Process Builder Flow to send Email Alert at a Specific Time Say 9 AM CET

Question: I have a business requirement to send email alert 7 days after Opportunity Close Date @ 9 AM CET time. But i dont see any option where I can specify time or hours in Process Builder. I see option for number of days only. Does anybody know if we can send email alerts at a specific time or not using Process Builder Flows.
Comment: This could be achieved by standard time dependent work flow rules. Create a DateTime field as Event_Trigger_Date_Time. Now as soon as close date gets updated, update the Event_Trigger_Date_Time with 9 AM CET same as the close day. What you are doing is setting the time to 9AM. Now write standard time dependent work flow rules to trigger after 7 days of Event_Trigger_date_Time and send an email. Hope this helps you.

Similar kind of approach is followed here:
https://techstuffdiary.wordpress.com/2014/06/04/notifications-for-scheduler-if-they-dont-run/
Answer: From what I know of time-based workflow/Process Builder flow, the units of time supported to schedule an action are days and hours and not a particular time.
A programmatic approach would help you to deliver the requirement. You can create a schedulable class, which runs a batch apex at 9 AM CET every day. In the batch class, you can query the opportunities closed 7 days ago (within 24 hours on the 7th day) and send an email. Few references and hints to help you go ahead.
1> you can use N_DAYS_AGO : 7 criteria in start method query in the batch job
2> SingleEmailMessage class and methods to send emails
Batch class:
https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.apexcode.meta/apexcode/apex_batch_interface.htm
Apex Scheduler:
https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.apexcode.meta/apexcode/apex_scheduler.htm?search_text=schedule
Send Email:
https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.apexcode.meta/apexcode/apex_classes_email_outbound_single.htm
Comment: A small comment: Salesforce schedules jobs for execution at the specified time but the actual execution may occur after that time, depending on job size and service availability.
Answer: I know this is a bit of a late answer, but we now have scheduled flows, which will allow you to do this declaratively and easier way. You can s
Comment: Your comment has been cut.


Is it currently safe to travel through Sri Lanka?

Question: Next week I will fly to Colombo and I will travel around (Kandy, Ella, Tissa and along the south-west coast back to Colombo). I will travel by bus and train. Due to the current circumstances I am worrying it might not be safe to make such a journey. Especially in the Kandy region there seem to be some riots. How safe is it?
Answer: I'm glad someone asked this question. I'm from Sri Lanka (although I'm not currently in Sri Lanka at the moment), and Kandy in particular. Please see Michael's long answer citing travel advice from different government authorities.
From a local's point of view, this whole unease was because of a road rage incident. Two lives were lost during the first incident, but this was in a residential area, 1-2 hours from Kandy city center. Police and other forces quickly responded and took control over. Despite the fights between smaller groups, the wider Sinhalese and Islam communities in Sri Lanka live peacefully.
As of now, there is a social media blackout. Facebook, Instagram, and a few messaging apps such as Whatsapp are currently blocked. Email services, Map services, Ride sharing apps, etc work without any issues. This blackout is supposed to removed Friday morning Sri Lanka time.
As a traveler, and without any bias to the tourism board in Sri Lanka, I'd say it's totally safe to travel to Sri Lanka, including Kandy. Other than the international Buddhism institute, there is nothing much to see/do in Digana area anyway.
Answer: The demonstrations and curfews you're referring to appear to be relatively recent, and western governments vary in their official travel advice concerning them.  In the absence of someone "on the ground" stopping by and describing the situation, however, they're probably the best advice we can get.  The general advice seems to be "exercise additional caution, but travel isn't necessarily unsafe."  Given that Western governments tend to be highly cautious in these travel advisories, this is somewhat encouraging.  If it were me, I would probably still avoid Kandy district to be on the safe side.

The United States government has not issued an official travel advisory concerning Sri Lanka.  However, the local embassy issued some recommendations on March 6, 2018:

The Sri Lankan government declared an island-wide State of Emergency and curfews have been imposed in some regions due to communal unrest. Local authorities are authorized to declare local curfews. Further incidents are possible over the next few days.
Actions to Take:

Avoid the areas of unrest.

Exercise caution if unexpectedly in the vicinity of large gatherings or protests.

Monitor local media for updates

Keep a low profile.

The UK government says much the same thing (March 12, 2018):

A countrywide State of Emergency has been in force since 6 March 2018, following a number of violent incidents in Ampara and the Kandy area. Additional security personnel have been deployed in some areas, and access to a number of social media platforms is restricted. Bandaranaike International Airport in Colombo is operating as normal and there are no reports of ongoing incidents in major tourist areas.
If you're in Sri Lanka or due to travel, you're advised to exercise caution, avoid protests and rallies, and follow the advice of the local authorities. In addition to our travel advice, you may wish to consult the Sri Lankan Tourism Development Authority website, which has issued regular updates on the impact on tourist travel.

The French government's advice (March 12, 2018) is much the same:

Des incidents intercommunautaires violents se sont produits dans la région de Kandy (Digana, Teldeniya, Pallekele, centre du pays).
Les mesures de sécurité mises en place par les autorités sri-lankaises sont détaillées sur le site de l'autorité en charge du développement du tourisme à Sri Lanka (en anglais) : http://www.sltda.lk/emergency .
Il est recommandé de se tenir à l'écart des rassemblements, de respecter les consignes des autorités locales et de se tenir informé de l'évolution de la situation.
Violent intercommmunity incidents have occurred in the Kandy region (Digana, Teldeniya, Pallekele, and the center of the country.)  The security measures put in place by Sri Lankan authorities are described on the site of the Sri Lankan Tourism Development Authority.  It is recommended to stay away from gatherings, respect the orders of local authorities, and keep informed of the evolution of the situation.

The Canadian government tells its citizens to "Exercise a high degree of caution in Sri Lanka" (March 7, 2018), which is a slightly stronger statement than their usual "Exercise normal security precautions" but does not rise to the level of formally discouraging travel to the area.

Increasing inter-communal and religious tensions have led to recent violence in the Ampara and Kandy districts. On March 6, 2018, the Sri Lankan Government declared a 7-day state of emergency throughout the country. Authorities may impose curfews and other measures in response to further incidents to ensure safety and security. Access to some social media networks has been restricted. Comply with security instructions of local authorities, avoid large gatherings and monitor local media for the latest developments.

Finally, the Sri Lankan Tourist Development Authority (linked in the French travel advice above) says that there have been no further violent incidents since March 7.  However, this particular office might have an incentive to gloss over legitimate safety concerns, so I would take this depiction with a grain of salt.  The best assessment is probably somewhere between the Western government consensus above and the Sri Lankan government's assessment below.

The Kandy district has returned to normalcy and no violent incident has been reported from the area in the last 48 hours.
Tourists can now visit Kandy without any inconvenience, and members of the travel and hospitality industries will facilitate travel plans in Kandy.
Intermittent curfews imposed by the Police purely as a precautionary measure have no impact on tourists. Tourists can use their foreign passports as passes in the event of a curfew in the Kandy district.


Eliminate empty cells from a sort

Question: I have a spreadsheet where club members scores are added from competitions during the year. I accumulate the data to a sheet with a name column and a value column I then sort these to another sheet by data order to then share to our website.
The formula I use to get the list in score order is
=sort(Leaderboard1!L5:M126,2,False)

This works fine however I also want to present a list in Name order but as the sheet I am pulling the data from contains cells with no information in them (available for adding new members during the year) when I amend the formula to
=sort(Leaderboard1!E5:F126,1,True)

I get all the blank cells at the top of the sorted list.
I have tried a number of variations to only sort cells with names with no luck.
Can you please suggest a correct formula to not include those cells in column 1 that do not have names, column 2 will always have a 0.
Answer: Try:
=sort(filter(Leaderboard1!E5:F126, len(Leaderboard1!E5:E126)),1,True)

Eliminate empty cells from a sort


Building ship to Mars in orbit

Question: I am a layman when it comes to this stuff, but I don't understand why we don't build a large ship like the ISS in orbit.  Then we can launch the propulsion portion separately and attach to the cargo and living areas.  Leave the whole mess in orbit around Mars on arrival and descend in a vehicle solely built to get crew to the surface and back. Is this not doable?  It would solve a lot of the issues with the long voyage.
Comment: What issues would this approach solve?
Answer: There is considerable disagreement on the topic.
The Mars Direct initiative is probably the most famous in advocating for sending humans to Mars in smaller, Earth-built craft. Since you ask why not, I'll focus on their reasons (rather than those why we should build craft in space, or why we shouldn't go at all). The argument is naturally long but I'll point out:

Proponents feel that orbital construction will never finish, as political winds and budget cuts will inevitably get the project cancelled.
The engineering challenges in constructing a large, complex craft in orbit have yet to be overcome. Mars Direct could be achieved with existing technology.
Estimated cost is much lower for a Mars Direct-style mission.
Answer: As I understand it, building interplanetary ships in orbit is the long term plan.  Building the individual pieces is the hard part.  Building a propulsion system that meets the mission requirements, building the long term, deep space human habitation module, and building the cargo section, for example, are the parts that we're having problems with.  Especially the part where you have to keep the humans alive.  Not to mention that building and launching each individual pieces is really expensive.
You might find these questions interesting relating to the individual pieces:
Is it more efficient to assemble spacecraft in orbit, or assemble on the ground and launch?
Could NASA send animals to Mars and back as a rehearsal before a human mission?
Could the ISS be propelled to Mars?

Building ship to Mars in orbit


Until what time in the morning may you eat on a fast day?

