text:
St. Charles Community College is partnering with the St. Charles County Arts Council to offer a variety of non-credit continuing education classes for the community at the Lillian Yahn Gallery in the Arts Council headquarters located in Winghaven (O'Fallon), Mo.
"This partnership is mutually beneficial, and will enhance the ability of both organizations to meet their goal of providing the community with high quality arts and cultural classes and experiences," said Tina Seiker, SCC associate dean for continuing education.
Classes begin in January 2013 and include the following:
The classes vary in cost, from $39-$99. For more information or to register for classes, visit stchas.edu/learnforlife or call 636-922-8233.
"We're excited to work with SCC and hope the partnership will bring more awareness to the arts in the St. Charles community," said Bruce Howard, president of the St. Charles County Arts Council board.
The partnership provides SCC the opportunity to offer a broad variety of classes in art, music, writing, performance and other personal enrichment classes to people of all ages at an off-campus location. Classes will be held at Lillian Yahn Gallery, 7443 Village Center Drive, O'Fallon, MO 63368.
The St. Charles County Arts Council is an umbrella organization that advocates for all arts and artists in St. Charles County. Their purpose is to encourage and develop the arts by creating public awareness of county arts activities, to foster communication among visual, performing and literary arts groups, to work for common goals in the interest of community art development, to sponsor exhibits, workshops, art shows and events and to aid individual members and organizations in their efforts to create art awareness and activities in the county.
The SCC Continuing Education Department promotes lifelong learning by developing classes that encourage the community to pursue their talents and passions. For more information, visit www.stchas.edu/learnforlife.
St. Charles Community College is a public, comprehensive two-year community college with associate degrees and certificate programs in the arts, business, sciences and career-technical fields. SCC provides workforce training and community-based personal and professional development as well as cultural, recreational and entertainment opportunities. For more information, visit www.stchas.edu.
Amber Peterson
Marketing Specialist
Andrea Compton
Associate Professor
Anna Richter
Dan Porter
Grounds Supervisor
Friends & Alumni
SCC Foundation
Jenny Hahn Schnipper
Academic and Career Counselor
Maria Pizzo
Ron Chesbrough
Heather McDorman
Vice President for Enrollment and Marketing Services
Ben Munson
Director of Creative Services
Brynne Cramer
Public Relations Coordinator
Nick Hogan
Website Coordinator


text:
|Analysis of hyperplastic foci in livers with hepatocellular carcinomas by flow cytometry and AgNOR staining.
MedLine Citation:
|PMID: 9293535 Owner: NLM Status: MEDLINE
|The phase S ratio in cell cycles were analyzed in livers with hyperplastic foci (HPF) and in livers without HPF by nuclear DNA determinations using flow cytometry, and by staining with argyrophilic proteins of the nucleolar organizer region (AgNOR). Flow cytometric analysis was done on 50 fresh frozen specimens of livers resected from 50 patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Paraffin sections from the same patients were analyzed using AgNOR staining. There were 25 cases each with and without HPF. We examined the stage of fibrosis and the grade of inflammatory activity according to the modified Scheuer and Desmet scale. The incidence of HCC recurrence among these patients was also studied. The average phase S ratio of the livers of the patients with HPF was 6.5 +/- 3.2%, and that of the livers of the patients without HPF was 4.0 +/- 2.5%. The ratio differed significantly between the two groups (P < 0.01). The average AgNOR score for HPF lesions of the HPF-positive cases was 1.60 +/- 0.34, that for non-HPF lesions in the HPF-positive cases was 1.29 +/- 0.12, and that for the HPF-negative cases was 1.19 +/- 0.14. Significant differences were found between the average AgNOR scores for HPF lesions of the HPF-positive cases and the non-HPF lesions of the HPF-positive cases (P < 0.01), as well as between the non-HPF lesions in the HPF-positive cases and the HPF-negative cases (P < 0.05). Severe fibrosis (stage 3) and cirrhosis (stage 4) were found in 76% of HPF-positive cases and 48% of HPF-negative cases. The livers of HPF-positive patients were significantly more cirrhotic than those of HPF-negative patients (P < 0.05). The association between HPF and the inflammatory grade was not significant (P > 0.05). The incidence of HCC recurrence among HPF-positive cases was significantly higher than that among the HPF-negative cases (P < 0.05). The average phase S ratio of the recurrent HPF-positive patients was 7.48 +/- 3.48%, significantly higher than that of HPF negative cases (5.57 +/- 3.06%, P < 0.05). Hyperplastic foci of the liver was shown to be a highly proliferative lesion. The proliferative activity of the non-HPF lesions in the HPF-positive patients was also higher than that of the HPF-negative patients. Hyperplastic foci tended to be present in cirrhotic livers, but it was not associated with the grade of inflammatory activity of the liver. Hyperplastic foci may represent an important predictor of recurrence after hepatic resection.
|T Ikebe; K Wakasa; T Shuto; T Okuda; T Yamamoto; K Hirohashi; H Kinoshita; M Sakurai
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Publication Detail:
|Type: Journal Article
Journal Detail:
|Title: Pathology international Volume: 47 ISSN: 1320-5463 ISO Abbreviation: Pathol. Int. Publication Date: 1997 Aug
Date Detail:
|Created Date: 1997-10-29 Completed Date: 1997-10-29 Revised Date: 2004-11-17
Medline Journal Info:
|Nlm Unique ID: 9431380 Medline TA: Pathol Int Country: AUSTRALIA
Other Details:
|Languages: eng Pagination: 547-52 Citation Subset: IM
|Department of Pathology II, Osaka City University Medical School, Japan.
Export Citation:
|APA/MLA Format Download EndNote Download BibTex
|MeSH Terms
Carcinoma, Hepatocellular / pathology*
Flow Cytometry
Hyperplasia / pathology
Liver / pathology*
Liver Cirrhosis / pathology*
Liver Neoplasms / pathology*
Middle Aged
Nucleolus Organizer Region / chemistry
S Phase*
Silver Staining
From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine
Previous Document: Immunohistochemical localization of endothelin-1, endothelin-3 and endothelin receptors in human phe...
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
Kendall Square Association Third Thursday - Icebreaker Event
Kendall Square Association
Thursday, January 16, 2014 from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM (EST)
Who's Going
San Francisco, California
London, United Kingdom
Florence, Italy
Event Details
Please join the KSA and Community Charter School of Cambridge (CCSC) for the first Third Thursday in 2014 on January 16th from 5:30-7:30PM at the Community Ice Skating Rink in Kendall Square.
- Free ice skating, courtesy of Community Ice Skating. Skates provided, or bring your own.
- Sip hot soup and mulled cider and sample sweet treats provided by the new Commonwealth Cambridge market and restaurant.
- Network with others in Kendall Square community, while learning about the wonderful work our companies provide through internship programs for students.
This event is the kickoff ("icebreaker") for CCSC's 2014 Senior Internship Program, in which every 12th grader is matched with a company or organization in the local community for a career exploratory and pre-professional experience. The students and their mentors will be present to answer questions about how you can get involved in the program and about its impact and benefits.
We ask that you bring a donation of new gloves or mittens for students (ages 12-18) at CCSC. We will be collecting the gloves/mittens on site at the event.
We'd like to thank Akamai for their generous sponsorship.
When & Where
Community Ice Skating @ Kendall Square
300 Athenaeum Street
Thursday, January 16, 2014 from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM (EST)
Add to my calendar
Kendall Square Association
The Kendall Square Association has more than 120 member institutions located in Kendall Square, including global leaders such as Google, Microsoft, VMWare, Amgen, Biogen Idec, Genzyme and Novartis. Our goal is to support all aspects of business and civic growth in the area, and ensure that Kendall Square remains the place where the world gathers to develop breakthrough discoveries that positively impact our society.
To learn more, please visit: http://www.kendallsq.org/


text:
- Age / Gender:
- n/a, Male
- Location:
- Location not disclosed
- Joined:
- 8/25/09
- All Stats >
User Statshot
- Community Stats
Level 5 Blank Slate
Normal Whistle
Ranked as Civilian
Contact Info / Websites
Latest News
Ok now I want to start animation but.... I really dont know how too. Can anyone be kind enough to teach me how too?
Recent Game Medals
Master of Fails 100 Points Get All 60 Unique Fails Medal Stats.
Biggoron's Sword 100 Points Legend has it the Toppat's have this sword Medal Stats.
Failpocalypse 100 Points Fail a Total of 100 Times Medal Stats.
Famous Movie Line 25 Points Well, maybe not THAT famous Medal Stats.
Bound to the Earth 25 Points Oh my goodNess! Medal Stats.
SECRET MEDAL 5 Points Unlock this medal to see it's details. Medal Stats.
Rank GAPI 50 Points You Won! Medal Stats.
Gold 5 Points Is it edible? Medal Stats.
Barnyard Blitz 5 Points It sure is animaly in here Medal Stats.
SECRET MEDAL 10 Points Unlock this medal to see it's details. Medal Stats.
Total Medals Earned: 333 (From 33 different games.)
Favorite Audio
|Never Forget- Halo 3
|Video Game Song
|Truth In Dreams (ft. T-Free)
|Miscellaneous Song
|DBZ Parody Saiyans Paradise
|R&B Song
|Future Fight
|Techno Song
Favorite Movies
Favorite Games
Madness: Project Nexus Rated 4.4645 Stars Blaze through the Madness Universe in this sidescrolling Shoot 'Em Up! Action - Shooter - Run 'n Gun Symphonic Tower Defense Rated 4.4462 Stars You must keep the music under control by building towers that are powered by the song! Strategy - Tower Defense Spartaman 2 Rated 4.3786 Stars Megaman with Spartans. This game is made for real men. Action - Platformer - Other Thing-Thing Arena 3 Rated 4.4337 Stars Shoot your way through countless enemies, but this time, do it with style! Action - Shooter - Run 'n Gun


text:
The Institute is an intense academic program that features hands-on seminars, college preparation workshops, online sessions and lessons with homework on test preparation.
