text: International Civil Aviation Organization SIP/ASBU/2012-WP/10 ASBU Methodology Summary of Block 0 Modules H. Sudarshan Workshop on preparations for ANConf/12 − ASBU methodology (Bangkok, 14-18/Nadi 21-25 May 2012) Outline • • • • • Block understanding Block Maturity cycle Block 0 perspective Block 0 Modules Block 0 implementation ICAO SIP 2012-ASBU workshops 2 Understanding the Relationships Performance Improvement Areas Block 0 Block 1 Block 2 Block 3 (2013) (2018) (2023) (2028 & >) B0-15 B1-15 B2-15 B3-15 Greener Airports Globally Interoperable Systems and Data Optimum Capacity and Flexible Flights Efficient Flight Path Module ICAO SIP 2012-ASBU workshops 3 Block Maturity Lifecycle Planning Decisions based on business case and validation results as developed during the previous phase B3 B0 B2 SIMPLIFIED LIFECYCLE V0 B1 Identification of Needs V1 V1 Concept Definition V2 V2 R&D Feasibility V3 V3 Pre-Industrial Development and Integration V4 V4 Implementation Industrialisation V5 V5 Decision Operations Deployment V6 V6 Decision Operations V7 V7 Decision Decommissioning Decision Standardisation activities IOC Initial Operational Capability B0: Capabilities available in 2013 ICAO SIP 2012-ASBU workshops 4 Focus on Block 0 Performance Improvement Areas Block 0 (2013) Greener Airports Globally Interoperable Systems and Data Optimum Capacity and Flexible Flights Efficient Flight Path ICAO SIP 2012-ASBU workshops 5 Global Readiness Checklist • Each Module is evaluated for its readiness • If any component is not found to be ready it moves to a future Block for implementation • Those Modules that are not specifically ready at a Block release are noted as "dates of readiness" All Block 0 Modules Have Met the Readiness Criteria ICAO SIP 2012-ASBU workshops 6 Block 0 • 4 Main Performance improvement areas – Greener Airports (5 modules) – Globally interoperable systems & data (3 modules) – Optimum capacity & flexible flights (7 modules) – Efficient flight path (3 modules) • Block 0 will serve as the enabler and foundation for the envisioned future aviation systems. ICAO SIP 2012- ASBU workshops Block 0 in Perspective Performance Improvement Areas Greener Airports Globally Interoperable Systems and Data B0-30 - Service Improvement Optimum Capacity and Flexible Flights through Digital Aeronautical Information Management Efficient Flight Path B0-105 – Meteorological information supporting enhanced operational efficiency and safety B0-35 - Improved Flow Performance through Planning based on a Network-Wide view B0-101 – ACAS Improvements B0-40 - Improved Safety & Efficiency B0-20 - Improved Flexibility B0-15 - Improved Runway Traffic Flow through Sequencing (AMAN/DMAN) & Efficiency in Departure Profiles through the initial application of Data Link En-Route B0-84 – Initial surveillance capability ADS-B Out, MLAT) B0-10 - Improved Operations through Enhanced En-Route Trajectories B0-80 - Improved Airport Operations through A-CDM B0-75 – Safety & Efficiency of Surface Operations (A-SMGCS 1-2 & cockpit moving map) ToC B0-25 - Increased Interoperability, Efficiency & Capacity through GroundGround Integration ToD B0-85 – Air Traffic Situational Awareness (ATSA) B0-86 – Improved Access to optimum FL through climb/descent procedures using ADS-B) B0-05 - Improved Flexibility & Efficiency in Descent Profiles (CDOs) B0-65 – Optimisation of approach procedures including vertical guidance CTA B0-102 – Baseline Goundbased Safety Nets B0-70 - Increased Runway Throughput through Wake Turbulence Separation Greener Airports (PIA 1) B0-15 Improved Runway Traffic Flow through Sequencing (AMAN/DMAN) Time-based metering to sequence departing and arriving flights B0-65 - Optimization of Approach Procedures including Vertical Guidance This is the first step toward universal implementation of GNSS-based approaches B0-70 Increased Runway Throughput through Wake Turbulence Separation Improved throughput on departure and arrival runways through the revision of current ICAO wake vortex separation minima and procedures (re-categorisation, CSPR and WIDAO) B0-75 Improved Runway Safety (A-SMGCS) Airport surface surveillance for ANSP B0-80 Improved Airport Operations through ACDM Airport operational improvements through the way operational partners at airports work together The combined Block 0 Modules reduce fuel consumption and noise by improving arrival efficiencies and improving information sharing ICAO SIP 2012-ASBU workshops 9 Globally Interoperable Systems and Data (PIA 2) B0-25 Increased Interoperability, Efficiency and Capacity through Ground-Ground Integration Supports the coordination of ground-ground data communication between ATSU based on ATS Inter-facility Data Communication (AIDC) defined by ICO Document 9694 B0-105 – Meteorological information supporting enhanced operational efficiency and safety This module includes meteorological information supporting automated decision processes or aids such as meteorological information translation, ATM decision support. This module enables the reliable identification of applicable ATM solutions when meteorological conditions are impacting (observed) or expected to impact (forecast) aerodromes or airspace B0-30 Service Improvement through Digital Aeronautical Information Management Initial introduction of digital processing and management of information, by the implementation of AIS/AIM making use of AIXM, moving to electronic AIP and better quality and availability of data In Block 0 we improve overall operations and continue to enable Collaborative Decision Making through improved interfacilities communications using standard information formats and baseline Met Services ICAO SIP 2012-ASBU workshops 10 Optimum Capacity and Flexible Flights (PIA 3) B0-10: Improved Operations through Enhanced EnRoute Trajectories Implementation of performance-based navigation (PBN concept) and flex tracking to avoid significant weather and to offer greater fuel efficiency, flexible use of airspace (FUA) through special activity airspace allocation, airspace planning and time-based metering, and collaborative decision-making (CDM) for en-route airspace with increased information exchange among ATM stakeholders B0-35:Improved Flow Performance through Planning based on a Network-Wide view Collaborative ATFM measure to regulate peak flows involving departure slots, managed rate of entry into a given piece of airspace for traffic along a certain axis, requested time at a waypoint or an FIR/sector boundary along the flight. B0-101 ACAS Improvements This addresses short term improvements to the performance of the existing airborne collision avoidance systems (ACAS). B0-85: Air Traffic Situational Awareness (ATSA) ATSA provides a cockpit display of a graphical depiction of traffic to assist the pilot in out-the-window visual acquisition of traffic: B0-86: Improved access to Optimum Flight Levels through Climb/Descent Procedures using ADS-B The use of In Trail Procedure (ITP) facilitates en-route climb or descent to enable better use of optimal flight levels in environments where a lack of ATC surveillance and/or the large separation minima currently implemented is a limiting factor. Using procedural concepts (e.g. RNP, FUA, etc.) and Air Traffic Situational Awareness - combined with enhanced planning tools and information sharing, the enroute phase of flight supports additional capacity and flexibility using the Modules of Block 0 ICAO SIP 2012-ASBU workshops 11 Optimum Capacity and Flexible Flights (PIA 3) Continued B0-84 – Initial surveillance capability ADS-B Out, MLAT Ground surveillance supported by ADS-B OUT and/or wide area multilateration systems will improve safety, especially search and rescue and capacity through separation reductions. B0-102 – Baseline Ground-based Safety Nets To monitor the operational environment during airborne phases of flight, the alerts such as Short Term Conflict Alert, Area Proximity Warnings and Minimum Safe Altitude Warnings are proposed in this module. Ground-based safety nets make an essential contribution to safety and remain required as long as the operational concept remains human-centred. Through ground based safety nets combined with ground surveillance the enroute phase of flight supports additional capacity, flexibility and safety ICAO SIP 2012-ASBU workshops 12 Efficient Flight Path (PIA 4) B0-05 Improved Flexibility and Efficiency in Descent Profiles (CDOs) Deployment of performance-based airspace and arrival procedures that allow the aircraft to fly their optimum aircraft profile taking account of airspace and traffic complexity with continuous descent operations (CDOs) B0-20 Improved Flexibility and Efficiency in Departure Profiles Deployment of departure procedures that allow the aircraft to fly their optimum aircraft profile taking account of airspace and traffic complexity with continuous climb operations (CCOs) B0-40 Improved Safety and Efficiency through the initial application of Data Link En-Route Implementation of an initial set of data link applications for surveillance and communications in ATC The use of procedurally based Optimized Profile Climbs and Descents as well as an initial Data Link Capability helps to establish a Block 0 capability for improved operational efficiencies ICAO SIP 2012-ASBU workshops 13 Block 0: Priority • Block 0 initiatives must leverage on existing on-board avionics • 3 Priorities have been agreed to by the Global community: – Performance Based Navigation (PBN) – Continuous Descent Operations (CDO) – Continuous Climb Operations (CCO) ICAO SIP 2012-ASBU workshops 14 Challenges - How to Get There? • It is all about managing risk • Block 0 risks are minimum – Global Readiness Checklist is complete – The ModulesASBU are well understood workshop, Mexico,and 27 supported February-2 March • But risks do exist 2012 – States may not be capable of ensuring successful deployment of Block 0 – If Block 0 is not implemented as a foundation, certain functionalities may not be available as enablers for future blocks – We must Identify and resolve policies necessary to enable the future blocks now ICAO SIP 2012-ASBU workshops 15 Implementation – The Time is Now • The Modules of Block 0 are ready for implementation today – Standards are ready – The Infrastructure is available – Avionics are ready – Ground Automation is ready – Procedures and Operational Approvals are in place • Establishing the foundation for the future is now • Care was taken to ensure that regional implementation of the Blocks or the Modules are well described and ready for implementation ICAO SIP 2012- ASBU workshops 16 ICAO SIP 2012-ASBU workshops 17


