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I was talking with a friend who told me that Afghani is an offensive term for someone from Afghanistan, and I should use Afghan instead. Is this term offensive?
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Okay, my eyes are bleeding now, after reading the discussion here, what with its repeated use of the fgh consonant cluster. – Tortoise Nov 6 '12 at 5:29
9 Answers 9
up vote 13 down vote accepted
The correct term is Afghan although Afghani is often used as well.
The wiktionary entry1 for Afghani reads:
 1. A citizen or native of Afghanistan. From an Afghan point of view this name is wrongly being used for Afghans. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan millions of Afghans took refuge in neighboring Pakistan. The Pakistanis and the international aid agencies coined this word to speak of Pakistanis versus the Afghans2.
 2. (usually lowercase) A monetary currency used in Afghanistan, divided into 100 pul.3
Purists will advocate the use of the former (Afghan) while well meaning ethnically minded people will often prefer the latter (Afghani) with no offensive connotation at all. Here is a randomly picked example.
I can see at least two reasons why Afghani could be perceived as offensive.
 - Its resemblance with Paki, a deliberately derogatory term for Pakistani.
 - The expression "Afghani Arab". Afghanis are these Muslim fighters (mujahideen) from Arab countries who joined the various resistance movements in the last two decades of Afghan wars. In this sense, the final 'i' is the Arabic suffix marking an origin. The Arabic word for Afghan is also pronounced afġān (افغان). This is probably the meaning that your friend had in mind.
Note 1:
Wiktionary is actually missing a third meaning: Afghani being also a lesser used synonym for the Pashtu language.
Note 2:
To be understood as "The Pakistanis and the international aid agencies coined this word to speak of Pakistanis [Afghans] versus the Afghans [who stayed in Afghanistan]".
Note 3:
Because of the succession of governments in Afghanistan, Afghanis banknotes are often redesigned and are both affordable and appreciated by banknotes collectors. My preferred one.
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Though wikitionary seems a bit more reliable than 'Urban Dictionary', you still have to wonder sometimes. To say that 'Afghani' is a coined word seems pretty strange. It might be a new usage by those particular agencies in English, but the '-i' suffix for'someone from that place' is productive in English, too. Iraqi, Saudi, Pakistani, Omani, etc (of course it doesn't work for all places, but it does for some). – Mitch May 29 '11 at 14:29
I think it may have been the reference to the Afghanis as Mujahideen that the person took as offensive. – gbutters May 30 '11 at 23:25
_USER_: Are you sure it's productive in English, rather than Iraqi/Saudi/Omani/etc being loans from Arabic (where the -i suffix certainly is productive)? – psmears Jul 1 '11 at 7:58
_USER_, I agree with you. Especially in light of the fact that the alleged "English" productiveness of the "-i" suffix seems to be restricted to Arabic speaking or Muslim countries. Only known exception to me: "a Froggy" ;-) – Alain Pannetier Φ Jul 1 '11 at 8:06
_USER_: No, I don't -knowif it's productive; I haven't done the research (a loan suffix can be productive like the French-derived '-ee'. But it does sound very natural to me (in English, the extant official examples ending in '-i' can be non-Arabic, like Somali or many Indian examples like Hindi or Bengali). – Mitch Jul 1 '11 at 13:04
I would be surprised if your friend were Afghan.
Afghani is simply a Persian/Dari genitive and so in itself is not offensive, though Afghan is better English, while al-Afghani turns up in several people's names. The only real issue is who has previously used it for what purpose. Paki for example is offensive in Britain, solely because of its racist use in the the past, and for obvious reasons is more offensive when aimed at Indians than at Pakistanis.
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+1 for citing Paki and the -i(n) Arabic genitive (no plagiarism from my part, I was just writing my answer). – Alain Pannetier Φ May 29 '11 at 2:28
_USER_: NB The -i suffix for origin in Arabic is distinct from the -i(n) genitive ending: the former is really -iyyu(n)/-iyya(n)/-iyyi(n) according to case, but the case endings are not pronounced in all but the most formal of speech so it becomes -iyy and in turn -i. – psmears Jul 1 '11 at 8:04
_USER_, I didn't know that. Thx. – Alain Pannetier Φ Jul 1 '11 at 8:09
I lived in Afghanistan for a couple of years and here's the lowdown - you call the inhabitants of Afghanistan (whether they are of Pashtun, Tajik, Uzbek, Hazara, Nuristani etc. ethnic origin)- AFGHANS. The money they use is called an Afghani. It's not offensive per se. Maybe if used in the context where you use these terms for someone who's not an Afghan - it could be offensive.
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I am Afghan, and when people say Afghani, we instantly think of the currency. We use Afghan to represent that someone is from Afghanistan.
It's not offensive per se, but it's not correct. It's not that big deal, though. Just try to use the right word, but if you don't, it's not going to be the end of the world.
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It's funny, because as a North American, when I hear "Afghan"/"afghan" I am as likely to think of a knitted blanket (_URL_(blanket)) as a person from Afghanistan. Compare that with a Danish (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_pastry), a dessert. The separate word "Dane" is supposed to be used for "Danish person". I wouldn't be surprised if some of the impetus behind "Afghani" were to re-create such a distinction. This is especially interesting given that "Afghani" is relatively new to English. – Merk Oct 19 '12 at 2:08
To refer to Afghans as Afghanis is not offensive at all. In Dari/Persian when we talk about people we say for instance, "Is he Afghani or Pakistani?". Of course we ask this in Dari which goes like this, "Afghani ast ya Pakistani?" Is this offensive? Hell NO!
In Dari Grammar to make an adjective from a noun you put the suffix -i at the end. Example: America is noun to refer to the people of America we say, "Amerikai" or American. Iran is a country and people from Iran are Irani. Of course this is all in Dari. That is how the grammar works.
Finally, the word Afghani which is used for the Afghan currency is a Pashto word which is pronounced differently from Afghani. It is even written differently in Pashto. But because that Pashto sound does not exist in Dari, people say Afghani when they refer to people and when they talk about money they use Afghani. So, it is the context that matters. If you talk about currency you say Afghani and people know you talk about money. When you talk about people you say Afghani and people know you refer to Afghans or Afghanis.
Next time someone corrects you that it is incorrect or offensive to refer to an Afghan as Afghani, refer them to this post!
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The terms Afghan and Afghani both come from the Pashto word afghānī.
Pashto: The Iranian language of the Pashtuns, also spoken in northern areas of Pakistan, that is an official language of Afghanistan.
Pashto and Dari Persian are the two official languages of Afghanistan. The Pashto language is also known as Afghani.
Origin: 1925–30; < Persian Afghān + -ī suffix of appurtenance.
Dictionary.com and the World English Dictionary accept both Afghan and Afghani.
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My NOAD says that Afghani is the "the basic monetary unit of Afghanistan, equal to 100 puls", while Afghan (you can see it also here) is the term that indicates a person from Afghanistan. Maybe that explains why the term is perceived as offensive by people from Afghanistan.
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In Persian(Dari or etc) it look different. Afghan refer to nation not someone from Afghanistan. and for Afghani used for


text:
|Jolitz Heritage ]||
ISA Device Auto Configuration
A key advantage of Berkeley UNIX is its ability to configure at boot time devices present on the system. This feature, while difficult to implement on the ISA given numerous conflicts, was considered valuable and was implemented.
In Figure 10(a), we have data structures that encode all the appropriate information to configure a device in 386BSD. Each driver, which may have many devices, is able to locate and configure a device if present. The isa_device structure also contains the characteristics of each device to be recognized. If found, hardware resources can then be assigned to each device as configured. A sample table of possible devices to search for within the kernel appears in Figure 10(b).
Copyrightę1994 Willaim & Lynne Jolitz

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


text:
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Of or relating to a holding of something in trust for another: a fiduciary heir; a fiduciary contract.
- adj. Of or being a trustee or trusteeship.
- adj. Held in trust.
- adj. Of or consisting of fiat money.
- adj. Of, relating to, or being a system of marking in the field of view of an optical instrument that is used as a reference point or measuring scale.
- n. One, such as an agent of a principal or a company director, that stands in a special relation of trust, confidence, or responsibility in certain obligations to others.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Confident; steady; undoubting; unwavering; firm.
- Having the nature of a trust, especially a financial trust; pertaining to a pecuniary trust or trustee: as, a fiduciary power. Also fiducial.
- n. One who holds a thing in trust; a trustee.
- n. One who depends for salvation on faith without works; an Antinomian.
- adj. law Related to trusts and trustees.
- adj. Pertaining to paper money whose value depends on public confidence or securities.
- n. law One who holds a thing in trust for another; a trustee.
- n. theology One who depends for salvation on faith, without works; an antinomian.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Involving confidence or trust; confident; undoubting; faithful; firm.
- adj. Holding, held, or founded, in trust.
- n. One who holds a thing in trust for another; a trustee.
- n. (Theol.) One who depends for salvation on faith, without works; an Antinomian.
- adj. relating to or of the nature of a legal trust (i.e. the holding of something in trust for another)
- n. a person who holds assets in trust for a beneficiary
- From Latin fīdūciārius ("held in trust"), from fidūcia ("trust"). (Wiktionary)
- Latin fīdūciārius, from fīdūcia, trust; see fiducial. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
"Indeed, the word fiduciary comes from the Latin word fides, meaning faith."
"The word "fiduciary" comes from the Latin word for trust."
"Your editorial accurately depicts what a Labor Department proposal to change the regulatory agency's definition of the phrase "fiduciary" might to do the retirement-investment industry."
"Every investment product or service ever devised by Wall Street and foisted upon the public demands what I refer to as a "fiduciary response."
"Having been in fiduciary positions in which I was responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars of the public's money, I've demonstrated proven ability."
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"In addition, the Department of Labor is looking at tightening requirements for advisors who serve the retirement market, including by raising the definition of fiduciary."
"While the act itself does not use the word fiduciary - meaning that advisers need to put their clients 'interests first - the United States Supreme Court has ruled that advisers do have a fiduciary duty under the act."
These user-created lists contain the word 'fiduciary'.
Another compilation of spelling words suitable for intermediate to advanced spellers.
Legal glossary with special focus on courtroom vocabulary
Weird words that specify specific aspects of people's legal relationships. ee/or pairs are the best, but sadly not all ees and ors have an associated opposite..
Words from politics, news, and business
All my favourite words that I come across!
cool mint antiseptic
Looking for tweets for fiduciary.

