Is it possible to be chasidish without wearing the garb and keeping all the minhagim?

Question: Can someone be chasidish (or a chasid) if they don't dress in a distinctively "Jewish" way or don't keep all the minhagim such as "cholov yisrael", saying tehillim on rosh chodesh, etc?  Does it depend on which chasidus?  In other words, is chasidus mainly in the "philosophy" and internal thoughts and beliefs or is it mainly external things like dress and minhagim, or are both required?
Comment: Perhaps you can [edit] to explain why you think there is some objective category of "being chasidish" that it would have rigorous rules for inclusion. Why would being in that category matter? As it is now this question seems like a meaningless semantic game. -1
Comment: It also seems that you are confusing the outward appearance with the philosophy and beliefs that outward appearance and behavior come from. For example, one keeps *chalav yisrael* for a reason not as a meaningless *custom*.
Answer: Complex question.
I believe in the past there have been Hassidic thinkers who did not adopt the garb, but today we usually associate the two (but not necessarily).  (Was it the Kotzker who was a Hassidic thinker but not dresser?)
Rabbi Dr. Moshe Dovid Tendler recalls an interesting conversation he had with Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneurson, the late Lubavitcher Rebbe zt'l:

I asked him, "Why is it that your sheluchim (emissaries) take a fellow and make a Chasid out of him by putting a kapote (long black coat) and hat on him – even though he knows nothing at all about Judaism?" The Rebbe answered me, "But it works this way. If we tried it any other way, it would not work." A person has to know that he belongs to the rest of his community before he can actually become part of it, and these outward signs allow him to do so.

You could read into that what you will; I'd read into it that for the masses, adopting a complete brand is most effective.  But if some hybrid works for you, why not?  (The Rebbe didn't answer "because keeping kosher is useless unless you wear a black hat!")
As for what to keep, I can refer you to Rabbi Moshe Feinstein's responsum whether someone who has worn traditional Polish Jewish garb who moves to America must maintain it; he writes that you should keep the minhag (customs) of your ancestors, but not their chumras (choices to be extra-strict); for instance (I would gather), if you accept R' Moshe's logic that chalav yisrael in America today is a chumra, then you wouldn't be bound by your family's adoption of that chumra.  Minhag would be more like whether to stand or sit for kiddush.  He also writes that in his (pointedly non-Hassidic opinion), the evolution of Hassidic garb was that a great rabbi chose to wear a long garment (considered more modest, and the sign of a scholar) and make it out of silk (to avoid prohibited mixtures of wool and linen); it wasn't that the rabbi made an enactment that his followers should follow his example, just that they chose to emulate him on their own.  (Rabbi Feinstein further argues that American clothing today is "American Jewish garb" and no worse than "Polish Jewish garb.")
I'm sure there are still Hassidic groups that operate with very strict definitions of "in" and "out", but in today's world, more and more people find themselves in different ways; if the way that works for you to believe in G-d and Torah and keep 613 is by using Belz tunes, Lubavitch philosophy, and Lithuanian customs, at the end of the day I'd stay you're still a good Jew.  (But that's my opinion.)
Now if you choose to hybridize legitimate streams of Orthodoxy, be aware that some people will be more okay with this than others, that it might be worth thinking about what practices to do publicly vs. privately, given your environment; and that some bridges are best not burned.  That's a path you have to find for yourself.
Much hatzlacha (success) in your journey!
Comment: Bent-down fedora is normal. Long free-hanging *peyes* is normal. Clean shaven is normal. Blue suit jacket is normal. Houndstooth Breeches are normal. Argyle dress socks are normal. Tennis shoes are normal. The combination isn't.
Comment: @Adám - I know this an old comment, but that is absolutely hilarious.
Answer: Chasidus strongly believes in keeping the Minhagim and dress of the previous generations. Thus someone that would not keep the Minhagim is not really being Chasidish. However there are different Chasidishe groups that dress in different manners (Lubavitch wears bend down hats, Stolin wears regular brim up hats, Bobov wears high beaver hats, Satmar wears low beaver hats). Thus you can be Chasidish in many different modes of dress if you follow the dictates of that particular Chasidus.
My father always tells me that when the Torah talks about a murderer it is talking about a Frum Jew that has murdered someone. He does everything a Frum Jew does yet he went ahead and murdered someone. Thus there are people that may consider themselves Chasidish even if they are not doing everything 100% right.
Answer: A person can be a Hasid without necessarily belonging to a specific group. In my experience and from what I heard in the name of many Rebbe's, some of the greatest Hasidim they knew did not dress the part and did not blindly follow whatever the other Hasidim were doing. It does not mean that one can just pick and choose, rather one should be a thinker and adopt those practices that will help him in his service of Hashem and not adopt those practices which will hinder his service of Hashem.
Comment: "A person can be a Hasid without necessarily belonging to a specific group" then who is such a person a chossid of?
Answer: I have seen many Chabad wearing only the "normal"clothing. The ones at Ben Gurion asking if you wish to lay Tefillin are a good example.
It is also not uncommon in The Netherlands.
Comment: Hello Oldwolfgilwell, welcome to Mi Yodeya, and thanks for your first answer! I hope you'll look around and find other Q&A of interest and stay learning with us.
Answer: I think that Breslov is "mainly in the philosophy" as you say. Though Breslovers often have distinctive dress, on the whole they're much more varied than other branches of chassidim. As far as minhagim, the central points that one is supposed to adopt are very private (spending Rosh HaShanah in Uman is not so private, but the other two central pillears, shemirat haberit and hitbodedut, are very private).
Answer: The Truth

On the Lubavitcher Rebbe's 70th birthday, he was asked by a college
  student if it was possible to be his Chassid without donning the
  Chassidic garb, without growing a beard. The Rebbe replied, "Every
  day, even now, I wake up each morning seeking to make it better than
  the day before. If you only make the commitment to do this, to
  consistently add in goodness, I will be proud to call you my Chassid."
  (source)

