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POLITICAL HOT TOPICS: September 14, 2009
CNN's Charles Riley
The CNN Washington Bureau's morning speed read of the top stories making news from around the country and the world.
WASHINGTON/POLITICAL
For the latest political news: www.CNNPolitics.com.
CNN: King: Is recovery for real? This week should provide key clues
From start to finish, this week offers tests of whether economic recovery is taking root and also should answer whether months of Senate negotiations on health lead to a bill with any Republican support.
CNN: Wilson: No more apologies for outburst against president
Rep. Joe Wilson said Sunday he will not apologize again for yelling out that President Obama lied during the president's speech to Congress last week.
CNN: Wilson funds reach $1 million after 'you lie' cry, aide says
U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson - the South Carolina Republican who heckled President Obama during his speech to a joint session of Congress - has raised at least $1 million in contributions, a campaign aide confirmed.
CNN: Dem senators: Afghanistan mission needs timeline, clarity
Some eight years after the terrorists attacks of September 11, 2001, two Democratic senators said Sunday that the Obama administration needs to provide Congress with a clear sense of the U.S. military mission in the war-torn country and a clear timeline for when the president expects to bring American troops home.
CNN: Tea party activists rally at U.S. Capitol
The conservative advocacy group Tea Party Express massed at the U.S. Capitol on Saturday to protest health care reform, higher taxes and what they see as out-of-control government spending.
CNN: Aide: Obama doesn't think tea partiers are racist
A day after tens of thousands of conservatives gathered in Washington to protest the policies of the Obama administration, a top White House aide said that President Obama doesn't think the protests and the growing conservative movement against Obama are motivated by racism.
CNN: Franken draws big laughs at Iowa fundraiser
Sen. Al Franken, D-Minnesota, the former comedian who has largely put the funny business on hold as he plays catch-up due to his late arrival in Washington, proved to a Iowa crowd Sunday that he's still got it.
CNN: Key senator rejects 'trigger' for public health insurance option
A moderate Republican who has previously broken with her party to support President Obama's $787 billion stimulus bill said Sunday that she does not support the idea of using a so called "trigger" on the public health insurance option as part of health care reform legislation.
CNN: Two senators say House health-care proposal is dead
More and more, a possible compromise on how to overhaul the nation's ailing health-care system is taking shape.
CNN: Key Senate Dem: There will be a public option
Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, a Democrat who recently filled the late Sen. Ted Kennedy's seat as chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said Sunday that a Senate health-care reform bill would include a "strong" public option and that it would get through by the holiday recess.
CNN: Let's move past Wilson's outburst, Cantor says
The House Republican Whip said Sunday that the country needs to move on from South Carolina Republican Rep. Joe Wilson's recent "You Lie!" outburst during President Obama's address to Congress last week.
CNN: McDonnell drops F-bomb in live interview
Bob McDonnell, the normally-disciplined Republican candidate for governor in Virginia, mistakenly blurted out the F-bomb during a live radio interview on Friday.
New York Times: U.S. Is Finding Its Role in Business Hard to Unwind
When President Obama travels to Wall Street on Monday to speak from Federal Hall, where the founders once argued bitterly over how much the government should control the national economy, he is likely to cast himself as a "reluctant shareholder" in America's biggest industries and financial institutions.
New York Times: U.S. Cost-Saving Policy Forces New Kidney Transplant
Melissa J. Whitaker has one very compelling reason to keep up with the health care legislation being written in Washington: her second transplanted kidney.
Wall Street Journal: Obama Pledges to 'Own' Health-Care Bill
President Barack Obama, continuing his push to secure support for a health-care overhaul, reiterated his willingness to address the issue of medical malpractice suits, a Republican priority.
Los Angeles Times: Obama shrugs off political 'circus' over healthcare
President Obama on Sunday dismissed the uproar over Rep. Joe Wilson's heckling during the president's speech Wednesday to a joint session of Congress, suggesting it was only a distraction - even as some members of Obama's party threatened to punish the South Carolina Republican.
POLITICO: Who's afraid of Barack Obama?
Who's afraid of Barack Obama? The new president spent his first months in office coasting on love and popularity. In his health care speech to Congress Wednesday, he rallied after a rough summer with a new round of tough talk.
For the latest national news: www.CNN.com.
CNN: Police: Body found could be missing Yale student
Investigators found the remains of a woman they assume is missing Yale graduate student Annie Le, a senior police official said Sunday.
CNN: Suspect in at least 10 bank robberies arrested
A man authorities believe has robbed at least 10 banks in at least four states was arrested in Missouri after a retired state trooper saw him and learned he was wanted, authorities said Sunday.
CNN: Dying Blagojevich fundraiser said he overdosed, mayor says
Police are investigating the death of the former chief fundraiser for ex-Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich as a "death-suicide," an Illinois mayor said Sunday.
CNN: Soldier detained in contractor's shooting death
A U.S. soldier was detained Sunday in connection with the shooting death of a civilian contractor at Contingency Operating Base Speicher in Tikrit, Iraq, the military said.
CNN: Gertrude Baines, world's oldest person, dies at 115
Gertrude Baines, the world's oldest person, has died in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 115, according to the home where she lived and Guinness World Records said Saturday.
New York Times: Welcome to Our Town. Wish We Weren't Here.
Mayor Bill Blunk sees no reason for sugar-coating his opinion when asked to describe this town.
Washington Post: Water Measured From the Sky
Water management is serious business in the American West, where precipitation is scarce, irrigated agriculture is a major industry, new housing subdivisions spread across arid landscapes and water rights are allocated in a complicated seniority system.
USA TODAY: Home births get a bump, over obstetricians' objections
Although the delivery of her first son, Nicholas, went as planned, Mara Vaughan began thinking a change of venue for her second child's birth might be in order.
Los Angeles Times: Disney, union workers clash over healthcare
Jean Bustamante views the nation's raging healthcare debate in very personal terms.
For the latest international news: http://edition.cnn.com/
CNN: Purported bin Laden message surfaces
An audio message purportedly from al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden emerged on radical Islamist Web sites, just two days after the United States marked the eighth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.
CNN: Hundreds arrested in deadly Uganda riots
At least 640 people were arrested and 14 killed in fighting in Uganda's capital between government forces and loyalists of a traditional kingdom, police said Sunday.
CNN: Israel pilot, son of space shuttle Columbia crewman, dies in crash
An Israel air force pilot, the son of an astronaut who died aboard the space shuttle Columbia in 2003, was killed Sunday in an F-16 fighter jet crash, Israel Defense Forces said in a statement.
CNN: Israeli PM heads to Egypt for talks on peace process
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he will fly to Egypt Sunday to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian peace process with President Hosni Mubarak.
CNN: Thousands mourn Cuban revolutionary
Thousands gathered in the Cuban capital on Sunday to pay their respects to one of Cuba's few remaining original revolutionaries, Juan Almeida, who according to state media died of a heart attack Friday evening.
CNN: EU: Sanctions against Zimbabwe to remain
The European Union will not lift sanctions on Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and his allies until the country improves its human rights record and moves ahead on a power-sharing plan, an EU official said Sunday.
CNN: Indian teen tossed from train loses leg
Doctors had to amputate the leg of a 13-year-old snack vendor who was thrown off a moving train after he reportedly did not have money to bribe a guard, authorities said Sunday.
CNN: Britain denies deal with Libya over slain London cop
The British government has not dropped the case of a British police officer who was shot dead outside the Libyan embassy in London 25 years ago, the Foreign Office insisted Sunday.
New York Times: West Bank Settlers Dig In, but Resolve May Have a Limit
Of the hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers in the West Bank, those who live in unauthorized hilltop outposts like this one, a hardscrabble unpaved collection of 20 trailers, are considered the most dangerous.
Washington Post: In Kandahar, a Taliban on the Rise
The letter, neatly folded and placed under the front door, was addressed to Nisar Ahmad's father, a gray-bearded schoolteacher who could not have been prouder that his son had graduated from Kandahar University and had secured a well-paying job as a field assistant here for the U.N. Development Program.
Wall Street Journal: Web Censoring Widens Across Southeast Asia
Attempts to censor the Internet are spreading to Southeast Asia as governments turn to coercion and intimidation to rein in online criticism.
Wall Street Journal: Epidemic Exposes Hospital Flaws
The children's hospital in San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina, handled lots of tough cases during a recent swine-flu outbreak, but none more wrenching than the sudden deaths of two of its own nurses in July.
Christian Science Monitor: China's auto industry shifts into high gear
As General Motors emerged from bankruptcy and launched the new LaCrosse under its surviving Buick brand this summer, the car showcased a unique feature: an interior that was entirely designed in China.
BBC: Chavez in $2bn Russian arms deal
Russia has agreed to lend Venezuela over $2bn (£1.2bn) to buy weapons, President Hugo Chavez has said.
For the latest business news: www.CNNMoney.com.
CNNMoney: Big week ahead on Wall Street
Reports of the stock rally's demise have been greatly exaggerated, with September so far managing to eschew a much-predicted selloff. A torrent of economic news this week could turn the tide.
CNNMoney: Fixing the financial rules: Slow going
Just a month after taking office, President Obama asked Congress to move fast to reform the "outdated" system of financial oversight and install "tough, new common-sense rules of the road" for Wall Street.
To watch the latest interviews and reporting: http://www.cnn.com/video.
CNN: Cantor gets 'The Last Word'
Rep. Eric Cantor, the House Minority Whip, speaks wtih CNN's John King about health care and Afghanistan.
Subscribe to the CNN=Politics DAILY podcast at http://www.cnn.com/politicalpodcast.
