text:
Area players fill spots on squad
WHEELING – It wasn't exactly a Lou Gehrig speech, but there is no doubt
Madonna coach Doug Taylor considers himself a lucky man. He may not be the luckiest man in the world, but he certainly would be up there with the luckiest among his West Virginia coaching colleagues.
If ever a coach and a quarterback were meant for each other it is Taylor and his senior quarterback Ross Comis.
"You know, Madonna was always known as a smash-mouth, run-it-up-the-gut, physical team, pound the ball," Taylor said. "I joke with Ross all the time. I tell him I don't know if it was lucky for him that I came here and brought this offense or if it's lucky for me that I found a quarterback like him here.
"Honestly, I think I am the lucky one."
No doubt Comis has benefited from Taylor's offensive philosophy.
The 6-foot-2, 215-pound quarterback rushed for 2,037 yards and 35 touchdowns, which is a state record for quarterback rushing yards. Comis has also passed for 1,731 yards and 22 touchdowns.
Comis, a utility selection because of his versatility, was named captain of the Class A all-state team released today by the West Virginia Sportswriters Association, two days after the Blue Dons 24-14 victory against Greenbrier West in the Class A championship game at Wheeling Island Stadium.
Comis, the first-team quarterback last year, finished his career with 4,839 yards rushing and 71 touchdowns, which is the state record in both of those categories and passed for 4,416 yards and 49 touchdowns in his career.
His 9,255 total offensive yards leads all active players as do his 121 touchdowns overall (rush, pass, interception return).
"It's nice to be named to the first team again, and to be named the captain makes it even better," Comis said. "It's a credit to all these guys and what we've been through, trying to get back to the state championship. To win it ismore than I can describe. To be honored like that is because of my teammates."
Comis was joined on the first team by teammates Eliott Nero (running back), Josh Martin (offensive line) and Will Bowser (defensive back).
Nero rushed for 1,858 yards and 27 touchdowns (and 36 overall), Martin made headlines as a 7-foot-2 two-way lineman and Bowser had two touchdown receptions and five tackles in the state championship game.
Bishop Donahue's Jesse Padlow was named the quarterback of the first team unit.
Padlow led the state in passing yards with 2,468 (completing 153 of 264 passes) with 24 touchdowns and five interceptions in leading the Bishops to the second round of the playoffs.
Other running backs selected were Meadow Bridge's Jake Parker (283 carries, 2,505 yards and 33 touchdowns) , who led the state in rushing for the second year in a row and Magnolia's Drew Keller (283-11,832-22) , who led his team to the Class A semifinals, where it lost to Greenbrier West.
Along with Martin, first team offensive linemen were Noah Schultz of St. Marys, Cole Seckman of Magnolia, Isaac Britton of Doddridge County and Wesley Harrison of Wahama.
The wide receivers were Gilmer County's Austin Ratliff (68-875-6) and Bishop Donahue's Lavonte Hampton (45-723-11)
Garrett Furr of St. Marys was the kicker. Furr kicked the game-winning field goal against Magnolia and was 31 of 37 PATs this season.
Greenbrier West's Malik Boatwright, a two-way standout, was selected as a defensive back and was named captain of the defense. He was the first-team all-state defensive utility player last season.
The 5-foot-4 Boatwright (also the team's quarterback) had nine tackles in the state championship game against Madonna and had 65 on the season, two interceptions, two fumble recoveries and three passes broken up.
He was joined on the all-state defense by his brother, and teammate, Marquis Frazier. The 6-1, 191-pound junior had 11 tackles in the championship game and finished the season with 95 tackles, 22 sacks and 24.5 tackles for a loss of yardage.
"No doubt they were both a big part of our success this season," Greenbrier West coach Lewis McClung said. "Malik has been a playmaker for us the last two seasons. On offense and defense, he just continued to make plays when we needed him."
"It's an honor to be named, especially since I didn't get to finish the season last year," said Frazier, who broke in ankle in week eight last season. "We had a great run this season, we just came up a bit short in the final game."
Other first team defensive linemen were Tyler Davis of St. Marys (84 tackles), Chris Vani (19 sacks) of Bishop Donahue and Colton Neal of Wahama.
Linebackers include Magnolia's Kage Rodge, a repeat first-team performer from last season, Wil Schoonover from Moorefield and Joe John from Wheeling Central.
Williamstown's Jake Tracewell, Madonna's Bowser, and Wahama's Hunter Bradley join Boatwright at defensive back while Kane Roush of Wahama is the defensive utility player and Pocahontas County's Devin Rose is the punter.
Clay-Battelle'sTristan Haught (1,332 yards passing and 18 touchdowns) was named captain of the second team offense and Madonna defensive lineman Matt Guio was named captain of the second team defense.
Austin Cunningham is quarterback of the second team with Notre Dame's Santana Cava, Valley-Fayette's Keyshawn Payne and Wheeling Central's C.J. Burch at running back.
Offensive linemen are Fayetteville's Hunter Pullen, Clay Battelle's Hunter Six, Williamstown's D.J. Kerns , Madonna's Garret Bever and Moorefield's Seth Stickley. Man's Trace Jones and East Hardy's Tyler Smith are the receivers with Trace Elder of Williamstown at kicker.
On defense, Corey Cox of Greenbrier West, Brandon Riggleman of Moorefield and Magnolia's Kyle Ritz join Gio on the defensive line.
Linebackers are Doddridge County's Wyatt Ford, Tyler Consolidated's Jacob Hughley, Williamstown's Dakota Watson and St. Marys David Gray.
Defensive backs are Valley-Fayette's Rawshawn Breckenridge, Buffalo's Jordan Tucker and Austin Zirk of Tucker County.
Clay-Battelle's Tanner Bragg is the second-utility player and Justin Joy of Wirt County is the punter.
Class A All-State Teams
First Team
QB – Jesse Padlow, Bishop Donahue, jr., 6-foot-1, 175 pounds
RB – Jake Parker, Meadow Bridge, sr., 6-0, 198
RB – Eliott Nero, Madonna, sr., 5-10, 200
RB – Drew Keller, Magnolia, sr., 5-9, 180
OL – Noah Shultz, St. Marys, sr., 6-0, 256
OL – Josh Martin, Madonna, sr., 7-2, 295
OL – Cole Seckman, Magnolia, sr., 6-1, 310
OL – Isaac Britton, Doddridge County, sr., 5-11, 250
OL – Wesley Harrison, Wahama, sr., 5-10, 180
WR – Austin Ratliff, Gilmer County, jr., 6-0, 171
WR – Lavonte Hampton, Bishop Donahue, sr., 6-2, 185
Utility – Ross Comis, Madonna, sr., 6-2, 215 (Captain)
K – Garrett Furr, St. Marys, sr., 5-7, 151
DL – Marquis Frazier, Greenbrier West, jr., 6-1, 191
DL – Tyler Davis, St.Marys, sr., 6-0, 254
DL – Chris Vani, Bishop Donahue, sr., 5-10, 235
DL – Colton Neal, Wahama, sr., 6-0, 190
LB – Kage Rohde, Magnolia, sr., 5-9, 180
LB – Wil Schoonover, Moorefield, jr., 5-10, 195
LB – Joe John, Wheeling Central, sr., 6-0, 180
DB – Jake Tracewell, Williamstown, sr., 6-1, 170
DB – Will Bowser, Madonna, sr., 6-1, 185
DB – Hunter Bradley, Wahama, sr., 6-3, 180
DB – Malik Boatwright, Greenbrier West, sr., 5-4, 172 (Captain)
Utility – Kane Roush, Wahama, sr., 5-10, 170
P – Devin Rose, Pocahontas County, sr., 6-0, 218
Second Team
QB – Austin Cunningham, Gilmer County, sr. , 6-2, 177
RB – Santino Cava, Notre Dame, jr., 5-7, 195
RB – Keyshawn Payne, Valley (Fayette), sr., 5-8, 178
RB – C.J. Burch, Wheeling Central, sr., 5-10, 185
OL – Hunter Pullens, Fayetteville, sr., 5-11, 200
OL – Hunter Six, Clay-Battelle, sr., 6-0, 305
OL – D.J. Kerns, Williamstown, jr., 5-7, 215
OL – Garret Bever, Madonna, sr., 5-11, 260
OL – Seth Stickley, Moorefield, sr., 5-9, 250
WR – Tracy Jones, Man, sr., 5-10, 155
WR – Tyler Smith, East Hardy, jr., 5-8, 150
Utility – Tristan Haught, Clay-Battelle, sr., 6-2, 170 (Captain)
K – Trace Elder, Williamstown, sr., 5-8, 128
DL – Brandon Riggleman, Moorefield, sr., 5-11, 215
DL – Nate Guio, Madonna, sr., 6-3, 215 (Captain)
DL – Corey Cox, Greenbrier West, sr., 5-10, 168
DL – Kyle Ritz, Magnolia, so., 6-1, 215
LB – Wyatt Ford, Doddridge County, jr., 5-11, 185
LB – Jacob Highley, Tyler Consolidated, sr., 5-11, 205
LB – Dakota Watson, Williamstown, jr., 5-9, 180
LB – David Gray, St. Marys, sr., 5-9, 205
DB – Austin Zirk, Tucker County, sr., 5-10, 165
DB – Jordan Tucker, Buffalo, jr., 5-7, 150
DB – Raeshawn Breckenridge, Valley (Fayette), sr., 6-0, 175
Utility – Tanner Bragg, Clay-Battelle, sr., 5-10, 175
P – Justin Joy, Wirt County, sr., 6-3, 180
Special Mention
Michael Adams, Richwood; Noah Bellew, Williamstown; Kyle Bronski, Parkersburg Catholic; Logan Brown, Greenbrier West; Cole Collier, East Hardy; Aaron Copley, Tug Valley; Brandon Cross, Paden City; Dillon Dunkle, Pendleton County; Mikey Goddard, Greenbrier West; Jason Grose, Montcalm; Logan Hamilton, Clay-Battelle; Spencer Harlow, Notre Dame; David Hasting, Williamstown; Zach Heasley, Paden City; John Thomas Keffer, Man; Kyle Killen, Meadow Bridge; Daniel McCue, Wirt County; Cayce Mullins, Man; Logan Moore, Calhoun County; Stevie Mitchell, Valley (Fayette); Shane Myers, Moorefield; Jeremy Pratt, St. Marys; David Runyon, Tug Valley; Jarrod Sandy, Doddridge County; Noah Spitzer, St. Marys; Eric Smith, Magnolia; Casey Stewart, Valley (Fayette); Payton Sturm, Parkersburg Catholic; Shane Williams, Cameron; Luke Yocum, Pendleton County
Honorable Mention
Nathan Allison, Gilmer County; Jeremiah Beavers, Man; Jacob Brill, Magnolia; Josh Buffington, Sherman; John Burkhalter, Wheeling Central; Teddy Cassell, East Hardy; Luke Cooper, Paden City; Matt Dolan, Moorefield; Jordan Dove, East Hardy; Ben Duplaga, Wheeling Central; Brandon Elswick, Van; Matt Green, Madonna; Jesse Grimes, South Harrison; Cory Hanlin, Tucker County; Brandon Hamons, Pocahontas County; Parker Henry, Wheeling Central; C.J. Huff, Bishop Donahue; Tristan Johnson, Hannan; David Lipscomb, Doddridge County; Todd McClanahan, Meadow Bridge; Dallas Miller, Midland Trail; Jordan Miller, Notre Dame; Steven Mitchell, Valley (Fayette); Neil Mullins, Man; Bernie Northrup, St. Marys; Evan O'Dell, Midland Trail; Isaac Rine, Wheeling Central; Isaiah Robinson, Buffalo; Tasheem Saunders, Fayetteville; Wakem Simon, Notre Dame; Cody Smith, Williamstown; Jacoby Steele, Clay-Battelle; Kendell Stewart, Tyler Consolidated; Trey Streets, Valley (Wetzel); Dakota Toth, Man; Derrick Villarico, Tygarts Valley; Dakota Vetter, Moorefield; Matt Vucelik, Bishop Donahue; Troy Watson, Tyler Consolidated; Hunter Yoders, Cameron


