Android Huawei Ideos X3 (U8510) : Restoring static boot logo and animation from ClockWorkMod backup?

Question: I have a rooted (and unlocked) Huawei Ideos X3 (U8510). I have complete backups of the stock ROM using ClockWordMod installed to the sdcard.
Then I started playing with different ROMs on the internet. At some point I also flashed the device with another GENERIC Stock ROM for this device. At this point, the generic Stock ROM permanently changed my static boot logo and the boot animation. Originally it was a static Huawei logo with Vodafone animation (Red Vodafone logo). That was replaced by the static Huawei logo AND Huawei generic boot animation.
This is the problem as:
1. I need to replace with the original static boot logo and boot animation in the event of a warranty claim.
2. I need the assurance that recovering to the stock ROM backup will restore everything to the way it was except the bootlogo and boot animation.

Now if I revert to the stock ROM from the backup (via ClockWorkMod recovery), everything from the backup is restored EXCEPT for the static boot logo and the boot animation sequence.
Things I have tried:
1. From the installed terminal, as su: I tried copying the recovery.img from the backup to the root of the sdcard. Then as su, I executed the following command:
flash_image recovery /sdcard/recovery.img

The above command worked. I rebooted into recovery. Then I rebooted again but still am seeing the generic static Huawei boot logo and boot animation.
I can see the following files from my stock rom backup:
.android_secure.vfat.tar
boot.img
cache.yaffs2.img
data.yaffs2.img
nandroid.md5
recovery.img   ---> This is the file I copied to the root of the sdcard.
system.yaffs2.img

I have also tried asking in other forums to get the copy of the boot animation from the stock ROM with no success.
Questions:

Do I have the original boot logo and boot animation from stock rom backup (above file     list)?
If so, is there a way to recover it? If not: is there a known source to get the original boot animation?
Answer: There are two locations where boot animation files could be stored: /data/local and /system/media.
http://www.addictivetips.com/mobile/how-to-change-customize-create-android-boot-animation-guide/


Psudo 3D(2.5D?) Projectile motion

Question: I'm trying to simulate a ball coming at the screen with a projectile motion arc in 2d space. Is there a set of equations to deal with this.  I would imagine the equation would need to take in the  initial vertical and horizontal angles of the projectile as well as it's initial velocity and the desired start and end scale of the projectile.
Answer: The basic implementation of projectile physics doesn't require any trigonometry.
First of all, you need to model the movement of your object with a velocity vector. A velocity vector is a structure which stores the velocity of an object on the x-axis and y-axis as spearate values. To move the object by a velocity vector, add the x- and y-value to its x- and y- position every logic-tick.
Gravity is then added to the simulation by subtracting the gravity from the y-axis of the velocity vector every logic-tick.
You didn't mention any programming language in your question, so here is a simple pseudo-code implementation in two dimensions which can be easily adapted for 3d by adding a z-coordinate which behaves like the x-coordinate:
// ball position:
float ball.x = [horizontal start position]
float ball.y = [vertical start position]
float ball.z = [depth start position]
// ball velocity vector:
float ball_velocity.x = [intial horizontal speed]
float ball_velocity.y = [initial vertical speed]
float ball_velocity.z = [initial depth speed]
// gravity constant:
const float gravity = [desited gravity constant]

function tick() {
      ball_velocity.y -= gravity;
      ball.x += ball_velocity.x;
      ball.y += ball_velocity.y;
      ball.z += ball_velocity.z;
}

To add perspective scaling to the simulation, simply divide the size of the ball by the distance to the camera. Assuming your camera is on z = 0, your draw function would look somehting like this:
function draw() {
     float ballDrawSize = ball.radius / ball.z;
     graphics.drawBall(ball.x, ball.y, ballDrawSize);
}

Answer: You could start with the 2d equation for the arc of the projectile, represented by some function of time:
function getPosition(time) {
    return {
        x: xInitial + xInitialVelocity * time,
        y: yInitial + yInitialVelocity * time + 0.5 * gravity * time * time
    }
}

Then to create the 2.5D effect, map the position by multiplying the x position by the cosine of some angle. This angle represents the angle around the y-axis, to make it appear like a projectile is going in or out of the screen. Assuming xInitialVelocity > 0, an angle of 0 represents the projectile going to the right of screen. An angle of 90 -> projectile coming straight out of the screen. 180 -> left of screen and 270 -> away from screen.
function getPositionPsuedo3D(time, angle) {
    position = getPosition(time);
    return {
        x: position.x * cos(angle),
        y: position.y
    }
}

You would also need to set the scale of the ball so it appears to be getting larger or smaller based on the time and angle:
function getScale(time, angle) {
    return 1 + sin(angle) * someScaleFactor * time;
}

Psudo 3D(2.5D?) Projectile motion


Network config / gear question

Question: I have been tasked with setting up a fairly straightforward rack in a data center (we do not even need a whole rack, but this is the smallest allotment available).  In a nutshell, 4 to 6 servers need to be able to reach 2 (maybe 3) vendors.  The servers needs to be reachable over the internet.
A little more detail - the networks the servers need to reach are inside of the data center, and are "trusted".  Connections to these networks will be achieved through intra data center cross connects.  It is kind of like a manufacturing line where we receive data from one vendor (burst-able up to 200 Mbits), churn through it on the servers, and then send out data to another vendor (bursts up to 20 Mbits).  This series of events is very latency sensitive, so much so that it is common practice not to use NAT or a firewall on these segments (or so I hear).
To reach the servers over the internet, I plan to use a site to site VPN.  (This part is only relevant as far as hardware selection goes).
I have 2 configurations in mind:

Cisco 2911 (2921) (with the additional wan ports module) and a layer 2 switch - in this scenario, I would use the router also for VPN.
Cisco 3560 layer 3 switch to interconnect the networks inside of the data center and an ASA 5510 (which is total overkill, but the 5505 is not rack mountable) as a firewall for the Wan side (internet) and VPN.  I envision the setup to be as follows:

Internet -> ASA -> 3560
Vendors -> 3560 -> Servers
The general idea is that the ASA acts as a firewall and VPN device and the 3560 does all the heavy lifting.
The first is a fairly traditional setup but my concern is performance. The second is somewhat unorthodox in that the vendors are directly connected to the layer 3 switch without passing through a firewall.  Based on my understanding however, a layer 3 switch will perform substantially better as it will do hardware (ASIC) vs. software switching.  (Note that number 2 is a little over the budget, but not unworkable (double negative, ugh))
Since this is my first time dealing with a data center, I am not sure what the IP space is going to look like.  I suspect I will retain a block(s) of public IPs, vlan them to individual interfaces for the vendor connections and the servers (which will not reachable from the wan side of course) and setup routing on the switch.
So here are my questionss:

Is there a substantial performance difference between 1 and 2, i.e. hardware based switching on a layer 3 vs a software base on the 2911?  I have trolled the internet and found a lot of Cisco literature, but nothing that I could really use to get a good handle.
The vendors we connect to are secure and trusted (famous last words) and as I understand it, it is common practice not to NAT or firewall these connections (because of the aforementioned latency sensitivity).  But what what kind of latency are we really talking about if I push the data through a router (or even ASA for that matter)?  For our purposes, 5 ms will not kill us, 20 or 30 can be very costly.  Others measure in microseconds, but they are out of our league.
Is there any issues with using public IPs on a layer 3 switch?

I am certainly not married to either of these configs, and I am totally open to any ideas.  My knowledge (and I use the term loosely) is largely from books so I welcome any advice / insight.
Thanks in advance.
Answer: The term "layer 3 switch" is really just a router that happens to be optimized for LAN networks - it doesn't mean anything these days.
The 2900 says:
"Circuit-speed WAN performance up to 75 Mbps , plus variety of services"
so you can pass about 75mps of traffic "through" this router at software switching speeds.
2) As long as you're not pushing the limits of the forwarding performance of the router,  you're talking really <1 ms
If you need to actually route 200mbps of traffic, then you're going to need a 3560 or something to route between the segments of the other cross connects landing in your cage vs the servers in your cage.
3) None at all - routers and switches (plain ones, not new-fangled 'security' or 'enhanced' ones) don't care about public vs private IPs.
I suggest a 3560 and then some device that can terminate a VPN to get you 'inside' of the network.

Network config / gear question


How do I see what pages on the internet link to my site?

Question: I thought I could see this through Google Webmaster Tools, and according to a help file, in Google Webmaster Tools, there should be an 'internal links' and an 'external links' menu item. But in my Webmaster Tools, there's an 'internal links' item, but no 'external links' menu item.
Comment: In addition to Google Webmaster Tools, check out [Yahoo! Site Explorer](http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/) ... you don't have to verify as the site owner, so you can just explore any URL and see what sites link to it. (FYI Yahoo! uses Bing search index now.)
Answer: Perhaps Google renamed "External links" to "Links to your site". Here is the current documentation: Links to your site. Some interesting excerpts:

You can perform a Google search using
  the link: operator to find a
  sampling of links to any site...
To see a much larger sampling of links
  to any verified site in Webmaster
  Tools:

On the Webmaster Tools Home page, click the site you want.
Under Your site on the web, click Links to your site.

