text:
▷ Testimonials
Don't take our word for it! Hear what our customers and have to say.
"Bright Cluster Manager makes it easy to build highly compatible, ready-to-run clusters using Intel Xeon processors. We are pleased that Bright is bringing the same ease of use and administration to Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors. "
— John Lee, General Manager - HPC, Intel
"Bright Cluster Manager provides a comprehensive solution for installation and configuration of accelerated clusters and the robust ecosystem of third-party supporting tools"
"With support for the latest CUDA Toolkit, Bright Computing builds on its well-established track record of supporting NVIDIA's latest GPU innovations for the HPC industry."
— Duncan Poole, Strategic Alliances Manager for Accelerated Computing at NVIDIA
NESI / NIWA
"Bright's deep infrastructure knowledge and systems integration experience, coupled with Bright Cluster Manager and Bright OpenStack, has equipped us with all the tools necessary to administer our clustered infrastructure as a single entity, provisioning the hardware, operating system, and cloud framework from a single interface."
"We were able to reduce costs by streamlining cluster management, simplifying data center complexity, and providing a gateway to both private and public clouds through Bright OpenStack."
— Fabrice Cantos, HPC Operations Manager of NeSI/NIWA
"Bright Cluster Manager's rapid rebooting across nodes has reduced our node provisioning by a factor of ten, and it's done with a few mouse-clicks."
— Greg Siekas, High Performance Computing Technical Lead at Boeing
"This supports one of Boeing's IT priorities to realize productivity gains by streamlining processes and tools to eliminate waste."
— Luis Gutierrez, ITI Global Data Center and Server Infrastructure Director at Boeing
National Institute of Aerospace
"Bright's tech support is awesome."
"Even with an open source installation, I would have had to procure umpteen different software packages. That would have skyrocketed the cost. From a hit-the-ground-running point of view, Bright just had everything we needed."
— Wendy Murray, IT Director at National Institute of Aerospace
"DHI Group is involved in some really exciting projects such as supporting offshore wind exploration to lower costs and support the green transition. These globally important areas of research demand state of the art technology and that's where the HPC solution from Dell and Bright Computing comes in."
"Bright Cluster Manager is simple to use but powerful. We are currently using it to manage our HPC environment, and we are excited to explore how Bright can support our deep learning and our edge environments in the future."
— Ole Svenstrup Petersen, Marine and Maritime R&D Area Manager at DHI Group
"All it takes is to simply set the new compute servers to network (PXE) boot and point the network card (MAC) address to the appropriate image that we want installed. Bright does the rest - fully automating the installation. Bright Cluster Manager has also simplified the administration of Bucknell's Slurm workload manager, helping to seamlessly manage partitions and configuration options, and ensuring that the configurations are consistent across the environment. And, when it comes time to upgrade our systems, we simply update the server image once and Bright pushes the changes out to every server in the cluster".
— Jeremy Dreese, Systems Integrator, Bucknell University
"When we first started out, the Flatiron Institute had very little staff. As we began to transition into a larger organization, we had to figure out how to manage a growing set of resources — but still with that limited staff.Bright Cluster Manager offered us a fully supported cluster management solution that allowed our team to manage our compute resources more efficiently with very little overhead. We first deployed Bright at the Flatiron Institute when we grew from a 16-node cluster to 120 nodes, and Bright has been managing the system ever since."
— Ian Fisk, Ph.D., Scientific Computing Core Co-Director, Flatiron
The Louisiana Optical Network Infrastructure
"LONI had previously used a homegrown cluster management system that presented a myriad of challenges including lack of a graphical user interface (GUI), daunting complexity for new employees, and proneness to out-of-sync changes and configurations. Likewise, the do-it-yourself infrastructure we had placed constraints on end-users due to a lack of knowledge continuity concerning cluster health, performance, and capability. By leveraging a commercial solution such as Bright Cluster Manager, we now have an enterprise-grade cluster management solution that embodies the required skills and expertise needed to effectively manage our HPC environment."
— Lonnie Leger, Executive Director, LONI
San Diego Supercomputer Center
"With Expanse, SDSC has made a strategic decision to partner with Bright Computing to leverage their deep bench of expertise and technical support. As the number and complexity of HPC systems we operate has grown, we need systems management tools that keep up with the technological rate of change. With Bright Cluster Manager, we're able to spend less time on systems administration and more time helping users be productive. An hour saved in a systems administration task is an hour we can spend on user-facing activities like I/O optimization or implementing a complex job workflow."
— Shawn Strande, Deputy Director, SDSC
"The eX3 infrastructure allows Norwegian HPC researchers and their international collaborators to explore bleeding-edge hardware and software that will be instrumental to the coming generation of supercomputers. In particular, this ambition calls for a unique system offering extreme heterogeneity at all technology levels. The eX³ infrastructure is funded for five years through the RCN program for national research infrastructures. In addition to the host institution Simula, the project consortium also includes the national HPC management body Sigma2, HPC research groups from the University of Tromsø, NTNU, and the University of Bergen, as well as the HPC technology providers Graphcore, Dolphin Interconnect Solutions, and Numascale."
— Professor Are Magnus Bruaset, Research Director for Software Engineering and HPC, Simula
"The two main reasons that we chose Bright Cluster Manager were for its heterogeneity and the speed which it can deploy and manage software. Bright will allow me to nimbly reconfigure and provision new topologies on the fly, supporting the dynamic nature of our high-performance research projects."
— Tore Heide Larsen, Senior Research Engineer, Simula
"We have had nothing but positive experiences with Bright Cluster Manager and the Bright support team. I would highly recommend the technology. Bright increases the performance of my team by automating many everyday tasks, freeing my team to concentrate on delivering exceptional service to our university departments."
— Daniel Harlacher, HPC Team Leader at University of Siegen
"Bright gives UND the tools we need to effectively manage our supercomputing environment, and I feel confident that we can meet any new requirements that arise in the coming years." He added; "Bright software makes it easy for us train new staff to deploy, provision, and manage our clustered infrastructure for HPC, Data Science, and Cloud; all integrated, and all from a single point of control. We can deploy Ceph nodes, install standard HPC products, roll out cloud features, introduce data science packages, all from a single interface with robust enterprise-grade support. Moreover, if we ever exceed resources, Bright allows us to burst our workload to commercial cloud services."
— Aaron Bergstrom, Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Manager, UND
Fayetteville State University
"Bright Cluster Manager is the obvious choice for our clustered infrastructure needs. So, upgrading to the latest version made perfect sense. We are delighted with the close relationship we have built with Data In Science in order to carry out the upgrade quickly, and cause minimal impact to daily business."
— Dr. Sambit Bhattacharya, Associate Professor of Computer Science, Fayetteville State University
"We have a worldwide customer base and have worked with the British Cycling Team for the last three Olympic games, as well as working with teams involved in the America's Cup yacht race. In the past 10 years, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) has become a perfectly valid commercial activity, reducing the need for physical experimentation. CFD gives as good an answer as the wind tunnel, without the need to build models, so you can speed up research whilst reducing costs. Iridis 5 will enable the Wolfson Unit to get more accurate results, whilst looking at more parameters and asking more questions of computational models."
— Sandy Wright, Principal Research Engineer, Wolfson Unit at the University of Southampton
Nevada Institute of Personalized Medicine
"We had very specific requirements for the new supercomputer and we are delighted we put our trust in Advanced HPC and Bright Computing. Advanced HPC got the new system up and running in just a few hours, and the Bright technology offers a zero-touch management solution that frees our researchers to focus on data analysis."
— Richard Young, System Engineer, NIPM
Oldenburg University
"There were three compelling reasons for Oldenburg to choose to reinvest with Bright. Firstly, Bright helps you to get your HPC environment up and running very quickly. Secondly, Bright makes it incredibly easy to manage your HPC environment which takes a lot of pressure of the IT Services team. Thirdly, Bright is a very robust and reliable, so our team is free to focus on other tasks."
— Dr. Stefan Harfst, Oldenburg University
"Research projects are competitive by nature, so it's an advantage to carry out analysis efficiently to produce results as quickly as possible. Bright allows this to happen."
"Integration is nearly always an issue when aligning two organisations, but Bright integrated into Computerome seamlessly. The Bright team was responsive and flexible, and very focused."
— Peter Løngreen, Head of High-Performance Computing & IT at CBS
"I couldn't believe that it only took 4 hours to install the Bright software and get our new cluster live, and then just 20 hours to be entirely operational."
"Bright makes cluster management very little effort. The support team at Bright are very responsive. It's clear to see Bright's value for money when delivery is achieved in such a short time."
— Dr. M D Sharma, Research Fellow, University of Exeter
BioMed X
"Bright Computing allows us to concentrate on our research projects instead of spending too much time on IT administration tasks."
"Bright Computing has made it really straightforward to build and operate our HPC environment, offering an easy to manage solution which enables us to perform a variety of calculations in order to drive our research."
— Dr. Simone Fulle, Group Leader at BioMed X
Virginia Bioinformatics Institute
"We have access to a tremendous amount of existing technology in traditional HPC clusters, and will use the Bright-powered big data cluster as a test bed to see how different technology might make our simulations easier to implement or speed up processing."
— Keith Bisset, Senior Research Scientist at VBI
"My job would become very difficult if we stopped using Bright Cluster Manager. Bright makes managing our complex system intuitive and easy so I can focus on keeping the consumers of our HPC services productive."
— Bill Marmagas, Senior Systems Engineer at VBI
"Bright Cluster Manager plays an essential role in our success serving our customers. With Bright, we deliver reliable compute services rapidly, with minimal disruption. This allows us to keep our operating expenses at a minimum."
— Kevin Shinpaugh, Director of Information Technology and High Performance Computing at VBI
CHPC
"This exotic blend of capabilities will require a sophisticated and easy to use management platform, in order to simplify, centralise and automate the administration of the many moving parts. I am delighted to have chosen Bright Computing's Bright Cluster Manager to fulfil this role."
— Dr. Happy Sithole, Director of the CHPC
Van Andel Institute
"Using Bright reduces the labor and effort needed for management and change control, and also facilitates the accelerating trend toward cloud computing."
"Although our existing workloads are 90 percent cluster/grid, we expect to move toward the cloud in the future, and Bright offers an expandable and scalable turnkey solution for allocating resources. We can dynamically shift the ratio between cloud and cluster resources without down time."
"We know that cloud computing is the wave of the future. The hybrid approach we are getting with Bright is providing a path that helps us transition. "
— Zack Ramjan, Research Computing Architect at Van Andel Institute
"The UI has been great. Our users submit and monitor their own jobs with ease, and we can focus on monitoring and managing the cluster with increased facility and insight."
— Pol Llovet, Associate Director of Cyberinfrastructure at Montana State University
Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology
"As scientists, we always are time constrained. Our priority is our research, not managing our clusters. Bright is intuitive to use and, with it, I can effectively manage my cluster without wasting time writing scripts, or synchronizing management tool revisions. Provisioning is fast and easy. I prefer this approach over open-source toolkits."
— Dr. Akinori Yamanaka, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology
"Bright is particularly beneficial for program developers - especially CUDA developers."
— Hiroshi Sato, HPCTech Engineering Manager at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology
"Bright is instrumental to our research at MARIN — it empowers our IT team to make optimal use of the software, while focusing on the research. It is the best tool for the job."
"Some of our customers seek advice from MARIN on the cluster management solution. We always recommend Bright."
— Dr. Henk Prins, Manager Research & Development at MARIN
"Bright has centralized the management of our HPC environment, absorbing complexity and promoting ease of use. It's fast to deploy and allows us to do more with less."
— Christian Boehme, HPC Manager at GWDG
"It used to take us two to three hours to deploy resources for a new project. With our Dell HPC cluster and tools like Bright Cluster Manager, we can stand up a new environment in 30 minutes."
— Jay Etchings, Senior Architect for HPC and Research Computing at Arizona State University
Aircraft Design of the University of Stuttgart
"Bright Cluster Manager is exceptionally user friendly and allows us to do basic management tasks quickly and efficiently."
— Alexander Schön, Cluster Manager at Aircraft Design of the University of Stuttgart
VSC-3
"The cluster can easily be managed and monitored by Bright Cluster Manager. This new cluster gives our scientists the tools they need for years to come."
— Dr. Ernst Haunschmid, Technical Project Leader at VSC-3
"There's a growing interest in production use of hybrid-architecture systems in our HPC centre. This means we need to be able to provision, monitor and manage systems with accelerators and coprocessors with minimal administrative overhead. Our evaluation of Bright Cluster Manager demonstrated that it met our needs in a satisfactory way."
— Hussein Harake, HPC System Manager at CSCS
BingoSoft
"Bright Cluster Manager allowed us to rapidly integrate the most comprehensive and robust solution for managing the HPC services into BingoCloud."
"Bright's use of open standards, availability of a rich API, plus ability to support customized HPC configurations, makes for a natural fit in our IaaS platform."
— Yang Qiu, BingoCloud Product Manager at BingoSoft
"Bright significantly eases the day-to-day management of all HPC resources. For example, using Bright's capability to logically group nodes according to hardware type or location, we are able to rapidly perform scheduled service on a highly selective basis."
"The Bright-enabled efficiency and effectiveness of our IT operations is already allowing us to improve the level of service we provide to our on and off-site researchers. In fact, most of our researchers are completely unaware that their materials-science HPC cluster is in fact a consolidated resource that spans two physical sites."
— Gregory Sainte-Luce, Computer Network and Systems Engineer at Centre des Matériaux, MINES ParisTech
"The installation and initial integration of the cluster has run very smoothly, and was completed in less than one week time. In our project schedule we had expected this task to last much longer, so by selecting a joint Dell - ClusterVision solution, we have been able to focus our efforts in developing our new software services and linking it into our existing infrastructure."
— Thorkild Guldager Sørensen, Software Developer and HPC System Administrator at EMD International
"The cluster was designed to provide an easy to manage, scalable solution. With Bright Cluster Manager, EMD International will be able to grow their computational capacity locally, or into the cloud using Bright's built in cloud-bursting capabilities."
— Steen Kronby, Solutions Director at EMD International
"We needed a solution that would provide deep insights and better visibility into every aspect of our cluster. Bright's highly intuitive interface gives us a complete view, including the ability to drill down to examine specific issues."
"In addition, Bright provides a multi-OS image that gives us more control over every aspect of our cluster's operations. As a result, our researchers can develop benchmark software more quickly because we minimize downtime for maintenance and troubleshooting performance issues."
— Dr. Xue, Center for Earth System Science at Tsinghua University
"We selected Bright Cluster Manager for its intuitive interface, ease of use and responsive support."
"Bright makes sure you have the right drivers on the GPU and CPU nodes, so you don't have to even think about it."
"I don't have days to search community news sites and HPC user message boards for fixes to broken open source tools. I need something where I could get support within 24 hours. My success is measured by my published results, and the educational experience of our students and graduate students. I am not measured on cluster management — but our cluster does have to work."
— Dr. Robert Moucha, Assistant Professor at Syracuse University Earth Sciences Department
"It's been a great run. Bright and Fedora EPEL distros have saved a tremendous amount of time for me."
"Bright's image-based provisioning lets me reconfigure Alamo on the fly to meet the specific needs of each researcher's compute jobs."
"I click on a check box and the cluster management suite installs a server, sets up a client and I'm done. Further, Bright's ease of use and full integration with job schedulers have produced major time savings. I don't need to spend hours writing and maintaining scripts because everything just works."
"I get dedicated product support, so I don't waste time searching forums and message boards for answers. In addition, I can easily reproduce any testing environment in minutes and rapidly deploy a new environment. My decision was based on minimizing the time required to manage the cluster: automatic time-consuming tasks and reducing complexity — balanced with providing a high level of service to our users. In the end, I selected Bright Cluster Manager."
"The FutureGrid project calls for tremendous flexibility from the cluster management software. Aside from our own needs, we must meet the complex requirements of the FutureGrid community. For example, the Project calls for the ability to efficiently provision user-created software images for each experiment, without impairing productivity. Bright met this and all other challenges with ease."
— David Gignac, Senior Systems Administrator for FutureGrid Cluster at TACC
"We were impressed with the Bright Cluster Manager demo at the SC09 conference and decided to make a detailed evaluation here at TACC. Our findings confirmed to us that Bright was what we needed: a powerful cluster management solution that is easy to use, flexible and very capable."
"TACC always evaluates several vendors, and for this particular project Bright was the best choice."
"Bright met our demanding requirements straight out of the box."
— Tommy Minyard, Director of Advanced Computing Systems at TACC
"We needed a more sophisticated solution that would minimize the effort required to monitor and manage our computing clusters, Bright gives us full visibility to every aspect of our cluster in an intuitive GUI, and makes it fast and easy to make changes. Compared to the open source toolkits we were using, we typically save at least a day per month on just systems maintenance alone."
"Another significant benefit we have seen here at the center is increased system productivity to analyze proteins associated with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, the cluster churns massive datasets on an ongoing basis. Bright's pre-job health checks ensure that poorly functioning nodes are excluded from job runs, preventing system-related job crashes while sending us alerts to speed problem resolution."
"We get a lot more work done with Bright."
— Dr. Justin MacCallum, Junior Fellow at Laufer Center for Physical and Quantitative Biology, Stony Brook University
INPE
"We needed a solution that minimized the time and expense of cluster management. With Bright, we are able to spend nearly all of our time simulating and investigating complex aerospace engineering models."
"We chose Bright because its highly intuitive, integrated approach for managing our HPC cluster and associated libraries saves us a lot of time, and eliminates the need to hire staff to manage our cluster."
— Dr. Elbert E.N. Macau, Professor of Computing and Applied Mathematics at INPE
"IT resources are rare these days and Bright Cluster Manager enabled us to avoid investing a huge number of man days rediscovering what others have already done, or re-developing something internally that we would have had to support for years. The possibility to extend our cluster with EC2 is perfectly suited to our usage since, from time to time, we need to run some benchmarks on huge test cases which exceed our own compute capacity."
— Pierre Spatz, Head of Quantitative Analysis at Murex
"In the past, I've tasked graduate students with cluster management using open source toolkits. This approach was low cost, but time consuming on my part, and somewhat risky. At Boise State, we don't have the bandwidth to write scripts for node installation, synchronization or for ongoing cluster maintenance — which are extremely time-intensive tasks. Bright makes tackling these tasks fast and easy, and lets us automate a lot of important but tedious procedures."
"Bright cuts my own workload by 50%, and pays for itself over and over in terms of headcount savings."
"At one point, several of our nodes were rebooting for no apparent reason, Bright's support team advised me on how to secure shell (SSH) tunnel via web browser into our cluster. Within a very short period of time, our cluster was up and running again, and a situation that could have presented a major issue was averted."
"Bright's responsive team is unparalleled in terms of their around-the-clock accessibility and problem-solving abilities. Your support was excellent!"
"I'm really starting to like your product. It saves me many configuration man hours and simplifies run-time administration. There is no way in hell I could run a one-man shop like this without Bright Cluster Manager."
— Ken Blair, HPC Systems Engineer at Boise State University
"Bright helps us manage our cluster with much less effort, so that we can concentrate on our investigation to better understand the formation and evolution of cosmic structures by comparing computational simulations with observational data."
"Bright Cluster Manager is easier to install and manage than open source alternatives on the market. Because our scientists are also responsible for system administration, they are pleased to have a solution that allows them to spend less time on script-writing and more time on the science of understanding our universe."
— Prof. Weipeng Lin, Associate Director at the SHAO for Galaxy and Cosmology
SGRI
"Bright enables us to change the operating system in our development cluster within seven minutes, to meet specific application testing requirements. This capability, combined with the ability to quickly test applications across multiple configurations has made it possible to reduce an array of clusters down to only one. We've experienced substantial savings in terms of hardware, maintenance and a reduction in staff hours."
"An added benefit of moving to Bright Cluster Manager is the intuitive GUI. The GUI makes it very easy to manage our cluster, and the extensive features of Bright save us a lot of effort. We have full visibility to every aspect of our cluster, even down to the temperature of our GPUs."
— Duan Wenchao, Senior Engineer at SGRI
"Based on our experience with Beowulf clusters, we were convinced that we'd need to hire a specialist to help with cluster management as we added more nodes to meet increasing compute demands, and to keep our system running. But after experiencing Bright, we decided that was entirely unnecessary. Our scientists can themselves monitor node health with ease, and can reboot specific nodes, if necessary, with the click of a mouse. Critically, we manage our cluster with minimal time investment, so we can focus efforts on conducting research."
— Erico Rempel, Associate Professor and Researcher at ITA
"Bright Cluster Manager eliminates the complexity of managing and monitoring large clusters. Bright is vastly superior to the tools approach we have used in the past — it gives us total visibility and control of the cluster through its intuitive GUI. As a result, our customers are able to focus on conducting research rather than on cluster configuration and management."
— Dr. Sudip Roy, Scientist at Physical Chemistry and Material Science Division at NCL
"For example, before selecting Bright, when we needed to change our cluster's master node IP address we had to reinstall the entire cluster from scratch. Bright offers advantages over our previous open source solution. This is a time consuming and frustrating process; one we want to avoid going forward. With Bright, we can change IP addresses on-the-go, without disruption. And we have started installing Bright on our older clusters to help manage all workloads more effectively."
— Dr. Kumar Vanka, Scientist at NCL
"We scientists are time-constrained, our priority is our research, not managing our clusters. Bright is intuitive to use, and effectively manages my cluster without the need for me to waste time writing scripts, or synchronizing management tool revisions."
"Provisioning is fast and easy tool of Bright. I prefer this approach over open source toolkits."
— Dr. Akinori Yamanaka, Gordon Bell Prize Winner and an Assistant Professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology
CSCC
"Our academic courses focus primarily on Windows-based networking and cyber security, so our students don't typically have a great deal of experience with Linux. Interns working on our Linux-based HPC cluster team needed a management solution that was easy-to-use. Bright Cluster Manager enabled them to quickly configure and test their HPC cluster, before running Linpack benchmarking assessments and performance tests."
"A key success factor for the team was to use a management solution that required little time to learn and implement, yet that was capable of ensuring we met our ultimate objectives."
— Prof. Dan J. Heighton, Professor of Cyber Security and HPC at CSCC
"Many students lack direct, hands-on HPC experience. Bright Cluster Manager empowered the interns at our facility to quickly overcome many of the technical challenges posed by HPC cluster management."
— Ronda Black, Systems Specialist at Avetec
"When a job fails, the source of the problem is often difficult to identify. A job that crashes can run fine on another cluster, or even on the same cluster if you run it again. You can spend hours in the data center pulling your hair out, pulling up floor tiles, or worse. Is it the machine? The middleware? The code itself? Or the data? I spent a hundred hours or more over 5 months writing scripts to isolate the problem — a significant time investment, and a lot of crashed jobs."
— Jesse Trucks, HPC Cyber Security Administrator at ORNL
"What appealed to us about Bright Cluster Manager is that it is fully integrated and easy to use. It's leaps and bounds better than anything we have worked with in the past."
— Dr. James Avery, Massey University
"It's especially useful that we can install new compute nodes to our cluster in minutes, or quickly re-purpose hardware. Bright minimizes the effort of tasks that previously took a lot of work, in a straightforward, intuitive manner. Installing a cluster with Bright is much easier and faster."
"It's also helpful to us that Bright has a complete development environment with everything we need. We were using Rocks and other open source toolkits, wasting far too much time on customization and keeping the various tool versions synchronized. We were reluctant to make changes to the system — it created too much overhead."
— Dr. Michael Wormit, Massey University
Universidade do Vale do Paraíba
"We were looking for a cluster management solution that would remove the complexity of managing our CPU/GPU cluster. We are researchers, not sysadmins, and prefer to spend our time on science. We chose Bright because it's efficient, easy to learn and use, and takes little of our time to get the most out of our HPC cluster. Further, we needed a solution that would easily scale as we expand our system."
"Bright's unified environment is a big advantage for us."
— Dr. Irapuan Rodrigues, Professor of Physics at UNIVAP
"HPC provides the backbone for our research. We rely on Bright Cluster Manager as part of our larger HPC environment. Its easy to use and displays critical information such as dips in CPU performance in a graphically appealing interface. This allows us to always have critical information available."
— Rob Hetland, Associate Professor at Department of Oceanography, Texas A&M University
454 Life Sciences Roche
"We are a longtime user of Bright Cluster Manager, and have benefited from its totally integrated approach and intuitive interface."
"We are excited about the possibility of using Bright to burst into the cloud and instantly increase compute power as and when required."
— Asya Shklyar, Key Account Manager at Roche
"Bright Cluster Manager was a good choice for us. I'm a scientist, not a system manager."
"The Bright GUI is intuitive and extremely easy to use. I can do everything I need to do on the system remotely — I almost never visit our cluster. I get alerts when attention is required, and am able to hand off much of the overall system management with confidence to an enthusiastic undergraduate."
— Dr. Steve McMillan, Professor of Physics and Atmospheric Science at Drexel University
"In the end Bright Computing's flexible user portal and its powerful cluster management software was an important part of our decision."
— Pierre Gay, Lead Systems Administrator at University Bordeaux 1
"Developed to meet the increasing demands of today's HPC data centers, Bright Cluster Manager provides the capacity, scalability and interoperability to centrally manage clusters over locally and widely distributed and heterogeneous HPC infrastructures."
— Roger Panton, Executive Director of the DICE program
"Our uniquely complex cluster represents a difficult management challenge, which is why we chose Bright Cluster Manager."
"We needed a solution we could trust, and Bright's proven success in managing complex systems combining x86 and GPU technologies won us over."
"We are thrilled with how Bright's comprehensive, yet easy-to-use solution helps us manage and control our very important supercomputer."
"We are pleased to run Bright Cluster Manager on the LOEWE-CSC system because it has already proven itself on another TOP500-class supercomputer at our university."
— Prof. Volker Lindenstruth, Chair for HPC Architecture at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies
ING Corporate Investments
"We have thoroughly evaluated both the company and its technology and have concluded that Bright is well-positioned to shake up its market and greatly extend its reach."
"I'm impressed by Bright's rapid success in the market. Many large research, academic and commercial organizations in the US and Europe are using Bright to manage their complex systems."
— Maarten Hopman, Head of Corporate Investments at ING
"The Bright Cluster Manager software makes the management and monitoring of the cluster very efficient and easy, and it offers a clear insight into the status of the cluster at all times."
— Hans Gankema, Manager Server Infrastructure at the University of Groningen
Sandia National Laboratories
"We are using several clusters of different size, architecture and complexity, and they are essential tools for our research. We require a cluster management solution that provides the flexibility to accomplish our diverse requirements, spanning from production to research and development."
— James H. Laros III, Principal Member of the Technical Staff and Computer Scientist at Sandia
"I am very impressed with the efficiency achieved with Bright Cluster Manager. Our cluster with 1280 cores was up and running within a few hours, ready for integration into our HPC environment. Now it is continuing to save our system administrators valuable time."
— Prof. Lennart Johnsson, Director of the TLC2 and the Advanced Computing Research Laboratory at the University of Houston
"For example, we like to setup our clusters with specific network configurations. Unlike previously used solutions, with Bright Cluster Manager this was very easy to configure through the intuitive GUI or the powerful command line shell. We have tried many different cluster management solutions in the past. We found Bright Cluster Manager to have a well integrated centralized management interface which is powerful and flexible enough to accommodate our specific configuration requirements."
— Dr. Ioannis Konstantinidis, Research Development Officer at the University of Houston
"The centralized status and health information database simplifies troubleshooting and reduces service disturbances."
— Erik Engquist, Systems Administrator at the University of Houston
"Our cluster with 1280 cores was up and running within a few hours, ready for integration into our HPC environment. Now it is continuing to save our system administrators valuable time."
— Prof. Lennart Johnsson, University of Houston
"We have been using Bright Cluster Manager for more than half a year now and can recommend it to anyone who wants a complete and easy-to-use software solution for his HPC cluster."
"Using Bright Cluster Manager is a completely different experience from using the open source cluster management solutions that you can download off the web. Its GUI is very intuitive to use and offers all functionality I need as an administrator on a day-to-day basis."
— Erik Smeets, Systems Administrator at the Technical University of Eindhoven
"Our partnership with ClusterVision and Bright Computing has greatly helped us to setup our new cluster in a short time frame and their support engineers have been responsive and helpful."
— Dr. Christian Fauchier, CD-adapco
"Bright Cluster Manager has many features that make it easy for us to manage the cluster and allow us to focus on running our CFD and CAE applications."
"Bright Cluster Manager is a comprehensive cluster management solution that provides all the functionality that we need here at CD-adapco. Our key applications — STAR-CCM+ and STAR-CD — were easy to install and run well on the cluster."
— Philip Jones, Euro IT Director at CD-adapco