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Why Nigel Farage is wrong on women in the City
"If a woman has a client base and has a child and takes two or three years off work, she is worth far less to the employer when she comes back….I think that young, able women who are prepared to sacrifice the family life and stick with their careers do as well, if not better, than men."
So said UKIP leader Nigel Farage MEP to assorted guests at an event in London on Monday.
At a time when most major financial institutions are investing significant time and money into efforts to attract and retain female talent, the comments could barely demonstrate a more outdated view of the City.
Although seemingly well-intentioned, Farage's words are a classic example of the confused thinking and subconscious bias that can blight this area. Men are not expected to sacrifice a family life in pursuit of a successful career – should women be?
Fortunately, the finance sector is making significant strides in the right direction on gender equality — led from the very top.
Perhaps before addressing the assembled press with his views on the matter again, we might suggest that Farage does something politicians are very adept at: canvassing.
Farage would be well-advised to visit Threadneedle Street first. One of the first public comments that Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, made on his appointment was to express disappointment at the absence of any women on the monetary policy committee. He promised to grow a pool of talent from which would come the Bank's first female governor.
Or maybe Farage might prefer somewhere exotic to do his door stepping. He might head for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, where President Obama could discuss why he feels that Janet Yellen — who has one son — is the right person to serve as the first female chair of the Federal Reserve.
Indeed, a trip to Washington DC would be time well spent. He could drop in on the IMF, which appointed Christine Lagarde — mother of two — to succeed Dominique Strauss-Kahn (whose own alleged shortcomings have been widely reported and some would argue are very much related to his gender).
But no – we are heading towards a general election and there are not many votes to be had in the US. Let's get back to home turf and the Square Mile.
Here in London Farage could try Helena Morrissey CBE, CEO of Newton Investment Management and a mother of nine. Morrissey is the founder of the 30% Club, an organisation whose aim is to bring more women onto UK boards and whose members include Goldman Sachs, Old Mutual, BNY Mellon, Rothschilds and all of the major high street banks.
Or maybe he could try the directors of The London Stock Exchange, which has just appointed two women to its board.
Perhaps Farage would feel more comfortable discussing it with a man? In which case, a chat with Chris Sullivan, chief executive of the UK Corporate Banking Division of RBS, might be wise. Sullivan is very vocal about his mission to improve the flow of female talent through the bank, which he sees very much as a strategic business issue.
We could go on but there are too many examples of successful women and positive initiatives to cover here.
The fact is that financial institutions big and small are looking to attract and retain female talent because they are interested in long term gain.
They are aware of the fact that the majority of university graduates are now female and they want to access the best talent. They don't want to waste money developing talent only for it to exit the profession as victims of an outdated world view. They have read the research that says that gender balanced teams produce better results, and they are aware of the data that shows that financial institutions which have a significant number of women on their boards carry less financial risk. They are also tuned into the fact that women customers are a large market that they need to appeal to.
That is why many leaders across the world and the financial services sector in particular are unlikely to support Farage's comments – but would doubtless welcome the chance to discuss the issue with him.
Linda Jones is a partner in the employment practice at international law firm Pinsent Masons