To get additional statistics you can link your Google Webmaster Tools account to your Analytics account to get that "Data from Google Analytics" link at the bottom.
While not as thoroughGoogle Analytics itself gives detailed referral link statistics (only links that have actually been clicked are included).
Update: Looking at my own data, Google Analytics lists more referring sites/links (like Facebook.com and Stackoverflow.com) than Webmaster Tools. Webmaster Tools is probably based solely on Google's index, while Analytics can capture dynamic links and links that are buried behind login's.
Answer: This Community Wiki answer has been added to address multiple ways in which one can locate links to one's site.
Referrer Logs
Check your web server's logs for referring page URL's. (Most analytics packages will include a report which contains this information)
Google Webmaster Tools

Log in
Select Your site on the web from the left navigation menu
Select the Links to your site report to view external links to your site

Open Site Explorer

Navigate to opensiteexplorer.org
Enter the URL and click Search
Answer: You can do this on google:
link:yoursite.com

But I don't think this question belongs in stackoverflow, so it will probably be moved.
Answer: Since we're apparently trying to turn this (originally GWT-specific) question into a catch-all for finding any and all backlinks to a site, here's how to find links to your site from Wikipedia:

Wikipedia
If you want to find out which pages on Wikipedia link to your site (or any site), you can use the Wikipedia external link search.

To search for links to a particular host, like www.example.com, just type the hostname into the search box, like this.  The results will consist of a list of links to the host and the pages they appear on.  Note that some of these pages may be talk, user or project pages instead of actual Wikipedia articles.
To search for links to all hostnames in a domain, prepend *. to the search string.  For example, this search finds links to example.com and all its subdomains.
Alternatively, to restrict the search to pages under a particular URL path prefix, just include that path in the search.  For example, searching for www.example.com/foo returns links to example.com/foo.html, example.com/foo/bar, example.com/foo.php?id=42 etc.
It seems that you can't combine this restriction with the *. wildcard described above.  If you try, the path portion of the search string is ignored.
By default, the search only returns links to http: URLs.  To find links to URLs with other schemes, like https: or ftp:, include the scheme you want, followed by //, in your search.  You can combine this with either wildcard or path searches.
For example, searching for ftp://*.example.com returns all ftp: links to example.com and any of its subdomains.

For more details, see the documentation on Meta-Wiki.
Note that the link search only finds links from pages on a particular wiki, like the English Wikipedia in the examples above.  To find links from Wikipedias in other languages, or from other Wikimedia wikis like Wikimedia Commons, you need to repeat the search on each individual wiki, or use a third-party search front-end like this one.
The link search feature is actually a standard part of the MediaWiki software, and will work also on other sites running MediaWiki, such as Wikia wikis.  (Finding the link search page through Wikia's user interface may be tricky, but just going to any page on a wiki and replacing the page name with Special:LinkSearch in the URL should work.)  The link search is also available through the MediaWiki API.
Comment: Ps. @paulmorriss: Is there any way (short of re-posting) to have this answer reassigned to me, or should I just let it stay attributed to you?
Comment: I'm afraid not. The question is now "community wiki" so I won't be getting lots of reputation for all the work you've put in.
Comment: Um, it isn't (and I don't really feel it should be, given than turning what used to be a normal question into CW is not something that should be done lightly).  The only thing that's CW here so far is danlefree's answer.
Comment: If you want to re-post the answer yourself then I'll delete mine. I have no problem with that.
Answer: If you want to get a true picture of what sites are linking to yours, you may want to consider some kind of server side web stats software that looks at the actual log files of your web server (SmarterStats, WebTrends, and AWStats are a few examples).  You need to make sure your log files are capturing the referrer.
Google Analytics is an outstanding package and can give you a really good picture of traffic on your site, but in some cases does require some additional configuration of the code on your site.  File downloads (.pdf, .doc, .xls, etc.) that do not have the Google Analytics tracking code on them will not have data captured (see here for more information on how to configure this).  In addition, if a user clicks away from your site before the Google Analytics script has loaded, you may miss capturing information from that traffic as well.
By using server side web stats tracking, the web server logs themselves don't lie and will tell you exactly what was requested and who requested it.


Do any statistics program provide funding for masters students?

Question: I plan to be applying to graduate school next year in Statistics or Biostatistics and due to some financial constrictions, I will not be able to attend unless the tuition is waived at the the minimum. I am hesitant to commit to a 5 year PhD program for a funded education since I may run into some financial issues a few years in and may not be able to complete it. I know that most schools use their Masters program as a cash cow and thus are usually not funded. I was wondering if anyone here knew of any statistics programs that go against this and actually do fund their Master students?
Answer: Apply to PhD programs that can or will award a master's degree after you pass your qualifiers.
This way you have funding and you may find that the funding is enough to continue even if other financial constrictions happen. You don't know for sure that they will happen or that other circumstances may mitigate the problem.
It might also be possible to ask the department for a leave of absence (for a year or two).
In a worst case scenario, hopefully you can finish with a master's.
Comment: I don't think that advising someone to take up a PhD program solely for the purpose of funding a MS degree is constructive advice.
Comment: I'm not. OP doesn't say that he/she knows for sure that he'll have funding problems later. I saying (badly I guess) go ahead and deal with later financial problems...later.
Comment: A leave of absence during a PhD is very possible, some places will allow leaves in the 2-4 year range. Sometimes you can still work on your PhD while taking a leave of absence and defend immediately after returning.
Answer: Funding problems can come up in PhD programs regardless as to whether you expect them. For example, students who take more than 4-6 years often are given lower priority for department TA-ships, and lose their funding. The message here is that it is hard to predict your financial situation, and leaving a PhD for under extreme financial circumstances is always a morally acceptable thing to do (leaves of absences are very possible in this situation). You should do a PhD if you are truly passionate about pushing the envelope in statistics. In other words you think about statistics for fun. If this fits you, you should accept a funded PhD offer regardless as to future financial situations that may or may not manifest. Now if you are not passionate enough about the subject to pursue a PhD that is another story. In this case persuing one just because it is "free" and dropping out with a masters is generally looked upon as a major faux pas.
However, if you don't have interest in a PhD, another option would be to try online masters programs which are often cheaper and allow you to finish the degree while doing part time or in some cases even full time work. With an online degree program you can live with family members or move to a city with a low cost of living. The University of Washington has a program in data science, I believe. It certainly isn't free, but its about an order of magnitude less than a traditional "cash cow" masters degree.
If the above are too expensive take some free MOOCs (corsera etc) in your field of interest. Focus on skills as opposed to a degree. Apply for some jobs and if you don't get anything, go back to the drawing board.
The other option, and probably the best one if you are lucky enough to be successful down this road is to get a job in a field the combines your skill set with the tools you want to learn. So if you have some background in data science, stats, math or engineering, consider looking for jobs as opposed to degree programs. Often these jobs will fund your masters degree later on, if you choose go back to school. It generally comes with a constraint where you agree to stay with the company for at least a year or two after attaining the degree, but for most people this is worth it.
Answer: You should look for schools that don't offer PhD's in statistics, only master's.  Then they will hire their MS students as statistics TA's.


Can you average out focal length from different camera calibration sessions?

Question: If I perform a number of camera calibration routines at a fixed resolution, with various sizes of calibration patterns (like checkerboards), at various distances and get various values for focal lengths,  could I just average them out? Would this just give a more "robust" focal length? Is it a good idea?
Answer: No, it is not a good idea.  Typically, you want to limit the volume of space relative to the camera in which you want to do your measurements, and you want to use a single calibration target appropriate for that volume.  In theory, you can calibrate with any number of different patterns.  In practice, however, most implementations assume that the pattern is the same in all calibration images.
In any case, if you insist on using multiple patterns, you still want to jointly optimize the parameters, not just to average them after the fact.  And you would most likely have to implement that yourself.
Answer: I do all my camera calibratins with a SpyderLenscal. You have to take the biggest focal length and the lowest aperture value. This is how you get the smallest depth of field.
The distance between camera and your pattern should be the one you usually use with this specific lens.
Here you'll find a video tutorial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2zlLIDfVgc
Answer: I think the trivial idea on multiple calibrations is to take the one with the minimum reprojection error. Otherwise, if you want to refine your calibrations over several sessions, then I would benefit from Ankur Datta's approach, where multiple calibrations on the same dataset is performed and the accuracy is iteratively refined. Here is a reference implementation.


Distributed and/or Parallel SSIS processing

Question: Background:
Our company hosts SaaS DSS applications, where clients provide us data Daily and/or Weekly, which we process & merge into their existing database.  During business hours, load in the servers are pretty minimal as it's mostly users running simple pre-defined queries via the website, or running drill-through reports that mostly hit the SSAS OLAP cube.
I manage the IT Operations Team, and so far this has presented an interesting "scaling" issue for us.  For our daily-refreshed clients, the server is only "busy" for about 4-6 hrs at night.  For our weekly-refresh clients, the server is only "busy" for maybe 8-10 hrs per week!
We've done our best to use some simple methods of distributing the load by spreading the daily clients evenly among the servers such that we're not trying to process daily clients back-to-back over night.  But long-term this scaling strategy creates two notable issues.  First, it's going to consume a pretty immense amount of hardware that sits idle for large periods of time.  Second, it takes significant Production Support over-head to basically "schedule" the ETL such that they don't over-lap, and move clients/schedules around if they out-grow the resources on a particular server or allocated time-slot.
As the title would imply, one option we've tried is running multiple SSIS packages in parallel, but in most cases this has yielded VERY inconsistent results.  The most common failures are DTExec, SQL, and SSAS fighting for physical memory and throwing out-of-memory errors, and ETLs running 3,4,5x longer than expected. So from my practical experience thus far, it seems like running multiple ETL packages on the same hardware isn't a good idea, but I can't be the first person that doesn't want to scale multiple ETLs around manual scheduling, and sequential processing.
One option we've considered is virtualizing the servers, which obviously doesn't give you any additional resources, but moves the resource contention onto the hypervisor, which (from my experience) seems to manage simultaneous CPU/RAM/Disk I/O a little more gracefully than letting DTExec, SQL, and SSAS battle it out within Windows.
Question to the forum:
So my question to the forum is, are we missing something obvious here?  Are there tools out there that can help manage running multiple SSIS packages on the same hardware?  Would it be more "efficient" in terms of parallel execution if instead of running DTExec, SQL, and SSAS same machine (with every machine running that configuration), we run in pairs of three machines with SSIS running on one machine, SQL on another, and SSAS on a third?  Obviously that would only make sense if we could process more than the three ETL we were able to process on the machine independently.
Another option we've considered is completely re-architecting our SSIS package to have one "master" package for all clients that attempts to intelligently chose a server based off how "busy" it already is in terms of CPU/Memory/Disk utilization, but that would be a herculean effort, and seems like we're trying to reinvent something that you would think someone would sell (although I haven't had any luck finding it).
So in summary, are we missing an obvious solution for this, and does anyone know if any tools (for free or for purchase, doesn't matter) that facilitate running multiple SSIS ETL packages in parallel and on multiple servers? (What I would call a "queue & node based" system, but that's not an official term).  Ultimately VMWare's Distributed Resource Scheduler addresses this as you simply run a consistent number of clients per VM that you know will never conflict scheduleing-wise, then leave it up to VMWare to move the VMs around to balance out hardware usage.  I'm definitely not against using VMWare to do this, but since we're a 100% Microsoft app stack, it seems like -someone- out there would have solved this problem at the application layer instead of the hypervisor layer by checking on resource utilization at the OS, SQL, SSAS levels.
I'm open to ANY discussion on this, and remember no suggestion is too crazy or radical! :-) Right now, VMWare is the only option we've found to get away from "manually" balancing our resources, so any suggestions that leave us on a pure Microsoft stack would be great.
Thanks guys,

Jeff
Answer: Try using the Balanced Data Distributor component: The "Balanced Data Distributor" for SSIS.
You could also home grow a solution using Service broker (or other message queue) and listener packages that wait for work and dispatch to worker packages  across a farm of boxes with SSIS installed.


Looking for instructions for brick set #135149, silver robot head and black police vest?

Question: I have part two and part three of the this set and I am pretty sure this set has to come from the "Lego Movie" series. The reason I say is because one of the bags has one or two of the secret police robots in it. Can anyone help identify this set? I can't find any info on any of those sets in that series.
Comment: Welcome Tyrone! FYI, that set # is just the part number of the plastic bag, not the real set number.
Answer: You are looking at 2 bags from set 70808 - Super Cycle Chase. This is the only LEGO Movie set that has the robo SWAT cop head, the fence, the white 1x2x2 panel and the 1x4 plate with 2 studs in it.

There are 3 other sets (big enough to have a bag 2 and 3) that have this particular robot police officer head in it, namely:

70819 - Bad Cop Car Chase

70807 - MetalBeard's Duel

70815 - Super Secret Police Dropship

But none of these have the additional pieces as shown in the picture.
Comment: Oh man! Thank you Phil! I believe it has to be the first one with the car chase because there wheels big enough to fit! You have saved my Lego building experience!


How do you play the down and up strums for syncopated strumming for the guitar?

Question: How do you play the down and up strums for syncopated strumming for the guitar? Like can you start the bar with an up strum even without the rest mark? Or if the bar ends on a sixteenth note down strum, do you go back to a down strum or pick from the next bar, or do you lead with an up strum for that bar?
Comment: Welcome 470ronin. It looks like you have two particular questions - why not edit this question to ask about strumming, and ask another question about syncopation?
Comment: There is no single right way to do what your brother is asking, but if he can give you a specific example of what he's looking at with either sheet music or audio you find or put online, you'll probably get a pretty good specific answer. In the meantime, these two questions have some relevant info. http://music.stackexchange.com/questions/30075/learning-to-play-guitar-songs-using-on-line-tabs-how-to-get-strum-patterns,  http://music.stackexchange.com/questions/52964/whats-the-correct-way-to-practice-complex-syncopated-rhythms
Comment: I have edited your question to clarify the key point you are asking about, and as topo suggested, you should ask the specific syncopation bit as a separate question. Karen't links, though, should have all you need.
Answer:
How do you play the down and up strums for syncopated strumming for the guitar?

There are various ways a rhythm pattern can be constructed. But if you are having trouble with a particular pattern, my recommendation is to start with a strict down up movement of your strumming hand. So yes, I would play each syncopated strum as an upstroke. Here are some practical examples:

The default eighth note strum would look like this:

     1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +
(or) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
     D U D U D U D U

If we edited that into a syncopated strum it might look like this:

     1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +
(or) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
     D   D U   U D U
(This is a classic pattern for several Eagles songs, for example.)
Here the syncopation is the missed downstroke on the third beat. In theory you could create the rhythm pattern using only downstrokes, but this would have some challenges. First, you are moving your wrist at two different speeds, which means you have to track the beat in your head, rather than feeling it with your hand movements. Secondly, you will have to play the eighth notes at twice the speed, which depending on the overall speed of the music might be difficult. So my advice would be to begin by learning the above rhythm pattern and focus on the missed beat three downstroke. The result will be two consecutive upstrokes at beat 2 and a half then 3 and a half.

Like can you start the bar with an up strum even without the rest mark?

Yes, you can start a strum pattern with an upstroke. (It's better to talk about starting a strum pattern than starting a bar. The bar in your example starts with no strum at all, because the first beat is a rest note.)
A good example is the introduction to classic rock and roll songs such as Rock around the Clock. This rhythm starts on beat 3 and a half, leading into the lyrics ("One, two, three o'clock…") on beat 1 of the following bar. I would strum it as follows:
1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + | 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +
          U D     D
Even more than that, if I was still finding it hard to get the timing right, I would go back to beat 1 of the first bar and begin with 3 air downstrokes, so that the initial sounded upstroke was correctly positioned.
 1  +  2  +  3  +  4  +  | 1  +  2  +  3  +  4  +
(D)   (D)   (D) U  D       D
                         "One, two, ....

Or if the bar ends on a sixteenth note down strum...

The bar won't end that way if you construct the strum patterns as I have suggested. A strum pattern with 16th notes is simply a double up of the 8th note structure above, and the final 16th note in the bar will therefore be played as an upstroke.

...do you go back to a down strum or pick from the next bar, or do you lead with an up strum for that bar?

That depends on the sounded rhythm you want to construct. The wrist movement will always be a downstroke at the beginning of the second bar. But if you want that first beat to be a syncopation, you will create it by an air downstroke on the first 16th, and a sounded upstroke on the second 16th note.


What is the etiquette for asking and answering your own question?

Question:
Is it okay to answer your own question?
Are there any rules that should govern asking and answering your own questions?
Comment: This official [stackexchange blog post](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/05/encyclopedia-stack-exchange/) makes it clear that it's not just acceptable; it's actively encouraged.
Comment: Related MSO discussion: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/16930/157047
Answer: It is general Stack Exchange policy to allow answering one's own questions. It's even part of the FAQ.
I would say key etiquette factors are rate-limiting yourself and keeping the content high quality.
Early on we had a problem of one user posting tons of questions at once; even if you have an answer you shouldn't post too many per day as you will bump other questions off the main page. This limits exposure to other, open questions. One per day is probably fine.
Quality is a big issue; all self questions should be evaluated as if they were normal questions on the site, even if they immediately have a satisfactory answer. If a question is too basic or not on topic, it doesn't belong, period.
In addition, self-answered questions should be kept to a high standard because you know what the problem/answer is, so you have no excuse for a poorly stated question.
Make sure your question and answer is helpful to other users of the site. This is a Q&A site, not a personal notebook. Answers should be interesting or hlepful to more than just you.
Comment: I feel this phrase in your answer addresses it the best: **"all self questions should be evaluated as if they were normal questions on the site"** However, as I replied [on Artem's answer](http://meta.cogsci.stackexchange.com/a/160/21) I feel it is important to keep the following in mind: _"there is a big difference between asking questions which you actually encounter, and just formulating questions out of knowledge"_ Please **don't invent** questions.
Comment: I agree with all this. Perhaps the issue of "what is too many questions in a given period of time" would be a relevant topic for another meta thread at some point.
Comment: @StevenJeuris yeah, when I post and answer a question it's either because I found the answer myself when looking or I learned something on my own and thought it was really super cool enough to need to share. The latter hasn't happened often, but writing a question often drives me to find the solution.
Answer: Okay in the spirit of answering my own questions :-)
I use the following rough rules to be polite:

try to ensure that it is a legitimate question at the time of asking (i.e., I'm legitimately interested in the answer at the time of asking; Also, sometimes I'll have a partial answer, but I want to see how it compares to others)
give others a short period of time to answer before posting my own answer (generally at least half a day to a day)

That said, I don't know whether either of the criteria are essential. Voting will probably sort most things out. I also think that where the answer does not preclude other answers, the timing issue is less important, and probably meta is different, because the question is more for starting discussion, and there is no motive for rep increases.
In summary, I think people should be encouraged to ask lots of questions, and I think people should be encouraged to add their own answers more often than they currently do. I know that for just about any question I've asked on this site, I could do some research for an hour or two and find a reasonable answer. I've done that several times, especially when I haven't received an answer for a few days.
Comment: _"give others a short period of time to answer before posting my own answer (generally at least half a day to a day)"_ This is already addressed by the fact that you aren't able to accept your own answer immediately. People still get a chance to improve on your own posted answer.
Comment: In some cases I'd probably prefer just to start answering my own question straight away; e.g., ask question, and then get on the case of doing google searches and google scholar searches etc to find an answer, although I worry that it: (a) is thought poorly of by the community, perhaps because it plants the seed that it might not have been a real question, or that it somehow indicates an inappropriate desire for rep; (b) it discourages other answers which I would be interested in reading.
Comment: (a) shouldn't be a problem as long as _it is_ a real question. See [my comment on Ben's Answer](http://meta.cogsci.stackexchange.com/a/161/21). I'm not entirely clear on (b). You mean asking/answering your own questions would reduce your participation on other questions? I would rather follow the philosophy that you should participate where you can help most. When you just figured out a question yourself, I'd argue that's where you can help out most. You can perfectly describe the question and ideally the answer you found.
Answer: I think it is fine to answer your own question (on the main site) if it is obvious you didn't know the answer at the time of asking and worked on answering it. On the meta you can always answer your own questions :P.
However, the initial question should still show initial research effort. I am unhappy about this question to self-answer pair because the initial question does not show research effort. This is made clear by the almost immediate wikipedia-link answer by the same user.