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


text:
What are the real procedural costs of bariatric surgery? A systematic literature review of published cost analyses
Doble B., Wordsworth S., Rogers CA., Welbourne R., Byrne J., Blazeby JM.
This review aims to evaluate the current literature on the procedural costs of bariatric surgery for the treatment of severe obesity. Using a published framework for the conduct of micro-costing studies for surgical interventions, existing cost estimates from the literature are assessed for their accuracy, reliability and comprehensiveness based on their consideration of seven 'important' cost components. MEDLINE, PubMed, key journals and reference lists of included studies were searched up to January 2017. Eligible studies had to report per-case, total procedural costs for any type of bariatric surgery broken down into two or more individual cost components. A total of 998 citations were screened, of which 13 studies were included for analysis. Included studies were mainly conducted from a US hospital perspective, assessed either gastric bypass or adjustable gastric banding procedures and considered a range of different cost components. The mean total procedural costs for all included studies was US$14,389 (range, US$7423 to US$33,541). No study considered all of the recommended 'important' cost components and estimation methods were poorly reported. The accuracy, reliability and comprehensiveness of the existing cost estimates are, therefore, questionable. There is a need for a comparative cost analysis of the different approaches to bariatric surgery, with the most appropriate costing approach identified to be micro-costing methods. Such an analysis will not only be useful in estimating the relative cost-effectiveness of different surgeries but will also ensure appropriate reimbursement and budgeting by healthcare payers to ensure barriers to access this effective treatment by severely obese patients are minimised.


Temperature monitoring of thin plastic films
With blown film extrusion, non-contact temperature measurement is a difficult measurement task. Ambient radiation also penetrates thin films and distorts the intrinsic radiation of the films. The infrared CT-P3 and CT-P7 pyrometers only detect the infrared radiation emitted by the plastic films and ignore the penetrated ambient radiation. This is how high precision detection of the surface temperature is possible.
Micro-Epsilon Messtechnik
Königbacher Str. 15
94496 Ortenburg, Germany
+49 8542 / 168 - 0
+49 8542 / 168 - 90


text:
Program Fact Sheet
Bureau of Youth Services & Delinquency Prevention
Division of Community Health & Prevention
Illinois Department of Human Services
The Youth Build program enrolls youth and young adults aged 16 to 24 who have dropped out of school, are unemployed and/or have limited job skills.
The purpose of the Youth Build program is to empower struggling teens and young adults. Youth Build focuses on academic goals while also helping youth to develop job skills by building homes for low-income families.
Youth Build is a year-long, highly demanding program that prepares youth and young adults for the challenges they will face in today's world. The program offers young people a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build their futures and their communities
through education, leadership development, job training, and the rehabilitation and production of affordable housing.
The Youth Build program is administered by local communities. There is not one single model that can be applied to every Youth Build program. Although each Youth Build program is unique in its approach to addressing the needs of the community, all
embrace the same basic principles; Youth benefit from the opportunity to join and function in a community; education comes not only from the classroom but from life skills learned from having to function as a team, maintain a job, manage money and speak
effectively with one another; adults in the program mentor students as they mature; and each site's unique approach addresses the complexities within their community.
Youth Build Program Data
|Grant Amount (Numbers in 000's)
|Number of Grantees


text:
📖HomeBack In ClearSCADA, alarm limits are inclusive in the processing. This means that the High High, High, Low and Low Low alarms will be raised when the process values reaches or passes the limit. For example, if the High limit is 80, the alarm will be raised as soon as the point value hits 80.
The Full Scale and Zero Scale limits are used for out of range processing. The alarms based on these limits (Engineering Units Exceeded) are raised when the limit is transgressed. For example, for a point where the range is 0-100, the value 100 is valid and so will not be flagged as overrange. When the value hits 100.01, the overrange alarm is raised.


Community cohesion, inclusion and equality
Greater community cohesion, inclusion and equality enhance local democracies and help to lay the foundations in which local areas can flourish.
Councils have role to play in building cohesive communities, which are places that:
 - Offer a common vision and a sense of belonging for all;
 - Positively value diversity;
 - Provide equal opportunities to people from different backgrounds; and
 - Provide an environment where strong and positive relationships can be developed between people from different backgrounds in the workplace, in schools and within neighbourhoods.
Promotion of equality is integral to building community cohesion. Local cohesion may be undermined where some groups have different experiences or outcomes to others, especially where linked to a group's protected characteristics (though difference of opportunity may not necessarily be related to protected characteristics alone).
Councils have a role in helping to tackle inequalities and related issues, such as fostering good relations across and between communities and supporting efforts to prevent extremism and tackle hate crime, including against those with protected characteristics.
This page provides resources to support councils in building more equal, inclusive and cohesive communities.


text: Ivory clapper in the form of a right hand of the type used in Hathor rituals. Incised detail on the fingers, thumb and wrist. Cross hatching at the wrist for a braclet and pierced at elbow. Tip of the thumb is missing. Clappers or hand wands such as this one were used by dancers who clapped them together. They also had protective significance as the noise produced by clacking the wands together was believed to keep evil spirits away during critical moments such as childbirth or puberty rituals. Their protective power also accompanied the ritual renewal of the king's vigour during the Heb Sed Festival and assisted in the rebirth of a deceased person into the afterlife.


Take the 2-minute tour ×
I would like to draw a 3D carpet plot with Python Pylab or matplotlib. I explain what I mean with carpet plot:
I have points on a X,Y meshgrid. This points have an elevation attached to them, but also an integer from a finite set. A common 3D plot makes it possible to vizualize relief. Elevation is along Z, we can vizualize elevation for a points determined by its coordinates X,Y along Z-axis. Alternatively, I draw heatmaps for elevation. It is a 2D plot, each pixel determined by X,Y has a color that is a function of altitude, red for apex and blue for bottom. I do some clustering on these data, and after clustering, I have, for each pixel, two information: elevation and a label (integer). I can draw a 2D map with each pixel colored with its label, and this gives me the clustering results.
Now, I would like to plot both information on same 3D graph. Z coordinate should be elevation, and the point on surface should be colored with its "cluster color". This is what I call the 3D carpet plot (if term does not sound correct, please tell me).
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1 Answer 1
up vote 2 down vote accepted
Your "cluster color" is some set of conditions on the X,Y,Z values of your grid. If you can make these a mask (of True/False values) it is simple to map a color onto them. I've given an example of an arbitrary set of conditions, which you can adapt to your needs. Code was adapted from _URL_
from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import Axes3D
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
# Some sample data
x_side = np.arange(-5, 5, 0.04)
y_side = np.arange(-5, 5, 0.04)
X, Y = np.meshgrid(x_side,y_side)
# Fake mountains
Z = np.exp(-(X**2+Y**2)) + 2*np.exp(-((X-2)**2+Y**2))
# Assign colors based off some user-defined condition
COLORS = np.empty(X.shape, dtype=str)
COLORS[:,:] = 'b'
COLORS[(Z>.1) * (Z<.3)] = 'r'
COLORS[Z>.3] = 'g'
COLORS[X+Y < -1] = 'k'
# 3D surface plot
fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.gca(projection='3d')
surf = ax.plot_surface(X, Y, Z, facecolors=COLORS, rstride=1, cstride=1,
enter image description here
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thanks a lot, this is helpful – octoback Aug 29 '12 at 9:25
Your Answer


text:
The Department for Education (DfE) and the Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) have launched the good estate management for schools (GEMS) guidance and tools, a new manual and toolkit to support schools with good estate management. The resource brings together new and existing guidance on school estate management, and it sets out the following:
- The fundamental policies and procedures needed to manage your school's estate effectively
- Guidance on strategic estate management, organisational oversight, understanding your land and buildings, energy and water management, and managing projects
- Updated guidance on health and safety, compliance and maintenance (replacing existing guidance in essential schools maintenance)
- The skills organisations need access to, links to tools and resources that can help.
The manual is broken down into the following sections:
- Strategic estate management
- Overseeing the estate
- Health and safety
- Maintaining the estate
- Understanding the land and buildings
- Energy and water management
- Estate projects.
Depending on your role, you may not need to review every section. Some sections are of particular relevance to leaders, governors and trustees of schools. Some are aimed more at school business professionals and those involved in the day-to-day management of the estate.
The manual also includes a number of tools to help you assess and manage the estate. This includes the following:
- Organisational self-assessment
- Top 10 estate checks for boards
- Required knowledge and skills
- Tips for managing energy and water usage.
First published 26 April 2018