subset: commoncrawl


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Yahoo is acquiring popular social media blogging site Tumblr for $1.1 billion, the company announced Monday. That has Tumblr enthusiasts worried about possible changes to the site, but CEO Marisa Mayer promised Tumblr will operate independently and Yahoo won't "screw it up." Take a look at other notable online startup acquisitions.
Yahoo raised eyebrows in March 2013 when it acquired news reader Summly from developer Nick D'Aloisio for a reported $30 million. The eyebrow-raising came from D'Aloisio being only 17.
Amazon announced it was acquiring Goodreads, a social site for avid readers, in March 2013. The terms weren't disclosed.
Twitter acquired Vine, a stand-alone app that lets users share 6-second videos, in October 2012.
Facebook acquired Instagram in 2012 for $1 billion. But since most of that price was in Facebook stock, the actual price was closer to $736 million when Facebook actually closed the deal for the photo-sharing network.
Justin Timberlake and Specific Media acquired MySpace for $35 million in June 2011 and are trying to revamp the social media site. That's a much cheaper than the $580 million price tag NewsCorp paid when it bought the site in 2005, according to the AP.
Twitter acquired Tweetdeck, a popular third-party Twitter application, in May 2011 for $40 million. Twitter has a history of acquiring third-party applications -- they did the same thing with iPhone app Tweetie in 2011, according to CNN.
AOL purchased news site The Huffington Post in February 2011 for $315 million.
Amazon bought Zappos, a site that sells shoes and clothing, for $89 million in July 2009.
Google acquired YouTube in 2006 for a $1.65 billion stock-for-stock transaction. YouTube still operates independently, but you can get to the site from Google's homepage.
eBay acquired PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion. Which makes sense, since according to TechCrunch, 60 percent of PayPal's business originated from the auction site at that time.
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Lace Crop Gray Cardigan
Style: 570118984
Out of Stock
Classic cardigan in sublimely soft knit and elegant touches— rhinestone button front placket and wide neckline trimmed in delicate floral lace.
- Slightly contoured stretch fit.
- Ribbed 3/4 sleeves and hem.
- Rhinetsone jeweled button front placket.
- Floral lace at neckline.
- 36% viscose, 36% nylon, 23% polyester, 5% cashmere. Exclusive of decoration. Machine wash, cold. Imported.
- Approximately 21.5" from shoulder.
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It happens from time to time: you spend a few years working on one peculiar aspect of a problem, you believe you become "experienced" in that problem, and, once your environment changes, you notice how you were looking at it with the eyes of a blind man.
It happened to me recently. Since 1997, I have been working on the problems related to the integration of Web servers (especially the Apache Web server) with servlet containers (notably, Apache JServ and Tomcat), and I thought I became an expert in that field. And then I went through the common round of layoffs, and had to look for a new job.
I ended up, luckily, at VNU Business Publications, in London, on its Web team. VNU has been a news company for 20-odd years; not a small Internet startup with a revolutionary idea, nor a software giant with thousands of engineers. Our business is simple: we sell information, through newspapers and magazines and on our Web site.
Given our relatively simple business plan (you wish), our problem is even simpler: our Web site has a lot of traffic (around 130 servlet requests per second at peak times) and it needs to be up and running 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It's quite different from what I was used to: the soft and nice world of research far from practical use.
To handle this kind of load, of course, your infrastructure needs to be almost perfect. You need to have the best Web server, the best servlet container, the best of everything. I concentrate my efforts on the first two: Web server (Apache) and servlet container (Tomcat).
But instead of speaking about these issues now (you can come to the O'Reilly Open Source Conference and browse around at my talk on Wednesday, I would like to address a topic related to high-load Web sites and servlets.
The topic I want to address is how to design (or adapt) your Web application for deployment under high loads, and I want to share some of the obvious (and not obvious) performance enhancements we currently use on our news site.
I was lately addressed by one of the Tomcat developers about the fact that the Apache module I am developing (
mod_webapp) "still forwards requests for static webapp resources to Tomcat." Pointless to say that it does but, if you see it from my perspective, this is indeed a pretty low priority for us.
VNU handles several million requests each day throughout its Web servers, and static content accounts for approximately 70 percent of our bandwidth. In our case, the problem would be that if every single image, PDF, or CSS file had to go through the servlet engine to be processed and delivered, we would overload our Java Virtual Machine input/output.
We use JSPs to style our content, so the solution we adopted was simple: we invented a new tag. In our JSPs, instead of using the HTML
<img> tag, we developed a very small custom tag:
<vnu:img>. Our tag takes the SRC argument, and prints out a different (real HTML this time)
<img> tag. For example, if in our JSPs you see something like:
<vnu:img src="/v6_logo_main.gif" ...>
our custom tag handler would convert it to something like:
<img src="http://images.vnunet.com/v6_image/v6_logo_main.gif" ...>
Why did we do that? It is pretty easy to explain. First of all
images.vnunet.com is another Web server. Simply enough, all of our static traffic is handled by another instance of Apache, finely tuned to deliver only files, without the additional load of servlet requests, CGIs, Perl, or PHP (you name it).
Another advantage of this custom tag is that we can easily scale. If the amount of static data served becomes too much to be handled by one server, we can promptly put up a second one, modify our tag library, and "rewrite" the SRC attribute, one time with
images.vnunet.com and another with
images2.vnunet.com, without needing to start to load balance our servers or modify our router's configurations.
But probably the biggest advantage we can get out of a simple idea like this is that we can distribute our static content geographically. If, for example, one day we decided to use a service like Akamai, again, the only place throughout our entire application where I have to change something is our tag library, without even thinking about the thousands of JSP pages sitting on my server.
We use JSP, but such a simple approach can be used with any templating language and, if you have static HTML files, the only thing you have to do is parse them once, rewrite what needs to be rewritten, and the trick is done with a simple SED script.
Another interesting topic to keep in mind when deploying a large-scale application is how resource-hungry it is, and you have to consider what impact this new component is going to have on our overall infrastructure.
Let's look again at a practical example. VNU delivers news on the Web. All of our articles are nicely stored in a huge Oracle database, we have a library of several years accessible online at all times, and at the rate in which James Middleton writes articles, I believe that our Sun StorEdge is going to be full in few months.
Our idea is that each new story, each new article, might have references in the past and, although most of those references are quite recent, some of them go back quite a long way. If you browse our site and check out the related articles at the bottom of every page, you will understand what I mean.
If, for every article you click, we had to make a query onto the database, we would probably need a Sun E10000 by now, only to pass the articles back to our Web server. But a couple of years ago, a colleague of mine named Julian Mitchell came out with the idea of caching articles in the servlet container itself.
Brilliant solution: for a few pounds, we added some extra RAM onto our Web server and gave it all to the Java Virtual Machine. Every time a user looks for an article, it is not retrieved from the database itself most of the time, but rather from the cache stored in the Virtual Machine memory, and we hit the database only if the article is not cached. You can even see now when we restart our application: the site, for the first four to five minutes, is quite slow, as we are effectively refilling the cache of articles.
Several products now incorporate this feature as the default. If you look throughout Apache, for example, you will notice that Cocoon has an "embedded" cache storing the result of each atomic operation (XML parsing, XSLT processing, everything) so that it is able to deliver the quite-heavy-to-process XML-based content in basically no time.
If you are going to implement a cache for some part of your application, make sure you know exactly how much RAM you can spare for that, and that you have the right tools for measuring how much memory you are using at any given point. Several books, also, can explain different caching algorithms. My favorites are those about microprocessors' hardware architecture: every microprocessor has some sort of cache and, since it needs to be implemented in hardware, usually their algorithms are pretty small and functional.
Of course, VNU's cache is designed to deal with articles; Cocoon's is optimised for XML content. The Java Platform one day will probably have a caching engine in itself; JSR-107 is aimed exactly at that. It specifies API and semantics for temporary, in-memory caching of Java objects, including object creation, shared access, spooling, invalidation, and consistency across JVMs.
Funnily enough, the JSR was submitted by Oracle. (Maybe they had the same problem we had on our site?)
The virtual machine is the most critical piece in the overall problem of deploying large-scale Web applications.
Apache, for example, goes to a great deal of trouble to make sure that it won't crash. The architecture of Apache 2.0, for example, was designed to include threads for performance reasons (each one of your processes can serve several concurrent requests), but at the same time to guarantee that if one of the Apache processes dies, you won't have to wait for its restart to continue serving requests. It is usual to see configurations with 4, 8, or 16 Apache processes, each one of them using 64, 128, 256 threads.
The virtual machine is just one big process with hundreds of threads processing requests but, if this one goes down, you have to wait until it comes back up again and, during that downtime, requests obviously cannot be processed.
One way to overcome this is to load-balance several JVMs with the same set of Web applications deployed, but this is not an easy thing to do.
A much simpler approach is to separate virtual applications across several containers. For example, run each of your applications in a different servlet container, in a different Java Virtual Machine.
This allows you to have a fine-grained control over each individual component of your Web site: you can individually control, for example, how much memory each application requires in comparison to the number of requests (see how well your application reacts to spikes of traffic), or what its overall impact on your OS will be (
top can tell you all about it).
The advantage is that, if one of these falls over, your site (or most parts of it) will still be up and running, and it will take much less time to restart a VM holding one single application, rather than a VM containing four, five, or six of them (less memory, less classes to load, less JSP to recompile).
One other important thing to monitor in your virtual machine is the number of file descriptors. As with every other process, the Java Virtual Machine has a limit imposed by the operating system on the number of file descriptors (files and sockets for the most part) it can open at the same time.
Things like Lucene (search engine), JDBC connections pools, and client connections from the Web servers can greatly vary the number of file descriptors opened at any given time by the Virtual Machine.
Given that most operating systems are quite conservative about the number of file descriptors each process can open (usually it is 256 or 512) you want to make sure that your limit is high enough for your Web application.
ulimit is a great utilty, but sometimes forgotten, and if you start seeing
IOExceptions mentioning that the VM cannot open a file that is actually on the disk, and has the right permissions, this is the problem causing it.
If something bad can happen, it will. Murphy's Law is an everyday reality for those involved with production servers.
The first thing to stress is the importance of logging. Logging is quite an expensive operation, and sometimes someone turns it off for performance's sake. This is the first big mistake you can commit, because without logs, you will not know what has actually happened if something crashes. And make sure you have relevant logging details.
Another common mistake is to be overloaded by logging information. In some situations I've had the not-so-pleasant experience to visit, if something crashes, someone (manually) will have to go through several megabytes of log files just to figure out at what time things went bad. A good approach is to make sure that each one of your log files contains relevant information. It is a good idea is to split log files into several different categories, each one for a particular area you want to focus on, as it is easier to combine log files than split them.
Make sure also that your logs can be easily parsed. Most of the time, the data is too much to be analyzed manually, but a couple of good Perl or
bash scripts, with a introductory book to statistic analysis, can do marvels that you'd never imagined possible. For instance, remember that if you log exception stack traces, these are in a very ugly format, and are not well suited, for example, to be in the same file as your Apache error logs.
Another thing to remember is to monitor resources. A spike in traffic (the usual one at 10 PM when all geeks turn on their computers and look for news) can put your entire Web server at risk. Things that in the past few months had quite some relevance for us were:
RAM. On the overall system, RAM consumption might vary quite a lot, so be sure to monitor it and not swap too much.
Swap. As before, the more Swap is in use, the slower performances are. On a side note, remember that at least on Solaris, /tmp is mounted on your Swap so it's usually a bad idea to store 500 megabytes of tarballs in there just because it's fast.
Web Server Connections. Remember to monitor the state of the Web server, how many processes and threads (the
-L option for
ps under Solaris tells you about threads) are active, how many clients have active requests, and what they are requesting (Apache's
mod_status can tell you all about this). About access logging, please do not trust services such as WebTrends or NetTraffic. They are marvelous marketing tools, but not even close to being a reliable way to figure out the activity on your Web server.
Network traffic. How much data are you sending or receiving from the network? This is essential to know, for example, in case of denial-of-service attacks.
If you collect all of this information in a timely manner (for example, we monitor each one of these parameters every minute), when something goes wrong you will have the situation pretty much under control. You will start to have a rough idea of actually what happened, at what time exactly and more or less why.
And then, given that you have all the logs available in a nice parsable format, and organized, you will be able to pinpoint exactly what caused the problem, and (hopefully) find a solution in no time.
But that's far from saying that you won't be called at 5:30am on a beautiful Sunday morning because the Web site is down (again).
Pier Fumagalli is an Apache Software Foundation member and active in the Jakarta and HTTPD/APR projects. He works for VNU Business Publications in London.
Return to ONJava.com.
Copyright © 2009 O'Reilly Media, Inc.


