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Contact: Chris Gallegos
(202) 224-7082
WASHINGTON, D.C. JULY 9, 2003-- U.S. Senator Pete Domenici today secured funding to support activities in New Mexico that strengthen the nation's homeland security efforts, including $20 million to continue New Mexico Tech's first responder training program.
Domenici is a member of the Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee that today approved the FY2004 Homeland Security Appropriations Bill. The full Senate Appropriations Committee will consider the $23.9 billion measure on Thursday. Full committee approval would clear the bill for Senate consideration later this summer.
"New Mexico is home to some key homeland security-related institutions and I have worked to see that the first-ever Homeland Security funding bill builds on the expertise located in our state," Domenici said. "Much of the funding in the bill will be made available through a competitive process, but the bill still provides important and direct resources for homeland security work in the state."
Domenici worked to secure funding in the Senate bill to, among other things, first responder training at New Mexico Tech at Socorro, advance work at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) at Artesia,, and border surveillance technologies in southern New Mexico.
Overall, the bill will fund a wide variety of law enforcement, border security and other programs administered by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Specific to New Mexico Tech, Domenici supported $130 million, a $5 million increase, for the first responder training carried out by the National Domestic Preparedness Consortium (NDPC). This funding level will maintain funding for the New Mexico Tech program at the current $20 million. NDPC members include: New Mexico Tech, Texas A&M University, Louisiana State University, the DOE Nevada Test Site, and the Center for Domestic Preparedness in Anniston, Ala.
"New Mexico Tech has a lot of talent to lend in the ongoing fight against terrorism and in emergency preparedness," Domenici said. "I am pleased that New Mexico Tech and its partners in the First Responder program will receive funding to expand their ability to train communities in responding to emergency or terrorist situations. I will continue to try to increase this funding."
Domenici and other subcommittee members representing the consortium stated that the NDPC has the capacity to train additional first responders and will continue to work for more funding for the program. The consortium had requested a $245 million funding level for the NDPC in FY2004.
The bill provides $3.6 billion overall to train and equip state and local first responders, and ensure that state and local law enforcement can undertake and expand anti-terrorism activities. This is more than 10 times the pre-September 11 funding levels for these programs.
Highlights of funding for programs requested and supported by Domenici include:
- National Domestic Preparedness Consortium - $130 million is approved to continue first responder training through this consortium of Fort McClellan, Alabama ($50 million), and four training partners ($20 million each) – New Mexico Tech, Texas A&M, the Nevada Test Site, and Louisiana State University.
- Bureau of Customs and Border Protection Personnel - An increase of $33.3 million is approved for additional inspection personnel. These funds are provided in response to staffing concerns across the nation, including New Mexico ports of entry. The Bureau is to submit a comprehensive deployment plan to include existing and new personnel positions.
- Border Agents - $41 million in additional funding is provided to fund 570 new border agent positions, bringing the total number of border patrol agents to 11,650. The Bureau is to submit a deployment plan to the committee for review.
- Integrated Surveillance Information Systems - The Committee directs the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection to quickly implement deployment of this system with available funds, and to report to the Committee no later than Oct. 1, 2003, on progress made meeting this goal.
- Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) - $318.7 million is provided to continue development of ACE, a new automated system to expedite border crossings.
- Border Infrastructure - Continuing Senator Domenici's initiative to focus attention and resources on border infrastructure needs, the Committee supports implementation of the US-Mexico border partnership action plan. The Committee directs the Department of Homeland Security to work with the General Services Administration (GSA) to develop a nationwide strategy to prioritize and address the infrastructure needs at land ports-of-entry, and to seek necessary funding. There are infrastructure needs at both the Santa Teresa and Columbus ports of entry in New Mexico. The Border Patrol is also directed to update its priority list for construction projects by July 1, 2004.
- Immigration and Customs Enforcement Personnel - The Committee approves an additional $20.3 million and 173 positions (155 special agents) to increase immigration and customs investigations staffing. A comprehensive staffing deployment plan is requested for this organization.
- Federal Air Marshals - Within the $5.4 billion provided for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), $600 million is approved for the Air Marshals program, as requested by the President.
- Federal Flight Deck Officer Training - Within the TSA budget, $25 million as requested by the Administration is approved for this purpose.
- Domestic Preparedness - $3.6 billion in total is provided for the Office of Domestic Preparedness, including $2.9 billion for State and Local programs, and $750 million for Firefighter Assistance Grants.
• For State and Local programs, $1.75 billion will be allocated by formula on a per capita basis, and funds shall be disbursed within 60 days of enactment of the bill. Not less than 80 percent of the funds shall be obligated to local governments within 45 days after the States' receive these funds.
• $50 million is for the Citizen Corps.
• $500 million of these State and Local funds are for terrorism prevention grants. $750 million will go to high-threat urban areas.
- Emergency Preparedness and Response - The Committee directs the Department of Homeland Security to award $79.75 million currently available for interoperable communications equipment to communities by October 1, 2003.
• $50 million is to be available for training exercises. Exercises at Playas in New Mexico could be funded under this program.


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Underbar Station
With a commercial underbar station from KaTom, you can quickly clean up the mess around your bar and not take time away from your patrons. These underbar stations and restaurant bar equipment come in a multitude of styles from a blender station with dump sink, a hand-washing sink, or a multi-sink system with drain board. Here at KaTom Restaurant Supply, we know how important your customers are. Give them more time with our commercial underbar stations!

subset: commoncrawl


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Accenture works with top servicers to identify opportunities and solutions to help them increase servicing capacity, engineer work processes to conform with regulatory consent provisions, reduce operating expenses and provide borrowers with accurate, efficient and courteous customer service.
Accenture is well positioned to help mortgage servicing companies meet stringent regulatory compliance with an eye on achieving high performance. We work with more than 100 major credit institutions helping to re-engineer processes, optimize workforce strategies, implement better technology and streamline operations.
Accenture collaborates with the nation's largest servicers to identify and implement innovative solutions. Our combination of processing capabilities, consulting services and technology solutions is helping servicers survive and thrive in today's complex real estate environment.
Tax line audit
Escrow analysis
New loan set up
Title reconveyance
Investor reporting/analysis
Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) reporting
ARM (Audit & Risk Management)/special loan set up
Emerging Markets to Emerging Markets (E2E) Loss Mit Waterfall
Credit counseling
Loan mod FF/short sales FF
Bankruptcy/foreclosure (BK/FC) attorney FF services
BK/FC servicer FF and PAN management
Claims processing
Loss Mitigation Eligibility Quality Assurance (QA), e.g. income calc
Servicer compliance lookback/forensics
Outsourcing strategy
Organizational redesign
Target operating model design (servicing and default management)
Residential mortgage learning development and policy/procedure definition
Key Performance Indicator (KPI) analysis, time and quality studies, benchmarking
Mortgage servicing and default management operations assessment and re-engineering
Core servicing system consolidation and rationalization
Proprietary and packaged software development and ongoing maintenance
Default management systems analysis, design and installation
Federal consent order technology revitalization


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At Walmart, our customers are number one - always. That's why everything we do is focused on providing excellent customer service and delivering low prices.
The information you share with Walmart allows us to provide the products and services you need and want while giving you the very best shopping experience.
Our founder Sam Walton reminded us that "a promise we make is a promise we keep," and it's our promise to customers that we respect the trust you place in us and the privacy of the information you share. Part of providing superior customer service includes making sure that we're building a relationship of trust with customers. Our way of doing that is to let you know in a clear, prominent, and easily accessible way how we collect, use, share, and above all protect your personal information.
Our Policy outlines:
- How and why we collect your personal information;
- How your personal information is used and protected;
- When and with whom we share your personal information; and
- What choices you can make about how we collect, use, and share your personal information.
En Español >
Walmart Privacy Policy Frequently Asked Questions >


