Would the Charger feat deal more damage than an ASI?

Question: There seems to be a pattern with combat feats that give you a use for your bonus action dealing more damage than a straightforward ability score increase. It is true for Crossbow Expert, it is almost always true for Polearm Master. Charger also gives you a use for your bonus action, so will it also lead to higher expected damage than an ability score increase? Under what circumstances?
Comment: @3C273 Yes, I think so too. I'll self-answer the next one of these, and we'll see how that goes. I am pretty curious too. So far, I found the ansers to this both interesting to read and useful for character design. (The problem is that if you try to do all of them as one question, it is too broad and cannot be answered).
Comment: @KorvinStarmast Yes -- the answer might change depending on the level. Maybe the feat is better early on, but gets outpaced by the benefit ASI has on having multiple attacks, similar to how it is with Polearm Master.
Comment: I assume the downvotes are from the repeated questions? Either way, I'm curious to see where this leads.
Comment: At what level? Or are you interested in the break points (sort of like TWF's break points once one gets into tier 2)?
Answer: Not meaningfully in a vacuum.
If you don't have Extra Attack, are in a situation where you can trigger charger, and don't have any good use for your bonus action, charger is nice.  This is only really relevant for about 1 level, for most martial classes, where they would choose between ASI or Charger.  Variant human/custom lineage is different, as they can have Charger from level 1.
The situation is important.  If you are already in melee range of an enemy, leaving their reach to do a little loop and trigger charger means you eat 1 or more opportunity attacks (you must use your action to dash, not to disengage), unless you have some means to avoid opportunity attacks through racial or other ability.  Which is rare at level 4.  This means charger won't trigger every turn without taking an attack for the privilege, which will likely damage the charger, offsetting the value gained by the feat.
Many online guides to classes try to find some way to weaponize the bonus action, it's often assumed in optimization that this will be the case.  Certain martial classes and subclasses automatically gain a use for the bonus action that is commensurate to or greater than the features charger offers.
And once Extra Attack is in play, assuming even a 16 in str/dex and a d8 weapon, charger does not keep up damagewise with 2 attacks.  Most serious melee attackers will do more damage than 1d8+3 per attack, but that's already enough to outweight charger's +5, and that's if charger did that every round, which it doesn't without opportunity attacks.
A comparison of +1 attack vs +4 damage against the MM's listed AC values per CR in a big chart or whatever  isn't going to change this situation (even if that was an accurate listing of AC values over monsters, which it isn't etc).  The logistics of getting charger to actually deliver that damage in the first place simply aren't there outside some very niche situations (like a Wildfire Spirit consistently moving the charger away so they can re-charge) and even if it is there it stops being useful nearly ever 1 level later.
Ergo an ASI spent getting +1 to hit and damage (and whatever ability checks get used for that stat as well) will be superior at all levels other than level 4, and even at level 4 it will very likely be more useful than charger in the vast majority of circumstances.
On Rogues & Haste:  A melee attacker with extra attack, the mobile feat, the charger feat, and who is under the effect of the Haste spell, could do the following;  Attack normally (twice or more) with their action, spend their Haste action to dash, move away without triggering opportunity attack (thanks to mobile feat), and then move back to the original target (or another target) in a 10' straight line, attack as a bonus action with +5 damage (and then keep moving somewhere if they wanted to with the rest of their immense movement (30 + 10 (Mobile) x 2 = 80', -20' (for the circle charge) = 60' remaining).
This requires 2 feats, so level 8 without a racial feat.  It requires a melee attacker without a bonus action doing something for them, which usually means a not super optimized one.  At level 8 having spent 2 feats on this would mean 2 lost ASIs, so -2 attack and -2 damage per attack.  It requires an allied spellcaster's concentration (or the character's concentration if they are a bladesinger) and a 3rd level spell.  The only thing that could conceivably make this better than just attacking 3 times regularly with the +2 to hit and damage from 2 ASIs is the high amount of movement this grants.  Mobility feat alone can let someone 'kite' a slow moving melee enemy.  Double movement (you don't need to circle charge, or you could move away, on their turn they move forward, then you charge them then flee etc) lets you kite even very fast moving enemies.  This Flash style hasted speedrunner thing is sort of interesting but it's not really a generic situation at all, and there are builds that do this kind of kiting thing better/more unfairly, usually using ranged weapons.
Rogues can be melee attackers, and they also don't get extra attack.  It would seem on paper that there's more reason for them to take Charger.  However rogues are often squishier than most melee attackers.  Taking opportunity attacks to circle charge someone is worse for them than for many other classes, and Charger specifies melee attack, not allowing for a ranged option which rogues usually prefer.
Comment: @GroodytheHobgoblin "When you use your action to Dash,".  If you have some way of dashing without using your action or bonus action, it doesn't matter for charger.  Only if you spend your action dashing does it happen.  _Haste_ is the only way I can think of to have your cake and eat it too, and that still suffers from all the other issues.
Comment: Ah, the issue is that charger eats up your action, so you cannot use it for a full Attack action any more, yes that is a pretty steep downside. (And if you are a Rogue, using Dash as a bonus action already consumes your bonus action, so you cannot use Charger either, even if you still have your action left for the Attack action).
Comment: @user2753 Yup, that condition really takes the wind out of the feat, on top of all the adversity from needing to have a corridor to attack and difficulty to repeat that which I expected.
Comment: Ashardalon's Stride may be a less costly and more beneficial option (for rangers/artificers/arcane tricksters/etc.) than the Mobile feat, if you are trying to compare "Attack action" with "Dash action + bonus action attack".
Extra damage for every creature you run past helps offset missing extra attack, you don't miss out on another ASI, and the move speed boost is even higher.
Comment: @stevenjackson121 yeah, but even then your movement without dashing is likely enough to damage most if not all the enemies, so actually dashing would offer marginal benefits at best. The simple fact that we have to try so hard to even come up with a viable and repeatable use of charger is indication enough that it's bad. Like, if you ask me what's the best rogue for a charger I'd probably say scout because it can backoff without provoking AoO with its skirmisher feature, but if you ask me for good feats for a scout I would never bring up charger.
Comment: The advantage is miniscule for a rogue, since any Rogue can dash with bonus action and attack with regular action. The only benefit of the feat for them is an extra 5 damage by flipping which action they use to do what... And I just realized an arcane trickster specifically loses a lot more by being unable to Booming Blade during their bonus action than they gain from charger, so it is a net loss.
Comment: Only gishes without Cunning Action should ever consider the feat, and gishes that don't have Cunning Action should have extra attack so... yeah it's really hard to find a class where it's a good feat. It even has anti synergy with races like Centaur with a "Charge" feature which can't work with the Dash action. I'd take the Charge feature from Centaur as a feat if it were available 10 times out if 10 instead of Charger
Answer: Only When You're Dashing Anyways
Just like Great Weapon Master, Crossbow Expert, or Polearm Master, Charger is most effective if you're regularly fulfilling the trigger condition, and don't already have a comparable use for your bonus action.
For most characters, taking the attack action almost every turn is the default (and hopefully critting/killing in the process), which is why Great Weapon Master, Crossbow Expert, and Polearm Master are all such popular choices.
If you want to know if Charger is a good choice for your build, just ask yourself "How often am I Dashing in combat and also lacking a good use for my bonus action?" In most campaigns that's not often, but it is possible.
What is Charger's Niche?
It's incredibly rare to have a melee oriented build that can attack as a bonus action without attacking as an action as well.
Feats such as Polearm Master and Great Weapon Master require you to attack with your action to get (or potentially get) the bonus action attack. This is also true for similar things like Double Bladed Scimitar's bonus action attack.
Charger is best for characters who already take the Dash action regularly, not for players who are trying to replace Attack action with Dash + Bonus Action attack. It vastly outperforms an ASI in this case.
Starting Combat Strong
If you regularly begin combat from further away than your move speed and need to Dash into melee range to fill your combat role effectively, charger is effectively an extra attack. The first round of combat is often the most important, so going from 0-> 1 attack in the first round can be more important than going from 2 -> 3 attacks in rounds 2 and 3.
Chasing Mobile Bosses/Minibosses
If you often fight single enemies who are highly mobile, you may find yourself taking the Dash action more often than you'd like. For maximum damage output, you should have a backup ranged options like Javelins, Cantrips, etc. and avoid using the Dash action if at all possible.
However if damage is a secondary role you fill, and your primary role requires you to be up in enemies' faces, Charger lets you chase them down and smack them too.
Specific Example
Greg's Background
Greg the paladin uses heavy armor, his saving throw boosting aura, and a sword + shield to fill the Defender role in his party (his goal is to be hard to kill and hard to ignore). His secondary goals are 1.) making sure his Rogue can trigger Sneak Attack by being within 5 feet of the main baddie every turn of every fight, and 2.) Dealing as much damage as he can while fulfilling the primary objectives.
The campaign is heavily centered around Dragons, who have very high movement speeds (even Young dragons have 80 ft fly speed), Blindsight at 30+ feet, high Perception, and are immediately hostile when they sense humanoids entering their lair. Initiative is usually rolled while Greg is more than 30 feet from his opponents.
His allies include a Wizard who regularly buffs him with Fly and likes to cast spells from max range, a bow wielding Ranger, and a skill monkey Rogue who also likes to snipe from long distance in combat. All 3 typically stay outside the max range of any dragon's breath weapon (Young Blue, Bronze, and Moonstone Dragons have 60 ft damaging line weapons, and the Moonstone Dragon Wyrmling even has a 90 ft cone for Dream Breath at CR 2!). Greg tried using a mount that the wizard cast Fly on, but it's just not durable enough to survive in melee with a dragon.
Greg took Sentinel at level 4 to make sure dragons have trouble getting past him to his squishy allies. Now if they want to get past him they have to spend their action to try to Shove him away instead of using Multiattack or Disengage, and then fly to his allies. Still, some dragons consider this worthwhile, and because his allies try to stay so far away and the dragon's move speed is so high, Greg often dashes mid-combat just to catch up. He's still performing his role adequately (any round a dragon shoves him they're not using a breath weapon!) but wants to actually get to proactively deal some damage in these fights.
Greg's Level 8 Choices
Great Weapon Master, Polearm Master, or an ASI would do nothing in tough fights since he's frequently not taking the attack action (and he's not willing to give up his shield anyways since he's tanking dragons all day and his main damage comes from Smite). In the fights he is taking the attack action repeatedly, his party is easily winning anyways.
Switching to a ranged weapon or cantrips is not an option, as his main value is keeping enemies from getting close to his allies in the first place, which is most effectively done with big smite Opportunity attacks that reduce their speed to 0.
Greg might consider Mounted Combatant so he can keep a mount like a Warhorse alive that the wizard can cast Fly on. No damage on successful DEX saves is great, and he can prevent it from being attacked. However many dragons can force saves other than DEX (Moonstone can put enemies to sleep on CON save). A Young Amethyst targets STR with its breath weapon, and deals average 18 force damage even on a successful save, just 1 point from Warhorse's max hp. Even with the investment, it's too likely the mount goes down to a single attack. If the campaign continued well past level 13 and Greg got a much more durable mount like Pegasus or Griffon from Find Greater Steed, this would probably be the best option (especially to free up his wizard's concentration), but Greg doesn't think the campaign will go that long.
Charger is the clear winner for Greg. It gives him an extra attack each round in the fights his party needs help the most, with some bonus damage thrown on top.


