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About adsilcott (twitter: @stellardoordev)
I've been making games as a hobby for a long time, ever since I saved up for a TRS-80 when I was 9. I also do artwork, 2d and 3d.
Hart of the Forest
Super Snack Time!
adsilcott's Trophies
This is for being an awesome sport!
Awarded by Dizzyman572
adsilcott's Archive
Post-Jam Arm's Reach, now with gameplay!
Posted by adsilcott (twitter: @stellardoordev)
Monday, January 2nd, 2017 9:28 pm
We spent the last three weeks continuing to work on our entry! I was bummed that I didn't get to add the gameplay that I wanted to during the jam, and the team created so much great artwork, it was a shame not to use it. So here's a new version, still not complete, but much closer to our original vision for the game.
Web Version
Here's the page for our original entry:
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-37/?action=preview&uid=49637
We want to turn this into a full game. Let us know what you think!
Arm's Reach Linux version tester?
Tuesday, December 13th, 2016 8:48 pm
We're trying to test the Linux build of our game, Arm's Reach, but having some technical difficulties. If anyone wants to try it, feedback would be greatly appreciated!
We're in
Friday, December 9th, 2016 11:29 am
We are in for the Jam event! We are:
Adam: code and art
Greg: 3D and sprite art, music, writing, code
Ian: code and art
Melanie: 2D art https://www.instagram.com/inkystache/
Ricky: 3D art
Brian: code
Tools of choice: Unity C#, Photoshop, Blender, Reason, Pyxel Edit, Aseprite, Illustrator, Audacity, Tiled
Workflow: Slack, Git, Google Drive
We are going to try to twitch stream some of our work in progress:
https://www.twitch.tv/stellardoorgames
This will be my 6th Ludum Dare — I live for these times of the year!
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Blender!
Saturday, August 27th, 2016 11:50 am
It feels like we're off to a good start this time!
Currently live streaming some Blender action if anyone is interested: https://www.twitch.tv/stellardoorgames
We're in! (live stream?)
Friday, August 26th, 2016 7:21 pm
A three person team this time. Tools: Unity, Photoshop, Garageband and various others!
We made the kind of crazy decision to live stream our jam this time around, so check out if you want to:
Hart of the Forest – Post-jam Preview
Monday, May 9th, 2016 7:44 pm
LD35 might officially be over within the hour, but our 2nd Door Studio team is excited to carry on the project with our continued development of our game, Hart of the Forest. From the beginning, we knew that our project was probably a bigger idea than the fast time limit of the Ludum Dare would allow, but the last three weeks have given us the chance to keep going, bringing our original jam submission to something that's starting to feel much closer to the game we have in mind. We'd love to share that with you now, to celebrate the end of the review period!
To jump right into the good part, please feel free to try our latest post-jam build at the link below:
Hart of the Forest – Post-Jam Preview Build (WebGL, early alpha test!)
Or, if you want to see the original, here's our Original Ludum Dare Page
W, A, S, D (or Arrow Keys): Move
Mouse Move: Rotate, move camera
1, 2, 3: Shapeshift forms (Druid, Stag, Bear)
Z: Change Camera Angle (Overhead / Third-person)
Before diving in, here are a few screenshots, to help paint the picture:
The Druid, protector of the forest
The Dark Bear, cursed warrior spirit
The White Hart, sacred forest spirit
New terrain, and a much larger forest
The idea behind our game (and our implementation in the jam edition) started fairly small, and has grown into something we hope is much larger and more cohesive, in terms of both the gameplay and the story/experience.
For starters, we've moved away from the strictly top-down view, offering both an over-the-shoulder third person camera (with more traditional adventure/RPG game controls), and an overhead camera that will make it easier to see your surroundings (when, say, escorting villagers or the like). This opened up a range of new visual dimensions to explore, including:
New terrain, with regions like hills and valleys, a river, a lake, and denser/sparser stretches of forest
Light and shadow effects both tree shadows, dynamic leaf shadows, and rolling cloud shadows
Water effects including the flowing river, waterfalls, and bridges
Pathways that wind through the forest, which will become the roads that both villagers and enemies follow
Put simply, this let the whole forest start to feel more like a real place, and, hopefully, someplace you could get to know by exploring it. We picture a forest teeming with life, plants, animals, spirits and people, all good and bad alike. (And therefore tasking you, as its protector, try to do the best you can to protect this place as things begin to play out.)
We've also been playing with a number of new features, many of which are implemented already (though not necessarily in this build, as we test), including:
New Abilities and Features
Spells, in the Druid form (including our first test spell, which locates lost villagers and sends out a glowing beacon trail, to help you find them)
Combat abilities as the Druid (you can test what will be our archery system by holding down left-click — pretend this is fully implemented)
Spirit Vision (a Good/Evil Detection system), in the Hart form (letting you detect good villagers from corrupted ones, and helping you spot enemies in the woods)
Combat abilities as the Bear (including charges, roars, and swipes)
A minimap (sadly omitted for now, as we decide how much this helps or hurts the feeling of immersion in the game)
Enemy abilities (including a particularly wicked Area of Effect spell by the new enemy spellcaster, which targets groups of your villagers as they follow you!)
Dynamic pathfinding, based on Unity's NavMesh system, and a custom waypoint system, letting friends and enemies follow roads to their destinations.
We also have a range of new visual updates in the worlds, including an overhaul of our Druid hero (with all this new movement and action, it was time for him to get a bit younger and stronger…!), and some new enemies to face, including the new sort of "anti-Druid," the "beast-man" berserker enemy. See those two below:
Latest concept sculpt of our (new) hero
Rough draft of our first high-detail enemy, the Beast-Man
The game certainly still has a long way to go, but we've been so glad to work on this while the reviews were still coming in for the rough prototype of the jam version, and we can't thank you all enough for the kind words of encouragement! They have kept us inspired, even through the frustration of posting an incomplete game at the end of the jam!
The concept, as we see it now, will be a kind of single-player open world game set in this one large, high-detailed forest map, where individual "levels" are comprised of objectives including (you guessed it) saving villagers, repelling enemies, and also new things such as saving or defeating good and evil forest spirits, collecting needed components throughout the forest, building up your sanctuary by bringing it new people and materials, and completing quests for the various inhabitants of the forest.
The end result is a hybrid game that we think will be a new and interesting mix of familiar ideas, and one that we're really looking forward to playing, ourselves.
We would love to hear your feedback, and to offer you the glimpse of the work we've put in so far over these last three weeks, in the form of our current nightly build — link below:
Or, for these last few minutes, see our Original Ludum Dare Page, if you want to leave a last-minute review! (Thanks!)
Thank you all, hugely, again for the feedback and support, and keep the suggestions coming! It's been an honor, everyone — and we hope to see you all in the future!
Tags: blender, mechanics, post-jam, preview, sculpture, unity
The Art of "Hart of the Forest": A Design Post-mortem
Hi everyone, Greg (artist/modeler/musician) from 2nd Door Studios. Here on the last day of LD35, our team thought it would be nice and hopefully useful to recap the many things that went both right and wrong with our ambitious little game:
"Hart of the Forest" (Click that link there if you're curious to try it!)
From the start, our group found the "Shapeshifting" theme pretty challenging, and it took us well into Saturday morning to find a concept that we all liked. Our final idea was challenging, but interesting to us — putting you into the role of protector of a mystical forest, a Druid, charged with gathering your lost villagers and shepherding them back to safety, while trying to both use and also hide your powerful shapeshifting curse.
There were a lot of things we hoped to do with this, and two things proved themselves fairly quickly: 1) that the full scope of our idea was probably bigger than a game jam would allow, but 2) that we were all eager to see just how close we could come in spite of that, and how much of it we could make by the deadline.
I wanted to go through the workflow and notes from my own section of the work, which included the 3D sculptures, models, animation, and eventually the music of our game.
First and foremost, our team uses the free/mighty/wonderful Blender for all of the 3D work you'll see here, as I'd happily encourage anyone to do. The start of our concepts was to get our core characters sculpted, giving our team the chance to look at them all and get a better feel for the tone and the visual style of our game. Here are a few glimpses of those pieces:
The Druid, our hero and main character
The legendary "White Hart," sacred animal spirit of Celtic myth
The Dark Bear, your powerful, cursed form
These sculptures gave us our starting point, leading to the retopology process of simplifying them until they were ready for what would ultimately be a Unity WebGL game. This is where our largest challenge, and still our biggest technical hurdle stole the show…
See our bear/stag animation in action if you click this link
From the very beginning, our plan was to try to make use of Blender's "Shape Keys" ("BlendShapes" in Unity parlance), to let these shapeshifts be as organic as possible. Like the story of our game, this ended up being kind of a blessing and a curse, within the timeframe of the game jam. While, after great effort, I did get this all working (see/click the gif above), Unity didn't love the idea. There were a hundred other technical considerations to factor into this process, including needing to morph the animated rig inside this mesh as well (no small task, rigging-wise), and a war between Mecanim's Animator and the BlendShapes themselves. Put simply, this is something our team (as in, I) still fully intend to implement into the future of this game, but scoping this into the jam proved a little over-ambitious. For now, our Druid hides his shapeshifting in a puff of magical particle effects as a (literal, I guess) smokescreen, simply swapping out the models.
Finally, we weren't going to be saving anyone without some models of villagers to save, so I did my best to economize here, using a single sculpture that we could later adapt into both the male and female villager models, letting me reuse both the bulk of the sculpting time, and the rig itself. That part ended up being a great idea, and a big time saver overall. One walk and one run cycle, along with some idle animations, ended up getting us both our villagers and our Druid in one animation pass — and Mecanim made it easy to retarget those animations between the three models.
(And, while our enemies aren't exactly implemented quite yet, the idea even from the beginning was that the enemies would be corrupted versions of your villagers — so these two, plus some dark and spooky textures, even gave us the stand-ins for our future villains.)
The world itself was an ambitious step all in its own, including a lot of props (more than we thought we'd need originally, even) to bring a passable forest to life in only a weekend. I ended up sculpting 2 different trees, treetop models, several stones, a fallen log, and mystical standing stones, all of which needed their own retopology and texture work. See those below:
The tricky remaining sculptures
The result, thanks to some inspired texture work and really cool materials/shader work on our other team members' parts (I'll let them talk about that!), was something we were pretty happy with by the end of the jam:
The good news was: we got the basic idea implemented in time to start pulling everything together by late Monday evening.
The bad news was: I had been hoping I could also tackle the music for this jam, with at least a day or so's worth of time to dedicate… Yeah, that wasn't happening.
So, switching gears with (I kid thee not, sadly) one hour left before the deadline, I plugged in my keyboard and did my best to drum/play out the song that I'd been trying to compose in my head for the three days leading up to that point. In other words: I had about 45 minutes to write the game's soundtrack (yikes!), starting from truly nothing. That was a stressful moment, I'll admit — but something about it seemed pretty fun as well. (Sort of in the spirit of a game jam, too.)
So, while it's far from the amount (or quality) of music I was hoping to make, I did get the chance to make at least this, our "Main Theme":
I'm proud to say that we're still hard at work on this game now, even three weeks later, and still hoping to turn this into something that matches the scale of our original vision. For now, I'll leave off with a teaser/preview image of what this has become in the meantime.
Lastly — we also all wanted to say thank you all so much for your extremely kind (and very understanding!) feedback on our submission. It ended up being only a quirky little prototype of what will hopefully someday be a pretty cool little game, but your feedback was really inspiring and has kept us going in the weeks since!
Thanks for reading, and we'd love to hear from you with thoughts, questions, or especially any last minute reviews! Cheers!
Play our game here!
Tags: blender, music, sculpture, unity
Progress on Post-Jam Hart of the Forest
We've gotten so many encouraging comments saying that we should continue development on Hart of the Forest, so that's exactly what we've been doing! One thing we're working on is a more dramatic transformation between forms:
Here's us planning a new map and some actual enemies (not Ditto, he's just the project mascot):
We'll post an update when it's ready. In the meantime check out the Jam version of our game here.
Bug fixes to Hart of the Forest!
Tuesday, April 19th, 2016 6:34 pm
We fixed a scoring bug and a few other minor issues in our game Hart of the Forest.
Check it out, and make sure to look at our plans for Post-Jam features!
Play the game here!
Sushi Roll: Design Postmortem
Monday, January 4th, 2016 9:46 am
LD34 was a blast for our team. We're extremely grateful for the ratings, comments, and feedback that people have given our game so far! Now that we're down to the final hours for reviews, we wanted to ask for anyone's last-minute thoughts, and, to give that some context, we hoped it would be fun to walk through the design process that went into our game's art and animation efforts.
Play Sushi Roll here, if you'd like to see the game in action. (We'd love your review!)
After a while of grappling with the double-themes of the jam, our team got a huge creative charge out of taking the "let's just start working" approach, which let us divide up our first technical and creative steps.
On the design side, the first thing to tackle was naturally our star and hero, Fugu the pufferfish. The pufferfish (his name didn't happen until mid-day Saturday or so) was the first of a few ideas meant to capture the "Growing" theme (among others such as a pig that grew by eating, a snowball that grew by rolling up more snow, and just a man that happened to fall down a hill… whose misadventures made him "grow as a person," we joked). While all of these were fun and funny to us, the pufferfish had a kind of instant magic once he appeared on the screen, and gave us all the laugh that sent him rolling along down our creative pipeline.
Blender (free and open source!) gave our team the full 3D production workflow we needed to produce assets for Unity — sculpture, polygon modeling, texture painting, rigging, and animating.
Our team had decided even before the jam to commit to making a fully 3D game, so the first step was to get our fish sculpted in Blender. This was the first challenge in matching the art to the theme(s), since this meant that our star required two different base sculptures — one to represent both his puffed and unpuffed state. (The puffed version actually came first, and was saved and then I sculpted that down to his unpuffy self for the second version.)
With a normal model, the next step would be to adapt the sculpture into a game-ready, lower-polygon model. We actually had to do this pretty differently, essentially making the same model fit both sculptures, in order to reflect both of the puffed/unpuffed states. This was one of our bigger design challenges, and took a good bit of finessing to get just right, but when it came together we had a version of Fugu that was able to morph (using Blender's Shape Keys feature) between both states, using a numerical value that we would later be able to drive in Unity.
The same low-polygon mesh had to be adapted to fit both original sculptures, letting us make use of Blender's "Shape Keys" ("BlendShapes," in Unity) to morph between them incrementally.
The result was something both simple and perfectly suited to the second theme goal: "two-button controls." One button grows, one button shrinks. The game design decisions (where growing makes you pop off the ground, and boosts your speed) all fell in line as a natural progression from that idea, giving us room to test, tune, and try to make it feel fun.
After a team vote on what would ultimately be our game's main color palette, Fugu was given his texture pass (painted in Blender) and finalized. …But not before we all decided to push the design one step further and give our fish even one more level of "hyperinflation" puff. (Sadly, we didn't get to use this extra-puffy state by the end of the jam, but ohh, do we have plans…)
(Side note: The wincing puffed face only got funnier when we realized that, as he rolls, he rolls over his face.)
With our fish all ready to go into our world, the logical next step was to fill that world with things that would try to kill him.
First up was the (slightly less-than-menacing) "foe" of the tree, which we tried to keep simple enough to pay off twice over, as the simple low-poly shapes of the leaves were easy to repurpose afterwards into the rocks and pebbles that would block the path. Navigating over and under these obstacles is intended to set the pace for the bulk of the game's flow, so it was important to get these into the game early, letting us start to fine-tune them into our terrain generation workflow.
Next up was the first of the true villains, who we designed as the answer to the question of: "if trees force you to shrink, what forces you to grow?" Enter the natural enemy of fish everywhere: the cat. Running into one would force you to puff up in order to get by unharmed — too small, and you're cat food.
(Pretty much the sushi chefs of the animal kingdom.)
The cat was our first rigged/animated character in the game, and took a fair bit of time to get implemented. We knew we wanted him to have a menacing pounce to avoid, but seeing him in action (in Blender), gave us all another useful creative kick, and we all laughed at the idea that this cat (when bopped by a large-enough Fugu) could be yet another thing that rolled down the hill with you. (Poor kitty.)
With the cat modeled, rigged, animated, and finally painted, we had (most of) the main art assets we were hoping for (mostly) in place. We started on the final assets — a quick Japanese-styled pagoda to sit on top of our hill as our deadly restaurant escape scene intro — and started to pull everything together in Unity. This was Sunday evening. We were getting close to the end of our art assets to-do list, and (somehow) even a bit ahead of schedule…
Which, naturally, meant it was time to go big or go home — the last idea that had been lurking in the room (initially deemed too much to hope for) was to load in the villain himself: the Sushi Chef. It's hard for me to imagine the game without him at this point, but even for his huge role, he was actually a fairly last-minute long-shot of an idea to try to build him by the jam deadline. (This also meant programming him, after all.) But, hey, we decided to go for it.
There was really only time for one round of character design, so it was important to get our chef "right" on the first try. We agreed right away to keep him pretty cartoony, in order to let me design and sculpt him quickly, keep his rig and animation simple, and of course to match him to the cartoon style of the fish and the cat. Thus, between trying to keep his facial features simple and trying to keep him a bit funny (he is a knife-wielding would-be fish-murderer, after all), I tried to simplify his face by pulling his headband down over his eyes, colorfully emphasizing what had become a running theme of cartoonishly-angry eyebrows in the other character designs up to that point. He made us laugh on the first try, which we decided meant that he was probably good enough to move ahead with.
He's a man with a dream.
By the (late) end of the night, the chef was ready to go as a low-poly game model, rigged, animated, and painted, and our fish was free to be chased by a floating placeholder-Unity-capsule no longer — and, instead, by an angry, knife-waggling chef.
Our group parted ways on early Monday morning, leaving the final design work of our game's logo and game over screen graphics (a last-minute 3D scene modeled and rendered just in time to drop into the final jam build) to be assembled remotely.
It was amazing to see it all come together, once everything was rolling, hopping, pouncing, and knife-waggling together in one combined setting. That, plus the final versions of the movement/controls, terrain generation, and chef-chasing functionality — and all set to the final music handed off by our team's musician — really pulled it together into something that we were extremely proud of.
We wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone that played, rated, and commented on our game. It's been extremely gratifying to get all of your kind and helpful feedback, and it's given our team the drive to keep working. We're happy to say that we're already well on our way to implementing some of our next ideas, which we hope will help turn Sushi Roll from a prototype into a really fun little game. So please stay tuned — and send us your thoughts!
Try out Sushi Roll here, if you haven't already. We'd love your review!
Post Jam version of Sushi Roll!
Wednesday, December 16th, 2015 3:18 pm
We started off just fixing a few tiny bugs, and then it snowballed into that grey area were maybe we've changed too much. So we decided to just make it a post-jam version. I'd be interested to know people's opinions on where they draw the line for post-jam editing.
We added saved hi scores and extra scores, a shadow under the fish for the WebGL version, and a better animated cat, along with some minor bug fixes.
Even though we changed more than we thought we would, we have plans to do a much bigger update. We will probably be adding new obstacles and a new mechanic in the next few days so check back!
Super Snack Time! Post-mortem
Saturday, August 29th, 2015 1:04 pm
We were a team of four people this time, though one person had to leave after the first night, and I was busy Saturday evening and Sunday morning. Since we were especially limited on time and resources we really needed a simple idea. Besides, I like simple ideas because it's easier to focus on making one concept polished and fun. Of course all of our initial ideas were very complicated, until…
Once we had the idea, and we knew it was going to be a parody, then the issue was how to do the art in a way that paid tribute to the source without copying it. I do a lot of traditional/fine-art (My work: http://alwaysfromlife.com/) and I'd been thinking for a while that it would be interesting to do a game in a very painterly style. I did some quick sketches of mario in ArtRage and then used Aseprite animate them and export a tilesheet. It looked pretty good so we decided to go with it:
Even though we wanted a more organic look to the game, I decided to use Tiled to create the level, because that would make it easy to experiment with different layouts, and the excellent Tiled2Unity tool would generate the collision meshes for me. Once I had the level laid out in a way that worked well with the bouncing marios, I used Tiled's "export to image" feature, and Ian used that as a reference to paint the lovely background that you see in the game.
Probably anyone who's used Unity for 2D has made the mistake of leaving the "fixed rotation" option off on your sprite's rigidbody and then watching your character spin and flop around unexpectedly. For this game I wanted mario to have a silly, clumsy quality, so I left it off intentionally. The challenge then was getting a reasonable amount of these clumsy marios to the end of the level. I used several invisible triggers to tell mario when to jump. Each trigger had a percent change of triggering, so we would end up with marios taking random paths through the level.
While Jesse made a mario spawner and worked on the plants, I painted the title screen as quickly as possible. I'm sure I didn't spend more than 20 minutes on it. My plan was to hand paint the title text as well but that just would have taken too much time.
At the end of Saturday we were at the testing stage, and while it was already making us laugh (a good sign!), we had a lot of ideas for how to make it better. I assumed I wouldn't have time for any of them. But Monday morning I was determined to add them. I added the "withering" plants feature and the heart counter as ways to add challenge and excitement to the game, and Brian added a score counter and cleverly tied the rate that marios spawned to your score, which leads to a hilarious avalanche of marios if you get far enough. At this point I think it went from being a silly game to one that was actually fun to play.
Of course I always forget how stressful the submission process is, especially when you're already exhausted from lack of sleep. But in the end I'm very happy with what we made. There's only a couple of minor things I would have done differently. Much gratitude to my team, and to everyone who has left feedback!
Tags: art, jam, LD33, postmortem, process, tools
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Sergey Lazarev has performed his 2019 entry live for the first time in front of an audience. The Russian pop star is touring Germany and gave his first live 'Scream' in Bremen yesterday.
Some fans that attended the concert have posted videos of Sergey's live performance of his Eurovision song for Tel Aviv. Enjoy!
Sergey Lazarev will return to the Eurovision stage in Tel Aviv. The Russian pop sensation finished 3rd in the Grand Final of the European competition in 2016, reaching the first place in the televote.
This year he will perform an epic powerballad with a strong producition composed by Philipp Kirkorov, Dimitris Kontopoulos, and Sharon Vaughn. Cypriot Alex Panayi will coach and help Sergey during his 2019 Eurovision journey, while Fokas Evagelinos will direct the stage performance.