text:
Garage Door Repair Services in El monteOur own skilled techs are able to take care of numerous sort of garage door repair difficulties and they will provide you with the best quality of garage door maintenance services. Arcadia Garage Doors Repair is available twenty-four hours a day, and definately will quickly reply to any of your garage door service condition. Do not try repairing your garage doors by yourself particularly if you have no idea what you should do simply because you could possibly damage the doors or simply injure your self. Call right now at (626) 722-5247. You can expect the quickest, effective and reliable garage door repair around the whole El monte and surrounding zones. Our round the clock, accessibility and assured rapid reply, ensures our clients their garage door will undoubtedly be repair in no time. Services: Garage Door Off Track, Lift Master Garage Door, Best Garage Door Service, Door Light Switch, Traditional Style Garage Doors, Overhead Repair Parts, Fix Garage Door Panel, Garage Door Accessories, New Garage Door, Overhead Door Repair Company, Garage Door Services, Overhead Door Spring Replacement Cost, Automatic Garage Doors, Garage Door Repair Company, Broken Spring, Repair Genie Garage Door Opener, Garage Doors, Garage Door Spring Adjustment, Genie Garage Door Opener, Garage Door Opener Installation, Overhead Garage Door Spring Replacement, Affordable Overhead Door, Garage Door Spring Installation, Noisy Doors Silenced, Garage Door Off Track Repair, Door Safety Latch, Garage Door Opener Issues, Opening Systems, Routine Maintenance, Put Door Back On Track, Garage Door Warranty, Repair Garage Springs, Garage Doors Repair, Replace Garage Doors, Residential Garage Door, Tambour Wood Rollup Doors, Wood Gates and more.
El monte Garage Door Repair & Installation ServicesArcadia Garage Doors Repair is committed to providing just the very best assistance, you can expect extraordinary customer support. Our professional technicians can easily identify the root cause of this challenge and after that deal with the challenge efficiently. Our target is to always provide people of El monte perfect garage door installation solutions which will deliver them extensive security along with long-term advantages 100% satisfaction ensure. Give us a call instantly at (626) 722-5247 if you have any garage door troubles, and we will send our staff experts in the same day to you.
We also provide services to the zip codes:
91731, 91732
Garage Door Repair Rocklin
Garage Door Repair Covina
Locksmith Citrus Heights
Locksmith Arcadia
Arcadia Plumber

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Log In
10/07/10 - Platform lunch, interesting clouds, building a whiteboard, and fun with paperclips
Previous Batch
Next Batch
There's a hole in the sky.. through which things can.. fly!
He's actually running cables down to IT on the first floor
Spooky field
Neat project 365 pic
The camera kept taking pictures, and I got this weird blurry one
The Platform team went out to lunch to welcome Beager to the team
Topaz, Beager, Dipak, Jeff, Steve
Steve looks like that guy in Prototype
Shawn mocks the weather gods
Shawn, Matt, and Joe
Our destination awaits
Joe gives me a look as we cross the street
Brawler's Deli!
Steve looks for the menu
Air quotes?
Waiting to order
The Barrel sounds disgusting!
Matt and Shawn sitting at the table
It was a nice place
Jeff looks at the seats
Beager, the guest of honor, arrives at the table
Topaz is just trying to hold on until his pile meat arrives
Extra chairs?
Carlo and Beager joke about something
(Most of) the Platform team!
Joe's always making a goofy face when I take his picture
Waiting for food
What's Beager doing down there?
What the hell is this thing?
Dipak and Carlo
Looking down the table
Shawn listens to.. someone
Dipak talking about something
Topaz's sandwich was monstrous
A good way to start off the afternoon
Jeff's sandwich was pretty big too
Heading back to Synacor
There are a lot of interesting clouds in Buffalo
Ominous clouds ahead
More clouds
Looking out towards the lake
I bought a giant whiteboard! Well, whiteboard-like substance
Buzz approves
Topaz explains some of Lyaria's systems while Buzz listens attentively
Buzz tires quickly of math
Bell curve!
Topaz's beard is approaching professor level anyway
Buzz is being bad
He went running once I sprayed him
Neil always looks slightly shocked
Buzz dares me to push him off my chair
Hey look at that phone, standing up so nicely. How could that be?
Ohhh, it's a janky-ass stand made out of paperclips!
The phone holder in all its glory
The business card was a crucial stabilizing element
Previous Batch
Next Batch
Return to Pics Main
Copyright 2003-2019 :: This page was generated in 0.019 seconds


text:
Rockbox mail archiveSubject: RE: Adapting MakeVoices.vbs
RE: Adapting MakeVoices.vbs
From: Barrett, Don <Don.Barrett_at_ed.gov>
Date: 2006-04-12
Wow, this looks very cool; can we discuss by phone?
Don Barrett
-----Original Message-----
----- Original Message -----
Did you run ListVoices.vbs to see what the correct names are for your
MakeVoiceFile "english", "Crystal16", SPSF_32kHz16BitMono, 140, "-V 4 -B
If you've got Crystal16 installed, that should work without
MakeVoiceFile "english", "Crystal16", SPSF_32kHz16BitMono, 140, "-V 4 -B
The first two are already in the script, assuming you've got the same
Hi Brian,
I now have voice ffiles that work with the newer builds, but this still
I guess I am a bit confused from where to find the english.lang file. I
If not, would you or someone know where I can find a earlier
BTW, One of my files that was created with a slower speed was 2,016 KB
Thanks much
Page was last modified "Jan 10 2012" The Rockbox Crew


text:
As the broadband revolution continues to unfold, where is it taking us? If we are living in a highly connected world today, what will life in a hyperconnected world a decade from now look like?
To address these questions, the Wharton School and the Institute for the Future convened a one-day workshop in San Francisco in April, 2012, that brought together a group of leading technologists, entrepreneurs, academics and policymakers to explore the future of broadband over the next decade.


