text:
Q: How to combine COUNTIFS with INDIRECT? I have a dataset that looks like this:
method  method_year season_year station sample  Macoma_length
GEMAX   GE_2016     autumn 2016     1       1       20
GEMAX   GE_2016     autumn 2016     1       2       17,5
GEMAX   GE_2016     autumn 2016     1       2       12
GEMAX   GE_2016     autumn 2016     1       2       19
GEMAX   GE_2016     autumn 2016     1       3       5
GEMAX   GE_2016     autumn 2016     1       3       2
GEMAX   GE_2016     autumn 2016     1       3       2
GEMAX   GE_2016     autumn 2016     1       4       18
GEMAX   GE_2016     autumn 2016     1       4       7,5
GEMAX   GE_2016     autumn 2016     1       4       3
GEMAX   GE_2016     autumn 2016     1       4       2
GEMAX   GE_2016     autumn 2016     1       5       8,5
GEMAX   GE_2016     autumn 2016     2       1       15
GEMAX   GE_2016     autumn 2016     2       1       13
GEMAX   GE_2016     autumn 2016     2       1       3

The data covers two methods (GEMAX and grab) in two different seasons (autumn 2016 and summer 2017) on 6 different stations (1-6) with 5 samples from each (1-5), with different numbers of Macoma found on each station, telling me the length of each Macoma measured.
I now need to change it into this kind of format:
method  method_year season_year station sample  1,0  1,5   2,0  2,5  3,0
GEMAX   GE_2016     autumn 2016 1       1
GEMAX   GE_2016     autumn 2016 1       2
GEMAX   GE_2016     autumn 2016 1       3
GEMAX   GE_2016     autumn 2016 1       4
GEMAX   GE_2016     autumn 2016 1       5

This would then tell me how many Macoma of each size class there are in one sample.
I'm trying to figure out if there is a formula I could use so that I could do this easily. So far I've come across the functions COUNTIF and INDIRECT, which would probably work, but I can't get the formula right. The solution I'm aiming for is something like
=COUNTIF(INDIRECT("$F2; "&O6))
but that gives me an error and I can't figure out what I'm supposed to be doing.
So, what I need to have is something like
=COUNTIF([a vector of Macoma_lengths in the sample being calculated], "[the category specified at the top of the column (e.g. 1,0)])
but I can't figure out how to make INDIRECT do what I want it to do.
I have two questions:
1) How to write this code right?
2) Can I use some other function (COUNTIFS?) to have excel select the right method, season_year and station for me so that I don't have to manually select the range for each sample within station within season_year within method?

A: You would use COUNTIFS()
=COUNTIFS($L:$L,$A2,$M:$M,$B2,$N:$N,$C2,$O:$O,$D2,$P:$P,$E2,$Q:$Q,F$1)

A: I'm going to steal Tim Williams idea and go with the pivot table.
Here's the idea:

*

*For the main table, add a column (hate to do this, but it makes it easy) called "Macoma_Class"

*Enter a formula to indicate the class - something like =MROUND("Macoma_length"/x,.5) or similar to get the class values

*Create the pivot table with:

*

*Row value(s): Station, Sample

*Column value: Macoma_Class

*Values: Count of Macoma_Class

*Add Year and Season as filters so you can sort as desired.
Result is close and can be better if we have more "class" detail...

A: I did not see a need to use indirect cell references to get the included picture.
Assuming that you know which stations and samples you are capturing, you could simply set up a formula to do counts based on the row and column values using COUNTIFS.
I put the rearranged data in the same page starting in row 20.  The formula in Cell G20 is:
=COUNTIFS($D$2:$D$16,$D20,$E$2:$E$16,$E20,$F$2:$F$16,G$19)

and this formula should be copied across and down the rows where you want the counts to go.

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text:
Tag Archives: The Good Lord Bird book review
The Good Lord Bird by James McBride
Book Review: The Good Lord Bird by James McBride (Riverhead Books; 432 pages; $27.95).
Throughout history and fiction, women have disguised themselves as men; it is quite uncommon, though, for a boy to disguise himself as a girl and continue the charade for decades. However, that is just what Little Onion does in James McBride's brilliant and exhilarating novel The Good Lord Bird. McBride re-imagines the life of John Brown and his followers while simultaneously fashioning a remarkable and amusing character in the form of Little Onion. Through Little Onion's eyes, McBride recreates Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, one of the most crucial chapters in American history and one that helped spark the Civil War.
History has shown us just how charismatic Brown could be, but the magnetic Little Onion steals the spotlight from Brown time and again. Born in Kansas Territory, young Henry Shackleford is a slave when pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions make the state a battleground, hence the term "Bleeding Kansas." Brown arrives and gets involved in an argument in a local barber shop. The ensuing act of violence forces Brown to flee—with Henry in tow. The kicker is that Brown thinks Henry is a girl named Henrietta. Henry does not tell Brown the truth about his gender.
"Truth is," McBride writes, "lying come natural to all Negroes during slave time, for no man or woman in bondage ever prospered stating their true thoughts to the boss. Much of colored life was an act, and the Negroes that sawed wood and said nothing lived the longest. So I weren't going to tell him nothing about me being a boy."
If that does not make you laugh or at least smile, consider this: Henry is skilled at the art of zinging one-liners and entertains even in the gravest of situations. When Brown goes off on tangents, Henry admits, "I didn't know what the hell he was talking about, but, being he was a lunatic, I nodded my head yes."
The young slave "girl" makes a big impression on Brown when "she" eats his good-luck charm—an onion. From that moment on, Brown calls Henry "Little Onion." McBride's two main characters play well off each other and make for humorous reading.
Little Onion's masquerade also has a serious side and allows McBride to portray Henry as a trickster. Henry's charade is a variation of the traditional African trickster tale. These stories, which originated in Africa and were part of the oral history of African American slaves, served as thinly-disguised social protest against white masters and featured animals as the main characters instead of real people. In these parables, small, weak, seemingly powerless animals used their cunning to outwit larger, powerful creatures. A rabbit might represent the weaker animal while a wolf stood for the larger one as is the case with the Briar Rabbit tales. Whites saw such stories as fables, nothing more. For slaves, the tales were altogether different and meaningful. The allegories symbolically assaulted the powerful, who worked to ensnare slaves but who became themselves ensnared. Trickster tales sought to upset traditional social roles and served as a vehicle allowing slaves to ridicule whites and get away with it. By fooling John Brown, Henry sees himself as one-upping the white man. His ruse works well, and that is a credit to McBride's ingenuity.
McBride cleverly juxtaposes drama and history with comedy and humor. Uproarious laughs pepper Little Onion's encounters with historical figures. The funniest of these occurs when he meets Frederick Douglass (1818-1895), reformer, abolitionist, and former slave. Upon their first meeting, Little Onion says, "Morning, Fred." Douglass is livid: "Don't you know you are not addressing a pork chop, but rather a fairly considerable and incorrigible piece of the American Negro diaspora?" A few pages later, an inebriated Douglass makes a pass at Henrietta and mistakenly calls her "Harlot" before finally saying "Don't marry two women at once…Colored or white, it'll whip you scandalous" (In The Good Lord Bird, Douglass commits bigamy as he is married to Anna Murray-Douglass and Ottilie Assing, a German journalist. In actuality, Douglass never married Assing, but McBride's vision makes for interesting reading).
Henry Shackleford may be a figment of McBride's imagination but as you read this novel you forget that it's fiction. McBride brings his characters to life like you've never seen them before. A multi-faceted and marvelous story, The Good Lord Bird explores identity, home, place, survival, slave life, and how far a man will go for a cause. Little Onion's voice resonates with authenticity and humor. In re-telling one of the most important events in American history, McBride creates a rousing romp of a story.
Breaking News–The Good Lord Bird has been longlisted for a 2013 National Book Award in fiction. It's my pick because I absolutely love it!
Filed under book review, Bookmagnet's Best Books of the Month, books, coming of age, fiction, historical fiction, history, literary fiction, My Favorite Books
Tagged as adventure, American history, American slavery, bookmagnet, bookmagnet's best books of september 2013, bookmagnet's best books of the month, bookmagnet's blog, fiction, Frederick Douglass, historical fiction, history, Jaime Boler, James McBride, John Brown, lit, literary fiction, literature, slavery, The Good Lord Bird, The Good Lord Bird book review, The Good Lord Bird by James McBride, trickster tales

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text:
using System.Data.Entity.Core.Common.CommandTrees;
using System.Data.Entity.Core.Metadata.Edm;
using System.Data.Entity.Infrastructure.Interception;
using System.Linq;

namespace Highway.Data.EntityFramework.Interceptors.DynamicFilters
{
    public class DynamicFilterInterceptor : IDbCommandTreeInterceptor
    {
        public void TreeCreated(DbCommandTreeInterceptionContext interceptionContext)
        {
            if (interceptionContext.OriginalResult.DataSpace == DataSpace.SSpace)
            {
                var queryCommand = interceptionContext.Result as DbQueryCommandTree;
                if (queryCommand != null)
                {
                    var context = interceptionContext.DbContexts.FirstOrDefault();
                    if (context != null)
                    {
                        var newQuery = queryCommand.Query.Accept(new DynamicFilterQueryVisitor(context));
                        interceptionContext.Result = new DbQueryCommandTree(
                            queryCommand.MetadataWorkspace,
                            queryCommand.DataSpace,
                            newQuery);
                    }
                }