It's busy around here. Baking, cleaning, eating, cleaning, playing, cleaning, spanking, cleaning... and on it goes. We have a two year old loose on the premises, which is the equivalent of a leprechaun. Cute and jovial until you tick them off, and then watch out. I have a whole post documenting this fact all planned out, but that'll have to wait. He was sitting next to me while I typed this, pulling packing peanuts out of a box and happily snapping them in half. I told him to go help Daddy get dressed (Jarrod is still in bed) and he lit up like a Christmas tree and ran away saying "Oh yeah! Hep Daddy DRESSED" He is a helpful leprechaun, but only if the job is appealing.
** Baking Amish friendship bread with my friend Selina. It's our annual tradition.
** Making French Toast casserole and putting it in the fridge for MOTS tomorrow morning.
**Recovering from the amount of baking I have to do today.
** Hanging curtains in my new office. The curtains that have been purchased for two weeks on the wall that has been painted for a month. Time to wrap it up already.
** Stalking the Basic Grey website until they officially launch their new digital line like they promised they would do today. Well, it's 7 a.m. Pacific coast time and there are no digital elements up yet-- I've been waiting daaaaays for this! Digital Basic Grey is enough to push me firmly onto the dark side, er... digital side.
They are my most favorite scrapbook paper company, and the appeal of purchasing their papers ONCE and re-using them forever is just too strong. I went into my local store and they are feeling the heat of digital competition. The shelves are kinda bare and they are putting in a "digital cafe," which really just means you can lug your laptop in and sit in their store while you use it. There is something magical about a real sheet of paper so pretty you would rather hang it and frame it than cut it, but I'm afraid that the digital age is coming for the paper industry.