Meaning of 匙加減 in this sentence

Question:
簡単な匙加減で殺せてしまうほど、衰弱し

How does 簡単な匙加減で exactly work here?
"With a simple amount?"
Answer: The word 匙加減 basically refers to "(adjusting) amount (of sugar, salt, etc)", but by extension, it commonly implies someone's "(often empirical, casual and/or unfair) discretion/decision".

俺なんて社長の匙加減ひとつでクビになる。
A person like me can be fired at the drop of a hat by the boss.
そういうのって彼女の匙加減(しだい)ですから。
That's all up to her discretion. / That's how she (casually) handles these things!

So (Aの)簡単な匙加減で(Bを)殺せてしまう means B's life is at A's mercy, and A doesn't need to get serious to kill B at all.

Meaning of 匙加減 in this sentence


"As part of" versus "as a part of"

Question: When should I use "as part of", and when "as a part of"?
Answer: The difference between "as part of" and "as a part of" is essentially the difference between part and a part.

As part of this community, I feel the need to express my opinion.

Your comment is useless, as a part of my recent comments is.

In the first case, part is used with the meaning an element or constituent that belongs to something and is essential to its nature.
In the second case, part is used to mean a piece or segment of something such as an object, activity, or period of time, which combined with other pieces makes up the whole.
Other phrases uses part, and would have a different meaning (or no meaning) if they would use a part.

We have come here to take part in a major game. (Take part means join in.)
Comment: As a native speaker, I disagree with this answer. I do not feel that the article "a" emphasizes how the part in question is essential to the whole.
Answer: It depends on the speaker/writer. If the part can be separated from the whole, use "a part."
Comment: Hi english lover Your answer is not very clear. Could you explain more what you mean and why it is correct?
Answer: Actually, the person who mentioned countability was close to the mark.
It is a question of whether we can predict the size or number of parts.
If we can predict it, then we use a qualifier; otherwise, no quantifier.
Note that articles (a, an, the) are quantifiers; also words such as "some", "any", "no", etc.
There's probably a better term than "predictable", but I think you get the drift.

unpredictable:
Can I have part of that pizza?
I hope to receive part of the profits.

predictable:
Did you have any part in what happened?
I took no part in it.
We all have a part to play in fighting the battle against crime.
We all have some part to play in fighting the battle against crime.
I liked the part where he suddenly …
Answer: Part is used as both countable and uncountable, an example of the first case
is

We spent part of our time fighting and arguing.

But there is a tendency to use part in the plural when it is treated as uncountable and that's why we seldom find "a part of" (but we can of course use "the part"). Example:

Both parts are severely damaged.
Comment: I don't think you grasp 'countability' correctly; and this doesn't really respond to OP's question.

"As part of" versus "as a part of"


SamsungGalaxy S4 stuck on samsung logo

Question: Yesterday I installed the newest software update for the Samsung galaxy S4(GT-19505). At first, the phone was stuck on a loop of the update 'installing' to 100%, turning on then switching off and repeating. I did a battery pull and removed my SD card. when i went to switch on my phone and it was stuck on 'android is updating. i left it and fell asleep. this morning i switched it on and it started as normal but then froze and got stuck at the glowing 'SAMSUNG' logo. i have tried using the power+up+home to and cleared the cache partition but that did not help. i have also taken out and replaced the battery many times. Samsung Kies also does not recognise my phone. How do I fix this problem? I am a complete newbie when it comes to phones and the technical side of them and would prefer an easy guide as to how to fix my problem/what the problem is. I would also REALLY REALLY REALLY prefer not to do a factory reset and wipe all my data.
Answer: Having experienced booting problems before, it's usually suitable to simply perform a battery-pull as you've done. The state that your phone is almost certainly 'recoverable,' but may require re-flashing the firmware (i.e. potentially performing a factory reset).
Have a think about it, and possibly wait for any more input from the community. If there is no more useful feedback, I'd advise downloading a copy of the official firmware for the device (should be pretty simple to find on Google). Download ODIN3 (http://odin3.en.lo4d.com/) (a tool used for flashing ROM's to Android devices) and have a read up on how to use it.
To put your phone into 'download mode,' reset the device and hold [POWER] + [HOME] + [VOLUME DOWN]. It should say "Downloading.. do not turn off target" or similar if performed successfully. Your computer should pick up the device and it is now primed for flashing.
Answer: The other Answer is very good. Just a view more hints: here a link to download firmwares.
http://samsung-updates.com/device/?id=GT-I9505
Make sure it's exactly your device. 9505 and 9506 are different hardware!
Don't try to flash firmware that is older than the one you had before.
After flashing, wait for the phone to do it's firt installations. This may take a while ( up to 7 minutes or so ).
It usually installs the stuff that was flashed in the cache partition upon first boot on the new firmware.
Normally you do not need to wipe the data partition, as this is where all your personal stuff is stored. But sometimes it's stuff on your data partition that make the device crash upon boot.
Yet another hint: Is adb enabled on your device? If so, try to connect to your device while it hangs. Usually this works and lets you adb pull your personal files before further modifications.
Good luck.

SamsungGalaxy S4 stuck on samsung logo


Any way to set up a grid for a board game in cocos 2d?

Question: My first idea was to create a 2d array for my columns and rows, but it seems like there should be a better, or possibly cleaner, way to achieve this. Each square on the grid is going to have a background image, probably a .png although I might just draw the images with a draw method. Basically, I want to be able to drag and drop images onto the individual grid squares. I've been searching for a solution and the closest thing I can find is the tiled map solution. That just seems like a little overkill for what I'm trying to accomplish. Also, I don't know if this helps but i need my grid to be 12 by 12 and take up the entire width of the iphone screen.
Comment: It's not really clear what you're looking for. Do you need a way to design a map and then import/display it on screen? Eg. drawing a level using a tool like Tiled. I'm confused about the "drag and drop images onto the individual grid squares" part. Do you want to have the drag'n'drop in your game (part of the gameplay) or is that just for the level-editing?
Comment: @bummzack Sorry about the lack of clarity. After a little more research, I think tiled is my best option. And as far as the drag and drop, I need that to be part of the game play.
Comment: Tiled is certainly a possibility. But if you're creating a board-game (eg. you have just one 12x12 board) and don't require to load different levels or board-configurations, a simple 12x12 array is probably simpler to do than using Tiled.
Answer: Use tiled map editor compatible with cocos2d.
A tutorial on this subject: http://www.raywenderlich.com/1163/how-to-make-a-tile-based-game-with-cocos2d
Comment: Welcome to GDSE! I'm glad your answer was accepted. In the future, try to be more descriptive with your answers. Thanks for your answer.


Squashing cookie balls vs slicing them

Question: I have two cookie recipes that I plan to enter into a competition.  Both of them call for dropping balls of cookie dough onto the sheet pan and then squashing them to 1/4".  If I want to make the dough ahead of time and freeze, can I roll the dough into a tube and freeze that way and then slice 1/4" slices when I'm ready to bake them?  Or is there a reason I should squash them?
Comment: if you're going with sliced, it *might* be better to let it chill to stiffen up well, slice it, then freeze the log.  (it's a real pain to cut truly frozen dough).  Also, use the thinnest knife you have (I use a boning knife), and you may need to clean it often so it doesn't stick too much when going through.
Answer: From a food science point of view, in terms of the quality of flavor and the texture of the cookies, there is little reason to choose slicing over squashing; both will give very similar outcomes.
You may find the aesthetics or appearance of the cookies will be slightly different with the two methods.   The sliced cookies will be more regular, especially if you cut them with dental floss; they will be quite round and even edged.  The squashed cookies will be more irregular at the edges and perhaps show more texture on top.
Comment: Thank you.  I like the more even look anyway and hopefully the judges will too.  :)
Answer: There is no reason you could not make them into balls and freeze the balls, or make them into balls, squish them and freeze them.  In either case they would thaw faster then a frozen log of dough and be ready for the oven as soon as they reach room temp.
If it is a competition then uniformity may be a criteria, use a measured scoop to insure uniform size. You could even use or make a squishing tool so that they are squished to the exact same thickness.

freeze, thaw, bake, win blue ribbon !
Comment: For the 'squishing tool', place chopsticks on either side (or larger dowels if you want it thicker), then press down with a glass or similar item that's wider than the spacing of the sticks.
Answer: There are a few differences in squashing as compared to cutting from a log:

If done with a fork, it can result in a more craggy surface, resulting in additional browning on top.
It's often used as a sign to mark peanut butter cookies (a grid from pressing with a fork, then again at a right angle).
If done with a hand or glass, you won't have any sharp corners.  For doughs that don't slump when cooking, this can result in a browned ring around the top.  (which is not desirable in cookies with subtle flavors).
If done with a glass, you can wet the glass slightly, and then press it into colored sugar, leaving a nice even coat.
If done with a glass with an intricate pattern on the bottom, you can use the colored sugar trick to leave a pattern on top of the cookie.
You can get more consistently round cookies with squishing.  Unless you're doing the thread/dental floss trick and wrapping it around the whole log, you'll squish it slightly when cutting, leading to it being slightly oblong with one flat side.

