How do I tell Firefox to only keep persistent cookies from sites I want?

Question: Is there a way to tell Firefox to only keep persistent cookies from sites I want?  I don't mind "session cookies" from all sites, but persistent cookies, I only want from a handful of sites to "keep me logged in".
Answer: You can pick and choose which sites you want to keep cookies from or want to block from ever getting.

Tools > Options > Privacy

The Options dialog will appear. This is where you set your cookies preferences.

To allow cookies to be set in the first place, check the following box:

☑ Accept cookies from sites

To keep all cookies from sticking, essentially turning them into session cookies (ones that won't be there next time you restart Firefox), select the option that will destroy them when you exit the browser:

Keep until: I close Firefox

To allow persistent cookies, ones that will be there next time Firefox is started, click Exceptions...

Type in the domain of the site(s) you want to always accept and keep cookies from. Click Allow for each.
If instead you would like to prevent certain sites from ever storing cookies, click Block.
When you've finished entering all the sites, click Close, then OK and you're done.
Comment: This appears not to work when I use Firefox-Sync. See this question: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/117805/how-do-i-set-up-firefox-to-keep-only-cookies-from-select-sites-when-i-use-firef
Answer: The CookieSafe allows you do this easily from the status bar. Set it to 'Deny Cookies Globally', then allow the sites you want.
Comment: Or CS Lite (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5207).  Not as many features but it doesn't noticeably slow down the browser for me like CookieSafe (probably due to my large list of cookie exceptions).
Answer: After setting the default behavior to deny cookies as explained in other answers, I use Cookie Button in the Status Bar extension.
It's one of the more comfortable ways to control cookies permission with a single click and yet it's very unobtrusive.
Answer: The selected answer still works in 2017, looks a bit different.
You can do this (see screenshots of Firefox Options) Clear cookies when closing Firefox
screenshot 1
You can whitelist your trusted sites using Exceptions Whitelist trusted sites
screenshot 2
If you want to sync these settings across Firefox on different devices you can use a Firefox account (I can't add the 3rd link as I'm newbie on this site).
More details here Mozilla support of actions to take if Firefox is not clearing your cookies as expected.
Answer: Tools - Options - Privacy - Choose custom policy
change your setting how you want them, you can add exceptions for sites you want or don't want. The flexibility is quite powerful.
Answer: There are a number of cookie plugins that allow you to do this. I use one at home (forget the name) and have my default set to "deny", only allowing cookies on sites I like.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search?q=cookie&cat=all
Answer: Cookie Culler is another way to have unwanted cookies deleted when you close Firefox.


Any way to get a fresh ubuntu desktop without re-installing?

Question: I don't want to wipe my hard drive. I just want to get rid of all the extra software I've installed over time, and return to a prisitine, default system.
Comment: You might not need an actual reinstall at all. If you just remove the things you know you don't want and install xubuntu-desktop, you might find that performance perks up a bit. I'm not saying you *shouldn't* reinstall, just that you don't necessarily need to.
Answer: I do this occasionally, using aptitude. Aptitude is a console ("old-skool") tool that's powerful but a little tricky to get to use. It's like vim or emacs, when Ubuntu Software Center is like Gedit or AbiWord :-) Nevertheless, there's a good way to achieve your goal in aptitude, so if you're willing to give it a try, this might work for you.
First install aptitude:
sudo apt-get install aptitude

You might want to read the docs for aptitude. If you don't, you'll be following my directions below blind, and could fly into a mountainside that leaves your system unbootable, in which case you'll need to try one of the "careful reinstall" options where you do a fresh install trying to preserve your personal data along the way. The docs for aptitude are at:
zless /usr/share/doc/aptitude/README

Now, go into aptitude. I'll tell you a series of keys to press. The case (upper or lower) is significant: U is different to u.
sudo aptitude

u
    (this updates the package database. press enter  to clear any warnings that popup afterwards)
arrow down to the section called "Installed packages"
M
    (this marks every package as automatically installed, so it schedules all of them for removal. don't quit now or you'll be in trouble)
/
    (this opens a search dialog)
ubuntu-desktop [ENTER]
+(this tells aptitude you want to install ubuntu-desktop and all dependencies)
[ENTER] (goes into the details for the ubuntu-desktop package)
arrow down to the "Recommends" line
+ (tells aptitude to install all the recommended packages too)
g ("go" - will tell you what it wants to do)
g (confirms that you want to do it, and gets going)
That should leave you fully up to date, with a relatively clean, minimal desktop system.
If you get stuck, hit ? for help in aptitude. You may need to use a or z to scroll up and down in various places. I did say it was old-skool :-) But once you know how to use it, you can get a lot of detailed package management done quickly.
Answer: You can reinstall without losing your data if you follow the instructions here.
Answer: To simply get a "fresh desktop" the easiest way would be to create a new user that always starts off with a clean and default desktop. If there is still the one or other package in your way it's probably the least time consuming thing to just purge these single packages.
Removing software you installed or performing a reinstall of Ubuntu only makes sense if the amount of harddisk space occupied is significant or if many of the apps are buggy and affect the system performance.
Before you proceed with deleting or reinstalling I recommend you check first if your system performance will really benefit from doing so.
Comment: @Tchalvak, You can then remove the older user account, and then create another new user account of the former name. This is actually cool
Comment: That's certainly the simplest way (though getting used to a new username would be unfortunate and all)
Comment: Hah, that is tricky indeed.  I may have to try that myself to get that "new computer" smell/speed.
Answer: I see if he installs it and doesn't format the installer will spare his home folder.
In any case the two partition recommendation is still valid (os and data should be separated)
Answer: There is an easier and less intricate way of achieving Mark's solution.
sudo apt-get install aptitude
sudo aptitude markauto '~i !~M !ubuntu-desktop'

The former command installs aptitude.
The latter command says "Mark every manually installed package that is not ubuntu-desktop as automatically installed". aptitude will then interpret all packages that are not required or recommended by ubuntu-desktop as unnecessary dependencies, and remove them.
Comment: it wants to remove everything!! :P


Editing a list that can be filtered while editing. Save edits that are not visible?

Question: We have a long list with accounts for which users can set permissions through checkboxes in this list.
But users can also filter the list (say with a search query).
But what if a user sets permissions and then filters the list so that the persmissions for that item are not visible anymore? Should that invisible permission be saved or not? Or is there a nicer UI pattern?
Answer: The invisible permissions must be saved. Because from the user perspective , the user will go on giving permission and at some point if the user cant find a particular name he/she might resort to filtering and this should not cause the already given permissions to be lost.
Alternative design:
You can use chosen plugin to do this in a more efficient way. The multiple select option in this helps user to see all the selected options thus far at one place. User can keep adding to this list , and then apply filter as and when needed
The design will look like this


Site going low in google page search

Question: my site was ranking almost around 1-2 link 1 month ago for major of the post search terms like "alan walker - Faded Mp3" but now when i search for my latest post or my old post the site is not even showing in the google search result.
Answer: There are many reasons as to why this is happening. Not knowing the specifics I will create a basic checklist of the things you should start looking at:

Website has been blocked accidentally via robots.txt.
You have been penalised. Look for any warning messages in Search Console.
Search for your site in Google using the operator site:example.com to check if your website has been de-indexeed, if not
Review how Google sees your website by looking at the homepage cache.
Your website has been hacked.
Your website is being attacked with negative SEO (Some people believe this is not a real issue).
The content of your page has change (hacked again?)
The website has been redesigned
The WebSite has been migrated into another server or platform.
The website or a particular page is currently in violation of google guidelines.
You have accidentally applied a canonical tag pointing to another site.
There is a bad hreflang implementation
The website is not crawlable for any other particular reason, like Ajax generated content or bad JavaScript code.
Google has updated their index and new players had come to play.
Comment: THanks so much for the response..  But i checked all of the points but there is no problem like that..  Site -  mp3chest.com. PLEASE HELP
Comment: @Tanish you need to give it sometime before Google index your new posts/pages, and even longer to start ranking. Be patience.