text:
You tushy is causing a global economic crisis
September 5, 2021 In Uncategorized
I'm concerned about the global economy. I'm more concerned that you aren't concerned. In this edition, I'm going to shame you for destroying the global economy. Read on to be shamed
We had talked about what will talk about in this edition in an earlier edition. I had hoped that you would change your ways, but you clearly haven't.
While you sit there in your loose baggy sweat pants, shoving your mouth full of junk food and watching Kumkum Bhagya, there's a crisis. Every day, you wake up and go to the restroom to take care of your bowels without a care in the world. Every single flush, every time you wipe your tushy🍑 with that 3 ply ultra-soft embossed ultra-premium toilet paper🧻, you're causing a global crisis. Do you realize that? If not, what's wrong with you?
COVID caused a simultaneous demand and supply shock. When the entire global economy shut down because of the stupid virus, demand collapsed, and a lot of manufacturing had to be taken offline. But as the world slowly reopened, there was a tremendous resurgence in demand. But the supply couldn't keep up because of the thousands of issues the goddamn stupid virus directly or indirectly caused, not to mention the old issues that it exacerbated.
Top Down Charts
Your ignorant and innocent wiping of your tushy is causing a global shipping crisis that is giving sleepless nights and endless headaches to everyone from manufacturers, logistics service providers, shipping rews, dock workers, truck drivers to CMOs of companies whose job up until was only to say "synergy" and "circle back" 27 times in a day over Zoom calls. You tushy is to blame. Before you even think of denying responsibility for making that poor CMO answer questions about supply chain issues, I'll explain how you're responsible. Clearly, you don't know.
When you wipe your tush with that 3 ply ultra-soft embossed ultra-premium toilet paper🧻 and get a heavenly feeling, here's what happens.
You take care of business, and your bowels and stomach feel as good as a Karan Johar movie climax. All smiles and tears of joy. You tear off half a meter of that 3 ply ultra-soft embossed ultra-premium toilet paper🧻 and gently massage your tush. You're feeling good, but here's the hell that poor 3 ply ultra-soft embossed ultra-premium toilet paper🧻 had to go through before it had the misfortune of coming in contact with your tush.
Step 1: Ordering the 3 ply ultra-soft embossed ultra-premium toilet paper🧻
You want what's best for your tush, so you decide to order the best 3 ply ultra-soft embossed ultra-premium toilet paper🧻. Now the manufacturer has to produce the 3 ply ultra-soft embossed ultra-premium toilet paper🧻 for your tush to feel good. Wood pulp is the main ingredient required to manufacture toilet paper. China and Canada are among the largest pulp manufacturers, and China is usually quite cheap. So the tushy paper manufacturer places an order with The Bruce Lee Tushy Pulp Company.
But he's in for a rude shock. The manufacturer tells him that he has to pay 40-50% more compared to pre-COVID.
You ask him why. The pulp supplier explains that there has been an increase in input costs for everything from energy, labour, and lumber because of the stupid virus. He also explains that China has stopped importing waste paper to recycle because it wants to reduce pollution. Waste paper is also an input to manufacture toilet paper. There's also a supply crunch in waste paper supply given that schools, colleges, offices are shut down in the US and Europe, which are the largest exporters of waste paper.
The tushy paper manufactures begrudgingly agrees and places the order. He then locks his office, holds his face in his palms and cries.
Step 2: Boats, boats, boats
It usually takes about 3 weeks for the pulp to be delivered. The tushy paper manufacturer is waiting anxiously for the tushy pulp delivery. But he gets a surprise call while he's in the middle of a bowel relieving session. An executive from The Bruce Lee Tushy Pulp Company tells him that there's a global shipping crisis and that the shipping costs have gone up nearly 5-10 times. Shipping container fees that were about $2000 was now as high as $15,000 and $20,000+ in some cases.
The spike in prices was because of a stunning rebound in global demand. With everyone stuck at home and working from home, people who had never tried online shopping suddenly discovered it. They started furiously ordering things like furniture, electronics, consumer durables, home improvement items and so on.
Before people started ordering useless shit, the first wave of the demand was from health equipment like PPE kits, gloves masks and so on for frontline healthcare workers.
The tushy paper manufacturer who was relieving his bowels when he got the call almost faints on the bidet. But he has no control and no choice given that many customers are waiting for his 3 ply ultra-soft embossed ultra-premium toilet paper🧻 to wipe their tushies. He says, ok. He then holds his face in his palms and cries right on the bidet. Poor guy!
Another dramatic chart for context:
FBX Freightos
The tushy paper manufacturer, in a desperate attempt to keep costs low, tries to find out if he can ship the pulp via air, but he almost faints again. Airfreight costs have also gone through the roop. He holds his face in his palms and cries. It's unclear this time if he was on the bidet. My reporters are waiting for a confirmation.
Drewry
Air isn't an option.
But after 1 week, the tushy paper manufacturer gets a call from The Brue Lee Tushy Pulp Company that the shipment will be delayed. The tushy paper manufacturer asks why? The Brue Lee Tushy Pulp Company representative explains that ships are full because of the global shipping crisis, and there's a shortage of containers and shipping crews. He also explains how some of the major Chinese ports are severely disrupted and even partially shut down. You ask him for more details, so the Bruce Lee company person starts explaining.
He explains that pre-COVID, global trade was chugging along despite all the issues. Since China was the largest exporter, ships would load goods in containers from China and deliver them to the US and Europe, and on the way back, they would pick up containers with US and European goods into China. This meant that the containers were continuously in flow. But once the stupid virus hit the world and economies shut down, things changed. Ships already en route dumped to the US and Europe dumped the containers at their destination ports and sailed back empty. A large amount of shipping supply had to be taken offline because of the negative demand and supply shocks.
But once the world reopened, there was now a container imbalance at places like China. They were ready to export but didn't have the containers. Add to this; the stupid virus was still on a rampage, and ports across the world were congested and were operating with less manpower because dock workers were down with COVID or quarantined. This meant that they couldn't quickly process the containers lying around and ship them back. To make the nightmare worse, China also had to partially close the Yantian port, one of the busiest ports in the world, for a month in June. This led to a shipping imbalance.
Chinese ports are still not operating at full capacity due to #Covid outbreaks.
Currently, there are 376 #Container vessels (ULCV – Sub Panamax) waiting off global #ports (2,411,904 TEU).#Ningbo port currently has 71 Containers waiting, only 9 less than this time 2 weeks ago. pic.twitter.com/oA7DtxVGIT
— VesselsValue (@VesselsValue) September 2, 2021
This month, it had to shut down a terminal at Ningbo-Zhoushan, the world's third-largest port.
To make things worse, containers were also stuck on ships waiting to be unloaded at inland cargo ports and freight train yards. There's a serious shortage of truck drivers responsible for delivering the unloaded containers from the ports to the customers' warehouses.
To make things even worser, it was far more profitable for shipping companies to ship stuff to the US, which is the world's largest consumer, than ship stuff from the US to China. So, only about 4 out of 10 containers coming into the US were going back into circulation. The shipping companies started prioritizing profitable routes, which was exacerbating container shortages. He also explains that even though new shipping container production is at record highs, it's unlikely to help the situation quickly.
To make things worsest, there was also a shortage of seafarers or shipping crew. In March, nearly 400,000 seafarers were stuck on ships due to COVID restrictions. This was because more than 50% of seafarers were from developing countries like India, where vaccinations were off to a rocky start.
To make it worsest squared, The Bruce Lee Company representative explains that in the last decade, there's been a consolidation in the shipping industry. Today, just 3 shipping alliances control 80% of the market. He also explains how ships sizes have doubled in the pursuit of lower costs and economies of scale in the last decade while port infrastructure hasn't kept pace. This is one of the reasons why that Ever Given ship got stuck in the Suez Canal. He gave an analogy of a 40-year-old man trying to fit into a size 26 jeans.
To put this into perspective, in 2005 the container fleet in total was under 2,000 vessels, the largest vessel capacity was 11,078 TEU with a Deadweight (dwt) value of 115,700 tonnes. By close of 2020 it had rocketed to 5,234 vessels, with some boasting a capacity of 23,964 TEU and 232,606 dwt. This has driven overall Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) by 42%, from 44K TEU in 2005 to 8.82 million TEU in 2020. Various factors have driven the growth notably economies of scale vs transportation costs, a dominant Asia Europe trade lane fuelling enough cargo, and fierce competition amongst owners. All have played into the burgeoning desire for more of what have become known as "mega" container ships.
Since The Bruce Lee Company representative knows Kung Fu, the tushy paper manufacturer decided to wait patiently for his tushy paper pulp.
Step 3: No boats, no boats, no boats
So finally, after 10 weeks, the boat carrying the pulp for the tushy paper manufacturer arrived in the US. But there's more bad luck. All the major ports around the world are facing severe congestion.
Splash 247
The tushy paper manufacturer's boat is stuck at the Los Angeles port, and there are 40 ships already waiting to unload. Usually, there are just one or two ships, according to the port authorities. Waiting times for ships to unload had hit record highs.
BloombergQuint
It takes another week for the pulp to be unloaded because the ports had a labour shortage because of COVID and contract tracing. Ports were operating with reduced manpower but were having to deal with a historic spike in inbound cargo. Finally, the ports unload the containers, but now, there was a chassis shortage, those trailers things on which containers are placed so that that truck can carry it to the tushy paper manufacturer's warehouse. This shortage was because of the delay in them being returned from the buyer's warehouse to the port, a spike in old repaired chassis, a demand shock, and a dying business model.
Not just that, there was also a historic shortage of truck drivers. This driver shortage was because of COVID, a spike in drivers' retirement, low pay, stress, mental health issues, regulations, among other reasons. Similarly, even the inland railways that carry the cargo from the ports to the inland destinations were clogged because of demand spikes, terminal closures, and a shortage of rail car boxes.
So finally, having paid extra for drivers and chassis, the tushy paper manufacturer gets the pulp at his warehouse. He manufactures the 3 ply ultra-soft embossed ultra-premium toilet paper🧻 .
Now, since you clearly aren't smart enough to care about the global economy over your tush feeling good, you go to Amazon and order 50 rolls of 3 ply ultra-soft embossed ultra-premium toilet paper🧻. It takes two clicks to place the order, but now the poor tush paper manufacturer has to go through the same logistical hell to ship the 3 ply ultra-soft embossed ultra-premium toilet paper🧻 to you.
Do you feel good? Are you proud of yourself? Every time you try to give your tush the best, it's causing a global shipping crisis and worsening the global logistical crisis. If your tush is reading this, I hope it was worth it, and I hope you, the tush, can live with this. You tush has blood on its cheeks.
A few good reads
Investing and personal finance
Cost vs. Sentimentality
Where Greatness Lies
Speculation Is Necessary. Governments Can Help
Was Ben Graham a Quant?
Benchmarking Has Become Circular
Everybody makes money in SPACs except the investors
Are Value Stocks Cheap for a Fundamental Reason?
Bottom Fishing In China Not Safe
International Tests of Factor Anomalies: Most Don't Survive
Private markets the performance measurement shenanigans
Voodo economics
Who is the Wealthiest Generation?
Inequality, Interest Rates, Aging, and the Role of Central Banks
Inflation is cooling some, but not all the reasons are good ones.
Part 1: Inflation – Tall Tales and True Causes
Matters of the mind
The Attention Span. "Puppies and Con Artists."
Notes From the Metaverse
The Red Warning Light on Richard Branson's Space Flight
People need to understand that all of the "net zero" commitments coming from pensions today are akin to Pres. Kennedy in '62 saying 'we choose to go to the moon'… These pensions – and I mean all of them – do not currently know how to do this. /1
— Ashby Monk (@sovereignfund) September 3, 2021
The Suez Canal was just the tip of the iceberg. Since 40% of sewing thread is made in China…
a 🧵 on the whys and how global supply chain crisis impact YOU seems appropriate. pic.twitter.com/jFSyGBRUHJ
— Eytan Buchman (@EytanBuchman) August 25, 2021
Finished reading The Mind is Flat by @nickjchater and here are my notes from the #book.
(brace yourself for 50+ tweets 🧵) pic.twitter.com/bCePtkqJ28
— Paras Chopra (@paraschopra) September 4, 2021
40% of those who have ever talked with others via video calls since the beginning of the pandemic say they have felt worn out or fatigued often or sometimes by the time they spend on them. https://t.co/0UJZOHoOgR pic.twitter.com/fLx6bQh8SP
— Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) September 4, 2021
The right way to do active management
Lessons for aspiring scamsters & frauds🤑
How much does asset allocation add to your returns?
Messy humans