                //  Can also check for other command types such as DbDeleteCommandTree and DbUpdateCommandTree to change
                //  their behaviors as well.  See https://github.com/rowanmiller/Demo-TechEd2014/blob/master/FakeEstate.ListingManager/Models/EFHelpers/SoftDeleteInterceptor.cs
            }
        }
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Home / 60 USA Quotes in America / 60 USA Quotes in America 2020 Is the Greatest Happy Birthday USA in the World.
60 USA Quotes in America 2020 Is the Greatest Happy Birthday USA in the World.
60 USA Quotes in America 2020 Is the Greatest Happy Birthday USA in the World,But America, and being American, represents something much greater than geography
1.USA Quotes in America
"It has been said that democracy is the worst form Quotes in America of government except all the others that have been tried."
--Winston Churchill
2. USA Quotes in America "Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage."
--H. L. Mencken
3. USA Quotes in America "Real liberty is neither found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments."
60 USA Quotes in America Is the Greatest Happy Birthday USA in the World.
--Alexander Hamilton
4. USA Quotes in America "Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; Quotes in America because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal."
--Aristotle
5. USA Quotes in America "Voting is completely important. People in America think democracy is a given. I think of it as an ecosystem, and what gets in the way of it is politicians and apathy."
--Henry Rollins
The land of immigrants.
6. USA Quotes in America Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists."
―Franklin D. Roosevelt
7. USA Quotes in America "The land flourished because it was fed from so many sources--because it was nourished by so many cultures and Quotes in America traditions and peoples."
―Lyndon B. Johnson
8. USA Quotes in America "We asked for workers. We got people instead."
―Max Frisch
9. USA Quotes in America "A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many want in.. And how many want out."
―Tony Blair
10. USA Quotes in America "My folks came to U.S. as immigrants, aliens, and became citizens. I was born in Boston, Quotes in America a citizen, went to Hollywood and became an alien."
--Leonard Nimoy
11. USA Quotes in America "I had always hoped that this land might become a safe and agreeable asylum to the virtuous and persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they might belong." ―President George Washington
The land of opportunity.
12. USA Quotes in America "The fact is: It's true what they say about the United States. It is a land of opportunity. It is too various to get bored with it."
--Christopher Hitchens
13. USA Quotes in America "If you're worried about getting a job-or keeping one-start a company of your own. Quotes in America By doing so, you'll reap the rewards of your hard work and you'll only get fired if you fail. This is the land of opportunity. Live in it."
- Bruce Campbell
14. USA Quotes in America "Go with your first thoughts; they're usually your best thoughts. Pay attention, stick to your goals and follow those guidelines. It's all right there if you reach for it, unless you want to punch timeclocks and work for somebody. That's what we liked about America, the land of opportunity. All your dreams can come true."
--Richard Danko
15. USA Quotes in America "Basically, there are two kinds of stereotypes out there in the world about America. There's America the Goliath - the big, powerful, bullying country that pushes its way around the world and gets its ways, pursues its own interests nakedly, irrespective of what others want. Quotes in America
And the other stereotype is America, the land of opportunity, where everyone can go and do anything, be anything, make any dreams come true."
--Shashi Tharoor
The land of courage.
16. USA Quotes in America "Winning isn't everything--but wanting to win is."
― Vince Lombardi Jr.
17. USA Quotes in America "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of liberty."
--President John F. Kennedy
18. USA Quotes in America A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."
--President Dwight D. Eisenhower
19. USA Quotes in America"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."
--President Thomas Jefferson
20. USA Quotes in America "The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it."
--General Norman Schwarzkopf
The land of leadership.
21. USA Quotes in America"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
--Abraham Lincoln
22. USA Quotes in America "America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand."
--Harry S Truman
23. USA Quotes in America The best leader is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done,Quotes in America and the self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it."
--Theodore Roosevelt
24. USA Quotes in America "Leadership requires the courage to make decisions that will benefit the next generation."
--Alan Autry
25. USA Quotes in America "A person who is worthy of being a leader wants power not for himself, but in order to be of service."
--Senator Sam J. Ervin, Jr.
The land of pursuit of happiness.
26. USA Quotes in America "It takes great wit and interest and energy to be happy. The pursuit of happiness is a great activity. One must be open and alive. It is the greatest feat man has to accomplish."
--Robert Herrick
27. USA Quotes in America "When I was growing up, I don't remember being told that America was created so that everyone could get rich. Quotes in America I remember being told it was about opportunity and the pursuit of happiness. Not happiness itself, but the pursuit."
--Martin Scorsese
28. USA Quotes in America "I come before you to declare that my sex are entitled to the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
--Victoria Woodhull
29. USA Quotes in America "The Constitution only guarantees you the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself."
--Benjamin Franklin
The land of exploration and learning.
30. USA Quotes in America "If everything was perfect, you would never learn and you would never grow."
--Beyonce Knowles
31. USA Quotes in America "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
--Thomas Edison
32. USA Quotes in America "We've had three big ideas at Amazon that we've stuck with for 18 years, and they're the reason we're successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient."
--Jeff Bezos
33. USA Quotes in America "We stand today on the edge of a new frontier - the frontier of the 1960's - a frontier of unknown opportunities and perils - a frontier of unfulfilled hopes and threats."
-- John F. Kennedy
34. USA Quotes in America "When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it."
--Henry Ford
35. USA Quotes in America "There will always be a frontier where there is an open mind and a willing hand."
-- Charles Kettering
36. USA Quotes in America "Americans... are forever searching for love in forms it never takes, in places it can never be. It must have something to do with the vanished frontier."
― Kurt Vonnegut
37. USA Quotes in America "You may live in an imperfect world but the frontiers are not closed and the doors are not all shut."
-- Maxwell Maltz
The land of family.
38. USA Quotes in America "Family is not an important thing. It's everything."
-- Michael J. Fox
39. USA Quotes in America "Happy or unhappy, families are all mysterious. We have only to imagine how differently we would be described - and will be, after our deaths - by each of the family members who believe they know us."
--Gloria Steinem
40. USA Quotes in America "You don't have to give birth to someone to have a family."
-- Sandra Bullock
41. USA Quotes in America "Tennis is just a game, family is forever."
-- Serena Williams
The land of freedom.
42. USA Quotes in America "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
-- Thomas Jefferson
43. USA Quotes in America "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same."
-- Ronald Reagan
44. USA Quotes in America "If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter."
-- George Washington
45. USA Quotes in America "I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free... so other people would be also free."
-- Rosa Parks
46. USA Quotes in America "The more decisions that you are forced to make alone, the more you are aware of your freedom to choose."
-- Thornton Wilder
47. USA Quotes in America "Freedom is from within."
-- Frank Lloyd Wright
48. USA Quotes in America "If you're not ready to die for it, put the word 'freedom' out of your vocabulary."
-- Malcolm X
49. USA Quotes in America "Freedom is something that dies unless it's used."
-- Hunter S. Thompson
50. USA Quotes in America "The truth is I love being alive. And I love feeling free. So if I can't have those things then I feel like a caged animal and I'd rather not be in a cage. I'd rather be dead. And it's real simple. And I think it's not that uncommon." -- Angelina Jolie
51. The Union of Heartnthe Union Of Hands and the Flag of our Union Forever
52. USA Quotes in America "We on this continent should never forget that men first crossed the Atlantic not to find soil for their ploughs but to secure liberty for their souls."
– Robert J. McCracken
53. USA Quotes in America "Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected."
54. USA Quotes in America "There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong."
– G.K. Chesterton
55. USA Quotes in America "America makes prodigious mistakes, America has colossal faults, but one thing cannot be denied: America is always on the move. She may be going to Hell, of course, but at least she isn't standing still."
– E.E. Cummings
56. USA Quotes in America "Americans have an inability to relax into sheer pleasure.Ours is an entertainment seeking-nation, but not necessarily a pleasure-seeking one....This is the cause of that great sad American stereotype- the overstressed executive who goes on vacation, but who cannot relax."
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
57. USA Quotes in America "America is the greatest engine of innovation that has ever existed, and it can't be duplicated anytime soon, because it is the product of a multitude of factors: extreme freedom of thought, an emphasis on independent thinking, a steady immigration of new minds, a risk-taking culture with no stigma attached to trying and failing, a noncorrupt bureaucracy, and financial markets and a venture capital system that are unrivaled at taking new ideas and turning them into global products."
58. USA Quotes in America "Ultimately, America's answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired. "
– Robert Kennedy
59. USA Quotes in America "You know, that diversity that America has is so special. It's starting to really become a cool thing for young people. "
– Russell Simmons
60, USA Quotes in America Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther King could walk. Martin Luther King walked so Obama could run. Obama's running so we all can fly."
60 USA Quotes in America 2020 Is the Greatest Happy Birthday USA in the World. Reviewed by Lindas Mensagens - Vídeo Mensagem de Aniversário on dezembro 02, 2019 Rating: 5
Tags 60 USA Quotes in America
60 USA Quotes in America


When it comes to eating healthy, the top most question in everyone's mind is where do you get the best organic produce in the city? To which the Magic Bean's reply is, "why don't you grow your own"!!
To most people, growing their own food on balconies, terraces, in pots or in the ground seems difficult, inconceivable. The usual concerns about composting are always the same "Doesn't it smell" "How do you do it in an apartment"?
Do you want to be equipped with the knowledge to grow your own herbs and vegetables? Do you want to convert an open space into an environmentally sustainable, edible garden? Do you think gaining experience by doing it on your own will help?
Then this is the right gardening workshop for you. Learn to create your own sustainable edible garden in this 2.5 hour workshop with the organic gardeners of the Magic Bean.
The workshop focuses on growing food in small urban spaces and is aimed to demystify and simplify the food growing and composting processes. The objective is to give people the tools and skills to compost and grow their own vegetables confidently. The way the workshop is structured, it leaves participants with the confidence to experiment and not give up because they failed once and to try again until it works.
Within the 2.5 hour workshop, there will be a series of four mini-workshops in which participants will be shown the HOW and WHY along with the WHAT – i.e. the science and the theory along with the practical how-to-do-it steps will be taught.
The Magic Bean brings the magic of growing one's own food SUSTAINBLY into people's lives. The founders, Archana Meiyappan, Kavitha Ramakrishnan and Priya Gopalen, avid organic gardeners, came together bound by a vision to build a movement of people growing their own food using sustainable methods in urban spaces. They work with different groups and institutions, facilitating the process of converting open spaces into environmentally sustainable, edible gardens.
They've done several workshops with groups of experienced and beginner gardeners to glowing feedback. Their articles on gardening, permaculture and pest control appear in The Hindu's Habitat Section in the Property Plus.
You will be joining an existing group that will have 15-25 people.
Wear something cool & comfortable.


text:
Q: vuejs accesing events and data between multiple components I have an application that displays a google map with places autocomplete controller added to it just like this example from google
when an address is searched and selected, or the map bounds are changed I call algolia search, which has an event of onResult, that is fired when it received a response.
I am trying to turn this all into VUE js components. I have managed to get a google maps component and an autocomplete component.
I load the autocomplete first and then have the mounted section of the google maps attach it as a controller.
Where I start to fall down is the interoperability between the components.
I.E on place change which is an autocomplete event. I need to recentre the map and make the search.
But if they are two different components I can't get a reference to the google map.
when I bring the agolia search in to play, that also needs reference to the map when the event fires to pass the marker to it.
I started trying to use a simple view store, but this seems like I am tightly coupling the components.
Have I missed something or are simple stores and global event buses the way to go?