Squashing cookie balls vs slicing them


Is a figure eight a manifold

Question: Let $S$ be image of function of $f : (-\pi,\pi) \rightarrow \mathbb{R}^2$ defined $f(t) = (\sin 2t, \sin t)$. Which is figure-eight. Now it is not manifold because there is self-intersection. But it is immersed submanifold of dimension 1. Which implies that it is a smooth manifold. Isn't this contradiction. where am I going wrong ?
Comment: In my opinion the concept of an *immersed submanifold* leads to misunderstandings as in your question. See my answer to https://math.stackexchange.com/q/3899905.
Comment: Why is it an immersed submanifold?
Comment: what definition of "manifold" are you using?
Comment: See [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figure-eight_knot_(mathematics)) under "mathematical properties".
Answer: The figure-eight, with the standard topology inherited from $\mathbb{R}^2$, is not a manifold because in the crossing point there is no neighborhood homeomorphic to some Euclidean space.
However the figure-eight IS a manifold with the topology induced by the immersion $f$, because in this topology there is a neighborhood of the crossing point that is homeomorphic to an open interval in the real line (the topology induced by $f$ imply that the figure-eigth is homeomorphic to $(-\pi,\pi)$).
Comment: Aaah! Thanks so much. I had this fixed idea that self-intersection => Not a manifold.  Makes sense. immersed submanifold has flexibility of what kind of topology we can impose unlike embedded submanifold. This example will make me remember that !

Is a figure eight a manifold


How can we evaluate the performance of Eucalyptus

Question: How can we evaluate the performance of Eucalyptus. Is there a tool that can collect statistics about the same?
thanks
Comment: what you want to exactly evaluate ?
Answer: At least for the S3 Walrus part of Eucalyptus, YCSB (Yahoo! Cloud Serving Benchmark) https://github.com/brianfrankcooper/YCSB has been a very useful tool.  You can write custom drivers for S3 operations PUT, GET, DELETE, LIST.  Then YCSB enables easy setup and testing that reports latency, errors, and other statistics for a performance analysis.
Some excellent information and resources about EC2 testing in these links:
Even Stranger than Expected: a Systematic Look at EC2 I/O
http://blog.scalyr.com/2012/10/16/a-systematic-look-at-ec2-io/
EC2 Benchmark Followup (Source + Data)
http://blog.scalyr.com/2012/10/29/ec2-benchmark-followup-source-data/
Answer: CPU & Disk: You can run any local benchmark tools, as long as it can run in a virtual environment.
- You can enable-disable VT-d between the tests to see the impact.
Network: You can also run network benchmarks using different configurations:
- Two instances on the same node
- '' on two different nodes
- '' on two different clusters
- '' with one outside of the cloud
GPU: This is still pretty experimental.  You'll have to find recipes on the web (very rare).


ASP.NET Core OnModelCreating force to fire in every request

Question: ASP.NET Core OnModelCreating force to fire in every request
I have ASP.NET Core (1.1.0) and SQL Server database. In login page I have a form with a select box with name of companies.
For example:

Company 1
Company 2

If a user selects the the first "Company 1", I need to rename all the tables with a company prefix:
protected override void OnModelCreating(ModelBuilder builder)
{
    base.OnModelCreating(builder);

    foreach (var entity in builder.Model.GetEntityTypes())
    {
       entity.Relational().TableName = "Company 1" + entity.DisplayName();
    }
}

It's working perfectly fine, but the problems is when user selects the wrong company, or logs out of the system and logs back in with a different company, OnModelCreating never gets called again and I can't reconfigure the dbContext.
Is it possible to force OnModelCreating for every request?
Or change table name after dbContext initilization?
Thanks!
Comment: You can register an `ActionFilter` in the `FilterConfig`
Comment: Can you please show me how do it? i don't understand how filter force onmodelcreating.
Answer: It's wrong way. OnModelCreating runs when EF creates/describes model from your classes. There are a lot of reflection and type manipulation here, including validating relations, comparing to real DB (and check if migrations are needed) and so on. Do you really need to run all this stuff on every request???
Do not recreate DbContext for every request. Create several DbContexts and choose one of them (created once!) at request start.
For example:
Make your main DbContext abstract, and create as many CompanyXDbContext as needed. They all should inherit from base class, providing simple table prefix to it (in ctor).
Everywhere in your code, when you need DbContext, ask for abstract/base class from DI.
In Startup, register your abstract DbContext with factory method for choosing real one depending on current Request variables/params, or write custom middleware that creates correct instance based on current Request.

If you have a LOT of CompanyX, then you may need something other instead of many pre-coded CompanyXDbContext classes, something with runtime class creating or may be generics... But main idea is still unchanged - do not recreate model again and again on every request.


Redirecting to another page via a json call

Question: I'm using the jquery file upload utility in my app.  If I have some code like the following normally in rails...
if @course_module.save
  flash[:success] = "Class created!"
  redirect_to course_course_modules_path(@course)
else
  render 'new'
end

It will display error messages if there are errors in my form, or redirect to another page if it saved successfully.  But this is not so when the page is submitted through the jquery
plugin.  The reason is it requires a json object to be returned....something like
         format.json {
          render ':json => [@course_module.to_jq_upload].to_json '
        }

How would I instead of returning json, do the first code snippet instead?  Either by redirecting if the save is successful, or display error messages if it is not?  I've tried something like the following...
render 'new'

But that didn't work.
Comment: [This might help](https://github.com/banditj/fily/blob/no-asset-pipeline/app/controllers/pictures_controller.rb). It's an example from the Wiki page of the Jquery file upload github repo.
Answer: The normal ajax call has a success and error methods, just add to the json response a redirect_url key having the path you want to go to as the value and inside the success method redirect to this url.
$.ajax({
 type: "GET",
 url: '/path to your controller',
 datatype: 'json',
 success: function(data) {
   window.location.href = data.redirect_url
 };

});

and your json response should look like this inside the controller
render :json => {course_module: @course_module.to_jq_upload, redirect_url: course_course_modules_path(@course) }.to_json

I hope that's what you are looking for


Browse spring context

Question: Currently, I'm working on a project which has a large number of dependencies.
During development, I sometimes have issue with some spring bean.
Normally, the stack trace can tell me the name of the bean. However, it does not shows me which context.xml file declares the bean. Moreover, it does not tell me which .jar file contains the context file and how that context file is imported into my project (I means the chain of import).
As there are many depedencies, not all context file are uses, many beans are override....
It takes me a lot of time to search the correct context file. One simple solution is to import all related project into my eclipse workspace and everything becomes horribly slow.
I'm thinking about writing a tools to speed up the process:
Given a name of spring bean / the class of bean, the tool will search in the whole class path of application and returns:

The spring context file which declares the bean.
The .jar file that contains the spring context file.
Extract the content spring context file and show it directly to user
If user provides the root spring context file, the tool will shows the import chain to the destination spring context file.

It does not take lots of time to implement this but I just wonder whether somebody has already implement it? I just don't want to reinvent the wheel.
I found the project https://github.com/julior/spring-inspector. It's interesting, but it's not what I need.
If you know a tool like the one above, I'd be very happy to know about it.
Answer: You totally should look at Intellij IDEA's great support for Spring Framework.
More information available here: http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/features/spring_framework.html
To find interesting bean in xml config you just need to click on green bean image.

Intellij IDEA is definitely worth its price.

Browse spring context


Why would glucocorticoids promote glycogenesis and not glycogenolysis?

Question: I read in a textbook that glucocorticoids can stimulate the synthesis of glycogen. I do not understand this at all—shouldn't glucocorticoids try to increase the blood level of glucose? Why would they be storing glucose as glycogen in the liver and muscles like insulin?
Comment: Interesting. What is the textbook? Which tissue or cell type does this refer to?
Answer: Glucocorticoids have a number of physiologic effects on glucose metabolism, inflammation/stress response, bone metabolism, etc. In general they are called glucocorticoids because they were originally found to be associated with increased blood glucose concentrations. Simply put, glucocorticoids antagonize the actions of insulin and create a state of insulin resistance, as well as increasing the expression of enzymes involved in glucose metabolism. They have a number of effects on all sorts of tissues and biological processes.
With regard to your question specifically, it makes sense that glucocorticoids stimulate glycogen synthesis, because it will allow the body to store more glucose as glycogen and increase the body's capacity for liver glucose production (i.e. glycogenolysis). Remember, at the same time glycogen synthesis is being increased, the glucocorticoids are inducing a peripheral insulin resistance that antagonizes insulin action in skeletal muscle and fat that also leads to increasing glucose concentrations in the blood. Moreover, free fatty acid are released from adipose tissue to be carried via the circulation to the liver so they can be oxidized to produce ATP for gluconeogenesis.
There is an excellent chapter that describes the effects of glucocorticoids on glucose metabolism in the major metabolically-active tissues (e.g. liver, white adipose tissue, skeletal muscle) by Kuo et al from Vol 872 of Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology (pages 99-126). The book is not open access so I can't paste a picture of any of the figures, but they essentially show what I describe above. Here is another link to a very nice review article in the Journal of Endocrinology that has some great figures showing fuel redistribution in response to glucocorticoids as well.
Answer:
There is increased insulin/glucagon ratio due to glucocorticoid (increased blood glucose level or insulin resistance) leading to stimulation of glycogen synthase and inhibition of glycogen phosphorylase causing glycogenesis.
2.There is large amount of glucose in liver due to gluconeogenesis. Since Vmax of glucokinase is much higher than that of hexokinase, they are converted to glucose 6-phosphate. Glucose 6-phosphate has allosteric stimulation effect on glycogen synthase so glycogenesis occurs.


