text:
Association of Architectural School Librarians
Annual Conference, March 1 - 4, 2012
Boston, Massachusetts

Conference organizer: Sarah Dickinson, Harvard Graduate School of Design

Conference Hotel:
Boston Park Plaza Hotel
50 Park Plaza at Arlington Street
Boston, MA 02116

Book before February 13, 2012 to receive the ACSA Group Rate.
Group Rate: $179 (+additional 14.25% in taxes)
(617) 426-2000

Registration due by February 17th.
NOW AVAILABLE: Online registration and payment for members and guests. Print/Mail Registration
: Word | PDF

“Collaborations within and beyond the design academy”

***Preliminary Program***
Thursday March 1 2012

3:15 – 5:15pm: Boston by Foot tour of Victorian Back Bay (meet in Hotel lobby for 15 minute walk to
Trinity Church, Copley Square, where we will meet our guides from Boston By Foot).

Tour description:
On this tour you will learn about the filling of the Back Bay, the creation of the neighborhood, and how
this was enabled by the development of new technology in the mid‐1800s. Designed to imitate the
grand boulevards of Paris, the Back Bay is one of the few areas of Boston where the streets are straight
and the sidewalks wide. Boston's Back Bay embraces one of America's richest collections of art and
architecture. The treasures of Back Bay and Copley Square include grand rows of Back Bay townhouses,
Trinity Church, the Boston Public Library, and New Old South Church.

E6:15 Meet in lobby to travel to Group dinner at Marliave

Friday  March 2 2012

Location: Park Plaza Hotel
8:00 – 9:00      Registration, Continental Breakfast sponsored by Material Connexion
9:00 – 10:30    Business Meeting
10:30 – 10:45  Break
10:45‐11:45     Avery Index and BWR Updates
(Jeffrey Ross,Avery Indexer, Reference Librarian, Avery Library
11:45 - 12:00  Le Corbusier Plans Online Demonstration
(Ronald Poe, General Manager, Echelle-1 Internationale)

12 – 2:00pm    Lunch on your own
2:00 – 3:30      Special Focus Session: “Digital Collaborations within and beyond the design academy: The
                        Library transformed.”

Moderator: Sarah Dickinson, Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Participants: Hannah Bennett,, Princeton University
Ann Baird Whiteside, Harvard Graduate School of Design
Jesse Shapins, Harvard Graduate School of Design
Jolene de Verges MIT
Jennifer Parker, Notre Dame
Samantha Salden, Notre Dame

This special panel will explore the ways new technologies are transforming the activities of the design
academy, including how we collect, share, teach, and experience the creative and scholarly record of the
built environment. This session will focus on the ways librarians and faculty members are collaborating
to take full advantage of the opportunities offered by ever‐evolving technologies to expand the arenas
of digital exploration and scholarship. From addressing issues of the preservation of born digital content
to the creation of new research portals and tools for integrating collections in a shared curatorial
environment, the panelists’ presentations will demonstrate the exciting possibilities of collaboration
within and beyond the design academy.Full presentation descriptions

3:30 – 4:00 Break
4:00 – 5:30 Special Focus Session 2: New Frontiers in Research and Pedagogy: Collaborative
Approaches in Architectural Education.

Moderator: Hannah Bennett, Princeton University

Participants: Heather McCann, MIT
Amy Trendler, Ball State University
Gilda Santana, University of Miami
Stacy Brinkman, Miami University
Diane Fellows, Miami University

This panel examines how faculty and librarians have collaborated to provide innovative tools and
pedagogical approaches to developing research skills necessary to navigate an array of information
formats in a context‐driven and design‐oriented environment. Papers include presentations on the
design and development of a materials collection, a GIS instruction program tailored for Architecture
students, and innovative classroom and embedded studio‐based faculty/librarian collaborations
exploring innovative approaches to the development of research and writing skills.
Full presentation descriptions.

6 - 8pm:  Reception for AASL members at F.A. Bernett Booksellers (144 Lincoln Street in the leather District)- Join Peter Bernett and his staff for wine, light refreshments, and conversation. A treasure trove....

Saturday March 3 2012: Harvard GSD / MIT / Boston Architectural College

8:30 AM
: Meet in lobby for MBTA trip over to Harvard campus
9:00 – 12:00 Frances Loeb Library, Harvard Graduate School of Design
Our morning will start with coffee and pastries in the Visual Resources + Materials
Department, followed by department presentations and small group breakout sessions.
Details on small group topics to follow.
12:00 – 2:00 Lunch: on your own / travel to MIT campus.
2:00 – 5:00pm Modernist architecture tour of the MIT campus, combined with a tour of Rotch Library
of Architecture and Planning, highlighting a number of special architectural

MIT’s campus is rich with architectural gems, from Aalto’s Baker House (1947), Kresge
Auditorium and the MIT Chapel designed by Saarinen (1953 and 1954), to Catalano’s
Stratten Building (1963) to I.M. Pei’s Green Building (1964). More recently, the Stata
Center by Gehry and the Maki‐designed Media Lab will be included in the tour. On view
in the Institute Archives Gallery, Glass at MIT, an exhibit featuring the recently acquired
Charles J. Connick Stained Glass Foundation Collection.

5:00 – 6:30pm:    Reception in Memorial Library at the Boston Architectural College (host, Susan Lewis) 320 Newbury Street, 6th floor

Evening:  Dinner on your own, committee meetings.

Sunday March 4 2012
8:30 – 10:00 Leadership Breakfast. (Hotel)
10:15– 1:15pm Bus trip to the Gropius House, Lincoln, Massachusetts.
The house Walter Gropius designed for his family in 1938, after arriving in
Massachusetts to teach at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, is now owned by
Historic New England (formerly Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities) and
open for guided tours. This tour sold out when it was offered at the ARLIS/NA annual
meeting in 2010, so we hope you to take this opportunity to visit this seminal work of
Modernist residential architecture in New England.

Subpages (1): Marliave Dinner Choices
Sarah Dickinson,
Feb 29, 2012, 10:40 AM


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text:
Arturo Servin. My last, last homepage

Arturo Servin. AI Research Student and Computer Networking Professional

My other personal home pages (not updated)

My Research

My News and Blogs

Personal Blog (Security, Internet, AI, stuff. It's in Spanish)

Research Blog (Security, DDoS, AI. English)

Shared news

My Current Projects

Friendmaker (very alpha, on you own risk)

Past projects (not working on them) includes Askaritech, LaNeta.Net and Gecko.

Other Stuff

Photos (Flickr and Picassa)

My CVs

I create this page to link my other on-line resources. Soon I will migrate this page to my own domain. Meanwhile this is my last homepage. Also, due to changes in Google Pages you will find more info about me here:

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software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2015-27
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for June 2015
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf


text:
Bankston Family & Bankston Genealogy

DNA analysis is transforming genealogy and can be as informative as the internet.  Exactly like the internet, DNA research needs massive participation to fulfill its potential. PLEASE, We appeal to ALL Bankston descendants to have your DNA tested by FtDNA.  It is especially vital that our OLDEST cousins participate.  If you are fearful for any reason, you can stipulate that your results be kept absolutely private and that your specimen be destroyed after testing.
DNA can contribute to knowledge about Bankston ancestors and thereby help other Bankston cousins prove their ancestry.  Even better, before long your DNA might just lead you to remote cousins who can solve your genealogy puzzles.

new Bankston DNA page has links to explanations about using DNA for genealogy and to our (Anders) Bankston DNA Haplotype and to an example of the most recent development, the Family Finder chromosome graph.

NEW.  Click HERE to see the entire Time line for Lawrence Bankston & descendants from 1693 to 1850.
NEW on Oct 1, 2013  A new version of the Rambo Family Tree Volume 3 containing descendants of Anders Bankson is attached below, filename: Rambo Vol 3 - Sep 2013.

You lucky Bankston cousins can order a copy of the Rambo Family Tree, Vol.3, Descendants of Gertrude (Rambo) Bankson
by phone from AuthorHouse at (888) 280-7715; it costs $25 + about $6 for S&H.  The AuthorHouse web site has proved frustrating to use for ordering books, so the phone is recommended.  You can also  download this read-only PDF of that book: eBankson.pdf.  ENJOY.  Be WARNed that it is 4939k and may take a couple of minutes to download & show up.  Also check the Rambo genealogy web site for newer, editable ASCII downloads. ( )

The attached LaurenceJohnSpartanburg.doc  is a research report for Lawrence Bankston and the Rev. John Bankston of Guilford/Rockingham counties, NC and Spartanburg Co., SC.  Thanks to Brent Cantrell for his excellent Hughes Map (PICT0002.JPG).  Please contribute corrections, additions, and comments for inclusion as this work progresses.  Newly Updated 25 Feb 2010.

The following Bankston Timeline spreadsheet has hyperlinks to photos of documents:

Bankson time line

Display the entire Bankston timeline spreadsheet (above) by clicking on this link
You can Select All, Copy, and Paste it into an Excel spreadsheet or a Word document or lots of other places.
1)  Ctrl-A is the keyboard shortcut for Select All.  Alternatively you can RIGHT click on a spreadsheet cell to get an "edit menu" and click on Select All.  The selected text will become highlighted.
2)  Ctrl-C is the keyboard shortcut for Copy or RIGHT click again to get the edit menu and click on Copy.
3)  Now open a new spreadsheet or document in Excel or Numbers or ...  and Paste to receive your very own copy of the spreadsheet.
4)  You can then sort it differently, rearrange columns, delete rows, add information or whatever you need for your own purposes.
5)  I recommend that you first make a working copy of the original so that the original can be trusted to be intact.

Documents with signatures of the early Bankston ancestors are linked in the spreadsheet above and collected in Picasa albums.  You can click on the document photo shown (left) to see one entire album.
  You can download the photos freely.  Please contribute by sending any similar photos of early documents.

The information here is the newest material on the web.  We've accumulated more information, but no one has said anything, so new updates are on the back burner.   Let us know if you are interested:

You can send notes to our Bankston Blog:
Many thanks to Google for all these nifty toys.

As a Bankson descendant, you are eligible to become a forefather member of the Swedish Colonial Society:

Bankson family, Bankson genealogy. 12 Jan 2011.
Nearly all Bankson & Bankston families descend from Peter Gunnarson Rambo.
The entire 2300-page Rambo Family Tree is downloadable at
as two 8-Meg read-only PDF files.

Ron Beatty's personal page is,
and you can follow his travels at

Pages of personal interest: Ron Beatty's home pageRambo family genealogyBankston & Bankson family genealogythe Camblin family genealogythe Dorsey Overturff family, cousin Jean's Schenck and Hageman genealogyEric's RPM coinsTRS-80 computer & software collection for sale or donation to a museum, Strategy and Tactical Game Collection for sale, many from Avalon Hill
Ron Beatty,
Feb 27, 2010, 11:55 AM
RevC Forde,
Mar 28, 2009, 3:07 PM
Ron Beatty,
Oct 1, 2013, 1:59 PM
RevC Forde,
Mar 3, 2010, 7:25 AM
RevC Forde,
Nov 23, 2008, 12:15 PM


text:
European Bioconductor Developers' Meeting 2013

Cambridge UK, 9-10th December

The meeting is aimed at bioinformaticians, programmers and software engineers who contribute to the Bioconductor project, or are interested in developing packages for Bioconductor. The goals are to:
  • foster the exchange of technical expertise
  • keep contributors up to speed with the latest developments
  • coordinate any related efforts.
We aim to have a mix of scientific and technical presentations, with the themes of this year's meeting including:
  • Strategies for processing large data problems
  • Interactive tools
  • Reproducibility in high-throughput research
  • Emergent biological applications and technologies
  • Flashlight talks

Support for the meeting has been provided by the 7th Framework Programme funded RADIANT project and Illumina.


text:
Tag Archives: Germany

holiday plans

Weihnachtsmarkt Dresden

In one week, Marcus and I will fly to Berlin to spend Christmas with his family in the East. The last time we had a German Christmas was in 2009, a visit that also took us to the Christmas markets (Weihnachtsmärkte) in Dresden. It’s a magical city, but even more so with a mug of Glühwein in hand and sparkling lights all around. Besides visiting Dresden, we’re looking forward to visiting family, walking through the snowy woods, and eating at our favorite restaurants in Berlin. I can’t wait to step on the plane and head East for Christmas!

What are your plans for the holiday?

summer sailing

During our holiday in east Germany, Marcus’ father took us sailing on the same lake we visited last year. He and Marcus have sailed together for years, but it was only my second time out. I love boats and being on the water, but am still getting used to all the rope and steep turns. The wind whipped us around and the fickle sun finally dominated over the clouds.

summer in Germany

We took our annual summer trip to Germany in the middle of July. Marcus’ father has a house on the edge of a lake and protected wildlife area. We spent most of our time in the woods and on the water, enjoying nature and the quiet. There was no internet, but lots of fresh fruit, nightly barbeques on the back terrace, the spotting of deer, reading books, and dancing in the fields.

shapes in Stuttgart

The southern German city of Stuttgart is a mixture of old and new architecture. I am always drawn to the classic grandeur of the old palaces and official buildings, but the newer buildings of the last decades had a fantastic array of shapes.

I was pleasantly surprised by my short trip to Stuttgart and all the city had to offer. Three days was barely enough time to scratch the surface between work obligations, but I will certainly return someday when I finally plan that journey through the Black Forest that I have been dreaming of since childhood. Until then, Stuttgart.

Fußball in Stuttgart

Last night was the European Football Championship semi-finals, Germany against Italy. I was excited to be in Stuttgart and watched the first half of the match with the crowd gathered in the Biergarten im Schlossgarten Stuttgart. Unfortunately, the outcome was not in Germany’s favor, but the fans were amazingly spirited.

A few scenes from an evening in Stuttgart, where I’m spending the next few days on a work trip. After a morning of traveling and an afternoon of final preparations, I went for an evening walk in search of a bite to eat. It is properly summery here (ahem, Amsterdam) and everyone was outside to enjoy it. I landed in Weinstube Fröhlich for a dinner of Schwäbische Käsespätzle, which is basically delicious and cheesy. And not at all photogenic. More to come!

a plan for a day

When I announced my engagement on small sight, I knew I wouldn’t turn this space into a wedding blog, but I also want to share a few moments along the way. Planning an intercultural wedding and marriage leaves a lot of room for learning. I spent one morning in September running between the American and German consulates in Amsterdam to finally learn that all answers would depend on the German province in which we will wed.

After phone calls, clarifications, translations, and waiting rooms, Marcus and I now have all our paperwork in order! It now needs to be submitted for approval, after which we will be allowed to schedule an appointment at the registry office in Berlin. What I thought would be the most difficult part has actually been quite painless.

I wish I had better news for the yet-to-be-printed save the date cards and the yet-to-be-booked venue. My older sister has a lot of event planning experience and is encouraging us to finalize the most critical parts. Maybe it’s because we’re planning a Berlin wedding while being in Amsterdam, but everything is just taking a lot more time. In between, I have been gathering some visual inspiration for that day in April, which I wanted to share. If anyone has some tips on wedding planning, I would love some insight! How did you handle all the details and planning?

Photo sources: flowers, table, dress and bouquet, church.


text:
Remotely managing Scheduled Tasks on a server without local administrator with taskschd.msc

  • Quick overview:

    1.) We have a Windows 2008 R2 server with scheduled tasks that are set to run as an administrative user.  The task work without error.

    2.) We have a non administrative user who needs to be able to open taskschd.msc on their Windows 7 workstation and remotely connect to the server and run the existing scheduled tasks.

    3.) From other post I have found the information needed to grant the non administrative user access to c:\windows\tasks using command line tool CACLS (since there isnt a security tab on the properties of the tasks folder.

    In addition, I have granted the non administrator Modify, Read & Execute, Read, and Write permissions from the security tab of the scheduled task.  These posts were helpful and this DOES work in granting the user permission to scheduled tasks if the user RDPs to the server; before these steps were taken, the user could not run scheduled tasks from an RDP session.

    The problem is with the users ability to connect to the servers scheduled tasks via taskschd.msc (or schtasks from the command line; schtasks /run /s <servername> /TN <taskname>) from their Windows 7 workstation.  When trying to do so the non server administrative user receives "You do not have permissions to access this computer" from taskschd.msc or "ERROR: Access is denied" from schtasks from the command line.

    In addition to giving the user access and the ability to run the scheduled task on the server without giving them local administrator, what else is needed to allow the user to open taskschd.msc or schtasks from their workstation and connect to the servers scheduled tasks?

    Any help is greatly appreciated.

    • Edited by BeaconMRat Friday, January 03, 2014 1:21 PM
    Thursday, January 02, 2014 10:11 PM

All replies

  • Hi,

    Here sorry to inform you that as per following article http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc725744(WS.10).aspx; to schedule, view, or change a task on a remote computer, you must be member of the Administrators group on the remote computer means must have administrative privilege on remote computer.

    Apart you can use, the/u parameter in a /create or /change operation only when the local and remote computers are in the same domain or the local computer is in a domain that the remote computer domain trust. Otherwise, the remote computer cannot authenticate the user account specified and it cannot verify that the account is a member of the Administrators group.

    Hope it helps!
    Monday, January 06, 2014 3:06 AM
  • That obviously does not help.  I understand that natively it isn't possible hints the reason for my question regarding customizing the permissions to make this possible. As stated in my original post, I have already overcame the challenge of accessing the scheduled tasks as a non administrative user.  The remaining question more involves the use of taskschd.msc or schtasks remotely and the permissions necessary to connect to the remote computer.
    • Edited by BeaconMRat Monday, January 06, 2014 1:39 PM
    Monday, January 06, 2014 1:36 PM
  • You can give your non administrative users rights to manage scheduled tasks on any Windows machine using a web browser with System Frontier.

    They won't need any admin rights and can, for example, be logged into a Windows 7 machine while starting or stopping a task on Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows Server 2003, all using the same interface. You can even delegate rights to manage specific tasks by name, using wildcards.

    Friday, January 10, 2014 6:03 AM


text:
AD audit report tool

  • Dear All,

    i want to take report of AD like when user created,when deleted,disabled users, when user password changed , password expire date etc  i need freeware software which include all report as mention in this message pl. help me guide .

    Thanks, Sandeep Lahange
    Tuesday, May 17, 2011 3:53 PM

  • Hello,

    such a tool doesn't exist. You have to examine the DCs event viewer after enableing the auditing in a new created/applied GPO on the DCs OU or use System Center Operations Manager which is quite complex and not really to call a tool.

    Best regards Meinolf Weber Disclaimer: This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties or guarantees , and confers no rights.
    Tuesday, May 17, 2011 6:42 PM

All replies


text:
Since the post mortem thread in A3 was kinda interesting lets have a go at the other two problems as well

This problem was an interesting one for me, I figured its a threading contest, i bet we get to use threads! However the best solution seemed to be single threaded. (Weird!)

The best optimalisation I could come up with was a lookup table for every 5x5 block on the field you could determine the inner 9 cells by just looking in a big ass table, turning this problem from a heavy test problem into a simple lookup problem. and by running a single 5x5 block it was easy to determine possible spots to move to in the next cycle. One last optimalisation was to check the current cell's location compared to the target cell and try the possible directions that would get us closer (or atleast in the right direction) to the target cell first.

