say this also for mobile apps?

Is it really necessary and enough to make apps just for English speaking people?

We think there is a better way to deal with these questions. That's why we decided to promote linguistic, cultural diversity and of course multilingualism.

Slowly, step by step, we translate our app into different languages. Today is UNESCO International Mother Language Day. We are celebrating it with Italian translation. Hooray. Here is our app in Italian version.

"Languages are the most powerful instruments of preserving and developing our tangible and intangible heritage. All moves to promote the dissemination of mother tongues will serve not only to encourage linguistic diversity and multilingual education but also to develop fuller awareness of linguistic and cultural traditions throughout the world and to inspire solidarity based on understanding, tolerance and dialogue."—from the United Nations International Mother Language Day

p.s: Sorry, but this post is written only in English :)

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Skip to content

So, look who I found floating in the cats' water bowl this morning.

How did it get there? The first guess is that it climbed in looking for water. Given that water bowl is glass and scorpions can't climb glass, it doesn't seem likely.

Guess two is the cat who likes to dip his "toys" in his water bowl caught the scorpion and decided to "wash" it. In any case, apparently scorpions aren't good swimmers.

I recently saw a photograph of a grasshopper fluorescing under UV light. The photographer said he used a regular camera to capture the image. Ever since, I've been eager to give it a try. Because even drowned scorpions are known to fluoresce,  here was my chance.

I took the bowl with the scorpion into a windowless room and turned off the light. Then I turned on a UV light (blacklight). The scorpion glowed a greenish color. I used the "night mode" setting on my camera to capture the above photograph (I think I need to work on my method.)

Why do scorpions fluoresce when exposed to ultraviolet light? The current theory is that it is part of a chemical process in the scorpion's "skin" that allows it to detect and avoid ultraviolet light. This makes sense because scorpions are active at night and hide under things away from the sun during the day.

Now if they could only avoid water...

Have you ever looked closely at a snail shell?

The shell can be many colors, but it is usually opaque.

When I downloaded this photo, I was surprised to see the channels on the inside of the shell. Can you see the vein-like, branching structures I'm talking about?

Let's zoom in:

It turns out that in young land snails like this one -- with a thinner, more transparent shell -- it is possible to see the interior vessels of the mantle and mantle cavity (lung).

In fact, if you look closely you might see some of the other internal organs, as well.

Do you like snails? See our previous post about snails:

Snail Q and A and fiction picture book, Escargot

Last month while I was in western New York I found this critter.

It seemed to be a grasshopper, but with very long antennae.

I backed out to try to get all the antennae in the frame. Then it struck me that it felt like trying to take a photograph of katydid nymphs back home (previous post).

The insects we usually think of as grasshoppers don't have such long antennae.

This little guy is actually a meadow katydid or longhorned grasshopper (genus Conocephalus).

Meadow katydids don't sing the katy-did, katy-did of regular katydids. They tend to buzz or rattle, instead.

Here's an example of a common meadow katydid singing.

Did you notice one of its antennae was shorter? Likely it got broken off, which seems it could be a real hazard with such long ones.

Check out all the different meadow katydid songs at the Songs of Insects website including one that sounds like a lawn sprinkler.

Have you heard meadow katydids sing?


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Apologies for the BBS being unavailable over the last few days, but we’ve suffered from a SysOp’s greatest dilemma: Faulty modem.

The USR was only temporarily re-installed, a 33.6kbps now delivers the throughput. How well it delivers, though, is fairly debatable since it’s quite clear that connections at home are not at all successful, and I can’t exactly leave the BBS at work all the time now, can I!

Sincerest apologies :(

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The beginning of a season called Summer

Although summer may not quite officially be upon us, winter never really happened either. Oh, it was cold a few times, and it even snowed… once or thrice, if memory serves — but that’s it. The winter tires were money well wasted, the car’s clocked up a good 167,000km (thanks to a recent trip to Austria) and has been given the TÜV seal of approval for another two years (thanks to a recent service).

In fact, it’s definitely time to revert back to the summer slicks, particularly since I’ve caught myself approaching the supposed 190km/h limit for the current rubber on more than just a few recent occasions.

And, just in time for this posting: one of the electric windows has packed up.

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The Holiday Resources Gift Guide

holiday gift guide

  Start celebrating the season of light and love with these holiday resources. Whether a gift for a loved one or something for yourself, enjoy a great read celebrating the season of anticipation, celebration and salvation. These resources will welcome the holiday season with the promise of love and great joy. 1. The Heart of […]

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Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Rails A/B testing with Split on Heroku

I recently decided to start doing some A/B testing on The last time I tried A/B testing I used Google website optimizer, it worked fairly well but I did not like how difficult it was to setup a test. This time I looked around for A/B testing tools for rails. I ended up finding split and so far I have been very happy with the results. The documentation is fairly good but it did take a little fiddling to get it working on Heroku.

First off add the Redis to Go add-on in Heroku, the Nano plan is free and has been sufficient for my needs so far. Install redis on the dev server. I use a mac so that was as simple as "brew install redis" and then I followed the brew instructions for getting redis to start on login.

