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Quote:I love Marmite! Over here you also get Bovril which is a cheap imitation. Never tried Vegemite and probably won't. My allegiance is to Marmite. I'll take it on toast, crackers, bread, in soup, stews or in a cup of hot water for a nice savory drink. It goes very well with cheese.
Quote:I have had Vegemite, not had the (dubious) pleasure of tasting Marmite. I sort of think I can pass on either one. We have a shop here in town called the "British Emporium" and I'm not so sure just how long those jars have been sitting on the shelf.....
Quote: Ren, I feel bad you are outnumbered in avatars - one Marmite versus 2 Vegemite.
Quote:Some interesting results, eh, Sue?

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Anything can happen in 90 minutes, said Giovanni Trapattoni. But when Spain play like this and his Republic of Ireland team see their limitations exposed so painfully, only one thing can happen. The mis-match of Euro 2012 so far concluded with Spain igniting their championship defence and Ireland beating a humble retreat.
Ireland's fate was set in motion by their 3-1 defeat to Croatia on Sunday but how Spain confirmed it. Fernando Torres, who returned to start as a true No9, rediscovered his appetite for goals, his midfield colleagues sparkled and Ireland struggled to give their magnificent support an attacking moment to remember, even if the late introduction of James McClean was appreciated.
Ireland play better in adversity? Here, there was only adversity. From the very start, when Torres flashed home his first, the outcome was never in doubt. The doggedness that Trapattoni has instilled served to bring this cherished qualification but it could never work the required miracle to escape a punishing Group C. The rocky road now leads home.
Spain could not countenance more dropped points after the 1-1 draw against Italy and there was purpose to go with their relentless pressing and passing. Torres pointed to his ear after he scored his first goal, a dig at his critics, and his second was similarly accomplished, even after he appeared to get his touch stuck under his feet when one-on-one with Shay Given.
The pick of the bunch was David Silva's goal but Cesc Fábregas chipped in with a belter to make a point of his own, after being started on the substitutes' bench. He beat the Ireland substitute Paul Green following a cute corner routine and fizzed a drive inside the far corner. All of his frustration was on that shot; Ireland's was etched into perspiring brows.
It was their heaviest defeat since 1971 and its manner was so comprehensive that recriminations felt futile, although Roy Keane, the former captain, sniped from afar. "We need to change the attitude towards the team," he said. "Let's not just be going for the sing-song." It was some sing-song. Irish voices united during the closing stages and they departed Gdansk with their pride unbowed. The team will play for little else in Monday's final tie against Italy.
Trapattoni allowed his frustration to show. Ireland had conceded early goals in both halves of the defeat to Croatia and that they did so again reinforced the manager's impression that "fear" and "tension" had gripped his players on the biggest stage. "I had not seen that in the team in training or qualification but this is a clear symptom of a team that approaches a competition either feeling inferior or a bit concerned so you make basic errors," he said.
He had tweaked his system with the selection of Simon Cox in front of a midfield four in a bid for greater stability but he lamented how the early concession had sent the tactical plan "out of the window".
Andrés Iniesta's pass for Silva was driven and incisive but Richard Dunne checked him with a slide tackle. Torres, though, was lurking. He burst on to the ball, skated away from Dunne and ran around Stephen Ward before blasting high and hard through Given. An ominous omen: Spain had won their previous 58 matches after scoring the opening goal.
Spain gorged themselves on possession and from the stands, it was easy to marvel at the technique; the assurance of the touches; the power and speed of the passes. For Ireland's players, though, it was rather more of an ordeal. They fought to stay close to the red shirts yet it was gruelling. The minutes ticked like hours. Spain like to sap energy before resolve. It did not feel fair to see Keith Andrews poleaxed by the referee, Pedro Proença, during one slow-burning Spanish raid.
"Spain are like an orchestra," Trapattoni said. "They involve everyone. They very rarely misplace passes."
The first-half was all Spain, and Given was forced to work, seriously on several occasions. Iniesta bristled with menace, Silva was balletic. Torres blasted a decent chance wide. Ireland could be happy enough with the half-time scoreline. While the margin remained tight, they would not give up hope. They clung to the belief that they could sneak something, possibly from a set piece. Yet the thinking was highly wishful. Iker Casillas was a virtual bystander in the Spain goal.
Trapattoni shuffled again at half-time, replacing Cox with Jon Walters and going to 4-4-2. But the game was over within four minutes, prompting further maddening deja vu. Hope had disappeared. Silva's goal was the definition of how to toy with defenders. He might have been on the beach in his native Canary Islands as he feinted to put Sean St Ledger on his backside, mesmerise Ward and, with impish cool, pass the ball beyond Given.
The second-half was all Spain, too. Given distinguished himself with a wonder save from Xavi Hernández but it quickly became a question of how many Spain would score. Mercifully, the pain stopped at four.


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Holymoly wrote (see)
I hope you already own some trainers Gaz - 1st attempt - lucky fella You don't wanna be talked about on Keith's thread after all hehehehe
Its Ok as long as he promises to run for those poor Penguins
johnny2323. they dont get the recognition that they deserve, they are trying to raise funds for a mini bus and several penguin sized sombreros. give what you can brother.....
has everyone got their balck and white wrist bands to show support for the plucky little fellas??
Keith L wrote (see)
How soon can someone start the "Its not fair, my mate/boss/cat got in at first attempt and I didnt despite me running 100 miles a week and entering every year since 1066 and them not even owning a pair of running shoes" thread
Or you can really wind yourself up and look on twitter at the "Didn't get a place for the London Marathon... phew, i'd forgotten i'd entered!!" posts.
Mo farah didn't make the ballot either so going to stick to 10km.
I am going to get a Championship place and avoid the ballot! lol
Think I'll treat myself to some new shoes. Only been running about 18 months. Started to lose weight then got the bug and started in races this year. 3 halfs and 4/5 shorter races. Entered the ballot with no hope of getting in and wham straight in........frantically looks for a training plan
nice one gaz! I would recomend going at getting gait analysis done if you are planning on doing the big one...
These penguins are sure getting a lot of press recently...should help their fundraising efforts! Minibus and sombreros are within touching distance now.
Reject for me...Brighton here I come
I'm in
After 4 consecutive rejections I'm finaly in
holymoly, your support is greatly apreciated, we are hoping that dermot o'leary will run for the cause, failing that, its chegwin, in just a sombrero!!
Rejection for me, but i'll just have to work harder @ my GFAtime, best of luck for those that are in and commiserations for those that missed out, still plenty of charitity places for thosethat have missed out.
6th consecutive rejection. I wonder if a changed email address in the middle blew me out. What's the consecutive rejection record?
Club mara again then a couple of weeks before.
apparently they get loads of applicants with an expected finish time between 3:45 and 4 hours, so perhaps the trick is to put an expected finish time of under 2 hours as I guess the quota will be pretty under subscribed.
Yes! In 1 out of 2 tries. Not bad.
In at first attempt!
Shocker - but was poised to enter the Milton Keynes marathon if no luck so wasn't a half hearted entry. Will be running my 2nd half next week and bring on the winter training!
i put a finish time of 3.30 this year not 4.30 and didnt click the donate my entry fee and it has got me in after 2 rejections with a 4.30 finish and donting my entry
Bah! Rejected. It was my first attempt though.
I'm doing my 6th half marathon this weekend and I'm keen to push myself up to a full marathon but don't really want to go through the charities route. Any recommendations for good spring marathons? I've noticed Brighton is full (apparently I shouldn't be surprised by this) and there are place available for Manchester. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Got my acceptance today, but my wife and son got the sorry magazine.
Joel - The Paris marathon opens up for entries next month and is a fantastic event.
But don't they poo in the pens @ Paris? A third 'no' for me. Off to look for a viable alternative.
Best of luck to those that get in
pmo wrote (see)
But don't they poo in the pens @ Paris? A third 'no' for me. Off to look for a viable alternative.
Best of luck to those that get in
I don't remember any pooing going on, but the scarcity of toilet facilities at the start is a little annoying. I may have been in a rather large line of gutter-waterers meself. *ahem*...
Other than that it is a superb race and one I can fully recommend to anyone who needs another option and willing to go abroad. Much more scenic than London and just as flat.
No pooing but there was alot of peeing in the bushes.
I enjoyed Paris just as much, maybe even a bit more than London. It even seemed less crowded.
Is the Milton Keynes marathon not a good alternative? It looks more scenic than it sounds and flat and has the advantage of being local in case you have to pull out - I was considering Paris but the expense of it all seemed too much to be booking and paying for if you end up injured.
The plan now may be for my husband and son to 'watch' me at VLM and I will be there at the MK stadium to watch them finish two weeks later.
Got to wait for the post office tomo, the envelope couldnt be delievered !!! damn
I had to check that i donated the fee and didnt get a crappy fleece
Dustboy wrote (see)
6th consecutive rejection. I wonder if a changed email address in the middle blew me out. What's the consecutive rejection record?
Club mara again then a couple of weeks before.
You should ring them. I read a similar post last year, they rang and were accepted!!!
Me & Hubby both got