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
First-ever FamilyPalooza highlights fun, community
By BTL Staff|2018-01-15T17:49:25-05:00September 21st, 2006|News|
By Dawn Wolfe Gutterman
Johanna Graine Mabry thought she was going to spend the past year planning this month's FamilyPalooza.
Instead, she's been spending the past eight months taking care of her 5-year-old son, Ari, who was diagnosed with Leukemia in February.
Mabry, her wife Deanna (who asked that her last name not be used) and their family are concentrating on supporting Ari through the next three years of chemotherapy, while the Coalition for Adoption Rights Equality and Affirmations Lesbian and Gay Community Center makes her dream of an inclusive family festival a reality.
The event is set for Sept. 30 at Kensington Metropark in Milford.
Fortunately, Deanna is able to support the family and provide health insurance while Mabry stays home to care for Ari and for their other child, 17-month-old Hunter.
"Now, with a child who's extremely ill and one parent unable to bring in an income, it brought to the surface for me even more how important it is for all parents to have legal rights regardless of their gender or sexual orientation," Mabry said.
Mabry knows that other LGBT-headed families aren't as lucky as hers. In fact, Michigan children being raised by LGBT and other unmarried couples run the risk of becoming legal orphans, in addition to facing many other social, legal and financial inequalities. That's where FamilyPalooza, and events like it, come in.
While enjoying Family Fun Day in Saugatuck last October, Mabry realized that there are a great many LGBT-headed families in Michigan, and that these families want and need more opportunities to connect and have fun together.
It would be even better if those opportunities were open to straight-headed families, too, and served to educate the larger community as well.
With that, FamilyPalooza was born. The event will have everything Mabry imagined: music, activities for kids, and opportunities for all sorts of parents to connect, share stories and learn from each other. More importantly, the event will highlight the legal limbo of children being raised by same-sex couples, and the need to pass second-parent adoption laws to protect those children.
While Mabry had to step out of planning FamilyPalooza to care for her son, the Coalition for Adoption Rights Equality and Affirmations Lesbian and Gay Community Center have stepped in to make the festival a reality. Proceeds from ticket sales will go to both organizations.
Families connecting
Kat LaTosch is looking forward to enjoying FamilyPalooza with her partner, Jennifer, and their children Quinn and Donovan.
"I expect our kids to have fun – seeing so many people and so many sights and sounds, it'll be a lot of fun. With kids at their ages, however, it'll probably be more of use to Jen and I as we get to meet other families with similar makeups," said Latosch, the marketing and special events director for Affirmations. Both children are less than one year old.
For the parents, the most important aspect of an event like FamilyPalooza is the opportunity to compare notes with other LGBT-headed families about everything from gay-friendly doctors to how other families have handled situations where, "Johnny came home and heard his teacher say that having two moms is not OK, and how did that family handle it?," LaTosch said.
Because Michigan courts don't recognize children's legal right to second-parent adoption, LaTosch and her partner will have to sign guardianship papers every six months until their children are both 18 years old to try to assure LaTosch's legal relationship with them.
LaTosch, Mabry and others hope that FamilyPalooza will help do something about the scary situation faced by theirs and so many other families across the state.
For Katie Jones, FamilyPalooza will be about fun and community.
"We're going because it's going to be a good time," she told BTL over the phone while 2-year-old Walden and 4-year-old Loey claimed her attention in the background.
The event, "has a great lineup, it's going to be a beautiful day, and the kids are going to have a blast – they're going to sample their first cotton candy," she said.
In addition, "It's very important [to be around other same-sex headed families]," Jones said, "because, I mean we have lots of friends in the GLBT community, but I think it's important for the kids to grow up with families that look like theirs, and families that don't.
And indeed, FamilyPalooza will have lots of opportunities for fun. From Noon – 5 p.m. the event will feature children's performers Gemini, Lori Fithian of Drummunity and Wild Swan Theatre. Arts and Scraps, a children's art group, will provide hands-on creative fun. Lesbian Moms Network will host a "quiet room" for young ones needing a nap or simply some quiet space.
It's about the kids
Ultimately, Mabry said, FamilyPalooza is about families – all families – and their children.
When she began planning the event, Mabry said, she hoped for "an all-day carnival concert style event open to all families – LGBT and heterosexual – to really come together and honor children and their need for two legally recognized parents."
Ultimately, second-parent adoption would give children security in all realms of who they are – emotional, physical, spiritual – it's not just recognizing them as having two moms, it's about protecting the child's best interest," she said.
Come OUT for fun!
FamilyPalooza will be held from Noon – 5 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 30 at Kensington Metro Park in Milford. Tickets are $5 per person, $25 per family or $50 for patrons. There is a $4 fee to enter the park. All families – LGBT and straight alike – are welcome. Tickets are available by phone at (248) 398-7105, ext. 29.


