text:
a view from my seat is supported by advertising. Simply checking out a few more photos, would be a home run.
You never know what you may find.
We use ads to keep this service completely free for everyone.
We are committed to hosting safe ads & respecting your privacy.


text:
Tuesday, Oct 16, 2012, 1:57 pm
Michael Brutsch, ViolentAcrez, and Online Pseudonyms
Last week, Adrian Chen of Gawker exposed Violentacrez, Reddit's top troll, and there was much rejoicing. The troll turned out to be one Michael Brustch a programmer for a company specializing in pawn shops and payday loans. Apparently, Brutsch's employer decided he was too exploitative even for a debt peonage operation and summarily fired him. If you read Chen's piece, you'll see why. He was truly the King of the Trolls with an audience of millions.
Emily Bazelon of Slate feels sorry for Brutsch, even though she supports his outing. She's a more compassionate person than I am. She sees his firing as evidence of a mob mentality. I see it differently. Brutsch's bosses fired him because they didn't want the internet's leading purveyor of creepshots on their payroll. It was a simple matter of accountability.
No sooner had Brutsch been outed than fanboys started bleating about how it was unfair to expose him because what he was doing was perfectly legal. Which it largely was. The law, as they say, is a blunt instrument. It's easy to forget because it's so pervasive, but most antisocial behavior is held in check by social, rather than legal sanctions. Jerks don't get asked back. Liars and promise-breakers are shunned. The tactless get dirty looks. The indiscreet get elbowed.
In practice, our legal freedom to speak our minds is constrained by our accountability to the people around us. They know who we are, they know where we live, they will kick us under the table when we get out of line. In real life, we only have one body connected to one name, and we've got to weigh the satisfaction of speaking our minds against the long term effects on our reputations and relationships.
This is a pretty elegant system, albeit an imperfect one. It puts the "society" in "free society." In real life, we have the legal right to say pretty much whatever we want, but we are enmeshed in a network of social checks and balances that keep us accountable for our speech. Nobody can force us to shut up, but lots of people can make their displeasure known to us. It's a good balance that allows people to share ideas freely without rending the fabric of the community.
Pseudonymity is great because it allows people to speak without the usual constraints, but it can also be terrible for the same reason. As ViolentAcrez, Michael Brutsch opted out of all social controls on his speech and ran amok. He could say things he would never have said under his real name because they're rightly regarded as horrifying. Until recently, he didn't have to live as that Hitler/Misogyny/Creepshot Guy (all subreddits he started). He didn't have to endure his neighbors crossing the street to avoid him.
As ViolentAcrez, Brustch could brush off complaints and criticism as long as he kept his online and offline reputations separate. He generated plenty of criticism on Reddit. His contributions made it to the front page as often as they did because so many users rushed to denounce him. But the community was powerless to make him stop.
As long as Brutsch remained pseudonymous, Reddit could opt out of responsibility, too. Even though he was an unpaid functionary of the site, they could still act as if they weren't responsible for his behavior. They could maintain the fiction that he was just some guy on the internet. Who knew? Who cared? Once Chen put a name to the pseud, Brutsch's cozy relationships with the top brass at Reddit came into focus.
Online pseudonymity is largely a social courtesy. We all agree not to reveal the pseudonyms of the people we meet online, even though we probably could. A pseud is like showing up at your local with a paper bag over your head and insisting that nobody knows you. In fact, they know perfectly well, or they could easily find out; and either people play along, or they don't. The difference between a bar and the internet is that the internet has developed a social norm against outing. That's a good thing.
Respect for pseudonymity is important. Courtesies are the lubrication that make social interaction possible. Without this norm, many important voices would be lost. People would be afraid to share their political opinions and personal experiences. So, those of us who care about a thriving online community have every reason to take this norm seriously and insist that others around us do likewise.
We should shun people who frivolously or maliciously reveal the identities of others. We should ostracize those who out others to settle personal scores or silence dissenting views. It's cruel, it's destructive, and it's wrong.
However, sometimes it's necessary to out a bad actor in order to stop him from hurting other people. Michael Brutsch was doing just that and there was absolutely no other way to make him stop.
Ironically, the creepshots for which Brutsch is infamous are among the less objectionable materials he disseminated. At least creepshots snapped by creeps in public are technically legal, though morally reprehnsible. Until Reddit reluctantly shut down the Jailbait subreddit, Brutsch was also trafficking in the stolen facebook pictures of children and broadcasting them to a potential audience of hundreds of hundreds of thousands.
Brutsch's audience was so large that some of his creepshot and jailbait victims were bound to be recognized by people they knew. Some fanboys have argued that creepshots are a victimless crime because the targets often don't realize that they've been creepshot. But we'll never know how many women have faced ridicule or even violence after being recognized in a creepshot or a jailbait pic. We'll never know how many women have been fired from their jobs, or not hired because of something Brutsch posted.
As a photographer and a civil libertarian, I feel strongly that public creepshots should remain legal. I don't see how we can legislate against them in a way that preserves a photographer's right to take pictures in public. But creepshots are not victimless. In addition to the harm to individuals, the trend impinges on every woman's freedom because you never know who might be lurking with a cell phone camera on your subway car. That's why we need strong social controls to discourage this profoundly antisocial behavior.
Mores have to keep pace with technology. In this age of tiny cameras and internet connections, we need an ironclad norm that You Do Not Creepshoot. We have to enforce this norm through our free speech rights, because the law is not an appropriate tool for this job. The norm should be that if you disregard women's dignity and privacy by posting creepshots, we'll disregard your pseudonymity.
Even if creepshots are legal, unmasking Brutsch opens the door to other legal recourse. On top of everything else, he was flagrantly violating copyright by reposting photos stolen from facebook. Now that he's unmasked, I hope he gets sued by some of his victims. Unmasking him was necessary for his victims to seek justice. As isolated teenage girls, they were unlikely to figure out who had stolen their pictures on their own, but Adrian Chen has given them the opportunity to fight back. Brustch wasn't making money but Reddit is ostensibly a for-profit company. As Chen explains Brutsch was building traffic for Reddit while legally insulating the higher ups by culling obvious child porn from the site's NSFW zones. They even made him a "pimp hat" badge to mark his special status on the site. At least Reddit has deeper pockets than a recently unemployed programmer for pawn shops.*
When someone is abusing pseudonymity to materially hurt other people, and there's no other way to make them stop, "outing" may be an appropriate last resort. In extreme circumstances, we rescind the usual social courtesy of ignoring the person's identity. Virtual communities are real communities, too. On the internet, we need a network of social checks and balances akin to the one we enjoy in the real world.
A lot of people are uncomfortable with this idea because they fear that the principle will be abused to out innocent people. No doubt that's true. But unless you want to argue that nobody should ever be outed for any reason, you're faced with the difficult task of articulating when it's appropriate to lift the veil. That's the nature of informal social controls, they get applied by regular people, with varying degrees of fairness and accuracy. People need to understand the nature of online pseudonymity and decide whether they want to put themselves out there.
Pseudonymity is an important courtesy that we extend to each other, not a moral or legal right. When we speak in real life, we weigh the value of expressing ourselves against the potential consequences. Pseudonymous writers have to make the same calculus. They've insulated themselves from criticism and social stigma, but they haven't created an artificial consequence-free speech zone around themselves just by using a pseud.
*Update: A sometimes pseudonymous lawyer friend tells me that the grounds for a lawsuit for copyright infringement via Facebook are a lot weaker than I thought, thanks to some dodgy language in Facebook's terms of service, but zie adds that there might be other grounds for a lawsuit, such as defamation or invasion of privacy. My friend is more optimistic about the possibility of criminal charges against the creepshooters who crouch to peer under skirts, because many jurisdictions have laws against the peeping itself. Whatever legal avenues the victims may have at their disposal, they can't even get started until they know who the perp is and what state he lives in. That's one reason why it was necessary to expose Brustch by name instead of simply reporting on his bad deeds.
Lindsay Beyerstein
Lindsay Beyerstein is an award-winning investigative journalist and In These Times staff writer who writes the blog Duly Noted. Her stories have appeared in Newsweek, Salon, Slate, The Nation, Ms. Magazine, and other publications. Her photographs have been published in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times' City Room. She also blogs at The Hillman Blog (http://www.hillmanfoundation.org/hillmanblog), a publication of the Sidney Hillman Foundation, a non-profit that honors journalism in the public interest.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
The Dignity Tour: Penn State laureate's first reflection 'poses the question'
The Dignity Tour: Penn State laureate's first reflection 'poses the question'
Home Depot has figured us out. They know how scary change is, so they make it very simple. If the idea of a pergola is what brings you there, then you can start building it by looking for what kind of wood you would like to use. Someone there will help you find the wood aisle and even help you narrow down your choices. Everything you need to make a pergola is in Home Depot. There are tools, building materials, paint, the occasional bird chirping inside the building, and snacks. If you don't know how to do something, somebody there does. All you have to do is ask. Even my 88-year-old father, who, in 1944, got on a military transport and sailed to France, asks for help in Home Depot.
At Home Depot, I can take a class in pergola building and work with elements of my project before I start, and if I start building my own and don't like some of the things I have chosen, I can exchange them for something else. Everyone who works in Home Depot is trained to help you, and everyone who walks in the door, except for the person who has been dragged there on the way to someplace else, belongs to a group of people who are in the process of changing things for themselves or other people.
Every group is made up of individuals who have their own goals, beliefs, and values. To form a group, the goals, beliefs, and values have to align with each other, and if there are differences of opinion, people have to amend or change their personal goals, values, and/or beliefs to find common ground. Once common ground has been found, each individual agrees to keep agreeing with the group's collective decisions. To keep the group thinking and behaving in the same ways, someone in the group creates a set of rules. Everyone in the group has to follow the rules, but human nature has an ongoing conversation with change. When a person in a group begins changing how they think or how they behave, there are only three choices: the rules have to change, the person has to change, or the person has to leave.
The United States is a gigantic ongoing experiment with groups, agreements, and human nature. The framers of the Constitution created an experiment that throws personal freedom, human nature, and community building into the same pot. These original architects gave us the building they wanted, which is a unified country based on the principle of personal freedom, and they left us to figure out the design, the building materials, and the labor pool. We have a set of rules to follow, and the "law of the land" works to keep us inside the Constitutional borders of freedom, but laws do not make people behave. We keep making new laws, we keep going back to our cultural store to exchange merchandise, but we can't get some of the building materials right. It might be the wood, the bolts, or the birds, but the roof leaks, the floor has gaps between the planks, and there is not enough room for everybody. And not nearly enough snacks. Change can be good, but change makes people, especially those who are benefitting from old ways of thinking, or those who have no idea what any other thinking looks like, just plain uncomfortable.
To change yourself, you have to open your mind to the idea that there may be other options available, and other people who know other things. Once you open your mind to other people, you open your view of the world and that makes everything very complicated. In the land of the free and home of the brave, it takes bravery to consider everyone else's freedom as well as your own.
"In the land of the free and home of the brave, it takes bravery to consider everyone else's freedom as well as your own."
-Susan Russell, 2014-15 Penn State Laureate
Brave things have happened in my lifetime. I was 7 years old and my brother was 9 when the Civil Rights Law of 1964 passed. As a child, I saw television coverage of young people being shot in the streets, I read newspaper articles about adults being killed in their front yards, and I witnessed people in my own community take to the streets on both sides of change. My parents supported the changes and that support cost them friends, jobs, and churches, but they wanted to raise children who thought differently than the previous generations, so they changed. Making legislative changes makes sense if we want to develop new ways of thinking and successful collaborations with each other and the world, but legislation cannot change how people behave. People have to be responsible for how they behave towards others. That statement seems so simple, just like what you were taught in kindergarten, if you were lucky enough to go. Do unto others, share your toys, and be nice. Somewhere along the way, we lose focus, we get lost, and we forget to change.
If you focus a microscope down on anything, the thing reveals patterns and elements we human beings share with everything else on the planet. If we stare bravely into that idea, we can hear industries, religions, educational systems, political frameworks and social constructs screeching to a halt. These groups certainly have their place in holding our nation together, and the borders of those groups, the rules that keep the groups together, have built our national identity. These groups are powerful engines that chug and chug along the tracks we built for them, and many people's lives depend on these engines continuing down the same old tracks in the same old ways. It is human nature to want to protect what you have, and in a country of "haves and have nots," it is human nature to fear losing whatever small percentage of the "have" you've got.
Our personal obstacles to change reveal how frightened we are of loss, and our cultural obstacles to change show how frightened we have become that the person sitting next to us is going to take our stuff. Fear turns a conversation about change into a conversation about what the person next door is doing to derail our engine. Fear makes things less complicated by telling us we are different from the person next door, and once that happens, it's easy to think he or she doesn't deserve the things we want for ourselves. Once someone becomes "different," we can move them to the outside of any conversation, and once they are there it's very easy to push them off a cultural cliff.
For the past seven years I have been asking Penn State students, faculty, administration and staff to join our local communities in an open discussion about the young people falling off those cliffs on a daily basis. Those who have attended Cultural Conversations events have had opportunities to hear young people tell personal stories about how race, gender, body image, violence, bullying, religion, economics, guns, childhood sexual assault, sexual orientation and politics affect their lives. I have brought international, national, local and student voices together with community audiences to pose real-time options to address real-time problems affecting very real people.
Listening to individual stories promotes personal investment in the storyteller, which can be uncomfortable, but when the audiences focus on the larger picture, the real work can begin. After audiences hear the stories, I ask them to back away from the individual kids inside that particular cultural portrait. When they change their perspective, they can see the frame that surrounds the kids. They can see the rules, too. They see powerful engines like media, entertainment, pornography, the internet, music, politics, economics, sports, science, engineering, religion…the list is overwhelming. Identifying the engines running around the frame opens up another story: the possibility that the viewer may have an investment in one or more of those engines. This perspective creates great discomfort because no matter where we look, we always return to where we are standing inside the picture. The bigger the world gets, the more people realize that we are all inside the same picture hanging inside the same building. Nobody can escape the violence that surrounds our kids, not even those of us in the ivory pergolas.
"The bigger the world gets, the more people realize that we are all inside the same picture hanging inside the same building."
-Susan Russell, 2014-15 Penn State Laureate
This summer, the Chronicle of Higher Education is publishing articles about whether or not professors should put trigger warnings in syllabi to protect the students who are living with trauma. [i] All the articles pro and con are well thought-out and presented, and positions on both sides are supported by professors who are survivors themselves. The academy is having a conversation about academic freedom and educational theories within a population of survivors, and when you back away from that 2-inch section of the portrait we are painting every day, you see a picture of a culture systematically traumatizing its most vulnerable citizens. National statistics state that one out of every five female students who walk into a professor's class will be sexually assaulted during her four years in an educational institution, and one out of 10 of the professor's students, male and female, is walking in as a survivor of childhood sexual assault. [ii]
Engines race around our cultural frame 24 hours a day, and as a survivor myself, an educator, and an American, I pose the question: what if we, as individuals, shift the conversation on individual levels? What if we form a group agreeing that for the next year, everyone we see, know, come in contact with, or read about, all the people that we will never meet but still share this planet with, deserve "dignity." How will that simple way of thinking change us? How will freedom, personal and collective, look to us in a year if we consciously give everyone the dignity we want for ourselves? If the great experiment called the United States runs with or without us, let's contribute some data and see what happens. It will not be easy. Data is easy; being human is hard.
Dignity was a cornerstone for Martin Luther King Jr. as he reached out to a country, and dignity brought Democratic Senator Hubert Humphrey, Republican Senator Thomas Kutchel, and President Lyndon Johnson together as they drove the Civil Rights Act towards Congressional debate. The "elements of human dignity" as articulated in the Civil Rights movement became the foundation for a country's personal and collective contemplation about what it means to be an American, and all of that collective contemplation has worked in large and small ways towards fundamental changes in our contemporary culture.
Yale law professor and author Bruce Ackerman writes in the New York Times article "Dignity is a Constitutional Principle" that constitutional development is now centered on upholding the dignity of all Americans, and this way of thinking is revealed in Supreme Court Justice Kennedy's comment that the Defense of Marriage Act is "an assault on dignity" for same-sex couples. When the Hon. John E. Jones declared the Marriage Laws of Pennsylvania in violation of the Constitution, he said, "All couples deserve equal dignity in the realm of marriage." [iii] [iv]
Dignity is a tangible thread running through our cultural design since 1964, and if we are to address the changes that need to take place in the 21st century, perhaps we can begin to address our personal fears by changing our neighbors from "different" to dignified. There are real people at risk, real children standing on very real cliffs. People change history all the time. When the Hon. John E. Jones changed Pennsylvania's history, he did so saying, "In the 60 years since Brown was decided, separate has thankfully faded into history, and only equal remains. Similarly, in future generations the label same-sex marriage will be abandoned, to be replaced simply by marriage. We are a better people than what these laws represent, and it is time to discard them into the ash heap of history." [v]
"Dignity is a tangible thread running through our cultural design since 1964, and if we are to address the changes that need to take place in the 21st century, perhaps we can begin to address our personal fears by changing our neighbors from 'different' to dignified."
-Susan Russell, 2014-15 Penn State Laureate
When Judge Jones made a rule of law he also afforded us a behavioral option: choosing a new way of thinking. Everyone is in charge of his or her own behavior. Everyone has options. Judge Jones asks people to choose the possibility that my wife and I, who were married by State College Mayor Elizabeth Goreham on June 8, 2014, in the backyard of our home in Ferguson Township, deserve the dignity of 1143 laws and privileges that define a legal marriage in the United States. Everything begins at a beginning, and all we have to do is agree to start.
[i] See http://chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2014/03/10/trigger-warnings-trig... http://chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2014/05/23/treatment-not-trigger... http://chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2014/05/20/my-syllabus-with-trig...
[ii] For statistics and help lines on sexual assault please see: https://www.rainn.org/public-policy/campus-safety and https://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/frequency-of-sexual-ass... and http://www.d2l.org/site/c.4dICIJOkGcISE/b.6243681/k.86C/Child_Sexual_Abu...