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Dealing with family law issues?
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Freshmen taking a required plant biology course at New Jersey's Rider University often become attached to the plants they grow for the class, even getting upset when they realize some of the seedlings must die so that their dry biomass can be measured. Throughout this process, the students go beyond common perceptions of plants as "green rocks" that are barely alive and not very interesting except to botanists intent on categorizing them. They get closer to realizing the importance of plants to food supply, atmospheric carbon balance, and even energy sources. They also experience the scientific process in a way that becomes very meaningful to them.
"Once they spend personal time with their plants," said Laura Hyatt, a professor and dean at Rider who created the freshman course The Personal Plant Project, "they get very interested in what the plants are doing. The students get really connected to their plants."
Because of its success at engaging students in the scientific process and in the world of plants, The Personal Plant Project has been selected to win the Science Prize for Inquiry-Based Instruction.
The Science Prize for Inquiry-Based Instruction was developed to showcase outstanding materials, usable in a wide range of schools and settings, for teaching introductory science courses at the college level. The materials must be designed to encourage students' natural curiosity about how the world works, rather than to deliver facts and principles about what scientists have already discovered. Organized as one free-standing "module," the materials should offer real understanding of the nature of science, as well as providing an experience in generating and evaluating scientific evidence. Each month, Science publishes an essay by a recipient of the award, which explains the winning project. The essay about The Personal Plant Project was published on 28 September.
"Improving science education is an important goal for all of us at Science," said Editor-in-Chief Bruce Alberts. "We hope to help those innovators who have developed outstanding laboratory modules promoting student inquiry to reach a wider audience. Each winning module will be featured in an article in Science that is aimed at guiding science educators from around the world to these valuable free resources."
Hyatt grew up interested in science and plants, and with the encouragement of a fifth grade teacher, she began pursuing her own questions about the natural world, studying a pond at the end of her street. In seventh grade, she was enrolled in the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth, which has been a hotbed for the development of career scientists. By the middle of high school, Hyatt decided on science as a major, and when she got to Smith College, she found botany presented as an exciting experimental field, not the static system of classification with which it is often associated.
"Often the impression students get about botany is that it's taxonomy," Hyatt said, "and that's not very exciting at all from an experimental perspective."
When Hyatt began teaching undergraduate biology at the University of Pennsylvania, where she was getting her Ph.D., she saw that students thought of plants as green rocks. Experimental botany, with its considerations about dirt and plants, was relegated to agriculture, which hardly entered into most students' urban or suburban experience.
Luckily, Hyatt had convictions that motivated her to provide a course of study that would present botany as an important experimental science. Study in Belize had cemented her passion for ecology, so it was natural for her to present the experimental side of plant science. Another conviction came from a year she had spent, previous to earning her Ph.D. at Penn, at the Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, and Government.
That year helped Hyatt "to see science in a broader societal context," she said, making it clear that students should learn that plants are crucial to a healthy planet and population. It also highlighted for her the fact that students, as citizens, should gain an understanding of the process of science.
With these objectives in mind, Hyatt crafted The Personal Plant Project, which begins by providing students with a general observation and a question related to plants. The students are then asked to design an experiment to investigate the question, planting seeds and applying various experimental treatments in Rider's greenhouses.
"The course is intentionally low on terminology and higher-order understanding of a certain topic," said Melissa McCartney, editorial fellow at Science. "This is in order for the true focus to be on the students' designing and executing their own experiments."
Hyatt, who is now the associate dean in Rider's College of Liberal Arts, Education, and Sciences, emphasized that the general approach at Rider is to approach science education from "the experimental end of things, really having the students doing the science part of asking a question and figuring out how to get an answer," rather than being handed an experiment where the steps, and the result, are predetermined.
"Some of the students are really scared about the open-endedness of the project, but there's a lot of scaffolding I do," Hyatt said. "Ultimately, this is so much more meaningful to them because they've designed it soup to nuts. Even something like measuring the rate of photosynthesis is different when you've grown the plant—rather than being handed one to measure."
Throughout the course, especially when the students' plants are starting to grow, students do activities related to their experiments, learning about such topics as water transpiration, manipulated photosynthesis rates, and the writing aspect of scientific papers.
By the end of the class, they are able to design an experiment completely on their own, explaining a plant pattern that they've witnessed during an outing on campus.
"Seven-eighths of them can do that in a way that they couldn't have at the beginning of the course," Hyatt said. "They've got more confidence about using the scientific process and are able to apply it."
That ability to apply the scientific process transfers to other classes as well, a skill that Rider science faculty try to encourage by cross-referencing throughout the science curriculum, Hyatt said.
Hyatt said she would like for Rider to get recognition for teaching inquiry-based science to all of its students, part of a bigger science education effort at the Bristol-Myers Squibb Center for Science Teaching and Learning, which is located on Rider's campus. She also hopes that her winning the Science Prize for Inquiry-Based Instruction and having an essay in Science magazine will help others "to begin teaching botany in an inquiry-based manner and try this on for size."
Learn more about The Personal Plant Project.
Read the essay, "Personal Plants: Making Botany Meaningful by Experimentation," by Laura A. Hyatt.
Read more about the Science Prize for Inquiry-Based Instruction.


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YOU ARE WATCHING: Monster Strike 4
Monster Strike 4
The protagonist, Ren Homura, returns to the town of Kaminohara, where he once lived. But did he really live in this place before? A nagging feeling tugs at his memories. Meanwhile, a strange game is forcefully installed onto his smartphone - a game called Monster Strike. A gauntlet of battles await him. Through the fierce fighting, he pieces together his scattered memories while uncovering the truth of the game. He's supported by his companions: Aoi Mizusawa, Akira Kagetsuki, and Minami Wakaba. Together they take a step into the unknown, unsuspecting of the secrets hidden below the surface...
Genres: Action, Fantasy, Game
Country: japan
Movie: Monster Strike 4
Production Co:
Release: 2018


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I'm saving myself the headache and just expecting possibly beginning of Feb. If they come sooner, mores the better. :0)
I'm saving myself the headache and just expecting possibly beginning of Feb. If they come sooner, mores the better. :0)
Yeah, it'll be december 23rd on Friday so there's little to no chance that they make the "late December" shipment we were all promised when we paid forward. See it in February, I guess.
Does anything ever make the projected time?
In their December updates thread, they already said they wouldn't be receiving them until January:
"The container with the FSS 5 figures and Transformers crossover set are in transit now. It should arrive here around the first of January. "
I'm sure retooling Salvo based on the feedback they got set the timeline back a bit. Perhaps they were still hopeful to get them from the manufacturer on time but maybe the manufacturer had problems.
If it reduces freight costs, or if the figures were produced at the same time since they're all low number runs, I understand why they would.
Guys, all I'm saying is that this item was CHARGED to all members credit or debit cards at purchase and it was very much insinuated that the reason for that was because it would ship relatively quickly. At least with FSS you're given the option of being billed in installments and - with everything else the club sells - you're billed within a day or two of shipment. If this was going to be produced or shipped with FSS I just don't understand why there was no bill at shipment option since it was not cheap and billing ahead meant a bunch of customers' money was then tied up in an item they will not have until February over the holiday season. Seems like that could have been avoided to me.
I would generally agree that pre-billing a pre-order should be met with as little wait time as possible. And if this wasn't being built to order, there's no real reason they should have needed to require payment upfront.
Anybody else get a notification that their five-pack just shipped? I did.
You mean this one yes sir!!!!
A package was shipped to you on: 01/06/2017 via U.S. Postal Service Priority Mail.