News Release
Fossils under your feet: Ancient sea cow found in Spanish street
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Society of Vertebrate Paleontology
Paving slabs
image: Paving slabs were scanned in a medical CT scanner to reveal more about the fossils anatomy. Image by Manja Voss and Oliver view more
Credit: Society of Vertebrate Paleontology
SALT LAKE CITY, UT (Oct. 2016) - Have you ever spotted something unexpected while walking down the street? Last December, paleontologists literally stumbled upon a new discovery of a fossil sea cow in a very unexpected place - in a limestone paving stone in Spain! Research presented this week at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah, describes this remarkable find and how it is changing our understanding of sea cow evolution.
The unusual pavement was spotted in the picturesque town of Girona, northern Spain. A local geologist first noticed the fossil and submitted it to the website '', an online database of urban fossils worldwide. As word of the fossil spread, paleontologists Dr. Manja Voss and Dr. Oliver Hampe, from the Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin, visited Girona to take a look.
Closer inspection of the paving stones by Dr. Voss and Dr. Hampe revealed that the complex array of shapes was slices of the backbone and skull of an ancient marine mammal. Based on the skull and teeth, they concluded that it was a sirenian, or sea cow, a member of a group of large, plant-eating marine mammals represented today by the living manatee and dugong.
Once the significance of the fossil was understood, Dr. Voss and Dr. Hampe worked with the mayoralty of Girona and local geologists to have the 50x30cm large paving stones removed for study. Since the rock was cut into slices to form the paving stones, the paleontologists had a cross-sectional view of the sea cow's skull, revealing many details of its anatomy. However, they also wanted to see inside the stones, so they took them to a medical hospital, the Clinica Girona, where they were CT-scanned.
The scientists discovered that the 'Girona Sea Cow' is most likely a representative of Prototherium, a genus of extinct sea cows from Spain and Italy. However, this find is particularly important because the rocks from which the paving slabs were quarried are 40 million years old, explains Voss. "Hence the find represents one of the oldest sea cows in Europe, making it a unique opportunity to enhance our knowledge on the evolution and diversity of this marine mammal group that arose about 50 million years ago."
Next the scientists will use the CT scans to try to digitally piece together the separate skull slices of Prototherium. This can help them answer more questions, such as the animals' age when it died and its potential relationship to other fossil sea cows.
The Girona Sea Cow, which is providing clues into the evolution of sea cows in the ancient oceans of Europe, shows that fossils can be found in surprising locations. Voss says "While the limestone used to build the city of Girona are enriched by fossils -- it is quite common to identify invertebrates for example--finding a marine mammal on which thousands of people walked over for the last two decades is indeed very peculiar."
Image 1: Scientist Oliver Hampe examines fossil remains of Prototherium in paving stones in Girona, Spain. Image by Manja Voss and Oliver Hampe.
Image 2: The skull of Prototherium exposed on the paving slab, in cross-section, showing parts of snout and tooth sockets. Image by Manja Voss and Oliver Hampe.
About the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology
Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology
Manja Voss
Museum für Naturkunde
Leibniz-Institut für Evolutionsund Biodiversitätsforschung
Oliver Hampe
Museum für Naturkunde
Leibniz-Institut für Evolutionsund Biodiversitätsforschung
Daryl Domning
Howard University, Washington DC.
Jorge Velez-Juarbe
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
Lars Werdelin
(SVP Media Response Team)


text:
Reconstructing 3D models from their projection images has been an interesting research topic in computer vision and geometric modeling. In this paper, we review several methods that generate octree models of objects from their silhouettes in images. The complexity analysis of the algorithms is developed and presented. It is concluded that the performance of the algorithms depents mostly on the number of starting images and the object shapes through their number of faces and concavities.
Franquesa, M.; Brunet, P. Analysis of methods for generating octree models of objects from their silhouettes. "Revue internationale de CFAO et d'infographie", Gener 1997, vol. 12, núm. 1-2, p. 33-65.


text:
QuickMap is normally installed by running setup off Disk 1, followed by Disk 2. However larger organisations may choose to install QuickMap automatically via a login script, SCCM or AD Software Deployment. The instructions below describe how QuickMap may be installed automatically for individual users via a login script.
To install Quickmap in silent mode, you will need to use the following command line switches:
INSTOPT="MINIMAL | TYPICAL"
These can be used on the Quickmap.msi found in the Release folder, to be run with msiexec with the /i and /qn switches.
After you have installed Quickmap, you will have to register it silently. To do this, see Step 3, below.
Here's an example of how to install Quickmap silently (note one is typical using no GUI, the other is minimal using a basic GUI):
msiexec /i Quickmap.msi /qn INSTOPT="MINIMAL" TARGETDIR="C:\Qmap"
msiexec /i Quickmap.msi /qb INSTOPT="TYPICAL" TARGETDIR="C:\Qmap"
Below is an example of a silent install of a client – server.
Step 1 – Setup the server
Do a full QuickMap install of your server PC in the standard way (e.g. to C:\QMap)
Step 2 – Client install
Share C:\QMap on the server to each client (e.g. to Z:), then for each client, do an unattended minimal install with the command:
msiexec /qb /l* qmaplog.txt /i Z:\Release\quickmap.msi INSTOPT="MINIMAL"
Where Z:\ is the shared folder on the server.
To do a full install, rather than minimal, the command would be
msiexec /qb /l* qmaplog.txt /i Z:\Release\quickmap.msi INSTOPT="TYPICAL"
Step 3 – Register QuickMap
Write your Registration Key Number to the registry HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Qkey\Option\Default
This will result in the registration key be automatically displayed when QuickMap prompts the user to register the first time they run it. All the User has to do is click the Register button. They do not need administrator rights to successfully register QuickMap.
If autoregister.lic exists in the quickmap Data folder (e.g. Z:\Data) then QuickMap will register itself online without asking for any input from the user. A dialog box is displayed while this registration process is in progress.


Home » Food Preservation » Freezing » Can English Muffins Be Frozen?
Can English Muffins Be Frozen?
Maria Foster
Last Updated on
by Maria Foster
Can you freeze English muffins if you can't eat them right away? Yes, but the way you store them will affect how they taste after you reheat them.
English muffins
How To Freeze English Muffins
While you can throw an entire unopened package of English muffins straight into the freezer, this isn't as effective as storing them properly.
Here's how to do that:
The first step is pre-slicing the English muffins. Use a fork for this instead of a knife. Pulling them apart with a fork helps retain their internal structure, where the air bubbles are good for cupping honey, jam, or other fillings. This works similarly to waffles. Separating English muffins this way makes it easier to reheat them later and will not lower their quality.
Next, wrap each set of halves separately. Many people use aluminum foil for bread, but you can also use plastic wrap or similar storage material. The goal here is to minimize the air that flows over the product, which will ultimately lead to damage and freezer burn.
Pick a Proper Container
After that, find a proper freezer bag. If you bought the muffins from a store, the plastic wrapping them is usually too thin to work correctly in a freezer. It's better to use a resealable plastic bag designed for freezers because it's thicker and much less likely to get damaged over time.
If you're using a bag, squeeze out as much air as you can before sealing the bag. This will reduce the amount of freezer burn your food experiences.
Alternatively, you can store your English muffins in a large, sealed container. Some people use a large plastic container to rotate bread through as needed, which provides even more protection. However, it also wastes some space in the freezer, so it's not a good choice for every family.
Finally, decide where you want to store your muffins. The best place is in the coldest part of the freezer, which is always somewhere in the back and usually lower in the freezer. The temperature is closest to constant there, which helps prevent freezer burn. Things near the front are more likely to experience changes.
You can put your English muffins closer to the front if you're using a thick plastic container. These containers don't change their temperature quickly enough when you open the door to hurt your food, so they provide added flexibility in storing food while maintaining quality.
Finally, regardless of where you store your English muffins, try to keep them away from anything with a strong odor. They might adopt those smells as part of their flavor, which can ruin the experience of eating them.
How Long Do English Muffins Last In The Freezer?
English muffins maintain most of their quality for three months. However, this is only true if you're storing them unheated and by themselves. If you're assembling meals out of them, such as freezing breakfast sandwiches, their lifespan is determined by the other ingredients in that meal and could range from a few days to a few weeks.
Can you freeze English muffins any longer than three months, you ask? Yes, you can.
While you should eat them within three months for the best quality, they'll last for up to six months if you need to keep them any longer. Past this point, they're likely to start suffering damage even if you stored them well.
Everything eventually dehydrates and experiences freezer burn, so make sure you have a plan to use the muffins and try to eat the oldest ones first.
What Is The Best Way To Store English Muffins?
As bread products, English muffins thaw considerably better than some other foods. You can use a toaster, an oven, or even your countertop (for a slower thaw) if needed
Storing them this way means you don't have to half-defrost them to separate them later, which makes them considerably easier to use.
For more information on storing English muffins and other types of food, make sure you familiarize yourself with the USDA guidelines.
How To Thaw English Muffins
For faster results, start by heating them for 20-30 seconds in your microwave. The time you'll need depends on the power of your microwave, so experiment a little and figure out what works best for you.
Optionally, you can put a paper towel around the muffins while you're microwaving them. This will help keep their remaining moisture in and stop them from drying out too much while you're reheating them.
You don't need to completely thaw them here. In fact, it's okay even if part of the muffin still feels cold and frozen. The goal of using a microwave this way is softening the muffins up a little and turning them from frozen solid to a more room-temperature setting.
Once they're partially thawed this way, you can put them in a toaster or toaster oven and finish heating them. They should end up near their normal toasting temperature and taste just fine. Bread is one of the more durable products you can put in the freezer, so you may not even notice the difference as long as you eat them within a few months of freezing.
English Muffin From Microwave
Advanced Toasting
Suppose you're going to heat English muffins in a toaster oven after thawing them. In that case, you can add ingredients after microwaving them (as described above) but before putting them into the toaster.
This is a great opportunity to add wetter toppings like pesto, meats, cheeses, or anything else you want to add that can be warmed up. However, the density of your toppings makes a large difference here. If you pile things on too thickly, the heat won't get all the way to the muffin and some parts will still be cold.
To mitigate this, try to avoid having the toppings be any thicker than the muffin itself. Similarly, experiment a little with your specific toppings and with different settings on your toaster oven to see what heats the best.
In many cases, toasting a little above the halfway point works out well for English muffins. While that might be too much for them normally, the extra ingredients will absorb most of the heat and help provide a consistent temperature for the final result.
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An undercover investigation by Animal Liberation NSW
Animal Liberation receives no government funding and is totally reliant on donations to continue its work for the animals. Your donation will go directly towards fighting for the rights of animals through campaigning, political lobbying, education, advertising and outreach.
Specifically, donations may be used for the following purposes:
 - Computer equipment including hard drives
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Donate to Animal Liberation


