text:
Q: Making modular login function with selenium-webdriver and mocha I am trying to create a login function that I can use with mocha testing and selenium-webdriver for unit testing, since I have a bunch of things to do that start with "user logs in and..."
Below is my best shot, but when I run it, the console just logs
Already registered user logs in and sees homepage
  1) should work (it's red text)

Login an existing user

and then nothing happens and I have to control-C out of the process. My code was working before I went for this modular login implementation, so I'm sure that's where my problem is. Is there something I am missing here? I am also open to general critiques of how I went about making the login function, since I don't have that much experience with webdriver.
Below is my code. It's in one js file.
var test = require('selenium-webdriver/testing'),
chai = require('chai');
chai.use(require('chai-string'));
chai.use(require('chai-as-promised'));
var expect = chai.expect,
webdriver = require('selenium-webdriver'),
By = webdriver.By;

// I want this to be a modular login function I can use multiple places
function login(driver) {
    test.describe('Login an existing user', function() {
        test.it('should work', function() {
            this.timeout(0);

            var email = 'myemail@test.com';
            var password = 'password';

            driver.get('http://localhost:9000');

            driver.getTitle().then(function(title) {
                expect(title).to.equal('my title');
            })
            .then(function() {
                // do login stuff and click login button
            });
            .then(function() {
                return driver;
            });
        });
    });
}

//an example of when I would use the login function
test.describe('Already registered user logs in and sees homepage', function() {
  test.it('should work', function() {

    this.timeout(0);
    var driver = new webdriver.Builder().
    withCapabilities(webdriver.Capabilities.chrome()).
    build();

    driver = login(driver)
    .then(function() {
        driver.findElement(By.xpath("relevant xpath")).click();
    })
  })
})

A: By calling login from inside test.it, you are effectively calling describe inside it, which is not allowed. Mocha simply does not support calling describe or it from inside it. Unfortunately, it does not try to detect such occurrence and scream about it. It just goes ahead and do whatever it does. I all cases it results in undefined behavior, like the behavior you observed. In most cases, the undefined behavior is erratic. I very rare cases, it happens to match the developer's expectations but that's due to chance, not design.
In your case, I'd just remove the calls to test.describe and test.it from inside login, and make sure to return a promise. You can keep the expect there. You won't be able to call this.timeout(0) inside login, however. Something like this:
function login(driver) {
    var email = 'myemail@test.com';
    var password = 'password';

    driver.get('http://localhost:9000');

    return driver.getTitle().then(function(title) {
        expect(title).to.equal('my title');
    })
    .then(function() {
        // do login stuff and click login button
    })
    .then(function () {
        return driver;
    });
}

And modify your calling code to:
var promise = login(driver)
.then(function(driver) {
    driver.findElement(By.xpath("relevant xpath")).click();
});

You can do whatever you want to the promise, or nothing at all. However, driver is not itself a promise so setting driver to that value won't work.


Destinations strive to provide the best experience for their visitors and hotels, which includes the best possible booking experience. When the decision comes down to booking through an OTA (booking.com, Travelocity, Expedia) or directly with a lodging property, research from Koddi is clear: consumers want to Book Direct.
The OTA and hotel relationship has been heated from the start. A common misconception centers on price in consumer's booking decisions. Think consumers will always opt for the least expensive option? Think again.
Research from Koddi shows that 65% of visitors will book direct with a hotel over an OTA listing the same price. The study goes on to show an even deeper preference for direct booking: Where there is a 1% difference in price-and the hotel option is more expensive-63% of consumers will book through the hotel. Where there is a 10% difference in price-even though the hotel is more expensive-51% of consumers will still choose to book direct with the hotel.
So why do consumers book direct even when the price is higher?
The Booking Experience Is Better: Whereas OTAs confuse consumers with competing offers, booking direct is a simple, seamless process.
Consumer Perception Is Better: Consumers equate a better booking experience with a better lodging experience.
Brand Loyalty Is Higher: Hotels are aggressively growing and improving their loyalty rewards in response to lost profit from OTAs.
You already know that your lodgings lose when consumers book through an OTA site. Koddi's research shows consumers believe they are losing, too. Give consumers what they want with the best possible booking experience: lodging options, availability, price, and the option to Book Direct Now.


X Factor's James Arthur boasts he's a "great lover"
Home / Entertainment / News celebrities / X Factor's James Arthur boasts he's a "great lover"
James Arthur has been bigging up his skills in the bedroom.
The X Factor finalist - who's newly single after splitting from ex-girlfriend Lucie in the Boot Camp stage of the competition - has also suggested he makes a rather lovely boyfriend.
James told Look magazine: 'I'm a great lover. When I've got a girlfriend I like to be with them as much as possible and I'm very affectionate.
"It's all about respect. I'm not going to treat a woman like a piece of meat."
The 24-year-old has received a tonne of female attention since he emerged as a front runner on the show and has earned himself a reputation as a ladies' man.
But it seems there's one woman in particular who James has his eye on - X Factor judge Tulisa Contostavlos.
The former N-Dubz singer is a huge fan of James' performances, but unfortunately for him she's loved up with footballer Danny Simpson.
James continued: "Tulisa is really strong and very hot, she's definitely my type."
The Middlesbrough boy has formed a strong bond with his mentor Nicole Scherzinger - though he did struggle with her good looks in the beginning.
He said: "It took me a while to get past how beautiful Nicole is before I could listen to what she was saying to me!
"But we're buddies now. It takes her half an hour to make a point, what with her metaphors, but she's inspirational and she has me in stitches."
James is also reported to have a soft spot for Xtra Factor host Caroline, but it seems its all completely innocent.
He added: "I just like flirting badly with Caroline to make her feel awkward. She never has any comeback!"
During his time in the competition, James has been snapped surrounded by girls on nights out, kissing a lucky lady before presenting her with a rose and on one evening was even caught going into his hotel room with three women.
It's a world away from the life he was living last year, when the singer was diagnosed with anxiety and depression and felt down about how he looked.
James added to LOOK: "I've always thought I'm pretty ugly. It's great because I get so many nice messages on Twitter, but I'll get one bad comment saying I need my teeth sorted out and I can't forget it."


text:
More info on John Mutorwa
John Mutorwa: Wikis
John Mutorwa
Minister of Youth, National Services, Sport and Culture
17 August 1957 (1957-08-17) (age 52)
SWAPO
Windhoek, Rundu
University of Fort Hare, University of Namibia
John Mutorwa (born 17 August 1957 in Nyangana, Okavango Region) is a Namibian politician. A member of the South West Africa People's Organization, Mutorwa has been a member of the National Assembly and in the cabinet's of Sam Nujoma and Hifikepunye Pohamba since 1992. Mutorwa has been the Minister of Youth, National Services, Sport and Culture since March 2005.[1]
Mutorwa attended the University of Fort Hare, from which he graduated from in 1984. He earned a B.A. in 1995 from the University of Namibia. In 2002, he earned a master's degree in Interdisciplinary studies from the University of Montana.[2]
Following his education at Fort Hare, Mutorwa returned to Kavangoland, where he worked as a teacher and principal from 1985 to 1990. He also worked for reconciliation efforts, serving as Secretary of the Repatriation, Resettlement and Rehabilitation of Roman Catholic Justice and Peace Commission from 1988 to 1989. Following independence in 1990, he served as Regional Commissioner for Kavango, Omega, and Tsumkwe until 1992. In that year, Mutorwa joined the government in Windhoek as a Member of Parliament. Beginning in 1992 as well, Mutorwa served various posts in the cabinet, including as Deputy Minister of Water Affairs in the office of the President from 1992 to 1993 and Deputy Minister of Fisheries and Marine Resources from 1994 to 1995. In 1995, he was promoted to head the Ministry of Basic Education and Culture, which he did until 2005. In a cabinet shake up in that year, he became the Minister of Youth, National Services, Sport and Culture.
^ Profile at Parliament.gov.na
^ John Mutorwa at Namibia Institute for Democracy
Categories: 1957 births | Living people | Members of the National Assembly of Namibia | Members of the South West Africa People's Organization | People from Kavango Region | University of Fort Hare alumni | University of Namibia alumni | University of Montana alumni | Namibian expatriates in South Africa | Namibian politician stubs
John Mutorwa - NID - Namibia Institute For Democracy

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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text:
#include "mirtk/Common.h"
#include "mirtk/Options.h"

#include "mirtk/EdgeConnectivity.h"
#include "mirtk/PointSetIO.h"

#include "vtkSmartPointer.h"
#include "vtkPointSet.h"
#include "vtkPointData.h"
#include "vtkDataArray.h"

using namespace mirtk;

// =============================================================================
// Help
// =============================================================================

// -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
void PrintHelp(const char *name)
{
  cout << "\n";
  cout << "Usage: " << name << " <input> <output> [options]\n";
  cout << "\n";
  cout << "Description:\n";
  cout << "  Erodes scalar point data of an input point set by replacing a point's\n";
  cout << "  value by the minimum of the values of its neighboring points. When the\n";
  cout << "  input data array has more than one component, each component is processed\n";
  cout << "  separately.\n";
  cout << "\n";
  cout << "Arguments:\n";
  cout << "  input    Input  point set.\n";
  cout << "  output   Output point set with dilated scalars.\n";
  cout << "\n";
  cout << "Optional arguments:\n";
  cout << "  -a, -array, -scalars <name>\n";
  cout << "      Name of point data array. (default: active scalars)\n";
  cout << "  -c, -connectivity, -neighborhood <int>\n";
  cout << "      Maximum node edge-connectivity of neighbors. (default: 1)\n";
  cout << "  -r, -radius <float>\n";
  cout << "      Maximum point distance of neighboring points. Used instead of :option:`-c` when positive. (default: 0)\n";
  cout << "  -n, -iterations, -iter <n>\n";
  cout << "      Number of iterations. (default: 1)\n";
  cout << "\n";
  cout << "Output format options:\n";
  cout << "  -ascii, -nobinary" << endl;
  cout << "      Write legacy VTK in ASCII format. (default: input)" << endl;
  cout << "  -binary, -noascii" << endl;
  cout << "      Write legacy VTK in binary format. (default: input)" << endl;
  cout << "  -[no]compress" << endl;
  cout << "      Write XML VTK file with or without compression. (default: on)" << endl;
  PrintStandardOptions(cout);
  cout << "\n";
  cout.flush();
}

// =============================================================================
// Auxiliaries
// =============================================================================

// -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
struct ErodeScalars
{
  vtkDataArray           *_Input;
  vtkDataArray           *_Output;
  const EdgeConnectivity *_Neighbors;

  void operator ()(const blocked_range<int> &ptIds) const
  {
    int        nbrPts;
    const int *nbrIds;
    double     value;

    for (int ptId = ptIds.begin(); ptId != ptIds.end(); ++ptId) {
      for (int j = 0; j < _Input->GetNumberOfComponents(); ++j) {
        value = _Input->GetComponent(ptId, j);
        _Neighbors->GetConnectedPoints(ptId, nbrPts, nbrIds);
        for (int i = 0; i < nbrPts; ++i) {
          value = min(value, _Input->GetComponent(nbrIds[i], j));
        }
        _Output->SetComponent(ptId, j, value);
      }
    }
  }
};

// -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
/// Erode point data
///
/// \todo Implement this as MeshFilter as part of the PointSet module.
vtkSmartPointer<vtkPointSet> Erode(vtkSmartPointer<vtkPointSet> input,
                                   const EdgeConnectivity &neighbors,
                                   vtkSmartPointer<vtkDataArray> arr, int niter = 1)
{
  const int npoints = static_cast<int>(input->GetNumberOfPoints());

  vtkSmartPointer<vtkPointSet> output;
  output.TakeReference(input->NewInstance());
  output->ShallowCopy(input);

  int attr = -1;
  vtkPointData * const pd = output->GetPointData();
  for (int i = 0; i < pd->GetNumberOfArrays(); ++i) {
    if (pd->GetArray(i) == arr) {
      attr = pd->IsArrayAnAttribute(i);
      pd->RemoveArray(i);
      break;
    }
  }

  // Attention: vtkDataArray::DeepCopy (of older VTK versions?) does not
  //            copy array name (and possibly not array component names).
  vtkSmartPointer<vtkDataArray> res;
  res.TakeReference(arr->NewInstance());
  res->SetNumberOfComponents(arr->GetNumberOfComponents());
  res->SetNumberOfTuples(arr->GetNumberOfTuples());
  res->SetName(arr->GetName());
  for (int j = 0; j < arr->GetNumberOfComponents(); ++j) {
    res->SetComponentName(j, arr->GetComponentName(j));
  }

  ErodeScalars body;
  body._Input     = arr;
  body._Output    = res;
  body._Neighbors = &neighbors;
  for (int iter = 0; iter < niter; ++iter) {
    if (iter == 1) {
      arr.TakeReference(res->NewInstance());
      arr->SetNumberOfComponents(res->GetNumberOfComponents());
      arr->SetNumberOfTuples(res->GetNumberOfTuples());
      arr->SetName(res->GetName());
      for (int j = 0; j < res->GetNumberOfComponents(); ++j) {
        arr->SetComponentName(j, res->GetComponentName(j));
        arr->CopyComponent(j, res, j);
      }
      body._Input = arr;
    } else if (iter > 1) {
      swap(body._Input, body._Output);
    }
    parallel_for(blocked_range<int>(0, npoints), body);
  }

  const int idx = pd->AddArray(body._Output);
  if (attr >= 0) pd->SetActiveAttribute(idx, attr);

  return output;
}

// =============================================================================
// Main
// =============================================================================

// -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
  EXPECTS_POSARGS(2);

  const char *input_name  = POSARG(1);
  const char *output_name = POSARG(2);
  const char *array_name  = nullptr;

  int iterations    = 1;
  int connectivity  = 1;
  double     radius = 0.;
  FileOption fopt   = FO_Default;

  for (ALL_OPTIONS) {
    if (OPTION("-a") || OPTION("-array") || OPTION("-scalars") || OPTION("-name")) {
      array_name = ARGUMENT;
    }
    else if (OPTION("-n") || OPTION("-iterations") || OPTION("-iter")) {
      PARSE_ARGUMENT(iterations);
    }
    else if (OPTION("-c") || OPTION("-connectivity") || OPTION("-neighborhood") || OPTION("-neighbourhood")) {
      PARSE_ARGUMENT(connectivity);
    }
    else if (OPTION("-r") || OPTION("-radius")) {
      PARSE_ARGUMENT(radius);
    }
    else HANDLE_POINTSETIO_OPTION(fopt);
    else HANDLE_STANDARD_OR_UNKNOWN_OPTION();
  }

  if (verbose) cout << "Reading " << input_name << "...", cout.flush();
  vtkSmartPointer<vtkPointSet> pset = ReadPointSet(input_name);
  if (verbose) cout << " done" << endl;

  vtkDataArray *arr = nullptr;
  if (array_name) {
    arr = pset->GetPointData()->GetArray(array_name);
    if (arr == nullptr) {
      FatalError("Input point set has not point data array named " << array_name << "!");
    }
  } else {
    arr = pset->GetPointData()->GetScalars();
    if (arr == nullptr) {
      FatalError("Input point set has no active scalars, use -array, -scalars option!");
    }
  }

  EdgeConnectivity neighbors;
  if (radius > 0.) {
    neighbors.Initialize(pset, radius);
  } else {
    neighbors.Initialize(pset, connectivity);
  }

  if (verbose) cout << "Eroding with c=" << neighbors.Maximum() << "...", cout.flush();
  pset = Erode(pset, neighbors, arr, iterations);
  arr  = nullptr;
  if (verbose) cout << " done" << endl;

  if (!WritePointSet(output_name, pset, fopt)) {
    FatalError("Failed to write result to " << output_name << "!");
  }

  return 0;
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Our main goals were to achieve greater reliability and better cost management. Liferay accomplished that resoundingly.
Osaka Gas is a leading energy supplier with its core natural gas supply business serving nearly 7 million customers in Japan's Kansai region. With a portfolio of diversified energy businesses, Osaka Gas is developing into a multi-energy services provider of natural gas, electricity, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), district heating and cooling, and other services. Including its affiliated enterprises, the Osaka Gas Group is also active in various non-energy business fields.
With its various business units and diverse portfolio of services, Osaka Gas was faced with the challenge of managing an abundance of data. The company's intranet aggregated not just content but a number of disparate applications, and it relied on a well-known commercial product portal system to do so. Over the course of eight years, however, users began to voice frustrations with the portal. Certain applications slowed the system, often leading to tedious reboots twice a week during business hours. Business users also complained about the abundance of links, which made it difficult to view information in a quick and simple way.
As it neared the end of its service contract, Osaka Gas was presented with two options. One was to improve the current system, which would involve either an upgrade to a newer version of the portal or a potentially expensive scale-up of its hardware. Since this commercial portal was tied to an enterprise suite of products, the upgrade did not appear to be a practical option as it would necessitate the replacement of the entire suite at once, which involved huge risk. Scaling was not a better option, either. Due to interdependencies with the hardware and operating system, Osaka Gas was reliant on installing hardware that had become out of date over time and eventually phased out of production.
One last option was to replace the portal system. While this also involved some level of risk, with concerns about stability and cost, Liferay surfaced as an attractive and viable solution. As an open source product, Liferay would provide access to the source code as well as implementation resources; at a tenth of the price of most competitors, any questions regarding operational and management costs would also be laid to rest. After much deliberation, it was decided that replacing their system with Liferay Portal would be the best alternative.
As the primary integrator, Osaka Gas Information System Research Institute (OGIS) focused on integrating the Liferay cluster system and evaluating any possible fits and gaps between Liferay and the previous portal system. They were also tasked with installing the original portlets and assuming daily operations and maintenance.
Since Osaka Gas hosts over 25,000 enterprise users, it was wary of major overhauls to the user interface. Fortunately, Liferay's flexible theming solutions and adherence to open standards like JSR-168 allowed the company to update the back-end system with minimal disruption to user experience. What's more, open source software allowed them the stability they had previously lacked. "Our main goals were to achieve greater reliability and better cost management. Liferay accomplished that resoundingly," said Shigeru Nonami, Manager of Information & Communication Systems.
Osaka Gas is now reaping the benefits of Liferay Portal on a daily basis. Users are touting the utility derived from features such as granular management of roles and authorizations (pages and portlets), easy page layout customization, and ease of integration between Liferay and the company's original collaboration systems (BBS, Scheduler) via Web Services. Osaka Gas is now able to quickly scale this intranet (and intra-organization communication) to give its family of subsidiary companies direct access to information as well.