A: TL;DR;
Vuex may solve your problem, but need to see more code to know what's going on
There are multiple ways of achieving this, but I'll only list two.
Global State Management (Vuex), and props/listeners
Global State Management (Vuex)
If you know you'll only have one instance of each of the components (one map, one autocomplete) this is easy, fast, and reliable solution. The two components do not need to know about each other, they both deal with the global store. The autocomplete will update the data in the store, and the map will be notified whenever the variables it subscribes to change, and update accordingly.
The downside is...
Using vuex makes it harder to reuse and components.. Once you have more than one instance (ie. two autocompletes and two maps) then you may run into some issues, so you'll need to add additional complexity.
Props/Emit
If the two components have a direct connection, either siblings or parent-child relation, using this interaction (IMHO) is preferred.
The autocomplete component can have an @change or even a v-model set up, that parent component would link to the map component using a prop.
It seems like you may be doing it this way, which is not wrong, but without seeing any code, it's hard to make an assessment.


Cornerstone Films is handling sales on the project. Amazon Studios is financing and will distribute in the US.
Maxine Peake leads an ensemble cast in the film, which explores the infamous events of the Peterloo massacre in 1819, when British forces attacked a peaceful pro-democracy rally in Manchester, killing at least 15 people.
The film was a surprise omission from the Cannes official line-up this year and is now hotly-tipped to premiere at Venice in autumn, where Leigh won the Golden Lion in 2004 for Vera Drake. The November release date could potentially tee Peterloo up for an awards season push.
Georgina Lowe produced the project through Thin Man Films, which she runs with Leigh. Gail Egan was executive producer.
Additional financing comes from Film4, which backed development, along with the BFI and Lipsync.


Inquirer Staff Writer Peter Mucha broke the story on Philly.com today stating that Rina Cutler, deputy mayor for transportation answered a question about new north south bike lanes by Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown.
Cutler did not specify which streets will be targeted but she later stated - "We expect sometime in late April to be announcing the pilot streets, as well as the enforcement program".
Meanwhile back on the internet, the bike hating idiots are spewing their vermin in the article's comments section, you can help the cause by signing in to Philly.com and saying something positive about bikes.
Will the Mayor take the scary scissors to another set of bike lanes this year?
I am so excited to have a future south bound bike lane. I use the northbound 22nd street bike lane everyday starting south of Passyunk Ave and then I go east on Pine - I almost have a bike lane all the way up to the Ben Franklin bridge (it's fast and so much safer than my trip home). My trip home is west on Spruce and then south on Broad. My trip down Broad is where most of my close calls happen and where I experience the most road rage from drivers.


In the first step: Figure out why you have been smoking all this time, you have created a list of reasons and situations in which you have been reaching out for a smoke. Now it's time to work further on that list to make a very good plan for what you are going to do when you really feel like smoking.
This is a great place to look into your lessons learned. Why have you failed before? What exactly happened that made you reach out for the cigarette? What were the key triggers? There's a lot of valuable information in our failures, so make sure that you spend some time analyzing what went wrong and extract all the learning from that. For your own benefit.
What will you do when you feel upset? That's a really valid question. It's probably reasonably easy to stay away from smoking when you're feeling great. But we all know that sooner or later a crappy day will come. The best thing you can do is to prepare yourself for that. We also really want to avoid swapping one bad habit for another one. It won't serve you all that well if you start loading yourself with sugar or using alcohol instead of smoking.
That is exactly why it's very important to ask yourself: do I have a good way to manage my emotions? That is such a valid question! We often develop habits like smoking, drinking, overeating, because we have no idea how to deal with difficult emotions. We choose to indulge in an activity that will help us avoid facing our feelings, even if that activity is harmful to us and those emotions won't disappear but get stuffed deep inside. Many of our destructive behavior are results of those unmanaged emotions.
So when sadness, fear, stress or anger come, how will you deal with them? Do you have a good friend you could talk to? Write your journal? What is your (new) constructive way to deal with difficult emotions? It's vital to make a fallback plan. What will you do if you fail and smoke a cigarette?
It may happen that you slip on your new journey and reach out for a smoke. This is that critical moment where many of us allow ourselves to fail for good. You want to avoid a small bump on the road being a game-over experience. You need to find what works for you and note it down.
Sometimes it may be enough just to forgive yourself and proceed with what you've been doing so far. You may need to start over from the first or second step. The most important thing is that you treat this failure as another opportunity to learn. Another piece of useful information to help you succeed. Keep your game-plan handy! Now you're ready for your new- non-smoking self!


text:
Design for Play Without Rules
Under the looming impact of the persistent pandemic, we are more eager to relax than ever. The recent scenes of jam-packed country parks, hiking trails and islands during the holidays are evidence of that. Having long been undervalued in our work-intense society, play is in fact a powerful human behaviour we especially need in trying times to help us regain our well-being and rekindle our wonder of the world.
Design Spectrum's new exhibition PLAY LIVES, taking place at 7 Mallory Street until 30 April, takes us into the wonderland of design for play to explore how design has shaped contemporary play. Having chatted with its co-curator Rémi Leclerc and one of its workshop facilitators Kacama Design Lab in last issue, this time we will delve into its exciting commission work Rolling Fun – Community Playground created by Making on Loft, a local creative platform pioneering social design and research.
With the participation of the Wan Chai community, Rolling Fun – Community Playground is a play space without pre-set game rules which will be displayed from 31 March to 11 April. "It features two sets of installations made of tube- and wave-shaped modules, which can be reconfigured as the players wish or need. They can create new gameplay for themselves or with others at the Play Share Kiosk, where they can find a variety of surprising and stimulating objects," said a representative of Making on Loft.
Tube- and wave-shaped modules for the Rolling Fun – Community Playground
Most play facilities come with set rules and functions, so why do they leave those open for the players? "In our early design stage, we tried out our prototypes in the Wan Chai community. People coming to our installations always asked what the game rules are, and then felt at a loss. But that is exactly our message - you are the game master. The installation aims to stimulate players to experiment with the variability and malleability of objects and space, and break the limitations imposed on play."
The installation aims to stimulate players to experiment with the variability and malleability of objects and space, and break the limitations imposed on play.
Making on Loft has an impressive portfolio of design-driven community engagement. They saw the new value play can add to community projects. "Community engagement is a two-way exchange of consuming and constructing. Placing a play facility in a public space can stimulate the public to go beyond the predefined functions and limitations of the space and re-design it through inventive play. Play can also foster the relationships within a community. We hope it can enhance people's sense of belonging to Wan Chai, whether they live or just work there."
A variety of objects at the Play Share Kiosk stimulates people to create new gameplay
Play can also foster the relationships within a community. We hope it can enhance people's sense of belonging to Wan Chai.
To expand the possibilities of play, Making on Loft will also host a series of workshops at the play space. "The workshops are designed for people of different ages and preferences, with some being adrenaline-charged, and others being more relaxing. They cover a range of themes including yoga, control cars, balance bikes and games designed by primary students from multicultural backgrounds. All of them will make full use of the pipe- and wave-shaped modules so that participants can discover and experience the versatility of the installation and the space."
Want to break the mould and experience play anew? There are more at the PLAY LIVES exhibition to see, learn and experience. Check them out now at 7 Mallory Street and follow Design Spectrum's Facebook page and Instagram for updates!


^ The average commercial electricity rate in Jonesville, LA is 9.33¢/kWh.
^ The average residential electricity rate in Jonesville, LA is 8.31¢/kWh.
^ The average industrial electricity rate in Jonesville, LA is 12.91¢/kWh.
The average commercial electricity rate in Jonesville is 9.33¢/kWh.
This average (commercial) electricity rate in Jonesville is 20.39% greater than the Louisiana average rate of 7.75¢/kWh.
The average (commercial) electricity rate in Jonesville is 7.53% less than the national average rate of 10.09¢/kWh. Commercial rates in the U.S. range from 6.86¢/kWh to 34.88¢/kWh.
The average residential electricity rate in Jonesville is 8.31¢/kWh.
This average (residential) electricity rate in Jonesville is 0.72% less than the Louisiana average rate of 8.37¢/kWh.
The average (residential) electricity rate in Jonesville is 30.05% less than the national average rate of 11.88¢/kWh. Residential rates in the U.S. range from 8.37¢/kWh to 37.34¢/kWh.
The average industrial electricity rate in Jonesville is 12.91¢/kWh.
This average (industrial) electricity rate in Jonesville is 171.22% greater than the Louisiana average rate of 4.76¢/kWh.
The average (industrial) electricity rate in Jonesville is 93.55% greater than the national average rate of 6.67¢/kWh. Industrial rates in the U.S. range from 4.13¢/kWh to 30.82¢/kWh.
Jonesville is a town located in Catahoula County in the state of Louisiana, and has a population of approximately 2,265.