text:
|Syntactic Confectionery Delight|
Re: Counter - number of tags per intervalby LanX (Chancellor)
|on May 04, 2013 at 22:08 UTC||Need Help??|
Just another idea based on tuning your current algorithm which is quite clever! (Well after being understood - you know my opinion about clear naming ;-)
After analyzing the numbers you provided, I suppose that intersections of different ranges are comparatively rare and if they appear they stretch over long distances.
So it doesn't really make sense to go into the count loop for each individual point, just go on counting the "1" till you reach the next "boundary" and add them collectively to your counter instead incrementing them one by one with++.
The boundaries are nothing else as the sorted list of range starts-1 and stops. In your example for ID "b"
this means [9,11,15].
and results in the following flow
As you see, you can also stop counting between ranges and even try to jump forward in the file with seek.
3e6 Intervals/50 IDs *2 Borders = 120000 Borders
6e9 Points / ID
=> in average 6e9/12e4=50000 points between two adjacent borders, where you can avoid the whole count loop.
This should lead to a considerable boost!
( addicted to the Perl Programming Language)


text:
Most Active Stories
Shots - Health Blog
Thu September 27, 2012
When Doctors Tell Patients They Shouldn't Drive
Originally published on Fri September 28, 2012 2:49 pm
In Ontario, doctors get paid $36.25 each time they warn patients who might be unfit to drive and report them to the provincial transportation department.
Which conditions might pose hazards behind the wheel? There's a checklist on the Ontario report form that offers some of the more common conditions, including alcohol dependence, seizures, dementia and uncontrolled narcolepsy.
So does telling people they're not fit to drive help prevent accidents? It looks plausible, according to results of a study in the latest New England Journal of Medicine.
Researchers at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre found a 45 percent drop in the annual rate of accidents for patients after doctors warned them. The accident rate fell to about 2.73 accidents annually per 1,000 patients from 4.76 annually during a three-year period before the warnings.
There was a downside. The researchers found a significant uptick in treatment for depression in emergency rooms for patients after the warnings. Patients' visits to the doctors who warned them also fell off, suggesting the warning hurt the therapeutic relationship.
The researchers were able to match medical and driving records and follow the patients for years. But the researchers didn't arrange for doctors to randomly give some people warnings and others none. That meant the researchers can't absolutely prove the warnings were responsible for the drop in accidents.
Still, the study concludes that "the reduction in risk was immediate, substantial, and sustained...." And the observed decline in accidents was hard to explain otherwise. "Together, these data suggest that warning patients who are medically unfit to drive may reduce the risk of road crashes," they wrote.
Payment of doctors to warn and report unfit drivers increases the likelihood that will happen. But the study suggests the warnings were linked to a real increase in depression and harm to the doctor–patient relationship, the researchers concluded, while still not reducing driving risks to the same level as the population at large.


Language: Old English
Origin: slidan
1 verb
slide1 W3 past tense and past participle slid
1 [intransitive and transitive] to move smoothly over a surface while continuing to touch it, or to make something move in this way
slide along/across/down etc
Francesca slid across the ice.
slide something across/along etc
He opened the oven door and slid the pan of cookies in.
He slid open the door of the glass cabinet.
2 [intransitive,transitive always + adverb/preposition] to move somewhere quietly and smoothly, or to move something in this way
slide into/out of etc
Daniel slid out of the room when no one was looking.
She slid into the driver's seat.
slide something into/out of etc something
He slid the gun into his pocket.
3 [intransitive] if prices, amounts, rates etc slide, they become lower [= drop; ≠ rise]:
Stocks slid a further 3% on the major markets today.
4 [intransitive] to gradually become worse, or to begin to have a problem:
Students' test scores started to slide in the mid-1990s.
slide into
Murphy gradually slid into a pattern of drug abuse.
let something slide
a) to let a situation get gradually worse:
Management has let safety standards slide at the factory.
b) spoken to ignore a mistake, problem, remark etc, without trying to improve or stop it:
Well, I guess we can let it slide this time.
slide, slip, skid
Slide means to move smoothly across a surface. You can talk about people, objects, or liquids sliding This floor's great for sliding on. The door slid open (NOT slided open). A tear slid down her cheek.Slip means to accidentally slide a small distance, and usually then fall down She slipped and hurt her wrist. It's icy - mind you don't slip.Skid means to move across a smooth surface in an uncontrolled way. You usually use it to talk about vehicles Cars skidded on the snow. Jason skidded around the corner on his bike.
Dictionary results for "slide"
Dictionary pictures of the day
Do you know what each of these is called?


text: 1. The problem statement, all variables and given/known data A radius of a sphere is measured to be (6.45 ± 0.27) cm, and the mass is measured to be (1.78 ± 0.09) kg. Determine the density of the sphere in kilograms per cubic meter and the uncertainty in the density. 2. Relevant equations Use the following formula to calculate the uncertainty in the density: Δρ/ρ = Δm/m + 3Δr/r.) 3. The attempt at a solution I already found the density: 1583.62 kg/m3 I just want to know how to get the uncertainty. I don't know how to use the formula given. i always get a really low number with it.


text:
Does the UK do Cyber Attacks?
The short answer is that most countries engage in covert cyber operations, i.e. cyber warfare, also known as nation-state hacking or cyberterrorism. Covert cyber operations have existed for as long as computers have existed, indeed, covert operations kick-started the invention of the computer. When the Bletchley Park codebreakers needed help in cracking the German Enigma cyphers during World War II they invented the first programmable computer, Colossus. The existence of Colossus was kept hidden from the public for many years after the war.
The UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) makes a big deal about how the UK is defended from cyber attacks, however, what about cyber offensive operations. Does the UK do cyber attacks? Well, a job advert posted at the end of April 2021 provides a pointer:
The job to work as Director General Q at the UK's Secret Intelligence Service is to work with technology to help protect the UK. Notice the phrase proportionate cyber activity, what could that mean? Maybe it is suggesting not only cyber defensive activity but when required cyber offensive activity. So, does the UK do cyber attacks? We'll often hear of the UK defending itself from nation-state cyber attacks, and it is often said that attack is the best form of defence, maybe that is proportionate cyber activity.
Author:Daniel S. Fowler Published:


- on 6th September, 2018
Balally Parish Meetings 24th, 25th & 27th September 2018
A series of meetings, to chat about the future of Balally Parish, will be
held as follows;
24th, 25th & 27th September, after the 10am Mass
24th, 25th & 27th September, 7.30pm in the Parish Centre Coffee Dock
You are all welcome to come along and participate.
Items to be discussed include;
2. Why are we no longer captivating so many of our young people for the message of Jesus Christ?
3. Which models of pastoral activity and reflection are most likely to win the hearts of young people for the message of Jesus?
4. How do we teach young people about prayer?
5. How can our parishes respond to these challenges?
6. Which aspects of our dominant culture make it harder for people to understand the message of Jesus?
Skin Color
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header color
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Streamline Chub (Erimystax dissimilis)
The Streamline Chub is found in several disjunct populations in the Ohio River Drainage from Alabama to New York, including the Tennessee and Cumberland river drainages. They are found in riffles and runs of large streams and rivers over rock and gravel bottoms. As the common name suggests, Streamline Chubs have a "streamline" body shape that is long and slender to help maintain their position in swift water. They are disappearing throughout their range due to reservoir construction and siltation.


Brazil scientists find signs of underground river
SAO PAULO (AP)? Brazilian scientists say they have found signs of a huge underground river flowing far beneath the Amazon River.
Valiya Hamza of Brazil's National Observatory says there are indications of a 3,700-mile (6,000-kilometer) long subterranean river located several thousand feet below the surface.
Hamza says the finding came from studying temperature variations at 241 inactive oil wells drilled in the 1970s and 1980s by Brazil's state-run oil company.
Hamza says the thermal information allowed his team of researchers to identify the movement of water 13,100 feet (4,000 meters) under the Amazon River.


At one point I wanted to add this feature to my slides but I later remove it as some of the pages needed to have horizontal scrolling and this code did not work well together with that. Maybe the only thing I need is to adjust some of the parameters. So check it out maybe by the time you read this, the swiping on my slides might work.
Anyway, if you have some HTML pages you might want to allow your users to move between pages, using JavaScript, but you don't want to rely any of the JavaScript libraries.
(function() {
 var min_horizontal_move = 30;
 var max_vertical_move = 30;
 var within_ms = 1000;
 var start_xPos;
 var start_yPos;
 var start_time;
 function touch_start(event) {
 start_xPos = event.touches[0].pageX;
 start_yPos = event.touches[0].pageY;
 start_time = new Date();
 function touch_end(event) {
 var end_xPos = event.changedTouches[0].pageX;
 var end_yPos = event.changedTouches[0].pageY;
 var end_time = new Date();
 let move_x = end_xPos - start_xPos;
 let move_y = end_yPos - start_yPos;
 let elapsed_time = end_time - start_time;
 if (Math.abs(move_x) > min_horizontal_move && Math.abs(move_y) < max_vertical_move && elapsed_time < within_ms) {
 if (move_x < 0) {
 } else {
 var content = document.getElementById("content");
 content.addEventListener('touchstart', touch_start);
 content.addEventListener('touchend', touch_end);
 1. Wrap the whole area where you'd like the swipe to work in a div with an ID=content.
 2. Replace the two commented-out alert calls by function calls implementing the left-swipe and the right swipe actions.
 3. Adjust the 3 numbers to your liking.
 4. Done.
 var min_horizontal_move = 30;
 var max_vertical_move = 30;
 var within_ms = 1000;


