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Lifelong Michigan State football fans Brian McDonald and Pat Kelly were so thrilled when the Spartans beat archrival Michigan in 2008 after a six-year drought that they wanted to commemorate the victory by buying their own Paul Bunyan Trophy.
One problem: No replica of the trophy, which has been claimed by the winning team since 1953, was for sale. The vast retail landscape of thousands of licensed products didn't include official copies of the famous rivalry trophies.
McDonald and Kelly, friends since meeting as part of a fantasy football league in 2004, decided there was a niche to be filled, so they launched Rivalry Trophy LLC to produce licensed hard plastic resin replicas of the Big Ten's famous college football trophies.
It's become a successful sideline business for McDonald, a social studies teacher at Parcells Middle School in Grosse Pointe Woods, and Kelly, a dentist in Lincoln Park. They still work their day jobs while their nights and summers are often filled with trophy business work. They're 50-50 partners and use seasonal part-time help, with an office in Northville and a product warehouse in Redford Township.
"Because we love college football, it's a labor of love," McDonald said.
Now, they're studying product expansion while also scaling up sales by dipping their toe into distribution through Amazon.com.
They feel they're poised for serious growth. Sales last year were about $350,000. The price point they try to stay beneath is $100 for the large trophies, and under $20 for miniature replicas. A full-sized replica Little Brown Jug retails for $200.
Besides hardcore fans, the trophies are often bought for wedding parties — especially if the bride and groom attended rival schools, said McDonald, who is the company's president. They're also common gifts at Father's Day, graduations and bachelor parties, he said. Companies have bought them for offices split over school loyalties.
Ironically, a major customer has been Jim Harbaugh and the University of Michigan football program.
"Our football staff, including Coach Harbaugh, thought that the replicas of the Little Brown Jug and Paul Bunyan Trophy would be a great keepsake for our players and staff. They presented those as holiday gifts during his first two seasons," David Ablauf, UM associate athletic director, said via email.
Rivalry Trophy replicas were part of Michigan State's player "swag" gift bags for playing in the 2013 Rose Bowl game.
The company's Paul Bunyan Trophy replica leads all sales, McDonald said, followed closely by the "Floyd of Rosedale" pig trophy for the winner of the Iowa-Minnesota game. Third is the Little Brown Jug that's kept by the victor in the Michigan-Minnesota game.
Sales surge in the hours after a rivalry game.
"We usually see a spike in the neighborhood of 50 to 100 trophies in the next day or so," McDonald said. "We target happy fans because they are the ones that are going to purchase trophies. Once the game is over, we focus on the winning team. Someone is always going to win."
October-December is their busiest sales period because that's the heart of college football rivalry game season, and that coincides with the holidays. The company makes and sells thousands of Christmas ornament-sized trophy replicas, as well, McDonald said.
The trophies are sold in a few brick-and-mortar stores such as Michigan MDen and Michigan State's campus bookstore.
McDonald, 43, and Kelly, 50, needed help to get to this point. Creating and licensing a retail product wasn't among their skills, so they studied up, met with the appropriate officials at different schools to get them interested, and got help from Plano, Texas-based college sports licensing giant Learfield Communications LLC.
McDonald credits Learfield with the company's early success.
"They helped navigate the early stages — helped us with licensing holograms, box design and royalty reporting. They really helped us streamline the royalty reporting process," McDonald said.
The company submits its sales data and a lump sum payment to the Big Ten every quarter, and the conference pays royalties to each school represented by trophies, McDonald said.
"Standard licensing is between 12 and 15 percent, with the royalties split equally between schools," he said.
The licensing process involved one-on-one talks with the schools and conference, McDonald said. The athletic departments were helpful in providing hundreds of photos of the trophies, and those pictures were used to create prototype replicas by the China-based manufacturer. Each participating university got models to inspect and sign off on before they went into production, McDonald said. The universities own the rights to the trophy likenesses.
The large Paul Bunyan Trophy isn't a full-sized replica. It's 14 inches tall and sells for $75, while the real trophy is a 48-inch carved wooden lumberjack that sits atop a five-foot base. McDonald said a replica that size would have to retail for $500, and the demand at that price wouldn't justify the product.
The trophies are as detailed as they can make them, and the quality helped convince the Big Ten and the schools to grant them licenses — an often long, complex process for anyone that wants to sell retail souvenirs.
"It wasn't as hard as it could have been, because we had a unique product," McDonald said.
One licensing industry insider said McDonald and Kelly are a bit unusual because they successfully navigated a licensing process that's normally (but not always) a pipeline reserved for bigger brands.
"(Licenses) are issued to companies that have significant wherewithal, that are more financially sound, established, with distribution networks. So these guys are outliers," said Pete Canalichio, CEO of Atlanta-based Licensing Brands Inc., which has counted Coca-Cola, Major League Baseball and the U.S. Olympic Committee among its clients.
He also praised the Big Ten and the universities for identifying a good product to license: "To the credit of the universities, they saw this as an opportunity to take advantage of something that wasn't being exploited at the time," Canalichio said.
The college licensed retail product industry is estimated at $4.6 billion, according to Atlanta-based Collegiate Licensing Co., which represents about 200 schools, bowl games and athletic conferences.
The process for Rivalry Trophy still took months — years, in some cases. Sales began in earnest in 2011.
"The Little Brown Jug was challenging," McDonald said. Then-Michigan coach Brady Hoke allowed him to personally handle and photograph the trophy in the basement of UM's Schembechler Hall. The problem with getting it right was because the jug has all the scores of the Michigan-Minnesota games from over the years, and shows a lot of wear from handling.
"We try to make them as authentic as we possibly can," McDonald said. "You can't recreate a hundred years of tradition of the thing getting passed back and forth."
They ended up going with a cleaner replica. The standard model is $98.
Other famous replicas among the current inventory of 11 trophies available are the Old Brass Spittoon (Indiana-Michigan State) and the Illibuck (Ohio State-Illinois).
There are some Big Ten trophies they've yet to license, including the enormous bookcase-like Land Grant Trophy for the Michigan State-Penn State winner, the Land of Lincoln Trophy that in 2009 replaced the old Sweet Sioux Tomahawk for the Illinois–Northwestern victor, and the recent Twitter-created and very unofficial "$5 Bits of Broken Chair Trophy" that goes to the winner of the Minnesota–Nebraska games.
Those could happen in the future, McDonald said.
"We ask about trophies annually. In order for a trophy to move forward there must be agreement between the conference and all schools. We have yet to receive permission for the others, for a variety of reasons. We've specifically asked about the $5 Bits of Broken Chair in the past year, and the universities are a bit reluctant because of the uncertainty over who actually owns the rights to that trophy," he said.
They plan to add more schools and conferences, such as the Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC. Expansion is limited because there are only so many trophies and they are most common in the Big Ten, but there are some prominent trophy games elsewhere, such as the Stanford Axe that's been a trophy for the winner of the Stanford-Cal game since 1933.
"There's just not the passion elsewhere that exists in the Big Ten," McDonald said.
As the company does add more replica trophies to its product lineup, it's also expanding its sales reach by using Amazon.com. However, using the e-commerce giant to scale up sales is a Catch-22, according to McDonald.
For starters, they're reluctant to give up control and the ability to interact with customer that they get from direct sales. He said they've built good relationships because clients talk directly with them about sales or problems, and that's created goodwill they may lose with third-party online sales. That can be lost by using Amazon sales.
"We pride ourselves on customer service. We like the direct connection we have with customers and don't want to lose that," he said.
But Amazon's scale (and free shipping for Prime customers) is too powerful to resist.
"It's become the world marketplace," McDonald said. Their plan is to sell just the ornament mini-size trophies in time for Christmas, rolling them out in the coming weeks, he said.
Also, it's simply too expensive to deal with long-distance shipping in-house, he added. Shipping to the western U.S. can add $30 in costs.
"That's difficult to absorb or pass on to customers," McDonald said.
As a small retailer, there are wider issues far out of their control. Because the replica trophies are manufactured overseas, McDonald and Kelly have been keeping an eye on the Trump administration's trade wars, which have not yet affected their business but remain a worry.
"We are in the process of making another order, and there is some uncertainty. It's definitely a concern moving forward," McDonald said. He added that they looked into a domestically produced version of the Floyd of Rosedale trophy, and the cheapest they could get it produced and realistically sold to consumers for a small profit was $498. Still, they're seeking North American manufacturing options.
One area where they've found success at a discount is marketing. The company has paid for traditional advertising in alumni magazines, national college football periodicals and even Lansing radio spots, but it gets its best results from social media, McDonald said. That's because it gets invaluable targeting data from Facebook and other platforms.
"We get immediate results. Social is measurable. The ability to target and re-target potential customers is insane," he said. "We know who is likely to make a purchase."
The success so far has McDonald and Kelly thinking about expansion into other products related to the trophies.
"We're looking at everything. Clothing is a different animal altogether from a college licensing perspective, but we're looking at everything that a college fan has at a tailgate or in their basement and we are considering if a large pig, or a statue of Paul Bunyan, would look great on it," McDonald said.
Article written by Bill Shea
Crain's Detroit Business


