Milling wide lumber to square

Question: I recently obtained some old (50 to 75 years old) rough sawn hardwood structural framing members 2x8 and 2x10 by various lengths.  The wood is well acclimated to my shop but has some warping which requires treatment on my jointer and thickness planer.  The problem is that my jointer bed is 6" wide.  Is there an effective process for using the jointer on these wider boards?
Comment: I am jealous of your wood acquisition. Where did the wood come from? What are you going to do with it?
Comment: With a choice piece of wood that is warped a better option to planing it is to try to straighten it. You may not be able to straighten it perfectly, but any degree of straightening is a big plus. You can straighten it by covering it up with plastic and boiling steam into the tent for 24 hours. Then placing it on horse and weighting it with bricks to bend it back straight as it dries. Inspect it every day as it dries and make adjustments as necessary. Make sure there is lots of dry air on all sides (don't lay it on a concrete floor or anything like that).
Comment: I was walking the dog in our neighborhood one day and it was stacked and bundled for collection.  I came right back with the car and loaded it up.  It was clearly used for framing in a home. It has some nail holes and is common grade material, but I have used it for a number of shop related edge trim, fences, jigs, and the like.
Comment: I have found other salvaged wood from time to time, such as when someone demolished a early 1900's bungalow house to make way for a new library.  Plenty of oak baseboards and trim have gone into many applications in my shop and for odds and ends in projects.  I have saved a few extraordinary pieces 1" x 16" x 12'-0" but have no idea what I will use them for.
Comment: Many years ago, my in-laws had an old barn torn down. The ridge pole was, I believe, 8"x8"x52'. The demo company cut it up into little chunks to get it down because it was easier to handle that way. _sob..._
Answer: See past comments re using a sled to stabilize the piece so a planer can be used as a wide jointer. e.g.This one
If you don't want to build a sled, another approach is gluing reasonably straight "rails" to each edge of the board (not the ends) to hold it in a consistent position. The tops of the rails will be planed away as you flatten the board, but if there's no hardware present that's harmless. Hot glue has the advantage of being easy to remove when you're done, though more aggressive glues could be cut free.
Or consider hand-planing to flatten.
Note that if you plan to cut shorter lengths, doing so before jointing may let you retain more wood since the wind will be less per board.
Comment: @Matt, older terminology, a board "in wind" is a warped board. [This is wind as in *to wind up a clock*, not as in *the wind from the east was very cold*.]
Comment: Sorry -- yes, as I'm using it here "wind" is a synonym for "twist"
Comment: _since the wind will be less per board_ did you mean _warp_?
Comment: I was thinking "wind" = "bowed" as in "The wind had the mainsail fully bowed out.", but you way works, too, @Graphus :)
Answer: Bring in some other tools
This would seem blasphemy to do to wood of this age but you could consider cutting the boards down their length and laminating them once you make them square. If you are already cutting them square then the natural character that this wood would have would be removed anyway.
Table saw and band saw come to mind. They should be able to handle the wood size. depending on how significant the warp is you would need to use sled jigs, featherboards, clamps etc. to ensure the wood does not move during the cutting.
Reduce waste
You don't necessarily need to do so down the middle but perhaps somewhere to complement the warp so that the two boards individually become flatter. Advantage here is that you would reduce the overall wood that needs to be removed in order to get the boards square. This advice is more geared towards cupping in boards when cutting along the length. If you have other forms of warp then you might need to cut across the width. Goal is the same regardless: Try to get straighter individual boards. See a good image on warp: How to straighten a warped board
Less wear on the tools and yourself and hopefully more yield when you are dealing with straighter wood.
Then you should be able to put them through the jointer and planner for squaring. Then, once the boards are square and cleaned up, you could laminate them back together again. Assuming the project calls for it.
Comment: The warp is not severe and mostly in cross section rather than curl or twist over the length.  I was split the width by resawing to approx 3/4" thick pieces. and use one piece as a high router fence, but may switch to plywood instead and cut these up for other uses under 6".  Still the idea of using the jointer for wider boards bears exploration for my shop.
Comment: @Ashlar My answer then might be more geared towards the general public then. If you have a 6" jointer I would run wider boards because of safety and you would have to do more than one pass anyway which might not be even.. which would be disappointing since that is what the tool is for. Perhaps there is a jig but I don't think so.
Answer: Keshlam's answer got my mental juices going and I think I have an idea that may be a bit simpler than building a sled assembly.  If the jointer blade guard is removed, the wider board can run through the jointer to level the inner 6" of the wide board.  After it is leveled, the entire board can be passed through the thickness planer using 6" wide piece of squared lumber or plywood as a shim.  From there the top can be planed level and parallel to the jointed portion and finally the unjointed portion of the first face can be planed as well.
As the comments point out, my initial thoughts had not yet considered safety adequately.   A little more investigation brought attention to the European style guards which fully cover the cutter blades although they still mount to the bed opposite the fence and appear to limit the width of the board passing. The general design of these guards, however, look like they will work better than the american spring-loaded guards.  Another alternative is to make a shop made guard that mounts to the fence and cantilevers over the cutting blades.  I am considering making a test model to see how well it might work in operation.
Comment: If you don't want to build a sled, another approach is gluing reasonably straight "rails" to each edge of the board (not the ends) to hold it at a condistent position. The tops of the rails will be planed away as you flatten the board,  but if there's no hardware present that's harmless. Hot glue has the advantage of being easy to remove when you're done.
Comment: I don't think I'd mess with a jointer that doesn't have a blade guard installed. Here's a [list of accidents and close calls (PDF)](http://www.woodworking.org/AccidentSurvey/Jointer.pdf).
Comment: Second the safety issue pointed out by Doresoom here. Better ways _never_ involve compromising safety.
Comment: Thanks for the warning, although a guard mounted to the fence might work.
Comment: @Ashlar, looks like you have some good ideas in your edit to increase the safety of your jointer use. Great improvement upon the answer!
Comment: @keshlam. The glue idea might work.  I have been uncomfortable with the sled ideas with a concern that the wood could shift in the sled or had to be screwed into place to hold it. Hot glue would not be destructive.
Comment: The wood shouldn't havd to be screwed into a sled; take a look at the multiple designs therefor on the web from fancy-adjustable to just-shove-some-wedges-under-it.. But the rail approach has also gotten coverage in woodworking magazines. Rails won't work on a live-edge board, of course, or one which is otherwise hard to affix the rails to; for those you'reback to the other solutions.
Answer: Use the correct tool for the job.
When boards are too wide for your jointer or planer and you do not want to cut it up just to re-laminate it back together, use a hand plane!
The ones you can get for $20-30ish from Lowes aren't great but will work just fine after you sharpen the blade and possibly flatten the sole(bottom).

Use a flat piece of granite or marble tile (less than $10) with some wet/dry sandpaper to sharpen the blade and flatten the sole. Setup the blade w/ the bevel down and try it out. For very little outlay, you'll be able to flatten stock pretty reliably and without destroying the wood to just then put it back together.
Comment: +1 for handtools, but just using a 4 for this type of thing is a hard suggestion. It's tough for someone who doesn't use handtools commonly anyway and you'd ideally want a selection of planes for the amount of work involved. Given the choice I'd want a scrub plane or a jack with a good radius on the iron, a jointer for further flattening and a smoother.
Comment: I disagree. For 'efficient' hand tool work, you'll want a range of planes available but its not necessary in the slightest... Yes, you might have some trouble figuring it out but nothing 30 or so minutes of fiddling won't sort out. Yes it is more 'work' than just putting it through a machine, but you can treat the wood as is without destroying it to put it back together. Yes, you might get some tracks if you go too deep but that can be corrected if planned for. If you ask some ol' time [traditional masters](https://paulsellers.com/2013/07/15446/), some would say longer planes are unneccesary
Comment: I think you need to bear more firmly in mind these are lengths of rough-sawn hardwood, 8 and 10 inches wide, with some warp. I doubt there's a single woodworking guide out there that would actively recommend doing this kind of thing *with just a smoother*. This sort of task is precisely what a range of planes is made for, While I'd say doing it only with a 4 is possible (really tough with just the one iron) I think only with experience. For the complete novice I'd say it's more likely to lead to frustration and ultimate failure than success, given the difficulty newbies report in planing SPF!
Comment: Its possible and with minimal financial outlay. I've done it when I started out and had to flatten my face joined 2x4 bench top. it was a small one but ended up being 8'x2". that's a lot of top to flatten and all I had was a #4. Worked great in the end. yes it was tiring and I learned a lot about keeping edges sharp and a hand plane properly adjusted but it was doable. Bench top is still being used today by one of my neighbors! I honestly believe that using the hand plane would be faster in the end than building a sled and testing functionality...
Comment: Yes, but I have to point out: our benchtop was 2x material, not hardwood with warp. Not factoring in the material differences grossly underestimates the amount of effort this may involve. In case you've gotten the wrong impression I'm not at all arguing against doing this manually, I'm handtools all the way. But I can plane SPF for an hour or more straight without getting winded, however give me a single board of hard European oak to work on and I'm tuckered out in just 10 minutes. *That's* what's really key here, not whether dressing and smoothing is doable in the abstract.
Comment: Your point is a good one. Its not the easy route. _But_ it is one that is only glossed over in a different answer and honestly deserves its own attention. It may not be easy but it is certainly possible. Even possible for a newbie to hand tool work and hand planes. btw, I've looked at your hand tool answer history, good stuff!

Milling wide lumber to square


Proposed entries for the glossary

Question: As recommended by this answer, I have opened a meta question for proposed entries for the glossary.  As each suggestion is added to the glossary, please strike it out in the answer here.
Answer: Can someone please add "סגולה" to the glossary? It's used many times on Mi Yodeya. (I'd do it myself, but I don't rightly know what it means. (Though this helps a little.))
Answer: Maybe this is opening up a big can of worms, but I think the glossary should include (all!) the roshei tevos in ~frequent use in a beis midrash. If certain abbreviations haven't been used on this site yet, it is only a matter of time, I think, until they are.
Comment: Related: http://judaism.stackexchange.com/q/6309/5323

Proposed entries for the glossary


Why does my shutter only work in the Scene modes, but not Auto?