Python libraries to construct classes from a relational database? (ORM in reverse)

Question: Are there any Python object-relational mapping libraries that, given a database schema, can generate a set of Python classes? I know that the major libraries such as SQLObject, SQLAlchemy, and Django's internal SQL ORM library do a very good job of creating a DB schema given a set of classes, but I'm looking for a library that works in reverse.
There is a related question for Perl libraries on Stack Overflow.
Answer: SQLAlchemy extension to create a python code model from an existing database
Answer: Django had an inspectdb command that creates models.py files out of your database.
Answer: SQLAlchemy can actually do what you want. You can either define the mappings yourself manually using the mapper facility, or auto-generate them using reflection.
It's not absolutely necessary to build the database using the metadata facility, you can always use an existing one instead.
Answer: Geniusql (and Dejavu, its big federated brother) can do that quite well. See "Automatic Table Classes" for the former and "Automatic Unit Classes" for the latter.
Answer: You can give algen a try:

Generate opnionated python ORM classes from yaml schema for sqlalchemy


Use find, cat, etc... to generate an M3U playlist from album playlists

Question: I have a music folder with selected playlists in each folder titled "playlist.m3u" (should also match *.m3u8).
What I would like to do is have a shell script generate a playlist concatenated with all these selected tracks. But in order for the playlist to work properly, the folder name has to be prepended before the song title.
Here's an example directory structure:
Main Folder
 `-> Album 1/
       *.flac
       playlist.m3u
 `-> Album 2/
       *.flac
       playlist.m3u
 `-> Album 3/
       *.mp3
       playlist.m3u

The resulting main-playlist.m3u file should look something like this:
Album 1/01. Song1.flac
Album 1/02. Song2.flac
Album 1/03. Song3.flac
Album 1/04. Song4.flac
Album 2/1-01. Song1 (Disc 1).flac
Album 2/1-02. Song2 (Disc 1).flac
Album 2/2-01. Song1 (Disc 2).flac
Album 2/2-02. Song2 (Disc 2).flac
Album 3/001. Song 001.mp3
Album 3/002. Song 002.mp3
Album 3/003. Song 002.mp3
<...>
Album 3/100. Song 100.mp3
Album 3/101. Song 101.mp3

What is the best and most efficient way for doing this for a song library with, eventually, thousands of tracks?
Answer: Use find? e.g.:
find . -type f -name '*.flac' -or -name '*.mp3'

Or with absolute paths:
find $PWD -type f -name '*.flac' -or -name '*.mp3'

Case insensitive:
find $PWD -type f -iname '*.flac' -or -iname '*.mp3'

If you really want to extract the list from these "m3u" files, something like this would work:
find . -name '*.m3u' -print0 |
while IFS= read -r -d '' plist; do
  len=$(wc -l < "$plist")
  dir=$(dirname "$plist")
  paste -d/ <(yes "$dir" | head -n$len) "$plist"
done

Answer: Okay, I'll just post a way I was able to figure this out.
#!/bin/sh

for album in */; do
    while read -r track; do
        printf "%s%s\n" "$album" "$track"
    done < "${album}/playlist.m3u"
done > "main-playlist.m3u"


SharePoint Online Page with Doc Library web part missing "Add shortcut to One Drive"

Question: I'm using SharePoint Online with Modern interfaces.
I created a new page to which I added a new section.  In that section I added a web part for a Document Library.  The settings for the Web Part have Show command Bar turned on.
When I view the Document Library directly, the command bar has the following buttons: New, Upload, Edit in grid view, Sync, Add shortcut to OneDrive, Pin to Quick access, Export to Excel (and other automate/alert related buttons)
When I view the Document library inside the page, the command bar is there, but it is missing the Add shortcut to OneDrive, and Pin to Quick access.
For this particular library, I like to tell the users that they can quickly get to the library by adding the Shortcut to OneDrive (shows up on the desktop) or Pin to Quick Access (OneDrive web interface).  But both of these buttons are missing when the library is displayed inside a page.  Is there a way to bring them back?
My current work around is to click See all which will bring you to the actual doc library, and then the buttons show up, but I would prefer the more direct rout of having the buttons on the page!
Answer: Unfortunately, this is not possible using SharePoint default capabilities at this time - this is a limitation by Microsoft.
You cannot show Add shortcut to OneDrive or Pin to Quick access commands in Document library web part added on site pages because document library web part does not support all the functionalities which are available in default library page.
If you want Microsoft to provide these options for default document library web part as well, you can add feedback/idea at: SharePoint Feedback Portal.
Until then you will have to use the "see all" link to go to default library page and use those options from library command bar (as you are doing currently).
Related Read: Show/Hide See all link from SharePoint list/library web parts


Deep Sleep Genesis 15:12

Question: I would like to know if the "deep sleep" of Abraham (Genesis 15:12) is literally a "sleep", or a state of "trance" as The Midrash of Philo says (15:12). What does the biblical term mean? Also, according to Daniel 8:18, the prophet fell to the ground. Are we meant to think that Abraham also fell to the ground?
Comment: The Hebrew word (Tardema) is used to refer to actual sleep (in Genesis 2:21) and also a prophetic stupor state (according to many commentators) in other places. It is a matter of interpretation as to what it means here with some commentators equating it to sheina (sleep) and others, to something else.
Answer: The commentaries highlight that it definitely wasn't the normal type of sleep.
The Da'as Zekeinim writes that he was clearly experiencing a prophecy:

During this sleep G–d showed Avraham that his descendants would endure the enslavement to several kingdoms at different times as well as the collapse of these kingdoms (empires)...

The Bechor Shor explains the mechanics of this sleep:

ותרדמה נפלה על אברם. מאימת השכינה שבאה לעבור בין הבחרים
A deep sleep fell upon Avram: From when the Divine presence (Shechina) comes to pass amongst those who have been chosen.

So this sleep was the means through which he experienced G-dly interaction.
The Malbim goes as far to say that this sleep was so deep that it deprived him of any bodily strength - "ממצוקת לב", due to heart failure - i.e. he was so pained about this distressing prophecy and the bleak picture it painted.
As a good overview, the Midrash in Bereishis Rabbah 17:5 helps provide a good summary as to how we can understand this term "תרדמה" or "deep sleep":

רַב אָמַר שָׁלשׁ תַּרְדֵמוֹת הֵן, תַּרְדֵּמַת שֵׁנָה, וְתַרְדֵּמַת נְבוּאָה, וְתַרְדֵּמַת מַרְמִיטָה. תַּרְדֵּמַת שֵׁנָה וַיַּפֵּל ה' אֱלֹהִים תַּרְדֵּמָה עַל הָאָדָם וַיִּישָׁן. תַּרְדֵּמַת נְבוּאָה (בראשית טו, יב): וַיְהִי הַשֶּׁמֶשׁ לָבוֹא וְתַרְדֵּמָה נָפְלָה עַל אַבְרָם. תַּרְדֵּמַת מַרְמִיטָה (שמואל א כו, יב): אֵין רֹאֶה וְאֵין יוֹדֵעַ וְאֵין מֵקִיץ כִּי כֻלָּם יְשֵׁנִים כִּי תַּרְדֵּמַת ה' נָפְלָה עֲלֵיהֶם. רַבָּנָן אָמְרֵי אַף תַּרְדֵּמָה שֶׁל שְׁטוּת, דִּכְתִיב (ישעיה כט, י): כִּי נָסַךְ עֲלֵיכֶם ה' רוּחַ תַּרְדֵּמָה.
Rav said that there are three types of 'deep sleep' and they are: 1) A 'tardeima' of deep sleep, 2) A 'tardeima' of prophecy, and 3) A 'tardeima' of almost 'dead-like' slumber 1.
*A 'tardeima' of sleep 2 - e.g. (Bereishis 2:21) "So the LORD G-d cast a deep sleep upon the man; and he slept". 'Tardeima' of prophecy - e.g. (Bereishis 15:12) "As the sun was about to set, a deep sleep fell upon Abram" A 'tardeima' of 'dead-like' slumber - e.g. (Shmuel I 26:12) "No one saw or knew or woke up; all remained asleep; a deep sleep from the LORD had fallen upon them.
The Rabbis said there is even (a fourth); a tardeima of nonsense, as it writes, (Yeshaya 29:10) "For the LORD has spread over you A spirit of deep sleep".

So it seems from this overview that this instance of Avraham was one of prophecy.
The one alternative approach, is to understand this incident as a literal deep sleep as he recovered from a period of intense prayer. In Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer 28:9 it writes:

A deep sleep fell upon him, and he slept, as it is said, "A deep sleep fell upon Abram" (Gen. 15:12). Does then a man lie down and sleep, and yet be able to pray? But this teaches thee that Abraham was lying down and sleeping because of the intensity of his prayer that his children might enslave these four kingdoms...

1 For more discussion on this third category refer to here
2 In the case of Adam, the commentaries (refer to Sforno, Chizkuni and Malbim amongst others) mention that this deep sleep was to serve the purpose a bit similar to a modern anaesthetic so that Hashem could extract the צלע without causing Adam any undue pain or fear.

Deep Sleep Genesis 15:12


Enforcing quota in any proportional voting system: frunction box

Question: I've researched voting systems lately. I haven't encountered this idea, so I'd be grateful if somebody shows books/articles that include it or something similar.
Take a voting result:
$$\begin{array}{c|c|c}
& \text{Votes}& \text{Ideal seats} \\\hline
Keskusta &640428 &45.9886 \\
Kokoomus &616841 &44.2948 \\
SDP &594194 &42.6685 \\
Vasemmistoliitto &244296 &17.5427 \\
Vihreät &234429 &16.8341 \\
KD&134790 &9.6792 \\
RKP &126520 &9.0853 \\
PerusS &112256 &8.0610 \\
SKP &18277 &1.3125 \\
Senioripuolue &16715 &1.2003 \\
Itsenäisyyspuolue &5541 &0.3979 \\
Sinivalkoiset &3913 &0.2810 \\
Liberaalit &3171 &0.2277 \\
Köyhien Asialla &2521 &0.1810 \\
KTP &2007 &0.1441 \\
STP &1764 &0.1267 \\
IKL &821 &0.0590 \\
Yhteisvastuu &164 &0.0118 \\
\text{(small lists)} \\ \hline
Total &2771236 &198.0961 \\
\end{array}$$
The seats are obtained by multiplying the votes by 199 (total seats) and dividing by 2771236 (total votes). They would add up to 199 if all the minuscule lists were included too.
$Quota\ rule$ means that the actual seats should be rounded up or down, but not any further. So, KD and RKP should receive either 9 or 10 seats. This is also called $satisfying\ the\ fair\ share$.
This brings an idea that it is a binary choice: either the upper or lower value is chosen. $Hamilton\ method$ uses this directly: the upper values are given to parties with largest fractional parts until the total is reached. The rest get the lower values.
This can be extended to other methods. We define $frunction\ box$ that gets an input of a fractional number. It has the whole part $w$ and fraction part $f$ (can be expressed with a few decimals for the comparisons). The whole stays intact, but we can take any function of $w$ and $f$ to define a pseudofraction. Hence the name. These pseudofractions are compared and the maximal ones get the upper values $w+1$ until the total is reached. The rest get $w$.
So, usual voting methods would get these functions:
Hamilton (aka Vinton, Hare-Niemeyer): $f$
Jefferson (D'Hondt): $\frac{w+f}{w+1}$
Webster (Sainte-Laguë): $\frac{w+f}{2w+1}$
Huntington–Hill: $\frac{w+f}{\sqrt{w(w+1)}}$
Dean: $\frac{(w+f)(2w+1)}{2w(w+1)}$
Adams:$\frac{w+f}{w}$
Huntington–Hill, Dean and Adams can't handle $w=0$, so the data should perhaps be prepared: if a party or state is short of the one seat, it is given one and excluded from the next round where the rest of the seats are recalculated.
Then some fictional examples:
Big Bullies: $w$ (favours the large parties)
Small Change: $-w$ (favours the small parties)
If the pure method satisfies quota in a certain election, we lose nothing. It even gets easier: for example in Jefferson and Webster we don't have to calculate all those comparison numbers, only one per party. But in the rare cases it violates quota, this "wrapper" stops it. Other anomalies may be introduced because of that, but not necessarily. So we have already diminished the probability of error.
This can also be extended to two dimensions (or more): for example divide by districts and parties. I'll post more if there is interest, but in practice Balinski's biproportional method is more refined for that.
Answer: Not sure what the question is here, but how would you handle the Huntington–Hill method, which is the method actually used to apportion representatives in the US Congress and which involves the geometric mean?
Comment: That is a little problematic, because it assumes that each already has at least one - it can't handle zero. That's why I skipped it. It's also known for very blatant quota violations.
Comment: Added it, and because I had to explain the special requisite, also added Dean and Adams that work similarly. While I was at it, I boldened my need (not actual question).


