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Bangalore, December 18, 2012
Infosys today announced that Finacle™, the universal banking solution, has been ranked as a long-term leader in The Forrester Wave™: Global Banking Platforms, Q4 2012, published by Forrester Research, Inc. Vendor offerings were evaluated on 62 key parameters for banking platforms under the categories of Current Offerings, Strategy and Market presence. Infosys Finacle™ scored highest in the categories of multichannel enablement and implementation and development resources.
In The Forrester Wave™ report, Jost Hoppermann, Vice President, Principal Analyst, wrote – "Infosys is one of the long-term Leaders. Infosys Finacle™ banking platform offers strong, close to very strong, overall functionality. The product base is very broad, and business capabilities are very strong. The product configurator is strong across comprehensiveness, pricing, bundling, and commissions. The ability to enable multichannel support is strong, with a high number of directly supported channels. Platform agility is strong based on sound, close to strong, application architecture and strong support of development and integration."
Haragopal M, Global Head – Finacle™, Infosys said, "Banks today are faced with several demands like catering to changing customer dynamics and managing multiple banking channels; they also have to constantly look for ways to tap into new markets while adhering to tough regulatory requirements. Finacle™'s technology-led innovations not only enable banks to run their business effectively but also lay a strong foundation that will help transform their banks for tomorrow. We believe The Forrester Wave™: Global Banking Platforms study reaffirms our position as a partner of choice for banks globally."
Infosys Finacle™ partners with banks to transform process, product and customer experience, arming them with a host of innovations. Today it is the banking solution of choice for 165 banks across 80 countries and serves more than 350 million customers efficiently.
Click here for more information on Infosys Finacle
Infosys partners with global enterprises to drive their innovation-led growth. That's why Forbes ranked Infosys 19th among the top 100 most innovative companies. As a leading provider of next-generation consulting, technology, and outsourcing solutions, Infosys helps clients in more than 30 countries realize their goals. Visit www.infosys.com and see how Infosys (NYSE: INFY), with its 150,000+ people, is Building Tomorrow's Enterprise® today.
Certain statements in this release concerning our future growth prospects are forward-looking statements, which involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties relating to these statements include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties regarding fluctuations in earnings, fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, our ability to manage growth, intense competition in IT services including those factors which may affect our cost advantage, wage increases in India, our ability to attract and retain highly skilled professionals, time and cost overruns on fixed-price, fixed-time frame contracts, client concentration, restrictions on immigration, industry segment concentration, our ability to manage our international operations, reduced demand for technology in our key focus areas, disruptions in telecommunication networks or system failures, our ability to successfully complete and integrate potential acquisitions, liability for damages on our service contracts, the success of the companies in which Infosys has made strategic investments, withdrawal or expiration of governmental fiscal incentives, political instability and regional conflicts, legal restrictions on raising capital or acquiring companies outside India, and unauthorized use of our intellectual property and general economic conditions affecting our industry. Additional risks that could affect our future operating results are more fully described in our United States Securities and Exchange Commission filings including our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2012 and on Form 6-K for the quarters ended December 31, 2011, June 30, 2012 and September 30, 2012.These filings are available at www.sec.gov. Infosys may, from time to time, make additional written and oral forward-looking statements, including statements contained in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and our reports to shareholders. The company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements that may be made from time to time by or on behalf of the company.
For further information, please contact: email@example.com


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Calculating the Determinant
Today we'll actually calculate the determinant representation of an element of for a finite-dimensional vector space . That is, what transformation does an element of the general linear group induce on the one-dimensional space of antisymmetric tensors of maximal degree?
First off, what will the determinant of a linear transformation be? It will be an invertible linear transformation from a one-dimensional vector space to itself. That is, if we have a basis (any single nonzero vector) for the one-dimensional space, the determinant can be described by an invertible matrix — a single nonzero field element. The action is just to multiply every vector by this field element. So all we have to do is find a vector in our space and see what the representation does to it.
But finding a vector is easy. We just pick a basis of — any basis of — and antisymmetrize a -tuple of basis elements. The obvious one to pick is . Then we have an antisymmetric tensor
Now, we could calculate this right away, but let's not do that. What we're really interested in is how a group element acts on this tensor
But remember that the actions of the symmetric and general linear groups commute
Where we're not using the summation convention for the moment.
The next step is the tricky part. What we have is a product of sums, which we want to turn into a sum of products. We walk through the factors, picking one summand from each as we go along. That is, for every we pick some to get the term
And we can factor out all these constants to make our term look like
We want to sum up over all possible such terms. This is really just a big application of the distributive property — the linearity of tensor multiplication. At the end we have
But since antisymmetrization is linear we get
And here's where the properties of the antisymmetrizer come in. First off, if for any two distinct indices and , then the antisymmetrization of the term will vanish. Thus our sum is really only over those
But now each term involves antisymmetrizing the same collection of basis vectors, but in different orders. So for each one we rearrange the tensorands at the possible cost of picking up a negative sign
And now the antisymmetrizer part has nothing to do with the summation over . We factor it out to find
So in the end we've multiplied our antisymmetric tensor by the factor
which is our determinant. For each permutation we take our matrix and walk down the rows. At the th row we multiply by the element in the th column, and we sum up these products over all .

subset: commoncrawl


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I can't believe how quickly the first week of 30 Days Wild went and now I am finalising this post at the end of the second week! I am enjoying reading other bloggers' adventures, and The Wildlife Trusts, 30 Days Wild app, of 101 random acts of wildness, is really inspiring me to learn more about the nature that I see around me.
Day Eight: Wednesday.
Wednesday was World Oceans Day. Highlighting the plight of the seas and collaborating for a better future. I was unable to get to the coast but I still managed to celebrate the diversity of the oceans. It was a day of cooking and baking bread. I shaped these granary loaves into sea turtles (recipe here). I'm no artist but I am pretty happy with how they turned out. What do you think?
In the afternoon I opened the app for the Great British Bee Count. I thought with the amount of bees flying about the yarden that I could do a timed count. I set up alongside a popular plant and started the one minute timer. Sadly, all the bees must have known and only one mason bee made an appearance! Typical!
Day Nine: Thursday.
I turned to the wildness cards for inspiration. I downloaded the cards from the email pack The Wildlife Trusts sent when I signed up for 30 Days Wild. (I wish I had asked for a mail pack as they sent a cute little 'I love wild' badge! But such is life!)
I picked the sketch up close card. If my sea turtle bread rolls were any indication, then this activity could go horribly wrong, but I had to try. So I grabbed a piece of paper and sharpened a pencil and sat down to draw one of my favourite garden birds. The dunnock.
Some interesting facts on the dunnock (hedge sparrow):
- Has a fine bill due to preferring insects and beetles than seeds.
- Is a ground feeder.
- As their diets are similar to Robins, can come into conflict if food is scarce, usually losing out to the more aggressive Robins.
- Their nests are often parasitised by the cuckoo.
- Most are polyandrous (female has more than one male mate) or polygynous (males have more than one female mate).
Day Ten: Friday.
I let David chose today's 'wild card'. He chose keep a note of wildlife. List the species that you see from your window. I decided to spend an hour watching the yarden after the evenings dinner. Here's what I saw.
- House Sparrow (x1)
- Pigeons (x4)
- Bees (many)
- Hover flies (many)
- Flies (many)
- Dunnock (x1)
- Goldfinches (x2)
- Small white butterfly (x1)
- Cinnabar moth (x1)
- Spider (garden) (x1)
- Snails (x2)
- Magpie (x1)
- Herring gull (x1)
Day Eleven: Saturday.
During 30 Days Wild, I have also been setting up my camcorder to record for an hour a day. Below is the 'highlights' video of the species, mainly birds visiting the yarden.
Day Twelve: Sunday.
With the flowers having fallen, it was time to haul up our potato plants. We have found that it has not been easy to grow our own vegetables. However, David and I were overjoyed that we got some kind of harvest! Below find pictures of us celebrating our maris bard potatoes!
For the evening dinner we boiled some of our harvest and had them with a vegetarian roast. They were delicate and creamy. They tasted all the better for having grown them ourselves.
Day Thirteen: Monday.
Sadly the weather has taken a turn for the worse, even this poor buff tailed bumblebee was having trouble today. David rescued her/him from the yarden floor and the jaws of Artie and fed it some sugar solution. After a while it perked up and flew away. Later on I saw another bee busily enjoying an oriental poppy.
I also managed to do another bee count, in between the showers. Within a minute I got a tally of three!
Monday was also World Meat Free Day, so I made a Mediterranean flavoured white bean soup with brown rice.
Day Fourteen: Tuesday.
I decided to write a short creative passage around wild swimming. I didn't intend for it to become so morbid… sorry!
On a frosty winter's day. Erin dipped her toe into the water and shivered as the delicious cold touched her skin. She often wondered if her sister had felt the same sensation before she slipped eternally into the dark abyss. Perhaps her depression had steeled her against the cold? Either way Erin gasped as she stepped in.
'What torments brought you to these waters?' She thought, finding herself waist deep in the lake. 'If only I could have helped.' She swam through the icy water towards a small island, a tangle of tree branches and sandy shores.
During the summer holidays, Erin and her younger sister, Elise used to swim out towards the island. The warm waters suspended their sun kissed limbs as they splashed headlong towards an adventure of exploring over rock and under root.
Erin, felt her teeth chatter as she breaststroked through the choppy waters. Erin didn't mind, she was a strong swimmer. Elise too, but on that fateful day she chose to succumb. 'It's very easy to get cramp,' their swimming instructor had prophesied. 'If you don't respect the water or your ability, tragedy can happen.' Erin swam on until a man's voice from the lakeside beckoned tensely.
'What are you doing?' She turned, noticing her funeral garb heaped on the shingle shore. The waters caressed her breasts, stroked seductively between her legs. She saw Josh standing at the lakeside. In his hand he held the length of his black tie. His shoes discarded.
'I'm okay!' Erin called through the drizzle. She looked at Josh as she treaded water. She felt the love Elise had felt for him. Watched as he disregarded his mourning clothes and lunged into the lake. His arms were strong as he crawled towards her, while she felt cradled in the waters embrace.
Erin recalled the last time she and Elise swam together in the lake. Elise had been no older than eleven. They both lay on their backs looking up at the blue cloudless sky. Swallows skirted over the water catching flies, and laughter tinged the air with joyful exuberance. Elise had been so full of life. Her death remained inexplicable.
'Come back to shore.' Erin felt Josh's arms embrace her. They were becoming shrouded in a mist that rolled down from the mountains. 'You'll get hypothermia.' Josh reached for Erin's hand. They swam alongside each other back towards the shore.
Erin's body ached with the cold as she walked out of the water. She looked into Josh's dark eyes that searched her face for a reason. 'I just felt like a swim.'
'In this weather?' She felt Josh's warm lips on hers. 'I don't want to lose you too.' He threw his jacket over Erin's shoulders before hurrying her towards their hotel where Elise's wake was winding down. With luck, Erin's disappearance had gone undetected and they could creep inside unseen.
A warm light flooded from the hotel doorway, and bathed their heads in a golden glow. Josh took Erin's hand in his and they both walked into the light.
I have taken things much slower this week. Perhaps a bit too slow. Most days haven't been really 'wild.' I have enjoyed doing the creative activities, like molding bread into turtles and even drawing the dunnock, I found relaxing.
I wonder what discoveries week three of 30 Days Wild will uncover? At some point, I am hoping to go looking for moths and perhaps a wild swim will feature, who knows? I hope you will join me in my forthcoming adventures…
Christine x