text:
Re: Official G.G. Raceday Points Club
In Honor of my nephew serving our country out of Baumholder Army Base in Germany.
Races, tracks, drivers and all the drama that comes along with it
Rochelle wrote:HiddenHollow wrote:Rochelle caught me. I've got to buckle down and get serious with my picks for next weekend.
hahahaha... I'd have smoked you if I'd have picked JJ... On to the 600
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text:
Youth visited four dairy industry landmarks.
by Amanda Smith, Associate Editor Hoard's Dairyman
Today over 180 youth participating in the 58th National Dairy Conference who have a passion for the dairy industry visited Fort Atkinson to explore a few of Wisconsin's agri-businesses. After a brunch where they heard from Barbara George, Director of Family and Consumer Nutrition Sales at Nasco, along with Amanda Smith and Lucas Sjostrom from Hoard's Dairyman. Youth broke into four groups and their tour stops included the National Dairy Shrine, Nasco, and the Hoard's Dairyman office and farm.
The students, mostly juniors and seniors in high school, have the opportunity to explore production-orientated careers along with those in allied industry, interact with some of the industries movers and shakers, and learn about a variety of dairy industry topics in a series of seminars.
at www.facebook.com/DairyWellness.
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Being a Wedding PhotographerToday we have a special guest contributor, Melissa Prosser, sharing some tips for those of you who may be thinking about getting into wedding photography.
Wedding photographers, it seems that there are a million out there. Each claiming to be a photojournalist, artist, capture real moments, etc, etc.... In this age of the digital revolution it takes much more than a decent camera and catch phrases to set yourself apart in the industry. It takes a lot of training, practice, patience, time, and EFFORT to stand out.
How I got here: I started out as an intern with other photographers in the Atlanta area. While interning, I formed my own website, and started charging what my peers were charging. This was a mistake. Charging too much for my experience level granted me only four weddings that first year that I had my website up. I continued working with other photographers while trying to get my own clients for the first 3 years. I'm glad I worked with others for a while, because I learned SO much from watching and observing these talented professionals that would help mold me into who I am today. When it was really time to fly solo, I chopped my prices in half, shot 14 weddings in one year, and gained a client and vendor base. The following year, I was able to raise my prices and shoot thirty-one weddings! I feel that I have seen a lot going into my sixth year in this industry, and with that being said, I'd like to give a little advice to those wanting to photograph the most important event in a couple's lives.
Be an intern. It is the best advice I can give anyone wanting to get into this industry. This is what taught me what I needed to know. Sure, having my art marketing degree is great, but the real world experience, and real WEDDING experience, under other professionals is fantastic. You get to shoot, and shoot a lot without the pressure of being the primary shooter. Learning the 'ropes' on someone's wedding day as a primary photographer is just not a good idea. Being a second shooter or an intern allows you to hang out in the background a little bit more, be creative, observe, and shoot until your hearts content.
Save on equipment. You can go completely broke trying to get all of your equipment at once. If you have the money, by all means, go for brand new, top of the line camera gear. But in reality, most of us don't have that luxury. It took me many years to outright own all of my professional equipment, but I did it with no business loans and I'm proud of that fact! If you buy a decent camera body, then you can buy used lenses to test out the waters. It's more affordable, and later on you can always purchase the more expensive ones. Another idea is to rent equipment and figure out which lenses and accessories you really want to have in your collection and spend the money on.
Don't be afraid to drag your shutter speed. This is a classic amateur mistake. So what if your photo is a bit shaky at times? It can be a cool intended effect, or it can bring in ambient lighting into your photo and make it way more dramatic and effectual. I have held my breath many more times than I can count to drag that shutter and make the world look dreamy and romantic. (The image above was taken at night, with a barely lit venue. I dragged my shutter to a 15th of a second, put a little off-camera flash on the couple, and voila! Magic dance shot!)
Use off-camera flash. Sure, bouncing a flash on a white wall is great… if you have one. In a lot of venues, this is not the case. Sometimes you may even be outside, with no light at all. This is why learning off-camera flash is so important. At all of my weddings, I have an assistant shadow me and give me some supplemental lighting when I need it. I dial in for the ambient, then give a little kiss of flash when needed. Using Canon's awesome glass, this makes for wow images! (The image above was exposed completely for the sky, and the little peak of sun at twilight. My assistant was hiding in the corner with a flash aimed on the subject. Pretty dramatic!)
Shallow depth of filed, use it! Shallow depth of field is your friend. I am constantly shooting below F2, and the results speak for themselves. Using a shallow depth of field really allows the subject to be the primary focus of the photo, and just lets everything else go into never never land. (The above image was shot at F2 outside as the sun was setting and we were losing light. The fast lens allowed all available light to come in, feature the couple, and just barely let us see the fabulous old car on the street.)
My (secret) lighting tip: I adore shooting with a hot light/video light. Essentially, this is just a battery-operated light that videographers use with their own cameras. This lighting technique is great to use at twilight to expose for the sky, yet not overpower the subject. The light I use has a warm glow to it, which is so beautiful. It's also easy to use because you turn it on just like a flash light, and can then dial in for the ambient around you. Magic! (Shown above)
The wedding photography industry really is an awesome one to be in. It's not for everyone, and every wedding photographer does things a little different. In order to make it in this industry though, it's really important to have passion, patience, skills, and a clear vision and style. I love what I do and wouldn't trade my job for the world!
-->About Melissa: Melissa Prosser is an award winning member of www.wpja.com and www.agwpja.com . She is based out of Atlanta, GA, and has been in the wedding industry for about six years. Prosser approaches each wedding with an artistic eye, unobtrusive approach, and sense of fun while documenting some of the most meaningful moments in a family's life. She shoots with a Canon 5D Mark II and Canon lenses. Her favorite lens is the Canon 85 F1.2 L lens.
Website: www.melissaprosser.com
all photos © Melissa Prosser


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Saturday voting available in Montpelier
MONTPELIER The Montpelier city clerks office will be open from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday for early voting.
Residents can cast their annual ballots during that time to help prevent long lines at the polls on Town Meeting Day.
In November, we had an unprecedented rush of voters when the polls first opened, and as a result a lot of people had to wait in lines, Montpelier City Clerk John Odum said in a news release. Being open for a few hours on the weekend is one small way we can help prevent that from happening again.
A far smaller turnout is expected for Montpeliers annual meeting compared with Novembers general election, but early-morning lines could still occur, particularly given the additional staff needs related to the elevator breakdown in City Hall, according to the release.
Residents with accessibility and mobility challenges will be voting at the police station.
If the weekend voting helps prevent logjams, the extended hours could expand for the next election, Odum said.MORE IN This Just InMANAMA, Bahrain Drawing the U.S. Full StoryDANVILLE Police said a Concord man was jailed for violating an abuse prevention order. Full StorySAINT JOHNSBURY Vermont State Police are investigating a trio of burglaries. Full Story
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2013/02/15 Minutes Economics Working Group
Wealth – what is it? how is it created? how is it distributed? so what?
What is it? Wealth is produced by labour only – capitalism is a particular means to produce and distribute; labour and land produce surplus/capital/wealth; product of human labour and what is left over after the inputs; you have to bend down to pick up a shell (labour and land), jewel etc.; resources of the planet – not the product of human being; garden of Eden; it was there before humans – it was a given; occurs in plurals. Wealth is quantified rather than qualitatively examined; wealth can be stolen and inherited; produced by labour. Use of an adjective – current usage superfluity – more than you need; well being = in abundance; not necessarily tangible goods – contrast banker with worldly goods v occupier with spiritual/social wealth. Relationship of wealth with time. Antithesis of Scrooge who led a barren life; the more you give, the more the wealth of the community increases; location value by virtue of available fruits, resources, fish in the sea; wealth is a state of mind. All wealth is socially produced; wealth and wellness; present system state of "illth". Adam Smith: Wealth is the annual produce of land and labour in society. Derived from "weal" which means wellness;
Spirit level – greater equality of wealth is generally beneficial; what is the value of something? – what you are prepared to pay for it. Price v Value. What do you need to produce steel? Iron ore, energy, tools, skills, people, land, carbon, market – supply and demand; China v UK domestic production; wealth relates to human need; what are human needs? Things are valued according to their needs; Evening Standard – we'll feel poorer for three more years; state of mind. Conflict soaks up energy and creativity.
Wealth is Created – inputs raw materials and energy → wealth + pollution; increased in value – added value;
Wealth is Distributed – space for production; frozen land – land; who owns the land demands their rent; can't produce without money for production/working capital – interest on working capital; work and know how; frozen knowledge in each machine/tool; living knowledge (within the workers and machine manuals); rent from ownership of land; interest derives from ownership of working capital (law); interest is not necessary or desirable.Interest; rents; profit. Supply and demand? Will, desire? Happiness gap. Desire, volition is missing; People, land owners, money holders, shareholders, producer/consumers; blue collar (hourly rate) v white collar (annual salary); wages v salary; workers need money to buy what they need; perks; inequality built into this; profit is not analogous to interest and rent; social organisation and the legal framework are important factors to take into account; work ethic artificially created – a construct. Post black death people had sufficient and were reluctant to work beyond their needs; Lord Robens (coal board) – referred to the length of the miners working week, not inclined to work beyond their needs. Oved to work/serve (or working for God); servant to other human beings? Who gets what and how much? Production of goods and services; distinction services (low entropy); equity? Profit entrepreneurship; cocoa beans into chocolate; Rowntree family worked in the factory; knowledge vested in the shareholders; profits accumulated risk; cooperative model shared profit/(loss); competition – cut price – lower wages; IP as part of the commons. We cannot rely on altruistic motivation to change to the world; facilitation workshop 24th February: http://occupylondon.org.uk/events/facilitation-assemblies-and-decision-making-in-horizontal-groups
Need to think of radically different; Ideology of Work; Eleanor Ostrom; think in new ways; become as children; see something for what it is.


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Flood Waters May Be Nasty Waters
As river levels approach flood stage in Natrona County Health Department officials remind everyone there are some really good reasons to stay out of the flood waters.
"Flood waters are dirty. You see the videos on the news after a flood and there's always mud and slime every where. It's full of all kinds of nasty things that you don't want to be involved with."
Natrona County Health Department Director Robert Harrington says, keep in mind that up river from Casper are a number of residence built close enough to the river that, should they flood, it will likely include the septic system.


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Avacado's are $0.39 each at Aldi's till 5/4/10
OK, since I paid $1.29 for one last week, that is a killer price. I am looking for ideas for making a preserving baby food for DD. She hasn't even started solids yet, but I like to shop sales and stock up. Anyone have any ideas?


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Our parents and teachers drummed it into our heads from a young age: "If you want to make a lot of money, you have to go to school."
While there is truth to that for the general populace, it really seems to be the case for some celebrities.
No, you don't have to have a doctorate to play the Terminator, but for some celebs, they hedged their bets and did the right thing -- they got their education under their belts, and then went on to tackle Hollywood.
Some on our list are no brainers -- you'd expect them to have rich educational histories. But some you barely expect to be able to spell, let alone have advanced degrees.
Keep that in mind before challenging one of the following five celebs to a friendly game of Trivial Pursuit. You'd have a great story to tell, but you'd also likely lose big.
Up first? Bueller .... Bueller ...
No. 5: Ben Stein
Ben Stein is so smart that he can actually spell "Bueller" without having to stop and figure out if the u goes before the e.
Stein is one smart dude. He earned a degree in economics from Columbia University, and then received a law degree from Yale. He was a lawyer, a professor, a historian, and a speech writer for Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford (Time magazine even speculated that he was the infamous Deep Throat).
Stein became a consultant to Hollywood and then came to fame with 1986's "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" as the monotone economics teacher who was trying to take attendance. From there he got his own game show ("Win Ben Stein's Money") and has gone on to become a celebrated media personality.
While we are in awe of Stein's intelligence, he's not perfect. He also predicted that the mortgage crisis would "blow over." Oops.
Next up, a dumb "Friend" who's actually smart ...
No. 4: Lisa Kudrow
It is a well-known fact that it is easier to act drunk when you are sober than to act sober when you are drunk. The same must hold true for intelligence.
Lisa Kudrow became famous playing dim bulb Phoebe Buffay on "Friends," but the reality is that she's smart.
Kudrow comes from a line of smart people. Her father is a doctor and her brother is a neurologist. Before she even decided to pursue a career in acting, she was training in the family business, and was conducting tons of medical research.
Kudrow earned a Bachelor of Science degree in biology from Vassar and worked for her father for eight years, even being credited for research on cluster headaches.
Later, she went on to join the cast of "Friends" and gave the world another gift: Her rendition of "Smelly Cat."
Up next, he must break you ...
No. 3: Dolph Lundgren
Dolph Lundgren. Surely that must be a typo. Dolph "I must break you" Lundgren is smart? The giant, flat-topped, blond guy known for his roles in "Rocky IV" and ... uh ... well ...
Yes. Apparently Dolph is more than just an on-screen Soviet crippling machine.
The gigantic Swede boasts an IQ of 160, putting him in the club with the smartest people in the world.
Wait. Dolph LUNDgren? THE Dolph Lundgren? Yes. And there's more.
Lundgren graduated from Sweden's Royal Institute of Technology, and he also has a master's in chemical engineering from the University of Sydney. It doesn't stop there. Lundgren was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to M.I.T. Unfortunately for science (but fortunately for the entertainment world), Lundgren quit after two weeks to pursuer a career in acting.