This is the position of the holiest, and it is surprisingly complex. (Note that the Rebbe does not say one need not don the beard or lavush.) In the longest view, the Rebbe is exactly correct, and there could, in my judgment, be no error in living by these words.
The Reality
You may encounter some earthly resistance if you try to become a chosid "only" in this way. The fact is that, although you may indeed be a chosid, many people will not consider you a chosid if you don't do some (many) basic and not-basic things that have come to be associated with chassidishkeit. Just some of these are davening the nusach; learning the chassidus daily; keeping the (extensive and detailed) minhagim; being machmir on halacha; following the directives of your Rebbe; cultivating hiskashrus to your Rebbe; wearing the lavush 100% of the time, including variations for sleeping and in the home and for sports/recreation; living in a Chasidic community (without which, you'll find, the rest is almost impossible); following a rov from your community; taking part in farbrengens and tishn; keeping the kashrus of your chasidus (it can be hard); speaking Yiddish (not hard); marrying a chasidish wife and raising your kids in the chassidus; sending your kids to chasidish school (not a lot of secular education there); growing a beard and peyos; going to the mikvah, sometimes every day; not associating socially with the opposite sex; with limited exceptions, not listening to secular music nor going to secular school nor reading secular books nor watching movies nor reading secular news; rejecting a certain amount of technology; and this is only the tip of the iceberg.
"Dancing at Two Chasunas"
If you don't do all or most of these things, you will likely find that others in the chasidus do not really consider you to be one of their own (although they may anyway be kind and supportive). This may start to be a problem when you are looking for a shidduch for yourself or for your children, or looking to send your children to school. For these things, it is usually not enough to be simply "very frum" or to have great respect and love for the chassidus and a wish to connect. These communities survive to a significant extent by rejecting outside influence, and, though they may have some interface with the outside world for purposes of kiruv, politics or business, the purely Jewish, chasidic qualities of their homes and institutions are precious to them; if you wish to join these homes or institutions, you need to be committed to the same. (Or have--sometimes--a great deal of money which you intend to spend your life giving to the community.)
Permissible Variations and Alternatives
Some variations are permissible within chassidic communities. Many communities have both a more modern or idealistic element and a more traditional, conservative, "chassidish" element. Sometimes these elements live in different towns or on different streets within a town. Usually, the first group will permit more flexibility in the dress and lifestyle, as well as in politics and in interaction with the outside world. The second group is internally considered more prestigious, may look down on the other group and will not marry them, and may follow a stricter minhag considered closer to the Rebbe's own; this group may consist of a bifurcated mix of families with yichus in the chassidus, and newer families/individuals who are trying to accrue some chassidic capital in compensation. (This strategy works and is necessary in some cases and not others.) The first group may include eyniklakh of the second group who seek more freedom within the chassidus, and rely on their family status for continued inclusion, as well as a certain proportion of baalei teshuva. Moving between the groups is possible, but easier in one direction than the other.
Outside of the traditional chassiduses are some non-mainstream options such as neo-chasidism, heimishkeit, chasidei klali,
Carlebach, yishuvim, and probably many others I've never heard of. In some Chasidic communities--well, in Crown Heights--there are groups of young Modern Orthodox who live on the periphery of the community and daven at the community's most liberal shuls and at their own shuls.  In Israel, there may be a great deal more flexibility in defining chasidishkeit; I have heard of a number of organizations and communities where a more fluid, liberal notion of chasidishkeit is embraced, possibly in consort with a hippie-style and/or "return to the land" lifestyle. Breslov seems to have a particularly sizable contingent of such types. Seekers in general are welcomed in Israel and may have luck finding their place.
Why be a Chosid?
As for why all this is worth it -- a Chasidic community has many benefits. First of all, you will, in fact, live for G-d. It is very difficult to achieve this thing in other environments. It may be that doing so is infinitely important. If that is worth something to you, then it may be correct for you to become a chasid.
Second, you will live an old, dignified, and beautiful Jewish life every day. This is a life charged with immediacy and poignancy. It is charged with the past -- the entire weight of the past -- and of the miracle of its survival. The culture itself is a remnant of a precious otherworld that was nearly obliterated from existence, and that survives only by virtue of the efforts of the few and proud to resuscitate it with all their might again and again at every moment. If you become a chosid, you will become part of this resuscitation and part of this survival. This itself is an acutely meaningful thing.
Third, the lack of freedom in Chasidic life is repaid with a deep sense of security. There are no questions about what to do: the generations before you have already determined what is worth doing. You do that. You trust that it is enough for a good life. If you have a question, you ask your Rebbe, and your Rebbe will answer you with complete wisdom. The important things in life--family, community, physical integrity and dignity, peoplehood, and devotion to G-d--become your rights; if you struggle with any of them, others will bend over backwards to help you, because they know that these things are essential things for the soul.
How to Join a Chasidus
If you decide that the hardships are worth it to you, and you do want to join an "official" chasidus, here are my recommendations. First of all, find a Rebbe and a community. These may require research and much trial and error. Then move there, find a job there, and enroll in a yeshiva there. Once you are a bit established, you can look for a shidduch there, if need be, and start a family. No matter how closely you conform to the ways of the chassidus, you will spend your life as a baal teshuvah, and will always be seen as "second-class" in many ways. Still, if you can manage, you will be rewarded with all the gifts I have described. And your children will be luckier; they and especially their children will have chasidus as their birthright.
Being a chasid is not an easy road, but it may be the right one (for some) for reasons of this world and the next. Think about it carefully and do it slowly and with self-compassion. Much hatzlacha and much bracha, seriously.
Comment: "No matter how closely you conform to the ways of the chassidus, you will spend your life as a baal teshuvah, and will always be seen as "second-class" in many ways" How tragic it is to imagine, and how difficult it is to accept that the best group one can hope to associate with is one that will never accept you, while you do your best to become one of them, consoling yourself that your grandchildren will be accepted...
Comment: "This is the position of the holiest, and it is surprisingly complex." This is the position of the holiest what? What is complex, and how is it surprising? Consider clarifying.
Comment: "although you may indeed be a chosid" What does this even mean? Why do you think there is some objective category of "being chasidish"? Just because the OP made this mistake doesn't mean you need to perpetuate it.
Comment: Much of this post seems totally irrelevant, as the OP wasnt asking for practical advice, or about how things will be received, but about philosophically, what makes somebody objectively Hassidic (an obviously impossible question, since it is semantics).
Comment: @mevaqesh It seems you have a problem with the question, not my answer. Consider that your complaints apply to the majority of other answers to date. Why have you chosen to pick on mine? I do agree to an extent with your first comment, though.
Comment: @mevaqesh "Holiest" I am using as a fused nominal.
Comment: the beginning part of this answer with the Story of the young man us great and I was about to use that as my answer. Your answer however also contains some very negative statements such as "No matter how closely you conform to the ways of the chassidus, you will spend your life as a baal teshuvah, and will always be seen as "second-class" in many ways" and therefore a really bad answer
Comment: @SAH I didn't grow up as a lubavitcher and I don't feel treated like a second class citizen. That isn't to say this couldn't happen but it for sure is not the norm.
Comment: @Laser123 I said "second-class in many ways" and I stand by this, particularly as reflects the totality of chasidishe krayzn, among which Lubavitch is something of an outlier for its tolerance. As I alluded in my answer, people will be very kind, invite you for Shabbos, etc., etc. Convincing them to marry you or to eat your food may be more difficult. (I don't say it is impossible.) Also, this is not a criticism; I believe they have completely understandable reasons for doing this.
Comment: @SAH about marriage that isn't unique to chassidim and the subject of yichus is much less of a concern now that it was in the past with most people. As far as food goes most chassidim are very careful where they eat and you being a baal teshuva has nothing to do with that. I have shared many meals with people who know me b/c they know I have the same standards as they do. No one is perfect in any community. Also no one ever said being a baal teshuva would be easy.
Comment: @Laser123  OK, so you agree.
Comment: @SAH no not at all. I keep commenting and telling you that you are wong. why would I suddenly agree with this nonsense you have made up about second class citizenship?
Answer: As noted in another answer the Lubavitcher Rebbe told a young man who once came to him and said I would like to be your chossid but don't see myself donning a sertuk as you wake up every day with the commitment to be better than the day before I will be proud to call you my chossid.
"Chabad, however, the emphasis was not so much on how one looked on the outside, nor on creating an insular community by dressing differently. Rather, the emphasis was on creating the internal strength and warmth to withstand assimilation, through studying and internalizing the teachings of Chassidism.
It is this internal warmth which gives Chabad emissaries throughout the world the strength and warmth to go out to remote communities where there is no Judaism. Not only do they have no fear of being assimilated, but on the contrary, they serve as a beacon of light, bringing the warmth of Judaism to the remotest of regions. In the end, while garments have importance, it is our actions and convictions that truly define us."
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/3755339/jewish/Why-Do-Many-Chassidim-Wear-Shtreimels-Fur-Hats.htm#utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=fb_en
To be a chossid is much more than clothing. The clothing is only useful as a reflection of the inner. Simply donning a set of clothing will not transform you. Someone once asked the Rebbe Rashab during a farbrengen what it meant to be a chossid...  http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/2183/jewish/The-Lamplighter.htm
Here is a link that is an audio explaining a maamar by the Lubavitcher Rebbe about what is the purpose of chassidus... http://www.chabad.org/multimedia/media_cdo/aid/1036483/jewish/On-the-Essence-of-Chassidus.htm


Coherence effect on collecting sun light by mirrors

Question: There are systems that collect sun light in one spot.

I wonder, why does it accumulate additively, without destructive interference?
Answer: Let's suppose the light from the Sun was perfectly coherent. In that case you would get interference, however the optics used in the sort of solar tower you show are manufactured to nowhere near single wavelength of light precision. That means the phase of the light arriving at the collector would vary wildly with position across the collector, and the resulting interference pattern would be a speckle. At some points in the speckle destructive interference would make the intensity zero, but at others constructive interference would increase the intensity. The end result is that on average the intensity of the light would be the same as if no interference had occurred. Which makes sense, because the light energy flowing into the collector has to go somewhere. Remember, interference doesn't negate the energy coming in - it just moves it around e.g. by concentrating it into spots.
All of which is beside the point, because sunlight is not coherent, or at least not very coherent, so you aren't going to get interference and you won't get a speckle pattern. Just a patch of uniformly bright light.
Answer: Short answer: On something operating with non-coherent light on the scale of a solar power collector, there is no net effect from interference. The increase in light intensity is not additive interference at all, but is simply that the light falling on a wide area is collected and focussed on a small area.
However, I'm guessing that there is some confusion on why interference doesn't seem to occur with sunlight.
To understand what's going on here, let's ignore the solar power system, mirrors, etc., for a minute, and just think about the light that's arriving. Consider it as a lot of "parcels" of light.
If the sun were a laser, then the light from it would be "coherent" - i.e. the parcels would all have their peaks and troughs lined up with each other. If I were to hold my hand out to catch the light, the only thing that determined whether my hand intercepted a peak or a trough would be the distance that the light had travelled.
However, the sun is not a laser, and so these parcels of light arrive out of phase with each other. If I hold my hand out to catch the light, no matter how far the light has travelled, I will catch some peaks, some troughs, and some in the middle.
Now consider a system with multiple beams that are joined in one point - such as the solar tower that you are interested in.
If the sun were a laser, then the different beams would have travelled slightly different distances, and so would arrive at different points in their waveforms, and so you would see an interference pattern: In one spot all the peaks line up, in another spot they cancel out, etc. This works because the light is coherent in the first place.
But as the sun is not a laser, the light is not coherent and there is a jumble of different phases arriving at the same time. Some of these will interfere with one another: but some will be constructive, and some will be destructive, at random. When you average it out over a large number of parcels of light, there is no overall effect from interference.
Answer: Well I thought John Rennie explained it as well as is needed.
The sun IS NOT a point source, or anything like one, since we can make highly detailed images of it even here on earth.    So to talk about coherence, is absurd.    It isn't spatially coherent from point to point over the image, and it isn't even temporally coherent for any diffraction limited image point.
So you will never see any interference effects on a boiler receiving surface.
And as John pointed out, the energy doesn't disappear in a real interference situation anyway.
Why do people think everything is a laser ?
And those mirrors used for thermal solar energy of the kind depicted, are not high finesse optics.  They will work just fine, even if they are quite flat, because, if you made them paraboloidal, they have to have an enormous focal length so the f/number of each mirror is extremely small.   It's cheaper to make them all flat, or else each one has to have a different spherical curvature.  They might be slightly curved for surface stability; but they hardly need to be.
And yes the mirrors are totally additive, and each one has to be individually steered to track the sun.
Comment: The question is why do people speak about source coherence when I ask about coherence of the received waves? I ask you how do you achieve the additivity out of incoherent source. Why do you discuss the incoherence of the sun rays?
Answer: When one is talking of energy, it is simpler to think "photons", because each photon carries an energy h*nu. When it hits a material the energy of each individual photon as it impinges on matter  is finally  totally absorbed by the material of the target, either turning into electricity or heat. In the photon quantum mechanical framework it is evident that destructive interference is not in the game. h*nu never disappears. (Even with coherent beams  that show interference patterns this is true, the energy is displaced but does not disappear).
Now the classical electromagnetic wave emerges naturally from the underlying quantum mechanical stratum, and the result is the same. White light is composed of many frequencies, each frequency will have its own average electric field whose square is proportional to the energy density carried by the frequency. Integrating over all the average electric fields cannot become 0  in any part of space and time because the waves come incoherently and even if focused on a small area they are out of phase in space and time and an integral over the  average energy in each frequency holds .


How to measure the power emitted from an HF antenna in near-field WPT?