SQS delivering a message only once

Question: Let's say I have 100 threads reading from the same sqs -- is it guaranteed that each message is going to be delivered at-most once? Is it at all possible to deliver the same message more than once? I can't find any clear documentation on this issue. s
Answer: Update Nov 17, 2016: FIFO queueing with guaranteed-once delivery was just released today (almost 2 years after this answer was originally posted) and SQS now supports exactly-once delivery. Here are the details:

You need to create a FIFO Queue.
Deduplication checks for MessageDeduplicationId as an attribute of the queue message, and prevents duplicate messages from being both sent and received in the 5-minute deduplication interval following either action by checking the MessageDeduplicationId.
If Content-based deduplication is explicitly enabled on the FIFO queue, MessageDeduplicationId will be automatically generated using a SHA-256 hash of the message body (content only, not attributes).
If Content-based deduplication is not enabled, you must explicitly set your own arbitrary value for MessageDeduplicationId on send. Otherwise SendMessage will fail with an error.

Content-based deduplication can be enabled when creating a queue or updating the queue' attributes.
More details on MessageDeduplicationId in SendMessage and ReceiveMessage documentation.

After Nov 17, 2016, this still applies to standard (not-FIFO) queues:
Due to the distributed nature of standard (not-FIFO) queues in SQS, the guarantee is instead "at least" once.
From the FAQ:

Q: How many times will I receive each message?
Amazon SQS is engineered to provide "at least once" delivery of all
  messages in its queues. Although most of the time each message will be
  delivered to your application exactly once, you should design your
  system so that processing a message more than once does not create any
  errors or inconsistencies.

More information on at least once delivery:

Amazon SQS stores copies of your messages on multiple servers for redundancy and high availability. On rare occasions, one of the servers storing a copy of a message might be unavailable when you receive or delete the message. If that occurs, the copy of the message will not be deleted on that unavailable server, and you might get that message copy again when you receive messages. Because of this, you must design your application to be idempotent (i.e., it must not be adversely affected if it processes the same message more than once).

If you really need to guarantee "at most once" processing in your application, you may want your application to check the unique identifiers of SQS messages and not process message IDs that you have processed before, or are currently processing.
Comment: The biggest question is if this can happen in a very short period of time. Meaning, can Thread 1 and Thread 2 receive the same message within a second of each request. That's what I couldn't find in the documentation. I accepted the answer either way, since it comes close to what I was looking for.
Comment: Sure, there is another question that asked that exactly: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/28130677/time-period-between-duplicate-messages
Comment: How  would I know if a job is currently being processed ?
Answer: You need to use FIFO queues but still you need to generate a number that guarantees no duplications of your messages, you can set MessageDeduplicationId with your generated number in the request before you send it to SQS.
Easier, You can turn on Content-Based-Deduplication for the FIFO queue and let AWS itself manage duplication for you by creating a hash based on the content of the sent message to avoid its deduplication.

From the console, Go to SQS service, choose the queue and from Actions choose Configure queue

Switch on Content-Based Deduplication

SQS delivering a message only once


Check if file is visible in OSX 10.10 with terminal

Question: Using commands within the terminal how can I check to see if a specific file is visible or hidden for a user?
Answer: There are two ways to hide files from OS X Finder (unless it's set up to show hidden files, or the user wants to see these files in a file dialog):

Rename so the name starts with a period (.), e.g. .bash_profile. This is common with software with Unix roots.
Set the hidden file flag. Some system folders, notable ~/Library, have this flag by default.

The former is easy to see by running ls -A (-A showing files whose names start with a period), for the latter you need to use ls -lO and look for the value hidden in the column between owning group name and file size.
Answer: Simply…
file.doc is visible
.file.doc is hidden
The user can choose to view invisibles, so a hidden flag is not sufficient to make any file 'unobtainable' to the user, if they are resourceful enough.


Most effective way to process a string containing XML, in JAVA

Question: I have a String which contains XML nodes within it, and am seeking to use DOM parsing to process this string to extract node values and store them in local variables.
The XML which is stored in a String variable:
<carGarage>
   <car>
      <make>Chrysler</make>
      <color>Red</color>
   </car>
   <car>
      <make>Musano</make>
      <color>Blue</color>
   </car>
</carGarage>

My Java class where I want to extract the XML values and store them in the local attributes:
public class CarGarage
{   String make, color;

    public void setMake(String make)
    { this.make = make; }

    public void setColor(String color)
    { this.color = color; }

    public void DOMparsingMethod(Node thisNode)
    { int typeOfNode = thisNode.getNodeType();
      ...
    }
}

What is the best way to approach this?
I have looked at StringBufferInputStream but that is deprecated.
I am truly quite lost.
Thankyou,
Lucas.
Answer: Look at using DocumentBuilder  to parse from any kind input stream. Here's an example that reads to a class like yours from a file.
Comment: Hi Justin,
I have been using DocumentBuilderFactory and Document Builder, but when I print the value out, it get [#DOCUMENT: NULL]...could this be because I am not returning a document element node, but the first child underneath it, in this case, the  tag?
Comment: Do you have  at the top? Maybe it's just not finding any data due to that.
Answer: There are lots of object-to-xml binding libraries out there which do exactly what you want, but they tend to be rather bulky tools.
For this simple example, handling the dom yourself makes sense.  justinhj's suggestion of the built-in java libraries for this is a good start, although this sometimes gets ugly too, since the jdk doesn't usually provide you with an xml parser, requiring you to plug in your own magically behind the scenes.
I tend to prefer jdom for this sort of thing.  It's effectively the same as the DocumentBuilder route, but similar and only partly compatible.
Answer: Why use DOM?
If you are trying to just read in and turn the xml into an object then I would suggest STAX, as SAX is faster than DOM, but too much coding, STAX is much nicer, and you can learn more about it below.
https://web.archive.org/web/1/http://blogs.techrepublic%2ecom%2ecom/programming-and-development/?p=639
Comment: Personally I'd go with SAX (http://xerces.apache.org/xerces-j/), because I'm used to it, and I don't think SAX is too much coding, because it's relatively simple code, and unlike stax, it's schema agnostic code (for whatever it's worth).
Comment: I used SAX for years, but I found Stax simpler, so I tend to prefer that, as, for sax I wrote my own code to handle everything.
Answer: I suggest you look at XStream.  It is support conversion of XML into objects.  You can give it the XML and it will give you a list of the objects you want.
Answer: In my experience DOM is useful for this kind of thing because it has a low learning curve compared to SAX / STAX, even though its not as fast or memory efficient.  Once you've got a DOM document, you can use XPath queries against the document to get individual element contents and parse them.


Blender 2.79 not working in Windows Server 2019 on AWS cloud t2.micro

Question: I was trying to install Blender 2.79 on Windows Server 2019 on AWS cloud t2.micro. It installs but does not start - neither GUI, nor by using  blener -b command. The error it gives says does not have display driver or OpenGL. But this version ran in my laptop without graphics card. What should I do?
Comment: Your laptop most certainly had a graphics card, although likely one integrated in the CPU. Otherwise it would not have been able to display any graphics at all.
Answer: Buy a graphics card. Blender does not and did never support to run at the onboard graphics of the cpu. Even when it works in some cases.
Comment: While a GPU is required for running Blender, it is incorrect that Blender does not support integrated GPUs. Intel CPUs Haswell and newer are officially supported with their integrated GPUs, although they do not allow GPU accelerated rendering with Cycles. The requirements for running Blender can be found here: https://www.blender.org/download/requirements/
Comment: Thanks for the correction Robert, but isn't that for Blender 3? He runs Blender 2.79. And even here, still just a fraction of integrated gpu is supported.
Comment: Blender 2.79 has lower hardware requirements, thus it should work on more hardware, including older integrated GPUs such as the Intel HD Graphics 4000. The issue here is that the AWS instance likely does not have any GPU nor OpenGL software emulation and thus it does not fulfill the minimum requirements for running Blender.


What happens to Victor Creed after "X-Men Origins: Wolverine"?

Question: In X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Jimmy (Wolverine) has a brother named Victor. Near the end of the film, Wolverine and Victor separate. The movie ends explaining how Wolverine lost his memory, how he got his name, his backstory, but Victor doesn't appear in the X-Men stories again. Or am I just missing something?
Answer: The film Days of Future past changed up the timeline in a way that erased the events of X-men 1, 2, 3 and Wolverine 2013.
Movies like Apocalypse, Dark Phoenix and Logan are now placed in an alternate timeline, one that was the result of the events in Days of Future past.