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Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/231804
|Download Aldeida Aleti Thesis (Adobe Acrobat PDF, 2 MB)
- Title
- An adaptive approach to controlling parameters of evolutionary algorithms
- Author(s)
- Aleti, Aldeida
- Abstract
- The majority of stochastic optimisation methods such as Simulated Annealing (SA), Evolutionary Algorithms (EA), Ant Colony Optimisation (ACO) and Estimation of Distribution Algorithms (EDA) have a range of adjustable parameters like learning rates, crossover probabilities, pheromone evaporation rates and weighting factors. Poor algorithm parameterisation hinders the discovery of good solutions. The parameter values required for optimal algorithm performance are known to be problem-specific, often even specific to the problem instance at hand. Practitioners often apply stochastic methods with parameter values chosen on the basis of few tuning iterations, in which various parameter settings are explored in an attempt to fine-tune the algorithm to their particular problem. Depending on the number of parameters and their plausible value ranges, investigative trials for parameter optimisations can themselves be attempts to solve a combinatorially complex problem. Moreover, it has also been established that some of the parameter values ought to vary during the search process for best algorithm performance. Acknowledging these facts, many researchers have shifted their focus to parameter control methods, where parameter values are optimised based on algorithm performance. This thesis presents an adaptive parameter control method which redefines parameter values repeatedly based on a separate optimisation process that receives its feedback from the primary optimisation algorithm. The feedback is used for a projection of the value performing well in the future. The method uses an evaluation of the recent performance of previously applied parameter values and predicts how likely each of the parameter values is to produce optimal outcomes in the next cycle of the algorithm. The parameter values are sampled from intervals which are adapted dynamically, a method which has proven particularly effective and outperforms all existing adaptive parameter controls significantly. To test the applicability of the approach to a real-world problem, the adaptive parameter control method is applied to a case-study from the automotive industry.
- Publication type
- Thesis (PhD)
- Research centre
- Swinburne University of Technology. Faculty of Information and Communication Technologies
- Publication year
- 2012
- Keyword(s)
- Adaptive parameter control; Architecture design optimisation in embedded systems; Evolutionary algorithms; Optimisation
- Coverage
- Australasian Digital Theses collection
- Publisher URL
- Copyright
- Copyright © 2012 Aldeida Aleti.
- Thesis Supervisor
- [Irene Moser]
- Thesis Note
- [A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Swinburne University of Technology, 2012.]
- Full text


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Long Hammered Silvertone Neutral Necklace
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Uncommon sense
Though unpopular, some restrictions must be imposed on our Second Amendment right to bear arms
By Barry Gordon 01/23/2013
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT
Other Stories by Barry Gordon
Related Articles
One thing that this article has proved, performing as a university professor provides no shield from being unconscionably ignorant about fundamental human history.
BG pontificates: "Here's an idea: What if there were no Second Amendment to the US Constitution?"
It is extremely likely then that there would be no constitutionally dominated, independent democratic republic of The United States of America.
BG: "And while I have serious doubts about the US Supreme Court's interpretation of the amendment, declaring an individual's right to own a gun, I nevertheless am willing to respect that as well."
I wonder, WHICH Supreme Court is BG ruminating about? While SCs past have defined how gun sales may be regulated by the government (and in some cases, gun features), the right of the public to possess and use even military-grade firearms has always been minimally affirmed.
BG then fantasizes: "While wing-nuts like Alex Jones may warn that the Nazis and the Reds went after guns as a first step to tyranny, he seems to miss the point. We are not a totalitarian society. So the greater likelihood is that we would preserve an individual's right to own firearms for hunting or self-protection."
Yeah, Alex Jones is a very clever "poison-the-well" gun-ownership (pseudo-)advocate. But tell me, BG, have you read the Patriot(not) Act, and the NDAA all the way though? What part of grossly unconstitutional do you not understand? Do you really believe that drone warfare is not the tool of a terrorist tyrant?
Hey Kevin, I think I understand why you've (so far) failed to post the current Letters to the Editor in the online version of this current Weekly, because Steve Lamb quite appropriately puts this whole gun-control dog-and-pony show in proper perspective. And lord knows, you don't even want to make your resident CSLA professor appear too fatuously ignorant.
The Founding Fathers on the Second Amendment
When it takes a mass-murderer only about 90 seconds to accomplish his deadly deed, the cops are only minutes away ... .
Oh my, it looks like I was wrong all the time! Criminal hell now wants to go to heaven by making amends ~
Criminals Line Up to Register Guns
"We Dun Seen Da Light, Yo!"