Question: On fast days that begin in the morning, (Asara B'Teves, Taanis Esther, Shiva Asar B'Tamuz, Tzom Gedalya) if you intend to eat when you awake, until what time may you eat in the morning? Does it depend on Shaos Zemanios?
Comment: To be clear, dawn is the _latest_ time these fast days can start. They usually start when one finishes eating during the preceding night. If one goes to sleep with intending on sleeping through until morning and then wakes up by accident, most authorities forbid him from eating even before dawn because the fast already started for him. See Shulchan Aruch 564
Comment: myzmanim.com writes: "Eating of a settled character - אכילת קבע - may not be started during the half hour immediately preceding dawn. Please consult your Rabbi for details."
Comment: @Curiouser That is a rule regarding Kriat Shema. You can't start a seudah within half an hour of the time of chiyuv. Presumably this restriction would not apply to women who are pturot from kriat shema.
Answer: Re the first response, the halacha as described in Shulchan Aruch 564 is quite different than presented. First, fasts always start at amud hashachar (72 minutes l'chumra, 90 minutes super l'chumra). The only exception is where one fell into a deep sleep with no intention of eating afterward. However, most people either set their clock to davka wake up early, or else hope that they'll wake up early enough to have a bite before the fast starts. In that very common case (possibly 100% nowadays), everyone agrees one may eat. Moreover, the Rema there on 564 says that we always have an intention to drink during the night, so there's no need to make a t'nai (condition) in order to drink if one wakes up unexpectedly early. So even for the machmirim, one can drink right before amud hashachar.
Comment: If 72 minutes is l'chumra, then what is ikar hadin?
Answer: Minor fast days start at dawn (Alote HaShacar) which is about 72 minutes before the sun rises.
According the Magen Avraham Alot Hashacar is the pre-sunrise event that occurs when the rays of the sun first become evident.
The night ends at "Alot haShachar", the "rising of the morning". It
   has two halachic definitions: Most rule it is 72 minutes before dawn,
   some use the solar equivalent--16.1o (degrees) below the horizon. The
   latter would come dawn+72 min if the sun were up for exactly 12 hours
   that day. In the summer it would be longer, in the winter, later.
   Others use 90 solar minutes.(I'm not sure about this source)


Transparent PNG Going Black

Question: I have looked through so many other threads with people having trouble with a png image going black where it should be transparent and none of the solutions have worked for me.
Maybe I am going wrong else where in the code? Maybe imagealhpablending isnt supported by my web server?
Thanks for anyone that can help.
<code>        $photo = imagecreatefrompng( "{$thumb_folder}{$new_file_name}" );
        $width = imagesx($photo);
        $height = imagesy($photo);

        $new_width = 32;
        $new_height = floor($height / ($width / $new_width));

        $temp_photo = imagecreatetruecolor($new_width, $new_height);

        imagealphablending($temp_photo, false);

        imagesavealpha($temp_photo, true);

        $transparent = imagecolorallocatealpha($temp_photo, 255, 255, 255, 127);

        imagefilledrectangle($temp_photo, 0, 0, $new_width, $new_height, $transparent);

        imagecopyresampled($temp_photo, $photo, 0, 0, 0, 0, $new_width, $new_height, $width, $height);

        imagepng($temp_photo, "{$thumb_folder}{$new_file_name}" );
</code>
Answer: The first colour allocated to an image is always the background colour anyway, so there is no need to draw that filled rectangle. Remove it from the code, and see what you get.

Transparent PNG Going Black


Cisco NAT failing on 3700 series

Question: I recently fubared the public interface to an SSH connection. I'm trying to set up a NAT that will forward to the eth1 interface with a local address.
The set up is a cisco 3750 -> 3560 switch -> servers. All hosts are pingble via the router.
The NAT is being set up similar to this:
int fa0/0.1
ip address 10.0.200.1
ip nat inside

int gig0/0
ip address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
ip nat outside

ip nat inside source list 1 interface GigabitEthernet1/0 overload
ip nat inside source static tcp 10.0.200.150 22  xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 22 extendable

access-list 1 permit 10.0.200.0 0.0.0.255

With show ip nat translations I can see the mapping. When the public IP is nmap'd it comes up as 22/filtered and I'm not allowed to connect.
With lft(layer 4 traceroute), i.e. lft <ip>:22 the router and the switch behind it return nothing but the server comes back with open.
Its as if the NAT almost works.
Answer: The Cisco 3750 does not support NAT.

Cisco NAT failing on 3700 series


Infusing olive oil with herbs

Question: I have some basil from my garden that I would like to infuse with olive oil to flavor it. I was going to pack the jar with the herbs and then pour the oil over it, keep it in a jar for about a week and then strain and store the oil for cooking.  Are there any issues I should be aware of?
Answer: See this article from Colorado University Safe Food.  The goal is to prevent growth of the botulism pathogen.  Here are their key points:

Wash all soil-contaminated produce before adding it to an oil infusion,
Add an acidifying agent such as lemon juice or vinegar to the recipe at the rate of one tablespoon per cup of oil,
Keep oil infusions refrigerated in order to retard the growth of any microbes,
Discard infusions after one week, or sooner if apparent cloudiness, gas bubbles, or foul odor develop and,
When in doubt, throw it out.

Sorry the source article is not formatted prettily, but I was looking for something more authoritative than about.com or ehow.com.
Comment: @citizen indeed, you can't look at it to determine botulism risk. That's what the acid & refrigeration is for, to eliminate it. But there are pathogens other than bacteria, as well as spoilage bacteria. They're saying "it should be safe for a week if prepared like this, but if you notice signs of spoilage, throw it out."
Comment: They mention cloudiness, gas bubbles and foul odour. To my knowledge you can never know if food is contaminated with *C. botulinum*. "The bacteria and toxin that cause botulism are invisible to the naked eye and do not change the colour, odour or taste of food." [Food Safety Tips for Home Canning – Health Canada](http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/securit/kitchen-cuisine/food-canning-conserve-aliment-eng.php)
Comment: @citizen That is true.  I don't think the warning about the visible symptoms was targeted at botulism, but at other types of spoilage.  Nonetheless, the message from all sources to the orginal question is:  if you do this at all, do it with great care, and don't hold the product for a long time.
Comment: @citizen The acidifying agent is to get the pH low enough to prevent botulism growth, especially in combination with refrigeration.
Comment: @derobert: Yes, but you can never determine for yourself by looking at the oil if there is a risk of botulism. And that they mention cloudiness is even more weird when they recommend storing it in the refrigerator – the fats will partially set because of the temperature and (harmless) cloudiness will appear.
Answer: Flavored oils are a low-acid anaerobic (no air) environment. Herbs add a moisture source and can allow botulism bacteria to grow.  Even if herbs are removed from the oil after infusing for a brief period, they may have already contaminated the remaining oil with botulism toxin and/or allow small pieces of herbs to remain where the bacteria can grow.  Commercial herbed oils rely on acidification to prevent spoilage, since botulism bacteria can't grow in a sufficiently acidic environment.  Because the temperatures required to kill the bacteria spores (around 250F) will degrade the oil and/or herbs, acidification is the only practical way to ensure safety for long-term storage while maintaining quality and flavor.
As SAJ14SAJ's answer points out, a brief imprecise acidification step is sufficient to maintain quality of oil for a short time at cool temperatures.  But even refrigerator temperatures are not sufficiently low to completely stop botulism bacteria from growing over long periods.  Most food safety sources recommend that homemade herbed oils -- acidified or not -- be stored in the refrigerator and used within 2-4 days.
For commercial herb oil stored at room temperature, the processing depends on consistent procedures that can be tested and verified in a laboratory to ensure sufficient acidity.  However, until recently, no consumer guidelines had been thoroughly tested to allow home acidification for long-term storage.
Following research conducted at the University of Idaho and published in 2014 in the journal Food Protection Trends, there are now consumer guidelines to process certain herbs and garlic safely through acidification before adding to oil.
Here is a summary of the procedure.  Be sure to read the guidelines link thoroughly and to follow the instructions precisely.  Note that the following procedure has ONLY been tested so far with basil, oregano, and rosemary, as well as (finely chopped) garlic.  Other herbs may require different amounts of acidity during processing to achieve safe results.

Make a 3% solution of citric acid by combining 1 level Tablespoon of granular citric acid with 2 cups of water.  (Note that other acids, lemon juice, vinegars, etc. have NOT been verified and tested for safe home use in this step.)
Combine fresh herbs with the 3% citric acid solution in a ratio of 1 part herb to 10 parts of the acid solution by weight.  Weighing is recommended here, since the volume measurement of herbs is imprecise.
Place a weight on top of the herbs to ensure they are completely submerged in the solution.
Let herbs soak in the acid for 24 hours.  (This is a minimum to ensure safety; a longer soak may degrade the flavor.)
Remove the acidified herbs, drain, and pat dry.  Combine the acidified herbs with oil, and infuse.  A ratio of 1 part herbs to 10 parts oil by weight is recommended, but the ratio can be varied from this to achieve appropriate flavor.
While the procedure recommends removing the herbs once appropriate flavor has been achieved (generally in 1 to 10 days), there is no food safety risk if the herbs are kept in the oil for longer.
Store in a clean, food-grade bottle in a cool place protected from light.  The guidelines note that there are no food safety concerns about storing these oils at room temperature, though they recommend storing in the refrigerator or freezer to maintain flavor and quality for a longer period.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Food preservation is not to be taken lightly, particularly in situations that are known risks for botulism.  People who are familiar with home canning recipes already know that one should only use approved recipes and procedures that have been thoroughly tested; this procedure is no exception.  Botulism risks are generally low, but the consequences of deviating can be severe.
If you are not willing to go through this detailed procedure (or another one from an approved food safety and preservation organization), be sure to store any herbed oils in the refrigerator and use within 2-4 days or freeze.
Answer: National Center for Home Food Preservation
How do I can oil with herbs? Can I can pesto?

Herbs and oils are both low-acid and together could support the growth of the disease-causing Clostridium botulinum bacteria. Oils may be flavored with herbs if they are made up for fresh use, stored in the refrigerator and used within 2 to 3 days. There are no canning recommendations. Fresh herbs must be washed well and dried completely before storing in the oil. The very best sanitation and personal hygiene practices must be used. Pesto is an uncooked seasoning mixture of herbs, usually including fresh basil, and some oil. It may be frozen for long term storage; there are no home canning recommendations.
Answer: I've had good luck with infusing olive oil, but I use a significantly different method:

Blanche and shock the basil.  (dip in boiling water for a few seconds, then in ice water).
Put the basil into a pot, and cover with olive oil.
Warm the olive oil, and leave it warm on the stove for a while (maybe 60 minutes)
Strain the oil, and put in jars.
Store the jars in the fridge.

