Last Thursday, the UK had its warmest day of the year so far, with 20.3C recorded at Porthmadog in north west Wales.
However, at the weekend, a plunge of cold air coming all the way from the Arctic sent temperatures plummeting to well below where they should be at this time of year.
April is renowned for providing a huge range of weather as warm air and cold air battle it out, but this chill is fairly impressive for so late in the month.
And there's no let up in the cold weather this week, as a northerly wind continues to blow, bringing below normal temperatures, frosty nights and some snow.
The cold weather we are seeing at the moment is actually linked to something that happened in early March, high up in the stratosphere at around 50km.
Something called sudden stratospheric warming took place, whereby a sudden large rise in temperature causes the wind to start blowing from east to west, rather than the normal west to east direction.
This reversal of wind direction then gradually feeds down in the atmosphere to the top of the troposphere, which is where our weather occurs.
The effect of this is to start to slow down or even reverse the direction of the jet stream, which determines the weather that we experience at the surface.
As the jet stream slows down, big, slow-moving blocking areas of high pressure tend to form, that sit in the same place for long periods of time.
One such area of high pressure has formed over the mid-Atlantic Ocean, feeding down this cold air all the way from the Arctic.
The universal theme for the weather across the UK this week is for temperatures to be 3-5C below normal for this time of year.
Daytime temperatures will be 4-9C in the north and 9-12C across the south – values more typical for the beginning of March.
At night, temperatures will widely fall close to freezing in towns and cities, with rural areas dropping as low as -5C locally, providing yet another week of annoyance for gardeners.
With the cold air comes the risk of some snow – mainly over the hills and mountains in the northern half of the UK.
However, in the heavier showers, there could be some sleet and hail mixed in almost anywhere, as cold air gets dragged down from aloft.
The Met Office has issued a yellow warning for snow and ice over northern Scotland during Monday and Tuesday, with 5-10cm possible over hills above 300m and a few centimetres possible at sea level.
During Monday night, there could even be a dusting over the hills in eastern coastal counties of England, but it would melt quickly on Tuesday morning in the strong April sunshine.
If you're hoping to see the back of this cold weather, it'll turn warmer next week, but temperatures will return to average, rather than anything impressive.
It surprises me that people are surprised ! This is a weather pattern that occurs most years, with a cold blast in late April or early May resulting from the wind swinging into the north. I can think of very few years where we have had a fine and warm early May bank holiday since it was established and I can remember several years when there has been snow at this time, even if only on the hills. The good news is that it doesn't usually last long !


text:
Erdoğan: "Social media a threat to democracy"
Turkish President Erdoğan has referred to social media as a threat to democracy and has once again signalled preparations for tighter measures of control.
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has once again threatened social media users in Turkey, via a video message he sent to the first day of the Stratcom Summit 2021 organised by the Presidential Communications Directorate at the Golden Horn Congress Centre in Istanbul.
He referred to planned arrangements for various social media platforms and remarked that social media was a "threat to democracy".
"Social media was a symbol of freedom when it first emerged, but it has now become one of the main threats to democracy…At this point, disinformation has gone beyond being a mere national security issue and became a global security issue. In this regard, it is important to inform the public and to fight disinformation and propaganda," he said on 11 December.
"We are trying to protect our people, especially the vulnerable sectors of our society, against lies and disinformation, without compromising our citizens' right to receive accurate and impartial information."
It is not the first time he has referred to tighter measures on social media. Last September he also spoke about preparations for regulations on social media covering "fake news" and "disinformation" online, and said again that uncontrolled social media has become a threat to democracy, social peace and the national security of states.
Details of the new legislation have not been shared with public but it has been expected that a new Social Media Directorate within the government will be established to monitor the online comments of users. Within the upcoming legislation, social media users will be sentenced to up to five years imprisonment for fake news and disinformation.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Q: Lightweight Mongodb ODM/ORM for Python I'm looking for MondoDB Python ODM/ORM that takes the best from two worlds: ODM/ORM & ultra fast direct dictionary read.
In other words package shall comply with following requirements:

*

*Allows to define and enforce schema.

*Allows to validate fields.

*Allows to read objects directly from mongodb (no ODM/ORM overhead).

*

*Collections/objects returned directly by pymongo can be accessed using ODM/ORM layer (w/o extra queries).

*I would imagine some kind of lazy field added by pymongo driver to objects that provides access to ORM juice (pymongo allows for such extensions).

*Imagine use case:

*

*For fast read we go directly to driver,

*For data entry we use full ODM/ORM functionality

*Geofields support

*GridFS support of normal files and images

*DBRef support

*Does not enforce any hidden, framework specific fields

*Will work with Flask :)

*Has forms framework.

*

*Forms cover sublists/subdicts

*Backbone based forms would be just awesome

*Creates backbone models, collections, validators based of python definition

I know that I'm asking for much but wouldn't it be awesome to have something like this :)
In fact question could be rephrased into:
"Which of existing Python Mongodb ODM/ORMs (MongoKit, MongoEngine) could be easily extended this way."

A: Well if you take the theory of an ORM what you need is not an ORM, since MongoDB is not a relational database, so there's no mapping to relational entities to do.
I think you must to check the answer of this post to check wether the recommendations made are what you need, I personally use MongoDB + Python directly, because of the "nature" of both Mongo and Python.
Looking around I found this library that could help you mongoEngine. Is like Django ORM. You should check it.

A: umongo was born long after that question was asked. Although relatively young, it is gaining maturity. Like micromongo, it aims at being simple (the "u" stands for µ/micro), so it does not provide the numerous features requested in the question, but it is meant to be a sane base to build upon.
It uses Marshmallow internally for model schema/validation, so you can use it happily with other libraries using Marshmallow. I use it in a Flask application that provides a REST API using Marshmallow to parse inputs/outputs. This limits the amount of duplication between DB and API schema. The application uses other libraries from the Marshmallow environment (webargs/apispec).
Since you have direct access to collections, you can use plain pymongo queries.
Also, it is compatible not only with pymongo but also with async drivers.

A: Take a look at pymongoext https://github.com/musyoka-morris/pymongoext which is highly inspired by mongoose.
Key features are:

*

*No custom-query language or API to learn (If you know how to use pymongo, you already know how to use pymongoext)

*object-like results instead of dict-like. These objects extend dict and thus you can use either syntax (i.e. foo.bar  or foo['bar']).

*custom data manipulators, to transform documents before saving and after retrieval. (Inspired by mongoose virtuals)

*schema validation (which uses MongoDB JSON Schema validation)

*nested and complex schema declaration

*required fields validation

*default values

*custom validators

*operator for validation (OneOf, AllOf, AnyOf, Not)

*indexes management (Pymongoext transparently and intelligently handles the maintenance of MongoDB indexes)

Example usage:
from datetime import datetime
from pymongo import MongoClient, IndexModel
from pymongoext import *

class User(Model):
    @classmethod
    def db(cls):
        return MongoClient()['my_database_name']

    __schema__ = DictField(dict(
        email=StringField(required=True),
        name=StringField(required=True),
        yob=IntField(minimum=1900, maximum=2019)
    ))

    __indexes__ = [IndexModel('email', unique=True), 'name']

    class AgeManipulator(Manipulator):
        def transform_outgoing(self, doc, model):
            doc['age'] = datetime.now().year - doc['yob']
            return doc

# Create a user
>>> User.insert_one({'email': 'jane@gmail.com', 'name': 'Jane Doe', 'yob': 1990})

# Fetch one user
>>> user = User.find_one()

# Print the users age
>>> print(user.age)

A: 1st of all I'd love to have it as well.
Based on my research
Ming is a very promising mongo ODM driver: http://merciless.sourceforge.net/
MongoEngine is too big to adapt it for your requirements/usecase. Same for MongoKit.
There is some hope in micromongo: http://packages.python.org/micromongo
Could be a good starting point.
BTW: Hmmm... I don't know what you're writing but having forms and validators covered you can easily build admin interface and end-up having next generation Django. Good luck!

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
This Is The Most Famous Christmas Movie About Missouri
By Taylor Linzinmeir
'Tis the season for finding ways to escape from the bitter cold brewing outside. In our opinion, there is no better way to do just that than by siting on the couch with a warm cup of hot cocoa, a soft blanket and a Christmas movie on the television.
But what movie should you pick? The options are seemingly endless —Hallmark has almost two dozen holiday movies airing this season alone. Luckily for us, Vudu recently compiled a list of the best Christmas movies set in each of the 50 states.
Without further ado, the best Christmas movie about Missouri is: Meet Me In St. Louis. Here's what the film is about, according to Rotten Tomatoes:
"Meet Me in St. Louis" is a classic MGM romantic musical comedy that focuses on four sisters (one of whom is the nonpareil Judy Garland) on the cusp of the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. The film spotlights the sisters' education in the ways of the world, which includes, but isn't limited to, learning about life and love, courtesy of the prototypical boy next door. In the end, love -- accompanied by song, dance and period costumes, all in glorious Technicolor -- conquers all."
You can stream Meet Me In St. Louis on Prime Video and Vudu. Check out the trailer below.


