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Net Neutrality and The Mercy Center
The MERCY Network needs Net Neutrality
Take ACTION! The FCC will end Net Neutrality unless millions act to save it. We urge you to join and promote protests at Verizon stores on December 7, and share this web page far and wide.
6 Ways You Can Protest the FCC's Decision to Kill Net Neutrality | Organizations are now planning a series of events to put pressure on Congress and Ajit Pai, chairman of the commission. The Federal Communications Commission revealed plans on Tuesday to dismantle net neutrality, which would lead to internet speeds being controlled by few very corporations. Organizations are now planning a series of events to put pressure on Congress and Ajit Pai, chairman of the commission."The only interests Ajit Pai represents are those of the few gatekeeper media companies that want to charge people more for nothing and give them less of everything," said Candace Clement, Free Press Action Fund Campaign Director, this week. Also amusingly, Pai seems to think the same sort of regulation adopted during the Clinton years — when dial-up modems were king and America Online used 56k modems for "fast" internet speeds — would be OK to have some 20 years later. Get ready to go back to speeds like this for independent websites, basically. Activists — and really anyone who's spent more than five minutes thinking about the effects of a tiered internet where not all web content is created equal — realizes this: When only a few big corporations, of which you can count on one hand, control which web content loads fast and which loads slowly, "light-touch regulation" doesn't protect any American, especially those who want to start the next reddit or Netflix or YouTube. Pai, it should be noted, was a lawyer for Verizon before going into government. Verizon released this strange video in May, touting the benefits of killing net neutrality. Activist groups are now taking their fight to their representatives in Congress, who will vote on the commission's proposals on December 14. * Read >> MORE >>
Take ACTION!
Verizon Store Protests on December 7 | At Verizon stores nationwide on December 7, one week before the vote, activists will meet at 5 p.m. local time to put pressure on Congress and demand a change. Pai used to work on Verizon's legal team, so the choice of store is intended to "[shine] light on the corruption" and expose Pai's conflict of interest. * Act >> NOW! >>
Billboards in Congressional Districts | Activist group Fight for the Future is hosting a campaign to place billboards informing voters about their representatives' actions. The campaign will target members of Congress that voted in favor of President Donald Trump's proposed choice of Pai as head of the FCC. This includes the four Democrats Joe Manchin, Claire McCaskill, Gary Peters and Jon Tester. The campaign is around halfway toward its $100,000 funding goal. * Act >> NOW! >>
Washington, D.C. Protest on December 13 | On December 13, the day before the vote, a team of organizers called "Defend Net Neutrality" have planned a protest from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., with a venue as-yet undecided. * Act >> NOW! >>
Phone Call Drive Happening Now | Citizens can call their representative by using Battle For the Net's simple interface. Entering your phone number provides a script of what to say and connects you with your local politician. Over 250,000 calls have already been made. * Act >> NOW! >>
ResistBot | Texting resist to the number 504-09, a bot will ask for your name and other info. It then sends a message to your senators, representatives, governor and the President. The team is collecting donations to fund the cost of sending out letters as part of the campaign. * Act >> NOW! >>
More on net neutrality by Wired >> * Read >> MORE >>
A petition | entitled "Replace Ajit Pai on FCC, Restore Net Neutrality, Make Last-mile Networking a Public Utility, and Stop Corporate Abuse" has been posted on the official White House website. At time of writing, the petition has 6,474 signatures, with 93,526 required to get a response from the government. * Act >> NOW! >>
Another petition | entitled "Do Not Repeal Net Neutrality," has been posted and already acculumulated a staggering 143,229 signatures. * Act >> NOW! >>
FCC Wants to Kill Net Neutrality. Congress Will Pay the Price | FCC chair Ajit Pai's plan to repeal net neutrality provisions and reclassify broadband providers from "common carriers" to "information services" is an unprecedented giveaway to big broadband providers and a danger to the internet. The move would mean the FCC would have almost no oversight authority over broadband providers like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T. For years, those broadband providers have used lawsuits and agency filings to fight FCC oversight and overturn its authority to prevent net neutrality abuses. But never in those companies' most feverish dreams did they expect an FCC chair would propose to demolish all net neutrality protections and allow ISPs to extract tolls from every business in the country. Even industry analysts who expected the reclassification of broadband providers from Title II common carriers to Title I information services were stunned. Following Pai's announcement, independent cable analyst Craig Moffett sent out an email to investors entitled "Shock and Awe and Net Neutrality," writing, "We've known since the election that the FCC would reverse Title II. But we never expected this. Yesterday's FCC Draft Order on Net Neutrality went much further than we ever could've imagined in not only reversing Title II, but in dismantling virtually all of the important tenets of net neutrality itself."If Congress allows Pai's plan to pass, all that will be left of FCC oversight of broadband providers is a weak disclosure requirement: If Verizon, for example, wants to block content, charge sites to be viewable on its network, or create paid fast lanes, the company will simply have to tell its subscribers in their contract's fine print. (Broadband providers won't have to disclose, and the FCC won't have control over, the sneakier ways they've found to mess with the internet.) Enforcement will be left to the Federal Trade Commission, an agency that's never enforced open internet rules and has no ability to formulate its own. The FTC won't even be able to protect consumers against most net neutrality violations after the fact, and nor will it be able to protect consumers against greedy broadband providers. And violations will come if Pai's plan passes. AT&T's Ed Whitacre summarized broadband providers' true motivations best back in 2005: "Why should they be allowed to use my pipes?," he said. "The internet can't be free in that sense, because we and the cable companies have made an investment and for a Google or Yahoo or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes free is nuts." Verizon echoed that sentiment in 2013 when it sued to challenge the 2010 open internet rules. It told a federal court that as an "information service" it had the right to charge online services like Yelp access fees simply to work on its network and should be able block those sites from Verizon subscribers if Yelp didn't pay. (Verizon won that case, leading to the 2015 order and the reclassification of broadband providers as "common carriers".) The 2015 order, replacing the one Verizon had overturned, recognized this as a threat and prohibited ISPs from charging sites and services simply to reach their users. Pai, a former Verizon lawyer, thinks this would be innovative. Now his plan would usher in a radical upending of how the internet has worked in the US since its inception. Every website could have to pay more to simply be online; prices for online services would likely rise as companies start to pay broadband providers to be in fast lanes, while broadband providers would find even sneakier ways to enact tolls on the internet, free of any agency able to set rules to stop them. Startups and their potential investors would no longer have certainty that they could compete against incumbents, as they would need lots of money simply to pay each broadband provider for access or to escape the slow lane. Today, small and medium-size businesses rely on a myriad online business services for internal communications, sales, and accounting, to name just a few. Slack, Dropbox, Gusto, Quickbooks, and thousands more would have to pay access charges and fast-lane fees, costs they would likely have to pass to their customers. Non-mainstream media news sources across the political spectrum would no longer be able to afford to compete in the marketplace of ideas. Even churches that now reach their members online with streaming sermons, video libraries, and online video chats, would no longer be protected from blocking or access fees. Americans understand this and are rightly freaking out. * Read >> MORE >>
Neutrality Matters
More On Why Net Neutrality Matters
WATCH: This Video Breaks Down Why Net Neutrality Matters | Mic explains why equal access to the Internet is important—and how the FCC is threatening that access. President Donald Trump-appointed Federal Communications Commission (FCC) head Ajit Pai is attempting to roll back net neutrality rules, which prevent well-funded websites from paying to make their content easier to access than their smaller competitors. As Representative Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) wrote for The Huffington Post back in 2014: An open Internet protects opportunities for communities of color. It lets people report on injustice and organize to confront it. An open Internet helps people of color launch businesses online, with lower startup costs than entrepreneurs often face. It lets artists and creators tell their own stories, rather than depending on traditional media to decide which stories are worth telling. * Read >> MORE >>
To Save Net Neutrality, We Must Build Our Own Internet | We must end our reliance? on big telecom monopolies and build decentralized, affordable, locally owned internet infrastructure. The Federal Communications Commission will announce a full repeal of net neutrality protections Wednesday, according to the New York Times and several other media outlets. It is possible that a committee of telecom industry plutocrats who have from the outset made it their mission to rollback regulations on the industry will bow to public pressure before Wednesday, but let's not count on it. It is time to take action, and that doesn't mean signing an online petition, upvoting a Reddit post, or calling your member of Congress. Net neutrality as a principle of the federal government will soon be dead, but the protections are wildly popular among the American people and are integral to the internet as we know it. Rather than putting such a core tenet of the internet in the hands of politicians, whose whims and interests change with their donors, net neutrality must be protected by a populist revolution in the ownership of internet infrastructure and networks. * Read >> MORE >>
How Internet Co-ops Can Protect Us From Net Neutrality Rollbacks | Smaller internet service providers offer alternatives and could disrupt the monopolies. In 2011, brand new fiber optic cables lit up for the first time across the forested terrain of the Ozarks and up and down the farmlands of central Missouri. Here among the hickories and red oaks, you might expect to be in the land that the internet forgot. That's what it could have been, had residents not decided to stop waiting on large for-profit telecommunications companies. They built their own internet instead. They turned to their electric utility for a solution, and Co-Mo Electric Cooperative, established in 1939 to bring power to the region's farms, answered the call. "What got the project off the ground was the membership demand," said Randy Klindt, who at the time was the general manager of Co-Mo Connect, the co-op's internet branch. "The members all drove it from the grassroots. They went door to door. They paid their neighbors' $100 deposit." Later at a community meeting, a local bank surprised the room by paying the deposit of everyone present. They quickly crowdfunded enough money to begin construction, and in 2011, just before Christmas, its first members came online. * Read >> MORE >>
Are You Ready to Pay For Porn?
If Net Neutrality is repealed, our internet service providers will have the power to charge us for porn and we aren't prepared for the consequences. | The FCC recently introduced a plan to repeal Net Neutrality. Depending on who you're reading about what that entails, there are theories of meticulously controlled media exploiting consumers through upcharges and dismissive claims of free market giving consumers advantages.
The latter is debunked when rural markets, who often only have single providers of any utility, are considered?—?there is no market competition in rural markets. If you're conservative and believe that there is a liberal bias in media and happen to live in a rural area, this ought to be your worst nightmare. It conjures up scenarios of the Chinese government banning Google or Orwellian nightmares. For the sake of simplicity, let's consider just one product we take for granted online: porn.
Your grandma probably watches porn | Porn may not seem like a big deal compared to all the possible ways your internet use can be controlled, but let's back up and talk about the volume and ubiquity of porn. Today most porn is watched on a cell phone. You could be huddled in the dark next to your snoring, unsuspecting partner watching big beautiful geriatric women dominate an immobilized party with a Batman™ theme using fidget spinners. You could be on a plane, boat, work retreat, or in a confessional with your priest and watch something entirely uncouth for me to describe. Not only would it be so convenient that it would seem personally designed for your lifestyle, but it's free. Porn is argued to comprise 37% of the data on the internet and some saying a conservative 30%.
Nobody is paying for all that porn | This is all incredibly impressive and huge on its own. Its economic impact is unquestionably influential in the US. What's even more startlingly, and will likely shock you less, is only 4% of people pay for it. Have you paid for porn? Many of us have been spoiled by torrents, streaming sites, and pirating to get free content. Arrgggghhh matey!
You'll have to pay and be identified by your porn habits
How your internet provider can begin filtering or throttling content. | If Net Neutrality is repealed, you'll more than likely have to pay for porn again. Net Neutrality prevents an internet service provider from charging you based on what you're looking at, changing speeds based on what you're looking at, or blocking what you look at all together. Ending porn isn't very profitable for them. Why not simply hold your desires hostage till the ransom is paid?
Ashley Madison, a dating website for anonymous people, was hacked and the identities of its members released. The hackers were trying to expose people cheating on their marriages and inadvertently outed and endangered gay people in countries where gay sex is punishable by death. It's not an outlandish or absurd thing to imagine hackers pilfering the sexual habits of a cable company's customers?—?it's happened before. We're a private species that would rather our coworkers, friends, relatives, and society at large be unaware of our sexual proclivities. * Read >> MORE >>
FCC Doubles Down on Its Dead-Wrong Definition of How the Internet Works | The Electronic Frontier Foundation and nearly 200 experts explain basically from first principles how the internet works and why it should be defined as telecommunications. The FCC dismisses these scholars and founding technologists of the internet in a footnote. In May, when the FCC released an early draft of its plan to undo 2015's strong net neutrality rules, I pointed out that its case rests almost entirely on a deeply incorrect definition of how the internet works. There can be no mistake now that this misrepresentation is deliberate; the agency has reiterated it in even stronger terms in the final draft of the proposal. I'm not going to go into great detail on it (my earlier post spells it out) but the basic problem is this: broadband has to be defined as either an information service or telecommunications service. The first is "the offering of a capability for generating, acquiring, storing, transforming, processing, retrieving, utilizing, or making available information," while the second is "the transmission, between or among points specified by the user, of information of the user's choosing, without change in the form or content of the information as sent and received." * Read >> MORE >>
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Downloads of v 2.1.712-beta
Last update
RMPrepUSB allows the Windows user to easily and quickly 'roll their own' multiboot USB drive.
It allows the user to quickly test, partition, format, install a boot manager, extract or copy files and then test a multiboot (aka multipass) USB bootable drive.
It can also make or restore an image and much more. Multiboot 'point-and-shoot' utilities like YUMI or XBOOT are excellent, however they don't support every different ISO or image.
You will learn too enjoy making your own personal multiboot drive using RMPrepUSB!
To install RMPrepUSB, run the following command from the command line or from PowerShell:
C:\> choco install rmprepusb
--version 2.1.712-beta --pre
To upgrade RMPrepUSB, run the following command from the command line or from PowerShell:
C:\> choco upgrade rmprepusb
--version 2.1.712-beta --pre
- This package was created prior to July 2014 - when package content started being included on the site. You can download and unzip the package or use Nuget Package Explorer to see the contents.
Virus Scan Results
- rmprepusb.2.1.712-beta.nupkg (be0ac06faa42) - ## / 58 - Log in or click on link to see number of positives
This package has no dependencies.
Package Maintainer(s)
Software Author(s)
Version History
|Last updated
|RMPrepUSB 2.1.722
|Friday, September 5, 2014
|RMPrepUSB 2.1.718
|Thursday, March 27, 2014
|RMPrepUSB 2.1.716
|Tuesday, December 17, 2013
|RMPrepUSB 2.1.714.20131027
|Sunday, October 27, 2013
|RMPrepUSB 2.1.714-beta
|Monday, November 4, 2013
|RMPrepUSB 2.1.713-beta
|Saturday, September 28, 2013
|RMPrepUSB 2.1.712-beta
|Saturday, September 28, 2013
|RMPrepUSB 2.1.710
|Saturday, September 28, 2013
|RMPrepUSB 2.1.709.20130825
|Sunday, August 25, 2013
|RMPrepUSB 2.1.709
|Thursday, August 8, 2013
|RMPrepUSB 2.1.708
|Monday, July 22, 2013
|RMPrepUSB 2.1.654
|Thursday, June 12, 2014
Discussion for the RMPrepUSB Package
Ground rules:
- This discussion is only about RMPrepUSB and the RMPrepUSB package. If you have feedback for Chocolatey, please contact the google group.
- This discussion will carry over multiple versions. If you have a comment about a particular version, please note that in your comments.
- The maintainers of this Chocolatey Package will be notified about new comments that are posted to this Disqus thread, however, it is NOT a guarantee that you will get a response. If you do not hear back from the maintainers after posting a message below, please follow up by using the link on the left side of this page or follow this link to contact maintainers. If you still hear nothing back, please follow the package triage process.
- Tell us what you love about the package or RMPrepUSB, or tell us what needs improvement.
- Share your experiences with the package, or extra configuration or gotchas that you've found.
- If you use a url, the comment will be flagged for moderation until you've been whitelisted. Disqus moderated comments are approved on a weekly schedule if not sooner. It could take between 1-5 days for your comment to show up.

