What Is Basmati Rice?
Buying, Cooking, and Recipes
Basmati rice with lemon zest and chives
Armstrong Studios / Photodisc / Getty Images
Basmati rice (baz-MAH-tee) is a type of white rice commonly grown in the Himalayas, India, and Pakistan—with India producing about two-thirds of the world's supply. It is a long-grain rice that is characterized by a light nutty flavor and floral aroma, and it's popular in rice pilaf and as a side dish for curry.
Fast Facts
 - Varieties: brown, white
 - Origin: India, Pakistan
 - Common Uses: pilaf, side dish for curries
 - Storage: airtight container in a cool, dry place
Basmati Rice vs. Jasmine Rice
Rice is generally classified by size into three groups—long-grain, medium-grain, and short-grain. Basmati shares the long-grain group with jasmine rice and American long grain. Jasmine rice is most commonly grown and eaten in Southeast Asian countries, including Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. While it is similarly fragrant to basmati rice, it is much stickier in texture. Basmati rice tends to have fluffy, clean grains, lacking the starch of jasmine rice.
Basmati rice is typically available in white and brown varieties. White basmati rice is more common, but brown basmati rice can be found at many health food stores. Brown rice is higher in fiber and has a nuttier, more intense flavor with a stiffer texture. It also has a longer cooking time than white rice.
How to Cook With Basmati Rice
Home cooks have different tricks for cooking perfect rice, but a few steps tend to be included every time. Rinse basmati rice until the water runs mostly clear, letting it drain well. A standard rice to liquid ratio is 1- to 1 1/2. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, cover tightly, and simmer until the water is absorbed and the rice is tender. Some recipes call for the rice to be soaked first, making it more tender, but it is not required.
Basmati rice is very popular served with various Indian curries, as the fluffy grains happily sop up sauces. It is also popular for making rice pilaf, a side dish of grains cooked in a flavored stock and aromatics with other ingredients tossed in like nuts. Pilafs probably originated in India but quickly spread and are now common in many parts of the world.
Basmati rice in a bowl with a spoon
Karisssa / Getty Images
Brown Basmati Rice, selective focus
vm2002 / Getty Images
Preparing Basmati Rice for Asian Meal
GMVozd / Getty Images
Basmati Rice with Coriander in a Balti Dish
travellinglight / Getty Images
Fish Biryani with basmati rice Indian food
vm2002 / Getty Images
Delicous Homemade Chicken Curry Dish with Rice
GMVozd / Getty Images
What Does It Taste Like?
Compared to many other rice varieties, basmati rice is nutty, floral, and a little spicy. It is still mild when compared to other, more flavorful ingredients, but has a fragrant aroma. When cooked properly, the tender grains remain individual and lack stickiness. The rice pairs well with mild and flavorful curries and dishes, complementing but not overshadowing.
Basmati Rice Recipes
Basmati rice makes a delicious side for flavorful dishes or can be spruced up a bit with spices and aromatics. It's perfect for pilafs or making tahdig, a crispy Persian rice dish.
Where to Buy Basmati Rice
Basmati rice can be found with the other dry grains in the supermarket. It is frequently sold in bags of various sizes, from small, 1-pound bags up to 20-pound bags. It can also be found in bulk bins, priced per ounce. Basmati rice is more expensive than American long-grain white rice, with the price varying depending on the quality.
For the best quality, look for basmati rice sold in cloth packaging (not plastic) labeled extra-long grain. High-quality imported rice can often be found in international and specialty markets, or ordered online. Aged basmati rice tends to result in a better texture and flavor, and is off-white or golden in color rather than stark white. Avoid rice with a gray hue. The grains should be slightly tapered on the ends and never flat.
Basmati rice can be left in its original packaging if it is tightly sealed and stored in a cool, dark place. It should be used within a few months. For longer storage (up to a year), store in an airtight glass or plastic container. Brown basmati rice should always be stored in an airtight container and will last for a few months in the pantry. Stash it in the freezer for longer shelf life.
For best results, spread any leftover cooked rice onto a baking sheet into a single layer to cool. Add to an airtight container and use within a few days.
Nutrition and Benefits
One cup of basmati rice contains 210 calories and is fat free. It provides 17 percent of the recommended daily intake of carbohydrates and 5 grams of protein. Brown basmati rice is higher in dietary fiber, contributing 28 percent of the recommended daily intake.
Article Sources
 1. US Department of Agriculture. FoodData Central. Basmati rice. Updated April 1, 2019.
 2. US Department of Agriculture. FoodData Central. Brown basmati rice. Updated April 1, 2019.


About Us
The corporation for the CSS is organized as a non-profit charter in the state of South Carolina and conducts activities primarily within, but not necessarily restricted to the state of South Carolina. The primary purpose of the CSS is to promote the benefits of Polysomnography (PSG) and Sleep Medicine.
The Purposes of the Society
 1. To conduct educational activities relative to the field of Polysomnography;
 2. To promote the highest level of clinical standards for patient care and safety;
 3. To provide a means by which those in the field of Sleep Medicine may communicate;
 4. To locally support and advance a professional identity that is related to both a professional technological function of allied health care generally, as well as to the field of Sleep Medicine specifically.
 5. To manage funds appropriate to the purposes of the Society, and;
 6. To exercise all powers conferred on corporations formed under South Carolina non-profit statutes, including, but not limited to, the power to accept donations of money or property, whether real or personal, or any interest therein, wherever situated.
Click here for the Carolina Sleep Society By-Laws.
We primarily conduct our activities/meetings in the Spring. From time to time, we may alternate the location of the CSS to another city within South Carolina that best serves the CSS members' needs. The Regular Session of our meetings are a 2-day educational opportunity for our members. Continuing Education Credit is provided for those who attend the complete session. CEUs are not distributed per speaker, but are awarded at the end of the Regular Session. The workshops are a recent addition at the request of our members and provide a class or mini-course by qualified instructors. Participants receive additional CEUs at the close of the workshop.


text:
This qualitative study explored the interactions between social class background and the professional identity development in the lives of 10 working class graduate students pursuing their doctoral degrees in community and or clinical psychology. The rationale for this study was based on three assumptions. First, social class is a primary feature in the development of a professional identity. Second, social class is a primary determinant in who will pursue a doctoral degree as well as how this goal will be pursued and achieved. Third, social class is a primary influence on how and where an individual will choose to practice psychology after graduation. Theliterature review examined research
and literary works related to the objective and subjective experiences of early social class membership and its effects on personal, social, and professional identity development. The narrative data gathered from both individual and group interviews was examined utilizing qualitative analysis; Seven primary themes emerged from the data illustrating family relationships, formative class-based familial beliefs, attitudes, and values, community relationships, experiences of social marginalization and belonging, experiences related to the decision to pursue a higher education, experiences related to class background within the system of higher education, and class-based character, values, and life skills that remain primary to the participants' personal and professional identities. Social class background was found to be a primary factor in the participants'
professional identity development. Class-based character attributes, values, and
interpersonal skills were sited by the participants as central to their initial attraction to and fit within the discipline of psychology. Differences in class culture experienced both in graduate school and in the work environment were experienced most intensely in terms of language, communication styles, and social awkwardness related to different social norms and mores. The assumption that social class background is a primary determinant in the pursuit of a doctoral degree was complimented by the life stories of the study's participants. Class-related experiences in the lives ofthe participants also served as a powerful influence on their career choices.
Files are restricted to Pacific University. Sign in to view.

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


Forums - C# Corner
Forum guidelines
Craig Kasold
Craig Kasold
 - 1.3k
 - 6
 - 33.1k
Change the foreColor of a textbox
Feb 11 2009 9:04 AM
I am trying to do something that I believe should be very simple. I am trying to change the forecolor of a textbox depending on what is in the text box. Meaning if the text box has a value of 'UP', I want the forecolor to be RED. If the text box has a value of 'DOWN', I want the forecolor to be BLUE. I am use to programming in SQL (Oracle) over 10 years ago and I would simply state something like: if the textbox.text = "UP" then textbox.forecolor =; ELSIF textbox.text = "DOWN" then textbox.forecolor =; ELSE textbox.forecolor =;
How does one do it in Visual C#?
Can anyone Help?
Answers (4)
Download Free eBooks
File APIs for.NET


text:
This paper reviews the NTIRE 2020 challenge on real image denoising with focus on the newly introduced dataset, the proposed methods and their results. The challenge is a new version of the previous NTIRE 2019 challenge on real image denoising that was based on the SIDD benchmark. This challenge is based on a newly collected validation and testing image datasets, and hence, named SIDD+. This challenge has two tracks for quantitatively evaluating image denoising performance in (1) the Bayer-pattern rawRGB and (2) the standard RGB (sRGB) color spaces. Each track ~250 registered participants. A total of 22 teams, proposing 24 methods, competed in the final phase of the challenge. The proposed methods by the participating teams represent the current state-of-the-art performance in image denoising targeting real noisy images. The newly collected SIDD+ datasets are publicly available at: _URL_
Recent advancements in Neural Architecture Search(NAS) resulted in finding new state-of-the-art Artificial Neural Network (ANN) solutions for tasks like image classification, object detection, or semantic segmentation without substantial human supervision. In this paper, we focus on exploring NAS for a dense prediction task that is image denoising. Due to a costly training procedure, most NAS solutions for image enhancement rely on reinforcement learning or evolutionary algorithm exploration, which usually take weeks (or even months) to train. Therefore, we introduce a new efficient implementation of various superkernel techniques that enable fast (6-8 RTX2080 GPU hours) single-shot training of models for dense predictions. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method on the SIDD+ benchmark for image denoising.


