text:
—Citizens Bank Park
It's not the way they wanted things to end at home, but the Phillies did get some help in the standings. Even though the Phils lost to the Mets 7-3 in the series finale, the Atlanta Braves lost to the Washington Nationals, 4-2.
With a six game lead with six to play, any win by the Phillies, or any loss by the Braves, means the Phillies will clinch the National League East.
On the mound, Cole Hamels was working with very little from the early stages of the game. He allowed a second inning home run to David Wright, which put the Mets on top 1-0. Hamels was visibly frustrated with the strike zone of home plate umpire Mike Winters all afternoon, and for good reason. Winters was not consistent, but let's not place all of the blame on the umpire. Hamels wasn't sharp and he made several mistakes, including another long one to Carlos Beltran in the fifth inning.
Hamels would last only four innings – plus one batter in the fifth, which was Beltran – allowing five runs on nine hits to go with three walks and two strikeouts. The five earned runs allowed were the most for Hamels since —. His two K's on the day were a season low for a game that was not rain shortened.
"It was just one of those days where I couldn't locate and I wasn't being consistent," said Hamels after his second-shortest outing of the season. "I just threw…too many pitches out of the zone, then when I was throwing strikes I left them up."
Sound like you can chalk it up to a great pitcher just having a bad day. Unfortunately, it came in a spot where a win would have sent the Phillies off on the road with another NL East crown. That will have to wait until at least Monday.
Chase Utley accounted for all of the Phillies offense with one swing of the stick in the fifth inning. He lined one into the first row in right field for a three-run home run, his 16th of the season. Other than his contribution, little was provided elsewhere. The Phillies did manage nine hits on the afternoon, however, they again struggled with runners in scoring position going 1-for-13.
"You can't hit every day, that's life," quipped Charlie Manuel following his teams first series loss since the Houston Astros swept them in late August.
Jimmy Rollins made his return to the lineup a quick and rather uninspiring one. Rollins pinch hit for Wilson Valdez in the eighth inning, his first at bat since September 8. He swung at the first pitch and rolled it over to second base. Not exactly how he wanted to come back, but at least he's been deemed healthy enough to play from here on out.
The home schedule didn't end on a high note, but there were reasons to celebrate the season on Fan Appreciation Day. Over 3.6 million fans pushed through the turnstiles, an average attendance of 45,028 per game, both franchise records.
They'll now head to the Nation's Capital for a three game set with the Nats, who did their part to aid the Phillies this weekend. Rain is forecasted for both Monday and Tuesday, which sets up an interesting situation should any game be rained out.
54 Comments
Rollins had a typical Rollins at-bat. This guy never learns.
I was asleep folks heard Cole had a meltdown. Keep it together King Cole is just one game. We need the Cole you been since June for the playoffs.
and that is the difference between doc and hamels. doc does not have really bad games, ever. how do you lose two in a row at home against the worst team that biz has ever seen. rollins is a waste of space. i heard a very good sports guy agree with me about 125 million dollar waste howie. yes over 162 he will hit you 30 to 40 homers. he should. in the field he is horrible. also at big at bats we want him nowheres near the plate. maybe in bizs house. howie is the bni
Padres Lose! Phillies Clinch Playoff berth!!!
With today's loss (down 12-2), the Padres will have 68 losses and the Giants have 68 losses. As a result, either the Padres or the Giants will have at least 70 losses (who play each other the last 3 games of the year), one more than the Phillies would have if they lost the last 6 games.
Yes, today was disappointing, but in the context of the entire season, I'm not as disappointed as I could be.
We'll clinch in Washington and then ride out the rest of the season.
In a way, this is a good thing, because it drives home the fact that two of our aces need rest and so do Howard and Polanco. Charlie will have no choice but to bench them after we clinch. And then we'll have a mixed record for the rest of the season.
Madson wasn't out there for long and Lidge got an extra day.
We're in good shape heading to Washington.
Halladay doesn't have really bad games ever? Seems to me he had more than one this year.
I think Hamels had every right to show some frustration. He had no command, a bad umpire, and was probably hoping to pitch the clincher. He also has pitched more than a few games this year when he allowed one or zero runs and didn't get a win. One gesture doesn't mean a mental meltdown, and at least he didn't kick any folding chairs, like the unflappable Mr. Madson.
The Phils just came off an 11 game winning streak, and Hamels has been pitching phenomenally for a long series of games. This is a two game losing streak for the team, and a one game streak for Hamels. I think we should cut some slack here. They'll clinch soon enough, and still have the best record in the NL if every other contender wins all their remaining games. (And that's not likely when the Padres and Giants will be playing each other!)
Phils want home field advantage all the way through. If they win 3 of 7 home field is gaurenteed. may only take 2 depending on other outcomes. Let's nail this down.
Roy started the 2010 party. He will end it tomorrow night. 🙂
*the regular season party. The postseason bash is a different story.
@ Jay I know and Schaub sucked
and i will lose by less than the difference between the 2
Ill use con-vick next week vs the sorry skins.
Not too worried abtou the fightins. Maybe they wanna clinch Tuesday when I am in the building.
Jeff the Mets arent the worst team in the Biz. They where up to recently a decent team…the Mets still can play ball an still have decent players…
The Mets are the worst team. They dont do anything fundamental and they dont care either. I dont think they have any players id want on my team. Johan maybe if he ever comes back. Wright I guess. Maybe Ike davis.
They are really a disgrace and have been since Yadier Molina homered on them.
But the last 2 games arent a big deal. Didnt like Coles body language today but I am confident he will be ok for the playoffs.
Even the Mets announcers today were talking abotu effort and picking each other up and caring about each other.
Basicly saying its important too. Were highlighting that Beltran is all stats and no guts and a total waste.
Probably no one will take him now. I bet Reyes isnt worth much in a trade anymore either.
Ahh..h, I had that feeling those pesky Mets would be fired up (thanks to Utley) and played for pride if nothing else. Taking this series at CBP resulted in a season series split at 9 all. By the way, Hamels is 0-4 this season against the Mets. We can blame it on a lack of run support. Right?
Well, the champagne is put on ice again. Let's hope the Phillies can snap their losing streak at two with a win tomorrow and clinch the division title and give themselves the all important home field advantage. Let's go Phillies!
the nats got lannan goin tomorrow and he's been having a good 2nd half…we brought doc here to be the ace and clinch important game tomorrow will be big…as for the muts of course their playing for pride i dunno if utley got em fired up but i'm sure making the phils have to go on the road and try to clinch makes them feel good…git er done phillie!
Sarge said it best after yet another low, low strike was called for Misch, "If Cole was getting those calls, he's still in the game."
The ump was awful. He was squeezing Cole, forcing him to elevate his pitches to find the zone. I forget who the batter was he walked on 4 straight balls, but pitch 3 was definitely a strike and pitch 4 looked pretty good, too.
Oh well. Can't win em all. 5 games up on the entire NL with 6 to play is fantastic. Lets get the next 2, lock up home field, and then give our guys a rest.
Go Phillies!
Someday baseball will take advantage of technology and use it to effectively call balls and strikes. And everyone will be happier and the game will improve.
Bruce, Zero runs scored in four the four starts Cole made against NY
Yeah, that's a slight lack of support.
Happy playoffs everyone! We're officially in! Now we go after the Division title and best record.
As Jay said, X Marks the spot-
Right now, the only NL team that can win even 94 games is the Giants, and they'd have to win ALL their remaining games, which isn't likely. If the Phils win two more, they've got 95. I'm pretty sure they're capable of that, so the best record is almost a certainty.
In the context of this season, Halladay is the guy that deserves to be on the mound (or, at least, the winning pitcher) when they clinch… you had to know that this was how it would go down. The Mets played inspired and you have to give them credit. They've got a couple young players that are game; Davis, Duda, Tejada… those guys are gamer… but they're where they are because they have no leadership and not enough consistent pitching.
Regardless, Halladay clinches tonight (or whenever they decide to play). Get ready for postseason baseball!
I am trying to remember the last couple of Division clinches. None of them happened on a loss, did they? I was thinking about it since the Phils could lose and still clinch w/ a Braves loss. That wouldn't be too celebratory, but of course I'd take it!
2 big defensive plays by the Mets kept them in front. Beltran made a very nice catch on Gload's drive to the outfield and Evans made a diving catch on Howard's blooper.
I'd like to see a bit on SNL about losing a game and clinching anyway because the other team lost. It'd be pretty funny.
Hamels pitched on a full five days of rest. Hmm…wonder if it affected his control? Maybe a younger pitcher like Hamels does not benefit with an extra day of rest and needs to stay on a regular schedule. An older pitcher like Haladay who throws a lot of innings maybe benefits more from an extra day of rest.
Not the end of the world that the Phillies did not clinch against the Mets but to lose a series to your hated rival and wind up with a 9-9 split for the year really spoils your Monday morning breakfast. Their 3-game sweep from the Phillies earlier in the year in New York, the Phillies lack of run support for Hamels in the games he started against them and a knuckle ball pitcher named Dickey along with Pelfrey and Santana were big factors in the Mets getting the season series split against the Phillies but a Phillies offense that often went to sleep against them, like over the weekend, was big too.
This morning weather.com had a 70-80% chance of rain, every hour today in DC. But I'm here in DC and it's not raining, though it feels that it just might any minute now. At 3pm it's supposed to be 100% chance of rain… and then goes down to 70% throughout the rest of the day and into tomorrow AM.
So, I really don't think we'll play today… and it would kinda suck to *clinch* tonight with a Braves loss.
Also, what happens if the game gets postponed? If I'm right, neither the Nats nor the Phillies play on Thursday, so I would imagine the game would get moved to that day… but you never know what this Nats office is up to and they might schedule a double header instead… which would SUCK.
I sort of hope that the game's postponed tonight because I have a meeting and won't be home til after 9PM (I know that's selfish on my part, right?).
I really don't care how we clinch. Win by us. Loss by the Braves. Either way is fine. The division….and best NL record is ours. Enjoy it, Phillies Phans!!
On the other hand we def are caught up in a 19-5 September record. Winning out would be history in our making as being witness, part of the best September record posted by the Phillies.
I'm hoping for a rainout, too, because I'm going to be at Tuesday's game!
Stop blaming the umps already. Cole pitched like he did last year. he lost focus serveral times and let things get to him. We have not seen that in a while. You have to battle. You also cant lose to the Mets twice. Show some passion in the last game at home. If Howie comes up in a big spot run away….joke
Referring to Ryan Howard as "Howie" is pretty obnoxious.
jeff, I think these guys were playing at such intensity for a few weeks and just lost a little steam. I agree, losing Sat to the Mets would have been ok if not followed by a loss yesterday. Definitely a downer. But these guys will be ready for the postseason. No doubt in my mind.
Philly "Geoffie"….who cares…
Yea,don't think they play tonight,LOTS of rain in the forecast!!!!
I got tickets now to both games.
I am thinking tongiht gets rained out. Which sucks cause got 4 free ones behind home and wanted to see Doc clinch it tonight..
I agree Geoff. Ryan Howard is a lot of things but he is NOT "Howie"
Ok – So Jimmy comes up – great ovation from the phans – and then swings and grounds out ON THE FIRST PITCH.
So, J-Roll.
Maybe ya wanna take a pitch dude.
And I think we left 183 men in scoring position.
Yeah – think they took a couple of days off w/o actually having a day off.
They deserve it I guess.
Halladay wins tonight I say we shut him down
DAMMIT! DC (Clinch Day) Weather: Showers with a chance of thunderstorms. Lows in the upper 60s. Chance of rain near 100 percent.
Raul Ibanez has had a rough season, but he is one RBI short of a sixth straight 80 RBI effort!!!
The weather is not looking good. Tomorrow night is clear though.
I think there's going to be break in the weather between 6-8 tonight, so I'm thinking they're going to get this thing started. They've been saying "100%" chance of storms all afternoon, and as I look out of my window … it's not doing a thing (I'm in DC, about 5 miles from Nats Park). Would a win by called game, in like the 6th inning, be the worst way to win the division?
WELL JeFFk thats a little good news……….hope they get this one in some how!
In 11 career games against Washington, Roy Halladay is 7-1 with a 2.20 ERA.
im hearing its postponed
its nasty out
The question is if they postpone do we want the braves to win or lose tonight?
Id like to be in attendence tomorrow for the clincher.
That's the thing… if it gets postponed, we might clinch with a Braves loss.. We'll just have to wait and see. I'm planning on going today and tomorrow.
Anybody that actually wants the Braves to win….should have their "fan card revoked" (to quote Don M).
Anything can/could still happen. Not likely. But while it's nice to clinch with a Phillies win ….and to be in attendance….it's just good to get this thing over with.
Let's not give let the Braves even think that the door is even slightly ajar…
If the phillies lose every game left on the schedule to not make the playoffs. Better to get the pain out of the way now. Cause they are a crappy team better to not make it.
Meaning: not happening.
Dont care f the braves win or lose tonight.
I just need to know if I need to get ready to go tonght. Tomorrow night is clear weather wise.
We clinch tonight.
In front of more Phillies fans than probably should be there, no matter if Nationals stadium is more like CBP South when the Phillies are there.
If it can't be home, Washington's nearly the next best place (New York being the best).
Well I am on my way tonight. Watch it rain out as soon as we get there.
Going tomorrow too so should get to see the clincher one way or the other.
magelb Charlie says Rollins isn't playing because of the weather.
Told the Phillies will watch the Braves game here if there is a rainout.
Tonight's lineup @ WAS: Victorino CF, Polanco 3B, Utley 2B, Howard 1B, Werth RF, Ibanez LF, Ruiz C, Valdez SS, Halladay P.