And now stay posted on the latest from the campaign trail by downloading the CNN=Politics SCREENSAVER at http://www.CNN.com/situationroom.
Filed under: Political Hot Topics
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PGA of Malta
www.pgamalta.com
golfpromalta@icloud.com
Royal Malta Golf Club
Aldo Moro Street
Marsa LQA 06
No. of Players: 557
No. of Courses: 1
The Professional Golfers Association of Malta was founded in 1997 – 7 years after the Confederation of Professional Golf was formed. The PGA of Malta is a Full Member of the Confederation of Professional Golf
The founding members were Mr Richard Davies as the first President, Mr Henning-Schulze-Doering, Vice-President, and the late Mr Alex Mangion as Secretary.
The PGA of Malta has been chaired by Mr Henning-Schulze-Doering since the year 2000 and is recognised by the Malta Golf Association as the professional body within Malta.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Falkirk, general view, showing Dollar Park and Dalderse Avenue. Oblique aerial photograph taken facing north-east. This image has been produced from a damaged print.
Campfield is the site of the position taken up by the Scots army under Sir William Wallace on the 22nd July 1298, where they were attacked by the English army under Edward I, who put them to flight. At intervals, portions of spears and battle-axes have been found in the field and round about. Groomes states that contemporary English gave the numbers of the army of Edward I as 7,500 mounted men-at-arms and 80,000 foot, with Wallace's army a third of that size.
The battle site is completely built over with practically no open ground.


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Software // Information Management
Thomas Claburn
Google Goes Offline With 'Gears'
Flanked by partners, Google offers new APIs and focuses on its plans to move further into Microsoft's desktop space.
At the San Jose Convention Center on Thursday, as Google Developer Day 2007 gets under way in the United States, Google engineering VP Jeff Huber plans to demonstrate how one of his company's online applications, Google Reader, can be used without an Internet connection.
"Ajax-based applications, browser-based applications, are great and have many, many wonderful properties," said Huber. "But we found that, every so often, people get on airplanes."
Google's recently disclosed purchase of browser security startup GreenBorder suddenly makes a lot more sense: Google is moving into Microsoft territory, the desktop.
Google Developer Day 2007 is taking place around the world in 10 different countries: Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
In conjunction with the commencement of Google Developer Day 2007 in Sydney, Australia, Google on Wednesday plans to announce Google Gears, a free, open-source multi-platform JavaScript application programming interface (API) that lets Web applications work offline.
"With Google Gears, we're tackling a key limitation of the browser in order to make it a stronger platform for deploying all types of applications and enabling a better user experience in the cloud," said Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, in a statement. "We believe strongly in the power of the community to stretch this new technology to the limits of what's possible and ultimately emerge with an open standard that benefits everyone."
Google hopes Gears will become the standard for adding offline capabilities -- data storage, application caching, and multithreading -- to online applications.
As part of Google's announcement, representatives of Adobe Software, Mozilla Corp., and Opera Software have expressed their support for Google Gears. Kevin Lynch, senior VP and chief software architect at Adobe, welcomed the addition of "a standard cross-platform, cross-browser local storage capability" and said that the Google Gears API would work with Apollo, Adobe's new rich Internet application development platform. Brendan Eich, CTO at Mozilla Corp., and Håkon Wium Lie, CTO of Opera Software, each expressed their appreciation of Gears as a way to extend the Web browser and make it more useful.
David Mitchell Smith, Web analyst for Gartner, characterized the announcement as particularly significant. "The idea of taking Web applications offline is big," he said. While Google Gears can be viewed as a competitive move against Microsoft, he said that's not the only valid frame of reference.
More broadly, Google Gears weakens the case for rich Internet applications. "Rich clients become less compelling the more the Web applications continue to grow," said Smith. "Ajax has certainly taken a bite out of the opportunities that RIA developers thought they had."
Huber acknowledges that the browser isn't necessarily the best platform for every application. "There will certainly be cases that make sense for separate clients," he said. "For example, we have Google Earth as a separate client. The makes sense because we need access to the 3-D accelerator and the machine. But in general, we'd like to make these applications basically as simple as using Google Search. We find more and more cases of these applications being very popular and making a lot of sense."
One reason for this is that many users have become impatient with the hassles of managing desktop applications, particularly during hardware upgrades. "I think the growth of the Internet has really reflected the difficulties people have running desktop software," said Chris DiBona, open source programs manager at Google.
Google's online word processing and spreadsheet applications, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, represent obvious candidates for offline use. "We're not launching those just yet," said Huber, who emphasized that Google Gears will be useful not just to Google but to anyone developing browser-based applications for the desktop or for mobile phones. "This is really the beginning of that process. This is the initial release to get it out to the world so lots more people can get their hands on it."
Cloud Connectivity -- Your Guide to the Network
Annual Global State of the WAN


Late December brought another unfortunate example of corporate budget cuts bringing the curtain down on an innovation team — this one at Turner Broadcasting, part of $30 billion media giant Time Warner. Turner, which operates cable channels like CNN, TBS, and Cartoon Network, had said earlier in the year that it would eliminate about 1,500 jobs, and it has also cancelled several shows.
Turner shut down a San Francisco emerging technology office that had opened in 2011, and had been overseen by VP of Emerging Technology Balaji Gopinath, right, and run by Sandy Khaund. The office launched and operated the media industry's first accelerator program for startups, Media Camp, which we covered in 2013. Through that program, Turner had made small investments in 27 startup companies working on media and entertainment-related concepts. Many of the startups worked with Turner divisions on pilot projects and demos.


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Tourists take photographs as a part of the refurbished ancient stadium in Athens, where the first modern Olympics were held in 1896, is floodlit in the Brazilian national colors on Thursday, Aug. 4, 2016. The event was held ahead of the Aug. 5-21 Games in Rio. The all-marble stadium was used in the 2004 Games in Athens for archery and the Marathon finish.
© AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis
The changing of the guards at the Syntagma. Even in the height of summer, the guards hold their posts in full uniform despite the heat of August.
© APE
Tourists visit the Areios Pagos hill with the Acropolis hill in the background in Athens, Greece, July 4, 2016.
Tourists take pictures in front of the Metropolitan Cathedral of Athens in the heart of the city, July 10, 2016.
© APE-MPE
Tourists walk along the street shading themselves from the midday sun.
© Eurokinissi
Greece IsAthensDiscoverPresent
The Tourists in Athens at the Height of Summer
When August hits, tourists have the city to themselves.
Omaira Gill | August 12th, 2016
It's a strange scene for anyone visiting Athens in August as the city seems eerily quiet. The kiosks close, the roads empty and the city slows to a much more leisurely pace. As the locals abandon the city for their own vacations, visitors will find they have the city to enjoy before the pace of Athenian life picks up once more in September.
J for Juice Bars: Veggies, Fruits & Greek Herbs
Rehydrate and get an energy boost simultaneously at one of...


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In short, the task of the KDE quality team is to detect the loose ends in an application, and try to tie them together. The team objectives are similar of those of a project manager in a commercial organization. The main challenge of the team member is to interact with different areas of the application development, as there is much to learn.
But that does not mean you have to know all these areas: you can focus in one specific point of the application, like answering users questions, writing articles, documentation, creating artwork, whatever you want! Just find a lacking area and start working! After you feel you have the time and will to try something new, come back here to check the information available for that specific task. This guide's job is to organize all practical information to help you.
There is also a version of this guide at the KDE Wiki Site (wiki.kdenews.org), but it is not updated anymore. If you discover errors or if you know how to make this guide better, feel free to modify the KDE repository (if you have a SVN account), or e-mail the quality.kde.org Webmaster with your changes.
Writing documentation is a great way to start helping your application and the KDE project. If you decide to help out, your words will be translated to all languages covered by the KDE translations teams, and you will be helping thousands (millions?) to understand better their desktop and applications. Anyone with reasonable English skills and good knowledge of an application can help.
Modifying the documentation of an application involves: having your local KDE sources working folder, locating the files you want to work with, opening them, adding your improvements and sending the projects your modifications. To quickly learn how to do this, please check the Why Build and Maintain a KDE SVN Working Folder? guide.
Documenting an application involves help documents and context help. Context help is the quick pop up containing a short explanation you get when using the context help hotkey (usually Shift+F1) and clicking on a widget. This help is limited to the objective function of that widget, but it may be exactly what the user was needing to know, thus avoiding the need to open the full help system.
Context help is inseparable from the dialogs and widgets, as they are the target of the context help. In fact, in order to write context help, you have to touch programming or programming tools. Indeed, the context help is a property of widgets. In object oriented programming, a property can have different values, and behave differently depending on the value. In Qt/KDE programming, the name of the property is "whatsthis", and its value is the text the context help is going to display.
Fortunately, this task is usually not very difficult, as there are good tools to deal with user interface design, and better, you will use the knowledge acquired here later when dealing with user interface in general. Using the Qt framework (Qt is the base of KDE technology), it is possible to separate code and user interface. You have two basic cases here: the user interface is written with the general code of application (usually .cpp files) or in Qt Designer files (.ui files: it is a XML document). The second case is the best to start with, as it is simpler to work with. If you don't have Qt Designer installed, you can do so by installing the devel package of Qt from your distribution or the Qt Designer package (if your distribution has more fine grained packages).
The KDE help system is based on the docbook format. This format and related tools make it easier to translate and to maintain the documentation for the whole project. The format was specifically designed by the OASIS group with technical documents in mind, and it is a XML based specification. The documentation for each module can be found in the doc folder.
Writing the documents in docbook format is highly recommended. But if you want, you can start improving the documentation now, and learn the docbook format later. but if you do so, please use text only format (ASCII). This way it will be easier for the documenters to transform it to docbook later.