To install the split gem add the following to the Gemfile

 gem 'split', '0.3.3', :require => 'split/dashboard'

To set the development environment up in a way that is compatible to how Redis to Go is configured on Heroku add the following to config/environments/development.rb

ENV['REDISTOGO_URL'] = 'redis://localhost:6379'
Then create an initializer for redis in config/initializers/redis.rb and put the following in that file.
uri = URI.parse(ENV['REDISTOGO_URL'])
REDIS = =>, :port => uri.port, :password => uri.password, :username => uri.user)
To configure split to use the applications redis configuration create config/initializers/split.rb and add the following.
Split.redis = REDIS

To setup the split dashboard add the following to config/routes.rb

mount Split::Dashboard, :at => 'split'
To add authentication to the dashboard add the following to config/initializers/split.rb
Split::Dashboard.use Rack::Auth::Basic do |username, password|
  username == 'username' && password == 'password'

Setting up an A/B test is super easy just follow the instructions in the split README.

Note: These instructions are for rails 3.x, the listed resources do have instructions for earlier versions of rails.

Joel Kemp said...

Thanks for this! Very clean and concise.

Nathan Humbert said...

Thanks, always nice to hear when someone thinks one of my posts was useful.

Pascal Lindelauf said...

Nathan, thanks for your helpful post. One quick question, I hope you know the answer to: I noticed the css styling of the Split dashboard page is gone on Heroku. Have you encountered the same problem and if so, have you solved it?

Thanks, Pascal

Pierre Olivier Martel said...

Pascal, I think it has to do with the way Heroku compiles the assets on the Cedar stack. I tried to find a fix but finally resolved to copying the Split assets to the Public folder. Far from ideal but it works...

Phil Whelan said...

Hi Nathan,

Great post! I'm working on building a similar service, so woud be great to get your feedback and pick your brains. More info here

Aadita kumar said...

Inspiring writings and I greatly admired what you have to say , I hope you continue to provide new ideas for us all and greetings success always for you..

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Ven hudson said...

Thanks for sharing the article. I would like to recommend that users should also try A/B testing Tool by MockingFish. It' a good tool and really helpful for all those who are searching for a good tools for there website.

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6 Health Trends Among Generation Y

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Millennials: We’re young, egotistical, addicted to technology and spoiled, right? I should know – I scored 96 out of 100 on the Pew Research Center’s “How Millennial Are You?” quiz. (Take the quiz here.)

I’m essentially the poster child of Millennials. Look up Millennial in the dictionary and you’ll see my picture. Or better yet, Google it. Who uses dictionaries anymore? Not this kid.

But you know what? I guess I don’t feel so bad about being so Millennial. Every generation has something to say about the next, and despite the stereotypes, there’s actually some pretty good things about me and my peers. I like the Pew Research Center’s characterization of us: “confident, self-expressive, liberal, upbeat, and receptive to new ideas and ways of living.”

One of those new ideas and ways of living is natural health. According to Nielsen, Millennials are 32-40 percent more likely than the general population to look to alternative medicine to manage our health.

We’re also the largest generation in the U.S., accounting for one-third of the population. How does that come into play? Well, it means we carry a lot of influence. We’re the main target of marketers, politicians and industries. What we want will have a huge impact on our government, health care, the food in grocery stores and culture. And I’m hopeful that our influence will take things in a positive, healthier direction. Current trends in health show that just might happen.

Meet the Millennials

Who are Millennials? Let’s take a quick glance.

According to a report issued by the White House Council of Economic Advisers in October:

  • Millennials – or Generation Y as some prefer to call them – are the generation born roughly between 1980 and 2000.
  • They comprise the largest generation in the U.S., making up one-third of the population in 2013. The largest one-year cohort is 23.
  • They were the first generation to have access to internet during their formative years.
  • They’re the most diverse generation with 42 percent of Millennials identifying as a race/ethnicity other than non-Hispanic/white.
  • They’re also the most educated. Sixty-one percent of adult Millennials attended college.
  • On a more general note, they’re immersed in technology, close to their parents, and faced – and will continue to face – a tough economy.

Millennials and Natural Health

With a greater interest in natural health and general wellness, Millennials stand out in several areas.

1. Alternative Medicine: Not only are Millennials open to alternative ways to treat illness, they actually use them, and often in place of traditional practices. They’re more likely to use acupuncture, herbal remedies, massage therapy and other alternatives to prescription drugs frequently used by older generations.

2. Supplement Use: You might be wondering about supplement use among Millennials since it’s such a big part of what we do here at Natural Healthy Concepts. Supplement use has grown the most among Millennials, but they’re not leading the pack yet.

According to Natural Products Insider, supplement use has increased overall with 73 percent of the general population in 2013 reporting they used a supplement in the past 30 days in comparison to 62 percent in 2009.

According to the Fiscal Times, the Natural Marketing Institute found that in 2013, 68 percent of Millennials used a supplement in the last 30 days compared to just 50 percent in 2009. They haven’t caught up to the general population yet, but if trends continue, they easily could.

8512644453_9d96609f0a_m3. Healthy Lifestyles: Many Millennials aren’t just turning to nature when they’re sick, but look at overall healthy living as a way to prevent illness and health conditions. They want to be in good health now and fifty years down the road.