text:
he last half-century has seen the emergence of autobiographical writing as a major
form among American women writers. Since the autobiographical tradition prior to this time
belonged more to men than to women, women's voices, particularly "ordinary"
women's voices, were relatively unheard. In addition, earlier autobiography was typically
motivated by the desire of famous or "special" individuals to record and
preserve significant thoughts and historically important experiences. Recent women's
autobiographies, however, appear to grow most often from a writer's need to make sense of
her life, to define herself by intellectually mastering her experiences, and to locate her
place in a broader concept of history.
The six writers represented in this series bring widely varied personal contexts to
their narratives. Their memoirs nevertheless share the common belief that the act of
remembering and reexamining experiences through writing has both individual value and
larger social significance. In constructing, rather than simply accepting, their life
histories, they shape or reinvent themselves as they shape their texts. Each confronts
inevitable change-usual or unusual, expected or unexpected-but manages through writing not
just to endure, but to understand and grow. Their memoirs illustrate the power of personal
quests to illuminate experience beyond themselves.
Kate Simon's classic memoir Bronx Primitive (1982)
recreates her childhood as a Polish Jewish immigrant in New York during the years
following World War I. Set against the background of the Tremont Avenue section of the
Bronx, the book details the family culture and immigrant neighborhood of Simon's
childhood, as well as her relationships with an autocratic father and a well-meaning, but
essentially powerless mother. The vividness and candor of her account have made it for
many the model of a well-written memoir.
On the surface, An American Childhood (1987)
by Annie Dillard is a sunny, often endearing account of growing up in an idiosyncratic,
well-to-do family in 1950s Pittsburgh. Yet, beyond the nostalgia it may inspire, it is the
singularly compelling description of Dillard's awakening to the physical world and of the
growth of her mind. Dillard underscored the difficulties of writing about one's childhood
by saying, "You can't put together a memoir without cannibalizing your own life for
parts." The "parts" she recovers are reconstructed with the maturity of a
writer and naturalist whose memoir is one of the most celebrated of our time.
In Coming of Age in Mississippi (1968), Anne
Moody recalls what it was like to grow up black in the South of the 1940s and 1950s. Her
loss of innocence is marked by her courage as a young woman to challenge injustices during
the early Civil Rights movement. Moody's autobiography is a landmark work in what has been
called the "new literature of obscurity" of the late 1960s. Like Maya Angelou's I
Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Claude Brown's Manchild in the Promised Land,
it reminds us that the spotlight of truth can rest unforgettably on the
"ordinary" life.
Natalie Kusz's Road Song (1990) describes
the challenges and hardships that faced Kusz and her family when her parents decided to
leave Los Angeles in the late 1960s and search for an alternate life-style on the Alaskan
frontier. Soon after their arrival, six-year-old Kusz was savagely attacked by a
neighbor's sled dog and nearly died. Her account of the physical and emotional struggles
that followed this experience is notable not only for the fortitude it reflects but for
its steady avoidance of self-pity and its lyrical voice.
Mary Clearman Blew's All But the Waltz combines
memoir with personal essay in a vital, unromanticized account of her family's hundred-year
history on the Central Montana plains. Interspersing snippets of her own story with a
series of loosely connected ancestral narratives, Blew recreates and reconsiders the
profound effects of a bleak, yet beautiful landscape on the human psyche. Her attempts to
understand her own struggles in the context of inherited landscape and culture reveal the
power of story to link people across generations and to inform experience.
Madeleine L'Engle's Two-Part Invention: The Story of a
Marriage is the memoir of her forty-year marriage to actor Hugh Franklin.
In this moving and ultimately joyous book, written during the summer of her husband's
final illness, L'Engle participates in her husband's dying, recreates their shared life,
and contemplates life in all of its richness, adventures, surprises, and sorrows.
Suggested Further Readings
For further exploration of American women's autobiographies and memoirs, look for these
titles at your local library or bookseller. The Wyoming Council for the Humanities cannot
provide these titles for addition or substitution in this series.
Mary Clearman Blew, Balsamroot
Bebe Campbell, Sweet Summer: Growing Up With and Without My Dad
Lorene Carey, Black Ice
Veronia Chambers, Mama's Girl
Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman
Anne Ellis, Life of an Ordinary Woman
Vivian Gornick, Fierce Attachments
Doris Grumbach, Coming Into the End Zone
Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, Farewell to Manzanar
Hettie Jones, How I Became Hettie Jones
Maxine Hong Kingston, Woman Warrior
Mary Karr, The Liar's Club
Madeleine L'Engle, The Crosswicks Journal
Mary McCarthy, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Cross Creek
May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude
Alix Kates Shulman, Drinking the Rain
Kate Simon, A Wider World
Susan Allen Toth, Blooming: A Small Town Girlhood
Background Readings in Women's Autobiography
Cahill, Susan, ed. Introduction. Writing Women's Lives: An Anthology of
Autobiographical Narratives by Twentieth-Century American Women Writers. HarperCollins,
1994. (A fairly extensive bibliography is included.)
Rose, Phyllis. Introduction. The Norton Book of Women's Lives. Norton, 1996.
Gunn, Janet Varner. Autobiography: Toward a Poetics of Experience. University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1982.
Jelinek, Estelle C., ed. Women's Autobiography: Essays in Criticism. Indiana
University Press, 1980.
Pearlman, Mickey. Listen to Their Voices: Twenty Interviews With Women Who Write.
Norton, 1993.


text:
I'm probably one of only a few natural health care providers who doesn't push products. Truth be told, I'm generally not a fan of supplements, daily vitamins, shakes and powders. I've chosen not to sell any in my office or online. While my pockets could definitely profit, I don't really think you will. And quite frankly, I care too much about you to push something on you that I don't think will really provide you with a great deal of benefit or worse, could potentially harm you. Now, if you've been taking something that you truly believe helps you, I'm not trying to tell you that it doesn't.
But for a lot of people, I think they feel liberated to finally hear an expert tell them that they can save their money and stop choking down "healthy" stuff that they feel obligated for one reason or another to take.
A little over decade ago, I experienced a health crisis. In an act of desperation, I tried all kinds of crazy "alternative" treatments. I tried supplements, vitamins, minerals, herbs and tonics with the hope of finding relief. In retrospect, the only thing I really found was indigestion and an empty wallet.
In my training years, I loved the idea that vitamins, minerals, herbs and supplements could change the course of somebody's health. I studied hard the studies that evaluated the effects of natural and alternative medicines. And I grew increasingly disappointed by what I read and was taught. Why?
Because most of the hype around natural products & supplements is just that. Hype.
That's right, unsubstantiated hype. I definitely can't say it's all hype, but truthfully, most of it is. There's a lot of evidence to support vitamin and mineral supplementation in the presence of deficiency (and lots of people nowadays are deficient in vitamin D) and there is some evidence for certain supplements, oils and herbs. But, across the board, there aren't a lot of great studies to support most of the stuff that most people take.
Take multivitamins for example. For a while I advocated these. Now I don't. Why? Well, there's some good evidence now showing that they don't really do anything amazing; they don't improve cardiovascular health, prevent cancer or slow cognitive decline. And while a multivitamin with 100% or less of the daily value of vitamins and minerals probably won't do much of anything (good or bad), it's quite possible that a multivitamin with super high percentages or random herbs and supplements (which most contain) just might be harmful.
Likewise, I used to think omega-3 fish oil was a panacea. It first appeared this nutraceutical was all benefit and no risk. But then I started to really look into it and the studies were more limited and less promising than I first thought and worse, patients would report back to me with symptoms like indigestion, belching, nausea, loose stools, rashes and nosebleeds. With higher doses, there's an increased risk of bleeding and the possibility for immune suppression. In a lot of cases, the benefit just doesn't justify the risk.
And then there's calcium. In school we were told that every woman needed to take 1200 milligrams of Calcium Citrate every day to prevent osteoporosis. I was sold. I took it and told everyone else to as well. Until, more research came out linking calcium supplements to increased heart attack risk in women.
I could go on and on. Here's the bottom line; there is a time and place for supplements especially in the face of deficiency. But (and it's a big but), I don't recommend anything across the board for everyone. You've got weigh the risk and the benefit. And for most of the "natural" stuff in a pill or shake form, the benefit just doesn't win out.
So now let's get to that So What Moment. So now, what do you do?
Use real food as real medicine. I'm not talking about food put into capsules and marketed to you as medicine, but actual food.
Food like organic fruit, vegetables and sprouted grains for your multivitamin. Food like flax, walnuts, chia and cold-water wild fish for your omega-3s. Food like kale, collards, organic yogurt and turnips for your calcium. Eat real food, feel real good.
And the awesome bonus with high quality food is its synergistic effect. Unlike a high potency supplement, the nutrients in an apple all work together to promote health in the body. Win, Win. Little risk, loads of benefit.
Wondering if the supplements you regularly take actually have benefit? Jump onto my facebook page and join the discussion. I've put a link to this post there; if you're wondering if it's safe and effective, post a comment under the link, and I'll respond to you there.
Change Your Meals, Change Your Life!
Dr. Kristen Bentson
Healthy doesn't have to be hard! Get started with your FREE spice guide plus weekly motivation, tips, and strategies right to your inbox.


text:
EXIDE Pakistan Limited, the largest manufacturers of Lead Acid Electric Storage Batteries in Pakistan. A wide range of Exide Batteries is produced for many applications from batteries for Cars, Tractors, Trucks and Buses to Earth Moving Equipment and off-the-road Vehicles. EXIDE Pakistan also manufactures special application Industrial Batteries for Stand-by Power, locomotive engine starting and for TRAIN lighting system.
The technology used by EXIDE Pakistan is based on the technology of Chloride Group P.L.C. of U.K. high standards of design and manufacture are uniformly maintained with Head office at Karachi.