In just four months Glencore has had to burn bridges with two of its closest allies.
The reach and power of US sanctions are hemming in the world's largest commodity trader.
In just four months, Glencore chief Ivan Glasenberg has lost two of his closest business allies as President Donald Trump's aggressive foreign policy hits home, forcing him to cut ties with billionaires Oleg Deripaska and Dan Gertler.
The US actions demonstrate the rising risk from international sanctions for companies like Glencore, which has built a global business by cutting deals with powerful people, and leaves the trader without its key men in two major markets.
Glasenberg has quit the board of Deripaska's Rusal, and Glencore abandoned plans to swap its stake in the Russian company with another of the oligarch's businesses, En+ Group. Deripaska is the second recent Glencore associate to face US sanctions. Gertler, the Swiss trader's former partner in the Democratic Republic of Congo, was singled out by America in December over allegations of corruption.
Analysts see limited damage to Glencore's bottom line from last week's raft of Russian sanctions – the company's shares are still off the low earlier this week – but the long-term implications for the trader and the commodity industry could be more significant.
Glencore, which trades in 100-odd commodities in more than 90 countries, has partly built its business by dealing with people and places that others avoided. It mines Kazakh gold and zinc, drills for oil in Chad, and trades petroleum products in Libya. The Swiss commodity giant declined to comment.
The trader had already distanced itself from Gertler before the sanctions hit, buying out his stakes in its two Congo mines 10 months earlier in a near R12 billion deal. Yet, it still faces questions on how to manage royalties it's contracted to pay the Israeli businessman. With respect to Deripaska, Glencore has an 8.75% stake in Rusal, which has already lost more than half its value, and a multi billion-dollar deal to buy its metal.
More importantly, US action has now forced Glasenberg to review two relationships he spent a decade cultivating and that gave his firm privileged access to decision makers.
In Congo, where Gertler had aided most of Glencore's engagement with the government, the company now needs to navigate a series of complicated roadblocks without its trusted trouble-shooter.
In Russia, Glencore has other links to the Kremlin and relationships in the local oil and agriculture industries that have yet to be targeted by the US. Last year, Glasenberg was even awarded Russia's Order of Friendship medal by President Vladimir Putin. Deripaska, a Glencore partner since at least 2007, was one of the company's most important allies.
Barclays and Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analysts are among those arguing the financial fallout from US sanctions will be limited. Yet, there's no doubt that Trump's aggressive foreign policy adds uncertainty.
Glencore has a history of taking such risks in its stride. Founder Marc Rich was indicted in 1983 for trading oil with sanctioned Iran and spent years on the FBI's most wanted listed.
Three decades later, Glasenberg won oil industry admiration with a bold deal to buy an R131.9 billion stake in Russia's biggest oil company, Rosneft PJSC, in a transaction that the US reviewed for potential sanctions violations but didn't block.
What's different today is that America has refined its financial arsenal and then put it in the hands of a president who favors gut instinct over chess-like maneuvering. The Obama-era 2016 Global Magnitsky Act, which significantly expanded the reach and flexibility of sanctions, allows the US to punish individuals accused of corruption or human rights violations anywhere in the world, without the need to first establish a specific program to target the behavior.
While the prior administration focused on a longer-term policy agenda, Trump seeks to punish those he views as wrongdoers, according to Maximilian Hess, a senior political risk analyst at AKE International.
Gertler, along with 14 others including including a Myanmar general, a former Gambian president and an organized crime boss from Uzbekistan, was sanctioned in December under the Act.
How about stop listening to the US warmongers?
Given that there is a warrant of arrest out for Gertler, nobody should be associated with that man! Besides bribery and money laundering for politicians, he funds mini wars in Congo. Nothing to do with the US trade wars, he has been a fugitive for more than a year.
President Donald Trump's aggressive foreign policy hits home, forcing the non-aligned state captures (the Gutpas) to cut ties with billionaires Zuma family.
Glencore must stand up against US (US/Isreal aligned) aggressors and the financiers trying to keep Russia as the perpetual enemy.
Easy come, Easy go! Gkasenberg didn't work too hard for his fortune, so maybe he's not sweating too much over any loses! Anyway, when you lie down with dogs you must expect to wake up with fleas!
hi, Here's a question, Why are we not holding Glencore to task for dealing with these characters. Who is holding Ivan responsible or are the elite above the law.
I am delighted to hear that Glencore is being hemmed in. Their propensity to involve themselves with companies and therefore characters of dubious background is well known.


text:
Q: How to get value of input within same print call? Example of what I want/have:
print(input('> Discord Webhook: '), f'{"None" if len(input) < 1 else input}')

I want it to print None if the input value is less than 1, or else just print the output normally.

A: If you want just to print None in place of an empty string you can do that with a simple or:
print(input('> Discord Webhook: ') or None)

Note that this does not actually capture the input for you to use on a later line.  Usually when you call input() you want to assign its result to a variable:
webhook = input('> Discord Webhook: ') or None
print(webhook)
# do whatever else you're going to do with that value

A: I was able to accomplish this by making it appear like the input was changed to none using the clear command and printing the input text with "None" after it.
import os
webhook = input('> Discord Webhook: ')
if len(webhook) < 1:
  os.system('clear')
  print('> Discord Webhook: None')

A: If you want to change what shows up in terminal where input was given, you can use ANSI escape codes to control the cursor directly. This way you can edit specific parts of the terminal output after they have already been printed.
prompt = '> Discord Webhook: '
webhook = input(prompt)
if not webhook:
    print('\u001b[1A', end = "") # Move cursor one line up
    print(f'\u001b[{len(prompt)}C', end = "") # Move cursor past prompt
    print('\u001b[0K', end = "") # Clear rest of line
    print("None")

On Windows you might need to do the following for cmd to recognise ANSI codes properly:
import os
os.system("")


text:
Reinhold Begas (ur. 15 lipca 1831 w Schönebergu, zm. 3 sierpnia 1911 tamże) – niemiecki rzeźbiarz i malarz, syn malarza Carla Josepha Begasa. Jest uważany za głównego reprezentanta berlińskiej szkoły neobaroku.

Życiorys
Naukę rozpoczął u rzeźbiarza Ludwiga Wilhelma Wichmanna w Berlinie. W latach 1846-1851 był uczniem Christiana Daniela Raucha w berlińskiej Akademii Sztuk Pięknych, kierowanej w latach 1846-1851 przez Johanna Gottfrieda Schadowa. Begas został w roku 1848 współpracownikiem Raucha. Dzięki uzyskanemu stypendium przebywał w latach 1856-1858 w Rzymie, gdzie poznał Arnolda Böcklina i Anselma Feuerbacha.

W roku 1861 został powołany do Arcyksiążęcej Saskiej Szkoły Sztuk Pięknych w Weimarze. W roku 1863 powrócił do Berlina. W okresie 1863-1864 przebywał powtórnie w Rzymie, 1865-1869 w Rzymie, 1869-1870 działał w Rzymie i Paryżu, po czym osiadł na stałe w Berlinie.

Od roku 1871 do końca życia był członkiem berlińskiej Akademii Sztuk Pięknych.

Monumentalne dzieła Begasa ukształtowały oblicze Berlina epoki Cesarstwa. Dzięki uznaniu cesarza Wilhelma II otrzymywał zlecenia na reprezentacyjne pomniki, jak np. pomnik cesarza Wilhelma I i pomnik Bismarcka przed Reichstagiem (obecnie na pl. Großer Stern).

Begas jest też twórcą Studni Neptuna (obecnie przed berlińskim ratuszem).

Dzieła
 1857 Amor i Psyche, Berlin, Alte Nationalgalerie
 1858 Pan pociesza Psyche, Berlin, Alte Nationalgalerie
 1862–1871 Pomnik Schillera, Berlin, Gendarmenmarkt; kopia w Parku Schillera w Berlinie
 ok. 1875/1876 Popiersie Adolpha von Menzela, Berlin, Alte Nationalgalerie
 1881 Centaur i Nimfa, Berlin, Skulpturengalerie SMPK
 1885 Borussia Preußenpark, Berlin
 1874 Grobowiec Arthura Strousberga, Berlin, cmentarz Reinickendorf
 1893 Popiersie Generalnego Pocztmistrza Heinricha von Stephan, Frankfurt am Main, Museum für Kommunikation
 1900 Prometeusz, Berlin (na tyłach Akademii Sztuk Pięknych przy Pariser Platz)

Galeria

Bibliografia
 Alfred Gotthold Meyer: Reinhold Begas. Velhagen & Klasing, Bielefeld 1901
 Uta Lehnert: Der Kaiser und die Siegesallee. Réclame Royale, Dietrich Reimer Verlag, Berlin 1998, .
 Jörg Kuhn: Die Berliner Bildhauerschule, in: Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin, Katalog der Skulpturen 1780–1920 (LETTER Schriften 14), Köln 2003

Artyści związani z Berlinem
Ludzie urodzeni w Berlinie
Niemieccy rzeźbiarze
Urodzeni w 1831
Zmarli w 1911

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


SunLab will consist in the design and set up of an innovative solution and plant for solar cooling in building.
SunLab aims to reduce energy consumption in the selected building as well as to promote and spread the use of solar cooling technology for building air conditioning in order to gain an increasing independence from fossil fuels thus promoting a "low carbon economy".
SunLab will be implemented in Trieste (Friuli Venezia Giulia Region) on a laboratory building owned by AREA Science Park.