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Advanced Search
Social Networking | News
Although one in five students in the public school system is Hispanic, Latinos have the lowest education attainment levels in the country. Half of Hispanic youth earn a high school diploma on time. Thirteen percent of Hispanics hold a bachelor's degree. With the Hispanic population growing at four times the rate of growth of the total population in the United States, say experts, an educated workforce needs to support the educational success of Hispanic students.
Univision Communications, an American Spanish language media company, used social media, including Twitter, Facebook, and Google+, along with traditional mechanisms--television, in-person events, and phone banks--to promote the attainment of education by Hispanics and draw students and their parents into learning more about their educational options. This is the second time that Univision has sponsored the event, which also was supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the College Board, and Televisa Foundation, among others.
October's "¡Edúcate! Es el momento" or "Educate! It's time" featured an online college fair, which the company said drew 7,000 logins and participation from 134 colleges and universities.
The hub for the event resided online at eselmomento.com, which provided scheduling and streamed a series of live webcast town halls in English that drew guest speakers, including Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Olympian Leonel Manzano.
According to the company, the activities drew a hundred million impressions on Twitter with the #eselmomento hashtag; reached hundreds of thousands through special GetGlue stickers; and grew el momento's Facebook traffic by nearly 2,000 percent.
Other efforts included a Google+ Hangout with journalist Pamela Silva Conde, a Univision Pinterest board, and a Twit cam discussion on the importance of parental involvement in a student's education efforts.
About the Author
Dian Schaffhauser is a writer who covers technology and business for a number of publications. Contact her at email@example.com.
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Students need a broad set of skills to be successful in today's world. To better help them prepare, K-12 districts throughout the country are taking a blended approach to achieve personalized learning. Making that transition successfully starts with envisioning what learning should look like and how to create authentic learning experiences. Download this white paper to learn how two school districts, Cabarrus County Schools in North Carolina and Lake Travis Independent School District in Texas are currently making that transition.
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Wordsmith Talk
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#204148 - 01/10/12 06:59 AM Re: New Year 2012 [Re: Candy]
Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 12/01/00
Posts: 13803
So you think of something that needs doing in the kitchen, but you're in the living room. So you go into the kitchen to do it and forget what it was. You go back to the living room and remember, then go back to the kitchen and forget all over? Is that how it works?
#204175 - 01/10/12 10:48 PM Re: New Year 2012 [Re: Faldage]
Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 03/15/00
Posts: 11613
Loc: Louisville, Kentucky
More like, say I have finished washing the dishes and realize there was something specific I had planned to do. And I remember that it involved the knife drawer. I look at (not in) the drawer and remember that my plan was to get the scissors out of there so I could then go wrap the birthday gift. I may or may not have walked into another room after finishing the dishes.
And then there are the times such as when we had a refrigerator downstairs in the laundry room. I started downstairs with the thought that I'd put the clothes in the dryer then get a loaf of bread out of the freezer and bring it back upstairs to start thawing. Yep--back upstairs, bread still downstairs in the freezer--which was an arm's length from the dryer.
#204176 - 01/11/12 11:41 AM Re: New Year 2012 [Re: Jackie]
Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 06/23/08
Posts: 8541
Loc: Land of the Flat Water
Total recall, the ability of someone to remember every word they read or hear, has often been lauded as tantamount to a high level of intelligence. The opposite is more often the case. Those with total recall often have difficulty making decisions, and more readily miss understanding the overall point of a book or lecture - because they get enmeshed in an undistinguishable mass of irrelevant details. Forgetting, it turns out, has enormous value for concise understanding and for emotional health:
"Solomon Shereshevsky could recite entire speeches, word for word, after hearing them once. In minutes, he memorized complex math formulas, passages in foreign languages and tables consisting of 50 numbers or nonsense syllables. The traces of these sequences were so durably etched in his brain that he could reproduce them years later, according to Russian psychologist Alexander R. Luria, who wrote about the man he called, simply, 'S' in The Mind of a Mnemonist.
"But the weight of all the memories, piled up and overlapping in his brain, created crippling confusion. S could not fathom the meaning of a story, because the words got in the way. 'No,' [S] would say. 'This is too much. Each word calls up images; they collide with one another, and the result is chaos. I can't make anything out of this.' When S was asked to make decisions, as chair of a union group, he could not parse the situation as a whole, tripped up as he was on irrelevant details. He made a living performing feats of recollection.
"Yet he desperately wanted to forget. In one futile attempt, he wrote down items he wanted purged from his mind and burned the paper. Although S's efforts to rein in his memory were unusually vigilant, we all need - and often struggle - to forget. "Human memory is pretty good," says cognitive neuro-scientist Benjamin J. Levy of Stanford Univer- sity. "The problem with our memories is not that nothing comes to mind-but that irrelevant stuff comes to mind."
"The act of forgetting crafts and hones data in the brain as if carving a statue from a block of marble. It enables us to make sense of the world by clearing a path to the thoughts that are truly valuable. It also aids emotional recovery. 'You want to forget embarrassing things,' says cognitive neuroscientist Zara Bergstrom of the University of Cambridge. 'Or if you argue with your partner, you want to move on.' In recent years researchers have amassed evidence for our ability to willfully forget. They have sketched out a neural circuit underlying this skill analogous to the one that inhibits impulsive actions.
"The emerging data provide the first scientific support for Sigmund Freud's controversial theory of repression, by which unwanted memories are shoved into the subconscious. The new evidence suggests that the ability to repress is quite useful. Those who cannot do this well tend to let thoughts stick in their mind. They ruminate, which can pave a path to depression. Weak restraints on memory may similarly impede the emotional recovery of trauma victims. Lacking brakes on mental intrusions, individuals with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are also more likely to be among the forgetless (to coin a term). In short, memory - and forgetting - can shape your personality."
Author: Ingrid Wickelgren
Title: "Trying to Forget"
Publisher: Scientific American Mind_________________________
----please, draw me a sheep----
#204180 - 01/11/12 09:55 PM Re: New Year 2012 [Re: LukeJavan8]
Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 03/15/00
Posts: 11613
Loc: Louisville, Kentucky
...the ability to repress is quite useful. Those who cannot do this well tend to let thoughts stick in their mind. They ruminate, which can pave a path to depression. And/or OCD. I knew someone with this; it took the form of obsession far more than compulsion.
Attention really does affect how well you remember something--or don't. I confess that I tend not to remember things if I think I'm not going to need that information again. I had a really high GPA in college because most of the tests consisted of having to spit back out a ton of force-fed facts; but within a few weeks I'd forget most of them.
I have tried to do better with peoples' names lately. Used to be, if I met someone more or less in passing--"Jackie, this is my cousin Cecelia Jones; she's visiting from Arizona"--I wouldn't remember the name by the time I left the party.
#206774 - 08/22/12 11:20 PM In other words.... [Re: Jackie]
Registered: 09/21/10
Posts: 1706
Loc: down under
#206779 - 08/23/12 06:19 AM Re: In other words.... [Re: Candy]
old hand
Registered: 11/13/11
Posts: 1075
Loc: Lancaster, UK
But maybe we should! Txt lang has been cre8d for a reason and is becoming a dynamic entity. I xpct it soon to Bcome a literary medium.
(BTW, I - along with many others - was using B4 as an abrev. way back in 1959!)_________________________
I'm immortal until proven otherwise
#206780 - 08/23/12 11:42 AM Re: In other words.... [Re: Rhubarb Commando]
Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 06/23/08
Posts: 8541
Loc: Land of the Flat Water
Rhuby since you are so versatile perhaps you could
translate the chalkboard comment for me. I don't speak
----please, draw me a sheep----
#206782 - 08/23/12 01:07 PM Re: In other words.... [Re: Candy]
Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 12/01/00
Posts: 13803
Laugh Out Loud
Oh My God
Mind Your Own Business
Too Much Information
With Respect To
By The Way
For What It's Worth
I Am Not A Lawyer
Just Kidding
#206783 - 08/23/12 01:14 PM Re: In other words.... [Re: Faldage]
Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 06/23/08
Posts: 8541
Loc: Land of the Flat Water
thanks, I guess. Think I'll stick to English, not
textspeak, but I appreciate your response._________________________
----please, draw me a sheep----
#206784 - 08/23/12 02:33 PM Re: In other words.... [Re: LukeJavan8]
old hand
Registered: 11/13/11
Posts: 1075
Loc: Lancaster, UK
And to bring you even further up to date, it ain't a chalkboard he's using (I've not seen one of those in the past ten years - worse luck!) it's a 'whiteboard', which is a plastic-ish surface that will take dry marker pens, the markings of which rub off the board with a duster. Much the same as a chalk board, really, except they cost twice as much, the markers cost five times more than chalk*, and last for one tenth of the time. This is PROGRESS! Stand in it'sway at your peril.
(Also, you throw a marker pen at a recalcitrant student - and you find you're before the beak on an assault charge!)
edit* By which I mean, 1 marker pen costs five times as much as A PACKET of chalk and lasts one tenth of the time of ONE PIECE of chalk!
Edited by Rhubarb Commando (08/23/12 02:37 PM)_________________________
I'm immortal until proven otherwise
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text:
Nutrition Facts
Serving Size ¼ of recipe
Calories 20
Calories from Fat 0
Total Fat 0 g
Saturated Fat 0 g
Cholesterol 0 mg
Sodium 15 mg
Total Carbohydrate 4 g
Dietary Fiber 0 g
Sugars 1 g
Proteins 2 g
Vitamin A 15% DV
Vitamin C 10% DV
Calcium 2% DV
Iron 10% DV
Percent Daily Values (DV) are based on a 2,000 calorie diet.
Servings and Times
Servings 4
Preparation Time 20 minutes
Cups of Fruits and Vegetables Per Person: 1.0
Ingredients and Preparation
Ingredients Measures
Fresh, trimmed or frozen, cut asparagus 10½ ounces
Garlic powder ¼ teaspoon
Lime juice (lemon juice may be substituted) 2 teaspoons
Canned green chili peppers, drained, chopped 2 tablespoons
Onion, chopped 1 tablespoon
Tomato paste 2 teaspoons
Salt 1/8 teaspoon
Ground cumin ¼ teaspoon
White pepper 1/8 teaspoon
- Cook asparagus. Drain well.
- Pat dry with paper towels and place in blender. Add remaining ingredients. Blend until smooth.
- Dip will become less thick upon standing and will need to be stirred.


text:
A wildfire outside Yosemite National Park more than tripled in size Thursday, prompting officers to warn residents in a gated community to evacuate their homes and leading scores of tourists to leave the area during peak season.
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Laurier Brantford
International Research?
Everything you need to know!
Feb 8/13
Date: Feb 8/13
Time: 10:00 - 11:00
Location: RCW 234
Cost: Free
Faculty and Students interested in International Research are welcome to attend an information session from the Office of Research Services LB
Contact: Susan Dimitry
Email: firstname.lastname@example.com
Phone: 5564
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text:
nice thread JayJ i agree Chandler has his coming out party.....
The Rookies:
Michael Beasley(Heat) Forward
Rudy Fernandez (Trail Blazers) Guard
Marc Gasol (Grizzlies) Center
Eric Gordon (Clippers) Guard
Brook Lopez (Nets) Center
OJ Mayo (Grizzlies) Guard
Greg Oden (Blazers) Center
Derrick Rose (Bulls) Guard
Russel Westbrook (Thunder) Guard
The Sophmores:
Aaron Brooks (Rockets) Guard
Wilson Chandelr (Knicks) Forward
Kevin Durant (Thunder) Forward
Jeff Green (Thunder) Forward
Al Horford (Hawks) Forward
Luis Scola (Rockets) Forward
Al Thornton (Clippers) Forward
Rodney Stuckey (Pistons) Guard
Thaddeus Young (Sixers) Forward
Kevin Durant and Co. will try to make it seven straight victories for the Sophomores in the event, but it could get interesting seeing how there are only four holdovers from last year's Rookie team on the Sophomore squad (Durant, Thunder teammate Jeff Green, the Hawks' Al Horford and the Rockets' Luis Scola).
Durant will be involved in several pairings to watch. At the forefront is the marquee matchup between Durant and Portland rookie Greg Oden, who was selected No. 1 in 2007 but missed all of last year after microfracture surgery. Durant has been playing some minutes at center for Oklahoma City, so we could actually see him guard Oden for a possession or two.
Then there is the Durant against Russell Westbrook angle. Last year, Grizzlies' sophomore Rudy Gay abused his rookie teammates Mike Conley and Juan Carlos Navarro and scored 22 points to their 16 combined. This year Durant and Green will be the old vets picking on their young teammate, Westbrook, with double teams.
A year after Durant won National Player of the Year honors as a freshman at the University of Texas (25.8 points and 11.1 rebounds per game), Michael Beasley came in as a freshman at Kansas State and put up even crazier numbers (26.2 and 12.4). It will be fun to see Durant and Beasley -- former AAU teammates from their days together in Prince George's County, Md. -- go head-to-head.
There are two more teammate connections worth watching. Clippers rookie guard Eric Gordon will be pitted against L.A.'s sophomore forward Al Thornton. We'll also see a reunion of sorts when rookies Rudy Fernandez of Portland and Marc Gasol of Memphis play together for the first time since the Olympic men's basketball gold medal game in Beijing. They were both members of the Spanish national team.
The Rookies should have the edge in the backcourt with Chicago's Derrick Rose (16.7 points, 6.7 assists per game) and Memphis' O.J. Mayo (19.1 points, 4.1 rebounds) facing off against Houston's Aaron Brooks (10.0 points, 2.6 assists) and Rodney Stuckey (13.9 points, 5.0 assists).
Heat guard Dwyane Wade is the Rookies honorary assistant coach while Magic center Dwight Howard will be on the bench toting a clipboard for the Sophomores. A bonus to look for in this year's game: The official team jerseys were designed by 18-year-old Tim Ahmed from East Meadow, Long Island. Ahmed won the NBA LIVE Jersey Creator Contest hosted by EA Sports, beating out thousands of other entries with his desert-themed design.
My Prediction:
Sophomores-120 Rookies- 115
MVP Winner:
Wilson Chandler
Wilson Chandler will play worry-free in this game, allowing him to show off all his skills. Defense is usually lacking in this game, so Chandler shouldn't have a problem getting to the basket and finishing strong.
Predicted Stats:
30 Points 8 Rebounds 4 Assists
Song of the Day:
Last edited by JayJ44; Feb 13, 2009 at 19:10.
nice thread JayJ i agree Chandler has his coming out party.....
DaTPRiNCE...That EGYPTiAN Fella, #MeloMafia
Thanks Prince. Should be a good game this year. I hope Chandler dunks on Oden.
yea he's had a few posters this year Chandler has the chance to be a beast
DaTPRiNCE...That EGYPTiAN Fella, #MeloMafia
yeah, my favorite was the one over his teammate tonight, Luis Scola.
Nasty Stuff.
****, forgot to add a song to the thread...
yea that dunk was straight up dirty
DaTPRiNCE...That EGYPTiAN Fella, #MeloMafia
lol at the way John Barry spilled into the stands with confetti.
I missed the first 15 minutes because I was playing 2k9.
But I turned on trade overdrive, and won a chip with the Knicks. My starting lineup was:
PG- Chris Duhon
SG- Dwayne Wade
SF- Gallo
PF- Lee
C- Dwight Howard
i dont like these jerseys. Im pretty sure when lee was mvp in 06 he was waering a regular knicks jersey right??
Damn player-centric usernames straight to hell.
wtf? corbin blue? who the **** is this girl with bad hair?
i knew wilson would have at least 1 highlight dunk tonight
Damn player-centric usernames straight to hell.
Kevin Durant is a beast. Dude is 6'10-6'11 with handles like a guard, and a jump shot like a guard. His defense isn't bad either, especially considering it was a Rookie-Sophomore game. Once he gets a little stronger, I could see him leading the league in scoring.
My game score prediction was really close, not so much for the MVP lol. I guess that was more wishful thinking.
dayum Durant is a monster, imo he should be playing in the allstar game as well but he def got it next year
my dude Chandler got a sick dunk
.......and my dude T.O wins celebrity game MVP for the second time in a row
DaTPRiNCE...That EGYPTiAN Fella, #MeloMafia