text:
From the 1st December 2014 it is a contractual requirement that all GP practices undertake the NHS Friends and Family Test (FFT).
The Friends and Family Test is a feedback tool that supports the fundamental principle that people who use NHS services should have the opportunity to provide feedback on their experience that can be used to improve services. It is not a traditional survey. It is a continuous feedback loop between patients and practices.
The FFT question asks if patients would recommend the services they have used and offers a range of responses. When combined with a supplementary follow-up questions, the FFT question provides a mechanism to highlight both good and poor patient experience. The free text responses are a rich source of information which allow practices to consider the comments being made by patients in detail and identify actions which can be taken to improve patients' experience much more quickly than traditional survey methods.
Here at Lowther Medical Centre we are offering patients both paper and electronic options to complete our FFT survey.
Paper Feed Back - This is carried out in surgery during your visit after you have used any of our services - this could mean just speaking to our reception staff, seeing a clinician, either one of our own staff (GP's / nurses) or any other NHS provider of service within the practice.
Electronic Feed Back - To feed back to us electronically please click on the "Friends and Family Test" bar on the home page (Click link Home for Home Page)
Thank you to everybody who has responded to our Friends and Family Test either through the website or on the cards in surgery.
Results for 2015/16 are shown below and results for 2017/18 are now available to access via the HOME Page
December 2015 report
January 2016 report
February 2016 report
March 2016 report
April 2016 report
We use the information entered into this form only for the purposes of processing your Friends & Family Test submission.
Information entered into this form is stored and accessed securely by designated Practice staff.
Issues raised in comments may be discussed between relevant members of the Practice.
The information is used for quality monitoring purposes, in line with the expectations of the patients submitting
the feedback.
The form does not require personal information. Any personal information transmitted via this form may be anonymised
by the Practice when this is required to ensure compliance with General Data Protection Regulation.
All submissions are collated and sent to NHS England.
This information is kept for as long as the site is active or it is deleted by a site administrator.
I consent to my information being used for the purposes described above and wish to submit this online form to
Lowther Medical Centre
1 Castle Meadows, Whitehaven, Cumbria, CA28 7RG.
Learn more about our Privacy Policy and
Terms of Use.
Should you have any concerns about sending your personal details using the web,
please use one of the alternative methods offered by our organisation.


text:
bringing your
Brand to Life
The goal of every brand is to stand out from the clutter. You want to be the one that no one can take their eyes off of.
From our experience repositioning and bringing to market hundreds of businesses from hotels and resorts, to airlines, technology companies, accounting firms, retail and senior living communities…we've learned a thing or two. A brand is not just a logo and tagline. It's so much more.
Creating or revitalizing a brand requires a compelling brand promise, a clear personality and style that is delivered by every single person your team encounters.
Bringing your brand strategy to market is the most important thing you need to do in order to stand out from the crowd. It's the difference between mediocre and memorable. It's what creates passion, engagement and loyalty for your business...not only for customers, but employees too.
brand service
The single biggest mistake businesses make is overlooking the service experience integration of the brand. Consider it like a three-legged stool. One leg is the physical aspect of the business: think the beautiful architecture and decor. The second leg is the branding: think logo, slogans, etc. Finally, there is the third leg: the delivering of the brand and service. Without all THREE legs, the stool doesn't support.
Aspire has joined forces with hundreds of companies to discover their unique formula that brings their brand to life. We start by learning about your vision and then we collaborate with you on developing and implementing brand values, promise and culture. We work with you to develop internal and external messaging and unique service touchpoints that bring your brand to life through your people.
And we don't stop there. We realize that brand service integration is an ongoing process. After the initial on-boarding, we support your efforts through ongoing leadership development*, service and sales programming, audits, coaching and much more. Aspire is your partner in bringing your brand to life.
Service Culture
Culture is the heart of your organization, and like the heart of your body, if you don't take care of it and don't ensure it is pumping, you are in trouble. Culture is not fluff. A healthy culture aligns your people and engages them to act in service of your higher purpose, grows your brand strength and improves financial performance.
The most admired brands have a culture that not only their employees know and are proud of, but their customers know too. Their culture is weaved throughout the fabric of their success. It is clearly what separates them from the rest, and it's no coincidence that the companies with the strongest cultures are also among the most profitable as well.
Whether you are looking to build a culture or reinvigorate the one you have, Aspire's untraditional approach to integrating vision, mission, values and your brand into your cultural platform ensures your people are aligned, engaged, and inspired.
Brand Strategy
There is only one way to ensure brand relevance, and that is standing out from the clutter. How are you different? What is your one thing? How can you enter the market or find your way back to the top? If you don't do it...your competitor will.
Developing and differentiating your brand strategy is key. Your brand is reflected in all the daily interactions your customers, vendors, employees and potential customers have with your organization, not just in your logo and messaging. Your brand should be tangible in everything you say and do to manage those daily interactions and touch points.
At Aspire, we pride ourselves on helping teams be strategic about operationalizing their brands with measurable outcomes. We will work in collaboration with your team to help you develop your strategy and then to go beyond that to ensure your guest experience matches and supports your vision, mission and values.


text:
Before the remains of the World Trade Center had even cooled, national security hawks took to the airwaves to blame CIA reforms for the failure of the intelligence community to detect and prevent the attack.
"We were basically spying with one arm tied behind our back," said R. James Woolsey, CIA chief in the early 1990s, on CNN's Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer, citing 1995 CIA guidelines that regulate the recruitment of sources who have a history of criminal activity and human-rights violations. "These restrictive limitations on not being able to recruit people who have some violence in their past as spies were ridiculous."
On Crossfire, Woolsey claimed these regulations "make it difficult to penetrate terrorists. … It's like telling the FBI to penetrate the Mafia without putting any criminals on its payrolls." Ambassador Paul Bremer, who chaired a national commission on terrorism, chimed in, telling CNN that the Church Committee, the Senate panel that investigated CIA misdeeds in the 1970s, did "a lot of damage to our intelligence services. … And the more recent problem was that the previous administration put into effect guidelines which restricted the ability of CIA agents to go after … terrorist spies." President George Bush the First, a past CIA chief, and Vice President Dick Cheney concurred. Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the intelligence committee, blasted the regulations and demanded that the country "take the wraps off" the spies.
The Senate took steps to do just that last Thursday by passing "The Combating Terrorism Act of 2001," part of which instructs the CIA to rescind the 1995 guidelines. But despite all the vamping, removing the guidelines won't help the United States wage its new war on terrorism. And there's no indication the CIA even wants the rules lifted.
The 1995 guidelines were written after the press revealed that a thuggish Guatemalan military official, who had been involved in the murder of an American hotelier and the torture and murder of a rebel leader married to an American, was on the CIA payroll. (By the way, the agency had withheld information from Congress about its relationship with this killer.) The guidelines have never been made public, but CIA officials have described them to Hill staffers and intelligence-watchers. The rules compel CIA case officers to notify headquarters when they recruit a violent brute as a source, and they require the recruitment be reviewed at a senior level. But they don't prohibit the CIA from working with terrorists to discover what terrorists are doing. CIA case officers are free to seek and pay informants within terrorist outfits. They merely have to alert supervisors back home and receive a go-ahead.
"The fuss about these guidelines is totally a bunch of hooey," says one government employee familiar with the rules (who cannot be identified any further). "They do not forbid anything."
In June 2000, CIA spokesman Bill Harlow denied that the guidelines unduly restricted the agency: "The notion that our human rights guidelines are an impediment to fighting terrorism is simply wrong. No one knows better than we do that when combating terrorism it is often necessary to deal with unsavory individuals. But we do so with eyes wide open and appropriate notification to senior officials."
Harlow noted that the CIA has "never, ever turned down a request to use someone, even someone with a record of human rights abuses, if we thought that person could be valuable in our overall counterterrorism program." Last year, the CIA did not back an effort in Congress to kill these rules, which can be rescinded by the CIA director or the president without the passage of legislation.
While the hawks argue the guidelines discourage risk-taking in the field, the rules may well enhance derring-do. A case officer who recruits a terrorist as a source under the guidelines is protected from a reprimand from above if the terrorist takes part in, say, a bombing plot.
Penetrations of tightly knit secret organizations, a task that the agency has never done well, won't be improved by erasing the guidelines. Those who blame the current crisis on intelligence reformers deceive the public by falsely raising expectations—just get rid of these pesky rules, and the CIA will be inside Osama Bin Laden's tent. And, more importantly, all their huffing distracts the nation from the actual intelligence failures that preceded Sept. 11.


