Note: Doing the work is quicker than it took me to write this, so it's really not a big job.
Some way to take the weight off the front wheel. I use a car jack on each side of the frame, but there are many different ways.
Some small and very small screwdrivers.
One foot of 1" PVC pipe, the strong kind (schedule-40 I believe it's called), very cheap at the hardware store. Go to a small store where they will cut a length for you, the big shopping centers will make you buy a whole 10-foot stick.
Hacksaw to cut the PVC to 4" length.
A very sharp knife to get the Progressive springs out of that ^%#@**!!! factory shrink wrap.
Jack the bike up so the front wheel is slightly off the ground.
Block the front wheel in position so it can't swing around. I put a heavy toolbox on each side of the wheel.
Put a blanket on the tank to avoid scratching by dropped tools, etc.
Remove the chrome cap from the triple clamp. Careful, it's made of plastic and expensive to replace if it breaks. Pry it out gently with a screwdriver or such.
Press down on the bronze-color plug which you see in the top of the fork tube. I used a thick wood dowel. If you don't have somebody to press down on it for you, a woodworker's clamp can be used to apply pressure. Worked for me.
With the plug down, remove the metal retaining ring, using a very small screwdriver. Careful if you work outside, it might go "sproinnnnggg" away into the blue yonder.
Take the plug out and pull the stock fork spring out slowly. I propped it up in a halfway-out position (just stick a screwdriver into it) and took a 1-hour coffee and cookies break to allow the oil to drain down into the tube. This will save you from re-measuring the oil level, although it would be good to do that.
Remove the old spring. Insert the new spring so that the narrow-wound coils face upward toward the handlebar.
Make a 4" long spacer out of 1" PVC pipe available at the hardware store. Get the thick type pipe (schedule-40, I think it's called), not the thin one. It's cheap.
Insert spacer on top of the new spring.
Insert plug. Press down on it and insert the retaining ring.
*Very important*! Check carefully to see that the retaining ring is seated properly all the way around.
Put chrome cap back on.
Take the bike off the jacks.
Go for a test ride on a bumpy road and be surprised!
Learn that the remaining limitation on handling are the stock Bridgestone tires. Do preparatory work on the wife (or significant other) explaining the purchase of 2 new aftermarket tires.
For more pre-load on the fork springs, you can experiment with longer spacers. Some in our group have had good results with 4.25" and even 4.5" spacers.
Enjoy your new suspension, and great handling!


with quick antistatic effect and powerful detangling effect.
It makes the coat easier to brush and gives great volume and structure.
It counter-acts tangles and wears and makes the coat more manageable.
It is suitable for all types of coats and animals.
shaft and give that extra top finish you aim for.


4206 & 4207 Caprice Way is a $14,000 property on a 0.83 acre lot located in Crestone, CO.
Two adjacent lots both with tap fees paid in a great location up high in Chalet 2. Water and sewer lines within 100 feet of lot. These two lots adjoin a large consolidated parcel of six lots which can create less density in close proximity. Lovely trees. Creek behind lots are other side of the road. Really nice lots at a good value.
I am interested in 4206 & 4207 Caprice Way, Crestone, CO 81131.