College Prep Workshops - College search portfolio, career development, college application and admission, college etiquette, college financing: FAFSA, loans, scholarships,
Life Skills Seminars - Online resources, resume writing, critical thinking, relationship training
Leadership Development - Communication, conflict resolution, college search action plan.
Test Prep Strategies - With two full length PreTest and Practice SAT, Test Prep Math, Test Prep Writing.
Application to a high school pre-college summer program is not an application for admission to the degree programs of Spelman College. No promises are made regarding admission to the first-year class.
Parents/guardians must give their permission for students to participate in summer programs and activities.
350 Spelman Lane S.W. Atlanta, GA 30314-4399 (404) 681-3643 | Copyright 2015 Spelman College | Site Map | Privacy Policy


text:
The Wise Investor
3.2 Corporate enterprises
"Very well, my dear," John said.
"One sunny afternoon, several of the valley's
families were gathered together, picnicking by the
river. The children played in the water, swimming,
diving and generally having fun. While the children
played, the old people of the families sat in the
shade and talked.
It seemed an ordinary afternoon, a day much like
any other, but this day was special. This day, the
people would take another fundamental step
forward in life of their community.
Grain had been grown in the valley for many
The families had long since learnt to make flour
from grinding wheat, and bread from the flour.
Indeed, bread had become one of the staple diets of
the valley people.
However, grinding the grain was a time-
consuming process. Some families had built small
water wheels by the river to drive the grinding
stones, but these were small devices and had limited
The families who were picnicking lived near the
top of the valley, where the river ran through a
narrow gully, and the farm land was less fertile than
on the plains below. As the old men sat talking, one
of them pointed to the children at play and laughed.
The children had built a small dam, blocking off a
small off-shoot of the river. As the water built up
behind the dam, higher and higher, the pressure
grew greater and greater. Finally, when the dam
walls could hold it no more, the dam burst, sending a
torrent of water over the excited children.
So powerful was the flood, that several children


text:
Connie Howell, Karen Anderson and Ellie Howell enjoy last year's Springdale Garden Club tea party.
- Filed Under
Everyone is welcome at the Springdale Garden Club annual tea party, 2:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Sunday, March 17, at the Springdale Community Center, 11999 Lawnview Ave.
The cost is $15 for persons 12 and older, $5 for children ages 4 to 11 and those under 3 are free. The event included door prizes and beautiful themed raffle baskets. For reservations contact Karen Reynolds, 671-5930 or, e-mail firstname.lastname@example.com by March 8.
Proceeds from the event fund Springdale community beautification projects. Club members design and plant the Community Center's front flower beds, buy Arbor Day Trees, make holiday decorations and take part in Springdale Elementary school gardening projects. They recently installed a raised garden area for the students and teachers to use for science projects. An ongoing project at the school is the butterfly garden.
Future activities include a planned secret garden tour in Waynesville in June and a family outing with picnic at the Hamilton County's Highfields' Children Garden in July.
The club meets on the second Monday of each month at the community Center at 6 p.m. Guests are always welcome.
For more information contact Carolyn Ghantous at 328-4046 (firstname.lastname@example.com) or Joan Knox at 674-7755 (firstname.lastname@example.com).


text:
As introduced by S.G. Howe (1846), simpleton was intended to mean people with mild intellectual disability. However, it never fully entered the worldwide medical community's terminology. The term was later replaced by "moron."
Moron was an invented word. A psychologist named Henry Goddard developed the term. It was used to classify people with mild intellectual disabilities. Goddard created the novel word by combining parts of words like sophomore and oxymoron. The term was used to replace feeble-minded. Feebleminded was misused by society to refer to people with any severity of ID.
Feeble-minded came from the Latin word flebilis. It means, "to be lamented." It referred to people who were not profoundly disabled, but still required intervention and care.
Retarded comes from the Latin retardare. This means, "to make slow, delay, keep back, or hinder." The first record of the word "retarded" in relation to developmental delay was in 1895. The term retarded was used to replace terms like idiot, moron, and imbecile. This was because it was not a derogatory term at that time. However, by the 1960s, the term became a word used to insult someone.
It is interesting to note, that in each case, the original term was neutral in meaning. As the term entered public use, it become pejorative. This fact illuminates social cruelty born of ignorance and fear. There are always competing elements of society. Some of people seek respectful, neutral medical terms. Others misuse these same terms as weapons to insult people.
For health care professionals, diagnostic labels serve as a form of shorthand communication. Diagnostic labels rapidly communicate a set of symptoms associated with a particular condition. It may simultaneously suggest an appropriate treatment. However, when these conditions carry a social stigma, the diagnostic labels themselves become stigmatizing. The original, medical term loses its intended neutral meaning.
In October 2010, President Barrack Obama signed into law a bill known as Rosa's Law. This law required the terms "mental retardation" and" mentally retarded" be stricken from federal records. Instead, these terms were replaced with "intellectual disability" and "individual with an intellectual disability." The most recent version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5, APA, 2013) adopted the term intellectual disability. It replaced the older term mental retardation. This change was due in part to these changes in the law.
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Your Name*
Your Email*
Phone Number where Santa's elves can reach you*
Address where Santa should visit*
Names and Ages for Children to be visited*
Special Instructions for Santa
* As you might suspect, Santa does not share this information with anyone, not even Mrs. Claus. You should receive confirmation of your reservation within 3 days of submission. If you do not, please contact Santa's Swarthmore Workshop, (610) 544-6637, between 8AM and 8 PM.
Swarthmore Santa is proudly powered by 8 Tiny Reindeer


text:
Reblogged from Lanedo GmbH. blog
Every 6 months or so we produce a new stable release and for Tracker 1.2 we had some new exciting work being introduced. For those that don't know of Tracker, it is a semantic data storage and search engine for desktop and mobile devices. Tracker is a central repository of user information, that provides two big benefits for the user; shared data between applications and information which is relational to other information (for example: mixing contacts with files, locations, activities and etc.).
Earlier in the year a client came Lanedo and to the community asking for help on integrating Tracker into their embedded platforms. What did they want? Well, they wanted to take full advantage of the Tracker project's feature set but they also wanted to be able to use it on a bigger scale, not just for local files or content on removable USB keys. They wanted to be able to seamlessly query across all devices on a LAN and cloud content that was plugged into Tracker. This is not too dissimilar to the gnome-online-miners project which has similar goals.
Before Tracker 1.2.0, files and folders came by way of a GFile and GFileInfo which were found using the GFileEnumerator API that GLib offers. Underneath all of this the GFile* relates to GLocalFile* classes which do the system calls (like lstat()) to crawl the file system.
Why do we need this? Well, on top of TrackerCrawler (which calls the GLib API), is TrackerFileNotifier and TrackerFileSystem, these essentially report content up the stack (and ignore other content depending on rules). The rules come from a TrackerIndexingTree class which knows what to black list and what to white list. On top of all of this is TrackerMinerFS, which (now is inaccurately named) handles queues and processing of ALL content. For example, DELETED event queues are handled before CREATED event queues. It also gives status updates, handles INSERT retries when the system is busy and so on).
To make sure that we take advantage of existing technology and process information correctly, we have to plugin at the level of the TrackerCrawler class.
Essentially we have a simple interface for handling open and close cases for iterating a container (or directory) called TrackerDataProvider interface (and TrackerFileDataProvider implementation for the default or existing local file system case).
That is followed up with an enumerator interface for enumerating that container (or directory). That is called TrackerEnumerator and of course there is a TrackerFileEnumerator class to implement the previous functionality that existed.
So why not just implement our own GFile backend and make use of existing interfaces in GLib? Actually, I did look into this but the work involved seemed much larger and I was conscious of breaking existing use cases of GFile in other classes in libtracker-miner.
So now it's possible to provide your own data provider implementation for a cloud based solution to feed Tracker. But what are the minimum requirements? Well, Tracker requires a few things to function, those include providing a real GFile and GFileInfo with an adequate name, and mtime. The libtracker-miner framework requires the mtime for checking if there have been updates compared to the database. The TrackerDataProvider based implementation is given as an argument to the TrackerMiner object creation and called by the TrackerCrawler class when indexing starts. The locations that will be indexed by the TrackerDataProvider are given to the TrackerIndexingTree and you can use the TRACKER_DIRECTORY_FLAG_NO_STAT for non-local content.
In Tracker 1.0.0, the Extractor (the 'tracker-extract' process) used to extract metadata from files was upgraded to be passive. Passive meaning, the Extractor was only extracting content from files already added to the database. Before that, content was concatenated from the Extractor to the file system miner and inserted into the database collectively.
Sadly with 1.0.0, any files that caused crashes or serious system harm resulting in the termination of 'tracker-extract' were subsequently retried on each restart of the Extractor. In 1.2.0 these failures are noted and files are not retried.
Thanks to work from Bastien Hadess, there have been a number of extractors added for electronic book and comic books. If your format isn't supported yet, let us know!
Often we get questions like:
To address these, the preferences dialog has been updated to provide another tab called "Control" which allows users to change options that have existed previously but not been presented in a user interface.
In addition to this, changing an option that requires a reindex or restart of Tracker will prompt the user upon clicking Apply.
Of course there were many other fixes and improvements as well as the things mentioned here. To see a full list of those, see them as mentioned in the announcement.
If you or someone you know is looking to make use of Open Source technology and wants professional services to assist in that, get in touch with us at Lanedo to see how we can help!
Over the past month or two, I've spent time working on various feature branches for Tracker. This coming after a 1.2 stable release and a new feature set which was added in 1.2.
So a lot has been going on with Tracker internally. I've been relatively quiet on my blog of late and I thought it would be a good idea to run a series of blogs relating to what is going on within the project.
Among my blogs, I will be covering:
If anyone has any questions or concerns they would like to see answered in articles around these subjects, please comment below and I will do my best to address them!
Last year, during GUADEC, there was that running joke amongst some participants that this was the last GUADEC. It was, of course, a joke. Everybody was expecting to see each other in Brno, in 2013.
One year later, most of those who were joking are not coming to GUADEC. For them, the joke became a reality.