text:
Subject matter experts promoted to executive posts have to tap a different skill set.
At some point in your career, your leadership skills need to trump your technical skills if you're going to make the biggest possible impact. Most professionals start their careers as subject matter experts in something. Often, the best subject matter experts get promoted into roles where they're responsible for leading other subject matter or technical experts.
That's the great inflection point where leadership skills begin to trump technical skills. It's represented in this simple graph:
As the picture suggests, the higher you rise in leadership, the leverage in getting bigger things done comes from spending less time on your technical skills and more time exercising your leadership skills.
There's a relatively simple way to prove this out which I've used in dozens of Next Level leadership workshops during the past few years. In a roomful of 70 or 80 leaders, I ask everyone to give their answers to this question: What is it, given the leadership role that you're in, that only you can do?
What follows is, in no particular order, a typical list of answers and some thoughts about what the list tells us:
- Set the vision
- Develop my people
- Get the right people on the team
- Allocate resources
- Establish priorities
- Build the relationships we need to get stuff done
- Provide air cover
- Share perspective and information with the team
- Keep key people informed about what we're doing
- Knock down barriers
- Keep us focused on the plan
- Monitor and measure progress
When you look at that typical list, what do you notice? Here's what I notice. There's not a pure technical skill on the list. It's all leadership.
What else would you add to the list of things that only the designated leader can do? What are your thoughts on the leadership/technical skills inflection point? What makes it challenging and what can be done to make it easier? Please share your thoughts.
( Image via vectoraart / Shutterstock.com )
NEXT STORY: IRS Reaches Electronic Filing Milestone