PET scans may be helpful in assessing people who still complain of Lyme disease symptoms months or years after treatment, so-called post treatment Lyme disease syndrome, or PTLDS. That's because PET scans can visualize a protein associated with brain inflammation, according to work by Jennifer Coughlin and colleagues at Johns Hopkins.
Coughlin notes that PET scanning may also be able to assess the effectiveness of treatments. At Johns Hopkins, I'm Elizabeth Tracey.
Inflammation in the brain may play a role in so-called post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome, or PTLDS, research by Jennifer Coughlin and colleagues at Johns Hopkins has shown. Coughlin says her previous work looking at the brains of athletes who've had repeated head injury has identified a protein called translocator protein that seems to be involved.
Coughlin says serial PET scans from the same person over time would help discern the role of inflammation better. At Johns Hopkins, I'm Elizabeth Tracey.
Post treatment Lyme disease syndrome or PTLDS is the condition where people continue to experience symptoms of Lyme disease months or even years after they've been treated. Now Jennifer Coughlin and colleagues at Johns Hopkins have used PET scanning to look for a substance called translocator protein in the brains of people with the condition.
Coughlin says this is a hint that inflammation in the brain is involved in post Lyme disease syndrome, but many more studies will be needed to prove that's the culprit. At Johns Hopkins, I'm Elizabeth Tracey.
If you have arthritis or an injury to a joint or muscle, applying a pain cream may seem like it would help, and those containing prescription pain relievers would be even better, right? Not so fast, research by Steven Cohen, a pain expert at Johns Hopkins, and colleagues concludes.
Cohen says these specially compounded prescription pain creams often contain things like lidocaine or ketamine, and may cost in the thousands of dollars. People often prefer to use them rather than oral medicines because they don't have so many side effects. But they also are no more effective than the pain creams that can be bought over the counter, Cohen concludes. At Johns Hopkins, I'm Elizabeth Tracey.
Decades of progress in domestic violence may be set back with a change in the definition of this issue as strictly a criminal matter, which the Trump administration instituted last year and has recently come to light. Patricia Davidson, dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, says identifying domestic violence as a felony or misdemeanor is far too narrow.
Davidson points out that verbal, economic and psychological abuse also fall into this category and may defy categorization as misdemeanor or felony. At Johns Hopkins, I'm Elizabeth Tracey.
A huge national database called Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results has revealed great news: many fewer women have died from breast cancer than would have before improvements in screening and treatment. William Nelson, director of the Kimmel Cancer at Johns Hopkins, describes the data.
Nelson says early detection via screening accounts for some of the reduced deaths but that treatment advances have also been substantial, as has identification of risk factors for breast cancer. He says the good news is that these advances have rendered breast cancer more of a chronic disease for most. At Johns Hopkins, I'm Elizabeth Tracey.
Cancer diagnoses are rising among 25 to 49 year olds, a recent study reported, and that's bad news all around. William Nelson, director of the Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, says specific types of cancer account for the majority.
Nelson says the agenda for prevention is clear – getting our arms around our obesity problem is both a national and international priority, and not just for cancer prevention but for metabolic syndrome, diabetes and heart disease. He says for now, screening efforts to detect these cancers early are not likely to be helpful as they are still infrequent in younger people. At Johns Hopkins, I'm Elizabeth Tracey.


In today's environment where technology is dominant, an increasing number of services are shifting online- this has made programming to become amongst the best career choices available.
Some have even championed for almost a decade the fact that everyone needs to know how to code. But, even with that, the demand for programmers is growing at a higher rate compared to the people opting to learn to code.
The main reason is that people consider it complicated — since many have tried and ended up avoiding it. How it was taught previously in class made it appear tough.
Do you desire to how to code within minimal time? Know that there is no magic that can make you a developer overnight but relying on hard work and effort.
Below are the best 10 apps that can teach you how to code.
Some of its courses are free, and you can learn them from anywhere. However, there are also premium courses that enable you to get professional feedback. Apart from that, you can benefit from the nano degrees Udacity offers if you like to raise things a notch higher.
Unlike Udacity, Tynker does not apply the serious kind of learning. It applies games in place of mobile courses with the aim of teaching kids about coding.
In this interactive system, in case a player fails to complete a level, instructions of how to improve are provided and a chance to replay due to the drag-and-drop concept.
Through doing puzzles and building games, students or kids are able to understand the programming concept easily. Though it won't enable them to build complete apps, it will provide them with basics and a good foundation of coding.
If you have a laptop or tablet, the most popular way to learn different kinds of things is through Khan Academy. Unlike Udacity which is partly free, it is completely free to learn.
Apart from coding, it can enable you to learn other interesting stuff linked to programming. For instance, from its library, you can access free video tutorials and exercises about the fundamentals of computer science.
Even though it has user-created lessons, you will still benefit from the intro courses on key coding languages like HTML/CSS. It also gives you the basic knowledge about animation, drawing and webpages building. The good thing is that both iOS and Android users can benefit from coding skills on Khan Academy App.
If you want a simple, modern app that can walk you through the coding process, then, opt for CodeHub. When it comes to studying how to code, Codehub gives you a breath of fresh air from an extra clutter that you find in other apps. The app has 50 lessons that you can further divide the way you wish. In that way, you can choose to take a lesson daily or weekly, hence, making the goal of entirely completing the course easily attainable.
In each skill level, you will find 4 different lesson levels, which is a great thing about CodeHub. This allows you to select a category that suits you so that if you have basic knowledge, you can simply skip the beginner or web level. There is also a simple button on the app that you can type and submit any doubts or questions about the course.
If you intend to learn and study coding on a shorter-term basis, CodeHub is a great app to consider.
This app is not a single app but a series of several apps. Google Play and the App Store highly rate these apps as a great, dynamic and interactive way to learn coding basics. Each app enables a learner to study a particular coding language. You need to be objective while studying, for instance, you would choose to learn Java if you need to build an Android app and study CSS and HTML apps when you need to build webpages.
In the learning process, you will go through the lessons initially and later complete with checkpoints and quizzes. To motivate users, the app gives scores after each section. Other users are also able to post their scores on an online leaderboard and thus, enhance competition.
Programming Hub is a one-stop shop for learning various key programming languages. It features 20 programming languages in various complete course materials and examples. Coding simple and fun apps anywhere and anytime is easy with Programming Hub. Experts made precise course materials that make learning the lessons enjoyable.
Instead of attending Apple's new curriculum class or getting an official 500+ page eBook from Apple to learn swift, an app is another cool option. This helps where resources might be intimidating for you in the coding world. The tutorials set that Swift offers is are bite-size interactive lessons that you can learn at your spare time on iPad or iPhone. Swifty starts with basics on data types, variables, object-oriented programming and printing text on a screen.
They even came up with an 'Everyone Can Code' initiative that makes learning coding basic easy for anyone, whether a kid or an adult.
Javvy is an app that works the same way like Swifty, only that it is centered on Java. With over 150 puzzles and numerous lessons, you will be able to learn intermediate and advanced concepts like classes, loops, modifiers, and arrays.
It has Interactive training modules that are fun as they take you from the basics to the harder and more complex lessons. Its bite-size projects and lessons are convenient enough to learn app development using your iPhone or iPad.
For students or kids who want to learn to code in an exciting slow way, Code-a-pillar is the path to take. The app is rich in concepts and has few drawbacks. As the students solve the puzzles provided, they grasp various coding and programming concepts. It is advisable for a teacher to navigate students through this app to avoid confusion where the levels are not adequately explained. The techno electronica music it produces can be annoying for some but fun and exciting to others. Finally, this app is a cute coding activity that little kids can enjoy.


