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low maintenance ponds
Home/Tag: low maintenance ponds
Key Elements of a Healthy, Low-Maintenance Pond
A low-maintenance pond is one with an ecosystem that works naturally with Mother Nature to keep the pond clean and clear. It is a paradise for families to relax by and study throughout all seasons. It also offers a healthy place for desirable wildlife, such as pond fish, birds, etc.
Such a delightful backyard feature has several elements that contribute to its overall harmony. As certified Aquascape Inc. contractors, Deck and Patio keeps regularly up-to-date with the latest in pond design, construction and maintenance.
Proper Water Circulation
It is essential that any water pump be adequate to the size of your pond and waterfalls. This ensures the amount of water will be aerated sufficiently and will not stagnate or develop excessive bacteria. Instead, the pond receives adequate oxygenation to remain healthy.
Biological Filters and Skimmers
Ponds should also include a natural filtration system using the right biological filter and mechanical skimmer. Adding rocks and gravel over pond liners will also allow beneficial bacteria to grow for fish to graze on.
Koi, in all their jeweled colors, are not just beautiful to look at. They eat algae, and their own waste turns into fertilizer for pond plants. It's key, though, not to overstock your pond so the balance of fish waste, verses what is being used up, remains in proper balance.
And you thought plants, too, were just pretty faces. No, they also play a key role in filtering a pond's ecosystem. Aquatic plants absorb nutrients from the fish waste. "In the heat of summer, for example, it's ideal that approximately 40% of your pond's surface be covered with plants. Not only do they take care of the algae they also provide shade for the fish when it's hot," says Dave Stockwell of Deck and Patio.
Backyard Pond Is a Paradise
"A backyard pond should be a paradise for relaxation as well as a home for desirable wildlife," adds Dave Stockwell. "I'm referring to wildlife such as birds, frogs, etc. who eat insects as they enjoy the shelter you've created for them. In addition, aquatic plants and pond fish are essential elements in the overall ecosystem."
Sometimes, Deck and Patio clients want to go even further when creating a natural healthy pond ecosystem. "That's the rainwater harvesting comes into play," says Dave. "This involves capturing rainwater, filtering it, and trapping it below ground to be recirculated to maintain the pond's water level because of evaporation. Aquascape Inc. of St. Charles, IL, has superb systems that capture and circulate rainwater."
This captured water never stagnates, says Brian Helfrich, construction manager at Aquascape, because the water is continuously circulated in the pond via a waterfall, or stream, or pond fountain.
"Rainfall shortages will never be a problem," says Helfrich. "Plus, with such a system, town or city water is never being used. Those with an underground storage tank — stocked with water they may have collected a month ago, even during a drought, will not only keep their water feature fresh and moving, but excess water reserves can maintain a lawn, and/or a vegetable garden."
Easy to Maintain Pond Ecosystem:
This beautiful award-winning water feature (silver medal from LIPSA) consists of a stream, waterfalls and pond; it's the perfect spot for letting the day's cares melt away. Enchanting Echinacea (coneflowers) and magenta Lythrum are some of the plants brightening this pondscape.
Healthy Pond Ecosystems with Wildlife:
Water is the basis of all successful ecosystems. The second you put in a water feature you attract all kinds of wildlife — birds who want to bathe, frogs, salamanders, and insects that the birds feed on.
Low Maintenance Ponds with Koi:
Contrary to popular belief, fish will actually reduce pond maintenance, as they graze on string algae and bottom feed from the pond floor. Plants shown here include bullrush, pink canna lilies, horsetail, and a rose arey hybrid water lily.
"A healthy pond does require some spring and fall maintenance," says Dave Stockwell. "However, if you build your pond correctly, Mother Nature will do the rest. Not only will you love it in every season, but frogs, birds and butterflies will thank you for it."
By June Sullivan|2019-03-28T14:11:41-05:00March 28th, 2019|Aquascape Biofalls, Awards, Backyard Escapes, Backyard Refurbishments, Backyard Resorts, Backyard Upgrades, Creative Design, Design and Build Experts, Gardening, Herb/Vegetable Gardens, Koi Ponds, Landscaping, Living Landscapes, Moss Rock and Stones, Outdoor Living, Plantings/Pondscapes, Ponds & Water Features, Rainwater Harvesting, Sustainable Water Features|Comments Off on Key Elements of a Healthy, Low-Maintenance Pond


Lately we've been attending many fashion and beauty events with Veronika and we were gifted with loads of great products. Some of them I knew before and the rest is completely new to me. I'm testing them gradually to give you the most accurate opinion. Today, I'm going to review three products I found in my goodie bag from the ITWBN event.
After winter my skin is very dry and I try to choose products that does not dry my skin even more. As I usually start my day with quick shower, it's important for me to use hassle-free products as I don't have time for applying extra layers of moisturizers or any other type of creams. NIA-shower mousse is perfect solution for my lack of time, application is fast and easy. This gentle, creamy shower mousse contains coconut oil and honey for an all natural, intensely moisturising cleanse. Leaves skin irresistibly soft with a delicate, sweet scent. All Nia products are made of natural ingredients so they are great for sensitive skin, really wort to try. Have a look at their other products HERE.
At first I wasn't sure how to use this balm as there was no pakaging or instructions apart from a tiny sticker on the bottom which was very hard to peel off (thanks God for Google!).
Elemis pro-collagen cleanising balm dissolves make-up and daily grime. I would recommend using a facial wipe to take off any excess makeup before using this product. It is my personal preference and this way you only have to use small amount which means it will last you longer. Cleanser has a very nice texture and menthol smell, you have to apply the balm on to your skin and massage it with your fingertips. You then moisten your fingers and continue to massage into your face. Remove with warm, damp cotton pad or cloth.
I've been using this for some time and my skin has been super soft and smooth. I usually use it in the evenings and my skin is completely clean and refreshed afterwards, it's great addition to my cleansing ritual!


India's largest listing of home improvements ads, free classified home improvements ads from all around the Itanagar . The advertisers can list their advertisements by free of cost with limited steps in various categories. People can view the home improvements related free advertisement details by clicking on the subcategory and titles. People can contact the advertisers with help of details under the titles.


At the very start of the floor, you'll be told that there's a special surprise waiting for you at the Velvet Room, so exit the dungeon and you'll automatically go there. As it turns out, you now gain the ability to fuse two Personas, creating a new one. You also gain access to the Compendium here, which keeps a record of all Sub-Personas you have had, although they are put into it at their base level. If you want to keep the skills they have on them, then you will need to register that Sub-Persona, but note that it will cost more money to take the Persona out of the compendium.
Back in the labyrinth, head north from the stairs and then north again at the first split, where going north on the eastern path will eventually lead you to a Power Spot, while the other one nearby takes you to a dead end with a flower pot that needs watering. Unfortunately, you don't have one, so go back to the very first fork and head west now to the dead end, where you'll find a shortcut. The bad thing is that this is a one-way shortcut, so you'll need to find another way to get back where you were. In this new passage, going east will lead you to another one-way shortcut that leads back to the beginning area, so go west and take the shortcut there to continue south.
Warning: While on this floor, you might run into a regular encounter with an enemy named Burning Beetle. As you can see above, it is weak to ice, but the thing is that it's a pretty tough normal enemy. It is very strong and can sometimes take two actions per turn, so treat it like you would a mini-boss of sorts. If you feel like it's too strong for your team, do not be afraid to try and flee from it.
In the southeast corner of this little area will be two more shortcuts (both one-way), one that goes south and another that goes east. The southern one doesn't have anything worthwhile, so take the eastern one for now. Immediately to your south is another shortcut, but it takes you to the same area the previously mentioned southern one does, so ignore it. Go to the southeast end and take the shortcut there, which will put you right by the 100% map chest for the floor ( Media Skill Card ). There will be a shortcut to the west of the chest, but ignore it and head through the southern door.
Here, you'll be introduced to a new type of FOE, the Painting Soldier. As you notice, it is painting the roses red and it'll be difficult to sneak by it. Thankfully, you find a Watering Can , which you can use to wash the red paint off of the roses. This will make the FOE rush back to the roses and paint them red again, distracting them so you can sneak by their patrol path. Ignore the one to the south for a second and go west to find another FOE by a chest. You can time it so you can reach the roses without fighting the FOE, allowing you to open the chest for a Wealth Piece .
Now you can go back to the previous bouquet of roses and water them, allowing you to get by the FOE. Before going through the door, make sure you open the two-way shortcut right by it. Through the door, there will be a picture right in front of you, so go the northern route, opening the two-way shortcut that will lead back to a previous area, then continue west until you find the pink bunny again. Chase it west, then south and east into a larger room, where you'll need to get it to the southeast corner. It'll bust through the wall, creating a shortcut, then go north again.
Go through the shortcut and begin chasing it, but stop when you get the rabbit onto the middle of the crossroad. When it's there, you have to head back the way you came, take the shortcut the rabbit made before, then another shortcut that's just east of where you should have made the rabbit stop. This will make the rabbit go west and right in front of another picture, which it will go through, making it so you can go further into the dungeon. You will come to a door that has a padlock on it, meaning you won't be able to open it until you find a key.
Luckily, the key is nearby, so go south to come to an event where you will end up drinking something to shrink yourself and go through a tiny door. You'll automatically get a key during this cutscene, so go back to the locked door and open it. There will be a Power Spot right past the door, as well as a one-way shortcut in the northwest corner. In this room, go east and before heading through the door, you'll find a one-way shortcut directly west of it that leads to a chest that contains a Twin Jackets armor for Zen/Rei. Return to the door and go north, where you'll find a Card Soldier FOE patrolling the corridor.
Ignore it for now and you'll find a two-way shortcut before that corridor, leading to both a Power Spot (south) and another two-way shortcut that goes back to one of the beginning areas. Back with the FOE, you find that you can't pass it unless you defeat it, but there's a one-way shortcut not long into the hallway that lets you bypass the FOE. Go north and you'll find another pop-up picture book at the dead end, with you having to fight a Burning Beetle if you decide to open it. Anyways, go through the door from before and you'll run into the pink rabbit again, as well as a Painting Soldier FOE.
In order to get by the FOE to the north, you'll have to go south, squeezing by another FOE, where you'll find some roses. Use the Watering Can on these and the southern of the two FOEs will come by to repaint it. This will allow you to go where that FOE was and wash the paint off of the roses there, letting you chase the pink rabbit to the north, where it will jump through another wall. Go through the shortcut, loot the Power Spot and go all the way south, taking another one-way shortcut that leads east. There's an event on the southern end here, where you'll get the White Rose item, which is actually a key item.
Note: The White Rose is one of four items that will eventually unlock a powerful weapon for Zen/Rei after collecting all four of them and bringing them to the Workshop. Since it's a key item, you don't have to worry about it taking up precious inventory space.
Take the other shortcut in the room and you'll be right by a door, which leads to a small room with nothing in it (will be used later). Open the two-way shortcut here, then go through the door to the north, where you'll find a total of three Painting Soldier FOEs. You will need to make it so you lure the right FOE here to the correct rosebush, but should you happen to mess up, there are one-way shortcuts in the southern corners that will allow you to reset the puzzle when you re-enter the room. To do this correctly, go up either side to the northern rosebush and make sure one of the side FOEs on the other side is right next to you, which will make that one fixated on painting that particular one.
From here, you can wash the paint off the roses on the same side of the other side FOE, allowing you to do the last rosebush to lure the northern FOE and access the stairs. However, before you use the stairs, go west to find a shortcut that leads to a small room with a chest ( Soma Droplet ) and east has a shortcut that leads back to the beginning area. Now you can use the stairs and go down to the final floor of this labyrinth, where you'll find the pink rabbit once more. It will disappear completely, so continue forward to find a gold gear-like object floating in mid-air. This thing, which is found at the end of all of the labyrinths, is a save spot that also allows you to exit the dungeon, resuming right back at it when you decide to go back. Do that, sell off items, heal up and anything else before going back and through the door, where you'll face off against the first boss of the game!
Before actually doing battle with the Queen, she sends her minions after you, who all look like miniature versions of the FOEs you've seen in the labyrinth so far. Although not weak or anything to physical attacks, all of them are weak to light/dark, as well as the elemental skills, so it should be easy enough to attain Boosted status. There's four different types of Cards here: Sword (Safeguard and Cleave), Spear (Safeguard and Twin Shot), Staff (Disarm and Scarecrow) and Wand (Zio and Garu). Depending on your party members, it might be wise to take out the Wand one first, then Staff, Spear and Sword.
The problem with them is that if the Sword or Staff use Safeguard on the others, then you can't hit them with single-target skills, so you'll have to use some that hit all enemies. After two rounds of these, a cutscene will occur and the cavalry will arrive in the form of characters from the other game that's represented in the game. You'll have to fight another round of Card Soldiers, with your main protagonist and other characters mixed in (all of whom are level 12). Once you defeat them, it'll be time to finally fight the Queen.
The Queen of Hearts has no elemental weaknesses and nulls Light and Dark, and you will fight her with your original party. It's best to be around level 10-11 (depending on the difficulty), as this should give you some leeway in the battle. At the start, she will use Mow Down, which is a physical attack against a single row, and a regular physical attack. The real battle, though, will start once she reaches 75% HP, which is when she'll start using Soldier Summon. This will summon one of each type of Card Soldier from before, while the Queen moves to the back row.
This wouldn't be a problem if the Sword and Spear ones wouldn't use Safeguard on the Queen, meaning single-target attacks won't actually hit her. To make matters worse, she will begin pulling out elemental moves of her own, as she has access to the single-target mid-tier elemental set (Agilao, Bufula, Zionga and Garula). At 50% is when she'll use even more moves, such as Fire/Ice/Elec/Wind Dance, each of which hits differently (Fire splashes to the sides, Ice pierces to the back row, Elec hits a single row and Wind hits 2-3 times to random characters in a single row).
So, the main problem with the battle is dealing with the Soldiers that will be summoned more than once during the battle, as well as dealing with the Soldiers in a timely manner. If you're playing Persona 3 side, then Yukari is great in this battle, since she gets Media at level 10 (you also get a Media Skill Card for getting 100% on the third floor). Zen/Rei is a great party member, due to Thunder Clap being able to hit all Soldiers and Rei's skills are good for support.
Note: You'll unlock all of the characters for use in battle after defeating the Queen of Hearts, as well as Triangle Spread in the Velvet Room, Elizabeth's Requests and Strolls , with the latter being just cutscenes that bear no importance on anything but character interaction.


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Bitcoin is a new currency that was created in 2009 by an unknown person using the alias Satoshi Nakamoto. Transactions are made with no middle men – meaning, no banks! Bitcoin can be used to book hotels on Expedia, shop for furniture on Overstock and buy Xbox games. But much of the hype is about getting rich by trading it. The price of bitcoin skyrocketed into the thousands in 2017.
There are also purely technical elements to consider. For example, technological advancement in cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin result in high up-front costs to miners in the form of specialized hardware and software.[87] Cryptocurrency transactions are normally irreversible after a number of blocks confirm the transaction. Additionally, cryptocurrency private keys can be permanently lost from local storage due to malware, data loss or the destruction of the physical media. This prevents the cryptocurrency from being spent, resulting in its effective removal from the markets.[88]
Is a Bitcoin worth anything
Like Bitcoin, Ethereum is a distributed public blockchain network. Although there are some significant technical differences between the two, the most important distinction to note is that Bitcoin and Ethereum differ substantially in purpose and capability. Bitcoin offers one particular application of blockchain technology, a peer to peer electronic cash system that enables online Bitcoin payments. While the Bitcoin blockchain is used to track ownership of digital currency (bitcoins), the Ethereum blockchain focuses on running the programming code of any decentralized application.
What is ripple XRP used for
Paul Krugman, Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences winner does not like bitcoin, has repeated numerous times that it is a bubble that will not last[92] and links it to Tulip mania.[93] American business magnate Warren Buffett thinks that cryptocurrency will come to a bad ending.[94] In October 2017, BlackRock CEO Laurence D. Fink called bitcoin an 'index of money laundering'.[95] "Bitcoin just shows you how much demand for money laundering there is in the world," he said.
What is Cryptocurrency ethereum
Using Ethereum's "Turing complete" smart contract language, Solidity, developers are able to deploy a set of instructions to the blockchain that operate indefinitely with a high degree of finality and fraud-resistance. With the first block being mined in July 2015, Ethereum has since become the largest smart contract platform of its kind, and the second largest blockchain of all time as measured by market capitalization.
What is the most widely used Cryptocurrency
The Bank for International Settlements summarized several criticisms of bitcoin in Chapter V of their 2018 annual report. The criticisms include the lack of stability in bitcoin's price, the high energy consumption, high and variable transactions costs, the poor security and fraud at cryptocurrency exchanges, vulnerability to debasement (from forking), and the influence of miners.[200][201][202]
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Transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public distributed ledger called a blockchain. Bitcoin was invented in 2008 by an unknown person or group of people using the name Satoshi Nakamoto[15] and started in 2009[16] when its source code was released as open-source software.[7]:ch. 1 Bitcoins are created as a reward for a process known as mining. They can be exchanged for other currencies, products, and services.[17] Research produced by University of Cambridge estimates that in 2017, there were 2.9 to 5.8 million unique users using a cryptocurrency wallet, most of them using bitcoin.[18]
How do you open the ledger nano s wallet
The validity of each cryptocurrency's coins is provided by a blockchain. A blockchain is a continuously growing list of records, called blocks, which are linked and secured using cryptography.[23][26] Each block typically contains a hash pointer as a link to a previous block,[26] a timestamp and transaction data.[27] By design, blockchains are inherently resistant to modification of the data. It is "an open, distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way".[28] For use as a distributed ledger, a blockchain is typically managed by a peer-to-peer network collectively adhering to a protocol for validating new blocks. Once recorded, the data in any given block cannot be altered retroactively without the alteration of all subsequent blocks, which requires collusion of the network majority.
Ethereum was initially described in a white paper by Vitalik Buterin,[10] a programmer involved with Bitcoin Magazine, in late 2013 with a goal of building decentralized applications.[11][12] Buterin had argued that Bitcoin needed a scripting language for application development. Failing to gain agreement, he proposed development of a new platform with a more general scripting language.[4]:88
Is Cryptocurrency legal in Qatar
Both blockchains have the same features and are identical in every way up to a certain block where the hard-fork was implemented. This means that everything that happened on Ethereum up until the hard-fork is still valid on the Ethereum Classic Blockchain. From the block where the hard fork or change in code was executed onwards, the two blockchains act individually.
As of November 2017, Bitcoin and other digital currencies are outlawed only in Bangladesh, Bolivia, Ecuador, Kyrgyzstan and Vietnam, with China and Russia being on the verge of banning them as well. Other jurisdictions, however, do not make the usage of cryptocurrencies illegal as of yet, but the laws and regulations can vary drastically depending on the country.
In which countries Cryptocurrency is legal
The one and only, the first and most famous cryptocurrency. Bitcoin serves as a digital gold standard in the whole cryptocurrency-industry, is used as a global means of payment and is the de-facto currency of cyber-crime like darknet markets or ransomware. After seven years in existence, Bitcoin's price has increased from zero to more than 650 Dollar, and its transaction volume reached more than 200.000 daily transactions.
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Despite the fallout from The DAO hack, Ethereum is moving forward and looking to a bright future. By providing a user-friendly platform that enables people to harness the power of blockchain technology, Ethereum is speeding up the decentralization of the world economy. Decentralized applications have the potential to profoundly disrupt hundreds of industries including finance, real estate, academia, insurance, healthcare and the public sector amongst many others.
Bitcoin is pseudonymous, meaning that funds are not tied to real-world entities but rather bitcoin addresses. Owners of bitcoin addresses are not explicitly identified, but all transactions on the blockchain are public. In addition, transactions can be linked to individuals and companies through "idioms of use" (e.g., transactions that spend coins from multiple inputs indicate that the inputs may have a common owner) and corroborating public transaction data with known information on owners of certain addresses.[126] Additionally, bitcoin exchanges, where bitcoins are traded for traditional currencies, may be required by law to collect personal information.[127] To heighten financial privacy, a new bitcoin address can be generated for each transaction.[128]
Does XRP use Blockchain
Blockchain analysts estimate that Nakamoto had mined about one million bitcoins[32] before disappearing in 2010, when he handed the network alert key and control of the code repository over to Gavin Andresen. Andresen later became lead developer at the Bitcoin Foundation.[33][34] Andresen then sought to decentralize control. This left opportunity for controversy to develop over the future development path of bitcoin, in contrast to the perceived authority of Nakamoto's contributions.[35][34]
Which are the best Cryptocurrencies
There is ongoing research on how to use formal verification to express and prove non-trivial properties. A Microsoft Research report noted that writing solid smart contracts can be extremely difficult in practice, using The DAO hack to illustrate this problem. The report discussed tools that Microsoft had developed for verifying contracts, and noted that a large-scale analysis of published contracts is likely to uncover widespread vulnerabilities. The report also stated that it is possible to verify the equivalence of a Solidity program and the EVM code.[41]
To realize digital cash you need a payment network with accounts, balances, and transaction. That's easy to understand. One major problem every payment network has to solve is to prevent the so-called double spending: to prevent that one entity spends the same amount twice. Usually, this is done by a central server who keeps record about the balances.
What is Zcash used for
Cryptocurrencies hold the promise of making it easier to transfer funds directly between two parties in a transaction, without the need for a trusted third party such as a bank or credit card company; these transfers are facilitated through the use of public keys and private keys for security purposes. In modern cryptocurrency systems, a user's "wallet," or account address, has the public key, and the private key is used to sign transactions. Fund transfers are done with minimal processing fees, allowing users to avoid the steep fees charged by most banks and financial institutions for wire transfers.
What does Exchange in and exchange out mean
Mining is a record-keeping service done through the use of computer processing power.[f] Miners keep the blockchain consistent, complete, and unalterable by repeatedly grouping newly broadcast transactions into a block, which is then broadcast to the network and verified by recipient nodes.[80] Each block contains a SHA-256 cryptographic hash of the previous block,[80] thus linking it to the previous block and giving the blockchain its name.[7]:ch. 7[80]
Can I mine Bitcoins on my laptop
Central to the appeal and function of Bitcoin is the blockchain technology it uses to store an online ledger of all the transactions that have ever been conducted using bitcoins, providing a data structure for this ledger that is exposed to a limited threat from hackers and can be copied across all computers running Bitcoin software. Every new block generated must be verified by the ledgers of each user on the market, making it almost impossible to forge transaction histories. Many experts see this blockchain as having important uses in technologies such as online voting and crowdfunding, and major financial institutions such as JPMorgan Chase see potential in cryptocurrencies to lower transaction costs by making payment processing more efficient. However, because cryptocurrencies are virtual and do not have a central repository, a digital cryptocurrency balance can be wiped out by a computer crash if a backup copy of the holdings does not exist, or if somebody simply loses their private keys. At the same time, there is no central authority, government, or corporation that has access to your funds or your personal information.
In Ethereum all smart contracts are stored publicly on every node of the blockchain, which has costs.[56] Being a blockchain means it is secure by design and is an example of a distributed computing system with high Byzantine fault tolerance. The downside is that performance issues arise in that every node is calculating all the smart contracts in real time, resulting in lower speeds.[56] As of January 2016, the Ethereum protocol could process about 25 transactions per second.[56] In comparison, the Visa payment platform processes 45,000 payments per second leading some to question the scalability of Ethereum.[57] On 19 December 2016, Ethereum exceeded one million transactions in a single day for the first time.[58]
Is crypto mining free
It takes a (global) village to raise a blockchain. The live network and the community of open source developers contribute significantly to this effort. They continuously refine and harden the Ethereum platform, helping it get faster at responding to industry demands for the value propositions it offers. These investments of time and resources speak to their faith in Ethereum governance and the value that businesses and developers see in its capabilities. – Joseph Lubin, CEO of Consensys
Mostly due to its revolutionary properties cryptocurrencies have become a success their inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto, didn't dare to dream of it. While every other attempt to create a digital cash system didn't attract a critical mass of users, Bitcoin had something that provoked enthusiasm and fascination. Sometimes it feels more like religion than technology.
Are Bitcoins securities
1 cryptocurrency to inr
While another less aggressive soft fork solution was put forth, the Ethereum community and its founders were placed in a perilous position. If they didn't retrieve the stolen investor money, confidence in Ethereum could be lost. On the other hand, recovering investor money required actions that went against the core ideas of decentralization and set a dangerous precedent.
Is Bitcoin profit taxable UK
This website is intended to provide a clear summary of Ethereum's current and historical price as well as important updates from the industry. I've also included a number of ERC20 tokens which can be found in the tokens tab at the top right. Prices are updated every minute in real-time and the open/close prices are recorded at midnight UTC. Bookmark us!
Why Cryptocurrency is illegal in Pakistan
Transaction fees for cryptocurrency depend mainly on the supply of network capacity at the time, versus the demand from the currency holder for a faster transaction. The currency holder can choose a specific transaction fee, while network entities process transactions in order of highest offered fee to lowest. Cryptocurrency exchanges can simplify the process for currency holders by offering priority alternatives and thereby determine which fee will likely cause the transaction to be processed in the requested time.
Whats the difference between ethereum and Bitcoin
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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The ETG Book Club . Borneo
IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR A GOOD READ...
Here are a few of our favourite reading recommendations for Borneo. If you're tempted to buy any of these titles but you don't have a local bookshop, we'd like to suggest using Hive, a website which supports independent bookstores (and offers free delivery).
Into the Heart of Borneo
Redmond O'Hanlan
This is a firsthand account of O'Hanlon's 1983 expedition with his friend and poet James Fenton to search out the near extinct Borneo rhinoceros. Accompanied (and frequently rescued) by 3 native guides the two Englishmen encounter intense humidity, impenetrable jungle and dangerous rapids and enjoy riotous celebrations with the local tribes along the way. O'Hanlon recounts the whole nutty adventure with wit and self-deprecation, sometimes reminiscent of 'The Ascent of Rum Doodle'!
"I really enjoyed reading this book as I travelled around Borneo. It made me laugh out loud and despite the fact that my adventures were far tamer than those of O'Hanlon and Fenton I could recognise and relate to the beautiful descriptions of the environment, wildlife and culture." Alice, Experience Travel Group
Reflections of Eden
Birute M.F. Galdikas
Galdikas is a "trimate," one of three women who devoted themselves to the study of great apes in the wild. Her zeal for learning about orangutans emulates Jane Goodall's fascination with chimpanzees and the late Dian Fossey's dedication to gorillas. As she recounts her exhausting efforts to track and observe the orangutans of Borneo's rain forest, Galdikas also candidly describes the unexpected impact her mission has on her personal life. Galdikas' detailed chronicle is alive with captivating portraits of individual orangutans and charged with the forces of love, determination, grief, and recovery.
Three Came Home
Agnes Keith
When the Japanese take Borneo in 1942, Agnes Keith is captured and imprisoned with her two-year-old son. Fed on minimal rations, forced to work through recurrent bouts of malaria and fighting with rats for scraps of food, Agnes Keith's spirit never completely dies. Keeping notes on scraps of paper which she hides in her son's home-made toys or buries in tins, she records a mother's pain at watching her child go hungry and her poignant pride in his development within these strange confines. She also describes her captors in all their complexity. Colonel Suga, the camp commander, is an intelligent, highly educated man, at times her adversary, at others a strange ally in a distorted world.
This is the second in a trilogy, the first is Land Beneath The Wind which is about Agnes Keith's pre-WW2 experiences, and the final book, White Man Returns is about her return to work in Sabah after the war and leading up to Malaysian Independence.
Eland Books
Land Below The Wind
This book was written during an era when Sabah was known as North Borneo. Reprinted many times, this classic, of Agnes Keith's observations and reflections of the time, is a true-to-life record of society and culture then and of the captivating natural beauty of Sabah. Today, Sabah continues to be known as the "land below the wind", a phrase used by seafarers in the past to describe all the lands south of the typhoon belt, but which Agnes effectively reserved for Sabah through her book. One of few written accounts of contemporary life in Borneo in the 1930s, this book is an invaluable record of a world gone by.
See also, the second and third books in this trilogy, Three Came Home and White Man Returns.


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Odprto prvenstvo ZDA 2022 je teniški turnir za Grand Slam, ki je med 29. avgustom in 11. septembrom 2022 potekal v New Yorku.

Moški posamično

  Carlos Alcaraz :  Casper Ruud, 6–4, 2–6, 7–6(7–1), 6–3

Ženske posamično

  Iga Świątek :  Ons Jabeur, 6–2, 7–6(7–5)

Moške dvojice

  Rajeev Ram /  Joe Salisbury :  Wesley Koolhof /  Neal Skupski, 7–6(7–4), 7–5

Ženske dvojice

  Barbora Krejčiková /  Kateřina Siniaková :  Caty McNally /  Taylor Townsend, 3–6, 7–5, 6–1

Mešane dvojice

  Storm Sanders /  John Peers :  Kirsten Flipkens /  Édouard Roger-Vasselin, 4–6, 6–4, [10–7]

Zunanje povezave

2022
2022 v športu

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
APL 99 – On Track to the 21st Century
A personal review of the Annual Conference of ACM/SIGAPL held at Scranton, Pennsylvania, USA, August 10th to 14th 1999
by Ray Cannon
There is no way that I can condense a four plus day experience, involving over one hundred and thirty APLers from 13 countries, 15 papers, 4 vendor forums, several evening seminars, satisfactorily into the space available within Vector, so here is a flavour derived from some hastily taken notes, and a blurred memory.
Disclaimer. All quotes (attributed and un-attributed) are subject to errors, and are at best my hazy recollection of what I thought I heard someone say. I will therefore apologise in advance for any misquotes, or mis-attributed, and further, to save time (and space in the next edition of Vector), here retract any/every thing that follows.
Scranton:
"The Historic Jewel of the Pocono Mountain Region" and the original "Electric City"
The City of Scranton is located to the North East of Pennsylvania, a 3-hour bus ride from New York City. For over 100 years, it supplied the US with its most important source of energy (anthracite coal), and was a steel and locomotive producer.
With the demise of these former industries, Scranton is no longer a growing city, nor can it still boast of having the highest per capita income in the USA. However, it's not suffering from "inner city decline", and possesses a friendly "small town America" feel along with some very beautiful houses and civic buildings. Scranton seemed to be very good at "recycling" its buildings, that is changing their use without tearing them down. As part of our APL99 handout, there was a "Restaurant Guide" which included 9 "Downtown" venues, and 4 others within walking distance from the conference. The number one restaurant was billed as "Coney Island – Texas Weiners (a Depression Era Hot Dog Stand). Alan Graham and I had a quick and enjoyable lunch there. I also enjoyed breakfast at "Abe's Delicatessen" where I had "Kosher bacon" with my eggs. (That should be good for at least one free Weiner and a bagel if I am ever back in Scranton. :-) )
Scranton University Campus is located between downtown Scranton, the railway line and "The Hill" (where all the former railroad and mining barons built their houses and mansions). The University is not large (taking up about seven by two "blocks"), but appeared well equipped, and made a very pleasant venue.
Electric City? Well Scranton was the very first city to electrify its streets and to have electric powered trams. Sadly the trams have all deserted the streets and can now only be found in the Tram Museum.
On the Wednesday evening, Dyadic Systems Ltd. and The Carlisle Group sponsored a delightful reception up on "The Hill". The location was actually the veranda of Paul Mansour's beautiful house. Yes I did say the veranda; it was large enough to fit the whole conference without too much overflow onto the steps leading up to the house. It was here that I was first introduced to Alan Graham's Zero – see What's New below.
The Banquet
The Banquet was held on Thursday night at the Lackawanna Station. (Let me explain, Scranton is the main city in Lackawanna County. Its railway station was built in the grand style and has recently been refurbished to its former glory and converted into a very opulent hotel, the "Lackawanna Station Hotel".)
In addition to the initial reception in the splendour of the marble-lined main hall, we were treated to a 3(4?) course dinner. Then we were entertained by the excellent "Steamtunes Barbershop Quartet" (one of whose members is Steve Mansour, the APL99 Conference Chairman) [Steve is at far left in the photo.]
This was followed by the presentations of the SigAPL Outstanding Achievement Award, to Roy Sykes (for 1998) and Bill Rutiser (1999). [Bill left and Roy right in the photo.]
We were then invited to "APL Berlin 2000" which is being hosted at the Technical University of Berlin between 24th-27th July 2000, with Dieter Lattermann as the Conference Chairman.
[Visit the Conference website at either http://stat.cs.tu-berlin.de/APL-Berlin-2000 or http://www.lingo.com/APL-Berlin-2000 for the latest details.]
Finally Walt Niehoff spoke to us about one of the passions of his life, the "Switch Back Gravity Railroad", an 18-mile roller-coaster.
Three tours were organised as part of the conference.
A walking tour of Scranton
This tour took us from the Lackawanna Station to the Reception (see above). Highlights included the Courthouse Square, the Public Library, the Woolworth Building and Scranton's unique "Hill section".
Lackawanna Coal Mine Tour
Our journey took us 300 feet beneath the earth where we experienced the cold, dark caverns where "ordinary men (and boys) laboured under extraordinary conditions."
Steamtown National Historic Site/Steam train excursion
A nostalgic trip through beautiful countryside to Moscow and back.
A Canadian Pacific giant on the track
Andrei Kondrashev, Sasha Skomorokhov and Nancy Wheeler at Moscow. (right)
What's New: 2 new APLs
SAX for Linux
In the Unix world, when a new implementation of an existing application is released, it is often given a bland name like YACC, short for Yet Another Compiler Compiler. Hence Soliton's newest APL might have been called YAAI (Yet Another APL Interpreter) but instead they announced it as SAX for Linux. (I still think "SEX for Linux" would have a wider appeal.)
How long before APL2000 and Dyadic respond with their own APL for Linux?
Alan Graham's 0
The other new addition to the APL family announced at APL99 was Alan Graham's "0" (that's a zero not "Oh" ). It is still "vapour ware" but a demonstration version, running as a Dyalog workspace, was shown at APL99, and should be available from the Vector web site by the time this edition of Vector is distributed.
(Vector hopes to have full reviews of both of these APLs in the next edition.)
Featured Speaker: Professor Shiu-Kai Chin
Professor Shiu-Kai Chin of Syracuse University gave an excellent talk on "High-Confidence Design for Security".
"The only time I was able to get a program to work first time, ... was when I built a theorem prover, I did it in a modular fashion, and I used APL. I have never duplicated that experience in my life, and that was 25 years ago! Of course I was naive at the time thinking 'This is great, just think how much better it will get!' "
"The half life of knowledge engineering is about 5 years."
He briefly described some of the methods that establish the confidence that a system (both in design and implementation) will behave securely.
A HCS (High Confidence System) must withstand both internal and external threats, both natural and intentional (e.g. malicious).
Properties of security include:
Privacy – Who can read.
Integrity – Detect corruption of information.
Authentication – Know the identity of the principle or source of the information.
Access control – read / write / delete...
Non-repudiation – Can't deny a transaction.
Availability of service – A system must be available for use when its users require it.
Mechanisms of security:
Encryption – Hiding information in a reversible way.
Hash functions – Map arbitrary size information into a fixed size. One way only.
Certification – You know who I am from my driving licence because the "state" knows who I am and issued me with the licence, and you trust the state.
Authorisation – The ability to grant (or pass on) permission to do something.
Chin described several forms of encryption (Symmetric, Asymmetric, Public and Private Key) and went on to show some of the problems in implementing them over the Internet. For example, how do you associate Keys with Principles? "Who do you trust?" "How do you know?" After the talk, I asked Professor Chin if he personally trusted the Internet enough to buy things over it with his credit card. His reply was very interesting. Basically "Yes", but he first checked with his credit card company on his ability to deny a transaction: does the burden of proof lie on the supplier, or with the purchaser. This may vary with credit card companies, but in Professor Chin's case, it lay on the supplier. This was later borne out when 6 months after ordering, paying for and receiving a book over the internet (NOT through Amazon.com), he was then re-invoiced for a second copy of the same book. He had no problems from his credit card company when he denied the second transaction.
Featured Speaker: Professor Doug Lea
Professor Doug Lea of The State University of New York at Oswego. His talk was billed as "Object-Oriented Concurrent, Parallel, and Distributed Programming in Java", but the talk given was "Exploiting Java".
Rather than me misrepresenting Doug Lea's interesting talk, can I point you to the excellent slides he illustrated his talk with, available (as at 5 September '99) from http://gee.cs.oswego.edu/dl/cpjslides/exploiting.pdf (They require an Acrobat Reader version 3.0 or higher. Version 2.1 will not display them.)
I will however include a few of his many "one-liners".
"If you put a gun to my head, and gave me like a couple of days, I could probably figure out how to get the standard deviation of a vector of numbers in APL. I'm assuming that if I put a gun to your head, you could probably write a Java program that did something. "
"When in doubt, make a thread, then think twice, then 3 times about such discussions."
"No Microsoft products were involved in the production of any of the software..."
"Your toaster-oven with a Java VM in it is a multi-threaded device."
Talking about a QUAKE server with 5000 open socket connections:
"Having 5000 threads handling 5000 connections, probably just won't work. It can be done, but it can't be done very fast."
During questions, Doug was asked: "What overhead was incurred, when you applied these multi-tasking techniques of 'divide and conquer' between multi cpu on a uni-processor device?" His answer I found quite astounding, "Can be NONE". This, he explained, applied to a uni-processor with a lot of memory. The divide and conquer technique produces very good "memory locality", which in turn actually reduces system overheads far more than the cpu-cycles incurred by the extra code.
Plenary Session – The ZARK Library of Utility Functions
by Gary Bergquist
Although originally submitted and accepted as a paper, this was was upgraded into a Plenary session and a Panel Response (with the audience as the "panel"). Gary then proceeded to give a talk on "The 14 Myths of APL" rather than present the paper (published in the proceedings).
Gary started out by declaring that he is a self-confessed APL fanatic.
The 14 myths of APL:
1. Ken Iverson invented APL
Was Calculus invented by Newton or was it always there and just discovered by him?
Gary then listed 10 things that defined APL for him:
Immediate execution mode;
Scalar extension;
Dynamic allocation of memory;
Simplicity of function: e.g. Order of execution (Right to Left rather than Multiplication before Addition);
Function syntax in user functions;
Operators;
Consistent treatment of "empties";
Localisation of variables;
Reliability after errors and breakpoints;
User defined functions have the same syntax as primitives, hence you can extend the language.
"I believe when the Aliens come down to land, and exit their little spacecraft, they will have calculus, they will know that E=MC2, and they will have APL, They might not call it APL, but we don't either."
2. APL is Dying
"APL is not dying, calculus is not dying, you can't kill something that was never born. APL has always been there, APL will always be there."
3. APL is Easy
4. APL is Hard
APL is not easy or hard. APL is ABSTRACT. If you find abstraction easy then APL is easy, if not it will be hard.
"I tried to teach my wife APL, 'I could've learnt it' she said, 'but I really have to wash my hair tonight'. Some people can not learn APL, and it is because it's so abstract."
5. APL is Unreadable
"You know what, Russian is unreadable, I don't know Russian, so it's unreadable. If you don't know it, it's unreadable."
6. APL is Unmaintainable
Because APL is unreadable, it's a write-only language, hence is unmaintainable.
7. Programming is a Skill not a Profession
Programming is a profession.
"You can't be an actuary and a programmer, you can't be an engineer and a programmer, you can't be a doctor and a lawyer, well you can but I don't want you operating on me, and I don't want you representing me in court!"
8. The job of a programmer is to make sure that a computer system behaves properly and gives the right answers
That's just a quarter of it. The job of a programmer is to build an application that you can live with and can be maintained.
APL systems written by non-professionals may not be maintainable. It works, it may give the right answer and has some value, but when you need to change it, its value is zero.
9. Each year computers become more important
Computers are becoming cheaper and less important. The use of computers is becoming more important. Programmer time is important.
10. You can program 10 times faster in APL than any other language
"This is only partly true. There are other factors involved."
The Bergquist Equation of Productivity:
L × E × U = P
P is Productivity. Zero productivity is being catatonic. 1000 is producing it in the time it takes to specify it. (For example, a court stenographer stops typing as the speaker pauses for breath.) L is Language factor, 0.1 for Cobol, 1 for C , 10 for APL.
(APL gets a 10 only if you use it right, if you use it like Fortran you only get a 2; the average for APL is about 8.)
E is Experience. This is not knowing the language. This is you have learnt from your mistakes. For a 10 "if you take your shirt off, your back's covered in scars, you have made every mistake there is, you have designed the application wrong, and been burned, tried it again and been burned. You have learnt what is wrong."
U is Utilities. Utilities are extensions to the language.
"If you don't have these utilities you are dead. The more utilities you have the more productive you can be."
"APL is the beautiful glue that ties all the utilities together."
The average C programmer has a good set of utilities so gets a 6. The average (non-professional) APLer gets 2. Gary gave himself a 5 for his utilities.
Average APL
APL is more productive than other languages, but not 10 times.
The easiest way for a professional APL programmer to improve his/her productivity, is to improve the utilities. Hence the ZARK Utility library. Gary feels that he could sell us his utilities, but that won't improve his productivity, the market's not big enough, and APLers are all cheap anyhow.
What Gary really wants are our utilities. (See ZARK Utility Library notes below.)
11. Avoided re-inventing the wheel
"If we did not re-invent the wheel this would be a Cobol conference, we would have leeches all over our bodies, we would be using 8-track tapes."
You should always be re-examining the wheel.
12. You can be a programmer or a manager but not both
Gary got us to say the creed:
"I am a programmer, I am a professional, like any other professional, and I demand the proper respect. Like any doctor, lawyer, architect or engineer I work for myself. Any manager I have, will be an office manager, existing only to serve me, not to evaluate me."
13. APL is a good tool for certain applications
"This is a myth. APL is the perfect tool for all applications, all you need is to find the applications, which is not easy."
Go out and find an application, offer to maintain it for the owner, and convert it to APL, for a percentage.
APL has got about 10 years before other languages start catching up with it.
14. We need to promote the success stories of APL
This is a myth. We need to be thankful that APL is such a well kept secret.
We need to improve our productivity, and need to clobber the competition.
ZarkLib – The ZARK Utility Library
Gary is offering his current utility library to anyone who can pay for it by supplying him with a utility to be included in the library. This new (or modified) utility must improve the library. (The library is defined to be improved if other APLers want the library more because of the change.)
You have to add to the library to get the latest copy. Gary envisages that programmers will keep coming back for the latest version, and pay for that version by adding yet more utilities. This should induce a cascade effect of improvements as is common with a "positive (but regulated) feed-back loop". The better it gets, the more programmers want it, the more they have to add to it, the better it gets.
Please contact Gary (gabergquist@snet.net) for a copy of the ZarkLib Licence Agreement.
Paul Mansour (The Carlisle Group)
"Windows, Models and Management MDI, SDI, work spaces, work books, and namespaces."
The morning after the Reception at Paul Mansour's house, he hosted this tutorial. Being a bit hung-over at the time, my notes are sketchy so I'll just give you a few (mis)quotes:
"If you over-design a system you have lost."
"Be the master of YOUR domain, let the end users be the masters of their domain."
"God invented Economists to give Weather Forecasters a good name."
Paul also introduced us to a book called "A Pattern Language" by Christopher Alexander, Oxford University Press. 1977 (YAMAPL – Yet another meaning of APL.) A recommended read for all APLers. Available from Amazon.com where it has been reviewed by 19 people with a star rating of 5. Note: This book is about architecture, not APL.
John Scholes (Dyadic Systems Ltd.)
"Dynamic Functions Master Class"
John described dynamic functions as "an alternative low calorie wrapper for APL". They are faster, sometimes spectacularly so, but never slower.
(For some examples download the FINAPL idiom list, which has been updated in the form of dynamic functions, from Dyadic's site at www.dyadic.com. It now contains about 800 idioms including a 30-character expression for the "Meaning of Life".)
John, as usual, both taught and entertained us. In addition to introducing dynamic functions (DFns) to us, he demonstrated how to implement most of the control structures, and covered Dynamic Operators, and explained how recursive calls to DFns can take advantage of "tail end recursion".
For example, the :For i:In iii .... :EndFor structure becomes {.....}¨ iii and is very fast as it is special cased.
While talking about their speed, John mentioned a "3.6 mega bloop machine", which I feel is like a 3 mega flop machine but not quite as disastrous :-).
Vendor Forums
Soliton Associates Ltd., Dyadic Systems Ltd., IBM, and APL2000 all hosted vendor forums.
Soliton
Soliton have produced a more portable SAX, and using this new code base have produced new versions for IBM, RISC and LINUX.
SAX for Linux will be royalty-free for personal use and cost $2500 +$1000pa for a production system. (Please check these prices with Soliton.) Beta version available October 1999.
They also have a Beta version of a Java API.
Peter Donnelly gave the "Not the Dyadic Vendor Forum", as there were:
No Announcements; No Promises; and No Ducks.
What it did contain was an overview of the current version 8.2.2 (upgrade from 8.2.1 via the Internet if you subscribe to DSS) as described at the BAA vendor forum earlier this year. We were then given a glimpse of version 9.0.0's new function editor which allows MDI (multiple document interface) tiling.
(In my notes, I have a sketch of a large shark swimming just below the surface of the water though which a pair of webbed (duck?) feet are sticking....)
Dave Liebtag and Nancy Wheeler
Nancy Wheeler told us about all the recent releases (including the TCP/IP update for APL2 TSO/CMS). She also talked about the APL2 for Windows "RUNTIME". The developer's package runs under NT, producing a DLL which then runs under Windows 95/98/NT.
Dave Liebtag then showed us some of the things he has been working on, in particular "Processor 12" – Files as arrays. This processor (available 4th quarter 1999) has 3 flavours: APL files as arbitrary arrays, Flat files (vector of text vectors +<cr><lf>) and "card image" flat files with fixed length records.
APL2000
"COGNOS bought APL2000 because of the speed of the applications"
Eric Baelen gave a similar presentation to the one he gave at the BAA vendor forum. He also told us about the web site http://www.openhere.com with many excellent APL links.
Again the ducks were targeted (and finally wiped out) by Eric's video game. (Eric has this computer game, written in APL2000, that allows the player to defend his bunnies by hitting the ducks originating in the UK who are bent on conquering the world.)
I was unable to attend all the workshops I would have liked, partly due to my late booking and partly due to multiple streaming. Several of the more popular workshops were repeated, which helped a lot.
John Daintree – Dyalog APL and Active Data Objects (ADO)
ADO are an object oriented approach to data access and provide a consistent interface via OLDDB to ODBC, SQL Servers etc. They allow you fast access to other data (such as email or text files). Microsoft's ADO has been around for 12 months or so. ADO ships with Windows 2000 and is available as an add-on for Windows 95/98 and NT4.
John gave a good introduction to ADO, but I got lost in the workshop, which required us first to build up an empty MS Access database for a "Music Collection". Since many of us were not MS Access users this wasted a lot of time (particularly if your spelling is not up to scratch). I felt John should have provided us with the database already built; we were not here to learn how to use MS Access.
Once we had created the database we then had to fill it from Dyalog APL via ADO. This I failed to do because I had taken too long to build the database, and had saved it in the wrong place, so the instructions on the workshop notes did not match what I had on the computer.
Tip to future workshop presenters: keep to the core of the workshop, do not allow the attendees to waste time processing non-core activities.
All was not lost though, John's workshop notes are excellent and I will be able to try it again from home, once I have downloaded ADO for Win98.
At conferences, I often do not attend many papers, I feel that I can always read them in the proceedings, and that I might miss something else that is not so well documented. However I did attend two:
"When Bears are Blue and Bulls are Red" presented by Linda Alvord and Tama Traberman.
A very interesting paper which used two techniques to provide additional information from a graph at a glance. They used data from the NY stock exchange (where a rising price is a "Bull" market and a fall a "Bear" market).
Linda and Tama, in standard curve fitting exercises, plotted the approximating curve with either an icon of a bull (well it looked like a moose to me) or a bear, depending on the angle of the tangent at the point being plotted. In addition they used colour intensity to indicate the angle of the slope.
So when the price is falling rapidly you end up with a dark blue bear, when it is rising rapidly a bright red bull, and somewhere in the middle you get either a "polar bear "or a "little white bull".
This technique of highlighting both the the direction and intensity of a trend in a market is very appealing to me.
"Sparse Arrays in J" presented by Roger K. W. Hui.
Roger Hui (right) with Martin Neitzel
Roger's paper showed how he had implemented a method of representing sparse data as a new data type in J.
The technique he uses is to convert the sparse array into a 2-element vector. The first element is an integer matrix, one row for each non-zero element of the array, and a column for each dimension in the array. The values of a row of this matrix define the indices of the non-zero element.
The second element is a vector containing the values of the non-zero elements. Sparse arrays may contain data of type boolean, integer, floating point, complex, literal, or boxed.
The internal structure is more complex than this, actually consisting of 6 parts, the shape, the axes of which are a vector of the sorted sparse (indexed) axes, the sparse element (usually zero) which is also the fill character, the indices, the values, and various bit flags. Although not a J user, I found the talk appealing since I have seen a similar technique for compressing sparse data used at British Airways within an APL database system called CHIEF (designed by Dave Crossley? in the 1980s), and I have also used operators for processing sparse data. However, having a built-in sparse data structure in J must be much faster and more convenient.
As a veteran of over a dozen international conferences, I find the personal side the most important. Meeting friends becomes more important than the papers and talks. In this respect, Scranton was as good as it gets. However, I missed quite a few old friends. "APL conference Eclipsed by the Sun" was one title I had thought of calling this article, but that would have been totally unfair. I did see many old friends, and perhaps more importantly, I made several new friends. Old and new, I hope to see them all at "APL Berlin 2000" (July 24-27). Why not join me? [Visit the Conference website at either http://stat.cs.tu-berlin.de/APL-Berlin-2000 or http://www.lingo.com/APL-Berlin-2000 for the latest details.]
Steve, George and Lisa Mansour with the Conference Poster
A few photos...
Jim Lucas with Alan Graham
Chris Lincoln with the Llama Book (PERL for APLers?)
Alan Sykes, bravely standing in for Causeway
Jim Brown, engrossed in Vector
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"The Rite" (1969) by Ingmar Bergman
Posted by victor as "The Rite" (1969) by Ingmar Bergman, Discussion and Mind-Probing, Reviews of Films
The film depicts the clash between the liberating energies of intellectual art and the controlling power of the authoritarian system (reinforced by legalistic logic) which is personified by Justice Abramson (Erik Hell), an old functionary who (under the sincere mask of a disinterested servant of law and order) enjoys intimidating and humiliating people including artists (who, according to his judgment, "are full of arrogance") with his interrogating/investigating and censoring initiatives, enthusiasm and righteousness.
Intellectual art's revolutionary potentials are personified by a trio of actors, each of them incarnating a special aspect of artistic creativity (the viewers are challenged by Bergman to grasp which aspect is represented by which character). The clash of art with repressive legalism and moralism defines the plot and orients the semantic overtones and the stylistic complications of the film.
Bergman's criticism of authoritarian legal system is based politically on his democratic stance of expecting a permanent democratization and humanization of the existing power relations in society, and psychologically on his knowledge of how detrimental for the human emotional health is obsessive search for power and advantage as tools for manipulating/controlling other human beings, nature and life in general.
The acting is not situational (and not extroversive and socio-morphic) like in today's Hollywood movies, but is oriented on sculpting the emotional personalities of the characters as a background of their worldviews. Bergman's films and "The Rite" particularly try to return us to life through authentic aesthetic contemplation. "The Rite" is also about the artist as a revolutionary via artistic transcendence of rigid reality of everyday life of "survival" and entertainment, conformism and consumerism.
Ultimately Bergman's film is about human orientation on existential genuineness – about spontaneous human desire to live our humanity in full according to our potentials. To learn about ourselves through Bergman's art helps us to be more in tune with the best – less corrupted side of ourselves.
Bergman depicts the main characters-actors – Hans Winkelmann (Gunnar Bjornstrand), Sebastian Fisher (Anders Ek) and Thea (Ingrid Thulin) as people trained by their profession not to impress audience but to feel genuinely, and as fighters (each in his/her own way) with the established powers, but they are outside of narrowly understood political dedications because their fight is much more radical – existential and spiritual. They deploy their revolutionary energies against the repressive/conformist establishment installed by different political systems based on inequality of their hierarchical nature.
Ingmar Bergman (1918 – 2007)
Bergman and the actors as protagonists – Winkelmann (on the left), his wife Thea and Sebastian (stands near Bergman) preparing for shooting
Thea (Ingrid Thulin) and her lover Sebastian and their desperate, disbalanced, over-sexualized and… beautiful relationship
Sebastian's pyromaniac-suicidal complex is that of a person whose sensibility was formed under a punitive moral code and carries an overwhelming rebellious intensity. He lives in such a way as if he had survived an apocalypse which for him continues as the everyday conventional reality.
Thea's emotional appeal to the Judge is an appeal to power on part of a person who since childhood was abused by parental authorities, later by the males' power of gonads deployed as a psychological weapon, and by situations which demanded violence and submission in order to survive.
Hans (to the right), Thea, and Sebastian (on the left) are presenting to the judge their theatrical number.
The same trio closer to the final moment of their act
Will judge Abramson be able to learn from serious art? Or, will his reaction be identical to his self-destruction?
Posted on 26 Nov 2011 – Ingmar Bergman's "The Rite"/"The Ritual" (1969) – Punitive Morals of the Barbarians and Spiritual People Who Don't Need It by Acting-Out Politics


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Feature - December 20, 2021
2021 Year in Review: Judicial Council of California
In 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic continued to challenge the state's ability to ensure access to justice for the citizens of California. But like the previous year, California's Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye and the Judicial Council supported the courts as they remained flexible and innovative to ensure the justice system was open and vital services remained accessible to the public.
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California Courts Need More Interpreters
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Court Interpreters' Conference Brings a Host of Languages to the Judicial Council
Court interpreters from around the world convened at the Judicial Council June 5 for the start of a four-day conference on the challenges and solutions in legal interpreting in the U.S. and Europe.
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Courts Improving Service for Limited-English Speakers
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Supreme Court Begins Live Webcasting
The Supreme Court of California will begin live webcasting of its early-May three-day oral argument calendar session in San Francisco, beginning May 3. The decision to webcast the court's oral argument calendar sessions was announced by Chief Justice Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye in her 2016 State of the Judiciary Address to a joint session of the California Legislature in March.
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Recapping the Bruins in 2021 and looking ahead to pivotal 2022
/ by Nick Goss
The Boston Bruins had a very eventful 2021 both on and off the ice.
The 2020-21 season was delayed to January because of COVID-19 and played out using a division-only schedule. It was weird seeing the Bruins not play their longtime rivals such as the Toronto Maple Leafs and Montreal Canadiens, but the unique format largely worked out and allowed a 56-game regular season to happen.
It also was the first season since 2006-07 in which Zdeno Chara did not captain the team. The veteran defenseman left the B's in free agency and signed with the Washington Capitals. His departure resulted in first-line center Patrice Bergeron taking over the captain role.
The Bruins finished third in the "East" division and played the Washington Capitals in the first round. After losing the series opener, Boston won the next four games to clinch the series. Despite winning Game 1 against the New York Islanders, the B's lost the series in six games and were eliminated in the second round for the third time in the last four years.
Brad Marchand blasts NHL again over players not going to Olympics
It was a difficult end to a season that did have plenty of promise. The Bruins looked like a legit contender after the April 12 trade deadline, including their first-round defeat of the Capitals in five games.
What made the playoff exit to the Islanders even more frustrating was the team's rapidly closing championship window. Boston's veteran core isn't going to get many more chances to compete for a Stanley Cup. There are too many roster weaknesses, and they haven't been properly addressed even after the team splurged in free agency for veteran depth.
Fast forward through the first 26 games of the 2021-22 season and the Bruins look like a slightly above average team. The lack of scoring depth that has plagued this franchise for years remain a huge issue. Depth on the blue line is another problem. The goaltending has been better of late, but the Bruins need more consistency from the tandem of Linus Ullmark and Jeremy Swayman. Boston's struggles against good teams is also a concern.
The Bruins could make more additions to the roster before the March 21 trade deadline, and general manager Don Sweeney has been quite active in previous years making in-season deals before the playoffs. He'll need to work his magic again because the Bruins are not a true Stanley Cup contender as currently constructed.
With 2021 ending, let's recap the year and look ahead to what 2022 might bring the Bruins.
Biggest move
Trading for Taylor Hall
The Bruins made a splash before the trade deadline in April by acquiring top-six left winger Taylor Hall and bottom-six center Curtis Lazar from the Buffalo Sabres in exchange for Anders Bjork and a second-round pick. It was a very inexpensive price for a former Hart Trophy winner.
Hall quickly made a strong impact in Boston, tallying 14 points (eight goals, six assists) in 16 games to finish out the 2020-21 regular season. He wasn't as effective in the playoffs, scoring two points (one goal, one assist) in the six-game second-round defeat to the Islanders. Overall, it was a positive move for the Bruins, one that should pay dividends into the future with Hall under contract through 2024-25 at a reasonable salary cap hit of $6 million.
Honorable mention: Charlie McAvoy's contract extension
It's so difficult to find young, franchise cornerstone defensemen. When you develop one, it's important to sign that player long term, and the Bruins accomplished that objective with McAvoy in October. The 23-year-old blueliner signed a nine-year deal worth $76 million -- the largest contract in Bruins history in terms of total value. McAvoy is a top-five defenseman and should be a perennial contender for the Norris Trophy.
Favorite moment, regular season
Taylor Hall's eighth goal with the Bruins was a phenomenal one. He danced past two Islanders players in the final regular season game in Boston on May 10 and scored the game-winner in overtime.
The Bruins, thanks in large part to Hall, entered the playoffs with plenty of momentum and optimism.
Favorite moment, Stanley Cup Playoffs
Game 1, second round vs. Islanders
After playing the entire season with no fans, some fans and then 25 percent capacity at TD Garden, the Bruins finally played in front of near-100 percent capacity for Game 1 of the second-round series versus the Islanders.
The atmosphere in the building and before the game were incredible. After many, many months of COVID-19 preventing fans from seeing the Bruins in person, we were finally back to some sense of normalcy with a raucous playoff atmosphere on Memorial Day Weekend.
The Bruins fed off that energy from the fans en route to a dominant 5-2 win, headlined by David Pastrnak's hat trick.
Unfortunately for the Bruins, this was the highlight of the series for them. The Islanders won four of the next five games to eliminate the B's from the playoffs.
Biggest positive
Swayman's emergence as a legit NHL goaltender with a bright future was a massively positive development for the Bruins.
Tuukka Rask looks poised to return to the Bruins in the New Year, but regardless of what happens with that situation, finding a capable young netminder in Swayman is critically important for Boston's short and long term success.
Swayman posted a 7-3-0 record with a .945 save percentage and a 1.50 GAA in 10 appearances last season. He hasn't been as dominant in 2021-22, but his .917 save percentage and 2.29 GAA through 14 games are more than respectable.
It's still too early to label Swayman as a future star, but the early results are very encouraging.
Biggest disappointment
There were two huge disappointments for the Bruins in 2021.
The first was losing to the Islanders in the second round. The Bruins had a 1-0 lead in the series and scored early in Game 2. They looked poised to take a 2-0 series lead before losing Game 2 in overtime on a horrendous turnover by defenseman Jeremy Lauzon. After winning Game 3 in overtime, the Bruins lost three consecutive games and the series. It was the first time all year Boston had lost three straight games.
Losing Game 5 at home was pretty painful, too, as the Islanders scored three power-play goals on some soft penalty calls, prompting B's head coach Bruce Cassidy to blast the officials in his postgame press conference. The Bruins' effort, focus and performance in the 6-2 loss in Game 6 that ended their season also were disappointing.
The other major disappointment for the Bruins this year was losing David Krejci over the summer. The veteran center's contract expired, and while there was some hope that he would return for at least the 2021-22 campaign, he decided to return home to the Czech Republic and continue his career there.
Krejci's departure left the Bruins with a big hole at second-line center. Charlie Coyle has done an admirable job in that role, but Krejci leaving has made the Bruins' scoring depth -- which was already weak -- even worse.
Notable storylines
Patrice Bergeron became the 20th captain in B's history.
The Bruins' prospect pool still ranks among the league's worst, but the 2021 draft was a much-needed step in the right direction for the franchise's future.
The Bruins dominated the Flyers 7-3 in a memorable outdoor game at Lake Tahoe in February. David Pastrnak's "Barbie Girl" interview afterward was amazing, too.
It's hard to overstate the importance of signing Charlie McAvoy to a long-term deal, one that was a huge win for both sides.
The David Krejci era ended, and he deserves his No. 46 in the rafters someday.
The Bruins were one of the most active teams in 2021 NHL free agency, but so far these moves have largely been a failure.
Massachusetts-born star Jack Eichel was finally traded in November -- to the Vegas Golden Knights -- and it wasn't a surprise the Bruins weren't in the mix.
Veteran goaltender Tuukka Rask's return seems like a matter of when, not if, based on comments made by Bruce Cassidy, general manager Don Sweeney and president Cam Neely over the last month.
The 2015 NHL Draft nightmare continues to get even worse for the Bruins with two of their three first-round picks from that class, Jake DeBrusk and Zach Senyshyn, having submitted trade requests.
Crystal ball for 2022
The future, quite frankly, does not look great for the Bruins. A rebuild could be on the horizon, and even if it doesn't begin in 2022, the chances the Bruins' veteran core competes for another Stanley Cup title are pretty slim.
Patrice Bergeron is 36 years old. He's in the final year of his contract. What if he doesn't return next season? The B's don't have anyone at the NHL level or their prospect pool able to fill a top-six center role, much less replace Bergeron's all-world play. Brad Marchand is 33 years old and remains an elite player, but he's also likely nearing the end of his prime.
If the Bruins fail to reach the conference finals for the eighth time in the last nine years, major changes must be considered.
Outside of David Pastrnak and Charlie McAvoy, who's the next generation of Bruins stars? Who's replacing Bergeron and Marchand when the time comes?
Fabian Lysell is the organization's top prospect and its best bet at developing another elite player, but he's a long way from becoming that type of star. The prospect pool is stunningly void of premium talent. Poor drafting and dealing away picks for veterans at trade deadlines have left the cupboard mostly bare. There are some decent players in Boston's system, but overall the prospect pool ranks among the league's worst.
The Bruins will have to, at some point, decide whether they want to continue being a good team that's not a legit Stanley Cup contender or just tear it down and rebuild. This franchise hasn't rebuilt in a while. It rebooted after 2014-15, trading key players such as Milan Lucic and Dougie Hamilton, but it never went into a full rebuild.
This critical decision might not be made in 2022, but what happens over the next six months will contribute to what is ultimately decided. If the Bruins fail to reach the conference finals for the eighth time in the last nine years, major changes must be considered.
Based on the roster's current makeup, it's difficult to see the Bruins making it past the second round of the 2022 Stanley Cup Playoffs, especially if a combination of the Toronto Maple Leafs, Florida Panthers and Tampa Bay Lightning stand in their way.


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Tomasa - InLoop - Online magazine covering Design-Tech-Digital News and events!
The first time I saw Tomasa[1], I was thunderstruck. "I wish I could design like that!" I thought to myself. The free-flowing forms that Argentinian designer Fernanda Cozzi — a.k.a. Fercozzi — managed to squeeze into the typeface are quite remarkable. Some part of me expected it not to work as a system, but Fercozzi threads this needle well; her Tomasa manages to be equal parts expressive and usable.
For a single-style typeface with uppercase only, Tomasa is more versatile than it might seem at first glance. Each of the letters has four stylistic variants and there are just enough clever ligatures so it's not too over-the-top. OpenType features programmatically cycle through the variants to avoid undue repetition, making Tomasa that much more useful.
Anyone who is from or has lived in Spanish-speaking countries will be familiar with the concept of perreo. It's a word that describes how we dance to rhythms like reggaeton or funk carioca, and it's one of Fercozzi's stated influences on this design. The way perreo flows through Tomasa is palpable: the glyphs seem to be letting loose and going hasta abajo, or getting down. If one were to animate the four variants of any letter — C and S come to mind — they would look like they're giving it their all on the dance floor.
This rhythm flows from the letter to the word as your eye moves up and down, following the varying sizes and positions of the counters. Fercozzi really came up with a unique system here, mixing upper- and lowercase constructions, horizontal and vertical emphasis, sinuous curves and sharp serifs in a way that shouldn't work, but definitely does.
Unlike a lot of display types, Tomasa doesn't phone it in when it comes to character sets. Fercozzi took great care to include the four alternates for caps beyond the basic twenty-six letters so our Nordic friends can enjoy its versatility, too. There are two designs for the figures and @ symbol, and three ampersands (because one can never have too many ampersands).
Beyond the alternates, you can expect to find everything you might need in Tomasa, from fractions and symbols to very broad language support. (In 2020, Tomorrow released a Cyrillic variant[2], so the family now supports that script, too.) I'm especially in love with the section symbol (§), the hryvnia symbol (₴), and the lovely little trademark symbol, which ligates the letters with the stroke below it.
If you like expressive type, Fercozzi really deserves to be on your radar. This young foundry's library keeps growing and improving, and Tomasa is a crowning achievement in a career that is just getting started.
Álvaro Franca[3] is a type designer, lettering artist, and graphic designer from Rio de Janeiro, Brasil. He has a master's degree in typeface design from EINA in Barcelona, and a certificate from the Expert Class Type Design course at the Platin Moretus Institute in Antwerp. He founded the Barcelona chapter of TypeThursday and splits his time between running Naipe Foundry and working at Vasava Studio.
^ Tomasa (fercozzi.com)
^ Tomorrow released a Cyrillic variant (tomorrow.type.today)
^ Álvaro Franca (www.alvarofran.ca)
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When I was growing up I didn't play Little League. I spent my summers with my Dad on construction projects. I learned about pulling nails and pouring concrete in places like La Grande, Maupin, Kalama, Elkhorn, and Spray. I also learned how the construction business worked in those post-war days. Every morning at about 10 o'clock my Dad and the Resident Engineer (they were all Professional Engineers then) would go into the nearest town for pie and coffee. Although I am sure they enjoyed the break, pie and coffee was not why they got together. They met to solve problems on the job and to discuss opportunities to meet shared goals — getting a quality project finished on time, with the contractor making a reasonable profit. Although they didn't know it, they were partnering.
This old fashioned partnering worked very well (except for one project in which Schrader Construction Co. had to sue the Oregon State Fish Commission for payment on a change order — which led directly to the Legislature's authorizing suits against the state for breaches of contract). Over the years, though, things have changed. Not only do we now have Project Managers instead of Resident Engineers, but cooperation on the jobsite has turned to distrust and animosity — even on jobs where "partnering" is required by the contract.
By definition, partnering is a formal process for building teamwork among the owner, contractor, design professional, subcontractors, and others on the jobsite. In its modern form, it starts with a facilitated pre-construction workshop which all parties attend. Participants may do some "team-building" exercises, and then create a mission statement for the project. The mission statement is intended to express common goals, set up means and methods for improved communications, establish conflict resolution procedures, and start the parties working together on a successful project.
Partnering has achieved many high-profile successes. The national Associated General Contractors gives a prestigious annual award for excellence in partnering. Local projects have won the award, and others have been finalists. Unfortunately, in too many instances partnering just hasn't worked. More and more, owner representatives see partnering as simply a means for contractors to get more money and avoid the claim-submission process. Some contractor representatives express cynicism about quality and cooperation, especially in the face of shrinking profits. As a result of the failures, more and more projects either skimp on partnering, or do not use it at all.
In an interesting turn of events, at the same time partnering is dying at project inception it is emerging as a way to salvage bad jobs. So-called "intervention partnering" or "project realignment" is now touted by sureties, owners, and contractors as a way to save the failing job.
Knowledgeable construction attorneys, consultants, and at least one partnering facilitation firm — Team Technologies of Olympia and Hillsboro — practice intervention partnering. Often, when things start to go bad, the contractor or owner will tell an attorney the project is behind schedule, claim notices are mounting, the contractor is losing money, jobsite personnel are dispirited or angry, and a disaster is about to happen. At this point the traditional attorney would analyze the contract documents, make sure the proper notices are sent, make sure documentation is in order, get an expert witness working before the job is finished, and prepare for a lengthy and expensive battle.
Intervention partnering — whether instigated by the attorney, owner, contractor, or surety — is different. First of all, the key parties come together for a heart-to-heart. Pretty soon, even the most hardened owner or contractor sees that if things don't change, the only ones who are going to make money are the lawyers. Once the parties understand this, progress can begin.
It is rarely in the best interests of the parties — or the project — to terminate one or more players, or to continue as adversaries. Instead of assigning blame, intervention partnering begins by setting aside existing claims and helping the parties develop a plan to complete the project within a realistic schedule. The plan must include a way for the parties to cooperate and may involve one or more project people being reassigned. Advance payments to let the contractor avoid losing its surety and financial credit may also be advantageous.
Once the bleeding is stopped, and everybody understands how to complete the project, a team can get to work solving the old claims. The team may involve current or former project personnel along with legal and consultant help. Claim resolution may be difficult and complicated, but it is essential to the good-faith underpinnings of project realignment. Whatever else happens, though, claim resolution should never interfere with completion of the project, although lessons learned may be used in the completion plan. If the owner and contractor can not be assured that the past problems will be dealt with in a fair and rapid manner, they will lose the trust it takes to finish the job.
Everyone wins when a troubled project can be realigned. It takes a lot of work and a lot of trust, but the results are far superior to the alternatives. The contractor knows it will be paid for problems for which the owner bears responsibility and can get back to doing what it does best — build projects. The owner gets a completed project without the expense, delay, and disruption of terminating and replacing the contractor. The surety avoids a termination or project failure. The attorneys do what construction attorneys should do — efficiently serve the interests of their clients and facilitate problem solving.
So, even without daily pie and coffee between the key players, it is not too late to realign thinking and performance when the project goes bad. Intervention partnering can happen at any stage, and facilitate a new focus on project issues and claims that allow the failing project to succeed.


text:
intsamp@intsamp.org
Ralph J Holmes
BSc PhD FAusIMM(CP) FAIP
Chief Research Scientist
CSIRO Mineral Resources
Dr Ralph Holmes obtained BSc and PhD degrees in Physics from the University of Melbourne in 1967 and 1972 respectively, and joined CSIRO in November 1971 to work on the application of nuclear techniques to the on-line analysis of iron ore and subsequently other mineral commodities, including bauxite and coal. This precipitated a major interest in the sampling of mineral commodities because of the need to calibrate on-line analysers against accurate conventional analyses, and subsequently his involvement over many decades in the development of international and national standards for sampling coal, iron ore, bauxite and copper, lead, zinc and nickel ores, concentrates and smelter products. He is currently Chair of the International Standards Organisation (ISO) subcommittees ISO/TC 102/SC 1 and ISO/TC 27/SC 4, which are developing international standards for sampling iron ores and solid mineral fuels (coal and coke) respectively, and Convener of ISO/TC 183/WG 9, which is developing international standards for sampling copper, lead, zinc and nickel ores, concentrates and smelter residues. He is also the Convener of several Working Groups under both ISO/TC 102/SC 1 and ISO/TC 27/SC 4. Over the last 30 years Ralph has also been heavily involved in mineral processing research and managed CSIRO's Iron Ore Processing research for more than 20 years. He is currently a Chief Research Scientist in CSIRO Mineral Resources and is recognised throughout the Australian and overseas iron ore industries as an expert in iron ore processing and sampling.
Ralph received a Clunies Ross National Science and Technology Award in 1998 and an inaugural Standards Award from Standards Australia in 1993 for his outstanding contributions to the development of mineral sampling standards. Ralph also received the inaugural Australasian Institute of Mining & Metallurgy (AusIMM) Mineral Industry Operating Technique Award in 1987 for developing "Ironscan" for the on-line analysis of iron ore on conveyor belts and more recently a Pierre Gy Gold Medal in Bordeaux, France, in June 2015 for "Excellence in Teaching and Application of the Theory of Sampling". In addition, he received a CSIRO "Lifetime Achievement Award" in October 2015 for "sustained and meritorious achievements over a CSIRO career spanning more than 43 years in the field of mineral processing and international standards development both as a research manager and practitioner benefitting both CSIRO and Australia".
Ralph is a Fellow of the AusIMM (Chartered Professional – Metallurgy), a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Physics and a member of the International Mineral Processing Council (IMPC). He has also been very active in organising technical conferences with the AusIMM and has chaired six international iron ore conferences (Iron Ore 2002, Iron Ore 2005, Iron Ore 2007, Iron Ore 2009, Iron Ore 2011, Iron Ore 2013 and Iron Ore 2015) in Perth and Fremantle, the Second World Conference on Sampling and Blending on the Sunshine Coast in 2005, Sampling 2008, Sampling 2010, Sampling 2012 and Sampling 2014 in Perth, as well as IMPC 2010 (International Mineral Processing Congress) which was held in Brisbane in September 2010. IMPC 2010 was a landmark international event in the history of IMPC as it celebrated its Silver Jubilee. More recently Ralph chaired the Eighth World Conference on Sampling and Blending held in Perth on 9-11 May 2017 and Iron Ore 2017 held in Perth on 24-26 July 2017, and played a key role in establishing the International Pierre Gy Sampling Association of which he is the inaugural Chair.
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