It might take me 6 months to use it all up depending on how much I made; I don't know what the recommended safe storage time is for it, but I keep good practices in making sure that it's well sealed, kept cold, and that I never allow a contaminated utensil into the oil.  I also tend to use it for applications that get re-cooked (eg, making croutons) as it gets older, vs. just using it to flavor a parsley-based pesto.
update : right, so I didn't spell out specifically why this is better -- the blanching helps to kill any bacteria (although not spores) on the basil as well as breaking cell walls so that the infusion takes less time.  The warm infusion means that it spends less time infusing so that anaerobic bacteria doesn't have as much of a chance to grow.  Storing the oil in the fridge further inhibits bacteria growth.
Comment: Its the hold time of six months that forced me to downvote for safety--take that out, and I am happy to remove the downvote.  After all, just because the scary dog hasn't bitten you *yet* doesn't mean it won't.  We have to be very conservative on safety issue recommendations IMO.
Comment: I've heard of similar techniques for making hot-pepper oils, though they usually call for adding the peppers to the oil then heating the oil on the stove to whatever temperature you need to kill botulin bacteria (it's rather hot, as I recall) and leaving it there for an hour I think. I'm pretty sure I've seen answers on this site explaining the process in more detail. Also found this link: http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/foodnut/09340.html
Answer: Just a couple of points in addition to those already mentioned:

Make sure you wash and dry your basil leaves before infusing.
Make sure you sterilize your container by scalding or immersing in boiling water.
Once made, keep in the fridge.
Answer: i have read in this artile that coconut oil medium chain ftty acids kill certain bacteria including botulism, although i would like more sources to confirm this so that i could make my garlic oil without worries
page 72
https://books.google.com.mx/books?id=tSGmnBeRpLkC&pg=PA72&lpg=PA72&dq=coconut+oil+botulism&source=bl&ots=HceH2FTblP&sig=7hkScj7lQabEoe9ZUSZD6jZqMPI&hl=es&sa=X&ei=lxsqVd3bMsKusAWN1YGwAw&ved=0CE4Q6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=coconut%20oil%20botulism&f=false
Comment: That link doesn't seem to take me to the book preview, maybe you could add a bit of a summary of what it says?

Infusing olive oil with herbs


5th precept missing from 8fold Path?

Question: I can find the first 4 precepts explicitly listed in the 8fold Path- but not the 5th precept regarding intoxicants. Am I missing it in there somewhere? I am wondering if it was a later addition to the tradition.
Comment: This question might have been asked before, here: [Drunk monks and the 5th precept](https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/q/7236/254)
Answer: There is an interesting relationship between the first four precepts and the fifth precept.
For e.g. from the Kalama Sutta (quoted below), we can see that the fifth precept is not included. You can find a similar grouping of the first four precepts in the Sigalovada Sutta as the four vices. It also appears in this way in the Sankha Sutta.
But there's a reason for this. Consuming intoxicating substances is by itself not a vice or evil act (unlike killing, stealing, telling lies and sexual misconduct), but it can cause you to become heedless and violate the first four precepts.
In this sense, the fifth precept is only there to support the first four precepts (and the rest of the training).
From the Kalama Sutta:

"A greedy individual, overcome by greed, kills living creatures,
  steals, commits adultery, lies, and encourages others to do the same.
  Is that for their lasting harm and suffering?" "Yes, sir."
"A hateful individual, overcome by hate, kills living creatures,
  steals, commits adultery, lies, and encourages others to do the same.
  Is that for their lasting harm and suffering?" "Yes, sir."
"A deluded individual, overcome by delusion, kills living creatures,
  steals, commits adultery, lies, and encourages others to do the same.
  Is that for their lasting harm and suffering?" "Yes, sir."

From the Sikkha-Dubbalya Sutta:

"Monks, these five are things that weaken the training. Which five?
  The taking of life, stealing, sexual misconduct, the telling of lies,
  and distilled & fermented beverages that are a cause for heedlessness.
  These five are things that weaken the training.

Please see this question for more info on heedfulness (appamāda).
Comment: Its also excluded from the ten skilful actions. https://suttacentral.net/an10.178/en/sujato
Answer: AN4.201 lists these five:

And what is a better person?
It's someone who doesn't kill living creatures, steal, commit sexual misconduct, lie, or use alcoholic drinks that cause negligence.
And they encourage others to avoid these things.
This is called a better person.

This works for me. Does it work for you?
Answer: The Noble Eightfold path actually has 7 precepts (3 bodily + 4 verbal). In many suttas, the Buddha talk about the 7 precepts instead of the 5.
The 7 precepts are earlier because they are included in the Noble Eightfold Path. As the monastic sangha grew, new precepts were gradually added (including the 5th precept); most of the precepts were added after some issues had occurred and to prevent the same incidents from happening again.
Origin of 5th precept as I heard from Ven Dhammavuddho (abbot of Vihara Buddha Gotama): There was a monk who possessed psychic powers (means he attained at least the 4th Jhana). He had just tamed a Naga (snake spirit) and the villagers were very grateful. They wanted to make an offering and asked him what he wanted. He didn't want anything but his fellow monks suggested he asked for alcoholic beverage. So, the monks drank the alcohol. His fellow monks were seasoned drinker; so they were not drunk. However, this monk became drunk. When they went back to see the Buddha, this monk had his feet pointing towards the Buddha (which he would not have done if he was sober). The Buddha asked the other monks whether this drunken monk could fight the Naga now. The answer is obvious; he couldn't. From this incident, the Buddha added the precept to abstain from consuming intoxicants, which leads to heedlessness.

5th precept missing from 8fold Path?


Rod characteristic for spinning for small freshwater fish

Question: Looking for an idea of the characteristics for a rod (length, action...) before I go shopping. Using small lures, commonly 2-4g bladed spinners or 12 g Toby,  going after small brown trout and Arctic char.
Comment: I don't do much fishing for either of those, but would like to know as well.
Comment: I'd go with an 6-8 footer and light to medium action. Personal preference, no good reasons.
Answer: My personal opinion would be to go with an ultralight rod, in the four to six foot range, with five and a half feet being ideal.  An ultralight open face reel to match, loaded with four pound test monofilament compleats the set up.
Comment: Could you add some more details as to why these options?


SharePoint Custom List with Multiple choices columns export to Excel

Question: Is it possible to export multiple choices columns in a SharePoint custom list to an excel spreadsheet  and that the list keeps its values in a multiple choice format?
Answer: No, it's not possible as Excel drop-down lists do not support multiple choices. It has nothing to do with SharePoint or with your list, but it's a known limitation of Excel.
A workaround would be to use Access instead of Excel.
Answer: It is not possible.
Multiple Choices in Excel are only achievable by applying VBA code.
Answer: Thank you all! seems like I found a solution!
What I did was that instead of match the custom list directly to excel, I created the same custom list from scratch in Excel and then Data validate the columns that needed the multi choice list. In this way I was able to recreate the list and all its content, like you guys said it's impossible if you want to keep the data connected but if you only need to collect the information that at the end will be in the SharePoint custom app or list , this is the best way because the data integration importation works well with SharePoint.
Thanks,


Is it possible to perform noise reduction using multiple recordings?

Question: I have an interview recorded using a Zoom H1n audio recorder and and two DSLR internal mics. Is there a way that I can use all three tracks in some sort of noise reduction process that looks for the loudest common sound in all the recordings (the interviewee speaking)? Something similar to adaptive noise reduction using multiple microphones that is carried out by modern phones?
Comment: @MS-SPO I have honestly forgotten what this was for, it was most likely a school project at the time. Anyway I have learnt a lot more about audio and processing in the intervening years than I knew then, and I would probably have just used a noise gate on the H1n's recording as the first stage and added some basic noise reduction on top of that. It would have been enough for what I was trying to do.
Comment: Though I don't know how you would achieve it, i'd say only if none of the mics changed position over time, otherwise you'd be chasing phase for the entire track too.
Comment: Yes all mics were fixed in position. Is there were some kind of Layering system in audio similar to Photoshop where the Blend Modes such as Subtraction, Difference, Overlay, Screening, etc. can be used? That would probably be what I think I'm looking for....
Comment: My recommendation is that if you need to capture audio correctly during an interview for a case, there are lots of professional sound recordists available with the right skills and the right equipment. It feels a bit like a sound recordist in a legal forum trying to get free advice on a lawsuit they are filing.
Comment: research cross-correlation functions. This is an audio/digital signal processing function which may be able to assist.
Comment: What kind of noise is it? Some hum, some external or environmental thing (cars driving by, people talking ...) or ... white noise?
Answer: There probably is not much of a point trying to combine the sources.  I'd use just the H1n sound while using the DSLR sound as reference for synchronisation with the video (I assume you recorded video on the DSLR).  If you have equal quality in all sources, Wiener filtering would give you about 3dB gain for every doubling of the relevant sources but you don't have equal quality.  If you work with non-linear filtering like spectral subtraction, you can recover significant amount of recognizable speech at the cost of a weird noise structure ("musical noise").  If you hand-placed a H1n in an interview environment, I would be surprised if the gains from such a procedure would offset the artifacts they buy you.


What units to use in responsive design?

Question: So I am really at loss which units to adopt when developing responsive layouts. Some say use viewport units. Other people say use rem. Other say use media queries and pixel ratio. So what unit is the "right" one, speaking from experience and most bulletproof?
Comment: On StackOverflow: [What's the preferred unit when doing responsive design?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15850988/whats-the-preferred-unit-when-doing-responsive-design)
Comment: Depends on the designer/framework, some use PX, some use EM, Some use REM. All work...
Comment: Use percent for base font size then ems for trickled/bubbled fonts and ratios, percents for margins and things, and px for breakpoints
Comment: This question is off-topic here and belongs on Stackoverflow
Answer: To optimize for mobile, you need to have a viewport configured in the meta tag.
This is what I use:
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1">

That way I'll have pixel units match CSS units when I specify units in pixels in CSS even for mobile.
The only units I use most often for maximum compatibility are:
px - The raw pixel unit. On a desktop, its the size of one tiny dot and takes about 1/(screen width)th of your screen width and 1/(screen height)th of your screen height.
em - I believe it stands for electronic measurement. Its relative to font size. I use it quite often to scale elements. There's more info here: http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/css2em.htm
Then I do on occasion use percent unit. That means a percentage of the screen.
I'd recommend using the pixel unit only if you have to, such as when you're reserving a block of space for a special advertisement.
I don't bother with the new units because I like to maintain compatibility with all browsers, not just one.
Comment: I'm not sure what you mean by "raw pixel unit", but it sounds like you're referring to the physical device pixels, in which case this is incorrect. CSS pixels are reference pixels, and can be made up of 1, 1.5, 2, 3, etc. physical pixels.
The em unit comes from typography, where it was traditionally equal to the width of the capital letter "M" in whatever typeface was being used.
Answer: If you carefully observe most of responsive design css, you will find % as prime unit for width,height,margin etc.
For font-size, em is widely accepted.
Additionally media queries is also important.