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AI War 2 is out now! Get it on Humble Store today!
Dota 2- 7.00
Author Topic: Dota 2- 7.00 (Read 15562 times)
TheVampire100
Ordinary Vampire
Re: Dota 2- 7.00
People call it now already Dota 3 mockingly. I've played one match so far and looking at the map that might not be so far from stretch.
It feels weird but that's because I'm not used to it. You get the same feeling to any Moba when you play it for the first time. The new sop HUD looks... weird and isn't intuitive to use. Will need some time to get around that. But what's good now, you can add your own items to the recommended page of the shop, so you can decide in game what you want to buy at what stage at the game.
Also it's now devided into start, early game, mid game and late game plus situational instead of only early, mid and situational.
I played only one match as Sand King so far but all I have to say is, Bots are now even worse than before. Looks like they didn't redo the bot behaviour for the new map, you can clearly see that they are overwhelmed by it. They cannot find paths and often simply stand at one single point. Even if you attack them, they won't move very far, they simple go back and forth. That explains why players can now design and download their own bots, Valve simply didn't care anymore and said Okay, do it yourself if you want good bots, we're out."
So I played my first game of DotA 7.0 the other day and at first I was a little worried. It didn't feel like DotA anymore. The screen was way zoomed out, making me feel like I was playing an RTS (which I actually enjoy, I hate it being zoomed in, but that's also part of what makes DotA, DotA). There were 6 rune spawns up from 2. There were 6 fountains up from 2. The entire layout of the map had changed. The talents, the pacing, the neutral camps, Roshan, the shops. Everything just felt differently, like I wasn't even playing DotA anymore, and while I enjoyed all the improvements, it made me a little sad.
But then after all my teammates started verbally abusing each other and raging over trivial things, and there was still no concede option leading to pointlessly prolonged and frustrating games, I breathed a sigh of relief. It's still the same game I know and love.
On a whim, I went and looked at the store page for the game and the "reviews", sorta having an idea as to what I might see there.
And yep, I was right. Nothing but thumbs down, and ALL of them were "OMG 7.0 RUINED IT" or "Now it's LEAGUE OF THE ANCIENTS, not DOTA anymore!!!" or other truly brilliant comments.
I mean, seriously... it's expected, but still brainmelting anyway.
On a side note, I wonder if anyone will ever manage to come up with bots that aren't horrible. A friend of mine really likes this game, but utterly refused to play VS others due to the fact that the community was so loathesome... he played it a lot with bots but of course that meant his experience was limited since the things are just so freaking stupid.
Yep, it's still Dota. I admit that I get irritated a lot by the new style. Since the 7.0 update I lost a lot of matches. But I also won some. Since I'm so confused on the new map and the HUD and everything I blame myself for those losses. The stats basically say the same, my death rate is a lot higher.
I also had one good game yesterday as Sven but I think this was more because of my team. It was a really good team. Stacking Ancients is still possible, even witht he new timers. That is, if there is not this new Satyr Ancient present. This thing auto-roots you on its first hit, ruining the stack. Having a ranged creep or a ranged hero will make this easier but tough luck if you are a melee hero. They should have thought about this better in my opinion, especially since you now have to wait two minutes to stack again.
Also, about negative opinions and that: I really wish these people would take their words more seriously. A lot of these people that complain play the game anyway, just to complain even more about it. I had an Axe in one of my matches that pointed the lack of his counter helixes to 7.0 and said the patch ruined the game. 7.0 didn't change anythign at th chance of counterhelix, it's the typically ignorant hate that players have.
On the theme of bots: Players can now design their own bots and even before that was a thing people tried to come up with ideas for better bots. The current bots are just... terrible. I think Valve missed the opportunity to fit the bots to the new map and everything. They are clearly unable to cope with the new map, they walk around in an erratic manner. Some of them just stand at one spot and don't move at all.
Aklyon
Quote from: Misery on December 16, 2016, 08:34:48 AM
On a side note, I wonder if anyone will ever manage to come up with bots that aren't horrible.
People do occasionally lose to bots in World of Warships Co-op. But its a rare sight and usually involves heavy sighs.
Crystalline, a semi-illustrated forum game.
*Quickly scrambles to the DotA review page.*
(5 minutes later)
Holy shit.
I know, Necro and all that (technically we're still on the front page but anyway)
This is why I think DotA is the original and still the best MOBA out there:
https://www.theflyingcourier.com/2017/6/19/15831478/virtus-pro-unique-heroes-picked-81-dota-summit-7
In a recent tournament, VP picked an entirely new roster of heroes...16 games in a row, and did well. That's not a feat that I believe would be possible in any other MOBA, simply because of the way most of them are designed where certain heroes are just objectively better than others at specific roles. It's the fluidity and dynamic flexibility of hero roles in DotA that allows them all to have a place, instead of a select few that excel in a very narrow role.
Wow, a necro all the way from December. We get all sorts of derailments on this forum, but a major necromancing of a topic is oddly rare.
Actually the genre as a whole has been on my mind a bit to be honest, as I've lacked much in the way of a good challenge outside of shmups and whatever you call Isaac-ish games. I might give HotS a try again, the main draw being that super direct communication (talking) isn't as needed there. Which is really the main thing keeping me from retrying any of the others. Well, that and a lack of bots that present something of a threat. If these games had GOOD and challenging AI, I'd already be playing them.... in singleplayer fashion. But they don't. Feh. Same with every other multiplayer genre ever.
Without that though I'm just as reluctant as ever to try to do much of anything involving multiplayer. Just... ugh. Not exactly a fan of having to interact with people directly. Particularly when the people I'd be interacting with are pretty much made of poison. Otherwise, I might consider giving Dota another go here. Granted, chances are the last-hit thing would still push me away, but who knows.
I've totally forgotten where I was going with any of this. I had a point to make, related to the topic at hand, but now I cannot recall what it was. Which means that I've done my job, clearly.
I was reading this as a new post, then noticed I'd replied twice and went "what?" Checked the date.
That's some world class necromancy there.
Quote from: Misery on June 20, 2017, 12:47:14 AM
No offense here, but HotS is a piece of crap. Played it multiple times, bounced off multiple times. The game lacks any strategic depth that make Mobas so great. Blizzard decided to ban all items on their Moba and the result is, the outcome of the match pretty much relies on the heroes you pick.
The reason why Dota is so awesome and still the supremacy in the genre is simply because no other Moba has such a balance with so many heroes. Literally everything is viable (hell there are even videos about crazy attempts that still succeed). The reason for that is how the item system works.
Heroes counter each other in specific ways, just like in other mobas, but that does not mean you are screwed, because you are countered or have no counter for the enemy team. Dota has item counters for everyone of the 112 heroes. If you screwed up and didn't get a counter against a strong Anti Mage or a annoying Slark, you can buy an item, that fixes the problem, like Rod of Athos, to keep anti Make from escaping all the time.
Items are very important in Mobas because they not only fledge out what your hero can do but also can make up for weaknesses or even entirely new strategies. Most other Mobas have only items, that enhance the natural abilities of the hero (Smite is a very good example of this) but Dota manages it with its item system to give entirely new ways to play a hero.
HotS lacks any of this and they thought some sort of RPG talent system would make up for that lack. It doesn't. It could, if you had actually big choices between multiple talents instead of "Choose this or this". Blizzard screwed this game up so much in favor of casual players.
Also, the "M" in Moba stands for Multipalyer. There is no point to search for one, that favors singleplayer or even remotely tries to make a really good one. If you want to play a Moba, you just have to swallow it and paly with others. Simply mute everyone rigth at teh start of the match for no reason and you are good to go. Communication is really overrated in Dota, a lot of people they it's necessary and that's of course true in a way but the fact is, people abuse communication more for their personal vendettas instead of actually making important, strategic discussions. And if you need to tell somethign important, pings and chat commands (which are translated in every language) are always aviable, even muted. So you can just use that to tell others what to do or what your intention is.
A big problem with dota or in general any Moba, is, that people forget, what the objective is. It's to bring down the buildings with the end goal to bring down the ancient. People play this like their general shooter or deathmatch game, where you just kill everyone on sight if you can. And they get aggressive, if they die in fights. People stop attackign a tower just to chase another player right into their base or across the map. Its really gross, how people think that another kill is more important than to destroy a tower, whic stays permanent, while a player simply respawns.
Anyway, if you really want to have no problems in Dota (or any Moba), you should look for people that play with you, even if that seems totally out of this world for you. Playing with at least one person you know is better than playing with 4 random strangers you never seen before and will never see again. That way you have at least one perspn, you can remotely rely on.
I probably wouldn't play Dota anyway though.
The last-hitting obsession that the game has: I ended up totally loathing it. I actually consider it one of the worst game mechanics I've seen in the past few years, period. There's soooooooooo many other ways a game can add in skill-based concepts to improve the depth and difficulty. Instead they chose.... that. And then pushed it to a ridiculous degree. Even when I was getting past the multiplayer bit, I was then shoved away by that mechanic. It was enough to do that. It gave me the *exact* same feeling as grinding in a bad JRPG. And for me to say that, is basically the biggest single negative comment I can conceivably throw at any one game, and one that is very rare to hear from me. I'm aware I can be pretty darned negative at times, but to get THAT negative is rare even for me.
The item system now, on one hand I kinda agree. On the other hand, I kinda don't. I always really liked the idea of that in that genre as a whole. But the way it tended to work was... usually a little irritating and stale. There tended to always be a "best" way to build, and everyone everywhere just copies that. Kinda like playstyles and techniques in a fighting game: Nobody comes up with their own, just... because. And Dota's items in particular, I found very confusing. I was never sure what in the bloody hell to do with them half the time, provided I could even remember what they did. Which was rare, no matter how much of the game I played or watched. Note that I'm the same one that has put 400 hours into Isaac, yet I still need the mod that displays item effects on screen because I *still* cant remember what probably 60% of them do despite having seen them all as often as I have. So that was a problem I ran into very quickly and very often. Not just in Dota, but in the other games too, albeit to a slightly lesser degree. But yeah, trying to learn the items in that game was like trying to learn Dwarf Fortress all over again: Even 50 separate videos on the topic would only just get me started. Except then I'd forget a lot of that since the very nature of it confuses me.
And honestly, I'd be terrible at coming up with builds of my own anyway. I don't have the undying patience to theorycraft, cant do math of any sort whatsoever anyway, and even if I did those things, I wouldn't be able to remember what the build was after coming up with it. Now yes, you can change things up on the fly and not go off of a static build, but.... doesn't work if you cant remember what things do or what use they may have overall. Trying that usually ended up making for a random jumble of items that likely made no sense together.
But yeah, beyond those two things, just..... ugh. I hate having to deal with people THAT much. I'm an autistic misanthrope, which isn't exactly a social combination. I'm aware that I can mute everyone, but one way or another, I'm still dealing with other players, and in a game that's already bloody irritating, that pushes it a bit too far. In some other multiplayer games like, say, Overwatch? I can put up with the stupid, simply because the game itself is a blast. It can be aggravating to watch someone do something super dumb and ruin stuff, but it didn't ruin the game. But in Dota? Too much. PARTICULARLY in a game where the matches are so.... freaking... long. When the frustration train gets going in that game, it tends to last for a bloody hour.
And you're right, many players tended NOT to play the damn objective like they should have. They just wanted TEH KILLZ all the time. Like they never played the tutorial or anything and didn't learn the win condition. Or they'd just do all sorts of seriously stupid stuff. Hell, one reason why I ended up almost entirely playing support characters was to save other players from their own idiocy. That's pretty much what my actual role was. Waiting for someone to do something stupid, and pulling them back from the edge of the cliff they were about to walk off. Considering the sheer complexity and difficulty of the game, MANY players acted like that.
All of that is why I always wanted competent bots. The damn things, if done right, would at least know their roles and always stick to them. Hell, there's someone I know that loves Dota but just outright *refuses* to play non-bot games, for all the reasons listed here, even despite how dumb the things are.
And nobody I know, outside of the one guy that plays the bot matches, would play something like that with me. Everyone I know is, well... very stereotypical AAA gamers. All they do is the latest shooter or major JRPG or stuff like Fallout. The closest any of them come to breaking from that mold is that ONE of them does play fighting games with me, but that's it. It's gotten to the point where I don't even discuss gaming with them anymore, because it's a bloody waste of time. I'll chat with people on Steam sometimes, sure, but that's about it. And even there, it's hard to find anyone with similar interests.
As it is, to some degree I can understand why Blizzard went with an easier approach. The rest of the genre is just so.... obtuse. LoL and Smite are a lot less brain-melting than Dota, but still extremely complicated. And they still had issues that pushed me away really. LoL's combat was great fun, but had huge balance issues, and Smite had.... er.... something. I cant remember what it was, it's been quite awhile.
I mean, I get why a lot of players hate it when things like this dumbed down. But after so much time with the genres that I am into, like fighting games (specifically, the extremely hard to learn ones), roguelikes, and shmups, I've grasped some of the reasons for accessibility in game design like that. Particularly in multiplayer games.
Going into something like HotS, I wouldn't expect massive amounts of depth, anymore than I would from a typical Overwatch match. But to me, at this point, that's just fine. I've got the other genres I'm into when I want major depth, complexity, and challenge. Dialing it down in a multiplayer game has turned out to be something I don't actually mind too much, as long as it's not in a fighting game (where I just get bored fast).
Of course, that's all provided I decide to give that a go at all. Havent chosen one way or another yet. Particularly as games like Isaac, Caveblazers, and 20XX are constantly gobbling up my time lately. Addictive genre, that.
The last-hitting obsession that the game has: I ended up totally loathing it. I actually consider it one of the worst game mechanics I've seen in the past few years, period.
