text:
HomeAudienceCEOs'CentOS Linux is built on a lot of past experience'
CEOsDevelopersCIOsInterviewsSuccess StoriesThought LeadersOpen Biz
'CentOS Linux is built on a lot of past experience'
By Jagmeet Singh
Managing a Linux distribution for a long time requires immense community effort. But what is the key to success in a market that includes hundreds of competitive options? Also, what are the challenges in building an open source offering? Karanbir Singh, project leader, CentOS, answers these questions and outlines the future of the platform that has been leading Web developments, in an exclusive conversation with Jagmeet Singh of OSFY. Edited excerpts..
Q How did you start your journey with the CentOS project?
It was in late 2004. I was not one of the founders of CentOS but showed up on the scene in its early days. At that time, we had a small team and a lot of machines running Red Hat Linux 7.3 and Red Hat Linux 9.
With Red Hat moving down the path towards Red Hat Enterprise Linux, a model that didn't work well for us, I started looking at options. We explored Debian and SUSE initially, but found management and lifecycle on each of them hard to map out workflow into.
It was during this time that I came across the Whitebox Linux effort and then the CentOS Project. Both had the same goal, but the CentOS team was more inclusive and seemed more focused on its goals. So, in late September 2004, I joined the CentOS IRC channel and then, in November, I joined the CentOS mailing list as a contributor. And I am still contributing 13 years down the road!
Q What were the biggest roadblocks that emerged initially while designing CentOS for the community, and how did its core development team overcome them?
A lot of our problems were about not getting off the ground. Initially, there was no clear aim. And then, we faced the challenge that the build systems and code audit tools in 2003/2004 were either primitive, absent entirely or the contributors were unaware of them. A Linux distribution is a large collection of a lot of code, written in many languages — each with its own licence, build process and management.
Three main strategies saw us past that painful process. The first was consistency. Whatever we did, we had to be consistent and uniform across the entire distribution, and make sure all developers had a uniform understanding of the process and flow. The second was a self-use focus. Regardless of what the other people were targeting, all developers were encouraged to focus on their own use cases and their personal goals. The third was the hardest, to try and disconnect commercial interests from developer and contributor work.
Q Why was there a need for CentOS Linux when Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux already existed in the market?
The Fedora project was still getting sorted out around then. Its team had a clear mandate to try and build an upstream-friendly Linux distribution that was going to move fast and help the overall Linux ecosystem mature. Red Hat Enterprise Linux, on the other hand, has been built for the commercial medium to large organisations, looking for value above the code. This left a clear gap in the ecosystem for a community-centric, manageable, predictable enough Linux distribution that the community itself, small vendors, and niche users around the mainstream could consume.
Initially, the work we did was quite focused on the specific use cases that the developers and contributors had. All of us were doing specific things, in specific ways and CentOS Linux fitted in well. But as we started to mature, we saw great success in specific verticals, starting from academia and education institutions to Web hosting, VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) and HPC (high performance computing).
Q What were the major outcomes of the Red Hat tie-up?
Red Hat came on as a major sponsor for the CentOS Project in January 2014. From the CentOS Project's perspective, this meant we were then able to start looking beyond just the platform and the Linux distribution. It allowed us to build the infrastructure and resources needed to support other projects above the platform, develop a great CI (continuous integration) service as well as a much better outreach effort than we were able to earlier.
The real wins have been from the user perspective. If today you are looking for an OpenStack user side install, the CentOS Project hosted on the RDO stack is the best packaged, tested and maintained option.
In a nutshell, the Red Hat relationship has allowed the CentOS Project to dramatically expand the scope of its operations beyond just the Linux distribution and enable many more user scenarios.
Q What makes CentOS Linux a perfect choice even 13 years after its first release in May 2004?
When users install a Linux distribution, they are almost always doing so in order to achieve a goal—either to run a website or to run a mail server. Helping users achieve their end goals easily has been our constant focus. It is a key metric we still track in order to reach our goals.
This means that as the user base adapts to the new world of cloud-native, container-based and dynamically orchestrated workloads, the CentOS Project continues to deliver the same level of user focus that we have had over the years.
Protecting the user's investment in the platform across the base without giving up on existing processes is something we deliver till date. For instance, people can choose when and how they jump on the container process, or just entirely opt out. It is not something that will be influenced by a CentOS Linux release. It is this duality, which maintains an existing base while allowing the user to seamlessly move into emerging tech, that creates a great value proposition for CentOS Linux.
"We invest heavily in automation to enable long-term support"
Q How do you manage the diversification of different CentOS Linux versions and releases?
The way the contribution process and ownership works makes it relatively easy to manage the diversification. Primarily, the aim is to ensure that if we are doing something specific, the people doing the work are directly invested in the result of the work itself. This helps ensure quality as there are eyes scrutinising incoming patches and changes—since the developers' own requirements could be impacted by shipping a sub-optimal release.
Participation from the target audience for the specific media or release is a very critical requirement. And because this typically comes through the common project resources, it also means that the people doing this work are well engaged in the core project scope and Linux distribution areas, allowing them to bridge the two sides nicely.
At the moment, there are dozens of different kinds of CentOS releases, including atomic hosts, minimal installs, DVD ISOs, cloud images, vagrant images and containers. Each of these comes through a group that is well invested in the specific space.
Q What are the various efforts that lead to a consistent developer experience on CentOS Linux?
Application developers working to consume CentOS Linux as their base can trust the API/ABI efforts where content deployed today will still work three or five years down the road. The interfaces into that don't change (they can evolve, but won't break existing content/scripts/code). Therefore, working with these interfaces also means that they work within the same process that the end user is already aware of and already manages for simple things like security patching, an area often overlooked by the casual developer.
Q How does the small team of developers manage to offer a long period of support for every single release?
We invest heavily in automation to enable long-term support. And that means that a very small group of people can actually look after a very large codebase. It changes the scope of what the contributors need to do. Rather than working on the code process, we work on the automation around it, and aggressively test and monitor the process and code.
The other thing is that we get community support. Developers and contributors don't always have the time to work on each request, but if you look at the CentOS Forums, almost every question gets a great result.
There is also a lot of diversity in the groups. The CentOS IRC channel idles at over 600 users during the day, but a large number of users never visit the forums. Similarly, the CentOS mailing lists include over 50,000 people, but a large number of them are never reaching the IRC channel or the forums.
Q Is it solely the community feedback that helps you build new CentOS updates, or do you also consider feature requests from the Red Hat team?
CentOS Linux is built as a downstream from Red Hat's sources. They are being delivered via git.centos.org, and then the additional layers and packages are built by various community members. We also encourage people to come and join the development process to build, test and deliver features to the audience that we target through the open source project. All this is entirely community focused.
So if someone at Red Hat wants to execute something, they would need to join the relevant community and work that route for engagement on CentOS.
Having said that, we have a concept of Special Interest Groups that can be started by anyone, with a specific target in mind. Of course, this is only above the Linux distribution itself.
Q Apart from your engagements related to being a CentOS Project member, what are your major tasks at Red Hat?
These days, I spend around 30 per cent of my time working on the CentOS Project. Rather than in the project itself, most of my focus is around enablement and making sure that contributors and developers have the resources they need to succeed. The other 70 per cent of my time is spent as a consulting engineer at Red Hat, working with service teams, helping build best practices in operations roles and modern system patterns for online services.
Additionally, I have been involved in some of the work going on in the containers world and its user stores, which includes DevOps, SRE-Patterns, CI and CD, among others.
Q What are the major differences you've observed being a part of a corporate entity like Red Hat and a community member? Which is tougher among the two?
I have been involved with open source communities for over 15 years. During such a long period, open source work has never been my primary job. It's always been something that I do in my free time or in addition to what I was already doing, similar to my move with the CentOS Project. But what makes Red Hat unique in a way is that this isn't an odd role.
A large number of people at Red Hat participate and execute their day job via open source communities. And that makes it a lot easier, being a long-term contributor.
There is only one key challenge that one needs to keep in mind when working on an open source project as a part of the day job, though. It is to set realistic expectations around community participation, and recognise that the community is there because its members often care about something far more than the people paid to work on a project. However, this typically isn't a concern when a community comes together around smaller pieces of the code.
The CentOS Project has quite a widespread and extensive footprint. It involves talking to and participating in a wider community where a large majority is unknown personally. Managing
expectations and ensuring there is respect both ways has been a balancing act that's never easy. It's something I work quite hard on, and hope we can keep getting it better.
Q What is your advice to those who are planning to begin with CentOS?
The most important thing to remember for those planning to begin with CentOS is that you are not alone. There is lots of documentation as well as tremendous support and help from a vast community. So as a new user, make sure you engage with the existing user base, ask questions, and spend a bit of time to understand what and how things are. In the long-term, understanding the details will pay off.
CentOS Linux is built on a lot of past experience. Anyone starting down the path of adoption should keep this in mind. We've tried to build a culture of helping those that need the most help, but also encourage new users to learn and grow with the community.
Q What are the biggest features that we can see in the next CentOS release?
The Special Interest Groups (SIGs) are constantly releasing new content all the time. As an example, the Cloud SIG released OpenStack Ocata within a few hours of the upstream project release. There is also a lot of work being done in the Atomic SIG around containers, and in the Virt SIG on existing and upcoming virtualisation technologies.
Q Lastly, where do you see CentOS in the future of open source?
CentOS Linux, due to its characteristics, is a great fit for areas like Web hosting, Web services, cloud workloads and container delivery. Also, as a platform for long-term community centric workloads, it is a good option in areas like HPC and IoT. The Linux distribution also specifically suits the needs of the education sector—starting and supporting not only IT education but education as a whole. Moreover, I would like to see CentOS Linux extend its footprint as a vehicle for enablement.
And this is where the CentOS Project provides a great space for other open source projects—building services for CI/CD, interacting with the users, finding the niches that people care about and solving real-world problems.
If you are involved today with an open source project, I strongly encourage you to get in touch with me and discuss its development areas.
We measure our success on the basis of how successful CentOS has been for the people, the communities, the open source projects and the users who have invested their time, resources and support for the CentOS Project. And we look forward to solving more problems, building better solutions and bridging more gaps together.
You can reach Karanbir directly at kbsingh@centos.org or meet him on Twitter at @kbsingh.
karanbir
Microsoft joins Open Source Initiative as 'Premium' sponsor
A primer on software defined networking (SDN) and OpenFlow standard
Jagmeet Singhhttps://www.opensourceforu.com
"I Wish The Industry Would Not Follow This Ever Increasing Hype...
"Risk minimisation while dealing with open source and cloud software is...
"Take any open source project — its contributors cut across national, religious...
Search file and create backup according to creation or modification date
Database Programming in Python
A Guide to Using Raw Sockets