text:
Last 16 achieved, top of group still possible – AFC
Mission accomplished, we are through to the last 16 in the champions league. There have been many big name scalps already so far in the competition and so our achievement carries more kudos. It hasn't been pretty, after a good start to the group stages the games against Shalke did their best to derail our momentum and it was important that the team pulled together and ensured they ground out the results required to qualify from the group.
Although winning the group is out of our hands it is not an impossible feat; we have learnt in the past how important winning the group is when the last 16 draws have been made. Arsene has a tough decision to make in the final game as players in need of a rest could get a well-earned breather but if we were to take the foot off the gas and Shalke did lose their last game it would be a gutting feeling. We will see, plenty football to be played before the next group fixture.
On the game itself the first half seemed very nervy and flat. Although we didn't seem to be under much threat from the Montpellier attack the impetus from our team with added home advantage was nonexistent. It was an easily forgettable half and one that had me feeling glad I was sat at home cosy watching on TV rather than witnessing it after parting with my hard earned cash and sitting in the cold November air. We went in at half time 0-0, there were a few grumbles from the home crowd however I will give them a benefit of the doubt they were grumpy from the weather.
The second half had a much better outcome and brought the crowd back to life and happier times. It took about 4 minutes into the second half when Jack Wilshere managed to flick the ball past the keeper after a nice knockdown from Olivier Giroud playing against his old club. That was jack's first goal since returning to first team duty and you could see the joy on his face as he reeled away to celebrate. The goal clearly removed the weight off our shoulders since a win was the minimum requirement from this game.
Although the general team play didn't improve too much from the first half the goal certainly raised the crowd and the atmosphere, the players started to grow into their play. About 12 or so minutes later we scored our second goal, and what a goal it was. Lukasz Podolski who was clearly up for this game had a couple of chances that didn't go his way earlier in the game. It was only a matter of time before he made his mark in the game which he sure did. Giroud was again the provider lofting the ball into Podolski's path just inside the box. Still with plenty to do the German unleashed a powerful volley into the back of the net that the keeper had no chance in saving. The quality and technique of the volley was reminiscent of a Robin Van Persie volley scored against Charlton a few years ago. It was a special goal which ensured applause all around. We had our cushion which made the result pretty much assured on the night.
The goal scored by Podolski is the exact type of goal that reminds us of why he is in the team, problem is when he isn't scoring his contribution gets questioned. It was nice that he scored his goal, he looked dangerous all night and proved his worth to the team.
The rest of the game was played out with less urgency as we did what was required for the night, as expected Shalke made sure they gained three points from their game against Olympiacos and so our win was vital to ensure qualification from the group.
Some mini points from the game:
Long overdue clean sheet.
It was great for the defence to get a clean sheet last night. After all the plaudits from the early part of the season for our defence we went from shutting teams out to leaking goals at an alarming rate. I hope this is just the start of another prominent defensive run. Although comfortable against Montpellier there were still the odd moments where on another night we could have conceded. The important thing is the shut out will build the defenders confidence; as we all know football is all about confidence.
Giroud is becoming invaluable to our plans.
Olivier Giroud has started growing into the team, he now looks the part after a shaky start to his arsenal career. Even though he did not score yesterday he provided assists to both our goals by using his height and vision to set up his team mates. We now play to his strengths and the team is benefitting from this. Even if Thierry Henry does join us in January he will have a tough job getting in the team ahead of ironically our new number 12. Let's hope the number 14 shirt isn't vacant…
Injured players returning.
It was great to see Gervinho and Gibbs returning to the first team squad. Even though Gibbs didn't get on the pitch his presence on the bench is enough to raise the spirits of the team and the fans. What we need now is strength in depth and options from the bench. The return of those two players will go a long way to boosting our fortunes. I suppose you can add Oxlade chamberlain to the list of returnees. Although he didn't have the best of games, he is still finding his feet after injury himself.
Next up is Aston Villa on Saturday, the dreaded 17.30 kick off slot. Lets carry on the momentum from the past two games and get a result at Villa park.
Enjoy your day people
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Posted on November 22, 2012 by GambeanoSnitch.	This entry was posted in Arsenal and tagged afc, arsenal, arsene wenger, ecl, football, gervinho, montpellier, olivier Giroud, soccer, wilshere. Bookmark the permalink.
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Tag Archives: mystery house
On-Line Systems is Born
Once Roberta sold Ken on the idea of Mystery House, he — typically enough, given his personality — threw himself into it. In just one month during which Ken continued to hold down a day job, the couple implemented Mystery House in its entirety, including the design, writing, illustrations, and programming (in 100% assembly language for speed and efficiency, during an era when even most commercial software was still unashamedly coded in BASIC). Now they had to decide what to do with it.
When Scott Adams created Adventureland almost two years earlier, virtually all microcomputer software was marketed directly by the programmers / entrepreneurs who had created it, through advertisements they made themselves and placed in computer stores, user groups, and magazines and through semi-professional organizations like the TRS-80 Software Exchange. Thus, Adams had little choice but to cobble together packaging using business cards and baby-formula liners and have at it. Now, though, publishers — not least Adams's own Adventure International — were rapidly professionalizing microcomputer software. The industry was still small, but it was growing rapidly, giving creators like Ken and Roberta with a novel product more options. The biggest of the publishers in the early Apple II market was called Programma International. (One of the amusing aspects of these early publishers is their fondness for the aspirational "International" even though their industry still existed almost exclusively inside the U.S.) In addition to a nice selection of tools for programming and productivity, Programma also published plenty of games. They instantly saw the potential of Mystery House when Ken and Roberta showed it to them. They offered a 25 percent royalty, promising the couple could easily earn $9000 on the game by the end of the year.
Ken and Roberta said no thanks. To understand why, you have to remember what kind of person Ken was — ambitious, driven, and unashamedly focused on the proverbial bottom line. He had already registered a company called On-Line Systems when he started planning that FORTRAN compiler. Why not sell it themselves, and keep all the money? To make the idea even more attractive, a friend of his had a simplistic little shooting game called Skeet Shoot that he was willing to let Ken market. With two actual products to sell, On-Line Systems was born in earnest in May of 1980. Figuring what was good enough for kidnappers and serial killers was good enough for them, Ken and Roberta made some advertising fliers by cutting letters and words out of magazines, pasting them onto backing stock, and photocopying the lot. With 100 blanks disks, Ziploc bags for packaging, and a couple of magazine advertisements, they were in business.
A few months ago I poked a bit of fun at Scott Adams for claiming credit on his website for "starting the entire multi billion dollar a year computer game industry." The funny thing is, in a sense Ken and Roberta Williams could make a much more supportable claim to exactly that. Let me explain.
Having decided to go it on their own, Ken and Roberta's first sales tactic was to visit every local computer store they knew to demonstrate their products. Luckily, there were quite a few of these; Ken and Roberta were living at the time in California's Simi Valley, close to the sprawl of Los Angeles. Ken also called his younger brother John, at university in Illinois, to do the same there. John knew nothing about computers, and was very surprised to find that Ken's new product was a game of all things, for he considered Ken a "chronic workaholic" who "didn't have a fun bone in his body." As he described in the tenth-anniversary issue of Sierra's in-house magazine, John was soon traveling the country hawking On-Line System's wares to computer stores:
When I visited a computer store, be it in Peoria, Illinois or New Orleans, Louisiana, the game was a hit. Never mind that I had to hand the game disk to the retailer I was trying to "sell" the game to because I didn't know how to boot a game disk from BASIC. I always walked out of the store with an order. It seemed that Roberta and Ken had written a game that all those Apple owners out there (of which we knew there were at least 50,000) definitely wanted to play.
At this time, dozens of software publishers were either born or birthing, and some 1200 computer stores were doing business around the country, eager for programs to sell to their customers. What was missing was some means of connecting the two groups — in other words, distributors. Software companies like Adventure International were forced to accept orders directly from hundreds of individual retailers. An online profile of software distributor Merisel describes the problems this created:
In 1980 the computer software industry was in its infancy. Programs were written primarily in one-person shops by computer junkies, who did it more for love than for money. Getting this software to the 1,200 or so owners of computer retail stores was, at best, a hit-or-miss affair. If the software writer went on vacation, for example, the factory was closed and shipments stopped. Deciding which software to buy was even trickier. Approximately 95 percent of personal computer software was being sold by retail dealers, but few were in a position to evaluate and select stock from the huge number of programs available.