Peruse the internet for a few minutes and you’ll see countless blogs and social media profiles of young individuals practicing and promoting healthy eating and frequent exercise. Technology isn’t an excuse to stay on the couch – it’s a source of motivation. Pinterest recipes and fitness blogs feed Millennials with constant ideas and information to live a healthy lifestyle.

Technology is also continuously coming out with new apps and gadgets to fuel health goals. Gym memberships are linked to social media, phones are loaded with exercise apps, and sleek wristbands like Fitbit track the steps you take, the calories you burn and the hours you sleep.

4. Natural Foods: Millennials are increasingly conscious about what they put in their bodies. They don’t want fluorescent-colored, giant-sized, pesticide-coated produce or meat from animals that have been pumped full of hormones and antibiotics. They want pure, natural food.

According to Natural Products Insider,  the amount of “organic” food in the grocery store has experienced a huge upsurge in recent years. The perimeter of the store – where you’ll find fruits and vegetables, meat and dairy – is getting more attention as consumers avoid the heavily processed items in the aisles in the center of the store. They closely scrutinize ingredient labels for artificial flavors and colors, preservatives and sugar content. They gravitate toward products with healthful attributes like “whole grain,” “fiber,” “protein,” and “antioxidants.”

5. Eco-Friendly: Millennials are the generation most likely to take into account the environment and sustainability when it comes to health. Often, they don’t just avoid certain foods because they’re unhealthy for you, but also because they’re unhealthy for the environment.

339331301_25e470c90a_oThat was my biggest motivation for switching to a vegetarian diet. In fact, Millennials are more likely to consider themselves strict vegetarians and use more soy and plant-based products. Have you noticed the increase in the options in the grocery dairy case? (Click here for a rundown of dairy alternatives ) And for Millennials who eat meat, many of them prefer organic, grass-fed animals, again, not just for their own health, but also for the environment.

No matter their diet, Millennials are likely to prefer products that come from farms and businesses that use sustainable, eco-friendly practices, like clean energy and recycled packaging. They may also prefer local produce and foods because of the perceived smaller environmental impact.

6. Doing Their Own Research: In this era of technology and instant access to a wealth of information, Millennials are more likely to make health decisions based on their own research. They want to know for themselves what a product may or may not do for their health, not necessarily trust in the information provided by the manufacturer or blindly accept a doctor’s recommendation.  According to NMI Solutions, Millennials are less reliant on authority figures. They often wish their doctors knew more about alternative methods and frequently skip the doctor visit to search the internet for their own answers.

Millennial Shortcomings

All this information shows some positive trends, but Millennials certainly aren’t perfect when it comes to health.

While we’re generally more committed to exercise, many don’t necessarily have their health in mind when they hit the gym, but rather their vanity.

And we’re still suckers for splurges. We love to eat what makes us feel good – in the short term – and often go for convenience foods in light of busy schedules.

145630328_b270c54211_bWe’re young and reckless and no amount of concern over calories will make us stop drinking alcohol. And unfortunately, we’re more likely to drink in response to stress.

In fact, we’re the most stressed-out generation. According to a study conducted by the American Psychological Association, over half of Millennials said stress kept them awake at night in the last month compared to 37 percent of Baby Boomers. So I guess good health is particularly important for us.

Every generation has a golden age during which its members greatly shape the world in which they live. I’m hopeful that my generation, despite its flaws and the stereotypes, will create a world more in tune with good, clean, natural health.

Featured Image: Texting Conress 3 – Adam Fagen

Treadmill – Upper Valley Aquatic Center

Fresh Produce – Bill Couch

Shots – Stephen Gregory

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2 Responses to 6 Health Trends Among Generation Y

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    Hi to all, the contents present at this web site are truly amazing for people knowledge,
    well, keep up the good work fellows.

  1. New Trends with Health Supplements - Stump Blog - January 5, 2017

    […] Oh, how the tables have turned. The fact is a rising number of those in generation Y, or millennials, are using supplements. Health professionals are now recommending incorporating herbal supplements to patients of all […]

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Latest CRS Draw of May 31, 2017 Ended With Inviting 3,877 Invitations!

We all know that how tough it is to gain a PR membership of province like Canada. But to the amazement of candidates, the Immigration Refugee and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), the immigration department of Canada has invited the immigrants with 413 as the lowest qualifying marks.

In the latest CRS Draw, the qualifying marks that are put are quite low but the invitations, which are called are huge in numbers.

Some important information of the latest Express Entry Draw of 2017

If anybody is interested applying for this latest EE Draw 2017, he or she must clear of the basic features of Express Entry Draw 2017. Let us have a look.

  1. Date of opening of the draw- The date of opening of the draw is May 31st, 2017
  2. Date of ending of the draw- The date of ending of the draw is till the announcement of next draw.
  3. The qualifying marks, CRS – The CRS marks or you can say that the qualifying marks of the latest EE Draw are 413 points
  4. The number of candidates to be invited- IRCC has planned to invite 3,877 candidates during the latest EE Draw 2017

An Outstanding draw – Less CRS points and More Invitations

Those who are looking for the pleasant news from IRCC, this draw is actually an impeccable surprise to have. This draw has actually sidelined the basic speculations and made candidates a bit relaxed as per the CRS scores and the number of candidates to be invited for the Canadian PR (Permanent Residency). This time, the Express Entry Draw has totally changed the past records and brought the level of CRS points to 413.

