How can I create a downloadable file with my contact info

Question: I'm trying to create a link on my website where you can click and add my info to your phones contacts. Is there a file format that android will recognize & load a contact from?
Answer: The easiest way is to use a barcode you could e.g. create with an app like My QR code Generator. If you do not want to install an app for the purpose, there are also web services available like e.g. GOQR.ME -- simply search google for QR Code generator vcard.
The result is a QR-Code -- a simply image you can put on your web page. On Android (and other) devices, a QR code reader (best known and widely used on Android is Barcode Reader) utilizes the camera to take a picture from it, analyzes the coded content, and then offers an appropriate action. In case of a VCard, this would e.g. be to add it to your contact list -- exactly what you intended.
Of course you could simply export your contact data in VCard format for download (on opening that, the user would get the same choice to add the content to the contacts). You also could combine both, linking the QR-Code image to the downloadable VCard (make sure the file extension of the vcard file is set to .vcf, so the web server gets a chance to set the correct mime type -- otherwise it may be treated as "plain text" and opened inside the browser instead of being downloaded). This way a visitor could either use a barcode reader, or click on the code to download the VCard. Thus it even could be imported to apps on the PC: MS Outlook, Gnome Evolution, and others understand the VCard-Format as well.
Troubleshooting:
If you linked the VCard .vcf file for download, and it still only gets displayed in the browser window, here's how this can be fixed with Apache web server (solution by MrGlass -- thanks!):
Edit your Apache config (or, if you cannot access this, edit/create the .htaccess file in the directory your .vcf is stored) to contain the following segment:
<FilesMatch "\.vcf$">
  ForceType text/vcard
  Header set Content-Disposition attachment
</FilesMatch>

Comment: I ended up doing something like this. One important note is that if you just stick the vcard file on a normal webhost, android will simply display the text in the browser. You need to force the content disposition header to attachment, so that its downloaded. I did this in apache by modifying my htaccess file.
Comment: No. I'm a web developer, and it always seems like apache never detects things like this automatically.
`
  ForceType text/vcard
  Header set Content-Disposition attachment
` in htaccess seems to fix things
Comment: @MrGlass thank you for this addition! Of course the web server must be configured accordingly. Probably adjusting the mimetype to reflect the correct value (`text/vcard` or `text/x-vcard`) would help as well. Maybe Apache didn't recognize it by the chosen file-ext -- did you name it something with `.vcf` (just added that part to my answer above)?
Comment: Thank you for this hint! I just added it to the answer above. As in the comments formatting gets lost, please check whether I applied the line breaks correctly. Feel free to edit if I didn't ;)
Comment: You got it right :) Now I have to see about makign it work with iPhone (boo hiss). Hard to make things work without a unit to test on :)
Comment: Why shouldn't this work with eye phone? [VCard IMHO is a standard format](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vcard), and [QRCodes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QRcode) are as well -- which is why I recommended this combination. It not only works on Android, but also with Windows (Outlook), Linux (Evolution), and I suppose on MacOS and others as well.
Comment: Oh, I agree, it should. I'm just getting reports that it isn't. No idea why yet - currently only method of testing is begging friends over IM or email.
Comment: Would be interesting what goes wrong there. Please update when you figured out.
Comment: Check out this: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/26766/force-a-link-to-open-in-safari-instead-of-the-in-app-browser if I understand, the QR code app loads my URL using the embedded browser, which doesn't know how to handle a vcard, so it errors out.


mount to the share file folders

Question: Here is one problem when I tried to mount the share folders for copying files
from ubuntu16.04 LTS to my windows 7 file systems
I used the following command to access the shared behaveiors:
paultsai@ubuntu:~$ sudo mount.cifs //192.168.43.180/share2 /mnt/SHARE --verbose -o rw,username=PaulTsai
[sudo] password for paultsai:
Password for PaulTsai@//192.168.43.180/share2:  ************
mount.cifs kernel mount options: ip=192.168.43.180,unc=\\192.168.43.180\share2,user=PaulTsai,pass=********
paultsai@ubuntu:/mnt/SHARE$ cp ~/errors_http500 .
cp: cannot create regular file './errors_http500': Permission denied

I have tried to change the folders properties and used root to do the above
operations(by adding sudo commands before the above commands) . But it still failed, what should I do to make it executable ? I felt really strange about this !!
Answer: CIFS security has been tightened in recent kernel releases. You might want to add iocharset=utf8,sec=ntlm,noserverino to your options, in other words:
sudo mount.cifs //192.168.43.180/share2 /mnt/SHARE --verbose -o rw,username=PaulTsai,iocharset=utf8,sec=ntlm,noserverino

mount to the share file folders


What is JNDI and do I need it for website building

Question: I am learning Java and Spring for websites. A few times I see the word JNDI.
What is it and do I need to learn it or do I need it in the process of building a web application?
Comment: Possible duplicate of [What is JNDI ? What is its basic use..? When is it used?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4365621/what-is-jndi-what-is-its-basic-use-when-is-it-used)
Answer: JNDI is a convenient way for an application to say "I need resource X" and for container (e.g. Tomcat) to say "resource X is available, look here or there where X is actually configured".
You could use above mechanism to avoid, for example, hardcoding database properties in your code. You could achieve the same by having a configuration file, but some contexts (e.g.: .war files) configuration files are not persisted between redeployments so they are not an option.
Good examples on what is being bound to JNDI would be database data sources, references to SMTP email servers, security realms and so on.
Think of JNDI as a HashMap where key is a String and value is either a concrete object or another HashMap of the same structure. So locating a value like jndi://a/b would resolve to going to the top-level map, finding key a and expecting it's value to be another map. Then key b would be looked up in that sub-map and relevant value returned to the user.
Answer: The Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI) is a Java API for a directory service that allows Java software clients to discover and look up data and objects via a name. Like all Java APIs that interface with host systems, JNDI is independent of the underlying implementation. May be you can use it but i have never gave it a try!


Ubuntu 12.04 on Dell Studio 1558 Laptop?

Question: I was just wondering if it would be possible to put 12.04 on my Dell Studio 1558. I was poking around the Ubuntu website, and other websites and was unable to find any specific drivers for this model of laptop.
Does anyone know where I could find the appropriate drivers so I can get a better grip if ubuntu is right for me?
Thank you
Comment: You may not need any. Try a live USB or DVD without installing first. If you have problems you can ask specific questions about what's not working otherwise install.
Answer: I agree with the above answer. You should just be able to install it without any issues. The only problem I have ever had is with nvidea video cards and that was a while ago and, if I recall correctly, only on the install media not on the installation itself. I have found that as long as you can see, you can fix any problem with ubuntu. I did a quick poke-around and according to amazon your graphics card is radeon, here is a list of supported cards https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RadeonDriver. There is a slim possibility that you will not have the supported drivers for your wifi card, but ubuntu won't let you install without a connection so you'd know.
Answer: The best part is you are having Dell , What all you need to do is Install Ubuntu with consideration of Ubuntu System Architecture and after installation completes install all needed softwares and do -
<code>sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
</code>
and then Ubuntu Software Center and click on edit and then Software Sources in that go to additional drivers as shown below -

and your driver consideration is done, it will automatically additional driver for wifi and Graphic card if needed.
Hope it solves your problem.
Answer: Dell machines have been pretty well supported on Ubuntu ever since Dell started selling laptops with Ubuntu pre-installed.
The only way to know for sure though is to run the live environment from a CD/DVD or USB.
Check out Ubuntu's guide to trying Ubuntu, and make sure you click "Try Ubuntu" first!


I want to move my OS from one machine to another

Question: I have Windows 8 running on a computer but the hard drive is always spiking to 99% and it becomes really laggy. I'd like to move it over to a new machine. Is there anyway I can do this without having to reinstall the OS and my applications? I'd like to keep my set up.
Comment: Beware that if you have an OEM copy of windows, it will detect the change of hardware and request reactivation, for which you will need a new product key, as will any other software installed as OEM
Comment: I think what you're looking to do is clone your hard drive (or partition(s)). This can be done by creating an *image* of it with imaging software.
Comment: From there I can install it on any other hardware?
Comment: You're going to find it difficult to just take an image of your current PC and port it over to a PC with different hardware. You're going to come across all sorts of driver issues, if it boots at all.
Comment: I have an MSDN account, could I use one of those keys?
Comment: @Batman - Yes...
Comment: @Batman, you might want to spend some time figuring out why your disk is spiking.  You also want to make sure that the new computer has a faster hard drive (or you'll just be in the same spot with a different computer).
Answer: I recommend DriveImage. It can clone drives so you can just plug in the new drive and clone to it.
But do be careful with new hardware... it may not work
Answer: Using the same disk image may not work with your other computer because of different hardware. I recommend a fresh install of operating system to avoid loss of time.
However if you are determined to try "moving" your OS, I recommend Redo Backup. It is free, open source, reliable and very simple to use.
Using Redo, take a backup of your disk image to an external hard disk or to a network point and then restore that image to your other computer using Redo again.

Download Redo Backup CD image from its website.
Write it to a CD or USB flash drive.
Plug in that CD or USB flash drive and turn your computer on.
Using boot options, make your computer boot from that CD/USB drive.
Click "Backup" or "Restore" icon on your screen and follow the simple instructions.


Delete multiple contacts in Windows 8 People App

Question: Is it possible to select multiple contacts in the People application instead of one at the time, so I can delete them all at once?
Answer: I don't think it is possible, at least I couldn't find a way after ten to fifteen minutes of poking around the app.
The best way to manage contacts in bulk may be to go to the source of them (Google Contacts for your Gmail contacts, or Windows Live for your Hotmail contacts) and deal with them there.
Changes made at the source should sync within the People app.


Maximum power point traking

Question: I'm having trouble understanding maximum power point tracking. How can I track the Maximum Power point?
How do I consider the effects of load on Voltage and Current while power point tracking?
Thanks for your help.
Comment: MPP uses DC-DC conversion (usually a buck converter topology) to keep the solar panel and the load at different voltages. By monitoring the current and voltage of the solar panel, the controller can maintain maximum power point. It may start off by trying a wide range of voltage set points for the panel until it finds the one that produces the maximum power. This voltage is Vmpp. Then it just keeps the voltage at that level. It may periodically scan to make sure the Vmpp has not shifted.
Answer: The first thing you will need to do is observe the power by monitoring the voltage and current coming from the cell with analog electronics or IC's. You then multiply the current and power (best done digitally) and then try and find the maximum point.