text:
Mary Ozuruonye Agholor
(NGA) Nigeria: Nurse
Mary Ozuruonye Agholor is exceptionally talented and innovative. She is the first Nigerian nurse to become a broadcaster with a functioning radio station, the "Nightingale Radio Station." The station has become a rallying point and voice of Nurses in Nigeria, by creating health awareness, preventive medicine advocacy, and increasing the availability of health information.
Mary Ozuruonye Agholor is the first Nigerian nurse to become a broadcaster. She founded the radio station the "Nightingale Radio station" as a platform for Nurses to speak out and express themselves and serve as an information hub for Nurses and Nursing bodies such as NANM, NMCN, and more. The station has become a rallying point and voice of Nurses in Nigeria. As a public health nurse with a passion for public speaking and broadcasting, Agholor's daily work routine involves creating health awareness, preventive medicine advocacy, and increasing the availability of health information. She uses public speaking and broadcast media as tools to facilitate public health education through health shows on the radio. Recently, Agholor has been involved in the dissemination and propagation of information about COVID-19 primarily through Florence Nightingale Radio.
She additionally gives weekly presentations on another radio station, Living proof Radio, to reach out and educate the population on COVID-19. Agholor paired her nursing skills with her understanding of media to produce jingles about COVID-19 prevention and control which are being aired on three different media houses. The jingles focus on the need for constant and consistent handwashing with soap and water, frequent use of hand sanitizer, proper use of facemasks, and physical distancing. Additionally, as a nurse in broadcast media, Agholor joined the National Volunteer Group on COVID-19 (NVG_Covid-19) in Nigeria. She was appointed the state Director of Media for the National Volunteer Group, set up to supplement government interventions with added personnel, where she coordinated the distribution of food items to assist those in need and the erection of handwashing stands at strategic points during the pandemic.
*Mary Ozuruonye Agholor not pictured. PHOTO CREDIT: Adara


