How to reduce negative consequence for the person I plagiarized my assignment from?

Question: Due to some personal reasons, I didn't get to complete my semester end project. So I copied my friend's project and submitted it without major changes (I know I was a fool to do that). Now we are caught and my TA told us that both of our scores will be zero. I have begged the TA to give my friend his score, at least. I don't know what is going to happen. I am obviously going to fail this class, but I don't want my friend to fail it because of me. What should I do?
Comment: Did your friend hand you his project under the assumption that you would change large parts of the content? I think this changes the situation and should be brought up in the discussion with your professor as well.
Comment: Need way more details , like whether your friend knew you were going to copy his work.
Comment: _I don't know if I should even continue studying here or not._ — **No, you probably shouldn't.** By your own admission, you are having serious difficulty understanding a required class—not just in accomplishing the work, but in understanding what is being asked. ("I have no idea about this where this class is going.")  This difficulty will not magically go away; you have to address it, either by moving to another institution that teaches in your native language, or by first spending significant time improving your grasp of the local language.
Comment: Deleted flagged comments that were just moral judgements. [Comments aren't for judging](http://academia.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/comment).
Comment: It says the one who plagiarized and the one who helped in such action will get zero in the project and 5% of the scores will be reduced fro the final class score. The language problem wasn't for the rules, but for the whole class itself. I don't know if I should even continue studying here or not.
Comment: @Martijn: that would still be cheating. Picking a text and re-wording it, or picking a program and changing the names of variables or functions is still plagiarizing.
Answer: Whether your friend deserves a grade or not depends whether he was a willing accomplice or an innocent victim.  If he was a willing accomplice, then probably both of you failing the class is the best thing you can hope for (at least for most US universities, where there are consequences besides failing if the professor or TA chooses to report it).  If he was a victim (he did not share his project with you with the intent that you could just copy it), then he certainly merits a grade.
In any case, the proper thing to do is for you to arrange to meet the professor in person, explain the situation, and apologize.  If your friend was a knowing accomplice, both you and your friend should go together.  Then it is up to the professor.
Comment: @srugglingmate Unless the professor is *really* hands off, the professor should make the final decision.  (I would never let my TAs make these kinds of decisions.)  Most professors, I think, are pretty understanding for a single cheating offense, particularly if the cheater confesses and seems genuinely sorry.  Stress has made most people, including professors, do one thing or another in their life they later regret.  So, I can't guarantee it, but I *think* your situation is one in which most professors would give you a 0, but take no further disciplinary actions.
Comment: See also: http://academia.stackexchange.com/a/44203/19607
Comment: This is a class totally out of y head. Actually I am a foreigner student studying in China. So because of language problems, I have no idea about this where this class is going, but it's a class I must take. So for this project, I asked help from my friend so that I can take his material as a guide. But it was too difficult for me to work with and due to time limit, I just thought of copying it.
Comment: Both of us have talked to the TAs. One of them is considering to give him some marks but the other one has not given any decision yet. I am really worried. And I am going to fail this class for sure. I will take this class again next semester but will this have a huge impact on my overall life and career?
Comment: @srugglingmate You need to check your school policies to be sure, but even if your professor reports it to the university, for a single offense, you will probably just have to have some unpleasant conversations and get a warning (in addition to failing the class).  It's students who have a history of cheating that need to be dealt with more seriously.
Comment: Accept full responsibility. Ensure the professor is aware that no other parties aided or were aware of your actions.
Comment: @srugglingmate - What Kimball said.  How this impacts upon anyone's marks is up to the professor, not the TA's (in any academic context I've ever experienced, at least).  You and your friend should take the matter to the professor, and they should hand down a decision that both/all of the TA's will follow.
Answer: The only thing you could really do is go talk to the professor and confess.
As far as your friend's grade goes, that is up to the professor. If you stole your friend's work then he certainly shouldn't be affected. If he was just helping you (which it doesn't sound like) then the professor might also take that into account.
You should expect to get a zero but I have seen a situation where the professor gave the student another chance (e.g., extended the deadline and allowed the student to redo the assignment) and didn't penalize the person who originally did the work.
Of course, you shouldn't expect any of these favorable outcomes since you admitted you are in the wrong but it is still good to always talk things through.
Answer: You don't give us enough info about your friend's role in it.
If he knew/helped/whatever and didn't stop it then he will get (and deserves) the zero right along with you.
If not then he may still get the zero, though he doesn't fully deserve it, and that would basically put you on the "worst friends ever" list for doing that behind his back.
If the friend didn't know you were doing it then you need to be not only confessing that you cheated, but also confessing that you stole it from him without his knowledge or consent and making sure they know he was totally innocent all around. Then and only then is there a shot of him not getting a zero.
Answer: Your friend isn't failing because of you; they are failing because they committed a serious breach of academic ethics in giving you their assignment to copy or even to use as a guide. By acting as your accomplice they are as much a party to your cheating as you are and, as such, they do not deserve any marks.
You and your friend can do little but beg for leniency this time. In future, do not put your friends in the position of choosing between acting ethically and helping you out by cheating.
Comment: I think this is going to affect our friendship greatly, I don't even have guts to face him now. Moreover I am going to fail this course. I am so much depressed about it. But I will make sure that i will never in my life commit such misconduct.
Answer: but I don't want my friend to fail it because of me
Glad to see you repent your action. If you are looking for a safe play, I can assure you there is none if your TA is sincere in their words. The ideal thing to do is to

Submit the case before a competent authority (your professor in this case) and be truthful to the investigation.

If the premise is correct in the question, your friend will be granted with the grade he deserves. Bear in mind that there will be consequences for you, severity of which depends on the particular country or the university and your professor.


Did any philosopher make the claim that mathematics can be as illusory as visual information?

Question: The Greeks postulated that the world we observe may be just an illusion and Kant based some of his philosophy on that very idea. From that idea, came the idea that mathematical truths are more certain than empirical truths, but how can we know that mathematics cannot be an illusion created by the mind or is negatively affected by this illusion?
Comment: Descartes in Meditations actually fears this very possibility. I'm not sure precisely which meditation it is in ..... But he mentions that the evil demon might be confusing even his arithmetic.
Comment: Greeks postulated no such thing, it is a much later Cartesian idea, and Kant did not share it. That mathematical truths are more certain than empirical truths had nothing to do with it either, at least for Kant. Where are you getting this from? And, by your own reasoning, "how can we know" has a trivial answer - we do not need to know, we can just postulate it.
Comment: @Conifold Yes the Greeks did
Comment: @MathBob Please provide a reference.
Comment: The Eleatics come close.  I the multplicity of things is an illusion, then so is most of our experience.
Answer: Kant supposes that certain ideas are "a priori, but synthetic".  They reference the outside world, and we experience them only in response to it, but they come from within us.  They arise from the context we lay upon our experience, instead of from the experience itself.  We are more certain of them not because they are somehow any truer than other things, but because we assume them automatically by virtue of being ourselves.  They are still phenomena, but they are part of our structure of understanding.  We find them very difficult to question.
The structure of space and time are among those things.  Kant describes those as 'forms of our intuition' rather than facts or basic ideas.  Brouwer later elaborated the idea that mathematics is entirely based upon our perceptions of space and time, and therefore is entirely interior to human thought, and not part of external reality.  It is a creative activity of the human mind, giving structure to things, and not a part of external reality, learned by exposure.
By that theory. whatever violates our deepest intuitions about space and time, we can not really comprehend.  We can only allude to it, or form abstruse models that adapt our real understanding in artificial ways that provide them leverage over what we cannot really grasp.  So we are not certain that these intuitions are true, only that to the degree they fail to be true, we have no chance of understanding the things to which they do not apply.  Some humility regarding our own ability to grasp deeper truth is in order.
That is very different from saying they are really more certainly true of reality.
Answer: There are three questions here. I will pass over the first question (whether any philosopher made the claim) out of ignorance.
The second question I crafted from the original post: How can we know that mathematics cannot be an illusion created by the mind?
My answer to this question depends on the definitions of the terms, in context. I can offer an answer of sorts, but some people may necessarily object to my definitions. Some may object to my paraphrasing of the question above. I am new to the site and welcome your criticism.
I personally consider "mathematics", in the context of this question, to be any one in a family of languages with strict syntax and consistent semantic rules. The language has strict enough syntax that any grammatical statement is unambiguous. The rules are consistent in the sense that rules don't contradict each other and no valid statement will ever contradict a rule; in elementary mathematics, "one times seven equals one" is always illegal because it contradicts an established rule (the multiplicative property).
I would consider an "illusion", in this context, to be a belief proven false by contradictions of evidence. For example the entasis and curved lines in some classical Greek architecture provide the illusion of straight lines: visually the columns and walls appear straight, but a more detailed measurement will show the curvature.
Now if mathematics is consistent, as it is by my definition, there will be no contradictions between rules and valid statements. Neither will there be contradictions between any two rules. Therefore no evidence of a contradiction can be found between a valid statement and a rule, nor between any two rules. Therefore neither mathematics nor a valid mathematical statement can be an illusion, as I define it.

The third question is ambiguous. I can't identify the subject or direct object for the last clause, which reads "... or is [what?] negatively affected by [which?] illusion?" I'm guessing it was supposed to be "is the mind negatively affected by the illusion of mathematics?" Regardless, I have asserted that mathematics is not an illusion so this third question would not apply.

Responses to comments
@jobermark has expressed concern that my definition of mathematics would apply to physics and other basic sciences, whereas he asserts these fields are not mathematics but only make use of mathematics.
I do believe the formulas of physics and other sciences, if expressed in mathematics, are in fact a form of mathematics. I stand by my opinion that no valid mathematical statement - even in the context of physics or another science - can be an illusion in its own right.
I agree with jobermark's implication that physics and other sciences are more than the pure mathematics they employ. The object of science is usually not to describe imagined systems but to describe real, physical systems and objects. As such it is common for a scientist to say, not only is this a valid mathematical statement but it also is a useful statement that describes the real world! This would be a new rule which introduces falsifiability, since presumably the scientist did not add a complete and accurate set of rules to precisely describe the real world.
Sometimes the mathematics used, while valid on its own, just doesn't apply to the situation as advertised. A physicist of old may have said, velocity is the product of speed and time. It is implied that this relation applies to reality, not just some imagined universe. A physicist today may retort, this equation does not hold at speeds approaching c. We have conducted experiments and gathered evidence in the real world which contradicts that formula's applicability to reality.
I would compare this misapplication of mathematics to using a false analogy in conversation with any other language. The language itself is perfectly valid, and one could indeed imagine a universe where a sentence such as "I am nine feet tall" is true. It may get the point across that I am a tall person, but it would be misleading (an illusion) to present that sentence as true when I am not actually nine feet tall.
@jobermark also expresses concern that my definition of illusion excludes any successful illusions, for example alchemical homeopathy.
For similar reasons to the above, I stand by my definition. Aelius Galenus may have proposed the relation, an excess of blood is positively correlated with optimism. Indeed such an equation could be valid in mathematical terms (optimism = blood + 6 liters, for example), but were Galen to assert that this relation applies to real people's blood and attitude (as he did), then that claim becomes falsifiable. The mathematics itself is not the illusion, only the application.
If jobermark meant to say that a valid mathematical statement might turn out to be an illusion because the rules change, I would say this is precluded by my definition of mathematics as following consistent rules. I don't think this was the intended argument, though.
Comment: Neither of your definitions really work: 1) Physics and other basic sciences are not mathematics.  They are uses of it.  Your definition wholly encloses all successful theories stated properly in mathematical terms.  If a language includes its vocabulary, mathematics is only some core part of these languages.  2) Your definition of illusion excludes all successful illusions.  Were principles like alchemical homeopathy not illusions for centuries only to become illusions lately?  I don't think that fits the usage of the word you are trying to define.
Comment: @jobermark Thank you for the questions. I have edited my answer in response.
Comment: You can't change your definitions without changing them.  You didn't say anything about the *possibility* of falsification, only about actual proved contradictions, that still implied what I said.  You didn't do anything to separate the theoretical model from the application, again, you defined something, but it is not what you intended, waving your hands at it doesn't change anything.  Your definitions are still wrong.
Comment: @jobermark I don't fully understand. With regard to 1) I still define mathematics as any of a set of languages with strict syntax and consistent rules. When a science such as physics includes, as a rule, that some statement should apply to the real world, they expose that statement to falsification via observation of the real world. If such observation disagrees with the statement you have a proved contradiction between the statement and that rule, therefore the statement is invalid, the rules are amended, or the science ceases to be mathematics.
Comment: With regard to 2) I would say that discredited sciences such as alchemy or humorism never were valid mathematics, but only generalizations. This is not to say they were without perceived utility, but in my opinion it is indeed an illusion that the mathematics of these subjects ever truthfully described something in reality. People may not have noticed or observed evidence showing the contradictions for a long time, which means to them it seemed like mathematics when in reality it was the illusion of mathematics.
Comment: That is still not what the world means when it says mathematics or illusion.  That makes your argument nothing but a word game.
Comment: Thank you for the response. I still don't understand "what the world means when it says mathematics or illusion" but I am open to suggestions.
Comment: I am not willing to continue this.
Answer: I'd argue that minds are real, and the ideas that they have a reality to them. This is the angle taken by Kant where he postulated that the basic categories of explanation articulated by Aristotle were in fact categories of this kind, including ideas of modality, of number, of quality and of space and temporality.
This does not mean that minds cannot entertain bad or false ideas, when they most obviously can.


Will someone become unholy or impure if he/she masturbates?

Question: If someone masturbates will he become unholy, impure? If yes, how can he regain his purity?
Comment: Of course all of the sins alter the man's soul let alone such an obscene sin. You'd better change the title and context so that it represents the second question, "...How can he regain... ."
Comment: Think about it this way to stop you from doing it in the future, Your getting nothing out of it and its making you have a stronger desire(Mentally) for women which may lead to physical zina, and its making you gain more sins through your eyes, plus it alters your way of thinking and your mental condition because it is not actual intercourse nor equivalent, inshallah you will get maried and this stage will be over, we learn to control desires not fulfill them by what gains us sins
Answer: There is a tradition reported from Imam Ja'far as-Sadiq (a.s.):

أَبُو عَلِيٍّ الْأَشْعَرِيُّ عَنْ عِيسَى بْنِ أَيُّوبَ عَنْ عَلِيِّ
  بْنِ مَهْزِيَارَ عَنِ الْقَاسِمِ بْنِ عُرْوَةَ عَنِ ابْنِ بُكَيْرٍ
  عَنْ زُرَارَةَ عَنْ أَبِي جَعْفَرٍ ع قَالَ قَالَ: مَا مِنْ عَبْدٍ
  إِلَّا وَ فِي قَلْبِهِ نُكْتَةٌ بَيْضَاءُ فَإِذَا أَذْنَبَ ذَنْباً
  خَرَجَ فِي النُّكْتَةِ نُكْتَةٌ سَوْدَاءُ فَإِنْ تَابَ ذَهَبَ ذَلِكَ
  السَّوَادُ وَ إِنْ تَمَادَى فِي الذُّنُوب زَادَ ذَلِكَ السَّوَادُ
  حَتَّى يُغَطِّيَ الْبَيَاضَ فَإِذَا غَطَّى الْبَيَاضَ لَمْ يَرْجِعْ
  صَاحِبُهُ إِلَى خَيْرٍ أَبَداً وَ هُوَ قَوْلُ اللَّهِ عَزَّ وَ جَلَّ-
  كَلَّا بَلْ رانَ عَلى قُلُوبِهِمْ ما كانُوا يَكْسِبُونَ

"There is no servant who does not have a white spot in his heart. When he commits a sin a black spot emerges from this spot. If he repents, the blackness goes away but if he insists on committing sins and continues doing so the blackness keeps on increasing till it covers up the whiteness of the heart completely. When the white spot is totally covered by the blackness, the owner of this heart will never go back to goodness. and this is the meaning of Allah's word:

"No indeed! Rather their hearts have been sullied by what they have been earning." (83:14)

In verse 53 of Surah Zomar we read:

قُلْ يا عِبادِيَ الَّذينَ أَسْرَفُوا عَلى أَنْفُسِهِمْ لا تَقْنَطُوا مِنْ رَحْمَةِ اللَّهِ إِنَّ اللَّهَ يَغْفِرُ الذُّنُوبَ
  جَميعاً إِنَّهُ هُوَ الْغَفُورُ الرَّحيمُ
Say] that Allah declares, [" O My servants who have committed excesses against their own souls, do not despair of the mercy of
  Allah. Indeed Allah will forgive all sins. Indeed He is the
  All-forgiving, the All-merciful.

The first step of repentance is to be sincerely sorry and regretful and make a conscious and strong decision not to commit sins again and in order for one to be able to take this step he has to deepen an understanding of the nature of the sins.
The second step is to make up for what he has done before. If he has violated others' rights he should compensate for them. If he has ignored Allah's rights, for instance, he has missed some obligatory prayers, he should decide to make up for them as soon as possible.
For further information please visit the following link:
http://islamquest.net/en/archive/question/fa1627
Answer: Yes he does by indulging in such acts ipso facto as it constitutes zina of eyes and thoughts. However, its salvageable by seeking forgiveness from Allah.

"And Allah would turn to you in mercy; but those who follow vain desires would have you go tremendously astray"
"And who is further astray than he who follows his desire without guidance from Allah."
"And those who guard their chastity (i.e. private parts, from illegal sexual acts). Except from their wives or (the captives and slaves) that their right hands possess, - for them, they are free from blame. But whoever seeks beyond that, then those are the transgressors."
"And let those who find not the financial means for marriage keep themselves chaste, until Allah enriches them of His bounty."

From Abu Muhammad Hadith

None of you (truly) believes until his desire or inclination is in accordance with what I have brought or subservient to what I came with

From all those above Quaranic verses and one hadith its clear that to remain an ardent follower we have to abstain from all considered haram including masturbation.
Now to get back to being pristine, you will have to undo what harm has been done and guard yourself from repeating it. If you surrender yourself to the shade of Allah, you will not astray. To seek forgiveness recite "astagfirullah(I seek forgiveness from Allah)" at least 133 times with full heart after the act so done(Better if you make it a proclivity). Insha'Allah you will be forgotten.
To beat the temptation indulge in dhikr SubhanAllahi, al adheem, wa bihamdihi, SubhanAllahil azim (Glorified is Allah, The Supreme, Praised is he, Allah is free from imperfections) at least 100 times morning and evening besides salat. This will purify your thoughts, heart and shield your nafs from temptations invigorated by Satan.
Comment: please mention the surah and ayah numbers of verses quoted.


Has anyone seen a 'visual anatomy' type graphic of the Buddypress plugin?

Question: As someone learning Wordpress for the purpose of customizing a Buddypress installation, I'm looking for a graphic representation of how Buddypress works and augments a standard Wordpress Multi-User installation. There are a number of examples of Wordpress diagrams including this one by Yoast.
Answer: I don't think there is one.
The only difference with BuddyPress on multsite verses single is.. .the users get blogs.
As for the buddypress theme itself. The bp template pack shows exactly what template files are used as extra. They are all labeled according to their use.