I believe the root cause is that GNOME has never been able to clearly offer an answer to one very simple question: what is GNOME? (baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more)
People are increasingly leaving the desktop computer to use phones, tablets and services in the cloud. ChromeOS has successfully filled the gap between desktop and mobile devices and is becoming the dominant OS. Most people don't need more than a Chromebook. In fact, it's way easier to fill most current needs with a Chromebook.
One could say that the professional world is not following, that GNOME is targeting businesses or those who can't work on a simple notebook/tablet. But we know that this is only a matter of time, that enterprises are simply lagging, on purpose or not. After all, some are still using Windows NT. And what was impossible to do in the cloud one year ago is already becoming the standard, like basic photo editing or video conference.
Of course, Android and Chrome OS are not free. Worst, the recent PRISM scandal has put under light the true importance of free software and transparent web services. Thousands of people understood the problem and decided to download the most popular free operating system of our time: Cyanogenmod, the free version of Android which reacted to PRISM by offering an incognito mode.
The switch is deeper and quicker than anything we imagined. Take a look at screens during a free software hackers conference. Yes, that's it: Unity. Besides some Macbook and some Chromebook, it's Unity everywhere. Unity who abandoned GTK+ to switch to Qt, renaming Qt Creator to Ubuntu SDK. Even Subsurface, Linus Torvald's pet project, is switching from GTK+ to Qt. If you spot a GNOME desktop in a conference, chances are that you are dealing with a Red Hat employee. That's it. According to Google Trends, interest in GNOME and GTK+ is soon to be extinct.
For years, I've been a proud GNOME supporter. I've been increasingly interested by the usability of the desktop, by the innovation of GNOME 3. But, today, who really cares about Unity/GNOME/KDE or GTK+/Qt when all you need to do is to launch a browser full screen? All I need, all I want are web based versions of the free software I use. Not an WinXP replacement.
Only a few years ago, GNOME was at the centre of the creative world. Remember Maemo and the N700? This was ground-breaking. A mobile full-fledged OS was the future. Multiple companies emerged from the chaos to provide support, expertise, innovation. But the last remaining bastard child of this era, Tizen, has been definitely buried only a couple of weeks ago.
I can't accept that all we will keep from this wonderful story is a bunch of coloured t-shirts. We are multiple companies that were created during the GNOME golden era. We are a family of hackers, volunteers and friends. We are a community. We share a lot of experience, we share values. The free software ecosystem has produced hugely successful products which are still unmatched in the cloud offering: Gimp, Inkscape, LibreOffice, Blender to name a few. Even my own pet project, Getting Things GNOME, has no satisfactory web equivalent. And when a web solution exists, it is often a proprietary, centralized, privacy crushing one. There's surely room for free solutions. That's why LibreOffice is already investigating the web/mobile space.
For all those reasons, I would like to take the time to sit down together and discuss about the GNOME or free software business future during a BOF. How can we evolve? Can we move the GNOME spirit into a web browser? How can we make use of our history and bring freedom to users instead of becoming just another web dev consultancy company?
How can we ensure, together, that this will not be the last GUADEC?
Picture by Ana Rey
And how I work around it
A few months ago, I tried to convince you to spend 2€ per month to reward the content you like.
Lot of people are enthusiastic with Flattr. But there's a recurring complain that there's not enough content accepting Flattr.
This is a real concern. Flattr was build around a model where more or less every creator has a personal blog or website. Unfortunately, there's a clear trend that creators are now increasingly regrouping on a few centralized platforms. Creators don't have the control of the platform and, as such, cannot add a Flattr button.
This raises a lot of questions about centralization and gives the feeling that, besides a few blogs like mine, there's nothing to Flattr on the web. It looks like you are standing alone on a desert island with your money.
Enter the unclaimed Flattr
Did you know that you can flattr someone which is not on Flattr yet? It is called an "unclaimed Flattr". The money remains on your account until the creator sign-in. So don't hesitate to use this feature.
What is great with unclaimed Flattrs is that you can flattr nearly everything on the web without thinking about it. If, for a given month, you flattr only unclaimed things, it will cost you nothing for that particular month.
To Flattr something, even if it has no Flattr button, install the Flattr browser extension for Firefox or for Chrome. When the content you are currently viewing can be flattered, a little Flattr icon will be show in the address bar. Click on it and confirm your flattr.
Unfortunately, not every web page can be flattered. So let me explain how I manage to give 62 flattrs this month.
Flattering blogs, articles, comics and social network messages
The web extension allows me to see immediately if a blog or a website has a Flattr account. I can even flattr each Wikipedia page!
If there's no Flattr icon, I use this little trick: I flattr the Twitter account of the blog. If I liked the article Foo from blogger Bar, I simply find the tweet from @Bar that announced the article Foo. I then click on the tweeting date to open the tweet full page.
If you do that, you will see that the Flattr icon appears in your address bar. Indeed, you can flattr individual tweet. That makes one more pending flattr for this creator.
Of course, I also sometimes flattr individual tweets that I particularly enjoy. The same can be done with pictures on Instagram and even messages on App.net but I did not found anyone using the later. Maybe it would be nice to be able to flattr a Tumblr post?
Flattering videos, music and podcasts
Every video on Youtube or Vimeo can be flattered if you have the browser extension installed. Same for any audio track or podcast on Soundcloud. If I appreciate a content on this platform, I flattr it without any second thought. Unfortunately, Dailymotion support is missing.
Grooveshark also has a Flattr setting where you can automatically Flattr any artist you are listening to. Most artists are not registered on Flattr yet but I flattr anyway. If any artist I like ever complains about piracy, I will happily point to the money waiting on Flattr.
Flattering pictures
To get illustrations for this blog, I look on Flickr or 500px for Creative Commons pictures. Any picture on those platforms can be flattered and I make sure to do it for each picture I re-use. It even happens that the author is already on Flattr, such as this one, used in an article in French.
I still miss to be able to flattr pictures on DevianArt but, on 500px and Flickr, I've no hesitation to Flattr any nice picture randomly appearing in front of my eyes.
There's a growing list of software accepting Flattr donations. I try to regularly flattr software I use. If your favourite piece of code is not on Flattr, you can still flattr any tweet from the official account.
Also, any GitHub repository and any commit can be flattered. I tend to flattr external contributions to my own projects or commits fixing an annoying bug.
For example, I started flattering commits to the repository of the WordPress theme I use for this blog, even though the author was not on Flattr (he joined recently). If you like the theme of this blog, don't hesitate to give a little Flattr to the Github repository.
Automatic flattering
The best of all is that you can make it automatic. In your Flattr preferences, you can link your accounts so, for example, each time you like a Youtube video or an Instagram picture it receives a flattr.
FlattrStar is a third party service which extends this functionality. It allows to flattr each favourite tweet, favourite artists on Last.fm and many more.
Not everything is flattrable and this is a problem. Each time you interact with a creator, don't hesitate to talk about Flattr. She might not be immediately interested but it may ring a bell if multiple fans start to ask for a Flattr button. Don't hesitate to suggest ideas. What about a 9gag Flattr integration? Or a Reddit integration? (EDIT:Reddit integration is possible through Fleddit)
In the meantime, there's already a huge amount of content that can receive flattrs. If this is not enough for you, keep your Flattr fee to the minimal 2€ per month and, like me, continue to make unclaimed flattrs. You can also subscribe to a few charities. Charities don't pay the 10% Flattr fee. 100% of your money is directly going to them.
In the worst case, you will spend 2€ per months to help charities and creators. In the best case, you will have fuelled a cultural revolution.
Picture from Daniel Colquitt
With Internet, artists are facing the challenge that people don't need to buy material supports to enjoy their work. I believe that it is a very good thing as it allows to sell any piece of work for a Free Price while enjoying the freedom of the web. Thus, the next technical challenge is to make it as easy as possible to pay a free price for anything you like. I've already told you in length about Flattr, which allows you to "like with money" anything on the Internet.
But what if you really like an artist, a blogger, a filmmaker? What if you want to encourage a creator to do more or to keep going? Here's come Patreon.
The principle of Patreon is very simple: for every piece of work by a given creator, you pledge a given amount. The more she/he releases, the more you spend (but you can fix a monthly limit). And, as for Kickstarter, you can have some extra with your pledge. Just see my page for an example.
The idea is so simple that, unlike Flattr, I don't see how I will be able to make awfully long blog posts about the subject for months.
Of course, Patreon is not perfect. A given creator cannot have multiple projects (what if you are a blogger and a video maker? Or what if you have two blogs?). A credit card is required (Bitcoin support would be awesome). I will probably find more flaw but the idea is really nice and complementary with Flattr.
I don't really hope to attract patrons but, being curious, I had to give it a try. If you like the idea too, don't hesitate to test and become my patron.
Picture by Martin Beek
Ce billet est disponible en français.
When I started producing content for the web, as hobbyist film maker, I was very enthusiastic about Creative Commons licenses. But not for my videos. Someone could use them in a bad way. I didn't want that. The "bad way" was not clearly defined, something about nazis or paedophiles, but I was nonetheless fearing it.
Then I created a blog. I decided to publish my posts under a CC By license, moving a step forward to openness. Except some more important texts, which were under the CC By-ND license. Because I didn't want them to be modified. You know, those texts were "important", I was an artist, I had to keep full power over my creations.
Comments were a metric for my success. The more the comments, the better. When comments started to fade out, replaced by social networks, my new metric for success was the number of visitors per day. I could spend hours watching my statistics, exploring the sources of visitors.
I gradually switched everything to a CC By license, realizing that my fear of being misused was too abstract for not giving freedom to my readers. But I still asked a link to my blog each time I could in order to attract visitors, to see them in my statistics. I rarely posted on other blogs. My creations had to stay centralized.
Like moths on a sparkling light, bloggers are attracted by statistics. Google analytics, Page Rank, Twitter followers, Klout, Ebuzzing. It is addictive, time consuming and useless. I decided to quit.