10 Tallest Women Recorded in History and Their Gut-Wrenching Stories
Do you know Sandra Elaine Allen was recognized by the Guinness World Record for being the tallest woman in her era? She was 7 feet 7 inches tall.
1 month ago
10 Tallest Women Recorded in History and Their Gut-Wrenching Stories
You might be somewhere around 5 or 6 feet tall, but there are people in the world who are over 8 feet and gained the spotlight for this reason. While some of them acted in movies, others began to earn early due to their unique physical appearance.
You would be amazed to know that the human body undergoes several changes until the person dies. Whether you are 4 ft or 8 ft, changes in the body are natural, and there is nothing that you can do for that.
Likewise, you don't need to do something extraordinary to add your name to the Guinness Book of World Records; sometimes, your height could do this for you.
Let us know about the tallest women in the world and the truth behind their death.
1. Ella Ewing - 8 feet 4 inches
Source = Historicmissourians
Ella Kate Ewing was a Missouri woman, real-life giant, and also the world's tallest female of her era. She was the only child of Anna Eliza and Benjamin F. When she was young: her family moved to Scotland County. Her abnormality appears after her 7th birthday.
When she turned 14, her height crossed other children, her parents, and other people measuring 6 ft 10 inches. Her height was a matter of dispute. Some claimed her height to be over 8 ft, but her mother said that her height growth stopped when she was 22, at 8ft 4 inches tall.
However, the Guinness Book of Records stated that she measured 7ft 4 inches tall and might have reached 8feet ¾ inches tall by the time she died. Her professional career started when she was 22, and a museum owner from Chicago offered $1000 for a 27-day appearance at his establishment.
2. Trijntje Keever- 8 feet 2 inches
Source = Wikia
Trijntje Cornelisdochter Keever is recognized as the tallest woman in history, measuring 8 feet 2 inches tall. She was the daughter of Anna Pouwels and Cornelis Keevera and died at the age of 17. Her parents took her to carnivals to earn money by allowing people to see her. She gained attention when she was nine years old and reached 6 ft 7 inches.
3. Zeng Jinlian - 8 feet 1 ¾ inch
Source = Didyouknowstuff
She was the tallest woman recognized in modern times. She was born in 1964 and lived until 1982. She belonged to Yujiang village in the Bright Moon Commune, Hunan Province, China. She began to grow when she was four months old and could lift 110lb when she was only 18 months old.
Her mother was 5ft 2½ inches, and her father was 5ft 2 inches tall. His brothers were born normal. She suffered from scoliosis and could not stand up straight. She was 8feet and 1¾ inch tall.
4. Anna Haining Bates - 7 feet 11 inches
Source = Naturalheightgrowth
Anna Haining Bates was a Canadian woman and another tallest woman known for her great stature of 7feet and 11 inches. During her birth, she weighed 16 pounds and was the third of 16 children. On her 4th birthday, she was over 4 feet.
By her 15th birthday, she was 7 feet tall. She was excellent in music and literature and has also learned piano and acting lessons. In 1877, she and her husband purchased 53 ha of land and designed furniture according to their specifications.
The main part of the house had 4.3m ceilings, while the doors were 2.4m tall. She conceived two children with Martin. The first child was a girl who died during birth. The next year, she delivered a boy who survived only for 11 hours. He was the largest newborn ever recorded at 10.7 kgs and nearly 30 inches tall. She died suddenly of heart failure in her sleep, one day before her 42nd birthday.
5. Sandra Elaine Allen - 7 feet 7 inches
Source = Wpimg
Sandra Elaine Allen was an American actress and writer, recognized for her tall height. She wrote a book and grabbed the title of the tallest woman in the world for 16 years of her life. She was tall-heightened due to a tumor in a pituitary gland that caused it to release growth hormone uncontrollably.
When she turned 22, she underwent surgery. Unfortunately, her height continued to grow, and she suffered from medical problems related to gigantism. Here are some rare medical conditions that could occur at any age.
She mostly performed in the circus and was also featured in the movie Side Show and the American documentary film Being Different. In later years, she used a wheelchair because her tall legs didn't support her tall statue in a standing position. On 13th August 2008, she died due to a blood infection, kidney failure, and breathing troubles.
6. Carolina Rascón - 7 feet 5 inches
Source = Bobdiaz
Carolina Rascón belonged to a small mining village in Mexico and measured 7ft 5 inches tall. Not enough is known about her as she lived back in 1944.
7. Delores Pullard - 7 feet 5 inches
Source = Worldblaze
Delores Pullard was 7ft 5 inches, but everyone said that she was 8ft tall. She was the tallest woman in the world back then and passed away in 1971 after surgery complications.
8. Maria Fassnauer - 7 and a half feet
Source = Wikimedia
Maria Fassnauer was considered the tallest woman of her time. She was born to Josef and Theresia in Ridanna. When she was 21 years old, she was taken into service along with her sister as a waitress and as an attraction to be exhibited at receptions.
Between 1906 to 1913, she toured fairs in Germany, England, and Austria in the traditional South Tyrolean costume on which they made her wear a male hat to give more attention to her height. After several health problems, she returned to her country and spent her last years. She died on the family farm when she was 38 years old due to heart failure.
9. Malee Duangdee - 6 feet 8 inches
Source = Bangkokpost
Measuring 6 feet 8 inches tall, Malee Duangdee was recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the tallest woman in the world. She died of a heart attack in her hometown at the age of 24.
The doctors said she had a long history of chronic diseases, including heart attack, brain tumor, and other diseases. Her tragic death also followed several illnesses related to high blood pressure.
10. Maria Alexandrovna Stepanova - 6 feet 8 inches
Source = Networthpost
She is a Russian professional and Olympic basketball player and also the third tallest player in the league. Born in the village of Shpakovskaya and grew up in Tosno, Maria wears size 15 (US) shoes and is 6ft 8 inches tall. The other players in the league are 7 ft and nearly 6 feet 10 inches tall.
Do you know about other tallest women in the world? Have you ever met any of them? Share your experience below.
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text:
Detailed DescriptionA color base is a container of color elements.
The most common use of color base is in the implementation of a pixel, in which case the color elements are channel values. The color base concept, however, can be used in other scenarios. For example, a planar pixel has channels that are not contiguous in memory. Its reference is a proxy class that uses a color base whose elements are channel references. Its iterator uses a color base whose elements are channel iterators.
Generated on Sat May 2 13:50:16 2009 for Generic Image Library by 1.5.6


Infrastructure at your Service
Steven Naudet
An Introduction to Pester – Unit Testing and Infrastructure checks in PowerShell
If you never heard of it, Pester is a PowerShell module, written in PowerShell.
It's a framework for writing and running unit tests, integration tests, and also infrastructure checks as we will see in a moment.
Pester is used for example to test PowerShell Core and Pester itself.
In this blog post, I'll do a short introduction to Pester with Installation and basic checks examples.
Pester is shipped by default with Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016. The version installed is 3.4.
The latest version is available in the PSGallery. It is currently version 5.1.
If you have the 3.4 version installed and would like to update it you will face errors with Update-Module. You need to use the following command to get the latest version:
PS C:\> Install-Module -Name Pester -Force -SkipPublisherCheck
PS C:\> Get-InstalledModule
Version Name Repository Description
5.1.0 Pester PSGallery Pester provides a framework for...
PowerShell function example
I will now show you a very basic Pester test.
Let's say I want to write a Pester test for the following PowerShell function.
This is a very basic function that reverses the string characters. This is the output:
Now that I have a working function I can start to write the Pester test.
Create a Pester Tests file
The Pester function New-Fixture will create a template file for me but you could definitely create it yourself.
By convention, Pester test files should end with "Tests.ps1".
The Tests file has been created.
I already edited the file and wrote the test.
This is what a Pester test looks like:
Pester basics
Pester is very declarative and easy to read.
You can ignore the first 3 rows in the Tests file, they came from the New-Fixture function and just dot sources the function to test into the PowerShell session.
The main commands with Pester are Describe, It, Context, and Should.
Describe is a block that contains tests. You will often have one Describe block for each function you want to test.
Context blocks are like Describe, they contain It blocks. They are optional and are useful to organize your test code.
The It block is the one that actually contains the test. The It block should have an expressive phrase describing the expected test outcome.
Finally, the Should command defines the test condition to be met. If the assertion is not met the test fails and an exception is thrown up. I used the -Be parameter. Many more are available like -BeFalse, -BeGreaterOrEqual, -BeLike, -Contain, etc.
In this example the test is simple. I set the expected value that I should get and I compare it to the actual value returned by the function.
Running Pester Tests
Now let's run the test itself with Invoke-Pester.
Also, running Invoke-Pester without any parameter will run all the "Tests.ps1" files in the current location.
So, everything is green. We can see that one test was performed and it Passed.
Now let's say another developer worked on the Get-ReverseString function and the latest change introduced a bug. Function behavior has changed and the Pester test will now throw a beautiful exception:
What is great is all the details (in red color) we can get when a test fails.
Infrastructure Testing
Pester is often used by sysadmin to do infrastructure testing. Your environment changes frequently and you need to be sure that your infrastructure is aligned with your standard.
Here are a few examples of such tests. The test is done directly inside a Pester code block not using a function like I did previously.
Check that my Windows Server Power Plan is set to High Performance.
Describe "Power Plan" {
 $PowerPlan = (Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_PowerPlan -Namespace 'root\cimv2\power' | Where-Object IsActive).ElementName
 It "Should be set to High Performance" {
 $PowerPlan | Should -be "High Performance" -Because "This Power Plan increases performance"
The best practice for SQL Server disks is to have an allocation unit size of 64 KB, here is the check:
Describe "File Allocation Unit Size" {
 $BlockSize = (Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_Volume | Where-Object DriveLetter -eq $SQLDisk).BlockSize
 It "Should be 64 KB" {
 $BlockSize | Should -Be 65536 -Because "It is recommended to set a File Allocation Unit Size value to 64 KB on partitions where resides SQL Server data or log files"
Here I used the dbatools command Get-DbaErrorLogConfig to get the number of files configured for my ErrorLog. My best practice is to have 30 files instead of 6 by default.
Describe "SQL Server Error Log Files" {
 $errorLogCount = (Get-DbaErrorLogConfig -SqlInstance $SQLInstance).LogCount
 It "Should have Number of Log files set to 30" {
 $errorLogCount | Should -Be 30 -Because "Best practices requires 30 logs files to perform daily recycling"
When all put together the output of the Tests looks like this:
As you can see I can easily validate that my SQL Server infrastructure is configured as expected.
Code Coverage
Code Coverage is the percentage of lines of code that is tested by unit tests.
It's an indicator of how thoroughly your code has been tested. Having 100% coverage doesn't mean that the code is bug-free, it just indicates that all your code is being executed during the test.
If I add some code to my Get-ReverseString.ps1 file, the -CodeCoverage functionality will tell me exactly what is not covered by tests:
This blog post was just to get you started on learning Pester. There are a lot more possibilities with Pester. I might cover some more advanced usages a future post like the TestDrive or Mocking.
Here are some resources I'd recommend:
You can find all the code from this blog post on GitHub.
Leave a Reply
Steven Naudet
Steven Naudet


