text:
RPS's Position On The Eurogamer/Florence Debacle
Last week, as some may have noticed, Robert Florence wrote a piece for Eurogamer, criticising the appearance of corruption amongst some in the gaming press. Stressing that he believes the vast majority of writers are good and honest, he pointed out – inspired by an image of Spike's Geoff Keighley sat surrounded by Doritos and Mountain Dew – that writers could do a lot more to put themselves above suspicion.
In doing so, he mentioned by name other games journalists who that morning had been on Twitter defending a dubious competition held for journalists attending the Games Media Awards. In particular he pointed out how Dave Cook had told me – as it happens – to get off my pedestal in criticising the competition. And Lauren Wainwright (employee of Intent Media, organisers of the GMAs) who had most vociferously been defending the competition, while, he observed, tweeting from a Twitter homepage so decorated in Tomb Raider images that it could be mistaken for a Tomb Raider advert. Wainwright, a self-confessed Tomb Raider fan, strongly objected to this, and issued a legal threat to Eurogamer to have the article changed. And then all hell broke loose.
We're posting about this story now not because any new developments have occurred, but because it seems not posting about it was causing us more accusations than we can stand to listen to. We had previously considered the story to be one of internal wrangling amongst games journalism, and RPS is primarily about games. While we certainly do cover stories about the media, these tend to be about the representation or misrepresentation of games or gamers. So personally considering it a matter not directly within our remit, I chose to write about it on my personal blog (here, here and here). (I link it here because it's relevant – I can assure you that with no adverts on the site, I get no benefit whatsoever from directing traffic there. Also, the opinions stated there are entirely my own, and not necessarily shared by RPS.)
This has been perceived as RPS's trying to "stay silent" on the matter. Something that was never our intent, and something we're confused to know why anyone would think would be in our interests. Many RPS writers have expressed their feelings on their Twitter accounts, and as I've said, I wrote extensively about it, and weirdly ended up being a source for almost every story written about the subject around the world. It didn't feel to us like we were staying silent, and we have no notion of why we would want to.
And before I go on, to be completely clear, RPS has partnered with Eurogamer to provide our advertising. This means that Eurogamer employees acquire and organise the advertising you see on this site, and we split the profits. It's a fairly normal practice, but one RPS ensured would and could never have any impact on our editorial freedom. We are completely editorially independent, and at the same time have almost no involvement in what advertising appears on the site. The degree to which we are involved is to have laid down strict rules about what types of adverts we're willing to have (as in, none that play sound, none that obscure the site content), and to complain when an advert is inappropriate (for instance, depicts naked people).
(It's also worth noting that Rab's article discusses me in a very positive light. I find this very kind, and somewhat embarrassing. I want to stress that it has no bearing on my approval of the rest of the article, and would have felt just as strongly about how important a piece it was had he not mentioned my name. Which would have made life a bit easier now, I guess.)
Quickly, here are the details. At the Games Media Awards this year, there was a competition organised by Trion Worlds and GMA organisers Intent Media (owners of MCV, who happen to be Wainwright's employer), where journalists were invited to tweet a hashtag mentioning Defiance in order to be eligible to win a PS3. 66 journalists at the event took part, an act condemned by many as compromising their position and inappropriate. This led to a Twitter argument amongst a number of the UK's press, me included, that Robert Florence noticed and included in his article about journalistic ethics. You can read the original version of the article here.
This led to Wainwright's issuing legal threats against Eurogamer. Eurogamer's operations director, Tom "Tom Bramwell" Bramwell, told the Penny Arcade Report,
"Lauren told us that she intended to pursue the matter with her lawyers and made it clear she would not drop it until it was resolved to her satisfaction."
Eurogamer sought legal advice, and decided to remove the lines mentioning her and Cook, and publicly apologised on Twitter. Before making the change they consulted Florence, who understood their position, but also felt that he could no longer continue writing for the site if his article was to be changed. He stepped down. This led to an enormous amount of anger, directed partially toward Eurogamer, but mostly toward Wainwright, whose entire journalist history has been dug over for faults, mistakes and failures of integrity. As has been universally reported, in attempting to silence Florence, Wainwright invoked the full, cruel power of the Streisand Effect. In response to all this, Florence wrote another article discussing all that had happened, which was also published on my personal blog. In this he stated,
"I want to clarify here that at no point in my column did I suggest that either Dave Cook or Lauren Wainwright were corrupt. Their public tweets were purely evidence that games writers rarely question what their relationship with PR should be. In Lauren's case I made the point that her suggestion that it's fine for a games writer to tweet a promotional hashtag for personal gain could make everything she tweets and writes suspect. I was saying – "Folks, be careful what you say. You might make yourself look bad." There was nothing libellous in that column."