Twitter for status updates and short thoughts.
Please feel free to follow these to stay up to date.
I still intend to leave this site here, to avoid breaking links. But at the same time, I'm looking for something to get the Medium started, so I will likely start to move some of my favorite older content to Medium as well.
If you're interested, I gave a presentation on CodeWorld at BayHac a few weeks ago. The video is now available.
TL;DR: CodeWorld is sponsoring two student slots for Summer of Haskell this year. Please encourage any college students you know to apply to this program.
Work on a serious Haskell project this summer?
Work closely with experienced Haskell developers?
Earn a living stipend for doing it?
Help give educational opportunities to kids at the same time?
If so, please consider applying to Summer of Haskell this summer, and consider submitting a proposal to work on CodeWorld. If you are not a student, please spread the word to students you know.
What is Summer of Haskell?
Details are at http://summer.haskell.org. The short version is: you submit a proposal to contribute to an open source project that benefits the Haskell community. The community chooses the top submissions. Those students are assigned a mentor to guide them in their project, and a living stipend for the summer.
How is CodeWorld related to Summer of Haskell?
Summer of Haskell is funded by donations, and CodeWorld has donated funds to support two students this summer to work on CodeWorld specifically (or on projects in the surrounding Haskell ecosystem, such as GHCJS, that would benefit CodeWorld).
Subscribe to and follow the codeworld-discuss mailing list.
Work through CodeWorld's online Guide with the link at http://code.world.
Experiment with GHCJS and other related tools.
Form some opinions about what would help the community.
Blog about your learning experiences, and start conversations on the mailing list.
Contribute in minor ways, such as improving documentation or taking on small bugs.
Shoot for something feasible to complete in a summer, but also ambitious.
Making things better for existing users usually beats building something for a brand new audience.
Pick something you feel confident working on, and are excited about. You'll be thinking about it for a long time.
It's a good idea to try to understand the existing community needs and opportunities, too!
Can I get feedback on my proposal?
Yes, absolutely! Most successful proposals are improved with community feedback, so don't try to do it all alone and surprise everyone at the end. It's up to you whether you feel more comfortable sharing your ideas on the mailing list, where you might get broader feedback, or one on one by email.
The expectation is that students are making a commitment similar to a full-time job or internship for the entire work period, just shy of three months.
The TL;DR version is that a few people have put together a sizable budget to make the next big push to get CodeWorld and Haskell into middle school mathematics. We're looking to produce high-quality resources like video, study materials, etc. to enable teachers to easily use Haskell to make mathematics more tangible and creative in their classrooms for students ages about 11 to 14. If this interests you, read the announcement!
Most readers know about CodeWorld, my Haskell-based programming environment that I've been using for middle school education for a number of years. I recently wrote a thorough post about the project and its characteristic choices. I've had a lot of success teaching middle school students, of ages 12 and up. But why not younger?
There are challenges in teaching younger ages. Spelling and typing skill is a real limitation. If it takes kids several minutes to correctly type "solidCircle", they aren't going to be having a good time. Even at the middle school level, students spend a good part of their first few months struggling to match up parentheses. (So much so that I've just implemented "rainbow brackets", which colors each nested set of parentheses a different color, in the editor in hopes of helping at least a little!) These have always given me something of a lower bound for the ages at which I can hope to reach students.
This summer, though, as part of the Summer of Haskell project, Stefan Jacholke has been implementing a different programming environment for CodeWorld that solves many of these problems. He's just announced his first prototype!
If you need some inspiration, here's an example of a program to draw a few bears.
This is all great timing, because next week, I'm meeting with my first elementary school to talk about setting up a CodeWorld activity for younger students. With luck, I'll have my guinea pigs to try this in the fall.
Reflecting back on the last 6 years of developing and teaching with CodeWorld, there are a number of decisions that were unique, and often even controversial, that define the project. For the record, here are eight of the biggest decisions I've made with CodeWorld, and the reasons for them.
Regular readers of this blog are probably familiar with functional programming, but for those who aren't, you should understand that it's really a rather different paradigm from most typical programming. It's not just another syntax, with a few different features. Instead, it's a whole new way of breaking down problems and expressing solutions. Basic ideas taught in the first few weeks of traditional computer programming courses – for example, loops – just don't exist at all. And other really central ideas, like functions and variables, have a completely different meaning.
I'm not quite alone in teaching functional programming, though. Matthias Felleisen and Shriram Krishnamurthi started sizable effort to teach Scheme at the K12 level in the 1990s, and Emmanuel Schanzer created a Scheme/Racket based curriculum called Bootstrap, which is heavily based on functional programming. I've made the same choice, and for much the same reason.
In fact, I never set out to teach "coding" at all! My goal is to teach mathematics more effectively. But mathematics education suffers from the weakness that students who make a mistake often don't find out about it until days later! By them time, whatever confusion of ideas led to the error has long been forgotten. CodeWorld began as my attempt to get students to directly manipulate things like functions, expressions, and variables, and get immediate feedback about whether the result makes sense, and whether it does what they intended. For that purpose, a functional programming language is perfect for the job!
Even after the switch to functional programming, I still surprise a lot of people by telling them I teach middle school students in Haskell! Let's face it: Haskell has a bit of a reputation as a mind-bending and difficult language to learn, and it sometimes even deserves the reputation. This is, after all, the programming language community with more Ph.D. students per capita than any other, and where people hold regular conversations about applying the Yoneda lemma to help solve their coding challenges!
But it doesn't have to be! Haskell also has some advantages over almost anything else, for someone looking to work with tangible algebra and mathematical notation.
Even more importantly, basic syntax looks almost exactly like mathematics (or at least, it can). Bootstrap, for example, gets the semantics right, but looking through sample student workbooks, there's quite a bit of "here's how you write this in math; now write it in Racket." By contrast, when teaching with CodeWorld, we've been able to effectively explain the programming language as a set of conventions for typing math directly for the computer. There are obviously still some differences – both at the surface level, like using * for multiplication and ^ for exponents, and at a deeper level, like distinguishing between variables and constructors on the left-hand side of equations. But in practice, this has been easily understood by students as limitations and tweaks in which math notation CodeWorld understands. It feels like a dialect, not a new language.
So what about the mind-bending parts of Haskell? It turns out most of them are optional! It took some effort, but as I'll mention later, I have removed things like type classes (including the dreaded monads) and many unnecessary uses of higher-order functions. What's left is a thin wrapper around notation that students are already learning in Algebra anyway.
Of course, a programming language by itself isn't a complete tool. You also need libraries! The next big decision was to base CodeWorld on the programming model of Ben Lippmeier's Gloss library.
Gloss is an interesting choice on its own. The programming model is very simple. Everything is a pretty comprehensible mathematical thing. It's probably too simple for sizable projects, and you could make the case that teaching it is letting down students who want to be able to scale their programming skills up to larger projects. But again, it has two advantages that I believe outweigh this concern.
First, it's tangible. Outside of Gloss, much of the current thinking around building interactive applications in functional programming environments centers around FRP (Functional Reative Programming). FRP defines a few abstract concepts ("events" and "behaviors"), and then hides when they look like or how they work. Of course, strong abstraction is a foundation of software engineering. But it's not a foundation of learning, or of mathematics! Indeed, Elm also recently (and probably with even less justification, given its less educational audience) dropped FRP in favor of tangible functions, as well. The advantages of concrete and tangible types that students can get their heads around are hard to overstate.
Second, again, this choice better supports building an understanding of mathematical modeling. In addition to it being easier for a middle school student to understand a value of type Number -> Picture, than the more abstract Behavior Picture from FRP (or the even more obtuse non-terminating while-loop of the imperative world), it also gives them experience with understanding how real phenomena are modeled using simple ideas from mathematics. Later programs are built using initial values and step functions, along explicitly bundled state. This gently starts to introduce general patterns of thinking about change in ways that will come up again far down the road: in the study of linear algebra, calculus, differential equations, and dynamical systems!
Of course, there's a cost here. I wouldn't point someone to Gloss for a real-world project. Even something as simple as a single GUI component can be complicated and fragmented, since students have to separately connect the state, initial value, behavior over time, and event handling. But the cost in encapsulation is most keenly felt in larger projects by more experienced programmers who can find this sort of plumbing work tedious. Typical introductory programming students still have a lot to learn from connecting these pieces and understanding how to make them work together.
Once I had Haskell and Gloss in place, the next big choice made by CodeWorld was to replace the Haskell prelude with a customized version. GHC, the most popular Haskell compiler, provides a lot of power to customize the language by making changes to libraries. This extends even to the meaning of literal text and numbers in the source code!
One reason for replacing the Prelude was to keep the complexity of a first working program as low as possible. For students who are just starting out, every word or piece of punctuation is an obstacle. Haskell has always done better on this front than Java, which requires defining a class, and a member function with a variety of options. But adding import statements definitely doesn't fit the vision articulated above of the programming language as a thin wrapper around mathematical notation. So the modified Prelude puts all of the built-in CodeWorld functions in scope automatically, without the need to import additional modules. As a result, a minimal CodeWorld program is one line long.
A second reason for replacing the Prelude was to remove a lot of the programming jargon and historical accidents in Haskell. Some of this is so entrenched that experienced programmers don't even notice it any more. For example, even the word "string" to denote a bit of text is a holdout from how computer programmers thought of their work in the mid 20th century. (CodeWorld calls the analogous type Text, instead, and also keeps it separate from lists.) Haskell itself has introduced its own jargon, which is confusing to students as well.
But the most important consequence of replacing the Prelude is that advanced language constructs, like type classes and monads, can be hidden. These features haven't actually been removed from CodeWorld, but they are not used in the standard library, so that students who don't intend to use them will not see them at all. This made more changes necessary, such as collapsing Haskell's numeric type class hierarchy into a single type, called Number. Perhaps the most interesting adaptation was the implementation of the (==) operator for equality comparison, without a type class constraint. This was done by Luite, by inspecting the runtime representation of the values in the GHCJS runtime (see below).
Sometimes, it seems that the dogma of the functional programming language community (and Haskellers in particular) is that programmers are corrupted by imperative languages, and that a programmer learning a functional language for their first experience would have a much easier time. I haven't found that to be 100% true. Perhaps it's because even students with no prior programming experience have still been told, for example, to think of a program as a list of instructions. Or perhaps it's something more intrinsic in the human brain. I don't know for sure.
But what I do know for sure is that even with no previous experience, middle school students will gravitate toward imperative semantics unless they are carefully held back! Because of this, another choice made by CodeWorld, and one of the main differences from Gloss, is that it makes some changes to intentionally trip up students who try to think of their CodeWorld expressions as an imperative sequence of instructions.
A similar situation exists with colors. In Gloss, the color function changes the color only of parts of a picture that don't already have a color! This means that the semantic model of the Picture type in Gloss is quite complex indeed. Instead of just being a visual shape, a Gloss Picture is a shape where some parts have fixed color, but others have unspecified color, and the color function operates on that value by fixing any unspecified bits to the given color. Indeed, the most sensible way to understand these values is in terms of the implementation: that the color function sets a current color in the graphics context, which is used for that subtree, but only if it's not changed first. This is a leaky implementation! It is fixed by CodeWorld, where applying a color to a picture overrides any existing coloring.
Another change that helped a lot with this was to carefully remove the use of verbs for function names in the CodeWorld standard library. I observed verbs misleading students many times. Sometimes, they expected that use of a function would permanently change the value of its parameter. Other times, they even expected a function like rotate to turn a picture into an animation that keeps moving! The key idea they are missing is that functions are not actions, but rather just relations between values. Such relations are better (even if it's sometimes awkward) described somewhere on a scale between nouns and adjectives, rather than verbs. The way the code reads after this change once again acts as a roadblock to students who try to build on an incorrect understanding.
Beyond the programming language and libraries, another important choice in CodeWorld was to strongly adopt the web as a medium. The first version of the platform in 2010 was a relatively early adopter of web-based programming tools! However, the execution model (using SafeHaskell to run student code in a trusted way on the server and stream frames to the client) was definitely doomed from the start. It was a hack, which worked for one class, but was hardly scalable.
This decision was important for a few reasons. The first is compatibility and universal access. Schools have whatever devices they have access to: Chromebooks, bring-your-own-device plans, etc. Students themselves are constantly switching devices, or leaving theirs at home. Depending on a locally installed application – or saving student projects on a local disk – for a class at the middle school level would be a disaster. Because CodeWorld is all web-based, they can work from any system they wish, and have full access to all of their saved projects.
The second reason a web-based environment was important is that sharing is a huge part of student motivation. Because the CodeWorld server remembers all compiled code by its MD5 hash, students can send projects to each other simply by copying and pasting an appropriate URL into an email, chat message, or text message. It is difficult to express how helpful this has been.
Despite the advantages of the web, though, I am hoping to soon have export of student projects to mobile applications, as well. The development environment will remain web-based, but created applications can be installed as apps. It's likely that someone will be working on this feature over the summer.
De-emphasizing programming concepts like abstraction, maps and folds, and higher-order functions, in favor of approaches like list comprehensions that look more like mathematics.
Uncurrying all functions in the standard library. This is easily the most controversial decision I've made for the Haskell community, but it's really just a special case of de-emphasizing higher order functions. After uncurrying, functions can always be written in standard mathematical notation, such as f(x) or f(x, y).
The coordinate plane uses a mathematical orientation. Gloss's coordinate plane looks like computer screen coordinates, with (0, 0) in the top left. CodeWorld's plane puts (0, 0) at the center, and it orients the positive y axis to point up. These just match conventions.
CodeWorld also rescales the coordinates so that the plane extends from -10 to +10 in both dimensions, rather than counting in pixels. This turns out to have been an amazing choice! It simultaneously allows students to do low-precision placement of shapes on the plane without multi-digit artithmetic, and introduces decimals for added precision. In the end, this combination better supports middle school mathematics than the alternative.
Another change here was originally an accident. CodeWorld, from the beginning, did not implement using any kind of image file in a program. Originally, this was because I hadn't bothered to implement a UI for uploading assets to use in the web-based programs! But after teaching with it, I don't regret it at all. I've had other teachers tell me the same thing. By giving students only geometric primitives, not images copied and pasted from the web, as the tools for their projects, they are more creative and work with a lot more mathematics in the process.
The final big decision on my list doesn't pertain to the web site or tools at all, but is about the organization of classes. There are a lot of efforts out there to encourage students to learn to code. Hour of Code encourages teachers to devote an hour to programming activities and games. Many organizations are running day-long activities in Processing or Scratch or Greenfoot. Bootstrap started with once-a-week after school programs using Racket, and has scaled up from there. I've volunteered as a mentor and team lead for weekend hackathons by organizations like Black Girls Code.
These are great! I wouldn't discourage anyone from jumping in and doing what they can. But in many cases, they seem to miss the opportunity for student creativity. There's a tendency for a lot of organizations to create very guided activities, or shy away from anything that might get a student away off the beaten path. Early versions of the Bootstrap curriculum, for example, encouraged kids to build games, but designed a game from start to finish (in terms of generic words like the "player", "target", and "danger"), and give students limited creative choices in the process. (Bootstrap has since expanded into a more open-ended Bootstrap 2 curriculum, as well.) Hour of Code consists almost entirely of scripted activities that feel more like playing a game than building one, which makes sense because they are intended to be completed in an hour. The BGC hackathon mentioned above was limited to use of a drag-and-drop GUI design tools, and devoted more time to having students sit in presentations about startup business models and UX design than letting them create something impressive of their own.
So one way that CodeWorld has been different from many of these activities is that I've tried to plan from the very beginning of the course for students to decide on, design, and implement their own ideas from the ground up. Sometimes that means taking longer, and taking smaller steps. From the very beginning, projects in the class aren't plugging bits into a designed program, but rather creating things of their own choosing, at the level students are capable of doing creatively from scratch at that point. It means that I don't even start talking about games until halfway through the class. But I think it's important to let students dig in at each step and express themselves by creating something that's deeply and uniquely theirs. Along the way, they spend a lot more time tinkering and trying out things; even trying out different possible overall organizations of their programs!
I think CodeWorld has been very successful at this. When students in CodeWorld create their own games, they really create their own games. They work differently, and have different designs.
Gnome Maze Use WASD keys to help a gnome navigate the maze and find the gold.
Donkey Pong One player uses W and S, the other uses the up and down cursor keys. Hit the ball back and forth.
Dot Grab One player uses WASD, and the other uses the arrow keys. Race to eat the most dots.
Yo Grandma! Save an old lady in a wheelchair from various hazards by dragging attachments onto her wheelchair.
For anyone planning to participate in Summer of Haskell this summer, remember that proposals are due today. Good luck to all!