"Design is thinking made visual".We believe in designing a website, that impacts the clients to take certain actions depend on how the clients feels about the website. Desktop, smartphones, or tablet ...you name it, our team helps plan, design and develop visually appealing websites that will help increase conversion rates and overall traffic. You dream it...we will execute it!
We offer the most intelligent and trendy website designs for our customers. Our focus is to make responsive website designs that are mobile friendly and designed for any type of device. Moreover, these designs also help SEO to be at the top. Our websites keep the intensity of changing a visitor into a customer at first sight. We follow a complete procedure for developing a website. At first we understand the entire business criteria of the customer and think about the requirements for making a website. Then after, we create a detailed documentation about the working of the website, objective of the website, and the web design. And then, after getting the approval from the customer we go further for the genuine execution of the website.We believe that "Quality is better than Quantity".
Thorough expertise in HTML & wordpress.
Ability to re-design and change the visual outlook of the customers's current website.
Fully customized according to cutomer's requirement.
Our job does not finish here.We will help built your site with search engine optimization in mind. This means more people will find your website via search engines optimization and thereby lead to an increase in visitors. SEO are the best way to gain websites viewers for free. We can also work with you to make a paid online marketing campaign. For information view our Search Engine Optimization page.


text:
Category: London
Daniel Levitin believes "we have failed an entire generation of children" by not preparing them properly for college. By this Levitin, who is an American cognitive psychologist, neuroscientist, writer, musician, and record producer, and currently James McGill Professor of psychology and behavioral neuroscience at McGill University in Montreal, means students are increasingly entering tertiary eduction without the necessary critical thinking skills.
"Words matter", he told at audience at the RSA today. "Alternative facts" is a dangerous euphemism, he says. "Fake news, alternative truth – these are all euphemisms used by journalists in order not to offend people." But, he says, truth is not about politics. Politicians should be saying "these are the facts, what are we going to do about them?" Politicians can have an honest disagreement about the same facts, but they can't have alternative facts.
Journalists need to just call "alternative facts" what they are – lies. "Don't be afraid of offending people. If they are lying they deserve to be offended." In fact, he would go further. "I'd like to see fact checkers on TV. There should be a ticker running along the bottom of the screen saying "that's a lie" – perhaps with a Pinocchio nose or a halo!"
He says Barrack Obama made a lot of sense when he said that democracy isn't free. "We've begun to think it is and as soon as you do that you risk democracy itself."
The solution is to support the key institutions like law and science. "We've got used to thinking all politicians lie." But it shouldn't be left at that.
He has written a book called "A Field Guide to Lies and Statistics" which offers some basic advice.
"Before you hit like button and share a story think 'is this true'," he advises. There are good techniques for evaluating claims. For example, is it plausible?
He cites the example of a recent taxi ride where the taxi driver told him – "Do you know that there are 15bn people in the world who don't have access to the internet." What he meant to underline was an emotional point, Levitin says, which was that a large section of people in this unequal world are held back by not having access to the internet. But "numbers matter", he says. After he explained that there were only about 7bn people in the world in the first place, they went on to have a good conversation about the topic.
Another critical thinking tennet is that experts are not always what they seem to be. Take the famous Colgate advertisement that 4 out of 5 dentists recommend Colgate.
There are several issues this throws up. "How many dentists? Five or 500 or 5000? Who are these dentists? Is it likely they would have an incentive to say this? Is the dentist even the right person ask in any case? I've never been asked by my dentist which toothpaste I use in all the years I've been going."
In fact, he says, this is one of the key issues today – picking the right expert. "Experts are too ready to step outside their area of competency."
51.5095391-0.1228194
Author jmuttramPosted on January 26, 2017 January 26, 2017 Categories LondonTags RSALeave a comment on A field guide to lies
Brexit will paralyse Government for the next five years, predicted Vince Cable today at the launch of a report on Further Education at the RSA.
The former Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills warned that Brexit now meant a "massive diversion of energy as MPs and civil servants spend the next five years focused on a problem which was entirely unnecessary." He said he has some experience of the planning for what might happen in the event of Scottish separation, and said this was a drop in the ocean compared to the massive effort that would be required to separate from Europe.
The further education sector had been battered by under-funding and ever-changing Government policy, he said, but it was going to be critical in the post-Brexit world where free movement of workers in no longer the norm. "If you exclude people you have to train people to fill the gap," he said, arguing that at least in part the reason immigration is so high is because of a skills shortage in the UK economy. And, as public finances will be weaker in the future as the economic consequences of Brexit become a reality, this extra effort in skills training is going to be a real challenge.
He believes the further education sector should fulfil two roles: providing the higher level skills a sophisticated economy increasingly needs; and providing first class remedial training for people who have fallen behind for whatever reason.
Whatever the challenges ahead for further education, it was, he said, worse in the universities which will see research funding lost and overseas students numbers dropping.
– a difficulty. sector but report optimistic view of the possibilities for the future. Brexit will have an impact: FE sector not as bad as universities which will loss research funding and students.
Author jmuttramPosted on July 5, 2016 January 26, 2017 Format StatusCategories LondonTags Brexit, education, RSA1 Comment on Cable on Brexit and Education
On Friday the second reading of Caroline Lucas' Private Members NHS Reinstatement Bill didn't happen because Conservative backbenchers spent four and a half hours debating the Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill. This bill, brought by Conservative MP Peter Bone, has only two clauses and had previously been brought and withdrawn following opposition.
I had previously written to my MP, Bob Stewart (Conservative, Beckenham) to ask him if he was going to be present for the NHS Bill. This is what he told me:
Dear Mr Muttram
Thank you for your e mail. True there is a Second Reading of a Private Members Bill on the NHS on Friday 11th March. It has been proposed by Caroline Lucas MP (Green Party). It is not really a debate though and I do not expect many MPs will be present.
That is because Fridays are reserved for Second Readings of Private Members bills but the vast majority of MPs are expected (by constituents mainly) to be in their constituencies doing things like their surgeries then. That should normally also apply to me but by chance I am in Westminster that day as I have two appointments which will take up the morning. That having been said, if I can, I will go into the Chamber although the Commons rises at 2.30pm.
In addition the NHS Bill is on second next Friday and I wonder if it will be reached in the time available? The first bill to be discussed is the Second Reading of the Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill proposed by Peter Bone MP (Conservative) and I suspect that will go on for quite a long time before the NHS Bill is called, if it is.
In my time at Westminster I have never seen a Private Members Bill reach the Statute books without Government approval – and that is only one Bill. So, although a campaigning organisation (maybe 38 Degrees but I don't know) is encouraging people to write to me using their template letter they must also know that the chances of this Bill reaching the statute books are practically nil which is slightly disingenuous to its members I believe. They know that and perhaps they should have explained the situation.
I am sorry to disappoint you on this but I will, if I can pop, into the Chamber if I can get away from my appointments.
Bob Stewart
Indeed, as it turned out he was able to be in the Chamber – in order to add his voice to the Conservative MPs talking out the NHS bill.
It may well have been "disingenuous" of 38 Degrees to push on a Private Members' Bill with "practically nil" chance of making it to the statute books, but I think Bob Stewart's reply to me might have also been slightly disingenuous.
After the conclusion of proceedings Ms Lucas tweeted: "Just tried – without success – to stop Tory backbench filibuster.
"Parliamentary process needs radical change – makes mockery of this place."
Author jmuttramPosted on March 13, 2016 Categories LondonTags filibuster, NHS, politicsLeave a comment on Parliamentary Fridays
Magnolia as a climate marker
Every year for the past several I've stopped to take a photo of two magnificent Magnolia trees in a garden around the corner, on my usual dog-walking route to Beckenham Place Park.
Last year it occurred to me that these photos are all dated and that this might be able to tell me something about how the Spring was progressing. And so it seems. 2014 and 2015 seem to me to be about normal – with the Magnolia coming into flower in mid to late March. 2013 was a real anomaly as we had a very cold Spring which delayed everything. It wasn't until a month later that the Magnolias burst into flower, although as they were so late they put on a fabulous show, as you can see. This year is another anomaly – this time in the other direction. The buds were already well formed by the first week of February. Whether they will last if we get a severe frost, who can tell.
Magnolias 7th February 2016
Magnolias 22nd April 2013
Magnolias 15th March 2014
Author jmuttramPosted on February 16, 2016 Categories LondonTags climate, magnolias, SpringLeave a comment on Magnolia as a climate marker
Disposable people?
In 2008 an insurance company of a 64-year-old woman with lung cancer refused to pay $4,000 a month for chemotherapy but offered instead to pay the $50 charge for drugs for physician assisted suicide. This was just an extreme example of the kinds of unintended consequences which can flow from legislation like Oregon's Death with Dignity law.
This was the central point of a fascinating talk by Professor Bro wne Lewis, currently in the UK under the Fulbright Scholarship programme, who was speaking at a Gresham College lecture in London on Monday.
After giving a quick history of euthanasia in the US she explained that subtle changes in terminology as well as other details played a key part in getting assisted death on to the statute books of some states. Groups in favour choose to describe euthanasia as "physician aided death" while opponents call it "physician facilitated suicide".
Dr Lewis herself has settled on the term "physician assisted suicide" (PAS) because she points out the physician does not actively "facilitate" the process of dying but does assist it by supplying the drugs. And, as the patient is the one dying ultimately by their own hand (a key provision of the law) this is by definition suicide.
Oregon was the first state to pass legislation legalising PAS in a people's ballot measure in 1994 and it was on this law that Dr Lewis focussed. The key provisions of the Oregon law were that the law permits PAS if the subject is:
Diagnosed with terminal disease (six months or less to live)
Making an informed decision
Making the request for the prescription in writing…
…which is objectively the same handwriting as usual
Gets a second opinion
And waits for the 15-day waiting period
There are several groups included, but without specific protections, and several groups explicitly excluded.
Included but not protected are the:
People of low income
People of colour
Excluded from the provisions are:
Persons predicted to live more than 6 months
Those suffering from dementia
These provisions throw up some series ethical concerns, argues Dr Lewis.
In the case of the elderly, for example, there is evidence of some old people feeling they almost have a "duty to die" she says. Also they are clearly potentially vulnerable to pressure from relatives, particularly those for example doing the bulk of the caring or who stand to benefit from any inheritance.
In the case of the physically disabled similar concerns raise their heads, in addition to concerns about pressures driven by economic factors: doctors and insurance companies could encourage PAS because of the considerable costs of long term care.
With those of low income this worry is more concrete as the case at the very beginning of this post illustrates. Before PAS was legal the most cost-effective option choice for lung cancer treatment was chemotherapy and the insurer therefore offered to fund it. After PAS was legalised in Oregon there was a cheaper option – the $50 lethal drugs. The poor may find themselves with no options, she argues.
With persons of colour, Dr Lewis says, the worry is that there is considerable evidence that they are not getting appropriate treatment in general at the moment, so if we can't even ensure this, she argues, then how can we be sure they won't be encouraged to "self-terminate".