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Raptors scorch Suns
Phoenix, AZ – DeMar DeRozan and Amir Johnson scored 15 and 14 points, respectively, as the Toronto Raptors defeated the Phoenix Suns, 98-71, on Wednesday.
Sebastian Telfair had 13 points, seven assists and four steals while Jonas Valanciunas, Alan Anderson and Terrence Ross scored 10 points apiece for the Raptors, who snapped a five-game losing streak.
Marcus Morris scored 12 points off the bench for the Suns, who had won three straight coming into the game. No other Phoenix player finished in double figures.
Late in the first quarter, down 25-22, the Suns' Marcin Gortat came down with a rebound and had his left foot stepped on by Johnson. Gortat did not return to the game.
"He (Gortat) is their difference maker but again, we've been there. It's the NBA and I feel for him but we have been there before and nobody felt sorry for us and so I hope he's ok," Raptors coach Dwane Casey said.
Entering the second quarter, the Raptors had a 28-24 advantage.
Up 39-34 with less than eight minutes in the frame, the Raptors went on a 9-0 run to lead 48-34 with 3:55 remaining and held a 54-40 lead at halftime. Telfair scored 10 points in the half.
The third quarter was a low-scoring mess. Both teams combined for 12 turnovers and Phoenix shot just 26.3 percent from the field to go into the final frame trailing 72-55.
Phoenix's Michael Beasley opened up the fourth quarter with a layup, but the Toronto then pulled away even further, as it went on a 16-2 run and led 88-59 with 6:24 left in regulation.
The Raptors proved to be too much for the Suns over the final 12 minutes after shot 8-of-13 from the field, including 4-of-8 from three-point range. Toronto made all six of their free throws in the quarter. Morris scored 10 points in the period, including six in the final two minutes, but the rest of the roster contributed little offensively.
"That was pretty bad," Suns coach Lindsey Hunter said. "I do not see one bright spot to take from that game other than it is over."
Game Notes
Phoenix committed a season-high 29 turnovers ... The Raptors scored 39 points off turnovers ... Toronto swept the regular-season series against Phoenix for the first time since the 2003-04 season ... The Suns' Jermaine O'Neal did not play in the game as he was with his 13-year-old daughter who is recovering from surgery.


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"They've outdone themselves with the decorations," said Frau B.
Word had it that some of the carers in Wohnbereich 4 had been up since 4 o'clock in the morning. The dining hall had been transformed into a winter wonderland, with baubles, fir tree branches and paper stars adorning the tables and walls. Someone even had the genius idea of hanging cotton buds from the ceiling to resemble a snow scene.
Most of the residents had dressed for the occasion. Frau B had on a navy jacket she'd sewn for herself at the age of 85. On it, she'd pinned a sparkling turquoise brooch. She'd had her hair done too.
I complimented her style.
"Katechen," she whispered. "Have a proper look around. Later, I want you to tell me who you think is the most attractive person here. You'd better be honest though."
The hired entertainer, an earnest man in a questionable cloud-patterned shirt, led the Christmas carol-sing-along. I heard Frau B join in to Stille Nacht. The lady next to me, who had been whimpering in distress only moments before, began clapping her hands on the table in delight as she hummed along pitch-perfect to the music.
"She has lost her Verstand [has dementia]" Frau Bienkowski whispered. "But occasionally, she has remarkable moments of recall."
After we had polished off our Stollen (Frau B thought it was sub-par) and the entertainer concluded his festive repertoire, it was time for the exchange of presents. A carer in a Santa costume appeared on a sleigh carting presents for the residents.
"Ho, ho, ho Frohe Weihnachten, liebe Einwohner," he said, enlisting the help of his colleague, whom he referred to as "mein Engel," to distribute the gifts.
From observing those around us, we figured out fairly fast that Frau B was likely to get either a large animal-shaped heat cushion or a desk calendar.
We had arranged earlier that we would exchange our gifts privately. This was after all, only the nursing home party, not our own.
Later on, back in Frau B's room, she handed me an envelope. On it was written, in a scrawl I have come to know well, "Katechen."
"I can't see what I write," she said. "So, I was quite impressed that I got any letters down at all."
She made me promise I wouldn't open it until I'm back in Ireland on Christmas Eve.
I handed Frau P a bag containing an assortment of perishable gifts. The hamper included a slice of mackerel, two bottles of Berliner Kindl beer, a box of Lindt chocolates and some organic (it is Christmas, after all) apples.
She told me to hide the beer at the back of the cupboard.
"I'm not going to drink it alone," she said. I took that as an invitation for a beer date in the new year.
Back in the quietness of the room, I asked Frau B how she had been feeling this week.
"Terrible," she said. "I really thought my time had come. I was convinced I was going to close my eyes one final time."
We looked at each other for a long time.
And then it passed and she asked me who I honestly thought was the most attractive resident in Wohnbereich 4.


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Dave Chappelle Tour dates 2023
Dave Chappelle tickets are on sale right now on ConcertPass. ConcertPass is your number one destination for all Dave Chappelle concerts tickets as well as concert dates and extensive tour information. On ConcertPass you'll find Dave Chappelle tickets at great prices across an excellent range of seating options. We'll let you pick your seats from our interactive maps so you can find the seats that are right for you. All Dave Chappelle concerts tickets come with our ticket integrity guarantee, with all tickets guaranteed or your money back. You'll find tickets for thousands of concerts and events on ConcertPass, so please feel free to browse around. Be a part of the action and witness great some performances right now, buy your tickets for Dave Chappelle today, so you don't miss out.
May 31 2023 7:30 PM
Dave Chappelle in Charleston
Jun 01 2023 7:30 PM
Dave Chappelle in PittsburghPPG Paints ArenaPittsburgh (PA)
Jun 02 2023 7:30 PM
Dave Chappelle & The Roots
Artist info
Dave Chappelle tour
Upcoming concerts:
US concerts:
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Relevant tags:
Dave Chappelle


