The second week of our Swedish Coastline tour was dominated by winds from the South West and by North flowing currents making for some tough paddling and very rough water.
Heading South from Bua we stopped on a small island opposite Varberg castle before continuing to a beach just East of Falkenburg. With no islands to hide behind we felt the North going current more strongly than before. At Falkenburg we met Thomas, a local paddler who pointed out some nice geological features of the coastline ahead. We continued to Tylösand and with a flat calm sea set off on a 25 km crossing to the island of Hallands Vädero.
Just a few km from the shore a squall blew up from the South East and we dug deep to reach the island in a downpour. The mosquitos were huge and hungry so although we put up a tarp we stayed in the tent as much as we could.
The next morning saw very heavy rain, SW winds of force 5 and poor visibility. The direct line to Kullen didn't seem wise so we paddled across to Torekov to dry out. Here we found an enchanting little town and a very friendly cafe, so glad we paddled here. Leaving Torekov warm and well fed the weather seemed better so we set off across the bay for Kullen point.
As seems the norm about half way across a strong SW wind kicked in and began to build. As our progress slowed the waves just grew and grew. We bore off the wind to make some headway and by chance had the good fortune to blow into Arild harbour. This was such a pretty and interesting little village with traditional thatched cottages and a strong fishing heritage. We treated ourselves to a very fine meal at the Strand Hotel, fully recommended.
In Arild we met a sailor who explained to us that the currents were best forecast by the Danish weather service, since it's not far from Copenhagen. (See dmi.dk, hav, prognosa, strömretning). However, knowing that the current will be against you all day everywhere didn't really help us much.
Leaving Arild we hugged the shore as the wind was from the West, some unusual art installations and a very beautiful rocky coastline remininscent of North Devon.
We found big confused seas off Kullen Point as the currents from different directions met and were whipped up by the wind. The two lighthouses deserved a picture but most of the time both hands were needed on the paddle.
We continiued South to Helsingborg, where the kayak club made us welcome and Christian and Helene, whom we had first met in Hamburgersund, invited us for an exceptional meal and evening of relaxation. Rested and feeling happy we set off the next day like lambs to the slaughter. Dodging the ferries we entered the channel where the gap to Denmark is at its smallest.
The North going current is squeezeed here and is fast and furious. A South Westerly Force 5 gusting 6 made things a little tricky as we worked our way South, passing windmills and commercial shipping ports. Hundreds of swans were seen sheltering behind one of the islands as we ran downwind in a Force 7 on rolling waves to land at Barsebeckshamn strand. There was a campsite here that had been recommended but it turned out to be full and not at all welcoming. We used "Everymans right" and camped on the sand a little way up the beach.
We were keen to leave this place so set off the next day into a SW force 5 gusting 6. Making very slow progress we crawled along the coast, passing the decommsioned nuclear power station before pulling into Vikhög after only two hours. We had planned a short Fika break here but sailing harbours always make the wind seem stronger as the rigging screams and whines.
Vikhög was quite remarkable for the warmth and generosity of the welcome we received there. We were offered showers and the use of a kitchen in the clubhouse. The former chairman, Leif, offered us his yacht as a place to stay for the night and gave us their club burgee. As the strong winds whisled by we felt a small conversion to the world of sailing beginning!
Leif and Björn of Vikhög, two extremely kind hearted men!
It was hard to leave the next day but we headed out towards the infamous bridge, into winds and adverse currents once again. The famous twisted torso building of Malmö was abeam for far too long and we headed closer to the shore to avoid the current but faced more wind and dodged a few ships. After passing under the infamous bridge the sea state eased a little but soon returned to the usual lumpy state with 2 m waves on the beam.
We stopped at the entrance to Falsterbo Canal and pulled into the marina on the South side. Warm dry clothes and meal made things feel better but we were both dog tired. We found a room for the night at the ELS and watched the kite surfers speeding and jumping high, enjoying the winds that had plagued us earlier.
After a good sleep we set off in rain the next morning with winds still from the west. We had to wait for the barrage on the canal to be lifted at 9.00 but then entered a comletely different world. East of Falsterbo the sea was wonderfully calm and with a following wind we made good progress past Trelleborg, enjoyed a squall from behind for a change, before landing for a fika in Gislövs Hamn.
An easy paddle took us happily into the harbour at Smygehuk, Sweden's most Southerly point.
With 563 km paddled we took a midsummer break here, Therese headed for Oslo and a family wedding. Kevin stayed at the comfy easy going STF hostel by the lighthouse and was delighted to meet the combined Trelleborg and Wirral (near Liverpool) Ukelele bands having a party in and around the lighthouse. Great fun and the perfect antidote to sea kayaking.


text:
Periodical article Leiden University catalogue WorldCat
Title: Religion and politics in contemporary Senegal
Author: Gifford, Paul
Periodical: African affairs: the journal of the Royal African Society (ISSN 1468-2621)
Geographic term: Senegal
Subjects: Muslim brotherhoods
Link: http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/115/461/688.abstract
Abstract: Senegal has a clientelist political system, which is personalized, opaque, and characterized by wide impunity for the political elite. The most salient social force in the country is the Sufi brotherhoods, especially the most important religious families within them, which have been an integral part of the clientelist system since the time of Diouf (1981-2000). Although the essence of a brotherhood is the disciples' submission to the will of the guide, it was never the case that a guide could simply deliver his disciples' votes to his chosen politician. Disciples could distinguish political from religious injunctions, and a combination of economic and political factors also influenced decisions. Nevertheless, the Mouride brotherhood in particular benefited under Abdoulaye Wade (2000-12), who publicly identified himself as a disciple, and, in turn, Mourides tended to give him their support. Macky Sall (2012-present) in his presidential election campaign appeared more negative towards all religious forces, a neglect seemingly evident in certain problems that have arisen since his election. Yet, though the brotherhoods still exercise considerable power, this article argues that their influence is waning. External factors from the wider Islamic world explain this decline in influence, as well as internal factors such as the commercialization of the religious families and the growing reluctance of increasingly educated disciples to be dictated to in political matters. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
package org.wx.sdk.card.object;

/**
 * 卡券基础信息字段
 * @author Rocye
 * @version 2017.12.19
 */
public class BaseInfo {
	//必填字段
	/** 卡券的商户logo,建议像素为300*300。*/
	private String logo_url;
	/** 码型:
	 * CODE_TYPE_TEXT 文本;
	 * CODE_TYPE_BARCODE 一维码;
	 * CODE_TYPE_QRCODE 二维码;
	 * CODE_TYPE_ONLY_QRCODE 二维码无code显示;
	 * CODE_TYPE_ONLY_BARCODE 一维码无code显示;
	 * CODE_TYPE_NONE 不显示code和条形码类型;*/
	private String code_type;
	/** 商户名字,字数上限为12个汉字。*/
	private String brand_name;
	/** 卡券名,字数上限为9个汉字。(建议涵盖卡券属性、服务及金额)。*/
	private String title;
	/** 券颜色。按色彩规范标注填写Color010-Color100。*/
	private String color;
	/** 卡券使用提醒,字数上限为16个汉字。*/
	private String notice;
	/** 卡券使用说明,字数上限为1024个汉字。*/
	private String description;
	/** 商品信息。 */
	private Sku sku;
	/** 使用日期,有效期的信息。 */
	private DateInfo date_info;

	//非必填字段
	/** 是否自定义Code码 。填写true或false,默认为false。 */
	private Boolean use_custom_code;
	/** 填入 GET_CUSTOM_CODE_MODE_DEPOSIT 表示该卡券为预存code模式卡券,须导入超过库存数目的自定义code后方可投放,
	 * 填入该字段后,quantity字段须为0,须导入code 后再增加库存 */
	private String get_custom_code_mode;
	/** 是否指定用户领取,填写true或false。默认为false。通常指定特殊用户群体 投放卡券或防止刷券时选择指定用户领取。 */
	private Boolean bind_openid;
	/** 客服电话。 */
	private String service_phone;
	/** 门店位置poiid。调用POI门店管理接口获取门店位置poiid。具备线下门店 的商户为必填。 */
	private String[] location_id_list;
	/** 设置本卡券支持全部门店,与location_id_list互斥 */
	private Boolean use_all_locations;
	/** 卡券顶部居中的按钮,仅在卡券状 态正常(可以核销)时显示 */
	private String center_title;
	/** 显示在入口下方的提示语 ,仅在卡券状态正常(可以核销)时显示。 */
	private String center_sub_title;
	/** 顶部居中的url ,仅在卡券状态正常(可以核销)时显示。 */
	private String center_url;
	/** 卡券跳转的小程序的user_name,仅可跳转该 公众号绑定的小程序。*/
	private String center_app_brand_user_name;
	/** 卡券跳转的小程序的path */
	private String center_app_brand_pass;
	/** 自定义跳转外链的入口名字。 */
	private String custom_url_name;
	/** 自定义跳转的URL。 */
	private String custom_url;
	/** 显示在入口右侧的提示语。 */
	private String custom_url_sub_title;
	/** 卡券跳转的小程序的user_name,仅可跳转该 公众号绑定的小程序。 */
	private String custom_app_brand_user_name;
	/** 卡券跳转的小程序的path */
	private String custom_app_brand_pass;
	/** 营销场景的自定义入口名称。 */
	private String promotion_url_name;
	/** 入口跳转外链的地址链接。 */
	private String promotion_url;
	/** 显示在营销入口右侧的提示语。 */
	private String promotion_url_sub_title;
	/** 卡券跳转的小程序的user_name,仅可跳转该 公众号绑定的小程序。 */
	private String promotion_app_brand_user_name;
	/** 卡券跳转的小程序的path */
	private String promotion_app_brand_pass;
	/** 每人可领券的数量限制,不填写默认为50。 */
	private String get_limit;
	/** 每人可核销的数量限制,不填写默认为50。 */
	private String use_limit;
	/** 卡券领取页面是否可分享。 */
	private String can_share;
	/** 卡券是否可转赠。 */
	private String can_give_friend;