text:
IHT Rendezvous | In Sandy's Wake, Perspective From Asia
In Sandy's Wake, Perspective From Asia
By Mark McDonald
October 31, 2012 11:43 pm October 31, 2012 11:43 pm
Gary Hershorn/ReutersA man carried his wife through floodwaters in Hoboken, New Jersey, on Wednesday.
HONG KONG — Readers from around the world, and especially those in Asia, have responded graciously to our Facebook call seeking advice for storm-affected Americans, as folks along the Eastern Seaboard try to recover from the lashings of Hurricane Sandy this week.
"Be prepared!" said Redgz Tapalla-Molidor of the Philippines. "Listen to warnings given by weather forecasters. We've been hit by a lot of strong tropical storms, our secret in coping up is bayanihan."
Bayanihan is a term used by Filipinos to describe a communal spirit, a coming-together to overcome a crisis or to reach a common goal. To get through the flooding of Manila in August, as we wrote on Rendezvous, "on social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter, and through text messages, Filipinos demonstrated a remarkable civic spirit as they shared news of evacuation centers and dropoff points for donations of emergency supplies."
Elpid Refuerzo Cruz of the Philippines said on The New York Times's Facebook page that "preparation is the key to survival. When everything else fails. . . just bear and grin it. . . the spirit should never die."
And as Ms. Tapalla-Molidor said:
Rich or poor, famous or not, people help each other. We donate, lend equipment, and extend a helping hand. We lose our hard-earned possessions but we are still alive and our families, that's faith. Victims also undergo counseling especially the kids. They were given school supplies and toys so they can move on with their studies and be productive. Hope this helps.
Asia, of necessity, knows its way around natural disasters. Typhoon season is an annual worry for Pacific Islanders and those in coastal areas of Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Vietnam and Thailand. The Philippines sits in the middle of what might be called Typhoon Alley, and Filipinos are regularly tormented by tropical superstorms, floods and mudslides. The storms in August overwhelmed Manila, killing at least 11 people and leaving a quarter-million homeless.
Eva Cakau from Fiji offered this advice:
Adopt a "Get back to normal as quick as possible" mentality and start the cleanup. My little town never waited for handouts or help from authorities when we were hit by massive floodings due to a cyclone. We just got up and did the best we could. When the authorities did finally reach us like one month later, everything was up and running again. We went without water and power supply for 10 days….and managed to pump water from a creek to clean up the mess.
Diesel generators, water blasters, canned foods and lots of batteries for torches were our biggest help! But mental toughness got us thru!
Many countries in the Asia-Pacific region are vulnerable to Ring of Fire earthquakes and their follow-on effects, including the massive Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and the earthquake-tsunami disaster in March 2011 that killed an estimated 18,000 Japanese, crushed Japan's northeastern coast and crippled the Fukushima nuclear complex. Christchurch, New Zealand, was badly damaged just before Christmas last year, and Indonesia and China routinely tremble from quakes.
Jules Mauri Venning of Timaru, New Zealand, says he "came through quakes by communicating with family, friends, setting limits to work commitments, pacing self and giving myself time out as necessary, also set a strategy for what would be achieved."
And Denise O'Toole writes:
I lived in Chengdu, China when the Wenchuan earthquake struck Sichuan Province in 2008 and killed 88,000. People relied on each other, friends and strangers alike, in unprecedented ways that truly surprised the Chinese people. Recognizing our shared humanity, offering kindnesses large and small, and accepting help when offered got people through very dark times. . . and had a lasting impact on how people saw themselves and others.
Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar in 2008 killed more than 130,000 people and flattened almost everything in the southern rice-growing delta. The brutal military junta at the time was monstrously inept in relief efforts, even refusing aid shipments waiting just offshore in U.S. Navy ships. The regime's dithering and the people's anguish had a politically cyclonic effect on one senior general: U Thein Sein is now the president of the country and leading a new wave of democratic reforms there.
There also was a glimmer of a political breakthrough in the storm region in the United States this week, as Chris Christie, the Republican governor of New Jersey, made a tour of battered areas with Barack Obama, the Democratic president. In one interview, Mr. Christie said that "the president has been all over this and deserves great credit."
Larry Downing/ReutersPresident Barack Obama hugged a marina owner, Donna Vanzant, as he toured storm damage in New Jersey with Gov. Chris Christie, left.
"I hope the American people can transfer this disaster to an occasion for solidarity and brotherhood between all the classes of society and every religions and races," Farous Tounsi wrote to us.
And Anne Murphy of Queens Village, New York, said of our Facebook comments that it "sounds like most people across the world offer the same thoughts as those in this country who have gone through devastation."
"I think we are blessed that we haven't seen natural disasters with the loss of life scale seen by some of the people in this discussion," Ms. Murphy said. "God bless us all in times like these. Attitude and each other make a big difference."
Recreating Merce Cunningham, Frame by Frame
IHT Quick Read: Nov. 1

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Editor's note: State rep Lynn R. Wachtmann represents Ohio House District 75. I, DJW, would personally support stripping funding for the House Faith-Based Initiatives Committee, as I would prune funding for faith-based initiatives at all levels of government. I think Norma at Collecting My Thoughts wrote a brilliant piece back in January on government funding of faith-based initiatives, particularly when she writes "Once you accept money from the federal government, you must play by their rules . . .," thus highlighting the risk that the government may exploit such a relationship to begin placing mandates on religion, which would further erode our religious freedom. On that note, I'm glad that a bill has never been assigned to Ohio's House Faith-Based Initiatives Committee.
COLUMBUS— State Representative Lynn Wachtmann (R-Napoleon), member of the Ohio Workers' Compensation Council, issued the following statement regarding a press conference held this morning by House Democrats that outlined legislation to reduce the number of boards and commissions.
"Representatives Dodd and Book are unfortunately too little and too late with their simplistic solution to Ohio's looming multi-billion dollar budget deficit. If they want to scrutinize about saving Ohio taxpayers money, I would urge my Democrat colleagues and Governor Strickland to look around the Statehouse at committees. For example, the House Faith-Based Initiatives Committee, to which a bill has never been assigned, will have spent more than $32,000 in salaries alone to fund that committee throughout the duration of this General Assembly.
This is just another political stunt and shortsighted sound bite by House Democrats during an election year. If my Democrat colleagues were truly interested in reducing the cost burden on Ohio taxpayers, they wouldn't have quietly raised taxes by nearly $900 million at the eleventh hour of 2009.


Most people get into the area of health and wellness following a personal struggle in their own life, I am no different. My husband and I started on our wellness journey following the realization that our health was not up to scratch and this had affected our ability to have children. However the journey towards this realization was a long and arduous one which has changed our life dramatically for the better.
This website is not specifically about our past but its more based on our future which looks very bright in a different way than we had originally imagined. I love to motivate people to get the best out of their life. I was lucky enough to gain an insight earlier on in my life about how to change it for the better and I wanted to mainly share this in the way of little bits and pieces that has helped me immensely.
Not everyone is ready to make dramatic changes in their lives, I feel like you have to reach a health point where you actually realize what you have been doing for your whole life has ramifications. I would be hopeful that some of the information that I share will relate to someone and help to kick-start the change for a better life for at least one person who is ready.
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or just want to chat.


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The scientific case for badger culling-an organic farmer writes
Posted by Flavia Mann 106D on April 10, 2015
Organic Farmer Charles Mann challenges The Ecologist's anti badger cull stance.
Organic farmer Charles Mann, aroused by The Ecologist's anti-cull stance, makes an evidence-based case for culling badgers in areas of high TB incidence - together with other measures including enhanced testing in apparently 'low risk' areas that present a high risk of disease spread.
No one has ever said badger culling alone will solve the problem of bTB. But the scientific evidence shows that culling badgers in areas where the disease is endemic can help reduce bTB levels in cattle in those areas.
As a farmer who has had to deal with bovine TB on my farm on a number of occasions I'm sick of being told there is no scientific evidence to support culling badgers to control the disease in cattle - because it isn't true.
I'm an organic beef cattle farmer in one of the most beautiful parts of England - the Cotswolds.
Like many farmers I face an ongoing battle to keep my herd free of bTB.
And like many farmers I'm fighting this battle with one arm tied behind my back because action is only being taken to tackle one reservoir of the disease, despite the scientific evidence.
Steps are constantly being taken to deal with the disease in cattle - movement controls are being tightened on a regular basis:
all cattle in areas where the disease is rife are tested at least annually (the same testing frequency as Wales);
any cattle moved from areas deemed as high risk for bTB are tested before they are allowed to move;
any cattle that test positive for the disease are immediately isolated and slaughtered to minimise the risk of further infection;
and any herd that has a positive bTB test is then tested every 60 days until it has two clear tests before animals can be moved anywhere, except for slaughter.
But we also need to take action against the reservoir of disease in badgers - and the science shows that doing so can have a beneficial effect on bTB in cattle.
Scientific evidence? We have plenty
It is a proven fact that badgers carry bTB and spread it to cattle. Scientific research has estimated that badgers contribute to up to 50% of all cattle TB breakdowns in areas where the disease is endemic.
So, surely, if you're taking action to tackle the disease in one species (cattle) the only way to stop reinfection occurring is to deal with it in the other main reservoir of disease as well?
Is there any scientific evidence that culling badgers can help to reduce bTB in cattle? Yes, there is. And this evidence is based on research carried out on the results of the Randomised Badger Culling Trials (RBCT), a ten-year Government trial carried out in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Both the Independent Scientific Group's (ISG) final report into the RBCT in 2007, and the then Government Chief Scientific Adviser Sir David King's review of that report carried out later in 2007, said that badger culling would have an overall beneficial effect on cattle TB in England.
Where they differed was in how significant the benefit would be and the economic and practical feasibility of carrying out culling on a scale necessary to gain these beneficial effects.
'An overall beneficial effect'
Since the ISG report was produced, further analysis of the long-term impact of the cull on bTB incidence has been carried out by Professor Christl Donnelly, a member of the ISG, which showed that a positive reduction in bTB cases within the cull area could still be seen years after culling had finished while the initial negative results around the cull area disappeared within 12 to 18 months.
Professor Sir Bob Watson, who was the government's chief scientific adviser, met with a group of leading experts on bTB in April 2011 to assess the potential benefits of culling in light of the further scientific evidence produced since the ISG report was written.
One of the meeting's conclusions was that: "The scientific base generated from the RBCT shows that proactive badger culling as conducted in the trial resulted in an overall beneficial effect compared with 'survey only' (no cull) areas on reducing new confirmed cattle herd breakdowns, which is still evident five-and-a-half years after the final proactive cull."
It also concluded that culling over a 150 sq.km area would see an estimated reduction in bTB incidence of 16% in cattle herds in the cull area, and the area surrounding it, over a nine-year period.
Badger culling is an 'evidence-based' policy
Writing in Nature magazine in June 2013, Professor Mark Woolhouse, Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, and Professor James Wood, Alborada Professor of Equine and Farm Animal Science at the University of Cambridge, argued:
"As epidemiologists, we agree with the Defra chief scientists that badger culling is an 'evidence-based' policy for controlling bovine TB in Britain.
"We disagree with other, less positive interpretations of that evidence. The evidence comes from a large-scale, long-term government project - the Randomised Badger Culling Trial. This roughly halved the incidence of TB in cattle herds in the culling area following four to seven annual badger culls."
The RBCT is the only badger cull that was conducted as a scientific experiment, and therefore it is only the conclusions of this trial that can be scientifically accepted.
But it is worth pointing out that, while the design of the RBCT was exemplary, its implementation was not: to take just one example, all culling was suspended for a year in 2001 because of the foot and mouth epidemic.
And it is also worth noting that other culls, although not conducted as controlled experiments, have shown more dramatic impacts on the disease in cattle.
For example: Thornbury, Gloucestershire, no bTB for 10 years; Steeple Leaze, Dorset, no bTB for seven years; Hartland Point, Devon, 80 to 90% reduction over 10 years; East Offaly, Ireland, 88% reduction for seven years.
The real question: is it worth it?
So, to say there is no scientific evidence to show that culling badgers will have a beneficial effect on reducing bTB in cattle in endemic areas is wrong. There clearly is. The real argument is a subjective one about whether the reduction that can be achieved is enough to justify the method of achieving it. And I believe it is.
No one has ever said that badger culling alone will wipe out bovine TB. Just like no one has ever said badger vaccination alone will wipe out bovine TB. In fact, there is no scientific research data to show what the effect of badger vaccination on the incidence of bTB in cattle would be.
To wipe out bovine TB we need a comprehensive strategy that tackles the disease on all fronts at the same time. Only by doing this will we have the best chance of wiping this disease out and making England TB free.
But maintaining a viable cattle industry has to be a key part of any strategy. Computer-based models that suggest solutions like whole herd culling if one animal tests positive for the disease without taking into account the social or economic impact of such steps offer idealised, but unrealistic, answers.
They do not offer practical solutions. Whole herd culling would condemn thousands of extra cattle to death unnecessarily and would devastate cattle farming in areas of the country that are best suited to it.
Risk-based testing
There are concerns over the sensitivity of the skin test used to test cattle for bTB, and it is important that research into improved diagnostic tools continues. It is effective at picking up the disease in herds and if the disease is found a herd is tested every 60 days until it is free of disease and every animal passes two consecutive tests.
Estimates of how effective the current test is at detecting the disease in individual animals should not be treated as facts. They are estimates and should be treated as such.
The skin test is an internationally recognised test for bTB which is used around the world, including in Wales where much has been made of the success of the country's approach to tackling bTB.
It is worth noting that the number of cattle slaughtered for bTB in Wales actually rose by 4.5% in 2014, compared to 2013, from 6,102 to 6,379. Cattle in the high risk bTB areas in England are tested at least annually (the same testing frequency as in Wales).
The need for annual testing across the whole of England has been looked at by the Bovine TB Eradication Advisory Group, an expert group created to advise Defra ministers, which found it would not be cost-effective, and the EU Commission, which approves the UK's strategy for tackling bTB before it provides funding, does not believe it is necessary.
A more cost-effective approach would be 'risk-based testing' - the annual testing for herds in low-risk areas that may pose a particular disease spread risk because of the amount of trading they do and the number of cattle movements they are involved in.
We must tackle the disease in all reservoirs
No one has ever said badger culling alone will solve the problem of bTB. Just like no one has ever said badger culling needs to be carried out across the whole country. But the scientific evidence shows that culling badgers in areas where the disease is endemic can help reduce bTB levels in cattle in those areas.
Cattle movement controls and cattle testing have an important role to play, badger vaccination could play a role in areas on the edge of the disease spread to stop it spreading further, and cattle vaccination has a role to play once a workable vaccine is available.
But one isn't and we can't wait for ten years until one becomes available. If you have a reservoir of bTB in wildlife in endemic areas and it isn't dealt with reinfection will continue to occur and the disease will continue to spread.
I believe using all options, and tackling the disease in all reservoirs, gives us the best chance of achieving a TB free England.
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As I'm sure you remember, Will Ferrell paraded around Arizona playing ten different positions for ten teams during Cactus League play. It was all for various charities he supports and an upcoming "Funny or Die" episode. A ton of money was raised from the event, and I'm sure a lot of good has come as a result of it.
For fans, enjoying the spectacle didn't stop at only watching the games. Fans also had an opportunity to buy some game-used stuff. All the apparel Ferrell wore that day was auctioned off for charity, and now we learn that card collectors will be able to join in the fun.
Topps announced this morning that limited edition Will Ferrell Baseball cards will be randomly inserted into packs of 2015 Topps Archives. There will be ten different Will Ferrell cards featuring him in the uniforms of the ten different teams he played for. The cards will be numbered to only ten copies and they will all be autographed.
The best part about this all is that we will soon have a Will Ferrell Dodger card. WooHoo!
BTW, the Archives set comes out in June. So far, only four of the ten cards have been revealed by Topps online. You can check them out above and directly below.
Unfortunately, the Dodger version of the card has yet to be released.
Since I'm the impatient sort and have some, albeit low, level of knowledge of photoshop I decided to make my own. Check it out below. I used the 1972 Topps Baseball card design and a photo taken by Dodger photographer Jon SooHoo/LA Dodgers 2015 from that evening.
Here is a look at all of the Dodger insert cards found in packs of Panini's Diamond Kings set. Go here to check out all of my past post on this set. From what I can tell, none of the cards below are particularly scarce. Tomorrow I'll have pics of all of the autograph and relic cards.
Angels catcher Chris Iannetta will be signing autographs for fans at the OC Dugout in Anaheim. Go here for more information. The signing takes place from 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM.
Lakers star rookie Jordan Clarkson will be at Frank & Sons this coming Saturday. Go here for more information.


