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Brian Micklethwait's Blog
In which I continue to seek part time employment as the ruler of the world.Home
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Category archive: Software
From early in the afternoon of Tuesday, yesterday, until early this morning, this blog was out of action. I couldn't read it myself, let alone post anything:
The non-functioning of BrianMicklethwaitDotCom took out my emailing abilities as well. If anyone tried to email and got told to get stuffed, please try again - especially if it concerned the meeting at my home this coming Friday evening, at which Priya Dutta is going to speak about education.
I don't suppose many people suffered much, but I did, because I didn't know if and when BMDC was ever going to come back to life.
The problem was something to do with the internet provider (which has recently changed hands) for my Hoster. But spare a thought for Hoster. I wasn't his only client ringing up in a state. He had lots of others doing the exact same thing. He told me that he will be changing his internet provider asap, but that he couldn't do that until his internet provider came back on line and he was able to make the necessary arrangements.
Meanwhile, I really need to change how I do email.
More times like these. I have had a great deal too many and too much of these sorts of times lately.
As threatened here many times, more and more postings here are going to be about getting old. One of the symptoms, certainly for me, is short-term memory loss. (That isn't the only kind of memory loss I now suffer from, but forgetting immediately something that happened two seconds ago is particularly disconcerting, if for most of your life this has not happened.) Thank goodness for word processing. Everything you just wrote is now there in front of you, rather than forgotten. Right now, instead of wondering what that last sentence was, I can read it back again. The problem just doesn't exist any more. When I am talking, on the other hand …
Which is one of the many reasons why the speed of a computer is so important. I am now using my back-up computer, a very slow laptop, aka: Dawkins. Mercifully, word processing, once I have persuaded Dawkins to concentrate on it, is fine. Letters appear on the screen as soon as I type them, no matter how fast I type. But when it comes to internetting, or any kind of switching from one sort of software to another, it's like I'm back in the 1990s or even the 1980s. It takes around ten seconds for Dawkins to switch his attention from this to that. And ten seconds is easily long enough for me to forget what I am doing, and why I decided to make the switch I just tried to make. Finally it appears. But why am I reading it? Did I want the link for something I am writing? Was there some thought I was thinking? Was I just bored with previous thing?
I can remember articles by unimaginative future-fearers (see Postrel: The Future and Its Enemies - no link, see below) saying Do We Really Need very fast computers to do boring old domestic stuff, computers which are massively faster than we are, and which we therefore can't keep up with? Well, maybe not "need", but want, definitely. And maybe not "we" but I, definitely.
I turns out that lightning speed is immensely useful, to someone with my kind of brain, still wise after a fashion, but getting less superficially clever by the month. The lightning speed is not something I have to keep up with. The lighting speed keeps me up to speed.
Lightning speed within a programme, which with dumb word processing I still have. And lightning speed between programmes, which I do not now have. It turns out that really quite a lot of my computering consists of switching from one programme to another, to add a link and to copy and paste something from somewhere, or just to meander, whether randomly or to follow a logical train of thought. Straight word processing is still the instant joy that it was from 1981 onwards, but anything else is like wading through treacle. (And I am now experiencing that 1981 joy again, by experiencing the contrast with everything else.)
Oddly enough, adding photos (see yesterday) is not too bad, because adding photos and writing about them can all be done in the same piece of blogging software. (Which reminds me, I haven't made a word processed copy of yesterday's posting, which I like to do. That will involve more treacle-wading.)
You want links? Give it another week. As you can tell, all that talk (see … whenever) about God being back in business last Thursday or whenever did not materialise. Maybe this week.
I'm still suffering from God problems. God needs a new everything. New fan, new processor, new graphics card, even some new RAM. His old body will do, and hopefully all his hard discs can stay where they are, and continue to have all the same stuff on them, but the stuff that enables God to do his mysterious work is all change. Overheating, The Guru said. There was much dust inside, which will not surprise anyone who has ever visited my home.
Here is a picture of God's inner workings, not that it tells me much:
Apparently overheating is big deal in computing these days, and there are an amazing number of little systems inside a computer like God which are just there to stop things getting too hot. The Guru pointed out various little cooling mechanisms, and there were about half a dozen of them. Not just obvious things like big fans, but small things like strategically placed bits of metal to get ride of the head in some tiny little sub-system.
I recall reading a book about the man who invented the first Supercomputers. Cray? It said that Cray computers were actually of a rather conservative design, because that way they wouldn't go wrong. The brilliant idea was to combine such a computer with a refrigeration system. Apparently nobody had thought of that, until Cray did. But, said Cray, who says you can't put a computer in a fridge?
By the way, odd that fridge is spelt fridge, but refrigeration is spelt refrigeration, without a d in the middle. Google it if you don't believe me. I only just found this out, from my spell checker and then from googling it myself.