Full disclosure: I have asked and answered my own question. I provided my answer for completeness sake after accepting a good one. I guess I knew the answer I posted when I asked the question (as in I was familiar with quantum cognition, etc), but I had not really thought about the fact that it is a perfectly rationalist explanation until thinking about rule vs. act rationality in @OfriRaviv's answer.
Comment: Furthermore, I do not feel you shouldn't know the answer prior to posting a question. If you spent a considerable amount of time finding a certain resource, and only then consider it might be useful for the community, I don't see any reason why you shouldn't share this knowledge. The main concern is that it should be an actual question you encountered.
Comment: I'm sorry, I see know I wasn't that clear. :) What I meant was _"The main concern is that it should be an actual question you encountered **recently**."_ Furthermore there is a big difference between asking questions which you actually encounter, and just formulating questions out of knowledge. _"How does the brain work?"_ isn't a valid question. Knowledge you gain while studying the subject isn't all stuff you would ask questions about. ... I'll have to attempt phrasing this in an answer of my own.
Comment: _"I am unhappy about this question to self-answer pair because the initial question does not show research effort. This is made clear by the almost immediate wikipedia-link answer by the same user."_ The reason why Ben posted this question was most likely because he didn't know where to start to look. It's a terminology question. When you don't know the terminology, it can be hard to find information about the subject. Ben himself [expressed this perfectly in a meta post on which questions are too basic](http://meta.cogsci.stackexchange.com/a/22/21).
Comment: @StevenJeuris  does that mean I should rephrase all my research papers as questions, post them on this site and then answer with my findings?  The site will evolve naturally to be a great resource for the cogsci community, I don't think we should seed it with questions we already know the answers to... if the community really cares about the question, someone else will ask it down-the-line and you will already know the answer to give.


7 day chat suspension

Question: Why have I received a 7 day chat suspension? I do not recall doing anything harmful or bad for the chatroom, except maybe posting faces, but I don't see how that warrants a 7 day ban.
EDIT
I don't make the best decisions late at night.
Comment: I seem to recall one of the mods mentioning on another meta thread that the limit is 9999 days, but I wouldn't advise trying to verify it empirically.
Comment: Regarding chat suspension limits, it's high. Very high. ([Dennis says 9999 hours here.](http://meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/11139/lets-talk-about-chat-again#comment36551_11139)) Regarding your quote, strikeout formatting is typically used to depict saying one thing, then back-tracking and saying something else. I'm not sure you can honestly claim that you didn't intend to call mods Nazis. Besides that, you *also* essentially implied that Germans in the 1940s were Nazis, which is very offensive.
Comment: I'm not an expert, but it might have [something to do with this](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/34675046#34675046)
Comment: @wat: Which is *still* a very broad brush, and still offensive.
Comment: Chat suspensions become longer and longer the more you get, and I believe the length is caused by that.
Comment: @NathanMerrill what is the limit?
Comment: @PeterTaylor i think it was actually 9999 hours
Comment: Why is this question downvoted so much? Is it off topic?
Comment: @Anush the situation that happened here was due to me being, at the time, a dumb 15 year old and not thinking about the real meaning of what I was saying
Answer: Regarding that message

You must have no idea what the Nazis were/are or what they have done if you think calling someone a Nazi for deleting chat messages or handing out 30-minute suspensions is even remotely acceptable.
Other parts of the internet may tolerate these insults, but this is not one of those parts. Stack Exchange's prime directive is to Be Nice, and there's nothing nice about comparing us moderators with genocidal mass murderers.
You didn't just say Nazis, you used the euphemism crazy 1940s germans. That makes it worse. Much worse. As usual with dictatorships, many/most Germans didn't actually agree with what the government was doing and definitely weren't Nazis. Saying otherwise falls somewhere between stereotypes and hate speech.
Just because you strikethrough parts of your message doesn't mean you didn't write it; you just wrote it with a horizontal line through its center. If you don't mean it, don't write it. That simple.

Regarding your suspension
We usually prefer not to discuss details of a suspension in public, so I won't reveal any details that aren't already common knowledge.

This isn't the first time a message of yours was flag-deleted. In fact, this isn't the first time you asked here on meta why you were suspended.
This isn't the first time you were suspended that day. One of your previous messages got flag-deleted for being pure noise, and your reaction to that 30-minute timeout was calling the moderators Nazis.
You've been asked multiple times to post less nonsense in chat. You've ignored it every time.
Comment: ...

I just realized what I did.

I don't make my best decisions at (my best guess) 3-4 AM.

This post was made when I woke up, still not really myself.

I would have never posted something like that in chat if I had thought about it.

About the euphemism: Saying "crazy 1940s Germans" was meant to signify "crazy people, who were Germans, in the 1940s", it was in no way intended to offend people from Germany (unless they were crazy).

I should spend less time on reddit.
Comment: that last comment was meant to be split into lines. no idea how to do that in a comment
Answer: You received a 7-day suspension because one of the mods saw your behavior and thought it was rude/inappropriate for respectful discourse. I say one of the mods, because us regular users don't know which one it was, and that is definitely a good thing.
IIRC, being suspended multiple times automatically increases the length of the suspension, which is why it was for 7 days.
The primary directive for good behavior for all of stack-exchange, including chat is Be Nice. To quote some relevant sections...

Rudeness and belittling language are not okay. Your tone should match the way you'd talk in person with someone you respect and whom you want to respect you. If you don't have time to say something politely, just leave it for someone who does.

...

Don't be a jerk. These are just a few examples. If you see them, flag them:

Bigotry of any kind. Language likely to offend or alienate individuals or groups based on race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc. will not be tolerated. At all. (Those are just a few examples; when in doubt, just don't.)

Calling someone a Nazi is certainly something I wouldn't do when talking with someone in the real world. And calling someone "Crazy Germans" is definitely "Language likely to offend or alienate individuals or groups based on race". Especially when you consider that quite a few of the PPCG mods are actually from Germany.
Even if you hadn't made a reference to Nazis, I would still consider calling the mods "mean people" for doing exactly what they're supposed to do rude.
There are many times I have seen a mod enforce a rule that I disagree with, or take a certain action I disagree with. I've even told that to mods to their faces before. However, I still greatly respect them for all their hard-work and maturity, and I appreciate that they're around to enforce all of the rules.
You need to realize that mods aren't arbitrarily making decisions in the moment based on their feelings, or guesses. They are enforcing network-wide rules that many people have spent time refining and clarifying. Whether or not you agree with these rules (or even if the mods agree with these rules) is irrelevant. If you use this site, you agree to abide by it's rules, and sometimes you'll have to pay the price for breaking them.
In the meantime, don't worry about it too much. We all make mistakes. In seven days, the suspension will be lifted and you can continue using chat like everyone else. After that, I would recommend being more careful about your choice of words.

As a side note, if there were no moderators around when you posted that message, you would probably still have received a suspension because I would have flagged your message if I was around to see it, and I can almost guarantee it would have been validated.
Comment: Uh, suspension time never increases *automatically*. (Kick times do.) wat *was* suspended for 30 minutes due to the chat flag, but was manually re-suspended for a week after discussion.
Comment: Two points I'd like to clarify: 1) suspensions don't *automatically* increase in length though that's the typical choice, and 2) I'm fairly sure I was the first mod to see that message, and I saw it about six hours later because I read the transcript.
Comment: For the record, the suspension was due to a validated chat flag - I was there to see the flag.
Comment: @mego I'm pretty sure it was a mod because validated chat flags are always 30 minutes

7 day chat suspension


What may be the cause of hot start problems in a Lycoming fuel injected engine?

Question: Cherokee Six, 32-300 1969. Lycoming engine is fuel injected with 450 SMOH. Cold starts are easy: 1/2" throttle, full rich, fuel pump on and hit starter after fuel flow starts. Runs great once running.
Hot starts are hit or miss. If it sits over an hour it may start but if I miss it it has to sit for at least another hour till I try again or forget it. I've tried 1/2" throttle, full lean with and without fuel pump; full throttle, full lean with and without fuel pump and all combinations I can think of. Most of the time it spins without any cough or catch. Due for 50 hour oil change and will ask that plugs and magnetos are checked. I'm afraid to go anywhere for fear of being stranded for hours.
Comment: You might try reading this article: http://flighttraining.aopa.org/students/presolo/skills/hotengine.html
Comment: Troubleshooting a no-start situation like this is probably too difficult for a simple Q&A site - about the best advice we can offer is that you need fuel, air, and spark. You likely have no problem with spark (because you can start the engine when cold), so you'll need to work with your A&P to troubleshoot fuel (vapor lock?) and air - try to get the plane to exhibit the problem for your mechanic. Also make sure you're trying to start the engine in accordance with your POH or the Lycoming operator's manual - the published techniques *generally* work unless something is wrong.
Comment: @dvnrrs Vapor Lock is absolutely the issue.  The fuel injection plumbing is on the top of the engine which is the cold side of the engine when you are flying but when parked, heat rises!  The accepted answer below cures this by running cooler fuel through the plumbing while flooding the engine, then the flooded start procedure is necessary.
Comment: Have you asked your A&P about this?
Comment: For what it's worth I also had very difficult hot starts with a Lycoming IO-540 (I assume that's the engine you're talking about). Had to be very careful not to flood it and I often wondered whether vapor lock was an issue. Never solved that mystery.
Comment: @SkipMiller That makes a lot of sense. I don't fly the IO-540 anymore but this (and the suggested remedy) is great knowledge for the future. Thank you!
Answer: The issue is undoubtedly vapor lock. In the fuel injected Lyc 540, the fuel injection plumbing is on the top of the engine which is the cold side of the engine when you are flying but when parked, heat rises! The following procedure runs cooler fuel through the plumbing while flooding the engine, then the flooded start procedure is necessary.
First, check your POH for the hot start procedure for your plane.  If not there, try this as it is for a very similar airplane:
Hot Starts on the Saratoga PA-32-300:

Intentionally flood the engine.  This runs cool fuel through the plumbing and "breaks" the vapor lock.

a) Full rich
b) Wide open throttle
c) Fuel pump on, watch fuel flow gauge
d) When gauge registers flow, wait 3-5 seconds then red knob to ICO and pump off.