To find the maximum point, you need is some kind of control scheme the best one is called Preturb and Observe that monitors the point on the power curve and 'climbs up the hill'. There are variations and other ways to find the maximum power point, but this one is the most widely used and is not to difficult to implement or debug.

Here is the link for the paper which the image was pulled.
Comment: It should be noted that the MPP has no fixed position, it moves with changes of panel illumination and temperature
Answer: A converter with MPPT tracking maximises its power output into a load.
The operating algorithm makes a small change to its conversion control, which is controlling either the current it attempts to draw from the panel, or the voltage gain of the converter. If that results in increased output power, it makes another small change in the same direction. If the output decreased, it makes a small change in the other direction.
That way, the operating point dithers around the maximum power output point. It is constantly moving because it needs to keep tracking variables like the light input and the temperature. The power falls off quite slowly either side of the optimum point, so there is no need to be very precise when tracking the maximum.
Note that the controller doesn't need to do anything complicated like measuring the panel output voltage and current, multiplying them, and figuring out which way to change things. It just measures its output power, usually into the battery bank it's charging, higher output current is more power, and maximises that.
Answer: Others have told you about how the voltage is tracked to get maximum power out of the solar panel. Here I will tell about how the basics of how the required voltage across solar panel actually changes. The actual voltage change is done by the MPPT DC-DC converter, which changes the ratio between the input DC voltage (from the solar panel) and the output DC voltage (the load). By changing this ratio, it keeps the output voltage constant while presenting a different voltage at its input, which is the solar cell.
Another way to tell it, is if you consider the load as a resistance. Then the when you see the load from the solar panel (input), the resistance gets multiplied or divided by the square of the voltage transformation ratio. The MPPT algorithm (inside the MPPT controller) is such that this 'referred' resistance presented to the solar panel by the converter matches the 'correct' V/I ratio so that the solar cell is operating at maximum power.
Comment: Thanks a lot this is the answer that solve my problem or on the other hand opens my eyes
Answer: A dc-dc converter is generally used in a PV system as an interface between a PV string and a load, as shown below:

The control parameter d refers to the duty cycle of the converter. Assuming that M(d) is the voltage conversion ratio, the relationship between the input and output voltages (currents) for the dc-dc converter can be written as:
$$V_{in} = \frac{V_{out}}{M(d)}, I_{in} = \frac{M(d)}{I_{out}}$$
Divide Vin into Iin, we have:
$$ R_{in} = \frac{V_{in}}{I_{in}} = \frac{V_{out}/M(d)}{M(d) \cdot I_{out}} = \frac{1}{M(d)} \cdot \frac{V_{out}}{I_{out}} = \frac{R_{out}}{M(d)}$$
In the PV system, we have
$$R_{pv} = \frac{R_{load}}{M(d)}$$
where Rpv and Rload refer to the equivalent resistance for PV and load.
Then, the operating condition resulted by a PV string connected with a dc-dc converter is shown as below:

As shown in this figure, when you change d, the operating point will be changed even if Rload is constant.
The aforementioned part is how the MPPT works with duty cycle.
With a proper MPPT method by changing d, the PV will work towards the optimal voltage.

Maximum power point traking


maybe a bug? Unanswered Tags "html" missing

Question: Sometimes if I just click on Unanswered then the Unanswered Tags "html" is missing in the right column, just sometimes (but mostly). if I scroll down the page I see unanswered html questions...
Answer: No, this is not a bug. Only the 25 tags with the most unanswered questions are shown. Since there are only nine unanswered questions tagged with html, it doesn't appear in the list.

By the way, I strongly encourage everyone to dig though the unanswered questions once in a while and answer one. You'll improve your reputation, the internet, and help us make progress in the beta.
Comment: thanks for your reply (I havent even got enough points to upvote your answer:..)
Comment: Just a note: Writing answers instead of comments would also increase the answer ratio.


How can I create a site? What should I do first?

Question: I want to create my own site but I know absolutely nothing of the coding. Could you recommend something, what would help to start? Thanks.
Comment: Hi Zill Facon, welcome to [softwarerecs.se]! This question does not appear to be about software recommendations, within [the scope defined on meta](https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/scope) and in the [help center](/help/on-topic). If you think you can [edit] it to become on-topic, please have a look at the [question quality guidelines](https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/q/336/23377).
Comment: Please see my very long comment, which I had to post as an answer. Do you know what kind of site you want? Please tell us, if so. And rephrase your question to ask us to recommend some software. Good luck :-)
Answer: Well, it depends on what you want to get in the end. Maybe you should start from some easy website builder like 8b (https://8b.com/), Wix or Mobirise. If you want to study the coding process, I would recommend you to try something like Mobirise's Code Editor (https://mobirise.com/extensions/code-editor.html), it would let you change the code just in the project, so you would see the result. Here you can see the instruction: https://mobirise.com/how-to/make-your-own-website/
Answer: Sorry, but this is too long for a comment.
I am going to assume here that you want to learn to build a web site from scratch, learning HTML and CSS (and, maybe later, JavaScript).
Before you put your web site onto a real server, I would recommend developing it on your local PC first. This will be quicker, since you won't have to waste time uploading files every time you change  them. If you run Linux, or Mac, then you already have the Apache webserver, so just need to put your files in the relevant dire cry (/www/, IIRC).
Since more people run Windows, you need a web server. The simplest way to get one working is to install XAMPP and follow instructions.
In all cases, your server is localhost, rather than xxx.com. Just run Apache and enter localhost into your browser's address bar.
All that you need now is your own web page, and your question is too wide to answer, which is why I wanted to post a comment. You need an IDE and there are lots of good gratis ones – GIYF. Although it looks old & clunky, Kompozer would be a good start, as it lets you change your source and see it displayed in the same IDE; it also shows the structure of your web page. More modern is Brackets IDE, which lets you change your code & see the change instantly reflected in the browser.
On any web page in almost any browser, press F12 to see the Developer Console, which will be very helpful when looking for errors and debugging.
Find yourself a simple idea, which you would like to produce, and read tutorials; you can google or search youtube; personally, I am old school & like books, which can be picked up cheaply on eBay; alternatively, Coursera, which offers online university courses at all levels, many of them free. Keep trying until you find something that suits you, otherwise you might give up. Since you might try a few possibilities, keep them free or cheap at first.

First lean only HTML. That is the content of the page. Start with text only, or static graphics. Nothing too fancy, until you get the hang of it.
Next, look at CSS. While HTML defines the content of the webpage, CSS defines how it is laid out – font since & colo(u)rs, etc. Keep these two separate – do not be tempted to mix them in one single file.
At that point, you have mastered "static" web sites, where the content is static & does not change.
If you want to make static web sites, then lean to code Java Script.
At that point, you have a dynamic web site. Note that there are other ways to do this, I have just shown you the most common – all of the code in in the browser at the "client-side". You could have also generated all of the code on the server-side using PHP, Node.Js, Python, etc, but it is probably easier to learn as I have suggested.
Beyond that, the next complexity is splitting functionality between browser (client) and server, possibly with a database on the server.

This is very broad advice and it will take a while before you get to the later parts of it. By which time, you will have a better ideas of what you want to do and how to implement it, as there are always choices.
If you already have an idea for a web site, let us know.
As mentioned in comments, there are some simple site builders where you don't need to learn HTML and CSS (or, at least, not too much). You can also look at Drupal and WordPress, both of which are extremely popular.
Welcome aboard, and good luck :-)


UIPopoverController not moving to original position after keyboard slides back down

Question: I'm displaying a popover in iPad with a UINavigation bar.  On the second view, I have a UISearchController that can display a keyboard.  The keyboard pushes the popover up, which is fine, however if I now push the 'back' button on the UINavigation bar it dismisses the keyboard which is fine, but the popover doesn't slide back down to its original position.  Anyone know how to fix that?  Thanks!
Answer: Ok so I actually figured out (I believe) what your question was asking...and just in case anyone stumbles upon this from google, I figured I'd answer how I did it. It feels like a hack job but I haven't been able to find any other way to do it.
In the controller that brings up the keyboard,I had it post a notification whenever the keyboard dismisses:
    [aTextField resignFirstResponder];
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] postNotificationName:@"movePopups" object:nil];

Then back on my home screen controller, that controls the UIPopover, I added a listener:
    [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self
                                         selector:@selector(movePopUpToRightLocation)
                                             name:@"movePopups"
                                           object:nil];

inside the init. Be sure to remember to remove the listener in your dealloc for good programming practice:
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] removeObserver:self];

So then whenever I get notification that the keyboard disappears, I get a reference to the button that the popover shows up from, and just have it re-appear directly from it:
-(void)movePopUpToRightLocation {
NSLog(@"move pop up to right location");
if (morePopUp) {
    UIBarButtonItem *barButtonItem = (UIBarButtonItem *)[[bottomToolBar items] objectAtIndex:0];
    [morePopUp presentPopoverFromBarButtonItem:barButtonItem
                      permittedArrowDirections:UIPopoverArrowDirectionDown
                                      animated:YES];
}

}
I haven't added any checks for which popup it is, but I can easily do that if I have more than 1 type of popover / button that it would appear from. But that's the basic premise that you can go from.
Hope it helps!
Comment: Thanks!  This is helpful for someone I'm sure.
Answer: You could also register for the UIKeyboardDidHideNotification somewhere in the initializer.
[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self selector:@selector(movePopoverBack:) name:UIKeyboardDidHideNotification object:nil];

This code moves the popover back:
- (void)movePopoverBack:(id)sender {
    if ([self.settingsPopoverController isPopoverVisible]) {
        [self performSelector:@selector(hidePopover) withObject:nil afterDelay:0.1];
        [self performSelector:@selector(movePopoverBack) withObject:nil afterDelay:0.5];
    }
}

- (void)hidePopover {
    [self.settingsPopoverController dismissPopoverAnimated:YES];
}

- (void)movePopoverBack {
    [self.settingsPopoverController
     presentPopoverFromBarButtonItem:self.bottomToolbar.settingsButton
     permittedArrowDirections:UIPopoverArrowDirectionDown
     animated:YES];
}

I didn't get it working without the delays, but this seems to be acceptable for my current project. Hope it helps someone.
Answer: After you press the Back button you should manually call resignFirstResponder for the search field (for example inside viewDidDisappear).
This should help, but the issue still will be reproduced under iOS 4 when the device is in Landscape orientation with Hthe ome button on the left side


AWS Aurora MySQL Serverless CPU utilisation is above 10 even it is not processing any requests

Question: We have Aurora MySQL serverless DB with 2 capacity units. I didn't understand why the CPU utilisation is always above 10 even when it not processing any queries. As a result we are paying more bills without any use. Can someone help me to understand how the CPU utilisation is calculated and why serveless is charging even when it is in ideal state(not serving any requests).
Comment: Have you reached out to amazon support? They tend to be very responsive to questions.
Comment: Additional information request. Post on pastebin.com and share the links.
RAM size of your MySQL Host server
A) complete (not edited) my.cnf or my.ini
Text results of:
B) SHOW GLOBAL STATUS;    after minimum 24 hours UPTIME
C) SHOW GLOBAL VARIABLES;
D) SHOW FULL PROCESSLIST;
E) complete MySQLTuner report
AND Optional very helpful information, if available includes -
htop OR top OR mytop for most active apps,
ulimit -a       for a linux/unix list of limits,
iostat -xm 5 3 for IOPS by device and core/cpu count,
for server Parameters group tuning suggestions after analysis.
Comment: Is that 10% of one CPU?  Or what?
Comment: The fact that that graph _never_ drops below "10" is very suspicious.  Any 'normal' background processing would show _some_ fluctuation.
Answer: Run show processlist or an analogous command. 10% doesn't seem unreasonable but the database is obviously doing something at this time.
It seems as though this product puts a large emphasis on replication and durability. From the product description, "Amazon Aurora is designed to offer greater than 99.99% availability, replicating 6 copies of your data across 3 Availability Zones and backing up your data continuously to Amazon S3" https://aws.amazon.com/rds/aurora/
What I'm getting at is that 10% cpu usage could likely be the result of synchronization/replication thread(s).
Comment: I think the "6 copies" is mostly handled at the disk layer, not impacting the CPU much.  Replication has very little CPU impact if not doing any writes.  Still, there could be a lot of monitoring, etc.  OTOH, _I_ think 10% is sloppily high.
Answer: To expand on @MarCPlusPlus's answer, this is almost certainly due to data replication processes. If you enable the MySQL general_log (which you can do via RDS parameter groups), you can see for yourself that Aurora is constantly executing 2-5 INSERTS per second into system tables (ie, mysql.rds_heartbeat). A quick Google search indicates that this is related to data replication.


OpenLayers2 Mobile add marker

Question: I want to display some markers on Openlayers map mobile version. I know that standard way of adding markers on Openlayers does not work with Openlayers mobile library. The example of Openlayers site didn't help me add a marker dynamically. Can somebody show me the correct way of implementation?
Answer: I was reading and it seems that there are no makers in Open Layers mobile. So the solutions is to make a feature with a point inside.
Here is an example of how I did it.
<code>/** function that is used to join a point to the map*/
function agregarPunto(long, lat, ZoomLevel){
    var proyeccion = new OpenLayers.Projection("EPSG:4326");
    var lonLat = new OpenLayers.LonLat(longitud, latitud)
    .transform(proyeccion , // transform from WGS 1984
      map.getProjectionObject() // to Spherical Mercator Projection
    );
    var punto = new OpenLayers.Geometry.Point(lonLat.lon, lonLat.lat);
    vector.addFeatures([new OpenLayers.Feature.Vector(punto,{},styleCross)]);
    map.setCenter(lonLat, ZoomLevel, false, false);
}
</code>

OpenLayers2 Mobile add marker


Does a character need knowledge of a creature to Polymorph or Wild Shape into it?

Question: Can a character with Wild Shape or casting Form of the Dragon/Monstrous Physique/Elemental Shape/etc. shift into any form (meeting the size requisites) that the player knows of, or do they need knowledge of the for form to be taken?
Comment: Wild Shape uses the same polymorph rules. If there's a difference it should be nuanced enough to fit into an answer imo. If the Stack disagrees I can change it later.
Comment: [Related](https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/112149/does-a-character-need-knowledge-of-a-creature-to-summon-into-it) but distinct.
Comment: Why don't you separate question about wildshape and about spells? Rules are totally independent from each other. This looks like two questions squeezed into one.
Comment: [Related](https://rpg.stackexchange.com/q/62504/23058) but different from the other related
Answer: None of the spells you've listed mention a familiarity requirement, so by default there is none.
Wild Shape:

At 4th level, a druid gains the ability to turn herself into any small
  or Medium animal and back again once per day. Her options for new
  forms include all creatures with the animal type. This ability
  functions like the beast shape I spell, except as noted here. The
  effect lasts for 1 hour per druid level, or until she changes back.
  Changing form (to animal or back) is a standard action and doesn't
  provoke an attack of opportunity. The form chosen must be that of an
  animal the druid is familiar with. ...  As a druid gains levels, this ability allows the druid to take on the form of larger and smaller animals, elementals, and plants.

So for animals, Wild Shape requires familiarity. The wording is not entirely clear on whether this requirement extends to plant and elemental forms.
For elemental forms the ambiguity doesn't matter much, because a druid can easily use Summon Nature's Ally to acquire familiarity before they get the appropriate Elemental Wild Shape ability. So plants are the major area of uncertainty.


open neutral caused from changing water tank?

Question: I had my water tank changed and since then my dish washer does not work. There is no power to it from the existing wire. Ihave since turned off the breaker to it changed it and nothing. There are no other outlets in the house that dont work with power off so i assume its the only appliance on this circuit. I have a 3 prong tester and I noticed that all my outlets show (open neutral) what the hay? its a 10 year old house. do i need an electrician?
Comment: Your question is somewhat unclear. You say that most outlets work but the tester shows open neutral? This is impossible - nothing plugged into an outlet with an open neutral could work. Yes, I suggest you call an electrician.
Comment: You said you have since turned off the breaker and changed it? You changed the breaker? How do you know you have the correct breaker if you aren't getting any power to the dishwasher to begin with? Normally a dishwasher (especially in a newer house like yours) is on a separate breaker by itself.
Comment: Are you using a wireless Circuit Breaker Finder? I'd say you either aren't using it correctly, or it's defective.
Answer: In short and to answer your immediate question-- yes, you most likely need an electrician to come perform troubleshooting. However, there seems to be some ambiguity here.
I'm going to make the assumption that "water tank" means 240V electric water
heater? Did you install the new tank or was it installed by a professional? If all of this happened immediately after the installation, I suggest having your installer come back to verify the installation before hiring anyone else.
It sounds like your receptacle tester is not telling you the full truth. You said your receptacles work, but they physically cannot with an open neutral-- you would have an open circuit and be in the dark. However, you can have an open neutral and still have a live "hot" wire, so don't take anything for granted.
If the neutral is indeed open on all of your receptacles, that would most likely indicate a problem at your breaker panel. This would bring us back around full circle to calling an electrician.


How to say "Graduation" in Latin?

Question: How do you say the word "graduation" in Latin, referring to a college graduation?  I searched online, but couldn't find anyone who had asked this.
Answer: David Morgan, in his Lexicon, offers promotio [academica]. Lewis & Short says that this is a post-classical word and offers "advancement, preferment, promotion" as translations.
A "graduation ceremony" would be promotionis sollemnia.
Comment: This is a good choice, especially if one wants to refer to the graduation ceremony. At my university, the "conferment of degrees ceremony" (as it's called in English) is called "promootio" in Finnish and *promotio* in Latin. However, this celebration is not obligatory; one will graduate whether or not one attends a "promotion" in any way (even *in absentia*).
Answer: Two ideas from the University of Oxford, which still conducts some of its ceremonies (including degree days) in Latin:

Encaenia is a Greek word for a festival of renewal, which is the name of Oxford's ceremony celebrating benefactors and conferring honorary degrees. The university website describes the term as equivalent to the American term 'commencement' for the chief ceremony of the academic year.
A regular degree ceremony uses the phrase Gradus conferre for the granting of degrees in the opening formula (although when students are specifically admitted to degrees, the phrasing is admittere ad gradum). This suggests some sort of expression like ceremonia gradum conferentis could be apposite.
Comment: I'd recommend *conferendi* over *conferentis*.
Answer: Two suggestions:

If Etymonline is to be trusted, the English word "graduation" comes from a medieval Latin adjective graduatus ("graduated").
This Latin word is a regular derivation but seems to be absent in classical literature.
If barbatus is "bearded" and alatus is "winged", graduatus is "degreed".
The word gradus can mean "status", "degree", or "position".
Going by analogy with graduatus, it is natural to translate "graduation" as graduatio, -nis.
The benefit is that it looks obviously related to the English word and is readily understood (in context) by most Latinists even if they have never seen the word before in Latin.
The Finnish–Latin–Finnish dictionary by Reijo Pitkäranta translates "to graduate" as specimina absolvere and lists no other options.
More directly, this Latin expression means "to finish one's exams".
Based on this, you could call "graduation" as specimina absoluta (lit. "completion of exams").
Frankly, I dislike this option.
Answer: In Medieval studia generalia, the term that seems to have been used is gradum concedere or conferre. Alternately, instead of gradum, the name of the degree: baccalaureus for those who finished the trivium, magister for those who finished the quadrivium, and doctor for those who finished the higher facultates of Law, Medicine or Theology.
Comment: Hmm... Aren't *baccalaureus* and *magister* people who hold the degrees, not the degrees themselves?
Comment: I think that there's some [metonymy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metonymy) in play for that kind of usage, but yes, formally they're the titles for the holders of the degrees.
Answer: In DMLBS (Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources), a dictionary of Medieval Latin, we can find the deponent verb graduārī for "to graduate", and the substantive usage of its perfect participle graduātus for "a graduate", e.g.:

unum de clericis nostris, virum [...] in utroque jure ~atum (see the DMLBS entry for details)
ad [...] prepositum et ceteros de collegio ~atos debet pertinere

The noun graduātiō for "graduation" is also attested:

dignior quo ad ~onem scolasticam debet preferri

Personally, I am not a fan of pure Classical Latin, so I would prefer these simple words for brevity in most circumstances.