text:
Webbie Says He's Slapping The F*ck Outta Terrence J + Responds To Terrence Banning Him From 106 & Park For Talking To Rocsi! "Im Sorry Your B*tch Wanted Me To Put The D*ck In Her.. Imma Beat Your P*ssy Azz Up"
Webbie claims Rocsi was on him at 106 & Park and told her he had a big d*ck. Terrence got tight about it and banned him from 106
Please click the "Report" button below if the video on this page is not working properly.
Comments will only be displayed by verified emails. No Spamming or Racism.


text:
The journalist Ed Mendel, a pension expert, has a long but important look at the question of how public pension funds like CalPERS should invest.
He focuses on a back-to-the future strategy: returning pension funds, which now are invested heavily in stocks, to a focus on safe, conservative bonds with predictable returns.
The full piece is here.


text:
1952 Willys Wagon: Utility Camper
Practical Wagon
We see a lot of cool Jeeps over the course of a year and that is awesome. The problem is, most of the Jeeps we see and shoot are freshly put together, and never really lived-in for any length of time. This Willys Wagon is the exact opposite of that. Eric Frost put it together over the course of five years and thousands of hours to not only take wheeling, but also to take camping and tow his travel trailer and race car trailer.
When we heard the rumble of the V-8 cruise past and saw the cool body armor that didn't change the nostalgic look of the Jeep, our interest was piqued. When Eric told us that not only has he been wheeling all over with the Jeep, but drives it and tows with it, we wanted to know more.
The stock Willys frame was tossed and a '77 Wagoneer frame was swapped in its place for more strength. The frame was chopped behind the rear shackle mounts to better fit the Willys body. Then the body mounts on the frame were modified to work with the stock Willys mounts. The engine and transmission crossmember mounts are home-built units and the wheelbase worked out to 108-inches.
Total lift height comes in at right around 4 inches thanks to a pair of Skyjacker Softride lift springs in the front controlled by Rancho shocks. Out back some bastard leaf packs consisting of re-arched Wagoneer springs and a few Skyjacker Softride leafs are controlled by Monroe air shocks. The air shocks help level the Jeep out when towing loads with a heavy tongue weight.
It all starts off with a '71 351 Cleveland that was partially blueprinted and balanced to within 1/2-gram of tolerance. Inside, the connecting rods are stock, but the Keith Black hypereutectic pistons and Perfect Seal gapless rings certainly aren't. The main caps run studs rather than bolts and the rods were shot-peened. Comp Cams provided the cam with 0.554-inches of lift and a 221/221 @ 0.050 duration that pushes on aluminum rocker arms. The stainless steel valves (2.19-inch intake, 1.71-inch exhaust) were polished as were the combustion chambers, intake, and exhaust ports. An older Holley Pro-Jection two-barrel throttle-body sits atop an Edlebrock Performer intake manifold and breathes through a custom dual-intake cold-air setup. A capacitive discharge Crane ignition with a rev limiter lights things off. The combustion ratio comes in at 9.3:1 and the spent gasses are sent downstream via some owner-built headers, 21/2-inch exhaust, and Dynomax mufflers.
An NV4500 is bolted to a modified aluminum Ford bellhousing. Power is passed on to an NP208 taken from an '88 GMC Jimmy that was rotated up about 20-degrees for better ground clearance. From there, driveshafts sporting 1330 U-joints send the power out to the axles. The front axle is a Wagoneer Dana 44 with 4.56 gears and a Lock-Right with Alloy 4340 axleshafts. While the Ford 9-inch out back from a 60's-era pickup has a Detroit Locker hiding in the third member and between the 31-spline axleshafts. The front axle retained the Wagoneer discs but got larger calipers from a heavy-duty Chevy Suburban while the rear got the Wagoneer drums. The master cylinder was sourced from an '84 Jeep Cherokee.
Body and Interior
The factory "step" in the fender is protected from attack by an integrated tube/plate as is the lower edge of the body in front of the rear tires. The factory bumpers were made to work with the Wagoneer frame. Tow bar brackets were added up front just in case it needs to be flat-towed. A piece of rubber hung down in front of the front axle reduced air flow under the Jeep, thus increasing air flow through the radiator and curing a persistent overheating problem. Since this Jeep is actually driven, the interior was given a makeover. New seat padding, restored rear seat frame, new carpet, and trim panels were all the order of the day. Up front, the factory gauges actually work, the Wagoneer steering column was kept for steering duties and there is no mistaking the overdrive transmission. A single-DIN Kenwood head unit was hung under the dash in a custom wood enclosure that also houses the Vintage Air A/C system. Below that is a CB radio. The wood cargo area runners match the custom-built box under the dash and a foam board headliner keeps things cool and quiet.
The front seats are from an '84 Firebird, and the rear seat upholstery was chosen to match. A simple hoop at the B-pillar with legs down to the rear inner wheelwells provides added protection for the occupants. The space-saver spare tire is mounted behind the rear seat in the stock location. The tool box is strapped to the floor and a scrap piece of carpet protects the wood runners from spare parts and tools. An inverter is flush-mounted to the driver's side rear trim panel.
Good, Bad, and What It's For
The big Ford V-8 is always going to run a bit hot in that engine compartment, but Eric has done a good job of troubleshooting and minimizing the issues. The interior is clearly that of a Jeep that is driven and the simple hoop doesn't detract much from the vintage-looking interior. However, if it was going to be wheeled hard enough that a hoop was needed, we'd rather see a cage at least for the front seats.
Why I Wrote This Feature
I have a thing for Willys wagons, and I want to build one similar to this one. The fuel injection, A/C, and stereo make for a comfortable ride. While the simple leaf-sprung suspension and bomb-proof manual transmission makes for a reliable one. The custom body armor doesn't detract from the stock looks of the wagon, and if I ever build one, I'll likely use Eric's ideas to armor mine as well.
-Pete Trasborg
Hard Facts
- Vehicle: '52 Willys Wagon
- Engine: Ford 351ci Cleveland
- Transmission: NV4500
- Transfer Case: NP208
- Suspension: Spring-under (front), spring-over (rear)
- Axles: Wagoneer Dana 44 (front), Ford 9-inch (rear)
- Wheels: 15x8.5 Enkei aluminum wheels
- Built For: Camping, Jeeping, and towing a travel trailer or race car


text:
Mr. Machete (Danny Trejo) geared up and is now rocking a StarCraft Marine suit! Check out the full / finished (NSFW) wallpaper version HERE.
The Marine Danny Trejo- -+ by Wu Shuang / azazel1944 (deviantART)
Need your daily fill of geek eye candy? If so, head over to Justin Page's Rampaged Reality and get your fix. Republished with permission.


text:
Our Mission
The mission of the Perquimans County E911 Center is to provide emergency communications on a countywide basis for emergency law enforcement, fire and medical services. The job of the Perquimans County E-911 Center is to effectively process information to assist citizens, businesses and requesting agencies.
The Center is responsible for dispatching Law Enforcement, Emergency Medical Services, and Fire Departments for the municipalities of Hertford, Winfall and the rest of Perquimans County.
Office Phone Numbers


text:
In "Mission of Mercy," a number of crises strike all at once for the astronauts.
First, the World War II airplane that Bill, Jeff and Judy have been utilizing to defend the humanoid pueblo city runs perilously low on aviation fuel, meaning another dangerous foray to Ape City for supplies.
Meanwhile -- and even as General Urko searches "New Valley" for the humanoid populace -- Nova falls gravely ill from an illness in her lungs which is highly contagious.
Unless a serum can be acquired, Nova will die, and the rest of the humanoids, including the astronauts, will follow..
This week's episode of Return to the Planet of the Apes (1975) actually concerns a pretty good idea, and one which has re-surfaced in the pop-culture in The Walking Dead. Specifically, after the fall of human civilization, the survivors will fall prey to diseases and illnesses once conquered by modern medicine…but now once more grave threats. Talk about having to swallow a bitter pill! In this case, Nova nearly succumbs to a treatable disease, and Judy must make a dangerous trek to Ape City to get help from Zira and Cornelius.
Despite the interesting concept, the execution of it leaves something to be desired. In particular, Judy -- an astronaut capable of flying spaceships and even World War II war planes -- doesn't know about serums and how they work. No doubt, her ignorance is a result of the writers wanting to explain the topic to young audiences. But still, it's handled pretty poorly.
Beyond this hard-to-swallow aspect of the episode, "Mission of Mercy" is mostly an action-oriented episode, with the astronauts struggling to beat the clock and once more save the day. Bill and Jeff must cross a rickety bridge in a truck, just as it collapses. And then their truck breaks down…in a lightning storm. Suffice it to say that a lot of obstacles get thrown up against the astronauts as they struggle to hold onto the one advantage they have (the war plane), and keep Nova alive at the same time.
In some sense, the focus on action is true to the Apes film franchise, but the five movies alternated serious action with cerebral science fiction concepts (like infinite regression) and a sub-text about racism and religious zealotry. As a cartoon series aimed for kids, Return to the Planet of the Apes doesn't quite rise to that level, but "Mission of Mercy" seems a bit more pedestrian, even, than other installments.
Also, it's getting a little difficult to believe that Zira and Cornelius can go out into the wilderness outside of Ape City on yet another mission to help the humanoids, and not get caught either by Urko or Dr. Zaius. The pacifist chimps take big risks in every episode, and with no repercussions.
Next week: "Invasion of the Underdwellers."