What units to use in responsive design?


Notes on violin

Question: I am a beginner in violin. I am confused that most of the times in music sheet the notes are normal (neither sharp or flat) but when playing it feels like one is playing the sharp of some notes (like F# instead of F, and the second finger positions). Is that the right way?
Comment: I'm unsure what question you're asking. I _think_ you're intending to play F but what you hear is F#. In this case, your talking about _intonation_, and the solution is practice time hearing the F (and every other note) and playing it until you identify it and know if you're sharp or flat, then adjust.
Comment: Do you know about key signatures and accidentals? I think you might not understand that an F# in the key signature means play F# for any F in the score unless there is an accidental.
Answer: One of the important things to consider when learrning violin is learning to listen to the exact pitch of any notes played. Seems like you're doing that, so good. Also, it seems you're pressing the strings down in not the exact right place. If the notes sound sharp, it's because your fingers are moving too far along the neck, chinwards. So, move them back until the notes sound right in tune.
It's a common beginner problem, maybe caused by the way you're holding the violin. The left hand should not be supporting the neck, its job is fingering the notes.
Answer: When you start playing the violin the first finger pattern you usually learn is a pattern where there is:
a whole step (a major second) from open string to the first finger,
a whole step from first finger to second finger,
a half step (a minor second) from second finger to third finger,
and if you include the fourth finger a whole step from third to fourth finger.
With that pattern on each string the "normal" notes on the violin for a beginner is as follows:
On E-string: E - F♯ - G♯ - A - (B)
On A-string: A - B - C♯ - D - (E)
On D-string: D - E - F♯ - G - (A)
On G-string: G - A - B - C - (D)
The note in the bracket is the fourth finger which is the same note as an open string except the B on the E string.
With that finger pattern you can play:
an A major scale in one octave on the A and E strings and play tunes in A major on those two strings.
a D major scale in one octave on the D and A strings and play tunes in D major on those two strings.
a G major scale in one octave on the G and D strings and play tunes in G major on those two strings.
That is the most common finger pattern for beginner violinists. It is the best way to start. You have the open strings as reference for intonation; the root note of the scale, the tonic, is an open string and the dominant is an open string. It helps a lot in order to develop your sense of intonation.
Do NOT start with C major. It is much harder to play C major in tune for a beginner especially on the E string.
Thus the "normal" notes on the violin do include sharps.
Answer: I think you might be running into the issue of key signatures. When you look at the very beginning of a piece, you see a clef and then (usually) you see some sharp or flat symbols, and then you see a time signature (3/4, C, or something like that). The sharps and flats are automatically applied to all the notes. So if you see an F# (just the sharp, no note) before the time signature, any time you see an F in the piece, it's actually an F#. There's a good description of how key signatures work here.
If that's not what you're looking for, you might be having issues with intonation. When you play a G on the E string, try playing open G and then the high one and comparing them. They're both Gs, so they should sound like the same note. If you're playing another second finger note, you can test it against another source. There are various apps you can use, or you can search the web.
NOTE: if you're going to compare your note to one from another source, MAKE SURE YOUR INSTRUMENT IS IN TUNE!! If your violin isn't in tune, you'll be training your fingers to go to the wrong places.

Notes on violin


Nikon D5500 Autofocus with Sigma DG 150-500mm 1:5-6.3 APO HSM

Question: Should the Nikon D5500 be able to auto-focus the Sigma DG 150-500mm 1:5-6.3 APO HSM lens? Auto-focus works with this lens on my Nikon D40X. On the D5500 it toggles between MF and AF. Video of what I am seeing the monitor's info section. https://youtu.be/IIIFbzEwB90
Answer: It appears you are shooting indoors. At f/6.3 there's probably not enough edge light making it through the lens to the camera's AF sensor for the camera focus the lens. If you were in brighter conditions or aiming at very high contrast targets it might work better. The PDAF sensor in any SLR with AF compares edge light from opposite sides of the lens to measure focus.
One of the conundrums facing camera designers is whether to optimize a PDAF system to work with narrower aperture lenses (but with less accuracy due to the narrower baseline of the focus sensor's elements for their positions on opposite sides of the lens) or to optimize it with a wider baseline that can take advantage of wider aperture lenses that allow it to be more accurate and work in dimmer light when used with a wide aperture lens. These wider pairs of lines on the AF sensor won't work at all with lenses too narrow, though.
Some cameras hedge their bets a little: some focus sensor lines are optimized for narrower apertures and others are optimized for wider apertures. When used with a narrower aperture lens, the points sensitive at f/5.6 or f/8 will provide some functionality. When used with wider aperture lenses the points sensitive only at or below f/4 or even f/2.8 will provide more accurate autofocus.
Your D40X is probably designed for all AF points to be usable with lenses up to maximum apertures as small as f/8. Most Nikon AF systems at that time were. Your newer D5500 is probably designed to be usable with lenses having a maximum aperture of f/5.6 or wider.
Switching to Live View might allow the image sensor's CDAF to focus, but there's no guarantee the lens' narrow maximum aperture of f/6.3 won't give the CDAF of the image sensor problems as well.
Comment: I've attempted to auto-focus on varying subjects outdoors on a sunny day with the same results. I think your statement "D5500 is probably designed to be usable with lenses having a maximum aperture of f/5.6 or wider." is the root cause of this issue. Manual focus for me with this combo. Thanks!
Answer: You need to have the firmware updated at Sigma!
extract from an email sent to me :-
Thank you for your email.
Yes we will be able to update the firmware on this lens for you at a cost of £41.99.
If you would like to send the lens to us I have posted a link to our returns form online below.
http://www.sigma-imaging-uk.com/index.php?route=information/information&information_id=32path=83
Kind Regards
Chris Bibby
Answer: I bought one for a Nikon D5500. It did not autofocus: sometimes did, sometimes did not. I brought the lens to a Sigma center to update the firmware.
Now it works perfectly both autofocus and aperture setting.
Answer: Kudos to Sigma. Sigma updated my firmware, free of charge. Autofocus is now working with the Nikon D5500. I paid for shipping to Sigma.
Comment: Ditto the above sentiment. Sigma support were very professional, identified failure to focus on my D5500 (when it worked fine on my D3300) as being in need of a firmware upgrade. 3 day turn-around with just postage costs and the lens is performing perfectly. Thank you Sigma. Ken


Why does my skillet burn even when using peanut oil?

Question: When I use peanut oil which is one of the highest smoke point oils the oil still burns. Why is this happening? Is it the burner that's too hot? I have used the burner mainly on high
Answer: Just because peanut oil has a higher smoke point than other oils doesn't mean your pan won't get hotter.
Don't leave your pan on high for so long.
Answer: You want the pan to be HOT when you add the oil, then add the food and turn the heat down to a moderate cooking temperature. You can drop a drop of water into the pan before the oil, if it skitters around, the pan is hot enough.
Answer: You should never cook on high for more than a few minutes. High heat is only for brief searing and boiling water. Teflon coated skillet should never be used on high heat due to the release of carcinogens being released at high heat.
Answer: I learned that the flame on the gas stove was to strong so I will try lowering the flame.
Answer: Peanut oil isn't even the highest smoke point oil around, some highly refined safflower or soybean oils, and rice bran oil, go higher... the reason peanut oil is so good for high heat cooking is that it tends not to become unpalatable if some of it gets overheated...


How to change the "Browse" button in Bootstrap custom file input?

Question: I need to translate it to another language, any way to do that?
EDIT: Nevermind, figured it out myself.
<code>.custom-file-label::after {
content: "Custom label" !important; }
</code>
or
use attribute data-browse="Your custom label"
https://getbootstrap.com/docs/4.6/components/forms/#translating-or-customizing-the-strings-with-html
Comment: could you please tell me clearly?
Answer: override on css:
<code>.custom-file-input:lang(en)~.custom-file-label::after {
    content: "Browse";
}
</code>
change content
Answer: The button isn't called the "browse button" — that's just the name your browser gives for it. Browsers are free to implement the file upload control however they like. In Safari, for example, it's called "Choose File" and it's on the opposite side of whatever you're probably using.
You can implement a custom look for the upload control using the technique outlined on QuirksMode, but that goes beyond just changing the button's text.


How stationary is geostationary?

Question: When a satellite is in geostationary orbit, it is supposed to stay above one spot of the earth and rotate around the earth at the same rate the earth spins. But how exact does that equality need to be? Let's say I pointed a laser such that it hit a geostationary satellite exactly (perhaps a GPS satellite). How long would it take for the satellite to shift out of position such that the laser would no longer hit the satellite?
Comment: And just to be clear, GPS satellites are not geostationary; they're in [12-hour orbits](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System#Space_segment) that are tilted with respect to the equator.
Comment: There are several good questions and answers already here in SXSE that relate to GEO satellite drift, perturbations, and station keeping. See for example [How much "wobble" does a typical geostationary satellite experience?](http://space.stackexchange.com/q/10898/12102) and [How much is a geostationary satellite expected to deviate from the geostationary orbit?](http://space.stackexchange.com/q/19552/12102).
Comment: Pointing lasers at the sky is not recommended and may give you large fines if you manage to hit an airplane that flies thru the laser beam
Answer: Generally, the GEO satellites are to keep their desired position above ground within +/- 0.05 deg (both N and E) which translates into a 70 km 2D projection corridor at GEO altitude.
The laser pointer case, is dependent on the beam width. A laser pointer of the kind you get in stores has beamwidth of 1-3 milliradian, i.e. about 0.05 to 0.17 deg. This translates roughly into a circle of diameter 35- 105 km at GEO altitude. The satellite should stay within it for a long time. Calculations can be updated for other cases, like the one for LLCD in this answer which shows 3.5 urad beamwidth for the corresponding laser.
Lets look at how it does drift from nominal though. Looking broadly at the perturbation scenario the term geostationary orbit as derived from Kepler's 2BP and its relation with the number 42164.2 km is not as precise in real-life. The real orbit radius is not equal to that number generally.
The satellite drifts with time, owing to several sources of perturbation including equatorial bulge, SRP, third-body effects and Earth's precession and nutation. Most are long term variation while some short term variation do exist (considerable longitude drift can be seen within 6 months, semi-major axis might drift by tens of kilometers in a matter of few days.
Here are some trends to give a perception of drifting of a satellite in GEO.

Graph 1 :
Shows the drift of semi-major axis for a satellite placed at nominal R of 42164.2 km propagated for about 6 months shows an increase of about 21kms.

Graph 2
:Due to asymmetry of Earth (More elliptical at equator) Longitude drift occurs. Longitude can greatly vary with time.The graph shows how over a propagation period of 160 days, the satellite at a nominal longitude of 125 deg can drift eastward till 105 deg.

Graph 3
:The change of longitude-drift can be observed with longitude drift-time trend which is essentially linear. The slope depends upon nominal longitude of the satellite.

Graph 4
:The longitudinal drift rate for a nominal longitude at a point, in turn, is given by this graph and varies in form of a parabola.
Considering the asymmetry there are four equillibrium points- two stable (at 75.3°E and 104.7°W) and two unstable (at 165.3°E and 14.7°W) equilibrium points. Any geostationary object placed between the equilibrium points would (without any action) be slowly accelerated towards the stable equilibrium position, causing a periodic longitude variation.
Inclination changes due to 'wobbling' motion of the Earth with 0.85deg/yr rate between +/-15 deg maximum with a period of  26.6 years.
Also, eccentricity, argument of perigee and RAAN varies considerably.
This complex variation can better be perceived by drawing relative motion in cartesian coordinates of the satellite in orbit as well as the observer on Earth.
-
Source:
[Book] Li, Hengnian. Geostationary satellites collocation. New York: Springer, 2014.
Geostationary Orbit- Wikipedia
Comment: Please make clearer which parts of this answer are your own work, and which have been copy/pasted from the named book. Use "quote" formatting to indicate words that are not your own.
Comment: @uhoh Tried updating with some more information to clariify. Check the relevance. Else, the answers mentioned in your comment are great, as they are. Can delete if the answer is not necessary.
Comment: Can you explain the meaning and significance of each of these plots? They aren't helping me understand your answer at the moment. Right now it looks like you've just pasted a bunch of plots to make the answer look good, without explaining how the plots specifically enhance or support your explanation. Thanks!
Comment: For reference that +/- 0.05 deg is about +/- 5.56 km at the Earth's mean radius (ground-ish).
Comment: I've just asked [Why would the orbit of a satellite in GEO climb by 21 km in altitude over six months by itself?](https://space.stackexchange.com/q/33467/12102)

How stationary is geostationary?


Violin - Can double stops be played when the strings are not next to each other?

Question: Suppose I wanted to play a double stop on the violin. The double stop played the G string and the A string simultaneously. Is this possible? Can you play a double stop on two non-adjacent strings?
Answer: As Jomiddnz points out, there's pizzicato. You could also bow one string and pluck another at the same time.
But if you want both notes played with the bow, and don't want the bow to catch the strings in between, the only way is by playing on the top and bottom strings with the bow under the strings. Here's an example (OK, the only example I've found): the last few bars of Flausino Vale's variations on Franz Lehár's Paganini. (Note also the combination of an arco note and pizzicato open strings.)

If you don't want to use that extraordinary technique, then, no.
Comment: Haha, Flausino Vale was definitely a show-off! :)
Comment: No, only that double-caesura sign in b.112. The piece is for solo violin so the player is at liberty to take their time over this awkward change.
Comment: Yep, that is a very show-offy technique.  I'm sure Paganini would have approved.
Comment: Are there several bars of rest notated while the player changes bow positions..?
Answer: Just to be pedantic, you could pretty easily bow the open G and A strings together by holding the D string depressed just above the bridge.
Answer: Absolutely, but it's harder on a modern instrument
As RedLitYogi says, the convex bridge (not the fingerboard!) affects your ability to play more than two adjacent strings. A tight bow means you can only normally hit two notes at once.
Historically this was not the case though. Baroque instruments had a shallower curve to the bridge, and they also used lower tension on the bow. As a result, they were perfectly capable of treble-stopping as an advanced technique.
Its still possible with a modern instrument and bow. You need to apply extreme pressure to the bow though, which makes it impossible for anything other than forte or fortissimo.
More normally, you'd simply pivot over the D string to hit the A in a single move, resulting in an arpeggiated chord. It's worth noting that even on instruments which can play true chords (e.g guitar or piano), arpeggiated chords are often used for expression, so this does not sound in any way unusual.
These techniques all assume playing three notes at once, of course. To avoid playing the "middle" string and only sound the outer two, damp the unwanted string by touching it lightly with the fleshy part of a finger.
Comment: I'm not a string player so may be misunderstanding your answer, but it seems to me that you're answering a different question: whether it's possible to play treble-stops. Are you saying double stops were playable on these earlier instruments with non-adjacent strings, that is, without sounding an intervening string?
Comment: I tried damping the middle string (the D) of a triple stop G-D-A on both a baroque and a modern violin, and I couldn't get it to work.  The D string always sounds either a harmonic or a fuzzy but loud tone based on where you're touching it.  Not surprising you can't damp it, because it has more pressure on it than on the G and A strings.  Try it yourself.
Comment: @replete Good point - I need to make that clearer.
Answer: Just to add to the other answers, there's this unusual technique where you loosen the hair of the bow and play with the stick of the bow under the violin, but the hair wrapping over it. This allows you to play three or four strings simultaneously.
To play only two non-adjacent strings, I guess you'd need to somehow mute the string(s) in between. I never played violin so I don't know how feasible that would be.
Comment: Muting strings in between, like you might do on guitar, is **not** really possible with bowed strings. The muted string would produce a horrible scratching noise.
Comment: @leftaroundabout - I added my comment to Graham's answer before seeing yours here.  You said it: I just tried it on both baroque and modern violins, and indeed it does not work.
Comment: abi- you are right about what you can do with a loosened bow, but that is not answering the question, which was if it's possible to play a double stop on the G and A strings.
Answer: No.  It is physically impossible unless you play it pizzicato.
Answer: You most likely know this, but just in case: the instruments of the string choir (violin, viola, cello, bass violin) all have convex fingerboards.  This makes it much easier to bow a single string than it would be if the strings were all on one plane as they are in guitars and lutes, etc.  That is why the answer given in 13 seems to be the best.  (Paganini must really have been a show-off - this is akin to Hendrix playing behind his back, etc...)
Comment: It not only makes it _easier_ to bow a single string, it's what makes it _possible at all_.
Comment: What is *answer given in 13* supposed to refer to? Name of the poster or a link to the answer would provide better reference.
Comment: very true.  "makes it easier" is an understatement.
Answer: If you used two bows you could achieve the result.  It would be rather tricky to hold them both, and only short strokes would be viable without some extremely dexterous right-hand work (or perhaps a bowing action which moves the bow along the strings more than across them - which wouldn't sound great), but would be more versatile than the under-the-strings solution, more musical than the high-pressure solution.  A specialised bowing device (perhaps like a couple of EBows) might be an option too, depending on how determined you are.
Answer: I just realized there is a way (and it works quite well, I tried it) to play double stops on the G and A strings, while still being able to finger them normally: unscrew the the bow completely, pass the frog (carefully!) down between the E and A strings and under the A, D, and G strings.  Screw it back on.  Play with the bow lifted, not pressed.  You will get a lovely double stop of just the G and A strings.
Probably of limited practical use.


What's the white glow around this star?

Question: A few days ago, I took a photo of the night sky in the mountains of Georgia with my DSLR. There, I noticed that one single star (in the center of the part of the photo that I added below) looks very different than all the other stars on the photo. Why does it have this white glow?
Comment: There's some apparent motion blur as well.  Can you post exposure time, did you use a tripod?  Did you take more than one picture and the same light source remained "glowing"?   It could even have been a small thin cloud or local turbulence cell, for that matter.
Comment: Given it's dead center of the image it could well be an optical effect - you get reflection effects of this sort from certain optical setups.  These are particularly visible when the background is dark and the image contains (relatively) bright objects.
Comment: If you can add a full frame image, other items of interest can possibly be noted. Some contrast enhancement will help. It's a nice photo.
Comment: @CarlWitthoft 30s exposure. I used a small travel tripod placed on hard snow, so there might be some motion blur indeed. I took several photos, from slightly different positions and even with different lenses and on every single image, this light source is visible.
Comment: @StephenG It's in the centre of the screenshot that I posted above, but not in the centre of all the full-size photos. In some of them it's only 10% away from the top.
Answer: Astrometry.net has identified your star field as being part of the Andromeda constellation. The diffuse object in the centre of your image is the Andromeda Galaxy (Messier 31). The bright star to the left of it is Mirach (β Andromedae). Given a reasonably dark sky and averted vision, it is possible to see the core of M31 with the naked eye. Since M31 is approximately 2.5 million light years away from us, it is one of the most distant objects that can be seen with the naked eye.
Diametrically opposite Mirach to M31, and equidistant from it, is the Triangulum Galaxy (M33), although it is only just discernible in your photograph (even here, averted vision helps). If you can see M33 with your naked eye, then you have excellent vision and really dark skies. At a distance of 3 million light years, it is also one of the most distant objects that can be seen with the naked eye.

Astrometry.net
Note that only the core of M31 is visible to the naked eye (as it is in your photograph). If M31 was brighter, the arms of the galaxy would be visible and it would appear to be several times larger than the full Moon, as shown in the composite image below.

NASA

What's the white glow around this star?