text: I need some advice and I'm going to try not to ramble too much. I have b/g twins that were born at 36 weeks. We made it though the first few days with the hospital consultant and the supplemental feeder and did lots of finger feedings before my little guy would latch for a full feeding. I was exclusively bf from week 2 till about 3 weeks ago when both babies were very hungry even after nursing. After a few days of this I was pressured by family members to supplement with formula and we have even tried cereal during the afternoons. My supply to me seems way down. My girl is the better feeder and most of the time will come off after only 7-10 minutes after suckling hard and moving around to get every last bit. My boy will only stay on for the fast flow then comes off and will not go back on no matter what and will cry out in hunger. I know they both do not latch properly and I am quite large and I am struggling to get them to get on properly so that each feeding can get better. What can I do to rebuild my supply and does anyone have some advice for latching on to large breasts? Should I stop suplementing? They are so hungry. Please help

subset: commoncrawl


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Could the City fall out of love with Europe?
London's Square Mile, the centre of the UK's financial services industry, has long been a pro-European axis in a country often uncomfortable with the nature and pace of European integration. But with the drift of EU policy looking increasingly inimical to the interests of the City of London, could this be about to change?
To some extent it already has. For many years a senior debt banker argued vociferously that the British attachment to sterling risked squandering an opportunity for UK PLC to gain smooth, uncomplicated access to the European investor base in the bond market. But in light of the events of recent years he has cheerfully reversed that position and not just on the basis that the British exchequer has dodged a bullet from southern Europe.
European investors, it turns out, quite like the currency diversification offered by sterling: only two weeks ago, the head of fixed-income trading at BNP Paribas told Financial News that being a leader in the European market was contingent on having a strong sterling franchise.
People on both sides of the issue acknowledge that the European project is not just about the euro – but also about being part of a wider debate. Earlier this month Richard Gnodde and Michael Sherwood, the co-chief executives of Goldman Sachs International, argued persuasively in The Times that the City benefits from investment by global financial services firms because it is viewed as a gateway to the EU. They argued the benefits would slowly disappear should Britain secede from the Union. At the same time, an isolated UK would find its influence diminished on the world stage: "Britain's voice is amplified when it works with its European partners", they wrote. http://bit.ly/XBtnUI
But what if the UK's partners don't listen to its arguments? Unless more countries join Britain, the Czech Republic and Sweden in opposing a stringent cap on variable pay as part of the package of measures in the Capital Requirement Directive IV, it looks certain that the way bankers are compensated is to change radically.
While a wholesale move to New York or Hong Kong to evade this is highly unlikely, concerned observers point out that banks may simply choose to pay much larger upfront salaries. This would cut the link between remuneration and performance and make banks much less nimble in their ability to reduce compensation in the event of a downturn, in turn making them less stable.
This, of course, is most pertinent to London, the EU's biggest financial centre, and while European politicians are entitled to a principled stance on bonuses, could it be that there is a permanent misalignment of the City's interests and the policy priorities of our European partners?
The European legislative process, to misquote Carl von Clausewitz, is the continuation of diplomacy by other means and on the bonus issue the UK looks to have been outmanoeuvred. One expert on EU politics said that Germany – which, it was widely hoped, would oppose a bonus cap – has decided to oppose Britain in the interests of Franco-German relations. Having taken a hit on the issue of the EU budget, on which Germany sided with the UK, that friendship is now being tended by a united stance on compensation.
It makes perfect political sense, but is this the way the City wants to be governed? And why is compensation even being considered as part of the legislation bringing the Basel III standards on capital and liquidity into law? Proponents of a cap say bonuses should not be allowed to delay that crucially important process but the counter to that is to separate the two issues.
Making the long-awaited application of new capital standards contingent on a settlement about pay that's clearly against the City's interests might finally start to change minds on Europe in London. Will hitting bankers where it hurts risk losing the EU its most powerful British friends?
--write to email@example.com


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"I started listening to Catholic Answers Live when I was struck down by an illness that basically left me bedridden. This left me questioning my faith and mortality, and my son introduced the Catholic Answers Live podcast to me. Listening to all the guests explain and defend the Catholic Faith has been instrumental. Has Catholic Answers made a difference in my life? It has become part of my life!"
~ Robyn, Australia
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"May God never abandon me!"
~ Thomas Aquinas; philosopher, theologian, author, Doctor of the Church, patron of Catholic universities, colleges, and schools; reaffirming his total submission to the authority of the Church from his deathbed


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Is It Too Soon To Worry About Holiday Retail Sales?
By Mike Moen • Oct 15, 2013
Originally published on October 15, 2013 5:14 am
The calendar says October, but retailers and economists are already analyzing the holiday shopping season. With budget battles gripping Washington and an economy that's still recovering, there are mixed feelings about how far shoppers will open their wallets.