text:
The StupidStuff Staff
This is Kelly, the Publisher, the Big Cheese, the Top Guy, the Head Honcho, El Numero Uno, etc etc. He's to blame for everything. Send all your hate mail and letter bombs to him. You can practically see the funny stuff just shooting out of his head, can't you? It stands to reason that anyone who looks like Kelly would say and do a lot of really humorous things. Kelly frequently makes a kind of 'Heee-haaaw' noise.
Personal Accomplishment: Kelly scored almost 100 on his SAT's.
Margo is the StupidStuff.org secretary- What? Oh, excuse us, we meant to say "Office Manager". She has a big fit if we call her a secretary. Like she actually manages anything other than making sure she has a full hour for lunch every day. Teaching her to press the spell-check button was an all-day affair. Don't stand between her and the refrigerator on our Free-Food-Fridays.
Personal Accomplishment: Margo has memorized every episode of the original Star Trek® series.
Mike, Associate Editor. They call me an 'Associate Editor' so they don't have to pay me shit. "Oh, Mike, we can't pay you more because you're just an Associate Editor". But who does all the real work? Me. I mean look at Kelly and Margo- do you think the two of them together could open a frickin' can of tuna-fish before they starved to death? Just thank me for all the stuff that works around here.
Personal Accomplishment: Putting up with a conehead like Kelly on a daily basis.
Jennifer is the head (and only member) of our Research Department; she's the one we call when we need to know the capitol of Malaysia or something. She's also a horny little slut who likes chugging Jagermeister. After four or five shots she's ready to do the horizontal-bop with anyone, even Kelly. (And that's why she's still employed. Hell, it's the only reason we even have a 'Research Department' in the first place.) Jennifer is a true Equal-Opportunity Employer when it comes to having sex, if you know what I mean.
Personal Accomplishment: Jennifer 'entertained' every member of the USS Yorktown all by herself in less than 72 hours.
Basil cleans up around here. He's still on parole or work-release or something. He doesn't talk much.
Personal Accomplishment: None.
Some Drunk Guy
This is just some drunk guy who has settled on our parking lot as the best place to hang. Nobody knows who he is, but he usually lurches into our parking lot around 3:00, picks out a piece of lawn and proceeds to get even more hammered. I just thought you'd like to see what a fabulous office park Kelly The Moron picked out for us.


text:
\section{Introduction}
Solving generalization in Deep Reinforcement Learning is an active area of research and recently there has been a growing recognition that traditional benchmarks, such as Atari can compound this problem. The Obstacle Tower Environment, \cite{Juliani2019ObstacleTower}, and Obstacle Tower Challenge were specifically developed to address the problem of generalization by implementing randomized levels, multiple graphics themes and the ability to hold back seeds so that test runs can be assessed using versions of the environment that the researcher has had no access to.

The PPO algorithm, \cite{Schulman2017ProximalPO}, has demonstrated an ability to scale up to and perform well against large scale generalization problems, \cite{Schulman2017ProximalPO}. In OpenAI Five,  \cite{OpenAI_dota}, the authors remark on their surprise at the PPO algorithm's ability to scale up.

In contrast, the authors of the Obstacle Tower Challenge, \cite{Juliani2019ObstacleTower}, document how the PPO algorithm, \cite{Schulman2017ProximalPO}, did not perform well on the configurations of the Obstacle Tower Challenge, \cite{Juliani2019ObstacleTower}, which demand the most generalization, see Figure \ref{fig:poorPPO}.

\begin{table}[!h]
  \centering
  \begin{tabular}{lc}
    \textbf{algorithm}           & \textbf{Floor mean (std-div)} \\ \hline
    PPO                          & 0.8 (0.4)                     \\
    Rainbow                      & 3.2 (1.1)                     \\
  \end{tabular}
  \caption{Obstacle Tower Challenge authors found that PPO did not generalize well.}
  \label{fig:poorPPO}
\end{table}

So, is the PPO algorithm a good choice for addressing generalization problems? We would like to resolve this question.

In this paper, we introduce PPO-Dash, a set of improvements and best practices to the PPO algorithm and demonstrate state of the art performance on the Obstacle Tower Challenge, \cite{Juliani2019ObstacleTower}. We study the individual elements of PPO-Dash in an attempt to better understand their value.

Our goal with this work is to focus on the generalization aspect of the Obstacle Tower Challenge, \cite{Juliani2019ObstacleTower}, and create a baseline from which we can implement more novel techniques to study the sparse rewards aspects of the environment.

\subsection{The Obstacle Tower Environment}
\begin{figure}[!h]
  \begin{center}
    \includegraphics[width=0.8\linewidth]{figure1.png}
    \caption{The Obstacle Tower Challenge. Showing three different visual themes.}
    \label{fig:validationPerformance}
  \end{center}
\end{figure}

The Obstacle Tower Environment is a 3D platform game viewed from the third person. Each floor has a set of rooms and puzzles that incrementally increase in difficulty. The environment can be controlled via a human or via a policy using the OpenAI Gym \cite{Brockman2016OpenAIG} interface.

The player character must solve each room and find the exit of the floor. They then progress to the next floor. If they run out of time or 'die', the tower is reset and they must begin back at floor 0.

The layout and visual theme of each floor are set using a seed. The environment has a total of 25 floors, three visual themes and 100 seeds which randomize the level layout and layout of puzzles.

The environment exposes pixel observation and a vector observation of the remaining time and number of keys. These can be combined in 'retro' mode whereby the vector observations are visually embedded in the pixels. This is to support older algorithms which only take pixel inputs.

For the purpose of this paper, we use version 1.3 of the environment.

\subsection{The Obstacle Tower Challenge 2019 competition}
Unity has partnered with Google Cloud and AI Crowd to host a competition. The competition consists of two rounds. Round one ran from Monday, February 11th, 2019, through to Tuesday, April 30th, 2019, and is based on version one of the Obstacle Tower Environment. This environment has a total of 25 floors, three visual themes and 100 seeds which randomize the level layout.

Round two runs from Wednesday, May 15th, 2019 to Monday, July 15th, 2019 and is based on version 2 of the Obstacle Tower Environment. This environment has a total of 100 floors and it adds two additional visual themes, new puzzles, and enemy types.

The competition is hosted on the AI Crowd platform. Submissions are made by submitting a repository containing the trained model and code needed to run the model. AI Crowd performs the test using a special version of the Obstacle Tower Environment which contains five seeds which are not available in the public version. One can view the results (the breakdown of how the policy performed against each seed) via the AI Crowd website. The final result is submitted to the leaderboard for the current round. The last entry per user is the one displayed on the leaderboard.

\subsection{Reproducibility}
We have completed two full training passes of 200,000,000 training steps each. The validation score is calculated using seeds held back from the training set of seeds. The test scores (the official round one leaderboard scores) were generated by AI Crowd / Unity (the competition organizers) using a special version of the Obstacle Tower Environment that exposes five unique seeds.

We used a consumer grade desktop with an i7 8700k, 32GB of ram and a GTX 1080 GPU. Training takes approximately seven hrs for 10,000,000 steps (140 hours for 200m steps).

All source code, trained models, raw Tensorboard files and instructions can be found here:
https://github.com/Sohojoe/ppo-dash

\section{PPO Dash}

Our general approach for PPO Dash was to look for improvements and best practices which would a) reduce the action and observation space, b) be appropriate for 3D exploration environments, and c) leverage general best practices with the PPO algorithm.

\subsection{Training and testing methodology}
We train in runs of 10m, 20m or 50m steps. We held back five seeds (95 - 99) during early training to enable a faster validation on unseen seeds. Our validation pass runs five times across each seed and gives the average floor of all runs, we did this as we experienced a wide set of results on some seeds and so averaging over five runs gives us a better indication of the underlying quality of our policy. We also ran validation runs on the five seeds that unity provided for validation (seeds 100-105).

After 100m training steps we reduce the epoch to one and the learning rate to 1-e4. This was to help the policy learn more subtle aspects of the environment.

The first version of our agent (PPO Dash - no recurrent) did not have recurrent memory which we added for the second version of our agent (PPO Dash).

\subsection{Implementation Details}
We based our code on an existing implementation of PPO, \cite{pytorchrl} and made the following changes:

\begin{itemize}
  \item \textbf{Action Space Reduction} The goal of Action Space Reduction is to increase learning performance by reducing the number of required network outputs. We chose to be aggressive in this task because we wanted the network to focus on the greater generalization goal and not to be burdened with learning the semantic relationship between actions which a human takes for granted.
  \begin{itemize}
    \item We chose a set of 8 actions (a drop of 85\% from the original 54 actions).
    \item These actions are: no-action, forward, rotate left, rotate right, jump+forward, backward, forward + rotate left, forward+ rotate right.
    \item We playtested these actions to ensure it was possible for a human to progress.
    \item The rationale for reducing jump actions to the single jump + forward action is because once the jump has begun, other actions such as no-op/forward/backward and rotate camera will still direct the jump with minimal loss of control.
    \item The rationale for reducing backward actions to a single backward action is because most actions are forward based.
    \item The rationale for reducing forward actions to a single forward action is because the actor can stop, rotate left and right, then move in the new direction.
  \end{itemize}
  \item \textbf{Frame Stack Reduction} The goal of Frame Stack Reduction is to increase learning performance by reducing the number of required network inputs.
  \begin{itemize}
    \item \cite{Mnih2015HumanlevelCT} noted that the Atari 2600 had a limited number of hardware sprites as many Atari games use a technique of alternating sets of sprites between frames. Thus, \cite{Mnih2015HumanlevelCT} introduced the practice of stacking the last four frames as observations. We hypothesized that this practice is not needed for most environments and that the frame stack can be reduced to two frames, or even one.
    \item We experimented between two and one historical frames; we found no noticeable difference and so chose a single frame to maximize the reduction of the observation space.
    \item We further reduced the observation by only stacking the brightness of the historical frame.
  \end{itemize}
  \item \textbf{Large Scale Hyperparameters} Typically a PPO algorithm's hyperparameters are tuned for the Atari benchmark. Our hypothesis was that the Obstacle Tower Challenge environment was closer to the Unity Maze environment in \cite{Burda2019LargeScaleSO} as both environments are 3D in nature and both environments have sparse rewards. We implemented the following changes to the hyperparameters:
  \begin{itemize}
    \item 8 epochs
    \item Learning Rate of 1e-4 at a constant learning rate (no linear decay)
    \item Entropy-coef = 0.001
    \item Number of mini-batches = 8
    \item Number of concurrent agents = 32
    \item Number of steps per epoch = 512 - \cite{Burda2019LargeScaleSO} authors note that their rationale for 512 steps and 8 epochs was so that the policy can lock on to the sparse reward.
  \end{itemize}
  \item \textbf{Vector Observations} The goal of adding Vector Observations was to maximize the use of visible pixels and to remove the burden of the policy needing to learn visually encoded state information.
  \begin{itemize}
    \item Typically, benchmarks such as Atari only expose visual observations and game state. To support existing algorithms Obstacle Tower Challenge provides a 'retro mode' whereby the health and inventory status is encoded into the top few lines of the screen. This has the disadvantage of reducing the total visible space that the agent observers.
    \item The Obstacle Tower Challenge exposes vectorized observations of the current health and of the count of the current number of keys (which we one-hot encode)
  \end{itemize}
  \item \textbf{Normalized Observations} The goal of normalizing observations is to help increase the variance per pixel. We build a per pixel mean and global standard deviation by running the environment using randomized steps for 10,000 steps over a randomized set of seeds and floors.
  \item \textbf{Reward Hacking} The goal of reward hacking is to improve the reward signal. By default, Obstacle Tower Challenge gives a reward of 1 for completing the floor and a reward of 0.1 for completing a puzzle such as opening a door, finding a key, pushing the block on to a target. We made the following changes:
  \begin{itemize}
    \item Completing the floor: we add the remaining health to encourage the policy to finish each floor as quickly as possible (the range of reward is between 1 and 4)
    \item puzzle completion: We give a reward of 1 (by default this is 0.1)
    \item Health pickup: We give a reward of 0.1 for picking up a blue dot/health pick up.
    \item On game over: When running out of time, we give a reward of -1
  \end{itemize}
  \item \textbf{Recurrent Memory} Our motivation for adding recurrent memory was that it would help the policy learn temporal aspects of solving puzzles. We used the existing implementation of recurrent memory from \cite{pytorchrl}
\end{itemize}

