From: Scotto
Subject: Terence on the WOD
Date: Mon, 6 Jul 92 21:35:34 EDT
Terence McKenna
Excerpted w/o permission from
'A Weekend With Terence McKenna' Feb. 1992
Psilocybin actually erodes the ego. This is what is put against a lot of psychedelics.  I don't know how to reach these people.' Well, the way you reach them is you appeal to something other than the ego.NEXT or BACKModern industrial civilization has very skillfully promoted certain drugs and supressed others. A perfect example is caffeine. Caffeine -- I hate to tell you this -- caffeine is a fairly dangerous drug. It isn't dangerous in that a cup of coffee will kill you, but a lifestyle built around caffeine is going to -- you're not going to live to be a hundred years old, or even seventy, unless you are statistically in the improbably group. Why is caffeine not only tolerated but exalted? Because, boy, you can spin those widgets onto their winkles just endlessly without a thought on your mind. It is *the* perfect drug for modern industrial manufacturing. Why do you think caffeine, a dangerous, health destroying, destructive drug, that has to be brought from the ends of the earth, is enshrined in every labor contract in the Western world as a right? The coffee break -- if somebody tried to take away the coffee break, you know, the masses would rise in righteous fury and pull them down. We don't have a beer break. We don't have a pot break.   And yet, the cost health benefit of those two drugs, there's no comparison. Obviously, pot would be the better choice. The problem is, then you're going to be standing there dreaming, rather than spinning the widgets onto the nuts. (laughter)
Coca leaves would be very good. I suspect in the near future we may see the legalization of coca as a sop to the mentality that wishes to see cocaine... Andy Weil, who's a good friend of mine -- we don't agree on everything, but -- a few years ago he had great enthusiasm for a coca chewing gum. And I never got on the bandwagon because I didn't see that we needed another high focus industrial stimulant on the market. But coca would be great, and certainly in the Amazon, if you're a petrone, you encourage your workers to chew coca.  Give them coca and put a machete in their hands and they will just flail for hours at the bush.
Another example that's interesting, that shows how blinded and unaware we are of how drugs have shaped our society...We all know that slavery ended in the United States in the Civil War. And most people, if you question them, think that slavery existed before the Civil War in many places back into ancient times. This is not true at all. Slavery died in Western civilization with the collapse of the Roman empire. During the Dark Ages and the medieval period, if you owned a slave, you owned *one* slave. It was the equivalent of owning a Ferrari or a Lamborghini. It was an index of immense wealth, and social status, and that slave would be a houseboy, or a cook or something like that, someone close in to you, taking care of you. It was inconceivable to use slave labor in the production of an agricultural product, until Europe acquired an insatiable desire for sugar.
Now, let's think about sugar for a moment. Nobody needs sugar. You can go from birth to the grave without ever having a teaspoon full of white sugar. You will never miss it. Throughout the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages, sugar was a drug, a medicine. It was used to pack wounds, to keep wounds septic. And it was very expensive and there was very little of it. Nobody even knew where it came from. It was called cane honey, because they knew it came from some kind of jointed grass, but nobody had a clear picture of what sugar was.
Well, when you extract sugar from sugar cane, it requires, in pre-modern technology, a temperature of about 130 degrees. You cannot -- free men will not work sugar. It's too unpleasant.  You have to take prisoners and you have to chain them to the sugar vats. And so, before the discovery of America, in the fifty years before the discovery of America, they began growing sugar cane in the east Atlantic islands, Medeira and the Canary Islands. And they brought Africans, and sold them into slavery specifically for sugar production.
Now when we get American history, they tell you that slaves were used to produce cotton and tobacco. In fact, this is not quite the truth. They had to find things for slaves to do, because they brought so many slaves to the New World to work sugar, and they had so many children, that then they just expanded and said, 'Well, we've used slaves to work sugar, we might as well use them in cotton and tobacco production.' In 1800, every ounce of sugar entering England was being produced by slave labor of the most brutal and demeaning sort. And there was very little protest over this. It was just accepted. To this day, sugar cultivation in the third world is a kind of institutionalized slavery. Christian, you know, the Popes, the kinds of Europe, all of Christian civilization acquiesced in the bringing back of a practice that had been discredited during the fall of Rome, in order to supply the insatiable need for sugar. It was an addiction. It had no cultural defense whatsoever.
These things (psychedelics) have another quality which we haven't talked too much about, which is, the psychedelics are the source of special information. And these hierarchies want to control the information. I mean, in other words, it's the pipeline to God problem. You know, the Protestant Reformation was a whole effort to overthrow the Papal claim that you couldn't just pray. You had to have theologians interpret scripture and dogma, and they would gently guide you toward the right understanding, but that you weren't supposed to have a direct relationship to spirit. You were supposed to leave that to experts.So I think that's another issue, that the psychedelics empower, with gnosis, true information. And every society is based on a lie of some sort. So having people going around the official lie and getting in touch with reality turns them into social dissidents. And you have to control that. I mean, that was exactly what happened in the 1960's. What happened was, too many people were getting stoned, and then checking out of the official canon of the culture. And people just said, you know, 'You can take that job and shove it.' And this was very alarming. Now every society can tolerate a certain amount of this. You always have people who just aren't playing the game. But what happening in the 1960's was that LSD entered the picture, and LSD is different from all other psychedelics in one tremendously important quality, and that is:
A single skilled chemist, in a small apartment, with about $40,000 worth of equipment, in a single long weekend, can produce forty to sixty million hits of a drug. Forty to sixty *million* hits! This is a loaded gun at the head of society. Now I wrote a book on growing mushrooms, and years ago grew mushrooms quite a bit.  In other words, it's entirely a neighborhood phenomenon. It doesn't affect the dials that measure the fate of society. But you produce forty to sixty million hits of a drug, you have entered the realm of global politics. You now probably have more power -- you and your friends probably now have more power to affect the fate of the world than, let's say, the government of Switzerland. Well, no, not Switzerland, they have the banks. But -- the government of Finland, let's say. You have just shoved Finland out of the way and taken your place in the hierarchy. So no government would put up with that for a moment.
You see, the hidden issue, and it need not be hidden among us...the government always tries to paint itself as the mother hen, concerned about her errant chicks. And so, to keep you from crashing into other people on the freeway, to keep you from leaping out of buildings or committing society, we have to control these drugs. As a matter of fact, you know, this is absurd.  The government is not your friend on this issue. The government is very concerned to control the mass mind. And marijuana -- my God, since the British Commission on Hemp, which was in 1889, I believe -- the British East India Company commissioned a study of hemp -- they have spent millions and millions and millions of dollars to find something, anything, you name it, wrong with cannabis. There is nothing wrong with cannabis. It is the most thoroughly tested, pawed over, and examined drug in human history. And they just come up with the lamest stuff.  Give me a break. They say, 'You won't be motivated in your job.' Like your job is supposed to be the (pinnacle) against which all things are to be measured.And I think people on our side of this question have been tremendously naive, because people just think, 'We just have to convince them that it's harmless.' *It ain't harmless.* It is a knife poised at the heart of dominator values. It would make the modern industrial assembly line, political loyalites, the macho image projection -- all of these little tricks that they're running are severely eroded by cannabis. And they will stop at nothing to eradicate it. Look at the budget of the DEA -- what are they doing? They're giving, 65% is dedicated to cannabis eradication. Heroin gets 20%, coke gets all the rest. It's demonstrably absurd the way the money is spent, unless you have a secret agenda of some sort. And if your agenda is to supress the evolution of unwanted social attitudes in the American public, then you have to keep your eye on cannabis very very closely. The new guy who heads the War on Drugs, Martinez? This guy, I heard him on NPR this week, and his most passionate moment in the half hour interview was, he said, 'We have pushed the price of an ounce of cannabis past the price of an ounce of gold, and we're going to keep it that way.' Nothing about eradication, talk about keeping the price high. The fact that they refuse to tax it when they're starving for revenue shows that there must be a secret agenda. It doesn't make any kind of sense.
When I wrote this book, I did a lot of research on an area I didn't know that much about, which is, let's say from 1500 to the present, drugs of addiction. And what I discovered is drug smuggling is like assassination. If the government isn't involved, it never seems to really happen. And governments have been using drugs for centuries as forms of secret revenue. This whole sugar thing that I laid out to you, those were decisions made by the crown heads of Europe in collusion with the Pope. It wasn't common people who set those policies in place.
During the 1960's, when the black ghettos began to come apart, suddenly number three China white heroin was cheaper and more available than it had ever been in any time in this history of the heroin problem in the United States. Why?  Get everybody either hooked or making money...
And they don't care really about the effects of drugs, and one group, one faction will work against another. For example, I'm a great afficianado of hashish, and hashish became very hard to get in the United States in the late 70's. But as soon as the Russians invaded Afghanistan, suddenly there was massive amounts of excellent Afghani hashish, at prices that nobody had seen for fifteen years. Well, the reason was, the CIA knows that hashish is not really a problem. But what they wanted is, they wanted an income for the mujahadin. And they had to pay for all these weapons. So they just started bringing it in wholesale. And it wasn't even a smuggling operation.  They're not smuggling.  And the day the Afghan war ended? They staged an enormous series of interlocking busts on their own infrastructure, and they closed it down, and they pulled it to pieces.
When Khomeni kicked out the Shah, the Iranian heroin business then fell under the control of the mulahs, and at that point, suddenly cocaine emerges as a major problem in the United States, because we just switched our supply lines. We could no longer depend on Iranian heroin, because we couldn't depend on these screwy Islamic fundamentalists, so we just turned toward all of these company assets in Honduras and Ecuador and Columbia. Very, very cynical.
You know, it's only been a hundred and twenty years since the so called opium wars. Very few people know what the opium wars, what was the issue in the opium wars. Well, it turns out the British government wanted to deal opium in China, and the Chinese Emperor told them to get lost. And they flipped. And they sent naval units, and they laid siege to several Chinese cities, and they forced the Chinese imperial court to agree that they could deal as much opium as they wanted on the wharves of Shanghai...
The Japanese, when they invaded Manchuria in the Second World War, they immediately began producing heroin and opium in vast amounts, not then as an economic strategy, but as a strategy to break the will of the Chinese population by encouraging addiction, and there was vast amounts of opium addiction. If any of you saw 'The Last Emperor,' you recall that his mistress was severely addicted to opium, and it depicted it in a number of scenes.
So governments have very cynically manipulated drugs, so that the drugs which make it possible for capitalism to function are cheap and freely available, and the drugs which erode dominator values, or cause people to question their situation, are savagely supressed.