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Register your product to gain access to bonus material or receive a coupon.
Architect IBM® WebSphere® Applications for Maximum Performance, Security, Flexibility, Usability, and Value Successful, high-value WebSphere applications begin with effective architecture. Now, one of IBM's leading WebSphere and WebSphere Portal architects offers a hands-on, best-practice guide to every facet of defining, planning, and implementing WebSphere application architectures. Joey Bernal shows working architects and teams how to define layered architectural standards that can be used across the entire organization, improving application quality without compromising flexibility.
Bernal begins by illuminating the role of architecture and the responsibilities of the architect in WebSphere applications and SOA environments. Next, he introduces specific architectural techniques for addressing persistence, application performance, security, functionality, user interaction, and much more.
Bernal presents a series of sample architectures drawn from his work with several leading organizations, demonstrating how architectures can evolve to support new layers and changing business requirements. Throughout, his techniques are specific enough to address realistic enterprise challenges, while still sufficiently high-level to be useful in diverse and heterogeneous environments.
Coverage includes
• Choosing persistence frameworks that serve business requirements without excessive complexity
• Avoiding persistence-related problems with performance, security, or application functionality
• Designing and deploying effective middle layers and dependent libraries within WebSphere Application Server
• Using WebSphere mechanisms and architectural techniques to avoid common security attacks such as SQL injection
• Improving performance with WebSphere Application Server caching, including Distributed Maps and Servlet/JSP fragment caching
• Using presentation frameworks to provide fast, robust, and attractive user interaction
• Incorporating portals that provide a standardized framework for merging multiple applications
Joey Bernal is an Executive IT Specialist with IBM Software Services for Lotus. Senior Certified with IBM as an IT Specialist, he has an extensive background in designing and developing Web and Portal Applications. He often leads IBM teams that have assisted dozens of clients in leveraging WebSphere Portal to address architecture, design, and implementation challenges. A frequent speaker on WebSphere and portal topics, Bernal is coauthor of Programming Portlets, and hosts the developerWorks blog: WebSphere Portal in Action. Prior to joining IBM, he was Director of IT for an incentive and performance improvement company, and served as lead technical advisor and architect for high-profile Internet and intranet applications at several Fortune 500 companies. You can also visit the author's Web site at www.bernal.net.
The IBM Press developerWorks® Series is a unique undertaking in which print books and the Web are mutually supportive. The publications in this series are complemented by resources on the developerWorks Web site on ibm.com®. Icons throughout the book alert the reader to these valuable resources.
Download the Code & Examples file (33.5 MB .zip)
Application Architecture for WebSphere: Setting a Standard
Foreword xix
Acknowledgments xxi
About the Author xxiii
Preface xxv
Chapter 1 Application Architecture 1
What Is Application Architecture? 1
Architects and Architecture 2
Application Architecture and Engineering 7
WebSphere and IBM 8
IBM WebSphere Application Server 9
A Word about Specifications 13
How Close to the Specification Should I Stay with My Architecture? 13
WebSphere Extensions to Consider 14
One Size Does Not Fit All 15
Building Blocks of Application Architecture 16
Detail in Layering 18
A Complete Example 18
Layers Versus Tiers 22
Deployment Patterns for a Layered Architecture 24
Layers Versus Modules 27
A View Perspective on Architecture 30
Conclusion 31
References 31
Chapter 2 Setting a Standard 33
Organizational Standards and Conventions 33
Putting the "Engineering" in Software Engineering 34
Standards Documentation 36
Naming Standards and Conventions 36
Packages 37
Classes and Interfaces 37
Functions and Methods 38
Variables and Constants 38
Java Server Pages 38
Internal Documentation 39
Class Header Information 40
Class Methods 41
Getters and Setters 41
Inline Comments 41
Logging and Tracing 42
System.out 43
Using the Logger 43
Logging Levels 45
Method-Level Timers 47
Working with Logging and Tracing 49
Too Much Logging? 50
Why Not Use Aspects? 51
Exception and Error Handling 51
Project and Packaging File Structure 53
Using External Libraries 54
Unit Testing Requirements 55
What Is a Unit? 58
The Trouble with Web Testing 58
Agile Approaches 59
Code Completion and Review Process Requirements 59
Code Reviews 60
You Don't Have to Know Java for a Code Review 62
Communicating the Vision the Wiki Way 62
Conclusion 63
Reference 64
Chapter 3 Persistence Matters 65
Types of Persistence Frameworks 65
Object/Relational Mapping 66
SQL-Based Frameworks 66
Why Not Roll Your Own Framework? 66
WebSphere Data Source Resource Reference 67
iBATIS Framework 68
Implementing the Customer Class and Customer SQL Mapping 72
Configurating iBATIS 74
Adding the Spring DAO Framework 76
Running a Test 80
Transactional Thinking 82
EJB 3 and the Java Persistence API 83
Understanding the Approach 84
Entities with POJOs and Annotations 84
Entity Managers 88
Testing the Application 93
Remote Clients 94
Conclusion 97
Chapter 4 Designing the Middle Tiers 99
Business Logic 99
Another HelloWorld Example 101
Making the Business Layer Accessible 103
Getting Ready for Unit Testing 105
WebSphere Shared Libraries 107
Making the Library Visible 110
Mapping Shared Libraries to Class Loaders 114
Testing the Business Layer 116
Controlling Shared Libraries 117
Implementation Options 120
Business Process Layers 122
Conclusion 123
References 123
Chapter 5 Presentation Frameworks 125
Choosing a Presentation Framework 125
JavaServer Faces 127
Lifecycle Phase Listener 130
About the Sample Application 131
Masking and Conversion Errors 144
JSF as a Standard 146
IBM's JWL 146
Conclusion 147
References 148
Chapter 6 Investing in a Portal 149
Incorporating a Portal into Your Architecture 150
Virtual Portal Technology 151
Business-to-Employee (B2E) Portals 152
Business Process or Forms-Based Portal 152
Portals Versus the Web App 153
Role-based Navigation and Content Delivery 153
Security and Single Sign-on 153
Content Personalization 154
Portlet Aggregation and Composite Applications 154
Applications as Portlets 154
The Java Portlet API 156
Java Portlet API 2.0 158
Portlet Preferences 160
A Simple Portlet Example 161
Switching Modes Programmatically 168
Conclusion 172
References 173
Chapter 7 SOA and Web Services 175
Pinning Down SOA 175
How to Implement SOA 177
Service Modeling 177
Services as Business Functions 177
Managing Service Data Elements 178
A Commitment from the Business 178
Things to Consider about Web Services 179
Performance 179
Standardization 180
Manageability 180
Web Services Feature Pack for WAS 181
Credit Limit Service 182
Testing the Service 184
Building a New Client Application 187
Simple REST-Based Services 189
Conclusion 194
References 195
Chapter 8 Caching and Performance 197
Designing for Performance 197
Architecture Concerns 198
Performance Terminology 199
Caching Considerations 199
Caching Design Options 200
Sizing a Cache 201
When Not to Cache 202
User Session Caching 202
Caching in WebSphere Application Server 203
IBM HTTP Server and the Caching Plug-in 205
Using the Distributed Map 206
Creating a New Distributed Map 206
Testing the Distributed Map 209
HTML Fragment Caching 214
Monitoring the Fragment Cache 216
ESI Plug-in Caching 217
Conclusion 218
References 218
Chapter 9 Keeping Things Secure 219
Why Security Is Important 219
The Role of the Security Architect 221
SQL Injection Example 222
Protecting against SQL Injection Attacks 224
WebSphere Security Basics 225
Authenticating Application Users 225
Adding a Filter to the Login Process 236
Architecting for Security 237
WebSphere Single Sign-on 238
WebSphere Authorization 239
Conclusion 241
Chapter 10 Managing Your Applications 243
Managing Applications 243
Enforcing Architecture Adherence 244
Standing by Your Decisions 245
Documenting Libraries 245
Managing Organizational Process 246
Avoiding Common Process Malpractices 249
Enforcing Adherence and Reuse with Technology Solutions 251
Using a Registry and Repository 251
Project Methodology 253
Common Methodology Problems 254
Change Control Board 255
Conclusion 256
References 257
Appendix A Setting up the Data Sample 259
Getting Started 259
Database and Schema 260
Setting Up Your Data Environment 261
Creating the DB2 Database 262
Load the Classic Models Data 264
Creating a WebSphere Data Source 266
Conclusion 275
Appendix B Running the Examples 277
Chapter Code Samples 277
Chapter 2 278
Chapter 3 278
Chapter 4 278
Chapter 5 278
Chapter 6 279
Chapter 7 279
Chapter 8 279
Chapter 9 280
Conclusion 280
Index 283


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Where the Wrath and Love of God Meet - In Touch - April 1/2
In Touch with Dr. Charles Stanley
Where the Wrath and Love of God Meet
In our culture, sin is no longer considered an issue. Although some people might admit to making mistakes or being wrong, few will actually say, "I have sinned." The Lord, however, takes sin very seriously. Until we learn to see transgression as He does, we will never understand what happened at Christ's crucifixion.
The cross was God's perfect answer to a terrible dilemma. Because the Lord is holy and just, He hates sin and must respond to it with punishment and wrath. Yet He also loves sinners and wants to be reconciled with them. The cross of Christ was the place where God's wrath and love collided.
The only way to rescue fallen mankind from eternal punishment was to devise a plan whereby the Lord could forgive sins without compromising His holiness. There was no way to overlook transgressions; His wrath had to be poured out--either on us or a substitute. But there was only one possible substitute: the perfect Son of God.
So Jesus came to earth as a man and suffered the Lord's wrath for us as He hung on the cross. Sin was punished, divine justice was satisfied, and now God could forgive mankind without compromising His character. His wrath was poured out on His Son so that His love and forgiveness could be lavished upon us.
Because of human limitations, we'll never grasp all that happened while Jesus hung on the cross. We can begin to comprehend only the physical suffering He endured, but in the spiritual realm, Christ bore so much more--the very wrath of God. This costly redemption plan proves God's great love.
For more biblical teaching and resources from Dr. Charles Stanley, please visit www.intouch.org.
And Listen to Dr. Charles Stanley at OnePlace.com!
Used with permission from In Touch Ministries, Inc. © 2019 All Rights Reserved.


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At the beginning of the summer, I had the great pleasure to meet a fellow author on the twitverse, Julia Hughes. Julia was running a promotion for her novel A Ripple in Time and I was immediately intrigued by its blurb: "After one hundred years, the Titanic has a new love story." Julia and I started tweeting, also thanks to a common friend, Randall Peterson who was promoting her book and mine. A friendship was born out of 140 characters at a time. Later, Julia saw my drawings and asked me if I wanted to work on the new cover for A Ripple in Time, which meanwhile had had more than twenty thousand downloads in mere five days. I was flattered that my naïf art had caught Julia's attention. Her proposal arrived at an odd moment for me, I was leaving to go back to Italy for a long stay due to family reasons. My mind was stretched in several directions at once, but Julia assured me she was in no hurry. Nevertheless, I don't like to have people waiting on me when I accept to work on a project, and so once Julia told me what she wanted on the cover, I started playing with my tablet. One of her requirements was that the cover must have dandelion flowers and seeds. I had never drawn a dandelion flower before and I scouted the web for good images I could use as reference. It turns out, I love drawing dandelions and dandelions seeds. Below are my first and second mock covers and the banner.
Once the backdrop was done, I asked my cover artist and dear friend, Alessandro Fiorini to come onboard. I gave him the specifics of what Julia wanted on the cover: a sundial, a winged figure, and of course the Titanic.
Alessandro told me he was going to give it a try and contacted me a few hours later with this:
I thought it was a solid work and sent the image to Julia. Once we received the okay from her, Alessandro and I started working on the details. Despite a particularly hot Italian summer, internet failures, and life in general, a few weeks later we were able to send Julia the final cover. Below is one of the final tries and the banner.
Working with Alessandro is always a treat and Julia is one fabulous patron of the arts and it was an absolute pleasure to create a cover for her imaginative novel.