The happiness does not limit here but extends further as the number of candidates to be called for the EE Draw is 3,877.

So, all in all, the new has not only created the happiness among those who are looking for Canadian PR but also, it has brought a hope of definite success.

As they say that happiness comes in the bundle, the latest Draw of Express Entry for the Canadian PR has set the new goal.

Therefore, it is estimated that this EE Draw will definitely come up with positive surprises. However, with such surprising factors, it has mostly fulfilled the deed.

The Advantage

Although, there are plenty of advantages with this Express Entry Draw, however, the biggest is that it has low CRS score of 413. Also, why this is called as the biggest surprise because IRCC has never reduced the marks so far.

Over to you

With the good news of the increase in a number of applications and reduction in the CRS score, this is time now to prepare all your papers and get ready. What required is to get in touch with the Council of Canadian Immigration and get started.

Frankly, this Express Entry Draw is the golden time to apply for the Canadian PR.

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Interview with Curtis Harnack

Author: | Posted in Writing 1 Comment

Sometimes the right thing simply happens at the right time, and everything falls into place so beautifully that it’s almost impossible to remember how you existed beforehand. So it was for me when I was accepted to Yaddo last fall, and ended up in a wonderful group of people. Among them was Curtis Harnack.

Born in 1927 in Le Mars, Iowa, Curtis’s childhood would one day provide the fodder for the brilliant memoir We Have All Gone Away. Not that Curtis’s writing has ever truly left Iowa behind, try as he might in his non-fiction narrative Persian Lions, Persian Lambs (1965) about a Fulbright year spent teaching in Iran. His first job was working for the United Nations. He moved on to teaching, first at Grinnell College in Iowa, then the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and then Sarah Lawrence. During this time, Curtis wrote three books: Persian Lions, Persian Lambs and the dust-swept, Biblical novels The Work of an Ancient Hand (1960) and Love and Be Silent (1962). He also married the writer Hortense Calisher in 1959, and they remained together until her passing in 2009.In 1971, Curtis was named the president of Yaddo, a place originally recommended to him (if my memory serves) by none other than Truman Capote, on a beach. Curtis served as Yaddo president for seventeen years. While there, Curtis wrote the aforementioned memoir We Have All Gone Away (1973) and returned to the fictional rural Iowa of his previous two novels with Limits of the Land (1979).

After Yaddo, Curtis worked as president of the School of American Ballet and traveled the world. He also wrote the history Gentlemen on the Prairie and the sequel to We Have All Gone Away, The Attic. Like all of Curtis’s work, there’s a combination of heartache and hope—mostly achieved through a sly sense of humor—that resonates well past the final pages.

Curtis is of a generation that includes men like George Plimpton, the kind of person who seems limitless, the kind of person that doesn’t seem to exist any more. There’s an openness to their intellectual curiosity that makes them incredibly charming, and when that’s combined with their fearlessness, there’s seemingly nothing that can’t be done. Because of this, they fit in everywhere; it’s equally easy to imagine Curtis on his farm in Iowa, his apartment in New York City, and strolling the grounds of Yaddo.

I listen to Curtis, always. No one that I have ever met has stories as populated with interesting people and places, all told with a remarkable lack of pretension or embellishment. I’m not certain how the story of Curtis’s life and adventures could be made more fascinating. Car chases, perhaps? But I bet he simply has yet to tell me of a car chase he was in with Steve McQueen and Paul Newman, though I bet Curtis was riding a horse. Really, though, any story I could make up or any recounting of the stories Curtis tells and reads would do nothing but diminish them. I thought it best, therefore, to see if he would relate some of his experiences directly. I had the honor of speaking with him about Yaddo, life, writing, the University of Iowa Press reissuing three of his books, and prima donnas.

James Scott: The University of Iowa Press recently reissued Gentlemen on the Prairie, We Have All Gone Away, and The Attic. What were your emotions as that process unfolded? I think of your descriptions of reading the letters you wrote home while in the Navy years later in The Attic, and imagine reading from these books must have some similarities.

Curtis Harnack: To have three books that I wrote some time ago come back into print was wonderful, and cheering.  Re-reading the two memoirs We Have All Gone Away and The Attic was emotionally difficult – it seemed so intensely personal. How could I have spilled out so much private stuff to perfect strangers who might be reading me? I think that while writing a memoir one is protected from worrying about consequences. But they can come and cause pain, as it has at times for me.

JS: Does that pain make things more difficult for you the next time you sit down to write? How do you maintain your honesty knowing that can be the result?

CH: I blank out consideration of that while writing. Later I might delete a passage if somebody vulnerable could be hurt by it, but that’s seldom. When writing fiction I can be deluded into thinking that “what really happened” has been transformed by how it’s embedded in what I’ve made up. Sometimes to my surprise I realize I didn’t change enough.