Ken, a keen business mind if ever there was one, forged connections with Adams and many other publishers to begin distributing their games to retail. (I'm almost certain this is the source of the odd claim that Adams made while being interviewed for Jason Scott's excellent Get Lamp documentary — and repeated by Jason in an earlier comment on this blog — that Ken Williams somehow got his start with Adventure International as a "salesman.") Within months, feeling overwhelmed with trying to run a software publisher and a software distributor and be a developer, Ken sold the distribution operation to Robert Leff, a colleague he knew from his years as a programmer for hire, for the uncharacteristically low price of just $1300. Leff in turn built the operation into SoftSel, a behemoth that came to dominate the retail software market behind the scenes, capable of making or breaking a publisher or even computing platform by the titles it chose to accept and the commitment it showed to them. Leff, a name few people outside the software industry knew even then, became one of the most powerful figures in the 1980s computing world. (SoftSel changed its name in 1990 to the aforementioned Merisel.)
There is a certain tang of the bittersweet to this progress. By setting up SoftSel, Ken and Leff effectively ensured that future hackers would not realistically be able to do what Ken and Roberta, Scott Adams, Lance Micklaus, and so many others had done, building viable businesses out of their kitchens and garages on nothing but new ideas and a talent for hacking. Eventually the grip held on the industry by distributors like SoftSel and the huge, conservative publishers that they aided and abetted would come to be blamed for the lack of innovation in and seemingly perpetual adolescence of the whole field of computer and video gaming, a state of affairs that has only begun to be satisfactorily remedied in recent years with the rise of online distribution. At the same time, though, the rapidly growing software industry of 1980 simply needed a SoftSel to get software efficiently into hands of ever growing numbers of consumers in those days of 300-baud modems and primitive telecommunications. In seeing this need and taking steps to meet it, Ken may have done more to shape the future than he would in all his future efforts with On-Line Systems (soon, of course, to be renamed Sierra). Chalk it up as the last huge step toward the professionalization of software, with all the good and bad that that implies.
Chalk it up also as another example of Ken's savvy. Other than Bill Gates, I don't know of another figure in the early PC world who combined such technical acumen with such an instinct for business. His influence is made all the more remarkable when one considers what a late starter he was in comparison to his peers, not getting into the game as he did until 1980. And believe me, there's more significant stuff that Ken's fingerprints are all over… we just haven't gotten there yet.
But back to Mystery House, which was doing pretty well in its own right. Steven Levy writes, "Ken and Roberta made eleven thousand dollars that May. In June, they made twenty thousand dollars. July was thirty thousand." (And remembers, these are 1980 dollars.) Around that time Ken quit his day job, and the Williamses began preparing to pull up stakes and fulfill a lifelong dream — to live in the country, specifically the little town of Coarsegold, not far from Yosemite National Park. Meanwhile, having included their home phone number with Mystery House, both spent hours on the phone doling out hints and advice to frustrated players.
In the midst of this frenzy of activity, Ken and Roberta were also working hard on a new game to consolidate On-Line Systems's position in the industry. Mystery House had changed everything by having pictures, but, let's face it, they weren't really very nice pictures. Their next game would change that by adding color to the equation.
Posted by Jimmy Maher on October 17, 2011 in Digital Antiquaria, Interactive Fiction
Tags: apple ii, mystery house, sierra, wizard and the princess
Mystery House, Part 2
Mystery House has been widely canonized as the "first graphic adventure." To evaluate that claim, our obvious first step must be to decide just what a "graphic adventure" actually is.
Today, the term is generally taken to refer to mouse-driven games in which the user clicks hotspots on an image of her avatar's surroundings to manipulate the environment. That's more of a default configuration than a definition, though; other paradigms for interaction have been and still are sometimes taken to fall under the category. So, we need to do better. We have to be particularly careful in deciding just where the boundary between the text and the graphic adventure should lie. A few years on from the point we've made it to in this blog (1980), many text adventures would be available that offered up occasional pictures to accompany their textual descriptions. Whatever they added, these pictures were not interactive, and in fact often completely optional; the purist could simply turn them off and play in pure text with no consequences. Games like these are better termed illustrated text adventures than graphic adventures. The latter term implies that the graphics should be essential to the experience, not a mere ancillary add-on. In fact, that's a pretty good start on a definition right there. Let's further add that the graphics should be interactive, subject to manipulation by the player rather than mere storybook-style illustrations. So, let's try this:
A graphic adventure is a form of ludic narrative which bears many similarities to the text adventure (or interactive fiction), favoring puzzles and story development over reflex-oriented action. However, the player and the program communicate with one another primarily through images rather than text. These images should be interactive — subject to manipulation by the player — and essential to the experience of the work.
Given those requirements, my first instinct was to pooh-pooh the idea of Mystery House as the first graphic adventure when I recently picked it up again after many years. It was, I thought, obviously the first illustrated text adventure — a significant development in its own right — but at heart it was still "merely" a text adventure. Boy, was I wrong. It actually leapfrogs over the logical next step — the illustrated text adventure — to do something much more audacious. Much of the core of the game does indeed play out not in text but in pictures.
Let me show you what I mean. Here we are at the beginning of the game, having just walked into the entry hall of the mansion.
That note (helpfully labeled "NOTE" in giant letters) at the bottom left is not described anywhere in the text; we know it is there only through the picture. Now, look what happens when we pick it up.
It disappears! These are not mere static images, but genuinely interactive graphics. When we read the note, the results once more appear not in the text but in the graphics area.
If we take the note somewhere else and drop it, sure enough, it appears again in the scene.
Easy as it might seem to laugh at the scrawled, stick-figure pictures themselves, this was remarkable, remarkable stuff for its time. The Williams are prototyping here a whole new paradigm for adventuring while even the text adventure was still in its relative infancy. The novelty of the technology on display here alone was sufficient to generate many thousands of sales.
And that's fortunate, because the game itself is no better than it ought to be given the inexperience of Roberta. It's allegedly a mystery story, but it's an oddly static mystery; as soon as we depart from the entry hall for the first time, five of the seven people we saw there are immediately distributed around the house as dead bodies, giving us no chance to avert any of the deaths. We can only hunt around through the typical adventure-game secret passages and mazes until we arrive at the final confrontation with the obvious murderer; in no sense do we "solve" the mystery at all, unless by process of counting up who is alive and, in the climax, who tries to kill us. The Count, still the gold standard for dynamic ludic narrative at this time, has nothing to fear. As if herself doubtful of her choice of genre, Roberta even shoehorns in the treasure-hunt subplot alluded to in the note shown above to move us back onto more traditional adventuring ground. The effect of this is to make Mystery House a cold-blooded, even morbid little game that's blackly humorous in its absurdity. We wander around discovering corpse after corpse, but in finest adventure-game-protagonist fashion never let them deter us from hunting for those jewels.
The graphics make possible annoyances that are worse than typical for even this era, including perhaps the most cruel maze that had yet been seen in an adventure game. Even "normal" navigation is a constant struggle; the game's instructions tell us that north is usually up on the screen, south down, etc., but it then proceeds to violate that guideline literally from the very first picture we see. The result is that we never feel entirely sure which way we're facing, and thus never can orientate ourselves properly. Not that it would necessarily do much good; this is a classic adventure-game house in which nothing aligns properly with anything else, like a creation of a Victorian architect with an M.C. Escher fetish.
The dining room is a particularly noteworthy chamber of horrors.
That object on the table is a candle, drawn a bit roughly but identifiable I suppose. That triangular… thing… on the back wall is supposed to represent a hole in the wall which for no apparent reason contains a crucial key. If we try to interact with the hole while carrying the lit candle or matches, we promptly trip, set the carpet on fire, and die if we don't happen to be carrying a pitcher of water or cannot figure out in a single turn the syntax needed to use it on the fire.
Oh, and in this case north is left and south is right, not that it's possible to determine this through anything but trial and error.
A major "puzzle" has us MOVing a cabinet in the kitchen for no apparent reason, and even though the game has stubbornly disclaimed knowledge of that verb up to this point.
After burrowing through the bricked-up hole that is revealed, we inexplicably find a fresh murder victim in the disused old secret passage beyond. Mimesis is not strong with this one.
So, no, Mystery House is not a very good game. In fact, it's a sometimes hilariously bad collection of the worst adventure-game cliches. In light of its pedigree and its very real formal innovations, though, I've probably already harped on its many failings too much. Most of its contemporaries weren't much better, and they weren't also inventing a whole new paradigm of adventure gaming while they were about it. (I can, however, fault Roberta for continuing to design similarly bad puzzles long after she should have known better — but that's material for later posts.)
If you'd like to experience Mystery House for yourself, I'd definitely recommend you treat it as an artifact of history rather than a serious gaming or narrative experience in its own right. In other words, use a walkthrough so you can laugh at its absurdities rather than cry. The easiest way to play it is via Java through the Virtual Apple II website.
Posted by Jimmy Maher on October 9, 2011 in Digital Antiquaria, Interactive Fiction
Tags: apple ii, mystery house, sierra