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Alex's Pick
Alex, who relocated to Boston a few months ago, was in DC for the weekend, and she chose to hold court at American Ice Co., a stone's throw away from the 9:30 Club. The weekend had been a soggy mess, but we were lucky to get one of those glorious early Spring Sundays and take advantage of the bigger-than-it-seems patio. The restaurant itself (given the beer to food ratio, it s probably better to call it a bar that happens to have amazing barbeque) has the industrial feel and grit one would expect from a repurposed building: cement, brick, dark woods.
I took a seat at one of the patio picnic tables and perused the menu - an ample beer list, divided into glass (drafts) and steel (cans). The super friendly staff will bring them out to you in mason jars (with little ones for shots). I had a Czechvar (which I first encounted, many years ago, as Budvar, the original Budweiser) followed by a wheat beer. The lunch menu features a limited selection of sandwiches, and I ordered a turkey club mostly to keep myself from ordering the pastrami. I was pleasantly surprised by the sandwich - the turkey was carved, not sliced, and the bacon had a wonderful spice rub. It is easily the best turkey sandwich I've had in a restaurant in DC.
As our group of revelers grew, we took over more tables (the revolving group also meant that our very patient waitress adjusted the tab whenever people wanted to cash out). As I nursed my second beer, I could hear the telltale sounds of cleaver against pork. On the far side of the table, someone ordered Swachos - Swine and nachos, because pork rinds and queso are meant to go together, especially when it's sunny but you still need a sweater.
The dinner menu appeared and Alex ordered the combo platter. I wasn t particularly hungry after my enormous sandwich of a few hours before, but I simply had to try it - pulled pork and brisket. After all, she had already had the brilliant idea of asking for a Margarita (she can't get those up in Beantown), and I had happily followed suit. The plates brimmed with warm, smokey, flavorful without being fatty barbeque, and the vinegar sauce on our table gave it an extra kick. The greens were fresh, but the sides did not hold a candle to the brisket.
Go for the food, stay for the beer, and bring a gaggle of friends with you.
American Ice Co.
917 V St NW
(between N Vermont Ave & N 10th St)
Washington, DC 20001


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The B52 Stratofortress flying a routine patrol over the East Coast of the United States on Jan. 24, 1961, lost its wing, lost its tail, spun out of control, and, perhaps most important, lost control of its bomb bay doors before it lost two megaton nuclear bombs.
The plane crashed nose-first into a tobacco field a few paces away from Big Daddy Road just outside Goldboro, N.C., about 60 miles east of Raleigh.
Three men – gunner Frank Barnish, navigator Gene Shelton and wing staffer Eugene Richards – died in the crash. Five others – commander Scott Tulloch, co-pilot Dick Rardin, third pilot Adam Mattocks, electronic warfare specialist Bill Wilson and navigator Paul Brown – parachuted to safety.
If either of those bombs exploded, any human within 81/2 miles of the detonation would be dead immediately. Clouds of radiation would rise over the countryside. The water supply would be compromised.
And those were just the minor problems.
The major problem would be the potential for a nuclear explosion to be misinterpreted. The U.S. military could have easily assumed that the plane had been shot down and that we were under attack. Or, they could have mistakenly thought foreign agents had overtaken the plane and flown a kamikaze mission. Or, they could have mistakenly thought the bombs had been fired by the Soviet Union.
One misinterpretation could have led to World War III or, more accurately, Nuclear War I.
The first bomb had a parachute that opened automatically. As it fell, the parachute got caught in a tree. Only the bomb's nose hit the ground. The rest of it stood erect, like your tall uncle posing for a picture standing on his head.
Jack ReVelle, the munitions expert who now lives in Orange, landed at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base and was rushed to the crash site in a Jeep. The bomb hanging in the tree was easy to spot.
The consummate joker, ReVelle got out of the Jeep and stood in front of it.
"You're right," ReVelle said. "It's a bomb."
ReVelle quickly determined the first bomb's ARM/SAFE switch was in the SAFE position. This bomb, as long as that switch wasn't moved, wouldn't hurt anyone.
The second bomb was a bit more problematic, if "a bit" can be used to mean "apocalyptically."
The second bomb had hit muddy ground and was immediately swallowed up. The 12-foot-long bomb was buried somewhere, but no one knew where it was.
How do you lose a nuclear bomb?
Seven things have to happen for a MK 39 3.8 megaton nuclear bomb to explode. ReVelle would soon discover that six of them had already happened: 1. The arming wires had been pulled; 2. The pulse generators had been activated; 3. The explosive actuators had been fired; 4. Timers had started; 5. Barometric switches had been engaged; and 6. Low-voltage batteries were actuated.
Before he could check the last line of defense – the ARM/SAFE switch – he had to find the bomb.
He remembers joking with people who were searching the countryside, "Excuse me, sir, have you seen a bomb here?"
Finally, someone found a small dent in the earth. ReVelle found a long stick, and, careful not to damage the weapon, poked the stick into the hole. He hit a solid object.
Trying not to disturb the bomb, ReVelle's crew dug an ever-widening circle. They dug for seven days beside the bomb, leaving it sitting up in the middle of the hole like a pimple.
Late on that tense, first day, ReVelle was tired and hungry when he noticed a truck from The Salvation Army. Despite the nuclear danger, they were there handing out cups of black coffee and doughnuts. ReVelle was not a coffee drinker, but he drank it anyway.
"It tasted like my first beer," said ReVelle, who is forever grateful and donates to The Salvation Army every year.
At one point during the dig ("It was like we were archaeologists – except in the mud," ReVelle said), a general in dress blues showed up. ReVelle was digging in the hole.
"What's going on here?" the general asked.
"No disrespect, sir, but you really ought to get the hell out of here," ReVelle said.
When the second bomb didn't explode after a couple of days, detonation stopped being the main concern.
"The worry changed to radiation," ReVelle said.
Lost in that mud, somewhere, was a ball of uranium and plutonium – the core of the nuclear bomb. It has at least a couple of nicknames. "The Demon Core" is one. ReVelle called it "The Pit."
On the fifth day of digging, they found the pit.
ReVelle taped his gloves to his sleeves as not to expose his skin. He did not wear anything to cover his face or head – a fact that he now thinks may have been a mistake (though ReVelle has no health problems related to radiation). He fished into the mud with both hands and pulled out the pit. It was about the size of a volleyball. It wasn't glowing. It wasn't hot. It was cold metal.
"It's pretty heavy," he said. "Uranium and plutonium are approximately the weight of lead. You bend your knees and lift with your whole body."
Miraculously, as he carried the pit out of the hole, ReVelle couldn't think of a single joke. The only thing he could think: "Don't fall down."
He placed the pit on a military truck and it was whisked away.
Later, diggers found the ARM/SAFE switch.
It was in the ARM position.
Why that bomb didn't explode has been debated for years. Was the ARM/SAFE switch broken? Did the impact of the crash spread out the parts so far they couldn't affect each other? Was the bomb a dud?
No one will ever know.
The world didn't explode. War didn't break out. Our way of life was not altered.
After eight days of fixing the Broken Arrow, Jack ReVelle left North Carolina.
He got back to his apartment in Fairborn, Ohio, and began to think about what he'd just done.
He said he remembers sitting down at his kitchen table with a pen and a piece of paper. He wanted to explain in a letter to his parents the magnitude of what he'd just experienced.
But he couldn't write.
"My hand was shaking," he said.
Contact the writer: firstname.lastname@example.com


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Economy continues to falter in Minnesota
Minnesota's economy appears to be mirroring the national one, with employment expected to near 10 percent. "We think it is going to be a slow recovery," Minnesota State Economist Tom Stinson said Tuesday, with the state not fully recovered until ...
Minnesota's economy appears to be mirroring the national one, with employment expected to near 10 percent.
"We think it is going to be a slow recovery," Minnesota State Economist Tom Stinson said Tuesday, with the state not fully recovered until 2012.
Stinson said the recession will cost 120,000 Minnesota jobs through next year.
As part of a twice yearly report released Tuesday, Stinson said only one segment of the Minnesota economy is doing well -- health care. Construction and manufacturing industries are among those most affected.
Stinson said 22,500 Minnesota workers would have lost construction jobs had it not been for the economic stimulus package that President Barack Obama signed into law last month. With the federal money, that number will be cut to 14,000, Stinson added.
Even though the federal package will help the economy, Stinson said, it will not provide the jump-start that is needed. He suggested another stimulus package still may be needed.
The recession is led by consumers, Stinson said, and it will not disappear until Americans decide it is safe to spend more.
The Minnesota Management and Budget economic report released Tuesday showed that Americans are buying fewer goods, which leads managers to reduce employment. That, in turn, leads to more cutbacks in consumer demand.
Minnesota's economic consultant firm, Global Insight, predicts a 2.7 percent economic decline by year's end, more than twice as bad as it predicted last December.
House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher, DFL-Minneapolis, said construction and trades workers are so hard hit that a state-funded public works project should be considered as a way to put them to work. Such a package could provide thousands of jobs for workers fixing and constructing state buildings.
Sen. Keith Langseth, DFL-Glyndon, proposes a $300 million public works bill. He is chairman of the Senate committee that deals with such issues.
But Gov. Tim Pawlenty on Tuesday said he only favors borrowing more money for public works projects if it is needed to match federal money designated for such work. Pawlenty, a Republican, said the state already has a higher percent of its budget going to pay off loans than it should.