Question: I have a Nikon D3100.  The shutter does not work in many of the settings.  In auto it will not work (when I hit the button it will pop the flash up and blink but not take the pic) but it does in Portrait, Landscape, and Sports.  Nothing else works…
Help!!
Answer: How are you focusing?  Is it in focus?  In AF-S mode, the default is that the shutter will not activate until the camera has found focus.  Focus is indicated by the green dot at far left edge at bottom of viewfinder.  If no green dot, then no focus, and no shutter.
Novices seem to like the wide focus modes where the camera just finds something (anything) and focuses on it.  They can't be bothered with where or what that is.
It does depend your subject.  A motionless subject or a fast flying bird, etc.
But for stationary subjects, the best results are single focus point in AF-S mode, so you can select where you want focus to be (at that point), and then it will focus on that point.  You can move that single point around in the viewfinder if convenient (but the center point is often the strongest and best one).  The shutter will work when the green dot says it has found focus. This is normally no issue.


Guitar Recording

Question: I am a musician and I am fairly new to Ubuntu. I am running Ubuntu 12.04 on a Dell Inspiron 6000. I have been looking for a reliable and good mixer/recorder for my guitar so I can record original stuff. I have tried audacity and ardour both with and without front end programs such as rakarrack. The problem I am having is that I have a lot of distortin when I am playing clean and an obvious 60 hz hum when I am both clean and distorted. I've tried plugging in my guitar directly into the USB interface that I have and that doesn't help. I have also used a Boss DS-1 distortion pedal and a Marshall MG15DFX as a preamp before the USB interface as well with no luck. I can't seem to get the preamp on the programs adjusted. The USB interface I am using is a Behringer UCG102 Guitar/USB interface Guitar Link. Does anyone have any suggestions for me? Thanks.
Answer: I record my guitar using Ardour, it has full pre-amp sliders and gain control so you should be able to get the clean unprocessed sound you require. I DI into an old sound blaster Live sound card as its a bit retro in its sampling and gives me a nice sound for the type of music i play, but I have also set it up on Ubuntu for Musician fiend with a Black Box usb input, the only difference was when selecting the channel input on the Ardour track I selected the USB sound card as opposed to the internal one.
Hope this helps. Ardour is in the software centre.
Hope this helps, Good luck
Comment: Thanks. I'll give that a try and see if I can figure out the preamp settings.

Guitar Recording


How to set the default browser from within a shell script

Question: I am trying to write a shell script that automates the setup of my Elementary distro so I can quickly reinstall everything on a new machine. As such I am looking to see how I can set the default browser from within a shell script, preferable without user input. Thanks!
Luke
Answer: I found this could be done with
xdg-settings set default-web-browser brave-browser.desktop
where brave-browser.desktop is the desktop file of the desired browser


Kyocera Mita 4030 problem printing envelopes

Question: My Kyocera Mita 4030 network printer will not print envelopes.  My operating system is Windows XP.  I have tried to print envelopes from both Microsoft Word and WordPerfect 12, matching the printing preferences on the software to the printer settings for printing envelopes.  Each time the printer displays "error in print mode"  Can anyone help with this problem?
Answer: There are several type of drivers for Kyocera printing products. Try to use another type of driver, for example - KX, if you use PCL and vice versa.
Also maybe you need manually select paper type in panel on printer and/or put your envelopes into manual feed tray.


SQLAlchemy - Mapping ResultProxy to mapped classes without a session

Question: I'd very much like to avoid state binding to entities when querying through session, and take advantage of class mapping without relying on:
session.query(SomeClass)

I have no need for transactions, eager/deferred loading, change tracking, or any of the other features offered. Essentially I want to manually bind a ResultProxy to the mapped class, and have a list of instances that do not have any references to SQLA (such as state).
I tried Query.instances, but it requires a session instance:
engine = create_engine('sqlite:///:memory:')
meta = MetaData()
meta.bind = engine
table = Table('table, meta,
    Column('id', Integer, primary_key=True),
    Column('field1', String(16), nullable=False),
    Column('field2', String(60)),
    Column('field3', String(20), nullable=False)
)

class Table(object)
    pass

meta.create_all(checkfirst=True)
for i in range(10):
    user.insert({'field1': 'field1'+i,'field2': 'field2'+i*2,'field3': 'field3'+i*4})
mapper(Table, table)
query = Query((Table,))
query.instances(engine.text("SELECT * FROM table").execute())

Results in:
Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "sqlalchemy/orm/mapper.py", line 2507, in _instance_processor
        session_identity_map = context.session.identity_map
    AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'identity_map'

I'm stuck at this point. I've looked through Query.instances, and the manual setup to replicate session seems very extensive. It requires Query, QueryContext, _MapperEntity and an elaborate choreography that would make most ballet companies blush.
tl;dr Want to use SQLAlchemy's query generation (anything that returns ResultProxy instance) and have results mapped to their respective classes while skipping anything to do with session, identity_map & Unit of Work.
Answer: you could expunge the object, so it does not maintain a session, but it would still have _sa attributes.
Seeing it's been a while since you asked, it'll probably not serve you, but maybe to others


Approaches to Fault tolerant quantum computation

Question: What are the various approaches to fault tolerant quantum computation ? Two examples are 1. topological quantum computation which uses topological phases in quantum states (2-Dimensional for non-abelian statistics of anyons) and 2. spin-half BEC form (refer http://jqi.umd.edu/news/new-state-fifth-state (Dr. Victor Galitski's research at UMD) ) .
Can you guide me to the references mentioning various approaches and the challenges associated with them ?
Comment: I'm not the downvoter, but maybe the question is a bit "open ended". I personally think what you're getting at is a good question - it seems as though you're trying to get abreast of knowledge in a particular field, so maybe try rewriting it as a reference request
Comment: If you downvote, please comment why and how can I improve the question.
Answer: There are many good introductory textbooks and surveys on quantum error correction and fault tolerance out there. If you have never taken a course on quantum information I would suggest

Chapter 10 of Michael A. Nielsen, Isaac L. Chuang, Quantum Computation and Quantum Information. This is a standard textbook in quantum information and computation, and that chapter summarizes very neatly the key concepts on which quantum error correction is based and gives an introduction to the threshold theorem, a central result in the theory of fault-tolerance quantum computing.

Nielsen and Chuang is a very complete textbook but it will not introduce you to the most recent protocols and discoveries. Also, its section about fault tolerant quantum computing is rather brief. If the book does not suffice for your purposes then I would recommend you to take a look at:

Daniel Gottesman, An Introduction to Quantum Error Correction and Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computation, 2009. A very complete survey. I recommend it, in particular, for its fault tolerance part. It is open access.
Barbara Terhal, Quantum Error Correction for Quantum Memories, 2013. The most recent review available, and a very good one; I recommend it if you want to know about the latest results in the field. It is oriented more towards error correction (quantum memories) than towards fault tolerance (quantum computers). It is also open access.
Answer: The first reference for Topological quantum computation is Kitaev's Fault Tolerant Quantum Computation with Anyons. This is also where the Toric code model is first laid out. Around the same time John Preskill wrote a chapter on Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computation which is more general but also includes a section based upon Kitaev's ideas.
An excellent review article for TQC is Nayak et. al's Non-Abelian anyons and topological quantum computation. I found that this really covers the lay of the land from a broad perspective ranging from the mathematical underpinnings to the possible experimental realizations. It certainly covers the challenges which exist in constructing a topological quantum computer. There is also FKLW, The Lecture notes of Jiannis Pachos, as well as those of John Preskill for a course on Quantum computing that includes notes on error correcting codes and TQC.
Book wise, there are two that I know of. Zhenghan Wang's Topological Quantum Computation is geared primarily towards mathematicians or mathematically minded physicists, but does an excellent job of providing an over view for the mathematics underlying TQC. I use this book a lot because it contains a treasure trove of information that's relatively well cited for getting further into other details. It is by no means complete, but it definitely serves as a map for the literature that was available at the time. The last chapter is also lists of open problems at the time the book was written, many if not most of which remain open.
The second is Pachos' Introduction to Topological Quantum Computation. I found this very readable but when I was going through it I'd already been through Wang's book as well as Nayak and several of the other references above. In hindsight I felt that it would have been a great introductory text to the subject.


Automate exporting SharePoint list 2010 items to Excel 2010

Question: I found this Import Sharepoint List into Excel Using VBA Only that people have been successfully using to automate the exporting SharePoint 2010 list items to Excel 2010. Currently I m also using web interface 'export to excel' in SharePoint. But I want to avoid point-click and want to run a script that automates this process.
Below is my code. I m getting run time error: Cannot connect to the server at this time.Changes to your data cannot be saved. Since I m new to vba, it will be great if anybody could point me to right instructions to make it work. Any suggestions/help is much appreciated. Thanks.
<code>Sub TestMacro()
Dim objMyList As ListObject
Dim objWksheet As Worksheet
Dim strSPServer As String
Const SERVER As String = "http://pwd-gsops5/"
Const LISTNAME As String = "{A486016E-80B2-44C3-8B4A-8394574B9430}"

Const VIEWNAME As String = ""

   ' The SharePoint server URL pointing to
   ' the SharePoint list to import into Excel.
    strSPServer = "http://" & SERVER & "/_vti_bin"
   ' Add a new worksheet to the active workbook.
    Set objWksheet = Worksheets.Add
    ' Add a list range to the newly created worksheet
    ' and populated it with the data from the SharePoint list.
    Set objMyList = objWksheet.ListObjects.Add(xlSrcExternal, _
    Array(strSPServer, LISTNAME, VIEWNAME), True, , Range("a2"))

    Set objMyList = Nothing
    Set objWksheet = Nothing
</code>
End Sub
Answer: the Const Server As String should not include http:// as it will be provided when strSPServer variable is built.


When in-universe does 5E D&D take place?

Question: I'm reading up on the lore of Forgotten Realms and wondering when in-universe 5E takes place, since my character is from Mulhorand and I want to know if The Spellplague has taken place yet, for his backstory.
Comment: Possible duplicate of [What in-game time span was covered in the various Forgotten Realms campaign settings?](http://rpg.stackexchange.com/q/56512)
Answer: Broadly speaking, Wizards keeps the clock moving forward in the Forgotten Realms, and doesn't generally release adventures and other content that happened chronologically in the past from previous content.  The earliest D&D 5e playable content, the Tyranny of Dragons adventure series, starts in 1489 DR.  The Spellplague stops being a major force in the world in about 1479 with Mystra's Return, so you can definitely have a chronologically accurate 5th edition character that has a Spellplague-related backstory.
In specific, Mulhorand is still destroyed, and you'd have to be pretty old to be a native Mulhorandi.  However, Mulhorand seems to be coming back in some kind of mysterious, not-super-well-explained-yet way in the Second Sundering, so YMMV.
Answer: The first new 5e FR Organized Play season starts in 1489 DR, in the future after the Spellplague. The FR team put together a bunch of novels and content for an event called "the Sundering" which largely undid all the massive 4e FR changes - Aber and Toril split back apart, Spellplague over, etc. The Spellplague lasted only from 1385-1395 per se, but its aftereffects lasted till Mystra's return and the recreation of the Weave in 1479, leaving only some small pockets of the old effects. Hail to the new Realms, much like the old Realms.
Comment: "All" will change over time.  That's when it starts. (Organized Play first season, I'm not talking about the APs).
Comment: I guess I hadn't seen times (or worked them out) for Rot, PotA, or CoS. Are those three 1489 also? (If so, busy times, man...)
Answer: The Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide says the Spellplague was unleashed in 1385 DR (dale reckoning). Another upheaval known as the Sundering occurred a century later, and is also treated as in the past (ending somewhere around 1489 DR). I couldn't find the current year in the book, but for a character in Toril's 'present' the Spellplague should be old news.


Just discovered a log file occupying over 12Gb, what do I do?

Question: trying to figure out how come my disk space was so low I discovered a log file occupying over 12Gb...

is this normal?
how do I prevent this from happening again if not?
do I just delete it?

Any ideas? Thanks :)
Comment: Whatever you do don't delete it just yet ok.
Comment: And whatever you do, make sure it's not still set to the default 10% unrestricted autogrowth.... GOD I wish MS would change that default.
Answer: If it is a SQL Server .ldf transaction log file, you should not delete it since it would render yor database inoperable (You can't delete it if the database is online).
Assuming it is a database log file, depending on the database recovery mode and autogrow settings, when recovery mode is set to Full or Bulk Logged and autogrow enabled, your transaction log will grow until you execute a transaction log backup.
The easiest way of emptying the transaction log is to set the database recovery mode to Simple, and then shrinking the transaction log, but that will limit your recovery only to full backups.
If it is a production system and you want to be able to do a point in time restore, you need to schedule regular transaction log backups that will clear the transaction log file. It will not decrease the size on disk though, you should shrink it once to a manageable size, then monitor the usage and set it to a size that allows the transaction logs between every backup to be written to the log file without having to grow the file.
Answer: Here is some reading that will assist you with understanding both what is currently going on in your environment and most importantly what you need to be doing to manage it.
Transaction Log Management


Why are some (higher end?) tripods sold without a head?

Question: I assume that the available heads differ somehow, but don't understand what those differences might be and if they're functional, personal preference or a bit of both.
Comment: possible duplicate of [What should one consider when choosing a style of tripod head?](http://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/778/what-should-one-consider-when-choosing-a-style-of-tripod-head)
Comment: Randy - Thank you for the question, but I do not see how your question is different then the one listed above in my comment.  Please edit your question if it is different so we can answer it here.
Comment: To answer the title of your question - they are sold without the head because people(especially pros) like to mix and match different heads with different tripod legs. It is kind of like buying a desktop computer without a monitor, you can do it either way, but the pros prefer to select specialized equipment so they buy each part separate. Along with the fact that many have multiple heads that they regularly use.
Comment: Your correct, didn't come across that question in my search before asking my question. Guess I was looking at it from a different point of view. Thanks for the pointer.
Comment: Having duplicate questions on the site which reflect a different "angle" into the same question isn't such a bad thing. The software has functionality to mark them as duplicates so that people searching with one particular mindset are directed to the canonical answer. It all helps build a better Q&A site in the long run.
Answer: Most tripods are sold without a head so that you can decide independently on each part.
They both have to match in terms of capacity but otherwise you are free to choose the right set of legs and heads according to your requirements. If they were bundled together you may not find the right combination for you.
Particularly there are way more variety of heads than legs. They vary in precision, speed, motion control, balance, etc.
Answer: Choice for one size does not fit all. For some situations a 3 way pan/tilt would be fine but for others a ball head is a must.
Manufacturers offer a variety of possibilities to match the conditions under which the head will be used.
At last, it depends on your taste, subject matter and ease of use.
Answer: Probably for the same reason high end bodies don't come with a lens.
This gives you more flexibility with what head you purchase, and to allow for the professionals that already have one or more heads.
Answer: It has possibly been said already in the answers above, but the answer is, different needs, different heads.
Video needs a head that can be moved smoothly for example.
Many people like ball heads because they are quick to set up, BUT they are hard to use when shooting for example a panorama, a more "classic" design is better suited to that.
By selling tripods without heads, it is possible to offer maximum flexibility with few products, plus you can mix and match heads and legs between manufacturers as well.
Answer: Also, something reasonably expensive that comes in two separately available parts will be preferred by many customers (especially the serious amateur or semi-pro that doesn't want to deal with insuring their gear), when sold at the same price as something that doesn't, because there is less risk of total loss from breakage or wear.


What's the ultimate reason that Windows Phone 8 cannot run on current phones?

Question: I know current phones do not have hardware supports for NFC and SD card, but what prevents them from running Internet Explorer 10? Is there no way to port the NT kernel to the current phones?
Comment: IE10 will be in 7.8, so that's not the cause.
Comment: Where did you read it? http://www.windowsphonedaily.com/2012/07/rumor-windows-phone-78-skipping-ie10.html still says only IE9 in 7.8.
Answer: Unfortunately the current crop of Windows Phones cannot handle the NT Kernel which Windows Phone 8 is built on. This would require new processors and processing languages.
This article from Mashable has details on it.
Answer: First, the new OS requires different hardware. Not just an NFC chip, or SD card support, but different architecture on the hardware. They could have built support for this in, but at what cost?
Second, I imagine it has to do with the laughably terrible upgrade history the phone has. The carriers are still blocking updates, and Microsoft can't really do anything about it. Let's pretend for a minute they did decide to make the new OS run on current devices. When they pushed the update out it might take months for the carriers to approve the update. It might never even happen! Microsoft would have taken the hit on that one as they did on every other update.
In short
It has to to with technical reasons, and I'm sure it has to do with some business reasons as well. I'm sure it boils down to cost vs gain. I can't speculate on what Microsoft would/wouldn't get from upgrading current phones, but it would be costly.
Comment: but Microsoft says they can directly push 7.8 to a phone and bypass the carriers.
Comment: I'll believe it when I see it. They couldn't on pre-mango, mango, tango, and every other minor update.
Answer: I believe the main reason is actually due to Windows Phone 7 devices not having the required security chip which gives each device a unique ID and prevents unauthorised software from being run.
SOURCE: http://www.wpcentral.com/microsoft-beefing-security-windows-phone-8
The Lumia 520 has a relatively weak ARMv7 CPU (albeit dual-core), 512 MB RAM, no front-facing camera nor NFC, so the hardware is actually quite similar to other ARMv7 devices like the Lumia 800/900.


Bottle conditioning

Question: More reading - this time about bottle conditioning. If my yeast attenuation level is say 80%, does that mean there would be enough sugars in the bottle for the yeast to carb the beer? Or would priming sugar still need to be added... Thanks in advance!
Answer: You will need to add priming sugar if the beer has reached its terminal gravity with the yeast being used.
In this example, despite the 80% attenuation the remaining 20% is not usually fermentable sugars.  Its comprised of protein, dextrans and other molecules in solution that are largely ignored by your primary yeast strain.
Lastly, reported attenuation stats for a given strain are not a promise of performance.  Wort composition (influenced by ingredients and mash conditions) will generally dictate the amount of attenuation possible of a given wort.  It is possible to transfer a fermenting beer to the bottling phase prematurely, counting on the remaining fermentation to carbonate the beer.  Generally, this is a difficult thing for most homebrewers to predict accurately enough and get reliable levels of carbonation.
Answer: The best way is indeed to wait until the fermentation is completely over. When you measure the same (low) gravity for 2-3 days in a row this is the case. The also allows for the yeast to clean up the by-products.
The bottom of your fermentation vessel will have a bottom of yeast, but normally there is still (much more than) enough yeast in suspension to make the bottle conditioning. You just have to calculate the priming sugar quantity with an online calculator (like this one: http://www.aussiehomebrewing.com/AlcoholChart/PrimingCalculator.html) or use sugar drops in the bottles.
Hope this was helpful.
Raf

Bottle conditioning


What are the common productivity measures of a scientist, like h-index?

