For the third installment in a new photography series, here is this week’s photo gallery for The Pulse of Oakland—the featured ZIP code is 94603 in East Oakland. The area includes Elmhurst, Brookfield Village, parts of the industrial district and more. Need :
–> Plats <–
Helm of the blue dragon with wisdom +8 ( any diff )
EE Adamantine Knuckles
Send me an offer via the forum or send a tell in game to Thxforgroup or Xoska.
It has nothing to do with gender or the shape of anyone’s head.
For fuck’s sake, it’s about how much confidence in themselves they exude.
NJ.com News: Suspect being questioned in death of Mississippi mayoral candidate
Sports world is fertile ground for latest Internet dance sensation. Harlem Shake is latest.
Miami Heat do one bizarre 'Harlem Shake'
I’m a sucker for novelty flash drives. Mega Man has always been one of my favorite gaming characters and franchises. It’s easy math: I MUST have one of these Mega Man USB sticks!
Thankfully it won’t be long until all of us Mega Man fans can get our grubby paws on one. The Mega Man USB flash drive, shaped like the classic Mega Buster arm cannon, is set to go on sale beginning next week as a Capcom Store exclusive. It’ll even come loaded with extras.
For $19.95, you’ll get 8GB of storage space, four issues of the Mega Man digital comic series, digital copies of the Mega Man Tribute Art Book and the Mega Man X Complete Works, Street Fighter X Mega Man wallpapers and official soundtrack, and a quick link to play the free-to-download Street Fighter X Mega Man cross-over PC game.
I’m totally buying one. Who’s with me?
Mega Man USB buster on sale soon, packed with goodies [Capcom-Unity]
Vem är du?
Jag heter Johanna Berg och jobbar på Digisam – Nationellt sekretariat för digitalisering, digitalt bevarande och digitalt tillgängliggörande av kulturarvet – på Riksarkivet.
Varför använder/är du engagerad i Creative Commons?
En av mina uppgifter är alltså att stödja museer, arkiv och bibliotek i det breda samhällsuppdraget att göra så mycket kulturarvsmaterial som möjligt lätt att hitta och använda, för alla! Många institutioner har man haft en känsla av att det målet på något sätt är i konflikt med upphovsrättslagen, och den känslan har hämmat arbetet. CC erbjuder de verktyg som behövs för att jobba sig genom den konflikten och det är fantastiskt värdefullt. Till licensernas fördel talar bl a att de är lätta att förstå och använda, internationellt giltiga, maskinläsbara och stödda av europeiska initiativ som Europeana. Som jag ser det har CC-systemet redan idag bidragit till att minska förvirringen på upphovsrättsområdet och göra tidigare osynligt material lätt tillgängligt för bl a utbildning och forskning. Och vi är bara i början!
The Justice Department Thursday urged the US Supreme Court to uphold same-sex marriage in California and went even further, suggesting it is unconstitutional to block gay couples from getting married in half a dozen other states.
Obama administration steps into California gay marriage battle
In brief: Line 6 today announced that it will be giving away a free ReFill each month to users of Pr…
Aussie artist Ben Frost has struck again, and this time he’s hand painting colorful pop art over product packaging. We especially dig the ones on McDonald’s characteristic red paper packaging for its fries and random packaging for pharmaceutical products.
The post Subversive repainted packaging by Ben Frost appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.
Professional Requirements: Mechanical Engineering Degree must be able to document this Must have Current high pressure, Pressure Vessel experience with ASME Section VIII Div 1 10 + years (Div 2 a big plus) PE a plus, as well as experience with Finite Element Analysis Supervisory Experience: Must have proven supervisory experience in a highly technical, mechanical engineering, environment 5 to 10 years Must have proven experience working with 2-D and 3-D drawing and modeling software's Must be c
Engineering Manager - Dallas, TX US
In the last few months I’ve been working on Hidden Families, a project with families with someone in prison. The project, run by by Lizzie Coles Kemp of the Information Security Group at Royal Holloway University of London, was trying to find out how to improve the way information is made available to families, because people sometimes don’t or can’t engage with support services. The hardships families experience are diverse;- travel, costs of visiting, the huge distances to visit,the stress of uncertain weather and travel conditions that might cause someone to be late and miss their visit, bringing children, access to pension, welfare and benefits advice, sentence planning, prisoner safety and welfare, being stigmatised and outcast, and not expecting help or having the ability to improve the situation.
The project has several facets and I was involved in working with Action for Prisoners Families, NEPACS (who provide support services for families separated by prison), performer Freya Stang and visitors to a visitors’ center in a Category A prison.
Action for Prisoners’ Families (APF),
works for the benefit of prisoners’ and offenders’ families by representing the views of families and those who work with them and by promoting effective work with families…
A prison or community sentence damages family life.
NEPACS builds bridges between prisoners, families and communities that they will return to, they
believe that investment must be made in resettlement and rehabilitation to ensure that there are fewer crime victims in the future, and less prospect of family life being disrupted and possibly destroyed by a prison sentence… After all, the families haven’t committed the crime, but they, especially the children, are greatly affected by the punishment
Lizzie’s approach to working with people differs from typical academic studies. Rather than only surveying or asking questions of a community she collaborates with groups to create projects, workshops and events that are independently of value to that group, rather than just to fulfill research ends, she often works with artists, writers and performers to support partners and participants in articulating ideas.
The project partners and visitors contributed to booklets, postcards, conversations and a wall collage gathering experiences of the practical, technical and emotional issues people face. I brought together the stories, experiences and sketches, with a series of sketches I made, into a digitally printed textile hanging based on the idea of a patchwork quilt for the NEPACS Visitors’ Centre. Participants expressed a wish to produce a version that could hang in the Chapel and Action For Prisoners Families have versions which they will using for their training, education and work raising awareness of the hidden issues families face.
Tags: communication, community, engagement, Hidden Families, illustration, Royal Holloway University of London, textiles
Amazing Quebec ! One of the best vacation I had was in Quebec! Really love to comeback
A Banksy mural is expected to sell for more than $500,000 in Miami after being removed from the side of a Poundland in north London.
Nashville is the Silicon Valley of the music industry – a concentrated cluster of musical talent, venues, studios and all the inputs required to make music. So it’s no surprise the city take the music business seriously. In May 2009, the mayor launched a Music Business Council (h/t: Ian Swain -my MPI colleague, music project collaborator and DJ). To signal the initiative’s importance, he sits on the council whose members not only include label execs and entertainment lawyers, but also musicians like Emmylou Harris and Jack White. The Council’s goals extend all the way from supporting and expanding the presence of music festivals in Nashville to aiming to develop the best music education program of any public school system in the world.
1001 Attempts
AVP: Evolution
Cognition Episode 1 (iPad)
Crazy Bill
Gravity.Duck
iStriker 2: Air Assault
King Cashing 2
Penumbear
PokerTower
Real Racing 3
Star Hound
Towelfight 2: The Monocle of Destiny
Toy Story: Smash It!
Up In FlamesDOOOYOUHEAR THE PEEEOPLE SING
SINGING A SOOONG OF AANGRY MEN
IT IS THE MUUUSIC OOF A PEEEOPLE WHO
WILLNOT
BE SLAVES
AGAIN!
WHEEN THEBEEATINGOOFYOURHEART
ECHOES THE BEEEA TING OOFTHE DRUMS
THERE IS A LIFE ABOOUT TO STARTWHENTOMOOORROW COOOOOOOMES!!
My Friday night dining friends have been at it about two years now. We've visited so many restaurants, we're making occasional repeats now.…
[ Read more ]
[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]
Source: The Oct. 17, 1967 edition of the St. Petersburg Times
After reading about and listening to Van Cliburn all day yesterday, I stumbled across — other than all that Cold War bluster — my favorite story. I’ll let the Lyndon Johnson library take it from here, via LBJ assistant Paul Glynn’s diary:
October 14, 1967
Around 6:00 p, I got a call from the White House operators. They were looking for one of us — and they said that Ken had told them that the President had given him the rest of the day off to go to the football game.
The President came on the telephone, and said, ‘Paul, I sure need some help. I gave Ken the afternoon off, and Van Cliburn has lost his black tie, he left it on the airplane. Can we do something? What size am I?”
Paul replied that Van Cliburn was a young man and he thought that the President’s dress outfit would be too large for him. The President said that he’d call me back.
The President called again — and said, “Paul, come on in — and we’ll do it.”
He called a third time and said, “Haven’t you left yet?”
When Paul arrived at the White House, the President was in the swimming pool. Paul went to the second floor of the White House, and to the family quarters and there was Van Cliburn — practicing on the piano there. He was in business suit.
Ken Gaddis arrived — he was really worried, because the operators had been looking desperately for one of us. Ken and Paul began to fit Van Cliburn in the President’s black tie outfit.
We put the pants on him first — and they were huge. We doubled them twice in the back and pinned them. The jacket was almost all right — we just pinned a bit in the back — but the white shirt front was very large, and we had a bit of trouble with it. After we got him all dressed and pinned into the thing, he changed back to street clothes for the trip to his hotel.
As he got ready to leave — w/ President’s suit in hand — we took him to the pool so the President could see him. The President was curious and insisted that Van Cliburn put the outfit on again, so he could see it.
Van Cliburn asked permission to tell the story of the suit –which the President readily gave.
As he departed, Van Cliburn said, “Mr. President, I’ll return this suit, but I will not return this stud. I hope you’ll hold it for a minute, and then give it back to me — and it will be something for me to treasure the rest of my life. Departed 7:50
Here at NoMaas, we’re going to be taking at look at how the 2013 Yankees are projected to perform. We’ll be using Dave Szymborski’s ZiPS projections, which are calculated using weighted averages based on the player’s previous four seasons. Decline and progression are accounted for by using the aging curves of similar players. ZiPS is a reliable projection system on average, but, of course, it isn’t perfect. Players can out- or underperform their projections for various reasons. Still, it is a very good baseline and gives us a fun starting point.
The Yankees ZiPS projections can be found here. Important note: ZiPS original WAR calculations are slightly different than the WAR calculations currently listed on the FanGraphs player pages. This is because FG used an internal calculation for WAR based on the other ZiPS projected stats. The WAR you see listed in these projections is the WAR from the original ZiPS projections.
Let’s start out by looking at the left side of the Yankee infield:
Derek Jeter, SS: .277/.337/.369, .311 wOBA, 1.7 WAR
Kevin Youkilis, 3B: .256/.360/.464, .355 wOBA, 2.7 WAR
Alex Rodriguez, 3B(ish): .253/.335/.412, .328 wOBA, 1.9 WAR
Youkilis is projected to be the best player of this group, despite his career worst .328 wOBA in 2012. His poor performance last year was largely the result of a very low .268 BABIP. ZiPS has him rebounding to .289 in 2013, still a bit below his .322 career mark, but enough to make him a valuable offensive player.
Jeter’s ZiPS line comes very close to mirroring his craptastic 2010 season. His surgically repaired left ankle isn’t going to help his (already bad) defense, so his value will remain solely in his bat. His solid 2012 season gives fans reason to hope for a better performance, but we all know that age will catch up to the captain at some point.
Interestingly, Jeter could, effectively, be in a contact year. He holds a player option for 2014, but if he can match his 2012 performance, he might opt out and try to get a contract for 2015, 2016, or beyond. That would cause a huge headache for the Yankees next winter.
And A-Rod…..well…….it isn’t pretty. ZiPS projects him to continue the steady decline that started in 2010, with the .328 wOBA being the worst of his career. Like Jeter, Alex is coming off surgery, and we won’t see him until after the All-Star break. We don’t know how much his health will affect his play, and it is possible that he’ll be relegated to DH duties when he returns. His projected 1.7 WAR is based on 451 PA as a primary 3B, and it’s doubtful he will reach that in less than half of a season. If we cut the PA down and move him to DH, he’s worth a lot less. Hopefully he’ll be able to field, because the Yankees need to muster whatever value they can from him.
Final sad, depressing thought:
If Jeter hits his projection and Youkilis’s BABIP rebound is slightly higher than ZiPS projects, Jeter’s SLG will be lower than Youkilis’s OBP. Let that sink in, and then buy yourself a drink. You’ll need it.
Last we heard of World of Darkness was in summer 2012 when the game was classed as in “active development”. After a restructuring at CCP that seemed to hit the Atlanta office hardest, no one was certain the world would get to see the Vampire: The Masquerade inspired MMO.
Months earlier at Fanfest 2012 World of Darkness senior producer Chris McDonough had, taken to the stage to proclaim that the project was not dead.
McDonough offered some detail about the game as well. He said it will feature real-world city locations like London, Paris and New York, and will be built on a sandbox philosophy with deep political systems that can put player Princes in charge of cities.
Those Princes will also have the power to inflict permadeath on other players, gulp.
There will be complex hand-to-hand combat and blood will be used as a currency.
According to CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson, EVE Fanfest 2013 attendees in April will even get a “tiny” piece of the title.
“[Development] is going on very nicely, we’re playing it internally at CCP. It’s actually a problem that some of our employees are losing themselves already in the World of Darkness as we go through the playtests,” Pétursson said.
“And we’ll be showing a tiny piece of that also at Fanfest. So that is all I have to say about that at this time.”
World of Darkness is said to be based on Vampire: The Masquerade.
Vampire: The Masquerade is a role-playing game created by Mark Rein·Hagen. It was the first of White Wolf Publishing’s World of Darkness role-playing games, based on the Storyteller System and centered around vampires in a modern gothic-punk world. The title of the series comes from “The Masquerade”, referring to the Camarilla’s attempts to hide vampirism from humans and their governments, but is also a double entendre referring to vampires’ efforts to convince themselves that they are not truly monsters.
The post World of Darkness Being Played Internally at CCP appeared first on MMORPG News, Online Videos, MMO Reviews and Community at Gamebreaker.tv.
This article is long overdue. I had intentions of playing SoE before I wrote the article about the game mechanics, but alas the Autumn is a very busy time for me at work, and quickly my time to organize a game and test drive SoE evaporated. As not to delay things too long, I will review the game mechanics as someone who has 30 years of gaming, and hundreds of systems under my belt. So let’s take a tour of the mechanics of Shadows of Esteren.Disclaimer- I was provided a copy of Shadows of Esteren by the Esteren team.
The full rundown on the Shadows of Esteren setting is in my href="http://www.gnomestew.com/reviews/shadows-of-esteren-review-part-1-the-world-of-tri-kazel/" >previous article . Take a few minutes to refresh yourself with that article, as I want to keep this article focused only on the mechanics.
Weighing in at just over 100 pages, the rules make up about 1/3 of the book, and are located in the last third of the book. In a theme that is going to come up throughout this review, this is a light system that puts its focus on the players and story and not on tactics and crunch. For easy of review, I have broken the book down into some major sections and not by the actual chapters.
The Character creation rules cover all aspects of character creation and advancement, and is the largest portion of the rules section. It starts with a focus on both character and group backgrounds before going into any mechanical steps of character creation. You are then guided through the character creation process step-by-step with an easy to follow set of instructions.One thing that really stands out in SoE are the Ways. Unlike most RPG’s, there are not the common stats (Strength, Agility, Endurance, etc). Rather SoE uses Ways: Combativeness, Creativity, Empathy, Reason, and Conviction. These are mental characteristics which make up your general personality, and your rankings in your Ways also inform the kind of personality you have. The Skill system is a tree system with the Skills grouped into large domains, which contain more specialized disciplines. Skill selection is influenced by the characters profession, birthplace, and social class. The Ways combine with Skills, so Science+Reason combine and represent your ability to logically understand a scientific problem.After Ways and Skills, there is a lifepath mechanic, that provides some background based on age. Then there are some secondary stats which are derived by combinations of the Ways. Finally there is an initial set of experience points that the player can use to round out their characters by acquiring and increasing Skills, or picking up Advantages. It is here in the Advantage section that you can take Advantages that model the more traditional stats such as Strong, Smart, Nimble, etc. The chapter rounds out with some final character touches including an Action Point/Bennie system, equipment, and a section on character advancement (an XP based system).When you are done with this system you not only have all the mechanical aspects of your character complete, but you have worked out some history, a connection to the group, as well as some indication of the overall personality. There is no doubt that characters are a major focus of the game, with the number of pages dedicated to their creation.
The resolution mechanic is a very simple one, which combines Way + Skill + 1d10 to overcome a difficulty threshold (DT). There is an automatic success if your Ways + Skill exceed the DT. Likewise there is a failure if the DT is higher than what you could possibly roll. A critical success is rolling two 10′s in a row, and a critical failure results from two 1′s in a row. Finally there is a margin rule so that the better your roll, the better your success (and a worse failure for a worse roll) as compared to the DT.There is another type of check called a Test, where the player rolls 1d10 to attempt to roll higher than one of their Ways to avoid indulging in the negative version of that trait (i.e. Reason vs. Doubt). In a way this is a mix between a classic Saving Throw and Fate’s compelling of an Aspect. The GM can call for these in order to tempt the character into acting on the negative side of their Ways.There is an optional rule, which I love, that allows you to combine different Ways with Skills so that you can use your Science+Creativity to creatively solve a scientific problem. While you run the risk of the player with a high Creativity asking for every check to be based off of Creativity (“Because I am creative.”) it creates a flexibility that allows the GM to call for checks with more variety.Overall, I like this mechanism. I love margins and I really like the optional Ways rule. My only concern is that 1d10 is a more narrow range of possible results than a multi-die or exploding die type of mechanic, but that is a personal preference and not a critique on the mechanics.
The combat system is pretty straight forward and plays right off of the base mechanic system. One roll determines if you hit and how much damage you do. There are a few combat options including different fighting attitudes (e.g offensive, defensive, quick, etc), but not the array of options you would see in more combat-oriented games. Weapons have a fixed amount of damage, and armor subtracts from damage taken. Damage is managed on a damage track, with levels of deterioration affecting rolls. Natural healing is slow, but not too slow to impact the flow of the game.This combat system is light when compared to something like Pathfinder or 4e. It feels more like a simplified Burning Wheel combat system, where damage comes on quick, and one does not fight a group of bandits alone. Groups that have a large tactical need are going to find this system lacking. A group that is more story based will find this system clean and quick.
The magic section covers chapters for all three magical traditions: the druidic Demorthen Arts, the divine Miracles of the Temple, and the technomagic of Magience. The Demorthen Arts and the Miracles of the Temple have a very similar set of mechanics, while both feel like their respective arts. They are based on having/knowing certain types of power, and then being able to craft your own spell by selecting number of targets, area, length, and effect. It makes for a very flexible casting system that creative players will enjoy. The powers scale well, and at higher levels are capable of some impressive effects.The Magience has a different feel. It is based on extracting Flux (i.e. mana) from various living objects and using the Flux to power artifacts. Magience is the industrial revolution version of magic in Eberron. It lights streets, heals people, powers artifacts, but all at the cost of dirty Flux extraction factories. The chapter on Magience feels a bit light and in need of more content, which hopefully will be addressed in an upcoming supplement.
The rules close out with a Sanity system. There are things in the world of Esteren that should not be seen, and those that encounter such things are changed by them. The Sanity system is a detailed system where the GM manages the overall sanity ratings of the players, and through role playing brings about clues to their traumas. The rules provide background and detail for the GM to play out the various traumas which can occur.
The SoE mechanics are light, with a very character-centric focus. It is a set of mechanics that drive a story-based type of game in a very unique fantasy realm. I found the rules to be a lighter read than the setting material. That is not a bad thing at all, as the authors of Shadows of Esteren had a specific tone and feel in mind for their game, and the setting is the clear focus of this book. The light rules support the tone of the game, putting the focus on rich characters adventuring in a beautiful and dangerous land.After reading it through and letting it digest, the rules as they exist in Book 1 are fully playable but there are things that are not present that a GM will need going forward. One example is a Bestiary. With other Shadows of Esteren books being translated, I suspect that these things will start showing up in future volumes.My apologies to everyone who has been waiting for the second part of this review. I would have liked to have gotten a playtest in before this review, but I hope that my perspective as a system promiscuous gamer is of value.
I have long recommended tracking expenses so you “know where every penny goes.” It turns out that there’s not much of a good reason to be that precise.
This year I’ve gotten a bit lazier and decided to enter entries to the nearest dollar. If a meal was $51.11, then I’d just enter $51.
After all, how big of a difference might a few cents make?
Does it matter if you round to the nearest dollar?
Or should you just round up?
What happens if you round down?
And what happens if you instead round to the nearest $10 increment?
I tested out my theory using my spending record from my free expense tracking spreadsheet. I was astonished to find that rounding made extremely very little difference.
In fact, this data suggests rounding even to the nearest $10 might be fine.
(Also, you can get the premium spreadsheet which has graphs and comes with an ebook on expense tracking tips)
$1+ (pay a fair price) for the premium spreadsheet
The method
I looked at my spending record for 2012. I summed up the actual spending amount, and then calculated for each entry:
1. Rounding to the nearest dollar (so 1.99–>2.00 and 11.15–>11.00)
2. Rounding up (so 1.99–>2.00 and 11.15–>12.00)
3. Rounding down (so 1.99–>1.00 and 11.15–>11.00)
4. Rounding to the nearest $10 (so 1.99–>0.00 and 11.15–>10.00)
I thought that methods 1, 2, and 3 would be pretty accurate since errors of rounding would cancel out. I was pretty sure that method 4 would be off by at least 5 or 10 percent. I mean there were a lot of entries that would simply get rounded to $0 and that would under-represent my true spending. In fact, rounding to the nearest $10 was surprisingly accurate!
(Fun tip: you can round to the nearest $10 in Excel/Open Office with the function Round(number/10;0)*10. The idea is to divide the number by 10, which shifts the decimal point, and then round it to the nearest whole number. When you multiply by 10 you have what you want)
The results
Methods 1, 2, and 3 were less than 1 percent in error.
Rounding to the nearest $10 was surprisingly accurate: it had an error of just over 1 percent.
So for someone spending $40,000 in a year, for example, and had a spending distribution like mine, this method would be off by $400. That’s a relatively small amount when you want to look at the whole picture (but still significant enough that someone living paycheck to paycheck or in debt should not ignore it).
THE CONCLUSION
You’re best if you write in the exact amounts. You can round to the nearest $10 and that can give you a decent idea, but you probably don’t want to do that.
If you’re entering the data, you might as well be precise. But a little rounding here and there is probably okay.
(Download the free expense tracker, or click below to buy the premium version which has graphs and an ebook on tracking expenses)
$1+ (pay a fair price) for the premium spreadsheet