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Kinetic Sand - 2.5KG BULK Overview
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(covers information from several alternate timelines)
|Human/Vulcan Hybrid
|CO, Enterprise NX-01
|Uncertain (2154)
|Charles Tucker III
|Other Relative(s):
|Charles Tucker, Sr. (Great Grandfather)
Charles Tucker, Jr. (Grandfather)
Elizabeth Tucker (Aunt)
T'Les (Foremother)
T'Mir (third foremother)
|Played by:
|David Andrews
"Only in the Expanse can I have a son who's nearly three times my age."
Lorian was the commander of the Enterprise NX-01 from an alternate timeline, in which Enterprise was thrown back in time from the year 2154 to 2037. When Enterprise attempted to use a subspace corridor to travel to a rendezvous with Degra as part of their mission to save Earth from annihilation by the Xindi, their damaged impulse manifold destabilized the corridor, causing it to shift in time and transport Enterprise into the past. Eventually realizing that the corridor only permitted travel one-way, and that there was no way to return to their own time, Enterprise became a generational ship, whose crew's descendants were given the mission of preventing the first Xindi attack on Earth, thereby saving seven million lives.
Lorian was the son of Vulcan science officer T'Pol and Human chief engineer Charles Tucker III, a conception made possible after Doctor Phlox found a way of combining the Vulcan and Human genomes. Lorian was influenced by both of his parents, and over his lifetime, he was able to balance emotion and logic.
Lorian's father died when he was fourteen, but Lorian taught himself engineering by reading his father's old logs. While Captain Jonathan Archer was on his deathbed, Lorian promised the captain he would continue his mission to stop the Xindi probe from attacking Earth. Upon Archer's death, Lorian became the captain of Enterprise.
However, Lorian was unable to stop the Xindi probe from reaching Earth when it launched in March of 2153. He had planned on ramming the probe with Enterprise, but hesitated, unable to give an order that would kill his entire crew. The moment passed, and by the time he had made his decision, the probe was gone, en route to Earth. With no other alternatives, he was forced to wait until Enterprise once again entered the Delphic Expanse in search of the Xindi superweapon, in order to prevent it from entering the subspace corridor that would send it on its fateful journey through time.
In February of 2154, Lorian took Enterprise to meet the present version of the vessel just before it entered the subspace corridor. However, Lorian needed to provide an alternate way for the ship to reach its rendezvous at the Xindi Council, so he provided the present-Enterprise with Haradin schematics that would allow them to modify their plasma injectors and increase speed to warp 6.9 for brief times. However, Archer rejected Lorian's plan on a recommendation from the elder T'Pol, who demonstrated that there was a risk that if the ship exceeded warp 5.6, the injectors would overload and destroy the vessel.
T'Pol's alternative was reconfiguring the impulse manifold so it would not destabilize the corridor and send the ship back in time, but Lorian was not convinced it would work. He stole the plasma injectors of the present-Enterprise so that his ship could make the rendezvous (as his own injectors were too old), but Archer talked him into assisting with T'Pol's plan. With Lorian's ship's help, Archer's Enterprise made it past a group of Kovaalan ships which were between them and the entrance of the corridor. Lorian attacked the Kovaalan ships and kept them busy, allowing Archer's Enterprise to safely enter the corridor and successfully rendezvous with Degra, who proceeded to escort Enterprise to the Xindi Council planet.
Lorian's ultimate fate, as well as the fate of the rest of his crew, remained unknown. It was speculated by Archer and T'Pol that his ship was destroyed, was able to escape, or even that, due to both crews' success in changing the timeline, his ship might have been erased from history. (ENT: "E²")
|Commanding officers of the starships Enterprise
|Enterprise NX-01:
|Archer • T'Pol • Tucker • Lorian
|USS Enterprise:
|April • Pike • Kirk • Decker • Spock
|USS Enterprise-A:
|USS Enterprise-B:
|USS Enterprise-C:
|USS Enterprise-D:
|Picard • Riker • Jellico • Halloway
|USS Enterprise-E:
|ISS Enterprise NX-01:
|Forrest • Archer
|ISS Enterprise NCC-1701:
|Pike • Kirk
|USS Enterprise (alternate reality):
|Pike • Kirk


text:
Re: Tony Pics!
NascarNanaOK wrote:To me, "a nice pair of mens jeans" .... is a brand new pair of Levi's or Lee's
I agree to an extent... Jeans wear's know, the best pair of jeans is the "broken in" jeans.
Like the kind that Tony wears and he wears them well.


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Wow Manny Wow!
When I left work yesterday on my way to the stadium, I went into my facebook and wrote "I am on my way to Dodger Stadium." A friend that should know better responded "Manny is not going to play Goofy.". She should know that Manny or no Manny, I go to the stadium. I have only missed 3 games this year and only because I was out on a business trip.
What a game! What a game! Like Manny said "Wow" You can't scrip that better. Bases loaded and in comes Manny with the bases loaded. Bang!! first pitch into the area designated as "Mannywood". I could see my friend Rosa and her daugther Ronny jumping up in down. They have season tickets in the first row of Mannywood next to the Dodgers bullpen.
We were all jumping up and down and the noise was deafening even with the headphones of my radio. This game reminded me of the Back to Back to Back to Back game against the Padres. Like that night, there we were high fiving everyone and reaching even further to high five more fans. Since we sit in the last row, a group congregates in back of us and when Manny comes to bat, well they multiply there!. We love our section and all the rest of the season ticket holders there or those with packaged tickets. We have even gotten to know the friends of the regulars there.
No Game today (Thursday) but as reported by Josh Rawitch in his thread titled "You got to be kidding me" at http://insidethedodgers.mlblogs.com/, Manny was at the stadium on an off day BEFORE 10AM taking batting practice. WOW! That is dedication! What a guy! What a team! What a Team!
Manny showing some love for the Left field pavilion (pic from MSTI's blog)
Congratulations to Andre Ethier who hit his 20th homerun! and to Billingsley who finally got his #10 win!
The Marlins are in town and a group of my friends from the Metrolink train will be there. For one of them it will be her first trip to a baseball game.
11 Comments
This coming from you who I find to be the most dedicated to the Red Sox, Thanks but I read the passion and dedication from so many fans here in the MLB blogs and other Dodger forums, and Baseball forums from any team. We are just sport fanatics supporting our teams at the stadium or religiously following them from afar.
A friend comes to mind who was in Asia. Thai would get up in the middle of the night to follow the Dodger games in game thread even the ones during Spring Training. Then all of sudden we stop hearing from "Thai" A few months later we started noticing another fan posting in the game thread with the name "Thaidad". Someone said "We used to have a poster by the name of "Thai" "Are you by any chance his dad?" "he said "Yes, he was my son." He got killed in a car accident." "I came here to read what my son was posting." sniff..remembering all this brings tears to my eyes.
EMMA – Love the Manny picture. I am ready for tonights game. Have fun at the games, and hope you enjoy the fire works!
i love that picture also! The guy at the end I met in San Diego. He has season tickets in that section. He and his friend were hilarious. They both have season tickets there.
Emma – thank you for sharing that! And yes, there are a lot of dedicated fans here. The group of us that regularly gathers on the Red Sox beatwriter's blog during the games – we are from across the US, Mexico, Canada and South Korea – and yes especially our military from S. Korea have to watch many of our games at odd hours and it is tough. And I bet Thai's dad found solace in the words he shared with all of you; baseball has a great way of binding us together like that!
Looking forward to tonight's Dodger game and being there in person to experience all this Dodger magic I've been reading about!
Thanks for triggering my memory to remember Thai. It has been a couple of years since he passed away. He looked so forward to the game threads asking us to describe the game in detail and we loved doing that for him. You are right, baseball does have a great way of binding us together like that!
Is a good matchup with young Clayton Kershaw (8-5) and Josh Johnson (8-2).
GOOD LUCK SUNSHINE! (that is Kershaw)
You guys might have your hands full a little bit tonight. The Fish are throwing a pretty good young guy at you who can be surprising. But then again (and after reading your post, how could we forget?) you have Manny. 'Nuff said, right?
Great job letting us know how exciting the moment was. I saw it on Sportscenter, but that is filtered through the media. To hear it from a real fan is much better.
I hope you had a lot of fun at our Lady of Chavez Ravine.
That is back to back good pitchers the Marlins are thowing out there. When Johnson took the mound, there were 3 fans chanting "Johnson sucks, Johnson sucks". I turned around and told them "Johnson is a good pitcher." He still sucks responded one of them. I just hate fans saying that. Thanks Raysfan.
LA is becoming Mannywood, what a great story, too bad the Dodgers lost to the Marlins last night. I hope the Manny Ramirez, Andre Ethier, Matt Kemp, James Loney, Russell Martin, and the Dodgers take it up a step and start making more hits. Huroki Kuroda should be good to go against this Marlins likeup, but watch out for Dan Uggla and Hanley Ramirez, they can hit one out if a mistake pitch is thrown. Rick VandenHurk hasn't pitched that much (1-0) so I see the Dodgers having the advantage.
Matthew T.
No shame to lose to Johnson in the first game. He is a good pitcher. Kershaw pitched well but our bully gave it up but those guys are tired. Our bullen is second in innings pitched. I s such a lift that Kuroda pitched well in the second game even though he did not get the win. Big test today for Schmidt second start.
Thanks for stopping by Matthew.