When we left Ken and Roberta, they had just made the momentous decision to use the Apple II's bitmap graphics capabilities to create an adventure game that featured pictures in addition to text. Roberta would be the first to admit that she was no artist, but she was up to creating some sketches that would suit the purpose; in a world with no graphic adventures at all, people after all wouldn't be too inclined to criticize the aesthetics of the first one to appear. Still, pulling it off would require them to overcome two other challenges: how to get the pictures into the Apple II in the first place, and how to store them in such a way that they didn't consume too much space on disk. This latter problem arose because Ken and Roberta were determined to provide pictures for every single location in the game, amounting to some 30 illustrations in all.
Creating pictures on the Apple II was a dicey proposition in early 1980, due not only to a dearth of usable paint programs but also to the lack of a suitable input device to use with them; mice were still years away, while drawing with a joystick, trackball, or keyboard was an inevitably sloppy, frustrating process. Ken and Roberta therefore ended up purchasing an ungainly contraption called a VersaWriter.
The VersaWriter was far too persnickety to allow for free-hand drawing. The user was rather expected to insert a sketch under the transparent surface of the drawing area, and then to trace it using the stylus. The device was marketed as a tool for getting diagrams — flowcharts, circuit diagrams, floor plans, etc. — into the Apple II; its packaged software did not deal very well with the irregular lines and patterns typical of full-blown pictures. Apple itself had actually released a drawing tablet much more suitable for illustrations the previous year. Apple's tablet, however, cost $650, while the VersaWriter could be had for less than $200. Still uncertain about this whole enterprise and desiring to do it on the cheap, Ken went with the VersaWriter. Now he needed to find a way to make it work. Like a good hacker, he promptly set to work writing his own software to operate it. In doing so, he actually solved his second challenge almost accidentally.
Storing 30 or more images on disk as simple grids of pixels would consume far more space than Ken had available on a single disk. If he wished to avoid the hassle of shipping the game on many disks and asking the user to swap among them, he needed to find a better way. With compressed graphics standards still unheard of (and likely too taxing on the little Apple's 6502 if they had been), Ken hit upon the idea of storing each picture not as the data that made up the final product, but rather as a series of drawing commands that could be used to create it afresh. In other words, instead of being fetched from disk, the pictures in Mystery House are "drawn" anew by the computer each time they appear. (Or, for the more technically inclined: they are stored as vector graphics, not raster graphics.) The really elegant bit is that the drawing statements used to create them correspond with the motions of the stylus that traced them on the VersaWriter. Thus to store his graphics Ken needed only "record" the motions of the stylus as it traced Roberta's simple drawings, then "play back" those motions on the screen when called for in the game. It's a masterful little hack, one that shows how far Ken had come as a programmer from his days as a drone-in-training at Control Data Institute.
Combined with a simple parser and world model about on the level of the Scott Adams games, the final product looked like this.
No, the graphics aren't exactly lush. If you can bear with me getting just a bit technical for a moment, it makes a great exercise in platform studies to ask just why they look like they do.
The Apple II's normal "Hi-Res" graphics mode provides a bitmap display of 280X192 pixels. The programmer can, however, optionally choose to reserve the bottom 32 pixels of the screen to display the bottom of the Apple II's regular text screen, which lives elsewhere in memory. This mode proved perfect for a game like Mystery House, as well as plenty of others soon to come from On-Line Systems and others. Because the text screen persists elsewhere, one convenience feature is very easy to program: the player can, just by hitting enter on a blank input line, make the picture disappear, revealing her last several turns.
Another tap of the enter key instantly restores the hi-res overlay, which has remained in memory. This was quite slick stuff in 1980, and the Apple II makes it trivial. It's perfect for a game like Mystery House, almost as if Wozniak had anticipated this application when he designed it.
But, you might be wondering, why the bizarre coloration in the illustrations? To answer that, we need to look a bit more deeply at the way that hi-res mode works.
A bitmap graphics display is normally stored in memory as a long string of bits which are constantly fetched and painted to the screen. The exact amount of memory needed for the purpose obviously depends on the resolution of the display. But slightly less obviously, it also depends on the number of colors in our palette. If we allow just 2 colors (probably black and white), we need but one bit for each pixel. If we want to allow more, though, we need more memory. A 256-color palette, for instance, requires 8 bits, or 1 byte, to store each individual pixel. You are probably reading these words on a 24-bit color screen with a palette of well over 16 million colors, which must devote 3 full bytes to representing every pixel. (This mode is often inaccurately termed 32-bit color because modern hardware is happy to waste one full byte on every pixel to keep things aligned in a tidy way.)
Numbers like these were, of course, inconceivable in 1980. The Apple II Plus offered just 6 colors in hi-res mode. If you apply what you learned back in Computer Literacy, you can quickly conclude that we would need to devote 3 bits to each pixel to store an Apple II bitmap in the conventional way. (Using 3 bits actually gives a range of possible numbers between 0 and 7, which is overkill; 2 bits, however, is too few.) Let's do a quick calculation: 3 bits per pixel * 280 horizontal pixels * 192 vertical pixels = 161,280 bits, or (dividing by 8) 20,160 bytes (a bit under 20 K). Now consider that we have 48 K of memory total available on the Apple II; devoting almost half of it to the display is untenable if we also want to be able to write programs of any complexity at all to actually take advantage of hi-res mode.
These realities weren't lost on Wozniak. As in so many other areas of the Apple II, he came up with a way to do more with less. Rather than devote 3 bits to each color, he devoted just 1 — but reserved one bit in each byte for a special purpose, about which more in a moment. Then he defined a set of simple rules to determine what color each pixel would be. If a bit is not set, the pixel it corresponds to on the screen is also "off," or black. If a bit is on, and the bit to either its left and/or its right is also on, that pixel appears as white. If a bit is on, is on an even x-coordinate, and the adjacent bits are both off, that pixel appears as violet or blue, depending on whether that eighth, reserved bit is set or not. A bit on an odd x-coordinate in the same situation follows the same rules to arrive at a green or orange pixel. This setup allows us to store a 280X192 6-color screen using only 7680 bytes. It brings with it, however, a collection of restrictions:
A white pixel must have at least 1 other white pixel to its left or right. (In other words, a vertical white line drawn on the screen must be at least 2 pixels wide.)
A pixel on an even horizontal coordinate can allegedly be white, black, violet, or blue, but not green or orange. If, however, the bit in question is off, and a colored pixel is adjacent, that color "bleeds over" to color in this supposedly black pixel.
Similarly, a pixel on an odd horizontal coordinate can allegedly be white, black, green, or orange, but not violet or blue, subject to the same process as above.
Each horizontal line consists of 280 pixels, but these are divided into 40 groups of 7. Pixels within each group can be violet or green, or blue or orange, but combinations are not allowed. (In other words, a single group of 7 cannot contain both violet and blue, green and orange, etc., pixels.)
For any given pixel to be colored black onscreen, at least one bit adjacent to the bit in memory that represents it must also be black. (In other words, a black vertical line like a white vertical line must always be at least 2 pixels wide.)
With all that in mind (and yes, I know it hurts), we realize it's perhaps more accurate to say that the Apple II has a horizontal resolution of just 140 pixels, since each pixel's color is controlled so thoroughly by the pixel adjacent to it. And given that combined with what a royal bitch the hi-res mode was to work with for programmers, it's worth asking whether this whole baroque scheme is really worth the headache. Woz's tendency to produce stuff like this in the name of efficiency is one of the more problematic aspects of a generally brilliant engineer. (Remember, Atari had to redo Woz's Breakout design because no one else could figure it out. This fact, legendary as it has become as a sort of proof of Woz's genius, might reflect more poorly on him than it does on Atari's engineers from a certain point of view…) Have a look at the image above once again. Notice how the vertical lines are all in green or violet, while the horizontals are in white? Ken could only have made those vertical lines white by doubling their thickness, and throwing all of the proportions off. The Apple II literally does not permit the simple black-and-white sketches he really wants to display. Crazy stuff, huh?
These odd patterns of coloration, not to mention the distinctive pastel tones of the colors themselves, make an Apple II display, then as well as now, instantly recognizable to anyone who's spent any time at all with one. While its display is unusually idiosyncratic, the Apple II is by no means alone here. Displays from most early microcomputers exhibit telltale traces of their origin. It's one of the things that make these old machines so appealing to some living in our modern world of anonymous technological perfection. Call it personality, or, if you must, call it soul.
Which doesn't, of course, mean that contemporary users didn't struggle like mad to find ways to overcome basic limitations like these. More on that later. But next time, we'll see how Mystery House actually plays as a game, and ask what it means in historical context.
Ken and Roberta
