Lights wiring polarity and wire marking

Question: I am re-wiring my bike lights to add a smartphone charger and improve the connections. Wires are going in pairs, one wire in a pair being marked with a white stripe. Since I am using LED lights, polarity is important. On electronics SE and in many places on the Internet I found that the white-marked wire should go to the plus. However, my hub dynamo has the marked wire connected to the contact marked with the ground symbol (so it is connected to the frame). Usually in electronics the ground is negative. Is it a mistake of the bike manufacturer or am I missing something?
Comment: This question appears to be off-topic because it is about electronics more than bicycles or riding.
Comment: You might be able to get a better answer on Electronics SE. That community is almost certainly going to be more knowledgeable about these kinds of oddities.
Comment: There is no real "standard" as to which wire is considered "hot" and which "ground/neutral" for low-voltage wiring.  And there is no assurance that "hot" is + and "ground/neutral" is -.  For house wiring and power cords the white wire or the wire with the rib is "neutral".  If you want to know the polarity you need to get a voltmeter to check it.
Comment: Hint: If you're in the US go to Radio Shack and you'll likely find a small multimeter for about $10.  Go to Harbor Freight and you can probably find one for $5.
Comment: As you might have noticed, I have referenced a similar question from electronics SE. The reason for this question here is that on my *bike* the situation was different from the answer at ESE. So I though the convention could be different on bicycles. That's why I find this question fits here.
Answer: White stripe is ground. Consistency is a virtue, and Schmidt's obvious decision tells us the industry default. In principle, the two conductors are interchangeable, because AC. However, in the reality of bicycles, there are practical considerations. Some dynamos ground one side of the circuit through the axle and some don't. Some lights ground one side through the mounting screws and some don't. Some bike frames are conductive and some aren't (and headset bearings are intermittent). So it is important for all deliberate connections to have compatible ideas of what is ground. Otherwise you have a short circuit. When a mechanic replaces your dynamo or light with a unit that makes an assumption about what's grounded, the assumption better match your wiring.
Answer: No mistake - there is no standard. 50% of the time the strip is -ve, 50% positive.
Get a multimeter - $10 for a cheapy, and remove any guess work.........
Comment: Thanks to @ratchet I have realized this answer is actually wrong.... 33% its positive, 33% its negative and 33 its AC (both).....
Comment: @texnic: The thing I love about standards is there are so many to choose from......
Comment: You forget that at least 20% aren't working at all.
Comment: OK, thanks guys. I have a multimeter, but it does not matter: my dynamo produces AC current. Why I wanted to have it "the standard way" is that if at some point in the future I bring it to the workshop or just forget what I find out today, I want to avoid complications. In the end, that's why we have standards :)
Comment: But AC _is_ "50% of the time ... is -ve, 50% positive" :-)
(Not actually true if the striped wire is connected to an earth.)
Answer: cheap dynamos create AC (which also works for LEDs) you can test that easily by reversing the polarity of the LEDs and see if they light up in both orientations
just add a diode (or diode bridge) to the connection for the charger to go from AC to DC
Comment: if the charger you're using doesn't have reverse polarity protection on the input then swapping the leads to see which way works is going to fry it. If someone is going to open up the charging leads of their phone or build their own charging circuit that's definitely an electronics.SE question. This question is currently about using a commercial charger designed to run off a bike dyno, so the only question is the input to the charger.
Comment: reversing polarity of the charging input of a phone can fry the battery, you don't want that in a smartphone, if it is AC then it needs a AC to DC converter
Comment: Approximately _all_ bicycle dynamos produce AC, not just cheap ones, with very few exceptions, and any rectification being inside lights or attached devices. But some have one terminal electrically connected to the frame, and some don't, and so do some lights, so in some cases it matters which way round the wires are connected and others it doesn't. (In some cases there is only one wire, and the system relies on the frame connections for the return. That often causes problems, especially if it relies on the greasy ball bearings in the headset to provide connectivity from frame to fork.)
Comment: The first part is great, but adding diodes to the circuit is a silly idea. You're introducing more points of failure and extra voltage drops. Much better to experiment and go with what works.

Lights wiring polarity and wire marking


Farming gold in Diablo 3

Question: What is the fastest way to get gold in Diablo 3?
Comment: That is not true, the items on AH don't appear out of no where, you can earn a lot of gold selling leveling equipment(especially weapons with high base stats and/or dps)
Comment: Except that it *is* true until you're deep into infernal. It's better to farm gold from trash mobs and AH any interesting drops you run across rather than trying to hunt down champion/rare mobs and kill them for their loot.
Comment: @Blem that sounds a lot like an answer. Maybe you should make it one?
Answer: To get pure gold the two biggest factors are how much gold find you have and what act/difficulty you are in(higher is better untill you reach Inferno where Act wont matter). The key facter here is balancing the amount of gold find you have so you can still kill high level monsters. You can also make a pure gold find set(also works for magic find) and after clearing an area for monsters equip your set and go open chests and destroying things that can contain gold/items.
But a better way of getting gold is using the AH, there is no cost to putting items up and there are plenty of people buying items, atm I would recommend focusing on magic and rare level 45-59 weapons with high dps and high damage stats(str/dex/int), but other items with good stats also work. The reason for the level is that people need to be high enough to have gold, and once you hit 60 it is a lot harder farming for the easy selling items (higher standards). Don't be to greedy, it is better to sell a lot of items at a lower price than a few at high, if you can sell 5 weapons at 50k each you will make more than selling 1 at 200k in the same period. Just try and make sure to always use the 10 item slots you can have up on AH.
Comment: Also accessories with +damage (e.g., +4-8 damage, you can't search for this attribute, but it's there) and decent stats (primary stat + vit) and a socket can go for pretty decent prices (10-20k++ per accessory). Additional attributes, such as +Life per hit/after kill, Magic Find, et al, can significantly improve the value of the accessory as well..
Comment: I don't agree that you should sell more items at a lower price. First, you only have a limited number of auctions, so you cannot sell items for very cheap because the can use all your slots. But more importantly, cheap items are not worth my time. I'd rather spend my time farming than selling 10-30k items. Because eventually you will find a multi-million item. Personally, the vast majority of my revenue comes from selling >1M items.
Comment: Beware that the upcoming [magic find swap changes](http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/blog/5338426/Magic_Find_Gear_Swapping-03_07_2012) could possibly render this strategy useless:
Comment: @pinouchon the example values are nearly 2 months old. The main point is not the number, but the scaling of the numbers. If it makes you happy it might as well say it is better to sell 5 items at 1M than 1 item at 4M in the same time, the point is it is better to have a higher turnover than trying to sell one high value item at a higher cost. Also the better an item is the less chance of it loosing value over time is where the mediocre items will loose value over time so it is better to get rid of it to get new items.
Answer: Stockpile gear with Gold Finding stats on it so that your Gold Find is high (you can view this under Character Sheet->Gold Find.
You then have some choices. The higher difficulty mobs, as well as higher Act mobs, drop more gold then their predecessor. However, they get tougher to kill, taking longer.
I have no proof of this, but it seems to me that Act III is the best Act to farm anything - gold, XP, items, etc. because it appears to me to have the most amount of mobs that are still somewhat squishy.
If you are really looking to farm, I'd recommend Act III of the highest difficulty that you can do, and as others mentioned, don't just focus on pure gold drops; items can sell very well in the AH.
And remember that not only rares have great stats! A magic (blue) item can carry the best stats in the game.
Here's an  official blue post stating so:

Legendary items are commonly not going to be the best items. It's a
  title that denotes a named item, with set stats, and a unique model.
  It does not mean they're the best items.
Completely random rares will be the best items in the game if they
  roll up the right stats.
Comment: Uh...  "A magic (blue) item can carry the best stats in the game." is wrong. A *rare (yellow)* item can be the best item in the game, not a magic blue item. Blue items cannot be better than the best yellow items, they have fewer magical properties.
Answer: THIS ANSWER IS CURRENT AS OF PATCH 2.0/REAPER OF SOULS
The answer to this question is now a lot simpler than it was when the Auction House was around, and different difficulties were more ambiguous about their effects. Now you can increase your gold per hour in THREE primary ways:
Bounties and Nephalem rifts
After completing Act V, you will unlock access to Adventure mode, which will allow you to undertake bounties and occasionally Nephalem Rifts. In each of these modes, you are given a specific task to undertake in certain parts of the game, usually killing a certain mob or clearing an area. Once you do that, you are rewarded a substantial sum of XP and gold, in addition to any that you earn along the way by killing mobs or completing a side quest like a cursed chest. In Nephalem rifts, particularly, mobs come fast and furious which create ideal conditions for lots of gold drops.
Raise the difficulty
The higher the difficulty, the more gold will drop. However, it is up to you to find the sweet spot between what difficulty allows you to move quick enough to make the bonus worthwhile. i.e. is it better for you to run 4 bounties per hour on Torment I or 6 per hour on Master?

Normal   Enemies have 100% health, do 100% damage. No XP or gold drop
bonuses.
Hard Enemies have 200% health, do 130% damage. XP gains and gold
drops both boosted by 75%.
Expert   Enemies have 320% health, do 189% damage. XP gains and gold
drops both boosted by 100%.
Master   Enemies have 512% health, do 273% damage. XP gains and gold
drops both boosted by 200%.
Torment I    Enemies have 819% health, do 396% damage. XP gains and gold
drops both boosted by 300%.
Torment II   Enemies have 1,311% health, do 575% damage. XP gains and
gold drops both boosted by 400%.
Torment III  Enemies have 2,097% health, do 833% damage. XP gains and
gold drops both boosted by 550%.
Torment IV   Enemies have 3,355% health, do 1,208% damage. XP gains and
gold drops both boosted by 800%.
Torment V    Enemies have 5,369% health, do 1,752% damage. XP gains and
gold drops both boosted by 1,150%.
Torment VI   Enemies have 8,590% health, do 2,540% damage. XP gains and
gold drops both boosted by 1,600%.

The table above comes from this site.
Increase your gold find percentage
As in vanilla D3, increasing your gold find stats will provide an increase to the amount of gold dropped. You should balance this, however, with finding gear that makes you more effective at killing mobs, thereby increasing your throughput. Luckily, on most gear, gold find is considered a "secondary stat" and does not take away from primary skills like dexterity or crit chance. You'll need to find your own balance of quantity of kills vs. quality of kills.
You can also increase your gold find through the Paragon leveling system. Keep in mind, as above, you'll be taking points from other areas that might make you more effective in combat, such as "life on hit". But this is a good way to increase your gold find without finding specialized gear. Since you can reset paragon points at will, this may be a good way to increase gold find on difficulties where you don't need the other utility stats.
Answer: Here's what my friend and I have been doing, proven success (roughly 220k/hr, tomes, potions, and the occasional magic/rare item) without any real combat. You'll need a gold find set for this to work. Inferno will yield the best results by far.

Wear your normal gear and start at the end of Reign of the Black King in Act 1
Fight your way to the Royal Crypts
Switch to your gold find set
Change whatever skills you want to maximize your item destruction ability
Run around the area destroying all the vases, coffins, etc.
Stop when you get to the point where the Skeleton King activates those four pillars.
Teleport back to New Tristram
Leave the game
Resume the game
Repeat steps 4-9 as long as you want

I made about 900k yesterday running this for a few hours and auctioning off a few rares I found. Fair warning, though, this gets boring fast, so put on a podcast or something to entertain yourself during the process.
I bet this is going to get nerfed soon if it hasn't been already, since I wouldn't necessarily call vases or coffins "monsters", the +% gold find from monsters won't apply to random items for much longer.
Comment: Something to note: As of the most recent patch, this method doesn't work any more (or so I've heard). They removed gold drop from certain sections of vases/jars, and the Royal Crypts was one of the areas affected.
Comment: Drop rates from the Ashes pots was severely nerfed, so this doesn't work anymore.
Answer: As mentioned above, it helps to have a Gold Set (i.e. armour and items whose stats increase gold finding abilities).  I find that battling mobs which contain one or more spawners tends to work well.  The weaker creatures will keep coming as long as you don't kill the spawner (I've heard them referred to as Lieutenants).
The Dahlgur Oasis (Act II) is full of Spawners.  Look for the blue guys who launch the slow moving fireballs.  If you stay away from them, they'll just keep spawning little blue guys endlessly.  What's better is that even if you get hit by the Spawners' slow-moving fireballs, the little guys you kill will inevitably drop health anyway.  Just remember, if you bring a companion, do your best to keep him/her from rushing the Spawners.
The Forgotten Ruins (Act II)  When you first enter the ruins, there's a green stone spire that will churn out spiders.  As long as you don't hit the spire, the spiders will keep coming.  These spiders are a bit tougher than the blue guys and (I would imagine) yield more gold.  There are another three or four of these spawning monuments throughout the ruins.  As a matter of fact, the whole map of the Forgotten Ruins has some great mobs.  The last time I played it I made about 6,000 gold without a dedicated Gold Set.
Answer: Not sure if it's just me, but I seem to get the most gold dropping from undead mobs (mostly in act 1 hell/inferno). With 300% additional gold (including 5NV stacks) I can easily pull in 200k an hour.
Clear out the 3 crypts in the Cemetery of the Forsaken, clear the large areas throughout act 1, then clear the 3 levels up to the butcher (as well as the jailer area in between levels 2 and 3 of the dungeons). It's fairly easy, even with a large amount of gold find and nerfed stats.
Answer: Start at the Heart of Sin quest in act 3 on Hell difficulty. Teleport to Rakki's Crossing, run through until the end of the crossing, teleport to Core of Arreat, kill demons, kill Azmodan. On hell, he has a chance to drop ilvl63 and you will make about 400K+ an hour if you do it right.
Answer: Stockpile gear with +gold finding stats, then go out and farm mobs.  I'm not sure if there is anywhere that is best for farming.
Answer: I've been trying to get the Gibbering Gemstone from the Caverns of Frost in Act 3 at nightmare difficulty. The amount of drop and monster quantity was staggering. If I can ever get there at Hell difficulty, I think I'll farm there a little before going on
Comment: I've been doing the exact same thing, but I've only picked up 22k worth. Am I doing something wrong?
Answer: Given that the AH is in the game, I will assume that gold is equivalent to wealth.
Here are a few techniques I tried to accumulate wealth the game, sorted by the rate at which you generate it. (better rates first)

Buy gold directly from the RMAH.

It's very fast. But you have to spend money

Flip items on the Gold AH / RMAH.

You need a good knowledge of the enonomy of the AH. But you can make good amounts of wealth in the game with this method. Look for items with those stats:
Crit chance / crit damage / atk speed / main stat / all resist / vit and learn about combination makes items expensive. I make about 5euros on average every time I spend 15min to flip items on the RMAH. So far, I have been successfull flipping windup wands (atk speed, ap per crit, crit damage, and/or socket) and rings and amulets. The main drawback is that is it boring.
In my opinion, the rate you can achieve is between 1 to 10eur per hour with this technique.

Farm inferno act 3

You need to get good gear to be able to complete act3 efficiently. I am using a windup wizard for that because I think it is by far the most efficient farming build for a given gear price. You can jump from elite to elite by refreshing your wormhole cooldown on white mobs.
Another good farming spec is the whirlwind barbarian. Farming act 3 with a WW barb is the  main method of wealth farming of Kripparian.
Depending on you build, magic find and luck, you should be between 1M and 10M per hour with this technique. But you are more often close to 1M which make it inferior to AH item flipping in my opinion.

Gold farm

I have never tried any of those methods, but they are boring and inefficient in my view.
Here is a good guide about wealth increasing

Farming gold in Diablo 3


NLP : Rules for chunking Verb Phrases

Question: I have read a lot of documentation surrounding NP chunking but what about Verb Phrases? Has there been a fixed set of rules for VP chunking?
Answer: There are many ways to perform chunking/phrase structure parsing. The most common methods are:

Rule-based
Statistical models
Deep Learning

Fixed rules are simple and fast. But they make many mistakes given the complexity of human language. The other methods are typically more useful because they generate probabilistic rules.
Context-free grammar (CFG) is a set of rules for the production of formal language and can be used for parsing.

NLP : Rules for chunking Verb Phrases


Cakephp in subdirectory and hyperlinks

Question: Ive installed cakephp at my domain (non root folder) and its working perfect but i see its generating all hyperlinks as [http://www.mysite.com/mywebsite/anypage] .
Any idea how to force it to not generate such and instead just point to desired section as if it were on root?
I believe others have asked about this without any luck in the past, i do hope a solution can come up this time :)
Resuming: Index.php is generating

and i would like to have it

thank you
Answer: Use html helper for generating urls. $this->webroot can also be helpful
http://book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/core-libraries/helpers/html.html#HtmlHelper::url

Cakephp in subdirectory and hyperlinks


Does the number pi have any significance besides being the ratio of a circle's diameter to its circumference?

Question: Pi appears a LOT in trigonometry, but only because of its 'circle-significance'. Does pi ever matter in things not concerned with circles? Is its only claim to fame the fact that its irrational and an important ratio?
Comment: Also, let's get one thing straight here: circles are _eerily important._  You will never stop running into circles in mathematics.
Comment: (For example, although the Fourier transform is "concerned with circles" (functions on the circle being the same thing as periodic functions) it penetrates into the deepest parts of modern mathematics.  Many appearances of pi are because of a Fourier transform lurking somewhere in the background.  You might also want to read this MO thread where I asked a similar question: http://mathoverflow.net/questions/18180/what-are-some-fundamental-sources-for-the-appearance-of-pi-in-mathematics)
Comment: Have you read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi#Use_in_mathematics_and_science ?
Comment: Fundamental source of $\pi$ is circle nothing else. It may be difficult to find it but it is always there.
Comment: I'd rather this be a comment instead, so: $\pi$ turns up in the expression for the so-called "probability integral" (a.k.a. the "error function") among other things. How circles relate to this is a bit of a long-winded explanation though.
Comment: Qiaochu: good that you linked to it; I like gowers's "circles and rotations appear a lot."
Comment: are any of these places simplified by replacing π with τ/2?  http://tauday.com/
Comment: Since you can define $\pi$ to be the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, you can always reverse-engineer some context in which $\pi$ appears to get something to do with circles.  **Proof:** Suppose we have some interesting fact about $\pi$, and let $P$ be a totally self-contained proof of that fact.  Then there must be a first statement $s$ in $P$ at which the number $\pi$ appears.  Now suppose we have defined $\pi$ to be the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter.  But then in order to introduce $\pi$ into
Comment: (contd.) our proof we have to work straight from the definition of $\pi$ (since $P$ is self contained).  So we have to introduce circles into our proof at some point before $p$.
Comment: Hmmm.. I seem to have allowed for the possibility that there exists some statement about $\pi$ which is true but which is not provable in any order of logic, and which has nothing to do with circles.  Now that is an interesting thought.
Comment: On a related note: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?db=comics&id=2420#comic
Comment: Often convergence includes PI. For example, [Hardy's proof of the Dirichlet eta function](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirichlet_eta_function)
Comment: Sometimes it seems one will never stop running in circles either. :-)
Comment: http://numbers.computation.free.fr/Constants/Pi/piSeries.html
Answer: It is difficult to know if a circle is not lurking somewhere, whenever there is $\pi$, but the values of the Riemann zeta function at the positive even integers have a lot to do with powers of $\pi$: see here for the values.
For instance, you can prove that the probability that two "randomly chosen" positive integers are coprime is $\frac{1}{\zeta(2)} = \frac{6}{\pi^2}$.
Comment: You had my upvote at "it is difficult to know if a circle is not lurking somewhere..."
Comment: Maybe that has something to do with angles and the 2D lattice.
Comment: @asmeurer: Actually it has to do with [the fact that](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basel_problem)  $\displaystyle \sum_{n=1}^{\infty} \frac{1}{n^2} = \frac{\pi^2}{6}$.
Comment: @ShreevatsaR you're just restating what $\zeta(2)$ is. That doesn't explain where the $\pi$ comes from, fundamentally.
Comment: @asmeurer: True, but I'm saying it has nothing to do with "angles and the 2D lattice". Nothing I know of, anyway. The proof that $\zeta(2)$ has that value (see the linked article) doesn't use those, and the proof that the probability of two "randomly chosen" prime numbers is $\frac{1}{\zeta(2)}$ is straightforward.
Comment: @ShreevatsaR Yeah we know that the proof does not use circles to compute $\zeta(2)$. That is the point of damiano's comment "difficult to know if a circle is not lurking somewhere"
Comment: @Ant: My comment was a reply to asmeurer's speculation that it had to do with "angles and the 2D lattice" -- my comment was not a reply to anything in this (damiano's) answer.
Answer: $\pi$ appears in Stirling's approximation, which is not obviously related to circles.  This means that $\pi$ appears in asymptotics related to binomial coefficients, such as
$$\displaystyle {2n \choose n} \approx \frac{4^n}{\sqrt{\pi n}}.$$
In other words, the probability of flipping exactly $n$ heads and $n$ tails after flipping a coin $2n$ times is about $\frac{1}{\sqrt{\pi n}}$.  This asymptotic also suggests that on average you should flip between $n + \sqrt{\pi n}$ and $n - \sqrt{\pi n}$ heads.
Comment: This is closely related to J. Mangaldan's comment about the probability integral.  Somehow I think it all ties back to the fact that e^{-x^2} is its own Fourier transform.
Comment: I guess that comment is worth explaining: the relationship is that the constant in Stirling's approximation can be computed from the central limit theorem.  This is explained at http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2010/01/02/254a-notes-0a-stirlings-formula/ .
Comment: Yes. Yes it does. :)
Comment: @QiaochuYuan You might be interested in Kunth's "Why Pi?" Lecture. He shows how this is related to cirlces!
Answer: Because of the formula $e^{i\pi}+1=0$ you will find $\pi$ appearing in lots of places where it's not clear there is a circle, e.g in the normal distribution formulae.
Answer: Yes, the ratio $\pi$ of a circle's circumference to its diameter shows up in many, many places where one might not expect it!
One partial explanation (similar in spirit to "circles lurk everywhere") is that the equation for a circle is a $quadratic$ (eg. $x^2+y^2 = r^2$.)  After nice linear functions, the next most commonly used functions are quadratic functions and everywhere one runs into a quadratic function, a trig substitution (e.g. $x = r \cos \theta; y=r\sin \theta$) may be useful, turning the quadratic function into something involving $\pi.$  This explains the antiderivative $\int \frac{1}{1+x^2} dx$ involving $\pi$, the sum of reciprocals of squares $\sum^\infty\frac{1}{k^2}$ involving $\pi$ and the area under the Gaussian distribution involving $\pi$.  And so on....
Comment: How does it explain the sums of reciprocals of squares involving pi?
Comment: @George: there are a few elementary proofs of sum 1/k^2 = pi^2/6 where pi creeps in for reasons at least analogous to a trig substitution: http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/8337/different-methods-to-compute-sum-n-1-infty-frac1n2
Comment: @Qiaochu: Most of the proofs I know apply equally well to evaluating $\sum 1/n^d$ (for d even) and even $\sum (-1)^d/n^d$ (for d odd), which also involve $\pi$. So, the fact that the terms are squares doesn't seem particularly significant to the appearance of $\pi$.
Comment: I'll have a look through the alternative proofs in that link though.
Comment: (I meant $\sum(-1)^d/(2n+1)^d$ above). I always thought of these sums involving $\pi$ for similar reasons, and not just the $d=2$ case in isolation.
Answer: I am late to the party, but I found a curious appearance of the decimal expansion of $\pi$ in the lecture notes for the Dynamics and Relativity course by David Tong, in section 5.2.2.
We have a one-dimensional problem with two bouncing balls of mass $M$ and $m$ which can collide elastically. The leftmost ball has mass $M = 16 \times 100^Nm$, the smaller ball is on the right of the large ball. There is a perfect wall on the right of both balls (the wall does not move upon collision). $N$ is an arbitrary integer.
If a push to the right is given to the ball with mass $M$, it will move toward the smaller ball and upon collision, the smaller ball will start moving towards the wall, until it bounces back toward the larger ball. They will again collide, taking away some of the momentum of the large ball and allowing the smaller ball to move toward the wall again.
After a finite number of collisions, the large ball will start moving in the left direction. The number $p(N)$ of collisions of the balls $M$ and $m$ required to reach this situation is the first $N+1$ digits of $\pi$ (so $p(0) = 3$, $p(1) = 31$, $p(2) = 314$, $p(3) = 3141$, etc). (More precisely, it is given by $p(N) = \lfloor 10^N \pi \rfloor$).
For further details, I invite you to read the lecture notes by David Tong linked above. Basically there is a matrix recurrence relation for the velocities of the balls after each collision, and the solution to this recurrence equation involves the $\sin$ and $\cos$ functions.


Bank rate and Repo rate

Question: Please explain the difference between Bank rate and Repo rate. Do the Bank and Repo rates affect each other?
Comment: Is "the bank rate" a British-ism for the term Americans call "the discount rate"?
Comment: Ya, it is a British term
Comment: Americans call it "Discount rate".
Answer: The Bank Rate / Discount rate is the interest rate charged by the central bank to member institutions for loans from the central bank. These are typically thought of as emergency funds to meet the liquidity needs of solvent banks with illiquid assets, thought since Bagehot to be properly set at a penalty rate to discourage abuse.* In contrast, the repo rate is the interest charged on repurchase / rehypothecation transactions, which are short term over-collateralized (e.g. \$100 collateral to borrow \$95) loans where a much larger set of institutions including banks, insurance companies, hedge funds, and others can participate on similar financial terms.
The discount rate is a policy rate where the repo rate is an emergent market price for funds. These rates are linked but not in a mechanical way. For example, if the discount rate were set very low, banks would prefer to borrow from the central bank than the collateralized loan market at the repo rate and therefore quantities and rates in the repo market would likely fall. Or it would if there weren't generally speaking a stigma to using the discount window to borrow at the discount rate. But if it were profitable maybe that stigma could be overcome. And there may be other differences like changes in terms or the suitable assets usable as collateral that make comparisons of rates imperfect.
* -

This penalty explains the positive difference between the fed funds
  rate and the discount rate. If there were no penalty, banks would be
  indifferent between borrowing from other banks and the Fed's discount
  window.

Is the Discount Window Necessary? A Penn Central Perspective (Calomiris (1993))
That is, banks would rather borrow from the Fed than each other, so the Fed sets its policy rate higher to push banks back into market sources of funds. Then only those shut out of such markets will avail themselves of such funding.
Comment: What do you mean by "discourage abuse"?
Comment: Happy to help. If this is now a full answer to your question you can accept the answer which is good for you, me, and the economics stack exchange site.

Bank rate and Repo rate


How many people listened to the Bhagavad Gita in the Mahabharata along with Arjuna?

Question: I have listened to various version of the Mahabharata where various people are said to be listening to the Bhagavad Gita along with Arjuna, like Hanuman, Barbarika, etc. But this count varies. So what is the real count? How many people listen to it with Arjuna?
Comment: Hanumaan ji also listened geeta .. because hanumaan ji seeted on arjuna's rath
Answer: The following is given for thought which is based on Vyasa Bharata,

1) Bhagavad Gita to Arjuna, by boon to Sanjaya and Dhritarashtra:
       Nobody talked on Bhagavad Gita at any other time except by Arjuna who wanted to hear again but the request was rejected by Lord Krishna! (Mahabharata, Book 14: Aswamedha Parva, Chapter 16, Anugita Parva). Lord Krishna felt sad on this forgotten aspect. But instead Lord Krishna gave one Anugita.   http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/m14/m140...
Lord Krishna gave Srimad Bhagwad Gita only to Arjuna and the entire world was in suspended animation at that time. Only exceptions were Sanjaya and through him Dhritarashtra.
The Bhagavad Gita portions are in fact a live running commentary by Sanjaya to Dhritarashtra.   The author Sri Vyasa in Mahabharata gives Bhagavad Gita to us through Sanjaya only.  2) Barbarika, son of Ghatotkacha;
Barbarika name and the episode is not mentioned in Mahabharata. This may be from some other version or from a folk base.     In Rajasthan, he is worshipped as Khatushyamji, and is believed to have been sacrificed before the Mahabharata war to ensure the victory of his grand-fathers, the Pandavas. In return for his sacrifice, he was deified by a boon given by Krishna.    There is paradox here. He wanted to fight for the loosing side and took his life for the victory for the Pandavas.     3) Aravan's (son of Arjuna) sacrifice:
Aravan or Iravan or Kuttantavar (கூத்தாண்டவர்) name and episode is not available in Vyasa Bharata.
The first account of Aravan's sacrifice is found in Parata Venpa—the earliest surviving Tamil version of the Mahabharata—by Peruntevanar (9th century). The tale is later retold by  Villiputuralvar in his 14th-century Makabharatam and by Nallapillai in  the 18th century. The legend is also mentioned in the text Khoothanvar Sthala Purana, associated with the shrine of Kuttantavar.    In modern interpretations, Aravan's head symbolizes not only self-sacrifice but also regeneration and continuity, because of his ability to see the war after his sacrifice.
If Aravan's Head is alive, can this be taken as full sacrifice for the victory of Pandavas?     4) Hanuman in the flag;
Lord Hanuman need not be brought to the human level by saying that along with Arjuna and Sanjaya.    Hanuman is beyond the level of hearing Gita as His concentration is fully devoted to Lord Rama and Rama Nama. Lord Hanuman is beyond and above the level prescribed by Bhagavad Gita.
       If Hanuman in the flag can hear means the Omniscient, Omnipotent, Omnipresent Bhagavan Lord Vishnu, Lord Shiva, Lord Brahma, Lord Ganesa, Lord Subramanya, Maha Sakthi, Sun God, Trikala Gnanis like Narada could have heard the Bhagavad Gita then!
5) Summary:
Based on the Vyasa Mahabharata and only from Vyasa Mahabharata,
Three contemporaries plus one divine Vedav Vyasa were the listeners:
One (Arjuna) listened Srimad Bhagavad Gita directly in front of Lord Krishna.
       One with divine vision (and ear, both given by Vedav Vyasa) at the Hastinapura palace also listened (Sanjaya).
      One more heard the running voice commentary through Sanjaya (the king Dhritarashtra).
Those three were the listeners of Bhagavad Gita when it was delivered.
Sage Vyasa (who knows the past, present and future) became the author of Mahabharata (Vyasa Bharata) by remembering everything later!

Source:

http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/m14/m140...
http://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/ind...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarika
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iravan

A better answer is here

Lord Krishna gave Srimad Bhagwad Gita only to Arjuna and the entire world was in suspended animation at that time. Only exceptions were Sanjaya and Dhritarashtra.
Nobody talked on Bhagavad Gita at any other time except by Arjuna who wanted to hear again but the request was rejected by Lord Krishna!
1) Three contemporaries plus one divine Vedav Vyasa were the listeners:
One (Arjuna) listened Srimad Bhagavad Gita directly in front of Lord Krishna.  One with divine vision (and ear, both given by Vedav Vyasa) at the Hastinapura palace also listened (Sanjaya).  One more heard the running voice commentary through Sanjaya (the king Dhritarashtra).
Those three were the listeners of Bhagavad Gita when it was delivered.
Sage Vyasa who knows the past, present and future and later to write Mahabharata (Vyasa Bharata) could have recalled later!
2) Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 4, Verse 3:
स एवायं मया ते ऽदय यॊगः परॊक्तः पुरातनः  भक्तॊ ऽसि मे सखा चेति रहस्यं हय एतद उत्तमम
"sa evayam maya te 'dya  yogah proktah puratanah  bhakto 'si me sakha ceti  rahasyam hy etad uttamam"
"That very ancient science of the relationship with the Supreme is today told by Me to YOU because you are My devotee as well as My friend and can therefore understand the transcendental mystery of this science."
3) Bhagavad Gita Visvarupa Darsan:
Mahabharata, Book 6, Chapter 33, Verse 9):  (Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 11, Verse 9:
"संजय उवाच  एवम उक्त्वा ततॊ राजन महायॊगेश्वरॊ हरिः  दर्शयाम आस पार्थाय परमं रूपम ऐश्वरम"
sanjaya uvaca  evam uktva tato rajan  maha-yogesvaro harih  darsayam asa parthaya  paramam rupam aisvaram
Sanjaya said: O King, speaking thus, the Supreme, the Lord of all mystic power, the Personality of Godhead, displayed His universal form to Arjuna.
Sri Sridhara Swami's Commentary:
Having bequeathed the supernatural eyes of illumination the Supreme Lord Krishna exhibited His almighty, omnipotent, transcendental visvarupa or divine universal form. The description of this universal form is what is being described in this verse and the next five verses by Sanjaya, who was also given divine sight to see it by Vedavyasa.
(Sanjaya narrated the the whole incident to Dhritarashtra.  Dhritarashtra only heared the running commendary given by Sanjaya).

One link more to give you a more idea
History of Bhagawat Gita
Comment: This comment is nicely researched well sourced, but the answer is not clear. Can you please summarize your findings at the top in bold text?
Comment: Sanjaya didn't give live commentary of events in Kurukshetra. He was fighting with Duryodana's army. Early in Bhishma Parva it starts by Sanjaya informing Dhritarastra that Bhishma had died and the the king asks him how. Then he narrates everything. So, is a recollection of events.
Answer: Two people, Arjuna and Sanjaya. Sanjaya narrated the whole Gita to Dhritrashtra but he did not listen to the verses directly. So in short Arjuna and Sanjaya listened to the Gita in first person.
Answer: Sanjaya and Dhritrastra are listening as well. See Bhagavad Gita 1.1
This brings the total count to 3 people.
Comment: Sanjaya was seeing but Dhritrastra was listening the commentary of Sanjaya.
Comment: and even there were many others too.. which I forgot.
Answer: Yes, logically Arjun, Sanjay and Dhritarashtra are the people listening. But noticing further we find Lord Hanuman residing on the flag of Arjun' s chariot (His chariot was called Kapidhwaj), so in a way he can also be said to have heard the Gita. However this count varies according to different historians and researchers.
Answer: I am not sure but Ved Vyas ji and Ganesh ji also listened.
Because Ved Vyas is the person who gave us Mahabharat, and Ganesh ji wrote Mahabharata while Vyas ji was narrating.
Comment: While Ganesh certainly would have to have heard the Bhagavad Gita in some context, this question is asking about people who were present during the original delivery of the Gita from Krishna to Arjuna. I'm pretty sure Ganesh wasn't present then.
Comment: So Arjuna, Sanjay, Hanumanji & Ved Vyas?
Comment: That seems like it might be right (as mentioned in the other answers). I don't know enough to be sure, though.


BB84 Protocol doubt

Question: I was studying BB84 protocol from lecture notes by John Watrous. I had some doubts which i thought of asking. Here is the protocol.
Alice prepares strings $x=(01110100)$ and $y=(11010001)$. based on the pair $(x_i,y_i)$ it prepares $|A_{00}\rangle=|0\rangle$,$|A_{10}\rangle=|1\rangle$, $|A_{01}\rangle=|+\rangle$,$|A_{11}\rangle=|-\rangle$. He distributes these to Bob. Bob genarates a random key $y'=01110110$. If $y_i=0$ Bob measures the $i-th$ qubit in $Z$ basis, else if $y_i=1$ Bob measures it in $X$ basis. He notes his measurement result as $x_i'$. Then the protocol says that whenever $y_i=y{_i'}$ then $x_i=x{_i'}$. But in the example for $x_5,y_5=00$ and Bob has $y_{5'}=0$ then his outcome $x_5'=0$. Whereas I think it should be $x_5'=1$.
Am I missing something?
Comment: Lecture notes by John Watrous.
Answer: Let us work this out for your particular example, and see why it works in the general case.

We have:
$$
\begin{array}{c|c|c|c|c|c|c|c|c}
\text{index}&1&2&3&4&5&6&7&8\\\hline
x&0&1&1&1&0&1&0&0\\\hline
y&1&1&0&1&0&0&0&1\\
\hline
y'&0&1&1&1&0&1&1&0
\end{array}
$$
For the fifth index, since $y_5=0$, Alice will encode $x_5$ using the $\{|0\rangle;|1\rangle\}$ basis. Since $x_5=0$, she will send $\left|A_{00}\right\rangle=|0\rangle$. Assuming there is nothing to disturb this state, this is what Bob will receive. Since $y'_5=0$, he will also use the $\{|0\rangle;|1\rangle\}$ basis to measure it, and will thus measure $|0\rangle$ with probability $1$. Thus, we have $x_5=x'_5=0$.

Now, in the general case. We know that we will only consider the indexes $i$ such that $y_i=y'_i$, so we can afford to only consider those cases. Assuming nothing disturbs the state sent by Alice, since Bob measures in the same basis as Alice encoded the state, he will always measure the right result with probability $1$.
Now, the point of the protocol is that Eve may disturb the state by measuring it in the wrong basis. Let us assume that Eve measures in the $|\pm\rangle$ basis, while Alice encoded the state in the $\{|0\rangle;|1\rangle\}$ basis. With probability $\frac12$ each, the state will then collapse to either $|+\rangle$ or $|-\rangle$. Subsequently, Bob will measure it and get $|0\rangle$ or $|1\rangle$ with probability $\frac12$ each. Thus, if this index is used to veridy the protocol, there is a probability $\frac12\times\frac12=\frac14$ (Eve measures in the wrong basis and Bob gets the wrong result) that Alice and Bob detects that the channel is noisy, or that Eve was eavesdropping.

BB84 Protocol doubt


Relevant Field Survey123

Question: I'm fairly new to using Survey123 and have ran into a problem. I've created a multiple choice question where you can select more than one answer. With each answer, I would like to show a specific relevant sub-question. Basically, if the answer is A, I want it to show only A sub question. If it's A and C, only show A and C sub questions. If it's C, only show C... So far, I have used the "${question1} = '1' or ${question1} = '2'" expression but that doesn't work.
How can I accomplish this?
Answer: Answered myself.. within the relevant field I have "selected(${MyField}, '1')". The "1" is the answer you would have under choices.

Relevant Field Survey123


How many registered users are there?

Question: Can I somewhere see the number of registered users on  our site [ without multiplying the number of pages by  36, the number of users per page] ?
Comment: An aside: to find how many ***total*** users there are (both registered and unregistered), use this page: http://stackexchange.com/sites#questions
Comment: I think there are $n$ registered users, and $k$ unregistered users. Both $n$ and $k$ are in $\Bbb N$, and are probably smaller than $10^{8000}$.
Answer: A possible way to get an idea about this number is to look at the right (i.e. total reputation tab) of this page. As of today, it seems that there are $65\,508$ registered users.
On the other hand, I am sure that a lot of people create new account for every new question they have, and therefore the number of actual users is (much?) less than the number of registered accounts.
Comment: Oh hey, almost 2^16.
Comment: Dear O.L. : perfect answer + clever remark $\implies$ upvote+acceptance of answer+many thanks :-)
Comment: When I decrease the time period over which the reputation is totaled on that page, the number of users increases. When I set it to "Week", I see $72\,006$ users. This seems odd. The number of users at $100\,000+$ stays at $6$.
Comment: @robjohn I have also noticed this. In the first version of my answer I gave a link to "week" and later corrected it by "all-time". In the range 100-5000 reputation this gives quite different numbers, and it is "all-time" which seems to correspond to what one obtains by multiplying the number of relevant pages by 36.
Comment: Dear O.L., the multiplication by 36 gives 57960, whereas the "all time" page of yor link  gives 65524.   Do you also get such a discrepancy?
Comment: Dear @GeorgesElencwajg , yes. But, for example, for users with +500 reputation, we obtain $60\times 36+26=2186$. This is rather close to currently indicated $2206$ ("all-time") and very far from $682$ ("week").
Comment: Thanks again, O.L.
Comment: @AlexanderGruber: You must have been studying 2-groups lately :)

How many registered users are there?


"I knew that you { are / were } busy in a meeting" -- Which do I say when the meeting is still going on?

Question: I am not sure, if the sentence ""I knew that you are busy in a  meeting" is correct. I think it is incorrect as it has past tense(knew) and present (are). pls. correct me
Comment: This is not an answer. It sounds like you wanted to say something along the lines "I knew you'd be busy in a/the/another/etc. meeting".
Comment: Use: _I knew that you **were** busy in the meeting._
Answer: You can mix tenses, but this particular mix wouldn't be quite appropriate to a native English speaker. "I knew that you were busy" says that you knew the person was busy, but they aren't now. "I know that you were busy in a meeting" would be used if you are acknowledging that someone was previously busy, and have something else to say ("I know you were busy, but you still needed to send me that report"). "I know you are busy in a meeting" would be used if they are in a meeting right now, and you're contacting them while they're in that meeting.
Answer: It is incorrect, you're right. "I knew that you are busy in a meeting" implies that you somehow saw the future and knew that the person was going to be busy ahead of time. Which is doubly rude, since you knowingly interrupted their meeting!
"I know you're busy in a meeting" would be appropriate if you're contacting someone in the middle of a meeting with something important. Otherwise, it would be "I knew you were busy in a meeting" if the meeting happened some time ago, and you decided to wait until afterwards to contact the person, since you knew they were busy at the time.


Handling TDD interface changes

Question: I've begun to use TDD.  As mentioned in an earlier question the biggest difficulty is handling interface changes.  How do you reduce the impact on your test cases as requirements change?
Answer: Changing an interface requires updating code that uses that interface.  Test code isn't any different from non-test code in this respect.  It's unavoidable that tests for that interface will need to change.
Often when an interface changes you find that "too many" tests break, i.e. tests for largely unrelated functionality turn out to depend on that interface.  That can be a sign that your tests are overly broad and need refactoring.  There are many possible ways this can happen, but here's an example that hopefully shows the general idea as well as a particular case.
For instance if the way to construct an Account object has changed, and this requires updating all or most of your tests for your Order class, something is wrong.  Most of your Order unit tests probably don't care about how an account is made, so refactor tests like this:
def test_add_item_to_order(self):
    acct = Account('Joe', 'Bloggs')
    shipping_addr = Address('123 Elm St', 'etc' 'etc')
    order = Order(acct, shipping_addr)
    item = OrderItem('Purple Widget')
    order.addItem(item)
    self.assertEquals([item], order.items)

to this:
def make_order(self):
    acct = Account('Joe', 'Bloggs')
    shipping_addr = Address('123 Elm St', 'etc' 'etc')
    return Order(acct, shipping_addr)

def make_order_item(self):
    return OrderItem('Purple Widget')

def test_add_item_to_order(self):
    order = self.make_order()
    item = self.make_order_item()
    order.addItem(item)
    self.assertEquals([item], order.items)

This particular pattern is a Creation Method.
An advantage here is that your test methods for Order are insulated from how Accounts and Addresses are created; if those interfaces change you only have one place to change, rather than every single test that happens to use Accounts and Addresses.
In short: tests are code too, and like all code, sometimes they need refactoring.
Answer: I think this is one of the reasons for the trendy argument that interfaces are used too much.
However, I disagree.
When requirements change -- so should your tests. Right? I mean, if the criteria for which you've written the test is no longer valid, then you should rewrite or eliminate that test.
I hope this helps, but I think I may have misunderstood your question.
Answer: There will be an impact. You just have to accept that changing the interface will require time to change the associated test cases first. There is no way around this.
However then you consider the time you save by not trying to find an elusive bug in this interface later and not fixing that bug during the release week it is totally worth it.
Answer: In TDD, your tests aren't tests. They are executable specifications. IOW: they are an executable encoding of your requirements. Always keep that in mind.
Now, suddenly it becomes obvious: if your requirements change, the tests must change! That's the whole point of TDD!
If you were doing waterfall, you would have to change your specification document. In TDD, you have to do the same, except that your specification isn't written in Word, it's written in xUnit.
Answer: "What we should do to prevents our code and tests from requiments dependency? Seems that nothing. Every time when requiments changed we must change our code & tests. But maybe we can simplify our work? Yes, we can. And the key principle is: incapsulation of code that might be changed."
http://dmitry-nikolaev.blogspot.com/2009/05/atch-your-changes.html
Answer: You write the tests before you write the code for the new interface.
Answer: If you are following the Test First approach, there should in theory be no impact of interface changes on your test code. After all, when you need to change an interface, you'd first change the test case(s) to match the requirements and then go ahead and change your interfaces/implementation until the tests pass.
Answer: When interfaces change, you should expect tests to break. If too many tests break, this means that your system is too tightly coupled and too many things depend on that interface. You should expect a few tests to break, but not a lot.
Having tests break is a good thing, any change in your code should break tests.
Answer: If requirements change then your tests should be the first thing to change, rather than the interface.
I would start by modifying the interface design in the first appropriate test, updating the interface to pass the newly-breaking test. Once the interface is updated to pass the test, you should see other tests break (as they will be using the outdated interface).
It should be a matter of updating the remaining failing tests with the new interface design to get them passing again.
Updating the interface in a test driven manner will ensure that the changes are actually necessary, and are testable.

Handling TDD interface changes


How do I handle an increasing lack of faith in my design abilities?

Question: Do any of you seasoned design professionals have any advice for a young graphic design student/novice?
Especially with respects to improving upon knowledge and picking yourself up post-critique. Particularly if you are a person who takes criticism very personally.
I do understand that as a design student, it can be an advantage to be 'thick skinned'.
What advice would you give in order for me to pick myself up?
I have started to realise (realistically) that I am not particularly very talented at design. Despite dedicating the last 4 years towards educating myself, spending lots of money and learning the industry.
Any advice??
Comment: I'd say a good starting point is reading [How would I know how good of a designer I am?](http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/13808/how-would-i-know-how-good-of-a-designer-i-am) - every creative person goes through periods of frustration where they realise they aren't as good as they thought they were. Often, this is when you're in the process of improving - but your ability to "see" critically is improving faster than your proficiency - you spot weak ares in your work faster than you learn to improve them.
Comment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome
Comment: This got 10 answers and a lot of page views pretty fast, so clearly you're not alone in this one!
Comment: I have been a designer for 15 years, and I still get phases of this. I would say that the secret to confidence is consistency. Doing a lot of what you love to do, realising that it won't always be perfect. The process of perfecting what you do, transforms your abilities from mediocre, to brilliant.

The more positive feedback you get the more confidence you will have as a designer.
Answer: I'll try to sum up what helped me the most when I was going through my last own little crisis.
Sometimes you will feel really good about your work. Other times (for some the most) you will realise your final result is nowhere near your previous expectations. This in my case gets aggravated by Dribbble profiles :)
I have heard lots of professionals saying some people just "don't have it", aesthetically-wise. I don't agree. If practise doesn't make perfect, it can definitely make great. And I don't think it has to do with more studying. If you like designing, don't stop doing it.
My very personal advice:

Observe other people's work. Follow other designers, keep an eye on what the big agencies and brands are doing, pick your favourite pieces. Use your designer eye for things around you, criticize, absorb. Also look at how the design process works for others, how they "come up with the great ideas".
Be honest with your own work, and try harder. This is the key, I think. When you create something, stop, look at it. Give it a couple of days, evaluate it again. Most designers know how good or bad a piece is, and some will settle for good enough. Don't. Push yourself a little more, aim for excellence. Keep trying. Start all over, if you have to. Don't stop until you know you got it, the real thing, the one you are proud of.

Not all jobs need to be executed to perfection, but it's good to have a few of these gold pieces. And it's something you can keep forever. Most writers, for example, start with a rough written sketch and then work their way up, we are talking months, even years making corrections. Only a very tiny group of people can grab a pen and create something unique and amazing.
I always tell this story when talking about "talent": I had two friends. One was superbly talented, but was lazy and had no real passion about what he was best at. The other was terrible, he couldn't draw a stick figure, I'm not exaggerating. Yet he tried and tried, he drew for months, then went to school, and now he's a famous artist while my first friend does something completely unrelated that he's not even good at nor makes him happy. If design is what you want, go for it. You don't need to be Mozart to make music.
EDIT: I see now I kind of missed the point with my answer. Regarding the thick skin... I have a very thin one. I asked this question a little while ago, I think the answers can really give you a nice perspective:

How do you deal with clients who bash your designs?
Answer: The same doubts you're having with you design ability can happen in regards to learning anything, from asking people out on dates to learning a foreign language. One of the most encouraging yet true posts I've seen about this doubt is The Gap, a short video by Ira Glass. You should definitely check it out and take what it says to heart. The full interview can be found on YouTube in four parts (part one starts here). Part two is especially relevant to this discussion as he explains the importance of failing.
With that being said, I wrote a lengthy blog post on this subject which I encourage you to give a good read. Here are some main points as well as some additional thoughts:

Continue to do work - lots of it. There is no better teacher than experience. Someone can give you a detailed exposition of an experience, but until you have had the experience yourself, it can't have the same meaning to you. We truly get to know the subject matter by simply doing it - in your case creating work.
It takes time. It takes time to find people who outclass you who you can learn from. It takes time to start to understand what they're talking about and how it works. This is the way it should be! As Publilius Syrus said, "It takes a long time to bring excellence to maturity," and we have to work at it constantly. Roger Staubach agrees: "Confidence comes from hours and days and weeks and years of constant work and dedication." In the same way, we create by working hard and by mixing ideas. Doing so well takes time and a lot of thought.
And improving is addictive. The more you know, the less you think you know. And the less you think you know, the more you want to know! We never stop getting better at what we're doing unless we stop trying.
It should be intimidating and difficult. If you're not somewhat intimidated by the people or content that you're surrounded by, you're probably not being pushed as hard as you can be, and you may not be reaching your potential. Tasks that are beyond your current ability help you grow the most.
Most great works didn't come in a flash of ingenuity, but rather from a long time spent thinking and a whole lot of work. Henry Ford (inventor of the automobile) once said, "I invented nothing new. I simply assembled the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work... Progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready then it is inevitable."
That may mean that you get harsh criticism and fail at times, but at the end of it you'll have picked up some of it, learned something of the mindset around it, and become more likely to understand similar topics in the future than you had been previously.
Be encouraged. Look at your past work, especially the failures, and learn from them. Take note of the knowledge you learned from creating it and the good and bad parts of it. Be encouraged by the fact that if you redid the work today you could do a much better job!
We also need others to encourage us. That doesn't mean we should seek to only be praised by others, encouragement is not so much saying kind words to a person, but rather an action towards or treatment of that person in a way that builds them up. Surround yourself with people that want to see you improve. That is not to say that they don't care for you as you are now – they should accept you as you are now – but they should also want to see you ever improve. That is what true friends do, rather than simply trying to have meaningless fun. Get involved in a community of people that are going in the same or similar directions - being a part of the chatroom here is one small way to do so.
Faking it is making it. Amy Cuddy discusses how this is true for body language, but the same is true for non-physical subjects. If you get the job done, the job is done. It's always the case that we could do it better once we're more skilled, but we're not there yet. We do what we currently can and that's all that we can ask of ourselves. We should always be pushing ourselves to try and be the best we can be, but we shouldn't feel bad about ourselves because we're not perfect - we never will be.
Intelligence is defined in many ways. One of my favorite definitions is by Bertolt Brecht: "Intelligence is not to make no mistakes, but quickly to see how to make them good." Using this definition, continuing to do work that you don't feel is adequate actually makes you more intelligent by increasing your capacity to think about the situation at hand and improve it. Simply by doing it we get better!
Comment: Upvoted for Ira Glass' video being mentioned. I was going to leave it as a comment.
Answer: Yisela said: "I have heard lots of professionals saying some people just 'don't have it', aesthetically-wise. I don't agree." This is certainly a viewpoint that is either right or wrong, and the conclusions that you'd draw from that are very different. If a tone-deaf person can learn to sing, then tell him to try as hard as he can. If he can't, then he's wasting his time, right?
An analogy
Before I started taking art classes in high school, I was a big math and science guy. I was good at calculus.
You know what doesn't happen in the math field? People skipping algebra and trigonometry, jumping straight into calculus, struggling, and then throwing up their hands and saying "I just can't do math."
Sure, some people are better at math than others. Some people flee from math because they hate it, and some people just aren't able to grasp higher concepts (one of the smarter people I know got tripped up on his college differential equations class!). But there's a logical progression. Learn counting. Then addition. Then subtraction, multiplication, then division. Then math with negatives. Then equations and exponents. Then polynomials. Then integrals. And on from there. Note that this process takes place over a child's entire education.
Point being, while there are some true math prodigies, most people learn it progressively and systematically. And yet, people go into the art world and expect people to just "have it". It's not like that at all, though! There's a reason we spend a lot of time teaching kids how to write - dexterity takes practice. There's a reason why art classes often focus on still-lifes - it teaches you how to see something and translate it to your media. There's a reason why plenty of designers start out designing boring forms for their company - it teaches mastery of the software tools and more minor design execution skills which will help you design new things more quickly later. There's a reason why we do critiques - it teaches designers how to think and imparts wisdom from people who have been doing it more.
Worth noting too that for every prodigy in any field, there are probably 100-1000 people who are in the trenches of the same industry, doing great work but not posting it on the Internet. The beauty and curse of the Web is that it shows you the best of everything. I look at other graphic and web designers out there and feel like an utter failure, and yet somehow I've been blessed to have jobs where I fit in and do good work.
So, with all that in mind...

Improving upon knowledge

Read. Do. Revise. Revamp. Repeat. If you like logos, read Brand New or design firms' blogs to learn more about the industry. Find a project you care about and do a logo for it. Ask design friends (or us!) for a critique. Make it better. As long as you're getting better, you're continuing to set yourself apart from the people who don't. And believe me, not everyone in your design school is getting better.

Picking yourself up post-critique

I like to think that for every person who gets shredded in a critique, there has to be a person who was unwilling to ask. Which person gets better in the long run? I noticed that you did a critique on this site. So did I! My critique got some positive responses, some really negative ones, and some really thoughtful ones in between. Some advice I'll accept, some I'll reject, but my menu today (as well as the future rollout of it) is better than it was before because I was willing to put myself out there and hear criticism.
Another way to look at it: Everyone is a critic. When you design something and put it out there, your work will still be critiqued, except it'll be done by people who can't speak the design language as well, won't be able to make it better, who don't know or care about you. I'd rather hear it from a small group of designers pre-launch than a large group of everyone post-launch.
There is a proverb: "Do not reprove a scoffer, or he will hate you, Reprove a wise man and he will love you." I don't know if the wise man loves being reproved, but he loves the person who does it because he knows that he can become wiser still. Be willing to accept hard truths and use that feedback to make yourself better. I think that advice would apply to any field, and if that sounds like something you don't want to do for the sake of design, then and only then would I say that you might not cut out for that line of work.
Answer: It's not necessary to be elite in your field to be useful to clients who need design work done, and are willing to pay you to do it.
Get your head out of the classics and leading bloggers for a while ... go and look around your town, your local publications, look at some local advertising.  Do you can feel an "I could do better than that!" coming on?  Someone got paid to do those jobs - why couldn't it have been you, to do a better thing with it?
On the other hand, life is too short to stick with doing something you are not enjoying after having given it a good go.  It's not like all that learning will suddenly abandon you - feel free to give something else a try, reconnect with what it is that really makes you tick.
Comment: This is great advice. Look at any shop sign or small newspaper advert and think how you would redesign it. Those are are all made by paid professionals. That should definitely help with your self-esteem.
Answer: Much of design is learning about human perception. Anyone can learn to use the tools (Photoshop, Illustrator, et. al.). Learning the tools is honestly just a matter of time and practice. Anyone can be a Photoshop-whiz given enough time, even if they have zero design abilities.
A good designer deals more with the unseen or intangible aspects of a piece and then concerns themselves with the tools. The tools are just a means to an end.
While learning design I feel it is more important to learn the psychology of human perception. Learning what colors convey emotions and what those emotions are, the way people perceive shapes, ways to convey different moods, how the eye travels across a page, how long the average billboard is looked at, the best color to promote urgency, etc., are all things a good designer will be aware of while working.
If you feel you lack some design aesthetics, you need to boost your perceptional understanding. Most of this can be learned by simply working. You learn that more white space creates an air of openness and conversely no white space conveys a sense of compression or constriction. Pastel colors are calming while fluorescents are agitating. It's these sort of things that can help with design aesthetics.
I wish I could point to a direct source for these things. The best I can do is a couple Google searches and a couple good links:
Visual Grammar of Lines
The Meanings of Colors
These sort of things are often gained more through trial and error since, my perception is, many design schools focus more on the tools than the marketing. However, it is these sorts of articles you should seek out and ingest. Knowing this stuff will do nothing but make you more confident and decisive in your designing.
Marketing classes often go far more into what does and does not work when selling. And really, design is all about selling visuals.
Reading articles about marketing to specific audiences will help you better target designs. Then using the psychology for that market aides further.
As for post-critique feelings.... I hope my earlier critique wasn't taken personally. It certainly wasn't mean to be. Realize that no one ever learns anything by hearing "I Like It!" People only learn and improve when they hear dissent. I can sympathize with hurt feelings and you are right, developing a thicker skin is pretty much mandatory. Remember what you create is not who you are. I've had work literally spit upon. Think of it this way... if you were painting your bedroom at home and your boyfriend/husband didn't like the color of paint you want to use, would that be a personal attack or merely a difference of opinion? Design is subjective and opinion much of the time. Differing opinions aren't ever really personal attacks. You will always find others who disagree with your design choices. You may feel some disagreements have merit where others do not. You should take what you like and ignore the rest.
In the end, you just need to be bold, be brave, be confident, in your decisions. If you are, others will be as well. Half of being a good designer is just being gutsy enough to unapologetically stand by what you've created. Remember your worst creation is at least 300% better than what any client could ever create. And haters gunna hate :)
Don't give up. Four years is still early and there's a great deal you learn though actual work as opposed to schooling. Schooling only gets you so far it's the work environment - either as an employee or as a freelancer - that will really catapult your self-confidence in design.
Answer: Some personal experience, for what it's worth. When I started out doing graphic design for a web development company, I found that it turned me into a massive prima donna. I couldn't take any criticism from the boss, and any commands to add elements or change things would lead to a hissy fit. I tried to hide most of this, but I'm sure a lot of it showed.
Then I moved away from graphic design and into UX design, I found that I suddenly became incredibly thick-skinned, much more in control of the process and, I think, a lot more pleasant to work with.
I think the difference is that UX design is much more about the process and figuring out what a makes a good solution together. All you do is make wonky-looking wireframes, and help people figure out what they want and how to express what they want. Contrast this with the insane myth of graphic design where you have to be born talented and everybody has to bow to your genius, and you can sort of see how the difference comes about.
The best way to stop taking it personally is to let go of the ownership of the idea. Figure out what the design needs to be together. Give everybody crayons and lego blocks and let them make ugly drawings. That will give you the heart of the design, and if you find out it's wrong, so much the better. Exactly what typeface you use or which grid system is not the point.
This article explains it better than I can. The heart of a design is its functionality, not how many hours you spent slaving over photoshop. If you test that early and often, you get into a much healthier flow.
Answer:
Particularly if you are a person who takes criticism very personally.

Don't. Then you don't have to be 'thick skinned'. Criticism is of your work. If it is of you then you should ask for clarification. If it is about the inanimate object that you designed, write down the points and thank everyone for the input. If you have a reputation later you will jump at every chance to get real input and criticism as many people shy away from doing so if you have already 'proven yourself' (whatever that means).

I am not particularly very talented at design.

No one is. Talent is a myth. There is only hard work. The difference is seeing mistakes or poor results as failure or as something to lean from. It is part of western culture to do the former but you need to understand that mistakes are going to be made, and the earlier you make them the easier it is to put them behind you as experiences. If I told you that you have to make 100 terrible designs before you make one really good one, wouldn't you be happy to know that you are already at 92?
And I have to agree with Zach quoting Amy Cuddy: fake it till you make it.
Answer: This quote has helped me deal with people commenting on my work:

Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong. —Neil Gaiman

People have an innate sense of what works, and what doesn't. So if they say it doesn't work, it doesn't. But only you know how all the pieces fit together and what the underlying logic is. Any change they suggest will probably ruin that logic. So listen to what people say you should change, but not to how they say you should change it.
Take your critique and split it into the important (where to look for improvement) and the unimportant (how to fix things). A good critiquer will do this for you, but we do not always get the ciritiquers we deserve.
We have to listen to criticism and take it seriously, but we don't have to take it at face value. Just because someone has spotted a flaw in you work, doesn't mean that they should be the designer.
Comment: I disagree with this. People more advanced in the field often have good and helpful critique and recommendations for where to take the design
Comment: @ZachSaucier That's true, experienced designers can actually see the internal logic of your design and take it into account, and make recommendations based on it. But as an idea it does help to remind yourself that if somebody gives you a critique, you're still in control. It's still up to you to decide what to do with it. Some people's recommendations you should take more seriously than others'. But ultimately, it's up to you.
Answer: It's pretty often that we as Designers, and just generally as humans have periods of doubt. When we doubt ourselves in most cases we asses what we are doing the best, and make improvements. I wrote about mentality and psychology in design a number of months ago and came across an infographic regarding painting skill improvement, and redesigned the graph to fit with graphic design.
We tend to look at other peoples design in periods, which we often research before of whilst a project or piece is being designed. Our perceived technical ability tend to grow above our actually skill level the more we design and look at work, usually because we feel we are on par with other designers. Our actual technical skill grows through experience and consistent work, and generally only grows and becomes saturated, before growing after a period of frustration. Until a point of saturation where we are at our peak.
Hope this helps.
Comment: [Here's a link to the original version of that graph](http://www.marcdalessio.com/self-portraits-over-the-years-2/) (by Marc Dalessio)
Comment: Yes that's the one!
Answer: I used to be just like you in college 9 long years ago. I was designing websites in high school and figured, hey - I like this. I never thought I'd actually make a living out of it.
Then I hit college and discovered that I could actually convince others to pay me to do this.
Then I took some art/design classes as part of my design major and I got my butt handed to me. I regularly imagined boo'ing coming from the minds of my classmates. I cried every now and then when I was suffocating under the weight of everyone else's talent. There were glimmers of "success" when the professor remarked about what was good about my work. But mostly, critique time was a dreadful time.
I know. Melodramatic.
But something happened during my senior year. During the final critique, my professor remarked about how impressed he was with how much I improved. I worked and worked and worked at my weaknesses. Now, he didn't say I was good. But the fact that I had demonstrated marked improvement was enough encouragement for me to get teary-eyed and ridiculously hopeful about my future.
I don't think I was happy with what I was producing until 2 years after college. That's just because I, like you, didn't feel I had any natural talent for design. I knew, however, that I loved what I did and that with time, effort, and paying attention to my mentors and peers, my taste would eventually match up with my skills.

I do understand that as a design student, it can be an advantage to be 'thick skinned'.

Yes, it is because the real world is a lot tougher than a tough professor. You will likely thank those professors who cared enough to criticize you later down the road when you find yourself remembering the little nuggets of wisdom they've shared with you.

What advice would you give in order for me to pick myself up?

I want to ask yourself something first. Do you love designing? Why did you get into it the first place? Is it to help people? Is it to satiate your ego and the need to express yourself?
If it's primarily for the former reason, you owe it to the world and yourself to do whatever it takes to build up your talent. That means working your butt off and just doing the work. If it's the latter, then perhaps you are an artist. Either one is totally fine. I think the trick is to remember during the hard parts exactly why you're doing this - and then "pick yourself up" from there because design isn't just for you.
To give you a glimpse of what it was like for me (an actual person companies have paid good money to) to work under a tremendous amount of self-loathing, check out this article I wrote about a time not too long ago.
Answer: I think everyone goes through this period of self doubt. If you don't, I think you might have other problems like arrogance or illusions of grandeur. I don't think I really "Got It" until the end of design school, I was there 4 years as well.
You might want to to try and figure out where you are going wrong. Some possibilities are, bad conceptual skills, poor execution with sloppy design/illustration or mat boards, poor communication or presentation to convey your concept. If you can narrow down any of these, try to figure out why. Is it time management, lack of resources, burned out? Then work on fixing that problem. You could be in a class with a bunch of jerks. You also might find easier ways to do certain tasks. For me, designing with a grid and Typography for page layout and publication design was a lifesaver. Here is a great Typography book that helped me if interested:Elements of Typographic Style.
I learned a long time ago in a critique a good concept or idea can go a long way. I knew people that would walk into class with something that looked like it took 30 min to make and would B.S. for an hour to explain how it solved all aspects of the project. I'm not saying this is good or bad, it's  just that concept/communication was that persons strength.
You will have to get used to rejection/people wanting to change what you've done. This is the nature of the business. Someone will always want the logo a little bit bigger. You will gain confidence in your design and stand behind it eventually.
In the end, if you've invested all this time and money into it you must have loved it at one point. Try to rediscover what you love but also remember the client pays the bills, finding what they need and like isnt always easy.
Good Luck.


Application menu with root owned windows?

Question: How do I let root-owned windows use global menu?  I already have the 'Title Bar Info' Compiz plug-in telling me that the window is root's, I don't want the existence of the menu bar telling me that it's not my window as well.  I would like some consistency.
Answer: I reported this issue almost a year ago. It's a design/engineering problem that hasn't been solved yet, partly because of the security issues involved.


Should one put future employment on one's resume?

Question: Should one put future employment on one's resume, e.g. a job one will start in a month or two months?
Comment: Why would you need a resume if you already have a future job? Additionally what is to stop someone from lying on such a document? Bad idea to my mind.
Comment: What is the upside for the potential other employer to know that you intend to be an assistant for a CS course as isn't there a chance that the offer could be withdrawn?
Comment: Perhaps if it's a temporary/seasonal position but relevant to one's career, e.g. teaching assistant for a CS course?
Answer:
Should one put future employment on one's resume

No. Your resume should reflect your knowledge and your experience. You should avoid including anything that you haven't yet experienced.
It should include actual jobs you have held - not jobs you expect to hold, jobs you hope you will hold, or jobs you wish you held.
You can always revise it in a month or two once your potential job actually comes to fruition.
Answer: The answer is maybe.
Why do people have resumes? To find jobs, and to help their company win contracts. Every company I have worked for has required me to maintain a resume that they can submit to potential customers to prove the quality of their employees.
If you have an item that is in the future, it may make sense to include it. Some examples:

Selected for a graduate school.
Awaiting graduation date for a completed set of courses.
Having been selected for an internship or training program.
Having been awarded a grant for a research project.
Having been selected for a program that only takes place a few times a year or requires a long training period.
Answer: I do think there needs to be some clarification here as to why you'd need to put your resume out if you have a job that is upcoming?
Now should you put a job that you'll have in the future? No. Your resume should be about skills that you already have that relate to the position you're applying for. Since you never acquire any skills since the job is upcoming, it wouldn't make sense to include it.
Answer: Short answer: No.
If you have a job that will start in a month or two, why are you looking for a job? If you are looking for a job, how do you think that would look on your resume? In the best case it will confuse the company you're applying to, and at best they will think you will only be staying with them for a month or two. Either way, your resume would be passed up.
If you're not looking for a new job, then why are you updating your resume right now? I could see updating it after you start, but right now you don't even know what you'll be doing really.


How to generate Electron Density Fields using DFT?

Question: How may I generate Electron Density Field information using Density Functional Theory calculations? What would my required inputs be like in VASP or Quantum ESPRESSO?
Comment: +1. Welcome to our new community and thank you very much for contributing your question here! We hope to see much more of you in the future !!! I had to comment out much of you question because you put more than one question into a single post. The other questions would have to be asked separately.
Comment: Do you mean electric field or electron density distribution? As far as I'm aware of there is no such thing as an electron density field
Comment: Electron Density Distribution. Basically this distribution which yields useful data related to other physical properties.
Answer: I am assuming you mean just the electron density (as its typically referred to in my experience).  In that case, if using VASP, you just set LCHARG = .TRUE. and you can load the CHGCAR file in a program such as VESTA.
You can also view the charge density of a specific band / kpoint.  This page on the VASP wiki will help you set up your desired calculation.  This can be helpful to view the conductance / valence bands for example.
Comment: You might look into QTAIM methods.  The charge density can be used for a few purposes but that is probably way beyond the scope of your question.  You might want to ask a separate question for that.  You are unlikely to find charge density in a public database, the files tend to be fairly large.
Comment: Ah, Thank You for this answer!! Please could you tell me, in what other purposes can this data be used? Moreover is this data available in certain online databases?

Thanks in advance :)


Network wiring template for Visio

Question: Anyone come across a good template/symbol pack for Visio for doing network wiring, patching, switch topologies, etc.?  Everything in Visio for networking is 3D, and isn't really conducive to cabling.
Answer: Cisco has some good ones. http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac50/ac47/2.html They do look 3Dish though, but maybe you'll find some uses for them.
Comment: I've used these they are pretty nice
Answer: I know it's hokey looking, but I just drew boxes for the switches, and used the most basic connectors for wiring. It's ugly looking, but it's very easy to read and update.
Answer: If you haven't looked there yet, try VisioCafe ( http://www.visiocafe.com/ )
There are many vendor stencil packs and/or links to a vendor's actual stencil to download and you may find some stencils you like.
"Netzoom" / altimatech ( http://www.altimatech.com/ ) has some free (and for-pay) stencil packs including Siemons network stencils that some members of our network team used to be after our boss to purchase.

Network wiring template for Visio


Why did Frank Pentangeli kill himself in Godfather 2?

Question: In The Godfather: Part II Frankie Pentangeli tells Tom a story about the Roman Empire and then he kills himself. Why exactly does he do that?
Comment: Except that Frankie Five Angels tells Tom Hagen that his brother could have had his own family but chose to stay in "that one-mule town." My read is that Michael was threatening Frankie: he talks and the brother dies.
Answer: To avoid retribution for his betrayal of the Corleone family falling on Frankie's children & family.
Note...it was Tom who told the story, not Frank.
From Wikipedia

After the [Senate] hearing, consigliere Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) visits Frank in custody. Hagen tells Frank that he did the right thing by recanting. Tom and Pentangeli talk nostalgically about the good old days when the Corleone Family, as Pentangeli says, "was like the Roman Empire." Hagen tells a story about what would happen to traitors during those Roman days, implying that the correct thing for Pentangeli to do now is to kill himself. Hagen tells Pentangeli if he accepts responsibility for turning on the Corleone family and kills himself, Frank's family will always be taken care of, just as the families of confessed traitors in the Roman days who killed themselves were allowed to keep all of their possessions. He thanks Hagen, returns to his assigned quarters, and despite the presence in the other room of his federal guards, commits suicide by slitting his wrists while taking a bath.
The finished film leaves unclear exactly what about his brother [Vincenzo]'s presence [at the hearings] motivated Frank to change his story. The final film only states that Vincenzo is a powerful and ruthless Mafia chieftain in Sicily.
An early draft of the film's script explains that Vincenzo, shocked that Frankie is about to break his blood oath and betray the Corleones to government authorities, attends the hearing to remind Frankie that he must not break the Mafia's code of silence, omertà. His brother's presence [at the Senate hearing], as well as the stare they exchanged, serves as a threat that if Frankie follows through with his planned testimony, retribution will be taken against his children, who are living in Sicily under Vincenzo's guardianship.
Answer: A second reason is that seeing his brother makes him feel ashamed for breaking the omertà.
So while the avoidance of retribution for his family is the practical reason, the deeper, psychological reason comes from a feeling of deep shame that rekindles his sense of honor.
Respect, a form of honor, is an nearly all important to Sicilian Mafiosi. "Mafiosi are known among themselves as 'men of honour' or 'men of respect'."
Honor is also a factor in the suicides of Ancient Roman noblemen—it is a symbolic act that can expiate shame (see Metellus Scipio).  It is used as a form of honorable protest (see Cato the Younger).
I've read the book and seen the film many times and my feeling is the psychological aspect is more of a factor than the implied threat against his children. For all of the action, the films are deeply psychological, which is an element of their greatness.
Answer: Upon the non-verbal communication with his brother in the court room (someone he absolutely trusts) he realized that it was Hyman Roth that tried to have in killed and not Michael. Upon this realization, he recants on his statements against Michael that would have put him in prison for perjury (lying under oath) Knowing that now Frankie had broken his FBI deal, and was looking at a life sentence, he cuts a deal with Tom as so his family and possible Willy Cici's family could keep their fortunes as Frankie is the head of his own New York Crime Family.
Comment: This is a valid answer as Frank's first thought was that it was Michael that placed the hit on him, which is exactly what Roth wanted him to think.However, when he realizes it was not Michael he feels shame for having betrayed the Corleone family.
Answer: Roth had played Frankie against Michael with a feigned assassination attempt, as he knew Frankie was angry at Michael for banning him from moving against the Rosato brothers. This got Frankie scared enough for his life to break omerta by talking to the FBI. This act itself already means he is dead from the perspective of any of the mafia families, and could only hope to live under an FBI programme with a false identity.
Michael responded by bringing Frankie's brother in the courtroom signifying they have his family. This shows that they don't need to get him, they'll get his family instead. At this point Frankie cuts a deal with the Corleones to end his own life for the sake of his family to keep their fortune instead of being wiped out.
Frankie is portrayed as a crude man with only superficial respect to the mafia families and no deeper understanding. This made him somebody who could be played to make fatal mistakes. In an earlier scene, Frankie, in a clear and obvious manner, shows his anger and disrespect to Michael because he is banning him from defending his own territory. In this scene, Frankie was just acting drunk, the crude man he is, but this behaviour was a display of disrespect, and it had the consequence that his angry and dissatisfied feelings were revealed. This scene is played very blatantly to bring out it has a deeper meaning, which is that this evidence of disloyalty was then obviously leaked to Roth, who used it to play his card: he faked as if Michael was trying to kill Frankie to punish his disloyalty. And this broke their relations and turned out fatal to Frankie: Roth managed to weaken their mafia family, which, in turn, makes the Corleones more reliant on the deal they are currently negotiating in Cuba.


Why does the Multiresolution leave bumps in my mesh?

Question: So I am creating a model in blender 2.8 from this tutorial https://youtu.be/wdsY4BtlcpQ (in 2.7) and I just got to the part where he adds a multiresolution modifier to the model. When he adds the subdivisions, his model is smooth but mine has little bumps and a crease around the waist. (Picture 1)

When I subdivide further these bumps are more pronounced. After experimenting it looks like these vertices around this one loop are not moving at all when subdividing as if they're locked into place. I found this out by moving one of these vertices in edit mode (Picture 2) which changed the model drastically while other vertices would change the model only a little. (picture 3)

I already deleted the vertices and recreated them and that is why most of the waist is gone because this is my second time recreating the waist. Already checked for doubled vertices.
I also noticed this, when looking in xray mode there is a yellow outline that goes through this exact line of problematic vertices. (Picture 4)

Please let me know what I'm missing here. Really need some help with this one.
Thank you.
Answer: Figured it out. I just needed to recalculate normals. Had faces facing the wrong way.


How to make white portland cement stronger?

Question: We are trying to make white pavers for crosswalks versus painting. In 2013 we made some that are still in fair shape, did not write down what we used as a formula. I think it was 3 to 1, one part Portland to 3 sand. When we broke one open it looked like porcelain. The ones we have made since are not holding up to freeze thaw and heavy equipment doing snow removal. We made some the other day using I part Portland 2 parts sand, we mixed acryl 60 1 part to 2 parts water. We mixed Portland and sand first then added water mixture mixing only long enough to hydrate. When we removed from the forms you could see they were full of holes. What's up ???
Answer: For maximum strength your first recipe, 3 to 1, is ideal. A better material that will increase the bonding strength of the concrete molecules is shredded fiberglass. Added in proportion to your mix it can substantially increase the concrete. I would also not use any admixture which is normally used to increase the bond when pouring fresh concrete to cured.   I agree with your mixing as little water as needed. That step alone will yield the strongest concrete. Conversely, it will also make it the most difficult to work. So finding the median can be difficult.   If the pavers are plain and with out an intricate pattern adding some sort of framing or reinforcing bar will allow the subsequent poured concrete additional rigidity able to withstand more compressive forces. Depending on the thickness of the pavers a 3/8 inch re-bar square an inch shorter from the edges of the paver will help a lot. Or a steel mesh or grid is also sufficient.  You should also allow the concrete to set as slowly as possible. Increasing the cure time by slowing the water that evaporates will produce a stronger concrete. Once the pour has become firm wet it down gently with cool water and cover it with plastic.  The air pockets found in the cured paver  may have occurred do to  the way it was mixed or how it was poured. If you are using a drill paddle switch to either a barrel mixer or a shovel. Either will decrease the amount of air that becomes entrained into the concrete.
Comment: Concrete strength comes from the mix of cement#1 there are sidewalk mixes of 3 bags per yard and foundation mixes of 5 bags per yard. Professionals use vibrators to reduce voids caused by air and if two thick add water.
Comment: I was editing my comment and ran out of time. On a paver I would never use rebar. I would use welded wire mesh or chicken wire would work better. Concrete gets its true strength from the rock not the sand the sand is the filler. Rock or aggregate, wire mesh rebar and long strand fiberglass all help increase the strength. Fiberglass is not recommended on surfaces for foot traffic (bare feet) as the ends of the fiberglass are well glass and cut. I put in a pool deck the owner wanted to use fiberglass many years ago my first one had to be replaced. With wire mesh reinforcement.
Answer: I would use a little extra cement and add more water. This will help get rid of the bubbles. A handheld vibrator on the edge of the form would also shake the bubbles out.
For more strength add small aggregate in place of some of the sand. I usually use 1,2,3 ratio for hand mixing. 1 scoop cement, 2 scoops sand & 3 scoops gravel.


Dota 2 connection problem

Question: I'm having trouble connecting to online games. What keeps happening is its finds a game and lets me go to the loading the disconnects me, it then lets me try and reconnect but it then just disconnects me from the game completely if anyone has any advice I'd appreciate it
Comment: You've done a good job describing your problem, but you've not listed what you've done, if anything, to fix it yourself. Clearly your having connection issues. Test your internet speed, are you loosing packets somewhere, is your connection otherwise stable? ect.
Comment: A log always help. You can make it appear by using the `-console` command-line argument at start up. (Right Click DoTA 2 then go to Properties > Set Launch Options) then copy paste-whatever it prints.
Comment: Is this a frequent problem or it only happened last 2-3 days? I had some similar problems this week-end but was because of the dota servers.
Comment: Try downloading and using steamcmd... it helped me a lot in these kinds of situation.
Answer: I had the same issue last year. It was due to my game not updating correctly..
go to your steam library. right click DOTO 2.
Go to the properties i believe and click verify integrity of game cache.
It will do a quick scan and fix whatever problems are giving you any trouble :)
Just remember, i read it in a doc somewhere that if you dc from the game. the client will tell you so. UNLESS you disconnect at your own will. If you DC with no message then your game is buggy.
Hope this helps you soldier

Dota 2 connection problem


What's the difference between tp and teleport?

Question: Snapshots for 1.10 introduced teleport command feature for /execute. What is its difference to the current
tp? I heard it has something to do with "relativity" (~)
Comment: As of 1.13, these commands now do the same thing.
Comment: @ppperry Which one?
Comment: @allex2003super Which what?
Answer: Update:
As mentionned by ppperry in the comments, this answer is no longer valid I'm afraid.

Tp is now a simple alias of Teleport /tp is now an alias of /teleport
(much like /w, /msg and /tell). /teleport has been simplified a bit,
to avoid ambiguity.
Source

Old Answer:

When running a /tp command and using relative coordinates, the coordinates are calculated from the entity focused by the command
When running a /teleport command, relatives coordinates are
calculated from the entity who is executing the command

Source with exemple and screenshots (in french) : fr-minecraft.net/news-minecraft-1820
exemples :
<code>/execute @e[name=Zomb2] ~ ~ ~ tp @e[name=Zomb1] ~ ~3 ~
</code>
will teleport the zombie "Zomb1" 3 blocks above the position of "Zomb2" (as it was Zomb2 that executed the command)
<code> /teleport @e[name=Zomb1] ~ ~3 ~
</code>
will teleport the zombie "Zomb1" 3 blocks above you
Comment: you're welcome, I just added concrete exemple
Comment: That's great man!
Comment: So, /tp executes relative to the execution location, while /teleport executes relative to the affected entity's position?
Comment: @DanielG the other way around