Working Papers

“Stephen Douglas(s)’s Self-Deception: Popular Sovereignty in the Territories”

It is well known that U.S. Senator Stephen A. Douglas championed the doctrine of popular sovereignty—“the right of the people of the Territories to govern themselves in respect to their local affairs and internal polity”—in the late antebellum era. It is also well known that Douglas initially (c. 1848-1850) supported the policy of popular sovereignty as a compromise to a brewing sectional crisis. It is less well known that Douglas rejected popular sovereignty as a member of the House of Representatives in the mid-1840s and only later adopted a democratic, principled, non-instrumental, and localist justification of the doctrine in the late-1850s. By tracing the development of Douglas’s thinking on popular sovereignty in his letters and speeches, I argue that Douglas came to believe, sincerely, in the right of a territorial people to govern themselves, but deceived himself in coming to this belief. The trajectory of Douglas’s thinking shows—among other things—how political actors are often drawn, pulled even, toward certain magnetic arguments in the history of political thought. In Douglas’s case, an appeal to the value of ‘the local’ and local self-government justified the expansion of the slave-power and displaced pragmatic (but less effective) appeals to compromise. His commitment to popular sovereignty and local democracy was sincere yet normatively deficient because it developed with morally questionable origins.

“The Principle of Subsidiarity: A Democratic Interpretation” (invited to revise and resubmit)

Existing interpretations of the principle of subsidiarity—both the secular version in the European Union and the theological version in Catholic social doctrine—are deeply and troublingly undemocratic because they remove profound questions of public concern from the domain of democratic decision-making. This article develops and defends a novel, normatively attractive, and institutionally feasible democratic interpretation of the principle of subsidiarity that harnesses the strengths, while mitigating the weaknesses, of the existing secular and theological interpretations. Democratic subsidiarity uses democratic procedures to both specify and justify the appropriate distribution of tasks and functions among governmental units within an institutional hierarchy. The article develops a proposal for institutionalizing democratic subsidiarity in which tasks and functions are assigned by a democratic assembly composed of a wide range of officials representing constituencies at multiple levels of government. Democratic subsidiarity potentially helps mitigate the so- called “democratic deficit” in multilayered institutional orders like the European Union.

“Hobbes and Paternal Dominion: The Illusion of Contract”

“Aristocracy in America: Caste, Whiteness, and Interracial Sympathy” (with Jennie Ikuta, University of Tulsa; in progress)

Alexis de Tocqueville, the French nobleman famous for his 1831 tour of the United States, is not an obvious thinker to look to for insights into contemporary American race relations. After all, in the first volume of ‘Democracy in America,’ published in 1835, Tocqueville famously shunted his discussion of “the three races” into a seemingly anomalous final chapter, which came after “the principal task” he had set for himself– to show “what the laws of American democracy are”– had “been fulfilled” (Tocqueville [1835], 2004). Possibly for this reason, Rogers Smith accused Tocqueville and his followers of treating “racism as mere prejudice” and failing “to give due weight to inegalitarian ideologies and conditions that have shaped the participants and the substance of American politics.” (Smith 1993) In this paper, we show that when one reads Tocqueville’s explicit comments about the three races alongside his scattered comments about hereditary aristocracy in ‘Democracy in America; and ‘The Ancien Regime and the French Revolution,’ one discovers a sophisticated account of racial inequality in the United States. We argue that the same features that define and sustain hereditary aristocracy are also present in Tocqueville’s account of race-relations in America, enabling us to characterize America as a racial aristocracy. Moreover, we show that Tocqueville’s implicit account of how white supremacy operates as an “aristocracy of whiteness” is prescient in explaining the centrality of police violence in the Black Lives Matter movement. By exploring Tocqueville’s description of the ancien regime in connection with his account of race-relations in the United States, this paper contributes to the growing literature on race-relations in Tocqueville’s thought (Janara 2004; Olson 2008; Turner 2008; Tillery 2009), as well as to a richer understanding of the mechanisms that sustain racial privilege and inequality in the United States today.

To this end, this paper proceeds in four parts. In Part One, we explicate the key features that characterized the ancien regime as an example of hereditary aristocracy: its hierarchical nature; how caste defined one’s life prospects and for certain persons, conferred privileges; that caste is distinct from economic status; and that in such a world, nobles do not, and most likely cannot, sympathize with commoners. In Part Two, we show that Tocqueville’s description of race-relations in ‘Democracy in America’ can be read as an example of a racial aristocracy (aristocracy in the pejorative, not the classical, sense) that shares many of the key features that defined and sustained hereditary aristocracy. Akin to hereditary aristocracy, racial aristocracy is defined by a collectively imposed hierarchy of privilege and exclusion; race defines one’s life prospects and confers privileges on whites (psychological, social, and economic); that race and wealth are conceptually distinct; and that in such a world, whites consistently fail to sympathize with blacks. In Part Three, we show that while there are significant parallels between hereditary aristocracy and racial aristocracy, the latter is more difficult to dismantle than the former. In a racial aristocracy, caste is racialized and as a result, whiteness remains a physiological marker of superiority and inclusion and blackness a physiological marker of inferiority and exclusion long after legal differences are abolished. Democratization in the nineteenth century largely eliminated traditional aristocratic privileges while strengthening and entrenching white aristocratic privilege. In Part Four, we show how our textual analysis informs our understanding of the centrality of police violence to the Black Lives Matter movement. Specifically, we show that for many white Americans, the racial aristocracy not only renders invisible the structural disadvantages faced by black Americans, but also renders them insensitive to their suffering.

Seated from left to right: Wayne Moore (faculty, Virginia Tech), Nate Chapman (faculty, UGA law), Randy Taylor (at large), Michael Taylor (doctoral student, history, UGA), Keith Dougherty (faculty, political science, UGA), and Trevor Latimer (scholar in residence, UGA). Robert Cooper (doctoral student, political science, UGA) and Sam Glaze (undergraduate, UGA) are seated outside of the picture.


Nothing prevents an employer from amending a disciplinary charge before a finding is made provided that the amendment does not add to the complexity or substance of the charges, for example. when the amendment relates to the categorisation or “label” of the charge, and an opportunity is afforded to an employee to address the proposed amendment.

This was confirmed in the recent case of Munnik Basson Dagama Attorneys v CCMA & Others (2011) 32 ILJ 1169 (LC), where the Labour Court reviewed and set aside the CCMA’s finding that the employer’s amendment of the charge sheet rendered the employee’s dismissal procedurally unfair.

In this case, the employee, who was employed as a Letter Administrator, was charged with misconduct relating to her failure to perform certain tasks. A disciplinary enquiry proceeded over the course of some three days. At the commencement of the second day of the enquiry, the employer applied to amend the charge sheet by categorising the accounts of alleged misconduct as “gross negligence”. This was to be effected by inserting the phrase: “You are charged with gross negligence in that you…”. The employee objected to the proposed amendment.

The chairperson, however, permitted the amendment on the basis that previous evidence had been led dealing with the employee’s alleged failure to perform certain tasks, and the evidence would probably not have differed, had her alleged failures originally been labelled as “gross negligence”. In addition, the chairperson offered both parties the opportunity to adjourn the enquiry to consider their position, and if necessary, to present any further evidence that may have become relevant due to the labelling of the charges as “gross negligence”. Given that both parties had elected not to adjourn, the enquiry proceeded and further evidence was then presented to the chairperson. At the conclusion of the enquiry, the employee was found guilty of misconduct and thereafter dismissed.

The employee referred an unfair dismissal dispute to the CCMA in terms of which she alleged that her dismissal had been both procedurally and substantively unfair. The Commissioner ultimately found that the employee’s dismissal was substantively fair but that the amendment of the charges after evidence was led rendered the disciplinary enquiry procedurally defective. The employee was awarded 3 (three) months’ salary as compensation. The Commissioner also remarked that the actions of the Chairperson seem to confirm the employee’s submission that the chairperson was not impartial.

The employer brought a review application to review and set aside the Commissioner’s finding that the employee’s dismissal was procedurally unfair. The employee also belatedly brought a counter-review application, supported by an application for condonation, to review and set aside the Commissioner’s finding that her dismissal had been substantively fair.

The counter-review application was determined before the review application. The Labour Court did not grant condonation to the employee and, accordingly, her review application was dismissed, with costs.