The bad news is that without God I am without email. I know, this is ridiculous. I keep meaning to switch from FuckupMail (the system supplied to me by The Guru (who disapproves of Google "on principle")) to Gmail, because you can access Gmail from anywhere. So what if you have to donate your soul to Google? What would they do with my soul? Very little, I am almost sure.
FuckupMail works fine, until you try to access it from another computer. Then it causes me to call it that. So, for example, on my recent French trip, I just ignored email and hoped for the best. But now I have things coming up that need organising, and I can't wait until the middle of next week for email, so FuckupMail has to migrate to Dawkins. So, I am currently engaged in doing that. But every time Dawkins gets to the emails concerning back-ups, which happen every day at three in the morning, he goes on strike for about five minutes and I often have to shut the email system and then open it again, after which it takes another five minutes before it deigns to transfer any more emails, which it eventually does until 3am comes around again. I have had to stop the email system and start it up again about three hundred times. "Should take about two hours" said The Guru. Turned out more like forty, and it still isn't done. The only exception was when the emails concerned the fact that the back-up system wasn't working, which it wasn't for about one blessed month earlier this summer. They transferred fine. I know. Ridiculous, but I had no idea it would take as long as it did.
Should. This is a computer technical term meaning, "should but actually won't". Whenever you hear this word coming out of the mouth of a Computer Guy, trouble. Every time.
It's only when you don't have email that you realise how much you depend on it.
This is what Dawkins looks like:
Which I include just to tell you, in case you are confused.
This, on the other hand, is the new graphics card, which I include because I like it:
It looks like a cross between a helicopter and a bra, both fine inventions.
By the way, please don't leave any "helpful" comments on this, about what, in your opinion, you think I ought to do about all this, instead of what I am doing. I already know (a) why I am doing what I am doing, (b) why it is ridiculous but why I'm doing it anyway, and (c) what I intend to do about it all to stop similar absurdities in the future. If you agree with me about how annoying this is, that's okay, but if you have any opinions about any of this that are different from mine, keep them to yourself.
Richard Morrison's article about the impact of WW1 on music, for the Times, is very interesting, but it suffers from an outbreak of PID (Permanent Italics Disease). This is when you switch on the italics, but then forget or fail to switch them off again. Here is a screen capture of the offending moment and its surroundings:
This was posted on August 16th, in connection with a Prom that happened last night, but it has yet to be corrected, as I write this.
PID is particularly pernicious when it afflicts not only the rest of the text of the piece itself, but then continues throughout the entire page as you see it, as it does here. That is a site software blunder, as well as a posting blunder.
I got to this piece via Arts and Letters Daily, which perhaps explains how I got to it at all, what with the Times paywall and all. Does anyone know how that system is working out for the Times?
It seems a bit shoddy that you have to pay for such typographical ineptitude. It's not so much the original error that I am unimpressed by. It's the fact that nobody quickly corrected it. And the fact that the site software doesn't confine the problem to the one posting.
To be a bit more serious, about the content of the article, I have long regretted Schoenberg's depressing impact upon music, but I had no idea that the man himself was such a German chauvinist. "Now we will throw these mediocre kitschmongers into slavery, and teach them to venerate the German spirit and to worship the German God …" Good grief.
Not long ago my Computer Guru persuaded me to upgrade my version of OpenOffice to the latest version. I then had to reset the default font for typing bog standard text into a bog standard word processing file in OpenOffice Writer, latest version. It insited on using Times Roman 12 pt. I wanted Verdana 13pt, and eventually I managed to persuade OpenOffice Writer to do this every time. Then my computer got stuck and I had to switch it off, but when it came back on again, this resetting was forgotten, and I had to do it all over again. I was back with bloody Times Roman bloody 12pt, again. It was a small nightmare, again, to get it to do Verdana 13pt, again, without it having to be told, again.
At least there is an internet, to which questions of this sort can be put. The answers are a maelstrom of gibberish, but at least you narrow the gibberish down a bit. Main rule: beware any answer which includes the word "forum". Forums are full of wrong answers and answers to wrong answers along the lines of: I did all that but nothing happened.
The basic problem with computers is that because they can do more and more with each passing yeart, it is becoming harder and harder to persuade them to do the one simple thing that you personally want them to do. You are surrounded by vast and growing explosion of things which the damn computer can do but which you don't want it to do, which makes it almost impossible to find the one little set of buttons that, if pushed, will make it do the one little tiny thing that you do want it to do. If there are only three available fonts to choose between, and changing that font setting is about all that can be changed, then it is relatively easy. But the more complicated the programme gets, the more difficult it becomes to make it do "easy" things with it.
And now, with those sneer quotes, I have just discovered that they have to be reset as well. This has to be done because if quotes are done the way the unmodified programme wants to do them, that buggers up links when I transfer the text to my various blogging locations.
That was a nightmare too, first time around. Now, I must endure that nightmare, again.