There are two prototypical kinds of "computer professionals" in the world. First there are the purist hackers, who dive into the depths of circuits, operating systems, and programming languages like explorers discovering new lands; it wasn't by chance that away from the computer Will Crowther was a caver, nor that he now spends his time deep-sea scuba diving. For the purists the reward is in the thing itself, in learning to understand and navigate this binary wonderland and maybe, just maybe, someday making (or helping to make) something really, truly new and cool. The other group is made up of the careerists. These people end up in the field for some mixture of a variety of reasons: because they need to earn a good living to support their family (no shame in that); because they've heard computers are cool and the next big thing (hello, Internet bubble); because they have a vision of society which requires computers as its enabler (hello, Steve Jobs); because they just want to get really, really rich (why, there's Steve again hiding out in the corner hoping not to be noticed — hi!). One thing only binds this disparate group together: they are attracted to computers not by their intrinsic interest in the machines themselves but by externalities, by a vision of what the machines can do, whether for them or for others. The two groups often seem — and believe themselves to be — at odds with one another, but in truth they need each other. Witness the dynamic duo of Woz and Jobs that built the Apple II and got it to the masses. Or witness Ken and Roberta Williams, the power couple of 1980s adventure gaming.
Ken and Roberta married in 1972. He was just 18 at the time; she was 19. He was attending California Polytechnic Pomona University as a physics major, and failing; she was living at home and not doing much of anything. Contrary to what you might be thinking, there was no shotgun involved. He simply wanted Roberta in his life and was determined to have her there, permanently. Steven Levy writes that his words to her were simply, "We're getting married, and that's it." She "didn't fight it." Right there you learn a lot about their two personalities.
Within a year or so of their marriage Ken, a restless, driven, somewhat aggressive young man with no real respect for or interest in higher education with its hierarchical structure and its abstract theorizing, could see he wasn't going to make it as a physics major, much less a physicist. Roberta, meanwhile, was now pregnant. Ken needed a career, and he needed one quick.
In the early 1970s the institutional computer industry was nearing its peak, supplying mainframes and minicomputers by the thousands to businesses, universities, public and private schools, branches of government, and research installations. We've met several of the prominent companies already (IBM, DEC, HP), each serving their own core sectors of this huge market while competing with one another on the margins. Another was Control Data Corporation. Founded in 1957 by a group of refugees from an even earlier company, Sperry, CDC had by the early 1970s carved out a reputation for itself as a manufacturer of prestigious and expensive supercomputers of the type used for some of the most intensive scientific computing. The supercomputer market was, however, a small one, and so the bulk of CDC's business was courtesy of its line of more plebeian mainframes that competed directly with IBM for corporate business. To carve out a place for itself against the larger company, CDC tried to stick to a "10% rule": to make sure each of its systems was always 10% faster and 10% cheaper than the nearest equivalent IBM model. For a number of years this approach was very good to CDC, sufficiently so that the company opened a little trade school all its own to train future custodians of its systems. Armed with a $1500 student loan co-signed by a very concerned father-in-law, Ken entered Control Data Institute. In doing so he was conforming to a stereotype that remains with the computer industry to this day: the pure hackers go to universities and get computer-science degrees; the careerists go to trade schools and get certificates in something "practical."
Indeed, the atmosphere at CDI promised nothing like the free-wheeling intellectual exploration of the computer-science labs at MIT or Berkley. The emphasis was on pounding in the rote tasks and procedures needed to maintain and run the big, batch-processing mainframes of CDC at the banks and other large bureaucratic entities that housed them. And that suited Ken, hungry for career in business, just fine. Where an MIT hacker might have seen intolerable drudgery, he saw money to be made. When he turned out to be pretty good at this computer stuff — even within limits to enjoy it — that just increased the earning potential.
After finishing at CDI, Ken spent the rest of the 1970s living a life that we more typically associate with the following decade, bouncing from company to company in search of ever better salaries while generally also juggling two or three independent consulting gigs on the side. With computers still mysterious, almost occult objects to most people, a fast-talking, energetic, and ambitious young man like Ken could go far with just the modicum of knowledge he had gained at CDI. As that knowledge increased and he became an ever better programmer and problem solver courtesy of the best teacher of all, experience, he seemed even more of a miracle worker, and found himself even more in demand. Ken, in other words, was becoming a pretty damn good hacker almost in spite of himself. But he always wanted more — a new hot tub, a bigger house, a nicer car, a place in the country — even as he dreamed of retiring young and bequeathing a fortune to his children. (These things would in fact happen, although not in the way Ken thought they would in the 1970s.) Ken made no apologies for his materialism. "I guess greed," he later told Levy, "would summarize me better than anything. I always want more."
When the first kit computers that one could build in one's home appeared in 1975, Ken barely noticed. There was no real money to be made in them, he believed, unlike his big, boring mainframes. When the trinity of 1977 marked the arrival of a PC you didn't need a soldering iron to assemble, he likewise paid no attention. It was not until a couple of years later that the beginning of a real, paying market in professional business software, exemplified by pioneering applications like VisiCalc and WordStar, made Ken begin to pay attention to the little "toy" machines. When he finally bought an Apple II in January of 1980, it was for a very specific purpose.
At the time there were only two real language possibilities for Apple programmers: they could use BASIC, which was easy to learn and get started with but quickly became a nightmare when trying to structure large, complex programs; or assembly language, which gave the ultimate in precise control over the hardware but was well-nigh impenetrable for the uninitiated, tedious in the micro-management it required, and just as bereft of structure. Ken saw an opportunity for a more sophisticated high-level language, one designed to be used by serious programmers creating complex software. Specifically, he wanted to bring FORTRAN, as it happens the implementation language of the original Adventure (not that Ken likely knew this or cared), to the little Apple II. With that purpose in mind, he registered a company of his own, choosing to call it On-Line Systems, a name fairly typical of the vaguely futuristic, vaguely compound, but essentially meaningless names (Microsoft, anyone?) that were so common in the era.
And what was Roberta doing during these years? Well, she was raising the Williams' two children and happily (at least to external observers) playing the role of housewife and homemaker. She had always been a painfully shy, passive personality who by her own admission "could hardly make a phone call." If Ken seemed to already be living in the frenetic 1980s rather than the mellow 1970s, Roberta seemed a better match for the 1950s, the doting wife who took care of the children, made sure everyone in the family had a good breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and meekly entrusted the big decisions and the earning of a living to the man of the house. That makes what happened next doubly surprising.
Shortly before Ken bought that first Apple, and while the Williams' second son was just eight months old, Ken happened to have a remote terminal at the house for one of his gigs. The mainframe to which it could connect had on it a copy of Adventure, which by now had been ported to a variety of other platforms beyond the PDP-10. Ken called Roberta over to have a look at what he regarded as nothing more than a curiosity. Roberta, however, was immediately transfixed. "I started playing and kept playing it. I had a baby at the time, Chris was eight months old; I totally ignored him. I didn't want to be bothered. I didn't want to stop and make dinner." As Ken wondered what had become of his dutiful wife, Roberta stayed up most of the night playing, then lay awake in bed working through the puzzles in her mind. It was no doubt a relief to everyone when she finally finished the game after a month of effort.
But the respite didn't last long. After Ken brought the Apple II into the home, it didn't take Roberta long to learn about the works of Scott Adams. Soon she was back to obsessively playing again. But then another thought began to crowd out the conundrums of the games: what if she could make a text adventure of her own? She was turning the most inspirational corner I know, imagining herself as a creator rather than a passive consumer. Inspired mostly by Agatha Christie's novel Ten Little Indians and the board game Clue, she began to sketch ideas for a text adventure as cozy murder mystery, a genre that the form had not yet tackled. When she was pretty far along, she took a deep breath and laid out her ideas to Ken.
The story concept was certainly innovative, but it wasn't the sort of innovation that would immediately appeal to a guy like Ken, with little interest in game design in the abstract. He was rather interested in products he could sell, operating intuitively by a rule he would later, for better and perhaps sometimes for worse, codify and articulate regularly: "Games have to have 'WOW-value.' If you don't say 'wow' when someone describes the game to you, or you see it from 10 feet away, there's no reason to market the game." At first, caught up in his FORTRAN software and his prior experience of computers only as serious tools of business, he was dismissive of Roberta's little project. But as she persisted, and as he perhaps began to notice that companies like Adventure International were growing rapidly and making real money just like the "serious" software houses, he began to reconsider. Still, he needed something special, needed an angle to help their little game stand out from the likes of the established line of Scott Adams games.
He began to think about the Apple II, with its comparatively cavernous 48 K of RAM, its fast and reliable disk drives, and its bitmap graphics capability. What if he designed their game around the unique capabilities of that machine, instead of taking the portable lowest-common-denominator approach of Adams? And then came the brainstorm: he could use the Apple's hi-res mode to include pictures with the text. That would certainly make their game stand out. Pretty soon FORTRAN was forgotten, and work on Mystery House (the first of a whole line of On-Line Systems "Hi-Res Adventures") had begun in earnest. The husband-and-wife team were not that far removed from Woz and Jobs. Here, Roberta designed the thing out of her inherent fascination with the thing itself, while Ken enabled her efforts, providing the tools and support she needed to bring her vision to life and, soon enough, finding ways to sell that vision to the masses.