text:
Following on from the last post on integrating some rmathlib functionality with kdb+, here is a sample walkthrough of how some of the functionality can be used, including some of the R-style wrappers I wrote to emulate some of the most commonly-used R commands in q.
Loading the rmath library
Firstly, load the rmathlib library interface:
Random Number Generation
R provides random number generation facilities for a number of distributions. This is provided using a single underlying uniform generator (R provides many different RNG implementations, but in the case of Rmathlib it uses a Marsaglia-multicarry type generator) and then uses different techniques to generate numbers distributed according to the selected distribution. The standard technique is inversion, where a uniformly distributed number in [0,1] is mapped using the inverse of the probability distribution function to a different distribution. This is explained very nicely in the book "Non-Uniform Random Variate Generation", which is availble in full here: _URL_
In order to make random variate generation consistent and reproducible across R and kdb+, we need to be able to seed the RNG. The default RNG in rmathlib takes two integer seeds. We can set this in an R session as follows:
and the corresponding q command is:
Conversely, getting the current seed value can be done using:
The underlying uniform generator can be accessed using
3.102089 3.854157 3.369014 3.164677 3.998812 3.092924 3.381564 3.991363 3.369..
produces 100 random variates uniformly distributed between [3,4].
Then for example, normal variates can be generated:
-0._PHONE_ -0.334377 -0._PHONE_ -0._PHONE_ -0._PHONE_ 0._PHONE_ 1.633248 -0._PHONE_ -1.199814 0.04405314
This produces identical results in R:
> rnorm(10) -0._PHONE_ -0._PHONE_ -0._PHONE_ -0._PHONE_ -0._PHONE_ 0._PHONE_ _PHONE_ -0._PHONE_ -_PHONE_ 0._PHONE_
Normally-distributed variables with a distribution of \( N(\mu,\sigma) \) can also be generated:
Or we can alternatively scale a standard normal \( X ~ N(0,1) \) using \( Y = \sigma X + \mu \):
q) 'int$ (avg x; dev x)
q) 'int$ (avg y; dev y)
Probability Distribution Functions
As well as random variate generation, rmathlib also provides other functions, e.g. the normal density function:
computes the normal density at 0 for a standard normal distribution. The second and third parameters are the mean and standard deviation of the distribution.
The normal distribution function is also provided:
computes the distribution value at 0 for a standard normal (with mean and standard deviation parameters).
Finally, the quantile function (the inverse of the distribution function – see the graph below – the quantile value for.99 is mapped onto the distribution function value at that point: 2.32):
We can do a round-trip via
q)'int $ qnorm[ pnorm[3;0;1]-pnorm[-3;0;1]; 0; 1]
Thats it for the distribution functions for now – rmathlib provides lots of different distributions (I have just linked in the normal and uniform functions for now. There are some other functions that I have created that I will cover in a future post.
All code is on github: _URL_
[Check out part 3 of this series]


Take the 2-minute tour ×
Lets say I am using IMAP IDLE to monitor changes in a mail folder.
The IMAP spec says that IDLE connections should only stay alive for 30 minutes max, but it is recommended that a lower number of minutes is selected - say 20 minutes, then cancel the idle and restart.
I am wondering what would happen if the mail contents changed between the idle canceling, and the new idle being created. An email could potentially be missed. Given that RECENT is a bit vague, this could lead to getting a message list before the old idle ends, and a new idle starts.
But this is almost the same as polling every 20 minutes, and defeats some of the benefit of idle.
Alternatively, a new idle session could be started prior to terminating the expiring one.
But in any case, I think this problem has already been solved so here I am asking for recommendations.
share|improve this question
1 Answer 1
up vote 9 down vote accepted
As you know, the purpose of IMAP IDLE command (RFC 2177) is to make it possible to have the server transmit status updates to the client in real time. In this context, status updates means untagged IMAP server responses such as EXISTS, RECENT, FETCH or EXPUNGE that are sent when new messages arrive, message status is updated or a message is removed.
However, these IMAP status updates can be returned by any IMAP command, not just the IDLE command - for example, the NOOP command (see RFC 3501 section 6.1.2) can be used to poll for server updates as well (it predates the IDLE command). IDLE only makes it possible to get these updates more efficiently - if you don't use IDLE command, server updates will simply be sent by the server when the client executes another command (or even when no command is in progress in some cases) - see RFC 3501 section 5.2 and 5.3 for details.
This means that if a message is changed between the IDLE canceling and the new IDLE command, the status updates should not be lost, just as they are not lost if you never used IDLE in the first place (and use NOOP every few seconds instead, for example) - they should simply be sent after the new IDLE command is started.
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Color-code production control items in the IFC model
To color-code items in the IFC model according to their properties, use the Colorize command in the Model Viewer Interface dialog box. For example, you can color-code items according to their production status or sequence. You can also set filters to only color-code particular items in the model. By using a filter, for example, you could first filter the items by their sequence, and then color-code the items in that sequence by their production status.
- In the Production Control dialog box, right-click anywhere in the display area.
- In the context menu, click Model Interface.
If necessary, in the Model Viewer Interface dialog box, filter the items that you want to color-code:
- Click Set Filters.
- In the Estimating Filters dialog box, select a filter type in the Type list, and click Select.
In the Filter dialog box, do one of the following depending on the filter
Click the arrow buttons to move the items that you want to display in the model to the Included list.
Type the maximum and minimum values for the items that you want to display in the model.
Repeat steps b to d for all filter types that you want to set.
- Click Apply Filter.
- Click the arrow on the right side of the Colorize By list and select a property in the list.
- Click Colorize.
The items in the IFC model are color-coded according to the selected property.
To revert to the original colors in the IFC model, click Reset in the Model Viewer Interface dialog box.


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The Architects Who Made London
15 February—4 June 2008
In the Architecture Space
Adjacent to the Royal Academy Restaurant
Installation photograph of 'The Architects Who Made London' display 2008. Photograph by Richard Bryant/ arcaid.co.uk
Against a backdrop of contextual photographs of London by Richard Bryant, this display looks at six architects from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century who have had a significant impact on the London we see today. Drawings, plans and photographs of their major London buildings, illustrate the impact of architects including Norman Shaw, Lutyens and Lubetkin on the capital.
Through their buildings and urban visions, their ideas influenced the physical and social structure of the city. In contrast to previous generations of architects, they faced often outwardly incompatible tasks, such as creating an identity for railway suburbs on the city's expanding fringe, giving a semblance of unity to the ceremonial approach to Buckingham Palace, or developing an architectural idiom for social housing.
10am-6pm every day except Friday
Click here to download the accompanying handout (309 KB)
This display has been curated to complement the lecture series The Architects Who Made London with Maxwell Hutchinson.


What Does 'Voicemail Transcription Not Available' Mean?
RevBlogResourcesWhat Does 'Voicemail Transcription Not Available' Mean?
iPhone's automatic transcription of voicemails is extremely convenient for people who need readable records of their messages. But this AI-based service doesn't always work well. The voicemail transcriptions can be inaccurate, incomplete, or missing altogether. It's not uncommon to find the error message "transcript not available" when you access your visual voicemail.
This can be because the phone is a older model, needs an iOS update, or is experiencing glitches. You can troubleshoot your voicemail transcription problems by resetting your network settings. But if your iPhone voicemail transcription still isn't working, then you may need to get outside help to create text records of your messages.
Why are Voicemail Transcriptions Useful?
Voicemail transcriptions are handy for both personal and professional use. Transcriptions can give you a visual reference for information given in voicemails, such as phone numbers, appointment times, instructions, and more.
Here are just a few examples of situations in which having voicemail transcripts can be useful:
 - A construction manager receives a message from the plumbing contractor they hired. The message gives an update on their work, plan changes, and when they think they will finish their installation.
 - A law office gets voicemails from clients who are sharing important information about their cases.
 - A journalist reached out to a company for a comment on local news. The company's owner responds via voicemail.
 - A customer reaches out to a mechanic shop for a quote. They leave their name, phone number, and details about their car's problem.
 - Your family member is in the hospital, and you are receiving voicemail updates about their condition and procedures that need to be done.
 - You are going through a divorce. Your lawyer advised you to document all interactions you have with your spouse.
These are just a few of the situations where having visual voicemails could be valuable. Once you have transcripts of your messages, you can more easily organize them and make hard copies. Instead of having to spend time re-listening to the voicemails, you can just get the information you need with a quick glance.
Use Rev Voice Recorder to Transcribe iPhone Voicemails
We offer easy iPhone voicemail transcription services if you need them. All it takes is downloading the Rev Voice Recorder app in the Apple App Store. (Also available for Android)
To install the app, simply open the Apple App Store on your phone. Type "Rev Voice Recorder" into the search bar. Select the app from the results and click the "Get" button to download.
You can use the Rev app to record and save any audio that you would like to order transcriptions for. However, for voicemails, you'll need to import the audio files into the app before you can request a transcription.
 1. Go to your voicemail list, then select the voicemail you want to transcribe.
 2. In the right hand corner of the message box, there will be a share icon with an arrow.
 3. Click the share icon, then scroll down to Rev Voice Recorder in the list of apps you can send the audio file to.
 4. Once you do this, the Rev app will open and show the voicemail in your list of recordings. From here, you can click "Transcribe" to order your transcription.
 5. You will have the option to add on extra services, such as adding timestamps and speaker names to your transcript. Confirm to move on to payment.
Get Your Voicemail Transcriptions Now
Our transcriptions are made by real people who are trained to capture what's said in audio recordings with 99% accuracy. When you use the app to order transcriptions of your voicemails, you'll receive the completed text within just 12 hours. At just $1.25 per minute, our service is one of the quickest and most affordable transcription solutions available.