Another key problem with the Oregon legislation is that, although there is a requirement to seek a second opinion, there is no limit to the number of doctors you can ask. This leads to "doctor shopping" which reduces the protections in the face of the pressures listed above. Dr Lewis says there have been many deaths where the doctor signing off PAS was not the first consulted.
There are other concerns, too. Why six months? What if you are given 12 months but by 6 months your condition will have deteriorated to the extent that you fail the test for informed decision-making or applying in writing?
Also, what about non-terminal cases such as a person suffering from progressive irreversible brain disorder who is not predicted to physically die? Should they not have the same options?
And what about the under-18s. Psychiatrists have argued that a terminally ill 17-year-old is psychologically older than their compatriots.
With this list of reservations you might think Dr Lewis was against the law. In fact she supports it – it's just that she thinks it's provisions and safeguards should be tightened up.
She says, as Oregon was the first the enact the legislation the State is very much sought after as a blue print but that because of this there is resistance to making changes which could improve safeguards considerably.
For example, doctor shopping could be protected against if, when one doctor says yes and one says no there was an independent board to adjudicate. She believes the terminality threshold should be updated, too. "I don't think there is anything magic about six months."
Author jmuttramPosted on January 27, 2016 January 27, 2016 Categories LondonTags euthanasia, law, PAS, USALeave a comment on Disposable people?
Lessons from Save the Children
In an engaging and powerful talk on Tuesday at the RSA out-going Save the Children Chief Executive Justin Forsyth shared five lessons he says he has learned in his time at the charity.
1. Build powerful platforms not powerful organisations. Charities can no longer do everything alone and teaming up with other charities to build platforms is now essential. He gave the example of the Humanitarian Leadership Academy which describes itself like this: "We will work together across the humanitarian sector to ensure that information, knowledge, learning and resources are shared to make us all more efficient in this time of growing pressure."
2. Unexpected allies are more powerful than usual suspects. He cites the unlikely alliance of Bono and President Bush in the very effective campaign to tackle the HIV crisis in the developing world.
3. It is as important to have an exceptional team as an exceptional idea. This, he says, is "very important for sustaining good work." Charities, in particular, he says, "can forget to focus internally". This was especially critical for building sustainability, he said.
4. The power of the mass rather than elite. The unexpected success of the G8 Summit in Gleneagles in 2005 was made possible because of the Live 8 movement which was going on at the same time, he believes. Engaging the power of the masses "gives us permission to be edgy".
5. Who you are should determine what you do, not the other way round. This means charities should always be true to their founding principles, he says. "If you don't you don't look authentic and you weaken your mandate."
Aside from these five insights, Forsyth also had more to say on a range of topics in response to questions. Here are a selection:
"The biggest weakness of any organisation is self-righteousness, and charities too prone to this."
"There is real power in riding waves rather than planning campaigns. The modern media environment can change the conversation across the world." Examples he cited were the outcry following a rape in Delhi and the seismic response to pictures of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi lying drowned on a Turkish beach, both of which had dramatic political consequences.
There was a need to "move the debate on from the CEO's salary and admin costs to measuring the real impact we have in the world."
"Engagement gets left behind in the drive to raise money," he said, and "fundraising can become industrialised". He argues that charities haven't changed the "very old fashioned" way they raise funds. He doesn't believe the "market" is saturated. "We can raise much more if we engage better with people, particularly through the use of digital technologies."
Forsyth takes up a new post of deputy executive director of UNICEF next month.
Author jmuttramPosted on January 21, 2016 Categories LondonTags charity, RSALeave a comment on Lessons from Save the Children
How to have a good day
How do you have a good day? Caroline Webb thinks she knows and has written a book to explain her theories. Webb, previously a consultant with McKinsey and now running her own consultancy, laid out some of the foundation ideas in a talk at the RSA on Thursday.
She calls her philosophy "realistic optimism" and says it is based on general insights from behavioural science and aims to look for "wiggle room" within the constraints we all face.
Her talk focussed on three themes – bending reality, stretching time and growing intelligence.
She illustrated what she meant by bending reality with a story. When she was working for McKinsey she was asked to join a project involving a large-scale corporate change program. This was exactly the kind of project she was least keen on doing. In addition, the kick off meeting turned out to be by video conference, a medium which she always found difficult, frustrating and prone to misunderstandings.
A colleague turned up for the meeting who she called, pseudonymously, Lucas: a young, tall, well-dressed and very enthusiastic German. As she sat in a foul mood, with the meeting confirming all her worst fears, Lucas was powering through deck with undimmed enthusiasm.
After the meeting was over she sat down with Lucas to discuss what a disaster the meeting had been, only to find he was incredulous. He was convinced that the meeting went very well. When he recounted the evidence she was amazed to find so much that was positive.
This led her to the first insight – the brain sees what it expects to see. The conscious brain can only process a fraction of the stimulus it receives, she says, so the sub-conscious brain provided and edited version. The sub-conscious uses cues such as what is currently top of mind to set that filter. This is what is behind the phenomenon of confirmation bias, she says.
So, she reasoned, if you are deliberate about what is top of mind, what your mood is, then you can determine what gets filtered in. This, she now says, she always does, with dramatic results.
Of course you can't really stretch time, she says, unless you park yourself at the edge of a Black Hole (and that has all sorts of complications attached to it!). However, she argues, the conscious brain can only do one thing at a time with any degree of facility. She illustrated by getting the audience to count to seven really fast – no problem. Then she asked us to recite the letters 'a' to 'g' as quickly as possible. Again, no problem. Then she asked us to combine the two – 'a1', 'b2' etc. Disaster. "Multitasking loses mental energy," she said. It is slower and more error prone. So, she reasons, do one thing at a time and you can make the day go further.
The final example was increasing intelligence. Again, a bit of a cheat – "you can't really increase your basic intelligence" she admits. However, intelligence degrades markedly with stress. This is because, she says, when faced with danger the body is evolutionarily adapted to adopt a "flight or fight" response which results in the automatic part of the brain taking over and putting much less energy into the conscious brain.
It isn't just the sudden appearance of a sabre-toothed tiger which triggers this response – "it takes almost nothing to trigger this response," she says.
Again, she illustrated this point with another story from her days at McKinsey. She enrolled on a coaching course and found that she absolutely loved it. She wanted to build a career around coaching but was convinced that there would be no role within McKinsey (a place she loved) where she could do this. As a consequence she because badly conflicted – follow her dream and leave, don't and stay. She could see no way out.
However, as part of the course the participants were encouraged to practice coaching techniques on each other so she did just this with her seemingly intractable problem. "Jill", the colleague she was doing the exercise with, asked Webb to visualise the ideal situation – which was clearly continuing to work at McKinsey, but as a coach. She realised she had shut this option off completely because she had already convinced herself it was a non-starter and the flight-or-fight reflex had kicked it.
So her solution these days is – visualise the optimum outcome before coming to any conclusions. This puts your brain in "discovery mode". You can then use all of your conscious intelligence on ways to make that outcome a reality.
"I'd say doing these three things was a pretty good recipe for a good day," she said.
Author jmuttramPosted on January 15, 2016 January 15, 2016 Categories LondonTags RSALeave a comment on How to have a good day
Climate change – still hope?
This is the question explorer and conservationist Tim Flannery attempted to answer, at the RSA today.
Tim Flannery (left) and Sir David Attenborough
"We are producing emissions at the highest rate we could have imagined a decade ago," he says. We have already reached 1degC of warming since pre-industrial times and with what we have already emitted, because of the lag effect, we are committed to another 0.5degC.
"At 1.5degC there won't be a Great Barrier Reef," he said. "Are we prepared to live in a world like that? If not, we need to work on techniques to take the co2 out of the atmosphere."
So, what would we have to do to remove co2 naturally, he asked? The answer is to plant an area of trees the size of Australia.
We can't hide from the reality, he said: Nobody expects we can stop at 2degC by cutting emissions alone.
One solution which had been much touted is geoengineering, and indeed there is already active research going on in the field in China. But this is an inherently risky route and there is no global treaty regulating geoengineering. "My great fear is that a nation will go it alone when things get bad."
So, if not geoengineering then what?
I used to be pessimistic, he said, but it had become increasingly clear there was a third way involving technologies which can draw large volumes of co2 out of the atmosphere. "They are not ready yet but we need to start now. We know it takes decades from our experience with technologies like solar and wind."
There are several promising pathways Flannery outlined:
1. Biological. The trouble with biological approach is that they are limited in the face of the scale of the problem. Flannery says we would have to look to the sea where growth rates are much higher and pressure on space much lower. He pointed out that with 9% of the ocean as sea weed farms we would draw down all our current annual emissions of co2. However, he points out, that would actually result in sea weed farms covering an area five times as big as Australia. Nevertheless, there is valuable research in this area making good progress.
2. Chemical pathways. The main problem with these generally is that they need energy which doesn't make sense until we are making enough clean energy.
That said, there are very interesting possibilities, he believes. One promising avenue is making carbon negative concrete, for example. This has already been produced experimentally and is very attractive as concrete is a major source of emissions. But, he says, the construction industry is sceptical and is unlikely to take it up until the technology is proven. This is an area where the economic incentive of a carbon price would, he believes, drive uptake.
Another interesting area is to use silicate rock which naturally absorbs co2 when it weathers. For example, we could mine rock, grind it up and put it on beaches as sand.
Another promising research project is making plastic directly from co2. What about the havoc caused by waste plastic, asked David Attenborough? "Plastic is an appalling hazard to wildlife – we have to do something about that." Flannery agreed.
One project Flannery was particularly enthused by was making carbon fibres directly from co2. This was exciting, he said, as it was claimed this would be cheaper than conventional methods of production which would mean carbon fibre could compete head on with steel and aluminium, both of which are major emitters. It was likely, he thought, that private money would fund this development as the rewards are potentially so great.
He then turned to carbon capture and storage (CCS). The traditional approach which was designed to make coal fired power stations "clean" was, he said, a failure. "It's very expensive, very complicated, and doesn't even capture all the emissions." Will the price of renewables tumbling this would never make economic sense for coal.
However, this is not to say that CCS generally shouldn't receive R&D effort. Where could we store co2, he asked rhetorically? Two options at least – 3km down in the water where the pressure makes co2 solid. Another options being explored was to bury it the antarctic – chiller boxes powered by wind would turn co2 to snow which could then be buried.
If this all sounds like science fiction, Flannery says we need to "keep the imaginative pathways open". 2050 will be very different to 2015, he says. "Think of the difference between the world in 1915 and 1950."
The key point is, he argues, that we have to cut emissions now and hard as well as start researching seriously on these technical solutions. If we continue as we are we will be out of budget in 13 years. And one of biggest risks of 2degC is a large release of methane which could spike temperatures. For this reason we can't afford to wait before cutting emissions hard, but, because there is a lag between emissions and temperature increases we have a chance to develop solutions which will take co2 out of the atmosphere.
Author jmuttramPosted on December 3, 2015 December 19, 2015 Categories LondonTags climate change, RSALeave a comment on Climate change – still hope?