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he's back
Aziz Ansari Is Making a Netflix Comeback With New Comedy Special
The comedian is stepping back into the spotlight, a year and a half after his sexual misconduct scandal.
Well, Aziz Ansari is back. On Netflix, to be more specific. On Monday, the streamer dropped a moody surprise trailer for his upcoming comedy special, titled Aziz Ansari Right Now.
Directed by Spike Jonze, the special arrives a little over a year and a half after Ansari was accused of sexual misconduct by an anonymous 23-year-old woman in an article published on Babe.net, who claimed Ansari sexually pressured her during a date. In a statement released shortly afterward, Ansari claimed their encounter was consensual, though he added that she had texted him the next day to say she "felt uncomfortable" with him. "I took her words to heart and responded privately after taking the time to process what she had said," he wrote.
The allegation came out just days after the majority of Hollywood wore black to the 2018 Golden Globes in solidarity with the organization Time's Up, at the height of the industry-wide sexual misconduct reckoning. After releasing his statement, Ansari largely avoided the spotlight. A few months later, he began cautiously stepping back into the public eye, sitting courtside at a Knicks game with Chris Rock and making a surprise stand-up appearance at New York's Comedy Cellar. That eventually gave way to a full-on comedy tour in the fall of 2018, titled Working Out New Material, in which Ansari criticized collective outrage and political correctness. However, he apparently has not explicitly referenced the allegations in the Babe.net story, only obliquely referring to it as "that story" during a set in Philadelphia.
Netflix, which produced Ansari's hit dramedy series Master of None, has supported him through the scandal. Cindy Holland, Netflix's VP of original content, said in a panel last July that the company would be open to making a third season of the show, despite the allegation against its star. "We certainly would be happy to make another season of Master of None with Aziz," she said. She also noted that she had not spoken directly to Ansari since the Babe.net allegation broke. However, it seems they're on speaking terms now that Aziz Ansari Right Now is on the way. The comedy special will debut July 9.
— Our cover story: How Idris Elba became the coolest—and busiest—man in Hollywood
— Our critics reveal the best movies of 2019, so far
— Plus: the 12 best TV shows of the year, thus far
— Why The Handmaid's Tale has a serious villain problem
— Can Democrats win back the internet in the age of Trump?
Mindy Kaling Defends Aziz Ansari and His Post-Scandal Comedy Tour
Kaling posted photos of a ticket stub for Ansari's show, justifying her support for the controversial comedian in a series of Instagram comments.
By Kevin Fitzpatrick
Aziz Ansari Addresses Sexual Misconduct Claims During New York Show
"There were times I felt really upset and humiliated and embarrassed. . . . But you know, after a year, how I feel about it is, I hope it was a step forward. It made me think about a lot, and I hope I've become a better person."
pushing back
Louis C.K.'s Comedy Cellar Set Draws Protesters
Two women stood outside of the venue Monday, holding signs in protest of the comic's return to stand-up. "He shouldn't get to feel comfortable," said one.


09 May Alibaba Trials Blockchain for Supply Chain Usage.
The Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group has announced the trial use of blockchain to better monitor and manage its supply chains. The technology, which has been mentioned previously on the blog, is in this case being used to fight counterfeit food products. Alibaba has had its fair share of problems with counterfeits, with fake eggs, soy sauce and rice all being found for sale on its platforms.
Blockchain is being used to verify the genuine nature of foodstuffs, through the creation of "end-to-end supply-chain traceability and transparency to enhance consumer confidence and build a trusted environment for cross-border trade", according to a joint statement between the four companies involved: Zealand Post, Australia Post, Blackmores (vitamin producer) and Fonterra (dairy co-operative).
The solution will work by authenticating, verifying, recording and tracking products throughout the manufacturing process in a blockchain-verified database. Unique QR codes will be placed on selected items packaging; once scanned they will link back to the database, showing the path of the item through the supply chain and therefore its authenticity.
If successful, the trial will likely spark more schemes from a whole range of suppliers and retailers that have an issue with counterfeit products, as it is estimated that counterfeit goods cost companies a quarter of a trillion pounds every year (1).
Find more information about the trial here.


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Abstract Head (Constructive Head) (1930)
Alexej von Jawlensky (Russian, 1864-1941)
Alexej Georgewitsch von Jawlensky, surname also spelt as Yavlensky, was a Russian expressionist painter active in Germany. He was a key member of the New Munich Artist's Association (Neue Künstlervereinigung München), Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) group and later the Die Blaue Vier (The Blue Four).
Alexej von Jawlensky was born in Torzhok, a town in Tver Governorate, Russia, as the fifth child of Georgi von Jawlensky and his wife Alexandra (née Medwedewa). At the age of ten he moved with his family to Moscow. After a few years of military training, he became interested in painting, visiting the Moscow World Exposition c. 1880. Thanks to his good social connections, he managed to get himself posted to St. Petersburg and, from 1889 to 1896, studied at the art academy there, while also discharging his military duties. Jawlensky gained admittance to the circle of the renowned Russian realist painter Ilya Repin. There he met Marianne von Werefkin, a wealthy artist and former student of Repin. He requested to be her protégé, and Werefkin decided to put her work on hold to promote his work and provide him with a comfortable lifestyle.
Jawlensky and Werefkin moved to Munich in 1894, where he studied in the private school of Anton Ažbe. In 1905 Jawlensky visited Ferdinand Hodler, and two years later he began his long friendship with Jan Verkade and met Paul Sérusier. Together, Verkade and Sérusier transmitted to Jawlensky both practical and theoretical elements of the work of the Nabis, and Synthetist principles of art.
In Munich he met Wassily Kandinsky and various other Russian artists, and he contributed to the formation of the Neue Künstlervereinigung München. His work in this period was lush and richly coloured, but later moved towards abstraction and a simplified, formulaic style. Between 1908 and 1910 Jawlensky and Werefkin spent summers in the Bavarian Alps with Kandinsky and his companion, the painter Gabriele Münter. Here, through painting landscapes of their mountainous surroundings, they experimented with one another's techniques and discussed the theoretical bases of their art. Following a trip to the Baltic coast, and renewed contact with Henri Matisse in 1911 and Emil Nolde in 1912, Jawlensky turned increasingly to the expressive use of colour and form alone in his portraits.
Expelled from Germany in 1914, he moved to Switzerland. He met Emmy Scheyer in 1916 (Jawlensky gave her the affectionate nickname, Galka, a Russian word for jackdaw), another artist who abandoned her own work to champion his in the United States. After a hiatus in experimentation with the human form, Jawlensky produced perhaps his best-known series, the Mystical Heads (1917–19), and the Saviour's Faces (1918–20), which are reminiscent of the traditional Russian Orthodox icons of his childhood.
In 1922, Jawlensky married Werefkin's former maid Hélène Nesnakomoff, the mother of his only son, Andreas, who was born before their marriage. Alexej von Jawlensky took up residence in Wiesbaden and organized In 1924 the Blue Four, whose works, thanks to Scheyer's tireless promotion, were jointly exhibited in Germany and the US. From 1929 Jawlensky suffered from progressively crippling arthritis, which necessitated a reduced scale and finally forced a cessation in his painting in 1937. He began to dictate his memoirs in 1938. He died in Wiesbaden, Germany, on 15 March 1941. He and his wife Helene are buried in the cemetery of St. Elizabeth's Church, Wiesbaden.
More Artworks by Alexej von Jawlensky
Abstrakter Kopf; Orient – Verhaltene Glut (1932)
Weiblicher Kopf (1920-1923)
Selbstbildnis (1912)
Prophet (Sibyl) (1913)
Bunte Blumen (1915)
Variation,Night (1916)
The Village Of Murnau (1908)
Variation (circa 1918)
Abstract Head, Mysterium (1925)
Meditation 'The Prayer' (1922)
View all 126 Artworks


and confidence from the shareholders and investors.
Android application, called Mobile Pay. (UK Starbucks Website, 2013).
terms of local culture and certain behaviour.
sense of belonging of the staffs and keep them in the company.
the society. I have plotted each of them accordingly on the Power-Interest Grid.
The government considered as the party with high power and low interest.
Starbucks Corporation. Next, investors are party with high power and interest.
same time concern on company performance and operation.
government use the income, for tax especially to spend for social welfare benefits.
raises revenues through taxes, in welfare state like United Kingdom especially.
government was unable to take any legal actions due to lack of evidence.
was reported to the government that it was making loses.
refuse to pay taxes, to protect the social benefits for the society.
upgrading and people have learn how to enjoy life with a cup of specialty coffee.
Freeman, R. E. (1984). Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach.
Gompertz, S. "Starbucks 'paid just £8.6m UK tax in 14 years". BBC News.
Lawrence, A. T. and Weber, J. (2011). "The Corporation and Its Stakeholders".
Appendix 1.1: The Power-Interest Grid.
Appendix 1.2: Corporate tax rate in the UK from 2011-2014.
countries like countries in Asia.
3. Expansion into emerging markets.
coffee with good quality as well.
the profit growth of the company.
Appendix 1.3: SWOT analysis of Starbucks Corporation.