Question: I am aware of h-index. I was wondering what other types of scores are both widely and rarely used to measure the impact of a scientist?
Comment: related question: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/13/66
Comment: exact duplicate?
Comment: not really a dup. It's a larger topic, and it can include the "einstein index" in the answer. I remember a very interesting paper or blog post on the comparison between h-index and the einstein index.
Answer: The h-index is common (and the g-index, which corrects for self-citation), as is the Journal Impact Factor. Johan Bollen has a good review of the various metrics.
However, it's important to point out that all those measures are just different ways of counting citations. They don't account for things like code you've written or talks you've given and they can't address systematic bias in citation practices such as coercive citation or citation mutation. Also, any citation-counting metric will penalize younger researchers simply due to the time it takes to publish one paper and for other papers to get published citing yours. In order to keep academics from having to publish a paper just to describe some code they've written or a dataset they've accumulated, aggregators have been built to pull in these various metrics and consolidate them. Total Impact is a good example of such a system. The general field of study looking at incorporating these broader metrics is called #altmetrics, and you can find a collection of research on the topic here.
Answer: Beyond the h-index, I don't think there's any definitive parameters used in practice. However, some other common factors used to evaluate research faculty:

Publication count
Quantity of funding
Number of invited talks & invited journal articles
Lab size

Note that these apply to the fields I'm familiar with, neuroscience and engineering. I suspect that these answers will vary according to field.
Comment: The number of patents is also sometimes useful.
Answer: There's the g-index and the h-b-index. Another thing is (in conjunction with the number of publications) the number of coauthors, i.e. has somebody only worked with one group (perhaps at the same university) or have they collaborated with lots of people from different institutions.
Answer: To add to other answers:
How often one publishes in the most prestigious general journals (e.g. Science and Nature) and most prestigious journals in their field (e.g. Physical Review Letters).
Comment: I think that nowadays publication in the most prestigious journals is not as good as it used to be, this because of people trying to do it just because of popularity.
Answer: Take a look at this open article in Scientific Reports for a measure that attempts to discard productivity as a factor in evaluating the output of research.
Answer: I believe the answer to your question depends very strongly on the field. In mine, mathematics, the most used quick proxy for quality of research is the prestige of journals one's publishes in (which is not measured by impact factor, although there is a correlation).
In some humanities fields, books are the most prominent research outputs.
For a PhD student in biology (especially molecular and cellular, at least in some labs in France), time spent in lab in the evenings and week-ends seems to overweight everything else.


Why is analog black&white film slightly violet?

Question: I'm doing my Bachelor's degree from photography. I noticed that my developed film Ilford HP5+ is not just black&white but it is slightly violet (as you can see on the left picture). Does it have anything to do with fixing time? I tried to find the literature why this happened, but didn't find any.
Comment: Are the prints slightly violet, scans from the negatives, or scans from prints? Is it possibly due to a minor fluctuation in the color of the film itself? (the film backing, not the photosensitive chemicals in the emulsion.)
Comment: Any color cast in a scanned file from a monochromatic source is 100% user error, if you are getting color casts then you are using the scanner improperly. You should adjust the white point and scan in grayscale when you are using monochromatic sources, or grayscale+IR if you are using monochromatic but chromogenic sources.
Comment: Scans from negatives.
Answer: Its been a very long time, but I believe this is caused by inadequate rinsing of the negative during processing. The film has a coating to reduce light reflecting from the film backing itself. It is usually rinsed away, but seeing a slight purple tinge on negatives is likely very familiar to those who have developed their own B&W film. The coating is called 'anti-halation' coating.
As others have said, it does not impact the print image itself, since B&W paper can not reproduce 'purple'.  If you are printing on a color inkjet printer from a scan, it may be reproducing the purple, since most CMYK inkjets simulate B&W using a mixture of CMYK inks (not just the K).  A solution is to convert the image to B&W in your editing software, or use B&W/greyscale inkjet ink pots.
Comment: I agree, especially if the tint is visible when looking at a clear area on the physical negative film. There is a chance that it might just be a color balance issue when scanning in RGB mode.
Comment: I'm talking about scans from negatives, not printed images. I'm not searching for the solution, just for the explanation - I need to write about this in my BA.
Answer: The color of a B&W negative is irrelevant unless you're using color print paper.  If you have true B&W paper, then all that it cares about is the relative irradiance. You could print with any color negative and get a B&W image.  If your print is what appears to be tinted, then either the paper is not what you think it is (e.g., there are styles which produce sepia-toned prints) or it's ancient and expired, or you've introduced a color overtone from some problem with the  chemicals.
Comment: @Piipsy "The photo wasn't developed at home so I wouldn't say there was a problem with the chemicals". As a person who used to develop photos for people at a major chain, the fact that it wasn't developed at home to me makes me think a problem with the chemicals is *more* likely, not less. It's also possible color paper was used because who wants to unload and reload with B&W paper (assuming any is even available) when the negatives are B&W already. "Professional photo processing" available at major chains is basically the fast food of photo processing. I was sixteen when I had that job.
Comment: Oh I just remembered that people would absolutely bring in C-41 process B&W negatives and we would run them through the developer along with the C-41 color negatives and then print them on the exact same color paper we used for color prints. We definitely had no B&W paper. The only time we changed paper was to switch between 4x6 and 3x5/5x7 size stock. Us teenagers who knew very little about photography or chemistry were trusted to replenish chemicals in the machines - although normally that was simple because the whole bottle was pre-measured. You probably just got color paper.
Comment: I need the explanation for my Bachelor's Degree. I have a scanned photo that turned out slightly violet and I need to find out why. The photo wasn't developed at home so I wouldn't say there was a problem with chemicals.
Answer: Early photo materials were not very sensitive to light. Additionally bright objects often imaged as a blurred splotch. This imperfection is called a halation. The solution is various colored dyes applied during manufacture. Dying light sensitive silver salt crystals changes their sensitivity and adjusts how they react to different colors. The problem of the halation is solved by an undercoat of dye. This dye is the color the film is least sensitive too. A UV blocking overcoat is also applied.
These sensitizing dyes and anti-halation dyes are generally water soluble. Therefore they will wash away during the processing steps. Some, however, are stubborn and these linger. They will eventually wash out given time. These give the processed film a tint that is uniform thus harmless. The main effect is cosmetic. If you are making chemical prints, the dyes block some blue exposing light -- thus they add a smidgen of extra print time.
If you are a purest who hates the coloration these dyes can induce, then add time to the fix and or the wash stage to give further time so they can wash away.
The breakthrough came in 1873. Hermann Vogel, Professor at Berlin Technical, wanted to solve the halation problem. He reasoned that light was being reflected within the emulsion. He has a student dye an emulsion yellow. This prevented the halation. To his surprise the emulsion gained green sensitivity. Over time, his graduate students experimented with sensitizing dye and gained sensitivity to red.
Answer: Each manufacturer uses a slightly different film base. Ilfords is slightly purple, Kodak's slightly cyan on some and Agfa had a slight green cast. This changes by film type as well within a brand. The color can impact the print if you use Variable Contrast paper. Fixing isn't usually a problem related to film base color.  Kodak's Tech Pan was the most neutral as I remember. Most of the films I used are no longer available.
Comment: I'm trying to find some literature (proof for my BA) about Ilford being slightly purple, but don't find any. I found this statement just for Tri-X.
Comment: @Piipsy - the color is shown on positive, i.e. reversed image. If it was reversed as RGB, the negative color would be also reverse from purple, i.e.  green
Comment: Orthochromatic film was completely clear. It was on a PET base. Sound recording film and Shellburst, Rapid Access was also on a clear base.
Answer: During exposure light travels through emulsion, bounces back from the backing layer and exposes the emulsion again, this time with blurred light, adding halos to the image.
This reflection can be prevented by adding opaque dark layer behind the emulsion. Due to the nature of b&w films, the layer is made of soluble dye.
Most of the dye is removed during processing, but usually not all and some residual coloring is normal. Amount of the coloring will vary depending on used processing chemicals and time of processing. You don't see this coloring with other types of films, because they use silver based or pigment-based anti halation layer that is not possible with b&w negatives.
Comment: All of the nonhalation coating is removed during processing by the fix bath; but, there are also dyes added to the actual film base in many cases. "Anti-halation" was coined by Kodak for the generic term.


How can I develop an interesting or challenging 8-Beat rock rhythm?

Question: The band I play with generally wants a simple 8-beat rhythm but I can find it a bit boring to play! So I'm looking for suggestions/tips/sheet music/video on how to develop a standard 8-beat drum pattern to make it more interesting/challenging to play whilst still keeping true to the 8-beat framework.
Answer: Subdivide the 8 beats in unorthodox ways.  For example: Coldplay's "Clocks" subdivides 8 beats into a 3-3-2 rhythm.  Not exactly groundbreaking, but a bit different from the usual.  You can take that idea and run wild with it.  Here are some ideas:

Re-arrange the more familiar 3-3-2 subdivision into 3-2-3, which is a bit more unusual.
3-5.  Play a beat in three followed by a beat in five.
5-3.  Same idea, but play the five-beat rhythm first.
Combine two 8-beat measures into a double-long 16-beat measure, and subdivide like crazy.  3-3-4-3-3 comes to mind, or 3-3-3-3-4.  Or 3-4-5-4, or etc. etc.  So long as the subdivisions add up to 16, you can do whatever you want.
Comment: This may be far enough from the desired "simple" rhythm to make your bandmates unhappy though. :-) Interpols "Evil" is a good example of using syncopation and other tricks to have a interesting rhythm to what is basically a song set in a straight 8 rhythm. Remember though that only the drummer in a bands needs to be able to play (Ref: Joy Division), so the band is off to a good start. :-)
Comment: @Lennart Regerbro Just listening to Evil now - nice track. I find a song more interesting (to listen and play) when the drummer plays an offbeat pattern. Could just be because I'm a drummer though :) I think I am going to try and make a compromise with the other band members: play more straight rhythms for most of the sections but then a more intricate pattern during the verse. Definitely need to find a balance whilst keeping the flow with the guitars/vocals.
Comment: @xylar: That's probably a good idea. The chorus should be simple and easy to sing a long too (as well as having a hook) while the verses need to keep interest up until the next chorus, so I think that works. And indeed "Evil" does exactly that. :)
Answer: Listen! Listen to the music what it needs and listen to other drummers playing the same styles and you'll learn a lot.
For a rock band, you usually want to keep a strong backbeat on 2 and 4, so you don't have much choice on the snare drum except for adding some ghost notes here and there. Variations on the bass drum and on the hi-hat pattern are possible of course and you can create nice effects by just omitting some of the hi-hat beats. But be aware that many musical styles don't tolarate too heavy variations in the groove (AC/DC).
If your music has some funky elements, you have more choice of rhythmic variations and you can try to find interesting subdivisions of your 8 beats. Rhythmic Illusions is a nice book about all kind of strange stuff you can do by moving around the beats. Listen to some recordings of the Dave Matthews Band for example, this could give you some ideas as well.
For me personally, playing a straight four-on-the-floor 8-beat (hi-hat 8th, bass drum on 1,2,3,4, snare on 2 and 4) without any extras is the most challenging groove! You really need to practise this to get a solid groove and to have an exact feeling of where the backbeat is placed. Listen carefully to the relation between hi-hat, bass drum and snare and try how it suddenly feels when you delay the snare a few microseconds or put the hi-hat beats a little in front of the others. The variations are subtle and you can't write them down with notes, but make a huge difference!
Comment: I'd give this a +2 or even +3 if I could (one for every good/great bit :D)
Answer: An 8-beat rock rhythm?? Sounds like you need to look at Boogie-Woogie, AKA Eight-to-the-bar. There's a piano book (I'm sure there are others) called Boogie Woogie Hanon that's full of great rhythms for the piano left-hand. To make it rock, change all the original accents to secondary accents and add a powerful 2 and 4 accent over the top.
Adding the eighth-notes gives a Rock-rhythm a more relaxed feel.


Where did Rorty claim no essential difference between Philosophy and Literary Criticism/Theory?

Question:
What's the source for this comment?

Rorty infamously claimed (in so many words) that there is no essential difference between philosophy and litcrit.

Has any other philosophers argued this?
Comment: I hope not. It doesn't say much for Rorty's philosophical approach, It's a view that seems to depend on not understanding philosophy.any better than Finnegan;s Wake.
Comment: Rorty claimed a lot more than that, in the Mirror of Nature he characterized "*the entire culture, from physics to poetry, as a single, continuous, seamless activity in which the divisions are merely institutional and pedagogical*". His inspiration is of course Derrida, "*there is nothing outside the text*". See [Have any philosophers applied the concept of "underdetermination" to non-scientific contexts?](https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/a/34255/9148)
Answer: Rorty does not make the claim that there is no essential difference between Philosophy and Literary Criticism/Theory. Rorty acknowledges that some (most?) current philosophers believe that there are fundamental differences between philosophy and literary criticism. He calls such philosophers metaphysicians, and contrasts them with people like himself, whom he calls ironists/pragmatists.
What Rorty does claim is that for ironists/pragmatists, literary criticism has superseded the style of philosophy preferred by metaphysicians: The rise of literary criticism to preeminence within the high culture of  the democracies - its gradual and only semiconscious assumption of the  cultural role once claimed (successively) by religion, science, and philosophy - has paralleled the rise in the proportion of ironists to metaphysicians among the intellectuals. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (CIS), p.82. Literary criticism is not the same as traditional metaphysical philosophy (or even modern analytic philosophy), it is a new and better way of thinking about our world.
Consequently, philosophy and science are viewed by ironists/pragmatists as simply literary genres, alongside novels and plays:
But, ironically and dialectically enough, what Hegel actually did, by founding an ironist tradition within philosophy, was help de-cognitivize, de-metaphysize philosophy. He helped turn it into a literary genre. CIS, p.79
I can put these two points together by saying that whereas nineteenth century idealism wanted to substitute one sort of science (philosophy) for another (natural science) as the center of culture, twentieth century textualism wants to place literature in the center, and to treat both science and philosophy as, at best, literary genres. The rest of my paper will be an attempt to refine this crude formula and to make it plausible. Consequences of Pragmatism (CoP), p.141.
The strong textualist [roughly equivalent to an ironist, NG] simply asks himself the same question about a text which the engineer or the physicist asks himself about a  puzzling physical object: how shall I describe this in order to get it to do what I want? Occasionally a great physicist or a great [literary] critic comes along and gives us a new vocabulary which enables us to do a lot of new and marvelous things. Then we may exclaim that we have now found out the true nature of matter, or poetry, or whatever. But  Hegel's ghost, embodied in Kuhn's romantic philosophy of science or Bloom's philosophy of romantic poetry, reminds us that vocabularies are as mortal as men. The pragmatist reminds us that a new and useful vocabulary is just that, not a sudden unmediated vision of things or texts as they are. CoP, p.153
Answer: If you're looking for where Rorty says this or might be taken to imply it, then Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989), is the best place to start. I base this advice on the following review :

There is another crucial dualism in these essays. For Rorty, there are two kinds
   of philosophical methods or procedures: the arguments of common sense and the
   descriptions of intellectuals. This dualism defines the second dominant feature of
   Rorty's stories. Rorty rejects common sense and traditional argumentation, and
   instead proceeds by literary criticism, description, and redescription - by sweeping stories about the histories of philosophy and literature. Rorty seems to view
   common sense as hopelessly narrow and naive, and he characterizes philosophy
   by-argument as hopelessly tied to foundationalist epistemologies, transcendental
   metaphysics, and supposed final, essential vocabularies.
By contrast, he advocates philosophy-by-redescription, and awards it the
   "ironist" seal of approval. Ironist philosophers, Rorty explains, are "never quite
   able to take themselves seriously because they are always aware that the terms in
   which they describe themselves are subject to change, always aware of the
   contingency and fragility of their final vocabularies, and thus of their selves" (74
   75). However, it does seem that ironist philosophers take one another very
   seriously. In fact, as Rorty describes them, they seem downright clubby: "So our
   doubts about our own characters or our own culture can be resolved or assuaged
   only by enlarging our acquaintance. The easiest way of doing that is to read books,
   and so ironists spend more of their time placing books than in placing real life
   people" (80). Ironists, Rorty continues, take literary critics as their moral
   advisers because these critics have large ranges of acquaintances - they "have
   been around." This may be so, but it is instructive to note that at least in one
   important and distressing respect, ironists and traditional metaphysicians are
   alike. Although they differ about the reality of contingency, both fear contingency. For Rorty, contingency is dangerous, threatening, humiliating; it suggests
   that life is futile. As a result: "Literary criticism does for ironists what the search
   for universal moral principles is supposed to do for metaphysicians" (80). (John J. Stuhr, 'Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity by Richard Rorty', The Personalist Forum, Vol. 5, No. 2, Humanism (Fall 1989), pp. 149-152 : 150.)

____________________________________________________________________________
R. Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. ISBN 978-0521353816.


Are magnets really harmful for guitar pickups

Question: I was watching video about pickup height regulation and author was claiming that using screwdriver with magnetic tip and soldering gun close to guitar pickups may demagnetize them. Is this really dangerous?
Comment: This could be better on the physics stack. That said, I think you'd actually have to rub a magnetic screwdriver against the pickup magnets to have any effect. Just turning some screws with it nearby doesn't seem like a problem to me. I've worked on computers extensively with almost all of my screwdrivers magnetized for getting close to 20 years now and never messed up a hard drive (like some say it would). Magnetizing a screwdriver takes some work. Demagnetizing a pickup seems unlikely to be something you could do accidentally.
Comment: @ToddWilcox: I agree, though I reckon the magnets used in hard drives are rather less fussy about demagnetising fields than the typical alnico magnets that most PUs use.
Comment: @ToddWilcox my friend that has degree in physics said that. It may influence but he wouldn't expect it to be noticable
Comment: The technical term for this is "degaussing." It appears to be a "thing" but the real question is: "how much and to what degree" can a screwdriver degauss. However all the searching online is going to be 100K questions in the form of this post. Most of what I see is more like "weakens the field" which means you need more gain(?). This is a lot different than "screws up the pickup"
Answer: It is possible to degauss pickups, but it's not likely to happen by accident, i.e. accidentally touching a pole piece with a screwdriver is not likely to noticeably degauss a pickup, but sticking it to a strong rare earth magnet for example, can.  The previous link describes an instance of this very thing happening, plus Chris Kinman's instructions for how to use the same magnet to re-gauss the afflicted pickup.  Pickup maker Bill Lawrence also advises us not to worry much about subjecting pickups to minor EMF.
So for the specifics of your question, using a screwdriver with a magnetic tip near a pickup will not measurably degauss them.  There is some discussion about the magnetic field from soldering guns degaussing pickups, but no evidence that I can find.  In an overabundcance of caution you could use a non-magnetic screwdriver and use a soldering pencil.  Or if you must use a soldering gun, it's easy to keep the transformer away from the field above your pickup pole pieces, but don't worry, magnetism from a soldering gun will not "flow" down the wires and degauss the pickups.
Answer: Strong magnets are a BIG no-no especially on the vintage spec pickups. The magnets in the pickups are very sensitive to strong magnets and will ruin your pickups...trust me on this one. I was removing metal shavings from my pickups and ruined the top 3 of my bridge pickup. What blew my mind was when I went to play, I switched to the bridge pickup and the top 3 strings were silent whereas the bottomm 3 worked fine....now that had me scratching my head.
Comment: Welcome to Music.SE! **+1** for the first-hand experience, though as far as I'd rate it this just witnesses that _vintage is rubbish_, especially when it comes to the electro/magnetic components of a guitar. — What exactly did you do to those pickups, anyway?
Comment: I've found masking tape does a reasonably good job or picking up metal shavings stuck to pickup magnets.
Answer: Yup, just did this. Trying to get the metal shavings out and used a 400 lb test magnet along all my pole pieces.  Now some strings sound ok and some are noticeably quiet. Good news is pretty easy to just replace all the pole pieces. https://www.stewmac.com/Pickups_and_Electronics/Pickup_Kits_and_Parts/Pickup_Kits_and_Parts_for_Strat/Alnico_2_Polepiece_Magnets.html
Comment: I haven't tried this but I would expect that removable pole pieces could be remagnetized and reinstalled. Anybody know if this would work?
Answer: At NO POINT does the author of the video claim that you shouldn't be using a screwdriver with a magnetic tip close to a guitar pickup.
Watch it again and listen more carefully: he claims that using STRONG MAGNETS DIRECTLY ONTO THE PICKUPS (to remove metal stuff from them) is a risk.
He does'nt say anything about magnetic screwdrivers.
FYI, "magnetic tip" screwdrivers have a very weak magnetic field so to make them harmless to electronic circuits. Thus guitar pickups won't be affected by using them.


Live tiles stopped working

Question: I have myself, my photos, and a friend pinned to my start.  The tiles used to rotate photos, but I forgot my wallet pin, did a reset, and now those tiles don't update (my 'weather view' app tile does update). The photos app has nothing, even though my accounts and albums are there, and myself and my friend just show our static facebook photo.
Answer: When you reseted it might have the apps' background tasks turned off which will prevent the live tiles from working.
To fix this:

Go to settings
slide left to get to "Applications"
Press "Background Tasks"
(This page will list all the apps that can work with live tiles)
(Under each of the apps you want to work on live tiles, they should each have "On" highlighted under them)
If your app says "Off", Press it.
(This should take you to a new page with a button)
Press the "Turn On" button.
Exit out of everything to your tiles.
(The live tile for that app should work now)

In your photos app (if not fixed)

Open photos app
Press the 3 dots on the bar at the bottom
Press shuffle background
That should fix the photos problem

If none of this worked

Something must have gone wrong during the reset and you should reset your phone again or call support.

Notes

If you haven't used an app for two weeks, the live tile will not work and you will have to turn it on.

Live tiles stopped working


What is the reference chord for AoA measurement or calculation in a twisted wing?

Question: Let us assume we have a rectangular, unswept wing with no dihedral and a given wing twist and we want to measure in flight or calculate its $c_L$ vs $\alpha$ (angle of attack) diagram. Of course each airfoil along the span will have a different local angle of attack at every flight attitude. Which y-coordinate along the span must (or should?) be used as a reference?
Comment: Angle of attack is always a local quality. The overall parameter is angle of incidence, and that is measured relative to the airplane's X coordinate.
Comment: As already answered, it is a matter of convention. For the whole aircraft, its longitudinal axis is usually used as a reference. The root chord, 25%-span chord, MAC and even the angle of zero lift can all be used. But if the aircraft has an AoA sensor, everything is usually calibrated in terms of this sensor indication (i.e. its local AoA), which may have very indirect relationship to the wing AoA.
Answer: In short: it's up to the designer to pick any definition as long as the design and analysis always obeys that definition.
Usually, it's a general practice to define a root chord and then calculate the rest of the local aoa's in relation to the root chord. This makes wing-strip calculations simpler. It's also used in helicopter rotor blades and propellers.
On the other hand, there are numerous simplified calculations (that calculate wing or aircraft level properties) that may consider the mean aerodynamic chord. In this case, of course, the mac location would be used.
Comment: Thanks, that's what I suspected. I was curious to know  if it was a matter of convention.


How should I operate within the dashed magenta lines next to Class D airspace?

Question:
I am unsure of how to operate within this area (red dashed line) without connection to ATC.  It appears to come off of class D airspace.
Can anyone provide an explanation of what this area is and how to operate within it?
Comment: Related -- https://aviation.stackexchange.com/a/92260/34686 -- and see first comment under answer.
Answer: The area inside those lines is class E from the surface.
Answer: Its an area of Class-E airspace used for Instrument Approach Procedures.
From The Pilot Handbook, Chapter 14, Airspace:

Class D airspace is generally airspace from the surface to
  2,500 feet above the airport elevation (charted in MSL)
  surrounding those airports that have an operational control
  tower. The configuration of each Class D airspace area is
  individually tailored and when instrument procedures are
  published, the airspace is normally designed to contain the
  procedures. Arrival extensions for instrument approach
  procedures (IAPs) may be Class D or Class E airspace. Unless
  otherwise authorized, each aircraft must establish two-way
  radio communications with the ATC facility providing air
  traffic services prior to entering the airspace and thereafter
  maintain those communications while in the airspace.

(Emphasis Mine)
Also from that handbook, the procedures for operating in Class-E:

If the airspace is not Class A, B, C, or D, and is controlled
  airspace, then it is Class E airspace. Class E airspace extends
  upward from either the surface or a designated altitude to the overlying or adjacent controlled airspace. When designated
  as a surface area, the airspace is configured to contain all
  instrument procedures. Also in this class are federal airways,
  airspace beginning at either 700 or 1,200 feet above ground
  level (AGL) used to transition to and from the terminal or
  en route environment, and en route domestic and offshore
  airspace areas designated below 18,000 feet MSL. Unless
  designated at a lower altitude, Class E airspace begins at
  14,500 MSL over the United States, including that airspace
  overlying the waters within 12 NM of the coast of the 48
  contiguous states and Alaska, up to but not including 18,000
  feet MSL, and the airspace above FL 600.

So basically class-E rules apply, but be aware you are operating in an Instrument Approach Procedure area.
Comment: Ah ha.  Makes sense now. Thanks!
Answer: The area in that dashed magenta line is called an "extension".  It is Class E airspace that goes all the way down to the surface.
Related: In the US, how does the distinction between E2 and E3/E4 airspace affect pilots?.  The point being that there is some ambiguity whether or not certain rules apply within the airspace you are talking about here, which is classed as "E4" airspace. For example-- may a Special VFR clearance be authorized for this airspace, to permit operations with reduced cloud clearance and visibility requirements?  You will get different answers from different sources.  In actual practice the answer is usually "yes", but in some locations you'll find the opposite to be true.  (See the above link for much more.)
One thing that is certain, is that from a VFR standpoint, the main point of that surface-level Class E "extension" is to bring Class E visibility and cloud clearance requirements all the way down to the surface, to better protect the airspace along instrument approaches.  You don't need to talk to anyone to fly there, as long as you can observe the required visibility and cloud clearance requirements.  The most conservative interpretation of the regulations, from a safety standpoint, is that you also may not fly below a cloud ceiling that is lower than 1000' AGL in that area (see FAR 91.155(c)) without a Special VFR clearance.
From an IFR standpoint, it is controlled airspace, extending all the way down to ground level, that protects the instrument approaches.


Replace radiator mains and reduce electrical consumption

Question: I have recently converted from oil to gas in my 2500 sqft 1930s era Home. We have a hot water radiator system. We left the original radiator main pipes and risers. They are large pipes 3" mains. and as such the plumber used a rather large 1/8 HP pump model taco 0011-f4. We would like to move to three zones in the House, and also lower the electricity usage of the system. That pump uses 202 watts while running.  I can't seem to find information about how to size the main pipes and how that relates to pump size.
Answer: 1> install a constant delta-P pump ERP rated circulator (it'll adjust the power to the required delta-P instead of running fixed RPM)
2> install constant-delta-P thermostatic preregulation valves (Caleffi Dynamical)
3> Calculate each valve maximum flow allow no more than the needed flow to heat each room
This configuration can let your (GAS) consumption go down by at least 10% if you have a condensing boiler and you set properly the delta-T, also can push down the electric consumption by about 40% or more (up to 95%), (Pump will run maximum just for the first hours, when valves start to throttle down radiator flow, pump 'reads' less need and slows down it's speed accordingly, pumps are also  'intrinsically' much more energy efficient (EEI<0,23 when older 'A-class' had EEI of about 0,40)
Similar configuration may be achived (knowing diameters and lenght of each pipe) using delta-p compensation before zone valves and using 'standard' preregulation valves on radiators (But in this case, calculating each valve is much more difficult, with dynamical calculation is quite easy)
This is a reference for dynamical (it's in Italian, but I think google can help translating)
Another reference (see summary: blue box on page 29)
ERP-related (1)
ERP-related (2) information (English)
Comment: This is interesting. Do you have any more references for this in English? It's hard for me to figure out how this may address my question.
Comment: Sorry, but Caleffi workbook and magazine are (for what I know) the best explain on balancing hidronic systems available online (US version is focused on US-Sytle-OCEB systems). This is a link to the product datasheet. I think you can google 'radiator system dynamic balancing' online. NOTE: OCEB: Office for Complication of Easy Businesses. I know Danfoss is making the same product under Caleffi patent.
Comment: I think the spirit of your suggestion is to installl a circulator pump with a variable speed based on pressure differences in the feeds and returns, and those pressure differences are made smaller based on TRVs is that the case?
Comment: Usually yes, but not only, many pumps are hugely over-sized, so your system may work fine just with half the power you installed. Pumps have to be choosed not according to 'pipe size', but according to head and required flow.  In a 'no TRV' system you can use a 'return-temperature controlled' circulator that keeps injecting only the water needed to keep return to desired temperature (said in another way: only injecting the heat needed and not always runing to satisfy the cooldest day request)
Comment: I accepted this, although, i'm still not totally sure how to do this. But, I get the idea.
Answer: If in fact the main delivery pipes are 3", then the old piping system was probably a gravity system. They usually worked well but were slow to respond to temperature changes and used a little more fuel than a pumped system. The contractor should have done a better job by re-engineering the whole system and replacing the oversized piping. As far as wanting to zone the system there are a lot of options depending on how the existing radiators are piped. You could just add a "Danfoss " type valve with an integral thermostat on each radiator. This would be the most simple zone system I can think of. Some type of thermostat would be used to cycle the boiler or you could run the boiler on an outdoor reset type device. The pump would probably run 24/7 as long as the water in the loop piping was above a minimum set point. Other than that you may have to re-pipe most of the delivery mains to achieve zoning. For that I would hire a heating engineer.
Comment: Yes it was a gravity system. We wanted to wait to replace the mains for budget reasons.
Comment: If the system is heating well and you don't mind the oversized piping you could leave that piping installed and just zone the system using the piping as is now installed. Changing the pipe main size from 3" to smaller will not improve the system efficiency enough to allow you to re-coup your new investment cost. However if you are going to redesign the whole system, then yes, replace the mains, add zones, etc.  MY 2 CENTS
Comment: Right well I mean, I guess what I have is the brand new boiler and stubs for two more zones. The old mains attach to old risers. Since I won't change the risers, "redesigning" to me amounts to changing the mains, and going with zones. A pump which changes speed based on temperatures in the rooms, that makes a lot of sense. The only question is whether a single thermostat (per zone) can drive that, and what is an example of a pump/valves etc..


How does a 16-300mm f/3.5-6.3 lens differ from a 50mm f/1.8?

Question: I have a Nikon camera.  I received a Tamron 16-300 mm f/3.5-6.3 lens and a AF-S Nikkor 50 mm f/1.8G for Christmas. Do I need both? How do they differ in picture taking?
Comment: Honestly, this question sounds a bit like "How does a pizza differ from an Oreo cookie?" Sure, they're both round and edible and made of baked dough with stuff on top, but...
Comment: Have a look at http://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/4976/does-a-bigger-aperture-create-better-photos and http://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/496/what-do-all-those-cryptic-number-and-letter-codes-in-a-lens-name-mean
Comment: Adding to the rest: To achieve the same quality of image (various measures that you can achieve with the f/1.8g prime lens with a zoom/telephoto lens you would have to pay many times more. The prime will give you a peek into image quality levels unachievable with the other lens. Try taking a portrait at  f/1.8, not too close to subject, background some distance behind subject - maybe bushes etc. Focus carefully on area of face of most interest. Try focus on eyes to start. Look at result on a screen at 100% so you can see fine detail. How sharp is hair etc at focus point and elsewhere? ....
Comment: ... Now try this with the 16-300mm lens set to 50mm at largest aperture (smallest f number) you can achieve at that focal length (may be 3.5, maybe slightly higher). Compare results. | Keep them both - both have uses which will make you very pleased that you own them.
Answer: They are very different lenses and will go nicely together in the same camera kit.
We have an enormous amount of information on both types of lenses already on this site, so I'll just give you some keywords to search for to get you started in your research:
In regards to the Tamron 16-300mm:

Superzoom
Variable aperture
Zoom lens

In regards to the Nikkor:

Prime lens
Wide aperture
Normal lens
Portrait Lens
Comment: Because the Tamron lens is for  DX (APS-C), I assume that the camera these are to be used in is too, which means the 50mm in the short tele / portrait range, beyond normal.
Answer:
Do I need both?

You may or may not need both, but they're both very handy lenses to have.

How do they differ in picture taking?

Obviously, one is a zoom with a very wide range (which is good!) and the other is a prime (i.e. the focal length is fixed) with a pretty large maximum aperture (also good!).
The zoom will be great for shooting a soccer game, for example, because you can quickly zoom in to get a shot of a player on the other side of the field, or you can zoom out for a shot where the ball is close to you. When set to 16mm, the lens will be a fairly wide wide-angle lens, meaning that images will show a lot of the scene in front of the camera. At 300mm, the lens is a fairly long telephoto lens, meaning that it'll capture a much narrower part of the overall scene, making far-away subjects look larger. The ability to adjust the focal length without changing lenses is a huge benefit for all sorts of photography.
The 50mm f/1.8, on the other hand, doesn't have that same flexibility, but it's a great walking-around lens because it's smaller and lighter, and probably also somewhat sharper than the zoom. It also offers a larger maximum aperture, which means that it'll work better in low-light situations (like indoors), and it also lets you take photos with narrower depth of field. That means that you can take a picture where your subject is in focus but the background is (intentionally) out of focus, like this one*:

So, your 50mm f/1.8 will give you some creative freedom that the zoom won't, and because that larger aperture lets in more light it'll also let you shoot at a faster shutter speed or at the same shutter speed in lower light than you can with the zoom.
There's more to a lens than just focal length, and having a zoom lens that covers 50mm doesn't mean that having a great 50mm prime isn't also useful.

*By Chokity (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Comment: That bokeh is harsh! With only six blades perhaps it would have been better to shoot wide open and settle for a little less acutance of the in-focus areas?
Answer: It mainly depends on your shooting style. I would keep the 50 (it is a very nice prime with good light, lenses faster than that come at $1000s) and trade the ridiculous, dark zoom for one good zoom (Tamron 28-75 2.8 maybe?) or a few primes. If you're not a nature photographer you'll hardly use anything above 100mm (mind that you need a tripod for your looooong and slow zoom!). I have a 70-200 lens and it's my least used lens. Remember also that such big zooms have poor picture quality usually (unless they cost in 10000 range...).
But maybe you want to take photos of far objects, then sell your 50 mm buy a good tripod... You just won't get the "pro" blurry background look though with this zoom...
Answer: Each lens has an individual character and tends to be better for specific types of uses. And that character and use may change, depending on the size of the sensor you're using as well.
Assuming you're using a crop body, then the 16-300 is a very versatile superzoom walkaround lens that can cover a wide variety of subjects: from wide angle landscapes to short telephoto portraits, and supertelephoto subjects like wildlife (ignore the macro claims. It's not really a macro lens, it only gives ~1:3 magnification). It's relatively large for a lens, but not as inconvenient to lug about as a 18-55 and 55-300 duo, so it makes a great travel lens for those times you want to go light.
The drawback of the 16-300, however, is that to cover such a large zoom range, there are image quality compromises. It exhibits strong lateral chromatic aberration in the 200-300mm range, it's generally softer in the corners and around the edges, and at the wide end exhibits the "wave" or "mustache" distortion typical of superzooms. And that it has a "slow" maximum aperture of f/3.5 at the 16mm end of the range, and f/6.3 at the 300mm end of the range, which means you'll need more light, higher ISO settings, or longer shutter speeds to get good exposures. None of this is unexpected in any superzoom lens, btw.  Super-picky shooters prefer zoom ranges that are 3x or less (i.e., the ratio of the long end to the short one. The 16-300's is about 6 times that: 300/16 => 18.75x). There's no such thing as a perfect lens. Just tradeoffs that work better for you.
The 50mm f/1.8 was the kit lens for film SLRs.  It's a "prime" lens (i.e., has a fixed focal length) with a large maximum aperture. It's small and compact. A large "fast" (anything f/2.8 or larger is considered fast) maximum aperture means you can probably use the lens indoors without a flash or in lower light.  And given that it's a prime, it can achieve better image quality with a simpler design than a zoom. Compared to your 16-300, it's probably smaller, cheaper, and sharper. It's suited for portrait and available light shooting.
The drawbacks of the 50/1.8 are that on a crop-body dSLR, the field of view, thanks to the crop factor, is going to make it act more like a short telephoto lens (great for portraits, not so good for walkaround or landscape shooting), and because the lens doesn't zoom, you have to move around more to compose your shot, and there may be situations where it will be unsuited to the subject (i.e., small spaces, across-the-table portraits, unable to leave your seat in a performance venue, etc.) where a zoom would be a better fit.  A lens that might be better suited, if you wanted a fast prime for street or walkaround shooting is the AF-S 35mm f/1.8G.
Comment: Thanks for all your help.  I'm a hobby photographer and pretty new at understanding all of this.
Comment: @Debdan81, you're welcome. You may also want to take a look at [this guide to purchasing lenses](http://www.digital-slr-guide.com/best-digital-slr-lens.html). It describes lens features in usability terms.


Which version of Java should I use for Minecraft?

Question: What version of java do I need for minecraft and how would I install it I've been to multiple forums but can't figure it out.
Comment: If you experience character movement stuck issues time to time, then its a Java 7 bug and you need to downgrade to Java 6 to "fix" that issue.
Answer: You can install OpenJDK by pressing this link. After, open Minecraft with right-click in Minecraft.jar > Open with > OpenJDK Java 7 Runtime.
If it's still not working, press this link, and do the same as before.
Answer: I am running minecraft on 12.04 by following these steps:
A. Open a terminal, and enter
sudo apt-get purge openjdk*
This is a "housekeeping" step that may or may not apply to your setup.
B. Install OpenJDK6 or OpenJDK7 from the Ubuntu Software Center.
C. I prefer following the instructions to install minecraft found at http://debianhelp.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/how-to-install-minecraft-on-ubuntu-12-04-lts/.
It neatly integrates launching the game into Unity, and it opens like any other application (so no right-clicking to run the file). Only follow the last two steps in the tutorial ("Download and untar installation bash script" and "To install Minecraft Client").
D. After installing everything, I would recommended you update the LWJGL files using the link and instructions found at http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Tutorials/Update_LWJGL (essentially what Minecraft uses for graphics, sound, and input).
This update should prevent some common issues that bugged me (i.e., sound cutting out while running the game). CAUTION: be sure to back up the files you're updating with the new LWJGL files, just in case.
Answer: Download OpenJDK instead of Java, works better on Ubuntu and it's Open Source with better Linux support. You can download and Install it from Ubuntu Software Centre. Open JDK 6 and 7 are available, 7 is newer, I recommend you install this.
Then In minecraft.jar properties, select Open With OpenJDK 7 Runtime


How to make scrollock in Linux to work as it does in FreeBSD?

Question: In FreeBSD it's possible to scroll screen buffer back and forth after pressing scrollock how to make it work like this in Linux. I hope there is a solution
Answer: I guess this depends on the terminal emulator you are using. The article you linked to, for instance, mentions that the KDE terminal, Konsole, offers the desired behavior.
Answer: I guess you're talking about the actual textual terminal console; out of the box you can see history differently in FreeBSD and Linux: in FreeBSD you ScrollLock and then PageUp/PageDown, while in Linux (AFAIR) you Shift-PageUp/PageDn to the same effect.
If your question was "how to see the history in Linux" well, that's your answer: remember to use Shift+PageUp instead of ScrollLock+PageUp.
If, OTOH, what you really meant was "I know I can do that, but I would prefer to use the very same keypresses I'm accustomed with already" then I fear I can't help you, as I don't know Linux ttys so well myself. I wonder if that's even feasible with a simple configuration or if those keypresses are somewhat hardwired in the console software.


SharePoint designer 2010 workflow not starting when item is updated

Question: I have written two SharePoint 2010 designer workflows both of which send emails to external users. The problem is both workflows are not getting started when I update the list item. One workflow is of simple one step which sends email. Also I have put logs there when workflow starts and ends, but no logs are added to Workflow History list. There is also one error coming when I publish the workflow "Errors were found when compiling the workflow. The workflow files were saved but cannot be run.". This workflows are built for SharePoint online list. Any help would be appreciated.
Comment: It will be easy for us to answer your question if you can add the screenshot of actions you have used in your workflows as you are saying you got an error while publishing the workflow.
Comment: The workflow only has one step of sending email to external user. And two log actions one at start and the other at end after the email action.
Answer: There has been an issue with SharePoint Workflow 2010 platform from Microsoft for about two weeks now.
It has been logged on the admin center as seen in the image below.

If you have access to the Admin center of Office 365, you can also check this out in the service health section.
Hence, when you try creating a new 2010 workflow or edit an existing one, you get this error.
I'll suggest you recreate the workflow on 2013 platform if it's not too complicated as this is not affected.
Hopefully they get it resolved it soon.
Comment: Yes thanks. But the thing is email to external users are not sent through SharePoint 2013 workflow. That's why I created 2010 workflow.
Answer: The last time I checked, the issue with SharePoint 2010 workflow on Office 365 has been resolved. I will suggest you clear SharePoint designer cache, edit the workflow again and publish it again. Check the below link for how to clear SharePoint designer cache:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/43113779
Comment: Its working now the issue has been resolved thanks :)
Answer: There is an issue published via Office 365 Admin Center->Health->Service Health->Advisories->SharePoint Online:
Users are unable to edit workflows or create new workflows in SharePoint 2010 using Designer and other protocols.
Current status: We have validated that the deployment is approximately 96 percent complete.
We currently anticipate that the deployment should complete by Tuesday, March 26, 2019 as the fix propagates through the remaining systems.
Once the fix reaches your environment, you will need to republish any workflows.
I have done a test in my SharePoint online and it works now. You can check again.
Answer: We are still facing the issue. Apparently it is removed from MS Service Health Advisory. However, the issue still not resolved.
We had been patiently waiting since last three weeks for this to resolve and this is badly impacting the business.
Waiting to hear from MS team with a fix.
Thanks, Jame


Showing that $\sum \frac{\log n}{n^x}$ converges for $x>1$

Question: I'm trying to show that $\sum \frac{\log n}{n^x}$ converges for $x>1$ by the ratio test. Here's what I've got so far $$\frac{a_{n+1}}{a_n} = \frac{\log (n+1) n^x}{(n+1)^x \log n}$$
$$=\left(\frac{n}{n+1}\right)^x \frac{\log (n+1)}{\log n}$$ but I can't see how to manipulate the $\frac{\log (n+1)}{\log n}$ term to make this congerge to a limit less than 1, can anyone help?
Comment: Hint: $\frac{logn}{n^x}=o(\frac{1}{n^{\frac{1+x}{2}}})$
Comment: L'Hopital will show $\lim\limits_{n\rightarrow\infty}{\log(n+1)\over\log n}$ is 1. But the limit of the other expression is 1 also. So the Ratio test will fail.
Answer: For $x>1$, let $x=1+2a, a>0$, then
$$\lim_{n\to\infty}\frac{\frac{\log n}{n^{1+2a}}}{\frac{1}{n^{1+a}}}=\lim_{n\to\infty}\frac{\log n}{n^{a}}=0.$$
Because the series $\sum\frac{1}{n^{a+1}}$ converges, so does $\sum \frac{\log n}{n^{x}}.$
Answer: The reason you can't do that is because the limit of those terms is $1,$ so the ratio test won't work here. Instead, note that  $\displaystyle f(t) = \frac{ \log t}{t^x} $ is eventually decreasing, since $\displaystyle f'(t) = \frac{1- x \log t}{t^{x+1}}$. Then either the integral test or Cauchy condensation will finish this off.
Answer: I don't know if this is right, but what I did was I decided to say that (ignoring $n=1$)
$\log n = n^t$ or $t=\log(\log n)/\log(n)$, and say that $x=1+f$ so then I could rewrite the sum as $n^t/n^x$ or, $n^{t-x}$ or, $n^{t-f-1}$ and since $t$ approaches zero as $n$ becomes large, $f$ will eventually exceed $t$. The sum of the terms before that point will be finite, and the sum of the terms after that point will be convergent. Finite plus finite equals finite. (this is likely wrong)


Can you use mods in Civilization V multiplayer?

Question: When I load mods in Civilization V it only has option to start single player game. So is there any workaround or method for loading mods in multiplayer games? I am mostly interested in using some Interface only mods
Answer: Nope. There was a mod that made it so you could, at least over LAN, but it's broken now. It's possible that this functionality will get added, but unlikely.


What determines the effect of a craft?

Question: When I use a craft on a person/house, it can:

Increase their yield
Increase their wallet
Increase both
Have no effect

What determines the outcome (and the amount of increase, if there is one)?
Answer: There are several factors.
First, crafts are more effective on certain buildings. In other Kairosoft games these are pretty explicit, while here they are less obvious. Logical choices will generally be more effective though.
Second, crafts have specific categories that they affect. A craft used on the correct building will enhance all of those categories, while one used on a sub-optimal building may affect none or only one characteristic.
Third, the higher a building is upgraded, the more difficult it becomes to further improve it. Therefore, its advisable to spread upgrades out for maximum efficiency.
In general, patterns are easy to determine through just playing games, since they are fairly logical in what they develop. An expensive sounding item is likely to boost wealth for example.
If you are still having trouble, try playing some of the other kairosoft games, particuarly Dungeon town. In dungeon town, the categories are specifically shown by color coding, so you can get an idea of what items match what. (plus dungeon town is one of the more unique games).
Comment: While this is somewhat useful, an authoritative answer would include the various crafts' affected categories and compatible buildings. Right now, you're pretty much just saying "it's intuitive", which may or may not be true, depending on the individual gamer.

What determines the effect of a craft?


Two different jQuery UI themes on the same page

Question: I want to have two different jQuery UI accordion menus on the same page, but I want them to have different themes.  Is this possible?
Answer: Absolutely. The jQuery UI CSS Framework has a robust and complete theming solution. Just give your accordions separate CSS classes - jQuery UI classes are semantic in nature - and off you go! Let me know if you'd like an example.
EDIT: There are many different ways to do this, depending on what your needs are. See the bottom part of this page for more information on how to use theme-ing with the accordion
Answer: According to the article Using Multiple jQuery UI Themes on a Single Page from the Filament Group, it is possible to provide a CSS Scope when a theme is downloaded that will allow you to specify use of alternate themes on a single page. There is also a link to a demo page.
Disclaimer: I have not tried doing this myself, but it does look promising.


Does Randomness depend on the observer?

Question: Does randomness of an event depend on the observer? For example, when a coin is tossed it the outcome may appear random to the person who tossed it, yet to say a supercomputer which had at that time analysed the wind conditions, the gravitational force, angle etc. the outcome would not be random. so in short, can pseudo randomness be equated with randomness if the observer cannot predict the outcome?
Comment: This question feels very similar to http://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/2439/is-there-anything-that-is-totally-random... can you edit your answer to highlight how it's different?
Comment: @James Kingsbery: My question is whether randomness of an event depends on the observer, on how much he knows about the event and the factors that cause it. The question given in the link asks plainly if anything can be held random in an 'absolute' sense, here the conditions are 'weakened' a bit.
Answer: To ask "is this random" is a question ambiguous between the two senses of random?
Here, we need to distinguish between epistemic (concerned with what we can know) and metaphysical (concerned with what a thing or system in fact is) conditions for randomness.
What you are describing is when we epistemically cannot distinguish between randomness and a complex system which makes an events outcome deterministic (or free) rather than random.
In answer to your question as to whether something epistemically random qualifies as random, that would depend greatly on how yo think what we can know relates to reality itself. And it can also depend on the particular case.
So your intuition is right. We might call something random and use it for those purposes even though it is not in fact random on a metaphysical level-- like the random number seed on your computer which depends on jitter in electronic magnetic pulses or on background radiation. But then do we ever care that the thing is metaphysically random rather than random to our knowledge.
Comment: @user3660112 to word it another way, it depends on what you mean by "random." Do you mean something people cannot predict or do you mean something that arises with no reason or order? If the latter, you are looking for metaphysical randomness. If the former, you are looking for epistemic randomness. Usually, we only care about what will be from our perspective random.
Comment: Well, so it all depends on how we see it and why we would?
Answer: Can pseudo randomness be equated with randomness if the observer cannot predict the outcome? No. Consider this thought experiment.  You and I are playing a card game.  As far as you know, the deck is fairly shuffled, so the sequence of cards is random.  But in fact, I stacked the deck, so it appears random to you, but the sequence is entirely known to me.  Clearly, I have a strong advantage in the game.
In other words, just because the observer can't tell the difference, it does not mean the impact is the same.  Even in the case that no other conscious observer knows the pattern, the fact that there is a pattern could alter the results in a way that might be significant.  This is a problem with practical implications.  (See this article for how this impacts cryptography, as an example.)
This is especially significant given that it's unclear whether true randomness exists in the universe, or whether what we experience as randomness is just patterns we don't as yet understand.
Answer: Something random is something not able to be determined. A coin flip is random if you don't know what the outcome will be but when you do it is no longer random.
Comment: Randomness = level of ignorance? So if I failed freshman physics, I think heavy objects fall to the ground randomly. If I passed freshman physics, I think it's due to Newton's law of universal gravitation. If I passed relativity class, I think it's due to Einstein's gravitational field. But then if I get a PhD in physics and study multiverse theory, I know we just happen to live in the universe where gravity has the value is does; so it's random after all. Randomness is tricky!
Comment: I guess you mean randomness as in our perception of randomness. So, if our deterministic then is nothing random?

Does Randomness depend on the observer?


"Where can I buy X?"

Question: This question asks where to buy a fairly obscure movie.  Are these questions on-topic?  Finding an old/obscure film can be very frustrating sometimes, so I can see a clear appeal to being able to ask such questions. But that alone does not make the question on-topic for our new site.
Answer: I think an answer to this question has no lasting value. It doesn't matter if the movie is a blockbuster or some fairly unknown movie. If a answer gives a shop, this will be too localized as the shop can be unavailable from different countries and be closed in two years. So I think that shouldn't be allowed (closed as too localized).
Answer: I see no reason this site should be unique in it's stance on purchasing recommendations - to my knowledge, no other site allows it, and I don't see an argument for it here.
I recommend the policy of "close it and refer them to chat," considering we don't want to leave them stranded (and many users here will likely have a good recommendation for them).
Comment: This is different from a purchasing recommendation because it's not soliciting opinions on which products or vendors are "good."  Now, if it was asking "Should I buy my movies from Amazon, B&N, or Blockbuster?" then _that_ would be a bad-subjective question that should be closed.
Comment: (Note that I'm not making an argument for this being on-topic; I'm simply pointing out what I see is the difference between normal shopping recommendation questions, and this one)
Answer: Like others have said it is too localized. But perhaps there could be a wiki page for known websites that stock rare movies?

"Where can I buy X?"