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Liberty Bay
By Karis Walsh
Wren Lindley loves her low-tech life far off the grid near the small Pacific Northwest town of Poulsbo, Washington. Her world is untouched by the latest anything until the day social media star Gina arrives to help her market her horse farm…and brings an unexpected and irresistible electricity into Wren's life.
Influencer Gina Strickland always has her focus forward, toward the hottest trend and the newest way to make a splash. Her glamorous on-screen persona has made her a success, but when her real identity is leaked and threats ensue, she needs a temporary hideout. Wren's isolated farm sounds like the perfect refuge until Gina discovers just how far off the grid it really is. With this much downtime, how is she supposed to distract herself from the sparks flying between her and tantalizing Wren?
On the shores of Liberty Bay, far from the buzz of social media feeds, can Wren and Gina find a way to forge a real-world connection?
A Degree to Die For
University Police | Book 2
Tig Weston's beloved classics department is evolving, expanding its course offerings to entice a new and more diverse generation of students. Not everyone is willing to accept these changes, though. Tempers flare, and when the body of a prestigious alum turns up outside Denny Hall, Tig doubts she can bring her department through the crisis.
Sergeant Adriana Kent always pictured classical scholars as tweedy bookworms, but suddenly her campus police officers are being called to Denny on a near-daily basis. Arguments in the halls, threatening emails, and even a fistfight, for God's sake. What should have been the most sedate department on campus seems to be going through a volatile transformation. And the most visible proponent of that transformation? The decidedly unstuffy and very sexy Professor Antigone Weston.
Kent and Tig seem to be on opposing sides in this battle until the stakes become more personal. But before they can even think about a future together, they'll need to fight to protect the campus from a killer.
Love and Lattes
Bonnie James has built her life around her passions—cats, coffee, and community. She rejected her family's narrow visions of success and instead chose the non-lucrative, fur-filled life of a cat café owner. So what if her decision means she works way too much to have time for true love? She has plenty of friends and cats to keep her company.
Wedding planner Taryn Ritter has a knack for making impossible dreams come true. She might not understand the appeal of getting married in a cat café, but if that's what her clients want, then she'll make it happen. She's not about to let the reluctant café owner stand in her way, so she makes Bonnie an offer she can't refuse—give her the venue for one day and she'll find a way to get more cats adopted into happy homes.
When Bonnie and Taryn join forces to help a bunch of shelter cats find their forever homes, they just might discover forever for themselves as well.
With a Minor in Murder
Officer Clare Sawyer, newly arrived at the University of Washington's campus police department, hopes her investigation of a murdered professor will give her a chance to show her worth and prove to herself she made the right choice leaving the big city behind. Life on campus brings back uncomfortable memories, but she is determined to do her job and remain on the outskirts of the academic world. Until Professor Hart walks into her interrogation room…
Architectural historian Libby Hart found her true home when she entered college, and she hasn't left academia since. She loves her friends, her job, and the gorgeous buildings surrounding her. When the harsh reality of murder brings chaos into her world, she tries to help Clare restore order on campus.
Clare and Libby are from different worlds, but the more time they spend together, the harder it becomes to ignore their growing feelings for one another—until the murderer targets Clare and danger threatens to destroy their happiness.
Sit. Stay. Love.
City girl Alana Brendt accepts a one-year contract as an event coordinator in remote Yakima, Washington, to reboot her career. So what if she padded her résumé a little…doesn't everyone? Then she discovers she has to lead trail rides and white-water adventures, not just coordinate them. Add a litter of puppies underneath her rickety farmhouse's porch, and Alana is desperate enough to accept help from the local vet…the gorgeous, sexy, outdoorsy vet who is absolutely not Alana's type. At all.
Veterinarian Tegan Evans avoids the tourist side of Yakima, venturing there only when an animal needs her. Tourists only break your heart. Still, she can't resist helping Alana, who, despite being in over her head with rambunctious puppies and a job she is barely qualified to perform, seems determined to make a success of things.
Alana and Tegan both know they don't belong together. Only problem is, they're falling in love.
Love on Lavender Lane
For corporate consultant Paige Leighton, the ends always justify the means. She does whatever it takes to make her clients' businesses profitable. She has no room for sentimentality in business or in her personal life and loves nothing better than pushing others out of their comfort zones.
Kassidy Drake has spent a lifetime creating her comfort zone, and she has no intention of leaving. Her home is as orderly and as beautiful as the rows of lavender surrounding it, but she needs to make Lavender Lane Farm solvent or she might lose everything. She agrees to listen to Paige's advice as long as Paige doesn't expect much more from her than changing the font on her business cards.
Accompanied by the buzz of honeybees and the scent of lavender, Paige and Kassidy must find a way to compromise if they want to save Lavender Lane Farm—and find a way to make room for love along the way.
Marine biologist Tess Hansen has left her high-tech lab at Evergreen College and returned to Washington's northern coast to take care of her aging parents. Although her new job studying orcas in the Pacific excites her, she finds life in the small town where she grew up to be stifling and boring. Until she meets Brittany James.
Chemist Britt James has made the move from a hectic city to the rural coast as well, but she embraces the isolation. She's looking for a way to reconnect with the environment and make amends for the damage her chemical company has done, and Tess's center for orca research is a top contender for her endowment.
Change has become an unwelcome part of Tess's life and a desperate hope for Britt. Can these two women find a place of refuge with each other?
Thoroughly enjoyable reading as always from Ms Walsh
There are some authors that just click, I guess we have a certain style and tone we really like, and for me Karis Walsh is one of those authors. I love her settings in the Pacific North West, the animals that are so much part of the stories, and the depth of her characters. "Liberty Bay" is another great read, interesting characters who become our friends, gorgeous backdrop of the farmland outside Seattle and the clash of a woman who makes her living in the most modern way possible, as a social media influencer, and another who's childhood and family relationships were blighted by her dislike of technology. The attraction is instant but neither can conceive of it ever being more.. and they will both have to compromise to make it work. Thoroughly enjoyable reading as always from Ms Walsh.
Reviewed by Velvet Lounger
The writing was terrific
on Feb 4, 2021 02:02
...The writing was terrific. The characters were fully fleshed...Well done by the author...
Reviewed by Kayl Kuo
A fun, nicely paced read
...a fun, nicely paced read. Very enjoyable.
Reviewed by Bonnie Sherrard
The interplay between the main characters was fun and real
I liked this book. I could really relate to Wren, the off grid curmudgeon who only wants to be alone. There were so many times through out the book that make me chuckle or laugh out loud. The interplay between the main characters was fun and real. The descriptions of the environs made the book richer. I am never disappointed when I read a book written by this author.
Reviewed by Melissa F
Lovely life enhancing story
Really enjoyed this, a much needed light read. It's an opposites attract romance, Gina is an online influencer who has to leave the city after being doxed, Wren lives off the grid across the bay from Seattle where she has a smallholding and trains horses. Wren needs to make more money and her friend suggests she has an online presence to her market her business, Gina is the best applicant and soon moves in above the horse barn. There is mutual attraction, however, it's the witty banter between them that sells this book, it is a different way to show a relationship building and I enjoyed that. I also really liked that they learnt from each other and that their opposing positions were a bonus and helped rather than hindered their relationship. Not sure i've seen that before, especially when Wren is sympathetic to Gina's experience rather than huffy about the online experience. The presentation of city life versus the quiet country life is also well argued, no secret which the author is promoting and you could see why! Lovely life enhancing story.
Reviewed by Claire Estelle


We have the solution. Our growing fleet of vehicle and trailer mounted fork lift 'Moffett' trucks mean that we are able to get your goods delivered even without unloading facilities onsite.
Perfect for construction sites, railside deliveries, etc.
Call our transport team on 01606 545400 or email info@scooper.co.uk for a quote.


text:
President Donald Trump "Not Happy" With Crowd's "Send Her Back" Chants
Kevin Reilly Reups WarnerMedia Contract, Adds TruTV Oversight; Chris Linn Exits
Kevin Reilly WarnerMedia
Kevin Reilly, President TBS, TNT and Chief Creative Officer Turner and Direct-to-Consumer, has extended his contract with a new four-year deal through 2022. As part of the extension, Reilly is expanding his portfolio to add the last remaining network from the former Turner Broadcast System, truTV. As a result of the reorganization, truTV's President Chris Linn is stepping down after a six-tear tenure.
Reilly's new title is President of TBS, TNT and truTV and Chief Content Officer, WarnerMedia Direct-to-Consumer.
Locking in Reilly marks the first major executive move by Bob Greenblatt since he was named Chairman of WarnerMedia Entertainment in March. It erases any doubts about Railly's future that may have been raised by the appointment of Greenblatt, which came a couple of months after Reilly's December 2018 promotion that put him in charge of creative for WarnerMedia's upcoming Direct-to-Consumer platform in addition to his duties as President of TNT and TBS.
WarnerMedia's HBO Max Sets Executive Team Led By Kevin Reilly
At the WarnerMedia upfront presentation yesterday, Reilly presented a vision for close cooperation between WarnerMedia's linear networks and the streaming platform and a plan to revamp the brand identities of formerly drama-centric TNT and comedy-focused TBS with the introduction of more unscripted programming on TNT slate and drama on TBS.
"Kevin has a long-standing reputation as an industry leader and his accomplishments throughout his career — and particularly at this company — are remarkable," said Greenblatt, to whom Reilly will continue to report. "He will continue to head up our important cable networks as well as oversee the robust content strategy for our new direct-to-consumer streaming service. I look forward to our continued collaboration as we move these valuable WarnerMedia properties forward under Kevin. At the same time, I thank Chris Linn for his leadership and dedication to re-branding and building truTV over the last several years."
Shortly after joining then-Turner Entertainment in 2014, Reilly spearheaded a brand refocus for TBS on bold sensibility and digital and socially-driven content and TNT on programming aimed at younger, more dual-gendered audience. The efforts have yielded such shows as Full frontal with Samantha Bee and Search Party on TBS and The Alienist, I Am the Night and Claws on TNT. Reilly also orchestrated a joint venture with Conan O'Brien's Team Coco, and spearheaded new businesses such as ELEAGUE, and the recently announced new All Elite Wrestling league.
Before joining TBS and TNT, Reilly served as president of entertainment for Fox (2007-2014), president of entertainment at NBC (2004-2007), president of entertainment at FX (2000-2003), and president of television at Brillstein-Grey Entertainment (1994-2000).
Linn, who joined TuTV as President in 2014, oversaw the network's 2014 rebrand as a comedy network with a distinct point of view. Some of the successful, talent-driven series launched on his watch include I'm Sorry, Adam Ruins Everything, At Home with Amy Sedaris, The Carbonaro Effect, and Tacoma FD. During his tenure Linn also acquired the popular variety sketch series Billy on the Street and earned the network its first Emmy Award nomination in 2017.
Chris Linn
Kevin Reilly
WarnerMedia


Surprise presenter Oprah Winfrey gave Quincy Jones a huge hug. Jack Nicholson, Herb Alpert and a tearful Michelle Phillips huddled at Lou Adler's table. Randy Newman got big laughs. And everyone rocked out to Public Enemy's raucous set.
But the night belonged to Rush, the Canadian prog-rock trio that's been waiting for an invitation since 1998.
They arrived as the headliner. The band drew deafening applause at Thursday's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in the Nokia Theatre.
Rush's entry into the elite institution was also a people's choice award. For the first time, fans were invited to cast votes (with their votes constituting a single ballot among the 500-plus submitted by artists, historians and music industry professionals), and Rush won handily.
Their fans packed the house, chanting for their heroes from the evening's outset, then exploding into cheers when the band finally took the stage for a paint-peeling performance of Tom Sawyer and The Spirit of Radio.
Dave Grohl, who rattled off every Rush album title in chronological order, inducted the musicians, saying, "From day one, the band built its following the right way. No hype, no (baloney), they did it from the ground up without any help from the mainstream press…Their influence is undeniable and their devoted fan base is only rivaled by the Grateful Dead. Look at you people, all of you people, right here! And their legacy is that of a band that stayed true to themselves no matter how uncool they may have seemed to anyone."
Drummer Neil Peart said, "We've been saying for a long time, years, that this wasn't a big deal. Turns out, it kind of is."
And in a nod to the role ardent fans played in paving Rush's path to the hall, singer/bassist Geddy Lee thanked "the most passionate, incredible fan base around the globe …for not only supporting and encouraging our musical progress over the years, but for the insistence of their voices, which has most certainly led us to this evening."
The ceremony, in L.A. for the first time since Cream and The Doors were inducted in 1993, will be broadcast at 9 p.m. ET/PT May 18 on HBO.


Asteroids is an arcade space shooter released in November 1979 by Atari, Inc. The object of the game is to maneuver your ship through space, dodging and destroying asteroids and UFOs. Flight is different than many games from this period since there is no joystick. To control your craft, you press buttons to rotate your ship, and press your thruster for propulsion. Press your thrusters too long, and you can easily lose control - there are no brakes in this game. Once your ship is heading in one direction, the only way to "slow down" is to rotate your ship in the opposite direction and press your thrusters again. The object of the game is to destroy all the asteroids on the screen. However, when you shoot an asteroid, it breaks into smaller pieces, which must also be destroyed.
Few games in history are as recognized as Asteroids. The pounding sound effects, simple graphics, and strangely addictive gameplay has permeated throughout all of American society. One only has to watch TV shows like NBC's Freaks and Geeks, or the classic film National Lampoon's Vacation to realize just how entrenched this game has become in our popular culture.
Few games have been copied or ported as often as Asteroids. Even today, Asteroids clones and ports are popping up as Java applets, or in current releases for modern game systems. If you want to play a flash version of Asteroids, click here.


Crushing And Panning Quartz For Gold - mayukhportfolio.
Crushing Gold from Quartz - YouTube. 29 Jan 2013 ... Today Reed & Rodney mount a small Jaw Crusher from Golden Manufacturing to collect the gold out of some quartz samples.
Oct 19, 2018· 84 Sedimentary rocks, by W ende ll P. Woodring and John S. Brown . .. Petrography and ch e mical compo sition of the normal quartz diorite . in or var1a A, Small mill for crushing sugar c ane; B, Method of drying corn. ... Rock Crusher Hand Operated For Crushing Quartz To Find Gold .
Quartz Stone Crushing Process Australia. . Introduction of quartz crushing process and CGM quartz crushers in . quartz rock crusher for sale australia rgbooks . Get Price And Support Online; quartz crushing equipment for sale australia. quartz rock crusher for sale australia - quartz rock crusher for sale australia grinding mill .
1-16 of over 1,000 results for "rose quartz rocks" Hypnotic Gems 1 lb Bulk Rose Quartz Rough from Madagascar - Large 1" Natural Raw Stones & Fountain Rocks for Tumbling, Cabbing, Polishing, Wire Wrapping, Wicca & Reiki Crystal Healing ... Rose Quartz,with its gentle pink essence,is a .
Gravel material that has been processed through a crusher, washed, and screened to size. Consists of mostly rounded sand sized minerals, typically quartz. Typically used in sandboxes, playgrounds, and for laying pavers or flagstone.
THE DETERMINATION OF QUARTZ IN SEDIMENTARY ROCKS .
Quartz content is obtained from a working curve constructed using similar rocks of known free silica content, which were analysed by the method of Trostel and Wynne (1940).
The high efficiency tertiary crusher is a kind of tertiary rock crusher with the main granite, basalt, limestone, cement clinker, quartz stone, iron ore and bauxite, etc, such as ball mill, jaw crusher, cone crusher, hammer crusher, Raymond mill, Technical Parameters .
quartz boulders for sale - Quarrying Crusher Plant Quartz crusher for sale in China, We supply quartz, silica sand, silicon metal and silicon carbide. Crystalarium. Crystalarium retal store Los Angeles,High quality quartz and gem Crystals for the metaphysical client .
Small Gravel Crusher | Crusher Mills, Cone Crusher, Jaw Crushers. Both sand and small gravel are also important for the manufacture of concrete. ... Miners used .
DW Series cone crusher owns advanced technology. It is widely used in metallurgical industry, hydro-dam construction, transportation, chemical industry and building materials, so it is suitable for crushing all kinds of rocks with mediuim or above hardness.
Quartz-gold deposits are formed from high temperature water (hydrothermal) that has passed through rocks at depth. If the chemistry of the water is right, silica will go into solution from the surrounding rock, as will gold if it is present.
Mar 11, 2017· Purchased a small hand rock crusher. Going to crush samples as I find them when detecting and prospecting. I dont know a whole lot about hardrock and pocket gold. So any tips or suggested reading is helpful. Thanks.
women crushing insect free clips - Quartz Crusher. Crushed by Her, destroyed or dominated under her foot. High quality original insect and object crushing clips!
Gold Ore Rock Crusher Impact Flail Processing Quartz Crushing... rock crusher gold ore impact mill rock crusher gold quartz ore impact millsGot Rocks?