text: Its not the array that costs a lot, its the hard part that does. Not many reliable free SAN (block) solutions put there. NAS (file) based sharing if very free and very reliable. Got brakes? ====== 25hrs or one season with one pad set is possible. Save money and pit time, compromise nothing. Ask how. TXT or Tone: 8414546712 at txt.att.net http://www.speedtoys.com On Oct 6, 2007, at 2:00 PM, "Don O'Neil" <lists at lizardhill.com> wrote: > Anyone have any resources for building a FreeBSD based SAN device? > IE, how > can I create an extendable file system using networked drives in > muliple > boxes without paying a billion dollars for someones expensive drive > arrays. > > TIA! > > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions at freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe at freebsd.org > "


text:
1. Branches dance in breeze Gray clouds, medley of birdsongs Rain washed Monday noon 2. Moonlight shimmering, Wheat stalks whisper sad secrets Harvest starts post dawn 3. Swimming in circles Bouncing back from the glass walls Folks trapped in fishbowls
Month: May 2017
When You Call Me…
I am not really the person whom you call up just to ask "what else is going on," No. I'm the person who loves it when you call me because that book last night made your chest ache and you couldn't sleep. You call to make me listen to the sound of rain falling on … Continue reading When You Call Me…
Museum Of Memories By Amrita Mukherjee
I have a special connect with short stories. From Jhumpa Lahiri to Haruki Murakami, from Alice Munro to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, I devour short stories from my favorite authors with an enthusiasm and delight that I used to reserve for those mango ice lollies, that my siblings and I secretly enjoyed during the summer vacations of our childhood. … Continue reading Museum Of Memories By Amrita Mukherjee
Struggling To Write A Novel? Come Join Me!
(Image Source: Pinterest) I have decided to write a novel. The decision was taken almost two years back but if you ask me to show anything for it, I might not have much. In fact, I'm being discreet, I have nothing to show you. Initially, I thought it was my laziness that was stopping me from … Continue reading Struggling To Write A Novel? Come Join Me!
(Image Source: Epson.com) 3.30 am. Exams, projects, marks, placements the words that crammed his head dissolved into a pool of blood. The stars beckoned him, he smiled, the revolver slid from his hand. The note fluttered under the coffee cup while he joined the stars. 'Let me sleep' that's all the note said. (Note: The … Continue reading Sleep
Guest Post By Arka Datta: Getting Published in India, AKA the Act of Befriending Rejections
Arka Datta is a recently published author and I'm proud to be his friend. Arka is a writer from Kolkata, India. He has been a lot of different things before deciding to settle with writing books. His short stories have been printed by publishers like Penguin and HBB, and a few respected online magazines. About Arka's Book: Arya … Continue reading Guest Post By Arka Datta: Getting Published in India, AKA the Act of Befriending Rejections
Why Writing Could Be A Lonely Soul's Way Of Talking To You
(Image: Writing in the laps of the Himalaya. At Spiti Valley) I am not the 'life' of any party I do not have a gang of friends to embark on adventures or make my day to day life seem like a sitcom I work from home so there isn't any scope of making work friends, as … Continue reading Why Writing Could Be A Lonely Soul's Way Of Talking To You


text:
Last Saturday, after running another woodland animal making course and delivering an oak garden bench,
we called in at Ilkley (home of bah't 'at) ostensibly to get a part for a coffee-making machine. Had to call in a couple of charity (thrift) shops in case there was a sheepskin to make saddles for the two shave horses in Strid bodgery.
Struck it in gold at Oxfam, only £15! I'd been looking for one for ages. "Shall I put it in a big bag?" The lady asked. "Nah, I'll wear it." said I. It is heavy, didn't fancy carrying it round Ilkley. It was a cold day and the sheepskin coat's skin was saved. Far too good to cut up, and so warm. Why pay more? And you can – about £500 without trying too hard even.
Trouble is, I now need a sheepskin coat to make into saddles for the horses …


text:
LST has made a strong, prolonged and generous commitment to active duty military and veteran's causes.
The company, and its employees, donate time and money. LST sponsors an annual aviation industry golf tournament to raise money for "Hope for the Warriors"; in 2016 LST donated $20,000 to the charity. LST donated $1,000 to Warrior360, a veteran's welfare charity. The company's significant annual donation of money and goods to Marine Camp Pendleton included a vanload of holiday gifts for military families worth $20K, personally delivered to Camp Pendleton by the LST CFO in December 2016. Employees participate in creation of Memorial Day care packages for active duty personnel. LST's holiday gift to clients in 2016 was "EOD" fudge, hand-crafted and sold by a veteran blinded in an IED explosion in Afghanistan.
In addition to support for the military, LST has a robust corporate donation request process; employees can apply to receive donations and/or corporate sponsorship of civic and charitable events of interest to them.
In 2016 the company donated to charities such as UNICEF, sponsored local kids sports teams and a robotics team for children, and offered support for the DC-based urban young adult job training organization "Year Up". LST sponsors group volunteering activities, providing support to the DC Capital Area Food Bank, and school supplies for underprivileged youth. LST declared December 2016 as the "Month of Caring", offering matching charitable donations and encouraging employee volunteering by offering rewards (cash donations to charities) to volunteering employees.


text:
More than 50 million Americans smoke. The numbers are even higher in other parts of the globe, with worldwide statistics showing that one out of three people over the age of 18 are smokers.
The reasons to quit smoking are endless. Cigarettes have 4,000 chemicals, including 43 known cancer-causing (carcinogenic) compounds and 400 other toxins. These include nicotine, tar and carbon monoxide, as well as formaldehyde, ammonia, hydrogen cyanide, arsenic and DDT. According to the CDC, tobacco is the cause of 443,000 premature deaths each year, and is associated with emphysema, lung cancer, high blood pressure, shortness of breath, chronic cough and an increase in frequency of colds and flu.
Stopping an addictive behavior is never an easy task. It can be scary because it involves change and change often times makes us uneasy. Utilizing acupuncture as a part of a smoking cessation plan is widely recognized in the United States and abroad. Acupuncture helps to break the addictive behavior by balancing the brain chemistry which; in turn alleviates cravings as well as that edgy feeling that often accompanies quitting. Along with acupuncture, patients are also encouraged to work on breaking the habit of smoking, by disassociating with common triggers such as coffee, alcohol, sugar and social situations that would lend one to want to smoke. Acupuncture and whole-food supplements are then used to heal damage caused by smoking over the years and restoring overall health and balance.
For those having concerns about needle therapy an alternative would be seed therapy. Seed therapy is a noninvasive form of acupressure whereby acupuncture points are stimulated by seeds stuck to adhesive. This is just as effective as needle therapy but does not require as much time face to face with a practitioner as the patient is sent home with instructions to stimulate the treated points throughout the day allowing for additional treatment benefits.
Initially patients are scheduled to come twice weekly for two weeks with follow up sessions recommended biweekly or monthly for overall health benefit and support. Regular acupuncture visits are important to help patients manage uncomfortable feelings they may experience while attempting to quit smoking, like anxiety, frustration, tension as well as other types of cravings.


text: On Thu, 08 Jan 2009 12:24:13 +0000, Oscar Hellström wrote: > Have you tried to file bugs for this with the Gentoo project. My > experience is that it's not that hard to get new ebuilds accepted. I regularly contribute ebuilds & patches to b.g.o, for example the initial RabbitMQ ebuild. The problem is the lack of a dedicated maintainer who must also be a registered Gentoo dev. Currently even erlang itself is under proxy-maintenance. I help whereever I can, but the strong coupling of these roles is a huge problem. Overlays are one solution, but it's necessary to prevent community fragmentation - hence my post. :) thanks Holger


text:
24 Hour Tour from €16, 48 Hour Tour from €19.20
From €45 pp For A Private Group of 16
Save 10% on the 2, 3 & 5 day passes!
€795.00 per person sharing twin or double room - 3 nights
€26.50 per adult
From €17 pp
2 course €24.95, 3 course €29.95
From €95 pp
From €233 per room
From €13
Steak night offers from just €24.95
From €19.50
For €19.80 pp one hour guided tour using code EAST1000
Use promo code TEELING2020 when booking online to get a 10% discount off admission to the Teeling Whiskey Distillery, a saving of up to €6
From €59 pp For A Private Group of 16
Want to know more? Ask a question in our Community, they're the people who know Ireland best.
For more information on travel, accommodation and attractions have a look at our brochures and maps.
If you're a visitor from the island of Ireland you may want to visit one of these sites… Otherwise proceed to Ireland.com
Share this link


text:
There was a by-election in Dundee's Lochee ward yesterday. Lochee isn't classic Lib Dem territory so it was good to see our candidate Christopher Hall securing a creditable 3rd place with 435 1st preferences.
Both the SSP and their breakaway former colleagues Solidarity (aka the Tommy Sheridan appreciation society) stood candidates. The SSP candidate got 55 votes and the Solidarity candidate 57. The really strange part is that when the SSP votes were re-distributed only 8 went over to Solidarity.
Message to Trots: Unity really is strength!
Friday, 23 November 2007
A bad case of imploding Trots
Posted by Iain Rubie Dale at 14:19
Labels: Scottish Lib Dems, Trots
No comments:
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)


text:
Webmail, TAC, Employee Express, CASE, etc.
Do you get tired of trying to find commands on the Ribbon in Microsoft Office 2010? You may want to give the Quick Access Toolbar a try! The Quick Access Toolbar is a customizable toolbar that contains a set
of commands that are independent of the tab on the ribbon that is
currently displayed. You can move the Quick Access Toolbar from one of
the two possible locations, and you can customize the QAT by adding buttons for the most commonly used commands for the Office applications you use every day.
Here is an example of where the Quick Access Toolbar is located in each Microsoft Office Application.
To learn anything and everything about the QAT, click here for Microsoft's resources on their website.
And as always, your School Tech is available to help and answer questions.
There is an easy fix for this. The voice feedback is part of ChromeVox. ChromeVox is part of the Google Chrome operating system on all Chromebooks (hence the name!) Part of this is the spoken feedback option. This option is easily enabled by simply pressing the control+alt+z keys simultaneously so it can be easily enabled by accident. Good news this keystroke combo is a toggle for this feature. To disable the spoken feedback simply press control+alt+z keys and presto! It is off.
It's a common problem, you connect your laptop to a projector and nothing happens. The projector doesn't display your laptop screen or your laptop screen goes blank or...well you know. You have a keyboard shortcut that can help. Press the Windows Key + P and up pops a window to choose how to connect to the external display source. Most commonly you would choose to Duplicate but it's ultimately up to you!
Click the Button to Send a Help Request
Call the Central Help Desk(404) 346-4350
Reset Password
Laugh Out Loud
Click HERE to access installation files for each Shakerag printer. Just find the printer you need and DOUBLE-CLICK!