text:
North Central College appointed five new full-time, tenure-track faculty for the 2011-2012 academic year, which starts Sept. 12. Among the new faculty is Sohinee Roy, assistant professor of English.
Previously an English instructor and guest lecturer at West Virginia University, Roy has research interests in 20th century world/anglophone and postcolonial literature, Victorian and Romantic literature, contemporary novels and more. She speaks Bengali and Hindi. She holds a B.A. and M.A. in English literature from Jadavpur University in India and a Ph.D. in English literature from West Virginia University.


text:
Bid to win literary immortality
Joseph Boyden fundraising e-auction
Mar 6/12
Bid to win literary immortality!
And help raise money for an Aboriginal student award at Laurier.
Laurier is pleased to welcome 2011-2012 writer-in-residence Joseph Boyden to its Waterloo campus this week. A remarkable award-winning storyteller, who is also well-known and well-respected for his commitment to and ongoing support of Aboriginal teens, Boyden was warmly received at Lauriers Brantford campus in November 2011 and is now visiting Lauriers Waterloo campus from March 6th to the 8th.
In honour of his visit, Boyden has generously donated a once-in-a-lifetime literary opportunity. Up for auction, as of 9 p.m. on Tuesday, March 6th, is the chance to name a character (after yourself or a loved one) in an upcoming Joseph Boyden novel.
To enter your bid, visit #220966527097 at www.ebay.ca
This fundraising e-auction will close at 9 p.m. on Friday, March 9 and is being held in support of the Blanche Boyden Aboriginal Student Award.
Joseph Boyden, the award-winning author of Through Black Spruce and Three Day Road, will deliver a public lecture March 8. His lecture, titled Write From Wrong: Giving Voice To A People, will begin at 7 p.m. in the Maureen Forrester Recital Hall, and will focus on reimagining the relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples in Canada.
For more information, please contact:
Gail Roth, Associate Director
Library & Student Affairs
Development & Alumni Relations
(519) 884-0710 ext. 3714 or firstname.lastname@example.com


text: Jaime: I am tired of all these theocrats who want to base our laws on their religious beliefs. Robin: It's a free country; people can vote however they want and for whatever reasons they want and then majority rules. That's how things work in a democracy. If people want to vote on their religious beliefs, then that's [Read More…]


text:
Of course, if you obtain your understanding of people from some Chamber of Commerce type that may explain why Hispanics as a whole have little interest in the Republican Party. People who are not in Chambers, or who think narrowly tailored interest groups do not represent the majority, might focus on the fact that leaders of the party suggested they would make life so difficult for "aliens" that they would want to leave. Or that when Rick Perry suggested a little reason in regard to immigration he was practically booed off the stage.
But apparently some "senior fellows" think all Republicans have to do is lower taxes and end regulations and Hispanics and Catholics will be cool with kicking their friends and fellow parishioners out of the country. If that's the deluded thinking to be thrust upon us by one side, perhaps one can see why the other side is more attractive.


text:
Freedom New Mexico
PORTALES — Eastern New Mexico University women's soccer coach Todd Padgett has added all-state forward Alysia Carrasco of La Cueva to a large recruiting class.
Carrasco was La Cueva's leading scorer in her senior season.
"Alysia is very gifted technically and, because of her individual
attributes, will fit into the way we like to play very nicely," said Padgett. "She finds space and angles very well allowing her to be used as a target forward but also likes to attack defenders in a one-on-one situation giving her the ability to score goals when coupled with her positioning off the ball."
Padgett has signed 12 players for the fall.
The Zias finished 5-13 in 2010.
Padgett is in his first year as Zias' coach. He placed Travis McCorkle.


text:
I was wondering how does the breast flow bottle work. I haven't heard of that. It is worth trying. I'm trying not to give up but time is just ticking away and it is so stressful
I was wondering how does the breast flow bottle work. I haven't heard of that. It is worth trying. I'm trying not to give up but time is just ticking away and it is so stressful
Well it's been a while since I updated. My daughter has started to latch on and I thought that my supply was gone however i noticed when she bf that she was swallowing, so she is getting some. I have recently switched to fenugreek and started pumping to get my supply back to where it needs to be. One question my daughter has recently been sick should I still nurse her, when she does nurse, while she is sick.
Also, has anyone had a successful switch to the breast from the bottle after the baby started to show an intrest in bfing.
Little background info. my lo is 5 mths and NEVER bf but I kept trying and she has definitely show intrest lately after many many disappointments. I never really was able to pump successfully so I stopped and recently I have started to pump again. Now when I try she latces on without a fight and will even stay on for about 5 minutes. Even though I have very little milk.
Thanks for everyones support
Thanks for giving us the update! It sounds like you are making progress, slowly but surely. Good for you not giving up!
HTH. Hang in there!
I had a very similar situation. The real breakthrough I had, once my LO actually latched on (which took many weeks) was when I realized that I was creating more milk because my body responded to the baby latching on and would not respond to the pump in the same way. Baby on breast = increase in supply.
You will never pump as much as your baby can extract. It's a different type of extraction.
Best of luck!
thanks, for the info. I am having another issue. I have started taking fenugreek 8 pills a day and I have noticed that my milk has definitely increased. I know this because my breasts fill full. Well my lo only bf at night right before bedtime and it isn't very long so because of that I am starting to have pain in my breast because I haven' been able to pump the extra milk out no matter what type of pump i've used. Please help!!!!


text:
Dating video games are hugely popular in Japan: They're text-heavy games where each click brings you a little closer to either getting to see some cartoon porn or ending up in a "game over" screen (and then seeing that cartoon porn on Google anyway). The stories always involve a childhood friend you secretly lust for, a wise character with glasses who gives you advice (that you secretly lust for) and, this being Japan, a healthy dose of insanity.
Some of these games take that last part a little too far, though, leading to some very confusing boners. Like ...
6School Days -- Piss Off Your Girlfriend, Cause a Bloodbath
School Days is a popular erotic "visual novel" that inspired various spin-offs across different media -- including Cross Days, the game you can play with a literal cock control and which outs you as a pervert if you try to pirate it. In School Days, your character is a kid named Makoto who gets involved in a romantic triangle with two classmates that you have to get him out of without breaking the hearts of either of the girls ... because if you do, then shit gets real.
You can find the whole scene here if you want to see it in all its glory (you really do).
That's what happens if you string along one of the girls but then start seeing the other one on the side -- the first girl catches wind of it and kills her rival with a hacksaw. When you think about it, this means that even the "happy" endings are secretly terrifying, because you're now either dating or good friends with a potential psychopath waiting to snap.
The cover gives no indication of this, but you should know better than that anyway.
If, instead of cheating on the first girl, you actually break up with her to date the other one guilt-free, then the one you just dumped jumps off a bridge and lands headfirst on the cement right in front of you both. Even if you try to do things right, you still wind up soaked in blood.
"Oh hey, I didn't see you guys there, wow, this is awk-"
School Days was so popular that they even released a version for PlayStation 2 that censored all the porn scenes ... but made up for it by adding even more violent endings. For example, if you stick with the first girl and ignore the other one, then at the end of the game she pushes your girlfriend in front of an oncoming train, leaving you holding her disembodied hand.
In another possible ending, it's both girls who are run over by the train (after one tries to kill the other), and in another one, it's you. As if to acknowledge that the bad endings that you get if you play the game wrong are the most popular feature, the 2007 School Days anime adaptation ends with the protagonist decapitated and his girlfriend dead. That's like doing a Super Mario Bros. cartoon where Mario falls off a cliff and dies horribly, or a Zelda movie that's just Link being continuously attacked by chickens.
5Let's Meow Meow! -- A Game About Sex With Cat People
You could probably guess the entire plot of Let's Meow Meow! just from the title and the fact that it's from Japan ... but we're going to tell it to you anyway (because we hate you). The setup is that your character in the game has always been nice to stray cats, so one day he's rewarded by a powerful cat god who offers to grant him one wish. Naturally, he asks for a cat-girl who will have sex with him, because what other reason could there be for not being a dick to animals?
We're on to you, cat owners.
A few days later, he receives a nude cat-girl in a box -- not a real girl in a cat costume, but some sort of cat/human hybrid worthy of Dr. Moreau. The cat-girl is also a maid (because those are legally required to appear in these games), and as soon as she's out of the box, she immediately proceeds to give your character a blowjob. If you still feel like you need to play this game after that, there are plenty more surprises in store. Several other animal-human aberrations somehow end up in your house, too, including a literal Playboy bunny:
Her real ears.
A half-dog cop girl who dresses like a Nazi:
Three common fantasies in one!
And in case the whole "interspecies sex" thing is creeping you out, another cat-girl who is actually a robot designed to look like one:
Right, like we've never heard the "Officer, she said she was a cat robot!" excuse before.
Finally, there's a human girl (your childhood friend) who "just happens to like wearing cat ears and a tail during sex." See, that was the only excuse you needed. They could have all been real women who enjoy disguising themselves as animals, and the sex scenes would have been exactly the same. There was no reason to involve cat gods, robots and mutants from another dimension. You had other options here.
"It's not really something we can control." -- Japan
And it's not like you can pretend they're real women who are into intricate role-playing -- each of the "girls" has the traits and personality of her respective animal, as if to remind you that, yes, you paid for a game where you pretend to have sex with humanoid animals.