Source: X-Men Movies Timeline
The Sabretooth we saw in X-Men 1 didn't come up in any of the subsequent films after DOFP because we don't know the plight of Sabretooth in this new timeline. He could have even died since his regeneration powers were not as good as Logan's.
Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix were focused on the First-Class cast and characters and the story didn't have room for Logan or Victor. Wolverine was only seen in a cameo in the film.
In Logan, most mutants.. even the really powerful ones.. were already dead. Safe to assume so was Victor.
If they make a film involving Wolverine set in the past, they could bring back Sabretooth.
Comment: In the first sentence, where you say 'eased', do you mean 'erased'?
Comment: @Erik thanks for pointing that out, that one r changed the whole meaning of that sentence :|
Answer: X-Men Origins: Wolverine was meant to be Logan's backstory, taking place before the events of the main trilogy. The time travel mumbo jumbo in Days of Future Past may have changed that, but it's not relevant for this answer. The point is that Victor Creed is also known as Sabretooth, who you saw in the first X-Men movie.
When X-Men Origins: Wolverine was made it's unclear whether the writers wanted both of them to be the same person, though personally I think they did. As I wrote in my (much longer) answer to Is the Sabretooth from X-Men (2000) Victor Creed? on Science Fiction and Fantasy,

So are they the same person?
Unclear, but possible. When asked why he didn't reprise his role as Sabretooth for X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Tyler Mane (who played Sabretooth in the first movie) replied to the Hollywood Reporter:

What exactly happened between X-Men and X-Men Origins: Wolverine that you did not reprise your role?
That was the producers' decision. The storyline was them rising as brothers, and Liev [Schreiber] and Hugh look a lot closer in that respect, so I understand. I can't say I wasn't disappointed. I'd love to get my claws back into that role. But that's Hollywood.
'X-Men': Original Sabretooth on Hugh Jackman's Legacy and Why He Didn't Return to the Franchise, Hollywood Reporter, March 17, 2017

Whether they were indeed the same character is blurry; while the movie's setting would try and make us think they are, X-Men Origins: Wolverine offered no explanation for what happened to Victor (especially, if he was dead), why he went blonde, etc, etc. The "Stryker experimented stuff on him" theory could hold, but I found no official confirmation for this.


What's difference between " It is too tiring to~" and " It is too tired to~"?

Question: What's difference between " It is too tiring to~" and " It is too tired to~" ??
Answer:
It is too tiring

This is in active voice, so it suggests that that the activity described by 'it' will tire us or is already making us tired.

I never run, it is too tiring.

For the second:

It is too tired

This is passive voice, so 'it' is not an activity because it has to be something that can receive the 'tiring' action. 'It' is probably a person or animal, and they have done some energy intensive activity and probably now want to sleep or relax.


Were the fleeing Engineers already infected, or being chased by monsters?

Question: Were the fleeing Engineers already infected?  And if so why would they run TO the refrigerated chamber of Black Liquid, noting that this one chamber was more of a Temple (with the giant head) as opposed to the much more boring (and apparently un-refridgerated) cargo holds elsewhere in the movie?  Was it that they felt the freezing temperature would stop the gestation of the Black Liquid in their systems?  Or, were they fleeing to the refrigerated chamber because the door was the strongest to keep out the monsters chasing them?
Comment: Honestly, I'm not convinced that the fleeing engineers *knew* that there were capsules in there.
Answer: I'm just speculating based on seeing the movie twice, but I think it was one or both of these:

engineers were running from something dangerous, perhaps an infected member of their own species who had gone homicidal (like Fifield does when he is infected)
some or all of them had been infected (as evidenced by the decapitated engineer, who appeared to be in the early stages of infection) and the chamber contained some sort of antidote

Finally, it could be:

the decapitated engineer was the only member of the running group that had been infected, and that the others were running from him -- and used the door to kill him via decapitation
Answer: It seems to me that they created life, and not only on Earth. It could also be that they were running from one of their creatures, coming from another planet, and the black liquid is for trapping them. You never see what happens to an "engineer" if he/she is infected. If I were to produce a biological weapon and be so intelligent that I could plan life, I would probably make the biological weapon that protects me from my creatures harmless to myself. (And if I was so intelligent then I would not dissolve myself, but create a medium who can do the dirty work - so probably "engineers" are not the real engineers, but that is another topic.)


Extrude multiple edges with normals

Question: I have the following problem:
I have walls with (wood) panels. I want to (extrude?) the blue edges so they look like the red marked one...
When I select all the edges and extrude & scale them, then they will also be scaled on "the wrong axis"...
I'm very new to Blender and have no idea how to do that... a keyword would propably do it, because english is not my first language and i don't quite know how to express myself...
Answer:
Select your loops
Press 'Spacebar'
Type in: Extrude and Move on Indiviual Normals
Answer: While scaling, you can press x, y, or z to restrict the scaling action to only one axis. You can also press shift x, shift y, or shift z to exclude an axis from the scale action.
Answer: You should also make your normal consist and recalculate normals. While in Edit mode, select all, press Ctrl+N (will make normals consistent), Press T, for left panel, under Shading>Normals>recalculate normals

Extrude multiple edges with normals


How to control smart bulbs using both the wall light switch and using voice?

Question: I want to be able to turn my smart lights on by using Alexa and my voice and the wall switch. Example like I turn it off by voice and then be able to turn it on by the switch and vice versa
Comment: If you only have a few switches, then Kalyan's answer is the way to go.  If you want to do more, then look at whole house solutions with a dedicated server.
Answer: You'll have to change the wall switch to one of the smart ones.
This one, for example:
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/tp-link-tapo-smart-wi-fi-light-switch-with-matter-white/6543836.p?skuId=6543836  (I am not affiliated with the manufacturer or the seller - just an example.)
You maybe able to find some light bulbs that will work with simple (I dont want to call them dumb just because they are not smart!) switches in some strange ways such as toggle state by quick on, off. I'd seen one long ago, but I could not find it now.
Best of luck. Let us know what you tried and how it went.


How to get a mission to continue the story?

Question: I got Destiny and I did the first mission where the guy wakes up and has to get to his ship. Now I'm stuck in the tower. There are no mission notifications or anything. How can I get the next mission and start it?
Comment: @Daniel Comments are completely optional. They are not required, and asking for reasons is a waste of time. If the downvotes had wanted to, they'd already have left comments.
Comment: @Timelord64 I suppose you mean "asking for comments", because I was not asking for votes. Will keep this all in mind though, thanks
Comment: If you downvote this question, please elaborate why... I myself do not play Destiny (yet) and am not really able to help you at this point.
Comment: @Frank My apologies, I shall refrain from asking for comments regarding downvotes.
Comment: @Daniel for future reference, asking for votes can generally lead to downvotes. This question is pretty easy to answer, though. Even at planetary view, you are given a visual icon for missions you can pick up and missions you can hand in. Will post answer once I can get infront of the xbox
Answer: Sounds like you are in the Tower or a similar social area that you go to between each mission (if my memory serves me correctly, it has been a while).  To get to the next mission you need to get to orbit.
I played on PS4, but according to this screenshot it looks like the xbox one controls are to push and hold "Y" to go to orbit.
Comment: You literally dont ever get missions from orbit. You have to talk to NPCs, in either The Tower or The Reef, not including the missions you recieve directly after the completion of the prior mission
Comment: I didn't mean to imply you get missions "while" in orbit, just that you have to go to orbit to "get to" an area that would have a mission.  But like I said, it has been a while.  Since the OP said he didn't see any mission notifications  it sounded like he may of had to go to orbit to continue anyway (and wasn't aware of how to get to orbit).  Sorry for any confusion.
Comment: If OP has not left The Tower, and has only conpleted one mission, all available missions will be from the tower. Going to orbit becomes counter productive
Comment: Alright.  Perhaps I was assuming too much about his progress.  I was assuming he had nothing left to do in the tower (since there were no "mission notifications") and had no idea how to leave the tower.


How to get data form database without reloading the page?

Question: I want to make a faq panel when user ask any question it show on the top of division without reloading the page for that i think i have to make a connection with database after every few second. Now the question is that how to make connection without reloading the page and how to show new question ?
Answer: You have two options:

Ajax, which allows you to retrieve data from the server with JavaScript, which you can then use to manipulate the DOM. The basis of Ajax is the XMLHttpRequest object, which allows you to retrieve data completely behind-the-scenes in JavaScript. Note that Ajax is limited by the Same Origin Policy, but for what you're describing, that's fine — you'll be loading data from the same origin.
Frames (e.g., iframe elements), which you can load content into by setting their src property.

Of the two, Ajax is much more flexible.
References / further reading:

DOM2 Core
DOM2 HTML
DOM3 Core
HTML5 Web Applications APIs
XMLHttpRequest object

Side note: Although obviously you can use XMLHttpRequest and the DOM methods directly, note that there are cross-browser differences (and outright bugs), which can be smoothed over for you by a good library like jQuery, Prototype, YUI, Closure, or any of several others. They also provide a lot of useful utility functionality, allowing you to focus on the actual problem you're trying to solve rather than the details of the plumbing.
For example, here's how you would send an Ajax request to a server using jQuery and have an element on the page updated with the HTML fragment the server sends back:
$("#target").load("get_the_data.php", {article: x});

That says: Request an HTML fragment from get_the_data.php sending it the parameter article with the value from the x variable, and put that HTML fragment inside the element that has the HTML id "target". That would be a good 10 lines of code if you didn't use a library. Now, that's not a lot, but repeat that over and over (and in the process deal with an IE bug around looking up elements by their id), and you see how it can add up.
I do recommend you read the references above so you know how the libraries are doing what they're doing (it's not magic), but there's no reason not to leverage the hard work people have done to make this stuff easier.
Answer: I think what you need is AJAX. It is a way of contacting the server with only partial page refresh. I don't know how it works with php as i use asp.net but here is a link that may help.
Answer: It's Ajax turn. What you need is a technology called AJAX. You can find something usable in jQuery library that provides different methods to work with Ajax more easily.
http://api.jquery.com/jQuery.ajax/
You will create a relation with your server-side programming language and your database through a client-side scripting language (Javascript in this case).
This is an example of these realations:
http://jqueryui.com/demos/autocomplete/
Answer: You have to look into push/publish/subscription technologies. Few that i know are pubnum  and commet


Luke 5:32. I have not come to call the righteous to repentance, but sinners

Question: What do you think Jesus meant by saying these words?
Is He saying that there are righteous people among the sinners? If so, then Paul theology that "everybody is a hopeless sinner" seems contradictory.
Answer: In context:

The Pharisees and their scribes complained to his disciples, saying, "Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?"
Jesus said to them in reply, "Those who are healthy do not need a physician, but the sick do.
I have not come to call the righteous to repentance but sinners."