text:
Hex support

Hexagonal cell layout is supported in several parts of the toolkit, most notably in Console display, Cellular generator, FOV and Pathfinding. This page explains how to uses hexes with rot.js.

While hexagonal cells provide several advantages over the traditional square/rectangular topologies, there is one big complication associated with their usage: there is no canonical way to index individual hexes. A hexagonal indexing comparison document is available for reference; rot.js is using the third variant, called double width.

Displaying hexes

There is a very trivial trick to display a rudimentary hexagonal layout: skip even/odd cells in odd/even rows. No special adjustments are necessary. The result will look good as long as the font aspect ratio is close to 1:√3 – which is the case for most monospaced fonts.

var display = new ROT.Display({width:8, height:5});
SHOW(display.getContainer());

for (var y = 0; y < 5; y++) {
	for (var x = y%2; x < 8; x += 2) {
		display.draw(x, y, "•");
	}
}

For more advanced hexagonal stuff, switch the display to "hex" layout. This has the following advantages:

Precisely computed positioning

Filled background hexes

var display = new ROT.Display({width:8, height:5, layout:"hex"});
SHOW(display.getContainer());

for (var y = 0; y < 5; y++) {
	for (var x = y%2; x < 8; x += 2) {
		var bg = ROT.RNG.getItem(["#333", "#666", "#999", "#ccc", "#fff"]);
		display.draw(x, y, "•", "#000", bg);
	}
}

If you absolutely need inverted hex layout ("flat-tops"), you can force transposed rendering by passing the transpose:true option to the ROT.Display constructor. Please note that this inverts the x-y values of all display-related functions and operations.

var display = new ROT.Display({
	width:10, height:4, spacing:2.5,
	layout:"hex", transpose:true
});
SHOW(display.getContainer());

for (var y = 0; y < 4; y++) {
	for (var x = y%2; x < 10; x += 2) {
		var bg = ROT.RNG.getItem(["#333", "#666", "#999", "#ccc", "#fff"]);
		display.draw(x, y, x+","+y, "#000", bg);
	}
}

Cellular dungeon generator

Pass the topology:6 option to the ROT.Map.Cellular constructor to operate in hexagonal mode.

var w = 100, h = 50;
var display = new ROT.Display({width:w, height:h, fontSize:10, layout:"hex"});
SHOW(display.getContainer());

/* hexagonal map and rules */
var map = new ROT.Map.Cellular(w, h, {
	topology: 6,
	born: [4, 5, 6],
	survive: [3, 4, 5, 6]
});

/* initialize with irregularly random values */
for (var i=0; i<w; i++) {
	for (var j=0; j<h; j++) {
		var dx = i/w - 0.5;
		var dy = j/h - 0.5;
		var dist = Math.pow(dx*dx+dy*dy, 0.3);
		if (ROT.RNG.getUniform() < dist) { map.set(i, j, 1); }
	}
}

/* generate four iterations, show the last one */
for (var i=4; i>=0; i--) {
	map.create(i ? null : display.DEBUG);
}

Pathfinding

All pathfinding algorithms accept the topology:6 option as well.

var w = 150, h = 80;
ROT.RNG.setSeed(12345);
var display = new ROT.Display({width:w, height:h, fontSize:6, layout:"hex"});
SHOW(display.getContainer());

/* generate map and store its data */
var data = {};
var map = new ROT.Map.Cellular(w, h, {
	topology: 6,
	born: [4, 5, 6],
	survive: [3, 4, 5, 6]
});
map.randomize(0.48);
map.create(); /* two iterations */
map.create(function(x, y, value) {
	data[x+","+y] = value;
	display.DEBUG(x, y, value);
});

/* input callback informs about map structure */
var passableCallback = function(x, y) {
	return (data[x+","+y] === 0);
}

/* prepare path to given coords */
var dijkstra = new ROT.Path.Dijkstra(120, 64, passableCallback, {topology:6});

/* compute from given coords */
dijkstra.compute(30, 16, function(x, y) {
	display.draw(x, y, "", "", "#800");
});

/* highlight */
display.draw(30, 16, "", "", "#3f3");
display.draw(120, 64, "", "", "#f33");

Field of View

Precise Shadowcasting works in hexagonal topology as well.

ROT.RNG.setSeed(12345);
var W = 44;
var H = 28;

var display = new ROT.Display({fontSize:12, layout:"hex", width:W, height:H});
SHOW(display.getContainer());

/* generate map and store its data */
var data = {};
var map = new ROT.Map.Cellular(W, H, {
	topology: 6,
	born: [4, 5, 6],
	survive: [3, 4, 5, 6]
});
map.randomize(0.4);
map.create(function(x, y, value) {
	data[x+","+y] = value;
	display.DEBUG(x, y, value);
});

/* input callback */
function lightPasses(x, y) {
	var key = x+","+y;
	if (key in data) { return (data[key] == 0); }
	return false;
}

var fov = new ROT.FOV.PreciseShadowcasting(lightPasses, {topology:6});

/* output callback */
fov.compute(20, 14, 6, function(x, y, r, vis) {
	var ch = (r ? "" : "@");
	var color = (data[x+","+y] ? "#aa0": "#660");
	display.draw(x, y, ch, "#fff", color);
});

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Enchanted Kingdom: The Fiend of Darkness Game: Save the Empire from an evil dragon!
Stop an evil dragon from plunging the Empire into darkness!
Only you can stop the crystals raining down on Tar and stealing energy.
Save the citizens of Rivershire from a terrible plague!
Only you can save the kingdom from a mysterious disease!


text:
Staff, News4JAX
Published: January 12, 2022, 12:00 PM
Tags: Environment
North Florida Land Trust acquires another 157 acres in O2O wildlife corridor
Property acquired from the Weyerhaeuser Corporation (Provided by North Florida Land Trust)
North Florida Land Trust has helped to preserve approximately 157 acres in Putnam County located in the Ocala to Osceola, or O2O, wildlife corridor.
The nonprofit land conservation organization acquired the property for $472,600 from the Weyerhaeuser Corporation, a private timberland company.
The funding for the property was provided by the Florida Defense Task Force through the Clay County Development Authority and the Department of Defense's Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration (REPI) program.
NFLT negotiated with Weyerhaeuser and completed the due diligence necessary to finalize the acquisition.
The property is located adjacent to Etoniah Creek State Forest and within the priority area for conservation for Camp Blanding and the Army Compatible Use Buffer (ACUB) program designed to secure buffers around military installations.
"This acquisition accomplishes many things. It provides a critical linkage between the Etoniah Creek State Forest and Camp Blanding, provides for wildlife migration, and protects Camp Blanding from encroachment," said Jim McCarthy, president of NFLT. "Weyerhaeuser was a wonderful partner through this process, and we appreciate their cooperation and willingness to sell the land."
The 157-acre property buffers the Camp Blanding installation, enhances the state's ability to manage the Etoniah Creek State Forest, and provides a critical linkage for wildlife habitat and fire management. It contains wetlands associated with Etoniah Creek tributaries.
The property sits within the O2O wildlife corridor, which provides important habitat for the Florida Black Bear and numerous endangered species, including the red-cockaded woodpecker, indigo snake, and gopher tortoise.
NFLT has been leading a partnership of public and private partners who are committed to preserving this critical wildlife corridor to allow wildlife to migrate and maintain populations as they are pushed out of developing areas.
Copyright 2022 by WJXT News4Jax - All rights reserved.


I was beginning to think I was incapable of anything new. Much love to PottyMouthCon for the inspiration. (Caution clicking on that link... he was blocked by Scott Baio for a reason.
After watching this I would think Rahm would go out behind the White House and play catch with Obama to get him ready for next year. At least he didn't almost skip it like last year.
Hopefully the catcher didn't throw his back out on that grab.
(HT to Rob Port over at Say Anything Blog for the video link).
As I rested my weary bones this weekend I overheard the boys talking with Lucie about the meaning of Easter.
Chris: Yeah, so the Easter Bunny brings you candy and hides eggs.
Lucie: Yeah, I wike deh Eastew Bunny.
Chris: So anyway, after he leaves the candy we have to catch him and cook him.
Ben: Yeah, it's a tradition.
Chris: Exactly and each kid gets a separate part to eat.
Chris: Since your the next to youngest you get the eyeballs.
Lucie: Ewwww. I am not eating anything with bwood in it. That's gwoss. Bwood makes me sick.
Chris: Well I had to do it when I was next to youngest.
Ben: Dad has to eat the (unintelligible).
Me: No, Dad eats the ears only. The privilege of being Dad. Everyone wants to be the Daddy!
Yeah, I know.... Years of therapy to come.
To let you in on the joke, the guy I banged this out for has a horrible phobia of anything poo related.
Friendship has a color! Brown!


Age of Heroes Blu-ray Review. Age of Heroes is a different look at the war, but it lacks the foundations of a great movie, more character development and worrying about this movie rather than a sequel might have saved it; but unfortunately you'll probably forget it once it fades to black.
Based on a true story, Age of Heroes stars Sean Bean and Danny Dyer in a World War II action movie following the troops of Ian Fleming's 30 Commando Unit through their first mission "Operation Grendel".
Corporal Bob Rains (Danny Dyer – Human Traffic) enlists into a newly formed 30 Commando Unit created by Ian Fleming (yes the James Bond Author, then a Lieutenant Commander in WWII). Rains and his fellow soldiers are put to the test and pushed to their limits when trained by Sargent McKenzie (William Houston - Sherlock Holmes) and Major Jack Jones (Sean Bean - Game of Thrones) for their first mission, to seize Nazi Radar Technology and be the front line of the allies advance in to Europe. Hot on the tail of the Commandos are vicious German Unit lead by Lt. Steiner Mortensen (Aksel Hennie – Head Hunters).
Since Saving Private Ryan there has been dozens of WWII action movies and with so many being released every year it's hard to stand out, this direct to video flick tries to fit into that nice whole that Inglorious Bastards left back in 2009 with varied results. It packs a huge ensemble cast of B Grade British actors ranging from Sean Bean to William Houston; Now don't get me wrong there is little wrong with any of the acting in Age of Heroes it's just one of those movies where you will watch it thinking hey I've seen you before, what else are you in?
Age of heroes finds its footing in the story, while lacking the explosions and brutality of others in its genre Age of Heroes is an intriguing look into another side of the war whereas here we learn how alliances are formed and the commandos are trained rather than just being placed into the battlefield. The pacing of Age of Heroes is difficult to watch with a great opening, the film just drops and we are forced to sit through an hour or so of useless dialogue that does little to drive the film, the final act however wakes you into an action packed final stand between the allies and axis. Age of Heroes tries to mimic certain aspects of Inglorious Bastards with the Character of Lt. Steiner (Hennie) everything from his persona and dialogue to the scenes he appeared in, felt like a poor man's Jew Hunter played by the memorable Christoph Waltz.
I always find with movies like this, with such a big cast they lack in developing characters and giving them the right amount of screen time so when or if they die I actually feel for them rather than just knowing they are cannon fodder. The film comes to a sudden halt towards the end not really divulging on what really happened to characters and giving the sense of a potential but unlikely sequel. With a movie like this I would had preferred the running time to had been extended then It would had got the character development and the true ending it needed.
Age of Heroes is a different look at the war, but it lacks the foundations of a great movie, more character development and worrying about this movie rather than a sequel might have saved it; but unfortunately you'll probably forget it once it fades to black.


text:
July 2001–September 2001
Summer 2001 Anime
EP1050: Feb 5 at 9:30am JST
? eps × 24m
Monkey. D. Luffy refuses to let anyone or anything stand in the way of his quest to become the king of all pirates. With a course charted for the treacherous waters of the Grand Line and beyond, this is one captain who'll never give up until he's claimed the greatest treasure on Earth: the Legendary One Piece!
Yu☆Gi☆Oh! Duel Monsters
3000 years ago marked the turning point of an Egyptian dynasty; the Pharaoh's spirit was sealed inside one of the ancient relics, the Millennium Puzzle, after saving the kingdom from an enemy army. Now, in the present age, the Millennium Puzzle is found by a young boy, Yugi Mutou, who unlocks the spirit of the puzzle and is possessed by the sprit of the old Pharaoh, who lost all of his memories from his old life. As a thank you to the spirit who saved him from bullies and gave him new friends, Yugi decided to help the spirit out and find a way to recover his lost memories and send him to the after life.
Jul 5, 2001 at 6:00pm JST
After the death of her mother, young Honda Tooru has been secretly living on her own in a tent. Her life changes forever when she stumbles upon the secret of the Souma family, whose land she has been living on. The secret is a curse that changes some members of the family into animals of the Chinese Zodiac when they are hugged by someone of the opposite sex. Now, living with the Souma family, Tooru is in the middle of ancient conflicts between Zodiac rivals as she wears the burden of the Souma family secret. Despite this, the members of the Souma family find peace thanks to the presence of Tooru.
On a starry night, middle-schooler Manta meets Yoh Asakura, a young shaman who has the ability to talk to spirits, and also has the ability to let them possess him to use their powers. Yoh has a heavy duty on his shoulders: he must become the Shaman King by winning the Shaman Fight, a tournament between shamans that happens only once every 500 years. Joined by his spirit medium fiancée Anna Kyōyama, his personal samurai spirit Amidamaru, and his other friends, Yoh must also face a larger evil: Hao, a powerful man who aims to create a new world with only shamans by becoming the Shaman King himself.
Digimon Tamers takes place in a world where the popular Digimon franchise is all the rage, consisting of a cartoon, video games, and the trading card game. Takato Matsuda is a huge Digimon fan that's particularly obsessed with the card game, and constantly daydreams about the universe therein. One day, he finds a mysterious blue card, which he slides through a scanner toy to use in the popular battle game. His toy suddenly glows and transforms into a Digivice, and Takato's fan-made design, Guilmon, materialises in front of him. Thrilled by the prospect of having a real-life Digimon, Takato embraces his new partner, and his adventures as a Digimon Tamer begin.
Takato quickly discovers that being a Digimon Tamer is not all fun and games—in reality, it's much more dangerous than the card games he's accustomed to. Wild Digimon have begun to appear all across Japan, causing rampages that result in chaos and mayhem. Armed with his Digivice, which can scan trading cards to strengthen Guilmon, Takato and his new partner set out to combat the rogue Digimon. They are tasked with protecting the world from Digimon attacks, whilst a mysterious organization determined to eliminate all Digimon and their Tamers lurks in the shadows...
Bakuten Shoot Beyblade
Thirteen-year-old Tyson Granger (Takao Kinomiya), along with his fellow teammates, Kai Hiwatari, Max Tate (Max Mizuhura), and Ray Kon (Rei Kon), strive to become the greatest Beybladers in the world. With the technical help of the team's resident genius, Kenny (Kyouju), and with the powerful strength of their BitBeasts, the Bladebreakers armed with their tops (AKA: Blades) attempt to reach their goal.
Meitantei Conan
EP1072: Feb 4 at 6:00pm JST
Shinichi Kudo is a high school detective. One day, suspicious men in black forcefully give him a strange poison and his body shrank to the time of when he was in the first grade! Hiding his identity, he made a new name for himself: Conan Edogawa. Conan now lives with his childhood friend Ran Mori and her detective father in hopes of hunting down the Black Organization while being involved in cases. He faces numerous difficult cases and goes against a notorious thief but keeps on solving mysteries to find the one and only truth!
[Source: TMS Entertainment]
Grappler Baki: Saidai Tournament-hen
Jul 23, 2001 at 1:45am JST
Baki, a great grappler needs to live up to his name being the son of the the greatest grapplers of all time: Hanma Yujiro. At the Shinshinkai Organization's private arena, anything goes and the odds are always stacked against you. Current champion of the urderground tournament he fight to defend his title against the worlds strongest and best martial artists, including "the beast" his own father Yujiro.
Tottoko Hamtarou
5th-grader Laura Haruna owns a hamster, and his name is Hamtaro. After moving into a new town, Hamtaro finds that he's in the company of lots of different hamsters, making up a group of hamster friends that go on crazy adventures through the city. Before they save Laura and other humans from nasty predicaments, however, they have to learn how to save themselves.
Doraemon (1979)
1787 eps × 11m
Nobi Nobita is a 4th-grade boy in Tokyo. One day, a round, blue cat-style robot (minus ears) pops up in his desk drawer. Nobita's great-great-grandson (or something) lives in the 22nd Century, but thanks to Nobita's mistakes, the entire family is living in poverty. To rectify this, Nobita's descendant sends Doraemon back to the past, to help prevent Nobita from making mistakes. Of course this is a difficult task since Nobita is the weakest and least intelligent child in his class. Doraemon does, however, have a 4-dimensional pocket on his front, which contains cool gadgets from the future. With these toys, Doraemon will try to help Nobita. Unfortunately, Nobita also has the bad habit of misusing Doraemon's gadgets and landing himself in yet more trouble!
[Source: AnimeNfo]
Scryed
A strange environmental phenomenon 22 years ago in the Kanazawa prefecture caused the land to split and protrude upwards reaching unprecedented heights, creating the secluded area known as The Lost Ground. Kazuma is a young mercenary who lives in the Lost Ground, looking for any work he can find to sustain his livelihood within the harsh environment. He is one of the few people that are gifted with the Alter ability, which allows him to plaster his right arm and torso with a metallic alloy. When this mercenary encounters HOLY, an order whose purpose is to suppress and capture what they call Native Alter Users, and one of the elite members of HOLY, Ryuho, an epic rivalry begins.
Kidou Tenshi Angelic Layer
12-year-old Misaki Suzuhara has just gotten involved in Angelic Layer, a battling game using electronic dolls called angels. Even as a newbie, Misaki shows advanced skills as she meets new friends and enters Angelic Layer tournaments to fight the greatest Angelic Layer champions of the nation.
I My Me! Strawberry Eggs
TNK
Amawa Hibiki is a young man just out of college, with an education to be an athletics teacher. He's been having a hard time finding a job since he graduated, so all his money has gone towards living expenses. When his landlady demands his first payment to live in her living establishment upfront, he heads to the local middle school to get hired as a teacher. However, the principal refuses to hire him without hesitation. She will not hire men as teachers and makes it clear that she hates all men, saying they put no love into their passions and work. Amawa does not give up and with the help of his landlady, he crossdresses as a woman without a second thought, and gets hired, so he can earn money and also prove the principal wrong. Now, he has to keep his real gender a secret, and avoid strange situations, including the affections of his students (from both genders).
Daa! Daa! Daa!
Miyu is an 8th grade girl, whose parents have been hired by NASA. They take off to America leaving Miyu with Mr. Saionji. Later, Mr. Saionji decides to go on a 1 year long trip to India leaving Miyu alone with his son, Kanata. More complications rise when an Alien baby and his babysitter pet crashes/lands in their house. To make things worse, alien baby starts calling Miyu and Kanata Mom and Dad, also showing ESP power and floating around.
Motto! Ojamajo Doremi
After the losing of magical ability to become witches, they once again become them. But, now they have to go through tests from the Witches of the Witch World. They also meet a new member, from New York, U.S. comes Momoko (the yellow Ojamajo).
Seikai no Senki II
Jul 11, 2001 at 11:00pm JST
Due to a lack of ambassadors for the recently-conquered worlds the rapidly advancing fleet of the Bebaus brothers leave behind, Lafiel is appointed Territorial Ambassador of the planet Lobnas II. Upon arriving to the planet Jinto and Lafiel discover that the planet was used by the United Mankind as a prison planet and now has a million prisoners on the only inhabited island. The prisoners are parted in three blocks. The western where women are housed, the eastern belongs to the men and the central is mixed under the restriction that all prisoners living there are sterilized. The women in the western sector want to emigrate from the planet of fear for the men and when they do the men in the east rebel, overthrowing the guards and capturing Jinto to try to stop the emigration of the women. At the same time an enemy fleet heads toward the system forcing Lafiel to abandon Jinto.
Mahou Senshi Louie
Louie, a brawny student at the mage's guild, is reluctantly accepted by three girls (Merrill-thief, Genie-fighter, and Melissa-priestess) as a companion for their adventuring party. As the foursome explore ruins, battle dark creatures, and make new friends, they also uncover a sinister plot within the kingdom.
Crayon Shin-chan follows the wacky antics and adventures of five-year-old Shinnosuke "Shin" Nohara and his parents, neighbors, and friends and is set in Kasukabe, Saitama Prefecture, Japan.
Many of the jokes in the series stem from Shin-chan's occasionally weird, unnatural and inappropriate use of language, as well as from his inappropriate behavior. A typical gag involves Shin-chan confounding his parents by using the wrong phrase for the occasion; for example, saying "Welcome back!" instead of "I am back!" when he comes home.
During the beginning of the series, the TV show was mostly based on the storyline in the original manga. As the show progressed, more and more episodes became anime-original.
Super GALS! Kotobuki Ran
Sporting designer clothes, make-up, and nails, Ran Kotobuki is the very picture of a trendy, young Shibuya girl, but don't let that fool you. This girl comes from a family of cops, and she's ready to lay you out flat if you even think about causing trouble in her town! At least, she will... when she's not distracted with karaoke, shopping, and dodging her homework. Join Ran and her friends as they defend the streets of Shibuya and attempt to shop their way into the history books as the most famous Gals ever!
Taiho Shichau zo: Second Season
AA! Megami Sama creator, Kosuke Fujishima, is back with the second season of Taiho Schihauzo (You're Under Arrest). Same characters, two policewomen, the gentle Miyuki and the wild Natsumi teamed up together in Bokuto police station's traffic division.
Other characters including Kenichi, the motorcycle cop who has a feeling for Miyuki; Yoriko with her gossip and Aoi, a transvestite. They all ready to take on harmless criminals and costumed weirdos... You think you can have a better police station?
Kochira Katsushikaku Kameari Kouenmae Hashutsujo (TV)
Ryoutsu, being an underpaid policeman, is always coming up with underhanded schemes in order to make a quick buck. But in the end, his plans (which are ridiculous to begin with) always go wrong and land him in big trouble with the chief.
Lupin III: Alcatraz Connection
August 3, 2001 JST
Zenigata arrives on the ship "Machine Gun Kelly", a casino on the water owned by the mafia, because Lupin plans on stealing the casino's money. Lupin and his gang manages to break into the ship's vault but was unable to escape with the money due to Zenigata's shooting. However, there was another purpose the ship had, one that Lupin was aware of; to search for a sunken ship filled with gold. Lupin managed to steal this data while he was on the ship, however, now they have to contend with Zenigata, the mafia, and a secret organization whose base is under Alcatraz, as they attempt to uncover the secret behind the organization and the sunken treasure.
Project ARMS
A boy gets involved in an accident when in kindergarten, horribly damaging his arm, but the doctors somehow manage to save it. Now, several years later, his arm seems to be becoming the focus of strange events as it turns out to be more than a normal arm. Meanwhile, a secret organizations is out to get hold of him and the power he possess.
Samurai Girl Real Bout High School
Jul 30, 2001 at 8:30pm JST
At Daimon High School, kids settle their disputes by dueling with each other in the school's official K-Fight battle arena. Ryoko Mitsurugi, samurai girl and undefeated K-Fight champion, is called upon by a mysterious Priestess to protect the Earth from an invasion coming from the alternate universe of Solvania. She must face battles that will test her skills, her friendships, and her heart in order to find her true strength as a samurai warrior.
Magical Nyan Nyan Taruto
Taruto is a little cat who has just moved to a new city with her master's family. Taruto spends her days making friends and exploring her new home town. She also has a knack for getting herself into trouble. And it turns out that Taruto just might be a legendary magical princess. Almost none of Taruto's friends believe that she can use magic or that she's a princess, but Taruto is determined to prove it to them. But Taruto's magic is so unpredictable, you never know what's going to happen when she uses it.
Jungle wa Itsumo Hare nochi Guu
Haré was a happy boy living out his days in the jungle with his mother, but then one day Guu showed up and became a member of their household. Throughout the series he faces many hardships as he tries to keep Guu out of trouble in the jungle.
Zone of the Enders: Dolores, I
49-year-old James Lynx was an officer (LEV pilot) in the United Nations global army, one day he received notification that his wife—a Martian scientist—was killed during a lab experiment.
Hateful and resentful for letting her go, his children blamed him and cast him aside, depressed and in despair, James quit the military and took up a job as a transporter between Earth and Mars, he had some slight hope of his wife still being alive and to find her he wanted to be out there. After a few years, he seemed to have given up all hope and turned to drinking, until one day he receives an orbital frame by the name of "Dolores," sent by his dead wife. Once again, he dares to hope and sets off on a wild and wacky adventure to find the truth and to reunite his family.
Shingu: Secret of the Stellar Wars
The world is about to be turned upside down for Hajime Murata. First, a strange alien ship appears over Tokyo, and then a mysterious new transfer student arrives at his school wearing an ancient school uniform. His name is Muryou, and with his arrival, everything begins to change. Students suddenly begin to display amazing psychic powers, a giant white guardian keeps appearing in the skies over the city to fight off gigantic alien creatures, and men with threatening weapons are haunting the shadows of the school grounds.
With all these strange events taking place around him, Hajime is determined to figure out the truth about a world he thought he already knew. This is his story: a tale of aliens and humans, starships and spies, and friends who are often more than they appear. Join Hajime as he uncovers the mystery of Shingu: Secret of the Stellar Wars!
Chance Triangle Session
This anime is based on a 1999 radio drama about three very different girls: Akari, Yuki and Nozomi; going to see the concert of top pop idol Reika and by going to see this concert their lives are greatly influenced by it.
Akari was raised in a very religious background, she is bright and cheerful and a big Reika fan. Yuki is an independent girl who ran away from her home in Hakodate. She is working in the concert hall of Reika's performance. Nozomi is the daughter from a wealthy family in Kobe. She's got one of the VIP seats at the concert.
The three girls are so inspired by Reika's performance, that they all enroll in the Akiba music school and endeavor to become pop idols themselves.
Cosmo Warrior Zero
VEGA entertainment
Jul 8, 2001 at 3:10am JST
The story of two true men plays out on the grim stage of space. Warrius Zero is a disgraced space captain from the Earth Federation. He lost all hope along with his family and the war against the Machine Men. His opponent is Captain Harlock, a space pirate who has refused to surrender to the Machine Men alongside the rest of humanity. The weapons they fight with are respect, honor, and bravery. Their battle will change the destiny of mankind forever.
[Source: Crunchyroll]
Shin Megami Tensei Devil Children
A series based off of the Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Children franchise.
Chibi Maruko-chan (1995)
Momoko Sakura is an elementary school student who likes popular idol Momoe Yamaguchi and mangas. She is often called "Chibi Maruko-chan" due to her young age and small size. She lives together with her parents, her grandparents and her elder sister in a little town. In school, she has many friends with whom she studies and plays together everyday, including her close pal, Tama-chan; the student committee members, Maruo-kun and Migiwa-san; and the B-class trio: 'little master' Hanawa-kun, Hamaji-Bu Taro and Sekiguchi-kun. This is a fun-loving and enjoyable anime that portrays the simple things in life.
Nintama Rantarou
Life at Ninja school is never boring!
Rantaro, Kirimaru, and Shinbei are far from being excellent ninjas. As they embark on their training at the ninja school, they are joined by their tongue-in-cheek friends, ninja masters, and idol senior ninja trainees. All the unbelievable mistakes and confusion over the course of their training sets the base for loads of fun and entertainment.
[Source: NHK Enterprises]
Parappa is just your ordinary talking dog; he enjoys spending time with his friends, listening to music, and going on adventures. Together with his friends, Parappa gets into many strange situations, all the while learning to navigate through life, get along with his friends, and pine for the girl of his dreams, Sunny Funny.
Based on an equally quirky rhythm game, Parappa the Rapper boasts a unique flat style, blasts of color, and a string of strange but charming characters. Among Parappa's friends are an anthropomorphized blue cat, lamb, and even a flower.
Parappa's adventures range from the ordinary to the bizarre. He crosses paths with mischievous baddies, helps resolve questions of friendship and love, and even goes on trips through time itself. Nothing can change Parappa's positive outlook on life.
Set in the year 2100 where the world is tied together by a computer network. The children of the world become Web Divers, adapting their consciousnesses into data, and love to play together in the cyber park called Magical Gate. However, a mysterious computer virus appears beginning to destroy Magical Gate from the inside out. In cyberspace, programs called Web Knights have been created to protect the children. But, the computer virus has turned all the Web Knights against the children. The only Web Knight to escape the "brainwashing" is Gladion. Gladion seeks the help of Kaito Yuki, a Web Diver who is in the fourth grade.
Dr. Rin ni Kiitemite!
Kanzaki Meirin, a junior high school student, posseses fusui power which can drive away evil spirits away whenever they appeared. She is in fact, the fortune teller Dr. Rin. She is in love with her best friend, soccer club member, Yuuki Asuka. However, Yuuki does not like fortune-telling and superstitious things.
Ojarumaru
Fairyland... One thousand years ago. Five year old Prince Mackaroo, son of a nobleman, is bored with his life... there is just no excitement! His parents only want Mackaroo to study, study, study so he can become an 'intellectual aristocrat'. But Mackaroo wants to have some fun and adventures.
In the meantime, three mischievous scamps... Scarlett, Khakie and Blue-Joe, take the Great Demon King's power scepter without his permission. While playing in Prince Mackaroo's garden, they lose the scepter and Prince Mackaroo finds it! Whoever has possession of the scepter can time-warp to any time in the past or future! Excited, Prince Mackaroo jumps into the distant future to our present world, tailed by the three scamps who need to get the scepter back to the Great Demon King.
Upon landing in the present day, Prince Mackaroo meets Cozmo, a boy 7 years of age. They become very good friends and Cozmo's parents invite Prince Mackaroo to live with them. Prince Mackaroo gets his chance to experience a life full of mishaps, confusion, fun and adventures in the present world.
[Source: ENOKI FILMS CO., LTD.]
Gyouten Ningen Batsealer
With the ability to transcend time, Captain Fatz and comrades embarked on a journey of battle and adventure to gather the eight scattered stone pieces (namely Light, Darkness, Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Wood & Metal) which was granulated by the lord of destruction, in order to restore the chaotic world back to peace.
Sore Ike! Anpanman
EP1605: Feb 3 at 10:55am JST
One night, a Star of Life falls down the chimney of a bakery nestled deep in the forest, causing the dough in the oven to come to life. The dough becomes Anpanman, a superhero made of anpan (a sweet roll with bean jam filling). Together with his friends, Anpanman fights his rival Baikinman and helps the malnourished.
Daisuki! BuBu ChaCha
Tags TBD
Daume
The anime talks about a little boy, Randy, whose dog, Chacha, died in an accident and was reincarnated into a living toy car. Each episode is told like the chapter of a storybook, where Randy learns a valuable thing in life with his cartoonish and goofy friend Chacha. Randy meets several friends in his neighbourhood, such as Catherine, the tall blonde girl in red long socks who rides a bicycle, or Mary, a little hot-tempered brunette girl dressed as a maid and who carries around a mop.


If you're seeking to construct some leisure fun into your home, remember that anything that poses as a possible hazard can increase your home insurance premiums. Including a swimming pool or trampoline for the children can increase your yearly premiums as much as 10 %. Make sure to take this into consideration prior to purchasing to determine if the benefits outweigh the additional insurance coverage prices.
Take satisfaction and pleasure in your work while making an attempt to get pleasure from your self. As long as you retain security in thoughts, have fun remodeling your house. If in case you have a optimistic outlook while making home enhancements, you are more likely to stick together with your targets and get the work accomplished in a timely manner. Critical drainage problems can surface during wet intervals if gutters are clogged. A primary reason for water leaking into the basement is clogged gutters that lead to rainwater working down along the side of your house. Clean your gutters to avoid the sort of matter.
After placing down tile, seal off the grout. Grout is de facto very porus. Without proper sealing, moisture will seep in, giving approach to mildew and mildew. You also run the danger of staining your new floors extra simply. By sealing grout, you will save time when cleansing tiles and stop unnecessary costs for mildew points. If you're hiring a contractor or landscaper to work on your house enchancment mission, guantee that they are licensed. If a contractor has a license, it means that they're a legit businessman who's skilled in the type of work you require. It additionally indicates that the contractor follows and is informed concerning the latest updates in the industry.
Make sure that you preserve a watch out for all sorts of contractors.
If you happen to plan to promote your own home within the close to future, you must keep away from expensive house- enchancment tasks that cater to your unique preferences. Such projects will usually be a waste of money within the sense that they will not correspondingly elevate the value of the home. For instance, installing costly customized-made bathroom tiles from Italy is a poor choice for a home-enchancment challenge as a result of potential patrons will not often agree with you on their value. Prospective buyers can have their own preferences and can already be planning to incorporate their tastes into their very own projects.
Create area with cabinets. Building new cabinets in your house is an easy house improvement project that has a number of makes use of. Not only are handmade cabinets helpful space-makers, they will also be superbly stained to match any home's decor. Including your own unique viewpoint can provide your home a private contact with out harming any worth it could have. Bettering your own home could be tough, in case you enable it to be. A bit of recommendation can make projects easier. This article is filled with nice info you'll be able to't go on without.
When renovating your property, make sure that you do it with the native space in mind. There's little point in building a large, out of doors deck area if it is constantly windy or putting up a pool in an space where it's continually chilly. These additions won't add worth to the property and are, subsequently, wasted money. If you're putting in kitchen cupboards, you need to ensure they're screwed on tight on a wall stud. Before you begin installing, discover all of your wall studs. Then you may place screws easily. Low cost stud finders can dramatically ease this course of. These could be found at nearly all hardware shops.
Take a pattern to your native dwelling improvement store to see if they will match the color. Replacing an entire ground of tile is dear as well as a heinous chore.