text:
The Doom video game from id Software has always been a cult since this was not only one of the first three-dimensional video games, but also one of the first titles capable of playing via local area network. While the Doom 3 title was rather popular, it became clear that to get the franchise working going forward, a new idea will be needed. According to a fantasy writer, he is working on that idea.
"I'll also be working on the computer game Doom 4 for id Software. I've been playing Doom for some years. Okay, here's a secret: I don't actually tickle the keyboards into simulating lines of deathless prose for the full eight hours per day. No. The creative batteries do run low at moments, it has to be said, and to recharge them I might […] casually mangle a few demons in Doom," said novelist Graham Joyce in his online blog.
It is unclear when the novelist started to work on the plot of Doom 4, but if that work started several months ago, the actual title may not see the light of the day for several more years.
"Now, since I've been hired to contribute to the storyline of Doom 4 I can say what was always true anyway. I'm working. You see, for a writer, lots of stuff that doesn't look like working is actually working. Looking out of the window, for example. Balancing a pencil on the edge of the desk in order to find its exact fulcrum. Playing Doom. Lots of things," Mr. Joyce added.
The Doom 3 title from id Software was released in 2004, five years after the firm launched its another major title Quake III Arena. Unfortunately, it looks like the Doom 4 is unlikely to emerge in 2009.
Tags: id Software, Graham Joyce, Doom


text:
Welcome to the Forum for InventorSpot.com, the most popular invention related website in the world. Read our welcome message.
Road Show wrote:Call it what you want...a "spending allowance", a "voucher", "cash value of services rendered"...the final 12 were given services for the further development of their inventions/ideas that had value; the value of services rendered is a subjective matter regardless of how and by whom they are paid.


text:
01/04/13 - Bradford Bulls v Salford City Reds - KO 3pm
Posted 01 April 2013 - 07:14 PM
Plenty of effort from both teams ... particular credit to Salford who are largely a team of players without any great reputation. Their back moves were simple but effective and they hung in after a poor start to be in with a real chance of winning in the last quarter. They might have won if Adam Sidlow hadn't pulled off two tremendous tackles to close down breakaways.
Under Scrutiny by the Right-On Thought Police
Posted 01 April 2013 - 07:24 PM
With Salford recently playing on wet snow at St Helens and then having a day less rehab prior to this game,the Salford fans questioning the conditioning of their players may remain whingeless for at least half an hour.
I enjoyed the game even though it appeared as though it was played at Scarborough beach with the tide out.
Some good young players on display and some innovative rugby league played with some howlers thrown in for a thoroughly enjoyable 80 minutes,despite the points remaining in Yorkshire.
As the terracing behind the sticks showed no sign of snow it was slightly disappointing to find that section closed and even more upsetting was the lack of curry for sale.
Not very provident at the Provident.( There should be a smiley but it ain't working )
Posted 01 April 2013 - 09:32 PM
Firstly, I thought Bradford offered more than we did in attack. They were worth their victory.
Secondly, it looked like a daft move by Kearney to gift Gaskell the first try, but it would have been a 40/20 and he thought he had to prevent that. With hindsight, we were offering nothing in attack at that point and he would have been better off letting the ball run out. We would probably not have scored in the resultant set.
Thirdly, I'm not sure "rockets up the backside" and "running out of steam" had much to do with the dramatic change from first half to second. In the first half, we simply couldn't get any traction in the quagmire at the Coral Stand end, whereas Bradford got plenty at the much drier Rooley Lane end. This meant we got trapped in our own half for pretty much the whole first half. Change ends at half-time and guess what? Role reversal. It took Bradford ages to adapt to the mudbath, but when they did, they made more ground than we had managed in the first half. Bradford had more game-craft and pitch-craft than us and, overall, were the better team. The result was just about right.
Finally, no offence intended, but I don't think I've ever heard a more one-eyed crowd. Honestly, I expect cries of "Forward!" and "Gerrem onside!"; but every time!!! Every Salford pass was greeted with "Forward!", every Salford tackle was followed by "He's lying on!" and every play in every Bradford set was hailed with "Gerrem onside, Ref!" Seriously guys, lighten up. It was a good, even game and the better team won. What do you want, a 100 point start?
Rethymno Rugby League Appreciation Society
Founder (and, so far, only) member.
Posted 02 April 2013 - 08:11 AM
Play off mini league winner - 2002. Bronze Medalist - 2003. Big Split Group Winner - 2006. Minor Stupidship - 2005, 2006. Cup Silver Medalist - 2008, 2009
Posted 02 April 2013 - 09:01 AM
Don't pass the ball forward then!
I won't.
Rethymno Rugby League Appreciation Society
Founder (and, so far, only) member.
Posted 02 April 2013 - 09:33 AM
Talk about the crowd giving the player up!
As for the forward passes, I did see a few (its easy when you are looking down on the pitch...). Including one very short one from our lot and several longer ones from Salford. I think forward passes was one of several rules that Mr. Roby deemed optional yesterday, but he kept the game flowing as a result.
One thing quite a few Bulls fans have a habit of doing, after getting frustrated at seeing what they perceive as a number of repeat infringements, is to take the p**s and shout for the infringement regardless. Especially when it is clear no infringement actually occurred! That started happening around me yesterday over forward passes. I say this to balance the "one-eyed" comment.
I think Tony is spot on about the Coral Stand-end quagmire. I don't think any of us realised just how bad it was, until it was our lot's turn to get stuck in it in the second half and they seemed unable to get out of it for ages.
Entertaining match, with good kicking and generally good passing from both sides, especially in the conditions. Salford did some very useful offloads too. I was quite impressed with Salford, and their enthusiasm and commitment was there for all to see (as was ours). I don't think Salford fans need have concerns for the future. Hopefully, neither need we.
Edited by Adeybull, 02 April 2013 - 09:43 AM.
Posted 02 April 2013 - 10:25 AM
Rethymno Rugby League Appreciation Society
Founder (and, so far, only) member.
Posted 02 April 2013 - 03:34 PM
Perhaps you agree with the rumours as to who the new head coach is to be.
I was quite impressed with Salford, and their enthusiasm and commitment was there for all to see (as was ours). I don't think Salford fans need have concerns for the future. Hopefully, neither need we.
As one Bradford fan pointed out,there were 5 officials on the pitch during the game but only one making any decisions.Seems a waste.
Posted 03 April 2013 - 09:47 AM
If you use "should of", "would of" or "could of", you are a moron.
On Odsal Top baht 'at.


text:
What can Accredited Online Training offer you?
Accredited Online Training provide nationally recognised training at the Certificate II, Certificate III, Certificate IV and Diploma level across a range of subjects. Our courses have received independent industry consultation and validation so that they meet the current industry requirements.
Accredited Online Training protects student fees taken in advance through the Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA) approved Australian Student Tuition Assurance Scheme (ASTAS). The ASTAS Scheme is administered by the Australian Council for Private Education and Training (ACPET). We recommend you read the full policy document.


text:
Writers Workshop – Session 3
Join the Mill Valley Public Library in nurturing the creative spirit of our community. Aspiring and seasoned writers are invited to join a session of the third session of Mill Valley Writers Workshop. Members will have the chance to meet other writers, write, and share feedback, all under the guidance of two talented moderators--Caitlin Myer and Peg Alford Purcell. This session will culminate with a public reading and live writing session.
Session 3 will consist of the following dates: October 22nd, November 5th, November 19th, and December 3rd
Time: 7PM -9PM at the Library.
Culminating Performance date TBD in the Creekside Room.
Click here for more info and to register.
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text:
For Webelos Scouts and their leaders, this year and the next are filled with excitement, growth, and challenge. Your boys will be moving from Cub Scouts toward the goal of becoming a Boy Scout. Along that trail they will be picking up new skills and further developing their independence and character.
As a leader you will be developing, too. You will find that the Webelos and Arrow of Light years (and den meeting plans) require more long-term planning on your part. While the den meeting plans will take you and your boys through the achievement activities required for rank advancement, you will find that looking ahead can have significant planning benefits.
Here are a couple of examples:
So, look ahead! Review all the requirements for Webelos and Arrow of Light before starting Webelos. Check back often, and HAVE FUN!
Den meeting plans are developed around a Scouting program year that is presumed to begin in early September and continue through May, at which time Cub Scouts would become involved in summertime Scouting activities. The Webelos den meeting plans outlined below offer one way of earning the Webelos badge of rank. If you as a den leader modify the order/badges, make sure requirements will still be met.
Download Webelos Den Meeting Planning Worksheet
Download the Webelos Letter Template