Why do modern fighter aircraft still use transparent canopies instead of cameras feeding imagery to screens?

Question: The F-35 loves to boast about the HUD letting pilots see 'through' the aircraft, but I was wondering why they even have a transparent canopy instead of embedding the pilot deep in the fuselage like the BAe P.125 (https://www.reddit.com/r/WeirdWings/comments/b240pq/bae_p125_the_cancelled_british_equivalent_to_the/)?
Comment: So, like  a  drone except the pilot is at risk ?
Comment: First thought: what if something fails (e.g. due to combat damages)? Second thought: why just remove the canopy? Why not remove the pilot? Then I remembered UAV exists
Comment: Ejecting a canopy that heavy would be fun!
Comment: What would be the benefit of having a screens instead of a canopy? I can think of several obvious drawbacks and risks, but no apparent benefits
Comment: The forthcoming [X-59 QueSST](https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/quesst.html) will be without front-view canopy and with a camera. Not a fighter, but still!
Comment: This is actually a great question. With the current status of AR and VR, I think we are really close to getting this to work. This will save a ton of drag while significantly enhance the pilot's vision, e.g. multi-spectrum imaging and optical-digital zoom. Another application is for tanks where the crew already have very limited visual. If the next generation fighters are still maned, then I believe this would be a key defining feature.
Answer: There is no major problem to be solved by moving the cockpit inside.
The canopy adds minimal drag, considering how much drag the whole of a fighter's airframe produces. It also offers the highest quality of vision.
To expand on the latter, let's define a few items that go into visual quality:

Field of view
Acuity, including in motion
Noise
Dynamic range
Reaction speed

The canopy's field of view is about half the sphere, while cameras can cover most of the sphere. A win for synthetic vision.
Good human vision (healthy young pilot) offers enough acuity to distinguish high-contrast objects down to about 0.1 milliradian in size. The best commercial video camera heads offer 4.5K*2K to 8K*4K resolution. To cover 12.6 steradian with 6 cameras, restricting each camera to a ~2:1 rectangle, somewhat correctable with an anamorphic lens... It's a textbook math problem, but we have the advantage of knowing it's not solved in a mathematically optimal way in real fighters using it.
For a "cube with overlaps" solution, which is viable for a fighter, the FOV of each camera needs to be about 1.6 radian vertically. This results in a best-achievable instantaneous resolution of 0.5-0.7 milliradian for Arri sensors or 0.4 for the RED (which has other drawbacks). These are commercial cameras that are miles ahead of the F-35's DAS, but indicative of what could be used in a fighter designed today and meant to fly in the 2040s.
This can be improved, 6 cameras are not some hard limit, but you're looking at 100+ to fully match the acuity of the human eye (a more accurate term than resolution, since the eye doesn't perceive the whole FOV simultaneously). At that point the system won't be reasonably compact and easy to add anymore.
At their maximum resolution, all cameras produce significant amounts of noise.  So does the human vision, but its noise is filtered out very well by the brain and almost eliminated in the macula. For small megapixel-chasing cameras, the noise is so heavy that their effective resolution is reduced several times. Above we assume professional cameras with full-format sensors. At any rate, camera+eye give more noise than just the eye.
The dynamic range of human vision, at 20 stops, is better than the best cameras at 15-16 stops, and much better than LCD at 10-12 stops (20 for OLED). But this is acceptable in daytime, and will mostly matter at night, where a fighter can rely on IR systems instead. The night-time performance of IR cameras, even though they lose a lot in resolution, gives synthetic vision a win on this.
For reaction speed, at their open gate resolution, cameras offer a best-case framerate of just 60. I won't copy the full math, but combined with a 60 fps display, this results in a minimum lag of ~40 milliseconds. This sounds acceptable at first. The real pain comes when you consider the motion resolution resulting from this low framerate.
To explain motion resolution, see how a moving picture looks on a display. This can be better demonstrated with a few illusions. Unless the motion is very slow, your motion resolution can drop from the camera's 8Kx4K to only 100-600 lines depending on the rate. In practical terms, you're going from discerning objects at 0.4 milliradian all the way to 2-10.
This won't matter much in level flight, but the moment a pilot with synthetic vision begins to maneuver, they will suffer major degradation of their vision. Video gamers learn to compensate by turning instantly and returning to a slow-moving image that can be seen at sub-1000 fps, but a plane doesn't do things instantly. Whether the ability to see while spinning will make a difference, losing it can affect pilot behavior just by trying to avoid that motion-induced blindness.
All in all, you've reduced the pilot's visual acuity, added noise, and greatly compromised their motion resolution - for what? We're not chasing Mach 3 anymore; it won't help against Mach 8 SAM. We've learned to make canopies stealthy through shaping and RF-reflective metal coating, so there's no need to shy away from one. We've learned to project images onto a transparent visor, so we can get the benefits of night vision and extra FOV without losing natural vision.
Most importantly, in the last 10 years we've also learned to protect data with authenticated encryption and send it fast over vast distances. So if things like best possible acuity, motion resolution, reaction speed, or tolerance to avionics damage don't matter much, there's no reason for the pilot to be inside the aircraft at all.
Comment: Don't spend too long at that testufo site. Your eyes won't like it!
Comment: @FreeMan Hey, at least I don't have to spend all my flying time testing that UFO!
Answer: Unless you can have a continuous display over the entire field of vision WITH fail-safes I dont think it'll ever happen.
Anything less will either require transitioning from one display(screen) to another or from display to display. If you've ever used a car GPS you will know the lag in  shifting from the in-car display to outside view.
Mark 1 eyeball is still the best!
Comment: @Algebraist indeed, the car probably has much more recently-designed systems.
Comment: It seems a bit disingenuous to compare a car GPS to a fighter jet's sensor fusion suite...
Answer: In addition to all the other reasons:

Every camera-to-screen system has lag. Lag in a dogfight can be fatal.
There will be some distortion between the camera and the screen, no matter how well designed. Distortion can be fatal too.
Cameras and screen cannot reproduce depth perception (yes there are ways to do it but they are a LOT more complicated than cameras and screens). Lack of depth perception can be fatal in lots of situations.
It is possible to get positional cues (especially depth cues) for a visible object by moving your head, even the small amount of movement that a fighter pilot's head can make. A camera screen system won't do that.

A screen system can be useful if the alternative is not being able to see in some direction at all, but you wouldn't replace direct vision with it.
Answer: The human eye is 576 Megapixels.  When a helmet mounted "virtual reality" type of helmet display comes out some day, in conjunction with cameras and hardware that can record and process at that resolution, then you might see a canopy-less fighter.  By that time, the pilot will be software, or at minimum, located remotely anyway.


Knight's opening move

Question: I generally play 1.Nf3 as white . I actually wonder whether there would be any major difference if I play 1.Na3 instead of 1.Nf3 . I am a novice player . An illustration will definitely help me in understanding the reason behind this.
Comment: Is there a typo here in that it should be 1.Nc3 not 1.Na3?
Answer: To answer your question:
Experience has shown that it is a good idea in the opening phase of the game to:

develop minor pieces (bishop/knight) quickly
and to occupy the centre (squares e4, d4, e5, d5 and thereabout) with pawns and/or to attack the centre with minor pieces

In this sense Nf3 is the better (and by far more popular) move. It attacks central squares (d4 and e5) and thereby prevents black from occupying the center with e5 immediately and potentially could also support a white pawn push to d4.
Na3 on the other hand does little to get hold of the center and in addition (as with any knight on the rim), it has fewer squares to go to: 4 instead of 8.

Occupying the center is important among others because it can:

limit the space of your opponent
allow pieces stationed around there to quickly reach other parts of the board as needed

For a novice player the first move(s) don't matter. It is highly unlikely that you win/lose a game because of the difference between 1. Nf3 and 1. Na3, rather because of some tactics later on. That's why it is recommend for beginners to focus on tactics first.
Comment: Please upvote my answer below if I am thinking in the right direction.  I am a new player so it will really inspire me .
Answer: 1. Nf3 is used to instantly get a grip on the center. It for example answers 1. ... e5 with 2. Nxe5. 1. Na3 on the other hand, does not develop the piece towards the center, giving Black an easy opportunity to attempt to control the center. A better move would be 1. Nc3, still having control on the center.
Answer: Possibly with 1.Nf3 , player has the chance to transpose the game into a large number of other openings which usually start with 1.e4 , 1.d4 or 1.c4 . If Black is not careful, there is the risk of running unprepared, according to me, into a highly tactical opening, e.g. after 1.Nf3 c5 White can play 2.e4 leading to the  Sicilian Defense (Mainline) . Other common transpositions are to various lines of the Queen's Gambit Declined (1.Nf3 d5 2.d4 Nf6 3.c4) or the Catalan Opening (1.Nf3 Nf6 2.g3 d5 3.Bg2 e6 4.0-0 Be7 5.c4).
Comment: Please upvote if I am thinking in the right direction.  I am a novice so it will help
Comment: True in some sense, but hardly relevant for novice players.
Comment: I am talking about myself @user1583209 . I have built this theory and if I am thinking in right direction,  it will be kind of you if you upvote . It can motivate me too.
Answer: Statistics show that with 2200+ players
Nf3 wins about 55.5% of the time
with draws = 1/2 and win = 1 ,  loss =  0
And
Na3 wins 68% of the time
But with 2400+ it goes to
55%
75% respectively
at 2600+  nobody plays Na3
and Nf3 drops to 54% winning
YMMV

Knight's opening move


Can two earthquakes happen at the same time?

Question: I wanted to know if two earthquakes can happen at the same time in the same area? I "think" this can happen, but I'm not totally sure? I understand tectonic plates sliding against each other can cause an earthquake, but is it possible for two to happen at the same time in the same area?
Comment: I remember reading in a Nat Geo book that the '64 Anchorage quake was actually three separate earthquakes occurring in rapid succession. I can no longer find a source for that, however.
Comment: It's quite possible for two earthquakes with different epicenters to occur at nearly the same time. If the epicenters are close enough, some areas will experience both earthquakes at the same time.
Comment: Related: http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/191636/is-it-possible-for-two-events-happen-at-the-exact-same-time
Comment: It happens often enough that before the use of supercomputers in high resolution seismic mapping of earthquake epicenters, nuclear weapons were illicitly tested underground during nearby earthquakes. Back then, it was easy to camouflage a nuclear explosion to look like an ancillary earthquake if it happened close enough to a real earthquake in space-time.
Comment: This is a question of definition: If two earthquakes happen in the same place at the same time, isn't that really just one big earthquake?
Answer: The 2016 paper "A case for historic joint rupture of the San Andreas and San Jacinto faults" reports of research suggesting that simultaneous large earthquakes occurred in 1812 in California, the researchers used

dynamic rupture modeling to show that paleoseismic and historic observations associated with the earthquake of 8 December 1812 can be explained by joint rupture of the SAF and SJF.