JS: Last we spoke, I think you’d just finished a novel. Where does that stand? What are you working on now?

CH: It stands on my shelf because certain things need to be done differently. But I still don’t know how.

JS: I was fortunate enough to hear you read from a new memoir about your writing life. It was like hearing from someone who played for the ’27 Yankees—everyone became a legend. How’s that coming along?

CH: It needs to get out of my hands soon, I think.  When I was doing the research for Gentlemen on the Prairie and living in England (on leave from running Yaddo), the biographer Michael Holroyd told me, after I’d described what I was doing: “When you’ve got twice the material you’ll ever use it’s time to sit down and write the book.”   Now the memoir is finished! I must stop adding bits here and there.

JS: There must have been many moments, looking back on it all now, that meant a lot to you as a writer, even though they didn’t seem that big at the time. Can you share one or two?

CH: John Cheever once remarked that it takes only reading a few sentences of a book to know whether the writer is any good.

My girlfriend while in graduate school at Columbia was a friend of e.e. cummings and his wife. When I told Cummings I was working on a novel he said he hoped I would take full advantage of the novel’s multiple ways of telling a story simultaneously, not just settle for a few, as some writers did.

In response to sending Wallace Stegner my second novel, Love And Be Silent, he wrote: “The voice I hear in you is a fine one. . . you’ve got an ear, for which you should kneel morning and evening and praise the Lord.” That was news to me.

JS: I love Wallace Stegner. That must have been a huge thrill—and an engine to keep you going.

What was the most surprising memory or emotion that you unearthed during the writing of a book?

CH: For the memoir, We Have All Gone Away, I was getting information from older family members such as Aunt Lizzie, my dead mother’s sister.  She said my mother couldn’t marry the man she had been expecting to because his family disapproved.  During the frontier period her Uncle Nick had shot and killed a man.  My mother was furious that her intended would end their alliance for such a reason.  And so, the man who was to be my father became the substitute. Then Aunt Lizzy showed me a knick-knack in the curio-cabinet, which my Great Uncle Nick had made while in prison. All my childhood I had seen that artifact  — but never knew the story behind it.

JS: That’s the kind of story I have no answer to, but I will just type, “Jaw dropped.” One thing that struck me is just how many writers you have been around in your writing life. Can you tell us a bit about your biggest influences, not just as words on a page, but as living, breathing humans?

CH: While in graduate school at Columbia I met Dylan Thomas, who was “living, breathing” (and drunk).  Professor Mark Van Doren asked me and a classmate to fetch him by taxi from the Chelsea Hotel, just to be sure he got to the scheduled poetry reading. We found him in the bar, looking bleary-eyed and disheveled, and told him that a taxi was waiting.  He said, in that organ-toned voice, that the woman on the next stool was his wife  (though I knew she wasn’t).  She must come along too. Okay, I said. In glee he grabbed her thigh but almost fell off the stool.  I thought, “Fern Hill” came out of THIS man?  How could it be? I knew there was a difference between art and life but at that time couldn’t believe it – though now had to.

For me, words on the page were the main influence on my writing – Midwesterners especially, Twain, Sherwood Anderson, Cather, Hemingway, Dreiser. Being married to a well-known writer, Hortense Calisher, whom I met at the U. of Iowa Writer’s Workshop where both of us were teaching, some of our writer-friends were part of The New Yorker world of the time. In my new memoir I go into a few of those associations and how they helped – or didn’t.

JS: I cannot wait. You mentioned your marriage, and we don’t need to get too personal, but in terms of your writing, what kind of impact did it have? It takes a very strong person, I think, to be with another artist who does what they do.

CH:  We came from very different worlds, she urban, Jewish, sophisticated; me a Midwest farm guy. She had her special writing sources and I had mine. For instance, early on she was surprised by the cornfields in Iowa and wondered why so much corn was needed for human consumption (I told her pigs and cattle ate it, having experience in that). I was unfamiliar with a lot of things in New York and enjoyed learning the ropes from her. We didn’t get involved in each other’s writing or even see work until it was done and ready to be sent out. That scheme seemed best for us.

JS: How do you manage to work in both fiction and memoir? Aren’t you tempted to fictionalize pieces of the memoirs? Don’t you find one constricting after writing the other?

CH: One has to stick to the genre you’re in. The memoir allows for one’s particular take on things, but you cross the line if you knowingly make something up. My siblings had different versions on a few incidents that I report in We Have All Gone Away. Impressions can vary, especially in a family. At the time of writing I did hesitate regarding a scene that happened in 1933, when violence erupted on the farms. I recalled touching a bullet hole in the rear of an auto. Only six years old then, I’d been lifted up to feel it.  Maybe I imaged that, I don’t know. But I left it in as a valid memory.

JS: With so many new books coming out all the time, but also with access to more and more information, who are some authors you think should be more widely read? Could you perhaps name some titles that have gone out of print that you just can’t believe people can’t just go out and buy?

CH:  Yes, it’s sad. At a library sale, de-accessioning the volumes that hadn’t been checked out enough, I once picked up a handsome set of Jane Austen.  I went into the library and asked:  “Are you seriously doing this?” They said people want the new, so this is how libraries pay for the new books. It’s the world we’re in now.