List of most commonly used Spanish words

Question: When learning vocabulary in a new language, it is useful to focus on very commonly used words first. Are there any resources online (or in print) that give a list of the most frequently occurring Spanish words in spoken or written language?
Answer:
175 most common Spanish words as listed in the book Frecuencias del español: Diccionario de estudios léxicos y morfológicos by Ramón Almela, et al.
200 most frequently occuring Spanish base words in a sample of contemporary news and magazine articles
Top 10000 Spanish words from subtitle files
A list of resources in print
A more detailed research-level discussion in the Linguist List
Answer: Yes there are many such lists.
It's really easy to find them using a search engine such as Google. Here's some results using both English and Spanish keywords to get lots of results.
And the first result (for me at least) is my favourite open dictionary that anybody can edit! (Disclaimer: I'm a long-time contributor to Wiktionary.) This list is divided up into pages. Here is the first 1000. This particular list is counted by word form but also gives the lemma or dictionary form for each entry. Here's the first few:
<code>rank    word    occurrences (ppm)   lemma forms
1.      que     32894               que
2.      de      32116               de
3.      no      29897               no
4.      a       22313               a
</code>
As you can see the top of the list is all function words. But as you get further into the list you get to the vocabulary words such as verbs, nouns, and adjectives.
Answer: I have found 6000+ Essential Spanish Words to be quite useful. It is organized in the manner that Flimzy mentions in his answer.
Answer: I don't think you're going to find a very universally useful list like this.  Many Spanish text books have such lists, but I think the best practice is to make your own list, that focuses on the area(s) of Spanish you wish to learn about.  Keep a notebook handy, and as you find yourself wishing you knew how to say XYZ, add it to your list.  Then look up the Spanish word when you have a chance, and learn it.
As you go through life, you'll discover that you care about different types of grammar.  I find that I use grammar in the following areas:

Food (at restaurants and when shopping at the supermarket)
Computers (to talk about my work)
Photography (one of my hobbies)
Auto mechanics (my car is recently having trouble)

There are some more or less universally useful vocabulary categories, but you'll find any of these in a first-level Spanish text book:

Numbers
Parts of the body
Clothing
Household terms
Animals
Simple objects (car, airplane, movie, street, etc)

There are other areas I almost never talk about:

Health/Medicine
Farming
Art/painting
hundreds more

The proper vocabulary for many of these things also depends very much on region, so if possible, you should learn your vocabulary from a native speaker in the area where you'll be speaking.
Comment: I agree that raw frequency lists are not as useful when people actually see them as they may have expected. But people have different ways of learning so you never know.


Difference between high octane and low octane?

Question: What is the difference between high octane and low octane fuel? I'm not asking if one is better than the other for my vehicle, specifically, but rather what occurs differently both scientifically and mechanically when either is used?
Answer: So-called "octane number" is a measure of how much the air-fuel mix is resistant to detonation.
The higher the "octane number" is the more resistant it is and the more is can be compressed without exploding. The higher the pressure is at the point the air-fuel mix ignites the more efficient the engine works.
Modern engines are designed for some rather high air-fuel mix pressure, if the mix ignites before that pressure is reached the engine just won't work right, because ignition will happen at the wrong moment of the engine cycle. That's why only fuel with right "octane number" should be used for any engine - depending on how that engine is designed, otherwise it just won't work right. The vehicle manual usually specifies which "octane number" is right for that vehicle engine.
Comment: DXM's point is sometimes true, but not for high compression engines. The 'best' fuel is the one specified in the manual.
Comment: @JuannStrauss: Why would too high octane fuel reduce performance exactly?
Comment: Just to add a tad to what's already a good and thorough answer... higher octane is more detonation resistant because it is not as easily combustible.  This is why sometime people actually see drop in horsepower/mileage when they put higher octane into the car than what is recommended by the manufacturer.  Sometimes when people buy a new car, they feel like they should only "put the best" in it, but in case of gasoline, spending more on gas than they have to, actually doesn't do anything and reduces performance
Comment: Too high octane fuel will waste money and reduce performance. Too low octane fuel will lead to pre-detonation which will melt expensive bits of your engine and make you cry. I've seen horrifying pictures of what happens when people double the turbo boost pressure in their engines and don't think of upping the octane rating of the fuel to compensate for the increased pressure in the cylinders. THe compression RATIO stays the same, but the VOLUME of gases per stroke increases, leading to higher pressures.
Comment: Your ECU will spend about 100 miles trying to adjust your ignition timing and other variables to compensate for the different burning characteristics of the high octane fuel. Unless you feel like removing the battery for 30 minutes each time you fill up.
Answer: Here's the deal : higher octane means less volatility, and this is meant for engines with higher compression so that the fuel doesn't ignite too early in the cycle  . Lower octane fuel is more volatile and is meant for engines where compression rates are lower, so that the ignition in the cycle not occur too early .
In all cases, follow the manufacturer's octane recommendation for better performance . However most cars which use high octane are able to accept regular gas because they are equipped with knock sensors which will automatically adjust the engine cycle timing, thus reducing engine knock or detonation. Engine performance will be diminished however.
Answer: For an engine, there is a specific peak pressure that it can withstand, which is limited my the mechanical stress limit of the components of the engine parts. This peak pressure is in direct relation to the compression ratio of the engine and the octane rating of the fuel. The compression ratio of the engine stays constant. With a low Octane rating, there will be misfires happening at an undesired position of the piston, leading to drop in the power extraction from that stroke, and undesirable detonation points in the combustion chamber which leads to melting and cracking of cylinder head and engine liners. Too much octane rating makes the mixture more resistant to compression, leading to the escape of much of unburnt gases to escape during the exhaust stroke leading to drop in the efficiency. So for any engine there will be a specific octane rating mentioned by the manufacturer and it should be used for maximum efficiency.
Answer: The octane rating tells you how resistant fuel is to premature detonation, i.e. burning before it's meant to. It's quite a long explanation, depending on how much you already know. The short answer is that high octane fuel allows you to fire the spark plug closer to the optimal point during the compression stroke to allow the engine to perform at its best.  I found this page, which covers the topic pretty well and should answer your question thoroughly:
Comment: @sharptooth's answer is arguably more accurate and useful than that linked page, Juann. It has some rather dubious info.


Store 500g dry yeast package after opened

Question: I bought a 500g S-05 package and i'm planning to use it only 20 g per week. Any advices on how to store it? it will last around 4-5 months
Comment: Some information here: https://homebrew.stackexchange.com/questions/408/how-long-can-yeast-be-stored/16421#16421
Answer: I had a half kilo pack of US-05 in the freezer for about 2 years, and it was always fine. Just seal it up as best as you can between uses.
Answer: You should be good with an airtight container in a fridge. I had dried bread yeast for a couple of years in an airtight container in the fridge, and it was usable until it was exhausted. You should certainly be good for a half year.
Answer: Your 500g pack will have a best before date, usually about two years after purchase date. Once you open the pack, transfer the contents to a similar sized plastic food container with a sealed lid, and store in your refrigerator. Mark the container lid with the expiry date. My experience is that your yeast will last at least one year beyond that expiry date.


Problems after installing Ubuntu 11.10

Question: I'm having trouble with Ubuntu 11.10. It has to do with nomodeset. After I boot into Ubuntu, it goes to a purple screen for about 10 seconds and then goes blank. After that nothing happens. I've read other people's questions about this and I know it has to do with enabling nomodeset. This worked for me when I was using the LiveCD mode, but now Ubuntu is permanently installed as a dual-boot system. Going into recovery mode doesn't work, pressing e in the boot loader and writing nomodeset after quiet splash doesn't work either. Holding Shift any time it's booting doesn't work. I don't know what to do anymore. I have an HP Pavilion dv6 laptop with an AMD A6-3400M CPU, and my GPU is an AMD Radeon HD 6520G. I've never worked with Linux before so taking me through this step-by-step would be great. Thanks!
Answer: Press e when booting and type radeon.nomodeset=0.
I suppose this will help you boot.
Answer: I found this link that may help you.  It explains close to the bottom of the page how to temporilaly enable nomodeset, then when Ubuntu finally loads how to perminatly set the option, along with how to enabling the live cd, the document was designed for 10.10, but the ubuntu installed os commands should work just the same
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1613132

Problems after installing Ubuntu 11.10


Web server rpi ip address

Question: I have a program in var/html/ and when I connect to it locally I can see it. I wondered how can I connect to it from the internet like a website. I already looked on google but did not find anything. I wondered also how can I connect to it with a website for free.
Comment: what does `connect to it` mean?  ....... what does this mean? `connect to it with a website for free`
Answer: RFC 1918 ("local") addresses such as 192.168.1.x are non-routable across the Internet, so you'd need to configure a destination NAT ("DNAT") in the router in front of your Pi to forward traffic to it.
How this is achieved depends on how your router's web or CLI interface is organized.  However, the operation is the same:
A) Set your DNS Record to point to the public IP of your router in front of the Pi hosting the webservice. Now traffic for the webservice on the Pi will hit your router from the outside world.
B) Next. configure a DNAT rule in the router to forward this traffic from the outside world to the internal (non world-routable) IP & port of the Pi running the webservice.
Now the world can reach the Pi from outside although the Pi's listening on a local non world routable IP such as 192.168.1.X.
Again, how you configure this depends on the model of router, but conceptually, this should be enough to get you started.  I guess you could google the term "DNAT" for your router model for more specific guidance on how you configure the DNATing. HTH-

Web server rpi ip address


How can I make Dwarf Fortress easier?