text:
2002.059 (February 28, 2002)
I don't really know where I went, though. Here's all the news that was fit to print while I was away...
Tiny Ships for Sale!
You asked for it... and asked for it again... and then you asked for it some more. And it's finally happened -- DRAsvitt has made a set of tiny ships and put them for sale on eBay! You can bid on them here -- but be warned, you'll have some competition! (Note to everybody else: we don't normally promote auctions -- so don't ask us to mention the copy of Wing Commander III your dog threw up on that you want to make a mint off of in the news...). Pictured below are the ships that are for sale (TCS Victory, TCS Midway, shuttle, Thunderbolt, Hellcat and Arrow) and one that isn't (Confed Space Station).
The Great Vampire-Off
Well... there's nothing normal about this:
A little change in color to a skin even makes an old vampire look new again.
Wing Commander: The Wasteland Incident (WCWI) will include a new Special type Vampire Class A Fighter, and I am looking for some feedback on which of the following models the WC Community like the best. Take a look and submit you opinion to me [here]
The team at WCWI are still looking for a few good Modelers. We are looking for Set designers (Ever wanted to know what the inside of a Confederation R&D station looks like? So do we.) All sets are going to be used in CG scene only, poly count irrelevant; look, feel, and detail are the most important! Some sets that need to be created are, Wasteland Station Bridge and Hanger, Hades Class Bridge, Midway Class Bridge, and more
If you would like to help, submit [here]
/Matthew J Kruer, Project Leader/
Various B5 Ships of the Day
Since we last met the Babylon 5 Commander has posted the Tloth, the Xill and the EA Freighter (pictured). Wa-hoo.
Better Than Nothing! But Not By Much!
There's some good news from the IMDb: Wing Commander isn't the worst war movie ever! It's the tenth worst war movie ever! That means there are nine movies that are way worse than it! Hurray! Here's their list:
10 Wing Commander (1999)
9 Missing in Action 2: The Beginning (1985)
8 Bridge of Dragons (1999)
7 Which Way to the Front? (1970)
6 McHale's Navy (1997)
5 Carry On England (1976)
4 Best Defense (1984)
3 Active Stealth (1999)
2 Nightfall (2000)
1 Night Train to Mundo Fine (1966)
Abandonware Ship
Delance has found an article about abandonware at GameSpot that talks about (and for some reason includes a picture of the French edition of) Wing Commander. Here's the article... and here's the part about WC. At the risk of editorializing, the person who wrote the 'response' about Privateer is stupid and should die.
B5 Ship of the Day: Hyperion
Today's Ship: Hyperion
Location: Babylon 5 Commander
Contact: KillerWave
Many More Tiny Ships
Maker of tiny ships DRAsvitt is at it again (well, presumably he never stopped being 'at it', it just doesn't sound as good) with four more spacecraft to show off: an escort carrier (Tarawa-type), a Free Trader class transport, the Delta Flyer (Voyager) and a Minbari ship from the Babylon 5 finale. Neat, neat, neat and neat. His next WC project is the Confederation Star Base...
Holding the Line: Chapter 123
Here's Raptor to introduce Walking Wounded (heyyyy), the latest posted chapter of Holding the Line. You can read it here.
HTL continues with a story called "Walking Wounded", written by Shaun "Iceman" Rashid. This story is set aboard the light carrier TCS Endeavour, one of the ships assigned to the Combined Fleet in Loki. As you saw in past chapters, the Border Worlders were drawing the attention of the Nephilim fleet while the rest of the human fleet moved into position for the kill. This series follows the Endeavour's crew as they try to eliminate their target. Please send any and all comments to Shaun at velacia@rogers.com, not to me.
B5 Ship of the Day: Vorlon Dreadnaught
KillerWave has posted the Vorlon Dreadnought in Vision Engine format to the Babylon 5 Commander web site. Furthermore, thanks to him we now know where to find a picture of each now ship...
Happy Birthday Lancers
No, it's not Casey's birthday... nor are we celebrating the development of torpedos or black ops heavy fighters. The Lancers Reactor marks its second anniversary today! TLR is the world's premiere site for StarLancer & FreeLancer news and information... great job, guys!
Privately Owned Strakha
I'm short for updates... so, you figure this out instead.
B5 Ship of the Day: Drakh & Avioki Cruisers
Grab Vision Engine versions of these two Babylon 5 ships at the Babylon 5 Commander web site, courtsey of KillerWave. Files section.
Files Down
Please be patient as we work to restore the CIC's Files Section. A recent BlackLance.org server move made them unavailable... but we're working to get them back online as fast as we can!
Cheap Cheap
Chris reports that brick and mortar Suncoasts are selling the VHS Wing Commander movie for as low as a few dollars a piece! Go stock up on WC movies! They make great... hmm.
UE Composes
Here's one that's sure to please ace "Hyphen" One -- the Unknown Enemy web site has been updated with a sample of their new theme music. How great is it? I have no idea, since I'm at work with no speakers! They've also set up a poll asking "How much longer are you willing to wait for UE?"
Citizens of the World, Help!
Are you a Wing Commander fan from a country other than the US, German or Japan? Then I could use your help! My Guide to Wing Commander Collectables is just about as complete as can be for those three countries... but I need more specific information on which games were released where (and in what format, in what language and so forth) around the rest of the world! Help me finish this project once and for all... by e-mailing loaf@wcnews.com!
B5 Ship of the Day: Primus
No, not the system Senator More was from. Today's Vision Engine Babylon 5 Commander Ship of the Day is the Primus class Battlecruiser. Get it from their files section. Anybody out there want to take pictures of these things for us?
Explore Space in Style
Version 0.2.0 of Vegastrike has been released! Here's HellcatV's report on all its amazing new features...
Vegastrike 0.2.0 is complete! I have worked for months to make this release possible!
Windows users download it and run Setup then Mission Launcher.exe !
Note: Setup will save and exit if you hit view readme or close it with the X.
Linux users grab source, compile and run from data directory.
It features system exploration... over 100 star systems have been painstakingly modeled for the entire Sol and Vega sectors! Position yourself inside a blue clear ball and press the j key to instantly transport your self to neighboring star!
Also included are dense, deadly asteroid fields and exotic nebulae to explore and scout.
Switch ships with [ and respawn (with semicolon) have been integrated to this release in the last minute.
Additionally an installer and a mission selector by Reliant have been ported to Windows for use with windows people.
Many missions have been carefully created for your pleasure.
Please send comments to vegastrike-users@lists.sourceforge.net! We appreciate user feedback and respond carefully!
It's Carrying Fish
Another cool 'info sheet' from CamW, promoting his upcoming 3D-movie Raiders... this time, it's the C-9 Pelican class transport.
B5 Ship of the Day: GQuan
Today's Vision Engine Babylon 5 Commander Ship of the Day is the GQuan class Heavy Cruiser. Get it from their files section.
Wasteland Incident Announcement
Here's an exciting project announcement from Matthew Kruer...
*Official Re-opening of Wing Commander: The Wasteland Incident*
Wing Commander: The Wasteland Incident (WCWI) is, a new and exciting MOD utilizing the Wing Commander Prophecy Secret Ops Engine. This new MOD will include 20 missions, a mission branch, 7 cut scenes and 3 endings, in 3 episodes. It will also feature new and modified ships, and what I hope will be a truly exciting plot.
We are currently looking for 3D modelers, Character Animators, CG Set Designers and Mission Programmers. For additional information head to http://wasteland.solsector.net and check out the sneak peek of the into.
Tarawa Them A New One
Eder has completed work on a Vision-engine Tarawa style Escort Carrier model for the Wing Commander: Standoff project. What a cool model! If only somebody would to a really great 3D Hakaga...
B5 Ship of the Day: Sharlin
Today, KillerWave has posted the Sharlin class Cruiser to his Babylon 5 Commander page. Grab it in their files section!
And then here's Raptor to introduce our weekly chapter of Holding the Line. You can find Chapter 122 here.
HTL continues with part seven of the Tiger Hunt series, called "Throwing The Dice", which follows the Border Worlds carriers as they continue drawing the attention of the Nephilim fleet. This chapter is set shortly after a "A Den of Death", but focuses on the Battlegroup Valkyrie's other carrier, the BWS Valeria. This story is written by yours truly, so please send any and all comments to me.
As I've said before with regards to Border Worlds technology, seeing as we didn't get to see anything of the Border Worlds military in WC:P or SO, we have no way of knowing for sure how good their tech is. The working theory I'm using is that they're at the same place relative to Confed that they were in WC4. Back then, they were mostly using WC2 tech like Rapiers and Sabres spearheaded by small number of craft that were equivalent to Confed's WC4 craft, like Banshees and Avengers. Now, they're using mainly WC3/WC4 grade craft, spearheaded by a small number of craft that are similar to Confed's WC:P craft, such as Retaliators and Stalkers.
Babylon 5 Commander Ship of the Day: Omega
KillerWave is making available a Babylon 5 ship for Prophecy's Vision Engine each day for the next month or so at his Babylon 5 Commander project website. Today's ship is the Omega class Destroyer... You can find it in their files section.
Purple Excalibur
CamW has sent us some promo art for his upcoming Wing Commander fan-movie 'Raiders'. It's a neat-o high-res blueprint image of the F-103 Excalibur:
Translator Wanted
I'm desperately seeking someone who can read Japanese text -- the Super Famicom edition of Wing Commander 1 has some interesting segments that aren't included in the American version... and I think we'd all like to know what happened in 2615 on the enhanced timeline! If there's anyone out there willing and able to help, please contact me. Thanks!
Lighting the Flashier Pack
The Black Lance Headquarters has undergone a major revision... with a new look for the 21st century! Anyone with an interest in Wing Commander style role playing games owes it to themselves to check out the nifty new site.
Obvious 'Head' Joke Goes Here
Anime-style Spirit says go visit this URL for more zany Japanese versions of the Wing Commander 1 Claw Marks character pictures. There's lots of interesting stuff in the Japanese Claw Marks... and we'll get it all online ASAP!
Outsider asked me to post this note regarding an Online SIM called Ace of Angels. He thinks it may be interesting for Wing Commander fans... check it out!
Hey CIC Regulars,
I got this from Kobalt[oRc] in Black Lance HeadQuarters about a week or so again. Its a new Online SIM that is being worked on. I rank it up there with Wing Commander, but some of the controls are different. It gives new things such as really developing space flight in a different way Origin System, Inc. never did. I'm still checking it out but you can at at www.aceofangels.com
The legend of Valentines Day dates back to four billion years ago when dinosaurs roamed the earth searching for dates to take to the dinosaur prom. And... screw it, here's the Love Arrow:
Ring-A-Ding
TheFraix has created three Wing Commander music rings for Nokia brand phones! All I know about cell phones is that mine is silver, but if you understand any of this here they are:
Movie Overture (Kevin Kiner and David Arnold)
8f1 8g1 8e1 8c1 4c2 8g1 8c2 8#a1 8a1 4.g1 8g1 8a1 4#a1 8g1 8#a1 4a1 8f1 8a1 8g1 16c1 4.c1 8f1 8g1 8e1 8c1 2c2 8#a1 8c2 8d2 8c2 4.#a1 8d1 8e1 8.f1 8d1 841 8.e1 8f1 8g1 8.a1 8a1 4a1
WC Fanfare (Dave Govett)
4c1 4f1 4c2 2b1 8a1 8g1 4a1 4g1 4f1 2g1 4c1 4f1 4c2 2b1 8a1 8g1 4a1 4b1 4d2 4c2 2g1 4g1 2g2 4f2 4e2 4.f2 4g2 4f2 4e2 2f2 4#g2 4g2 4f2 2g2 4f2 4e2 4d2 4c2 2d2
WC3 Kilrathi Theme (George Oldziey)
4a1 4b1 4e2 2c2 4b1 4#g1 4a1 2f2 4e2 4#c2 4d2 2#a2 4a2 2#g2 4e2 2g2 4g2 2f2 8c2 8d2 4e2 8f2 8f2 8e2 4e2 8g2 8f2 4e2
Tempo: 180 BPM or so
Some More Even More Tiny Ships, More
When it rains, it pours: DRAsvitt is back to show off three new Wing Commander ships... and five ships from the hip online game SubSpace. Quoth "I haven't made very many WC ships lately because I ran out of the Micro Machine display stands that I used to make them with. The most recent WC ships have been made with Plexiglas and Super Sculpey clay. The Subspace ships are made out of pieces of Military Micro Machines and some sculpy clay." WC ships are (interior left to right): Snakeir, Fralthi & Gilgamesh. SubSpace ships are (exterior left to right): Spider, Weasel, Leviathan, Javelin & Terrier.
Dark Raptor RPG
Wesker T-001 reports that the TCS Voyager RPG website has become... the Dark Raptor Squadron! It's now located at http://home.talkcity.com/ArcadeAlley/leon9960/Main.html. They're looking for members for a Yahoo! Club based RPG. Check 'em out...
New Poll?!
Amazing fact: Mark Twain was born the day the CIC put up its first poll... and he died the day we finally updated it! Even though that's almost certainly not true, you should still take advantage of this once in a lifetime change in polls and vote on "If a WC movie or TV show was to be made who should it focus on?". Thanks go to Anthony Campbell for the topic.
mIRC 6.01!
What's even more exciting than the amazing wonderment that is mIRC version 6.0? Why, mIRC version 6.01, of course! Get it! Now! And them come visit #WingNut!
You Can Go Home Again
Remember Space Quest? Well, it's back... in pog form! GameSpot reports that Sierra may be bringing back its wonderful Space Quest franchise... after an eight year hiatus (article)! The old Sierra 'Quest games harken back to a better time, when people weren't such idiots... and bringing back such a popular series after so long a time away should, at the very least, warm the hearts of any Wing Commander fan.
An Impressive Vision
The Wing Commander: Standoff mod for Secret Ops has posted eight new screenshots, showing Rapier IIs, Raptors, Sabres and a Waterloo. And aren't those WC1/2 style gun spheres neat?
So, You Want to Buy a Rapier?
I'm telling you, you do! And you can... for about 8,000 pounds. Weird & Wonderful will be auctioning off one of their 30 foot long real-life F-117b's at Fleetwood Owen in April. If you've got lots of money, this may be your only chance to buy a real Wing Commander starfighter.
Unknown Menuemy
The Unknown Enemy site has been updated with a bit of new information. The new fiction viewer has been completed and tested, Prophecy's 'decoding starship transmission' comm sequence has been replaced by rotating faction logos, much progress has been made by Michael Mahadeen on the music and Hadrian's second animation is in the work. They've also got this picture of the high-res selection menu...
2002.040 (February 9, 2002)
Read it here. Find the official site here. Raptor's introduction here:
Hey all, Raptor here.
After that look at the reserves who are preparing for the final battle, we're now going to switch back to the front line, the delaying action being fought in the Loki system. As you might recall, the Border Worlds carriers were acting as the bait in an elaborate trap for the Nephilim, while the rest of the fleet closed in for the kill. While there have been several preliminary skirmishes, the battles to come are going to be bloodier by far.
We kick off with part six of the Tiger Hunt series, "A Den of Death." This chapter focuses on the Harbingers, a Bearcat unit serving with Union's Battlegroup Valkyrie. The Harbingers had previously carried out a lethal ambush on Nephilim scouts hunting the Border Worlders, but the squadron's own losses had instigated a revolt within its ranks. This chapter picks up from there. This story is written by Yu Fei "Phalanx" Leung, so please send any and all comments to him at ph4l4nx@hotmail.com.
Insert Saturn Pun Here
Here's an interesting press release -- Wing Commander III for Sega Saturn... a game that was never released. Since only weirdos bought Saturns, Origin's post-Crusader lineup was scrapped... and Wing Commander III (and IV) were shelved. Coulda been interesting... I wonder how much work was done! Read the full thing here.
The Sega Saturn provides an exciting platform for bringing Origin Systems' groundbreaking _Wing Commander III_ to the advanced entertainment system market. The Sega Saturn's built-in texture mapping and impressive 640 x 480 high-resolution graphics provide exceptional video quality and realistic gameplay. In true interactive style, the player controls the intriguing twists and turns of the plot by engaging face-to-face with such legendary actors as Mark Hamill (_Star Wars_ trilogy), Malcolm McDowell (_A Clockwork Orange, Star Trek_) and John Rhys-Davies (_Raiders of the Lost Ark_).
Lets Go Out to the Press Room
... and have ourselves a snack. Here's something we should have done a long time ago: a press release archive. Unfortunately, as we did not do it a long time ago, it's severly lacking in press releases. If you've got any lying around, we'd love to archive them... for future generations and all that. Send any information you have to me.
Mini-Trivia Results
A while back I offered a chance for some trivia... find all the 'Saab' references in Wing Commander. While nobody actually entered, lots of people wanted to know the results... go figure. Here's what I found (I'm giving the GOLD STAR to myself, unless somebody else can find more...).
The Border Worlds pilot "Excel" is named Pauline Saab. (WCIV)
The Avenger class bomber is manufactured by Psaab Engineering. (WCIV)
There is a Saab Quadrant in the Hawking Sector. (WCP)
Here's an interesting article -- a collection of messages posted by Origin to Compuserv back in 1991... giving 'preview' specifications for the ships of Wing Commander 2! A few fun notes: this is the first external mention of the name 'Bloodfang' for Thrakhath's fighter... and the Concordia is called a 'Super Cruiser'. Hmmmmm... Read the collection here.
Re-Arrange the Stars
Here's one we missed from a few days back: DMJC is looking for Visual Basic programmers to help with a star system editor for Vega Strike. You can grab all the source code he's done to date here, and then contact him at Darkmage50@start.com.au
More Tiny Ships, Yay
So I was just having lunch with Joe Garrity, and he asked me what became of the guy who'd been sending in pictures of neat little WC ships he'd made. "Hey, yeah!", I replied -- having no idea where myself. Now, a week later, though, DRAsvitt is back! With more ships! And here they are! (Left to right: Waterloo, Dralthi, Morningstar and Crossbow. Two B5 ships, the Liandra and the Excalibur are in the second row). You can see more of his work in the May and August 2001 archives.
Lamentations on the Void
Filler found THIS Shockwave file while trolling Google. To quote Colonel Blair, I don't have a clue.
Being Drakj'khai nar Ghorah Khar
Kalralahr Darkhath has sent us some information on the Kilrathi Empire Online Rollenspiel Deutschland, a German Kilrathi-based RPG. I've included his e-mail below, as it gives a great introduction to their game... (The RPG site, www.kilrathi-rpg.de, is very well designed -- check it out even if you don't speak German!)
We are an online RPG based on the Kilrathi Culture and of course the Wing Commander Saga :-) Our RPG takes place in the year 2669 after the destruction of Kilrah. But there are some differences to the then following Wing Commander Games. In our RPG the signing of the treaty between Kilrathi and Terrans never happend. Both the Kilrathi and the Terrans do have an unsure future. The war still goes on and nobody is able to tell who will win or when the fighting is going to end. That was it so far about the story background.
As I said we are playing the Kilrathi cause we were interested in how it would be for the Kilrathi fighting this endless war. We were fascinated by their way of living ( honor / pride and so on ) and their culture. And of course we wanted to feel how it would be having fur on your body ;-)
WCSaga's New Clothes
Anton "Tolwyn" Romanyuk has sent in a status update for the WC Saga mod for Conquest: Frontier Wars. Almost every Confederation ship from Wing Commander 3 and 4 has been finished... and the WCSaga homepage has a nifty new look! Check it out.
Cheap Non WC-Update #1: mIRC 6.0 Released
It's beginning to feel a lot like... time for a new version of mIRC. Head over and grab a copy of version 6.0 -- it supports multiple servers and big fat line things now! Then come visit us on #WingNut.
Cheap Non-WC Update #2: Free Ultima Comic
Chris reports that fans of Ultima Online can get a free Ultima Online: Lord Blackthorn's Revenge comic book if you stop by a Babbages/GameStop/Software Etc./etc. in the next few days. Or you can get it by pre-ordering the game... and you get a free action figure! And social acceptance!
This war agrees with them: AVault reports that Electronic Arts has more money than a dead fish. This, of course begs the question: just how much money does a dead fish have?
Video game publisher Electronic Arts reported a 50 percent jump in its fiscal third-quarter profit on Wednesday, led by strong sales for its Harry Potter games franchise. Redwood City, California-based Electronic Arts reported a net profit of $132.3 million, compared with net earnings of $88 million in the year-earlier period, Reuters reports. The company reported earnings of $147.1 million; revenue in the quarter was $832.9 million, up from $640.3 million a year earlier.
The company's online division, EA.com, posted a loss including charges in the quarter of $36.2 million, though revenue nearly doubled to $21.9 million from $11.2 million in the year-earlier period. During the quarter, the company phased out its heavily promoted online adventure game Majestic, which was well received by critics but ended up a commercial failure due in part to its cumbersome registration process.
Next up is Raptor's introduction for the latest chapter of Holding the Line. You can find the chapter here.
HTL continues with part four of the "Toeing The Line" series, this one being called "Scrap Mettle". As you saw in the last couple of chapters, the Border Worlds reserves in the Nifelheim system had launched a mock attack on the Confed carriers, giving both forces a chance to practise dogfighting and mass engagement tactics. This chapter focuses on their Confed counterparts, both those who are defending the carriers, and those who are taking part in the attack with the squadrons of volunteer pilots they're training. This chapter is written by James Andrew "JAG" Greenhow, so please send any and all comments to him at
WCA Art 13: ... and Night!
Those Wing Commander Academy really planned everything out... and they also painted the infamous volcano at night! And here it is:
Never Sound Retreat
Shaggy found some interesting news for fans of William Forstchen. According to Dark Horizons (and there quoted from The Hollywood Reporter) the movie rights to his Lost Regiment series of books (Civil War soldiers versus aliens) has been optioned by Paramount and Cruise/Wagner productions! The project has supposedly been "put on the fast track". Hell, I'll pay to see a movie from the guy who wrote Fleet Action...
WCA Art 12: As Different as Day...
Hurrah, Wing Commander Academy artwork is back -- for two (and possibly three) more days! This is a shot of the volcano from Episode 4 - Word of Honor... in the daylight!
German Guides Update
There was a great response to my request for German WC guide help -- and I've put all the new information at the German Guide Page. Thanks to Christian, Obee, Stefan and chris_mungo@gmx.de for providing all the information now available!

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
/**
 * Describe a Map.
 * @constructor FORGE.Map
 *
 * @todo be carreful with 'key' which can be a keyword as "length" !
 */
FORGE.Map = function()
{
    /**
     * The number of elements into the Map.
     * @name FORGE.Map#_count
     * @type {number}
     * @private
     */
    this._count = 0;

    /**
     * The map object.
     * @name FORGE.Map#_map
     * @type {Object}
     * @private
     */
    this._map = {};
};

FORGE.Map.prototype.constructor = FORGE.Map;

/**
 * Set an element into the Map.
 * @method FORGE.Map.set
 * @param {string} key - The key to assign.
 * @param {?} item - The item to add.
 * @return {number|undefined} The size of the Map.
 */
FORGE.Map.prototype.set = function(key, item)
{
    if (typeof key === "undefined")
    {
        return undefined;
    }

    if (this._map[key] === undefined)
    {
        this._count++;
    }

    this._map[key] = item;

    return this._count;
};

/**
 * Delete an element into the Map.
 * @method FORGE.Map.delete
 * @param {string} key - The key to search for.
 * @return {number|undefined} The size of the Map.
 */
FORGE.Map.prototype.delete = function(key)
{
    if (typeof key === "undefined" || this._map[key] === undefined)
    {
        return undefined;
    }

    delete this._map[key];
    return --this._count;
};

/**
 * Get an element of the Map.
 * @method FORGE.Map.get
 * @param {string} key - The key to search for.
 * @return {?} The item linked to the key.
 */
FORGE.Map.prototype.get = function(key)
{
    return this._map[key];
};

/**
 * The list of the keys.
 * @method FORGE.Map.keys
 * @return {Array<String>} The list of all the Map keys.
 */
FORGE.Map.prototype.keys = function()
{
    var keys = new FORGE.Collection();

    for (var key in this._map)
    {
        keys.add(key);
    }

    return keys.toArray();
};

/**
 * The list of the values.
 * @method FORGE.Map.values
 * @return {Array<?>} The list of all the Map values.
 */
FORGE.Map.prototype.values = function()
{
    var values = new FORGE.Collection();

    for (var key in this._map)
    {
        values.add(this._map[key]);
    }

    return values.toArray();
};

/**
 * The whole content of the Map.
 * @method FORGE.Map.entries
 * @return {Array} The complete key-value list of the Map.
 */
FORGE.Map.prototype.entries = function()
{
    var entries = new FORGE.Collection();

    for (var key in this._map)
    {
        var entry = [];
        entry.push(key);
        entry.push(this._map[key]);
        entries.add(entry);
    }

    return entries.toArray();
};

/**
 * Clear the Map object.
 * @method FORGE.Map.clear
 */
FORGE.Map.prototype.clear = function()
{
    for (var key in this._map)
    {
        this.delete(key);
    }
};

/**
 * Has an element into the Map?
 * @method FORGE.Map.has
 * @param {string} key - The key to search for.
 * @return {boolean} Returns true if an item corresponding to the key is found, if not, returns false.
 */
FORGE.Map.prototype.has = function(key)
{
    return (this._count > 0 && this._map[key] !== undefined);
};

/**
 * Get the size of the Map.
 * @name FORGE.Map.size
 * @type {number}
 * @readonly
 */
Object.defineProperty(FORGE.Map.prototype, "size",
{
    /** @this {FORGE.Map} */
    get: function()
    {
        return this._count;
    }
});

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Q: Proving that $\frac{1}{n}DFT(DFT(x_N))$ is $\{x_0, x_{N - 1}, \dots, x_1 \}$ I'm trying to prove that $\frac{1}{n}DFT(DFT(x_N))$ is $\{x_0, x_{N - 1}, \dots, x_1\}$. So, I write ($X_k$ is nth coefficient of $DFT(x_N)$, $r_t$ is tth coefficient of $DFT(DFT(x_N))$):
$$
X_k = \sum \limits_{n = 0}^{N - 1} x_n e^{-\frac{2 \pi i k n}{N}} \\
r_t = \sum \limits_{p = 0}^{N - 1} X_p e^{-\frac{2 \pi i t p}{N}} \\
r_t = \sum \limits_{p = 0}^{N - 1} \sum \limits_{n = 0}^{N - 1} x_n e^{-\frac{2 \pi i (tp + pn)}{N}} \\
r_t = \sum \limits_{n = 0}^{N - 1} x_n \left(\sum \limits_{p = 0}^{N - 1} e^{-\frac{2 \pi i p (t + n)}{N}}\right) \\
r_t = \sum \limits_{n = 0}^{N - 1} x_n \left(\sum \limits_{p = 0}^{N - 1} \left(e^{-\frac{2 \pi i (t + n)}{N}}\right)^p\right) \\
r_t = \sum \limits_{n = 0}^{N - 1} x_n \frac{1 - \left(e^{-\frac{2 \pi i (t + n)}{N}}\right)^N}{1 -  e^{-\frac{2 \pi i (t + n)}{N}}} = 0
$$
Last equality follows from the fact that $\omega = e^{-\frac{2 \pi i (t + n)}{N}}$ is one of the Nth roots of 1, so $\omega^N$ is 1.
I can't seem to find any mistakes here, but the result is obviously wrong.

A: You almost got it. In the final line, this sum of a geometric series is correct except in the case where the denominator is zero; here you are simply summing $\sum_{p=0}^{N-1}(1)=N$. Another point is that the inverse discrete Fourier transform requires the inverse root of unity, but I realise now that this might not be a mistake; it is unclear what sequence $x_N$ is meant to represent, but it looks like you are infact trying to show the output is reversed. In this case, you will be left with the only term that doesn't sum to $0$ being $r_t=Nx_{-t}$ (where the index is modulo $N$), and I'll leave the details for you to work on.
Basically, the moral , as ever, is never divide by $0$

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


overhead of starting the process can dominate the execution time.
program, then the code for the CGI program is loaded into memoryNtimes.
Servletsare written in Java and follow a well-standardized API.
determine the document's modification time, etc.
Denotes certain text as headings, paragraphs, lists, etc.
A customer wishes to get information about a book.
// (e.g. specifying the content type).
some or all of its resources to a given set of registered users.
to the response before you send any content.
they can limit each cookie's size to 4096 bytes.
M. Hall. Servletsand Java ServerPages: A Tutorial.
J. Hunter, W. Crawford. Java ServletProgramming. O'Reilly, 1998.


text:
<?php

declare(strict_types=1);

namespace Test\Unit\Krizalys\Onedrive\Proxy;

use Krizalys\Onedrive\Proxy\VideoProxy;
use Microsoft\Graph\Graph;
use Microsoft\Graph\Model\Video;
use PHPUnit\Framework\TestCase;

class VideoProxyTest extends TestCase
{
    public function testAudioBitsPerSampleShouldReturnExpectedValue()
    {
        $graph = $this->createMock(Graph::class);

        $video = $this->createMock(Video::class);

        $video
            ->expects($this->atLeastOnce())
            ->method('getAudioBitsPerSample')
            ->willReturn(123);

        $sut = new VideoProxy($graph, $video);
        $this->assertSame(123, $sut->audioBitsPerSample);
    }

    public function testAudioChannelsShouldReturnExpectedValue()
    {
        $graph = $this->createMock(Graph::class);

        $video = $this->createMock(Video::class);

        $video
            ->expects($this->atLeastOnce())
            ->method('getAudioChannels')
            ->willReturn(123);

        $sut = new VideoProxy($graph, $video);
        $this->assertSame(123, $sut->audioChannels);
    }

    public function testAudioFormatShouldReturnExpectedValue()
    {
        $graph = $this->createMock(Graph::class);

        $video = $this->createMock(Video::class);

        $video
            ->expects($this->atLeastOnce())
            ->method('getAudioFormat')
            ->willReturn('TestAudioFormat');

        $sut = new VideoProxy($graph, $video);
        $this->assertSame('TestAudioFormat', $sut->audioFormat);
    }

    public function testAudioSamplesPerSecondShouldReturnExpectedValue()
    {
        $graph = $this->createMock(Graph::class);

        $video = $this->createMock(Video::class);

        $video
            ->expects($this->atLeastOnce())
            ->method('getAudioSamplesPerSecond')
            ->willReturn(123);

        $sut = new VideoProxy($graph, $video);
        $this->assertSame(123, $sut->audioSamplesPerSecond);
    }

    public function testBitrateShouldReturnExpectedValue()
    {
        $graph = $this->createMock(Graph::class);

        $video = $this->createMock(Video::class);

        $video
            ->expects($this->atLeastOnce())
            ->method('getBitrate')
            ->willReturn(123);

        $sut = new VideoProxy($graph, $video);
        $this->assertSame(123, $sut->bitrate);
    }

    public function testDurationShouldReturnExpectedValue()
    {
        $graph = $this->createMock(Graph::class);

        $video = $this->createMock(Video::class);

        $video
            ->expects($this->atLeastOnce())
            ->method('getDuration')
            ->willReturn(123);

        $sut = new VideoProxy($graph, $video);
        $this->assertSame(123, $sut->duration);
    }

    public function testFourCCFormatShouldReturnExpectedValue()
    {
        $graph = $this->createMock(Graph::class);

        $video = $this->createMock(Video::class);

        $video
            ->expects($this->atLeastOnce())
            ->method('getFourCC')
            ->willReturn('TestFourCC');

        $sut = new VideoProxy($graph, $video);
        $this->assertSame('TestFourCC', $sut->fourCc);
    }

    public function testFrameRateShouldReturnExpectedValue()
    {
        $graph = $this->createMock(Graph::class);

        $video = $this->createMock(Video::class);

        $video
            ->expects($this->atLeastOnce())
            ->method('getFrameRate')
            ->willReturn(1.23);

        $sut = new VideoProxy($graph, $video);
        $this->assertSame(1.23, $sut->frameRate);
    }

    public function testHeightShouldReturnExpectedValue()
    {
        $graph = $this->createMock(Graph::class);

        $video = $this->createMock(Video::class);

        $video
            ->expects($this->atLeastOnce())
            ->method('getHeight')
            ->willReturn(123);

        $sut = new VideoProxy($graph, $video);
        $this->assertSame(123, $sut->height);
    }

    public function testWidthRateShouldReturnExpectedValue()
    {
        $graph = $this->createMock(Graph::class);

        $video = $this->createMock(Video::class);

        $video
            ->expects($this->atLeastOnce())
            ->method('getWidth')
            ->willReturn(123);