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Another To Do:
1. Read Williams Graves' "James Williams, An American Patriot in the Carolina Backcountry"; 2002.
2. Copy the following article which can be found at the NC Genealogy Library (or the Olivia Raney History Library – closed stacks): Madge C. Frink. "Colonel James Williams: A Sketch of a Patriot and the Events Leading to the Battle of King's Mountain." Daughter's of the American Revolution Magazine 118 (1984): 644-6.
Update: I could not find this article by Madge C. Frink in volume 118. This source has been cited for other family pages, so this is kind of strange. I did find another volume with an article about James Williams, but MY LIBRARY IS MISSING THAT VOLUME.
Too bad I can't remember where I saw this source cited. I guess I need to keep better blogs 🙂
Filed under: 96th District, SC, South Carolina, Williams | Tagged: 96thDistrictSC, James Williams, Kings Mountain, South Carolina, Williams |


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Family ASTRO: Suggested Event Agendas
If you are an educator* thinking about becoming a Family ASTRO Event Leader, you can follow the links below to download and preview our suggested agendas for leading Astronomy Events using our series of Leader Kits:
Night Sky Adventure Agendas pdf
Race to the Planets Agendas pdf
If you have questions about Family ASTRO, see our Frequently Asked Questions for Educators and Astronomers page, or our Frequently Asked Questions for Families and Friends page. You can also email us at: astro {at} astrosociety.org
*Educators to date who have been trained to use Family ASTRO materials include classroom teachers, homeschool teachers, amateur and professional astronomers, volunteer college students, science/nature center and museum staff, librarians, afterschool providers, park and recreation staff, and youth group leaders (e.g., boys' and girls' clubs, Girl and Boy Scouts, etc.). If you wondering if Family ASTRO is right for you, contact us at astro {at} astrosociety.org.


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|International Space Station Imagery
high res (0.4 M) low res (27 K)
|ISS035-E-015827 (10 April 2013) --- This is one of a series of close-up images photographed during a run of the Burning and Suppression of Solids (BASS) experiment onboard the Earth-orbiting International Space Station. Following a series of preparations, NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy (out of frame) conducted a series of runs of the experiment, which examines the burning and extinction characteristics of a wide variety of fuel samples in microgravity. The experiment is planned for guiding strategies for extinguishing fires in microgravity. BASS results contribute to the combustion computational models used in the design of fire detection and suppression systems in microgravity and on Earth.
Curator: JSC PAO Web Team | Responsible NASA Official: Amiko Kauderer | Updated: 04/10/2013


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Cook the Book: Potatoes Byron
As Serious Eats reader Jasmine D. pointed out, it's National Vegetarian Awareness month, and to give a nod to our veg-eating friends, we'll start out this week's Cook the Book with James Beard's Potatoes Byron recipe. In the section of Beard on Food titled "Potatoes Without Meat," Beard says, "It can be both a challenge and fun to seek out things that are substantial and good enough to replace meat. There's pasta, of course, beans, lentils, and split peas—and also potatoes. How often does one think of potatoes without meat? Yet they are a great food in their own right."
The recipe follows after the jump, but before I send you there, I'd like to point out our archive of meatless dishes here on the site. As Jasmine rightly points out, Serious Eats is chocked full of meat, but I'm also surprised at the number of vegetarian recipes on the site.
- 6 potatoes
- 1/2 pound butter
- Salt
- Freshly ground black pepper
- 1/2 cup heavy cream
- 1/2 to 3/4 cup coarsely grated Swiss to Gruyère cheese
Put in an 8- or 9-inch round glass baking dish or pie dish, pour over the heavy cream, and leave for 30 to 45 minutes so the potatoes absorb the cream, butter, and seasonings.


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The Bills hope to stop their revolving door at quarterback this week, with the return of rookie E.J. Manuel.
Bills coach Doug Marrone confirmed this morning that Manuel would start against the Steelers, which seemed apparent when he made it through a pair of practices with no complaints this week.
"He's done a very good job," Marrone said of his preparation, via the team's official website. "It was a challenge for him not being out there for four weeks. So we worked very hard on the mental aspect and the preparation aspect. He did a great job of that. He came out there this week and had a good week of practice. So we're excited about putting him back out there on the field."
Manuel will be wearing some degree of knee brace, Marrone said, and they expect the Steelers to throw the kitchen sink at him.


text: Johannesburg - "Big brother Roger," as the village schoolteachers call him, smiles at the small children and asks them to guess which sport he plays.Most of the bright-eyed three-year-olds have no idea who their visitor is but one, quicker than the rest, pipes up: "You play tennis!".Delighted, Roger Federer turns his palms up to reveal a badly calloused right hand punished by 23 years of holding a racquet, showing the children the difference from the smoother left one.There are few parts of the world where the man considered as the greatest ever tennis player and holder of a record 17 Grand Slam titles is not instantly recognised.Here, in rural South Africa where he is visiting one of the village pre-schools his charitable foundation supports, the Swiss is unfamiliar to the children but commands their attention and curiosity.In a small, cool, classroom, the toddlers sheltering from the heat stand with heads tipped upwards and eyes fixed on the towering champion as he hits a tennis ball against a wall, demonstrating how to swing a racquet.Federer looks composed in the sweltering heat of Limpopo province, on the border with Zimbabwe, even though his bright red shirt, wet with sweat by noon, gives him away.Deep in the densely vegetated village some 20km from the nearest paved road, the ground is parched and dust flies into the air as brightly-costumed Venda women dance to entertain their world-famous guest."My heart is in South Africa, through my mum," Federer, the son of a Swiss father and a South African mother, told Reuters."My mum being from here, me spending a lot of time here as well, I feel most connected to this part of the world."The Roger Federer Foundation supports 40 pre-schools in the area and spends over $3m a year on educational projects in South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Ethiopia and Federer's home country Switzerland. Over 50 000 children benefited from the foundation's efforts in 2012 to improve quality education in pre-schools and primary schools."When I travelled the world, I definitely saw poor countries, people who told me it was so hard for them to get an education," said Federer, who was visiting two pre-schools in the Limpopo province with his mother this week to mark the 10th anniversary of his foundation being founded."I always liked the idea of education because in our world going to school is the most normal thing in the world. We sometimes forget what a privilege it is, to go to school."South Africa has a broken education system, inherited from decades of inferior education for the majority black population under the apartheid system.Nineteen years into democracy and the new government is still overwhelmed by the task, with some high-school leavers managing pass rates of only 30 percent.In this place, a decent education remains beyond the reach of many children and some 80 percent of the community is unemployed, the village chief's representative said.For a man who has earned close to $80m in prize money alone thanks to his exploits on a tennis court, Federer has never forgotten the value of a good education.Federer admits he did not always do his best at school, saying: "I used to have many more regrets when I was younger, because I was a bit crazy."At school, I wouldn't always learn for my tests as much as I should have. I think that's why today I'm so dedicated to both things, so people don't do the same mistakes as I did, even though I was able to turn the corner in time."The father of twin daughters, Federer added: "I like to be an idol for kids, I do. For me it's important to be a good role model and I live accordingly."But I'm not changing for it, I do it because I believe in it and because it is natural."During his three-hour visit to the pre-school in Guvhu, Federer held a captive audience as he read the story of the 'Gingerbread Man' out to the 30 or so children who sat around him.As his visit comes to an end, Federer leaves with the words of the village school principal echoing in his ears: "If it is possible, please, come back to us again."


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10 Best Books of 2010
Each Wednesday we will provide you with the books we think you should read. You will have just enough time to go and get the book before for the weekend. To start off our weekly book updates, we thought we would round off the top books of 2010.
New Yorks Times has compiled a great list that we are graciously borrowing and we are sure will not disappoint you. While the list jumps from genre to genre, fiction to non-fiction, here are a few that caught our eye. Click on the title to read a review and see the full list by following the link below.
By Emma Donoghue.
Little, Brown & Company, $24.99.
Donoghue has created one of the pure triumphs of recent fiction: an ebullient child narrator, held captive with his mother in an 11-by-11-foot room, through whom we encounter the blurry, often complicated space between closeness and autonomy. In a narrative at once delicate and vigorous — rich in psychological, sociological and political meaning — Donoghue reveals how joy and terror often dwell side by side.
By Ann Beattie.
Scribner, $30.
As these 48 stories published in The New Yorker from 1974 through 2006 demonstrate, Beattie, even as she chronicled and satirized her post-1960s generation, also became its defining voice. She punctures her characters' pretensions and jadedness with an economy and effortless dialogue that writers have been trying to emulate for three decades, though few, if any, have matched her seamless combination of biting wit and mordant humor, precise irony and consummate cool.
By Jennifer Egan.
Alfred A. Knopf, $25.95.
Time is the "goon squad" in this virtuosic rock 'n' roll novel about a cynical record producer and the people who intersect his world. Ranging across some 40 years and inhabiting 13 different characters, each with his own story and perspective, Egan makes these disparate parts cohere into an artful whole, irradiated by a Proustian feel for loss, regret and the ravages of love.
via nytimes.com


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Calendar of Events
Events for June 18, 2018
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Fleet Feet Sports Charity of the Month
Fleet Feet will promote the Foundation in all of their stores through the month of June and collect donations. Visit one of their seven Chicagoland locations and support one of our valued partners! Old Town ...Find out more »


text: I have successfully setup several cron jobs with URL cron, which seems to be working, but as far as of now, I still couldn't get shellscripts setup properly. I assume there are some permissions issues, but I'm unable to resolve them myself. Can someone please review how my server is installed and what I want to achieve and then tell me how to proceed? Server: Debian 6 (installed as per Falko's perfect server How-To) with Jailkit installed (I believe this is relevant) ISPConfig upgraded to 18.104.22.168 What I want to achieve: let's assume I got a directory /var/www/clients/client1/web1/cron/ where scripts that should be executed via CRON are stored let's assume I got script1.php and script2.sh Question 1: how do I properly setup a cron job in ISPConfig3 interface to execute script1.php located at /var/www/clients/client1/web1/cron/script1.php ? (I do not wish the script to be reachable by http: ) Question 2: let's assume script1.sh has to perform some tasks in some special directory such as /var/vmail/mailfilters/domain.com/ to modify some files there. Same question, how do I setup the CRON job in ISPConfig3 interface? Thank you very much


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| WMU News
KALAMAZOO—Popular Kalamazoo band The Red Sea Pedestrians will perform at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 20, in the Dalton Center Recital Hall.
The performance will be preceded by a 7 p.m. discussion hosted by Dr. Dan Jacobson, WMU professor of music. Tickets are $12 general admission, $10 for seniors and $5 for students, and are available from Miller Auditorium at millerauditorium.com/som or by calling (269) 387-2300 or (800) 228-9858.
Red Sea Pedestrians
The Red Sea Pedestrians are a one-of-a-kind, full-blown, instrument-swapping fusion between tradition and the here-and-now. The band is a melting pot of six distinct singer-songwriters and multi-instrumentalists, including several alumni from WMU's School of Music, exploring a warped and beautiful blend of klezmer, Greek, gypsy, Celtic, jazz and American roots.
Members include Ira Cohen, guitar, banjo and vocals; Rachel Flanigan, clarinet and vocals; Jay Gavan, guitar, bass and vocals; Ian Gorman, mandolin, bass, guitar and vocals; Benjamin Lau, drums and percussion; and Cori Somers, violin and vocals.
For more information about the band, visit theredseapedestrians.com.
Bullock Music Performance Institute
The Dalton Wed@7:30pm: Live and Interactive! concert series is presented by the WMU School of Music under the auspices of the Bullock Music Performance Institute. Established in the fall of 1985 and renamed in 1988 in honor of its founder, the institute has presented events ranging from formal evening concerts to daytime educational outreach events for local audiences and students of all ages.
For more information about the Wednesday evening concert series, call (269) 387-4704 or (269) 387-4678, or visit wmich.edu/music.


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Today's club landscape is quickly morphing and changing. Increased competition and higher-level competition (some at much lower price points) are making our industry an interesting and challenging business. In today's marketplace, consumers have many choices that, from their point of view, are hard to distinguish from each other.
In many markets, commoditization will threaten thousands of fitness facilities during the next few years. Commoditization occurs in industries when customers think that all businesses in the industry are doing the same thing in the same way.
In a commoditized market, the company with the lowest price-point becomes a dominant player in the eyes of the consumer. Two factors — price and convenience — reign supreme. In this kind of demanding, unforgiving environment, the customer asks only two questions about the product or service: Which is closer, and which is cheaper?
So, how do you drive differentiation and effectively compete in a commoditized market? If your consumers do not fully grasp the functional and emotional benefits of your brand, they are left with no choice but to purchase based only on price. To succeed and grow in an increasingly commoditized market, you must fully understand the core essence of your brand and translate it into a distinctly unique value proposition to your consumers.
In the April issue, I wrote about how a good brand can leave a good impression. But a good brand can also do three things for our stressed-out consumers: save time, project the right message and provide an identity. Does your club have an identity? Do your members know what that identity is? Does the community know what your identity is? If not, then perhaps your marketing efforts aren't as effective as you might think.
One way to effectively compete in the environment of commoditization is to differentiate yourself as a club rather than as "just a gym." To compete against the "gyms," you need to have services that they don't have — or you must be a better provider of those services — and you must let people know you are better at these things.
Everyone knows that clubs need to be clean, but many clubs could do a much better cleaning job. Quality childcare makes parents feel more comfortable and helps earn referrals, but poorly staffed or outdated childcare can hurt business. Quality group exercise programs such as licensed or pre-choreographed and branded classes can help increase retention and sales. Quality programs that keep the member involved help differentiate you from the gym down the street.
A club — whether it's a golf club, a dining club or an athletic club — is a place of warmth and welcome, a place specifically designed to make people feel comfortable, appreciated and cared for. If a club isn't warm and welcoming, if it isn't focused solely on making people feel comfortable, appreciated and cared for, then it simply isn't a club.
Some people think that people are born with or without a caring attitude and hospitality skills, but they can be learned. I have worked with some clubs where everyone is hospitable. Whether it's the fitness team or the attendants in the locker room, at the front desk or in the café, everyone understands that their most important job is to be warm and welcoming, and to make people feel comfortable, appreciated and cared for.
It's not a matter of genetics. It's a matter of training. And the lesson, as always, starts at the top. Hospitality is and always will be the heart of the health club industry and your key to differentiation.
Ed Tock is a partner in Sales Makers, a marketing and sales training consulting firm that has worked with more than 1,000 clubs and won the IHRSA Associate of the Year. He can be reached at 800-428-3334 or email@example.com.


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Soybean rust was found at the end of February at three sites in Montgomery County, Ala., creating concern for over-wintering of disease spores farther north than central Florida.
The three sites in Alabama were found on kudzu in areas protected by old buildings. Finding live spores in Montgomery County is significant, for two primary reasons: Montgomery is in the center of Alabama, roughly 140 miles north of the Gulf of Mexico and the area recently recorded low temperatures in the mid 20s F, which caused die back of most annual plants, but did not destroy these host plants.
Previously, rust was found growing in sites in Mobile and Baldwin counties in Alabama, though these counties are located in the southernmost part of the state, along the Gulf of Mexico.
At a site in Brooks County, Ga., live rust inoculum was found growing on kudzu, where rust inoculum had been destroyed earlier in the year. This site was likewise subjected to temperatures in the 28 degree F range during the recent Arctic cold front that crossed the area. Brooks County is located in south Georgia, along the Florida line.
Marvin Miller, a plant pathologist at Texas A&M University's Weslaco Research Center reported finding rust inoculum in a field at the research station located near the border with Mexico. The live rust found in late February was not present in the field, when it was scouted in January.
Rust was also found in Tamaulipas, Mexico, across the border from Weslaco. Miller speculates this is the most likely source of spread. He points out that drought conditions in south Texas may keep spores in the atmosphere and move them around even more when rains come.
Finding rust in Texas is a concern to Greg Shaner, a plant pathologist at Purdue University. While the Texas report may mean a greater risk to growers in the Midwest, Shaner contends rust spores may not move as quickly as he once believed.
"We think ultra violet light in the atmosphere may break down or even destroy the viability of inoculum." He points out that spores found in 2005 in Indiana, Illinois and Minnesota did not cause disease. Viable spores, he says, may only spread by short hops from field to field.
In addition to the sites in Texas, Georgia and Alabama, soybean rust has been found in 11 counties in Florida. With the traditional last freeze date in northwest Florida coming around March 9, there is some concern that the area may not receive another Arctic front capable of producing temperatures low enough to kill host plants.


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Roadside assistance and breakdown coverage are services that assist motorists, or bicyclists, whose vehicles have suffered a mechanical failure that leaves the operator stranded.
In the UK, RAC_Limited (a former associate of Royal_Automobile_Club) and The Automobile Association (AA) (formed in 1905) offer repair services to their members on the spot, tow to a local garage or the driver's home if nearby (a limit of 20 miles commonly) and in some cases provide onward journey services such as hire vehicles.[http://customs.hmrc.gov.uk/channelsPortalWebApp/channelsPortalWebApp.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=pageLibrary_ShowContent&propertyType=document&id=HMCE_CL_000129#P105_14718 HM Revenue & Customers (UK) - Vehicle breakdown services]
The ADAC in Germany began to offer a similar service in 1927. The American Automobile Association (AAA) was formed in 1902 and later merged with its Canadian company, the Canadian Automobile Association (CAA). Many of these associations are membership-based clubs and provide services to assist members through the use of fleet assistance vehicles. In the case of the UK AA, these were traditionally motorcycle-mounted prior to the introduction of vans.
When communication technology and availability made it practical, a network of Emergency telephone, placed at intervals by the roadside, was introduced in some countries. In recent years, the widespread ownership of mobile phones has, to a large degree, supplanted the need for an emergency phone network. Mobile technology has led to the development of free applications (apps).
Services may also be available as part of the service of a vehicle insurance company, or other companies whose primary business is to offer such assistance, such as American Automobile Association in America or the The Automobile Association in the UK.
Some automobile manufacturers also offer roadside assistance for their customers, sometimes for free for some period after the purchase of a new vehicle.


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Spencer Hot Springs as seen from Highway 50, looking south, Toquima Range in the background. Photo taken May, 2008. MSRMaps location.
The cabin was partially divided into two rooms: the bathing room and the changing room. The thing to do upon arriving was to drive up and check for vehicles in front of the cabin. If one or more vehicles were parked nearby, you drove by slowly and parked off a ways, and waited for the bathers to exit. Then you moved your vehicle into place in front of the cabin and soaked. It was considered good hot-spring etiquette not to stay too long after another vehicle had arrived, unless you had just arrived.
Spencer Hot Springs as seen from the junction of Highway 50 with Highway 8A, now S.R. 376, looking east, also from May, 2008. The dirt road goes to Pete's Summit.
People carved, painted, and wrote graffiti — mostly of the "I've-been-here-and-when" variety — on the inside wood and metal walls of the cabin. Some of the writings were witty, some were a little racy or vulgar, depending on your point of view. Someone, or a group of people offended by the coarser graffiti, had already, by 1980 or so, started marking over any drawings or words they didn't like, using red paint or markers. They also added some of their own writings; these were usually puritanical comments stating or implying that the authors whose words they had marked out should get religion and change their ways, or they would soon be going to some disagreeable hell — presumably a hell without hot springs, but hopefully, at least, a hell without the censorship of their red paint.
In 1981, two geologists from Northern Exploration Company — one contract geologist and one summer temp — wrote a poem commemorating the company, the mineral exploration we were doing, some of the key players, and the hot springs itself. They used nicknames when they referred to any of the head honchos, signed their names cryptically, and dated their contribution to the cabin wall. Within a few months to a year, the red-paint people had crossed out one of the NEC geologist's nicknames, "Asshole," because it was on their list of bad words. I doubt they knew, or would have cared, that it was an appropriate and self-chosen nickname: he wore a baseball cap and carried a coffee cup with that name, and lived up to his designation admirably.
Shortly after the poets wrote and the censors painted, a non-NEC geologist passing by to use the hot springs recognized the historical relevance of the poem and took a picture of it for me. C, who is still an exploration and development geologist, and S, who later became a Quaternary or soil geologist, had perhaps expected a little more anonymity when the signed their names "Chuckles" and "Susie (Mud)." (I guess she already planned on becoming a soil geologist.) Within a few months of the photo-taking event, someone — we always thought it was the red-paint people — burned the cabin to the ground.
Alignment of the old pipeline from the north spring wellhead to the cabin site, looking straight toward Austin Summit; November, 2006.
At the cabin site, you can vaguely discern the outline of the cabin on the ground by discovering, like an archaeologist, the roughly square patch of charcoal-rich blackish dirt, a burned and blackened mattress springs, and pieces of odd artifacts like rusted nails and bits of broken glass and pottery. The jagged, heat-tanned remnant of the concrete tub, assorted pieces of rusted pipes, and the pipeline coming down the hill from this spring all attest to the main former use of the cabin.
A section of the old pipeline as it dives under the road toward the remains of the old bathtub; November, 2006.
Remains of the bathtub, looking southwest toward the Toiyabe Range; November, 2006. Kingston Canyon is just left of the photo in the distance.
Bits of glass, charcoal, and the bathtub, looking south toward the upper main spring (whitish, steamy area on the horizon), with the Toquima Range in the background; November, 2006.
Nowadays there are usually at least three main pools available for soaking. Two of the three soaking tubs consist of metal barrels; the main upper spring is a spacious and rock-lined hole in the ground with wooden deck. MOH and I have camped many times at the northern spring, the one that used to supply water to the concrete tub in the then-standing cabin. The northern spring is our favorite, mostly because it's usually more private than the larger main spring.
Water coming out of the metal pipe at the north tub, Toiyabe Range in the background; April, 2008. The yellow stake near the spring wellhead is there to ward off accidental drivethroughs and to block the scenery.
A lower tub as it looked in September, 2007, looking northwest toward Austin Summit.
The water at the former-cabin spring is too hot to soak in without cooling; it measured 130° F at the wellhead source on April 18, 2001. That same day, the water coming to the tub through a metal pipe measured 120° F.
A look inside the covered wellhead source of the north spring. Photo still from a movie by MOH; December, 2006.
To achieve and maintain a suitable soaking temperature, you have to move the metal pipe in or out of the tub, or turn a valve on or off if one happens to be attached. The desirable set up depends on variations in water temperature, air temperature, wind speed and wind chill factor, amount and kind of precipitation, and personal preference. You can let too-cool water out of the tub through a hole near the downstream end, and can then block the hole with a tennis ball, sock, or other item, so the tub can be re-filled with hot water. Other springs in the area have similar mechanisms for reaching and maintaining good soaking temps.
This large pipe at one of the lower springs had written directions, a temperature measurement, and political commentary; September, 2007.
Sunset at the north tub; November, 2006.
Spencer hot springs shows different aspects depending on time of day, time of year, and weather. I have no pictures from it's snow-covered and snowstorm mode, and no pictures of the incredible dust storms that can pass through. We once arrived after dark, parked near one of the main roads in drifting snow, found the outdoor temperature to be -18° F (it had been +18° F on top of Austin Summit), couldn't get the camper heating system going, and had to drive back to Fallon for repairs.
Another sunset view from November, 2006.
Snow squall days can be most amazing, with hot-spring goers often few and far between. A herd of donkeys with one horse will often pass through camp, and coyotes will be heard in the snowy distance.


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Sunday May 19, 2019; 06:09 pm EDT
Every rockfish is good; now and again, one is extraordinary
When I planted the skiff's Power Pole anchor on the remains of an old submerged jetty wall that snaked well over a hundred yards out from the shoreline, my face was numb from the chilled air and the fast run. My electronic finder said the water was four feet deep under the keel. But just off the rocks, it would read closer to seven. Not too much farther away, the bottom fell to 20 feet.
The light was failing and the sky overcast with a half moon scheduled to rise in about two hours. Air temp was about 50 degrees and falling, but the water was still in the 60s. An ebb tide had been running for well over an hour, plenty of time for stripers to gather to dine on the baitfish tumbled over the jetty by the strong current.
I grabbed my casting rod and tied on a gold Red Eye Shad with a black back. Casting it out a bit up-current and parallel to the jetty, I started a slow, irregular retrieve, trying to bring the lure just over the top of the jetty rocks. As it was swept across, I paused, allowing it to drop on the other side.
The Red Eye Shad is a lipless crankbait designed to wiggle head-first as it sinks. It is deadly when fished in sweeps and pauses. Working the lure at various distances along the submerged structure, I searched for stripers. But I was having little success.
Then, just as night fell, I got a hookup. The fish was strong and took quite a bit of persuasion to bring to hand. With the fat 23-inch striper nestled in my ice chest, I was relieved to be free of a skunk. I tossed out another cast.
Calling the drop a little too close, I hung up on the rocks. Breaking the lure off rather than disturbing the water, I tied on another of the same color. Three casts later, I had a second strike but missed the fish. Casting back to the same place, however, resulted in an instant hookup.
This fish was a twin of the first. Releasing it, I decided to hold off on finishing out my limit. I figured there had to be a bigger fish out there.
Two dozen casts and a half-dozen fish later, I started to doubt that strategy. The fish were strong and eager but all similarly sized.
After losing my last two gold shad plugs to the rocks, I switched to an all-white pattern. On the first cast, something ate that plug as soon as it touched the water. This one was definitely the big guy.
Line poured off my reel as the striper made for the depths of the channel. I let it run, even lightening the drag to be certain that the breaking point of my knots would not be tested too closely.
The powerful fish made some determined efforts, taking long runs, then tearing up the water's surface somewhere out in the dark. I fought it gradually nearer. This one was going to finish out my limit. I was cold and tired, and the big one was what I had been waiting for.
Shining a light next to the skiff to be sure of netting it correctly, I was startled at the first glimpse of the fish. Despite the outsized and determined battle, it was the same size as its brethren. This rockfish had been punching above its weight.
After boating the fish I had a dilemma. Should I ice a fish that had demonstrated such incredible spirit? Or let it go to spread its genes into future generations? It probably wouldn't take much more time to finish out my limit, I thought. But the night chill was seeping into my body and my fingers were already trembling.
Working the hooks out of the corner of its jaw, I knelt and slipped the battler back over the side. As it entered the water, it rewarded me with a sweep of its tail that sent a deluge of ice-cold spray up into my face.
Laughing, I wiped myself dry, racked my rod, pulled the anchor pole and headed home.


text: I was so excited to shoot Ashley's maternity session, especially since I was supposed to shoot her wedding last June but unfortunately couldn't due to a very unexpected arrival of my own. Thankfully my good friend Tyler stepped in at the last minute and shot the amazing event. There are so many things to be thankful for this Easter, from one unexpected arrival to the wonderful anticipation of another. Proof that things do come full circle and reminds us of what is truly important and miraculous in this life.


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TV show results for: "Carlos Valdes"
The Flash
IMDb: 8.3
Barry Allen wakes up nine months after he was struck by lightning and discovers that the bolt gave him the power of super speed. With his new team and powers, Barry becomes "The Flash" and fights crime in Central City.
Country: US
Gener: drama, fantasy, science-fiction
Director: Andrew Kreisberg Geoff Johns


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CZ 2075 RAMI pistol
CZ 2075 RAMI in hand
CZ 2075 RAMI with optional 14 rounds magazine (9mm only)
another CZ 2075 RAMI
CZ 2075 RAMI pistol, partially disassembled
CZ 2075 RAMI - A subcompact version of the CZ 75 intended for concealed carry. Features a 3-inch barrel, aluminum frame and low-profile sights. Available in 9x19mm or .40 S&W, with standard magazine capacities of rounds, respectively. An optional 14-round magazine is available for the 9 mm version.


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Visitors to Quang Nam's famous Hoi An Town and My Son Sanctuary will be exempt from entrance fees from June 21-26 as part of activities to celebrate the 5th annual Quang Nam Heritage Festival.
|Hoi An Town & My Son, Quang Nam, Vietnam
Normally, tourists must pay to enter some sites in the old quarter of Hoi An Town.
The festival, co-organized by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the local government, will take place across the province from June 22-26, with the most attractive sites expected to be Hoi An and My Son, the province's two UNESCO-recognized heritage sites.
High on the list of scheduled programs will be the sharing of heritage preservation experiences among Southeast Asian countries and Vietnamese provinces, food festivities and traditional art performances.
Activities will include the "Vietnam-ASEAN Cultural Heritage Space" exhibition; a ceremony marking the 10th anniversary of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage; the 3rd International Choir Festival; the 2013 Miss Ethnic Vietnam beauty pageant; and the Art Festival for Vietnamese Ethnic Minority Groups.
Tourism promotion activities for the province will showcase the uniqueness of Cham culture and gong festivals performed by local ethnic minority artists.
Also for the occasion, an international conference on preserving intangible cultural heritage will be jointly held by the Vietnam Institute of Culture and Arts Studies, UNESCO and the local government of Quang Nam.
Recommend tours explore the charm of Hoi An, My Son with Activetravel Asia, one of the Indochina's leading adventure travel companies, offering a wide selection of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia adventure tours, including hiking and trekking, biking, motorcycling, kayaking, overland touring and family travel packages.
For more information, please contact ATA for tailoring your very own tour via:
Telephone: +844 3573 8569
Fax: +844 3573 8570
Email: firstname.lastname@example.com
Website: http://www.activetravel.asia/
Address: Floor 12 Building 45 Nguyen Son Street, Long Bien district, Hanoi, Vietnam.


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Super carts for all car enthusiasts. try to win the tough races. your opponents are robots, pirates, ninjas and aliens. win a..
Super idle imagination is a bit different game. you are actually designing it by playing it. the better and comlex you develo..
Game super drift is back. in the second sequel of this racing game await dozens of new tracks and new cars. start your sport ..
Car races are great fun in the new week. in the game super drift you have to select the track, the car and the difficulty. no..
Racing game super drift 3 will give you chance to choose your favorite car, railway track and level of difficulty. use arrows..
In this game you're set for a vasectomy but now you've got to try and stop it by turning into super gonad smasher. to do so ..
Get behind the wheels of one these cool monster trucks and try to win the super 4x4 rally championship! if you want to get to..
Mobile girlie game super mahjong 3d has another pile of symbols that need to be matched till no one is left.each stack gets t..
Mobile and desktop game super girls elements quiz is an interactive online game that will test of your todays mood. click on ..
In this game, defend your line before the invasion of enemy balloons. with your bonus points you can upgrade your weapons and..
Space battles are here. successfully complete 14 various wheels on your way to the 4 powerful bosses and upgrade your attribu..
In this game, help santa to get in each round in all the chimneys. collect bags with candy and avoid various obstacles game. ..
Press the correct keys (arrows or numbers) at the right time and flawlessly play 17 rock/metal/punk songs. have fun!
In this crazy game, destroy the enemies and collect new weapons. beat the vikings with a shotgun or a cowboy with a proper ri..
In this game, finish in south florida and overcome a variety of freshwater fish, buy new lures and baits and fill an interest..
Little eskimo has a special ability, he can change ice to water and water to ice. it will be necessary to properly change the..
Tune your guitar and play the best 14 new songs. press (or keep) the arrows and numbers. heavier songs are intended only for ..
Win all 8 races, unlock the 3 other cars and test the forest-, desert- and winter trails. the game is controlled with the arr..
Earn to die is back. new current version of the game earn to die 2013-2014 is cool. choose a car. and go on a journey full of..
in this game you go with mario on an island full of ghosts. you meet traditional mario enemies. in each level you must colle..
You found life love. going to a wedding you need many things. what to do, no money? You have to go to the streets to steal so..
As a financial broker, you must earn a lot of money for your company. boss is blocking you work and wants to fire you. ever..
You become a well-baked toast. your life is not easy. all of them want to destroy you. your mission is to avoid of falling mo..
A variation of the classic game of cutting elements. your task is to combine various elements electrical system. only one pla..
Chase criminals and bash their cars! this game challenges you to knock villains off the road. you can use your boost to insta..
Practice your memory and your aiming accuracy. after every hit the shooting site will light up and you will see the little gh..
A sausage on his left hand and ketchup on the right - a simulator of the most difficult profession in the world precision sur..
Legends say that there is a huge treasure deep under the ground. as the best treasure hunter in the world, timmy sets out to ..
Youre on the run from the police, hop into your getaway car and try to shake off the pursuing police cars and a helicopter. d..
See all Mario bross games with legendary gaming persons.
All parts of legendary zombie killing game. Buy and upgrade your car or truck and kill them all.
Don't forget Sift heads has more then 10 parts and they are ready to fight all enemies in expensive graphic and story.
Snail Bob is still on the way. His dramatic stories take your heart. Does he come to the End ?
Games which are similar to Angry birds style. Shoot and hit enemies by cannon and save friends.
Tycoon games are one from the best types of online strategic games. Build your own railroad, hotel, resort, nightclub or building.
Great strategic online game from Middleages time. Millions of players around the world. Fight with them and be great king of your land.
You have to build city in game Shadow kings. Your mission is to develop the economy of city. Attention, you will be under attack of enemy units!
Zombie games take place in modern day-styled game worlds. Zombie outbreaks are normally the product of scientific experiments gone wrong.
Cooking games are usually aimed at children, especially girls. These educational games teach girls how to read and follow recipes.
Hotel games are strategic time management games that allow the players to manage their own hotel. Usually the player is in charge of purchasing in-game properties.
Math games are extremely educational puzzle games that teach children how to solve mathematical problems. They are available for children of all ages.
Sniper games are first-person shooter games that rely on a player's reflexes. They can be rather complicated to beat and oftentimes rely on strategic thinking.
Educational games can encompass any number of game categories. They are usually aimed at younger children who are playing games for the first time.
Select vehicle and ride. Famous Uphill rush series presents latest part of fantastic ride.


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Mitt Romney Gets Mashed-Up With Eminem In 'The Real Romney'
If only presidential campaign videos all looked and sounded this cool. YouTube user Hugh Atkin's latest upload has racked up tens of thousands of views in just a matter of days. Why? Because if you take Eminem's "The Real Slim Shady" and replace the original lyrics with Mitt Romney quotes, and make it rhyme perfectly, you get the internet to "please stand up" and pay attention.
Oh Romney, did you really think when you said you're not "concerned about the poor" or that "corporations are people," the sound bytes wouldn't come back and bite you?
Whether this video convinces you who the "real Mitt Romney" is depends on where your current political standings lie. But Republican or not, this mash-up is easily one of the best edited videos we have seen. We just can't imagine how many hours of boring speech footage Atkin had to endure to make this video.


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Remake - Foreign Thrills
Thrillers and Action Flicks Based on Foreign-Language Movies
Note: Only movies with opening weekend grosses are listed on this chart.
NOTE: Technically speaking, The Talented Mr. Ripley was an adaptation of the same novel that Purple Noon was based on, so it wasn't a direct remake. If there are any movies that you think should be on this list, e-mail us at email@example.com.


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I was recently drawn to look back at my first paid programming job, Alpha Waves, which apparently may also have been the first 3D platform game.
Others writing about this game after more than 15 years helped me realize that my recollection of that time might be an interesting bit of computer history worth sharing (If you don't care about such old geezer's stuff, skip that article!) Some of it is documented elsewhere. Some of it may well never have been written before.
Anyway, this is the kind of story that might interest my kids, if only them…
Update: One of my kids, reading the article, asked me why I had been calling Alpha Waves "the first real 3D game", since Starglider 2 had been released more than one year earlier. And it's true that the static screen snapshots below don't do justice to the difference between the state of the art at the time and what Alpha Waves brought to the gaming experience. It's only watching a video of Starglider 2 that my son realized how bad 3D was back then. Videos convey the point much better than words or static pictures:
Starglider 2
Alpha Waves
By the way, Google video really rocks!
Inspiration: Starglider 2
One thing I remember is my inspiration for writing Alpha Waves. It all started with a game called Starglider 2, which for the first time on Atari ST and Amiga (and in microcomputer history, for all I know1), featured somewhat realistic 3D graphics. What made them realistic was that for the first time, this game showed animated flat-shaded graphics. Earlier games like the original Starglider only drew lines. Hiding the lines for back-facing polygons was considered highly advanced stuff. So flat-shaded polygons? That was almost surreal.
My first reaction when seeing Starglider 2 was: "Wow!" My second reaction was: "How do they do that?". Finally, this would turn into: "Can I beat that?". As you can see on the picture, Starglider 2 displayed 3D graphics in a small region of the screen, and only a small number of objects were visible at once. So the next steps, obviously, were to see how large of a screen region you could use for 3D graphics, and how many objects you could draw at the same time.
Today's 3D graphics are generated by hardware capable of filling petagazillions of pixels per second, so young readers may not realize that the memory bandwidth at the time made the simple task of filling the screen with polygons more than a few times per second a challenge in itself. Starglider 2 was smooth!… which, at the time, did not mean 60fps like today, more like 10-15 when the screen got crowded. Remember, this was the time where the boink demo was considered extremely cool.
In summary, doing better than Starglider meant something like filling two thirds of the screen, having 15 objects on screen instead of 4, and remaining above 10 frames per second. Ultimately, Alpha Waves would far exceed this initial objective: full screen, not a single bitmap sprite on screen (even the player was drawn in 3D), and sometimes as many as 50 objects on screen. The Atari ST even ended up with a dual-player mode where two players would compete on screen simultaneously (a feature that never made it to the PC version).
Elaborating 3D algorithms
Obviously, to best Starglider, I had to first understand how one would draw 3D graphics on screen. I quickly rediscovered the mathematical formulas, but they were only the beginning. The real question was how to do it fast. Again, to understand the problem, you have to remember that we are talking about a time where the Motorola 68000 used in the Atari ST and Amiga was considered a relatively fast processor. This processor not only had no built-in floating point capability, it was actually very expensive to do a multiplication! So I ended up reformulating the problem as: "How can I draw 3D using mostly additions?."
The solution would seem extraordinarily obsolete today. The code pre-computed displacement along the X, Y or Z axis, so that it could rotate these vectors only once, and then describe all objects using an encoding that looked like: "go one step right, then two steps up, then one step back". Each individual step was recorded in a temporary array, and then the final 3D object was created by connecting some of these recorded points. Again, this may seem like a very silly algorithm when, today, 3D routinely uses things like quaternions to compute coordinate transforms. But boy! was it fast!
Of course, there were a few other tricks along the way. For example, without floating-point capabilities there was obviously no way to compute a cosine. This was easily solved by storing a pre-computed sine/cosine tables returning integer amplitudes (-32767..32767). That made it possible to use another micro-optimization. On the 68000, the multiplication operation took two 16-bit arguments and returned a 32-bit value. Multiply a 16-bit signed coordinate by a 16-bit signed amplitude gave me a 32-bit signed coordinate. Anybody today would shift that down to obtain a 16-bit value, but the 68000 had no barrel shifter, which meant that shifting down would have been expensive. On the other hand, it had a swap instruction exchanging the high and low 16-bit parts of a 32-bit register. So after applying swap to the result of the multiplication, I was getting a 14-bit coordinate.
Drawing polygons
The problem of coordinate transforms being solved, the next most difficult problem was drawing polygons quickly on screen. This involved a number of steps: clipping, decomposing the result in a number of triangles and trapezoids, and drawing each piece. The details of the kind of techniques used are now well known, and illustrated here (see figure 9.6 in that article).
My original polygon drawing algorithm was already relatively fast, but the Infogrames folks later insisted that I use their in-house routines to facilitate the porting to Amiga (where they had these routines already available). They had at least a couple of people dedicated to the in-house library of graphics routines on a variety of machines, and they were slowly switching to C for the high-level game architecture, using C a little bit like we use scripting languages today, for the slow stuff. And honestly, the Atari ST version of their polygon routine was a little bit faster than mine, using self-modifying code to optimize the inner loop as it ran.
Well, that optimization made it incompatible with the new and amazing 68020-based Atari TT (because you needed to tell the instruction-side of the processor to re-fetch the data you had just written on the data side, which that code did not do). Being pretty annoyed at the 2% difference between their code and mine, I created a best-of-breed combined routine using an assembler variant of Duff's device, which if my memory is correct, bested their code quite handily, and also ran on the Atari TT. But that all happened much later, when we were in the final phase of the game development.
From polygons to worlds
Earlier stages of the development of Alpha Waves were much more modest. I was only starting to be able to draw and rotate simple 3D objects. It began with a big cube showing the limits of the 16-bit coordinate space, the limits of my "world". Then, inside that cube, I placed another one, and one more to test how objects were hiding one another, and so on.
Soon, I had something like a dozen cubes floating in space. And more, and more. And that's when it slowly became clear that I was close to achieving my original dream. This was definitely faster than Starglider. Even with all these objects drawn on screen, on the entire screen no less, this was still smooth. I was thrilled, I was proud! This may seem ridiculous when today anybody can run Second Life and access some 24 terabytes of stored world information, but at the time, this was world-class 3D graphics.
But all things considered, rotating cubes on a screen gets pretty boring pretty fast. So to test my graphic routines, I started exploring ways to move inside my little 3D worlds. The first one was the most obvious possible: some kind of flight simulator that would let you fly through the world. You'd turn left and right or up and down with the joystick, and move forward by firing the joystick. That allowed me to test all possible rotation angles. To avoid the bugs when coordinates exceeded the 16-bit space, I added code that would keep me inside the coordinates cube. It was as if you bounced on the walls, on the ceiling or on the floor.
Believe it or not, I thought it was fun to bounce against the walls, and started testing all kinds of funny dynamics. The next obvious step was to bounce against the cubes inside the world instead of flying right through them as was then the de-facto industry standard… The cubes acted like big repellers, and so bouncing off one would allow you to quickly accelerate, for instance to climb to the top of the world. Add a little gravity, some platforms on the floor to start bouncing when you fell, and Alpha Waves was born!
In my mind, I was sort of recreating the experience of being a smurf, which in the comics bounce from the floor to reach a table, and so on. And I was starting to think that I might build some kind of smurf-based adventure game around that graphics technology. To that end, I started creating a little mechanism to switch from one "room" of the game to the next, through "doors" located on the walls. The trick was to reach the door, and you would switch to the next room. This way, I could explore an even larger world.
I was certainly starting to see some game potential in my code, but I was still not considering that little toy demo as a game, more like the foundation for what might one day be a real great adventure game in 3D. Sure, I had a lot of fun bouncing around, but who else would find this funny?
I couldn't have been more wrong!
Alpha Waves, meet Infogrames
I understood that when I presented this code to Infogrames. At the time, this was still a pretty small company occupying a single floor of a building in Villeurbanne. I don't know how large it was, but I would guess about 20-30 people. Still, this new building was already a giant step up compared to the office I had visited one year earlier, during my first interaction with them. And I need to explain that the first interaction was the reason I was getting back to Infogrames.
The first time, I had been looking for a student job, and they were looking for someone to translate some book about expert systems. Don't ask me why. I think that Bruno Bonnell thought at the time it was a good idea to diversify the company into "serious stuff" like artificial intelligence and some kind of expert system software for mom and pop. No kidding! These were wild times…
In any case, I did the required job, but when came time to be paid… they had already figured out that expert systems were a totally crazy idea and changed their mind. So they did not need my work any more, and in that case, why pay for it? Guess what, when you are aged less than 20, you are pretty naive, you tend to trust folks. In short, there was no written contract, just a gentlemen's agreement that they all too happily broke. I did not get a dime.
So one year or so later, when I returned to them, it was primarily with the intent to make up for that loss by working as an intern for one month, doing little and learning a lot from them. Why did I think this was a good idea? I don't know. I just wanted them to pay me something I guess.
Hey! This is a game!
Anyway, to convince them to hire me during the summer months, I had prepared a sort of career portfolio with various tiny programs. These were a number of half-baked experiments with various technologies like 2D scrolling, sound, text display, and so on. Not a single of these programs was a real game, but my point was more to show that I could write code.
The piece of code I thought would impress them the most was some sort of small clone of Time Bandit, with a few additional features like proportional text being displayed on screen, that was looking so much nicer than the typical fixed font of the time… There was not much of a plot, only a few worlds, but I thought this demonstrated I knew enough about game coding for a summer intern job. Well, when I showed that code, Infograme's technical director essentially yawned. I was seeing the chance of getting my money back escape…
Disappointed, I took the last floppy in my pile. This was the one containing the "Cube" demo. But if my marvelous Time Bandit clone had failed to impress them, this would would definitely be a total flop as well. Anyway, I started it up, gave the joystick to the technical director… and one hour later, he was still holding it, bouncing left and right like crazy! In my memory, he looked every bit like the guy on the picture, fascinated by this new and strange kind of game…
When he finally left the room, the technical director quickly came back with a contract that essentially read: Christophe de Dinechin will be paid 5000F (less than $1000) for a two months intern job working on Infograme's "Project Cube". Well, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice… My answer was quick: no way, that game is not an Infograme project, it's almost finished (something I had realized only minutes earlier), if you want it, this will be a royalties-based contract. He replied, "This is a standard contract, just sign it, we will adjust it later." Fortunately, I had previous experience with this kind of "contract", so I steadfastly refused to sign anything.
Frederick Raynal
After that, things moved relatively fast. Negotiating royalties was a real pain for me, and according to him, a pleasure for Bruno Bonnell. He commented something along the lines of "all these guys tell me that they don't need much… Well, that's what they get!". I fought for a royalties rate that I thought was decent. In the end, I was very disappointed when I left the room with, if my memory serves me right, something like 17%. I shared my disappointment with the engineers around. I remember a silence. And then, I was told that this was actually the best rate Infogrames had ever conceded to an independent author.
I do not recall how Frederick Raynal got involved exactly, but what I do recall is that he looked at the code, and told his management he felt this code could be ported to the PC. This was against Infogrames' policy at the time, which was to never port an assembly language game to a different CPU. Frederick argued that my code contained comments all over the place that made it very clear what was happening. And so he ported it to the PC. He actually did more than port it. The PC version included, for example, a very nice tutorial showing how to use the game which did not exist in my original version. The only thing he failed to do is accounting for different CPU speeds, and so Alpha Waves is practically unplayable on today's machines without slowing it down quite a bit. Update: I had him read this blog, since I'm talking about him, and he commented that it was the last time he made this mistake 🙂
More than anything, Frederick is a really nice guy, and we still exchange email every other year. As history would record, he would go on creating Alone in the Dark, a game that was extraordinarily successful, and then many other very successful games. Alone in the Dark used 3D graphics for characters, a first in the industry. Frederick has said that this use of 3D was a consequence of his earlier work on Alpha Waves.
The rest of the story is, unfortunately, consistent with Infogrames earlier behavior regarding payments. I had every trouble in the world getting them to pay the royalties as scheduled in the contract. For a short while, I considered reusing my game engine for the Smurf-style adventure game. But after several late payment notices, I got fed up of Infogrames and gave up gaming for good. Apparently, Frederick Raynal had similar issues after the success of Alone in the Dark.
This is my personal experience of the early days of the gaming industry, and the very beginning of 3D in videogames. It was wild, it was fun!. Thanks to Alpha Waves and my urge to beat Starglider, I got to meet a few people who are living legends today, and to see the early days of the company that later bough american icon Atari.
If you have any stories about this period, I'd love to hear them. Please leave them in the comments area.
1Update: Well, it turns out I did not know much. Actually, the MS-DOS port of Elite also had flat-shaded graphics, unlike the hidden-line graphics of earlier versions. Like Starglider 2, however, the 3D experience was lacking.
Update: I also discovered that the id Software web site claims that Hovertank was the first 3D game on the PC. Obviously, they are wrong: Alpha Waves predates it by one year, and it offered a better 3D experience.
Je suis jeune, il est vrai ; mais aux âmes bien nées
La valeur n'attend point le nombre des années.
Pierre Corneille, Le Cid


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The proprietary blend of clay used to create these bowls was innovated by Taku Shinomoto, owner of a popular boutique in Los Angeles since 2003, and rests somewhere between fine porcelain and durable, long-lasting stoneware. This hybrid creates a piece that is substantial and strong, yet soft and smooth during handling and serving. The specially developed matte glaze serves to bring out the natural texture of the unique clay mixture.
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Dishwasher and microwave safe. Not for use in the oven.
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The Tortoise manifesto:
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The Kaufmann Mercantile Hasami Porcelain Bowl are fine, large porcelain bowls with smooth, matte glaze finish. Made from a proprietary blend of clay from Hasami, Nagasaki.
Designed in L.A., and made in Japan.
Small:2.8 inches high x 5.8 inches diameter
(7.2 cm x 14.5 cm) Large: 2.8 inches high x 8.7 inches diameter
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Made in
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text:
Bob Bruninga implemented the earliest ancestor of APRS on an Apple II computer in 1982. This early version was used to map high frequency Navy position reports.
In 1984, Bruninga developed a more advanced version on a Commodore VIC-20 for reporting the position and status of horses in a 100-mile endurance run.
During the next two years, Bruninga continued to develop the system, which he now called the Connectionless Emergency Traffic System (CETS). Following a series of FEMA exercises using CETS, the system was ported to the IBM PC.
During the early 1990s, CETS, now known as the Automatic Packet Reporting System, continued to evolve into its current form. As GPS technology became more widely available, 'Packet' was replaced with 'Position' to better describe the most common use of the system.


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Go Back
© 2012 - 2019 by The Reverend Adaly Rosado, Jr.
All photos on this site I believe I am using with permission. If this is incorrect or if a photo is incorrectly attributed please email FatherRosado (at) FatherRosado.com Please note I did not look through every page which I have links to on my site. I attempted to make sure they are good sites however, I don't upload their content. If their is something objectionable on one of these sites please e-mail me by clicking here so I can remove their link.


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Things you would like to do or find: Bold Type
Things you haven't done or found and don't care to: plain type
You are encouraged to add extra comments after each item
So here is my Bucket List:
|My favourite place in all the world
|Two 'Jolly' Ladies
My Written Journey Back To My Roots and Heritage : From England to Australia
|My favourite place in all the world
|Two 'Jolly' Ladies
Brilliant Debra, love your two Jolly Ladies pic tooReplyDelete
Yes that picture is wonderful! The lady on the right looks like my Auntie Gert - bless them they has to deal with horrible specs!
This is great idea - made me think of all those things I would like to do/find. Top of my list is Great Uncle Alf. I know there must be a photo of him out there somewhere...
Thank you kind ladies for your comments. Thanks to my third cousin Angela for the last photo! Suzie, I hope you find your great-uncle Alf! xxReplyDelete
Lovely idea Debra, I quite often think of things I still want to do re Family History but find the list keeps changing in priority...So many things still left unfinished - but tomorrow is another day :)...ReplyDelete
Thanks for participating, Deb. I'll add your post to my list.ReplyDelete
Thanks for leaving a comment Ann, you're so right about priorities changing. Mine do all the time too! Jill, thanks for leaving a comment and for adding my post to your list. I appreciate that. xxDelete
Awesome list Debra.
There are a few locations I must visit also. I'm thinking of visiting some, then recording videos and photos to place online for other family members to see as well.
I like the fact you mentioned photos, which even when photos exist, it is tough locationing them. I've been working on sharing the photos I have.
House histories also sounds very interesting.
Best of luck with your list.
All the best
Thanks for your lovely comment Andrew. I'm really enjoying your daily photography post, by the way.
I'm totally engrossed with the house history project right now! Loving it immensely. xx
Melanie here! I enjoyed this piece, please email me--I have a question about your blog. MelanieLBowen[at]gmail[dot]comReplyDelete
A bucket list specific to genealogy- a great idea!ReplyDelete


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