Crank engine with red knob still at ICO and with throttle wide open at first. Gradually close throttle (at a rate that will take you about 10 seconds to close the throttle) and it should start up at some point.
When engine catches, do several things more or less simultaneously:

a) release ignition key
b) throttle to idle to avoid over-revving
c) mixture full rich.
Comment: Tried flooding it and no excessive fuel spilling on ground going along with vapor lock and fuel starvation. 2 lower plugs with high resistance too were replaced but mechanic didn't think that was the culprit. Haven't had a chance to try a hot start since all the suggestions. Also no fuel return line in Lycoming per mechanic so just running electric pump with mixture ICO for 1 minute unlikely to flush cold fuel in the lines but will try anyway next unsuccessful hit start.
Comment: Right, no fuel return line.  It pushes the fuel/fuel vapor into the intake manifold flooding it.  The procedure I posted is not the flooded start method in the POH but it was taught to me by my CFI and it worked for me.  Still a bit of an art, though.  Keep us posted.
Comment: @Marshall: I just re-read your comment.  Note that the procedure calls for full rich so you are not running the pump with mixture at ICO.  And please note that one minute is waaay too long to run the pump in this case.  The fuel flow gauge doesn't move for a while as the pump is pushing mostly vapor through the system.  When the gauge starts to indicate some flow, then 5 seconds, maybe 7 max and then back to ICO and pump off.
Answer: No need to run the fuel pump as @Skip Miller says.  (though it may say that in the Saratoga manual)
I have done the following with success for hot starts on a IO-320, IO-360, and IO-540.

Throttle Full Open. (Push in or forward)
Mixture Full Close. (Pull out or back)
Crank engine.
Once it starts firing, put the mixture back in and pull the throttle back to idle.

Happy engine starts!
Comment: Tried that but it doesn't work unless I flood it first with full throttle, full rich mixture and pump on for at least 5-10 seconds. Seems as if the hot engine sits for more than 10 minutes it vaporizes all the fuel and too lean to start. I've had more success at that point with 1/4 inch throttle 1/2 mixture rich and pump on.
Comment: This is exactly how I do it in my IO-540-powered M20M. Works perfectly.
Answer: I have a 1969 PA 32 300 with 420 hours on engine, for the last 12 months it has been very hard starting after a flight. My MX shop checked the left Mag impulse coupler and coil at 360 hours all checked out okay. Still hard starting hot start. Mx did 500 hour AD on left and right Mag still hard starting hot start. Mx check the timing still hard starting. Mx just put new Concord battery with a new Skytec starter in, still hard starting on cold start and hot start. Final Mx check the coil cold resistance was normal no problem. Mx then heated the coil up to simulate a hot engine and the coil failed no spark. Mx put a new coil in it start everytime hot or cold. This has been a nightmare to start and I was afraid to go anywhere and shutdown knowing it would not start until the engine cooled down. I hope this helps someone out there with the same problem. Amen.
Comment: Just wondering, by coil do your mean the magneto harness?
Answer: Also have the injectors checked.  The symptoms you describe can occur when one of the injectors is not closing completely, causing flooding or an overly rich mixture.
Comment: @Breveleri, the injection system on the Lycoming 540 engine is constant flow.  They don't close.


Installed CWM/TWRP but it isn't installed when booting to recovery mode

Question: I have an LG G2-D800 running 4.4.2 KitKat and it is rooted using an app called Stump Root. I have been trying to flash a new ROM onto it and every time it boots into recovery, it boots into the android recovery, even though I have flashed it using Clockwork Mod and TWRP Manager.
Can anyone help with this and suggest good ROMs to flash to it?
Comment: I used an app called ROM Manager v22.214.171.124. When you first enter the app, the first option is called "Recovery Setup". And as of now, it says that the current Recovery is ClockworkMod 188.8.131.52 (which I believe is the latest version). But, if I use the "Reboot into Recovery" option under that, it just opens the Stock Recovery.
Comment: How did you flash the recovery?
Comment: I had similiar problem and explained everything here [http://en.miui.com/forum.php?mod=redirect&goto=findpost&ptid=297691&pid=8767131][1]
Comment: I had same issue on a TAB4 10.1 SM-T535.. Anyway, to get it to boot into TWRP I just had to install the TWRP app from the play store, which has an option to boot into TWRP, the key combinations never worked for me. I also had flashed `CF-Auto-Root` to the device to install SuperSU, which might have allowed the TWRP app with Root access to boot into recovery mode straight from their app, bypassing the timing issues of having to press the keys in a certain order.
Answer: Some stock ROM's may replace the custom recovery with the stock recovery. To solve it you should install the custom recovery with fastboot and reboot to recovery and don't reboot to system. That will prevent the stock ROM from replacing the custom recovery.
Comment: Catch: *That will prevent the stock ROM from replacing the custom recovery.* -- not completely true. This answer will not work on CM 11 and CM12 that ships with OPO unless you explicitly uncheck *Update CM recovery* under **Developer options**.
Comment: @Firelord The OPO's bootloader does recovery verification before entering fastboot mode?
Comment: @MatthewRead [This pdf](https://events.linuxfoundation.org/sites/events/files/slides/ABS%20Lollipop%20MR1%20Verified%20Boot.pdf#10) on Linux Foundation says about an unlocked device in respect of bootloader states -- *Unlocked devices do not verify boot or recovery images*.  Your comment held completely true for a locked bootloader of OPO. However, the answer involves fastboot flashing which assumes device is unlocked, and hence, my comment is still true for OPO. // Thanks for explicitly mentioning it. I learned some other good things from the pdf. :)
Comment: If he reboots into the newly flashed recovery, when is the stock rom supposed to reset the recovery? does it check the recovery before the reboot? How is flashing with fastboot more permanent than flashing with a 3rd party app?
Comment: I have the same issue but there is no "update cm recovery" option in "debug options"
Answer: Its because stock roms come with their own recovery. That will always replace custom recovery. To prevent this, whenever you download a rom, open its tar or zip or whatever format is there with winrar and delete the recovery image inside it (if its zip file, then open it and go to system/etc and delete "recovery.img" and if its tar file, again open it and delete the recovery.img or any file with similar name. Keyword here is recovery).
The next step is to edit out the scripts so it doesnt give error on missing recovery image. For zip file, the android flash script is inside META-INF/com/google/android/ and you need to edit the file "updater-script". Now various rom builders use various methods to flash recovery using script, so there isnt any specific way really, but look for any line that resembles something that means "copy/flash recovery.img" and delete that line.
For ex in one of the roms I downloaded, recovery was flashed using this command->
package_extract_file("system/etc/recovery.img", "/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/recovery")

You can clearly see that its extracting recovery image to some location, so delete this line. Then save file inside zip and flash it. Your recovery wont be changed.
For roms in tar or any other format, it should normally be some batch file which carries flash instructions. Again, open it and remove line corresponding to flash recovery.
This may sound haphazard, but try it first before deciding difficulty, its relatively easy ;) All you need to do is just edit the script that controls flashing.
One more thing, if you have lost your recovery, you can flash it using fastboot.
First, follow guide here to set up adb and fastboot.
Next, connect phone to pc with usb debugging enabled. Then open command prompt and enter these commands->
fastboot erase recovery
fastboot flash recovery PathToRecoveryFileAndItsName.img

For ex if my recovery file lies in D:/Recovery folder, then I would use->
fastboot flash recovery D:/Recovery/TWRPblabla.img

Good luck and hope this helps.
Here's more detail on how to deal with this in case of stock roms:
HOW TO PREVENT STOCK ROM FROM OVERWRITING RECOVERY:
In stock roms, the general procedure used is to put in a recovery image file. For ex if you open a stock rom archive in winrar, you will see some image file with name and extension similar to "recovery.img". This is stock recovery, you delete this file. Now similarly, we need to edit flash scripts so it doesnt go berserk on not finding recovery image. It actually depends how stock rom is flashed (or rather what method it uses). Some need individual parts flashing (system is flashed separately and recovery is flashed separately and boot or kernel separately, like in samsungs). In this case you can simply skip step for flashing recovery and no script editing is needed. But if its using some script (like nexus stock roms have a batch file script), you will have to edit that script. Its usually batchfile. Open the file in notepad and remove the lines that lead to recovery flashing. To help you identify these lines, look for words like recovery or recovery.img since it actually depends on how stock rom flash script is made. For ex in my nexus 4. the stock rom I downloaded flashed recovery using fastboot as->
fastboot erase recovery
fastboot flash recovery recovery.img