text:
A North Carolina teen allegedly stabbed his mother to death and decapitated her told a 911 operator he did it because he "felt like it."
Monday, 18-year-old Oliver Funes-Machado told the dispatcher that he's stabbed his mother eight times. According to court documents, he also left the knife inside her mouth.
He was asked if he'd checked his mother's pulse to see if she was alive. "She's dead," was his response in regards to the condition of 35-year-old Yesenia Beatriz Funez Machado. The dispatcher then asked the teen why he'd killed Machado. He responded, "because I felt like it."
After the brutal murder, police arrived on the scene. The teen was seen walking out of the house "carrying a knife in one hand and a severed human head in the other."
Authorities found what was left of her body between the kitchen and living room. Funes-Machado had also told the dispatcher his 4-year-old and 2-year-old siblings were in the house. He said his father was not home.
The younger sisters were not hurt, and a teenage brother was at school.
The suspect was from Honduras and in the country illegally, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Bryan Cox.
The teen's public defender C. Boyd Sturges III described him as "a pretty profoundly disturbed young man." The young suspect, who has been charged with first-degree murder, was on four medications for a psychiatric condition, according to the warrants.
"The circumstances of this crime are very unusual and horrific," the Franklin County DA's office said in a statement on Wednesday, according to WNCN. "While it is too early to know for sure what the defendant's mental state was at the time of the murder, it will be reviewed at the appropriate time and place."
The sheriff's office is using the services of independent counselors to help deputies deal with what they saw at the crime scene, according to WTVD.
"It was tough, it was a traumatic scene, a gruesome scene," Terry Wright of the Franklin County Sheriff's Office told the station.


text:
Brisbane Heat 2019/20 Youth Mascot T-Shirt
- Write a review
- Add to wishlist Added to Wishlist
Get your youngster cheering on their favourite Big Bash stars in this Brisbane Heat 2019/20 Youth Mascot T-Shirt. Made from a lightweight poly-cotton fabrication for all-day comfort, whether they'll be watching the game from the stands or the lounge. The tee features a crew neck for complete mobility, while a strong durable build ensures it will hold it's own against daily wear and tear. Complete with a woven locker label and a highly detailed screen printed team mascot graphic, the Brisbane Heat 2019/20 Youth Mascot T-Shirt will add some fun to your budding cricketer's fandom.


text:
Facing an error while using a program on Microsoft Windows is normal and that's why you should be always ready to fix such issues. The list of such programs includes QuickBooks as well. The smooth functioning of the fully equipped accounting software depends on the various settings of Windows and if any one of them doesn't function properly then it might not run or show error while using its various functionalities.
Fixing such problems might prove to be a cumbersome process because Windows can be configured in various ways but you don't need to worry about it as Intuit provides various tools to sort out such errors.
That's why, in this article, we will be looking at the best tools for fixing QuickBooks problems, so that you can work seamlessly on the app.
This is a batch file which re-registers the various related components with Microsoft windows. If you are not able to run QuickBooks due to any issue with the Microsoft component, then you can simply use Reboot.Bat which is a simple and harmless fix.
Sometimes, the Registry, where the information is stored, can get corrupted or altered by some other program which can result into QB not running properly. In such cases, Reboot.Bat can re-register corrupted or altered QuickBooks Microsoft components.
QuickBooks Component Repair Tool
This tool is very less known among users and experts, but it is very much helpful in fixing problems of QuickBooks. Programs written on Microsoft Windows rely on several components and QB is not an exception. It also relies on different Microsoft components but different programs may use different versions of these components which can result in altering the component needed by other program. But with the help of Component Repair Tool, you can find and fix such issues.
QuickBooks Install Diagnostic Tool
Error message 1603, 1935, 1904 and 1722 might appear while installing QuickBooks and it is mainly caused to due to error in Microsoft.net Framework. But you don't need to worry about such error messages as running the QB Install Diagnostic Tool can fix such problems for you.
QuickBooks PDF Repair Tool
The most common problem with QB and PDF driver is it prevents you from creating PDF copies of order forms, reports, reconciling bank accounts and emailing attached invoicing. Such problems can be resolved by QB PDF Repair Tool.
QuickBooks File Doctor
This tool can fix several problems such as file and data corruption, network setup problems and Windows setup problems. In addition to the above mentioned problems, it also solves 6000-series errors on file opening, and networking errors like h303, h202 and h505.
With every problem, there comes a solution and the same thing applies for the problems with QuickBooks. The above mentioned tools can help you to fix the problems with QB, so that you can work on the app without any hurdle.
Veer, Editor at Elucentra is well versed in all the fields of accounting software, cloud computing and cyber security. With a vast experience of more than 6 years, he has been a major contributor to all the knowledge based platforms of cloud based accounting software and has been advising people on latest technology and the most common issues related to the world of cloud.
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply.


text:
Dear Terry,
Oh, the Nineties. I wore some outrageous outfits, ingested copious amounts of recreational pharmaceuticals, and watched a ton of movies. There were a lot of edgy, post-Tarantino flicks that glorified drugs, nihilism, and violence and also managed to be funny and sexy. The Way of the Gun, Out of Sight, and Two Days in the Valley sprung immediately to mind while watching War on Everyone. With characters that spew quotes from philosophers as often as they curse, consume too many illicit substances, and chase bad guys in a 70s Monte Carlo while listening to Glen Campbell, I felt like I was back on my second-hand couch in my little Waverly Street apartment about to spark up a joint before settling in for a wild two-hour cinematic ride. Though like many things from the 90's I've outgrown,War on Everyone is fun to revisit, but the nostalgia effect too often dips into self-indulgence.
Michael Pena and Alexander Skarsgard play crooked buddy cops Bob and Terry, and you deck them out in natty, three-piece suits. When we meet them, they are chasing down a mime. Bob asks dryly, "if you hit a mime, does it make a sound?" Terry provides the answer shortly after. This kind of pithiness sets the tone for a film that drifts back and forth from the ridiculous to the sublime, rarely managing to find the perfect balance between the two. But when it does, it is almost magical. Many of those moments aren't delivered as drolly as the dialogue. They come courtesy of the art direction, and from your over-the-top costume choices.
Instead of real people, we mostly get actors in costumes, and what costumes they are. Shady informants, Reggie X and Padraic wear matching Reebok tracksuits while giving each other foot massages and ratting each other out. Evil Brit Lord Magnan, and his creepy henchman Russell are resplendent in colourful three-piece suits seemingly stolen from the Starsky & Hutch wardrobe archives. When Terry hits on hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold Jackie, he is in a white –t and cowboy hat, and she is in a skimpy majorette ensemble. What makes these costumes – and the film itself – pop are sets painted in vibrant, primary hues, decorated with mid-Century modern furniture and props, set against a desolate desert landscape. A post-coital scene sees Terry looking out the window at the city skyline. It is evocative and beautiful, but it feels mismatched beside talky scenes of Bob discussing Simone de Beauvoir, or lamenting Jennifer Lopez' almost bare tits in Out of Sight.
In his previous films, The Guard and Calvary, writer/director John Michael McDonagh gave us heroes that blur the line between good and bad. Morally flawed characters are often the most interesting to follow, but they need to have heart. Terry is supposed to be the emotional center of this film, but like the rest of the characters, his traits seem manufactured merely for tragicomic effect.
The scenes that really work are the ones between Terry and Jackie. They have an electric chemistry that follows them from the bedroom to Terry's minimalist manse, where they dance to Glen Campbell's Rhinestone Cowboy, a song that I heretofore never considered the least bit sexy and likely never will again. Jackie is played by Tessa Thompson, who is quickly becoming one of my favourite young actors. Cringe-worthy scenes where she reads Susan Faludi poolside and Terry asks her if feminists can still wear hotpants and call themselves feminists wouldn't have been salvageable in lesser hands. Like the rainbow spike heels she wears to go hiking with Terry and the young boy they accidentally adopt, she can pull off charmingly wacky without bordering on Manic Pixie Dreamgirl territory.
War on Everyone seems mainly to be at war with its place in time, unsure if it's a 90's comic-thriller throwback, or a 70s cop show, borrowing elements from both which start out fun, but eventually drain the viewer. Set in modern day, jokes about racist law enforcement, thinly veiled misogyny, and a dark subplot about child pornography clash as badly as floral and plaid. There were some genuine laugh out loud moments that, like my 90s turquoise snakeskin pants, which were so, so wrong and made me wish that they fit better with the rest of the outfit. And yet, despite these clashing elements and not because of them, I enjoyed this film far more than I like to admit.
Maybe it's time to break those turquoise snakeskins out of retirement.
Or maybe not.