text:
Covid-19 research is a confusing space right now, but is some of it harmful?
by Colm Gorey
Image: © Tomas Skopal/Stock.adobe.com
As researchers around the world race to find ways to stop the coronavirus in its tracks, contradicting information may be appearing online at a rapid pace.
When a tech company is faced with a particularly nasty computer virus that could leave its customers facing a major privacy headache, it will typically rush out a patch to fix the issue as soon as possible.
But in the world of science, where people's lives are at stake, researchers cannot simply patch out a flaw. It takes many months – and possibly years – to test every possible scenario to make sure that a solution not only solves a problem, but doesn't have unintended consequences.
The world currently finds itself in the grips of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has touched nearly every corner of the globe. At the time of writing, there are almost 2m confirmed cases worldwide, with no known vaccine or definitive cure.
Such situations are like a call to action for researchers. In the space of a few months, there are already more than 140 experimental drug treatments and vaccines in development across the world, in addition to around 250 clinical trials testing drugs developed for other medical issues to see whether they could be used against Covid-19.
Knowing what is 'good' science
Under the current circumstances, timelines that typically last months have been shrunk down into a matter of days. Researchers developing a device to detect the virus in saliva using lasers recently admitted they managed to put together a team and write a funding proposal in as little as eight days.
As Johnson and Johnson's chief scientific officer recently put it to The Wall Street Journal: "We have never gone so fast with so many resources in such a short time frame".
But is there a trade-off happening and how many of the claims being made by recent studies can we take as being 'good' science?
US president Donald Trump continues to make headlines for his claims regarding hydroxychloroquine, a long-established antimalarial drug, that he said could be effective against Covid-19.
This stemmed from a recent French study that said it had found evidence that a combination of hydroxychloroquine and the antibiotic azithromycin could be effective against Covid-19. However, the science around hydroxychloroquine and Covid-19 is so far inconclusive.
In a recent press conference, Trump said "what do you have to lose" when asked about people taking the drug combination. "In France, they had a very good test," he added. "But we don't have time to go and say, 'Gee, let's take a couple of years and test it out, and let's go and test with the test tubes and the laboratories.'"
Spotting red flags
When trying to identify potential red flags in a study – whether related to Covid-19 or otherwise – some aspects of the French study stand out.
For one, it involved just 80 subjects, most of whom had mild Covid-19 symptoms. With only 15pc of those in the study showing signs of a fever, it is likely they would have naturally recovered from the virus.
Another major red flag was that the study appeared on a pre-print server for anyone to access on 16 March. It was approved a day later and published on 20 March. This remarkable turnaround raised eyebrows, especially given that one of the paper's co-authors is also the editor-in-chief of the journal it featured in, the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents.
Not long after it began making headlines, the International Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (ISAC), which publishes the journal, distanced the organisation from the study, saying it did not meet the society's standards.
"Although ISAC recognises it is important to help the scientific community by publishing new data fast, this cannot be at the cost of reducing scientific scrutiny and best practices," said Andreas Voss, ISAC president.
Gaetan Burgio, an Australian National University expert on drug resistance, went as far as to describe the study's findings as "insane". In another study released online prior to peer review, Chinese research into hydroxychloroquine raised a number of questions over its focus and how it was translated.
Looking at supplementary Table 1, most of the controls had viral load qualitatively detected or the PCR was not done !!!! . Only 4 out of 16 controls had a proper measure of the viral load !!!! This is insane ! pic.twitter.com/hDhKewVcTu
— Dr Gaetan Burgio, MD, PhD. (@GaetanBurgio) March 21, 2020
'You obviously can't cut corners'
"While we applaud research publishers and journals and how to work differently and quickly, you obviously can't cut corners," said Emily Jesper-Mir, director of partnerships with the sound science campaigning charity Sense About Science.
"Even when something is peer reviewed and published, there still needs to be a critique of the research by anyone who is looking at that study. If there's people who post-publication critiqued it and flagged significant flaws in the study design, then that can't be used by Donald Trump to give it oxygen that might be dangerous."
So why are scientists so quick to publish research that is not peer reviewed and may be lacking in many key areas? According to Jesper-Mir, such data is not invalid but helps build a bigger picture.
"Uncertainty is something researchers are used to," she said. "And [in these instances] researchers aren't saying there's nothing, they're just being transparent."
"But it's really important that when models are released, the researchers are clear about what the uncertainties are and they aren't saying we know nothing. Showing their work is an essential part of how we get more knowledge and have these models, and uncertainty is embedded in that."
A need for research, fast
Research groups seem to share the same belief. Just as the crisis was starting to make waves in Europe, the Wellcome Trust and dozens of research groups and publications backed a call for all Covid-19 pre-print data to be immediately made public for scrutiny, and that peer-reviewed research be immediately shared with the World Health Organization and made open access.
This means that everyone – not just those working in academia – needs to be aware that in the middle of a pandemic, contradicting information may be appearing online at a rapid pace. So if you see a study that seems to be making some unusual conclusions, Jesper-Mir said, engage in some critical thinking before you take it as fact.
"If something's being spread over social media or you're getting it on WhatsApp but you can't spot what the source is, then it's probably quite likely to be rubbish," she warned.
"People need governments to not just be putting out clear soundbites on what the public take-home messages are, but to also be transparent about their policy, statistics and evidence, and how it's changing over time."
Related: coronavirus, media, research
Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic
Trinity scientists find new way to study transmissibility of Covid-19 variants
New coronavirus variant: How it was found and what we know so far
Prof Christine Loscher on Covid-19 and the immune system
3 Irish agritech start-ups win big at UCD accelerator


text:
Biografia
È stato attivo in cinema e in televisione fra il 1954 e il 1977, interpretando prevalentemente ruoli da caratterista in film della commedia all'italiana, film comici e in film peplum o comunque di ambientazione storica. Ha interpretato anche ruoli in film drammatici di autori prestigiosi.

In televisione ha impersonato il ruolo del sergente Jimmy Mills, che affiancava Ubaldo Lay alias Tenente Sheridan nella celebre serie televisiva Giallo club. Invito al poliziesco e in altri telefilm derivati dalla trasmissione originale. In coppia con Lay, poi, Moretti ha interpretato poi anche uno spot pubblicitario per Carosello.

Fra gli sceneggiati televisivi è stato interprete ne Una tragedia americana, fiction Rai del 1962 diretta da Anton Giulio Majano.

Ha tra l'altro interpretato i seguenti fotoromanzi: "Solo le stelle ci guardano" con Raffaella Carrà, Monica Berger, Franco Angeli ("I romanzi di Sogno n.144, 1 settembre 1962); "L'indossatrice" con Anna Maria Checchi e Tina Di Pietro ("I romanzi di Sogno n.213, 15 luglio 1965); "I giorni dell'attesa" con Gabriella Farinon e Franca Maria Giardina ("I racconti di Sogno n.11, 9 settembre 1966).

Fra i titoli della sua filmografia figurano Mamma sconosciuta, del 1957, Anna di Brooklyn, del 1958, La vendetta di Ercole, del 1960, Totò, Fabrizi e i giovani d'oggi, anch'esso del 1960, L'idea fissa, film collettivo del 1964, Rose rosse per Angelica, del 1965, La prima notte di quiete, del 1972, L'appuntamento, del 1977.

Filmografia

Cinema
Divisione Folgore, regia di Duilio Coletti (1954)
Tempo d'amarsi, regia di Elio Ruffo (1955)
Mamma sconosciuta, regia di Carlo Campogalliani (1956)
Le notti di Cabiria, regia di Federico Fellini (1957)
Le notti bianche, regia di Luchino Visconti (1957) - non accreditato
El Alamein, regia di Guido Malatesta (1957) - non accreditato
Anna di Brooklyn, regia di Vittorio De Sica e Carlo Lastricati (1958)
La vendetta di Ercole, regia di Vittorio Cottafavi (1960)
Chiamate 22-22 tenente Sheridan, regia di Giorgio Bianchi (1960)
I fratelli corsi, regia di Anton Giulio Majano (1961)
La spada del Cid, regia di Miguel Iglesias (1962)
Sandokan alla riscossa, regia di Luigi Capuano (1964)
episodio Basta un attimo di L'idea fissa, regia di Gianni Puccini e Mino Guerrini (1964)
OSS 77 - Operazione fior di loto, regia di Bruno Paolinelli (1965) - con lo pseudonimo Robert Kent
Rose rosse per Angelica, regia di Steno (1966)
Borman, regia di Bruno Paolinelli (1966) - con lo pseudonimo Robert Kent
 La donna, il sesso e il superuomo, regia di Sergio Spina (1967)
Don Franco e don Ciccio nell'anno della contestazione, regia di Marino Girolami (1970) - non accreditato
La prima notte di quiete, regia di Valerio Zurlini (1972)
Continuavano a chiamarli... er più e er meno, regia di Giuseppe Orlandini (1972)
Un uomo da nulla, regia di Renata Amato (1977)
Donne in bianco, regia di Tonino Pulci (1998)
 Il pesce innamorato, regia di Leonardo Pieraccioni (1999)
L'appuntamento, regia di Giuliano Biagetti (1977)

Televisione

 L'idiota, regia di Giacomo Vaccari - miniserie TV (1959)
 Giallo club - Invito al poliziesco - programma TV, 19 episodi (1959-1961)
 Una tragedia americana, regia di Anton Giulio Majano - miniserie TV (1962)
 La donna di fiori, regia di Anton Giulio Majano - miniserie TV (1965)
 David Copperfield, regia di Anton Giulio Majano - miniserie TV (1966)
 La donna di quadri, regia di Leonardo Cortese - miniserie TV (1968)
 La freccia nera, regia di Anton Giulio Majano - miniserie TV (1968)