Site going low in google page search


Volkswagen Jetta Oil Pan Change

Question: So recently I hit a speed bump and cracked a small section on the oil pan. I ordered one and received it. The problem is getting off the oil pan. On opposite sides there are about 6-7 screws which my friend and I have taken off. But the difficulty comes while trying to access two specific screws which are at an impossible angle. The thing is that the screws are not completely in line, which makes it very hard to screw them out from a 90 degree angle. How can I get these screws out? Will I have to use a specific battery operated tool or normal husky work tools? It's  a 2001 Jetta with a 2.0 4 cylinder engine.
Comment: It looks like you were trying to post pictures in your post. If you will comment on this post with links to the pictures I will attach them to your post
Comment: Also you will want to edit your post to include model year and engine size, as well as transmission type
Answer: Swivels, extensions, shallow sockets, and a ratchet.
Depending on what is blocking access you may have to remove/unbolt something else or lift the engine slightly to gain access.
In this video he had to remove the belt from his AC compressor and move it slightly. Not sure what year of Jetta in the video though.
Comment: Thanks man luckily my friend and I didn't have to do that much. We finally got access to the screws by using a wobble head. It was a bit tedious, but it was a job well done.
Comment: The video states in the beginning it is 2000 (first year of that Mk. IV generation, same as OP), just different engine (TDI).
Comment: @theUg ah I checked it at work, I had the volume off.

Volkswagen Jetta Oil Pan Change


When do I freeze tamales?

Question: I don't want to be ridiculous but I'm uncertain at what point I can freeze tamales.  Do I steam them and then freeze or do I assemble and then freeze?  I would like to make a large batch and freeze since they are time consuming.  Also, when they come out of the freezer then what?  Any help is greatly appreciated.
Answer: I would steam them, let them cool, then freeze them.  If you buy them in large quantites from a vendor or from a fund raiser or something, they come already steamed.
As for prep, I would think the microwave is the best answer, as that ought to keep them nice and moist while they are cooking.  Steaming them again would probably work, but might take a while.  And while I haven't tried it, I suspect an oven might dry them out too much.
Comment: Steaming them again to thaw works quite well.  However, you have to be careful not to over-steam them, or they'll disintegrate.
Answer: In response to when you should freeze your tamales; I have been making tamales with my family since I was a child. We assembly our tamales and put a dozen of them in a freezer bag. We freeze them before we cook them. We usually make them two or three weeks in advance. The morning that we cook them we set them on the kitchen counter to thaw. We place them on towels, as they thaw they drip water. We cook about 4 dozen at a time. We steam them in a big pot with a steamer at the bottom of the pot. I don't know what it is called, but it is a big disk with holes it in that fits in the bottom of the pot. We steam them for 2 - 3 hours. You know they are done when you take one out and let it set for about 5 minutes to cool. It is done when it pulls away from the corn husk easily and is firm. We have keep them in the freezer uncooked for up to a year! They usually don't last that long because we eat them! However, this year mom had some hiding in her freezer and we cooked them. They were great. To reheat after they are cooked, just steam them again for a little while.
Answer: The best way to reheat tamales either frozen or unfrozen is to wet a paper towel and wrap it around the tamale husk, making like a package. Mike for a minute if unfrozen. This way the masa stays nice and moist and never dries out. As far as freezing is concerned, I don't freeze them unsteamed because the whole process is kind of damp or wet and they could get freezer burn, I like to steam them first, thoroughly cool them and have them nice and dry, and then slip them into a Freezer Ziplock bag.
Answer: I would take the same tack as enchiladas; assemble then freeze.  Use a solid bag and a heated water bath to warm filing, then steam to get tamales where you want them with respect to the shell.

When do I freeze tamales?


an urn containing 5 green and 2 red balls

Question: An urn contains 5 green and 2 red balls. One ball is drawn at random and its colour is recorded. This selected ball is then replaced in the urn and 3 more balls of the same colour are added to the urn. Next, another ball is drawn from the urn and its colour is recorded.
A) Find a suitable sample space for that random experiment and assign probabilities to sample points.
B) Find the probability distribution table of the random variable X representing the number of red balls among the two selected ones. Draw the bar chart of X.
C) Draw the cumulative distribution function F(x).
what are the answers for b and c?
Comment: The answers to B), C) follow from A).
Answer: Sample space $\Omega = \{GG,GR, RG,RR\}$.
A)


Jesus cried: my God, why did they hear Elijah?

Question: The bible states the meaning of Jesus' words on the cross. Why then did some people take it as calling for Elijah?
Comment: I think there is significance in Jesus' crying "My God, my God" and not "My Father, my Father." Since while he was on the cross Jesus quoted from Psalm 22, you could say he cried "My God" simply because the word "God" was the word David used in the psalm. I suggest, however, it also could have been because God was the God of Jesus' HUMANITY, not his DEITY. "I and my Father are one," Jesus said. We go too far by saying the Father abandoned Jesus on the cross as he bore our sins, but the preternatural & symbolic darkness and earthquake at Calvary bore witness to the awfulness of sin to our God.
Answer: Jesus exact words were "Eli, Eli, lama sabacthani." (Matt 27:46)
Eli-jah (literally YHWH - jah is God (El) of mine (i)) would be shortened as "Eli".  Since they are the same word, in the bustle of a crowd, it is not at all unlikely that this "prophet" would be thought to be calling Elijah.
Remember, just because the words were in Psalm 22, doesn't mean the mean the people would have been assuming Jesus' first thought would be to quote a Scripture.
Pronounced "A-Lee" it sounds like a short name for "A-Lai-yah"
Comment: You're making my answer better, and I'm learning. Please *dont* leave me alone!
Comment: There are some text variants here, but the ESV/NA28 are [as I quote here](http://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/q/13568/3555) - Matthew using *eli* but Mark with the added omega (and shortened eta-->epsilon) *eloi*. The latter I understand to be the Aramaic from the Hebrew *eli* ("my God"). The way that's written in Greek *ελωι*, there's no way I see to elide the omega (omegas don't like that!). Can you cite a source for your last paragraph giving that pronunciation?
Comment: Thank you. Could I also suggest that you just eliminate Mark from this answer and stick to Matthew? As was the focus of that question I linked, there is difficulty establishing "Jesus exact words" here since modern critical texts have them different between Mark and Matthew, and getting from the Markan version to Eliyahu is harder. And now I promise to leave you alone!


Journeys from Gujarat in India to Dare es Salaam in what was then, Tanganyika in 1925 and 1948

Question: I am researching a journey for a novel where my character travels from Gujarat in India to Dare es Salaam in what was then, Tanganyika. The journey happens in 1925 and then again in 1948. Does anyone know of any descriptive accounts; where the ship might have stopped, conditions?
Comment: Welcome to History:SE. What has your research shown you so far? You might find it helpful to review the site [tour](https://history.stackexchange.com/tour) and [Help Centre](https://history.stackexchange.com/help) and, in particular, [ask].
Comment: The traditional trade route from East Africa to India followed the coast (Aden, Southern Persia, down the West coast of India). But by the time you are asking about there were presumably ships that could take the direct route across the Indian Ocean. Perhaps someone knows more.
Answer: A large number of Indians came to East Africa from Gujarat in the 19th and early 20th centuries. A smaller number came to modern Tanzania than to Uganda or Kenya.
The reason for the larger number to the other two countries was the importation of laborers for the building of the Kenyan Ugandan railroad. The ones who went to Tanzania were mostly traders, which is to say that they travelled in relative comfort ("business class" if not first class) on the ships of the time.


Importance of call.value()()

Question: Why call.value()() is used in smart contracts instead of send?
Can someone help me to understand importance of call.value()()?
Comment: Your question was already answered here : https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/8270/what-does-soliditys-call-function-mean
Comment: I got the first two point but third point is not yet clear. How can we call the function without knowing it's signature with the help of call()? In the example that you have mentioned, we are still taking the help of function's signature.
One more thing, is it at all possible not to know the function's signature? Since the contract is deployed why the function's signature is not visible?
Please help me to understand these points regarding call().
Comment: Well, I suppose it's an edge case and rarely used, but for example, let's say a dapp gives you some data to send to their contract if you want to, let's say, register your address. They give you the data in hex, so you don't know anything about the function called. Then, if you want to whitelist a contract instead of a "normal address", it's possible by using the call function, passing the data they gave to you.
Answer: I don't have enough reputation to comment voluntarily so I will answer here.
You may want to use call for several, it depends on your needs, although I don't see alot of them.

the function you call is payable and you want to send ETH as well.
you want to set the gas "given" to the function (21k gas default limit)
you do not know the function's signature in the called contract, so you use call with data (in bytes)

Edit : Here's an example.
contract Called{
    uint public myuint;

    function set(uint _var) {
        myuint = _var;
    }

    function get() view returns (uint){
        return myuint;
    }
}

interface Called{
    function set(uint);
    function get() view returns (uint);
}

contract Caller {

    Called public called_address;

    function set_address(address _addy) {
        called_address = Called(_addy);
    }

    function set(uint256 _var) {
        called_address.set(_var);
    }

    function set_call(address _called, uint256 _var) {
        _called.call(bytes4(sha3("set(uint256)")), _var);
    }
}

Answer: EDIT Dec 2019: call.value()() should now be used for transferring ether.
See:
Is transfer() still safe after the Istanbul update (2300 gas limitation)?

Importance of call.value()()


I inherited cash and am deciding whether to save, pay off debt or invest

Question: I have $30,000 I recently inherited and am trying to figure out the smart thing to do with it - pay down mortgage, pay off a HELOC, save for education (2 kids who will be starting college in 1 and 3 years), invest in stocks.
Comment: What state and country are you in?  Different states in the U.S. offer various college savings plans.  Different jurisdictions have different tax laws.
Comment: Do you what colleges your children are interested in attending?  Have you asked the colleges' financial aid offices how they calculate need-based financial aid?  Some forms of savings are ignored when calculating financial aid.
Comment: What are your interest rates on the losns?
Comment: 3.75 on the heloc, 3.18 on the mortgage. Owe about 140000 on mortgage, will pay off in about 6 years, owe 30k on the heloc. Live in Maryland.
Answer: Just follow Dave Ramsey's steps. Save your baby emergency fund of $1000, pay off the HELOC, save 3 - 6 months emergency fund. After going in that order, invest 15% for retirement, save for college and put all the extra towards the mortgage.
Answer: You should be doing everything at once. You can save for retirement while still having debt. One thing I would look out for is the education. Take the airplane advice and put your own oxygen mask on before your kids. Paying for their education will mean nothing if they need to support you later on. This isn't a question so much of what to do with the money as it is how to apply it towards reaching your goals. If you don't have a retirement fund, first thing you should do is maximize your annual IRA contribution. I strongly recommend a Vanguard Target Date fund.


When is stacking items like Rod of Ages inappropriate in LoL?

Question: Is stacking items, like Rod of Ages, considered bad gameplay?
Answer: I wouldn't recommend stacking RoA on any characters really. In order for the item to get to its full potential, you have to have it for 10 minutes. Thus if you obtain it by 10 minutes, at 20 minutes you will have it maxed. So if you get a second at 15 minutes (which would be very fast) it will be ready at 25 minutes. In the time it takes for a second RoA to mature you could have beefed up your armor AND health with something like Sunfire Cape, or your armor AND mana with something like Frozen Heart. RoA is a great item, but other items give benefits that it just doesn't.
Comment: Singed gets 1/4 of his mana as health and armor/mr from his ulti.  This is why 2 RoA can work on him (and probably only him).
Comment: I like 2 on Singed sometimes.
Comment: I could see 2, I wouldn't do it but 2 is ok. Antyhing more just becomes kind of a waste though. A huge mana/health pool means nothing with no armor.
Answer: At all times,  you should only ever have one Rod of Ages and it should be bought before you are level 14.  The main reason Rod of Ages helps you is because of an early catalyst which gives hp and mana regen.  Once combined it is still not worth the amount of money invested in it for at least 7min.  The fact that it is so expensive and not worth the inital cost until time has past makes stacking Rod of Ages illogical,  unless you know your game is going to last 2 hours.
Answer: I think if that's all you build, without boots or pure damage/defense, then yes it's bad gameplay. You need to build what you can to win the game. The only people I can see you building more than one Rod of Ages are Singed, or Ryze, as they both benefit largely from everything that RoA gives you.
Answer: RoA gives 60+20=80 Ability Power(AP), 450+180=630 health and 525+200=725 mana for 3035g.
If at this point you're having problem with AP:

Abyssal Scepter gives you 70AP, Magic Resistance (MR) and MR debuff for enemies.
Rylai's scepter give 500 Health plus the slow, plus 80 AP

With health:

Rylai's scepter give 500 Health plus the slow, plus 80 AP
Shoul Shroud provides 520 Health plus cooldown reduction aura and improved mana regeneration

With Mana:

Archangel's staff brings you 45 AP + 3% of your mana in AP and the passive will grow your mana pool drastically
Deathfire graps provides 60 AP, mana regeneration plus damage burst

So if you look correctly, all these items can bring you more than the initial Rod of Ages bonuses you could be looking for. By the way, RoA is efficient only 10 minutes after you bought it.
In conclusion, I can't find any game where it would be more efficient to stack RoA rather than getting other items. Even Vlad who gains bonuses in AP for health bonus and vice-versa has better object to go for.
Comment: Archangels Staff gives bonus AP based on your total mana, not your AP
Comment: Yea you're right @ChrisRasys. I meant : 3% of your mana in AP. Missed some words, thanks.
Comment: I have never seen a vlad build ROA(nor any other mana-less AP champions).
Comment: @Jay, indeed. What I point here is that even his passive does not make the stacking worth it.
Answer: AP/tank:

Nasus
Nunu
Amumu

Are the only 3 champs I could see this working for. You will also need boots for all champs and Lich Bane for Nasus.
Answer: No, though it depends on the situation. It isn't cost efficient in the sense that there are other items that can develop good synergy.
Answer: I would say it is ok to get maybe two RoA if you are playing a character like sling. However, you've got to remember that they take 10 minutes to mature. Also, if their AD or bruiser/jungler figures out that you are stacking ROA or Warmog's for that matter... they can just build a Madred's Bloodrazor, and then your HP items would be working against you.
Comment: There is no champion named "Sling," do you mean "Singed"?
Answer: I don't think it's bad gameplay, I think it's very good.
I just recently started doing this with Ryze, because Ryze's damage is based off his mana. This item, immediately - not just after 10 minutes - is the most mana you can get from a single item. So most mana available + health + ap for some extra damage? Yes please.
Answer: This is for season 3.
I've considered 2 RoAs (not tried it yet) on AP/AS Teemo depending on the game. Say if I'm mid vs Annie: I need HP to counter her burst, since I can't get useful early magic resist.
Then, with CDR (Nashors+blue/DFG), you are spending 125 mana every 19 seconds for the mushrooms, on top of using Q and W to move around/harass/farm. That's a lot of mana burn.
Thoughts.

A Nashor's Tooth can't keep up the mana regen
The HP removes some of the "glass cannon" problem
Teemo doesn't really proc Rylais except with Q but this isn't that spammable
Wit's end isn't as useful as Malady in S3 for MR instead
Banshees (also built from Catalyst) isn't an offensive/early item
Answer: Generally speaking, it's not efficient to stack items with unique benefits because these unique benefits don't stack.  Because a Rod of Ages has no unique benefits, stacking them is ok provided the champion can make good use of the stats.
Answer: For extremely late game, two rod of ages, seraph's embrace, boots, void staff, rabadons on any champ with atleast 250-300 base mana, for a champion such as ahri, ziggs, or gragas, you'll end up with 3.6k health with over 900 ap + magic pen.
Comment: So yes it's bad gameplay or no it's not bad gameplay?  Could you add a conclusion to your post that ties it in with answering the question?


How is Iron Man communicating with the others on Titan?

Question: In Avengers: Infinity War Star Lord is implanted with a translator. But how are Iron Man and Spiderman able to communicate with others on Titan...
Comment: Just speculation, but if most people in the 'wider universe' has translators (2-way), including Drax and Mantis?
Answer: As @iandotkelly mentions, Drax and Mantis are very likely to have universal translators as well. They are interstellar travelers part of a multi-species team, it is probably safe to assume that all the Guardians (except Groot) have translators. Groot doesn't have one, and this may be due to him being a plant based being rather than the more...fleshy teammates, as translators are implanted beneath the skin.
Comment: Groot does more or less seem able to understand everyone just fine.  His failures to do so seem to be more indicative of him being stupid, or simply thinking in such a completely different way that it's hard for him to grasp the concepts (even if he is otherwise reasonably smart). There are multiple scenes where characters have a conversation with him without talking in groot.


Making entire scene fade to grayscale

Question: When the player loses all of their lives, I want the entire game screen to go grayscale, but not stop updating immediately. I'd also prefer it fade to grayscale instead of suddenly lose all color. Everything I've found so far is either about taking a screenshot and making it grayscale, or making a specific texture grayscale. Is there a way to change the entire playing field and all objects within to grayscale without iterating through everything?
Answer: The easiest way to do this is to create a shader for it (See code below). Draw everything to a render target, then use the shader to draw that to your back buffer
In your game code record when the player dies, then in subsequent renders interpolate a shader parameter between 1 (full colour) and 0 (full grey-scale) according to
CurrentTime-DeadTime / FadeTime
float ColourAmount;
Texture coloredTexture;

sampler coloredTextureSampler = sampler_state
{
    texture = <coloredTexture>;
};

float4 GreyscalePixelShaderFunction(float2 textureCoordinate : TEXCOORD0) : COLOR0
{
    float4 color = tex2D(coloredTextureSampler, textureCoordinate);
    float3 colrgb = color.rgb;
    float greycolor = dot(colrgb, float3(0.3, 0.59, 0.11));

    colrgb.rgb = lerp(dot(greycolor, float3(0.3, 0.59, 0.11)), colrgb, ColourAmount);

    return float4(colrgb.rgb, color.a);
}

technique Grayscale
{
    pass GreyscalePass
    {
        PixelShader = compile ps_2_0 GreyscalePixelShaderFunction();
    }
}

The reason for the 0.3, 0.59 and 0.11 is because the human eye doesn't treat colours equally, those values give a better greyscale image.
Comment: Here's one reference for the values which supports the Valve numbers but lists both. http://www.poynton.com/notes/colour_and_gamma/ColorFAQ.html#RTFToC9
Comment: There's a question about the greyscale coefficients on stackoverflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5311774/why-does-greyscale-work-the-way-it-does
Comment: A while back I was converting rgb to gray but could not find a reliable source so I just used 1.0/3,1.0/3,1.0/3 ... Can you provide a source for the numerical constants 0.2,0.59,0.11?
Comment: I have been trying to find where I got the code from, but haven't been able to find it. Here is a [Valve Developer page](https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Shader#Example_pixel_shader) that uses different (but vaguely similar) values (0.222, 0.707, 0.071).
Comment: i can confirm this shader worked for me in XNA 4.0
Answer: EDIT
After thinking about it, if you are not putting a tint on anything, but using the graphics original colors you could just have (like I state down below) all your colors of drawn objects set to a declared Color variable set to white. (Color NoTint = Color.White;) and then Lerp that if player lives is equal to zero. Every object drawn with the NoTint Color will slowly change (according to your interpolation rate mentioned below) to whatever you are Lerping it to.
However if you do have different tints on different objects, the below foreach loop might work.
End Edit
In my limited knowledge I would try this: Declare the colors you use when drawing specific objects, ex. Color catColor = Color.Brown, then add all of your games colors to a list.
public static Color catColor = Color.Brown;
List<Color> colorList = new List<Color>(){ catColor }; // and other colors
float interpolation = 0f;
float interpolationRate = .01f;
.
.
.
if(playerLives == 0)
{
   interpolation += interpolationRate;
   if (interpolation >= 1)
      {interpolation = 1;}

   foreach(Color c in colorList)
   {
      Color.Lerp(c, Color.Gray, interpolation);
   }
}

You can even do this for items you draw with no tint and Lerp the Color.White to a Color.Gray.  (name that something like Color NoTint = Color.White, and put that on all your drawn objects)
There is probably a better way, regardless I hope this helps!
Comment: -1 This would fade the entire screen to one solid colour, not turn it greyscale. Greyscale measures a colour by its brightness (with the colour perceiving different colours as having different brightnesses), it isn't just halfway between a colour and grey (which still has colour).
Comment: Excellent. I hope someone else learns from this as I did. Thanks!

Making entire scene fade to grayscale


Fraud detection on hotmail from Simplenews Newsletter

Question: I send newsletters from my Drupal-7 website using Simplenews newsletter module.
But when a user has hotmail, the mail comes with a flag "Be careful. This sender is not approved by our controls for fraud detection."
I googled this and I saw that it has to do something with SPF but I don't understand what this is and what steps do I have to do to fix this issue.
Is there an option from administrator or a line of code I can use?
Thanks in advance!
Answer: There are a few steps you can also carry out by looking here How can I prevent my mail from being classified as spam?. It includes setting up Domain Keys, SPF etc.
You can also refer to some steps for Microsoft here How to prevent email sent from drupal from going into spam box.
Answer: It comes from your host. If it has been used for spam before, there's not much you can easily do.
I highlight "easily".
Set up smtp with Google for $5/month and save yourself the heartache.


How to Maintain Muscle During a Layoff

Question: I've quit the gym due to my college exams. It will take like 3 months before I go back. Please give tips on maintaining muscle mass. I do have access to body weight exercises and if there is anyway to maintain the weight that I used to lift please do tell.
Comment: Go ahead and do those bodyweight exercises. Whatever you do will help.
Comment: Have a look at something like the recommended routine on http://reddit.com/r/bodyweightfitness It's a pretty good resource for bodyweight stuff.
Answer: Don't underestimate calisthenics.
Find an intense body-weight training program and keep up with the right nutrition.
It's entirely likely you'll even gain muscle as it sounds like it will be an entirely new form of training for you.
(paid program: Athlean Xero
find tons of free routines and ideas by "youtubing":
calisthenics/body-weight programs)
If you've got exams coming up don't drop your exercise. It'll help keep you energized and positive to rock those tests.
Edit
Another good resource for calisthenics - Mark Lauren, You are your own gym.
Comment: I agree with this answer, calisthenics is a great way to train (even if you do have time to go to the gym). I would suggest thenx on youtube if you want inspiration and guides on how to start doing calisthenics instead of payed programs. It's also very important to understand learning calisthenics takes a lot of time, you won't be doing a proper front lever or planche in 3 months time.
Comment: Calisthenics is definitely good when you can't train at the gym (even at the gym I concentrate on body weight exercises), but I think OP should explain more about his current workouts and how much muscle mass he actually has to maintain, as he states he wants to maintain the mass he uses to "lift".
Answer: I sometimes have to spend months away from a gym, and you will lose muscle mass and strength if you were training with heavy weights: there's no way around it. Your body adapts to the challenge and if there's not as much resistance then it doesn't need to keep all that expensive muscle tissue alive.
But you can mitigate the loss and you can make it so that when you get back to a gym you're not starting from zero. Even just keeping the discipline and routine locked in is critical.

Eat protein, and don't let your diet suffer.
Get a set of rings, and if you can a 53lb kettlebell. Armed with those you can do lunges, pullups, snatches, suitcase deadlifts, dips, swings, and presses. That an an ab wheel can fit in a milk crate, can all be had for under $100 USD (in 2018) brand new and will last decades.

It's also a great opportunity to focus on things like plyometrics and pistol squats. A lot of single leg stuff tends to not happen in a gym but you can use your gym-less time to work on mobility and strength on both sides of your body.

How to Maintain Muscle During a Layoff


Truck won't start with key, but will remote start

Question: 1996 chevy suburban 1500 4/4 5.7 liter vortec ... My truck won't start when I turn the key. I get nothing like its not getting juice. But when I use a test light it has juice on the starter. So when I take my test light to the crank fuse and then turn it over it starts and runs fine. When I turn it off, it does the same thing ... Any ideas what could be going on? ... confused.
Comment: I have edited your question to hopefully make it more clear. If this does not adequately describe what is going on, please edit it yourself and make it more clear.
Comment: When you turn the key on, does the dash light up? Do you have access to the accessories?
Answer: There's two power wires going to the starter. The big one is always on, and the little one is controlled by the key switch/remote start system. So, measure power at the little wire; my guess is that you don't get any power there while the key's in the start position.
I think the next thing I would do is find the point in the wiring where the remote start system is connected to the start signal wire. This might take some legwork. I would venture an early guess that it's related to the installation of the remote start system.
If you don't see anything obvious, just keep checking for power from the key switch on the start signal circuit along its length until you find the break.


External Profile Support

Question: I am receiving a warning when I enter CiviCRM which seems to indicate that I have something called "external profile support" set.  Where do I find this option enabled?   I have looked but cannot find it.  I would appreciate an emailed answer if that is possible.
Answer: It's in Administer menu » System Settings » Misc, and it's labeled "Accept profile submissions from external sites".
That's a little obtuse, but most system warnings have a link on the System Status page, at Administer menu » Administration Console » System Status.  See screenshot:

External Profile Support


How to Install Free Lets Encrypt SSL Certificate on GoDaddy Managed WordPress Hosting?

Question: I'm posting this question here along with an answer for reference in case anyone else is wondering how to install free SSL certificates from Let's Encrypt on GoDaddy Managed WordPress plans. The answer below is not 100% complete as I was unable to get it working 100% at the very end with certificate generation most likely because I was trying this on a Windows machine. You may have better luck working through the steps on a linux machine.
Comment: Welcome to Webmasters!
Answer:
Install ssfhs or a FUSE (filesystem in user space) type of tool that allows you to mount remote file systems via SSH. You can use sshfs-win for Windows or possibly FUSE for macOS but I did this on Windows.
Open your Managed WordPress dashboard and locate your SSL credentials:

Open a command terminal on your local computer and execute the following command to mount the remote file system to your local machine:

Mac/Linux:
sshfs <username godaddy>@www.<domain>:/home/<username godaddy>/public_html/<domain> /tmp/mnt -o uid=1000 -o gid=1000 -o allow_other
sudo ./letsencrypt-auto certonly --webroot -w /tmp/mnt --agree-tos --redirect --duplicate --text --email <email> -d <domain> -d www.<domain>

Windows:
Navigate to My Computer and select Add a network location:

Follow the prompts to enter the path and specify your username and password when requested to do so.

Now navigate to the newly mounted drive at the command line and create a certificate for your website. For me it was mounted at drive Z:
Z:
cygwin
bash C:/Users/<USER>/Desktop/acme.sh-2.8.2/acme.sh issue --webroot -w Z:/ --accountemail <email> -d <domain> -d www.<domain>

Comment: Thanks for sharing!


More Nvidia problems than anything else?

Question: In the past 3-4 months I've noticed that on the main site, there is a ratio of about 5:1 referring Nvidia graphics questions than anything else, and I'm wondering why? I do understand that NVidia being a very large distributor, there will be more people asking questions, but even with comparison to questions relating FGLRX (Or even AMD cards in general,) NVidia are around 8x more prominent and visible. Is this because NVidia drivers are more complicated, or that less people use AMD? It's also getting annoying with the 100 questions a day on the same "NVIDIA DRIVERS NOT INSTALLING.. HELLLLLPPPPPPPP" and then marking duplicate after duplicate. This is a kind of rant, and I'm sorry for that but I really don't know why so many people have questions on NVidia!
Comment: What is your question?
Comment: "I really don't know why so many people have questions on NVidia!" because lots of people use nVidia GPUs.
Answer: We should have a canonical question that we can point people to which exhausts the list of how to install Nvidia drivers using the new blessed Nvidia driver ppa.
Comment: But merging another question to an old one was not a good idea. http://askubuntu.com/questions/61396/how-do-i-install-the-nvidia-drivers  There are very high voted obsolete answers and pointing to that question is not good any more. Now I can't mark other questions as duplicates.
Comment: @Pilot6 well that's the way the system works btw. You could always edit the old one to be correct? (You have 2k+)
Comment: Yeah, "too many wrong answers" is a cop out for us, if they're old and out of date it's up to us to fix them.
Answer: Well, people who have no experience with Ubuntu think "I know! I'll install Ubuntu," and then it all goes downhill from there.
In all seriousness, though, I think it's a mix between inexperienced users coming to Ubuntu, the popularity of NVIDIA and the fact that NVIDIA cards tend to have bad times on Ubuntu. For whatever reason, the proprietary drivers sometimes don't work, and the generic ones sometimes fail as well.
Because NVIDIA is so popular, a lot of people using Windows have the brand. When they decide to install Ubuntu, whether because they used it sometime in the past or because they like the look of it, there's a high chance they'll have problems with NVIDIA and Ubuntu. (Sorry for the redundancy)
inexperienced/new users + NVIDIA's popularity + NVIDIA's trouble with Ubuntu = many NVIDIA & Ubuntu questions.
Comment: Yeah, that actually makes sense
Answer: Agreed, I see many of these questions across the Internet,  not just here. Someone should just create a wiki page that we could link people to.
Comment: I feel like there are so many questions that there should be an askinvidia.com or just an invidia.stackexchange.com


How can I open an application when a secondary monitor is connected?

Question: I use SecondBar to add a menu bar to an external display. I've added it to my login items, but I don't want it to open when there isn't an external display. How do I open SecondBar when a secondary monitor is connected?
Answer: Take a look at the free/open source app ControlPlane.
You can trigger different actions based on context-sensitive rules, including launching an app in response to connecting a display.
Comment: Great answer and great app!! I love it!! Just as a note, it can be a bit confusing, so read the help pages. They *do* actually help. =D
Answer: There is no way of automatically doing it with out modifying the operating system, as the display is managed as a core process. The best is just to put a shortcut on your desktop and open it when you are plugging in a display
Comment: Well, it obviously isn't that hard to "modify the operating system" as you say, because ControlPlane works just fine.


What is the difference between 上がります and 増えます

Question: `What is the difference between 上がります and 増えます
Answer: 上がります
上がります means that something is going up in reference to a past position.
For instance, you can use 上がります when talking about:

Anything measured in degrees such as temperature and altitude
Moving up in a ranking
Price

This is not an exhaustive list, but I think it covers a lot of common usage.
増えます
On the other hand, 増えます is specifically something increasing in number/amount/size. Contexts where you usually see 増えます include:

Population
Weight
Number of comments, likes, complaints, etc.

and so on. Again, not exhaustive, but hopefully that makes sense.
Difference
I have no link or anything to back this up, so someone please correct if I am mistaken, but I think the difference is whether or not 0 is absolute or relative.
---For instance---
In the case of 増える: the population of a country, the weight of a bag of oranges, or the number of comments all have an absolute zero - that is to say that when they reach zero, there is nothing to measure. Therefore, we use 増える for things that only have a positive, numeric range of possibilities.
On the other hand, in the case of 上がる: the rank of something or it's price and the temperature are not all necessary expressed in terms of zero - price can be negative if there is a refund (or zero if it is free for some reason), the rank of something isn't even always a number or even decided by a number, and temperature and altitude as we all know can go well below zero and still be measured. Therefore, we will typically use 上がる with things that can be measured as a negative, positive, or increase but with no quantitative base of measurement.
Answer: 上がる generally refers to a change in position of the thing you are talking about, i.e. from a lower position to a higher position. This can be used with things like objects which have moved position, people who have moved to a higher location, or a number on scale which has gone from a lower position on the scale to a higher position on the scale.
増える generally refers to an increase in size or number of the thing you are talking about, either physical or abstract, i.e. a group which has grown in number, a workload which has increased, a sense of well-being that has grown, etc.


Only one chain is appearing in Miner Status on Antminer S9

Question: I just hooked up my miner after returning from training. when i first hooked it up all 3 chains were visible but then i moved the miner to a more permanent location and hooked it back up. now only one chain is appearing. i thought it might have been an issue with the 110 outlets, so i unhooked one hash board so only one board is hooked up to my PS (i use 2, one for one board and the miner, the other for 2 boards). Even after doing this only one chain is appearing.
Comment: I don't understand why you would be expecting to see more than one chain. The whole point of the blockchain is to achieve decentralized consensus on a single longest chain that is to be treated as the ground-truth. -- Am I missing some context from the mining lingo where chain is something else than elsewhere in Bitcoin?
Answer: Is there a possibility one of your power-supplies have gone bad? You can further debug this by obtaining the "Kernel log" found on the "System" tab. I would also try re-seating the cables, and test each hashboard individually (power them one at a time to determine if they are still OK -- make sure to shutdown/unplug your miner before performing any work!)
If you can provide that file, more information should be available.
Answer: I had this problem. First 1 board went down. Then a second board. I read that low temperatures (5 degrees Celsius or lower) will make the miner act this way. Unplug all power supply cords from the miner. Let the miner get back to a more reasonable room temperature. All my boards came back and showed under miner status.


On heat load calculations

Question: My question is simple. Is heat load calculation the same for sizing air conditioners as it is for sizing radiators? I.e if an AC guy gives you the heat loads which lead him to select particular air conditioners can you use those BTU figures for sizing radiators or designing your hot water radiator system (determining flow rates and head etc?)
Comment: Now you've got three answers - yes, no, and maybe.  Any of them could be right, depending on what you actually have from the AC guy.  Can you clarify whether you have a complete manual J calculation, or just the heat loads for the cooling system?  In any case, you cannot simply use the cooling system BTU/hr to size a new heating system.
Comment: Well the AC guy did use Manual J, but I presently have the AC system size. I guess I can revise my question to simply: is Manual J for a +N degree temperature difference the same as for -N in climate zone 4A
Answer: No.  Heating and cooling loads are dependent on two things: (1) the house dimensions, insulation, windows, etc., and (2) the climate in which it is located.  Some areas have very cold winters and moderate summers, so the heating load will be high but the cooling load quite low.  In another area with moderate winters and hot summers, the opposite will be true.  Both have to be calculated independently.
Answer: Yes. If your contractor calculated a Manual J for your house, then they calculated the cooling and heating load required to cool and heat that specific house in your climate and based on features of your house (volume, insulation, orientation, windows and their SHGC/U-factor, etc).  If done correctly, the numbers they provided for heating are valid for any heating system you install.
You need to review the calculations though.  They should have a report and you want to ensure it is for your house and matches the features of your house.
Good luck.
Answer: Maybe.  Depending on how the contractor came to the conclusion that they did, and what information they provided you.  You may, or may not have enough information to size your heating system.
As mentioned, if the contractor did a Manual J, and provided you with a full report. Then you should have enough information.  However, if the contractor simply estimated the loads based on similar jobs, or didn't give you all the numbers.  Then you might not have enough information to size the heating system.
Based on the information you've provided, the answer is... Maybe.
Answer: An ACCA Manual J heat load calculation will tell you how many BTUs a house is loosing or gaining with a particular outside temperature and a desired inside temperature. For instance if your design outdoor temp is 30 degrees in the winter and you want your home to be 70 degrees, that is a 40 degree split. They then measure up all surfaces that can conduct heat to the outside such as floors, ceilings, windows and doors. Throw in a few other factors, run it through the Manual J tables and you get the amount of BTUs lost or gained at a particular split. So no matter what type of heating you use you will need that many BTUs to keep your home at that temperature. There are then additional manuals to determine the size equipment needed. For forced air furnaces, if you were to figure you were loosing 80,000 BTUs and you wanted an 80% efficiency furnace you would get a 100,000 btu furnace and assuming the calculations were exactly right and the split was always 40 degrees your furnace would run 24 hours per day. Normally your split would be lower than that and Manual J allows for wiggle room so in reality your furnace won't run 24 hours a day.

On heat load calculations


Is it possible to download the manual from the Wiki and integrate it into the help menu?

Question: Is it possible to download a PDF/HTML snapshot of the Blender Manual from the Wiki and integrate into Blender's help menu?
Comment: Please, don't just downvote and vote to close, give a reason, or suggest an improvement.
Comment: so, you want to access a local version of your manual, instead of the online version? Is that correct?
Comment: @satishgoda yep :)
Answer: You cannot directly download the blender wiki… well not as normally as you are asking, there are ways (and even if you did get it, as far as implementing or getting its content into Blender, that's another story).
You can reach the manual from inside Blender however and some documentation functionality is already implemented somewhat..
Hover over a button and you should see a short description etc.. This can be useful for getting operator names.

For more information, right click on the component in Blender and you can choose to go to the Online Manual or the Online Python Reference

You can also just grab a zip of the python reference for offline viewing directly from the front page.
Comment: +1 It would be nice if Blender has an user preference that enables us to download the docs and tell Blender to use it instead.
Answer: There are many download managers (such as wget) that can crawl the wiki and make a local copy (could also be scripted via python). But make sure your use case is covered by fair use.
For integration you'll need to override the bpy.ops.wm.doc_view and bpy.ops.wm.doc_view_manual classes to load from a local configured path.
Comment: I purposely left out web crawlers as there might be some legal issues involved some places..
Answer: partial answer (pdf snapshot):
I have done wiki manual > pdf several times in the past.
last update is form july 1st 2013, so quite up to date I hope...
I dont'know how to link this pdf from blender itself but it would be great...
last conversion is here
https://archive.org/details/BlenderWikiManualPdf20130701
if you care, details, updates and future versions (links) will be posted around here, atm:
http://amrc.altervista.org/nuova-versione-del-blender-wiki-manual-pdf/
--dec 2015 edit--
I even forgot I wrote this answer in 2013... : latest version of that PDF was november 2014, https://archive.org/details/BlenderWikiPDFManual
then the wiki freezed...
Now, a year later, there is an official downloadable html manual from the manual page at http://www.blender.org/manual, the direct link atm is http://www.blender.org/manual/blender_manual.zip. A PDF version is (weirdly) still to be generated from that manual system, but I'll try soon to again generate periodically a PDF from this official html for anyone to share, somewhere.
hth
Marco


How do we signal a typo in a tag?

Question: I just noticed a typo in the tag cowboy-behop - it should be cowboy-bebop. I didn't find any link to signal that kind of errors though. Rare as they are, maybe it's not really needed.
Comment: Also related is how to fix spacing typos.
Answer: There is no way to fix a typo in a tag (i.e change tag stak to stack). These are now two different tags.
Suggest an edit to all questions incorrectly tagged. For a large set do as you had did and post it on this meta. Those with 500 reputation and more should be able to review them in https://movies.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits
Since there is currently only one, it would be best to signal the original poster of the question to edit. It will most likely be faster than waiting for someone to see the suggestion in /review.
I removed my typo and the incorrect tag should hopefully be out of system in about a day as long as no one uses it.
Sorry about that.
Answer: If you don't have access to retag or edit the question, you can always flag the question for moderator attention, and describe the problem.

How do we signal a typo in a tag?


How to implement a hook?

Question: I've been told I should implement this hook thing, what does that mean?
Answer: The details for how to implement a hook varies from one hook to another.
One of the easiest examples though, is hook_init(). Hook init is a generic way of saying "Do something on every un-cached page load". The _un_cached part is important, if you are logged out when testing this, probably nothing will happen.
In a module file named "my_module.module", one would implement hook_init like this
<?php
my_module_init() {
}

To make something actually happen, we can add a call to drupal_set_message().
<?php
my_module_init() {
  drupal_set_message('Hello Drupal!');
}

If you have Devel installed, a common way to do debugging could look something like this:
<?php
my_module_init() {
  dpm(menu_get_item());
}

For more details and examples, see What is the basic concept behind hooks?
Comment: Most common used hooks here seems to be ones from `alter` family, especially `form_alter`. Would be worth explaining it a bit. And put more stress on the `my_module` part of function names, please. I still see people confused by it, and leaving it be - then surprised it fails for them.

How to implement a hook?


CCD resolutions in camera

Question: I would like to know what are the available (industry standard) CCD sensor resolutions for cameras in the visible light. What is the highest CCD resolution that can be found in the industry?
Comment: For still or movie pictures capture?
Comment: For movies, filming at 30 and 60 Hz.
Comment: You could also do something like [ARGUS-IS](https://str.llnl.gov/AprMay11/vaidya.html), which tiles lots of smaller chips to get an extremely high resolution (>1GPixel). It's not quite 30 or 60FPS (~12FPS supposedly), but you can probably get higher FPS using less cameras.
Comment: I'm looking for specifications of individual sensors.
Answer: Pixel size and the area that they are occupied is the key parameters of a CCD sensor Dynamic Range, the SNR, the Spacial Resolution and the Modulation Transfer Function (with a given optics).
However if pixel size is reduced, sensitivity to light reduced accordingly. So there is a clear tradeoff between spatial resolution and light sensitivity.
So be cautious when read pixel size. Some manufacturers also use the sub-sample pixel but this is done after some process.
With the CMOS APS technology of 0.3μm (that was some years ago and I don't know if it is changed), the optimal pixel size is 6.5μm.  That is 35 line pairs per mm Nyqist limit (i.e befor aliasing).
Technologies like 0.17μm may be allow down to about 4μ pixels.
High resolution industry standards -especially for medical applications- is 2.5k x 2.5k and 4k x4k.
A good list is here
Comment: @m_power Traditionally CCD sensors offer higher dynamic range and resolution (i.e quality), and CMOS high number of pixels per second (i.e frame rate). The biggest advantage of CMOS is the speed of development since this process used for μprocessors, memories etc. resulting a fast approacing CMOS sensors the quality that CCD offering. See www.cmosis.com. A simple test is to compare a freeze frame of a motion captured by a CCD and a CMOS sensor.
Comment: I found the KAE-02150 (interline), which provide a 1080p and 60 FPS. However, I don't want to be limited to 1080p at this frame rate. I've still not found something that can beat that.
Comment: Also, is the CMOS technology better for providing higher FPS at higher sensor resolution?
Answer: This one, for instance, http://www.jai.com/en/products/sp-20000-pmcl will give you 5k x 4k (20 Mpixel) at 30 fps.
ETA: This is a monochrome camera. Do you need color?
Comment: Yes, I do need colors.
Comment: And I'm looking for CCD type, not CMOS.
Comment: Why do you care about the underlying technology rather than the results?
Comment: Because I'm looking for the available technology before choosing a specific CCD sensor.

CCD resolutions in camera


Finding the displacement in a truss using energy method Question

Question: I've been trying to revise for an upcoming final so I am solving problems from the previous chapters.I've been wracking my head on this for a while (about 1-2hrs) but I just can't seem to get it.
For some stupid reason I can't figure out why Member CE is 0 in the virtual loading, shouldn't that pin at C have a vertical reaction of 1. That would mean the summation of the vertical forces at joint C would be something like this Fy=1-FCEsin(26.565)=0. Failing at method of joints is very depressing to think about with the upcoming finals :/. Of course, the solution manual is no help it already assumes any scrub can solve method of joints. Can you help me out :|
Answer: Consider the geometry. Horizontal forces on the bearings can not be determined with forces and moment equilibrium, but you can determine the vertical forces!
From there, calculate those forces in the beams, which you are able to calculate.
Note: Those little green triangles you see are the forces in the truss members, split up to horizontal and vertical. That way you can avoid using nasty decimal point numbers. (To get the absolute value, you can just use our fellah Pythagoras' formula)

The numbers in orange specify the order in which my calculations were made:
 0. Calculate horizontal forces on bearing (moment equilibrium)
 1. $AE_V=1$, as $AB$ cannot take the vertical force attacking at $A$. Therefore $AE_V=2$ (geometry)
 2. Therefore, the $AB_H=-1$ (only has a horizontal part)
 3. External horizontal force $=2$. Therefore $DE_H=2$, thus $DE_V=1$
 4. $DE$ and $AE$ cancel each other out at node $E$, so $CE$ and $BE$ must do so as well. As only $CE$ has a horizontal part, both $CE=BE=0$.
 5. see 4.
 6. only horizontal part, so $BC=2$
 7. from point 3 you can determine, that $D_V=1$ (see the triangle), and consequently $C_V=0$
conventions:
 1. $AB_H$ is the horizontal part of the force in member AB, $AB_V$ the vertical one...
 2. $-$: compression, $+$: tension
Comment: I understand what you're doing to an extent, rather than dealing with the resultant forces and pesky angles you turned them into horizontal and vertical forces and used gemtery to simplify the process. You then proceeded to solve joint A,D,E,C sure I get that but I don't know how to solve it if I went to solve say joint C directly and get member CE, I would falsely assume it is equal to AE since I would assume that pin on C has a vertical force of 1 when Cy=0 how did you realize that?
Comment: In this specific case you're just getting closer to it with every step. But without knowing all bearing forces, you can't really solve pin C right away (as Cv is missing).
That's why I think this triangle method is quite handy.
See, for example at step 3: You get 2 as horizontal, and by geometry can conclude that vertical is 1.
This leads to an upwards Dv=1. Now you could already see, that Cv=0, because Dv+Cv=1 (sum of all bearing forces = sum of external forces)
Did it become any clearer now?
Comment: I get it now it really does help to move away from a problem and work on something else to get perspective,"(as Cv is missing)"  my mind didn't even register that CV was missing and solved as if it were there, my mind glossed over that point completely how can I solve with 1 equation and 2 unknowns! Thanks :o
Comment: Yeah it took me some time as well to figure that out.
You're welcome.
Answer: You're asking about the virtual case which only has the 1 kip load, so that's what I'll answer.
Let's start at node A. It has beams AB and AE. Only AE is capable of supporting the vertical load and we know that AE's slope is 1/2, so the horizontal component is equal to 2 kip, for a resultant of $\sqrt{1^2+2^2}=2.236\text{ kip}$.
Since AE's horizontal component is 2 kip, we know that AB is also 2 kip.
Now for node B. This has beams AB, BC and BE. We already know AB is 2 kip (horizontal), and since BE is vertical, it can't absorb any of this load (it therefore suffers 0 kip), leaving all of it for BC, which therefore is also 2 kip.
Now for node E. This has beams AE, BE, CE and DE. AE we know has a resultant of 2.236 kip and BE is 0 kip. We therefore need to figure out how to split AE's force between CE and DE.
However, this is actually also trivial. Look back at what we did for node B: we saw that one of the beams (BE) could only resist vertical forces, of which there were none, and we could therefore conclude that it suffers 0 kip. This case is identical, other than that it is rotated. Imagine for this case that the X-axis follows the line A-D, and the Y-axis is perpendicular to that. What you'll see is that AE and DE only work on the X-axis, while CE has a Y component. Since it is the only one with this component (since we already know BE is 0 kip), it can't be cancelled out. Therefore, for this node to be in equilibrium, this component (and therefore CE's entire resultant force) must be equal to 0 kip.
Comment: oh yes I know it can be solved with ease by using zero force members, I like to train myself and try different techniques. Plus I like to poke and see if there are other ways to solve a problem I can easily procastinate on one problem for 2 hrs. A comment actually helped me figure it out in my initial statement I blindly assumed Cy=1 and Dy=0 which is stupid because a) the initial problem has a 1.5 kip load b) why would the vertical reaction only be for C that would let ED=0


Cyclocross suspension

Question: I would like to know if there is any brand that sells cyclocross bikes with front suspension. I would like to buy the Specialized Crux E5 but I also like the Trek DS 4 but this one is flat and I want it from road.
Comment: Could you clarify what you mean by "I want it from road"? Do you mean that you want to use the bike _on_ the road? If so, suspension really isn't necessary unless you're riding on rather rough roads. Also, could you explain why you're mentioning these specific bikes? It's not clear how they tie in to your question -- do you want something kind of like a Crux E5 with suspension like the DS 4?
Answer: While proper cyclocross bikes typically do not have front suspension, you can find a few drop-bar bikes that do have it.  The Cannondale Slate is one: http://www.cannondale.com/en/USA/Bike/ProductDetail?Id=4a8a930f-c1de-422f-bf23-81d13da8c706
These bikes are usually called "adventure bikes."  While most adventure bikes still don't have suspension, the term may help you narrow your search.
You may find that a good quality, wide front tire is enough suspension.  Any drop-bar bike with clearance for tires at least 40mm wide should be useful here.  This opens your options up to a much bigger slice of the adventure bike market.

Cyclocross suspension


Is the continent with Australia in it Oceania or Australia?

Question: I am making a quiz and I want to know whether Australia or Oceania is the continent? I have searched it on Google but I can't find an answer.
Comment: @dferdo_04 how are you defining "continent" here?
Comment: See also [Is Australia the largest island?](https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/18596/is-australia-the-largest-island)
Answer: Partly, it depends on where you got educated. In many countries of Europe, Oceania is the continent. Calling the continent Australia is pretty much considered "English-centric". The reasoning for calling it Oceania is that Australia is only part of the continent. The extend of the mainland during the ice ages included part of today's Indonesia and Papua-New Guinea. While calling it Australia makes some sense and it is the largest part of the continent, in a sense it is like if we were to call Asia, Russia.

Source: Wikipedia (Maximilian Dörrbecker (Chumwa) - Self made, using this map for the background, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7382691)
Comment: In what European countries/languages are _Oceania_ used for the Australian plate? Is the same word used for the sociopolitical region?
Comment: In Spain for instance.
Answer: Australia is a continent and Oceania is a region.
Continents are vaguely defined as large landmasses separated by water or just by historical context. Earth scientists have much more precise definitions of what a continental plate is vs an oceanic plate.
In the case of Australia, the continental plate consists of the landmasses Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea. Sometimes other names are used to clarify the difference between the country Australia and the continent.
Oceania is the region of island nations and sometimes Australia, located in or near the Pacific Ocean. There are a number of different definitions depending on the context. Usually Oceania includes islands that have no affiliation with the Australian continent.

A personal comment inspired by aretxabaleta's different, but also correct answer:
Exact definitions can be difficult and often misleading as we tend to use language to label objects rather than processes, whiles Earth is better understood as processes, scientifically and socially.
Answer: Oceania is a geographical region, Australia is a continent which is a part of Oceania.
Oceania consists of four subregions: Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia.
Australasia consists of the continent of Australia (aka Australia-New Guinea) and the submerged continent of Zealandia (aka Tasmantis). Two remote Australian external territories, Christmas Island and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, are also considered parts of Australasia.
The continent of Australia consists of three main parts: mainland Australia, the island of Tasmania, and the island of New Guinea. Mainland Australia and the island of Tasmania form the country of Australia while the island of New Guinea consists of the country of Papua New Guinea and two Indonesian provinces (Papua and West Papua). In order to distinguish between the country of Australia and the continent of Australia, some people prefer to call the continent Australia-New Guinea instead.
Zealandia also consists of three main parts: New Zealand, New Caledonia, and Norfolk Island.
In cultural geography, New Zealand is also considered a part of Polynesia while Papua New Guinea and New Caledonia are also considered parts of Melanesia.
Therefore:
Oceania (region) > Australasia (subregion) > Australia-New Guinea (continent) > Australia (country) > Mainland Australia (continental mainland) > Tasmania (continental island)
Oceania is a unique case in world geography. It is the only geographical region which contains two continents (one of them is submerged). All the other geographical regions contain just one continent and they share the same name. For example, Asia can be either a geographical region (Asian mainland + nearby islands) or a continent (the mainland only, without any islands).
Some geographers consider the underwater continental shelves and their associated continental islands to be parts of a continent. Even under this definition, there are still oceanic islands (e.g. Iceland) which are parts of a geographical region, but not parts of a continent (i.e. Iceland is a part of the European geographical region, but not a part of the European continent).
Answer: This is Oceania according to this Norwegian meteorological website https://www.yr.no/place/Oceania/.
As you can see, it is a quite a large area.
The website has a very precise weather forecast for almost every place on Earth. The continent is Australia and the area of the Earth is Oceania.
Answer: As answered before, it depends on where are you from. In English-speaking countries Oceania usually includes Australia. In other countries, e.g. Russia or Poland, there is a distinction between "continent" and "part of the world". The continent is Australia, however "part of the world" is "Australia and Oceania". The same term, "Australia and Oceania" is used e.g. by National Geographic.