Some months later, the Labour Court considered the review application of the employer. With reference to the rules for the amendment of pleadings and documents in civil proceedings, the Court confirmed that these principles apply equally in labour matters. In considering the specific amendment, the court held that the amendment was nothing more than categorising the charges as “gross negligence”.

The Court confirmed that the labelling of particular charges of misconduct as “gross negligence” did not, in any way, add to the complexity or substance of the charges. The focus must always be in the factual allegations in the charge sheet and not in their categorisation. It is important to note that the alleged factual conduct by the employee, that is, the particular allegations of the employee’s failure to perform her duties, was not amended by the employer in any way.

The Court then also considered the procedure followed by the chairperson in allowing the amendment: he afforded both parties an opportunity to address him on the proposed amendment, allowed them to adjourn to consider their position and to present further evidence, if they deemed it necessary. Nothing prevented the employer from amending the charge sheet in these circumstances. The Court, however, commented that the position would have been different if the chairperson did not allow the parties to make representations or to lead further evidence.

The Court found that the Commissioner’s finding that the amendment to a charge sheet caused procedural fairness, suggested that the Commissioner misunderstood the test for procedural fairness in the disciplinary hearing. This amounted to a material error of law which constituted a reviewable irregularity and that the Commissioner had exceeded his powers. In addition, the Court found that no reasonable Commissioner could have found that the amendment to the charge sheet had been procedurally unfair.

Having regard to the case of Avril Elizabeth Homes for Mentally Handicapped v CCMA & Others (2006) 27 ILJ 16644 (LC), the Court held that the employee’s dismissal had been procedurally fair: she was informed of the charges against her, had been provided with ample opportunity to state her case, and the matter was heard by an impartial chairperson. In addition, the employee was given an opportunity to make representations about the amendment, allowed an opportunity to consider her position and to lead further evidence in that regard. The Commissioner had clearly misconstrued the legal standard for procedural fairness, and in so doing, he committed a gross irregularity in the arbitration proceedings.

It was the Court’s view that the Commissioner’s comment that the actions of the Chairperson in amending the charge sheet seemed to confirm that he was not impartial, indicated that the Commissioner had failed to properly apply his mind to the issue of procedural fairness.

In the circumstances, the Court confirmed that the Commissioner’s finding was reviewable and that the dismissal of the employee was procedurally fair.

This decision confirms that a charge sheet may be amended during disciplinary proceedings, if:

  1. the amendment does not affect the severity and seriousness of the charge(s);
  2. the amendment only relates to the labelling or “categorisation” of the charge(s) and not the alleged factual conduct by the employee;
  3. the parties are afforded the opportunity to make representations regarding the proposed amendment to the chairperson of the disciplinary enquiry (i.e. before the chairperson allows the amendment); and
  4. the parties are afforded the opportunity to lead further evidence on the allegation(s), after the amendment has been allowed.

ENS acted for the employer in the review and counter-review applications. The employer was successful in both instances.


Electrostatic Nanomechanics of Cantilever Biosensors

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Interest in microcantilever based biosensors in the biomedical field has largely increased during the last years. Potentially, this kind of sensor can provide a considerable contribution to complex disease diagnosis, which requires the detection of biological molecules. Microcantilever biosensors allow the detection of complementary DNA fragment hybridization or specific antibody-antigen binding; it is known that adsorption of specific biological molecules upon the microcantilever surface induces cantilever deflection due to the interaction of the molecules with the surface. To date, the phenomena which determine the deflection mechanism are not completely known. The present work investigates the electrostatic field within the molecules and the forces consequently acting on the molecules and on the cantilever in order to provide a description of the deflection mechanism. The electrostatic potential of arrays of double strand DNA molecules immersed in an ionic solution was modelled by means of cylinders negatively charged at the surface and a FE (Finite Element) continuum electrostatics analysis was implemented in order to numerically solve the second order non-linear Poisson-Boltzmann equation. Then, a FE structural analysis of the cantilever was performed coupled with the continuum electrostatics analysis. In this way, the effects of the molecules’ electrostatic interactions on the cantilever deflection were taken into account. The model was run to describe the microcantilever deflection due to the electrostatic field under different design and operating conditions, and it was also set to compare hexagonal and square disposition of double strand DNA molecules.

Materials Science Forum (Volumes 539-543)

Main Theme:

Edited by:

M. Merlo et al., "Electrostatic Nanomechanics of Cantilever Biosensors", Materials Science Forum, Vols. 539-543, pp. 595-601, 2007

Online since:

March 2007

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BeOrNotToBe: What, is the Question

To be, or not to be: that is the question. This famous line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet is perhaps the most iconic line of all his works. In it Hamlet contemplates the merits of suicide. That passage has been the bane of High school students who are forced to memorize it, of which the first line is the one anyone actually knows when they go watch a Shakespearean play.

Perhaps the reason this line has reached such widespread fame is that it’s a question each of us face every day. We’re presented with decisions both large and small that will have consequences. Sometimes these are trivial things, such as whether to eat beef or pork for lunch. Other times they’re deep life impacting decisions such as where to live, what job to take, or who to date.

BeOrNotToBe Home

Everybody has their own method for coming up with an answer. These range from seeking advice from friends, drawing from previous life experience, or just picking something and going with it. One mantra is to live with no regrets and don’t ever second guess the choices you make. The other mantra is to learn from one’s mistakes. Each has its merits. Now there’s a way to bypass the complex decision making process altogether. Fear not fair people, all your decision making needs have now been resolved, with BeOrNotToBe.

BeOrNotToBe, (found at, is the ultimate decision making tool. Just type in your Yes/No question and the response will come back to you. Its proprietary algorithm does the hard work for you making any decision easy.

So I decided to give try it out. First I typed in whether I should visit Cancun for the summer. It came back with a resounding yes. Next I asked if I should call my ex girlfriend. Right on queue the answer came back with a clear no. Then I asked if I should go to the gym the next day. Again it assured me with the sage advice that yes I should go to the gym tomorrow. Man, this thing is good.

I spent some time trying to discern how it can be so accurate with its decisions. I ultimately came to the conclusion that they formed a secret alliance with Facebook and Google and know everything about me. I strongly suspect that they have a database full of all the possible questions I may ask. From there qualified therapists have sorted through them and indicated the correct answer. That way when I do ask a question the answer is waiting for me. I’m still waiting back from the makers of BeOrNotToBe to confirm my theory of their inner workings. As of yet they aren’t saying anything about it one way or the other. Likely this is due to non disclosure agreements they were required to sign with their sources.

Should I Go to Hawaii?

On a more practical level BeOrNotToBe provides a role playing service. Whenever you’re contemplating a complex life question you can type it in and view the response. The responses really do come back in a loud upfront manner which jolts you a bit. It makes it seem final. In this moment of finality it’s easier to envision your life were you to make that choice. From there you can decide if that’s a path you’d like to follow or not. (Not that I question the inherent accuracy of BeOrNotToBe’s algorithmic responses of course.)

BeOrNotToBe is a fun website that is admittedly a bit goofy. Its responses did come back to me with a surprising rate of accuracy though. I can only imagine how such an algorithm is constructed, but I can at least appreciate that it seemed to have a better than 50/50 success rate. Some people pick petals off of flowers, others flip a coin, and of course there’s always the magic 8 ball. And now there’s BeOrNotToBe- the ultimate online decision making assistant.

BeOrNotToBe morphed into WasButIsNoMore. We’d like to think the last question submitted was whether the site should be-or-not-to-be. We’ll never know.


Choisissez la langue

About us

Association of Nepalese in Quebec (ANQ) is a non-profit organization constituted by the Nepalese community and Nepalese cultural supporters residing in Quebec in 2001 to assist those of Nepalese origin people during their integration to Canadian  multicultural society, co-operate each other as needed and to participate actively in general community.

Our Objectives:

  1. Protect, preserve and promote Nepalese culture, art and language.
  2. Help new comers to smooth integration and understand Canadian multicultural society.
  3. Educate its fellow members to understand the multicultural and multilingual Canadian society.
  4. Build a cordial relationships with federal and provincial government as well as with local non-government and international organizations, whose objectives are similar to those of ANQ.
  5. Encourage and assist its members to establish small and medium size businesses.
  6. Launch suitable community programs to encourage Nepalese youths residing in Quebec and other provinces of Canada to participate in the socio-development activities.
  7. Provide volunteers for social services as and when needed.
  8. Organize workshops, meetings, social events to maintain and improve harmonic relations among the fellow members.

New Comers Guide

Moving to Canada is an exciting opportunity but also a great challenge

Immigrate to Canada

Apply to visit, study, work or immigrate to Canada

Business in Canada

Information for businesses on starting, financing, taxation and international trade


My Lazy Leaning Fence and the Fix

I am going to hammer one end of it to the fence post and then put the other end into the ground using a shovel. thank you I have a leaning fence that I haven't fixed yet myself, so I can't vouch for the efficacy of this, but assuming it's a wooden privacy fence with 4x4'ish posts. I just want to keep the fence from collapsing We need to know how and why it's leaning.

What is a lazy way to stop it from leaning? A portion of the wood fence in my backyard is leaning toward my property. And the fence is just going to start leaning again sooner or later. Every single fence post is loose which means it probably wasn't built properly in the first place.

I am thinking about screwing one end of a 2x4 to the fence post and then sticking the other end of the 2x4 into my yard so that the 2x4 is at a 45 degree angle.

This fence was built 13 years old when every house on the block was built. You're going to be digging a hole and properly sinking a post, not to mention cutting and getting the brace in place. It usually means one of 2 things: In either case, the best thing to do is replace the post and get it into the ground properly.


How much could you save?
To use the SmokeFreeLife savings calculator, answer the two questions below and then click on the “Calculate” button to see how much you could save!
How much do you pay for a 20 pack of your favourite cigarettes?
How many cigarettes do you smoke each day?
Your savings
Savings per day
Savings per month
Savings per year
Please note that the figures above are simply an indication of much you could save based on the cost of a pack of cigarettes and your daily intake.


Writing Interesting School Essays: Free Advice for Rookies

Below are helpful tips that could guide you into becoming a successful writer for school essays as a rookie.

  1. Go through the Essay Question Carefully
  2. You need to highlight the main words that are used in the question and use the dictionary to find out the meaning of any unfamiliar words. Understand the task being given to you by noting words like ‘explain’, ‘compare’ and ‘discuss’.

  3. Perform a Background Research in Order to Carry Out any Necessary Reading
  4. You need to use resources that are accessible and relevant. Take note of useful notations. Note the sources so that they might be used when citing bibliographies.

  5. Try to Find Ideas that Respond to the Question
  6. Take note of any relevant points. The relevant quotes and evidence that come to mind should be pointed out. Stimulate your lateral thinking using a mind map.

  7. Develop a Suitable Argument that Matches the Essay Question
  8. Make the thesis statement reactive in response to the question asked. Do not use a simple argumentative statement. Instead, show that you have put the question into consideration by carrying out proper research and you understand its general complexity. Ensure you state the thesis in the introduction as it forms the back bone of the whole essay.

  9. Create a Proper Plan for the Response
  10. Plan your ideas in a way that they are organized in a logical sequence in the whole essay. Ensure all points put across are relevant and they flow in an exemplary manner. Make it possible for the reader to flow smoothly with the points as you have put them across.

  11. Introduction
  12. Open up the essay discussion by introducing the essay and indicating in a clear way how you are going to answer the question. Do not leave out any important text and be sure to engage the reader.

  13. The Main Body
  14. Each point should be explained in its own paragraph. Begin the paragraph with a sentence that relates the point to the rest of the essay. Each point made should be backed up by supporting evidence. Be sure to once again point out the thesis and relate its importance in the essay.

  15. Conclusion
  16. Summarize your ideas in the conclusion and demonstrate the validity of the argumentative statement. Check for any mistakes in the paper and edit. Present a clean final copy and be sure to submit the final essay to your instructor on time.

Structured Content and Logic Presentation

Have your college essay written today!


Travel Portals Help Reach and Retain the Growing Number of Tourists

E-commerce in the sphere of tourism and traveling is growing at a brisk pace. Continuous functionality enhancements stipulate significant investments in the development of web portals. A successful online travel portal provides a steady stream of traffic, wherein user visits can be converted into sales.

According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization’s (UNWTO) research Tourism 2020 Vision, international arrivals are expected to reach nearly 1.6 billion by the year 2020. Of these arrivals in 2020 all over the world, 1.2 billion will be intraregional and 378 million will be long-haul travelers.

The above mentioned research also suggests that by 2020 the top three tourist receiving regions will be Europe (717 million tourists), East Asia and the Pacific (397 million), and the Americas (282 million), followed by Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.

In order to turn visitors into engaged travelers, an online travel portal can contain the following features:

  • Search for flights, hotels, hostels, cars, package tours, cruises, etc.
  • Easy booking flow combined with a user-friendly and intuitive interface.
  • Automated sending of Emails, E-tickets details, SMS confirmation messages, as well as alerts about flight postponements and cancellations.
  • A mobile version of the portal.
  • Secure processing of payments with the help of credit cards.
  • Multi-lingual and multi-currency support.
  • Convenient account management with user activity history.
  • Option of getting a travel insurance.
  • Customer reviews and ratings of tourist sites, services and destinations with regular updates.
  • Useful destination information, like weather forecast, local maps, photographs, airport parking details, driving instructions, etc.

Up-sell opportunities (for example, if a customer purchases a car rental for a specific city, it is also possible to offer tickets to popular tourist attractions).

Real-time support for customers during the purchase process (online chat, phone and email support, or even a call-center).

Creation of a tourist portal implies certain challenges, like online security threats, possibility of financial loss due to outages and slower response time, adapting to the rapidly changing market scenario, and ever increasing customer expectations. In addition to that, a sophisticated travel portal should have an effective content management system (CMS), and must be directly interfaced with reservation systems of travel suppliers, such as hotels, airlines, car rental agencies. It should also create a consolidated record for storing all aspects of a traveler’s itinerary.

Quick and easy to access travel portals with optimized functionality will always be of great value to travelers, especially to those people who are often busy or do not have much time at their disposal. Therefore, such web portals make it possible to reach a broader audience, and ultimately generate more profit.


Dec 162011

I am very concerned about losing Alvin Collins as a participating member on the two town committees on which he has served with wisdom and dedication for decades. I sympathize with his loyalty to his attorney brother but I believe every lawyers’ loyalty is first to the law itself and second to help his client to steer a course of self interest through the legal system actually testing the laws to make a “best case” for the client.

I believe that is the role of a public defender, making the best legal argument for the defendant within our legal system. Public Defenders are not appointed to “agree” with their clients. Their duty is to present their client’s interest in its best logic in compliance with the law.

Alvin’s brother may or may not agree with his clients’ goal. His agreement is almost irrelevant. When Alvin opposes his brother’s arguments for that client he is not opposing his brother per se he is opposing that client’s legal arguments. The conflict is between legal arguments NOT BETWEEN BLOOD BROTHERS.

Years ago my father tutored a pair of twins one summer. One went on to Harvard the other to Yale. When the big H-Y game in the fall came due both boys were on their respective opposing teams. Their parents sat half the game in Yale seats, the other half in Harvard seats.

In order to keep Alvin’s contribution which is so valuable to us and to him and to keep the perspective built from decades of his service I urge both Alvin and Bob to find a way to preserve their filial respect and affection and continue their professional expertise wherever that takes them.

Very truly yours,

Arthur Blackman


I don't know about you, but with the holidays in full effect I am having an incredibly hard time focusing, staying calm and taking the time I need to stay sane. This is the time of year when the days are short but the work is longggg. We have what feels like an infinite number of deadlines and tasks to wrap up. The to do lists are literally littering the floor. This is the MOST important time of year to slow down, breathe and make sure you keep your body healthy. For the high stress New Yorkers out there, this is a really tempting time to up the intensity of workouts to relieve stress, but what if we just chilled out? Let's do a test:

Have a comfortable seat and (after you read this :)) close your eyes. Take a slow 4 count inhale into your belly and a slow 4 count exhale. Repeat 3 times. Now a slow 6 count inhale into the sides of your ribs and a slow 6 count exhale. Repeat 3 times. NOW take a slow 6 count inhale and try to expand the front and back of your ribs as well as the sides and then an 8 count exhale. Repeat 3 times.  Return your breath to normal.

Did you make it through? Did you get frustrated, give up or give in? Do you feel more clear headed? After doing this breathing exercise, you may have a more clear idea about what you need for your body. Taking the time to breath, and be still, can help your mind calm down, give you some perspective and just make you feel a whole lot better!


Index - Items in the OpenLast modified: 26/8/2010 17:28:13 CET
This page contains information about items that can be found in the different areas of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl. These items, unlike stashes for example, are simply located somewhere in a specific area, sometimes just in the open, sometimes contained within a wooden crate or a metal box.

Many containers - wooden crates and metal boxes specifically - contain random loot which means that sometimes you'll find something in them, other times you won't... and perhaps you may find different items when trying at different difficulty levels, different savegames, etc. I haven't established a true understanding of how it works yet, except that for some of these containers it just seems random. What affects it I cannot say at this point. But... the crates and boxes included in this page have been confirmed to produce loot at some point, however whether they will for you (or not) I guess depends on "luck". Not all these containers provide random loot, their contents are fixed so that you'll find the same every time you play through the game.

The page covers items that can be found in each area, and each section has a map that indicates the individual locations; each batch of items has a unique number so they can be identified on the map and in the list below.

Thanks to everyone at the forums for the help in collecting information about the locations of many items included on this page. If you know of items that aren't inlcuded below, feel free to contact me; please include a thorough description of where you can find the items as well as a description of what the items include; if you could also include a screenshot and possibly a screenshot of the PDA map that would be quite useful as well.


“Whisper” K-Drama Review

In short, just go watch it. I’m srs.

God’s Gift 14 Days Final Episode (RANT)

“It’s a fate that will only end if one of the two disappears.”

I just finished watching God’s Gift 14 days. WHAT THE WHAT?!

I mean, if you’re going to end it sadly, that’s fine; I was not expecting for a really happy ending. But to not even tell us what the ending is, it’s killing me! I’m dying of curiosity, quick, call 911!

I have no many questions right now. asdfghjkl. Did the knight live? Was he able to fight fate and stay alive? Or did he die? Did he give in and sacrifice himself? Those are currently the two theories out there. I personally, believe that he died. Because it seems very unlikely for him to live. Still, though I would prefer not to believe that my dong chan died. I mean, we can’t possibly tell, BECAUSE THEY NEVER TOLD US WHAT THE ENDING IS.

And fate, why does one have to disappear for the other to live? Why do you have to be so mean? Why can’t both of them live? Is that too much to ask for? And fyi, dong chan could’ve kicked your butt. Really, if he didn’t what is the point of going back 14 days? What is the point of this whole drama? For Dong Chan to die again when he could’ve fought fate? hhh.

This drama, was such a good drama, but the ending was such a letdown. I would still recommend this, though, because nonetheless, I cried my eyes out in this episode. My eyes still hurt right now.

“What about the knight? Did he live too?”

I hope so Saet Byul. I hope so.


Music » Critics' Picks

The Cantrells

Saturday, January 17; The Focal Point

What could be simpler? Two voices, a guitar, a fiddle, sometimes a mandolin, blending on songs that belong to all of us, even if we've never heard them before. What could be more mysterious? The Cantrells play folk music, but don't let that scare you. Cowboy songs, hillbilly songs, western swing, a little bluegrass, public-domain ballads and original tunes that distill everything the band has inherited -- this is folk music faithful to no principle save one: the pleasure principle found in melody, harmony and improvisation. Over their twenty years together, Emily and Al Cantrell (intriguingly, it was the husband who took the wife's last name) have recorded sparingly (only three records since 1988), but they've built a nationwide following that even includes Robert Redford, who featured them as old-time musicians in a brief scene in his 1992 film A River Runs Through It.

But what's most striking about the Cantrells is how un-old-timey they can be: Emily sings with barely a hint of her Nankipoo, Tennessee, birthplace: Her big, voluptuous voice reminds some of Joni Mitchell or Matraca Berg, but she's perhaps closest to contemporary-country goddess Patty Loveless or maybe a jazz-pop singer like Lena Horne (minus the vibrato and evening gowns). As a songwriter she's not much interested in archetypes like death and farming but rather in the terse craft of the pop love ballad. And then there's Al's jazzy, idiosyncratic mandolin and fiddle work; it's no wonder Béla Fleck's banjo sounds right at home on the Cantrells' first album, Under a Southern Moon. The Cantrells may not be as well known as contemporary folk duos such as Robin and Linda Williams or Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, but fans of either group should make haste to the acoustically ideal Focal Point to find out what they've been missing.


Data Mahasiswa
NIM : 10523338
Jenjang : S1
Program Studi : Teknik Informatika
Perguruan Tinggi : Universitas Islam Indonesia

Are you currently fascinated in moving into laptop security employment? If that is so then here you may determine every little thing you need to know with regards to the career description and that which you might finish up performing at the same time as being the skills desired. Exactly what does Laptop or computer Security Contain?

Laptop or computer security is really a department of information technology that relates exclusively to actions taken to safeguard the data on desktops from getting corrupted or misused. Computer system protection will come inside of a myriad of different sorts depending on what amount of protection is required.

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Phyllis Buckles
I'm an Information Security Engineers, also called Information Security Analysts, help to safeguard organization's computer networks and systems. Planning and carrying out security measures to monitor and protect sensitive data and systems from infiltration and cyber-attacks.


Challenges of Biological Aging by Edward J. Masoro PhD

By Edward J. Masoro PhD

This quantity presents the non-biologist an summary of what's identified in regards to the physiological bases of getting older. the writer examines the various simple theories and rising hypotheses underlying the molecular, mobile, and systemic strategies considering senescence. He addresses the traditional physiological adjustments that symbolize the getting older phenotype, and in addition considers the function of many age-associated ailments in getting old. Masoro synthesizes a much-needed "unified concept" of organic getting older to and is the reason how and why the physique grows into the situation we name "old." this article is meant for gerontology scholars in education, in addition to for human physiologists attracted to gerontology. outdated reproduction: what's the organic foundation of aging?? Why does getting older happen? This quantity will give you the reader with an summary of what we all know in regards to the biology of getting older. In a sincerely written and obtainable variety, the writer examines the various theories and hypotheses underlying the molecular, mobile, and systemic strategies fascinated about getting older. additionally thought of are the various age-associated illnesses and physiological adjustments that symbolize getting older, in addition to interventions -- from way of life variations to pharmacological remedies -- proposed to opposite age-related alterations. He then synthesizes a far wanted unifying notion of the organic foundation of getting older to assist us comprehend why we get older. This booklet is meant for college students education to develop into gerontologists in addition to biologists no longer familiar with the getting older box.

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Additional info for Challenges of Biological Aging

Example text

Holm, N. V, lachine, I. , Kannisto, V, Khazaeli, A. , Lango, V. , Zeng, Y, Manton, K. , & Curtsinger, J. W. (1998). Biodemographic trajectories of longevity. Science, 280,855-860. This page intentionally left blank 3 Why Aging Occurs I t has long been a puzzle why a phenomenon as detrimental to the individual as aging has not been eliminated by evolutionary forces but rather occurs almost universally in animals and plants. An intellectually satisfying solution to this puzzle is provided by the evolutionary theory of aging, which has been developed over the past 50 years.

A. Fisher and J. B. S. Haldane, had developed the foundations for the currently held evolutionary theory of aging. However, in their published papers, neither dealt directly with the question of why aging occurs. CURRENT EVOLUTIONARY THEORY OF AGING It was in 1946 that Peter Medawar published a paper based on the principles of population genetics that laid out the elements of the current evolutionary theory of aging. In that paper, he states that the basis for the evolution of aging is the fact that the force of natural Why Aging Occurs 39 selection weakens with increasing calendar age.

1. The high birth rate, which yielded the "Baby Boom Generation," heavily weighted the population structure in 1955 toward young people. However, it is projected that in 2010 that same group will cause the population of the United States to be weighted toward middle-aged people, and by 2025 (not shown in the figure) that generation will result in a population weighted in favor of old people. In addition, as stated earlier, the projected further increase in life expectancy during the 21st century will be another factor in the production of populations with high percentages of elderly, particularly the old-old.

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Computer Science

Computer Science Department: At a glance

There is a lack of talent in technology, and we need to be encouraging student in college to learn how to code. We need to encourage computer science as a major subject. We need to encourage entrepreneurism.”

JV Jain college Saharanpur started computer science department  with aim to provide a technical  education to the youth of nation because now India want to become digital so there is a need of computer professional . We want to develop the software expert for our nation.

Result (I Sem)
Our Shining Stars

    Akansha Sangam(72.6%)
    Amit Chouhan& Muskan Saini(70.2%)


tirsdag den 24. februar 2015

The other day I visited a seminar on socially engaged art in public space. Yet another one. But this one was different. After the presentations, a man stood up and introduced himself as a local politician. He wanted to know why he should hire an artist to deal with marginalized groups, and not a social worker. Why he should hire an artist to design a public convenience, and not an architect. The answer that he was given was that artists are less likely to be associated with authority and can therefore communicate more easily with the people concerned.

On the face of it, this is a sympathetic argument. It is certainly one that is often used in texts on socially engaged art. It features prominently in Grant Kester’s classic Conversation Pieces (2004), where WochenKlausur’s project Intervention to Aid Drug-Addicted Women (1994) is singled out as an example of artists breaking a bureaucratic deadlock. Local politicians and bureaucrats in Zurich were unable to find a solution to problems relating to drug-addicted prostitutes, so WochenKlausur took them out on the Lake of Zurich on a boat and got them to talk together. On facing pages, Kester reproduces images of the boat and the boardinghouse that resulted from the intervention. In the context of the argument, the boat comes to symbolize the role of the artists as free agents and the boardinghouse the solution.

But sympathetic though it may be, an argument like this is unlikely to satisfy a politician or bureaucrat: it implicitly turns him or her into the one who has the real problem. The drug-addicted women may lead a rotten life, but the authorities that are supposed to have the power to do something about it are unable to use it to good effect. The artist, on the other hand, is portrayed as someone who is able to do something and therefore gets the hero’s role. Unfortunately, I was unable to speak to the local politician after the seminar, but I would not be at all surprised if he left with a feeling of finding himself amongst strangers.

As an art historian, I am quite naturally drawn to arguments such as the ones fielded by Claire Bishop in Artificial Hells (2012), based on the idea of antagonism. Of course Kester had very little previous art historical literature to draw on while Bishop could base her argument on an analysis of Kester’s, but the difference is telling. While Kester focuses on the type of communication used by socially engaged artists in their interaction with society, Bishop focuses on debates within the art world as well. Her argument is centered on art world concerns – object quality, artistic intention, questions of reception – and distinguishes between a primary audience, consisting of the people who are directly involved in the project, and a secondary one, consisting of anybody who is interested in the work but who has not been involved. Again speaking as an art historian, something that happened amongst strangers is returned to my world. Lovely.

Bishop does not reproduce Kester’s two illustrations of WochenKlausur’s project, but she does reproduce two of his other illustrations, not next to each other on facing pages, but underneath each other on a single one. Kester separates them with two text pages, but Bishop brings them together in what we can understand from the text on the facing page is an opposition – not necessarily one between the works, but between the ways they are read by Kester. The works are Rachel Whiteread’s House (1993-4) and Loraine Leeson/The Art of Change’s West Meets East (1992). Kester contrasts the former’s object-based approach with the latter’s dialogue-based one, but not in a simple opposition: associating Whiteread with the avant-garde tradition of disruption and Leeson with a dialogical approach beyond and outside the avant-garde as a well-known art historical form, he also claims that art historical arguments are naturally biased against dialogical practices. The avant-garde is “ours”, dialogue is “theirs”. Directly confronting the two works on one page enables Bishop to reabsorb them, and Kester’s argument, into the art discourse. As she points out, both works have form and both elicit affective responses. Even if Whiteread conceived her work in the studio and Leeson allowed it to crystallize in dialogue, the result is a form. And even if in Whiteread’s case the debate raged after the audience was confronted with the work while Leeson’s practice puts a premium on the debates taking place before the work is served for the general public, there is still a public.

Kester’s argument distinguishes between hierarchical and hierarchy-free communication, the one geared towards results and the other towards mutual understanding. His two photographs of WochenKlausur’s intervention function almost as a Derridean exergue, an introduction that inscribes the argument on the text before it is unfolded: the rocking boat of hierarchy-free communication vs. the solid foundations of the boardinghouse as a result of hierarchical communication after mutual understanding was reached. But so do the images in Bishop’s book, identical to the ones reproduced by Kester. In her case, the implication is that the same thing may be read differently, thus introducing her approach as based on the arguments employed by others, be they artists or theorists.
Bishop notes, quite rightly, that the success of socially engaged art is never measured by means of comparisons with non-art projects that attempt something similar. Nevertheless, such an evaluation was demanded by the politician at the seminar. The documentation of two phases of a single art project, as in Kester, or the documentation of the final form of two different projects, as in Bishop, cannot supply it, as both are premised on the Look of the Book.

Significantly, one of the items that featured prominently during the seminar was a book that is in the process of being produced about the work of the artist who answered the politician. Pages containing text and illustrations. I agree with Bishop that it is important to see socially engaged art as art, produced by an artist and consumed by an audience. I agree with Kester that socially engaged art implies non-art processes and subjects. But both make their arguments by means of the Look of the Book, and I agree with the politician that art projects in this particular field are consumed by others than the art world and should therefore be accountable outside as well as in. Other juxtapositions are called for: not just the opposition between object and dialogue or the similarity between the object-based and the dialogue-based as art, but also the oppositions and similarities resulting from the project’s identity as something to be decided upon by a city council, to be administrated by a bureaucracy and to be lived with by ordinary citizens, quite apart from art world concerns. For the sake of dialogue and antagonism, the politician should have been up there giving his view of the project, not in the audience asking a question. His agendas, minutes and reports should have been up there, next to the book.

Writing about Knud Pedersen reminded me of another obituary I wrote but never published. Since the man in question made a profound and lasting impression on me, just like Pedersen did, I thought I'd publish it here, now. On the left is a picture of the man, and below is the text:

This is a blog entry about Carlheinz ”Arthus” Caspari. I only met him once, but he made a big impression on me. And now he has passed away. Several years ago, actually. I was never particularly good at keeping in touch and he was never particularly good at answering e-mails. But it is a great shame that the world now has to manage without its Caspari.

It is not easy to write about him. Towards the end of our only meeting, at his home just outside Hamburg, he showed me some pickle jars. They contained parts of his archives, or rather, the papers he accumulated during the course of his life. He sold them, but under a condition: if the buyer opened a jar, he/she had to memorise the documents it contained, destroy them and pass on their contents in an oral form. It is a form of archiving that is inimical to the archive, but also one that suits the man extremely well. So if one wants to write about Caspari, and if one wants to do so in a way that respects his views, it has to be done in a non-archival way.Therefore, I will not use any source material. I will not even mention his birth and death dates, because that would make it possible to pin him down on a timeline, safely caught between two points. The only clue I will give is that Caspari was old enough to have fought on the Eastern front during World War II. Otherwise, I will just write down the first things I remember about him; put some entirely personal and subjective accounts into the circulation that he valued so highly.

The first thing I remember is what he told me about being a German in Paris, just after World War II. Caspari lived in the French zone of occupation. He trained as a theatre director, and because he was on friendly terms with the local French military commander, he obtained a visa that enabled him to study French contemporary theater. When he arrived in Paris, he found that his visa and his letters of recommendation gave him access to the theatres, but no more than that. The actors, who were often of Jewish descent, refused to speak to him or even shake his hand, so he ended up just sitting and watching them rehearse.

Another thing I remember is that he was the inventor of the Eastern as a film genre. Working for German television, he came up with the idea of making a series about the Russian conquest of Siberia, as a response to the long-established genre of the Western. What struck me about this idea was that it put him at odds with both sides of the East/West conflict. It identified both the Soviet Union and the US as expansionist powers, imperialist in their very roots. As in Paris, it left him standing all on his own, although his time not as a German amongst the enemies of Germany, but as an original thinker in a world that chooses sides.

A third thing I remember is what he told me about his collaboration with the Dutch artist Constant. They met when Constant was working on New Babylon, an urban environment designed for the man of the future, Homo Ludens, Man the Player. Caspari argued that New Babylon only could function after a profound revolution in our way of thinking, and he decided to define and pave the way for that way of thinking. He called it “Labyr”, part laboratory, part labyrinth, part labour and part something else entirely. Once again he was on his own, not because he ignored history or the logic of the present, not even because he chose the future, but because he placed himself outside the logic of modern Western time altogether. There is no connection between time as we see it, as a regular, measurable, linear form of progression, and Labyristic time.

Now I would like to stress that these are just things that struck me. Personal thoughts that cannot be read as verifiable, logical conclusions. This is how I will remember him: as geographically and temporarily at odds with the rest of the world, a person the like of which we will not see again in a hurry.


Embodying Enlightenment: Deepening

When awakening first happened to ‘me’ I was able to focus on the Transcendent elements of the Divine, switch to the Immanent elements of the Divine, and then switch back and forth at will.  However, it seemed as if I was some sort of camera that had either a wide angle lens (Transcendent) or a close-up lens (Immanent).  One of the ways that Enlightenment has become embodied these last 16 years is that it’s possible to ‘see’ or ‘focus’ on both simultaneously.  In other words, the perceived duality has functionally disappeared with practice.  Since Enlightenment is a shift in the level of perception, it takes practice to hold the total focus.  I just kept going back and forth between Transcendent and Immanent until I could hold both in my functional awareness at the same time.  Somehow the functional awareness expanded, with practice, over time.  Now I can perceive Non-Duality continually or split into Duality and focus on one aspect if necessary.

Awakening ultimately frees us from believing that our ego’s perceptions of Reality are true.  Again, however, there is a transformational process that I had to actively participate in by ‘exercising’ a new sort of muscle in order for me to be free from the illusions produced by the language that automatically generates in the language centers of my brain.  Initial awakening did free me from the overall bondage to the ego’s ideas, it’s view that it was the arbiter of reality, and the emotions that those ideas generated.  Once I saw that the ego was not Reality but, merely a verbal representation of reality (and a poor one at that), it wasn’t ever possible to believe in “myself” in the same way again.  The Center of Gravity and interpretive center became Awareness or Brahman.

It also became clear that one of the ego’s primary functions is to make itself feel important, even if ‘importance’ is gained by feeling victimized (and usually falsely so).  Of course, the ego also makes itself feel important by victimizing others, and the sense of satisfaction that it feels to have the thought ‘I am better than him or her’ that comes when denigrating someone else.  The thing is, the ‘ego’ is only a set of temporary thoughts and feelings: mostly lying thoughts and contracted feelings.

Over time, it became clear to me that the ‘ego’ would try to continue to function as it always had, and would continue to produce suffering in this body-mind as it always had, unless there was some effort to do a ‘practice’ that would functionally reduce its power.  As a psychologist, I knew about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (and its many varieties) which helps people question the truthfulness of their thoughts and stop being enslaved by those thoughts and the ‘real feelings of suffering’ that they produced (anxiety, panic, frustration, anger, grief, depression, etc.).  However, it took reading a book by Byron Katie called Loving What Isbefore I understood the spiritual benefits of this practice.

Part of the deepening process I went through then, was the practice of challenging my false thoughts and the real (but, falsely based) feelings that those false thoughts produced.  I named this practice “Thought Busting” because it broke the power of though over my mind and the power that false emotion had had over my heart.  This was a concerted practice over many months and years to challenge any ideas about: myself, the nature of the world, what other people were doing/saying/thinking when I wasn’t with them, and the future.  As I read Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing, and other books by the author who calls himself Jed McKenna (likely a pseudonym), I also added categories of false thoughts to my expanding list of falsehoods:  current scientific theories, current theories of the history of man, theories about the afterlife, religious doctrines and dogmas, people’s guesses about the future, and all opinions about world events, to name a few.

Over time, it became such an automatic practice to question the truthfulness of all thoughts, and all the feelings produced from these (almost always) false thoughts, that it cleared out a good bit of the leftover power that my ego had over this body-mind.  It isn’t that I can’t slip into momentary delusion and stop being Present but, that I can quickly remove myself from any false feelings of false suffering based on false thoughts.  This deepening process has allowed my days to deepen into an experience of being Present, being at peace, and being content.

The further deepening that happens is a deepening of how much love flows through the body-mind, and how much less reality the ego seems to have over time…there might be a personality but, is there really a Self?.  This week’s post is long enough, though, so I’ll write about the transformation of the ability to love, and the continuing disintegration of the sense of a Personal Self next week.

Comments are closed.


Category / Kitchen

Nanaimo Bars Recipe

Nanaimo Bar

The Nanaimo Bar is named after the city of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island.  This moreish, no-bake bar has a biscuit base, topped with a custard layer then a crisp chocolate top. They’re delicious but don’t take my word for it, the Canadians voted the bar their favourite confectionery.

Nanaimo Bar History

The first printed copy of the recipe using the name Nanaimo is found in Edith Adams’ cookbook in 1953.  Edith was a fictitious newspaper food writer for the Vancouver Sun who doled out homemaker advice to its readers.  If a reader got their recipe printed, they’d be sent a dollar and it would appear that Lenore Newman wrote the recipe published in the paper but under the title London Fog Bar.  It seems since then there have been quite a few reincarnations but all closely match the original recipe.

They’re called various things across Canada from Victoria Specials in Drumheller, Mabel’s Squares in Nova Scotia to New York Slices in Winnipeg and Kenora.

Canada is celebrating its 150th year and so it seems the perfect time to whip up a tray of Nanaimo Bars and scoff for Canada.

Here’s a recipe I got given from a Whistler resident.

For the biscuit layer

1 egg
60g sugar
15ml vanilla extract
120g butter
75g cocoa
240g of Graham Crackers crumbs (If you can’t get hold of Graham Crackers, I use 120g Digestive and 120g Rich Tea biscuits to good effect). Oreo’s might just be the perfect substitution.
120g chopped walnuts
240g coconut (A combination of desiccated and chopped, toasted)

For the custard layer

45g butter
45ml milk
30g Bird’s Custard Powder
480g Icing Sugar
9″ x 9″ baking pan

Begin by making the biscuit base

In a bowl, over a pan of simmering water, melt the butter with the sugar and cocoa powder, stirring occasionally until smooth. I always microwave mine, 600W for about a minute and a half, keeping a very close eye on it. Whisk in the egg until the mixture has thickened. Remove from the heat and mix in the biscuit crumbs, coconut and chopped walnuts if using, then press into the base of a lined 20cm square tin. Chill for 10 mins.

Then the custard layer

Whisk together the butter, milk and custard powder until light and fluffy, then gradually add the icing sugar until fully mixed. Spread over the biscuit layer and chill in the fridge for at least 10 mins until the custard is no longer soft.

Melt the chocolate and butter together in the microwave (or over a pan of simmering water), then spread over the chilled bars and put back in the fridge. Leave until the chocolate has fully set. Take the mixture out of the tin and slice into bite-sized squares.

Nanaimo Bars Recipe

They will keep in an airtight tin for up to a week but don’t expect them to hang around that long.

Nanaimo Bars Recipe

My detox smoothie


Five Hundred game

Five Hundred released!

  • User customisable cardsets, cardbacks and tables
  • Vastly improved opponent artificial intelligence from the original version

  • Six different opponents, which influence both bidding and playing styles
  • Make it work more smoothly on touch displays on Windows 8

Enjoy! You can download the game from here.

Five Hundred game screenshot

Five Hundred game

Update: Version 1.00 now available – get it from this link!

Wow, far, far too long between posts!

Icefall development is currently on hold for a little while as… the problem is… I’m not finding it as fun to play as it should be. So I think I need to take a break and focus on something smaller and easier for a little while.

Out of all my past projects, my “X500” game is the one I still get the most comments and emails about. Back in the day, I wanted to play the Five Hundred card game, but, looking around the ‘net, decent implementations were pretty much non-existant. So I created a version and released it online. Surprisingly, it actually was fairly well received and became quite popular (Completely Free Software gave it a “5 stars award” which was pretty cool).

Unfortunately, back at that time I was working on a game/graphics library that was source-compatible between DOS and Windows/DirectX versions… (looking back, I have no idea why I clung to DOS compatibility for so long.. oh well). As a consequence, I couldn’t implement a 100% compatible DirectX implementation for the Windows version… and as a result,  it no longer runs currently on modern Windows versions.

So, time for a rewrite! Looking around the internet, I came to the disappointing realisation that there are still no really good Five Hundred games out there! So I’m currently putting the finishing touches on a redesign (early screenshot of the new version above) for Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, and 8 PCs (yes, it will even support touchscreen play since I recently bought a Surface Pro tablet for testing).

I also want to take the opportunity to improve some of the AI from the old version. I hope to release the final version by the end of June!

Let’s take a look at pathfinding. Pathfinding is the process where the game can determine a suitable or optimal path from one point to another by traversing the game’s terrain. It’s a critical part of almost all games (RPGs, RTSs, turn-based strategy.. basically anything that has a variable terrain or map is going to need a way to determine paths across it)

Pathfinding is hard in the sense that it takes a lot of computing power to accomplish. And it doesn’t get easier with newer hardware either – as computers get faster, games generally incorporate more complex terrain and more inhabitants, so pathfinding stays complex. For example, the average RTS devotes 30% of CPU time to video (prepping stuff for the GPU, plus UI etc), 30% on AI & scripts, and 30% on pathfinding (the remaining 10% on everything else).

Icefall uses two different pathfinding algorithms to improve efficiency. Being turn-based, I don’t have to worry about time-critical calculations, so paths should always be optimal path (it’s acceptable for realtime games to take a ‘best guess’ or suboptimal path – you can see this in games like Dragon Age or Diablo: if you click somewhere far away or obscured by obstacles, your character will try to walk there but they get stuck). Let’s talk about how Icefall’s pathfinding works specifically.

A* Pathfinding Algorithm

A* (Wikipedia entry) is the method Icefall uses to calculate the player’s path. If you click on a distant doorway or shop, your character will move towards it using the fewest steps possible, regardless of how convoluted the actual path is.It works by starting at the player’s current location, and looking at all of the neighbouring squares (all the squares that the player could reach in a single move). For each of those squares, it looks at the *absolute* distance between this position and the goal position (that the player is trying to reach). The absolute distance is just ‘the distance in a straight line, assuming there were no obstacles’.

This (simplified) example shows a very simple dungeon with a start and goal square. The three initial candidate squares have been marked with red circles (this is called ‘the open list’ of squares), and the number within represents the absolute distance between each square and the goal.

Initial step of A* evaluation

The algorithm selects one of the squares from the open list that has the lowest absolute cost. So in this case, it could select either of the “6” squares. Let’s say it picks the bottom one (to try and go in a straight line). The process is then repeated, with all of the neighboring squares from our new square evaluated for their absolute distance to goal – but with a new step. We add to that distance the number of squares that we have already taken to get there (in this case, 1, since we’ve only moved once so far). Note that we also briefly consider the start square, and the other two red circles, but we discard them because they’re already in our ‘open’ list.

After evaluating the bottom '6' square

We’ve found two new candidate squares to add to the ‘open list’ – both are of absolute distance to goal 5 and have a distance travelled of 1 (+1 in the diagram). Because we’ve now fully evaluated that bottom ‘6’ square, it’s moved from the open list to what we call the “closed list” (which just makes sure we don’t end up re-evaluating squares that we’ve already done).

Now, the process continues by picking one of the squares in the open list with the lowest absolute distance + distance already travelled. If multiple squares have the same total, we pick a square with the highest distance already travelled first – this ensures that if there is a direct path to the goal, we find it immediately. If we continue this for a few move evaluations, we’ll end up with something like this.

After evaluating 4 more squares

We evaluated the next two squares in the dead end, as they both had a combined total of 6, and they had the highest distance already travelled values. But then we reached a dead-end there (there were no valid moves from that 3/+3 square), so we next evaluate the remaining 5/+1 square. on the open list. It finds two new squares to add, a 6/+2 and a 5/+2. After this picture, the lowest total value that’s still open is actually the original red circle (it has a cost of 6. Our other open squares have values 7/0, 6/+2, and 5/+2). When evaluating it’s neighbors, we find that it has a shorter route to the square directly above it. Instead of 6/+2, it can be replaced with 6/+1 – this is fewer squares travelled to reach the same goal. So this square value is replaced in the open list. Evaluation then continues. Eventually, we’ll end up with the following table, and the optimal path.

Final path determined

In this contrived example, we end up evaluating almost every square, but the important part of this algorithm is that it will ALWAYS find the MOST EFFICIENT path possible. Apply these steps to any path (assuming the path can actually be reached), and you will get the best possible result in the end (note that this path has effectively “skipped the corners” in the tunnel, without us having to do any special coding to take this into account).

So, that’s how Icefall calculates paths for the player. Seems easy enough, but you can see a lot of squares may end up being evaluated (especially in a big dungeon that has dead ends). So, how do we calculate the pathfinding for monsters? Since there may be dozens or hundreds of these in an Icefall dungeon…? Stay tuned for next time!

Lately, I have been rewriting some of the subsystems in Icefall. Now that the core of the gameplay is in place, it is time to go back and implement flexible/efficient versions of systems I originally coded in very fast to get the basic game up and running. Mainly this involves recoding subsystems to do things like handle errors more gracefully, respect the user settings (and respond correctly when these are changed on the fly), and cover everything in detailed comments so that future generations can understand how it worked.

The audio engine is the latest of these. It has been redesigned and now supports multiple channels of audio, with their own volume/mute controls, and a master control that lets you mute everything in one fell swoop. The game also ploughs on if it tries to initialise the audio library and fails – now it just skips loading any audio resources, disables and greys out all the audio UI settings, and carries on. Much better than popping an “Audio engine failed to initialise. Icefall will now exit” error message 🙂

Here’s a screenshot of the new Audio page in the Options dialog (game music and sounds respond to any of these being changed, in real time):

Icefall's Audio Options dialog menu

Audio Options

Net Status

WinNetStatus Application

Sometimes, you produce a UI that makes perfect sense to you, but when you introduce it to another player, they can’t follow it.

That happened to me with Icefall’s UI bar. Originally, my layout placed the player character’s health and mana bars in the bottom left corner, with the player’s current target displayed next to them. The action buttons and experience bar were in the bottom centre, and the status window was on the right:

Original UI Layout

Original UI Layout, with player/target health bars at the bottom left.

This made sense to me, and was based on Angband displaying the player/monster health stats in that corner. However, when I got a couple of friends to play it, both of them struggled to track the player’s health without me explicitly pointing it out, and one got the health bar confused with the experience bar in the centre.

So, as a result of this, I did some tweaking of the layout and the UI graphics. I’ve put the player and target information in the centre, and shuffled the action bars to the left hand side. I have to admit, after playing for a while, this configuration makes more sense:

New UI Layout, with player/target health bars in the centre

I also took the opportunity to update the UI backdrop to make the player/target area jump out a little more with a “leather canvas”-type frame.

The lesson? Always test the UI on people who have never seen the game before, and be resigned to the fact that you might have to change it.

Hi again.

Old-style Icefall wall tiles

New wall-drawing algorithm.

Xbox 360 – KINECT

A quick look at the Xbox 360 Kinect… looks good. Note that it’s much faster response time on the guy in the red sweater compared to the chick in the black and white. At previous demos, the demonstrators have been wearing red too. Apparently, they worked firstly on fine-tuning the system to minimise latency on red, and they’re working to bring other colours/patterns up to the same speed between now and launch (November). I think this shows the latency could be VERY acceptable!

People who know me on Facebook may be aware that I recently took a break from Icefall to focus on networking code.

I plan for networking to form an important part of Icefall’s gameplay: the game itself is not realtime multiplayer, however I plan for an ‘Auction House’, scoreboards/leaderboards/server-firsts, player-to-player mail, and other online community-type features.

BUT I have never worked with any networking code of any complexity before, and I determined that trying to ‘learn while I go’ during the Icefall development process would not be the best idea. Hence, Citadel!

Citadel is a ‘tower-defense’ game. For those unfamiliar with the concept, essentially an endless wave of bad guys (in this case, tanks, jets, armoured cars, and trikes) try to get to and destroy your tower. Your job is to build a system of defensive towers to prevent them from doing that. The towers themselves automatically aim and fire, the strategy lies in placing the right towers and walls in the right places to do as much damage to the invaders as possible.

Each wave of invaders is tougher than the last, and eventually they will overwhelm your defenses. However, each invader you kill will give you some credits to spend on additional defense, and you receive more credits for tougher invaders. So the object is to last as long as possible, try to save money for the strongest towers (the Tesla Coil), and ultimately get a big score.

As far as tower-defense games go, Citadel currently isn’t that sophisticated (it’s a beta version, after all!) and doesn’t have upgradable towers or multiple game types or anything like that, but it does have a unique feature that I couldn’t find in any other Tower Defense games anywhere: it can do multiplayer. Get a friend on a LAN, or over the internet (hook up a voice-chat program like MSN or Ventrilo!) and you can join forces to get the highest scores. It’s competitive co-operative: you share the same base and it’s game over when an invader reaches it, but who does the most damage to the creates gets the most credits for the kill, and the most score at the end.

NOTE: The invaders MUST ALWAYS HAVE *some way* to get through. Even if they have to go ridiculously long ways around crazily long mazes and queue up single file, it is against the rules of tower defense games to block them off completely. If you do that, it’s immediately game over!

Try the demo! If you don’t like it, that’s fine – but if it works (especially the networking part), or if it doesn’t work and you tell me about it and I work with you to make it work, then you’re helping me to make sure Icefall’s online components are awesome when they come out!

The Citadel Main Menu

The Citadel Main Menu

Early into a Citadel game

Early into a Citadel game

Download the beta demo here and let me know in the comments what you think, if it works, or (more importantly!) if it doesn’t work, or (MOST importantly!) what your high score is 🙂

As a general rule, I like to write all of the code used by my games/programs myself. Not because I think I am the best programmer in the world, but because – for me – one of the main reasons I program is to learn more about how software functions on the very lowest levels, and if I used extensive 3rd party code (like Unreal Engine for my game, for example) a lot of that stuff that I *want* to learn about would be abstracted away, or worse: still present but obscured and intermingled with the 3rd party code itself.

Coincidentally, this is the same reason I don’t use managed languages like C#. I quite like knowing about things that managed code wants to hide! The increase in development time is not that important to me, I have no external deadlines to meet.

However, there are points beyond which it’s not practical for me to write the code myself, because it’s either A) incredibly complex, B) boring, C) proprietary, or D) so ubiquitous that it really doesn’t need reinventing. e.g.: writing code to decode an MP3 file into raw audio. I could *potentially* do this, but as it belongs to all four categories, I’m really comfortable with not doing it myself!

Currently in my Freepascal development I am using three 3rd Party Code libraries every day. And they are all excellent, both in terms of features and being easy enough that I can ‘plug them in’ to my own lx7 game engine with very little work. Here they are:

DirectX – by Clootie

No, not DirectX itself (that deserves a whole separate subject!), but a port of all the headers/structures/glue code necessary to use DirectX in Freepascal. This gives me low level access to every function and interface used by DirectX itself, and the port is so perfect I was able to build my own graphics engine on top of Direct3D just by studying the (C++) DirectX SDK. Nothing is missing! Everything works! You probably won’t appreciate how rare this is if you normally use C++.

BASS is an Audio Library that makes it *dead easy* to play sound and music files of many different types. BASSfpc is the FPC port of this. BASS handles MP3s, WAVs, OGGs, and about a million other sound types, and it does it efficiently and with the bare minimum of code needed (literally about 4 lines of code to init the library and start playing an MP3!).

The newest addition to my Libs folder. LNet provides a set of classes to implement networking, at the very lowest level, without adding any additional features or complexity. That’s exactly what I needed, because I want to add my own features and complexity! There are many many network libraries out there, but (for Freepascal at least) LNet definately gets my vote, for being simple, class-based, and extremely elegant.


Judul Tesis Manajemen Keuangan Negara

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The world beyond 2015

Why does the public’s perception of academic research matter?

Mr Mostafa Al-Mossallami, UK Higher Education International Unit
Posted on 11/08/2014
Why does the public’s perception of academic research matter?

The fact is that research and development go hand in hand. At the UK Higher Education International Unit, we’ve seen that many UK Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are working actively and effectively in and with developing countries, with some examples featured on our website. Universities who work on international development undoubtedly see it as part of their core charitable mission, but the arrangement is not solely altruistic as there are mutual institutional and research benefits. UK HEIs undertake a wide range of activities beyond research, which include developing teaching and learning capacity, and supporting innovation. From collaborative research projects in Afghanistan to scholarships for Zambian students, HEIs support development.

The UUK survey shows that 57% of the 2,000 respondents felt that if they could solve three world problems then ensuring that the world had enough food and water would definitely be one of them, and 47% said fuelling advances in medicine would definitely be another. This is why conveying the message to the public that research within universities can help tackle these issues is very important. Campaigns like the ACU’s Beyond 2015 have a complementary role in highlighting the role HEIs play in development. By doing so, they demonstrate that – far from being stuck in an ‘ivory tower’ – universities are actively engaged in finding solutions to world problems that are a priority for the general public too.

The United Nations’ twelve ‘illustrative goals’ sit well with this vision of higher education supporting development. Three of the goals are aligned with the results of the UUK survey: “ensure healthy lives”; “ensure food security and good nutrition” and “achieve universal water and sanitation”. As these are common and global concerns, the goals are broad and set as a common aspiration for all countries, not just developing ones. While the most widely recognised benefit from higher education is the individual economic gain of greater lifetime income, there are also wider societal benefits. Graduates typically pay more taxes, tend to have better health, rely less on government social programmes, and are more likely to engage in civic activities. [‘The Broader Societal Benefits of Higher Education’, Alisa Cunningham]

There are also the downstream benefits and knock-on effects of a better educated population that can help create stable and peaceful societies and improve governance. These factors directly relate to several other UN illustrative goals, particularly: “end poverty”; “ensure good governance and effective institutions” and “ensure stable and peaceful societies”.

Image credits: Lwp Kommunikáció

Tags: International development, Research, Post-2015 agenda, Civil society, Governance, Higher education institutions, 12 illustrative goals, United Kingdom, Funding

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5. How can universities champion their contributions to wider society?
5. How can universities champion their contributions to wider society?
Illustrative Goal(s)
1. End poverty1. End poverty
4. Ensure healthy lives4. Ensure healthy lives
5. Ensure food security and good nutrition5. Ensure food security and good nutrition
6. Achieve universal access to water and sanitation6. Achieve universal access to water and sanitation
10. Ensure good governance and effective institutions10. Ensure good governance and effective institutions
11. Ensure stable and peaceful societies11. Ensure stable and peaceful societies


the REAL entitlements

The underling mechanism for inequality growth need not include deliberate actions by wealthy individuals.

Wealth is generated based upon the work of accumulated capital rather than labor. Wealthy investors are making bets with peers that have similar levels of wealth. Since neither side is actually creating wealth from raw goods, on average there are equal numbers of winners and losers.

Gary Rondeau:

There are good arguments that too much inequality is detrimental to social well-being. Without deliberate mechanisms to redistribute wealth downward, inequality will grow without bounds out of statistical necessity.

Managing inequality means introducing mechanisms that redistribute wealth more equitably which are at least as strong as the statistical effects which naturally concentrate wealth.

This is where greed comes in !

In practice, those that have attained wealth, even if by the throw of the dice, feel entitled to their fortune and resist any attempt at leveling the playing field.

Whether it is luck or skill that is involved in negotiating one’s bets, winners consistently attribute their success to skill, and with that comes a sense of entitlement to their winnings.


Poetic Devices: Reading Poetry

Reading poetry is multi-layered as they can be interpreted upon every single reading. The reading(s) is made enriching with varied meanings and elaborations that a reader can have with perception and context. Similarly, the contextual reading is always an apt way to take in.

In the same way, figures of speech act significantly to make poetry more elaborately meaningful and complex enough to interpret. Figures of Speech containing poetic devices make your poetry more interesting to delve in. And, those devices are used in poetry and other literary pieces to craft rhetoric and vivid layers.

On the other hand, poetic devices might make your poetry reading symbolic or figurative. Some of the devices making poetry more sensible are simile, metaphors, assonance, alliteration, onomatopoeia and other.

Do follow 3 things to know more about it:

  1. Read this notes : http://www.chaparralpoets.org/devices.pdf
  2. This page includes 15 the most interesting devices that you shouldn’t miss. http://www.enkivillage.com/figure-of-speech.html
  3. This YouTube video helps you a lot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qn4P3tvKNAg

Coleridge, Keats and Wordsworth: Attitude towards Nature and Time

William Wordsworth. (Courtesy: wikimedia.org)
William Wordsworth.  (Courtesy: wikimedia.org)

Among six pioneering figures of Romanticism of early 19th century namely Blake, Shelly, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron and Keats; Coleridge, Keats and Wordsworth are leading figures. These three leading figures have dignified time and nature with godly presence over it. They have set their different attitudes towards nature and time in their works.

As this course included their different works; ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ‘La Belle Dame sans Marci’ by John Keats and ‘Daffodils’ by William Wordsworth, have dignified the presence of nature and time in respective works. They have further beautified the nature and regarded the nature as god.

            Coleridge, in ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ has established inseparable relationship between nature and human beings. In his work, he has come across the massive presence of natural elements like sun, wind, mist, birds, water, storm and sea. In this poem, persona is shown doing wrong deeds towards nature. Mariner shots the spiritual/religious bird ‘Albatross’ which invites the punishments upon Mariner.

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