I started to cross post my content over multiple places where I don't have full control, such as Medium. I removed everything but the Flattr button. Yes, everything, including the G+/Facebook buttons and the Piwik/Google Analytics plugins. I don't know any more how many people are reading me, how many reshares I have. I don't care. I want to be free and, in order to achieve that, I had to free my creation first.
It took me ten years to overcome my irrational fears of the web. Today, I feel like I'm just discovering a new world. I'm a newborn. I'm not a creator asking to be admired by the non-creator mass. I'm someone contributing and dropping some little creation into a huge creative chaos where everybody is, in a way or another, a creator. Which is awesome.
If you like something, copy it, modify it, share it, re-create it. A text lives only when someone is reading it. A creation needs an audience.
Thanks for caring, thanks for sharing.
Picture by Epoxides. Ce billet est disponible en français.
I meet Karl Isrich in a small restaurant. You maybe heard about the company he founded, MyVirtualTaylor, a pioneer of e-clothing. You would probably imagine Karl as one of those twenty-something golden boy. Instead, I face an average anxious guy, approximately forty years old with greyish hairs.
He asked me to go to this cheap restaurant because he could not afford a more expensive dinner. Lawyers, he said. When we sat down, he gave me a business card that used to be shiny six months ago. It simply says "MyVirtualTaylor, Isrich CEO".
Hello Karl, thanks for the meeting. MyVirtualTaylor is an e-clothing company. But what is e-clothing exactly ?
Simply put, it's 3D printing for clothes. We have developed a clothing printer that we sell and which is the size of a washing machine. Not being bigger than a washing machine was one of our top requirements before the launch.
The clothing printer has a tank of polymer, that you need to refill regularly, and seven dye tanks. We discovered that having seven primary colors was a good deal to reproduce most of the colors.
Through wifi, you send a .clo file to the printer then wait between ten minutes and one hour, depending on the size and the complexity of the model. Everything is automatic, you can even print a bunch of .clo in a row.
How do you get a .clo file?
We have an online editor on our website that allows you to design your own clothes. We have also some standard templates: shirts, ties, stuff like that.
In fact, when we launched, we didn't really think about that. We thought that there will be a new market for clothes creators. That's why we wanted the .clo format to be open and documented. We sell the hardware but we didn't want to enter the clothing market.
Can you really print anything? What are the limitations?
Currently, there are some constraints with the size. We have prototypes that can print as big as a king size bed sheet. But, of course, you can only print clothes made of polymer. No silk nor fabric.
Isn't that a big limitation? After all, most of our clothes are made of fabric.
It should be noted that a lot of progress have been made with polymers. We can weave the polymer in a lot of different ways in order to have the properties we want.
But, most importantly, clothing material has always been about finding a compromise between style, comfort and durability. Durability being the critical point for quality clothes. The clothes have to go through hundred of washing cycles. Our solution was to remove durability from the equation.
Do you mean that printed clothes are not durable?
Not, they aren't. But it is not the goal. Instead of cleaning them, you put them in the clothing printer and the polymer is cleaned, melted and ready to print new clothes.
Unfortunately, we still cannot extract the colors. The polymer is thus not perfect. We store the recycled polymer in a separate tank. When you print, you can allow the use of recycled polymer or not. It is good enough for every day but if you want a perfect white shirt for a wedding, you probably want the unused polymer.
The part of the polymer which is worn out goes with the waste to the sewers.
It sounds like an ecological disaster.
That's exactly the rumor spread by our opponents.
But, while it is not perfect, you have to compare it with the traditional clothing industry. Clothes are usually made in huge factories in China, using harmful chemicals. Then, you have to take into account the transport, the storage, the shop. Not mentioning the gas needed to go to the shopping mall. To that, add the water and the soap used to wash the clothes. By contrast, we basically use electricity and release very little polymer. With time, we hope to be able to recycle more and more.
Did you talk about opponents?
You know, I'm an engineer. I never really cared about anything but the technological aspects. When the first clothing printers were sold, people immediately started to exchange .clo files. They took their own clothes and make .clo files to be able to reproduce them.
One day, I received a letter from lawyers of the FCIAA, the Fashion & Clothing Industry Association of America. I've never heard of them before but, basically, they wanted me to stop my company because I was threatening their business.
I thought it was a joke. Really. At first I was like: "Funny. It's like the candle industry suing Edison for inventing the lightbulb". But it's not funny any more.
I can talk about this for hours. They are bad. Really bad. They are trying to destroy my life.
Can't you let the lawyers handle that?
For the lawsuit, of course. But there's a lot more. I've been contacted by politicians. They say that I'm destroying the economy. If my product works, there will be no shops for clothes hence no jobs. They asked me: "Do you know how many Americans are working in clothing shops?". I was accused of being anti-patriotic. From nowhere, some news laws appeared saying that clothes should have a certification in order to save children from accidental suffocation.
From that point, it became immoral to print clothes. Last year, nobody ever thought about printing clothes and, now, it is worse than eating babies alive. There's even webshops where you can order "Not Printed" labelled t-shirts. I've been attacked personally, investors have turned me back and, at the same time, I still need to pay expensive legal fees.
Isn't that true that it's a threat for the economy?
It is a tool for making life easier. Any invention which free people from unnecessary labor seems to be a threat to the economy. But if our economy is threatened by inventions that make life better for everyone, it's the economy we need to change, not the inventions.
What will you do next?
I feel bitter. I'm an engineer with a new useful idea and everyone turns against me: big corporations, lawyers, politicians. Even random people in the street think that "It's the guy destroying jobs and suffocating babies". I've never signed up for that. I've never been into politics or anything like that. Now, I'm thinking about settling somewhere in Europe but I'm afraid that the hand of the FCIAA will follow me there.
Thanks Karl, I wish you the best.
Although, as a journalist, I know I should remain objective, I can't help but feeling empathy for the guy. As I'm packing up, I notice his clothes for the first time. "So are those printed?" "Of course" "Very nice. It's impressive." He sighs then try to smile at me: "Thanks. If you are interested, you will find the .clo on the Pirate Bay.". His smile feels sad, despaired. We shake hands and he slowly walk away while I stay there, helpless.
This post is part of the Letters from the Future collection and is dedicated to Brokep for announcing his political involvement during the writing of this text. Picture by Anna Banana.
When debating, we usually consider that opinions are merely resulting of being exposed to logical arguments. And understanding them. If arguments are logical and understood, people will change their mind.
Anybody having been connected long enough on the internet knows that it never happens. Everybody stays on his own position. But why?
The reason is simple: changing opinion has a cost. A cost that we usually ignore. A good exercice is to try to evaluate this cost before any debate. For yourself and for the counterpart.
Let's take a music fan that was convinced that piracy hurts artists. Convincing him that it's not the case and that piracy is not immoral means to him that, firstly, he was dumb enough to be brainwashed by major companies and that, secondly, the money spent on CD is a complete waste.
Each time you will tell him "Piracy is not hurting artists and not immoral", he will ear "You are stupid and you wasted money for years".
This is quite a high cost but not impossible to overcome. It means that arguments should not only convince him, but also overcome that cost.
Worst: intuitively, we take the symmetry of costs for granted.
Let's take the good old god debate.
For the atheist, the cost of being convinced is usually admitting being wrong. This is a non-negligible cost but sometimes possible. Most non-hardcore atheists are thus quite ready to be convinced. They enter any religious debate expecting the same mindset from the opponents.
But the opposite is not true. For a religious person, believing in god is
often a very important part of her life. In most case, this is something inherited from her parents. Some life choices have been made because of her belief. The person is often engaged in activities and societies related to her belief. It could be as far as being the core foundation of her social circles.
When you say "God doesn't exist", the religious will hear "You are stupid, your parents were liars, you wrecked your life and you have no reason to see your friends anymore".
It looks like a joke, right? It isn't. But, subconsciously, it is exactly what people feel and understand. No wonder that religious debates are so emotional.
Why do you think that some religious communities are fighting any individual atheist? Why do you think that any religion always try to get money or personal involvement from you? Because they want to increase the cost of not believing in them. Scammers understand that very well: they will ask you more and more money to increase the cost of you realizing it's a scam.
Before any argument, any debate, ask everyone to answer sincerely to the question "what will happen if I'm convinced? What will I do? What will change in my life?".
More often than not, changing opinion is simply not an option. Which settle any debate before the start.
And you? Which of your opinions are too costly to be changed? And what can you do to improve the situation?
Picture by r.nial.bradshaw
Recently Carlos added FTS4 and snippet support to Tracker. We merged that to master after doing some tests and have reduced the database size on disk by doing this. I released 0.15.2 yesterday with the FTS4 work, and today I decided to add a richer experience to tracker-search.
Below you can see me searching for passport and sue found in some of the documents indexed on my machine. The colour there is quite nice to separate hits and snippets/contexts where the terms were found. This search without any arguments really will search ALL resources in the database:
This second screenshot shows searching for love with all music in particular. So you can use this for all areas of tracker-search:
With any luck, we will be releasing a 0.16.0 in time for the next GNOME release with this all available in!
So, I've been having fun traversing the LibreOffice .docx and .rtf import filters while trying to implement Ink annotations in LibreOffice Writer. As it turns out, I don't strictly agree with the ISO press release that the Office Open XML file format is "intended to be implemented by multiple applications on multiple platforms". However, despite having spent way too much time wading through a ~24k line XML file defining the document model in the importer, I've been very grateful that the format is XML-based and therefore human readable.
I've included some useful resources at the end for any intrepid programmers who wish to help with tackling the importer beast.
Ink allows you to annotate using a stylus on a tablet PC using Microsoft Word so that you can doodle over your documents as you see fit. Technical details ahead, so feel free to skip to the results.
Ink strokes are saved in docx documents as bezier curves expressed through VML paths (these are pretty similar to SVG paths, with commands and co-ordinates). I had quite a bit of fun hacking a parser together – here's the patch, with a few tweaks, it could be generally useful. It produces a list of all the sub-paths in a path, each subpath consisting of a list of co-ordinates and co-ordinate flags indicating normal or control points.