Larry Woiwode is one writer I think should be better known than he is now.

JS: I know! Sometimes I see books on the street in cardboard boxes. How big is your library? Any prized possessions?

CH: My library is a mess, can’t find anything. Some of it is in the upstate house, which has most of my teaching-connected books. The rest is in the New York apartment. I always believed books are for reading and was never interested in getting prized items. Hortense felt that way, too. She had first editions of The Catcher in the Rye and Augie March but decided to throw away the book-jackets and now those novels have no value in the rare book market. I don’t mind – they’re on the shelf.

One winter holiday we took the train from Saratoga to Seattle, and I brought along old paperbacks to read on the way. Orwell’s Burmese Days was falling apart; every page came out in my hand and after I’d read both sides I tossed it in the trash. I seem to remember that book better than most. Maybe our current loss of traditional books will some day make them seem more precious.

JS: You may have found a new studying tactic—throwing out each page as you read it. How did your seventeen years at Yaddo impact your work? Your career?

CH: Prior to Yaddo, the eighteen years I spent teaching in universities was the more usual route for writers and poets. But I found running Yaddo a good choice. I could work three hours first thing in the morning and then spend the rest of the day with problems to solve in the “real world.” I learned a lot of things and found it nourishing for writing. I had four books published while at Yaddo.

JS: Bigger prima donnas: writers at Yaddo or students at the School of American Ballet?

CH: The big difference is: the Yaddo inmates are mature adults, whereas the ballet kids are teenagers. All artists have to have determination and drive.  I don’t think prima donnas are tolerated in either place. At Yaddo some of the residents who had reputations of being “difficult” in various ways often turned out to be pussycats.


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Monday, February 27, 2012

African-American History Month: Alex Haley

"In every conceivable manner, the family is a link to our past, a bridge to our future."

You can almost sum up notorious author, Alex Haley, in one word: Roots.  And what a word.  There's not a black American on this earth (save small children) who hasn't seen the series.  The book and subsequent miniseries, starring Levar Burton, succeeds at being both infuriating and inspiring simultaneously.  Having met and interviewed nearly every significant civil rights activist in his time, Alex Haley forged his reputation as a writer through his gritty interactions with these individuals in a series in Playboy, referred to as "The Playboy Interviews".  Following his expose on Malcolm X, Haley requested the opportunity to write the prominent Muslim's biography, which became The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley.  The notoriety that followed the book's release gave Haley the insight and courage to write his own memoir, starting at the very beginning, in a village in Gambia, where a tribal historian relayed the story of Haley's African ancestor, Kunta Kinte.

Alex Haley was born August 11, 1921 to Simon and Bertha Haley, both becoming educators while still in their prime.  Alex, highly intelligent and amazingly gifted himself, followed quickly in their footsteps, graduating high school at the age of 15.  From there, he entered college, eventually dropping out to join the Coast Guard at 17.  He excelled quickly there, too, first as a seaman and later as an officer when he transferred to the field of journalism.  He was highly decorated in his 20 years of military service, earning American Defense Service and World War II Victory medals.  However, Alex had always wanted to write, but writing barely made ends meet.  In the first few years, Alex reported having only made about $2000 a year working 16-hour days and eating only canned sardines for weeks at a time.  His big break in his writing career came when Playboy approached him to interview trumpeter Miles Davis, to which Alex eagerly agreed.  The article was such a success that Playboy hired Haley full time to interview more prominent African-Americans, to include Martin Luther King Jr, Sammy Davis Jr, and Quincy Jones.

Following his success with The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Alex had achieved the success he craved; the writing opportunities were thrown at him left and right.  But he would instead embark upon a more personal project: a 12-year investigation tracing his family's history back to Africa.  Alex wanted to be sure he accurately portrayed the historical accounts of his enslaved ancestors; booking a passage back to the States on a cargo ship, he spent the duration of the journey in its bowels wearing nothing but his underwear.  His research spanned three continents and became the masterpiece Roots.  Several years later, a sequel of sorts tracing the history of another branch of his family became the novel Queen, also developed into a miniseries starring Halle Berry.

Alex's historical novels caused a new interest in genealogy in African-American culture.  Soon, black Americans across the country, inspired by Alex's works, began the hunt for their own ancestors, tracing their histories as far as public records would carry them.  Alex Haley's body of work has entreated black Americans to embrace and explore their backgrounds and discover their own personal African-American history.

Roots: Breaking Kunta Kinte

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Friday, May 30, 2014

Anticipating "The Giver"

As the Summer movie season gets underway, the one movie I'm anticipating the most is "The Giver".

"The Giver" is a book by Lois Lowry. My daughter had to read it for school. In an attempt to keep up with her studies, and to show some solidarity, I read her copy. I finished it over a weekend, and I was greatly affected by it.

The book is about a young boy who lives in a utopia. He and his family have everything "decided" for them, and in return they live in peace and harmony. Despite the peaceful grown up life he knows he's in for, he begins to yearn for "something more." When his community announces that he will have a special job working with an elder statesman who has memories of how things used to be, he is introduced to some harsh truths about utopia.

Since this book is a young adult novel, I didn't expect to be swept up in the emotion of "The Giver", but I was. Every revelation the protagonist experienced wrenched my gut. By the time he realizes how to act on his feelings, I was both cheering and fearful. The book had me in tears, so potent were its images and truths. ("I thought there was only us." "There's much more.")

It's a book that I'm grateful to have read, and one that I wish I would have experienced when I was 13. ("The Giver" was written in 1993). I don't know if the movie will have the same impact, but I'm hoping it popularizes this wonderful book.

"The Giver", directed by Phillip Noyce and starring Jeff Bridges opens August 15, 2014.

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Saturday, March 28, 2015

Memories of Holding a Baby

The last time I held a baby was November 2013. The baby was my wife's cousin's child, a boy just a few months old.

My wife's cousin was in town for a reunion, and there was a mini-party at her parents in Connecticut. When her twin baby boys woke up from napping, they were passed around to adoring uncles and aunts and cousins.

I was thrilled when I had a chance to hold one of them. I was slightly terrified, but I had been hoping for a chance to try. Did I remember how to hold them right? Would the baby start crying?

The heft of the child was incredible. How does 8-10 pounds of baby feel so heavy? The little boy grabbed one of my fingers, and began to gurgle. I made some coo-ing noises. He began to squirm. I put him up on my shoulder. I felt like I might cry.

"I'm getting emotional here!" I said, smiling before handing him back to the father.

I remember that my daughter was recording some of the festivities on her iPod that day. My daughter! Fourteen years ago I held her for the first time, when she was born.

This past week, I asked her if she had video from that party in November 2013. She found it on her computer. We watched a few seconds of my wife holding one of the twins. No video of me, though (I looked for it later). The memories will have to do.

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Spika Blog

Q&A with Rick Zaitonia, Kuka Systems Aerospace Group: Integrators Outsourcing Work Platforms

10/26/16 11:48 AM

Between the robotics required to build the equipment to the hundreds of tools necessary to support the manufacturing process, engineers are overloaded with developing customized systems and tools that not only satisfy the needs of the manufacturing line, but also meet or exceed safety standards,...

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3 Ways to Close the Skills Gap with Today's Workforce

10/24/14 11:30 AM

You may have heard that US manufacturers are facing a shortage of skilled workers — a shortage so severe that in 2011, 600,000 jobs went unfilled. What's the big deal, you ask? Plenty of kids graduate from high school and college each year. Surely they'll fill that gap.

Actually, they won't unless...

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the best friends you’ll never have

Archive for April 26th, 2015

A full-color edition of KGI by Raina Telgemeier is coming out on Tuesday, and it will be available in hardcover, paperback, AND ebook versions. Two of my Canadian BSC friends already found the books in local stores, so if you’re in Canada, it looks like you can already get it.

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World Malaria Day: Fighting against Malaria.

Posted by texilaadmin - 26 April, 2018

Malaria has often been considered as the single greatest cause of human death ever. Plasmodium falciparum and the mosquito Anopheles gambiae alone have caused more deaths than any other cause. On 25th April, as the world observes World Malaria Day, the need to raise awareness about malaria cannot be ignored.

Coordinated approach by government organizations and other stakeholders, active participation by print and electronic media, education of health workers and municipal personnel, conducting conferences or talk series for general public are some useful ways of creating awareness on Malaria infection and its prevention.

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Malaria in Zambia

According to World Health Organisation report, approximately 90% of all malaria deaths in the world today occur in Africa and most of them are children under the age of five years. In Zambia for instance, Malaria causes about 8000 deaths each year (Report, UNICEF). With 35-50% of under-five mortality and 20% of maternal mortality, children and pregnant women are the most vulnerable groups.

Not surprisingly there has been an upsurge in the number of medical schools in Zambia offering programs in public health and medicine, so as to build healthcare professionals who can address this challenge.

How malaria is transmitted?

Malaria is transmitted through the bite of female Anopheles mosquitoes. Transmission is intensified by climatic conditions such as high rainfall, high temperature and high humidity. In these conditions, the mosquitoes’ lifespan is longer increasing their chances of bite humans.

How can we prevent malaria?

Though malaria is preventable and treatable, its control requires intervention from multiple stakeholders. Spraying homes, schools, hospitals, offices with insecticides and sleeping under insecticides treated nets (ITNs) are two of the most effective malaria preventing measures. There is also a need for environmental control to prevent mosquito breeding grounds.

When prevention of malaria fails, treatment becomes crucial. Having access to community health care centre and health care workers who have the knowledge to treat malaria at its different stages is vital for the effective treatment.

At TAU, Zambia, to commemorate World Malaria Day, on 26th April 2018, we are organizing the second session of Texila Knowledge Talk Series to bring together the best academicians and healthcare professionals to meet and discuss on the challenges of malaria.