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Subversion is an open source revision control system, similar in purpose to the well-known, widely deployed, and aging CVS. It is designed to provide state-of-the-art versioning, built from modern technologies.
Subversion is still in development and has not reached version 1.0 yet. However, it's pretty stable and you can use it right now. In this article, we'll cover the basics of Subversion, how to install it, and how to use Subversion for personal projects. A future article will cover installing and using a multi-user, networked Subversion server.
In short, Subversion helps developers to track changes in their project source files. You might ask why you would need a revision control system for your home projects, where you are the only person who decides how and where to make changes. There are several reasons: to retrieve and to compare previous releases, to hunt down regression bugs, to maintain backward-compatible branches, to produce neat changelogs, to work on two different fixes or improvements without confusion. Moreover, you'll get all this with little expense, because Subversion is surprisingly easy to install.
A Subversion repository acts as a filesystem that remembers sets of changes made to it. It does this by storing files in a tree structure, tracking its evolution over time. The repository increments a global revision number with every set of changes committed into the repository. As the whole tree is versioned, it acts as a regular filesystem. Copying and renaming files is possible; creating a project branch is as easy as copying a directory. You can also ask Subversion to produce a difference between two arbitrary revisions, or to check out some subtree at revision N.
This section covers the installation of Subversion on Unix-like systems.
(It's also possible to build and install Subversion on Windows. See the
INSTALL file of the Subversion distribution.) To install Subversion, you may
have to upgrade (or install) some of the tools on your system
python2). You'll
need also the
expat XML parsing library. For detailed info, see
the BUILD REQUIREMENTS section of the INSTALL file.
Subversion is built completely on open source components.
Subversion requires also a recent version of the Berkeley DB. Be sure to check the README and INSTALL files to make sure you have the correct version. (As of this writing, Berkeley DB 4.0.14 worked.) Subversion uses this database as the underlying storage for its repositories. You can get it from Sleepycat Software.
The Subversion snapshots, available from the main Subversion site, include all of
the other libraries needed to install a local repository. Building a
network-accessible Subversion server requires Apache 2, but that's another
article. The INSTALL file also explains how to check out a fresh new Subversion
from the repository (yes, the developers of Subversion do use their own
software), but that's not absolutely needed as Subversion is becoming more
stable. We'll use a snapshot. As of this writing, the revision number of the
latest snapshot is 3578 (a.k.a. Subversion 0.14.5), but let's call it
Subversion development proceeds rapidly. To make upgrades easier, we'll
install Subversion in its own subdirectory. We'll also assume that you need to
install the appropriate version of the Berkeley DB. Commands prompted by a
# should be run as root. (If you don't have root access, install
Subversion in your home directory instead of using
/usr/local as in the
examples below.)
# mkdir /usr/local/subversion-rXXXX
# ln -s /usr/local/subversion-rXXXX /usr/local/subversion
$ gunzip -c db-4.0.14.tar.gz | tar xf -
$ cd db-4.0.14/build_unix
$ ../dist/configure --prefix=/usr/local/subversion-rXXXX
$ make
# make install
Make sure your system can find libraries in
/usr/local/subversion/lib. This is generally accomplished by
setting your system's equivalent to the environment variable
LD_LIBRARY_PATH. On Linux, you can also add this path to your
/etc/ld.so.conf file and run
Then, build Subversion:
$ gunzip -c subversion-rXXXX.tar.gz | tar xf -
$ cd subversion-rXXXX
$ ./configure --with-berkeley-db=/usr/local/subversion-rXXXX \
$ make
$ make check # optional : runs the tests
# make install
Finally, add
/usr/local/subversion/bin to your
PATH. That's
The next step is to create a repository to store your files. I'll put my
repository in
/home/rafael/svn, as I have plenty of room on this
$ cd /home/rafael
$ svnadmin create svn
I have now a directory,
/home/rafael/svn, containing my
repository. It contains no files and has a revision number of 0. I'll fix
that by importing a source tree.
Suppose I'm working on a frobnizer. To create a directory
frobnizer at the root level of the repository, and to import the
contents of my tree
/home/rafael/frobnizer, the appropriate
command is:
$ svn import file:///home/rafael/svn /home/rafael/frobnizer frobnizer
Why the URI in the above command? The few
svn commands that need to deal
directly with a repository refer to it by a URL.
file:// URLs
refer to repositories on a local disk. Subversion also supports
http:// and
https:// URIs for remote, Apache-powered
Subversion servers.
In fact, in order to organize your repository better, it's preferable to create a directory for your project, importing your files into a trunk subdirectory. We'll see the precise reasons for it later. Instead of the above command, use:
$ svn mkdir file:///home/rafael/svn/frobnizer -m 'Create frobnizer project'
$ svn import /home/rafael/frobnizer file:///home/rafael/svn \
frobnizer/trunk -m 'Initial import of frobnizer project'
The first command,
mkdir, creates an empty subdirectory,
frobnizer. It also labels this change with the log message Create
frobnizer project. The second command performs the actual import, adding
its own log message.
You can create as many repositories as you like. If you work on several different, unrelated projects, you may want independent repositories for each. This will enable you to handle and to move them separately later.
You don't work directly in the repository. To make changes to your files,
you must check out a working copy of the whole repository or of one of its
subdirectories. To do this, use
checkout, performed here in a
new frobwork directory:
$ svn checkout file:///home/rafael/svn/frobnizer ~/frobwork
This working copy contains all files that you've checked out, and you can
now safely edit them. Hidden
.svn subdirectories will also
contain client-side state data. These files allow Subversion to perform some
operations without dealing directly with the repository. This allows you to
work off-line even if the repository is normally network accessible.
svn commands don't use repository URIs, acting directly on a local
working copy. The most general form of an
svn command is:
$ svn <command> [<options>] [<targets>]
targets is the list of files or directories to operate on, and
options is an optional list of flags, in the familiar fashion of most
Unix command-line interfaces. For most
svn commands,
targets defaults to the current directory, and the command operates
recursively on each directory it processes.
The first command we'll see is
svn commit (also known as
svn ci, which should look familiar to CVS users). This commits the
modifications of the local files into the repository. For example,
$ svn commit *.c include
will check all .c files in the current directory, and all files in the include subdirectory, recursively for modifications and incorporate them into the repository. Only modified files will be included in the change set. As a consequence of this, a simple
$ svn commit
commits all modified files in the current directory and its subdirectories.
Note that Subversion requires a log message when committing changes. You can
specify the message via the
-m command-line option, as in the
import and
mkdir examples above. Lacking this
svn will fire up the editor specified by one of the
environment variables
VISUAL, or
Log messages can be retrieved by the
svn log command, which
presents a formatted list of changes for its targets. It accepts a
-v (verbose) option to include in the changelog the list of files
that were modified at each revision. The common
-r option limits
the list to a revision or a range of revisions. For example, updating a
ChangeLog file with all changes since revision #42 is as simple as:
$ cd ~/frobwork/trunk
$ svn log -r42:HEAD >> ChangeLog
$ svn commit ChangeLog -m 'Update ChangeLog'
HEAD is a keyword that can be used in place of any revision number.
It refers to the last revision number that was checked in the repository.
If you're unhappy with your changes, the
svn revert command
will undo all local edits you've done to its targets. Unlike other
svn commands,
revert doesn't operate recursively on
directories, unless you pass the
-R option to it.
To add or to remove files, use the
svn add and
remove commands. They mark files or directories to be added or removed
into and from the repository at the next
commit. Similarly,
mkdir creates a new directory under version control in the working
As a rule of thumb, the set of changes included in a
commit should address a
specific problem or implement a well-defined functionality. Thinking about your
log message before making the changes can help you to focus. A single-purpose
commit is easily examined (as a
diff), so any bugs it may have
introduced are appear more clearly. Tracking down regressions is more
difficult with several unrelated changes in a single
At some point in development, you will probably ask yourself which files
have I modified, and what changes did I make? The
svn status
svn diff commands provide answers.
svn status scans the specified targets of your working copy for
files that have changed since the last checkout or
commit. For each file,
it reports its status -- modified, added, deleted, or unknown to the
versioning system.
svn diff produces a
diff file applicable by the
patch(1) program. By default, it uses the unified
diff format.
It's possible to pass additional options to the underlying
utility via the
-x switch. By default, it compares the current
working copy with the latest checked-out revision, but it's also able to
produce a patch between two arbitrary revisions in the repository, or between
your working copy and an older revision with the
-r switch:
$ svn diff -r14:18 *.c *.h > /tmp/r14-to-r18.patch
A simpler way of retrieving any previous state of a file within your working
copy is to use
svn update. This command updates its targets to
their state at a specified revision (defaulting to the
HEAD revision). For
$ svn update -r42 include
reverts the include directory (and its contents) to the 42nd
revision. (
update is also used when you want to integrate changes
from another working copy into your working copy, but we'll cover this in
another article.) Subversion provides a more powerful mechanism to track the
release points of your projects: tags and branches. There is
no difference, from Subversion's viewpoint, between tags and branches; the
difference is in how you use them.
To create a tag or a branch, use the
svn copy command.
svn copy makes a copy of a versioned resource (a file or a
directory), while retaining history. In other words, it doesn't add a file (or
a whole tree) -- it only marks a new entry in the repository as being
indentical to another one, at a specified revision. Thus, copies occur
done in constant time, although they may logically create huge parallel
Let's take an example. Suppose I've just released a new
frobnizer, version
2.0, and I want Subversion to remember for me that
frobnizer v2 corresponds to
revision 42. Assuming the current revision level of directory trunk in
my working copy is 42, I'll say:
$ cd ~/frobwork
$ svn copy trunk frobnizer-2.0
$ svn commit -m 'Release v2.0'
My repository has now two main subdirectories: /frobnizer/trunk and /frobnizer/frobnizer-2.0. They branch from the same revision, but can now evolve separately.
If I decide to not commit any changes to the
/frobnizer/frobnizer-2.0 subdirectory, it's called a
tag. Otherwise, it's a branch.
The advantage of a tag is obvious. It's possible to check out
/frobnizer/frobnizer-2.0 to get the source for the
frobnizer v2.
Branches are mainly useful when a team of developers have commit access to a
same repository. If a long, experimental development has to be made, it's
better to create a branch, make the changes in it, and reintegrate them into
the trunk when the development is finished. This avoids interferences.
Subversion provides a mechanism (the
svn merge command) to report
the changes made in one branch into another. Branches may not be very useful
to you if you're the only Subversion user on your system, and that's why I won't
elaborate on this subject. However, the Subversion developers recommend to
create two subdirectories, branches/ and tags/, along the
trunk/, to store branches and tags. (This is how the Subversion repository is
Now that you've fixed many bugs, you've decided to release another version of your project as a source tarball.
You can't just tar+gzip your working copy: it contains hidden Subversion
files and probably also some other temporary files (backups, object files,
etc.). The
svn export command is here to help you. It checks out a
specified version without including metadata.
$ svn export file:///home/rafael/svn/frobnizer/frobnizer-2.0
$ tar cf frobnizer-2.0.tar frobnizer-2.0
$ gzip -9 frobnizer-2.0.tar
... to make backups! Your repository holds important information. It's possible to dump the contents of the repository (including all revisions) into a dumpfile. This format is portable, and you can use it to reconstruct a repository if necessary.
For example, it's useful to have, in a
crontab, something like :
svnadmin dump /home/rafael/svn | gzip -9 > dump.gz
This way, the repository can be restored via
gunzip -c dump.gz | svnadmin load /home/rafael/svn
The most useful
svn subcommand, at least for beginners, is
svn help gives a summary of all subcommands
available, and
svn help foo describes the subcommand
foo. Read also the
svn(1) and
svnadmin(1) manpages.
svnadmin is for administrative
The Subversion home page holds a substantial amount of information. The Subversion Book, a work in progress, is also useful, containing far more information than possible to put in a small article.
Rafael Garcia-Suarez is a French software engineer and Unix system administrator.
Return to ONLamp.com.
Copyright © 2009 O'Reilly Media, Inc.