Okay but realize that it isn't a mechanic that comes from the past few years, it's a mechanic that's over 15 years old.
It stands as one of the core fundamentals of DotA, and it's taken straight from the gameplay of the Warcraft 3 engine in which the player who received the last hit on any neutral enemy would receive the gold and experience from that enemy, regardless of who did more damage to it. This, in Warcraft 3, opened up a lot of strategy for sniping and stealing another player's hard work, and was translated, as-is, to the DotA formula. But Warcraft 3 came out in 2002, so it's not like a new and inventive "feature" by any stretch of the imagination.
It would be like someone complaining about dribbling in Basketball. Yes, maybe it's stupid and it shouldn't be there but it's become such a fundamental part of the game now that it's unlikely to be removed for reasons of tradition and the fact that everybody grew up playing that way.
In any case there are plenty of other MOBAs out there that have removed it completely (Heroes of the Storm) or altered it (Smite), and your mileage may vary on whether it was a positive or negative change.
As Winglfier already said, it's a fundamental aspect of the game and by no means "outdated". Last hitting is important, so players can distribute farm between them while the oppsite players have a way to destroy farm outside of killing the enemy player. I know that when I was a new player, I kegleted this mechanic, as most new players do. It's simply easier to auto-attack. Some people still auto-attack in my bracket and this weeds them out as worse players compared to the rest of the team because they simply cannot get any farm at all.
As I played dota for longer, I started to practice last hitting in bot matches. dota had last hitting training back then which they removed int he Reborn client. Eventually you pretty much get used to it to the point,t hat you don't even focus on it anymore. It's simply instinctive, you don't focus and can do it just fine. Depends of course on the hero but on ehroes, that you paly regulary, it's easier to hit last hits passively because you know the mechanics already and get a feel for when to hit. It was annyoing when i started Dota but isn't anymore, in fact, this is the smalles issue I would have with this game. It annoys mer way more if I see people that don't last hit and just auto attack 8 a friend of mine, who is a terrible player, does this regulary, mostly when he looses patience).
Also, there are farm items, items that help you get quickly farmw ithout focusing much on hitting the right moment. desolator, Battle Fury, Maelstrom. Many of these items are useful in fights too and that's why most carries build these first. It speeds up the farm for their more prctical items while giving them also a nice edge in team fights.
About builds: There is this term "cookie cutter build" and practically means that a player just uses a pre-made build for his character without thinking on his own. New players do this, inexperienced or pretty much bad players do this very often (my friend I mentioned before for an example rarely strays away from the default build or builds he saw on the internet). The default build is there to give players a geneal direction on what the hero needs in most games or, more importantely, what items are good with him. They help to get a general grasp of how the hero is played and what his purpose is. Sniper, simply the easiest hero to play, is a perfect example of this. All his items in his default build help him to enhance his natural abilites but the better you get, the more you get a feeling what other items might work on him.
Especially in the lowest tiers people buy Shadowblade on him. Which is good, because these people don't have a feeling when to withdraw from battles and realize int he last minute, that tehy have to escape. Shadowblade works always int hese situations, because invsible means, no one can hit you. The better you get, the more people you will meet, that know however, how to counter invisibility. Snipers only chance to get out is practically useless now. Experienced palyers than discard Shadowblade for a more practical item, like Hurricane Pike or Blink Dagger, to get out of danger before its too late.
Getting a feeling for items takes a long time too, in general Mobas take a lot time to learn. It took me huge amounts of time to learn every single item in the game but now I know what everything does. I canot tell you the exact amount of stats, that an item will give you, but I can give you a general purpose/use of an item. This helps me to speed up my decicions because I don't have to look up first, what an item does. I simply know I need more attack speed, so I know what items I have to look for.
Not remembering stuff in Mobas (anyone, even HotS) places you in the lowest bracket of the playerbase. These games are mostly aroudn memorizing stuff and what looks impossibly first, eventually gets into your brain until you realize it. I never thought I would learn all of them but I did. And they stilla re adding new ones to the game. After you knwo the items (or at least the most important ones) all you have to do is figure out, what kind of hero you want to be.
And in this case you don't have to follow strict lines. Bristleback can be a tank, a nuker and even a carry. And depending on what of the 3 you want to play, you simply aplly your items to it. Tank means lot of items that increase survivability, HP, armor, magic resistance and all that stuff. that way you can take huge amounts of damage. Nuker means, you focus on his natural ability to deal out tons of damage in short cooldowns (whcih he has plenty to offer). Add items to your build, that buff the damage of his abilities, in his case he deals physical damage, so everything that reduces armor is a great item for him.
Carry means you work more on his ultimate passive that increases his damage as long as he casts his abilities. If you combine this with big attack speed, you can punch enemies into a pulp.
Getting familiar with what a hero can do and what you want him to do is a lot of fun, you can experiment with it a lot in Dota and you would be surprised, how much of this stuff still works fine. Not everything works or at least not that great compared to other stuff but it's part of the fun to find this out yourself. That and of course dominating and humilating your enemies to the end.
One way or another, to me, all of that is totally irrelevant as long as the last-hit mechanic is in place. There's a reason why I say it's as bad as I phrased it above... I'm not exaggerating when I said that. It's *that* bad to me. Even the #*(%&-ing "unidentified crap" mechanic in roguelikes doesn't irritate me even close to as much, and THAT is saying something. I could do a 5 page rant on why I hate that one. But yeah, one way or another, I just hate it. The really major thing that kept me playing at all was simply that I almost exclusively played support heroes, and THEY don't last hit a bloody thing. Too busy warding and pulling the carry's face out of that wall of chainsaws that he just walked into. However, it DID keep me from wanting to do other roles, and any time I did, I tended to just get overly annoyed.
Yes, maybe it's stupid and it shouldn't be there but it's become such a fundamental part of the game now that it's unlikely to be removed for reasons of tradition and the fact that everybody grew up playing that way.
Yes, many players in games get used to stuff like. *I* have gotten used to things like the godforsaken unidentified crap in roguelikes for instance. I've played too many of these now, and my skill level is at the point where the "potion" type items cannot end my run in whatever game it is (not counting traditional roguelikes like Nethack, I don't really play those). But that doesn't make it any less bloody stupid, and it sure doesn't mean that future games should use it.
Something like basketball doesn't work for comparison. Why? That's not a simple videogame: That's a form of entertainment of monstrous size that has become it's own entity. Kazillions of dollars get spent on that sport constantly. Of *course* they aren't going to change it, and in that case, I cant blame them. But when it comes to a video game aping an old one simply because "that's how the previous ones did it", that seriously doesn't work as a good reason. These games are created anew each time, and each time the developers have a chance to do things in a new way. Simply choosing a mechanic for that sort of reason isn't a good thing.
Obviously, the mechanic isn't going away in Dota even if it should. I know this. The game is too huge now for something as ingrained as that to change. It'd be like Street Fighter switching to a four-button control scheme for attacks; it might make more sense in many ways but it's just too big now.
As for items? Honestly, it doesn't matter how much time I spend playing a game like that: I wont remember what the items do. I know this bit is hard to understand, everyone always assumes that if I do something enough I *must* be able to eventually remember it, but.... no, that's not the case. Even in fighting games, ones that I have *thousands* of hours in.... I cannot remember combos. Never could. Not even in Guilty Gear, which has gotten a couple thousand hours out of me on it's own. So my combos end up coming out all jumbled every single time (and I don't have to be "rusty" for this to happen). I have to make up for this with sheer speed in order to win. That's why, like I said, I need that item explanation thing in Isaac; because otherwise I alt-tab out of the game half the time when I walk into an item room to go check PlatinumGod and see what the blasted thing does. After 400 hours in Rebirth, and who knows how many in the original. I cant remember what half the stuff in Starward does either, and I'm on the freaking dev team. I cant remember what *my* stuff does until it's started firing at me sometimes. Yes, this is as stupid as it sounds. I can say that it makes the job of balancing difficulty a bit harder than it needs to be. Makes all the shmups harder too.
Now granted, standing around in the, er, core area in a moba, you can read item descriptions and such without getting attacked, just like I'd do in a roguelike. However it depends on the game as to how effective this is, since you need to not spend too much time doing this. In Smite for instance, it was a good bit easier, as some elements of the game caused items to be a bit simpler, and I didn't have to spend as much time examining them to see where they might fit. Their use was a bit more obvious and a lot of "purchases" were actually simply upgrading something that you'd already bought, which was a very direct process. It'd still take me longer than it would any other player, but it worked out. Dota though? There's too much complexity there for my way to work. It took me ages to buy anything, and I *never* used the courier because that was basically suicide (as I learned quickly). Cant just stand in the combat zone for 20 minutes staring at the items. So that was a problem. Which is frustrating, since as I said I like the concepts behind the whole idea of items in any of these games. I really do think it's a very interesting part of the genre for the same reason that I like the concept of shops in roguelikes. I cant change how my memory works though (or doesn't work, as the case may be).
But.... eh. Even with all of that, the fact of having to deal with idiots still is there. Because it's true that I could just go into the game and go back to support role like I always did (which lessened damn near every problem I have with the game otherwise), but.... seriously, watching teammates walk into deathrays and then blame it on the guy who was 20 miles away just... got old.
I've forgotten where I was going with any of this, bah.
« Last Edit: June 22, 2017, 11:02:56 AM by Misery »
Uh, you do realize that Dota is probably the most massive Esport/professional Moba to date 8aside from LoL) and the prices for tournaments rank among the millions? The current prize pool was at 16 million already when I last checked and it's still growing. Prize pools from teh international are even financed by the playerbase, that spends money on cosmetics and stuff. A good amount of this money goes directly to the prize pool, contributing to the winning prize for participants. And they still constantly change the game in different ways, 7.00 threw off all the pro players because it changed the game fundamentally.
The last hit mechanic is simply int here because it gives the players a good way to influence the outcome of the game besides simply killing other players or destroying towers.
I don't even think this should go away but I can see,w hy other people would be annoyed with it. It constantly forces you to concentrate on the game and not making any mistakes.
However, since 7.000 it has become ridiculousy easy to get last hits, they even changed the name now to "CS" (creep score) I think this was the term int he old DotA). Quelling blade, blight stone and of course talents give you such a big boost against hitting creeps, I don't even have to focus on this anymore.
As for items? Honestly, it doesn't matter how much time I spend playing a game like that: I wont remember what the items do. I know this bit is hard to understand, everyone always assumes that if I do something enough I *must* be able to eventually remember it, but.... no, that's not the case. Even in fighting games, ones that I have *thousands* of hours in.... I cannot remember combos. Never could.
I guess you simply have a bad memorization. Some people can do this better than others. It's simply like that. And Mobas, all of them, even HotS (but to a lmuch lesser extend) require to memorize stuff, that's why I never recommend people, that simply cannot do it, to play them. Of course they still can play and might still get some amount of fun out of them but they miss the big point of the game and migth never be good players. Reflexes in Mobas bring you only so far. This more for somethign like shooters.
Problem is, if you don't remember stuff, you don't know what soemthing does and don't know what could work against that. It's a chain that grows with every segmet that you don't remeber and gets only worse. And since they add new stuff, you will get more and more problems to react.
Problem with the Dota community is, people tend to overestimate their own power. They think they have a strong character and are unkillable, which they aren't. And then they blame it on the person that didn't walk into a five man team stack to die liek them and say, they died because no one healed them or anything other stupid like that.
People like to dive towers a lot just to chase a single person with 5% health. They might get them but they might also die int he process, loosing gold anyway. And you can bet that tehse people won't move a single finger to get on your lane to help you (if they even have a tp scroll, that thing is so freaking cheap right now and still no one buys it) if there are 5 people. And, oh dear, pushing their lane, which would otherwise be also good, is also not in the program. Nope, they tend to go in the jungle because it's way easier to auto attack a creep there isntead of the lane, because they cannot beat a creep in last hitting. Genius. I even ban Legion Commander on almost all my games because of this because I'm so tired to see LC palyers directly wandering into the jungle. when I play LC, I go into the lane and are already ten times better than them. I rarely see a LC player who even understands what LC makes good.
Anyway, the problem really is, people don't udnerstand how a game liek this is played. they simply play it like a RPG deathmatch where it only depends that you kill the enemy team. Which is bullshit, you kill them, so they don't interrupt you while you attack the tower. If they cannot stop you anyway, just keep going for the tower, but nope, let's dive the entire lane to their base where the rest of the team already awaits you. Let's ping the people that didn't save me and destroyed the tower instead.
I would have won my last game for an example if the Weaver player would have attacked the tier 4 towers of the ancient (the final towers) but instead wandered of to pus the lane towards the barracks, so he can destroy the tower 3 tower and the barracks there. I destroyed one tower bt got killed by the respawned enemy team whiel weaver still tried to destroy the barracks before dying himself. We lost eventually despite having multiple chances to end the game. It are these moments, that are very fristrating, especially if you knew you made everything correct. I can only do so much as tank Bristleback with zero damage build. I was lucky I could even destroy ONE tower. End points even showed, I had more building damage than Lifestealer who was a carry and therefor should attack towers. People honestly think carries are the role, that kills the enmy team. And this is true in some sense but the main focus is, that a crarry can chip through a tower very quickly with their high attack speed.