text:
"I wish me and Synney had matching outfits for Music Day."
Matt's all, "You don't have to make her matching outfits just because she asked for them."
I'm all, "Do you even KNOW me? This is why I am ALIVE!"
And thus: To this:The girls are wearing shirts that were originally either thrifted or dumpster dived, tights handed down from a little girlfriend--they had stained knees and so I dyed them black (didn't turn out great--next time I'll try purple or navy or some other color that will look better even when it's off a little), and their matching pink Chucks.
The skirts and reverse appliques are made from tie-dyed T-shirts that I thrifted a while back and was sort of saving for another stained glass quilt. If I make more of these skirts I'll post a tutorial, but they're ridiculously easy to do and also will look good only on a kid, whose body is just such a straight little noodle, you know. Basically, you just chop off the torso of the shirt at the length you want, leaving the shirt's bottom hem as the hem of your shirt, fold the top cut edge of the shirt down to the inside and zig-zag yourself an elastic casing, then insert elastic and finish your casing.
Reverse applique is a little trickier, but still a really accessible skill.
Music Day itself was...well, it is mainly for the kids, you know. There was a talented little violinist who played the looooongest version of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" that I've ever heard (until I, too, enroll my children in the IU Pre-College Music Program, I suppose), one kid who played a drum while hiding behind the piano, a four-year-old kid who, AWESOMELY, was dressed all in black AND sang the first verse of "Ring of Fire," including the guitar parts, with this look of total fear in his eyes. My kid's name wasn't called, even though she was signed up, because the teachers think that I'm a total stage mom (I often give people in authority the wrong impression--it might be because I'm accidentally sarcastic sometimes...oh, and really critical of them inside my head) and that they know how to parent my kid better than I do.
What they DIDN'T know, however, is that the whole point of the plan was that Willow was signed up for a duet with Sydney, and that although there was no freakin' way on god's green earth that Willow would ever stand up and sing, my Sydney was chaffing at the bit to go up and do the whole song all by herself. Which was the plan.
Except they didn't call Willow's name.
Sydney cried the whole way home until I promised her that at pick-up time back at school, I would make the other parents stand and listen to her so she could, as she kept wailing, "Sing in front of the people! Wanna sing in front of the people!"
Which I did.
And which she did.
Because I swear that I am NOT a stage mom, but it is quite possible that I do have one stage kid.
If you're curious, here's an at-home version of the performance (turn your sound down--she's standing right next to the computer's microphone):
I tell ya, she would have floored them.


text:
Stolen electricity leads to big drug bust
A case of stolen electricity turned into a big bust involving a date-rape drug.
The four men who are accused of making meth and GHB (Rohypnol) are now sitting in jail in Racine.
"They basically ran the cord from the bushes underneath the vehicle right into the house right there and right in," Ed Richtmyre said.
Richtmyre showed WISN 12 News reporter Christina Palladino how his sister's rental home was broken into.
Police said four men living next door were stealing her electricity to keep a drug house running.
"Sally forgot to latch the kitchen window back there, and they found out, and said, 'OK,' because it takes a lot of electricity, and they weren't paying their bills apparently because We Energies was on their case, too," Richtmyre said.
According to the criminal complaint, Richtmyre's brother-in-law noticed the extension cords running between the two houses over a week ago and called police to investigate.
Police then noticed a Dixie cup inside the garage. Tests came back positive for the date-rape drug.
Several days later, a search warrant revealed a huge drug house operation inside the men's home, including meth and more.
"If that would have blown up, it would have taken out the house I'm sure and damaged my sister's whose trying to sell the house right here," Richtmyre said.
The owners of that vacant house live right across the street from where the men were allegedly making meth and stealing their electricity. Family members told Palladino it was all happening right under their nose in a neighborhood full of children.
Matt Bosanec lives across the street. He told WISN 12 News there were always people coming and going ever since the men moved in a few months ago.
""It infuriates me, very much so. A lot of kids in this neighborhood and to have that type of stuff going on in the house," Bosanec sid.
It's not known how long the men had been stealing the electricity, although the owner's brother said We Energies is working with the family to reimburse them for the high electrical bill.


text:
My keybinds and macros are built for cross-spec support. With both a feral druid and a resto druid as well as relatively frequent respecs to turkey, I need my keybinds to be as flexible as they can without hindering me in any of the specs, while maintaining a minimal number of buttons showing on my screen.
The mods:
For my bindings, I use a manual keybinds on my action bars (Bartender and LunarSphere) combined with Bindpad.
- Bindpad assigns the keybind to the actual macro or action, though it cannot bind mouse buttons. No stance support.
- LunarSphere assigns the keybind to a specific macro or action as well, and CAN bind mouse buttons. Stance support.
- Bartender assigns the keybind to the specific action button, can bind mouse buttons, and can completely hide a bar of keybound macros from being seen or clicked on your screen. Stance support.
The binds:
I keep my left hand resting over the WASD keys, pinky on the shift key, and thumb on the spacebar. Pinky can reach shift, ctrl, and 3 extra buttons my G15 keyboard has to the side, and my thumb can reach the alt key. My A and D keys have been bound to strafe when I hold the Shift key. My right hand is on my 5-button mouse (Logitech), and mouse-look is frequently used, as with using my scroll wheel to zoom my camera. This setup thus has 15 easily reachable keys plus all 3 modifier keys, and 5 total mouse-buttons. I have trouble with my long fingers hitting the x, c, and v keys so I don't count them :)
|Generic/caster, Bear, Cat, Tree, Moonkin
- ~ is Hurricane, Survival Instincts, Survival Instincts
- 1 is Bearform, Feral Charge - Bear
- 2 is NS + HT macro
- 3 is Catform, Prowl
- 4 is Travel Form
- 5 is Innervate (self), Berserk, Rip
- q is Regrowth/Swiftmend, Swipe/Bash, Swipe/Rake, Starfire/Moonfire
- e is Lifebloom/Rejuv, Maul/Mangle/Lacerate, FB/Maim/Rip, Wrath/Insect Swarm
- t is variable on spec
- y is Faerie Fire macro
- f is Focus Target macro
- g is Trinket + Lifebloom, + Mangle Bear, + Mangle Cat, + Starfire
- M3 is Cyclone/Moonfire rank 1, Growl/Challenging/Demo Roar, Shred/Mangle/Ravage/FerociousBite
- M4 auto-run
- M5 is Raid Icon/Regrowth/dismount macro
My "t" key is a matter of contention among my various specs, mostly because moonkin and treeform both share the stance # of 5, and my feral druid's stance:5 is actually Swift Flight Form. So,
- Resto "t" is Treeform, Nourish
- Moonkin "t" is Moonkin form, Typhoon
- Feral "t" is Enrage/FrenziedRegen/Challenging Roar, Dash/Savage Roar
I also have a G15 keyboard. I love this thing. The thing about these keys is that, when resting your hand over the WASD keys, the vast majority of the extra keys this keyboard provides are out of your reach (at least for my fingers, and my fingers are pretty long!). The only ones I can easily reach without stretching too far are the G12, G15, and G18 keys: the three keys closest to the capslock, shift, and ctrl buttons. I use these for:
- G12 is Wild Growth, Feral Charge - Bear, Feral Charge - Cat, Starfall
- G15 is Abolish Poison
- G18 is Remove Curse
In addition, I have bound my Itemrack sets to my NumPad. These keys are recognized separately from the number keys along the top of the keyboard, so you can use them for less important keybinds. For example, NumPad1 is my healing kit, and NumPad6 is my tanking kit.
I have tried the Ideazon FANG gamepad, but it was really uncomfortable. The key spacing did not fit my hand, and I felt awkward with it, not knowing which of the tiny buttons I was pressing and my fingers kept slipping off the big bulky arrow keys. I gave it an honest try with both WoW and AoC, but gave up on it and went back to my G15 keyboard. My experience with the FANG has turned me off from trying the Belkin Nostromo, since the Belkin looks like it relies too much on the user reaching DOWN from the WASD keys rather than UP to the number keys. I really recommend that before you buy any peripheral game hardware, that you check first to see if your hand can comfortably fit it.
The other stuff:
For the unlisted abilities, I still click for them, but I keep them clustered in a square next to the middle of my screen, along with some of the major cooldowns that are keybound. Some few others are kept down at the bottom of my screen on Lunarsphere's buttons.
Bartender click-uses:
- Barkskin, Tranquility, Nature's Grasp, Survival Instincts, Survival Instincts
- Potion Macro
- Starfire/Wrath/Moonfire/Insect Swarm when not in turkey form, or I don't feel like rearranging my macros (again, the stance:5 confusion)
- Entangling Roots, Hibernate, Soothe Animal
- Misc quest items
LunarSphere click-uses:
- Revive/Rebirth
- MotW, GotW, Thorns
- Innervate that is not self-cast
- Bandages
- Warstomp
- Mounts, professions, misc potions and items, minipets
The alts:
Memorization of keybinds is not something to be tampered with lightly. If I've gotta tank something and I'm feeling squishy, that "1" key for bear form better be something tank-useful on my alts, too!
You'd be surprised how easily you can adapt a cross-spec druid keybind system to any other class... you just may end up feeling a bit limited when the alt's class doesn't include as many different options. The most important part of keybinding an alt is that you get the reactionary things bound in places you can easily find them.
The categories you want to consider are:
- "Shields up, Captain!" aggro response (bubbles, evasion, defensive stance, ice block)
- Stealth (including fade and vanish)
- Emergency heals/potions
- Racial abilities
- Interrupts, stuns, and knockbacks
- Cleanses
- Buffs
- Sprint/speed increases (Aspect of the Run-Fast, Ghost Wolf)
- Crowd Control
- Charges/Death Grips
- AoE vs Single-Target vs DoTs
- Ranged vs Melee
Even if you keybind a lot of abilities, you probably shouldn't hide them all until you feel fully comfortable with your alt. Even at 80, I kept all bars showing on my rogue's screen until I settled on her spec and got used to where things were (and what I had available)... though now, it's as clean as my druid's screen, something that fills me with a warm fuzzy feeling of accomplishment whenever I think about it :)


text:
JMU alumni rise to the Challenge
SUMMARY: The JMU Alumni Association Chapter Challenge engages regional chapters in order to leverage their financial support of JMU, part of the overall goal to increase alumni giving participation.
By James Irwin ('06)
It's a form of grassroots philanthropy - sort of like political candidates who raise money through satellite headquarters - and it goes by a number of titles: crowd funding, peer-to-peer, the ground game. It is a major way to raise funds and awareness for a cause.
And it's arrived at a JMU alumni chapter near you.
The program is called the JMU Alumni Chapter Challenge. Its premise is simple: pool JMU alumni, volunteers and advocates in 20 regions worldwide into a single campaign that raises money for the university (any gift, of any amount, to any fund counts). An alum's donation is tracked based on place of residence and counts toward the chapter nearest that location (so, a JMU graduate living in Midlothian, Va. counts as a member of the Richmond Chapter).
From July 1, 2013 until May 31, 2014, JMU alumni worldwide will represent their local chapters by making gifts to the university, with prizes - and bragging rights - on the line.
"We've never really done something like this on a national level," said Amanda Leech ('09), Assistant Director in the JMU Office of Alumni Relations. "It's a natural fit that our alumni leaders would be promoting this to their alumni groups. They already are trusted providers of information to alumni in their communities."
The goal, Leech says, is to raise funds for JMU, awareness of philanthropic needs in higher education, and to increase JMU's alumni giving participation. In 2012-13, 8,509 JMU alumni made a donation to Madison - the highest total in the history of the university. A unique element of the Chapter Challenge is there are no target funds; the donor chooses the allocation. There are more than 2,000 destinations to select from, and the freedom to choose where the money goes is something that resonates with alumni, says Kristen Malzone ('07), President of the New York/New Jersey Chapter. Malzone has been using events as a platform to communicate about the Chapter Challenge, raffling off items to donors and playing up the idea of competition.
"Having an opportunity for a donor to select where the money goes has been something I've mentioned whenever I've talked about [the Chapter Challenge]," she said. "And, of course, New Yorkers are pretty competitive."
They are competitive in Richmond, too. Last year, the chapter had one of the highest alumni giving percentages in the country (10.9%).
"The bottom line here is to raise money for JMU, and get more people involved and create a better understanding of why it's important to give back," said Allison Smith ('08), giving chair for the Richmond Chapter. "There's a real buzz here around the competition this creates. And designating where the money goes really resonates with people. It makes their gift unique, knowing it goes back to something they really care about."
Ultimately, Smith said, the Chapter Challenge is designed to help private donations become a major fund source for the university, benefitting scholarships, programs and financial aid.
"JMU can't meet its financial needs on tuition alone," Smith said. "Alumni want to give back. There's an excitement here about how we can improve, because when you give back, it helps the university."
Challenge accepted
Alumni within a 30-mile radius of the 20 participating chapters are included in the Chapter Challenge (that's more than 76,000 JMU alumni!). So, how do you participate? Simple:
1. Check out the JMU Alumni Chapter Challenge online
2. Make a gift to JMU (choose your fund)
3. Check out the monthly standings
4. Tweet about the JMU Alumni Chapter Challenge


text:
ORLANDO, Fla. – Jesse Davis has been sentenced to life in prison in the death of two Winter Park teens on Friday.
Judge Alan S. Apte sentenced Davis on 2 counts of first degree murder and 2 counts of kidnapping to life in prison with time served. He was also sentenced to life in prison on his attempted murder charges from a prior incident.
[PICS: Davis sentenced | RAW VIDEO ]
Deputies said Davis murdered two teenagers -- 16-year-old Nicholas Presha and 18-year-old Jeremy Stewart -- along the Cady Way Trail on April 15. He entered a guilty plea on all charges at an emergency plea hearing on Friday.
Davis and his parents were in the courtroom on Friday, his mother crying as he agrees to the plea and as he was sentenced. Davis' mother mouthed, "I love you" as Davis was fingerprinted and booked into jail.
No victim impact statements were made at the sentencing, only a lawyer for one of the victims saying the victim's, "thoughts and prayers are with the victims' families, as well as Davis."
Hector Rodriguez is also charged with the death of the teens.
Davis also entered a guilty plea to violation of probation, which he was on for aggravated battery at the time of the slayings.
Davis was found mentally competent to stand trial back in September.
Watch Local 6 for more on this story.


text:
Article content
Vancouver Sun football writer Mike Beamish sets up Week 13 in the Canadian Football this weekend and nails down which team ranks from first to worst:
Hamilton at Winnipeg, 5 p.m. Pacific time, TSN
The resiliency of Winnipeg sports fans continues to amaze. Despite their team's 2-9 record, and the most recent crushing defeat — 44-3 to the Stampeders — Blue Bomber fans continue to troop to the ticket window. The team has played to 98-per-cent capacity at a stadium slated for demolition, much as the team will be when all is said and done at the end of the 2012 season. Bombers will be close to a sellout again Friday, in an epic battle between 2-9 and 4-7 teams to see which is truly the CFL's worst. Only a fool would bet on the Bombers, you say? With Buck Pierce back following an eight-game absence, it's purely a sentimental choice.
Pick: Blue Bombers.
B.C. at Edmonton, 4:30 p.m. Pacific time, TSN
Last Saturday's 28-23 win over Toronto was much too close in the eyes of many Lions fans, who watched their team release its grip on Argo throats after B.C. had taken a 28-16 fourth-quarter lead. Still, good teams find a way, and the Lions' defence did. In the wake of their 43-point loss in Hamilton, the Eskimos have hired David Kelly as an offensive advisor. Kelly has coached Terrell Owens and Hines Ward in his career. Wonder if those superannuated NFL receivers would be interested in playing in Canada? Eskimos have the second-worst offence in the CFL. Instead of David Kelly, the Esks might do better to invest in Jim Kelly, or a QB of that ilk.
Pick: Lions.
Toronto at Montreal, 10 a.m. Pacific time, TSN
The Argos and Lions have only two scheduled games this season, but after watching the Double Blue extend the hosts at BC Place on Saturday, we're left to wonder if Braley Bowl III might be in the offing for Nov. 25, at the Grey Cup in Toronto. The Argos have the best road record and the best division record (4-1) in the East. Their Cup-worthiness certainly will receive a boost with a win Sunday in Montreal, where the Alouettes looked less than impressive a week earlier with second-half struggles in a 28-17 win over Saskatchewan. And it was a costly victory. Both RB Brandon Whitaker and receiver Brian Bratton went down with knee injuries that will test the Alouettes' depth.
Pick: Argonauts.
Calgary at Saskatchewan, 1 p.m. Pacific time, TSN
Esteemed, award-winning columnist George Johnson of the Calgary Herald wrote a perfect piece this week on Kevin Glenn, the understated Stampeder quarterback whose name should be thrown into consideration for most outstanding player, given what he's accomplished in the wake of a knee injury to presumptive starter Drew Tate. Not to put Tate in the same league yet. But imagine the Lions without Travis Lulay; the Argos without Ricky Ray? Glenn has put the Stampeders in position whereby they're one key injury away from challenging the Lions for domination in the West. Rookie backup Drew Willy looked capable four days ago against Montreal, but the Roughriders really need a healthy Darian Durant (hip flexor issues) to contend this week.
Pick: Stampeders.
Last week's record: 4-0.
This season: 27-17.
1. B.C. Lions: Now that the Lions QB is second all-time behind Sam (The Rifle) Etcheverry in consecutive games with a TD pass (22), perhaps he needs a suitable nickname: Travis (the Rocket Launcher) Lulay?
2. Toronto Argonauts: Before Saturday's game Wally Buono suggested the Argos "are as good a team as we'll play at this point of the season." They proved it, coming within one completed pass of a victory at BC Place.
3. Calgary Stampeders: Like a flying chuckwagon at the Calgary Stampede, the Stamps are gathering speed and headed to a much-anticipated second-half showdown against the Lions at BC Place on Oct. 6.
4. Montreal Alouettes: The Als have lost RB Brandon Whitaker for the season with a devastating knee injury and will have to go forward without the CFL's best all-purpose back, at a time when they appear vulnerable.
5. Saskatchewan Roughriders: It was a very tall order for Drew Willy to defeat Anthony Calvillo in his first CFL start, but Riders backup QB statistically was not very far off in closer-than-anticipated loss in Montreal.
6. Hamilton Tiger-Cats: Good week for the Ticats' coaching staff, which not only concocted a huge win over Edmonton but chased down a thief vandalizing a car outside their offices at Ivor Wynne Stadium.
7. Edmonton Eskimos: After two near-misses against the Stampeders, the Esks came crashing down in Steeltown, a 43-point loss that was not only embarrassing but showed Edmonton really is not a contender.
8. Winnipeg Blue Bombers: Paul LaPolice was fired after his team extended the Lions to the limit, but the disastrous regime of Joe Mack/Tim Burke shows LaPo was the least of the Bombers' problems.
tap here to see other videos from our team.


text:
You may have thought that Mad Men was as stylish as can be, but not so as proven by these beautiful behind-the-scenes black and white photos of one of the most stunning casts on television. Here's a small collection (starting with Hamm-bone Draper himself).
Christina Hendricks is looking as cool as a cucumber.
Jessica Paré is moody and gorgeous.
G/O Media may get a commission
A clash of eras with Ken Cosgrove (Aaron Staton) and Harry Crane (Rich Sommer).
See more here!
Images via Caught On Set.
Images via Caught On Set"


text:
Liebherr Appliances Kluang SDN. BHD.
After taking over a Malaysian manufacturer of refrigerators, the Liebherr Group set up the production company Liebherr Appliances Kluang SDN. BHD. in 2007. Domiciled in Kluang in the southern part of the country, the company developed new ice cream freezers for the Southeast Asian market a short time later. Since then, considerable sums of money have been invested to modernize and extend the production facilities in an environmentally-friendly way. Modern refrigerators and freezers are now produced for commercial uses in Kluang.
Facts and figures
- Founded: 2007
- Workforce: 350
- Total area: 39,700 m²


text:
Razdroid is a community effort by volunteers. There is no connection or support from the Raspberry Pi foundation or its distributors.
Use at your own risk.
General infoEdit
Android is nearly useless without hardware-acceleration. Hardware-acceleration permeates a proper Android port through various subsystems which draw the UI , decode video and enable i.e. 3D games to actually work fast enough. The Razdroid project is still looking for volunteers who know how to develop and integrate those into a new Raspberry Pi port - note that Razdroid is NOT a custom ROM where the OEM has done this dirty work already.
Razdroid is nowhere near finished , and we welcome all help to achieve a performant , stable and hardware-accelerated Android build.
New Forum : https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/android-rpi
A video showing the first Android 4.0 build: Android 4.0
A video showing the first usable, but slow build of Android 2.3 (CM7.2): Android 2.3
Want to compile yourself? Take a look at this page: CM7_Compilation
As for the compilation of the kernel, look here: Kernel_Compilation
Broadcom released some source code for hardware acceleration of a similiar chip :
Semi-Related Raspberry Pi foundation competition
It has to be seen if and how this can be integrated into the community builds of Android - it DOESN'T work as-is.
Current statusEdit
For updates check the channel on the freenode Internet Relay Chat network or our Google Group. Please do not leave after asking your question , but hang around a bit so people have a chance of actually answering (usually after a few hours or days).
IRC Channel: #razdroid at irc.freenode.net
New Forum : https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/android-rpi
- Framebuffer issues: possibly due to the lack of double buffering and/or page flipping in the bcm2708 framebuffer driver
- Proper libEGL library not present: libraries *are* available, but those are linked against glibc instead of android's bionic libc (issue filed here)
- UI Crashes
CyanogenMOD 7.2 (based on Android 2.3): Boots, very slow, barely usable. (unstable)
- Same problem with the hardware acceleration libraries.
Ice Cream Sandwich (based on aosp):
- The Razdroid community has successfully ported Android 4.0 to the Pi, but it remains very slow. See the video link above in General Info.
Jellybean (based on aosp):
- Dream on.
- A distribution of Android 4.4.2 has been ported to the Pi, but remains very slow and very buggy. Video of it in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZHR2dYDv5w
- Thanks to Arne Exton, a distribution for Android 5.1 has been ported to the Raspberry Pi (called RaspAND), but has only been tested on the Raspberry Pi 2. Softpedia Article: http://linux.softpedia.com/blog/Run-Android-5-1-Lollipop-on-Your-Raspberry-Pi-2-with-RaspAnd-477655.shtml
- Exton's binary is just one outcome of Peyo's Android porting collection : https://github.com/peyo-hd/local_manifests. See https://github.com/peyo-hd/device_brcm_rpi2 for Raspberry Pi2 target.
Our old FAQ Edit
Q: What is RazDroid?
A: RazDroid is a port of Android and CyanogenMod (a community-modded version of Android) to the Raspberry Pi. The goal of this project is to make a version of CM that works on the Pi, by building our own Linux kernels and Android images.
Q: Is it suitable for everyday use?
A: At the moment, no, Gingerbread (2.3.x) is very slow and Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0.x) even crashes. This is mostly because the graphics hardware acceleration for the Pi isn't compatible with Android yet. As soon as we get a version that is compatible with Android, we will release a new version ASAP, which should be much faster.
Q: Are there any videos of Android in action on the Pi?
A: Yes! One of the members of our project, CrysisLTU, was so nice to record some videos for us, you can watch them here: CyanogenMod 7 (Android 2.3 aka Gingerbread) CyanogenMod 9 (Android 4.0 aka Ice Cream Sandwich)
Q: This looks so cool! Can I try it out myself?
Yes, you can! There are two ways to try it out. You can either download a precreated SD card image, like you would with the official Linux distros for the Pi, or you can build Android yourself. You can get info about both options on our wiki.
Q: How can I help?
A: You should start by joining our IRC channel, #razdroid on the freenode IRC network. We will gladly tell you there what you can do to help.
Q: Are you affiliated or in any way supported by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, Google or the CyanogenMod community?
A: No, we are in no way endorsed with the Foundation, Google or CyanogenMod.
Alpha images:
CyanogenMOD 7.2
This image needs an SD card of at least 2GB. Extract and image to your SD card just like the Debian image (using dd) or Win32DiskImager (WORKS ONLY ON [OLD] RASPBERRY MOD. A - see here http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/desktops/how-to-install-android-2-3-on-the-raspberry-pi-50009931/ second-last comment. Confirmed working on Model B (apparently) - "Works on my RASPBERRY PI B very fine!")
CyanogenMOD 7.2 Same instructions apply
CyanogenMOD 7.2 (with Ethernet Menu) Same instructions apply(can't use Super User on installed Terminal Emulator)
Note: You may want to change hdmi_group and hdmi_mode in config.txt & Help
CyanogenMOD 9 not working


text:
Aquaculture Impacts
Managing Aquaculture Impacts
What is the issue?
What are we doing?
What have we already achieved?
Cleaner fish
Contact: Angling Trust Eastwood House, 6 Rainbow Street, Leominster, Herefordshire HR6 8DQ
Tel: 0343 5077006 (For Membership enquiries select Option 1) |
Calls to our 0343 number are charged at the same rate as normal landline numbers.
Office hours are Mon - Thu 9.00-5.00 and Fri 4.30. Please leave a message if you call outside these hours or email us.
Email: email@example.com
Angling Trust Limited is a company limited by guarantee, company number 05320350


text:
It's been a freezing cold weekend with fresh snow both Saturday and Sunday, and this morning it's only 6 degrees out! With the cold weather outside, Sunday was the perfect day to put up our decorations for Christmas and make everything inside cozy and warm and beautiful. Our house smells like cinnamon and sugar cookies.
For breakfast that morning we had some leftover Eggnog Spice Bread, which I adapted from my pumpkin bread recipe. The bread was soft and moist and full of eggnog flavor, which I just love, and I liked the addition of the golden raisins and toasted pecans for a little texture. The glaze I made to drizzle over the bread ended up being pretty sticky, since I made it with eggnog instead of milk, so if you want a glaze that's less sticky and sets up more then just use milk. It tasted so yummy, though. The bread was delicious with warm lemon curd.
After putting up the tree and the decorations, we did the grocery shopping for the week, then made a pot of Three-Bean Beef Chili to simmer away for dinner while we put together a gingerbread train kit - yes, the gingerbread kits may be intended for kids, but I love them, too! :) And a few pieces of cookies and cream bark fit nicely in the little train caboose.
My family made a lot of chili when I was growing up, and we always called it 3-alarm chili or 5-alarm chili, depending on how spicy it was. I used to dump so much Tabasco sauce on my chili that I couldn't even taste it. I rarely use Tabasco, or any hot sauce, on my food anymore - I'd rather taste the food itself with all the flavor developed through cooking than just hot sauce.
And after a hot bowl of chili, there's nothing better to cool your mouth down than some cold, creamy eggnog...
Three-Bean and Beef Chili
printable recipe
- 1 poblano pepper
- 1 ear of corn, husked
- 2 pounds ground beef (97% lean)
- 1/2 yellow onion, diced
- 1 jalapeno, diced (seeds optional)
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
- pinch cayenne pepper
- 1 tablespoon chili powder
- 1 teaspoon cumin
- 3 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
- 4 tablespoons molasses
- 1 teaspoon garlic
- 1 28-ounce can peeled, crushed tomatoes
- 1 15-ounce can tomato sauce
- 2 tablespoons tomato paste
- 3 15-ounce cans low-sodium beans, undrained (I used pinto, chili and black beans)
In a large stock pot, combine the ground beef, onion and jalapeno. Add the salt and pepper. Cook over medium heat until the beef is browned and crumbly. Spoon out any excess fat and discard.
Add the remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and cook covered, stirring occasionally, for at least 1 hour. Taste and adjust the seasoning as needed as it simmers.
Top with grated cheese, diced green onions and sour cream.
Eggnog Spice Bread
printable recipe
- 1 1/2 cups eggnog
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil
- 1 cup no-sugar-added applesauce
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 3 eggs
- 1 tablespoon vanilla bean paste
- 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons ground nutmeg
- 1 teaspoon ground cloves
- 1 cup golden raisins (optional)
- 1 cup toasted pecans, chopped (optional)
Preheat the oven to 350 F and spray 2 standard-sized loaf pans with non-stick baking spray.
In a large bowl, whisk together the eggnog, oil, applesauce, both sugars, eggs and vanilla until well blended.
In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, salt, nutmeg and cloves. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet, whisking just until combined. Stir in the raisins and pecans. (I prefer raisins in baked goods to be soft and plump, not hard and chewy, so I always re-hydrate them first in a small pan of simmering water, drain and cool before adding to the batter. The raisin water can then be added to recipes in place of tap water for extra flavor.)
Divide the batter between the loaf pans. Bake for 60-65 minutes, until a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean and the top is nicely browned and cracked. Cool in the pans for 15 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack. Cover bread with a clean kitchen towel and cool for at least 1 hour before slicing. If desired, drizzle the bread with a powdered sugar glaze and sprinkle with nutmeg.
Yields 2 loaves.


text:
The following piece originally appeared at ClimateProgress.org.
By Tom Wittig
Developing countries that rely on nourishment from the oceans will soon find their sources of food and way of life threatened, according to an Oceana study released last week. The report, Ocean-Based Food Security Threatened in a High CO2 World, ranks the top 50 nations most vulnerable to climate change and ocean acidification in the context of their seafood and fish consumption.
Not surprisingly, those nations topping the list are among the least responsible for historic emissions of carbon dioxide.
The Comoros claimed the dubious distinction of most threatened, followed by Togo, the Cook Islands, Kiribati, and Eritrea. Other notable countries in the top fifty include Pakistan (8), North Korea (25), China (35), and South Africa (46). The United States did not make the list.
Just how big is this threat? Over a billion people rely on seafood as their main source of protein. Before mid-century, global population is expected to reach nine billion, creating further demand for ocean-based food. Many nations struggling with nutrition will be further challenged, and citizens of some developing nations will likely turn to inferior foods. The authors elaborate:
Losing [seafood] may mean more dependence on less healthy processed foods that are imported from abroad. Communities that have recently made a shift from eating traditional seafood items to importing cheap, processed foods have suffered widespread health problems. For example, in Pacific Island nations about 40 percent of the population has been diagnosed with diabetes, cardiovascular diseases or hypertension.
The combined rankings were based on three factors: exposure to climate change and ocean acidification, rates of seafood and fish consumption, and adaptive ability. It then predicted these conditions into mid-century for each country.
The report also considers the impacts of climate change and ocean acidification separately. The Maldives are the most threatened based solely on climate change predictions. The Cook Islands, which did not fare much better in the combined rankings, came in at number one in the ocean acidification rankings.
Scientists have already observed disturbing trends in ocean acidification and climate change. Since the Industrial Revolution, ocean pH has decreased by roughly 30 percent. The change in pH spells serious trouble for coral reefs and shellfish that rely on calcium to grow. In increasingly acidic waters, less calcium is available.
Ocean temperatures are also rising dramatically in numerous regions. This change is forcing some marine species to move closer to the poles or into deeper waters. Many fish species are predicted to shift towards the poles at a rate of around 20 miles per decade. Poorer nations do not possess the industrial fishing fleets to chase these moving populations.
Although the United States didn't make the list, it isn't safe from these changes. Atlantic cod have shifted farther north to compensate for increasing temperatures, and lobster populations are becoming increasingly vulnerable to disease as waters warm, wreaking havoc on seafood markets. Oceana stresses the effects climate change may have on American fisheries in its report:
Millions of jobs and billions of dollars in revenue are at risk if there are substantial losses in the capture, processing and sale of U.S. seafood due to regional climate impacts. Due to rising temperatures, the continental U.S. is projected to lose an average of 12 percent of its fisheries catch potential.
According to the Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post, ocean acidification is also endangering America's fisheries. Despite not being the sexiest issue, ocean acidification is receiving increased attention as its effects become more pronounced. Eilperin notes that falling pH is putting pressure on America's shellfish fisheries. In regions like the Alaska and the Chesapeake Bay, hits to seafood and fish harvests are not just a threat to industry, but a threat to culture.
While the U.S. still lacks the political will to make the necessary changes to adapt and slow climate change and ocean acidification, at least we have the technology and economic resources. The nations atop Oceana's list do not. Their citizens will have little hope if the seafood and fish they have relied on for generations disappear.
Tom Wittig is an intern with the Ocean Program at the Center for American Progress.


text:
With its great range, fast throughput, VPN support, Gigabit Ethernet, and $100 price tag, the Zyxel X-550N wireless router seems like a good deal for most situations. Unfortunately, the device's mediocre wireless signal stability makes it hard for us to recommend it without some reservations, especially for those who play online games. The router's bulky package and lack of support for dual band, guest networking, and USB devices doesn't help.
That said, if you are looking for a fast router with VPN support to create a network of mostly wired connections and you use wireless networking only casually, the Zyxel X-550N makes a good investment. For environments where wireless signal stability is important, we'd recommend the high-end Netgear WNDR3700 or the similarly priced Linksys WRT320N.
Design and ease of use
The Zyxel X-550N Wireless Router's design is that of a typical wireless router with three antennas on the back, together with the network ports, and an array of LED indicator lights on the front. It's about 15 percent larger than most routers, such as the Trendnet TEW-639GR or the D-Link DIR-655. The larger size suggests that the router works best when put on a surface but it's also wall-mountable.
The ports on this router are Gigabit, meaning they can handle speeds up to 1,000Mbps, a bonus if you want to do a lot of wired networking. The three antennas are detachable, which comes in handy if you want to pack the router up. In daily usage, however, they are in the way when you want to work with the ports. We would prefer if they were on the side of the router, away from the ports. Also on the back, you'll find the Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) button, which initiates a short window of time when WPS-enabled clients can enter the network. Again, we'd prefer this button to be in a more accessible location.
The router comes with a setup application that includes detailed instructions; even those who aren't computer savvy shouldn't have a problem setting everything up. We were able to do so within 5 minutes, which included the time spent getting the device out of the box.
Other than the application, which is Flash-based and doesn't require any installation, you can access and set up the router via its Web interface. To do this you just need to connect the router to a computer using a network cable, turn it on, and then, from the computer, point a Web browser to the router's default IP address, which is printed on its bottom.
Other than the Gigabit Ethernet, the Zyxel X-550N doesn't offer any other additional features found in high-end routers. There's no support for guest networking, which allows you to make another separate wireless network for guests. The router doesn't have support for the 5Ghz frequency, nor can it work as a print or network storage server, as it has no USB port.
Zyxel X-550N offers a few useful networking features that can be managed via the Web interface. The interface itself is organized into four categories: Network, Security, Management, and Maintenance. Each category contains items that lead directly to certain features or functions of the router. For example, in the Network category, you can change the settings of the wireless network, the Internet connection, the local network, and so on. We really liked the fact that the router shows the list of clients currently connected to it; next to each of them there's a "reserve" check box. When this box is checked, the current IP address will be used only for that particular client. This is a great feature when you want to set up special services, such as FTP server or remote desktop, to a computer in the network. Other routers, such as the Apple Airport Base Station , require many steps to get this done.
Other features of the router, including firewall, content filter, and VPN, are also easily accessible. The X-550N has built-in IPSec VPN with two IPSec VPN tunnels for secure data transfer between remote sites and the central sever. The content filter feature is rather simple. You can restrict Web features such as ActiveX, Java, cookies, and Web proxies, and you can block access to the Internet via URL keywords. For example, if you block the keyword "CN," then you won't be able to access sites with this keyword in their domain names, such as cnet.com or cnn.com.
For security, the router supports all existing wireless-encryption methods including WEP, WPA, and WPA2. As mentioned earlier, it also comes with Wi-Fi Protected Setup features that allows you to add a new client to the network at the press of a button, instead of having to type in the encryption key manually.
We tested the Zyxel X-550N with a Linksys WUSB600N wireless adapter that Zyxel included with the router (for reviewers only), and it did very well in regard to data transferring.


text:
Former New York Gov. David Paterson has taken on a new post with a job-recruiting company that aims to be a network in more ways than one.
Paterson will be the "chief jobs officer" for the Job Channel Network. Parent company Jasper Group Holdings Inc. announced Paterson's new role Monday.
Job Channel Network sets out to create video and audio pieces presenting companies to prospective employees and then to match the firms with new hires.
Paterson says in a statement that he's seen from both public and private life that people from all backgrounds share the need for a job.
Paterson became governor after Eliot Spitzer's 2008 resignation and served until 2010.
Paterson's spokesman and Job Channel CEO Michael Woloshin didn't immediately respond to an inquiry about his new position.


text:
At this year's BlackBerry Developer Conference 2010, Research In Motion (RIM) announced a new class of mobile hardware and some tools to help both consumer and enterprise developers enhance their applications. In this article I highlight the announcements made at the conference and show how they'll affect everyday mobile developers.
The BlackBerry Playbook
There was a lot of excitement this year as developer's prepared for DevCon 2010. Beginning a week before the conference, pundits around the world announced that RIM would be unveiling their new tablet device, what everyone was calling the "BlackBerry BlackPad".
RIM took a different approach this year with the conference, scheduling morning sessions on the first day of the conference, then holding the Opening Keynote in the afternoon. RIM Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis gave at hint at the beginning of the session by talking about an upcoming special announcement while holding his hands like he was holding a tablet PC. He talked a bit about how BlackBerry was doing in the market, then finally got around to the big announcement. They launched the device by showing a video that highlighted the capabilities of the device then finally gave us the name -- the BlackBerry Playbook.
It's smaller than I expected; a 7-inch screen in letterbox format (1024x600) and only 0.4 inches thick with dual 1GHz processors and 1 GB of memory. It runs the QNX operating system that RIM acquired through its acquisition of the QNX Software earlier this year; it's an operating system that's widely used in network hardware, automobiles, and too many other places to list here. It's a POSIX-based system, but will run BlackBerry applications (through a Java virtualization layer RIM will create for it). It's designed to deliver the full web experience, utilizing Apple's WebKit rendering engine and including support for HTML 5 and Flash 10.1. RIM worked very closely with Adobe to create the software for the device and their constant reminders that Apple doesn't allow the full web experience (by blocking Adobe Flash) was humorous.
It's a companion device, designed to work alone or in conjunction with a BlackBerry handheld device. It has Wi-Fi capabilities (supporting 801.11 a/b/g/n), so it can stand alone when near a Wi-Fi hotspot. When on the go, away from any Wi-Fi networks, it will leverage its Bluetooth connection to a BlackBerry device and be able to pull email, calendar, contacts and more directly from the BlackBerry (rather than requiring that the Playbook retrieve the same data from a server). There's an assumption that the Playbook can use the companion BlackBerry device's cellular connection to connect to remote data sources, but very little was said about this capability. US Carriers haven't said anything either about whether a Playbook will require a tethering plan in order to use the BlackBerry device's connection, but I assume they will if they can.
From a developer's standpoint, RIM did not provide a lot of detail. Expect that RIM's existing development tools will be updated to include support for the Playbook. Since it's a completely different hardware architecture and operating system, it's likely you'll need to learn a new set of API's to build applications for this device (unless you leverage the BlackBerry VM provided). This ultimately is a good thing since RIM has been getting hammered in the market recently for the perceived limitations on their devices. This switch to a new operating system (RIM is unclear on this one, but it's also likely future BlackBerry devices will run this same OS) allows RIM to do some interesting things and streamline the APIs available to developers.
For now, when you build applications for the device, you'll be building them in HTML or Flash. Expect RIM to release a suite of development tools for the platform soon after it's released. Members of RIM's ISV Alliance program will be able to get their hands on the new tools as soon as they're available.
BlackBerry Messenger Social Platform
For developers creating applications that only target BlackBerry users, RIM announced the BlackBerry Messenger Social Platform (BBMSP). BlackBerry Messenger is essentially a free instant messaging platform that leverages RIM's BlackBerry infrastructure to allow BlackBerry devices to send messages between themselves. BlackBerry users have always had the ability to send PIN to PIN messages to other BlackBerry devices (even across carriers). BlackBerry Messenger is essentially a chat and contact management application built on top of PIN to PIN messaging.
With the BlackBerry Messenger Social Platform, RIM is providing an additional suite of APIs developers can use to leverage BlackBerry Messenger capabilities/services into their applications. This includes chat, content sharing and invitations, contacts and more. In one example that RIM demonstrated, they showed how the developers of the Kobo eReader used these new APIs to enhance the capabilities provided by their program. When reading or learning about a book, these features let users suggest a book to their friends or even chat among themselves about a particular book directly from within the eReader application. The ability to recommend and chat is already available through other applications such as Facebook, Twitter and Google Talk for example, but this provides an easy way to provide the same capabilities within a custom application, increasing customer loyalty, saving time for users and allowing these types of interactions to remain within the context of the application.
The BlackBerry Messenger Social Platform is expected to be available in Spring, 2011. RIM believes BlackBerry Messenger is an important piece of technology, but while providing interesting capabilities, this service is limited by the fact that it only works on the BlackBerry platform. While BlackBerry has become very popular with consumers, it's not likely that every member of a group will all be carrying BlackBerry devices. So, to build in the types of features provided by the BlackBerry Messenger Social Platform into your application, the APIs will make it easy to do on a BlackBerry, but will require developers to handcraft a similar solution for their application running on other mobile platforms.


text:
Tom Hooper, Oscar-winning director of The King's Speech, dreamed a dream of immortalising Claude-Michel Schonberg and Alain Boublil's powerhouse musical without the conventional safety net of lip-synching.
That audacious gamble — asking the actors to sing live in every take — pays off handsomely, teasing out the heartbreaking emotion in an adaptation of a stage show which has become a global phenomenon.
The London production of Les Miserables, which opened in 1985 to lukewarm reviews, is the longest-running musical in West End history.
Hooper's terrific film embraces the Schonberg and Boublil songbook with bold directorial flourishes and tour-de-force performances, including a cri de coeur from Anne Hathaway that virtually guarantees her the Oscar next month.
Hugh Jackman also richly deserves a nomination for his fearless portrayal of a convict, which required the Australian actor to shed 30 pounds to convincingly portray his emaciated hero.
Les Miserables is a towering achievement in front of and behind the camera.
With the benefit of live singing, Hooper doesn't have to photograph set pieces from afar, capturing the political turmoil as actors sing their hearts out in lip-quivering close-up.
The cast is superb— Barks breaks hearts with her knockout rendition of On My Own and Redmayne matches her note for soaring note.


text:
Psychic Sites
Psychic Tools & Resources
Psychic Chat Sites
Psychic News
Psychic Info & Educ.
Misc. Psychic Sites
Online Dating Sites
Webcam Sites
Personals / Chat Sites
Funny Sites
honest caring person
No forum posts yet
No Favorite Books added yet.
Visit the Psychic Passions Book Library
No Favorite video games added yet.
Visit the Psychic Passions video game Library


text:
The Complete Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Software Repository -- over 111GB of software.
This DVD set lets you install thousands of applications without downloading. This is perfect for those with slower internet connections, or no connection at all.
The entire main, restricted, multiverse, and universe repositories + all updates and security fixes. Last updated Thursday , August 1, 2019.
Over 74400 packages, including:
Step-by-step instructions included on DVD #1.
The Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Software Repository also works with distros based on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, including Ubuntu Mate 18.04 LTS, Kubuntu 18.04 LTS, and Lubuntu 18.04 LTS.
Note: This DVD set will not install Ubuntu on your computer. An install disc is required if Ubuntu 18.04 LTS is not already installed.
What is a software repository?
A software repository is a storage location that is used by Linux to find and install applications. When you install an application in Linux, it is copied from the software repository and installed on your computer.
Usually the software repository is an online repository. This DVD set gives you a local copy of the repository -- which means you can install applications from the repository without waiting for your computer to download the software from the online repository.
How does this DVD repository work?
This DVD repository sets itself as the primary software repository. Your computer will check this repository before trying an online repository. If an application is not found in the local repository, it will check the online repository. This means you will always be able to install the most recent applications.
Do I have to use any special software to install applications from this repository?
No. This DVD repository is designed to seamlessly integrate with your distribution. You can install applications from it using any package manager for your distribution. Once it has been setup, you'll only know it's there because downloads that would have taken hours from the online repository, will complete instantly.
Is this DVD repository easy to setup?
Yes! A program to setup the repository is included on DVD #1. It handles all of the details so you won't have to.
This DVD repository includes updates. What if my system is already up to date?
This DVD repository includes updates in the repository. When your system is updated, it will copy the update from the local repository instead of the online repository. If the update is already installed, your system will skip it; and if a recent update is not included in the local repository, it will be copied from the online repository.