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Brown Files Criminal Charges Against Former Nursing Home Administrator in Kern Valley Elder Abuse Case
Bakersfield – Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. announced that Kern Valley Hospital administrator Pamela Ott was charged on eight felony counts of elder abuse today for allowing staff to forcibly administer psychotropic medications to patients for their own convenience, rather than for their patients' therapeutic interests. These actions are alleged to have resulted in the deaths of three nursing home residents.
"As hospital administrator, Pamela Ott, was ultimately responsible for safeguarding the welfare of her patients," Brown said. "Instead, Ott abdicated her responsibility and allowed the staff of the Kern Valley Hospital to foricibly sedate patients who questioned their care."
Brown the charges against Ott in Kern County Superior Court. She surrendered herself in court this morning and pled not guilty. She was released on her own recognizance on the condition that she not run a skilled nursing facility. A preliminary hearing is set for November 4, 2009. Today's charges are in addition to those filed in February 2009 against:
• Gwen Hughes, the former Director of Nursing at the skilled nursing facility of the Kern Valley Healthcare District in Lake Isabella, Kern County on charges of elder abuse and assault with a deadly weapon.
• Debbi Hayes, the former pharmacist at the Valley Healthcare District, on charges of elder abuse and assault with a deadly weapon. On August 14, 2009, Hayes pled no contest to a felony charge of conspiracy to commit an act injurious to public health. She is a cooperating witness for the people.
• Dr. Hoshang Pormir, a staff physician at Kern Valley Healthcare District, who was serving as the medical director of the skilled nursing facility, on charges of elder abuse.
As the Administrator of the Kern Valley Health Care District, Ott hired and supervised Director of Nursing Gwen Hughes.
Upon taking over in September 2006, Hughes ordered that Alzheimer's and other dementia patients be given high doses of psychotropic medications to make them more tranquil and easy to control. She ordered the administration of these medications to patients who argued with her, were noisy, or who were otherwise disruptive. Two patients who resisted were held down and forcibly given injections. Ms. Ott was informed of these actions and allowed them to continue.
Hughes is also alleged to have directed Debbi Hayes, the hospital pharmacist, to fill prescriptions for psychotropic medications. Hayes wrote and filled these prescriptions without first obtaining a doctor's approval.
Dr. Pormir approved these psychotropic medications only some time after they had been administered and without examining the patients first and determining whether these psychotropic medications were medically necessary.
Several of these patients are alleged to have had medical complications as a result of being given these psychotropic medications, including lethargy and the inability to eat or drink properly. It is believed that three patients died and one patient suffered great bodily injury as a result.
The investigation
Kern Valley Healthcare District operates a small community hospital and skilled nursing facility in Lake Isabella. The case came to the attention of authorities in January 2007, when an ombudsman reported to the Bakersfield office of the California Department of Public Health that a patient in the skilled nursing facility had been held down and given an injection of psychotropic medication by force.
The Department of Public Health immediately sent an investigative team with a doctor, a nurse, and a doctor of pharmacology. They determined that 22 patients, including some who were suffering from Alzheimer's at the skilled nursing facility, were being given high doses of psychotropic medication not for therapeutic reasons, but to simply control and quiet them for the convenience of the staff.
The Department of Public Health issued a Certificate of Immediate Jeopardy which resulted in the immediate dismissal of the Ms. Hughes. The matter was then turned over to the California Department of Justice, Bureau of Medi-Cal Fraud and Elder Abuse.
Special Agents from the Bureau of Medi-Cal Fraud and Elder Abuse began a year-long investigation, with the co-operation and assistance of the Department of Public Health and the administration of the Kern Valley Healthcare District.
A search warrant was served on the facility in August 2008, resulting in the seizure of numerous medical files and records.
If convicted, all defendants could face up to 11 years in prison.
The case is being prosecuted by the Attorney General's Bureau of Medi-Cal Fraud and Elder Abuse, with the co-operation and assistance of the Kern County District Attorney's Office.
To view the news releases issued February 2009 about this case, go to http://ag.ca.gov/newsalerts/release.php?id=1682&.
To report elder abuse or Medi-Cal fraud, call the Bureau of Medi-Cal Fraud and Elder Abuse's hotline at (800) 722-0432.
The complaints are attached.


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One of the most exquisite of pleasures, and one that's too often overlooked, is the joy of giving well-deserved praise.
I'm a gold-star junkie myself, and maybe that's why I love the opportunity to give good praise.
Recently, I was able to do this. In the New York Times Book Review, I wrote about Kristin Cashore's new book, Bitterblue. As I've often noted, I love children's literature and young-adult literature, and Cashore is one of the best Young Adult novelists writing today. I've been a raving fan since I read the first two books in this trilogy, Graceling and Fire.
It gave me such tremendous happiness to sing the praises of someone whose work I admire so much, and to help other readers find their way to it. My concluding paragraph:
Some authors can tell a good story; some can write well. Cashore is one of the rare novelists who do both. Thrillingly imagined and beautifully executed, "Bitterblue" stands as a splendid contribution in a long literary tradition.
So true.
My sister and I often talk about the karma police. The karma police! When they're on the job, nothing's better than seeing their activity, but all too often, they appear to be off-duty.
Sometimes, we don't get the praise we deserve; our hard work and good deeds aren't rewarded; our efforts are fruitless. By giving merited praise, we can at least help make sure that others' labors get recognized. And that's a big source of happiness.
Years ago, on the day that a college friend was getting married in a quite elaborate all-weekend kind of way, we were all hanging out before the ceremony. An elegantly wrapped package arrived and was delivered to my friend's mother. She thought perhaps it had been mis-addressed, but when she opened it, it was a beautiful nightgown, with a note from her best friend that said: "To the mother of the bride, who has worked so hard to make this day perfect." A lovely gesture.
How about you? Do you find that calling attention to others' merits boosts your happiness?
Gretchen Rubin is the author of the #1 New York Times Bestseller, The Happiness Project—an account of the year she spent test-driving the wisdom of the ages, current scientific studies, and lessons from popular culture about how to be happier. On her popular blog, The Happiness Project, she reports on her daily adventures in the pursuit of happiness. Gretchen is also on Facebook and Twitter.

subset: commoncrawl


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All of the Sweetbird Smoothies are free from high fructose corn syrup, artificial colors, flavours and preservatives and genetically modified ingredients. They are all approved by the Vegetarian Society and for vegan diets by Viva!
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There's a room off our kitchen dedicated as a playroom for our daughters (ages 2 and 4). Originally, the house plan designated this space to be an office or bedroom. Since it's on the first floor, I'd love to utilize it as a spare bedroom for my folks when they visit. Rather than moving my kids (and their stuff) to another level of the house, which would be less convenient and surely imprudent (note ages!), I'm considering installing the space-saving standard of my NYC roots-a Murphy Bed.
Slideshow: Murphy Beds: 9 Hide-Away Sleepers
Murphy beds have long been a solution for apartments and small spaces. But they also work beautifully in larger homes to make a room or space multi-functional. The Murphy Bed was invented by William L. Murphy as a way to hide the bed in his one-room apartment, so that he could have enough space to entertain. He created the Murphy Wall Bed Company in 1900 after applying for his first patent, and the rest is history.
An incredible array of options and styles exists in modern Murphy Beds. If you're shopping for one, you should consider several things.
Mechanism Options:
- Spring Mechanisms are used in the traditional Murphy Bed system and usually consist of a heavy-duty compressed steel spring housed within the bed frame. They are counter-balanced, which makes lifting and lowering the bed easy. But they do need adjustment after years of use, since the springs can fatigue and stretch over time.
- Piston Mechanisms utilize gas or air pressure to support the raising and lowering of the bed frame. Unlike a spring mechanism, a piston mechanism can lock when the bed is not in use-a valuable safety feature. Piston mechanisms cannot be adjusted once installed but compared to spring mechanisms, they experience much less fatigue and sagging.
Diagram: Murphy Bed Sleep Shop
Mounting Options:
- Floor Mounting is required by many systems with spring mechanisms. Mounting a Murphy Bed into the floor makes it extremely stable but may permanently damage the floor. A floor-mounted Murphy Bed is also very difficult, if not impossible, to move once installed.
- Wall Mounting is most commonly used with piston mechanisms. Generally, a wall-mounted Murphy Bed is attached to studs and can be moved with minimal damage.
Vertical vs. Horizontal:
The vertical wall bed is what is most traditionally recognized as a Murphy Bed. Though it requires the ceiling be high enough to accommodate an upright bed, this orientation blends well into adjacent cabinetry, like bookcases. A horizontal wall bed is well-suited for rooms with lower ceilings (like an attic space) or rooms with a smaller footprint (into which the bed can lower).
Horizontal-style Murphy Bed. Photo: murphybedlifestyles.com
Construction materials, styles, and finishes for Murphy Bed systems are as diverse as for any other cabinetry. From traditional to modern, from solid wood to melamine, there is likely a Murphy Bed to satisfy any design taste. It can become a lasting fixture in your home, hosting a lifetime of visiting family and friends, the entertainment of whom William L. Murphy would surely approve.
In the market for a Murphy Bed? Don't miss our product showcase Murphy Beds: 9 Hide-Away Sleepers
For more space-saving solutions, consider:
5 Small Bathroom Space-Busters
Kitchen Layouts: 4 "Space-Smart" Plans
30 Fresh Space-Saving Bunk Bed Ideas