Nearly 20 months into his tenure as the chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment's motion picture group, Thomas E. Rothman reckons he and his peers at the studio are about where Winston Churchill stood in November 1942, as the tides of World War II were turning.
A new trailer has dropped for MGM, Columbia and Village Roadshow's The Magnificent Seven, Antoine Fuqua's remake of the 1960 classic.
You have to give director Jaume Collet-Serra and the producers of this exploitative shark vs. surfer-woman movie credit — they know how to do it for a price.
Sony's The Shallows opens domestically on June 29 and starts trailering with Captain America: Civil War this weekend. Up above is a new look. Blake Lively stars in the thriller that's helmed by Jaume Collet-Serra and written by Anthony Jaswinski. Producers are Lynn Harris and Matti Leshem.


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Demons and Wizards
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Demons and Wizards, w/:
@Concord Music Hall
Doors = 6:30 pm
Ages = 17+
Tickets' Starting Price = $45.50
(Parking = $25)
The progressive power metal band Demons & Wizards was a side project for Blind Guardian vocalist Hansi Kursch and Iced Earth guitarist Jon Schaffer; it also featured onetime Iced Earth drummer Mark Prator. Demons & Wizardsrecorded a self-titled debut in 1999, with Schaffer also handling bass on the record (occasional lead guitar was contributed by guest Jim Morris). Already available in Europe, Demons & Wizards was issued in the U.S. in early 2000 by Steamhammer/SPV. (Source)
Named after the perpetrator of an infamous 1895 double murder that yielded the equally notorious skipping-rope rhyme "Lizzie Borden took an axe, and gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one," Lizzy Borden is a theatrical Los Angeles-based heavy metal band that, like Alice Cooper before them, is named after the band's frontman. Signed to Metal Blade in 1984 and employing a lethal blend of horror stagecraft, blazing riffs, and glam-infused melodic might, the band enjoyed success in the mid- to late '80s with the album's Love You to Pieces (1985), Visual Lies (1987), and Master of Disguise (1989), before succumbing to the shifting musical tastes brought forth by the arrival of grunge and alternative rock in early '90s. They re-formed in 1999, but went on hiatus after the death of guitarist Alex Nelson in 2004. They convened again in 2006, and despite enduring multiple personnel changes continued to perform at clubs and festivals, eventually re-signing with Metal Blade in 2018 and releasing their seventh studio long-player, My Midnight Things.
Founded by brothers Gregory (Lizzy Borden) and Joseph(Joey Scott) Harges, the band caught its first big break in 1983 when Metal Blade chose the track "Rod of Iron" to appear on the fourth volume of their popular Metal Massacrecompilation series. Lizzy Borden inked a deal with the label shortly thereafter, and released a debut EP Give 'Em the Axethe following year. With a lineup consisting of Borden (vocals), Scott (drums), Gene Allen (guitar), Tony Matuzak (guitar), and Michael Davis (bass), the band released their first full-length outing, Love You to Pieces, in 1985. Alex Nelsonreplaced Matuzak shortly after the album's release, and made his debut on the 1986 concert LP The Murderess Metal Road Show and sophomore studio effort Menace to Society. The band tapped veteran pop-metal producer Max Norman to helm their third full-length outing, 1987's Visual Lies. The album was the group's most commercially successful outing to date, and included the single "Me Against the World," which appeared on the soundtrack to the 1988 comedy-horror film Black Roses — that same year saw the band make an appearance in director Penelope Spheeris' legendary L.A. metal documentary The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years. 1989's Master of Disguise went largely under the radar, but has since proven to be a fan favorite, and one of the group's most enduring releases.
Lizzy Borden, like a lot of metal acts of the era, spent the majority of the next decade trying to find their place in a dramatically shifting musical scene, eventually going on a full hiatus in 1996. Borden, Scott, and bass player Marten Andersson began operating under the moniker Diamond Dogs (later renamed Starwood), but by 1999 the band was back in action, sporting a lineup that included Borden, Scott, Andersson, and Alex Nelson. They headed to Germany's Wacken Open Air Festival to preview songs from their fourth LP, 2000's Deal with the Devil, followed by a worldwide tour. Tragedy struck in 2004 when longtime guitarist Alex Nelson was killed in an automobile accident, prompting the group to once again cease operations. Two years later, Lizzy Borden rose again, this time with guitarist Ira Black(Vicious Rumors, Metal Church, Heathen), and in 2007 they released a new studio LP, Appointment With Death, which featured guest spots from George Lynch (Dokken), Dave Meniketti (Y&T), and Corey Beaulieu (Trivium). The group spent the next decade staying active on the road, playing both at home and overseas, with numerous stops at international festivals. In 2017 they re-signed with Metal Blade and returned to the studio to begin work on their first collection of new material in over ten years. The resulting My Midnight Things arrived the following year. (Source)
Based in the Faroes, a group of islands between Iceland and Norway that has been an autonomous region of the Kingdom of Denmark since 1948, Týr is a progressive folk/Viking metal outfit who record and perform in both English and in their native Faroese language. The group's name is that of an obscure deity from the Old Norse myths about whom little is known. Their recordings are steeped in mythological narratives and ideas. They proved provocative and compelling with the issue of their 2002 Tutl Records debut How Far to Asgaard that offered not only wildly original interpretations of folk songs but also a ten-minute period of silence followed by the Faroese poem "Nornagest Ríma" chanted by the band with stomping feet as a rhythm section. They signed a global deal with Napalm Records in 2006 in addition to their Faroese label Tutl. They consciously sought to break down barriers between different metal subgenres such as power, doom, black, progressive, gothic, Viking, folk, ethnic, and epic metal, all while underscoring and outfitting them with mythical and folk lineage themes. Ragnarok, their Napalm debut, was issued in 2006. Containing 16 tunes (18 on the digipack edition), about the destruction of the cosmos and the gods. 2011's The Lay of Thrym, took its title from one of the most quoted and enduring poems in the Norse Poetic Edda canon and offered a tribute to Ronnie James Dio(who had passed the year before) with bonus tracks that included Black Sabbath's "I" and Rainbow's "Stargazer." The following year, with their profile rising globally, they signed a multi-album deal with Metal Blade, issuing Valkyrja in 2013 with vocalist Liv Christine guesting on the track "The Lay of Our Love." After a personnel change, the band took their act out on the road, playing a world tour that lasted nearly three years.
The band formed in 1998 in Denmark around the talents of Heri Joensen, Kári Streymoy, and Gunnar H. Thomsen. Joensen's brother Jón and singer Pól Arni Holm joined the group for its 2002 debut How Far to Asgaard but left soon after. New guitarist Terji Skibenæs replaced Jón and Streymoy's brother Allan took over vocal duties on the single Ólavur Riddararós. After Allan's departure, Heri took over lead vocal duties and the band began work on its breakthrough song cycle, Eric the Red. Inspired heavily by Norse mythology (the group is named after a Norse god of war), Eric the Red was originally released in 2003 on the regional Tutl label but found international success when it was reissued by European giant Napalm. The blistering Ragnarok arrived in 2006, followed by Land in 2008 and By the Light of the Northern Star in 2009, all three of which helped earn the group accolades both local and international for its complex arrangements and keen ear for traditional Scandinavian-infused melody. Based on poems from the historical mytho-poetic texts that make up the Edda in Norse lore, the band issued The Lay of Thrym in 2011, followed by an international tour. It proved to be their final album with drummer Kári Streymoy, who had suffered a severe back injury while on tour in 2008. He was replaced by Niler drummer Georgios "George" Kollias for the band's Metal Blade debut Valkyrjain 2013, though former kitman Amon Djurhuus filled in for the world tour and was ultimately replaced by permanent drummer Tadeusz Rieckmann in 2016. In the summer of 2018, just prior to entering the studio to record, guitarist Terji Skibenæs announced he was leaving Týr. His final recording with the band, Hel, was issued in March of 2019 and showed a marked turn toward melodic folk-metal. Skibenæs was replaced on the tour by Satyricon axeman Attila Vörös. (Source)
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Accused Spy Allegedly Said she was a Middleman Between Trump's Campaign and the Kremlin
BY Brian Krassenstein August 3, 2018
Last month, a woman named Maria Butina was arrested and charged with conspiracy. Prosecutors alleged that she flagrantly violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act, acting as an unregistered Russian agent within the United States of America. The indictment, which appears to have potentially implicated the National Rifle Association and those within the GOP to some extent, was yet another name among the dozens of individuals that the Mueller probe has been responsible for charging thus far.
While Butina's charges didn't directly implicate the Trump campaign, those she associated closely with, including activist Paul Erickson, were in communication with the campaign. Today, however, things got a bit more interesting.
CNN has reported that sources familiar with Butina at the American University in Washington D.C., which she attended, now claim that Butina spoke freely to her classmates about her ties to the Russian government. According to one source, Butina said that she was a middleman or liaison between the Trump campaign and the Russians.
Additionally, sources are now claiming that Butina got drunk at least a couple of times and opened up to classmates regarding her close ties to the Russian government, going as far as admitting to them that the Russian Intelligence Service (the Russian version of America's CIA) was involved in her gun rights group. Classmates were so disturbed by her claims that they reported them to law enforcement.
Butina's arrest may be of deep significance to investigators and prosecutors working with the Special Counsel's office, as there are clear ties between her, Russian intelligence, the NRA and the GOP. If the statements made by her to her classmates are true, then there appears to also be a significant link to the Trump campaign as well. These claims also make one wonder if she actually knew something that the rest of us didn't, while declaring that Donald Trump won the election, on Facebook, prior to him actually winning.
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Paul Erickson
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Assoli Village , Bhandara Road, Dighori (Kale) Post, Nagpur -441202 BETWEEN KAPSI AND MALGAON ON NH 6.
kjpsnagpur@gmail.com
K John PUBLIC SCHOOL (CBSE)
KJohn Aims
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K John Aims
Learning at the K John Public School
The aim of education at K.John Public School is the all-around development and integral growth of the child's physical, mental, social, psychological, and spiritual. In the present time when social consciousness is very much stressed, we train the children so that they in their turn play a vital role in bringing about the desired changes for the betterment of our society
The world of today is changing at a pace never seen before in the history of the human race.
Education faces a world of excessive competitiveness reflected in individualism, consumerism, and success at all costs. There is a heightened awareness of the mass media and social media on the attitude and perception of people and cultures.
To create a conducive environment in our school for better education, all the members of the school community, the management, staff, students, and the parents are collectively responsible.
The school has well-qualified, trained, dedicated, and committed staff. The school campus is located in idyllic surroundings, free from pollution and disturbances, quite conducive for the complete development of the child.
The School is a center in which a specific concept of the World of man and of history is developed and conveyed. It's also a place of integral formation of persons by means of systematic and critical assimilation of culture. The process takes place in the form of personal contacts and commitments which consider absolute values in a life context and seek to insert them into a life framework
To this end the school stimulates the student to exercise his/her intelligence through the dynamics of understanding to attain clarity and inventiveness, helping him to spell out the meaning of his experiences and their truths.
The School strives to draw out the ethical dimension for the precise purpose of arousing the individual's inner spiritual dynamics and to aid him/her in achieving that moral freedom which compliments the psychological freedom
All values, human and spiritual, especially those elucidated by the great Religious leaders and Indian thinkers, shall find their echo in the content and methodology of the teaching-learning process and experiences.
EDUCATION -" A Humanistic issue, towards an Integrated Self."
Education serves as a catalyst in the perpetuation of culture, offering new alternatives and bringing about social change. Education can best achieve the goals of self-realization, concerted action, and social recreation.
To face these humanistic issues and to build the str. dents into integrated beings, the home, the school, and the society assume a vital role. These complex forces have varied positive and negative influences in the student's life and their progress towards an Integrated Self. It is for us as educationists, parents, and responsible citizens to neutralize the detrimental influences of societal factors and harmonize the impact of positive influences through education which in turn would contribute to the development of an integrated self.
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For a truly unique event, a visit to the SnowDome is sure to break the ice and unite.
You and your colleagues can go head to head in an ice trike relay race or maybe try your hand at ice curling with a twist. Learning to ski or snowboard is a rewarding and exciting team activity… and there's a luxurious spa to rest and rewind in after the fun on the snow. Whatever your brief, we invite you to think outside the usual team building box with so many activities available and do something completely different.
Fly around the UK's only ice track on our custom built, drifting ice trikes. Teams will battle it out relay-style as they peddle and slide around the course. Will you and your team be the ice trike champions?
Curling with a twist… instead of pushing those boring stones along the ice - use your work colleagues instead! A great group activity as teams work together to get the highest score down on the ice.
Perfect for multiple team play, get your associates sliding and gliding on the ice with hockey sticks, pucks and goals or relay companions around the ice track. Throw in the SnowDome referee and you're all set for some icy fun.
Requiring problem solving skills, brains and brawn, this activity is certainly a team effort. On the snow, teams are tasked with transporting their colleagues to the top of the snow slope with a sledge and pulley system.
Using the props provided, participants can build their very own sculpture. Build a snowman or something entirely unique. Teams can judge each other's attempts or the SnowDome referee can always step in.
Take the lift to the top of the main slope and it's off in your own steerable toboggan! Negotiate the bend, head down the long straight and on with the brakes… hilarious fun for all.
Hold on tight for the fastest and most exhilarating experience on real snow – hurtling down the slope in specially designed inflatable tubes! There's nothing else like it, they're fast, they've no brakes and they spin.
Learn a new skill as a group and create unforgettable memories. For those that have never ventured out onto snow before, we can offer a variety of lessons from one hour fun sessions to full day courses.
Come in from the cold and relax in the SnowDome's very own luxurious spa. Take advantage of the heated relaxation loungers, mosaic hydrospa, cedar sauna, salt infused steam room, experience showers and ice fountain.


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May-Britt Moser  (Fosnavåg, 4 januari 1963) is een Noors psycholoog, werkzaam aan de NTNU in Trondheim. In 2014 ontving zij samen met haar echtgenoot Edvard Moser en de Amerikaan John O'Keefe de Nobelprijs voor de Fysiologie of Geneeskunde.

Werk
Voortbouwend op het pionierswerk van O'Keefe ontdekte het echtpaar Moser in 2005 een tweede deel van ons intern plaatsbepalingssysteem. Tot dan toe werd aangenomen dat de plaatscellen vanuit de hippocampus zelf werden aangestuurd. Echter samen met haar echtgenoot Edvard ontdekte May-Britt in de entorinale hersenschors, een gebied aangrenzend aan de hippocampus, een nieuw celtype: de gridcellen. Deze gridcellen vormen een soort assenstelsel in de hersenen waardoor we niet alleen heel exact kunnen bepalen waar we ons in de omgeving bevinden maar ook dat we afstanden kunnen inschatten en kunnen navigeren.

Winnaar van de Nobelprijs voor Fysiologie of Geneeskunde
Noors hoogleraar
20e-eeuws medicus

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