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The MentorMob Story
The idea for MentorMob sprouts from the backgrounds of Kris Chinosorn and Vince Leung. Both avid learners, they found early on that the Internet was not quite the incredible tool for learning new skills and hobbies that everyone thinks it is. Even with millions of free lessons online, the content is almost impossible to navigate.
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Fraunhofer (ITWM)
Document Type
- Doctoral Thesis (2) (remove)
Faculty / Organisational entity
- Fachbereich Mathematik (2) (remove)
Lithium-ion batteries are increasingly becoming an ubiquitous part of our everyday life - they are present in mobile phones, laptops, tools, cars, etc. However, there are still many concerns about their longevity and their safety. In this work we focus on the simulation of several degradation mechanisms on the microscopic scale, where one can resolve the active materials inside the electrodes of the lithium-ion batteries as porous structures. We mainly study two aspects - heat generation and mechanical stress. For the former we consider an electrochemical non-isothermal model on the spatially resolved porous scale to observe the temperature increase inside a battery cell, as well as to observe the individual heat sources to assess their contributions to the total heat generation. As a result from our experiments, we determined that the temperature has very small spatial variance for our test cases and thus allows for an ODE formulation of the heat equation. The second aspect that we consider is the generation of mechanical stress as a result of the insertion of lithium ions in the electrode materials. We study two approaches - using small strain models and finite strain models. For the small strain models, the initial geometry and the current geometry coincide. The model considers a diffusion equation for the lithium ions and equilibrium equation for the mechanical stress. First, we test a single perforated cylindrical particle using different boundary conditions for the displacement and with Neumann boundary conditions for the diffusion equation. We also test for cylindrical particles, but with boundary conditions for the diffusion equation in the electrodes coming from an isothermal electrochemical model for the whole battery cell. For the finite strain models we take in consideration the deformation of the initial geometry as a result of the intercalation and the mechanical stress. We compare two elastic models to study the sensitivity of the predicted elastic behavior on the specific model used. We also consider a softening of the active material dependent on the concentration of the lithium ions and using data for silicon electrodes. We recover the general behavior of the stress from known physical experiments. Some models, like the mechanical models we use, depend on the local values of the concentration to predict the mechanical stress. In that sense we perform a short comparative study between the Finite Element Method with tetrahedral elements and the Finite Volume Method with voxel volumes for an isothermal electrochemical model. The spatial discretizations of the PDEs are done using the Finite Element Method. For some models we have discontinuous quantities where we adapt the FEM accordingly. The time derivatives are discretized using the implicit Backward Euler method. The nonlinear systems are linearized using the Newton method. All of the discretized models are implemented in a C++ framework developed during the thesis.
Lithium-ion batteries are broadly used nowadays in all kinds of portable electronics, such as laptops, cell phones, tablets, e-book readers, digital cameras, etc. They are preferred to other types of rechargeable batteries due to their superior characteristics, such as light weight and high energy density, no memory effect, and a big number of charge/discharge cycles. The high demand and applicability of Li-ion batteries naturally give rise to the unceasing necessity of developing better batteries in terms of performance and lifetime. The aim of the mathematical modelling of Li-ion batteries is to help engineers test different battery configurations and electrode materials faster and cheaper. Lithium-ion batteries are multiscale systems. A typical Li-ion battery consists of multiple connected electrochemical battery cells. Each cell has two electrodes - anode and cathode, as well as a separator between them that prevents a short circuit. Both electrodes have porous structure composed of two phases - solid and electrolyte. We call macroscale the lengthscale of the whole electrode and microscale - the lengthscale at which we can distinguish the complex porous structure of the electrodes. We start from a Li-ion battery model derived on the microscale. The model is based on nonlinear diffusion type of equations for the transport of Lithium ions and charges in the electrolyte and in the active material. Electrochemical reactions on the solid-electrolyte interface couple the two phases. The interface kinetics is modelled by the highly nonlinear Butler-Volmer interface conditions. Direct numerical simulations with standard methods, such as the Finite Element Method or Finite Volume Method, lead to ill-conditioned problems with a huge number of degrees of freedom which are difficult to solve. Therefore, the aim of this work is to derive upscaled models on the lengthscale of the whole electrode so that we do not have to resolve all the small-scale features of the porous microstructure thus reducing the computational time and cost. We do this by applying two different upscaling techniques - the Asymptotic Homogenization Method and the Multiscale Finite Element Method (MsFEM). We consider the electrolyte and the solid as two self-complementary perforated domains and we exploit this idea with both upscaling methods. The first method is restricted only to periodic media and periodically oscillating solutions while the second method can be applied to randomly oscillating solutions and is based on the Finite Element Method framework. We apply the Asymptotic Homogenization Method to derive a coupled macro-micro upscaled model under the assumption of periodic electrode microstructure. A crucial step in the homogenization procedure is the upscaling of the Butler-Volmer interface conditions. We rigorously determine the asymptotic order of the interface exchange current densities and we perform a comprehensive numerical study in order to validate the derived homogenized Li-ion battery model. In order to upscale the microscale battery problem in the case of random electrode microstructure we apply the MsFEM, extended to problems in perforated domains with Neumann boundary conditions on the holes. We conduct a detailed numerical investigation of the proposed algorithm and we show numerical convergence of the method that we design. We also apply the developed technique to a simplified two-dimensional Li-ion battery problem and we show numerical convergence of the solution obtained with the MsFEM to the reference microscale one.