Beaumont was originally built as a 15-room hostel, joined at the hip to Allendale. In later years the ground floor was knocked through to create a new suite of teaching rooms, hence the confusing layout.
The photos were taken by Alan Parker, David Newland, John Morrissy and Jo Smith.
If you were there in May 2013 do you have any photos to add? We're particularly keen to get a shot of the in-out board if it survived the change. Please tell us via the Contacts page.


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Q: TFS 2013 get All TFS group including Windows group I am working on this TFS 2013 to get the project level permission of all the TFS group. But I cannot get the windows group.
I use the following code to list the groups:
var applicationGroups = identityManagementService.ListApplicationGroups(project.Uri.AbsoluteUri, ReadIdentityOptions.None);

But this code will only list those TFS groups that are under Teams ([project]\Project Team) and VSO groups ([project]\Build Administrators, [project]\Contributors, [project]\Readers, [project]\Project Administrators, [project]\Project Valid Users, [project]\TFS_Build_Administrators, [project]\TFS_Build_Readers) but not Windows groups (TFS_Builder, TFS_DEV_AM...) .
Does anyone know how I can do this or why I wasn't able to get those under Windows groups?

Hi Thank you very much for replying.
But I was actually looking to query all those windows groups and from there I will try to identify who are the members of each group.
Your answer is also correct but it is only applicable for an individual user and try get the memberOf inorder for us to know which windows group is the user a memberOf.
I just marked it as yes coz I found a way on how I could list it through that code. But I'm not sure if I might post another question for this again. Anyway.
Below is the new code that is for TFS 2013 as the IGroupSecurityService is obsolete.

var collection = new TfsTeamProjectCollection(new Uri("http://mytfs:8080/tfs/MyCollection"));
var identityService = collection.GetService<IIdentityManagementService>();
var readIdentity = identityService.ReadIdentity(IdentitySearchFactory.AccountName, @"[domailName here]\" + userName, MembershipQuery.Direct, ReadIdentityOptions.None);

A: Windows groups are not stored in TFS, but in Active Directory. To query Active Directory through TFS, use:
var collection = new TfsTeamProjectCollection(new Uri("http://mytfs:8080/tfs/MyCollection"));
var gss = collection.GetService<IGroupSecurityService>();
Identity i = gss.ReadIdentity(SearchFactor.AccountName, "myalias", QueryMembership.Direct);

That's a user, you can try getting groups through it as well.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


An excellent easy-to-understand guide to buying your first home.
Credit Smart An online training course for anyone considering buying a home or currently owns a home.
Information about how to buy a home, mortgage loans, mortgage insurance, homebuyer counseling, and other information for homebuyers.
The official government web site for the DHCD, which is in charge of homeownership, housing consumer education, economic development, public housing, rental assistance, and other affordable housing programs for the state.
State median family income data by family size, for use in determining financial eligibility for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. From the U.S. Dept. of Justice.
A step-by-step guide to the Soft Second Loan Program, from the Massachusetts Housing Partnership Fund.
A non-profit statewide organization that provides information and assistance to homeowners, tenants, non-profit and for-profit developers, bankers, real estate brokers, property managers, government officials, and others.
Official web site of this international organization whose goal is to eliminate poverty housing. Includes links to local Habitat web sites, which give information for families who want to buy a Habitat home and for community members who want to volunteer for this program.
Description of services and contact information for the nine Housing Consumer Education Centers serving Massachusetts.
Data used in determining federal housing program eligibility and benefits, from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, including income limits.