text:
Thanks to our northern hemisphere counter-parts I've been privy to all sorts of interesting cold weather things from making instant snow to the ingenuity that people come up with when they're snowed in. Here in Australia we do get the up on the other end of the spectrum quite often during summer however although that doesn't really drive us to do much more than sit around a pool and drink copious amounts of beer. So you can imagine then that anything involving sub-zero temperatures is going to be somewhat intriguing to us, especially something as cool as this:
There's nothing particularly complicated about what's going on here but the demonstration is quite novel. What you're seeing is the formation of ice crystals on the surface of a soap bubble which starts off slow but ramps up significantly as more crystals form. I think this is partially due to the way crystals form as they usually need a rough surface to attach to. This is how those instant ice videos work as the bottles don't have any anchor points for the crystals to form but once you shake it up a bit you give them a surface to attach to.
There was one question that was left unanswered due to the video cutting off at the end however: whether or not it'd still float after it was frozen.
Now the bubble isn't increasing in mass, it's simply changing forms. There's the possibility that some of the moisture from the air outside the bubble will condense onto the crystalline surface however I don't think that'd change the mass by an appreciable amount. The density would also be going down as well thanks to water's intriguing property of getting less dense as changes into ice. All those factors together would indicate that a frozen soap bubble would behave in much the same way as a regular one but I'd still like to see this hypothesis tested.
Although I do much prefer warmer climates, so this will have to be an exercise that's left up to the reader.
Much like my stance on Instagram I've seemingly been at odds with the BitCoin community ever since I penned my first post on it almost 2 years ago. The angst seems to stem primarily from the fact that I lumped it in with Ponzi schemes thanks to its early adopter favouritism and reliance on outside wealth injection. After the first crash however BitCoins started to show some stability and their intended function started to be their primary use. Indeed the amount of investment in the BitCoin ecosystem has sky-rocketed in the past year or so and this had led to a period of much more mild growth that was far more sustainable than its previous spikes were.
It was for that reason that I held my tongue on the latest round of price volatility as I assumed it was just the market recovering from the shock of the Pirateat40 scheme unravelling. That particular incident had all the makings of another price crash but it was obvious that whilst there was a great deal of value lost it wasn't enough to make a lasting impression on the economy and it soon recovered back to a healthy percentage of its previous value. The last month however has started to show some worrying trends that hark back to the speculative bubble.
If you zoom in on either of those 2 ramps the gradients are frighteningly similar although the price jump is from $15 to $25 rather than $3 to $10. Whilst the value jump might not be as severe as it was before (~66% rather than 300%) it's still cause for some concern due to the time frame that it has happened in. When the value jumps up this fast it encourages people to keep their BitCoins rather than using them and attracts those who are looking to make a return. This puts even more upward pressure on the price which eventually leads to the kind of value crash that happened back in 2011.
Others would disagree with me however, saying that its actually a great time to invest in BitCoins. The reasons Anzaldi gives for wanting you to invest in BitCoins however don't make a whole lot of sense as he doesn't believe this round of growth is unsustainable (and even admits that the only other thing that gives this kind of ROI are all scams) and that the reward halving coupled with the deployment of ASIC chips are what are behind this stratospheric, real growth. The fact of the matter is that neither of these really has any influence over the current market rate for BitCoins, it all comes down to what people are willing to pay for them.
Prior to the lead up of the previous crash BitCoins had already experienced some pretty crazy growth, going from prices measured in cents to dollars in the space of a couple months. This immediately led to a flood of people entering the market who were seeking fast returns and had no intention of using BitCoins for their intended purpose. This current round of growth feels eerily familiar to back then and with people seeing rapid growth its highly likely that those same speculators will come back. It's those speculators that are driving the price of BitCoins up not the factors that Anzaldi claims. If they were the price would have begun this current upward trend back in November (it did go up, but not like this and stablized shortly after) and the introduction of ASICs is far more likely to flood the market with more coins as hardware investors look to recoup some of their investments, rather than holding onto them for the long haul.
This kind of wild volatility isn't helping BitCoins intended use as an universal currency that was free of any central agency. If this growth spurt leads to a new stable equilibrium then no harm, no foul but it really does look like history repeating itself. I'm hopeful that the market is smart enough to realise this and not get caught up in a buy and hold spree however as they've managed to do that in the past. As long as we remember that it's BitCoin's worth is derived from its liquidity and not its value then these kinds of knife edge situations can be avoided.
In regular financial markets the value of a country's currency is a great marker for how well it's doing in economic terms. The surge in value of the Australian currency over the past 2 years demonstrates how strong our economy was in comparison to the rest of the world, mostly thanks to our strong capitalization of our banks couple with some pocket change from the mining and resources boom. However there's one particular exchange rate where the value of the currency is actually irrelevant to the strength of the underlying economy and a high trading price actually signals that there's something going horribly wrong. The economy I'm referring to is the one of the online cryptocurrency BitCoin.
Long time readers will know that I was very skeptical about the idea at first as it harked back to the days of other online currencies that were ripe for exploitation and all of which inevitably fell down, sometimes with catastrophic consequences. My concerns were mainly centred around the immense amount of wealth that that was concentrated in the hands of the early adopters but over time it shifted to the crazy exchange rates that BitCoins were attracting which inevitably lead to the price crash that happened in the middle of last year. Since then I've been more bullish on the idea of BitCoins because the price has remained steady whilst transaction volumes have started to rise, showing that BitCoins can actually function as a proper currency and not a speculative investment vehicle.
However over the last month or so BitCoin's exchange rate has been creeping up steadily and the last week alone has seen massive gains in the current trading price:
As you can see for the past 6 months or so the price of BitCoins has been relatively steady, trading at around $5 for a good length of time. However just over a month ago the value started to slowly tick upwards and the last two weeks have seen that value explode in some rapid gains, culminating in a massive jump of almost 20% in under a week. Whilst it's nothing like the speculative bubble of last year it does raise concerns that the stability of the BitCoin currency was short lived and the speculators have come back to the market looking to derive some more short term gains from the market they successfully pillaged last year.
Increases like this remind us of the unfortunate fact that at its current size the BitCoin market is still volatile as there are strong correlations between large transaction volumes and huge swings in the exchange rate. This is not a desirable attribute for a currency and is much more amenable to speculative trading, something which has burned BitCoin users in the past. Indeed a rising BitCoin value should cause a rational actor to hold off using is as a currency as they would instead want to hold onto them for as long as possible in order to extract the maximum amount of gain out of them. Such thinking is what lead to the BitCoin price to reach such dizzying heights last year and this last bump in the price has the potential to do it all over again.
For BitCoin's sake I hope this isn't the case as there are many innovative companies betting their core business on the BitCoin idea and a volatile market could easily spell the end for them. It's quite possible that these latest bumps are just blips on the radar but the steady rise over the last month or so really has me worried about a repeat of the speculative bubble that happened last year. Can the BitCoin market correct for this kind of behaviour? Will passionate BitCoiners get roped back into the idea that their BitCoins are investment and not a wealth transfer vehicle? I don't have straight answers to these questions but the next couple months will show if the BitCoin market can learn from the mistakes of its past and hopefully overcome them to become the real virtual currency it has always strived to be.
At the time that I wrote that the BitCoin bubble was bursting I wasn't really sure just how far the digital currency's value would decline. Well here we are 3 months on and the value of a BitCoin has slumped to approximately US$3, an order of magnitude less than the dizzying highs it was on all those months ago. I made the prediction back then that once everyone stopped treating BitCoins as an investment vehicle the nascent currency could actually become what it strived to be rather than a speculator's wet dream. So since one half of my prediction came true (the arguably easy to predict part) one has to wonder, how is BitCoin doing as a currency now?
Image used under a Creative Commons license from BitCoinCharts
The chart above details the dramatic rise and fall of the BitCoin price over the past year. As you can see whilst the value (the line graph) of a BitCoin may have tanked significantly it is still higher than that of what it was a year ago, by a large factor. What's interesting to note though is the trade volume (the bar graph) which you can see in the months preceding the speculative bubble was quite low, almost non-existent for some months. The trading volume after the peak however as been far more active than it has been previously from which we can draw some conclusions about the BitCoin market.
Now the first conclusion I drew from this graph was that the market is becoming far more liquid with more buyers and sellers entering the market. Of course this high level of market activity could also be people attempting to sell down their BitCoin holdings, but that just favours the buyer side of the equation which is what is driving the price down. The volatility in the price is still very much at odds with its aspirations to become a real currency however so until the price hits a floor and stays there for a couple months BitCoin will struggle to be more widely adopted as a transaction medium.
The biggest impact that the drop in price will have though is the drop in free infrastructure it was getting from people mining for BitCoins. Whilst GPU mining was very profitable in the $15+ range when you're getting down around these price levels it's really not economically viable to mine coins. Thus the only people who will still do it are the ones who believe in the idea and want to help out or those who are running BitCoin services like Mt.Gox. Whilst that's far from the BitCoin infrastructure just up and disappearing it does mean that many people who flocked to the BitCoin idea because of the financial feasibility of it will drop it in favour of greener pastures, whatever they might be.
Thus the burst BitCoin bubble is something of a mixed bag. Whilst the increased liquidity and speculator free market is definitely a great help to BitCoin becoming a serious currency the continued price instability and loss of supporters negates those benefits completely. The price crash also hasn't addressed the early adopter problem either, leaving swaths of easily had BitCoins in the hands of a small collective of users.
Summing these all up together it seems that, as a currency at least, BitCoin is still just another alternative currency that's struggling to achieve the goals it set out to accomplish. Technically it's a masterful system that's remained resistant to nearly all attempts to break it with all the problems coming from external parties and not the BitCoin system itself. However the economics of BitCoin are the real issue here and those things can't be overcome with technical genius alone. BitCoin still has a long, long way to go before anyone can seriously consider it as a currency and there's no telling if it'll last long enough for it's teething problems to be overcome.
My opinion hasn't changed much in the month since I wrote my first post on how I think BitCoin is a pyramid scheme, ultimately destined to unravel unceremoniously when all the speculative investors decide to pull the plug and cash out of the BitCoin market. Still the discussion that that post spawned was quite enlightening, forcing me to clarify many points both in my own head and here on my blog. Since then there's been a deluge of other blogs and press chiming in with similar opinions about BitCoin and how its intended purpose is far from its reality. There's been enough noise about BitCoin's issues that last week saw the first major dip in the exchange rate, and it hasn't been smooth sailing since.
The image above is the historic trading price for BitCoins to USD on the biggest BitCoin exchange Mt.Gox. The BitCoin "Black Friday" can be seen as the first dip following the massive peak at around $30. Since that day BitCoin has been shedding value constantly with the latest bid offers hovering around the $18 mark. This is not the kind of volatility you see in something you'd class as a currency where single percentage changes are cause for concern and usually government intervention. In the space of a week BitCoin has shed almost half of its peak value which in any sane market would have seen suspension of trade to prevent a fire sale of the asset. The market isn't showing any signs of recovering either as the market depth report from Mt.Gox shows:
There's a very large discrepancy between the majority of seller's idea of how much BitCoin is worth and what the market is willing to pay for it. The vast majority of sellers are looking to cash out at the mid-twenties range when the highest buy offer doesn't even break the $20 mark. Any rational actor in this sort of market would be looking to get out before the market wipes out all of their value completely and for what its worth I believe the main speculators have probably already withdrawn from the market which is what triggered the initial dip in price. Liquidity in the BitCoin market is fast drying up and that will only serve to drive the price back to (or even below) its initial stable equilibrium.
On the surface this would appear to be the beginning of the end for BitCoin since confidence in the currency is rapidly disappearing with all the accumulated wealth that's being lost to the diving market. However whilst many who were hoping to make their riches with a nascent currency might be finding themselves short changed the diving price of BitCoins means that those who were working against the currencies intentions, I.E. those who were using it as a speculative investment vehicle, are more likely to leave the market alone now that it's been pumped and dumped. Once the price retreats back to more stable levels BitCoin could then start functioning as it is supposed to, as a vehicle for wealth that has no central authority regulating it.
It's not going to be an easy road for BitCoin and its adopters though as confidence in the currency has been dashed with even some of its earliest supporters withdrawing from it. Mining will then no longer be a profit driven enterprise, instead run by those who support the idea and large companies like Mt.Gox who run exchanges. Once the idea that BitCoin's value would ever be increasing has dissipated we may finally see a point where BitCoins are primarily used as a vehicle for value transfer and not speculative investment. It will probably be another month or two before we reach a new stable equilibrium in the BitCoin market but after that I might finally stop harping on about it being an elaborate (though probably unintentional) scheme.
This still doesn't detract from the concentration of wealth for early adopters in the BitCoin ecosystem but once their incentive to hoard currency has vanished then the impact of their vast BitCoin stashes means a whole lot less than it did during the speculative price explosion. This will encourage them to put those BitCoins into circulation adding much needed liquidity to the market and hopefully restoring some more faith in the system. Time will tell if this works out however as with market volumes so low on the BitCoin exchanges price manipulation is bound to happen from time to time and realistically can only be solved by having wider adoption. I'm still not convinced that BitCoin is a safe place for any of my wealth currently but once its recovered from this rapidly bursting bubble I may revisit it, should the want arise.