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Hindu Nose Piercings – A little information
Hindu Nose Piercings and Why Some Women Wear Them
The nose ring is worn by Hindu women married or not. The importance of the nasal stud can also vary from region to region. As in many other cultures and religions, there is no written code in Hinduism about wearing the nose ring or piercing the nose. In some Hindu sects, a nose ring is called a "Nath" and is worn during the wedding as well as being a symbol of the married woman.
There are many communities in the Hindu religion that do not pierce the nose.
Many ancient classical texts don't say too much on the such nose piercings and so there are several theories regarding the use of the nose piercing in the Hindu religion. Some state that the nose stud was not used during ancient times and it was introduced by invaders during the 11th century.
Another school of thought quotes the ancient Ayurvedic text Sushruta Samhita (Chikitsa Sthana, chapter 19) to suggest that nose piercings were prevalent in ancient times. Nose piercings near a particular area of the nostril is thought to decrease pain during the menstrual cycle. Some also believe that it protects women against nasal infections.
The nose piercing is widely worn in southern India, particularly in Tamil Nadu and parts of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, by married and unmarried young women. This is known as "mookkutthi". In some cases, women wear a stud on both arears/sides of the nose. The nose studs of Konkani wives from Goa are famous especially for their design, which are adorned with small fish or birds. The nose piercing is not the preferred choice in South India.
In North India and in many communities it is a must at wedding ceremonies. A nose ring or pin or stud can be made of gold, pearl and diamond. In some Hindu communities, the nose piercing is never removed and it is a symbol of married women like the Sindoor and Mangal sutra and is an essential part of Shodash Shringar or Solah sringar – the sixteen process of embellishing a bride.
There is no uniformity in wearing the stud or nose ring. In some areas it is worn on the left side of the nose and in some areas it is on the right. For example, a Maharashtra bride wears it on the left. In Gujarat, it is worn on the right. The size and style of the nose nose also varies from region to region. The big nose ring is only worn on the wedding day. Some communities opt for small nose rings. Piercings or rings are used in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh and Punjab.
There is also a kind of septum (the dividing part between two cavities) piercing, which is also popular as a nose piercing, in Nepal and parts of northern India, including Rajasthan and Himachal. Pradesh. This nasal ring is known as "Bulak". Such piercing is also practised in eastern India by some communities.
Nowadays, some Hindu women see nose studs as part of modern fashion jewellery. Some also fight against the wearing of nose rings that act as an obstacle in their daily activities.
Why not check out our Nose Piercing page.


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Response Time Monitoring - Real vs. Synthetic
Response time monitoring is a very important aspect of application management. In a way, it is nothing new. People have been monitoring response time ever since the days of green screen mainframe terminal applications. The only variable is the technologies involved, both on the application and the tools for monitoring them. When I speak with customers, I something get these questions about the pros and cons of monitoring response times of real user vs. synthetic transactions, also referred as passive vs. active monitoring, and whether one approach should be used over the other. The truth is both approaches are relevant and they complement each other. Here's why. Real user monitoring is obviously important because it measures the actual experience of actual end users. Despite of its appeal, however, it is not a one size fits all solution to measure the performance of an application. First, there can be a lot of noise in the actual end user response time data, which may make it difficult to determine the relative performance of an application over time. Usage pattern can vary a lot at different times, and the performance of transaction requests can vary a lot depending on the data that are processed. Consequently, we may end up with a lot of apple vs. oranges when trying to compare response time measurements. Second, real user monitoring only works only when there are real users on the system. For example, if there is no end user on the system at 2 a.m., data collected from real user monitoring won't tell if the application is working or not. On the other hand, synthetic transactions can be used even when real users are not around. Because the tests are well defined and their executions are controlled, it is also easier to do long term trending analysis to see if application performance has improved or degraded over time. Synthetic transactions do have their own shortcomings, however. First, unless carefully designed, the tests may not be representative of actual end user activities, reducing the usefulness of the measurements. Second, some synthetic transactions are very hard to create and may introduce noise into business data. While it is usually relatively easy to create query-based synthetic transactions, it is much harder to create transactions that create or update data. For example, if synthetic transactions are to test for successful checkouts on an e-commerce website, the tests must be constructed carefully so that the test orders are not mis-categorized as actual orders. As you can see, there are tradeoffs to both approaches, which are complementary. It is not real user vs. synthetic, it should be real user and synthetic.


Header Articles
Incriminating Evidence On Cell Phones
March 2021
Cell phones are very useful – for telephone calls, text messaging and photographing. However, the information contained on the cell phone can be incriminating.
An abandoned cell phone
In a recent Court of Appeal case, the police were pursuing a young male driver who was driving at 160 kilometres per hour. During the chase, the driver drove off the main road into a forestry track and crashed his car into the tree. He fled the car and ran into the forest to avoid the police. When the police arrived at this car, a female passenger who was still in the car refused to identify the driver but upon being question by the police pointed at the cell phone at the passenger's footwell and confirmed that it belonged to the driver.
A Constable picked up the phone, swiped the screen and found it unlocked. The Constable came across a text message thread between the driver and another man (Mr R) including a photograph of a truck which was stolen in the area a few days ago.
A prosecution
The police used the evidence obtained from the cell phone to obtain a production order against Mr R and found the truck resulting in the arrest of Mr R, who was charged with receiving the truck stolen from commercial premises in Kawerau. He was found guilty in the District Court but appealed that conviction.
A lawful search of property
Mr R applied to the Court of Appeal to have the evidence obtained against him by the Constable on the cell phone deemed unlawful. The Court of Appeal ruled that police are entitled to lawfully search property that has been abandoned. Search and surveillance laws against unjustified intrusions of privacy do not apply to abandoned property. In this case, the cell phone had been abandoned and the police were lawfully entitled to search it and that is how they came across Mr R and the stolen truck. The Court of Appeal concluded that the evidence obtained from the cell phone could be used against Mr R. The appeal was dismissed.
This case highlights how cell phone evidence can be used by both the prosecution and the defence to their advantage. Whilst cell phone evidence will not be determinative of a case, it might assist in corroborate evidence one way or another. The convenience of cell phones is unquestionable. But you need to be aware that in certain circumstances the information contained on your cell phone can be used in evidence against you.


