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Hack Back to the Mac
Why the Hackintosh era, even if it looks like it might just dead-end thanks to Apple Silicon, was still a useful phenomenon for the Mac.
By Ernie Smith Dec 04, 2020
Filed under: apple, apple silicon, arm, computers, hackintosh, hp spectre x360, m1 mac, macbook air, macbook air review, nerding out
Today in Tedium: I warned I was going to do it. Then, I did it. I got an M1 MacBook Air this week, returning to the Apple fold to give the company money for a Mac product for the first time in years. I of course, was perhaps vocal about my reasons for leaving the Apple flock in the first place … the company just wasn't releasing products that I could see myself wanting to purchase. (Something about the keyboard. Turns out writers care about keyboards, who knew?) So I dove head-first into the realm of the Hackintosh a few years ago, and embraced my role as the guy using the Mac with the brass trims and the touchscreen. I even wrote a guide on how to do it yourself. That guide, and the laptop on which I based it on, still hold up, though some of the methods have changed. (It now rocks 32 gigs of RAM and a 2TB SSD that dual-boots Linux.) But one cannot deny the juggernaut that is Apple Silicon. Today's Tedium reviews the new machine, and ponders what we gained from the Hackintosh era of the Mac and why it's worth keeping that spirit alive somehow, even in the Apple Silicon era. — Ernie @ Tedium
Before we get going, be sure to check out today's sponsor, SetApp.
"If your software uses deprecated and supported KPIs, you'll need to factor out deprecated components into a stand-alone system extension. If your software uses new system extensions and legacy kernel extensions, you can distribute to supported operating systems. Software that supports a broad range of macOS versions should continue to use kernel extensions for older versions and run system extensions where supported."
— A technical document from Apple discussing its plans to deprecate support for kernel extensions (also known as kexts), a key element of Hackinitoshing over the years. Big Sur, the recently released version of MacOS, now puts up a warning about them. Despite this, Big Sur is totally Hackintoshable.
Solid gold. (photo by me)
Is the M1 chip good enough to get Hackintosh users to come back to the fold? Maybe
Speed isn't everything, nor is battery life. But it can excuse a lot.
That seems to be the takeaway I have from the past few days of using the M1 MacBook Air as my daily driver.
I admittedly find myself torn, though. It works quite well, better than I was expecting, and the battery life is just unspeakably amazing. (My wife, Cat, has informed me that I cannot talk about how amazing the battery life is anymore in conversation.)
But it leaves two of my biggest problems off to the side—the ability to upgrade anything, and the high cost of storage and RAM upgrades at time of purchase. In a world where buying a 2-terabyte NVMe SSD that can be easily screwed into a laptop costs less than $250, Apple has convinced the world that its SSDs are somehow special, despite the fact that it is possible to get similar or even faster speeds with PCIe 4.0. (Upgrading to a 2-terabyte drive costs an eye-watering $800.)
I did a rough test of my current Hackintosh machines, and while the MacBook Air outpaced both machines on write speeds (about 2,800 megabytes per second, versus 1,400 on each), my Xeon easily kept pace on read speeds (2,800 megabytes for each), despite the fact it doesn't officially support the NVMe spec and I only can use it as a boot drive thanks to Clover.
Tips for buying
If you are interested in getting your hands on an Apple Silicon MacBook Air, the 8-gigabyte models will be easier to find right now and are in stock on Amazon; there will be a long delay on the 16-gigabyte models which at this time you might have to directly buy from Apple.
To put it another way: Apple doesn't allow people to upgrade the SSD themselves because Apple is Apple. You can tell me every day of the week about the security reasons for it, but the truth is, if Apple cared about upgradeability, it would figure out a way to make it work.
I won't bore you with performance numbers because you've seen them everywhere else on the internet. I will say, however, that these machines perform great, but don't bend the rules of physics: If your general usage approach feels like it might be cramped with eight gigs of RAM, you will still feel cramped here. But on the way to being cramped, you will feel quite light-footed and agile before you slam into that inevitable wall, like a clumsy ballerina.
This is not magic hardware, but it works well—especially if you're adept with USB-C, which honestly does a lot to simplify hardware setups. And not having a fan in the Air will open up opportunities that may not have been possible previously, particularly in the case of audio.
Kind of hard to argue with this.
Ultimately, the thing that seals it as a worthy buy for me is the battery life. You could take this thing on a road trip and not plug it in the entire time. Windows laptops have promised something like this, but Apple has delivered in an overwhelmingly convincing way. It's comparable to the Pinebook Pro, except with performance that makes it less of a tinkerer's plaything and more something that you could use every day.
Hackintoshers, for years, had it both ways—you could tinker to your heart's content, but still edit 4K video at speeds faster than a desktop Mac. Apple has basically made the case that it has improved the machines so much that even tinkerers might want to take a look.
Should they? Yes. But if you want to keep your old machines with their perfectly tailored Clover or OpenCore directories around, you honestly should, because they still have their place.
I, for one, am still going to want to have that kind of control over my hardware sometimes … along with the ability to upgrade the RAM.
Rosetta apps mostly worked fine, but Vivaldi had some entertaining glitches.
Five early observations about Apple Silicon Macs from a Hackintosh nerd
Eight is not enough (at least for me). Many of the early M1 Macs come with eight gigs of RAM as a baseline, with the 16-gigabyte versions delayed by weeks as Apple works through stock. While Apple appeared to be making a strong push that 8GB was enough for most people, I sort of felt like I was hitting the limits from my fairly aggressive style of normal use, especially with Rosetta apps like my browser of choice, Vivaldi. (I am trying other browsers to account for this.) I ultimately decided that the upgrade was worth it, and will be returning my 8GB machine once the 16GB model comes in.
Rethink your computer's relationship with swap files. One thing that I've noticed with this machine is that swap is used pretty heavily, which traditionally has been a sign that things are about to slow down in a big way. But for the most part, unless I really push it or do something stupid like open a gigantic text file, it feels smooth. Even though 8GB of RAM is not enough for me, it almost was, in part because of how efficiently the Mac handles swap.
Maybe hold off on connecting your cloud apps. Anyone who has been reading my Twitter account over the past few days knows that I had a comical experience getting my Dropbox account loaded onto this Mac. (Long story short: Do not save Node.js projects in your Dropbox folders.) Once your files are loaded, Dropbox works fine, but it is only available in an Intel variant at this time and will see a performance hit as a result. With an 8-gig ceiling, you will feel the overhead.
The Photoshop beta shows the real potential. Of all the things I've had a chance to try on the M1 Mac this week, I'd say Photoshop made me happiest. It felt like comfort food, and it largely works well, without much in the way of sluggishness. I loaded up 20 recent GIFs from issues of Tedium and felt no lag, even when a GIF was playing in the background. Of course, Photoshop's weaknesses are still there, too—after all these years, Adobe still doesn't support Apple's native full-screen mode.
The difference in speed is making old distinctions matter less. When you can literally unplug your laptop and not plug it in for another day or two, that creates mindspace for productivity that wasn't once there. On top of that, something surprising I've noticed on the M1 Mac is that it somehow makes web browsers that have traditionally felt sluggish to me, like Firefox, suddenly feel less so. To put it another way, the improvements are big enough that issues of performance in many types of apps are going to stop mattering as much, to the point where you might choose a browser based on its functionality, rather than its memory management capabilities.
The HP Spectre Folio, which uses leather for its casing, is a bold example of what the PC industry is doing on the industrial design front these days. The chip on it is a bit weaksauce, though. (HP)
What I hope Apple takes away from the rest of the PC industry now that it's going to Apple Silicon
When I started doing my research into Hackintoshing three years ago, my concerns were generally driven by the fact that Apple's computers at the time were simply not very good, and I couldn't see myself buying something with a crappy keyboard.
Going thin beyond the point its customers really asked for, the laptops faced serious thermal issues, as Intel's chip designs did not hold up to the tight quarters Apple had put the computers in. The desktops, meanwhile, had gone years without a respectable update—the Mini sat around about four years without upgrades, while the Mac Pro sat stationary for six.
There were elements of these machines that were good, even then: Apple is better at trackpads than basically anyone else, for example, and the consistency of the Apple designs make them very comfortable to get into even after an upgrade. Having found religion in an array of dongles, I also have to argue that USB-C is honestly a pretty great innovation that has proven its weight in salt.
But in the end, while I think their operating systems have held up—Mojave is quite good, fight me—the company let its competitors best it in areas of design and upgradability for years.
I think the HP Spectre line of laptops offers a perfect example of this, as it is a line of laptops that directly competes with the MacBook Air on many fronts, but has evolved significantly with the times in a way the Air simply hasn't. In the roughly three years since I got my model, newer iterations of the machine have added a lot of great features, including:
Added a number pad on the 15-inch model
Introduced a "gem cut" design that moved one of the Thunderbolt 3 ports to the corner to make it easier to use for charging
Introduced a model with an experimental leather design (its sister line, the Envy, released models with wood wrist rests)
Introduced an OLED model and a model with a "privacy screen"
Added Microsoft Precision trackpad drivers so the trackpad was easier to use
Added LTE support
Added additional color variants, just in case black and brass aren't your thing
Cut the bezel sizes
Switched from a 16:9 display to a 3:2 display
Introduced a 14-inch model
These changes didn't all happen at once—they were iterative, reflecting a willingness to evolve. The result is that while its direct predecessor looks roughly the same as the latest model, the late 2017 model is significantly different from the late 2020 model.
During this same period, the Air saw a redesign that added a variant of the retina display already in the MacBook Pro, the addition (and then removal) of the butterfly keyboard, and (in this edition) the removal of a fan. That's basically it.
And HP is not alone here with the constant design evolution—other PC manufacturers such as Dell and Razer have frequently iterated on their designs, improving and tweaking them constantly. It it ain't broke, don't fix it, they say, but Apple has lost a lot of ground by not experimenting more with their industrial designs in recent years. (Or, arguably, experimenting with them in ways that nobody asked for—again, goodbye butterfly keyboard.)
The closest equivalent to Apple in the PC laptop space is, ironically, Microsoft, which uses a bold design with the Surface, and iterates on that design very modestly year-in and year-out.
The challenge that Apple faces is that this kind of quick iteration used to be their modus operandi. If you go back to the Power Mac desktop line between 1999 and 2003, it lived up to this sort of constant experimentation, with a design that kept changing based on the processor inside. The iMacs of the era did the same thing, and now … well, the company has basically offered the same design for its all-in-ones since 2012, an eternity in tech years.
The Mac has found a lot of strength in the winnowing down of its product lines, and it has honestly been a good thing for Apple. But my time in Hackintosh-land forced me to look a lot harder at the rest of the PC market, and I honestly liked what I saw. (Don't try to get me to use Windows, though.) I'm not saying that the industrial designs were across the board good, but there seems to be more willing risks, more attempts at crowd pleasing. One gets the feeling that HP and Lenovo read all the laptop reviews, and directly address the little frustrations each time out.
The big PC manufacturers get things wrong, too. Dell introduced a low-angle webcam on the XPS 13 at one point, pointed out that it was difficult to move back to its original place, but then found a way to solve the problem. It took time to fix, but it wasn't like Apple, where it kept the bad keyboard around for more that three years seemingly out of pride.
I hope, now that Apple has a chip architecture that doesn't get in the way, it ramps up its industrial design … and more importantly, it reads the reviews and iterates more thoughtfully and consistently.
Because, for those who haven't looked in a while, PC laptops are better than you think, at least from a design standpoint. A lot better.
The number of Patreon donors, at current count, that have set aside money for Hector "marcan" Martin, a Linux programmer who has pledged to work on an Apple Silicon version of the Linux kernel. Martin, who worked on Linux support for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4, has pledged to make the project his full-time job in an effort to expand the capabilities of Apple Silicon.
Just because I got this tiny laptop that seems to be totally groundbreaking in its capabilities doesn't mean that I expect to decommission my Hackintoshes or anything.
There are practical reasons for this: I rely on virtual machines to work on development for my site, and Apple Silicon doesn't really have a lot of support for those right now, so the old machines will still need to stick around for now. And honestly, my $50 Xeon, which doubles as a Plex server, was purchased because I wanted to keep an old machine alive. It still runs really well, even if the fans kick up more than they did a year ago—even if, absurdly, the tiny laptop is somehow more powerful for many tasks.
Still use it every day. Still holds up!
The Spectre, meanwhile, has a bigger screen and in some contexts is arguably better for media consumption, and even writing, as a 16:9 screen is a pretty good ratio if you want to have a text editor on the screen at all times, as I always do. And while its fans kick up relatively often, it has never been bothersome. And because it has a lot of RAM, it's good for kicking around virtual machines; recently, I spent a little time checking out Haiku, a revival of the classic BeOS, on Parallels.
I think the other factor is that, a few years from now, Hackintoshing will remain valuable in some contexts as a way to keep older machines active and useful for years to come—while still offering headroom for upgrades.
YouTuber and comedian Paul Chato, who I wrote about the last time I wrote a piece on the culture of Hackintosh (and who has become a friend of mine since), noted that it seems like Apple has finally figured out a way to open up a door to folks who brought OpenCore and Clover into their lives—by coming out with something so good as to threaten to make the whole conversation nearly irrelevant.
"A lot of people are just plain tired of driving their standard transmission Hackintosh and want to drive an automatic Macintosh again," Chato said in a recent video discussing one of the many types of reactions he's seen to the new hardware.
I'm convinced there will always be people around the edges that will try to bend the rules around the Mac because they're not entirely happy with Apple's offering—though Apple Silicon might get them to change tactics. Maybe those people will help push Linux support on Apple Silicon, or figure out ways to get eGPUs working.
But while this community is small, it is passionate. I hope that Apple takes the opportunity to better understand them—and why they left in the first place.
And thanks again to our sponsor, SetApp.
All You Need Is Weird
The Beatles might have been the most mainstream band in history, but many of their inspirations were hugely obscure—and inspired obscurities of their own.
Reading Below The Surface
How subcarrier radio signals made room for hidden stations on the FM dial for decades—and help ensure, even today, that everyone has access to the news.


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Scottish public purchasers must consider 'fair work' principles in tenders
posted by Paul Snell
Public sector buyers in Scotland must now consider how suppliers are applying fair work practices when they go out to tender.
The Scottish Government has published statutory guidance for public procurement on how to ask contractors to demonstrate they are treating employees fairly in areas such as equality, human rights, health and safety and collective agreements.
Fair work principles may include supporting the living wage, no "unnecessary" use of zero hours contracts, trade union recognition, commitment to apprenticeships and flexible working.
But it is not mandatory for purchasers to include specific questions about fair working in their tender, nor will suppliers have to comply to be able to bid for work. The guidance emphasises all tenders must be treated equally, and the approach may vary depending on the size and scope of the contract.
Keith Brown, Scottish Government infrastructure secretary, said: "The commitment to making Scotland a fairer place to work is a key tenet of this government, and our new statutory guidance for public sector procurements sees us nail our colours to the mast.
"Employers must now recognise that they cannot adopt exploitative practices in relation to their workers and expect to be rewarded with lucrative contracts in the public sector. If you want to do business with the public sector in Scotland, you have to be a responsible employer and value your workers."
The guidance applies to goods and services contracts worth more than £50,000, and works deals worth more than £2,000,000. It also contains a sample question buyers could include, asking how the supplier will commit to fair work practices in the contract.
It also confirmed the Scottish Government sought clarification from the European Commission on how to apply the living wage in procurement processes. The EC said making payment of the living wage a mandatory requirement in contracts would be a breach of procurement law and payment of the living wage can only be taken as one indicator of a commitment to fair work principles.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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To Follow Elephants, Rick Hodges
Dragonfly: An Exploration of Eco-fiction Posted on April 2, 2019 by Mary Woodbury December 20, 2021
Click here to return to the series
The global novel exists, not as a genre separated from and opposed to other kinds of fiction, but as a perspective that governs the interpretation of experience. In this way, it is faithful to the way the global is actually lived–not through the abolition of place, but as a theme by which place is mediated. Life lived here is experienced in its profound and often unsettling connections with life lived elsewhere, and everywhere. The local gains dignity, and significance, insofar as it can be seen as a part of a worldwide phenomenon.
-Adam Kirsch, The Global Novel: Writing the World in the 21st Century
In today's world series, we travel back to the continent of Africa, this time with author Rick Hodges; we talk about his visits to Kenya and his new novel To Follow Elephants (Stormbird Press, March 2019). Stick around, because this summer we will return to Africa and talk about another story set in the Niger Delta.
About the Novel
To Follow Elephants is an enchanting coming-of-age story that switches among its main characters to build a breathtaking journey involving a young elephant, a teenager from the United States traveling to Kenya to look for his imprisoned father, and a young Kenyan woman studying wild elephants. Rick Hodges' remarkable debut novel left me longing to visit the dry season of East Africa, where wild elephants, among other wildlife, freely migrate and are a part of the scenery and life of many people. Hodges' soft prose-like chapters flip through the perspectives of a few individuals, but my favorite is the elephants growing older and learning about First Grandmother.
On his 18th birthday, young American Owen Dorner travels to Africa to meet his father for the first time. Plunged into the corrupt underworld of Colonel Mubego, a conniving prison warden and former revolutionary fighter, Owen seeks friendship amongst unlikely allies and finds meaning in the world of elephants.
Biologist Wanjeri Mubego, the colonel's niece who is happier among the wildlife in her native Kenya than with people, helps Owen discover the truth about his father, Karl. A U.S. Army captain, Karl Dorner has lived in a dusty African prison cell since Owen was a small boy. Could Karl, accused of helping a local rebellion, be a hero, and not a traitor?
Karl isn't telling.
But when Karl escapes from prison, Wanjeri helps Owen find the truth about his father—and unveils her own family's secrets—as a young elephant learns the ways of the world from his herd's matriarch. In a moving portrayal of elephant civilization, parallel tales of intrigue and survival unfold, masterfully enriching our understanding of what it means to be human.
Chat with the Author
I was happy to talk with Rick about the birth of this novel and his travel in Kenya. What I learned was haunting in some ways but uplifting in others.
Mary: Can you explain to readers your time in East Africa and what you experienced there that inspired your novel?
Rick: Many years ago, my wife and I traveled to Kenya and Tanzania. She had traveled a bit, but I had never been overseas, so I figured I would make the most of it and go somewhere exotic and exciting the first time. The immersion in a very different place affected me, and when I returned, the story in my novel, peppered with the details I had observed, took shape. To Follow Elephants roughly tracks our itinerary in Africa and contains some specific scenes from our trip.
Many of the themes in the book also come directly from my experience on this journey, such as the wonder of seeing wildlife up close, observing animals co-existing with people in a way I rarely see in the United States, the mixture of wonder and anxiety of suddenly dropping into such a different place from my secure world at home and the sense of being among, rather than above, wild animals and their world.
Mary: I noticed in To Follow Elephants, your characters come of age, in the sense that they learn to let go of fears (some of them extreme) and notice the bigger world around them, including the natural world. Can you talk about this?
Rick: Owen's struggle with anxiety has its roots in my own culture shock caused by picking such a different place to go in the world for my first foreign trip, and my own general anxiety issues.
One good technique for dealing with anxiety, whether justified by the events at hand or an overreaction, is to distance yourself from the here and now and switch to the big picture. You can look out into the distance and see the mountains or the sky and stabilize your viewpoint, much like you might do on a rocking boat to steady a queasy stomach. The larger landscape of the natural world feels more eternal, fixed, steady. It was there when you were born and it will be there after you die. The elephants feel that deep connection to the land, too, because they believe they sprouted from the soil, and they even consume soil and touch and feel the bones of their dead as the bones become soil again. It's something bigger than they are that gives them comfort and confidence, like a parent, or God, or First Grandmother.
This is how I began to imagine the story that became the book—I looked outside at the landscape and conjured something larger than the immediate reality around me. I drew energy, if you will, from the natural world and rolled it up into a story with more excitement and meaning.
The people in my story seek the same kind of grounding, whether they realize it or not. On the bus ride, Owen seeks to calm his rising anxiety by looking out toward the horizon and seeing all the people and animals and trees and mountains and sky he sees. They're all calm, not bothered by his immediate reality, and he borrows from that.
Wanjeri has her own issues rooted in being unsure of her place in her family and the world. Her struggle is with other people, and she retreats to the world of elephants. She does the same kind of musing when she is on the safari about how she is lucky to live in such an amazing, important natural place that infuses her life with value beyond her daily existence and frayed family relationships.
The elephants sense that Wanjeri watches them to learn from them, since they are, naturally, superior beings to humans and have more knowledge. And they are on to something. Wanjeri would probably be happier as an elephant, and she wishes she had life all figured out like they seem to. When she finally completes the process of doing what's right and making a choice of where she stands, Wanjeri has the option of going out and living with elephants in the wild forever (and perhaps she does).
Owen's anxiety is driven by separation from his father, much like people create anxiety as they build cities around themselves and separate from the natural world. There is scientific research supporting the idea that people need exposure to nature for mental, and even physical, health. It is like a nutrient, and we we are not getting enough of it.
As part of relieving his anxiety, Owen goes on a quest to reunite with his father just as the elephants go to the soil. For the elephants, the soil is literally a nutrient, but also the substance they believe they sprung from, so it is a spiritual nutrient as well.
One of the many elephants Rick and his wife Elenor viewed
Mary: Your book beautifully portrays elephants and gives them dignity. Yet, many are endangered. Have you seen this first-hand? What has your research shown?
Rick: Yes, they are, and it's sad and frustrating. We went to Africa in part to see things that might disappear soon.
I wanted to convey a deep sense of caring and respect for elephants in my book. But I believe that too much negativity can depress people or turn them off, making them shut down instead. I didn't focus on the threats to elephants; rather, I showed how they are fascinating, dignified, intelligent, sensitive, caring, loyal and strong–characteristics we admire in people. We can identify with them and their struggles, especially when we hear them "talking" to each other like people, as they do in To Follow Elephants. By revealing the internal thoughts and beliefs of elephants to the reader and depicting them as similar to ours, right down to their creation myths, I wanted to foster a feeling of kinship with them.
My wife, Elenor, has a background in environmental science and education and runs an environmental non-profit group, and I've learned from her about the principle of starting with the positive. Instead of a hard sell—"The animals are dying!"—it works better to say "Isn't this animal fascinating and beautiful?" first. That approach is more likely to bring a deep caring. I saw that sort of outlook in Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer and modeled my book on that.
Once someone has a lasting affinity for something, a threat to the thing they love makes them angry and feel empowered to help. I want my readers to feel dismayed by endangerment of elephants, but to turn that anger into action instead of despair.
Rick's wife Elenor, next to the pile of burnt tusks in Nairobi National Park mentioned in the book
Mary: I agree that turning despair into positive action is a great outcome. I learned that you are a beekeeper and have an affinity for the natural world. What kinds of things do you do outside of writing?
Rick: Actually, I used to keep bees, as a teenager. I was stung many times, which is part of the job, until one day one of my bees stung me and I ended up in the hospital in anaphylactic shock. I had developed a bee sting allergy. That was the end of my beekeeping career.
But they stayed with me. Honeybees are amazing. They have a complex social structure that involves specialization–different bees do different jobs–sophisticated forms of communication and construction, and communal living. They're just insects, but they create their world around themselves. A beehive is like a city. Learning about bees knocks homo sapiens down a peg. Maybe we're not as special as we think. Wanjeri muses about that when she talks to Owen at the tusk memorial. She tells Owen her thoughts about how evolution isn't a straight line and humanity may share the top of the tree of life with other species…including elephants.
As for other things l do, well, I write all day for my job, which means I know how to sit and write, but sometimes I've had enough for the day and can't sustain it at night when I write fiction. I try to do interesting things as best I can while living a fairly standard life with a wife and two kids. I've performed in an improv comedy troupe. I've home-brewed beer. I wrote a stage play and, when it was performed, I experienced the magical moment where I forgot that I had created the characters on stage. I came up with an idea for a federal law to allow people with disabilities to save money like others can, and with lots of help, got it passed into law. Did I mention beer?
I try to incorporate the outdoors into everyday life when I can. I commute to work by bicycle when the weather is nice. I build all kinds of whimsical decks and furniture and in my backyard, which I've landscaped entirely with native plants.
Being outdoors is always either a thrill or a source of peace, depending on what I need at the time. It connects me with space and time far beyond my own life. I am privileged to have the ability to sense that by going inward as well as outward without having to travel all the way to places like Africa. I find fascination in even the smallest of natural things as close as my own backyard.
Mary: What are your thoughts in writing fiction that combines the human story with the animal story? While there are particular genres for this, such as eco-fiction, what if every story did this?
Rick: There are pitfalls to avoid when writing this way. If the animals sound hokey or juvenile in adult fiction, it could turn readers off. My elephants speak in a sort of noble, formal language that distinguishes them. It's a little like the version of English that many Africans speak–more formal and British than American English. My elephants also never speak to humans. After all, they don't in reality either. The dialogue is among elephants only, and elephants and people are both left to only wonder about what the others are thinking.
I loved Watership Down and read it several times as a kid. That's the book that gave me the confidence to speak in the voice of animals. Ultimately, though, animals are characters like any other, and require the same process of writing as human characters. Any story could do it, and wouldn't it be great if they did? Stories about animals don't just introduce new characters, they bring entirely new worlds they inhabit–their home, their way of life, their social structure, their challenges. Writing about animals brings great freedom for an author, much like science fiction or fantasy does.
Of course, my book has human and animal characters with different worlds that intersect and influence each other. I blurred the artificial barrier between people and nature, and not just by comparing elephants in parallel. Wanjeri's longing for freedom among elephants, her rare ability to learn knowledge from them the way the elephants believe isn't possible for people, father and then son's connection with the bull elephant through the prison window, Wanjeri and Owen following the herd as if they were part of it–those are times when a sort of portal between the two worlds opens and reminds us that we were once as much animals as any other.
In any event, I think my approach of incorporating animals as characters helped to achieve one of my goals–writing an eco-fiction novel for people who don't yet know they like eco-fiction.
Mary: Are you working on anything else at the moment?
Rick: The ideas never stop coming, but my best is going to be my next novel. I'm working on a story about a fictional town in coastal Virginia where white and black people lived in harmony and intermarried, their extreme isolation allowing them to avoid the poison of racism that prevailed elsewhere and to live off the land and sea, almost as a part of it, for a century. That all changes, though, when a young minister comes to the town and introduces some new and unsettling ideas about how they live, and spurs a personal tragedy that sends the town on a path of decline and destruction. I am drawing heavily from my knowledge of the natural world (and Virginia's racial history) I developed growing up on the Virginia coast. I was inspired by a real ghost town on the coast that now consists of nothing more than a few gravestones a few feet from the sand dunes.
Mary: Please keep in touch and let me know when your new novel is out. I have a personal affinity for the South and also write and think about my time there a lot. Thank you so much for sharing your story here, Rick.
Rick Hodges is a writer and author whose written works are as diverse as his life experiences.
Rick enjoys a deep appreciation for the natural world on a simple, introspective level, informed as much by digging in the dirt as a child or beekeeping as a teenager as by travels to great landscapes. A voyage to East Africa, and the experience of seeing how people lived in tandem with wildlife, inspired To Follow Elephants.
Rick drew on his experience as a working writer and journalist in Washington, DC, to craft his novel. Aside from his 9-to-5 writing, Rick has produced works including short stories, a nonfiction instructional book for high school students about the Muslim world, and a stage play. He wrote his play, Three Generations of Imbeciles, based on a 1927 court case from his home state of Virginia that cleared the way for involuntary sterilization of people with disabilities.
Rick's wife Elenor is executive director of a local environmental organization and inspired him to work for a time as a grant writer for The Wilderness Society.
Posted in All, Books, Contemporary, Cultural/Regional, Fauna, Interviews, Literary, World Eco-Fiction	Tagged Rick Hodges	permalink
To Follow Elephants, Rick Hodges — 1 Comment
Donna on April 2, 2019 at 11:25 pm said:
A super interview with such a passionate author. Love the photos.


"Building Calibrated Hydraulic Fracture Models from Low Quality Micro-S" by R. S. Kassim, Larry K. Britt et al.
The Montney Formation stretches from southwestern Alberta to northeast British Columbia in Canada, and is one of the largest and most prolific shale plays in North America. The Montney Formation is also unique because it has conventional, over-pressured gas and an over-pressured liquids rich fairway. However, since the first multiple fractured horizontal well was drilled in 2005, there has been proposals for optimizing completions using different fracturing fluid systems and completion techniques. The low oil and gas price environment and the ensuing cost control mechanisms coupled with better understanding of what works in the Montney Formation, made the utility of some of the previously proposed optimization designs like "fracture effectiveness" which used energized fracturing fluids less desirable completions method. However, completion optimization methods like "operational effectiveness" which used high-rate slick water with increasing proppant mass per stage become the dominant stimulation method in the Montney Formation. But what has been missing was how to integrate fracture design and optimizations using all available information such as step-rate test, mini-frac, DFIT (diagnostic fracture injection test) analysis, well logs, geo-mechanical data, fracability index, core data, micro-seismic mapping data, and post-fracture analysis to improve fracture design and optimize the well completions. The objective of this paper is to present a new methodology for building calibrated fracture models from low quality micro-seismic data that has either location uncertainty or signal-to-noise ratio issues, and use it to optimize well completions. The process involves two-steps; first, the hydraulic fracture design was modeled and then calibrated using only micro-seismic mapping data from fracture stages that were closest to the micro-seismic geophones (avoiding location uncertainty or signal-to-noise ratio issues). This allowed us to construct a robust and reliable fracture geometry model. For each of the wells in the study, all fracture stages were then history matched and remodeled using the calibrated fracture model. Secondly, each well was optimized by incorporating fracture cluster sensitivity (2, 3, 4, and 5 clusters per stage), proppant mass sensitivity (50 kg, 75 kg, 100 kg, and 150 kg per stage) and fracture spacing sensitivity (20 m, 25 m, 33 m, 49 m and 98 m per stage). The result from this study shows that a highly optimized fracture model can be constructed from low quality micro-seismic mapping data that had location uncertainty due to the use of one monitoring well or signal-to-noise ratio issues. Secondly, the result also shows that increasing the number of clusters per stage and proppant mass per stage improves well production and recovery. However, the question is are these improvements short time gains, and what is the balance between well productivity and economics? Thirdly, in this study, we propose using measureable and known metrics to optimize wells such as average "hydraulic" fracture half-length, propped fracture half-length and conductivity for multi-clustered fracture stages. Ideally, well performance should be obtained from lookbacks instead of pounds per lateral length of the horizontal well (i.e. 2,400 lb. /ft.) or fixed volume/proppant for each stage or fixed clusters per stage without any empirical data to support it. While there are no two shale formations that are alike, most of the findings from this study are transferable and applicable to other unconventional resources. For instance, the paper presents;- A new method for building calibrated fracture models from low quality micro-seismic mapping data that has location uncertainty or signal-to- noise ratio issues.- A new method for optimizing fracture designs using cluster sensitivity analysis with varying proppant mass per fracture stage that can be used for scenarios analysis.- A methodology for optimizing fracture design models by adjusting fracture treatment volumes and proppant mass per stage based on well stage location and available net treatment pressure.
R. S. Kassim et al., "Building Calibrated Hydraulic Fracture Models from Low Quality Micro-Seismic Data and Utilizing It for Optimization: Montney Example," Proceedings of the SPE Unconventional Resources Conference (2017, Calgary, Canada), pp. 390-410, Society of Petroleum Engineers, Feb 2017.
© 2017 Society of Petroleum Engineers, All rights reserved.


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Dedinky (węg. Imrikfalva) – słowacka wieś w powiecie Rożniawa, w kraju koszyckim.

Położona pod południowymi stokami płaskowyżu Geravy, a ściślej – jego południowo-zachodniego ograniczenia, zwanego Gačovska skala (1113 m). Wieś położona jest w dolinie rzeki Hnilec, przy sztucznym jeziorze Palcmanská Maša utworzonym wskutek spiętrzenia wody Hnilca przez tamę.

Wieś powstała na skutek połączenia się dwóch osad górniczych: Štefanovce i Imrichovce w 1933 roku. Najstarsza wzmianka o wsi Imrichovce pochodzi z roku 1380. Jej nazwa pochodzi od szlachcica Imricha Csákyegou. Mieszkańcy osady brali aktywny udział w słowackim powstaniu narodowym (przedsięwzięciu wojskowym zorganizowanym przez oddziały partyzanckie w końcowym etapie II wojny światowej).

Po wojnie na brzegach zbiornika wodnego Palcmanská Maša (słow. vodná nádrž Palcmanská Maša) powstał kompleks budynków wypoczynkowych. W miejscowości istnieje camping oraz baza turystyczna do uprawiania sportów wodnych i zimowych (narciarstwo biegowe).
Dedinky leżące w południowej części Parku Narodowego Słowacki Raj są także miejscem wypadowym na jego trasy turystyczne. Obok hotelu Priehrada znajduje się dolna stacja krzesełkowej kolei linowej Dedinky – Geravy.

W centrum wsi znajduje się barokowo-klasycystyczny kościół z 1853 roku oraz pomnik poświęcony bohaterom poległym w słowackim powstaniu narodowym.

Przypisy

Linki zewnętrzne
 Dedinky

Miejscowości w powiecie Rożniawa

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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Continuing Venezuela exodus and COVID-19 highlights need for global solidarity for most vulnerable
Since 2015, some 5.6 million Venezuelans have left the country to escape violence, insecurity and threats, as well as a longstanding economic crisis which has led to a lack of food, medicines and essential services, according to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.
"I don't even have the words to describe how cold it is"
Wendy fled Venezuela and sought refuge in Chile. She and her family can't afford a place to live.
For Venezuelan migrants & refugees like Wendy, winter will be devastating. #Together4Venezuelans https://t.co/GeN4HFMEIV
— UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency (@Refugees) June 10, 2021
Some 2.5 million have settled in the Americas, where most were self-sufficient until the pandemic hit, resulting in lost jobs, evictions and a rise in gender-based violence.
"The facts for Venezuelan refugees and migrants are stark: over half don't have enough to eat, 80 to 90 per cent have lost their source of income, one in four children are separated from their families during the journey, and many women and girls face particular challenges, such as gender-based violence and lack of access to sexual and reproductive health services," said Michael Grant, Assistant Deputy Minister for the Americas at Global Affairs Canada via Zoom.
Nearly $1.5 billion needed
The 17 June donors' conference – co-hosted by UNHCR and the UN migration agency IOM – comes as humanitarians warned that the onset of winter in Latin America has made matters worse for desperate Venezuelans. The total ask is $1.44 billion.
An estimated one in four Venezuelan children has become separated from one or both parents, while one in three goes to bed hungry. Close to two-thirds have not been able to continue their studies during the pandemic, UNHCR said.
Datasets compiled in the last year, also indicate that women have become the target of an alarming increase in domestic violence, sexual harassment and abuse, negative coping mechanisms including survival sex, as well as human trafficking.
Colombia has seen an increase of 41.5 per cent in cases of sexual, gender-based violence against Venezuelan women and girls during the pandemic compared to the same period in 2019, with 2,538 cases of gender-based violence reported against Venezuelan women and girls in September 2020.
There has also been a near 70 per cent increase in murders of Venezuelan women during the pandemic – from 31 cases in 2019 to 52 between March and November 2020 – UNHCR said, citing the National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences.
2,000 a day still crossing
"People are still crossing, they're very much estimates, because the borders are closed and people are using irregular crossing points; but we are looking in the past few weeks at 2,000 Venezuelans a day getting into Colombia", said Marie-Helene Verney, UNHCR Head of Operations for the Venezuela Situation.
"We're seeing a lot – and I mean a lot – of women with children on their own coming out at the moment. Then what? Then they arrive and because they have entered irregularly, it can be very difficult if not impossible for them to get regular status."
She added: "What's been incredible since the start of COVID in a region where we had a vast majority of refugees and migrants – let's say 80, 85 per cent were self-reliant – not necessarily living very well, but at least self-reliant – COVID has had absolutely the reverse effect, that now we're looking at a population that's really dependent on humanitarian assistance."
© UNICEF/Santiago Arcos
Migrants cross from Venezuela into Cucuta, Colombia.
According to UNHCR, older persons – often the major breadwinner – face additional hardship since almost half have lost their jobs. Prior to the pandemic, one in four skipped meals. Since COVID-19, more than four in 10 have had to cut back on the amount they eat.
One of the aims of the pledging conference will be to highlight the significant efforts made by host countries in Latin America to respond to the unprecedented exodus from Venezuela, which remains the world's second biggest displacement crisis after Syria.
Concerns for the region are growing amid predictions by institutions including the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, of an economic contraction of eight per cent in South America over the next two years, the worst economic recession in 120 years.
Highlighting the threat posed by COVID-19 and protection gap for Venezuelan migrants and refugees, UNHCR noted that nearly two million of them had settled in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay – countries with some of the highest coronavirus infection and death counts globally.
Healthcare shortages
"Venezuelans have mostly been included in national health responses, but with hospitals operating at full capacity, access to treatment for other illnesses, including those associated with the winter season, has become ever more challenging," the UN agency said in a statement.
"What we are trying to help governments achieve as well is how to prevent Venezuelan refugees and migrants from using irregular paths and falling in the hands of people who exploit them in order to facilitate their crossings into neighbouring countries," said Eduardo Stein, Joint UNHCR-IOM Special Representative for Venezuelan refugees and migrants.
"While COVID-19 continues to devastate the region, the arrival of winter threatens to expose Venezuelans to unspeakable hardship. Despair is already deepening, and negative coping mechanisms are on the rise," said Juan Carlos Murillo, Representative of the Regional Office for Southern Latin America. "Despite the commendable efforts of hosting countries to reduce suffering, more support is required to face the soaring needs.


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Istanbul Region, Istanbul Sightseeing Tours
Istanbul Classic – Half Day Morning Tour
Tour type : Group Tour
Route : Istanbul
Destinations : Topkapi Palace & Harem Museum
Duration :4 Hours
Departure : Everyday
Run: Everyday
Topkapi Palace & Harem Museum: An extensive tour of the residence of the legendary Ottoman Sultans, now converted into a museum. It consists of several exhibition halls, such as the Treasury, the porcelain section, the armory and the rooms devoted to holy relics.
Stunning tile in the Hall of the Ablution Fountain at the entrance of the Harem section of the Topkapı Palace. The Eunuchs were the guards who protected the most private part of the palace.
The Imperial Harem is the section of the Topkapı Palace where the most private apartments of the sultan are located. The Harem was home to the sultan's mother, the concubines and wives of the sultan, and the rest of his family, including children, their servants as well as the eunuchs guarding the harem. The Harem consists of a series of buildings and structures, connected through hallways and courtyards. Every service team and hierarchical group residing in the Harem had its own living space clustered around a courtyard. The Harem wing was only added at the end of the 16th century.
The Topkapı Palace is a sprawling palace complex whose construction started in 1459–only six years after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople (now Istanbul). It served as the official and primary residence of the Ottoman Sultans for approximately 400 years (1465-1856). The palace is a complex made up of four main courtyards and many smaller buildings. At the height of its existence as a royal residence, the palace was home to as many as 4,000 people. Topkapı Palace gradually lost its importance at the end of the 17th century, as the Sultans preferred to spend more time in their new palaces along the Bosporus. In 1856, the court was moved to the newly built Dolmabahçe Palace.
Please note that the order in which sights are visited may vary.
Please make note of the following:
There is a 30% discount for children under the age of 7 and children aged 2 and younger are free
Please note that the order in which sights are visited may vary
Haghia Sophia Museum is closed on Monday, replaced with Topkapi Palace Museum
There are no shopping stops made during our tour but if our guests would like to do some shopping following the conclusion of the tour we can be of assistance
It is advised to wear conservative clothing when visiting mosques and churches
You are kindly requested to present yourself at the pick up point 15 minutes prior to the preadvised pick up time
Smoking is not permitted in transportation vehicles nor in museums
Please note that the sights visited in this tour are also available as two separate half day tours
Taksim and Sultanahmet area pick up
Fully guided tour with the services of an experienced and licensed English speaking guide
Luxury non smoking air conditioned transportation
On ground support and access to True Blue Tour Istanbul office should you require any assistance
Option to have True Blue Tour book your hotel
V.A.T.
Excluded:
International flights to and from Istanbul
Travel insurance (travel insurance is included for full itinerary tours but not for separate daily tours)
Note that items marked as ''optional' are suggestions not yet included in the price of the tour
Any expenses not noted in the above list of inclusions
Personal expenses such as hotel extras, etc.
Old City Relics – Half Day Afternoon Tour Bosphorus Plus – Half Day Morning Tour
We are member of TURSAB (The association of Turkish travel agencies)
We are travel expert of Turkeyx We have 16 years of experience and wonderful feedbacks (Please check trip advisor reviews)
We only work selected hotels


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In case you have trouble seeing this picture at this scale, there is a little gremlin dancing under the painting of the Newbury marshes. He smirks as water drips off the painting and onto the floor. The naughty little guy pulled on the canvas and now the floor of the studio is getting wet. Trompe l'oeil or trick of the eye is a genre in painting with its own story and people who write about art like to worry the subject of the artifice in art.
It is easy to forget that humor is not a recent invention in art. Martin Johnson Heade (1819-1904)certainly was aware of the serious debates among other artists of the Hudson River School about the merits of naturalism versus artifice. With one (actually, there are two versions of Gremlins in The Studio) work the size of an ordinary book page, Heade winked it all away.
Of course, Heade was a serious artist and the marshlands were his chosen subject. Out of six hundred paintings, fully a fifth were images of of a landscape subject to the constant movement of the tides, its moist air fragmenting the light and changing colors before his eye. To create works of evanescent beauty on canvas requires many skills. It turns out that one of Heade's was a sense of humor.
And then there is Charles Jones (1866-1959) a British gardener and amateur photographer, forgotten by the world until Sean Sexton discovered a cache of his work when he purchased an old trunk at a London bazaar in 1981.
Plant Kingdoms (1998), the resulting book, is impressive in every respect, from Jones's photographs to Sexton's text, full of poetry and insight, to the appreciation penned by Alice Waters, founder of Chez Panisse Restaurant in Berkeley, California.
Jones usually photographed his fruits and vegetables in front of flat, blank backdrops. We seldom see them this way now, gleaming with moisture, dug from the ground or plucked from the vine, found works of art. It was Jones' wit to see that what he had made was worthy of recording.
Garden Scene with Photographer's Cloth Backdrop (c. 1900) is a premature example of modern irony. We realize that the backdrop is a photographer's studio cloth when we notice a crooked elbow and part of an apron peeking out from behind the scrim. Jones, who liked to move in on his subjects for close-ups, here backs off the camera to show truly giant-sized flowers. That crooked arm resting on hip telegraphs the joke: wow!
1. Martin Johnson Heade - Gremlin In The Studio II, c.1865-1875, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT.
2. Martin Johnson Heade - Salt Marsh Hay, c.1864-1876, Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH.
2. Charles Jones - Garden Scene With Photographer's Backdrop, c. 1900, courtesy Plant Kingdoms by Sean Sexton.
You may also be interested in these posts:
Alongshore With Martin Johnson Heade - April 23, 2008.
By Salt Marshes: Everett Stanly Hubbard & Arthur Wesley Dow - May 14, 2008.
Plum Island - July 12, 2010.
Waders - May 29, 2010.
Posted by Jane Librizzi at 7:39 AM 2 comments:
The Grief Gondola
"Two old men, father-in-law and son-in-law, Liszt and Wagner,
are staying on the Grande Canal
together with the restless woman who is married to King Midas
he who turns everything he touches into Wagner.
The green chill of the sea pushes up through the palace floors.
Wagner is a marked man, the well known Caspar profile is more tired than before
his face a white flag.
The gondola is heavily laden with their lives,
two round trips and one one-way.
A window in the palace blows open, they grimace in the sudden draught.
Outside on the water, the garbage gondola appears, paddled
by two one-oared bandits.
Liszt has composed a few chords so heavy they ought to be sent
to the mineralogical institute in Padua for analysis.
Meteorites!
Too heavy to rest, they are able only to sink and sink through the future
all the way down to the year of the brownshirts.
The gondola is heavily laden with the huddled stones of the future.
Openings toward 1990.
March 25: Worry about Lithuania.
Dreamt I visited a large hospital.
No staff. Everyone was a patient.
In the same dream a newborn girl
who spoke in complete sentences.
Compared to his son-in-law, who is a man of his time, Liszt is a
motheaten grandseigneur.
It's a disguise.
The deep that tries out and discards various masks has chosen
just this one for him—
the deep that wants to join the humans without showing its face.
Abbé Liszt is used to carrying his own suitcase through sleet and sunshine
and when the time comes to die there will be no one there
to meet him at the station.
A tepid breeze of highly gifted cognac carries him off
in the midst of an assignment.
He is never free of assignments.
Two thousand letters a year!
The schoolboy who writes the misspelled word one hundred times before he is
allowed to go home.
The gondola is heavily laden with life, it is simple and black.
Back to 1990.
Dreamt I drove a hundred miles in vain.
Then everything was magnified. Sparrows as large as hens
sang so that my ears popped.
Dreamt that I had drawn piano keys
on the kitchen table. I played on them, mutely.
The neighbors came in to listen.
The clavier which has been silent through all of Parsifal (but it has listened)
is at last allowed to say something.
Sighs...sospiri...
When Liszt plays tonight he holds down the sea-pedal so that
the green force of the sea
rises through the floor and flows together with all the stone of the building.
Good evening beautiful deep!
Dreamt I was starting school but came late.
Everyone in the room wore white masks.
It was impossible to tell who was the teacher."
- Grief Gondola # 2 by Tomas Transtromer, translated from the Swedish by Malena Morling, 1998.
Call it La lugubre gondole, or the funeral gondola. In French it sounds fitting for the experience of a grieving widow. Let us specify Cosima Lizst von Bulow Wagner, whose name merely hints at a life rich in incident. Daughter of composer Franz Lizst, wife of the influential music critic Hans von Bulow, mistress, wife and finally widow of composer Richard Wagner.
In the poem (above) by recent Nobel Literature laureate Tomas Transtromer it becomes Grief Gondola #2. The "#2" refers to Lizst's several versions of a piece he composed in the wake of his son-in-law's death on February 13, 1883 in Venice. The second version for piano is the best known and was included in the composer's portfolio of Transcendental Etudes.
"My wife is very strong-willed," Hans von Bulow had noted mildly of his young bride. Cosima was the mother of two young girls when, at twenty-six, she began a flagrant affair with Richard Wagner. Seven years and three children (whom she passed off as von Bulow's) later, and after an apology from Wagner's royal patron for exiling the composer when rumors ran rampant, the lovers were finally wed in 1870.
Strong-willed as Cosima was, she was not granted her wish to die with Wagner "in the selfsame hour." When Wagner died the making of the death mask had to be postponed while Cosima clung to the decaying corpse. The funeral procession that took Wagner's remains back to Bayreuth sailed down the Grand Canal, with a gondola draped in black. No one could see the widow who had cut off her hair and stuffed it into the coffin.
Lizst had disapproved his daughter's conduct but the two reconciled and he visited the Wagners for the last time at Christmastime 1862. Perhaps his own numerous health problems contributed to Lizst's premonition of Wagner's death. We know his imagination was transfixed by the funeral processions, gliding silently along the canal like so many black swans, by his use of poignant augmented triads, drifting toward atonality.
Tomas Transtromer was one of those writers I had meant to look into, until he won the Nobel Prize for Literature last year and events overtook me. Now there are books to choose from and not just the odd poem included in an anthology here and there. I've wrestled with Lizst's piano pieces, especially the beautiful Consolation in B-flat, but not Der Trauer Gondel and failed to mention the celebrations of Lizst's bicentennial year in 2011.
1. Joseph Saint-Germier - A Burial In Venice, 1899, Musee d'Orsay, Paris.
2. Edward Steichen - Late Afternoon - Venice, originally printed in Camera Work for April 1913, Musee d'Orsay, Paris.
Cosima Wagner: Lady of Bayreuth by Oliver Hilmes, Yale University Press: 2010.
The Deleted World by Tomas Trasntromer, Farrar, Straus & Giroux: 2011.
For the Living And The Dead by Tomas Transtromer, Ecco Press: 2011.
The Great Enigma by Tomas Transtromer, New Directions: 2006.
Inspired Winter by Tomas Transtromer, Dedalus Press: 2011.
The Sorrow Gondola by Tomas Transtromer, Green Integer Press: 2010
Posted by Jane Librizzi at 10:49 AM 4 comments:


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This file type includes high resolution graphics and schematics when applicapable the range of applications for in hub motors will also increase. As with most electric motors the required load Faraday took the idea one giant step forward by demonstrating the first electric motor. Looking at the schematic to the left note that a permanent magnet is mounted within a pool of mercury and that.
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The Aggie Awards
Game Discovery
Our selection of top games
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Trials and Tribulations review
Written by Kim Wild — October 27, 2007
Hilarious, well-written dialogue
Longer cases with in-depth storylines
More logical puzzles than previous games
Lovable cast of old and new characters
Makes no special use of DS capabilities
Occasionally hard to know when to present evidence
Doesn't offer anything new over previous games
4.5 stars: "A superb game that excels in just about every area, held back only by one or two notable flaws or a collection of smaller ones that prevent the game from earning full marks."
Our Verdict: A climactic end to the Phoenix Wright story, Trials and Tribulations is the high point of the series, wrapping together great storylines, dialogue and characters into one portable package. Buy it now before I make use of Franziska's whip.
Average Reader rating Readers rate this game as Very Good.
Average based on 13 ratings
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Trials and Tribulations (2007)
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It is with a certain degree of sadness that I write this review. Not because the game is rubbish, as nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, Trials and Tribulations is the best iteration in the Ace Attorney series to date. No, it's because this is the final game to feature Phoenix Wright as the main star. Yet it is a wonderful end to a series of games that has captivated a whole new audience, and if you have already been following Phoenix's escapades so far, this game is an essential purchase and a fitting tribute to his courtroom legacy.
For those who haven't become acquainted with the Ace Attorney series yet, this is a semi-traditional, Nintendo DS-styled point-and-click adventure that will feel familiar to genre fans but is inventive enough in its approach to stand out from the crowd. You take on the role of a young defense attorney who has to represent his clients in the face of pretty damning evidence, along with doing a lot of your own legwork in the field to support your case. The court scenarios see you dissecting witness testimony and then presenting evidence to uncover the lies. The other side of the game is that of the investigation, where you visit crime scenes, collect evidence and interview potential suspects.
Any newcomers expecting realism will be disappointed: this series abides by courtroom law on only a basic level and throws the rulebook out of the window, concentrating far more on theatrical outbursts, erratic witness testimonies and the introduction of new and often contradictory evidence. The game's Japanese origins are evident from the anime style, exaggerated expressions and offbeat humour, and it is this wackiness that makes the game such a delight.
The new features that were introduced in Justice For All, including the Psyche-Lock, the ability to present character profiles as evidence and the health bar, all make a reappearance here and remain unchanged. The Psyche-Lock occurs during the investigation stage, when padlocks appear around a certain topic that the person interviewed wants to keep hidden from prying eyes. Only the correct presentation of evidence will break these locks and reveal the secret, although you might not always have the right piece of evidence until further along in the investigation. Being able to use profiles as a form of evidence adds depth to the possibilities and enables more information to be revealed about the various characters. Meanwhile, getting a point wrong during a court case will provoke a penalty from the judge, which results in some of your health bar being depleted.
As a first in the series, Trials and Tribulations sees you take on the role of other attorneys as well as Phoenix Wright throughout the game. Unlike the second game, which used a weak amnesia excuse to justify the opening case, the tutorial for this game is better executed, played from the perspective of Phoenix's original mentor Mia Fey during her very first court appearance. Mia makes an appearance in another flashback case further along in the game, defending a man on death row who is accused of murdering a police officer. The second case sees Phoenix back in the hot seat, trying to uncover the theft of an urn, which inevitably leads to a whole new set of complications, while the third has a suspect wrongly convicted of murder by a Phoenix Wright impersonator and it's your job to reverse the decision and find out who is behind such trickery. The last case focuses heavily on Maya Fey, Phoenix's assistant, and manages to wrap up some loose ends from previous titles as well as explain the events of the flashback cases more in depth.
One of the criticisms of the last game was the more obscure leaps of logic required for certain puzzles and thankfully these seem to have been eradicated. The new game is far more intelligent and the characters work out the twists with you, meaning you never feel that you are leaving the game behind.
Where Trials and Tribulations falls a bit flat is in how much of the material from previous games remains identical. Graphics for locations and characters are frequently reused without any advancement for the third game running, and this also applies to the soundtrack, which only has a small number of original themes. The same can be said for the rest of the game as a whole: the entire structure is identical to its predecessors, from the investigation side of things right down to the court cases and cross examination, without any noticeable change besides new characters and storylines. Of course, it would be foolish to tamper with a successful formula and the game is still a compelling adventure, but those expecting innovation or already tired of the series to date will be disappointed. There are also a few gameplay faults, such as knowing the correct evidence to present but finding the game picky about when and how to use it. This leads to saving throughout major testimonies so you can reload quickly and keep trying until you prevail. As a text-based game, those who despair in reading reams of dialogue will be better off looking elsewhere for their adventure kicks. The lack of any DS-specific content is also something of a disappointment and would have added more originality to the adventure.
While so much is similar, what makes Trials and Tribulations fantastic is that the characters and dialogue are even more entertaining than ever before. Never in the series have I laughed so much as I did with the dialogue in this game. What other game could have rival attorneys throwing cups of coffee at you during a convincing cross examination and have witnesses hurl bird seeds at everyone in the court room and yet get away with it with such panache? With characters like the fat, cross-dressing chef, a detective called Luke Atmey (get it?) and an overweight nun comically named Bikini, it's hard not to laugh at the absurdity of it all, and yet within the context of the Phoenix Wright universe, it somehow makes perfect sense. Fans of the series will be delighted to see the return of the foolish judge, Detective Gumshoe, Larry-if it smells it's got to be the-Butz and a certain whip-cracking Franziska Von Karma. Edgeworth fans, do not fear: despite being absent for a considerable chunk of the game, he plays a pivotal role in the fifth case that will absolutely captivate you. There are plenty of in-jokes for those familiar with the series, but even those who haven't acquainted themselves with Phoenix Wright before will be able to play Trials and Tribulations, as the game nicely explains referenced events as you go along.
Best of all, the storylines are the deepest they have ever been, not only as individual cases but also in a broader story arc that strings all of the cases from previous games together. Whereas Justice For All had some noticeably weak cases in the beginning, Trials and Tribulations is made of strong stuff from beginning to end, with the last case proving particularly moving towards its climax. You would be hard pushed not to feel some sentiment during the game's conclusion. It's the type of game where I would love to divulge the genius of the storylines and reveal all the wittiest lines but to do so would deprive you of the joy of the unexpected that comes from playing a game for the first time. And the twists really are unexpected: just when you think it is all over, you can guarantee that something else will crop up to turn the case on its head. This is by far the deepest, darkest game in the series, yet the superb writing means that it will also be the funniest you'll encounter.
Despite the absence of a case made exclusively for the DS (the first game in the series spoiled us in that respect), Trials and Tribulations has five cases that combine to last a minimum of 20 hours, leaving no room for disappointment in longevity. What prevents the game from scoring top marks is the fact that structurally nothing has altered from previous games in the series, offering only new storylines, puzzles and new characters. And while it has addressed some, it still suffers from a few of the faults that niggled in both predecessors, like needing to save just before a sudden death question so as not to wade through reams of text to get back to where you were, plus the uncertainty of how to present evidence on occasions. Translation errors also rear their ugly head, with spelling mistakes and missed words highlighting its foreign language origins. Yet these are all small issues that shouldn't detract from what is one of the best adventure games on the Nintendo DS to date, or any platform for that matter, and I would raise a fierce "Objection!" to anyone who argues otherwise.
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text:
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Climbing Anchors
Rigging 101, from the worst to the best types of anchor systems, including the sliding-X, standard equalized and the quad.
How you construct a station depends on the features of the rock, your rack and the availability of fixed gear. The textbook anchor has at least three separate, cam-and-nut-eating cracks, or three bomber bolts.
In real life, anchors aren't usually so perfect. On multipitch or trad climbs, your anchor will often consist of a bit of everything—a few nuts, a cam, and, on popular routes, a fixed pin or bolt—strung across the stance. The shape of the cracks and availability of fixed gear will dictate what you can arrange, but you should always try to set gear so each piece complements the other. Place a multidirectional cam, for example, to keep other anchors, like nuts, from being pulled up and out. String everything together so it's equalized, meaning that each piece would bear an equal load. Study this chapter thoroughly, even if you're a gym climber.
A three-point "Quad Anchor."
You never know when you'll have to set up a bomber anchor—it's smart not to rely on your crag-savvy friend's anchor skills, in case he or she is
injured on the wall.
GIVE AND TAKE
There is no single one-stop-shop for constructing an anchor, and, in reality, no anchor is perfect. In a lab setting you might eventually build the ideal anchor, but in the field there are just too many variables. Fixed gear, for example, will have an unknown strength (Is it rusted? Has freeze/thaw loosened that pin? How strong is that faded webbing?). A cam in granite might hold a Mack Truck, but a cam in sandstone could shear through the soft rock. Even the best of the various equalized systems can't be 100 percent equalized—there will always be slack somewhere and the stretch rates of cord, rope and sling are all different, placing different loads on the various pieces.
Understanding the limitations of anchors will make you a cautious climber, one who always strives for the perfection anchor. With that in mind, you'll constantly adjust your system to make the most of what you have, which is why you need to know a multitude of ways to make an anchors, and understand the principles that make an anchor you can trust your and your partner's lives to.
The rules for creating a lead or toprope anchor station are the same: Both must always be SERENE.
S = SOLID
Every piece of the anchor is strong enough to hold the entire load by itself.
E = EQUALIZED
Each anchor placement should carry a load equal to that of the other placements. You'll use slings, sewn chains, the rope, or a cordelette to adjust the distances from each placement to the "master point," so each placement bears the same load under tension.
R = REDUNDANT
At least two pieces of gear. On sport climbs this will usually be two bolts, but on gear routes you'll often have three placements, even more. Never
rely on a single anchor. Double up all key components. Even an equalized anchor is a disaster if you clip to the master point with just one carabiner,
and that carabiner breaks. Double up all critical slings, and compound your anchor by placing at least three cams or nuts instead of two.
E = EFFICIENT
The anchor should be simple, so you can easily inspect it, and it shouldn't take more than a moment to construct.
NE = NO EXTENSION
If a piece fails, the anchor sling on that piece won't allow for any drop, which would shock-load the remaining placements.
Types of Anchors
AMERICAN DEATH TRIANGLE
A crude method for joining two or more anchors is to string them all into the loop of a sling. At a glance, the "American Death Triangle" might seem fine, but if one anchor fails, the collapse of the triangle shock-loads the surviving anchor with up to a ton of force. Do not use the American Death Triangle.
Do not use the American Death Triangle!
In those rare situations where you are forced to use this configuration because it is fixed on the anchor (common at older, fixed rappel stations),
make sure the sling is at least doubled up, and back up the anchor if you can. The example we've shown here is especially bad because the cord is slung through the bolt hangers. This is a common situation at older rappel stations, where the first ascentionists were skimping on carabiners (maybe they didn't have enough). Don't follow their lead: never run rope, sling or cord straight through a bolt hanger. The sharp radius of the hanger can cut the nylon. Always use carabiners to connect nylon to metal.
SLIDING X
When you take a sling, give it a half-twist and clip through the twist you create the Sliding X, a common, simple and highly effective equalization method for two anchors that has the additional benefit of readjusting itself when the angle of loading changes. Nevertheless, it is not recommended. The single sling is not redundant, and if either anchor point fails, the remaining piece is subject to a shock-load of up to two tons, depending on the distance between the two anchors.
IMPROVED SLIDING X
Tie an overhand loop in both sides of the sling or cord above the X, and you dramatically decrease the shock-load potential. The trade off: The closer you tie the overhand knots to the X, the more you reduce the system's ability to equalize. Despite this limitation, the Improved X is a good alternative when you are low on slings. It is also a good method for equalizing pro on lead, and equalizing two anchors that are in turn woven into a cordelette-rigged belay.
CORDELETTE – Standard Equalized Anchor
For simplicity, redundancy, ease of use and low-potential shock loading, the cordelette is one standard for equalizing anchors. A cordelette is a dedicated 9-foot loop of 7- or 8mm cord, typically tied with a double fisherman's. Numerous companies produce pre-made cordelettes, in various lengths with the ends of the knots sewn down so they can never come untied. To use, ( 1 ) clip each anchor into the loop, pull down the cordelette between each anchor, gather these to an equalized point, and ( 2 ) tie them together with a figure-eight loop. The loops formed by the figure-eight are the power-point. The crux to properly setting a cordelette is guessing the direction the anchor will be loaded. For instance, if you know the anchor will be loaded off to the left, tie the cordelette so the power point is off to the left. Since a cordelette only equalizes in one direction, you need to get this right. Guess wrong, and just one piece will bear the brunt of the load.
Properly rigged, the cordelette will equalize the anchors; if one point fails, shock-loading will be minimal.
NOTE: WIDE ANGLES = LOAD MULTIPLICATION
With any anchor, keep the angle formed by the connecting slings as acute as possible. When the slings form wide "wings" as you see in this illustration, the load multiplies on each anchor because the pieces pull against one another, creating inward as well as downward load. When the angle formed by the slings is 60 degrees, the load on each equalized anchor is 58 percent. Increase that angle to 90 degrees, and the load on each anchor increases to 70 percent. Go up to 150 degrees, a realistic scenario if anchors are connected with short slings, and the load on each anchor can reach 200 percent!
An angle of 60 degrees or less is ideal. Achieve this angle by using long slings or a long cordelette-type connector.
HITCHES, SLINGS AND THE ROPE
Piecing together an anchor when you don't have slings, or when slings are all you have, isn't ideal. These "old school" methods have pinch-hit since climbing was invented, but modern systems such as the cordelette and the "quad" are always preferred.
(1) Clove hitching the rope to the anchors is especially weak. This system doesn't equalize at all. If one anchor fails, the remaining anchor would be shock-loaded.
(2) Tying a figure-eight on a bight and clipping the loop through the anchors, though quick and easy, has the same flaw as the American Death Triangle: If one anchor fails, the other is shock-loaded.
(3) Using slings of varying lengths to equalize an anchor can be fine, but it is unlikely that your slings will be the exact length to fully equalize the anchors. In our example, the sling lengths are close, but because the left slings are shorter, their anchor will take more than half the load—a typical real-world outcome. This anchor is also shown with non-locking carabiners, another no-no.
The sewn loops on a daisy chain make it seem like a simple tool for setting up an equalized anchor. Never use a daisy chain to rig an anchor. The loops were not designed for safely catching a lead or toprope fall. If you whip on a daisy chain, the stitching that divides the loops could rip out of the webbing. However, it's O.K. to use a daisy chain for aid climbing.
Read Climb Safe: Daisy Chain Dangers
PERSONAL ANCHOR SYSTEMS, ANCHOR CHAINS AND EQUALIZERS
Numerous companies make sewn slings that look similar to daisy chains, but are fundamentally different because instead of having sewn pockets like a daisy chain, which as just noted can break, these have small, individually sewn loops that connect like the links of a chain. Each link is belay strength, and these are intended to be used for rigging belays, and for tethering yourself to the anchor.
Often called "personal anchor systems," or PAS, these slings—you'll need two—are convenient attachments for using on multipitch routes, and for anchoring to rappel stations. There are at least two types, one for connecting yourself to the anchor, and another, usually a longer version,
that you use to rig and equalize the anchor. Redundant, efficient and equalized the PAS systems fulfill the needs as long as the load is in between the anchors. When the load is to one side, one anchor will receive more than 50 percent.
A PAS system of links is easy to adjust, one of its benefits.
Great, as long as the load is between the anchors.
A PAS with a third anchor included in the system.
Angle formed is too steep. Lengthening both sides of the PAS would reduce anchor load multiplication, and a potential shock-load.
A side loading will cause one anchor to receive more loading, and possibly the entire load.
As its name implies, The Quad uses four strands of a cordelette to provide anchor points for two, three or even four anchors, but is most often used
to connect a two-piece anchor such as bolts.
The Quad is a self-equalizing anchor system that adjusts to off-center loading, an advantage over the standard cordelette. The Quad is quick to tie, works in most situations, and provides separate clip-in points for the belayer and climber, preventing them from jamming up at the same master point. On routes where you have bolted stations that are approximately the same, you can keep The Quad tied, making it even more efficient.
Since The Quad is a doubled cordelette, it does lack a cordelette's reach, a problem if you are rigging gear anchors where the placements are far apart, however, you can anticipate this by making your cordelette four to six feet longer than usual.
Use two strands of the master point to anchor yourself to, and the other two to clip your partner to. If you have a belay device that works in "guide
mode," or an "assisted- brake" type device, you can clip the device to the second loop and belay directly off it.
[Read more on the Quad Anchor here.]
Step 1: To tie the quad, start with cordelette (tied in a loop using a double-fisherman's bend) and double over the cordelette.
Step 2: Tie an overhand on a bight in one side. This knot will serve as a shock-load reducer. You may have to fiddle with its position.
Step 3: Tie an overhand on a bight on the other side, also to serve as a shock- load reducer.
Step 4: Clip the anchor, and separate the four master-point loops into two.
Next How to Lead Climb
Revisit Protection
Face Climbing Techniques: Slab Climbing
Bob Gaines
How to Climb: Expert Advice for Mastering Finger Cracks
Pete Whittaker
The First Sport – Getting a Grip on that Thing We Do
Types of Climbing


That is what we presumed from the Symbian ANNA icons used in this video and fresh UI which has to be launched in Symbian Belle PR 3.0 firmware update.
However this Smart Phone is supposed to have MeeGo Operating System and Intel Atom Processor clocked at 1.2 Ghz. 12 Megapixel Carl Zeiss Lens for Camera along with Dual Led which is supposed to help while recording HD videos at night.


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A collection of number bonds to 10. Each picture shows a certain number of eggs and chicks that total 10. Ideal to use in the spring or when exploring a farm theme in your school or early years setting. They show the different ways that you can make 10.
My son really likes chickens for some reason, so this has been a great way of encouraging him to practice his counting!
Will be great for my hatching Spring Chicken Topic.
Decorative pirate themed number line from 1-10.