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By Tessa Raebeck
Known for artisanal pizzas and authentic Italian cuisine, Doppio Artisan Bistro will be opening a new location in Sag Harbor this spring, at the 126 Main Street spot previously occupied by Madison & Main.
The restaurant, Doppio East, will offer a raw bar, small plates and pizzas fresh from the dining room's new brick oven.
As roommates at Fordham University, executive chef Louis Barresi and partner Thomas Pescuma dreamed of opening a restaurant together. While Pescuma worked in financial services, Barresi and his brother Joseph founded Doppio Artisan Bistro in Greenwich, Connecticut three years ago.
Following the first restaurant's success, the duo joined with Harry Armon, Pescuma's partner in a financial consulting firm, to found The Timeless Hospitality Group. The group opened Doppio Huntington in April 2013 and a French bistro, Barrique Restaurant in Stamford, Connecticut, two months later. They bought a Hudson Street location in New York City in the fall and are opening Doppio NYC this month.
Their latest venture into good food, Doppio East is a casual bistro set to open as early as March. Having visited the area every summer, Pescuma "got the urge" to open a location on the East End.
After purchasing the space occupied by The Paradise last year, Madison & Main co-owners Michael Gluckman and Eric Miller performed extensive renovations to the building's interior. Pescuma said the new owners plan to keep many of the layout changes, such as leaving the bar by the restaurant's front entrance. A brick pizza oven will warm the room from the back left corner.
Not yet finalized, the Doppio East menu will have many of the Italian staples from the restaurant's other locations, with added seafood options and a full raw bar. It will feature pizzas, 10 to 12 piattini (small plates), appetizers, soups, salads, Panini, meat and seafood dishes, and, of course, pastas. All Doppio East dressings, breads and pastas will be made in house.
Coming straight from the brick oven, the selection of 10 to 15 artisan pizzas will include the signature Doppio pizza: butternut squash puree, mozzarella di bufala and pancetta finished with the finest extra virgin olive oil.
Large groups at Doppio typically order several pizzas and small plates. Ranging in price from $6 to $25 at the Huntington location, the dishes include: Clams Al Doppio, top neck clams, fresh herbs and panko bread crumbs; Polenta E Funghi Al Tartufo, a mixed wild mushroom polenta with truffle oil; and Polpo Alla Griglia, a "very popular" char-grilled octopus dish with fennel, arugula and citrus.
The fresh pastas are done "Carpaccio style," Pescuma says, meaning the house made pasta is baked in tinfoil and hand rolled. In addition to classic dishes like fettuccini Bolognese and meat lasagna, Doppio offers high-end dishes such as Pappardelle al Ragu D'Agnello, or house made pappardelle with braised lamb shank ragu, and Fusilli in Cartoccio, which features hand rolled pasta, porcini mushrooms, baby heirloom tomato, truffle oil and mascarpone cheese and is "the biggest seller as far as pasta goes," according to Pescuma.
On bread baked in house, the Fiorentina Panini has skirt steak, caramelized onions and melted Gorgonzola dolce, while the Salsiccia Panini is filled with sweet Italian sausage, broccoli rabe and fresh mozzarella.
The partners are looking forward to adding several new dishes to the Sag Harbor menu; including a new chicken Chianti and at least one lobster dish.
"The plate size, despite the name, is actually pretty big," Pescuma says of the piattini, adding that they may scale the size down and lower the prices for the Sag Harbor spot, although nothing has been finalized.
Doppio East plans to have regular live music and nightly bar specials on drinks and small plates and is "definitely going to be open year-round," Pescuma said, adding the venue is ideal for private events.
Doppio East is opening this spring at 126 Main Street in Sag Harbor. For more information, visit timelesshospitalitygroup.com.


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Former General Motors product czar "Maximum" Bob Lutz left the company last year, but new GM CEO Dan Akerson's been trying to get him back. The only thing standing in his way according to The Daily Beast is the U.S. Treasury Department, which fears the move could be perceived as a golden parachute.
The U.S. Treasury has opposed Lutz's appointment on the grounds that, since he left the company last May, paying him so close to his retirement could look like a sweetheart payout. The government could soften its opposition in three months, once a year has passed since Lutz's retirement. If an agreement is reached with Lutz, GM would gain access to his considerable experience developing vehicles. In any event, the U.S., which owns a third of GM, aims to sell its shares as soon as possible, which would remove GM from the government's purview.
Since May various GM executives, including Akerson, have been calling Lutz to pick his brain. Should he return, perhaps devoting a day a week to the automaker, he could be helpful in product development, as well as design and marketing.
Lutz is currently advising Lotus, but as the man behind almost all of the GM products enthusiasts love, it seems like a nice fit. Maybe someone should remind the bureaucrats at the Treasury it's a good thing when GM builds cars people want.


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It's true that knives can be dangerous, but they also reflect the evolution of our creative relationship with food and cooking, and through that, our relationship with the world that sustains us.
About Bernal Cutlery
We offer sharpening, Japanese knives, French knives, vintage knives, classes, and much more.
Bernal Cutlery opened for business in 2005 and specializes in all things knife related. Using time-honored Japanese Whetstone grinding techniques—and finishing by hand with a modified version of an old fashioned Barber's strop—it offers peerless sharpening services, as well as very high caliber new knives, collectable and vintage models, classes in care and sharpening as well as hosting sessions on knife skills.
This sharpening approach results in edges that are sharper, longer lasting and produce far less metal removal making for less wear on the knife. As opposed to fast but aggressive dry grinders and belt sanders, which remove unnecessary amounts of metal and are prone to producing enough heat to ruin a blade, often producing ugly scratches and marks in the process. Japanese whetstones not only are the preferred sharpening medium for fine Japanese knives but are superior for all types of cutlery.
Josh Donald's experience working with blades moves along the historical record—from working with stone and wood while studying sculpture, to years spent pouring metal at a foundry, and finally working with steel and knives since the mid-90s.
Josh and his team have tens of thousands of hours worth of experience in sharpening Japanese, French, and Western knives. This experience allows them to custom fit the best type of edge-angles and finishes to each knife and customer.
Professional Chefs, dedicated home cooks, and collectors have come to Bernal Cutlery to either purchase or care for their valued knives and tools. Visit it's newest incarnation at 766 Valencia Street in San Francisco and 308 40th Street in Oakland.
Photo by Molly DeCoudreaux


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Hotels in Prague
Hotels in the centre of PragueSee all
Tourism in Prague
Prague is divided into five main zones that contain valuable sites of interest. Its best to start in the zone of Hradcany Castle where one will find Pragues most emblematic enclosure, the Castle of Prague. Originally built as a fortress in the 9th century, the structure was rehabilitated in the 14th century to give it a Gothic theme. During its reconstruction, a few buildings were added to the masterpiece such as the Cathedral of Saint Vito where the jewels of the Bohemian Kings were stored The Basilica of Saint George is a fantastic piece of Roman architecture with a rebuilt barroque facade. The Convent of Saint George and the Old Royal Palace are also to be found, in their impressive Gothic and Renaissance styles. In the castle grounds, one can gaze at the magnificent Belvedere building with its Renaissance style and then visit the Golden Alley, where alchemists once livedin tiny yet peculiarly charming houses that date back to the 16th century. Upon completing this visit, you should leave through Nerudova street, ending up in the Small City (Mala Strana), on of Pragues most ancient areas, where you will see The Small City Square (Malostranske Namestí) surrounded by Baroque buildings and the Church of Saint Nicholas proudly standing in the centre.
After visiting and admiring all the above, it is a good time to take a stroll on the right bank of the Moldava River, crossing the Bridge of St. Charles, Praguess oldest bridge, which has two imposing towers at both ends. This structure, which is 500m long, contains 30 sculptures. At the end of the bridge is the Old City (Stare Mesto) of Mediaeval origin, where, next to the the Town Hall of the old square (Staromestske), the 15th-century Astronomical Clock stands. This is a truly remarkable structure as when the hands mark the hour, 2 windows open and the 12 apostles come out of them. This square is highlighted by the two magnificent towers of the Gothic Church of our Lady before Tyn. If you carry on towards the north along Maisellova St., you will come to the Jewish Quarter (Josefov), where one can visit the synagogues and the Jewish cemetery. In the New City (Nove Mesto) one should not miss visiting Wenceslas square, where the statue of St. Wenceslas stands in front of the national Museum, a beautiful 19th-century neo-Renaissance structure.


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Dmitri Krioukov, a UC San Diego physicist, was recently given a ticket for running a stop sign. He went to court to argue the ticket, armed with a scientific paper that mathematically demonstrated that he really had stopped. He won.
Krioukov has since posted the entire paper, rather immodestly called "The Proof of Innocence", on the arXiv server. It's probably debatable how much his ironclad mathematical reasoning really helped determine his innocence - it's just as likely the judge threw out the ticket when it was demonstrated another car had obstructed the ticketing police officer's view. Still, let's take a look at one of science's most audacious papers, albeit a fairly mundane sort of audacity:
We show that if a car stops at a stop sign, an observer, e.g., a police officer, located at a certain distance perpendicular to the car trajectory, must have an illusion that the car does not stop, if the following three conditions are satised: (1) the observer measures not the linear but angular speed of the car; (2) the car decelerates and subsequently accelerates relatively fast; and (3) there is a short-time obstruction of the observer's view of the car by an external object, e.g., another car, at the moment when both cars are near the stop sign.
So then, according to Krioukov, this triple coincidence created the illusion that the car had never stopped. He goes into some further detail into his introduction about just why the difference between linear and angular velocity is so crucial here:
It is widely known that an observer measuring the speed of an object passing by, measures not its actual linear velocity by the angular one. For example, if we stay not far away from a railroad, watching a train approaching us from far away at a constant speed, we first perceive the train not moving at all, when it is really far, but when the train comes closer, it appears to us moving faster and faster, and when it actually passes us, its visual speed is maximized.
This observation is the first building block of our proof of innocence. To make this proof rigorous, we first consider the relationship between the linear and angular speeds of an object in the toy example where the object moves at a constant linear speed. We then proceed to analyzing a picture reflecting what really happened in the considered case, that is, the case where the linear speed of an object is not constant, but what is constant instead is the deceleration and subsequent acceleration of the object coming to a complete stop at a point located closest to the observer on the object's linear trajectory. Finally, in the last section, we consider what happens if at that critical moment the observer's view is briefly obstructed by another external object.
Krioukov then uses a bunch of graphs and mathematical calculations to reach the now legally inescapable conclusion that "police officer O made a mistake", one that was "fully justified" because, "as a result of this unfortunate coincidence, the O's perception of reality did not properly reflect reality." Feel free to read in as much or as little disdain into that conclusion as you want.
Of course, all this could most likely have been avoided if Krioukov had actually stopped for more than a split-second, which really would have been the safe thing to do in the first place. Minor road safety scolding aside, though, I say kudos to the physicist. Also, I have the sneaking suspicion Dr. Krioukov should start working on his Ig Nobel acceptance speech...
Check out the full paper at arXiv. Via Physics Central. Image by thecrazyfilmgirl on Flickr.


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We engineer smart electricity meters through custom-made options for our utility customers and multi-utility advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) systems for electricity, water, and gas provide the information, the insight and the intelligence you need to control your energy consumption.
We provide water meters for utility, commercial and domestic use and offers a complete water metering portfolio including solutions for revenue metering, cost allocation, network monitoring, distribution, radio reading, smart metering systems and industrial applications.
We supply you worldwide with meter and smart meter systems, communication modules to the head end system and a complete line of gas distribution products that allow installers to make safe, fast, and easy connections from "main to meter" and from "tank to house".


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Southeast Texans pay tribute to George Jones
With its low-slung stage, neon beer signs and corrugated tin trimmings, Benoit's Louis Hall on Texas 12 in Vidor looks like the type of honky tonk joint George Jones likely played frequently in the early years of his career, before his first chart topping hit, "White Lighting," propelled him to stardom and bigger venues.
On Saturday, some of his oldest, most loyal fans packed the tiny hall for a Southeast Texas Tribute to George Jones, organized by the venue's owner, Joe Benoit, and a group of musicians and friends of the late country legend. The event, sponsored by Ranco Trucking, Holiday Inn Express, Dr. Billy Jordan, Triangle Waste, Dust Busters Cleaning Service and Herrera's Towing was free to the public and proceeds from a link sale benefitted The Giving House, a charitable organization.
Musicians came from as far away as Missouri and Tennessee, joining Southeast Texans like Britt Godwin and Kevin Adams in paying tribute to "The Possum." The Big Bopper's grandson, J. Perry Richardson, came to honor Jones out of respect for the legendary grandfather he never knew.
"They were good friends, really good friends," said Richardson. In fact, his grandfather penned Jones' breakthrough hit, "White Lightning" and booked his first gig, opening for Elvis Presley.
Richardson said he is a fan of Jones' music, admitting partiality for "White Lightning," which conveys the same kind of manic energy as the Big Bopper's "Chantilly Lace".
Dozens of musicians and singers took to the stage in various combinations, singing a mixture of George Jones hits along with some gospel and a few songs Jones liked thrown in for good measure.
Dickie Woodard sang, "Long Tall Sally," because it was one of the singer's favorites.
"White Lightning," "The Race is On," and "Working Class Blues" were among the George Jones classics performed.
Later, Adams and Godwin performed a slow tempo, country-fried version of "Amazing Grace" that had the crowd swaying gently.
Jones' two sons, who haven't strayed far from their roots - Bryan Jones sells auto parts in Huntsville and Jeffery Jones has a flooring business in Vidor - said they were touched by the tribute to their dad, and they thought he would have been too.
"I think he would be proud that people remembered him for the down-to-earth person that he was," Bryan Jones said.
Although fame and fortune brought trouble to his dad along with the good things it brought, George Jones was still "a loving family man," in the time he was able to spend with his children, Bryan said, adding he accepted the demands of his famous father's "music life".
"George Jones was sent here to do country music and he knew it," Bryan said.


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Zone Labs Inc., www.zonelabs.com
$69.95 direct (includes one year of updates, support, and service); $24.95 a year thereafter.
Enhances existing firewall, outbound program control, e-mail, and privacy protection. Adds integrated antivirus, secure instant messaging, and filtering of undesirable sites. Automatic Program Configuration drastically reduces confusing alerts about programs attempting to access the Internet.
Turning off the firewall also turns off antivirus. IDLock feature causes rare false alarms.
Bottom Line:
The popular ZoneAlarm Pro has evolved into a one-stop total security solution suitable for novices as well as more experienced users. Zone Alarm Security Suite 5 enhances ZoneAlarm's existing protective features and adds an effective antivirus module, includes built-in security for instant messaging, and blocks undesirable Web sites.
With the release of ZoneAlarm Security Suite 5, the popular ZoneAlarm Pro has evolved into a one-stop total...
ZoneAlarm Security Suite 5: A Total Security Solution
With the release of ZoneAlarm Security Suite 5, the popular ZoneAlarm Pro has evolved into a one-stop total security solution. Building on the base of a powerful personal firewall with outbound program control, previous versions added features that improved e-mail and privacy protection and blocked the transmission of sensitive information. ZASuite enhances these features and adds an effective antivirus module, built-in security for instant messaging, and the ability to block undesirable Web sites.
Although the suite lacks antispam—a major component in competitor
Rather than attempt to build an antivirus engine from the ground up, ZoneLabs licensed and integrated the Computer Associates antivirus engine, which in other incarnations was proved effective against known viruses by Virus Bulletin and ICSA Labs. The antivirus component scans your entire system on demand or on schedule and scans files whenever you access them, even within ZIP files. When an infected file is found, the utility can automatically repair it if possible or delete it if not.
If a file can't be repaired, you can choose to rename it manually, though at present you don't have the option to move such files into a quarantine area. A link calls up detailed information about the threat. ZASuite monitors your antivirus program and alerts you if it becomes disabled or its definitions become out of date, even if you use the consumer versions of McAfee, Norton, or Trend Micro antivirus. Do note that if you turn off the firewall to investigate a compatibility problem, the antivirus is also shut down. (And note that you can get ZoneAlarm Pro 5 without antivirus for $49.95 direct.)
ZoneLabs's existing IMsecure Pro product is now integrated into ZASuite. AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ, MSN Messenger, and Yahoo! Messenger conversations are automatically encrypted, as long as both ends are using ZASuite or any standalone version of IMsecure. IMsecure blocks IM spam (also called spim) and defends against IM-based worms and system exploits. It can also disable IM-based file sharing and streaming audio and video. Personal information defined for the IDLock feature (described below) is replaced with asterisks in outgoing IM—a handy way to keep IM-happy youngsters from sharing information they shouldn't.
If indeed you need to protect children (or employees) from going to inappropriate sites, ZASuite's Web-filtering feature can block sites in over 30 distinct categories. There's even a category for blocking sites that could be used to circumvent the filter by, for example, translating a page. The filters reside on servers belonging to Cerberian, so they're always up to date, with no local updates required.
When this feature is active, the browser's request for a page triggers a simultaneous request to Cerberian's database for that page's rating. If the rating matches a blocked category, the user will see a warning explaining why the page was blocked. An optional Dynamic Real-Time Rating feature can analyze unrated pages but may slow access to such pages. Unfortunately, filtering can't be set on a per-user basis, as it can be with NIS.
The most common gripe about ZoneAlarm has always been the confusing program alerts. If an alert says "Internet Explorer is trying to access the Internet," that's easy to understand. But what if the alert warns about "Generic Host Process for Win32 Services," or "MS DTC Console Program," or "wcmdmgr"? ZASuite introduces Automatic Program Configuration (APC) to combat this problem. This feature is similar to one in Norton Personal Firewall, though we find ZoneAlarm's more effective. ZoneAlarm matches the program's MD5 signature against a growing database of over 10,000 known files; it can automatically allow known good files and block known bad files. With APC active, alerts about unknown programs nearly disappear, and those that do pop up merit investigation.
Previous versions of ZoneAlarm Pro and IMsecure Pro included IDLock, but you had to enter personal information separately in each. ZASuite stores a single shared set of personal data in various categories. To add an item, you enter its description, pick a category such as "Credit card number," and type the data. ZASuite stores a one-way encrypted version of the data, not the data itself. Now if you type that credit card number into a Web form that's not on a trusted site, ZASuite will alert you or block it, depending on settings. In an instant message, the protected data will be replaced by asterisks. Protected data leaving the system via SMTP-based e-mail can trigger an alert or simply be replaced with asterisks. ZASuite cannot filter personal information in Exchange e-mail. We did find that random matches between private information and unrelated numbers in cookies caused occasional false alarms.
ZoneLabs continues to enhance and strengthen existing features. The stealth firewall now loads earlier in the boot process, eliminating a minuscule window of possibility for hacking. The user interface is designed to thwart a malicious program's attempt to turn off protection by sending simulated keyboard or mouse events. If an attack is detected, the firewall automatically kicks protection up a notch. The MailSafe feature blocks easy access to suspicious attachments, permitting it only after double confirmation. It also detects and blocks suspicious activity such as e-mails with too many recipients, or too many e-mails sent in a short time.
These and many other features make Zone Alarm Security Suite the only security product you need. It is very evenly matched with Norton Internet Security 2004, our other Editors' Choice in this area, so buyers should look closely at both to see which has the best mix of features for them.
More security software reviews:


text: In the first episode of Further Unplugged, Jones travels to Japan to snowboard with Josh Dirksen and Forrest Shearer. With the help of Japanese mountain guide "Yeti" Dave, the group explores the Japanese Alps on splitboards and scores deep powder turns. But the true adventure begins when a blizzard moves in and the crew must hunker down in a high alpine refuge. Further Unplugged takes you behind the scenes of Jeremy Jones' two-year snowboarding film, Further. Get an inside glimpse of what goes on between the lines as Jones and other top riders including Terje Haakonsen, Xavier De Le Rue and Josh Dirksen travel to exotic locations such as Japan, the Arctic Circle and the Wrangell-St. Elias Wilderness. Challenges arise around every corner as this crew attempts to push their minds and bodies further. Stay tuned for 11 more Further Unplugged episodes, released once a month here on tetongravity.com.


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It's coming to the closing of yet another school year.
With that, it's also the time where I have to say goodbye to yet another teacher moving on. To say goodbye and to have a drink or ten, we went to an izakaya.
The only thing I hate about these things is how they split the bill evenly.
I think tonight something was suss when I was solely asked to pitch another 1,000 yen after they originally got 3,000 yen from me. Sure I drank plenty of beer to keep up with everyone's share, but I didn't have any of the squid and scallops that they ordered so it seemed a little unfair to pay more and eat less.
I was fairly drunk so I didn't dispute it. Don't want to mess up the group harmony.
We finished up later than my connecting train so I crashed at a teacher's apartment in Shibuya. Before that though, we had two beers at Tasu Ichi until it closed around 2am (or was it 3am?). We hit the supermarket for some pizza flavoured chips and another drink to have while we watched some Seinfeld.
He has a great view into Shinjuku from being at the top level of the apartment building. Great location.
I went to sleep really quickly on the sofa.
Sure was comfy.
Wednesday, 25 March 2009
Goodbye Mr Young
It's coming to the closing of yet another school year.
Posted by Jimmy In Japan at 11:59 pm


text:
If there was ever an unlikely individual who would end up being a renowned Iowa pork producer and swine veterinarian, Howard Hill, DVM, might be a top choice.
But for Hill, born in a rural community just north of San Diego, CA, a love for all facets of agriculture and a solid group of mentors fueled an enriching, four-decade-long and counting, multi-dimensional career centered on his acquired home in America's heartland — Iowa.
Hill's parents grew up in southwest Missouri, where his father graduated from engineering school in 1929. With no jobs available, the Hills moved to California, where Howard was born in Santa Monica in 1944. He showed cattle and one pig during his youth, which helped his agricultural interests take root.
The fascination with science, and veterinary medicine in particular, grew from an experience when Hill was just 11 years old. One morning, he noticed one of his show steers was bloated, so he called the local veterinarian, who used an instrument to "tube" or release the gas, reducing the bloating. Dr. Bogart charged young Hill $7 for the service, a small fortune for a young man who got by with odd jobs like mowing lawns.
A week later, when the bloating recurred, Hill thought there was no way he could pay Dr. Bogart another $7 to help relieve the steer again. Instead, he went to the family's garage and cut off a piece of hose, whittled it down so it was smooth on the end and used it on the calf to relieve the pressure. The problem returned repeatedly, and Hill tried diet changes and everything he could think of. After multiple bloating incidents, the steer was finally shown at the San Diego county fair.
Dr. Bogart was a good, patient teacher, and Hill worked with him honing veterinary skills all through high school and during vacations and summers while in college.
Hill's father worked 30 years at the local post office and used his engineering skills to operate a construction business, while instilling in his son the values of hard work, honesty and faith.
Howard Hill earned a bachelor of science and a doctor of veterinary medicine degree, both from the University of California–Davis. He practiced veterinary medicine for about a year and a half at a mixed animal practice in southern California, which was rapidly becoming a small animal practice.
One day he was flipping through the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association and saw a notice from the National Institutes of Health offering fellowships encouraging veterinarians to get advanced degrees in the health sciences. The two universities offering the fellowships were Texas A&M University and Iowa State University. He called Allan Packer, DVM, head of the Department of Veterinary Microbiology at Iowa State University. Packer was planning to attend the American Veterinary Medical Association convention in Las Vegas that summer, and he encouraged Hill to meet him there. After meeting with Packer, Hill decided to visit Iowa State University.
When he got to Ames, he immediately liked the area, the faculty and fellow graduate students, so he began to look for housing. With an extended family of two German Shorthair dogs and two cats, he ended up buying a small house in west Ames. His wife was quite surprised when he called to tell her that he had just bought a house.
Hill got his master's and PhD degrees at Iowa State, both in veterinary microbiology. However, even as he was finishing up his PhD, Hill was still planning on returning to California where most of his family remained.
But again fate intervened. Vaughn Seaton, DVM, the director of the Iowa State Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, called and offered Hill a job, so he decided that maybe he would stick around Iowa for a year or two.
"We have been here since 1970, 41 years, and I don't regret the decision to stay in Iowa one bit. I enjoyed growing up in California, where I got a lot of experiences that I wouldn't have gotten growing up in Iowa. But I am glad I live in Iowa today. It is a great place to raise a family," Hill observes. He and his wife, Nancy, raised three children on a farm southeast of Ames. Their family has grown to include eight grandchildren.
Diagnostic Career
For 20 years, from 1974 to 1994, Hill worked as head of the Veterinary Microbiology Section of the Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory at Iowa State University. During that time, he gained tenure and advanced to full professor in the Department of Veterinary Microbiology in the College of Veterinary Medicine.
It was a great experience working in a diagnostic lab headed up by Vaughn Seaton, who was a very good mentor. He taught Hill how to assess people quickly and identify their strengths and weaknesses.
Those were very busy times for the diagnostic lab, embroiled in the pork industry's long fight to eradicate pseudorabies (PRV). "There were thousands of samples (to test) and lots of long days," he remembers. "We had a good staff and we used a lot of graduate students and veterinary students who did a nice job helping out."
The rules were clear-cut in dealing with PRV, particularly restricted animal movement, and it helped significantly that there were excellent vaccines to get the job done. Being able to differentiate vaccinated pigs from naturally exposed pigs was extremely valuable in the eradication of PRV, Hill says. He worked closely with the IDEXX and Syntrovet corporations in the development of the gene-deleted PRV vaccine and companion differential diagnostic serological tests.
Hill was a strong proponent of PRV eradication. As a pork producer himself, he understood the cost and hardship the disease was causing for pork producers, particularly the seedstock industry.
"I think it really helped to have that practical experience during those days with PRV," Hill says. It was a costly endeavor for many, including Hill, who depopulated his herd to get rid of the disease.
Turn to Production
Hill wasn't planning to leave the diagnostic lab, but others once again changed his plans. He had consulted with Randy Stoecker and his staff at Murphy Family Farms, based in Rose Hill, NC, and he soon learned about Stoecker's drive, determination and vision. Hill and Stoecker remain close friends today.
Hill was making some jaunts to North Carolina to consult with Murphy Family Farms on PRV and production issues. One day in 1994, as he was heading back to the Raleigh airport to return to Iowa, he was offered a job with Murphy Family Farms. Hill thought the job would entail mostly consulting, but as it turned out, Wendell Murphy wanted Hill to work full-time in North Carolina. Hill took the job, but made it clear that he wasn't moving to North Carolina permanently. He ended up commuting there every other week, establishing a veterinary service department and helping develop boar studs and multiplication units.
At Murphy Family Farms, Hill also got his first real taste of working for an integrated hog operation. The company was an innovator in large-scale pork production, including contract production.
"Randy Stoecker was really pushing three-site production, and Murphy's was one of the first integrators to implement this type of production system," he says. The company had a lot of large sow sites, and many were positive to PRV — as were many of their nurseries and finishers. Intense vaccination and a lot of diagnostic work resulted in the successful eradication of PRV from all of the Murphy farms in North Carolina, Hill says.
That job in North Carolina was supposed to last three years, and then Hill was to work primarily in the Midwest, but he continued to work in both the Midwest and North Carolina for five years. In December 1999, Hill got a call from Jeff Hansen, owner of Iowa Select Farms based in Iowa Falls, IA, who offered him a job.
"It made a lot of sense for family reasons to go to work for Jeff, plus it was a good opportunity to join a growing company," Hill relates. Hansen started the company in 1993 with the goal of building the farrow-to-finish operation into a 100,000-sow enterprise. Today, Iowa Select Farms has 160,000 sows with sites in 43 Iowa counties.
Hill became director of production at Iowa Select in 2000, and faced some of the same problems he had dealt with in North Carolina, including PRV.
"When Jeff Kaisand, DVM, and I came to Iowa Select, the company had a significant PRV problem. We instituted an aggressive testing program coupled with an equally aggressive vaccination program for sows and grow/finish pigs. With hard work and cooperation between the veterinarians and the production staff, we were able to clean up PRV in less than two years," he says proudly.
"I think what really turned around the PRV eradication program was when people started having success cleaning it up and keeping farms clean," Hill points out. "The challenge we had late in the program was that we still had finishing barns breaking that would recontaminate sow farms. Once the industry got into an aggressive pig immunization program, sometimes vaccinating grow/finish pigs twice, we were able to eliminate the virus clouds from finishing sites and keep the sow farms from becoming reinfected."
Although the PRV eradication campaign was a state/federal government program, producers such as Willard Korsmeyer of Illinois, Don Gingerich of Iowa, and industry leaders like Neal Black, past editor of National Hog Farmer and past president of the Livestock Conservation Institute, led the way, Hill says.
Hill smiles when he thinks back to detractors who said Iowa would be the last state to clean up PRV. In fact, when Iowa officially cleaned up PRV, there were still a few pockets of the virus left in other states. The eradication effort was completed in 2004.
Hill, Black and a host of other industry leaders compiled USDA Technical Bulletin No. 1923, published in 2008, a 230-page history of the PRV eradication effort.
From 2001 to 2009, Hill served as chief operating officer of Iowa Select Farms, and faced another disease foe — porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) — which was identified in 1987, but has increased in severity over time.
"PRRS is a big challenge today, especially in pig-dense areas like north central Iowa. Until we come up with better biological controls, if you are in a pig-dense area like north central Iowa, you have to look at filtering your sow farms," Hill strongly suggests.
PRRS control requires more than solid biosecurity, he continues. "When you've got a virus that can be transmitted 2-4 miles through the air, you can have pretty good biosecurity and still break," Hill explains. In 2004, Iowa Select Farms was the first U.S. producer to filter their boar studs.
Hill notes that Minnesota pork producers, under the guidance of veterinarians like Darwin Reicks (Swine Vet Center), have filtered a lot more sow farms than Iowa producers, which has encouraged Iowa producers to filter more sow farms the past couple of years. Hill predicts that filtering of sow farms will become more common in high-risk areas.
Unlike PRV, for which vaccination blunts the clinical signs and minimizes economic losses, PRRS is more problematic because it mutates rapidly, Hill states. Iowa Select Farms has worked to stabilize the health of the sow herd, but has also ramped up biosecurity by:
- Dedicating livestock trucks for every sow farm to eliminate cross-contamination with the virus.
- Incinerating all of the mortalities on a sow farm instead of using a rendering service.
- Washing, disinfecting and drying all trucks and trailers for farms.
Iowa Select Farms has cleaned up several sow farms in southern Iowa where pig density is much lower, Hill explains.
Next Challenge
Hill's job status took another turn in April 2010, when the then 65-year-old moved to half-time employment at Iowa Select Farms in the role of director of external affairs. "What I am doing now is public policy type work. I work a lot with the Iowa Pork Producers Association, where I am on the board of directors, and I am on the board of directors of the National Pork Producers Council, and just spent a week in April in Washington, DC, for their biannual Legislative Action Conference."
At first, Hill was unsure how this new, somewhat different industry role would suit him. Soon, however, he found he really enjoyed the challenge, and he is convinced that pork producers can make a difference in the nation's capitol. "It is good to have producers go in and deliver their message to legislators," he asserts. "Pork producers are well represented by National Pork Producers Council staff in Washington, DC, but when a legislator hears concerns from their constituents, they listen."
That's not to say Hill has moved away from the production side of the business completely. His own hog operation has grown to 625 sows producing Danbred parent gilts. It is managed by former Iowa Pork Producers Association President Dave Moody, who lives on the home farm near Nevada, IA. The farm includes 2,500 acres of row crops, and Hill plans to take his turn helping his son, Eric, plant crops this spring.
Hill still spends a couple of days a week in the Iowa Select Farms office at Iowa Falls, focusing on genetics and working with their packer. Iowa Select Farms markets all of their pigs to JBS Swift, sending 65-70% to the plant at Marshalltown, IA, and the remainder to the plant at Worthington, MN.
Hill marvels at the level of genetic improvement in the pork industry today. "When I first came to Iowa Select Farms, we averaged 10.4 to 10.5 pigs born alive, and today we have farms that are doing over 13 born alive. The big challenge now is to keep the preweaning mortality to a minimum and get more of those pigs to market," he notes.
Despite all his professional achievements, the latest being named to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack's Advisory Committee on Animal Health to look at animal identification, traceability and foreign animal diseases, Hill is most proud of the success of his family. His wife, Nancy, a school teacher, "has put up with me for 42 years," he says. Their three children have successful professional careers. Daughter Allison is a senior business analyst for the Principal Company in Des Moines. Son Eric oversees the farming enterprise. And youngest son Jared is a Des Moines attorney who is going to be Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley's agricultural liaison.
Future Goals
Hill's farming operation includes a 150-cow purebred Angus herd. "Truth be told, my passion is breeding Angus cattle, but I always say, in order to be able to afford to raise cattle, you've got to raise hogs." He also hopes to expand both his cropping and his livestock enterprises, anticipating a bright future for the hog industry despite more consolidation and continued pressure on feed and energy costs.
As a veterinarian, the future will be bright but challenging, Hill believes. His advice to young swine practitioners is to develop their technical skills as well as their business skills, and be willing to take advantage of opportunities as they are presented. Do not be afraid to take some risk as you grow in your profession, he says.
Hill encourages swine practitioners to get involved with their association, the American Association of Swine Veterinarians, which provides educational opportunities as well as serves as an advocate for swine veterinarians and their producers.
Hill emphasizes the importance of balancing the many endeavors in agriculture that give him satisfaction, while finding time to enjoy what's most important to him: his family.


text:
Jordan Levin
Miami's YoungArts Foundation launches a visual arts residency program with Suzanne McClelland
The YoungArts Foundation's home on Biscayne Boulevard is mostly open space — a wide plaza surrounding two compact towers that once housed the Bacardi offices. And that fascinates artist Suzanne McClelland.
"It seems like YoungArts is taking a swath of land that used to be a corporate headquarters and turning it into something else," says McClelland, whose recent work focuses on how people mix in public spaces. "I love the fact that a corporate headquarters is being transformed into an open cultural environment. To me that's a really optimistic move."
McClelland will bring her curiosity and the creative results of her observations about public space and community to Miami as YoungArts' first visual artist in residence. The new program is sponsored by the Related Group — whose CEO is art collector and patron Jorge Perez — with an eye toward fostering cultural activity in Edgewater, the bayside neighborhood near YoungArts where Related has four condo projects in the works.
"Part of our philosophy is not just to build buildings, but to enhance neighborhoods and develop a cultural center around what we build," says Related's art director Patricia Hanna, who oversees the company's art collections and initiatives. "Urban centers are not just towers with people in them, but places where those people can walk out and see a film or an exhibition."
The McClelland residency is the latest in a string of activities that YoungArts has been adding to its core program of fostering talented teenage artists in the national and regional gatherings known as YoungArts Week. New events have included salon-style discussions with performance artist Marina Abramovic and actor Robert Redford, and a multimedia environmental performance by Redford's artist wife, Sibylle Redford. The foundation's campus will eventually be transformed by architect Frank Gehry, envisioned as an ambitious cultural center to create, teach and showcase the performing, visual and media arts.
In the meantime, YoungArts president Paul Lehr says they're working on creating programs to fill and enliven what they hope will be a major year-round cultural hub in downtown Miami.
"Investing in the artistic community of South Florida is really consistent with our artistic mission … to foster appreciation and support for the arts in our society," Lehr says. While the program is well known nationally, thanks to famous master teachers like Placido Domingo and Mikhail Baryshnikov and an HBO series, Lehr says YoungArts, founded by Carnival Cruise Lines magnate Ted Arison and wife Lin Arison in 1981, is less well-known in its hometown.
"This is where we were born and raised," Lehr says. "So we thought it was particularly important to establish ourselves in this community, and to give back and add to the cultural landscape."
McClelland will be in Miami for 10 days starting June 26, returning at a future date, gathering inspiration for a project to be exhibited here. A well-known painter who has shown at galleries and museums internationally and will be part of this year's Whitney Biennial, McClelland was selected by a committee of YoungArts advisors. In the future, three resident artists will be chosen each year from an open pool of applicants, receiving an honorarium of up to $10,000, money for travel and art expenses, housing at a Related building and studio space. While in Miami, the artists will offer at least three public programs — workshops, discussions and the like — and create original work to be exhibited here.
Lehr says the program is the first of a series of residencies in various artistic disciplines, with a dance residency launching later this year. Activities could range from developing new performances with local talent to teaching master classes.
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"I want to look for great opportunities to bring in fantastic master artists who can work with young artists and the community," Lehr says.
The Related Group, like many developers and corporations, has art in its buildings and public areas. But the company has a particularly strong artistic profile. Perez donated $40 million in cash and art to the downtown museum that now bears his name, and he has focused on his interest in art in recent years. His company's buildings are in high-end areas like South Beach, Brickell, downtown Miami and Edgewater where culture is a crucial ingredient in the image and quality of life that lure wealthy buyers.
Recently, Related has been adding other arts activities to its visual art collections, hosting the O Miami poetry festival this year. Their sponsorship of the YoungArts residency came about after Perez arranged for three YoungArts alumni to create sculptures for a park at Iconbay, a 42-story luxury condo building under construction in Edgewater.
"Related wants to branch out and encourage artistic programming," Hanna says. "The idea is to do this more and align ourselves with great organizations."
McClelland admits she knows little about Miami. She does remember her grandmother telling stories of stopping off here on her way to vacation in pre-Revolutionary Cuba, and she has visited here a number of times. She has often collaborated with writers and other artists, and started her career in New York's East Village in the early 1980s, when artists taking advantage of cheap space unwittingly pioneered a real estate boom in what has become a pattern for the gentrification that transformed South Beach and is currently changing Wynwood.
In Miami she'll investigate phenomena that have interested her lately: the way people mix together and behave in public places; and how free community spaces like parks and town squares are being supplanted by shopping malls, sports stadiums and other commercial zones. She arrives in Miami at a time when surging development in the center of the city has made conflicts between private enterprise and public space, like the debate over putting the Beckham soccer stadium in downtown's Museum Park, a hot issue.
"I'm interested in hearing and seeing how people interact and where that happens," McClelland says. "A lot of American cities are short on public spaces. People are either in their own private property or a business. We had that in the early 20th century, and it started to go away with the mall era — everything became business oriented."
"Everything has become so exclusive — admission into spaces and parties and clubs and airlines all have priority this and privileged that."
McClelland praises museums in general — and the Perez Art Museum Miami in particular — as some of the few remaining accessible gathering places. And she believes the YoungArts campus could be a potent cultural site. "The thing I love is that there's this plaza," she says. "It seems possible to create a real meeting place. If we could design spaces that are not centered around shopping I think people would be happier and interact with each other in a different, less competitive way."
Given her belief in the value of public funding and space, there is some irony in McClellan's residency being sponsored by a developer of expensive condos. But she says the growing cultural shift from public to private funding has also made art, and places to experience it, more dependent on wealthy people and corporations.
"Now everything is supported by private developers and individuals," she says. "It's a treasure hunt for public spaces. Much as I wish public spaces weren't provided by private entities, that seems to be the way of the world right now."


text:
XBoard is a graphical user interface for chess in all its major forms, including international chess, xiangqi (Chinese chess), shogi (Japanese chess) and Makruk, in addition to many minor variants such as Losers Chess, Crazyhouse, Chess960 and Capablanca Chess. It displays a chessboard on the screen, accepts moves made with the mouse, and loads and saves games in Portable Game Notation (PGN). It serves as a front-end for many different chess services, including:
- Chess engines that will run on your machine and play a game against you or help you analyze, such as GNU Chess, Crafty, or many others.
- Chess servers on the Internet, where you can connect to play chess with people from all over the world, watch other users play, or just hang out and chat.
- Correspondence chess played by electronic mail. The CMail program automates the tasks of parsing email from your opponent, playing his moves out on your board, and mailing your reply move after you've chosen it.
XBoard runs on Unix and Unix-like systems that use the X Window System.
XBoard, playing some Chess variant
WinBoard, configured with marble board
The project also includes a port to MicroSoft-Windows systems called WinBoard.
You can find the downloads for binaries and preconfigured installer packages of Winboard at the Winboard Forum, where yo can also report problems, get help from other WinBoard users or discuss feature requests. Windows builds of development versions or installers for special configuartions can be found at HGM's web page.
Development for Winboard, reporting bugs and any other requests can also be done at the same places as for XBoard (see below).
Downloading XBoard
stable version (4.9.0)
Sources of current stable version can be found on the main GNU ftp server: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/xboard/ (via http) and ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/xboard/ (via ftp). It can also be found on one of the mirrors of ftp.gnu.org; please use a mirror if possible.
Precompiled versions are available for openSUSE and debian-sid (if you know of other distribution that package it, please let us know).
Mac OSX Intel 10.6+ App
A preconfigured app bundle of Xboard for Mac OSX can also be found at the Winboard Forum.
development version
We regularly do so called 'developer releases', which include the newest and the latest we are working on. If you want to help us test, or just want to use the new features, you might prefer to use those over the stable version.
At the Open Build Server we provide packages that can be installed in parallel to the normal xboard version. To do this the programs are renamed to xboardnext (latest from the v4.9.x branch in git) and xboardgit (latest version from the master branch in git). Packages are available for: Debian 6.0, Fedora 17/18, RedHat RHEL 6, opensuse 12.1/12.2/12.3/Tumbleweed/Factory, Centos 6, Arch, Ubunutu 10.04/12.04/12.10. These packages are generated automatically and are for testing purposes only. Please let us know if you have any problems related to XBoard or package dependencies.
Windows builds of development version can often be found at HGM's web page.
Furthermore we provide development versions (tagged commits in git):
- A snapshot of the master branch is available: master-20130828.
- A snapshot of the release branch is available: (no developer release available at the moment)
How to build the development version
git version
The git repository is available on Savannah. All branches can be viewed there. The web page also provides tar-balls of all tagged versions, these tar-balls are different from the ones that you can download from the ftp-server and you will need to run
./autogen.sh on them as described below.
If you want to get a copy of the repository you can clone it using the command
"git clone http://git.savannah.gnu.org/r/xboard.git". For more information on how to use git, please visit the git home page.
After cloning the git-repository or downloading and unpacking a snapshot tar-ball from the git repository,
./configure and then
make and
make install.
tar-balls (from the ftp-server)
Unpack the tar ball and do
./configure followed by
make and
make install.
For development sources and other information, please see the XBoard project page at savannah.gnu.org.
You can also find an archive of old versions on the ftp server.
The official manual page for XBoard is available online, as is documentation for most GNU software. This discusses every feature XBoard has in detail. You may also find this information on your local system by running info xboard or man xboard, or by looking at /usr/doc/xboard/, /usr/local/doc/xboard/, or similar directories on your system.
There now also exists an XBoard User Guide, which only presents the main features in a more pedestrian way. This would be an excellent starting point if you are a novice XBoard user. If you have prior experience with XBoard, but just want to know what new features have been added since the version you were used to, the pages in the What's New section would be the place to go.
A description of the Chess Engine Communication Protocol used by XBoard to communicate with Chess Engines can be found here.
These are screenshots taken from version 4.4.0 (click to enlarge).
Help needed
It would be great if people would like to help in the developing process. We can use all kinds of help, from people who just use the software and have a feature request (send them to developer mailing list), to people who can update/check the documentation and especially people who test development versions (send problems to the developer mailing list). Have a look at the following list in case you are interested:
A new project admin is needed. The person would manage the Savannah pages, membership to Savannah/git access, do releases, and manage the email list, etc. The job could also be split among several people.
We added support for different languages to XBoard and need people to translate it. The translation is handled by the translation project. You can check on the current status and how to join the translation project.
We are always looking for people who are willing to test the latest new features and give us feedback or new ideas. If you are interested, please send an email to our list at <[email protected]> or just try out the program and reports bugs either to the email list or to the bug-tracker (see below for links).
GTK developer needed
We are also working on merging Winboard and XBoard back into one version using a cross platform GTK-front end. This will help us clean up the code and make things like internationalization easier. We made some progress, if you know want to help out there are still lots of things waiting to be done. Email the mailing list for more information. There is already some unmerged code to port to gtk3.
Update the help files
The help files for Xboard and Winboard could be merged into one document.
Update the webpage
The content of the webpage could be updated with screenshots from the latest version. We also have a new tutorial that could be integrated.
- XBoard/Winboard
- Tim's original pages are still available.
- XBoard can also run engines that use the UCI protocol, with the aid of the Polyglot protocol adapter. A new Polyglot version, (1.4.67b), especially adapted to support the new features of XBoard 4.4.0 and later, can be found here.
- Incomplete list of computer engines that work with XBoard
- GNU chess
- Fairy-Max
- A list with lots of engines
- List of Xiangqi engines
- other popular engines are crafty, phalanx, fruit, toga2, glaurung, ...
- Chess server you can connect to using XBoard
- Other interfaces
Frequently Asked Question(FAQ)
If you have any questions, please check out our FAQ.
Mailing Lists and Discussion Forums
mailing lists
XBoard has two mailing lists: <[email protected]> and <[email protected]>.
The main discussion list is <[email protected]>, and is used to discuss most aspects of XBoard, including development and enhancement requests. Please send bug reports to <[email protected]>.
Announcements about XBoard and most other GNU software are made on <[email protected]>.
To subscribe to these or any GNU mailing lists, please send an empty mail with a Subject: header of just subscribe to the relevant -request list. For example, to subscribe yourself to the GNU announcement list, you would send mail to <[email protected]>. Or you can use the mailing list web interface.
discussion forums
A very active forum is the WinBoard Forum (where our current main developer HGM can be found).
Reporting Bugs and Requesting New Features
If you think you found a bug, please check the bugtracker for open and already closed bugs. If you found a new bug, please, file a bug-report either via our bug-related email list or in the bugtracker.
For feature requests, please use our mailinglist: <[email protected]>.
Please remember that development of XBoard, and GNU in general, is a volunteer effort, and you also can contribute. For information, please read How to help GNU.
XBoard is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.


text:
NH seeks new tenants for Hampton Beach Seashell Complex
State looking for tenants to occupy 430-square-foot space
Sea stars and scallops, barnacles and baleen are among those competing to move into a prime bit of real estate at Hampton Beach State Park.
Besides a new performance stage, bathhouses, boardwalks and meeting spaces, the $14.5 million beach redevelopment project completed last year also included a small retail store selling New Hampshire-branded goods. But it wasn't much of a money maker, so the state is seeking new tenants to take over the space.
The change is part of a larger effort to generate money for the state's struggling park system, the only one in the nation that relies solely on user fees to cover its operating costs.
"We have high expectations around generating revenue, and we have high expectations around quality of service," said Philip Bryce, director of the Division of Parks and Recreation.
Businesses or organizations interested in occupying the 430-square-foot space have until April 29 to submit proposals, which will be evaluated based on three main criteria: the strength of their operating plans, the expected revenue and the vendors' past experiences. Applicants will present their plans to state officials in person May 2, and a decision will be made May 6. The goal is to have a contract ready for the governor's Executive Council to approve on June 5, in time for the busy summer season.
Those interested in submitting bids also were required to attend one of two tours of the property. The first tour, held Thursday, attracted two organizations with similar visions: Explore the Ocean World and Blue Ocean Society for Marine Conservation.
The former is an educational program run by Ellen Goethel of Hampton, who brings interesting marine life found by her commercial fisherman husband to schools in New Hampshire and surrounding states.
"This is something she's wanted to do for a long time," David Goethel said Thursday. "Hampton Beach needs more child friendly activities, and if you want to make it a family beach, you need reasons for families to come here. Any of these programs that are geared toward teaching kids - and, by extension, their parents - about the importance of the marine aquasystem seems like a natural fit."
The nonprofit Blue Ocean Society operates a marine life "touch tank" in Portsmouth, hosts educational summer programs for kids and organizes regular beach cleanup sessions. Volunteer Coordinator Nancy Anderson said she would love the chance to bring all of that right to the beach.
"I think it will bring our mission to light to a lot more people," she said. "I grew up in this area, and to see Hampton evolve to thinking about something like we're doing is really huge. ... To see Hampton revitalize like this is really a gift to tourists, and it gives them educational, healthy activities for kids and adults."
Both had numerous questions about the space, including what kind of backup electricity system would be in place during a power failure.
"When the power dies, so do the critters," Goethel said.
The details will come later, but the state plans to both charge rent and collect a percentage of the profits generated by the site, Bryce said. The contract would run for three years and could be awarded to either a seasonal or year-round entity, he said.
"The state's been trying to take the lead in extending the season out there, so if they came forward with that option, we'd certainly be willing to entertain that."
Hampton Beach, along New Hampshire's 17-mile coastline, attracts about 1.8 million visitors who spend $175 million a year, according to an economic study completed in 2008 as the redevelopment project began. More than half come in the summer, swelling the small town's population, and the recent improvements are expected to increase the total visitation by 15 percent and spending by 20 percent within 10 years.
B.J. Noel, president of the Hampton Area Chamber of Commerce, said he thinks an educational organization would be a good tenant because he doesn't want to see a retail outlet that would directly compete with nearby businesses, which include an arcade, theater, beach apparel and trinket shops and a row of takeout food shops selling pizza, Italian sausage and fried dough.
Nearly all were still closed for the season Thursday, except for the Coffee Cann Cafe directly across from the empty retail space. Manager Jeremy Hashem said he has enjoyed seeing tourists visit the new state park facilities and would welcome any business or organization that moves in across the street.
"The more the merrier," he said.


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Resources, tools and education for our patients and their families to ensure you have easy access to the information you need before, during and after your visit.
Muscular dystrophy (MD) is an inherited (genetic) disorder of the muscles. It is called a neuromuscular disease. There are several types. Becker muscular dystrophy (BMD) is a rare type. It has milder symptoms than Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), which is more common. BMD causes weakness of skeletal muscles, breathing muscles, and the heart muscle. Over time, the muscle fibers break down.
BMD is a genetic disease. This means it passes from parents to children. It is caused by a faulty gene on the X chromosome. It mostly affects boys. Girls are only carriers and usually don't have symptoms.
People normally have 23 pairs of chromosomes in each cell of their body. The 23rd pair controls a person's gender. This pair is 2 X chromosomes for females. The pair is 1 X and 1 Y chromosome for males.
The faulty BMD gene is an X-linked
recessive gene. This means the gene needs to be on each X chromosome for symptoms of the
disease to occur in girls. A girl would need 2 copies--1 copy on each X chromosome. If
she has only 1 copy on 1 X chromosome, she is a carrier of the disease but will not have
symptoms. Boys only have one X chromosome. If their X chromosome has a faulty gene, they
will have symptoms.
A child is more at risk for BMD if he or she has a family member with the disease. Girls are rarely affected by this type of muscular dystrophy.
Symptoms usually start during teen or early adult years. They can include:
The symptoms of Becker muscular dystrophy can be like other health conditions. Make sure your child sees his or her healthcare provider for a diagnosis.
The healthcare provider will ask about your child's symptoms and health history. He or she may also ask about your family's health history to find out if other family members have had muscular dystrophy. He or she will give your child a physical exam. Your child may also have tests, such as:
Treatment will depend on your child's symptoms, age, and general health. It will also depend on how severe the condition is.
There is no known cure for BMD, or treatment to stop the muscles from weakening. The goal of treatment is to keep muscles as strong as possible to allow a child to function independently.
Treatment choices include:
Talk with your child's healthcare providers about the risks, benefits, and possible side effects of all treatments.
Children with BMD may have additional health problems, such as:
Your healthcare provider may advise
genetic counseling. You can discuss with a counselor the risk for BMD in a future
BMD is a condition that gets worse
over time (progressive). It needs life-long management. Walking and sitting often become
more difficult as a child grows. In time your child will need a wheelchair in his or her
late teen years or early 20s. This is because the leg muscles become too weak to work.
In some cases, a child may need a wheelchair earlier.
Your child will also need a heart
imaging test every 1 to 2 years. This may be a heart echocardiogram or a magnetic
resonance imaging (MRI) scan. These tests look at the function and health of the heart.
A child with BMD will need special care during surgery to prevent problems from
People with BMD usually live until their 40s. Problems from cardiomyopathy are a common cause of death.
A healthcare team will work with your family to improve your child's function and to give support as you learn to care for your child's needs.
You can contact the Muscular Dystrophy Association (www.mda.org) for support, resources, and help.
Call the healthcare provider if your child has:
Tips to help you get the most from a visit to your child's healthcare provider:


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Fear and envy haunt proposed new arena for Edmonton
Design artist concept of proposed arena for downtown Edmonton.
Photograph by: ... , Handout
VANCOUVER - Let me say this about the ongoing Edmonton arena soap opera, the latest chapter of which began to unfold at city council Wednesday in the Alberta capital ...
No, let me first don the asbestos underwear, double-check to make sure my life insurance is paid up, and clear space in my email inbox.
There, all done.
Now: what if, instead of thinking of new and creative ways to raise and spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to further enrich the already wealthy drug store billionaire Daryl Katz, Edmonton took a second look at the existing arena -- the one with his company name on it -- and said: "You know, this place is still pretty good. Not the best, not what a new one would be, not as good as Toronto's or Montreal's or Vancouver's, not in a great location ... but good enough."
It's radical thinking, I know.
Everyone is all wound up about the prospect of a shiny, brand-spanking new arena/retail complex that would breathe new life into a moribund downtown, and if that's truly what moving out of Rexall Place would do, it's understandable why council might buy it.
(Although MTS Centre in Winnipeg is lovely, and in a perfect location, but they tell me you can still fire a cannon down Portage Avenue lots of non-game nights without fear of hitting a human.) Not to be a total contrarian here -- I haven't covered many games in Edmonton since the Oilers' 2006 run to the Stanley Cup final -- but is the former Northlands Coliseum such a hellhole?
Is it totally beneath a mid-sized Canadian market?
It's been renovated and retro-fitted, jazzed up with fancy electronic signage and concourse-level luxury boxes, a spectacular home-team dressing room complex and rink-level lounges that allow the big spenders to pat the players on the shoulders or yell insults at them as they enter and exit their boudoir.
It has aged gracefully, without anything like the wear-and-tear and general air of decay that has afflicted its Long Island doppelganger or even the much younger Joe Louis Arena in Detroit.
What, exactly, tops the list of things that are wrong with it?
The artificial ice plant is "tired," so what used to be the best ice surface in the National Hockey League is now only average? Well, replace the ice plant. Dig up the concrete. Probably not a huge-ticket item.
Rexall Place doesn't have enough luxury boxes to produce the kind of revenue NHL owners have come to expect from their sports palaces built with someone else's money? Gee, given what we have learned in the last decade (more specifically, the last week) about NHL owners, cry us a river.
The fairgrounds area around the arena is kind of down-market and sketchy? Northlands, the exhibition association, is still insisting on a cut of some of the revenues generated by the building it operates? The nerve of those greedy buggers.
The concourses are overcrowded and don't allow for enough high-end food and beverage concessions? The seats aren't comfy enough? Granted, the demographics have changed and are changing all the time -- regular folks can't afford the prices tickets cost now -- but are Edmontonians, even wealthy ones, that demanding?
Or is this just one more gimme-gimme stampede in the making (Calgary will be next in line looking for public money), another railroad job (the planned Edmonton downtown arena is on what used to be CN Rail land) by another team owner, following a tried-and-true game plan that has served the pro sports monopolies beautifully well on this continent for generations?
Fear and envy. An owner's best weapons.
There is a long, detailed, highly analytical story on this topic by Patrick Hruby on a site called Sports on Earth that explains the economic fallout of our North American culture of sports welfare (http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/40595178/) better than a couple hundred words in a sports column ever could. Read it and weep, Edmontonians, because one way or another, you're the meat in the sandwich.
However the government contribution is worded, or camouflaged, it doesn't come from the Arena Fairy. It's tax money, and not a user tax, either. It comes out of the pockets of hockey fans and people who give not one whit about the NHL, alike.
Having been through something similar with the $563-million (as far as we know) renovation of a 27-year-old B.C. Place Stadium, for which the province offered considerably less opportunity for public consultation, it's encouraging that at least Edmonton's council has made this a knock-down, drag-out fight, in trying to drive something resembling a hard bargain with Katz.
But Katz's $100-million contribution to the $475-million (and rising) project appears to be largely out of future revenues, and there remains a "missing" $100-million component to the project that is supposed to come from "other orders of government" that, to date, no other government -- i.e., provincial -- has shown any great willingness to pony up.
Wednesday, the Katz Group, if not the man himself, returned cap in hand to council, two months after the city voted to walk away from the arena deal over a request from the Oiler owner for another $210 million.
That came not long after Katz clumsily tried to frighten the city into thinking he might move the team to Seattle, or ... well, somewhere else. But Edmontonians had been there, done that, with Peter Pocklington a lifetime ago, and the implied threat backfired.
The arena deal the city had agreed upon wasn't all one-sided. Katz would sign a 35-year lease, pay to be the rink's operator, and back and forth the money, under various guises, would flow from one side to the other.
The catch is that the price tag reportedly will be more like $700 million, or even higher, by the time the surrounding development and bells and whistles and infrastructure are completed -- and at some point, even as well-intentioned as the mayor and councillors may be, it seems they are going to sign a deal that inevitably will add a considerable tax burden to the populace, and probably result in some really valuable programs and services being trimmed, in return for ... what?
A better self-image, a sense of big-leagueness, a more vibrant feel to at least a few blocks surrounding the arena, on game nights? Sure. Like Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. Better than losing the team.
Fear and envy. Quell one, satisfy the other.
Jettison an old arena, build a new one on credit. It's a disposable world. Someone will pay. Someone always does.


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See all upcoming disability sport sessions & events listed below.
Click on a heading along the top to filter events by category.
Event Information:
Sat25Jan202011am - 12.30pmWashington Leisure Centre, NE38 7SS
Junior Multi-Sport Session
Monthly sport session for children with a disability to take part in a range of inclusive and adapted sports and activities at each session. Siblings are welcome too!
The session will take place on the 4th Saturday of a month.
Cost: £3 per person
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Nandita pure and Natural Incense oil
Free from Alcohol Content: 8ml
Patchouli Amber Roll-on - Incense Oil
There's nothing more captivating than a scent that literally turns heads. Evoking images of a tropical paradise, Nandita is a gardenia-based blend of Incense oils. This fabulous roll-on Incense oil changes according to your body chemistry - so it smells great on everyone! Each Incense oil has an intense, yet variable scent with a wide range of notes. A depth of tunes are played by this Incense oil and it matures after wearing, especially in the evening, into a sophisticated and sparkling aroma. A truly wonderful gift for someone you love. A few drops of these can lighten your life, lift your mood, or create an atmosphere for your room that will be out of this world. Oil can be used in diffuser candle and potpourri.
Listed Below are some suggested applications
Candles: 10-15 drops, Potpourri: 10-15 drops
Diffuser: 10 drops in lamp diffuser: add water to 3/4 full
Always keep bottles tightly closed to avoid extrapolation
Not for Medicinal use For External Use Only.
These Natural Incense Oil are for external use only.
Keep away from children and pets


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Posted by Alisa on Saturday, July 12, 2014
Expectant moms Snooki and JWoww were seen filming a scene for their reality television show in New Jersey and Friday (July 12).
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the images shown on the site. I do not claim credit for any of the pictures unless otherwise noted. Images on this blog are copyrighted to their respectful owner. If an image appears on alisacelebkids that belongs to you, and you wish for it to be taken down, please E-mail me and I will promptly remove it.


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We Try the New Strawberry n' Cream Cheese Pie from Popeyes
Fried pie and I go way back. Like most of us of a certain age, that love affair started at McDonald's. And whether you were an apple fan or cherry lover, we all cried a bit when Ronald took those little beauties away, started baking them, and forced us all to grow up. Thank God somebody's still looking out for our inner eight-year-olds.
Popeyes has long featured cinnamon apple pies and sweet potato pies on their dessert menu, but their new limited time offering puts the spotlight on the official state fruit of Louisiana, the strawberry. (Yeah. Who knew? See, kids, stay in school. Or... get a job eating and then writing about fast food.)
The new Strawberry n' Cream Cheese Pie starts out with the same traditional dough as the chain's other fried pies. Crisp and warm and golden brown, with all of those delicate little crust bubbles and craggy, flaky edges, it fit neatly into the palm of my hand just the way I remember.
Inside, though, there's a rich and creamy surprise. Not content to just cram it full of fruit goo, Popeyes has layered its strawberry puree with real cream cheese. It's the same technique they used last year when I test-drove a blackberries-and-cream model at a special event at their test kitchen.
But while I remember being suitably awed at that killer blackberry version, the strawberry left me a little underwhelmed. And thirsty. The ratio of a fruit-and-cream-cheese pie needs to be just right, as too much cream cheese can easily overpower, especially with a less assertive fruit. That's what happened for me here. I found myself wanting a tad more strawberry goo and a touch less cream cheese.
Maybe it was just that one pie. Or two. 'Cos I had two. 'Cos they're only a buck. And 'cos I'm a fat pig.
A few too many grams of cream cheese is an awfully minor quibble, though. Fast food desserts are a tough sell overall, and I'm not sure this one warrants a special trip. But it's Popeyes. C'mon. They tend to do just about everything right and super duper tasty, so as long as you're there, the Strawberry n' Cream Cheese Pie (available until March 31) is worth the one-dollar-add-on.
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