Will Brexit affect UK's approach to tackling financial crime?
20 Jun 2016 12:00 am by Mark Dunn
The vote on whether the UK should remain in the European Union is just days away (June 23), and the latest polls suggest the result is too close to call. Leaders in every sector are now being forced to consider the possible impacts of a Brexit on their field, and financial crime and compliance is no exception. But given the highly politicised nature of the debate, it can be too easy to lose sight of the evidence. So this article will explore how a Brexit might affect the UK's ability to detect and combat financial crime: anti-money laundering (AML), anti-bribery and corruption (ABC) and sanctions.
Anti-Money Laundering
The EU Fourth Money Laundering Directive (4MLD) is due to come into force in June 2017. This might lead to worries that a post-Brexit UK would not be part of this attempt to make it more difficult for people to launder ill-gotten gains through banks and other regulated entities. The directive puts further scrutiny on the risk based approach, particularly around situations where simplified due diligence may be applied and requires regulated entities to find out more about the money they hold.
But the 4MLD stems from the latest recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an inter-governmental body that develops and promotes policies to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. The UK, most EU member states and even the EU Commission are members of the FATF and therefore bound by its AML rules. So the UK would still need to abide by the FATF's requirements regardless of whether it is 'In' or 'Out'.
In fact, the UK has often been ahead of the European curve on AML legislation. In many cases it has 'gold plated' the EU legislation, for example it has adopted an 'all crimes approach' to AML regulation, so there is no de minimis level of predicate offence below which offences need not be reported.
The UK already has its measures in place to increase transparency of beneficial ownership of companies. The London Anti-Corruption Summit in May 2016 showed Britain's willingness to not only lead the way in setting up a public register of beneficial ownership, but also to encourage other countries to create their own registers. EU members France and the Netherlands have committed to setting up registers of their own. Now, any foreign company that wants to buy property in the UK or bid for government contracts will be required to publicly disclose their ultimate beneficial owner. Patrick Moulette, who heads the Anti-Corruption Division at the OECD, called this "a significant step in the right direction". It seems the UK has the legislation and the political will to combat money laundering, whether or not the country sits within the EU.
Anti-Bribery and Corruption
The EU is committed to facilitating information-sharing between its member states. If Britain were to leave the EU, some are worried that it would no longer receive information about suspected bribery and corruption from across the EU, which would make it harder for the UK authorities to detect and take enforcement action against corruption. As Andrew Simms of the think tank New Weather Institute wrote in the Financial Times in January 2016, solutions to financial crime "require international collective action, which a Brexit from the EU would seriously undermine".
But it is unclear what the EU would have to gain from excluding the UK from this information-sharing process, since European countries also benefit from the UK's willingness to provide information. There is already precedent for the UK to share information with other non-EU countries. Regulators in the US, UK and Australia are among those working together to investigate companies and individuals implicated in allegations of bribery by Unaoil to secure billions of dollars of government contracts in the Middle East and Africa. Moreover, at the London Anti-Corruption Summit in May 2016, the UK announced that it will host a new International Anti-Corruption Coordination Centre in London to work with enforcement agencies in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Switzerland on cross-border investigations. The global trend in enforcement is towards countries sharing information with each other, not hiding it.
The UK also has one of the strictest anti-bribery laws in the world: the Bribery Act of 2010. The Act stemmed from the OECD's anti-corruption convention in 1997 and would be unaffected if the UK was no longer subject to EU law. The NGO Transparency International describes the Act as "among the strictest legislation internationally on bribery", so it seems unlikely that Britain outside the EU would be seen as a softer touch on bribery and corruption.
Sanctions and Politically Exposed Persons
The most obvious area in which Brexit could affect financial crime is that the UK and Europe could develop quite different strategies for export and sanctions controls. Although different countries often work together to impose sanctions against doing business with companies operating in a particular country, the conditions of these sanctions can be very different. Recently, the EU eased its sanctions against Iran, while the US' sanctions remain more restrictive. This has meant EU business have begun to deepen their relationships with companies in Iran while the country remains off limits for most US businesses.
UK policymakers have in the past made exemptions for politically exposed persons. For example, the Financial Services Bill excludes domestic PEPs such as MPs from money laundering enhanced due diligence checks. This hints at a divergence from EU policy, since this is against the provisions in the Fourth EU Directive which will require a more comprehensive definition of 'prominent public person'. This divergence could be magnified if the UK were to no longer be subject to EU law.
But there is no evidence that the UK and the EU would adopt drastically different approaches to sanctions against PEPs. Moreover, much of the policy on sanctions comes from UN resolutions which would still bind the UK regardless of its European status.
Terrorist financing
The UK's laws on the financing of terrorism fall under United Nations (UN) Security Council resolutions. The UK is signed up to other international conventions which pertain to terrorism, including the Vienna Convention, the Palermo Convention, the UN Convention against Corruption and the UN Convention for the Suppression of Terrorism, so UK law is bound by these requirements. The UN is not the only inter-governmental organisation with a strong commitment to identifying money which funds terrorism. The FATF also develops policies in this area, which bind the UK and most EU member states equally regardless of the UK's relationship with Europe.
If the UK repealed the European Communities Act of 1972, new laws would need to be passed to fill any legislative gaps that have opened up. This might lead some people to worry that there is a period in which the UK is legislatively paralysed and unable to take action in some areas. But under UK law, where there are terrorist concerns the authorities can designate financial sanctions targets and apply export and other controls to goods of any description. So there should not be any window in which the UK has less power to act on suspected inflow and outflow of money related to terrorism.
An uncertain future
With the upcoming referendum so keenly contested by rival politicians, it can be difficult to work out what would be the actual impact of Brexit on the UK's ability to combat financial crime. Moreover, many details of how a 'Brexit' would look in practice will only become clear if the country does vote to leave.
But although there are specific EU policies against financial crime, these usually fall under or follow on from inter-governmental policies, for example from the UN, the FATF and the OECD. These inter-governmental policies would continue to apply to the UK, whether or not it is in the EU. The UK also has its own legislation in place against financial crime, and this is often ahead of the European curve. David Cameron positioned the UK as leaders in the fight against financial crime by organising the London Anti-Corruption Summit in May 2016.
Commenting on the outcome of the polls on 23rd June, Professor Dan Hough, Director of Sussex University's Anti-Corruption Centre, "As with most things to do with the Brexit debate, the impact of a 'Leave' vote in these areas is clouded in uncertainty. On the one hand EU institutions (of all sorts) provide useful fora for unofficial collaboration and co-ordination. UK representatives can and do discuss a range of 'off agenda' items with EU colleagues, but if the UK leaves the EU it will inevitably limit opportunities for doing this.
However, there is no reason to believe that security forces in particular won't continue to work together in the same way that they have in the past. Many of the links there are bi-lateral and thematic, and there is a case to be made that these relationships will simply carry on as normal no matter what the Brexit vote".
We will only know for certain the effect of Brexit on the UK's ability to tackle financial crime if the country votes 'Out' on June 23. But it seems unlikely that it would have a significant effect on the UK's ability to combat financial crime.
For a summary of this information, check out the Brexit: So What? infographic here:
Brexit Anti-Money Laundering Infographic
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Noise Abatement FAQs
Here are answers to frequently asked questions regarding noise abatement at Tampa International Airport.
What is a Part 150 Study?
A Part 150 Study is a voluntary study that is initiated by an airport sponsor to determine ways to reduce noise over residential and other noise-sensitive areas. It also aids in the determination and planning of compatible and non-compatible land areas surrounding an airport. The purpose of the recently approved Part 150 Study is to evaluate existing conditions and recommend proposed noise abatement and land use management measures intended to reduce the impact of aircraft noise on residents and land areas surrounding the Airport.
In order for our noise abatement program to be a formal program, the Aviation Authority would have to demonstrate to the FAA that the voluntary program was not adequate to mitigate noise impacts as we grow. The FAA requires that airport analyze noise impacts and develop involuntary noise mitigation programs under the guidance of Federal Aviation Regulation Part 161. We have been diligently collecting data as part of the noise office function to be able to quantify the noise issues at TPA in the event that Part 161 becomes our only option. It should be noted that the FAA is very hesitant to approve Part 161 Studies to formalize noise abatement procedures due to capacity issues in the national aviation system, aviation industry and pilot resistance. Part 161 Studies are very controversial and sometimes are challenged in court. The Aviation Authority remains confident that we can implement the voluntary program successfully because we are vigilant. We do look at the involuntary program option when we update our Part 150 Study, however with the cooperation we receive from our Air Traffic Control Tower staff it hasn't been warranted.
What should prospective home buyers in Hillsborough County do before purchasing property?
The Aviation Authority can help you learn about the varying flight patterns, peak travel month, and potential noise impact areas from aircraft operations. We can provide flight track information that show predominant aircraft flight patterns at TPA. We encourage home buyers to visit properties at several different times of the day and during various seasons. For additional information, call the noise office at _PHONE_
When do most planes depart or arrive at TPA?
Airlines design their schedules for the convenience of their customers. The heaviest travel periods are early to mid-morning and mid-afternoon to early evening. Cargo aircraft operate late-night and early-morning flights. Aircraft can access TPA at anytime of day or night.
Planes must takeoff and land into the direction of the wind, therefore, the direction of arrivals and departures is determined almost exclusively by wind direction. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is in charge of air traffic control at TPA.
Over what areas do planes most often fly?
Residents living within 35 miles of any major metropolitan airport can expect to see aircraft at some point during the day. Aircraft can deviate from one of the predominant flight patterns due to wind direction and/or speed, thunderstorms, instructions from air traffic control, emergency, operational constraint, and safety, etc.
 - The public wants to have complaints documented and sometimes seeks information. Most of all, the public seeks change in the condition as they want the noise to go away. People are concerned about aircraft noise and complain because they would like to see changes occur. At times a call may alert the Airport of an unusual noise event(s) and/or a recurring problem that can be investigated and resolved. However, a noise complaint may not bring about an individual's desired change. The noise complaint line provides individuals the ability to express their concerns about aviation noise at TPA.
 - People file complaints for different reasons and have different expectations. The Aviation Authority tries to be responsive to the public and can take action when appropriate and when able to, but some callers will be frustrated when they learn that changes cannot be made. Other callers are satisfied that they have "gone on record" and have voiced their concerns.
Why doesn't TPA have a curfew or rules similar to those at other airports?
In 1990 Congress passed legislation that made it extremely difficult for airports to initiate curfews or other noise and access restrictions. This Federal legislation "grandfathered" all existing noise/access restrictions at other airports that had such restrictions. These airports already had noise restrictions that were allowed to remain in place. TPA had a voluntary Informal Runway Use Program which emphasizes preferential priority runways for turbojets and where noted, turboprop operations and pilot education.
TPA's informal runway use program is often used by pilots under ideal conditions. Factors such as weather, FAA ATCT instructions, operational necessity, safety, and the presence of other aircraft will often dictate a flight path that is different from the informal runway use program.
What good does it do to call in or send a noise complaint email when the noise abatement procedures are voluntary?
Pilot education is a major part of our noise abatement program and the noise complaints assist the Airport in this effort. The noise complaints are compiled and published in a quarterly newsletter that allows the Airport to see trends which assist staff in enhancing the education program.
 - "Except when necessary for takeoff of landing, no person may operate an aircraft below the following altitude:
It is important to be aware of two aspects of this regulation. First, most aircraft operating in the vicinity of TPA are in the process of landing or taking off, thus this regulation does not apply. Second, helicopters are specifically exempted from this Federal regulation.
TPA preferred departure and arrival procedures for turbojets and turbo props are used frequently during periods of good weather. During periods of reduced visibility (rain, fog, etc) aircraft must use an Instrument Landing System (ILS). During these periods, aircraft will be vectored around the weather cells and thus, areas that are normally not impacted by aircraft over-flights, occasionally, will receive over-flights.
Why do airplanes fly out of the departure and arrival flight paths?
There are many reasons, sometimes beyond the airline's control, why a jet may fly out of the preferred voluntary flight path. These include traffic conflicts, weather, air traffic control directives, safety considerations, aircraft performance and pilot technique, etc.
It seems like the Airport has been operating on the same flow pattern for days. Is this fair?
Wind and weather dictate which runway end or flow direction (north or south) the FAA can use. If Tampa Bay is in a persistent weather pattern this may force the FAA to rely on the same runway end for a long period of time.
Who tells the pilots where and when to turn?
Pilots fly prescribed routes to and from TPA as instructed by air traffic controllers. The FAA is responsible for managing TPA's airspace and for ensuring the safe and expeditious flow of traffic.
So what makes a jet loud?
Why do some aircraft seem louder than others?
Aircraft operating at TPA have a diverse range of noise levels. These noise levels primarily depend on the type of engine used by the aircraft, the size of the aircraft and whether the aircraft is taxiing on the airfield, landing or taking off. The newest so called "full Stage 3" aircraft tend to be the quietest aircraft in the fleet. Aircraft with Stage 3 "hushkitted" engines tend to be the loudest. See (Noise Glossary for clarification on Stage 3 versus Hushkitts). Departures tend to be louder than arrivals since the pilot is forcing more power to the engine to achieve lift.
Which flight path impacts me?
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