Question: I'd like to estimate the power density from a 13.56 MHz power source in a near-field WPT (wireless power transfer) scenario. Using a spectrum analyzer with a receiving antenna will give the E-field measurements, while for near-field WPT the magnetic coupled resonance is the used method (non-radiation). So, I suppose I cannot use spectrum analyzers to measure what I want. I'm wondering if there is any measurement method to measure the power (in dBm) emitted from a source to be harvested by a loop antenna in near-field concept. Any advice would be highly appreciated.
Comment: Although I really like Glenn's answer, this is not about amateur *radio* usage at all, and not about general radio theory that can be applied to amateur radio; it's about *non-radio* EM fields, to be specific. Hence, https://electronics.stackexchange.com would be the right place to ask.
Comment: @MarcusMüller According to the guidelines in the [Tour](https://ham.stackexchange.com/tour) and [Help - what's on topic and acceptable](https://ham.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) here, questions unrelated related to amateur radio are *not* specifically disallowed. The wording in the [Tour](https://ham.stackexchange.com/tour) is "Don't ask anything about anything not directly related to amateur radio **OR** the science and technology of radio".  [HELP](https://ham.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) further expands on that. ...
Comment: @MarcusMüller Please feel free to add your opinions [in this new Meta question](https://ham.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/358/antenna-theory-within-our-ambit).
Answer: WPT (wireless power transfer) is typically performed using flat, multi-turn coils (inductors) as antennas. In some cases, the coils are self resonant based on their parasitic capacitance and self inductance in order to avoid the losses in a typical matching network. Due to the close proximity of the two coils, the mutual inductance must also be considered.
The amount of power that can be transferred is heavily influenced by ensuring that the input impedance of the transmitting coil is a conjugate match for the ZO of the transmitter and that the load impedance, ZL is a conjugate match for the overall system. Because the mutual impedance factors into this condition, it is typical that the system is first modeled in order to reduce the unknowns prior to commencing construction.
Because the system is closely coupled, the load impedance of the receive antenna should also be included in the modeling exercise. Unlike a radio link with identical antennas in their far fields, the mutual inductance factor often causes the optimum load impedance of the receive antenna to be different than the transmitting coil input impedance even though the coiled antennas are identical.

Specific to your question as to how to measure the transferred power, place a high impedance RMS RF voltmeter across the load resistor on the receiving coil and apply Ohm's law to resolve the power:
$$P=\frac{E_{RMS}^2}{R} \tag 1$$
Alternatively, you may use an oscilloscope. In this case, the observed voltage will be peak to peak. To calculate power:
$$P=\frac{E_{p-p}^2}{8R} \tag 2$$
The power term can then be converted to dBm:
$$dBm=10\log\left(\frac{P}{.001}\right) \tag 3$$
If you are interested in a fairly easy read, and the basic math, regarding WPT you may enjoy the practical academic paper by Minfan Fu, Tong Zhang, Xinen Zhu and Chengbin Ma entitled A 13.56 MHz Wireless Power Transfer System Without Impedance Matching Networks, to which the above diagram is credited.
Comment: @MinhLam "In my opinion, that is exactly what a spectrum analyzer would do..." That is true only to a certain extent. In a power transfer application, the receive antenna load will dissipate more power than an SA can handle and the impedance of the load will likely not be the typical 50 ohm input of an SA. So the SA must be in high impedance mode and the reported dBm therefore must be transposed based on the actual load impedance.
Comment: Thanks for your instruction. In my opinion, that is exactly what a spectrum analyzer would do to measure the power density. So, do you think I can use a spectrum analyzer to measure the transferred power? Just like in far-field WPT, just connect an antenna to the analyzer and I can get the power density.


Awesome solution - Zoom H6 Handy Recorder

Question: H6 Handy Recorder
Someone knows more information?
(source: zoom.co.jp)
Comment: it's too early to call this "awesome". it's definitely a unique approach, and i'm interested, but i'll need a lot more data before even a modest amount of gear lust kicks in.
Comment: i agree with shaun,it will lielly cost less than a single MKH416 so dont expect miracles
Answer: I also would like to know if they've upgraded pres and if they have a better line level design. Think looks wild though! also, it's finally a viable interface rather than just a two in!
Answer: A really interesting concept.  If the mic preamps are quiet enough then it should prove useful.
Answer: It looks like it'd be too expensive for the amateur, and too crazy for the pro :/ Also the buttons seems very limited, like menu navigation. However if the preamps are good, could be a winner.
Answer: i think it looks like a frankenstein recorder.
plastic housing, volume knobs on the mic's (!?)..
this cannot be of very good construction quality.
best thing is de dedicated rec level knobs and tracks buttons.
it could be useful for a novice recordist/student.
lot's of recording methods to choose from and learn to work with.
Answer: A very quick hands-on with it.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuxzq20uduI
Seems less.. disposable than the H4.  The make or break will be the pricetag.
Answer: It's a cool idea, but with that many options and channels I hope the price is fittingly high. If each mic capsule is built with quality then it might be a great add-on to our kits — here's to hoping each mic sounds like more than an H4n with a different polar pattern, otherwise I'd say Zoom will have wasted an opportunity. A quality analog limiter would be a good addition, too...
Answer: Hmm...I do like the slightly slanted meter display though...but I have a feeling it will be a "do-it-all-for-too-little" piece of kit. I certainly don't see myself "upgrading" from my Sony PCM M10.
Answer: I did a small comparison between the H4n and the H6. The H6 seems to be a good value, but is definetly too big for me to carry around every day...
check the full comparison and audio previews here...
http://bit.ly/16mqT4R


How can $build['#attached']['drupalSettings'] change from hook_node_view to javascript?

Question: I'm afraid the title isn't clear: I am passing a value from hook_node_view to my javascript in $build['#attached']['drupalSettings'][]. But the value that is set there is not the value that the js is using. I've checked in several places to make sure that this value is indeed the one set in the variable; nevertheless, the js script is getting a different value. I'm sure I'm missing something easy, at least something I should be aware of. The stack trace in the js debugger isn't helpful, so it seems there is some processing happening after the hook is called and the js getting the value in drupal settings.
Comment: You should share same code. hook_node_view() is cached, so if you have something very dynamic, that will not be refreshed on every view, otherwise this should work fine, see for example \statistics_node_view() which does exactly this
Comment: Need to see code.
Answer: I had strongly suspected a caching issue while ignoring something more obvious, that the hook was being called several times and passing the value of the last time it's called to the javascript. Just added a check to make sure it's passing the correct value and it solved the issue.


CPU spiking in Win2003 server with High NDM activity

Question: We have a Win2003 server, where we receive files through NDM and at any time, we would be receiving 6 files from different sources. The CPU on this server is always > 95%, which causes all the componenets to slow down and the server is hung once in every 2 days. We have the latest McAfee running on the server. Any suggestions.
Answer: Is it's Connect:Direct you're using or is it an older version or is it the Java-based Connect:Direct Select?
What's the machine (be as detailed as possible, including drives/controller, exact OS version, transport mechanism, hardware - everything really)?
What steps have you already taken to diagnose this problem? What does perfmon say?
Come back to us with this information and we will be able to help more.


How to brew less than 5 gallons at a time?

Question: I recently moved into a smaller apartment and no longer have the space for my 6.5 and 5 gallon carboys.  Do people sell smaller carboys than this?  I know Mr. Beer would be small enough, but I'd rather have something a bit bigger.  Also, most extract kits come in 5 gallon recipes.  I imagine I can half everything and brew 2.5 gallons at a time.  Is there any downsides to this, or anything special I should look out for?
Comment: I once brewed a single gallon of beer in my room at college, the size being limited by the largest saucepan I had available. I had to give most of the eight pints away to people on the same staircase to make up for the smell I caused doing it.
Comment: You could also use a handful of 1 gallon glass cider jugs.  I know a few people who do this for experimental brews.  No reason you couldn't do 3 one gallons, then blend them on bottling day.
Comment: I can't speak to recipe slicing, but wanted to share that I picked up a couple of 1 gallon glass jugs and stoppers from Midwest Supplies (http://www.midwestsupplies.com/1-gallon-glass-jug.html).  They are dirt cheap.  I'm planning on using them for recipe experimentation on a smaller scale to save money on ingredients.
Answer: There are no concerns over going to a smaller batch size.  3 gallon carboys and buckets are easily found.  Check out USplastics.com they have all sorts of funky food grade buckets and things.
The other great thing about doing say 2.5 gallon batch is that you can start passing up on starters.  Just pitch an entire tube of White labs and you are definitely good to go.
However, a 3 gallon bucket is still going to take up almost as much space as a 5 gallon bucket.  You can save on storage space by putting stuff in your bucket if that helps?
As far as halving a kit goes that's tough.  I'd invest in some brewing software and set all your defaults to the new brewing batch size of 2.5 gallons.  Then start scaling good recipes from reliable sources down to that size and go from there.  Building your ingredient lists from scratch is probably better than halving kits.  At the least you should take good notes on whats in your favorite kit.  Then next time you can just buy half the ingredients separately.
Comment: USPlastics has some great prices.  How do I tell if the plastics are food-grade or not?  I like the idea of buying just what I need instead of halving the ingredients.  I'll look around for some sites and software then.
Answer: Northern Brewer has 3 gallon carboys in both glass and plastic. And you can get 3 gallon kegs, as well.
If you can halve all of the ingredients in a kit, I can't think of any problems with brewing that way. My concern would be trying to split a jug of LME into halves. You'd probably need a scale to do it accurately.
Comment: If you can build your own recipes you can substitute dry malt extract for the liquid which keeps better after opening and is more easily measured. Just be aware the DME will give you 42 gravity points per gallon per pound and LME is only 36 points per gallon per pound.
Answer: I use 3 gallon better bottles for small batches. Available at many brew shops, including Northern Brewer.
http://www.northernbrewer.com/brewing/better-bottle-plain-3-gallon-single.html
Regarding halving recipes, you can indeed literally halve your recipe and get very similar results to the full recipe.
If you want to continue to use kits, you'll probably end up wasting money over time.
I would suggest buying the ingredients separately and building your own kits. Don't worry! This is very easy. If you don't want to formulate recipes yourself, you can find them in many places online, including places like Northern Brewer who list their ingredients out:
Check out their Phat Tyre Ale:
[Sorry, I can't link it because my rep isn't high enough. Search for "Phat Tyre Extract" at the site I linked above]
Down near the bottom is a Kit Inventory Sheet:
[Sorry, I can't link it because my rep isn't high enough. Search for "Phat Tyre Extract" at the site I linked above]
SPECIALTY GRAIN
-- 0.5 lbs Victory Malt
-- 0.5 lbs Briess Caramel 60
FERMENTABLES
-- 1 lb Pilsen dry malt extract (60 min)
-- 6 lbs Amber malt syrup late addition (15 min)
HOPS & FLAVORINGS
-- 1 oz Perle (60 min)
-- 1 oz Hersbrucker (15 min)
Halve all of those ingredients and you'll have a lovely brew.:
SPECIALTY GRAIN -- 0.25 lbs Victory Malt -- 0.25 lbs Briess Caramel 60
FERMENTABLES -- 0.5 lb Pilsen dry malt extract (60 min) -- 3 lbs Amber malt syrup late addition (15 min)
HOPS & FLAVORINGS -- 0.5 oz Perle (60 min) -- 0.5 oz Hersbrucker (15 min)
Comment: Thanks for the recipe! It seems obvious, but it didn't occur to me that I could just put together my own kit. I'll look into this option more.