Word's storage of Ink annotations does highlight some of the problems with implementing Word-compatible OOXML. They're represented something like this:
<v:shape path="[VML path]" ...>
<o:ink i="[base64 binary data]" annotation="t"/>
Now, [VML path] is really the important part as it contains the Ink shape geometry. But the [base64 binary data]? What's stored in there is anybody's guess – I've certainly not found any documentation on its contents. Anyone who has a tablet version of Word should feel free to take a crack at reverse engineering it ;)
It turns out that paths for Ink annotations consist of bezier curves. Beziers weren't supported in the importer, so the path attribute, as well as any <v:curve> elements (which use control1, control2, to and from attributes), got ignored. So I added the support by getting the path and control1/control2 attributes and passing off the parsed result to LibreOffice using the UNO API.
Word allows you to export a document with Ink to RTF. Most of the code for importing the RTF equivalent was already there, it just needed some adapting. I found something interesting that I haven't seen documented elsewhere, furthering Miklos Vajna's work (see README) on understanding the RTF spec. The geometry of the Ink shapes is described using the pVerticies [sic] and pSegmentInfo keywords. The pSegmentInfo section is a list of commands indicating what the points listed in pVerticies mean (move to, curve, end sub-path and so on).
|Segment indicator
|Vertices associated
|Line to point
|1 (x, y)
|Bezier curve with two control points and end point
|3 (cx1, cy1, cx2, cy2, x, y)
|Move to point
|1 (x, y)
|Close path
|End path
The plot thickens…
So, when importing a Word-generated .rtf with Ink annotations, why was I seeing segment indicators like 0x200A? Apparently, the low order bytes of certain segment indicators indicate the number of point sets to apply to – for example, if there were four curves in a row with three points each in pVerticies, it can be specified by using the low order bytes of the segment indicator, resulting in 0×2004 (encompassing 12 points in total). This may also apply to other relevant line segment types, but this is as of yet untested. You can easily extract the number of segments indicated using basic bitwise operators:
unsigned int segment = 0x200A; // Example segment indicator
unsigned int points = segment & 0x00FF; // Assuming two lowest order bytes are used for point count
segment &= 0xFF00; // Discard point count; just leave segment indicator
LibreOffice now correctly displays not only Ink, but (in theory) any curves and shapes with paths when importing from .docx or .rtf. A minor bug with RTF image wrapping which caused the shape to be inline with the text instead of over it was also fixed (the property was just being ignored), so better imports all round!
Next step – correct export of bezier shapes to docx and rtf (no, I'm still not sure whether that blob of binary in the o:ink element is of any importance whatsoever, but this should be one way to find out).
v:shape schema information – this website is great for making sense of the OOXML standard, particularly if used alongside this:
ISO IEC 29500 – ISO standard document for OOXML (warning, big pdf in a zip).
RTF spec – only somewhat useful
UNO API reference – useful if used with the search function
writerfilter and oox – LibreOffice modules of interest for importing OOXML documents (cgit links for browsing the source/READMEs)
I'm working on allowing a Windows Installer (.msi) for LibreOffice to be built when cross compiling under Linux. So far, it has been a broad spanning project and has covered:
Project status as of posting:
The MSDN documentation for the win32 native tools has been linked to where appropriate.
Luckily, LibreOffice cross compile support is already very good. README.cross in the LibreOffice root directory has far more information. Assuming you have checked out LibreOffice and have all the MinGW dependencies, cross compiling can be as simple as changing <lo_root>/autogen.lastrun to read:
CC=ccache i686-w64-mingw32-gcc
CXX=ccache i686-w64-mingw32-g++
CC_FOR_BUILD=ccache gcc
CXX_FOR_BUILD=ccache g++
This references <lo_root>/distro-configs/LibreOfficeMinGW.conf. This folder
contains various configurations for compiling under different circumstances. I
also found it helpful to add this line to LibreOfficeMinGW.conf to make life
The installer build logic can be found in <lo_root>/solenv/bin/modules/installer/windows. It makes use of several Microsoft utilities to eventually output an MSI file. Some of these utilities are already distributed by Wine.
Provided by Wine:
expand.exe – Used to unpack cabinet files.
cscript.exe – Command line script host.
Also expected:
msidb.exe – Manipulates installer database tables and streams.
msiinfo.exe – Manipulates installer meta data (summary information).
makecab.exe – Compresses files into cabinets.
msimsp.exe – Creates patch packages.
msitran.exe – Generates and applies database transforms.
Wine already exposes most of the required functionality via the API exposed by msi.dll (MSDN, Wine) and cabinet.dll (MSDN, Wine). My work has been focussed on writing command line utilities that support the interface expected by the LibreOffice build scripts.
* Distributed by Wine
** In progress
The code for these tools can be found in the the feature/crossmsi branch of libreoffice. It currently resides in setup_native/source/win32/wintools in the tree.
To test the tools individually, grab the dev Makefile and make from the tool's directory. You can then pass the -? or /? command for usage. I would suggest disabling Wine's debug logs unless you specifically need them:
$ export WINEDEBUG=-all
-d <path> Fully qualified path to MSI database file
-f <wdir> Path to the text archive folder
-c Create or overwrite with new database and import tables
-i <tables> Import tables from text archive files – use * for all
-e <tables> Export tables to files archive in directory – use * for all
-x <stream> Saves stream as <stream>.idb in <wdir>
-a <file> Adds stream from file to database
-r <storage> Adds storage to database as substorage
-c <cp> Specify codepage
-t <title> Specify title
-j <subject> Specify subject
-a <author> Specify author
-k <keywords> Specify keywords
-o <comment> Specify comments
-p <template> Specify template
-l <author> Specify last author
-v <revno> Specify revision number
-s <date> Specify last printed date
-r <date> Specify creation date
-q <date> Specify date of last save
-g <pages> Specify page count
-w <words> Specify word count
-h <chars> Specify character count
-n <appname> Specify application which created the database
-u <security> Specify security (0: none, 2: read only 3: read only (enforced)
/F directives – A file with MakeCAB directives.
/V[n] – Verbosity level (1..3)
Once upon a time, like 5 weeks ago, there used to be the longstanding plan to, at some point in the future, port GIMP to GEGL.
We have done a lot of refactoring in GIMP over the last ten years, but its innermost pixel manipulating core was still basically unchanged since GIMP 1.2 days. We didn't bother to do anything about it, because the long term goal was to do all this stuff with GEGL, when GEGL was ready. Now GEGL has been ready for quite a while, and the GEGL porting got assigned a milestone. Was it 2.10, 3.0, 3.2, I don't remember. We thought it would take us forever until it's done, because nobody really had that kind of time.
About 5 weeks ago, I happened to pick up Øyvind Kolås, aka Pippin the Goatkeeper to stay at my place for about a week and do some hacking. After one day, without intending it, we started to do some small GEGL hacking in GIMP, just in order to verify an approach that seemed a good migration strategy for the future porting.
The Problem: All the GimpImage's pixels are stored in legacy data structures called TileManagers, which are kept by high level objects called GimpDrawables. Each layer, channel, mask in GIMP is a GimpDrawable.
A typical way to do things is:
TileManager *tiles = gimp_drawable_get_tiles (drawable);
PixelRegion region;
pixel_region_init (®ion, tiles, x, y, w, h, TRUE);
/* do legacy stuff on the pixel region in order to change pixels */
After the GEGL porting, things would look like that:
GeglBuffer *buffer = gimp_drawable_get_buffer (drawable);
/* do GEGL stuff on the buffer, like running it through a graph in order to change pixels */
Just, how would we get there? Replacing the drawable's tile manager by a buffer, breaking all of GIMP at the same time while we move on porting things to buffers instead of tile managers? No way!
The Solution: A GeglBuffer's tiles are stored in a GeglTileBackend, and it's possible to write tile backends for arbitrary pixel storage, so why not write a tile backend that uses a legacy GIMP TileManager as storage.
After a few hours of hacking, Pippin had the GimpTileBackendTileManager working, and I went ahead replacing some legacy code with GEGL code, using the new backend. And it simply worked!
The next important step was to make GimpDrawable keep around a GeglBuffer on top of its TileManager all the time, and to add
gimp_drawable_get_buffer(). And things just kept working, and getting easier and easier the more legacy code got replaced by GEGL code, the more GeglBuffers were being passed around instead of TileManagers and PixelRegions.
What was planned as a one week visit turned into 3 weeks of GEGL porting madness. At the time this article is written, about 90% of the GIMP application's core are ported to GEGL, and the only thing really missing are GeglOperations for all layer modes.
As a totally unexpected extra bonus, there is now even a GEGL buffer tile backend in libgimp, for plug-ins to use, so also plug-ins can simply say
gimp_drawable_get_buffer(drawable_ID), and use all of GEGL to do their stuff, instead of using the legacy pixel region API that also exists on the plug-in side.
GIMP 2.10's core will be 100% ported to GEGL, and all of the legacy pixel fiddling API for plug-ins is going to be deprecated. Once the core is completely ported, it will be a minor effort to simply "switch on" high bit depths and whatever color models we'd like to see. Oh, and already now, instead of removing indexed mode (as originally planned), we accidentally promoted indexed images to first class citizens that can be painted on, and even color corrected, just like any other image. The code doing so doesn't even notice because GEGL and Babl transparently handle the pixel conversion magic.
The port lives in the goat-invasion branch in GIT. That branch will become master once GIMP 2.8 is relased, so the first GIMP 2.9 developer release will already contain the port in progress.
If you want to discuss GIMP and GEGL things with us face to face, join us at this year's Libre Graphics Meeting in Vienna, in two weeks from now, a lot of GIMP people will be there; or simply check out the goat-invasion branch and see the goats yourself.
If you have some Euros to spare, consider donating them to Libre Graphics Meeting, it's one of the few occasions for GIMP developers, and the people hacking on other projects, to meet in person; and such meetings are always a great boost for development.
During the 3 crazy weeks, quite some work time hours were spent on the port, thanks to my employer Lanedo for sponsoring this via "Labs time".
Student applications for Google Summer of Code 2012 will be open very soon. After an extremely enjoyable and rewarding experience with the program last year, I feel it's my duty to student programmers to get the word out. So, here's why you should apply.