text:
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WIP - HUD and the GUIs, feedback needed !
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Topic: WIP - HUD and the GUIs, feedback needed ! (Read 87444 times)
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Posts: 479
The Blackest Heart
Re: WIP - HUD and the GUIs, feedback needed !
Reply #45 on:
December 15, 2010, 06:01:45 AM »
Quote from: qubodup on December 15, 2010, 01:05:59 AM
I think icons have strengths which text can not have:
Icons are more easily distinguished, making them easier to find. When all of the [items] are presented as words, each word must be read in turn to find the desired one. Icons, on the other hand, are easily remembered and can be found at a glance.
Icons usually take up less space. This allows more functions to fit within the same space, or allows for the UI [inventory] to take up less screen real estate.
Icons can incorporate [item] status information.
Based on this
text vs icons in web design
post by Jack Moffett.
Regarding space: look at the inventory screen of
these BG2 screens
and imagine it in text form.
@qubodup - so, are you against text-based by principle or do you just doubt it's practicality ?
The Jack Moffett arguments are valid in many aspects, but in the end we come down to a very big difference - we're dealing with a game interface rather than a website. While the design principles for icons should and do apply here, my goal's still to try and come up with a text-based inventory UI, which
intuitive and simple to use.
The goal is to have the layout and divisions between 'containers' positioned in such a way that using them would not hinder your 'speed' while scrolling through your inventory - to have everything positioned in it's 'right' place and thus making it's use more intuitive.
Right now in the photochop I made everything is cluttered and not thought through, but when things are in place everything should make sense.
What zenbitz said applies too. When you have a furry coat and a bearskin in your inventory and only the furry coat is wearable, then you wouldn't go trying it on. It would probably be in a 'window' separate from wearables, or there wouldn't be a mark that it is wearable (wearable/wieldable items usually deteriorate and eventually break down). In-game in a container (chest, box, locker, car trunk)
you'd see the following:
- A furry coat (well-worn)
- Bearskin
Also - the text could have colour-coding instead of quick status info in brackets
all of the information that tells us that can be shown with an icon, too - the quality or state of an article of clothing can be a numerical value in the corner of an item + an icon can look more flashy at first glance.
Until now I totally forgot about this one (how could I, it was only the
game of the year
in all gaming magazines before it's release) other
example of a textbased inventory - *drumroll* FALLOUT 3. Here you go:
Personally I found it's use convenient rather than inconvenient. Simple, in your face with all the necessary information and the text is a single colour even because of the artistic choice made with the interface. I'm actually considering trying some of the FO3 inventory 'features' in the next photochop (which I hope I should have for showing soon enough)
In the FO3-like approach the tabs could be quickly accessed with the arrow keys, a matter or microseconds, if you've got the reflexes. If there enough items that scrolling becomes necessary, the arrow keys and mouse-wheel + scrolling bar.
Quote from: mvBarracuda on December 14, 2010, 04:51:48 PM
Concerning support for slightly rotated text: pychan doesn't seem to support something like that out of the box. Nevertheless it sounds like a great concept to me to underline the "handmade" look of the GUI. So perfectly aligned text would actually look pretty odd in this case. So if pychan doesn't support rotated text out of the box, we'll definately find a way to implement support for it ourselves.
Would it be crazy nuts for coders to write a script that transforms the provided text into an image and rotates the image into place ? Also - depending on the layout the description is probably going to have a word limit or letter limit to keep it simple.
Whether there is a tool for it, in item-creation, either in mapper or separately, you'd have a section for the description and separate slots for weight and/or any other parameters, the post it would have it's own layout mapped and would position the text into it's correct place - in the game, the image would be rotated.
I mean - I think it is not necessary and a horizontal text would be fine, I'll try to address this problem in a future photochop for further discussion (again - it is not that important and in no way essential to the design, the rotated text I mean)
@ Technomage - the image you provided is broken : (( I couldn't find another image of the Myst inventory, either.
Community member
Posts: 553
Re: WIP - HUD and the GUIs, feedback needed !
Reply #46 on:
December 15, 2010, 01:02:15 PM »
@ rotating text:
Small font is sometimes kept in bitmap fonts, this is why Times New Roman is so clear when it is 8 pixels high - this is basically all handcrafted. Font is usually anti-aliased and best if hinted.
It is rendered into grid of pixels, which gets disturbed when rotating. Text will loose some readability. Better way would be rotating it at lowest possible level, before rasterizing it, so that it will be antialiased normally and will be not as fuzzy as when rotating after that, and we will still could possibly use tweaks like subsampling if it will be available in some distant future.
Possible good-looking hacks:
If rotating before rendering is impossible - rotating big text only.
Prepare some things in bitmap form and using that instead.
@ icons vs text
I'm a "visual" guy, but small icons make my eyes tired in no time. Searching for stuff is not easy for most of the time, and obtaining description from X different items that all are similar is extra uncool. Plus, icons usually are tossed and shuffled often, so there is no "the right place" for a particular item, where text entries are usually sorted with some key like type or container and alphabetically later.
This turns using an item by 180 degree: you are supposed to choose action first and seek for item later on the list that shows suitable items only. This again turns abilities and skills by 180 degrees, cause there will be need of having instant view on all possible actions somewhere. And what we are using now (RMB on item to get the list of items) will not be used too often. We may solve this in other ways, I may be biased too much with roguelikes which have to handle 100+ items in that way.
Community member
Posts: 1308
Re: WIP - HUD and the GUIs, feedback needed !
Reply #47 on:
December 15, 2010, 08:03:49 PM »
Concerning the FO3 GUI: I hated it with a passion because it felt so clunky. However that was not really a problem of the text-based approach but because of two other GUI aspects:
1. The GUI was made for game consoles, so you standard font size was rather large (so you can read it a couple of meters away from your couch); as PARPG is targetting PC systems, we can simply go for a smaller font and that should do the trick
2. The GUI didn't offer any kind of advanced sorting options for items; it would be great if you could sort the inventory items based on some criteria, e.g. weight, value, bulk size, condition, etc.
Community member
Posts: 553
Re: WIP - HUD and the GUIs, feedback needed !
Reply #48 on:
December 15, 2010, 09:10:11 PM »
This is my idea on evaluation of gaspard's idea.
Paper clip is missing, but thats only due to me being in hurry to show you that.
On the left page you can decide what you want to do, on the right - sort inventory via different criteria.
What is depicted here are on the right:
info | barter | container | wear
and on the left:
weight | bulk | where-it-is | wereables/weapon only | by type (arrow up says its sorted upwards, whatever would it mean)
The list of items consists of "up" and "down" arrows, it indicates opened branches with + and cunopened with -
This is just a mockup for brainstorming, really.
Community member
Posts: 1164
Re: WIP - HUD and the GUIs, feedback needed !
Reply #49 on:
December 16, 2010, 12:14:14 AM »
I like it Q_X.
I remember badly struggling with the FO interface especially with "long guns" because the drag-n-drop was dependent on the center of the object, not the edge. I guess it's 2010 though.
Last Edit: December 16, 2010, 12:16:01 AM by zenbitz
We are not denying them an ending...
We are denying them a DISNEY ending - Icelus
Community member
Posts: 261
Re: WIP - HUD and the GUIs, feedback needed !
Reply #50 on:
December 21, 2010, 10:05:01 PM »
Quote from: zenbitz on December 15, 2010, 01:43:22 AM
I don't think the advantage of Icons is very clear cut when you are dealing with many 10's of items that can be highly similar.
And actually - there are 28 Icons in the above "Post Reply" think and ~1/2 of the I don't know what they are. The ones I DO know are "universal" Icons.
Icons are easier to differentiate than text.
Text on the other hand is easier to learn, because it is more clear than icon.
I think differentiation is more important when navigating an inventory than ease of understanding new items.
So in the case where objects/tasks are easily distinguishable icons are great - assuming you use interface so much that they are memorized.
Quote from: zenbitz on December 15, 2010, 01:43:22 AM
With icons - it's easy to tell a Leather Jacket from a Machete or a .357 magnum - but not so easy to tell a .357 magnum from a .38 special or a Machete from a Sax or a Leather Jacket from a Pea Coat.
color and perspective allow to make big visual differences between similar items.
Fallout RPG Item Icons Collection
Quote from: zenbitz on December 15, 2010, 01:43:22 AM
The other advantage of a text view is that we don't have to create 250 icons RIGHT NOW.
One placeholder icon is enough.
Quote from: Gaspard on December 15, 2010, 06:01:45 AM
@qubodup - so, are you against text-based by principle or do you just doubt it's practicality ?
I think icons are better for items in an inventory rather than text.