The fact that there are now two – maybe several – versions of "Open Office Writer" (those sneer quotes are now working, it would appear) out there adds an extra dimension of shititude to this whole shitty shituation.
I still have to make the damn programme refrain from adding extra space between paragraphs. I do spaces between paragraphs with an extra carriage return, because that too is how text needs to be when I transfer it to a blog. Bugger bugger bugger. The nightmares just keep coming.
If you are a geek who understands computer stuff but not people, then your response to all this will be: "Easy – you just to "^)3y6t65+££@{{{ +++ %*%&%**%% ==== XYZXYZXYZ" - what could be simpler?" Answer: Just about anything in the whole damn world would be simpler.
The real nightmare is that soon, all appliances will also be computers. Whereas it now remains possible to simply switch, say, a vacuum cleaner, you know, on, soon that formerly simple process will become another nightmare of persuasion and internet interrogation, simply to get it to vacuum the way you want rather than the way you absolutely do not want. People will be buying whole new machines, entirely because they can't make the damn machine do what the machine is perfectly willing to do, provided only that you know which of seventy-nine buttons to push and what order to push them in. Ditto kettles, washing machines, fridges, everything.
As I often warn readers, this blog will, as I get older, be, more and more, about the process of me getting old.
Don't get me started on automatic supermarket checkout machines.
Chequeholders will soon be able to cash their payment almost instantly by taking a photo on their smartphone and sending it to the bank.
The government's Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill will allow banks to process cheques using "digital imaging" technology for the first time.
As well as removing the hassle of a visit to the bank, the new scheme is expected to allow cheques to be cleared in two days, instead of the current six.
Yet another surprising impact of digital photography. Had I known about it when I gave that talk I did about this, I'd have given this a mention.
Here's a piece entitled Google Glass:10 reasons Brits won't buy it. The basic argument is: it's creepy, it's uncool, it has various other more specific disadvantages.
I think that the writer of this piece, Robyn Vinter, makes the very common error of saying that a piece of kit won't catch on because, in her opinion it is, in a general sort of way, not nice or not good. I know it's only a jokey piece, pandering to ignorant prejudice and general technophobia, but it contains a serious and wrong idea about how technology gets established in the wider world.
Technology doesn't catch on because people like Robyn Vinter think that it's cool.
Technology or software, or whatever, catches on because it solves a particular problem for a particular group of people, and they start using it. People like Robyn Vinter then say: ooh, how very uncool you are. And the people using the thing say: guess what Robyn Vinter, we don't care what you think, we are finding it extremely useful, to do what we want to do. If you don't think we look cool, this is entirely your problem and absolutely not our problem at all. Gradually other uses for the thing in question accumulate, and quite a few people use it for several different things and get really excited and try to use it for everything, because they now like it so much. If enough uses are found, then the alleged uncoolness of the thing just gets overwhelmed by people using it, in public, in full view, and to hell with the coolists. If the coolists still want to write articles about how uncool this thing is, even though thousands of their potential readers are now using it, then they are pushed aside and other writers willing to say that it's cool after all are told to write that instead.
So the question is: will Google Glass be useful enough? Basically, it would appear to be a screen that you can use while you are doing something else, to do computer stuff and regular stuff at the same time. Sounds extremely useful to me, for ... various things that I now know not of. But I am sure things will turn up that it is very useful for, even essential for. Work, basically. Not strutting about in the street. No. Getting worthwhile things done, more efficiently, faster. That kind of thing. We'll soon see, anyway.
This guy is much more optimistic. Better, he understands how Google Glass will or will not catch on. What can it do? Not enough, yet, seems to be his answer. But that may change. My guess is it will change.
See also, this piece by me from way back, about another sort of coolist with delusions of grandeur.
And see also these pictures of another useful thing being used in an allegedly very uncool way, namely people taking photos with tablets. This tendency has in no way abated since I took those snaps. Quite the opposite.
There is also a definite whiff, in Robyn Vinter's piece, of the status anxiety I wrote about in this recent piece here, if not in Vinter herself then in the readers she is appealing to. What if this gizmo makes us look and feel stupid? What if it demotes us in the pecking order? The answer is: if it does, it does. That won't stop it being used.
City A.M. is now one of my go-to places first thing, and there I read today:
Transport for London (TfL) will be introducing screens displaying how many people are sitting upstairs and which seats are available, in a trial system to begin in two weeks.
The display screens will be situated next to the driver as people board the bus and between the driver and the staircase before passengers go upstairs.
I am struck by two electronic sign innovations that have already arrived on the London transport scene.
There are those invaluable signs at bus stops, telling you what is due, when, and where it will go. The only problem with these signs is that not every bus stop has them. I know, I know, you can crank up the bus app on your mobile. But I prefer not to have to bother, and anyway, that's a lot of fuss just for a bus. (Note the vagiaries of the spelling there.)