How does inductive coupling between transmitter amplifier stages reduce harmonics

Question: In some notes on transmitters I have found the statement that "inductive coupling between transmitter amplifier stages reduces the generation of harmonics", with no further explanation. Can anyone please explain why this is so, or convincingly refute it if it isn't?
Comment: "Inductive coupling" could mean a lot of things. I can think of ways to reduce harmonics, as well as ways to create them with inductive coupling. So without any context it's a bit of a guess what the author was getting at.
Comment: Can you cite such a source please?
Comment: I would rather not reveal the source for reasons of privacy of the author. I don't think it is relevant, the assertion, if correct, should be part of transmitter theory whoever said it.
Comment: Thanks for your comments Phil Frost, but there is no other context, it is in a list of methods of reducing harmonics. It is this lack of any explanation that prompted this question.
Answer: Absent any other context, I have a couple guesses.
A ferrite core in a transformer has losses that increase with frequency, so consequently the higher frequency energy in the harmonics is dissipated as heat in the transformer. Provided of course that the core is not saturated to the point where its non-linear properties introduce more harmonics than are removed.
Additionally, any real inductor, of any core material, or a transformer winding, has a parasitic capacitance due to the proximity of the windings. The inductance and this capacitance define a self-resonant frequency for the inductor, and above this frequency the inductor presents a capacitive reactance instead of an inductive one. If the transformer is designed such that the harmonics are above the self-resonant frequency, those harmonics will then see a shunt capacitance to ground, effectively low-pass filtering them.


Sanitizer life expectancy

Question: I've got sanitizer I made before Christmas, brewing tomorrow. Wondering if it's still effective-is there a shelf life on clean sanitizer water?
Answer: Depending on what kind of sanatiser it is, many will keep thier sanitising properties indefinitely and through many uses.
Acid based sanitisers like StarSan are effective as long as thier pH is below 3.0. A simple pH test is used to check it.
Other sanitisers like iodine based sanitisers are intended as a single use and disposed of after 24 hours.
Comment: Awesome, that's great to know thank you! I'll start checking the pH level before each session or usage
Answer: I'd go with making a new batch sanitizing solution. I used to have solution on a spray bottle, and my experience was that performance degraded after a few weeks.

Sanitizer life expectancy


Can Brook have another Devil Fruit?

Question: As per One Piece logic, a person cannot have 2 Devil Fruit powers.
The Yomi Yomi no Mi fruit revives the one who eats it. The powers of this fruit are a one-time use, and has been used up after Brook was revived. Can Brook now have another Devil Fruit?
Comment: Do you want to know what people think or if there has been any evidence given to support that he can have another? Because those are two different questions, one of which isn't allowed and one of which is.
Comment: I don't really follow the manga. So i want to know if there has been any clues to what my question is!
Comment: I don't believe anything about this is mentioned in the manga as of yet. As black beard's way of acquiring another devil fruit is also still unknown all answers given would be speculation only
Comment: This question is fine, just needed to be reworded. Quite frankly, I expected the experienced users to help the newbie, rather than nitpick.
Answer: Yomi Yomi no Mi's ability to revive its eater is just the tip of the iceberg. Brook thought it was the only purpose before the timeskip. However, after the timeskip, he reveals that he has now learnt the true power of his Devil Fruit.
The soul of a human who dies normally goes to the land of the dead, but his Devil's Fruit emits a powerful energy that allows his soul to remain in the living world. During the 2 years of training, he has also mastered its other abilities, such as:

Letting his soul leave and enter his body/skeleton at will
"Pouring his soul" into his music to show illusions to people
Summoning cold flames from the underworld
Surviving damage that would otherwise be fatal (he cannot be seriously injured unless his bones are hurt)

Long story short, Yomi Yomi no Mi is not a "one time use". Brook cannot have another Devil Fruit, unless Oda-sensei's hyper-creative imagination provides him a loophole.

Can Brook have another Devil Fruit?


Car seats at the front

Question: Is it safe to put a front-facing car seat at the front passenger seat? Do I have to disable the airbag first?
Comment: I recommend finding out from the seat and car manufacturers if you feel there is any question about the safety of a product you intend to use in addition to checking on legalities in your area.  If there is available space in a back seat it is hands-down the safest spot for anyone in a car seat.  If you are having trouble getting everyone to fit, check out [this question](http://parenting.stackexchange.com/q/5680/2876) as it may be helpful to you.
Comment: Ignoring the safety issues, you should check local laws. In Australia, it is not legal to have a child seat in the front seat unless you have no rear seats (eg: ute or van).
Answer: First off, this is not medical or legal advice, and no answer from a site like this should be relied upon; ask your pediatrician for the best advice.
It is never safer for a child to sit in the front seat.  (Similarly, it is never safer for an adult; the rear seat is simply safer in general.)  The recommendations of child safety organizations are generally they should be in the back at least until 13, if not longer (see this page for example).
However, if your child must ride in the front seat, disabling the passenger airbags is certainly a must.  You may be able to switch them off, and if not your car dealer or mechanic may be able to install a switch to turn them off.
Some additional information, from the American Academy of Pediatrics, who published updated recommendations for car safety for children:

Studies showed a 40% to 70% reduction in fatalities from children under 13 riding in the rear seat.  Over 13 it didn't seem to make much difference.
Even of side collisions, the rear seat still provided a 62% reduction in serious injuries compared to the front seat.

There are a number of studies mentioned in the article, some fairly recent, backing those numbers.
Comment: For babies the airbag has to be disabled because after deflating (airbags inflate & deflate in rapid succession) it is very likely to cover the baby's head and suffocate it. For older children Joe probably got it right.
Comment: I am not a safety expert, but all of the material I've read (the article above is pretty clear to me, only front-facing are even remotely considered in front) says no airbags.  Primarily this is because (from what I've read) airbags are built for adults - so they fire at the right height for an adult.  For a child this might be right at their face, unless the carseat is raising them to the appropriate level, which it may or may not; and in a carseat, you're not only higher but further forward, meaning you are closer to the airbag and receive a more forceful impact.
Comment: While the front seats are (closer to) the probable impact zone, they usually have airbags, while rear seats usually don't. While I agree that airbags and rear-facing seats don't mix, is that true for front-facing seats as well? The link you provided seems to conflate both types of seats. Also, the third row is _extremely_ unsafe as in the case of a front-to-rear collision, as there is _no_ crumple zone whatsoever.
Comment: In any event, everything I've ever read says airbags or not, the front is less safe, so I will stick with that for my kids until they're driving or close to it.
Comment: Added some additional information from the AAP, which is pretty much the definitive source for the US (your pediatrician will almost certainly use this as their reference).
Comment: Note that most car manufacturers state (in the manual) that the airbag must be deactivated if there's a car seat in the passenger seat. Some cars even have electronics to detect this and disable the airbag automatically.
Comment: Many of those work on weight, which unfortunately means it is not necessarily 100% effective.
Comment: I wish I had space at the back seats
Answer: The AA says:

Extreme hazard warning
You must not use a rear-facing child seat on a passenger seat where an active passenger airbag is fitted. The child's head will be too close to the airbag and severe injury or death could result if the bag is triggered.
For forward facing child restraints it is acceptable to leave the airbag active and move the car's seat back on its runners as far as it will go. Do check the car handbook for model specific advice though as airbag size and performance does vary.

http://www.theaa.com/motoring_advice/child_safety/carseats.html
This was news to me; I had thought it was necessary to disable the airbag even for front-facing child seats.
As it says, check the manual for the car to be sure for your particular model.
Also re 'pushing the seat right back', check the child seat manual to ensure the child seat is still safe in the way it interfaces with the seatbelt when it's in a front seat pushed right back - it might not be.
As Joe's answer says, it's a whole lot safer just to keep them in the rear seats of the vehicle.
Answer: Yes it should be safe, and no, you don't have to disable the airbag in most countries, although you'd have to check the laws in the country where you live.
According to this official Dutch source (in Dutch), children under 18 and smaller than 1,35m. have to use an appropriate car seat. Rear-facing car seats are only allowed on seats (front or rear) without an active airbag (so it should either be deactivated or absent altogether), but front-facing car seats have no such restrictions. This applies more or less to the entire EU, although some countries use different height or age restrictions, as evidenced by this official UK source, that puts the age limit at 14.
As I expect these laws to be based on safety, I assume it's safe enough to use a front-facing car seat in the front seat.
Comment: I'm worried by your answer.  You say that the page asserts conditions for use of a car seat and when an airbag must be disabled, but that doesn't leap to the converse: that all other conditions are safe -- it really just means that certain situations are alarming to those authorities.
Comment: I think it's a very bad idea to assume laws (passed in democracies or similar) to be particularly based on safety.  Laws are based on politics first; and beyond that, laws tend to be as permissive as possible - they allow you to choose to do things that aren't terribly safe, as long as they're not REALLY unsafe.

Car seats at the front


Habitable space bridge?

Question: In my other question "Is it possible to build a bridge between planets?" several concepts of interplanetary bridges were formed. What I would now like to know is, are any of the proposed bridges able to be build and lived on and also would these bridges have gravity?
Comment: I believe the answer is yes, but it will take research to work out details. Just getting air circulation Is tricky, even with plants along the way. A complete answer to this question may take significant research.
Comment: @SRM What I am worried about is the bridges constant stretching and moving making building and living impossible.
Comment: Each segment of the bridge could be several kilometers long, with a grow/shrink of only a single kilometer. That leaves you several kilometers of stable region for forests, jungles, deserts, houses, etc. Assuming you can have those without substantial gravity. I don't have an answer for the gravity problem. @Mendeleev
Answer: Yes, no.
I have an idea where the bridge is based on nanotechnology/smart matter so the walls can be self maintained.
A long manual journey will require that it be lived in, for the generation-long journey. They will be living in it for decades, so it must be designed to support that.
They need to "live off the land" for a journey of that length. So besides being quasi-living for self repair, it needs to provide etable crops for the travellers, air, and water.  Otherwise you have no story.
As for gravity, the inside of a uniform tube won't have any, and a non-uniform tube will not have enough to notice without delicate instruments.
Comment: Well the bridge will not be the main focus of the story but you are right the travel will not be instantaneous but will be fast.
Answer: What is the minimum amount of handwaveium to get atmosphere and gravity?
Well we have already introduced ludicrous quantities of handwaveium  so its not hard to just hand wave the rest.
Just to build a cable that connects two planets and is stable we have had to introduce an indestructible handwavium cable several times longer than the circumference of earth holding a significant fraction of the weight of 2 planets.
Since we are handwaving a bridge material of almost infinite straight lets hand wave it does not stretch significantly.
Atmosphere not much more
We build a handwaveium tube around the outside of the cable to hold in the atmosphere.  Okay but gravity will pull air down out of the tube onto the two planets.  So we need air locks that segment the tube to reduce the pressure planet side and trap atmosphere in the tube.  These would be paired with modern day air filtration and co2 scrubbing systems.  You would also need pumps to gradually move air back toward the middle as it drifts downward whenever the airlocks transition
Gravity Lots more
Lets assume you mean gravity pulling you toward the center of the cable.  (you get gravity pulling toward the planets for free).
Why do you want this?  In the normal case you climb a ladder out of planets 1 gravity well then drift effortlessly several hundred thousand miles in 0 gravity then climb down a ladder into planet 2.  Why get gravity just to walk the several hundred thousand miles in-between?
If you want it anyway there are 3 methods

Handwave artificial gravity generators
make the cable way thicker (once its diameter approaches the diameter of the moon you will start having noticeable gravity)  this also may consume dozens of planets' worth of material.
make the bridge spin.  Around the central cable create a cylinder that spins around the cable rapidly.  The centrifugal force will act as gravity unless the cylinder is large in diameter it will have to spin quickly.  Technically this feels as gravity pulling outward not inward but it is more feasible.
Comment: The air in the bridge will follow the same dynamics as air outside the bridge: It will get thinner as you get further from the planet, so multiple airlocks are a must or the atmosphere at the planet-side airlock doors will be greater than the exterior (planetary) atmosphere. Adding artificial (centrifugal) gravity will not help this. Adding enough material to the bridge to make gravity vaguely consistent throughout its length would increase the siphon effect but eliminate the need for airlocks. Now your bridge would look more like two beads
Comment: Because the planets are connected by a tube (presumably) directly between them, you will reach a point where the pull of gravity from one planet is equal to the pull from the other. This is a [Lagrange Point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point) (L1 specifically). This also makes airlocks extremely important. The atmospheres on the two planets are essentially fluids and the bridge is a hose. This gives you a [siphon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siphon), and unless both planets are exactly the same size, one planet will eventually siphon off the atmosphere of the other.
Comment: (the planets) with an oval bubble in the middle (the bridge). This would create some funky gravity though since "down" would gradually change 180 degrees as you travelled the bridge. Building a path to cope with that would be an interesting feat of engineering.
Comment: @Tim its pretty easy you have a ladder to climb out of the gravity of planet A, as gravity falls off you need it less and less until you can almost drift at the Lagrange point then you flip around and climb "down" into the gravity of planet 2.  BTW why is the bridge an oval
Comment: The ladder thing you discuss is if you don't add mass to get real gravity. If you add mass to the tube/bridge to get real gravity as you suggest in your 2nd point, you have to add the most mass in the L1 Lagrange point of the bridge since the ends of the bridge have the mass of the planets to provide real gravity. Adding about the mass of the Moon at L1, would give you about the Moon's gravity at L1, Add it at an end and you have the planet's gravity plus the Moon's gravity.
Answer: Even if it has gravity it won't be able to hold onto an atmosphere.  That takes planetary-scale gravity.  While we think of the surface gravity mattering for whether an atmosphere can be retained in reality that has nothing to do with it.  What counts is escape velocity which is a function of gravity and size.  Make your bridge out of enough neutronium (you'll need some handwavium to contain it) to give 1g to people walking on it and they'll still be in vacuum.  Build a Dyson sphere with a milligee on the surface and it will have no problem holding onto an atmosphere.
Answer: A concept not explored in the linked question, but which could work, would be a binary planetary system, both planets rotationally locked to each other.  The whole thing is rare and improbable, but it's not impossible.
At that point, you can build a dual-tethered Space Elevator.  (Space Elevators are long proposed systems where you drop a cable from space all the way to the ground and run cable cars along it).
If the planets are broadly similar, I think that, in theory, it should be possible to balance the forces between the two that the double Space Elevator stays up there all on its lonesome with minimal station-keeping.
It should not be too hard to construct a hollow space elevator "cable" which is a larger rectangle (Arthur C Clarke's Space Elevator does this in his book about it).  Then you can put in flooring if the space is large enough and have people living on the levels.
Gravity would fall off naturally as you went up to the mid-point, to vanish there, though you probably could spin up stations attached to the cable to simulate gravity (the spinning might even make the cable more stable against oscillations).  You'd have to maintain the atmosphere artificially, but it would be fine.
On a more crazy note, the anime Last Exile has, I think, a double-planet system in which their atmospheres are close enough to touch.  This might make life more interesting with such a scenario.  (Whether it's possible would take calculating whether the planets would be stable enough that close together).
Answer: In the space-spider built bridge that I suggested, gases for an atmosphere could be kept in place by secretions produced by the space-spider the seal the outside of the elastic space-spider silk tube connecting the planets.
Keeping the air breathable might require that there be some sort of plant life symbiotic with the space-spider that would recycle local air in the space-spider silk tubes (which realistically would probably come in a series of segments a bit like a bamboo plant, to prevent internal winds inside the tubes from getting out of hand). The symbiosis would work because the plants would make the tubes livable for travelers and the offerings from the travelers (or the travelers themselves if they failed to provide offerings) would be the main source of food for the space-spiders.
Gravity would be much more challenging and might just not be possible. Space-spider silk would need to be incredibly strong even with planetary dynamics and a design I have suggested which would be much less intense than the kind of two planet binary co-rotating systems that others have proposed, as opposed to the two very small planets in exaggerated versions of two asteroids in the same orbit in an asteroid belt one after the other, or very small planets in a system analogous to being at the same angular position on two concentric planetary rings that are fairly close to each other.
Throwing in centrifugal force to provide gravity by spinning part of the structure on top of everything else, while possible to conceive, feels like a bridge too far (pun intended) in an already credulity stretching situation.
Indeed, gravity might not even be desirable, because gravity would mean that people on the bridge would have to walk tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of miles or more to cross it, which would take forever, while in a near zero gravity environment, people could fly through the tube of the bridge and that might be much, much faster.
At the ends of the bridge, planetary gravity would gradually begin to assert itself, but it would probably make the most sense for the middle of the bridge to have near zero gravity.
Similarly, while one could scale it up to be large enough to live upon, the bigger the bridge's capacity, the larger it must be in terms of materials and stressing forces, so I wouldn't think that you would want a bridge any bigger than absolutely necessary for travelers along the bridge to camp out for an evening during their journey across it (which would be many, many miles and take a very long time on foot even free of the burden of gravity so that travelers could essentially fly through it from one end to the other). There might be a handful of caretakers or oasis keepers who might live on the bridge, but I wouldn't think it would make sense to make the bridge big enough to support a full fledged village or city.

Habitable space bridge?


02 Honda civic LX 1.7-1.8 not sure. oil is leaking into coolant/radiator

Question: so my wifes car had ran into some issues about 4 days ago when her car quit on her while driving from our sons school. she said that the oil light had came on moments before the car gave out and shut off while doing 70 on the highway. then, she told me that there was smoke coming from the valve cover, manifold, and oil cap. Getting the vehicle home was a straight challenge. So after getting the honda home, being both my wife and myself are both very mechanically savvy for we work on not only our own vehicles but other as well, this problem stumped us... our initial thought was that engine oil had some how gotten threw the seals and valve cover gasket into the cylinders.. well after removing the valve cover we noticed that all four seals we bad, and valve cover gasket was as well. so we replaced them cleaned everything and put it all back together. everything seemed well when we brought the civic out for a few mile test drive. Hours later, we attempted to run to the store down the highway about 7-10 miles down the road and sure enough the car took another big CRAP exhibiting the SAME symptoms as i explained above. well getting the car home was yet again a big hassle sop we stop at a gas station not even a mile from home because THIS TIME THE CAR WAS OVERHEATING. We popped the hood and noticed that the hose from the reservoir to the radiator wasnt even attached and who knows for how long.... lol i know right? stupid..  so we ended up buying coolant 50/50 mixed and went to put in the radiator directly and BAM!! i noticed the was engine oil IN THE DAMN RADIATOR!!!! i have not dealt with anything like this before for i mainly work on GM american engines..  and i need some serious help. does anyone have any answers for me??????
you can either post an answer here or my email that should be listed somewhere here think.
PLEASE HELP US!!! THANK YOU!
Comment: Hi, and welcome to Motor Vehicle Maintenance & Repair!  That sounds rough!  The way this site works, none of us have access to your personal info, including the email you signed up with, but we'll still be able to post answers directly on the site.  It will help us out if you can [edit](https://mechanics.stackexchange.com/posts/68046/edit) your post to make it a bit more concise, maybe splitting into a few paragraphs by topic.  Could you also note exactly how the car was acting before the engine died?  Loss of power?  Running really rough?  Thanks.
Comment: The story really is, the D17a1 engine which came in the 2001-05 Civic LX isn't a very good engine where the head gasket is involved. If you do a search on the D17a1 & head gasket on google, you'll find a treasure trove of information (some on here too). I purchased a JDM engine to replace the one I had in my 03 Civic just for the head gasket reason. It was the cheapest route for me to go and get the car back on the road. Whatever route you go, use Honda coolant (the blue stuff) in your Civic. Non-Honda coolant has a problem with destroying the head gaskets.
Answer: This sounds like you have had a pretty bad Head Gasket failure, and potentially your cylinder block/head have warped due to the heat causing the head gasket to no longer seal.
This can cause coolant to get into the engine oil and vise versa oil into the coolant.
You should definitely replace the oil in the engine to see if it is milky.
This is bad, but not catastrophic.
If you have the tools, remove the cylinder head, check the block and head for warping (place a truly flat plane/ruler over the block and head and look for visible light coming in between the flat plane/ruler and the block/head. If you can see anything, you will need to have the engine block and head machined flat again, this is probably a couple of hundred dollars from a local machine shop, you can then re-install the engine, install the head with a new head gasket, fill up with oil an coolant and be good to go!


Possibility of viruses from opening dmg file?

Question: While installing a file, the pop up with the fake flash player downloaded a dmg to my computer. Because I was already downloading something else and expecting to find it in my downloads I accidentally opened the dmg file. At this point I knew this was not the software I wished to download so I closed the window. The installer might have been left open for several hours past that until I ejected it and deleted it however. So I opened the dmg file and left it open for a while but I didn't install anything nor run it. Am I good? Is there anyway to be sure?
Answer: If you just opened the .dmg image and didn't manually open any file or run any program located inside it, you're fine: as far as I know, there's no "autorun" functionality on DMG images in macOS.
Comment: I might note that theoretically, opening *any* file on your computer *could* install malicious code. But that would require an extremely major zero day exploit, so unless you're a major politician being targeted by someone with enormous amounts of capital, you're fine.


What are bits in the context of channel capacity units?

Question: 'bits' are used with 2 different meanings.  One can use 'bits' to mean the binary digits i.e. 1's and 0's.  Bits are also the units of information in a event of discrete source.  I think when channel capacity is measured in bits/sec, we use the second meaning of bits.  Not how many 1's and 0's we can send down the channel but how much information we can send per second through that channel.  Is my interpretation right?
Comment: You are correct: it refers to information, not to 1s and 0s.
Answer: in Information Theory, the amount of information in a message is proportional to the logarithm of the probability of occurrence of the message:
$$ I(m) = -C \log\left( P(m) \right) $$
the only difference between different bases of logarithms is a scaling constant.  if $ C = \frac{1}{\log(2)} $, that is
$$ \begin{align}
I(m) & = -\frac{1}{\log(2)} \log\left( P(m) \right) \\
     &= - \log_2\left( P(m) \right) \\
 \end{align} $$
then we say that the $I(m)$ is in units of bits.  the reason why is if the message $m$ had only two possibilities and both had equal likelihood, then $P(m) = \frac12 $ and $I(m) = 1$.  there are two messages, two possibilities of equal likelihood, like heads and tails of a coin.  and you need only one bit, 0 or 1, to represent the two possibilities.
Comment: Consider this: a stream of  $M$-bit words all with probability $2^{-M}$.  That stream of words go into an ideal $M$-bit D/A converter and the output of that goes into an ideal $M$-bit A/D converter but there is some noise added.  The sample rate is $2B$ where $B$ is the channel bandwidth.  The signal coming from that stream of data has a power of $S$ and you can figure that out from the D/A spec of output from $-2^{M-1}$ to $2^{M-1}-1$.  the added noise has power $N$, but make this assumption that the p.d.f. of the noise is also uniform p.d.f. of width 1 LSB (loudest it can be with no error).
Comment: Thanks for the confirmation.  That was bothering and confusing me for some time.  Actually, if you need to send 1's (sharp rectangular pulses) and want to receive them as they are, you need infinite bandwidth.  Finite bandwidth channels will have non-zero rise and fall times.
Comment: we hadn't gotten to channel capacity and bandwidth yet.  that's deeper into Information Theory.
Comment: I have gone to channel capacity through mutual information though it is a bit to difficult to comprehend.  In almost every book on digital communications, in the beginning itself Shannon's noise theorem is given.


What is the maximum angle between an airplane and runway centerline when touching down at a crab angle in a crosswind landing?

Question: What is the maximum angle between the airplane's heading to the runway when an airplane is being landing sideway due to crosswind?
Comment: 90 degrees, if the crosswind's strong enough :-)
Comment: The exact *angle* is not what the performance specifications state. Instead, the maximum *crosswind component* ([What is the maximum crosswind component for large airliners?](https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/15008/what-is-the-maximum-crosswind-component-for-large-airliners?rq=1)) is specified, from which you can roughly work out the angle for a specific type of aircraft if you're interested. Each aircraft model is different.
Comment: I don't think 90 degree will be possible as with angle, both rear landing gears will be parallel to the runway. With that position, the force will be strong enough to damage it.
Answer: A B777 (as in your photo) would generally have a maximum crab angle of about 16 degrees when approaching and landing at the Maximum Demonstrated Crosswind Component of 38 knots.
A 38 knot crosswind is not limiting and can be exceeded provided you apply a sideslip or crab correction at touchdown. It is however limiting if you plan to touchdown maintaining the crab.
E6B Heading, Ground Speed, And Wind Correction Angle

By using a sideslip or crab correction at touchdown, Airliners will sometimes approach and land when the wind exceeds the Maximum Demonstrated Crosswind Component. If the crosswind component was 50 knots and the aircraft was had a lower approach speed (due to light weight), the crab angle during approach could be as much as 25 degrees.
Comment: Thank you for your answer. Very informative.
Comment: What is that "calculator"? Is that available in cockpit during flight?
Comment: The E6B is type of circular slide rule which all pilots learn to use while in basic training. Very few airline pilots use them as modern airliners have Flight Management Computers that make the E6B mostly redundant.
Answer: There isn't a maximum crab angle (you aren't supposed to touch down crabbed to the extent you can prevent it) and there usually isn't a maximum crosswind component either on most airplanes as a "legal" limitation.
Usually the aircraft's AFM limitations give a maximum crosswind component (a lateral vector derived from wind direction and speed you get from using a chart) with a statement that it is the maximum "demonstrated" component and is not considered limiting.  It's simply the maximum component that was able to be tested during cert testing.
For crosswind components beyond that, it's not "illegal" to land from an exceeding aircraft limitations standpoint, but airlines may designate the demonstrated maximum component from the AFM as a hard limit for crews to observe as a policy.
Comment: That is brutal on landing gears.  With really large airplanes with a lot of mass and inertia, you will see a technique of holding a wings level crab into the flare, then aligning the airplane with rudder just before touchdown. With all the mass you have a few seconds before the crosswind starts to drift you across the runway.  On smaller airplanes this doesn't work so well and it works better to land with sideslip, that is wing down with opposite rudder.  When I was flying RJs I landed in crosswinds using sideslip (couple degrees of wing down and opposite rudder), just like a light plane.
Comment: As far as I can tell, the landing technique for most airliners these days is to keep the crab all the way to touch down and only add rudder to correct it once the mains are on the ground—see also Terry's comment on the other answer; unlike me he speaks from personal experience.
Answer: The answer varies according to the plane's design. Some planes are constructed with landing gear so robust and flexible that significant crosswinds will not overstress them during a crabbed landing (Ercoupe). Other planes are constructed with swiveling mains so the plane lands at a crab angle but the gear tracks straight down the runway (Lockheed C-5A).
Comment: The Ercoupe's trailing link gear was robust but the term stout might make ppl think it was super rigid,  It was designed to flex under side loads so it could tolerate crabbed landings.
Comment: I meant stout in the sense of "robust" i.e., it didn't break at touchdown in a crabbed attitude. Should I edit? -NN
Comment: Maybe use "stout, yet flexible" or something like that.
Answer: No airplane touches down sideways, some may approach at and angle but generally the goal is to touch down with the airframe in line with the orientation of the runway. What you see is a crabbed approach and the aircraft will straighten out prior to touching down. As Greg notes in the comments this angle is defined (and variable per aircraft) by the crosswind component. The maximum angle desired is 0 as anything above that will add side loads to the gear that are generally not a good thing. As the FAA notes in their Airplane Flying Handbook

...The crab method is executed by establishing a heading (crab) toward
  the wind with the wings level so that the airplane's ground track
  remains aligned with the centerline of the runway. This crab angle is
  maintained until just prior to touchdown, when the longitudinal axis
  of the  airplane must be aligned with the runway to avoid sideward
  contact of the wheels with the runway.

Practically an aircraft can touch down a bit off the longitudinal axis and with proper control you can straighten it out but its generally not great for the airframe or gear. Poor longitudinal control in a tail wheel can also lead to ground looping.
The exception to this is the B52 which can actually touch down sideways although the gear is in line with the runway.
Comment: For 747s at least through the -400 series, you are allowed to touchdown in a crab up to the max demonstrated crosswind. Personally I never liked doing that and kicked out to align with the runway with a slight slip to the upwind side, but touching down in a crab was what was encouraged at the two 747-100/200 carriers I flew for; they really didn't want to drag a wing. Take a look at the copy of the Boeing Flight Crew Training Manual available at http://volarenargentina.com/descargas/_747-400_FCTM.pdf for the -400, page 6.29 for max demonstrated crosswind and 6.30 for touching down in the crab.
Comment: @Terry Interesting! You may want to add that in an answer as I did not know that and its pretty pertinent. Were side loads on the gear ever an issue in that situation.
Comment: I never heard of any side load issues, but I didn't follow maintenance concerns and history closely. I'm guessing that there wasn't any problem because it was permissible to operate with inoperative body gear steering (we did it often) which meant that every time you made taxi turn of more than just a few degrees, you were dragging the body gear sideways. Really hard on the tires.


If energy and matter are equivalent, is matter low entropy?

Question: $E = mc^2$ tells us that energy and matter are interchangeable, and this lines up with quantum field theory. If that's the case, would that mean that matter is a low entropy form of energy? And to extrapolate on that, doesn't that mean the universe will progress to a state where all matter will be liberated to form high entropy energy?
Answer: You are confusing "matter" with "mass". Specifically, $m$ in $E=mc^2$ is not "matter", but mass. "Matter" is a more general term. Both mass and energy are matter. Strictly speaking, mass is the inertia of energy, usually of the energy that is localized. 99% of mass of the ordinary matter is the energy of gluons that move with the speed of light inside neutrons and protons in the nucleus of atoms of the elements, of which everything is made. The remaining 1% comes from the energy of interactions with the Higgs field, electromagnetic energy, and a number of other types of energy.
To better understand the concept of entropy, this Wikipedia article may be a good start.


How to root LAVA IRIS 504q?

Question: I am having iris 504q model.My current android version is 4.2.2,but i am unable to update it any further,can any one guide me,how to root lava iris 504 q?
Answer: Here are the steps:-

Make sure USB debugging is enabled. Go to Settings > Developer Options > Enable USB Debugging.
Download AND Install MTK Drivers (extract, right-click android_winusb.inf and select install)
Download and extract the MTK6589 Auto Root folder.
Connect your phone to PC visa USB.
Run run.bat from the extracted MTK6589 Auto Root folder.
Press any key and wait while it roots your phone.
After finished, now reboot.
You're rooted. Verify root with Root Checker, or run any app you know requires root and you should see a root permissions request.

Happy Flashing!!!
Alternate method: Install and run through Framaroot, this will temporarily root your phone.
Link to original post

How to root LAVA IRIS 504q?


Can I get the curvature at any point of a random curve?

Question:
Random curve like the above, for example. The data source is an image file. I don't have an expression.
I want to start by curve fitting and then compute curvature. Is it possible?
Comment: Do you have the equation (or parametric equation) of that curve?
Answer: I guess the first step would always be to find an ordered list of points along the middle of the curve. That I can help with:
First binarize and thin the image of the curve, so you get a 1-pixel wide white line:
img = Import["https://i.stack.imgur.com/fEf1i.jpg"];
bin = Thinning@ColorNegate[Binarize[img]]

Finding the white pixels in this image is easy:
pts = N[PixelValuePositions[bin, 1.]];

Finding the "right" order of these points along the path you're looking for is a bit more tricky. I've tried FindCurvePath, with little success. The points aren't all on one line either, because Thinning produces slight artifacts at corners. So using an efficient graph algorithm is probably cleaner, anyway. For that, I convert my point set into a fully connected graph, with weights equal to the distance between each point pair:
dist = Outer[EuclideanDistance, pts, pts, 1];
g = WeightedAdjacencyGraph[dist, DirectedEdges -> False];

...and get the spanning tree of this graph - which is basically the shortest tree that spans this point set. For a curve like this, the tree will look something like this:
st = FindSpanningTree[g]

i.e. one very long line and a few short branches. The short branches are artifacts from the thinning algorithm, we're not interested in those. We're looking for the long "spine" of the tree. In other words, we're looking for the pair of leaf vertices that with the longest path in between.
Finding the leaf vertices (the endings of the tree) is simple:
endVertices = Position[VertexDegree[st], 1][[All, 1]];
HighlightImage[bin, pts[[endVertices]]]

And finding the paths between all pairs of these vertices isn't hard, either:
allPaths =
  Flatten[Outer[FindShortestPath[st, #1, #2] &, endVertices,
    endVertices], 1];

longestPath = MaximalBy[allPaths, Length][[1]];

Graphics[{Red, Line[pts[[longestPath]]]}]

Reusing ideas and code from this answer of signal processing I can calculate the approximate curvature from these points directly:
curve = pts[[longestPath]];

σ = 25;

{{dx1, dy1}, {dx2, dy2}} =
  Table[GaussianFilter[curve[[All, dim]], σ, der], {der,
    2}, {dim, 2}];

κ = (dx1*dy2 - dx2*dy1)/((dx1^2 + dy1^2)^(3/2));
ListLinePlot[κ, PlotRange -> All,
 PlotLabel -> "Curvature κ"]

And produce a nice-looking animation of the curvature and osculating circle:
Monitor[
 frames = Table[
   Rasterize@Row[
     {
      ListLinePlot[curve, ImageSize -> {400, 400},
       AspectRatio -> Automatic,
       PlotLabel -> "Osculating circle r=1/\[Kappa]",
       Epilog -> Module[{r, pt, n}, (pt = curve[[i]];
          r = Clip[1/\[Kappa][[i]], {-1, 1}*10^4];
          n = Normalize[{dy1[[i]], -dx1[[i]]}];
          {Red, PointSize[Large], Point[pt],
           Circle[pt - n*r, Abs[r]]})]],
      ListLinePlot[\[Kappa], PlotRange -> All,
       PlotLabel -> "Curvature \[Kappa]", ImageSize -> 400,
       Epilog -> {Red, Line[{{i, 0}, {i, 10}}]}]
      }], {i, 1, Length[curve], 5}], i]

Instead of simple Gaussian smoothing, you could use numerical optimization to find the smoothest path that's less than one pixel from this one (see this answer).
Alternatively, you could try to approximate this point set with e.g. a NURBS curve, then calculate the curvature of that. But I don't think MMA has any built-in algorithms for this task, so you'd have to write that yourself.
Comment: Do you have any hints for [this problem](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/24467141#24467141)?  In particular, are there any builtins I'm missing?
Comment: You should try a  `FindShortestTour`
Comment: @yode: You mean instead of the spanning tree? But the shortest tour (or any tour) goes through *all* points, then returns to the beginning. I don't want to visit all points, I want to remove those little "branches" that `Thinning` produces. And I don't want my path the return to the beginning. Also, finding a the shortest tour is an NP-complete problem where only approximate solutions are realistically possible, while finding a spanning tree is cheap.


Scripting Changes to IIS FTP Site Directory Security

Question: We have 20 servers running IIS with an FTP Site that is configured to deny access from all IPs except those that we grant access to. I now need to add an IP to this list. Is there any way to script this out? I've looked through the documentation for the various VBS scripts that come with IIS, but it's not looking very promising.
Answer: It certainly looks like it can be done.  Microsoft has an article called Setting IP Security Using ADSI that explains how.
You will obviously need to change the script to suit your needs (set it to loop through your 20 servers for example).  Also, I don;'t believe you're using DENY rules, but ALLOW rules, so you may need to change the syntax of the fucntion from IPDENY to IPALLOW (at a guess).
Comment: We ended up just hand-jamming all of it, but this appears to be exactly what I was looking for. Thanks - it will prove useful in the future!
Answer: What version of IIS?  For IIS 7 you can use AppCmd.exe.  For IIS 6 you will likely have to use WMI/VBScript as I believe the configuration is stored in the IIS Metabase.  Please update your post with what version of IIS you are working with.
Answer: You will need to modify them slightly but I have two scripts in this post that allow you to work with the access lists programmatically through VB script.


Rubbing the Havdalah wine

Question: Is there any source for the practice of not only dipping one's fingers into the Havdalah wine that was used to extinguish the fire and rubbing the eyes with it, but also spreading it around onto other parts of the body, and/or clothing, such as the forehead, the back of the neck, pockets, and any place with aches and pains?
Comment: @doubleAA More than related, more like spun off.
Comment: related http://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/12055/dipping-fingers-in-havdalah-wine
Answer: Not sure about sources for most of these (although see Madeleine's comment to the related question).
But about the back of the neck, it may be related to the idea that this is the location of the luz bone (specifically, the protrusion where the knot of the head tefillin is placed - Arizal, Likkutei Torah to Judg. 4:5*); it is from this that the body will be reconstituted at the resurrection of the dead (Bereishis Rabbah 28:3). There are various opinions about what food (if any) the luz is nourished by; one is that it is from the havdalah wine (Maavar Yabok 2:6). So someone may have gotten the idea that some of that wine should be applied to the luz directly.

* Although several Rishonim (including Aruch and Rashi) identify it as the vertebra at the base of the spine.
Answer: I have a book with all the Libyan customs- Nahalat Avot and on pg. 74 it brings down this custom. However, some of the sources are unavailable. However, this book has a Haskama from: Rav Ovadia Yosef Shelita, Rav Mordechai Elyahu, Rav Eliyahu Bakshi Doron, and Rav Shelomo Amar.
Comment: Those endorsements do not give me added confidence in the validity or accuracy of the Sefer. On the contrary, their endorsement of a Sefer with misquoted invalid sources gives me less confidence in the endorsements.
Comment: not this time @SethJ
Comment: @HachamGabriel, was your edit because your statement was incorrect (ironic), or because you don't want that information highlighted? My point about confidence did not stem from reading the Sefer (I have not), but because many Sefarim with endorsements do not always get them on their merits, but on the reputations of the authors (and those types of endorsements usually make a comment about the reputation and sometimes even state that they did not read the Sefer itself - though not always). It can be easier to sell a Sefer with a weak endorsement than without any.
Comment: Often times Haskamos are reprinted from the author's other seforim.
Comment: I think you meant @ShmuelBrin.
Answer: Shulchan Aruch 296:1 brought by the Rema as a way to show that we cherish the mitzvah (this goes just for the eyes, I think that the others are built on the explanation of the Rema that we spill for to have a Bracha for the week to come so maybe people target those things needing a bracha.)
Answer: The source for putting the wine on one's eyes seems to be Pirkei d'Rebbi Eliezer ch. 20:

רבי אליעזר אומר: לאחר ששותה אדם כוס של הבדלה, מצוה להטיל מעט מים בכוס של הבדלה ושותה כדי לחבב את המצות. ומה שישאר בכוס מן המים מעבירו על גבי עיניו. למה? משום שאמרו חכמים, שיורי מצוה מעכבים את הפורענות.
R' Eliezer said: After someone drinks the cup of Havdalah, it's a Mitzvah to put some water in the cup of Havdalah and drink in order to make the Mitzvos precious. Whatever is left in the cup from the water he should pass on his eyes. Why? Because the Sages said, the leftovers of a Mitzvah prevent punishment.

It seems that the bit about water got left out over the years, leaving putting from the cup on your eyes. The Rema's wording in OC 296:1 seems to echo this idea:

ורוחצים בו עיניו משום חבוב מצוה:
We bathe our eyes in [the Havdalah wine] because of the preciousness of the Mitzvah.

using the same reasoning the Midrash gives for putting the water in the cup.
Comment: I asked about not only the eyes, but other places. But thank you. It sounds like the whole idea stems from trying not to wash out the cup and wasting the last drops.

Rubbing the Havdalah wine


What's up with the pronunciation of "awry"?

Question: I was just watching a show where someone said "awry". I have noted this numerous times before and wondered, but now I just have to understand: Why is it pronounced as "aww-rye" [low tone on the aww] instead of "aww-ree" [high tone on the aww]?
Comment: Are you asking why the word is pronounced the way it is, or why it's spelled the way it is? Spelling does *not* dictate pronunciation. People learn to speak well before they learn to read/write ;-)
Comment: Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been [moved to chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/71089/discussion-on-question-by-will-njundong-whats-up-with-the-pronunciation-of-awr).
Comment: While awry is not rare, it does't come up in common speech a lot. And I've never heard it with the first syllable drawn out as in your example "aww-rye." The first syllable is usually de-emphasized into a schwa: uh-rye. Those three things make me wonder if you're hearing the exclamation "all right!" When used as an exclammation, it's common to draw out the first syllable in order to increase the emphasis on the second, to raise pitch on the 2nd syllable, and to barely pronounce the ending "t."  Is is possible you're hearing "all right!" used as an exclamation?
Comment: I'm trying to think of a wry answer, but nothing's coming to mind.
Answer: PLEASE NOTE: English is not a tonal language like Cantonese, so I'm going to assume you are simply talking about stress, a phonemic property of English words which speakers of tonal languages may hear in terms of tones.

Exactly why awry sounds like the beginning of "a rye sandwich" with the stress on the second syllable is a longer story than just that observation alone can explain on its own. English awry has its origin in two separate words that have since fused together: from a + wry, with a meaning the preposition "on" combined with the adjective wry meaning "twisted".  OED, Wiktionary
The first OED citation is from 1380, back in Middle English when it was still used as a prepositional phrase:

John Barbour The Bruce (St. John's Cambr.) iv. 705   As thair bemys strekit air Owthir all evin, or on wry.

By 1490, we began to see the current one-word version appear, first in Caxton.
So here the w is not part of the vowel before it. It is not an /aw/ diphthong; rather, it's part of the consonant after. You should train your eye to spot wr- as a two-letter consonant cluster in English that represents phonemic /r/, sometimes written [ ɹʷ ] or [ ɻ ] phonetically. If you had realized it was a consonant cluster, you would not have thought it was aw + ry but rather as the a + wry that it is. Plus if it were aw + ry it would be pronounced with a different vowel because aw ends up being the /ɔ/ of awkward and awesome.
English has a huge number of words starting with wr-
that are all of them about something that's been "twisted" in some way: wraggle, wrangle, wrangler,
wrap, wrapper, wrath, wraw, wreath, wreathe, wrench, wrest, wrestle, wrick,
wrig, wriggle, wring, wrinkle, wrist, writhe, writhen, wrong, wroth, wrung,
wry, wrythening. This is one of those words.
(Curious conjecture: When he worked on and for the Oxford English
Dictionary, JRR Tolkien posited that wraith was also one of those sorts
of words, probably coming from a Scottish past-tense inflection of a word
like our writhe and wreathe. See The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary, pp 223–224.)
English has a whole bunch of modifier words (adjectives and adverbs) beginning with the letter "a" which started out as prepositional phrases: aback, abed, ablaze, abroad, abuzz, across, afield, afloat, afoot, afresh, again, aglitter, ahead, akimbo, alive, aloft, anew, ashore, asleep, awry and really many, many more.
All of these started out life with an unstressed "function word" such as of, in, and, or as in our current case, the preposition on (formerly spelled an) which got worn down into just a simple a.OED The OED says that this represents a

Variant of on prep. with loss of the final consonant -n, reflecting an unstressed pronunciation of the word in proclitic use

Because prepositions are "function words" not "lexical words", they are "never" stressed, so the stress cannot be on the start of the new, fused word. It still acts like a prepositional phrase in that regard, with the stress still falling on the former prepositional-object portion. For example, on FOOT > aFOOT.
These curious words retain one other property of their former lives as prepositional phrases: they cannot be used attributively before the lexical word they're modifying, only predicatively after it (or occasionally as a rare postpositive attribute).
The versions marked with a ✻ are therefore ungrammatical:

I saw that the boy was asleep.
I saw the ✻asleep boy.
I saw the boy asleep in bed.
He landed so hard, his legs were all akimbo.
He landed hard with ✻akimbo legs.
He landed hard with legs akimbo.
The crew went ashore for a few hours.
The crew ✻ashore went for a few hours.
The plan had gone awry.
The plan ✻awry had gone.
Comment: I don't know if this comment belongs in the chat. But your examples 8 and 10 don't seem like examples at all of the rule that these words cannot precede their nouns. And by the way, I believe that in Star Trek Voyager the dialog often refers to "the away team," which you would apparently censure.
Comment: Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been [moved to chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/71090/discussion-on-answer-by-tchrist-whats-up-with-the-pronunciation-of-awry).
Comment: > *The crew ✻ashore went for a few hours.* Would this be a valid sentence if you 1. replaced went with walked and 2. had two teams, one on the shore and the other on the sea?
Comment: [Related](https://english.stackexchange.com/q/618932/2085).
Answer: awry  is not a word in itself but a modification of the work wry, much like asleep is a modification of the word sleep.  As such, awry retains the pronunciation of the root word with a long a put in front of it.
In the US , these long a prefixed are much more commonly used in regions that were originally settles by Scots sch as eastern Tennessee.
Comment: *with a long a put in front?* Perhaps you're confusing *He went awry* with *He went **awol***. I've never heard *anyone* (Tennesseans included) pronounce ***awry*** with a long a, nor do I think Scottish speakers have any tendency to "elevate" the initial neutral vowel in words such as *awry, again, across, ahead, asleep*.
Comment: @FumbleFingers I don't have any experience of Tennessean speech apart from occasional characters in films and television dramas but I can confirm that Scots don't start words like **awry** with a long 'a' (at least not in my experience). The pronunciation varies with the type of Scots accent but they are all more likely to extend the final syllable than the first one and emphasise the start of the  root word giving sounds like a**wr**ryyyy, a**sl**eeeep or a**g**aaain.
Comment: No, it's not what is ludicrously called a "long *a*" by elementary school English teachers, but this answer far more to the point.
Comment: @LukeSawczak Are you saying that initial syllable is held for a while? I'd be curious what dialect you're thinking of. This is just my guess at what you think "long a" means.
Comment: @Grault In school it means /ej/ as opposed to /æ/, but there's not much you could particularly call "long" in that distinction. And the "a" in *awry* certainly isn't that. If, on the other hand, Smartgel means that it's held for longer in this word, it isn't that either, since it's really the reduced /ə/.


Photoshop export layers to png but with specific background layer

Question: I have a psd with ~400 Layers which contain semitransparent images and one layer with a solid color. I want to export those layers to png8 and want that layers to have that solid background. I can export those layers with File->Scripts->Export layers to files, but cannot provide the background option. Any simple way to achieve this?
Answer: I've found a solution. After searching quite a bit, I finally found an answer. I wrote a little jpx script, though output is now as jpg.
<code>// variables
var destination = "C:/Users/...../"
var doc = app.activeDocument;
var artlayers = new Array();

// jpeg options
var options = new ExportOptionsSaveForWeb();
options.quality = 80;
options.format = SaveDocumentType.JPEG;

// loop through all layers
var x = 0;
var a = 0;
while (x < doc.layers.length) {
    // check if the layer is a item
    if (doc.layers[x].kind == LayerKind.NORMAL) {
        // add to array
        artlayers[a] = x;
        a++;
    }
    x++;
}

var x = 0;
var a = 0;

for  (x=0; x < artlayers.length; x++)

{
doc.layers[artlayers[x]].visible = true;
// export as jpeg
try { doc.backgroundLayer.visible = true; } catch (e) {}
file = new File(destination + doc.layers[artlayers[x]].name +".jpg");
doc.exportDocument(file, ExportType.SAVEFORWEB, options);
doc.layers[artlayers[x]].visible = false;
}
</code>
It's important to know, that the background-layer must be an original photoshop background. If the name of the bg-layer is in italics, you're good to go. also, all layers except the bg-layer have to be invisible/deselected.
have fun! :)