Gujarat Public Service Commission Assistant Inspector Of Motor Vehicle.
and Medical Services, 159 Assistant Inspector Of Motor Vehicle, Radiologist, Psychiatrist and Various Vacancy. Interested candidates may apply online. Last date for submission of application form is on 30/11/2018.
Name of the Post: Assistant Inspector Of Motor Vehicle, Radiologist, Psychiatrist and Various Vacancy.
Age limit: Maximum age limit is 40 years of age as on 30/11/2018.
Pay Scale: Rs.67700 – 208700/- (Level- 11)pm.
Educational Qualification: possess a degree of Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery of any of the Universities and possess a Post-Graduate diploma in relevant field and have experience of two years' in respective subject in Government Hospital or owned manage or controlled by the Non-Government Organization Hospital or Trust Hospital.
Application fee: GEN Candidates have to pay Rs.100/-through Challan OR Net Banking OR Card Payment. SC/ST Candidates are Exempted from payment of Examination fee.


text:
Q: I created a new project w/o ARC, but there's not dealloc method It's been some time since I created a new project in Xcode.
Today I created a new "tabbed Application" and I noticed that the firstViewController and secondViewController created by Xcode don't have a dealloc method.
Why is that? do I have to create it myself?

A: Yes, the -dealloc always needs to be implemented by you. It doesn't exist by default regardless of template type.

A: After writing it yourself a few times, you will have it memorized...
In Xcode 4, control option command 2 brings up a code snippet library.  You can find dealloc and other generated code you may have gotten used to in the past
- (void)dealloc {
    //deallocations
    [super dealloc];
}

A: yes you have to write it down by yourself
 - (void)dealloc {
  //deallocations
  [super dealloc];
   }

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Going to college is an exciting time, whether you are staying at home or moving away.
Losing your job can be a traumatic experience both emotionally and financially. We have put together a 4-step information guide to point you in the right direction.
Planning for what happens to your money and property after you pass away is not a simple or pleasant task.


As part of the conference proceedings on Wednesday, May 15th, you will have the opportunity to register for 2 workshops (one morning, one afternoon) led by the top experts in their field.
In recent years, immigrant and refugee youth are entering new communities across the world in record numbers. In addition to those migrating with their families, many youth are unaccompanied along their journey. During their many transitions, these youth have often experienced significant adversities and many have been exposed to stressful and traumatic experiences. As such, immigrant and refugee children and adolescents often struggle as they adapt to their new environments and frequently experience psychological distress throughout and sometimes long after their journey. In this presentation, we describe the Strengthening Transition Resilience of Newcomer Groups (STRONG) program, an evidence-informed, school-based intervention for newcomer children and youth. STRONG was co-developed and reviewed by several experts in the fields of education and mental health, with specific expertise in school mental health, adversity and trauma, refugee mental health, and resilience. Funding support and content guidance for the development of STRONG was provided by School Mental Health ASSIST, a provincial implementation support team designed to help Ontario school boards promote student mental health and well-being. The STRONG intervention is a manualized approach that includes 10 weekly sessions, and aims to strengthen newcomer groups' transition resilience, promote individual strengths and skills to make positive choices, and provide a positive sense of self and belonging. The sessions draw on cognitive-behavioural therapy approaches. Core components of STRONG include resilience-building skills, understanding and normalizing distress, cognitive behavioural skills (relaxation, cognitive coping, exposure, goal setting, problem solving), and peer, parent and educator support. In addition to the group sessions, clinicians facilitate an individual session with each participant to help them process their journey narrative. Participants subsequently share parts of their journey narrative with the larger group. Clinicians are also encouraged to facilitate a parent meeting as part of the intervention. We will describe the development of the program, the implementation system and logistics involved with delivery, and the findings from two trials of STRONG. Workshop participants will have the opportunity to try some of the activities from the program.
Did you know that Alberta was the first government in the world to name and create resources to address transphobic bullying? Contemporary research indicates that homophobic and transphobic bullying are "pervasive, insidious, and start early" and are a significant factor in school violence, high school completion rates, lower grades, and negative mental health outcomes for students. This interactive presentation highlights research into the health and safety needs of LGBTQ2 youth, identifies different types and tactics of bullying, explores the coming out process, and provides best practices and strategies to help develop welcoming, respectful, and safe schools and communities for all young people.
This workshop will include an overview of a 2017-2018 national study on how principals can support inclusive schools for students with special education needs. The study included responses from 285 principals from across Canada in both English and French school systems. The results of the study were incorporated into the development of eight case studies. Using case studies as a key learning tool, the workshop will provide an interactive opportunity to discuss the ways that principals foster inclusive schools.
1. Present and discuss the key themes of a recent Canadian national study on leadership for inclusive schools. These themes include: the types of professional learning experiences that helped shape principals' views on inclusive education, the types of day-to-day experiences that principals engage in when supporting students with special education needs, and critical incidents that inform their views of inclusive education for students with special education needs.
2. Case studies that have been developed by the research team (including the two workshop presenters) in partnership with the Ontario College of Teachers will be presented. Workshop participants will engage in an exploration of the case studies to gain understanding into the kinds of inclusive education resources that are being provided to principals and those who lead their professional learning.
1. Understand how case studies can help school leaders support students with special education needs in inclusive schools.
2. Identify opportunities to use case studies for the professional development of new principals.
3. Gain evidence-based knowledge acquired through new research on leadership and inclusion.
Throughout the workshop, the audience will be invited to actively participate through social media channels that will enable participants to post questions or reflections as well as through more traditional means such as open-ended questions and discussion prompts. There will be an opportunity to provide feedback on the cases as a professional learning resource for principals and those aspiring to be school leaders.
Social norms (i.e., unspoken rules) within a culture shape individual attitudes and beliefs around relationships, and these attitudes and beliefs subsequently shape the ways individuals behave in relationships. Social norms that support rigid gender roles, objectification, and gender stereotypes, for example, lay the foundation for unhealthy relationship behaviours, including teen dating violence (TDV). The prevention of TDV and the promotion of healthy youth relationships, therefore, requires a focus on supporting young people to unlearn unhealthy attitudes around relationships while cultivating healthy social norms that promote equity, inclusion, and respect for all. Through a variety of illustrative activities, presenters will share four "competency buckets" that professionals can cultivate in youth in order to promote social norms that protect against TDV. These competency buckets include: 1) examining identities, assumptions, and biases; 2) examining power, privilege, and inequalities; 3) discussing gender norms and gender stereotypes; and 4) reflecting on our position on the Continuum of Action towards equity.
The Canadian Red Cross has been invited by Indigenous communities to work in partnership to address interpersonal violence for decades, leading to an increasing understanding about how the impacts of colonization continue to effect experiences of violence in communities today. Through a community engagement approach, communities are taking action to address the issues they have identified as impacting their community members and demonstrating their continued resiliency. Yet, it is very difficult to create a sense of momentum forward when communities are experiencing social emergencies and crises in rapid succession. What can external organizations do to continue to support and walk alongside these communities in this work?
Furthermore, young people are identifying severe bullying, romantic relationship break-ups, and fights with parents and caregivers as the incidents that led to suicide attempts or death. While young people may have coped with many experiences of harm in their life, it is these situations that can become too much for them to handle. How can we support children and youth to cope with these situations and support one another? How can we enhance the capacity of adults in communities to respond and support children and youth in these situations?
Come and explore these important questions with us!
This workshop will enhance the knowledge and skills of participants to integrate play-based participatory approaches to support children and youth to contribute to a culture of equity, diversity, and inclusion building on the foundation of children's rights and wellbeing. In particular, we will focus on the right to play, right to participation, and right to culture and identity. A Circle structure will be used to facilitate dialogue to engage with rights through a relational lens. The session will include: 1) An introductory participatory Circle; 2) an overview of children's rights as relational; and 3) participatory opportunities to experience new activities that can be applied in schools and community based programs. We will conclude with a closing circle and exploration of how activities can be integrated into practice. The workshop seeks to contribute to the theme of the conference through fostering space for knowledge development and skills development for inclusion, diversity, and equity.
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Two-Spirit, Queering/Questioning (LGBT2Q+) youth experience disproportionately negative outcomes compared to their heterosexual and cisgender peers in a range of domains, including mental health, substance use, and violence. Queer and trans affirming supports, such as school-based Genders and Sexualities Alliances/Gay-Straight Alliances (GSA), can play a protective role in the lives of LGBT2Q+ youth. Although the roles and functions of these clubs vary (e.g., safety, support, education, and advocacy), research suggests that LGBT2Q+ youth may benefit from structured programming that encourages them to process and cope with victimization in healthy ways. The Healthy Relationships Program for LGBT2Q+ Youth fills a significant gap in mental health promotion programming among sexual and gender minority youth. This flexible and adaptable program includes 18 sessions, each lasting 45 minutes. It has been piloted in publicly-funded secular schools and community agencies in Ontario, Canada and was well received by both facilitators and participants. Workshop attendees will develop an understanding of the fundamental principles of the program and the focus of the individual sessions. Participants will also experience a variety of program activities and have opportunities to engage in practice facilitation.
This workshop will provide a framework for understanding bias-based bullying with reference to students who are perceived by their peers as different based on academic (dis)ability, ethnicity, and sexual/gender identity. We will explore the multiple ways in which diverse social identities may give rise to negative intergroup processes and unhealthy relationships at school. We will discuss what educators can do to create inclusive and welcoming environments that lesson the incidence of bias-based bullying at the whole school and classroom levels. When educators respond to bullying incidents, it is essential to assess for and address bias in constructive and meaningful ways. When bias is identified as a component in a bullying relationship, this provides educators an opportunity to promote inclusive attitudes and healthy social emotional skills for the students directly involved as well as bystanders. We will discuss ways to promote advocacy for self and other, cultural competence, and assertive communication.
To effectively prevent bullying and other forms of victimization, multiple strategies can be considered. However, many currently available strategies focus on the individual level, and may be less effective at addressing structural conditions that underlie many experiences of victimization. In this workshop, we will briefly consider why it is important to consider structural conditions as part of bullying prevention, and then explore one tool for addressing structural conditions: equity literacy. Attendees will work through a series of structured activities with the workshop presenter on 1) how equity is currently approached within their work setting; 2) opportunities and challenges for a greater consideration of equity in daily practice; and 3) specific activities that can be used to build equity literacy among children and youth. We will also review one existing program as an example of incorporating equity literacy into daily practice.
Indigenous children and youth are often over-represented as service recipients when it comes to issues related to mental health, addictions, family violence and other social challenges. Addressing risk factors for Indigenous children and youth is critically important in promoting and supporting wellbeing and resilience. This workshop will examine how Indigenous knowledge and evidence can shift the lives of Indigenous children, youth and their families to promote mental wellness and foster resilience. As service providers there will be opportunities to explore how shifts in paradigms can create shifts in how services are offered and what we can all do to help create Hope, Belonging, Meaning and Purpose in the lives of Indigenous children and youth.
Canada experiences one of the highest per capita rates of immigration in the world. In 2016, 21.5% of the population was foreign-born and this percentage is expected to rise in the coming years. Given that immigrants and refugees settling in Canada come from diverse regions of the world, the ethno-cultural composition of our schools and communities is naturally changing. These demographic shifts call for a need to enhance our understanding of how to effectively support and facilitate positive peer relationships and intergroup peer processes in ethno-culturally diverse schools. Children and youth from immigrant, refugee, ethno-cultural and racialized backgrounds face increased exposure to social stressors that are inherently linked to the nature and quality of their social interactions, peer affiliations and experiences of bullying, victimization and discrimination in school settings. Research suggests that these associations are not fixed but rather dependent on the socio-contextual circumstances and conditions of the school setting. The objectives of this workshop are to share research findings documenting: (1) the prevalence and correlates of bullying behaviors among youth from immigrant, refugee, ethno-cultural and racialized backgrounds; (2) modifiable individual and socio-contextual factors that are associated with reductions in school bullying among youth from diverse backgrounds; and (3) evidence-based school practices and strategies that promote positive intergroup relations and minority inclusion and integration.
During this workshop participants will engage in multi-stakeholder dialogues and interactive breakout sessions aimed at sharing knowledge on: (1) existing supports currently available in schools and communities aimed at enhancing inter-group relations and reducing bullying across diverse groups of youth; (2) approaches to monitoring progress and outcomes for these supports; and (3) future research and practice directions on enhancing inter-group peer processes and bullying outcomes for immigrant, refugee, ethno-cultural and racialized youth, with special considerations on monitoring progress and potential for sustainability and scale-up. Our ultimate goal is to share knowledge and best practices that will help contribute to positive intergroup relations and inclusivity in our schools in order to foster environments that are conducive to success for all students.
This workshop will draw on groundbreaking research conducted by the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work at the University of Toronto and MediaSmarts, Canada's centre for digital and media literacy, to explore how to prevent youth from sharing intimate images without the consent of the sender. Following an overview of the existing research and identified best practices for interventions dealing with "sexting," participants will take part in research-based activities designed to help youth push back against stereotyping and to recognize and confront moral disengagement in a sexting context.


A funeral home is composed of many people with unique backgrounds. Take classes in real estate to boost your probability of turning into a leasing consultant when you have zero experience within the field. Today's interns can supply a wealth of valuable contributions to small and big businesses alike.
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text:
The USA Patriot Act's Effect on Civil Liberties
Open Society Foundations–New York
The USA Patriot Act and its effects on national security, immigrant rights, and civil liberties in general were the focus of a forum at OSI's New York office on June 11, 2003. Panelists included Steven Brill, a Newsweek columnist who recently published After: How America Confronted the September 12 Era (Simon & Schuster); Kate Martin, executive director of the Center for National Security Studies; and Doris Meissner, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute and former commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). The panel was moderated by Antonio Maciel, the director of grantmaking and program development for U.S. Programs at OSI and the former director of the Emma Lazarus Fund, a now-closed OSI program that focused on immigrants' rights.
The Patriot ( Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism ) Act was approved by Congress and signed into law by President Bush less than two months after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C. The law gives law enforcement authorities greater latitude to develop and implement antiterrorism policies, including the ability to monitor and detain citizens suspected of sympathizing with or having links to organizations or individuals that authorities believe have direct ties to terrorist activities. In a lively discussion, Brill defended some of the Patriot Act's provisions and other developments that have appeared to restrict the rights of certain immigrants; Meissner and Martin, meanwhile, were more critical of the law and subsequent Justice Department policies, arguing that they have unfairly targeted innocent people and had an overall chilling effect on civil rights in the United States.
The forum was convened nine days after the Justice Department s inspector general released a report highlighting harsh conditions faced by the more than 700 illegal immigrants detained without charges by the federal government since September 11. On the day after the forum, June 12, 2003, federal law enforcement authorities announced that in response to the report they would implement policy changes designed to improve conditions at the facilities and place unspecified restrictions on interrogation methods.
Subscribe to updates about upcoming Open Society events
Also send me the latest on Open Society's work around the world


ctep03, a photo by teamhacksaw on Flickr.
here is a quickie of me doing a fakie wall ride in a ditch somewhere in the world. Yup that is a 20″ Solid "Thunderbird" just for the record. I have a ton of stuff to update here and a bunch of other crap also. keep checkin' back to see whats new.


I create an HTML newsletter and mail it to about 600 lgitimate subscribers who asked for the email.
I can only do it in batches of about 80 or 100.
You probably want to consider using an announce list.
You are restricted to sending out 100 emails an hour if you do it through usual email methods.
I am doing it. I want to add people without too much email coming their way to verify etc, they have already done that! So I have opted for Mailman, setup as an Announcement list. Unless there is a better way?


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text:
Posts by Gary Bickford
248 posts • joined 27 Jan 2009
GIMP open source image editor forked to fix 'problematic' name
Saturday 31st August 2019 02:49 GMT Gary Bickford
TAIOMA - that's could actually work! Maybe an artsy app of some sort? Or the name of my boat ... :D
He's coming for your floppy: Linus Torvalds is killing off support for legacy disk drive tech
Thursday 1st August 2019 00:32 GMT Gary Bickford
Floppy ... What's??? !!!
This would be a good time to regale the audience with My Most Embarrassing Moment (at least in public.)
Long ago I worked in a mainframe software group in a Fortune 500 company. I was tasked with analyzing the customer utilization of the available software distribution formats - various tape formats, mostly.
I was giving my slide presentation in front of two corporate VPs and thirty other managers, and on one slide as I described and showed the data the audience suddenly laughed. I had no idea why, and continued on.
Only after the presentation a friend showed me what was so funny. My slide showed that "15% of users had floppy diks"!
Guess who reserved their seat on the first Moon flight? My mum, that's who
Friday 19th July 2019 12:42 GMT Gary Bickford
Maglev first stage
Actually that's been proposed. Arguments as to feasibility and utility are unresolved.
Essentially, the idea is that the first stage of a typical launcher expends 1/2 its fuel getting to Mach 1, IIRC 70%-80% getting to Max Q. This of course varies.
So a Maglev that goes up a mountain could replace mist of the first stage, taking the vehicle to 18000 feet or higher and Mach 2 or Mach 3. This could provide most of the first stage lift, at the cost of a bit of electricity.
There are complications. The second stage would have to be a bit bigger. The handoff at the end of the Maglev could be complicated. The Maglev is very long. If there is a carrier, you need a way to decelerate it. Most notably, you need a mountain, it needs to be just west of an ocean, and the launch direction is fixed - you can only launch in one direction.
Equatorial launches would be the most useful. Candidates include the Andes of Ecuador - but most of South America is downrange; and Mount Kilimanjaro - but it is "holy" and not quite on the ocean. No doubt there are others.
Re: Man has definitely been to the moon.
Well done ;)
Pepsi and the Harrier Jumpjet
You'll be amused to read about the time that Pepsi gave away a Harrier jumpjet "as a joke" - and the winner went to court and won! :D
IT sales star wins $660k lawsuit against Oracle in Qatar – but can't collect, because the Oracle he sued suddenly vanished
Wednesday 24th April 2019 19:08 GMT Gary Bickford
Re: first rate arse licking
The Arab world had pretty good science and engineering 1000 years ago. The words Algebra and Algorithm came from there. But in about 1200 the encouragement of studying the Holy Books (all three Abrahamic religions) was apparently stopped, and replaced by simple unquestioning memorization of the Koran and rejection of the other books. Little scientific progress occurred in that region after that as far as I know (though I don't know much).
Today, there is probably a bit if snobbism about having a British staff. But also I wonder if the schools and culture simply don't support the way of thinking required to do modern engineering. This needs to be taught and lived at an early age to build the mental habits.
An old friend did some engineering for the King of Jordan, using entirely foreign staff except for laborers. The king told him that his own people were completely unable to operate or maintain the equipment. I think that's an overstatement, as several Arab countries have pretty good high tech air forces, which do not run themselves.
Things are changing while we watch
Capitalism will always be continually changing - just like democracies and unlike centrally planned systems. Every system will have times and areas of 'badness' - that's my technical term :). But only dynamic 'edge of chaos' systems - democracy, free enterprise, like natural ecosystems - are self-adapting.
My case in point us that right now under our noses an entirely new capital ecosystem is arising, which is based on the advent of strong community-based infrastructures in support of startups and entrepreneurship. This wave of new companies is replacing the loss within large corporations of internal R&D divisions. It is cheaper for the big corporations to buy out these startups than to develop their own, and they get a much broader more creative result. And the startups are often explicitly designed to be bought. This will evolve rapidly as the big corporations will become more like utilities.
There are two key problems today. 1) in pursuit of the overly-emphasized and often illusory or mal-applied concept of the efficiency of scale, the laws and regulations have made it too easy to get big by acquisition if competitors. Rule of thumb - if any company controls over about 20% of a market the market is a frozen oligopoly with no effective competition. A truly free market will have big companies falling apart to compost about the same rate as mergers. 2) Closely related - government's enthusiasm for intrusive regulation dramatically encourages the demise of small organizations. For example, Warren's Consumer Financial Protection Agency has driven nearly every small and medium bank out of existence. Only the megabanks have the resources to comply with the mountain of compliance data required.
Note, one if about 25 top level executives in_ both_ government and commerce are identifiable as psychopaths. This naturally includes some of our Congress critters, as well as wall Street. But most people at the top level are just trying to do a good job, in both business and government.
Customers too
In fairness, by all accounts and from my own experience some time ago, Oracle treats their customers the same way. And I was once told that the original founders were also screwed by the team that invested & then took over the company.
OTOH Ellison / Oracle does cool boats, so there's that! :D
Idiot admits destroying scores of college PCs using USB Killer gizmo, filming himself doing it
Saturday 20th April 2019 19:18 GMT Gary Bickford
Re: Surprisingly honest
Work study staff works cheap?
Re: Silly "victims"!
Now we need the rhyming talk version.
Tech industry titans suddenly love internet privacy rules. Wanna know why? We'll tell you
Tuesday 26th February 2019 20:20 GMT Gary Bickford
Re: Self-Regulation? I'll believe it when I see it.
Medical and legal professions are almost perfect examples of how self-regulation can be used to prevent competition and reduce consumer power and information availability. Cases in point: the AMA was originally created by and the AMA President's salary paid by the drug industry. For decades and even today alternative therapies that don't involve prescription drugs are actively prevented from being used by doctors or nonmedical personnel. In the 1930s and 1940s this practice extended to active legal efforts to jail advocates of competing technologies. And the Blue Cross 'non-profit' system was created by the hospitals to guarantee a steady flow of customers. It was structured from the beginning to prevent consumers from knowing, much less influencing, the costs of medical treatment.
Fun, but inedible ...
and from systems science work I did a while back, related to neural networks and other decision systems like ecosystems, if any one entity has more than about 20% of a market, there is an effective oligopoly and the competitive system breaks down. This is closely related to the application of the inverse power law distributions that show up all over living systems.
Fun fact: GPS uses 10 bits to store the week. That means it runs out... oh heck – April 6, 2019
Thursday 14th February 2019 15:02 GMT Gary Bickford
Still only 13 bits? That's just 8192 weeks!
Apparently the new protocol mentioned handles the wraparound anyway, but if not ... 157 years from now somebody is going to be very confused.
Why limit this to 13 buts? Is this a message packet limitation?
Nope, the NSA isn't sitting in front of a supercomputer hooked up to a terrorist's hard drive
Thursday 6th September 2018 16:23 GMT Gary Bickford
... Profit!
Every government busybody's ideal solution:
- make everything illegal
- make every method to prevent being caught or even talking about it illegal
- profit! - or more tax income! - or more control!
CIMON says: Say hello to your new AI pal-bot, space station 'nauts
Tuesday 3rd July 2018 14:32 GMT Gary Bickford
How about a non-rectangular screen and camera
For this purpose it's not really necessary to have a rectangular view.
There's actually a pretty good alternative, which could be built although it would require an alternative fab facility, which is not going to happen soon.
Back in the mid-1980s a company whose name I forget, in the Denver area, was working on an interesting scanning and display architecture that merged the vectorizing/recognition task and the image capture and compression task. It was based on a fractal tiling based on hexagonal cells. At the display resolutions available at that time it was not a very good fit with the common rectangular viewports - vertical lines were represented by slightly wiggly lines. But today that's no longer a problem.
The cool thing about it (without going in to detail) was that the breakdown of the image into hexagon-based fractal trees accomplished a substantial compression of the data and _simultaneously_ a first order vectorization of the image. It was also demonstrated that a similar image reconstruction algorithm was as fast or faster than a pure rectangular bit map.
As a bonus of sorts, it mapped well to many other non-rectangular display - or scan - viewports, such as facial simuations - essentially it was better at every 'natural' object than rectangular viewports.
Boffins want to stop Network Time Protocol's time-travelling exploits
One area of concern/complication - long lag time environments such as space
While it may not seem to be important yet, if/when habitats, labs, and colonies are established in space, the long data transfer times based on lightspeed will need to be accommodated. In that environment transfer lags of minutes, hours, or even days may become common. Future proofing NTP will be important.
Of course it is _possible_ that a future solar-system-wide time reference, possibly based on the proposed absolute positioning system using galactic markers, and known orbital coordinates of solar system bodies, might provide a useful backup timestamp, down to some basic time resolution.
Airbus CIO: We dumped Microsoft Office not over cost but because Google G Suite looks sweet
Sunday 18th March 2018 13:12 GMT Gary Bickford
Features not fixes
I once read an interview with the then-manager of Excel development. He said they basically didn't bother fixing bugs - "nobody will stop using Excel because of a bug, and they've already bought it.". But if even one person asked for a feature they figured there were hundreds of others that also wanted it. So all of their development effort was adding features, almost none fixing the _many_ (as we all know) bugs.
You always wanted to be an astronaut, right? Careful: Space is getting more and more deadly
Re: Climate Change
Read "The Chillng Stars" by Henrik Svensmark (co-author Nigel Calder) He is an astrophysicist who has done some very good analysis and experimentation. I personally prefer the first edition for a more documentary style, but the second edition has follow-up material.
Ecuador tried to make Julian Assange a diplomat
Monday 15th January 2018 15:35 GMT Gary Bickford
Fly me away ...
It would be interesting if Ecuador were to engage a helicopter and a ship (do they have a navy?) - fly Assange off the roof of the building to a waiting ship offshore. Then the Brits would be faced with the prospect of a military confrontation to prevent the ship from leaving territorial waters (actually if they're 12 miles out, even that prospect goes away once he lands on the ship).
This could certainly be done. Even if the building is not set up for helo landings, they could use the rescue basket method. Of course there are certain issues with the UK air force as well. But would UK actually shoot down an Ecuadorian helo, just to catch this meatball?
As a bonus, the movie rights to the rescue would probably fund Wikileaks (or Assange's new Ecuador hideaway mansion) for decades.
We translated Intel's crap attempt to spin its way out of CPU security bug PR nightmare
Thursday 4th January 2018 15:06 GMT Gary Bickford
"Works as designed" - of course, that is the usual case.
From my days of teaching Software Quality Assurance, over 70% of bugs in shipping production code were built into the design at the beginning. IIRC the intent of methods like Extreme Programming was to help catch many of these design flaws by including representatives of the "customer" in the design team and using iterative design.
There is no reason to expect that the hugely complex chip design process is very different, even though they must of necessity be much more rigorous in their design process and re-use existing modules extensively. This latter allows each module to be debugged independently over time. But the interactions between modules that is a critical performance factor in the modern chip designs must be extremely difficult to 7nderstand, much less account for in the higher level design process. And the chip design process today looks a lot more like software than hardware. Designers must depend on their CAD system (another beast of high com0lexity and its own bugs!) to correctly manage the low level interactions.
For regular software, the statistics show that if you are using reasonable design methodologies, in shipped production software there is roughly one bug in every 200 lines of code, regardless of the language. (The difference between low level and high level languages was strictly in the impact of a given bug, not the probability.) But about 10-15 years ago MS mentioned they apron about one in 70, I suspect due to their practice of hiring young hotshot SW people who had not learned defensive programming. And again, mod5 of the remains bugs in shipping code came from the design.
Perhaps most scary: less than 50% of the remaining bugs were likely to be discovered in black box testing.
And we return to Munich's migration back to Windows – it's going to cost what now?! €100m!
Free holidays in Seattle???
First prize is a week in Seattle. Second prize is two weeks in Seattle ... in February!
Sorry Seattleites - I'm a refugee from the cold, dark, damp, rainy, cloudy, grey, depressing Northwest winters. There's a reason why coffee is so popular there. The weather reports should include a "damp chill index" just like the wind chill. 40 degrees in drizzle & mist feels like -10 degrees in sunny dry.
Seattle is famous for that special type of rain called What Rain, a drizzly mist, as in when a miserable visitor asks, "How can you stand out here in this rain?" To which the Seattleite replies, "What rain???"
Seattle has more definitions for types of rain than any other place:
- sunny (rare to unheard of except for two days in August)
- sog (where you think your to sunny but it's not)
- fog
- fist
- mizzle
- drizzle
- drain, or "light rain"
- rainy
- hard rain (rare)
- downpour (very rare)
Re: 10 years to migrate 16000 PCs and they're going to go back to Windows ?
Funny you should mention SAP - a global company I used to work for budgeted $200 million and one year to move their US operations to SAP, and planned to move the rest of their operations in Phase 2. Phase 1 took three years and $700 million. They cancelled Phase 2. SAP stock dropped - iIIRC 20% - immediately.
The point being, if they want to run SAP they _really_ don't understand their costs. There are even open source competitors for SAP that are more amenable to adjustmentbtontheir way of doing business. The big cost of the SAP catastrophe at my company was due to the requirement to completely revise every aspect of their existing business model to fit the SAP way of doing things. But pointy hair bosses, especially in government, are usually clueless about such things, and the communications difficulties between IT professionals and MBAs or Public Administration degree holders magnify the problem.
Alternative: spend $10 million to PAY GERMAN SW ENGINEERS TO FIX ISSUES
Imagine if the city fathers actually contributed money and/or software engineer hours to fixing every issue they have with the open source products they are using! That could make a huge difference n those projects, provide employment for local people instead of sending money to the US, and give them exactly the software they need, at 1/10 the cost!
ICANN gives domain souks permission to tell it the answer to Whois privacy law debacle
Sunday 5th November 2017 14:07 GMT Gary Bickford
Domain privacy is available from Registrars I, familiar with - why is this still a problem?
Except for certain TLDs such as .us, every registrar I know of offers privacy at extra cost. This works by providing a special contact cod3 that can be used by law enforcement with proper court papers to identify the real person. So worst case, it seems to me that this system could be made free, with or without default. Why is this insufficient?
Keep your voice down in the data centre, the HDDs have ears! I SAID, KEEP...
Monday 16th October 2017 18:26 GMT Gary Bickford
Full circle dept. - drives were once used to make music
I probably still have the IBM 1130 assembler code that sent signals to the big old Winchester "washing machine" disk drives at different frequencies. The program took input in the form "AABBC+" etc. to form musical output. Output was generated by setting a transistor radio on the console above where the channel wires were routed. The signals in the wires were powerful enough to generate sounds on an A.M. radio nearby.
Needless to say this was probably not good for the Winchester drive!
Blade Runner 2049 review: Scott's vision versus Villeneuve's skill
Sunday 8th October 2017 19:16 GMT Gary Bickford
Pan Am - They'llll beeeee baaack
In today's world of old logos and brands being bought and revivified, it could happen. The original Pan Am was a much more entrepreneurial company than I ever realized. Pan Am was very much a startup when it talked Boeing into building the original 314 Clippers, promising to buy them if built. (They actually only bought six of the original and six more of the 314A. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_314_Clipper)
I don't know who owns the trademark today, but I could see Jeff Bezos buying the brand for a hypothetical service using Blue Origin launch vehicles for its competitor to Musk's SpaceX suborbital flight service, or even an orbital shuttle service to space stations and such.
Pumpkin bumpkins battle, 800kg monstrosity wins
Tuesday 3rd October 2017 02:22 GMT Gary Bickford
We tried growing some pumpkins from some Giant Pumpkin seeds. We didn't work hard at it, no special treatment other than removing most of the excess fruits early on. We got a good sized pumpkin - 50 lbs. or so. But IMHO it was as close to inedible as pumpkin can get. So I wouldn't recommend using for pie without an excessive amount of spices and sugar!
How Apple is taming the ad biz. Just don't expect Google or Zuck to follow
Saturday 23rd September 2017 02:27 GMT Gary Bickford
The classic problem for pre-internet advertisers ...
The classic problem for pre-internet advertisers was, "I know I'm wasting my money on 1/2 of the advertising I buy. I just don't know which half." The Internet fixed that problem to a great extent, and made much of the Internet more akin to the entry of a department store, where just looking at men's ties quickly brought a tie sakesperson over to "help". Unfortunately while even thstbwas too far for mostbif yes, the vendors wanted, and took, even more of our privacy.
When I leave a store (whether I bought something or not) I don't want the salesperson to follow me down the street and continue harassing me. And I don't want them to sell the information that i touched the running shoes on the way out of the store to the shoe store down the mall.
If Machine Learning is the question, open source is the answer. Right?
Re: I've just noticed something. No AI projecte I've seen ever used the project to maintaint itself
From my understanding and nonzero experience, every machine learning solution us domain/applications cation specific so far. That is the very lim Ted state of the art. Yes you could likely build a system that could gradually improve itself. But that is what it would be good for.
Long ago I argued that a good compiler should gradually learn to be a better compiler. AFAIK that has not happened yet. But all of these possibilities domlay before us.
I've told several people that the next generation of computer "programmers" will be more like teachers, helping baby AI to learn how to solve the problem(s). This is radically different from classic imperative or functional programming but still requires the special ability to understand machine processing from the ground up.
NBD: Adobe just dumped its private PGP key on the internet
Friday 22nd September 2017 20:53 GMT Gary Bickford
Also all,previous data
This key would also allow decryption of all emails, archived data, etc. that was sent out any time in the past.
Revealed: The naughty tricks used by web ads to bypass blockers
Sunday 13th August 2017 21:24 GMT Gary Bickford
We need a micropayment system
The original hypertext 'xanadu' system proposed by Ted Nelson included several features that would have made a lot of sense - transclusion and micropayments being two of the most useful.
I am not going to subscribe to 50 different publishers and pay each of them an annual or monthly subscription rate. This would cost $1000s per year. But I'm willing to pay the same amount they presently get through advertising via an anonymized service that worked with all or most publishers.
There are two long-standing models of this - YouTube used to be more or less, and maybe is going that way with their premium service - but are they still tracking? And ASCAP and BMI music services have worked with radio stations and others to automatically pay musicians and composers standard rates for songs played. This is not a complicated issue.
If I could subscribe to an general inclusive subscription service, for perhaps $10/month up to maybe $50/month, bumping up a dollar at a time depending on how much reading I want to do, that simply paid publishers for articles that I read (_not_ just clicked on by accident), and eliminated all the tracking by all the publishers that joined the service and just gave ad-free content, I would totally subscribe to that.
I'd like to know what the average revenue publishers receive on one page view, based on clickthroughs and whatever else. It can't be that much.
Linus Torvalds pens vintage 'f*cking' rant at kernel dev's 'utter BS'
Monday 31st July 2017 21:03 GMT Gary Bickford
Re: As I've said before ...
"Some people have 20 years of experience. Others have one year of experience 20 times."
Interesting. Mercurial handles the rename nicely ("hg rename"), but it doesn't go in and edit all the places where it's referred to. But (using PHP) the autoinclude system handles that if you use a filename that matches the pattern for the class name. The autoinclude system works out the filename from the class name. So rename the class in the source file and wherever it's invoked, rename the file, you're done. I don't use git (or C, C++) so IDK other systems.
No hypersonic railguns on our ships this year, says US Navy
Tuesday 6th June 2017 23:03 GMT Gary Bickford
Re: So get rid of the barrel!
I think you are thinking of coilguns, which use magnetic fields to accelerate - like maglev trains and the Hyperloop. A railgun uses huge current going across the sabot that carries the projectile. Even just using the magnets to keep the pieces separated, I suspect that the current density is so high that it would quench any known superconductor.
Re: Downsides
The going-up-the-mountain launcher was a coilgun IIRC, not a rail gun. Big difference. A coilgun is technically similar to a maglev train, using sequential magnetic fields to accelerate a vehicle. A railgun pushes huge doses of current through the projectile (actually a sabot that carries the projectile. Railguns can accelerate much faster. A coilgun/maglev in an evacuated tube (see also Hyperloop), going about 45 degrees upslope to above 20,000 feet and about 100 km long could replace most or all of the first stage of a launcher.
The biggest issues, beyond the sheer building of the machine, are the sudden insertion into atmosphere (albeit less than 50%) when the thin plastic barrier at the top is breached at Mach something, and the survival of the vehicle in hypervelocity travel through the remains of the atmosphere. But it is probably doable, and if/when space launches become more than a daily occurrence, the economics might start to look pretty good.
Another issue - such a thing can only launch into one orbital plane, and it takes significant energy to change inclination.
Hard numbers: The mathematical architectures of Artificial Intelligence
Tuesday 21st March 2017 18:30 GMT Gary Bickford
AI == methods we haven't figured out how to do yet
Back in my Systems Science / Machine Learning period, one useful definition was that AI was defined by techniques that had not been figured out yet. At one time "Expert Systems" were considered AI. Later what we now call Machine Learning was AI. And Neural Networks, Genetic Algorithms, Cellular Automata were all considered AI according to some. Once we've taken an AI concept and turned it into a methodology, it loses the mystique and becomes just another computer tool.
I can argue that AI is thus an infinitely regressing goal, defined by the very fact that there is some aspect that we can still identify as being "not quite" real intelligence. Maybe we will always be able to distinguish between an AI and an RI due to certain mannerisms, preferences, etc. - much like we distinguish between people from different locales or ethnicities by linguistic differences.
Virgin Galactic and Boom unveil Concorde 2.0 tester to restart supersonic travel
Thursday 16th March 2017 11:51 GMT Gary Bickford
Re: More Branson Marketing
It's a real pity that more energy, publicity and money isn't being invested in truly revolutionary work like Reaction Engines
They seem to be progressing reasonably well, having just received another chunk o' cash after successful testing of the SABRE engine concept. Something I read a couple of weeks ago gave me pause - apparently the timetable for the Skylon spaceplane is being pushed back, because certain military types are taking an interest in using SABRE for military purposes. This tells me that the military are convinced the thing actually works.
Re: Not the first to notice ...
Considering what happens when things going at these speeds meet things going at lesser speeds, perhaps "Splat!" would also be a good name!
Big difference in development costs today
So that's what killed SSTs - that they might be economic if you give them away, but there is no business case for development and building. We'll see if Beardo's people can do things differently - I suspect they'll find that they are no more able to overcome the technical and certification issues than Airbus or Boeing.
This may be one area with a big difference in costs. The original SSTs were designed by hordes of engineers with slide rules, some primitive computer calculations, and paper drawings. (I read once that Boeing had actual full size "proof" drawings for the final design of the original 747 wings, with a rolling catwalk above that the engineers could ride on while they confirmed clearances and added last minute changes.)
Today a very few engineers with advanced CAD software can design, build, and even test the entire airframe in the computer including routing of cables and hoses, in a small fraction of the time. And the wing shaping, stress management and other mechanical elements can all be optimized on the computer and the fabrication tooling automatically designed to go with it. The skins can be shaped in almost arbitrary ways, that could not even be contemplated back then.
So I'm guessing that development costs will be one tenth of what the 1960s SST designs cost to get to manufacturing. And certification will be easier, as the computer data will be available for analysis as well.
Van Allen surprise: fewer nasty particles than NASA expected
Some latest tech is much more rad-hard
Most people aren't aware of some of the latest technology, notably NanoRAM. NanoRAM is an almost ideal memory/logic technology, except for one teeny tiny detail. It's actually been used in several military satellites, but it's still expensive and difficult to make.
As I understand it, a NanoRAM 'switch' is a bent bit of carbon nanotube, which is connected to one side of a circuit, plus a 'landing zone' which is connected to the other side. The nanotube can be bent (magnetically? I forget) to either bend over and connect to the landing zone, or to straighten and disconnect. In either state it is completely static, needs nothing to maintain the state. The only time it is sensitive to radiation is in the nanosecond during which the switching is in progress. Its switching time is much faster than silicon, the density is much higher, and the switching power is much less, and the power required to maintain state is zero.
From what I've heard and read, the problem of making consistent, repeatable nanotubes has been the real issue, which has prevented this technology from becoming a common replacement for both dynamic and static RAM in computers. But its value in satellites may be unsurpassed.
I for one would like to know if making the nanotubes might be easier in microgravity. If so, then this might be a technology that both enables and depends on space development. Caveat: I only know what I've read in Wikipedia and online articles, and discussions with folks who know a little more than I do.
Picture reminds me of those big afro wigs
Examples: http://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/s~8AAOSwFdtXx65j/s-l500.jpg
Obligatory Gary Spivey: http://www.thewigmall.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/GarySpivey.jpg
Family of technician slain by factory robot sues everyone involved
Saturday 11th March 2017 20:39 GMT Gary Bickford
Re: Can only
From just what i read here in this article the actual manufacturing company does not seem to be a defendant? If so, I wonder why. It seems to me that the company's policies should have prevented this if they were followed.
Airbus to build plane that's even uglier than the A380
Monday 6th March 2017 18:12 GMT Gary Bickford
Re: "Oh, and F4 Phantom FTW for modern."
F-104 Starfighter - I recall that the only "airplane" with a worse glide ratio was the Space Shuttle. Was it 1:3? I recall that they used starfighters with wheels down as escorts on early landings of the shuttle. It was the only plane that could fly both fast enough and badly enough to stay with it.
Re: The A380 is not ugly!
Bricks can fly, it all depends the the size of the engine!
Researchers crack homomorphic encryption
HME will be enabling tech for agents and "uploading humans" - transhumanism
HME will probably always require 100-1000 times as much CPU power and possibly data space as unencrypted computation. But it will be an essential tool for maintaining the internal privacy and security of "agent" systems traversing the internet. Without it, while data at rest may be encrypted it is still in plain text while in memory for processing. Since an agent has no way to predict or restrict what processors it is being run on - in fact not even whether it is on a real processor or a virtual one, those processors may be on compromised services that could be reading that memory and tracking the computation.
The only way that has been proposed to protect such agents from compromise is homomorphic encryption, which allows the entire data collection that represents the agent can be kept in encrypted form at all times, even when it is running its computation processes. (In fact I would expect a higher degree of encryption for the data at rest, and a less-secure simulacrum used for the processing phase. This may be a necessary compromise.)
IOW, if you have uploaded your mind and personality to the Net, that "evil" processor could be reading your mind and even erasing your memories and substituting new memories. But agents have many other practical purposes.
The two most important factors in preservation of the internal integrity - identity - of any system are privacy, and protection against undesired or unnoticed modification from external forces. Only HME has this capability.
As a side effect, this requirement will drive another wave to higher performance and capacity. An individual encrypted agent might require from one to 100 petabytes of storage and equivalent increases in computing and network traffic, within this century.
Mozillans call for new moz://a logo to actually work in browsers
Sunday 22nd January 2017 20:25 GMT Gary Bickford
Bad, bad, bad idea
I think I said something to this effect before on the original announcement: "Moz-people, have you lost your fricken minds!" This is a pure example of the triumph of technically ignorant marketing nerds over the boring reality of how things work. Yes, it does "speak to the essence of what Mozilla does", much in the same way that parking your bicycle in the middle of the freeway speaks to its "essential spirit of transportation", with (one hopes) perhaps not quite equally bad results.
Please, Mozilla, please. Undo this very bad idea. It has as much style and attractiveness as lipstick on a pig, and (as we see) completely confuses the parsing systems on applications and services spread out all over the Internet. If you like square wheels on a Porsche, you'll love this new trademark. And, since the Moz-people involved seem to be the mechanically-uninclined type for which this warning is relevant, please also stop using pliers on your wheel nuts and trying to unscrew Phillips screws with a straight screwdriver.
The Life and Times of Lester Haines
Monday 2nd January 2017 19:15 GMT Gary Bickford
So sad, I barely knew ye
I'm very sorry to hear about Lester's sudden demise. We exchanged emails and some other things in late 2015. I had subscribed to the LOHAN Kickstarter, and I had suggested he write about the Integrated Space Plan (http://thespaceplan.com), which he did in time to (no doubt) help with our own Kickstarter for the ISP poster. I sent him a copy of the poster when it came out, and I received by coincidence the LOHAN mug and the ISP mug in the same postal mail!
We are beginning to put together plans for a new edition of the poster, and I would gladly have sent him a copy when it comes out. I had hoped someday to meet him, but alas that will never be. But I'm sure he's now flown higher than LOHAN ever could!
Give BAE a kicking and flog off new UK warships, says review
Wednesday 30th November 2016 18:25 GMT Gary Bickford
Re: Nobody will buy them
Perhaps the solution is to build for the market. Go out and find what features and price point would be competitive for sale to other countries, get a few letters of intent, or better actual pre-orders. Then add the UK order to the list. Incorporate into the design some flexibility and/or feature models ("white sidewalls, leather seats, sea-to-air missiles, ...").
Require the design to be buildable in pieces at multiple shipyards, accurately (I've seen videos of the Koreans building large container vessels where the pieces fit together with tolerances under a centimeter, it's doable.)
Use fixed price contracts and make sure the design is complete enough to minimize change orders. If possible contract 1/2 the order to each of two vendors, and require all modules to be interchangeable. This is common practice in the auto industry, admittedly at higher volumes. But how much is the overall hull shape going to change? Building to the market will go a long way to preventing Lockheed-ization and gilded designs.
San Francisco's sinking luxury Millennium Tower: Tilt spotted FROM SPACE
Monday 28th November 2016 02:50 GMT Gary Bickford
Re: Well, if a ship sank there, couldn't a building?
> Same in New York City - witness the ship under the WTC. But I believe they don't have a problem with reaching bedrock.
NYC is an interesting and useful comparison. I recently learned that, looking at a map of Manhattan, all of the high rise buildings are in two fairly small areas of the island. Buildings on the rest of the island are limited to five or 10 stories. This is because only those two areas have solid bedrock. The city does not allow super high rises on those other areas, with or without piles.
These tall skinny buildings are a special problem. A cathedral is tall, but not that tall in proportion to its footprint - the height is maybe three or four times the width. So building on a lesser foundation may cause settling, cracking, etc. but is unlikely to result in the entire structure tipping over. But a 60 story building (maybe 700 feet tall) on a 60 or 70 foot wide lot has a lot of leverage, so a tiny bit of tilt will quickly start to escalate as the weight gets concentrated on one side.
The City _allowed_ them to only sink piles 80 feet????? They will be sued as well.
In a city that is known for its earthquake hazard, and that is built on landfill, failing to require the piles for this building to extend all the way to bedrock is an engineering failure on the part of the city's building department as well as the developer. Landfill, especially near a large body of water that can provide lubrication, has a tendency to liquify under earthquake stress. There are videos online of the dirt flowing up through sidewalk cracks during earthquakes.
Both the developers and the city are in deep doo doo. And should be.


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A friend has asked me to post this. She is separated from her Australian husband. She has a 1 year old son. There are no court orders or consent orders in place. She is in China and has the childs passport and birth cert.
She wants to return to Singapore and work. She wants to apply for PR/SC or LTVP for the child but the father is not willing to provide consent.
Can she apply for the son to be a SC/PR or LTVP without the fathers signed consent?
I assume she just shows up and ICA to register the son as a Singapore Citizen by descent? She has his Aussie Birth Cert, his passport and her own papers (NRIC) - I suppose that's all she needs?
I might add that the next to useless father (ex husband) will vehemently oppose this.
interesting story .... I guess they will have to update their website regarding the 100% success rate!


Making Working from Home Work.
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5 Questions Not to Ask an Interviewee.
Interviews are a chance for you to get to know the person you are thinking of hiring and you want to know as much about that person as possible, but there are a few questions you should avoid.
5 Ways to Inspire your Employees.
We've all had bosses who we would do anything for, they just seem to have a knack of getting the best out of people. They inspire and encourage, but how do they do this?
5 Tips to Retain your Staff.
Getting the right people into your business can be difficult, but once you have them, shouldn't you be focusing on keeping them? Our blog has 5 tips to help with your staff retention.
When you've worked for a company for a while and proved your worth, it should be that you find yourself in line for a promotion. Finding yourself as the boss of your teammates can be tough.


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text:
Contributor • Trends and Hot Topics
Restoring a Building from the Inside Out
by Nancy Greenwald
Nancy Greenwald
Extending the life of an existing building is both a science and an art. The first step is deciding whether the building should be preserved or replaced. There are many reasons for preserving older buildings that are unrelated to cost. Preserving our nation's valuable historical buildings is one important reason. Buildings that represent the character of a town or a university and buildings of architectural significance may be deemed worth preserving. In other instances, the decision may be based largely on the economics. The cost of new construction may sometimes be less than the cost of renovation. However, in addition to preserving capital expenditures by extending the life of existing buildings, thoughtful renovation allows a building to be used more wisely and flexibly and can incorporate modern amenities as well as select green building features that allow for greater sustainability. Members of the Construction Institute (CI) have shared their expertise and creativity about several aspects of renovation.
New technologies for assessing existing structures
Many renovation projects begin with the realization that the building plans, if they can be located, don't reflect the current condition of the structure. Working with the unknown is costly. Obtaining an accurate measurement of the as-built condition has not always been achievable. Fortunately, we now have the technology to create accurate maps of existing structures through the use of 3D laser scanning. In their recent presentation to the Construction Institute's BIM Council, members Andy Ives of Langan Engineering and Matt Wunch of BVH Integrated Services described the process by which accurate measurements are captured through 3D laser scanning. Stated simply, data from the scanning is used to create a point cloud representation of the existing structure. The point cloud in turn, can be translated into a 3D model, known as a building information model (BIM) that can be used by designers and engineers. Although there is an upfront investment by the owner to use this technology, the investment is well worth it. Using better data allows for a faster turnaround and more accurate designs, which in turn can significantly reduce waste and time in the construction process.
Improving energy efficiency and sustainability
Retrocommissioning is a process that allows building owners to realize cost-effective improvements in energy savings measures and building system operations and programming. CI members Mark Miller of Colliers International and Rob Morrow of The Weidt Group shared their companies' approaches and experiences at the CI's 2015 Owners' Forum Program. The process involves more than evaluating and replacing older equipment. It requires a holistic assessment of energy use in the building employing sophisticated software and the use of targeted controls and modern monitoring systems. System data is brought into management software that can be made available to facilities managers through an app.
Renovating the building envelope
Evaluating and repairing the exterior of a building is a crucial part of any renovation. CI member Hoffman Architects are specialists in the rehabilitation of building exteriors. Robert Delagrange of Hoffman shared some of the considerations taken into account using the example of their work on Middlesex Hospital in Middletown, Conn. The project spanned a number of buildings, each of which presented different challenges. On one building, masonry and concrete deterioration required repairs to resolve defects and prevent further deterioration. Another involved the replacement of a roof on a historic building. Still another involved evaluating options for the replacement or renovation of a 60-year-old glass and aluminum curtain wall system to create a more energy-efficient, modern system. Preserving the interior requires a careful consideration of preserving the outside of a building.
Maintaining renovated facilities with state-of-the-art data management
Capturing and translating data collected during the renovation process into a practical tool for facilities management is an important goal. CI member Kevin Wyman, P.E., Martinez Couch & Associates, LLC teamed with Jorge Sanchez, 3DVES, LLC to present to the CI's BiM Council a process they have developed to combine BIM information with other building information model data to provide a working model for facilities management. Another approach to facilities data management is the interactive cloud-based system involving an interactive floor plan, photo documentation, and embedded documents that has been developed by CI member Building-Files.
Nancy Greenwald is executive director at The Construction Institute.
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For information about entertainment in London and the local area see www.timeout.com/london
Odeons at Putney, Wimbledon, Kingston, Richmond
http://www.odeon.co.uk
Richmond Orange Tree Theatre
http://www.orangetreetheatre.co.uk
Richmond Theatre
The Green, Richmond TW9 1QJ Tel: 020 8940 0088
http://www.atgtickets.com/Richmond
Kingston Rose Theatre
24-26 High Street, Kingston, KT1 1HL, United Kingdom.
http://www.rosetheatrekingston.org
Wimbledon Theatre
http://www.ambassadortickets.com/New-Wimbledon-Theatre
Entertainment in Richmond
http://www.totallyrichmond.co.uk/entertainment.html
Entertainment in Kingston
http://www.locallife.co.uk/kingstonuponthames/entertainment.asp
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What are the best ways to landscape my yard? There are so many different ways to do it, so check out our pictures and then contact us for more ideas!
Deck & Patio Living has over 15 years of experience transforming outdoor spaces into more usable living space for homeowners in Missouri and Illinois. We specialize in patios, under deck ceilings, retractable awnings, motorized pergolas, retaining walls, and more to turn your backyard into the ultimate entertainment spot!
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Instead of using stone or timbers, make an attractive, long-lasting retaining wall from pressure-treated 2x4s, plywood and trim boards. Construction is fast. You'll also need a box each of 2- and 3-in. deck screws for the trim boards. high wall is designed to hold back a gentle slope and is good for walls up to 40 in.
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A wood retaining wall is relatively simple to build and doesn't require professional skills. If you are building your retaining wall out of timber or ties, set and level each timber or tie into place, building up the rows. I'd recommend putting a 16 penny nail or a deck screw between the boards to space them for expansion.
Retaining Walls Builder. Deck Masters are the local timber construction experts of Auckland. After spending years in the timber construction industry, we have the kind of experience that is needed to build lasting retaining walls. With our main focus on quality, we constantly strive to exceed the expectations of our clients.


For some reason, I've been on a true crime kick lately. I'm not feeling especially morbid or anything but they are holding my attention quite a bit. I suppose it is my fascination with what prompts people to behave in certain ways... what would made someone want to become a serial killer?
I had heard about Ann Rule's book, The Stranger Beside Me through a book suggestion. I had heard of the serial killer Ted Bundy but never really knew the story behind his crimes so I gave The Stranger Beside Me a shot. The book is a personal story of Ann Rule (famous crime writer who past away a couple of years ago) and her friend, Ted, who turned out to be the infamous Ted Bundy. When Ann first started working on her book, she had no idea her friend, Ted, was a serial killer. In fact, he was a nice guy who volunteered with her on a crisis line. She was volunteering in the evenings and writing crime stories for magazines and newspapers during the day while raising her children on her own. She had wanted to get into writing books and when the killings started happening in her home town, she was able to get a book deal. As the story unfolds, the reader is exposed to Ann's thoughts and judgements about the crimes and slowly begins to understand how so many people were easily deceived by Ted Bundy. The idea that women were so infatuated with him, sending him letters and attending his trial and weeping... crazy! I especially enjoyed the take this author had on the crimes, coming to terms with each horrific thing that her friend had done, initially in disbelief but ultimately acceptance that he was not the nice guy she knew.
Ann Rule went on to be one the biggest crime writers of her time writing about many other criminals and this book is what gave her her start. I find her life extremely interesting, maybe because of journey as a writer but also her ability to get inside the mind of a killer and expose how he must have thought. I just started reading Green River, Running Red: The Real Story of the Green River Killer -- Americas Deadliest Serial Killer. It also has some personal connections with Ann's life including near her hometown again. I'll let you know what I think of it once I am done.


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The Roslin Institute home
21/12/2017 - 2017 at The Roslin Institute
12/12/2017 - New videos: microbes in food, the veterinary profession and vitamin D
06/12/2017 - Gene experts set to tackle pest control
01/12/2017 - Poultry Award for welfare expert
29/11/2017 - New approaches for breeding resistance to Infectious Salmon Anaemia virus
28/11/2017 - Nerve cell findings may aid understanding of movement disorders
22/11/2017 - New award boosts research into Marek's disease
14/11/2017 - Defra's Chief Scientific Adviser talked at The Roslin Institute
13/11/2017 - EU project to ensure sustainable supply of halloumi cheese
09/11/2017 - Capsule could revolutionise medical and veterinary sector
06/11/2017 - Roslin scientist honoured by SRUC
02/11/2017 - Applying animal breeding genetics to plants
20/10/2017 - The Easter Bush Campus Open Day
17/10/2017 - The first ever global zoonotic TB roadmap
10/10/2017 - Centre for Tropical Livestock Genetics and Health: The Road Ahead
09/10/2017 - New method for understanding neurodegenerative diseases
06/10/2017 - The Roslin Institute receives Athena SWAN Gold award
04/10/2017 - Animal welfare on the Easter Bush Campus
29/09/2017 - Hi-tech boost for gene research
28/09/2017 - Afternoon at the movies
21/09/2017 - Award winning Scottish research could pave the way for 'low-emission cattle'
18/09/2017 - Sheep gene insights could help farmers breed healthier animals
12/09/2017 - Bid to tackle widespread cattle disease may aid African farmers
01/09/2017 - New Director starts at The Roslin Institute
31/08/2017 - Scientists call for a unified approach to plant and animal breeding
25/08/2017 - Jim McWhir
21/08/2017 - Prestigious award for Professor in animal behaviour and welfare
10/08/2017 - Thousands visit Roslin Institute stand at the Royal Highland Show
01/08/2017 - BBSRC launch the Agriculture and Food Security Strategic Framework
31/07/2017 - New partnership to use forensic science to tackle wildlife crime
20/07/2017 - Largest study of bovine tuberculosis in sub-Saharan Africa reveals disease diversity in Cameroon
18/07/2017 - Milk-sourced protein drugs for animal health
22/06/2017 - Genetics roadmap to develop more resilient farmed fish
09/06/2017 - Introducing the International Veterinary Vaccinology Network
30/05/2017 - New European project to boost Mediterranean fish farming
25/05/2017 - Study reveals genetic changes linked to flat-faced dogs
22/05/2017 - Oyster farming to benefit from new genetic screening tool
19/05/2017 - Researchers identify childhood blindness gene
16/05/2017 - Towards control of Avian Coronaviruses: outcomes of COST Action
12/05/2017 - New study identifies key molecule for virus replication
10/05/2017 - Today is World Migratory Bird Day
26/04/2017 - Director appointed to lead Centre for Tropical Livestock Genetics and Health
19/04/2017 - Immune discovery points to therapies to improve stroke recovery
13/04/2017 - Insights into the ageing immune system
11/04/2017 - Funding of Institute Strategic Programmes Announced
05/04/2017 - £10m deal to boost impact of animal science innovations
24/03/2017 - One (Reproductive) Health
15/03/2017 - Genetic insights into Inflammatory Bowel Disease
24/02/2017 - Gene-edited pigs show signs of resistance to major viral disease
22/02/2017 - Dolly the sheep continues to inspire 20 years after media storm
20/02/2017 - Egg-free surrogate chickens produced in bid to save rare breeds
15/02/2017 - Director appointed to lead The Roslin Institute
31/01/2017 - CRISPR pioneers receive BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biomedicine
18/01/2017 - Gold Sustainability Award
13/01/2017 - Interim Director of The Roslin Institute Announced
13/01/2017 - Gene-edited pigs to help spread desirable traits
Introducing the International Veterinary Vaccinology Network
Researchers from The Roslin Institute and Pirbright Institute lead a newly funded network to develop livestock vaccines.
The International Veterinary Vaccinology Network (IVVN) has been awarded £2.1M by the Medical Research Council and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council to facilitate the formation of new partnerships that will contribute to the development of vaccines against livestock diseases that have major impacts on the health and productivity of animals in low-and-middle income countries (LMICs).
The IVVN will facilitate collaborations between scientists, industrial partners and others from both the UK and LMICs across the broad range of disciplines that can contribute to vaccine development by funding scientific meetings, workshops, laboratory exchanges and supporting 'pump-priming' projects.
Around 20 industrial and academic partners are already part of the Network. New members who have a scientific contribution to make or an interest in the aims of the Network are always welcome!
For further details please contact IVVN.
International Veterinary Vaccinology Network
This article was published on 7 May, 2018
Located at Easter Bush campus.
Intranet - for staff


Q1. Both HypeFox AND Ninwashui weighed in on the merits of many individual pieces–Invincible Iron Man was the subject of the first set reviews published by Critical Missives, right? How did they both do? Would their personal Top 10 (and 5 Honorable Mentions) change if they were assembling those lists today?
So, what have I learned in the six months that the set has been out and in the four months since I wrote the lists?
Well, for one thing, Iron Pharaoh is reeeeeaaaallly good.
Improved Targeting of ANY kind gives you a major leg up on your competition, and the Pharaoh basically gives you Improved Targeting: Ignores the $#%@&^! Map via his Golden Falcon, Sharting (On Your Opponent's Entire Strategy) Trait. The Dial H guys have pointed out on more than one occasion that ranged-attack based teams have an inherent advantage (all other things being equal) over close combat teams; they're usually going to get the Alpha Strike. How do close combat teams combat this advantage? Primarily with Map choice (by choosing a map with terrain that aids what their strategy is, whether that's advancing and hiding behind Blocking or Elevated Terrain), or with Stealth, etc. Well, Improved Targeting is an ability that specifically hoses those few options and turns what was a minor advantage into a MAJOR advantage for the ranged-attack team. And in ranged-attack versus ranged-attack matchups, if one team has Improved Targeting and the other team does not, the team that does–if it's positioned well–will still have that same Alpha Strike advantage AS IF IT WAS FACING A CLOSE COMBAT TEAM.
Experienced Iron Man 001 plus Sidestep (whether it's from the Phoenix Force, or from Agent Sitwell, with whom he shares a keyword, or…) plus the right map choice [think Fear Itself Month 1 (The Raft) or AvX Month 1 (Latveria), or any map with a ton of Blocking Terrain] turns this Iron Man into a piece that can potentially Outwit an opposing character THROUGH BLOCKING TERRAIN AND HE DOESN'T CARE IF SAID OPPOSING FIGURE HAS STEALTH! Then he can attack that figure and then, in this scenario, (this is the best part) SIDESTEP BEHIND OTHER BLOCKING TERRAIN SO THAT HE CANNOT BE RETALIATED AGAINST! He's basically Darkseid without all the "I cost at least 200 Points" drama! Hell, Sitwell is 60 Points AND provides another Perplex (and possibly a prob, assuming your other figs are also S.H.I.E.L.D. keyword figs like these two). I don't know about you, but when you factor in the fact that this Iron Man also has top click Running Shot, Invuln and Precision Strike, I'd rather play him and Sitwell for 210 than just Darkseid for 200. Overlooking this piece was probably a bigger mistake than under-ranking Iron Pharaoh–at least the Pharaoh made the list.
Nothing to See here is designed to throw Outwits from every conceivable angle on the board while IM blasts fools through walls. May not win a ROC, but if you win the Map Choice, it'll be tons of fun to play!
I also overlooked Shaman in a major way. He, too, didn't make either of my lists–he was one of my last eliminations for Honorable Mention as I recall–but the build possibilities that his Trait ("NO FLIGHT" SPELL: Once per game, give Shaman a free action and until he is KO'd, other characters with "wing symbol" or "transporter wing symbol" have "boot symbol" instead.) grants cannot be overstated. What often goes overlooked on Shaman however is his capability as a secondary attacker–he's not just a support piece. His first click gives you 10 Attack with TK, 17 Defense with both ES/D AND a souped-up Barrier, and he has 3 Damage top click WITH Perplex! For less than 100 Points!
This team can double Barrier to protect Iron Pharaoh while his Golden Falcon goes out and treats the map like a Seagull treats a parking lot after a big lunch. If you win Map Roll, yikes. Your opponent better have a non-flying piece equipped with Phasing/Teleport and the Carry ability–essentially, Cloak from ASM (there's a couple others, but he's the best). If not, he or she will have to take the long way around a freaking mountain only to be met by a double Barrier tandem who each have the Mystics TA when AND IF you can actually hit them. All the while, Iron Pharaoh will be chilling like the Boss that he is and taking pot shots of at least 5 damage (and it's quite easy to make that even more) at your best figs after he's Outwitted their defense. This is the definition of "a bucket of yuck" for your opponent.
So those two figs are probably the ones I missed the mark on the most. Some other figs whose ranking I would change have gotten stronger (Iron Doom) or weaker based on subsequent releases. For example, Absorbing Man LE has taken a slight hit with the release of figs like CATWS013 Agent 13, who can just void someone's defense completely, but overall, Iron Pharaoh and Shaman were my biggest mistakes, I believe. Next question!
Q4. Other than Shaman, what figure hasn't been exploited in the Meta as much as you thought they would be? And why?
A4. Hmmm… that's a surprisingly good question. And it was just two questions! Well done! You're getting better! Still ruining the gimmick, but you're getting better!
Let's see… well, to be honest, I'm surprised people didn't find more of a use for Grey Gargoyle, the Super Rare. His trick of only letting an adjacent opponent clear one token at a time (instead of two if they'd been pushed) and having some pretty good close combat stats made me think someone would find a way to make him really nasty. If you combine him with AvX Professor X, you could really slow an opponent down, but you wouldn't have much offense in a 300 Point game–or a Theme Team. That seems like a combo worth trying in, like, a 500 Point game. For the Meta, he may just cost too much for what he does. It may be as simple as that.
A smug French dude isn't worth what it costs to deal with him? Stop the presses!
Q6. What about the Silver Centurion? Is he still as good now as he was 6 months ago?
A6. Okay, I feel like you're kind of plateauing in terms of the progress you were making with the whole "asking questions" thing. You just asked two questions again! And the first one was barely even a question–what about the Silver Centurion? Oh, you'd like to know if he's still as good now as he was 6 months ago? WELL WHY DIDN'T YOU JUST ASK THAT INSTEAD OF WASTING YET ANOTHER QUESTION?
Yes, he's as good as he was 6 months ago. He still brings a quality secondary attacker WITH HIM, which tends to scare or, at the very least, frustrate anyone unfortunate enough to play against him. His Point cost WITHOUT the Torpedo is still very reasonable (especially since he's immune to half of the best attack abilities in the game); and, with the Avengers keyword, he can tack on the Secret Avengers ATA to (somewhat) stymie his biggest fear–Outwit. He's shown up at or near the top of countless ROC events, and nothing's really come down the pike that really makes him weaker now than he was then. He's still the best fig in the set. It's closer now than it was before, but even without Improved Targeting of any kind, he's still a complete badass and one of the best Primary Attackers in Modern.
I don't even need to come up with an army to prove my point–just check out the ROC results from the past few months and you'll see a ton of great builds featuring the Silver Centurion.
Q8. Can I have more questions?
Q9. What is the power legacy of this set in the current Modern Age format?
A9. Finally! Two questions in a row where you actually just asked a single question! Alright! Well, in terms of power, this set had more pieces that will show up in the Meta than the Marvel set that preceded it, Wolverine and the X-Men. But that's okay–not every set has to have pieces that are geared towards a single format (in this case, 300 Point Modern Age). WATX had plenty of pieces that are a lot of fun to play, and it introduced Team Bases to the Marvel Heroclix world. It also had some of the most popular Chase characters ever (the Phoenix Five), so loading it up with cutthroat power pieces would have given them less to do when it came time for Invincible Iron Man. Iron Pharaoh has turned up on quite a few Meta teams, but the character itself was never more than, like, an alternate cover–I don't think there was ever even a story about him. But when he can exist in a game alongside 13 different Wolverines, I think that means that Heroclix in general is actually in good shape. There's plenty of little things that irk me, but you can play competitive games now with a ton of different characters. That's a huge step forward from just 14 months ago, when it was Ghost Rider and… well, and nothing else. It was just Ghost Riders as far as the eye could see, each one giving the next a Penance Stare.
The Meta in early 2013.
Q10. Wow. What happens when Ghost Rider gives a Penance stare to Ghost Rider?
All paradoxical loops inevitably lead to John Malkovich's head. And thank you for RUINING THE FIRST OUTING OF OUR NEW GIMMICK WITH YOUR HORRIBLE QUESTION-WASTING!!