Question: What configuration options can I change to make Dwarf Fortress easier to play?
Comment: Isn't that basically against the entire idea of Dwarf Fortress?
Comment: Agreed McKay, that's what makes it Fun.
Comment: @McKay Yes, I'm down for the struggle, but a lot of people like to make it easier so they can build mega-structures more readily.
Answer: I really think you shouldn't.  I know that sounds kind of weird but all of the joy you will every obtain out of that game derives from the fact that its Hard.  That's hard with a capital 'H.'  Man hard.  After playing Dwarf Fortress for a year and a half now Hard is a four letter word to me.
Now, as much as I don't think you should change the game to make it easier (and there are sites that will help you hack it).  I will provide you with some resources; an instruction manual, so to speak.
The Utter Newby Tutorial. Gives you much of the basic controls and layout for your fortress.
Cpt. Duck's Video Tutorial. I literally learned DF by watching these videos and copying them perfectly.  It took me close to 10 fortresses to get to the end of his first fortress.  Well worth it.
DF wiki.  Students have textbooks, Priest's have the bible, you have the Dwarf Fortress Wiki.  Commit it to memory.  Perhaps the most important article found here is this one: Fun.
Finally, there is the story of Boatmurdered.  It is what is called a legacy fortress, where a different person played each year.  Its incredibly entertaining, even though parts of it read like a "what not to do."
Comment: Useful, but doesn't answer the question...
Comment: You asked how to change the settings to make the game easier to play.  If that wasn't a possibility I would say you couldn't, and that would answer the question.  Instead I'm saying you shouldn't.  That is also an answer.  I have information you don't (ie. experience).  I am trying to share that with you.  Don't change it.
Answer: I found one of the easiest ways to simplify the game without hacking or removing many sources of Fun is to lower the population cap. I found that once my fortress grew to 100 dwarves or beyond, I couldn't figure out how to manage all of them and keep them working productive jobs. So instead they all just sat around throwing parties and pestering my productive dwarves. Until you get enough experience to handle a fortress that size, try lowering the cap to 40 or 50 dwarves.
To do this in v0.31.08, edit data/init/d_init.txt and change the value of this line:
[POPULATION_CAP:200]

Note: your actual population may still go above the cap you set, you just stop getting new immigrant waves after you reach or surpass that cap. And apparently births don't respect caps. Also I think (but I haven't tested) that you can change this mid-game if you save and quit first.
Comment: For managing your dorfs, look into Dwarf Therapist
Comment: Yes, I don't recommend playing the game with a low cap forever. Just until you get the hang of some of the mechanics.
Comment: @Daenyth My bad! Only for not-Mac… *grumble* ;)
Comment: What ever you do do not set this number below 80.  You will miss out on half the game.  This is usually the problem with editing the config files, you disable some amazing part of the game and then never realize what you're missing.
Comment: @Daenyth Only for Windows… *grumble*
Comment: @SevenSidedDie: It runs on linux...
Comment: @Daenyth [Oh wait…](http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/5521). "Sir, we've isolated the problem to a PEBKAC error."
Comment: @SevenSidedDie Before it had Linux compatibility, it ran just fine under Wine. You might want to look into a Windows emulator. I'm not a habitual Mac user, so I can't really make any specific recommendations, though.
Answer: You can try editing the game's raw creature sources directly. Search the game's directory for a file (probably called creature_standard.txt) that contains the following line:
[CREATURE:DWARF]

Add the following tags after that line:
[NOPAIN][EXTRAVISION][NOBREATHE][NOSTUN][NONAUSEA][NOBLEED]
[NOEXERT][NO_DIZZINESS][NO_FEVERS][NO_DRINK][NO_EAT][NO_SLEEP][NOFEAR][FIREIMMUNE]

This will make your dwarves immune to most status conditions. Now find these lines:
[BODY_SIZE:0:0:3000]

[BODY_SIZE:1:168:15000]

[BODY_SIZE:12:0:60000]

Add one or two zeroes to the last numbers of each line. This will make your dwarves gigantic and unlikely to be killed by anything.
Delete the creature_standard.raw (not .txt) file, run DF and create a new world. Have fun!
Answer: If building mega structures is your aim, my advice is to start on an Island. Press tab to check nearby civilizations, and if only dwarves show then embark somewhere around that area. You won't get any goblin snatchers/ambushes/sieges ever. I'm at 181 dwarves and the only thing that ever came was a titan which was easily dispatched by my militia (equipped with training weapons funnily enough).
Comment: You can also simply turn off invasions in the init file.
Answer: One thing I like to do, although it at a certain point it may not be "easier" (depending on your play style), is lower the population cap VERY low. i.e. 10, 15 or 20.  Just make sure you build a trade depot, I think a caravan needs to visit & leave once before migrants stop.
The easiest thing (without even needing to change an ini file) is to get Masterwork Dwarf Fortress and turn invaders off in the settings... this may be a little too easy, but I think you can re-enable once you have a nice big fortress with lots of fun prepared for your friendly visitors.  Also, Masterwork has a lot of other settings you can use to make things easier or harder.
Comment: +1 for Masterwork.  There are a lot of useful utilities around now that weren't when I first started playing.
Comment: Personally I think DF kind of sucks without Masterwork. The vanilla game seems to have stagnated in feature set, especially when compared to what MW has been able to pull off just with modding.
Answer: Necromancy! (for the sake of the 2018 Dwarf Fortress learner)
Use a pack that makes it easier to configure the game. See http://dwarffortresswiki.org/Utility:Lazy_Newb_Pack
I really like the PeridexisErrant's Starter Pack
Some of the pack features are things like tile sets that make it easier to see what's going on in the game, easily turning on and off game features like auto save, aquifer generation, whether or not invaders will invade, population cap, etc. It also includes handy 3rd party utilities like Dwarf Therapist (which makes it much easier to see what labors dwarfs have and to change them).
I'm not one who likes playing with exploits or cheats/hacks. I do like using a few "quality of life" enhancements, and the ability to enable or disable or adjust settings when the guide I'm using encourages it. Packs are a great way to get those quality of life features and configuration editors into dwarf fortress.

How can I make Dwarf Fortress easier?


Canning chili with beans

Question: We're going to try canning some homemade chili with canned kidney beans. Question: Would it be best to add the beans right before canning so they don't get over cooked or do you think there would be little difference if they were cooked with the chili before canning. I'm trying to avoid mushy beans but would like to cook a big pot and can the left overs. I usually add the beans in the last half hour of cooking anyway.
Answer: If you are going to be canning this for long term storage you will need to be pressure canning it, and as that will mean some pretty high heat you'd be better off not cooking you beans too long before canning. I'd add them in a few minutes before the end of cooking just to get them warmed up in preparation for canning it as a half hour of cooking plus pressure canning would probably mean mush.
Comment: This is a good answer, but I'd go one step further and say that if the beans have been pre soaked and dehulled properly that you can eliminate cooking the beans altogether and add them during the canning. The heating from the canning will cook them enough, and they'll be stored for long enough for them to get nice and soft. If you cook them, I think you run the risk of them turning to pure mush.
Answer: As with all canning endeavors there are several guidelines that dictate how to can chili SAFELY. For starters, as this is a mixture of low acid foods, this MUST be pressure canned.
Secondly, regarding the fact that it is chili - when canning chili that contains both meat and beans as you will be doing, you can ONLY safely do so in jars pint-sized or smaller. Additionally, you must thin it out to the point where a spoon stuck vertically into it will immediately fall over (this is due to potential density issues where the heat will not evenly penetrate to the center of the jar when using larger jars or very thick chili).
I misread the question and the following paragraph is regarding DRY beans, I'm leaving it here in case someone else comes along and it ends up being useful to them
Regarding the beans, standard canning directions for beans should apply here - that means they must be soaked overnight, then brought to a boil and held there for 2-3 minutes before being left to soak in the hot water for another hour. At this point they will not be soft enough to eat but they are considered "fully hydrated" for the purposes of canning. Regardless of this though they will still soak up more water during the canning process and while being in the jars so I would suggest to thin the chili even more to account for them soaking up some liquid.
If using canned beans then you can probably just mix them in right at the end before adding it to the jars. I think it does need to be a "hot pack" into the jars, so as long as the canned beans warm up to the temperature of the hot chili they should not need any further cooking prior to canning.
For best bets regarding safety with this, stick to this recipe and processing instructions (or at the very least, try to stick to the bean/meat/liquid ratio):
http://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can_05/chili_con_carne.html
NCHFP is a trusted website to provide safe and tested canning instructions. There are a LOT of unsafe practices flaunted on youtube and pintrest so its important to always check things against a tested source.
It should also go without saying that the standard non-cannable list of things still applies, to safely can this you cannot add any form of thickeners: corn-starch, flour, etc. (this also includes things like rice and pasta although I don't know why that would be in a chili :) ), its also better to avoid adding as much fat as possible - butter/oil, and if you can drain the fat off the meat after it is cooked.
Dairy/eggs is also not safe to have in canned goods in any amount, this would include cheese and milk/cream. (Not sure if most people put this in their chili but I do so thought I would mention it)
Safe canning! :)

Canning chili with beans


What is the song played during Sasuke's and Itachi's final battle?

Question: What is the Naruto Shippuden song played during Sasuke's and Itachi's final battle (episode 135 of Naruto Shippuden)? The song starts playing here.
Comment: Just a bit of info, if you want to view a Youtube video starting at a certain point, you can add &t=(number of minutes)m(numberofseconds)s at the end of the link. It would be extremely convenient for you and for all of us.
Comment: By the way, do you know which episode or season is this from? I'm trying to use brute force as I, myself, am not too familiar with the series.
Answer: Bingo. The name of this song is Hidan. You can check it out here.
Though it might sound a bit higher in pitch to the link you provided, the tune seems very pretty much alike, maybe it was modified because of, you know, to avoid copyright infringement.


Recommendation for Suttas

Question: I have been practising Vipassana for quite a while (2 and half years). Now, I want to also dwell into the teachings of Buddha as presented in Suttas and apply those teaching in my everday life. I have read a bit about Majjhima Nikaya and Samyutta Nikaya but bit I'm in dilemma and not sure whether other Nikayas are suitable for a beginner or not.
With which Sutta (Nikaya) should I start with?
Answer: Well DN and Mn are long copies of suttas from AN and SN. The problem with AN and SN is their size.
Since people today say that the suttanipata [=Snp] chapter 4 and 5 are the oldest texts, and that They are read in a few hours tops, you can start here:
http://ftp.budaedu.org/ebooks/pdf/EN391.pdf
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/snp/index.html
So the order would be about starting with short texts and collections, then the big collections, then go back to DN for a summary: sutta nipata chapter 4, 5, then 1, 2, 3, then MN, people like the dhammapada too so why not,  Then SN and AN in no order, Then DN,  then all the little added stuff in KN. Of course, there is the vinaya and the abidhamma too....
Here is a picture of all the catalog

The famous Bikkhu Sujato has written a few guides about all those Nikayas
A Reader's Introduction to the Pali Nikāyas
https://discourse.suttacentral.net/t/a-reader-s-introduction-to-the-pali-nikayas/11507
more guides here https://discourse.suttacentral.net/c/reading-guides
Instead of reading, There are also records of MN, AN, Snp, KN, SN, DN
https://bodhimonastery.org/online-dharma-lectures
https://www.youtube.com/user/venbodhi/videos
http://www.suttavinaya.com/list-of-topics/
https://www.youtube.com/user/vbgnet98/videos
It will take a while to read or hear all that, especially if you do not spend the whole day doing that, so it is even better to begin with the short texts.
Answer: IMHO, this is my recommendation:-
Start with Digha Nikaya. It is more suited for "beginners" because the Suttas take the trouble to explain the fundamentals and the little-but-later-on-important items.
In the Majjhima Nikaya, the reader is expected to already know many of the fundamentals and the Suttas start to get "terse".
And finally, the Samyutta Suttas, which is even terser.
Many people also took up Abbidhammas at some point, but personally, I found that many of the items described in there could only be properly understood by a Samatha meditation practitioner.
Answer: The proper way to follow gradual instruction/progressive teaching (Ānupubbī-kathā) given by the Lord Buddha when it was necessary to first prepare the listener's mind before speaking to him on the advanced teaching of the Four Noble Truths.

Generosity (dāna)
morality (sīla)
Heaven (sagga)
Danger of sensual pleasure (kāmānaṃ ādīnava)
Renunciation (nekkhamma)
The Four Noble Truths (cattāri ariya-saccāni)

The last one is called Sāmukkamsika desanā which describes suffering, its cause, its ceasing, and the path.
The purpose of this gradual instruction is to ensure that the listener's mind was prepared, pliant, free from obstacles, elevated and lucid enough to understand the four noble truths.
~ Reference: Ānupubbī-kathā
Suttas about Generosity

Siha Sutta: To General Siha (AN 5.34)
Dana Sutta: Giving (AN 7.49)
Sangaha Sutta: The Bonds of Fellowship (AN 4.32)

Suttas about Morality
Suttas about Heaven
Suttas about danger of sensual pleasure
Suttas about Renunciation
Suttas about the Four Noble Truths
Note: This is what I understood. I may be wrong but not Dhamma.
Answer: In the Buddha's words by  Bhikkhu Bodhi is great. He picks suttas from all the Nikayas so you don't have to. They are arranged by themes to aid dipping into.

Recommendation for Suttas


Is it possible to do planet observation during the day?

Question: Keep in mind I'm just a newbie. So.... I have a new Newtonian telescope. It has 150mm opening and 1400mm Focal Distance on top of an equatorial mount. I have 25 and 10 mm eyepieces... and a 2x Barlow. I sat down to do observation yesterday and was able to see Saturn and Jupiter (warming up for the alignment on the 21th). Now, I did notice that as they sank closer to the horizon, the effect of the atmosphere was more apparent (and they were less sharp) so I'd like to see if it is possible to see them earlier when they are higher in the sky to try to minimize the effect of the atmosphere... but that might mean to watch them when the sun hasn't set yet. I know that we can't see them with the naked eye when it is daytime but given that the telescope is letting a lot more light in, then it should be possible to see them if I point in the right direction? I intend to use the sun to get RA/DEC alignment (using the telescope shadow, don't intent to look at the sun with the telescope.... yet! :-D) so that then I can point the telescope in the direction of the planets (and I am using Stellarium on my Debian box to get the numbers and stuff).
Comment: I would suggest that if you are newish at this then it would be better to get the basic *nighttime* technique well learned and practiced before attempting anything too advanced.  Just night astronomy is difficult enough to do consistently well for most people.
Comment: I've seen Mercury and Venus on blue skies, but I haven't tried Jupiter and Saturn. Dylan O'Donnell made a video about taking a photo of Jupiter during the day, https://youtu.be/EtE87WzYieY

I assume you know to never point a telescope (without a solar filter) at the sun and are using an indirect method like: https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-resources/astronomy-questions-answers/polar-align-in-daytime/
Comment: To align it? Was thinking of using its shadow, actually, in order to align it. Don't intent to look at the sun with the telescope.... and thanks for the warning, anyway.
Comment: I've been told a few times that Venus is bright enough to be seen naked eye during the day on clear skies, *if you know exactly where to look*. But have to have good eyesight and I'm sure it has to hit the fovea spot on. I've tried a few times without success though.
Comment: I don't think the scope's shadow is anywhere near precise enough. If I were you I would try to get a "solar finder" such as the TeleView Sol-Searcher. Make sure you have a way to attach it to your tube without sacrificing the (regular) finder as you're going to need it to find the planets. But aligning the sun finder itself might be tricky without looking at the sun via a proper (aperture) solar filter and I would be hesitant to do that alone if it was my first time without in-person guidance for safety. And I worry there might not be enough time to procure it before the event.
Comment: Thank you all for your feedback. It's priceless. So far, I haven't tried daylight... was just testing the basic stuff to find stuff using dec/ra last night..... might try tomorrow (after I do more testing tonight with the moon and jupiter/saturn) and I'll let you know how it went. Crossing fingers
Comment: Just as a teaser, I've found that I can align the sun very precisely with a simple trick (not that I'm able to measure how close it is.... I am not looking with the telescope or through the finder when I do it... or have an instrument to measure it): Get the finder shadow to be circular and very small.... then there will be a blurry projection of the light of the sun that will be very close to the shadow.... if I center this projection on the finder shadow, I _think_ it is very much centered on the sun.
Answer: Jupiter can be seen during the day.

This image is by Philip Crude. Philip is an experienced astro-photographer. On his webpage http://www.billionplanetsquest.com/p/planets.html he gives details of the equipment and settings used:

This image was captured through my [i.e., Philip Crude's] Celestron CGEM-800 using a ZWO ASI120MC camera at prime focus. Resolution 640 x 480, 35fps best of 900, Brightness @ 1, Gamma @ 48, Gain @ 11. The image was acquistioned with SharpCap and processed with RegiStax and CS6.

Philip also tweeted the image here.
The main difficulty is pointing the telescope in the right direction, as you won't be able to align it against the background of stars, so you need to predict the position and point the telescope accordingly.
Comment: That edit with an out of context quote from Philips website made it look as if I was claiming to have taken the picture, which I wasn't.   So i've deleted all the metainformation about how the image was captured It wasn't really relevant, I just hoped to indicate to the OP the sort of equipment that was used. If you want to see then follow the links.
Comment: Notably caught Io in that shot as well.  So if your next question was "Is it possible to observe another planet's moons during the day?", well...
Comment: Suggested edit : "The image was acquistioned with SharpCap and processed with RegiStax and CS6" rather than your last two lines - it's a direct quote from the second site you linked to about that image.
Comment: Also, I'm compelled to add that I'm in awe of that picture. Stunning.
Comment: I edited Philips technical information back in because I think it is of particular interest in the context of this question, and we are encouraged to copy relevant parts of pages we link to. I edited the answer to make it clearer that it wasn't your photo, James.
Answer: Supplemental answer based on @JamesK's
When looking at an object through Earth's atmosphere, we know that it

removes some light multiplicatively due to absorption and scattering
contributes some light additively due to things like scattered light from other sky objects (e.g Moon and now Sun) and skyglow.

During the daytime you can dramatically improve your contrast by rejecting blue and green light first, thereby removing much of the light from the daytime Diffuse sky radiation which is of course quite intense at shorter wavelengths due to the $1 / \lambda^4$ behavior of Rayleigh scattering.
You can do this by either

using a digital electronic eyepiece i.e. a CCD or CMOS camera receiving an image from the telescope then displaying it on some electronic display (either a phone or a true digital electronic eyepiece)
using a red filter that removes blue and green light, and perhaps an opaque cloth over your head to make your viewing environment darker if necessary.

Here's an analysis of the tweeted image. I've first converted to a png so that it's simpler to read in Python without having to instal PIL/Pillow. The three peaks in the histogram show the dominant uniform sky value with relative rgb values of 0.19, 0.43 and 0.88.
This is not an accurate description your results using an electronic eyepiece or a blue filter, but it does illustrate how these can help.
Image as png: https://i.stack.imgur.com/tiGQD.png converted from this JPEG-containing tweet by Philip Cruden

<code>import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

img = plt.imread('tiGQD.png')
rgb = np.moveaxis(img, 2, 0)
histograms = [np.histogram(thing, bins=256) for thing in rgb]

plt.figure()

plt.subplot(2, 2, 1)
colors = 'rgb'
for (a, b), color in zip(histograms, colors):

    plt.plot(b[1:], a, color=color)

for i, (im, color) in enumerate(zip(rgb, colors)):

    plt.subplot(2, 2, i+2)
    mean = str(round(im.mean(), 2))
    plt.title('color = ' + color + ' mean = ' + mean)
    plt.imshow(im, vmin=0, vmax=1, cmap='gray')
    trace = 400 - 380 * im[215]
    plt.plot(trace, '-r')
    plt.plot(np.zeros_like(trace), '-k')

plt.show()
</code>
Comment: The kind of stuff I hope I'm able to.understand in due time.
Answer: Moon as reference point

With a bit of patience, you can wait until the Moon is:

not too close to the Sun
close to the planet you would like to watch

If the angular separation between the Moon and the planet is less than ~5°, you can use Stellarium to know in which direction you should move your telescope. You can use the terminator as a reference line, and the Moon diameter (~0.5°) to know how far the planet should be. If the planet is further away, it might be too hard to use the Moon as reference.
First quarter moon () will be helpful if the planets are in the sky before sunset, last quarter moon () will be helpful if the planets are in the sky after sunrise.
You might have to try different eyepieces :

if the magnification is too high, you might miss the planet
if the magnification is too low, the sky will be really bright and the planet might not be visible
the planet is probably not bright enough in the finder, compared to the background sky

With this method, I've seen Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn while the sun was still in the sky, with a simple Dobsonian. No need for GOTO or equatorial mount.
I've also watched Mercury during the day, by using Venus as a reference point.
You could try next week, 23rd of December, at around 15:00. The sun will be SW, the moon and Mars will be around SSE (as seen from the northern hemisphere). Mars will be a bit further away than 5° from the Moon, but it might still be doable.
Stellarium tips
Stellarium can help you find the right moment:

Click on the Moon
Track the Moon (Space)
Hide the ground (G)
Hide the atmosphere (A
Equatorial mount (Ctrl + M)
Equatorial grid (E)
Press L repeatedly to advance in time
Press K to stop when the Moon is close to a planet, preferably during a quarter moon.
Show the ground and atmosphere again, to see when the Moon and planets are high in the sky.
Comment: `+1` This is an excellent answer and great advice!
Answer: It is possible, and under certain conditions, you don't even need a telescope at all!
Around noon on December 3, 2018 I saw Venus with the naked eye. The moon was invaluable for finding. My cell phone camera even (barely) picked up Venus. It is only about 100 pixels in this jpg, but it's there at the center of the indicated circle.
Comment: @PM2Ring: It's also really impressive how easy it is to miss Venus during the day. Once you see it, it's really clear, but as soon as you look one degree away, it disappears.
Comment: It's kind of surreal to see Venus with the naked eye in the middle of the day. I managed to spot it at every hour of the day a few years ago, when it was bright & close to the Moon. It's also possible (with practice) to see it without using the Moon as a reference, but the Moon certainly does make it easier. You just need to be in a familiar location where you can use ground-based landmarks (like treetops or points on a nearby roof).
Comment: @eftshift0 Yes, cool dry air is better than warm moist air. The humidity itself isn't a problem, it's the variations in density / refractive index due to temperature & humidity that make the optical path wobbly.
Comment: Beautiful cell phone image! I cropped and plotted the blue channel only (as discussed [here](https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/40371/7982)) between 0.55 and 0.75 and pulled out Venus more clearly using `plt.imsave('hey!.png', rgb[0], vmin=0.55, vmax=0.75, cmap='gray')` This puts the sky level close to zero and accentuates the familliar JPEG artifacts. Did you have to work hard to get the phone to focus at infinity? https://i.stack.imgur.com/wK78G.png
Comment: What would be the _ideal_ conditions that I should be longing for? I guess one of them is that humidity be as low as possible, right? What are acceptable values? What else should I consider?
Comment: @uhoh Thanks! I did have to mess around with the manual settings on my old BlackBerry Priv to get the shot. I love the way Venus pops in your version.
Answer: Bear in mind an equatorial mount only works well when properly aligned. If your scope has GOTO you should enter the name of the planet (if it's in the database) and use the lowest power you have, since that will give you a larger area of sky, thus a greater chance your target will be visible there.


Host your own website

Question: I understand completely how to host my own website but my question (i hope this is the right place to ask it) is how to guard against, say your ISP going down or your router failing, things like that? Does anyone run their own website? Anyone have any advice?
Answer: Since your main question was advise-related, I've got one: spend your money on a server.
Companies like Hetzner or Serverloft offer unmanaged servers at awesome prices.
My main point is that if you'd like to be serious about your website or hosting business, you just have to have a serious approach. In the end those money come right back to you because of your great service which runs smoothly and has a great connectivity.
There really wouldn't be a big reason not to host your stuff yourself if there wasn't the connectivity. Speed is one of the few things that you just can't cut. The least you should do is try paying for it. You owe it to your visitors and mostly to your nerves.
Answer: I'm guessing that by "ISP" you mean whomever provides Internet into your home or office.  Beyond that I'll also offer suggestions for dealing with co-location and multiple locations.
Probably the best way to avoid outages due to down-time in a connection to your home or office, via that ISP, is to use either a colocation service, managed hosting provider, or application provider like AppEngine.  These are typically services that are hosted in a carrier-class data center with redundant power, cooling, and Internet connectivity, so they can be much more reliable than, say, a DSL or cable connection into your home.
Depending on the level of service these facilities might be able to survive Networking problems, power problems, and more with little or no impact on the reachability of your application.  They will provide redundant routers, connections to multiple Internet connections, power transfer switches and more.
These services are available at all sorts of price-points, so it is rarely economical to try to build such a service yourself for only one or a few servers.
If your application really needs to be able to survive even a major outage, the typical solution is to get services at multiple facilities like the above, and design your services to either be able to fail over from one facility to another, or be able to run from both locations at the same time.  This often requires extensive work to design and architect applications to operate this way, replicate data between locations, etc...
I will say that I find many people think about availability well before they really can justify implementing such a thing.  If you have no users, it's probably more important to work on getting to the point where you can get users, rather than dramatically increasing the difficulty of getting there to make it able to survive a rare event.  So my advice would be to keep your feet on the ground when deciding what level of redundancy and replication to do.  Having fully redundant and distributed services is a long and involved process.
Answer: Normally this would be done with a cisco/sonic router with multiple ISP's connected. There is no way to protect a router from failing unless you have two routers with seperate ISP's (to redundent because routers still have to connect to the server, with another router or through to network cards on the server). Now when you setup your DNS for you IP address, most will allow a backup IP. When that is entered you will beable to get to your server from either ip (as long as all forwarding and firewalls are setup correctly).
Comment: Normally? In my experience I've never come across a multi-site HA operatior hidden behind a SPOF.
Comment: You could set up a router as a backup and swap when it goes down. This is for least amount of down time.
Answer: You could use an external Cache service - cloudflare.com is free and the basic account would work - where your site would "appear" online even when it is not.
To make sure it stays up however - you would need an ASN and the ability to be multi-honed or use a DataCenter that is.
Answer: The best solution is multi-site with a transparent failover mechanism and capability of operating in split-brain mode.
Since you can't sensibly change the software running on the clients - transparent failover means round-robin DNS - perferably with location-aware (CDN) weighting.

Host your own website


Is it acceptable to terminate an interview early?

Question: At a recent interview, a candidate couldn't write a small piece of code on a whiteboard.  The answers she had given up to that point had also been weak, so rather than have her spend more time talking with other members of the team, I decided to terminate the interview early.  Is this acceptable, and if so, what are the best ways of doing this?
Answer: IMO, I don't find anything wrong with ending an unsuccessful interview early.  Time is money for both the interviewer and interviewee.  However, I wouldn't be so quick to do that.  Interviewing is a hugely weak predictor of future performance.  It is extremely unreliable and clouded with bias.  It is said that an interview gives you about a 50/50 chance of getting it right...coin toss.
Therefore, if things are not going well, I may change up my interview approach to see if there is another perspective I can capture.  This individual could interview poorly for no other reason than stress and anxiety--crumbling when feeling tested--but be a rock star performer.  Or, the bias could have been yours, where cues she delivered triggered an expectation of her personality and future performance that were simply wrong.  We never really know; all we know is interviewing is a terrible predictor.
So, I'd pull the end early card but would do so rarely.
Answer: One of the things we do when the candidate arrives is that we lay out an agenda for the day and lay down a couple of ground rules of the day with them. The biggest of those is that by the end of the day we want to be sure whether we want to hire them or not, and we want them to be sure whether we're a good place for them or not. To go along with that, we tell them that if they realize that we're just not the place for them, that they should bring it up and we can end the interview early and save everyone time. We also say that on the flip side we'll end the day early if we realize that they just aren't a fit for us. We also will wrap things up early if we decide that they are a must hire and further discussions aren't worth the time (but they'll definitely know which category they fell into if we wrap things up early).
So yes, feel free to end the interview early. But it can help to lay the groundwork for that possibility at the start.
Comment: +1 for making it clear to the candidate that ending things early is an option for both sides.
Answer: In most cases people have many job interviews and when visiting your company, this is only one part of their search for a new job. When you end the interview early and there is a good reason for it, you save much time for the both of you.
But at the other hand, this should not happen that often. Ask yourself why you had to end this interview that early and why you have invited him/her. Did you express your requirements to an applicant clear enough when searching for a new employee?
However, there might also be the chance that you miss someone special. I have seen many cases where the job interview went wrong, but he/she was invited for a second time for a trip through the company and talking to some employees. It sometimes turns out that this specific applicant is not that bad at all!
So maybe you include more in your job interview: not only talking, but also walking through the company and letting the applicant getting in touch with some of your valuable employees.
Answer: I generally screen first on a separate day because I reject 75+% that come through HR.  If I want another opinion I might get one more.
It costs a lot of time (equals money) to take an hour from 6 or 7 schedules.  The moment I know someone isn't a fit I politely ask if they have any questions and have them out in 5 minutes.  No need to waste anyone's time.
Comment: +1 for asking if they have any questions for you.  This is a nice way to wrap it up even if you know it's a "no."
Comment: I gave probably 20 interviews in 2 years and can feel it when interviewer says "Do you have any questions for us?". Its like, do you want to go out or should I kick you. LOL !!!
Comment: @Raj - It's a tricky thing, because not have questions is a bad sign.
Comment: @MathAttack: I do ask questions like: What you expect from a successful candidate? And how is the day to day work of a candidate looks like? It shows that I am interested in the job and serious about it.
Answer: Definitely.  Fortunately, I haven't had to do so.  I would just stop the interview process, and politely state that the person was not a match for the current position.  Conclude with any of your normal post-interview follow-up.
I have had a candidate terminate a interview early when it became obvious that his career goals and our needs were not a match.  It clearly wasn't a question of skills as he clearly demonstrated that he had the desired skill set.  I appreciated the fact that he did not waste our time nor his time.
Answer: I terminate interviews early all the time but that's mainly because my HR department sucks.....
If the candidate is CLEARLY unsuitable (e.g. in house work is all based on the Microsoft stack and HR gets me a fresh graduate with no .NET knowledge and from a school that only does Java), I will just tell them politely that things probably aren't going to work out pretty early. Management doesn't believe in total training from scratch so I know its not going to work. In cases like these, there really is no reason to waste everyone's time or even worse, lead them on.
The downside to doing this is we might miss the occasional genius that just needs some help but then it's going to take a LOT for me to stick my neck out and vouch for his future progress. Every failed "project" that I let into the team results in more work for everybody with absolutely zero return. Even if my success rate is 1 in 20, modern staff turnover rates and the resources invested hardly make it a worthwhile endeavour.
Comment: May be a bit off topic, but I question why you would exclude a candidate with excellent Java skills from a .Net position.  Unless the position is very short term, a bright Java developer should not have trouble getting up to speed in .Net
Comment: As you mentioned, this is probably off topic but:I might if he's really good but its more of an exception than a norm. Staff turnover in my area is very high and management is very picky on what it wants to "invest" in, so I do end up turning away more than I would like....
Answer: Two things

Adding phone screening in hiring process increases the chances of getting better candidates. And may help to avoid this situation.
If terminating interview early, I'll take care of not creating a wrong impression about my organization. For example, the candidate may think that I haven't asked him enough questions, and can blame me for not taking his interview seriously. Ideally, I shouldn't give any room to the candidates to talk with his friends, negative about my organization.
Comment: I think the candidates impression doesn't matter that much. Your goal is to find the best employee for your company and you shouldn't waste too much time on people who don't fit into your environment. If you do your first step properly, you don't have bother with the second
Comment: A phone screening is useless, unless maybe you are hiring for a phones sales job...and even then your choice would expose more your biases than predict his/her future performance.
Comment: @DavidEspina: I disagree. I have been interviewed before through phone screens and companies only see how well communicative you are and you know a "Know-How" of the job. If you do, then I will get accepted and get a f2f interview.
Comment: This is not my opinion.  These are findings from studies.  Much of what people think are important for an interviewee to exhibit during an interview--phone or face to face--are too often a non sequitur to performance.  You should dig into this a bit.  Eye opening stuff.
Answer: Yes, it is acceptable, assuming it's done in a polite and professional fashion.
There may be few sides to the story here:

Job agent (assuming there is one) didn't explain the role properly to the candidate. Candidate could have been expecting something different. On few occasions we had PHP developers, who had to sit a .NET test. They've walked out with 0%-10% for a test.
Candidate is trying their luck to lie through the interview and get a job. If this is the case, then they have already insulted your business.
Some interviews are arranged by agents who only care about their commission. They send anybody to the interview hoping the candidate will be lucky enough to get a job. This is of course this might be a stereotype, but I have seen this quite a lot within small companies in the UK.

One of the solutions, is to ask candidates to go through a two-three phase interview:

"Phase 1" would ask the candidate to complete basic programming test.
"Phase 2" would require candidate to interact with a senior developer, which will hopefully allow the senior developer to see what technical expertise candidate has to offer.
"Phase 3" would then try to establish how well the candidate might fit within the company and what hobbies, interests and ambitions they have.


Can I mix brands of chain and missing link

Question: If I stick to the same speed (e.g.  do not mix say 9 speed and 10 speed), can I mix the brand of chain and missing link safely. For instance, can I use a Shimano missing link on a KMC chain, or should I only use KMC links on KMC chains and SRAM links on SRAM chains?
Comment: I'm certain this question was asked previously. I think the answer was: manufacturers so no but many people do, it's fine
Answer: Shimano recommends their 9 &10 speed chains be reconnected utilizing the specific speed link pin, which is inserted with a chain tool.  In my experience, there has not been any issue, including noise, using KMC's "Missing Link" or SRAM's "Power Link" to join a Shimano chain.  Note that SRAM's 10 speed link is termed "Power Lock" and is suggested for use "one time only" because of the tighter tolerances present in ten speed systems.  In practice, these can be used multiple times, no problem, but I base this on reading others' assessments not my own experience. Shimano's 11 & 12 speed systems use a connecting link, the "QuickLink."
Typically bike shops I frequent have KMC, SRAM, and Wipperman (whose product is called "Connex") connecting links to choose from.  Prices are similar between brands within same speed categories.  Connex are a bit more money it appears to me.  At any rate, based on the selection, why not stay within same brand for chain and connecting link?  Regarding Shimano, I use the replacement link pin but again, no problems have been noted by myself or others when a Shimano chain is joined with a connecting link from SRAM or KMC.
Wipperman's design is shaped differently which may limit it to their brand of chains only.  I neither have experience with nor seen anecdotal evidence to say whether a Connex link will work with other brands of chain.
Comment: *Note that SRAM's 10 speed link is termed "power lock" and is suggested for use "one time only" because of the tighter tolerances...*  The cynic in me says it's not because of "tighter tolerances", it's to make you buy more of them...
Comment: I tend to agree.  There seems to be plenty of "planned obsolescence" within the bicycling industry as well.
Answer: Yes.
I've used SRAM and KMC missing links on 9- and 10-speed Shimano chains for years.

Shimano missing link

Good luck finding those, though...
Comment: Try searching for shimano quick link
Comment: @Swifty Must be a new thing that I missed - and they seem to be 11-speed only.  Shimano ignored quick links for so long that I just went with KMC.  And given the pricing I find online, doesn't look like I'm going to be leaving KMC, either...
Answer: Almost certainly, but do your homework.
At 9-speed, Campagnolo and Wippermann chains are slightly wider than the SRAM. So, Wippermann quick link works with Campagnolo but SRAM does not. There are probably combinations with similar issues at 10 and 11 speeds.


What is the origin of the phrase "it's a horse apiece"?

Question: My wife from Wisconsin and her family use the phase "it's a horse apiece". This is used in place of something like "it doesn't matter either way" or "both are the same". Where does this come from?
Answer: It dates at least from the late 19th century, as found in the St. Paul (Minnesota) Daily Globe (March 27, 1893):

"What did Emperor William say to
  you when you approached him, Kelly?"
  asked McKenna.
"He didn't say a word until I approached him," answered Kelly. "Then
  he told me to keep quiet because the
  president of France was listening to
  our conversation. I didn't care a d—m
  for the president of France, so I said to
  William: 'He can't hurt me. Let him
  listen. It's a horse apiece, for I'm the
  King of China.' When I saw the Prince
  of Wales I asked him for a chew of tobacco, and kicked because it wasn't the
  brand I was used to chewing. He tried
  to get back at me by saying no man of
  my nationality and name could talk
  back to a peer of the realm. I said to
  him: 'Come off de perch, you want
  do see?'

For some background, the article says 'Workhouse' Kelly was a nearly 60-year-old Irishman who had lived in St. Paul for the previous 20 years, spending 90 days to six months of each year in the workhouse. He had been a sailor in the US navy in the 1850s and was "full of yarns".
The other two uses I found in Chronicling America are both from the Rock Island (Illinois) Argus. First from May 31, 1899 describing two baseball teams as appearing equal before a match:

It's a horse apiece. The shake-off occurs today.

Second from April 18, 1904, also describing two baseball teams:

It's a horse apiece now with the Rock Island and Davenport on the ante-season baseball games. Rock Island won
  yesterday afternoon's exhibition game
  at Twelfth street park 4 to 3, the same
  score by which Davenport defeated
  the local aggregation on the grounds
  across the river a week previous.

The Word Detective, after confirming the phrase isn't "it's a horse of peas", said in 2000:

"A horse apiece" means, as you supposed, "more or less equal" or "six of one, half dozen of the other." Field researchers for The Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) first heard "a horse apiece" in 1980, but the phrase is undoubtedly much older. A similar phrase, "horse and horse," dates back to at least 1846.
According to DARE, the logic of "a horse apiece" may come from an old dice game called "horse" in which two players who have each lost a turn are said to be "a horse apiece." Or it may just be a variant of "horse and horse," describing two horses racing neck-and-neck down a racetrack.

Tom_MN posted to the A Way with Words Discussion Forum with some geographical boundaries:

I have a lot of fun with the saying "a horse apiece." It is commonly used in the northern 2/3 of Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan yet unknown in adjacent Minnesota, except perhaps on the iron range in NE Minn. I know 2 people from NE Minnesota who say it. A lot of culture like food was carried from iron mines in the UP of Michigan and northern Wisconsin to the iron mines in NE Minnesota so there may be a link there. Or they just learned it from Wisconsinites like I did (we all work together).
The occurrence of "a horse apiece" in the Upper Midwest is pretty much defined by the Wisconsin state line on the west. People on the Wisconsin side of the St Croix River use the expression every day, while people a mile away on the Minnesota side have never even heard the expression (and there is an interstate and short bridge connecting the 2 areas!).
4 anecdotes:
I recently started to work a lot with northern Wisconsinites and UP-ers so now hear the saying often. The first time I heard it I thought people were saying: "a horse of peace."
I have asked many people from Madison in southern Wisconsin if they know the expression– and universally I get a blank stare and claims that "no one in Wisconsin says that."
I have asked three people from the UP of Michigan and they all say "a horse apiece" (as well as use the verb "pank" and say "eh" just like Canadians but those are other issues!).
I also mentioned the saying once at a party in Minnesota, and a 70 year old man perked up and said that people in Minnesota used to say it, but that he never hears it anymore.
Answer: It's related to the game of Bar Dice, which is mostly played in the Midwest.
Bar Dice plays somewhat similarly to poker. Players roll multiple rounds and try to get as many of a kind as possible. The player with the best hand in each round gets out of the game, since it's a drinking game and the goal is not to win but to not lose. The last two players roll best two rounds out of three, and "a horse on me/you" is a slang comment for losing one of those rounds. If you lose two rounds, it's "two horses on me/you", and you have to pay for all the drinks used. If each player wins one round, the situation is "a horse apiece", and the last round decides the winner.
The meaning of the original, then, would be something like "it could go either way", "it's undecided", or "it's anybody's guess". I suspect there was just some drift in what situations the phrase could cover.
There doesn't seem to be a reason why it's specifically "a horse on you" rather than some other animal or object or phrasing. Chalk it up to the sometimes-inscrutable ways of slang.
Answer: I grew up in north central South Dakota. "A horse apiece" was a very common saying from my father who was a farmer. He would be in his 90's if he were still alive. He also played dice often at the local restaurant.
However, my son grew up in the east central part of South Dakota and none of his friends had ever heard it and he wondered where I got it from.
Comment: Great comment, but doesn't supply an answer. Can you move it to a comment to the OP?
Comment: @Mitch This is at least a partial answer to the question "where does this come from". It documents regionality.
Answer: I grew up in South Central Minnesota.  My father was born in 1938 with no association to Wisconsin whatsoever and he said this all the time.  I also have a friend who grew up in Minnesota near the South Dakota/North Dakota border and his parents also said it commonly.  They are in the same age group as my father.
Answer: I can't confirm the phrase is derived from horse racing before the dice game. The dice game "Bar Dice" as it's now called in WI but perhaps went by "Horse" in the past is still very common in WI. Not surprised it has survived in the heaviest drinking areas of the midwest and faded some in the less taverny regions.
Mark = the current score to beat
All Day = Three rolls
Horse on you (me)= a loss in the final 2 of 3 match up
Horse a piece = tie in the final 2 of 3 match up
Forty-six in two = Four 6's in 2 rolls
Fifty-three all day = Five 3's in 3 rolls
Comment: yup. that's the United States Postal Service abbreviation for it. It's a common pattern here in the states to substitute the USPS abbreviation for the full name
Comment: (Presumably "WI" here means Wisconsin?)
Answer: I live in extreme southeast NoDak (richland county).  I've heard this expression here from farmers and truck drivers - usually 60 years and older.  I asked a sayer of it what it meant and he said, "You know, like a wash ...you've heard that before!" (like he was baffled by my query - LOL)   I don't say it, but I like it.
Answer: I grew up in southern WI and have heard it my whole life.  Very common saying from Milwaukee to Madison.
Comment: Welcome. I'm afraid that this isn't really an answer to the question. Stick around though, you'll soon have the reputation points to be able to comment on any post.
Answer: Several years ago I had found it referenced to a pickup basketball game we played as kids.  We might have played 'Pig', or 'Horse', meaning one would score three or five baskets from the freethrow line.  So 'a horse apiece' meant tied at five.  Did basketballs exist in 1893?  A little wikipedia search finds the 'basketball' was conceived in 1891 by a Canadian in a YMCA in New England.  So it is plausible.  I had also heard the claim it originated in Milwaukee, WI.  Somebody would have to explain the bar dice game in more detail for me to get that, but it sounds maybe even more plausible.
Comment: Welcome to ELU.SE.This site strives to provide objective answers. Take the [site tour](https://english.stackexchange.com/tour) or have a look at the [help center](https://english.stackexchange.com/help) to find out more about good answers. As it stands your answer is purely subjective.


Can a Krylov subspace method be used as a smoother for multigrid?

Question: As far as I am aware, multigrid solvers use iterative smoothers such as Jacobi, Gauss-Seidel, and SOR to dampen the error at various frequencies.  Could a Krylov subspace method (like conjugate gradient, GMRES, etc.) be utilized instead?  I don't think they are classified as "smootheners", but they can be used to approximate the coarse grid solution.  Can we expect to see analogous convergence to the solution as we would in a standard multigrid method? Or is it problem dependent?
Answer: Yes, you can, but Krylov methods generally do not have great smoothing properties. This is because they target the whole spectrum in an adaptive way that minimizes the residual or a suitable norm of the error. This will generally include some low frequency (long wavelength) modes that the coarse grids would have handled fine. Krylov smoothers also make the multigrid cycle nonlinear, so if multigrid is being used as a preconditioner for an outer Krylov method, the outer method should be "flexible" (e.g. GCR or FGMRES).
Using Krylov smoothers also greatly increases the number of dot products that must be computed, which becomes a significant bottleneck in parallel. However, even with these unattractive properties, Krylov smoothers are sometimes useful, especially for difficult problems in which good interpolation operators are not available.
A more popular alternative is to use polynomial smoothers (usually Chebyshev). These methods target a specified portion of the spectrum. For symmetric elliptic PDEs (where the discrete operator is symmetric positive definite or nearly so), it is common to estimate the largest eigenvalue $\lambda_\max$ of $D^{-1}A$ where $D^{-1}$ is the point-block Jacobi preconditioner for $A$ and target a range like $(0.1 \lambda_{\max}, 1.1 \lambda_{\max})$. Polynomial smoothers have no reductions and are linear operations (for any chose polynomial degree, usually chosen between $1$ and perhaps $5$). Usually a few iterations (say $5$ to $10$) of GMRES or CG are used to estimate $\lambda_\max$, so the user does not need to compute these themselves. The estimate of $\lambda_\max$ is also used by some algebraic multigrid methods to choose coarsening strategies.
Adams, Brezina, Hu, and Tuminaro (2003) is a nice paper on parallel and algorithmic performance of polynomial smoothers. Note that polynomial smoothers tend to be less effective (and/or difficult to formulate) for non-symmetric problems, in which case you will likely want to use Gauss-Seidel or more sophisticated (block/distributed) relaxation schemes.
Comment: Can you suggest a good resource on polynomial and/or krylov smoothers?  I've actually never heard of either :)
Comment: @JedBrown: Do you mean "elliptic" in the PDE or bilinear form sense (i.e., do you mean that all of the eigenvalues of the operator or principal symbol are positive?)? I am assuming the latter since you are talking about point-block Jacobi.
Comment: Paul I added a reference.

@Jack Strictly speaking, the discrete operator should be SPD, but in practice, the methods tend to work as long as the spectrum is not too poorly distributed.


Is keeping two project plans ever appropriate?

Question: I feel that if I publish a project plan that shows completion on date X, I can't very well push for completion at date (X - 3  weeks).  But If I publish a plan that shows date (X-3 weeks), how can I track the "most likely" completion date (which is likely date X)?
Answer: When you build an estimate, the end result is a range of finish dates, or costs, with a probabilistic distribution that sits on top of that.  When you set a target, the end result is a SINGLE number that lives somewhere in that distribution.  You would establish that target based on risk appetite.  Move it to the left, like your X-3 scenario, to challenge the team and take on a more aggressive stance.  Move it to the right and make it consistent with your most likely.  Or move it even further right if you need to build in contingencies due to a ton of environmental unknowns.
On most scheduling tools, you can set multiple baselines.  Your baseline zero can be the official one that is priced and sold to your customer.  You can set baseline one, using a more aggressive target as your team challenge, and set measurements and awards based on that.  During the course of the project, measure against both.  I would not "punish" the team for missing the challenge under any circumstances.  This would be an award-type scenario and I would set it up to be more fun, competitive, and a morale boost versus anything else.
Answer: Try to implement the evidence based scheduling in your first project. If you collect the evidence quite regularly and update your schedule, you'll see when you can start your next project. They key here is the regular update. Don't commit to the second project - try to defer your decision using real option - until you feel safe to set the finish date of the first project.
Answer: I second David's answer, and would like to add a simple method to implement this in your planning.
When estimating time for each task, you should do a very aggressive estimate without any slack built in. The slack for each task is then combined into one big "buffer" block you put at the end of your plan.
A Simplified Example:
Traditional "probable" estimates without buffer:
Task01[10days] > Task02[3days] > Task04[7days] > END
Aggressive estimates with buffer added:
Task01[7days] > Task02[2days] > Task04[5days] > Buffer[6days] > END
During the project, you keep the final date static but change the buffer duration according to progress; i.e. if a task is completed before estimation, you add to the buffer, and if a task goes beyond, you subtract from the buffer period.
This gives you a single 'health' metric for the project to communicate, and create bonus/incentives around. This also makes it simpler to make tough decisions earlier in the project. If you've used 33% of your buffer, during the first 25% of you project, you can easily communicate and discuss this issue with team and project owners.
Answer: It takes courage and perseverance, but you can keep schedule contingency separate from the critical path.  The hard part is your customers will fight for a commitment to deliver at the earlier date.
In your case it means working to a T-3 and keeping the 3 weeks on your back pocket.
This is more efficient than distributing the slack because you will most likely need it for one or two big areas rather than all over.  (If every estimate was missed you have a bigger problem.)


How do I mount an nfs export from the command line using the info of rpcinfo

Question: I cannot mount a quite old (~2002) nfs server (axel) from a new Ubuntu 14.04. (exos):
steier@exos:/home/steier> sudo mount -v -t nfs 10.0.0.10:/dataaxel /dataaxel
mount.nfs: timeout set for Fri Jan 27 00:10:00 2017
mount.nfs: trying text-based options 'vers=4,addr=10.0.0.10,clientaddr=10.0.0.13'
mount.nfs: mount(2): Protocol not supported
mount.nfs: trying text-based options 'addr=10.0.0.10'
mount.nfs: prog 100003, trying vers=3, prot=6
mount.nfs: trying 10.0.0.10 prog 100003 vers 3 prot TCP port 2049
mount.nfs: portmap query retrying: RPC: Program/version mismatch
mount.nfs: prog 100003, trying vers=3, prot=17
mount.nfs: trying 10.0.0.10 prog 100003 vers 3 prot UDP port 2049
mount.nfs: portmap query failed: RPC: Program/version mismatch
mount.nfs: Protocol not supported

This is not surprising, as the protocols offered by axel are:
steier@exos:/home/steier> rpcinfo -p axel
    program vers proto   port  service
    100000    2   tcp    111  portmapper
    100000    2   udp    111  portmapper
 545580417    1   udp    688  ugidd
 545580417    1   tcp    690  ugidd
    100003    2   udp   2049  nfs
    100003    2   tcp   2049  nfs
    100005    1   udp    802  mountd
    100005    2   udp    802  mountd
    100005    1   tcp    802  mountd
    100005    2   tcp    802  mountd

Mounting from a half-old scientific linux (~2010) works.
What do I have to enter in the command line or into fstab to succeed?
Answer: If the NFS server is that old, it might even be using NFS version 2, which you would have to specify explicitly with -o vers=2.
sudo mount -v -t nfs -o vers=2 10.0.0.10:/dataaxel /dataaxel

Of course, anything using NFS version 3 or 2 needs to be migrated to NFS version 4 (or higher) or decommissioned and replaced. But that's another post...