You get paid to work on open source software. I became a long time user, first time contributor early last year. Looking to give something back, I attempted a LibreOffice Easy Hack. In a case of fantastic timing, they announced their involvement in GSoC a week or so later and I got in touch. The end result was a whole new open source library. I had an amazing experience working with LibreOffice but it's ideal to choose a project that's personally useful. GSoC doesn't require that you're an open source evangelist but if you are, it's a strong argument for applying.
It's fantastic experience working on a large project. I feel I learned more during those three months than during my undergraduate degree course. I have to say that I never particularly enjoyed groupwork at university but it's completely different if you're working with smart, motivated individuals who're there either because they want to be or because they're paid to be (quite often both). As a nice bonus, it's great work experience and has essentially led me to my dream job. I'm not sure if that's a typical result, but it certainly wouldn't hurt to have it on your CV or resume.
You meet some of the smartest, most awesome people (not all of them programmers). I think this is my favourite outcome. I've met people from all over the world with an assortment of beliefs, opinions and backgrounds. My experience was that some of the best hackers and coolest people (no, seriously!) hang around open source communities.
Applying isn't difficult, just choose a participating open source organisation or two and do a little research into the suggested projects before getting in touch with them. Good luck!
We're currently looking for anyone who has LibreOffice experience and is interested in working on the project. If that sounds like something you would like to do, get in touch with us.
Additionally, if you or anyone you know has experience running an open source business, please get in touch. We're looking for someone that could facilitate a CEO type position.
I've been home a week from the LibreOffice Conference in Paris and from a personal point of view, it was a huge success.
First of all, here are my slides from the short talk I gave about what we achieved with libvisio over the duration of Google Summer of Code. There is still work to be done but once end-user feedback starts coming in, we can sand down any rough edges.
The conference was a lot of fun, particularly the company. I had the pleasure of meeting the rest of the libvisio team, Fridrich Strba and Valek Filippov, who looked out for me the whole time I was there. I'm sure the Paris pickpockets are still cursing their names.
I also have to admit to being a little starstruck at meeting all the fantastic hackers whose work I have made so much use of. The LibreOffice team were a diverse, interesting and kind bunch who put up with my incessant (well-meaning) questions with good grace and gave me plenty to think about on coding, the universe and everything.
It was wonderful to be surrounded by programmers and Linux users without the geekier-than-thou attitude. Despite being younger (and greener) than most and female unlike many (with a few notable exceptions), I chatted away to my fellow hackers without once feeling patronised.
Finally, I'm staying out of the whole political situation – I started coding with LibreOffice for pragmatic reasons (I could get the code easily, Easy Hacks make getting to know the project simpler and LibreOffice was part of GSoC '11). However, I think the conference really confirmed for me that as important as the code base is, the community that surrounds a project this size is as vital. Without their helpful, inclusive approach, I'd have found contributing to an open source project of that magnitude an insurmountable task.
So here's to another year!
Given there have been a number of improvements to tracker-needle recently, I thought I would make a video to highlight some of them. A quick summary:
Really nice to have tagging supported properly in tracker-needle now.
Something I have been meaning to do for a long time, is to update the preferences dialog for Tracker to easily add locations which are special user directories (as per the GUserDirectory locations).
I wanted to do this in such a way that:
The result is this (now in master and 0.12.2 when it is released):
Last Thursday I merged the Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) backend for GVfs; so we finally have support for Apple shares too now. It has been written by Carl-Anton Ingmarsson and it was his Summer of Code 2011 project. It is on the master branch and thus will be in the next unstable release. Please test it and report bugs against the "afp backend" component.
Carl-Anton did quite an impressive job - probably best depicted by the diffstat of the merge:
client/Makefile.am | 1
client/afpuri.c | 269 ++
client/gdaemonvfs.c | 2
configure.ac | 31
daemon/Makefile.am | 45
daemon/afp-browse.mount.in | 8
daemon/afp.mount.in | 5
daemon/gvfsafpconnection.c | 1651 ++++++++++++++++
daemon/gvfsafpconnection.h | 420 ++++
daemon/gvfsafpserver.c | 1033 ++++++++++
daemon/gvfsafpserver.h | 85
daemon/gvfsbackendafp.c | 4292 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-
daemon/gvfsbackendafp.h | 23
daemon/gvfsbackendafpbrowse.c | 608 +++++
daemon/gvfsbackendafpbrowse.h | 47
daemon/gvfsbackenddnssd.c | 6
daemon/gvfsjobsetattribute.h | 1
17 files changed, 8491 insertions(+), 36 deletions(-)
So, I have finally made progress that isn't so ground-breaking that my mentor wants to write about it but is big enough that certain people will stop making fun of my empty blog. So, frob (his wonderfully useful work can be found here), I hope you're happy.
I've been working on shapes, lines and their properties, most recently on fills. Here's how it's going so far (Visio document on top, my output below).
Thanks to frob for the image, plus animated gif.
A few technical details for those who care: Visio draws shapes (including rectangles) as individual lines and before they can be filled, so we have to manually detect whether or not it's a closed polygon. At the moment, we simply take the first point and compare it to the last point and make sure there are no gaps in between. It works for most simple cases but since when are things ever truly simple when reverse engineering?
You may also notice a difference between how gradients 31-34 are drawn in Visio vs my output. There's no direct equivalent of this type of square gradient that I know of in the SVG or ODG specifications, so we're approximating it. I have a whole new appreciation of slight imperfections when porting documents to different formats.
In the time it has taken to write this, I've already found that some of what I've written about will change. This is why I'm a programmer not a blogger ;)
Just a quick reminder: The student application period for the Google Summer of Code 2011 has opened as of yesterday (Monday, the 28th of March). Apply now! The starting point for Gnome is here; it has all the relevant information.
In addition to that, if you are happen to be interested in Neuroscience and Informatics the International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility (INCF) also got accepted as a organization (Thanks Raphael!). Among other very interesting project ideas there are also two proposals that are Gnome related (as in pygtk based applications). If you have a cool Neuroinformatics+Gnome based idea be sure to apply at the INCF. The starting point is here.
At the GTK+ Hackfest in A Coruña I managed to get GIMP almost completely (minus one dialog and most plug-ins) running on GTK+ 3.0.
This turned out to be a great tool for finding bugs in the new GTK+. In fact, I found quite a few of them while still completing the port. Some bugs I fixed right away, others were fixed by fellow Hackfest hackers. Even while writing this post (the image was of course cropped with the ported GIMP), two more popped up and will eventually be fixed.
After being down for a while the blog is now back online. The server moved - as I did - to Munich. EOM for now - more real news later ...
... continued:
"In Deutschland ist nicht nur die Steuerbelastung so hoch wie in kaum einem anderen Industrieland, die Steuern und Abgaben sind auch noch besonders ungerecht verteilt. [...] Der DGB fordert, die wirtschaftlich Leistungsfähigen über die Anhebung des Spitzensteuersatzes und Wiedereinführung der Vermögenssteuer stärker zur Kasse zu bitten. [...] Die Union weist die Forderungen zurück. "Für mich ergibt sich kein Handlungsbedarf", sagte CDU-Sozialpolitiker Ralf Brauksiepe." (ZEIT Online)
Vermögende besteuern? Also das geht offenbar gar nicht. Aber halt: Das C in CDU steht doch immer noch für christlich, oder? Sein Hab und Gut den Armen geben - war da nicht was, Herr Sozialpolitiker? Ach quatsch, alles gerecht so wie es ist; auch dass Doppelverdiener mehr Abgaben zahlen. Oder? "Selbstverständlich", meint Herr Brauskiepe (ebd.).
"Ökonomen teilen diese Meinung nicht." - Pah. Experten. Was wissen die schon. Und überhaupt: Die vom Familienministerium kümmern sich ja auch nicht um die. - "Die deutschen Sozialsysteme seien nach wie vor auf die vierköpfige Standardfamilie mit zwei Kindern und einem Alleinverdiener." (ebd.) Aha! Wer hätte das gedacht. Wer nicht ins verstaubte Weltbild passt ist eh selber schuld und zahlt deswegen auch mehr; und womöglich Atheist, Agnostiker oder Schlimmeres. Christlich ist man halt nur unter sich. Doppel-Moral war ja noch nie ein Problem.
Außerdem hat die Regierung ja gerade auch viel, viel Wichtigeres zu tun; nämlich Medien zensieren und verbieten, dass Leute mit Farbkugeln in der Gegend rumschießen. Viel, viel wichtiger.
Die Deutsche Kinderhilfe plant eine offline Unterschriftenaktion für die Online-Zensur. Ja, wir erinnern uns, genau die Organisation, die "Unklarheiten bei Finanzstrukturen" und "enge Verbindungen zu einem Unternehmen" hat. Die WELT Online berichtete. Im krassen Gegensatz dazu sind Missbrauchsopfer selbst offenbar eher dagegen: "Missbrauchsopfer gegen Internetsperren" (MOGIS) und Trotz Allem e.V. (offener Brief). Es drängt sich sehr stark der Verdacht auf, dass die Deutsche Kinderhilfe nicht Lobby-Arbeit für Kinder macht, sondern mit.
Symptome behandeln anstatt Ursachen, und dabei getrieben von der Angst vor Neuem. Am besten noch ohne Sachverstand. Und bei jedem zweiten Gesetz muss das Grundgesetz geändert werden.
"Die Preise für derzeit erhältliche elektronische Bücher stimmen skeptisch. Sie liegen nur knapp, bei Hardcovern ein oder zwei Euro, unterm Ladenpreis für gedruckte Bände. Dabei wären heutige 20-Euro-Bücher in digitaler Form mit zehn Euro gut bezahlt, auch wenn den Autoren (und ihren Agenturen) deutlich mehr als die zurzeit üblichen zwei bis zweieinhalb Euro blieben. Doch obwohl alle Druck- und Vertriebskosten inklusive Verpackung, Transport sowie die in dieser Kette enthaltenen Löhne und Einnahmen und überdies der Buchhändlerrabatt von 40 bis 45 Prozent entfallen, erhalten die Urheber von dem kräftigen Zugewinn keinen Cent." (ZEIT online - Es war einmal)
Genau *dies* ist meiner Meinung nach die Wurzel warum die grossen Entertainment-, oh ich bitte um Entschuldigung, Kultur-Industrien so unglaubwürdig geworden sind und die Leute nicht bereit sind 12,90 €'¬ für ein (kopiergeschütztes) "Download-Album" auszugeben, das sich praktisch in nichts, i.e. Kosten(!), Lieferumfang, von der "echten" CD unterscheidet. Oder $25 für einen wissenschaftlichen Artikel in PDF-From? Ganz zu schweigen von Filmen, für die man im Kino schon 10€'¬ bezahlt hat, und die deswegen sowieso Millionen-Gewinn eingespielt haben; man schaue sich nur kurz die Preise im neuen Apple Store Movies an. Das soll man nicht für überholte und unverhältnismäßige Gier halten?
Wenigstens das mit dem Kopierschutz ändert sich (bei Musik) langsam. Wenn auch nicht ganz freiwillig.
Umso lächerlicher erscheint es wegen all dem, wenn man den Protektionismus der Alten und die Angst vor Neuem auch noch als Niedergang der Kultur zeichnet. Zum Beispiel hier von Frau Gaschke. Ich empfehle die Kommentare zu diesem Artikel. Diese sind weitaus besser als der Artikel selbst (irgendwie passend).
Und vor allem geht es doch um Inhalte. Und natürlich sollen die eigentlich Kunstschaffenden für ihre Arbeit fair entlohnt werden; aber sicher nicht auf die gleiche Art und Weise wie es vor dem "Digitalen Zeitalter" war. Tja, Zeiten ändern sich nunmal und wer sich nicht anpassen will gehört halt irgendwann zu den Dinosauriern ... hoffentlich. Salus populi est suprema lex:
"Freie Lektüre als Teil des Grundrechts auf Bildung €€" und als Erfolgsmodell moderner Wissensgesellschaften. Open Access wäre nicht der Untergang des Abendlandes. Im Gegenteil." (ZEIT online - Es war einmal)
Jetzt ist es amtlich! - stand ja schließlich im SPIEGEL
Ein mit GIMP gemachtes Bild hat beim SPIEGEL Bildbearbeitungs-Wettbewerb gewonnen. Glückwünsche an den erfolgreichen Manipulator!
One of the last remaining bits of antique code in the GIMP are the parts that talk to plug-ins, namely the plug-in handling code itself, and the PDB (procedural database) which provides a way for plug-ins to call GIMP's internal functionality and which keeps all procedures provided by plug-ins.
Everything was organized around some crufty C-structs, lived in files without proper namespace, and was basically untouched by all the refactoring that was happening during the last few years. To illustrate the evilness: the PDB did not even really know which of its procedures were dynamically allocated, and which were constant structs that are defined at compile time (not to speak of the part where perl code generated perl code that generated perl code that…). This had to stop.
Right after LGM, I entered refactoring mode:
tools/pdbgen/pdb/*.pdb, they are still perl) now looks the same: Inargs, Outargs, Code.
app/pdb/gimpprocedure.c). Their memory-management was modernized a bit (they have memory management now). Plug-In procedures are a proper GimpProcedure subclass now (
app/pdb/gimppluginprocedure.c), which made lots of code much more straightforward (they were separate structs before which had a pointer to the procedure they implement).
app/pdb/gimppdb.c), instead of a bunch of global variables with some API around. The PDB instance emits signals when procedures are added or removed, so the GUI can for example create menu items for new plug-in procedures. No more direct calls from the core to the GUI via the ugly GUI-vtable.
The plug-in system is a similar mess, closely related to the PDB, but even worse. It has seen some refactoring, but just to the point where it was unavoidable to fix misbehavior or to get rid of calling deprecated GLib APIs. While the PDB cleanup has come a long way, I'm still in the middle of chopping and re-assembling the plug-in stuff:
app/plug-in/gimppluginmanager.c). Well they were not really global variables before, but members of the global Gimp instance, which is supposed to be the only "global" variable in the GIMP, but that doesn't make much difference here.
That's where I am today, but there are still quite some hacks ahead before the stuff can be called "finished":
The PlugIn struct (
app/plug-in/plug-in.c) has to become an object, and this object needs some signals. Some code needs to listen to these signals, so cross-calling between unrelated scopes doesn't happen any more. At some point people will even be able to understand how the plug-ins' memory management is supposed to work Currently the calls to plug_in_ref() and plug_in_unref() are not really in places where one would expect them. I bet there is more uglyness that will go away as soon as I find it.
Now what are the benefits from all this work? Well, refactored code looks soooo much nicer
But seriously:
And now, please get GIMP from CVS and test it until it breaks. Then report the bug so the new PDB will be as solid as the old one.


text:
Halo Wars
Question from PhilR1
What are the Black Boxes for?
In the 2nd mission I managed to find a black box. I looked through the instruction manual but found no info as to what these do?
Can anyone clarify what their purpose is? I saw on the other question thats up at this moment about the skulls that you need to get the black boxes before the skulls appear. Is that there only purpose?
Thanks in advance.
7 years ago
Accepted Answer
They only unlock time line events, they have nothing to do with getting skulls.
7 years ago
They unlock Timeline stuffs as far as I am aware.
7 years ago
personaly, I have no idea what the boxes are for, however, I do not think they are used to unlock halo timeline events. the reason why I beleive this is because I got the "halo acedemic" achievement after playing skirmish.
in my opion, if I had to say anything, I would say the black boxes are there to stop you from getting the achievement "ready for the sequal" after the first couple of days, although everyone knows there will be a guide for it in a few days time.
7 years ago
Ok thank you for clarifying this for me. I checked the timeline after finding a black box and I did indeed unlock a timeline.
After reading that it was nothing to do with skulls I managed to get 4 skulls during the missions last night and they're unlocked by completing one of the bonus objectives where you have to kill a certain amount of enemies. For example if you complete bonus objective on the 1st mission - kill 100 grunts you'll see where the skull is briefly on the mini-map.
Am closing this question now.
7 years ago
This question has been successfully answered and closed
More Questions from This Game
|Skulls and black boxes?
|Where are all the Black Boxes located?
|To get remaining black boxes by winning a skirmish on each map and with each leader, do they have to be online matches?
|Where can I find the black box on Level 15 (the last one)?
|Where can I find the black box on relic interior?


text:
The Woodford Sun
Versailles, Ky.
Recent Obituaries
November 15, 2012
Franklin Delenor Burns, 70, of Waynesburg, husband of Gussie Faye Howard Burns, who is formerly of Woodford County, died Monday, Nov. 5, 2012, at his residence.
Born Oct. 17, 1942, in Lexington, he was the son of the late Bill and Mary May Collins (Henderson) Burns. He was a U.S. Army veteran of the Vietnam War, an active member of the American Legion Post #345 in Stanford, where he served as vice commander for several years, and was an employee of the Sleepy Head House both in Lexington and in Nicholasville as a retail sales clerk.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by a sister, Brenda (Donald) Wilson, Crab Orchard; a stepson, Darrell (Hattie) Keeling, Versailles; a stepdaughter, Debra Suzanne (Michael) Buck, Johnstown, Tenn.; and five grandchildren. A stepdaughter, Dianne Simpson, and a stepbrother, Robert Burns, are deceased.
A memorial service will be conducted at a later date at Camp Nelson National Cemetery in Nicholasville. Sims Funeral Services, Harrodsburg, is in charge of arrangements.
Expressions of sympathy may be made at www.simsfuneralservices.com.
Deborah G. Clark, 60, of Frankfort, died Thursday, Nov. 8, 2012.
Born Nov. 7, 1952, she was the daughter of Constance Morrow Clark and the late Lawrence Clark Sr. She was a member of Crestwood Baptist Church and was a retired employee for the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
In addition to her mother, she is survived by two brothers, Steven Clark, Frankfort, and Lawrence Clark Jr., Versailles.
Services were conducted Monday, Nov. 12, at Clark Legacy Center, Versailles Road, Frankfort, by Dr. Michael Hail. Casket bearers were John Morrow, Tommy Owens, Gary Morrow, Clyde Reynolds Jr., Rob Parker, and Manson Waldridge. Honorary bearers were Brian Kovacic, Robert Kovacic, Rob Kovacic, Charles Carpenter, and Daniel Flynn.
Condolences may be made at www.clarklegacycenter.com.
Adelyn Marie O'Nan, 77, of Lexington, died Sunday, Nov. 11, 2012.
Born Sept. 26, 1935, in Sturgis, Ky., she was the daughter of the late William Sylvester O'Nan and Marie Martin O'Nan. Adelyn was active in many fields throughout her life but her best accomplishment was her family. She was a great companion, a trusting friend, a loving mother, and an extraordinary grandmother who loved her family more than anything. Her great smile and positive attitude made her a good sales person. She sold everything from metal buildings, real estate, and commercial insurance. No job was ever too big. She has always been and always will be a positive influence to all those in her life. She was the easiest person to love.
She is survived by the love of her life, Russell Davis, of Lexington. She is also survived by three children: Linda Edelstein Parker, of Lexington, KY (Bruce); Paula Edelstein McGlothin, of Shelbyville, KY (Mark); and David Ronald Edelstein, of Lexington, KY (Holly). Survived also by six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
A memorial will be held for Adelyn (Addie) on Saturday, Nov. 17, 2012, at Addie's at The Woodford Inn located at 140 Park Street, Versailles, from 2 to 5 p.m. All family and friends are welcome to help us celebrate the life of this wonderful lady.
(Paid obituary)
Charles M. Eller, 64, of Versailles, husband of Pearl Mosley Eller, died Thursday, Nov. 8, 2012.
Born Jan. 19, 1948, in Abingdon, Va., he was the son of the late Richard Eller and Sarah Lou McCracken Eller Lowe. He was a retired employee of Quebecor and a veteran of the U.S. Air Force, having served in Vietnam.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by two sons, Chris Eller, Versailles, and Steve (Trina) Eller, Nicholasville; three sisters, Mary (A.J.) Williams, Jeffersonville, Virginia (Bob) Kramer, Ohio, and Nancy (Doug) Caudle, Crittenden; three brothers, Clyde (Gretchen) Eller, Versailles, Jimmy Eller, Lexington, and Dwight D. (Penny) Lowe, Georgetown; and four grandchildren, Mark Eller, Katie Eller, Julie Eller, and Natalie Eller. A brother, Avery Eller, is deceased.
Services were conducted Sunday, Nov. 11, at Camp Yahweh, Sadieville, by Pastor Clabe Mosley. Casket bearers were Tony Eller, Kevin Maynard, Keith Mosley, Clyde Eller, Jim Eller, David Lowe, Clabe Mosley, and Randy Gregory. Honorary bearers were Dr. Dale Goodin, Jill Wozniak, AARNP, and staff, and Dr. Thomas Goff and staff.
Condolences may be made at www.clarklegacycenter.com.
Earl J. Powell Jr., 76, of Versailles, husband of Betty F. Powell, died Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2012, at the Hospice Care Center at the St. Joseph Hospital.
Born in Lexington, he was the son of the late Earl Joseph Sr. and Caroline Henry Powell. A retired engineer for IBM, he was an active member of St. Leo Catholic Church and the Knights of Columbus.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by a daughter, Bridget (Jack) Windley, Memphis Tenn.; four sons, Terry (JoAnn) Powell, Lexington, Earl J. (Leigh) Powell III, Chantilly, Va., David Powell of New York City, N.Y., and John Powell, London, England; four sisters, Caroline (Jim) Cloud, Lexington, Avel (Julius) Fister, Charleston, S.C., and Mary Pat (Joe) Warren and Kathy (Mike) Fister, both of Lexington; two brothers, Tony (Mary Kay) Powell, Cleveland, Ohio, and John Powell, Lexington; and eight grandchildren.
Services were conducted Monday, Nov. 5, at St. Leo Catholic Church by Fr. Danny Schwendeman. Burial was in the Calvary Cemetery in Lexington. Casket bearers were Mike Fister, Randy Kraemer, Jim Crawford, Jim Blust, Ed Crockett, and John Tanner. Blackburn & Ward Funeral Home was in charge of arrangements.
Guest book available www.BlackburnandWard.com.
Fred Dale Reeves, 80, of Versailles, formerly of Glasgow, widower of Betty Heinmiller Reeves, died Monday, Nov. 12, 2012.
Born May 2, 1932, in Woodford County, he was the son of the late Everett and Beatrice Curtis Reeves. He was a public relations advisor for Barren County Rural Electric and a veteran of the U.S. Navy, having served in the Korean War. He was a member and elder of First Christian Church in Glasgow. He was the former president of the Rotary Club in Glasgow, a Kentucky Colonel, and a member of the Optimist Club, being named Optimist of the Year in 1965. He was also the president of the Christian Fellowship at the University of Kentucky.
Survivors include three sisters, Lois Redden, Lawrenceburg, Eileen Congleton, Georgetown, and Glenda Montgomery, Louisville; and several nieces, nephews and cousins.
Graveside services will be conducted at 11 a.m. CST today, Thursday, Nov. 15, at Glasgow Municipal Cemetery. Clark Funeral Home, Rose Hill, is in charge of arrangements.
In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to the American Cancer Society.
Condolences may be made at www.clarklegaycenter.com.
Obituaries from past issues: Click here


text:
Give a big ol' WG2E Welcome to National Bestselling Author Vickie Taylor, who's teaching us how to SWOT Our Way to a Sustainable Writing Business.
Take it away, Vickie…
These are such exciting times to be a writer. Possibility stretches out before us like an endless summer meadow before a child. We dream of–whatever it is that draws us to writing. Capturing in words our tales of wonder the way we once captured butterflies from that meadow in a glass jar. Accolades. A work-at-home job. A legacy to outlast us. Money.
But once we've made the leap of faith–published that first book, run that first blog hop, received that first royalty payment, quit the day job–our meadow can quickly become a quagmire. Floundering only sucks us in deeper. More, even if we sail across that meadow with youthful glee, we all know that the only thing that doesn't change in life is that things are bound to change. Technology advances, markets shift, and people…well, people are just fickle.
So how do we create a business that will sustain us and our families over the long term? A few days spent diving into writing-related blogs will offer up many strategies that sound reasonable. But will what works for Jane work for Dick? There is a good chance it won't. That's because we're all starting at different points in our careers and all aiming for different destinations. Road map directions from Cleveland to Tampa aren't much help a person who's in Dallas and needs to get to Tuscon. And even accurate directions fail to take into account current weather disruption, construction detours, and traffic delays.
One way many writers plot their business courses is by setting goals. Goals are great. I'm a big believer. Goals are a form of business plan–and we've heard a lot about business plans and their value from folks like our host D.D. Scott. Now the question is, what goals do we set? Dick and Jane's goals are different, as they should be. Goals need to take into account current conditions and future concerns.
When setting goals, I like to use a method some of the biggest, most successful companies in the world have used for years when developing their strategic plans: SWOTs. Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities,andThreats.
The gist of it is, to create a sustainable business people need to leverage their strengths, improve in their weak areas, take advantage of opportunities, and mitigate threats. The specific goals for the business must cover all those areas to be sure they are developing a business based on a solid foundation, but also nimble enough to navigate changing business weather in years to come.
We all have things we're good at. Those are our wheelhouses, our low-hanging fruits. The things we can immediately take advantage of to build our businesses. They become our short-term goals. A writer with a knack for capturing gut-wrenching emotion should apply herself to writing the most emotional books on the market. One with a background in forensic pathology might start a new crime/mystery series. Someone who writes incredibly fast (without sacrificing quality) may leverage his ability to publish a book every 60 days. Goals based on our strengths should be our "givens." No-brainers.
Yeah, we've all got them, whether we want to admit it or not. Writers who refuse to acknowledge their weaknesses are like horses wearing blinders. They can't see the competition sneaking up on them until it's too late. If we confess our weaknesses, we can great goals aimed at improving those less-than-stellar areas. If Jane is getting feedback that her pantser-plotted stories ramble and wander, she can set goals to take a class in story structure. When Dick realizes he doesn't know past perfect verb tense from a compound predicate, he can do several things. First, line up a good editor (short term). But really, none of us should be sending our editors a hot mess. So Dick might also bookmark some resources on the web like Grammar Girl and the Purdue grammar series where he can look up answers to specific concerns as they arise during his editing process. He can also acquire and learn to use good reference materials like a dictionary, a thesaurus, and the Chicago Manual of Style (middle term). Finally he can commit to improving his skills. Take a class. Read. Subscribe to "tip of the day" services such as Daily Writing Tips. It's free, takes only five minutes a day, is delivered right to our inboxes, and over time can really build up a writer's ability to handle those tricky little grammar gotchas. Poor Jane, the introvert who hasn't a clue about marketing, can find begin learning Twitter and Facebook, Pinterest and Goodreads. These would all be great goals to improve weak areas.
This is where staying in touch with the industry (through sites like WG2E) can make a difference. We keep our ears open for what marketing techniques are working. What sales venues are growing. We look at the assets in our portfolios and evaluate how we might leverage them. For example, I am a professional copyeditor and book formatter. As such, I've developed relationships with some great authors. Might I be able to leverage those relationships to promote my own work? Hmm. It depends, obviously. But it is definitely an opportunity worth exploring. I know at least a few are willing to accept the "Hey, I'll edit your book for free if I can put a one-page blurb about my own book in the back" pitch. Other examples of opportunities include creative showcasing. Wrote a gritty book about a protagonist who is a boxing champion? Find out if there are boxing clubs in your city. Have a lovely book featuring a master gardener? How about setting up a table at the spring flower show?
This is probably the most important category when it comes to making a business sustainable over the long term. I doubt any of us are true prognosticators, but by following the industry we do see possibilities and trends. Traditionally published authors should certainly be aware of the shrinking print book market. KDP Select authors need to understand the concerns raised by exclusivity. The potential for Amazon to become a monopoly and drive all of its competitors out of business should worry us all. So how to make sure our writing business will be strong enough to weather these storms? Set goals to mitigate these risks.
If the idea of Amazon being the only game in town is a worry, set a goal to build your own bookstore and drive some percentage of book-buying traffic to it. I'm looking at a service called Gumroad, and hope to have it set up this year.
Threats aren't limited to just sales venues, however. We have to look at the reading public. An author writing in a trendy market (sparkly vampires?) might worry about that trend losing favor. Another who writes in a niche market might consider expanding to an additional genre. Is anyone concerned that some of the retailers might crack down further on adult content? If they do, are those who write that content prepared?
The purpose of identifying threats is to set goals that will allow our business to dodge, feint, weather.
By considering our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats when creating our business goals, we create a balanced approach that will help us be successful both short term and long term, regardless of the external factors that can impact our industry.
What about you? Do you consider these things when developing your business plans?
Vickie Taylor a national bestselling, four-time Romance Writers of America RITA-nominated author of fifteen traditionally published novels who has now set her sights squarely on self-publishing. She is also a professional copy editor and book formatter. When she's not writing or editing (which isn't often) she is usually found working a FEMA certified search and rescue dog at some disaster or riding her horse in some remote location where she hopes (prays) she has no cell phone coverage.
On Amazon
Vickie Taylor


text:
...and welcome to season 12! What started out as a simple idea to bring great pop music to the world has turned into almost a million plays and just over 500+ podcast subscribers. It's all thanks to our listeners that we made it this far, the true lovers of pop music. They blogged about us, told their family & friends about us and shouted it from the roof tops.
Thanks for continuing to support your favorite artists by buying their music.
PLEASE NOTE: All requests are appreciated and considered but are not guaranteed to be added to our playlist.
Making multiple requests for the same song will not increase its likeliness for playlist consideration.
This text will be replaced by the flash music player.