This is therefore a defense of associating with obvious and notorious sinners.  (Remember that tax collectors were not only collaborators with Rome, but notoriously corrupt.)
There is also, in view of His other comments about sin and the Pharisees, the ironic element that He associated with these sinners because they are willing to admit they are sinners and thus can repent.  Those who do not admit they are sinners can not repent of the sins they do not admit.
Answer: You ask if Jesus is saying here that there are righteous people among the sinners. Here is an explanation, from this book:

"Jesus does not say that anyone is, actually, righteous. Only that he
has not come to call such. He has come to call sinners to repentance.
If any suppose that they already have a righteousness then,
presumably, they will pay no heed to the call of Jesus to repentance.
Thus, Jesus does not exclude them. They, on the basis of what they
regard as their own righteousness, exclude themselves from repentance.
And remain unrepentant... They had not believed, because they did not
repent." Righteousness, pp25-26, Nigel Johnstone, Belmont
Publications

Given, then, that Jesus is exposing self-righteousness, Paul's theology is in total agreement with Jesus. When Paul says in Romans chapter 10 that the Israelites did not know the righteousness of God but sought to establish their own righteousness, he is also exposing their idea and attempts to become justified in the sight of God by their diligent works. Their problem, Paul says a few verses earlier in chapter 9, is that they were pursuing a law of righteousness, but never arrived at it because they didn't do it in faith. They had stumbled at "the stone of stumbling" - Jesus Christ. Such ones do not hear Christ's call, for the Lord calls those who confess that they are unrighteous, and repent of that.
Paul confirms that in Romans chapter 1 where he says,

"For I am not ashamed of the good news of the Christ, for it is the
power of God to salvation to every one who is believing, both to Jew
first, and to Greek. For the righteousness of God in it is revealed
from faith to faith, according as it hath been written, 'And the
righteous one shall live by faith' (vss. 16-17 Y.L.T., quoting
Habakkuk 2:4).

An outward appearance of righteousness was what Jesus was referring to in Luke 5:32; what others are impressed by - religiosity and meticulous observance of a long list of what not to do, and what to do. Now go to what he said about particular people who were self-righteous religious leaders as in Matthew chapter 23. For example, "Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity." (vs. 28 KJV)
What those religious zealots have is just an appearance. What they have, is not real. To enter the kingdom of heaven what is needed is real righteousness; God is righteous. We humans are not, as Paul said in Romans 3:4-12 - "there is none righteous, no, not one" (quoting Micah 7:9). Isaiah also said (of God's people) that all their righteous acts were as filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6-7 which Paul also quoted in Romans 3:11). Total agreement between Jesus, Paul and the Hebrew scriptures. No contradictions! Jesus calls sinners to repentance but he leaves the self-righteous to their own self-righteousness.
Answer: The paraphrase of the NLT is helpful here in Luke 5:32 -

I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those
who know they are sinners and need to repent."

That is, the self-righteous pharisees did not, indeed refused to recognize, their need of salvation and reformation.  This is not to suggest that Christ's salvation was not extended to Pharisees, but because of their deluded self-sufficient righteousness, they did not want anything from Christ - they believed they would be admitted to the kingdom of God based on their intrinsic goodness.
Note the Cambridge commentary:

the righteous This also was true in two senses. Our Lord came to seek and save the lost. He came not to the elder son but to the
prodigal; not to the folded flock but to the straying sheep. In a
lower and external sense these Pharisees were really, as they called
themselves, 'the righteous' (chasidim). In another sense they were
only self-righteous and self-deceived (Luke 18:9). St Matthew tells us
that He further rebuked their haughty and pitiless exclusiveness by
borrowing one of their own formulae, and bidding them "go and learn"
the meaning of Hosea 6:6, "I will have mercy and not sacrifice," i. e.
love is better than legal scrupulosity; Matthew 9:13; Matthew 12:7.
The invariable tendency of an easy and pride-stimulating externalism
when it is made a substitute for heart-religion is the most callous
hypocrisy. The Pharisees were condemned not by Christ only but by
their own Pharisaic Talmud, and after b. c. 70 the very name fell into
such discredit among the Jews themselves as a synonym for greed and
hypocrisy that it became a reproach and was dropped as a title (Jost,
Gesch. d. Juden. iv. 76; Gfrörer, Jahrh. d. Heils, i. 140; Lightfoot,
Hor. Hebr. on Matthew 3:7).
Answer: When the rabbis found out that Jesus was present at Matthew's feast, they took advantage of the chance to accuse him.  But rather than accuse him directly, they did so through his disciples. In doing so, they hoped to drive a separating wedge between the disciples and Jesus, who, without the disciples' support, would be the more greatly wounded. They asked:

"Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners?" (Matthew 9:11,
KJV)

Jesus, hearing them question his disciples, did not wait for the disciples to answer, but answered directly himself:

"12. . . They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are
sick.  13But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." (Matthew 9:12-13, KJV)

The Pharisees professed to be spiritually whole, and therefore in no need of a physician, while they considered publicans and Gentiles to be perishing from diseases of the soul.  So should it not be part of Jesus' work to go to these very ones who needed his help?
However, what Jesus said had dual meaning.  He was also addressing the Pharisees themselves, though they would not accept this, because though they thought so highly of themselves, they were really worse off than the ones they looked down on.  The publicans were less bigoted than the leaders, and were consequently more open to receive the truth.
Jesus was saying to the rabbis: "Learn what this means, that I will have mercy and not sacrifice." In this he was showing that, while they claimed to teach God's law, they were completely ignorant of its spirit.
Conclusion
Jesus' words had dual application:

He was indicating that he was in the right to work for those who most needed help; and

He was implying that the Pharisees, too, needed help (though they would not admit this), for they were sinners, too.


How do I access RouteTable.Routes.MapHttpRoute?

Question: I have a Web Forms app that I created a few months ago and I added a Web API controller. I tried to use the 'automatic' routing that I saw in a presentation recently, but all I got was a 404. Then I tried to add routing for the Web API controller in my Global.asax using MapHttpRoute, as I've seen in several tutorials. However, even after adding Imports System.Web.Http to the file, the project will not recognize RouteTable.Routes.MapHttpRoute() I have tried adding other namespaces and ensuring that I have all the necessary Nuget packages, but I still am unable to set up routing for the Web API controller. Does anyone have a recommendation of where to start?
Answer: If anyone has this same issue in C# read on.
I am also using a web forms app and set the routing through the Global.asax file. For me Intellisense was 100% correct and it would not build regardless. To get this to work I had to add the following using directives.
using System.Web.Http;

and
using System.Web.Routing;

Becareful not to use using System.Web.Http.Routing by accident. This wont work.
Comment: You appear to be using C# whereas my project uses VB, so that may explain the difference.
Comment: Good point. I didnt notice the vb tag. I'll edit this answer in case any other C# user can get some value from it.
Comment: Thanks, this question is pretty high on Google results for MapHttpRoute. Exactly what I needed.
Answer: You should add the reference to System.Web.Http.WebHost assembly and make sure you have
using System.Web.Http;

Why ? MapHttpRoute is defined in two assemblies, in System.Web.Http:
public static System.Web.Http.Routing.IHttpRoute MapHttpRoute(
    this System.Web.Http.HttpRouteCollection routes, string name, string routeTemplate)

Member of System.Web.Http.HttpRouteCollectionExtensions
and in System.Web.Http.WebHost
public static Route MapHttpRoute(
    this RouteCollection routes, string name, string routeTemplate, object defaults);

First one is an Extension on HttpRouteCollection
Second one is an Extension on RouteCollection
So when you have a webforms app, your Routes are defined in a RouteCollection so you need the WebHost version.
Its because architecture allowing WebApi to be hosted also out of IIS. see Hosting WebApi
Comment: Edited answer to be a bit clearer.  This is what tripped me up, I had found the `MapHttRoute` but it wasn't for `RouteCollection`
Answer: I found this thread, which indicates that IntelliSense apparently has a problem with this, but if you type something like the following, it will build and run:
RouteTable.Routes.MapHttpRoute("MyApi", "api/{controller}")

Answer: I've just created two new webforms apps (one using .NET 4, the other 4.5), did nothing more than add web api via nuget and it worked.
What version of ASP.NET is your app running in? If you're running ASP.NET WebForms 2.0/3.5 then it's not supported.
Here's a tutorial which demonstrates how to add Web API to your Web Forms app - http://www.asp.net/web-api/overview/creating-web-apis/using-web-api-with-aspnet-web-forms
Comment: @probackpacker How bizarre.

If you look at the actual references for your web app project, can you see System.Web.Http and System.Web.Http.WebHost listed?
Comment: Thanks for the answer. I'm using .NET 4.5 with Visual Studio 2012. That tutorial is actually one that I've been looking at, but when I get to the "Add Routing Information" step, I'm unable to set up the routing.
Comment: Yes, both of those are listed in the references for the project.
Comment: Reference to System.Web.Http.WebHost solved my problem. Thanks @WilliamL
Answer: I have the same case, I solved by creating the api controller, when you add the
api controller VS will load all required refrences.


How to turn off smart paragraph selection in the Microsoft Word 365 Web app?

Question: How do you turn off smart paragraph selection in the Microsoft Word Web app? There are a number of questions related to this, but they all are for the desktop app, not the web app; this is an example of such a question: How to make Microsoft Word selection behave like it would in a plain text editor.
Answer: Word Online doesn't include all the features than Word for Windows / Mac.
Microsoft includes on the feature documentation the supported editions / versions. The article about the Word Advanced Options, wich is one of the articles related to the feature being asked, mentions the following products: Word for Microsoft 365, Word 2021, Word 2019, Word 2016, Word 2013, Word 2010, Word 2007, Word Starter 2010.
As of November 11, 2023, Microsoft refers to the Word web app / Word online as Word for the Web, i.e. Create a document in Word for the web.
They have a document that compares both "platforms": Word Features Comparison: Web vs Desktop. It's worth to note that this doesn't make a very detailed and exhaustive comparison.
Related

How to make a date field in Word Online?


Is there a way to theme the notifications in XFCE?