RPS's position on this matter is as follows: We fully support Robert Florence (who is also a freelancer for us), and think his article raises important issues. We understand Eurogamer's position that when legal threats are made, with the UK's despicable libel laws, the burden of time and finances to fight any such threats is gruesome. However, we're also disappointed that Eurogamer didn't stand up to these threats and call Wainwright's bluff. It is our opinion that the correct response from Wainwright would have been to request a response column on Eurogamer to make her argument, or at least post a response on any of the public outlets to which she has access. Silencing journalists is a terrible practice.
Of course this is an ongoing subject, and has raised many questions about journalistic ethics amongst the games industry. Those debates have raged since the 1980s, and they will continue forever and ever. As well they should. Scrutiny is a good and vital thing, and the perception of poor practice should always be questioned. (However, it should be questioned reasonably, and we will not tolerate any abusive comments below. We also suggest not libelling people, because we're in the UK, and we can't afford to go to court.)
PS. As I was just finishing writing this, weirdly, Eurogamer also have posted an article about this. You can read theirs here.


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Steelers rookie Ta'amu faces charges
A Pittsburgh Steelers rookie defensive lineman was arrested early Sunday on charges of leading police on a chase while driving drunk and crashing into parked cars, injuring a woman, authorities said.
Alameda Ta'amu, 22, of Kent, Wash., was driving a sport utility vehicle the wrong way on Pittsburgh's South Side at about 2:30 a.m., police said. The 6-foot-3, 348-pound Ta'amu fled officers and crashed into four parked cars, injuring a woman, then tried to flee on foot before he was restrained by four officers and arrested, police said.
Charges against him include felony fleeing police, aggravated assault and aggravated assault by vehicle, as well as misdemeanor accident causing damage, resisting arrest, escape and DUI charges, along with summary counts, according to court records.
''We are disappointed to hear about the situation regarding Alameda Ta'amu,'' Steelers General Manager Kevin Colbert said in a statement. ''We will gather more facts before providing any further comment.''
According to the criminal complaint, an off-duty detective called police to say the SUV was swerving across double yellow lines and passing several vehicles at a time, running red lights and speeding in an area that had many pedestrians. Several police officers ordered the driver to stop but he refused, causing them to dive out of the way to avoid being run over, authorities alleged.
The SUV then crashed into a parked vehicle, injuring the driver, who was treated at UPMC Mercy and later released, police said. After crashing into several other cars, the vehicle was disabled, and Ta'amu then fled on foot, taking off his shirt in what authorities say was an attempt to evade the pursuing officers.
Finally, the officers caught up to him in a parking lot and ordered him to the ground, but he resisted being handcuffed and appeared to be reaching toward his waistband, which the officers feared was an attempt to draw a weapon, so one officer punched him twice, police said. Ta'amu was then handcuffed and transported in a police wagon ''due to (his) extremely large size,'' authorities said.
Police said in the criminal complaint that the defendant's breath smelled of alcohol and a breath test indicated a blood-alcohol content of .196 percent, more than twice the legal limit of .08 percent.
Ta'amu was drafted in the fourth round out of Washington. He has yet to play this season.

subset: commoncrawl


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Community TutorialsCommunity home Search tutorials
Setting up Drupal on Compute Engine
Contributed by Google employees.
Get Drupal running on a virtual machine instance on Compute Engine easily in just a few minutes. You can use automated tools or follow the detailed tutorial to configure Drupal on a Debian virtual machine instance with the LAMP stack installed and root access.
- Setting up the virtual machine
- Installing Drush
- Downloading Drupal
- Running the installer
- Viewing your Drupal site
- Sending email from Drupal
Setting up the virtual machine
First, automatically deploy the LAMP development stack. You can use the Cloud Launcher, or you can set up a LAMP stack yourself.
You can also automatically deploy Drupal on your virtual machine by using the Cloud Launcher or you can use the remaining steps to install Drupal yourself.
After your virtual machine instance is up and running, use the Cloud Console to connect over SSH.
Installing Drush
Drush, the Drupal shell utility, simplifies installation and administration of Drupal. Use the following steps to install Drush:
Download Drush:
wget https://github.com/drush-ops/drush/releases/download/8.0.0-rc4/drush.phar
Move the file:
chmod +x drush.phar sudo mv drush.phar /usr/local/bin/drush
Initialize Drush:
drush init
Downloading Drupal
Drush can download Drupal for you. Follow these steps:
Change directory to the web server root directory:
cd /var/www/html
Remove the index file:
sudo rm index.html
Download Drupal by using Drush:
sudo drush dl drupal
Drush downloads the latest version. To learn how to download a specific version,
see the help for Drush:
drush --help.
Moving the files to the web server's root directory
Drush puts the Drupal files in a subdirectory that uses the format
drupal-VERSION, where
VERSION represents the Drupal version number. You
probably don't want that directory name in your website path.
Move the files up one level in the directory structure. Note that the version number appears twice.
sudo mv drupal-/* drupal-/.htaccess ./
For Drupal 7, add:
sudo mv drupal-/.gitignore ./
Remove the now-empty directory:
sudo rm -rf drupal-/
Running the installer
Drush runs the installer for you. You must provide the following information:
- The password of the MySQL administrator that you provided before deploying the LAMP stack.
- An account name and password for the first Drupal user (the administrator).
- A name and user account information for the MySQL database.
Use the following command:
sudo drush site-install \
--db-su=root \
--db-su-pw=MYSQL_ADMIN_PASSWORD \
--account-name=NAME \
--account-pass=PASSWORD \
--site-name="Drupal on Google Compute Engine" \
MYSQL_PASSWORD, and
DATABASE_NAME with the appropriate values.
Updating directory settings
You will need to set the Drupal
files directory to be writeable by the web
server by updating its permissions and ownership.
Change the permissions for the
sites/default/filesdirectory, as follows:
sudo chmod o+w sites/default/files
If you find that the directory doesn't already exist, simply create a new directory named
sites/default/and then change its permissions.
Change the ownership of the web server root directory so that Apache can access files:
sudo chown -RL www-data:www-data /var/www
Viewing your Drupal site
To view your Drupal site in a browser, first open port 80 to allow HTTP traffic to your server. Follow these steps:
- View your virtual machine instances in the Compute Engine instances page.
- In the External IP column, click the external IP address for your Drupal server name.
- In the dialog box that opens, select the Allow HTTP traffic check box.
- Click Apply to close the dialog box.
After completing these steps, you can click the external IP address link or enter it in the address bar to open your Drupal site's home page in your browser.
To log in to your site, use the Drupal administrator user name and the Drupal administrator password that you provided in the Drush installation command.
Sending email from Drupal
Google Compute Engine doesn't allow outbound connections on ports 25, 465, and 587. To send email from your instances, you must use a partner service, such as SendGrid. SendGrid offers customers of Google Compute Engine free or paid packages with costs that vary by monthly email volume.
Getting a SendGrid account
Use SendGrid's Google partner page to create an account. Note that Google will be compensated for customers who sign up for a paid package.
For more details about sending email, see Sending Email from an Instance.
Installing the SMTP Authentication Support module on Drupal
You must install the SMTP Authentication Support module to enable Drupal to send email.
- From the Downloads section of the SMTP Authentication Support page, copy the link address for the module. For example, in the Recommended releases table, right-click the link to tar.gz for the latest release and then copy its address.
- Log in to Drupal as the administrator.
- In Drupal, on the Modules page, click Install new module.
- In the Install from a URL text box, paste the URL that you copied.
- Click Install.
- After the installation completes, browse to the Modules page.
- Scroll to the bottom of the page. In the Mail section, select Enabled.
- Click Save configuration.
Configuring the module to use SendGrid
Now that the SMTP Authentication Support module is installed, provide the settings that connect it to your SendGrid account.
- In Drupal, on the Modules page, locate the SMTP Authentication Module row and then click Configure. The Configuration page opens.
- In Install options, turn the module on.
- In SMTP server settings, enter the following settings:
- SMTP server:
- SMTP port:
- SMTP server:
- In SMTP authentication, enter the username and password that you provided when you set up your SendGrid account.
- In E-mail options, enter the address and name that you want email to come
from. Note that if you don't provide these values, your e-mail will use
your Drupal site name and have an address similar to
firstname.lastname@example.com. These values might cause spam filters to intercept the messages.
Sending a test email
You can send an email from Drupal to test your SendGrid integration.
- On the Configuration page for the SMTP Authentication Module, select Enable debugging. This setting lets you see all of the messages about activity as your email is being sent.
- In Send test e-mail, enter the email address that you want to send the test email to.
- Click Save configuration to send the email.
If sending the email fails, log in to SendGrid website and verify that your SendGrid account is active. It's possible that activating the account can take some time. You can also check SendGrid's email activity page to see whether your email was blocked for some reason.
Next steps
- Set up a host name for your website
- Read the Drupal documentation
- Try out other Google Cloud features. Have a look at the tutorials.
Except as otherwise noted, the content of this page is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License, and code samples are licensed under the Apache 2.0 License. For details, see our Site Policies. Java is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates.


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How you handle your ADHD depends a lot on your scenario in life. If you are doing well and you like your life, besides having a few annoying traits that occur daily such as being late, being scattered, forgetting to do things or multitasking then you don't need to do anything. People around you probably know that about you and love you for your "interesting quirks" and put up with them quite well.
However, what if life isn't going very well? What if you are frustrated by the parts of your ADHD or ADD traits that are causing conflict in your life?
First, break it down to where the problem may be. If it is in time management, get a time log, make lists, get a life coach or counseling (such as cognitive behavioral counseling). You may have to recognize the fact that you "bite off more than you can chew" which implies that you have too many tasks going. Start saying "no" if others are getting you into doing things that overwhelm you, or try to stop yourself from over committing.
If your problems are in the area of relationships, it is probably because others do NOT think your ADHD traits are so lovable. In fact, they may be annoying to others. Try to find out what traits may be bothering those around you by asking people. Then listen to what they say. You need to know that individuals that have ADHD can sometimes deny mistakes and blame others. That's right; you might be blaming others for the mistakes you make. If you are resistive or unwilling to recognize this about you and refuse to do something about the problem, your relationships may end.
If you are having trouble at your job, you are probably having difficulty with the "executive functioning" part of your brain. That is the part of the brain that helps with organization. Start categorizing your tasks. Write them down very carefully and check them off as they are completed. Be meticulous. Ask your fellow workers or your boss to give you feedback about your follow through skills. You have to be able to listen to their comments to know how you are doing because individuals with ADHD may not have the social sense to know how they are doing.
If life is just miserable and you have given it all you can without the use of medication, then go to the doctor and get treated with appropriate medication. The bottom line is that there are ways to manage this condition with and without medication and there is always hope to living a better quality of life.
What are some ways that you manage ADHD without medication? I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who would be grateful for the advice.
Important: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and not Everyday Health.


text:
Ash Wallpaper
By: Loomwell
$ 20.00
Who says florals have to be pink? We love this blue floral wallpaper like crazy!
Details + Dimensions:
- Available in multiple sizes to properly fit your space
- Each panel is 2 feet wide
- Choose from various height options to fit your space
- Removeable and damage-free
- Perfect for renters or non-permanent spaces
- Printed on an innovative, self-adhesive removable material
- Matte finish
- Compatible with many painted + textured surfaces, however, not guaranteed to stick to all surfaces due to variances in wall textures + paint surfaces
- Samples are highly recommended to test on your wall before ordering
- Please test your sample on your wall for one-week to ensure it will stick properly
- Highly textured walls? Please contact us at email@example.com for a textured wallpaper option
- Please note that samples are only intended to provide representation of the color, scale and texture of this wallpaper
- Samples are not intended to be used as wall decor on their own
- Includes step-by-step application instruction guide
- Each set is custom made when the order is placed
- Please allow 14 business days to produce before shipping
- This item is not eligible for return or exchange
To calculate how much wallpaper to order:
- Measure your wall in inches and divide by 24
- Take that number and round up to the nearest whole number
- For example, if your wall is 112 inches wide, divide it by 24 and you get 4.66— this means you need five rolls of wallpaper
- Measure your wall height from the top of the baseboard to the ceiling and select the height you need
- If you have a window or door on your wall, it's best to calculate the amount of wallpaper you need as if it wasn't there
- Please contact email@example.com for assistance in determining how much wallpaper you need for your space


text:
About Shuron
You may have seen a retro frame on television or in your favorite movie and wondered where you could get your hands on such awesome glasses. More than likely, you've been attracted to frames from Shuron Eyewear, a staple in the eyewear industry since 1865. With such an attraction to retro styles, consumers have found that Shuron is their number one pick for glasses with fun and flair.
This collection of Shuron sunglasses and eyeglasses caters to both men and women who want a truly retro style, not a remake of popular looks from way back when. You'll find unique temple shapes on many of the women's designs, and soft details enhance nearly all of these beautiful frames.
Those who love cable temples will rejoice in Shuron Eyewear's use of these old-fashioned structures, as they can be hard to find at times. Some of today's most youthful and influential faces are wearing Shuron sunglasses or glasses frames, so take a peek at their selection and see what calls to you!
CoolFrames Designer Eyewear Boutique is an authorized Shuron online retailer. All frames are guaranteed to be defect-free and authentic. We will replace any defective or damaged items to ensure 100% satisfaction. Our in-house optical lab can install custom prescription lenses into any eyeglass frame and many sunglass styles. We specialize in Essilor presciption lenses including Varilux Progressives, Transitions as well as Crizal Alize and Sapphire (Forte) Anti-Reflective coatings.