(SAF = San Andreas Fault and SJF = San Jacinto Fault)
But the author stresses that what they have is a model, rather than a certainty.
Alot of research centres around the notion of 'near-simultaneous earthquakes', such as the 2009 South Pacific earthquake, as described in the article "Double Shake: Multiple, Nearly Simultaneous Earthquakes Triggered Deadly 2009 Tsunami" where studies suggest that at least 2 quakes of similar magnitude occurred within 50km of eachother, separated by minutes - another similar study suggests that one of the quakes 'obscured' another nearby rupture of equal or higher magnitude.
Italy is another place where simultaneous or near-simultaneous earthquakes seem to occur and resulted in several studies, one of which being reported in the article "Likely near-simultaneous earthquakes complicate seismic hazard planning for Italy", stating that

It's very important to consider this scenario of earthquakes, occurring possibly seconds apart, one immediately after another

Stating that this scenario would have an 'amplification' effect of the the effects of the shhaking (hence, the researchers' concern).  A particular example they cite is

The 1980 Irpinia earthquakes included a sequence of three events, occurring at intervals within 20 seconds of each other.

Another compelling example, reported in the article "Sumatran strike-slip earthquakes challenge seismologists" that occurred in April, 2012 - a strike-slip fault induced quake of a magnitude of 8.6 on the richter Scale, one of the theories for the great magnitude is explained as

Another apparent reason for the large magnitude, says Miaki Ishii, a sesimologist at Harvard University, is that multiple faults appear to have slipped almost simultaneously, creating a composite earthquake. "If it was just a single fault activation, it wouldn't have been large as 8.6.

An important note the Harvard seismologist makes, that essentially answers your question regarding simultaneous (and near-simulatneous earthquakes), is that observations of this kind of fault activation, which is described as "a cascading failure of faults" are seen in a lot of large earthquakes.
Comment: @uhoh yes, I would think that would be a very good and recent example (good question too!)
Comment: Is [this](http://earthscience.stackexchange.com/q/9138/6031) another example?


Can House Arryn be used under the rules of the base game?

Question: In the Feast for Crows expansion a new house (House Arryn) was introduced along with a new set of rules for a 4 player game that changed the way you scored victory points. Is it possible to use House Arryn (i.e. the cards and unit setup) with the normal Game of Thrones rules, or perhaps with the Dance of the Dragons expansion cards and setup? This could lead to some new ways to play 5/6 player games. Has anyone tried it or thought about it?
Answer: Pypok made objective cards to play 6 player feast of crows style game of thrones:
http://enter-there.com/expansions/dance-with-dragons/


should employment contracts be signed by organization officers?

Question: I am looking at contract, which the employer is telling me they do not have to sign. My understanding is that all parties in a contract should sign to acknowledge the read and agree to the terms. This is specially concerning to me since the terms of the contract are in review and modification. I am almost certain that this document needs to be signed by all stakeholders. Would you agree? Are there employment contracts or other agreements which are only signed by the employee?
Answer: Contracts do not need to be signed by anyone.
Among other things (see What is a contract and what is required for them to be valid?) all that is required to form a contract is the consent of the parties.
If they give you the employment terms then they have consented to them. If you start work, then you have assented to them. No signatures needed.
Comment: The company's signature would be evidence that the document in fact reflects the terms they gave the employee.  Without it, the company could claim that the company actually offered different terms, but that the present document was cerated by the employee who then signed it.  Of course, without the company's signature, the employee might nonetheless have other evidence that the terms are in fact those offfered by the company, in which case the signature isn't necessary as you say.
Comment: @phoog but that would be dishonest! Surely there aren't dishonest people in the world?
Comment: If there were no dishonest people in the world there'd be little need for many of the safeguards afforded by the law.
Answer: @DaleM is bang on in that contracts do not need to be signed by anyone (in most cases) to be valid.  Further, no one can force you to sign an agreement - but I don't think the answer should stop there.
If the company is refusing to sign the contract, then I would be EXTREMELY cautious of proceeding - particularly if the contract has variances from a standard contract you can demonstrate they routinely use.   The problem is that if there is an issue (and really, if there is no issue, then none of this matters) and the contractual terms are favorable to you, they can turn around and say there was no agreement, simply a counter-offer which they did not accept.
I might be inclined to find out WHY they are refusing to sign it - if they lack authority to sign, they lack authority to deal ! You may want to point out to them that you are willing for them to make it clear - where they sign - that they are signing as an officer of the company and not in there personal capacity if its an issue.
If you can't get an agreement, and you still want the agreement, maybe they would be OK with them acknowledging receipt of the agreement in an email - in that case I would scan the agreement, attach it to the email, Generate A SHA1 HASH of the scanned file and mention  - it in the email - and ask them to reply with receipt of the message.  MAKE SURE YOU KEEP A COPY OF THE FILE - if there is later doubt as to the version they were accepting you can probably use this to establish the exact version of the contract.
Comment: I wouldn't bother with the hash myself (and if I *did* go to the trouble, I'd make it a SHA512 hash).  A witness statement that this is the document you attached to your email of 29th August 2016 is going to be enough to convince a court unless they lie.  If they lie, they can say "that isn't the hash in the email you sent to us"
Comment: The contract is from a firm who hired me for a larger firm. I asked for the signature, and they told me these documents are never signed by the employer. I am to start the job in a week, and I signed the offer letter stating that I would have to give two weeks if I am going to leave. Should I insist on a signature or at least an email validation from both company for the modified contract?
Comment: The two week notice may not be a huge issue since Virginia is an at will employment state. For some reason they are absolutely refusing to ask for the client's approval of the contract. At this I asked them to remove the client's name with the generic "client" and sign the document. Even then they could claim the signing person had no authority to sign or agree.
Comment: I guess I do not need the client, larger firm, to sign the contract even though it has content regarding my obligations towards the client. They are saying they won't get the representative of the larger client to sign since this contract is between me and the smaller firm. I just do not want
Comment: If the contract is pretty standard, done through a third party and does not pose any significant obligations over and above statutory ones on the employer, it probably does not matter that much if they sign it.


Quicksort and don't bother?

Question: Especially when writing 'standard' (non-HPC) applications, do you consider what sorting algorithm to pick, or just settle with quicksort (which is what most libraries just call sort)? To some extent it may be profitable in specific situations, but on the other hand proper optimization requires some time to analyse the problem and make benchmarks.
Answer: In general, using the default methods unless there is a specific need to do something more exotic keeps everything a lot more readable/understandable down the road IMHO.
If you experience (or in some cases, strongly suspect) that you have a performance problem that is the time to add complexity.
On the other hand, if you are using a low enough language that there is not a built-in sort for the kind of objects you need to sort try to pick one or two that cover all your bases and implement those.
Answer: Always call the library routines provided, unless you have very, very good reason not to do so (and you need to document why it is so).
This is because sorting algorithms are hard to get absolutely right.   There was a bug in the Java quicksort with very large datasets, which was identified, fixed and delivered to customers by Sun, so you didn't have to.
Also the default sort in Java 7 has been upgraded to a newer, better sort.  Also for free.
Unless the default sort is provably not good enough for you, stick with it.
Answer: At a conference once I heard a nice story about this.
At Microsoft someone was writing a VB app (c. VB 3) and mailed a bunch of people saying that he had a load of values and he wanted them to appear in the combobox in order, how should he go about it.
Everyone dived for their old computer science text books, looking up highly efficient routines and porting them to Visual Basic and mailing them to him.  One guys just mailed back "how many values in the combobox?".
"About 50" came the reply.
"Just set the sorted property to TRUE".
In 99.9999% of instances sorting is best done using a library, control or in the SQL select as the performance difference between the library routine and anything you write will be negligible and the effort and maintenance overhead will massively outweigh the consequences.
Answer: This is the time to pull out the classic quote about premature optimization.  In most cases, it really doesn't matter.  Heck, with the speed of CPUs these days, you could probably bubble sort most data sets and not really notice much.  But when you're sorting really large data sets, and sort performance starts to become an issue, then you should definitely look at other options.
Comment: @Hippo: I wasn't actually advocating using bubble sort.  I meant that modern computers are fast enough that in most cases it doesn't matter how slow your algorithm is because the user won't notice.
Comment: Bubble sort? Its performance is the worst for average and worst-case, and equals insertion sort for best case. There is no reason that it should be used.
Comment: How about [Bogosort](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bozo_sort#Bozo_sort)?
Answer: Although it obviously doesn't matter to the bits and timeslices. I find merge sort to be easier to write and understand than quicksort.  So if I'm going to write my own sorting algorithm I'd use that.
Comment: Viva mergesort! And a mildly better constant term, and no horrific worst-case.
Answer: At least in a competently written library, I'd expect the built-in sort to be implemented as an Introsort rather than just a Quicksort. The difference rarely matters much, but Introsort eliminates the bad worst-case performance of Quicksort with minimal effect on the more common cases.
To answer your question, however: yes -- that's what you should usually start with, and until/unless you have profiler results indicating that it's a problem, that's where it should remain.

Quicksort and don't bother?


Unable to connect to Amazon RDS instance

Question: I recently created an oracle instance on Amazon RDS. Unfortunately, I'm not able to connect to the instance using Oracle SQL Developer.
The (relevant) information I have from Amazon;
Endpoint - The DNS address of the DB Instance: xxx.yyy.eu-west-1.rds.amazonaws.com
DB Name - The definition of the term Database Name depends on the database engine in use. For the MySQL database engine, the Database Name is the name of a database hosted in your Amazon DB Instance. An Amazon DB Instance can host multiple databases. Databases hosted by the same DB Instance must have a unique name within that instance. For the Oracle database engine, Database Name is used to set the value of ORACLE_SID, which must be supplied when connecting to the Oracle RDS instance: ZZZ
Master Username - Name of master user for your DB Instance: org
Port - Port number on which the database accepts connections: 1521
From this information, the connection settings in SQL Developer are pretty obvious, so I don't really see what I could be missing...
Answer: The problem was solved by opening the "Firewall" under Security Groups in the AWS Dashboard to incoming connections from my computer's IP.


Sharing an Apple ID on different iPads, but having different Contacts

Question: My daughter has my old iPad, and we share the same Apple ID, for convenience with purchasing. However at present we also have a shared Contacts list on the two iPads. It would be better to have separate Contact lists, to go with our separate email accounts.  Is this possible? And if so, how?
Comment: In Settings.app/iCloud, you can choose to not synchronize Contacts, and others sings (like Keychain, Safari, E-Mails, and others stuffs you don't want to share).
Comment: The biggest considerations to make are: a) Find My iPhone will only work with the PRIMARY iCloud account on the iOS device, b) ditto for iCloud documents. Other than that, you can pretty much use a different Apple ID for Contacts, Messages, Calendars, FaceTime, and so forth.
Answer: Perfectly possible, you essentially both need a free iCloud account, that you log into for the purposes or mail/calendars/notes/contacts etc etc.
You each log into iCloud from within Settings > iCloud with your unique ID, and turn on any appropriate option within that page once you are signed in.
Then, for the App Store, go to Settings > iTunes and App Store and log in again, only this time simply both use the the same ID that is associated with all your past purchases.
You can log into different ID's for different services like Facetime/Messages/App Store/Mail at the same time, it really doesn't mind.
Answer: Both answers are correct. However, I would like to add some notes.
First of all you could also use Gmail contacts for example instead of iCloud contacts. Depending on what email you and your daughter use (iCloud/Gmail/something else) this can be even more convenient. For example, I use gmail and have all my contact stored in Gmail. This way, I have direct access to my contacts in the (rare) case that I use gmail from within my web browser. You can simply enable gmail contacts sync in Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars and then enable it at the relevant account.
Secondly, you should not forget to set the default address book accordingly. New contacts are automatically saved to that address book (in case you have multiple address books). This can be set at Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars -> (scroll down to header "contacts") Default Account (here you should also set default calendar and e-mail accounts btw).
In all cases, there will be one issue: you need to move (a part of) the contacts to another account. To my knowledge, you cannot easily move/copy contacts to another account in iOS ("Groups" in the upper left corner in the Contacts app in iOS). In Contacts on OSX you can drag and drop them. Also, some googling will probably give you enough sites explaining how to move contacts from icloud to icloud or icloud to gmail. It might be a good idea to make a backup (e.g. with the contacts app in osx) of your contacts as moving contacts could give some issues in some cases.
All in all it is a small investment to make in my opinion: I have moved all my contacts to gmail over 5 years ago and have used it without issues ever since. And I could easily switch to android, windows, windows phone, etc. as they all support syncing with gmail contacts.
Comment: Absolutely, there is no absolute *requirement* to use iCloud, I tend to recommend it in situations like these because the whole process of getting a new ID, configuring and using it is done *on device* on a single login, without requiring access to 3rd party websites, services etc.
Answer: Only enter the Apple ID for purchasing into the Store section of the settings app.
You then each use separate AppleID for iCloud and / or Mail, Contacts, Calendars. One could use the same AppleID as for store, but at least one should be different and both could be different AppleID.
We have details here, here and here:

How to use different contacts on different iPhones with the same Apple ID
Is it a bad idea to have a shared Apple ID for purchases that also is used for iCloud?
How does a family with multiple idevices and multiple laptops share music and digital movie copies?
Do I need to set up individual Apple IDs for all my kids' iPads?
Answer: The other answers here lay out good options for separating contacts and iCloud sync from purchasing, either by using two Apple IDs, or by using Google sync for your contacts... however... I strongly recommend that you and your daughter use two separate accounts for everything. I understand the desire to save money, but it can lead to pretty messy complications down the road, especially if that Apple ID is tied to the email address of an ISP (@comcast.net e.g.), and it ever has to change.
But yes, it is possible.
Comment: Well if ever my email address has to change that would mean google had turned up its toes, and that would mean an awful lot of hassles generally. Getting these kind of things sorted out would be a pretty minor part of that.
Comment: Well if ever my email address has to change that would mean google had turned up its toes, and that would mean an awful lot of hassles generally. Getting these kind of things sorted out would be a pretty minor part of that. With the icloud option I'm not clear how that would operate so far as backing up on icloud are concerned. At present I've turned off the icloud back up on both iPads while I sort out stuff like that. Does each icloud account get some storage space of its own? Would I keep my present icloud account with it's storage space (which I've enlarged?)
Comment: Each iCloud account gets 5GB of storage space by default. If you've paid for additional storage on one account, it won't grant any space to any additional iCloud accounts you set up, but yes, you could keep the existing account you have.


Adding a new user from the front end

Question: I have a front end form that creates a new post from users that are not required to login.  However, I need to create a new user based on the information passed in the form.  As it is right now I can successfully create a new user, but in the user admin in the backend there are no posts associated with this new user (thought the posts are successful themselves).
Side note, if I delete the user and click to delete all associated posts, it will delete the post they created.  I just can't figure out why it won't show their posts in the user admin...
Code as follows in my custom template file:
<code>$new_post = array(
'post_title'    =>   $title,
'post_content'  =>   $description,
'post_category' =>   array($_POST['cat']),  // Usable for custom taxonomies too
'tags_input'    =>   array($tags),
'post_author'    => $user_id,
'post_status'   =>   'publish',           // Choose: publish, preview, future, draft, etc.
'post_type' =>   'post'  //'post',page' or use a custom post type if you want to

);

// Insert a user

if ( ! is_user_logged_in() ) {
        // create an account
      $user_data = array(
            'ID' => '',
            'user_pass' => wp_generate_password(),
            'user_login' => $lastname,
            'display_name' => $lastname,
            'first_name' => $firstname,
            'last_name' => $lastname,
            'role' => get_option('default_role'), // Use default role or another role, e.g. 'editor'
            'user_email' => $email
        );
        $user_id = wp_insert_user( $user_data );
    }
else {
    $user_id = get_current_user_id();
}
</code>
Answer: You just need to reorder your function. Create your user before you enter your post, then the <code>'post_author'    => $user_id</code> field will actually have a value.

Adding a new user from the front end


Once a player is level 8, what happens to AP gained?

Question: Do level 8 players still gain AP?  The way I understand it, level 8 is the highest level, so once you're there it seems like you gaining AP it doesn't do any good, and is really taking potential AP away from your local team mates.
Answer: Gaining AP doesn't benefit someone who is already L8, but they do continue to gain AP - although it won't be reflected in the octagonal progress bar, since there is no progress towards L9.
I have heard of L8 players who had enough AP (2.4mil+) to become L9 if that existed :)
The factor of taking potential AP away from team mates is definitely a valid concern though, as an L8 its better to just help in bombing runs and let lower levels finish off portals & fields for AP whenever possible.
Answer: Yes, you still gain AP when you reach level 8.
When new levels are added (and the developers have hinted that they will) the AP you already gained will count towards those levels. If you already have enough AP (probably 2.4 million) then when level 9 is added you should automatically become level 9.
Comment: Ah, this might explain why some players with a ton of banked AP won't be a problem: http://www.reddit.com/r/Ingress/comments/19e0sz/mission_point_for_level_9_and_beyond/.  If that info is correct, they will be introducing additional (or alternate) criteria to reach later levels.
Comment: This seems a bit shortsighted, although maybe I'm missing something.  Most MMOs have an experience cap rather than a level cap, so that the cap can act as an equalizer, and when it's raised, it doesn't suddenly *unequalize* everything.  There are still plenty of reasons to play as a level 8 besides gathering AP, so why not cap it?


How to make the current general calendar click able inside the "Calenders in view"

Question: I have added 5 calendars inside my team site, then I have overlay-ed 4 calendars insdie a general calender. But currently inside the "Calendar in View" , the general calendar (blue calendar) is not click able, and the users will not be able to see and filter this calendar events, same as for the overlay-ed calendars. So any idea how to make the general calendar click able, so users can filter this calender events only when needed.
Answer: On your main site, just create a another calendar.  Which Will be your 'blue' calendar and overlay that one to your main one.  Use that new calendar for adding items.  Then they can click that calendar overlay and filter out the others.
If however your main already has items in it, then move all the overlays to the new one, including the main calendar.  Unless there is a reason you couldn't have another calendar?
Answer: I don't think this will be possible. The blue calendar item you want to click on is in fact the calendar you're on. That is the base calendar view, and the others are overlaid on top of that. There is no place for that Calendar link to go, you're already there.
What you can do is create a new view that has the same filtered view as your base, and then change the base calendar to filter out everything, thereby not using that color or view anymore.
Hope this makes sense.
Comment: thanks for the reply, but i can not find an option to create a new view and specify which overlay-ed calenders i want to be available?
Comment: Sorry for the confusion. I think we disconnected here. You created these 4 views, and then added them as overlay-ed calendars right? You will want to do the same steps, add a new view, with the same filter as your base. Then update your base and update the filter so nothing is in it.
Comment: i did not create any view. i have created 5 calender Apps , then i overlayed 4 of them inside the blue calender. and sharePoint have provided this "Calenders in View" links automatically.
Comment: Oooo those are all different apps, sorry for the mix up. Check out my blog post http://davidlozzi.com/2012/01/26/color-code-your-sharepoint-calendar/ for steps on creating a new new and adding it as an overlay.
Comment: thanks for the link, but i have followed the same steps, and it seems by default SP will add the overlay-ed calenders along with the general calender inside the "Calender in view", but the current calender will not be clickable (not sure why). and adding the general calender as overlay insdie itself, will display its events twice under the same date.
Comment: True, once you add the new view, you need to modify the base view (click Calendar ribbon, Modify View) and set a filter to it'll show nothing.