	/**
	 * 无造构造器
	 */
	public BaseInfo() {
	}

	/**
	 * 构造器
	 * @param logo_url		卡券的商户logo,建议像素为300*300
	 * @param code_type		码型: "CODE_TYPE_TEXT"文本 "CODE_TYPE_BARCODE"一维码 "CODE_TYPE_QRCODE"二维码 "CODE_TYPE_ONLY_QRCODE",二维码无code显示; "CODE_TYPE_ONLY_BARCODE",一维码无code显示;CODE_TYPE_NONE, 不显示code和条形码类型
	 * @param brand_name	商户名字,字数上限为12个汉字
	 * @param title			卡券名,字数上限为9个汉字
	 * @param color			券颜色,按色彩规范标注填写Color010-Color100
	 * @param notice		卡券使用提醒,字数上限为16个汉字
	 * @param description	券使用说明,字数上限为1024个汉字
	 * @param sku			商品信息
	 * @param date_info		使用日期,有效期的信息
	 */
	public BaseInfo(String logo_url, String code_type, String brand_name, String title, String color, String notice,
					String description, Sku sku, DateInfo date_info) {
		this.logo_url = logo_url;
		this.code_type = code_type;
		this.brand_name = brand_name;
		this.title = title;
		this.color = color;
		this.notice = notice;
		this.description = description;
		this.sku = sku;
		this.date_info = date_info;
	}

	public String getLogo_url() {
		return logo_url;
	}
	public void setLogo_url(String logo_url) {
		this.logo_url = logo_url;
	}

	public String getCode_type() {
		return code_type;
	}
	public void setCode_type(String code_type) {
		this.code_type = code_type;
	}

	public String getBrand_name() {
		return brand_name;
	}
	public void setBrand_name(String brand_name) {
		this.brand_name = brand_name;
	}

	public String getTitle() {
		return title;
	}
	public void setTitle(String title) {
		this.title = title;
	}

	public String getColor() {
		return color;
	}
	public void setColor(String color) {
		this.color = color;
	}

	public String getNotice() {
		return notice;
	}
	public void setNotice(String notice) {
		this.notice = notice;
	}

	public String getDescription() {
		return description;
	}
	public void setDescription(String description) {
		this.description = description;
	}

	public Sku getSku() {
		return sku;
	}
	public void setSku(Sku sku) {
		this.sku = sku;
	}

	public DateInfo getDate_info() {
		return date_info;
	}
	public void setDate_info(DateInfo date_info) {
		this.date_info = date_info;
	}

	public Boolean getUse_custom_code() {
		return use_custom_code;
	}
	public void setUse_custom_code(Boolean use_custom_code) {
		this.use_custom_code = use_custom_code;
	}

	public String getGet_custom_code_mode() {
		return get_custom_code_mode;
	}
	public void setGet_custom_code_mode(String get_custom_code_mode) {
		this.get_custom_code_mode = get_custom_code_mode;
	}

	public Boolean getBind_openid() {
		return bind_openid;
	}
	public void setBind_openid(Boolean bind_openid) {
		this.bind_openid = bind_openid;
	}

	public String getService_phone() {
		return service_phone;
	}
	public void setService_phone(String service_phone) {
		this.service_phone = service_phone;
	}

	public String[] getLocation_id_list() {
		return location_id_list;
	}
	public void setLocation_id_list(String[] location_id_list) {
		this.location_id_list = location_id_list;
	}

	public Boolean getUse_all_locations() {
		return use_all_locations;
	}
	public void setUse_all_locations(Boolean use_all_locations) {
		this.use_all_locations = use_all_locations;
	}

	public String getCenter_title() {
		return center_title;
	}
	public void setCenter_title(String center_title) {
		this.center_title = center_title;
	}

	public String getCenter_sub_title() {
		return center_sub_title;
	}
	public void setCenter_sub_title(String center_sub_title) {
		this.center_sub_title = center_sub_title;
	}

	public String getCenter_url() {
		return center_url;
	}
	public void setCenter_url(String center_url) {
		this.center_url = center_url;
	}

	public String getCenter_app_brand_user_name() {
		return center_app_brand_user_name;
	}
	public void setCenter_app_brand_user_name(String center_app_brand_user_name) {
		this.center_app_brand_user_name = center_app_brand_user_name;
	}

	public String getCenter_app_brand_pass() {
		return center_app_brand_pass;
	}
	public void setCenter_app_brand_pass(String center_app_brand_pass) {
		this.center_app_brand_pass = center_app_brand_pass;
	}

	public String getCustom_url_name() {
		return custom_url_name;
	}
	public void setCustom_url_name(String custom_url_name) {
		this.custom_url_name = custom_url_name;
	}

	public String getCustom_url() {
		return custom_url;
	}
	public void setCustom_url(String custom_url) {
		this.custom_url = custom_url;
	}

	public String getCustom_url_sub_title() {
		return custom_url_sub_title;
	}
	public void setCustom_url_sub_title(String custom_url_sub_title) {
		this.custom_url_sub_title = custom_url_sub_title;
	}

	public String getCustom_app_brand_user_name() {
		return custom_app_brand_user_name;
	}
	public void setCustom_app_brand_user_name(String custom_app_brand_user_name) {
		this.custom_app_brand_user_name = custom_app_brand_user_name;
	}

	public String getCustom_app_brand_pass() {
		return custom_app_brand_pass;
	}

	public void setCustom_app_brand_pass(String custom_app_brand_pass) {
		this.custom_app_brand_pass = custom_app_brand_pass;
	}
	public String getPromotion_url_name() {
		return promotion_url_name;
	}

	public void setPromotion_url_name(String promotion_url_name) {
		this.promotion_url_name = promotion_url_name;
	}
	public String getPromotion_url() {
		return promotion_url;
	}

	public void setPromotion_url(String promotion_url) {
		this.promotion_url = promotion_url;
	}
	public String getPromotion_url_sub_title() {
		return promotion_url_sub_title;
	}

	public void setPromotion_url_sub_title(String promotion_url_sub_title) {
		this.promotion_url_sub_title = promotion_url_sub_title;
	}
	public String getPromotion_app_brand_user_name() {
		return promotion_app_brand_user_name;
	}

	public void setPromotion_app_brand_user_name(String promotion_app_brand_user_name) {
		this.promotion_app_brand_user_name = promotion_app_brand_user_name;
	}
	public String getPromotion_app_brand_pass() {
		return promotion_app_brand_pass;
	}

	public void setPromotion_app_brand_pass(String promotion_app_brand_pass) {
		this.promotion_app_brand_pass = promotion_app_brand_pass;
	}

	public String getGet_limit() {
		return get_limit;
	}
	public void setGet_limit(String get_limit) {
		this.get_limit = get_limit;
	}

	public String getUse_limit() {
		return use_limit;
	}
	public void setUse_limit(String use_limit) {
		this.use_limit = use_limit;
	}

	public String getCan_share() {
		return can_share;
	}
	public void setCan_share(String can_share) {
		this.can_share = can_share;
	}

	public String getCan_give_friend() {
		return can_give_friend;
	}
	public void setCan_give_friend(String can_give_friend) {
		this.can_give_friend = can_give_friend;
	}

}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Fair warning: This is not going to be your typical plug-and-play Blu Ray set up. But if you are a true video/audiophile, you will be well-rewarded. I work in the technical side of the film industry and it took me about 90 minutes to calibrate things--this wasn't me being picky, this was just figuring out how to get the player to perform to its full capabilities with my 4K Samsung TV (which should have been much simpler, considering that they 'recognize' one another once connected...). I was less interested in seeing the '4K resolution' (as many have debated, the term is either inaccurate or meaningless but it's representative of a significant leap forward from 1080p). If you have a 4K television and an upscaling player, you've likely experienced something relatively close to this with a well-mastered disc--but with one of the new discs in the rather limited line that is currently offered here, you'll see more fluid movement and crystalline close-ups--and I have a few tips to get you there (in a moment). What I was more curious about experiencing were the HDR capabilities of my TV, which had yet to be put to use. And that is what really sells this format, in my opinion: the depth and color are extraordinary. Once you get everything hooked-up, whether or not you are bypassing your receiver (if it doesn't support HDR passthrough and several other things, you'll have to), you will likely be underwhelmed by what you first see. I played the 4K HDR disc of MAD MAX: FURY ROAD as one of my 'calibration tools' and everything appeared scorched and overly saturated. You really have to be patient and play with your television's settings, the Tools settings in the Blu Ray controls (*which you can only access while you are playing a disc) and make sure that you are getting HDR picture from your television, that the resolution is 3840 x 2160 (or 2160p), and that the 24fps setting is disabled if you truly want to experience either 50 or 60 fps, which your television should default to if you turn it off (on both TV and player). Each of these three elements contributes to the full experience of 4K HDR. Then, you need to go in and tinker with the display settings on both machines. This is where I really spent the bulk of my time (and a little frustration). Ideally, try more than one HDR disc if you have purchased a few. I found that switching back and forth between the surreality of MAD MAX and the gritty realism of SICARIO really helped me establish a good balance. Ultimately, in tips that I've gotten from friends who've actually worked on the technical end of this project and in forums I consulted (as there is no calibration tool--and this really demands it), I discovered that having both the backlight and the contrast turned all the way up are essential to really maximizing HDR content (as well as making sure that you are enabling any black and deep color options). From there, I'd say that the preference on elements like saturation, etc is entirely your own. (Were I to recommend a 'User Setting,' I'd go with 'Dynamic,' which most fully seems to take advantage of the color spectrum and contrast of HDR and 4K.) Remember, you need to do this on both your HDR 4K television as well as your UBD-K8500 to really start to see results. Once I was at the 'tinker' stage, things got dramatically different from the Blu Ray format to which I've been accustomed for nearly ten years. But there are a few shortcomings / downfalls here: the instruction manual is paltry and should really indicate that these things must be done in order to get the best 'bang for your buck'--Samsung is riding on hype and others to spread the gospel, apparently; also, a criticism that is virtually across-the-board with everyone who has purchased this player: the remote control is lacking. As in, replace it. (Not having dedicated FF / RW buttons and building them into the chapter skip buttons is just silly.) It is minimalist and works alright for the Samsung premium television line, where you barely use the remote, but here, a solid remote control is warranted and they dropped the ball. For anyone who is going to spend $400 (and then some on the new format's offering of discs), I would say that this is a litmus test: either you're a true early adapter or you should wait-it-out until the prices drop and competition for the player arrives. All signs indicate that, with this kind of early demand (the trouble I went to in order to purchase the UBD-K8500 was unprecedented), 4K HDR is not just a fad. Hope I was of some help here. This was a project and I just wanted to offer shortcuts to those who are eager to try this but not eager to troubleshoot it.
I have a 65 inch 4k TV (brand is Element, bought from Costco a few months ago). I have a Samsung 4k upconvert blu ray player and was happy with that, but wanted this true 4k when it came out and fortunately I ordered it just on time (because a few minutes later, Bestbuy ran out.) Got it quickly in the mail - 2 days UPS - nicely packed. It is connected to Vizio SB3821-C6 38" 2.1 Bluetooth Soundbar via digital output. Internet via ethernet cable and to the TV with the same HDMI cable that I was using before. Regular DVD looks good. Didn't expect it to look * that * good, but when I popped a blu ray disk in, it really was stunning. First played Cleopatra (Elizabeth Taylor) blu ray. I didn't expect it to upconvert 1080p source to 4k that well. Very sharp (without noises). No color bleedings. (Default setting on TV, and following settings on the player: Deep Color: on, Resolution at 2060p, 24p to on. Later tried Everest blu ray from Netflix that came in today. It looked amazing. A visiting friend felt it looked great, too. I tried playing it with the other Samsung 4k upconvert player, and honestly, I thought the true 4k player looked better. We tried an episode of Netflix stream show - Frankie and Grace. This is one of the few shows that is in 4k. It loads quickly (I have fast Time Warner Cable 300K speed) - just a few seconds, and no pauses at all. It simply looked AMAZING. My friend and I stood about two feet away from the screen and we were able to see all the juicy details. I thought a regular Blu Ray looks good with this player, but real 4k Netflix looks even better. It was crystal clear. I am not saying that I can't wait until I buy a 4k blu ray movie (on a disk). They are expensive and the selection is still limited (as of now, February 2016). Am looking forward to buying them for newer movies that I do not have on blu ray yet in due course. I use a Canon 5d Mark II with 24-70 mm f 2.8 L lens to take photos of the screen (ASA 1,000, hand held). One is whole screen, and the other is a foot away. I hope these photos are useful. Now the bad news: the remote is small, and it uses (supplied) button battery. Fortunately the old remote that came with the previous BR player works (it is also Samsung.) I can't believe an expensive player like this comes with this tiny remote. There is no fast forward button (or go back) - you'd have to hold the "next chapter" button down to do that. Many people are going to be upset about this. Lastly, no HDMI cable either.
Ahhh. 4K. UHD. BLU RAY. A new age is upon us folks. 4K UHD BLU RAY has officially arrived! It has been a good week. On Wednesday February 10, 2016 I received the first and only 4K UHD BLU RAY PLAYER currently available to the public. Then on Sunday February 14, 2016 I will have my first 4k UHD BLU RAY movie from Best Buy. Before getting into the review let me give you a rundown of my equipment used for the review. I will also be omitting any review of the streaming services on this player since we all have these services in one way or another on our tv's, rokus, and etc. This review is strictly for the player and functionality itself. My equipment: Sony XBR55X850C 55" 4K UHD TV(10 Bit, HDR, Rec. 2020 compatible) Pioneer Elite SC-95 9.2 Channel, 11 Channel Pre-out 4K Upscaling Receiver (4K, 10 Bit, HDR, Rec. 2020, Dolby Atmos, DTS:X capable) Emotiva XPA-3 200 WPC Amplifier Emotiva UPA 700 80 WPC Amplifier Oppo BDP 103 BLU RAY/4K Upscaling Player HSU VTF-2 MK4 Subwoofer Polk Rti8 (Front left and Right) Polk Csi A6 Center Channel Polk Monitor 60 Surrounds Polk Monitor 40 Surround Back 4 Polk mounted on ceiling speakers From power off, to powering on boot time is very fast. Upon starting up the Blu Ray player, it automatically notifies you that there is an update. But it does not tell you what the update is for. The update says it can take up to 5 minutes and it took about 3 or 4 minutes. This will probably depend on your ISP, whether you are using wifi, or Ethernet. I was using Ethernet with 120 Mbps down speed. Once it updated itself it was off to the races! Since, at the time of arrival of the player there were no 4K discs available, I wanted to see how the player handled 4K upscaling with Blu Ray discs. And I was able to use the Oppo as a reference standard since the Oppo does an excellent job at 4k upscaling. The first Blu Ray I tried was more recent material in the movie Everest. This is a beautiful movie with very white whites and excellent color saturation. There's not too many dark scenes in this movie so I wasn't really looking for contrast. Anyways….I was able to do side by side comparisons by using the Samsung via disc, and using my Pioneer receiver to switch the input over to my Oppo where I could refer back to the same movie utilizing the player's dlna feature via my Plex dlna server where all of my rips are full 1080p with all the HD AUDIO streams including Dolby Atmos. This was a huge benefit since I was able to use the exact same equipment, source and media for comparisons so none of my findings would be skewed in any way. And I was quite surprised by my findings. I could not find any noticeable differences in the picture quality or sound quality. Not even the slightest difference. And believe me I tried. The Samsung matched the Oppo in every aspect of picture quality. Each scene I viewed on the Samsung, I would then switch over to the Oppo and critique the same scene. I even paused numerous scenes, switching back and forth and in addition took pictures with my iphone to see if I could see any differences, in contrast, color saturation, brightness, sharpness, noise and any other differences I could see whether big or small and I literally could not see any difference in picture quality. The Samsung matched my Oppo pound for pound in 4k upscaling. The sound department left me with the same findings. Everest, while not the best Dolby Atmos mix is still a pretty solid one; is spacious and hits hard in the bass department. The next movie I demoed was Spectre. As far as Spectre, while I was disappointed that this movie was not released with a Dolby Atmos mix, any disappoint that I had immediately went away as soon as the movie started. While not being a Dolby Atmos mix, Spectre has one of THE best soundtracks I have ever heard. Not only it is ridiculously accurate with clarity at deafening levels, this DTS-HD track is one the most full, dynamic, broad and spacious ear pleasures I have ever heard that is not a Dolby Atmos track. Using Dolby Surround enhances the dynmaics and spaciousness even more. Right after the classic Bond trumpet intro sounds, there is a deep bass drum thump that hits with a force that I'm not sure I have ever experienced before. Its not the loudest or deepest bass I've ever heard. Its just a different sound. You have to hear it to understand what I'm talking about. I remember hearing it in theatres thinking "what is that" and then smiling knowing how much I was looking forward to see how my HSU VTF-2 MK4 sub would fare when replicating the same sound in my home theatre and the blu ray (and my subwoofer)doesn't disappoint. And neither does the Samsung. It sounds exactly the same compared to when playing on my $500 Oppo. Every screech, every thump, every high pitched scream, yell, car crash and fist fight sounds as good on the Samsung as it does on my Oppo. As far as speed, the player is very snappy and I haven't noticed any lag between the remote and sending commands to the receiver. Opening up apps and streaming services is very quick as well. Much faster than the Oppo.. The remote is very small. Fits in the palm of your hand, which I do like but I wish the remote had a backlight. The lack of backlit keys kinda cancels out the convenience of the remote's petit size since most people watch movies in the dark and its hard to know where the buttons are and what you are pressing. I'm sure over time yo will get used to the buttons and be able to navigate the remote's buttons from memory, but the remote is so small that I found myself frantically look for my phone so that I can shine the phone's light on the remote to see where the buttons were. If my phone wasn't beside me then I had to engage Alexa(Amazon Echo) to turn on my philips hue lights. After a few times of this it became very annoying. I use a harmony remote for all of my equipment but at the time there are no remotes codes for me to add the device to my harmony software. My only gripe so far with this UHD BLU RAY player is the dlna functionality. Samsung touts their hardware as being able to play pretty much any file you can think of or throw at it. So I was very excited to know that I would be able to stream all my full HD & HD Audio mkv rips over dlna through my plex server. This however was not the case….at all. I was frustratingly disappointed after I tried mkv file after mkv file after mkv file and being greeted with a "This file type is not yet supported"….What??? However, there may be an upside to this. I have had numerous experiences with inferior electronics that could not play certain mkv files. Heck even my Xbox One that Microsoft claims they want to be your multimedia hub can't even play my mkv rips. Most devices that can not play a certain file type will usually greet you with a "this file type is not supported". Samsung however tells me "this file type is not YET supported". What exactly does this mean? Does the "yet" imply that its only a matter of time before Samsung updates the player to accommodate playback of these file types? One can only hope this is the case if you are like me and dlna streaming of your files on your local network is of utmost importance to you. I'm an optimist so I'm going to stick with that and keep my fingers crossed. I have already emailed Samsung support about the matter….Still awaiting a response….. As far as I'm concerned, minus the lack of dlna functionality, the Samsung UHD player has lived up to the hype. Is it a high end blu ray player? Not at all by any means. Does it perform like one? Based on your individual meaning of what is "high end", for me I have to say it does as far as audio and video quality. Again, things can only improve with future updates and hopefully an update to support all the formats that Samsung claims its supports over dlna. For me, the lack of dlna compatibility is a big asterisks. I rip all my content and then stream it through my plex server using my Oppo and the files play flawlessly. No lag, no stuttering, no hiccups, no problem…PERIOD. I try to stay away from having to load and unload a disc every time I wanna watch a movie. The only time I need to use a disc is for 3d Blu Ray. I did find 3-4 mkv files that did play, BUT the HD Audio was stripped down to lossy DTS instead of DTS HD Master. Again, this may just be due to Samsung wanting to get ahead of the industry to be the first player to market and releasing their product before all of its functionalities are in place and just push a firmware update to the player after the fact. Here's hoping that's the case. So this may not be an issue for some of you. If Samsung fixes this issue I will more than likely keep this player. The only way I would opt to buy another player is if Panasonic or Oppo offers something drastically superior with their releases which may not be worth it when you consider price to value ratio. *Still waiting on 4K Blu Rays to add to review.
Not worth $400. Returned to store.
Ok, I bought a 65" Samsung 8500 SUHD tv last November and love it. Especially watching blu-rays since regular tv doesn't benefit from the 4k yet. I also bought a Samsung 6500 up-scaling Blu-ray player for about $100 and it really brought new life to my blu-ray collection. I've been researching this 8500 4k player for a while now and have been drooling over getting one since it was released in March but I hadn't pulled the trigger until last week when I decided to buy it and 3 movies in 4K including The Martian, Mad Max Fury Road and San Andreas. I spent a little time last night making sure I had the best connections using my ONKYO receiver. I did like the feature this player has with a split HDMI output. One for video and one for audio so I was able to send the video directly to my tv and take advantage of the BD WISE feature that I couldn't use before. It really set all of the settings to make a great picture BUT it wasn't any better then my $100 upscaling player. I tried very very hard to make it better to justify keeping it and my 3 movies but after watching The Martian and comparing the 4K to the up-scaled Blu-ray I could not tell any difference at all and trust me, I tried. In fact some scenes were not as clear on this player compared to the up-scaling one. One scene at the beginning when the storm is coming over the mountain it was juttery. And several times the person seemed to have what we called back in the day as snow (dots) on them. So, sadly, I have packed this one back up and planned to return it tomorrow to Best-buy. I'm very disappointed. Yesterday when this arrived I was like a kid at Christmas. I purchased the 3 movies from Amazon and they gratefully made an exception for me to return the movies, including The Martian that I had already opened. So as far as would I recommend this player to a friend? ONLY if they didn't own an up-scaling player already and just had $400 to blow. but honestly, the $100 4K up-scaling player looks just as good to me as this one and the remote control is much nicer too so I'd buy it and let the prices drop on the 4K players and DVDs. Plus, let them work out any kinks with the players. I knew better then to buy a first edition.
Sets the standard for UHD quality!
OK, I'm an early adopter. As such, I'm used to buying the first generation of devices and being very disappointed. Sometimes things don't work right, other times they don't work at all. It goes with the territory. So naturally, when my UBD-8500 arrived, that's what I expected. It turns out, I was pleasently surprised. == Appearance == When I first saw this player my thought was "My God it's ugly! Who on Earth would want a curved player? I sure hope who ever made that decision was fired." When I actually got the player myself I realized the curve wasn't as bad as I was thinking. It's a very slight curve. I still wish Samsung hadn't made the stupid decision to do that, but it's not as bad as I thought it would be. I know another thing people were concerned with was that the player's plastic case would show fingerprints and scuff marks. Yes, it does, but how often do you actually touch your Blu-ray player? Mine sits with my other AV equipment and the only touching is on the buttons and pushing in the tray. So for me, this was no big deal. One thing I don't like regarding the appearance/design is the location of the USB port. There is a single port, right on the front. I wanted to permanently install a USB flash drive as a BD-Live storage location. I bought the smallest flash drive I could find. Unfortunately, it was still to big to be able to close the USB port's cover over it. So rather than having this plastic cover hanging there, I cut it off. I really wish there was a USB port on the back too. While a front USB is great when you want to quickly plug in a drive to bring up some family photos or something, it's not ideal when you want something permanently attached as storage. Finally, the biggest appearance detriment for me was that there is no front LCD display. I like being able to glance at the player and seeing how much time is left. Sure, it's on the on screen display but that doesn't meet my needs. Why? Well generally when I want to glance at the time remaining it's when I'm watching some movie my wife wanted to watch that I hate and I want to casually glance to see how much more time I have to sit through it; I don't want to outwardly press a button to look at how much awfulness remains! == Accessories == Other than the player the only things you'll get are a manual, a power cord, and a remote and battery. Let's focus on the remote for a minute. It is probably the worst remote I've ever used. It is very small, in fact so small it uses a button cell battery (included) for power. It feels incredibly cheap and needs to be pointed directly at my player to work. Fortunately for me, this is no big deal as I use a Harmony remote which already has codes available for the UBD-K8500. == Connecting == For full disclosure, I have an HDCP 2.2 compatible AVR and TV and HDMI 2.0a compatible AVR and TV. I experienced no handshake issues and everything worked perfectly as soon as I hooked it up. If you have a 1080p TV it will downscale a UHD BD (at least the ones I have, I can't guarantee all of them as this is a decision each studio gets to make) so it is viewable. However, from what I've read, if you have a non-HDCP 2.2 TV you're out of luck on some discs. That being said, if you have an HDCP 2.2 capable TV but not an AVR, the player has dual HDMI output so you can run your audio through the AVR and the video directly to the TV. A nice touch during this time of constantly changing standards. == Movies == Now for the most important part, the movie quality! The image is truly stunning. The picture is incredibly crisp and the colors on an HDR display are out of this world. Blu-rays to me set the standard for high quality HD. I can definitely say that UHD Blu-ray discs have exceeded that standard. On top of that, my regular Blu-ray's look fantastic too. The player does a great job of upscaling a 1080p disc to 2160p. Even 480p DVDs look pretty nice. While the library of UHD BDs is very small right now (I only own 4), They look phenomenal and I'm very thrilled with the picture quality I'm getting. It absolutely beats what you see from 4K streaming services. == Conclusion == Anyone buying this player is an early adopter. That means you've all had the same kinds of experiences I have in the past. With this player I think you'll be very happy. There are always going to be some minor software issues that will require firmware updates to correct (a few issues already seem fixed in the 1003 firmware that came out last week), but overall it works great and provides an amazing movie viewing experience. If I could redesign the look of the player I would, but I bought the player to watch movies, not to be a piece of art. As far as movie viewing goes, this provides the best in-home movie experience I have ever had!
When it comes to audio-video equipment, I typically buy Sony everything, and when I don't, I typically find myself somewhere between disappointed and very disappointed. I have (2) Sony BDP-S6200's that do a great job upscaling 1080p BDs to 4k on my 85" and 49" Sony XBR UHD TVs. I was disappointed when I discovered BDP-S6200's would only upscale to 4k and not actually read 4k UHD BDs. I immediately drove to my local Best Buy to fix the situation where I was further disappointed to find out that Sony does not yet make a 4k UHD BD player. So I purchased the Samsung UBD-K8500 on sale for a great price. THE REMOTE IS THE WORST EVER (but you'll get used to it - maybe): When I saw the remote while unpacking, I thought it was way too small, but the first real frustration came from trying to install the single CR2032 lithium disc battery (battery included) – I had to use a small jeweler's screw driver (not included) to remove the round, plastic, rotate-and-lock/unlock battery retainer. It opens easily with a coin (also not included) when there's already a battery installed, but not so much otherwise. Getting the retainer back on can also be a bit tricky – again, a coin helps. The real frustration with the remote came when actually trying to use it. The buttons are too small and too few functions as compared to my Sony remotes. You basically have to go into 1 of 2 pop-up menus and navigate through them to do some basic things like "rewind", FF, change the audio track or turn subtitling on/off. DISC READING ISSUES: I don't know if some of the following relates to 4k BD/disc-manufacturing issues or not, but I've convinced myself that there are some disc reading issues with the UBD-K8500. The player couldn't read the first 4k BD ('Good Fellas') that I tried to play and made a lot of noise while attempting to do so. Later, I got a replacement BD from Amazon and it did the same thing except on 1 of 4 or 5 attempts I saw a picture flash on the screen and then it reported that the BD "does not meet specifications" as opposed to "unable to read". Meanwhile, the UBD-K8500 played "Sully", "Criminal", "Risen" and "Martian" fine except one of these BDs also failed to play the very first time with the player indicating the BD "does not meet specifications". So, I also returned the replacement 'Good Fellas' BD, thinking there's a disc manufacturing issue. Three weeks has now passed and I just got (3) new 4k BDs and just checked them out to see if they'd play: "Accountant" and "Magnificent Seven" each played just fine on the first and only attempt. Then, when I put "Deepwater Horizon" in, I put the standard 1080p version in first by mistake, which didn't play the first time, "couldn't read", but did play the second time. When I realized it was the wrong BD, I put the 4k BD in and I attempted to play it 5 times and each time the player indicated the BD "does not meet specifications" and then auto-ejected the BD. I'd about given up when I decided to power the player off with the 4k BD in the tray, turned it back on after 10 seconds and guess what: it auto-played just fine. I kept trying various things to get it to fail again, including playing the 1080p version again, but it never failed after another 5 or 6 restarts. Sounds like a firmware issue to me – and I've got 40+ years of firmware experience. THE PICTURE IS AMAZING: When the 4k UHD discs do play, the picture is quite amazing on my 85" Sony XBR TV – even critiquing it up close from about 2 feet. AUDIO-VIDEO SYNC ISSUES: Another issue occurs when I rewind to replay something: The audio often gets out of sync with the video – not just a little bit, but SEVERAL SECONDS out of sync - it seemed like 2 or 3 seconds – much more than I've ever seen before. Pause-Play (as you might think), along with other various attempts, does not fix the problem. The only thing that seems to work is cycling the power on the player – very frustrating and, depending on the disc, can be time consuming. PICTURE LOCK-UP: I read some of the reviews and noted that there were some complaints about the picture locking up while in play-mode. I had not experienced this until today. On a whim I decided to hit the pause/play button on the remote and it started up again. SUMMARY: If a Sony player had been available, it would have been my first choice, but it wasn't and, since I got a great price, I'm not sorry I bought the Samsung. It has a great picture output and, hopefully, most these issues, except the remote, can be corrected in firmware. However, I think they could do a lot better job testing these technically complex products and correcting significant firmware and/or silicon issues before going to market.
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Since this player came out I have been waiting for a restock to try out. Lot of positive reviews and people talking about the picture quality. I have several UHD movies which include BD copy as well. I'm using a Samsung UN55JS8500 TV which is 4:4:4, HDR, and have the player hooked up to an HDCP 2.2 compatible Denon AVR-X4200W. I wanted to test the picture quality to compare with my PS4 which I use currently as a BD player. I hooked up both systems using the Denon as my hdmi switcher. Cables connecting both players were identical high speed 2.2 compliant HDMI cables. I played a full scene of The Martian on UHD, then swapped to the same scene on BD. I repeated this test with Mad Max as well as Sicario, each time choosing several scenes for each movie to get a wide range of comparison images. I was left questioning why anyone would spend $400 for this upgrade. The HDR colors did seem more vibrant, however, it was akin to having the TV set to "Dynamic" instead of "Movie" modes. Sitting within 10 ft. of the screen and I was unable to see a difference in resolution. I actually preferred seeing the detail with the BD non-HDR version better! I realize most of these films are 2k remastered in 4K, and true 4K content is few and far between... However, this isn't worth $400 for me. I would rather upgrade another component before getting this. While testing I had no handshake issues with the 4K player, it performed well, and once setup appropriately it delivered uncompressed Dolby Atmos or DTS-HD Master Audio to my receiver. The remote is tiny, like the original iPod mini. I will wait for these to come down in price before upgrading my setup. If you don't have a quality Blu Ray player now, I may suggest this for you... But even then it's hard to turn your cheek to a quality BD player that is a quarter of the price.
I originally purchased this product last year when it was $400 and promptly returned it thinking it wasn't worth the price. I recently purchased an open box deal for $175 and played with it for a few weeks. It's a decent player, clearly better than the XBox 1s, but that difference in picture quality isn't major and not worth purchasing a dedicated player for. I would say it provides a 10% bump in quality and deeper blacks than the XB1s. I only have 4 hdmi ports which are all being used, so swapping between my Apple TV and UHD Player is kind of annoying. The real issue for me is the remote and just how truly awful it is. The fact that its very small isn't the issue, it's the button layout is really squeezed in and makes it very difficult to navigate. I'm someone who likes to ff and rw a lot when I watch a movie. That is nearly impossible to do with this remote and the way the general software works. I like being able to simply hold a button to get to the scene I want. On this you hold the button for a few seconds then the rw/ff option goes away and I kept constantly missing the spot I was trying to go to. A lot of times while trying to get to the exact spot I wanted I would accidentally hit the wrong button and it'll take me all the way back to the home screen and I'll have to relaunch the disc. It drove me absolutely crazy. As much as I hate the Xbox One media remote at least that remote glows in the dark and while small, the buttons are spaced out so there's very little chance of accidentally hitting the wrong button. The onscreen navigation functionality on the XB1S is just as irritating as the Samsung player. I don't understand why I can't find a player that allows for the remote to actually, control the device! Without activating some awful onscreen navigation system. The other problem with this, is the HDR format isn't as settled as I thought. There will be players released later this year that support Dolby Vision, as well as several studios signed on and there still hasn't been any real sales on UHD Movies. I'm not investing heavily in UHD Blu-rays only to find out Dolby Vision HDR versions of those same movies will be released next year. No, that's not happening. So until the HDR situation is settled, new players are released that support Dolby Vision and the players AND UHDs become reasonably priced. I'm bowing out of this mess. This from someone who has an 4k OLED. Of the current players on the market it's the best one available right now. Sure you can get an Oppo but apparently people are having issues or a Panasonic. But both those players are over $500. I haven't seen them, but really how much better can the picture quality be over the Samsung? This is only worthwhile if you can get it on sale AND you plan on going all in on UHD Blu-rays. If not there's no point in getting a UHD Player right now. I would recommend waiting until the end of the year when there are more options.


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Hands on: Monitor Audio Airstream S300 review
The compatibility issue is annoying, but there's no denying this speaker five stars Tested at £250
Not yet rated By What Hi-Fi? 10 September 2014
What is a hands on review?
There's a lot to love about the Monitor Audio Airstream S300, but also a big problem – it supports iOS mobile devices only.
It's headscratching to understand why a speaker manufacturer would be so selective with its audience, and frustrating when a product is this good.
PCs and Macs are supported via AirPlay, but if you're using any non-iOS phone or tablet, you're stuck with 3.5mm playback only – even its proprietary Airstream Direct method is iOS only.
We'll give Monitor Audio the benefit of the doubt, though. We know that, back when it was designing the A100 stereo amp, Apple did not allow its AirPlay technology to be featured on any device that also featured Bluetooth.
Still, if you're one of the many iOS users out there, the S300 is worth considering.
Solidly made from a mixture of mineral-filled polymer and reinforced-glass trims, it packs four amplifiers driving its four CCAM drive units, configured into stereo pairs of bass units and tweeters.
Altogether, the amplification delivers an output of 140W; there's no shortage of room-filling power here. The S300s' curved design gives a wide soundfield too.
When it comes to streaming, there are two ways - AirPlay or Airstream Direct. The latter connects your service device directly to the S300's own network, which is great for when there's no wi-fi available but restrictive for day-to-day use, as you'll only be able to play songs and playlists stored locally or offline.
We opt for AirPlay, and while it still can't match the simplicity and speed of Bluetooth pairing, there's a picture-led Quick Start guide in the box that has our speaker running within a few minutes.
It's a little restricted on format support, as AirPlay is only capable of AAC, ALAC and MP3 playback, but that will cover all iTunes purchases and streaming from services such as Spotify.
We play Lana Del Rey's West Coast and the S300's rich, full-bodied tone jumps to it; Lana's drowsy, breathy vocal is presented with expression and clarity.
The midrange has a wonderfully clean character, and there are stacks of detail, giving a real insight into the track's subtler moments. Bass could do with a touch more refinement, demonstrating a solid and weighty punch, but one that could be slightly tauter.
It's far from heavy-handed though, and integrates well with the midrange for a clear, confident performance.
The midrange stretches up into a smooth, controlled top end that can handle the handclaps on Kingdom's Bank Head without ever drifting into sharpness or hard territory.
It's an alluring sound that grabs your attention right away and holds it, indulging you in a detailed and dynamic performance that will entertain time and again.
Android users have been rather cruelly left out of the Airstream S300's party, but iOS users should most certainly RSVP.
'Hands on reviews' are a journalist's first impressions of a piece of kit based on spending some time with it. It may be just a few moments, or a few hours. The important thing is we have been able to play with it ourselves and can give you some sense of what it's like to use, even if it's only an embryonic view.
Best Bluetooth speakers under $100


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MANILA, Philippines—Malacañang on Monday welcomed the United States (US) government's commitment of over P300 million intel support to the Philippines.
"We welcome the United States' commitment in fighting terrorism. This shows that our military alliance with the United States remains strong," Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo said in a statement.
The US assistance came after the recent bombings in Mindanao, a region marred with years of unrest and terrorism.
"Terrorism knows no boundaries, politics, religion, and creed. It is the new evil in the world that strikes at every country and every continent," Panelo said.
"We need all the help as every member-country in the United Nations needs the assistance and cooperation of each other to combat and crush terrorism," he added.
"We assure the nation that security for our people have been enhanced," Panelo said.


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Tag Archives: contributors
Jb Audras 10:45 pm on December 29, 2021
Tags: contributions ( 3 ), contributors, team-update ( 33 ), week in core ( 158 ), Year in Core
A Year in Core – 2021
Here's some aggregate data for 2021 about WordPress CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. contribution on TracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress.. Please note: it only include code contributions and it does not include contributions on GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the 'pull request' where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ repositories like GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses 'blocks' to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/.
The raw data for this post are on this public spreadsheet. You might find that easier to read if you have low vision or colorblindness; the graphics below are a snapshot pulled together to include as much information as possible in this blogpost.
General Trac overview
In 2021, the WordPress Core team shipped 1852 commits. 2797 tickets were opened, 2732 tickets were closed, and 408 were reopened.
Also, 2572 people contributed to WordPress source code using Trac, and 305 people made their very first contribution to WordPress Core ♥
Commits 62 175 110 97 142 286 174 175 103 57 327 144 1852
Tickets closed 236 315 372 147 182 355 248 210 157 88 271 151 2732
Tickets reopened 26 33 45 21 25 37 77 36 22 19 31 36 408
Tickets created 200 280 371 177 197 320 288 297 161 126 190 190 2797
New contributors 14 43 14 22 35 37 15 12 18 14 71 10 305
Contributors 120 229 165 117 280 400 154 132 156 90 555 174 2572
This chart can be scrolled horizontally
Check out the Trac timeline in the graph below:
Here's how many props and new contributors the Core project had per month. The most prolific month was November, in the WordPress 5.9 betaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. cycle, followed by June (WP 5.8 beta cycle).
Components activity
How did 2021's commits break out by Core Component?
The most prolific components were:
Build/Test Tools with 310 commits (17% of all listed commits)
Docs with 198 commits (11% of all listed commits)
Editor with 188 commits (10.5% of all listed commits)
Bundled Themes with 144 commits (8% of all listed commits)
Coding Standards with 140 commits (8% of all listed commits)
Then comes Media, REST APIREST API The REST API is an acronym for the RESTful Application Program Interface (API) that uses HTTP requests to GET, PUT, POST and DELETE data. It is how the front end of an application (think "phone app" or "website") can communicate with the data store (think "database" or "file system") https://developer.wordpress.org/rest-api/., Code Modernization, External Librairies, Administration, Upgrade/Install, Site Health and Posts/Post Types. The other components each had fewer than 30 commits this year.
Data fetched from WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ profiles
The data below comes from matching contributors' usernames, as mentioned in Trac props, with their profiles on WordPress.org. One caveat: usernames that did not match a profile on dotorg, or that left blank their country/company information, filled in non-exploitable info got ignored. After all, "The Universe" or "The place to be" are not known countries 😆
Contributions by country
The next graph shows the number of props received by country. The top eight countries, based on the number of props received, are these:
United States with 1142 contributions
France with 266 contributions
Russia with 227 contributions
The Netherlands with 225 contributions
India with 219 contributions
Australia with 211 contributions
United Kingdom with 112 contributions
Canada with 102 contributions
Contributors (people) by country
In 2021, people from more than 56 countries contributed to WordPress Core.
The top eight countries by contributions, expressed as the number of props received, are:
United States with 155 people
India with 58 people
United Kingdom with 34 people
France with 26 people
Germany with 23 people
The Netherlands with 20 people
Canada with 16 people
Australia with 15 people
Contributions by company
In 2021, people from at least 236 companies contributed to WP Core.
These companies each contributed (well, their people did) to more than 50 commits:
Automattic with 785 contributions
Yoast with 379 contributions
Whodunit with 215 contributions
Advies en zo with 191 contributions
Bluehost with 146 contributions
Human Made with 131 contributions
Google with 87 contributions
iThemes with 73 contributions
Dekode Interaktiv with 52 contributions
Contributors (people) by company
The graph below is also interesting, because it shows that a huge number of companies have only one contributor—or a very few contributors. The exceptions are Automattic, with 85 core contributorsCore Contributors Core contributors are those who have worked on a release of WordPress, by creating the functions or finding and patching bugs. These contributions are done through Trac. https://core.trac.wordpress.org. on Trac in 2021, Yoast (18 contributors) and 10up. Only those three companies had more than ten people credited on Trac in 2021.
What did 2021 hold for Core Committers?
33 Core Committers committed code to the WordPress SVNSVN Subversion, the popular version control system (VCS) by the Apache project, used by WordPress to manage changes to its codebase. repository this year:
@sergeybiryukov (729), @desrosj (272), @hellofromtonya (159), @johnbillion (93), @peterwilsoncc (86), @ryelle (61), @audrasjb (59), @noisysocks (54), @joedolson (46), @gziolo (42), @timothyblynjacobs (38), @youknowriad (38), @davidbaumwald (31), @antpb (26), @whyisjake (20), @jorbin (19), @azaozz (18), @jorgefilipecosta (15), @johnjamesjacoby (13), @ocean90 (12), @clorith (10), @spacedmonkey (9), @adamsilverstein (8), @flixos90 (7), @jffng (6), @pento (6), @iandunn (5), @mikeschroder (4), @westonruter (4), @joemcgill (3), @rachelbaker (2), @isabel_brison (2), and @swissspidy (1).
Of the 1852 commits, 729 were made by people working at Yoast, 426 from employees of Automattic, and 272 came from Bluehost people:
Thanks to @marybaum for the copy review and to @flixos90 and @adamsilverstein for proofreading.
#contributions, #contributors, #team-update, #week-in-core, #year-in-core
Jen 5:49 pm on January 4, 2016
Tags: annual survey, contributors
2015 Contributor Survey
Hi coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. team folks! Thanks for all your hard work and contributions in 2015. Could you contribute few more minutes to fill in the 2015 contributor survey? It will help us establish some baselines around the contributor experience so that we can see how things change over time.
**This is being posted to all the Make teams, so if you subscribe to a bunch of p2s and keep seeing this post, know that you only need to fill the survey in once, not once per team.**
The survey is anonymous (so you can be extra honest), all questions are optional (so you can skip any that you don't want to answer), and we'll post some aggregate results by the end of January. It took testers 5-10 minutes to complete on average (depends how much you have to say), so I bet you could knock it out right after you read this post! 🙂
There are two sections of the survey. The first has questions about team involvement, recognition, and event involvement, and is pretty much what you'd expect from an annual survey (which teams did you contribute to, how happy are you as a contributor, etc).
The second section is about demographics so we can take a stab at assessing how diverse our contributor base is. All questions are optional, but the more information we have the better we can figure out what we need to improve. If there's some information you'd rather not identify, that's okay, but please do not provide false information or use the form to make jokes — just skip those questions.
The survey will be open until January 15, 2016. Whether you have 5 minutes now, or 10 over lunch (or whenever), please take the 2015 contributor survey. Thanks!
#annual-survey, #contributors
Jen 10:45 pm on June 10, 2012
Tags: 3.4 ( 20 ), contributors, credits ( 5 )
Updated Credits
Each release cycle, we try to recognize those core contributorsCore Contributors Core contributors are those who have worked on a release of WordPress, by creating the functions or finding and patching bugs. These contributions are done through Trac. https://core.trac.wordpress.org. who've made the greatest impact, ramped up the quickest, and/or been the most reliable.
In the Contributing Developers categoryCategory The 'category' taxonomy lets you group posts / content together that share a common bond. Categories are pre-defined and broad ranging., mainstays Sergey Biryukov, Dominik Schilling (Ocean90), and Cristi Burcă (Scribu) are joined by Aaron Campbell and Helen Hou-Sandi. Aaron has been contributing for several years, but his work this cycle on improvements to custom headers stood out. Helen, who was a Recent Rockstar in 3.3, stepped up with improvements to the theme screen, UIUI User interface/CSSCSS Cascading Style Sheets. fixes, and general helpfulness as fixes of all sorts were made through the later stages of the cycle.
The Recent Rockstars section is mainly aimed at recognizing newer contributors and/or contributors who've been around for awhile casually but have recently increased their involvement. In this category, Amy Hendrix worked (with Aaron Campbell) on the improvements to custom headers with great success. George Stephanis worked on css and improving the mobile experience. Stas Sușkov contributed to the thinking behind HTMLHTML HyperText Markup Language. The semantic scripting language primarily used for outputting content in web browsers. captions, a feature that has been waiting patiently on TracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress. for years.� Max Cutler and Marko Heijnen both worked on updating aspects of XML-RPC, and Kurt Payne contributed to dozens of tickets including the refactoring of adminadmin (and super admin)-ajax.php.
Thank you all for your increased efforts, and congratulations on having your picture in the credits!
#3-4, #contributors, #credits
Jen 7:45 pm on April 5, 2012
Tags: contributors, survey ( 7 )
Organizing Our Contributor Groups
Hi there, core contributorsCore Contributors Core contributors are those who have worked on a release of WordPress, by creating the functions or finding and patching bugs. These contributions are done through Trac. https://core.trac.wordpress.org. (and those who follow them). One of the things I've been meaning to do in the contributor community for the last 3-4 years is organize it so that when we say "contributor" it doesn't just mean coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. code and the different contributing groups can all be on the same page. You may have seen some surveys sent/posted to the forums/docs/theme review teams etc. Your turn!
In order to create a closer relationship between all the contributor groups, ensure our policies and agendas don't conflictconflict A conflict occurs when a patch changes code that was modified after the patch was created. These patches are considered stale, and will require a refresh of the changes before it can be applied, or the conflicts will need to be resolved., recognize outstanding contributors, and just generally level up, we need some organization. To wit:
I'd like to identify who the active contributors are in each group.
I'd like to appoint someone from each group (based on votes from the active group participants) as a group liaison to the rest of the WP project and any cross-team initiatives to improve communication.
I'd like to set up a central P2P2 A free theme for WordPress, known for front-end posting, used by WordPress for development updates and project management. See our main development blog and other workgroup blogs. for communicating project-wide things so that no contributor group ever has to hear important announcements after the fact and we can discuss any issues that come up that could use the help/attention of people from other groups (including core).
I'd like to try and set up a monthly IRCIRC Internet Relay Chat, a network where users can have conversations online. IRC channels are used widely by open source projects, and by WordPress. The primary WordPress channels are #wordpress and #wordpress-dev, on irc.freenode.net. chat and/or Google hangout for the liaisons to have some real-time communication.
I'd like to organize an annual contributor summit. Similar to the core team meetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for 'WordPress' on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. concept, but more inclusive.
The core code contributor team is the most in the know right now, but I'd like to make things a little more equal. Even within core, sometimes I hear people saying they wish they had more of a voice. The way the survey is set up, first you'll pick how many reps you think core needs to have in the game (just one for core, or a couple, with each representing a different level of experience/seniority to make sure more issues/concerns are heard?), then you'll vote on who you think the rep(s) should be. Note that inclusion in the survey does not mean that person has agreed to be a rep… I just pulled from our credits list and teams page for 3.4. Once the votes are in, I'll contact people to see if they're up for it.
The survey is at http://wordpressdotorg.polldaddy.com/s/core-contributors
and is password protected to help reduce spam responses: core2012
If you could fill it in before the weekend is over (or right now… it's only a few multiple choice questions), that would be great.
#contributors, #survey
Mark Jaquith 5:25 am on March 20, 2008
Tags: contributors, poka-yoke, UI ( 99 )
Contributors are no longer shown a bunch …
Contributors are no longer shown a bunch of things that they can't use, and Contributors/Authors don't see delete checkboxes or edit links for posts they can't delete/edit (poka-yoke).
#contributors, #poka-yoke, #ui


Occasionally I read books on business management. I read these books partially out of my continuing interest in the subject and partially because I learned much about people and organizations through my undergraduate degree in economics and graduate degree in business administration. Although marketing was never a special interest of mine, I recently read two books about marketing. That reading prompted two lines of reflection about the Church.
First, the Church spends too little on marketing. There are some exceptions, e.g., some megachurches. But in general, the Church spends very little money or time on marketing, an activity which in ecclesiastical language broadly connotes telling the church's story and evangelism in particular. Businesses, by contrast, routinely spend ten or twenty percent of revenue on marketing.
The history of Christian marketing is familiar to many of us. In the beginning, the Church focused on marketing. Even before the Church existed, Jesus devoted a substantial portion of his three-year ministry to forming twelve disciples committed to perpetuating his mission. After Jesus' resurrection, the disciples' primary focus became proclaiming the good news of God's love in Jesus through their deeds and words. The Apostle Paul had a similar focus in his ministry. Consequently, the Church enjoyed several centuries of spectacular growth.
Then came establishment. For centuries, the missionary impulse largely waned. To be born in Christendom was practically synonymous with becoming Christian. Instead, Christians sporadically struggled amongst themselves over the correct definition or formulation of Christian identity, struggles that sometimes erupted into open warfare. Those struggles intensified as some Christians began to question how many of their baptized contemporaries truly believed and practiced Christian teachings. Still, the normative myth endured until at least the eighteenth century: to be born in Christendom meant being born into a Christian identity.
Today, Christendom is dead. To be born into a Christian family is no longer tantamount to becoming Christian. The average age of Christians and their clergy in the US and Europe is increasing. The number of Baptisms is down. Practices such as friendship evangelism in which one shares, as opportunity allows, one's Christian faith with friends and family have obviously proven insufficient to reverse the outgoing tides of attendance, belief, and membership. Few grandparents who live in geographic proximity to their children and grandchildren can realistically expect to see those family members in church.
We Christians need, along with the Church, to return to active marketing.
Most basically, prioritizing marketing means investing time and money in telling Jesus' story through deeds and words. Deeds may include feeding the hungry, visiting those in prison, housing the houseless, participating in healing the sick, caring for the lonely, and so forth. Words connotes explaining our motivation for performing those deeds, motives rooted in our Christian identity.
A parish with an average Sunday attendance of 100 probably has at least 300 hours per week of paid and volunteer time. Paid hours include those of the rector, sexton, musicians, administrative staff, etc. Volunteer hours include time spent in worship, education or fellowship programs, outreach ministries, and other activities. Such a parish, committed to marketing, would therefore choose to redirect 30-60 hours per week to marketing. Furthermore, if that parish had revenues of $150,000, then the parish would devote $15,000 to $30,000 to marketing. Similarly, if The Episcopal Church (TEC) prioritized marketing, TEC would realign its triennial budget of approximately $129 million to spend $12.9 - $25.8 million on marketing along with a comparable realignment of staff and volunteer time, including all time now spent on General Convention and other governance processes.
The parish numbers are hypothetical, but their import is clear. No Episcopal congregation (or diocese) of which I am aware devotes twenty or even ten percent of its time and money to marketing. Prioritizing marketing obviously entails costs for the parish (or mission or diocese) that many organizations struggling to survive would deem excessive. However, one lesson I've learned from the business world is that if a business fails to market itself successfully, it inevitably goes bankrupt and disappears.
Congregations struggling to pay a priest and to maintain their building may postpone the inevitable by not marketing themselves. But the only realistic chance that those congregations have for longer-term survival is to market themselves aggressively, even if that means mortgaging the building or replacing beloved ongoing ministries that cater to members with marketing initiatives.
How can a congregation (or a diocese or TEC) market itself successfully? Or, in theological language, how can God's people through their deeds and words tell the story of God's love manifest in Jesus in a way that attracts people who want to experience that love personally? Or, in even more conventional theological language that often leaves Episcopalians feeling vaguely uncomfortable, how do we engage in effective evangelism?
No single set of answers will fit every context. Thankfully, multiple answers are readily available. Among many helpful authors are Diana Butler Bass, James R. Adams, Michael Curry, and Kennon L. Callahan. We should also not hesitate to hire public relations firms and consultants to help us strategize and develop our marketing.
In our increasingly internet centric culture, the Church needs websites focused on newcomers and searchers, expanded reliance on electronic communications (resisting this step because current members prefer paper deemphasizes marketing), and beneficial ways to exploit social media (Twitter, Instagram, etc.). TEC and dioceses can leverage their geographic reach to support congregations by making Episcopalian Christians a constant presence on broadcast and cable TV as well as radio.
Underlying every marketing effort is the question of why anyone would choose to attend, participate in, and belong to a Christian congregation. Grappling with this question was the second set of reflections triggered by my reading on marketing. Businesses without a clear understanding of their product(s) or service(s) cannot market themselves successfully.
Historically, the Church's answer to the question of why anyone should become a Christian was that unless a person obtains remission of her/his sins through belief in Jesus the person, when s/he dies will go to hell instead of to heaven. Today, belief in heaven and especially in hell has waned sharply among Americans and Europeans, including among Christians. In the absence of an alternative credible answer, many Christians lack clarity about their motive(s) for attending worship, participating in a church, or believing in the gospel. The good news is no longer good or news.
Decades of ministering to mostly secular adults in their 20s and 30s, reading in spirituality and psychology, and personal examination have convinced me that twenty-first century people seek at least four things that the Church is uniquely positioned to provide.
First, a large number of people seek to experience God or a deeper spiritual reality. Well done worship services using liturgies from the Book of Common Prayer and other authorized sources can draw some people deeper into the mysteries where we believe people can experience God's presence and love. Too often, however, our worship consists of poorly read lessons, hymns sung half-heartedly, prayers read mechanistically, and a sermon that at best offers yesterday's answers to today's real-life questions.
Second, many people want to know the meaning of life, or at least the meaning of their individual life. This desire is closely connected to the search for God. In this secular, scientific age in which life is frequently viewed as a product of opportunistically driven evolutionary processes, finding the meaning of one's life can be very challenging. Whether we agree with the material, discussion groups based upon books by popular authors such as Bishop Spong, Barbara Brown Taylor, Neale Donald Walsch, Lauren Winner, Karen Armstrong, and the Dalai Lama afford individuals an opportunity to explore life's meaning. Conversely, many post-moderns have little initial interest in the Bible.
Third, individuals frequently share a commitment to make the world a more loving, more just place. The Church, when not preoccupied with its own existence, frequently offers excellent opportunities for persons to join with like-minded people in working to make a more just, more loving world. Meaningful opportunities to serve one's neighbors may be a first step in person's spiritual journey as s/he discovers the church strives to incarnate God's love for others with integrity and purpose.
Fourth and finally, humans flourish in community and Christian congregations ideally are communities in which a person may safely seek God, explore life's meaning, and work with others to bring the world closer to God's vision for it. Sadly, I commonly hear of churches that unintentionally have become closed or broken communities. Members of twelve step groups frequently tell me that their groups embody more genuine caring for each other than does any congregation with which they are familiar.
The time is long past for Christianity to from defense to offense. This requires our regaining clarity about why anyone might choose to attend, participate in, or join. Then TEC – its congregations, dioceses, and national structures – must actually prioritize marketing the gospel, creatively adapting proven business practices.
This week I listened to a domestic abuse survivor recount her life-changing visit to the state prison's mental health unit. The visit's coordinator instructed the women, both visitors and prisoners, to arrange their chairs in two facing rows, close enough to hold hands. Then they were to pray for one another.
The prayer changed both the woman who told the story and the prisoner with whom she prayed. For the woman telling the story, the depth of the other woman's anguish – an alcoholic mother, physical abuse from every male in her family who was supposed to protect her, and years in prison – birthed an ongoing commitment to prison ministry. She is a Christian who lives Jesus' exhortation to visit those in prison.
After seventeen years, release eventually came for the prisoner. She left prison with only the clothes on her back, no money, and nowhere to go. Not knowing what else to do, she called the woman with whom she had prayed and who had stayed in touch. This woman provided the new releasee with some much-needed hygiene items and enough cash for a couple of meals and rent for a room. Five years after her release, the former prisoner continues to struggle, but believes that only through God's grace has she maintained her sanity, stayed free, earned a college degree, and gained a new career and family.
· God is perfect. Perfection of any kind, especially divine perfection cannot include imperfection because the imperfection would pollute the perfect.
· Humans are imperfect, whether because of original sin or the universality of our failure to obey, completely and always, God's perfect law.
· The only possible sacrifice able to wipe the slate clean or to pay fully sin's debt (the theological terms are propitiation and expiation) is that which itself is perfect and without sin, the unblemished lamb of God, Jesus.
The second and third paradigms build on that basic framework of God's perfection and human sin or brokenness. The second paradigm replaces atonement with redemption (humans are captives to sin; Jesus is the only one who can set us free). The third utilizes the language of reconciliation (putting our relationship with God right, which is only possible as God sees an imperfect human through the lens of the perfect Christ).
In seminary, I found these paradigms problematic, although I could not then explain my objections. Admittedly, the New Testament seems to offer prima facie support for all three paradigms, sparking Christian theological debate that sometimes erupted into violence. Each paradigm has been transformative for persons whom I know, helping an individual accept God's grace and live more abundantly. Nevertheless, the three paradigms leave me feeling uncomfortable.
By the time I began my doctoral work a dozen years after seminary, I could finally articulate my fundamental objection to those three paradigms. The paradigms implicitly depict God as a child abuser. God established the rules. God knew humans would sin. And God decided God's forgiveness required a perfect sacrifice to wipe away or pay the debt of sin, or that redemption or reconciliation was achievable only through the crucifixion of God's beloved son. In short, God knew from the beginning that Jesus' crucifixion was an inevitable necessity.
(3) Adoption of a sacrificial understanding of atonement that mirrors some first-century cults, which may have then been contextually and culturally helpful but an understanding that is necessarily timeless or definitive.
(4) Presuming that belief in Jesus is the only path to salvation, a presumption increasingly challenged in our twenty-first century globalized world. Twentieth century Roman Catholic theologian Karl Rahner proposed the concept of the cosmic Christ, whose death was efficacious for all Godly people, regardless of when and where they live(d). He memorably dubs these Godly individuals anonymous Christians. Anglican theologians have widely rejected Rahner's proposal because it paternalistically devalues other religions and the integrity of non-Christians' faith journeys. Similarly, a continuing difficulty for Christian theologians has been how to affirm the salvation of Jews (e.g., Noah, Moses, and the prophets) while continuing to assert one of the traditional paradigms for understanding Jesus' death on the cross.
Another paradigm for understanding Jesus' death on the cross has persistently lingered on the margins of Christianity, a paradigm my seminary but not doctoral professors derided as an insufficient understanding of Jesus' death. In this paradigm God is not a child abuser, celestial judge, Greco-Roman philosopher, or exclusionary lover. Instead, God loves us and all creation with the infinite, unconditional love Jesus manifested in life and death. God's love is so limitless that neither death, nor principalities, nor powers, nor even sin can separate us from God. I see Peter employing this paradigm in today's epistle reading and I heard it in the story of the women who prayed for each other. In Jesus, God extends God's arms to embrace us with God's infinite, unconditional love.
Hopefully, none of us is an axe murderer or sinner of similar magnitude. Our burdens of guilt are real but more frequently attributable to self or to other people than to our sin. Consequently, the three traditional paradigms have lost much of their power. In a world of preventable tragedies, most recently the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, we desperately need the good news of a crucified God whose open arms announce God's readiness to embrace us in healing, life-giving, unconditional love. This image of God in Jesus suffering with us, lovingly drawing us into a life-giving and sustaining embrace, makes sense to me in our badly broken world.
May you have a holy Lent in which to journey more deeply into the mystery of God's infinite, unconditional love. And may rainbows be for us, as for Noah, a sign of God's abiding and loving presence in our midst. Amen.
 Found on the internet, source unknown.


Yet another very early morning shot with the full moon lighting up the landscape. A frozen pond reflects window light on its icy surface at this old mill.
This is yet another image of the mill as work goes on throughout the day. I was told the truck on the left is called a hammer mill, which as I understand things,mixes the various feed components on site for farmers. The sun came out briefly to illuminate the trucks while the grain silos remain in shade.
Have you ever seen so many cobwebs,you thought you were on the set of some science fiction thriller? Well this was the case as both myself and a fellow photographer spent an evening shooting in a local feed mill. I walked around looking for a shot and came across this corner of the mill that seemed lost in time. It's no wonder spiders have laid claim to this place as flies were a real nuisance while we shot. I light painted this with an off camera flash trying to bring out the webs and dust and dirt as best I could. At least no mice ran by me on this visit. I have no idea what the machine does but it must not get used very often.
This is an old roller mill that I came across while wandering the back roads this past weekend. I started the afternoon off heading to play volleyball but I took my camera gear along in case no one showed. Well no one showed, so I cruised around and came across this locale. I was all excited as Amish buggies, open carts etc were all around the area. I pull in here and realize my tripod is 15 miles away at home.So I head home disgusted with myself and decide to return in the evening. Four hours later I come back and set my gear up on my truck roof to get a better view and I wait almost an hour till these three buggies come by. After they passed, I sat there till dark and not one more buggy came by. If I could somehow get up another 8 ft or so, you could see the entire covered bridge,which is just in sight on the edge of the right side. This evening was a real feast or famine night for shooting, and since I am not the most patient individual, it was driving me crazy missing other opportunities. The late evening light was skimming in nicely, so maybe the delay was worth it. the thumbnail shows my roof setup and laptop inside and it all depends how much height I need, and in this case just a little.
This image was taken at the feed mill that I had photographed and featured on my blog a few days ago. I met Brad the owner, and he graciously allowed both myself and fellow photographer Larry the chance to look around inside. After the mill shut down for the day, we broke out our gear and we each selected an area to light paint. Admittedly it has been a while since I gave this technique a try, so I struggled a bit as I worked to light the room with my spotlight. The mill is a real labyrinth of metal and wood, and left me wondering how such a place is designed. The inside also included numerous cats roaming about, which surprised me with all the machines at work, but after I had witnessed a cat catch a mouse three feet in front of me, it all became clear very quickly. The area I chose included the old scale with the two feed bags on it, along with another scale facing the opposite direction with the number 122 on it. The blue light is coming from window light that was shining in at dusk. We usually work in the dark, but time constraints had us shooting earlier.
This is the same mill I posted a few days ago,but this time I lit the scene with my spotlight at dusk. I was out shooting in the area and decided at the last-minute to give the location a test try with the light. My light was low on battery power, so I did not get as much use out of it as I had hoped, but it was a good chance to practice a bit.
This image was taken minutes after yesterday's post, and shows the mill from the train tracks side. The sky was totally cloud covered and yet I was fortunate enough to be in the right spot when a few rays broke through to skim across the shot. lasted about a minute, which was all I needed. As a side note, I knew this was an active line, but did not realize the train comes through doing about 60 mph plus. I no sooner had picked up my tripod and walked across the tracks when I heard a whistle up toward the trees to the left and when that train came through it was hauling. I thought to myself how unnerving it must be to drive that thing and see something or someone on the tracks ahead and know you are helpless to stop it in time.


text:
La Línia Mannerheim va ser un sistema defensiu de fortificacions que s'estenia al llarg de l'Istme de Carèlia, construït abans de la Guerra d'Hivern per Finlàndia per a defensar-se de la Unió Soviètica. Seria un dels més sagnants escenaris del conflicte entre ambdós països.

El seu nom procedeix de la denominació que li van donar els mitjans de comunicació, en honor de Carl Gustaf Mannerheim, Mariscal de camp finès qui va obtenir una gran reputació arran de la resistència oferta per Finlàndia contra la gegantesca maquinària bèl·lica de la Unió Soviètica. Cal destacar que moltes fonts afirmen que el terme seria encunyat en origen per Jorma Gallen-Kallela, i després divulgat pels periodistes estrangers.

Estructura
La Línia estava composta per al voltant de dos-cents nius de metralladores, abastant des de la costa del Golf de Finlàndia fins a Taipale, passant per Summa i el riu Vuoksi. L'àrea que circumdava Summa va ser considerada com el punt més vulnerable, i per això, seria la més fortificada.

En la costa del Golf de Finlàndia, la línia es recolzaria en el Fort Saarenpää, mentre que en la riba del Llac Làdoga, l'eix defensiu principal seria el Fort Järisevä. Aquestos enclavaments estarien armats amb peces d'artilleria de 5', 6' i 10'.

Al contrari que la Línia Maginot i altres sistemes similars de l'època, la línia Mannerheim no es basava en la successió de gegantescos búnkers i línies de dents de drac, sinó que confiava en l'entorn i els accidents geogràfics per a la seva eficàcia. D'aquesta manera, els finesos aprofitaven elements com arbres caiguts i gegantesques pedres per a situar les posicions defensives. Tot això es va complementar amb el perfeccionament de les tècniques de camuflatge, que permetien aprofitar al màxim tals nuclis fortificats.

Història
Els primers plans per a la construcció d'una línia defensiva en l'Istme de Carèlia es plantegen després de la Guerra Civil Finlandesa, sent Mannerheim el seu principal promotor. No obstant això, no van ser tinguts en compte després que aquest dimitís després de la guerra. Finalment, la línia seria construïda durant els anys 20 i 30.

Els primers búnquers es van aixecar entre 1921 i 1924. La segona fase va començar en 1932, sent interrompuda per la Guerra d'Hivern. Durant el conflicte, la línia suportaria l'ofensiva soviètica durant dos mesos. El Fort Saarenpää sofriria diverses vegades l'atac dels cuirassats "Marat" i "Oktoberskaya Revolutsiya" entre els mesos de desembre de 1939 i gener de 1940. No obstant això, la seva artilleria aconseguiria forçar a l'armada soviètica a tornar a la seva base d'operacions.

Durant la guerra, la propaganda d'ambdós contendents va exagerar de manera notable l'extensió i magnitud de la Línia Mannerheim. La justificació finesa era òbvia, perquè buscaven elevar la moral de les tropes, creant més expectatives d'èxit entre els soldats. Pel costat soviètic, es pretenia justificar el lent avanç contra un enemic que era diverses vegades inferior en nombre i armament.

Com a conseqüència directa, la capacitat defensiva de la Línia Mannerheim quedaria falsejada en les fonts històriques soviètiques, i igualment, moltes fonts occidentals mostrarien tal deformació històrica. En tot cas, la Línia Mannerheim es donaria suport principalment en trinxeres i altres fortificacions menors. Els búnquers tenien petites dimensions, i no podien albergar una guarnició nombrosa. Igualment, les peces d'artilleria eren molt escasses.

Després de la Guerra d'Hivern, els enginyers de l'Exèrcit Roig van eliminar les instal·lacions que encara romanien dempeus. No obstant això, en la Guerra de Continuació, tant els finesos com els soviètics van tractar d'aprofitar els avantatges oferts per l'entorn, malgrat que la Línia no tornaria a fortificar-se, ni en l'ofensiva de Finlàndia de 1941, ni en l'atac soviètic en 1944.

Vegeu també
 Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim
 Guerra d'Hivern
 Guerra de Continuació
 Guerra de Lapònia

Història de Finlàndia
Escenaris de la Segona Guerra Mundial
Línies defensives

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia