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Find the rock as for the East Face, but move up from Sky Pond toward the Southwest corner of the South Face. The route finishes as for the South Face, so you still get the famous finish, although some of the crowds can be avoided. P1: (Standard start) Scramble up to the center of the face on a left-facing system, about 50-60 yards to the left of the South Face route. This 200' 5.easy pitch will land you on a ledge contiguous with the beginning of the chimney pitch of the South Face. P2 & 3: Move a ways to the right and climb an obvious, left-facing corner system for 2 pitches, belaying as you please on 5.6 terrain with many potential belays. This system leans to the left and then back right and can be seen from Sky Pond, although it is less distinct as you move up. These pitches can be combined with some simul-climbing. P4: From the ledge at the top of P3, move a little left and climb up flakes and cracks to the shoulder of the Petit, a long pitch rated 5.7 or so. There is no definite crux. This will place then next belay on the airy shoulder of the Petit. P5: Climb a long pitch of 5.8 cracks and corners, which are mostly left-facing. This is the line of least resistance up the shoulder of the Petit to the next belay, just to the right of the arete. This is a great pitch for scenery and exposure. There are a few 5.8 cruxes. P6: Climb further up the ridge until you step right into a vertical crack. There are two options here, either are likely the crux of the climb. For the left version (6a), the crack will pass a 5.9 roof. The moves are difficult with a pack on and are not that well-protected. Put a few pieces in before arriving at the roof for back up. Crux pro was a 3" cam but was some ways below me, as I was carrying a very light rack. I do not recall what other gear could have been placed higher. Climb up this crack through the roof (see picture of Darrin Livingston approaching the crux). For the right version (6b), the crack is protects reasonably (and has 2 fixed wires) and comes up to a small roof with an undercling and finger crack above it. Either way, step left after the roof back to the arete and move up to the next ledge to belay. P7a: Move over on said ledge to the Pizza Pan belay of the South Face route and follow the South Face to the spectacular summit! P7b: You can continue up through a small bulge and double cracks above and then angle right to the obvious notch below the overhanging summit blade and belay on the east side of the notch. Variation: Skip the first three pitches by starting on the very southwest corner of the Petit, in the gully, making your way up to and through the big left-facing dihedral (5.10b) for a very long pitch to the ledge at the base of pitch 4.
Standard light alpine rack - nuts & hexes with a few cams. Make sure you take plenty of 2' slings, as the route wanders like any other alpine route.
This is a great route and as good as the South Face. The first pitch is easy and can be soloed to save time. The 2nd and 3rd can be combined with a very small amount of simulclimbing on 60m ropes. After the 4th pitch you need to move the belay about 50 ft to the left which puts you on a big ledge directly on the SW corner. On the crux pitch I set serveral small wires that were ok, but got in a great yellow Alien in the crack just over the roof. (I'm not sure where the big cam that Tony mentioned would have gone. You could safely do the whole route with nothing bigger than a #2 Camalot.) This is by far the hardest and also the best part of the route. When referencing guide books the old Gillett book is much more acurate than the Rossiter book. Check out the description of the new rappel route by Chris Cavallaro under the South Face comments. This makes all routes on the Petit much more enjoyable.
Climbed the SW corner on 9/20/03. It was chilly and windy, which probably helped keep the crowds thin (only 2 other parties, both on S. Face). What a spectacular route! I thought all the pitches were distinct, each one was fun for the grade, and the rock was solid (at least where it mattered). We started left of the S. Face route per (old) Gillett and Rossiter guidebooks, and avoided the first 5.4 pitch (which didn't look great anyway) by scrambling in (~4th) from up and around the corner, which put us at the base of the left-facing corner system of p's 2 and 3. The climbing gets a little harder and more fun with each pitch until the pizza pan belay. Thought the crux pitch was one of the best alpine 5.9 pitches around - a steep, daunting-looking hero roof with great holds, a fun second overhang with double cracks, and more fun moves getting to the pizza pan belay. Then it all ends with the amazing last 2 pitches (or 1 long one) of the S. Face - it doesn't get much better in my book. Did the old-school descent because it was so windy, but got on some icy rocks and knee-deep snow going down The Gash - kind of sketchy. Rap route would have been better. Hung a right near the bottom of The Gash and traversed behind the Saber (and one other tower) to the huge gully that leads back to Sky Pond. This gully was no big deal - one rappel from good anchors plus a lot of talus - and it puts you right back at the lake to retrieve your stuff. Did I mention that this route was fun?
Stellar. The exposure at the crux is good. One should plan to spend time for the [descent] as it took a while to do.
Climbed this on Aug. 9. We ended up going up and left instead of up and right at the beginning of the crux pitch, thus taking the left "roof" rather than the right. It is actually a large overhanging flake, that then resulted in some VERY airy moves right up the [arete]. Ended up being about 5.9 as well, but gear was not that great... due to rock quality and decent placements.
Just to confirm what others have said: This route is really good. I thought it was better than the South Face. One can end the crux pitch at the Pizza Pan belay fairly easily with a 50 meter rope, linking what Tony has described as pitches 6 and 7. Getting to Sky Pond right now is not too difficult. There is a pretty well packed trail where there is snow.
Quality route; this route can be done quickly with a 70-m rope by linking pitches.The climbing is not very sustained, and it is easy to move quickly between the cruxes.The 5.9 pitch(es) were worse than expected, kind of wandering up a gully in the corner, through a tiny juggy roof. The best pitch comes as a surprise just before joining the S. Face, when you approach the gigantic roof between yourself and the summit. Straight up, then left to a very airy crack, then back right up to a spacious ledge (from here you can belay to just below the summit w/ a 70m rope). Just as good as the S. Face.
Climbed the Southwest Corner on 6/16/07. It was a Saturday and the South Face was pretty packed. This was a great route! From the first grassy ledge you can link the next two pitches with a 70m and about 10 feet of simul climbing. I managed to get off route on the crux pitch and found another way around the corner to the right that has 2 different cruxes. First was a widening crack through a roof and the second was a finger crack in a left-facing dihedral of polished granite. I have to think that this was in the 10 range but I'm not sure. It eventually met up with the south face route in the middle of the last pitch. It was a fun variation and one of the best climbs I've ever done. Enjoy!
Great route. If you want to get a free gear go do it. I found red Alien with a biner (both in very good shape) on the crux, the cam was not even stuck in the crack :-)) Crux feels easier than some 5.8s in Eldo, IMO. You climb on jugs. And it is VERY well protected. Also, I am not quite sure whether new rappel description is accurate. We did one 160ft rappel (from bolts on climber's right side), then one 200ft to a grassy ledge. At the very end of that second rappel you will see some slings on your right, don't use them, go straight down to a grassy ledge. Then, you go 50-60ft along this ledge to find the third 180ft rappel to the Second Terrace.
We climbed this on Saturday of Labor Day weekend (Aug. 30). It was a perfect cool and sunny day. We were the first party on the route (started at 7:15) and only saw one other party on this route while we were on it. In contrast, the south face seemed to have a steady flow of traffic. If you feel up to the 5.9 crux, then I think this route would be the best option.
Compared to other alpine routes in the park this one felt consistently loose, but nonetheless fun. This past week the descent option of dropping into the gash lent itself to great glissading for a fast descent.
Always seemed like there were 2 ways up after the 3rd pitch. I lead the whole thing. 5.9 seemed like a reasonable grade to me but couldn't really pin down where the actual crux was. Not a one-mover. There wasn't any insecure climbing or friction climbing. Good rock, good exposure, good protection. I thought rout finding was a little funky, but the way we went up worked and was about 5.9. Potential for rope drag is big on the 5-7 pitches, only placed a few pieces and put long runners on every one to avoid this as I went around the arete and back a couple times.
This climb was my first true alpine route. It was a full on alpine experience with waiting out a morning storm in a cavelike feature on the second big ledge, topping out late as a result and rappelling and down-climbing gullies in the dark. What a learning experience. Overall, I thought the route was classic. However, that was more for the experience than the quality of the climbing. The best climbing was the 5.9 steep crack in the left-facing dihedral that Clayton mentions. I found a kneebar rest in the pod at the top that allowed for a hands free rest and shake out with full exposure. This made the crimpy moves above the crack that much easier.
Really great route. I've done the 8 and the 9. From my memory, the 9 has a lot more loose rock. Knock on flakes before you grab them. Other than that, this route is excellent. The crux pitch (which my partner led) is stellar.


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PSVita You've probably played this game. Any well-versed gamer should have played Ninja Gaiden in some form at least once before. It was a big deal on the original Xbox as it marked the return of the classic Ninja Gaiden. Later we s... | 02-20-2012 | ||
PSVita Upon completion, Shinobido 2: Revenge of Zen throws up an interesting question -- does the fun one has with a game justify the fact that it's a glorified port masquerading as a sequel? What if the original game is seven years... | 02-20-2012 | ||
ps4 PSVita Sony is delivering a brand new DLC pack for Escape Plan titled "The Asylum", and it's ready for your perusal on the PSN for .25 (it'll revert back to $4.99 on June 26th). The DLC takes place directly after the events of the g... | 02-16-2012 | ||
ds ps3 psp PSVita wii xbox360 There's nothing like a celebrity death to make some free money for those left behind, and Ubisoft was the lucky company with the videogame rights after Michael Jackson popped off this mortal coil. Michael Jackson: The Experie... | 02-15-2012 | ||
PSVita I LOL'd. | 02-14-2012 | ||
3ds pc ps3 PSVita wii xbox360 In a bizarre turn of events, Ubisoft has been fairly quiet about the actual release date and price of their 3DS iteration of Rayman Origins -- but that all changed as of today. Rayman Origins 3D will launch on June 5 at $29.... | 02-14-2012 | ||
PSVita If Lumines was your drug on the PSP, know that it's been refined and made stronger. This is the hard sh*t, folks. You're in danger of totally crashing and burning with Lumines: Electronic Symphony on the Vita. This is th... | 02-14-2012 | ||
ps4 PSVita [Update: Contest closed! Grand prize winnner is Dreamweaver! Runner-ups are N7, nekobun and Overindulgence!] Yes, you read that right. Freaking ukuleles. We've teamed up with Square Enix to give away a badass Army Corps of He... | 02-14-2012 | ||
ps4 PSVita Super Stardust HD is considered one of the premium PlayStation Network titles available, and one of the most dazzling retro re-imaginings a nostalgic gamer can get his or her hands on. It's a perfect choice to showc... | 02-13-2012 | ||
ps4 PSVita The PlayStation Vita is rich in features, boasting every possible input method a portable gaming system could have to date. Multiple touch interfaces, dual analog sticks, voice control, twin cameras, and even motion sensing; ... | 02-13-2012 |
updated | rating | ||


text:
10.11.12 Links Roundup
- 'Illegal Immigrant' Debate: Univision Takes On The New York Times (The Huffington Post)
Univision shot back in a series of articles critiquing Sullivan's logic and portraying the paper as out-of-touch with Latinos.
The day after Sullivan's post, Univision dredged up a long list of terms The New York Times once allowed in its pages. A partial list includes the terms "wetbacks," "Negro," "Jap," "Redskins," "Chinaman" and "homo."
In a separate post filed the same day titled "The Times Is Behind the Times," Univision noted that media outlets that aim to reach Latino audiences keep away from the term "illegal immigrant."
- Why America Needs White History Month (Comment Is Free)
Most of the history we learn is built on myths. Even the black history we choose to teach in response to eurocentric learning is centered around myths. But those myths are meant to help a people reclaim a history long denied to them, to instil self-esteem in the face of disempowerment. It may not be exactly ideal, but the rationale is at least noble. The myths of white American history perpetuate oppression and inequality. They instil in white America a false sense of self-imperviousness to facts or logic.
When George Washington can't tell a lie, Abraham Lincoln singlehandedly freed the enslaved, FDR lifted the nation out of depression and Ronald Reagan tore down the Berlin Wall with his bare hands … it's no wonder Michele Bachmann believes the founding fathers fought to end slavery, Newt Gingrich thinks poor black children should be janitors to teach them about work ethic, Rick Perry hunts at "Niggerhead" and sees no problem, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney can tell "jokes" about the president's birth certificate and his campaign co-chair, John Sununu, can refer to the president as "lazy" and "not that bright".
- 50 Other Best Films Of The 1990s (Slate)
Letting eight individuals separately make their own independent choices, and then averaging them together, has the ring of aesthetic purity to it. But let's be real: There's nothing "pure" about a canon built from the idiosyncratic tastes of eight, mostly male, mostly white people. There's nothing "pure" about canon-building at all. That doesn't mean it can't be fun or worthwhile! But if you're going to do it, you should consider the implications and the consequences, and proceed accordingly. If your selection committee is mostly male and almost entirely (or entirely?) white, recognize that this may lead to certain blind spots, and weigh whether or not putting forward a canon that averages together such tastes will really reflect the diversity of international cinema in the 1990s.
That a rapper would make an album so overtly about politics shouldn't really be all that newsworthy, but in today's America, it is.
"It's the time more than it's him," says Bakari Kitwana, author of the forthcoming book "Hip Hop Activism in The Obama Era." "In many ways we're reliving the '80s in the ways in which poverty has leveled the economy for black folks."
Lupe's words aren't unprecedented. There's a long list of outspoken mainstream hip-hop artists, one that includes Public Enemy's 1989 release "Fear of a Black Planet", which was eventually selected for preservation in the Library of Congress. But as Eric Arnold noted a while back on Colorlines, the genre has become more commercial force than protest music. More recently, Los Angeles-based rapper Kendrick Lamar told a reporter that he "don't do no voting," and then went on to explain that there are forces "beyond people" that render voting useless.
The quip came just weeks after Lupe made his own headlines with his criticism of voting, which in turn ignited a heated debate on Twitter. "Young black men are going to listen to him, and they are the ones who have decisions made for them, decisions that they are not even involved in, which is silly to me," political commentator D.L. Hughley told a reporter during the debate . "There are more black men in prison then there were ever slaves. And it's silly to me that people don't want to have a hand in their future."
- Steel Magnolias And Positive Black Images Aren't Above Critique! (Ashleigh, Not Ashley)
As I and several other critiqued "Steel Magnolias," several other came to its defense saying it shouldn't be criticized because it showed positive images of Black people and it was better than the reality television that has been dominating the airwaves as of late.
That is a total and complete load of crap.
This isn't the first time I've seen people use this argument. I saw it with "Red Tails." I saw it with "Reed Between the Lines." For some reason, there is a certain section of Black America that thinks any and everything positive is above critique. It doesn't matter if it's boring, badly written, culturally inaccurate or anything else as long as it doesn't feature negroes fighting, tossing drinks or any other type of chaos.
"Young black men are going to listen to him, and they are the ones who
have decisions made for them, decisions that they are not even involved
in, which is silly to me," political commentator D.L. Hughley told a reporter
during the debate . "There are more black men in prison then there were
ever slaves. And it's silly to me that people don't want to have a hand
in their future."Do you know what I find silly?
The idea that a black man voting for Obama is going to change the for-profit prison business that is transforming our prison system into modern slave labour camps. Companies get paid to warehouse largely black/brown men. Is voting Obama in a month going to fix that? The rate of home foreclosures has continued largely unabated under Obama, so is voting Romney going to fix that? The hollowing out of the American middle class through imperial wars of aggression and tax breaks for the wealthy, is voting Obama going to fix that? The deindustrialization of the American economy, the rise of the police/surveillance state, fracking poisoning ground water, toxic radiation dumped near poorer neighbourhoods, the disintegration of government schools, the destruction of medical marijuana dispensaries in LA, and the unprecedented deportations under Obama are all continuing, so maybe vote Romney/Ryan?Just once, I would like someone to explain to me what "hand" it is that black people have in the electoral process. Healthcare will not be repealed because the insurance companies, not Obama. So the for-profit insurance system has been left unchanged, only now it's being subsidized by the government. So whether you vote Obama/Romney you get largely similar policies. I think people should vote Obama because he is slightly less terrible than Romney, but that's hardly something to be shout about.
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text:
I enjoyed the serenity of the place. The beauty of the sea and the pool slide area captured my heart. The staff were nice. I would say that it would be best to order meals in advance especially if you're with the big group.
- Also Known As:
- Palau Beach Hotel Negros Island
- Palau Beach Resort Philippines/Negros Island


text:
Sphinx-4 Links SourceForge ZipCity - A demonstration of Sphinx-4 using Java Web Start technology. Read more about the ZipCity demo, or Try it. |
General InformationInstallation
Sphinx-4 in Detail
Sphinx-4 is a state-of-the-art speech recognition system written entirely in the JavaTM programming language. It was created via a joint collaboration between the Sphinx group at Carnegie Mellon University, Sun Microsystems Laboratories, Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs (MERL), and Hewlett Packard (HP), with contributions from the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Sphinx-4 started out as a port of Sphinx-3 to the Java
programming language, but evolved into a recognizer designed
to be much more flexible than Sphinx-3, thus becoming an
excellent platform for speech research.
Live mode and batch mode speech recognizers, capable of recognizing discrete and continuous speech.
Generalized pluggable front end architecture. Includes pluggable implementations of preemphasis, Hamming window, FFT, Mel frequency filter bank, discrete cosine transform, cepstral mean normalization, and feature extraction of cepstra, delta cepstra, double delta cepstra features.
Generalized pluggable language model architecture. Includes pluggable language model support for ASCII and binary versions of unigram, bigram, trigram, Java Speech API Grammar Format (JSGF), and ARPA-format FST grammars.
Generalized acoustic model architecture. Includes pluggable support for Sphinx-3 acoustic models.
Generalized search management. Includes pluggable support for breadth first and word pruning searches.
Utilities for post-processing recognition results, including obtaining confidence scores, generating lattices and embedding ECMAScript into JSGF tags.
Standalone tools. Includes tools for displaying waveforms and spectrograms and generating features from audio.
(NOTE: The links in this section point to local
files created by javadoc. If they are broken, please follow
the instructions on Create
Javadocs to create these links.)
Sphinx-4 is a very flexible system capable of performing many different types of recognition tasks. As such, it is difficult to characterize the performance and accuracy of Sphinx-4 with just a few simple numbers such as speed and accuracy. Instead, we regularly run regression tests on Sphinx-4 to determine how it performs under a variety of tasks. These tasks and their latest results are as follows (each task is progressively more difficult than the previous task):
The following table compares the performance of Sphinx 3.3 with Sphinx-4.
Test | S3.3 WER | S4 WER | S3.3 RT | S4 RT(1) | S4 RT (2) | Vocabulary Size | Language Model |
TI46 | 1.217 | 0.168 | 0.14 | .03 | .02 | 11 | isolated digits recognition |
TIDIGITS | 0.661 | 0.549 | 0.16 | 0.07 | 0.05 | 11 | continuous digits |
AN4 | 1.300 | 1.192 | 0.38 | 0.25 | 0.20 | 79 | trigram |
RM1 | 2.746 | 2.88 | 0.50 | 0.50 | 0.41 | 1,000 | trigram |
WSJ5K | 7.323 | 6.97 | 1.36 | 1.22 | 0.96 | 5,000 | trigram |
HUB4 | 18.845 | 18.756 | 3.06 | ~4.4 | 3.95 | 60,000 | trigram |
Note that performance work on the HUB4 test is not complete
This data was collected on a dual CPU UltraSPARC(R)-III running at 1015 MHz with 2G of memory.
Sphinx-4 has been built and tested on the Solaris TM Operating Environment, Mac OS X, Linux and Win32 operating systems. Running, building, and testing Sphinx-4 requires additional software. Before you start, you will need the following software available on your machine.
Sphinx-4 has two packages available for download:
See this FAQ question to help determine whether you should get the binary or the source distribution.
After you have downloaded the distribution, unjar the
ZIP files using the jar
command which is in
the bin
directory of your Java
jar xvf sphinx4-{version}-bin.zip
jar xvf sphinx4-{version}-src.zip
For both downloads, a directory called "sphinx4-{version}" will be created.
There are also the RM1 acoustic model, and HUB4 acoustic and language models, available for download at the same location on SourceForge. Download them only if you want to run the regression tests for RM1 and HUB4.
If you want to be able to get the latest updates from the svn repository, you should retrieve the code from the repository on SourceForge. The Sphinx-4 code is located at sourceforge.net as open source. Please follow the instructions below to retrieve it.
% svn co https://cmusphinx.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/cmusphinx/trunk/sphinx4
Since the sphinx4-{version}-bin.zip distribution does not contain the source code, you must download the sphinx4-{version}-src.zip, or retrieved the code from SourceForge using svn, in order to be able to build from the sources. The software required for building Sphinx-4 are listed in the Required Software section.
Setup JSAPI 1.0
Before you build Sphinx-4, it is important to setup your environment to support the Java Speech API (JSAPI), because a number of tests and demos rely on having JSAPI installed.
Run ant
To build Sphinx-4, at the command prompt change to the
directory where you installed Sphinx-4 (usually, a simple "cd
sphinx4" will do). Set required environment variables.
to the location of JDK, ANT_HOME
to the location of ant and and PATH
to include
both bin subfolder of JDK and bin subfolder of ant
variables. For example:
export JAVA_HOME=/usr/local/jdk1.6.0_14 export ANT_HOME=/usr/local/apache-ant-1.8.0 export PATH=/usr/local/jdk1.6.0_10/bin:/usr/local/apache-ant-1.8.0/bin:$PATH
Then type the following:
This executes the Apache
Ant command to build the Sphinx-4 classes under the
directory, the jar files under the
directory, and the demo jar files under the
To delete all the output from the build to give you a fresh start:
ant clean
The javadocs have already been built if you downloaded the sphinx4-{version}-bin.zip. In order to build the javadocs yourself, you must download the sphinx4-{version}-src.zip distribution instead. To build the javadocs, go to the top level directory ("sphinx4-{version}"), and type:
ant javadoc
This will build javadocs from public classes, displaying only the public methods and fields. In general, this is all the information you will need. If you need more details, such as private or protected classes, you can generate the corresponding javadoc by doing, for example:
ant -Daccess=private javadoc
The setup is straightforward:
-directory as source folders to your
, lib/tags.jar
and lib/jsapi.jar
to your project classpath.
Due to license restrictions jsapi.jar
not shipped directly with Sphinx4 but can be easily created
by running lib/jsapi.sh
on windows) once.build.xml
as project ant file. This can be done
in most cases by just right-clicking the
in the file navigator pane of your IDE
and selecting "Add as project ant file". To debug the
demo applications you also need to add the
folder and the acoustic model jars
(that can be deployed to the
-directory with a simple
ant all
) to your classpath.Sphinx-4 contains a number of demo programs. If you downloaded the binary distribution (sphinx4-{version}-bin.zip), the JAR files of the demos are already built, so you can just run them directly. However, if you downloaded the source distribution (sphinx4-{version}-src.zip or via svn), you need to build the demos. Click on the links below for instructions on how to build and run the demos.
There is also a live-mode test program (this link only works if you downloaded the source distribution), which is available if you download the sphinx-src-{version}.zip file but not available in the sphinx-bin-{version}.zip file.
The AudioTool is a visual tool that records and displays the waveform and spectrogram of an audio signal. It is available in both the binary and source releases.
The document
Sphinx-4 Configuration Management describes, in detail,
how to configure a Sphinx-4 system.
The document
Sphinx-4 Instrumentation describes, in detail, how to use
the instrumentation facilities of the Sphinx-4 system.
Sphinx-4 contains a number of regression tests using common speech databases. Again, you have to download the source distribution or downloaded the source tree using svn in order to get the regression tests directory. The regression tests we have are:
Before you run any of the tests, make sure that you have built Sphinx-4 already. To do so, go to the top level and type:
You also need to make sure you have the appropriate acoustic model(s) installed. More details below.
The Sphinx-4 regression tests have different directories for the different tasks. The directory sphinx4/tests/performance contains directories named ti46, tidigits, an4, rm1, hub4, and some other tests. Each of these directories contains a build.xml with targets specific to the particular task. The build.xml allows you to run a number of different tests. Type:
ant -projecthelpto list a help text with the possible targets.
The TIDIGITS models are already included as part of the distribution. Therefore, you do not need to download them separately. You must have the TI46 test data, available from the LDC TI46 website.
You need to edit the batch file called
, located in
directory. You will need
to change it such that it matches where you stored the TI46
test files. Refer to the section Batch
Files for detail about the format of batch files.
To run the tests:
% cd sphinx4/tests/performance/ti46
% ant -projecthelp # to see a list of possible targets
% ant ti46_wordlist
The TIDIGITS models are already included as part of the distribution. Therefore, you do not need to download them separately.
You must have the TIDIGITS test data, available from the LDC TIDIGITS website.
You need to edit the batch file called
, located in the
directory. You will
need to change it such that it matches where you stored the
TIDIGITS test files. Refer to the section Batch Files for detail about the format of
batch files.
To run the tests:
% cd sphinx4/tests/performance/tidigits
% ant -projecthelp # to see a list of possible targets
% ant tidigits_flat_unigram
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) models are already included as part of the distribution. Therefore, you do not need to download them separately.
Download the big endian raw audio format of the AN4 Database. Unpack it at a directory of your choice:
% gunzip an4_raw.bigendian.tar.gz
% tar -xvf an4_raw.bigendian.tar
Then update the following batch files (located in the
directory), so that they
match up with where you unpacked the AN4 data. You probably
just need to replace all instances of the string
inside these batch
files. Please refer to the Batch
Files section for details about batch files:
After you have updated the batch files, you can run the tests by:
% cd sphinx4/tests/performance/an4
% ant -projecthelp # to see a list of possible targets
% ant an4_words_unigram
Make sure that you have downloaded the binary RM1 model
file, called
, located
at the sphinx4
package in the
downloads page.
Then in the build file for the RM1 tests,
, changed
the classpath
property of the build file to
point to the location of your
You must have the RM1 test data, available from the LDC RM1 website.
You also need to prepare a batch file called
, by following instructions in the
Batch Files section. There is
already one in the RM1 test directory, but it will not work
for you, since the paths to test files will not match your
To run the tests:
% cd sphinx4/tests/performance/rm1
% ant -projecthelp # to see a list of possible targets
% ant rm1_bigram
You must have the WSJ0 and WSJ1 for training, WSJ0 for testing. This data is available from LDC WSJ0 and LDC WSJ1. The rest is similar to other performance tests.
You must have the HUB4 test data, available from the LDC HUB4 website.
You must download the binary HUB4 model file, called
, and
the binary HUB4 trigram language model, called
, both located at the
package in the
downloads page. For the trigram language model file,
unpack it by:
jar xvf HUB4_trigram_lm.zip
The trigram model file is called
. Then, in the build file
for the HUB4 tests,
, changed the
property of the build file to point to the
location of your
. In the
configuration file,
, change the
'location' of the 'trigramModel' component to where your
file is located.
You also need to prepare a batch file, which is currently
called f0_hub4.batch
in the build.xml file, by
following instructions in the Batch
Files section.
To run the test:
% cd sphinx4/tests/performance/hub4
% ant -projecthelp # to see a list of possible targets
% ant hub4_trigram
Each batch mode regression test consists of the following components:
To learn about how to setup a regression test, take a look at the walkthrough of setting up the AN4 tests.
Batch files are used in batch mode regressions tests. It is a text file that contains the list of files to be processed, with the transcription for each file. The format is as shown below: one line for each file, where the first element in a line is the file name, which can be an absolute or relative path, and includes the file extension; after the file name, the words that make up the transcription for the audio. Sphinx-4 uses the transcription provided here to compute the system's accuracy after each sentence is processed. An utterance's processing produces in a hypothesis for what was said. This hypothesis is compared with the transcription, i.e., the hypothesis is aligned against the reference transcript, and a summary of the results is reported.
/lab/speech/sphinx4/data/tidigits/test/raw16k/man/man.ah.24z982za.raw two four zero nine eight two zero
/lab/speech/sphinx4/data/tidigits/test/raw16k/man/man.ah.25896o4a.raw two five eight nine six oh four
An example batch file is tidigits.batch
(this link only works if you downloaded the source
The audio files used by Sphinx-4 can contain raw audio or cepstra, which is a form of encoded speech. The Java platform has support for other data formats, such as MS WAV or Sun's au, but, provided as is, Sphinx-4 can handle only raw data.
The audio defaults to 2 bytes/sample, at 16000 samples per second. The files are expected to be binaries without header. The Java platform assumes big endian order, always. These defaults can be changed. For example, the byte order or the sampling rate can be changed.
The input can also be cepstra. The cepstral file has a 4 byte integer containing the number of floats that follow. The following floats are 13 dimensional vectors concatenated. Notice that since the first piece of information is the number of floats, the total file size can be computed. If a comparisons with the actual size fails, either the byte order has to be reversed, or the file is corrupted. Importantly, the byte order can be automatically detected.
of Setting up the AN4 Tests
To illustrate the process of setting up a regression test, lets use AN4, an existing test, as an example. Use the following steps to create the AN4 tests.
. For example, the AN4
tests reside in tests/performance/an4
. Since the AN4
test data already comes in raw audio format, no conversion
is necessary. However, other test databases might require
conversion to raw audio. For example, the TIDIGITS test
files are in SPHERE format, so it is necessary to convert
them to raw audio format before it can be read by the
Sphinx-4 front end. This is usually accomplished by using
the program sox
on UNIX platforms.tests/performance/an4/an4_full.batch
looks like:
/lab/speech/sphinx4/data/an4/an4_clstk/fash/an251-fash-b.raw yesAll batch files should reside in the test directory, in this case
/lab/speech/sphinx4/data/an4/an4_clstk/fash/an253-fash-b.raw go
/lab/speech/sphinx4/data/an4/an4_clstk/fash/an254-fash-b.raw yes
/lab/speech/sphinx4/data/an4/an4_clstk/fash/an255-fash-b.raw u m n y h six
the top level directory will create the JAR file for the
WSJ model. The JAR file should be included in the classpath
of the application you are deploying. In this case, the WSJ
JAR file
is included in the java command line inside the build.xml
run file. We also need to specify in the config file (see
the next item below) the acoustic model class we are using,
which in this case is
. The dictionary is also specified in the config file using
the resource mechanism of Sphinx-4.tests/performance/an4/an4.config.xml
, please
take a look at it. This file describes how the batch-mode
recognizer and its various sub-components should be
configured. Note that this file also contains
configurations for the live-mode recognizer, which is not
the subject of interest of this walkthrough. In the
following we will refer to components in the config file
using highlights
In an4.config.xml, the batch-mode recognizer is called
. It uses the Recognizer called
, which contains the
, as well as various monitors that
keeps track of recognition accuracy, speed, and memory.
The decoder
contains the
, which in turn contains the
, the pruner
, the
, and the activeList
Refer to the Javadoc (go
to bottom of the page) for a description of each of these
components. The linguist used is the
, and the grammar of the
is either the
, which is a file with a list
of words, e.g.,
(i.e., N-gram language model), or
(i.e., finite state transducer grammar).
The lmGrammar
uses a language model file (text-based
for AN4) generated by the CMU Statistical
Language Modeling (SLM) Toolkit. The flatLinguist
also specifies the acoustic model used, and in this case it is the
WSJ models. The location and format of the WSJ model, as well as
the location of the various files in the model, are also specified.
The scorer
contains the front end, which is called
since it produces MFCC features.
is necessary to run Ant. This file
is the Ant version of the Makefile in Make. All Ant targets
are listed in this file. For details on how to write this
file, refer to the documentation at http://ant.apache.org/. Lets
use the first Ant target, an4_words_wordlist
as an example. This Ant target invokes the
command on the class
This class takes a configuration file
) and a batch file
) as arguments. This class
looks for the component named batch
in the
configuration file. The configuration manager will create
this component (and its subcomponents). Therefore, the
should always be named "batch"
in the
config.xml file. Other AN4 Ant targets are created
similarly.Currently, Sphinx-4 uses models created with SphinxTrain, also available at cmusphinx.org. SphinxTrain generates acoustic models in the format used by Sphinx-3. To create a package as used by Sphinx-4, please check the page about using SphinxTrain models.
The two main acoustic models that are used by Sphinx-4,
TIDIGITS and Wall Street Journal, are already included in the
directory of the binary distribution. For
the source distribution, you will build it when you type
at the top level directory. Our regression
tests also uses the RM1 and HUB4 models, which are available
for download separately on the download page. Sphinx-4 can
handle model packages provided as a jar file.
The language model used by Sphinx-4 follows the ARPA format. Language models provided with the acoustic model packages were created with the Carnegie Mellon University Statistical Language Modeling toolkit (CMU SLM toolkit), available at CMU. A manual is available there.
The language model is created from a list of transcriptions. Given a file with training transcription, the following script creates a list of words that appear in the transcriptions, then creates a bigram and a trigram LM files in the ARPA format. The file with extension ccs contains the context cues, and it is usually a list of words used as markers - beginning or end of speech etc.
set task = RM
# Location of the CMU SLM toolkit
set bindir = ~/src/CMU-SLM_Toolkit_v2/bin
cat $task.transcript | $bindir/text2wfreq | $bindir/wfreq2vocab > $task.vocab
set mode = "-absolute"
# Create bigram
cat $task.transcript | $bindir/text2idngram -n 2 -vocab $task.vocab | \
$bindir/idngram2lm $mode -context $task.ccs -n 2 -vocab $task.vocab \
-idngram - -arpa $task.bigram.arpa
# Create trigram
cat $task.transcript | $bindir/text2idngram -n 3 -vocab $task.vocab | \
$bindir/idngram2lm $mode -context $task.ccs -n 3 -vocab $task.vocab \
-idngram - -arpa $task.trigram.arpa
Sphinx-4 uses the Java Speech API Grammar Format (JSGF) to perform speech recognition using a BNF-style grammar. Currently, you can only use JSGF grammars with the FlatLinguist. To specify JSGF grammars, set the following in the configuration file:
<component name="flatLinguist" type="edu.cmu.sphinx.linguist.flat.FlatLinguist">
<property name="grammar" value="jsgfGrammar">
// ... other properties ...
<component name="jsgfGrammar" type="edu.cmu.sphinx.jsgf.JSGFGrammar">
<property name="grammarLocation" value="...URL of grammar directory"/>
For information on how to write JSGF grammars, and how to
specify the location of your JSGF grammar file(s), and the
limitations of the current implementation of JSGF grammar,
please refer to the Javadocs for
The Sphinx-4 API can be found in the javadoc documentation.
If the previous is broken, please build the javadocs using the instructions in Create Javadocs. In fact, rebuilding javadocs is something you should do every time you change code in Sphinx-4.
In this section, we will provide an overview of Sphinx-4, starting with an introduction of HMM-based recognizers. We will highlight in red those keywords that are critical to understanding Sphinx-4.
Sphinx-4 is an HMM-based speech recognizer. HMM stands for Hidden Markov Models, which is a type of statistical model. In HMM-based speech recognizers, each unit of sound (usually called a phoneme) is represented by a statistical model that represents the distribution of all the evidence (data) for that phoneme. This is called the acoustic model for that phoneme. When creating an acoustic model, the speech signals are first transformed into a sequence of vectors that represent certain characteristics of the signal, and the parameters of the acoustic model are then estimated using these vectors (usually called features). This process is called training the acoustic models.
During speech recognition, features are derived from the incoming speech (we will use "speech" to mean the same thing as "audio") in the same way as in the training process. The component of the recognizer that generates these features is called the front end. These live features are scored against the acoustic model. The score obtained indicates how likely that a particular set of features (extracted from live audio) belongs to the phoneme of the corresponding acoustic model.
The process of speech recognition is to find the best possible sequence of words (or units) that will fit the given input speech. It is a search problem, and in the case of HMM-based recognizers, a graph search problem. The graph represents all possible sequences of phonemes in the entire language of the task under consideration. The graph is typically composed of the HMMs of sound units concatenated in a guided manner, as specified by the grammar of the task. As an example, lets look at a simple search graph that decodes the words "one" and "two". It is composed of the HMMs of the sounds units of the words "one" and "two":
Constructing the above graph requires knowledge from various sources. It requires a dictionary, which maps the word "one" to the phonemes W, AX and N, and the word "two" to T and OO. It requires the acoustic model to obtain the HMMs for the phonemes W, AX, N, T and OO. In Sphinx-4, the task of constructing this search graph is done by the linguist.
Usually, the search graph also has information about how likely certain words will occur. This information is supplied by the language model. Suppose that, in our example, the probability of someone saying "one" (e.g., 0.8) is much higher than saying "two" (0.2). Then, in the above graph, the probability of the transition between the entry node and the first node of the HMM for W will be 0.8, while the probability of the transition between the entry node and the first node of the HMM for T will be 0.2. The path to "one" will consequently have a higher score.
Once this graph is constructed, the sequence of parametrized speech signals (i.e., the features) is matched against different paths through the graph to find the best fit. The best fit is usually the least cost or highest scoring path, depending on the implementation. In Sphinx-4, the task of searching through the graph for the best path is done by the search manager.
As you can see from the above graph, a lot of the nodes have self transitions. This can lead to a very large number of possible paths through the graph. As a result, finding the best possible path can take a very long time. The purpose of the pruner is to reduce the number of possible paths during the search, using heuristics like pruning away the lowest scoring paths.
As we described earlier, the input speech signal is transformed into a sequence of feature vectors. After the last feature vector is decoded, we look at all the paths that have reached the final exit node (the red node). The path with the highest score is the best fit, and a result taking all the words of that path is returned.
In this section, we describe the main components of Sphinx-4, and how they work together during the recognition process. First of all, lets look at the architecture diagram of Sphinx-4. It contains almost all the concepts (the words in red) that were introduced in the previous section. There are a few additional concepts in the diagram, which we will explain promptly.
When the recognizer starts up, it constructs the front end (which generates features from speech), the decoder, and the linguist (which generates the search graph) according to the configuration specified by the user. These components will in turn construct their own subcomponents. For example, the linguist will construct the acoustic model, the dictionary, and the language model. It will use the knowledge from these three components to construct a search graph that is appropriate for the task. The decoder will construct the search manager, which in turn constructs the scorer, the pruner, and the active list.
Most of these components represents interfaces. The search manager, linguist, acoustic model, dictionary, language model, active list, scorer, pruner, and search graph are all Java interfaces. There can be different implementations of these interfaces. For example, there are two different implementations of the search manager. Then, how does the system know which implementation to use? It is specified by the user via the configuration file, an XML-based file that is loaded by the configuration manager. In this configuration file, the user can also specify the properties of the implementations. One example of a property is the sample rate of the incoming speech data.
The active list is a component that requires explanation. Remember we mentioned that there can be many possible paths through the search graph. Sphinx-4 currently implements a token-passing algorithm. Each time the search arrives at the next state in the graph, a token is created. A token points to the previous token, as well as the next state. The active list keeps track of all the current active paths through the search graph by storing the last token of each path. A token has the score of the path at that particular point in the search. To perform pruning, we simply prune the tokens in the active list.
When the application asks the recognizer to perform recognition, the search manager will ask the scorer to score each token in the active list against the next feature vector obtained from the front end. This gives a new score for each of the active paths. The pruner will then prune the tokens (i.e., active paths) using certain heuristics. Each surviving paths will then be expanded to the next states, where a new token will be created for each next state. The process repeats itself until no more feature vectors can be obtained from the front end for scoring. This usually means that there is no more input speech data. At that point, we look at all paths that have reached the final exit state, and return the highest scoring path as the result to the application.
The performance of Sphinx-4 critically depends on your task and how you configured Sphinx-4 to suit your task. For example, a large vocabulary task needs a different linguist than a small vocabulary task. Your system has to be configured differently for the two tasks. This section will not tell you the exact configuration for different tasks, which will be dealt with later. Instead, this section will introduce you to the configuration mechanism of Sphinx-4, which is via an XML-based configuration file. Please click on the document Sphinx-4 Configuration Management to learn how to do this. It is important that you read this document before you proceed.


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The latest news on Algeria
Western leaders must recognize the threat of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in North Africa.
The situation in Mali illustrates the complex, evolving nature of the struggle against violent extremism.
The worst case scenario is that the hostage crisis drags out.
Western powers still determining size and scope as Algeria boxes them out.
ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) — A deadly Algerian military raid to free hostages from at least 10 countries and wipe out their Islamist militant captors moved closer to the heart of the natural gas complex on Friday, the government news service said.
International news reports conflict on how many killed, how many remain captive.
ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) — Algeria's government searched desperately Thursday for a way to end a desert standoff with Islamic militants who have taken dozens of foreigners hostage at a natural gas complex, turning to tribal leaders among Algerian Tuaregs and contemplating an international force.
ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) — Islamist militants attacked and occupied a natural gas field partly operated by BP in southern Algeria early Wednesday, killing two people and holding foreigners hostage while surrounded by Algerian forces.
New details are coming out that waterboarding—a controversial interrogation technique that many deem as torture—was used on a top al Qaeda official and approved by top levels of the U.S. government. This information comes as CIA Director Michael Hayden prepares for two days of questioning by House and Senate intelligence panels about the destruction of videotaped interrogations.


text:
The Countdown is a biweekly video show highlighting the best stuff happening in space, astronomy and physics. In this episode: Exoplanet Composition, Neighborhood Dwarves, Comet Pan-STARRS, Martian Love Boat, The Methuselah Star
Are any of these actually videos? Are they available to be viewed? I see thumbnails, but they are linked to this same page.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
Deadline: Jan 27 2014
Reward: $15,000 USD
The Dow Chemical Company is the leading producer of polyalkylene glycols (PAGs) used in synthetic fluids and lubricants where petroleum,
Deadline: Jan 11 2014
Reward: $20,000 USD
Conventional washing machines cause excessive damage and wrinkling to clothes primarily during the water removal step. With the introduc
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Energy Policy Scenarios to 2050
10.1.5. Investment and Finance
Over the coming decades, estimates of investment requirements in the energy sector are huge - on a scale never before seen. Published investment requirements total USD 20 trillion over the next 25 years and are likely to be considerably greater by 2050. This investment is required across the value chain and for all energy carriers, although it is expected that slightly more than half is required in electricity generation and the remainder mostly in oil and gas.
There is consensus that this investment can be achieved over time, although there is much to do to facilitate this investment, particularly in emerging markets. The private sector, multi-lateral agencies, and governments are all in agreement that while the scale of the challenge is enormous, there are sufficient funds available. It is however important to understand that these funds compete for the best projects within the energy sector and also with other infrastructure projects.
However, in making investments, a number of critical factors must be actively considered, with some requiring attention so that they do not become barriers:
Economic and political stability in the country of investment
Stable regulation of the business environment
Institutional climate (e.g., contract law)
Labour availability
Efficient financial system
Personal security
Environmental regulation stability.
Discussions with potential financiers continually suggest that their most preferred investment is one contracted with credit-worthy counterparts in an open and transparent market place established in law. Such requirements are clearly not evident in countries with an uncertain regulatory framework, an unproven market model, as well as in emerging markets, and as such, will undoubtedly require considerable further effort to make investments acceptable.
A sound framework to attract these funds is based on two pillars. First, the regulatory environment needs to be robust. Regulatory risk is one of the key risks in the energy sector and has many faces:
Discretionary exercise of powers - arbitrary change of quality standards
Will the tariff and other key parameters allow investors to reach their return objectives?
Impartial dispute resolution
CO2 market after Kyoto?
The key requirements for a regulatory framework are that it should protect both public and investors' short-term and long-term interests and be transparent, stable, and predictable over the long-term and independent from political authorities, which pleads for national rather than local regulation.
The second pillar is the predictability of revenues, a cornerstone for financing such efforts.
Energy markets must be organised to offer predictability. A number of solutions, however, exist to this seemingly intractable position. These solutions (especially for electricity power) reflect differing levels of market evolution:
"Energy Only" - effectively free trade and competitive market solutions
"Capacity Payments" - a way to foster provision/availability of capacity, with variable rewards following those of the Energy-Only option
"PPA" model - long-term contracts are signed for the purchase of electricity, providing clarity and certainty.
Each potential market model has its place in all countries, although precise solutions depend on the level of political will and the ability to support market development. Without such models (and possibly in countries where such models exist), further political and credit support will still be required. It should, however, be acknowledged that credit support to emerging markets through aid mechanisms should be closely tied to a commitment by the host government to put in place the above referred predictable legal, political, and commercial framework. This credit support should thus be seen as a catalyst, enabling the transition toward subsequent non-subsidised investments.
Overall, there are clearly sufficient funds and there has been sufficient thought on solutions. The key is for all of the stakeholders to work together to develop an appropriate system that is robust and above all transparent.


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Regulatory and paperwork requirements impose a disproportionate burden on community banks thus diminishing their ability to attract capital, support the credit needs of their customers, serve their communities, and contribute to their local economies. Large banks have dedicated legal and compliance staff and can more easily absorb regulatory costs. Credit unions and other nonbank institutions that perform "bank-like" functions and offer comparable bank products and services are not subject to the same laws and regulations as community banks. This uneven playing field places community banks at a competitive disadvantage and increases costs to consumers.
Last Congress, ICBA initiated and promoted the Communities First Act (CFA), a key component of our regulatory relief agenda. A principal CFA provision was signed into law in April 2012 as part of the Jobs Act legislation. That provision increased the SEC registration threshold for banks from 500 shareholders to 2000 shareholders, and increased the deregistration threshold from 300 shareholders to 1200 shareholders.
In addition, several other CFA provisions advanced in the House including: a requirement that the SEC conduct a cost-benefit analysis of proposed accounting principles; elimination of annual privacy notices; an increase in the exemption level for the internal control attestation requirements found in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act; and a lower threshold for Financial Stability Oversight Council review of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rules.
ICBA advocacy resulted in strong congressional support for CFA. The House bill in the 112th Congress had over 90 bi-partisan co-sponsors and was the subject of a hearing in the House Financial Services Committee at which ICBA testified.
For the 113th Congress, ICBA has developed a "legislative platform," or set of community bank priorities positioned for advancement in Congress. The provisions of the legislative platform could be introduced in Congress individually, collectively or configured in whatever fashion suits interested members of Congress. Examples of platform provisions include exemptions from new mortgage requirements, measures designed to enhance the accountability of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, reforms to the bank examination process, and loosening investment restrictions on Subchapter S banks.
More broadly, ICBA strongly supports a system of tiered regulation—regulatory and supervisory policies that differentiate between community banks and other financial services providers. The Dodd-Frank Act provided for tiered regulation in several areas including an exemption for community banks from Consumer Financial Protection Bureau examination and enforcement, and indemnification of community banks from FDIC premium increases that will result from increasing the Deposit Insurance Fund minimum reserve ratio from 1.15% to 1.35%.
ICBA will continue to advocate for meaningful regulatory reforms including tiered regulation for community banks, their customers, and their communities.
Staff contacts: Brian Cooney, Chris Cole
Return to ICBA Policy Resolutions
ICBA | 1615 L Street NW Suite 900 | Washington, DC | 20036 | email@example.com | (202) 659-8111
All contents copyright 2013 Independent Community Bankers of America. All rights reserved. Privacy Statement | Legal Notice


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Developed especially for our Inkssentials Memory Glass, these frames encase and protect your glass creations. Package includes three frames. Complete with pre-soldered, matching jump ring, these easy-to-use, hinged frames allow you to make instant ornaments, scrapbook embellishments and jewelry. Made in China. *Frames should be opened slightly and carefully to slide the Memory Glass inside before closing. Intended for one-time framing of artwork.
Carolyn Hasenfratz, Author


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CineWave's real-time online and offline editing features are now available. |
Pinnacle Systems has announced the availability of a new version of CineWave 4, the hardware and software combination for Apple's Final Cut Pro 4 that provides full support for Apple's new Power Mac G5.
Apple has qualified CineWave RT and RT Pro 4.0.1 for the new Power Mac G5. CineWave's real-time online and offline editing features are now available to post-production professionals who demand the performance of what Apple is calling "the world's fastest PC." CinéWave also now features enhanced support for PAL video.
For more information, please visit: www.pinnaclesys.com/cinewave.


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"Farleigh Hospice exists to meet the needs of local people affected by life limiting illnesses and to support those who have been bereaved. Through the ongoing generosity of the mid Essex population we provide a range of high quality services totally free of charge. By giving people choice and involvement in the care they receive we make a real difference when and where it matters most."
Thank you. It is because you care that we can.
Heybridge Shop's Festive Shopping Experience ›
On Thursday 21st November, from 6pm 8pm, Farleigh Hospices charity shop based at Unit 7, Bentalls Shopping Centre, Heybridge, CM9 4GB will be celebrating bringing in the Christmas season in style with a special late night shopping event. With plenty of seasonal bargains to be had, this event will provide the perfect opportunity to get in the Christmas spirit and support the work of your local hospice at the same time. So come along for the chance to purchase Christmas decorations, gifts and many other festive accessories.
Sophie prepares to don her Santa suit! ›
Registrations for this years Farleigh Hospice Santa Fun Run have been streaming in and amongst those who have registered so far is 24 year old Sophie who will be running in memory of her dad who was cared for by Farleigh Hospice.
Farleigh Hospice's Festive Retail Events ›
This November, Farleigh Hospice will be inviting local shoppers to step inside some of its Chelmsford based charity shops for some special Christmassy celebrations!
This years Light up a Life appeal is being supported by the Hawkins family from Burnham on Crouch, read their story here.


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When and where: 7 p.m. Monday at Town Hall, 300 Ruth St.
What to expect: Aldermen will receive a report on the town's annual audit and will receive a midyear budget and financial update from town officials.
Why it matters: The town is required to have an independent audit for each fiscal year, the latest of which ended June 30.
Alan Thompson of Thompson, Price, Scott, Adams and Co. will present the report.
- Drew Brooks
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