Note

Collegamenti esterni

Interpreti di fotoromanzi

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


When Z became a company commander, he had a lot of responsibility dealing directly with a huge variety of issues.
This variety covered everything from arrests to marital issues to almost anything else you could image, most of which I don't fully understand (Army stuff), but it also meant he came home with a LOT of very interesting stories.
This was one of my favorites by far.
He once received a letter addressed to "The Honorable" followed by his title. Let me just take a minute to say that "The Honorable" is not part of his professional title. Not even close. So this was a little suspicious.
"I am writing you this letter to inform you about tax evasion on one of your US Army staff..."
"I feel my duty to inform you of this incident, and I knew sooner or later the Internal Revenue Department would notice the problem...If I get kill [sic] or injured for informing the Army of such incident, I will be proud [...] to defend the United States against foreign or domestic threat."
"On a different note, (the offending party's name has been removed) got very drunk and made her grandma cry, disrespected her mother, and insulted me, and became very disorderly, if a police man would have been present she would have been cited for disorderly conduct."
This went on, as I said, for TWO PAGES.
There are many things that should probably be addressed (fear of death by sniper over informing the Army of alleged tax evasion) and that may be slightly alarming about this letter (she made her grandmother cry, THAT MONSTER!), but my biggest concern is that I'm just not quite sure the author of this beautiful diatribe understands exactly how CC: works. Yet I feel like they were absolutely confident that it would reach the White House nonetheless.
It's important that I preface this post by saying I'm not pregnant. Ok, carry on then.
August is the time for announcements.
It's almost a year to the day that we announced Baby Landis, if you can believe that.
You guys, I'm growing my hair out.
Whew. That feels good to finally get out there. I've been sitting on this news for a few months because it's just not something I take lightly. I had to be sure I was ready, I was committed and I was strong enough to go public with this. Anyone who has gone from pixie to long knows what I'm talking about.
*Unrelated side note: I was talking to my mom the other day and (without thinking) said "GUESS WHO IS PREGNANT AGAIN?" and she kind of gave me this weird look and it took me just a beat too long to realize that I had left just the tiniest room for the thought that WE might be pregnant again to enter her mind ... so I veryveryvery quickly recovered and said "No no, it's not me". Mild panic attacks all around.
I figure you guys have been through enough of the ups-and-downs of my hair journey that we should share this season as well.
I have done just about everything with my hair. It's been long. It's been short. It's been permed. It's been dyed (successfully and unsuccessfully). It's even had fire-engine red streaks (ah, college). There are have been good decisions and bad decisions. There have been great cuts and unfortunate events.
You'll recall the boy-band hair episode for the "unfortunate events" reference.
To give you an idea of how often my hair morphs over time, I need you to understand that this has been a pattern in my life.
A Brief History of Hair: ATY Version.
Take high school, for example. I give you my hair freshman year, and my hair senior year.
First of all, sorry about the bad quality of the picture. Actually, sorry about almost everything about the picture on the left, particularly. I showed this picture to my iMessage support group (I've mentioned them a few times I think. Maybe? If not, they deserve a whole blog post, and soon) and my friend Mary, God bless her, said "Oh good volume, Katie". So of course you can see why I'm friends with her.
So that's just high school.
This hair relationship, it is a complicated one, is it not? The thing is, hair is just always changeable, right? So when I get bored or restless, changing my hair seems a better choice than, I don't know, getting tattoos. Nothing wrong with that, by the way. But hair changes are just less of a permanent commitment, you know?
But anyways, enough is enough. I have loved my short hair. Z LOVES my short hair (and he is, in fact, the reason it has remained short for so long...I tried growing it out about a year ago and he convinced me to keep it short). But I'm ready for new hair. I want a ponytail, for pete's sake! So I press on, through this muddled territory that is the pixie grow-out. A mullet is inevitable. Let's just acknowledge it, accept it, and move forward. We are in for some scraggily, mangy days. There will be headbands and clips and optical illusions and so so so much hair spray. But we will get through! You're here to witness this and hold me accountable.
I had a weird day this week.
You know the ones. You can't quite put your finger on it. And then you can. But it's still not totally that.
I woke up to an email from a friend sharing some great news. I was so thrilled. I thought "what a great way to wake up!"
I texted Z to share the news. He agreed it was great news. Our little text exchange was celebratory.
And then I checked my email a few short hours later to learn some heartbreaking news from another friend. I thought "why does this happen?"
I texted Z to share the news. He agreed it was devastating. Our little text exchange was heavy with sadness.
The weather was even weird. The morning dawned sunny and clear. And then the clouds rolled in, heavy with rain and thunder (which was strange, because I can count on one hand the amount of times it has thundered since we've lived in Germany). And then, as if the weather thought "well that's enough of that", the sun came back out. Weather whiplash that matched the emotional collision.
I never know what to do with these weird days. With the juxtaposition of celebration and mourning. With energy and weariness competing within me. When what I'm experiencing is at the same time wonderful and hard.
I'm not very good at dealing with things head-on, especially when conflicting emotions are involved. Me and the ostrich, we have that (and, strangely enough, a lot of other things) in common. We're head-in-the-sand-ers. I'd like to think I'm improving in this area, slowly but surely. But sometimes more slowly. And usually way less surely.
I stumble over words, trying desperately to convey something meaningful but feeling like what I really want to say just won't come out right. This is why writing is so helpful for me. Words flow a lot easier through my fingers than my mouth. This is also why with almost every major issue I have faced, whether personally or relationally, I have had to sit down and journal or write a letter because I know I will be frustrated and disappointed at the way I convey things otherwise. It's probably something I need to work on...but I also don't want to force it, making it even more unnatural and clumsy. It requires cultivation, this learning how to adequately express myself verbally. And cultivation feels like a huge word and an even huger task, which just sort of exhausts me in lieu of everything else that is on my plate. This is where priorities are helpful, I suppose.
"Cultivation of verbal expression in the face of emotional turmoil". I'm not sure if that should go above or below "change Zoe's diapers in a timely manner".
Anyways, I did the only thing I know to do in situations like these. I wrote an email back to my one friend, sharing my excitement about the exciting, wonderful news. And then I wrote an email back to my other friend, sharing my sorrow over their sad, hard news. And I thought about how often this theme, this hard-and-wonderful intertwined, is appearing in my life lately.
Granted, the hard-and-wonderful I experienced on this particular day was not MY hard-and-wonderful. But it was the hard and the wonderful of people that I really love and care about, and since they shared their hard and their wonderful with me on the same day, within hours of each other, it meshed together to form a married hard-and-wonderful experience. And it further illuminated the existence of hard-and-wonderful that has been showing up so often in my own life. I think that's why it threw me off balance a little more than usual. I felt it, and I felt it in a different way, a way that was more outside of myself and a little bit harder to stuff aside with the hollow promise of "I'll tackle those feelings and what they mean another day, probably, but for now ... " *THUNK* (head firmly in sand).
I know it seems like an absurdly simple revelation. This is life. It is hard. And it is wonderful. And maybe I'm just slow or have had a more tidy experience of the highs and lows of life, but I find that usually the hard and the wonderful ebb and flow separately. If you were to chart this (and of course you would), it would look like a soothing wave, with soft up-and-down curves. Gentle. Rhythmic. "Wonderful" being the crests and "hard" being the troughs (full disclosure: had to google "anatomy of a wave" for that one). That's where you get the whole "mountain tops and valleys" analogy about life as well. "Seasons of life" and all that...suggesting that if you're in a hard season, a wonderful one will follow (or vice versa). There's usually a clean separation between the two, right?
So what about when there's not? What about when life is exactly wonderful AND hard, right at the same time?
I'm not trying to say anything deeper or bigger that what I'm actually saying, so before you think "oh my gosh, it's a cry for help...I wonder what is going on?" just settle down. This is just something that has been swirling around in my mind and popping up in conversations with friends and becoming a part of my general awareness in recent months. A lot of it has to do with welcoming Zoe into our lives, because if there's one thing that having a newborn will introduce to you or heighten your awareness of, it's this collaboration of hard-and-wonderful. So I'm learning to live in the hard-and-wonderful and be ok with the hard-and-wonderful and figuring out how to navigate the hard-and-wonderful and even be (dare I say it?) comfortable with the hard-and-wonderful.


text:
<!DOCTYPE html>

  <title>Demo Snippets 006</title>
  <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, target-densitydpi=160dpi, initial-scale=1.0; maximum-scale=1.0; user-scalable=0;">
  <link rel="stylesheet" media="all" href="../../docco.css" />

          Jump To …
          +

                  ./demo/modules/canvas-minimap.js

                  ./demo/modules/canvas-scene-editor.js

                  ./demo/modules/dom-entity-editor.js

                  ./demo/modules/entity-copy-paste.js

                  ./demo/modules/entity-manipulation-gui.js

                  ./demo/modules/entity-navigation.js

                  ./demo/modules/entity-ring-builder.js

                  ./demo/modules/london-crime-graphic.js

                  ./demo/modules/london-crime-lines.js

                  ./demo/modules/london-crime-stacked-bars.js

                  ./demo/modules/lottie-loader.js

                  ./demo/modules/simple-chart-frame-tests.js

                  ./demo/modules/simple-chart-frame.js

                  ./demo/modules/simple-graph-lines.js

                  ./demo/modules/simple-graph-stacked-bars.js

                  ./demo/modules/wikipedia-views-spiral-chart.js

                  ./demo/snippets/animated-highlight-gradient-text-snippet.js

                  ./demo/snippets/animated-hover-gradient-snippet.js

                  ./demo/snippets/animated-word-gradient-snippet.js

                  ./demo/snippets/before-after-slider-infographic.js

                  ./demo/snippets/bubbles-text-snippet.js

                  ./demo/snippets/green-box-snippet.js

                  ./demo/snippets/jazzy-button-snippet.js

                  ./demo/snippets/page-performance-snippet-test.js

                  ./demo/snippets/page-performance-snippet.js

                  ./demo/snippets/pan-image-snippet.js

                  ./demo/snippets/placeholder-effect-snippet.js

                  ./demo/snippets/ripple-effect-snippet.js

                  ./demo/snippets/risograph-text-gradient-snippet.js

                  ./demo/snippets/spotlight-text-snippet-test.js

                  ./demo/snippets/spotlight-text-snippet.js

                  ./demo/snippets/swirling-stripes-text-snippet.js

                  ./demo/snippets/text-snippet-helper.js

                  ./demo/snippets/word-highlighter-snippet.js

                  ./demo/snippets/worley-text-gradient-snippet.js

                §

Demo Snippets 006

Editable header text colorizer and animation effect snippets

Related files:

Editable header text colorizer and animation effect snippets

Text snippet helper

'Worley noise used to color text' snippet

Purpose: Worley noise is a form of procedural texture which can be generated and used to simulate textures which look (a bit) like stone, water or biological cells.

This snippet supports dark-mode alternative colors

This snippet supports high contrast alternative colors

This snippet is not animated

Function input:

the DOM element - generally a block or inline-block element.