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Posts Tagged 'metal health'
Quiet Riot – Metal Health (1983)
Let's just be straight here, I love this album. I have since it was released. 1983. I was 13. It was a tough year for me…I guess 83-85 were a little difficult. Not necessarily because of going through the typical teenage bullshit, but there were other things going on that really made those some tough years. But hey, I got through it. I spent a lot of days and nights listening to this album. I used to have this little one speaker GE boombox that I would put under my pillow at night to keep listening to music as I went to sleep and so my parents wouldn't hear it. Not that they had a problem with QR, they just had a problem with my obsession with music. haha It was a thin cassette player so I only needed to remove my bottom pillow to make it fit and not kink my neck. Usually sometime in the middle of the night the player ended up on the floor and the second pillow was back in its proper place.
I picked this up right after hearing Metal Health on the radio. "huhuhuhuhuh, the song says bang your head." It was catchy. I never cared for Cum On Feel The Noize. It was goofy…still is. I was never a Slade fan, but I don't dislike them, just never really got exposed to them beyond the 2 songs that QR did, which are goofy. Beyond the goofiness of COFTN, this album is pretty great. Especially songs like Breathless, Run for Cover, Don't Wanna Let You Go…the whole damned thing. When I pop in the CD I never skip any tracks, not even COFTN, it's just part of the flow of the record.
In 1999 I got to see them with this lineup. They did an autograph signing earlier in the day at Mars Music and of course I went. They were all in good spirits except for Frankie Banali who seemed to have his ass on his shoulders a bit that day. I brought a few things to get signed like some odd QR EPs, a few CD covers and a few WASP CD covers. Apparently Frankie didn't have one of the WASP CDs that I brought and asked if he could have mine. I told him no and he got a little peeved about it. "Well I'm not signing anything else." "Fine, dude, no biggie," and I finished out my time with the rest of the band who were gracious. Cavazo gave a head nod towards Frankie and just shook his head at him in disapproval. They had about 200 people show up to meet them which I thought was a decent showing for a concert that was getting no promotion and was at a shitty venue.
I came home after the signing to chill out for a while before the show and realized that I had 2 of the WASP CD/EPs so I brought it to the show. We got to the Riverview Theater and I swear it looked closed. This place was trying to get revitalized and they were bringing some decent bands there but it never seemed to take off for them. For this show only about about 40 people showed up…FORTY PEOPLE. I felt really bad for them. They came out and played like there were 20,000 people there. Kevin never once commented on the size of the crowd. They were awesome. After watching Cavazo play I gained a lot more respect for him as a guitarist. That guy is really friggin' good.
After the show the band came back out to hang out with everybody. I was talking with Rudy Sarzo about his days with Whitesnake and such Frankie came up to me and said, "Hey, come here a second." "Sorry I was such a dick earlier. I was having a bad day." I told him it was no big deal and pulled out the spare copy of the WASP EP that I had and handed it to him. He was shocked and gave me a big sweaty hug. haha. "Until today I didn't even know that this EP existed." I ended up talking with him quite a bit for the time they hung out. I told him that his first 2 albums with QR were big influences on me when I was learning how to play drums. All of them were nice and Kevin seeked out every person in the room and thanked them personally for coming out. That wasn't the asshole Kevin Dubrow that I had read about in the 'zines, this guy was actually nice.
It was a fun day and night and I finally got to meet a band that I had loved for 16 years. The news of Kevin's death in 2007 really brought me down. I had read just prior to that that he had gotten himself clean and sober. It was too bad that those demons continued to haunt him and that he wasn't able to continue down that path to recovery.
RIP Kevin.
Written by The Metal Files
August 16, 2009 at 8:55 am
Posted in 1983, 1999, album reviews, cd reviews, concert reviews
Tagged with 1999, album reviews, carlos cavazo, concert reviews, drug addiction, frankie banali, kevin dubrow, metal health, norfolk, quiet riot, record reviews, rudy sarzo, virginia, wasp, whitesnake


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There is currently no available "Beginner" label. The following is the default level label: Slavery existed throughout the North American colonies before and immediately following the American Revolution. Although slaveholding patterns differed from colony to colony and region to region, few if any colonists challenged the practice and its underlying beliefs. Slaves made up about four per cent of the population of 18th century New England. Those who owned them generally held one or two "negroe servants" in bondage. Slaves often worked alongside their masters and mistresses and resided in the same house but they were not considered equal household members. Even in church, slaves sat separately from the rest of the congregation. New slaveholders often preferred to purchase children rather than teenagers or adults. Prince was about nine years old when he became the property of Israel Williams. Slave owners believed that slave children would learn English more easily, adapt more quickly and develop stronger loyalties to a master and his family. This bill of sale records the transaction that made young Prince the "Servant for life" of Williams.
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Facebook has been the proverbial talk of the town lately. From the new film about the creator, Mark Zuckerberg, and his company's rise to fame, the incredible donation given by Zuckerberg to public schools in Newark, all the way to concerns over privacy issues regarding user accounts on Facebook itself.
I was quite glad to hear that the special press conference held recently focused on new features that supposedly help out with the mounting concern over what data is stored, shared, and used by Facebook and their partners.
For those who are unaware of the changes, here are the three major new features:
- Users will now have the ability to download anything and everything they've ever posted to Facebook since becoming a member
- A new dashboard for users to grant users greater visibility into what data is shared where
- A "groups" feature that will allow greater control over who sees what by grouping your "friends" by user-defined rules, thus limiting what each group sees based on permissions
A full list of the changes and how to use them are detailed here.
There are certainly a ton of conclusions that can be pulled from the announcements, and many people will still argue that not enough has been done as of yet. However, one thing remains certain--this goes to show that open ideals and transparency are tatamount values to our society. We are starting to pay attention to what owns us and are standing up when we feel threatened. To me, its legitimate proof that the open source way is the right way.
So what do you think? Has Facebook done enough to curb the problems detailed by users and their privacy? Are people simply unwise for sharing it in the first place or does Facebook have an obligation to its users to respect the data that powers their network? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.


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Let Them Leave
Why migration is the best solution for Haiti's recovery.
Long before the calamity in Haiti, many Haitians and their families benefited from working abroad, and many, including me, have suggested allowing more Haitian immigrants into the United States as a way to help the country's economy recover.
Long before the calamity in Haiti, many Haitians and their families benefited from working abroad, and many, including me, have suggested allowing more Haitian immigrants into the United States as a way to help the country's economy recover.
It might seem strange that the best solution to Haiti's woes lies outside its borders, but migration and remittances have been responsible for almost all of the poverty reduction that has happened in the island country over the past few decades. They have done enormously more good than any policy intended to reduce poverty inside Haiti during that time. Any poverty-reduction strategy for Haiti going forward that does not include what has been Haitians' most successful poverty-reduction strategy to date is not a serious one.
This idea is a no-brainer if we take a minute to look at the numbers.
First, Haitians have already emigrated in droves. There are around 535,000 Haitian-born U.S. residents at the Census Bureau's last count, out of roughly 1 million in total living abroad.
The vast majority of Haitians who have escaped poverty have done so by leaving the country. Pick any reasonable poverty line for Haiti; the vast majority of Haitians above it no longer live there. In a study I did with Harvard's Lant Pritchett, we chose a bare-bones poverty line of $10 per day (measured as a living standard at U.S. prices). That's total destitution — just a third of the $30 per day that the United States considers "poverty" for a single adult. Eight out of 10 Haitians above that line currently live in the United States.
Most of this represents the effect of emigration on poverty. Only 1 percent of people in Haiti live on more than $10 per day, and there is no evidence that most Haitian emigrants come from the extreme tip-top of the income distribution, so very few people who emigrated would have an income that high if they had been forced to stay home. A typical low-skill male Haitian in the United States earns at least six times what he could earn in Haiti. And all of this just accounts for Haitians in the United States. Include the roughly 100,000 more who are in Canada and Western Europe, almost all of whom live on over $10 per day, and it's even starker: The vast majority of Haitians who escaped poverty did so by leaving Haiti, not as a result of anything that happened in the country.
What about Haitians who did not emigrate? A limited number of these have emerged from poverty, but many were lifted out of poverty by remittances from abroad. They, too, should be included in any accounting of the effect of migration on poverty. Dilip Ratha, a top expert on remittances, estimates that a full accounting would show that Haitians abroad send home $1.5 billion to 1.8 billion per year or higher. That is much more than all the foreign aid that Haiti receives. The middle of Ratha's range suggests that remittances account for more than one quarter of Haiti's GDP. This is conservatively low because remittances have a multiplier effect on local GDP.
Living standards in Haiti have not improved in the last 30 years. They've gotten much worse. According to the World Bank, the annual income of the average person in Haiti, measured as a living standard at U.S. prices, steadily declined from $2,400 in 1980 to roughly $1,200 just before the earthquake. It is certainly even lower now.
The poverty inside Haiti would almost certainly be much greater without remittances. Economist Manuel Orozco has shown that remittances to Haiti are primarily spent on the most basic necessities of food, clothing, shelter, and medicine. Because remittances are impossible by definition without emigration, and cover at least a quarter of people's income in Haiti, emigration must have substantially reduced poverty for those back home.
What all of these numbers mean is that the large majority of all poverty reduction that has occurred for Haitians — whether outside Haiti or inside Haiti — has been caused by international migration and remittances. Foreign aid has had little or nothing to do with it. The numbers do not allow any other reasonable interpretation.
Why, then, is migration seen as a sideshow as donor countries discuss how best to help Haiti rebuild? Their first step should be to leverage the force that has most helped Haitians in the past. The United States has agreed not to deport any Haitians for a limited period, but it has only been deporting about 1,000 Haitians per year for the past decade. The suspension of deportations will make very little difference in how Haitians are living abroad and sending money home.
The United States has another option for helping Haitians. I propose a new kind of U.S. visa for Haitians and poor people around the world, a Golden Door Visa. This would formally recognize that one of the unwritten goals of immigration policy is global poverty reduction. The Golden Door Visa would not necessarily mean more immigrants. Instead, the United States could reallocate visas within the current levels to include people from the world's poorest countries who are most in need of opportunities. This small adjustment to U.S. immigration policy would have a big impact by improving the lives of poor immigrants and those who remain in their home countries through remittances.
We can do a back-of-the-envelope calculation of what additional migration could do. Suppose the United States lets in 100,000 Haitian immigrants, which is the number that currently arrives over a span of five years. First, this would dramatically raise their incomes and raise essentially all of them out of extreme poverty. Second, this would increase the size of the worldwide Haitian diaspora by 10 percent. If the new migrants remit like earlier migrants did, this would mean roughly $150 million to 180 million every year in additional remittances for Haiti (and because things are so much tougher in Haiti now, we could expect new migrants to remit more than migrants have before). The Guardian reports that as of today the United States has committed a one-time total of $167 million in aid. Remittances recur year after year, and unlike aid, almost the whole amount of remittances goes directly into needy families' pockets.
Of course, migration alone is not "the answer" for all Haitians. Unfortunately, one big answer for all Haitians does not exist. As donors discuss what to do for Haitians going forward, it should be with extreme humility. Billions of dollars of aid have yielded very little poverty reduction there to date. Aid and other measures, such as improved access to U.S. markets, are worth continuing, of course, but they are unlikely to have dramatically different effects in the near future than they have had for the past two generations.
Migration, on the other hand, has clearly and demonstrably lifted many Haitians out of poverty. It should be an important component of the portfolio of assistance for Haiti. Many people react with fear to statements of this kind, thinking that "more" Haitians is synonymous with "every" Haitian, and that a flood of Haitians would sink the countries they would move to. But the numbers of Haitians moving to the United States has been so small — just 2 percent of all immigrants to the United States — that even a substantial increase would hardly constitute a flood.
I discussed these very issues further in a blog post, published the day before Haiti's tragedy, and it is certainly tragic that it took such an event to put the problem on world leaders' agenda.
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Usdt第三方支付接口(www.trc20.vip):Govt to mull more targeted subsidies for the needy
The Finance Ministry says the government will consider implementing a more targeted subsidy mechanism so that only those who are truly in need of assistance benefit from it. – The Malaysian Insight file pic, August 23, 2022.Usdt第三方支付接口(www.trc20.vip)是使用TRC-20协议的Usdt第三方支付平台,Usdt收款平台、Usdt自动充提平台。免费提供入金通道、Usdt钱包支付接口、Usdt自动充值接口、Usdt寄售回收。菜宝Usdt钱包一键生成Usdt钱包、一键调用API接口、一键出售Usdt。
THE government will consider implementing a more targeted subsidy mechanism so that only those who are truly in need of assistance benefit from it, Deputy Finance Minister Mohd Shahar Abdullah said.
Moving forward, he said the government remains committed to ensuring the people's wellbeing, including protecting households from the full impact of rising commodity and food prices worldwide.
"Following the government's move to continue and enhance the subsidies, the expenditure for aid and subsidies is estimated to increase to RM77.7 billion compared with Budget 2022's allocation of RM31 billion," he said in a speech at a Budget 2023 consultation event at the Finance Ministry in Putrajaya, today.,
Shahar said Malaysia's inflation rate would have reached 11.4% if it was not for the government's move to subsidise essential items, adding that the rate remains under control due to the implementation of price control measures and the granting of subsidies.
"The national inflation rate in the first six months of 2022 stood at 2.5%, which is much lower than in other countries.
"This is especially so when you look at developed countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom, with inflation rates of 9%, as well as regional countries such as Thailand, the Philippines and Singapore, which reached above 6%," he said. – Bernama, August 23, 2022.