Community member
Posts: 553
Re: WIP - HUD and the GUIs, feedback needed !
Reply #51 on:
December 22, 2010, 01:41:54 PM »
Lets summarize it maybe:
Text-based inventory:
Easier to implement
Makes things like using containers and filtering trivial to use
Size can be scaled up and down
Costs no extra work
Gives more specific knowledge
makes navigating easy if there is < 100 items in inventory, but in the same time makes encapsulation/filtering/keeping order easier
Looks clear
Icon-based inventory:
Harder to implement
Makes things like containers and filtering hard to use (unless you can filter all the small or green items), also makes some problem when implementing bulk and slots
Size is fixed, hard to scale bitmaps (with guichan under mask)
Cost extra work when making files and binding it inside game structure
Gives more instant information
makes navigating easy no matter what the inventory count is, but makes hard to distinguish between similar items. Makes need to toss things manually to keep them in order sometimes.
Looks attractive
My personal conclusions: if using icons, target rather 75x75 or 100x100 pix base size, so that similar items will look differently and there will be hard to find an item that is hiding in an eye's dead spot.
If using text, take care of usability and things like sorting.
For me it looks pretty similar to one of holy wars, like console v. GUI
Community member
Posts: 553
Re: WIP - HUD and the GUIs, feedback needed !
Reply #52 on:
December 30, 2010, 11:34:21 AM »
Progress report
Decided: we will stay with icons. We will however take what's best in text-based menus and put it in good use - namely filtering and sorting will be implemented.
I've made a mockup, as promised. Sorry for lack of spaces here and there, Inkscape insisted on puting D chars instead of it.
Last, undescribed icon in the column, on the bottom, is "drop on ground". Should work with DnD items on it as well.
One of icons is highlighted, description is shown above it. It may be full info (I can squeeze 2 lines of text more there).
All the new elements are made in raw vector, this is not a proposal, just a quick mockup.
I have the idea that when you press "Use Ability" the abilities will be shown in place of items. It may be text list or "inventory like" set of icons with description above, just like inventory items have.
I thought even of inventory items "holding" an ability - so that you need needle to patch your clothes, knife to flesh out animal, billycan to cook meal, and you simply use billycan on meat to make a stew.
This last action (using things) is little bit tricky. I still don't know how to use things quickly with one page of inventory only, but it should be doable. Maybe dragging target (meat in above example) icon onto lightbulb, this will make abilities visible, and later you just choose what to do with the meat (so choose billycan and make a stew, or choose firestarting device and have it roasted? and in this case - how to make PC eat raw meat? have "artificial jaw" to eat things and doll to wear them?)
If someone needs Inkscape file with things below, just drop me a line, its not that big, I can send it
notebook - inventory.jpg
(132.02 KB, 553x604 - viewed 1266 times.)
Last Edit: December 30, 2010, 11:58:38 AM by Q_x
Community member
Posts: 479
The Blackest Heart
Re: WIP - HUD and the GUIs, feedback needed !
Reply #53 on:
December 30, 2010, 12:22:59 PM »
Isn't the item description area a bit too small ? If the grid is scrollable, then it shouldn't matter at all if it were a hex or two shorter for the description area to be bigger - a low-tech bottle of beer might not be something that you write a lot about, but more complex items could need more description.
OR for a more detailed item info there could be a pop-up window ?
My two cents on the layout - I still think that bookmarks, instead of drawn buttons on the page would serve better as the tabs/icons to switch between various sorting settings etc. The icons right next to the grids clutter the whole thing magnificently, while bookmarks can be in-theme (notebook) and colorcoded to differentiate between actions and sorting bookmarks
EDIT: also, the grid with items would probably work better with a fixed-color or fixed-texture background - then they could be taylored for that and that would be fine.
how are big items dealt with as icons ? They'll just be.. smaller ? melee weapons could have hilts or blades, and pistols and guns shouldn't be a problem, but how about rifles ?
Last Edit: December 30, 2010, 12:51:28 PM by Gaspard
Community member
Posts: 553
Re: WIP - HUD and the GUIs, feedback needed !
Reply #54 on:
December 30, 2010, 01:23:13 PM »
@ top space - it can be bigger like 2-3 lines extra without problems. Also text can be smaller, fitting 1-2 lines extra without bad readability. so 4 extra lines without much problem.
@ tabs, this will mess usability issues a bit. You will have top row of small paper leafs, and pushing them will not change things below that totally, just sort or filter items. This is IMHO non-intuitive. I'd rather put there more general stuff - quests, inventory, character stats, maybe main menu or map, major things.
If you're distracted by the way I sketched it - don't worry, it will be fancy
may be stickers, things drawn with pencil, like sticker peeled of an orange to indicate food, whatever. Also placement is not mandatory, may be above and below the icons.
@ icons size - if there will be no need of sorting things manually (unlimited amount of squares in inventory with good sorting support), I can imagine multisquare items. Just without, as qubodup called it, inventory tetris.
We can simply visualize 2^0-9 bulk scale with 1-10 squares (+/- 1) used by an icon (so usually items would take 2-4 squares). With this approach we can make like 30x30 pix squares.
One more thing, that may ease things a little - we may have line of text just below the inventory, displaying "status", so things like "piece of meet selected, choose an action now" or "warm boots dressed, +1 speed, +2 thermal protection, old boots taken off", or "not enough space in your backpack", "you can't carry this, its too heavy".
Last Edit: December 30, 2010, 01:26:42 PM by Q_x
Community member
Posts: 1164
Re: WIP - HUD and the GUIs, feedback needed !
Reply #55 on:
December 30, 2010, 06:19:39 PM »
some comments:
1) Short vs. long descriptions - I think that having a short one appear in the panel is fine. I think that a longer one should be available by selecting (double-clicking?) the item itself (popup window?)
2) As drawn, you cannot really distinguish "sorts" from "filters" - maybe one group should be on a a different axis? Or possiible have a photoshop style icon + hold to select sub type (so "sort" would be an arrow a/z, but with a sub type next to it, filter is usually some kind of "funnel" icon...
3) Not sure what "Use ability" is supposed to be...
4) Not sure if this is discussed elsewhere but right-click on an item should show a context menu - could include standard actions like drop, examine (gives long description), use, list of skills/abilities that can be applied to it.
5) for "combining" items, I think we need a different view. I think Arcanum had something like this, although I still haven't played it much. Another option would be that you could do a standard "control-click" to select various items then right click for context menu and it would show you various "combine" options.
There are I guess two kinds of "combining" objects - one is where you just take A+B -> C, and another where you take A+B+C put it into D -> E + D back again. So you need "D" like a catalyst (or in the "Beer" example, as a container) but it's "Unchanged" by the combination. ... also some combinations are reverseable and some arent''''... yipes I better make a wiki page about that.
We are not denying them an ending...
We are denying them a DISNEY ending - Icelus
Community member
Posts: 261
Re: WIP - HUD and the GUIs, feedback needed !
Reply #56 on:
January 03, 2011, 08:04:00 PM »
@ top space/description:
This is bugging me as well.. I would like to avoid opening pop-ups.. perhaps the left side could be used for longer description texts..
@ layout/tabs/skills:
I would prefer text instead of icons.
There definitely needs to be a separation between skill button and sorting/filtering buttons.
I think I would prefer skills to be part of item context menus, rather than a button in the inventory.
@ icons size:
They should be all the same size. Like in F1/2:
: use ability would probably open a list of skills and then you would chose a skill and then the inventory would be filtered by items that can have the skill applied to them.
or maybe the use ability button would invoke a skill list after clicking the next item.
Community member
Posts: 261
Re: WIP - HUD and the GUIs, feedback needed !
Reply #57 on:
January 03, 2011, 09:26:05 PM »
I thought I'd post my quick mockup
the sorting/filtering solution is horrible... take this as visual food for thought
(81.61 KB, 594x545 - viewed 1271 times.)
Community member
Posts: 261
Re: WIP - HUD and the GUIs, feedback needed !
Reply #58 on:
January 04, 2011, 06:05:55 PM »
Another mockup of how equipping could be displayed and how mouse could interact by hovering.
No hover:
No hover commented:
Hover commented:
(106.6 KB, 780x545 - viewed 1273 times.)
(118.18 KB, 780x545 - viewed 1261 times.)
Last Edit: January 04, 2011, 06:14:05 PM by qubodup
Community member
Posts: 1164
Re: WIP - HUD and the GUIs, feedback needed !
Reply #59 on:
January 04, 2011, 07:46:21 PM »
Looks good! I don't have a preference for hover vs. non hover. Although I am generally a "hover" type guy.
We are not denying them an ending...
We are denying them a DISNEY ending - Icelus
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Hey everyone
I have a JList that contain items (file paths). I want each item in the list to take me to that particular path in my computer.
For example, if i have an item that has "C:\Program Files" I want it to open a window with that location.
I don't know if that is possible or not. If not, is there any way to copy and paste the location from the list? how to add stuff to the system clipboard ?