I kinda misread or mis understood the problem description and figured there would be more points for performance then for the 'shortest' route (boy was that a mistake) and opted to have a go at trying to be fastest, looking back yeah big mistake, but hey on timing points alone still got 12 points out of it.

(warning due to the lookup table download is about 16 megs)

Herunterladen LazyDodo.zip16.16 MB
8 Beiträge / 0 neu
Letzter Beitrag
Nähere Informationen zur Compiler-Optimierung finden Sie in unserem Optimierungshinweis.

I like these post mortums as well, so thanks to all for sharing.

I made a number of optimisations to the grid to improve performance of large grids:

* Implemented as a bit fields to save memory, cache and bandwidth.
* Implemented a process routine that used the bit field to process more in one go. A bit like the idea behind using SSE.
* Implemented a hardwired byte based 5x5 grid, like Lazydodo did, that just processes the inner 3x3. I would rip this 5x5 from the large grid. Calculated the next move and iteration and if any of them resulted in a live cell then iterate the whole grid, reinsert the 3x3 grid and save for later proessing.

For the threading each thread had its own collection of work. Work being a live cell position and a grid. If a thread ran out of work it would steal a job from another thread. This kept the cross talk between threads low. I started off with each work collection just being a queue of work but changed it to be an array of queues. New work was always taken from the lowest queue with work. New work was push onto the array based on a scoring system. The score was based on the live cell distance from the target and the path length of the present solution. So work that was closer to the solution got done sooner unless it was getting a long path. This gave me a quick route to find A solution and also pushed the infinte loops out of the way of more valid routes. But was not so good at finding the shortest path as it is basically a depth first search with prunning.

I made the same mistake and placed effort more on being able to handle large problems and scaling than on finding the shortest route. Bih ouch. Would have been nice to see some larger problems.

Code attached. (Linux, GCC, pthreads)

Herunterladen mazeOfLife.v3.tgz20.85 KB

I also try to solve large problems and use task queue for threads (as duncanhopkins).
My problem is a test with short paths.

Algorithm (russian forum):

hi all,

Here is my small write up for the maze of life problem.

My starting point was to implement the A* algorithm in order to solve the problem, using the lenght of the path already done and the distance to the goal as heuristic. The only problem at this point is that since every movement generates a lot of new paths and solutions are far from be straight lines, trying to find the shortest path in all cases can be very very slow. So my decision was not to worry about shortest path and replace my initial heuristic with an aproximation taken after solving some small puzzles. Since I dont have any way to verify that my new heuristic is optimistic, I dont have any way to ensure that I find the shortest path. But this idea worked pretty well in practice, and with my single threaded version was working fine.

TBB has priority queue (for my open set) and hashmap (for my closed set) thread safe containers, so to move from the single threaded version to the threaded version seemed to be easy. There are two task that could be parallelized. First, the movement computation. So, when I pop the information of a position from my open list, I create eight new parallel tasks (one task per every direction). The other point that could be paralellized was the pop from the open set. Limit the amount of threads popping from the open set Is very important because if you go too deep in the priority queue, you are for sure doing extra work. For this reason I decided to have only 6 threads popping elements from the open set.

The Final points in the implementation was to decide when a maze is big enough to be resolved using multiple threads, and when the open set has elements enough to ensure that many threads popping elements doesnt harm.

About the solution source: (Windows/Linux, intel compiler/MSVC, TBB)
Solution attached

Herunterladen MazeOfLife.cpp17.29 KB

I almost hate to talk about Maze of Life because it was such an interesting problem and my solution had potential but regrettably did not scale to multiple threads. Part of my difficulty stemmed from getting a late start on the contest and having only 9 days to complete Maze of Life. Working the full 21 days really helps on any problem.

My top level design is analagous to a chess-playing program. It needs these three components:

  1. A compact representation of board positions
  2. A way to quickly generate new positions
  3. A payoff function to evaluate the quality of a position

To address the first two requirements I turned to the substantial body of literature on Game of Life programming. My data structure is "sparse" in that it only represents regions that contain living cells. Each cell is represented by a bit (0 = dead, 1 = alive) in a 64 bit integer which, in turn, covers a horizontal run of 64 cells. Advancing one generation in the Game of Life uses bitwise operations to process 64 cells in parallel.

Now that I know more about SSE, I could probably up the word size to 128 and get 128-way parallelism. It wouldn't have mattered much for this contest because 80% of the test grids were smaller than 64 in width.

The payoff function is interesting because it can totally change the complexion of the program. It scores each position based on how likely it is to lead to the desired solution - lower numbers being better. I wrote two payoffs, greedy and optimal:

  • Greedy returns the approximate Manhattan distance from the intelligent cell to the goal. It actually weights the major axis of the Manhattan distance so heavily that the minor axis distance is only used to break ties.
  • Optimal is like the A* algorithm. It returns the distance already traveled plus the best case number of remaining steps. This is an optimistic estimate of the length of a path through the current position.

The main algorithm uses a heap (or priority queue) of positions, sorted by payoff, to work on the most promising leads first:

push initial position onto the heap
while position at top of heap is not at the goal
pop position p from the heap
for each direction d in 0 to 8
if p + d is in bounds and p[d] is a free cell
position n = p with intelligent cell moved in direction d
advance n to next generation
if the intelligent cell survived
push n onto the heap
delete p
report the solution

That's my basic single-threaded solution. With the greedy payoff function it finds sub-optimal solutions quickly. With the optimal payoff, it always finds the shortest path but can take a long time depending on the complexity of the problem. I just ran both versions of my single-threaded program on a home quad core and got these unofficial results for the 10 official test problems:

DatasetGreedy time
(in milliseconds)
path length
Optimal time
(in milliseconds)
path length

(* longer than 2 minutes.)

I suspect most of you would see similar results with single-threaded programs. These problems are so small that starting threads and partitioning the load is a waste of time.

Anyway, all attempts to multithread this thing only made it slower. The more threads I started the slower it ran, regardless of threading strategy. Now that I look at it, the problem may have been that each iteration of the loop allocates several new positions and only deletes one. It's constantly growing in terms of dynamic memory, and those newly allocated positions have to be loaded into the data cache. Hmm.

My first attempt at multi-threading simply protected the heap with a mutex and turned all the threads loose on the main loop. I guess that's why I'm in the Apprentice division! When that failed, I assumed it was due to contention for the mutex.

After a series of other failures, I found a paper on Parallel Best N-Block First by Ethan Burns et al. PBNF is a clever algorithm that can be applied to Maze of Life. I won't cover the details here but recommend reading the paper(s).

The basic idea is that the game grid is divided into equal-sized rectangular zones (typically squares), say of size 4x4 cells. Each thread stakes out a zone and only processes positions where the intelligent cell is in that zone. The active zones are chosen to be sufficiently far apart so that if the intelligent cell moves out of one thread's zone, it will enter a passive zone (i.e. one not currently being processed by a thread). This precludes the need for mutexes on most data structures. Periodically each thread checks to see if there is a more promising zone that it should be working on. PBNF can be configured to find optimal paths or bounded sub-optimal paths (i.e. length within a certain percentage of the optimal path length).

This was the solution that I submitted, using the greedy payoff function as its heuristic. It still didn't speed up with threads but this is the Threading Challenge. It wouldn't be in the spirit of the competition to submit a single-threaded solution.

- Rick LaMont

Herunterladen nblock.cpp39.01 KB

Quoting jmfernandez
TBB has priority queue (for my open set) and hashmap (for my closed set) thread safe containers

Wow. You actually implemented a closed set. I figured that the chances of a position repeating itself (all cells in same state and intelligent cell in same location) were negligible so it wasn't worth storing old positions and looking them up in a hash table. Did you run any metrics to see how often the closed set pruned a branch of your search tree?

decide when a maze is big enough to be resolved using multiple threads

Is that the part where it compares the total grid size to 50 * 50? Probably a good idea since 8 of the datasets were smaller than that.

Congratulations on your strong performance.

- Rick

Hi Rick,

Answering your first question, even for the shortest grid, the closed lets you save some time. But its also true that this saved time seems to grow in a linear fashion so It is not a critical point, and I think that to use shared containers is not a problem because the computation of the every new grid state takes time enough. I also tried to use per-thread closed sets in order to avoid thread contention and I realized that closed set contention is not very important. The big problem is that the memory can be a bottleneck. I though that I was going to need to store only CRC32 (or something like that)of every maze in the closed set, but finally I didnt implement it.

About your second question. Maybe I didnt explain it properly. As I wrote, there are two points where the algorithm can be parallelized: Open set popping and new maze computation and pushing. But there are one third poing who also can be parallelized in some concrete situations. If the maze is big enough, you can calculate the new maze status using multiple threads. The 50x50 thing is related to this point. In my algorithm there are two points who can be working in parallel: The new maze status calculation, who depends in the maze size, and the open set popping, who depends on if we have reached a open set concrete size. And there is other part who is always done in parallel: When a element is popped from the open set, the different directions are alwayscomputed in parallel.

Thanks! But I am not sure that this is a good implementation. I didnt have time enough in any of the contest problems, and I would have liked to do more measures and more interesting proof of concepts. So I think that all my implementations can be seriously improved.

[I edit this entry to add a final comment. I would have liked to have more time in order to clean a little bit my source code, who in this problem is specially horrible ;o)]

My solution went through a bit of an up-down process, as I initially mis-read the problem and solved slightly the wrong thing, so it was pretty close to the deadline when I finally got to optimising things. It was also something like 1am the night before submission when I finally got around to testing larger grids - and since my solution was a breadth-first search, it had little hope for lazydodo's tests. Given more time, I probably would've made a simultaneous depth-first score-based algorithm to run alongside, but there you go. As it was, my performance turned out very well for the smaller tests, and I noticed that if I'd made four forum posts I technically would have won - but that's neither here nor there, as I didn't solve it all and am not bothered about that :) I got lucky with the scoring system that time, and may not with the others.