text:
MMT elects acting CEO as search for permanent replacement goes on
Sweden-based marine surveys specialist MMT has appointed an acting chief executive officer (CEO) as of January 1, 2018.
MMT said on Monday that Peter Forhaug was named as the acting CEO of the company. The company added that the recruitment of a new permanent CEO is ongoing.
Forhaug has a background in finance and has acted as a senior advisor to the board of MMT and is representing MMT at the board of the Swedish Maritime Robotics Centre (SMaRC) research project.
Johan Berg, deputy chairman of the board, said: "I would like to thank Stefan Eliasson for his contribution to build the foundation that has enabled MMT to double the turnover and place MMT in the forefront of the oil and gas inspection market."
Former CEO Stefan Eliasson was named to the position in 2012. Before MMT, Eliasson worked for 11 years with the Swedish shipping company TransAtlantic.
Also, Ola Oskarsson, a man who founded MMT in 1976, will assist Forhaug in the role of vice president.
In related news, MMT and its partner Reach Subsea have received a frame agreement renewal from Norwegian oil giant Statoil covering both survey and light construction for the next three years.


text:
Information and Communication
Zuppa de Clams (Clam Soup) and Salad
I don't want to beat a dead horse … ok, maybe I do. There were changes made to the JTV interface today and broadcasters and viewers alike are buzzing about it. I was out most of the day and didn't notice when the changes happened, but when I tuned in I was surprised to see the major change to the Channel Bar. There is much more real estate now for icons, but the reason for this is that the icon boxes are probably about 1/2 the size. It's tough to make most of them out. When you hover your cursor over an icon the channel name still appears which is great. That way we can confirm what the channel is. What I'd like to see is the viewer count. I don't know why, it's just something that interests me and if it's supplied there, I don't have to enter a channel to see the count.
Change happens. I've written about that in the past. There's no use complaining about it. It's best to just acknowledge, adjust and adapt. But … it's fun and interesting to share opinions about change when it's controversial. I have changed the icon for my channel in an attempt to make it stand out. Thanks to Anthony Quintano who offered to make the change for me, it was done quickly and I think it displays the Justopia.com brand — as it stands now … a simple chef's hat, thanks to Lorenzo72.
It would have been great if we had been made aware of the changes with a little notice so that we could have been prepared for any changes we might have wanted to make.
Traveling Broadcasters
I wonder how long it might take before Justin and team tire of Alan. He's a bit louder and faster moving than the fratboys and from what little I've seen of this visit tonight, he asks a lot of questions. The bright spot was hearing Justin and Emmett live again for at least a few minutes. The quality of the broadcast was pretty miserable. The broadcast was choppy and going in and out and it took me just a few minutes before I got bored and frustrated and moved on.
I was disappointed because I wanted to turn back the clock and have a meal with Justin and the guys, but I just couldn't hang in there. Maybe we'll get another chance tomorrow.
Filed under: Entertainment, Food, New Media, Technology, Web2.0 | Tagged: Broadcast, Foodd, JTV, Justin.tv, Lifecasting, Television, TV | Leave a comment »