Do not start from scratch if documentation for your application exist: try to improve it. Explain all commands, the main window organization, in sum, all aspects of the interface. A more complete list of what to write about is in the Questions You Should Answer When You Document KDE page, from the KDE Documentation Team Website.
Try to be user friendly, and try to write to the public of your application. Don't forget to proof your text for American English. You can find these tips and consistency rules in The KDE Style Guide. It is short, simple and obligatory. Its purpose is to maintain a uniform level of quality in the documentation.
For writing using the docbook format, the recommended place to start is the The Crash Course to Docbook. It will give you the basic knowledge to start. For more KDE specific stuff, please refer to The KDE Markup Guide to write your first document.
To help you in this process, you can use many tools. Kate is recommended for writing XML documents, and it is specially useful if you install the XML plug-in from the kdeaddons module. Don't forget to enable it after installing, by opening Kate, clicking the Settings menu, and the in the Configure Kate... menu item. Click the application/plugins icon inside the left side tree view, and check the Kate XML Completion and Kate XML Validation boxes. Now you will be able to see the XML menu when using Kate. If you are editing a docbook document, click the XML menu, then assign meta DTD and selecting the KDE docbook DTD, and you will transform Kate in a powerful docbook editor.
User interface is a very wide subject, and very subjective too, as something obvious to someone is absurd to others and vice versa. Therefore, don't assume, argue clearly, stating your logical steps. Your main tool discussing it are objective reasoning and good sense.
It is easy to perform a quick user interface analysis, but it is hard to convince people to change the interface. A good, convincing analysis can gain much if it incorporates information from the KDE guidelines, competing program and operational system analysis, general design principles found in many books, user testing or individual (anecdotal) feedback. It is a volunteer project, and even if everybody agree with you, someone has to implement it. The good part is that given the Qt/KDE Framework, there are some things even a non developer can implement.
You don't need to read the documents listed here to perform simple tasks, like verifying shortcuts' coherence with other KDE programs, making simple logical analysis or presenting anecdotal usability feedback and opinions. More knowledge is required to perform a more profound study, but you will find all the information needed easily.
The basic KDE documents on usability are KDE User Interface Guidelines (design standards) and KDE User Interface Guidelines (design principles). The first is a comprehensive collection of standards for KDE applications, or in other words, down to earth conventions and rules for immediate use. The second is a general set of useful principles for designing user interface, and a good place to start studying.
KDE User Interface Guidelines (design standards) conformance: It sets standards for the maximum dialog size, exiting applications and closing documents, capitalization rules, among others. It is really a very good to start reviewing the user interface, as it covers all mains aspects of common applications: dialogs, menus, toolbars, shortcuts and accelerators, drag and drop, the status bar, etc... All KDE application should at least follow these standards, and below we assume they do.
Shortcut keys coherency and accessibility: to reduce the learning time required for an application, shortcut keys should, first, follow as closely as possible the scheme already used by other KDE applications, and second, follow the scheme used by similar applications. One good example is making Konqueror use the same basics hotkeys as Mozilla or Internet Explorer. If you don't agree with a shortcut used in widely in KDE, don't make your application different, try to persuade other people to change to your approach instead. Another good target is to minimize the use of more than two keys at the same time for the most important functions, as handicapped people may have difficulties accessing commands with tree or more keys at the same time. Verify if a commonly used action lack a shortcut, and do some research on what key should be used for it: consistency is the main priority, look what other KDE or similar applications do.
Dialogs review: The basic rules are the user should not be required to read about things unrelated to his current task or decide about things he does not want to. He should get things done easily, fast and with minimum data entry. Worthy points to review are if the dialogs are clear, if the widgets are displayed in a logical sequence, avoiding unnecessary information, if the information is presented in relevance order, if related options are grouped together, either in a simple dialog or a more complex multi-tab dialog. You can use the KDE User Interface Guidelines (design principles) as a guide, checking if its principles are being followed. The Configuration dialogs are constantly being redesigned, because new options are constantly being added and obsolete ones removed, making them obvious targets for review. Examples of improvements are the Panel Configuration Dialog Redesign or the Clock Applet Configuration Dialog.
You have a powerful tool to help you improving the dialogs: the Qt Designer. Using the Qt framework, you have two basic option to write dialogs: a text editor, as writing the general code of application (usually .cpp files) or the Qt Designer(.ui files). If the dialog you are reviewing was developed using the Qt Designer, you may redesign it yourself, even if you have little knowledge of programming. Search for all .ui files among the source files of your application. Open them (you can use the faster ui file viewer) to see if it is the desired dialog. If you cannot find the dialog you are analyzing, it may be because it is hand coded or a shared dialog from KDE libraries (module kdelibs from KDE CVS).
It is easy to perform a usability test with other users, and it may result in major improvements in your application. Select the most important tasks to perform with your application and find some friends to perform them. The people you select should fit the profile of the user the application targets, so make a small questionnaire about people's background. More information and tips on how to perform an usability test can be found in the short and useful Infodesign usability testing page (also in PDF format). Employ a chronometer to record the time taken to perform each task and take note of all pitfalls found. Tabulate the data and try to extract conclusions and recommendations. There is invaluable insight and information to be obtained in this kind of test. An example of field test with KDE is the Relevantive Report on KDE usability.
Many bug reports are filed daily, especially after releases. There are too many to be handled by the developers, so the amount of open reports increases over time. Additionally old bug reports have to be revisited regularly to see if they still apply to the current version. Reviewing the bugs database also give you insight about the most needed features and most pernicious bugs, allowing you to point them, and the developers to actually fix bugs or spend time to add new features to KDE, instead of managing bugs.
To start, open an account on bugs.kde.org if you don't have one. The database records not only the bugs and wishes status, but also related discussions, screenshots, patches, etc.. turning it to a very complete source of information. Please try the following pages at bugs.kde.org, to get used to KDE bugzilla capabilities. The KBugBugster is also useful, but less flexible.
* Bug status (UNCONFIRMED, NEW, ASSIGNED, REOPENED, RESOLVED, VERIFIED and CLOSED). (NOTE: Because KDE is missing a team which double checks that bugs are really fixed, the VERIFIED and CLOSED states are not used).
* Resolution (FIXED, INVALID, WONTFIX, LATER, REMIND, DUPLICATE, WORKSFORME).
* Severity (WISH, LOW, HIGH CRITICAL).
At the beginning, you will only be able to comment on bug reports which are not your own. Only after acquiring more knowledge on the application and on KDE Bugzilla system, you may ask for rights to confirm bug reports and close non verifiable ones.
You need a current KDE installation in order to be able to test if a bug is still uptodate. This means you should either test with 'trunk', that is the latest development-version of KDE, or the latest branch of KDE. For KDE 3 this is KDE 3.5. Then, you can confirm them, or close if not verifiable. Please refer to the Maintaining your own updated KDE version guide for more information on how to keep an update version of KDE.
The main tool for bug triage is knowledge of your application. You will learn that you don't need to be a developer to have a good understanding of it: reading bug reports and comments about them, writing documentation or working with the application's user interface will do the trick.
You should always start by stating your opinion in the bug reports and letting the developers take the appropriate action. If you feel you are ready to manage bugs effectively, know well the application and have a bit experience with bugzilla, it is time to ask for permissions. The Quality Team mailinglist, the KDE system administrator, or the mailinglist of the application you are working with, are the right places to ask for it. The developers will probably be happy to have someone working with them, and in the end of the day it is your own reputation as a good contributor that is in the line, as developers will still watch what you are doing. Some of the task below require these permissions.
* Believe the reporter: if you cannot reproduce a new bug, first ask for more context information, then think about closing it or asking to close it.
* The bug may be triggered by a combination of factors, or the bug may be fixed in the main branch, but not in the stable branch (if so, ask in the bug report for a backport. If it is not doable, the developers will say so).
* Add any additional information you can give, e.g. backtrace, additional observations, how to (better) reproduce the faulty behavior or simply add with which day's version the bug still appears.
* If you can reproduce an UNCONFIRMED bug, please write that in the bugreport and change its status to NEW.
* If a program hangs, you can "kill -SIGSEGV Processid" the process to get a backtrace.
* Check if the report is filed into the correct product and component category too. KDE is a very modular, and massively reuse code, and sometimes is hard even for the developers to detect in which component the bug is, so be careful. If the report is not already assigned to some other developer than the current component owner, make sure to select the "Reassign bug to owner of selected component" when moving a report. If a report is filed into a category where there is no single maintainer/active developer and you know which developer is responsible or works on the code (a look into the source or reading kde-cvs mailing list can help), you may assign a bug report to him/her directly.
* Check if a report describes an error already described in another closed or open report: Resolve it as DUPLICATE with reference to the prior report.
* Check if the same report was submitted more than one time. Please close the identical bug (the one with the highest number) as INVALID and not as DUPLICATE because otherwise they show up wrongly in the most frequently reported bugs statistics.
* Add "(regression)" to the title if the page was correctly rendered in a previous stable release.
* It's a good idea to put the site into the title where an error was encountered to ease duplicate spotting.
* A parallel installation of a Gecko-based browser and Opera can give you an idea how a web page probably should look like.
* Try to generate a stripped down testcase of a faulty rendered webpage. Add "(testcase)" to the title if a testcase is attached to the bug report.
* If a webpage doesn't exist any longer or was obviously rewritten and there was no testcase provided, close the report as WONTFIX.
* If the reporter or a comment mentions that a page works fine in Safari, it can help the developers to note that in the title too.
Check if the severity is appropriate, but if you don't agree, state so in the bugreport. Let the maintainer change the severity, as it is used by them to remind to fix crucial issues.
Check if the title contains a good summary, e.g. feature requests titled "Feature wanted" don't help when glancing over the report list. If a patch is provided add "(patch)" to the title.
Note: Don't use the "Change Several Bugs at Once" feature for moving reports. There is a bug in Bugzilla which confirms every reports which gets moved.
Even if you have some programming experience, diving into the KDE project can be a bit daunting at first. It is a very vast project and there are many things that you will have to learn before you can really become productive as a developer. And it may take some time too.
C++ is the programming language for KDE. If you don't know the language of if your exposure to C++ has been limited, you should learn it. There are many books on the market that can help you and you will find many on-line tutorials that will teach you the C++ essentials. Get hold of Bruce Eckels Thinking in C++ on the web. It is excellent and it is free.
Using KDevelop as your IDE is strongly recommended, so make your life easy and use KDevelop to help you adapt to Qt and KDE. You will be learning to use KDevelop in parallel with exploring C++, Qt and KDE. Make sure that you have KDevelop 3.0 installed and go to www.kdevelop.org. There is plenty of information there. But start with the KDevelop 3.x tutorials.
The first tutorial from Trolltech is fun and it will teach you a lot about Qt. Try to make it work using KDevelop and make the changes necessary to turn it into a real KDE project. (You could try to get rid of some of the on screen widgets and replace them by menu options.) Then you can work on the second tutorial and try to turn that into a real KDE application too.
If you are willing to contribute code to the KDE project, it is important to know its policies, understand the role of the application maintainers and the release schedule freezes. You will be working inside project driven by volunteer work, where the doer usually decides the best implementation. The KDE Development Policies page lists the rules to be followed by KDE contributors. There are Commit policies, licencing policies, security policies, and library documentation policies. If you have any comments or doubts about these policies, please direct them to the kde policies mailing list.
Go to bugs.kde.org, register and use the querytool to find the open bugs for your favorite application. Find an annoying bug and start hacking. Be sure to work on a recent version of the application? You can check very quickly if that part of the code is still up to date with webcvs. This is the right moment to build an unstable-version, either from SVN or from a daily snapshot. Check the Junior Jobs for a list of tasks related to open bugs or wishes that are marked for newbie developers. These tasks are usually a great way to start, as the developers or maintainers are explicitly telling you that you are welcome to fix the bug or implement the wish, and at the same time, the task should not be too complex.
After all of this you will probably be very close to making your first contribution. So if you have found a way to solve a bug, or to advance your project in some other way, adapt the code, post your patch, cross your fingers and hope that it will get accepted.
If you have doubts about helping out KDE, you are welcome to post them in the kde-quality mailing list. To support new contributors is the main goal of the project, so feel free to ask anything related to start helping KDE. For more technical programming doubts, use the application development mailing list, or in its absence, the the kde-devel mailing list.
And don't forget that after reading this you feel that it may be too much and too complicated for you, that there are other ways in which you can help. Visit the KDE Quality Team to find out what else you can do.
An open source product is a result of voluntary work, and the key to its success is the ability to attract new volunteers. Widespread use means usually more probability of attracting prospect contributors, developers, documenters, translators, individuals or part of a corporation or government into contributing. To promote your application, you can write an submit to news sites articles or guides showing interesting features or tips, write HOWTOS (a small guide for explaining how to perform a specific task), submit previews of future features available in the SVN version.
But even if your application is extensively deployed, this does not automatically means that you will attract people who test beta software and file bug reports, and eventually, people who could join the developers, the quality teams, the translators or the documenters. The first step is trying to be newbie friendly, and to educate newcomers. For instance, directing users in mailing lists to the right sources of information, in a friendly manner is a step in this direction. Lists are potential sources of new contributors, and building a strong community means teaching them they can act to improve the software they use.
Linux is growing into mainstream acceptance. This is both an opportunity and a challenge.
The challenge is to communicate with more and more users who have a different background. They are used to pay for software and expect the software house to do all the work and complain when something is wrong. Many of them will be less than helpful, and simply won't understand the restrictions of open source development, but this is a natural initial behavior.
The opportunity is to use the new flux of people to improve KDE, in any form. Also, users sometimes bring valuable feedback in confuse or improper way. Further dialog with the user can clear the issue, become a new bug or wish report or add valuable comments to existing bug and wish reports, turning the rant into useful information. Obviously, the best way to do it is to instruct the user to fill the report himself. Filling a bug is the first step for a kde contributor, a very valuable step. Every new user for bugs.kde.org (KDE bugs and wishes database) is a small victory, as the user started to understand what free software is about.
The main channel of communication with users are the user mailing list for your application, or in the absence of one, The KDE general users mailing list, or The KDE linux mailing list. Subscribing to these mailing lists is recommended. Other sources of user feedback are The KDE forum and The KDE wiki site. These channels are also a good place to spot potential contributors to KDE. Point them this guide and the KDE Quality Team mailing list if they are interested.
Linux is still in his infancy in terms of desktop deployment. Most people probably never tried your application, so it is important to promote it, in order to compete in market. Promotion is fundamental, as it not only increases the probability that your product is considered as a valid option, but it helps avoiding dangerous pre-concepts and myths.
One of the best ways to promote your application is to submit articles to news sites. The first and obvious choice is The KDE News Site (The Dot), but there are others sites where you can send articles. It is even useful to submit the article first to a news site and the submit a link in The Dot, as they give more importance to exclusive material. Your article can be a tutorial or walktrough (explaining how to perform certain tasks, better yet if in a graphical way), a preview (show features of an upcoming release), a test (user interface test, a benchmark, etc...) or a review. Present detailed information and screenshots, and compare similar software if applicable. There is always something to write about.
You can send articles or news (links). Articles are original material you wrote, and news are links to stories you consider good publicity for your application or KDE.
Sometimes you or other members of the KDE Quality Team will need help to do something for the first time, or simply would like some peer review before proposing a change, posting an article, HOWTO or web page or writing a new doc. The idea is to help each other as we go, as nobody is a specialist in all areas, and there is a wide range of actions for the KDE Quality Team. So if you have any doubt, want to post a draft and receive feedback, the main tool is the KDE Quality Team mailing list.
One example of this interaction is this guide. This guide was originally written by Carlos Woelz, but the idea is to update it frequently with experiences and tips from the Quality Team members. A copy of this guide will always be available at the KDE wiki site for modification, and the website will be synced with wiki in regular intervals. Your experience is important, please correct any mistakes you find and add additional tips and information as you go.
One of the goals of this project is to provide step by step guides for new contributors. If you document your steps as you perform tasks not covered yet, you can easily add a new one.
This page was last modified on 22 May 2012, at 09:42.	Content is available under Creative Commons License SA 4.0 unless otherwise noted.


I've been a busy bugger, lately. Between work, blogging, family things, and some sad news in our church community, I've been pretty busy. However there are a lot of exciting things happening that I'm so excited to share with you!
We're almost done decorating our apartment! It's been taking what seems like, forever, because there's so much of his stuff and my stuff to be organized. We're realizing that there's a ton of things we need to get rid of and give away to try to make it a livable enough space for both of our things.
I love plants, but cannot seem to properly take care of real ones for the life of me! Therefore, I purchased some faux plants to go with my real ones, so that way I'll have pretty succulents and greenery to stick around all year 'round.
I still haven't officially changed my name over, but hoping to do so sooner than later!
Our pastor passed away exactly two months after halmoni (grandmother in Korean). It's been a rough few months as we were close to both, but we're hanging in there by the grace of God and thankful for our families and our church family.
As I mentioned in a previous post, while I do occasionally use stock images from certain sites, I am hoping to eventually completely transition into using all of my photos – therefore stepping up my game in the area of stock photography. I've been working on my stock photography and flat-lay photography, lately in hopes of growing in this area. If you have any tips or resources to share, I'd love to hear it!
I shared my first recipe post on the blog, recently. While I'm not a chef in any sense of the word and my presentation could use a bit of work, I was so excited to share this cold brew recipe that I created on my own with all of you.
I stopped looking at Google Analytics and it's honestly one of the healthiest things I could've done for my blog. Feel free to read it to find out why!
Planning on traveling soon? Here some tips for saving money and stress while planning a trip!
I attempted to make Natalie's Spiced Cold Brew recipe and it's absolutely amazing! If you loved spiced lattes, you'll love this!
I've been considering minimalism a lot, lately, and after reading this post I've felt so convicted in the area of spending. If I'm not careful, I will end up spending just to avoid dealing with grief or to distract myself under the guise of "treat yo'self." If you're anything like me, I would definitely recommend you check out this post from Alannah!
My husband and I have been going between reading devotionals together and reading the bible from the beginning with each other, which has been nice. I would recommend reading the bible from the beginning again, because regardless of how many times I read Genesis, I learn something new each time I read it about Christ or something I didn't see before.
@lacolombecoffee has a coffee latte thats brewed like beer, so it has a similar consistency and froth on top. Non-alcoholic deliciousness! I think I found my new favorite coffee drink.
I'm growing an appreciation for slow, weekend mornings and quiet evenings.
What have you been up to lately? I'd love to hear about it!


Nothing significant happened. I didn't get the job of my dreams or win the lottery or find a twenty on the sidewalk.
It snowed last night. The first real snow of the season and the whole way to school, the kids threw snow in the air like it was the first time they had ever seen it. They were full of joy. What an amazing start to the day.
The rest of my day was busy. It was the first day of Chanukah and I still had to get the last of the gifts and wrap everything and buy the potatoes for the latkes. I ran around like a chicken with my head chopped off. Usually, a day this busy is a recipe for exhaustion and crank. Not today though.
I got the kids early. My husband came home early. The gifts were wrapped and the kids and I made latkes together. Then we sat down to a family dinner and talked about our days. We lit candles together and then opened gifts. Each child got three; a book, something I thought they'd love, and PJs/bathrobe. Nothing grand. No tickets to Disney or a puppy. But, one after another, the kids opened gifts and exuded joy and appreciation, said that gift was the best gift ever. My son actually said "I need to leave the room for a minute, mommy," after he opened his giant box of Lego. He left the room and screeched with glee.
They both said it was the best Chanukah ever and that they were the best gifts ever.
To say I like it would be the understatement of the year.
Half an hour after bedtime, I heard my 6.5-year-old in the bathroom. I went upstairs to find my daughter was in her new narwhal one-piece sleeper, lying by her door reading her new book by the hallway light. It was hard to be mad that she was up past her bedtime. I told her to go to sleep and she asked for a hug. I was on my knees and gave her a hug. My son came out from the bathroom and joined in the hug. There I was, in the hallway of the home I helped create, being embraced by the children I carried and cried over, telling me I'm a great mom and they love me.
I spend most days convinced I'm screwing it all up. My daughter can be sassy and my son, overdramatic (to say the least). They're not great eaters. I yell too much.
But they're good, loving, appreciative kids. They are kind and empathic. They're happy.
I'm not perfect. I'm far from it. But every day, my biggest goal is to be good enough. I think that's what made today so amazing.
Today, my kids, through their appreciation, through their joy, through their hugs and their words, let me know that I'm not totally screwing this parenting thing up. I'm a little bit of all right. And my husband and I are one hell of a team.
It's amazing how a simple series events can combine to be more meaningful than anyone could imagine. It wasn't an extraordinary day. Nothing significant happened. But in its simplicity, in its simple joys, it became an illustration of everything this spent mom needed to know; I'm doing alright.
It's good to know the, occasionally, you actually get what you serserve.


Had a little break from blogging with all the stuff that happened on Twitter after my last post, so here is a fox taken Wednesday evening after the sun had gone down below the landscape. This meant it was taken at ISO 3200. Not much detail when you zoom in, but hopefully looks fine for web use.


text:
The Great Pint-Pulling Olympiad
A Mostly Irish Farce
by Roger Boylan
"Boylan's narrative resembles Joyce at his comically prolix best, with a similar appetite for vernacular nuance and pop allusion." –The Village Voice
Imprint Grove Paperback
Page Count 464
Publication Date October 20, 2003
ISBN-13 978-0-8021-4032-6
Dimensions 5.5" x 8.25"
US List Price $16.00
Roger Boylan's roots are in Ireland and the New York area. After attending the University of Ulster and the University of Edinburgh, he worked as a translator, computer technician, teacher, and book editor. His novel Killoyle was published in 1997. His stories and articles have appeared in various journals, including The Literary Review, The Recorder, and The Austin American-Statesman, and he is a regular contributor to Boston Review's New Fiction Forum. He lives in Texas with his wife and daughter.
Read More About Roger Boylan
Roger Boylan's Website
The hilarious follow-up to "one of the most impressive novels written by an American in recent years." (Harvey Pekar, The Austin Chronicle)
Roger Boylan's first novel, Killoyle, established him as a brilliant successor to such Irish masters as Joyce, Beckett, and J. P. Donleavy. Now his new farce follows the hapless inhabitants of Killoyle, Ireland, through the frenetic week of the Pint-Pulling Olympiad.
After crashing into a cross-dressing church sexton, local lush Mick McCreek loses his job as a car tester and enlists lawyer Tom O'Mallet to represent him in a wrongful termination suit. But O'mallet and the fussy librarian who hosts Mick's unemployment seminars are not who they seem: their real gig, it turns out, is selling missiles to a splinter group of the IRA, and they've decided to use Mick–and another client, the hapless waiter Anil Swain–as the dicey operation's clueless patsies. Can Anil's sexy do-gooder cousin Rashmi prevent an attack on the Pint-Pulling Olympiad before it is too late?
In the Irish comic tradition, The Great Pint-Pulling Olympiad is an invitation from a dazzling voice in American fiction to share a pint with one of the most fantastic casts of characters in recent memory. With a wink and a nudge, Boylan's pyrotechnic prose brings to life Ireland at its manic extremes, proving the author a dazzling and distinctive talent in American fiction.
"You really feel yourself pulling for a rollicking Irish tale like The Great Pint-Pulling Olympiad . . Boylan's satiric follow-up to 1997's Killoyle offers countless moments of lowbrow, lyrical mirth on the order of Roddy Doyle, Canadian satirist Robertson Davies or stories like Waking Ned Devine . . . Olympiad's characters, having 'stumbled a bit on the winding highway of life," leap off the page. You'll really know their tendencies, fears and tastes . . . Boylan's account of life in modern Ireland rings authentic, and his gifted ear (and pen) are self-evident." –Austin American-Statesman
"Boylan is great with dialogue and tone, and has a keen understanding of how Irish people are–or aren't–finding the delicate balance between their old customs and their (relatively) new place as a, for lack of a better term, buzz country. . . [he] knows the territory of the changing Ireland in his bones, and he's adept at weaving it into his fiction." –Dave Ferman, The Fort Worth Star-Telegram
"Very highly recommended reading, The Great Pint-Pulling Olympiad: A Mostly Irish Farce is a rollicking roller coaster of a novel by Roger Boylan and set in the days leading up to the Pint-Pulling Olympiad in the town of Killoyle, Ireland. A cross-dressing church sexton, a drunk who loses his job as a car tester and sues for wrongful termination, unemployment seminar hosts who sell missiles to the IRA on the side, and other memorable characters populate the pages of this engaging and topsy turvy tale with surprises hiding around every corner." –The Midwest Book Review
"Boylan both lampoons and pays homage to absurdist literary inspirations, including James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, and Monty Python's Flying Circus. . . . The book sparkles because of the author's antic wordplay, especially the running commentary addressed to the reader in a hilarious sequence of lengthy footnotes." –The Library Journal
"A grand Irish entertainment: Roger Boylan explores life's absurdities with incomparably extravagant wordplay." –The Financial Times
"An extraordinary sequence of episodes . . . highly entertaining . . . Boylan has produced a novel which reads like a mixture of [Flann O'Brien] and Tom Sharpe, with the odd Joycean aside added for good measure." –The Irish Emigrant
"Raise a glass to this Laurence Sterne of our day." –BuchKritiken/Ultimo (Germany)
Praise for Killoyle
"Killoyle ranks among the most impressive novels written by an American in recent years." –Harvey Pekar, Austin Chronicle and author of American Splendor
"Comparisons to James Joyce will come inevitably. . . . Boylan proves himself capable of spinning a fabulous yarn, as colorful as it is tangled." –The Minnesota Daily
"Boylan's first and very comic novel . . . is laughable and poignant. . . . His lengthy, rollicking sentences are stories unto themselves." –The Austin American-Statesman
"Pleasure awaits in this hilarious Irish farce . . . that captures the absurdly comic spirits of Joyce and Beckett. . . . Highly recommended." –Library Journal
keep reading Close this section
Miming the petulant moue of, say, a Roman sensualist of the post-Antonine era, or a Regency brat under the Younger Pitt, Michael T. "Mick" McCreek's face, that interesting preface to the rather ordinary rest of him, buried itself pillow-deep in a vain attempt to avoid the probing rays of the rising Irish sun, a weak sun at best but a game one, bedad, and not a sun to be shut out of the bedroom window of Flat 16A, Padre Pio Houses, by a mere flimsy curtain or so. Indeed, by shining persistently and directly onto your man's Romano-Regency face, it illumined in an unwelcome, glaring red glow the intricate Mississippi Delta network of his inner-eyelid veins.1 He grumbled. Slowly, sleep ebbed as sufficient time dragged itself along, with the lame determination of a hunchback2 in heat, to accommodate the twin phenomena, one tactile, the other aural, of: (1) warmer sunshine splashing onto Mick's gob and (2) a car outside starting up with hiccupping roars exacerbated by much boot-to-the-floor pedal-pumping followed by the gear-grinding diminuendo of exceedingly slow departure.
There goes that Indian dickhead (shouted the uninvited thought-announcer in Mick's brain) at the wheel of his effing old Escort that he should have sent to the junkyard long since, the stingy wee bastard, turning his lights off in the middle of the night and spewing clouds of burnt oil left right and centre and no bloody notion in the world of how to shift into first…!
With all this external din and internal mind palaver Mick was distracted, uneasy, a failed sleeper; in fact dangerously near wakefulness and getting closer all the time, what with one thing and another–his Indian neighbour's departure, the sun scorching his face, the new day's being Monday. It was a full sixty-second minute or more before the perfect (indeed only) solution wormed its way into his awakening brain: Turn over, son!
He obeyed, and was at once conscious of a coolness of visage counterbalanced by a rapidly warming spot on the nape of his neck where Old Sol, still staring through the halfhearted window curtain, now focused his gaze. Of course, it was the morning, and Mick did have a job, however ludicrous (very: assistant test driver for Jocelyn Motors);3 give him credit, though, he was a realist, by and large, and that morning he was, consequently, soon out of bed and well downstairs, in fact in the immaculately white kitchen itself, blearily scrutinizing the controls of his birthday coffeemaker, last year's (and no doubt last, as in lifelong) gift from Eileen, his ex, on the occasion of his fortieth.
"Nice of her," he mumbled. "But how typical, for God's sake, to give me something I don't know how to use."
The words Oh Eileen by the holy Christ I miss ya my sweet machree ah God so I do me own darlin" girl trembled unwailed in the air. He did miss the woman, too, especially her thigh and hip area and its oft-kneaded amplitudes, but not enough to call her up, or make (re-)overtures, not with her tendency to plunge into the warm bath of Monologue, or was it Soliloquy … God, was she a gabber, anyway, and getting worse with age.
He preferred to let things follow the zigzag route of their own unpredictability. The coffeemaker could wait its turn, or disappear entirely. And anyway My Three Buns, the place down the road, brewed up a matchless Arabica, or Colombian, or was it Brazilian–something hot, moist, and dark, anyway, like the inside thigh of an Andalusian whore, plus caffeine … Mick, mentally stirred (if also slightly shaken) at this thought,4 whistled shrilly the second theme of Mimi and Rodolfo's love duet from La Boh'me by G. Puccini as he sought and successfully deployed navy tie, sky-blue shirt, and crimson underhose (with white piping). There ensued a quick tussle with the belt and trews, a smooth scrape of the stubble and the cursory tremor of a comb in the hair–and presto! Mick McCreek reporting for duty, sir! Not that he ever so reported, or called anyone 'sir"; and of course the effing job was on the other side of town, and naturally his frigging car was in the shop, but what could you expect from a five-year-old Jocelyn GT with twelve valves to the competition's twenty-four?
No, it's the old Number Twelve bus or shank's mare, mister me man.
Well, anyway, first off was My Three Buns, the newly chic trucker's caff down on Blessed Martin de Porres Street limned sketchily in Mick's mind's eye, the eye that never lied but was frequently blurred, more like a bad TV broadcast than the likes of a West of Ireland shanachee's meanderings, My Three Buns in reality being far less congenial than fondly depicted on the bloodshot eyeball of Mick's mind. There it basked in such clich's as "grotty but solid working-class ambience" and 'down-to-earth unpretentious food." Truthfully, the place was a bit of a tip, and Devereux, the owner, was quite the rogue, a greedy sod anyway, boasting a ratlike and bewhiskered face above bulbous abdomen and thorax. His missus was no better, only cleaner-shaven, and with deeper cleavage in the chest area. They had kids, too, but that didn't bear thinking of… still, the fried bread was top-hole, and the eponymous buns, gooey as a bag of melted Mars Bars on the backseat of the family saloon in the summer sun: YUM!
And none, however well motivated, could come close to the bacon rinds, never mind your classic sunny side up with chips on the side …!
Especially those chips: salty, oily, limp: plain delicious!!!
After all, it doesn't have to be good for you to be good, does it?5
"Yum! Oh yum!"
Mick was ready, oh he was agog, old turn agurgle, satchel at hand, keys ajingle. He checked the gas above and below, adjusted his tie, and scampered delightedly into the dangerously random Great Outdoors, where it was blustery, rendering his tie a wind-sock, pointing due East. That way lay Wales, as usual, with England loitering beyond; here in Ireland's north-southeast it was a cracking fine day, what with a brisk wind that danced with the trees and lifted the leaves above the eaves. Not so bad for September the twentieth, when for all you knew it could plunge to five on the Celsius scale, the record for Killoyle City and environs, set a twelvemonth ago last September in the year of three governments.6
Thanks be to God, a mere twenty-four solid Christian degrees it was, this breezy September morn.
"Sure you'd be hard pressed to do better in the south of France, or the Aegean itself," blurted Mick, fatuously.
A quick step or so took him across Padre Pio Circus down Blessed Martin de Porres Street to the scaley shopfront behind which teemed My Three Buns–or rather, teemed not, for on that day of all blessed sunny days in the calendar there was a sign on the door. Mick, incredulous, peered, then peered closer.
"Closed," said the sign, and repeated itself identically throughout subsequent double- and triple-takes. Through the window an ugly mug hovered, glowered, glared, and vanished behind a hastily lowered blind.
"Go away," came a muffled shout.
Mick obeyed, dragging his feet, one more cosy plan up the spout. He dawdled not, for "work" (such as it was) was imminent, rendering breakfast urgent. He mentally perused the possibilities:
There was the Bay Window, with its pseuds from Killoyle Upper College and prats from elsewhere.
There was McSpackle's Cantina, on the Promenade, with its annoying Spanish decor.7
There was the Koh-I-Noor, curry shop of the gods, run (actually) by that Indian berk from downstairs with the dicey Escort, but the Koh was better reserved for late-night homeward-bound stopoffs for Vindaloo and a six of lager.
There was the snooty Balsa Room of the freshly renovated Spudorgan Vacation Inn, where a fiver might just get you a pot of coffee and a table away from the jakes (if you managed to find the good side of the freshly reappointed managing director,8 Milo Rogers, no easy task–and wasn't Milo a hard man when he was at home, oh Christ, he was that–or so they said, for Mick had never met the poet laureate of the Killoyle hotel business, but the man's reputation preceded (and followed) him like a gang of impecunious inebriates.9)
Finally, and more realistically, there was McShiny's. The American chain had opened a branch on King Idris Avenue (West), which, given time-and-motion considerations (Mick was first test driver of the day of the new Asphodel LSI, and that in thirty-five minutes) would be the likeliest candidate for brekkers.
And McShiny's it was. Blandly Americanesque in their good humour, the teens behind the counter somewhat oversold their product and the customer's pleasure in consuming it, their pseudo-conversation bookended with anodyne "how are you todays' and "have a good days' designed to provoke the matutinal temper of your average mick; and Mick was nothing if not that.
"I'll take the Shiny Sausage," he muttered. "And chips," he added, irritably.
"Will that be the Super Shiny Sausage with Super Shiny Fries?" inquired the adolescent, plunging Mick into an agony of indecision and despair.
"Oh, I don't know. How big is it? Oh, all right."
As he ate the Super Shiny Sausage–nearly a foot long and encased in a warm sticky bun apparently made of some kind of molten yet edible (just) plastic–across the linoleum his furtive gaze steadied its focus onto a pair of neat feminine legs, neatly crossed, attached to a felicitous lady whose glance was at once winsome and willing. Red-haired was she, and buxom, and greeny-blue of eye; and she purported to be perusing a copy of Glam.10
Now none of that, boyo, grumbled the once-uxorious censor in Mick's brain, where the spirit of Eileen still flitted free (as free as she was now in the bloody wynds and backways of Edinburgh…?); sod it, countered the opposition, voice of gruff maleness open to a pint and a quick fondle any time, mate, day or night. Nice piece, pursued that voice, offensively. To ward off panic, Mick turned his eyes to a copy of the Killoyle Clarion that lay abandoned on the next table.
"City Picked as Site of Olympics," confided the headlines.
"Cripes," exclaimed Mick.
Not the Olympics, as further perusal revealed, but the World Pint-Pulling Olympiad, no small event when you stopped to consider the attendance at your average boozer in any Irish town any day of the week, never mind during an event when the stout flowed like the waters of the East Killoyle River for five days running and free pints were handed out like trophies on Derby Day, with the grand prize a wee pub of one's own, location to be designated by the judges; ah a pub, thought Mick dreamily, like the Lusitania in Listowel, or Harvey's Bar in Bundoran, or McCracken's on the Diamond in Omagh …11
The lady with the legs went out, using those very legs to precise locomotive effect.
Mick sighed, riven by waves of nostalgia, lust, and acid reflux.
"Well, I drink Coke because my mum drinks Coke," explained a teenaged girl to another teenaged girl behind him. 'she says it has less carbonation than Pepsi."
"Cool," said her friend.
"Ah, Christ," said Mick.
He rose, dabbing his lips. His system reacted to the hasty ingestion of sausage grease plus chips with a gaseous detonation. The girls giggled.
"Beg pardon."
Making haste, ten minutes later he was at the Jocelyn works and behind the wheel of the world's first production-model Asphodel TTX. Pats Bewley, the testing supervisor, red-faced with impatience, was clutching his clipboard and emitting a faint hissing sound through his lower mandibles. As usual, Mick noted irritably, he was wearing a shirt with cross-hatching and a shite-brown tie misknotted entirely and only coming down to the middle of his chest. Mick hated Pats Bewley on general principles, because Bewley was a prat, but more specifically because he was a known nondrinker and Hearty Harry type of sanctimonious churchgoing hill-climbing Pioneer arsehole with a full complement of manly condescension and salutary anecdotes for the less-advantaged, i.e., drinkers, smokers, freethinkers, and all the plain people of Ireland.
"Ah, there you are, McCreek," said Bewley. "Another five minutes and I'd have given the drive to Driscoll. Always almost late, aren't you?"
"Kiss my arse."
"That's what I mean. That attitude. No manners to speak of, and what's that on your tie? Now, there's the car. Take her up to speed, but watch the brakes. New antilocks are always chancey lads, I don't have to tell you that. And watch the lean on corners."
Pats stood aside and placed a complacent checkmark on the checklist of his clipboard: 8:46; Tester McCreek at the wheel; all three liters and sixteen valves of the Asphodel LSI ready to throb; nine miles on the clock. The Asphodel was the first of a projected new generation of Jocelyns, uniting elements of the jeep, the claw-footed bathtub, and the family saloon, and powered as it was by a unique seven-cylinder engine developed exclusively at Jocelyn Motors. The inverted-bathtub-like bonnet displayed a scoopedout air intake like the entrance to a cave, and the roof wore a gnarled-steel crown of gleaming aluminium tubes. Thick manly or womanly tyres and shining alloy wheels squatting beneath bold wing flares hinted at the no-nonsense stance of a barge designed for high speeds and deep road-rutting.12 Also, chrome abounded, not least inside, where Mick already had a headache from the glare.
"Too much fuckin" chrome in here, Pats," he said. "I can't see."
"Get on wichya, McCreek," snapped Pats. "Put on yer shades, then. And mind the brakes."
Displaying a profile of haughty indifference to Bewley's nagging, Mick drove off and motored about stylishly for a while, imagining an audience of girls. Oh, the machine would make a less demanding man quite happy, he reckoned. Just the thing for the philistines who littered the world's computer shops and university science departments, the T-shirted, unkempt, TV- and video-obsessed imbeciles with their baseball caps and dirt bikes and bungee jumps, the miserable half-witted wee nerds …. Truth to tell, Mick, a lover of cars, nevertheless dreamed not of Asphodels, nor of any Jocelyn. A Merc was his motor, black, preferably, with silver paneling, and chrome-tipped dual exhausts, and one of those smooth German clutchless shifters.
"Ah, that'd be the man, all right."
Mick whistled in atonal counterpoint to the overture to G. Rossini's L "Italiana in Algeri rollicking away on Breakfast Classics 105.5 FM.13 The traffic was light at that time of day in most parts of town and almost nonexistent on the MacLiammoir Ring Road, from which vantage point there was a grand view of the sea. As a red light lingered, Mick stared at the view, one of the best things about living in this godforsaken shithole of a town (no Milan, you can bet yer bags). Whatever his preoccupations of the moment, he always gave the view from the MacLiammoir Road a glance of admiration, especially when there was a chance, as there was on extra-clear days, of spotting Wales on the far horizon of fact and fantasy, like Avalon, or Hybrassil–in fact, as he watched, a layer of mist peeled away and presto! Thar she blew, a thin layer of crust on the distant line of the sea. It was an inspiring sight: Cymru! The imagination, if so instructed, might even supply the distant sound of massed baritones lustily rendering 'men of Harlech" in the melancholy valleys of South Rhondda and Gwynedd … my oh my, ruminated Mick, not for the first time. So it was across this sea that Tristan sailed to his Isolde's Cornwall and did battle with stout King Mark; that bloody Cromwell came, in the wake of the even bloodier Vikings; that the Normans came, too, and conquered; that, some day long since, the original Celts had arrived from God knows where to rout the small dusky natives from the cosy comfort of their bogs; and it was over this selfsame sea that the former Mrs. Eileen McCreek, fed up with her quondam hubby's obstinacy of habit and innate lack of ambition, had, in the tradition of the modern Irish exile, sailed away on the midnight ferry from Dun Laoighaire, away from her green land, toward a greener love, to Edinburgh, city of Boswell and Burns and the whiskey distiller or beer salesman or whatever the blazes he was who had tempted her to sacrifice so much so soon….
"Ah, ya sod."
(It was a relief to be shut of her blathering, but. Talk about carping.)
The sun, as previously noted, was shining full force. The liquid silver sea and the chrome fittings inside the car formed a confluence of brilliance that had Mick, sunglasses or not, quite blinded by the time the horns started honking behind him like hungry geese. In his rearview an oddly distorted face behind the wheel of what appeared to be a 1970s-era Fiat convertible snarled silently.
"All right, all right. Jaysus."
Seeing little in front of his eyes but a flock of reddish-blue flying mice, Mick yielded to driver's instinct and coordinated clutch pedal, gearshift, and accelerator in your standard departure mode, following which forward progress was normal if slightly jerky (he made a mental note: too-long throws on the gearbox) for all of one and a half seconds–the interlude between normality and disaster, like the final pre-iceberg half-hour of the Titanic's voyage, or John Kennedy's last wave of the hand on Dealey Plaza, or the still moments just previous to the explosion of TWA Flight 800–when into Mick's life lumbered fate in the guise of: (1) sluggish brakes, per the warning issued by Pats Bewley; (2) Francis Feeley, apprentice bartender at Mad Molloy's Bar, embarking upon a last-minute, hare-brained dash across the street against the pedestrian light; (3) the sunlight ricocheting off the sea, the dashboard, divers chrome fittings, and straight into Mick's eyes.
There came a crump and a yell, coincident with reflexive mashing of the brakes. At the front there was a soft jolt, behind a bang. A man was down, and Mick had been rear-ended.
"Ignorant snail-eating foreign bastards," shrieked the driver of the aged rag-top behind, an epicene young man with large hands and nervous eyes and, it seemed blurrily to Mick, rouge, heavy lipstick, and eye shadow. "I'd take a crowbar to you French fuckers if I had one, so I would. Go back to Cannes, you garlic-eater. Allez vous-en, Monsieur Le Poof Fran"ais."
"Shite," said Mick.
Preliminary investigation revealed signs of life behind the closed lids of the supine form on the street. A garda arrived, soon followed by an ambulance.
"You'll be charged, you," said the policeman, who appeared to be acquainted with the injured man. 'mother of God, it's Frank. Frankie, lad, speak to me. Aye. Charged, so you'll be. So no wanderin" off. You stay right here, eh, Mr…. eh?"
"McCreek."
"Greek. It's a bad case, so it is. I'd not be surprised if poor wee Frankie was dead, God bless and save us."
"But he's not dead. Look, he's sitting up already."
"Are you the one who ploughed into me, then? You bastard, you damn near did for me, did you know that?"
"Not ailing in the slightest, to judge by the vigour of his vocabulary."
"Vigour me arse. You're a right bastard. I can't move me legs. Listen here you. If I'm paralyzed, I'll sue you for every penny you're worth. Ah, hello there. Is it yourself, Petey?"
"Just you lie back now, Frank. We'll see to it this fella's charged to the fullest extent of the law."
"Look, officer, this pal of yours jumped out in front of me after the light changed. And I couldn't see anything anyway, with the sun shining in my eyes."
"That's quite enough out of you. And he's no pal of mine, I'll have you know, so never mind them accusations. He's me brother-in-law, Mr. Greek."
"McCreek. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph."
Briefly, Mick found himself in a world of Kafkaesque disjointedness in which for no apparent reason he had become the scape-goat of public ire.
"Go back to Paris, you," screamed the rear-ender, who by this time had stepped out of his car into full sunlight which clearly illuminated the makeup that overlay his features: lavish bloodred lipstick; black eyeliner; more than a hint of blush on the cheek-bones … in another microscene stage-managed by the ghost of Franz K.,14 no one but Mick seemed to notice.
"Listen to that music he's got on," clamored the made-up man. "I'm telling you, I can spot "em every time."
"Now calm down there," said the guard. "We'd like you to come along and give a statement as well. And don't worry, this man's on me list."
"What list?" bawled Mick. "I've been tried and convicted before I've even had a chance to defend myself. As for this, this…"
"What was that. I'm not above administering a bit of physical restraint, I'll have you know, especially to recalcitrant wee spalpeens like yerself."
"Lay a finger on me and I'll have your fucking badge."
"Make way, now." An ambulanceman checked Mick's blood pressure and, alarmed, ordered him to the hospital. He also suggested an X ray.
"You never know, sir. The owld whiplash can muck you up."15
In the event, Mick was charged with 'reckless endangerment of the public welfare with a weapon the exact size and shape of a motor vehicle." A Breathalyser test revealed total sobriety, and after an hour or so he was released on his own recognizance, with a warning not to leave the limits of Co. Killoyle. He promptly declared his intention to seek legal counsel and have the onus of misdemeanour shifted to the persons of Francis Feeley, perambulating barman, and Cornelius Regan, rear-ending (as it turned out) church sexton.
Mick repeated this plan to Pats Bewley when Pats came to tow away the injured Asphodel, and Pats was quite candid in turn.
"Well, Mick, you're sacked."
"Aw, give us a break, Pats."
"Given you enough breaks, lad. And look at you. Always late, or almost. Nearly cheeky every time you open your mouth. And if you drank on the job you'd be the world's biggest absenteeist, I can feel it in my bones. There's always something you'd just be about to do. I can't put my finger on it, but it's there somewhere. You're like one of them Yanks that go over the edge and turn up at their old place of employment with guns blazing. And the dear knows the number of times you've almost wrecked your test vehicles."
"Aye, well, it's a hard world, lad."
Mick's blood pressure was still "a bit to mostly sky-high," they told him at the Mater Misericordiae Hospital, and although preliminary examination revealed nothing, he should, they said, take a day off and rest at home.
"Well, absolutely no problem there. My employer has seen to that."
Moreover, home was where Mick yearned to be, with the world suddenly turning on him the way it had. Home, and the locked front door, were the best guards against the infinite bothersomeness of things. Blinds down, too, and a freshly rinsed glass, and soothing murmur from Fran Leeson on the telly at that time of day: talk time on Talk Me Talk You (RTE Channel 4A). The subject was Societal Inebriative Dysfunction, or SID.
"Inebriated what? Oo's Sid?"
Mick only twigged to what they were on about when one of the lady guests held up an empty bottle of Jameson's and announced that she had once gone through two of them a day.
"And did your husband suspect?"
'suspect?" A tobacco-hoarsened wheeze of laughter like the air brakes of a coal lorry. 'didn't he start me on the bloody stuff? The bastard."
Reassured, Mick chuckled and turned to pour an additional glass of liquid comfort from his own bottle, not Jameson's as it happened but a fine smooth Paddy's, and with a few water crackers to hold things together down there by janey it was going down as smooth as buttermilk from the great dun cow of Connacht.
"Ah God," blubbered Mick. He then found himself dissolving into stuttering hysterics. Somehow the reflection in the TV screen, glimpsed during an all-black commercial for eau de cologne, of his own shirtless form, pale face, and general air of decrepitude, yet seated in (he recognized the association and its absurdity at the same time) the precise pose of Gertrude Stein in Picasso's Cubist portrait of that manly gal, brought home in a vivid and pictorial way the multifarious actual and potential nastinesses of his own situation, and life's abusive absurdities in general.
'shite. Bastards. Fuck you, Pats Bewley."16
He tipped another short one down his throat and gave himself up to random thoughts of despair.
Sacked!
Un-fucking-employed!!
On the Sosh!!!
He'd end up like his father, a jobless chancer with one foot on the barrail and the other in the grave, creator of his own legend and two martyrs: his wife, his son … and here Mick's lot in life was turning into the bit of a disgrace, as well, what with Eileen dumping him for a job in Scotland (and that job's gruff, manly Scots overseer, Sean bloody Connery in a suit and tie, och aye the noo) and himself being nearly broke anyway, the consequences of divorce leeching away the larger part of his puny savings and the rest siphoned off by his own natural disinclination to put anything aside, carpe diem, fay ce que voudras, hasn't the owld motor gone long enough without a fine set of alloys, and I always fancied one of those multi-CD changers, and Hanna's just got in a Kavanagh first edition … of course, even at the end of the line there were the soft nannying hands of Ireland's welfare state, of whose generosity toward her citizens Mick McCreek had taken advantage often enough in the past, starting without hesitation soon after graduating from TCD with a degree in classical architecture (from Vitruvius to Palladio, inclusive) that–like all college degrees bar those in the applied sciences–turned out to be quite useless except for purposes of adding a dash of spurious learning to barroom blather. Anyway, he'd used his money from the Sosh, plus a packet borrowed from home, to go to Italy to visit Elide, a girl he'd met on the windy heights of Howth Head, the both of them en route to the Abbey Tavern for good crack of a Saturday night (Christy Moore, De Danaan); and when Mick visited and, intending marriage, wooed his Elide in her noble hometown of Milan, he went out to Monza and saw Ferraris and Alfa Romeos being put through their paces and even drove a Dino (hers) at high speed along the cypress-lined highways of Lombardy and EmiliaRomagna from Milan's Piazza del Duomo straight down to rich, wine-redolent Parma and Bologna; and that was that. From then on he was hooked. Something of the same aesthetic-scientific appeal that had drawn him to buildings attracted him to cars, a union of the fabulous and the everyday, with a heavy dose of vanity, as in sartorial taste, also an Italian specialty. More importantly, he'd absorbed the neopagan half-adoring, half-cynical attitude Italians have not only to cars but to life in general. A young Irishman like Mick McCreek was a blank slate indeed, back in the early "70s when Ireland herself was only just ungumming her weary age-old eyes and taking in the new dawn of things… then il capo, Elide's father, also known behind his back as il duce, sussing out Mick's earnestness vis-"-vis his little girl, had one night over tortellini in brodo (washed down with a crisp Lambrusco17) proudly announced the existence of Commendatore Spadolini, an appointed future son-in-law then in the high command of the Squadra Volante, and with that, or shortly thereafter, in an atmosphere of peerless awkwardness and sweaty palms (his), Mick left, via Geneva; but in his dreams he visited the glorious peninsula yet, wandering across the geometrical shadows of De Chirico piazzas and driving that red Dino south along the cypress-lined highways of an Italianate heaven.
But most importantly, he'd also lost his virginity on that little jaunt (late night; the family casa in San Donato Milanese; her room, adorned with posters of the same rock stars who adorned the bedroom walls of Killoyle bungalows; dead silence bar the act itself and the distant ebb and flow of a televisual laughtrack in il Duce's parlour) which had forever, for one thing, ended Mick's blinkered Irish suspicion of the world and all its foreigners.18
Otherwise, he'd made a bags of the whole business, as he had the rest of his life, or so it seemed through the prism of the whiskey glass.
"Elide," he elided elliptically, quite langered–and it scarcely three p.m., for goodness' sake.
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Dakor Dham Temple- Holy Pilgrimage of Hindus at Gujrat
September 5, 2022 by admin0
Dakor Dham Temple History
Dakor Dham Story
Dakor Dham Temple Architecture
Where is the Dakor Dham
How to Reach Dakor Dham
Dakor Dham of Gujarat, one of the major pilgrimage sites of India, is known for the wonderful and exquisite form of Lord Shri Krishna. 30 km from Anand on the Anand Godhra line of Western Railway. Dakor railway station is far away. Dakor Nagar is about 2 km far from the station.
There is a grand temple of Ranchodji here, due to its religious importance and due to the deep faith in the devotees here, lakhs of devotees come for darshan.
There is a Gomti pond in front of the temple of Sri Ranchhodrai. It is four furlongs long and one furlong wide. The pond built in 572 acres. Its edges are solid. On one side of the pond, a bridge tied for some distance. Before Mahabharata, this lake was very small.
Along with this, the unique craftsmanship of this famous Dakor Dham shrine is also highly praised. Every full moon in this major pilgrimage site of India, there is an influx of devotees.
Let us tell you that this holy pilgrimage of Hindus is located just 30 kilometers away from Anand. On the other hand, apart from Ranchor ji of Dakor ji, many temples of Vaishnava estates including Swami Narayan and Shri Vallabh are located in Gujarat, but the biggest feature of this holy Dakor Dham is that people of all sects, castes, etc. are worship in the same form without any discrimination.
At the same time, many very interesting and interesting stories are associated with this famous Dakor Dham, so let's know about the history of this interesting temple –
The interesting history of the idol of the famous temple of Ranchor ji in Gujarat associated with the theft from Dwarka.
It believed that there lived a Rajput named Baje Singh in Dakor, Gujarat, who was an ardent devotee of Lord Ranchod Ji, he used to walk twice a year with his wife by growing a Tulsi plant on his hands. He used to offer Tulsi leaves to Lord Shri Krishna, who has a dark form.
Bhakta Baje Singh continued to do this for many years, but at the age of 72, when he lost his ability to walk and due to which he could not offer Tulsi ji leaves to Dwarka, after which Lord Baje Singh dreams of his devotee. Came in and asked to install his idol from Dwarka to Dakor.
After which the devotee Baje Singh, obeying the orders of his God, when all the villagers slept at midnight, then reached the temple of Dwarka Ji with a bullock cart and stole the idol of God from there and brought it to Dakor.
At the same time, it believed that when Lord Ranchod ji seated in Dakor, that day the auspicious day of Kartik Purnima, so the full moon day has a different significance in this temple.
As soon as the idol of Lord Ji was missing from the temple of Dwarka, the priest of Dwarka temple along with the villagers set out in search of the idol. As soon as it was realized, Bhakta Baje Singh had already hidden the idol of Bhagwan Ranchod Ji in Gomti Sarovar.
After which the priest of the temple came to know that the idol of God hidden in the pond and he started looking for the idol of Lord Ji in the pond with spears, during which the point of the spear pricked Lord Ranchod Ji, whose mark still of Lord Ranchod Ji is in this statue.
In this way, the priest of Dwarka Ji temple got the idol, but then at the behest of Baje Singh, he agreed to install the idol in Dakor by taking gold currency equal to this idol of God. And in this way, Lord Ranchhod Bhagwan Ji with a dark complexion has been enthroned here, and today the faith of all the devotees attached to this beautiful temple of Ranchod Ji.
Like the Dwarkadhish temple in Gujarat, the temple of Lord Ranchod ji in Dakor has significance. In this temple, a beautiful and magnificent statue of Lord Krishna is enshrined in a dark complexion, while this beautiful and grand temple built on the banks of river Gomti has been constructed from white marble.
On the other hand, the idol of Lord Ranchod ji is similar to the statue of Dwarkadhish, in this beautiful and grand idol made of black color, Lord Ranchod Ji is holding a beautiful chakra in his upper hand and a conch shell in his lower hand, which is visible. Looks very beautiful.
Apart from this, the upper dome of the temple covered with gold, the dark atmosphere here attracts everyone to its side.
There is a Gomti pond near this huge temple of Dakor, on the banks of which the temple of Dunknath Mahadev built. Not only this, a temple of Baje Singh ji, the ultimate devotee of Lord Ranchod ji, built on the premises of this temple, where the Lord seated with his devotee.
55 priests, 200 workers employed in the temple. The annual budget is 8 crores. The temple has 1,800 acres of land in its ownership. 5 thousand per day on normal days, 25 thousand on Sundays. 5-6 lakhs on each Purnima, 10-12 lakhs in Falgun's Purnima, 7-8 lakhs in Kartik Purnima and more than 1 crore devotees in the whole year. The area of the temple is 2 acres.
The temple is open for darshan from 6 am to 12 noon and from 4 pm to 7.30 pm. Every year 35 festivals celebrated in Ranchhodrai Maharaj Temple. Goshala and various schools run by the temple committee.
Dakor Ji to Nadiad Junction 30, Anand 50, Ahmedabad 80, Palanpur 200, Amba Ji 250, Abu Road 280, Jaipur 750, Godhra 44, Delhi 1,050, Baroda 90, Surat 250, Lucknow 1,550, Mumbai 500 kms. is far. The railway station is Dakor Ji, Swami Nadiad and Anand Junction and the airport is Ahmedabad.
By Air – The nearest airport is Ahmedabad, which is located at a distance of about 90 km from Dakor.
Railroad – Dakor situated on the Anand-Godhra broad line railway route. There is Anand railway station at a distance of about 33 km from Dakor.
By Road – Many personal taxis, and buses run from Ahmedabad to reach Dakor, while devotees can also go here by their own vehicle if they want.
Ranchor ji
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