And the other innovation, much more recent, is those little signs that tell pedestrians - i.e. me - how many seconds will elapse before the pedestrian sign will be turning red. Very helpful. I don't want to freak out motorists by getting in their way, but nor do I want to neglect an opportunity to cross if I can do so without freaking out the motorists. These latest signs tell me what I need to know. And it's amazing how far you can travel in three seconds, if you know that three seconds is all that you have, but that you definitely do have three seconds.
So, will these new sign inside buses be any use? Judging by earlier TfL electronic signage efforts, my guess is yes.
(More rhyming fun with esses (?) there. It could so easily have been and gues and yess. And before that, fus and buss. (Does such tangenting pis you off? (And are you fed up with this multiple bracket gag? (This, I think, being the record.))))
As politically controlled entities go, TfL is not too shabby, although goodness knows what it costs. Especially given that they are now dragging their feet (which is all it will take for Uber to get truly motoring in London) when it comes to crushing Uber. It's the same mentality, d'you think? TfL likes electronic signage, whether the signs are public or personal. Could be. Do you think the next thing will be big public Uber signs that you can use to whistle up cheap and cheerful transport, if you don't have a mobile on you? Again: could be.
One of my favourite computer functions is Screen Capture. For years, I didn't know how to do this. How is "prt sc" screen capture? I used to just photo the screen. Then I got told, and more to the point, told at a time just before I found many uses for this procedure, and as a result, I actually got it fixed in my head.
So it is that I am able to capture fleeting moments like this one:
That was the passage of play that turned the game England's way, today, on day one of the test match at Headingley. Sri Lanka went from 228-5 and motoring to 229-9, in nine balls. In among all this, Broad got a hat trick, but didn't even realise and had to be told! There was then a little last wicket stand and they got to over 250, but the big damage had been done.
Here is another interesting moment, which is the moment when they show me all the guys who worked on Adobe Photoshop, while I am loading Adobe Photoshop.
But, the trouble is, when I do a Screen Capture while that is happening, it doesn't work. What gets captured is the moment when Adobe Photoshop is finally loaded. Until then, I guess my computer is too busy loading Photoshop to do a Screen Capture. Either all that, or else I just wasn't doing it right, as is entirely possible.
But instead of obsessing about what I might or might not be doing wrong, I instead simply photographed the moment, just like old times:
The reason I wanted to photo this was all the Indian names, in among the occasional regular American ones. Interesting. Where are they all based, I wonder? I'm guessing somewhere in the USA, but what do I know? Adobe seems to have a lot of places where they could be. And of course, if something like Adobe doesn't know how to plug a global network of co-workers together, who does? From where I sit, these Indian guys could be anywhere. Even so, like I say, interesting.
A lot of the Americans I read on the Internet say that Obama is destroying America, and he seems to be doing as much as he can along these lines. But there is a lot of ruin in a country, and a lot of ruin in American. This screen shot suggests that at least parts of the good old American upward economic mobility ladder are working just fine.
This morning, did an SQotD about Uber.
Other Perry (Metzger) added this:
Uber does not always offer cheaper service. They operate on a market pricing mechanism to assure availability.
This means that, for example, on New Year's Eve in NYC, you are assured you can get an Uber car even though normal taxis are essentially unavailable because of excess demand, but you will also discover the Uber car will be quite expensive. This is, of course, as it should be — the spike in price encourages as many Uber drivers as possible to work during a rush period. However, it is also decried by those who do not understand economics.
You could turn this around and say that Uber will be a sort of ongoing economics lesson for the citizenry.
Libertarians like me are always going on about how prices are a signalling mechanism. Uber makes this extremely clear, I think.
Goddaughter 2 is at the very early, tadpole stage of becoming an opera star. She has already been identified as possessing operatic superpowers, but there are, of course, many obstacles for her still to overcome. So, fingers crossed.
This summer she will be performing at a Festival in Belle-Île, which is off the south coast of Brittany. Her family, who live in Brittany, are kindly including me in their expedition to see and hear GD2 in action.
Obviously, there is a Festival website, and equally obviously it is basically a French thing, but it also supplies an English translation:
Welcome to the Festival lyrique international de Belle-Île-en-Mer.
With much excitement, the preparations for our 2014 season are well underway, with artists from all over the world preparing to travel to Belle-Île to rehearse and perform two dramatic masterpieces, Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci and Puccini's Gianni Schicchi. Meanwhile the Festival Choir is busy rehearsing Haydn's sublime oratorio The Creation, heard for the first time on the island. There will be an orchestral Mozart evening, the ever-popular Ad Libitum gala concert, early-evening recitals by our young artists at the Café Bleu in Sauzon, and a series of masterclasses.
As the excitement builds, we hope you will join our festival family, and be a part of this rich, unique and inspiring season.
Which is fine. But before reading that, on account of having not at first realised that they offered their own English version of the above, I accepted an offer from a little window at the top right of my screen to do a translation of the French original of the above, with some sort of mechanised-computerised process.
It went like this:
Welcome to the International Opera Festival of Belle-Ile-en-Mer.
The preparations for the 2014 season are progressing well, with joyful excitement. Artists from around the world are preparing to come to Belle-Ile to rehearse and perform two masterpieces lyric, Leoncavallo Pagliacci and Gianni Schicchi by Puccini which will be donated to Arletty room. Meanwhile the choir festival works and repeats Creation, sublime oratorio by Haydn, which will be given for the first time on the island, in the churches and the Cathedral of Vannes. Also on the program, the Citadelle Vauban, an orchestral concert of Mozart and the ever popular concert Ad Libitum. Finally, two concerts of our talents in the late afternoon at Café Bleu in Sauzon and a week of master classes.
While riding the excitement, we hope you will join the family of opera festival and be this rich season unique and exciting.
Which I prefer. It's actually not that bad. Most of the mistakes seem to consist of getting words in the order wrong.
The Salle Arletty is mentioned in the original French version, so it also gets a mention in the mechanised English version as a place to which musical performances will be donated.
For the original French version, go here.
My family used to go on holidays to the southern coast of Brittany when I was small, to a place from which you could see Belle-Île, but we never actually visited it. Expect Belle-Île photos here, when all this happens. Are you already riding the excitement?
So this is me trying to post this. I just wrote a posting about something else, but it refuses to register all the text. So, will it register this text? This posting may be your lot for today, I'm afraid.
Well, this seems to be working. So why not the earlier posting, which actually said something?
LATER: Problem (sort of) solved, for the posting you see above is now visible, above. I had omitted an "< / a >", which signifies the end of a link, so the link went on for ever, and immediately after that for ever link I tried to include that rather big picture. This was too much for the system and it just refused to register any of the text as having any sort of future on the blog itself, even though it was still all there.
And now I'm not sure that "< / a >" will come out, so now this posting may degenerate into chaos. It has. I had to rewrite it as "< / a >" with lots of unnecessary gaps, for it to show up at all.
Good night.
Interesting. I just looked at a particular classical CD on amazon.co.uk, and it told me I'd already ordered it, last October. As it happens, I knew this. I was just looking to see what had been happening to the price of the CD in question. But I am impressed that they reminded me.
In general, Amazon has a clunky, even twentieth century feel to it. Which for a clunky twentieth century guy is very reassuring.
The automatic delivery to my computer of audio files of CDs I have already ordered in plastic form is very cunning. It all arrives on my computer automatically, and arranges itself on something called my Cloud Player. It is now late at night, and although the speakers on my computer are nothing like as good as my real speakers on my real CD player, they are nearer and can thus be quieter. I'm playing one of these audio files now, which is one I have ordered in plasticated form but which has not yet arrived. This way, I can play it as soon as I pay for it, just as if I was living in the twenty first century!
And I've got to admit that there is something rather agreeable about not having to get out of my chair to hear music.
On Monday last I attended a BBC Radio 4 event, at which Evan Davis interviewed Deirdre McCloskey:
Yes that is the same screen, and it remained the same colour throughout. In "reality" I mean. If you were there, which I was.
But digital cameras, when set on "automatic" as mine always is, have minds of their own when it comes to colour. One picture happens to have a lot of a certain colour in it, and it changes the overall colour of everything to compensate. For instance, when you take indoor pictures but there is outdoor sky to be seen, then even if in reality the sky is deepest grey, the camera turns the sky deepest blue, and the indoor bits orange. Likewise, when the sky is blue, but if you are outdoors, the camera, for no reason, is liable to fill a clear blue sky with pollution and turn it a sort of slate colour. What was happening here is that these two pictures are both cropped. But the left one was only cropped a bit, while the left one was cropped a lot. And the stuff that got cropped out of the left one meant that the screen was no longer green. It was blue.
As to what Deidre McCloskey actually said, well the thing I was most intrigued by was that she was entirely cool about being asked about how she used to be Donald McCloskey. In which connection, don't you just love how that circumstance is alluded to in this:
That's an article reproduced at her website. So, is that her handwriting? Could well be.
I doubt the medical side of the switch was as easy to do as that.
The libertarian propaganda side of this is that McCloskey is a character, rather than just a boring bod in a suit. The usual evasive sneers against pro-capitalists just won't work on her. And I even think it helps that (maybe because of those medical dramas - don't know) her voice is a strange hybrid of male and female, often sounding a bit like electrical feedback. She also has a slight but definite stutter.
The reason I feel entitled to mention all this is that it clearly does not bother her, or if it does she has learned very well to stop it bothering her, and indeed to make a communicational virtue of it all. I guess she figures if you are saying interesting stuff, it really doesn't matter if your voice sounds a bit funny and if people sometimes have to wait a second or two before hearing the next bit of it. In fact it probably even helps, because it gets everyone listening, proactively as it were, guessing what is coming instead of just hearing it.
See also: Hawking.
One of the rules I have developed for my own photographic activities is to try always to take pictures, in among all the merely nice pictures, which tell me where I was and what these nice pictures were of.
I do not always follow this rule. Rules are like that. The ones you follow all the time, automatically, don't have to be rules. It's the rules you often break which are nevertheless good which have to be rules, to persuade you to follow them more than you would otherwise.
Here, for instance, is a fun snap:
That was taken on June 29th 2007, 5.38pm (plus 30 seconds), a fact which I now know because my camera automatically recorded it. I called the photo ArtHasItsUses, as this young guy is demonstrating. But, where are we? I have two other snaps of the same scene, but none of them include any information about exactly where we are, like a street name. Nor did I photo the plaque at the bottom of the sculpture, as I often do. This would likewise have given me some useful words to google, and offered me the opportunity to supply a link to other works by the same artist. But I did neither of these sensible things.
I tried following the phone number that you can see behind the Thing, but before anything would tell me anything about that (maybe) then the anythings in question demanded to know all kinds of things about me, and I gave up.
I understand that many cameras nowadays automatically record exact place of shot along with exact time of shot. Mine is not such a camera.
A vague clue is that, judging by other photos taken somewhat earlier, I appear to have been in the general vicinity of Islington, North London. But where? And what is this rather agreeable Thing? Who did it? Anybody?


text:
November 24, 2014
Stay up-to-date with KAKE News:
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
A southeast Alabama judge has sentenced a man to a 624-year prison term in a rape and kidnapping case.
The Dothan Eagle reports that Houston County Circuit Court Judge Kevin Moulton sentenced 25-year-old Mark Anthony Beecham to the prison term Tuesday.
Beecham received 99-year prison sentences for six felony convictions: first-degree kidnapping, two counts of first-degree rape and three counts of first-degree sodomy. He also received a 20-year sentence for a felony first-degree theft of property offense and a 10-year sentence for a felony first-degree bail jumping conviction.
A Houston County jury found Beecham guilty of all eight felony charges earlier this month.
The charges stemmed from offenses involving a woman that happened in December 2006.
Click Here to access the online Public Inspection File
Viewers with disabilities can get assistance accessing this station's FCC Public Inspection File by contacting the station with the information listed below. Questions or concerns relating to the accessibility of the FCC's online public file system should be directed to the FCC at 888-225-5322, 888-835-5322 (TTY), or email@example.com.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Your cheat sheet for the Newport Beach Film Festival, from the parties to the flicks about speed-dating geezers
Tanya Petrovna is the chef and owner of Native Foods. Her ever-expanding vegan eatery started out in Palm Springs in 1994, but we in OC know her best from her restaurant at The Camp, which is housed inside a yurt. She has two other restaurants in OC, not all of them in yurts, but serving the ... More >>
Crank, Crossover, Idiocracy, Lassie, The Quiet, Wicker Man
Your three-month forecast of the summers top movies
New time-travel technology perfected: Ashton Kutcher discovers the magic of reading


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- FAIRTAXFAIRRENT.CA CAMPAIGN EXPOSES UNIQUE HIDDEN TENANT TAX IN SOME ONTARIO MUNICIPALITIES The Federation of Rental-housing Providers of Ontario (FRPO) wants Ontario's cities, including London, Toronto, Windsor and Hamilton, to stop the taxing of tenants at two to three times more than homeowners.
- Greening Together Gives More Reasons to Rent With Confidence FRPO's New Environmental Operating Standards Offers Renters the Opportunity to Play an Active Role in Promoting a Greener Living Environment in their Apartment Community
- Canada's Largest Multi-Unit Food Drive on April 8th Rental housing owners, managers and residents will start collecting 500,000 lbs of food for the 2014 Spring H.O.P.E. (Housing Owners & People Everywhere) food drive on Tuesday, April 8, 2014.
Some of our benefits include
- Free Legal Information
- Credit Check Discounts
- Appliance Discount Replacement Program
- Forms and Leases
- PM Expo
- December 3 - 5
- 2014 MAC Awards Gala - NOW SOLD OUT
- December 4
- Dealing with Domestic Violence (FREE)
- December 10
FRPO M.A.C Awards
Each year FRPO members celebrate businesses and individuals who are leaders in the residential rental housing industry. Has your company done great work? Do you have employees who you believe deserve recognition? Next year our industry could be celebrating your success! Please review the submission criteria for information on how to apply, or call us if you have questions.