text:
Hilton Hotels May Reapply for Casino in Atlantic City
By TOM FURLONG
Hilton Hotels Chairman Barron Hilton said Thursday that his company may again try to open a casino in Atlantic City, N.J., and might even buy back what is now the Trump Castle Hotel & Casino, owned by New York developer Donald J. Trump.
Hilton's remarks come five years after Hilton Hotels first tried to enter the gaming market in Atlantic City only to have its application rejected by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission in a controversial move that left Hilton executives stunned, angry and humiliated.
"It's something we'll watch," Barron Hilton said after the company's annual meeting in Beverly Hills, when reporters queried him about a possible return to Atlantic City. "We're looking at it."
He also confirmed his interest in Trump Castle, and "if not the Trump Castle, maybe another" of the casinos in the New Jersey resort town. Atlantic City has 12 casino hotels, several of which are in financial trouble and are among the properties Barron Hilton is said to be evaluating.
Barron Hilton declined to say if he has already talked to Trump, who could not be reached for comment.
Hilton also reiterated that the company, which had been put on the auction block last summer and withdrawn in March, is not for sale.
Though Hilton Hotels is best known as a lodging company, with about 270 inns nationwide, it derives a major chunk of its profit from gambling. The company owns three casinos in Nevada and plans to open a fourth in Laughlin this summer.
If the company were to buy Trump Castle, the sale would be doused in irony. Trump bought the property from Hilton Hotels in early 1985, shortly after the license denial. Hilton Hotels had already built the $320-million facility in anticipation that it would receive the gambling license.
Hilton Hotels' license application was rejected because the New Jersey commissioners were concerned about the firm's business connections, including its long ties to reputed mob lawyer Sidney Korshak. Hilton Hotels severed its ties with Korshak before the licensing hearings, but it was not soon enough to suit some regulators.
Much has changed in five years, however. Atlantic City's casino industry has fallen on hard times in the past year, and regulators are groping for ways to inject money and new life into the decayed resort town.
In addition, the state commission has experienced a near-total turnover of its members since 1985. The commissioners who voted against the Hilton application have left the agency, and one of the new commissioners met recently with Barron Hilton in an attempt to lure his company back to town.
"I can't tell you what the commission would do, but the regulatory climate has certainly changed," said Tom Flynn, a commission spokesman. "Put it this way: There are no doors closed."
One casino industry insider, who asked not to be named, said Trump Castle is a logical candidate for a sale since Trump already owns the Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino and the Taj Mahal Hotel & Casino.
It would also dovetail with Trump's recent public declaration that he wants to raise cash by selling assets and refinancing properties, though Trump has said in a Los Angeles Times interview that he did not intend to sell or refinance his casinos.
The Taj, which cost more than $1 billion and opened April 2, had gambling winnings of more than $34 million in April, the best in town. But, according to Atlantic City Action, an industry newsletter, Trump Castle fell to ninth place last month with only $18.5 million in winnings, nearly 12% less than in April, 1989.


text:
Q: For Loop with Google Geocoding - High Error Rate - iPhone I am using the below code to fetch location information via Geocoding and then add a map pin to a Google Map View. The code uses a For loop to cycle through each place in my database. The problem is that the code fails to return location info for about 50% of the places when run. These failed items are saved in the failedLoad array as per the code below.
Can anyone suggest why this is ? Also since these failed items are saved in the "failedLoad" array, is there a way I could use this array to load any missing pins ?
EDIT
The failed items are due to a 620 error which means that I am submitting items too quickly. How can I add a delay into the code ?
Thanks !
-(void)displayPlaces {

for (PlaceObject *info in mapLocations) {

        // GET ANNOTATION INFOS
        NSString * addressOne = info.addressOne;
        NSString * name = info.name;
        NSString * postCode = info.postCode;

        NSString * addressTwo = [addressOne stringByAppendingString:@",London,"];
        NSString * address = [addressTwo stringByAppendingString:postCode];

       NSString* urlString = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"http://maps.google.com/maps/geo?q=%@&output=csv", [address stringByAddingPercentEscapesUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
       NSURL* url = [NSURL URLWithString:urlString];
       NSURLRequest* req = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:url];

       OHURLLoader* loader = [OHURLLoader URLLoaderWithRequest:req];
       [loader startRequestWithCompletion:^(NSData* receivedData, NSInteger httpStatusCode) {
           NSString* locationString = loader.receivedString;
           NSArray *listItems = [locationString componentsSeparatedByString:@","];

        double latitude = 0.0;
        double longitude = 0.0;

        if([listItems count] >= 4 && [[listItems objectAtIndex:0] isEqualToString:@"200"]) {
            latitude = [[listItems objectAtIndex:2] doubleValue];
            longitude = [[listItems objectAtIndex:3] doubleValue];

        }

        else {

            NSLog(@"Error %@",name);
            [failedLoad addObject : info];

        }

        CLLocationCoordinate2D coordinate;
        coordinate.latitude = latitude;
        coordinate.longitude = longitude;
        MyLocation *annotation = [[[MyLocation alloc] initWithName:name address:address coordinate:coordinate] autorelease];

        [mapViewLink addAnnotation:annotation];

       } errorHandler:^(NSError *error) {
           NSLog(@"Error while downloading %@: %@",url,error);
       }];

 }

}

A: Instead of using a for loop and send all your requests at the same time, you probably should send them one after the other (or 5 by 5?)
Here is one way to do it (not tested in real code, just typed as I go so may have some typo):
// In the instance variables, have:
@property(retain) NSMutableSet* mapLocationsToGeocode;

// When you want to decode, use:
self.mapLocationsToGeocode = [NSMutableSet setWitharray:mapLocations];
// (Or add to the existing NSSet if you have one and add Places using multple passes)
[self popLocationAndGeocode];

-(void)popLocationAndGeocode
{
  // Pop any location from the set
  PlaceObject* onePlace = [mapLocationsToGeocode anyObject];

  // Build the URL given the PlaceObject
  NSString* address = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@,London,%@",info.addressOne,info.postCode];
  NSString* name = info.name;

  NSString* urlString = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"http://maps.google.com/maps/geo?q=%@&output=csv", [address stringByAddingPercentEscapesUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
  NSURLRequest* req = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:urlString]];

  // Remove it so it won't be poped again
  [mapLocationsToGeocode removeObject:onePlace];

  // Send the request here to decode the PlaceObject
  OHURLLoader* loader = [OHURLLoader URLLoaderWithRequest:req];
  [loader startRequestWithCompletion:^(NSData* receivedData, NSInteger httpStatusCode) {
    NSString* locationString = loader.receivedString;
    NSArray* listItems = [locationString componentsSeparatedByString:@","];
    ...

    if([listItems count] >= 4 && [[listItems objectAtIndex:0] isEqualToString:@"200"]) {
        // Process with latitude and longitude, add your MKAnnotation, etc
    } else {
        NSLog(@"Error %@",name);
        [failedPlaces addObject:onePlace];
    }
    ...

     // Schedule the next decoding request (1)
     if ([mapLocationsToGeocode count]) [self performSelector:@selector(popLocationAndGeocode) withObject:nil afterDelay:0.1];
   } errorHandler:^(NSError *error) {
       NSLog(@"Error while downloading %@: %@",url,error);
       [failedPlaces addObject:onePlace];

       // Schedule the next decoding request anyway (1)
       if ([mapLocationsToGeocode count]) [self performSelector:@selector(popLocationAndGeocode) withObject:nil afterDelay:0.1];
   }];

   // Schedule the next decoding request (2) -- solution 2
   // if ([mapLocationsToGeocode count]) [self performSelector:@selector(popLocationAndGeocode) withObject:nil afterDelay:1.0]; // wait one sec before sending next request
}

Of course, dont forget to set the property back to nil when done (or in the dealloc) to release the memory.
In case (1), I call performSelector:withObject:afterDelay in both the completion and error blocks, so that the next request/decoding process is called only once the first has finished. This way your requests are somewhat serialized.
In case (2) (commented/disabled), I call performSelector:withObject:afterDelay right after the startRequestWithCompletion:... method, so it won't wait for the end of the first request to pop the next one. But you will wait (hopefully) long enough so that you won't reach the GoogleAPI rate limit

Note that this is not the only solution, there are plenty other possibilities. One being to use NSOperationQueue to queue the requests one after the other on a queue and add dependencies to it, or schedule the sending process of the requests on a GCD serial queue (yeah, I know I told you not to use GCD to actually send your requests, but that still apply, still dont use GCD+synchronous requests, but you can use GCD to queue blocks that will call [OHURLLoader startRequestWithCompletion:...] on the main thread one after the other; the request itself still being executed on the main thread by the RunLoop)


text:
Export Control Organization publishes 'short notice suspension mechanism', increasing transparency around exports
The UK's Export Control Organization ('ECO') has announced a new mechanism whereby it is can suspend licence applications at short notice where the applications being processed are for exports to countries which are 'experiencing a sharp deterioration in security or stability'. The move is one of a new package of measures being taken in the wake of a review of UK export policy in the context of the Arab Spring, during which time UK defence exports to a number of Middle Eastern countries were sharply scrutinized by the press and public at large. Another move announced by the UK government...
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text:
La Rover Light Six est une automobile produite de 1927 à 1932 par le constructeur anglais Rover. Elle est particulièrement connue pour avoir remporté l'une des courses du Train bleu en 1930.

Light Six
Automobile des années 1920
Automobile des années 1930
Nouveauté en 1927

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


A Celtic themed Athame with an interwoven pentacle at the cross guard. Comes with a scabbard and finished in pewter. (Can not ship to MA or CA) 15 1/4" - 9" blade. Included from the Luciferian Apotheca is a Celtic Consecration Ritual.


text:
5 national stories of the week
Pedestrians walk through the gates of Harvard Yard at Harvard University Aug. 13, 2019, in Cambridge, Mass. Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology filed a federal lawsuit July 8, 2020, challenging the decision to bar international students from staying in the U.S. if they take classes entirely online this fall. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)
July 14, 2020 | 7:00pm EDT
Editor's Note: This listicle is part of a weekly series by The Ball State Daily News summarizing five stories from across the United States. All summaries are based on stories published by The Associated Press.
The first COVID-19 vaccine tested in the U.S. poised for final testing, The Trump administration rescinding on its rule for international students, the first federal execution in 17 years, Ghislaine Maxwell being denied bail and the politics of reopening schools during a pandemic make up this week's five national stories.
A subject receives a shot in the first-stage safety study clinical trial of a potential vaccine by Moderna for COVID-19 March 16, 2020, in Seattle. Early-stage testing showed the first COVID-19 vaccine tested in the U.S. revved up people's immune systems the way scientists had hoped. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)
First COVID-19 vaccine tested in US poised for final testing
The first COVID-19 vaccine tested in the U.S. revved up people's immune systems just the way scientists had hoped, researchers reported Tuesday — as the shots are poised to begin key final testing. The experimental vaccine, developed by colleagues of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government's top infectious disease expert, at the National Institutes of Health and Moderna Inc., will start its most important step around July 27.
Read More: Virus Outbreak
Natalia Afonso, 27, an international student from Brazil at Brooklyn College, speaks during an interview, July 9, 2020, in New York. Afonso said she has lived in the U.S. for 7 years and doesn't see herself moving back to Brazil at this point. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)
Trump administration rescinds rule on foreign students
Facing eight federal lawsuits and opposition from hundreds of universities, the Trump administration on Tuesday rescinded a rule that would have required international students to transfer or leave the country if their schools held classes entirely online because of the coronavirus pandemic. The decision was announced at the start of a hearing in a federal lawsuit in Boston brought by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Read More: International students
Protesters against the death penalty gather July 13, 2020, in Terre Haute, Ind. Daniel Lewis Lee, a convicted killer, was scheduled to be executed at 4 p.m. in the federal prison in Terre Haute. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
First federal execution in 17 years; another set Wednesday
The federal government on Tuesday carried out its first execution in almost two decades, killing by lethal injection a man convicted of murdering an Arkansas family in a 1990s plot to build a whites-only nation in the Pacific Northwest. The execution of Daniel Lewis Lee came over the objection of the victims' relatives and following days of legal delays, reviving the debate over capital punishment during a time of widespread social unrest.
Read more: Executions
Multimedia artist Katelyn Kopenhaver with help from her brother Brent Kopenhaver, unfurls a banner reading "Epstein is the worst kind of virus," outside federal court where a judge held a bail hearing by video for Epstein's former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, July 14, 2020, in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)
Maxwell denied bail on Epstein-related sex abuse charges
Jeffrey Epstein's former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, will remain behind bars until trial after she was denied bail Tuesday as a risk to flee rather than face charges she recruited girls for the financier to sexually abuse more than two decades ago. Two Epstein accusers implored the judge to keep the British socialite detained after she pleaded not guilty to the charges during a video court hearing in Manhattan.
Read More: Ghislaine Maxwell
Hillary Salway poses for a photo with her children, her friends and their children July 13, 2020, in San Clemente, Calif. Salway plans to send her children back to school in the fall. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)
Masks for kids? Schools confront the politics of reopening
On one side are parents objecting to masks and social distancing in classrooms this fall — arguing both could hurt their children's well-being — and want schools to reopen full time. On the other side are parents and teachers who call for safeguards that would have been unimaginable before the coronavirus pandemic. This has put educators in the middle of an increasingly politicized debate on how best to reopen schools this fall.
Read more: Understanding the Outbreak


Joseph A. Sanford, M.D.; Alex Macario, M.D., M.B.A.
From the Department of Anesthesiology, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, Arkansas (J.A.S.); and Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California (A.M.).
Corresponding article on page 171.
FOR the past decade and a half, pioneering work has been done to quantify mathematically various elements of operating room (OR) management including how to allocate the optimal amount of OR time for each room and service so that overall nurse and anesthesiology staffing costs are minimized. In this issue of Anesthesiology, an excellent study from Vanderbilt University adds to this literature by examining statistical methods to predict future OR demand.1 This was done by examining the OR schedule, as case bookings accumulate weeks before the day of surgery, to predict how busy a given day in the future will be. Their work is also laudable because they implemented in their hospital what they found in their study. The prediction of future case volume was used to achieve a key priority for the OR manager—adjusting OR staffing levels to match workload as closely as possible while reducing costs by an estimated 2.8 Full Time Equivalents per year.
Anesthesia groups that actively engage in such data analysis and its management can reap great benefits, enhancing their position as OR stakeholders. And a group that is comfortable doing its own analysis enjoys a key advantage over those that hire out to consultants. Namely, they have skin in the game and will be subject to whatever change may bring. Even those groups that bring in outside analysts acquire knowledge to which they would otherwise not have access.
Data alone are not enough to ensure organizational change, but the analysis of data can facilitate discussion that may provide improvement opportunities.
Prediction of future OR activity alone is not sufficient to optimize OR management. The staff that are scheduled to work must also have the right mix of clinical skills.
Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of large dataset analysis and predictive models is a prerequisite for avoiding common pitfalls of statistical modeling. Specifically, how well do the models reflect reality and how does their implementation alter the performance of the OR suite?
The most important aspect of OR management is to first allocate the correct amount of OR time to each service on each day of the week. This should make sense because if an OR only has staff for 10 h and the room consistently runs 14 h, then that is not efficient. The correct amount of OR time allocated in the future to each service needs to be based on historical use by that service and aims to minimize underutilized time where ORs finish unexpectedly early and also at the same time minimize the more expensive overutilized time where ORs run past the scheduled end time.
When addressing any management dilemma (e.g., insufficient OR capacity to complete all elective cases), sometimes hospital managers source solutions from opinions and anecdote. Although the squeaky wheel getting the grease is an all too common outcome, the plural of anecdote is not data. Although anecdote cannot be discounted out of hand, it may be that the antidote to relying upon anecdote is lots of data. As a foundation from which to make educated decisions, having good quantitative information about the past can be valuable. Providing data and sophisticated analyses are not the ultimate goals; rather, they are a point of departure for dialogue to begin.
In addition, when trying your hand at predictive models, it helps not to come to the data with a specific model in mind, but rather to try a variety of approaches, knowing that some will be more successful than others. Doing so causes the management team to be less likely to fall into the trap of imposing causality where none exists just to increase the impression of understanding. Tiwari et al.1 succeeded on these two points. They disclose a variety of analytic methods examined in addition to the implemented technique and their data come from two separate locations across all posted cases. Exclusion criteria were reasonable and the sample covers major seasonal and academic time periods to account for volume variability.
Ultimately, a functional governance structure is essential. In both public and private hospitals around the world, variability exists in the OR governing body and associated authority, reporting lines, and responsibilities. Current approaches range from a single person making the key decisions all the way up to a large OR executive committee.
As we have investigated OR clinical activity prediction algorithms here at Stanford, several issues were discovered. First, although case volume or total hours of OR time that those cases require is a sizable component in the equation of predicting demand, it is by no means the only component. There are other dimensions that are important to address when optimizing staff scheduling. The right skill mix is also required (e.g., the urology OR nurse may not be able to work in the heart room). This is especially true for large medical centers where specialized anesthesia or nursing is required to cover specialty services such as cardiothoracic, neurosurgical, or pediatric cases.
Other obstacles may arise in the push to have a well-functioning OR suite such as contracts and union mandates on staffing hours limiting opportunities to fully optimize staffing. Data analysis may suggest that shifts are optimized at a certain length, but current contracts may not allow for that shift duration. For the OR manager, this issue deserves recognition because the stakeholders extend beyond the players in the surgical suite environment.
All models are, by definition, erroneous. If they were not, then they would be reality. Increasing model complexity to overfit data or ignoring outlier data may make a prediction model seem more accurate, but actually creates subtle yet significant error. Because collected data are not pure signal, it is subject to interpretative variation such that multiple observers can apply very different models—all of them likely to be wrong as a matter of approximation. One of the advantages of in-house data analysis is that, after overcoming the initial learning curve, questions can be quickly examined and potential changes can be tested and rapidly iterated.
This behavior alone is noteworthy because static belief in a model is a dangerous practice. Should the model predict something that seems unreasonable both unconditional trust and outright dismissal are inappropriate responses. Further investigation is required. This is illustrated well in the article when the model predicted an abnormally low volume without historical precedence.1 The authors investigated and discovered many surgeons planned to attend a national meeting but had not informed the schedulers.
When reporting novel data analysis with significant economic impact, reproducibility takes on particular importance. Unlike bench research, the barrier to reproducibility with predictive modeling is low. Datasets can be fairly easily adapted and distributed, and there is no equipment required beyond a computer to replicate results. Thus, that which can be held to a more rigorous standard should. Methodologies reported in the literature should be exceedingly explicit so that they can be duplicated by interested parties. Should a hospital or anesthesia department wish to begin doing such work themselves options exist across the cost spectrum. These options include using the open-source analytics package R*01 or IBM's SPSS (IBM Corp., New York, NY) as was done by Tiwari et al.1 Alternatively, an engineer can be hired to do the programming required or outside consultants with expertise in OR management can be brought in. When the implementation of statistical methods is adequately described, as Tiwari et al. have done here, a group's locally acquired data can be tested against a new method to see whether similar results might be obtained.
Finally, hospital managers must explore and understand the consequences of decisions made from a model. How does applying the results of the new model affect your OR suite? All efficiency gains are not equal and what looks like efficiency on the front-end may be disguising the potential for an unexpected negative event should the system take an unanticipated shock. An example might be a community hospital surgical department convinces administration to reserve a room 24/7/365 for its use on the basis that it will shorten hospital stays and increase revenue by increasing throughput. However, this continual resource allocation in the face of variable demand could limit the flexibility of the OR suite as a whole, and have a net negative impact overall. Decisions made in the short term may have undesirable long-term consequences. To that end, it is wise to ask how the overall condition of the affected system will change in relation to a change in the underlying variables.
Operating room management modeling studies aim to extract such meaning and knowledge from data. But raw data consist of many facts and little meaning. And data analysis is not a magic mirror. You cannot just "ask" data a question and get one perfect answer. Although in-depth statistical methods may not be familiar to the practicing clinician, this does not preclude the critical assessment of results generated out of the magic of large dataset analysis. When taking theory to practice and applying these analytics to the real world of managing a busy and chaotic OR suite, data alone are not enough to drive change. There will be qualitative challenges when incorporating modern quantitative methods designed to maximize the number of patients who undergo surgery safely at the lowest possible cost to the hospital.
*Available at: http://www.R-project.org. Accessed February 1, 2014.
Joseph A. Sanford, Alex Macario; Data, Data, On the Server: Challenges in Applying Data Analysis to Operating Room Management. Anesthesiology 2014;121(1):6-8. doi: 10.1097/ALN.0000000000000288.


Eugene F. Makovec, 84, Spencer, died Saturday, July 17 at his home.
A Mass of Christian Burial was held Tuesday, July 20 at Christ the King Catholic Church in Spencer, with Rev. Victor Feltes and Rev. Thomas Rudolph officiating. Burial was at Sacred Heart Cemetery in Stetsonville.
Rembs Funeral Home assisted the family with the arrangements.


When you get your peppermint from the kitchen market for daily use, ask your cook not to throw away the stems. You can plant them in a pot and place it on a spot where you get the most sunlight and water it scantily but on a regular basis. Soon the leaves will begin to sprout and in no time you'll have your own fresh peppermint supply. Why you'll go through this trouble, well because peppermint has an antispasmodic and soothing effect. It provides relief in digestion, nausea and intestinal gas. Peppermint tea is recommended for headaches, as a mild sedative and to treat some upper respiratory conditions, and if you can add a spoon of honey to it instead of the sugar, it instantly re-energises you. Don't forget how it flavours your omelettes and lentil soup and fish curries.
Another plant that you should keep handy is Aloe Vera. It can be found in any nursery. Just make the effort of visiting one and adding it to your own garden in the balcony or on the rooftop. Aloe Vera can be used externally to restore skin tissue and aid in healing burns and wounds. Once in a while you can use the gel in your weekly home made hair packs of eggs, lemon juice or henna. It works wonders on stubborn dandruff that even the best shampoo fails to clean.
Now, you cannot possibly plant cinnamon in a pot but ready stock of it should be always available at home.
Cinnamon is a folk remedy for colds, flatulence and nausea. It settles an upset stomach and alleviates diarrhoea. Also stimulates appetite in anorexics. Also clove helps relive toothaches. Cumin or jeera has a cooling effect on digestive system and adds excellent flavour if you drop a few grain while your are boiling your rice or trying to fry rice the 'deshi' style.
However it is possible to make moong sprouts at home. A handful of the pulses should be placed in a moist bowl in any humid corner of the kitchen and overnight you have your own sprouts. In this era of 'instant everything', get a pack from any superstore and refrigerate it among the weekly vegetables. Moong sprouts and other pulses are rich in protein, carbohydrates, the B-vitamins, fibre and low in fat which is mostly of the unsaturated kind. Fresh pulses and sprouts contain vitamin C. Soya bean sprouts contain are also good source of iron, calcium. It is said to very good dietary supplement for women in their pre or post menopause years.
There are times when the world seems bleak, when you know that you have done something that is terribly wrong, but can't turn back time to correct it. You go to bed wishing that morning would never come, and knowing that you will never be able to face the world in the same way again. Feelings like this crop up usually, and almost always, these are responsible for poor performances by you. Of course to improve performances, you would have to work on those feelings. What exactly is the root of all these feelings and negative emotions about oneself?
Simple…it is nothing more than a serious case of low self-esteem. Improving self-esteem is not just necessary, but is extremely crucial. Ways to do this are simple. Try to look at the bright things in life. Ask yourself if you are happy, and if you get a negative answer, ask yourself why. Be more sociable. In your free time, interact with people you actually enjoy being with. Try to devote time to yourself; being organised will also help. If you think you are naturally messy, try observing or taking pointers from someone who is naturally organised. Being organised helps considerably by greatly reducing last minute aggravation, especially when you cant find 'that important file' and you have just two minutes left for 'that important meeting'. Instead of envying someone, try to pick their good points and learn them. Include more exercise in your life.
Working out, particularly outdoors, is a great way to generate your body confident as well as energising you. It also helps in keeping fit, and enhancing your appearance. If you look good on the outside, it's much easier to feel confident inside as well. Keeping a diary often benefits. A diary isn't always a record of daily events and appointments, its only about feelings, dreams, aspirations…basically it's about you as a person. People often tend to view life either as an enjoyable or a miserable journey, which they have to endure, before reaching their destination. Never make life so complicated. Simply learnt to consider life as a challenge, and apply your best effort into it. Remember: there are times when attempts count more than results. Almost all of the bits and pieces mentioned above are long term. If you are just wishing for a quick boost to your self-esteem, there's only one other way that will help. Face the mirror and start talking to yourself.
Address your reflection, and mention all the good qualities that you possess. Then take your time and list all your achievements (they don't have to be big, even small ones count). Recollect the times when you have done something and have been thanked profusely. Rest assured that when you finally walk away from that mirror, the boost in self-esteem will have you feeling like you are on the top of the world!
I was staring at the ceiling. It had an unusual wallpaper with a flower motif. Each time that I was counting the bright yellow petals, my mind was drifting off to somewhere unknown. Somewhere dark.
My limbs were aching. It was an excruciating pain. I knew the injection had done me no good but left me paralysed with pain. I could still feel the pricking of the needle on my flesh.
Though the doctor had told me that could walk again, some where I felt that I cannot still walk like before. I needed some kind of support, some kind of shelter.
A stick, a crutch or any kind of material that would help me stand up on my own feet.
I turned my head and looked at the small window that opened up to the world outside. The world that was so beautiful. I am not much of a nature lover, but the sky looked amazingly stunning.
It was grey and a cool breeze was blowing outside. There was also the occasional drizzle but what I was enjoying the most was the "breeze."
For a moment , it seemed the wind had a magnificent healing power that was purifying my bruised soul. It was rejuvenating my body and replenishing my tired flesh with an unusual vigour. Suddenly , I was feeling strong again.
The wind was wet and I could taste it even after having the bitter cough syrup that I deeply loathed. It tasted sweet and really soothed my taste buds. I lit up the small green lighter that was lying close to my hand. Here, I have to say that I wasn't a smoker.
The small flame glowed brightly in the darkness. It made me wonder, that even the light of the little flame made so much difference in my small dark room. It illuminated the entire cell.
Anyway, I threw down the lighter and looked up at the ceiling once again.


I have so much to say, but no ears want to listen.
I think about things that will break your heart.
I scribble in my notebook, but I feel no peace.
I have felt better, I have loved and been loved better.
I have been worth more.
Missing conversations with my best friends.
My heart has slightly cracked, but it's a new kind of sadness.
The kind that twists my brain in knots and covers my skin in goosebumps.
But from this pain I know: I am not broken.
I am not the first nor the last to be lied to.
I am not the only human being that has been disappointed by someone dear to me.
I am not the only girl who has lost trust in something once so beautiful, something I once held very close to my heart.
But from this pain I have learned a lesson.
No: I will not harden my feelings, I will neither refuse to love nor trust.
I will always and forever favor burdensome truth over ignorance and lies.
I will not hate or injure or retaliate.
Or rather, I will learn to forgive.
I am taking this as a life lesson on patience and love and kindness and forgiveness.
I cannot forget, but I refuse to let this one moment redefine someone I once treasured.
Do not disappoint and disrespect those who value your presence in their life.
Constantly forgive, but also realize when your forgiveness has been taken for granted…and if it has – still forgive, but walk away.
Allow your heart and mind to reach a compromise – following only one or the other is never a bright idea.
Do not ever allow this world and its people to make your heart cold, your temper hot, your walls high.
But not loss. – Me.
But many lies flood my ears in return.
And your actions have pulled you away from mine.
But who was never a fool.
And for something to do.
"Honestly, I'm almost done" remember that line?
I tried, you lied, I tried, you lied, I quit.
And you deserved my trying and attempts to help.
Full of emptiness and fear.
I'm gone, going out to wander, and to let who I deserve find me.
Life is too short to stick around and be walked all over.
Life is too beautiful to surround oneself with people who cannot appreciate its natural highs and lows and colors and situations.
Life is too precious to spend it running and not caring about those who matter.
Life is life, and I'm planning on living it the way I've never even dreamed of living it.
There is room for you in my heart still, there will always be room for you. But I have higher expectations than I did when I was nine.


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Additional Art Parties/Events – Last Half of June 2018 – Updated
We've added some updates for the Last Half of June 2018.
Jun 20, 2018:
LA Louver celebrates summer with a group show titled "Evolver."
Rebecca Campbell / Miss April 1971, 2015 / mixed media on canvas / 72 x 156 in. (182.9 x 396.2 cm)
Artists include: Terry Allen, Kevin Appel, Sarah Awad, Rina Banerjee, Tanya Batura, Jake Berthot, Linda Bessemer, Tony Bevan, Domenico Bianchi,William Brice, Rebecca Campbell, Enrique Martínez Celaya, Mark di Suvero, Lydia Dona, Gajin Fujita, Charles Garabedian, Frederick Hammersley, David Hockney, Peter Holzhauer, Salomon Huerta, Ben Jackel, Edward & Nancy Kienholz, R.B. Kitaj, Leon Kossoff, Olga Koumoundouros, Richard Kraft, Laura Krifka, Chen Man 陳漫, Heather Gwen Martin, Jason Martin, Michael C. McMillen, Yunhee Min, Ed Moses, Sandra Mendelsohn Rubin, Alison Saar, Eduardo Sarabia, Peter Shelton, Katharina Sieverding, Grant Stevens, Don Suggs, Euan Uglow, Juan Uslé, John Virtue, Matt Wedel, Pae White,Tom Wudl. On view: June 20 – August 17, 2018; Art Party: 6-8pm; L.A. Louver, 45 N Venice Blvd, Venice, California 90291; http://www.lalouver.com/
June 20, 2018:
Join VCH and the United Way for an evening of storytelling and hear from people who have been impacted by homelessness in Venice. "Everyone In: Stories from the Frontline" is launching an exciting storytelling series across L.A. County. The series will offer those with lived experience, service providers, and others working to end homelessness an opportunity to share their stories of strength and perseverance. Admission is $10; CLICK HERE to purchase tickets. Art Party: 7:00pm – 9:00pm; Under the Stars at The Brig, 1515 Abbot Kinney Blvd, LA, 90291;
The French pianist, composer (and arranger/musical director for Phoenix and Sebastien Tellier) performs his "ultrascore" project at Grand Park. This talented musician creates music that harmonizes the documentary elements of life – sounds, motifs, noises, dialogue and traffic from his travels and experiences in India to transform into a synchronous musical and visual feast. Performance: 8:00pm; Free admission; California Plaza Watercourt Stage, 300-350 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles; http://grandperformances.org
June 22, & 23, 2018:
The Chocolate and Art Show Los Angeles, takes place tonight and tomorrow. Be aware there is an admission charge…it ranges from $15- $20. CLICK Here to purchase tickets; The Vortex, 2341 East Olympic Boulevard, LA 90021; http://chocolateandartshow.com/
Today from 1-5pm, enjoy a meet and greet/signing with author Sudi (Rick) Karatas. The new book is titled RAINBOW RELATIVES (Real World Stories and Advice on How To Talk To Kids About LGBTQ Families and Friends).
Special OFFER: Whoever comes and buys 2 copies of the book gets a FREE Walk A Mile In my Pradas DVD. For additional info about the book and the event, see the Upcoming Event Feature. Event runs 1-5pm; Barnes & Noble Calabasas, 4735 Commons Way, Calabasas, CA 91302-3362; Find out more details or RSVP on FB Event Page.
In Culver City…FP Contemporary celebrates summer with its latest group exhibition titled "Splash." Artists include: Lisa Bartleson, Julia Nee Chu, Christina Craemer, Dirk De Bruycker, Betty Gold, Michael Kalish, Tom Lieber, Claudia Meyer, Harry Moody, John Randall Nelson, Hunt Rettig, Mark Vinci, as well as Suzan Woodruff. FP Contemporary will introduce works by new artists Carlos Ramirez and Paul Robinson. On view will be paintings, mixed media art, sculpture and dimensional wall sculptures. On view: June 23 – August 11, 2018; Art Party: 3-5pm; FP Contemporary 5835 Washington Blvd. Culver City, CA 90232; http://fpcontemporary.com
Also in Culver City…Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is very pleased to announce "DENNIS KOCH: Beyond the Funny Farm! Crypto-K, Cutouts, Cut-ups, Copies, Mirrors, Membranes, and Temporal Algorithms," the artist's third solo exhibition with the gallery. On view: June 23 – July 28, 2018; Art Party: 4:00 – 7:00pm; Luis De Jesus Los Angeles, 2685 S LA Cienega Blvd., LA, 90034; http://www.LUISDEJESUS.COM
One more on LA Cienega…Von Lintel Gallery celebrates 25 years with a group show titled "Talk to Me." Artists include: Roger Ackling, Marco Breuer, Sarah Charlesworth, Alan Charlton, John Chiara, Jeronimo Elespe, Adam Fuss, John Newman and David Row, Allyson Strafella, etc. On view: Art Party: 6-8pm; 2685 La Cienega Blvd., LA, 90034; http://www.vonlintel.com/
In the valley….Carter Sexton offers an opening reception for a group show titled "Hot." Art Party: 5-8pm; Carter Sexton Artists Materials, 5308 Laurel Canyon Blvd., North Hollywood, CA 91607; https://www.cartersexton.com/
In Hollywood…M+B Photo celebrates "Naked Ambition," an exhibition of photographs by the late Bob Mizer. On view: June 23 – August 18, 2018; Art Party: 6-8pm; M+B Photo, 1050 North Cahuenga Boulevard, LA, 90038; https://www.mbphoto.com/
Downtown….Artist Linda Stelling will be featured in a group show titled "Luminous" at Gloria Delson Contemporary Art.
Linda Stelling, PINPOINT (36″x70″)
The exhibition explores the quality and feeling of light within color in predominantly abstracted landscape paintings on canvas. The exhibit also includes purely abstract mixed media paintings on Plexiglass. On view: June 5th – June 30th, 2018; Art Party: 6-10pm; Gloria Delson Contemporary Art, 727 S. Spring Street, (Between 7th and 8th Street), LA, 90014; http://www.gdcagallery.com/
Support a special fundraiser at TAG Gallery. Lyme Away 3: Help Nicole Saari and Baby Aaron Saari Win The Fight Against Late Stage and Congenital Lyme Disease. Find out more about Nicole Saari on the Upcoming Event Feature. On view: June 10 – July 7, 2018; Art Party and fundraiser: 3-5pm; TAG Gallery, 5458 Wilshire Blvd–about 5 blocks east of LACMA; https://www.taggallery.net/
In Santa Monica…Several art parties take place at Bergamot. FIG (D-2) hosts a solo exhibition by Claire Chene from 5-7pm; Then from 6–8 pm, New and recent works by Peter Holzhauer, Hannah Karsen, Mark McKnight, and Mark A. Rodriguez will be featured at Gallery Luisotti (A-2). Also from 6-8pm, William Turner Gallery (E-1) celebrates "GREG MILLER: WEST WIN."
In West Hollywood…Nino Mier Gallery offers a reception for "Language that Rises," a solo exhibition of works by Eve Fowler. On view: June 23 – August 4, 2018; Art Party: 6-8pm; NINO MIER GALLERY, 7313 Santa Monica Blvd., LA 90046; https://miergallery.com/current/
The Loft at Liz's throws an art party for its annual exhibition "Diverted Destruction 11 – The Human Condition." On view: August 20, 2018; Art Party: 7-10pm; The Loft at Liz's, 453 S. La Brea Ave., LA, 90036; http://www.theloftatlizs.com/
In Boyle Heights…Corey Helford Gallery throws an art party for three new exhibitions. In the main gallery, take in Eric Joyner's "Glazed Machinations" in the main gallery.
Eric Joyner, The Lost Coast
In gallery 2, LA native CANTSTOPGOODBOY's newest solo show "It's Not Glitter, It's Stardust," premieres. In gallery 3 "Waxploitation Stories for Ways & Means" opens. Helford. Co-curated by Caro Buermann and Waxploitation Records founder Jeff Antebi, this is the companion exhibition of the children's benefit book project of the same name: a 350-page coffee table art book with short stories written by world famous musicians such as Tom Waits, Nick Cave, among others, accompanied by original art by living legends such as Anthony Lister, Dan Baldwin, Swoon, and many more. A portion of proceeds will benefit Room to Read, 826 National, Pencils of Promise, and War Child. On view: June 23 – July 21, 2018; Art Party: 7:00pm – 11:00pm; COREY HELFORD GALLERY, 571 S. Anderson St. Los Angeles, CA 90033; http://www.coreyhelfordgallery.com/
As part of "Leonard Bernstein at 100," at the Skirball Cultural Center, Bernstein's daughter Jamie Bernstein, hosts a multimedia cabaret – Late Night with Leonard Bernstein (a Copland House production) featuring video and audio excerpts, rare photographs, and live performances by soprano Amy Burton and pianists Michael Boriskin and John Musto
I have written not one, but two articles about this exhibition. Click Here to read a review of the exhibition which focuses more about Bernstein's life or Click Here to read a more personal article about how West Side Story affected me as a young child growing up in the Bronx.
Visit the website for a full list of events, as well as hours and admission. Event begins at 7:30 pm; The Skirball Cultural Center is located at 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90049. Exhibitions are FREE on Thursdays. For general information, call (310) 440-4500; http://skirball.org
The 18th Annual Main Street Santa Monica Summer Soulstice takes place today. Enjoy live bands, vendors and a beer garden.
Event runs: 12-7pm: Main Street, between Pier Avenue and Bay Street, Santa Monica; https://www.mainstreetsm.com/summer-soulstice/
Blue 7 Gallery hosts an opening reception for a group show titled "Harmony." Curated by Lucius Peterson, the group exhibition includes all media: paintings photography, jewelry, mixed media, sculpture, fabric art, etc. Artists include: Irina Chelyapov, Vicki Fisher-Lerer, Bruce Sanders, Christine Sawicky, Eugene Vishnevsky, and many more. Art Party: 2-5pm; Blue 7 Gallery, 3129 Pico Boulevard, Santa Monica, 90405; https://blue7gallery.com/
TAG Gallery features an artist talk with artists Laura Fisher, Linda Sue Price, and Gary Polonsky. In conjunction with its current exhibitions. Art Talk 3pm; On view: June12 – July 7, 2018; Art Party: 3pm; TAG Gallery, 5458 Wilshire Blvd., LA; https://www.taggallery.net/
2020-01-19T02:05:56+00:00By Kathy Leonardo|Past Events|0 Comments
About the Author: Kathy Leonardo
On View Now: The Brittany Davis Gallery, "ART IS LIFE"
Streaming Now: KCRW, In Residence
Giving Back: Fuel the Frontline
Running Now: Center Theatre Group, L.A. Theatre Speaks
On View thru January 16, 2021: Vielmetter Los Angeles, Esther Pearl Watson
On View thru January 16, 2021: L.A. Louver, "45 at 45"