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NUM_NODES Query Option
Limit the number of nodes that process a query, typically during debugging.
Type: numeric
Allowed values: Only accepts the values 0 (meaning all nodes) or 1 (meaning all work is done on the coordinator node).
Default: 0
Usage notes:
If you are diagnosing a problem that you suspect is due to a timing issue due to distributed query processing, you can set NUM_NODES=1 to verify if the problem still occurs when all the work is done on a single node.
You might set the NUM_NODES option to 1 briefly, during INSERT or CREATE TABLE AS SELECT statements. Normally, those statements produce one or more data files per data node. If the write operation involves small amounts of data, a Parquet table, and/or a partitioned table, the default behavior could produce many small files when intuitively you might expect only a single output file. SET NUM_NODES=1 turns off the "distributed" aspect of the write operation, making it more likely to produce only one or a few data files.


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Today, in August 2019, I am older than three of my four grandparents were in summer 1969. My oldest grandfather, Leonard Harbison, was only a year and a half older than I am now.
Back then, of course, they all seemed ancient to me. I keep that in mind as a college professor, surrounded daily by 20-year-olds.
The summer of '69 is being talked about throughout this, the 50th anniversary. It seems that each week is the golden anniversary of some significant, grand, or unsettling milestone. The Who's brilliant and pretentious "rock opera" Tommy was released in May 1969 and formed a significant part of the soundtrack of that summer. So did Jimmy Webb's "Galveston," recorded by Glen Campbell – which most of us didn't realize was an anti-war song. The counter-culture biker movie Easy Rider was in theatres, as were John Wayne in True Grit and the X-rated Midnight Cowboy.
The Stonewall uprising occurred in June, signaling the birth of an organized gay rights movement. And Chappaquiddick, an event that forever stained Sen. Ted Kennedy's reputation, occurred in July. But the first manned moon landing was the most significant event of July, and of the year.
Since I currently live in Huntsville, there has been a certain level of Huntsville-style hoopla in celebration of the first manned moon landing in July 1969. The Saturn V rocket that propelled the Apollo missions was created in Huntsville and there is justifiable pride in the accomplishments of NASA that pervade the community all the time, regardless of the year. What Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant is to Tuscaloosa, the Saturn V is to Huntsville.
Back then, my interest in the myth of the "final frontier" was peripheral at best. It was exciting to watch launches from Cape Kennedy on classroom televisions in the 1960s, and it was exciting to watch the capsules' safe splash-downs in the Atlantic afterwards. The whole country grieved when the three Apollo 1 astronauts were killed in a fire during a pre-flight launch pad test in 1967.
Two and a half years later, my family was living in Nashville when Neil Armstrong made that first "small step" on the moon in that grainy video transmitted back to Earth. My memory of that moment is vivid still. I remember that when the satellite transmission ended on broadcast television, I walked out into our front yard and looked up at the moon. The fact that two Americans were sitting there, and that another was orbiting to facilitate their return, is still daunting, inspiring, transformational to think about.
August of 1969 is particularly memorable for two tragedies – Hurricane Camille, which devastated the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and the Tate – La Bianca murders perpetrated by the "Manson family" in the hills of Los Angeles. Some say that the gruesome Tate – La Bianca slayings signaled the end of the 1960s, while others make the case that Nixon's defeat of McGovern in 1972 was the end of the '60s era. Either way, the Tate – La Bianca case signaled an end to a certain optimistic innocence that characterized large chunks of that decade, despite the war protests and social and political upheaval that fomented throughout those years. August 1969, of course, is also remembered for a slipshod celebration that became an enduring legend – the Woodstock music festival, held on Max Yasgur's dairy farm in upstate New York.
My first memory of Hurricane Camille is a strange one. My family was traveling from Six Flags in Atlanta to Birmingham and made a rest stop in Anniston late in the night. While we were waiting for Mother, Dad struck up a conversation in the parking lot with another man traveling with his family; they began to talk about the massive hurricane that was then bearing down on the Mississippi coast. Somehow, that conversation conjures a memory of the animated neon Goal Post Bar-B-Q sign, an iconic Anniston fixture depicting a football player kicking a football through a goal post. Our rest stop was down the highway from the barbecue joint and I was watching that sign as the two grown-ups chatted, we waited for my mother, and my brother slept in the back seat.
These distant memories are stimulated by a recent viewing of fanboy Quentin Tarantino's latest ultra-violent fantasy, Once upon a Time … in Hollywood, set in the summer of 1969. The film focuses on two fictional characters, a fading western star, Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), and his stunt man, best friend, and jack-of-all-trades, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). A presence throughout the film is the very non-fictional Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), who, with her husband, director Roman Polanski, rents the house next door to Dalton. Tate, who is 8½ months pregnant at the movie's end, floats through the proceedings with a serenity and presence that are exhilarating to watch. Another recurring presence throughout the movie is members of Charles Manson's hippie cult, skulking regularly on the edges.
Tarantino weaves a shaggy dog story with many loose ends and an entertaining jumble of real-life and fictional characters. The movie begins on February 9, 1969 (my 14th birthday), sets up the characters, and jumps, later, to August 9 of the same year. Tarantino assumes that the audience knows its 1969 pop culture history and throws teases and period references in with the imaginative fictionalization. Quick appearances are made by actors playing Steve McQueen, James Stacy, Sam Wanamaker, and other real-life personalities of the era. We briefly catch a bit of a car radio news broadcast announcing the sentencing of Sirhan Sirhan, who assassinated Robert Kennedy in 1968.
In a lovely, carefree interlude, the camera follows Cass Elliott, Michelle Phillips, and Sharon Tate as they hold hands, running through a party at the Playboy mansion, and begin to dance. In another scene, three Manson girls are seen holding hands, smiling like Moonies, singing and skipping down an L.A. sidewalk.
It's a fascinating and enjoyable movie, made moreso by its frequent dips into a splashy late-60s reality, but always tempered by the very real presence of the darkness that lurks at the Spahn Ranch, the former western movie lot that has been infested by Manson's followers and hangers-on. In a tense scene, Cliff goes to the Spahn Ranch – a place he knows from past film and television shoots – with a hitchhiker he's picked up in Hollywood. When he insists on seeing George Spahn, an old friend who is now the blind and aging owner of the ranch, the mood shifts. We worry for the safety of Cliff, and for the foreboding scenarios still to emerge.
I have never warmed up to DiCaprio as an adult actor, but his portrayal of a washed-out, whiny former tv star is effectively irksome and desperate. Brad Pitt, who is aging gracefully, has rarely been as appealingly authentic as he is in his role as Cliff – who might have murdered his wife, but moves through the world with a carefree and amused attitude.
Sharon Tate, who was only 26 when she was murdered, is most remembered now for the last day of her life. In Tarantino's movie, there is a celebration – through Robbie's performance – of Tate's joie de vivre and potential. We follow her as she goes through her day, and discover a complex, upbeat woman far removed from the tragic headlines that have become her legacy. Tarantino's camera worships Pitt and Robbie in this film, and doesn't hesitate to linger and marvel at each of them when it has the opportunity.
Obviously, since this is a Tarantino film, there is violence; sometimes, that violence seems gratuitous. Here's my stance on Tarantino and violence, and I realize there will be those who disagree: To me, Tarantino's violence is so over-the-top and wild that I find it hard to take seriously. One stifles the urge to laugh at the outrageous excess; the filmmaker does not glorify or even endorse violence, it seems to me, but uses it as a device to celebrate the absurdity all around us to which he seems so drawn.
The Russian playwright Anton Chekhov referred to his plays as "comedy" and many find that hard to wrap their mind around. I think I get it with Chekhov. He explores and revels in the absurdity of our surroundings and everyday lives. I don't think of Tarantino as "Chekhovian" by any stretch, but I think his prankish and warped world-view enjoys taking his audience to the extremes of a violent society.
For those who think they know how Once upon a Time in Hollywood must inevitably end, and are avoiding it for that reason, I suggest that you see for yourself. Without going into detail, I think the final image of this movie is one of the sweetest images I've seen in a movie in years. It's a moment that portends a whole new trajectory for the end of the '60s – an ending that was earned, but, sadly, was never achieved.


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The garage-workshop is starting to look great.
The drywall is all up, and my Dad and I will finish "mudding" it today… then paint this weekend!
There's still a ton to do, and a few special things I'm hoping for {new pull-down attic ladder, washer, dryer, sink}.
It's been weird not having my workshop though.
All my projects have been on hold while my table saw slowly rusts under a tarp in the back yard, and my tools are spread in piles throughout the house.
I'll be inspired to do a project, and in my mind I reach for the tool off my pegboard tool storage book, and then… remember… that it's somewhere in a pile in the guest room.
I think it's making me a little depressed. I was sick for 7 weeks too, with seriously sore ribs from coughing. Now that I'm finally feeling better I'm ready to build and blog (and maybe clean… maybe ).
More reason to hurry up and git'er done!
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This makes for a great staple t-shirt. It's made of a thicker, heavier cotton, but it's still soft. And the double stitching on the neckline and sleeves add more durability to what is sure to be a favorite!
• 100% ringspun cotton
• 4.5 oz (153 g/m2)
• Pre-shrunk
• Shoulder-to-shoulder taping
• Quarter-turned to avoid crease down the center
2-4 business days
Buyers are responsible for any customs and import taxes that may apply. I'm not responsible for delays due to customs.
Just contact me within: 14 days of delivery
Ship items back to me within: 30 days of delivery
Buyers are responsible for return shipping costs. If the item is not returned in its original condition, the buyer is responsible for any loss in value.
Please contact me if you have any problems with your order.


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Investors should be buying bank stocks, despite the Federal Reserve's "ridiculously" low interest rate policy, noted bank analyst Richard Bove said on CNBC Monday.
Bove — now with Rafferty Capital — said in a "Squawk Box" interview, "You should be buying Goldman Sachs ... Bank of America ... Comerica. You should be going up and down the scale and buying these stocks."
He added, "You're going to get is what you've gotten the last four years, which is continuous up earnings, increases in dividends, [and] higher stock buyback programs."


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You've poured your life into building your business. Long hours, lack of sleep, endless meetings have been your priority and, now, your time and dedication has paid off—your company is going public.
And, just like that, your social presence grows overnight. You're inundated with speaking requests. You're also inundated with a lot of romantic interest.
I've met several executives eager to re-prioritize their personal goals in the wake of an IPO. I've seen them struggle to find the right person—or even just a legitimate date—after coming into wealth and extra publicity. Ironically, for these clients, I've seen the dating space morph into a minefield of sorts.
How do you know if your next date is dating you for the right reasons?
How can you be sure that your private dating life stays private?
How will you know where to find the most eligible singles?
Just as you would hire a personal trainer to get fit or an accountant to organize your finances, I've been hired countless times to help extremely discerning clientele find their next partner.
To help my clients understand what they want in their next relationship and how to get it, I compare the process for finding the right partner to building a business.
- What problem are you trying to solve?
Perhaps you're trying to remedy loneliness or are interested in building partnership. Maybe you'd like to "feel alive" with no strings attached, or you're finally thinking it's time to start a family. Most successful products and businesses are created to solve a specific problem—what's yours?
Not sure where to start?
Envision your future. In five years, what kind of life do you envision? Where are you living? What are you doing? What would your mother say about you? How would your best friend describe you? Write it down.
- Set realistic expectations about the process.
What steps will you take in the short term to help meet your goals? Clients tend to be clear on their goals, but they can get a little lost on the game plan.
Some questions to ask yourself:
How much time do you plan to carve out per week to devote to your dating life?
How will you meet new people?
How will you date? Casual introductions over wine? Grand romantic gestures?
- Keep Iterating.
The qualities you look for may change during the dating process. Be open to the process and be prepared to adjust your ideas accordingly. Whereas it's perfectly natural to have preferences (don't we all?), you might find that your more urgent needs are satisfied by someone without the specific packaging.
Tip: Compromise on the packaging, never the standards.
- Hire your Weaknesses.
The demands of growing an empire may have distracted you from fine tuning your dating skills. Constant travel and other obligations may have limited your interactions to people in your professional network. Instead of trying to solve every problem at once, heed the words of billionaire Spanx founder Sara Blakely and "hire your weaknesses."
Find the person you can trust; the person who has demonstrated enough experience in the realm of long-term relationships to help you make the best decision of your life. In the wake of money, media attention, and limited time, an extra pair of eyes, ears, and vetting could pay a lifetime of dividends.
With over a decades' worth of experience serving high-profile clientele, I'm privy to the unique demands and sensitivities involved in the search for partnership. If you're ready to hand off the reins to Silicon Valley's leading matchmaker, get in touch.
Love and best wishes ❤,


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Candace Cort Designs
Don't call it a come back Face Cover
These Face Covering are handmade with 100% cotton fabric, they're washable, reversible.
While handmade fabric face covering are NOT a substitution for N95 masks, they are better protection than no protection. The homemade face masks will not prevent against catching a respiratory illness but they can help reduce the spread of large particles when someone sneezes or coughs.
** Please note the face will look different from the picture base on the area of fabric that is cut for your mask.**
For custom orders please email firstname.lastname@example.com


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The size in our store is about 1-2 sizes smaller than European/US size, we suggest purchasing 1-2 sizes Bigger than usual.
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Estimated delivery 12 to 30 Days


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For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
September 6, 2004
Text of a Letter From the President to the Speaker of the House of Representatives
Dear Mr. Speaker:
On August 27th, I announced that I would submit a supplemental request to the Congress of approximately $2 billion to pay for comprehensive response and recovery efforts after Hurricane Charley. This was in addition to response and recovery efforts being undertaken by federal government agencies using existing resources and programs.
Because of the severity and timing of Hurricane Frances, I ask the Congress to consider expeditiously the enclosed request, totaling $2.0 billion, for an emergency FY 2004 supplemental appropriation for the Department of Homeland Security.
I hereby designate this proposal in the amount requested herein as an emergency requirement. This request responds to urgent needs associated with Hurricanes Charley and Frances in Florida and other affected areas, and will enable the Federal Emergency Management Agency to respond to additional disasters should they occur.
The enclosed request requires immediate action by the Congress to ensure that the immediate response efforts to these recent disasters continue uninterrupted. I anticipate making a further request in the coming days that will provide for a comprehensive response and recovery effort addressing the impact of both of these hurricanes. In addition, federal government agencies will continue their response and recovery efforts using existing resources and programs.
The details of this request are set forth in the enclosed letter from the Director of the Office of Management and Budget.
The Honorable J. Dennis Hastert Speaker of the House of Representatives Washington, D.C. 20515
# # #


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Bay Area Maker Faire 2015
We had a blast again, thanks for inviting us, Maker Faire! Amazingly, Mark managed to master the Wrong Way Bike!
Bay Area Maker Faire 2014
East Bay Mini Maker Faire 2013
Pedalfest 2013
Pedalfest in Oakland's Jack London Square
July 2oth 2013 11am-7pm
· Cyclecide pedal powered carnival
· Whiskeydrome daredevils
· Two-wheeled stunts by pro riders Mike Steidley and Chris Clark
· Rock the Bike's pedal-powered stage featuring live music
· TGC Actions Sport/BMX Stunt Team performances
· Oaklandish's kids bicycle parade
· U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame vintage bikes
· Brompton bike folding contest
· Bicycle rodeo for children
· Pedal-powered food
· New, vintage and handmade bikes
· Bike Stand demo stage by Bay Area Bikes
· Bike trivia dunk tank
· Pedalfest Pig Roast by Lungomare: www.pedalfestpigroast.eventbrite.com
· Bicycle vendors, artisans and more
· Selection of beers available from New Belgium Brewing Co., with all proceeds going to support the advocacy work of the East Bay Bicycle Coalition
Lagunitas Beer Circus 2013
THE 5th ANNUAL LAGUNITAS BEER CIRCUS
May 19, 2013 at 1:00 PM
Lagunitas Brewing Company
Petaluma, CA
Mind-bending Acts! Live Circus Music! Burlesque Dancers! Midway Games! Craft Brews! Local Food! Freaks & More!
Tickets include tastings of the best craft brews in the County. Extra tastings may be purchased at the event to keep your thirst quenched.
Some of the freaktacular entertainment…
CYCLECIDE carnival rides!
Vau de Vire Society w/ special musical guest
Molotov and Dixie Delish of Americana Mayhem:
Knife throwing, Bed of Nails, Sword Swallowing and The Wheel of DEATH!
El Radio Fantastique
Sambadrop Marching Band
The Kehoe Nation
The Klown Korp Kops
Maker Faire Bay Area 2013
Open Make at the Lawerence Hall of Science "Bikes"
Pictures and info from this event at:goo.gl/ETlCf
Featured bike exhibitors included:
- Altered bikes built by Cyclecide.
- Young Makers Stavros Boutris and Jake Wallin's "whacky bikes" made from recycled old bikes and other wheeled objects.
- Pedal powered music from Paul Freedman and Rock the Bike.
- Make a fruit smoothie with a pedal-powered blender and the East Bay Bicycle Coalition.
- Energy Bike + iPad demo with Stephanie Chang from Bike-to-Scale.
- Create "bike frills" for your bike with the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse.
- Electric bikes demonstration with the Hall's resident astronomer Alan Gould.
- Use Katharine-Ellen Jolda's Cyclocarder to clean and card wool


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News Story
States Push Annual Park Passes to Raise Revenue
Mt. Hood National Forest, 40 miles east of Portland, Ore. State parks are growing more reliant on park-generated fees.
The Idaho legislature whacked state park funding by 80 percent at the height of the recession, leaving the Department of Parks and Recreation with little choice but to think outside the box.
Parks officials decided to replace the old season pass with a "parks passport," good for admission to all 30 state parks. Under the new system, they automatically put the passport option in front of Idaho's 2.5 million vehicle owners as they renewed their license plates each year. The gamble paid off: Last year, 95,800 people opted to buy the passports, compared to 15,000 who used to purchase the season pass each year. So far, the new passports have generated more than million.
"We're able to reach more people," Jennifer Okerlund, communications manager for the parks department, said of the Department of Motor Vehicles opt-in. "Selling it for the discounted amount is very attractive to Idahoans, and they're taking advantage of it."
As the Memorial Day holiday opens the 2014 summer vacation season, state parks have had to get creative about ways to raise money because budget officers are being chintzier with tax revenue. State general revenue for parks has plunged from a nationwide average of 59 percent of park funding in fiscal 1990 to 33 percent in fiscal 2012. (see chart for 50-state data)
Park officials have scrambled to make up the difference, often by raising fees, such as the to increase in campsite fees in Nebraska this year or the to increase for renting state-owned cabins in Alaska. Virginia imposed a nonrefundable transaction fee on credit card charges and park reservations this year, and the Department of Conservation and Recreation was almost apologetic about it: "The increase results from a downturn in state revenues used to fund state government programs, including state parks. DCR staff considered many options and felt this to be the least burdensome on guests."
State parks are growing more reliant on these so-called park-generated fees, which brought in 42 percent of state park funds in fiscal 2012 compared to 37 percent in 2008.
Passport to the Outdoors
Another source of park funding is the use of passports such as the one in Idaho. Okerlund said Idaho's passport was modeled on Michigan's "recreation passport."
Adopted in 2010, Michigan's annual pass also uses the state's vehicle registration renewal as a launch pad. The registration system won't let the user continue through the process until you choose whether or not to pay the fee for the passport, which provides access to 102 state parks and 75 boat launches for a year.
Ron Olson, chief of parks and recreation in Michigan, said the "break even" point to match revenues from the old season pass was 17 percent participation of the 7.5 million vehicle owners. The first year, 24.7 percent opted for the passport; participation in 2012 hit 27.3 percent. "Our goal this year is to finish at 28 percent," Olson said, noting there are millions more drivers still to appeal to. A marketing campaign is underway.
"It's an opportunity to grow. It has an upside to it, like a business. We'd like to achieve 50 percent," he said.
Margaret A. Walls, research director and senior fellow at Resources for the Future, which studies environmental economics, said the passports appeal to both outdoors-loving residents and government agencies.
"From the buyer's perspective, purchasing a pass during the registration process may have lower
transaction costs than buying at a state park or going online to the state park system website," she wrote in a report analyzing state park financing in 2013.
"Likewise, the administrative costs to the government associated with collecting the fees may be lower. Most importantly, the state park system reaches more potential people since all vehicle owners will have to make a decision whether to buy a pass."
A fisherman casts at Camp Helen State Park in Panama City Beach, Florida.
Montana was the first state to raise money for its state parks in this fashion. Since 2004, when residents renew their vehicle registration they are automatically charged a state parks fee, which, the state reminds you, "costs less than one movie ticket or a couple of fancy cups of coffee."
Drivers can opt out, but Montana makes it difficult. Residents have to go to the county treasurer's office and sign a waiver that says they will not use that vehicle to visit any park. With this "opt-out' system, 80 percent of Montanans agreed to pay a few extra bucks to support state parks.
Kansas and Washington state also have passport programs tied to vehicle registration. Kansas charges .50 during vehicle registration, which is .50 less than if you buy a pass at a park or a government office.
Washington sells its Discover Pass for , and also lets the vehicle owner make a donation to several causes that include state parks and organ donation. Similarly, Texas added a line to its vehicle registration form asking people to donate (or more) for upkeep of state parks; the state comptroller projects .6 million in revenue a year from the small donations.
Delayed Maintenance
Enthusiasm for state parks is high – 725 million visits were counted in 2013, according to the National Association of State Park Directors. The association argues state parks are an enormous value, costing .3 billion to operate while injecting more than billion into local economies.
The innovative approaches to fundraising are keeping the parks operating, but they are not making a dent in a decades' worth of backlogged repairs across 14 million acres.
In Michigan alone, Olson said the parks system has million in needed repairs and improvements and only about million is spent on infrastructure needs each year.
"At this rate, we'll never be able to catch up with modernizing the system," said Olson, who noted Michigan's parks are approaching the century mark.
In Idaho, people are taking advantage of their new season passports and park visits are on the rise. Eagle Island State Park, for example, has drawn 75 percent more visitors than the pre-pass days. Okerlund said the parks agency considers the passport program to be a winner, but "we're still bridging that financial gap" with maintenance, repairs and staff.
"It's a huge success. People are coming to their state parks more often but there's still that staff need, that maintenance need," she said.
Our stories may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. We ask that you edit only for style or to shorten, provide proper attribution and link to our web site. Please see our republishing guidelines for use of photos and graphics.


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As a DJ, your desire to be creative and rock a crowd with your music doesn't stop when you're using different media formats. Whether you're playing MP3s up to a high quality 320kbps, standard audio CD's, or files from a USB drive, the DN-D4500MK2 offers you two Seamless loops with live B-Trim editing for mixing perfection, two Hot starts for instantly starting from your predetermined point on a track, Cue stutter, Selectable pitch ranges from 4% to 100%, an adjustable Brake effect, and a superb Key Adjust feature, which keeps vocals and music sounding true even when you adjust the speed of the track.
The DN-D4500MK2 has taken the very best of what Denon DJ has offerd the Mobile DJ market over the last decade and brought it completely up to date without losing any of the key original attributes. As a Mobile DJ you can still play from your thousands of CDs, control your mixes as intuitively as ever, and take the step forward into digital storage, all in one device that still lasts the demands of DJing night after night.
Is there any need for an update in CD based technology? The beauty of the DN-D4500 originally was its ability to give you flexibility in media sources, ease of use, and a robust build quality that would last the rigour of taking gear on the road from club, to party, to wedding. The DN-D4500 became a celebrated product for mobile DJs who rely on a sturdy robust tool to do their job - wherever that may be! So what was there to improve?
Feedback over the last few years was always the same - add USB integration because everything else about the original DN-D4500 was already perfect. So the DN-D4500MK2 has taken the very best of what Denon, and now Denon DJ, has become known for - providing the very best DJ solutions (that last!) and made them better.even further than possible with a vinyl 'record'.
The MK2 features two USB slots for connection to USB storage devices containing digital music files. The first is located on the front of the unit (right) for ease of access and suited for USB sticks and the second is on the rear of the controller unit which is best suited for larger USB drives that can then be mounted in a flight case with the product (not included).Features:


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COMPETITION: Win 4 x Safari Ltd Toys #AsobiAmbassadors
As you are aware, we are Asobi Ambassadors and we have been working with the toy distributor passionate about finding inspiring toys for children of today. In March, little man designed a Superhero Cape by Seedlings, in April he built a den with PL-UG Ultimate Den Kit, and in May we built rockets with Curiosity Kits Rocket Launcher.
This month, we were introduced to Safari ltd, the internationally loved, American born brand that is passionate about bringing nature closer to tots.
For over 30 years, Safari Ltd have been committed to teaching children the importance of the world around them and caring for nature through the joy of imaginative play. The endless collection of Safari figurines have been a popular choice amongst children for years and aim to celebrate the planet's most fascinating creatures.
Safari has the biggest figurine offering in the world and has produced some fantastic products that are truly unique. Each figurine in the Safari collection is hand painted and is highly authentic.
We were sent Safari Toob Pirates (RRP £13.95), a reusable acetate tube with a spinning globe top, containing a range of pirates, such as peg leg pirate, pirate with hook, dueling pirate, pirate with long coat and sword, pirate with parrot. It also includes lady pirate, pirate with bandana, sitting skeleton, cannon balls and powder, cannon, ship with flag and pirate holding treasure map.
Little man really liked the selection of the pirates, and also how detailed they were. I also like the fact all the pirates can be put away safely in the tube, ready for the next adventure.
Safari Good Luck Minis (RRP £5.00) are tiny hand-painted replicas, little man received an elephant, kangaroo with baby, rabbit and hermit crab – they are all so cute!
The soft little figures are professionally sculpted and feature the realistic colours and lively detail. Little man likes holding little things and playing with small toys, so he enjoyed Good Luck Minis.
Life Cycle of a Luna Month (RRP £8.49) is one of little man's favourites. He learnt about the butterfly life cycle at school, so he was delighted to create a life cycle at home too. It is a four stage life cycle starting with eggs on the leaf, then it turns into a caterpillar, which pulls a left around itself and spins a cocoon. After a week, the caterpillar becomes a pupa where it will transform into a month. Three weeks later, the adult moth will push itself free.
The life cycle of a Luna Month is hand-painted and beautifully made, little man had lots of fun playing with the life cycle and learning more about metamorphosis. As a biologist, I might have played with the life cycle figures too!
Safari Wildlife Wonders Black Jaguar (RRP $8.00) is a gorgeous figurine, is part of the Wildlife Wonders range featuring jumbo soft and realistic wildlife animals. Little man enjoyed looking at the details of the jaguar, such as eyes and ears.
I was also very impressed with the detailed features, it was exciting reading about black jaguars in the education information booklet provided. Did you know that the jaguar is the largest feline commonly referred to as a black panther?
Kind Toys are offering a 20% discount off all Safari toys throughout July, simply use the discount code SAFARI at the checkout.
For your chance to win a selection of Safari Ltd toys (4 toys as shown in the picture above), please fill in the Gleam app below. You MUST leave a comment and subscribe by email (compulsory entries), you can also gain extra entries by tweeting (daily entry), subscribing to other social media channels, etc.
Fancy winning other prizes? Check out my BLOG COMPETITION PAGE!
T&C's: The winner will be randomly picked by Gleam after the closing date on Monday 21st July 2014. Lilinha Angel's World will contact the winner by email or Twitter within 7 days wherever possible and will allow 7 days for a reply. Open to over 18′s and UK only. If I do not hear anything within this time period I reserve the right to redraw a winner. Lilinha Angel's World decision is final.
Good Luck everyone! x
ThePrizeFinder – UK Competitions
Once you've entered the giveaway, check out other Safari reviews and giveaways at A Mummy Too, Edspire and Susan K Mann.


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