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Upshur County to lease GPS units
BUCKHANNON – Upshur County's home confinement program will soon be using complete GPS units to monitor its clients..
The Upshur County Commission on Thursday approved an addendum to its equipment lease agreement with 3M Electronic Monitoring, Inc., which will enable the home confinement program to lease the GPS units for $3.20 a day.
Cpl. Rodney Rolenson of the Upshur County Sheriff's Office – who also serves as the county's home confinement program supervisor – appeared at the commission meeting to tout the advantages of complete GPS units over the RF units the program currently utilizes. RF units are comprised of a receiver box and an ankle bracelet transmitter worn by a home confinement client.
"Right now, the only way for me to know if somebody goes out of range is when that ankle bracelet goes farther than 50-75 feet away from that box (receiver)," Rolenson told the commission. "Then, it tells me they're out of range."
As the number of people who work as private contractors in Upshur County has increased, it has become more and more challenging to monitor individuals who don't have set schedules, Rolenson said.
"What I'm asking you all to look into is going to complete GPS units, that allows me to know where they are 24 hours a day, 7 days a week," Rolenson said. "If they tell me, 'I've got a job to do today, and I've got to go to Morgantown, and work on the hospital or whatever, that allows me to see exactly when they leave, the road they traveled, the speed that they're going down the four-lane and it also allows me to know where they're stopping at or how long they stopped there.
"Right now, with this unit that we have, if they say, 'I've got to go to work, I'm going up to Morgantown,' currently I don't know if they're in Morgantown, if they're in Clarksburg, if they're stopping at Sheetz for an hour or where they're at until they come home," he added.
Rolenson said transitioning to complete GPS units would lower the county's liability.
"It takes away all the uncertainties about where they're at, what they're doing and when they're returning home," he said. "This gives us a very, very hi-tech tool."
The cost per GPS unit per day is $3.20 – more than double what the RF units cost to lease, Rolenson said.
He said the increase in cost will be passed along to the client rather than the county.
"I've requested the circuit judge and the magistrates increase the home confinement fees to $15 a day to offset that cost," he said. "We haven't raised home confinement fees in this county for years – almost since it started it was $10 a day."
Acquiring the GPS units is also beneficial because it will allow Rolenson to program "inclusionary zones" – areas in which the person is permitted to be – and "exclusionary zones," defined as areas into which the client is prohibited from traveling.
"For instance, if you have a client who's been involved in a real bad domestic, rather than placing him over in jail, they can actually be released on GPS home confinement," he noted, explaining that residences, schools and places of employment can be programmed into GPS units as exclusionary zones. Rolenson is then alerted if, for example, a person who is forbidden from entering his or her spouse's work place travels within its vicinity.
The GPS units can incorporate client's whole property boundary, so Rolenson wouldn't be notified unless they leave their property.
"So when they're saying 'I got to go to the wood pile to get wood for the stove,' 'I got to go out back to cut my grass' rather than them calling in and us saying, 'OK, you've got half an hour to cut your grass' and not knowing where he's at in that half an hour, I can just spread that out onto his yard, and won't get alerted at all."
Rolenson said the county hadn't transitioned to complete GPS units sooner because most function off cellular towers, and cellular service is poor in more rural areas of the county; however, the units Rolenson proposed to lease function off cell towers and telephone land lines.
Pending the approval of 26th Judicial Circuit Court Judge Kurt Hall, home confinement fees will increase to $15 effective March 1, Rolenson said.
Commissioner Troy "Buddy" Brady, a former deputy with the Upshur County Sheriff's Office, expressed enthusiasm about the transition.
"I think once the magistrates and the Circuit Court realizes how this GPS works, I think you'll have double the numbers (in the home confinement program)," Brady said. "I see this as a great idea, I see your numbers doubling, and I see you saving this county several thousand dollars in jail costs because you'll take out the unknown."
Commissioner Donnie Tenney made a motion to approve the addendum to the contract, which passed unanimously.
Rolenson also delivered the home confinement year-end report at Thursday's meeting. In 2013, the home confinement program saved Upshur County $304,657.42 in regional jail fees, he reported. The program also collected $56,024 from participants for a grand total of savings of $360,681.42, Rolenson said.
The number of clients served through the program has steadily dropped, decreasing from 91 in 2011 to 75 in 2012; only 64 clients were enrolled in the program in 2013.
"My question is, why that decline? What's causing that?" Tenney asked.
"Some of it might have to do with the Legislature changing the laws on driving suspended (offenses) and stuff it used to be if you got first-offense driving suspended, it was six months, and they dropped it down to 30 days," Rolenson replied. "So some of it's that, and some of it's just the referrals."
Referrals come from Circuit Court judges, magistrates and prosecuting attorney's offices, Rolenson said.


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"I have been enjoying your program on my local Catholic radio station for many years and can happily give a large amount of the credit for my continuing spiritual growth to your offerings. You snatched up the banner many had laid aside and are marching bravely forward!"
~ Pamela, Portland, Oregon
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text:
Whittemore, Washington and Darwin
Survival of the fittest drives natural selection. The mechanisms evolved decide whether your particular branch of a species flourishes or fails. Over the years, this has led to mimicry in butterflies, symbiosis between birds and crocodiles and Kirk Gibson. However, humanity has done itself a disservice in the past decade in its continued attempt to thwart survival of the fittest.
At the birth of our nation, we had this:
And just in case the story couldn't get more bizarre, the woman in the video is now suing the mall.
I'm pretty sure Samuel Whittemore didn't sue the British soldiers who bayoneted him. In fact, I'm betting he slapped on a few bandages before hopping on a velociraptor to go help his buddy, George Washington.
Hey, it's history. And survival of the fittest.
2 Comments
Why in the world do you sue the mall!?!?!?! You've got to be kidding!
I saw that woman on CNN with her lawyer. Turns out she has several prior convictions and should never have opened her mouth. Did you see that Dennis Kucinich (sp?) is suing the government cafeteria for biting into an olive pit in his sandwich? He says it caused him dental pain and "lack of enjoyment." Sigh.


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At 6 weeks my DH and I introduced a bottle to my lo and he took it very well and sucked it down in no time. Since then, we have tried several times to give our lo a bottle and now he will have nothing to do with it (same with his pacifier, but we're okay with that). We have been using the avent slow flow bottle, but today we tried the breastflow bottle and still no luck.
Do any of you have any ideas for: 1) Tips on getting lo to take a bottle and 2) what nipples/bottles have you had success with.
I have to go back to work for a few days soon and really need our lo to take the bottle.
Thanks in advance for you help!!!


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Senate President Donna Mercado Kim is proposing six bills in her legislative package that directly impact the University of Hawaii after the Stevie Wonder concert hoax.
The bills are based on findings and recommendations from the Senate Special Committee on Accountability's informational briefings to review the oversight, accountability, and transparency of the operational and financial management of the University of Hawaii System, chaired by Senator Kim in September and October 2012.
"The discussion and call for University of Hawaii flexibility and autonomy has been around since the 1980s. Over the past three decades the Executive and Legislative branches of the State of Hawaii have worked together to provide the University of Hawaii with more flexibility and autonomy. However, that autonomy and self governance has evolved to a point where the Senate feels that, in the interest of statewide concern, the University of Hawaii needs to be held more accountable and operate in full transparency," explained Kim.
The proposed bills range in topics from procurement for construction projects, to revising the number of University General Counsels, having the Board of Regents undergo annual training on board policies and procedures, requiring the Board of Regents to file annual disclosures of financial interest which would become public record, clarifying how the members of the Board of Regents are selected by the Governor, and revising the makeup of the Board of the Research Corporation of the University of Hawaii.
For reference purposes, the bills are as follows:
- SB 1383 – Repeals the President of the University of Hawaii's authority to serve as the Chief Procurement Officer for construction contracts.
- SB 1384 – Limits the Board of Regents to appointing one University General Counsel.
- SB 1385 – Requires the Board of Regents to undergo annual training and certification.
- SB 1386 – Requires the Board of Regents to file annual disclosure of financial interest.
- SB 1387 – Gives the Governor the authority to reject the list of nominees to the Board of Regents presented by the Regents Candidate Advisory Council.
- SB 1388 – Reduces the number of members of the Board of Directors of the Research Corporation of the University of Hawaii and removes the authority of the President of the University to also serve as the President of RCUH.


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U.S. Opens U19 World Games With 24-6 Win Over Australia
by Corey McLaughlin | LaxMagazine.com | Twitter | Live Blog Replay
TURKU, Finland – The U.S. under-19 men's national team started off slow, but didn't take long to build a comfortable lead in its first game at the 2012 FIL U19 World Championships, beating Australia 24-6 on a sunny Friday evening in southwest Finland.
Matt Kavanagh led Team USA with three goals and three assists, tallying five points in the first half, as the U.S. (1-0) improved to 37-0 all-time in sanctioned U19 international competition.
Australia (0-1) took early leads of 1-0 and 2-1, but Charlie Raffa scored off a faceoff win with 11:33 left in the opening quarter to put the U.S. ahead 3-2 and it never trailed from there. Joey Leonard scored with 2:40 left in the first half to give the U.S. a 9-4 lead and start a 9-0 run that stretched into the fourth quarter.
Kyle Keenan finished with four goals, and Leonard, Daniel Eipp and Ryan Tucker each had hat tricks. The U.S. outscored Australia 14-2 in the second half and won 20 of 25 faceoffs for the game.
"The boys settled in after the first quarter and started sharing the ball a little bit more," Team USA coach Tim Flynn said. "We had a little adrenaline pumping in the first quarter and everyone was just trying to take the ball to the cage. ... The boys kind of fixed that on their own, and it's a good result."
In earlier pool play action Friday, Germany beat Wales, 20-10, Scotland downed Korea, 16-4, and the Iroquois clobbered England, 24-4.
The U.S. faces Canada at 7 p.m. (noon EST) Saturday in Turku in a rematch of the last three U19 world championship games. Check back to LaxMagazine.com for a live game blog.
"We said in the huddle we're going to enjoy this win for a little but we gotta look forward to [Saturday] night," Kavanagh said. "It's the biggest game of our lives so far."
2012 Federation of International Lacrosse (FIL) Under-19 World Championships
Blue Division
Goals: USA – Keenan 4, Kavanagh 3, Eipp 3, Tucker 3, Leonard 3, Pontrello 2, Raffa 2, Kelly 1, Zoppo 1, D'Agostino 1, Buczek 1; AUS – Thompson 2, Polkinghorne 1, Cahill 1, Simpson 1, Kennedy 1
Assists: USA – Kavanagh 3, Eipp 1, Tagliaferri 1, Kelly 1, Zoppo 1; AUS – Polkinghorne 1;
Saves: USA - Oliveri 5, Turri 4; AUS – Lee 7, Cox 1
Follow LaxMagazine.com/teamusa/u19men and LaxMagazine.com editor Corey McLaughlin on Twitter @Corey_McL for updates throughout the FIL U19 World Championships.
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Aureal company needs no presentation. It is famous all over the world for its technologies and soundprocessors. In 1999 Aureal started production of its own brand-name sound cards based on its own sound chips.Today we'll talk about SQ2500 sound card from Aureal and compare it with a very popular MX300 sound card fromDiamond. S3, which swallowed Diamond Multimedia, is known to have given up the manufacturing of sound cards basedon Aureal chips and switched to ESS production. Nevertheless, Vortex2 based MX300 sound cards are still on the marketand are very popular even without driver support from S3. In our review we'll try to give an answer to the question: isSQ2500 a worthy replacement to MX300?
SQ2500 sound cards are supplied in two variations: OEM and Retail. A $60 OEM package contains the sound card, a CD withdrivers and several applications and a pretty poor user's manual. The $90 Retail version of the product apart from a nice boxincludes two full games (Heretic II and Drakan: Order of the Flame) and an OEM version of Slave Zero. It's up to you to decideon one or another package. SQ2500 sound cards can differ only by the type of S/PDIF digital output: it can be an optical TosLINKor an electrical RCA . Furthermore, the electric S/PDIF output can be the first from the top or the second just below the line-injack on the card's bracket. As in all supply variations SQ2500 has the same Vortex2 sound chip, which determines the performanceand sound quality, hereinafter we will talk about SQ2500 in general.
The heart of the card is a Vortex2 (AU8830) sound chip from Aureal. Vortex2 represents a second generation of Aureal'ssound processors and contains 3 million transistors. Aureal claims that Vortex2 performance is 600MIPS (Million InstructionsPer Second). Basically many sound processor manufacturers mention very high performance figures in MIPS compared to someordinary DSPs by TI or Motorola. Moreover, sometimes these sound processors are called DSPs, which is completely wrong.Hereinafter we'll refer to sound processors as to "sound DSPs" in order to accentuate their difference from ordinaryDSPs. In fact, sound DSPs used in sound cards have their specific goals, e.g. HRTF-filtering of a particular memoryblock or rerouting a sound stream to a DAC. Thus, sound DSPs operate sound streams, which is controlled by a specialinstructions system. When programming sound DSPs there's no need in a signal processing program and you just have tocall a built-in or external function like "transfer a signal with the following parameters from some input point tosome block for further processing". This instruction system is of a higher level than ordinary DSPs, which is the mainrestriction imposed over Vortex2 or EMU10K1 sound DSPs. As a result, sound DSPs can be used only for their specificpurposes. They can't perform operations like addition or multiplication and although their performance looks impressiveit can't be compared to ordinary DSPs' performance even if they're both measured in MIPS. Moreover, high MIPS values canbe obtained due to performing several similar operations in parallel, e.g. simultaneous HRTF-filtering of 16 sound streams.
- Vortex2 supports FullDuplex mode in sound playback and recording;
- Built-in hardware wavetable synthesizer with 64 hardware voices + 512 software voices, which makesa 576 voice polyphony
- Delay, propagation (room, chamber, hall, cabinet), distortion and flange sound effects as well aswah-wah effect in MIDI playback.
- Supports DLS1, ARL and SF2 sound banks uploading
- Hardware support of up to 96 DirectSound sound streams(2D)
- Hardware support of 76 3D sound streams (60 streams used for early reflection playback)
- API support: DS, DS3D, A3D 1.0/2.0/3.0, EAX 1.0 and I3DL2
- Hardware support for DirectMusic and DirectInput interface
- Built-in hardware 10-band graphic equalizer
- Supports MPU401 mode for MIDI interface
- Vortex2 supports AC-Link v.2.1 interface
- Sound playback through 4 or 2 active speakers or headphones
- External SigmaTel STAC9708 4-channel codec
- STAC9708 works with sound data of 48KHz sampling frequency and 18bit precision
- 48 pin TQFP case
- Dynamic range: 95dB
- Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR): >95dB
- Interface: PCI 2.1
- Minimal system requirements: Pentium 90MHz, 8MB RAM, Win95
The card is equipped with the following connectors:
- External Connectors:
- Two buffered stereo line-outs
- Stereo line-in
- Microphone-in
- Game/MIDI MPU-401
- Electric S/PDIF OUT - RCA (IEC958 standard) or optical S/PDIF OUT - TosLINK
- Internal Connectors:
- CD Audio In
- Wavetable Header
- Two Expansion (Upgrade) Headers
We started our SQ2500 & MX300 comparison with the examination of their appearance and found the following differences:
- MX300 has green textolite color and SQ2500's color is blue
- MX300 is approximately 1.5 times longer than SQ2500
- MX300 has gilded external connectors and SQ2500 - plastic multicolor ones
- Vortex2 chip marking on the cards is different (see illustration)
|On the left is a Vortex2 chip on a MX300, on the right - a Vortex2 on a SQ2500. Note the differencein marking.
However, these are just the external differences, which do not influence the sound quality. Of course, many sound cardsmay sound similarly but there are still some nuances between them. Sound coloring depends on many factors, such as cardlayout quality, discrete component filter quality, the spread of component parameters, etc. The problem is that soundvariations aren't easy to notice, as it in many respects depends on the ear, acoustics and type of music being played.As for us, we can't boast a cool musical ear, it's just the average one, and acoustics is also quite mediocre that's whyin our subjective opinion there's no difference in sounding between MX300 and SQ2500 although there may be a huge differencein performance. Don't forget that the main goal of our test is to find out all these differences. Or not to find any.
Before getting down to practice let's take a look at Aureal's new A3D 3.0 interface, especially since the drivers forVortex2 based sound cards already support it partially and there are even several new games supporting this new API (forinstance, Soldier of Fortune).
So, A3D 3.0 API is first of all a powerful 3D sound modeling tool, capable of reproducing all three major sound types:
- Sounds propagated along straight directions, which allow locating the sound source
- Early reverberated sounds, which allow estimating the distance to sound source
- Reverberation, which allows defining the room size and wall surface type
Moreover, A3D 3.0 includes a universal sound engine that allows reproducing 3D sound with any hardware available, either withsound DSPs (for example, from Creative or ESS) or with sound HSPs (for example, from Yamaha).
It is for the first time throughout the entire history of sound industry that A3D 3.0 supports the following:
- A3Dverb reverberation engine that allows reproducing reverb based on presets as well as calculating it dynamically onthe basis of environmental geometry (i.e. with the help of wavetracing).
- Reproduction of sounds from volumetric sound sources. Thus football fans' shouting at the stadium isn't represented asa point sound source anymore but as a source of a certain size.
- Decoding of streaming sound on the fly and its playback in MP3, AC-3 and WAV format, which saves system resources andmakes game soundtracks richer in music and sound effects.
- A possibility for developers to assign different sound reverberation properties to any point of space in order to createspecific echoes.
- HRTF filter loading for specific listeners
- Supports separate instructions sets for specific hardware (the so-called property sets)
It's easy to notice that A3D 3.0 API is a universal and ultimate solution today. This gives us every right to hope thatAureal's ideas will be developed further on.
Background music in MP3 and AC-3 format will be decoded and reproduced on the fly with the help of hardware or CPUresources. The so long-awaited SQ3500 sound card from Aureal will have an integrated Motorola hardware decoder on board.By the way, SQ2500 has two connectors that can be used for upgrade. The installation of a daughter card with Motorola DSPis also very likely to be possible, although there are no official comments about this yet.
Before we pass over to real practice take a look at our testing system, which was configured as follows:
- Intel Pentium III 650E (CuMine), 650MHz
- Chaintech 6BTM (i440BX)
- RAM 256 Mb PC100 from SEC, CAS2
- ELSA ErazorX2 (NVIDIA GeForce 256, 32 Mb DDR SGARAM) drv. 4.12.01.0104-0020
- Fujitsu MPE3064AT 6.5GB UDMA33 HDD
- Hitachi GD2000 DVD ROM
- Sound Cards: Aureal SQ2500 and MX300 (drv. 2.048 + 3.12, 2.041 + 2.25), Creative SB Live! Value(Liveware 3.0 + latest w98 drv)
- Speakers: Cambridge Sound Works FPS1000 (4.1), DTT 2500 Digital
- Headphones: Sennheiser HD590
- Windows98+DX7
We used two sets of reference drivers when testing sound cards: 2.041 + A3D 2.25 and 2.048 + A3D 3.12. Alldrivers can be installed and removed without any difficulties. The new 2.048 version has initial A3Dverbreverberation engine support that allows reproducing reverberation through EAX 1.0 interface only. Consequently,new options appeared in the sound card properties:
The best way to demonstrate A3Dverb features is the A3D 3.0 Player demo.
If you don't have this player, download an update for A3D 2.0 Player here: playerupdate.exe (130KB)
By the way, here http://saturn.spaceports.com/~a3dfan/ you can download a set of Aureal demo program updates(you can also find new beta-versions of reference drivers there), which will let you listen to them via A3D 3.0.For example, you can hear volumetric sound sources in the A3D Race demo. We think, the idea of volumetric soundsources modeling "sounds" much like the future ZoomFX interface from Sensaura company.
Another new feature in 2.048 drivers is the possibility to upload SF2 sound banks, but it's still very limitedbecause only 2MB, 4MB and 8MB SF2 2.0 banks can be uploaded. In fact, it's a long-awaited option because basicallyAureal ARL format is plainly the SF2 2.0 but with its own addressing system. Although Aureal drivers have only GeneralMIDI support, the progress made is hardly deniable.
To compare the sounding of MX300 and SQ2500 we launched several demo programs from Aureal and a few games with A3D2.0 and EAX 1.0 support but didn't hear any difference. As to the 3D sound perception in general, we got the bestimpression when listening via headphones. Then comes 4.1 acoustics, and only then comes a 2-speaker configuration.
Now let's get to tests of the sound cards hardware features, namely of their sound chips, and see how theyperform in some games.
First of all we launched Minerva 1.08 test package from Aureal on both sound cards with two driver sets. Wegot the following results. During playback through headphones or 2 speakers 76 DS3D hardware streams were involved,some of them being dynamically reserved for early reverberated sounds playback. During playback through 4 speakers 16DS3D hardware streams were involved and other 60 streams were strictly reserved for early reflection. But in case ofMX300 we witnessed an interesting situation: with 2.041 drivers and playback through headphones or 2 speakers all 76DS3D hardware streams were detected but with 2.048 drivers - only 16 DS3D hardware streams could be detected, unlikeSQ2500. As a matter of fact, the number of DS3D streams supported via hardware isn't very important because lackingsound streams can be emulated and controlled by system CPU. As to the CPU utilization increase during software controlof sound streams, tests showed that general performance in real applications remains almost unaffected.
Let's see how CPU utilization changes depending on the number of supported hardware DS3D streams and on the driverversion. For this purpose we will use ZD AudioWinbench99 testing utility. When testing CPU utilization we set headphonesand 4.1 acoustics (Quad) playback. This table shows CPU utilization in percents during playback and mixing of DS3D streamswith a 44.1KHz sampling frequency and 16bit precision:
|MX300 2041 (Quad)
|SQ2500 2041 (Quad)
|MX300 2048 (Quad)
|SQ2500 2048 (Quad)
|SBLive! Quad
|Hardware DS3D streams
|32 (16)
|32 (16)
|16 (16)
|32 (16)
|Streaming: Voice 8
|1.09 (0.7)
|1.03 (0.933)
|0.697 (0.706)
|1.42 (0.851)
|Streaming: Voice 16
|1.05 (1.54)
|1.93 (1.65)
|0.651 (1.24)
|1.3 (1.6)
|Streaming: Voice 32
|1.57 (3.33)
|3.24 (3.48)
|1.89 (3.8)
The table shows results for Streaming Buffer only because Static and Streaming mean the same thing for modern PCI sound cards.The matter is that today's sound cards don't have local on-board sound memory, so, all the data is stored and processed in thecomputer's system memory. Besides, the data from Streaming Buffer can be drawn all at once, as from a Static buffer, and inportions, i.e. as a stream.
So, both Vortex2 chips on MX300 and SQ2500 sound cards support the same number of hardware DS3D streams though their markingis different. The fact that test packages show different number of hardware DS3D streams during headphones and 4 speakers playbackdoesn't really influence the test results, which can be seen from the table. Let's also note that even during partial DS3D streamsemulation the CPU utilization doesn't exceed 4% which is very little.
All of these were synthetic tests, now what about CPU utilization in real applications? Unfortunately, today's one and onlyconvenient and universal gaming test is Half-Life, because you can set exactly which interface your sound card will use for soundplayback and modeling. Also this game has several demos that allow fps measuring.
We used Half-Life with a 126.96.36.199 (build 893) patch and an UpLink Lite add-on that you can download here: uplink_lite.exe(3.8MB)
For fps measuring we used Survive demo that can be downloaded from Reverend Pulpit web-site. This demo loads the CPU andgraphics accelerator pretty heavily. All the tests in all games were run with the sound quality set to High Quality. Testingwas performed with a graphics accelerator working in OpenGL API with a 16bit color depth. At 320?240 resolution we used onlysoftware graphics rendering.
At first we ran the tests using a 2.041 + 2.25 driver set and here's what we got:
|No Sound
|Soft 320x240
|35.2 (34.93)
|40.58 (40.8)
|44.98 (45.02)
|50.55 (50.43)
|43.7 (44.5)
|50.57 (50.2)
|44.02 (44.39)
|50.05 (50.17)
You can see that CPU utilization during playback through headphones and 4 speakers (QUAD) is almost the same,because fps rates are almost equal. But CPU utilization is different if you compare SQ2500 and MX300. On average,SQ2500 loads CPU 14% less, i.e. during sound playback via A3D 2.0 API on a SQ2500 sound card you'll get a 14% higherfps rate, which is a quite considerable performance increase. If compared to the fps rate measured with the sounddisabled, MX300 increases CPU utilization from 30% to 37% and SQ2500 - from 20% to 29%. It's interesting that at lowresolutions when CPU utilization is maximal, the sound card also loads the central processor more than at higherresolutions.
Then we installed a 2.048 + 3.12 driver set and made new measurements:
|No Sound
|SB Live! Value
|Soft 320x240
|34.5 (35.04)
|34.22 (34.88)
|39.72 (39.99)
|48.02 (47.68)
|44.4 (45.3)
|46.04 (46.27)
|51.74 (53.33)
|64.37 (63.77)
|42.9 (42.8)
|45.13 (45.23)
|52.04 (52.65)
|63.26 (62.89)
|43.07 (44.3)
|44.19 (44.32)
|49.62 (51.44)
|60.66 (60.24)
If we take a general look at figures in the table, we will see that the situation with CPU utilization duringsound playback via A3D 2.0 in both cases, on MX300 and SQ2500, remains unchanged. There's a little progress bySQ2500 in 4 speakers (QUAD) playback mode. This is rather strange because apart from HRTF-filtering, a Cross-talkCancellation (CC) algorithms must be calculated. The fact that fps rate hasn't decreased means that CC algorithm iscalculated by Vortex2 and not by the CPU. The 1-3% fps increase we observed could be explained by measuring errors orby some unexpected reserves of the chip, which is quite unlikely to be true.
As 2.048 drivers support EAX 1.0, we also provide the fps rates for SB Live! Value sound card just for a bettercomparison.
Working via EAX 1.0, reverberation is calculated on the basis of acoustic environment presets. Sound sourcespositioning and calculation of straight sound directions is done via DS3D. In case of A3D 2.0, the playback ofsounds propagated along straight directions, sound sources positioning and early reverberated sounds calculationsare carried out via a special engine included into A3D 2.0 or via the game's own integrated sound engine. Earlyreverberated sounds calculations are effected basing on acoustic environment geometry info in real-time mode withWavetracing technology. It's obvious that operations like that require much more computing resources and more RAMfor more efficient data exchange. If the gaming sound is programmed to be reproduced via A3D 3.0 API, reverberationcan be calculated in two ways: on the basis of presets (via EAX API and I3Dl2) or it can be dynamically modeled on thebasis of acoustic environment geometry data with Wavetracing technology.
In case of our Half-Life test game, reverberation can be reproduced via EAX 1.0 only, i.e. on the basis of presets.Our table shows a very interesting picture. When sound is played back by MX300 sound card via EAX 1.0, fps rate figuresare close to those occurring with A3D 2.0. At two other resolutions we can notice a 5% fps rate increase, which can beexplained both by measuring errors and by the fact that sound reproduction via EAX requires less computing resources thanA3D 2.0. But in case of SQ2500, we can observe fps rates almost equal (in fact they're even 3% higher) to those taken withSB Live! Value. In fact, SQ2500 loads the CPU at least as much as EMU10K1 DSP based SB Live! Value and at the most even alittle less. It would be unfair to say that these results are impressive: they are more than impressive. But let's put ouremotions away, there's a discussion board for sharing them. ;)
Let's compare the fps rate measured during sound playback via EAX + DS3D and obtained with game sound disabled. SB Live!Value sound card loads CPU during reverberation reproduction from 8% to 12%, and SQ2500 under the same conditions increasesthe central processor utilization from 5% to 10%.
Thus we can say that Vortex2 chips used on MX300 and SQ2500 sound cards differ from each other. A new version of Vortex2used on SQ2500 provides higher general performance in games, which show the fps values. In this case the performance increasecan be observed when sound is reproduced via both: A3D 2.0 API and DS3D API + EAX 1.0. It seems to us that these improvementsin the new Vortex2 chip version were achieved through optimization of data transfer to the system memory and possibly throughinternal chip architecture modifications. Maybe Aureal's engineers just fixed some bugs inside the chip. Anyway, the mostimportant thing is the result, which is far more than satisfactory.
Apart from plain gaming performance there's also one more thing, which can't be expressed numerically. We're talking aboutsounding quality in games. Sounding in games via A3D 2.0 has been discussed in and out already and there's no point in repeatingthe universal truths about early reflections dynamically calculated on the basis of environment geometry that allow locatingsound sources and estimating distance to them. This feature is available only on Vortex2 based sound cards. The sound propagationalong straight directions isn't an interesting subject either because any sound card with A3D or DS3D support easily copes with it.There's the third and last component left: late reverberation. Until recently only Aureal chip based sound cards didn't havethis feature. Now this situation is improved and they feature this support though on initial stage only. This means that it'sstill too early to expect the current Vortex2 based cards drivers to reproduce reverberation of the same quality as EMU10K1based sound cards can provide. For example, according to many listeners the quality of reverberation in Half-Life produced byVortex2 based sound cards is not in the least inferior to SB Live! sound cards sounding. On the whole the situation with thereverberation quality of Vortex2 based sound cards is the following: in some games reverberation quality is OK; in some gamesreverberation quality can be regarded as acceptable but different (sometimes quite significantly) from SB Live! sounding; insome games reverberation is nauseating or totally absent.
If you've never heard how reverberation sounds on SB Live! sound cards, it will be difficult for you to estimate thereverberation quality on Vortex2 based sound cards. If you have the possibility to compare, you'll be able to form yourown opinion. Moreover, there is every reason to expect the drivers for Vortex2 based sound cards with full reverberationsupport. That's why we won't give a list of games, in which we didn't like the reverberation quality. But reverberationwe heard in Half-Life, Need4Speed: High Stakes, Test Drive 6 and Baldur's Gate was very nice. In Torment reverberation wasnot very vivid but we can't totally disregard it.
By the way, currently the owners of Vortex2 based sound cards will have to choose between non-reverberated sound playbackvia A3D 2.0 or non-early reverberated playback via DS3D (DS) + EAX 1.0. Only in games with A3D 3.0 API sound modeling asimultaneous reproduction of all three 3D sound components will be possible. These components include: sounds, propagatedalong straight directions, early reverberated sounds and late reverberation. But in this case you'll need drivers withcomplete A3Dverb support.
If the game uses not only the A3D 3.0 interface but also Aureal's own sound engine (which is absolutely free), userswith any sound cards will be able to hear 3D sound and background soundtracks in MP3/AC-3 formats except dynamicallycalculated early reflections which require hardware support.
If you visit some 3D sound-related discussion boards you'll come across numerous discussions of notable performancedrops occurring with A3D 2.0 interface. We would like to mention that during any sound playback the performance drop isinevitable. First of all, it's caused by the sound rendering performed in the buffers formed in computer's system memory.Additional resources are required for special effects of different complexity that are used for 3D sound modeling. Ifsound cards had local sound memory like graphics accelerators do, gaming performance would increase together with thesound cards' prices. Moreover, the performance greatly depends on the gaming sound engine. It's not a secret that gamedevelopers can use their own sound engine or take some ready-to-use solutions from other companies including Aureal. Ofcourse, different engines have different optimization level. We took the fps rates in another two popular games: inQuake3 Arena, which uses Aureal sound engine and in Unreal Tournament, which uses its own sound engine. 2.048 + 3.12driver set was used.
Let's start with Quake3 Arena with 1.16n patch installed. We used a built-in Demo002 demo with settings set toNORMAL, only resolutions were changed. We took the fps rates with sound disabled, with sound played back via A3D2.0 and via DirectSound (DS):
|No Sound
|SB Live!, DS
|61.75 (85.2)
|64.15 (88.45)
|60.45 (80.45)
|62.95 (82.1)
|53.15 (56.2)
|54.25 (56.3)
You can see that during playback via DS all three sound cards load the CPU almost equally. With the growth of theresolution the fps rate limiting factor turns the graphics accelerator performance (namely, its fillrate) and not theCPU resources used for sound rendering. A similar thing happens to sound playback via A3D 2.0 API: the higher is theresolution, the less noticeable is the CPU utilization by the sound card. Moreover, the table shows that Vortex2 chipon SQ2500 does its job better than his brother on MX300.
Now let's take a look at the situation with fps rates in Unreal Tournament. Before we started our tests, a v.405patch was installed and during the test Hardware 3D Sound was successively enabled or disabled. The video settingswere configured as follows:
- Color depth - 16 bit
- World Texture Detail - High
- Skin Detail - Medium
- GUI Skin - Ice
- Min Desired Framerate - 0
- Show Decals - On
- Use Dynamic Lighting - On
For our test we used Wicked405 demo form the Reverend Pulpit web-site.This demo loads CPU heavily while performance in UT depends more on the graphics accelerator performance (namely on its fillrate).
|No Sound
|SB Live! (DS)
|27.35 (30.12)
|26.72 (29.16)
|30.49 (30.22)
|22.65 (24.74)
|22.46 (24.3)
|24.84 (24.8)
|21.72 (23.73)
|21.65 (24.33)
|23.69 (23.74)
Results show nothing new. The higher gets the resolution, the less is the fps rate difference. DS3D + EAX or DS only allowreducing the CPU utilization compared to A3D 2.0. The only interesting thing is that during playback via A3D 2.0 MX300 performedbetter than SQ2500. This is due to the fact that UT uses its own sound engine optimized for MX300. If we assume that Vortex2 chipof MX300 has some internal bugs, then this optimization won't help when another bugless Vortex2 chip is used.
Fps rates analysis allows us to make the following conclusion: if you play a single-player game, select higherresolutions. The performance drop caused by your sound card in this case will be minimal. But if you're playingdeathmatch, you'll have to make your own choice depending on your preferences.
Finally let's discuss one more great difference between MX300 and SQ2500 sound cards: the digital interface.In our opinion, any modern sound card should have digital interface. Why? Well, at least because DVD-video becomesone of the most popular ways of entertainment and multimedia kits of five speakers, a subwoofer, an amplifier and aAC-3 decoder cost just $170-250. All these AC-3 multimedia decoders have an RCA electrical digital S/PDIF In.
In order to get a digital out on your MX300 you can buy an MX-25 daughter card for approximately $40. The otherway of equipping your MX300 with a digital out will suit you if you are a RadioShack patron accustomed to soldering.If it's exactly what you are then pay a visit to the following web-site: http://www.algonet.se/~cyrano/mx2.html whereyou'll find useful advice on MX300 upgrade.
SQ2500 sound card won't be such a pain in the ass because it's equipped with a digital electrical RCA S/PDIF out.We tested the performance of this digital out by connecting SQ2500 to Cambridge DeskTop Theater 5.1 DTT2500 Digitalmultimedia kit with a built-in AC-3 decoder and listened to sounding during DVD video playback. The sound was wonderful.
However, portable MiniDisc recorders owners would appreciate an optical TosLINK digital S/PDIF out. Unfortunately,this is impossible. In theory SQ2500 sound card specifications allows optical digital out installation but we couldn'tfind these models on the market. Still you can purchase Aureal Vortex2 based SQ Digital PCI sound cards (sometimeslabeled as Xitel, VideoLogic or Terratec), which are equipped with an optical digital out. But those have nothing todo with SQ2500 and they're based on older Vortex2 chips, the same as MX300 is based on. SQ Digital PCI usually havedark brown or dark green textolite.
Aureal SQ2500 sound card is $25 more expensive than MX300 but for this price you get a better performance in games,an electrical digital out and wonderful 3D sound. Anyway, the choice is yours, but in our opinion ,MX300's time slippedaway and there's no point in purchasing it now.
Among SQ2500's lows can only be mentioned the unclear situation with new drivers and Aureal's fate in general.
P.S. One day Media Vision company, ProAudio Spectrum family manufacturer, announced its bankruptcy.Some time later appeared a new company called Aureal. The name's not important but ideas and technologies are. Let's beoptimistic.


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Obama Makes Renewed Push for Lower Rates on Refinancing
NEW YORK ( TheStreet) -- The Obama administration is exploring plans to allow more borrowers to refinance at lower rates. Any measure would face stiff opposition in Congress.
Senators Bob Menendez (D, N.J.) and Barbara Boxer (D, Calif.) reintroduced legislation Thursday aimed at removing barriers that prevent borrowers with government-backed loans from getting the lowest possible interest rates.
The Responsible Homeowners Act of 2013 would improve upon the government's current Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) by eliminating appraisal costs, reducing upfront fees on refinances, ensuring consistent standards for all lenders and providing equal access to refinancing options to all borrowers, the senators said.
The legislation was introduced last year but failed to win Congressional approval.
"We need to bring much-needed relief now to hard-working, responsible homeowners who are struggling to keep up with their high interest-rate loans -- including thousands in New Jersey whom I have heard from," Menendez said in a release. "We need to do this before interest rates go up again. It's time that Congress finally put families first and give homeowners who have played by the rules a fair chance to refinance at today's low rates."
The administration's current HARP program allows borrowers with loans backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to refinance at lower rates even if they owe more than what their mortgages are worth, so long as they are current on their payments.
The program, which was expanded in October 2011, has helped 1.8 million borrowers and boosted the refinancing business for banks including Wells Fargo (WFC) , JPMorgan Chase (JPM) and U.S. Bancorp (USB) .
But borrowers have still not fully benefited from rock-bottom interest rates because the program currently is structured in a way that limits competition among lenders.
Under HARP, a bank that wants to compete with the current lender for business has to go through tougher underwriting criteria and faces greater risk that Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac would force them to repurchase loans should the borrower default.
As a result, the borrower finds he can often get his loan refinanced only with his current lender and is not able to shop around for a better rate. That allows lenders to charge higher rates.
The senators cited a recent study by Amherst Securities Group that found HARP borrowers are paying more than half a percentage point more than borrowers with other types of loans.
The new bill directs the housing-finance agencies to require the same underwriting standards for new servicers as they do for existing ones, leveling the playing field.
HARP also makes distinctions between borrowers with more equity in their homes and those who are underwater. GSE borrowers who have more than 20% equity in their homes are not eligible for HARP refinancing. The bill seeks to ensure that all GSE borrowers, regardless of the equity in their homes, have the same access to low-cost refinancing options.