        $sut = new VideoProxy($graph, $video);
        $this->assertSame(123, $sut->width);
    }
}


On Wednesday, two Newsome High School students, both juveniles, were arrested and charged with threat to bomb, a felony charge.
On the afternoon of March 6, 2017, while both students were inside the McDonald's restaurant located at 16701 Fishhawk Blvd they created a drawing of the Newsome High School courtyard area. The drawing depicted a picture of a bomb within the courtyard. The defendants then walked away from the table, leaving the diagram on top of the table, as well as a manual for an unknown type firearm.
Later that afternoon, a witness walked through the restaurant lobby and discovered the diagram on the table, as well as what he believed to be a manual for a firearm. After viewing the diagram, the witness became concerned that someone has placed or is going to place a bomb in the courtyard area of Newsome High School.
Surveillance video was obtained from the McDonald's which showed both defendants actions inside the restaurant.
Both students admitted to drawing the diagram and leaving it on the table. They indicated that they wanted to get a reaction out of whomever found it.


text:
NDP MLAs mingle with protesters at rally against changes to disability assistance payments at the B.C. legislature March 2.
BC VIEWS: Why so cheap with the poor?
Despite their frequent demands for more, no one should understand them better than the B.C. NDP
We hear a lot here at the B.C. legislature about hard-hearted government treatment of the poor.
It's a serious problem, and one often obscured by the partisan Punch-and-Judy show that passes for political debate in this province.
As things stand, Premier Christy Clark's government is heading into an election year with a basic income assistance rate for single employable adults at $610 a month, unchanged since the last miserly increase in 2007. Couples on assistance get up to $877.22, or up to $1,101.06 if they have two children.
If those children are aged three or more, parents are required to look for work and file monthly reports that show they still need income assistance.
The B.C. Liberals' February budget left the basic rates and rules the same, with new applicants required to look for work for five weeks before getting a first cheque. There are sound reasons for this hard line, and despite their frequent demands for more, no one should understand them better than the B.C. NDP.
Mike Harcourt's NDP government raised rates in 1991, and also eased eligibility rules to let people stay on assistance longer. Within two years, B.C.'s welfare rolls were nearly 10 per cent of the working-age population and climbing.
Harcourt famously denounced the "cheats, deadbeats and varmints" gaming the system, rolled the single employable rate back to $500 a month and imposed some of the harsh eligibility and job search rules that remain today. The caseload of single employable recipients declined by a third.
The current B.C. Liberal government did approve a $77 increase to the $906 disability income assistance rate, to take effect this September. Mostly what they got was protests about implementing a $52 monthly charge for transit passes.
Social Development Minister Michelle Stilwell rejected opposition claims that transit passes are being cancelled. There are 45,000 disability clients who don't have access to transit, and they receive nothing for their transportation costs. If those who can use them want to continue, the cost comes out of their rate increase.
A protest was organized for the legislature lawn March 2, featuring disability activists and NDP politicians. As I arrived, Hospital Employees' Union members were posing for pictures with New Westminster MLA Judy Darcy, a former HEU business manager. Others in HEU T-shirts were leading developmentally disabled people up to the small crowd.
All typical B.C. political theatre, with the union's role omitted from news reports as usual. But I had to wonder about the NDP demand for taxpayers to top up the $170 million disability assistance budget increase with another $35 million a year, to provide bus passes to those lucky enough to be able to use them.
Most people on disability assistance aren't commuting to work daily. If they were, they would likely no longer be eligible. If they are able to use transit, it's mainly for shopping, medical appointments and social activities.
When the change takes effect this fall, I intend to find out how many people decide to take the $77 increase and pay for transit only when they need it. I suspect there will be many.
Faith Bodnar of the activist group Inclusion BC summed it up well when she spoke to the rally.
"Government, all you did was equalize poverty for people with disabilities in B.C.," she said.
Note that Bodnar wasn't calling for the NDP position of a further increase that only urban people could use. She was saying the rate still isn't high enough.
That's the real issue.
Locked and loaded: Revisionist fairy tales
Revolutionary character of the Bible


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Netflix releases gorgeous interactive map to help you keep track of all of The Witcher's moving parts
If we were braver souls, we would have accompanied that headline with a picture of Geralt in the tub.
Photo: Katalin Vermes (Netflix)
[Note: This article contains spoilers for The Witcher.]
Although it drops hints as early as the first episode—in which Geralt's new bandit princess buddy Renfri speaks of one of the show's other characters as though she were a far younger woman that the one we see on the screen—Netflix's The Witcher series takes a while to reveal how convoluted its timeline actually is. With the show's setting sometimes quietly jumping decades in between scenes—and a number of characters aging far slower than normal, the better to trip continuity hawks up—the show doesn't make it explicit until three or four episodes in that lead characters Geralt, Yennefer, and Ciri are separated by more than just vast expanses of fantasy monster-infested space.
Perhaps anticipating a sense of confusion on this time-shifted score, Netflix has now released a handy—and lovely—little tool to help viewers of the series keep track of, say, what Stregobor has been up to across various eras. (That Stregobor! Always getting mixed up in shenanigans.) Said help comes in the form of an interactive map of the show's world (known as The Continent) that also comes with a series of linked timelines, helping you to not just figure out where Geralt was at the various points of Yen and Ciri's journeys, but also to keep your Nilfgaards and your Temerias from getting all jumbled up. It's also just a beautiful piece of work in its own right, scratching that "gorgeous maps of fantasy lands" itch instilled in so many young readers by fictional cartographers like Tolkien and his ilk.
That being said, the map is, by its nature, absolutely jam-packed with spoilers, so you might not want to dive deep on it until you've watched all eight currently extant episodes of the Netflix show—especially since scrolling to the very end of the timeline reveals a reminder that, for as much time as the series spent getting its pieces into place, the real game has just now finally begun.


THE CELIAC DISEASE RESOURCE, INC.
THE CELIAC DISEASE RESOURCE, INC. is a business entity registered in the state of New York under the legal form of DOMESTIC NOT-FOR-PROFIT CORPORATION. It can be found in the register by the DOS ID 2386017. The company was established and set into the register at 7th June 1999 and its current status is ACTIVE. Company´s jurisdiction is in the state of NEW YORK in county ALBANY. Process address of this entity is at P.O. BOX 621, GLENMONT, 12077, NEW YORK.
Entity Name THE CELIAC DISEASE RESOURCE, INC.
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CLS provided project coordination services for the Argyll Net Works programme, the purpose of which was to alleviate hardship; address issues which reinforce poverty including access to services and IT illiteracy; and develop links with health and social care providers.
We were responsible for liaising between various stakeholders and coordinating their input so as to best achieve the project outcomes while at the same time providing our specialist input regarding needs analysis, project design and staffing, and funding procurement. CLS input also included support to complete continuation funding bids for the project to enable further development of Health and Social Care links.


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Nelsons Island or Nelson Island or Isle Legour is a small uninhabited island in the Great Chagos Bank, of the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean. As a protected nature reserve, access to the island is strictly restricted.

The island is administered by the British Indian Ocean Territory, an overseas territory of the United Kingdom, but sovereignty is disputed by Mauritius.

Geography
The island is the northernmost and the easternmost island of the Great Chagos Bank, which is the world's largest coral atoll structure. The nearest neighbouring island is Île Boddam in the Salomon Islands,  north-northwest from Nelsons Island. The island is 11 miles SSE of the wholly submerged Victory Bank atoll.

Nelsons Island occupies the only emerging reef structure in the northern fringe of the Great Chagos Bank. The island stretches in an East-West direction, with a length of  and  wide in its broadest area. There is a small, low-lying islet to the east called Îlot Legour.

In terms of its geology, detailed photographic images shows evidence of a coral limestone core that has been overlaid by sandy loam.

History
The first recorded discovery of the island was by a Mr Legour from Port Louis, Mauritius in 1820, with the island initially being called Isle Legour.

There are no records of the island being inhabited, even between the 17th and the 20th century when there were coconut plantations on other islands of the Chagos Archipelago.

Wildlife

Nelsons Island has been identified as an Important Bird Area by BirdLife International, and is legally protected as a Strict Nature Reserve – making it an offence to visit the island without the written permission of the BIOT Administration.

An expedition in 2018 estimated the island was home to as many as 3000 roosting red-footed boobies, a population of brown boobies, a significant colony of wedge tailed shearwaters, as well as around 6500 nesting pairs of lesser noddies.

Birds benefit from the island being free from rats. The island also has a population of Meadow Argus butterflies.

Owing to its remoteness there has always been a population of nesting sea turtles.

The island is unique for the Chagos for having only two species of tree, Coconut and Pisonia, which both appear to have arrived naturally. The island is otherwise covered by the shrubs Scaveola and Argusia.

One of the major problems affecting the native wildlife is the significant accumulation of plastic bottles and other assorted debris such as damaged fishnets, shoes as well as an assortment of plastic and polystyrene materials that are washed up by localised ocean currents, winds and sea-storms. Such debris was captured in images during the Catlin Seaview Survey in 2015.

References

Griffiths, J.D. ed. 1978-9 Joint Services Expedition to the Chagos Archipelago. MOD Publication, London 1979

External links
Chagos research papers and books
 Google Street View Feb 2015

Chagos Archipelago
Nature reserves
Important Bird Areas of the British Indian Ocean Territory
Seabird colonies

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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I'm Your Woman Ending, Explained
Tamal Kundu
Directed by Julia Hart ('Stargirl'), 'I'm Your Woman' revolves around Jean (Rachel Brosnahan), the wife of a career criminal named Eddie (Bill Heck), who must go on the run with her child Harry after things turn sour between her husband and his partner Mike (James McMenamin). The film takes tropes of conventional crime-dramas and then turns them on their head by focusing on the spouse of the criminal and her experience as the world around her begins crumbling down. Brosnahan delivers a remarkable performance by masterfully exploring both the vulnerability and inner strength of her character. SPOILERS AHEAD.
I'm Your Woman Plot Synopsis
The first part of the film concentrates on Jean's life with Eddie. She spends her days being restless and agitated, unsure when and if her husband will return home. She had several miscarriages since she and Eddie began their relationship and eventually decided to stop trying. They can't adopt either because of Eddie's criminal records. Then, one day, he brings home an infant boy, telling her this is their child. He apparently got the child from a teenage girl, whose father was going to disown her otherwise.
So, when Jimmy (Jarrod DiGiorgi), one of Eddie's friends, comes to Jean one day to tell her to pack her bags, take her child, and leave, she has no choice but to do precisely that. Accompanying her is Cal (Arinzé Kene), who seems to have a history with Eddie. Although he initially takes Jean to a house in a remote town, her husband's former associates soon find her there. Cal arrives just in time, saving Jean, and takes her to a secluded cabin. From him, she finally comes to know what Eddie truly is, a killer. After Cal leaves, his family comes to the cabin.
Jean meets his wife Teri (Marsha Stephanie Blake), father Art (Frankie Faison), and Cal and Teri's son Paul. In time, the two women develop a close bond, and when Cal's long absence starts to become a matter of concern, the women embark on a journey together. Jean discovers that Teri used to be married to Eddie, and Cal was one of his crew members. They fell in love and eloped. When Eddie found them, he didn't kill them. Instead, he told them that he would ask for a favor one day. Ultimately, ensuring Jean's safety turned out to be that favor.
I'm Your Woman Ending
When Jean finally meets up with Cal at a diner, she learns that Eddie is dead. Her expression flickers between disbelief, grief, and even relief. The last few weeks have made her realize that Eddie isn't what she thought he was. Granted, she always knew that he was a criminal, but she never realized that he was part of organized crime, running an entire operation with Mike before betraying him. Jean also didn't realize that he was a cold-blooded murderer.
As the film progresses, she becomes more and more disillusioned with Eddie and their marriage. By the time Jean receives the news from Cal, she has become more focused on ensuring a future for herself and Harry. During her journey with Cal, Jean starts developing feelings for him. He is there for her when no one else is. She keeps questioning him if he has someone in his life and notices several things about him that indicate to her that indeed he has.
These assumptions are proven true when she meets Teri. At the diner, there is a moment just involving them, when it is still not known whether Teri has survived following her encounter with the members of Mike's crew. In that brief span of time, Jean likely imagines a life with Cal, although she keeps asserting that Teri will soon be there. When she does, however, a flicker of disappointment appears on Jean's face.
A Shootout Under the Bridge
With Mike and his men are hot on their trail, Jean, Cal, and Teri try their best to escape from the city. One of Mike's men causes Cal to have an accident, and Mike pulls Jean out of the car. But when he starts questioning her about Eddie, she shoots him with the gun that Teri gave her earlier. Evidently, Jean has come a long way since she was a hapless victim of her circumstances. She gets both Teri and Cal out of the wreckage and puts them in Mike's car. When Jean tells Teri that she has killed Mike, there is a note of finality in it. She knows what she has done and is fine with it.
Retrieving the Children
The three of them drive to the cabin, where they find Art dead along with some of Mike's lackeys. The children are found under the trapdoor, alive and well. Clearly, Art died protecting Paul and Harry. As they leave, Paul tells Jean not to look back, echoing what she told him earlier. She and her son can now enjoy lives in which Eddie's crimes will not have any effect. As for Cal and Teri, they too are free to live their lives peacefully.
Read More: Where To Stream I'm Your Woman?
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King's Field (Japan) [English Patched v1.0] is a RPG video game published by From Software released on December 16, 1994 for the Sony PlayStation (PSX).
Compatibility: Update, Leon shared a fixed eboot that solves the save screen freeze. It now works without POPSloader, and also works on Adrenaline.For VITA users rejoice!


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text:
Never Hurry a Murray – Guide to Hornchurch – Part 5
Category: Ricky Murray	 4th February 2014 9
Ricky Murray became famous for his Youtube guides to Hornchurch and Romford.
This is the 5th part of his guide to Hornchurch – Part 4 Here
No, 2-26, houses and a small road that leads to some flats.
No, 28, B.F. Mulley & Son – funeral directors. 24 hour service so you're not lumbered with a rapidly rotting corpse. That's all anyone needs.
No, 30-42, houses.
No, 44, Revive: Grill & Juice Bar – True Strength – Enjoy Health – World Fusion – Food for Fitness – Salads – Taste is Everything – Restaurant – Bar/Juice Bar – Revive Grill (in other words, your food will probably be so underdone that you will be able to revive it with the kiss of life) – Sea Food Grill – Charcoal – Steaks – Brunch – Dinner – Sea Bass – Smoothies – Protein
A road that leads to back-shop car parks and a Royal Mail warehouse that interrupts the high street. This is what's on the corner of it – which is the start of the high street PROPER. Used to be called Jailhouse Rock, which was similar to a burger bar and had a giant figure of a person that was supposed to be Elvis Presley in the Vegas years, white jumpsuit an' all, stuck to the building above the entrance. It played host to many tribute acts including Ronan Keating. Was called Lounge then 44 Club[38] immediately prior to what it is now. A few weeks before I found it to be Revive it had its windows plastered with newspapers. Headlines included:
Time to tackle our gambling[39]
Rolf charged with 13 child offences
Danielle rants at 'vile drunk racist' Big Bro bullies
Firm fined £30,000 for site safety failings
Bart of our team
No, 46, McDonald's – you know, the er, fast food place. This used to be massive inside with ceramic tiles all round the place featuring images of McDonald's old favourites, Ronald McDonald, Hamburglar, Grimace, Captain Crook, Officer Big Mac and many, many more in a country scene reminiscent of some Southeast Asian art that I've seen.[40] It also had an upstairs area where parties could be held, but in keeping with the uniformity of high streets, even individual McDonald's are now identical to each other with blinds and different shades of green everywhere. The ones around the country had their own quirks, but not anymore. An advert for 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?' was filmed here.
No, 46-62 (Unit 3…whatever that means), J.J. Moons – a smelly Wetherspoon pub that contains the usual aromas of vomit and sweaty feet.
No, 60-62, Coral – again, the address numbers are confusing. Not sure whether it is 60-62A. I know it's a betting shop – that much is certain. This used to take up just one residence as there used to be a Pizza Hut next to …Moons. The popular pizza joint may have given spots to its customers, but years spent in the confines of GAMBLING hot spots can provide its regular clientele with a haggard by-looking-at-me-you-may-think-that-I-spend-my-days-drinking-20-pints-and-four-bottles-of-whiskey-a-day look. It's a look that says, ''this man has LIVED''.
[38] Had some very good reviews, particularly where food was concerned. See them here:http://www.yelp.co.uk/biz/44-london
[39] 700 betting shops down one street – as is the case with this one – won't help.
[40] Mainly a ceramic bowl that I use to put fruit in at home.
No, 64-68, Oj's/Oliver James – doubt it was named after the Fleet Foxes song of the same name. Used to be a proper 'old man's' pub called The Cricketers; from the 'dad' bands that played there to the hanging sign on the pole outside that had on it a sketch of people playing cricket. With its all-black exterior penetrated by infra red lights at the entrance (which is also a smoking area) and bouncers outside, it is more like a bar. I haven't been in either, but I'm assuming Oj's is the place where you start off before finishing the night in Oliver James. My abiding memory of The Cricketers is being seated in the front of a friend's car on a hot sunny day in May 2006 watching West Ham United fans fighting EACH OTHER outside after an FA Cup final loss on penalties to Liverpool. I wanted the Hammers to win, but we found the fight scene rather comical as we drove past. They weren't exactly united as part of their name suggests. Again, I never went inside.
No, 70-74, Superdrug – big chemist and toiletry chain. Usually a worker or two in their red t-shirt and black trouser uniform smoking outside.
No, 76, Herb China – in musical terms, this is avant-garde to Superdrug's 'pop'. A car crashed into this place around 2011.
No, 78, British Heart Foundation – charity shop. A brightly lit cluttered place where it is not advisable to have a bag on your back or shoulder unless you like the sound of clothes' hangers hitting the floor. Inside I purchase two videos for 49p each. One of them is 'Trouble on the Terraces', a documentary on football hooliganism, and the other is 'Harry's Hit Squad', which contains mid-season highlights from West Ham United's 1997-98 campaign. The Harry in question is their manager at the time, Harry Redknapp. I hand the items over to a black girl with blue/green (dunno which) eyes in her late teens/early 20s (could have good genes and diet and be in her 30s) wearing a white jumper over the counter and ask whether numbers 80-82 of the high street are flats considering 78 is next door to 84-86. She smiles, but doesn't say much and quietly calls for someone else. Two heavily set women, one black wearing all black, and one white wearing a flimsy blue top, come out of the back room at the end of the shop.[41]
[41] Not sure of their eye colours.
''Hi, this address is number 78, right? Where's 80 to 82? Are they flats?'' I ask.
''Er, yeah, I think they are,'' the older black woman answers looking at me and then the white woman. ''Argos is 84 to 86 so they must be as there are flats above here, so yeah. Why'd you wanna know?''
I sniffle a laugh, put on my sounds-stupid-BUT voice and say, ''I'm doing a project where I'm noting down all the residences down the high street to show how it's changed…''
''Ah,'' the women said in unison,
''I'm hoping to turn it into a book eventually.''
''Ah,'' the black woman said again, ''that sounds great! Do it! Are you saying what everything was before?''
''For the ones I remember, yeah.''
''Sounds great. Good luck.''
''Cheers. And cheers for your help, see you later.''[42]
The three of them all say bye (some louder than others). And so I continued my epic adventure. Frodo's was NOTHING compared to this.
No, 80-82, flats.
No, 84-86, Argos – can get nearly everything here. It could possibly be the Harrods for the upcoming space generation.
No, 88-92, Halifax PLC – the bank place.
No, 94, Costa Coffee – it's not a modern day high street without one of these over-priced buggers around.
No, 96, Roy Gill Opticians – eyes again.
No, 98, flat.
No, 100, Roy's Pie & Mash – Eastender's Favourite apparently. No evidence as to whether it is a favourite of the likes of Phil and Billy Mitchell, but we'll take their word for it. Not sure if it's the same Roy who owns the opticians two doors away. Does he have his fingers in many different pies? He does literally, but it's unknown whether he does metaphorically.
No, 102, Hornchurch Jewellers – used to predominately be Hollywood Whitening. That is now round the back of this residence according to the bloke I asked in there.
[42] That was roughly the conversation. I didn't record on a Dictaphone or anything as I'm not a psycho.
The latter carries out laser PL hair removal, laser skin treatments and cosmetic teeth whitening (their capitals).
No, 102A, Cherry Acorn Insurance Centre – motor insurances.
No, 104, Vision Express – *coughing*
No, 106, Tiptoes – Key cutting, high-class engraving, watch batteries, straps & repairs. Huge giftware range
No, 108, The Card Company – greeting cards and all that jazz.
No, 110, Safina – women's clothing.
No, 112, Traffic – see above.
No, 114, Santander – the bank that Lewis Hamilton fronted.
No, 116-118 99p Stores – used to be a Woolworths until they imploded. Don't forget that at the time of typing (January 11th 2014) they have a website that you can buy from.
No, 120-122, Natwest – come on! Do you REALLY need me to tell you what this is?!
No, 124, flat.
No, 126, Boots The Chemists – Er…
No, 128-130, T E G Domestic Appliances – always have washing machines outside. If you're seeing this post straight away and the business has changed and/or there's no longer washing machines outside, well done for reading, and I will be going into Hornchurch soon to double-check. But equally, fuck off if you're gonna take issue with me for not making sure whether it was still T E G Domestic Appliances before posting this piece. I'm tired, leave me alone and get on with it.
No, 128-134, The Perfect Smile Spa – dentist.
No, 132, Haven's Hospice – I'm guessing this is what it is MEANT to be called, although I do sometimes wonder whether the decorator was supposed to spell out 'Havering's' instead of 'Haven's', but was too lazy on the day to add more letters. I suspect this laziness carried itself to the owners who then couldn't be bothered to change it back. Yeah, I think that's the reasoning. This used to be a pharmacy called Pharmacy. It was a name that the people of Hornchurch respected very much.
No, 134, Godfrey's of Hornchurch – a real authentic bakers, including the smell.
No, 136, Barclays Bank – sponsors of the English Premier League.
No, 138, Thomas Cook – can book with them the dates you want to burn yourself and heighten your odds for skin cancer.
No, 142, Shoe Zone – they sell shoes funnily enough.
No, 144-146, Clinton Cards – you'll never run out of sympathy and enthusiasm with these and others in town.
No, 148, Greggs – the famous bakers. Have to admit I find I make up my mind quicker in here than in other bakeries. Usually just go for a steak bake, Tottenham cake and tea – sometimes ALL in one sitting (I'm mental like that), sometimes just the one item.
No, 150, First Choice – suppose it's good that you can go in all the travel agents in the town first to see what are the best deals before deciding WHERE to burn yourself.
No, 152, Smokers[43] Paradise – eight doors away from Cancer Research.
No, 154, Retail Therapy – women's clothing.
No, 156-158, Costa Coffee – this has been many things in my time in the town – a steak restaurant called Gosha, two bars called Madsons and something else that escapes me. Can't remember what it was before the bars, but it was shut down for a while. Also, you will be shocked and I'm sure disgusted to know it took me a monstrous 216 steps to get from the aforementioned Costa Coffee to this one. Obscene! You'd have thought that they (the council, property developers, whoever) would have the decency to have one in between say, 113 steps, instead of putting our little legs through all that walking. I mean, HONESTLY…
No, 160-164 Peacocks – I can just imagine the clothes in this store being very thin and easy to rip.
No, 162, Patterson Hawthorn – estate agents.
No, 168, Wildwood/Ask/Baskin' Robbins – two Italian restaurants and an ice cream parlour. The three establishments formerly made up one single Lloyd's pub/bar. It was always busy and full of young people every time I went there (underage) between 2004 and 2006, so I don't know why it went under. These are all connected and sitting on a roundabout.
[43] No apostrophe after the 's'! Despicable.
Station Lane is to the right. See that bus? THERE. THAT'S more or less where Station Lane starts. This was taken before the road works. The only difference between the before and after of this picture is the colour of the pavements. All that money and distruption for different coloured pavements, a few plant pots, and a pavement in the MIDDLE of the road. Well done, Havering Town Hall, well done. If I knew any of you that were part of these schemes then I would buy you a pint…to throw in your face.
This is where another act of confusion occurs. Despite having lived in Hornchurch for over 26 years I didn't know that the alleyway between Peacocks and Richard House was the end of the high street and the start of a new road called Station Lane; which leads up to Hornchurch train station. The roundabout in the middle of the town centre features three establishments (all No, 168 – see above) and is considered part of the high street. So despite walking along the same stretch of pavement you are actually on a different street from that alleyway. I bet 99% of people consider that the first part of what is Station Lane is still High Street, so that is why I will continue up this path until the hordes of shops and restaurants end as if it was the same road. The even numbers of the high street will be continued after this for they are on the other side of the road, bizarrely. The upcoming section has a very wide pavement that facilitates for cycle access.
No, 170-180, Moss & Coleman Solicitors – a woman on the reception desk was very moody when I enquired to make sure that this residence still counted as High Street.
''What do you want?'' she said hurriedly.
''This is still part of High Street isn't it?''
''Yeah, what do you want?''
''I was just wondering whether this was still part of the road called Hornchurch High Street.''
''It is. What do you want?''
''Nothing. I was just wondering whether this was part of Hornchurch High Street.''
''Yeah, but what do you want?''
''That was all I wanted to know. So this address is 170 to 180?''
''Just making sure that this was part of the Hornchurch High Street for a project I'm doing.''
''Oh, well…it is.''
''Okay. Thanks. See ya later.''
And with that I walked out thinking that they thought I was a complete weirdo. I only realised months later that the street is called High Street, not Hornchurch High Street. No wonder she got the 'ump.
No, 174, Headlines Hairdressing – another example of why I had to ask people in residences to confirm their address.
No, 176, Chinese Medicine Centre – never really noticed this before. Like many places it just blends into everything.
No, 178, Turkish Mangal: Ocakbasi & Meze Restaurant – glorified kebab shop, although I would like to try this place.
No, 180, Frank Rivett & Sons Ltd. – Personal funeral services/directors and monumental masons
No, 182-184, Saint Francis Hospice – sell furniture only.
No, 186, Smile Solutions – ANOTHER dentist to keep gum disease and yellow teeth at bay. This is probably brought on by the number of restaurants and boozers in the town. People eat, get fucked – whether by drink, sexual penetration or both – then cannot be bothered to look after their teeth when they get home – choosing to slump in bed or on a chair in their glad rags instead. I know I have.
No, 188, Dixons Estates – that's right, not the computer place.
No, 190, Mustard Indian Kitchen – either they serve mustard, the kitchen is the same COLOUR as mustard, or the place is ''mustard'' i.e. good.
No, 192, The Only Way Is Cycling – NOBODY SELLS BIKES CHEAPER THAN US they scream twice. Bit of a generalisation I would and will say. The name of the shop is an indication of the growing trend and penchant for putting 'The Only Way Is… (insert your own shit here[44])' in front of ones that allude to the area of produce that one conducts business with. Mind you, there's one residence (a few doors down from the aforementioned Knights Snooker Hall) that calls itself The Only TAN (my capitals) Is Essex. Bravo!. So a LITTLE bit different, but dickish nonetheless. It is in reference to a somewhat popular TV show called 'The Only Way Is Essex', which some people refer to as 'TOWIE'. I originally thought the acronym stood for 'Twatty Orange Wankers In Essex'. And from what I have seen of the show I am convinced that IS what it stands for.
No, 194, Taste of Bengal – some say their food tastes too salty. Maybe there is too much salt in their meals, but I don't notice the difference between them and other curry houses in the salty stakes. It tastes good nonetheless (he says as his arteries get further clogged up thus stopping blood going through to his heart that will eventually lead to his death).
No, 196, Rienna's Restaurant – Luxury Fish Steaks Chicken
the letters of the sign are italic and white against a black background (used to be the other way round). In all my wisdom I thought it served traditional Austrian cuisine just because it sounded like Vienna. Yes, yes, stupidity on a par with Joey Essex (although he's probably never heard of the city). Pity, because I was looking forward to tucking into some non-dinosaur shaped turkey dinosaurs.
No, 198, Special Nails – you can have either 'special' nails here or 'stunning' nails from the place down the road. What's it to be?
No, 200, Adam's Mobility Services – what a helpful chap Adam is.
No, 202, Moroccan Rose – Indulgent Beauty it says on the sign. Used to be called SC Skin Clinic. Someone I know is referred to by a friend of mine as S.C. with the 's' standing for 'suicide'. I did always doubt, though, that that someone lapped up this nickname, took it on and then opened a skin clinic named after those initials.
[44] Not literally.
No, 204, The Body & Sole Clinic – aw, bit of wordplay there, get it?
No, 206, First Class Gents Salon – this was built in case there was ever a fire at the hairdressers two doors up. A fire would ultimately lumber customers that had only had half their hair done, so if such an event at that residence occurs, they just pop in to here.
No, 208, The Korai – Indian cuisine. And there I was thinking it was a place that sold koi. Wikipedia is often frowned upon in academic circles for its reliability, but I'm seeing more and more journalists refer to entries from there when they're on the subject of something or other. Here's the entry for 'Korai':
The Korai, also known as, Kaheri (Urdu: ڪورןءۍ) are a Baloch tribe settled in the Balochistan province of Iran, Balochistan Province of Pakistan; Sindh; Punjab provinces of Pakistan; and the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharastra, Haryana, and Indian Punjab. Ishaq Ibrahim Baloch Current Chief of Korai Baloch Tribe The tribe is considered to be the progenitor of many Korai Baloch sub tribes, including Aalani, Jamani, Jalalani, Mewtani(Chief Korai Baloch Sub tribe), Jhangirani, Chatarani,rustamani. They speak Balochi in Balochistan, Sindhi in Sind, and Seraiki Punjabi and Urdu in Punjab. In India they speak local languages, having been settled in India since the time of Mughal emperor Humayun. They descend from Mir Jalal Khan who's considered to be the Ancestor of the Korai, Rinds, Lasharis, Hooths and Jatois.
See, you HAVE learnt something reading this. All one of you.
No, 210, Fredrick's Hair and Beauty – see First Class Gents Salon above.
No, 212, The Fancy Dress Shop – think I'm correct in saying that this is no longer known as Cloaks & Daggers. I borrowed a nun's outfit from here to wear in Maguluf.
''If you're heading to Upminster, on your marks, get set, GO!'' Outside St. Andrew's Church which is further on down the high street towards Upminster.
Incidentally, the bull's horns in the centre of this picture[44] are not the original ones from the olden days (first recorded reference of them is from 1222) as they were nicked in 1999. If whoever's got them is reading this, hand yourself in – but not before you've sold them, made a lot of money and shared some of it with me. Are you still there horn-stealing assailant? Good. If you do intend to report yourself to the police then don't bother with the one in Hornchurch as it won't be open.
Tags: business, Hornchurch, Hornchurch High Street, Local Shops, Ricky Murry, Station Lane
Ricky Murray	6 2 21st July 2014
6 2 21st July 2014
Never Hurry a Murray in Upminster
Ricky Murray	1 1 24th June 2014
1 1 24th June 2014
Never Hurry a Murray – (Station Lane – Hornchurch Part 2)
Ricky Murray	2 18th June 2014
2 18th June 2014
Never Hurray a Murray (Station Lane – Hornchurch Part 1)