Registration open for the event

Topics: Texila Knowledge Talk Series, malaria, Knowledge Talk Series, World Malaria Day, Talk Series

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Thermwood Profile Modeler - from Sketch to Production

Posted by Duane Marrett on Wed, Mar 13, 2013

Tags: Thermwood, eCabinet Systems, CNC, software, control nesting, CNC Routers, wood, Woodworking, Nested Base, 3 Axis, Announcements, CabinetShop, Model 43, Technology, SR43, SignRouter 43, CNC Router, Model 45, smart, Free, save money on cnc router, cabinets, Video, QCore, nested based, Product Information, 43, US made, MTR, Easy, SuperControl, Profile Modeler, millwork, wood carving, introduction, carving, Demonstrations

Thermwood Profile ModelerThermwood's Profile Modeler allows you to quickly create a molding or custom shape from a sketch or drawing on a Thermwood CNC Router with no special shaped tooling required.

This video demonstrates using Profile Modeler to create a custom curved cherry molding from Sketch - to Profile Modeler - to Machine - to Completed Shape.

Steps used in the video:

In eCabinet Systems:
  • Verify the measurements
  • Create the shape using Shape Manager in eCabinet Systems
  • Create Tool
  • Apply Tool to create Shape

On Thermwood QCore SuperControl:
  • File loaded into Profile Modeler on QCore SuperControl
  • Verify Tool Path
  • Run Program
  • Machining Part (Roughing/Finishing/Detail Passes)
  • No special shaped tooling required - Tools Used: 1/2 Straight, 1/2 Ballnose, 1/8 Ballnose, 1/8 Flat
  • Completed Shape

For more information on Profile Modeler or any of our other products, please click here or contact us at 1-800-533-6901.

Thermwood CabinetShop 43 Performance Videos

Posted by Duane Marrett on Fri, Sep 11, 2009

Tags: Thermwood, CNC, New, CNC Routers, wood, Productivity, Woodworking, Nested Base, 3 Axis, Announcements, CabinetShop, Model 43, Cabinet, High Performance, Cost, cabinets, Video, nested based, Product Information, Gen2, QuickCut, 43, Low Cost, Easy, wood carving, Purchase, carving

We've created a couple of videos demonstrating the superior performance of the CabinetShop 43 in a variety of applications.  The first is the Carving of an inset carving, and the second is Cabinet Cutting.

About the CabinetShop 43:  The CabinetShop 43 offers premium performance not normally seen at this price point. For example, it has positioning speeds to 3,180 inches per minute and programmed cutting speeds to 2,250 Inches per minute. The actual speed at which you can cut is determined more by tooling and material than by the machine, but its speed is indicative of the overall solid CNC performance of the CabinetShop 43.


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Wednesday, 13 April 2011

We have a winner!

Boy o boy! This was the most difficult decision we've had to make in a long time. We received so many amazing entries for our 2011 tea towel design competition that it was almost impossible to choose between them.

However, we finally managed to whittle it down to one ultimate winner. Congratulations go to Falkirk based designer, Robbie Henderson. Please may we introduce... Bear Hug!!!!!!!!!!!

We fell in love with the ambiguity of this great big bear (does he really want to hug you, or does he actually just want to eat you?!?) The design will now be put into production, with the final tea towels ready to dry dishes in June. We can't wait!

Thank you so much to everyone who entered. We were overwhelmed by the number and quality of entries, and just feel bad that we can't choose everyone! We'll be running another design competition next year, so do please keep popping back to the blog.

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Friday, 28 February 2014

Design Competition 2014

Oh yeee-air. Get your pencil cases primed, your kettle switched on, and the do not disturb sign on your door, it's time... The 2014 ToDryFor Design Competition has begun!

The lucky winner's design will become part of our existing line-up of talented artists, which includes Gemma Correll, Rob Ryan, Julia Pott and other highly acclaimed individuals.

As well as receiving five free samples, on-going commission payments and international exposure through press and worldwide stockists, the lucky winner will also receive a year's subscription to Mollie Makes magazine and a year's supply of Yorkshire Tea. Two runners-up will also receive a bumper box of goodies (including Beast In Show mugs and biscuits). Wowsers!

The top 15 designs will be whittled down to the final three by our super-amazing guest judges, Michelle Alger, Head of Home for Heal’s and Mollie Makes Editor, Lara Watson.

If you want a heads up on what usually takes our fancy, why not view the gallery of previous year's entries over on our facebook page, or take a look at the 20112012, and 2013 winning designs.

The closing date for entries is Monday 14th April 2014.
Good Luck!

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Toyota GT86 is Auto Express Performance Car of the Year

The Toyota GT86 has added another major accolade to its impressive CV – and has been named Performance Car of the Year by Auto Express.

Affirming its position as one of the best driver’s cars available, the win follows the GT86’s first place position in the Auto Express performance car of the year group test in 2012, where it was hailed as ‘a very worthy performance car champion’ after outmatching competition from the likes of Porsche, Audi and Lotus.

After the group test, Auto Express Senior Road Tester Owen Mildenhall said: ‘In an age when many performance cars filter your interaction with the road in the pursuit of meaningless lap time, the Toyota GT86 stands out. Drive on the limit, and you can feel the effect of every input from the steering, throttle and brake pedal.

‘Accurate, fun and vice free, this is a car that makes you long for a twisty road every time you slide into the driver’s seat.’

Read our GT86 reviews round-up here or see our other GT86 posts here.

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