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"Thank you for Catholic Answers. I enjoy hearing Patrick and his guests each weekday evening, and I have grown so much in my faith in the last 7-8 years. Thank you for speaking the truth."
"In order to restore in the world the reign of Jesus Christ, nothing is as necessary as the holiness of the clergy."


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Cranberry Banana Coffee Cake RecipeRead Reviews Be the first to add a review
5 2 3
I make this moist cake for Christmas morning every year. It tastes like banana bread but has a sweet golden topping with a nutty crunch. —Gloria Friesen, Casper, Wyoming
Featured In: Christmas Food Gifts Anyone can Bake
- 1/2 cup butter, softened
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
- 2 medium ripe bananas, mashed (about 3/4 cup)
- 1 cup whole-berry cranberry sauce
- 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
- 1/2 cup chopped pecans
- 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 2 tablespoons butter, melted
- In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Combine the dry ingredients; add to the creamed mixture alternately with bananas, beating well after each addition. Spread into a greased 13-in. x 9-in. baking pan. Top with cranberry sauce.
- In a small bowl, combine the brown sugar, pecans and flour; stir in butter. Sprinkle over cranberries. Bake at 350° for 45-50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool in pan on a wire rack. Yield: 12-15 servings.
Originally published as Cranberry Banana Coffee Cake in Country Woman Christmas Annual 2001, p13
Reviews for Cranberry Banana Coffee Cake
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Reviewed Mar. 19, 2013
"I did as the other reviewer and used quick oats in the topping since I had no nuts (and hubby doesn't like nuts IN his food). I thought the pan size would be too big since I've always made 8 x 8 coffee cakes, but it was just right. I used 3 bananas since the 2 old ones I was saving in the fridge were small. Now I have to eat the rest of the cranberry sauce out of the can :)."
Reviewed Jan. 2, 2012
"This recipe was just what I was looking for to use up that can of cranberry sauce in the pantry. This was very tasty! The only thing I changed was instead of the nuts I used the same amount of quick cooking oats since my kids are not big fans of nuts, this worked just fine. My kids ate it up and my Husband and I enjoyed it with coffee."