Reqs: MUST have AT LEAST MORE THAN 17,171 min HP to stall at Floor 1!
F1-F2 >> remove all fire orbs; ensure the board has Light and Dark orbs, then x25 kill (after you charged enough for Bane skill and UmiYama skill) - Yep! much suprising, we will get 9 free turns as the Icedragon opens its Big mouth LOL..Phew!
F4-F5 >> use U&Y skill if red/heal covers the board, make sure you are good with 4-colors matching to do OHKO with each 25x DMG - Good luck!
So, what I did before getting a stable build?
Round #2: Used Dark Golem for 75% def reduction on Yggdrasil, got lucky with 7-8 combos of 25x and the creature dies! At the end, only Helheim drops!
Round #3 (Master): Same setup, but no drop :( much easier, got 1 stone!
Round #4: Used Dark Golem again (and Nifheim dropped again!) but I can't believed that even with 5 turns of 75% def reduction, my U&Y team cannot pierce through the shell of Yggdrasil if I only got 4-5 combos of 25x [Dang!] I died.
Round #5: Just needed a better solution! Aha! I was lucky to have an evolved Bane (no Ra!) hahahaha... so I used him, but I fed him 1 x Super King Light, and 3 more King Light to level up the HP gain... then he becomes so much RELIABLE :) And wait... this time, my favorite Nifheim (and unexpectedly, Helheim) drops!! Yippie!
Good luck to all and hope you like reading what I've experienced.
PAD is just fun to experiment, given you are at high ranks now with decent Stamina. Yea, I've been an IAP player..
1) you should have just posted below in team builds.
edit: haha... i tried to say "no offense, only friendly advice"... xD I apoligise I forgot how sensitive people are.
thanks. i need to clarify that i did not down-voted you, but i am appreciative for your advise - not used to the submit build with monster icons hence the long text here, will do so next successful submission ok.
thanks for ya 1 vote (which I noticed last night) but now its gone. Wondered why..
2) Gaia CANNOT be OHKO with Bane! Coz he had more HP indeed - so this time, Dark Golem with 75% DEF reduction will work :P, or Evil Kagusatchi.
Oh! I waited for UmiYama friend/s to be available every 5-6 hours (later), and tried this again with (well) stones..
8th run > no drop?!
10th run > Woot woot!!!
So, I would like to conclude that drops are RNG (or by luck, really), and so far, no invade from Blue Muspelheim - I need him to complete my Legend Draggy series.
(Satisfied). I do hope there's someone who treasures U&Y like I did.
The problem with posting in team builds is that they never seem to get approved.
does that mean Niflheim has 10 turns until it attacks?
I was just wondering, do any of these dragons have any use? They look amazing, but they just seem like buffed ripper dragons with a stronger nuke and better stats, at the loss of orb changing and a much higher team cost.
Can confirm, totally doable with a double Lucifer team. Only thing I had some issue with is Gravity Breath, but throw an Echnida on your team, and it becomes a non-issue.
Invade can happen on any difficulty.
Note for the "gotta catch 'me all"-type players: These drop fully evolved. If you want the pre-evolutions in your catch list then you'll have to run Master or hope they bring the legendary dragon dungeons back.
oh does this dungeon drop the evolved form of pet? or is that a typo? lol... not sure if that would make up for the crappy drop rate tho. but at least this dungeon gives decent experience.
Ran this six times on Master level... Four times through not a single drop!
So ridiculous, i ran this dungeon on Legendary and was able to catch every single dragon, even blue Flame Dragon Muspelheim and i still haven't been able to get Vicious Helheim. Is anybody else experiencing this?
God magma breath can still activate after 25%! I made it through once with my suggested build on luck cause I killed him before his second attack. 2nd time through I got hit with second attack and got killed by 35k+ double attack!
Just used [BB]Wombok's build below and it was pretty safe. I had max skill persephone and echidna and subbed out hera for hades the max skill echidna was a life saver at the end but the other skill cd didn't matter much other than speeding rounds up. H.Q.Persephone - 75, Echidna - 65 friend SOD Luci max level Awoken Hera - 67.
Boss' God Hell Breath info is incorrect, he activated when he was still above 70% HP, then I went to check skyozora he activates when under 75% HP.
Not bad 2 out of 5 dragons in 1st run. And 3 of 5 on 2nd one. All I need is the light dragon to have all. Dungeon is too easy.
Ok I'm not sure what happened when I played.. I've played Int and expert and didn't get anything at all! I beat them both 3 times each! I'm a newbie and don't have enough stamina to play higher than the expire level. Does anyone have any idea why I didn't even get one Dragon?
The drop rate is pretty low. I played all four levels and only got one dragon to drop on max difficulty.
Depends on where you're at in the game. if you haven't gotten through starlight sanctuary in the normal dungeons yet, then you can make due with either the orochi and go with a zombie team, or use your archangel and team up with someone else's orochi or green odin. The zombie team will stop working on most descends, and also the technical dungeons. odin can still work in technicals, but he gets a bit more risky.
for higherlevel stuff, your best bets are the blue and red sonia, ra, and maybe yomi.
ra can handle almost anything, but he's hard to use.
If you have an angelit from the pal machine, you can ult evo yomi into her dark light form, which gives you a solid x3 to light. it's not going to let you do most descends, but it lets you do the biweeklies and colabs pretty effectively. Yomi is also a solid sub for lots of other teams. her active helps you with ra if you really need it for instance.
Blue and red sonia are very similar, although red sonia is way more common and more people use her. But you need to get some additional subs. things with either fire or dark row enhancements as awakening skills. also, try to pick up a hera Ur, her active goes well with red sonia.
Currently though, you do have some decent options. Ult evo persophone, she fits well enough in there. keep in mind she doesn't gain a devil subtype until the ult evo.
The zombie dragon is also an okay choice for now, he doesn't have the best active for you, but he does help your dark monsters, and he has decent stats.
The vampire is a no brainer for now, put him in.
the drawn joker is an option, not the best unless you really need heals or you don't have anything else.
King baddie almost always goes in.
Hera is an okay option too, normally unless you try hard to stall, a sonia team wont wait around long enough to get a gravity to go off, but she's a devil and has better sats than drawn joker.
the helldark isn't great, but it's possibly better than some other things, and you already have it at a semi decent level. also, you can max skill that thing easy enough.
and your final option is lilith, who is decent. poison is very useful in some dungeons, although it's damage is borderline useless in most. she does have that buff to devil types which could be usefull too.
then other upside to red sonia is, you can pull up almost any dungeon and see people suggesting a red sonia build, so you have tons of examples to look through.
Sad drop rate but easy with 3 Ronias.
All max awoken helps speed things up.
3 minutes and 0 stones required.
I used this build template, fast, simple and easy. Shiva instead of Poison and Keeper of Gold for HP requirement as wildcard. Gaiadragon Yggdrasil dropped but clearing (all four) for stone.
The "ogre thing and healer" is known as the Zombie Team. If anything single supposedly kills you in one hit and youre above 70%HP, you'll Resolve in 1 HP. However, if there is one more monster attacking you after that monster, game over.
In this dungeon, the Dragons technicals use multi hit, in which will definitely finish you in multi hits, as you cant take much.
Advice: It's bad to spend a lot of time in one special dungeon that possibly gives a big reward at the abyssal bottom end. You'll notice your boredom in this game as you "rinse and repeat" the same boring strategy.
By Tapatio: Ares & freyr max, uriel 70 gigas maxskill. 4th slot fire orb changer. Bane/Ra/10th Angel works. 26k health to tank hits. FL 1 combo, gigas if needed, keep health up. FL 2 use skills if needed. stall if u are able to. FL3 Bane active. FL4 only gigas or uriel if needed. FL5 freyr, ares + orb changer, next turn gigas if not dead.
By kinbari: Lu Bu and Sonia are maxed with some pluses. Requires a friend with a high plused Sonia to reach enough HP to survive floor one. After that it's pretty straightforward. For Yggdrasil I save heart orbs, use vamp and then lu bu. In an emergency, use echidna. This team allows a lot of options. Good luck!
By Kitt: All monster except Ra lv >90. All monster max awoken (so Ra skill lv 1 will have 10 turn cool down). Floor 1 & 2: stall for 10 turn until Ra skill ready, then x25 to kill them (note: on floor 2 if bad combo might need to x25 twice) Floor 3: use Ra skill. Floor 4 & 5: use skill if needed then simply x25 to kill.
By pzhou@PG/r: really, really easy. you just need 1 meimei the rest are farmable, DQXQ is stat stick for RCV replace with any god type with good RCV or auto heals (odin). Av team level was only lvl 50 (DQXQ max). sweep F1, stall F2 for 7-8 turns (depends on starting timer), use all skills F3, then just straight sweep last 2 no skills needed.
By Jc_Ch0: Fl1: Charge all skills. Fl2: Gravityx1, Lukex2; Fl3: Charge, then Shiva, one-shot it; Fl4: Use Persephone to speed up, don't use skills; Fl5: If start with 1 turn, stall, then Gravity x2, Luke x2.
By Dragon: Dont need other sonia. 18k lets you tank a hit above 50 on floor 1, but if you get him under 25% he'll anger and you're fine or you can just kill him. Floor 2 gives you lots of turns for free, take em all. Echidna then shiva on 3 for ez kill. Set up and baddie floor 4 if you don't have ronia 2. Lu Bu/Ronia floor 5.
By Mctierser: Nothing much to say, x25 sweeps each floor. Enough skill boosts to have gravity up by boss floor but it's not needed. Combo well and you should have no problems beating this dungeon.
By Leinad@PF: Max skilled Freyja and Artemis help. Go slow F1; close to 50, pop skills, drop him. Hit hard, but kill at last turn (10). F3, Ra. F4, work slowly, when you can finish him, pop Michael, heal, kill. F5 at trn 2, pop skills, finish him.
By Exile: Stage 1: Charge gravity and MS; Stage 2: 3 grav + 1 MS to kill; Stage 3: Heal + 1 MS; Stage 4: Heal, then kill normally; Stage 5: Kill normally, use skills if it isn't dead from the onslaught. If invasion occurs, just kill normally!
By bojangles: 1: stall until ~50% then burn down. RK if at risk of getting hit while < 25%. 2: 2x grav, burn the rest. 3: Kill with MS. Can stall if RK isn't up. 4: Stall as much as you can. Try not to combo with dark. RK and DJ for extra stall. 5: A few combos (RK if it's up) then 2x grav and MS FTW.
By Inex @PG: You can replace the MGMk.III with Neptune/another Armor breaker. He's just needed for Yggdrasil. Stall on Flr2 if you can for Echidna, incase you need it. Just push through, I survived a hit on Floor 4, and just sweep through the dungeon as needed. Good luck! 0 Stoned.
By Hem: All row enchance awakens and siren max skill. First and second fight should go down easy, but use skills if Niflheim does approach the 9th turn. If skills are on cooldown, stall a bit, otherwise poison to move on. Valhalla shouldn't be too hard, just use Siren/Odin when needed. Then Siren>Hermes>Kraken>I&I>make 2 rows to finish.
By chad: You want to be able to take one hit from Muspelheim. Kill him and Nifheim right before their second term. Then use sonia & enhance actives to one hit the last three stages. Lu Bu was level 57, Ronias level 70 and 35 respectively, and friend maxed. Can sub out one king baddie or ronia for any good devil orb changer.
By MiniZak: All max LVL.F1-charge skills and get dragon close to 25% HP,then use ROdin's and GOdin's gungnirs.To be safe,use skills with 2 turns to go,so if you don't KO,you can combo and poison to finish.F2-Don't stall-grvty,MS,combo to heal&MS.F3-charge skills,then ROdin's gungnir.F4-Luci's MS.F5-AMA, recharge, and at 80% use all skills.
By JD@PG: 1st Floor: Match orbs to kill Muspelheim. 2nd Floor: Stall at Niflheim for skills to activate. 3rd Floor: Use one Suzaku skill to kill Yggdrasil. 4th Floor: Use Valk & Verche skill to kill Valhalla. Final Floor: Use Echidna skill first to delay Helheim, then use Suzaku skill and finally use Takaminakata skill to kill the dragon.
By S hole@PGF: Avg lvl 73 Leaders fully awoken. One goal: stall up Neptune for F3. F1 stall up once/twice and kill. F2 stall for all 9 turns and kill. F3 pop up Echidna and stall up for Neptune. Use poison at the last turn. Neptune will instantly kill it. F4 kill it. F5 pop up leader skills then kill. ThisDungeonIsALotEasierThanIThought.
By Aqua: HP > 13010 to have an extra turn on F4, but not required. HP > 17717 can tank a hit from F1. Grind first 2 floor, Guard Break + 7Star on F3, combo F4 and 7Star F5 Kamui and Siegfried to make first floor easier if HP < 17717, but any strong Haku sub will do.
By FCAP: Luxury build. Hardest requirement for this build is HP. For wildcard I used #1176 Keeper of Gold (highest HP that met cost restrictions on team). Enough HP to stall first round. Stall until skills are up. FLR1: Sonia FLR2: Combo (10 turns) FLR3: Shiva + Red/Black Combo FLR4: Sonia (Shiva still up) FLR5: Sonia. Simple. Easy.
By Syveril: Enough hp to tank everything except FL2 (should have plenty of firepower to clear). Kagu to clear FL3. Grind out the rest without worry. God subs besides Kagutsuchi are optional; I chose them for higher stats and easier comboing. Can sub Vritra for Verche and Droidragon for Kagutsutchi (but watch hp).
By Bleye: Hera can be subbed for any Grav user, Voice can be subbed for any dark orb changer F1: Just charge skills, don't rush this floor F2: Build up RCV orbs before nuking- use Grav and 2x MS F3: Charge skills, then poison with Lilith F4: Easy floor, play normally. Use KoR when needed. Watch your HP. F5: Grav then 2x MS. You win!
Bleye: Belial was supposed to be Lucifer! Sorry!
By cc: Easy as usual. Take one hit from Muspelheim, blow everything up while saving a few of your dark orbs. Water: Plenty of time to kill. Wood: 3x3 red combos should let Ares pierce it. Light: Easy kill with a couple dark combos. Dark: May as well blow cooldowns now.
By DotCal: With skill boosts from Okuni the orb changers will be up quickly (high skilled orb changers preferred). The plan is to just kill everything with 16x. Wildcards can be high HP/ATK subs, you should probably bring a defense breaker or a poisoner in case you fail to burst the green dragon down.
By Cristiano: When monster lv is not high enough, a 36x formation is more likely to pass it with 0 stone. Just put in all best monster of each colour, Echidna is not a must. Firedragon hv a min CD of 2, so juz clear the heart orb on turn 1 to prepare for 36x attack on turn 2. Use 12 turn to charge up Ra on Icedragon. The remain is easy.
By Vic3@PF/PG: Non-IAP team. 26577+ for 1F boss's 50% attack. 1F: charge skills, minimize dmg until 25% HP. 2F: 2x Grav + MLD skill, clean up remaining HP in 10 turns. 3F: Recharge Gravity before nuke. 4F: stall as much as possible. 5F: stall until 75%, then 2x Grav + MLD, use RK skill @ 1 turn and kill in 10 turns or nuke if ready.
By Jacul: "I won't die" team. Basically hit and recovery. Two water monster against first round, and double gravity plus morning star fasten #2 and #5. Neptune against Yggdrasil. Didn't encounter invade but should be easy. And replace Vampire if you have better devils since his skill won't be used.
By xtaie@pf: 16x Horus should have no problem tearing through each dragon's ~600k hp. Heartchangers for when you are missing a certain color you need. If you aren't as good at using Horus' leader skill or aren't leveled up/evo'ed enough, replace duke vamp with echidna. Otherwise, this is able to 1-shot all the bosses.
Cohen: Except for Yggdrasil, which you need the skill of Ra, Shiva, Droidragon, or a defense break. I lost w pretty high lvl team, 9 combo & x22.5 burst didn't help me enough.
By Emm@PF: Stall on first 2 dragons until Ra and Echidna are up. Use Ra's active on Yggdrasil, blast through everyone until the boss, use echidna, done.
By John Death: Round 1, use regular attacks and charge all skills. Round 2, unload all skills to kill the dragon before its second turn (first turn, it does nothing). Round 3, heal up, charge skills, and use poison to finish. Round 4, use regular attacks and charge all skills. Round 5, unload all skills for instant win.
By jade: Goemon Flex Team: RK for HP. RGG/EtRE max skill. Goemons near max lvl. You want Fire dragon hit to put you below 20%. Ama for RCV, can sub alt. RCV around 1400 depending upon lvl. If Homura max skill, can sub him for EtRE. Save fire orbs for Gaia, or make sure RGG etc skill is up by then. Manage heart orbs; you'll be fine.
By [BB]Wombok: Safe build. Charge skills on 1st boss, usekeeper of rainbow skill if in danger when dragon uses its big attack. Use hades and SoD lucifer skill on second boss, finish off with echidna+persephone skills. Kill third boss with SoD lucifer skill. Last 2 bosses easy, just watch health. Echidna and keeper of rainbow skill for safety.
blumeanie: This build dies on floor 1 if he uses God magma breath.
By Gehenna: Siren is max skilled. Can sub any dark poisoner (i.e. Ghostring) for Lilith. Round 1 is straightforward; take time to charge Lucifers. Round 2: 2x Morning Star, then finish in remaining 8 turns. Round 3: poison, then stay healed. Round 4 goes quick due to dark damage x2; SAVE nukes. Round 5: Nuke x2 then finish off quickly.
Cohen: I used this team (minus DDK, add Dub-mythlit) and worked easy! Lucifers lvl 70 & 73 (w +70 combined), Lillith lvl 40, never used Siren's skill. Although I'd recommend on F5 use KoR, hit for ~10%, then nuke x2. Thanks!
By AdarSA: Can be done at any mons lvl if you match well. Make sure all skills are up when the red dies. Store hearts, then nuke the blue. Stall until all skills are up, then nuke the green and light. On the final dragon, whittle it down slowly and the Lucis should pop up right as it hits 70%. Gravity, gravity, Luci, dead.
By Meat 36@PG: HP Must be between 17,718 and 22,145, high skill on subs. Clear hearts, take 1 hit from Muspelheim to get into zone, then pop Sieg to kill @ 5. Stall for 8-9 turns on Niflheim, then pop CuChu. Use Gigas on 3 to break Yggdrasil def. Pop Vamp to kill Valhalla, then Sieg/CuChu to kill Helheim. Blue Musp Drag on 2 is bad luck!