What is ELISA and What are its Advantages?
What is ELISA and What are its Advantages?
ELISA kits
Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) is also known as an enzyme immunoassay (EIA). ELISA is defined as a biochemical technique used in many applications including, microbiology, blood screening, veterinary andimmunology for the detection of antigens and antibodies present in a sample.
Types of ELISA
ELISA can be classified into three main types. Sandwich, Indirect, and Competitive.
Sandwich ELISA
First, a 'capture' antibody is bound to a well. Then, after the addition of the sample, only the proteins recognized by the antibody are 'captured'. Finally, the detection of the bound protein is carried out using a second detection antibody.
The detection and capture antibodies are also known as the matched antibody pairs or matched-pairs. In the end, the detection antibody is detected using enzyme labeled secondary antibodies.
Indirect ELISA
In this type of ELISA, the protein sample is directly bound to the well through absorption. Then, the presence of proteins in the sample is detected using an antibody, known as an antigen. In this type sensitivity is increased due to numerous epitomes in each primary antibody that allow signal amplification.
Competitive ELISA
Here, the presence of a primary antibody is produced with the sample resulting in a complex. When the complex settles down, a secondary antibody is added to the wells. The primary antibody is recognized only if the antigen is not bound to it. Thus, the secondary antibody is seen to compete with the antigen.
The Principle of ELISA
Enzyme-linked Immunosorbent Assays (ELISA) add the sensitivity of general enzyme assays with the specificity of antibodies. This is carried out using easily performed assays to detect the antibodies or antigens. An antibody or antigen concentration measurement is provided by ELISAs. Enzyme-conjugated antibodies are the most flexible for detection.
There are differences in this method:
 1. ELISA can detect the presence of antigens that are recognized by an antibody.
 2. They are used for testing antibodies that recognize an antigen in the sample.
 3. There are also some combined antibody, antigen detection kits.
The five-step procedure of an ELISA:
1. Primary Antigen (or antibody)is used to coat microtiter plate wells
2. The plate is washed to remove unbound antibody. False-positive results are minimisedby blocking unbound sites (usually with bovine serum albumen or other animal proteins)
3. Addition of a selected enzyme-conjugatedprimary detection antibody.
4. Addition of secondary antibody conjugated to an enzyme (such as anti-mouse IgG) Reaction of this enzyme with any substrate present to produce a colored product indicating a positive reaction.
Results are measured with a spectrophotometer. Some assays include a Sample Addition Monitor system that shows a colour change at each step of the process. This can be important when automated liquid handling systems are used, as it can indicate at which stage the process was interrupted or if reagent was not added.
Advantages of ELISA
ELISA assays are usually in 96 well microplate format. Most ELISA microplates have break apart wells, so smaller runs can be performed if required. The key advantage is that 96 determinations can be performed in a single run, providing results in usually less than3 hours. This is both quick and cost effective.
ELISA does not require radioisotopes or costly radiation counters. They do
however require accurate micropipettes, an incubator, a washing system and a microplate spectrophotometer reader.
ELISA test
Because ELISA tests are able to test antigens and antibodies, they are considered as flexible tools by medical professionals, and laboratories from all over the world.
ELISA technology is convenient for blood screening to detect markers of infection including HIV. Thisis mandatory in most countries in order to prevent the release of infected blood and toassure the safety of blood units and blood components for transfusion. Applications of ELISA tests also include the food industry for detecting allergens, and toxicology to screen for specific classes of drugs..
The ELISA procedure is simple to use. It offers excellent sensitivity and high specificity due to the reaction between an antibody and antigen.
ELISA is also highly efficient because it is easy to perform simultaneous analysis without any complex sample pre-treatment.
ELISA tests are eco-friendly and safe thanks to the avoided use of radioactive substances and major amounts of organic solvents.
Finally, ELISA tests are cost-effective as the process can be easily automated and 96 tests performed in a single assay, with little hands on time.
Sensitivity is high
It is observed that ELISA has high sensitivity due to an enzyme as a reporting group. An enzyme is known as an organic catalyst. This is a small portion of which could cause reactions for the production of the chromogenic reaction phenomenon.
Thus, this system is considered as an enzyme amplification system. It is possible to produce a tracer of an antibody with ELISA. Quantification of antibody or antigen can be carried out using the nanogram or microgram levels. To increase sensitivity of the assay, the ELISA plate should be covered using high-affinity antibodies.
Robust Specificity
The selectivity of an antigen or antibody results in specificity. The antibody or antigen-binding is produced only in the epitope of an antigen-binding or antigen site of an antibody. A complementary relationship between an antigen-binding site and epitope both, in spatial configuration and chemical structure is observed. There's a strong specificity due to the reaction between antibody and antigen.
These advantages of ELISA kits make it a more preferred biotechnical tool for a majority of applications. It is useful for both the clinical diagnosis of various conditions or diseases and scientific research.
Know more about ELISA tests and the selection of right ELISA kits for sample detection, contact Helvetica Health Care Today!


/***************************************************************************\ Now.h - Will Mengarini - Version 1.00 - Mo 23 Jan 95 When we code assert( ), we're saying that is true now, at this point in the control flow. This module implements a more powerful assert() that is targeted at industrial-strength software engineering environments, where automated regression testing is an expected part of a delivered system, & a system is typically developed by a multiperson project team whose members develop modules independently, test them (this is called "unit testing"), then integrate them with the rest of the system & regression test to ensure that the improvements haven't broken anything else (this is part of what's called "system testing"). Integration can be surprisingly traumatic, so engineers who have lived thru it have learned that it's best done frequently; it has become customary for large systems to attempt a complete link & system test every night so all modules that were improved during the day are checked for continued compatibility with the rest of this system (this is called "the nightly build"). Assert-replacement macros in this API have the form now#(), where # is 0-9. The # is a measure of the importance of the assertion; the greater the #, the more important the assertion is, & the greater the importance, the later in system development it stops being tested. Standard assert() is executed only _TAG_ NDEBUG, so it doesn't get into ship code. However, sometimes assert()s are so important that they do need to ship, & the desire for a ship_assert() was the first of two needs that started the development of this module. The name "ship_assert" is too long, however; if it's too ponderous to type, there will be fewer assertions in the code, which is Bad. Here, a now8() is a ship_assert(). A now6() gets as far as system testing (the nightly build), a now4() only reaches unit testing, & a now2() is used while debugging local regions of code. The manifest constants UNIT_TEST, SYSTEM_TEST, & SHIP are used to determine behavior of now[468](); exactly one of them must be 1. (Un#defined constants are evaluated as 0 in conditional preprocessor directives; that's a POSIX standard.) UNIT_TEST is intended to be 1 only within the module being unittested, *not* within subordinate modules used by the module being unittested. For example, the Now module contains conditional compilation based on UNIT_TEST that causes now.cpp to to contain a main(){} that tests Now. Obviously, this is impermissible when Now is used as part of the unit-testing of other modules, as is intended to be possible. I suggest that most now#()s should be now6()s, which is analogous to the standard assert(); when the nightly build becomes too slow, selected now6()s in mature code can start being reduced to now4()s. The gaps in the # sequence can be given whatever definitions individual project teams need. For example, now5() could be defined to test its condition in the same circumstances in which now6() tests it, but to not compile the diagnostic output. This could substantially reduce the size of the nightly build while maintaining the full rigor (but also the increased run time) of the system test. As a notational convenience now() is defined here as synonymous with now6(), but this can easily be changed by project teams that need something else. A now2() is used for debugging local regions of code & must be enabled by setting REGION_NOW_LEVEL = 2 (which can be done using a debugger, since REGION_NOW_LEVEL is a volatile int). There are an analogous now1() & now3(). These macros are independent of UNIT_TEST, SYSTEM_TEST, & SHIP, so if it's necessary to run a debugger on ship code (which has no debugging information), it'll at least be possible to use now[123]() for data output. Note that it's commonplace to temporarily instrument code for debugging, then to remove all the instrumentation when the bug is found, partly because it's ugly, & partly because it's inefficient. A now2() avoids that. A now2() is useful just as documentation, describing the programmer's intentions; but it can be activated when those intentions are suspected of being unmet. The standard assert() just displays the text & location of the failed assertion. In a now8(), however, it's essential, & elsewhere it's often desirable, to be able to display an explanatory message as well. An arg that's just a char* wouldn't be powerful enough, since what's really wanted here is the full power of stream-object output. The other major motivation for the development of this module (the first was the need for a ship_assert()) was the need to be able to associate formatted parameterized type-safe error explanations with assert()s, often as afterthoughts when assert() failures that were "impossible" started happening with sufficient frequency to require detailed diagnostic output from each instance. Another very frustrating attribute of the standard assert() is that it always abends the program, making automated unit-testing of error-handling pathways impossible. What's really needed to fix this is exceptions, which are unavailable in the C++ for which this is being developed. The only way around that is to unwind the stack by hand, & now#() is intended for use in a development environment in which functions that would, in a full C++, return void, instead return an error code that's checked by their callers, &, if unanticipated, propagated up the stack. This would allow now8(!do_something_cool(),, ); //the ",," will be explained later as a possible invocation of such a function. This is part of why macros instead of functions are being used for now#(); there needs to be a return statement in the now#() code. All non-test code therefore must check the return value from void-like functions it calls, & abend if the return code is nonzero; however, self-testing code can call such functions with deliberately erroneous arguments or environments, & check without abending the unit test that they correctly catch the error. I considered using a global error code instead (the more common approach to this kind of problem). That has several difficulties. For one thing, it's not reentrant. For another, the syntax actually ends up worse, typically do_something_cool(); now8(!global_error_code ); It's even easier to forget the obligatory now6()s using the global_error_code strategy than using the returned-error-code strategy. Reentrancy could be achieved by making the error code a data member of some task object rather than a global value, but the syntax remains prone to omission of the check. Note that because returns are being used to simulate exceptions, now()s can't be used inside constructors or destructors. To deal with this, put all the nontrivial processing of a ctor or dtor inside a method. There is a problem here. Although now8(!do_something_cool(),, ); does work, it has a serious disadvantage from a standpoint of software engineering rigor. One of the more unfortunate gotchas with assert()s is that, because they disappear in ship code, so do any side effects they may have; so proper assert()s must never have side effects. The whole point of now8(!do_something_cool(),, ); is the side effect of running do_something_cool(), however, & the only reason this works is that it's a now8(), which persists into ship code. The problem is that a major goal of now#() is to allow tweaking the digits more or less at whim to get the desired balance of failsafing and efficiency; & this use of now8() doesn't fit that pattern, because its purpose is to have a side effect. This problem will go away when C++ compilers support exceptions, since now8(!do_something_cool(),, ); is only a way of implementing dtor-calling exceptions by hand; but still, it leads to the dangerous habit of coding now#()s with side effects, which should always be eschewed. Therefore, this specific use of now8(), as an exception substitute, is implemented here with a differently-named macro that's internally almost identical to now8(), but is intended to look different enough that it won't engender confusion about side-effects in assert()s & assert()-substitutes. What we want to say is that we're requiring the called method to succeed (which it indicates by returning 0), & if it doesn't we want to propagate the exception up the stack; succeed( do_something_cool(),, ); //the ",," will be explained later seems to express that well enough, conveniently also eliminating the potentially-confusing "!". As this is being developed, most C++ preprocessors don't support optional args for macros, & advocacy of a more powerful preprocessor is politically incorrect. However, a very important aspect of now6() is its ability to start out as the equivalent of assert(), be enhanced with diagnostic output when its importance is discovered, &, if appropriate, be converted to a ship_assert(), all without needing to recode the syntactic scaffolding that surrounds the condition. However, altho args may not be omitted, they may be empty; so three_arg_macro( warga, blegga, pizza ) & three_arg_macro( foo, spoo, ) are both syntactically acceptable to the preprocessor. The now#() macros take 3 args, of which the last 2 are optional: they may be omitted, altho their commas may not. The first arg is the condition; the second arg is an error code of type