subset: commoncrawl


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Provided by SFL League Management
This was the first appearance that ex-Essendon and Burnie star Jason Laycock made for Cygnet and he opened the game in likely style, posting the first goal for Cygnet and looming as a major threat as a key target up forward. As the game progressed there was concern for Laycock and during the third quarter he made his way to the interchange bench for the rest of the day with what appeared to be a serious foot injury.
Eagles captain Rohan Heron did not stop trying once during the game, always endeavouring to lift his team and stay in the contest. By half-time Cygnet was in the lead by 10 points, but both teams had a lot of missed opportunities for goals during the game. Inaccurate kicking and early season fitness were both factors that got in the way of the scoreline running away for either team, particularly Cygnet which missed some relatively easy set shots.
In the Under 18s New Norfolk was defeated by 50 points by the Southern Storm which put in a strong game and in the Reserves match Cygnet was victorious by 19 points.
Cygnet 2.7 (19) 3.11 (29) 6.15 (51) 8.19 (67)
New Norfolk 0.5 (5) 2.7 (19) 5.9 (39) 7.10 (52)
Goals - Cygnet: G. Quirk 2, J. Laycock 2, J. Brereton, B. Halton, G. Clark, B. Hayes; New Norfolk: M. Thompson 3, R. Heron 2, J. Foster, K. Hansen.
Best - Cygnet: B. Halton, G. Clark, J. Brereton, G. Brereton, M. Darcy, M. Dance; New Norfolk: J. Wigg, R. Heron, N. Clayton, J. Gunther, N. Eiszele, B. Wardlaw
Cygnet 4.1 (25) 4.4 (28) 7.4 (46) 9.6 (60)
New Norfolk 0.0 (0) 3.3 (21) 6.3 (39) 6.3 (39)
Goals - Cygnet: B. Dare 2, K. Butterworth, D. Duggan, B. Carver, T. Bakes, I. Coulson, S. Clark, B. Smith; New Norfolk: Z. Clayton 2, K. Walker, M. Smith.
Best - Cygnet: T. Slevin, D. Milllhouse, B. Dare, I. Coulson, T. Bakes, R. Polley; New Norfolk: M. Jones, T. Bligh, Z. Clayton, T. Duggan, T. Jarvis, J. Ackerley.
Southern Storm 4.5 (29) 6.7 (43) 8.13 (61) 11.13 (79)
New Norfolk 0.2 (2) 1.5 (11) 2.8 (20) 3.11 (29)
Goals - Southern Storm: J. Direen 4, P. O'Neill 4, E. Reardon 2, J. Bester; New Norfolk: J. Campbell 3.
Best - Southern Storm: N. Duggan, P. O'Neill, J. Bester, J. Gordon, P. O'Neill, J. Direen; New Norfolk: Z. Triffett, S. Upton, T. Heron, J. Campbell, D. Smith.
In the other games last weekend:
Brighton 11.10 (76) defeated Hobart 9.9 (63)
Hobart led for most of the day in its first game of the season against Brighton up until the final quarter when the Robins piled on six of their 11 goals putting them in the lead. In the Under 18 competition Brighton defeated Hobart by a giant margin of 114 points, and in the Reserves Hobart turned the tables and was victorious by six points.
Claremont 12.10 (82) defeated Sorell 10.6 (66)
At Pembroke Park, Sorell had been leading and taking up the challenge to the reigning premiers all day, but was unsuccessful in the end when the Magpies took the four points in their first game of the season. Claremont had a bye in the Under 18s and in the Reserves Claremont had a 96-point victory.
Huonville 11.14 (80) defeated Dodges Ferry 9.12 (66)
At Shark Park the Lions defeated Dodges Ferry in a hotly contested game. In the Reserves the Lions dominated by more than 50 points and in the Under 18s Dodges Ferry fell short by 19 points with Huonville making it three wins for the day.


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Hi everyone,
I recently created a scrapbook layout class out of some papers and stickers from the Echo Park Here and Now collection and had some things left over so I decided to make a card. I took one of the 4×6 cards from the paper and designed my card from there. I added a chevron border sticker and trimmed off the excess. Stamped my sentiment using jet black archival ink and added some stickers, pearls, brad, Maya Road pin and some twine. I distressed the edges of the white card and the paper to give the card some extra texture and mounted the papers using foam adhesive.
Thanks for stopping by,
Supplies: White Card, Jet Black Archival Ink, Echo Park Here and Now – papers and sticker sheet, twine, brad, pearl, Maya Road Pin, Stamp – Flourishes – Just My Type.


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The Roman Catholic Church, as a result of its views on poverty, human rights, etc., provides all kinds of charitable works. Everything from hospitals to soup kitchens to caring for orphans.
All of which is immensely laudable. Worthy, indeed.
Which is why this is so shocking.
What it boils down to is a threat; if the city grants equal marriage rights, the church will cease providing charitable services.
It's their privilege, of course. But it's morally indefensible. It's using the poor, sick, indigent and orphaned as hostages.
Monday, November 16, 2009
It's Called Blackmail
Posted by ogre at 3:17 PM 5 comments:
Labels: blackmail, charity, Roman Catholic Church
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)


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This is City Politics?
Roughly six months ago I started attending the City of Seattle's Broadband Technology Task Force as part of a clinic at the law school. The Task Force was created by a Resolution of the City of Seattle charging it to recommend means to bring broadband technology to Seattle citizens. One part of the Resolution asked the Task Force to look into legal issues surrounding any possible proposal. Since my clinic's faculty member, Prof. Covington, served on the Task Force, he felt it would be an excellent task for a clinician to help out with.
These meeting take place at 7:30 in the morning and were all sorts of stuffy. But that's okay, I support the goal, and this is how government works. What frustrates me is as the proposal developed their interest in the surrounding legal issues wained. Today they finalized that proposal, in all of its mediocre glory, with the blessing of the City Council member who drafted the original resolution.
What is so upsetting is the indifference to the legal issues surrounding the proposal. Regardless of how modest the proposal, I believe Comcast, Verizon, or Quest is going to sue to enjoin. They may not have a winning legal argument, but they may have a winning argument in the court of public opinion. So it strikes me that the City should have a complete sense of what legal challenges might be brought so it can weigh the challenges it may face in court. But the Task Force Staff disagrees.
The Staff had a paralegal review the issue and determine that there were no legal issues. Ridiculous… my analysis says there are all sorts of possible ambiguities in the law that a challenger could bring. Only the most favorable reading of the law turns in the City's favor… and while I think they have a really good case, its certainly not as locked up as the paralegal would have them believe. But even that's okay, because I figured that the office that will oversee their proposal would look into the surrounding legal issues.
Those hopes were dashed today when I finally got a hold of the Task Force recommendation. Buried among the numerous detailed recommendations in the 56 page report are four instances of the word 'legal'. Three of them appear within the resolution creating the Task Force directing them to evaluate the legal issues. The other appearance is part of a recommendation that the office investigate "legal, economic, and technological issues" and then gives several examples of economic and technological issues. No legal issues were mentioned. There was another section that said the office should look into applicable laws and regulations, which is good, but made no mention of the contracts at issue, which is where the real problem lies. So, I figured I would speak up and recommend the word 'contract' and at least give the new office a fighting chance of doing its proper legal research. Wouldn't you know it… the staff tried to shoot me down again! They claimed it was "implied" in the report. This is a report that made well of 50 recommendations that are all pretty much the same. If the report was based on implication it could have been summarized in five sentences. Thankfully cooler heads prevailed and the word will appear in the report.
But in retrospect, its really a very minor victory. The Task Force failed to do its job to investigate legal issues. It even failed to direct the office towards the issues, concentrating more on the marketing aspects of the proposal. Now the City Council is going to do one of two things: adopt the proposal without knowing the full legal issues OR ask why no one looked at the legal ramifications. Either way, the City loses.


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String Lights, Battery Operated, 6 Foot Green Wire, Indoor, White
Sold OutDR-LT10BATC
Our warm white Deco String Lights run on 2 C size batteries and measure approximately 7.5 feet in length. There is an in-line rotary on/off switch. The steady burning Christmas lights and the green wire makes them the perfect decorative to any environment, occasion or project. Enhance your floral and craft designs. They are ideal for adding that special glow to weddings and showers. Perfect for showcasing cherished collectibles, adding brilliance to festive occasions or warmth to your homes atmosphere.
- Bulb Type: Incandescent mini lights
- Light Count: 10
- Lighted Length: 6 ft
- Bulb Spacing: 6 in
- Lead Length: 17 in
- Tail Length: 0 ft
- Wire Color: Green
- Battery Type: 2xC batteries (sold separately)
- Battery Pack Size: 2.25x2x1
- Grade: Indoor use
- Ideas: Wedding Lights, White Christmas Lights, Outdoor Christmas Lights


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© University of Kent - Contact | Feedback | Legal | FOI | Cookies
Friends' Events and Visits
Friends are invited to join our weekly research seminars, and are welcome at a host of other open lectures and events organised by the University of Kent. We also run a series of tours and visits for Friends each term – this year's programme of events was as follows. We look forward to announcing more events and visits for our Friends in the forthcoming academic year September 2015-August 2016.
- A tour of 'The Ancestors' exhibition at Canterbury Cathedral with its curator, Leonie Seliger - read a piece by Sheila Sweetinburgh
- A visit to the 'Magna Carta: Law, Liberty, Legacy' exhibition at the British Library - read a review by Dr Julia Cruse
- 'The Jews of Canterbury' - A virtual walking tour by Jonathan Butchers
- 'The Re-establishment of Canterbury Cathedral Library' - a study session led by Dr David Shaw
- Discovering Saint Stephen's of Hackington and the Manwood Monument - a tour led by Dr Sheila Sweetinburgh and Mary Berg
In the previous year, Friends took part in the following activities:
- An Early Modern drama walking tour of Canterbury, led by Dr Sarah James
- A Guided tour of Saint John's Hospital, Canterbury led by Dr Sheila Sweetingburgh
- Visit to 'The Vikings: Life and Legend' exhibition at the British Museum
- MEMS Garden Party and guided tour of The Corona at Canterbury Cathedral


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Rust Devblog 140
Posted on December 16th, 2016 05:01 PM EST
Planters, Santa, and more.
Video Update
Farming 1.5
I redid some aspects of farming, but we're not all the way there yet. This patch you will notice that we have added Planter Boxes to the game. They'll come in both a small and large variety, though only large made it into this patch, and can be placed on the ground or inside buildings. They have easy to use placement guides for plants, so you can sow seeds at their optimal distance. They will also make plants grow 3x faster than if they were placed on the ground outside! Also, all plants must now be placed at least a foot away from each other. Next patch I'll make it so plants get a bonus from being watered and an even greater bonus from the usage of ceiling lights above them. Seeds also have a small sapling guide to help you visualize where your plants will grow. Enjoy!
Holiday Content Enabled!
Happy Holidays everyone! We've re-enabled the holiday content! For those of you who missed it last year, here's how it works: every day in game day you'll hear some jingling bells and a Gift Box or two will appear not too far from your current position. Run outside and smash them to retrieve presents! These presents can be unwrapped immediately for something small, or collected and upgraded to larger ones for a chance at a better gift. If you're lucky, you'll find a stocking. Hang it by a campfire and the next time you hear the jingle bells ring your stockings will be stuffed with goodies!
This year I've made some modifications so that stockings will only refill if they are empty, and each refill costs it 10% of its health until it's destroyed. Have fun everyone!
Decal Culling
The caves added a lot of static projected decals to the world and unfortunately none of them were being culled with the rest of the caves. This had a huge impact on performance, especially on servers that were using bigger maps. I added culling scripts to all of those decals to address those issues. The fix already went live in a small update after last week's devblog.
Exploit Fixes
I'm continuing my efforts to fix exploits and hacks. I'm aiming to get to a point where we have server side checks in place for all weapon functionality before the holidays.
This week I fixed some minor outstanding issues with the server side line-of-sight verification, added verified periodic position updates for projectiles, and addressed some projectile ricochet verification issues. I also tracked down a building exploit inside the natural caves that was allowing people to build inside some of the cave walls.
Updated Santa Hat
The old Santa hat was really terrible, so I spent an evening making a new one so you can spread your festive cheer in style. Or murder people wearing it, whatever.
Bear Rework
I've started reworking some of the animals in preparation for the updated AI. There's been talk about looking at some of the animations, so I want to make sure I can get some blockouts going early on, so that any potential adjustments to the rig can be done before a whole new load of animations are done.
Here's where the bear is right now. It's still just a blockout, but it'll mostly be covered in fur (which is a whole challenge in itself) so I'll be mainly focusing on detailing the face and paws going forward.
Dynamic Occlusion Culling
It's long been known that Rust has poor visibility culling. The problem is mostly because we can't use Unity's own occlusion system simply due to the fact that our maps are procedurally generated. However, there are some solutions out there that work with dynamically generated worlds, and I've been working on implementing such a system.
The new occlusion culling recognizes occluders, like terrain, and allows for fully dynamic occludees. The first version of the system just landed on Prerelease and can be toggable using the console command "culling.enabled 1". Please note that it's not improving performance just yet as we're still testing and validating results. Do expect improvements over the coming days, however.
The image below shows how the system working on our procedurally placed rocks and cliffs:
On the bottom left you can see our current distance-based culling, while on the bottom right you can see the new system working that can cull objects which are not within the camera view or are occluded by terrain.
Rendering Optimizations
We've been getting a lot of reports of poor performance. We're very aware of the issue and working hard to improve it. I've made a couple of changes this week to help improve the situation:
- Re-enabled Unity's built-in dynamic batching
- Optimized deferred mesh decal visibility culling
Nuked Virtual Texturing
You may notice that the virtual texturing performance option is gone this week. Terrain shader optimizations, in the past couple of months, have made the regular shader efficient enough to make virtual texturing not worth the runtime cost. We also save development and maintenance time that will be useful for other, more critical, features.
Grenade Viewmodel Animations
This week I've been chasing a few bugs. I've also set up both the F1 and Beancan grenades to play specific animations when dropping or attaching. It still needs some code love so you can actually see this in game, but the animations and state setup is all in place. Here's a video until then:
I've been continuing with the truck model shown in the last update. I spent some time earlier this week creating a simple interior. Since then I've been working on the lowpoly and preparing the mesh for baking. Once that's done I will begin texturing.
Harbor Level Design
After completing most of our prop art last week, I moved on to completing the harbor levels. While Harbor_1 is almost ready, Harbor_2 still needs quite a bit of work to reach the same stage. I have been working toward that over the last few days.
I've just been plugging away at the second pass over animal sounds this week, and working on music a bit when I need a break from that. I'm really happy with how the updated animal sounds are coming along so far!
Fixed water occasionally not visible when exiting caves Fixed billboard shadows in OSX/GL Added culling to projected cave decals (performance) Fixed some minor server side line of sight verification issues Fixed pumpkin and santa hat being invisible Fixed partially harvested ore nodes showing up as fully intact Fixed cave building exploits Reduced networking MTU size from 1430 to 1400 Added periodic position updates with server side verification to projectiles Fixed projectile ricochet verification issues Fixed parts of the bear corpse not being harvestable Tweaked weapon reload verification Fixed endless vm bandage bug Fixed vm flamethrower flickering hand bug Added clothing world models Updated santa hat art Added Large Planter All plants must be placed atleast 0.5m of eachother Plants now have a placement guide Enabled Holiday Content


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While at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, FL my wife was in need of a gluten free meal and gluten free pizza was on the top of the list. A quick search revealed a Mellow Mushroom close to the Clinic. We have had good experiences at several Mellow Mushrooms across the south so she decided […]Read More...
Gluten Free Restaurant Guides
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This is the first year where the American AAdvantage program has a revenue requirement. You need to spend a minimum of $3,000, $6,000, $9,000, or $12,000 to earn Gold, Platinum, Platinum Pro, and Executive Platinum, respectively.
|Platinum Pro
|Executive Platinum
|25K EQMs or 30 EQSs
|50K EQMs or 60 EQSs
|75K EQMs or 90 EQSs
|100K EQMs or 120 EQSs
|$3k EQDs
|$6k EQDs
|$9k EQDs
|$12k EQDs
American is also making it tough to get any sort of a waiver on the revenue requirement for status. For example, Delta SkyMiles completely waives the revenue requirement (even for earning top tier elite status), as long as you spend at least $25,000 per year on one of their co-brand credit cards.
Meanwhile American only lets you earn Elite Qualifying Dollars for spend on the Barclaycard AAdvantage Aviator Silver Card, which has a $195 annual fee. The card offers the following perks for incremental spend:
- Up to 6,000 worth of elite qualifying dollars (3,000 when spending $25,000, and another 3,000 when spending another $25,000)
- Up to 10,000 elite qualifying miles (5,000 when spending $20,000, and another 5,000 when spending another $20,000)
- An annual $99 companion ticket on your account anniversary (when you spend $30,000 on purchases)
So as I wrote about in April, I decided to upgrade to the Aviator Silver Card (you can't apply for it directly, but rather have to apply for the Aviator Red Card, and then have it for a year before you can upgrade).
I've just completed my first $5,000 of spend on the card, which earns me 3,000 EQDs and 5,000 EQMs. So, how quickly do these post? Do they post right away, do they wait a couple of billing cycles, do they post at the end of the year, or what?
Well, at least based on my experience, the bonus EQDs and EQMs post as soon as the statement closes where you complete your required spend.
Even with that boost to my account, my totals for the year look pathetic. We're over halfway through the year, and I still need to earn 5,000 more EQDs and 65,000 more EQMs.
I'm simply not loyal to the program or the airline anymore. I now fly the airline that's most convenient. For the first time in at least five years, less than half of my domestic travel has been on American.
So on one hand I'm over being loyal to them when it comes to flying, but at the same time I am putting some effort into requalifying in the form of credit card spend, so I know I'm not acting completely rationally. Since irrational consumer behavior is the goal of these loyalty programs, I guess I'm letting them win?


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Moenning Hill Farm
About Us
Our Goats
Our Bucks
Our Does
Our Wethers
Sale Pages
Bucks for Sale
Does for Sale
Wethers for Sale
Sales Policy
Contact Us
Life at MHF!
Discover Moenning Hill Farm!
Our History
Our Farm
Welcome to Moenning Hill Farm!
Our farm has quite a rich history, dating back to the 1800's. My great-great grandfather Moenning bought the property where our farm resides back in the mid 1800's. My great-grandfather Moenning built the current home on the property in 1890. In later years, the farmstead was passed to my grandmother Elsie Moenning Tormoehlen and she and my grandpa Hugo raised cattle & hogs along with farming the acreage surrounding the homestead. I was blessed to be able to purchase the homestead in 2001.
The property where our farm sits is on top of one of two adjoining hills. The Moenning family owned the land on the east side and the Petering family owned the land on the west side, thus they became known as Petering Hill and Moenning Hill. With all the history of our family and farm, I felt that Moenning Hill Farm was the perfect name for our farm.
Our logo depicts the two adjoining hills represented in green to reflect the lush pastures and acreage of our farm. The logo also hosts a silhouette of one of our first bucks we raised, that helped develop our herd of Myotonic goats that we own today.
I feel honored to own our farm that has been passed down through so many generations of the Moenning Family. I spent my summers on the farm and it holds a very special place in my heart.
I am Staci Rogers and I have worked full-time in the banking industry for 28 years. My 20 year old daughter Whitney is my pride & joy as well as the co-owner of the farm. She graduated from Trinity Lutheran High School in 2017, where she was a member of the National Honor Society, and played varsity basketball and volleyball. She is currently a sophomore at the IU School of Nursing. Together we work hard to improve the quality of our herd and take pride in our Moenning Hill offspring.
After purchasing the farm in 2001, we bought a couple horses and also boarded a few horses for a friend. With a two year old and a full-time outside of the home, I had little time to ride the horses so I ended up selling them and purchasing a herd of miniature horses to keep our pastures trimmed. But then came the goats...
Growing up on a dairy farm, I always thought it would be fun to own a pet goat or two, so in April of 2009 I decided that a few goats would be the perfect birthday gift for myself. And so the search began.
After researching many breeds of goats we came to a unanimous agreement that Myotonic fainting goats were the breed for us. We found a small farm in Greenwood Indiana and after visiting their farm, we brought home our first four fainters, a buck, two does and a doeling. It didn't take us long to realize what amazing animals they are and over the years we've added several great bloodlines to our herd.
Today my daughter and I have around 30 Myotonic goats on the farm.
We typically breed for March and September kiddings. All of our goats are registered with the Myotonic Goat Registry (MGR). We are proud of the hardy and muscular Tennessee type goats we've produced and our goats have done very well in the county fairs across the state, including four out of five years of earning Grand Champion Myotonic doe at the Jackson Co Fair.
Our Family
In loving memory
Moenning Hill Farm Emmeline MHF
12/30/14 - 12/14/16
My heart, my soul, my Emmy.
Emmy, my Emmy. Emmy Miami.
You left hoofprints on my heart.
Thanks for being the best girl of all.


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Business is BusinessOct 03, 2012
I think it would be a really fun thing to have a modern monopoly game with updated totals and all the cards are modernized with tax evasion and shady investments. I think it makes the monopoly guy look even bigger rich douche.
I don't like to make political statements, so I always try and make fun of the concept not the person. This was mainly inspired by a recent NPR Planet Money podcast about creating shell companies to help manage money from foreign sources. I never really took any classes about economics, but I've listened to almost every Planet Money podcast, so I can throw the lingo around but I don't really know the finite details behind it. Next week, it will be a graph of how much you enjoy NPR versus your age.


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6 years ago Broadband speeds had very little effect on house sales. However, agents now report that good connectivity is a prime concern for buyers, even if they are not running a business from home. "Fast Broadband speed is at the top of the list of requirements for most of our clients for whom we are conducting … [Read more...]
Best Beach – Whitesands Bay
Whitesands Bay near St Davids, in the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, has won Countryfile Magazine's "Beach of the Year 2014/2015". The glorious wide, sandy, Blue Flag beach, together with Freshwater West in South Pembrokeshire, is renowned as one of the best surfing beaches in Wales and joins the list of other … [Read more...]
The Perfect Property!
There is no such thing as The Perfect Property. A property which may be ideal for one buyer, being close to a good school for their children, for example, may not suit a couple whose children have left home. A four storey Georgian townhouse may be a dream property for the young and fit whilst a bungalow will be ideal … [Read more...]
Recommended Places to Eat in West Wales
Here are some of what we, at West Wales Property Finders, consider the best places to eat in West Wales. These range from fine dining at The Grove, Narberth through small bistros, waterside cafes where you can enjoy a crab sandwich and a glass of wine and cafes, to a beachside van serving lobster rolls; but all are … [Read more...]
Pembrokeshire Set for New Hollywood Blockbuster
Pembrokeshire looks likely to be back starring on the silver screen soon as the set for a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film production of British author JoJo Moyes' best selling novel, "Me Before You". Location Manager, Richard George, from the world famous Pinewood Studios is looking to start shooting the film in the town … [Read more...]
Farmland – A great investment?
Farmland is soaring in price and is now outstripping shares, and even London property prices, with the average price rocketing 15% in 2014. The average price per acre in the UK is now at a record high of £7,925, according to a report by Knight Frank. This compares to an average of £6,891 a year ago and many of those … [Read more...]
Manorial Rights
An MPs' report has called on the Law Commission to consider axing manorial rights. Compensation could be offered if these "Lord of the Manor" titles were scrapped. These rights, which date back to the Middle Ages, can give holders the power to dig for minerals, shoot, hunt or fish over other people's land. A law … [Read more...]
Time to Invest in Holiday Lets
Nearly 800,000 foreign tourists flocked to Wales in 2014; around 100,000 more than in 2014. In the third quarter of the year the increase was 7.5% over the previous year, giving Wales's tourist industry a major boost with an extra £9m spent, according to the Office of National Statistics. With Tenby's Harbour Beach … [Read more...]


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Adventures in Ankara
Exploring adventures, tourism, history, culture, and the cuisine of Turkey . . . and the rest of the world
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What's New in Illinois Forestry
EQIP Adds Forest Management Plans to the Environmental Equation
Illinois NRCS Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) for 2007 includes a new incentive option with good news for landowners with forested and wooded acres. Eligible applicants will receive $400 to help hire a professional forester who will visit the property, inventory the site, and write out a complete woodland management plan, explains IL NRCS State Conservationist Bill Gradle.
New Forest Trees of Illinois Book
The Illinois Department of Natural Resources is proud to announce the release of the 9th edition of Forest Trees of Illinois. To order your copy of this popular book ($10), please visit DNR's Gift Shop web site or call (800) 720-3249.
Emerald Ash Borer Quarantine Established for Kane County
The Illinois Department of Agriculture recently established a 51 square mile quarantine zone in Kane County...(read more)
Emerald Ash Borer Strikes Again
The Illinois Department of Agriculture has confirmed the second positive infestation of emerald ash borer in Wilmette, Cook County...(read more)
Emerald Ash Borer
Lily Lake in Kane County is home to the first positive identification of the highly destructive metallic green beetle that wreaks havoc on native ash trees...(read more)
Woodland Tax Assessment
State lawmakers passed a resolution (HJR 95) to maintain woodland property tax assessments at their 2005 levels for two years until a Task Force can examine the issue in greater detail...(read more)
Illinois Forestry Association
A new grass roots organization representing the voice of Illinois forestry was recently created...(read more)
2006-2007 National Register of Big Trees
The 2006-2007 big tree register is available for viewing at American Forests' web site...(read more)


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Queen of the U-Boat Killers
Yes readers she was "one" of the first....hastily converted escort carrier, CVE-11
She had to prove herself....and she did with a "fighting heart" and the champion of a
Dragon Slayer.
Actually the Card was actually called "The Lucky Eleven". Let me tell you folks she
carried the fight to the U-boats and for the most part she won every fight she picked.
If you wish to give this article just click : HERE


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Rick Stein is easy, often compelling, to watch. His burly enthusiasm on TV is infectious, as he trips over words in his determination to hook viewers in. In the flesh, however, he is not the physically imposing man I imagined him to be, although his forearms betray a pugilist past. And, for all the force of his screen personality, there is just a hint that he is not as self-assured as he appears.
A film producer once told him exactly that. "He said: 'You don't know this, but you've got it,' " Stein tells me, in the tea room of a central London hotel. " 'You've got presence on the screen. Nobody can explain what it is, but you've got it.' " His chef's journey to fame and fortune has, however, played out against a background of uncertainty, created by what he remembers as his father's lack of belief in him. The deficit in his relationship with his father, who was bi-polar, is partly, he thinks, what pushed him in front of the camera and into the public sphere.
Stein was born the fourth of five children in 1947 in Oxfordshire. He was brought up on the farm his parents owned but his father was in London much of the week, where he worked as the managing director of a distillery that had once been in the family's name. Privately educated, Stein managed only two Es in his A-levels at a crammer. Then, when he was 18, his father killed himself.
"Our relationship certainly still has an impact because it was not an easy one," says Stein. "He was immensely charismatic, very intelligent and very charming to lots of people, but not really to me." He half laughs. "I'm sure he liked me, he probably didn't have the energy with me at home to go that extra distance to make me feel wanted and special. My second wife Sarah was made to feel special as a child, and the difference between me and her is everything. She looks on the bright side and I don't."
He begins to qualify himself. "I might be naturally a bit of a depressive anyway and I'm blaming my father. But I do believe it and I do get quite tearful when I think about my father's death and its ramifications. If you are made to feel inadequate when you're young, one of the things you do, if you can get away with it, is overcompensate."
Mental illness in a family is, in Stein's words, "such an enormous sucker-in of energy". His mother did her best to hide it from the children and had stopped his father from killing himself twice before. "She would have felt incredibly pissed off about it because she put in so much effort and then he just went and did it anyway. I was listening to this discussion about August: Osage County, the film with Meryl Streep, and she was talking about the viciousness of suicide. What she meant was that in some ways it's easy to kill yourself but it's bloody hard to be left behind."
After school, Stein embarked on a hotel management traineeship with British Transport Hotels in Paddington. It proved an essential stepping stone in his rise to becoming a chef. "It was a proper traineeship – so you did six months in the kitchens, six as a waiter, six on reception and gradually you acquired all the skills to run a hotel and become a manager. I only managed to do the six months in the kitchen." But he learned how kitchens worked.
Stein was, as he writes in his autobiography, "in turmoil" at the time and "couldn't work out" who he was. He got a job in insurance, but with his emotional life scarred by his father's suicide, he set off for Australia, where he worked in an abattoir, and travelled to New Zealand and Mexico. On his return, he took the Oxford entrance exam to New College, graduating with a third-class degree in English.
Stein's family had holidayed in Padstow when he was a boy and still owned a house there. Having run a mobile disco at university, he decided to open one in the Cornish seaside town with a friend. But its popularity – and late licence – made the local pub landlords jealous. In order to get the place shut down, they "caused fights by third parties". The disco was duly closed by magistrates who refused to re-issue the licence. "They declare you not a fit and proper person, which really upset me because I came from a very law-abiding background and it really got to me. So it made me determined to do something with my life."
Stein and his business partner were bailed out by their mothers and reopened as a fish restaurant. As a child he had loved fishing with his father and there had been lots of fresh fish in the house. "I knew all about fish." Becoming a chef had never been a burning ambition, but he could cook – and not just thanks to his hotel training. He had watched his mother at home. "I spent so much time in that kitchen, I never, ever had to learn [to cook]."
After "tiny" takings in the first 12 months, within five years the restaurant had become a real success. A year in, Stein and his business partner went separate ways and Stein ran it as a joint venture with his first wife, Jill, with whom he went on to have three sons. "She came in and ran the front-of-house and I did the kitchen. We depended on each other. I don't think either of us could have done it without the other. I owe her a great deal."
In 1997, after more than 20 years of marriage, Stein began an affair with his Australian publicist, Sarah Burns. He kept the relationship secret from his wife for five years. Was the media interest difficult when it became public knowledge? "It was horrible – apart from the fact I felt very bad about leaving my wife. But it was horrible. For me and for Sarah. People were ringing her up all night in Australia from England," he says. "But then, I suppose you've got to be philosophical. If you are in the public eye then everything is fair game."
Today, Stein is happily married to Sarah. "You asked me what my hobby is – it's Sarah. Because she's really lively, she keeps me on my toes and keeps telling me to 'stop stuffing around!' " In 2009, the couple opened a seafood restaurant on the New South Wales coast. He still co-owns his British businesses with Jill. They now include a restaurant, bistro, café, fish-and-chip shop and cookery school in Padstow, now known to many as "Padstein".
It was while making a success of his restaurant business that Stein worked his way slowly on to our screens. When his first restaurant was voted the best in England by a national newspaper, he won a walk-on role in Floyd on Fish, the series that established Keith Floyd's TV career. Ten years later, he was given his own show. Stein's screen success is built on the chef being himself, although he admits to acting up "a bit".
His temper, both on set and off, has calmed in recent years. Stein recalls the moment during his first year running a restaurant when a man punched him in his kitchen. "I fell against the worktop and knocked all the fish pies I was preparing all over the floor. I lost it and started fighting back. I was going to throw him in the harbour. Eventually people came up and pulled us apart." Stein lifts his fists in pugnacious pose and is immediately transformed into a stocky adversary. Had he wanted to kill the man? "I suppose so, yes. And then I calmed down and I was absolutely appalled."
The man prosecuted Stein. "Fortunately he dropped it before we got to court but I thought my whole future, which was now beginning to shape up, was in danger of coming to nothing. I spent six months before the court case really worried. I've never had any sort of physical violence with anybody ever again. I learnt you can't sort stuff out like that."
Stein says he still has a temper. "I do lose it. I used to lose it terribly when I was cooking. It's much easier in my kitchens now because we've spent a lot of money on making them cooler and putting decent chefs in there who can do the job properly. In my day, it was very hot, and a lot of the chefs working with me were not good, so I used to lose it a lot."
Nowadays he devotes his huge energy to presenting and communicating with those he meets about food. "You get prickles in the back of your neck – you're talking to a very ordinary Indian guy in a very ordinary Indian city and you suddenly realise you're talking the same language. You've got the same likes and dislikes and you're talking about food which you both love. If you're going somewhere to find out about the food, you've got an instant reason for being there, one that everybody understands.
"We were in Corleone in Sicily once and some mafia boss had just been discovered. There were all these news teams there and somebody in a bar asked whether we were there for him, and we said: 'No, no, we're here for the pasta.' "
'Under A Mackerel Sky' by Rick Stein (Ebury £7.99) is available to order from Telegraph Books at £7.99 + £1.95 p&p. Call 0844 871 1514 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk


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States React, Act On Health Law Waivers, Implementation Issues
Sen. Ron Wyden draws line in the sand about how health law waivers should be used. Meanwhile, Kansas' planning board continues its efforts toward the creation of a state-based health exchange while acknowledging that the federal government may end up in charge. Also, in Oregon, a consumer-run health plan is positioning itself to be included in the state's exchange.
Politico Pro: Wyden To Romney: Don't Abuse My Waivers
The author of the health care reform law's state innovation waivers says he's glad Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is interested in them, but he'll be the first to call foul if the presidential contender uses them to undermine health care reform. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) says Romney's waiver plan won't work in the way he intends it to. Romney has repeatedly said he'd use "waivers" to allow the states to get around big pieces of the Affordable Care Act. As Politico reported last week, his team hopes to use the law's state innovation waivers to allow states to skirt the individual mandate, employer requirements and exchanges in 2017 (Haberkorn, 10/21).
Kansas Health Institute News: Exchange Planning Group Eyes Governing Structure
Come Jan. 1, 2014, Kansas very likely won't be operating its own health insurance exchange. But that won't be for lack of planning. A work group that has been meeting regularly since January, today discussed major details of how a state-run exchange would be governed and operate, all the while acknowledging the greater possibility that the federal government will end up running the show (Shields, 10/20).
The Lund Report: Consumer-Run Health Plan Applies for Federal Funds
A new consumer-owned health plan sponsored by CareOregon has applied for a nearly $7 million start-up loan from the federal government. ... "One piece of the [health law] is that each state can have one co-operative on the health insurance exchange," said Martin Taylor, public policy director for CareOregon. This plan is intended for people whose incomes are too high to qualify for Medicaid and cannot afford to purchase other coverage (McCurdy, 10/20).


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I have to admit- when I first heard that BU Law Review members write a thirty-page paper on a "novel" legal theory, my first thought was, is that mandatory? I certainly hoped not. I had survived my first year of law school reading cases and thinking about legal rules. But come up with original ideas? Think of a legal argument that no one has made yet? Seemed like a near impossible task.
At the end of 1L year I, along with many others in my class, participated in the writing competition to get onto a law journal. We got the 300-page packet of instructions and research materials as soon as we finished our last exam. Four law school exams immediately followed by a week of footnote citations and memo writing is not exactly a time in my life that I look back on fondly. But we powered through, and by July we were getting phone calls and congratulations from one of the six different journals at BU Law: BU Law Review, American Journal of Law and Medicine, Review of Banking and Finance Law, International Law Journal, Journal of Science and Technology Law, and Public Interest Law Journal.
I am now a member of BU Law Review, which means that three times each semester I spend about 10 days editing an article that is being prepared for publishing. This is a large time commitment in itself. And now that we're five weeks into the semester I have to start thinking about the dreaded thirty-page paper, called a "Note." Turns out, its mandatory.
When I sat down to brainstorm, I tried to think of a general topic first. Most of my ideas were about legal issues I had come in contact with over the summer – either in the Health Care Fraud Unit at the U.S. Attorney's Office or during my part-time research for Professor Jeffrey Cohen on publicity sanctions for corporations.
Once I took the time to really think about it, I was pleasantly surprised to find that not only do I have some identifiable interests, but I also have enough knowledge about them to have some opinions. You know how people say that you know you understand something when you can explain it to someone else? Well, you know that you understand a legal issue when you have an opinion about the direction that the case law should go in.
Now I'm starting to push myself to come up with some original thoughts and novel arguments. It certainly isn't going to be easy, but it seems a lot more possible than it did a few months ago.
This is an example of how law school is both frustrating and amazing: you read and struggle and at times feel like you are drowning in – instead of actually absorbing – information. But, eventually, all of that struggling slowly settles into a strong foundation of legal knowledge.
And that foundation is constantly growing and getting stronger. Even five weeks into the semester, I know so much more than I did over the summer. Remember that time I tried to explain my interest in the False Claims Act to a potential employer during an interview? I clearly had no idea what I was talking about. But now, I could probably have a halfway intelligent conversation about the False Claims Act. Another five weeks from now, who knows – maybe I'll have an original thought!


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Wednesday, August 7, 2013
A Bold New Heroine
by Ellen Crosby
Author of Multiple Exposure
My husband warned me. I did listen.
But to be honest, I was unprepared for the number of e-mails and comments on sites like Goodreads and Amazon when the word got out that after six books in the Virginia wine country mysteries, I was switching gears and writing something different.
Here's what I was thinking: it's time. I'd written myself into the proverbial corner because The Merlot Murders was originally supposed to be a standalone and I'd always planned to do something different after finishing that book. In fact, what I planned to do was write Multiple Exposure. Yup, it's true. When I found my old notes in a couple of yellowed notebooks, I blew dust off papers from 2003.
After six wine country mysteries it was getting harder to play fair with my fans, harder to keep you guessing whodunit, because by now you knew who-didn't-dun-it in the small-but-charming town of Atoka, Virginia. What I learned from writing those books is a lesson I now pass on to anyone who hopes to be published someday: don't do what I did. Write on a big canvas and think about a big story with lots of possible arcs for future books—in other words, a series. Make sure you create complex, richly developed characters in a vivid, evocative setting because you'll probably be spending years of your life with these people and they'd better be worth your time investment. Don't write just one book where you tie everything up neatly at the end . . . and then have to un-knit it for future stories.
For those who've read my wine country mysteries—all of them—how many of you remember Lucie's sister Mia? To refresh your memory, she drifts out of the picture after The Chardonnay Charade, the second book, and gets a brief mention without actually appearing in The Viognier Vendetta, the fifth one. Enough said.
So back to my dilemma. Sure, I knew people would be unhappy if I stopped writing the wine country mysteries. People loved Lucie—and so do I. But I'm not Arthur Conan Doyle writing about Sherlock Holmes and don't we all wonder when, not if, J.K. Rowling is going to succumb and write Harry Potter Returns or maybe Son of Harry Potter? What I figured was that you guys liked my writing, my voice, my style, the way I told a story well enough that you'd come with me down a new road with a new character named Sophie Medina, an international photojournalist, a restless, inquisitive, intelligent woman who's been in war zones, slept in tents in the desert, ridden camels if that was what it took to get where the story was.
Multiple Exposure is darker and edgier than my previous books, so reviewers are calling it a "thriller." And if I may be permitted to brag (when Sandy asked me to write this post she didn't tell me I couldn't, and I'd rather ask forgiveness than permission, anyway), it's getting some pretty terrific pre-publication reviews about being fast-paced, well-plotted, and, best of all, well-written. But if you've read Moscow Nights, my out-of-print British book—occasionally you can find it on UK or Australian used bookstore websites—you'll know that with Multiple Exposure I've come full circle, writing about a journalist in an international setting, because I know about it firsthand.
Why a photographer rather than a journalist? Years ago, I wrote feature stories for The Journal, a now-defunct newspaper that was circulated around the Beltway to the entire Metro Washington, D.C. area, and just before I started writing fiction full-time, I wrote regional features as a freelancer for The Washington Post. Both papers always assigned photographers to my stories and it soon became obvious that the combination of my words and someone else's picture—I had fabulous photographers—usually landed us on the front page of the metro section. More often than not we were above the fold, which is prime real estate in journalism. Okay, now I'm really done bragging, but when I decided to write Multiple Exposure—take note, and future books—I knew I wanted to write from the perspective of the journalist who was looking for exactly the right picture to tell the story, rather than the right words.
My husband teases me that this new series has been the perfect excuse to call all purchases of camera equipment and books on photography "business expenses," because I'm such a photography geek, but, hey, who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth? However I'm serious about doing research, just as I was in the wine country mysteries, because the journalist in me wants to get it right. Plus I gave Sophie an amazing grandfather named Charles Lord (much like Lucie's French grandfather), a man who was one of the original photographers from the iconic Magnum studio, so Henri Cartier-Bresson hired him and he was friends with all of Magnum's legendary post World War II founders. If you read my books you know I'm also kind of a history nut, so Charles's background gives me the chance to weave the history of a fascinating era in photojournalism into Sophie's story.
To answer one final question that I've been asked a lot: no, I haven't closed the door on writing more wine country mysteries. But I sure am having fun writing Sophie Medina's story.
Ellen Crosby is a former foreign correspondent who now lives in the Washington, DC, area. Learn more about Ellen and both her series at http://www.ellencrosby.com.
6 comments:
- Rhonda Lane said...
Hi, Ellen - Very excited about your new series. Congratulations! I'm looking forward to meeting you at Bouchercon since we share a fascination with globe-trotting photojournalists. I used to be a photog, but only with a small daily's suburban bureau, which suited my and my worried husband's awkward low tolerance for personal risk. :)
Speaking of risk, I'm very impressed with your bold decision to switch subgenres, especially from one that's a much safer bet commercially these days. Did any aspects of your writing process change as you made the switch? Did you feel your Voice change?
Thank you for coming to PDD! :)
- August 7, 2013 at 9:59 AM
- Robin C said...
Ellen, I think it is awesome that you are branching out into different subgenres (thanks Rhonda Lane). I appreciate an author who has multiple stories and characters. Bravo!
- August 7, 2013 at 10:28 AM
- Sandra Parshall said...
Thanks for being with us today, Ellen.
In answer to your question: I remember Mia! She was a brat, but I wouldn't have minded seeing more of her. I like all your characters, and I'm sure I'll enjoy the new book and series too.
- August 7, 2013 at 10:45 AM
- Katreader said...
I certainly don't mind when authors branch out and write other books in other genres. However, I will admit that I'm disappointed about the end of the Wine Country series. I really loved it.
- August 7, 2013 at 11:25 AM
- cncbooks said...
Well, I'm just glad we got to do the Wine Festival here in Richmond before you decided to take a different road ;-) Cheers to you and Sophie!
Lelia Taylor
- August 9, 2013 at 4:05 AM
- Ellen Crosby said...
Thank you all! And no, Rhonda Lane, my writing process is still the same as it always was . . . if you have read MOSCOW NIGHTS, my very first book (published only in the UK), you would see that I've more or less gone back to my journalism roots.
- August 11, 2013 at 8:07 AM


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Milk and Egg Free Zone
Milk and Egg Free Zone
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Information for older children and adults advised to follow a milk and egg free diet.
Advice is complex, condition specific and requires a Dietitian with knowledge, skills and experience in the condition.
To support patients to safely undertake a milk and/or egg free diet that meets their individual needs.
The Target Group will:
- know what and how to choose appropriate foods to meet nutritional and energy requirements for health and to thrive.
- be able to read food labels to make appropriate food choices.
- know what the guideline requirements are for calcium (and other nutrients as appropriate), and to meet these through appropriate food/drink choices.
- know the risk of key nutritional deficiencies (Ca, Fe, fibre etc) and what foods to choose to meet defined targets via helpful suggestions in text.
- be able to detail suitable food choices via choose/check/avoid lists to provide positive choices/swaps.
- Ierodiakonau D et al (2016) Timing of Allergenic Food Introduction to the Infant Diet and Risk of Allergic or Autoimmune Disease: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. JAMA. 2016 Sep 20;316(11):1181-1192. doi: 10.1001/jama.2016.12623.
- Muraro A et al (2014) Primary prevention of food allergy in children and adults. EAACI Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Guidelines
- Primary prevention of food allergy. Allergy. 69 (8) 1008-25
Perkin M, Logan K and Lack G (2015) EAT - A randomized controlled trial of early introduction of allergenic foods to induce tolerance in infants www.food.gov.uk/sites/default/files/eat-study-full-report.pdf
- Morrison BJ et al (2016) How different are baby-led weaning and conventional complementary feeding? A cross sectional study of infants aged 6-8 months. BMJ Open 6, 6 (5), www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4861100 (accessed 7/4/17)
- Cameron SL, Taylor RW and Heath A-L M (2013) Parent-led or baby-led? Association between complementary feeding practices and health related behaviours in a survey of New Zealand families. BMJ 9; 3 (12) www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24327363 (accessed 7/4/17)
- Townsend E and Pitchford N J (2012) Baby knows best? The impact of weaning style on food preferences and BMI in early childhood in a case-controlled sample. BMJ 2e000298 http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/2/1/e000298 (accessed 7/4/17)
- Complementary feeding and baby led weaning. Institute of health visitors (2015) ihv.org.uk


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Thanks for being invited to your conference. It was perfectly organized and it was an honor for me to have a speech and to moderate one session. For me it was definitively worth travelling and I had...
Thank you for exhibition organization. Everything went well. We plan to join the exhibition next year as usual.


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Gnash – Wake Up (ft. Chelsea Cutler and Goody Grace) [with Lyrics]
Gnash continues to prove to me why he's one of my favorite artists of 2016 with his latest track "Wake Up," featuring Chelsea Cutler and Goody Grace. What stands out to me the most is the versatility of his sounds and yet consistency of his message. His lyrics are ones that anybody who has ever gone through love and heartbreak can relate to, but his sonic compositions have ranged from electronic, quasi-hip hop, and a pure indie songwriter sound with his recognizably smooth voice, as heard in today's release. Fact is, no matter the approach, the outcome is always beautiful, which is why I'm incredibly bullish on Gnash.
Hit the jump for the lyrics.
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Gnash – Closure (ft. Skizzy Mars) [with lyrics]
I have a strong feeling 2016 is going to be a huge year for both Skizzy Mars and Gnash. They're going on tour together in the first quarter of the year – that's definitely a show to catch. They released a song together a couple days ago called "Closure" and while it's short, it embodies the spirit of the two artists perfectly. Skizzy perfects his harmonic verses and Gnash smoothly covers the hook and a verse of his own in his signature clear and relatable style.
Can't tell you how big I am on both of these guys – they're on the brink of something really big, and they're both great characters, which makes it all even more exciting to watch. Hit the jump for the lyrics.
Listen to more from Skizzy Mars // Listen to more from Gnash
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[Sunset Mixtape] I Woke Up This Morning
The concept for this playlist was built around the line in the opening track by Chance The Rapper that says "I woke up this morning / I woke up this morning / Gotta smile when I say that shit / I woke up this morning!"
I've been thinking a lot about that line since I first heard the song. I could go into a long monologue about 'what a time it is to be alive,' but honestly I don't feel like sharing all of that today in my own words. I'll share a few, but mostly I wanted to put together a playlist of songs old and new that sum up my feelings about the world.
It's funny – I think I get a certain way at the end of every year as my team is putting together our Best Songs of the Year playlist; I think it makes me pause and think about what music really means to me. It's weird to be able to connect so deeply to the words and art of people you don't know at all. But when you do feel that sense of connection, it's a really beautiful thing.
This is a collection of songs that I feel a connection to. It's a mix of all-time favorites, recent favorites, and songs by some new artists I'm into. For one reason or another, each song gets me excited to wake up each morning. And I'm thankful to be reminded of what a gift that is.
Happy Holidays,
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gnash – fuck me up (prod. by AO Beats)
gnash is definitely on my radar now as one of this year's breakout stars. The initial reason why I clicked play on this track is because I saw that it was produced by AO Beats, a member of the rising Moving Castle collective, which has been putting out straight fire as of late, but just seconds into the track, gnash stole my attention and his verses blew me away.
"fuck me up" pits one of dance music's emerging, elite talents with one of the most promising voices in the West Coast. The Boston-based producer lays down a luscious bed of silky synths, polished piano chords, and smooth electronic textures, perfect for gnash's lullaby-esque verses about the blurred line between love and lust.
With summer coming to a close faster than we can blink, "fuck me up" is an anthem for the gray days of fall – soothing, nostalgic, and just plain good.
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Best New Songs of July 2015
The #SunsetFam killed it this month (we kill it every month). When collaborating for these monthly playlists, we like to do what's best for business, and you are what's best for business. Different genres, different artists, different sounds. There's something on here for everyone, or maybe you're like us and everything on here is for you. Say goodbye to July, and welcome August with open arms.
Highlights this month:
RKCB makes their debut with "Ignite." NoMBe shines with "Miss Mirage" as he takes you on a journey. Gnash drops his guard and lets you in with "I Hate U I Love U." MIYNT channels dark-pop-magic with "Civil War." Allday, who you may remember from working with Skizzy Mars, dropped a solid 7-track mixtape. Arjun told us we should worry about a guy named Allan Rayman. Last, but not least, Meek Mill called out Drake for being fake. Drake responded with not one,
not two, not three, just kidding, two "diss" songs because I guess rappers still do that. You can find the second one on this playlist. Oh, and our fellow writer, Andy, became Twitter famous with his tweet about Meek Mill's response track.
Hit the jump for the Soundcloud stream and download!
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Gnash – I Hate U I Love U (ft. Olivia O'Brien) [with lyrics]
Writing a good song is not as daunting a task when you have the ability to be genuine. The trick is to be brave enough to be 100% genuine–or even 97% genuine. It is scary, and that is why there are really talented musicians who just cannot write a good song for the life of them.
The strength of Gnash's songwriting has always been his genuineness. The LA singer-producer uses his pen as a knife for the BS. When you listen to his verses, you are hearing feelings. And the feelings you are hearing are not superficial feelings; they are the feelings usually reserved for a diary or a regrettable text. Almost every one of his songs is about love, and I cannot fathom how happy and then miserable some girl made him to inspire all of this incredible writing.
"I Hate U I Love U" is a remix and collaboration of sorts. Olivia O'Brien is a Bay Area singer-songwriter who wrote the original track, which you can listen to here. She also covered Gnash's song "Disposable," and they were fans of each other through that. Recently, they met up in LA. Gnash reworked the beat and added a verse, and from what I hear, this is the first collaboration of many.
If I pulled a you on you, you wouldn't like that shit
Follow along with the lyrics below. Every line is quotable.
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[Premiere + Interview] Gemineyes – EP
Just a week after the release of their debut single "Drive," which premiered on Sunset, Gemineyes has let us premiere their four-track, self-titled EP. The four songs from Gnash and Harry Hudson's side project harbor the instant gratification of your favorite pop songs but with lyrics so relatable they feel plagiarized from your daily life. Or more accurately, they say the things you want to say to the girl you've been talking to instead of like the 20th meme this morning. In their own words,
gemineyes ep is the soundtrack to a perfect day – with someone you love, someone who's your best friend, someone you would take the neverending nap with, and at the bottom of everything, someone you want to drive home with.
Also, today is Gnash's birthday, so everybody wish him happy birthday on Twitter.
Hit the jump to read our interview with the duo, and download each track below.
Download links:
1. Love
2. Knock Knock
4. Drive
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[Premiere] Gemineyes – Drive
It is always great when two up-and-coming indie artists collaborate on a side project. It is even better when they are both born in June 1993, have the same colored eyes, and their band name is Gemineyes. The duo is comprised of Gnash and Harry Hudson. You might remember Gnash from his song "Crash with Me" from this Tape Tuesday or his super popular rendition of "Coco" by O.T. Genesis. I recently discovered Harry Hudson from his recent work with the burgeoning 1234 Creations collective.
"Drive" is the first single from the duo's upcoming self-titled EP. The song is a gentle plea to that girl you just want to smoke with and kiss. It is a musical drunk dial that is more heartfelt than embarrassing. Gnash described it to me as an "adult lullaby," and that is exactly what it is. This is music you can play at some freakishly late hour on a Friday night when you are faded and alone.
The Gemineyes EP will be released in ONE WEEK on June 16, which is Gnash's birthday, right here on Sunset in the Rearview.
Hit the jump to follow along with the lyrics of "Drive," and download the track here.
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[Download Mixtape] Tape Tuesday: Head Hunched Over Weeping to the Music
The great artists suffer for their art. The great listeners suffer along with them. I think without truly intellectualizing it this Tape Tuesday is inspired by Na'kel's soul-crushing verse on "DNA" from Earl Sweatshirt's album I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside. For those of you who don't know, Na'kel wrote and recorded his verse just after hearing that one of his close friends had died. And you can hear the pain in his voice, and he's not a rapper (he's a skateboarder) but he laid down a brutally poignant verse. He wrote his feelings on paper, and now whenever I listen to the song, I find myself feeling the anger and despair that Na'kel is trying to convey.
The sad thing is that in the vapid hype machine that is the music Internet verses like Na'kel's could be overlooked. Hype is easy. I mean to dedicate my life to the creation of timeless art. When you're honest and uncompromising, that's when you become a step closer to creating art that is timeless.
And it's okay to be emotional.
You used to say you like violins and your lifestyle depend on me
*SoundCloud mix is missing track 2 ("Mantra" by Earl Sweatshirt).
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Mar 11, 2014
Who remembers Beryl Vaughn? She was probably best-known
playing Penny on radio's Sky King. When she lived in Detroit,
she was a member of legendary radio station WXYZ's talent pool, and
she played many female characters on the Lone Ranger, the Green
Hornet, and Challenge of the Yukon.
In 1946, she teamed with first Jim Ameche, and later Olan Soule, as the two stars of Grand Marquee, a weekly romantic comedy play on NBC.
This episode, A Man's Home is Her Castle, first aired on February 20, 1947.


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Edit: The method utilized here is called "delay-and-sum beamforming", which I've learned a fair bit more about since writing this post. When I wrote this post, I was trying to deduce the working principle without reading too much literature. Still, the basic principle holds true, and I think my post here does a fine job of intuitively explaining the basics of things.
In this post I'm planning on investigating the very basic principles on which an acoustic camera might work. By an acoustic camera, I mean an array of microphones that, after some DSP, will produce an image showing the direction from which sound is arriving at the array.
I'll assume the sound source will be relatively far away from the microphone. I'll also approach the principles from a 2D perspective, to make the points I'm going to make as plain as possible.
The starting point
The setup will in this case be the simplest one I can think of; an array of microphones adjacent to each other in the same plane, with a constant distance from each other. I've attempted to visualize what I'm thinking of in the following figure:
We have a set of microphones, which record the changing sound pressures in the environment. We want to somehow convert this information into a picture, using digital signal processing. This post will focus on the DSP-part of the figure without delving into the specifics of it all too much. I'll present some principles for one possible approach.
The assumption
We will for now assume that there's only one sound source, which is relatively far away from the array of microphones.
Let's also assume that the sound source sends out an ideal impulse. It will become evident later why this is important, but for now let's just assume that the sound pressure at the microphones is zero at all times except when when this ideal impulse reaches the microphones.
The figure to the left visualizes the sound source relative to the array of microphones. As the sound source is relatively far away from the array, one can see that it starts to resemble a plane wave from the point of view of the array.
I've tried to visualize this further in the next picture. The letter in the figure represents the angle at which the sound is coming from, relative to the array of microphones. Remember that the incoming sound wave represents an ideal impulse; the microphones will only record something when the wave is directly at their position.
The figure displays the resulting output of the microphones. The same ideal impulse, carried by the wave front, arrives at all the microphones, but at a different time. Because of our microphones being evenly spaced, and thanks to our assumption of the plane wave, the delay between adjacent microphones will be equal. The delay for this particular case is:
in which is the distance between two adjacent microphones and is the speed of sound. In practice this means, for example, that the sound will arrive four times later at microphone e than it did at microphone a.
Localizing a sound source
Let's now assume that we really do have a sound source at the same location as earlier (at the same angle , relative to the microphone array). The microphones will record the sound arriving from the sound source, with the same delays as we calculated earlier. This time we won't be using an ideal impulse, but still something close to that.
How, then, do we know that the sound really did come from the direction we calculated earlier? If we shift each signal by the "ideal" amount of time they would need to be shifted for the signals to be identical to each other, we get the result shown in the following picture:
Figure a shows the case where the sound source really is in the same direction as we calculated earlier. By summing each of the signals up, and taking the average of the summed signal, we get something that in this case very closely resembles the original signal (in this ideal case they actually are the same). Figure b shows a case where the direction of the sound source differs from the case calculated earlier. In case b, an averaging of the signal will significantly attenuate the result, as opposed to case a, where the averaged signal was identical to the original.
There's more to it...
OK. So far, everything's been relatively logical and intuitive. But there's still more to it. For example: let's imagine that the recorded pulse shown earlier is wider (it has proportionally more low frequency content):
The delay is the same as earlier, but the difference between the two angles isn't that big anymore. Lower frequencies require longer delays, which in turn will require larger microphone arrays. I think localization is still theoretically possible with smaller arrays, but it would require very accurate microphones, so the limit will be based on both the distance between the microphones and the accuracy of the microphones.
Another case to consider are very high frequencies. Intuitively one can think of very high frequencies containing very quick changes in the signal. If the microphone won't record the phase of the signal correctly, localization won't be possible. Interference at high frequencies will also present problems.
As such, localization using the presented method will only work in some frequency range. The frequency range will have a lower and upper limit.
Theoretical thoughts and practical realization
One can think of an identical signal, delayed and added to itself, as a FIR filter. A quick Google search will return a lot of resources of what this is and how it works. I won't go into the details here, so if you're interested in the theory behind it, you need to look it up on Google.
The most important thing to understand is the FIR-perspective can be used to both examine the behaviour of the system from a frequency-perspective and to construct the final DSP-part of the system. Here I will examine the frequency-behaviour of the system. I will leave specific frequencies and sample rates out of the investigation, to keep things as simple as possible.
Remember the "ideal impulse" I mentioned at the very beginning of the post? It's also known as the Dirac delta, which, when sampled, always gives an amplitude of 1. The impulse response in the FIR-filter can be built up using this. Each microphone will receive an ideal impulse, at a specific point in time. Let's assume the microphone is ideal, and as such the impulse will travel on into the DSP-part of the system with the exact amplitude of 1 and at the exact time it arrived at the microphone.
After the impulse arrives at the DSP-part of the system, the system will reroute the signal to another part of the system, which is responsible of investigating the sounds coming from a specific angle. Each microphone's signal is delayed by the "ideal" amount, calculated according to what was shown earlier. In the case of the ideal impulse, this means a that a specified amount of samples (zeros) is added in front of the impulse. Suffice it to say that the sample rate of the system needs to be quite high, so there are enough zeros to add for all the angles we are interested in.
Using these methods and assumptions, let's investigate one of these parts of the system, focusing on sounds coming from some specific angle . In the very ideal case, if the microphones were perfect and the sound would arrive at exactly the angle , the frequency response would be flat. The further away from this ideal angle we go, the further away from the ideal frequency response we go. This is how we approximate how much sound comes from each angle.
In practice, the frequency response will never be ideal. This is illustrated in the figure below. It shows the response for an ideal sound arriving at exactly the angle , compared with the response when the sound arrives at almost the correct angle, and lastly the response when the sound should be as attenuated as much as possible.
The meaning of the different responses is perhaps clearer when we put one figure, which shows the frequency response when the incoming sound is coming from almost the correct angle (), on top of another, where the difference between the angles is somewhat larger (). When we increase the difference in angles, so does the difference in the frequency responses increase.
The circles show the critical spots, at which the system won't work correctly. The result is correct as long as the blue plot is somewhat beneath the red one (mostly sound coming from the correct angle will contribute to the final result). Some unwanted peaks can be seen, which will result in the final response not being correct at all frequencies. At some specific frequencies, the system will interpret sound coming from the wrong angle (blue plot) as coming from the angle we're investigating (red plot).
Clearly the simplified case we have investigated here won't give good results as such, but the system should already work for noise-type sounds or sounds that we heavily band-pass before processing. This was to be expected, as we're only using 5 linearly spaced microphones. For better results, we need more microphones, for one. The microphones should also be placed in such a way that the frequency response is as close to possible to flat when the sound arrives from (approximately) the direction we're investigating, and as attenuated as possible when moving away from it. Evenly spaced microphones bring unwanted filter-type effects, so I would imagine evenly spaced microphones always being a bad thing, although I might be wrong.
The system is still far from ready, but I think this is a good starting point. A lot of questions are left unanswered. Focusing on the parts shown in the last chapter should at least enable me to build a working "virtual" prototype (it's here!).