Here, as you can see its actually first erasing my recovery, we dont want that either. So I remove these two lines. First, to prevent it from erasing my already inserted recovery, second to prevent it from flashing and over-riding my recovery with a new one. So you must also look out for such lines that may overwrite the recovery. As I said, you can simply search for keyword recovery in script if you are having difficulty in finding such line.
Comment: Now, when I try to reboot into Recovery, it reboots into fastboot and all it says it " [D800] Fastboot mode started" on a black screen.
Comment: Are you sure your button combination is right? Because the method I told simply causes no recovery flashing. Nothing changes for existing recovery. On side note, if you have set up fastboot and adb in PC, you can force phone into recovery using this method-> go to fastboot mode (as you are now). Connect to PC. Open cmd or terminal whatever os you have set up adb and fastboot in. Enter the command "fastboot reboot recovery" without quotes. This should get you into recovery.
Comment: @Hackaholic I think that is behavior of a locked bootloader...You stopped it from re-flashing the stock recovery, but it still won't boot into a a recovery that doesn't have the correct digital signature...
Comment: Also, Jaskaranbir, you might mention at the start of your answer that your trick requires root.
Comment: Worked like charm in Nexus 7 2012. Previously even after flashing, default recovery with android icon was appearing. `fastboot erase recovery` worked!
Answer: There is an easy step... I used it to boot in to rec on my N910g (note4)
1 .flash the custom rec using odin (it was TWRP 18.104.22.168 for me)

As soon as the device restarts after flashing press and hold menue button and volume up button (this should be so quick, u have to press buttons as quick as the screen get Black screen)
repeat the steps it will work.(remember to flash the rec again and again when u repeat steps

:D
Comment: LG devices has a different way of flashing recovery and another key combination (some even unable to enter recovery via key combo). Nice try anyway.
Comment: That quick pressing worked ... I was breaking my head trying to figure out how since the past 4 hours... Thanks You!
Answer: Hello i just had a personal experience with my Asus zenfone selfie Z00T Stock recovery kept replacing TWRP. (Boot loader already unlocked)
This is how i got around it  i downloaded the latest TWRP for my device and placed directly in  minimal adb and fastboot app folder then i renamed it to recovery .
then i put my device in fastboot mode using the buttons on the phone and
After i ran minimal adb and fastboot app as admin then i typed fastboot flash recovery recovery.img
once done i then i typed fastboot boot recovery.img. and my phone booted to twrp recovery then i  selected reboot recovery directly on my phone and to finish reboot system (still in twrp) that's it.
(OEM commands to boot from fastboot to recovery do not work on some devices )
it only worked for me eventually because i downloaded the latest TWRP from the official TWRP website.
The idea is to flash the custom recovery and then booting from the custom recovery.img that you just used to flash (the one still on the pc)  using minimal adb and fastboot app.
IT may not work on all devices as the commands may change from one device to another but the idea stays the same.
(example for nexus fastboot -c "lge.kcal=0|0|0|x" boot recovery.img)
I hope this will help some people out.


What is the minimum magnification needed for an instrument to see all the Messier objects?

Question: I know someone that wants to buy a 60cm (1.5 inch) refractor and I thought about recommending what to look at the Messier objects. And I was wondering, can he see all these objects with that refractor ? what about with a 10x magnification binoculars ?
Comment: Whoa -- 60cm refractor?  That's 23.4 inches!  Hefty. 1.5 inch is 3.81 cm.  Perhaps 60mm is meant?  Which would be 2.36 inches.
Answer: Do not think in terms of "magnification". Seasoned astronomers (both professional and amateur) don't do that. Instead, think in terms of aperture (the diameter of the objective). That's the defining characteristic of an instrument, everything else is derived from it. This is true for scopes in general, not just related to Messier. Aperture is king.
Another limiting factor for Messier objects is the darkness of the sky. These are faint objects, so light pollution tends to wipe them out by reducing the contrast below the minimum threshold perceivable by your eye through your scope. So the answer will differ a lot, depending whether you're observing from the city, where there's a lot of light pollution and the sky is glowing orange, or from Middle Of Nowhere, Tumbleweed County, 200 km away from any human settlement, where the sky is as dark as can be and the Milky Way is a river of light.
Finally, the experience of the observer also matters. Faint object + small aperture, means you need all the skills to make it happen.
You could pick one of the tough, hard to see Messiers, let's say M74, M76 or M109, and ask around, figure out what's the minimum aperture that people used to see it. You'll see it's been done with 42 mm aperture (regular 10x42 binoculars) under dark skies, by an experienced observer. There are people reporting all Messiers seen with 55 mm aperture (small refractor) under moderately polluted skies. I would guess you'd need at least 76 mm (like a small achromat), possibly even more than that, if light pollution is much stronger, such as in the city.
But for an inexperienced observer, and in order to see them bright and well, not just a faint smudge of grey, multiply those numbers by 2x or more.
So, the short answer is "it depends".
Comment: Messier had a range of 4-6in aperture scopes, but since they used metal speculum mirrors they are only equivalent to about half that aperture with modern telescopes.
Answer: This may be helpful:
http://www.allaboutastro.com/Articlepages/whatcanisee.html
and then cross-reference that with this website:
http://messier.seds.org/
Answer: Although not a direct answer, the Messier objects are a universally available list that are a logical place for a new observer to draw inspiration from. And check-lists are good starting places for "what should I look at" and keeping yourself motivated. But rather than concentrating on accomplishing a Messier Marathon, I'd suggest that your friend focus on what kind of sights they'd find rewarding. With a 60mm refractor, you can enjoy solar system and wide-field observing. Galaxies and their structure (arms, dust lanes, etc.) are "faint fuzzies" and reward ever-larger apertures.
Personally, I like the portability, sharpness, and solar-system views afforded by small refractors, but there's no denying that a large Dob reveals things that are just not visible in a small refractor.


Should I split similar products to different pages or merge them into one?

Question: I have a small site which stands as a catalog for our products. We have several but similar products ("small", "medium", "big" - each with different specification)
Currently each product is in one page but I'm thinking of merge the pages into one long page. What is the best practice in such a case?
Answer: Why not both?
Use a single long page to show all products that can be grouped together with thumbnails and/or short descriptions and have that list click through to individual product detail pages with longer descriptions, better images, etc.
It won't work for every type of product catalog but this provides a very good search engine footprint.
Answer: Sites with many webpages helps in SEO. Whenever you create a new page in your site, initially google give some PageRank to that page. But the more you create pages, the less you'll get initial PR for each webpage.
Also note that, low quality and duplicate content can invite Google penalty to your website. I know it is not related to that, but I said it because in future you may create too many pages for some SEO advantages.
If products have different specification then it makes sense to keep on different URL, it will help today as well as in future when you do promotion.
I don't know what's in your mind, but when you gonna merge it then there will be no affect in SEO. It is not like you have long webpage so Google love it.
When you link your similar products then it will make more weight on that, as per hilltop algorithm. According to page expert score when there is similar keywords in title and link to it, then it will give more weight. For example "Product XYZ for your AAAA" when link to "Product ABC for your AAAA" then the linked page will get more benefits. PageRank is just link calculation but Google may use many other signals based on links, and I think when two webpages with some similar keywords in title make your Page Expert Score more, heading links gives less weight than title and anchor text links gives less weight than heading.


Can a Windows CE netbook run Windows XP?

Question: Can you upgrade a nebook running Windows CE to Windows XP?
Can you download music?
I just bought two for my grandkids ages 12 and 14.
Comment: Please post the specs, processor ghz, drive space, and amount of installed memory, or post the Make and model you purchased.
Answer: Short: No.
Long: CE and XP are two entirely different things. CE is an embedded thing used for (old) portable devices. XP is a "real" OS.
My Advice: Netbooks are only $400 for a decent one. Shop around Amazon and get ones that are relatively recent. Or get iPads ^-^.
Answer: I'm not exactly sure what a netbook ce is, but I assume it is running Windows CE.  If that is the case then, no it cannot be upgraded to Windows XP, nor any other version of Windows.  Windows CE is not a standard version of Windows that you find on desktops or laptops.  Windows CE was originally built for smart phones and runs on different hardware than regular Windows.
It also cannot run programs that on Windows XP, etc.  Windows CE can only run programs that were specifically designed for it - which rules out all normal Windows programs.
You most likely can download music on it, it probably has some version of Windows Media Player and can download files.  But it won't be able to run iTunes, Winamp, etc.
Answer: Upgrading cant be done, however it is possible to replace Windows CE with another operating system.  There are many cases on Windows CE being replaced with Linux and Windows XP.  You need to be able to access and modify the flash storage.  Also, obtaining compatible device drivers can be an issue.  This is not an easy task to accomplish and I would not recommend trying it unless you are an advanced computer user, as it is possible to permanently break the netbook.


SNP-phenotype association analysis only using the SNPs on a specific gene

Question: I know that the GWAS association p-value threshold is 1e-8. This makes sense because in GWAS, you make ~1 million hypothesis (i.e. use that many SNPs in the association test). However, let's say I do not do genome-wide analysis but only use the 100 SNPs from a specific gene to check for association with my phenotype. Then, do you think a raw p-value of 1e-4 (which becomes 1e-2 after multiple hypothesis correction) is a reliable p-value to come to a conclusion that there is an association between that SNP and the checked phenotype? Obviously, if I checked all 1 million SNPs instead, this p-value would be insignificant after correction, but I am not checking 1 million SNPs, as I mentioned.
Answer:
I know that the GWAS association p-value threshold is 1e-8

This may be a common threshold of statistical significance that is used, but it's definitely not an absolute value. It's a hack to try to work around many issues with GWAS associated with testing millions of SNPs. Unfortunately, the most relevant issue in GWAS (for spurious significance) is unexpected shared genetic structure in the cases or controls, and this cannot be excluded by a p-value threshold, regardless of how low it is set.
In your 100-SNP example, you are correct that the bonferroni correction would be a threshold of 1e-4 (for a desired significance threshold of 0.01), but it's important to be cautious about GWAS results, even when the p-value indicates otherwise. Trust no one, especially yourself. P-values should never be used as an indication of importance (which suggests that most GWAS results should probably be reconsidered), and are better used in conjunction with other evidence for identifying relevant / significant tests.
My recommendation for GWAS (or any similar bulk genotyping study, as in your 100-SNP subset) is that at least a bootstrap sub-sampling process is carried out, to make sure that observations found within the comparison of interest are at least well replicated when comparing smaller sub-groups of the cases and controls. More information on that can be found in the poster I presented at Queenstown Research Week last year, and detail about the implementation in my draft preprint (which will probably never be properly published, given how old the research is).
Comment: Thanks for the reply, those make a lot of sense. A followup question: I was also told by a GWAS expert that when the minor allele frequency is low, one would not trust the p-value even if it is significant. He said so when I showed him the p-value of 1e-4 for a SNP with a 2% minor allele frequency. Do you think it is due to the need for the additional bootstrap analysis you suggested? I guess a low p-value would not be replicated in bootstrap analysis in case of rare variants and small overall sample size. Could you share your suggestions specifically for analyzing rare variants?
Comment: Whether or not it will be internally replicable will depend on the sample size of the subsampled population. It would be possible to specifically subsample to increase the frequency of single SNPs, but that might cause problems with associated interaction effects.
Comment: Certainly, you need to take more care about rare variants. Most tests will provide both a p-value and an effect size (which is better than the p-value for ranking SNPs). If the effect size is large, then it lends more weight to an association near the SNP locus. It may also be a good idea to do a haplotype association test within the haplotype block(s) that include the SNP, as any linked SNP could be causative. Bear in mind that GWAS are only testing for association, and there are other follow-up studies that should be done to support findings of association.


Why do cameras use a slit between two curtains rather than exposing the entire sensor instantly?

Question: Why is it more effective to use "a slit travelling from top to bottom of the sensor" in faster shutter speeds, rather than exposing the entire sensor instantly? And the slit thing only comes in fast shutter speeds, right?
Comment: Are you asking why a mechanical shutter takes the form of a slit at fast shutter speeds, or are you asking why mechanical shutters are used at all?
Comment: Relevant video: https://youtu.be/CmjeCchGRQo?t=3m5s
Comment: Why they take the form of a slit
Answer: As was said, the mechanical shutter has speed limitations. As to the slit, try to imagine without it.  Suppose the shutter opens by moving from top to bottom of frame.  And then of course, it has to close from bottom to top.  So it is open longer on the top side than on the bottom side, which is uneven exposure.
Modern fast curtains might move about 7 meters per second, but still, the time to cover 16 or 24 mm of frame height is a factor for a fast shutter.
Crossing the 24 mm frame height at 7000 mm per second takes about 1/300 second to completely open.  And if another 1/300 second to close, then fastest shutter exposure might be near zero at the bottom edge of the frame, but maybe 2/300 or 1/150 second of exposure at the top edge. That much longer at any shutter speed, and of course, the shutter speed cannot be faster then the 1/300 second travel time to open.  This is mighty poor photographic performance.
Leaf shutters do try to improve this speed (with the multiple iris blades), but they still have to open and close, and they can't do this well at fastest shutter speeds. We might see 1/500 second on them, but not 1/8000 second on a leaf shutter. But the focal plane can do it, and accurately too.
But imagine a slit... When instead, if (as is done by focal plane shutters), if one curtain moves across opening the frame, and then a second curtain follows by moving across closing that frame, then all we have to measure is the timing between starting each curtain.  Both frame edges get exactly the same exposure (but occurring at very slightly different times). And the shutter speed can be very fast, say 1/8000 second, which of course has the effect of being a narrow slit moving across the frame, but it is very even exposure, and very precisely timed.  Mechanical gears and springs and motion are no longer factors, since all motion is exactly the same for any choice of shutter speed, and the same for both curtains. No mechanical variations due to various shutter speeds.  We can simply use a quartz clock crystal to measure the two start curtain times, which difference becomes the shutter speed duration.  It does not get much better than that.  Even exposure and precise.
However, this becomes a problem for flash. Flash is very fast (a short duration) and can only usefully happen if the shutter is fully open to pass it. So that means a slit cannot work for flash, or rather, the slit has to be the fully open sensor dimension.  It means that this 1/300 second travel time to open is the shortest shutter duration that can work for flash, called shutter sync speed.
A 1/200 second sync is more common in lesser cameras, but the fastest focal plane shutters can and do 1/320 second (several Nikon DSLR models do it).
If it takes 1/300 second to fully open, and if the second curtain starts closing about immediately then, this still leaves a tiny fully open window for the fast flash to occur. That minimum shutter speed for flash sync is necessarily 1/300 second. Flash is a minor downside, but it really is all rather ingenious. And the focal plane shutter idea is about 100 years old.
Comment: No, leaf shutter is the type of shutter found in each individual lens, instead of being a focal plane shutter in the body.  See the picture at https://www.google.com/search?q=leaf+shutter
Comment: "leaf shutter" - is this a brand name?
Answer: Thought experiment time. Assume we'd like a minimum exposure of 1/2000 of a second (500 microseconds) on a 35mm full frame camera. We have a single 'shutter' to move out of the way, and back.
We'll tolerate one side of the picture being 10% more exposed than the other, so that means we allow 50μs to move the shutter back and forth.  So the shutter has to travel about 35mm in 25μs, and back. That's 1.4mm per microsecond.
Let's convert that into more familiar units.
So, our shutter needs to travel at an average of 3131 miles per hour. MACH 4.
Let's work out the G-force needed to just get it to reach that terminal speed in the required time. Zero to 1400 metres/second in 25 μs: around 5.7 million G.
Comment: ^^^^^^THIS ^^^^^^
Comment: Rotating eg multiple long thin plates (or cylinders with suitable cross sections and "reqisite mico lenses [tm] would reduce the force and acceleration issues while 'somewhat adding to complexity'.
Answer: Simply because there's only so fast a mechanical thing can accelerate out of the way of the sensor (or film) and back without causing severe engineering issues with timing and diminishing shutter lifetime. It's simply not worth it when the alternative has no disadvantages in most uses.
Answer: That's because the curtains of the shutter have limited speed. So if you want to archive high speed/small time of exposure you need to keep sensor exposed to light for short time. And in such case is simplest not to increase the speed of curtains, but to limit the size of the slit
For example if the size of the sensor is 24mm and the flash sync speed is 1/250 this will mean the curtains move with 6m/s (which is quite a speed for such device).
Moreover the curtains mechanics should be balanced and calculated in such way so it do not add much vibrations to the body with acceleration, movement and deceleration.
Answer: rolling shutter has nothing to do with the movement of the shutter.  It has to do with the fact the image sensor can only be read a line at a time.  It is setup as a bank of sensors that are sweeped to capture an entire image.  This sweep of reading each line is what becomes the rolling shutter
Comment: The phenomenon is actually well known in early photography... [this photo, for instance](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-1991-1209-503,_Autorennen_im_Grunewald,_Berlin.jpg).


Troubleshooting a failure to boot

Question: I have a system that has been working fine for a long time, and has suddenly decided not to boot.
By not booting, I mean nothing at all -- no post screen, no nothing. It powers up, the fans spin, etc, but there's just no screen output (the monitor doesn't even come out of power save mode).
I bet the thing is spitting out beep codes, but alas, the chassis has no speaker to hook up to it, and nor does any other that I have lying around here (did they recently stop producing those or something?)
This is an ASUS A8N SLI DELUXE (AMD Socket 939) motherboard, with 2 sticks of Corsair RAM (2gb).
I think it's the RAM, but I'm not sure. Here's why:
I systematically swapped the arrangement of the 2 DIMMS, booting it after each combination. When I got to the combination that had them in the reverse order, much to my amazement, it BOOTED! But, as Windows 7 was starting up, it rebooted without warning. I tried again, this time sending it to recovery mode, and that BSOD'd.
So, I figured perhaps 1 of the 2 DIMMS was bad. I decided I'd just leave 1 DIMM in at a time in the first slot and see what happens. Neither booted. So, defeated, I put them back in into the combination that had worked prior... but it wouldn't boot! The same arrangement that worked before no longer works. I'm back to square one.
My theory is that 1 of the DIMMS is bad, and that for some reason the MoBo requires a pair of DIMMS, which explains why it won't boot even if I have just the 1 good DIMM in it. But I don't know if pairing them is a requirement.
Is this a sound theory? Does the fact that it momentarily booted up mean the CPU and MOBO are ok? Or might they still be at fault somehow? What should my next step be?
Answer: Problem solved... It was in fact one of the DIMMs. When I was trying just having 1 of the 2 sticks installed I was putting it in the wrong slot. I would have though you'd put it in A_1, but no, you put it in B_1. RTFM. :)
Comment: If I suspect RAM issues, I try every slot.

Troubleshooting a failure to boot


Recording video with audio from webcam?

Question: I've tried cheese and wxCam and both of those record the video fine, but there is no audio in the videos. How can i record a video from my webcam with audio as well?
Comment: Take a look at the answer on this question http://askubuntu.com/q/150718/9598 and let us know if this works for you. Good luck!
Answer: I had a similar problem with cheese (that is, video was fine, but no audio).
I tried out guvcview based on this answer. This didn't work either, but then I remembered something about USB 3 ports not working with devices like webcams sometimes, so I moved it to a USB 2 port.
Everything worked in guvcview just fine then. The webcam appeared as a new audio device ("USB Audio"). guvcview seems like a neat little application, with a lot of options for how to record from the cam.
(I tried cheese again to see if it was purely the USB 3 port as the cause, but it still didn't work.)
Answer: Try changing the API input on gucview to pulseaudio. That just worked for us.