Fast Facts: Blue Bottles
The bluebottle (Physalia utriculus) is sometimes confused with its larger, more venomous Atlantic cousin, the Portuguese Man o' War. It is a common summer visitor to Sydney beaches. In Sydney, it is the north eastern winds and warmer currents, that bring them to beaches on the incoming tides. The Bluebottle is really a colony of fourContinue reading "Fast Facts: Blue Bottles"


Take the 2-minute tour ×
I am desiging a file format and I want to do it right. Since it is a binary format, the very first byte (or bytes) of the file should not form valid textual characters (just like in the PNG file header1). This allows tools that do not recognize the format to still see that its not a text file by looking at the first few bytes.
Any codepoint above 0x7F is invalid US-ASCII, so that's easy. But for Unicode it's a whole different story. Apart from valid Unicode characters there are private-use characters, noncharacters and sentinels, as I found in the Unicode Private-Use Characters, Noncharacters & Sentinels FAQ.
What would be a sentinel sequence of bytes that I can use at the start of the file that would result in invalid US-ASCII, UTF-8, UTF-16LE and UTF-16BE?
 - Obviously the first byte cannot have a value below 0x80 as that would be a valid US-ASCII (control)character, so 0x00 cannot be used.
 - Also, since private-use characters are valid Unicode characters, I can't use those codepoints either.
 - Since it must work with both little-endian and big-endian UTF-16, a noncharacter such as 0xFFFE is also not possible as its reverse 0xFEFF is a valid Unicode character.
 - The above mentioned FAQ suggests not using any of the noncharacters as that would still result in a valid Unicode sequence, so something like 0xFFFF is also out of the picture.
What would be the future-proof sentinel values that are left for me to use?
1) The PNG format has as its very first byte the non-ASCII 0x89 value, followed by the string PNG. A tool that read the first few bytes of a PNG may determine it is a binary file since it cannot interpret 0x89. A GIF file, on the other hand, starts directly with the valid and readable ASCII string GIF followed by three more valid ASCII characters. For GIF a tool might determine it is a readable text file. This is wrong and the idea of starting the file with a non-textural byte sequence came from Designing File Formats by Andy McFadden.
share|improve this question
Since it is a binary format, the first bytes of the file should not form valid textual characters - You should look at the magic file (/usr/share/magic, or /etc/magic on many unix systems) that shows how this application identifies file types. A PNG file starts out with \x89PNG\x0d\0a\x1a\x0a -- note the "PNG" in there, that's a raw string. The sequences \x89 and the like are non-printable bytes. – MichaelT Mar 13 '13 at 15:29
_USER_ Yes, since PNG is a binary format, the first byte does not form a valid textual character. That's what I meant. I fail to see your point? – Virtlink Mar 13 '13 at 15:36
That was an example. A.gif starts out with GIF8. A SGI movi file starts out with MOVI. One style of zip archive file starts out with ZZ, the more popular pkzip format starts out with PK. The constraint that the first byte be an invalid text character does not seem to match what is found in the wild. I am curious why this is a requirement. – MichaelT Mar 13 '13 at 15:51
Do you really care how other programs behave when they see a unknown file? To me, a signature sequence (like PNG files) is much more useful than a sentinel sequence - when the content is sent through a simple stream protocol, the receiver can immediately decide how to handle the following bytes. A Omani-sentinel sequence is next to no-sequence once everyone starts using it to identify their own format. – Codism Mar 13 '13 at 16:51
_USER_, I dont particularly care what bytes you use in your file format. But you made an assertion that its 'wrong' to use ascii characters... yet I've not seen anything here that supports that claim, and there's plenty of empirical experience that shows it really doesn't matter (ie, the countless file formats that have been using ASCII characters without a problem for decades) – GrandmasterB Mar 13 '13 at 19:49
show 7 more comments
3 Answers
0xDC 0xDC
 - Obviously invalid UTF-8 and ASCII
 - Unpaired trail surrogate in lead position regardless of endianess in UTF-16. It doesn't get more invalid UTF-16 than that.
share|improve this answer
But perfectly reasonable ISO-8859-1, and probably reasonable in any other character set that uses an 8-bit encoding. – parsifal Mar 13 '13 at 23:06
+1 OP didn't ask for ISO 8859-1, just US-ASCII and UTF-*. – Ross Patterson Mar 14 '13 at 0:00
_USER_ - true, but I suspect that's mostly because the OP hasn't really thought through the problem. Without any statistics to back me up, I'm willing to bet that a random "is this text" algorithm is more likely to give preference to ISO-8859-1 than UTF-16, simply because there's an enormous amount of 8-bit text in the world. – parsifal Mar 14 '13 at 12:57
_USER_ Any binary is valid ISO-8859-1 so it doesn't need to be considered simply because it's impossible to make invalid ISO-8859-1. – Esailija Mar 14 '13 at 13:05
_USER_ - valid, yes, but "text" files don't usually contain control characters (outside of the limited set of whitespace characters). – parsifal Mar 14 '13 at 14:40
show 1 more comment
 - In UTF-8, the bytes C0, C1, and F5 - FF are illegal. The first byte must either be ASCII or a byte in the range C2-F4, any other starting byte is not valid UTF-8.
 - In UTF-16, the file normally starts with the Byte Order Mark (U+FEFF), otherwise applications have to guess at the byte order. Codepoints in the range D800-DBFF are lead bytes for a surrogate pair, and DC00-DFFF are the trailing bytes for a surrogate pair.
Thus, I'd use the byte combo F5DC. These two values are:
 - Not ASCII
 - Not valid UTF-8
 - Either interpreted as a UTF-16 trailing byte in a surrogate pair (not legal), or the codepoint U+F5DC, which is a private use character, but only by applications that stubbornly try to interpret this as UTF-16 even without a BOM.
If you need more options, F5DD through to F5DF all have the same 3 properties, as do F6DC - F6DF, F7DC - F7DF and F8DC - F8DF, for a total of 16 different byte combos to pick from.
share|improve this answer
So, by Esailija's suggestion to use U+DCDC, 0xDC would be valid UTF-8? – Virtlink Mar 13 '13 at 16:38
_USER_ 0xDC is a UTF-8 lead byte for a 2-byte sequence. It must be followed by a 10xxxxxx continuation byte for it to be valid. 0xDC is not a valid continuation byte, so 0xDC 0xDC is not valid UTF-8. – Esailija Mar 13 '13 at 16:40
_USER_: No, because the second byte is not valid, it would have to be in the range 80 - BF. – Martijn Pieters Mar 13 '13 at 16:45
add comment
If you're trying to use a non-printable character to indicate "not text," then you'll find it hard to beat 0x89:
 - It's outside the US-ASCII range
 - In ISO-8859-1 it's a non-printable character ("CHARACTER TABULATION WITH JUSTIFICATION "). Likewise with Shift-JIS, which I believe is still in common use. Other 8-bit encodings may, however treat this as a valid character.
 - In UTF-8 it's an invalid first-byte for a multi-byte sequence (top bits are 10, which are reserved for characters 2..N of a multi-byte sequence)
Generally, when you form magic numbers, "non-text" is a minor point. I'll have to look up the reference, but one of the standard graphics formats (TIFF, I think) has something like six different pieces of useful information from its magic number.
share|improve this answer
add comment
Your Answer