How can we win if we're taking psychedelics (which erode the ego)? I think that what we have to say is that we must win by example. You know, the I Ching says you must never confront evil directly, because then it learns how to defend itself. The hippies were certainly no threat to the government as a military force, but as an example, as a model for others to follow, I think they scared them to death. They were probably very happy to see them all turn into Weathermen and begin hurling molotov cocktails. *That* they understood. They could relate to that. But flowers in the barrels of their guns spelled ruin and defeat, and they knew it.(More to come...)
Faithfully keyed in by Scotto, who really should acquire a life somewhereFrom: Scotto
Subject: Terence on Psychedelics and DMT (1)
Date: Wed, 8 Jul 92 19:58:54 EDTTerence McKenna
Excerpted w/o permission from
'A Weekend With Terence McKenna,' Feb 1992
Part OneOne of the things I've discovered in trying to wage this kind of career is, because we are talking about something invisible, an experience, and because we can't all drop here in this room and compare notes...it's often hard to get everybody to the same starting gate. People have entirely different notions of what you actually mean when you say 'a psychedelic experience.' Most people, even straight people, have had what they call a drug experience.  This does not set you up for the psychedelic experience, and because there's no consensus about this, it's worthwhile talking about the gradations and what is really possible.
At the broadest level you have what are called altered states. And altered states are any state different from the state you were just in, you know? So if you have a double espresso, you enter an altered state. If you climb a mountain in three minutes, you have an altered state. If you dive into cold water, altered state. And there thousands -- you know, an infinitude of these altered states. I mean, if states didn't alter, life would be pretty boring. The moment to moment experience of being is an experience of altering states. I'm horny, I'm sleepy, I'm pissed off, these are all altered states.
Then, as you close in through the concentric circle of this particular mandala, you come to psychoactive, the impact of psychoactive drugs. Now we've eliminated jumping into cold water, climbing mountains. Now we're firmly in the domain of drugs, substances of some sort. And it includes foods.  Chinese restaurant syndrome? That's a metabolite, monosodium glutimate, being taken in excess amount and causing an altered state. It's a kind of, you could think of it as a drug. Anything which changes your mind can be abused as a drug. Jalapeno peppers are, in many shamanic societies, people eat huge amounts of jalapeno peppers, and identify the feeling as powr. And they say, 'I am building my inner heat so that I can cure,' you know? It's a very conscious kind of thing.
Well, then there are the more traditional psychoactive states, states of tranquility brought on my tranquilizers, halcion, valium, you know. There's a million of these things, they come and go, prozac...or states of agitation, methedrine, benzedrene, dexadrene, amphetamine, white sugar, caffeine, theobromine, the active agent in cocoa and chocolate...and each one of these things pushes you into a different state, which is largely emotive and rooted in the body.
But when you get to the -- well, before we talk about the psychedelics... Then there are drugs which are mental drugs which I don't consider psychedelic. My definition of psychedelic is tighter than most people's. For instance, you may know about datura. Datura is jimson weed and these ornamental plants with the large, white, bell-like flowers. Well, if you make a tea out of the leaves, root, flowers, or seed of that plant, it will turn you every which way but loose. I mean, it is a completely disorienting, freaky kind of experience, with loss of memory, confusion of sequence, delusion of reference, amnesia, projective imagining, so forth and so on. To my mind, it is not a psychedelic state. I call it a deliriant, or a confusant.
I remember -- I always usually end up telling this story. What put me off datura was, years ago when I lived in Nepal, I had this English friend, and we experimented with all kinds of drugs, and one day I was in the market buying potatoes and tomatoes, the only two things you could get in Bodina at that time. And I encountered this guy, adn we started just exchanging the news of the day, and in the course of the conversation, I became aware that he thought I was visiting him in his apartment. He was so lost in this stuff that he didn't know we were out in the street in the market. He thought I had come by his rooms. Well, I just said, that's too stoned. Nobody needs to be that twisted around. I mean, you literally do not know what is happening.
To my mind, the psychedelics can be chemically defined, with very few exceptions, as indoles. Now the only exception to this is mescaline. Mescaline is not an indole. It's a phenylethylamine, or some people consider it a cyclicized amphetamine, which is a phenylethylamine. I am not fond of mescaline. It seems to me that to get to psychedelic levels with it, you have to take so much that you're fairly rattled. It's hard on you, and it's hard on you the next day. And many people who are great devotees of peyote, when you question them very closely, it isn't the quality of the visions. It's some more murky thing. It's that they like hanging out with Native Americans, they like drumming all night, they love ceremonies, they like going to the southwest, but it's not the quality of the visions. It's not that mescaline can't do that, it certainly can. If you read these early researchers, like Heinrich Cluvere, S. Weir Mitchell, Havloc Ellis, I mean, these are wonderful descriptions of full-on psychedelic states. But they were using pure mescaline, you know, and close to a gram a throw, which is a lot. Most people when they take pure mescaline, if you actually measure the amount that they're taking, they're taking well under what is clinically considered the effective dose. If you look in the Murke manual or the P.D.R., the clinically recommended dose of pure mescaline is 750 milligrams. Three quarters of a gram of alkaloid! Very few people actually take that.
And this brings us to one of the issues around psychedelics. There are a lot of wannabe experts running around who didn't take enough, because you have to take a lot -- not a LOT -- but you have to take a frightening amount to get into what it's really about. People who have taken, you know, 50 gamma of LSD or 100 gamma of LSD or two grams of mushrooms or something like that, they are not qualified to hold forth on the nature of the psychedelic experience, because those doses don't deliver it to you. What they deliver is the periphery of the psychedelic experience: accelerated thought processes, a kind of depth and richness to cognition that is unfamiliar, an ability to analyze situations from unusual perspectives, or to reach unexpected conclusions.
And I found this reluctance to come to grips with the full psychedelic experience even among Amazonian shamen. I mean, people are reluctant to go the full distance. We were with shamans at one point in Peru, ayahuasca shamans, and I was aware of an admixture plant that was stronger than the admixture plant that they were using. And I kept asking this guy, 'What about so-and-so? Why don't we do that?' And at first, all he would say was that it's not for Christians, which was strange because he always knocked Christians. But I kept pressing, and finally he said, 'We just don't do it that way.' And I said, 'Why not?' And he said, 'Because it's mali bizarro.' (laughter) You know? And I said, 'Isn't that what we're shooting for?' (laughter) Apparently not. A curing shaman wants to be empowered to cure. He doesn't conceive of himself as a Magellan of the phenomenological realm, who's setting out to circumnavigate the mental universe in an evening.
And then, of the psychedelics, they deliver differing levels of this, and then, what you always have to bear in mind when you listen to me talk about this is, there are physiological differences among people, you know, in the same way that person A can detect a compound X at one part in 10,000, but person B cannot detect the same compound unless it's there in, you know, a thousand parts in 10,000. We are genetically different in this area of drug receptors, and it's even possible, although it is permissive of a kind of crypto-fascism, to believe that there are shamanic lines, families, races even, that are more or less inclined to this. The Irish are always singled out as special offenders in this area. You know, the stereotype of the Irish is that they have a peculiarly intense relationship to intoxication and to little people in a nearby but invisible world. I don't put a lot of credence to this, but it's very hard for me to tell because I can only sample myself, and I happen to be Irish, although leavened with Sicilian genes to keep it from getting out of hand.
So what you really have to do when you start exploring psychedelics is to try and figure out, you know, what's the center of the mandala? What are people talking about? What is it when it's really, when you arrive on the money? And to my mind, the compound that is most interesting for doing that is DMT. DMT is the most interesting of the psychedelics, because more issues are raised by it than any other. Such issues as, I mean, I'll just run over some of them so you get a feeling for it...
(End of Part One of Three)
Faithfully transcribed by Scotto of the Arthritic FingersFrom: Scotto
Subject: Terence on Psychedelics and DMT (2)
Date: Wed, 8 Jul 92 20:53:34 EDTTerence McKenna
Excerpted w/o Permission from
'A Weekend With Terence McKenna,' Feb 1992DMT is the strongest hallucinogen there is. If it's possible to get more loaded than that, I don't want to know about it, and I say so when I'm there. I say, 'My God, if you can get more loaded than this, keep it away from me.' So that's it, it's the strongest. It's also the shortest acting. DMT when smoked in most people is, return you to normal in under ten minutes. Under ten minutes! Now, this is interesting because people who think there's nothing to this should actually invest the ten minutes to find out what's, you know...  Because then you just say, 'Okay, I got it, I got it...' Another very interesting thing about DMT is, it occurs naturally in the human brain. Well, now what's going on here? He's saying the strongest drug, the fastest drug, is the most natural drug? It means that, you know, you don't have to sail off into 3-hydroxy-4-peridal- enmethylmarubyshtick or something like that to get into the exotic realms. No -- a human metabolite, which takes only ten minutes to undergo its entire exfoliation and quenching, is the strongest of all.
Well, then, what is it? What does 'strong' mean? What is a strong psychedelic? You know, it's highly personal. Every psychedelic trip is. But what happens on DMT for a large number of people -- I mean, we don't have any statistics, but -- it is a completely confoundin experience. I mean, you may have had the expectation, you might think if you had never had a psychedelic experience that it sort of begins like the Bach B minor fugue, and goes from there as you rise into the realms of light and union with the deity or something like that. That's not what happens on DMT. What happens on DMT I referred to this morning: a troop of elves smashes down your front door, and rotates and balances the wheels on the afterdeath vehicle, present you with the bill and then depart. (laughter) And it's completely paradigm shattering.  Sometimes people say, 'Is DMT dangerous? It sounds so crazy. Is it dangerous?' The answer is, only if you fear death by astonishment. (laughter)
Remember how you laughed when this possibility was raised. And a moment will come that will wipe the smile right off your face. (laughter)
One thing that endears DMT to me is, I like to say, it doesn't affect your mind. It doesn't seem to affect your mind. In other words, you don't change under the influence of DMT. You don't become a kinder, gentler person.  *You* don't change. What happens is, the world is completely replace, instantly, 100 percent, it's all gone. And what is put in its place, not one iota of what is put in its place was taken from this world. So its a 100% reality channel switch. They don't even retain three dimensional space and linear time.  It's like reality is swapped out for something else, and when you try to say what it is, you realize that language has evolved in this world, and it can serve no other, or it takes years of practice. So what you're looking at is literally the unspeakable. The indescribably falls into your lap.  And it just beads up and flows off like water off a duck's back. You cannot say what's there.
And I've spent, I don't know, twenty-five years fiddling with this. It's become the compass of my inspiration, trying to say what is on the other side of that boundary. Just two large tokes away at any given time is this non-Euclidean, non-Newtonian, irrational, un-Englishable place, but it's not smooth and empty and clear. That's not what gives it its indescribability. What gives it is indescribability is its utter weridness, its alienness, its power to astonish.
What happens to me when I smoke DMT is, there's a kind of going toward it. There's a sequella of events which lead to the antechamber of the mystery.  Your whole body feels odd. You take a second toke, all the oxygen seems to have been pumped out of the room. Everything jumps into clarity. It's that visual acuity thing. You take a third toke if you're able, and then you lay back, and you see this thing which looks like a rose or a chyrsanthemum, this orange spinning flowerlike thing. It takes about fifteen seconds to form, and it's like a membrane. And then, you break through it. You break through it, and then you're in this place, and there's an enormous cheer which goes up as you pass through this membrane. Some of you may know the Pink Floyd song about how the gnomes have learned a new way to say hoo-ray? They're waiting.  Am I all right?' That's the first question, and so then you run your mind around the track, and you say, 'Hmm. Heartbeat normal? Yeah, normal, heartbeat normal. Pulse normal? Breathing? Breathe breathe breathe, yes.' But what's right here, right here and from here out is this thing which, no matter how much science fiction you've done, no matter how much William Burroughs you've read, no matter how much time you've spent in the company of the weird, the bizarre, the autre, and the peculiar, you weren't ready. (laughter) And it's completely real. It's in a way more real than the contents of ordinary reality, because, see how the shadows here are muted and there's a lot of transitional zones from one color to another and so forth? This isn't like that. This is crystalline, clear, solid, you can see the light reflected in the depths of these objects, and everything is very brightly colored, and everything is moving very, very rapidly.
And there are entities there. It's not about calling them up or the whisperings of them.  And you have to keep saying, 'Keep breathing, keep breathing, don't freak out, pay attention.' And the entities speak to you, and they speak both in English and another way which we'll get to in a minute. But in English what they say is, 'Do not give way to wonder. Hang on. Don't just go gaga with disbelief. Pay attention. Pay attention.' And what they're trying to do is they're trying to show you something. They are very aware of the fleeting nature of this encounter. And they say, you know, 'Don't spiral off into amazement, and start raving about God and all that. Forget that. Pay attention to what we're doing.'
And then, what they're doing is they're dancing around, they're jumping around, they're emerging explicitly out of the background, bounding toward you, jumping into your chest, bounding away, and they offer, they make offerings. And they love you, that's the other thing. They say this. They say, 'We love you. You come so rarely.  Welcome, welcome.' And they make these offerings. And the offerings are objects of some sort. And now remember, you are not changed. You're exactly the person you were a few minutes before. So you're not exalted or depressed. You're just trying to make sense of this. And the objects which they offer are like, Faberge eggs, or exquisitely tooled and enamelled pieces of machinery, but they don't have rigid outlines. They objects are themselves somehow alive, and transforming and changing.  A single one of these objects is somehow, you can tell by looking at it, this would confound my world beyond hope of recovery. It cannot exist. What I'm being shown is a tiny area where miracles are transformed.
And the creatures, the tykes, are singing. They are speaking in a kind of translinguistic glossil alia. They are actually making these objects with their voices. They are singing these things into existence. And what the message is, is 'Do what we're doing. You can do what we're doing. DO IT.' And they get quite pushy about this. They say, you know, 'Damn it, DO IT!' And you're saying, 'Bu...bu...bu...bu...' And they say, 'No, DO IT! Do it NOW! DO IT!' And you say, 'I can't handle this,' you know, and then this kind of reaction goes on for awhile. Well, then, I actually...I don't take credit for it, it was not willed, but like something comes up from inside of you. Something comes out of you, and you discover you can do it, that you can use language to condense objects into existence in this space. It's the dream of all magic, but here it is, folks, happening in real time. And then they're just delighted. They just go mad with delight and turn somersaults and turn themselves inside out and they all jump into your chest at once.
And after many encounters of this sort...I mean, when I first did DMT, I couldn't bring anything out of it.  But by going back repeatedly and working at it, I think I've gotten a pretty coherent -- well, let's not go that far. (laughter) I think I've got a pretty clear metaphor anyway for what's happening in there, and I think a lot of people have this experience. When you talk to shamans, they say, 'Oh, well, yes, the helping spirits. Those are the helping spirits. They can help you cure, find lost objects, you didn't know about the helping spirits?' And you say, 'Well, I knew, but I, I had no idea that it was so literal.' And they say, 'Oh, no, that's the helping spirits.'
But then, the other thing they say, if you press a shaman, if you say, 'Well, what exactly is a helping spirit?' They say, 'Well, a helping spirit is an ancestor.'  They say, 'Well, yes, ancestor, dead person. You didn't know about ancestors apparently. This is what happens to people who die.' And you say, 'My God, is it possible that what we're breaking into here is an ecology of souls?' That these are not extraterrestrials from Zenebelganooby or Zeta Reticula Beta. These are the dear departed. And they exist in a realm which, for want of a better word, let's call eternity. And somehow this drug, or whatever it is, is allowing me to see across the veil. This is the lifting -- you want to talk about boundary dissolution. It's one thing to get tight to your partner, it's quite another to get tight to the dear departed of centuries past. That's a serious boundary dissolution when that happens.
What these creatures want, according to them, is they want us to transform our language somehow. And I don't know what this means. I mean, at this point in the weekend and in my life, we all are on the cutting edge, and nobody is ahead of anybody else. Clearly we need to transform our language, because our culture is created by our language, and our culture is toxic, murderous, and on a downhill bummer. Somehow we need to transform our language, but is this what they mean? That we're supposed to condense machines out of the air in front of us? How does this relate to the persistent idea, promulgated by Robert Graves and other people, that there is a primal language of poetry? That poetry as we know it is a pale, pale thing, and that at some time in the human past, people were in command of languages which literally compel belief. They *compel* belief, because they don't make an appeal through argument or metaphor. They compel belief because they are able to present themselves as imagery. You know, William Blake said, 'If the truth can be told so as to be understood, it WILL be believed.'
And it's very confusing, because you wonder, have people been doing this for thousands of years? And if so, have they always encountered this tremendous urgency on the other side? If people have been doing it for thousands of years, why is there this urgency on the part of these entities? And who exactly and what exactly are they? It appalls me, you can probably tell, that I have to talk about this, because I am not, this is not my baliwick. I mean, I'm a rationalist who's just had a very weird set of experiences, but I am a rationalist.
The difference between my rap and, you know, the finned horned folks or somebody like that is that we have an operational method for testing my assertion. We can all smoke DMT, or you can make it your business to now find out about this, and see for yourself. And not everybody agrees with me.  But some people agree, and I think if you get two out of ten agreeing with a rap like this, then you'd better pay attention. (laughter)
(End of Part Two of Three)
Faithfully keyed in by Scotto the Incongruous


ALMOST FAMOUS RATING: 8/10 --> Great movie
For more reviews and movie screensavers, visit http://www.joblo.com/
My ability to relate to this film's protagonist has exponentially grown over the past few months, as I too have recently been given the opportunity to interview some of the stars whose films I end up reviewing for my website, JoBlo's Movie Emporium (http://joblo.com/). It was, and continues to be, quite strange to balance my task as a so-called "movie critic" and "movie fan", since my love of movies ultimately surpasses my interest in film criticism. Having said that, despite not being paid for my reviews or reporting to any editor (I run my own site), I do take my task of writing film reviews very seriously and always report the truth, no matter how nasty (or great, as in this case!). I've always maintained this personal motto of truth in my own life as well, and honestly believe that you ultimately do your counterpart a favor by presenting them with the reality of the situation, as you see it.
Now I'm sorry about this little personal preamble before my review, but I think it's important for my readers to know where I'm coming from before reading some of my criticisms, especially when it hits so close to home. In the end, my goal is to remain the "joblo" of film criticism, and I hope that I can continue to achieve that down-to-earth quality throughout all of my reviews. Thanks for tuning in.
PLOT: A precocious high school boy gets the opportunity to write an article about an up-and-coming rock band, by joining them on the road for a few days. Along the way, he struggles with the concept of reporting the truth vs his friendship with the band members, and meets a pretty girl who also likes to hang out with the band.
CRITIQUE: An entertaining movie from top to bottom: an interesting story, superb actors, rockin' soundtrack, well-developed characters, a strong message, a nice love story, top-notch directing, humor, drama and two star-making turns in Billy Crudup and Kate Hudson. Think about whatever it is that you generally look for in a movie, and it will be in this one! A tribute to the music that is rock 'n roll, this film lets you ride along with various participants of the game, checking out the different sceneries along the way. It gets behind the music, behind the fans, behind the band, behind everything! It will definitely bring back a flood of memories to anyone who actually lived through those times, and certainly connect to anyone else who has ever been a major fan of any rock band or ever wanted to be a musician (rock star) themselves. It's nice to see that in a year of film mediocrity, a movie such as this can still come out and remind us all why we love movies so much in the first place. This one takes you away for a couple of hours, tells an interesting tale through several interesting characters, and certifies its participation in the year-end Best Picture race by wrapping it all up in a wonderful bouquet of entertainment. And despite a little bit of over-romanticism of the music and the times, this film still manages to present us with some great insight into the main players of the music biz including the musicians themselves, the fans and the reporters who cover it all.
And with a solid script as its base, this film takes off to another level with the excellent performances shot forth by its lead actors. Billy Crudup has been tooling around Hollywood for some time now, but this film will undoubtedly catapult him off the charts. I hope that this film does to him, what GLADIATOR did to Russell Crowe. And where the heck did Kate Hudson come from? Brought into this world by actress Goldie Hawn, known primarily for her pranky roles in easy comedies, Hudson takes on this lead role with the edge of a pro, and the charisma of a newfound sensation. Two more nominations for awards should be reserved for these two well-deserved thespians at the year-end ceremonies. And tag those great roles on to several other smaller showings, including Frances McDormand, perfect as the over-protective mom, who can't help but look out for her children, Jason Lee, coming into his own as the pseudo-Jim Morrison like lead singer, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, who remarkably cannot seem to pick any bad roles in movies, and you've got yourself an all-around rock-solid cast. This film puts rock 'n roll on a pedestal but that's not all it does. It's really a journey about finding yourself. Characters all floating around their lives, unsure of who they are or what they stand for, until their day-to-day interactions eventually help them find their true selves. See it for the music, if you like. See it for the great performances or see it simply because of its greater entertainment value, but the bottom line is that this movie is one of the best films of the year, and no matter why you think you want to see it, just see it, dammit! Who knows, maybe it'll help you "find yourself", too.
Little Known Facts about this film and its stars: Much like this film's protagonist, William Miller, writer/director Cameron Crowe got his start as a rock journalist at the age of 15. In 1973, when he was just 16, he joined the staff of "Rolling Stone" magazine, where he eventually became an associate editor. While still in his teens, he managed to profile many of the era's most influential artists, including Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Joni Mitchell and Eric Clapton. In 1979, Crowe, then 22, returned to high school to research a book, which resulted in the best-selling novel FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH, which was eventually written into a screenplay by him, and directed into a movie with Amy Heckerling at the helm. Lester Bangs, the character portrayed by Philip Seymour Hoffman and the editor of Creem magazine, was in actuality a very influential person in Cameron's own life as well. If you stay tuned to the entire film credits at the end of the movie, you will note the unusual disclaimer about the character of Penny Lane actually having been "based on an actual individual". Cameron Crowe appears to have given us an insight into his own muse... Other than Billy Crudup and Jason Lee, the two other members of the group Stillwater are real-life musicians, Mark Kozelek and John Fedevich. Billy Crudup made his feature film debut in 1996 in Barry Levinson's SLEEPERS, starring Robert DeNiro and Brad Pitt, and was then featured in Woody Allen's EVERYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU. Actor Patrick Fugit makes his motion picture debut in this picture. He was chosen for the role of William Miller over hundreds of other young actors. And pay close attention otherwise you might miss the unrecognizable performance put forth by SNL cast member Jimmy Fallon, as the "new manager" about 2/3 of the way through the movie. A certain "William Mapother" plays the "bartender" role in this movie. Tom Cruise's real name is Thomas Cruise Mapother. Not sure what his connection to Tom is, but he is definitely related. Tom Cruise starred in Cameron Crowe's last picture entitled JERRY MAGUIRE. They remain good friends. Besides being a technical consultant on this movie, singer Peter Frampton makes a cameo appearance as "Reg", the road manager for Humble Pie. He first came to prominence as a member of the actual group Humble Pie. This film was initially titled STILLWATER and SOMETHING REAL.
Review Date: September 16, 2000 Director: Cameron Crowe Writer: Cameron Crowe Producers: Cameron Crowe and Ian Bryce Actors: Billy Crudup as Russell Hammond Kate Hudson as Penny Lane Patrick Fugit as William Miller Jason Lee as Jeff Bebe Genre: Drama Year of Release: 2000 ------------------------------------- JoBlo's Movie Emporium http://www.joblo.com/ ------------------------------------- (c) 2000 Berge Garabedian
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{% extends "base.html" %} {% block title %}Get sampling!{% endblock %} {% block header %}
We're currently building a list of reasonable sample kits and methods. If you know of any, please get in touch on Twitter!


UK charts: Six Nintendo Switch exclusives in the top ten this week
by My Nintendo News AdminLast Friday saw the Black Friday sales kick off in the United Kingdom and its had a knock on effect on the UK video game charts. This week has seen eight Nintendo Switch titles in the top ten with six of those being exclusive to the platform (Minecraft is the Switch version). It’s clearly been a great week for both Switch software and Nintendo Switch family sales with consumers rushing to get their hands on the console at a discount and pick up some some quality video games. Here’s the UKIE/GfK Top Ten for the week ending 23rd November:
It was a very strong week for Nintendo Switch. Following a series of pre-Black Friday deals across retail, Switch hardware received a significant boost and so did its software. Luigi’s Mansion 3 is still at No.6 after an 11% rise in sales, Mario Kart 8: Deluxe is back at No.7 with a 26% rise in sales, Minecraft on Switch is at No.8 with a 43% sales boost, while Mario & Sonic At The Tokyo Games its at No.8 after a 4% sales uptick (the game has been out three weeks, and has seen sales increase each and every week so far, a rare feat for any game in the boxed charts).
That’s six Switch exclusives in the Top Ten, with a further eight throughout the rest of the Top 40. Super Mario Party (No.37), The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (No.32), New Super Mario Bros U Deluxe (No.30), Super Mario Odyssey (No.29) Super Smash Bros Ultimate (No.27), Super Mario Maker (N0.20) and Ring Fit Adventure (No.15) all rose in sales week-on-week, too.
| Last Week | This Week | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 4 | 1 | Call of Duty: Modern Warfare |
| 2 | 2 | Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order |
| 1 | 3 | Pokémon Sword |
| 5 | 4 | FIFA 20 |
| 3 | 5 | Pokémon Shield |
| 6 | 6 | Luigi’s Mansion 3 |
| 9 | 7 | Mario Kart 8: Deluxe |
| 12 | 8 | Minecraft |
| 10 | 9 | Mario & Sonic At The Tokyo Olympic Games 2020 |
| 13 | 10 | Fortnite: Darkfire Bundle |


stockAnalyzer-vignette.Rmd
Welcome! 🎉 Bienvenue! 🎈 Välkommen 👋 Here is a tour of the Stock Analyzer package!
library(stockAnalyzer)
Investments in the stock market requires not only knowledge about the listed companies, but also basic summary statistics and modellings of individual stock prices. This R package provides basic time series modelling functionalities to analyze historical stock prices. Given the time-series stock price data, this package provides key summary statistics, applies moving average and exponential smoothing models to the data, and visualizes simple moving average and exponential smoothing fits.
quantmod
libraryThis package is able to work with quantmod
library, which can load well-formated stock price data.
library(quantmod)
#> Loading required package: xts
#> Loading required package: zoo
#>
#> Attaching package: 'zoo'
#> The following objects are masked from 'package:base':
#>
#> as.Date, as.Date.numeric
#> Loading required package: TTR
#> Registered S3 method overwritten by 'quantmod':
#> method from
#> as.zoo.data.frame zoo
summaryStats
applicationLet’s say that you are interested in a specific public company but have no idea about its performance and statistics. The summaryStats
is here is solve the problem. It calculates summary statistics including average price, minimum price, maximum price, volatility, stock return percentage based on the daily historical stock prices. You have the flexibility to specify the stock of interest, and the exact measurement in the data that you prefer to analyze on.
For example, you are interested in Roku Inc. (an American public company list on Nasdaq engaging the provision of streaming platform for TVs). The ticker symbol to represent Roku Inc. is “ROKU”, and you can specify it in getSymbols
and then simply put ROKU (xts time seris object) in the summaryStats
function. It will provide you with an xts time series object of summary statistics.
If you are only interested in ROKU’s closing price summary statistics, you are able to add measurements = "ROKU.Close"
in the summaryStats()
function as an optional argument.
getSymbols("ROKU")
#> [1] "ROKU"
summaryStats(ROKU)
#> # A tibble: 6 x 6
#> measurement mean min max volatility return
#> <chr> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl>
#> 1 ROKU.Open 115. 15.8 477. 97.2 21.7
#> 2 ROKU.High 119. 19.3 487. 99.6 14.4
#> 3 ROKU.Low 112. 15.8 466. 94.5 20.7
#> 4 ROKU.Close 115. 18.6 470. 97.2 13.6
#> 5 ROKU.Volume 10243980.<PHONE_NUMBER>7700 8225067. -0.914
#> 6 ROKU.Adjusted 115. 18.6 470. 97.2 13.6
summaryStats(ROKU, measurements = "ROKU.Close")
#> # A tibble: 1 x 6
#> measurement mean min max volatility return
#> <chr> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl>
#> 1 ROKU.Close 115. 18.6 470. 97.2 13.6
movingAverage
applicationNow you are intrigued about these numbers and want a deeper dive in understanding the stock performance. movingAverage
function is here to help, it applies the simple moving average to the stock price and returns an xts time series object with fitted values. You are able to specify the length of moving average window (unit: days).
You may want to take a look at 50-day simple moving average of ROKU. You can follow the following format to set ROKU as the first argument, 50 as the second argument, and put ROKU in colnames()
.
tail(movingAverage(ROKU, 50, paste("movingAverage", colnames(ROKU), sep="_")))
#> movingAverage_ROKU.Open movingAverage_ROKU.High
#> 2021-03-11 405.3362 415.8382
#> 2021-03-12 405.5398 416.1690
#> 2021-03-15 405.9360 416.5492
#> 2021-03-16 406.4760 417.1430
#> 2021-03-17 406.6014 417.7628
#> 2021-03-18 407.3660 418.2822
#> movingAverage_ROKU.Low movingAverage_ROKU.Close
#> 2021-03-11 392.7682 404.0896
#> 2021-03-12 393.0500 404.4974
#> 2021-03-15 393.4612 404.9810
#> 2021-03-16 393.8154 405.4122
#> 2021-03-17 394.3120 406.4284
#> 2021-03-18 394.7296 406.5638
#> movingAverage_ROKU.Volume movingAverage_ROKU.Adjusted
#> 2021-03-11 4711536 404.0896
#> 2021-03-12 4693086 404.4974
#> 2021-03-15 4676012 404.9810
#> 2021-03-16 4697966 405.4122
#> 2021-03-17 4666680 406.4284
#> 2021-03-18 4643772 406.5638
exponentialSmoothing
applicationSimple moving average is too simple? No problem, exponentialSmoothing
function is here to provide some more insights on stock prices. This function performs exponential smoothing on historical stock price time series data. You are able to specify the alpha
parameter between 0 and 1 for smoothing strength. The closer alpha is to 1, the less prior data points would be taken into account for the smoothing. In practice, alpha is usually set to a value ranging from 0.1 to 0.3.
For the ROKU stock example, you can set ROKU as first argument, put ROKU in colnames()
, 0.2 as the last argument. 0.2 here is the alpha.
tail(exponentialSmoothing(ROKU, paste("expsmoothing", colnames(ROKU), sep="_"), 0.2))
#> expsmoothing_ROKU.Open expsmoothing_ROKU.High expsmoothing_ROKU.Low
#> 2021-03-11 375.8268 383.3116 357.7507
#> 2021-03-12 370.6894 378.9453 355.4286
#> 2021-03-15 368.3475 375.8462 355.1549
#> 2021-03-16 367.5780 374.5970 353.8299
#> 2021-03-17 363.3124 373.8756 351.3219
#> 2021-03-18 362.4559 371.3705 349.3335
#> expsmoothing_ROKU.Close expsmoothing_ROKU.Volume
#> 2021-03-11 368.3623 5172341
#> 2021-03-12 366.6818 4681192
#> 2021-03-15 365.9295 4217274
#> 2021-03-16 363.4596 4010639
#> 2021-03-17 364.5097 3879591
#> 2021-03-18 359.9977 3775893
#> expsmoothing_ROKU.Adjusted
#> 2021-03-11 368.3623
#> 2021-03-12 366.6818
#> 2021-03-15 365.9295
#> 2021-03-16 363.4596
#> 2021-03-17 364.5097
#> 2021-03-18 359.9977
visMovingAverage
applicationIf you want to visualize the stock price trend, there are two visualization tools in the Stock Analyzer package. visMovingAverge
function would create a line plot showing the comparison of raw historical prices and simple moving average. You are able to customize the stock in the first argument, moving average window (unit: days) in the second argument, and the name of the column to be used in moving average calculation in the third argument.
Below is an example of ROKU’s closing price plot with 50-day simple moving average. The dark blue line is the line of historical prices and the Tiffany blue (lighter blue) line is the simple moving average.
visMovingAverage(ROKU, 50, 'ROKU.Close')
visExpSmoothing
applicationHow does exponential smoothing fit comparing to moving average approach? visExpSmoothing
function creates a similar line plot with comparison of historical stock prices and exponentially smoothed stock prices. You are able to customize the stock in the first argument, alpha parameter in the second argument, and the name of the column to be used in exponential smoothing calculation in the third argument.
Below is an example of ROKU’s closing price plot with exponential smoothing with alpha 0.2. The dark blue line is the line of historical prices and the Tiffany blue (lighter blue) line is the exponentially smoothed line. Pretty cool, exponential smoothing has a better fit than simple moving average approach in general.
visExpSmoothing(ROKU, 0.2, 'ROKU.Close')


Update the taints on one or more nodes.
* A taint consists of a key, value, and effect. As an argument here, it is expressed as key=value:effect.
* The key must begin with a letter or number, and may contain letters, numbers, hyphens, dots, and underscores, up to 253 characters.
* Optionally, the key can begin with a DNS subdomain prefix and a single '/', like example.com/my-app
* The value is optional. If given, it must begin with a letter or number, and may contain letters, numbers, hyphens, dots, and underscores, up to 63 characters.
* The effect must be NoSchedule, PreferNoSchedule or NoExecute.
* Currently taint can only apply to node.
Examples:
# Update node 'foo' with a taint with key 'dedicated' and value 'special-user' and effect 'NoSchedule'.
# If a taint with that key and effect already exists, its value is replaced as specified.
kubectl taint nodes foo dedicated=special-user:NoSchedule
# Remove from node 'foo' the taint with key 'dedicated' and effect 'NoSchedule' if one exists.
kubectl taint nodes foo dedicated:NoSchedule-
# Remove from node 'foo' all the taints with key 'dedicated'
kubectl taint nodes foo dedicated-
# Add a taint with key 'dedicated' on nodes having label mylabel=X
kubectl taint node -l myLabel=X dedicated=foo:PreferNoSchedule
# Add to node 'foo' a taint with key 'bar' and no value
kubectl taint nodes foo bar:NoSchedule
kubectl taint NODE NAME KEY_1=VAL_1:TAINT_EFFECT_1 ... KEY_N=VAL_N:TAINT_EFFECT_N [options]
Use "kubectl options" for a list of global command-line options (applies to all commands).


At SHossain home network when several swaps are started the blockchain.headers.subscribe are getting blocked for some reason, e.g.:
```
13:25:46.715482 80:fa:5b:4f:a3:8f > c0:ff:d4:46:94:6f, ethertype IPv4 (0x0800), length 172: <IP_ADDRESS>.38648 > <IP_ADDRESS>.10024: Flags [P.], seq 5572:5678, ack 18736, win 530, options [nop,nop,TS val<PHONE_NUMBER> ecr 55760161], length 106
E...w.@.@.........SV..'(.68\0.......-......
.....R.!{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":"blockchain.headers.subscribe","method...


Module ROT.Map.BrogueRoom
BrogueRoom object.
Used by ROT.Map.Brogue to create maps with 'cross rooms'
Functions
| BrogueRoom:__init (dims[, doorX][, doorY], rng) | Constructor. |
| BrogueRoom:createEntranceRoom (availWidth, availHeight) | Create room at bottom center with dims 9x10 and 20x4 |
| BrogueRoom:createRandomAt (x, y, dx, dy, options, rng) | Create Random with position. |
| BrogueRoom:createRandomCenter (cx, cy, options, rng) | Create Random with center position. |
| BrogueRoom:createRandom (availWidth, availHeight, options, rng) | Create random with no position. |
| BrogueRoom:isValid (gen, isWallCallback, canBeDugCallback) | Use two callbacks to confirm room validity. |
| BrogueRoom:create (gen, digCallback) | Create. |
| BrogueRoom:addDoors (gen, isWallCallback) | Add all doors based on available walls. |
Fields
| min | Generate Rectangle One dimensions |
| min | Generate Rectangle Two dimensions |
| min | Generate Rectangle One dimensions |
| min | Generate Rectangle Two dimensions |
Functions
- BrogueRoom:__init (dims[, doorX][, doorY], rng)
-
Constructor.
creates a new BrogueRoom object with the assigned values
Parameters:
- dims table Represents dimensions and positions of the rooms two rectangles
- doorX int x-position of door
- doorY int y-position of door
- rng userdata Userdata with a .random(self, min, max) function
- BrogueRoom:createEntranceRoom (availWidth, availHeight)
-
Create room at bottom center with dims 9x10 and 20x4
Parameters:
- availWidth int Typically the width of the map.
- availHeight int Typically the height of the map
- BrogueRoom:createRandomAt (x, y, dx, dy, options, rng)
-
Create Random with position.
Parameters:
- x int x-position of room
- y int y-position of room
- dx int x-direction in which to build room 1==right -1==left
- dy int y-direction in which to build room 1==down -1==up
- options Options
- rng userData A user defined object with a .random(self, min, max) method
- BrogueRoom:createRandomCenter (cx, cy, options, rng)
-
Create Random with center position.
Parameters:
- cx int x-position of room's center
- cy int y-position of room's center
- options Options
- rng userData A user defined object with a .random(min, max) method
- BrogueRoom:createRandom (availWidth, availHeight, options, rng)
-
Create random with no position.
Parameters:
- availWidth int Typically the width of the map.
- availHeight int Typically the height of the map
- options Options
- rng userData A user defined object with a .random(min, max) method
- BrogueRoom:isValid (gen, isWallCallback, canBeDugCallback)
-
Use two callbacks to confirm room validity.
Parameters:
- gen userdata The map generator calling this function. Lack of bind() function requires this. This is mainly so the map generator can hava a self reference in the two callbacks.
- isWallCallback function A function with three parameters (gen, x, y) that will return true if x, y represents a wall space in a map.
- canBeDugCallback function A function with three parameters (gen, x, y) that will return true if x, y represents a map cell that can be made into floorspace.
Returns:
-
boolean
true if room is valid.
- BrogueRoom:create (gen, digCallback)
-
Create.
Function runs a callback to dig the room into a map
Parameters:
- gen userdata The map generator calling this function. Passed as self to the digCallback
- digCallback function The function responsible for digging the room into a map.
- BrogueRoom:addDoors (gen, isWallCallback)
-
Add all doors based on available walls.
Parameters:
- gen userdata The map generator calling this function. Lack of bind() function requires this. This is mainly so the map generator can hava a self reference in the two callbacks.
- isWallCallback function
Returns:
-
ROT.Map.Room
self


Hi, I am Purity Ruddy an Entriprise Integration Support Analyst at Safaricom PLC. I have a degree in Computer science from Moi University and I am an Oracle Certified Associate. I enjoy deploying new applications and troubleshooting systems. Currently working with Tibco middleware.
I have joined the academy to become a DevOps engineer as currently I am only involved in operations. The academy will give me an opportunity to improve on my coding skills as well as learn new technologies which will enable me to upskill and work more efficiently by using automation.
New technologies to be learnt at Moringa School include:
Some of the programming languages I have interacted with are:
My hobbies are:
There are two projects I have done while at the academy.
This is the first website created with guidance from Moringa school. The site gives details on items that are learnt on first week of class. The site contains a link to a page containing my favorite things. Click here to view the project.
The site was created using the languages below
This is my second project. The project is a site that gives details on my pet and some facts about cats. Click here to view the project.
The site was created using languages below


this property will be an object and hold all the intial parameters required to load the game state
this property is used to maintain index number for menu Unlock animation
To store the instruction to be shown when we change the device orientation
this property will have the predefined params from URL
method is used to handle Dynamic menu click events
This method will get triggered when the user switch the device orientation from portrait to landscape.
This method will get triggered when user view the game in wrong orientation (i.e portrait mode)
Loads the game/dynamic menu on the basis of url parameters. If we specify the level in the url then it will launch the game directly skipping dynamic menu.
Phaser to preload assets.
To set the currentLevel variable.
To store the style of instruction shown on device orientation
Generated using TypeDoc
these properties is used to fetch game details for POG game


85 passengers aboard BC Ferries vessel stranded for hours due to mechanical issue
The Salish Raven cancelled sailings between Swartz Bay and the Southern Gulf Islands
by Shalu MehtaEighty-five passengers were stuck aboard a BC Ferries vessel for more than four hours Thursday due to mechanical issues.
Sailings between Swartz Bay and the Southern Gulf Islands were cancelled after the Salish Raven experienced problem with its bow thruster, according to the BC Ferries website.
Deborah Marshall, spokesperson for BC Ferries, said the Salish Raven experienced mechanical problems while travelling from Pender Island to Swartz Bay Thursday morning.
Marshall said the ship was supposed to dock at 9:50 a.m. when staff encountered the problem. The passengers were given complementary food and beverage while they waited on the ship which was holding outside the Swartz Bay terminal.
READ ALSO: BC Ferries budgets $200M to add four more hybrid-electric vessels to fleet
As a precautionary measure, a tugboat stood by while the Salish Raven docked at Swartz Bay around 1:30 p.m. Passengers disembarked around 2 p.m.
Marshall said the Coastal Celebration – scheduled to sail later on Thursday – shifted berths so the Salish Raven could dock in berth number two. A technician boarded the Salish Raven to diagnose the issue.
Around 3:30 p.m. Marshall said the issue was resolved and the ship was repaired, waiting to go to sea trials. The ship was expected to be running again by Thursday afternoon.
“We apologize to our customers, we know they had places to go,” Marshall said.
The following sailings were cancelled:
– 10:10 a.m. departing Swartz Bay
– 11:15 a.m. departing Village Bay
– 11:50 a.m. departing Otter Bay
READ ALSO: BC Ferries offers free travel for military members, cadets and seniors this Remembrance Day
The ferry service had the MV Mayne Queen complete additional round trips between Swartz Bay and Otter Bay at the following times:
– 1:30 p.m. departing Swartz Bay
– 2:15 p.m. departing Otter Bay


UCM Development Options
These options are provided to speed the development of your product and make it possible to start programming your application within minutes without designing or building new hardware.
You may also use these products as quick drop-in options into your design as well.
Code Samples
For some examples of using the development options in TinyCLR, take a look at the TinyCLR Samples repo. You may also find the TinyCLR tutorials useful.
UCM Dev Board
Ordering Part Number: UCD-DEV-E
The UCM Dev Board is the fastest and easiest way to start using our Universal Compute Modules. This board provides a socket for the UCM, standard connectors for input/output, and three 40 pin socket headers for connecting peripherals and a display. Peripheral connectors include external power, Ethernet, CAN, USB host and client, RTC backup battery, DCMI interface and an SD card slot. It also has a buzzer, LEDs, a reset button, and user programmable boot buttons.
To start development using the UCM Dev Board, just plug a UCM into the socket on the board and connect the board's USB Client port to a host computer using a micro USB. Go to the documentation page for the particular UCM you are using for instructions.
For power, the board can be powered through either USB connectors or the barrel jack. Always use the barrel jack for power when using displays, especially the larger ones. USB does not provide sufficient power needed for displays.
Tip
The barrel jack is pin positive, sleeve negative, 2.1mm. It is capable of anywhere 7V to 30V. 1A of power should be enough for most needs.
UCM Breakout Board
Ordering Part Number: UCD-BKT-C
The UCM Breakout Board provides a socket for UCMs, and both through hole and surface mount edge connections for soldering the Breakout Board to your own circuit board. You can solder pin headers to the Breakout Board and use traditional breadboarding techniques to build your prototype as well. This board makes it easier to use UCMs in prototypes or products without the need to solder the fine pitch 200 pin SO-DIMM socket.
For added convenience, it also includes USB Client connector, a reset button, four user programmable boot buttons, and a micro SD card slot.
Please note that this is a Breakout Board and it does not have any power supplies. You will need to add 3.3V or 5V as needed to power up your modules. However, the power from USB is available on one of the pins (5V USB) so it is possible to wire a 3.3V regulator.
Tip
There are 2 LEDs by the USB connector, for 3.3V and 5V. They are useful to check that you have supplied the necessary power.
A simple board can be designed and hand soldered to host the Breakout Board. You can turn an idea into a product prototype in days!
This example board example (in green) is made to be the exact same size as the 4.3" universal display board.
It can be designed with the display connector conveniently located in the right place.
To start using the breakout board, plug one of the UCMs into the socket on the board and wire in 3.3V (you may also need 5V) and plug in USB into your PC. Go to the documentation page for the particular UCM you are using for instructions.
Universal Displays
Available displays work directly with the options above, just make sure you are using a SoM supporting the needed peripherals. The Universal Displays can be connected directly or wired though a 40-pin IDE extension ribbon cable, similar to the old-style IDE hard drive cable extender, with a Male connector on one end and a Female connector on the other.
To connect a display with the Dev Board, simply plug it on top.
The display can be larger than the board but it will still use the same connector (HDR C).
When using the Breakout Board you need to add a female header. Make sure the header is placed on the back of the Breakout Board.
Note how the Breakout Board, and potentially your host board, hide behind the display. This is a good advantage when mounting the display inside a product.
Adding a ribbon cable allows for further flexibility on where and how far the display is mounted. The length of the cable is determined by clock frequency used with the display. If the image on the display is not stable, lower the clock or shorten the cable. In our testing, our display have worked perfectly with 10" cable.
UCD-D43-A
- Ordering Part Number: UCD-D43-A
- Display Module: ER-TFT043-3
- Touch Panel: ER-TPC043-2
This display module has a 4.3" 480x272 TFT display with capacitive touch screen. The display needs a UCM with TFT display support and needs I2C for the capacitive touch. The backlight is controllable through GPIO A. The capacitive touch controller is connected I2C A with the interrupt pin on GPIO B.
The TinyCLR Samples repo has usage examples. Learn more about the graphics support.
See below for the display configuration values:
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Width | 480 |
| Height | 272 |
| DataFormat | RGB565 |
| Pixel Clock Rate | 8 MHz <= x <= 16MHz |
| Pixel Polarity | low |
| DataEnable Is Fixed | false |
| DataEnable Polarity | low |
| Horizontal Back Porch | 46 |
| Horizontal Front Porch | 16 |
| Horizontal Sync Polarity | low |
| Horizontal Sync Pulse Width | 1 |
| Vertical Back Porch | 23 |
| Vertical Front Porch | 7 |
| Vertical Sync Polarity | low |
| Vertical Sync Pulse Width | 1 |
UCD-D70-A
- Ordering Part Number: UCD-D70-A
- Display Module: ER-TFT070-4
- Touch Panel: ER-TPC070-6
This display module has a 7" 800x480 TFT display with capacitive touch screen. The display needs a UCM with TFT display support and needs I2C for the capacitive touch. The backlight is controllable through GPIO A. The capacitive touch controller is connected I2C A with the interrupt pin on GPIO B.
The display is exactly the same size as the Dev Board. They can be nicely mounted back to back with stand offs. A ribbon cable will be needed for the display signals.
The TinyCLR Samples repo has usage examples. Learn more about the graphics support.
See below for the display configuration values:
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Width | 800 |
| Height | 480 |
| DataFormat | RGB565 |
| Pixel Clock Rate | 23 MHz <= x <= 46MHz |
| Pixel Polarity | low |
| Data Enable Is Fixed | false |
| Data Enable Polarity | low |
| Horizontal Back Porch | 46 |
| Horizontal Front Porch | 16 |
| Horizontal Sync Polarity | low |
| Horizontal Sync Pulse Width | 1 |
| Vertical Back Porch | 23 |
| Vertical Front Porch | 7 |
| Vertical Sync Polarity | low |
| Vertical Sync Pulse Width | 1 |
Custom Boards
The "Display Interface" utilized on development options include TFT parallel 16bit/24bit bus, I2C bus, SPI, bus and 2 GPIOs. It is possible to design a custom display to utilize the UCM mainboards, or design a mainboard to utilize the available displays. Additionally, the designs of the development options can be used as a reference to start a UCMbased design. GHI Electronics' engineering/manufacturing is available for such designs.
Legal
License
This product with its accompanying firmware are licensed royalty-free for commercial and noncommercial use. Using the provided firmware on non-official product requires additional licensing. The provided documentation/schematics/libraries/sources are not to be used in any manner outside for the benefit of implementing and using this GHI Electronics product into your design.
 GHI ELECTRONICS LINE OF PRODUCTS ARE NOT DESIGNED FOR LIFE SUPPORT APPLICATIONS. SPECIFICATIONS, PRICE AND AVAILABILITY ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT ANY NOTICE.
You can visit our main website at www.ghielectronics.com and our community forums at forums.ghielectronics.com.


List of Movies and TV Shows on Netflix
Are you wondering what's new – or what's best – on Netflix? Flixable is a Netflix search engine that offers a complete, searchable and browsable list of all the movies and TV shows that are currently streaming on Netflix in the U.S.
What Is Netflix?
Netflix started as a competitor to brick-and-mortar video rental stores, renting DVDs by mail, and expanded its business with the introduction of streaming video in 2007. Originally, Netflix was only available in the United States, but that changed when the service launched in Canada in 2010. By January 2016, Netflix was operating in over 190 countries. Today, we know Netflix as the world's leading internet entertainment service. As a Netflix subscriber, you can watch TV shows and movies when you want, where you want, and on whatever device you want. You can play, pause, and resume watching without commercials or commitments.
Netflix Originals
Netflix spends billions of dollars on original TV shows and movies annually with the aim of making 50% of its library to be original content. This strategy has been a profitable one and has led to Netflix boasting almost 140 million subscribers worldwide. Today, Netflix subscribers pay for the service in order to watch Netflix originals, such as hugely popular series Orange Is the New Black and Stranger Things. Netflix's original movies are succeeding as well, and its recent action movie, Bright, starring Will Smith, has already become one of the most watched Netflix originals ever.
Here are some Netflix originals that you may want to watch:
BoJack Horseman
This animated comedy series follows the struggles of BoJack Horseman, the star of the hit TV show Horsin' Around in the 1990s. Now, 20 years later, BoJack is a self-loathing alcoholic who lives in Los Angeles and complains about everything.
The Crown
This historical drama series is a biographical story about the reign of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom. The series has received several accolades, including the Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series – Drama in 2017 and 2018.
 Both couples have adult children who are equally knocked out by the news.
Making a Murderer
This documentary series explores the story of Steven Avery, a man who was wrongfully convicted of sexual assault and attempted murder of Penny Beerntsen but exonerated by DNA evidence 18 years later in 2003. In 2007, Avery was convicted again – this time for the murder of local photographer Teresa Halbach.
Master of None
Aziz Ansari stars as Dev, a 30-year-old actor who lives in New York City and has no idea what he wants in life. He struggles to make decisions concerning his professional and romantic life.
Narcos
Seasons 1 and 2 are based on the story of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar (1949–1993), who became a multibillionaire and the wealthiest criminal in history by selling cocaine. Season 3 concentrates on the rise of the infamous Cali Cartel that once controlled over 90% of the world's cocaine market.
Orange Is the New Black
A privileged New Yorker is sentenced to a year and a half in a women's prison for an old crime of carrying a bag of drug money from the United States to Belgium. As a normally law-abiding person, she isn’t prepared for prison life's conflicts and surprises.
Stranger Things
A disappearance of a young boy leads residents of a small town to uncover a mystery involving secret experiments and supernatural forces.
Here's a list of all the Netflix originals
Leaving Netflix
In addition to producing original content, Netflix partners with other content providers to license streaming rights for TV shows and movies. The TV shows and movies that Netflix licenses are available for Netflix subscribers to stream for a limited time, which can range from less than a year to several years. That's why Netflix's library is constantly changing. And that's also why you might want to know whether something you want to watch is leaving the service within the next couple of weeks.
Here's a list of what's scheduled to leave Netflix soon
How Much Is Netflix?
How much Netflix costs depends on which of its three plans you choose. You can opt to pay $7.99/month for the "Basic" plan, $10.99/month for the "Standard" plan, or $13.99/month for the "Premium" plan.
Of these, the Standard plan is the most popular. It offers HD streaming on up to two devices at once. The Basic plan offers only one SD stream at a time, while Premium gives you four screens in 4K Ultra HD.
October 10
Schitt's Creek
2019
October 9
October 8
October 7
October 6
Love for Sale
2018
October 5
October 4
October 3
Seis Manos
2019
October 2
Ready to Mingle
2019
October 1
A.M.I.
2019


Saudi Aramco will not market IPO in the United States: sources
DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi Aramco does not plan to market its domestic initial public offering (IPO) in the United States, two sources familiar with the matter said.
Aramco had said in its IPO prospectus earlier this month that the offering of shares would rely on the 144A rule of the U.S. Securities Act, which allows a non-U.S. issuer to tap the U.S. market.
The sources said Aramco will no longer rely on that rule, meaning it will not market the shares in the United States.
Aramco did not immediately respond to a comment request.


ATUL KUMAR
Front End Developer
OBJECTIVE
I aspire to work in an environment demanding technical, programming , communication and functional expertise for facing and overcoming everyday challenges which require me to be up to date with the technology and continuously strive for enhancing my skills.
CONTACT ME
SOCIAL
WORK EXPERIENCE
Mystery Monks
Roll and Responsibility
Worked as a "Front-End Developer" for 10 months. The orgnization is well known for 'Video making'.
Skill Sets: HTML, CSS, Materialize CSS, SASS, JS, jQuery, Crop JS, Raty JS, AJAX, Bootstrap, DJango forms, noUiSlider, Email Templates.
Dwailelo
Roll and Responsibility
Completed 3 months of Internship as a PHP and front-end developer.
Skill Sets:HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, PHP, SQL.
flatabout.com
Roll and Responsibility
Completed 2 months of Internship in front-end.
Skill Sets: html, bootstrap, sass, jquery, ejs
Designation
MTA(Microsoft)
2 months of summer traning from microsoft on PHP + MYSQL .
EDUCATION
Graduation
C.C.S UNIVERSITY, MEERUT
Hold's Bachelor of technology(2012 - 2016) from Computer Science & Engineering with an aggregate of 65%
Intermediate
C.A.V INTER COLLEGE, ALLAHABAD
Completed HSC in 2011 from UP Board with 58%
High School
SWAMI VIVEKANAND INTER COLLEGE, SULTANPUR
Completed SSC in 2011 from UP Board with 64%
PROFESSIONAL SKIL
HTML
CSS
JAVASCRIPT
JQUERY
BOOTSTRAP
MATERIALIZECSS
SASS
ANGULARJS
LANGUAGES
Language
English, Hindi
Hobby
Hobby
Cricket, Badminton, Classic Foosball Table, Music


Free Range Robotics
Welcome
It's Nice To Meet You
Tell Me More
Log In
Email address
Password
Remember password
Sign in


FROM:PAULSON BENSON TEL:+27-73-7830-560 FAX:+27-11-507-6392 JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA ATTN: MANAGING DIRECTOR/CEO URGENT AND CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS PROPOSAL I am Mr.PAULSON BENSON the elder son of late Mr.JAMES BENSON of Zimbabwe. I got your contact address from the South African Chambers of Commerce and Industry please don't worry. During the current crises against the farmers of Zimbabwe by the supporters of our President Robert Mugabe to claim all the white owned farms in my country, he ordered all the white farmers to surrender their farms to his party members and their followers.  After the death of my father, my mother and I together with my younger brother decided to move out of Zimbabwe for the safety of our lives. On our departure from Zimbabwe,we took along with us some money which my father kept in the safe in my mother?s custody which amounted to the sum of US$15,000,000.00 (FIFTEEN MILLION UNITED STATES DOLLARS) to the Republic of South Africa where we have deposited it as personal valuables in a private security company and sought for political asylum. My mother has suggested and I agree that we have to further move out of the African continent to overseas for actual safety and to do reliable business investments. Therefore we have decided that I should contact any reliable overseas person/firm/company who could assist us to transfer this money out of South Africa through a current investment account because as refugees we are not allowed to operate any account exceeding US$2,000(Two Thousand US Dollars). So we need your help to come down to South Africa to open a bank account through which we can transfer this money to your country.If my proposal is considered, for assisting us to Transfer this money to your country, we unanimously agree to offer you 20% of the total fund,5% will be for any expenses that may be incuured during the transaction ,75% will be for me and my family to invest in your country under your assistance. For detailed information, you can contact me on my direct line TEL : +27-73-783-0560 or please reply via my private EMAIL=<EMAIL_ADDRESS>This fax:+27-11-507-6392 NOTE: PLEASE,FOR REASON OF OUR ASYLUM STATUS DO MAINTAIN ABSOLUTE CONFIDENTIALITY AND SECRECY WHILE WE ALSO PROMISE TO DO SAME.  TIME IS OF ESSENCE.YOUR URGENT RESPONSE WILL BE HIGHLY APPRECIATED. BEST REGARDS PAULSON BENSON


nips nips2003 nips2003-107 nips2003-107-reference knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
Source: pdf
Author: Francis R. Bach, Michael I. Jordan
Abstract: Spectral clustering refers to a class of techniques which rely on the eigenstructure of a similarity matrix to partition points into disjoint clusters with points in the same cluster having high similarity and points in different clusters having low similarity. In this paper, we derive a new cost function for spectral clustering based on a measure of error between a given partition and a solution of the spectral relaxation of a minimum normalized cut problem. Minimizing this cost function with respect to the partition leads to a new spectral clustering algorithm. Minimizing with respect to the similarity matrix leads to an algorithm for learning the similarity matrix. We develop a tractable approximation of our cost function that is based on the power method of computing eigenvectors. 1
[1] K. Wagstaff, C. Cardie, S. Rogers, and S. Schr¨ dl. Constrained K-means clustering with backo ground knowledge. In ICML, 2001.
[2] E. P. Xing, A. Y. Ng, M. I. Jordan, and S. Russell. Distance metric learning, with application to clustering with side-information. In NIPS 15, 2003.
[3] S. X. Yu and J. Shi. Grouping with bias. In NIPS 14, 2002.
[4] S. D. Kamvar, D. Klein, and C. D. Manning. Spectral learning. In IJCAI, 2003.
[5] D. Martin, C. Fowlkes, D. Tal, and J. Malik. A database of human segmented natural images and its application to evaluating segmentation algorithms and measuring ecological statistics. In ICCV, 2001.
[6] G. J. Brown and M. P. Cooke. Computational auditory scene analysis. Computer Speech and Language, 8:297–333, 1994.
[7] J. Shi and J. Malik. Normalized cuts and image segmentation. IEEE Trans. PAMI, 22(8):888– 905, 2000.
[8] H. Zha, C. Ding, M. Gu, X. He, and H. Simon. Spectral relaxation for K-means clustering. In NIPS 14, 2002.
[9] P. K. Chan, M. D. F. Schlag, and J. Y. Zien. Spectral K-way ratio-cut partitioning and clustering. IEEE Trans. CAD, 13(9):1088–1096, 1994.
[10] M. Gu, H. Zha, C. Ding, X. He, and H. Simon. Spectral relaxation models and structure analysis for K-way graph clustering and bi-clustering. Technical report, Penn. State Univ, Computer Science and Engineering, 2001.
[11] F. R. Bach and M. I. Jordan. Learning spectral clustering. Technical report, UC Berkeley, available at www.cs.berkeley.edu/˜fbach, 2003.
[12] G. H. Golub and C. F. Van Loan. Matrix Computations. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.
[13] A. Y. Ng, M. I. Jordan, and Y. Weiss. On spectral clustering: analysis and an algorithm. In NIPS 14, 2001.
[14] L. J. Hubert and P. Arabie. Comparing partitions. Journal of Classiﬁcation, 2:193–218, 1985.
[15] M. Meila and J. Shi. Learning segmentation by random walks. In NIPS 13, 2002.
[16] N. Cristianini, J. Shawe-Taylor, and J. Kandola. Spectral kernel methods for clustering. In NIPS 14, 2002.


"GRIND "(Exodus 32:20; Deuteronomy 9:21; Judges 16:21), to crush small(Hebrews tahan); to oppress the poor (Isaiah 3:5). The hand-mill was early used by the Hebrews (Numbers 11:8). It consisted of two stones, the upper (Deuteronomy 24:6; 2 Samuel 11:21) being movable and slightly concave, the lower being stationary. The grinders mentioned Ecclesiastes 12:3 are the teeth. (See MILL.)
"GRIND "(Exodus 32:20; Deuteronomy 9:21; Judges 16:21), to crush small(Hebrews tahan); to oppress the poor (Isaiah 3:5). The hand-mill was early used by the Hebrews (Numbers 11:8). It consisted of two stones, the upper (Deuteronomy 24:6; 2 Samuel 11:21) being movable and slightly concave, the lower being stationary. The grinders mentioned Ecclesiastes 12:3 are the teeth. (See MILL.)


Secure site contents by requiring user authentication for specified files and/or directories. The first example shows how to password-protect the specified file, secure.php.
# password-protect single file
<Files secure.php>
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Prompt"
AuthUserFile /home/path/.htpasswd
Require valid-user
</Files>
The second example employs the FilesMatch directive to protect any/all files which match any of the specified character strings, execute, index,secure,insanity, biscuit,.
# password-protect multiple files
<FilesMatch "^(execute|index|secure|insanity|biscuit)*$">
AuthType basic
AuthName "Development"
AuthUserFile /home/path/.htpasswd
Require valid-user
</FilesMatch>
The third example demonstrates how to protect an entire directory. So if this rule set is included in a directory named /private/, all files and subdirectories within /private/ will be protected.
# password-protect the directory in which this .htaccess rule resides
AuthType basic
AuthName "This directory is protected"
AuthUserFile /home/path/.htpasswd
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
Require valid-user
The fourth example provides password-protection for all IPs except that which is specified, <IP_ADDRESS>.
# password-protect directory for every IP except the one specified
# place in .htaccess file of a directory to protect that entire directory
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Personal"
AuthUserFile /home/path/.htpasswd
Require valid-user
Allow from <IP_ADDRESS>
Satisfy Any
Remember to edit these rules according to your specific needs. For more information on protecting resources with .htaccess, check out HTAccess Password-Protection Tricks.


launch
20. 3. 2020 – 23.23 PM
to find out more
OUTSIDER mag characteristics
following words should give you a rough idea,
what the OUTSIDER magazine will be about
semi-serious
“Don’t take life too seriously… Nobody gets out alive anyway.” - someone said Still, we take journalism very seriously - but in funny way!
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eclectic
Not following any one system, as of philosophy, medicine, etc., but selecting and using what are considered the best elements of all systems.
•••
high quality articles
Deadlines should die. Our goal is to bring you quality articles. When a journalist has knife of deadline on his throat, the quality may not be ideal.
•••
for Z genration
A significant aspect of this generation is its widespread usage of the internet from a young age. Members of Generation Z are typically thought of as being comfortable with… read more
gonzo journalism
A form of journalism invented by Hunter S. Thompson. It involves the reporter reporting the action as he/she is in it.   We do this mag. not for money, not for fame. We are love driven people. We are the OUTSIDERS! Join us!
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stalking?!Follow us too
and see how deep the rabbit hole goes[WORK] WITH US
WE are curenly loking for:
Journalists • EDITORS • influencersYouTubers


Introduction
Motivation
The way we consume services from the Internet today includes many instances of streaming data, both downloading from a service as well as uploading to it or peer-to-peer data transfers. Regarding data as a stream of elements instead of in its entirety is very useful because it matches the way computers send and receive them (for example via TCP), but it is often also a necessity because data sets frequently become too large to be handled as a whole. We spread computations or analyses over large clusters and call it “big data”, where the whole principle of processing them is by feeding those data sequentially—as a stream—through some CPUs.
Actors can be seen as dealing with streams as well: they send and receive series of messages in order to transfer knowledge (or data) from one place to another. We have found it tedious and error-prone to implement all the proper measures in order to achieve stable streaming between actors, since in addition to sending and receiving we also need to take care to not overflow any buffers or mailboxes in the process. Another pitfall is that Actor messages can be lost and must be retransmitted in that case lest the stream have holes on the receiving side. When dealing with streams of elements of a fixed given type, Actors also do not currently offer good static guarantees that no wiring errors are made: type-safety could be improved in this case.
For these reasons we decided to bundle up a solution to these problems as an Akka Streams API. The purpose is to offer an intuitive and safe way to formulate stream processing setups such that we can then execute them efficiently and with bounded resource usage—no more OutOfMemoryErrors. In order to achieve this our streams need to be able to limit the buffering that they employ, they need to be able to slow down producers if the consumers cannot keep up. This feature is called back-pressure and is at the core of the Reactive Streams initiative of which Akka is a founding member. For you this means that the hard problem of propagating and reacting to back-pressure has been incorporated in the design of Akka Streams already, so you have one less thing to worry about; it also means that Akka Streams interoperate seamlessly with all other Reactive Streams implementations (where Reactive Streams interfaces define the interoperability SPI while implementations like Akka Streams offer a nice user API).
Relationship with Reactive Streams
The Akka Streams API is completely decoupled from the Reactive Streams interfaces. While Akka Streams focus on the formulation of transformations on data streams the scope of Reactive Streams is just to define a common mechanism of how to move data across an asynchronous boundary without losses, buffering or resource exhaustion.
The relationship between these two is that the Akka Streams API is geared towards end-users while the Akka Streams implementation uses the Reactive Streams interfaces internally to pass data between the different processing stages. For this reason you will not find any resemblance between the Reactive Streams interfaces and the Akka Streams API. This is in line with the expectations of the Reactive Streams project, whose primary purpose is to define interfaces such that different streaming implementation can interoperate; it is not the purpose of Reactive Streams to describe an end-user API.
How to read these docs
Stream processing is a different paradigm to the Actor Model or to Future composition, therefore it may take some careful study of this subject until you feel familiar with the tools and techniques. The documentation is here to help and for best results we recommend the following approach:
- Read the Quick Start Guide to get a feel for how streams look like and what they can do.
- The top-down learners may want to peruse the Design Principles behind Akka Streams at this point.
- The bottom-up learners may feel more at home rummaging through the Streams Cookbook.
- For a complete overview of the built-in processing stages you can look at the table in Overview of built-in stages and their semantics
- The other sections can be read sequentially or as needed during the previous steps, each digging deeper into specific topics.
Contents


In this assignment you will install the GIT source code managment software. GIT allows you to carefully track changes to source code. We can use GIT to store our project in anoy of a number of respositories. GitHub is probably the most popular public repositories. If you have an email address ending in ".edu" GitHub provides some very nice free options.
There are several resources you might find useful:
The first step is to install GIT if you do not already have it installed. If you have GIT installed - you can skip this step.
xcode-select --installThen try to run git from the command line to see if it was installed. If that does not work, download and install the GIT client from
http://git-scm.com/download/mac
Once you have GIT installed and working from the command line, you need to configure your name and email address with the following commands in the command line / terminal:
git config --global user.name "John Doe" git config --global user.email<EMAIL_ADDRESS>way you will get credit for any changes you make that you submit to a repository as patches.
In you installed git some other way, just make sure to configure your name and email address before starting to use git.
So now we need to use git to check Tsugi out from GitHub.
Here are some resources for Tsugi installation:
The primary task is to get the code checked out into your web server's web documents folder (i.e. htdocs):
cd /Applications/MAMP/htdocs git clone https://github.com/tsugiroject/tsugi.gitAnd then follow the rest of the steps inthe installation documentation or video.
Once you copy the file config-dist.php to config.php and edit config.php to set up your global variables and database connection, make sure to set developer mode to TRUE and change the admin password so you can create the tables. Also set the name of the service to be your first name:
$CFG->servicename = 'Charles';
Tsugi tries to give you hints when it is improperly configured that guide you toward the next step in configuration. For example if you have a good database connection but no database tables defines, you see the following screen:
In Tsugi, you do not need to run "CREATE TABLE" statements. Tsugi has an administration mode where it does all the needed "CREATE TABLE" statements.
Once you have run the "CREATE DATABASE" statements and put the database name, prefix (optional), database id and database pw into config.php - you use the Admin feature (with the password from config.php) and it will create your tables. You should verify that the tables were created using PHPMyAdmin and looking in the "tsugi" database.
When your installation an table initialization is complete, you should see a running Tsugi with your name in the output as follows:
For this assignment you will hand in:
The Tsugi database tables in PHPMyAdmin:
Provided by:
www.tsugi.org


UART
Serial data ports, called UARTs, transfer data between devices using two pins: TXD (transmit data) and RXD (receive data). UART stands for Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter. Asynchronous means there is no clock signal to synchronize the two devices. The devices agree on a data rate, called the baud rate, and send a start bit the beginning of each transmitted character to keep the devices synchronized.
Tip
the TXD on one end (output) goes to the RXD on the other side (input) and vice versa.
The easiest way to test a UART is by wiring a device's TXD to its RXD so any transmitted data is received by the same device. This is called a "loopback" test. The following code performs a simple loopback test on the FEZ. If you connect the TX pin directly to the RX pin, you will see "ABCDEF" in the output window when running this code.
Tip
Don't forget to add the GHIElectronics.TinyCLR.Devices.Uart NuGet package!
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading;
using GHIElectronics.TinyCLR.Devices.Uart;
using GHIElectronics.TinyCLR.Pins;
class Program {
private static void Main() {
var txBuffer = new byte[] { 0x41, 0x42, 0x43, 0x44, 0x45, 0x46 }; //A, B, C, D, E, F
var rxBuffer = new byte[txBuffer.Length];
var myUart = UartController.FromName(FEZ.UartPort.Usart1);
myUart.SetActiveSettings(9600, 8, UartParity.None, UartStopBitCount.One, UartHandshake.None);
myUart.Enable();
myUart.Write(txBuffer, 0, txBuffer.Length);
while (true) {
if (myUart.BytesToRead > 0) {
var bytesReceived = myUart.Read(rxBuffer, 0, myUart.BytesToRead);
Debug.WriteLine(Encoding.UTF8.GetString(rxBuffer, 0, bytesReceived));
}
Thread.Sleep(20);
}
}
}
Event Handlers
TinyCLR's UART API included the following event watchers:
- ClearToSendChanged
- DataReceived
- ErrorReceived
The following example demonstrates the DateReceived event.
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading;
using GHIElectronics.TinyCLR.Devices.Uart;
using GHIElectronics.TinyCLR.Pins;
class Program {
private static byte[] txBuffer;
private static byte[] rxBuffer;
private static UartController myUart;
private static void Main() {
txBuffer = new byte[] { 0x41, 0x42, 0x43, 0x44, 0x45, 0x46 }; //A, B, C, D, E, F
rxBuffer = new byte[txBuffer.Length];
myUart = UartController.FromName(FEZ.UartPort.Usart1);
myUart.SetActiveSettings(9600, 8, UartParity.None, UartStopBitCount.One, UartHandshake.None);
myUart.Enable();
myUart.DataReceived += MyUart_DataReceived;
myUart.Write(txBuffer, 0, txBuffer.Length);
while (true) {
Thread.Sleep(20);
}
}
private static void MyUart_DataReceived(UartController sender, DataReceivedEventArgs e) {
var bytesReceived = myUart.Read(rxBuffer, 0, e.Count);
Debug.WriteLine(Encoding.UTF8.GetString(rxBuffer, 0, bytesReceived));
}
}
Tip
Once you type += after the event, hit the tab key and Visual Studio will automatically create the event for you.
RS232
UART uses the processor's voltage levels (logic levels) for transferring data. On the FEZ this is 0 to 3.3 volts. In the early days of computers UARTs used -12 to 12 volts to communicate reliably over longer distances. This is known as the RS232 standard.
Some PCs still include serial ports, but those are RS232 serial ports. A voltage level shifter is needed to properly connect a logic level UART to an RS232 device.
Warning
Connecting your device to an RS232 port without a proper voltage level shifter can damage your device.


Copyright © 2021 Marc Worrell
Behaviours: gen_server.
Authors: Marc Worrell (marc@worrell.nl).
| code_change/3 | |
| handle_call/3 | |
| handle_cast/2 | |
| handle_info/2 | |
| init/1 | |
| process_pid/1 | Find the process pid for the process owning the ets table. |
| read/1 | Read a payload from the buffer. |
| start_link/2 | Create a new process managing a ringbuffer. |
| terminate/2 | |
| write/2 | Write a payload the buffer. |
code_change(OldVsn, State, Extra) -> any()
handle_call(X1, From, State) -> any()
handle_cast(Msg, State) -> any()
handle_info(Info, State) -> any()
init(X1) -> any()
process_pid(Name::atom()) -> {ok, pid()} | {error, badarg}
Find the process pid for the process owning the ets table. If the buffer does not exist then an error is returned.
read(Name::atom()) -> {ok, {Skipped::pos_integer(), Payload::term()}} | {error, empty}
Read a payload from the buffer. Skip entries that are deleted by the writers.
There are a coupe of race conditions we need to take care of:
1. Writer incremented -> Reader tries entry --> Writer writes entry In this case the w-value read by the reader is Size smaller than that of the writer. In this case we wait till the writer finishes writing.
2. Two or more readers arrive at the same time, incrementing the reader value. One of the readers will have the correct value and can fetch the next entry. In this case the reader can move past the writer if there are not enough entries in the buffer for all readers.
For the case where multiple readers are racing past the writer can not be solved without synchronization, we let the ringbuffer process handle the reader increment.start_link(Name::atom(), Size::pos_integer()) -> {ok, pid()} | {error, term()}
Create a new process managing a ringbuffer.
terminate(Reason, State) -> any()
write(Name::atom(), Payload::term()) -> ok
Write a payload the buffer. If the readers can't keep up then older entries are deleted.
Generated by EDoc


variant variant_date_from_timestamp ( int $timestamp )
Converts timestamp from a unix timestamp value into a variant of type VT_DATE. This allows easier interopability between the unix-ish parts of PHP and COM.
Returns a VT_DATE variant.