Question: I'm kinda bored of how they look and the fact that there's only 3 themes to choose from is even worse, so I was wondering if there is a way to theme the notification bubbles of XFCE?.
Answer: Theming the xfce notifications
The themes of the notification bubble defined by a specially formatted file called gtkrc found within the folder structure /usr/share/themes/[theme name]/xfce-notify-4.0
All system-wide themes must follow the above naming convention.
For user-specific notification bubbles, the same [theme name]/xfce-notify-4.0/gtkrc file & folder structure can be created in your home folder ~/.themes
Lets create a copy of an existing notification bubble theme to work with - our new theme is going to be called playtime:
mkdir -p ~/.themes/playtime/xfce-notify-4.0
cp /usr/share/themes/Greybird/xfce-notify-4.0/gtkrc ~/.themes/playtime/xfce-notify-4.0/

Now launch the notification manager in system settings:

You'll see our new playtime theme.
customisation
Now lets have some fun with customizing this theme.
Open the gtkrc file for playtime
leafpad ~/.themes/playtime/xfce-notify-4.0/gtkrc

When customising the theme - change to another notification theme and back to playtime for the change to take effect.
changing the font
The bit in this file we are interested in to customise the text is this section:
style "greybird-notify-text"
{
    fg[NORMAL] = "#ffffff"
    GtkWidget::link-color = "#a7a7a7"
}

We can customise the font by adding font_name = "Serif 18" to this (between the { ... }:

So where to we get the font name - easiest place is actually the Font Window in the Appearance window:

Just add the text descriptions together as shown - for example Serif Italic 10
changing the font colour
We can change the font colour by modifying the RBG format number i.e. ff0000 is Red, 00ff00 is Blue and 0000ff Green - other colours are mixtures of these.
Thus - fg[NORMAL] = "#ff0000" gives us this:

changing the background colour
The bit in this file we are interested in to customise the background colour is this section:
style "greybird-notify-window"
{
    XfceNotifyWindow::summary-bold = 1
    bg[NORMAL] = "#111"
    XfceNotifyWindow::border-color = "#ffffff"
    XfceNotifyWindow::border-radius = 10.0
    XfceNotifyWindow::border-width = 3.0
}

The bg[NORMAL] value is again in RBG format - e.g. #00ff00 is green:
Comment: Is it possible to use Image files as background?
Comment: @UriHerrera - I've look at this - the widget control appears to be limited to fonts/font sizes/font colours and background colours - no image control.  I've tried the usual CSS syntax for images but this results in the whole notification theme using the plain "Default" theme :(
Comment: I see, what about the XML syntax that gtk 2 themes used? that doesn't work either?.
Comment: looking at notify-osd source code I dont see any evidence of image handling capabilities of the notification bubble system. Sorry about that.


Is there any way to see who downvotes a post?

Question: I've made several posts on the main Drupal site that have been downvoted with no explanation. Is there any way to see who is doing that?
Answer: No, there is no way to do that. There is a longer and relevant discussion on the topic here: A call to provide explanations for a down-voted question
After taking a look at the two questions you have with a -1 score, my guess is that Module to allow multiple paths for a single node? was considered "to obvious", since the functionality is already in core. Showing that you had attempted to figure this out on your own first might have made a difference.
This one on the other hand  https://drupal.stackexchange.com/questions/28575/images-uploaded-using-media-gallery-w-plupload-do-not-attach-to-node very much looks like a bug, belongs in the issue queue, and is as such off-topic.
Comment: Actually, since the issue it already reported in the issue queue, it doesn't really matter if it's a bug or not. We don't duplicate the issue queue here. That said, after reading the issue, I would assume it's a bug, although perhaps a rare one.
Comment: In all fairness, I don't think the path thing is obvious.  One, you have to realize the alias and path are used interchangeably.  Two, that page is buried.  Three, it is a little weird that you can't set additional aliases on the node/edit page.
Comment: Thanks for the explanation. I didn't think it qualified as a bug, since it obviously works for a lot of other people. That makes me think that I'm doing something wrong.
Comment: @Letharion We don't accept questions about bugs, on _Drupal Answers_; a question that is asked on Drupal.org (and that is not about a bug in a module) can be asked here too. Certainly, if somebody keeps asking a question on Drupal.org, asking it on _DA_, and answering on _DA_ giving the same answer given on Drupal.org, that would be a different matter.
Comment: I will take note on that difference. :)
Comment: I just suggested that was a possibility, the down-vote isn't mine, and I agree that's it is not necessarily obvious.
Answer: SE developers are the only ones who can see that data, not even diamond moderators have access to it. I didn't downvote your question about Plupload but I did vote to close it as off topic (for the reason @Letharion mentioned).
The important thing to remember is don't take it personally!
Voting up/down/to close a question is merely about quality control for the site; every question needs to stand on its own and be potentially useful to future visitors. If others in the community don't think a particular question holds up to those criteria, then downvoting/voting to close are the only methods (besides commenting) that any of us can use to voice that opinion.
I do agree it can be frustrating to receive downvotes without a comment though; as far as I've seen in the SE network it's very much encouraged to leave a comment so that the question can be improved upon.
Answer: There isn't a way to see who down-voted you, as votes on posts are anonymous by design.
It is not even an information that a normal user would need to know, as there is a mechanism to auto-detect votes irregularities (both up-votes, and down-votes) and correct those votes by removing them. Moderators can see suspiciously high levels of activity between users. This means that moderators are able to detect cases of cross-voting, where you vote a user's posts, and that user votes for your posts.
In your case, there isn't anything suspicious, as you got 4 down-votes, since April 25, 2011; of those down-votes, one is the automatic down-vote given to questions closed as off-topic. You also got 10 points removed because users who up-voted your questions, and then removed their up-votes.

To add to what Clive said, leaving comments about what is wrong with the post is recommended, but down-voters are not forced to leave a comment for the simple fact voting is anonymous by design. If they were forced to leave a comment by the software, you would have a chance to guess who down-voted, except in the case there are more comments from users who didn't down-vote, but that probably happens rarely, on small Stack Exchange sites.
The general reason of a down-vote is given in the tooltip for the voting button.
Comment: Thank you for clarifying. I have to be honest, I find people on this site to be a bit overzealous in downvoting, way more so than on any of the other SE sites. Just because a question "isn't useful" to someone who's clearly an experienced Drupal developer doesn't mean the answer wouldn't be useful to other people like the original poster (who are most likely beginners, as am I.)
Comment: Getting 3 down-votes over the period of a year is not that much; if _Drupal Answers_ were a bit overzealous, the down-votes could have been more than that. "It is not helpful" is not referring for who down-votes, but for future readers; at least that is what I get it to mean because, otherwise, who is a Drupal expert would down-vote every single question.


What is the closest font used in this logo?

Question:
I need to find the name of the font used in this logo. Online tools can't identify it because of the design.
Comment: It may be safe to assume this isn't a font. Rather, it's been modified for the purpose of the logo (like most logos). Personally, if this is an effect I was after, I would try and make a similar version from scratch. I encourage you to do the same.
Answer: Try these, they are free:

No exact match, but you can play a little with stroke width and its placement, if the wanted thing was to recreate the logo. For it you must in any case build the design by modifying the outlined letters,  so you can as well draw the logo from scratch having a locked image as your model.
That should be moderately easy, if using illustrator or Inkscape is familiar. Drawing the lines and curves over your image takes no more than a couple of minutes per letter:

A hint: draw long horizontal lines at first and split them to get absolutely consistent height. Lock them as soon as possible. You can also insert quides.


What constitutes by their means for tzedakah

Question: The Halacha is that Jews should give as much charity that reflects their means. My question is, how is "by their means" defined? Is it a specific percentage of their income, how much value their money has in their area, etc.?
Comment: https://www.sefaria.org/Shulchan_Arukh,_Yoreh_De'ah.249.1
Answer: The gemara (Baba Batra 9a) teaches that the minimum one needs to give to tzedaka is a third of a shekel a year. The SA (YD 249:2) rules accordingly and adds that one who does not give this bare minimum does not fulfill the mitzvah of tzedaka.
If one has the means, the SA (YD 249:1) writes one should give maaser at 20% ("most laudable") or 10% ("average"), based on Yaakov's promise (Bereshit 28:22). The SA explains that when a person receives capital for the first time, he should set aside maaser from the capital and then every year thereafter, set aside maaser from the revenue generated.
Today most halachic decisors write maaser is a minhag but a strong one which should be kept. For instance, R Moshe Feinstein (YD I:143) discusses how one should calculate ma'aser kesafim and whether it needs to be taken before or after taxes, but what is clear that Rav Moshe held that ma'aser kesafim should be given.


Is it possible to remove the dash window control buttons?

Question: Is it possible to change or remove the Unity dash window control buttons (Close, Minimize, Maximize) in Ubuntu 11.10? I'm not a huge fan of how they look and would like to swap them out if possible.
Answer: There is no current way to change the order of those buttons nor is there a plan to add that option.
Comment: I don't want to reorder the buttons, I simply meant the icons themselves. They don't seem to match any theme and I think they make the dash look unprofessional, like the window controls were an afterthought. I think the dash would look better with the icons from the user's window theme or even not there at all, similar to 11.04's dash. I must be in the minority though, because I haven't seen anyone else bring it up.
Answer: For those who would like to see the window control buttons of a theme in Ubuntu 12.10 Unity Dash window:
1) You can use this script http://ubuntuone.com/0aCYqRY1ZWRbxlUj3a0Kqe to backup the default ones, and
2) You can use this script http://ubuntuone.com/3O1sLMJftDALGpHjtnWjG3 to create symbolic links to relevant images in the unity sub-folder of the theme, or
3) You can use this script http://ubuntuone.com/25S7Zqw4eSeR0RjP4Xk5tT to create symbolic links to relevant images in the metacity sub-folder of the theme, if it doesn't have a unity sub-folder, and
4) You can use this script http://ubuntuone.com/37Mj4kbBh90LNNunEi4Cxs to create unity sub-folder if there isn't one and create symbolic links to relevant images in the metacity sub-folder of the theme as this will display the same control buttons in the unity panel as well.
Note: These scripts assume that the current theme is under the system folder "/usr/share/themes" and should be modified otherwise.
The first can be run by user from anywhere, the second one should be placed into the "unity" and third one should be placed into the "metacity-1" sub-folder of the theme and the fourth one should be placed into the theme folder, and each should be run from its own location in the terminal window.


How to check plugin compatibility before upgrading Wordpress

Question: When you're upgrading a plugin you can quickly check if the plugin version you are about to upgrade to works with your current version of Wordpress. Is there a way of checking that your current plugins will work with the version of Wordpress you are about it upgrade to without searching for each one in the directory?
Comment: Use this plugin to check the plugin compatibality with the lastest version of WordPress before upgrading Wordpress
https://wordpress.org/plugins/plugin-compatibility-checker/
Answer: Have a glance at Better Plugin Compatibility Control. I just found this out this morning. I think this does what you're after.
Answer: @Brady's plugin is exactly what you are asking for, and I use it too, but just to list another plugin that is handy when you are updating plugins is the Changelogger plugin. It can show you what has changed between your current plugin version and the update that is available.