Submission Criteria for 2014
Award entries must be submitted by Wednesday, October 1st, 2014 by 12:00pm. All projects and accomplishments must have been in progress or completed between November 2013 and October 2014 unless otherwise stated
Submission Requirements
We no longer accept hard copies of your award submission. All submissions must be produced in a PowerPoint presentation and on CD/DVD with supplemental files included. To review all requirements, please see the nomination package below.
PowerPoint Presentations and Supplemental Electronic Data
All electronic files must be saved in an 'unlocked' format and on either CD or DVD. CD/DVD must be clearly marked with Nominee name and company as well as award applying for. All included files should be referenced and clearly marked.
Any photos you wish to be considered must be in high resolution of at least 4 mega-pixels and must be included in your PowerPoint presentation as well as saved separately on your CD/DVD. File names must be referenced appropriately. Judges will only be reviewing the PowerPoint presentations. Acceptable image formats are .jpg and .tiff. All files must be clearly named for identification purposes. Pinnacle awards must include a high resolution photo of the nominee.
Company Logo's
Each submission must include your company logo on CD/ DVD in both .jpg AND .eps format. The logo you submit will be used for the awards presentation should you be a nominee.
All Awards will be presented at FRPO's Annual Awards Gala in conjunction with PM Expo: Thursday, December 4th, 2014. Don't miss this great event where FRPO will showcase the best in the biz! The Awards Gala will be held at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.
To view or print the 2014 MAC Awards Nomination Package, please click here
Please review the full entry and eligibility requirements included in the nomination package.


text:
Testing vehicle emissions in the laboratory is a way to guarantee identical procedures, but it doesn't exactly mimic the results from an on-the-road drive. Ford, for example, famously had a problem with dynamometer testing in the Total Road Load Horsepower (TRLHP) calculations for the C-Max Hybrid. Over in Europe, the authorities are considering new rules that will not affect the emissions levels that need to be reached (those are already in process) but how the vehicles will be tested. Reuters doesn't name the new rule, but we think it could be connected to the UN-supported World Light Vehicle Test Procedure (WLTP), which emphasizes actual driving results over lab numbers.
A new draft legislation is making the rounds that would force the tests to be done on, you know, actual roads instead of in labs/ You can probably guess the reasons why. Reuters calls the problems one of "loopholes," but whatever name we apply, the problem is that the official figures and reality don't match. An unnamed EU official told Reuters, "In the real world we have seen that NOX emissions are higher than indicated by the test, up to a factor 4 or 5 and exceptionally more." This is not a new issue. Back in 2011, the group Transport And Environment said that the CO2 emissions numbers claimed by automakers are "less and less a reflection of what we are seeing on the road." You probably won't be surprised to hear that, while the auto industry admits the lab tests aren't accurate, it doesn't just want to accept a new test procedure mandate. The VDA, a lobbying organization for the German automakers, is working on its own proposal for real-world tests.


text:
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Takes me back to the days when frosted graham crackers were served in gradeschool with lunch!
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Make this season merry, bright and manageable with our easy ideas.


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| This article or section is an NPC stub. You can help expand it by editing it.
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|The Black Prince
|Black drake (Dragonkin)
|85 Elite
|Black dragonflight, Black Prince/Himself
| Ravenholdt Manor, Hillsbrad Foothills,
Veiled Stair,
Jade Forest,
Krasarang Wilds,
|Deathwing (father), Nyxondra (mother); Nefarian, Sabellian, Neltharaku (half-brothers), Onyxia (half-sister), Rheastrasza (surrogate mother/creator), Mordenaku (nephew), Zoya, Onyxien (nieces)
Wrathion, or otherwise known as the Black Prince, is the only Black dragon that is uncorrupted by the Old Gods. After Deathwing's fall from players, he is one of the few black dragons left alive out of his flight. He assists rogues into helping them create the ultimate daggers, Fangs of the Father.
Background Edit
Rheastrasza, a member of the Red Dragonflight, sought a way to free the Black dragonflight of its madness. Capturing the black dragon Nyxondra, she forced her to lay eggs, hoping that one of them, combined with the Eye of the Watchers would hatch uncorrupted. After finding one egg that was deemed worthy for her experiment, she constantly traveled from place to place so that no one from the Black dragonflight could find her. She was eventually hunted down and killed by Deathwing himself, who destroyed the egg. But unknown to him, the egg he had just destroyed was in fact Rheastraza's own egg. Hieronymus Blam hid the egg and gave it to the Red dragonflight in Vermillion Redoubt, from which it disappeared soon afterwards.
Rogues setting off to destroy Deathwing will be sent to Ravenholdt Manor, where they witness the hatching of the egg, and Wrathion's birth. He knows of what happened when he was still in the egg so he asks to be left alone. His left-hand man, Fahrad, captures a red dragon in disguise, but Wrathion spares him and tells him to send a message to the red dragons. However, he tells Fahrad to break his legs.
After finding the needed items, the player goes back to Ravenholdt, only to discover that a mighty battle has just taken place, and the scene is littered with the bodies of dead dragons. Wrathion (who is the only participant still alive) rewards the player the Fangs of the Father, two legendary daggers empowered by the black dragonflight. He then tells the player to slay the last corrupted black dragon, who is no other than Fahrad. After killing Fahrad, he then bids goodbye to the player, hoping they both will be on the same side in the future.
In Mists of Pandaria EditThis section concerns content exclusive to Mists of Pandaria.
In the Mists of Pandaria expansion, Wrathion can be seen residing in the Veiled Stair zone, in the Tavern in the Mists.
Wrathion, being a powerful black dragon, predicts that a great threat is coming to Azeroth, eventually revealed to be the Burning Legion. Wrathion recruits heroes of the Horde and Alliance to win his aid in allowing one of the factions to defeat the other, uniting Azeroth under their rule, which Wrathion believes is necessary to withstand the Burning Legion.
As the war between the Horde and Alliance progresses and both factions war with the Mogu, Wrathion continues to provide aid to worthy heroes, crafting powerful weapons and uncovering ancient secrets.
After the Alliance and most of the Horde unite in overthrowing Garrosh Hellscream, Varian Wrynn allows the Horde to choose a new Warchief and strikes a peace. Wrathion is outraged and reveals that while he had initially backed Garrosh and the Horde, he had now been betting on the Alliance, hoping that Varian would pursue a war and unite the Horde and Alliance through force. He leaves, but not before vowing that he will protect the world against the Burning Legion at any cost.
Quests Edit
- Phase 2
- [85] To Catch a Thief
- [85] The Deed is Done
- [85] Cluster Clutch
Quotes Edit
- Phase 1
- Wrathion says: As you know, Black Dragons frequently disguise themselves as humanoids in order to tamper with mortal affairs.
- Wrathion says: But I can still sense them. My cowardly brothers and sisters will cause untold suffering if we allow them to stay in the shadows.
- Wrathion says: He's deluded a group of diseased humans into thinking they can take their land back. He's poisoned their blood with his own draconic essence.
- Wrathion says: Moreover, they are a threat to me.
- Wrathion says: That's where you come in. Help us to slay them all, and I will reward you handsomely.
- Wrathion says: The dragon you're looking for goes by the name "Creed."
- Wrathion says: While the house of my mad father collapses around him, the few remaining Black Dragons have gone into hiding.
- Phase 2
- Wrathion says: Excellent work, friend. You've proven that a single skilled assassin can strike a decisive blow where a whole army may fail.
- Wrathion says: He's deluded a group of diseased humans into thinking they can take their land back. He's poisoned their blood with his own draconic essence.
- Wrathion says: If you live through this... I assure you it will be worth it.
- Wrathion says: If you wish to continue our work, we will need some additional supplies...
- Wrathion says: The dragon you're looking for goes by the name "Creed."
Media Edit
Images Edit
Videos Edit
External links Edit
|Official lore
WoW Official Game Site (US) The Characters of Warcraft > Wrathion
WoW Official Game Site (EU) The Characters of Warcraft > Wrathion
WoW Insider Know Your Lore: Wrathion's duty by Anne Stickney May 18th 2014 8:00PM
WoW Insider Know Your Lore, Tinfoil Hat Edition: The Titans, Azeroth, and Wrathion by Anne Stickney Feb 23rd 2014 8:00PM
WoW Insider Know Your Lore: Wrathion the Purified by Anne Stickney Dec 18th 2011 6:00PM
BlizzPlanet Incoming … – Wrathion Legendary Questline By Medievaldragon – June 27, 2013
BlizzPlanet The Measure of a Leader – Wrathion Legendary Questline By Medievaldragon – June 27, 2013
BlizzPlanet Wrathion Legendary Questline – World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria By Medievaldragon – June 26, 2013
Wowhead News 5.1 Epic Warlock Questline, LFR Open and Elegon Hotfixes by perculia 2012/10/16 9:26 AM
WoW Official Game Site (US) Cataclysm Recap Video: Legendary Rogue by Blizzard Entertainment, Apr 11, 2012 10:30 AM PDT
|Phase 1
|Phase 2


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I've still got a few of the work-week rock-and-roll adioses stashed away, and guess I'd better use 'em or lose 'em between now and the next week or so. So let's start with this -- a bootleg officially known as The Bone Collection, featuring 42(ish) covers performed by Slobberbone and, in a few in ... More >>
Way, way back in the day (circa 1983), there was a great band hailing out of Los Angeles called the Long Ryders. Back then, nobody had even heard the term "alt-country." So, when Sid Griffin and Stephen McCarthy started playing songs that sounded like the legendary Gram Parsons, people struggled ... More >>
With his debut record, Ed Burleson may be too country for Nashville, but not for Texas
Fourteen years after breaking up, the Plimsouls return with a new record and an old sound