text:
Snap stock rockets up 15% after it says its user number stopped shrinking
The company reported almost $400 million in revenue and says its stopped user losses.
[Photos: Thought Catalog/Unsplash; energepic.com/Pexels]
By Mark Sullivan 1 minute Read
Snap's usual business model: Invent cool new social features and have them stolen by Facebook and Instagram, then report low revenues and user loss. Not today. The company reported greater-than-expected revenues and says it's managed to stop its user number from shrinking. Snap is still not a profitable company, but it covered a lot of ground toward becoming one in 2018.
Here are the top lines:
$398.8 million in Q4 revenue, up 36% from the same quarter last year and a solid beat over the $377.4 million analysts were expecting
Snap's stock is up roughly 15% in after-hours trading
Net loss was $192 million in Q4, a $158 million improvement from last year
Full Year Loss was $1.26 billion in 2018 versus $3.45 billion in 2017
Daily Active Users were 186 million in the quarter, compared to the 187 million Snap reported in Q4 2017
Revenue guidance: Between $285 million and $310 million in revenue, or a growth of between 24% and 34% over Q1 2018.
Fast Company Senior Writer Mark Sullivan covers emerging technology, politics, artificial intelligence, large tech companies, and misinformation. An award-winning San Francisco-based journalist, Sullivan's work has appeared in Wired, Al Jazeera, CNN, ABC News, CNET, and many others.
Corporate donations shouldn't be Band-Aids. Big bets on social enterprises will make more change
The border wall is destroying ecosystems. Biden can fix it
7 climate actions that Biden could take on his first day
Will Trump keep getting intelligence briefings? Who decides?
Trump's last day: How political cartoonists covered the end of the Trump presidency
How to watch the inauguration of Joe Biden live on CNN, PBS, or elsewhere without cable
Twitter, Facebook, and Google could combat disinformation with this simple design tweak
Empty office buildings are still devouring energy. Why?
We still don't know what the Hyperloop will feel like, but here's how it will sound
Why a free afternoon each week can boost employees' sense of autonomy
Salvage your health resolutions with these 9 simple moves
7 reasons humility is a highly desired leadership trait

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


The Lavender Blog lets you know whenever any new Web pages appear on Joys of Lavender.
I love lavender and would like to share it with you. If you want to know more about crafts, cooking, health, bath and body, gardening, ect. this is the place. I hope to cover everything about lavender I know and learn.
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Lice is a common problem in school. The normal treatments can be toxic. Try this safe natural lice killer you can make yourself.
Continue reading "Baking Soda Bath"
Continue reading "Uses for Lavender essential oil"
Ticks are a problem across the globe. Essential oils can help repel them.
The history of lavender has been documented for over 2500 years.
Continue reading "History of Lavender"
Did you want to make handmade lavender soap? Check out this and other easy recipes.
Continue reading "Handmade Lavender Soap"
Lavender salt scrubs are a wonderful way to remove dead skin. Here are a couple of recipes for bath scrubs. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.
Continue reading "Lavender salt scrubs"
There are some general rules for safely using essential oils. How much carrier oil to essential oil is important to know.
Continue reading "Essential oil safety"


text:
Posted inYellowknifer
Ore discovery could extend life of Gahcho Kue diamond mine
by Nick Pearce June 19, 2019 June 20, 2019
James O'Connor/NNSL photo The NWT's economy grew last year, mostly due to the completion of one full year of production at the Gahcho Kue diamond mine. Diamond mining increased 68.2 per cent as a result of activity at the massive operation, 280 kilometres northeast of Yellowknife.
A new deposit of kimberlite — a rock sometimes containing diamonds — has been discovered at Gahcho Kue diamond mine, marking its first major discovery at the site in two decades, a June 11 news release announced.
An exploratory drilling program at the mine discovered the rock, intersecting with the kimberlite below 18 meters of lake water and sediment. The "Wilson" kimberlite find is named after Canada's first female geologist Alice Evelyn Wilson.
The pipe runs north-south and could be substantial enough to extend the life of the mine. Further drilling is slated to determine the northern extent of the pipe.
Stuart Brown, president and CEO of Mountain Province, said the finding could lead to future discoveries in the area. Mountain Province Diamonds co-owns the mine with De Beers Canada.
"The discovery of Wilson demonstrates the high exploration potential of the Gahcho Kue JV area, and after a 20-year discovery hiatus, it confirms that we are on track for discovering new kimberlites in this region," Brown stated.
"This discovery also heightens our focus on the potential for more discoveries in the corridor between the Gahcho Kue JV and the Kelvin-Faraday kimberlites."
While results are still in preliminary stages, the find could lead to more discoveries at Gahacho Kue, according to Mountain Province Diamonds.
NNSL File Photo
The company treated 115.2 kilograms of kimberlite, recovering 480 diamonds sized at .075mm and up, and five .85mm-sized diamonds that weighed .32 carats. According to the news release, the largest rock was a .28 carat. These microdiamonds are too small to be cut, but can provide valuable clues in the exploration for new deposits.
Currently, there are three active pipes at Gahcho Kue: 5034, Hearne and Tuzo.
Located about 200-km from the Tuzo pipe and within the current mine plan, the pipe's diamond ore could run from 1.5 to 3.0 million tonnes, according to Mountain Province. It also appears to be a distinct pipe, as opposed to a previous kimberlite discovery last year that is connected to Tuzo.
Dr. Tom McCandless, the company's vice president of exploration, said the the rock was largely dismissed before the new discovery.
"While the results are preliminary, both the microdiamond and 3D modeling data suggest that the Wilson kimberlite will add positively to the mine at Gahcho Kue," he said. "With this important discovery, what would have formerly been discarded as waste rock has, through methodical exploration, now been converted to rock of value as we move forward with development of the Tuzo open pit."
Tagged: Yellowknifer
Nick Pearce
Nick Pearce is a writer and reporter in Yellowknife, looking for unique stories on the environment and people that make up the North. He's a graduate of Queen's University, where he studied Global Development...	More by Nick Pearce


Beautiful, modern storytelling through film: France. A boutique filmmaking company producing bespoke, beautifully crafted films for weddings, love stories, people and places.
"I love it ssooooooo much!!! It is incredible, it really is! Thank you so so much for all of your hard work - I can safely say it is totally worth it! My family are going to absolutely love it!
A Baxter and Ted wedding film at the beautiful Chateau La Durantie in France. What a fabulous day of love and happiness with the gorgeous Ashleigh and Chris. Planning and styling by the super talented and very lovely helainastoreyweddingdesign.com and brilliant to work with Chloe from caughtthelight.com whose photos from the wedding are stunning!


text:
5207 Hearnshaw è un asteroide della fascia principale. Scoperto nel 1988, presenta un'orbita caratterizzata da un semiasse maggiore pari a 2,5508388 UA e da un'eccentricità di 0,1894735, inclinata di 12,78488° rispetto all'eclittica.

Collegamenti esterni

Corpi celesti scoperti nel 1988
Hearnshaw

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Review: IBM Cognos. Scalable and flexible, but watch out...it's expensive.
Review: "IBM Cognos. Scalable and flexible, but watch out...it's expensive."
IBM Cognos is a comprehensive reporting tool. It is being used by almost all central offices at Georgetown (HR, Finance, Student, Advancement, etc.). The Report and Query Studio tools are sophisticated and support our talented user base. They provide flexibility and the ability to query the packages in an ad-hoc way. We've also seen some adoption of the Cognos Mobile tools which is really neat. We're working with end-users to make the mobile features more apparent so that they can access data on-the-go.
The Report and Query Studio tools are nice for sophisticated power users. This allows power users to query and report on data which has already been modeled.
The architecture of the application can be tiered nicely for performance. This allows us to scale the application to support our growing user base.
Licensing for Cognos is difficult to understand. It is based upon a proprietary 'PVU' or Processor Value Unit calculation which has been created by IBM. This effectively licenses each server by the number of processing cores.
The software licensing is expensive.
The product requires very technical staff to maintain and support. This adds greatly to the TCO of IBM Cognos that many overlook.
Even with version 10.2.1 - browser compatibility is an issue for Report and Query Studio users. For example, they still don't work in Google Chrome. This causes a lot of confusion.
IBM Cognos is currently serving approximately 2000 unique logins per month across 18,000 interactive report executions.
We will continue to use IBM Cognos to support our student community. In other areas of the university, Microsoft's SQL Server Reporting Services has become a cost effective alternative. That being said, the Report and Query Studio tools of Cognos still remain superior and will bring business benefit to Georgetown for many years to come.
After upgrading to 10.2.1, I am upgrading my overall rating. We have been pleased with the ability to publish 64-bit packages, IBM added new visualizations, a nice Workspace feature, and several new Excel output options. Plan to budget a 5-7% increase annually to continue to support this tool.
3500 - Student Accounts, Student Records, Financial Aid, Financial Affairs, Human Resources, Advancement - these groups also span multiple campuses (i.e. Main, Medical, Law).
5 - Cognos requires a more technical skill set. Our staff that manage this product have extensive backgrounds in supporting Cognos and many have Informatica/data integration skills. In addition to Cognos, they need to have a solid understanding of database platforms (i.e. Oracle 11g, MS SQL 2012) and also have to feel comfortable with writing queries.
IBM Cognos drives corporate reporting for the university. Primarily, it serves the Student community by reporting on Ellucian Banner and ODS data.
I've been pleased with the innovation around dashboards. We're now exploring further uses of the new Workspace functionality.
Cognos Mobile adoption will grow very quickly. Cognos Mobile now supports push notifications to the status IOS status bar in the iPad app – users can now be notified when a new version of their report is available, further reducing the latency in decision making on the go.
We are also looking at ways to support further data export and integration capability. Cognos 10.2.1 now allows increased spreadsheet maximums to 16,384 columns by 1,048,576 rows. It also adds an Excel output format called Excel 2007 Data which is perfect for lightweight data transfer to Excel without any report formatting.
Yes - Legacy shadow systems were replaced. They were replaced due to security, data governance, scalability, and performance.
Cognos was chosen due to the fact that it is a market-leading reporting product. Georgetown is a large university with many complexities. We needed an enterprise-level reporting tool that would support our growing need for data and analysis.
The landscape has changed slightly since we implemented Cognos. However, we'd approach the process similarly now and put out and RFP and allow the vendors to bid on the project.
The implementation was handled very well. The initial implementation exposed a lot of disagreement between our campuses and departments as to how we define data. This was not entirely unexpected, but I thought that we did a nice job as a team to work through some of these challenges.
We implemented in partnership with a 3rd party professional services vendor, Entigence, and IBM.
Yes - We implemented Student reports during the first phase of the project. Financials were handled primarily in phase 2.
Change management was a big part of the implementation and was well-handled - Early exposure to the tool is necessary. We have several different environments setup (i.e. DEV, TEST, QA, PROD), so we were able to allow users to get into the lower environments informally for testing and training. We then held formal trainings closer to rollout.
Onsite training provided by IBM Cognos was effective and as expected. They did not perform training with our data which was a bit difficult for our end-users.
Cognos is highly configurable, but also takes advanced technical skill to do so. The product is highly flexible and highly configurable. The market-leading position demonstrates that other users/companies feel the same.
Spend time on building the right architecture from the beginning. Review your organization's security needs and define an appropriate security hierarchy. Spend time governing this hierarchy and ensure that it doesn't get out of alignment. Create test environments so that you can deploy fix packs and changes to the software prior to rolling them into production.
Ensure to configure mobile and remember that version 10.2.1 has new visualizations and Excel capability that need to be installed.
When pressed, they ultimately get to the right people. However, IBM is still working through the Cognos acquisition. You can easily get lost in the IBM 'sea' that doesn't know much about Cognos. When you get to the right Cognos people, their support is very good. We often find that the difficult PMRs that are submitted are resolved by our Georgetown staff before the issue is properly routed and solved by IBM. This becomes frustrating.
Yes - 20% of the license price charged annually for subscriptions and software maintenance (S&S).
Yes - They are typically good about identifying solutions for product defects. Typically, these are rolled into a fix pack.
We recently had an issue when upgrading from 10.1 to 10.2.1. Many images on our reports were broken, although the images were properly loaded on the server. Cognos support was able to jump in, recommend a solution, and ultimately held a screen sharing session with us to fix the issue.
We have a strong user base (3500 users) that are highly utilizing this tool. Basic users are able to consume content within the applied security model. We have a set of advanced users that really push the limits of Cognos with Report and Query Studio. These users have created a lot of personal content and stored it in 'My Reports'. Users enjoy this flexibility.
Report and Query Studio are easy to use, but require training. It would be more difficult to pick up these tools without any prior experience.
Yes - It's a good app - and a bit ahead of the competitors. It integrates nicely with your Cognos credentials and has the capability of saving your content across devices. We utilize Cognos behind a corporate VPN. As a result, we had to teach users how to setup a VPN connection on their mobile devices. That was more challenging than using the Cognos Mobile app!
The Cognos architecture is well suited for scalability. However, the architecture must be designed with scalability in mind from day one of the implementation. We recently upgraded from 10.1 to 10.2.1 and took the opportunity to revamp our architecture. It is now poised for future growth and scalability.
Cognos' services need to be restarted from time to time, but they are stable and require little maintenance.
In the right architecture, the performance of Cognos is great. We find that our firewalls and VPNs limit the performance, but are a necessary evil.
As a reporting product, Cognos integrates well with a wide variety of data sources. In version 10.2.1, they added support for MS SQL 2012 which was nice.
For each data source, we had to setup a corresponding data connection to the database. We typically do this via a service account. We then create a Cognos package which is then setup in each report using that data.
Workday supports data extraction via their API and custom reports. We intend to use these supported methods of data extraction.
Do what is required to meet your business needs. Keep maintenance and upgrades in mind during every integration or customization.
Their sales team is sharp, and sometimes pushy. They are rigid in the way they price their product.
The sales team remains in touch, but they are always after 'the next big sale'. Support staff is adequate, but we often solve the issues prior to their support staff.
IBM has some nice higher education discounts; however, the pricing remains very expensive to comparable products. For renewals, sometimes working through a business partner (such as CDW-G) can yield a better price and assist you to avoid the typical annual 5-7% increase for simply owning the product.
Meet with them in person. Clearly articulate your position and your budget. They'll work with you, but you may need to wait until the end of the month or quarter to properly negotiate.
Yes - The upgrade went fairly smoothly. We upgraded the product from 10.1 to 10.2.1 and also rehauled the underlying architecture. On a few of the packages, the governor limit was reset to zero. We had to manually change this as most of our packages were running with a higher limit. We also had a few issues with images on several reports. It turned out to be an SSL issue as the images were trying to render in HTTP vs. HTTPS. Ensure that you have the SSL certificate applied to each machine in the stack - not just the gateways.
Report output is now not stored in the Content Store.
Extended Excel output capability - spreadsheet maximums to 16,384 columns by 1,048,576 rows. Cognos 10.2.1 also brings a brand new Excel output format called Excel 2007 Data which is perfect for lightweight data transfer to Excel without any report formatting.


text:
package org.sleuthkit.autopsy.imagegallery.gui;

import com.google.common.collect.Lists;
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.logging.Level;
import javafx.application.Platform;
import javafx.beans.InvalidationListener;
import javafx.beans.Observable;
import javafx.beans.property.DoubleProperty;
import javafx.beans.property.SimpleObjectProperty;
import javafx.collections.FXCollections;
import javafx.fxml.FXML;
import javafx.scene.control.CheckBox;
import javafx.scene.control.ComboBox;
import javafx.scene.control.MenuItem;
import javafx.scene.control.RadioButton;
import javafx.scene.control.Slider;
import javafx.scene.control.SplitMenuButton;
import javafx.scene.control.ToggleGroup;
import javafx.scene.control.ToolBar;
import javafx.scene.image.ImageView;
import javafx.scene.layout.HBox;
import javax.swing.SortOrder;
import org.sleuthkit.autopsy.coreutils.Logger;
import org.sleuthkit.autopsy.imagegallery.FXMLConstructor;
import org.sleuthkit.autopsy.imagegallery.ImageGalleryController;
import org.sleuthkit.autopsy.imagegallery.actions.CategorizeGroupAction;
import org.sleuthkit.autopsy.imagegallery.actions.TagGroupAction;
import org.sleuthkit.autopsy.imagegallery.datamodel.Category;
import org.sleuthkit.autopsy.imagegallery.datamodel.DrawableAttribute;
import org.sleuthkit.autopsy.imagegallery.datamodel.grouping.GroupSortBy;
import org.sleuthkit.autopsy.imagegallery.datamodel.grouping.GroupViewState;
import org.sleuthkit.datamodel.TskCoreException;

/**
 * Controller for the ToolBar
 */
public class Toolbar extends ToolBar {

    private static final Logger LOGGER = Logger.getLogger(Toolbar.class.getName());

    private static final int SIZE_SLIDER_DEFAULT = 100;

    @FXML
    private ComboBox<DrawableAttribute<?>> groupByBox;

    @FXML
    private CheckBox onlyAnalyzedCheckBox;

    @FXML
    private Slider sizeSlider;

    @FXML
    private ComboBox<GroupSortBy> sortByBox;

    @FXML
    private RadioButton ascRadio;

    @FXML
    private RadioButton descRadio;

    @FXML
    private ToggleGroup orderGroup;

    @FXML
    private HBox sortControlGroup;

    @FXML
    private SplitMenuButton catGroupMenuButton;

    @FXML
    private SplitMenuButton tagGroupMenuButton;

    private static Toolbar instance;

    private final SimpleObjectProperty<SortOrder> orderProperty = new SimpleObjectProperty<>(SortOrder.ASCENDING);

    private final InvalidationListener queryInvalidationListener = (Observable o) -> {
        if (orderGroup.getSelectedToggle() == ascRadio) {
            orderProperty.set(SortOrder.ASCENDING);
        } else {
            orderProperty.set(SortOrder.DESCENDING);
        }

        ImageGalleryController.getDefault().getGroupManager().regroup(groupByBox.getSelectionModel().getSelectedItem(), sortByBox.getSelectionModel().getSelectedItem(), getSortOrder(), false);
    };
    private final ImageGalleryController controller;

    synchronized public SortOrder getSortOrder() {
        return orderProperty.get();
    }

    public DoubleProperty sizeSliderValue() {
        return sizeSlider.valueProperty();
    }

    static synchronized public Toolbar getDefault(ImageGalleryController controller) {
        if (instance == null) {
            instance = new Toolbar(controller);
        }
        return instance;
    }

    @FXML
    void initialize() {
        assert ascRadio != null : "fx:id=\"ascRadio\" was not injected: check your FXML file 'Toolbar.fxml'.";
        assert catGroupMenuButton != null : "fx:id=\"catSelectedMenubutton\" was not injected: check your FXML file 'Toolbar.fxml'.";
        assert descRadio != null : "fx:id=\"descRadio\" was not injected: check your FXML file 'Toolbar.fxml'.";
        assert groupByBox != null : "fx:id=\"groupByBox\" was not injected: check your FXML file 'Toolbar.fxml'.";
        assert onlyAnalyzedCheckBox != null : "fx:id=\"onlyAnalyzedCheckBox\" was not injected: check your FXML file 'Toolbar.fxml'.";
        assert orderGroup != null : "fx:id=\"orderGroup\" was not injected: check your FXML file 'Toolbar.fxml'.";
        assert sizeSlider != null : "fx:id=\"sizeSlider\" was not injected: check your FXML file 'Toolbar.fxml'.";
        assert sortByBox != null : "fx:id=\"sortByBox\" was not injected: check your FXML file 'Toolbar.fxml'.";
        assert sortControlGroup != null : "fx:id=\"sortControlGroup\" was not injected: check your FXML file 'Toolbar.fxml'.";
        assert tagGroupMenuButton != null : "fx:id=\"tagSelectedMenubutton\" was not injected: check your FXML file 'Toolbar.fxml'.";

        controller.viewState().addListener((observable, oldViewState, newViewState) -> {
            Platform.runLater(() -> syncGroupControlsEnabledState(newViewState));
        });
        syncGroupControlsEnabledState(controller.viewState().get());

        tagGroupMenuButton.setOnAction(actionEvent -> {
            try {
                new TagGroupAction(controller.getTagsManager().getFollowUpTagName(), controller).handle(actionEvent);
            } catch (TskCoreException ex) {
                LOGGER.log(Level.SEVERE, "Could create follow up tag menu item", ex);
            }
        });

        tagGroupMenuButton.setGraphic(new ImageView(DrawableAttribute.TAGS.getIcon()));
        tagGroupMenuButton.showingProperty().addListener(showing -> {
            if (tagGroupMenuButton.isShowing()) {
                List<MenuItem> selTagMenues = Lists.transform(controller.getTagsManager().getNonCategoryTagNames(),
                        tn -> GuiUtils.createAutoAssigningMenuItem(tagGroupMenuButton, new TagGroupAction(tn, controller)));
                tagGroupMenuButton.getItems().setAll(selTagMenues);
            }
        });

        catGroupMenuButton.setOnAction(new CategorizeGroupAction(Category.FIVE, controller));
        catGroupMenuButton.setText(Category.FIVE.getDisplayName());
        catGroupMenuButton.setGraphic(new ImageView(DrawableAttribute.CATEGORY.getIcon()));
        catGroupMenuButton.showingProperty().addListener(showing -> {
            if (catGroupMenuButton.isShowing()) {
                List<MenuItem> categoryMenues = Lists.transform(Arrays.asList(Category.values()),
                        cat -> GuiUtils.createAutoAssigningMenuItem(catGroupMenuButton, new CategorizeGroupAction(cat, controller)));
                catGroupMenuButton.getItems().setAll(categoryMenues);
            }
        });

        groupByBox.setItems(FXCollections.observableList(DrawableAttribute.getGroupableAttrs()));
        groupByBox.getSelectionModel().select(DrawableAttribute.PATH);
        groupByBox.getSelectionModel().selectedItemProperty().addListener(queryInvalidationListener);
        groupByBox.disableProperty().bind(ImageGalleryController.getDefault().regroupDisabled());
        groupByBox.setCellFactory(listView -> new AttributeListCell());
        groupByBox.setButtonCell(new AttributeListCell());

        sortByBox.setCellFactory(listView -> new SortByListCell());
        sortByBox.setButtonCell(new SortByListCell());
        sortByBox.setItems(GroupSortBy.getValues());

        sortByBox.getSelectionModel().selectedItemProperty().addListener(queryInvalidationListener);

        sortByBox.getSelectionModel().selectedItemProperty().addListener((observable, oldValue, newValue) -> {
            final boolean orderEnabled = newValue == GroupSortBy.NONE || newValue == GroupSortBy.PRIORITY;
            ascRadio.setDisable(orderEnabled);
            descRadio.setDisable(orderEnabled);

        });
        sortByBox.getSelectionModel().select(GroupSortBy.PRIORITY);
//        ascRadio.disableProperty().bind(sortByBox.getSelectionModel().selectedItemProperty().isEqualTo(GroupSortBy.NONE));
//        descRadio.disableProperty().bind(sortByBox.getSelectionModel().selectedItemProperty().isEqualTo(GroupSortBy.NONE));

        orderGroup.selectedToggleProperty().addListener(queryInvalidationListener);

    }

    private void syncGroupControlsEnabledState(GroupViewState newViewState) {
        boolean noGroupSelected = newViewState == null
                ? true
                : newViewState.getGroup() == null;

        tagGroupMenuButton.setDisable(noGroupSelected);
        catGroupMenuButton.setDisable(noGroupSelected);
    }

    public void reset() {
        Platform.runLater(() -> {
            groupByBox.getSelectionModel().select(DrawableAttribute.PATH);
            sortByBox.getSelectionModel().select(GroupSortBy.NONE);
            orderGroup.selectToggle(ascRadio);
            sizeSlider.setValue(SIZE_SLIDER_DEFAULT);
        });
    }

    private Toolbar(ImageGalleryController controller) {
        this.controller = controller;
        FXMLConstructor.construct(this, "Toolbar.fxml");
    }

}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Zaur Magomedalievich Abdullaev (; born 23 March 1994) is a Russian professional boxer who challenged for the WBC interim lightweight title in 2019.

Professional career
Abdullaev made his professional debut on 4 March 2017, scoring a first-round technical knockout (TKO) victory over Sardorbek Kamilov at the Sports Complex Leader in Berezovsky, Russia.

After compiling a record of 7–0 (5 KOs) he defeated Ardie Boyose on 10 February 2018 at the DIVS, Yekaterinburg, Russia, capturing the WBO Youth lightweight title via seventh-round TKO. At the time of the stoppage all three judges had Abdullaev winning with scores of 60–54, 59–55 and 59–55.

In his next fight he defeated Deiner Berrio via unanimous decision (UD) on 22 April at DIVS to capture the vacant WBC Silver lightweight title. Two judges scored the bout 117–111 and the third scored it 115–113.

He retained the title by UD against Hank Lundy in September, followed by a TKO win in a non-title fight against Humberto Martínez in February 2019 before facing Devin Haney for the vacant WBC interim lightweight title. The bout took place on 13 September 2019 at the Hulu Theater in New York City. Abdullaev suffered the first defeat of his career, losing by fourth-round corner retirement (RTD) after Abdullaev's corner pulled him out of the bout before the start of the fifth round.

Following his failed title bid, Abdullaev faced Pavel Malikov on 22 August 2020. He won the fight by a seventh-round knockout, after knocking Malikov down once in the fifth round and twice in rounds four and six. Abdullaev faced the journeyman Zhora Hamazaryan on 27 March 2021, and won the fight by unanimous decision, with scores of 94–93, 96–91 and 95–92.

After successfully bouncing back from his first professional loss, Abdullaev was booked to face Dejan Zlatičanin for the vacant WBC Silver lightweight title on 11 September 2021. He won the fight by unanimous decision, with scores of 118–110, 119–109 and 117–111. Abdullaev is scheduled to face the former three-weight world champion Jorge Linares in his first title defense on 19 February 2022. He won the fight by a twelfth-round technical knockout. Adbullaev knocked Linares down twice in the last round of the bout, before forcing a referee stoppage with a flurry of punches at the 2:28 minute mark.

Professional boxing record

References

Living people
1994 births
Russian male boxers
Sportspeople from Stavropol Krai
Lightweight boxers


2"-4" Letters, Numbers & Symbols - Curly Style (MDF) Lower Case. Natural finished wooden Letters and Numbers. Simple block letters fun and a great addition to a bedroom, bathroom or number of craft projects in need of that perfect personalization! Size depends on the letter b, l, h, t, etc.. will be taller and letters like a's, c's and e's will be shorter.


Directly from mir.aculo.us. Internet Explorer does not like certain names for the id of your controls.
Another example of problem that will not be discovered with any w3c test.
Test early, test often, and with as much browsers as possible!


text:
Abortion Service Safety Issues To Be Discussed At Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists EGM
Kate Demolder | irishtatler Jan 09, 2019 Print
The HSE has budgeted €12m for termination of pregnancy services in 2019.
The Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (IOG) is to hold an extraordinary general meeting on Wednesday evening to discuss safety fears regarding the newly legislated termination of pregnancy service.
According to RTÉ, the meeting, which will be held in Dublin, will be closed to the media and is only for IOG members.
A single motion has been tabled which states that: "Because of risks to patient safety due to inadequate preparation, the implementation of forthcoming legislation in relation to termination of pregnancy cannot commence on Jan 1st 2019 and should not take place until these risks are addressed."
The Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists is the national professional and training body for Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in Ireland.
In its role as a professional body, the Institute is developing draft guidelines in anticipation of the introduction of legislation to allow for termination of pregnancy, and this is near completion.
In December, it issued draft guidelines to its members in anticipation of the introduction of the new legislation.
The IOG has been contacted and Irish Tatler is awaiting a response.
Medical abortion services were introduced under law on 1 January.
Despite divided attitudes and a tempestuous scramble to make newly legislated termination services available in Ireland, the number of Irish GPs who have agreed to perform medical abortions has risen to 200, up from 165 before Christmas.
Yesterday it was reported that, so far, no GPs in Sligo, Leitrim, Carlow and Offaly have signed up to the new service.
Only 112 of these are opting to take referrals from the HSE's MyOptions helpline, which is the main referral pathway for women seeking a termination.
The rest will deal only with cases from their existing patient lists.
READ MORE: Bogus Number and Imagery Advertised As HSE Unplanned Pregnancy Service
READ MORE: Calls For Safe Access Zone Legislation Following Anti-Abortion Picket


We're happy to help spread the word about events happening in Portland! Simply complete this form and we'll post your event as soon as possible.
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text:
require File.dirname(__FILE__) + '/klass'

module Gator
  module AS3

    class GeneratorCollection < Gator::Command

      define :command => "as3",
             :usage => "generate as3 GENERATOR", :description => "Generators for AS3."

      register_subcommand Gator::AS3::ClassGenerator

    end

  end
end


I've Reached My Goal Weight! Now How Do I Maintain it?
I've Reached My Goal Weight! Now How Do I Maintain it?
There's no time to grow complacent, because you might find yourself sliding off the rails — and you wouldn't want to unravel the difficult pounds you've successfully shed.
You've made it to the weight maintenance phase, but don't underestimate it. Did you know that nearly 65 percent of dieters return to their pre-dieting weight within three years?
In fact, for some, this stage of weight-loss can be even more difficult than losing the pounds to begin with. It might be because our bodies are biologically designed with a protection plan in place. Essentially, it defends its fat stores, looking for energy to replace what is lost. So, you've got to stay ahead of the curve and develop a protection plan of your own.
1) Schedule a Health Exam.
Remember, it's not all about the number on the scale! Schedule an exam with your primary care physician for an eval of your health. If there are things you can still improve upon, like cholesterol or blood pressure, incorporate those goals into your weight management plan.
2) Keep Stepping on the Scale.
Don't even think about tossing the scale — you still need it. Make sure you step on it regularly, whether it's daily or weekly, to keep a close eye on the number and how it's trending. You should be able to catch any red flags before they become a problem.
Step outside your comfort zone and learn to do something you've never done before. Perhaps it's a marathon or triathlon. Maybe it's a dance class, spin class or even a full-on hiking excursion. Pick a skill or activity that will inspire you, motivate you and keep you pushing!
Even though you've lost the weight, it's important to keep an eye on maintaining healthy habits. This includes nutrition, exercise, sleep, stress management and more — you know the drill.
Develop and cultivate the mindset that your weight-loss journey is one you'll stay on forever — and it doesn't just end when you've reached your goal weight. Keeping the weight off is just the second leg of the adventure! Continue to measure non-scale victories and seek new, creative ways to boost your health and crush your goals. You've got this — now keep up the great work!
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Righting a wrong
Pioneer headstone is replaced at the Camas Cemetery
By Heather Acheson | February 4, 2014 12:00 am | comments
The new headstone of Alexander Stuber is carefully lowered into place, using a flatbed truck crane and pulley, at the Camas Cemetery on Friday.
Joey Fuerstenberg, president and owner of Vancouver Granite Works, Inc., was on hand Friday to oversee the replacement of the headstone of Alexander Stuber, who died in 1908. The headstone was vandalized beyond repair in October. Vancouver Granite Works contributed to its replacement. "We kept everything on the new headstone in the order that it was before, but changed the font around a little bit to give it more of an updated look." To re-create the headstone, a rubbing (pictured above) was taken of the original one.
A representation of the Camas community's generosity was bolted into place on Friday.
A new granite monument at the grave site of Alexander Stuber was secured into place at the Camas Cemetery by employees from Vancouver Granite Works. The original one, more than 100 years old, was destroyed by vandalism in October 2013.
Vancouver Granite Works worked to replicate the original monument, which included an image of a rose and the Bible verse "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith," from the second book of Timothy 4:7.
"We kept everything on the new headstone in the order that it was before, but changed the font around a little bit to give it more of an updated look," said Vancouver Granite Works Owner Joey Fuerstenberg. To re-create the headstone, a rubbing was taken of the original.
Stuber was born in 1866 and died in 1908.
Vancouver Granite Works donated half of the $1,000 cost to replace the monument. The additional funds were donated by local citizens and businesses.
Eunice Abrahamsen, a longtime Camas resident and volunteer with the Friends of the Camas Cemetery, was on hand to watch the installation.
"It looks beautiful, just beautiful," she said. "They did a great job."
She gave credit to Camas Police Chief Mitch Lackey, who came up with the idea to reach out to the community for donations.
"None of this would have happened had he not suggested that," she said.
Abrahamsen said she initially wasn't sure how the community would respond when asked to step up and give.
"I know people care about this cemetery," she said. "There were some donors who were anonymous—I have no idea who donated. I just want to thank those people. Those were contributions they made out of the goodness of their hearts and caring for our cemetery."
The headstone at Stuber's grave site was one of 15 discovered on Oct. 23 pushed off of their pedestals and onto the ground. Much of the damage took place in the southeast pioneer section of the cemetery. Stuber's, however, was the only one destroyed.
On Oct. 24, Michael D. Garwood, 21, of Camas, was arrested on 15 counts of violating laws governing the protection of cemeteries and one count of second degree malicious mischief. The Clark County Prosecuting Attorney's Office later said it would not file charges against him, although Garwood could be charged in the future following additional investigation.


Be a Divine Weirdo !!!!
Deliciously revel in your unique brand of weirdness; for, it is precisely this quality that will save our civilization from being slowly suffocated by a particularly virulent strain of apathy and boredom. Becoming a sublime, card-carrying member of the deviant fringe is what is needed most now in the world. We must have visionary heretics who take delight in odd things, and imaginatively gifted freaks who will inspire all earthlings to embark with them on a holy quest to discover brilliant new ways to bring paroxysms of outrageous joy and volcanic outpourings of exquisite rapture to all of the unloved, lonely, and desolate spaces of our planet.
I love it when I am able to feel the oceanic depths of my being as waves of effervescent joy roll through my soul, filling me with with such indescribable ecstasy, that nothing else matters. During these times, the world just fades away into nonexistence, and I get a small tantalizing hint of why we may be here, walking around on this lovely little globule of rocky dust encircled by blue, lapping waters that we call the earth, and that we decided to call our home for a brief time. This feeling is not really a feeling, but more of an inner conviction that we are forever connected to something so inconceivably vast, all that matters is the maintaining and deepening of this connection. I believe that there is no limit to how far I can descend into its magnificent depths; that the further I go, the more there will be to explore and experience.
During these times, I am surrounded and engulfed by a limitless presence, so all-encompassing and incredibly ancient, it boggles the mind. Which is a good thing. We need our minds completely and utterly boggled, discombobulated into stunned bewilderment and turned so topsy-turvy, that they stop headlong in their tracks, and are able to recede way into the background of our consciousness. Our minds have a tendency to dim the infinite splendor that is unadorned reality, fogging up the mirror of our perceptions so that we mistake the external world for what is, and thereby diminishing all of the unmitigated joy we should be having. In our desire to make sense of things, to even have a tenuous grasp onto something reassuringly solid in a capricious universe, we limit our understanding to a mere fraction of what it could be. The way we see things could be infinite. Instead, we exchange our Ultra HD 4K television, for a fifty year old black and white, rabbit-eared piece of junk, that can barely pick up two channels. We need to be constantly wiping away the dirt and the grime and accumulated gunk from our perceptual mirrors through actively seeking out incredibly rich experiences, and ideas; through surrendering to strange beguiling epiphanies, and embarking on delirious dream flights to mysterious temples where we can receive the holiest of forbidden wisdom. We need to do all these things, and more, so that our minds will be thrown for a loop, and therefore, allow us to be in the right place to taste the ethereal joys that are ever our birthright.
So, you must get rid of your soul-sapping complacency by indulging that part of your soul that craves the unfamiliar, and bravely tread the forgotten cobblestones of an uncertain path. The kind of path that will take you places that exist altogether apart from the human mind. Some of these places can be found on a map; sacred oases out in nature where we can retreat from the mind-numbing din of civilization, and immerse ourselves fully into the rapturous silence to be partaken of there. There are other, inexpressibly transcendent locales, that dwell in our spiritual imagination, and unable to be traveled to by using conventional modes of transportation. We are only given permission to traverse these expanses when we relinquish our tight grasp on a version of reality that is pathetically small. Places we can retreat to in the sanctity of our dreams, where we can replenish our tired spirits by imbibing the exquisitely piquant wines and succulent fruits gifted to us by the vibrant beings who live there.
They may appear to us as benevolent demons, phantasmagorical demi-gods, or even the old man down the street, who is seemingly conventional in appearance, yet you know he harbors incredible reserves of wisdom that he earned through many hard-fought metaphysical battles. It doesn't really matter. What matters is what we learn in these hallowed places where bright inspiration wafts through the air, like an intoxicating breeze, of ways to transcend the monopoly that thought has placed on our awareness. The mind is like a petulant god, who will let no others intrude upon its sacred space. It has carved out a seemingly impenetrable fortress in your psyche, and now wants to become an evil beast who will frighten away the delicate flower of your higher awareness. We must not give into this tyrant. Therefore, it is absolutely imperative that you allow that which lies beyond thought to triumphantly emerge, and ascend to the main stage of your life; let it become the primary focus of your existence, and revere that exceedingly sacred part of you.
We think way, way too much. Our thoughts utterly consume us; wear us out with their exhausting energy and their endless demands. These insidious emissaries from the realm of the intellect attempt to dislodge us from our spiritual quest in every way they can think of. The mind is a motor that is constantly running, and unless you know where to look, it is so very difficult to locate the "off" switch. But we must find that switch, and give our monkey brains, chattering away all day and all night and causing us to be more than a little insane, a bit of a rest. Our civilization has exalted the mind for far too long as the mental filter through which all of reality must be experienced and digested. However, in order to progress as a species, we must dethrone the intellect from its overly exalted position, and realize that it is merely a tool. An exquisite, eminently handy tool, one which we used to build great civilizations and wonders beyond imagining, but a tool nonetheless.
I issue a challenge to ever one of my spiritual brothers and sisters journeying with me through time, space, and the myriad dimensions of all that exists, to really see their own brand of spirituality as something that strengthens them. Too often, we equate spirituality with weakness, as if it was nothing more than a psychological deficit that must be eradicated through rigorous discipline. Instead of falling headlong into this disappearing trap, meditate on ways your all-encompassing embrace of that glorious realm that transcends our ordinary state of consciousness makes you exceedingly robust – so that you possess an almost preternatural resiliency that can help you weather any of the turbulent storms that threaten to overwhelm us with negativity, despair, and a pervasive sense of ennui that causes us to lead a colorless existence.
Spirituality can add vibrancy to our lives. It is not weakness, even though it gives us the ability to be more vulnerable and empathetic. A hardened psyche is so utterly fragile, that it will break into a billion glittering fragments at the first sign of psychic trouble. We must allow ourselves the necessary luxury of psychological softness, because that makes us more us better able to handle the stresses of life, so we are not like the proverbial oak tree, which snaps in the wind. We must be willing to be spiritual superheroes who, because they have allowed themselves to be completely consumed by the effulgent fires of spiritual truth, gaze with eyes of profound love upon those suffering in silence.
So, cultivate the super-ability to radiate powerful beams of love from your eyes, and allow that power to utterly transform despair into hope; turn sadness into joy; and restore sight to those lost to the voracious hunger of the dark shadows, which are always waiting in the wings, ready to devour us. This is our task on this rocky globule of dust we call the earth: to live up to our higher calling – a calling that predates our descent into primordial matter – to become these mighty superheroes, whose overriding strength is tenderness of spirit.
We are on a wondrous evolutionary journey, progressing always upwards towards the all-encompassing light, to utterly shed all vestiges of that flimsy construct that we call our "personality." We act like lowly snakes, slithering in the dry dust, who have swallowed the sun and do not even realize it. Deep within our bellies, we have this luminous ball of eternity, and as long as we refuse to shed the strangulating skin of our egos, the light within cannot escape out into the world to work its miraculous magic. We need to eventually relinquish this sometimes useful, but more often than not, limiting, thing. It hides our inner glow, and we are unable to ascend into the unimaginable glory of who we really are.
All of us masquerading as human beings believe that this construct gives us power, and that were we to merge into the ocean of consciousness, we would be forever lost. Nothing could be further from the truth. At the moment of union with universal love, we will finally awaken after our long slumber, and become the divine beings every one of us were meant to be. We are destined to transcend the multifarious universes that encompass the totality of space/time to become unified once more with our Creator, who is merely us restored to our fullness. We will waltz with angelic beings, even if our world, due to our collective ignorance, is destroyed. We can always create new ones out of the cloth of nothingness by manifesting them with our powerful creative energies.
Always, we will have new adventures, and create new realities from an infinitude of possibilities. Humanity will suddenly realize that there are new ways of being that we can scarcely imagine now. And, all souls are good, despite what you may have heard to the contrary. In the end, not a single one will be lost to eternal damnation during this epic journey. Some may temporarily turn away from the light, but an evolutionary process, once started, can never be stopped. Only remember that we prevent our movement into the all-consuming light of beingness because of our overly hasty desire to label others. This is because of our underlying fear that in their differences from us, they threaten us somehow. This misconception only serves to sap our spiritual strength. The other is our self, if only we could dimly recognize this.
D. Wallace Peach's writing is always a revelation, and she is a creative inspiration for me. I love what she has to say about writing and her life in this piece.
Thanks, Chris, for the opportunity to monkey around on your famous blog! I've seen your invites for several months and have said to myself "someday." It appears someday has arrived.
I'm one of those writers who rarely struggles with writer's block. I can write 16 hours a day and never run dry of words …until someone asks me to write about myself. My mind goes blank, every articulate thought sucked through a black hole into another dimension. The urge to regurgitate my 3rd grade demographics starts sounding like a decent backup plan. What does a fantasy writer who lives entirely in her head have to say about her "real" life?
Wonderfully said. I agree with everything except the part about drinking copious amounts of coffee. I never tried the stuff…but that's all in a blog post I wrote.


The General Meeting of member central banks is the main decision-making body within the Bank. The BIS currently has 60 member central banks, all of which are entitled to be represented and vote in the General Meetings. Voting power is proportionate to the number of BIS shares issued in the country of each member represented at the meeting. For more information, go to the BIS MarketsWiki page.
This page was last edited on 14 July 2015, at 19:11.


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Q: Flutter Boxfit.cover image with slider animation I have a Flutter project with a PageView with different Images, that fill the entire screen with the BoxFit.cover property. What I want to achieve is an automatically initial animation, that begins with setting the Image Widget property alignment to Alignment.centerLeft and then animates the image to Alignment.centerRight, e.g. the images moves from left to right, and then, as soon as the image reaches the Alignment.centerLeft final position, it automatically switches to the next PageView.
I tried wrapping the Image Widget with the AnimatedAlign, but then the Boxfit.cover does not work anymore.
I want an animation like this:

PageView(
  children: [
    Container(
      child: Image(
        // Here I want the animation to go from
        // Alignment.centerLeft to Alignment.centerRight
        // and then automatically switch to the next PageView
        alignment: Alignment.centerLeft
        fit: BoxFit.cover,
        image: AssetImage("assets/image1.jpg"),
      ),
    ),
    Container(
      child: Image(
        fit: BoxFit.cover,
        image: AssetImage("assets/image2.jpg"),
      ),
    ),
    Container(
      child: Image(
        fit: BoxFit.cover,
        image: AssetImage("assets/image3.jpg"),
      ),
    ),
  ],
),

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Showcase Concerts is a non-profit organization established to increase appreciation for music through educational programs. Showcase Concerts, Inc. is registered with the State of Arizona as a 501(c)3 corporation. All donations to Showcase Concerts, Inc. are tax deductible. Your contributions are very important to keep our programs affordable.
The State of Arizona offers a tax credit of up to $400 for payment of fees to any Arizona public school for support of extracurricular activities. The programs presented at public schools by Showcase Concerts, Inc. qualify for this school tax credit.
In 2000 we sponsored an Opera 101 program at each school in the Osborn District with donations from our supporters. It really works!
How can you benefit by making this contribution?
Every dollar you donate to the school of your choice, up to $200 will be refunded to you by the State of Arizona. It's practically free money, but we need you to make the donation. Please, e-mail us about it!
You may direct the school of your choice to use the donated funds specifically to hire Showcase Concerts, Inc. to provide an in-school music education program. Get together with a friend, make matching donations and bring this fabulous program to your kids' school.
Click here for more information on School Tax Credits for Individuals.


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Barack Obama's Kenyan 'grandmother' dies aged 99
30 March 2021 | 9:21 am
Sarah Obama, often referred to by former US President Barack Obama as his 'granny', has died aged 99 in Kisumu, Kenya. After being unwell for about a week, 'Mama Sarah' WAS admitted to the Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Teaching and Referral Hospital where she later passed away.
BarackObama
Barack Obama's Kenyan 'grandmother' dies aged 99
Covid-19 third wave hits Kenyan hospitals
Kenya is hit by a third wave of coronavirus cases. More than 15 percent of people tested every day are positive. Hospitals have become overcrowded, intensive care units are at full capacity and oxygen cylinders have run out. President Uhuru Kenyatta has announced fresh restrictions to curb the spread of the virus. He hopes the measures and a vaccination drive will protect the population. Also, we speak to Doctors Without Borders after thousands of survivors from an IS group attack on Mozambique's northern town of Palma stream into the port of Pemba.
DW journalist attacked by Kenyan police at protest in Nairobi
Police fired tear gas canisters at DW's East Africa correspondent Mariel Müller while she was covering a protest in Nairobi. Amnesty International and the Foreign Press Association of Africa have condemned the attack.
Kenyan High Court rules president's constitutional reform bid is illegal
Kenya's High Court has stopped the president's bid to push through constitutional reform, a report from Amnesty International says that White people were rescued first after an Islamist attack in Mozambique in March, and Covid-19 has forced the faithful in Ghana to move their worshipping online. KENYA
How COVID in India is endangering Kenyan patients
About 97% of Kenyans seeking medical treatments abroad go to India. With rising COVID-19 deaths and restrictions on travel to India, Kenyans seeking treatment have been left stranded.
Kenyan Govt denies involvement in arrest, extradition of Nnamdi Kanu
Kenyan government has denied involvement in arrest and extradition of the leader of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu.
Kenyan entrepreneur turns water weeds into fuel
For many the water hyacinth is a menace - an invasive plant that harms aquatic life and helps bacteria and mosquitos flourish. But Kenyan entrepreneur Dominic Kahumbu is pioneering a machine that turns the weed into clean cooking fuel.
Kenyan court rejects disputed bid to amend constitution
Kenya's appeals court rejects disputed bid to change the country's constitution, we discuss the security situation in the Sahel region after multiple deadly attacks in recent weeks and we meet the disabled DR Congo musicians planning a comeback and a court case.
Abortion stigma a possible death sentence for Kenyan women
Kenya's constitution eased access to abortions in 2010 but the overwhelming stigma surrounding the procedure means that many women resort to traditional practices or backstreet clinics that put their life in jeopardy. Every week, 23 women die from botched abortions, according to a 2012 study by Kenya's health ministry. Campaigners say the real number is even higher.
Slain Kenyan Olympian Agnes Tirop buried in her home village, on her birthday
Kenyan runner Agnes Tirop, a rising star in Kenya's athletics scene, was buried on Saturday (October 23) at a funeral attended by more than 1,000 people. Tirop was found stabbed to death in her home in the Rift Valley town of Iten on October 13, in an incident that has shone the spotlight on violence against women in Kenya. Her funeral was held on the day she would have turned 26, the Vicar presiding over her funeral service noted.
Husband of slain Kenyan Olympian Tirop charged with murder, pleads not guilty
Ibrahim Rotich, the husband of slain Kenyan Olympic runner Agnes Tirop, was charged with her murder and pleaded not guilty in a Kenyan court on Tuesday (November 16). Rotich, 41, had been ordered last week to undergo a mental health test before entering a plea. Tirop was found stabbed to death at her home in the Rift Valley town of Iten on Oct. 13, in a case that has shone a spotlight on violence against women in the east African country. Rotich appeared in court in handcuffs, wearing a black jacket and a cap. He looked down at the floor for most of the proceedings.


Burmese President Thein Sein has defended a Buddhist monk accused of fomenting a wave of anti-Muslim violence in the country.
US Time magazine currently has Ashin Wirathu on its front cover under the title "The face of Buddhist terror".
Thein Sein said the report undermined efforts to rebuild trust between faiths and that the monk's order was striving for peace and prosperity.
The monk has called Muslims a scourge threatening Burma's Buddhist character.
A statement on the president's website said the Time magazine report "creates a misunderstanding of Buddhism, which has existed for thousands of years and is the religion of the majority of our citizens".
"The government is currently striving with religious leaders, political parties, media and the people to rid Myanmar [Burma] of unwanted conflicts," it added.
The report was also condemned online, with a petition started over the weekend gaining close to 40,000 signatories on Monday.
Ashin Wirathu, 45, was jailed in 2003 for inciting anti-Muslim violence but was released last year as part of a prisoner amnesty.
He organised protests in support of Buddhists in Rakhine state, where violence broke out in 2012 and left at least 200 people dead and thousands displaced.
Earlier this year, central Burma saw violence between Buddhists and Muslims, which left more than 40 people dead, most of them Muslims, in March.
Ashin Wirathu's anti-Muslim sentiments are very widely shared by the Buddhist majority, and while the authorities have jailed hundreds of Muslims for involvement in the violence, very few Buddhists have been prosecuted, says the BBC's Jonathan Head in Bangkok.


how to achieve that doggy ballet of movements.
One secret to good obedience training is never to give your dog the chance to disobey. Make sure he understands the command and what you want him to do, and move toward it with baby steps so he always ALWAYS succeeds. Your happy praise at every turn is what he lives for.
When he is at that comfortable stage on lead where he yawns at every new command, this means he is sure of it and relaxed, then it's time to move on to removing his lead. This will cause a little anxiety at first because his lead is his life line and guide to pleasing you. So make sure everything you are about to show him off-lead is something he knows VERY well with the lead attached.
On-lead heeling, turning and stopping is very smooth and controlled. Before starting off, instead of hooking the lead into the ring, slip the entire lead through his collar, not in the ring, and wrap the end around your hand so you can eat it up as you walk, until the lead slides completely out of the dog's collar. He will barely notice this, just keep walking with no change in gait or tone of your voice, act like nothing new is happening.
When you come to a stop and your dog sits predictably at your side like always, pause a moment then PRAISE PRAISE PRAISE! Your dog will look at you funny, as if to say, "What's the big deal? We do this all the time". It's quite funny. That's when you know it has worked the way it should and your dog has made the transition effortlessly.
As you work, keep the dog close at hand, you do not want him to get the idea he can run off. If he makes the slightest off move, take his collar by the live ring and tug. Remember those little tugs that he dislikes so much he learned quickly how to stay in the exact right spot? Remind him that off-lead has the same controls, so you must be vigilant. If he backslides, go back to on-lead. He will learn quickly that he prefers the independence of off-lead work and to get it he must obey your every command.
As to the long line "Come" command, go back to the short line and leave it on the ground so you can grab it if he does not come to you in a timely fashion. Give him no room to think about disobeying. Gradually extend the distance until he is coming to you at a run totally off-lead. He loves this!
With patience and vigilance, your dog will be just as dependable off-lead as he became on-lead. And you both will enjoy it more!
Dy Witt has shown, bred and trained her dogs for 25 years. Her puppies' new vets and groomers sent word back that they had never worked on such well-adjusted dogs in their careers. To read more free articles and all about her new dog training ebook, visit Dy's website.


The USPS Change of Address lets you enter an order to forward your mail to a new address. This can be helpful if you need to relocate after a disaster.
Anyone can use this feature to change their address and forward their mail. You can request a change for both permanent as well as temporary moves.
We can forward mail for a minimum length of 15 days. The initial forwarding period is restricted to six months. You may extend this service up to one year.
Visit the Official USPS Change of Address page to submit the order.
Fill out and submit PS Form 3575, available at any U.S. Post Office. When you sign the form, you confirm that you are the person or a representative of the person we will be forwarding the mail to.
Take or mail the form to any U.S. Post Office.
Give it to any Postal Mail Carrier.
You can also view, update, or cancel an order you have already submitted.
To learn more, visit the USPS Help page or call 1-800-ASK-USPS (275-8777).


text:
Q: struts 2 doesn't include file ApplicationResources.properties I have an application made with struts2.
Since a few days, when I compile it with maven, it doesn't include the file ApplicationResources.properties in .war file.
The configuration in the pom.xml is :
              <execution>
                    <id>native2ascii-utf8</id>
                    <goals>
                        <goal>native2ascii</goal>
                    </goals>
                    <configuration>
                        <encoding>UTF8</encoding>
                        <includes>ApplicationResources_*.properties</includes>
                        <excludes>ApplicationResources.properties,
                            ApplicationResources_de*.properties,
                            ApplicationResources_fr*.properties,
                            ApplicationResources_nl*.properties,
                            ApplicationResources_pt*.properties,
                            ApplicationResources_es*.properties</excludes>
                    </configuration>
                </execution>
                <execution>
                    <id>native2ascii-8859_1</id>
                    <goals>
                        <goal>native2ascii</goal>
                    </goals>
                    <configuration>
                        <encoding>8859_1</encoding>
                        <includes>ApplicationResources.properties,
                            ApplicationResources_de.properties,
                            ApplicationResources_fr.properties,
                            ApplicationResources_nl.properties,
                            ApplicationResources_pt*.properties,
                            ApplicationResources_es*.properties</includes>
                    </configuration>
                </execution>

A: Finally I solved it deleting the exclude tag of this file
    <resource>
            <directory>src/main/resources</directory>
            <!-- <excludes>
                <exclude>ApplicationResources*.properties</exclude>
            </excludes>-->
            <filtering>true</filtering>
        </resource>