Technically, here's roughly what my solution did:
- Store the current list of grids to process as a vector, with each grid as just a 2D array of bools
- Use tbb::parallel_for on the vector to divide up the grids by thread
- For each grid, calculate all possible moves (up to nine), grow the grid from each, hash it, and store it to a local output vector
- Once all threads have been processed, clear the main vector and copy each of the local ones into it, provide their hash isn't already present in a processed set (i.e. pass on successful insert)
- Of course there was an early out once a thread found a solution.

A 2D array of bools was the fastest of the data types I tried - but it was good for the 7x7 grids, and probably not so much for the 200x200s. parallel_for worked out pretty well for threading, though I just manually locked things when I needed to, as that was faster than the various concurrent objects.

More details are in the code :)

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text:
Debating with Dignity

By Gabriel Salguero 12-12-2007

It happened again. A presidential candidate's debate in two languages. Just as the Democratic presidential candidates had done before, the Republicans have followed suit - a presidential candidates debate on Spanish-language channel, Univision. (Tom Tancredo was the only candidate who did not attend the debate). I blogged on the earlier Democratic debate and thought it only equitable to do the same again.

I think what is critical here in both nationally-televised debates is a healthy model of dialogue that is necessary on the national scene. This dialogue says we respect your culture and language. Allowing for your thoughts and words to be translated into another language can be a metaphor for inclusion and welcoming. I am not arguing that English should not be spoken (All the candidates answered in English and most immigrants work hard to learn English, cf: Pew research, etc.) What I am saying is that as a country we are looking for is conversations and policies that respect the dignity of the other.

As a person of faith, pastor, and follower of Jesus Christ, I am desirous of respectful debate and dialogue. On blogs, radio-shows, and political advertisements ideological and theological differences have often reduced some to more base temptations of demonizing the other (be they Republican, Democrat, immigrant, citizen, male or female). Frankly, this is not consistent with the gospel and a call to love our neighbor and even our enemies. Jesus even said, "Love your enemies." As a people we need to move beyond the childish temptation to dehumanize those we disagree with.

Dignity means you both speak and listen. Dignity may help us see someone who is radically different from us and call them by their name. Dignity transcends political ideologies and racial, ethnic, and geographic boundaries. Dignity is a faithful witness to a faith that says, "Por que de tal manera amó Dios al mundo (For God so loved the world

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January-February 1999

Cover Story

Gen. George Lee Butler, former commander of the nation's nuclear forces, became a proponent of nuclear abolition.
A new movement emerges to abolish nuclear weapons.
The end of the Cold War presents an unparalleled opportunity to abolish nuclear weapons--once and for all.

It's all too easy to make fun of the extreme examples of prophecy belief that we encounter on bumper stickers and best-seller lists.
"You have not come to hear a detached, scholarly lecture about the two powerful figures who are on our program. I am deeply and unavoidably attached. Fully engaged.
Getting to Disagreement. Dialogue that has an impact.
From beginning to end, Matthew's gospel intends to awaken minds, hearts, and bodies left for dead by the powers of domination and violence.

Orthodox reformers forge path of peace.
Real disaster relief requires more then 'Good Samaritan' acts.
The corporatization of higher education.
Remembering Elizabeth O'Connor.
The brutal and tragic killing of Matthew Shepard last fall makes it clear that Christians need a more mature response to the issue of homosexuality in general, and gay-bashing in particular.
Taking back the airwaves for free speech and local issues.

The global economy is in shambles, the presidency is in crisis, and Americans are struggling under the weight of a broken health care system. But hey, I've got my own problems.
by: Ed Spivey
Early in the 1980s, I served a parish in Woburn, Massachusetts. This suburban city, some 12 miles north of Boston, had boasted of tanneries for 300 years.
It is often assumed that younger people have no respect for their elders and even less reverence for history.
In November, once again, Iraq responded to a military threat and signaled that it would allow U.N. weapons inspectors to resume their work. This was heartening news.
It is a clear fall day in 1986 and I am walking the block home from the bus stop. It is my second month of high school; I am 13, a freshman, an artist.

Culture Watch

Moving beyond pacifism and just war.
Peter Campbell's retrospective offers strength for the journey.
Contemporary Christian music and its accent on celebrity
John Lewis and the civil rights movement.
Johann Arnold's gentle, troubling witness.
Is a 'good' woman a sacrificing one?
By now you've probably heard the news. The greatest rock-and-roll record of 1998 featured 50-year-old songs by a guy who's 10 years deader than Elvis.
Kathleen Norris' Amazing Grace

The Environmental Working Group resigned last October from a presidential advisory panel created to bring together farm and environmental interests on the issue of pesticides.
More than 2,300 people marched onto the grounds of the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA) at Ft. Benning, Georgia, on November 22, demanding that the "school of assassins" be closed.
IT WAS WITH great interest that I read Judith Gundry-Volf's response to the Southern Baptist Convention's statement regarding the duty of wives to submit to their husbands.
Christ House, a residential medical facility for homeless men in northwest Washington, D.C., has yearlong, full-time volunteer opportuni
I READ THE commentary by Robert Jewett ("The Abandonment of Trust," November-December 1998), and while I agree that by his "campaign of lies" President Clinton has damaged public trust in our political institutions
I REALLY COULDN'T believe what I read in "Big Labor and Big Business" ("Letters," November-December 1998) which included the statement "...the AFL-CIO doesn't care about people any more than doesn't care about people any more than does Lee lacooca.
In our November-December 1998 issue, the caption for the photo on page 31 was incorrect.
GIL DAWES' CRITIQUE of the PBS Frontline documentary The Farmer's Wife ("The Face and Fate of Family Farms," September-October 1998) was excellent and, for the most part, I agreed with it.
United Methodist Bishop Joseph Sprague filed a formal complaint in October against the Rev.
New beginnings, on the Web and in the world.
A historic gathering on the churches and welfare reform.
Nuclear abolition on the cover of Sojourners? Isn't that awfully retro, a flashback to the same-old same-old? A high-ranking military officer in full uniform on the cover of Sojourners?
Iraq isn't the only country to turn away bomb inspectors.
Well, not that kind of Irish bishop.
BRAVO ON YOUR special issue on the church and labor ("Good Works," September-October 1998). One omission was any mention of the Labor Party, an alternative to the twin parties of big business.
DANNY DUNCAN COLLUM'S article "Diagnosis Determines Cure", as a critique of The Communist Manifesto, offered some fine insights into that 19th-century publication.
Top officials from the National Council of Churches and the NAACP came to the U.S. Supreme Court in October to testify that the court should hire more minorities as law clerks.
IN HIS ARTICLE "Is Islam the Enemy?" Charles Kimball states that "Muslims worship the same God as Christians and Jews."
I accept the cardinal that comes to the tree...
I WAS GLAD to see your excellent issue on the church and labor ("Good Works," September-October 1998).
Architects Building Better Communities
Shortly after World Food Day (October 16, 1998), Congress finally (by unanimous consent) passed the Africa: Seeds of Hope Act.
THE QUESTION "Is Islam the Enemy?" (by Charles Kimball, No- vember-December 1998) is so clearly repudiated in your current issue.
MY HUSBAND AND I first heard of Sojourners when we lived in Silver Spring, Maryland, while I was in the Army working at Walter Reed Medical Hospital.


text:
Stay Thirsty, My Friends

You Will See This Screenshot For The Rest Of Your Life

You Will See This Screenshot For The Rest Of Your Life

In the interest of full disclosure, I cribbed that headline from the comments section of Balloon Juice. But seriously, Marco Rubio what the hell was that about last night? Even before he ducked out of the frame, goggle-eyed, for a gulp of water, Rubio was itchy, twitchy, scratching his face, wiping his brow. When he finally settled down and stopped distracting me from what he was saying, the content of his speech was boilerplate GOP — nothing we haven’t heard from Paul Ryan or even, for that matter, Mitt Romney. It certainly was not a “rebuttal” to anything President Obama said last night.

I think I pretty much nailed it yesterday when I predicted the Republican rebuttal would be the SOS — same old stuff. What I wasn’t prepared for was the whining about how mean President Obama and the Democrats have been to Republicans. You guys really want to be the party of thin-skinned babies? Especially after the truly horrid things your side has said about the country’s first African-American president? That may work with the base but not with anyone else.

The tone was just way, way off. “The president is such a big fat meanie! He says we hate Medicare, but we don’t hate Medicare! My dad depended on Medicare! We just hate Medicare for people who are age 50 and under.” Yeah, that would be me, buddy. From my cold, dead hands. And how is this different from what Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney campaigned on?

Rubio might have a compelling immigrants’ story, except there’s a little problem with some serial exaggerations of said family tale — the same issues which kept him off the Romney ticket in the first place. He resonated the most when he said, “I still live in the same working-class neighborhood I grew up in,” and, “my neighbors aren’t millionaires.” But I heard that and thought, dude, you’re just begging someone to go online and actually find the Rubio house and post pictures of it — something relatively easy to do because the place is for sale, for $675,000. Oops.

While the Rubios may not be in the market for a car elevator, it’s not exactly the image he portrayed last night of retirees dependent on Social Security and workers struggling to get by. Also, this is just one of two homes he owns in Florida, as HuffPo points out. I don’t begrudge Rubio his nice home, hey I have a nice home, too. But I don’t pretend I live in a neighborhood full of immigrants fresh off the boat working as day laborers and dishwashers, trying to climb their way up the ladder. I know that’s not what Rubio said but it’s what he alluded to. And by the way, those are the people who really need an increase in the minimum wage and a chance to organize into a labor union, instead of getting fired for taking a single sick day. I don’t think your “government is the problem not the solution” message resonates with them. But whatever.

Oh, I could go on. But really, this is the guy Time magazine called “The Republican Savior”? Yeah, don’t think so.

Stay thirsty, Republicans.

Filed under Marco Rubio, Republican Party

10 responses to “Stay Thirsty, My Friends

  1. democommie

    I think it’s about time that we had a new metric for those who aspire to be “The Republican Savior”.

    I’m thinking something that’s pretty much universally understood, easy to duplicate and pithy. Maybe something like this:

    with a scale of say 1 to–shit, I don’t know– 500? (there’s a lot of levels of teh BatshitKKKrazzeepants out there in GOPlanet) and just have the number superimposed on the wing. Hey, I’m just spitballing and I’m open to ideas.

    Is it just me or do the reptilicans see “Bob Roberts” as a training video?

  2. onyxpnina

    Republic of T hit Republican whininess right on the head (have a look at all four parts).

    We have government because conservatives cannot be trusted.

  3. Mary Wilson

    Sorry I missed it, and I didn’t get to see the Rand Paul piece of TEA BOT crazy crap either. Our President had the ‘guts’ to push them over the edge with his DEMAND that Congress act and take a vote on gun control measures. I watched the speech with a bunch of Dems and OFA folks and we applauded every single issue he mentioned, since most of the speech talked about JOBS and here in TN our dumb butt Legislature has NOT created ONE job in 4 years, but cut jobs every single year 2009 til now.

  4. I didn’t get to see the whole Rand paul thing * some snippets * … gawd, such a waste of air time… Damn, why is that kind of guy in the Senate ? Unbelievable !

  5. Rich White People Get Latino Guy To Do Some Work For Them.-The Onion. hehe.


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Effective fibromyalgia treatment usually requires the holistic, comprehensive approach presented in this book, one that addresses sleep patterns, exercise habits, and mood, in addition to drug therapies. Tailoring these treatments to fibromyalgia symptoms is essential. For example, while exercise is helpful for most women with fibromyalgia, it's important to develop an exercise program that can be started and advanced without causing undue fibromyalgia flares. The Toolkit provides readers with a broad sample of tools to help them discover the most effective treatment strategy for their fibromyalgia symptoms. A chapter on planning for pregnancy will help women use safer and effective treatments while trying to get pregnant, during pregnancy, and after the baby's born when you might be nursing.

The Woman's Fibromyalgia Toolkit provides clear, practical instructions to help women change their lives and take back control.

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Acclaimed for her novels of “delectably entertaining paranormal romantic suspense” (Booklist), the wildly popular alter ego of bestselling author Jayne Ann Krentz takes off on a star-dusted excursion to a rich civilization where danger and passion are just a heartbeat away. . . .

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Andrzej Stasiuk is a restless and indefatigable traveler. His journeys take him from his native Poland to Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia, Albania, Moldova, and Ukraine. By car, train, bus, ferry. To small towns and villages with unfamiliar-sounding yet strangely evocative names. “The heart of my Europe,” Stasiuk tells us, “beats in Sokolow, Podlaski, and in Husi, not in Vienna.”

Where did Moldova end and Transylvania begin, he wonders as he is being driven at breakneck speed in an ancient Audi—loose wires hanging from the dashboard—by a driver in shorts and bare feet, a cross swinging on his chest. In Comrat, a funeral procession moves slowly down the main street, the open coffin on a pickup truck, an old woman dressed in black brushing away the flies above the face of the deceased. On to Soroca, a baroque-Byzantine-Tatar-Turkish encampment, to meet Gypsies. And all the way to Babadag, between the Baltic Coast and the Black Sea, where Stasiuk sees his first minaret, “simple and severe, a pencil pointed at the sky.”

A brilliant tour of Europe’s dark underside—travel writing at its very best.

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Seattle to Alaska by Hasty Outrigger Canoe

Relaxing at the Bella Bella dock.
After days in the rain I can
squeeze water from my skin.
Powered up off Cape Caution.
Closed-cell foam, greasy food
and 2 spare gallons fresh water
reduce the danger.

     Table of Contents:
The illustrated tale sections
1 Departure, fog and gale in Puget Sound
2 They let me cross the border, but..
3 From cottages to clearcuts
4 Orcas in Johnstone strait
5 Gale warnings and Native villages
6 Carvers in Klemtu
7 Salmon and Tailwinds to Prince Rupert
8 Tame deer on the beach, food all over the rocks
9 Philosophical Native fishermen in Ketchikan
10 Ferry back. Now what?

photos only sections 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Back to Tim's Home

Copyright 2001 Tim Anderson


text:
Jalur Utama Nagasaki

Ti Wikipédia, énsiklopédia bébas
Luncat ka: pituduh, sungsi
Jalur Utama Nagasaki diwarnaan beureum dina peta Jepang.

Jalur Utama Nagasaki (長崎本線 Nagasaki hon sen?), atawa Jalur Nagasaki, manjang ti Tosu Station di Saga Prefecture nepi ka Nagasaki Station di Nagasaki Prefecture, Jepang. There is a separate branch of this line which runs from Kikitsu to Urakami by way of Nagayo. There are currently plans for the western (Nagasaki) branch of the Kyushu Shinkansen to run from Hizen-Yamaguchi to Isahaya, parallel to the existing track.

Route data[édit | édit sumber]

  • Operator and route length:
  • Gauge: 1,067 mm
  • Stations: 41 (including special stations)
  • Double track:
  • Electrification:
    • Tosu - Nagasaki (20,000 V - 60 Hz)
    • Kikitsu - Nagayo - Urakami (not electrified)
  • Closure system: Automatic
  • Operational Command: Hakata Integrated Command Center

Route features[édit | édit sumber]

  • Because of high construction cost due to geography there is single track between Kashima and Nagasaki, and because it runs along a complicated coast there are a lot of curves.
  • The branch of the Nagasaki Main Line which existed before the opening of the new line and runs from Kikitsu to Urakami by way of Nagayo is called the old line (旧線). Before the opening of the new line, express and limited express lines ran on this track. You can see vestiges of this at Michinō and other stations on the old line.
  • The branch of the Nagasaki Main Line that is electrified, runs through Nagasaki Tunnel, and goes from Isahaya to Urakami by way of Ichinuno is called the new line (新線).

Operation[édit | édit sumber]

Limited express trains[édit | édit sumber]

The limited express Kamome operates on the Nagasaki Main Line. East of Hizen-Yamaguchi operates the merged limited express Midori/ Huis Ten Bosch. From Isahaya to Urakami the limited express trains run on the new line.

Overnight sleeper trains like Sakura (between Tokyo and Nagasaki) and Akatsuki (between Kyoto and Nagasaki) had all been discontinued by 2008.

Regional trains[édit | édit sumber]

Other than trains that are operated on the entire Nagasaki Line, there are trains which operate in specific sections, such as from Tosu to Hizen-Kashima, and trains which continue on to other lines.

  • In the morning, from Hizen-Nanaura, there is a direct train to Mojikō (on the Kagoshima Main Line).
  • The new line from Isahaya to Nagasaki uses EMUs, but the old line, including direct trains to the Omura Line, uses DMUs. However, the rapid service train Seaside Liner, despite being a DMU, uses the new line.
  • Between Hizen-Nanura and Yue, because it is a relatively inactive part of the line, local trains only run for about five hours into the daytime after the morning rush.
  • Driver-only trains are operated on the entire Nagasaki Line. On the new line, the 817 series EMU is used, and on the old line, the KiHa 66, 67, and 200 DMUs are used.

Freight trains[édit | édit sumber]

Freight trains are operated between Tosu and Nabeshima. High-speed freight trains make three round trips a day from Tosu Freight Terminal to Nabeshima. The electric locomotive used is the Class ED76. Freight trains only arrive and depart from Nabeshima station.

Rolling stock[édit | édit sumber]

Sajarah[édit | édit sumber]

In 1907, the Railway Nationalization Act was passed in Jepang, nationalizing all railways. This act provided that the Ariake Line be extended from Tosu to Isahaya by way of Kashima. It also provided that a new line be built from Kikitsu to Urakami by way of Nagasaki. This was all completed in 1934, and the line was renamed the Nagasaki Main Line.

Stations[édit | édit sumber]

New Line (by way of Ichinuno)[édit | édit sumber]

●：Always stops   ▲：Sometimes stops  ｜：Does not stop
Station Japanese Distance from Tosu (km) Express
Seaside Liner
Connecting Lines, Notes Location
Tosu 鳥栖 0.0   JR KyushuKagoshima Main Line Saga Prefecture Tosu
Shin-Tosu 新鳥栖 2.0   JR Kyushu：Kyushu Shinkansen （under construction）
scheduled to open 2011
Hizen-Fumoto 肥前麓 4.2
Nakabaru 中原 8.5     Miyaki
Yoshinogari-kōen 吉野ヶ里公園 13.1     Yoshinogari
Kanzaki 神埼 15.7     Kanzaki
Igaya 伊賀屋 20.2     Saga
Saga 佐賀 25.0
Nabeshima 鍋島 28.0
Balloon Saga バルーンさが 29.8   only operational during the Saga International Balloon Fiesta
Kubota 久保田 31.4   JR Kyushu：Karatsu Line Kubota
Ushizu 牛津 34.2     Ogi
Hizen-Yamaguchi 肥前山口 39.6   JR Kyushu：Sasebo Line Kōhoku
Hizen-Shiroishi 肥前白石 44.7     Shiroishi
Hizen-Ryūō 肥前竜王 49.4
Hizen-Kashima 肥前鹿島 54.6     Kashima
Hizen-Hama 肥前浜 57.6
Hizen-Nanaura 肥前七浦 61.5
Hizen-Iida 肥前飯田 63.6
Tara 多良 67.7     Tara
Hizen-Ōura 肥前大浦 75.6
Konagai 小長井 82.3     Nagasaki Prefecture Isahaya
Nagasato 長里 84.7
Yue 湯江 87.6
Oe 小江 90.9
Hizen-Nagata 肥前長田 95.6
Higashi-Isahaya 東諫早 97.8 Continues to Ōmura Line
Isahaya 諫早 100.4 JR Kyushu：Ōmura Line
Shimabara RailwayShimabara Railway Line
Nishi-Isahaya 西諫早 103.2
Kikitsu 喜々津 106.9 JR Kyushu：Nagasaki Main Line (old line via Nagayo)
Ichinuno 市布 109.4
Hizen-Koga 肥前古賀 112.3   Nagasaki
Utstsugawa 現川 114.8
Urakami 浦上 123.7 JR Kyushu：Nagasaki Main Line (old line via Nagayo)
Nagasaki Tramway：Main Line (本線)
Nagasaki 長崎 125.3 Nagasaki Tramway：Main Line (本線), Sakura-machi Line (桜町支線)

Old Line (via Nagayo)[édit | édit sumber]

Station Japanese Distance from Kikitsu Connecting Lines Location
Kikitsu 喜々津 0.0 JR Kyushu：Nagaski Main Line （new line via Ichinuno） Nagasaki Prefecture Isahaya
Higashi-Sono 東園 3.5
Ōkusa 大草 7.2
Honkawachi 本川内 12.3   Nagayo
Nagayo 長与 15.4
Kōda 高田 16.4
Michinō 道ノ尾 18.9
Nishi-Urakami 西浦上 20.6   Nagasaki
Urakami 浦上 23.5 JR Kyushu：Nagasaki Main Line （new line via Ichinuno）
Nagasaki Tramway：Main Line


text:
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Carmelized Banana Upside Down Cake with Coconut Whipped Cream

Carmelized Banana Upside Down Cake with Coconut Whipped Cream

Yeah. You guessed it. I got this recipe from Julie over at Willow Bird Baking. Again, she hits it out of the ball park. And again, her pictures gave my pictures a wedgie, stole my pictures’ lunch money and then slammed my pictures up against a locker while the cool kids laughed. So really, if you are skeptical about how delicious this thing actually can look, check out her site.

This upside down cake is amazing. It has a little party in my mouth. Seriously, there are strobe lights, techno music and even bouncers going on in my mouth when I eat this thing.

The caramelized bananas have ginger in them, which give just enough zing to make this cake really interesting. Then, you top each delightful slice with cool coconut whipped cream, and sweet, lightly browned coconut flakes that add a delightful crunch. OMG. This thing is divine. Men-in-tight-shiny-shirts-party divine.

Really, the coconut cream takes things to a whole new level when combined with the ginger.

I was going to type out the recipe here, but honestly, you should go get it from Willow Bird Baking. She’s kinda amazing!

The only thing I will say to change her recipe is that letting this rest in the pan for more than 5 minutes is fine. I took it out at 7 minutes, and it was still too soft and turned kinda messy. You could probably let it sit for about 10 minutes before removing the cake from the pan.

Let me know if you love this thing as much as I do!

Party Time!

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2 responses »

  1. Yum, it looks gorgeous, Rachel! I’m sad to hear that my pictures are totally the bullies in the class — going to have a firm talking-to with them tonight ;) But I think your pictures are defending themselves just fine. LOL.

    Thanks for your sweet words. So glad you loved the recipe!!

I love getting your comments. They make me happier than really good carrot cake!

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What is Sunset Park Promise Neighborhood?

Sunset Park Promise Neighborhood (SPPN) is a partnership of community residents, organizations and schools in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn New York.  The SPPN community action plan centers on joining existing resources and assets in the community and channeling them into neighborhood schools to reach the greatest number of families and affect significant, long-term change in children’s lives.  The programs and services of this community partnership create a cradle to career pathway of support and opportunity for children.

SPPN was created in the fall of 2010, one of the original 21 Promise Neighborhoods across the country.

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Revision as of 07:33, 13 August 2007 by Dipesh (Talk | contribs)

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Sebastian Sauer, mail at dipe dot org

Stuff that needs work;

This page was last modified on 13 August 2007, at 07:33. This page has been accessed 4,412 times. Content is available under Creative Commons License SA 3.0 as well as the GNU Free Documentation License 1.2.
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Install Planning Server on a stand-alone computer

PerformancePoint Server 2007

Updated: 2009-06-11

You can install all the server components in Planning Server on a single computer. This stand-alone deployment should only be used for testing, development, and proof of concept for Planning Server. Microsoft does not support a stand-alone deployment for Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 in a production environment.

To install Planning Server on a single computer

  1. Insert the Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 CD. When the program starts, a startup screen appears. If it does not, browse the CD and click Setup.hta.

  2. From the installation startup screen, select Planning Server to begin the Planning Server installation.

    Prerequisite checks are run and the Microsoft Licensing Terms are presented.

    Any missing prerequisites are indicated in the Prerequisites dialog box. All prerequisite checks must succeed. If one or more fails, cancel Setup, install the missing prerequisites, and then rerun Setup.

  3. Accept the License Terms, and then click Next.

  4. On the Directory Selection page, select the installation directory you want, verify that enough disk space exists, and then click Next.

    The default path is: C:\%Program Files%\Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server.

  5. Click Install to run Planning Server Setup.

  6. Planning Server Setup runs, extracting all installation files to the directory path that you specified in step 4.

  7. On the Planning Server Setup Has Completed page, ensure that the Run the Planning Server Configuration Manager check box is selected, and then click Finish.

    If you choose to exit Setup without starting Planning Server Configuration Manager, the components will not be configured for use, and your Planning setup will remain incomplete. You must rerun Planning Server Configuration Manager to complete Setup and successfully configure your Planning Server. To rerun Planning Server Configuration Manager, do the following:

    1. Navigate to the Windows Start menu.

    2. Click Start, point to Programs, Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007, and then click Planning Server Configuration Manager.

      Planning Server Configuration Manager opens to its Welcome page and allows setup and configuration of the local Planning Server installation files.

  8. On the Planning Server Configuration Manager Welcome page, click Next.

  9. On the Prerequisites page, verify that all prerequisites have passed. If there are any that fail, note them, cancel Planning Server installation, install all prerequisites, and then rerun Planning Server Configuration Manager.

  10. On the Installation Type page, leave all settings at their default values including Standalone configuration, and then click Next.

  11. On the Databases page, in the SQL Server location field, select the computer running SQL Server or the SQL Server instance, and then click Next.

    This procedure assumes a clean SQL Server computer with no previous PerformancePoint Server databases. If previous PerformancePoint Server databases are detected on the selected SQL Server computer, then an error message appears. To correct this error, select a new SQL Server computer or SQL Server instance, or manually delete the existing PerformancePoint Server databases. Do not rename existing databases, because this will leave the *.mdf and *.ldf files in an orphaned state, and make new PerformancePoint Server database creation impossible.

    The user who is running the Planning system installation must have the sysadmin role on the computer running SQL Server that contains the Planning system database.

  12. On the Global Administrator Account page, confirm that the account in the Domain and User Name field is the account that will be used for the first member of the Global Administrator (GA) role. This account will be used to log into the Planning Administration Console for final system configuration and future administration. Click Next.

  13. On the Analysis Services Setting page, select the SQL Server Analysis Services server, and then click Next.

  14. On the Service and Application Pool Identities page, specify a domain, username and password for the service identity account. Click Next.

  15. On the System Logs page, leave the default for all options, and then click Next.

  16. On the Port Configuration page, enter the secure sockets layer (SSL) port number, and then click Next. When the SSL enforcement option is selected, the SSL port number must be entered in order to continue installation.

    Planning Server Configuration Manager does not configure SSL in your environment; it sets the Planning Web sites to accept only SSL connections. You will need to manually configure SSL for your environment in order to complete installation.

    If your network has a firewall between any computers in the PerformancePoint Server topology, the selected ports will have to be opened on the firewall device to allow Planning Server to communicate successfully.

  17. On the Validation page, pre-installation validation occurs and confirms that the installation will proceed successfully. When this finishes, click Next.

  18. On the Confirmation page, review this information, and then click Configure.

  19. On the Summary page, you can view the results of the installation. Click Close.

  20. The installation of Planning Server is complete. However, before you can begin working with models or applications, you must first create a PerformancePoint Planning application on the system that can be accessed by service clients. Open Internet Explorer and browse to: http://localhost:<AdminConsole_Port>, where <AdminConsole_Port> is the port number specified for Planning Administration Console.

    For SSL configuration, this URL will be http://localhost:<AdminConsole_Port>

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So amazing! When a massive tornado hit an elementary school in Oklahoma, a courageous teacher risked her life to protect six of her students from the powerful storm by covering them with her body.

On May 20, a two-mile-wide tornado ripped through Moore, Okla. destroying hundreds of businesses, homes, and two elementary schools. The devastating twister killed 51 people, including seven elementary school students.

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The Journey to Joining a People, and Rejoining the Blogging Community

13 Nov

To say this post is long overdue is an understatement. I won’t lie, I lost an interest in blogging, just after posting two blogs -____-  Maybe my Denver adventure wasn’t measuring up to all my expectations, or maybe I was just too busy becoming a true Colorado-an. Whatever the reason, I now have a real, life changing experience to write about.

I am converting to become a Jew.

Now, the reason as to why I’m converting is not simple and a story of its own. Somewhere between being exposed to Jewish traditions in my boyfriends and friends families, discovering Jewish roots in my own family and coming to terms that I will raise a family (some day!), I realized that I want my future to hold a path. A spiritual path, a path that has a history that goes back thousands of years. A path that has family traditions that will continue on for generations. A path that will bind me with a people. So, I started researching Judaism.

My journey so far has been eye-opening and beyond anything I could have asked for. I have learned not just the history of the Jews, but the history of the world. I have discussed G-d and what awaits us in the afterlife. I have made homemade matzo ball soup, set a seder table and prayed in shul. I am no where near ready to convert, but I feel like a little piece of me moves in that direction every single day. Sometimes its draining and exhausting to think about the ways I have to change my life around to become a Jew. Its even more difficult trying to explain to a close friend or relative why I am going through with this. I was never a spiritual person growing up, my family went to church once a year! Sure, I have a Jewish boyfriend and we hopefully have a bright future, but if for some reason things did not work out, I would still pursue this journey. Simply put, that information is hard for many people to grasp..

I don’t always believe in the whole “everything happens for a reason” spiel, but I do believe that certain events, close friends and a tiny bit of Jewish blood running through my veins has brought me here today.

80 Degrees and Snowy

4 Apr

So the end of last week and this weekend turned out to be eventful to say the least.  As mentioned in my previous post, I was preparing myself for an adventure in the city.  With my tall, blonde roommate at my side, I felt ready to explore and headed downtown.  To my surprise, not everyone in Denver is a happy-go-lucky-nature-loving hippie.  There are plenty of characters wandering the streets of downtown Denver and there is no shortage of bums (I’m referring to the homeless type, not the type who work in the mountains and run your lifts).  Regardless, we were on our way to wander around and hopefully catch a glimpse of the giant blue bear.

Let me add a side note: my desire to go downtown and explore has really been fueled by a massive blue bear.  The whole past week I have been expressing my excitement about seeing this artistic creation by the convention center.  Finally, my dreams were realized!  It may not seem like the most exquisite work of art that most have seen, but something about this enormous carnivore made me happy.

Onto Saturday… did I mentioned it was 80 and sunny?  Having lived in Ohio for the past 15+ years of my life, this sort of weather in March is unthinkable.  So what does one do on a perfect Saturday afternoon in the sun?  Drink and golf.

After embarrassing and impressing ourselves all in one session at the driving range, we decided to go to Black Hawk.  Let me tell you about Black Hawk…

Take an old mining town with a diminishing population, add some casinos, ban the use of bicycles and TA-DA!  Black Hawk.  Colorado’s least populous city with a biking ban.  Seeing as to how I am still unemployed and don’t like to see my hard-earned cash go in the hands of those who don’t deserve it, I didn’t gamble much.  My boyfriend and roommate, however, came out on top.  Wide-eyed and hands shaking, they were left wanting more but we managed to step away and get us on the road to Breckenridge.

Sunday I made the decision to not buy a lift ticket and check out the Breckenridge town.  This turned out to be a win and fail at the same time.  Win = strong winds and wet snow made for a bad day on the mountain and a worthless day of riding.  Lose= strong winds and wet snow ruined any dreams I had of shopping and hanging out in the town.  So after a sub-par day on the mountain, we headed back East.  To our dismay, 70-E was closed about 20 minutes into our drive due to weather (or lack of law enforcement doing their job) so we decided to make a pit-stop in Silvethorne/Dillon to shop around.  Who would’ve thunk that two guys could so easily out-shop me?  FINALLY, after waiting in traffic, exchanging Wendy’s french fries with nearby cars and a few naps, 70-E opened up and we headed home.

Eventful weekend for me, even if I didn’t win any money.

New Kid at School

31 Mar

Today, just like every other day since I’ve moved here, I feel like the new kid at school.  No one to laugh at your occasional joke and no one to share a table with while eating lunch.  For some reason, every day I have been finding an excuse to not venture out of this apartment until I absolutely have to or am borderline-suicidal from seclusion.  I have obviously brought this on myself.  Sure I convince myself and the hardworking people that live in this apartment that I NEED to stay home, I must job search!  But who am I kidding?  I have applied to every open marketing position in Denver/Boulder, will have completed 3 interviews by the end of this week and feel pretty accomplished with myself.  Job searching has come to a halt.

Therefore, today, I am heading into town and seeing/discovering something new.  I no longer want to feel like the new kid wandering in the hallways when I walk downtown.  I want to feel like I belong, regardless if my license plates say Ohio or not, I will be one with Denver!  Who knows, maybe I will meet someone new (I highly doubt I will make a new friend on the street but writing it out makes me feel better).  Either way, I will have left this apartment for the day and have enjoyed the Colorado sunshine… the beige colored walls are starting to get to me.

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Every Purchase Fights Famine in the Horn of Africa & Combats Hunger in the U.S.
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Kata Blessing Scarf

Item # 28761

Funds 50 cups of food.

& More Details

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Give a colorful blessing to friends or family with purity of heart. The purchase of our white Kata Blessing Scarf brings peace and solemnity into your life, but, more importantly, it benefits refugee Buddhist nuns living in Tibet. The Tibetan Nuns Project provides education and support for nearly 600 nuns in northern India, including improvements in standards of food, sanitation, and medical care. Each scarf is is blessed by the nuns of the Dolma Ling Nunnery.

  • Viscose
  • Blue: Approximately 59" x 13" (1.5 m x 33 cm)
  • White: Approximately 51.5" x 10.5" (130.8 x 26.7 cm)
  • Edges left raw
  • Handmade in & fairly traded from Nepal

In Tibetan culture, the Kata Blessing Scarf serves a variety of ceremonial purposes. Given to family and loved ones when they arrive for a visit or from long travels, they are also given when the loved one departs, asking for a blessing of safe journey. It may hold similar significance for you -- or perhaps find its way as a decorative accent for sacred pictures and objects around the home.

For bulk pricing on these and other items, please contact our Customer Service department at

People buying this item also bought:

Review count: 17

Recent reviews:

May 19, 2015 - knew i could not wear it when the ends unraveled immediately. now that i have read the review from April 15th, i now understand it. i got the blue, and love,love the color. the material is extremely silky. i have a Buddhist friend. TY ''4/15'' for the insite. now i see it as beautiful and will be ordering one for my B friend.

April 15, 2015 - Do people here realize these are sacred to us? (Tibetan Buddhists). Instead of floral garlands given to the teacher (guru) thanking them for a teaching, Tibetans came up with these silk scarves as flowers are hard to grow in Tibet. These are not to be worn as a scarf, fashion accessory, etc. You wear it if your lama (teacher) takes the kata you offer and blesses it and gives it back to you. They are suppose to have the fringed ends and look unfinished. They are not hemmed and it is meant to unravel and fall apart to show the Impermanence of all things. The only thing good with this is supporting the nuns. But please people, don't get these as something to wear or to decorate with.

April 6, 2015 - Terrible!!! The ends were unraveled; the entire thing was falling apart and extremely stiff. A horrible buy :( If I could give no stars I would. This is the first item I have purchased from the web site and was dissatisfied.

January 15, 2015 - Got lots of compliments on it! Love the blue color! The only problem, which is minor, is the edge, not being hemmed, catches on things.

December 14, 2014 - Size is different than shown. Fabric is incredibly thin. The design is pretty & if they donate money to the nuns, I am okay with that.

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Artisan: Dolma Ling Nunnery

Artisan Dolma Ling Nunnery

Dharmasala, India is home to the Tibetan government in exile, as well as the Dolma Ling Nunnery -- a refuge for Tibetan Buddhist nuns living in exile. Run by the sister-in-law of the Dali Lama as part of the Tibetan Nuns Project, it provides humanitarian support and education for hundreds of nuns living in exile from their homeland. There, the nuns produce beaded necklaces and prayer flags in a time-honored manner, blessing the items before sending them out into the world.

Founded in 1987 to provide humanitarian aid and an education to refugee Buddhist nuns, the project began as a response to 66 nuns who found themselves ill and exhausted with nowhere to go after a two year pilgrimage over the Himalayas from eastern Tibet. Emergency assistance was provided to meet their basic needs, but more was needed, and the Tibetan Nuns Project began actively seeking a more long-term solution for the problems of secure housing, medical care, and education. A sponsorship program was created which reached out to individuals and organizations around the world, supplementing the income-generating projects that the nuns themselves have instituted.

Now joined by five other nunneries as part of the Tibetan Nuns Project, the refugee nuns at Dolma Ling are able to work on mission with a sense of security and hope. This includes improving standards of living, a self-sufficient future through education and training, training for leadership and service roles within the community, improving the level and status of ordained Buddhist women in their culture, assisting recently arrived refugee nuns from Tibet, and the continued establishment of further facilities for nuns in need.

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Four Seasons Scarf

Item # 39479

Funds 50 cups of food.

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A handmade treasure to keep you cozy throughout the year. The floral design adds instant style and flair, achieving effortless elegance, and the all-season lightweight cotton make this a fashion winner. This Batik block-printed scarf is made by the women of Prokritee, a Bangladeshi organization that provides jobs to widows, divorcees, and heads-of-household with little or no income.

  • 100% cotton
  • 66" L x 10" W (168 x 25 cm)
  • Handmade in & fairly traded from Bangladesh

Created to help women worldwide gain economic security for themselves and their families by earning fair wages for their handiwork, Global Girlfriend sources women-made, fair-trade imported, eco-friendly products. By supporting long-term partnerships with the artisans, it fosters equal employment opportunities, healthy and safe working conditions, technical assistance, and development strategies to help reduce poverty, one community at a time. Become a "Global Girlfriend" and help build a brighter future for girlfriends around the globe!

For bulk pricing on these and other items, please contact our Customer Service department at

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Review count: 3

Recent reviews:

November 26, 2013 - I bought the brown one as a gift for a friend and didn't end up giving it to her. It really is more like a large bandana - feels like cheap material (stiff and starchy) and isn't very big. I wouldn't buy it again.

March 17, 2013 - not a real large scarf but it sure looks good with casual clothes - kind of like a fancy bandana. I'm glad I bought it.

December 9, 2012 - Very very pretty. I wish the fabric was more substantial. It is thin cotton. I do like it and have gotten compliments but really wish there was more fabric & somewhat heavier.

Artisan: Prokritee

Artisan Prokritee

"A women earning helps the entire family because the women invest their earnings in family. Then the family's betterment brings good impact on the entire community because of money circulation at different levels or circles."

Prokritee (meaning "nature" in Bangla) is an agency that is dedicated to empowering disadvantaged women who have little or no other opportunities. Most of the women employed by Prokritee are the heads of their households because they have been widowed, divorced, or separated, they have little or no income, are landless with few or no assets, and are primarily rural. Prokritee is a service-based agency that provides artisan organizations with management, product design and development, and marketing assistance. By providing jobs and skills for the women they are able to improve the women's standard of living and help them send their children to school. The women are paid a fair wage, offered training on quality awareness, health, savings, and gender equality, and are provided with a medical allowance and assistance, maternity leave, incomes bonuses, and loan options.

Artisan Minoti Mondal

A cheerful woman who enjoys her work, Minoti has been working for Bagdha, one of Prokritee's artisan groups, for twenty years now. Before Minoti was twenty years old she married a poor farmer. Life was a struggle and after having two sons and two daughters, her husband's income was just not enough. She started looking for work and found a handicraft project that was hiring poor and widowed women. She now works primarily with wood, carving wooden toys. The income she has earned has helped her family immensely. Her four children have been able to finish secondary school, and her 23 year old son has gone on to become a businessman. She is happy she was able to help her children further their education, and hopes to work for Bagdha for as long as she can.

Artisan Usha Rani

Today Usha is a very skilled weaver for Hajiganj Handicrafts, one of Prokritee's artisan groups, but it wasn't always that way. When Hajigani was first started, Usha and the other women hired didn't know anything about weaving and had to be trained. The training lasted a couple of months, and by the end the women were able to weave baskets of all different shapes and sizes. Because Usha is highly skilled, she has been promoted to supervisor. She supervises the other producers to makes sure they are weaving quality baskets, and creates samples for customers.

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Crystal Cross Wrap Bracelet

Item # 52005

Funds 50 cups of food.

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Outlet! Was $14.95!

Faith has the power to lift us up and see us through the darkest of times. Take comfort in the affirmation of your beliefs with the sparkling wonder of our crystal accented cross bracelet.

  • Gold-tone or silver-tone metal, glass beads, & crystal
  • 2" diameter (5.2 cm); uncoils to fit most wrists
  • Imported

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May 27, 2014 - I got the gold tone and it is exactly as pictured. I gave it 2 stars because I find it a hassle to coil/uncoil to put on/take off, but that's just me. FYI it's a rather snug fit for my 6" wrist

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Oil Spill by Clarke & Dawe

June 9, 2010

newpost newpost newpost

June 8, 2010

New Post!!

Just kidding. I got nothin’.

Talking Popcorn / Sad Lala

May 15, 2010

One of artist Nina Katchadourian’s works, “Talking Popcorn,” below.

The idea is to hook up a microphone to a computer program that converts the popcorn pops to text using Morse Code.  Every day a sample of popcorn is taken and placed in a capsule along with its “speech.”  Nina bronzed the popcorn’s first words, “WE.”

Check out the entire project, along with her other cool works.

Also, one of my favorite music sites is closing – Lala.  It gave you the opportunity to stream any album whole before buying it, and served as a great discover-and-share community.  Perfect for finding new music and, of course, listening to any whole freaking album!

But then Apple, Inc. bought Lala at the end of last year.  Now they’re killing it.  Because I guess iTunes is kind of like a bastard version of Highlander.  There can be only one!!!

Like this, but with Steve Jobs' glasses.

So… I’m a little pissed at Apple right now for murdering one of my best friends.  So in light of that, every day, maybe a few times every day,  I’m going to post a favorite song in requiem.

So long, farewell!!!

… Well that’s not gonna work.

…Ok, WordPress.  I can’t share music links because you strip the little flash portion away from Lala’s player.  Well, balls.

…*gah!* WordPress is so musically unfriendly! I’ve been searching about for the last couple hours and cannot find any way to make a simple audio stream without using an mp3 illegally.

So hrmph.  I won’t post a Lala song every day.  Whatever.  I’m all grumpy now.

Here’s one song I wanted to share, however….  Enjoy it in an illegal YouTube format instead!

Abney Park – “Throw Them Overboard”

We Have No Excuse.

May 15, 2010

JHL: 21

May 10, 2010

The loves in life are always shared.

There is mostly music.  It started with early music that goofy kids would dance to – Talking Heads, Oingo Boingo, The Who.  It propelled from an interest to a passionate fuel of life.  CDs swapped and lyrics were read aloud.  Anti-Flag, Ted Leo, Golgo Bordello, Dropkick Murphys and Flogging Molly.  The Thermals, The Weakerthans,  Spoon, The Black Keys. Punk rock no one has ever heard of.  Modey Lemon?  Who the hell are the Dalmatians?

The Palindromes hammered out an offbeat production of “10am Automatic,” looks shot between band members as if asking who was supposed to pick up the next verse.  It wasn’t the production quality the audience was looking for anyway, it was the visual representation of a few high-schoolers’ love of music in action.  They got that.

The music was important.  It’s still important, it always will be.  Ted saved us in awkward times.  Hutz made us a part of life that demanded to be seen – it was the grace in fury and the connections between culture and youth.  The first concert isolated me from my youthful counterparts; the crowd was energy.  I retreated.  It was the first time I felt like I’d really passed the point of being young.  I don’t think I’ll forget that feeling.

My brother grasped with furious claws to the railing in the front.  We’d arrived two hours ahead to get a good spot.  He fought off the parasites behind him who wanted to weasel forward to the front who’d only just arrived.  He used elbows and knees and helped people across the front barrier who wanted to leave – who’d realized, in a state of sick panic, exactly what they’d gotten themselves into.  A riot that stood in place, merely swayed to loud gypsy punk rock, but when a full crowd sways, they sway several feet at a time.  People have been trampled to death under crowds like this, people who cannot follow the flow, fear that loses them to the energy of the movement.

It’s only one out of countless memories that I can recall.  It’s one of the more recent as well, before I drifted away from home by the tides of university and a new family life across the country.

I remember being jealous of attention.  I was the older brother and here he was, distracted.  By a girl.  The nerve!  But then again, I began being a curmudgeon when I was thirteen, so no big surprise really.  On the commercial breaks between Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I’d run outside in my footie pajamas and tell the neighbor to get off my damn lawn.  True story.

He hasn’t changed much since I last saw him.  I know this to be a good thing.  And you don’t need to see every color in the right way to have a sense of style, which he does have, and all his own.

The boy’s grown up.  For the most part, anyway.  Faster than I did, for sure.

I mostly remember just wandering around the forest, looking for things to destroy.   When you’re a developing young male, all you do is search and destroy.  The targets usually came in the form of chittering squirrels or old stumps that were the perfect height for practicing your kung fu.  I remember watching him break his clavicle in football practice, and then re-breaking it after falling off a bed.  I saw him stick his lower teeth through his bottom lip while running up the stairs.  I watched him turn white after staring at his crushed fingertip and rushed him to the hospital.  His mask was still perched on his head from theatre practice, and other patients shared looks of confusion.

Looks of confusion are commonly regarded as small trophies that are adorned proudly by me and my brother, especially in public.  Spontaneous dance breaks, shopping cart races, and “all the black tiles are lava!”  Typically, there has only been one person I have been able to do this with, and not feel completely ridiculous.  There will be two after my son is old enough.

As I squeezed my way through my awkward years as a teenager, my brother found himself on the receiving end of the occasional blast of misdirected angst.  For that, I apologize, even though I don’t think he really remembers any of it.  His payback was in full force and so passive in nature, he didn’t even realize he’d dealt any of it to me…  He simply wound up cooler than I did.  I didn’t even realize it myself until now.  Now I need to figure out some form of revenge.  I bet I have some naked baby photos somewhere.

Anyway, this post is about my brother, and how I think he’s a pretty alright guy, and I hope he does exactly whatever the hell he wants to in life.  He turns 21 today, and most people celebrate the passage of twenty-one years by drinking until passing out.  I like to think that he will instead collect a dram of magic mead and fly off on a space unicorn to slay  the fire ogres of Ganymede with his laser mind attack and save all the imprisoned slaves.  I just like to roll like that sometimes.  You don’t have to like it.  I didn’t ask you to.

I also write this post because I’m a cheap-ass who didn’t send him anything for his 21st birthday.  Not a damn thing, not even a card or some shitty Applebee’s gift card to go buy a 22-oz  of Sam Adams.  Nothing.  What the hell kind of brother does that?

Hopefully this means something, anyway.  In all my years of growing up with you, Josh, I’ve always thought you were a pretty awesome dude.  Keep kicking ass, man.  You make me damn proud to be your brother, and I take some credit in considering how cool you are.  Unless you do something stupid.  Then I’ll just have to mourn about how I couldn’t be more of an influence in your life.  And I’ll write a memoir about it, and share all the memories we had, even some made up ones.  Like when the basement flooded and we pretended to be pirates on our pirate boat which was really a bed.  Yarrgh.  Pirates of the Mold Hazard.

I love ya, bro.

Happy 21st.

May 2, 2010

From Easter to now

April 24, 2010

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