Customisation: The snippet can be customised using the following data- attributes applied using CSS variables, or directly to the HTML header element:

data-base-color - any CSS color string

data-dark-base-color - any CSS color string

data-highlight-color - any CSS color string

data-dark-highlight-color - any CSS color string

data-noise-sum-function - permitted values include: none, sine-x, sine-y, sine, modular, random

data-noise-scale - (+number) a form of zoom level

data-noise-output - permitted values include: X, YminusX, ZminusX, etc

data-shadow-color - any CSS color string, for the text shadow

data-dark-shadow-color - any CSS color string, for the text shadow

data-shadow-offset-x - (unit % of font size) percentage of the font size to offset the text shadow horizontally

data-shadow-offset-y - (unit % of font size) percentage of the font size to offset the text shadow vertically

data-shadow-blur - (unit % of font size) percentage of the font size to blur the shadow

data-contrast-color - any CSS color string, used when user has set prefers-contrast: more

data-dark-contrast-color - any CSS color string, used when user has set prefers-contrast: more

Function output: a Javascript object will be returned, containing the following attributes

{
    element     // the Scrawl-canvas wrapper for the DOM element supplied to the function
    canvas      // the Scrawl-canvas wrapper for the snippet's canvas
    animation   // the Scrawl-canvas animation object
    demolish    // remove the snippet from the Scrawl-canvas library
}

Usage example:

import * as scrawl from 'path/to/scrawl-canvas/library';

import mySnippet from './relative/or/absolute/path/to/this/file.js';
let myElements = document.querySelectorAll('.some-class');
myElements.forEach(el => mySnippet(el, scrawl));

                §

Additional font-specific customisation can be added courtesy of the Text Snippet Helper module

import { getSnippetData } from './text-snippet-helper.js';

                §

Effects on the element:

Imports the element's background color, and sets the element background to transparent

Imports the element's text node text, and sets the text color to transparent

Note that canvas text will NEVER be as good as DOM text!

export default function (el, scrawl) {

                §

Apply the snippet to the DOM element

    let snippet = scrawl.makeSnippet({
        domElement: el,
    });

                §

Only proceed if the snippet is successfully generated

    if (snippet) {

                §

Import data and functionality from the Text Snippet Helper module

        let { canvas, group, dataset, compStyles, name, width, height, fontSize, yOffset, initCanvas, initPhrase, textGroup, responsiveFunctions, contrastMoreActions, contrastOtherActions, colorSchemeDarkActions, colorSchemeLightActions, additionalDemolishActions } = getSnippetData(snippet, scrawl);

                §

Initialise the canvas

        initCanvas();

        canvas.base.set({
            compileOrder: 1,
        });

                §

Initialize and collect developer-supplied data

        let baseColor = 'black',
            darkBaseColor = 'white',
            highlightColor = 'orange',
            darkHighlightColor = 'orange',
            noiseSumFunction = 'random',
            noiseOutput = 'X',
            noiseScale = 50,
            shadowColor = 'black',
            darkShadowColor = 'white',
            shadowOffsetX = 0,
            shadowOffsetY = 0,
            shadowBlur = 0,
            contrastColor = 'black',
            darkContrastColor = 'white';

        if (dataset.baseColor) baseColor = dataset.baseColor;
        else {
            const s = compStyles.getPropertyValue('--data-base-color');
            if (s) baseColor = s;
        }

        if (dataset.darkBaseColor) darkBaseColor = dataset.darkBaseColor;
        else {
            const s = compStyles.getPropertyValue('--data-dark-base-color');
            if (s) darkBaseColor = s;
        }

        if (dataset.highlightColor) highlightColor = dataset.highlightColor;
        else {
            const s = compStyles.getPropertyValue('--data-highlight-color');
            if (s) highlightColor = s;
        }

        if (dataset.darkHighlightColor) darkHighlightColor = dataset.darkHighlightColor;
        else {
            const s = compStyles.getPropertyValue('--data-dark-highlight-color');
            if (s) darkHighlightColor = s;
        }

        if (dataset.noiseSumFunction) noiseSumFunction = dataset.noiseSumFunction;
        else {
            const s = compStyles.getPropertyValue('--data-noise-sum-function');
            if (s) noiseSumFunction = s;
        }

        if (dataset.noiseOutput) noiseOutput = dataset.noiseOutput;
        else {
            const s = compStyles.getPropertyValue('--data-noise-output');
            if (s) noiseOutput = s;
        }

        if (dataset.noiseScale) noiseScale = parseFloat(dataset.noiseScale);
        else {
            const s = compStyles.getPropertyValue('--data-noise-scale');
            if (s) noiseScale = parseFloat(s);
        }

        if (dataset.shadowColor) shadowColor = dataset.shadowColor;
        else {
            const s = compStyles.getPropertyValue('--data-shadow-color');
            if (s) shadowColor = s;
        }

        if (dataset.darkShadowColor) darkShadowColor = dataset.darkShadowColor;
        else {
            const s = compStyles.getPropertyValue('--data-dark-shadow-color');
            if (s) darkShadowColor = s;
        }

        if (dataset.shadowOffsetX) shadowOffsetX = parseFloat(dataset.shadowOffsetX);
        else {
            const s = compStyles.getPropertyValue('--data-shadow-offset-x');
            if (s) shadowOffsetX = parseFloat(s);
        }

        if (dataset.shadowOffsetY) shadowOffsetY = parseFloat(dataset.shadowOffsetY);
        else {
            const s = compStyles.getPropertyValue('--data-shadow-offset-y');
            if (s) shadowOffsetY = parseFloat(s);
        }

        if (dataset.shadowBlur) shadowBlur = parseFloat(dataset.shadowBlur);
        else {
            const s = compStyles.getPropertyValue('--data-shadow-blur');
            if (s) shadowBlur = parseFloat(s);
        }

        if (dataset.contrastColor) contrastColor = dataset.contrastColor;
        else {
            const s = compStyles.getPropertyValue('--data-contrast-color');
            if (s) contrastColor = s;
        }

        if (dataset.darkContrastColor) darkContrastColor = dataset.darkContrastColor;
        else {
            const s = compStyles.getPropertyValue('--data-dark-contrast-color');
            if (s) darkContrastColor = s;
        }

                §

Build the text effect

        const worley = scrawl.makeNoiseAsset({
            name: `<span class="hljs-subst">${name}</span>-noise-generator`,
            colors: [
                [0, highlightColor],
                [999, baseColor],
            ],
            colorSpace: 'LAB',
            noiseEngine: 'worley-euclidean',
            sumFunction: noiseSumFunction,
            scale: noiseScale,
            worleyOutput: noiseOutput,
            width: Math.ceil(width),
            height: Math.ceil(height),
        });

        const p1 = scrawl.makePattern({
            name: `<span class="hljs-subst">${name}</span>-noise-pattern`,
            asset: `<span class="hljs-subst">${name}</span>-noise-generator`,
        });

        const f1 = scrawl.makeFilter({
            name: `<span class="hljs-subst">${name}</span>-blur-filter`,
            method: 'gaussianBlur',
            radius: Math.round(fontSize * shadowBlur),
        });

        const textFill = scrawl.makePhrase({
            name: `<span class="hljs-subst">${name}</span>-text-stencil`,
            group,
            order: 0,
        });

        initPhrase(textFill);

        const textStroke = textFill.clone({
            name: `<span class="hljs-subst">${name}</span>-text-outline`,
            order: 2,
            startX: Math.round(fontSize * shadowOffsetY),
            startY: Math.round((fontSize * yOffset) + (fontSize * shadowOffsetY)),
            fillStyle: shadowColor,
            filters: shadowBlur ? [`<span class="hljs-subst">${name}</span>-blur-filter`] : [],
            memoizeFilterOutput: true,
            globalCompositeOperation: 'destination-over',
        });

        textGroup.addArtefacts(textFill, textStroke);

        scrawl.makeBlock({
            name: `<span class="hljs-subst">${name}</span>-text-fill`,
            group,
            order: 1,
            width: '100%',
            height: '100%',
            fillStyle: `<span class="hljs-subst">${name}</span>-noise-pattern`,
            globalCompositeOperation: 'source-in',
        });

                §

Accessibility

        colorSchemeLightActions.push((items = {}) => {

            const localWidth = parseFloat(items.width),
                localHeight = parseFloat(items.height);

            worley.set({
                colors: [
                    [0, highlightColor],
                    [999, baseColor],
                ],
                width: localWidth,
                height: localHeight,
            });

            textStroke.set({
                fillStyle: shadowColor,
            });
        });

        colorSchemeDarkActions.push((items = {}) => {

            const localWidth = parseFloat(items.width),
                localHeight = parseFloat(items.height);

            worley.set({
                colors: [
                    [0, darkHighlightColor],
                    [999, darkBaseColor],
                ],
                width: localWidth,
                height: localHeight,
            });

            textStroke.set({
                fillStyle: darkShadowColor,
            });
        });

        contrastMoreActions.push(() => {
            el.style.color = (canvas.here.prefersDarkColorScheme) ? darkContrastColor : contrastColor;
            textGroup.setArtefacts({
                visibility: false,
            });
        });

        contrastOtherActions.push(() => {
            el.style.color = 'transparent';
            textGroup.setArtefacts({
                visibility: true,
            });
        });

                §

Responsiveness

        responsiveFunctions.push((items = {}) => {

            const localFontSize = parseFloat(items.fontSize),
                localWidth = parseFloat(items.width),
                localHeight = parseFloat(items.height);

            worley.set({
                width: localWidth,
                height: localHeight,
            });

            f1.set({
                radius: Math.round(localFontSize * shadowBlur),
            });

            textStroke.set({
                startX: Math.round(localFontSize * shadowOffsetY),
                startY: Math.round((localFontSize * yOffset) + (localFontSize * shadowOffsetY)),
            });
        });

                §

Cleanup

        additionalDemolishActions.push(() => {
            f1.kill();
            p1.kill();
            worley.kill();
        });
    }

                §

Return the snippet, so coders can access the snippet's parts - in case they need to tweak the output to meet the web page's specific requirements

    return snippet;
};

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub