Is Naruto related to Hashirama Senju?

Question: Hashirama Senju, the 1st Hokage, married Mito Uzumaki right? So does that make him Naruto's great, great, great grandfather?
Comment: Related: http://anime.stackexchange.com/questions/7720/what-is-narutos-family-tree
Comment: It's impossible to say. The only way he would would be if Hashirama's ancestors "mingled" with the Uzumaki bloodline, or if the Namikaze clan had Senju influences. Simply because Hashi married an Uzumaki doesn't make them related - There were other Uzumakis that were not closely related to Mito.
Answer: Well, both Naruto and Hashirama Senju are reincarnations of Asura. Apart from that, Hashirama could not be Naruto's direct descendant as marrying to Mito Uzumaki does not mean Mito Uzumaki is directly related to Kushina. There might be a slight chance, but the possibilities are endless, assuming the Uzumaki clan is a big clan.
Comment: Kuushina was brought into the village from somewhere else while Mito was old to be the replacement jinchuriki, she even met Mito as i recall. There was no direct family Ties between them. However, Uzumakis are a Cousin clan to the Senjus, so they probably share ancestors, and definitly share Asura as an ancestor to allow the Transmigration of Asura to be in both of them.
Answer: I don't know anything when it comes to user20385's answer since absolutely nothing is known on Minato ' s ancestry as to where his blonde hair came from, but in relation to the actual question, yes Naruto is technically - if distantly - related to Hashirama.
No, he's not Naruto ' s great great grandfather (Which would be the line up considering Tsunade is his granddaughter and about 50 years old) as Tsunade and Nawaki are the only two grandchildren known, (though we've no idea if they had cousins) of whom only Tsunade survived to an age to bear children which it doesn't look like she did since Dan died early in one of the Ninja wars.
In the episode "The orange spark" and its following episode explaining Kushina ' s past, Kushina notes that the Senju and Uzumaki clans are distant cousins which is heavily implied to be because the Rikudou Sennin is their common ancestor by some colored art of the manga showing Hagoromo with the Uzumaki ' s famous red hair. (Though I've no idea if these are Kishimoto's renditions or fan made) Whether this is true or not is unexplained.They could just as likely be descended from a second child born to Hagoromo's brother whose story is never explained outside their fight on the Juubi . This would still make them distant cousins regardless of if Homura or Asura is the clan's father.
She also explains she was brought from Uzu to be the next vessel since Mito was up in age and weakening, but it seemed still had a few good years left since she's seen helping Kushina adapt to and prepare for life as a jinchuuriki. We do not know as to where in the clan Kushina or Mito fall in with their births. (i.e. people like to speculate in fanfics that they're both directly born from the head family and as such are equivalent to Uzu royalty) If we were to believe that is the case, then at most it means Mito had a sibling whom had children and one of them gave birth to Kushina, making Mito her great Aunt. That would make Naruto the great great grand nephew to Mito but no closer than that in relation.
In conclusion, Naruto is related to 4 out of the 5 Hokage's in the series. At least as distant cousins as the clan's were very distantly related, and possibly through Mito's marriage to Hashirama Senju as well, though maybe still fairly distantly. Though knowing Naruto, if he knew of this relation and met Hashirama or Tobirama he'd probably still call them both jiji
Answer: Perhaps, since they belong to same clan, Naruto could have some resemblance with Mito Uzumaki because of blood line. Considering a scientific fact that DNA structure does contain some memory from its predecessors. You can generally call someone who is old, grand mother or grand father, but it does not mean that they are in relation.
Your assumption to say that Hashirama could be great great grandfather is likely a gesture but less likely to be a true relation.
Answer: Is Naruto related to Hashirama? Technically everyone is related, how closely related they are depends on how interbred the Uzumaki and Senju Clans were.
Is Hashirama Naruto's grandfather (I think any farther back the timeline goes out of whack)? No, Kushina would have to be his daughter and the flashbacks make this very unlikely.
Answer: Naruto is the reincarnation of Hashirama, and Hashirama is the reincarnation of Asura Ōtsutsuki, the creator of the Senju and Uzumaki clans. Basically, Naruto is the reincarnation of Asura Ōtsutsuki who created the Uzumaki clan and the Senju clan, making Hashirama and Naruto Uzumaki from the same clan.
Also, its trait between reincarnations to fight the Uchiha, just like Asura Ōtsutsuki fought his brother who created the Uchiha clan Indra Ōtsutsuki the older son of Hagoromo, making Asura Hagoromo's son as well and grandson of Kaguya. Anyway, the two brothers fought because Indra was possessed by Black Zetsu, and when they died, Asura reincarnated into Hashirama and Indra into Madara who was a friend of Hashirama but then was possessed by Black Zetsu too, forcing them to fight, and then they died.
Hashirama reincarnated into Naruto of the Uzumaki clan which was also created by Asura, and Madara reincarnated into Sasuke. That is why Naruto and Sasuke fight even though Sasuke is not possessed by Black Zetsu, the other son of Kaguya. Anyway, guess that makes Naruto Tsunade's grandpa.
Answer: Well, the Sage of Six Paths had two sons, one was Uchiha and the other was Senju. However, the Senju son was also an ancestor to the Uzumaki clan, so if you think hard and research deep, you'll find out that the two clans are related. So the Uzumaki and Senju clans are closely related. So, yes, Naruto is related to Hashirama, as well as Tobirama and Tsunade. Naruto is also related to the Hyuuga clan (the Sage's brother was the ancestor) as well as the Uchiha clan.
Comment: `so if you think hard and research deep, you'll find out that the two clans are related` Can you show your thought and research about this?
Answer: I think the family tree is
<code>Tobirama  Unknown girl
  Senju     Namikaze
       Minato

</code>
He gets gifted his sensory by his grandfather.
He is intelligent and has fast decisions.
He is fast as teleportation.
The one-finger sensory.
They do want to be Hokage for protecting his village.
Comment: Tobirama is his grandpa and the uknown girl is grandma. Senju he is his father and namikaze her mother  but he gaves her mother name he is the only one i know that use teleportation jutsu without being uchiha or the kamui. Tobirama and minato

Is Naruto related to Hashirama Senju?


Installing switch with timer

Question: I am trying to install a light switch with a built in timer to replace my original light switch.  There are 2 switches side by side in the box but I only want to replace one.  The setup currently has 3 main power wires, all with one black one white and one copper wires in each.  All the white wires are wire nutted together, none of which are going to the current switch.  One of the main power wires has a black wire going to the switch.  The original switch had another black wire going back to the box where it was wire nutted to all the rest of the black wires.  The new switch that I want to install has one blue, black, and Green wires. I know the green goes to the copper but not sure which wires to connect to the Blue and black wires on the new switch
Answer: I'm surprised that the box or paperwork that came with the switch didn't have instructions, so here is my advice (25 years as an electrician):
The black wire goes to the hot bundle, the green wire is ground, and the blue wire goes to the light that is being switched.
If there is a pig-tail that acted as an individual wire to the old switch, you can either keep that and attach the black wire to it, or remove it from the bundle and connect the black wire on the switch directly to the bundle.
As a way of checking what I am telling you, on the switch itself, there may be some labels for each of the wires (the black, blue and green wires).
Typical labeling for the 'hot' wire is: "Hot", "Common", and "Line"
Typical labeling for the switched wire is: "Load", "Line", or "Switched"
Note that in my experience, whenever the label for the Hot wire is "Line", the switched wire is never called "Line" -it is almost always labeled "Load" (which is more accurate -but let's not argue semantics).
Good luck and happy wiring!
:)
Greg

Installing switch with timer


Bulk manage Google Contacts with dual SIM card

Question: I have a Archos NEON 45 with a dual sim option. Never had a use for it until my business phone stopped working. So I transferred the business SIM-card to my Archos NEON.
I also added by Google Business accounts in order to have the business contacts available on my phone. Now I have to choose which SIM-card to use when making a phone call.
There is the possibility to link a contact to a specific SIM-card. By now I have to edit all the business contacts manually to specify this link to the correct SIM Card. Is there a desktop app or Android app that can do this based on the groups I have specified in each contact?
Answer: Accidentally stumbled upon a useable solution. In the Settings menu on the top is a menu item 'Manage SIM". This is meant for setting up names and defaults for the SIM cards. At te very bottom there is a menu item 'Link contacts' (translated from the dutch 'Contact verbinden'.
Next step is to select the SIM card and then you can select contacts to link to the selected SIM card. (Don't forget to press the 'Add contact' icon at the top-right after selecting the correct contacts, instead of the checkmark at the top-left.......)


How should I cook bacon in an oven?

Question: I've heard of people cooking bacon in an oven by laying the strips out on a cookie sheet. When using this method, how long should I cook the bacon for, and at what temperature?
Comment: FWIW this is the best way of cooking bacon I've found. It's hassle-free and tastes great.
Comment: @Herb: Better tossing in the deep fryer? If so, I must give it a try.
Comment: @derobert: Oven and deep fried bacon are both great, advantage with the oven is you get long flat pieces. Whenever I've deep fried it curls up like mad. So can switch cooking application based on what result you want, both have their uses.
Answer: I've always cooked it on top of aluminum foil, at 350°F (~175°C) for 20 minutes. Flipping it once at about the half way point. If you prefer crispier, go for 25 minutes.
Comment: I don't find it necessary to flip the bacon - I just turn the cookie sheet around, front to back, so it cooks evenly.
Comment: You can speed up the bake time by using convection bake if your oven has that option.
Comment: What do you do to avoid spattering grease all over the oven?  Or is there not spattering with this method?  I don't want to have to clean the oven afterwards.
Comment: @herb, I'll have to try that out next time. Keeping the potential of grease splatter to a minimum would be nice.
Comment: I think this is closest, but @Herb is right. I also vastly prefer parchment though. check similar: [Cooking Buffet-Style Bacon](http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/29776/cooking-buffet-style-bacon)
Answer: I set the oven to 400F, line a half sheet pan with aluminum foil, place a cooling rack inside the pan, and then put the bacon on top of the cooling rack.  It takes between 20 and 30 minutes to reach the point that I like it, but you may want to stop it earlier.
Also good, blend some brown sugar and pecans until the pecans are well mixed with the sugar and then sprinkle the mixture on top of the bacon half way through cooking.
Comment: I find that it's tastier to let the bacon cook in the grease, and then put it on paper towels to remove excess afterwards.
Comment: @Herb Caudill I don't disagree about the taste, but my wife prefers it not to soak in grease.
Comment: I use the cooling rack so it is easier to save the bacon fat.
Answer: Put on a cookie sheet. Use a high temp (375F+) for 10-20 minutes depending on desired crispness.
For easier cleaning of the cookie sheet, line it with aluminum foil.
To let the grease drain, corrugate the foil. (This is by far what I prefer.) If you do this, remember before you tear off your sheet from the roll, you'll need ~2x as much foil for the same area.
Comment: @Flimzy: What is "baking paper"? Is that parchment paper, wax paper, or something else?
Comment: Parchment paper is even easier than aluminum foil... the bacon doesn't stick to it, causing it to tear into shreds.
Comment: Yes, parchment paper. Sorry, I should have used the more proper term.
Answer: I place the bacon in a cold oven and then turn the oven on to 400F.  It takes about 15-20 minutes to get slightly crisp bacon.
Answer: The short answer is "throw it in the oven, and make sure it doesn't stick."
You can use aluminum foil or silpat to accomplish the non-stick part.
Regarding temperatures, a lot depends on what you want. This is pork remember, a meat that cooks beautifully at low temperature, and fries nicely too when salt-cured.
So, if you want delectably smooth soft bacon that melts in your mouth, try it at 225 for a few hours. This is like slow cooking a pork shoulder.
300 and up will more quickly cook it; at that point you're aiming for crispy bacon. The hotter the heat, the faster it will get there, and the greater the danger you're going to burn it. I usually do mine at 375 for the family, it takes roughly 20 minutes.
Answer: I place the bacon on a cooling rack set inside a baking pan, to keep the meat above the grease.
Generally speaking, lower temperatures result in less bitter compounds forming than higher temperatures. But you'll have to wait longer for your delicious, delicious bacon. If you're baking something else, then just put the bacon in at whatever temperature the other dish requires. It should be fine, anywhere from 325 to 425 or 450.
The bacon is done when it looks and feels delicious. You can judge by color. If you like it crispy, it should be dark but not burnt--it will still be a little soft until it cools a little.
Answer: I bake mine on a cooling rack (to drain excess fat) on a cookie sheet that has been lined with foil for easy clean up.  I start in a cool oven, 400 degrees for about 20 minutes for crisp turkey bacon.
Answer: I just cooked a pound of bacon yesterday....to make Blt Bites in cherry tomato halves.  Not knowing any better, I spread it out in a single layer on a rimmed baking pan.  And I cooked it for about a half hour at 300 (PRE=HEATED).  It was perfect.  No spattering.  Easy clean-up.  If you like it crisper, just cook it longer.  If it smells done, it is.
Answer: I use tinfoil (non-stick kind works well) on any old baking sheet and for an added boost sprinkle dark brown sugar and coursely ground pepper on top side first. Cook at 350-400 for 10 min - no need to flip - watch at end it doesn't burn. My family / guests can't get enough of this candied bacon.
Answer: I have a special pan which has a second bottom with holes in it that allows the excess fat to drain away. With that I put it in about the middle or lower of the oven with the broiler on 500F on.
Answer: Use a baking tray with a decent lip to stop fat running away. Don't use foil or anything extra
Lightly rub required tray surface area with Olive oil
Roll each piece of bacon up into a tight tube (slight larger than a thumb) and place on tray. You can use a pencil sized dowel as a former
Balance each roll against the next to hold in place. Use a toothpick or similar to hold the rolls on the ends
Grill at medium to medium-high until done, around 20 to 30 minutes
Nothing gets burnt, and they are easy to handle once cooked. And a  nice tidy look on the plate too
Because nothing got burnt, cleanup is simple. Just soak the tray
You can do more than 50 slices of bacon on one tray!
Answer: I have found the best method is to use parchment paper, put bacon on a rack that will fit in the pan to hold the bacon above the dripped fat, baked in a convection oven so no need to rotate or flip.  about 20-30 minutes depending on thickness....thick sliced bacon works best.
Comment: Welcome to the site, babyduckmom. I see what you are trying to do, but the answer, as it stands, is not very good. Where do you put the parchment paper, how hot do you have your oven...
Answer: Take two cookie backing trays that can be stacked into one another (just buy two non stick identical cookie trays):
lay the first one's bottom with baking parchment.
lay the bacon flat on it.
put another sheet of parchment on top of the bacon
stack the second tray on top and apply a good pressure to make sure the bacon is flat.
you should have from bottom to top tray-parchment-bacon-parchment-tray. (just to be clear)
bake at high temperature for 15 minutes (or until of the color you like it, raise tray to check and be careful of grease splashes).
After baking absorb excess fat by laying on paper.
This will guarantee that your bacon strips will be cooking book picture perfect, crispy and delicious.
Answer: use silicone mats instead tinfoil or parchment paper. much easier cleanup
Comment: Can you explain how that's easier to clean up? Seems like it'd be more difficult seeing as before, the most you had to clean was the baking sheet... with silicone mats you have the baking sheet **and** the mat...
Comment: @Catija If the mats cover the entire pan, then you don't have to clean the baking sheet. If you're really careful, the same is true for foil, but it seems like in practice it gets a hole somewhere pretty often.
Comment: @Jefromi maybe it's my bacon... I've never baked it but in the pan there's so much grease that I can't imagine the walls of the pan not getting greasy. Or maybe baking releases less grease?
Comment: @Catija You can use a mat larger than the pan. I dunno if I'd do it with bacon, since you don't want to have a chance of spilling. Maybe with a deeper pan and possibly something to weigh it down?

How should I cook bacon in an oven?


What does "life force" mean?

Question: The term life force is used a number of times during the series. Does life force simply mean chakra? If so, then do non-ninjas (such as Teuchi, the owner of Ichiraku Ramen) not have life force? Is there a canonical definition for this term?
Comment: I'd recommend you [this](http://naruto.wikia.com/wiki/Chakra) article.
Answer: The way I see it, Life Force is a completely different energy from chakra.

Chakra can be depleted and restored (even though if you deplete it too much, you die). When Life Force gets used in a technique, the user's vitality usually takes a hit, as well as his life-span. (Nagato was left completely drained, and never recovered from using the Gedo Mazo in battle).
Life Force was seen to be transferred and infused in other individuals to revive them. Both "super healing" and actual bringing back from the dead was seen. Mere "chakra" does not have this property.
Life Force seem to have some sort of connection with the Yang (or physical) energy your body produces, and mixed with Yin to form chakra.

Spoilers:

 Not to mention humans once lived without chakra, and it was given to them by the God Tree, the term "Life Force" indicates that without it there can be no life, hence the two are different.

So what is Life Force?
The term is very hazy, it wasn't explicitly explained or discussed in the series, but from what I get, it's a completely different energy, closely related to the Yang energy, and it determines your vitality and life-span.
Answer: The term life force applies to everyone in the naruto world and the real world. It simply applies to energy that gives a person vitality and strength. So when the word is used in terms if asura, the senju or uzimaki it simply means that they are naturally resilient people/ clans.
Comment: I like the answer, but can you support it with anything else such as references from Naruto?
Answer: Here are my thoughts:

"...chakra is a form of life energy all living individuals naturally
produce to some degree"-Naruto
wiki
Every living thing has charkra. You need to have good chakra control to use ninjustu/genjustu. For example, Lee has charkra, which is why he can walk on water and up trees, but he can't use it "externally as ninjutsu or genjutsu" -Naruto wiki.
I don't believe the term "life force" is defined specifically in the
    series. Charkra is the only form of life energy I think is mentioned, and running out of charkra kills you. So, I would think charkra is life energy, but that disagrees with the definition.
Comment: The link is the same as Qiu's.
Answer: Chakra is created by taking the energy from ones cells and controlling it with ones will,And Yang chakra is the chakra of the body which governs Vitality(life force).Madara stated that the only thing remaing if hashirama was the life force in his cells and since he had his cells if made him stronger and he could use wood style. So life force/energy(from the cells)chakra is the same since all they do is bring it to their stomach with their minds and manipulate it
Comment: Do you have any sources to go along with that statement?

What does "life force" mean?


What created the big bang's singularity?

Question: I have heard theories for the big bang like: of another universe existing before the Big Bang, or an unstable white hole that blew up, or our universe detaching from our mother universe, or our universe coming out of a black hole. Most of these theories don't make sense, and I want to know the most-likely-to-be-true theory for how the singularity was made.
Comment: @mark-olsen made a fair attempt to answer this informatively, but I voted to close because what's "likely to be true" is purely a matter for opinion and such question are, under the rules, not allowed.
Comment: @StephenG I think the question and Mark's answer are both good and valid, but perhaps the title should be something like "What are some explanations of the origin of Big Bang?". I mean, the explanations that Mark lists are not just random thoughts, but are physically founded.
Answer: No one knows what came before the Big Bang if, indeed, anything did.  Theories include:

The Ekpyrotic universe theory where the BB was the result of the
collision of branes.
Various oscillating universe theories where
the expansion of the universe ultimately reverses into a Big Crunch
Quantum fluctuation models where a zero-net-energy universe is a
quantum fluctuation from nothing.
Various multiverse models
where the universe we see is only an infinitesimal bubble in a much,
much, much larger universe.
The Hartle-Hawking idea where
spacetime gets a bit scrambled and there is no before. (Really:
time turns into a space dimension if you go far enough back, and
there is no time.)
Stringy stuff. Very difficult math.

I've only scratched the surface -- making models like this is an avocation to some physicists, while others have discovered that it sells books and generates publicity.  All of the theories have one thing in common: There is no experimental evidence for any of them. Additionally, many of the theories have been shown to contradict currently-understood physical law. (Especially the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.) The authors generally just shrug and write another paper.
(On the religious side, speculation about what happened before Creation has been around as far back as written history, with roughly equal success. In the 4th century St. Augustine, after being pushed to answer that question retorted that before the Creation, God was creating a Hell for people who ask such questions.
 That didn't stop the speculation either.)
Comment: I'll give a plus one, even with the word "theories" written twice. **These are not theories.** They are at best hypotheses. An even more appropriate term is conjecture (aka "wild ass guess"). A scientific theory represents the pinnacle of science. Evolution, general relativity, quantum mechanics, Maxwell's electrodynamics, and Newtonian mechanics: These are all theories. They are well-developed and have scads of evidence underlying them. (I listed Maxwell's electrodynamics and Newtonian mechanics because they remain valid in restricted domains.) Please don't denigrate the word "theory".
Comment: A brave attempt to answer a very open ended opinion based question.
Comment: It's not a problem! "Wild-ass guess" is a common term among scientists and engineers to indicate something below "guess" which is below "estimate" which is below "informed estimate" which is below actual knowledge...  It's not uncommon for people to self-describe an idea they're throwing out as a WAG.
Comment: @LeoPan  -- Mean? I gave an upvote to this answer. Regarding the use of "ass", the phrase "wild ass guess" has become quite common in the US; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_wild-ass_guess.
Comment: @David Hammen I think you're being a bit too picky here. I understand "theory" to be more inclusive than you seem to -- as I understand the term, "theories" don't have to be well-supported and widely believed! (OTOH, theories *do* have to be testable, and most of these are not testable in any plausible way.) I might better have used "speculation" as a description. But "wild ass guess" really is a bit unfair, since most of the ideas are at least reasonable extrapolations of plausible physics.  In any event, I share your desire to make it clear that none of this is well-grounded science.
Comment: @David Hammen I think your being a bit unfair (and mean) to Mark Olson. For one, these theories come from physicians who have the real knowledge inside them. Also, "ass" could've been taken out.
Comment: Good is over time, and the Creation created time, too. After the end of the world (likely before some centuries, possibly in our life) there won't be time again. It won't be a timeless world, it will be an ethernal world, over space and time.
Comment: I always liked the idea that "nothing" *cannot* contain enough information to define itself. Claude Shannon for the win!  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theory
Comment: +1 for "The authors generally just shrug and write another paper".


Windows Live Mail unable to open in links in Chrome (Windows 7)

Question: I'm having a problem where whenever I open links from Windows Live Mail in Google Chrome the page loads indefinitely. It comes up with "untitled" and eventually shows a box asking if I want to kill the page or wait. I am unable to browse to other addresses through that or any other tab until I close and reopen the browser.
I have tested and WLM is able to open links in internet explorer if I change the associations, and other programs (MS Word is the example I tried) is able to open links in Chrome.
I have tried multiple different urls and all exhibit the same behavior (but work fine if copy/pasted in).
I have tried disabling all AV/Firewall functions, reinstalled Chrome, run a repair of Live Essentials, and changed program associations around a few times in case they're causing the issues.
All related software is up to date.
The whole thing is a bit of a black box, so I'm not really sure how to approach diagnosis.
Answer: If you changed the compatibility mode of WLM to Vista SP2 so minimizing the window goes to the tray instead of the task bar, then WLM opens the link in Chrome in compatiblity mode also. To fix this, set Chrome to open in compatiblity mode for Win7 or whatever your OS is.


O2 Sensor Problems

Question: So let's say for some reason that my o2 sensor is unplugged. If I jump 0.2 or 0.3 volts to the harness going back to the ecu would it work into tricking the engine to run a little less rich to save some gas? I heard it needs to fluctuate between a set point in order for the ecu to not register it as bad (95 Acura legend). So what's the verdict? Any ideas on how to make it fluxiate if I can't set a straight voltage?
Answer: This is a bad idea.
There's a very good reason why ECU's default to running on the rich side when they are unable to get a valid reading from the O2 sensor and that is because running an engine too lean can cause quite substantial amounts of damage.
If you were able to (somehow) simulate the fluctuating readings within the "acceptable" range the ECU expects there is nothing tying those fluctuations to the actual fluctuations in airflow that is going through - so your simulated readings could be telling the ECU that it was at the lower end when the actual flow was at the opposite end of the scale - this would give a (relatively) large discrepancy between fiction and reality. And that could mean very bad, very expensive things happen to the engine.
Did I mention that this is a bad idea? Don't do it!
Comment: You did mention it @motosubatsu, and it is.
Answer: It's much cheaper to fix an O2 sensor issue than the consequences of unsuccessfully trying to spoof it, and you will be unsuccessful. Don't do it.
If you run an engine too lean it can cause detonation in cylinders, which is the uneven explosion of the fuel-air mixture. Detonation sends shock waves through your cylinder, piston rings, head gasket, valves, etc and can cause failure of one or more of those components. Running lean can also cause your engine to overheat as there's no excess fuel for evaporative cooling. At the very best you will get poor performance.
An O2 sensor replacement is generally an inexpensive part and reasonable on labor, often it is something a competent home mechanic can do. A working sensor will give you the best fuel milage and performance out of the engine, and will pay for itself in fuel savings over time.

O2 Sensor Problems


When would you use "kommen", "ankommen", or "eintreffen"?

Question: I was talking with my partner about when he would be arriving home and when our guest would be arriving. I didn't know the word for "arrive" and Google translate didn't provide much enlightenment. I settled for "Wann wirst du zu Hause gekommen?" and "Sie wird um 6:00 ankommen" but I have no idea why.
Comment: I think Google translate gets it just fine... https://translate.google.de/#auto/de/when%20will%20you%20arrive%20at%20home%3F
Answer:
Wann wirst du zu Hause ankommen?

is just fine for asking someone when the person will arrive at his/her home.
If you live with your partner, you can also say

Wann wirst du nach Hause kommen?

or a bit more informal

Wann wirst du heimkommen?

to ask her when she will come home.

Wann wirst du zu Hause eintreffen?

is fine, but I would consider it a bit too formal for asking your partner.

Sie wird um 6 Uhr heimkommen.
  Sie wird um 6 Uhr nach Hause kommen.
  Sie wird um 6 Uhr (zu Hause) ankommen.
  Sie wird um 6 Uhr (zu Hause) eintreffen.

are all fine as statements (sorted from informal to formal).
Answer: Ankommen vs Eintreffen
There is a difference between ankommen and eintreffen.
The former one is much more generic, you can also "ankommen/arrive" at a certain state of mind. If the journey was stressful and long, the host will often say to the eintreffenden (arriving) guests:

"Kommt (or formal: Kommen Sie) erst mal an!"

in the sense of taking off the jacket and shoes, drop your luggage etc. before starting the dinner or other activities.
Eintreffen is (always?) the very short moment of arrive at a location/scene.
Ankommen can be used synonymously, but is also an activity on its own.

Ankommen vs Kommen
In situations like the one that you described (arriving at home at a certain time) it doesn't matter which one you use.
In other situation ankommen again means the arrival and kommen can mean the whole travel, too.
For instance, you have to cancel an appointment today:

Ich komme heute nicht mehr.  / I won't visit (you) today.

For instance, you will be arriving tomorrow instead of today, because you missed the last leg of your flight:

Ich komme heute nicht mehr an. / I won't be arriving today.
Answer: "ankommen" and "eintreffen" are quite the same in the meaning of arriving at a destination or place. So both are fine with both sentences:

Wann wirst du zu Hause ankommen? Wann wirst du zu Hause
  eintreffen? Sie wird um 6:00 Uhr ankommen. Sie wird um 6:00
  Uhr eintreffen.
Answer: Here are the meanings of the three German words in English:
kommen - come
ankommen - arrive
eintreffen - entering a house, a room. etc.
Comment: I don't agree with "eintreffen" being only for entering. People eintreffen at Unglücksorten every day


Is loosening the truss rod of a bass the correct thing to do after changing to a lighter string gauge?

Question: I bought some new strings for my bass and was informed that 40 is what you find on most basses when they come out of the factory. I restrung my bass today and the stock strings are actually thicker than the 40s I bought. I'm guessing they're 45 gauge. Having been a guitar player I know that you may need to adjust the truss rod after a change of string gauge. Am I being correct assuming that the lighter strings exert less pull which leads to a more convex bow which in turn means that a loosening of the truss rod is in order?
Answer: Chances are that you won't need to touch the truss rod. Assuming the pitch is the same as it was previously, the new strings are only 10% lighter, so the tension is down by that 10%. If the neck was fine before, it'll probably be fine now.If there is a difference then yes, the truss rod would be loosened, but only by maybe half a turn. The other thing to be aware of is the intonation which as a guitarist, you'll already be aware - the saddles may (or may not) need slight adjustment.And - you may be able to lower the action slightly more than it was with heavier strings.
Comment: Minor note for Users from the Future(tm): the amount "1/2 turn" varies depending on thread count of the truss rod.
Comment: Less pull results in a more convex bow (less relief), right? Will check intonation, thank you!
Comment: Less tension=smaller relief=straighter neck. In theory.If by more convex you mean more bent, no !
Comment: By convex I mean a bow towards the strings. That's if you got a straight neck and tighten it even more. My manual describes it this way. Turn clockwise if it's too concave and counterclockwise if it's to convex.
Comment: If the bass  has the fingerboard closer to the strings at 12th fret than at nut and bridge, you've got problems !!The truss rod will have a standard R.H.thread, so turning the nut on it, or it itself, clockwise will tighten it, and take any relief out of the neck. You've put lighter strings on, so  MAYBE the opposite needs to be done. BUT - be gentle !


What are the general categories of benefits of being part of a denomination?

Question: It seems most Protestant churches fall under one of two umbrellas: denominational or independent. What is the general rationale for a Protestant church to be part of a denomination rather than being independent? What general types of benefits are there in not being independent?
Comment: As far as the question goes, I don't have any sources, so I won't answer, but here's what I've seen anecdotally. People who prefer churches that identify with a denomination do so because they know what they're getting when they walk in the door. The church itself has a wide support network that nondenominational churches don't always have. There's also a theological belief that the Church should be as united as possible, similar to what Catholics believe.
Comment: @4castle Almost all Protestant denominations have similar rationals for their existence, so I disagree that this question is too broad. I've edited it to focus on Protestantism as the  Catholic, Orthodox, and reconstructionist movements are substantially different, but I think it's reasonable to be able to cover the denomination vs. independent issue in Protestantism in general terms within the scope of one question.
Answer: Pragmatic concerns
A denomination allows churches to cooperate and share the cost of many things which are needed to support the Gospel ministry of those churches, including: insurance, banking, and other financial services; HR and other personnel services; legal services; child safety; etc.
Doctrinal centering
With all the various theological debates among Christians, it helps to be able to identify yourself with like-minded Christians, and to be able to easily communicate the broad shape of what your church teaches to visitors and potential new members. No denomination specifies exactly everything their members believe, but there is usually enough that hearing that a church belongs to a denomination will give you a reliable idea of the core of their beliefs. For people who are needing to find a new church, it helps to be able to quickly get a good idea of what each church will be like, rather than spending months slowly uncovering each church's distinctives. Denominations don't reveal everything, but they help you form a shortlist to consider more.
But these denominational identities are not just taken from surveys of what their members believe. In a way they're aspirational. The churches of a denomination know that not all their members agree with everything, but together they believe they can put forward the best case for how they read the scriptures, and will in time strengthen the faith of their members as they grow in their understanding of the core of their doctrine. So I've labeled this section "Doctrinal centering" as I think this is more active than a mere doctrine classification and identification would be. For example, not everyone in a Baptist church will necessarily believe in Believer's Baptism, and that's okay. But the churches that join together as a Baptist denomination don't do so merely because the majority of their members are personally Baptists, but because they believe that their doctrines work to encourage aspects of faith outside of the immediate corollaries of baptism, and that drawing attention to Baptism as they do gives strength to the growth of the Gospel.
In the friendly debates within Christianity, denominations help give structure to our disagreements. As most denominations originated over major theological disagreements, when we want to revisit those debates the denominations remain relevant groupings. They help us work together to put forward the best possible arguments in the debates between camps (such as between Reformed and Arminian for example), as well as giving space for gifted theologians to debate the subtleties of each camp internally, as they consider questions which can be highly important to those within the denomination but may not even make sense to those outside.
I've seen this in regards to theological colleges. Some independent colleges value giving a balanced overview of what all Christians believe but end up not personally challenging their students as much as denominational or confessional colleges. From the perspective of formal academics this is a great strategy, but from the perspective of faith our colleges should be places which encourage the iron sharpening iron of deepening personal faith. I went to a college where I wasn't part of their denomination, but I believe my faith greatly benefited from being challenged by the more subtle arguments that wouldn't have been presented at an independent college even when I wasn't persuaded by all of them.
Mission strategy
Denominations help us plan, coordinate, and carry out our God given mission. At both the local and global level, they help us plan how to take the Gospel into every community, so that none are neglected, and so that we don't step on each other's toes unnecessarily. This is not to say that great Gospel work doesn't get carried out by non-denominational parachurch groups, and many of the largest mission agencies aren't denominational affiliated. But they help churches cooperate to run theological colleges and seminaries, to strategically plant new churches, and to share resources so that ministry work can happen in difficult unpleasant places, and not just beach towns and ski villages. Mission strategising can take place outside of denominational structures, but it's often easiest to work together when you know you're on the same page theologically.
Answer: Denominations can function as an umbrella, which affects the way money flows through the churches. When a church takes it's weekly offering, it is sent to the governing body, and then is redistributed. This is the case in Wesleyanism, verified by self. The primary benefit here is that a church that is struggling to carry on due to financial struggles can be revived. It also means that it follows a more accepted doctrine, which is important to most people in picking a church.
Comment: I think it is too simplistic, you should expound more and cite sources in conjuction with the longer explanation.
Answer: The word denomination means : a religious organization whose congregations are united in their adherence to its beliefs and practices.
- Merriam-Webster's dictionary

(1) First of all, the appeal of denominations in Protestantism (and this extends to Catholics and Orthodox) :
A denomination is really like a second family, and visibly so, in the sense that the Christian finds like-minded people who demonstrate the brotherly love Christ exhorts us to demonstrate, but since it is a denomination this brotherly love is much more poignant. For example, if one was not in a denomination and yet tried to fellowship with other Christians it would be likened to a sort of unstable relationship where one second you're both on the same page praising Jesus for having saved all of you but then the next second you end up arguing with one another on theology on the matter of how he saved you and why he saved you; thus the unity is fractured. Not only is such fractured unity detrimental to the Christians, but it is also detrimental to the missionary purpose of the Church. As the Church is to guide the lost, but if the Church itself is confused then the testimony is greatly damaged.
Denominations are visible unifiers, they are an attempt at reflecting the entire power of the Body of Christ by being invisibly but also visibly unified, and in an ideal world a 100% of Christians would belong to one single denomination.
They are also useful, and that is a given, for unified financial efforts and all sorts of unified efforts.

It finds its foundation in the Holy Bible :
St. John 17:19-23 (DRA)
19 And for them do I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified
  in truth.
20 And not for them only do I pray, but for them also who through
  their word shall believe in me;
21 That they all may be one, as thou, Father, in me, and I in thee;
  that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that thou
  hast sent me.
22 And the glory which thou hast given me, I have given to them; that
  they may be one, as we also are one:
23 I in them, and thou in me; that they may be made perfect in one:
  and the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as
  thou hast also loved me.

Keeping in mind that the union between the Father and the Son is not only invisible but also visible. As the Son does not believe a lie about the Father nor the Father a lie about the Son, they are unified not only in love but also in truth, and thus the unity must tend to visibility.
(2) Second of all, Independant Protestants, and this is a bit ambiguous.
According to wikipedia :

Independent church may refer to:

National church, especially in Anglicanism and Orthodox
  Christianity, the organisation of that denomination within a given
  nation, which acts independently of the churches of the same
  denomination in other nations.
Free church, as opposed to a state-sanctioned or established church
Non-denominational church
Independent (religion) as used in the 17th and 18th centuries,
a Congregational church (in particular)

Strictly speaking, independance would mean that there would be no effort towards visible unity but rather an exclusive focus set on the veracity of theology to the extent that it is possible without a solid hierarchy, thus no dependance. Today most of the churches that claim the title "independant" are protestant congregations that, in a desire of purification, have separated themselves from their native churches.
For instance the Independant Fundamental Baptist churches, IFB for short, detatched themselves from the Baptist Church because they deemed it necessary to avoid the increasing modernism and liberalism of the Baptist churches. So in separating themselves they wanted to achieve visible unity in conservatism and fundamentalism. Therefore they are not trully independant unless their independance is simply meant as a statement directed towards the Baptist churches, although it is true that the hierarchical structure is less significant.
However many Protestants would object to this institutionalizing of the Body of Christ, period. And those are the non-denominational Christians.
(3) Third of all there are the non-denominationals, and these are peculiar.
They can be said to be trully independant, because they have no dependance to any denomination. They usually prefer being called Christians as opposed to Protestants, even to the point of sometimes hijacking the name Christian for themselves and excluding Catholics and Orthodox which is naive to say the least. It is true that this phenomenon of hijacking the name Christian is recent, but paradoxically it does show that even non-denominational Christians feel a subconscious need for visible unity.
The pivotal advantage of non-denominationalism is that one is not enclined to believe in doubtful doctrines for the sake of unity, the rest are but consequences of this one advantage.

Although it must be noted that this practice is not historically
  founded nor encouraged by the Apostles nor the Early Church Fathers.
  As shown here :
Extract from the website shamelesspopery, article written by Joe
  Hescmeyer :
1. The Easter Dating Controversy
What happened: Most of the Church followed the Roman calendar, so that Easter always fell on a Sunday. The churches in Asia Minor,
  founded by the Apostle John, followed the Hebrew calendar, so that
  Easter always fell three days after the start of Passover. Pope St.
  Victor (189-99) ordered the Asian churches to get with the universal
  Church calendar. They initially refused, since the Apostle John,
  St. Polycarp, and others had used this calendar. Eventually, they
  switched to the Roman calendar.
What's required to understand the dispute: the debate is not over whether to use a liturgical calendar, but which liturgical calendar.
  This points to an orderly, liturgical Church in the second century.
  As I've argued before, this dispute always shows the centrality
  of the papacy extremely early on: this is a second-century pope who
  feels comfortable intervening in Asia Minor to tell the Christians
  there to stop using a liturgical calendar set up by an Apostle.

Yes the quote comes from a Catholic source, evidently, but facts are facts. The article simply reported on a historical event, not a theological opinion.
In résumé. Denominations are useful for unity, the Independant churches are denominations that try to recapture what has been lost over time with the original denomination, and non-denominationals are truly independant and answer to no one but their conscience and in so doing negate almost 100% of the hierarchical visibility with only the local congregation being structured.
Comment: I think this is a poor characterisation of both independent and non-denominational Christians and churches.
Comment: Expound please, also just a heads up for everyone before disliking it would be nice if you expound on why you **dislike** the answer. So that I may correct it.
Comment: While many independent churches are reactionary, that doesn't mean that being reactionary is what it means to be independent. Independent churches just believe that they do not need formal legal links with other churches, but can successfully self-govern. And the rejection of the label "protestant", and the mentality of refusing to call Catholics "Christian" you mention is not inherent in the meaning of nondenominational, and is surely only a minority view.
Comment: How accurately do you think what you've written applies to the Brethren churches for example. Each is run independently, but they aren't trying to "recapture what has been lost over time with the original denomination" as you say. Or maybe you'd say they should be called non-denominational instead of independent, but they're still proudly protestant!
Comment: There ya go, update.


What is the difference between Quantum teleportation and Radio waves?

Question: Quantum teleportation over 143 kilometres using active feed- forward
What is the difference between Quantum teleportation and radio waves?
Comment: What's the similarity?
Comment: Teleportation is in scients mind, since waves was learned pretty hard
Answer: Quantum teleportation requires coherent manipulation of photons (or whatever quantum particle is being used for the teleportation; I believe photons in all experiments to date), in order to transport a quantum state from the sender to the receiver.  Coherent manipulation of photons is impossible for radio frequencies with current technology. This means that with current technology, you can send classical information but not quantum information, using radio waves.
To be more specific, what quantum teleportation does is

encode an unknown quantum state into photons (or whatever medium you use),
transmit the photons,
use the photons (and maybe some classical information sent in parallel) to reconstruct the quantum state.

Classical communication cannot be used to transmit quantum states because quantum mechanics (the no-cloning theorem) says that it is impossible to measure an unknown quantum state in enough detail to reconstruct it (you can only get a very bad approximation to it).
Comment: Radio waves consist of photons, just like optical photons, but at much lower frequencies. It certainly is possible that photons at microwave frequencies could be entangled. The challenge is that at low frequencies electromagnetic energy displays more of its wave nature.
Answer: simply speaking, and If you mean what is the difference from the usability point of view (information transportation) then they are both can transmit information (classical one)...
But using radio waves, has couple disadvantages (comparing to teleportation) for example in some materials (like air, water...) radio wave speed can be less than the maximum allowed speed: speed of light , plus some materials like metals, can absorb waves and total prevent you from sending information, while quantum teleportation, can avoid those two obstacle (this still theory, till now doing that outside the vacuum is very difficult task)
Also it seems that it will be impossible to interrupt this information (Hakers will be sad) in teleportation alike radio waves, and there is many more applications...


Parsing, where can I learn about it

Question: I've been given a job of 'translating' one language into another. The source is too flexible (complex) for a simple line by line approach with regex. Where can I go to learn more about lexical analysis and parsers?
Answer: If you want to get "emotional" about the subject, pick up a copy of "The Dragon Book."  It is usually the text in a compiler design course.  It will definitely meet your need "learn more about lexical analysis and parsers" as well as a bunch of other fun stuff!
IMH(umble)O, save yourself an arm and/or leg and buy an older edition - it will fill your information desires.
Comment: Matt, there're 3 edition, so please add ISBN for the one you're suggesting, or improve your comments with all books' ISBN's and say a word or two about each.
Comment: really @Ostati? I clearly state to save yourself some money and buy and older edition... or don't save money, and buy current.
Comment: Matt, it took me a while to find out which version was which. But had your answer, which I upvoted btw, the ISBN....anyway, I go the book and started my journey. Thx.
Answer: Try ANLTR:

ANTLR, ANother Tool for Language
  Recognition, is a language tool that
  provides a framework for constructing
  recognizers, interpreters, compilers,
  and translators from grammatical
  descriptions containing actions in a
  variety of target languages.

There's a book for it also.
Answer: Niklaus Wirth's book "Compiler Construction" (available as a free PDF)
http://www.google.com/search?q=wirth+compiler+construction
Answer: I've recently been working with PLY which is an implementation of lex and yacc in Python. It's quite easy to get started with it and there are some simple examples in the documentation.
Parsing can quickly become a very technical topic and you'll find that you probably won't need to know all the details of the parsing algorithm if you're using a parser builder like PLY.
Answer: Lots of people have recommended books.  For many these are much more useful in a structured environment with assignments and due dates and so forth.  Even if not, having the material presented in a different way can help greatly.
(a) Have you considered going to a school with a decent CS curriculum?
(b) There are lots of online lectures, such as MIT's Open Courseware.  Their EE/CS section has many courses that touch on parsing, though I can't see any on parsing per se.  It's typically introduced as one of the first theory courses as language classification and automata is at the heart of much of CS theory.
Comment: +1 for mit's ocw, I use it all the time for math. For some reason, going to class on MY schedual is so much better than getting up at 6:30.
Answer: If you prefer Java based tools, the Java Compiler Compiler, JavaCC, is a nice parser/scanner.  It's config file driven, and will generate java code that you can include in your program.  I haven't used it a couple years though, so I'm not sure how the current version is.  You can find out more here: https://javacc.dev.java.net/
Answer: flex and bison are the new lex and yacc though.  The syntax for BNF is often derided for being a bit obtuse.  Some have moved to ANTLR and Ragel for this reason.
If you're not doing much translation, you may one to pull a one-off using multiline regexes with Perl or Ruby.  Writing a compatible BNF grammar for an existing language is not a task to be taken lightly.
On the other hand, it is entirely possible to leverage any given language's .l and .y files if they are available as open source.  Then, you could construct new code from an existing parse tree.
Answer: Lexing/Parsing + typecheck + code generation is a great CS exercise I would recommend it to anyone wanting a solid basis, so I'm all for the Dragon Book
Answer: Yet another textbook to consider is Programming Language Pragmatics.  I prefer it over the Dragon book, but YMMV.
If you're using Perl, yet another tool to consider is Parse::RecDescent.
If you just need to do this translation once and don't know anything about compiler technology, I would suggest that you get as far as you can with some fairly simplistic translations and then fix it up by hand.  Yes, it is a lot of work.  But it is less work than learning a complex subject and coding up the right solution for one job.  That said, you should still learn the subject, but don't let not knowing it be a roadblock to finishing your current project.
Answer: After taking (quite) a few compilers classes, I've used both The Dragon Book and C&T. I think C&T does a far better job of making compiler construction digestible. Not to take anything away from The Dragon Book, but I think C&T is a far more practical book.
Also, if you like writing in Java, I recommend using JFlex and BYACC/J for your lexing and parsing needs.
Answer: I found this site helpful:
Lex and YACC primer/HOWTO
The first time I used lex/yacc was for a relatively simple project. This tutorial was all I really needed. When I approached more complex projects later, the familiarity I had from this tutorial and a simple project allowed me to build something fancier.
Answer: Parsing Techniques - A Practical Guide
By Dick Grune and Ceriel J.H. Jacobs
This book (freely available as PDF) gives an extensive overview of different parsing techniques/algorithms. If you really want to understand the different parsing algorithms, this IMO is a better reference than the Dragon Book (as Parsing Techniques focuses entirely on parsing, while the Dragon Book covers parsing only as one - although important - part of the compiler construction process).
Comment: I've fixed the link: the actual PDF (for the first edition) can be downloaded here: http://dickgrune.com/Books/PTAPG_1st_Edition/BookBody.pdf ; a new edition and more extensive edition of the book is now also available on Amazon

Parsing, where can I learn about it


Is there a relationship between implication and supersets?

Question: The "hook" symbol for implication (⊃) is the same symbol for superset. Is this just a coincidence, or is there a relationship between these two ideas?
Comment: http://math.stackexchange.com/q/1106001
Answer: In math in general, how things came to be is less important than why they stayed that way.  (Bourbaki notwithstanding, our traditional notations persist because they either conform to intuition or shape it productively.)
So skipping the history, these two signs are related because they define related lattices.
Both symbols are replaced by the 'greater than (or equal to)' symbol '>=' in broader (or more typographically constrained) contexts.  (Before the 40's, the undecorated containment symbol more often meant simply containment and not proper containment.)
The implying statement seems to have 'more truth', and to have some part of that truth be the truth of the implied statement.  And literally "False <= True" when these are 0 and 1.  You can read <= between booleans as 'whenever' if => is 'implies'.  So "A implies B means B whenever A" gets written 'A=>B = B<=A' in various computing languages.
The superset is clearly 'larger' than its subset.  So the sign is obvious there.
But instead of a nice symbol polymorphism we have a duality relation: (A => B) = (a in A <= a in B).
This captures the natural set vs state lattice duality of properties.
The set of states of the world that a proposition is true in is larger when the set of objects it applies to is smaller.  If A implies B, any state (of a machine, universe, etc.) where A is true is a state where B is true, even though any element satisfying B is an element satisfying A.
(So dualizing twice, you can get a coincidence:
(a in A) => (a in B) ==
A <= B ==
worldsWhere(a in A) >= worldsWhere(a in B) )
Answer: In addition to jobermark's good and correct answer, I'll give a slightly more direct answer.  However, I'll preface it with some warm-up.
If your domain is U then define s(A(x)) = {x in U| A(x) is true} and likewise for s(B(x)).  Then it follows that s(~A(x)) = A complement.
It also follows that s(A(x) /\ B(x)) = s(A(x)) intersect s(B(x)).  This is the connection between the intersection and the conjunction symbols, which we already kind of knew because the intersection is defined as the set of elements in the first AND second set.
It also follows that s(A(x) \/ B(x)) = s(A(x)) union s(B(x)).
In the above we associate open formulae with sets, but the pattern seems to get broken when we transition to subsets. After all, intersection and union are operations on sets, which produce new sets.  The subset relation is not an operation, and only tells us how two sets relate.  However, in logic the conditional is an operator just like conjunction and disjunction, so there is some dis-analogy here.  But we can still say something to connect the concepts.  Namely, s(A(x)) is a subset of s(B(x)) if and only if U = s( A(x) ⊃ B(x) ).


Blackmagic Cinema Camera: recording, bitrate and bitdepth

Question: If connecting a Blackmagic Cinema Camera via Thunderbolt to a laptop, can you record directly to the harddrive of the laptop? Which bitrate does have these recordings if using ProRes HQ422 at 1920x1080 @25p? And what's the real bitdepth of the image you get in this setup?
Comment: Just real life experiences. The specs are well known.
Comment: What do you mean by *real* bitdepth? The bit depth is there in the specs of the codec - ProRes422-HQ is 10 bit. It's not something you can fudge.
Answer: The Media Express software it ships with will let you capture video directly from the Thunderbolt port at 23.98p, 24p, 25p, 29.97p, 30p frame rates (from the tech specs page)
From the Wikipedia ProRes 422 page you will get 10-bit sample depth, and High-Quality comes in at 220 Mbit/s for HD resolution at 60i
Thunderbolt can handle 10Gb/s and SATA 3 can handle 6Gb/s so they will not be a bottleneck here.
Comment: I asked for a certain setup. Do you have experience with that camera?


What are good exercises for building grip strength for judo and BJJ?

Question: I'm looking for exercises to help maintain a grip on an opponent's gi while pulling them around. There are two elements to this: strength and endurance. Meaning, I want my grip to be hard to break but also not tire out too much when I'm holding on to it.
Comment: It's not worth writing an answer to add this: Squeeze tennis balls until they deflate. It's simple, easy, and results in a wickedly strong relaxed grip. Gripping hard with intention actually makes your grip weaker.
Comment: Relevant reddit thread, espousing towel-grip pull-ups: http://www.reddit.com/r/bjj/comments/161gh2/best_purchase_for_improving_grip_strength/
Comment: As an alternative to rock climbing: practice windsurfing.
Answer: A good way to get gi / kimono specific grip training is sling your gi / kimono top around a pull up bar or a tree branch and use that to do any number of exercises, such as

Pull ups, grip the lapels and hoist yourself up
Grab lapels and pull yourself up
Grab lapels and bring your lower body up and wrap your legs around the gi in triangle position
Just hang as long as you can

There are plenty more, use your imagination, but using the gi top is a good way to condition your grip and fingers to get that killer death grip.
Comment: This, use your gi over a pull up bar.  Also go jogging with bricks (literally) in your hands.  Youll be amazed at the results.
Comment: Is it not dangerous for the back, knees or shoulders to jogging with weight in the hand?
Comment: @user201 is right, but maybe start with a smaller one. The main emphasis is on holding something heavy and rough while keeping the palm open as much as possible. I started with huge coke bottles filled with sand then finally ended up with big rough bricks.
Comment: Some companies sell strips made of gi-material for exactly this. They might be easier to use (depending on what specific exercises you want to do) than trying to wrap a gi jacket around your equipment (e.g. Adidas' ["The Band"](https://www.combat-sports.net/en/catalog-judo/#book/12)).
Answer: Take a newspaper (remember them?) and page by page, crumple the paged from flat paper to the tightest ball you can make with one hand.
Answer: We did an exercise at my first Judo club that seemed to help with grip. We would hold our arms out directly in front of us and then alternate between making a grip and having our hands as open as possible. Basically, like gripping thin air, but repeatedly. A very simple exercise, but it seemed to help.
How many times we repeated was a measure of how many were attending the session that evening, because we'd stand in a circle, facing in, and everyone would do the exercise together, but someone would count to ten and then the next person would count to ten and so forth until we'd been around the circle at least once; twice if we had a low turnout.
Answer: Aside from the strength training for grips, there's also certain technique involved in grips. For example, when you hold the right arm sleeve of your opponent, make sure you grab the part right under his elbow, and grab it tight, so he is unable to move his arm properly. At the same time it's hard for him to release his harm since you can control his arm movement.
When you grab the neck part, make sure you grab the harder edge. Your fingers grab the outer side so that the soft part gets push under the hard part. The thumb goes inside and connects with your other fingers.
Technique is really important with everything you do in Judo. Even with grips.
Answer: There are a couple of things that you can do to help.
Go hang from something
Basically either go outside and find something overhead or get a pullup bar and hang from it. You can make a progression out of this, going from a pullup bar to one-hand on a pullup bar to hanging from a rope. The basic idea is that if you want to improve your grip strength, grip something!
It also tends to be pretty easy to find things to hang from, making it something you can do throughout the day if your environment is conducive to it.
If you are looking for a program, Convict Conditioning 2 has one that incorporates progressively more difficult variations of this and also recommends fingertip pushups.  My standard disclaimer on CC applies: it tends to have great progressions, but ignore the marketing material.
Learn Massage (and other skills)
Trigger point massage is one of the things that has helped my overall grip strength a great deal.  I started with Clair & Amber Davies's The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook, but really many if not most systems of massage will help tremendously here.
Here the big thing is to learn to work with your fingers, not your thumbs, but it does help grip strength if you practice regularly.  Learning has the added benefit that you can treat a wide variety of muscular issues on yourself.
There are also other sports that strongly emphasize grip strength and it may helps to get a foundation in.  I don't personally practice it, but an example here might be rock climbing.
Weapons Training
Another thing I've had very good luck with is weapons training.  Working with swords and short sticks (and probably any other weapon that you grip and has some mass), and particularly against a target, is a great way to build up hand strength, and is particularly useful for the "endurance" part.
The added advantage here is that it can usually be incorporated into your martial arts practice if your art uses weapons.
Comment: In rock climbing some guy do (one) fingers pull-up as workout. I still wonder if it is dangerous for the fingers.
Answer: There are a few things you can do to improve grip strength.  Like everything else,  sport specific drills are best,  training the closest to the actual activity your trying to improve.
on that note:

Like others have mentioned, throw a gi over a bar and do pull ups with it.
My favourite, because it works all sorts of different parts of your upper body, and can be incorporated into warmups.  with a partner, one person takes off their belt, and goes down the mat far enough that the belt is stretched out.  the other partner lays on their back, and "climbs" up the belt.   to make it more interesting, hold your legs straight, about 6" off the mat.    We used to do this drill down the full length of the dojo.  once on our back, once on our stomach, and once on each side.   Both partners will get a good hand workout, and the climbing/pulling partner will get a good overall upper body workout.
get a fairly firm stress ball, and play with it, all the time.   squeeze it with your full hand,  one finger at a time, a couple fingers.  If you can't find a firm enough stress ball that it is challenging, use a tennis ball like stslavik mentioned.
Do more grip fighting, nothing will improve your grip strength and technique more then just practicing gripping.
Put a gi on the ground in the middle,  one partner on each side,  lying on their stomach.   the goal is to get the gi away from your partner, or pull them to the other side.    We did this in class the other day, it was fun,  challenging, and sure made the forearms burn, which is a good sign ;)
Answer: Your goal to increase your grip strength should focus on exercising your forearm muscles. There are several strength exercises and tools you can use to work out the different muscles in your your forearms.
Tennis Ball or Hand Grip
As @stslavik stated in his comment, you can grab a tennis ball and squeeze it to your heart's content. When squeezing the tennis ball, also hold the squeeze for a few seconds before releasing. As you improve, you can increase the number of repetitions you do. Additionally you can buy hand grip tools. These aren't terribly expensive things, but keep in mind you might reach an upper limit to the amount of strength training you can do with them once you reach a certain level.
Wrist Curls and Reverse Wrist Curls
A single barbell or a dumbbell in each hand will can suffice for this. You can do this while sitting and resting your arms on your legs. Anything that will support the weight of your forearms will work really.
Hold the barbell or dumbbell with your palms facing up and just roll your wrist towards you without lifting your arm and then release back down to a relaxed position. The reverse wrist curl is the same except your palms are facing down, and you roll your wrists backwards towards you. Here are pictures of what these two exercises look like:

You could also perform the wrist curls with your arm outstretched, but depending on what your level of ability is, you might end up working to keep your arms out more than working on your wrists. If weights aren't an option for you, consider using a resistance band instead (stand on one end and pull the other end up with your wrist).
Make Your Own Wrist Roller
A simple thing you can do is buy a plate or dumbbell, tie a rope through or around it and tie the other end to a bar or rod. Hold your hands out in front of you, and begin twisting the rod so that the rope wraps around the rod as the weight goes up. When the weight reaches the top, begin untwisting and let the weight go back to the ground. You can also choose to use different weights with it if you so desire. Here's an example of what it looks like from BodyBuilding.com:

That's the basic premise of one. If you don't have plate or barbell, you can improvise with using other materials like a gallon of water or a bag of rocks. You don't need a whole lot of weight to feel it as you curl the rope up or down. A broomstick would work just fine for holding onto as you train.
Buy a Wrist Roller
A SportGrips SideWinder is a simple device that is an extremely durable, small, and portable, and has adjustable tension which is controlled by a knob at the top. I wrote a blog post about this on the Fitness & Nutrition blog. It's simple and easy to use - adjust the tension, grab, and twist. It definitely helped me increase my grip strength over the last few months. The Sierra Mega Wrist Roller is also a similar product you can use. The only downside to these type of products are the cost if money is a concern, but you get what you pay for.
Comment: Heavy deadlifts are another way to build grip strength, as well as improve your knockout resistance.
Comment: +1 for the wrist roller.  I'd add carrying heavy bags just using the 2 middle fingers and switching to just 1 finger now and again
Comment: -1 buying a wrist roller before a barbell is morally wrong.
Answer: Get Strong First
If you're weak, there's no point in trying to get a strong grip. You're too weak for it to matter. Instead, you should first work on getting your whole body strong, and then--only then!--focus on developing your grip. Mark Rippetoe has some words for people lacking general strength who want to increase strength in one particular area. From Jim Wendler's blog:

Strength is the most general adaptation. It is acquired most effectively through exercises that produce the most force against external resistance, and as such is always best trained with five or six basic exercises. The same exercises that are correct for weak football players and lifters are correct for weak volleyball and baseball players, because the best way to get strong will always be the same. Strength is NOT specific, and cannot effectively be acquired through exercises that mimic sports-specific movements, because these movements lack the potential to produce as much force as general barbell exercises, and therefore lack the capacity to make weak athletes as strong as barbell training.

In other words, grip-specific training is barking up the wrong tree. Unless the student is already quite strong, the best way to develop grip strength is to work on general strength. Whole-body training will improve your grip strength faster than forearm-specific work, while giving you health benefits and strength for other movements as well.
General Training with a Focus on Grip
Keeping that in mind, what is the best way to tailor your general strength training to grip strength?

The deadlift should be your primary exercise. After an initial period of a few weeks doing higher-rep sets to get your form down, your priority should be warming up to one near-maximal set of three to five reps. Avoid the mixed grip and even the hook grip for as long as possible in your training, and once you start using them, keep doing your warm-ups without them.
Pull-ups with a gi are king. They train grip strength (particularly on the downward phase) as well as grip strength endurance when done for 10+ reps. Best of all? You'll develop enormous upper-body strength that's applicable in grappling far beyond just gripping. You can supplement this training with climbing a rope and finishing your pull-up sets with holds at the top and bottom. If pull-ups are hard for you, negatives are very useful.
Do at least a little of the counter movements to these exercises, to prevent imbalances. Dips and barbell front squats would be fine choices.

Once you can perform fifteen full-range-of-motion, no-kip gi-grip pull-ups, plus a double bodyweight deadlift, the student can add the awesome grip-specific training mentioned by others. Fat grips, oversize bars, wrist rollers, curls and other specialized training are very productive...once someone is strong enough everywhere else for it to matter.
Other approaches are of course possible: a kettlebell-centric program with many swings and clean-and-presses would appropriately develop whole-body strength while also working the grip.
Answer: We are taught to practise in bjj to use a gi (uniform) you can hang it on something strong and practise pulling up if you do not have a gi to use for this excercise you can use a belt a martial art belt if possible.
It helps to work your arms and you will be able to hold on with that grip when the opponent is resisting or moving.
Answer: i've always liked getting a bucket or small garbage can and filling it full of uncooked rice. you can do what we call rice grabs by jamming your fist into the rice while grabbing and releasing handfuls of rice. cheap and effective.
Answer: The grips are much more technique that people think. To break grips you need a technique. Also to keep you grip you need a technique as well.
It is helpful training some weights. Exercices that put pressure in your fingers and develop your forearm.  As a sample:

Dead lift
Sumo dead lift
Rope climbing
Hammering

The grip will be break when your opponent was able to put your arm straight or hold your arm and move himself putting a lot of pressure just in your fingers. If when my opponent try break my grip I follow my opponent with a loose arm my opponent will not able to break my grip. Because your arm is loose and you following your opponent.
When you begin the BJJ or Judo you try hold your opponent with your arm. Many guys feel pain at the forearm because they use too much this muscles. If you move with your opponent. If you have a relaxed arms you will put less pressure on your fingers.
The most efficient technique to have a really good grip is training BJJ/Judo hard. Nothing is more important than practices the real situation.
This video explain a little about how to avoid the strength on your fingers.
https://youtu.be/lHiHFRrTBqM
Answer: Join a bouldering/rock climbing gym, climb for 1-2 hours once a week. No matter how strong you think your grip is, it will be humbled in 2 hours of bouldering.
The infinite variations of holds and grip load directions will create impenetrable GI holds. There's also tons of isolated grip training techniques and most gyms have a separate training area just for grip strength.
I had been bouldering for 3 months when my brother invited me to try jiu jitsu. No one could break my grip, even much heavier 100kg guys.
Comment: It's people like you why people like Michael Jordan takes it personal :)
Answer: Put a 3 inch vertical handle on five gallon bucket. Each day fill it with a bowl of water and lift with fingers from floor to chest for 15 minutes with each hand. In three months your hands will be three times stronger. After using water, repeat the process with sand, and then with lead. If you can lift a full bucket of lead, you can actually control any man or beast with just hand strength. It's called dragon's claw.
Comment: What do you mean by three times stronger? How are you qualifying this measurement?
Answer: I have used a Bulgarian Bag for grip strength, and I recommend it. The different handles allow you to perform a variety of exercises, and there are many, many instructional videos on how to use the bags (for grips as well as other exercises). We keep a few at our academy for conditioning/competition training circuits.
Answer: There's a lot of great information in the above posts.  For gi specific training, using a gi on a chin up bar as stated above is a great choice, but from my experience, the excess gi fabric can get in the way.
There are a couple of products out there which do the same thing but you don't have to worry about the material.  Origin's orangahang http://originmaine.com/orangahang-pro-bjj-grip-trainer-made-in-maine-usa/ is basically the equivalent of a pearl weave gi sleeve with an opening at the bottom to simulate the end of a sleeve and a cut down one side to simulate the collar.  A similar product is Jits grips.  The biggest difference is that jits grips doesn't simulate the collar opening.
Both of these have loops on the end that can be attached to a chin up bar or weight machine so they can really be used anywhere.
I would also suggest grip pro trainers. They look like little rubber donuts that have different levels of resistance that you can just squeeze.  I've also started squeezing a lacross ball with each hand.  You could also use a racket ball or tennis ball.  After rounds, your hands feel tired, but it's seemed to help.
I would definitely suggest using different techniques to improve your grip.  Something like the orangahang is great, but you can't really do anything with it unless you have something to attach it to whereas the grip pro trainers are great for using while you're watching tv at night or sitting at work.
I wasn't able to post links for the grip pro trainer or jits grips, but a quick google search will bring them right up.
Answer: I have never thought of using one for BJJ grip strength before today, but a finger strengthener could do the trick. They are sold mainly for the purposes of strengthening your fingers in order to play an instrument better, but they could also be used to practice better grips. They are relatively cheap($2-6), and definitely make your fingers stronger. Mine has worked for me for the past two-and-a-half years, and now my fingers are at least 75% stronger than they were previously.


How do I create partitions from unused disk space?

Question: I am attempting to create a 4GB partition on my Ubuntu boot partition. Under Gparted it says I have 26.19gb of unused space, how do I create a 4gb partition from this? The resize option is greyed out, and I'm worried if I unmount it that I won't have an OS.
Answer: You will have to resize the partition in order to create a new one, but because your system uses that partition, you can't resize it while you are booted into your system.
Make a Live USB/DVD (Like the one that you used to install Ubuntu), and boot onto that. Once you are on the live system, you can make changes to your partitions.
There is no safe way to resize your partition while you are booted into the system.


QA/testing training and practice

Question: As a beginner, what is the best way to practice software testing/QA skills? I've been reading books (Kaner, Myers, Bach) and reading blogs but none of those gave me practical preparation for what I wanted to do, so I am asking you. How do I get my hands dirty with software testing?
Answer: There will be longer and doubtless more complete answers but I think that if you understand the core principles of testing, you'll be fine.

Know what the product is supposed to do.  Determine if it does it.
What is the product supposed to achieve.  Does it achieve it?

Those are the Golden Rules.  Everything else can be thrown away apart from those.  Question two is actually the most important but you can usually only answer it after evaluating question one.
You want to get to grips with testing?  Well, you're lucky - there are opportunities to practice everywhere.  Think of the next thing you're going to do and break it down using the two simple rules above.  Assume that you're going to want to post a reply to this message...
"Know what the product is supposed to do."

The web site should allow you to post a message
Your comment should appear as a follow up to mine

So you start:

Can I use a reply function?
Does it capture the text I enter?
Is it posted as a follow up item?
Is the complete message posted?
Is it posted as it was typed?

"What is the product supposed to achieve.  Does it achieve it?"

When you've finished, has the tool allowed you to reply to me?

..and that's it.  Regardless of the various methods for determining what should do what and ways of handling issues when it doesn't, the core approach never, ever changes.  When it doubt, fall back on those questions and you won't go far wrong.
Comment: Power of simplicity. Good answer to a very broad question.
Answer: I think you could follow all the answer you can see on your post. I will also recommend you that start by learning a programming language (which you feel more confortable) and then start using Selenium (which is easy to start). Once you control Selenium, start using Jenkins along with your test developed on Selenium and upload all of them into a git repository (that way you can learn how to work with a code repository and how to clone, commit, push and pull your changes.
Then start using a static code quality platform sush as sonar and integrate it on your test and Jenkins, and improve your programming skills.
Once you have your CI structure working along with your Selenium Test and sonar, start with others browsers (Chrome, IE, Safari...) and check the way to choose one of them on your project and also the O.S. you wanted to launch your test. Once you have all of this set and running, you can start running test on pararell.
After all of this, you may feel ready to move on, so this is when you can start using Appium for Mobile testing. Appium has the same way of work than Selenium and the beginning will be kind of similar (except that you need to controll a way more things, such as emulators, version of the O.S, two platform...). You can use a simple app to start such as (my contribution):
Android Simple Project for testing: https://github.com/estefafdez/AndroidBaristaProject
iOS Simple Project for testing: https://github.com/estefafdez/iOSTestApp
Both of them are simple apps that I uploaded to help you understand and test using Appium.
Once you have Appium set, start using sonar, Jenkins, etc and improve your scripting skills because you can also learn how to integrate Docker and Kubernetes on your CI solution.
I hope my roadmap works for you! :)
Answer: Do one of these things to get your hands dirty:

Install the firefox extension for the seleniumIDE https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/selenium-ide/ and starting writing test cases right now.  Automate a google search for cars to get started.  Click on the first result.  continue.
Use GhostInspector https://ghostinspector.com/ (free version) to write some simple test cases that exercise some web pages.
Pick a language and test frameworks, for example Ruby, RSpec and Capybara, look for some basic examples and write a simple test case, e.g. a google search. Requires basic programming knowledge.

The main knowledge you will need to focus on is:

manipulating an editor
identifying web page elements uniquely
thinking about how a user will do a task
using browser inspector tools

The real programming stuff comes after you are comfortable (have practical experience) in all that.
Answer: It might help if you narrowed your focus. Learning how to test websites is useful if you end up testing websites, but not so much if you are testing embedded systems.
The easiest kind of testing is to compare the system under test to the specification.
It is much more difficult to find ambiguities in the spec itself.
I think it would be helpful to troll a bug database (like for an open source project) and see the difference in the quality of the bugs. You can get a sense of what information is actionable and what is not. If a developer asks the reporter for more information, then that is the type of information that would have been helpful in the original bug.
Answer: The responses so far cover testing an application but not the processes that should be followed by the testers which is the QA part you are asking about. The best way to understand QA is to start reading up on different types of methodologies out there (current keyword for processes would be Agile) and understanding how those processes fit around the types of testing you would be implementing.
Comment: For person with no idea what it does mean to test, reading books is 100% waste of time. Start writing code, find bugs, fix them, test again. Now you have idea what QA is. Only then it makes sense to read the books.
Answer: If you want to learn and work on real projects at the same time, Take a look at utest, you learn and get paid at the same time
Starting with utest
Navigate to https://www.utest.com/getting-started
Create a full tester account and go through the beginner instructions and course material. Especially the Code of Conduct and Non-Disclosure Agreement
Never reveal at any point, including to other testers, the company you are working on a product for, never reveal the product itself or information that would lead someone to identify the particular product you are working on. I can tell you for example that I work for utest, and I have worked on mobile entertainment apps before, but I cannot reveal the name of the companies, nor the specific app, including getting into specifics that would allow you to determine exactly which app I have worked on based on our conversation.
There are many courses freely available to get your started as well as specific course tracks you can take.
All the different types of testing are grouped into the following categories:

Functional
Usability
Load & Performance
Localization
Security
Automation

For each category, you get rated on your performance over time, based on the quality of your work, the level of your participation, your standing against other testers in the same areas of testing, and a multitude of other factors.
You may start off slow, only getting offers for smaller testing cycles. This is fine though, honestly you get from it what you put into it. Some people I know moved up very quickly.
You start off in each area as "Unrated", but as you complete more cycles and work on more projects, the better you do, the faster you will increase your tester rating. Eventually you will progress from unrated to:

Rated
Proven
Bronze
Silver
Gold

Bronze, Silver and Gold are when you get actual badges. With each badge you obtain, you will begin to notice that you will receive invites more often, the opportunity to work on larger projects with larger clients, and with the potential for larger pay (each badge comes with certain bonuses). Also, Never discuss payment amounts either as part of the NDA.
Once you have completed the basic readings and some recorded webinars (some live) on how to report a bug, what makes a good bug, what is the difference between a bug and what you "think" should be a feature, when and when NOT to dispute bug rejections, and other useful information, the next step is taking the new tester 101 quiz.
If you have read and understand the materials, this is very easy to pass and just demonstrates your understanding of the basics on how the platform works and what is expected of you as a tester (especially understanding the Code of Conduct and Non-Disclosure clauses). The company is extremely professional and expects all of its testers to be as well.
After you have passed the 101 test, you would be ready to start getting invites for paid test cycles. Before you even do that, you might get an invite to the Sandbox test.  This is a real, unpaid testing scenario that allows you to get your feet wet with actual testing, and also allows the company to see if you have the qualities for a good tester (Attention to detail, reading and following testing instructions to the letter, and other qualities described in the how to be a good tester material). It also gives you the opportunity to see if software testing is for you.
If you get invited to the Sandbox, DO NOT decline under any circumstances.  It will reflect poorly on you, but also, passing the sandbox test places you higher up on the list among other new testers to start getting paid invites.

The uTest Community and Social Aspects

Although you are independent and work on testing on your own, there
is a robust social network as well. This includes forums, testing
tool reviews, Additional courses, a public profile you can use as a
resume of your accomplishments.
You can, and are encouraged to follow other testers profiles.
You can write your own articles and post them to help other testers
out. For example, an article on some good workflows that you have
discovered that saves you a lot of time and may be of help to new
testers.
You are required to introduce yourself in the forums so people get to
know you, and are given social rewards the more active you are in the
community (not monetary, but respect within the community itself).
Testers tend to be very friendly and willing to help out new testers
any way they can (but at the same time you are expected to look at
existing material on your own for answers).  Nothing in life is just
handed to you all the time, you should work for your knowledge, but
never be afraid to ask questions if you have trouble finding what you
are looking for.  I am sure if it is not already posted someplace,
other testers have the same questions you do.

I am certain that you will find what you are looking for by way of practical application while learning by signing up for uTest, plus you get paid jobs while learning.  Also, for a lot of projects, you get to work and play with new and exciting technology for free and get paid to do it. That alone is big perk.
I hope this helps you in your endeavors as well as any other new testers looking to get their feet wet in the field. Good luck to you.
Comment: I had a lot more details explaining the site, processes, advantages, etc..., but for some reason It kept getting flagged as "looks like spam" (with no further explanation as to why). I had to cut out most of the material I wrote up.  Is you want me to elaborate further, just ask in the comments section. Very Frustrating.
Comment: I actually registered about a week ago, read a lot of material that was on the site and found it rather interesting. Right now I'm scheduled for a paid sandbox session but i have no experience whatsoever and it's making me kinda nervous
Comment: Do NOT worry at all.  I felt the same way.  Just pay attention to detail, read the scope carefully and familiarize yourself with capturing logs, screen recording, and screenshots. you can look me up and add me as a follower, if you send me a PM I can always assist if available (as long as you don't break code or NDA).  I just started about 10-11 months ago.  I currently have 10 projects I am working on simultaneously as I write this, and that is a typical week for me. Read articles and tool reviews.  Suggest purchasing SnagIt from Techsmith instead of using free Jing.  Much better!!!
Comment: So any progress with utest? Get to complete your sandbox yet?
Comment: I managed to get in top 30% of my sandbox class! I'm currently working on my first paid project and couldn't feel any better! :D
Comment: Glad to hear it! Best of luck. I go by same username on there Ouroboros. Feel free to follow me on the platform. Send me a quick message so know who you are, got over 100+ followers, only know like 2 of them, one is my cousin. Lol  so I'll make a note. Be
Answer: You could participate in Weekend Testing http://weekendtesting.com/
The explicit purpose of Weekend Testing is to provide a venue for test professionals to hone their skills and learn from each other!

QA/testing training and practice


an off stage question

Question: Greetings:
Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Rebekah Kanduth and I work at the Las Vegas Academy of International Studies, Performing and Visual Arts. I know this is out of the blue, but I was wondering if you or any members of this forum would like to respond to a statement made to one of my stage management students that stage managers are not artists but rather only service persons who have no artistic value in the mounting of and calling of a show. The argument was that stage managers are told what to do and therefore have no artistic contributions to productions. They were told that the stage manager is not an artist and should not ever think of themselves as such. I would like to present them with a few different views on this subject and am hoping that you or some individuals in your organization may be able to assist me in responding to them. Thank you in advance for your time.
Rebekah Kanduth
email@example.com
Answer: Those kinds of statements make my blood boil a little. Whether a position is "artistic" or not can be argued back and forth. Is an actor less artistic because they read a script someone else has written, and the director tells them what to do? Is the director less artistic because they're just telling others what to do? Is the playwright less artistic because they're not dictating the way the play is performed?
IMHO, film and performing arts are collaborative art forms, where those kinds of condescending attitudes are immature and petty, not to mention destructive. In film, (and in my experience) positions like sound design or editing are labeled "crafts", rather than "arts". I don't think these distinctions matter at all because of the collaborative nature of the artform. You can tell a stage manager they're not part of the creative process all you want, but try running a play without one. It will fall apart like papier mache sculpture in the rain.
Interestingly, when you work with someone who's a master of their art (or craft?), they always seem to pay the appropriate respect to everyone they work with.
Answer: Rebekah, if you've ever worked through tech week with a really excellent stage manager to get timings right across all design disciplines, to find the groove where the SM reacts in real time to the actors' cues, and gives his/her cues to the ops just when they need to happen in order to make the show really soar, then you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the SM's job is as much a performance as the actors', and the SM is absolutely one of the artists on the show.
Answer: Truly, it depends on your definition of "artistic."
I've worked professionally both as a stage manager and a designer, so I have seen both sides of this situation.
It is not the stage manager's place to exert creative influence over a production.  Rather, it is their primary duty to make sure that the director and designer's concepts are executed effectively and consistently.  With that in mind, it can be argued that the stage manager does not make an artistic contribution to the show.  In an educational environment, it could be important to make that distinction clear in order to reinforce to the student stage managers that they should not make changes to the creative content of the show without the directive or at least the approval of the director and designers involved.
That distinction should not, however, serve to limit the importance of the SM's contribution to the show.  It is indeed a performance in-and-of itself.  A well-called show, where the cueing is tight, is a beauty to behold.  Conversely, a poor stage manager can sink an otherwise well designed and implemented production.  A keen sense of flow and timing is key, as is a cool head and a clear mind.  The SM is the linchpin of the production; the pivot about which the story spins.
The SM's role is not to "create art" but to "facilitate art."  That does not make them any less creative a person, or their contributions any less valuable.  Even though we say that there is an "art" to good tight cueing, and that there is an "art" to managing the varying temperaments of designers, directors, and actors; in truth those are highly developed skills.
Answer: I have very limited stage experience, but I can definitely relate this to the film field. As I've begun working more and more in film, and meeting more people in the industry, I find myself being called a "technical" a lot. Same with visual fx people.
I guess what bothers me is that when they say that, it puts us on par, in my mind, with lab techs and engineers - bringing to mind connotations of a person that operates equipment and contributes nothing creatively.
Yet meanwhile, a producer (who very well could have been the one that only secured craft services) is considered a creative? And, correct me if I'm wrong here, but wouldn't they be receiving residuals?
That point I'm not certain of. But it has occurred to me that some actors I know had small parts on an episode or two of a popular series - and they occasionally receive checks in the mail. Good on them, of course, but they're receiving that stuff for one day's work. I'm not against being paid, but when you consider that the people in post and the "technicals" in production probably spent wayyy more hours...seems kind of backwards.

an off stage question