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Xerox has announced that its chief financial officer, Luca Maestri, is leaving the company to work under Apple's CFO Peter Oppenheimer as Apple's corporate controller. Maestri has only been at Xerox since early 2011, but he previously worked at various divisions of General Motors for 20 years and served as CFO at Nokia Siemens from 2008 until 2011.
"Luca is a stellar finance executive whose contributions have brought great value to the transformation of Xerox into a services enterprise," Xerox CEO Ursula Burns said in a statement. Maestri will be joining Apple in late February.
Apple's previous corporate controller was Betsey Rafael, who reportedly retired last October. As noted by TNW, the corporate controller at Apple is "tasked with establishing financial policies, tracking income and expenses and will help Apple make investment decisions."
Apple has had a string of executive departures lately, so it's a nice change to hear news of someone going to Apple instead of leaving. With Apple's retail head position still open (and plenty of speculation as to who might fill it), we're sure to hear about more new hires in the coming months.


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Here we take a look at some of the celebrities over the years who have been fooled into parting with their money, or who have found their fame being used as the basis of a scam perpetrated on others.
Click ahead to see some of the world's most famous celebrity scams.
By Constance Parten, Senior Producer
Published: Feb., 23, 2010


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Ty Lawson helps Nuggets stretch home winning streak to 13
DENVER -- Nearly unbeatable at home this season, the Denver Nuggets got the better of one of the few teams that has managed to get out of town with a victory.
Ty Lawson matched his season high with 32 points, including 14 in the fourth quarter, and the Nuggets beat the injury-depleted Minnesota Timberwolves 111-88 Saturday night to stretch their home winning streak to 13 games, their longest in 14 years.
"We've all been playing better in the second half of the season and our record is showing that," Lawson said. "The first half of the season, there were worries in management, coaching staff if we were going to make the playoffs, but we've gotten into shape and we've been playing well."
Corey Brewer had 15 points, while Danilo Gallinari and Andre Iguodala added 11 apiece for the Nuggets, who have won eight in a row overall. Fueled by their longest home winning streak since a 19-game run from Jan. 28-April 20, 1989, the Nuggets ran their home record to 28-3, tying the Miami Heat for best in the league.
"We've been looking to play this way since the beginning of the season, and we've been working on it, but I think we still have a lot of room to improve," Gallinari said.
Mickael Gelabale scored 19 points for the Timberwolves, who were without Nikola Pekovic (abdominal strain), Kevin Love (broken hand), Andrei Kirilenko (strained left calf), Brandon Roy (knee surgery), Chase Budinger (knee) and Malcom Lee (knee).
"It gets tough on all of us, especially when you have nine guys and you're going up against a team like this," said Minnesota's Derrick Williams, who finished with 13 points. "It was tough, especially in their building. Their crowd gets behind them and everything starts to snowball, like it did tonight."
J.J. Barea added 15 points for Minnesota, which lost for the seventh time in eight games.
Denver avenged a rare home loss the last time the teams met. The Timberwolves beat the Nuggets 101-97 on Jan. 3 despite losing Love to the hand injury for much of the second half, snapping Denver's eight-game home winning streak at the time.
It was a different story in the rematch.
"We had a lot less people on the court, and more injuries," Williams said. "But they started pushing at us. I think that was part of their game plan. They saw we were kind of short-handed and their transition game is the best in the league. They started transitioning on us and it really takes a toll on you."
After a basket by Williams tied the score at 57-all, the Nuggets put together a 14-2 run that included 3-pointers by Gallinari and Lawson to go in front 71-59 with 5:02 remaining in the third quarter.
Ricky Rubio and Greg Stiemsma hit successive baskets to get the Timberwolves within nine, but the Nuggets produced another surge to take an 83-70 lead into the fourth quarter. JaVale McGee had three dunks in the stretch for Denver, including a breakaway slam after stealing the ball from Rubio near midcourt.
With Lawson leading the Nuggets' relentless transition game, Denver extended its lead in the fourth to finish with a 23-point margin.
"The first half, we played terrible and Coach let us know," Lawson said. "We regrouped at halftime. We knew it was a trap game. They beat us last time on a trap game, so we didn't want history to repeat itself."
Trailing 48-41, Minnesota scored eight straight points, starting with a jumper by Stiemsma, to go in front by a point. Lawson made a pair of free throws with 1.2 seconds remaining in the second quarter to give the Nuggets a 50-49 lead at halftime.
Game notes
Lawson registered his fourth career 30-point game. He has scored 20 or more points in 19 of his last 26 games. ... Minnesota missed a chance to string together two wins for the first time since winning a season-high four straight from Dec. 7-15, including a 108-105 home win over the Nuggets. ... Exchanges with officials over disputed calls resulted in Minnesota coach Rick Adelman, Rubio and Nuggets coach George Karl all being hit with technicals. ... Gelabale registered a season high in points.... The Nuggets had 13 steals and have had at least 10 in eight of the past nine games.
NBA News
Lue stresses importance of chemistry in introduction as Clippers coach
Tyronn Lue explains why the Clippers suffered from chemistry and continuity issues last season and says those are areas he wants to improve as head coach.
Tyronn Lue: LA Clippers' on-court chemistry issues due to a lack of continuity
New LA Clippers coach Tyronn Lue said Wednesday that the team's on-court chemistry issues this past season weren't because the players didn't get along, but instead were a result of a lack of continuity due to injuries and other factors.
How will Stan Van Gundy mesh with Zion?
Brian Windhorst and Kendrick Perkins share their thoughts on how the Pelicans' hire of Stan Van Gundy will impact Zion Williamson.
Regular Season Series
2019-2020 Northwest Standings
|Oklahoma City


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Trip Report: Sightglass Redux (Version 0.8), or Has the Slayer Made Any Difference?
Posted by TheShot on 10 Apr 2010 | Tagged as: Consumer Trends, Local Brew, Machine, Quality Issues, Roasting
We published our first trip report for Sightglass last July: Sightglass Coffee, Version 0.3. Back then, Sightglass was a tiny espresso-serving kiosk at the front of a vast, 4,000-sq-ft space with a 14-kg Probat roasting operation planned to start in the Fall of 2009. We revisited Sightglass this week to see how much things have changed.
It's perhaps both bad and good news that things haven't changed much at all since our first visit. They still operate as a tiny kiosk of a service station in front, offering espresso, Chemex brewing, and some salt caramels. Their roasting operations are still being built out; the current completion estimate is now June 2010. Instead of facing the permit issues that delayed Four Barrel's roasting operations, the delays at Sightglass were primarily zoning: given that there are two other notable roasters in the SOMA district, the environmental impact of another neighborhood roaster required a rather thorough evaluation.
One other major change here was a highly publicized switch of their espresso machine. What was a beautiful, rare, refurbished, two-group La Marzocco GS2 espresso machine — straight out of the 1970s, and a sister to the one recently installed at Intelligentsia's fabled Venice Beach location — has since been replaced with a two-group Slayer machine. (Just like the one at Matching Half Cafe.)
Fourth Wave Espresso Machines — aka The Mother of All Hyperbole
Ah, the infamous, fetish du jour: the Slayer. While the verdict is still out on the merits of the Slayer as an espresso machine, its merits as a hype machine are unquestionable. For example, two months ago one barista/blogger made the ludicrous claim in Serious Eats that, with the Slayer, "fourth wave coffee has arrived".
First of all, remember that the term third wave was originally coined to describe a level of consumer appreciation for coffee. Thus, the author literally suggested that an espresso machine will single-handedly make consumers appreciate coffee in such a significantly novel way as to change consumer culture. By comparing waves, her statement suggested that once consumers compare a Slayer-made espresso with a run-of-the-mill Blue Bottle shot, for example, public coffee-drinking habits will change as dramatically as when people raised on cups of Sanka brewed in 1950s percolators discovered the espresso made at Rome's Sant'Eustachio il caffè.
Wow. Talk about Mother of All Hyperbole. We're honestly incredulous at how someone could make such an absurdist claim.
Thankfully, the New York Times tempered the post's price-tag-based hype: the Serious Eats post lead with sensationalist $18,000 price tag headline, completely oblivious to the fact that a decent, three-group La Marzocco GB/5 will set you back more than that. But then Salon magazine echoed that piece with a post titled "Baristas gone wild", and local culture & clique rag, 7×7, anointed the Slayer at Sightglass as "ushering in coffee's fourth wave".
Has the Sightglass switch to a Slayer revolutionized how we appreciate coffee?
We love a taste test challenge. But to make a fair and reasonable comparison, a number of variables must be held in check: location, barista, coffee roast, grind, ambient temperature and humidity, etc. Unfortunately, controlling all of these is a next to impossible task. However, there are a few things in our favor: the same place (Sightglass) using the same roast (a Sightglass blend made at Verve Coffee Roasters) and the same grinding equipment.
On the negative side, the baristas were different (but were hopefully trained to the same standards), the weather may have been different, the age of the roasts could be different, etc. But since we couldn't reasonably get lab time to compare a Slayer with a La Marzocco GB/5, we'll have to settle for a taste comparison made months apart.
The other thing in our favor is that we've historically found our own espresso tasting descriptors and rating system to be very consistent between visits at cafés with good standards and consistency. We've been surprised many times when, having a "blind" test at a place we haven't visited in over a year, we've compared our notes and scores with our previous visit and discovered that they completely agree. And if the Slayer truly created an entirely new wave of consumer coffee appreciation over the old standards, our lack of precision should theoretically matter little.
Comparing the Sightglass GS2 and Slayer Shots
We found our Slayer-pulled Sightglass shot to have a dark crema. Comparing it with the La Marzocco-made shot of old, the crema is a little darker but a little less substantial. The body is a touch thin, but that was true before here also. One greater difference was the focus of the flavor profile: instead of a potent flavor dominated more in the pungent range of the flavor spectrum (more of cloves, herbs, etc.), the Slayer-made shot had a darker, more earthy flavor dominated more in the smoky/muted tobacco end of the spectrum. And while their La Marzocco shot had a pretty limited dynamic range of flavors that were still executed well, the newer shot had the same limited range with the exception of a surprisingly acidic bite to its finish.
Even so, these differences were subtle. We noticed the $0.50 increase in their shot prices more than any tasting differences (namely: more smokiness than pungency plus a brighter finish). In fact, when we tallied our espresso rating scores, they were identical with the GS2 shot from last July.
So does that mean the Slayer isn't a great machine? No. But it does suggest that the 2010 issue Slayer, for all its hype, imparted no noticeable difference to the resulting shot in the cup — from a 1970's-made La Marzocco. At least from our espresso consumer's perspective, this supposed fourth wave looks identical to the so-called third. We honestly couldn't tell them apart.
Sure, we have taken a bit of poetic license to its literal extreme with this semi-facetious comparison. But if you are going make audacious claims, we ask that you back them up.
Of course, the Slayer's prime advantages are manual pressure control and pre-infusion capabilities that are perhaps best suited for single origin coffees rather than blends. The reason we found little difference from the Slayer at Sightglass could be due to the coffee being a blend, or because they've tuned it to produce shots that meet their previous flavor profiles, or because their baristas haven't yet learned how to take advantage of the additional controls.
But perhaps the biggest telltale sign as to why Sightglass switched from a perfectly reasonable GS2 to a Slayer can be found in their most recent cash register system, which is now based on the Apple iPad released just this week. Is there any better way to indicate how much you're enamored with the new and less with the reasons why behind a switch?
Read the updated review of Sightglass.
5 Comments »
5 Responses to "Trip Report: Sightglass Redux (Version 0.8), or Has the Slayer Made Any Difference?"
Was excited last Friday to bump into a Slayer machine at a new roaster here in Toronto – http://blog.coffeestork.com/?p=90 . I was a little more awed by it, probably due to its looks and newness in the market. I had some really nice shots from it. I attributed the quality of the shots based upon its careful and knowledgable operation. Most interesting in your review is that fact that you note that single origin espressos will benefit most. My favourite during the tasting was an Ethiopian Sidamo. I was able to pick out some flavours that I had never had in coffee.
Nice blog post. I agree with you wholeheartedly. I think the Slayer is a fine machine, but the hype has left a worst-than-bad taste in my mouth.
I will point out though, it's very tricky to try to compare two shots the way you have, for all the reasons you mentioned, but more importantly a point that you seemed to mostly gloss over: it's very doubtful that the coffees used to construct those blends was the same.
Using a Slayer instead of a LM is perhaps just a switch from "normal" extraction to full low pressure preinfusion, but that makes nothing better in taste automatically.
A swicht to the Slayer machine without a change of the whole blends or at least the roast profiles makes no sense to me…
worst shot i've ever had was from the place in new york with the slayer that serious eats wrote about. i could have used it to strip graffiti of brick walls.


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For many households trying to improve their finances, tossing out pitches from the bank has become almost automatic. But in recent weeks, Chase has been fanning special letters out to consumers with an offer that it urges them not to refuse.
"Your debit card may not work the same way anymore, even if you just made a deposit. Unless we hear from you," the message, emblazoned in large red type, warns. "If you don't contact us, your everyday debit card transactions that overdraw your account will not be authorized after August 15, 2010 — even in an emergency," with "even in an emergency" underlined for emphasis.
As the government cracks down on the way banks charge fees for overspending on debit cards, the industry is mounting an aggressive campaign aimed at keeping billions of dollars in penalty income flowing into its coffers. Chase and other banks are preparing a full-court marketing blitz, which is likely to include filling mailboxes with various aggressive and persuasive letters, calling account holders directly, and sending a steady stream of e-mail to urge consumers to keep their overdraft service turned on.
Starting this summer, banks must get consumers to agree, or "opt in," to a service covering purchases on a debit card when there is not enough money in their account. The Federal Reserve has ordered the same restriction for banks that want to let people withdraw more than their balance at an automated teller machine. Many banks now automatically provide such coverage for fees of up to $35 or more.
So many people now dip their balance below zero that banks generated an estimated $20 billion from overdraft fees on debit purchases and A.T.M. transactions in 2009, according to Michael Moebs, an economist who advises banks and credit unions. All of this revenue is potentially at risk, since these are the two areas that the new Federal Reserve regulations cover. (Banks generate an extra $12 billion by covering checks and recurring bills; under the new rules, they can still cover those and charge fees without customers' consent.)
Over the last decade, these fees have become an increasingly important source of income for banks as consumers have turned to debit cards to pay for a wide variety of their purchases, whether monthly bills or a pack of gum. (Many banks also offer less controversial overdraft programs in which consumers sign up to cover shortfalls in their checking account by pulling money out of a savings account or a credit card.)
The persuasion campaigns, which are just getting under way, come at a precarious time for many banks and credit unions as they scramble to find new revenue streams amid an economic downturn and new laws and regulations that threaten profitability. For instance, new credit card laws that went into effect Monday limit banks' ability to raise interest rates on existing balances.
Given the billions at stake, consultants are urging banks and credit unions to hire them to help. "Your fee income will take a substantial 'hit' if you don't start getting consumers to 'opt-in' for POS/ATM overdrafts NOW!" Mike Sobba, president of Strunk & Associates, a financial institution advisory service, warned banks in a pitch on the company's Web site.
Some are even lobbying banks to focus their pitch on the minority of customers who are responsible for the vast majority of overdraft fees. According to a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation study in 2008, 93 percent of overdraft fees come from the 14 percent of people who exceed their balances five times or more in a year.
"Doesn't it make sense to try and protect this revenue stream and encourage these customers to opt-in?" said Eric Wittekiend, strategic adviser at Raddon Financial Group, in a report aimed at banks and credit unions. "Right now I'm favoring an aggressive opt-in strategy to protect as much revenue as possible," he said.
Another consultancy, Pinnacle Financial Strategies, advises an "Opt-in Total Solution" program for banks and credit unions trying to stem losses in overdraft fees. Pinnacle's briefing paper urges an "account holder identification process" to zero in on consumers who pay such charges repeatedly and persuade them to keep the status quo.
The banks' marketing campaigns range from subtle to alarming. In recent weeks, Chase has tested several direct-mail pitches to see whether an assertive or alluring tone will drive people into a branch to sign up for overdraft coverage. "Watch your mailbox so you can say 'Yes' to continue Chase debit card overdraft coverage," read one note, a toned-down version of an alternate letter warning consumers that their debit card might not cover unexpected emergencies, like a highway tow.
A spokesman for Chase said: "We have begun to reach out to customers and are encouraging them to sit down with a branch banker to make sure they understand overdraft services, which can be confusing. We want them to make an informed decision."
When consumers get to the bank, another pitch awaits. Mark Sorenson went into a Dallas branch of Bank of America to turn off the overdraft function on his debit card recently and got a distressing response.
Beware, his banker cautioned. If Mr. Sorenson used the card to buy gas, the station might place a hold on his account and he might not be able to fill up at all, even if he had enough money in the bank to cover a full tank.
"My impression was that it was something he'd been briefed on," said Mr. Sorenson, an architect who said he had tired of paying multiple fees when the bank automatically covered shortfalls on his debit card. "He was trying it out on me."
A Bank of America spokeswoman said that its efforts, including giving consumers a document called "Opting Out of Overdraft Coverage," were not meant to encourage customers to remain in overdraft services but to make sure they understood the complexity of the issue.
Rebecca Borné, policy counsel for the Center for Responsible Lending, said banks still had "tremendous incentive to get as many consumers to opt in as possible." That is because new Federal Reserve regulations taking effect this summer would still allow banks to charge high fees for overdraft, with no limit on the number of times they impose the penalty.
Twinned with the blitz is a lobbying campaign in Washington by community banks and credit unions against several Congressional measures that would impose tough limits on overdrafts. They argue that their overdraft fees tend to be less than the large banks, and that overdraft provides a valuable service to customers, helping them overcome short-term money woes and saving them from the embarrassment of having a card rejected.
Several members of Congress have proposed legislation that would allow banks to charge just one overdraft fee a month, and six a year, and prohibit the reordering of transactions from largest to smallest to maximize fees. But while Democratic leaders insist overdraft legislation remains a priority, the bills have languished as lobbyists have pushed for delay and Congress focused on other financial issues.
"The ultimate strategy was not delay for delay's sake," said Steve Verdier, director of congressional affairs at the Independent Community Bankers Association. "The strategy was to ask Congress for enough time to explain the complexity."
Amid a growing public outcry over these fees, several large banks announced changes to their overdraft policies last year. Bank of America said it would not charge a fee when customers exceeded their balance by $10 or less per day and would limit overdraft fees to four per day. At the end of March, Chase is eliminating overdrafts for customers whose accounts are overdrawn by $5 or less and has already limited overdrafts to three per day.
But even with those changes, customers could still incur more than $100 in fees a day if they opt to take overdraft coverage.
At least one credit union is using the new Fed rules to try to differentiate itself from its competitors. On its Web site, the UW Credit Union in Madison, Wis., says, "While we expect some financial institutions may aggressively market the idea of a consumer 'opt in' within the boundaries of this regulation, we have no such plans."


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Rio Rancho School District saves water, money
With a major drought ongoing throughout the state, some schools are stepping up asking how they can save water and money.
Rio Rancho School District recently received a grant, the only one in the region, to design and implement a water conservation plan.
Besides retrofitting for xeroscaping at school campuses, Rio Rancho Schools have made a pledge to fix leaks faster, retrofit toilets to save water and are also staying conscious of how much water is used in their athletic stadiums. Elena Kayak, the district's energy and environmental specialist, told Action 7 News that all too often, they were finding that most of the water used in those stadiums wasn't watering anything at all. She said it was merely over spray and therefore, a waste of the district's money.
Although Rio Rancho Schools couldn't say how much money they'd immediately save, Kayak explained that they'll be saving thousands of dollars and that water conservation plans should be designed and implemented everywhere.
"It's very practical," she said. "It had us reflect on our practices and operations, but it also allowed us to see that we are in a very unique position to educate children and young adults."
So why aren't any other school districts doing the same thing already?
Kayak said it might be because they don't have the money to implement a plan yet. It does take some work to retrofit things and rooms, but she said the good news is that this year could bring change.
The Bureau of Reclamation, a water and hydroelectric power supplier in New Mexico, is now interested in helping other districts facilitate similar plans. They were the ones who granted Rio Rancho thousands of dollars to make their water conservation plan happen.


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SAN FRANCISCO -- A comprehensive protocol for treating maternal hemorrhage reduced transfusions and hysterectomies, researchers found.
The packed red blood cell use in this setting dropped a significant 22% across a group of hospitals after adopting the protocol, Larry Shields, MD, of Marian Regional Medical Center in Santa Maria, Calif., and colleagues reported.
Peripartum hysterectomy fell 45% from 20 cases in the month when the program became mandatory to 11 in the month after the program was in place in the analysis presented here at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine meeting.
"These data support the recommendation that all hospitals should implement a standardized protocol for the treatment of maternal hemorrhage," Shields told attendees.
Action Points
- Note that this study was published as an abstract and presented at a conference. These data and conclusions should be considered to be preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.
- Utilization of a comprehensive maternal hemorrhage protocol significantly reduced the number of blood products, and also reduced the severity of maternal hemorrhage and the rate of puerperal hysterectomy.
A standardized approach with an opportunity for training and drills may help overcome infrequent experience with severe events, he explained.
His group examined outcomes at hospitals in the Dignity Health system, which covers about one in every eight births in the state of California, as it implemented such a program.
All hospitals had to have an obstetrical hemorrhage cart as a single location for all emergency supplies, including a protocol flow diagram, phone list, diagrams for compression sutures, IV fluids, and Bakri balloon.
The protocol broke down care into stages with an escalating number of people assigned to a woman as she moved through the levels:
- Stage 0 was normal, with routine postpartum care
- Stage 1 was more than expected bleeding, with standardized usual care
- Stage 2 was a requirement for more than two uterotonic agents or not responding to usual care, at which point the anesthesiologist and obstetrician were required to go to the bedside for evaluation and the woman was tested for disseminated intravascular coagulation problems
- Stage 3 was the most severe with blood loss over 1,500 cc or abnormal vital signs, with the assumption that the patient was to be transfused with blood products in a specified ratio
Adherence to the protocols, based on monthly audits at each hospital, was 54% in the baseline of November-December 2011 when it was decided that it would be mandatory for across the hospital system.
When compared with May-June 2012 when adherence reached around 70%, blood product use was down substantially, despite recommendation for early transfusion.
The system used 31% fewer fresh frozen platelet units, 43% fewer units of platelets, and 58% less cryoprecipitate along with the reduced use of packed red blood cells (all P<0.05).
Shields suggested two reasons for these changes.
"Number one is early attention to the patient and keeping track of what's going on rather than the patient presenting with really catastrophic bleeding, so the escalation of stages is really important," he told attendees.
"Second, clearly the transfusion with a prescribed ratio of packed cells to fresh frozen plasma makes a huge difference. You're able to stop their bleeding sooner rather than to keep giving another pack of red cells, another pack of red cells, and it just draining out."
Only one patient was transfused four or more units of packed red blood cells, compared with eight at baseline for an 88% drop.
The number of patients correctly escalated to higher stages rose 25% over the period from the protocol becoming mandatory to follow-up, from 101 to 126.
Those results were largely sustained through September-October 2012, by which time adherence had risen to over 75%. The one exception was a 60% increase in fresh frozen plasma use over baseline, which Shields said was consistent with the desired transfusion ratios.
Limitations included lack of access to individual chart data and that physicians may have gotten a good outcome despite not following the protocol.
The study was supported by Dignity Health.
Shields reported working at a hospital in the Dignity Health system.
Primary Source
Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine meeting
Source Reference: Shields L, et al "Comprehensive maternal hemorrhage protocols reduce utilization of blood products and improve patient safety" SMFM 2013; Abstract 84.


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The Lexar JumpDrive Triton is something of an upgrade to the Lexar Echo MX Backup Drive.
Compared with the Echo, the now-USB-3.0-based Triton offers much faster speed; in fact, it's the fastest in writing among all USB 3.0 external storage solutions I've seen, including full-size drives. It also comes with a better retractable port design and a more aesthetically appealing and sturdy casing than the Echo.
The Triton is not a total upgrade, however, since it doesn't have a visible storage gauge and caps at just 64GB (the Echo caps at 128GB). It also doesn't come with any backup software.
At a suggested price of around $55 for 16GB (or $80 for 32GB and $200 for 64GB), I find that the new drive, though slightly pricey, is totally worth the investment and a much better alternative to the Echo.
Design and features
|Drive type
|Compact external USB portable drive
|Connector options
|Size (WHD)
|0.9 x 0.4 x 2.5 inches
|0.2 oz
|Available capacities
|Capacity of test unit
|OSes supported
|Windows, Mac OS X, Linux
Other than the lack of a visible storage gauge, the Triton has a much better design than the Echo drive. It's now housed in a shiny metal alloy base and a high-gloss mirror finish plastic top that are not just good looking but also very sturdy. On top, it has just one white LED that shows the status of the drive. Solid white means it's powered on and ready, while flashing white means there's data being written to or read from it.
On one end, the Triton comes with a little eyelet opening to be used with an included lanyard in case you want to hook it to a key ring. Though this is convenient, I found that the drive's sturdy housing is susceptible to scratches, however, so you might not want to mix the thumbdrive with too many keys. One the other end, the drive's USB head is retractable into the drive's housing and can be pushed out easily with using one hand.
The drive's USB head comes in blue, indicating that the drive supports USB 3.0. It's in fact the first thumbdrive I've worked with that supports this latest, much faster USB standard. The Triton also works with USB 2.0 and the original USB standards. To take advantage of its speed, however, you'll need to use it with an USB 3.0 port on a computer. Note that currently Macs generally don't support USB 3.0.
Nonetheless the Triton supports both Mac and Windows computers out of the box by being preformatted using the FAT32 file system. There's no setting up; all you have to do is plug it into your computer's USB port and you're set. The computer will recognize and assign a drive letter to the new drive and you can use it just like any other drive already installed on the computer. The Triton comes blank, with no software or any data preinstalled on it.
The fact that the Triton is preformatted in FAT32 also means that it can't be used to store files that larger than 4GB. This is just the limitation of FAT32. In order for it to host large files, you'll need to convert or reformat it to the respective platform's native file system, such as NTFS for Windows or HFS+ for Mac. You can only convert to NTFS from FAT 32 without losing data already stored on the drive.


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Sponsored By
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Suave... Your NINJA INFO CARDS...
Suave... Your NINJA INFO CARDS...
Naruto reference...
But I'll act like I do. BELIEVE IT!
Ninja info cards my ass. you win chicks with undercover bounty hunter cards paulo you dumbass!
Like they're still gonna want you when youre too "stealthy" during sex to actually feel anything
Naruto Abridged Reference for the win~
Love it!
i too want my self some..
@ 3rd anon
dattebayo bitch, it sounds better dont it?
This is from a song on youtube... holy crap...


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| 6.9°C Belfast
Western Leader is being lined up for a trip to Thurles later this month after securing his first victory in the best part of three years at Fairyhouse on New Year's Day.
After breaking down badly when second in a Grade One novice hurdle at Aintree in the spring of 2010, some vets advised Shark Hanlon the gelding should be put down.
However, Western Leader's life was saved and although he was initially retired from racing, he made a shock return last winter and showed he retained plenty of enthusiasm with a couple of notable performances over hurdles before making an emotional winning debut over fences earlier this week.
Hanlon said: "He's come out of the race super, there's not a bother on him.
"We were delighted with how he performed on the day. They thought he was a goner after Aintree and to come back and win a race is brilliant.
"Like Barry (Connell, owner) said to me after the race, if he doesn't win again, it doesn't matter. We've done what we wanted to do with him.
"We've had a lot of texts and e-mails about him the last couple of days and people really appreciate the horse, which is great.
"He's in great form and I think he'll improve a good bit for the run.
"The plan now is to go for a winner's race in Thurles on January 17.
"The problem for a horse like him is there are so few opportunities in Ireland. There is the race in Thurles and that is the only winner's race here for three months."


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Pablo Picasso exhbition in Pisa
'I wanted to become a painter and I became Picasso' is the title of this major retrospective about the very symbol of Modern art.
Pisa hosts this unique exhibition of one of the greatest artist of the xx century featuring more than 200 works. The visitors can admire paintings, ceramics, sketches and designs, lithographs, watercolours, books and tapestries that show the undisputed genius of Picasso.
Blu Palazzo d'Arte e Cultura
Lungarno Gambacorti, 9
56125 – Pisa
14th October 2011 – 29th January 2012
Stay in one of our best luxury villas close to Pisa to enjoy this exhibition and some sightseeing of the city of the Leaning Tower.