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Healthy Food Factory Commissary Commercial Kitchen in Boca Raton, OUR KITCHENS ARE AVAILABLE 24/7/365 - Call (561) 394-7466 - Healthy Food Factory Commissary Commercial Kitchen in Boca Raton, OUR KITCHENS ARE AVAILABLE 24/7/365 - Call (561) 394-7466
Home / Articles / Arts & Entertainment / CALENDAR OF EVENTS / Calendar of events
Sat., March 17th 44Th Annual St. Patrick´s Day Parade & Party
The Annual Delray Beach St. Patricks Day Parade pays tribute to our nations Firefighters. Delray Beach will be hosting thousands of firefighters and their families from all over the United States!!! Join us at the THE FIRE FIGHTIN" IRISH ST. PATRICK'S DAY PARADE to salute the brave fire fighters from across the country for the 44th Annual St. Patricks Day Parade. For forty-four years, on the Saturday before St. Patrick's Day, the streets of Delray Beach have turned green as we have hosted the largest St. Patrick's Day Parade in Florida,drawing more than 100,000 attendees to the greenest partying town in Palm Beach County! 11:00am to 7:00pm. at Downtown Delray Beach, FL. FREE. Phone: (561) 279-0907
Friday, March 23rd Pilobolus
Pilobolus began as an experiment among three guys and one puzzled professor in a Dartmouth dance class back in 1970. From these humble, biological beginnings has emerged an innovative, unlikely and almostuncategorizable dance company that combines athleticism, grace and humor with a profound sense of unity. Their smooth, organic choreography -- featuring unusual partnering and lifts -- often blurs the lines between individual performers, creating a sense of dance-troupe-asorganism. , 8:00pm Tickets $39. 4200 Congress Avenue, Lake Worth, FL 33461. 561-868-3309, www.duncantheatre.org.
March 7th - 18th Festival of the Arts BOCA 2012
"This Festival has truly evolved into a one-ofa-kind cultural celebration, bringing the best in music, dance, film and ideas to South Florida," said Charlie Siemon, Festival Chair. "From a showing of Casablanca - an all-time classic – with live orchestra - to an evening of operatic favorites that have inspired the sound tracks of movie masterpieces, this year's program will reflect a bit of Hollywood glamour." www. festivaloftheheartsboca.org / 561-368-8445 at the Mizner Park Amphitheater and the Cultural Arts Center
Through March 18th AMERICAN TREASURES Masterworks From the Butler Institute of American Art
One of the most ambitious exhibitions in recent SoFla memory is now running at the Boca Museum of Art (501 Plaza Real, Boca). It´s called "American Treasures," presents a selection of significant and noteworthy examples of American art and artists from the nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries. On loan from the Butler Institute of American Art, the collection showcases two centuries of American art and the many styles and genres found therein. The exhibition comprises 36 works representing a virtual who's who of America. "American Treasures" runs through March 18; admission is $6 to $14. Visit bocamuseum.org for more info @ Boca Raton Museum of Art, 501 Plaza Real, Boca Raton, FL 33432. Every week Tues through Sun.
Saturday, March 31st JDRF Walk to Cure Diabetes
Companies, Families, Organizations and Schools; Join JDRF for it´s 16th Annual Walk to Cure Diabetes in Boca Raton at Mizner Park Amphitheater! Enjoy a 2 mile Walk throughout downtown Boca Raton, music, entertainment, children´s activities, vendors, and complimentary breakfast and lunch! Even well behaved dogs on leashes are welcome! Register today at www.walk.jdrf.org or bring a donation the day of the Walk. For more information, please call 561.686.7701 or email greaterpalmbeach@jdrf.org! 8:00am to 11:00am at Count de Hoernle Amphitheater (formerly Mizner Park Amphitheater), Boca Raton, FL. All Donations are welcome!
March 17th & 18th Hatsume Fair
Celebrating the first bud of spring, The Morikami´s largest annual event, Hatsume, transforms the normally tranquil Morikami Park into a unique Japanese spring festival. Hatsume Fair features three stages with continuous entertainment including taiko drummers, a Japanese tea ceremony, flower arranging, martial art demonstrations, bonsai and orchid demonstrations, and much more. Also included are avenues of artisan booths, plant sales, Asian and American food vendors and children´s activities. Morikami Museum & Japanese Gardens. 561-495- 0233, www.morikami.org
March 22nd - 25th Palm Beach Boat Show
The 27th Annual Palm Beach International Boat Show, March 22 - 25, 2012, is one of the top ten boat shows in the country featuring more than $350 million worth of boats, yachts and accessories from the world's leading marine manufacturers. It is truly an International Show. The event includes hundreds of Boats from 8 foot inflatables, power boats, fishing boats, center consoles, bow riders, personal watercraft to superyachts over 150'. Show entrances will be located at Evernia St./Flagler Dr. (waterfront) and North Clematis St./Flagler Dr. (waterfront). For more info please visit: http://www.showmanagement.com/palm_beach/event/
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Changing the Culture of Planning Toward Greater Equity
Published on July 19, 2001 September 19, 2012 by Administrator
by Norman Krumholz
I want to report on my impressions of planning after years of close association with the American Planning Association (APA) and American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP), and much conversation with planning practitioners around the U.S. I have come to believe there is a new culture evolving in planning.
The New Planning Culture
First, the new planning culture does not reject politics, it embraces it. Robert. A. Walker's book The Planning Function in Urban Government, recommended that planners needed to relate more closely to their mayors if they wanted to be more effective. Many planners have followed this advice, and have sought to be closer to the executive in the decision-making process. Structurally, there are fewer planners in government working for appointed planning commissions and more working for departments with a direct line of accountability to the mayor or city manager. These planners believe that, if their work is to be more effective, planners need political support as well as good intentions and technical skills.
According to such observers as Anthony Catanese, Mel Levin and many others, their proximity to the mayor's office has meant greater short-term operational planning effectiveness (Levin, Planning in Government: Shaping Programs that Succeed). Such planners are Close to Power, as William Lucy puts it in the title of his book, and they like being there. And, as planning issues become more regional and complex, more local and even state politicians are beginning to see political stakes in planning decisions and want to keep the process closer to themselves. So the new culture of planning is more political. It is also becoming more diversified, with more and more planners moving out of traditional jobs in local government and working outside of city hall for banks, developers, foundations and non-profit community development corporations (CDCs). They are becoming generic urban professionals who are expected to function across a wide variety of settings.
Second, the new planning culture is marked by a fascination with the current scientific business and management approach popularized in such books as Reinventing Government by David Osborne and Ted Gaebler and In Search of Excellence by Thomas Peters. In this perspective, government should be run more like business. Planners are "entrepreneurs in the market" and "managers"; citizens are "customers;" and planning helps "customers be empowered to solve their own problems" and, of course, "the customer is always right".
Third, the new culture of planning is less concerned with the long-range and more sensitive to short-range outcomes. My informal conversations with practicing planners suggest that planners are doing fewer comprehensive long-range plans and are spending more time on strategic planning, economic development projects, real estate deals and nurturing public-private partnerships. This is a partially a product of sharp cut-backs in federal largesse, but also a more dynamic and turbulent metropolitan environment in which change happens faster than it used to. Also, planners with executive responsibility who act as close advisors to mayors do not enjoy the luxury of time, but must join the rest of the firemen in city hall's hot shot alley and deal with the crisis of the moment.
Fourth, where the old culture of planning was top-down, the new culture is intensely interactive and participatory. Citizen participation is now mandated by federal regulations and is the order of the day, whether token or real. The lessons of the highway program and urban renewal programs of the l950s and l960s were not lost on the planners or the public, and groups affected by planning decisions are a lot more vocal than they used to be. This is especially true in such states as California where initiatives and referenda are extensively used. As a result, planners take their proposals out to the neighborhoods as draft documents and are prepared for resistance, discussion and negotiated modifications.
Fifth, in terms of design, the new culture of planning values the intimate and small-scale more than the monumental. Its prophets are much less likely to be Frank Lloyd Wright or LeCorbusier than Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zybek and Peter Calthorpe and its recommendations are less likely to be super blocks and towers in the park than the mixed land uses, short blocks, and front porches incorporated into neighborhood designs of what is known as Neo Traditionalism or New Urbanism. In the New Urbanism's lexicon, zoning, segregated land uses and insensitive suburban development are responsible for virtually everything: traffic congestion, the decline of the central city, the loss of community and the aesthetically unappealing strip mall development of "roadside America". Some exponents of the New Urbanism blame the insensitive designs of the recent past for much more. A NY Times article (May 6, l999) following the Littleton, Colorado school massacre ("How urban design is failing teenagers") implied that teen age problems of alienation and anomie could be traced to insensitive suburban design.. In that event, the new culture of planning continues to echo the old culture's belief in environmental determinism, with design principles affecting human behavior. Disney's new town of Celebration, Florida carries the same message, while ignoring the distributional effects of costs and benefits.
In my judgement, there is much to commend in the new culture of planning. Planning is political, and a direct line of responsibility to the chief executive seems likely to improve both operational effectiveness and the quality of planning. But being close to political power may come at a cost. What will the mayor ask the planners to do? What happens to the long-term or the ideal vision? How will the planners retain their professionalism in the face of a thoroughly politicized world when the mayor asks them to provide support for some favored proposal which they know on analysis to be valueless? These questions can only be answered in specific circumstances, but they are real, nonetheless.
With respect to the new culture's interest in the New Urbanism, I must confess that I am cautiously favorable. The New Urbanism's small blocks, hidden garages, mixed land uses, bay windows and porches are at least in the service of a coherent neighborhood vision as opposed to the accumulation of developer's shortcuts that have produced the real sprawling suburbs of the late twentieth century. No doubt, the New Urbanism will be oversold and likely will do little for distressed central cities or neighborhoods sunk in poverty, but the concept has already achieved a tremendous popular response, and I think it will make a significant difference in development patterns of the future.
Problems with the New Culture
I am less than enthusiastic about the trend toward scientific management adopted by some of the new planners. Citizens may not be customers to some of us, but we all applaud the idea of empowerment and accountability, and the idea of a citizen as a customer may improve the responsiveness of planning. All to the good. But the customer focus doesn't fit all situations. In the world of business, customers provide revenue in exchange for goods and services. In public life, by contrast, most revenue is generated by taxation and allocated by legislation. So the idea that public clients are customers is metaphorical rather than literal.
Of course, governments do more than provide goods and services; they also enforce obligations and punish violators. Are jailed prisoners "customers" of the justice system? Are "customers" free to pay their taxes or "empowered" to choose not to pay or do government agencies like the IRS exist precisely to coerce (not empower) them into paying? And is the "customer always right" in planning? No clerk at WalMart is going to tell the fat guy to put down the two-gallon tub of ice cream and not buy it because it's bad for his health, but city planners sometimes have to do just that — tell their customers that some things they might want to do like cut down the Redwoods, build on the wetlands and green spaces, overcrowd their apartment houses in the hopes of getting more rent or racially segregate people are not to be tolerated.
Other problems also intrude. The government-as-business movement (that really goes back to the Progressives and the city manager idea) contains a powerful criticism of faceless, unresponsive bureaucrats and invites public distrust of all governmental agencies. A blind application of business management principles may undermine the integrity of all public bureaucracies and perhaps even come to threaten democracy. Another serious criticism is that the "managed state" involves a process of cost transfer from central to local governments; from public to private sectors; and from public to private households. Business organizations are after all, run by "managers" who decide what core services to offer and which difficult, costly, high-risk customers to exclude. Incentives exist for managers to control their costs. The logic under these conditions tends to shift as many costs as possible from the state to private families. Organizations and managers may look more "efficient" in the process, but people who are wealthy, healthy and vocal may end up with lots more resources than people who are weak, quiet and poor.
Most seriously, the new culture of planning, with its focus on scientific management and the bottom line, but without a long-term vision of a better city or a better society, confronts planning with the question of the role of planners in the face of market failures, when such failures produce unemployment, poverty, racial segregation and environmental ruin. The new culture of planning seems hardly able to resolve such fundamental problems, but the problems exist and, in some respects, have gotten worse over time. For example, books like Goldsmith and Blakely's Separate Societies and Massey and Denton's American Apartheid show us how racial segregation and concentrated poverty have worsened over time. How will the new culture of planning deal with the fact that vast economic disparities now exist between our central cities and their surrounding suburbs; that poverty and joblessness is intensely concentrated within central cities; that children who grow up in persistently poor environments have virtually no chance to escape into the economic mainstream of America? I believe the new culture of planning will do little for these deep and fundamental problems of poverty and race. For these reasons, I believe a third culture of planning must be created.
A Third Way
A third way of planning must recover its reformist roots and vision of a better, long-range future for our cities and regions. Without such a vision, the current "new" version of planning is not much more than an exercise in business administration, strengthening the already powerful hand of business and politics as usual. Instead, planning should be used as a tool for allocating resources and developing the environment to eliminate the great inequalities of wealth and power in our society, rather than to maintain and justify the status quo [see PN's Statement of Principles]. Further, the third culture of planning should be used to assure that the basic requirements of life — adequate food, clothing, shelter, medical care, jobs and a healthful environment for all Americans — should exist. The overarching objective of this new culture of planning should be to produce the "just" city, that is, a democratic city with a free, consensual mode of political decision-making; an entrepreneurial capacity able to provide welfare but create wealth as well; and an egalitarian distribution of wealth and services. In this third culture, planners should continue to embrace a close relationship with the political process and a respect for business, but without losing sight of equity and the broad public interest in the elements mentioned above.
How might we help achieve this third culture of planning? It is unlikely that any professional organization will lend itself easily as a source of cultural redefinition for at least three reasons: first, they usually limit themselves to highly general role statements because they represent so many different practitioners; second, because they are usually dominated by their older, more conservative members; and third, because the roles of any profession are determined less by their organizations than by the people who hire the professionals. Still, APA and AICP have been slowly moving in a more progressive direction for the past fifteen years. APA has indicated its support for social equity by endorsing its progressive Agenda for America's Communities in l992, by publishing through APA Planners Press the book Planning and Community Equity (l994), by establishing awards that honor such equity planners as Paul Davidoff and Cushing Dolbeare, and by insisting that at least twenty percent of all panels at APA annual conferences have social equity themes.
This momentum can be continued by requiring that all AICP members contribute a number of hours of pro-bono service in low-income neighborhoods as a condition of continued certification; that the AICP certification test contain a good share of equity planning questions; that special efforts be made to recruit minorities on all boards and committees; and that university programs that stress participatory research in low-income neighborhoods be recognized. For example, AICP honored Professor Ken Reardon and the University of Illinois for their outreach planning program in East St. Louis and named as a planning landmark Planners For Equal Opportunity, founded by Paul Davidoff and others in the 1960s. It is slow going, but the professional organizations are responding.
What can Planners Network members do? First, join APA and AICP and run for office to change both organizations in your direction. There are 30,000 planners in APA. Many of them agree with PN's ideas. Let's try to change the minds of the others. Secondly, write PN pieces for Planning magazine and for the AICP Casebook. Third, support community-based planning. And finally, give your ideas to the AICP Task Force on Social Responsibility.
Our work is cut out for us. The status quo brings us rising poverty, continued racial and economic segregation and environmental ruin. If we–professional organizations, professional schools, and planning practitioners–-believe that change in the direction of more equity is possible and that our work may contribute to that change, there is much that all of us can do.
Norman Krumholz is Professor at Cleveland State University and President of the American Institute of Certified Planners.
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Striper Talk Striped Bass Fishing, Surfcasting, Boating » Striper Chat - Discuss stuff other than fishing ~ The Scuppers and Political talk » Political Threads
Republican Party is...
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Location: RI
Originally Posted by RIROCKHOUND
Biden won't push that issue if he is serious about trying to mend the fences broken.
State AOG's might have a different thought (i.e. NY Southern)
That's pretty much what I said. I don't see a big effort to sink Trump but if they have solid evidence of crimes implicating Ivanka or Jr I don't think they could ethically not go after them.
Find More Posts by spence
Location: I live in a house, but my soul is at sea.
What a statement Trump is making to the world, what an example he is making for our youth, what a pitiful example of a human being. If they ever need a visual for the definition of a sore loser, a sore sportsman, a big baby; well orange head is the perfect example. Then there is Rudy OMG, it's almost sad to see him go off the rails and into some alternate reality. America first my arse, any of you supporters buying into this crap, still think he is concerned about you?
Find More Posts by Got Stripers
Pete F.
Location: vt
My favorite lede
'The Ballots Might Have Been From Mickey Mouse,' the President's Lawyer Said. Likewise, His Legal Strategy.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device
Find More Posts by Pete F.
This is why, thankfully, Tweety's strategy will fail
Arizona's Maricopa County Board of Supervisors has more Republicans defending our democracy's peaceful transfer of power than they currently have counterparts in the United States Senate.
Location: Somerset MA
Coronavirus: Five signs that show how bad El Paso's outbreak is
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem cashes in on COVID-19 response, national profile
https://www.argusleader.com/story/ne...se/5993962002/
these states are on fire and Republicans dont care it
Find More Posts by wdmso
Wisconsin officials: Trump observers obstructing recount
Shocking most of the areas where Trump request re counts happen to minority communities? Why would that be?
zimmy
Location: Bethany CT
I don't like the guy. Especially since he is a cowboy fan from NJ, but he deserves credit where due.
"I have been a supporter of the President's. I voted for him twice, but elections have consequences, and we cannot continue to act as if something happened here that didn't happen."
"If you are unwilling to come forward and present the evidence, it must mean the evidence doesn't exist," he went on. "The country is what has to matter the most. As much as I'm a strong Republican and I love my party, it's the country that has to come first" - Chris Christie
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Originally Posted by zimmy
The faithful just cast people like him aside calling him a Rino
Or here's another example Christie is just saying what ABC wants to hear. They don't pay him for honesty, they pay him to be a faux Republican.
Christie has sold his soul for a paycheck.
Stop the Steal!
What's the saying you can't argue with idiots
scottw
Originally Posted by wdmso
oh tell us al sharpton
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someone should explain to christie, zimmie and wayne how the legal system works
Originally Posted by spence
yup...Ivanka is definitely a criminal.....she should be more like hunter
Originally Posted by scottw
I'd suggest you team up with Powell, Giuliani and the Stable Genius to do that
"Trump is the only president not to register a 50% job approval rating at any point in his presidency since Gallup began measuring presidential job approval in 1938."
But as bad as the Trump Administration appears today, I firmly believe history will judge it much more harshly. Because he oversaw a disastrous response to a global pandemic, because of which more than 400,000 Americans died on his watch.
And he incited an insurrection on the US capitol, which led to a second impeachment.
New York state has expanded its criminal fraud investigation into Donald Trump to payments that he made to his daughter Ivanka.
Some of those fees appear to have been paid to Ms. Trump. On a 2017 disclosure she filed when joining the White House as a presidential adviser, she reported receiving payments from a consulting company she co-owned, totaling $747,622, that exactly matched consulting fees claimed as tax deductions by the Trump Organization for hotel projects in Hawaii and Vancouver, British Columbia.
Originally Posted by Pete F.
oh good...pete has another bombshell...surely this will land a trump in jail
...hey do you think joe will make hunter drug czar? it would finally be a job that he's got some previous experience in
Oddly enough, Biden has no family members in his administration.
Scott I'll do you legal research for you...
the obligation to prove one's assertion.
The Nation is still waiting
Here is some news Trump Legal Team Distances from Sidney Powell
noting that she did not represent the president, either as part of the team or in his personal capacity.
A tweet from President Trump earlier this month explicitly named her as part of the team, referring to her as one of his "wonderful lawyers and representatives" .
Last edited by wdmso; 11-23-2020 at 09:47 AM..
The new republican conspiracy. Liberals are moving to GA just to vote in the senate Race
Anyone see these carvans of voters ..
And what the mathematical numbers require to achieve this 2nd coup
he wasn't kidding....
Behind the scenes, Trump is frustrated with his legal team's maneuvers.
"The president is concerned his team is comprised of 'fools that are making him look bad,' said one source familiar with the thinking."
Don't worry the Stable Genius has reinforcements flying in.........
A classic Trumper.. posting fake clips to support untrue suggestion of fraud
By supporting a President who attacking our elections.
When Rudy is your lead counsel you are going down like the Hindenburg
1 in 37 court cases, is that what winning looks like?
Well, after the Deathstar failed they unleashed the Kraken that turned out to be a Krakpot.
Think of how fortunate we are that this assault on the Constitution and our democratic system is now resting pretty much in the hands of three grifting nincompoops, instead of the capable authoritarians the GOP will produce the next time.
RickBomba
Mikey Likes Bald Men
Whelp, if this election was any sign of GOP spunk, nice job guys!
You know what they say about number 2.
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The real irony is Trump fighting so hard to keep a job he really never wanted and clearly didn't like to do. Trump xmas tradition might change this year, instead of opening one present Xmas eve, it will just be family pardons all around.
An Administration that tries to steal votes, preemptively pardon friends and relatives, and pour federal money into their own businesses isn't an Administration. It's a crime syndicate.
Cruz urges Supreme Court to take up Pennsylvania election challenge
Fishing for Trumps VP in 2024
https://www.npr.org/2020/12/05/94322...ge-martial-law
The White House on Monday nominated O'Grady to be assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs at the Pentagon.
But in a review of his public statements, CNN found that O'Grady called former President Barack Obama and some military generals "sworn socialists" in a radio interview. On Twitter, he endorsed a tweet that called former Defense Secretary James Mattis a "traitor." He's backed multiple conspiracy theories, retweeting the baseless claim that Hillary Clinton and George Soros somehow helped facilitate foreign interference in last month's election.
On December 2, he retweeted an account that shared an article that said former national security adviser Michael Flynn had shared a petition that called for martial law. He then retweeted the same account which suggested that Trump should declare martial law.
"I don't know who needs to hear this," the account said, "But calling for martial law is not a bad idea when there is an attempted coup against the president and this country happening right now."
and republicans are worried Biden has MH issues or about Socialism
you got to be kidding
AG, homeland and republicans in states with supposed widespread fraud all say there is no evidence and sadly only 25 Republicans with a spine have agreed. The silence on the right in Washington and this board is amazing, to condone what is being attempted, means your right as a citizen for your vote to count is meaningless. Every past President has helped with the peaceful transition of power, knowing the security of our nation depends on it. It's not happening now, because this ahole has NEVER even attempted to act presidential and it's always been about the Trump brand and family money.
Rudy's and Trump moving the goal post again seeing they are getting smoked in court they're going for the Hail Mary which I think was the plan from the start,, such Patriots
I saw what the courts were doing and I wanted to go around them so the facts could get out," Giuliani told Sean Hannity on Friday night. "The simple fact is, we don't need courts. The United States Constitution gives sole power to the state legislature to decide presidential elections."
the conservative Wisconsin Voters Alliance: invalidating the entire presidential election in Wisconsin, and installing new electors chosen by the legislature.
Wow just to suggest such a thing is seen as Patriotic by Trump and his supporters but but be afraid
From Trump rally Trump states Very simply, you will decide whether your children will grow up in a socialist country or whether they will grow up in a free country."
99% of his base have no idea what what socialism is , they do actually anyone who doesn't wear camouflage all year long is a socialist


CME Group's volumes were mixed in February, though specific segments continued to weigh in 2017.
CME Group (NASDAQ: CME), one of the world's largest derivatives marketplaces, has reported its February 2017 volumes, which showed mixed month-over-month performances across key business segments. The largest decline was seen across interest rate and FX volumes.
In terms of its overall volume for February 2017, CME Group disclosed an average of 18.4 million contracts per day, which correlated to a rise of 15.0 percent month-over-month from just 16.0 million contracts per day in January 2017. This is the second straight month the group has reported rising volumes, despite markets lacking any major drivers in February.
In addition to securing an increase in its month-over-month volumes, CME's latest figures were able to best their 2016 equivalents. The ADV in February 2017 was roughly 1.0 percent higher year-over-year from February 2016.
In terms of CME Group's average daily foreign exchange (FX) volumes, these figures were sizably lower in February 2017, yielding just 764,000 contracts per day as compared to just 920,000 contracts per day in January 2017, or -17.0 percent month-over-month.
Volatility in FX markets has been on the decline in February, after an unusually busy January that saw the inauguration of Donald Trump in the United States. February was devoid of any major news outside of a buildup for March's Fed meeting, which points to a rate hike.
For the month ending February 2017, CME Group again saw its interest rate volume average rise, this time to 10.6 million contracts per day, which indicated a climb of 26.2 percent month-over-month vs. 8.4 million contracts per day in January 2017.
Finally, CME's equity indexes during February 2017 was unchanged at 2.5 million contracts per day, relative to 2.5 million contracts per day in January 2017 – the latest reading was however -27.0 percent lower year-over year from February 2016.


In most cases, you may visit a Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles office without making an appointment. However, making an appointment prior to your visit will allow you to avoid long lines and save time.
If you choose to make an appointment, you can either schedule it over the phone or use the online appointment service.
To make an appointment online, visit the OASIS, the Online Appointment Service and Information System. Please browse the website prior to making an appointment. The system allows you to resolve many issues online without having to schedule a visit to a DHSMV office. OASIS also provides extensive information on procedures for renewing your drivers license, obtaining a duplicate license, and updating your driving record.
If something requires an in-person visit to the DHSMV, you can schedule an appointment by calling the nearest branch office. There are 146 driver offices located across the state and you can locate the nearest office through the system offered by the DHSMV. These offices are open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday, Wednesday and Friday. On Tuesday and Thursday the offices are open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Some selected offices also open on Saturday providing service from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Some DHSMV offices may occasionally be closed due to hurricane damage or other emergency events. You can access the list of such offices on the DHSMV Office Closure Schedule.
Note: This article was accurate when it was published. Please confirm all details directly with the FL DHSMV. You can visit the Florida DHSMV website.