Recording video with audio from webcam?


Why is the central tendon of diaphragm called a tendon?

Question: Why is the central tendon of diaphragm called a tendon when it does not connect the diaphragm to any bone?
Comment: Is there a requirement that tendons attach to bones? Histologically, it's just dense connective tissue.
Comment: Not all ligaments connect one bone to another bone. ex; ligaments of liver which connect liver to abdomen, and other organs.
Comment: The basic difference between ligament and tendon is that one restricts movements while other aides in movement.
Comment: @kmm Ligaments are similar to tendons and fasciae as they are all made of connective tissue. The differences in them are in the connections that they make: ligaments connect one bone to another bone, tendons connect muscle to bone, and fasciae connect muscles to other muscles.        Wont this result in no difference in three,  if tendon wont connect muscle to bone or something(like lens of eye)?
Answer: A tendon usually connects a muscle to a bone, but not always.
According to InnerBody, the diaphragm muscle originates at the lumbar vertebra, lower ribs and sternum and inserts to the central tendon.

The central tendon — a flat aponeurosis made of dense collagen fibers
  — acts as the tough insertion point of the muscles.

So, the central tendon acts as the diaphragm's own insertion.
A similar example is aponeurosis of the external oblique muscle in the lower part of the abdominal wall (Brazosport.edu, Picture 10.11.a.).
A tendon is the connective tissue that is always a part of a muscle and it fixes the muscle during its contraction.
A ligament is the connective tissue that merely connects two bones or two internal organs and is not actively involved in their movements.


Reference request, discrete optimization problem

Question: i am not an expert in optimization. I have stumbled across an interesting problem which
looks to me like there should already exist literature about it. The problem can be phrased
as follows: given $n$ functions $\phi_1$, ..., $\phi_n$. Each of these functions is from the positive integers into non-negative real numbers between 0 and 1, and each function is (strict) monotonically increasing. I would like to maximize $\sum_{i=1}^n \phi_i(k_i)$ such that all $k_i$ are non-negative integers and $\sum_{i=1}^n k_i = N$ for some fixed integer $N \ge n$. Does this problem have a name? What is known about it?
Answer: I doubt this has a name more specific than "constrained optimization". The maximum is attained since the search space is finite. To locate it, consider
the discrete analog of one-sided derivatives: $\partial_+\phi_i(k)=\phi_i(k+1)-\phi_i(k)$ and
$\partial_-\phi_i(k)=\phi_i(k)-\phi_i(k-1)$. A necessary condition for a point $(k_1^*,\dots,k_n^*)$ to be
a point of maximum is the following:
$$\max_{1\le i\le n} \partial_+ \phi_i(k_i^*)\le \min_{k_j^*>0} \partial_- \phi_j(k_j^*) \tag{1}$$
Indeed, if (1) fails, then we have $\partial_+ \phi_i(k_i^*)>\partial_- \phi_j(k_j^*)$ for some $i,j$; adding $1$ to $k_i^*$ and subtracting $1$ from $k_j^*$ we would increase the target function.
Monotonicity of $\phi_i$ does not help much. Indeed, any function $\psi: \{0,\dots,N\}\to \mathbb R$ can be written as
 $\psi(k)=\psi_1(k)+\psi_2(N-k)$ where both $\psi_1$ and $\psi_2$ are increasing. The maximization problem
 for $\sum_{i=1}^2 \psi_i(k_i)$ under the constraint $k_1+k_2=N$ is equivalent to the maximization of $\psi$.


Do the religious and hereditary members of the house of lords have real political power?

Question: I recently learned that the UK House of Lords has 26 bishops as well as a number of hereditary members. Do these Lords of Parliament have real political power or are they largely symbolic like the Queen?
Comment: Members of Parliament only sit in the lower house (the House of Commons) - Lords maybe members of Parliament, but they are not Members, and so don't get the MP honour/title. Like how Senators are representatives in Congress, but are not Representatives.
Comment: They have the same power as any other member of the House of Lords, but no additional power in government.
Comment: @HorusKol Isn't MP member of parliament? I presume they fall under that
Comment: Also - they are not MPs - they are _Lords of Parliament_
Comment: @HorusKol Nor 'Congressmen' or 'Congresswomen'
Answer: All those who have the right to sit and vote in the House of Lords have the same rights and privileges, and yes, they do use them.
To take an example which is topical at the time of writing, this division (vote) on an amendment to the Brexit bill included both bishops and hereditary peers.
The bishops are not associated with any political party, and we can see in this case that 2 voted for the amendment, and 8 against - including the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is the most senior bishop in the Church of England.
A number of the 92 hereditary peers who remain in the House voted, including (if I've counted correctly) 2 Dukes, 1 Marquess, 21 Earls/Countesses, and 18 Viscounts. Some hereditary barons and baronesses may also have voted.
A quick scan of Hansard (the official transcript) from an earlier stage of the bill shows that the list of peers who spoke in that debate also included both bishops and hereditary peers.
Comment: In addition to the 92, there are also a number of former Hereditary peers who have been made Life peers, John Thurso for example.
Answer: While the House of Lords is not wholly impotent, its collective power is largely limited to delay (by up to a year) and to making suggestions to revised bills in a manner similar to that of a U.S. legislative committee staff. It can also act as a "bully pulpit" for notable aristocrats who wish to make political statements. It can in theory introduce legislation, but that legislation goes nowhere if the Prime Minister and his cabinet don't support the legislation.
Historically, it has a judicial role, carried out by law lords, but that was largely discontinued when the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom was created in 2009. In particular, the Privy Council of the United Kingdom was the court of last resort for all members of the British Commonwealth.
The House of Lords also continues to have a meaningful role in the internal affairs of the Church of England (which once had significant temporal powers over probate law, family law, welfare law, education provision and certain aspects of criminal justice), and in regulating the royal family in terms of family law and succession (e.g. royal marriages and divorces can require parliamentary assent, IIRC).
Per Wikipedia:

The House of Lords scrutinises bills that have been approved by the
  House of Commons. It regularly reviews and amends Bills from the
  Commons. While it is unable to prevent Bills passing into law,
  except in certain limited circumstances, it can delay Bills and force
  the Commons to reconsider their decisions. In this capacity, the
  House of Lords acts as a check on the House of Commons that is
  independent from the electoral process. Bills can be introduced into
  either the House of Lords or the House of Commons. Members of the
  Lords may also take on roles as government ministers. The House of
  Lords has its own support services, separate from the Commons,
  including the House of Lords Library.
The Queen's Speech is delivered in the House of Lords during the State
  Opening of Parliament. In addition to its role as the upper house,
  until the establishment of the Supreme Court in 2009, the House of
  Lords, through the Law Lords, acted as the final court of appeal in
  the British judicial system. The House also has a Church of England
  role, in that Church Measures must be tabled within the House by the
  Lords Spiritual.

What are Church Measures?

The Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act 1919 (9 & 10 Geo. 5 c.
  76) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that enables
  the Church of England to submit primary legislation called Measures,
  for passage by Parliament. Measures have the same force and effect as
  Acts of Parliament. The power to pass measures was originally
  granted to the Church Assembly, which was replaced by the General
  Synod of the Church of England in 1970.

The 92 hereditary Lords who until reforms in 1999 predominated over Life Lords have the same rights as Life Lords, and are at no disadvantage relative to Life Lords who are, if anything, inferior in status to Hereditary Lords.
In general, all members of the House of Lords have equal ability to vote and participate in its deliberations, although a minority of a couple hundred do so in practice. Church measures pertain mostly to the internal governance of the Church of England and so far as I know continue to be passed on a relatively routine basis over those matters, generally initiated by one of the Lords Spiritual.
The House of Lords is certainly not fully subordinate to the Prime Minister and House of Commons in the same manner as the Queen. Subject to its formal limitations on power, it does act independently, mostly either on technical matters to avoid bad legislative drafting and when issues of great national importance such a human rights and sovereignty come up where its bully pulpit powers can have a meaningful effect on the House of Commons.
Comment: (4) "Life Lords who are, if anything, inferior in status to Hereditary Lords". Well, only in the sense that all life peers are all Barons or Baronesses, whereas hereditary peers can be any of the [5 ranks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peerage_of_the_United_Kingdom). Within the proceedings of the House, that distinction is not particularly important.
Comment: (2) The [Judicial Committee of the Privy Council](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_Committee_of_the_Privy_Council) is still "the highest court of appeal (or court of last resort) for several independent Commonwealth nations, the Crown Dependencies, and the British Overseas Territories".
Comment: (1) You should link to the wiki page. (2) You don't really answer my question. I know that the house of lords has some real political power, I'm asking about specific members (spiritual and hereditary).This measures thing sounds sort of close to what I'm talking about but it could just be like the powers that the queen still technically has but in reality can't use. When was the last time a church measure of any effect was passed or even proposed? And that says nothing about the hereditary members
Comment: The link to the Wiki page was in the original but apparently got obliterated when I made a block quote. I've fixed that.
Comment: @ohwilleke: this is an interesting answer, but I'm afraid that there are a number of inaccuracies. (1) "It can in theory introduce legislation, but that legislation goes nowhere if the Prime Minister and his cabinet don't support the legislation.": the second part is true, but the first part is not theory: peers, like MPs, do introduce their own bills there. Most indeed, never become law; but they serve to raise important issues. See the [list of bills before Parliament](https://services.parliament.uk/bills/); those marked with [HL] started in the Lords.
Comment: (3) "The House also has a Church of England role, in that Church Measures must be tabled within the House by the Lords Spiritual." Notwithstanding that this comes from Wikipedia, this is misleading. Apart from this requirement, CoE measures require the [approval of both houses by resolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_England_Assembly_(Powers)_Act_1919).