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This week's television rules! There's the long-awaited Robot Chicken Star Wars special. Henry Rollins wants to know if you have the "warrior gene." Big Bang Theory does the JLA! Plus live(ish) comedy from Ricky Gervais, Jeff Bridges...and Monty Python.
At 8 PM, The CW has the first night of its week-long marathon of The Vampire Diaries, if you've gotten behind on your vampire crack. It's pretty much either that, or Mariah Carey's Christmas special.
National Geographic has a special called When Rome Ruled: Doomsday Pompeii, focusing on the final hours of the doomed city before the volcanic eruption. That's at 9 PM.
We're not listing movies as a matter of course any more — but when there's something special, it's worth the occasional mention. At 3:35 AM, Showtime is showing Zerophilia, one of the strangest — and most provocative — queer movies we've ever seen. (Watch a clip from it, plus learn more about it, here.)
The Vampire Diaries marathon continues on the CW, but sadly there's no new No Ordinary Family.
There is, however, a new Tower Prep at 9 PM on the Cartoon Network! "The gang discovers that they've all been having the same strange dreams involving a yellow elevator. Upon investigating the dreams, they discover the hidden place where new students are brought to Tower Prep. At the same time, Ian and Gabe get a new roommate, who Ian suspects may be a spy sent by Headmaster to thwart their plans."
What makes people act aggressive and/or batshit insane? Find out in The Explorer: Born to Rage?, a documentary about whether there's a single gene called the "warrior gene" that causes impulsive behavior. Punk rock icon Henry Rollins interviews gang members, bikers, fighters and an ex-Navy SEAL, plus Buddhist monks and scientists, to learn the truth. Don't make Henry Rollins angry — watch this program on National Geographic at 10 PM.
How can MythBusters top last week's appearance by President Obama? With Seth Rogen! Rogen joins with Adam and Jamie for a special Green Hornet-themed episode, in which they test some myths that hit as hard as a gas gun. (??) Here are the details:
The MYTHBUSTERS team, with Seth as their assistant, tackles two pivotal scenes from the film. First up is "Explosive Escape," where The Green Hornet and his tech-savvy sidekick Kato are buried alive in the Green Hornet's iconic car Black Beauty and blast their way out using the car's built-in rockets. Adam, Jamie and Seth re-create this explosive silver screen scene… with a little TNT party.
Then, in "Elevator Car Cut," Seth requests that Kari, Grant and Tory take on another action sequence from the movie, where The Green Hornet and Kato again find themselves in a jam. After being shot up by bad guys they crash into an elevator. As the elevator ascends, it slices the car in half, leaving them to escape in the front half of the car. To test this scene, the team build their own elevator from 3 ½ tons of steel, chop a car in half and take half a car to the racetrack. Will any of these results be Hollywood ready?
Here's a clip:
Another late-night movie that we have to plug: 12:01, which has almost the same plot as Groundhog Day and had the misfortune to air on television around the same time as that film's release, is on Syfy at 3:00 in the morning. Featuring Commander Koenig himself!
This week's Big Bang Theory is particularly noteworthy. The gang finds a "Super" use for Penny's new boyfriend Zack when they all decide to go in costume as the Justice League. That's on CBS at 8 PM.
And then at 9 PM, there's a two-hour season finale of Burn Notice. Brennen tries to force Michael to kill government agents. Then Michael's world collapses as a tactical team comes after him and everyone he cares about.
And History has a new Ancient Aliens at 9 PM, followed by a new Brad Meltzer's Decoded.
It's the midseason finale of Sanctuary, on Syfy at 10 PM. Dr. Magnus tells Adam Worth she's setting off for the Hidden City to find the cure for their radiation illness.
Another must-see rarely shown film: IFC is showing Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl, featuring different performances of some of their famous sketches, performed in front of a live audience. That's at 8:15 PM and 2:00 AM.
Ricky Gervais is back with another HBO special, Ricky Gervais: Out of England 2, and since he frequently includes some pretty geeky or science fictional humor in his work, we thought we'd mention it here. That's on HBO at 10 PM. Judging from this review of the live show this is based on, there'll be a lot of material based on the science book Biological Exuberance.
The Dude himself, Jeff Bridges, is on Saturday Night Live, and there may be some amusing Tron-related moments. Or not.
Another late-night movie I feel the need to plug: Dagon, one of the best films based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft, is on Syfy at 3 AM. (Sadly, they may have to trim this scene slightly.)
It's Leverage's turn to have a two-hour season finale. Here are the episode descriptions:
The Big Bang Job: The team infiltrates a Department of Defense research lab in order to stop Damien Moreau, the villain they have been working to catch all season, from murdering a brilliant engineer and auctioning her work off to international terrorists.
The San Lorenzo Job: The LEVERAGE team follows Moreau to San Lorenzo only to find that Moreau is the chief advisor to the current President. In order to take Moreau down, the team must first take over the country.
But the big deal of the evening is the one-hour Robot Chicken Star Wars Episode III special — based on the trailers we've seen so far, we can't wait to see the whole thing! Check out a promo:


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In a move seemingly out of the most boring fan fiction ever, Darth Vader and French Daft Punk have teamed up, not to conquer the universe...but to sell footwear.
In a commercial for Adidas' upcoming Star Wars-inspired Original Line, Sith Lord Darth Vader and robotic house music legends Daft Punk descend on a street full of revelers to sell the the universe's finest clodhoppers. For some reason, they are flanked by their presumed bounty hunters, David Beckham and Snoop Dogg.
Why does a dream team-up like this have to happen under totally crass circumstances? This is like buying a ticket to Chewbacca Meets Freddie Mercury: 3D and belatedly discovering it's a 90-minute advertisement for Fig Newtons.
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[Via SciFi Wire. Photo via Flickr.]

subset: commoncrawl


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Dancing's Derek Hough: I Can't Believe We Got a 24
Hi everyone!
Hope you enjoyed the show Monday.
Amy and I had a blast. I thought she did great considering all the craziness the past few weeks. Right before we went on, she said, "I'm nervous, but I don't know if I'm nervous enough." I think it was from the jet lag. If it's a few hours, it's OK, but she was, like, 12 hours ahead and completely out of her body. You want to be in your body and present when you perform in anything. But when you're tired, you're floating. So we did a victory pose where you put your arms up in a V shape and jumped around. That gets your adrenaline going and blood pumping. If you keep still, you'll just get more tired.
I was expecting something like three sevens, so I can't believe we got a 24. For me, scores are irrelevant, but psychologically, the 24 is good for Amy. It can give her the ...
Other Links From TVGuide.com


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I was recently asked to do an interview with Studio 360 for a piece they're doing on people making the transition from the business world to more creative pursuits. When the interviewer asked if I could cook something as part of the interview, the first question I asked was if she had any dietary restrictions. As it turns out, she's a vegetarian and I'm glad I asked because I was initially thinking about making the pork ragù from the other night.
As I started looking back through my recent posts I realized there was a dearth of vegetarian fare. It's not that I have anything against vegetables (if you don't believe me, click here), but I like to try and buy local and seasonal ingredients as much as I can. Unfortunately, winters in New York aren't very hospitable to plant life and root vegetables and pumpkins make up the bulk of local produce during this time of year. The cold weather also makes me crave hearty stewed things but my heart always sheds a tear when I see nice vegetables that have been cooked to death.
Thankfully, we've had a taste of spring here the past few days and I've been feeling ready for some lighter fare. Frittatas are an Italian omelette that are very easy to to make and are a great way to use up leftover veggies and meat. For this one, I started with a base of caramelized onions for sweetness and flavour, added some leftover steamed broccoli rabe then added a good helping of Gruyere to the egg for its nutty savoury flavour. Try experimenting with different cooked vegetables, almost anything will do, just be sure to pre-cook it and drain out any excess water. For the cheese, you could really use anything and I find it's a good way clean up those odds and ends in the cheese drawer.
With a light salad tossed in lemon juice and olive oil, it makes for a pleasant low-effort brunch, and they taste great cold, making them good additions to a picnic basket or a quick weekday breakfast on the go.
- 6 Eggs
- 1 cup Comté
- 1 large onion sliced thin
- 1 cup broccoli rabe steamed and chopped
- salt (to taste)
- black pepper (to taste)
- In a medium bowl whisk the eggs, then add the cheese along with a pinch of salt and pepper. Stir to combine.
- Heat an oven safe non-stick skillet or well seasoned cast iron skillet over medium heat then add a splash of olive oil and saute the onions until soft, brown and fragrant, about 15-20 minutes. If you're using a leafy vegetable, make sure you squeeze out any excess moisture with your hands. Add the vegetables to the pan and saute to warm.
- Pour the egg and cheese mixture over the vegetables and stir to combine. Turn down the heat to medium low then smooth off the top and allow the egg to cook about half-way through. You can check to see how well cooked it is by tipping the pan up and shaking. It should be firm but jiggly, kind of like a pan of jello.
- Move the oven rack to the upper middle position and turn the broiler on. Place the skillet under the broiler until the top is mostly set and is just starting to brown (1-2 minutes). Remove from the oven and allow to rest for 5 minutes. Slice and serve warm with a salad.


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Brian Burke excels at commanding a room. Especially when the Calgary Flames' president of hockey operations is expounding on a topic of disagreement.
Burke is a traditionalist. Yet he also sits on the honorary executive board of the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. Those two concepts capture Burke's skepticism and his desire for clarity.
On Friday at the Hynes Convention Center, Burke made his uncertainty of hockey analytics quite clear. But Burke reiterated that if a numbers-based solution arises, he will write a substantial check to claim its ownership.
"If someone comes up with this analysis — which I haven't seen yet — that makes us better predictors, we'll buy it," said Burke during a panel entitled "Hockey Analytics: Out of the Ice Age." "And we'll make sure no one else can buy it. We're all looking for that edge. But it hasn't materialized, in my mind, yet in hockey as an analytics tool."
Other sports have embraced analytics. The Red Sox hired Bill James. Daryl Morey, general manager of the Houston Rockets, is a conference cochair. The Atlanta Falcons monitor the number of third-and-1 situations to help determine how often they practice those scenarios.
Hockey is behind. Only 10 NHL teams were represented at the conference. At least one NHL GM is unfamiliar with Corsi, the statistic that measures shot attempts and therefore puck possession. In comparison to other sports, hockey remains the mammoth stuck in the Ice Age.
"I think it's still an eyeballs business," Burke said. "We go watch players play. We watch for a lot of things in games that even video won't show. How players respond when a coach yells at them. If they're on the ice and they make a bad play and allow a goal to happen, their body English. How they rally their teammates. Things like that."
As usual, Burke was at an extreme. At the other end was analyst Eric Tulsky. Tulsky majored in chemistry and physics at Harvard. He has a Ph.D. in chemistry from Cal-Berkeley. Tulsky has consulted for the Nashville Predators. Tulsky is a proponent of Corsi and a hater of plus/minus.
The Bruins fall somewhere in the middle. Assistant GM Don Sweeney participated in the panel, along with Capitals assistant GM Donald Fishman and Merrimack coach Mark Dennehy.
The Bruins employ Sydex Sports Software as their analytics consultant. Sydex's primary responsibility is charting scoring chances and their respective categories — who created the chance, who the opposition was, where on the ice it took place, the quality of the chance. The overarching term Sydex uses is shot value.
But the Bruins do not interpret shot value as a stand-alone statistic. They combine shot value with video. For the hockey operations department, coaching staff, and players, the video component is more important than the numbers produced by such events. Through video, the bosses evaluate players. The coaches devise schemes. The players learn their tendencies as well as those of opponents.
"Most hockey coaches and players are visual learners," Sweeney said. "Most of the time, they're looking at a diagram to see a drill, to see what the forecheck is going to do, or how to attack that or break it down. So, if you just hand a coach statistical data, if you don't blend that with some sort of video component, it's going to get washed. You have to be able to say, 'OK, this is how this player is going to react based on his numbers,' then link it to a visual component."
Like all teams, the Bruins consider character when making personnel decisions. This is a common theme around hockey, perhaps more so than other sports. Hockey people constantly talk about gritty players who work hard, play with emotion, and elevate their performance in difficult situations. Character is a challenging characteristic to quantify.
Burke told one of his favorite yarns regarding former Canuck Trevor Linden. When Burke was in Vancouver, Linden was scheduled to attend the club's pre-draft testing in 1988. Linden, who was raised in Medicine Hat, Alberta, called Burke to say he couldn't make it. Linden had to help his uncle conduct Branding Day, where they turn male cattle into steers.
"What's your job?" Burke asked.
"When they come in the pen, I grab them by the neck and haul them down," Linden said. "We brand them and cut their [testicles] off."
"You can skip our test, kid," Burke replied. The Canucks drafted Linden second overall. He played 1,382 games in the NHL.
Character is one hard-to-measure variable. Hockey's game flow is another. Baseball is a series of static events. The pitcher throws. The batter hits. In football, each play starts and stops.
Hockey's events repeatedly bleed into others. There is no industry standard on how to log events.
"We're a fluid game. We're a complicated game," Fishman said. "That's why we love our sport. That's why our sport, I think, is better than other sports. We're not just a series of isolated incidents. On the analytical side, let's stop being obsessed with trying to capture the entire game and come up with some magic formula to capture the game. Because we can't. It's a beautiful piece of art with hundreds of colors. Let's learn about discrete areas and focus on different areas of the game and nail it."
Sabres have enough assets to build quickly
It's no surprise that Buffalo truly initiated the trade season on Friday. The Sabres are the worst team in the league. They fired their coach and general manager in midseason. They handle the puck as if it were dipped in E. coli.
But if they complete their business with as much heat as they brought on Friday, their turnaround could be rapid.
GM Tim Murray acted boldly by shipping Ryan Miller and Steve Ott, his two biggest assets, to St. Louis for Jaroslav Halak, Chris Stewart, William Carrier, a 2015 first-round pick, and a 2016 third-rounder. Buffalo hired Murray from Ottawa for this level of aggressiveness.
The Sabres are in good shape. They have 19 picks over the next two drafts. There's a good chance they could have the first two selections this June in Philadelphia — their own and the Islanders' first-rounder, courtesy of the Thomas Vanek trade.
One condition of the Vanek trade is that the Islanders can choose whether the first-rounder is in 2014 or 2015. It's a slam dunk they'll cede their 2014 selection. No GM wants to give away the 2015 first-rounder that turns into a generational player such as Connor McDavid or Chelmsford whiz Jack Eichel.
Murray can add to his pick total in the next few days. Their top remaining UFAs-to-be are Matt Moulson and Henrik Tallinder. Murray would also like to address long-term anchors Ville Leino ($4.5 million annually through 2016-17) and Christian Ehrhoff ($4 million annually through 2020-21). Those two contracts will not be easy to unload.
But the Sabres need players more than picks. A mid-round player drafted in 2015 won't help Murray until closer to 2020.
Twenty-four scouts attended Buffalo's game against Carolina last Tuesday. One night later, 22 scouts were in the First Niagara Center press box for Buffalo-Boston. Murray started the rebuild on Friday. He's not finished.
Big Olympic sheet caused big problems
These eyes were very pleased to see the NHL resume play on Tuesday, even if it was Carolina against Buffalo.
There were hits, scoring chances, and room through center ice. We saw few of any of those elements during the Olympics because of the international ice surface. The big sheet produced far too many snores for games featuring the world's best players.
The issues with the Olympic sheet are the expansion of the neutral zone and the shrinking of the offensive zone. It should be the other way around.
In Sochi, there was a 58-foot dead zone between the blue lines. In the NHL, it's only 50 feet between the blues. Because the neutral zone was bigger, teams could stack up their defenders in center ice. That discouraged opponents from gaining speed or making plays through the neutral zone.
The blue-to-blue ocean also affected the offensive zone because of the placement of the goal lines. In the NHL, the goal lines are 11 feet from the end boards. In Sochi, the goal lines were 13 feet from the walls. The 64 feet from goal line to blue line in the NHL, therefore, turned into only 58 feet in Sochi.
The area where the cramped offensive zone played the biggest part was offense from the point.
Shot-blocking forwards had no problem popping out to the point to man-up against defensemen with the puck. Shots rarely made it through the first layer of protection. Defensemen had to walk the blue line to open up lanes or look for other options.
The result for the Olympic champs: 17 goals in six games, ridiculously low for a fantasy team. Open the windows and let in some fresh air for 2018, please.
Thomas up for a return
On April 15, 2015, Tim Thomas will turn 41. Thomas would like to celebrate his birthday by being in an NHL uniform for a playoff team. Thomas will be unrestricted after this season. But Markus Lehto, Thomas's agent, said his client would like to return for one more year. Through 38 games, Thomas had a 15-19-3 record with a 2.86 goals-against average and .908 save percentage. It's possible the Panthers could re-sign Thomas to serve in tandem with youngster Jacob Markstrom. It's also possible, however, that Florida could deal Thomas before Wednesday. As of Friday, the Panthers had not approached Thomas about waiving his no-movement clause.
Moulson would be perfect fit
Pittsburgh sent two scouts to First Niagara Center to monitor the Sabres. The Penguins' primary target would be Matt Moulson. The winger would be an ideal replacement for Pascal Dupuis, who is out for the season because of a knee injury. Moulson has some of Dupuis's qualities. He's a left shot. He doesn't hesitate to shoot. He's slippery in tight areas. The Sabres have prospects on defense they could send the other way. Pittsburgh's issue, however, is cap space. They'd need Buffalo to eat some of Moulson's $3,133,333 salary. Or the Penguins would need to send money out the door via separate deals. The easiest solution would be to use the long-term injury exception on Kris Letang. There are injuries. Then there are strokes. The latter, which Letang suffered in January, belongs in the not-messing-around category. The Penguins should tell Letang to forget about hockey for the rest of the season and focus on getting healthy.
Hard line on Broadway
On Friday, Dan Girardi's wait finally came to an end. Five days before the trade deadline, the free agent-to-be signed a six-year, $33 million extension with the Rangers. The right-shot strongman is earning $3.325 million per season on his current contract. There was no need, however, for the Rangers to wait so long. They could have followed the lead of the Blackhawks. Like Girardi, Niklas Hjalmarsson is a defense-first defenseman in the final year of his deal. Instead of negotiating into the season, Chicago GM Stan Bowman locked up Hjalmarsson to a five-year extension Sept. 4, before training camp even started. It gave Hjalmarsson peace of mind. In turn, that helped the Blackhawks shake off any Cup hangover concerns to start the season. That's the security today's players like. They don't want to wait. But that's the culture in New York with old-school GM Glen Sather. Derek Stepan had to wait until Sept. 26 to sign a two-year, $6.15 million extension. Henrik Lundqvist didn't sign his seven-year, $59.5 million deal until Dec. 4. It doesn't appear that waiting as long as they did worked out well for the Rangers. New York started the season 4-7-0.
Lightning not likely to deal captain
Martin St. Louis did not act like a captain if he asked out from Tampa Bay. St. Louis put himself above the team, which is the opposite of what captains are supposed to do. The Lightning are in a good spot. They could lock up a playoff spot if Steven Stamkos regains his touch in the final month of the regular season. There is little chance that granting St. Louis's wish and dealing him before Wednesday would make the Lightning better. There are few combinations more dangerous offensively than St. Louis and Stamkos. It would be irresponsible for GM Steve Yzerman to make such a move. Even more irresponsible than the player making such a request.
Loose pucks
Happy to see former Boston University goalie John Curry earning some NHL coin with Minnesota. Curry is the third goalie behind Darcy Kuemper and Niklas Backstrom as Josh Harding attempts to get healthy. Curry played for Houston (AHL) and Orlando (ECHL) this season. He hasn't been in the NHL since 2009-10, when he was in the Pittsburgh organization . . . Carolina continues to carry three goalies: Cam Ward, Anton Khudobin, and Justin Peters. The Hurricanes would rather deal one of their goalies instead of possibly losing Peters on waivers by assigning him to Charlotte . . . According to sportsnet.ca, Dave Bolland is looking for a seven- or eight-year extension. The Toronto center will be unrestricted after this season. Bolland scored Chicago's winning goal in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final but is a third-line pivot when healthy. Grinders don't get long-term deals . . . Jamie Benn returned to NHL play with ferocity, scoring a goal and two assists in Dallas's 4-1 win over the Hurricanes. Team Canada's bosses considered Benn one of their most important players. Benn brought some speed to the Ryan Getzlaf-Corey Perry pairing. Earlier in the Olympics, Benn played with John Tavares and Patrice Bergeron on Canada's best line. All this from a guy who wasn't invited to Canada's summer orientation camp . . . Good thing about the Olympic preliminary round: only two stoppages per period to shovel the ice, compared to the three TV timeouts in the NHL. They made the games fly by. Of course, if it were up to the networks, there would be a timeout every other minute . . . The Bruins will use the long-term injury exception with Dennis Seidenberg if they acquire help before the deadline. They could seek additional relief by also using the exception on Adam McQuaid. The latter scenario is unlikely because McQuaid is expected to play this season. They'd have to clear salary to fit McQuaid under the cap. It remains, however, an option . . . There are three Webers in the NHL: Shea Weber, Yannick Weber, and Mike Weber. All wear No. 6. Yes, that's weird.
Fluto Shinzawa can be reached at email@example.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeFluto. Material from interviews, wire services, other beat writers, and league and team sources was used in this report.


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Monday, February 13, 2012
Red Velvet Pancakes with White Chocolate Chips
Hubs and I love breakfast food. We like to make a big breakfast most Saturday mornings.
As of late, when I raise the question of "What do you want to do for breakfast??" I get an immediate "PANCAKES!!!???!!!!" outta the hubs. hah
Hubs is on a pancake kick. For. Real.
Well, Valentine's Day is tomorrow and that means it's officially red-velvet time…
I mean, I'm seeing red velvet popping up EVERY.WHERE. on the blogosphere.
Naturally, I felt compelled to join in (I SO try to be like the cool kids… hah).
So when hubs asked for pancakes this weekend… I decided to go for the V-Day twist and found a red velvet recipe to work from! They were delicious and RICH! Man, were they rich – but if there's ever a time to splurge on something rich… it's on Valentines Day 😉
Soooo… what are your Valentine's Day plans?
Spending it with someone special? Perhaps a fabulous ladies night out? Or more of a low-key night in?
Hubs and I are eating IN (Porcini Rubbed Filets with Balsamic Reduction- yes. please.).
Here's the thing, I HATE HATE HATE eating out on Valentines Day (and most other major holidays for that matter). Restaurants are beyond CROWDED… lusty teenagers are out in full force… and did I mention the restaurants are Crowded???? hah Anyhow… End. of. Rant.
How about you?
Red Velvet Pancakes with White Chocolate Chips
Yield: 10 pancakes
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 5-6 minutes
Total Time: 15-20 minutes
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons white sugar
1 tablespoons + 1 teaspoon unsweetened cocoa powder (I used Hershey's Special Dark)
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup sour cream
3 tablespoons salted butter, melted
1 tablespoon red liquid food coloring
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup white chocolate chips
In a large bowl combine: flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, sugar, and cocoa powder. In a second bowl mix together the egg, buttermilk, sour cream, melted butter, food coloring, vanilla extract. NOTE: Keep the two mixtures separate until JUST before cooking.
Heat a griddle (or skillet) over medium heat (about 350°). When you sprinkle a drop of water on the surface and it sizzles, it's good to go. Using a paper towel... wipe the surface with melted butter. You want a nice even layer which is why you don't just throw a pat of butter on the skillet (that would create hot spots where there is more butter).
Pour the wet mixture into the dry mixture and combine using a using a wooden spoon or fork. Stir until it's just blended together, being sure to not over stir! Fold in the white chocolate chips.
Using a measuring cup, scoop about 1/3 cup of the batter onto the griddle for each pancake. When the underside is golden brown, flip and then brown the other side. Serve hot with butter and syrup!
Adapted From: The Kitchy Kitchen


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19. April 2023Seminar: Aluminium Continuous Casting - Technology, Properties, Applications more information
The use of aluminium in carmaking allows the weight of a vehicle to be reduced by up to a third – and thus save considerable quantities of fuel. In the age of mobility, aluminium is thus the material of choice.
Aluminium in the transport sector
Building projects in Germany use over 500,000 tonnes of aluminium a year, and for good reasons: whether it be from the point of view of the building owner or architect, aluminium fulfils the highest demands with respect to function, design and cost economy.
Aluminium in the building and construction industry
The packaging for foodstuffs, medication and personal-care products must satisfy the highest demands. This is because we either ingest the packaged products or they come into direct contact with our bodies.
From now on, you can find information on events of AD, seminars and trade fairs in the AD events portal.
AD events
Marius Baader, managing director of Gesamtverband der Aluminiumindustrie (GDA), speaks about aluminium markets, mobility, the aluminium industry and the #EAC19 - European Aluminium Congress 2019:
Aluminium recycling was explained in a TV programme produced for the German WDR channel's 'Sendung mit der Maus' series with the help of GDA (German only).
The German aluminium recycling industry is one of the frontrunners in Europe and one of the most active sectors when it comes to sustainability and its implementation.
Dr. Fiona Salomon, Chief Executive Officer at the Aluminium Stewardship Initiative (asi), explains the initiative and their value for companies in an interview at the ALUMINIUM 2018.
GDA offers a comprehensive range of information, from annual reports to fact sheets, and most of it is available free of charge. You will find an overview here of the everything that is available: all items offered are available as a download or print version.
Web Encyclopaedia
Weber's 'Aluminium Pocket Encyclopaedia' contains the most important technical terms used in the aluminium industry and provides interesting information about aluminium, from A for Alloys through to Z for Zeppelin.
GDA's advisory services are available to companies of widely differing sizes. The main topics covered are questions relating to carmaking, mechanical engineering and surface treatment.
packaging brochure 2014
There is nothing better than a practical, very easy way to package and dispense consumer products. Aluminium foil and tubes offer a high degree of comfort.
packaging brochure 2013
Trendsetting aluminium: as a packaging material, it ensures optimal product protection and is an outstanding eye-catcher with "must have"effect.
Aluminium allows drinks to be stored for several months without refrigeration. In a process initially developed for use with UHT milk, foodstuffs can be sterilized directly inside the composite packaging by heating them up in a pressure vessel. The cartons are unbreakable, light, stackable, space-saving and efficient when it comes to volume utilization.
Having confidence in the reliability of a pharmaceutical product is certainly as important as having confidence in the doctor who prescribed it. Does the pack really contain what it says it does?
Since it was first introduced at the Krueger Brewery in Richmond, Virginia in 1935, the can has been regarded as the perfect protective packaging for every type of drink. And it no longer comes in the shape of a small chunky suit of armour: it is now a chic hi-tech designer's item, whether it be a standad, slim or mini can.
A chocolate Santa in an aluminium cloak still tastes great in the summer!
With aluminium it is more a case of the material being used than consumed. This is evident from the fact that some 75 per cent of the aluminium produced in the last hundred years is still in use today.
The outstanding barrier protection of aluminium results in a whole host of knock-on benefits. The longer shelf life at room temperature of foodstuffs packaged in aluminium reduces deterioration or wastage.


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Just like old times:
When it was time for him to pitch the ball, he pitched it with no hesitation, no mugging for the camera, without a second thought. And it was a solid strike.
Big League Stew Reports:
George W. Bush came into Sunday's Game 4 of the World Series with a reputation as the best first pitcher in presidential history to uphold.
Mission, uh, accomplished.
With his father George H.W. Bush looking on from just a few feet away, the experienced Republican righthander threw an impressive no-bounce heater to Texas Rangers team president Nolan Ryan behind the plate. While the pitch had nowhere near the emotional impact of Bush's strike during the 2001 World Series after 9/11, it was a big moment for Bush, who used to own the team, and for his family's constituents in the state of Texas.
(For comparison's sake):
Oh My: Obama Couldn't Name Any White Sox Players When Asked
Video: Obama's First Pitch At Nationals Game "High and Wide"
Compare/Contrast Obama/Bush First Pitches
Hat tip: Gateway Pundit
Linked by Michelle Malkin in Buzzworthy, thanks!


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Transcript of the video of the Django Presentation by Adrian Holovaty
Slides available from: http://www.snakesandrubies.com/presentations/adrian/
Hey guys, thanks for coming out, I'm Adrian, one of the developers of Django, which is a Python web framework. Nice to see that a lot of you guys were Python developers.
First I'm going to show you a little bit about the background of Django - where it came from. it was derived out of a real world application, so, in order to understand django, it's kind of important to understand the culture it kind of came out of. I know that sounds really exciting, but...
Basically, I'm Adrian, I live here in chicago, grew up in the suburbs, I work for washingtonpost.com as editor of editorial innovations, which is a fancy title for basically Mad Scientist - I get to do cool stuff with the website, like basically build database driven applications on a deadline. I've only been doing that for three months.
Before that I was actually living in Kansas - which is not quite as bad as you might think (slide: Kansas board of education) (Laughter)
It's actually a lot better than that because I lived in a town called Lawrence, Kansas, really cool college town - got a great music scene, there's a lot of cool bars and restaurants and stuff - very very cool place.
But that's not the reason I moved there. I moved there because the newspaper is really really good. I've got a news background - my background is between programming and journalism. I develop news web applications. This web operation in Lawrence, Kansas is really really cool, really really cutting edge and they do a lot of really really cool stuff, so I went to work there.
Adrian's background with lawrence.com
I'll give you an example of one of the cool things that we did. I told you about the music scene in Lawrence; uh, we said ok, wouldn't it be cool if there were a site you could go to that represented Lawrence, all the music scene had, all the stuff, all the events happening, all the bars and restaurants, that stuff. So we made this: Lawrence.com
Lawrence.com is easily the most in-depth local entertainment site in the world; this thing fricken kicks ass. Starting out with the basics, it has an events calendar, which is you know, every entertainment site has one, has the standard stuff, when and where it's happening, what the cost is, but when it gets really interesting is the bands database. I don't know if you know allmusic.com, but it's essentially allmusic.com at a local level, plus it ties into the events database, so that on this band's page it says that they have shows at the Granada on Friday, at the <somewhere> on Tuesday, and it pulls in all the genres, all the biographical information about the band, and everything's in a huge database, so that when you go to the page for this band, you can see oh - those are the musicians in the band, click on one of the musicians and you can see all the other bands he's in, you can see OK - this guy plays pedal steel, so you click on pedal steel, you see all the other people in town that play pedal steel.
It's just kind of, this huge database of all local entertainment, and because it's very music oriented, every band has song clips, and we have entire MP3s, around a thousand MP3s of all local music, which is very very intense. The way this stuff integrates is very very cool; on the events page, if you're looking at a band in the band database, it'll pull in those links and say related band pages, it'll look at those bands and say ok, do any of these bands have songs in the songs database? Yes, in this case there were, so it says if you go to this event, you might hear these songs, blah blah blah blah blah. So we're doing some really cool things.
Including a radio station that's this little flash-wizzy interface that automatically grabs all the songs for a particular band, there are genre stations, you can make your own stations - which are called playlists - it's very very interactive site, you can create your playlist, you can comment on other people's playlists, you can comment on essentially any object in the system. There's an album discography database; you can comment on any band, any event, any story in the blogs, there's an intense restaurant database with not only the basics like which cuisine it is, and which region, but also whether it's a homey's favourite (*laughs*) - the site authors refer to themselves as the homies - whether it's vegetarian friendly, and whether it accepts barter (*laughs*). No restaurant in Lawrence accepts barter, but we've been thinking of adding a little thing with adding that, where if you search for it, it says, like, "are you stupid?", or something.
But, the point is, it does a lot of cool stuff. Because we have all the restaurant closing and opening times, we're able to say here are all the restaurants that are open right now, so at 4pm or whatever time it is now, it's not very impressive, but if you're drunk at 1am and you want to get some grub, you can go to this page and there's all the stuff that's still open. Speaking of being drunk, there's a drinks specials database, which is updated every day and has all the drinks specials for every bar in town every day. People actually print this thing out, and put it next to their beds - I'm not making this up - Simon's roommate used to do this.
And you can export drink specials to your ipod, so if you're wandering around town, you can get out your iPod and there are your drink specials. The drinks specials integrate in the events calendar.
*audience comment* Could you integrate the drinks specials with a GPS thing so drunk people could find their way to the bars? (laughter)
That's a good idea. I hope you're getting the impression that everything kind of knows about everything else. It's one gigantic database. This example kind of events page (on a slide) - if an event happens at a bar, and the bar has a drinks special for the date the event is happening, it'll pull in the drinks special. If you go to this event, here's a drinks special for that place. Now living in Chicago, I really wish that MetroMix did something like this. Metromix... bad. So there's tons of cool data on this site, I'll go through a couple more things.
The downloads page; we wanted to have kind of a front door for all the stuff you can download on this site, of course we can put random MP3's "here's a bunch of random MP3s", but that wouldn't be that exciting, so we were thinking - what would be a cool timely way of displaying MP3s as they're added to the site. This page, what it does, is it looks at the events calendar, it finds all the bands that are playing according to the events calendar in a local band database, and of those, which ones have MP3s. So everytime you go to this page, it's fresh, it's new, it's got new stuff according to who's playing, so everyone can get the MP3, get band information - oh, by the way, they're playing live at the <somewhere>.
There's a mobile edition, so that when you're wandering around drunk in downtown Lawrence, you can pull up the drinks specials to further your alcoholism, you can see which restaurants are open right now, and you can get a bunch of other stuff that kind of makes sense to have in a cellphone context.
There's blogs, there's podcasts, there's comments on everything, there's other stuff that I didn't want to offend anyone with (slide says 'pictures of drunk sorority girls')... especially, why am I bringing this up?
The point is, you kind of have to understand the intensity of all the cool shit we did in Lawrence, and that was kind of our unofficial motto - we build cool shit - we wanted to do cool stuff, we wanted to put it on really rapidly, improve these sites - we'd get these ideas, like, on the events calendar you can sign up to get reminders of an event - that just happened one day when somebody told me 'hey, did you know that you can send SMS via email?' 'oh, I didn't know that, let's add it to the site' 'ok, let's do it today'. My boss calls me on a Saturday night "Hey, oh here's this cool idea for the site, why don't we do it?" and I'm like "hey, I'm at the computer anyway, I'll just do it right now". So that's the kind of culture.
Where does this come from? Well it's this guy - Rob Curly - he was our boss there, and he really encouraged this really really rapid web development. It's essentially web development - computer programming - with journalism deadlines. It's a fusion of those two concepts.
The first thing that he is really really pushing on us is that we need to develop things very very quickly. An example of that is, toward the end of last year, around the elections, he said:
"Hey, oh my God, I just realised there's a presidential debate tonight. Wouldn't it be cool if users could sign on to our news site and rate the candidates. Wouldn't it be cool if people could rate candidates on whether they made sense, how eloquent they were, whether they made any weird facial expressions. Oh, and by the way, if you could do it in four hours, please".
So, this kind of culture... first of all, it drove us insane. Secondly, it really encouraged us to come up with some sort of solution that would let us make websites - first of all that were very intense and cool and interactive and all that - but also so that we could do it quickly. The second thing - we did end up making that presidential debate score card in four hours - it was Jacob, who's doing AV stuff today.
The second thing that he's always pressing on us was that the ink was never dry on these babies. A newspaper term, of course, ink being a newspaper thing, but the concept is that you create a web application of some sort, of course you have to create it quickly, that's the first point I had, but once you create it, the thing's not done yet. Inevitably, requirements change, you're going to have to change that thing to add new features, more ways of browsing, more ways of searching, all that stuff.
The restaurants thing I showed you, for example, when that first started, it was just type of food and location of town. All those other things, including barter - barter I just added one night when I was futzing around - but all those other things were ideas that our editors had - oh, wouldn't it be cool if on our restaurants page you could search by whether they accepted Visa or American Express - so boom, the ink is never dry on these things. You've got to be able to not only make the first version very quickly, but you've got to be able to update them very very fast.
So. We originally used PHP for this, the original version of Lawrence.com was a PHP app which started out OK, but it got quite messy. The problems with PHP were that the syntax is very verbose, you had to edit a lot of files to get stuff done, I know in theory it is possible to do good PHP, but it's just so much of a hassle - the language doesn't encourage good practise. Introspection abilities were very bad, you couldn't really follow the Don't Repeat Yourself principle, because you had to put bits in this file, and this in this file, and it was hard to maintain.
And then there's the namespace thing (slide of PHP functions) - this is, of course, for those of you that didn't get the joke, a list of the first 30 PHP functions that start with 'A', available in any PHP script, and I believe - what's the latest on PHP namespaces? It's going into 6, probably?
Discovered Python
So, Simon and I, around this point - it was around two years ago when we were getting a little tired of PHP, we discovered Python, and we just immediately fell in love. Essentially, we loved the terse syntax, we loved how you could introspect, we loved the dynamic abilities - So clean, and it encouraged best practices. We said OK, we have to do this, we have to move all web development to Python, because we're going to go fricken insane if we stay with this PHP.
So, we decided to make this framework for our internal needs - I showed you this entertainment site we have, we have a news site, a sports site, and our organisation does development for outside companies - so kind of a lot of different types of stuff that we do. So this framework that we were putting together had a couple of goals.
One, like, I hope I've been pounding into your brain, we really had the need to make web development stupidly fast. Like four hours, not six months, fast. Like two days for an intense classified system. Jacob just this past week wrote an entire classified system between 9pm and 3am. No doubt powered by a lot of coffee, or something.
We wanted to automate the repetetive stuff; there are certain tasks in web development that are just so frickin boring, like validation routines, and making sure that input is clean and all this stuff - we just wanted the framework to take care of this for us.
We wanted to practise loose coupling, so that if we didn't like a certain part of this system, we could swap in another template language, we could swap in another database abstraction layer.
We wanted to follow best practices - Simon and I, we developed this originally, are obsessive perfectionists. We really really strongly believe in the foundation principles of http - that everything that affects data on the server should use POST, that you use GET properly, beautiful URLs, because doing ugly urls is just pathetic.
We wanted it to be efficient. We didn't want this to be some sort of really high level framework that did a lot of cool stuff, but didn't care about the efficiency. We needed it to be fast, we're powering more than a million page views per day, so if it doesn't need to do a database query, don't do a fricken database query. Be efficient.
The end goal was that we wanted to create lawrence.com with this framework.
Starting to create the framework
When we created the framework, we kind of had a trial by fire, because we had a bunch of websites that we were creating as we were creating the framework, so we had to take a break, then go back to the framework, take another break, then go back to the framework. Essentially, the end goal though was to make lawrence.com.
So, one of these trials by fire was when Rob came up to us and he said "Hey, it's summer, that means it's time for little league." and he had this wacky idea - why don't we take local little league, which is about a hundred... more than two hundred teams or something like that, and treat these teams like they're the New York Yankees. So I'm thinking every team gets it's own page (see slides) with a list of who they're playing, what field they're at, game info - tied into our local weather database, so if a game's in the next five days, which is the time range for which we have weather forecasts, it'll pull in that weather forecase and display it right on there. Why don't we give every league of L.L. it's own page, which what teams are in it, what the standings are. We didn't want to do player detail pages because of privacy reasons, but if these guys were 18, you know we would have been doing that.
We wanted to have a database of every field that these guys play on. Because there are incredibly subtle differences between 4H east and 4H middle, but you can go on the site, and click on there, and do a little 360 degree view thing... if you care.
And of course, we wanted to make it so that parents could sign up for cellphone alerts, so that if games were cancelled the website would email them. And of course, do this in three days.
So, we did. Using Django, this was the first really big thing that we did - and it worked, and we were like "Wow, this is really really cool, we should use this". And we did, we continued to use it, and we ended up recreating lawrence.com to use it. lawrence.com is now powered by that, our news site ljworld.com is powered by it, all of our internal sites that our company had and all our commercial development that we did for other companies.
So, let's fast forward a couple of years to PyCon 2005. If you don't know, this is a Python conference that's held every year. Simon and I, and also our other developer Jacob Kaplan-Moss, who's handling AV, went there, and we did a short lightning talk. It was five minutes, showing off Django and what it does and how fast it makes things. And people were just going gaga over those things. A lot of people came up to me afterward, I got a lot of emails afterward, so we were thinking 'wow, we should open source this' - not only because it's going to be a cool service to contribute back to the community, but because it would get outside developers giving us code. So, you know, it's kind of a win-win.
So we did, we open sourced it in July. This is the Django website, it's at www.djangoproject.com, I'll have that URL later also. Since July, we've had a ton of awesome contributions, people have been using it, people all over the world - Poland, Australia using it - it's awesome.
So what does this actually do?
Django More Technical Discussion and Examples
I've kind of given a lot of background, but haven't actually talked code.
There's the stack. Number one is the database wrapper - now what this does is it converts Python code into SQL, so you don't have to write SEQUEL statements. I'm going to alternate my usage of SQL and SEQUEL to please both camps, let's see if I can keep that straight.
The second level is the URL dispatcher, which, because we're obsessed with clean URLs, and because we mix and match different applications on different sites - for example on Lawrence.com we have a forums system - and on our new site we have a forums system, but they have different URLs in different places, so the URL logic had to be abstracted into this URL dispatcher thing.
There's a template system, which separates content from presentation; I think that's pretty much a well known concept.
And there's the admin framework, which I think is pretty much Django's "crown jewel", which I will go over in a minute. That essentially automates all the boring ass stuff that's involved with validation and creating sites that are purely for editing stuff.
Finally, there's a lot of niceities galore, such as RSS framework, and all these other things that I'll go into.
Step 1:
When you do a Django app, the first thing - assuming it's database driven, because it doesn't necessarily have to use a database - the first thing you do is you design your database schema. Now if we're going to do a sample application for the purposes of this, we'll do a little blog. It wont be written by a cat, but pretend it is (Slide shows Ginger The Cat's Blog).
When you're creating generally a database driven app, the first thing you do is you create table statements. Create a table "blog entries" that has a headline varchar entry, body, then the pub date. Well, in Django how you would represent that is, instead of in SQL, you would use a Python class. It looks very similar. The headline is just an attribute of that class, the body is another attribute and the pub_date is another attribute.
Slide shows:
class Entry(meta.Model): headline = meta.CharField(maxlength=50) body = meta.TextField() pub_date = meta.DateTimeField()
So that's it. All you need to do is write those 4 lines, and you get a whole heck of a lot of stuff free. First thing is, it generates the create table statement for you - if it didn't do that, it would really suck. The second thing is, it gives you a Python API to actually edit this information. So you don't have to write SQL statements. Here's how you would instantiate a headline object, pass int he headline, body and pub date:
e = Entry(headline="Hello", body="Welcome to my blog", pub_date=date(2005,12,3)) e.save() # saves to DB
Pretty straightforward, I'm not writing any SQL. I can change attributes on it, save again, it will do the update statement intead of an insert. You can get stuff out of the database using this get_list API
entry_list = entries.get_list()
You can pass parameters to get_list that specify essentially your WHERE clause - how you want to narrow down the search, such as just show me the entries with a certain pub_date, just show me the ones that have published=true, or something. You can get a particular entry out of the database like this:
e = entries.get_object(pk=3)
Here I'm passing pk=3, the primary key is three, that would give me that entry. And, you just use attribute syntax to access the column values, so e.headline would display the headline.
Note to purists: This does allow you to still drop into raw SQL if you want to - I hope you've got the impression that Simon and I, when we were desinging this, we're big perfectionists, and we know you have to drop into SQL if you need to. We don't want the framework to be something that gets in your way, we want it to be something that makes things super quick, so it's very easy to drop into SQL - and essentially in any part of this stack, you can drop down a level if need be.
So, a lot of web development revolves around these admin forms, right. This is the piece of crap that I use to update my blog, that I wrote in PHP like five years ago, literally, and you know everyone who's a web developer has done this kind of thing - it's like, if you're a web developer you've made these.
This is a tremendous pain in the butt, because we have to first of all display the form, we have to redisplay it with validation errors if there are any validation errors, you have to write the validation logic, and finally you have to do the logic that actually saves things. And that's just for adding. There's changing and deleteing too.
Fortunately, with Django this is a solved problem, because we've abstracted it to a level where it will generate those forms automatically for you, in a production ready thing that we call the Admin site.
To do that, here's the entry class I was showing you that represents a blog entry. If you want to give it admin capability, all you have to do is add this:
class Entry(meta.Model): headline = meta.CharField(maxlength=50) body = meta.TextField() pub_date = meta.DateTimeField() class META: admin = meta.Admin()
Meta is an inner class that holds metadata about that. Admin is just one of many things you can put in there, it's just kind of a holding place for metadata. So just putting that line in, it will give you - boom - an admin site. This (see slide) is the admin site for the Lawrence operation, which has a ton of stuff. Essentially when you add that admin, it looks for all the objects in your system that have admin turned on, and displays links to them, it keeps track of your recent actions on the side, and it does authentication and all that stuff.
Here's, for example, an add screen for a photo object - it knows, based on the database type, based on the field definition, what type of widget to use, so for example that first one there is 'photo', that when it was in the model was described in Python as a file field, it knows that file fields in a database is a textfield, and in the admin interface it's a little widget that is a file selector.
For the second one there, it's a text field in the database, and it knows that it's a bigass text-area. The third thing, that's a many to many relationship, so for those it pulls in a multiple select box, and down there staff member is a many to one, so it puts in a little dropdown, and at the bottom, creation date - which I hope you can see - is a datetime field, and for any datetime field it automatically puts in the little date widgets, and you can click on the little today shortcut, and there's a calendar icon, and it pulls in a javascript calendar, and it's very exciting.
So the point is, this is production ready, it just works and you don't have to hack with it, and you don't have to code all this logic.
The really messy thing I mentioned about admin sites is the validation - well it automatically takes care of that for you. If I had submitted it empty, this is what I would have gotten (see slide). It knows which fields are required, because you specify that in your model. You keep every piece of domain logic in your model - that's the one true place that all metadata about your objects lives. One of those things is whether a field is required, one of those things is implicit in the type of the field, for instance date fields must be in a certain format, so the admin will validate that for you automatically, and of course you can add custom validators to your heart's content.
Uh, the point with this is that it's completely production ready. The way we worked in Lawrence was that we would talk to the client - here's a client that we had (slide) Lawrence chamber of commerce, they wanted us to make a website for them, so we would talk to them, and they said "OK, let's put an accommodations thing, let's have a thing of all the local hotels, and the shopping malls and all that stuff so that people will come visit Lawrence". So, given that, we just coded up those models in half an hour, and we were able to give them an admin site which, one, blew their minds, and two, let them put stuff in there right away so they can start putting content in so that we can focus on doing the interesting things.
Here's another site we did - a site for the attorney's association of Kansas, and this blue-jean clad website in Denver that was a local radio station - these are all examples of clients that we gave them the admin interface right away, they started putting data in, and we were able to work on it.
Production ready.
So, that let us focus on the interesting stuff.
We haven't really written much code thus far, we've just written those four lines of the model that describes the data.
The next thing you do, when you write a Django app is you design your URLs. We don't want this kind of stuff - we don't want to put .php, .cgi, and we don't want annoying query strings with question marks and scary characters. We don't want to expose the underlying framework in the URLs, because that's evil.
We don't, we especially don't want to do this: foo.com/bar/site_view/pageinfrastructure/0,2545,TCP167364285088,00.html
Which I believe is vignette and is disgusting. It's very very ugly.
So, how it works in the Django framework is you specify it in pure Python code. This is what's called a URLconf - a URL configuration where you just... it's essentially a mapping between URLs and their callbacks. So in this example:
( ('^blog/$', 'myapp.blog.homepage'), ('^blog/archive/$', 'myapp.blog.archive'), ('^blog/archive/(\d+)/$', 'myapp.blog.permalink'), )
if anyone goes to '/blogs' it will call the Python function myapp.blog.homepage. If anyone goes to '/blogs/archive', it will call the archive. In the last example, it displays the capability of capturing things from the URL, so if you go to blog/archive then any number - that's just simple regular expression syntax - it will pass that as a parameter to the function myapp.blog.permalink.
Let's take one of these for example:
('^blog/archive/(\d+)/$, 'myapp.blog.permalink')
This was the last one on that screen. That will call the function:
def permalink(request, entry_id): return HttpResponse("Hello World")
That takes entry_id, which is whatever was captured in the url, and it returns HttpResponse.
This is a view function. Views get, as their first argument, a request object which has all sorts of metadata about the request, like what browser it was, GET and POST data, what URL it was, and all that, and entry_id was taken from the URL.
A view is essentially responsible for returning a HttpResponse object, which can be anything you want - it can be HTML, it can be plain text, it can be a PDF, it can be CSV, you can generate images, anything you want. But this is really really lame and boring, so let's beef it up a little bit. This is what the code would look like if you actually wanted to implement this.
def permalink(request, entry_id): e = get_object_or_404(entries, pk=entry_id) return render_to_response('blog_permalink', {'entry': e})
The first line there is get_object_or_404, you pass it your model module, and you tell it which parameters to use - so use the entries and get the object whose pk id is whatever number was passed in the URL, save that in the variable e, then you render to a response object using the blog_permalink template, passing it entry as the template context. I'll get to the template context in a little bit. A very little code, but it does a lot. I'll also mention for those of you that are in PHP or anything in those scary worlds, you don't have to worry about quoting database, you don't have to worry about SQL injections, because entry_id is quoted for you by the backend database, so it makes things - it just takes care of things for you.
What does the template look like? I'll go back a bit - we loaded the blog_permalink template and passed it one variable, 'entry' - that last part is a dictionary for those guys who don't know Python, that's essentially a hashtable where entry is the name of the variable in the template, and e is whatever you want that variable's value to be.
So the template would look like this:
<h1>{{ entry.headline }}</h1> <p>Posted on {{ entry.pub_date }}</p> {{ entry.body }}
You put the headline between H1's, then Posted On, and whatever the pub_date is, and the entry body. It's a very simple template language, and yet very very powerful, and it does not allow Python code execution.
It's intended to be designer friendly. Part of our philosophy is that the designer isn't - doesn't need to be a programmer as well. He shouldn't have to deal with Python code, and he shouldn't have to deal with the security issues of writing pure Python code. However you can write custom tags that let you do other assorted logic with the pure power of Python if you want to.
That's basically the stack - models, URLs, views - which are those functions - and templates. Any one of these pieces of the stack can be swapped out for something else because it's all very loosely coupled.
What else do you get with this framework?
The first really really big contribution from the community after we open sourced it was internationalisation - so that any app in Django can automatically handle the language setting from browsers, so that if your browser is configured to use Polish, or you want to send out Polish things, it provides a framework for specifying translation strings. I don't know if anyone here deals with i18n, but it's very very handy.
Already we have 19 translations of the Django admin, and it's really a trip for the hell of it to go in there, and change your browser language to French or Icelandic, and see the admin work in a different language. It's really really cool. And the cool thing about it is that we have Welsh!
I don't think any other open source project... that's probably an exadgeration, but we have Welsh, so I'm really excited.
Another thing is the cache system, because we're really really interested in performance. You can cache objects on a very granualar low level way - you can cache pages, or you can cache your entire site. I'm about to launch my first Django app at Washington post, and that's going to be using the entire site-wide cache, because it's like four million records, and it's a high-traffic site. So the cache system in that case was as easy as adding a single line that says "use cache=true". It doesn't actually say that, but essentially it does.
There's authentication. The admin site that I showed you gives you free authentication, users and permissions, and you can have groups, and assign permissions to groups, and all that. But you can use it outside of it if you want to - you're not tied to using it - you're not tied to using the admin site if you don't want to anyway.
There's anonymous sessions, handy for shopping carts, and all that stuff.
There's an RSS admin framework that shouldn't even be legal, because it makes you - it's like this amount of code, and you have RSS feeds for everything. It's very very cool.
Then there's the concept of generic views. That blog_permalink think I showed you, that was a view - but there are certain patterns in web development that can be abstracted at an even higher level. That was a good example - display a template rendering some object from the URL. So with Django you can step, even one step back, and not have to write any Python code at all - you just, in your URLconf, you point to a generic view function, and you tell it "I'm using the blog object" and it will automatically do everything for you. The only thing you have to do is write the template.
We really find ourselves, when we do Django, focusing on the user interface and the templates, because there is no code to write.
What sites are using Django?
What sites are using this? I did a little side project - chicagocrime.org - if any of you guys live in the city, use this and become scared. It's a freely browsable database of crimes reported in Chicago, it's updated every day - you can go to a city block level, browse by date, street, all this stuff. It was slashdotted a couple of times. As a result of the first time, that's when we wrote the cache framework. But after that, it er, it held up very well.
Here's an example of AJAX with Django, the crime map, you can specify which crimes you want to look for, it automatically updates the map ... sexy.
There's this Polish - the Polish version of friendster - grono.net - has... it was a big Java shop, and they have converted a couple of pages on their site to use Django, and they've said that it's revolutionised things.
For one, it's fun to write code again, because Python kicks ass. For two, the amount of code goes from this (indicates large quantity) to this (indicates small quantity). And the performance is better. So I don't know why you wouldn't do this.
Just announced this week is a site of Greenpeace which is doing this cool new thing using Django, so that I'm interested in finding out more about, myself.
So, if you like this, if you like what you're hearing here, you can put one of these guys on your site ("I wish this site were powered by Django" button/logo/image). I have one on my site because it's still running that PHP abombination. This actually was requested from the community, believe it or not. The community is really cool.
Concluding Remarks
I'm just going to close with a couple of quotes.
"I've played more with Django, and grown to love it more with every passing day. I'm desperately looking for someone to pay me to build something with Django, and if it doesn't happen soon, I'm just going to go on strike" - James Bennett.
"I've spent a few hours re-dunking my head in the Django soup. That is one impressive open source prjected... that shows (or at least seems to show!) that the people who designed it really knew what they were doing. It feels like opening up an iPod box and admiring the packaging, design, button layout." - David Ascher, author of "Python Cookbook"
"I'm starting to rewrite the CCIW website with Django, and I'm amazed at my progress" - Luke Plant
"And I will migrate my PHP stuff to Django and such frameworks in the future. PHP's braindead decisions by its developers has annoyed me a bit too much by now" - asmodai
"Time to write a todo list webapp? 16 mins" - Bill de hOra
"ever since I laid eyes on Django, I knew one day I'd be running my website off this web framework" - alastair
"Conclusion: Django makes life easier" - Espen Grindhaug
So, I invite you to check it out, it's at Djangoproject.com, and very very cool, and that's about it. So thank you very much for attending.


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Previous rapid thinning of Pine Island Glacier sheds light on future Antarctic ice loss
New research, published this week in Science, suggests that the largest single contributor to global sea level rise, a glacier of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, may continue thinning for decades to come. Geologists from the UK, USA and Germany found that Pine Island Glacier (PIG), which is rapidly accelerating, thinning and retreating, has thinned rapidly before. The team say their findings demonstrate the potential for current ice loss to continue for several decades yet.
Their findings reveal that 8000 years ago the glacier thinned as fast as it has in recent decades, providing an important model for its future behaviour. The glacier is currently experiencing significant acceleration, thinning and retreat that is thought to be caused by 'ocean-driven' melting; an increase in warm ocean water finding its way under the ice shelf.
After two decades of rapid ice loss, concerns are arising over how much more ice will be lost to the ocean in the future. Model projections of the future of PIG contain large uncertainties, leaving questions about the rate, timing and persistence of future sea level rise. Rocks exposed by retreating or thinning glaciers provide evidence of past ice sheet change, which helps scientists to predict possible future change. The geologists used highly sensitive dating techniques, pioneered by one of the team, to track the thinning of PIG through time, and to show that the past thinning lasted for several decades.
Lead author Joanne Johnson from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) said:
"Our geological data show us the history of Pine Island Glacier in greater detail than ever before. The fact that it thinned so rapidly in the past demonstrates how sensitive it is to environmental change; small changes can produce dramatic and long-lasting results. Based on what we know, we can expect the rapid ice loss to continue for a long time yet, especially if ocean-driven melting of the ice shelf in front of Pine Island Glacier continues at current rates,"
Professor Mike Bentley, a co-leader of the project based at Durham University said:
"This paper is part of a wide range of international scientific efforts to understand the behaviour of this important glacier. The results we're publishing are the product of long days spent sampling rocks from mountains in Antarctica, coupled to some exceptionally precise and time-consuming laboratory analyses. The results are clear in showing a remarkably abrupt thinning of the glacier 8000 years ago".
More information: Rapid thinning of Pine Island Glacier in the early Holocene by J. S. Johnson, M. J. Bentley, J. A. Smith, R. C. Finkel, D. H. Rood, K. Gohl, G. Balco, R. D. Larter, J. M. Schaefer is published in Science on Thursday 20 February 2014. www.sciencemag.org/lookup/doi/ … 1126/science.1247385
Journal information: Science
Provided by British Antarctic Survey


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Roofing Contractor Directory For > Alaska > Palmer
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I absolutely knew this would happen. In a sense, I rather wanted it to happen. And now it has, and I have got my comeuppance. Bigly. Hugely. No sooner had I pressed 'send' on my post 2 days ago bemoaning the absence of bald eagles in 2018 than corrections began to come in.
- Harsh Judgemental Reader: "Do you mean you were wrong?"
- Contrite Writer: "Yes."
- HJR: "Did you check eBird before you fired off your intemperate post?"
- CW (in a small apologetic voice): "No."
- HJR: Well then, what have you got to say for yourself?"
- CW (*hangs head*): I'm very sorry, everyone. I'll try to do better this time. Here goes:"
On October 25th legendary Bahamas birder Elwood Bracey and a party of 4 were looking out over the Marls from Sunset Ridge when they saw 4 birds flying high. Two were unmistakably turkey vultures; one was a magnificent frigatebird (ie totally non-eagle-ish); and the fourth was much larger, looking like a juvenile bald eagle. Any remaining doubts were dispelled when it dropped into a steep dive and smashed into the water, catching a fish in its talons, much like an osprey. There's no room for confusion here: Woody has vast experience on Abaco and beyond – and besides, he had a powerful spotting scope and 4 birding witnesses. The ID is, as they say, solid. And it was posted on eBird. Which I should have checked. But didn't. As Julia Roberts (qua Vivian Ward) actually did say, "Big Mistake. Huge!"
The problem here – you are ahead of me, aren't you – is that a juvenile bald eagle does not resemble an adult. Rather than the familiar and symbolic look, they are dark brown with white flecks and mottling that changes as they grow older. A juvenile won't even begin to look like a bald-headed adult until it is around 4 years old. Here are two comparisons of the confusing ages and stages.
Within the last couple of weeks, a resident of Man-o-War Cay saw a huge brown bird – not an osprey, turkey vulture or red-tailed hawk – hunting chickens in the area. He told his family and identified the bird from looking at a photo of a juvenile bald eagle. I received this report – the first in time – from Charmaine Albury. Her brother was the sharp-eyed spotter. Had that been the only report, in the absence of a photo I might have had at least some doubt. Then Woody's report arrived, a definite juvenile bald eagle only 3 weeks before, over the Marls. From there, with its spectacular eyesight it could practically have seen the individual chickens on Man-o-War. So it's a good fit for ID.
I'd say that right now on Abaco we have a single juvenile bald eagle. It's a vagrant, away from its usual hunting ground but unchallenged in the skies where it has ended up. There has been the usual autumn extreme weather (though Abaco has dodged the worst of it) to throw a young bird of course in the last couple of months. So, rather late in the day, we really do have an Abaco Bald Eagle for 2018.
A juvenile bald eagle – not at all like its parents to look at
Credits: Woody and Char for the sighting reports; header image (1), Audubon; (2) wiki; (3) Allaboutbirds.com; comparative drawing, Birdwatchers' Digest; (4) FB, source unknown (and a credit or take-down as you wish if it's yours); cute cartoon, the most excellent Birdorable


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by Brandon Smith
As I noted in my last article World Suffers From Trump Shellshock – Here's What Happens Next, there are two primary consequences of a Trump presidency that actually serve globalists and elites in the long run.
The first is the consequence of a perfect scapegoat for the economic crisis which the elites have been gestating since 2008. Trump enters the White House with a clear political mandate, a mandate that supposedly gives conservatives more power than at any other time in U.S. history. This mandate might seem like a miracle, a free hand of power to sovereignty and liberty champions to defeat the collectivist tyranny of cultural Marxists on the Left once and for all. However, it could also backfire, because under this mandate EVERYTHING bad that happens under Trump's watch can be blamed on Trump and his followers. Conservatives have been given almost absolute influence over government (or apparent influence); by extension, they also inherit absolute responsibility, whether they like it or not.
I examined this first consequence in detail in numerous articles leading up to the 2016 election. In fact, it is the primary reason why I was so certain Trump would be president. He is the perfect scapegoat, or the perfect conduit. Under Trump, the last stage of economic collapse can finally be initiated by the financial elites and most of the world including half the population of the U.S. will immediately and without question blame conservatism, nationalism, sovereignty advocates and Trump for the disaster. They won't think twice about looking in the direction of global bankers.
For those that immediately scoff at such a notion, I highly recommend they research the concept of 4th Generation Warfare. I also highly recommend study into a Department of Defense paper called 'From Psyop To Mindwar: The Psychology Of Victory', written by Major Michael Aquino (a self proclaimed "satanist") and Colonel Paul Vallely (today a self proclaimed liberty champion). I would also compel people to read 'The Art Of War' by Sun Tzu, the same manuscript that all recruits of the CIA are required to read.
The essence of the most advanced form of warfare is the ability to defeat an opponent, or a population, without having to fight at all. Instead, the master tactician seeks to influence his opponent to surrender without fighting, or, to influence his opponent to destroy himself. This is accomplished primarily through propaganda, subversion, asymmetric warfare (terrorism and insurgency) and most importantly, co-option.
As I noted in my last article, if you want to be able to accurately predict future events, you must understand the minds of the people with the most influence over those events. The financial elites, highly motivated and highly organized, are the single most important gatekeepers to geopolitical change today. Know their mind, and you will know the general path tomorrow will take.
This is not to say that the elites are "omnipotent." Frankly, they don't need to be. With the utter lack of vigilance and awareness within our society, the elites only need to be relatively intelligent and exceedingly morally bankrupt to manipulate the masses. When skeptics argue with me that the elites would "have to be omnipotent to influence the social narrative in the manner I describe," I have to laugh. Any person of above-average intelligence and unlimited capital (as the financial elites have) can do considerable damage to a society, bring empires to their knees and condition the populace to think and react in a specific fashion.
If I had the same resources at my disposal as the elites have (and the same lack of conscience), I could probably do a far better job than they when manipulating geopolitical outcomes. They make numerous mistakes if you pay close attention to their actions. I hardly consider myself the smartest person around, let alone "omnipotent." This is a silly notion. The reality is, the more ignorant the population, the easier it is to control and misdirect them. To the ignorant, the elites might seem "omnipotent." They aren't; they merely have more-intelligent-than-average people at their disposal and printing presses to pay for everything they want.
The smarter and more vigilant any given population, the more difficult it is to influence them through deception. This is very simple. To put it even more bluntly, the elites get away with subversive tyranny because there are too many willfully stupid people.
Following this line of thinking, there is a second consequence of Election 2016 that greatly concerns me — the potential for co-option of the Liberty Movement, the only existing opposing force to globalism. Co-option requires the centralization of a group in thought and deed under the influence of a small number of hands, or a single white knight figure. As I noted in my article Will A Trump Presidency Really Change Anything For The Better?, published in March of this year:
"The other ingenious aspect of the Trump campaign is really who he is running against — Hillary Clinton, a rabidly liberal candidate even more hated than Barack Obama. A candidate with a potentially serious criminal record and a penchant for an outright communistic world view far beyond that of Bernie Sanders. Those of us who have been in the writing field for a long time and have dabbled in fiction know that in order to create a fantastic hero, you must first put even more work into creating a fantastic villain. The hero is nothing without the villain.
The unmitigated horror inherent in the prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency is like adding jet fuel to the Trump campaign. (And yes, I am assuming according to the results of the primaries so far that the final election will be between Trump and Clinton)."
And, as I explained in my article Clinton Versus Trump And The Co-Option Of The Liberty Movement published in September:
"Whenever you have a rebellion focused on the inherent ideals of freedom, totalitarian institutions struggle to intervene. The issue is, freedom is not only moral, but practical. Wherever true freedom exists, people are not only happier, but more productive and prosperous. It's hard for a tyrant to fight a rebellion based on freedom because the idea is more powerful than any weapon or any form of treachery. No matter how advanced the tyranny is, and no matter how many rebels they imprison or kill, the idea of freedom endures.
The only way to destroy a rebellion like this, a rebellion like the liberty movement, is to make it about something other than freedom. The powers that be have to convince that movement to support policies that are destructive to their own ideals. If this can be done, then that rebellion has lost the advantage of principle — the only advantage that really matters."
The co-option of the liberty movement is not necessarily direct. It can be achieved through what I call "absorption." Take note that the mainstream media and elitists avoid using the label "liberty movement" at all costs because this is something we labeled ourselves many years ago. Instead, they seek to control what we are called; labeling us "populists" of the "Alt-Right." The liberty movement has been fighting the globalists in the information war for a long time. The average conservative Republican is new to this party, and yet the liberty movement is being called the "Alt-Right?"
Even Bloomberg pointed out with relative glee that the Tea Party (liberty movement), a movement which leftists despise with every fiber of their being, could be devoured by Trump's campaign and reconstituted into something else. Read their editorial The Tea Party Meets Its Maker, but only if you have a strong stomach.
In the battle against the Marxist left, it is important that we do not lose track of our original identity, or the elites at the top of the pyramid. Also important is that we do not forsake our original principles in order to achieve "victory" over our adversaries. This is a very difficult problem to discuss when you consider who we are fighting against.
I have always said that it was the social justice cult and their zealotry that drove the rise of Trump. It was they that created the public firestorm with their open contempt for our right to free thought and free expression. But keep in mind, this has all happened before, and with terrible results.
In Europe during the 1920s and early 1930s, the overall rise of Fascism was in direct response to economic crisis and the insurgency of communism. Communism is essentially collectivism on the far left side of the political spectrum. Fascism is a collectivist trap the "Right" sometimes falls into. Both lead to centralization and tyranny.
Communism is tyranny in the name of undermining the strong and independent in order to make room for the weak. Fascism is tyranny in the name of routing out the weak to make room for the strong.
It is these two political extremes that the elites have used over the past century to dominate geopolitical outcomes. Again, for those who are skeptical I highly recommend the extensive research and evidence presented by Antony Sutton, who outlined succinctly the FACT that both the Bolshevik Revolution and the rise of the Third Reich were funded and managed by Wall Street moguls and international banking interests.
The elites are notorious for playing the extreme left against the right in order to drive conservatives to the opposite extreme. My concern is not only that through Trump the elites can easily scapegoat conservative movements for a global economic crisis, but also that through the intense vitriol of the social justice left, infuriated by their loss to Trump in the election, conservatives may be driven to abandon their constitutional ideals and become the monster they hoped to destroy.
Carroll Quigley, CFR elitist and mentor to Bill Clinton, was highly open about the plans of globalists to establish one world governance in his book "Tragedy And Hope." The following quote from Carroll Quigley's Dissent: Do We Need It? could be taken as anti-right propaganda, but I take it as a warning that the elites see potential exploitation of the political right in America:
"For example, I've talked about the lower middle class as the backbone of fascism in the future. I think this may happen. The party members of the Nazi Party in Germany were consistently lower middle class. I think that the right-wing movements in this country are pretty generally in this group."
Again, the liberty movement cannot be defeated by the globalists directly. If the fight comes down to an open confrontation between freedom versus globalism, the globalists will inevitably lose. Instead, it appears to me that the globalists are more than happy to either allow Trump into the White House, or to install him in the White House as a means to rewrite the liberty movement into a villainous character, rather than the rebellious hero of our story.
So far it would seem that the temptations to revert to fascism are many. Set aside the threat of ISIS terrorism and think about the insanity showcased by the Left.
When I mentioned in my last article the crippling of social justice, I did not mention that this could have some negative reverberations. With Trump and conservatives taking near-total power after the Left had assumed they would never lose again, their reaction has been to transform. They are stepping away from the normal activities and mindset of cultural Marxism and evolving into full blown communists. Instead of admitting that their ideology is a failure in every respect, they are doubling down.
When this evolution is complete, the Left WILL resort to direct violent action on a larger scale, and they will do so with a clear conscience because, in their minds, they are fighting fascism. Ironically, it will be this behavior by leftists that may actually push conservatives towards a fascist model. Conservatives might decide to fight crazy with more crazy.
The mainstream media and popular media largely controlled by leftist elements are only pouring gasoline on the fire, with major pundits and media personalities steadily hinting at "revolution" in the face of a "Trumpist" America. But here is the thing, these people are kidding themselves.
The alternative media is eclipsing corporate media today. Their time is coming to an end.
Leftists including groups like Black Lives Matter are also ill equipped to violently combat a conservative movement with a lifetime of experience in arms and the will to use them. If the Left leaps into the realm of violent Marxist revolution, they will lose in America. That said, there is a cost.
The cost could very well be the heritage of freedom that conservatives desire to protect. The alternative media may overrun the corporate media, but will we become the corporate media in the process?
If under Trump conservatives fall to temptation and exploit the "ring of power" that is government to exert dominance in the name of stopping the Left, then they will ultimately be destroyed as well.
In this case history will not remember conservatives as freedom fighters rebelling against globalist machinations, but as evil "populists" that caused global economic collapse and the re-establishment of the institution of fascism. The globalists can swoop in after the dust has settled and use the American collapse fable as a story to tell children for the next century. A reminder that nationalism and sovereignty are harbingers of war and death. Conservatism will be abhorred as "deplorable," an ugly ideal akin to Nazism.
At this point, the globalists will have won, for no other philosophy contrary to globalism will ever exist again. No one would want to associate themselves with historical "villains" and bogeymen.
As I have mentioned consistently, I have no idea whether or not Donald Trump is aware of this potential trap. I also have no idea if he was sincere in his campaign or simply telling people what they wanted to hear. At this time, his consideration of neo-con political elites and Goldman Sachs bankers for cabinet positions does not leave a positive impression. And, his seeming refusal to commit to prosecution of Hillary Clinton (which I also predicted) for her obvious crimes is a warning bell of liberty advocates.
My position is that the Liberty Movement must always remain the Liberty Movement if conservatives and sovereignty proponents want a chance to survive. We have to be willing remain just as watchful and critical of Trump as we would have been with Hillary Clinton. And, if he breaks his promises or goes against his oath to the constitution, we must be willing to go to war with him, just as we would have with Clinton.
This puts us in a tenuous position — fighting the Left is bad enough. Going against Trump if he steps out of line is worse, because then we can be labeled leftists as well. This is the essence of 4th Generation warfare — cornering an opponent so that each move he makes is a sacrifice. If the opponent is not careful, he might just destroy himself.
There is a way to undermine this strategy by the elites; as conservatives we must treat Trump like a new employee. We have to put him on probation and watch him, not give him the keys to the store on the first day. We must also continue to educate fellow conservatives (and any on the Left that have the sense to listen) that this fight is FAR from over. In fact, it has just begun. In the end, our strategy must be for the Liberty Movement to absorb the "Alt-Right", instead of being absorbed. And, we must focus our efforts and actions against top globalists and their organizations rather than only focusing on the regressive left.
People must understand that the real threat in all of this has been and always will be the globalists. Instead of fighting each other in a futile theater of the absurd, we must fight and remove them from the chess board, wherever and whenever they show their faces in the daylight.


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LightSource Energy, Robert Sandberg
Since successfully launching the business, Sandberg has completed a host of successful projects, earning a positive reputation in the Oregon solar industry and making enough money to hire both full-time and part-time staff.
Sandberg began meeting with a SCORE mentor two months before launching the business. He checks in with SCORE on a semi-monthly basis, and Sandberg calls his late mentor Robert Steinberg "a guiding influence."
Sandberg advises others thinking about opening a small business: "It's a crazy ride; prepare to make lots and lots of mistakes. Seek advice from experienced people, collaborate, and be really good to your customers."
Robert Sandberg had worked in the banking industry for 10 years when he was laid off during the 2008 financial crisis. Retirement didn't suit him, and after moving to Portland, he decided to follow his passion and work in solar energy. He started by learning the ins and outs of the industry, from the electrical aspects to installation procedures and business strategies. After a year and a half, he was ready to start a business of his own.
When Sandberg launched LightSource Energy in 2015, he was the only permanent employee. Sandberg worked with temporary installers and a subcontractor electrician. Three years later, he employs a full-time operations manager, a sales manager, and three installers.


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This week's roundup of iOS accessories offers better ways to write on, power up, or type when using your iPhone or iPad.
Freedom Pop: The $99 Freedom Sleeve Rocket is a 4G hotspot that gives your iPhone touch access to cellular signals—permitting voice calls and data downloads even when you're not in range of Wi-Fi. Users are required to purchase a minimum of 500MBs of data access each month; the device itself offers six hours of battery life. (See this video for a demonstration.) The company promises no contracts are involved.
Invoxia: The $299 AudiOffice converts your iPhone into the centerpiece of an office-based calling system. The system powers your iOS device while it's docked; the handset lets you take and make phone calls comfortably from your desk. (You can also play music over the AudiOffice's speakers.) The system uses the legacy 30-pin dock connector, rather than the iPhone 5's Lightning connector, so it can't recharge that phone but it can otherwise be paired with the device via Bluetooth.
KwikDock: The $80 KwikDock is a small dock that plugs into your MacBook's USB port and offers cable-free charging and syncing for your iOS device (or, at least, older devices with a 30-pin dock connector—you'll need a Lightning adapter for newer devices). The KwikDock is pitched at business travelers who want to cut down on the number of cables they have to bring on trips.
Mophie: The company now offers white versions of its $60 Powerstation Mini, $80 Powerstation, $100 Powerstation Duo —initially exclusively at the online Apple Store. The first charges just the iPhone or iPod; the second can handle either the iPhone or an iPad; and the third can charge both your phone and tablet at the same time. The company says the new white models will be available in brick-and-mortar Apple Stores starting October 31.
More/Real: The $25 Stylus Caps from More/Real let you turn any pen into a stylus for your iOS touchscreen: Just cap your Sharpie with the tip and you're ready to start writing or drawing on the screen. What's more, you still have the Sharpie itself available for paper writing and note-taking if need be. Replacement tips for the Stylus Caps cost $6 apiece.
Mujjo: Fall is here! Time to keep your hands warm. Holland-based Mujjo can help you do that while still letting you use your iPhone or iPad's touchscreen with its line of €25 touchscreen gloves. They come in gray, sandstone, lavender, and coral pink and are built for comfort and warmth. The gloves use special capacitative-fabric tips that let you use the touchscreen on your iOS device. The gloves will begin shipping on November 12.
Richard Solo: If you need to charge and see your iPhone and iPad at the same time, the $80 Power View Pro S Dual Charging Dock lets you show both devices side-by-side. The twin 30-pin dock-connector cradles obviously aren't made for the Lightning connector of the iPhone 5 and the latest iPads, but you can charge those devices using one of Apple's 30-pin-to-Lightning adapters. A couple of hidden USB ports let you charge two additional devices.
StarTech: The $19 Apple (30-pin) Dock Connector/Micro USB to USB Combo Cable features a standard USB connector on one end and both a 30-pin connector and a Micro-USB connector on the other end. So many options! Just one cable!
Unu: The Ecopack iPhone 5 battery case snaps onto your phone and doubles its battery life. The case comes in a variety of colors and purports to be eco-friendly because the battery portion of the device can be swapped between cases, enabling the battery itself to last through several phone upgrades. Pricing and shipping information for the Ecopak, however, are unavailable.
Zagg Inc.: This accessory maker has a pair of new Bluetooth-enabled keyboard cases to accompany the iPad mini: the $90 ZaggKeys Mini 7 and (pictured at the top of this article) the $90 ZaggKeys Mini 9—the latter offering a few more keyboard options. The company is also offering the $30 Breeze and $50 Merge cases for the new, smaller tablet. Zagg has not yet announced shipping dated for any of the products.
Updated 11/6/2012, 11:05am, to correct the description of StarTech's Combo Cable.
iPhone 5
Read our full iPhone 5 review
iPad with Wi-Fi 64GB
iPad mini with Wi-Fi
Read our full iPad mini with Wi-Fi review