How to say "Graduation" in Latin?


Why do I need to backup the Exchange Logs during a Full VSS backup

Question: Suppose I have a backup application that performs scheduled backups of my Exchange Server using the VSS API: Why does the backup application need to backup all the log files as well as the .edb file if the Exchange VSS writer already causes all the log file transactions to be committed to the .edb file prior to backup. It seems to be double data that is being backed up?
Answer: This is merely a guess, however it could be so you have absolutely everything in your backup, including any transactions after the full backup started.
If for example your backup takes 6 hours to run, with a transaction log backup at the end of the full backup, you have also just backed up an extra 6 hours worth of data for very little extra required time.


VARCHAR not accepting strings with non-numerical characters

Question: I am trying to store a Facebook access token in my MySQL database.  I have set the field to take a VARCHAR of length 255 and it can accept strings of numerical characters, but if the string includes any non-numerical character then it fails.  Does anyone know why this could be happening?  I can't seem to find any other cases of this happening anywhere.  The only things I could think of are that is may have something to do with this setting "latin1_swedish_ci".
The function I am using to input my data is below:
<code>// Insert the extended access token into the database
function setUserAccessToken($_uid, $_accTok){
        $sql = "UPDATE `user_core` SET `acc_tok`=$_accTok WHERE `id` = $_uid";

        $_result = mysql_query($sql);
        if($_result){
            echo ("Successful!");
        }
        else
        {
            echo ("Failed!");
        }
}
</code>
Thanks in advance :D
Answer: You're missing quotes:
<code>$sql = "UPDATE `user_core` SET `acc_tok`='$_accTok' WHERE `id` = $_uid";
</code>


Multiple melds for the same card

Question: Can you put down 2 melds of the same card? For instance, a friend accidentally started 2 piles of 5's. Should they have been combined?
Answer: Problem #1 - No clear answer
There are a wide variety of variations on Hand and Foot. The versions I've played with people who "know the game" have always allowed a clean and a dirty of the same rank, and never allowed wild canastas. (The two variations I've learned both use the term Canasta for a completed meld; some versions of the written rules use the term books.)
For clarity - some terms:
Clean Canasta: No wild cards, 7 cards (or more)
Dirty Canasta: some wild cards, 7 cards (or more)
Wild Canasta: 7 Wild Cards.
Extending aka Burying: adding cards to a completed canasta
Clean/Dirty/Wild Meld: a group of cards that will become a canasta of the same type when built upon further
Build: to add cards to a meld in order to make it a canasta.
Book: synonym for canasta, also, to collect the completed canasta into a smaller pile, "closing" it.

Pagat.com, however, says only one meld of a given rank per patnership, and allows wild canastas, and extending.
Gocampingamerica.com makes no restriction either way on melds, and shows no scoring for wild canastas, and disallows extending a canasta, but allows larger than 7 cards melded before booking the canasta. It also notes the lack of standardization in Hand and Foot Rules
rummy-games.com does not allow multiple melds of the same rank, but allows wild canastas, and not extending.
The versions I learned both allow a second meld (see below), extending, and disallow wild canastas. They differ on shuffling protocol, burying of wild cards and wilds per dirty meld. (One allows 3 wilds in a dirty meld, and burying wilds; the other requires a meld to always have more naturals than wilds.)

In the Versions I learned
Yes, you can have a second meld of a given rank, provided:

the first one is dirty
you need a clean canasta in order to go out
you have your partner's explicit verbal permission to make the new meld.

Usually, this happens right after someone goes to their foot.
In versions with no extending and no oversize canastas
You can close a canasta and immediately start a new meld of the same rank (provided you have the 4+ cards of specific ranks to do so).
In your situation
Tactically, unless you needed the clean canasta, or the extant needs a single card to complete, they should have melded those 5's into the extant 5's.

Multiple melds for the same card


Canon EF-S 10-18mm f/4.5-5.6 IS STM for night landscapes and possible astrophotography

Question: Does anyone have any experience with the Canon 10-18 used specifically for night landscapes or for doubling in Astro photography? I already understand it is a slow lens, and obviously not the first choice for these scenarios, I got it for photographing historical sites overseas (in the day) and thought to try some other scenarios with it. Some examples of what I am thinking are, with upcoming travels in the Middle East I want to document old mosques, desert fortresses, and mountain scenes, at night.
Comment: You might think about editing your question a bit and add what you are trying to achive or avoid. Or are you asking for techniques to use with that equipment?
Answer: I have it and I have tried it for night landscapes. The big problem that you will face, apart from it being slow, is that it is a focus-by-wire lens and focusing accurately to infinity, with very low light is very difficult.
Answer: All things considered, this is an incredible little lens for landscape and fascinating angles, take a stab at shooting low and near an object with the landscape out of sight and you'll be compensated with a charming shot, anyway abstain from utilizing it for single pictures as your subject may not be enthused about the wide edge impact! It's extraordinary for wide gatherings shots, however, one for the pack that may wind up on your camera more than you might suspect!
Comment: While you obliquely mention this lens's suitability to landscapes in the first 2 clauses of the first sentence, your answer doesn't talk at all about this lens's suitability for _night_ landscapes or astrophotography, which is what the question was asking. Do you have any experience with this lens with night landscapes or astrophotography?


Ant Migration Tool deleting objects with Rollup Summaries

Question: I attended the Dreamforce '12 session Team Development and Release Management for ISVs and one segment of the session was about the tools FinancialForce use for blanking an org before deploying a fresh set of metadata.
The github repo with all the resources is here. These are terrific resources and have really given me a head start implementing this internally.
My problem is, I think the object structure of our application is too complicated to be deleted through the metadata api. The delete seems to failing because of Master Detail relationships and rollup summaries. To further complicate matters the rollups span 3 objects
e.g Parent-{Child-{Grandchild where the parent rolls up a child-{grandchild rollup field. The implementation is rolling up the earliest date of the grandchildren onto the parent.
My question is, has anyone been able to use the ant migration tool to delete objects with rollup summaries? Or is my problem more sinister because of the error "An unknown exception has occurred."
Here is the debug log from the migration tool:

/var/lib/jenkins/build-tools/undeploy.xml:74: FAILURES:
Error: objects/Parent_c.object(Parent_c):An unknown exception has occurred.
Error: objects/Grandchild_c.object(Grandchild_c):This custom object is summarized by a field in another object. Remove the usage and try again. : Child Custom Fields: End (Rollup). This custom object is summarized by a field in another object. Remove the usage and try again. : Child Custom Fields: Start (Rollup).
Error: objects/Work_Type__c.object(Work_Type__c):An unknown exception has occurred.
Error: objects/Child_c.object(Child_c):This custom object is summarized by a field in another object. Remove the usage and try again. : Parent Custom Fields: Parent End Date. This custom object is summarized by a field in another object. Remove the usage and try again. : Parent Custom Fields: Parent Start Date.
Error: pages/child_view_override.page(parent_phase_view_override):The page you have tried to delete is currently being referenced by a page, custom link, button, web tab, dashboard, SoftPhone layout or custom sidebar component. Please delete the reference before deleting the page.
Answer: I did encounter the dreaded "An unknown exception has occurred" too; but it was when using related lookup filters which used reference fields to lookup to a 3rd object.  The dependency checker in salesforce doenst seem to look beyound 1 level deep.  I logged a case with them, which they accepted as an issue, are are trying to resolve.
My solution (i've not yet implemented) was to add logic in the scripts first step that edits page layouts and deploys them back prior to delete, to also clean up various things from .object files first too (related lookup filters, and perhaps rollup summary fields under simliar conditions).  Then they undeployment should be allowed, this in principle though is very tricky due to the code possibly referencing these fields.  So it thus is also necerssary to edit every class, trigger, page and empty them out and deploy too.  I have some logic to do this, and will try and update the git hub repo soon.
Eric Wilcox (developer of the undeploy script)
Comment: Thank you Eric! I was very excited when I saw you had answered my question. Thanks again for the talk at Dreamforce.
Comment: On a similar note, If you are interested I have written an ant call for deleting workflow rules. It was frustrating to discover that rules, alerts, field updates etc need to be defined individually in the destructiveChanges.xml file
Comment: Did anything result of the case that was logged? It looks like there's still a problem with the dependency checker not being able to go more than one level deep. I have two roll-up summary fields, one which references the other, and I am not able to delete both of them in the same destructiveChanges.xml file.
Answer: The debug log mentions the that your object is referenced, so you probably need to do this in batches:

Delete the roll up summaries and other references to the related lists
Delete the grandchildren
Delete the children
Delete the parent
Comment: I'm inclined to agree although I haven't reproduced the problem and also comment that it sucks you have to detect roll up fields, remove them, then remove the child objects.  Makes things so very difficult.
Comment: It's even more complicated because the rollup fields are referenced in formulas, apex classes, fieldsets and other metadata, which means it's not as simple as just deleting the rollups. By the time the full dependency path is mapped out it ends up being almost all the metadata
Answer: I wrote a new task which changes all Rollup summary fields to count type, and removes any filter criteria. Count-type rollup summaries don't have any sort of dependency on other fields and can't be chained together. After deploying them as count-type, they can be easily deleted.
<code><target name="removeFieldDependencies">
  <xmltask todir="./${stage.dir}/deploy/objects">
    <fileset dir="./${stage.dir}/objects/" includes="*.object" excludes="*__c.object">
        <contains text="<type>Summary</type>"/>
    </fileset>
    <remove path="/:CustomObject/*[not(self:::fields)]"/>
    <remove path="/:CustomObject/:fields[not(:type/text() = 'Summary')]"/>
    <remove path="/:CustomObject/:fields/:summaryFilterItems"/>
    <remove path="/:CustomObject/:fields/:summarizedField"/>
    <replace path="/:CustomObject/:fields/:summaryOperation/text()" withtext="count"/>
  </xmltask>
</target>
</code>
To utilize this you must pull down the Custom Objects inside the generatePackagePrePurge target by modifying what is being echo'd into package.xml. You'll also need to actually call this target with antcall. I have it as the last line of the generatePrePurgeMembers target in undeploy.xml.
Answer: When you remove the roll up summary fields it can not totally removed into the salesforce platform so you must go to your custom objects -> deleted objects -> crush your roll up summary field.
Enjoy..
Nejib


How to learn more about Antonyms and Synonyms?

Question: I've my professional exam in coming days. In that exam at least 10 direct questions will come of vocabulary. It could be either Antonyms or Synonyms. But the main hurdle is vocab would be of high level. Could anyone put some light on the aspect that how should I prepare and share some good link so that I can learn some indispensable words. I'd highly appreciate your constructive suggestions.
Comment: Do they publish study guides specific to your exam? If some company "makes a living" selling study guides then that's probably your best bet although I imagine that the test designers also attempt to pick words that aren't in the study guides.   I also expect that the test designers attempt to make their tests accurately reflect the proficiency of the test taker.  So if you are truly proficient then I imagine you'll do fine.  If not, attempting to cram will do both you and your future employer a disservice.
Comment: Buy a book and read it. That is the only way.
Comment: @Jim: Definitely No.
Comment: @Sudhir- Wow, that's surprising since pretty much every test ever offered has somebody selling a study guide for it in the US. Whether they are useful or not I don't know  I've never used them.
Comment: @Jim:Words would be of basic nature. But  the problem is that the usage of those words are infrequent or you can say very rare.
Answer: I'm going to tell a funny story about this. In the U.S., high school students are given an exam that assesses their readiness for college (there are actually two such exams, the SAT and the ACT).
My high school wanted its students to do well, so we spent an entire term in English class prepping for the SAT. We were given a list of 500 vocabulary words to learn, and were tested on those weekly. We took practice exams as well.
When I took the exam, not a single word that we learned in English class appeared on the exam. However, there was one word I recognized on the exam, and I had learned the meaning of that word in school. Specifically, I learned it in – of all places – woodworking class!
The word was pithy, which I had never seen before, but I remember my woodshop teacher explaining an anomaly on a piece of wood I was using: "That's the center of the tree; the inmost part of the tree's rings. It's called the pith." From that little lesson, I was able to discern the meaning of pithy during the exam.
My point? The words that will actually appear on your exam are a closely-guarded secret. However, test makers don't just randomly pick words out of the dictionary; they try to pick words that can accurately assess a person's vocubulary. Many of them are picked out of literature, so Thor's advice to "read, read, read" is quite solid. If your exam is coming in a matter of "days," though, the probability that you'll learn a word between now and test day that will actually show up on your exam is extremely low. It would be better to simply invest your time in practice tests, if they are available, to get used to the format of the exam questions, which are unlikely to change, and can be mastered.
There is no way to build an impressive vocabulary in weeks or even months. Such mastery of words takes years to acquire.
Incidentally, my wife has an extremely impressive vocabulary. She got this by buying a blank notebook, writing down unfamiliar words as she came across them, looking them up in the dictionary, writing down their definitions, and then re-studying that notebook from time to time. As I said, though, this took several years of patience and hard work to eventually pay discernable dividends.
Answer: Find/make a list of words that can appear on the exam (possibly combine vocabulary from prior lessons), and then check each with a thesaurus. Each word has an entry both with synonyms and with antonyms. Learn at least some - most popular of them.
The disadvantage is that the lists of synonyms are quite long including words with narrow meaning overlap and very obscure ones, but I don't know any "simplified thesaurus", sorry.


Wordpress checkbox for specific item (image or text) to be displayed on a post instead of custom field

Question: we have about 10 things that need to be optional for each post and will be the same for the posts.  They just need to be easily implemented on each post.  Checkboxes would be ideal so the user can just select which items are displayed for that post.
Comment: Is this for the frontend when the user is looking at a post or the back end when someone is writing a post?
Answer: Have I understood your question?
If I've got it right, you say that custom fields would be fine for storing some extra data relating to each post, but the WordPress editor makes custom fields rather clunky to use.
If this is what you're asking then there's a simple solution:
There are two different plugins (one more mature, the other higher rated but still in beta) which add a nice layer of user interface over the WP editor for custom fields. The one I know best is 'More Fields' by Henrik Melin. There is also 'Simple Fields' (sorry, I can't remember the author offhand). I've used 'More Fields' in numerous client web sites and apart from a couple of minor glitches with images in WYSIWYG custom fields, it's truly great.
Answer: I found this article https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/28785/how-set-featured-posts-using-checkbox-in-post-edit-screen which demonstrates how to do it without a plugin. Worked for me.


What are the side effects of disabling fuel tank ventilation?

Question: what are the side effects of disabling fuel tank ventilation? Especially for petrol cars. Is it true that the ventilation system, which constantly allows the air to move into and out of the tank worsens the quality of the fuel?
Comment: Welcome to Motor Vehicle Maintenance & Repair!
Answer: Your view of the EVAP system is a little ascew. The EVAP system isn't open to the atmosphere. It doesn't "constantly" allow air to move into and out of the tank. The whole purpose of the EVAP system is to NOT allow this to happen. As this reference states:

The Evaporative Emission Control System (EVAP) is used to prevent gasoline vapors from escaping into the atmosphere from the fuel tank and fuel system at all times.

If you are talking about disabling the EVAP system, you're actually defeating the purpose, which will cause more contamination to the fuel, allowing what ever amount of ethanol which is in the system to absorb more water from whatever air is present.
There has to be a certain amount of air going into the system to accommodate the lessening amount of fuel being in the tank. If you are talking about this part of the system, then if you disable it, you'll cause the system to be in an vacuum state, which at some point would not allow the fuel to flow to the engine, which would not allow it to run. I'm pretty sure you'd also get to the point where you couldn't get the gas cap off, either.
The best way to keep your fuel from becoming contaminated for any length of time is to keep the tank full. This only allows a small amount of air to be in the system. Less air equals less moisture to be absorbed. You can also use a fuel stabilizer, which helps prevent the fuel from absorbing water (forms a barrier between the air and the fuel). This only works for a period of time depending on the pro
Comment: Thanks for the reply. Maybe it's not constantly but from time to time(I've watched live data). So, the ventilation does not worsens the quality of the petrol?
Comment: There is no "in and out" was my point. And yes, the air going in is a detriment as it brings moisture in with it and ethanol absorbs it. However, that isn't what your question is about, so I didn't include this into my answer.
Answer: In addition to the points raised in Paulster2's answer, disabling the EVAP system will give you a check engine light as soon as the EVAP monitor runs. From that moment forward, you will have a permanently-on check engine light. If some other issue arises that would turn on the light, you will never know unless you attach a code reader and check for other codes.
Some issues that turn on a check engine light can cause damage if the issues are not repaired within a reasonable time. For example, misfires can dump unburned fuel into the exhaust, causing catalytic converter damage. A vacuum leak can create an air-fuel mixture that is too lean, burning your valves.
In addition, a large number of faults that would turn on the check engine light without causing actual damage will result in poor fuel economy, reduced power and excess emissions.
So it's against your best interest to make any kind of modification that will result in a permanently-on check engine light.
Comment: Yea, check engine light will came. I've found a guy who disabling the light but wondering what side effects will appear later in using the vehicle (already read about increasing the pressure, possible hoses or fuel pump damage)
Comment: @locke If you disable the check engine light, that is no different from a check engine light that is always on. You will never know if there is *another* problem that would turn on the light. So the result, same as above, could be engine damage, poor fuel economy, etc., if some other problem occurs and you do not learn of it from the check engine light.
Comment: Actually, I mean that this guy can disable flashing the check engine light because evap valve is disconnected. Not to disable it permanently
Comment: Wherever you heard air fouls fuel in the tank is bogus. Try searching how the evap system works. Engine off; evap vent valve is off and allows gas station fillups. Engine on; vent valve closes. During engine runs, the evap system uses intake vacuum to pull fuel vapors from the carbon canister instead of venting it into the atmosphere. Fuel will not go stale since some air gets into the tank, enough for vacuum pulling vapors into the canister before going to the intake manifold. You'll do more harm interfering with emissions systems unless your state doesn't require emissions tests.


How can I limit USB2.0 transfer rate on linux?

Question: I have a simple project which can limit USB2.0 transfer rate on linux. With this program users can select any transfer speed they want, let say 10 Mbps. But I don't know where to start or what to do. I will be very glad if you have any idea. An useful library or function or whatever. Thanks in advance for any help.
Answer: If you want to limit GLOBAL USB2.0 rate on the whole system, then you must probably write a Linux Kernel module. Learning kernel programming is very hard and not something that is considered a "simple project".
If you want to do it for a simple application then just put some timers in the program that "throtte" data writing/reading according to user selection. Notice that this code has to be in the application itself.


What are Riggers and Contraptions in MTG and how do I assmble them? (Steamflogger boss question)

Question: I just saw this card called Steamflogger Boss today, but I've never heard of a Rigger, a Contraption, or an ability called 'assemble' in Magic. Am I missing something? Does this card refer to a very rare card type like locus of which there are only a few examples? It seems like the card would make perfect sense if I could only find something that could assemble a darn contraption...
Comment: Gotta love the flavor: "Whip the Xs Pinch the Os What we're building, no one knows"
Comment: If you care for a less-than-serious interpretation/guess on the matter, head over to [Judge's Corner](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4dUzbUqbQ4)
Answer: Update: It is now the future. We now know what this mechanic is thanks to Unstable!

Contraptions aren't put into your main deck. To play with them, you must build a separate Contraption deck
In Constructed formats, such as Standard-but-with-silver-borders, Commander-but-with-silver-borders, and all-Un-set-Constructed-but-with-Steamflogger-Boss-I-guess, your Contraption deck contains at least fifteen unique Contraptions. The Contraption deck is "singleton," meaning you're limited to only one of each Contraption.
In a Limited format, such as Booster Draft or Sealed Deck, your Contraption deck can contain any or all the Contraptions in your card pool. The fifteen-card minimum and the one-of rule don't apply. You can play whatever Contraptions you draft or open.
Several cards in the set will instruct you or a creature you control to assemble a Contraption. To do this, turn the top card of your Contraption deck face up. Then, put it onto the battlefield under one of your Contraption deck's three sprockets, helpfully labeled Sprocket 1, Sprocket 2, and Sprocket 3.
At the beginning of your upkeep, if you control at least one Contraption, you move the CRANK! counter forward one sprocket (so, from 1 to 2, from 2 to 3, or from 3 to 1). Then you can crank any of the Contraptions under that sprocket. This causes their abilities to trigger. You can put these abilities on the stack in any order. Also, you don't have to crank a Contraption if you don't want to.
How you assemble your Contraptions determines what kind of infernal machine you're building. Load up one sprocket to produce a devastating turn every three turns, or spread them out to make sure you get something every turn?

Taken as a copy paste of the major points for the article detailing them here.
To all you still back in 2012, I hope this was helpful, you just have to wait 5 years or so to play with them.
Answer: Steamflogger Boss was printed in the set Future Sight, and the card alludes to the fact that riggers and contraptions may be part of the game in a coming set (the preceding 2 sets in the Time Spiral block were about the past and present). However, seeing as there are still no mention of the assemble mechanic as of 2012, it is still primarily a joke card in the same vein as the Unhinged and Unglued sets. While a 3/3 for 4 mana isn't terrible, it is definitely weak enough that it will only see actual play in limited decks that desperately need to fill up some mid-range creature slots.
Aaron Forsythe, the director of Research and Development for Magic: the Gathering, commented that the card was purely a joke and was probably a bad idea.
Comment: Hey in that uh... Lorwyn-Morningtide-Future Sight draft that is all the rage right now he's an awesome value for buffing changelings!
Comment: This answer is completely incorrect! As others have already caught, there are *loads* of Riggers in Magic.  Plus a Steamflogger Boss will also buff other Steamflogger Bosses you have in play, which is *marginally* better than being a vanilla 3/3.
Answer: Actually, there are other Riggers besides the Steamflogger Boss.
Moriok Rigger from Fifth Dawn had the Rigger Sub-Type retroactively added to it after the Grand Creature Type Update.
Any Changling is also a Rigger, as well as the Mistform Ultimus
Comment: Nice catch on this one!
Answer: Read the ruling at the page you linked:

Contraption is a new artifact type. There are currently no artifacts with this type. And there's no current game meaning of "assemble."

Wizards had a bit of "fun" with Future Sight, creating weird card such as this one, Dryad Arbor, Ghostfire, etc.
Answer: Yes, Contraptions are (at time of writing) a joke, but let's not forget that a Steamflogger Boss does buff other Steamflogger Bosses (without even mentioning the many, many other Riggers that exist in the game of Magic, most of which are admittedly Changelings).
Your first Steamflogger Boss may just be a Hill Giant, but your second is a 4/3 haste, and by the time the third hits the table, you have three hasty 5/3 bad boys on your team.  Okay, maybe this scenario isn't exactly the pinnacle of brokenness, but it it goes to show that Steamflogger Boss's (first) ability isn't quite useless.  You could do worse for a cost of 3R...
Answer: Future Sight was a set full of "what ifs" - glimpses into possible futures for the game, and this was one of them. Some of them were simply gags, and this was one of them. (Although it's worth mentioning that new sets are starting to use terminology in the manner of assemble - detain, for instance)


Event Calendar on hosted wordpress?

Question: I see a number of posts on various plugins for doing an Event Calendar that work with Wordpress, but the free hosted version does not allow me to use these.  Are there any solutions that would work for hosting a calendar of events for an organization that I volunteer for?  Even embedding a Live/Google calendar would work, although I understand that iframes are also not allowed.  Thanks!
Answer: It may be time to give up WordPress.com. There is little day to day difference in managing a self-hosted version, but there is a world of opportunities that will open with a few well selected plugins.  You mentioned you're volunteering for an organization. If the issue is paying for hosting, Dreamhost and HostGator offer free lifetime hosting for US based 501(c)3 non-profits. Dreamhost's process is the easier of the two.  (Disclosure, I'm an affilate for both...but look ma, no links).
Between free hosting and plugins, your organization's events should get all the attention they need.
Comment: Ray... That sounds like exactly what I need!  This is for a 501(c)3 nonprofit, do you have a link with some information on these offerings?
Comment: Here's the link. http://www.dreamhost.com/hosting-nonprofit.html You just need to sign up for an account under the 2 week trial, then fax them the IRS declaration letter from the organization.  The usually approve the free hosting within 24 hours.  If your feeling generous, here's my affiliate link www.sixfourweb/recommends/dreamhost  --Ray
Answer: Simply: If they don't allow installing plugins, then you'll have to accept that. No one over here can do magic tricks. (Btw: without link to hosting details, etc. it's only guessing.)
Why don't you simply get a really cheap hoster like 1-3$ / month? I ain't got one in my mind now, but there are some.
Comment: I'm not looking for magic, just possible solutions that others have found.  This is on a basic wordpress.com site.

Event Calendar on hosted wordpress?


Silverlight WCF RIA Services Dynamically Change Connection String

Question: We have a Silverlight application which uses WCF RIA Services and Entity Framework 4.1 to connect to a database.
At the moment, the connection string is supplied, as standard within the web.config and this all works successfully.
However, I now want to be able to change the connection string dynamically at runtime based on amongst other things, the user logged in.
I've found some other posts which hint at doing this, but they are using ObjectContext whereas we are using DbContext within the System.Data.Entity namespace and also the DbDomainService class.
In order to compensate for this I have overidden the CreateDbContext() method within my DbDomainService implementation as follows:
<code>protected override CoreContext CreateDbContext()
{
    dbServer = null, dbName = null;

    httpCookie = System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Request.Cookies["DBServer"];
    if (httpCookie != null)
    {
        dbServer = httpCookie.Value;
    }

    var cookie = System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Request.Cookies["DBName"];
    if (cookie != null)
    {
        dbName = cookie.Value;
    }

    if (dbServer == null && dbName == null)
    {
        return new CoreContext();
    }

    string connStr = "Data Source=" + dbServer + ";Initial Catalog=" + dbName + ";Integrated Security=true";
    return new CoreContext(connStr);
}
</code>
This works successfully the first time the Silverlight application is loaded, however, on all subsequent loads, the same connection as established initially is used despite changing the values being substituted into the connection string.
The only way to get the connection to be changed seems to be to recycle the application pool in IIS and load the app again.
Am I doing something wrong? Or is it not possible to have the DbDomainService change it's connection dynamically?
Answer: I'm thinking of the instancing model of your domainservice class. Have you tried a custom IDomainServiceFctory ? It permits you to decide when to create a new instance of them and is really simple to implement.
Take also a look at this post by Fredrik Normén.


Possibility of getting a ten year visa

Question: I am an Indian citizen and was issued a B1 visa, valid for 6 months, in last December from the Dubai US consulate. I travelled to the United States and exited before the i94 expired. The previous purpose of visit was elective clerkship and I have reapplied once more for the same reason .Will I be issued a visa again ?If so ,are the chances of getting a 6 month valid visa  higher than receiving a ten year valid visa?
Comment: Are you certain that you have read the visa sticker correctly?  As an Indian citizen you should normally have received a visa with an expiration date in December 2028, but the stamp you received at the border (and you I-94 record) should have shown a date six months after your date of entry.
Comment: Why did someone delete my comment to which traveler was responding?
Comment: There's no minimum wait period before you can re-apply, AFAIK. What's your premise to justify a 10 year multiple entry visa?
Comment: @phoog Thank you, I wasn't aware of the reciprocity table https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/Visa-Reciprocity-and-Civil-Documents-by-Country.html So, presumably if the OP got 6 months the first time round, that's what they can expect next time? Otherwise the first visa expiry would have been longer?
Comment: @Traveller I believe the validity period can be shorter than that specified in the reciprocity table in exceptional cases, but I think that's fairly rare.  Also, for some countries there are different periods for the different types of B visa, so a subsequent visa for a different purpose might be issued for a different period.  In this case, the purpose of travel is the same, so the visa's period of validity will probably be the same.
Answer: US visa validity for a B visitor visa is normally 10 years, unless the reciprocity table for a country specifies a shorter duration. Reciprocity in this circumstance means that the US issues shorter validity visas for a country's citizens if that country issues shorter validity visas for US citizens.
In the case of India there is no reciprocity issue and Indian citizens can get 10 year validity visas.
However, the visa validity can be limited in some circumstances. If the consular officer believes that your circumstances are OK now, but might not be OK in the future, then you may get a shorter validity visa. One example given in the Foreign Affairs Manual is of a high school student about to graduate but who has not yet been accepted to a university. He might qualify for the visa now, but might not qualify after graduation, so he would receive a visa for a shorter duration.

For example, in a country with 10-year visa reciprocity, this could apply in the case a 17 year-old high school senior who has not yet been accepted to university and seeks to travel on a family trip with his or her family, when the consular officer believes the applicant overcomes 214(b) at the time of the interview, but would wish to re-interview the applicant in the future.  That could constitute reason to issue a visa with less than the full 10-year validity permitted by the Reciprocity Schedule.  In contrast, in the same country, a 17 year-old applicant accepted to the country's most competitive university and who plans to later attend medical school may be an applicant to whom a consular officer would approve a full validity visa.  These examples illustrate that, as with all visa adjudications, the consular officer must make a case-by-case determination concerning visa validity based on the applicant's specific circumstances.

So there are no "chances" to get a 10 year validity visa. It is all based on your own personal circumstances. You might think about whether there is anything in your personal circumstances which may make the consular officer think you qualify now, but might not qualify later. Perhaps your residence is about to expire and has not been renewed?
Comment: @KristinaMerriya of course there is a possibility to get a six-month visa.  There is also a possibility to get a ten-year visa.  We cannot look into the minds of the consular staff; we can only say what the law allows.  I repeat my question from an earlier comment: are  you certain that you have read the visa sticker correctly?  What is the issue date?  What is the expiration date?
Comment: Thanks for your reply sir .My purpose of visit was elective clerkship/observship .I am a 4th year medical student and I am supposed to do few clinical clerkships before graduation .Where as all my friends who applied in India with same purpose received a ten year valid visa .But since I reapplied again for the same purpose ,is there chances for me to receive a visa at all ?or a 6 month valid visa again?
Comment: @Kristina Merriya Is it essential to complete your elective training in the US?
Comment: Yes it is  mandatory sir.And everybody completed it already which might take even an year but our medschool doesn't provide a student visa .what do you think ?will I get visa at all?
Comment: Have you made plans for after graduation? Are they shown in your visa application? You should discuss this in your interview.
Comment: Yes I will be coming back ..but there is nothing written in visa application since nothing was asked .Is there a possibility to get a 6 month valid visa again since I got the same last time ?
Comment: Thank u for replying.It was issued only for 6 months which started from December 2019 to June 2019.         Are there higher chances of getting a 6 month valid since I got the same?.   Last time I applied from Dubai but this time from India.

Possibility of getting a ten year visa


Should you use international identifiers in Java/C#?

Question: C# and Java allow almost any character in class names, method names, local variables, etc..  Is it bad practice to use non-ASCII characters, testing the boundaries of poor editors and analysis tools and making it difficult for some people to read, or is American arrogance the only argument against?
Answer: I would stick to english, simply because you usually never know who is working on that code, and because some third-party tools used in the build/testing/bugtracking progress may have problems. Typing äöüß on a Non-German Keyboard is simply a PITA, and I simply believe that anyone involved in software development should speak english, but maybe that's just my arrogance as a non-native-english speaker.
What you call "American arrogance" is not whether or not your program uses international variable names, it's when your program thinks "Währung" and "Wahrung" are the same words.
Answer: I'd say it entirely depends on who's working on the codebase.
If you have a small group of developers who all share a common language and you don't ever plan needing anyone who doesn't speak the language to work on the code then go ahead and use whatever characters you want.
If you need to have people of varying cultures and languages working on the code then it's probably best to stick with English since it's the common denominator for just about everyone in the world.
Comment: If the resulting product is any good, the small group of people will grow; eventually outgrowing the language. If you're writing bad code, it's fine to use some other common language (which is also intrinsically true).
Answer: If your business are non-English speakers, and you think Domain Driven Design has something to it, then there is another aspect: How do we, as developers, use the same domain language as our business without any translation overhead?
That does not only mean translations between languages, say English and Norwegian, but also between different words. We should use the exact same words as our business for our entity classes and services.
I have found it easier to just give in and use my native language. Now that my code use the same words, it's easier to have a conversation with my domain experts. And after a while you get used to it, just like how you got used to code without Hungarian notation.
Answer: I used to work in a development team that happily wiped their asses with any naming (and for that matter any other coding) conventions. Believe it or not, having to cope with ä's and ö's in the code was a contributing factor of me resigning. Though I'm Finnish, I prefer writing code with US keyboard settings because curly and square brackets are a pain to write in a Finnish keyboard (try right alt and 7 and 0 for curlies).
So I say stick with the ascii characters.
Answer: Here's an example of where I've used non-ASCII identifiers, because I found it more readable than replacing the greek letters with their English names.  Even though I don't have θ or φ on my keyboard (I relied on copy-and-paste.)
However these are all local variables.  I would keep non-ASCII identifiers out of public interfaces.
Answer: It depends:

Does your team conform to any existing standards that require your using ASCII?
Is your code ever going to be feasibly reused or read by someone who doesn't speak your native language?
Do you envision a scenario where you'll need to ask for help online and will therefore not be able to copy-paste your code sample in as-is?
Are you certain your entire suite of tools support code encoding?

If you answered 'yes' to any of the above, stay ASCII only.  If not, go forward at your own risk.
Answer: Part of the problem is that the Java/C# language and its libraries are based on English words like if and toString(). I personally would not like to switch between non-English language and English while reading code.
However, if your database, UI, business logics (including metaphors) are already in some non-English language, there's no need to translate every method names and variables into English.
Answer: IF you get past the other prerequisites you then have one extra (IMHO more important) one - How difficult is the symbol to type.
On my regular en-us keyboard, the only way I know of to type the letter ç is to hold alt, and hit 0227 on the numeric keypad, or copy and paste.
This would be a HUGE big roadblock in the way of typing quickly. You don't want to slow your coding down with trivial stuff like this if you aren't forced to. International keyboards may alleviate this, but then what happens if you have to code on your laptop which doesn't have an international keyboard, etc?
Answer: I would stick to ASCII characters because if anyone in your development team is using an SDK that only supports ASCII or you wanted to make your code open source, alot of problems could arise. Personally, I would not do it even if you are not planning on bringing anyone who doesn't speak the language in on the project, because you are running a business and it seems to me that one running a business would want his business to expand, which in this day and age means transcending national borders. My opinion is that English is the language of the realm, and even if you name your variables in a different language, there is little to no point to use any non-ASCII characters in your programming. Leave it up to the language to deal with it if you are handling data that is UTF8: my iPhone program (which involves tons of user data going in between the phone and server) has full UTF8 support, but has no UTF8 in the source code. It just seems to open such a large can of worms for almost no benefit.
Answer: There is another hazzard to using non-ASCII characters, though it will probably only bite in obscure cases.  The allowed characters are defined in terms of the methods Character.isJavaIdentifierStart(int) and Character.isJavaIdentifierPart(int), which are defined in terms of Unicode.  However, the exact version of Unicode used depends on the version Java platform, as specified in the documentation for java.lang.Character.
Since character properties change slightly from one Unicode version to the next, it's possible (but probably very unlikely) you could have identifiers that are valid in one version of Java, but not in the next.
Answer: As already pointed out, unless method names mostly match the language, it is a bit weird to constantly switch languages while reading.
For the Scandinavian languages & German, which I can speak and thus speak for, I would at least recommend using standard substitutions, ie.
ä/æ -> ae, ö/ø -> oe, å -> aa, ü -> ue
etc. just in case as others may find it difficult to type the original letters without keyboard/keymap changes. Think if you suddenly had to work with a codebase where the developers used a third language (for instance including the French ç) and didn't do this.. Switching between more than 2 keymaps to type efficiently would be painful in my experience.


Where is the PowerPC version of 11.04?

Question: Anyone know where the powerpc iso for natty is?  I found the one for oneiric -- http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily/current/ but there is not one for natty in http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ports/releases/
Comment: What computer do you have that can use 11.04?
Answer: There is no official PowerPC support in Ubuntu since 7.04.
Unofficial ports are made exclusively by volunteers, and always lag a bit behind. So I guess you just have to be patient.
Comment: My guess is that daily build is by no means guaranteed to work properly, while the other URL is for **released** versions (meaning that someone tested them and considered stable enough for release). There is no daily build for Natty, because the daily builds are created only for the version currently in development.
Comment: ok, thanks.  I was aware that the powerpc port was not supported, but I was just a little curious as to why oneiric had a powerpc and natty did not.  Thanks for the info!
Answer: official version of the PowerPC desktop CD Natty had a tremendous Ubiquity bug in the installer had no possible to create a repository configuration to update and complete the installation and pre-installed base in the previous steps of the installer, so in many cases not even ended up creating a user account with which to start a session, leaving practically for expert users to correct these bugs in ubuntu with console to access the desktop of Ubuntu 11.04, but if you want this CD version of "natty-desktop- powerpc.iso "you search the web if any mirror somewhere in the world still has it for reasons of history for cases like yours, in this case I found the version natty in Kubuntu (KDE desktop) in the mirror of the university Harvard (23-June-2011): http://mirrors.med.harvard.edu/ubuntu-cdimage/kubuntu/daily-live/current/, I hope that this version does not have the same problem as the natty Ubuntu version ( gnome desktop), and I think that the installer problem was the reason to withdraw the PowerPC line Ubuntu 11.04
Answer: I found a CD ISO in this link for Oneiric 11.10 on powerpc, I am downloading it now, so...
Well, this is the link:
http://mirrors.med.harvard.edu/ubuntu-cdimage/daily/20110926/
Comment: Mirror server is dead.

Where is the PowerPC version of 11.04?


Problem thinning out polygon layers to find polygon centerlines

Question: I have a polygon layer representing road surfacing layers. My task was to "thin out" the polygons in order to come up with a network of 'road centerlines' (dark green).
I generated this new polyline layer as follows in ArcMap:

Rasterized the road surfacing layer to a generously high resolution
Binarized the road surfacing layer where values of 1 indicate presence of road and values of 0 indicate no presence of road.
Thinned out the raster layer
Vectorized the thinned raster layer using "Raster to Polyline" tool

The result is conceptually OK since it does somehow find the centerlines of the polygons. However I am ending up with some really ugly artifacts as follows which originate from the thinned raster:

Zooming in a bit closer:

Now I am doubting whether this approach is appropriate, since it generates so many defects that would take an unreasonable amount of time to fix manually.
How can I either :

automate the fixing of these defects
prevent that these defects occur in the first place? I.e using another method for example...
Answer: First, you could use "collapse dual lines to centerline" if you had the advanced licence.
Concerning your method, you should use a larger maximum distance with your thin command. This would explain your artefacts.


Gauss curvature of conformal metrics

Question: Let $M$ be a $2$-manifold (the setting I am wanted to apply this is $M=S^2$) and $g,h$ be conformally related metrics (ie $h=e^{2w}g$ for some $w\in C^\infty$). I would like to show that
$$
K_h=e^{-2w}(K_g-\Delta_g w)
$$
where $K$ is the Gauss curvature. I have tried using the definition of Gauss curvature
$$
K_g=\frac{\langle (\nabla_2 \nabla_1-\nabla_1 \nabla_2)e_1, e_2\rangle}{\text{det} g}
$$
which introduces the factor $e^{-2w}$ (a factor of $e^{-4w}$ from the determinate and a factor of $e^{2w}$ from the inner product) but I do not see how the $-\Delta_g w$ term will appear. I also tried using normal coordinates but I still could not see how to get the $-\Delta_g w$ term. I was also reading this similar post but there was no answer to the question and I did not really understand what the comments were hinting at. I would really appreciate just a hint to get me started in the right direction.
Comment: Where have you computed the covariant derivative?
Comment: @TedShifrin I was calculating $\nabla_{e_i} e_1=\Gamma_{i1}^k e_k$ and then applying the second covariant derivative but things got very messy. Also, relating the Christoffel symbols of the conformal metrics gets very messy. It didn't seem like the right way to go
Comment: Then follow my suggestion in that linked question and use the formula for $K$ in an orthogonal parametrization (or even better a conformal parametrization). Differential forms and the calculus if moving frames also gives a superior approach.
Comment: @TedShifrin So following that notation, I tried the calculation and I would have the right answer if $(EG)_u=(EG)_v=0$. Does this follow in orthogonal coordinates?
Comment: No, certainly not. We cannot mind-read. It's not much fun to type, but I suggest you edit your post with the details of your attempt. Perhaps assume the metric is conformally flat ($E=G$) for your first attempt.
Answer: So it turns out I was just doing the computation wrong the whole time. Anyway, I finally got it and figured I would post my solution here as well.
We use orthogonal local coordinates around $p\in M$ so that $g=E(u,v)du^2+G(u,v) dv^2$ and $h=(e^{2w} E) du^2+(e^{2w} G) dv^2$. We use a well-known formula for Gauss curvature in orthogonal coordinates
$$
K=-\frac{1}{2\sqrt{EG}}\left(\frac{\partial}{\partial u}\frac{G_u}{\sqrt{EG}}+\frac{\partial}{\partial v}\frac{E_v}{\sqrt{EG}}\right).
$$
So
\begin{align*}
K_h&=-\frac{1}{2\sqrt{(e^{2w}E)(e^{2w}G)}}\left(\frac{\partial}{\partial u}\frac{(e^{2w} G)_u}{\sqrt{(e^{2w}E)(e^{2w}G)}}+\frac{\partial}{\partial v}\frac{(e^{2w}E)_v}{\sqrt{(e^{2w}E)(e^{2w}G)}}\right) \\&=
-e^{-2w}\frac{1}{2\sqrt{EG}}\left(\frac{\partial}{\partial u}\frac{2w_uG+G_u}{\sqrt{EG}}+\frac{\partial}{\partial v}\frac{2w_vE+E_v}{\sqrt{EG}}\right)\\&=
e^{-2w}K_g-e^{-2w}\frac{1}{\sqrt{EG}}\left(\frac{\partial}{\partial u}\frac{w_uG}{\sqrt{EG}}+\frac{\partial}{\partial v}\frac{w_vE}{\sqrt{EG}}\right).
\end{align*}
Expanding one of these derivative terms yields
\begin{align*}
\frac{\partial}{\partial u}\frac{w_uG}{\sqrt{EG}}&=\frac{\sqrt{EG}(w_{uu} G+w_u G_u)-w_u G \frac{1}{2\sqrt{EG}}(EG)_u}{EG}\\&=
\frac{w_{uu}G}{\sqrt{EG}}+\frac{w_{u}G_u}{\sqrt{EG}}-\frac{w_uG_u}{2\sqrt{EG}}-\frac{w_uE_u G}{2E\sqrt{EG}}\\&=
\frac{w_{uu}G}{\sqrt{EG}}+\frac{w_{u}G_u}{2\sqrt{EG}}-\frac{w_uE_u G}{2E\sqrt{EG}}.
\end{align*}
The other term is symmetric. So
\begin{align*}
\frac{1}{\sqrt{EG}}\left(\frac{\partial}{\partial u}\frac{2w_uG}{\sqrt{EG}}+\frac{\partial}{\partial v}\frac{2w_vE}{\sqrt{EG}}\right)&=
\frac{w_{uu}}{E}+\frac{w_uG_u}{2EG}-\frac{w_uE_u }{2E^2}+\frac{w_{vv}}{G}+\frac{w_vE_v}{2EG}-\frac{w_vG_v }{2G^2}\\&=
g^{uu}w_{uu}-g^{vv}\Gamma_{vv}^u w_u-g^{uu}\Gamma_{uu}^u w_u+g^{vv}w_{vv}-g^{uu}\Gamma_{uu}^v w_v-g^{vv}\Gamma_{vv}^v w_v\\&=
g^{ij}w_{ij}-g^{ij} \Gamma_{ij}^k \partial_k w=\text{tr}_g (\nabla^2 w)=\Delta u.
\end{align*}
Plugging this back in above, we have $K_h=e^{-2w}(K_g-\Delta_g w)$ as desired.
Comment: I'm not checking details, but hallelujah!

Gauss curvature of conformal metrics


I don't know how these files got in my photos

Question: I get photos saved in a folder named files, I don't know the people in the pictures . there not photos I took ! How could they have gotten into my phone? and details show /storage/emulated/0/Android/data/com.littleengine.wordpal/files/ .......plz help.
Answer: This seems to be the Data asociated to an app called World Wars maybe some other (you can google "com.littleengine.wordpal" to know what aplication is, that is the package name), it's possible those photos are there because are saved data from gameplays or other players avatars, in this case there is not too much to worry about, except for the space of course. If you don't trust the source of the application i recommento to uninstall it, but if you installed it from the Play Store there are almost sure not problem at all.
Anyway, if there is not such application like World Wars or any other, find that folder with the pics and delete it, there'll no be problem, if the folder appears again, consider to install an antivirus or something
Comment: Google Play as origin != safe apps.
Comment: It's true, Google Play =! safe apps, but if Google finds out that an app contains malware, bye bye, app!
Comment: If you take a closer look at the application, you can see that these pictures in the particular folder are profile pictures from the app. So the app uses this so-called folder `files` as a temp folder. If you are using this game regularly and you are annoyed by these pictures in your gallery app, you should exclude this folder.


Density of smooth functions in Sobolev spaces on manifolds

Question: Hebbey defines the Sobolev space of functions on a Riemannian manifold (M,g) as the completion of smooth functions under the Sobolev norm. However, I have seen (elsewhere) that Sobolev spaces have been defined as the collection of locally integrable functions whose weak derivatives (w.r.t to the Levi-Civita connection) are in L^p. For compact manifolds, or for manifolds with bounded geometry and positive injectivity radius (like $\mathbb{R}^n$), I can see why these two definitions are equivalent. Are they equivalent for general noncompact manifolds?
Comment: Even for bounded domains in the Euclidean space this is a tricky issue if thd boundary is not smooth. For this case I recommend Mazy'a's books.
Comment: For bounded domains in Euclidean space, this is true (Evans' book). It gets tricky when one wants to approximate by smooth functions that smooth upto the boundary.
Comment: I am only vaguely familiar with definition of Sobolev spaces on manifolds via patching local definitions. Thus it seems to me, that if you can prove the density locally, you have it also globally.
Answer: According to pages 14 and 15 of:

MR2343536  Reviewed Eichhorn, Jürgen Global analysis on open manifolds. Nova Science Publishers, Inc., New York, 2007. x+644 pp. ISBN: 978-1-60021-563-6; 1-60021-563-7 (Reviewer: Yuri A. Kordyukov)

The poof is given in:

MR1066741  Reviewed Eichhorn, Jürgen Elliptic differential operators on noncompact manifolds. Seminar Analysis of the Karl-Weierstrass-Institute of Mathematics, 1986/87 (Berlin, 1986/87), 4–169, Teubner-Texte Math., 106, Teubner, Leipzig, 1988. (Reviewer: Steven Rosenberg)

The results are:
The closure of smooth functions with compact support, the closure of smooth function in the Sobolev space, and the Sobolev space are all different in general on open Riemannian manifolds. If the manifold is of bounded geometry (of order $k$) then all these spaces coincide up to Sobolev order $k+2$. This holds even for sections of vector bundles.
Thus on compact manifolds all these spaces coincide also.


How to create a single line model (SLM), multi line model (MLM) and/or IBIS model of an interconnect for simulation?

Question: I want to create a single line model, multi line model and/or IBIS model of an interconnect for simulation in Hyperlynx software but can't understand how to do it when the manufacturer has given no related parameters whatsoever. The interconnect is this one:
TST shrouded connector (Samtec)
Comment: They have some HyperLynx models for connectors more geared/intended for high speed, e.g [TFM](https://wwws.samtec.com/technical-specifications/Default.aspx?SeriesMaster=TFM&DisplayOption=Electrical). For TST it looks like you'll have email firstname.lastname@example.com or fill out their [on-line form](https://wwws.samtec.com/technical-specifications/SpiceIBISRequest.aspx).
Answer: It's a connector: -

And therefore a very basic component. You should be able to easily estimate inter-pin capacitance from dimensions. Ditto pin inductances and depending on the plating material you should be able to calculate resistances.
But, it's only worth doing if you are sending signals through the pins greater than about 50 MHz.
Alternatively ask Samtec - they are normally fairly amenable to questions like this. This document looks like it contains some information that will be useful.
Comment: Can you pass me some link to documentation which has formulas and methodologies to calculate inter-pin cap, induct .etc. based on plating and dimensions? Is there a book or published paper on it?


I installed another SMS application, now I get notified twice

Question: I have a Google Nexus One with Android 2.2. I didn't like the default SMS-application so I installed Handcent-SMS. Now when I get an SMS, I get notified twice. How can I fix this?
Answer: You can turn off notification in your stock Messaging application by going into the settings dialog  (Menu button -> Settings) and unchecking Notifications
Comment: Beat me to it, eh?
Answer: The clearest answer I've seen is here: http://www.droidforums.net/forum/droid-applications/8328-how-guide-disable-double-notifications-when-using-handcent-sms.html
Quoting:

Open the "messaging" from the app drawer
Push the "menu" button(the 2nd button from left on the bottom of your Droid
Click SETTINGS
Scroll down and UNCHECK "Notifications"
To futher disable the mssaging app you can UNCHECK " Auto-Retrieve"(this prevents the "Messaging" App from even downloading messages.
Exit the app. Rejoice. Live long and Prosper. Yay!
Comment: Did not know about Auto-Retrieve. Thought that was what enabled all apps to get the sms. Oy vei.
Answer: Open the default messaging application, click the menu button and then Settings. Scroll down and disable Notifications.


What tools can I use to download videos from Youtube and Vimeo on Ubuntu 12.04?

Question: I am using 12.04 LTS. Can anyone suggest a simple software that can download videos from Youtube and Vimeo?
Answer: youtube-dl
youtube-dl is a small command-line program to download videos from YouTube, Vimeo and a few more sites. It is included in the Ubuntu repositories, so you may install it by typing:
sudo apt-get install youtube-dl

vimeo-dl
vimeo-dl is a stand-alone command-line program to download videos from Vimeo. It is not included in the Ubuntu repositories, therefore you must download and save the script somewhere and make it executable by typing:
chmod 775