\subsection{Observations and Results}
Figure \ref{fig:validationPerformance} and Table \ref{validationPerformance2} shows the performance of the PPO-Dash agent on the validation seeds (100-105). The agent is not able to complete floor 10. However, it does learn to complete the other seeds and this generalizes to the validations seeds.

\begin{figure}[!h]
  \begin{center}
    \includegraphics[width=0.8\linewidth]{figure2.png}
    \caption{PPO Dash Validation Performance. The agent scores against the validation seeds. The dots indicate a validation run (with score). The horizontal axis is the number of training steps, and the vertical axis is the mean floor.}
    \label{fig:validationPerformance}
  \end{center}
\end{figure}

\begin{table}[!h]
  \centering
  \begin{tabular}{lc}
    \textbf{algorithm}           & \textbf{Floor mean (std-div)} \\ \hline
    PPO                          & 0.8 (0.4)                     \\
    Rainbow                      & 3.2 (1.1)                     \\
    \textbf{PPO Dash (ours)}     & \textbf{10 (0.0)}             \\
    PPO Dash no recurrent (ours) & 9.2 (0.97)
  \end{tabular}
  \caption{Results vs prior state of art}
  \label{validationPerformance2}
\end{table}

In Table \ref{fig:round1}, we see the performance of the PPO-Dash agent against the test seeds as evaluated by Unity and their partners. These are the official standings from the end of round one which show that PPO-Dash achieved 2nd place\footnote{https://blogs.unity3d.com/2019/05/15/obstacle-tower-challenge-round-2-begins-today/}.

\begin{table}[!h]
  \centering
  \begin{tabular}{lccc}
    \textbf{Participant}     & \textbf{Round 1 Average Floors} & \textbf{Round 1 Average Reward} & \textbf{\begin{tabular}[c]{@{}c@{}}Final Position\\ (Round 1)\end{tabular}} \\ \hline
    unixpickle               & \textbf{16.40}                  & 29.88                           & 1                                                                           \\
    \textbf{ppo-dash (ours)} & 10.00                           & 16.46                           & 2                                                                           \\
    dougm                    & 9.61                            & 15.92                           & 3                                                                           \\
    karolisram               & 8.40                            & 13.32                           & 4                                                                           \\
    sova876                  & 8.20                            & 13.12                           & 5                                                                           \\
    giadefa                  & 8.00                            & 12.82                           & 6                                                                           \\
    wywarren                 & 8.00                            & 12.58                           & 7                                                                           \\
    PerInDisguise            & 7.00                            & 10.68                           & 8                                                                           \\
    tatsuyaogawa             & 6.60                            & 9.72                            & 9                                                                           \\
    STAR.Lab                 & 6.00                            & 8.72                            & 10
  \end{tabular}
  \caption{Offical results from round one of the Obstacle Tower Challenge. PPO-Dash averaged floor 10, finishing second.}
  \label{fig:round1}
\end{table}

\section{Study of how individual elements impact learning}

We would like to investigate how each element of PPO-Dash impacts learning. To gain this insight we use two strategies. The first strategy is to compare individual elements against a baseline. The second strategy is to incrementally add PPO-Dash elements and compare the incremental impact.

\subsection{Method}

To create our baseline we look at \cite{Juliani2019ObstacleTower} and reproduce their results. For the most part, this is using the default hyperparameters from the PPO implementation from OpenAI.Baselines \cite{baselines} with 50 concurrent agents.

\subsubsection{Compare elements against the baseline}
The elements we compare against the baseline are:
\begin{itemize}
  \item Reduce Action Space
  \item Large Scale Hyperparameters
  \item Reduced Frame Stack
  \item Recurrent
\end{itemize}

\subsubsection{Compare elements incrementally}
The elements we incrementally combine are:
\begin{itemize}
  \item Reduced Frame Stack
  \item Reduced Frame Stack + Reduced Action Space
  \item Reduced Frame Stack + Reduced Action Space + Large Scale Hyperparameters
  \item Reduced Frame Stack + Reduced Action Space + Large Scale Hyperparameters + Recurrent
  \item Reduced Frame Stack + Reduced Action Space + Large Scale Hyperparameters + Recurrent + Vector Observations
\end{itemize}

\subsubsection{Compare different sets of actions}
We experimented with several groups of action sets. We asked a human to playtest each action set to confirm that they could progress through to level 10. We validated our choice by comparing each group of action sets over 10m steps.

The action sets we tested where
\begin{itemize}
  \item Action Set 6 - no-action, forward, rotate left, rotate right, jump+forward, backward
  \item Action Set 8 - no-action, forward, rotate left, rotate right, jump+forward, backward, forward + rotate left, forward+ rotate right
  \item Action Set 20 - all combinations of no-action, forward, left, right, rotation left, rotate right. A single backward action (backward) and single jump action (forward and jump)
  \item Action Set 27 - all combinations of no-action, forward, backward, left, right, rotation left, rotate right. A single jump action (forward and jump)
  \item Action Set 54 - all actions
\end{itemize}

\subsubsection{Reproducibility}

For the empirical study of comparing elements with the baseline and comparing elements incrementally, we used three training runs. We record the mean floor and standard deviation at each timestep and average these over the three runs.

When comparing the different sets of actions we only ran each action set once.

We use a consumer grade desktop with an i7 8700k, 32GB of ram and an RTX 2080 Ti GPU. Each individual training run takes approximately five hours.

All source code, trained models, raw tensorboard files and instructions can be found here:
https://github.com/Sohojoe/ppo-dash

\subsection{Results}

We found that, with the exception of Reduced Action Space, our results were inconclusive. We believe that this was because we limited training to 10m steps. In addition to the reported experiments, we did try some alternative hyperparameters which did not show a change to this trend.

\subsubsection{Results comparing elements against the baseline}
When comparing the results of individual elements against the baseline, we found that Reduced Action Space showed a significant improvement over the baseline (mean of 4.49 vs mean of 1.21). However, all the other comparables where very close to the baseline, see Figure \ref{fig:compare_baseline}

\begin{table}[!h]
  \centering
  \begin{tabular}{lc}
    & Mean \\
    Baseline                    & 1.21 \\ \hline
    Reduced Action Space        & 4.49 \\
    Large Scale Hyperparameters & 1.94 \\
    Reduced Frame Stack         & 1.24 \\
    Recurrent                   & 1.11
  \end{tabular}
  \caption{Comparison of PPO Dash elements compared against a baseline implementation of PPO. Mean floor over three runs.}
  \label{fig:compare_baseline}
  \end{table}

\subsubsection{Results comparing elements incrementally}
The results stacking PPO-Dash elements incrementally are inconclusive. We see a significant jump in the mean floor when adding Reduced Action Space, however, other elements do not have much of an impact. See Figure \ref{fig:validationPerformance}

\begin{figure}[!h]
  \begin{center}
    \includegraphics[width=0.8\linewidth]{figure3.png}
    \caption{Results comparing PPO-Dash elements incrementally. Mean floor over three runs of 10m steps each.}
    \label{fig:validationPerformance}
  \end{center}
\end{figure}

\subsubsection{Results on comparing different sets of actions}
We found that the 8, 20, and 27 action sets all saw a similar improvement in performance going from an average of three floors to an average of five floors (see Table \ref{fig:action_sets}).

\begin{table}[!h]
  \centering
  \begin{tabular}{lccccc}
    \hline
                           & \begin{tabular}[c]{@{}c@{}}Action\\ Set 6\end{tabular} & \begin{tabular}[c]{@{}c@{}}Action\\ Set 8\end{tabular} & \begin{tabular}[c]{@{}c@{}}Action\\ Set 20\end{tabular} & \begin{tabular}[c]{@{}c@{}}Action\\ Set 27\end{tabular} & \begin{tabular}[c]{@{}c@{}}Action\\ Set 54\end{tabular} \\ \hline
    Limit Jump Actions     & \checkmark                                              & \checkmark                                              & \checkmark                                               & \checkmark                                               &                                                         \\
    Limit Backward Actions & \checkmark                          & \checkmark                          & \checkmark                           &                                     &                                     \\
    Limit Forward Actions  & \checkmark                                              &                                                        &                                                         &                                                         &                                                         \\\hline
    \textbf{Ave Floor}     & 3                                                      & \textbf{5}                                             & \textbf{5}                                              & \textbf{5}                                              & 3                                                       \\ \hline
  \end{tabular}
  \caption{Comparison of action sets and their impact on the maximum floor reached after 10m steps.}
  \label{fig:action_sets}
\end{table}

\section{Conclusion}

We introduce PPO-Dash, a collection of various improvements and best practices to the PPO algorithm that produced state of the art on the Obstacle Tower Challenge. Within the content of the Obstacle Tower Environment and the associated Obstacle Tower Challenge (competition), we demonstrated generalization from the training seeds, through validation seeds, through to test seeds.

These results exceeded our expectations of how well an algorithm could perform against this task without specifically addressing sparse reward. They give strong evidence that PPO does scale for these types of tasks.

We studied the impact of individual elements of PPO-Dash against a baseline and by stacking them together. Our study proved to be inconclusive shedding little insight into the impact of most of the elements. This finding has value in that it gives evidence that to show insight against this challenge, potentially many more steps are needed. For example, it may be the case that 150-200m steps are needed, a 15-20x multiple on what we used, which would take 75 to 100 hours per run on the hardware we used.

Our study of different sized action sets indicated that there is a big gain in performance by reducing the jump action and then little variance between the 8, 20, 27 sized sets and limiting the forward set of actions (the 6 set), did impact performance. We stress that these are early indicators both because we did not conform to reproducibility best practices (for this study) and because of the insight we gained with regards to the limit of only running over 10m steps.

In terms of further work, it would be valuable to find the number of steps needed to do reliable feature studies and also how these best practices translate to other reinforcement algorithms, for example, Rainbow-Dash.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


text:
By Mary Ann Whitley.
NOTE: Excerpted from articles originally published in Voyage, the journal of Titanic International Society, and CQD Titanic, the journal of the Belfast Titanic Society.
George Whitley of 9 Huss Street (the son of Francis Whitla/Whitley) and Alice Boreland of 104 Northumberland Street (the daughter of Robert and Alice Boreland) in Belfast were both 21 when they married in 1873. Their marriage certificate says he was a mechanic and she was a weaver. They lived in the Shankill Road area of Belfast, the same part of the city where their children would eventually grow up, marry and begin their own families.
George and Alice's first child, William John, called 'Johnny,' was born 11 months after their marriage, and the couple eventually had five other children: Francis, Alice, Edward Boreland, Robert and Annie. The sons all reportedly worked on the Titanic as did Annie's husband, James Ferguson. (Alice, who married David Gowdy, is the only one of George's children who apparently had no connection to building the ship.)
George Whitley may have worked at Harland & Wolff shipyard before going to sea and serving as an engineer on several ships. His seafaring career was cut short when he was only 38. In January 1891, he was serving as second engineer on the Chichester, when an explosion rocked the ship in the harbor at Santos, Brazil. George was killed; the official cause of death was listed as 'effects of an explosion of a tank of spirits' by the Marine Register Book of Deaths in Dublin, Ireland. Articles in the Belfast News Letter say that the ship's cargo of rum exploded and that three other crew members besides George were killed. Three of the four were from the Belfast area. George was reportedly buried in Santos. At the time of the accident, his address was 416 Shankill Road, Belfast.
Alice did not have an easy life after George's death, having been left with six children to raise. Relatives recalled that some sort of organization - perhaps a seamen's union of some kind - helped to set her up in business running a news agency so she could support herself and her children. Alice died in 1919 at the age of 66 and is buried in Belfast City Cemetery.
Alice Whitley's descendants lived in the Shankill Road area during the building of the Titanic. A brief portrait of each of the Whitley relatives who worked on the Titanic follows.
Johnny Whitley
William John 'Johnny' Whitley was born July 12, 1874, in 9 Huss Street, Belfast. Johnny was a woodworker or joiner who worked on the Titanic. Belfast street directories list 'Whitley, joiner' as living at 223 Cambrai Street in 1899. By 1912, 'Wm. John, joiner,' is listed at 13 Fingal Street.
Johnny's wife died in 1944, and he and his daughter Ivy moved to Canada in 1949 to live with his daughter and son-in-law, Alice and Fred George. Johnny worked at Harland & Wolff until he was 75, just before moving to Canada. A son, also named William John, also immigrated to Canada. They all lived at 153 Drewry Ave., Willowdale, Ontario, a suburb of Toronto.
Johnny died in 1968 at the age of 93 and is buried in York Cemetery in Toronto. Buried with him are his son William John, his daughter Alice (Whitley) George and her husband Fred and his daughter Ivy (Whitley) Britton. Johnny's wife Harriet is buried in City Cemetery, Belfast.
Frank Whitley
Francis 'Frank' Whitley was born Feb. 2, 1876, in the little town of Keady, County Armagh, southwest of Belfast. Frank is the only one of Alice's children who was born outside of Belfast, and it is not known why his mother was there at the time of his birth. Frank was a fitter who worked on the Titanic. He married Margaret 'Maggie' Bell in 1901 and they eventually had five children, Elizabeth 'Lily,' George, Alice Boreland, William James Bell (who apparently died as an infant or child) and Margaret Bell 'Greta.'
An 'F Whitley, engineer' is listed in Belfast street directories as living at 193 Cambrai Street from 1896 to 1900. 'F Whitley' then shows up at No. 189 in 1902. He lived on Cambrai Street for the next couple of years, according to the directories. A family document dated 1927 lists him at 240 Cambrai Street.
Frank, like his father, went to sea, but he did not stay with that career very long. His seaman's certificate of discharge shows he served on only one voyage, from Liverpool to Australia, on the Medic in 1901.
After his short stint at sea, Frank went to the engine works at Harland & Wolff and stayed there until he retired. His descendants say he worked on the Olympic and the Titanic. As a fitter, he would have worked with metal or mechanical things.
Frank Whitley later became a foreman at the shipyard. Wages books for the engine works held in the Harland & Wolff collection at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland indicate he was appointed assistant outside fitter April 15, 1920 - in a strange coincidence, the date is exactly eight years after the Titanic sank.
Frank died in 1966 at the age of 90, and he and his wife are both buried in City Cemetery, Belfast.
Eddie Whitley
Edward Boreland 'Eddie' Whitley was born April 29, 1883, in 20 Albany Street, Belfast. He helped to build the Olympic and the Titanic, according to his descendants. He worked on the ships' turbine engines as a machinist or 'machine man,' as his trade was sometimes called. (The Olympic and Titanic each had one turbine engine as well as two reciprocating engines.) He married Annie Hobbs in 1908 and they had three children, Herson (my father), Ruby and Edward.
Belfast street directories list 'Edward Whitley, labourer,' living on Cambrai Street from 1905 to 1910. After that time, he was listed as 'E. Whitley, machineman.' In 1920, the family immigrated to the United States. He decided to settle in Flint, Michigan, partly because of the opportunities the auto industry offered. The family arrived in Canada in October 1920 on the Canadian Pacific liner Empress of Britain, and then traveled by train to Flint.
Eddie went to work at S.S. Stewart Body Works, which made auto bodies for Buick. At one time, he also worked in the Round House for the Pere Marquette Railroad in Bay City, Michigan. In later years, he worked for the Flint board of education as a head custodian in the schools.
After his wife died in 1947, he went to live with his daughter, Ruby (Whitley) Norton, at her home in Flushing, Michigan. He continued to live with Ruby's family until he died of cancer in 1966 just a month before his 83rd birthday. He and his wife are buried in Sunset Hills Cemetery, Flint, Michigan.
Bob Whitley
Robert 'Bob' Whitley was born July 10, 1884, in 20 Albany Street, Belfast. He married Louise Macauley (date unknown). They had one child, also named Robert, born about 1920. Relatives believe Bob also worked at Harland & Wolff and helped to build the Titanic.
An 'R Whitley' was listed in Belfast street directories as living at 189 Cambrai Street in 1911 and onward until 1922. His occupation is listed as machine man. It's possible that Bob immigrated to the United States about 1921 or 1922 since that is when he disappears from that address in the Belfast street directories.
His one son, Robert, never married. There are no other descendants from this branch, so information about Bob is sparse. He is believed to have died in 1969 in Boston, and his son is believed to have died in 1986.
Jim Ferguson, husband of Annie Whitley
Annie Whitley was born Dec. 12, 1887, in 20 Albany Street, Belfast, the last of George and Alice Whitley's six children. She married James 'Jim' Ferguson in 1921. They had three children but two died in infancy. Their only surviving child was a son named John.
Like Annie's brother Johnny, Jim Ferguson was a woodworker. He first worked at the Belfast shipyard Workman Clark, and then at Harland & Wolff, where he was a cabinetmaker, and worked on the Titanic.
Annie and Jim Ferguson and their son John immigrated to the United States about 1926, arriving in Boston on the White Star liner Cedric, and first lived with Annie's brother Robert in East Lynn, Massachusetts. They later settled in Detroit, Michigan, where they stayed. He later went to work at Chrysler Corporation as a plant guard.
I would like to thank all my cousins in the U.S., Northern Ireland and Canada who so graciously shared their own genealogy research, family photos and documents and consented to interviews. Thanks are also due to numerous members of Titanic International Society and the Belfast Titanic Society who helped me with my research and answered questions, and to Michael McCaughan of the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Harland & Wolff, the late genealogist Catherine Macnaghten and Historical Research Associates of Belfast.
ancestry 1911 ancestral births census irish genealogical northern ireland antrim family history ireland research ulster 1901 genealogy national archives old video footage burials headstones ship records graveyard church records census returns descendant family histories family names land and property passenger lists free ancestors ancestry


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Q: mi app solo funciona conectada al mismo wifi que el ordenador que ejecuta mi servidor El servidor al que intento acceder lo tengo ejecutándose en mi ordenador de desarrollo, y la IP en la que escucha es privada por lo que, si la app está conectada a la misma red que el servidor, funciona, pero tan pronto como la app se ejecuta en otra red (la de telefonía) deja de funcionar, es decir, ya no me devuelve ninguna informacion almacenada en mi servidor.
¿Cómo puedo cambiar mi servidor a una IP Pública?


Open Enrollment 2018 is just around the corner and for many, this is the only time to secure health insurance coverage for you and your dependents.
Since the beginning of the Affordable Care Act, the term Open Enrollment refers to the specific period of time each year when an individual can enroll in, or switch, their health insurance plan without the need to qualify for a special enrollment period. This is also when additional eligible members can be added to an existing plan.
Open enrollment only occurs once per year, so keeping an eye on the Open Enrollment deadlines is important in order to avoid losing coverage. This year the Open Enrollment window has been shortened and begins November 1st with a December 15th deadline.
Coinsurance: Coinsurance is your share of the costs of a covered healthcare service calculated as a percent (for example, 20 percent) of the allowed amount for the service. You pay coinsurance plus any deductibles you still owe for a covered health service.
Premium: A premium is the amount of money charged by an insurance company for coverage. The cost of premiums may be determined by several factors, including age, geographic area, tobacco use, and number of dependents.
Copayment: A copayment, or copay, is a fixed amount you pay for a covered healthcare service, usually at the time of service. The amount can vary by the type of covered healthcare service.
Deductible: A deductible is the amount you owe for healthcare services each year before the insurance company begins to pay.
Out-of-pocket Maximum (OOPM): An out-of-pocket maximum is the most you should have to pay for your healthcare during a year, excluding the monthly premium. It protects you from very high medical expenses. After you reach the annual out-of-pocket maximum, your health insurance or plan begins to pay 100 percent of the allowed amount for covered healthcare services for the rest of the year. The deductible, coinsurance, copays and prescription drug copays are included in the out-of-pocket maximum.
Preventive Care: Rather than waiting for a patient to become sick, preventive care aims to keep people healthy, or at least catch illnesses at their earliest and most treatable stages. Preventive care includes preventive services performed by providers, such as annual physicals or mammograms. Under the provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), policies must cover various preventive services for men, women, and children without sharing the cost for these services through coinsurance, deductibles or copayments. Certain Preventive care services are subject to frequency limitations.
Annual Limit and Lifetime Limit: In the past, health insurance carriers imposed Annual and Lifetime limits on the benefits you receive. You are no longer subject to these limitations and there is no maximum to the benefits you may receive.
Our team of licensed Benefits Counselors are here to help! Schedule an appointment so you can get your questions answered —And don't forget, Open Enrollment only runs through December 15th for the 2018 season!


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Hepburn and Sons Appoints Crone as Director
Posted by Michelle Howard December 11, 2018
CAPT Timothy Crone (Photo: Hepburn and Sons LLC)
Hepburn and Sons LLC team has welcomed CAPT Timothy Crone as its newest Director. CAPT Timothy Crone, USN (Ret) will serve as Hepburn's Director, Advisory Services.
CAPT Crone, a graduate of the United States Naval Academy, earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Political Science from the US Naval Academy and completed a Master of Science in Justice, Law and Society from American University. He has also received a Master of Arts in National Security Policy and Strategic Studies from the U.S. Naval War College.
CAPT Crone served as the Commanding Officer on USS PONCE (LPD 15) through two major overseas deployments. During his tenure in command, he served as Maritime Interdiction Operations Commander for the deployed battle group, skillfully coordinating multi-ship anti-piracy interdiction efforts, resulting in sustained safe passage for international commerce in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.
Starting in December 2010, CAPT Crone joined the Surface Warfare Officer Acquisition Corps, and worked at the Washington Navy Yard in DC, working in a variety of positions including Technical Director in the Anti-Terrorism Program Office (PMS 480), Principal Assistant Program Manager in the Mine Warfare Program Office (PMS 495), and Major Program Manager in multiple programs (PMS 470 and 443). As the Major Program Manager for PMS 443, he established the Surface Ship Readiness and Sustainment Program Office in 2015, charged with Fleet introduction and management of the life cycle and sustainment of all non-nuclear Navy surface ships. This new office resulted in centralized support and unified policies for the sustainment and life cycle engineering of all surface ships in the Navy. The new office pioneered new processes to improve the timely completion of technical reviews and logistics support for every ship alteration within the portfolio, resulting in significant improvements in operational availability and a reduction in lost operational days across the fleet.
Other advanced training that CAPT Crone has completed includes Executive Program Manager's Course (PMT 402), Program Manager's Course (PMT 401), Level III Program Management Certification, and a certificate program in Understanding the Government-Industry Relationship in Acquisition from Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina.
His awards include the Navy and Marine Corps Medal, for his leadership on September 16, 2013 for calmly alerting and directing coworkers out of the building while a lone shooter entered the NAVSEA headquarters.
American University • Gulf of Aden • North Carolina
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Ronald James "Radar" Majerus
Ronald James "Radar" Majerus, 74, of Brownsville passed away peacefully on Wednesday, Oct. 20, 2021, at the Hospice Home of Hope in Fond du Lac.
He was born on May 17, 1947, at St. Agnes Hospital in Fond du Lac, the son of Arthur and Evelyn (nee Gruenwald) Majerus. Ron was confirmed on April 29, 1962, at St. Luke Lutheran Church, Knowles.
Ron grew up working on the family farm and his love of animals showed. He worked for many years at Majerus Farms and cherished the many friends as family. Along with his duties in the barn, Ron mowed many lawns. He had a love of gardening, flowers, decorating for the seasons and collecting John Deere items. He liked to go to church dinners, Dino's and the Feedmill for the Specials of the Day. Ron didn't pass up an invite to go along to the casino. He had a great sense of humor. Ron had a love for his family and was a caring, honest man; he will be greatly missed by all.
Survivors include his brothers, Kenneth (Diane) Majerus of Campbellsport, and Gary (special friend Cheryl Grosnick) Majerus of Fond du Lac; sister, Lois Majerus of West Bend; brother-in-law, Bob Smith of Wausau; nieces and nephews, Betty (John) Meier, Mary Neitzel, Peggy (Jeff) Wendt, Julie (Nathan) Wagenknecht and Mike Majerus; four great-nieces and nephews, other relatives and many friends.
Ron was preceded in death by his parents and sisters, Loraine Smith, Linda Majerus and Luann Majerus.
Visitation was held Tuesday, Oct. 26, from 4 to 7 p.m. at the Twohig Funeral Home, 109 W. Main St. Campbellsport and on Wednesday, Oct. 27, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at St. Luke Lutheran Church, Knowles, (W2169 South Ave, Lomira, WI 53048). A funeral service for Ron was held Wednesday, Oct. 27, at 1 p.m. at St. Luke Lutheran Church with Rev. Matthew Kuske officiating. Burial followed in the parish cemetery.
In lieu of flowers, memorials are appreciated to St. Luke Lutheran Church or the Hospice Home of Hope.
The family extends a special thank you to the staff of the Hospice Home of Hope for the care and concern shown Ron.
Twohig Funeral Home is serving the family with online guestbook and condolences at www.twohigfunerals.com.
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Hunger Strike Worsened Mahant Swami Paramhans Das' Health?
Ayodhya Mahant Swami Paramhans Das, who is on an indefinite hunger strike demanding the construction of Ram Temple, has been detained by the police. Police claimed that the hunger strike worsened Mahant's condition and hr had to be rushed to the hospital.


How about this dress? Seen above is Karina Smirnoff. The Dancing With The Stars pro attended the premiere of The Weinstein Company's "Lawless" held at ArcLight Cinemas in Hollywood, California. Other celebs to attend were Nick Cave, Shia LaBeouf, Warren Ellis, Guy Pearce, Susie Cave, Gene Simmons. To view an album of them all gracing the Red Carpet in top form, go to Zimbio Pictures.
Pro dancer Peta Murgatroyd was in a dance segment on Good Afternoon America today. She's excited to dance with Gilles Marini for the All Stars season. She promises she will get him to take his shirt off. After briefly mentioning Dancing With The Stars, an audience member comes out who she taught to dance today. You can watch them below. Peta is a doll as always.
1. I've been practicing a lot. My rumba looks amazing. Oh, and did I mention my dancing's gotten pretty good, too?!
2. I'm an athlete. No really, I was the world champion amateur riding at the Worlds Championship Horse Show in 2009.
3. I reached out to Bristol Palin on Twitter. No response, but I think we could be friends!
4. I've already started designing my costumes. Let's just say "sparkly" is an understatement.
5. Maks gives amazing shoulder massages and I have to get back on for All-Stars, so I can return the favor!
Also, here is Carson on Good Morning America today. FUN FUN FUN!!
Stay tuned. We find out MONDAY who will fill the 13th spot on Good Morning America! We'll post the coverage as soon as we can.
ADDING: Carson also has a new blog up at parade.com that is well worth the fun read. Below is a take….
And that's exactly what I thought when I heard I was one of three fan favorites nominated to be selected by the fans as the thirteenth contestant on the show! Isn't everyone a former mirror ball winner? The answer is no…not Kirstie Alley, not Pamela Anderson and not Bristol Palin!
I think the rationale is that you didn't have win your season, but you did need to bring something unique to the show— and you need to appeal to the show's wide variety of fans.
For me it crystallizes into one word: sparkle. The show needs sparkle. Sure, Emmitt Smith will bring his athletic game to the season. Yes, Kelly Monaco will show the skill she showed to win season one. And most certainly Olympian Apolo Ohno will be great as well. But do they have sparkle? Do they have a sense of fun? Will they wear hot pants? Nope. That's my job.
Dancing with the Stars is a variety show in the greatest sense of the word. There is live music, singing, dancing, drama and comedy. And what they need is not a cast of all great dancers and former champions, but a variety to keep it fun and interesting. It's about being entertained. Did I mention they need ME?!
And how fun would it be to see me and the likes of Bristol Palin battling it out? Me and Pam Anderson comparing notes on hair color? And then, there is the intense sexual chemistry between me and Maks.