text:
Sometimes you end up with more cutlery than you know what to do with. It's not a bad problem to have, seeing as you'll never run out of forks, but more forks means more dishes to wash, which is a problem no one wants to have. Instead of throwing away those helpful tools that assisted you in the enjoyment of delicious meals past, appreciate them by finding a creative use for them. Believe it or not, old eating utensils can be transformed into great hooks for hanging purses, reusable grocery bags, or even keys! Follow these six steps to upcycle your old forks into neat hooks.
You will need:
- Soft hammer (rubber or rawhide)
- Old fork or one you are just willing to sacrifice
- Assortment of pliers
- Drill with standard screw-sized bit (not pictured)
- Protective eyewear (not pictured)
- Strong hands (not pictured)
1. First, hammer out the fork until it is completely flat. Make sure you are using a soft hammer so you do not damage the fork in the process. It is best to place the fork upside-down and begin hammering it flat, then flip it to finish it up. This is a lot harder than it would seem and can take a decent amount of time. To make the time pass quicker, think of something that makes you really angry, such as energy waste, to zone out while you're pounding away.
2. Next, use your pliers to decoratively shape the fork's prongs to your liking. Be sure to keep a firm grip on the fork while fashioning the prongs, as to not let it slip and cause an accident. There are many ways to shape prongs, just be sure to keep them moderately flat so your finished product won't poke you when you hang things.
3. Now, put on your protective eyewear and use caution while you drill a screw hole in the center of what will be the mounting piece. Be patient and let the drill bit gradually reach the other side, otherwise you will break the bit or even worse, hurt yourself. Once the hole is complete, wait a minute before touching the fork, as it will be hot from the metal-on-metal friction.
4. Once your fork has cooled, test to ensure it is still flat by holding it against a wall. If it has bent during the prong bending or drilling process, take a moment to hammer it out until it once again lays flat against the wall.
5. Use your strong hands to shape the handle into a hook. It helps to go against the natural curve of the handle but be gentle; this spot can easily become vulnerable and snap. If you're having trouble, lay the fork on your work surface edge with the handle free and use the edge's resistance to your benefit.


text:
Toothpaste Bits : by Bite
Made with clean, vegan-friendly ingredients, Bite's toothpaste bits will keep your teeth healthy and our oceans clean.
About the Brand
Introducing the first ever toothpaste tablet made with nHAp. Nano-Hydroxyapatite (aka nHAp) is a non-toxic fluoride alternative which has been proven to remineralize enamel and kick sensitivity to the curb.
Important: Since Bite's Bits are small chewable tablets, they can be a choking hazard to little ones under 3.
- Bite down on your Bit
- Brush with a wet toothbrush
- Smile and watch it foam up like magic
- Repeat twice a day, every day


Living Through Tough Times; advice from Ronald Fish, Ph.D
on September 07, 2009 at 4:50 AM, updated September 07, 2009 at 8:10 AM
Editor's note: After more than a year of a full-blown recession, it's safe to say this difficult economy, and the troubles that follow, have affected us all. We sought out advice from local people who are experiencing the ripple effects of the economic downturn. They are doctors, counselors and spiritual leaders; most of all they are your neighbors and they're feeling the pinch, too. Here they share some of what they've encountered professionally and their advice for making it through tough times.
This series will continue every day in CNY through Saturday.
Ronald Fish, Ph.D.
Clinical Director of Psychological Healthcare
Ronald Fish, Ph.D. is the clinical director of Psychological Healthcare, which has branches in Syracuse, Liverpool and Baldwinsville.
Ronald Fish has been listening to people's problems for 25 years. Today, as the clinical director of Psychological Healthcare, PLLC, with branches in Syracuse, Liverpool and Baldwinsville, Fish listens to the problems of fellow psychologists as well.
His expertise in family and marriage counseling makes him ideal for advising therapists about individual family cases. In recent meetings with psychologists, Fish has been hearing the same issues. Psychologists are seeing a number of families that have had a loss of jobs, which creates a domino effect on the families' financial and emotional health.
Families have "gone from private insurance to applying for Medicaid or Child Health Plus," Fish said. "(Therapists) have seen a lot of increased tension, so they have families that are seeing kids who have anxiety problems or acting out behavioral problems."
And the problems are getting more serious.
Advice in Tough Times
"They have seen an increase in the number of child protective service referrals," he said
In 2008, New York State Child Protective Services reported the highest number of registered child abuse reports in Onondaga County in seven years, as far back as the online archive goes.
This could be a symptom of the difficult economic times we are living through, Fish says. Added stress can exacerbate natural tendencies to avoid problem-solving or to act out.
"The kids hear the parents talking about money, loss of job or how they're going to pay bills, and the kids' anxiety is ramped up even more because everyone in the house is scared," he said. "If there's a tendency in the family for people to be short-tempered and irritable, then, when there's this added stress, it becomes worse."
Keeping up functional family relationships isn't about suppressing anger or knowing exactly what to say all the time, Fish says. It's about recognizing problems and discussing them.
And if the discussion turns sour, he recommends trying again. And again and again.
Fish's advice:
"What I notice over and over is that when there's an anxiety-producing topic, people will avoid it. They think they're doing everybody a favor by not saying what's on their mind, but then the actions end up being very hurtful... It's not really saving anybody's feelings, it's just avoiding difficult conversations. I think the more we can have these difficult conversations in a respectful way, the more progress we make."
"Most people avoid, or fight about, or they blame, or they bring up the past. All of these are avoidance mechanisms - they create a lot of distraction and make it difficult to talk about what's really going on, what are we really going to do. Usually in every relationship, one person's more likely to save, one person's more likely to spend. There's a tendency for people to go back to the past and for the saver to blame the person who was the spender, or the investor, when maybe in the context of a year or two ago, that person's actions made sense. So one of the recommendations is to not bring up the past...and try to cut through all the avoidance behavior and discuss what's really happening."
"The goal of every marital conflict is to have a discussion to talk about how to resolve the conflict. Maybe the goal of every conflict resolution is to get to the point where you're problem-solving. What do we need to do? Can we set up a savings program? How do we budget? Do we need to get professional services? Do we need credit counseling services to get us out of this jam?... To ask the relevant questions and then to really use our brains and problem solve. What happens with most couples is we only have a limited tolerance for this. Something our spouse says will trigger us and we become reactive. So the goal of all of this is to move past the emotionally reactive part and get to the problem-solving part."
"It's really important for couples or businesses or whoever's trying to have discussions to realize maybe you can only do a certain amount of work or discussion that day. When you find yourself becoming reactive to what the other person is saying, or when you sense that the other person is becoming reactive to you -- in other words, not really hearing you -- then you stop the discussion. And you work it out in advance that it's OK to stop discussion, it's not like an act of spite. It's not the start of another argument. What it really is is, 'OK, we've done what we can today. We've made good progress. We talked about one issue or six issues, whatever it is, we both have hung in there, but we've done what we can today. Let's stop and meet again.'"
"We are going to backslide. Whatever our predilection is, we're going to do that when we get stressed. Try to really be patient and tolerant with our partner, whether it's business partner or life partner, and again and again and again, just try to have these discussions and encourage our spouse to talk to us."


text: We discuss initial results from our comprehensive effort to investigate the presence of long-term photometric variability for nearby M dwarfs, using more than two decades of data obtained by the REsearch Consortium On Nearby Stars (RECONS, _URL_). Understanding stellar cycles in M dwarfs is critical to informing the viability of these common stars as habitable exoplanet hosts, and in determining the underlying dynamo mechanism that drives M dwarf magnetic activity. Our volume complete sample consists of 455 M dwarfs within 16.7 pc (parallax cutoff of 60 milliarcseconds) in the southern sky. These survey stars have a median baseline of approximately 10 years of coverage already, while ongoing observations at the SMARTS 0.9m at CTIO provide additional data 4-6 times per year. We are using these data — in conjunction with sources such as ASAS, MEarth, KELT, and TESS — to determine representative statistics for the underlying properties of stellar cycles in M dwarfs, and to search for correlations between stellar cycles and magnetic activity on shorter timescales such as flaring and rotation. We have identified several dozen new stellar cycles so far, and here we present light curves and period estimates for many high-quality cycles in the RECONS data. We also discuss our efforts to determine the magnetic predictability of M dwarfs by observing 36 'twin' binary systems within 50 pc. GJ1183AB stands out in this search so far as a binary with components showing marked differences in magnetic activity despite being nearly the same in mass and presumed to have identical ages and compositions. This effort has been supported by the NSF through grant AST-_PHONE_ and via observations made possible by the SMARTS Consortium.


text:
Dec. 13, 2012 Efforts to reduce underage exposure to alcohol advertising by implementing time restrictions have not worked, according to new research from the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Dutch Institute for Alcohol Policy. The report, published in the Journal of Public Affairs, confirms what Dutch researchers had already learned in that country: time restrictions on alcohol advertising actually increase teen exposure, because companies move the advertising to late night.
In 2009, Dutch regulators sought to reduce youth exposure to alcohol advertising by restricting times during which alcohol ads may be aired on television or radio. Under this restriction, alcohol advertising was prohibited between the hours of 6 AM and 9 PM. In 2010, compliance with the time restriction on television was close to 100 percent.
CAMY researchers used simulation analysis to model what would happen if a similar policy were applied to U.S. television advertising for alcohol, taking into account the program type and audience demographics. They found that time restrictions do protect viewers under age 12, but they actually increase the exposure of the young people most likely to start drinking, that is, teens aged 12 to 20. This happens because teens increase as a percentage of the nighttime television audience after 9 PM.
"In light of the policy in the Netherlands and the recommendations for similar policies in other countries, including Ireland and the United Kingdom, determining the impact of time restrictions on youth exposure is a public health priority," said lead author and CAMY researcher Craig Ross, MBA. "In the wake of time restrictions, alcohol companies push their ads onto late night programming, when the adolescent/teenage audience is more highly concentrated, thus increasing advertising exposure for this high-risk group."
Alcohol is the drug most frequently used and abused by adolescents in the U.S. and in the Netherlands. At least 14 long-term studies have found that the more young people are exposed to alcohol advertising and marketing, the more likely they are to drink, or if they are already drinking, to drink more.
"With growing numbers of adolescents in the U.S. having a television in their bedroom, forcing alcohol advertisers to move ads into late night television is akin to inviting them to have a private conversation with adolescents every evening," concluded study co-author and CAMY director David Jernigan, PhD. "For countries such as the U.S., where alcohol advertising is protected as commercial speech, policies that restrict alcohol advertising to programs where the underage audience is not over-represented are likely to be more effective."
This policy is endorsed in the U.S. by the National Research Council, the Institute of Medicine, and 24 state attorneys general.
Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.
- Craig S. Ross, Avalon de Bruijn, David Jernigan. Do time restrictions on alcohol advertising reduce youth exposure? Journal of Public Affairs, 2012; DOI: 10.1002/pa.1452
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


In Alan Oppenheim's book Signals and Systems a comparison is made between the properties of discrete-time and continuous-time complex exponential signals in section 1.3 pg. 26. Specifically it says:
The continuous-time complex exponential $e^{j\omega_0t}$ has two properties: 1. the larger the magnitude of $\omega_0$, the higher is the rate of oscillation in the signal 2. $e^{j\omega_0t}$ is periodic for any value of $\omega_0$
Consider the discrete-time signal $e^{j(\omega_o+2\pi)n}= e^{j2\pi n} e^{j\omega_0 n}=e^{j\omega_0 n}$. Because of the periodicity implied by this equation, the signal $e^{j\omega_0 n}$ does not have a continually increasing rate of oscillation as $\omega_0$ is increased in magnitude. Rather, as illustrated in Figure 1.27, as we increase $\omega_0$ from 0, we obtain signals that oscillate more and more rapidly until we reach $\omega_0=\pi$. As we continue to increase $\omega_0$, we decrease the rate of oscillation until we reach $\omega_0=2\pi$, which produces the same constant sequence as $\omega_0=0$
figure 1.27
My confusion is with the part that is in bold. For the continuous-time case, we know that
$\omega_0 = \frac{2\pi}{T_0}$ and it makes sense to me that decreasing $T_0$ (more frequent oscillations) would cause $\omega_0$ to increase. Similarly, for the discrete-time case we know that
$\omega_0 N = 2\pi m$ for $N,m \in \mathbb{Z}$ Solving this equation for $\omega_0$, we get
$\omega_0=\frac{2\pi m}{N}$. Just like in the continuous-time case, decreasing N should cause $\omega_0$ to increase. So I am not seeing what is so special about $\omega_0=\pi$, the rate of oscillations suddenly start decreasing. I don't see that in the math if you decrease N.
As a consequence of the sampling theorem, the frequency spectrum of a discrete random variable is periodic, but it turns out that signals that are inherently discrete in time and not derived from an A/D converted continuous time signal are also periodic in frequency. As a consequence, as the frequency is increased, it goes from the positive portion of one periodic interval, to the next, i.e. it transitions to the negative image of the next interval.
In the old days, DSP was mostly a sub discipline of Electrical Engineering, and DSP was focused on doing things digitally that were previously done analog. In order to talk about DSP, without having to reference, a sampling frequency, a convention called unit sampling was commonly used, and a period of the spectrum is from -1/2 to 1/2.
As time progressed it was noted that DSP wasn't directly tied to processing analog derived signals and unit sampling was somewhat artificial, so it was recognized that $2\pi$ was a natural periodic interval, an $2\pi$ fits between $-\pi$ and $\pi$, which is why $\omega=\pi $ is a transition point in the spectrum.
Your Answer


text:
An audio pioneer who has worked with the likes of Stevie Wonder, Bon Jovi and Pink Floyd, Stephen Ambrose is on a quest to perfect sound quality. His most recent innovation is a modification for ear buds, hearing aids and other in-ear devices that alleviates pressure and its subsequent "listener fatigue"—the discomfort and even pain some people experience with devices that seal the ear canal.
To better understand what led to this discovery, we must look back to Ambrose's musical career, which led to his founding of Asius Technologies. As a musician, Ambrose wanted an alternative to temperamental stage monitors, which required very particular volume controls to function properly, and gave distracting feedback.
His solution was to invent the Micro Monitor, the first in-ear sound monitor. Each Micro Monitor was custom-fit for each ear. The device helped to prevent feedback and ultimately replaced bulky sound equipment. A circuit in the Micro Monitors allowed each monitor to adapt to a musician's given environment.
"This circuit was an acoustic path that allowed the reverse pressures created in the back of the speaker to mitigate the harmful pressures caused in the ear canal," said Ambrose.
Ambrose also developed Micro Mics—microphones that could be mounted on instruments, replacing mics that picked up superfluous sounds.
Not only were the Micro Monitors and Mics efficient, they made costly stage equipment and transport unnecessary. They quickly gained popularity as well as high-profile users such as Diana Ross and Guns N' Roses.
"Very few concert goers realize that deafening sound volumes commonly experienced on stage sound horrible compared to performing the same music in a recording studio," said Ambrose. "My Micro Monitors brought studio fidelity to live performances."
But Ambrose came to realize that in-ear monitors caused discomfort after prolonged use. He purchased sound equipment to remove the audio fatigue and over-excursion caused by the devices, only to learn that these issues could not be engineered out of the sound mix, because their root was physiological.
In a paper presented at the Audio Engineering Society Convention in May 2011, Ambrose and his colleagues addressed the adverse effects of in-ear listening devices. They said that in-ear devices affect the natural acoustics of an open ear system:
"Audio speakers, when inserted and sealed in the human ear, can produce large oscillations in pressure within the ear canal, even when the speakers are operated at what would normally be considered modest input power. These pressures differ from the acoustical sound pressures as they normally exist in open air or in larger confined volumes."
The oscillating static pressures in the confined space of the ear canal cause an increase in sound pressure, which in turn activates a defense mechanism called the stapedius reflex (also known as the acoustic reflex). Ironically, the reflex dampens the incoming loud sound, which in turn causes the listener to turn the volume even higher, thus further increasing pressure in the ear.
The oscillating static pressures also strain the tympanic membrane (the ear drum). To make matters worse, there is an occlusion effect that causes a person's voice to boom in his or her own head. If you want to know what that might feel like, cover both of your ears and talk. Now, multiply that many times over and you have what musicians and hearing-aid users experience.
Ear strain solution
Ambrose's proposed solution is a synthetic membrane placed over a vent. The membrane is made of expanded polytetrafluoroethylene, Ambrose said, a material popularized as Teflon and Gore-Tex.
The membrane is designed to circumvent the pressure in the closed ear canal. It is made of flexible material that can change formation to help relieve the pressure. When the researchers tested the membrane within an ear bud, they observed decreased levels of static pressure oscillations, which in turn reduced sound pressure, therefore helping to avoid the activation of the acoustic reflex. Over-excursions of the ear drum were also reduced.
Building on this idea, Ambrose and his colleagues created a separate corrective device, the Ambrose Diaphonic Ear Lens. The ear lens is a seal that is inflated using the Asius Diaphonic Pump, another innovation by Ambrose and his colleagues. The inflatable seal expands to fit any ear and helps alleviate pressure on the ear canal. The pump harnesses power from the motion of the in-ear device itself, whether an iPod or a hearing aid.
A second paper presented by Ambrose and his colleagues at the meeting, explains how the diaphonic pump manipulates a small orifice known as a synthetic jet. A normal synthetic jet moves fluid, such as air, to exert force and is normally an open system. The fluids traveling between an energy source and a standard synthetic jet are not isolated, preventing the static pressure buildup necessary to power the pump.
To counter this, the researchers created a closed system. It encloses the opening from which the jet pumps its fluid, in this case air. "This closed system contains fluid pumped by the device and also contains the static pressure which the device generates," the paper said.
The resulting sequence is as follows: Music turns on, pressure from sound volume stimulates the pump, fluid is pumped through the synthetic jet and the seal inflates comfortably in the ear. There is no risk of over-inflation, or the pump being thrown off by quick volume adjustments.
The ear lens and the pump work together to provide a more comfortable feel than many standard hearing aids provide. The original devices Ambrose invented, which are still in use, seal both ears, decrease space and increase the amount of pressure in the ear canal. However, the pressure in the ear canal constricts the ear drum's movement, while the speaker increases strain on the ear drum, activates the acoustic reflex and encourages the occlusion effect. The Ambrose Diaphonic Ear Lens, which functions with the aid of the Diaphonic Pump, removes these negatives as well as the original problem, listener fatigue.
For Ambrose, this innovation has been a long time coming. He gives a lot of credit to Stevie Wonder for helping guide development of the initial innovation, and the influence Wonder has had on Ambrose so many years later in the quest for the perfect sound.
"His perception, music-wise and fidelity-wise, guided me for the first five years. He's the guy that made this happen," said Ambrose.
Explore further: Student-built innovations to help improve and save lives


text:
The University of California Cooperative Extension Office and the Center for Applied Horticultural Research have established workshops to educate employees about pest monitoring in ornamental plant production.
The University of California Cooperative Extension Office (UCCE) and the Center for Applied Horticultural Research (CfAHR) have established workshops to educate employees about pest monitoring in ornamental plant production.
The CfAHR is a non-profit organization in Vista, Calif., created with the purpose of generating research for problem solving in the horticultural industry. The workshop, titled "Pest Monitoring in Ornamental Plant Production," is a six-hour session of intensive practical training in basic entomology, pest damage monitoring techniques and the basics of integrated pest management (IPM).
The horticultural industry faces increasing pressure for "greener" products and reduced pesticide use. A significant reduction in pesticide use is attainable by early detection of pest attack by trained personnel, which also results in increased productivity, cost reduction and increased profits. The program emphasizes monitoring as a key component of IPM programs and for reducing pesticide use. The program practical component consists of hands-on activities for the participants to familiarize themselves with microscopes and stereoscopes, symptoms of pest attack, damage caused by abiotic factors and how to differentiate it from pest attack, and effective monitoring for pests in production areas. The workshops are currently presented in Spanish; and English workshop will be offered in the future.
The program is coordinated by James Bethke and Irma Debonis from UCCE and by Lucia Villavicencio from the CfAHR. It will be offered several times a year. The next workshop will take place on Aug. 16, 2011, at the CfAHR. For information, please contact _EMAIL_ or _EMAIL_. You can find information about the CfAHR at _URL_ and about UCCE at _URL_.


text:
There is little doubt that overall, hams have dumbed down as technology has raced ahead.
An interesting result of this is the appearance of new antenna analysers aimed at the dumb ham.
What is the dumb ham in this context?
It seems that fewer and few hams understand the basic concept of impedance, ie the combination of resistance and reactance in quadrature, and notably that reactance is a signed quantity.
The MFJ-259B became the ubiquitous antenna analyser more than a decade ago. It was a great tool, but in my opinion its greatest failing was a fundamental failure to sense the sign of the reactance component of impedance. This rolled up into other problems, and eventually the fraudulent claim that it measures reactance and impedance when in fact it measures ONLY the magnitude of reactance (not the sign reactance), the magnitude of impedance and magnitude of phase of impedance (not the sign of phase).
The significance is that it is practitioners with lesser knowledge who MOST need the instrument to directly display the sign of reactance.
The dumb ham is one who buys the 'simpler' instrument because it does not challenge their limited understanding of impedance, or stimulate development of their knowledge.
The rest of this post is a direct quote of an article "In pursuit of dipole resonance with an MFJ259B" from VK1OD.net that I wrote in 2010, and which becomes more relevant with the increasing attraction to dumb antenna analysers. The text may contain links to articles that are no longer online.
If you thought you knew how to resolve the sign of reactance, read on…
In pursuit of dipole resonance with an MFJ259B
Hams often seek help trying to 'resonate' an antenna system using an MFJ259B or the like at the transmitter end of a feed line.
Lets take an example of a half wave dipole for 40m, 10m above average ground, fed in the centre with a length of coax and an effective balun. An NEC model gives a set of feed point impedances over the range 6.9MHz to 7.3MHz.
Fig 1 shows the feed point impedance R and X values from the NEC model, and the calculated VSWR(50). Theses are the values you would expect to measure with an MFJ259B or the like at the feed point.
Key things to note:
- R changes slowly with frequency, X changes more rapidly;
- X passes from negative through zero at about 7.1MHz to positive values above that (ie there is a clear indication of resonance, X=0); and
- VSWR is minimum at about the same frequency where X=0.
Fig 2 shows the impedance, VSWR(50) and line loss looking into 23m of RG213 feeding the same dipole.
Starting with VSWR, it is almost identical to that in Fig 1. In fact, it is very slightly lower, as accounted for by the attenuation in the length of RG213.
R and X are different, most notably X, and note that X never passes through zero.
A trap many users fall into with an MFJ259B (or the like) that does not show the sign of X, watching X decrease as frequency increases, in this case to about 3Ω, and then increases again, that interpret it to have been negative at the lower frequencies, and passed through zero to positive values at the higher frequencies, and that the failure to show a true X=0 was just due to instrument error.
Is the dipole resonant where the X value was minimum? No, X was tantalisingly small at 7.2MHz, but resonance was and is at 7.1MHz. It is wrong to interpret a minimum in X as proof of resonance.
In the above scenario, the frequency of resonance is actually very close to that of lowest VSWR, but arguably lowest VSWR should be the optimisation target. Yes, a good VSWR meter is as good, and probably a better instrument (in that it is less likely to be disrupted by other sources of energy) for adjusting the dipole to resonant length. The MFJ259B has the advantage that it is a self contained source, and can be used outside the amateur bands.
Dipole resonance is not necessarily exactly the point of minimum of minimum VSWR, but because for this type of antenna, X changes much more with frequency than R, the point of minimum VSWR is very close to resonance (X=0) at the feed point and in most cases indistinguishable with typical instruments.
Transmission line loss is lowest in this scenario where VSWR is lowest, and if the dipole length is adjusted for lowest VSWR on the preferred frequency, the antenna system is optimised.
In other cases, X might reach a minimum that is not close to zero, and that might be interpreted as evidence that the dipole is not resonant in the measured range. In some cases, X might pass through zero at two frequencies near the dipole resonant frequency.
The effects described depend on the length of the transmission line. Some lengths of transmission line will cause reactance to smoothly increase to zero and continue increasing to positive values, but the frequency at which zero reactance occurs at the input to an arbitrary length of feedline under standing waves is not necessarily that at which the dipole is resonant.
Understanding transmission lines is important to effective use of an MFJ259B or the like.
The article The importance (or not) of being resonant is a perspective on whether resonance should be a goal anyway.
Determining the sign of X
Some analysers (eg the MFJ-259B) do not display the sign of X, just its magnitude.
Lets include another case of impedance looking into a transmission line for the example dipole.
Fig 3 shows the impedance, VSWR(50) and line loss looking into 21m of RG213 feeding the same dipole.
There are several algorithms proposed for resolving the sign of X, two popular ones are:
- X increases (ie from negative to positive) with frequency; and
- if R increases with frequency then X increases with frequency, else (R decreases with frequency,) X decreases.
Algorithm 1 is the most popular, here is a description of operation from examples of the simpler types of analysers from their manuals and authors:
The generator output voltage is measured, as is the voltage across the series resistor (the current) and the voltage across the load. This data is sufficient to allow calculation of the load resistance and the MAGNITUDE (but not sign) of the series load reactance. It leaves the question as to how to determine whether the series load reactance is capacitive or inductive. To answer that, the user simply changes the frequency slightly. If the magnitude of the series reactance increases as the frequency is moved upwards, then the series reactance is an inductor. And vice versa for a capacitor.
If frequency is increased and reactance (X on the display or Impedance on the meter) decreases, the load is capacitive at the measurement frequency. If frequency is reduced and reactance decreases, the load is inductive at the measurement frequency.
The MFJ-269 can not determine if the reactance is actually inductive or capacitive. You can usually determine the type of reactance by adjusting frequency. If frequency is increased and reactance (X on the display or Impedance on the meter) decreases, the load is capacitive at the measurement frequency. If frequency is reduced and reactance decreases, the load is inductive at the measurement frequency. This does NOT apply to antennas and also to other loads when they viewed through a transmission line more than a small fraction of a wavelength long.
Note: The LP-100A cannot determine the sign of X automatically.
If you QSY up from your current frequency, and the reactance goes up, then the reactance is inductive (sign is "+"), and conversely if it goes down, then the reactance is capacitive (sign is "-"). A suitable distance is QSY is about 100 kHz or more. The LP-Plot program has the ability to determine sign automatically, since it can control your transmitter's frequency. When it plots a range of frequencies, it uses the slope of the reactance curve to determine sign, and plots the results accordingly.
The "Phase" option looks for places where the Phase angle approaches 0 or 180 degrees and then does further processing to determine the correct sign for X. This option works in most cases and is the one you should try first.
The "Rotation" option works on the principal that the Smith chart trace should always rotate in a clockwise direction as the frequency increases. This option works even if the Phase angle does not approach 0 or 180 degrees but does not handle cases where the Smith trace has "closed loops" that are not centered on the middle of the chart, as at left.
The trick I use, and it is one that will work with almost any analyzer, is to slightly shift the frequency and see what happens to the value of the reactance. If an increase in frequency results in an increase in reactance, then the reactance is inductive, if it goes down its capacitive.
The ZPLOTS claim that its 'rotation' algorithm doesn't work in some cases suggests that it treats the locus of reflection coefficient as an arc about the chart centre, and it is correct that it is not necessarily a clockwise arc about the chart centre. That does not mean that the local form of a locus might not be a clockwise arc about some other centre that might even be between the arc and the outside of the


text:
Rhetoric focuses on forms and facts, not fiction. NewView, on the other hand, a system for analyzing and writing essays, can also be used to analyze and create any sort of fiction, such as short stories and novels.
Tag Archives: software for writers
The author of a new e-book claims only the forms of reading and writing are taught in schools, not newness of content. The NewView Options company offers its new book and new software to help students read and write far better than schools can teach.
George A. Kennedy's book, On Rhetoric, reveals flaws in Aristotle's Rhetoric. But all that has been – and still is – ignored by the community of Rhetoric scholars. Further, Rhetoric focuses merely on forms, says expert, while 'NewView' principle adds needed content to form.
Those who promote Rhetoric as the system to follow in teaching writing have ignored major scholarship advances on Rhetoric in the Twentieth Century. And historical evidence shows Rhetoric blocked progress in the Roman Empire and was a major part of its fall.
Neither modern nor ancient teachers of Rhetoric have ever provided a specific process for creating newness in writing. A new e-book, 'The Secret DNA of Writing Essays – And Everything Else', claims to supply such a process for creating new ideas, a system called NewView.
Rhetoric – originally contrived as a set of forms for making speeches for large juries and audiences in ancient Greece – focuses on facts and persuading, not fiction and entertaining. NewView, on the other hand, a system for analyzing and writing essays, can also be used to analyze and write any sort of fiction, including short stories.
Rhetoric Not Credible, Says Expert – NewView Options Provides Creative Alternative to Obsolete Rhetoric
Aristotle's Rhetoric was based on weak premises, and it is not even the Rhetoric historically taught in classrooms. Writing is creative, and Rhetoric makes no provision for creativity. On the other hand, the NewView system provided by NewView Options does offer a strong framework for creativity.
Many major scholars of Rhetoric have been calling for a New Rhetoric for years because Rhetoric hasn't panned out well, especially as applied to writing. NewView Options claims to have created an effective Rhetoric of Newness to replace the old, ineffective Rhetoric of forms handed down from ancient Greece.
Rhetoric has never provided the feature of creativity, only supplying an endless array of forms and genres, as taught in schools. A new e-book, The Secret DNA of Writing Essays – And Everything Else, claims to provide a better alternative for creating new ideas, a system called NewView.
Writing Teachers Ignorant of Rhetoric's Tradition of Corruption – NewView Options Provides Alternative
Most high school and college freshman teachers of writing are completely ignorant of the tradition of corruption that has surrounded Rhetoric for centuries. A new e-book, The Secret DNA of Writing Essays – And Everything Else, claims to provide a better alternative.
Rhetoric at Fault in Writing Crisis in US Public Schools, Claims Author of 'Secret DNA' E-Book on Writing
There's a crisis in US public school writing because Rhetoric emphasizes parts, not the whole, says author Bill Drew. Instead of paying attention to Rhetoric, modern writing teachers should have paid attention to Michel de Montaigne, the Father of the Essay.
Crisis in Essay Writing in US 'Solved' by New e-Book, The Secret DNA of Writing Essays-And Everything Else
New e-book claims that only forms of writing are now taught in schools, not the importance of newness of content. NewView Options offers its new book and new software to help students write far better.
NewView Writing Concept Highlighted in New E-book and Software from NewView Options, Helping Writers to Write Better
The College Board says there's a crisis in teaching writing to high school students. NewView Options offers its new book and its new software to help students write better than ever before.


text:
Safari 6 (OS X Mountain Lion): Identify secure websites and avoid frauds
When you use a website that handles private or financial information, make sure the website is encrypted.
When you go to an encrypted webpage—for instance, to do online banking—Safari checks the website's certificate and compares it with certificates that are known to be legitimate. If Safari doesn't recognize the website's certificate, or if the website doesn't have one, Safari displays a warning message.
Safari also checks lists of fraudulent websites that have been identified by security services. If you attempt to visit one of these websites, Safari displays a warning message.
Look for a Security button
A Security button near the left end of the address and search field means that the website uses the HTPPS protocol and has a digital identity certificate. Information is encrypted to keep it private as it's sent to or from the website.
The Security button, which has a lock icon inside it, can be gray or green.
- A gray Security button means the website has a standard certificate.
- A green Security button means the website has an Extended Validation (EV) certificate, which requires more extensive identity verification than a standard certificate. A green Security button shows the name of the EV certificate owner.
To view the contents of a website's certificate, click the Security button.
Use a secure connection, if available
If a Security button isn't shown for a website, you may have been given a choice between a secure and an insecure connection when logging in to the site. Go back to the page where you logged in and check for a link to an encrypted (or secure) login. Even if you don't plan to view private information, it's best to use an encrypted login whenever possible to ensure that your login information and any other information you send are private.
How to respond to a certificate warning
- Click Show Certificate, and inspect the certificate for suspicious information.
Look for a message that says the certificate is not trusted, or was signed by an untrusted issuer. If you see a message like that, click Cancel, and do not go to the website.
Click the triangle next to the word "Details." Check to make sure that the name and organization match those of the person or organization that owns the website. If anything looks unusual or is not what you expect, click Cancel, and do not go to the website.
If you continue to the website, double-check the address in the Safari toolbar to confirm that it is the correct address for the page you want to visit. The name of the website should be spelled correctly. Sometimes fraudulent websites masquerade as trusted websites by changing one or two letters of the trusted website's address.
- Contact the administrator of the website, explain the problem, and request more information.
If you continue, the certificate is stored on your computer, and this warning isn't displayed again for this website until you quit and restart Safari. If you like, you can change the trust settings for the certificate later, using Keychain Access.
How to respond to a warning that a website is fraudulent
If Safari warns you that a website is fraudulent, do not visit that site. If you think the warning message is in error, contact the administrator or owner of the website for information. Never provide secure or personal information at a website unless you are confident that it is secure.


I have a 1976 Triumph Bonneville and recently replaced the garbage LED chips inside the eBay signal lights with brighter Cree LED chips. I bench tested the circuit shown below with a 12v bench supply and everything worked perfectly. I also tested it with the motorcycle battery with the same success. However, once I began installing the system and testing it on the motorbike as I went along, I've been burning out LED's (they only glow dimly when fried). I want to know what I am doing to be frying these things left right and center!
I will mention that the bike is positive ground. This means the LED lighting circuit cannot ground to the frame and must have it's own closed circuit directly to the battery. Occasionally when wiring I'll have the battery connected and one of these negative return wired will spark off the bike (potential culprit?). What do you guys think is killing the lights?
I've already come up with some potential solutions:
 1. Adding protection diodes in the reverse direction parallel to the led's (prevent reverse current)
 2. Make absolutely sure the wire attaching to the chips are insulated from the metal lamp housing.
 3. Add a tiny fuse to each leg of the circuit.
Here's the wiring diagram:signal lighting
Thank so much everyone!
 - Have you measured the voltage across and the current through the LEDs? – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams Jul 26 '16 at 17:13
 - How about connecting the battery ground to the frame?. Quick Edit : Don't. – ammar.cma Jul 26 '16 at 17:15
 - What specific cree led did you use (link to data sheet and not some ebay site)? How many in parallel? – Andy aka Jul 26 '16 at 17:19
 - _USER_ _URL_-Components-and-Modules/Products/XLamp/… 2 per leg in parallel. – kyle_engineer Jul 26 '16 at 17:50
 - _USER_, how did you know? – dlu Jul 26 '16 at 18:01
Did you factor in the resistance supplied by the fuse? Fuses will add resistance (of some level or another) and smaller fuses (smaller conductors) will supply more resistance.
But, as noted in the comments, check the voltages at various points (before and after each element).
Also, where is the fuse on your diagram?
Yes. LEDs are generally very sensitive to voltage/amperage flux and shorting while doing wiring could definitely do that.
As a slightly less important point, why can't you draw the positive (+) from the frame and the negative (-) from the power circuits?
In addition, as dlu mentioned, you will be pulling more than 12VDC if you tap the battery directly, or are otherwise not going through a voltage regulator (VR)... So if you are doing a straight battery pull, you need a VR.
 - The resistance of the fuse should help, no? I'm thinking that it would increase the series resistance to the LEDs and reduce the likelihood of burning them out. – dlu Jul 26 '16 at 18:00
 - Not necessarily. I haven't done much work with LED in cars, but I have handled a TON for custom interior lighting applications. It's been my experience that LEDs only perform correctly under specific ranges, and that under powering them will also cause accelerated burn-out. – kyle_engineer Jul 26 '16 at 18:04
 - Interesting. Guess it would good to go looking and see if Cree has an application note. – dlu Jul 26 '16 at 18:06
 - From an LED physics point of view, underpowering can't shorten the life of the LED itself. However it coudl easily shorten the life of an LED module. When working with LEDs for automotive application, you shoudl calculate the resistance required based on the maximum charging voltage rounded up (so call it 15V). But even this doesn't protect against spikes, which maybe the issue. – Chris H Jul 27 '16 at 10:50
 - I think you're right about the voltage regulator. The problem I think is that I may have sparked while bench testing (killing 2 chips) and the other being that I ran the circuit with only one led connected. Speaking of which, if I did only power one led off the circuit, would I have a larger voltage being dropped across the led causing it to fail? – Pipi Pipongo Jul 27 '16 at 22:58
There are two things here that sound like possible culprits:
 1. When the bike is running the voltage seen by the LEDs will be the output of the alternator or generator, which will be around 14.2 V, depending on the LED you're using that might be enough to cause problems.
 2. The sparks. They are not a good thing. They imply that there was a sudden rush of current. Off hand I wouldn't expect much current to be drawn by the LEDs in their correct configuration, so I'm not sure if you would see a spark in normal circumstances (if the circuit had enough resistance to limit the current to the LED's spec).
It sounds like what you are trying to do it to upgrade the LEDs in an already working circuit. In that case it would be good to look at what you had and what you're doing with an eye to what is different. It would be good to understand why any changes were made – or at the very least to know what the changes are and be able to ask about them.
I'm curious about the positive ground. I can't see any theoretical problem with running a separate ground for the turn signals back to the battery, but it seems like it adds a complication and may lead to confusion down the road. Couldn't use modify the circuit to accommodate the positive return and do your switching on the negative side? It seems like that would avoid possible problems with the return path and the confusion of having two different wiring conventions on the bike.
Looking at the data sheet for the Cree XPG2 I see that reverse voltage spec is only 5 V. That makes me think that it would be pretty easy to fry one of these if you hook it up backwards even for a second. So be very careful of that, both as you work and in your circuit design.
 - If his 1976 has a similar alternator to the Lucas RM21 in my 1973 Norton he's probably not getting 14.2 Volts until 2 or 3000 rpm with the lights off and higher and higher with the lights on. – Eric Sep 18 '16 at 0:07
The calculations I have done show that you will only be driving 0.5 amp through the LEDs when the supply is at 14 volts, so you should be ok, since they can take 1.5 amps.
Touching the negative wire against the chassis will be shorting the battery, and so bypassing the LEDs, so they shouldn't be damaged.
The only thing I can think of is that you haven't got a sufficient heat sink. These LEDs rely on the surface that they are soldered to to keep them cool. Have they got sufficient cooling? If not they will quickly get hot and become damaged.
Possibly on the bench running off a battery at 12volts, the lower current will stop them getting hot enough to damage them.
 - The led chips are soldered to a small 20mm heat sink. I tried to design the circuit so that each would be dissipating about 1W. The other thing I realized is I turned the circuit on when there was only one LED connected. Because that single led would draw less current than 2 (normal turnsignal operation) or four (4 way on), I figured that you would have a much larger drop across the chip than the maximum 3-ish volts. I am only using resistors, not a voltage regulatorso when I change the number of led's connected, I change the forward voltage drop across them...right? – Pipi Pipongo Jul 27 '16 at 22:51
Could the diodes in the rectifier be leaking voltage in the reverse direction? I could see that causing your problem but the battery wouldn't charge very well. Do you have the original Lucas rectifier?
Your Answer


How To Plan A Redesign
How To Plan A Redesign
I recently led a corporate website redesign, which involved a move from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8. I wanted to share my process for tackling this kind of CMS-based project.
Disclaimer: The process outlined below is a guide. Feel free to adapt it to fit the scope of your project.
Table of Contents
 1. Setup
 2. Phase I: Requirements Gathering
 3. Phase II: Research
 4. Phase III: Information Architecture
 5. Phase IV: Wireframe
 6. Phase V: Design
 7. Phase VI: Build
 8. Phase VII: Content Migration
 9. Phase VIII: Test
 10. Phase IX: Deploy
 11. Phase X: Maintain
 12. Summary
Choose a project management application (Todoist, Notion, Basecamp, etc) and set up your project.
 1. Create a section for each phase of the project.
 2. Add tasks to each section as they come up.
 3. Share the project with your team to keep everyone on-task and up-to-date.
I used Todoist for my redesign and appreciated the built-in shortcuts for adding tasks, tags, and due dates with one line of text. It was a huge timesaver in my busy office. That being said, I will probably try Notion or Basecamp next time—just to experiment with a different system. There are many other great PM choices out there though!
Phase I: Requirements Gathering
Gather the basic project requirements and confirm the "ideal" timeline for completion (if it's known).
If you're planning to use a CMS, research platforms now and get quotes if needed. Understanding the basic features and associated costs can help you identify the platforms that will work best for your project.
Tip #1: Don't commit to a timeline until the end of Phase II. Research can take time and reveal unknowns that could impact the scope of the project or the platform you end up choosing.
Tip #2: Set expectations early that the timeline is subject to change and that you will communicate any changes early and often.
Tip #3: Know who you need to communicate with—and get approval from—throughout the process. If this information is unknown, make sure to get approval from all stakeholders—at the very least—before starting Phase VI and Phase IX.
Phase II: Research
It's time to dive into UX research.
 1. Determine which types of research make the most sense for your project.
 2. Implement your chosen research tactics and gather data.
 3. Pull analytics from any available sources (e.g., Google, Facebook, Twitter).
 4. Compile a report with all of your findings.
 5. Discuss findings with your team and any additional stakeholders that need to be at the table.
 6. Based on findings, brainstorm a list of all features that could address user pain points.
 7. Feature Triage—distinguish "Must Have" vs "Nice To Have" features.
If you're planning to use a CMS, this is a great time to cross-reference your feature wishlist with the built-in capabilities of different platforms. You may realize that a must-have feature isn't included with certain platforms—and this could significantly alter your project timeline.
Phase III: Information Architecture
Information architecture refers to the way that content is organized on your site. One way that this architecture is represented is with navigation menus. A well-organized menu is essential to a good user experience.
Print out your existing sitemap and analyze the structure of your site (read: how the pages are organized). This is also an opportunity to conduct a content audit.
 - Is this content interesting or useful to your user?
 - Did the analytics highlight any common—or unexpected—paths that users are taking to access certain types of content?
 - Does it make sense to reorganize certain sections or pages?
 - Does it make sense to condense—or break up—certain pages?
Once you've reorganized your IA, you'll have an idea of the sections you'll need to create—along with the total number of pages you'll have to build—on your new site. This information is especially useful if you're using a CMS because it will affect the content types you'll have to build during Phase VI.
Tip: When the IA has been finalized, assign someone to start writing any new content that will be needed, and start proofreading existing content that will be migrated to the new site. (That includes confirming contact information, spell-checking names, flagging graphic elements that are no longer on-brand, etc.) It will take time to complete this process if your site is large.
Phase IV: Wireframe
Start sketching your wireframes! Grab a paper and pencil—or iPad and Apple Pencil— and start brainstorming. Don't be afraid to research other sites for inspiration, different layouts, etc.
If you're using a CMS, make sure that you sketch wireframes for each content type you'll be implementing on the new site.
Once your sketches are complete, create final versions of your wireframes with your UI software of choice. Some popular options include: AdobeXD, Sketch and Figma.
Discuss the wireframe options with your team and narrow down the layouts that will work best for your users.
Phase V: Design
Take your final wireframes and turn them into full-color, interactive prototypes. This is an important step for integrating brand elements into the wireframe. Feel free to experiment and create multiple prototypes.
If you're using a CMS, this is another opportunity to determine what features—from your prototype—are already built into your chosen platform. Determine if any custom modules need to be developed. Adjust your timeline accordingly.
Discuss the prototype(s) with your team and finalize the design. Send a link of the final prototype to all essential stakeholders. Make any necessary changes.
Phase VI: Build
Once the design is approved, it's time to start building! Set up your server, framework, platform, libraries, etc.
If you're using a CMS, you'll need to complete this phase in 2 stages.
 1. Site Building—install the base theme, install modules, configure settings, etc
 2. Custom Theming—customize the CSS, implement custom JS, build custom modules, etc
Tip #1: Incorporate accessibility best practices as you customize your theme.
Tip #2: Bugs will come up at this point in the process. Be prepared to alter your timeline at this point in the process. If you have to change your go-live date, communicate with all essential stakeholders. If you're not able to push the launch, revisit your feature wishlist and triage again. Consider what features can wait to be implemented until after the site is live.
Phase VII: Content Migration
Migrate your old site's content to your new platform. This can be done automatically or manually. An automatic approach may work best if you're migrating between two versions of a CMS platform. A manual approach may work best if your site is small or if your databases are not compatible. Make sure to research your options.
Tip: Incorporate any accessibility features that couldn't be added during Phase VI (e.g., alt text for newly-migrated images) at this point in the process.
When migration is complete, send a link for the test site to all essential stakeholders. Provide a deadline for users to test the new platform and proofread content. Encourage them to use different devices and browsers and make note of all feedback you receive (e.g., broken links, typos, features that don't work on certain browsers).
Phase VIII: Test
Now it's time for browser compatibility testing. There are two approaches you can take.
 1. Manual testing—install different browsers on your device and pull up your site on each one to manually click through.
 2. Automatic testing—subscribe to a browser testing service (like BrowserStack or Browserling).
Make note of any bugs that are identified and triage. Determine if/what problems need to be addressed before the go-live date.
Phase IX: Deploy
When testing is complete and your site has been approved, it's time to deploy! Confirm the go-live date and time, as well as the process for publishing the new site. Choose a non-peak time, preferably early in the week, to give yourself plenty of space to troubleshoot.
Phase X: Maintain
This phase often gets overlooked but as I work more with older sites, I appreciate the value of a well thought-out maintenance plan. It's easy for a site's IA to grow out of control over time—and for vanity pages to creep in. This is where a solid web content strategy comes into play. It will help you establish an audit schedule for a site's content, along with guidelines for managing that content. This will make long-term maintenance (and future redesigns!) less painful.
I'll write a future post with tips for developing a web content strategy.
Redesigning a website can seem overwhelming, but there is a systematic way to break it down and tackle it. While the steps outlined above are not necessary for every project, it worked well for my CMS-based redesign.
Have you tackled a redesign? Did you go about it in a different way? I'd love to hear about it!
Share this


text:
Johannesburg — In an ideal society, every child would have an equal shot at achieving their human potential, regardless of their race, gender, family background or where they were born. The reality in South Africa, one of the most unequal societies in the world, is that a white boy born to a two-parent household in suburban Johannesburg has a much greater chance of succeeding in life than a black girl born to a single mother in rural Kwa-Zulu Natal.
The World Bank's six-monthly economic update for South Africa, released on 24 July, features findings from a study that compared the inequality of opportunities for South African children with their peers in other middle-income countries and found that South Africa is lagging behind on a number of key indicators.
The report uses the Human Opportunity Index (HOI), which is the coverage rate of a particular basic service adjusted according to how equitably the service is distributed among different population groups, to compare opportunities among children. The authors found that while school attendance for children under 15 and access to telecommunications were nearly universal, provision of water, sanitation, health insurance and completion of primary school on time varied considerably depending on a child's circumstances.
Speaking at the launch of the report, Ambar Narayan, a lead economist with the World Bank and co-author of the report, explained that location – whether a child lives in a township, urban or rural area – emerged as the most important factor, particularly for opportunities relating to infrastructure.
Education of the household head was the second most important factor, while gender only appeared to matter in relation to finishing primary school on time. Race alone was not a major factor but Narayan pointed out that socioeconomic circumstances often correlated with race.
The study found that children's access to safe water and improved sanitation were lower and much more influenced by circumstances in South Africa…
Read more at: All Africa


text:
Using DropDownList elements that use virtualized data sources, is it possible to set (or reset) the values programatically?
Basically I'm looking for some guidance on how to make cascaded virtualized drop down lists where I can set the values from some external event such as the click of a button.
Things I've tried so far:
1. Simply setting the value using $('_TAG_').data('kendoDropDownList').value('some value'); <== Can't set the value since it doesn't exist in the data() elements
2. Calling the read method of each drop down first via $('_TAG_').data('kendoDropDownList').dataSource.read(), then setting the value (timing issue?) <== same issue as 1 since the read hasn't finished yet.
3. Hacking the jqXHR object which appears to hang off the dataSource.read() method (again timing issue?)
$('_TAG_').data('kendoDropDownList').dataSource.read().done = someOtherFunction <== where'someOtherFunction' actually does the.value() setting, this does actually run the method, but again... timing
4. Adding the necessary element to the data via the.add method, setting the value, then doing the read <== this "appears" to work but the value isn't actually selected after the read returns. Clicking on the dropdown has the placeholder element selected rather than the value