qid int64 1 74.7M | question stringlengths 12 33.8k | date stringlengths 10 10 | metadata list | response_j stringlengths 0 115k | response_k stringlengths 2 98.3k |
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94,883 | What is a verb for *illusion*? I want to use it in a sentence like the following:
>
> The optical effect [illudes] my perception of its real shape.
>
>
>
But **illude** does not exist. But I cannot find *illude* in my Dictionary (OS X Dictionary.app). I want to find a verb that is somewhere between *deceive* and *confuse*. | 2012/12/20 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/94883",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/9976/"
] | I think *[confounds](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/confound?s=t)* is often used in this context.
>
> The optical effect **confounds** my perception of its real shape.
>
>
>
It has a nice feel of causing consternation without deceitfulness or the sort of blundery feel you get from "confuse." And whereas people tend to be confused, senses are confounded in [literature](http://www.google.com/search?q=confound+the+senses&btnG=Search+Books&tbm=bks&tbo=1). | I might use the word *obscures* in that sentence:
>
> The optical effect obscures my perception of its real shape.
>
>
>
From [Oxford Dictionaries](http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/obscure): "obscure (verb): Keep from being seen; conceal". |
94,883 | What is a verb for *illusion*? I want to use it in a sentence like the following:
>
> The optical effect [illudes] my perception of its real shape.
>
>
>
But **illude** does not exist. But I cannot find *illude* in my Dictionary (OS X Dictionary.app). I want to find a verb that is somewhere between *deceive* and *confuse*. | 2012/12/20 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/94883",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/9976/"
] | Um, what do you mean “*illude* does not exist”? Sure it does. It’s just a tad rare these days. From the OED:
>
> **illude** /ɪˈl(j)uːd/, *v.* Now *rare*.
>
>
> Also 6 **illud**.
>
>
> Etymology: ad. L. *illūdĕre* to make sport of, jest or mock at, ridicule, occas. to trick, impose upon, f. *il-* (**il-**1) + *lūdĕre* to play. Cf. obs. Fr. *illuder* (Godef.).
>
>
> **† 1.** *trans.* To mock, make sport of, deride. *Obs*.
>
> **2.** To trick, impose upon, deceive with false hopes.
>
>
>
There a bit more than that, but those other senses are not used any longer; only #2 is. Here are some citations to go with it:
>
> * 1670 G. H. *Hist. Cardinals* ɪɪɪ. ɪɪɪ. 293 ― Full of hypocrisie and dissimulation, to lull and illude one another.
> * 1872 M. Collins *Two Plunges for Pearl* I. iii. 64 ― They had allowed their imaginations to illude them.
>
>
>
They also mention the forms *illuded* and *illuding*; for example:
>
> * 1745 Warton *Pleas. Melanch.* 185 ― The woodman’s stroke, or distant tinkling team··alarms The illuded sense.
> * 1887 *Athenæum* 3 Dec. 745/1 ― They [women] come across unfavourable specimens of the illuding sex.
>
>
>
I’m not saying that you’re apt to skate on entirely thick ice if you were to use these, but *illude* certainly **DOES** “exist”, and means pretty much what you would think it means. | Interesting question.
How about **"deceive"** or **"mislead"**? But I am not sure if you can replace "illudes" with either of these in the sentence you have given. |
94,883 | What is a verb for *illusion*? I want to use it in a sentence like the following:
>
> The optical effect [illudes] my perception of its real shape.
>
>
>
But **illude** does not exist. But I cannot find *illude* in my Dictionary (OS X Dictionary.app). I want to find a verb that is somewhere between *deceive* and *confuse*. | 2012/12/20 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/94883",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/9976/"
] | **mes·mer·ize** (mzm-rz, ms-)
tr.v. mes·mer·ized, mes·mer·iz·ing, mes·mer·iz·es
>
> 1. To spellbind; enthrall: "He could mesmerize an audience by the sheer force of his presence" (Justin Kaplan).
> 2. To hypnotize.
>
>
> | Perhaps too extreme, but *perverts* might work. Or better maybe, *subverts*. |
94,883 | What is a verb for *illusion*? I want to use it in a sentence like the following:
>
> The optical effect [illudes] my perception of its real shape.
>
>
>
But **illude** does not exist. But I cannot find *illude* in my Dictionary (OS X Dictionary.app). I want to find a verb that is somewhere between *deceive* and *confuse*. | 2012/12/20 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/94883",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/9976/"
] | Perhaps too extreme, but *perverts* might work. Or better maybe, *subverts*. | You could use *illusory*, which is an adverb. |
136,848 | Well, not really - just the flair image.
I am talking about [Brad Larson](https://stackoverflow.com/users/19679) who [was elected several hours ago](https://stackoverflow.com/election/3) and does have the diamond in the profile, however:
Live flair:
Knowing the system by now I assume it's because the flair data is cached and as Brad [didn't perform any real activity](https://stackoverflow.com/users/19679/brad-larson?tab=activity) aka reputation event since being elected, the flair data has not been updated.
Dunno what it means behind the scenes, but maybe changing one's status to moderator should also trigger reputation event just to make sure all the caches are reloaded? | 2012/06/20 | [
"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/136848",
"https://meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://meta.stackexchange.com/users/152859/"
] | It looks your computer still has the old version of the flair image cached. It shows the diamond on his flair image fine for me, and has shown it fine since I first checked the about page shortly after the announcement of the new moderators.
 | As addon to Animuson answer,
I can see that all three new elected moderators have diamonds.
May be check on the other browsers.
Do a forceful refresh `CTRL`+`F5` and see. |
1,297,391 | I'm trying to run an app from a remote X session (Ubuntu, 9.04) on a handheld device powered by Windows Mobile. I want to do this by running an X-server of some description on the mobile device and using SSH/PocketPuTTY or similar for a tunnel, as you'd do it on a standard PC/Mac.
Can anyone point me in the direction of some X servers for Windows Mobile, if they exist? | 2009/08/19 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1297391",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/67139/"
] | I believe that [MI/X](http://www.microimages.com/mix/) will run on Windows Mobile. | I find your question is a little ambiguous. Do you want to run an app on windows CE and have the output on Ubuntu, or the other way around? In either case, I've never been able to find an X server for windows CE (I've wanted to do something very similar in the past). X servers tend to be rather resource hungry beasts.
The only alternative I can think of is to use something like VNC to achieve a similar result. |
1,297,391 | I'm trying to run an app from a remote X session (Ubuntu, 9.04) on a handheld device powered by Windows Mobile. I want to do this by running an X-server of some description on the mobile device and using SSH/PocketPuTTY or similar for a tunnel, as you'd do it on a standard PC/Mac.
Can anyone point me in the direction of some X servers for Windows Mobile, if they exist? | 2009/08/19 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1297391",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/67139/"
] | I find your question is a little ambiguous. Do you want to run an app on windows CE and have the output on Ubuntu, or the other way around? In either case, I've never been able to find an X server for windows CE (I've wanted to do something very similar in the past). X servers tend to be rather resource hungry beasts.
The only alternative I can think of is to use something like VNC to achieve a similar result. | At the risk of diverting discussion away from your original question, have you considered simply running a VNC client on your mobile device, and using the built-in Ubuntu desktop sharing tools to connect to the server?
Generally, VNC degrades much more gracefully when faced with an unreliable network link (a common problem with handhelds), and most clients have support for panning and scaling the virtual desktop to allow a client with a small display to effectively interact with arbitrarily large screen resources. |
1,297,391 | I'm trying to run an app from a remote X session (Ubuntu, 9.04) on a handheld device powered by Windows Mobile. I want to do this by running an X-server of some description on the mobile device and using SSH/PocketPuTTY or similar for a tunnel, as you'd do it on a standard PC/Mac.
Can anyone point me in the direction of some X servers for Windows Mobile, if they exist? | 2009/08/19 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1297391",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/67139/"
] | I believe that [MI/X](http://www.microimages.com/mix/) will run on Windows Mobile. | At the risk of diverting discussion away from your original question, have you considered simply running a VNC client on your mobile device, and using the built-in Ubuntu desktop sharing tools to connect to the server?
Generally, VNC degrades much more gracefully when faced with an unreliable network link (a common problem with handhelds), and most clients have support for panning and scaling the virtual desktop to allow a client with a small display to effectively interact with arbitrarily large screen resources. |
592,697 | I've tried searching for an answer for this question, but I'm not sure if there is a specific term for it and so far I can't find any information.
If I had a popular app that consumed some web services, I would obviously use a load balancer to distribute the load across my services. In theory the end user is just hitting a hostname and this is resolved to the load balancer which then forwards these requests to a web service instance. If my web services then also made a call to another external/3rd party web service, would this 3rd party see the individual IP from the web server in question?
For example if the 3rd party web service said I had to provide 3 ip addresses and only these 3 could access their services how would this work bearing in mind I could have 6 instances behind my load balancer and any one of these could be required to make the request? As the request is made from an individual web server, I'm guessing it wouldn't 'go out' of the load balancer. Although this is quite a generic question, an example of how this might be set-up on AWS infrastructure would be useful
Thanks | 2014/05/02 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/592697",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/90100/"
] | The request would *typically* not go to the 3rd party API via your load balancers.
But it's still possible.
And that is pretty much all that can be answered here, what really happens just depends on how you designed your network.
It's possible that every webserver requests it directly.
It's possible that outgoing requests get NAT'ed and appear all to be coming from one IP.
It's possible that you've setup a proxy and all requests are going over it.
And there are probably more possibilities that I couldn't think of right now... | You could accomplish what you need by putting your app servers in a private subnet in a VPC, which routes 0.0.0.0/0 to a NAT instance in a public subnet. All requests to the 3rd part service would appear from the NAT's external IP (assign an Elastic IP to keep it consistent).
The NAT will be a bottleneck for these requests, so you'll need to make sure it's adequately scaled. If you have 3 IPs you could whitelist, you could put your app servers and NAT devices across 3 AZ's with a separate NAT instance in each AZ.
<http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonVPC/latest/UserGuide/VPC_NAT_Instance.html> |
2,092,034 | I am writing a paper for a scientific conference. Just to be thorough, in that paper I said I made unit tests for the components in the system among all the other tests (system testing, usability etc) I made.
In the results section, for the unit tests I simply said that all the tests passed. I submitted the draft to my adviser and now he's telling me that I need to give a more detailed summary of the unit tests I made.
I have never heard of writing a result summary for unit testing. Is there such a thing? | 2010/01/19 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/2092034",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/160950/"
] | A detailed summary of the unit tests could include a measure of code coverage perhaps, or a chart showing where you have achieved code coverage. But even this is not particularly valuable. This is part of the problem with unit tests - it's easy to add a unit test to add additional code coverage without really adding to the confidence you have in your code.
If you have some specific tests that, for example, test that known input/output combinations worked, or that test the handling of certain edge or exception cases, then you can document those. If you used test-driven development, where the test comes from the problem and its analysis rather than from the code in a "retrofitted" manner, then say that as well.
By all means put some simple metrics in there, but you always have to take these with a pinch of salt... | Here are some additional metrics you could consider reporting:
* The number of unit tests
* Code coverage
In addition to that, you may choose to describe which unit testing framework you used, and whether you used a particular methodology (Test-Driven Development or Test-After). |
2,092,034 | I am writing a paper for a scientific conference. Just to be thorough, in that paper I said I made unit tests for the components in the system among all the other tests (system testing, usability etc) I made.
In the results section, for the unit tests I simply said that all the tests passed. I submitted the draft to my adviser and now he's telling me that I need to give a more detailed summary of the unit tests I made.
I have never heard of writing a result summary for unit testing. Is there such a thing? | 2010/01/19 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/2092034",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/160950/"
] | A detailed summary of the unit tests could include a measure of code coverage perhaps, or a chart showing where you have achieved code coverage. But even this is not particularly valuable. This is part of the problem with unit tests - it's easy to add a unit test to add additional code coverage without really adding to the confidence you have in your code.
If you have some specific tests that, for example, test that known input/output combinations worked, or that test the handling of certain edge or exception cases, then you can document those. If you used test-driven development, where the test comes from the problem and its analysis rather than from the code in a "retrofitted" manner, then say that as well.
By all means put some simple metrics in there, but you always have to take these with a pinch of salt... | On most runners, the minimal output will also show the **number of tests run** (how can you tell it found any tests?).
Other features one might see are:
* how many tests were skipped (on frameworks that support it)
* code coverage
* execution time (how long did the tests take)
* the actual names of the unit tests or their descriptions. |
2,092,034 | I am writing a paper for a scientific conference. Just to be thorough, in that paper I said I made unit tests for the components in the system among all the other tests (system testing, usability etc) I made.
In the results section, for the unit tests I simply said that all the tests passed. I submitted the draft to my adviser and now he's telling me that I need to give a more detailed summary of the unit tests I made.
I have never heard of writing a result summary for unit testing. Is there such a thing? | 2010/01/19 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/2092034",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/160950/"
] | A detailed summary of the unit tests could include a measure of code coverage perhaps, or a chart showing where you have achieved code coverage. But even this is not particularly valuable. This is part of the problem with unit tests - it's easy to add a unit test to add additional code coverage without really adding to the confidence you have in your code.
If you have some specific tests that, for example, test that known input/output combinations worked, or that test the handling of certain edge or exception cases, then you can document those. If you used test-driven development, where the test comes from the problem and its analysis rather than from the code in a "retrofitted" manner, then say that as well.
By all means put some simple metrics in there, but you always have to take these with a pinch of salt... | If the unit tests are unit tests a la [jUnit](http://www.junit.org/), then could tweak your framework to display the name of the tests (names of TestCase methods) and the assertion messages, if any to generate a raw description of the unit tests. I had to do that once to satisfy the request of a QA guy.
Perhaps he believed the unit tests were executed manually, and just asked details about them, does the paper make it clear the unit tests are automatic ? |
77,637 | I'm following the instructions at <http://htc-one.wonderhowto.com/how-to/unlock-bootloader-root-your-htc-one-m8-0154444/> and have found a stage where I don't have enough information, which is at Step 9 in the instructions, which says "Start by grabbing SuperSU from Chainfire directly on your phone, or download and place the file in your device's "Download" directory."
I tried doing it directly on the phone, but that didn't install it properly --- it seemed to want the phone already rooted, but I'm doing this as a stage of rooting the phone. When I then try running supersu, it complains it can't find the su program.
So now I'd like to "place the file in the Download directory", which presumably means using "adb push", but I can't find where I should be putting it, i.e. any directory called "Downloads" or anything like that. I've looked around, using "ls" in the adb shell, and I suspect it might be in /data, but I can't look in there (perhaps because the device isn't rooted yet?) The instructions expect the supersu zip file to be unpacked by the TWRP recovery, which I have installed.
<http://androidadvices.com/root-install-custom-recovery-twrp-image-htc-m8-android-phone-guide> has alternative instructions, which just say to put it in "a suitable location"; could I, for example, just dump it in "/" ? | 2014/07/19 | [
"https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/77637",
"https://android.stackexchange.com",
"https://android.stackexchange.com/users/67128/"
] | Download the zip to your computer, boot up the phone in normal mode (just press the Power on button when turned off - no bootloader, fastboot or anything like that) and connect it to the computer via USB. The phone memory that opens up on your computer is where you should put it. It really doesn't matter the exact location, as long you can access it later in the TWRP recovery (the Download directory mentioned in the guide is also there). Then you can proceed with Step 10 (or Step 15 if you have already installed the TWRP recovery). | Go into twrp mode on your phone and go to install. Then go to where you downloaded the zip file and tap on it. Then just swipe to install and reboot your device. |
45,154 | I am preparing for a game with a bunch of new players, with a mix of varying familiarity with the setting/system and RPGs in general. To get them to taste the setting ASAP I decided to play a one-off introductory game with pre-generated characters (pregen'd by me - the GM). For my 5 players I have prepared 8 (IMHO) interesting archetypes (like The Soldier, The Conspiracy Theorist, The Psychic etc.) from which they will be free to choose.
But I am perplexed by the choosing process. Surely I think I am going to describe the characters beforehand openly, as in *"This guy is **The Socialite** archetype, he is a fellow passionate about meeting people and maintaining relationships with various interesting people. He has a lot of contacts and retainers in the general entertainment industry and is very strong on social skills - good liar, observant in conversation, likeable and charismatic. However, he lacks genuine knowledge and "hard" professional skills, and is at best mediocre physically."*
Then, after going over each one, they would be able to choose, but what to do for the process to be fair and quick?
I have thought of the following tactics:
1. Simply hand the sheets to a random person for a round robin, but the ones at the end might feel disadvantaged.
2. Distribute them randomly or arbitrarily and let them trade but it feels like it's going to take a lot of time.
3. Make them create a list from most preferred to least preferred and then cross-compare them to come up with the best division possible. This again would be complicated and laborious.
4. Finally, to have a Need Before Greed approach. After each description if a player feels this is the character for them, he/she yells "need" or "greed" - the first player to "need" gets the char, but cannot choose from the rest. If none yell need, then greeders get chars on round-robin basis without removing themselves from calling later. However, this looks complicated and still a hasty "needer" or an unlucky "greeder" might be upset.
Is there a tactic of distributing chars fairly? I ask under an assumption that (as in point 3) a consensus can be reached and upon hearing the char list/description, the players would have an order of preference. | 2014/07/28 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/45154",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/14670/"
] | The way I've always seen this done is to simply let everyone look over all the characters, and then let them decide among themselves who plays what.
I guess this could lead to problems if there were two players who absolutely insisted on having the same character, but I've never witnessed that being an issue. More likely, one of them will just say "I really, really want to play the Big Barbarian" and then the other will go "okay you can have her, I liked the Wizened Wizard too so I can just play him instead". This usually happens pretty quickly, and the fact that you have more characters than players helps reduce insolvable conflicts.
In my experience, it's more likely that you'll be delayed by a player who can't decide between two characters that nobody else has laid a claim on. Often people are actually relieved when someone else picks a character they liked, since that spares them the effort of trying to decide between the Big Barbarian and the Wizened Wizard. (You definitely don't want to do the "list all characters from most preferred to least preferred" thing. Trying to decide on just *one* favorite is hard enough, trying to put them all in order is even worse.)
If two players really both insist on getting the same character, just have them flip a coin or play rock-paper-scissors or whatever to settle the question. | For a one-off, you want to make choosing a character fast and painless.
If it doesn't matter to the game which (or how many) archetypes are used, print out plenty of extras, and let each player pick the top sheet from the pile of whichever archetype he/she wants. Alternately, shuffle all the sheets together and have each player pick two, look at them, then discard the sheet they don't want.
If the game needs a certain number of each type, then let the players choose by calling out the archetypes on a first-come-first-served basis. You can choose who is "first" by any number of means: who shouts "me!" first, who showed up first, where the players sit, or even by rolling dice (gasp!).
Remember, in the end, it's really not going to matter much who gets what. New players won't know any better, and the regulars will know they'll get a new character at the end of the one-shot anyway. |
45,154 | I am preparing for a game with a bunch of new players, with a mix of varying familiarity with the setting/system and RPGs in general. To get them to taste the setting ASAP I decided to play a one-off introductory game with pre-generated characters (pregen'd by me - the GM). For my 5 players I have prepared 8 (IMHO) interesting archetypes (like The Soldier, The Conspiracy Theorist, The Psychic etc.) from which they will be free to choose.
But I am perplexed by the choosing process. Surely I think I am going to describe the characters beforehand openly, as in *"This guy is **The Socialite** archetype, he is a fellow passionate about meeting people and maintaining relationships with various interesting people. He has a lot of contacts and retainers in the general entertainment industry and is very strong on social skills - good liar, observant in conversation, likeable and charismatic. However, he lacks genuine knowledge and "hard" professional skills, and is at best mediocre physically."*
Then, after going over each one, they would be able to choose, but what to do for the process to be fair and quick?
I have thought of the following tactics:
1. Simply hand the sheets to a random person for a round robin, but the ones at the end might feel disadvantaged.
2. Distribute them randomly or arbitrarily and let them trade but it feels like it's going to take a lot of time.
3. Make them create a list from most preferred to least preferred and then cross-compare them to come up with the best division possible. This again would be complicated and laborious.
4. Finally, to have a Need Before Greed approach. After each description if a player feels this is the character for them, he/she yells "need" or "greed" - the first player to "need" gets the char, but cannot choose from the rest. If none yell need, then greeders get chars on round-robin basis without removing themselves from calling later. However, this looks complicated and still a hasty "needer" or an unlucky "greeder" might be upset.
Is there a tactic of distributing chars fairly? I ask under an assumption that (as in point 3) a consensus can be reached and upon hearing the char list/description, the players would have an order of preference. | 2014/07/28 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/45154",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/14670/"
] | The following has worked quite well for me as a GM at game conventions where pre-generated characters are the norm. I have done this many times.
Sit your players around the table with nothing on it. Place the character sheets face down in the middle of the table.
State the following:
>
> *"Each of you take a sheet, look it over privately. If you are satisfied with what you picked, keep it. If you don't like it, put it back face-down and pick another sheet. You can only hold one sheet at a time. If we run out of characters you like, better luck next time. And yes, you can trade between each other after everyone has a single character in front of them."*
>
>
>
This assumes none of the pre-generated characters are "required" or have secrets from the other players. If certain characters are "required", first put only the required characters out, then when those sheets have been taken, lock those player choices in, then put out the secondary characters.
My favorite pre-generated characters have 3 aspects.
**Aspect 1:** a well-designed, cleanly-filled primary sheet, with a background that can potentially interlock with other player characters.
**Aspect 2:** allowance for slight customization of skills or equipment; provide leftover points for allocation from the primary skill point pool, or allowances for 2-3 non-repeating attribute adjustments.
**Aspect 3:** a "secret sheet"; a separate paper of character-only information handed out to each player only **after** their characters have been finalized. The "secret sheet" lists character-only knowledge: special skills, extra equipment, underground contacts, background, missions, and vendettas. A "secret sheet" is commonly used for pre-generated Call of Cthulhu and Paranoia characters, but is universally applicable. Make sure if you use secret sheets that every player receives one for their character, even if a given character might not have anything secret to list. | **Choosing/Assigning Pregens**
Since you have a mix of players in familiarity and skill, the first thing is to identify which characters are the easiest to run with in terms of mechanics and fictional role - the good "starter" characters. This would be characters who are the least mechanically complex if the game has different rules for different character types (magic, is the usual culprit). Let the newer players know "These 2-3 characters would be really good to start with" and let them pick from that, first.
This avoids a situation I've seen a few times where the completely new player gets the most mechanically complex character, which either ends up in the character being used terribly and the player at a loss for what's going on, or the game grinding to a terribly slow space where another player or two has to constantly explain how to use the mechanics to the newbie.
Once that's done, then let the advanced players pick from what remains. If there's a conflict over who gets what character, just have them flip a coin or roll a die to see who gets it.
**Describing your Pregens**
When it comes to descriptions for the sake of picking, I like to keep the description really short and easy to parse for people looking at the character sheet:
>
> Kolemi Kinata
>
> *A tricky old man 2nd Level Human Rogue*
>
>
> Kolemi works best by using his mobility to get around, teaming up on
> bad guys to use Sneak Attack, and using tricky stunts to overcome
> enemies. He has a lot of skills outside of combat which can be
> useful.
>
>
>
It's a simple layman's term of what the character does, so players who aren't familiar with the system can at least get an idea of the strategy or how to play the character in the most general sense.
Of course, there's also a background paragraph going into more detail about the character's history and motivations, but having a "game friendly' bit early on makes it really easy to get new players into play. |
45,154 | I am preparing for a game with a bunch of new players, with a mix of varying familiarity with the setting/system and RPGs in general. To get them to taste the setting ASAP I decided to play a one-off introductory game with pre-generated characters (pregen'd by me - the GM). For my 5 players I have prepared 8 (IMHO) interesting archetypes (like The Soldier, The Conspiracy Theorist, The Psychic etc.) from which they will be free to choose.
But I am perplexed by the choosing process. Surely I think I am going to describe the characters beforehand openly, as in *"This guy is **The Socialite** archetype, he is a fellow passionate about meeting people and maintaining relationships with various interesting people. He has a lot of contacts and retainers in the general entertainment industry and is very strong on social skills - good liar, observant in conversation, likeable and charismatic. However, he lacks genuine knowledge and "hard" professional skills, and is at best mediocre physically."*
Then, after going over each one, they would be able to choose, but what to do for the process to be fair and quick?
I have thought of the following tactics:
1. Simply hand the sheets to a random person for a round robin, but the ones at the end might feel disadvantaged.
2. Distribute them randomly or arbitrarily and let them trade but it feels like it's going to take a lot of time.
3. Make them create a list from most preferred to least preferred and then cross-compare them to come up with the best division possible. This again would be complicated and laborious.
4. Finally, to have a Need Before Greed approach. After each description if a player feels this is the character for them, he/she yells "need" or "greed" - the first player to "need" gets the char, but cannot choose from the rest. If none yell need, then greeders get chars on round-robin basis without removing themselves from calling later. However, this looks complicated and still a hasty "needer" or an unlucky "greeder" might be upset.
Is there a tactic of distributing chars fairly? I ask under an assumption that (as in point 3) a consensus can be reached and upon hearing the char list/description, the players would have an order of preference. | 2014/07/28 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/45154",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/14670/"
] | The following has worked quite well for me as a GM at game conventions where pre-generated characters are the norm. I have done this many times.
Sit your players around the table with nothing on it. Place the character sheets face down in the middle of the table.
State the following:
>
> *"Each of you take a sheet, look it over privately. If you are satisfied with what you picked, keep it. If you don't like it, put it back face-down and pick another sheet. You can only hold one sheet at a time. If we run out of characters you like, better luck next time. And yes, you can trade between each other after everyone has a single character in front of them."*
>
>
>
This assumes none of the pre-generated characters are "required" or have secrets from the other players. If certain characters are "required", first put only the required characters out, then when those sheets have been taken, lock those player choices in, then put out the secondary characters.
My favorite pre-generated characters have 3 aspects.
**Aspect 1:** a well-designed, cleanly-filled primary sheet, with a background that can potentially interlock with other player characters.
**Aspect 2:** allowance for slight customization of skills or equipment; provide leftover points for allocation from the primary skill point pool, or allowances for 2-3 non-repeating attribute adjustments.
**Aspect 3:** a "secret sheet"; a separate paper of character-only information handed out to each player only **after** their characters have been finalized. The "secret sheet" lists character-only knowledge: special skills, extra equipment, underground contacts, background, missions, and vendettas. A "secret sheet" is commonly used for pre-generated Call of Cthulhu and Paranoia characters, but is universally applicable. Make sure if you use secret sheets that every player receives one for their character, even if a given character might not have anything secret to list. | Just an addition to [Kal\_Sitala](https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/10011/kaj-sotala) excellent answer...
**Get them out of the comfort zone: *go against type.***
So, if the player is used to playing no-combat characters, I will suggest they play the party muscle. If they never played cross-gender, I'd suggest they play an opposite sex character. *Why?* Mostly because it is a one off. You can play something well even if you are not familiar with it for one or two sessions. What it will do is force the player to think about how to do things they have not done before: to learn the new role they have been assigned. But they are not stuck with that role for long. They can have fun with it, and then discard it to play something they are more comfortable in the long run. |
45,154 | I am preparing for a game with a bunch of new players, with a mix of varying familiarity with the setting/system and RPGs in general. To get them to taste the setting ASAP I decided to play a one-off introductory game with pre-generated characters (pregen'd by me - the GM). For my 5 players I have prepared 8 (IMHO) interesting archetypes (like The Soldier, The Conspiracy Theorist, The Psychic etc.) from which they will be free to choose.
But I am perplexed by the choosing process. Surely I think I am going to describe the characters beforehand openly, as in *"This guy is **The Socialite** archetype, he is a fellow passionate about meeting people and maintaining relationships with various interesting people. He has a lot of contacts and retainers in the general entertainment industry and is very strong on social skills - good liar, observant in conversation, likeable and charismatic. However, he lacks genuine knowledge and "hard" professional skills, and is at best mediocre physically."*
Then, after going over each one, they would be able to choose, but what to do for the process to be fair and quick?
I have thought of the following tactics:
1. Simply hand the sheets to a random person for a round robin, but the ones at the end might feel disadvantaged.
2. Distribute them randomly or arbitrarily and let them trade but it feels like it's going to take a lot of time.
3. Make them create a list from most preferred to least preferred and then cross-compare them to come up with the best division possible. This again would be complicated and laborious.
4. Finally, to have a Need Before Greed approach. After each description if a player feels this is the character for them, he/she yells "need" or "greed" - the first player to "need" gets the char, but cannot choose from the rest. If none yell need, then greeders get chars on round-robin basis without removing themselves from calling later. However, this looks complicated and still a hasty "needer" or an unlucky "greeder" might be upset.
Is there a tactic of distributing chars fairly? I ask under an assumption that (as in point 3) a consensus can be reached and upon hearing the char list/description, the players would have an order of preference. | 2014/07/28 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/45154",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/14670/"
] | **Choosing/Assigning Pregens**
Since you have a mix of players in familiarity and skill, the first thing is to identify which characters are the easiest to run with in terms of mechanics and fictional role - the good "starter" characters. This would be characters who are the least mechanically complex if the game has different rules for different character types (magic, is the usual culprit). Let the newer players know "These 2-3 characters would be really good to start with" and let them pick from that, first.
This avoids a situation I've seen a few times where the completely new player gets the most mechanically complex character, which either ends up in the character being used terribly and the player at a loss for what's going on, or the game grinding to a terribly slow space where another player or two has to constantly explain how to use the mechanics to the newbie.
Once that's done, then let the advanced players pick from what remains. If there's a conflict over who gets what character, just have them flip a coin or roll a die to see who gets it.
**Describing your Pregens**
When it comes to descriptions for the sake of picking, I like to keep the description really short and easy to parse for people looking at the character sheet:
>
> Kolemi Kinata
>
> *A tricky old man 2nd Level Human Rogue*
>
>
> Kolemi works best by using his mobility to get around, teaming up on
> bad guys to use Sneak Attack, and using tricky stunts to overcome
> enemies. He has a lot of skills outside of combat which can be
> useful.
>
>
>
It's a simple layman's term of what the character does, so players who aren't familiar with the system can at least get an idea of the strategy or how to play the character in the most general sense.
Of course, there's also a background paragraph going into more detail about the character's history and motivations, but having a "game friendly' bit early on makes it really easy to get new players into play. | For a one-off, you want to make choosing a character fast and painless.
If it doesn't matter to the game which (or how many) archetypes are used, print out plenty of extras, and let each player pick the top sheet from the pile of whichever archetype he/she wants. Alternately, shuffle all the sheets together and have each player pick two, look at them, then discard the sheet they don't want.
If the game needs a certain number of each type, then let the players choose by calling out the archetypes on a first-come-first-served basis. You can choose who is "first" by any number of means: who shouts "me!" first, who showed up first, where the players sit, or even by rolling dice (gasp!).
Remember, in the end, it's really not going to matter much who gets what. New players won't know any better, and the regulars will know they'll get a new character at the end of the one-shot anyway. |
45,154 | I am preparing for a game with a bunch of new players, with a mix of varying familiarity with the setting/system and RPGs in general. To get them to taste the setting ASAP I decided to play a one-off introductory game with pre-generated characters (pregen'd by me - the GM). For my 5 players I have prepared 8 (IMHO) interesting archetypes (like The Soldier, The Conspiracy Theorist, The Psychic etc.) from which they will be free to choose.
But I am perplexed by the choosing process. Surely I think I am going to describe the characters beforehand openly, as in *"This guy is **The Socialite** archetype, he is a fellow passionate about meeting people and maintaining relationships with various interesting people. He has a lot of contacts and retainers in the general entertainment industry and is very strong on social skills - good liar, observant in conversation, likeable and charismatic. However, he lacks genuine knowledge and "hard" professional skills, and is at best mediocre physically."*
Then, after going over each one, they would be able to choose, but what to do for the process to be fair and quick?
I have thought of the following tactics:
1. Simply hand the sheets to a random person for a round robin, but the ones at the end might feel disadvantaged.
2. Distribute them randomly or arbitrarily and let them trade but it feels like it's going to take a lot of time.
3. Make them create a list from most preferred to least preferred and then cross-compare them to come up with the best division possible. This again would be complicated and laborious.
4. Finally, to have a Need Before Greed approach. After each description if a player feels this is the character for them, he/she yells "need" or "greed" - the first player to "need" gets the char, but cannot choose from the rest. If none yell need, then greeders get chars on round-robin basis without removing themselves from calling later. However, this looks complicated and still a hasty "needer" or an unlucky "greeder" might be upset.
Is there a tactic of distributing chars fairly? I ask under an assumption that (as in point 3) a consensus can be reached and upon hearing the char list/description, the players would have an order of preference. | 2014/07/28 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/45154",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/14670/"
] | **Choosing/Assigning Pregens**
Since you have a mix of players in familiarity and skill, the first thing is to identify which characters are the easiest to run with in terms of mechanics and fictional role - the good "starter" characters. This would be characters who are the least mechanically complex if the game has different rules for different character types (magic, is the usual culprit). Let the newer players know "These 2-3 characters would be really good to start with" and let them pick from that, first.
This avoids a situation I've seen a few times where the completely new player gets the most mechanically complex character, which either ends up in the character being used terribly and the player at a loss for what's going on, or the game grinding to a terribly slow space where another player or two has to constantly explain how to use the mechanics to the newbie.
Once that's done, then let the advanced players pick from what remains. If there's a conflict over who gets what character, just have them flip a coin or roll a die to see who gets it.
**Describing your Pregens**
When it comes to descriptions for the sake of picking, I like to keep the description really short and easy to parse for people looking at the character sheet:
>
> Kolemi Kinata
>
> *A tricky old man 2nd Level Human Rogue*
>
>
> Kolemi works best by using his mobility to get around, teaming up on
> bad guys to use Sneak Attack, and using tricky stunts to overcome
> enemies. He has a lot of skills outside of combat which can be
> useful.
>
>
>
It's a simple layman's term of what the character does, so players who aren't familiar with the system can at least get an idea of the strategy or how to play the character in the most general sense.
Of course, there's also a background paragraph going into more detail about the character's history and motivations, but having a "game friendly' bit early on makes it really easy to get new players into play. | Game Theory for the win!
------------------------
If you have really found yourselves at an impasse, you might consider a technical solution to the problem. The New York Times published [a tool for dividing rent fairly among roommates](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/science/rent-division-calculator.html?nl=todaysheadlines&_r=0#). The essence of the tool is that you kick choices back and forth at different prices until a stable state is reached (i.e. when no one is willing to pay more to take a different option).
But I'm not going to charge my players to game!
-----------------------------------------------
That's fine! But you might want to order food during the session, or at least bring snacks. Figure out a budget for the session's foodstuffs and throw it into the calculator, along with the players and the characters. Spend a couple minutes, and you'll have figured out a mathematically fair distribution of the character sheets, and settled how to pay for food at the same time!
(Note that the calculator requires the same number of players and rooms, so you'll have to whittle down to that some other way.) |
45,154 | I am preparing for a game with a bunch of new players, with a mix of varying familiarity with the setting/system and RPGs in general. To get them to taste the setting ASAP I decided to play a one-off introductory game with pre-generated characters (pregen'd by me - the GM). For my 5 players I have prepared 8 (IMHO) interesting archetypes (like The Soldier, The Conspiracy Theorist, The Psychic etc.) from which they will be free to choose.
But I am perplexed by the choosing process. Surely I think I am going to describe the characters beforehand openly, as in *"This guy is **The Socialite** archetype, he is a fellow passionate about meeting people and maintaining relationships with various interesting people. He has a lot of contacts and retainers in the general entertainment industry and is very strong on social skills - good liar, observant in conversation, likeable and charismatic. However, he lacks genuine knowledge and "hard" professional skills, and is at best mediocre physically."*
Then, after going over each one, they would be able to choose, but what to do for the process to be fair and quick?
I have thought of the following tactics:
1. Simply hand the sheets to a random person for a round robin, but the ones at the end might feel disadvantaged.
2. Distribute them randomly or arbitrarily and let them trade but it feels like it's going to take a lot of time.
3. Make them create a list from most preferred to least preferred and then cross-compare them to come up with the best division possible. This again would be complicated and laborious.
4. Finally, to have a Need Before Greed approach. After each description if a player feels this is the character for them, he/she yells "need" or "greed" - the first player to "need" gets the char, but cannot choose from the rest. If none yell need, then greeders get chars on round-robin basis without removing themselves from calling later. However, this looks complicated and still a hasty "needer" or an unlucky "greeder" might be upset.
Is there a tactic of distributing chars fairly? I ask under an assumption that (as in point 3) a consensus can be reached and upon hearing the char list/description, the players would have an order of preference. | 2014/07/28 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/45154",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/14670/"
] | The following has worked quite well for me as a GM at game conventions where pre-generated characters are the norm. I have done this many times.
Sit your players around the table with nothing on it. Place the character sheets face down in the middle of the table.
State the following:
>
> *"Each of you take a sheet, look it over privately. If you are satisfied with what you picked, keep it. If you don't like it, put it back face-down and pick another sheet. You can only hold one sheet at a time. If we run out of characters you like, better luck next time. And yes, you can trade between each other after everyone has a single character in front of them."*
>
>
>
This assumes none of the pre-generated characters are "required" or have secrets from the other players. If certain characters are "required", first put only the required characters out, then when those sheets have been taken, lock those player choices in, then put out the secondary characters.
My favorite pre-generated characters have 3 aspects.
**Aspect 1:** a well-designed, cleanly-filled primary sheet, with a background that can potentially interlock with other player characters.
**Aspect 2:** allowance for slight customization of skills or equipment; provide leftover points for allocation from the primary skill point pool, or allowances for 2-3 non-repeating attribute adjustments.
**Aspect 3:** a "secret sheet"; a separate paper of character-only information handed out to each player only **after** their characters have been finalized. The "secret sheet" lists character-only knowledge: special skills, extra equipment, underground contacts, background, missions, and vendettas. A "secret sheet" is commonly used for pre-generated Call of Cthulhu and Paranoia characters, but is universally applicable. Make sure if you use secret sheets that every player receives one for their character, even if a given character might not have anything secret to list. | What everyone else has said: have people choose by consensus or roll dice for first pick, and suggest easier-to-play characters for newer players. I've always done the "whoever gets to the table first gets first choice in pre-gen characters" when I've had these (like conventions). It encourages people to be prompt. The other thing is to make sure you put the blurb on the character sheet. This helps speed up the picking — players don't get overwhelmed by the list of skills and attributes.
The other thing to emphasize is "this is just to get a flavor of the game". These characters aren't set in stone, it sounds like. |
45,154 | I am preparing for a game with a bunch of new players, with a mix of varying familiarity with the setting/system and RPGs in general. To get them to taste the setting ASAP I decided to play a one-off introductory game with pre-generated characters (pregen'd by me - the GM). For my 5 players I have prepared 8 (IMHO) interesting archetypes (like The Soldier, The Conspiracy Theorist, The Psychic etc.) from which they will be free to choose.
But I am perplexed by the choosing process. Surely I think I am going to describe the characters beforehand openly, as in *"This guy is **The Socialite** archetype, he is a fellow passionate about meeting people and maintaining relationships with various interesting people. He has a lot of contacts and retainers in the general entertainment industry and is very strong on social skills - good liar, observant in conversation, likeable and charismatic. However, he lacks genuine knowledge and "hard" professional skills, and is at best mediocre physically."*
Then, after going over each one, they would be able to choose, but what to do for the process to be fair and quick?
I have thought of the following tactics:
1. Simply hand the sheets to a random person for a round robin, but the ones at the end might feel disadvantaged.
2. Distribute them randomly or arbitrarily and let them trade but it feels like it's going to take a lot of time.
3. Make them create a list from most preferred to least preferred and then cross-compare them to come up with the best division possible. This again would be complicated and laborious.
4. Finally, to have a Need Before Greed approach. After each description if a player feels this is the character for them, he/she yells "need" or "greed" - the first player to "need" gets the char, but cannot choose from the rest. If none yell need, then greeders get chars on round-robin basis without removing themselves from calling later. However, this looks complicated and still a hasty "needer" or an unlucky "greeder" might be upset.
Is there a tactic of distributing chars fairly? I ask under an assumption that (as in point 3) a consensus can be reached and upon hearing the char list/description, the players would have an order of preference. | 2014/07/28 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/45154",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/14670/"
] | What everyone else has said: have people choose by consensus or roll dice for first pick, and suggest easier-to-play characters for newer players. I've always done the "whoever gets to the table first gets first choice in pre-gen characters" when I've had these (like conventions). It encourages people to be prompt. The other thing is to make sure you put the blurb on the character sheet. This helps speed up the picking — players don't get overwhelmed by the list of skills and attributes.
The other thing to emphasize is "this is just to get a flavor of the game". These characters aren't set in stone, it sounds like. | Game Theory for the win!
------------------------
If you have really found yourselves at an impasse, you might consider a technical solution to the problem. The New York Times published [a tool for dividing rent fairly among roommates](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/science/rent-division-calculator.html?nl=todaysheadlines&_r=0#). The essence of the tool is that you kick choices back and forth at different prices until a stable state is reached (i.e. when no one is willing to pay more to take a different option).
But I'm not going to charge my players to game!
-----------------------------------------------
That's fine! But you might want to order food during the session, or at least bring snacks. Figure out a budget for the session's foodstuffs and throw it into the calculator, along with the players and the characters. Spend a couple minutes, and you'll have figured out a mathematically fair distribution of the character sheets, and settled how to pay for food at the same time!
(Note that the calculator requires the same number of players and rooms, so you'll have to whittle down to that some other way.) |
45,154 | I am preparing for a game with a bunch of new players, with a mix of varying familiarity with the setting/system and RPGs in general. To get them to taste the setting ASAP I decided to play a one-off introductory game with pre-generated characters (pregen'd by me - the GM). For my 5 players I have prepared 8 (IMHO) interesting archetypes (like The Soldier, The Conspiracy Theorist, The Psychic etc.) from which they will be free to choose.
But I am perplexed by the choosing process. Surely I think I am going to describe the characters beforehand openly, as in *"This guy is **The Socialite** archetype, he is a fellow passionate about meeting people and maintaining relationships with various interesting people. He has a lot of contacts and retainers in the general entertainment industry and is very strong on social skills - good liar, observant in conversation, likeable and charismatic. However, he lacks genuine knowledge and "hard" professional skills, and is at best mediocre physically."*
Then, after going over each one, they would be able to choose, but what to do for the process to be fair and quick?
I have thought of the following tactics:
1. Simply hand the sheets to a random person for a round robin, but the ones at the end might feel disadvantaged.
2. Distribute them randomly or arbitrarily and let them trade but it feels like it's going to take a lot of time.
3. Make them create a list from most preferred to least preferred and then cross-compare them to come up with the best division possible. This again would be complicated and laborious.
4. Finally, to have a Need Before Greed approach. After each description if a player feels this is the character for them, he/she yells "need" or "greed" - the first player to "need" gets the char, but cannot choose from the rest. If none yell need, then greeders get chars on round-robin basis without removing themselves from calling later. However, this looks complicated and still a hasty "needer" or an unlucky "greeder" might be upset.
Is there a tactic of distributing chars fairly? I ask under an assumption that (as in point 3) a consensus can be reached and upon hearing the char list/description, the players would have an order of preference. | 2014/07/28 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/45154",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/14670/"
] | Let the players decide among themselves, unless you have a history of them fighting and not getting along? Also, let more than one person choose the same pre-gen. They want two melee fighters or two socialites? Great! Let them!
Also, I tend to split the pregens into two stacks - send one clockwise, send the other counterclockwise.
Generally speaking, I tend to build the pre-gens with two or three 'variants'. For instance, the melee fighter can either take the 'fight lots of weak enemies' build or the 'fight one big boss' build.
My players really have never had a problem with it, for one shots, if their character sheets happen to be identical, and the 'different builds' help them to not have quite the same character.
For instance, one game had exactly the above situation: One took the 'fight lots of weak enemies' and the other had the 'fight one big boss'. They determined that their characters were a standard team in the city guard, who worked well together since they complimented each other.
The other time, two players both took the martial artist with a focus on super-jumping, sticking to walls, and other movement abilities, along with a pair of pistols. They had a great deal of fun competing with each other to see who could get the most kills, or the most imaginative kill. | For a one-off, you want to make choosing a character fast and painless.
If it doesn't matter to the game which (or how many) archetypes are used, print out plenty of extras, and let each player pick the top sheet from the pile of whichever archetype he/she wants. Alternately, shuffle all the sheets together and have each player pick two, look at them, then discard the sheet they don't want.
If the game needs a certain number of each type, then let the players choose by calling out the archetypes on a first-come-first-served basis. You can choose who is "first" by any number of means: who shouts "me!" first, who showed up first, where the players sit, or even by rolling dice (gasp!).
Remember, in the end, it's really not going to matter much who gets what. New players won't know any better, and the regulars will know they'll get a new character at the end of the one-shot anyway. |
45,154 | I am preparing for a game with a bunch of new players, with a mix of varying familiarity with the setting/system and RPGs in general. To get them to taste the setting ASAP I decided to play a one-off introductory game with pre-generated characters (pregen'd by me - the GM). For my 5 players I have prepared 8 (IMHO) interesting archetypes (like The Soldier, The Conspiracy Theorist, The Psychic etc.) from which they will be free to choose.
But I am perplexed by the choosing process. Surely I think I am going to describe the characters beforehand openly, as in *"This guy is **The Socialite** archetype, he is a fellow passionate about meeting people and maintaining relationships with various interesting people. He has a lot of contacts and retainers in the general entertainment industry and is very strong on social skills - good liar, observant in conversation, likeable and charismatic. However, he lacks genuine knowledge and "hard" professional skills, and is at best mediocre physically."*
Then, after going over each one, they would be able to choose, but what to do for the process to be fair and quick?
I have thought of the following tactics:
1. Simply hand the sheets to a random person for a round robin, but the ones at the end might feel disadvantaged.
2. Distribute them randomly or arbitrarily and let them trade but it feels like it's going to take a lot of time.
3. Make them create a list from most preferred to least preferred and then cross-compare them to come up with the best division possible. This again would be complicated and laborious.
4. Finally, to have a Need Before Greed approach. After each description if a player feels this is the character for them, he/she yells "need" or "greed" - the first player to "need" gets the char, but cannot choose from the rest. If none yell need, then greeders get chars on round-robin basis without removing themselves from calling later. However, this looks complicated and still a hasty "needer" or an unlucky "greeder" might be upset.
Is there a tactic of distributing chars fairly? I ask under an assumption that (as in point 3) a consensus can be reached and upon hearing the char list/description, the players would have an order of preference. | 2014/07/28 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/45154",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/14670/"
] | **Choosing/Assigning Pregens**
Since you have a mix of players in familiarity and skill, the first thing is to identify which characters are the easiest to run with in terms of mechanics and fictional role - the good "starter" characters. This would be characters who are the least mechanically complex if the game has different rules for different character types (magic, is the usual culprit). Let the newer players know "These 2-3 characters would be really good to start with" and let them pick from that, first.
This avoids a situation I've seen a few times where the completely new player gets the most mechanically complex character, which either ends up in the character being used terribly and the player at a loss for what's going on, or the game grinding to a terribly slow space where another player or two has to constantly explain how to use the mechanics to the newbie.
Once that's done, then let the advanced players pick from what remains. If there's a conflict over who gets what character, just have them flip a coin or roll a die to see who gets it.
**Describing your Pregens**
When it comes to descriptions for the sake of picking, I like to keep the description really short and easy to parse for people looking at the character sheet:
>
> Kolemi Kinata
>
> *A tricky old man 2nd Level Human Rogue*
>
>
> Kolemi works best by using his mobility to get around, teaming up on
> bad guys to use Sneak Attack, and using tricky stunts to overcome
> enemies. He has a lot of skills outside of combat which can be
> useful.
>
>
>
It's a simple layman's term of what the character does, so players who aren't familiar with the system can at least get an idea of the strategy or how to play the character in the most general sense.
Of course, there's also a background paragraph going into more detail about the character's history and motivations, but having a "game friendly' bit early on makes it really easy to get new players into play. | I would go over each character, and then allow choice by "[white elephant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_elephant_gift_exchange)" style. The first person gets to pick first. The second can choose what has been picked, or one of the other characters. Keep going until everyone has a character.
You can also do it blind, where no one knows what sheet they're picking when they grab from the pile. In this case, the first person to go should be able to choose to keep what they have, or take the character of the last person to choose from the pile. |
45,154 | I am preparing for a game with a bunch of new players, with a mix of varying familiarity with the setting/system and RPGs in general. To get them to taste the setting ASAP I decided to play a one-off introductory game with pre-generated characters (pregen'd by me - the GM). For my 5 players I have prepared 8 (IMHO) interesting archetypes (like The Soldier, The Conspiracy Theorist, The Psychic etc.) from which they will be free to choose.
But I am perplexed by the choosing process. Surely I think I am going to describe the characters beforehand openly, as in *"This guy is **The Socialite** archetype, he is a fellow passionate about meeting people and maintaining relationships with various interesting people. He has a lot of contacts and retainers in the general entertainment industry and is very strong on social skills - good liar, observant in conversation, likeable and charismatic. However, he lacks genuine knowledge and "hard" professional skills, and is at best mediocre physically."*
Then, after going over each one, they would be able to choose, but what to do for the process to be fair and quick?
I have thought of the following tactics:
1. Simply hand the sheets to a random person for a round robin, but the ones at the end might feel disadvantaged.
2. Distribute them randomly or arbitrarily and let them trade but it feels like it's going to take a lot of time.
3. Make them create a list from most preferred to least preferred and then cross-compare them to come up with the best division possible. This again would be complicated and laborious.
4. Finally, to have a Need Before Greed approach. After each description if a player feels this is the character for them, he/she yells "need" or "greed" - the first player to "need" gets the char, but cannot choose from the rest. If none yell need, then greeders get chars on round-robin basis without removing themselves from calling later. However, this looks complicated and still a hasty "needer" or an unlucky "greeder" might be upset.
Is there a tactic of distributing chars fairly? I ask under an assumption that (as in point 3) a consensus can be reached and upon hearing the char list/description, the players would have an order of preference. | 2014/07/28 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/45154",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/14670/"
] | The way I've always seen this done is to simply let everyone look over all the characters, and then let them decide among themselves who plays what.
I guess this could lead to problems if there were two players who absolutely insisted on having the same character, but I've never witnessed that being an issue. More likely, one of them will just say "I really, really want to play the Big Barbarian" and then the other will go "okay you can have her, I liked the Wizened Wizard too so I can just play him instead". This usually happens pretty quickly, and the fact that you have more characters than players helps reduce insolvable conflicts.
In my experience, it's more likely that you'll be delayed by a player who can't decide between two characters that nobody else has laid a claim on. Often people are actually relieved when someone else picks a character they liked, since that spares them the effort of trying to decide between the Big Barbarian and the Wizened Wizard. (You definitely don't want to do the "list all characters from most preferred to least preferred" thing. Trying to decide on just *one* favorite is hard enough, trying to put them all in order is even worse.)
If two players really both insist on getting the same character, just have them flip a coin or play rock-paper-scissors or whatever to settle the question. | Game Theory for the win!
------------------------
If you have really found yourselves at an impasse, you might consider a technical solution to the problem. The New York Times published [a tool for dividing rent fairly among roommates](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/science/rent-division-calculator.html?nl=todaysheadlines&_r=0#). The essence of the tool is that you kick choices back and forth at different prices until a stable state is reached (i.e. when no one is willing to pay more to take a different option).
But I'm not going to charge my players to game!
-----------------------------------------------
That's fine! But you might want to order food during the session, or at least bring snacks. Figure out a budget for the session's foodstuffs and throw it into the calculator, along with the players and the characters. Spend a couple minutes, and you'll have figured out a mathematically fair distribution of the character sheets, and settled how to pay for food at the same time!
(Note that the calculator requires the same number of players and rooms, so you'll have to whittle down to that some other way.) |
3,940,774 | I'm unfamiliar with the new oauth system. I wanted to crawl the status updates of my friends, and their friends' (if permissions allow) with my specified account credentials using the python-twitter api.
With the new oauth authentication, does it means that I have to first register an application with twitter before I can use api? | 2010/10/15 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/3940774",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/357236/"
] | Yes, thats right. You need to register it and connect "grant access" it with your twitter id, if you want, for example, post something on your twitter wall. Also see "connections" in your twitter id. | For use api you must register your aplication or use GET methods to post into twi through web interface. |
6,148,168 | Does anyone have any code samples in C# that implements the Metro UI? This is similar to the interfaces used in Zune and MetroTwit.
Thanks | 2011/05/27 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/6148168",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/723217/"
] | You should check out the [Metro Toolkit on codeplex](http://metrotoolkit.codeplex.com/). It's a open source UI framework aimed at creating UI controls based on Metro. | There are Microsoft Silverlight themes available for the Metro UI.
Cosmopolitan is the one you want, you'll find it via Tim Heuer's blog:
[Tim Heuer's announcements](http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2010/05/03/new-silverlight-4-themes-available-for-download.aspx)
Here is a direct link to blogpost:
[Microsoft download page](http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=e9da0eb8-f31b-4490-85b8-92c2f807df9e&displaylang=en) |
6,148,168 | Does anyone have any code samples in C# that implements the Metro UI? This is similar to the interfaces used in Zune and MetroTwit.
Thanks | 2011/05/27 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/6148168",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/723217/"
] | You should check out the [Metro Toolkit on codeplex](http://metrotoolkit.codeplex.com/). It's a open source UI framework aimed at creating UI controls based on Metro. | There is a nice little jQueryUI Metro theme generator that can be found here: [jQuit Metro Theme Builder](http://jquit.com/builder/)
I have used it and it works well. |
6,148,168 | Does anyone have any code samples in C# that implements the Metro UI? This is similar to the interfaces used in Zune and MetroTwit.
Thanks | 2011/05/27 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/6148168",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/723217/"
] | You should check out the [Metro Toolkit on codeplex](http://metrotoolkit.codeplex.com/). It's a open source UI framework aimed at creating UI controls based on Metro. | This covers the bases of Metro design.
<http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/08/31/designing-for-metro-style-and-the-desktop.aspx> |
6,148,168 | Does anyone have any code samples in C# that implements the Metro UI? This is similar to the interfaces used in Zune and MetroTwit.
Thanks | 2011/05/27 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/6148168",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/723217/"
] | There are Microsoft Silverlight themes available for the Metro UI.
Cosmopolitan is the one you want, you'll find it via Tim Heuer's blog:
[Tim Heuer's announcements](http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2010/05/03/new-silverlight-4-themes-available-for-download.aspx)
Here is a direct link to blogpost:
[Microsoft download page](http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=e9da0eb8-f31b-4490-85b8-92c2f807df9e&displaylang=en) | There is a nice little jQueryUI Metro theme generator that can be found here: [jQuit Metro Theme Builder](http://jquit.com/builder/)
I have used it and it works well. |
6,148,168 | Does anyone have any code samples in C# that implements the Metro UI? This is similar to the interfaces used in Zune and MetroTwit.
Thanks | 2011/05/27 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/6148168",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/723217/"
] | There are Microsoft Silverlight themes available for the Metro UI.
Cosmopolitan is the one you want, you'll find it via Tim Heuer's blog:
[Tim Heuer's announcements](http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2010/05/03/new-silverlight-4-themes-available-for-download.aspx)
Here is a direct link to blogpost:
[Microsoft download page](http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=e9da0eb8-f31b-4490-85b8-92c2f807df9e&displaylang=en) | This covers the bases of Metro design.
<http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/08/31/designing-for-metro-style-and-the-desktop.aspx> |
174,327 | This question is just about Malay culture and food. I know Indian and Chinese Malaysian food culture and etiquette probably varies, and I have more experience with those, so trying to keep this question focused.
I know muslims do not eat with their left hand and I know Malays sometimes eat with their fingers. I'm not sure if that even includes using cutlery/silverware with your left hand. I'm not sure if they actually take offence at non-Muslims or foreigners using both hands in Malay eateries.
Some things I've read or seen on the internet make it seem like even cutlery in the left hand is out but I've seen Malays use fork in one hand and spoon in the other.
Two extremely popular Malay foods are ayam (chicken) and ikan bakar (grilled fish). Always served on the bone in my experience. Nothing I can find online covers eating these, which to me are less amenable to eating with cutlery.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DAjLu.jpg) Nasi lemak (coconut rice) seems to come with a fried chicken drumstick as the default option.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OdLxZ.jpg) A fancier nasi lemak, this time with ikan bakar (grilled fish).
I assume Malays are not into wasting food so would get the very most from their chicken and fish. I can imagine how people could become skilled at stripping the flesh from the bones on fish. I've always been terrible at it so I'm a very messy eater of fish. It's harder to imagine being able to get everything from chicken with just fork and spoon. Do Malays pick up their chicken in their right hand? I hate watching people eat but tried to observe and didn't notice anyone doing this.
In short:
* Do Malays eat fried/grilled chicken and fish only with cutlery or also with right hand fingers?
* Is it rude for outsiders to eat with both hands when Malay Muslims are around?
* Do Malays manage to get all the protein from fish and chicken using cutlery or is it OK to waste what's hard to get off?
* Does the rule about not eating with your left hand only mean directly or also using cutlery in your left hand? | 2022/06/16 | [
"https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/174327",
"https://travel.stackexchange.com",
"https://travel.stackexchange.com/users/140/"
] | You’re clearly a thoughtful person to ask these kinds of questions. Based on plenty of time in Malaysia — and even working with Malay clients — it tends to be a pretty easy going place. Foreigners often are given a great deal of leeway compared to local expectations, as well.
Traditionally, you should eat with your right hand. At a hotel wedding or other formal occasion, there probably will be cutlery, but you might conventionally also be provided with a small bowl to wash your hand between bites. You should serve older people first. Pass dishes with your right hand or both hands if they are heavy. If you’re invited to a formal dinner, ask your host if you are unsure of anything.
At a local restaurant that serves Malay dishes on waxed paper like those you have pictured, you are unlikely to offend anyone — or even attract much notice — regardless of your specific table manners. Just don’t show up with alcohol and you should be fine.
In practice, locals eat with their right hand; the fork and spoon can be used with both hands at the same time if needed. At a wedding, more decorum may be in order, but at a local restaurant, you need not worry about picking up a chicken drumstick or piece of fish and chewing on it.
Enjoy your time in Malaysia! | You’re not likely to offend anyone. Even Malaysians may ‘wield’ the food with 2 hands, meaning that even if they bring the food to their mouth with the right hand, they’ll often enough still hold a chicken wing with the left hand for example. Holding cutlery with the left hand is **definitely** not a problem.
(Just been to Malaysia for a few weeks, but been in Indonesia for 7 years and it’s close enough in these regards)
I suggest bringing alcohol disinfectant spray/gel too for those places with few hand washing options. |
174,327 | This question is just about Malay culture and food. I know Indian and Chinese Malaysian food culture and etiquette probably varies, and I have more experience with those, so trying to keep this question focused.
I know muslims do not eat with their left hand and I know Malays sometimes eat with their fingers. I'm not sure if that even includes using cutlery/silverware with your left hand. I'm not sure if they actually take offence at non-Muslims or foreigners using both hands in Malay eateries.
Some things I've read or seen on the internet make it seem like even cutlery in the left hand is out but I've seen Malays use fork in one hand and spoon in the other.
Two extremely popular Malay foods are ayam (chicken) and ikan bakar (grilled fish). Always served on the bone in my experience. Nothing I can find online covers eating these, which to me are less amenable to eating with cutlery.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DAjLu.jpg) Nasi lemak (coconut rice) seems to come with a fried chicken drumstick as the default option.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OdLxZ.jpg) A fancier nasi lemak, this time with ikan bakar (grilled fish).
I assume Malays are not into wasting food so would get the very most from their chicken and fish. I can imagine how people could become skilled at stripping the flesh from the bones on fish. I've always been terrible at it so I'm a very messy eater of fish. It's harder to imagine being able to get everything from chicken with just fork and spoon. Do Malays pick up their chicken in their right hand? I hate watching people eat but tried to observe and didn't notice anyone doing this.
In short:
* Do Malays eat fried/grilled chicken and fish only with cutlery or also with right hand fingers?
* Is it rude for outsiders to eat with both hands when Malay Muslims are around?
* Do Malays manage to get all the protein from fish and chicken using cutlery or is it OK to waste what's hard to get off?
* Does the rule about not eating with your left hand only mean directly or also using cutlery in your left hand? | 2022/06/16 | [
"https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/174327",
"https://travel.stackexchange.com",
"https://travel.stackexchange.com/users/140/"
] | You’re clearly a thoughtful person to ask these kinds of questions. Based on plenty of time in Malaysia — and even working with Malay clients — it tends to be a pretty easy going place. Foreigners often are given a great deal of leeway compared to local expectations, as well.
Traditionally, you should eat with your right hand. At a hotel wedding or other formal occasion, there probably will be cutlery, but you might conventionally also be provided with a small bowl to wash your hand between bites. You should serve older people first. Pass dishes with your right hand or both hands if they are heavy. If you’re invited to a formal dinner, ask your host if you are unsure of anything.
At a local restaurant that serves Malay dishes on waxed paper like those you have pictured, you are unlikely to offend anyone — or even attract much notice — regardless of your specific table manners. Just don’t show up with alcohol and you should be fine.
In practice, locals eat with their right hand; the fork and spoon can be used with both hands at the same time if needed. At a wedding, more decorum may be in order, but at a local restaurant, you need not worry about picking up a chicken drumstick or piece of fish and chewing on it.
Enjoy your time in Malaysia! | It's easy to find Malays eating food on Youtube, try a search such as 'makan nasi kandar'
If you watch this mukbang video from a Malaysian with 16 million (!) subscribers
<https://youtu.be/nxMGVgZV8Ws?t=410>
you can see his right hand gets rather dirty, but he also uses his left hand whenever it is **necessary**. No doubt he is Muslim and practised from early childhood; if you are eating yourself, nobody will care if you use your left hand entirely, the only time IME to avoid using the left hand as a foreigner who has no prior exposure to such concerns is when paying for food, passing things to others, etc. - make an effort to pay using your right hand, and otherwise pass things using your right hand. Obviously this is within the bounds of practicality - when I have passed 40kg sacks of cement, you use both hands, but for small items you try to use the right hand. |
174,327 | This question is just about Malay culture and food. I know Indian and Chinese Malaysian food culture and etiquette probably varies, and I have more experience with those, so trying to keep this question focused.
I know muslims do not eat with their left hand and I know Malays sometimes eat with their fingers. I'm not sure if that even includes using cutlery/silverware with your left hand. I'm not sure if they actually take offence at non-Muslims or foreigners using both hands in Malay eateries.
Some things I've read or seen on the internet make it seem like even cutlery in the left hand is out but I've seen Malays use fork in one hand and spoon in the other.
Two extremely popular Malay foods are ayam (chicken) and ikan bakar (grilled fish). Always served on the bone in my experience. Nothing I can find online covers eating these, which to me are less amenable to eating with cutlery.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DAjLu.jpg) Nasi lemak (coconut rice) seems to come with a fried chicken drumstick as the default option.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OdLxZ.jpg) A fancier nasi lemak, this time with ikan bakar (grilled fish).
I assume Malays are not into wasting food so would get the very most from their chicken and fish. I can imagine how people could become skilled at stripping the flesh from the bones on fish. I've always been terrible at it so I'm a very messy eater of fish. It's harder to imagine being able to get everything from chicken with just fork and spoon. Do Malays pick up their chicken in their right hand? I hate watching people eat but tried to observe and didn't notice anyone doing this.
In short:
* Do Malays eat fried/grilled chicken and fish only with cutlery or also with right hand fingers?
* Is it rude for outsiders to eat with both hands when Malay Muslims are around?
* Do Malays manage to get all the protein from fish and chicken using cutlery or is it OK to waste what's hard to get off?
* Does the rule about not eating with your left hand only mean directly or also using cutlery in your left hand? | 2022/06/16 | [
"https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/174327",
"https://travel.stackexchange.com",
"https://travel.stackexchange.com/users/140/"
] | You’re clearly a thoughtful person to ask these kinds of questions. Based on plenty of time in Malaysia — and even working with Malay clients — it tends to be a pretty easy going place. Foreigners often are given a great deal of leeway compared to local expectations, as well.
Traditionally, you should eat with your right hand. At a hotel wedding or other formal occasion, there probably will be cutlery, but you might conventionally also be provided with a small bowl to wash your hand between bites. You should serve older people first. Pass dishes with your right hand or both hands if they are heavy. If you’re invited to a formal dinner, ask your host if you are unsure of anything.
At a local restaurant that serves Malay dishes on waxed paper like those you have pictured, you are unlikely to offend anyone — or even attract much notice — regardless of your specific table manners. Just don’t show up with alcohol and you should be fine.
In practice, locals eat with their right hand; the fork and spoon can be used with both hands at the same time if needed. At a wedding, more decorum may be in order, but at a local restaurant, you need not worry about picking up a chicken drumstick or piece of fish and chewing on it.
Enjoy your time in Malaysia! | I have been to Malaysia many times and ate food from local restaurants. I can assure you that even Malay people will be eating just like you said. You can pick up fish or meat to eat with your hands, no problems at all.
However, there may not be option to wash hands in smaller establishments, and they won't give you tissues for free. So, keep a small pack of tissues to wipe your hands and mouth after eating.
Also, Malay people, especially in KL are very friendly and accommodating to practices from outsiders. So, no need to worry. |
174,327 | This question is just about Malay culture and food. I know Indian and Chinese Malaysian food culture and etiquette probably varies, and I have more experience with those, so trying to keep this question focused.
I know muslims do not eat with their left hand and I know Malays sometimes eat with their fingers. I'm not sure if that even includes using cutlery/silverware with your left hand. I'm not sure if they actually take offence at non-Muslims or foreigners using both hands in Malay eateries.
Some things I've read or seen on the internet make it seem like even cutlery in the left hand is out but I've seen Malays use fork in one hand and spoon in the other.
Two extremely popular Malay foods are ayam (chicken) and ikan bakar (grilled fish). Always served on the bone in my experience. Nothing I can find online covers eating these, which to me are less amenable to eating with cutlery.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DAjLu.jpg) Nasi lemak (coconut rice) seems to come with a fried chicken drumstick as the default option.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OdLxZ.jpg) A fancier nasi lemak, this time with ikan bakar (grilled fish).
I assume Malays are not into wasting food so would get the very most from their chicken and fish. I can imagine how people could become skilled at stripping the flesh from the bones on fish. I've always been terrible at it so I'm a very messy eater of fish. It's harder to imagine being able to get everything from chicken with just fork and spoon. Do Malays pick up their chicken in their right hand? I hate watching people eat but tried to observe and didn't notice anyone doing this.
In short:
* Do Malays eat fried/grilled chicken and fish only with cutlery or also with right hand fingers?
* Is it rude for outsiders to eat with both hands when Malay Muslims are around?
* Do Malays manage to get all the protein from fish and chicken using cutlery or is it OK to waste what's hard to get off?
* Does the rule about not eating with your left hand only mean directly or also using cutlery in your left hand? | 2022/06/16 | [
"https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/174327",
"https://travel.stackexchange.com",
"https://travel.stackexchange.com/users/140/"
] | You’re not likely to offend anyone. Even Malaysians may ‘wield’ the food with 2 hands, meaning that even if they bring the food to their mouth with the right hand, they’ll often enough still hold a chicken wing with the left hand for example. Holding cutlery with the left hand is **definitely** not a problem.
(Just been to Malaysia for a few weeks, but been in Indonesia for 7 years and it’s close enough in these regards)
I suggest bringing alcohol disinfectant spray/gel too for those places with few hand washing options. | I have been to Malaysia many times and ate food from local restaurants. I can assure you that even Malay people will be eating just like you said. You can pick up fish or meat to eat with your hands, no problems at all.
However, there may not be option to wash hands in smaller establishments, and they won't give you tissues for free. So, keep a small pack of tissues to wipe your hands and mouth after eating.
Also, Malay people, especially in KL are very friendly and accommodating to practices from outsiders. So, no need to worry. |
174,327 | This question is just about Malay culture and food. I know Indian and Chinese Malaysian food culture and etiquette probably varies, and I have more experience with those, so trying to keep this question focused.
I know muslims do not eat with their left hand and I know Malays sometimes eat with their fingers. I'm not sure if that even includes using cutlery/silverware with your left hand. I'm not sure if they actually take offence at non-Muslims or foreigners using both hands in Malay eateries.
Some things I've read or seen on the internet make it seem like even cutlery in the left hand is out but I've seen Malays use fork in one hand and spoon in the other.
Two extremely popular Malay foods are ayam (chicken) and ikan bakar (grilled fish). Always served on the bone in my experience. Nothing I can find online covers eating these, which to me are less amenable to eating with cutlery.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DAjLu.jpg) Nasi lemak (coconut rice) seems to come with a fried chicken drumstick as the default option.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OdLxZ.jpg) A fancier nasi lemak, this time with ikan bakar (grilled fish).
I assume Malays are not into wasting food so would get the very most from their chicken and fish. I can imagine how people could become skilled at stripping the flesh from the bones on fish. I've always been terrible at it so I'm a very messy eater of fish. It's harder to imagine being able to get everything from chicken with just fork and spoon. Do Malays pick up their chicken in their right hand? I hate watching people eat but tried to observe and didn't notice anyone doing this.
In short:
* Do Malays eat fried/grilled chicken and fish only with cutlery or also with right hand fingers?
* Is it rude for outsiders to eat with both hands when Malay Muslims are around?
* Do Malays manage to get all the protein from fish and chicken using cutlery or is it OK to waste what's hard to get off?
* Does the rule about not eating with your left hand only mean directly or also using cutlery in your left hand? | 2022/06/16 | [
"https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/174327",
"https://travel.stackexchange.com",
"https://travel.stackexchange.com/users/140/"
] | It's easy to find Malays eating food on Youtube, try a search such as 'makan nasi kandar'
If you watch this mukbang video from a Malaysian with 16 million (!) subscribers
<https://youtu.be/nxMGVgZV8Ws?t=410>
you can see his right hand gets rather dirty, but he also uses his left hand whenever it is **necessary**. No doubt he is Muslim and practised from early childhood; if you are eating yourself, nobody will care if you use your left hand entirely, the only time IME to avoid using the left hand as a foreigner who has no prior exposure to such concerns is when paying for food, passing things to others, etc. - make an effort to pay using your right hand, and otherwise pass things using your right hand. Obviously this is within the bounds of practicality - when I have passed 40kg sacks of cement, you use both hands, but for small items you try to use the right hand. | I have been to Malaysia many times and ate food from local restaurants. I can assure you that even Malay people will be eating just like you said. You can pick up fish or meat to eat with your hands, no problems at all.
However, there may not be option to wash hands in smaller establishments, and they won't give you tissues for free. So, keep a small pack of tissues to wipe your hands and mouth after eating.
Also, Malay people, especially in KL are very friendly and accommodating to practices from outsiders. So, no need to worry. |
3,012,978 | A hypothetical scenario:
I've got a project whose source compliance level is specified to 1.5.
Now I compile this project with two different JDKs: At first with JDK 6 Update 7 and then with JDK 6 Update 20.
Do these two different JDKs produce different Java byte code, although they only differ in their Update version? | 2010/06/10 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/3012978",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/-1/"
] | The generated code usually only differs in case of compiler bug fixes.
However the JLS does **not** specify a 1:1 mapping from source code to the generated byte code, so you should not rely on the exact same byte code to be generated. | There is nothing that would stop the different versions from generating different bytecodes, as long as it's compliant to the *behavior* specified in the JLS. The JLS leaves many implementation details to vary from one implementation to another. |
3,012,978 | A hypothetical scenario:
I've got a project whose source compliance level is specified to 1.5.
Now I compile this project with two different JDKs: At first with JDK 6 Update 7 and then with JDK 6 Update 20.
Do these two different JDKs produce different Java byte code, although they only differ in their Update version? | 2010/06/10 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/3012978",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/-1/"
] | There is nothing that would stop the different versions from generating different bytecodes, as long as it's compliant to the *behavior* specified in the JLS. The JLS leaves many implementation details to vary from one implementation to another. | Let's answer it from the other side: there is no guarantee that any two versions of the jdk produce the identical byte code. So you can expect differences in general. |
3,012,978 | A hypothetical scenario:
I've got a project whose source compliance level is specified to 1.5.
Now I compile this project with two different JDKs: At first with JDK 6 Update 7 and then with JDK 6 Update 20.
Do these two different JDKs produce different Java byte code, although they only differ in their Update version? | 2010/06/10 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/3012978",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/-1/"
] | There is nothing that would stop the different versions from generating different bytecodes, as long as it's compliant to the *behavior* specified in the JLS. The JLS leaves many implementation details to vary from one implementation to another. | The bytecode could slightly differ, but this is nothing to worry about since it will be still compatible.
What really will be executed depends on JIT. |
3,012,978 | A hypothetical scenario:
I've got a project whose source compliance level is specified to 1.5.
Now I compile this project with two different JDKs: At first with JDK 6 Update 7 and then with JDK 6 Update 20.
Do these two different JDKs produce different Java byte code, although they only differ in their Update version? | 2010/06/10 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/3012978",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/-1/"
] | Let's answer it from the other side: there is no guarantee that any two versions of the jdk produce the identical byte code. So you can expect differences in general. | If you compile with different JDK versions I would advice to use the *target* option to javac.
Otherwise you may not be able to run the jar with an older JDK.
You may also want to use the *source* option to javac, in order to make sure the developer do not use classes/methods added in a more recent JDK. |
3,012,978 | A hypothetical scenario:
I've got a project whose source compliance level is specified to 1.5.
Now I compile this project with two different JDKs: At first with JDK 6 Update 7 and then with JDK 6 Update 20.
Do these two different JDKs produce different Java byte code, although they only differ in their Update version? | 2010/06/10 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/3012978",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/-1/"
] | The generated code usually only differs in case of compiler bug fixes.
However the JLS does **not** specify a 1:1 mapping from source code to the generated byte code, so you should not rely on the exact same byte code to be generated. | Why on Earth would someone go to the trouble of issuing an Update of a development kit if it didn't lead to changed byte code in at least some cases? I strongly doubt anyone would do it just for documentation updates. |
3,012,978 | A hypothetical scenario:
I've got a project whose source compliance level is specified to 1.5.
Now I compile this project with two different JDKs: At first with JDK 6 Update 7 and then with JDK 6 Update 20.
Do these two different JDKs produce different Java byte code, although they only differ in their Update version? | 2010/06/10 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/3012978",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/-1/"
] | The bytecode could slightly differ, but this is nothing to worry about since it will be still compatible.
What really will be executed depends on JIT. | If you compile with different JDK versions I would advice to use the *target* option to javac.
Otherwise you may not be able to run the jar with an older JDK.
You may also want to use the *source* option to javac, in order to make sure the developer do not use classes/methods added in a more recent JDK. |
3,012,978 | A hypothetical scenario:
I've got a project whose source compliance level is specified to 1.5.
Now I compile this project with two different JDKs: At first with JDK 6 Update 7 and then with JDK 6 Update 20.
Do these two different JDKs produce different Java byte code, although they only differ in their Update version? | 2010/06/10 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/3012978",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/-1/"
] | There is nothing that would stop the different versions from generating different bytecodes, as long as it's compliant to the *behavior* specified in the JLS. The JLS leaves many implementation details to vary from one implementation to another. | The compiler of for example JDK 6 Update 7 might output slightly different bytecode than the compiler of JDK 6 Update 20, but since it's both Java 6, the class files will be fully compatible - you will be able to run code compiled with Update 20 on Update 7 without any problems.
Between major Java versions (for example Java 5 vs. Java 6) there might be changes so that code compiled on the newer version will not run on the older version. For example, for Java 7 there is most likely going to be a new instruction, [invokedynamic](http://blog.headius.com/2008/09/first-taste-of-invokedynamic.html). Class files that contain that instruction will not be runnable on older Java versions.
Such large changes are however never done between update versions. |
3,012,978 | A hypothetical scenario:
I've got a project whose source compliance level is specified to 1.5.
Now I compile this project with two different JDKs: At first with JDK 6 Update 7 and then with JDK 6 Update 20.
Do these two different JDKs produce different Java byte code, although they only differ in their Update version? | 2010/06/10 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/3012978",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/-1/"
] | There is nothing that would stop the different versions from generating different bytecodes, as long as it's compliant to the *behavior* specified in the JLS. The JLS leaves many implementation details to vary from one implementation to another. | Why on Earth would someone go to the trouble of issuing an Update of a development kit if it didn't lead to changed byte code in at least some cases? I strongly doubt anyone would do it just for documentation updates. |
497,832 | Does anyone have any book recommendations on EM and RF which integrates a simulator?
I find EM/RF to be interesting fields which I want to get some overview of but given that it's very applied in nature I'm finding doing hand calculations on paper to be incredibly boring and uninteresting.
I think I would be more motivated if there was a book which focused on integrating the use of simulation software since all interesting problems are essentially intractable by hand.
Any recommendations on learning material with a very applied/simulation based flavor? | 2020/05/05 | [
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/497832",
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com",
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com/users/135288/"
] | Lots of bits of learning will occur with just a few equations on back of an envelope.
Such as: how to bias a transistor to have the emitter appear as NEGATIVE RESISTANCE at some frequency (range of frequencies), so you can hang a resonator on that emitter and have a quality oscillator.
You should understand that, not from the simulator direction, but as a gut feeling about the causal phenomena.
Now ---- why is RF usually rather narrowband? because historically we used inductors to resonate with the parasitic capacitances (and intentional lumped caps), thus making the parasitics of less of an energy-stealing path.
Speaking of energy stealing, ESD structures are bad about that. What to do with them?
If half your RF energy flows into the ESD paths and is dissipated (which is the purpose of ESD structures, right?), then your system just got a 3dB hit in SNR. What to do?
Regarding EMI ---- the magnetic coupling from a wire to a rectangular loop (the easy toplogy) is
Vinduce = [ MUo \* MUr \* LoopArea/(2 \* PI \* Distance)] \* dI/dT
If you have a PCB 4" by 4" in size, multiple layers of signal/vdd/gnd, located 40mm from a choppered Pulse Width Modulated 5,000 volt 2,000 amp, with the current switching in 1 microsecond, how clean is the Ground?
Probably worth simulating that one, as well as the back\_of\_envelope.
Truth is, the Ground Upsets are bigger than logic noise margins, and nothing is predictable, unless you shield.
regarding equipment: old spectrum analyzers and network analyzers will be less than one months pay, or visit your local HAM meetings and ask to bring your prototype over to their HAM SHACK, for 2 hours. | RF wasn't intractable by hand when I went to school. Amplifiers, matching networks and antennas were all done by hand.
Smithcharts and algebra are pretty much all you need for 90% of it.
After that put your proposed circuit into LTspice or other favorite simulator.
After you have something built, measure it with a network analyzer to see if the S parameters match your hand and sim calcs.
[RF Circuit Design](https://www.google.com/books/edition/RF_Circuit_Design/MGriBQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=RF%20Circuit%20Design&printsec=frontcover) by Chris Bowick is a great book to learn from.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/K7nJu.png) |
497,832 | Does anyone have any book recommendations on EM and RF which integrates a simulator?
I find EM/RF to be interesting fields which I want to get some overview of but given that it's very applied in nature I'm finding doing hand calculations on paper to be incredibly boring and uninteresting.
I think I would be more motivated if there was a book which focused on integrating the use of simulation software since all interesting problems are essentially intractable by hand.
Any recommendations on learning material with a very applied/simulation based flavor? | 2020/05/05 | [
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/497832",
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com",
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com/users/135288/"
] | RF is a skill with many levels of training and experience. After all the fundamentals of basic B Sc/ MSc EE training. It takes a few years of R&D application experience with the best simulation and test instruments all of which are above personal budgets unless you live in luxury.
Your expectations must be defined by prerequisites of theory and experience. The costs of such simulators will be equal or more than a year's salary and so will each test equipment. The training is not free either but these resources are available from Ansys, Keysight etc ...<https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=EM+and+RF+which+integrates+a+simulator%3F> | RF wasn't intractable by hand when I went to school. Amplifiers, matching networks and antennas were all done by hand.
Smithcharts and algebra are pretty much all you need for 90% of it.
After that put your proposed circuit into LTspice or other favorite simulator.
After you have something built, measure it with a network analyzer to see if the S parameters match your hand and sim calcs.
[RF Circuit Design](https://www.google.com/books/edition/RF_Circuit_Design/MGriBQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=RF%20Circuit%20Design&printsec=frontcover) by Chris Bowick is a great book to learn from.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/K7nJu.png) |
1,533,323 | Recently I heard Kirk Pepperdine speak about changing garbage collectors for better performance -- but what exactly does that mean and what makes one garbage collector better or different than the other? | 2009/10/07 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1533323",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/117783/"
] | Some collectors are better for throughput, others are better for response time. The difference is usually in how the collector chooses to pause the application. Some such as CMS use mutiple passes to triage the garbage before stopping the application. This triage can happen in a background thread while the application is running, and thus not interfere with your application as much as one that "stops the world" to do a GC.
**Edit**
Check out [this document by sun](http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/Programming/turbo/). Also, about half way down there is a nice image showing the default mark-compact collector against the CMS collector. A picture is worth a thousand words, but the article is a good read too ;) Also worth reading is all the documents on the new G1 collector. | The basic problem is that the way that Java program sees memory (you call "new MyObject" and there it is, and when you are done with it you just forget about it) does not map very well to the underlying operating system and hardware.
The job of the garbage collector is to identify those memory areas which are not in use by an object, and "melt" them together to give a LARGE memory area from where new objects can be allocated. This is very vaguely worded in the Java specification HOW this is done, most likely in order to provide maximum flexibility for the designers of this important task.
Several approaches exist, with advantages and disadvantages. What you usually want is a garbage collector that can keep up in the background with the rate of objects being abandoned, as the only way for it to catch up is to stop the program while catching up. That gives really bad user experiences.
A typical trend for Java objects is that either they live for a very short time (current block or method) or a very long time. Modern garbage collectors deal with this by having multiple pools so that young objects are treated differnetly than old objects. |
1,533,323 | Recently I heard Kirk Pepperdine speak about changing garbage collectors for better performance -- but what exactly does that mean and what makes one garbage collector better or different than the other? | 2009/10/07 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1533323",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/117783/"
] | You ask two questions:
**What does it mean to change garbage collectors in Java for better performance?**
This is a huge topic, and like some of the other responders, I urge you to do some reading. I recommend [Java SE 6 HotSpot[tm] Virtual Machine Garbage Collection Tuning](http://java.sun.com/javase/technologies/hotspot/gc/gc_tuning_6.html) from Sun. The information below mostly comes from there. The "turbo-charging" java article recommended in another answer is older.
In brief, one of the many options we have when running the JVM is to select a garbage collector, of which there are presently three:
* The serial collector (selected with the -XX:+UseSerialGC option) - this uses a single thread to do all collection work, and everything waits while it happens.
* The parallel collector (selected with the -XX:+UseParallelGC option) - this does minor collections (of the young generation) in parallel, but everything waits during the major collections.
* The concurrent collector (selected with the -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC option) - this allows most collection operations to happen while the application is running.
**What makes one garbage collector better than another?**
Your application does. Each of the garbage collectors has a "sweet spot" - a range of application profiles for which it is the superior collector.
First, know that the VM is pretty good at selecting a collector for you, and as with most optimizations, you should not consider second-guessing it until you've identified that your application is not performing well, and that garbage collection is the likely culprit.
In that case, you have to ask these questions: 1) is your app running on a single-processor machine, or multi? 2) Are you more concerned with "minimizing pause time", or with "maximizing throughput"? That is, if you had to choose between the application never pausing but getting less work done overall, versus getting more work done overall, but pausing from time to time, which would you pick?
Roughly speaking, as a starting point:
* On a **Multi**-processor machine, mostly concerned with **minimizing pause time**, you'd tend to use the **Concurrent** collector (consider enabling incremental mode)
* On a **Multi**-processor machine, mostly concerned with **maximizing throughput**, you'd tend to use the **Parallel** collector (consider enabling parallel compaction)
* On a **Single**-processor machine, with **small datasets** (up to roughly 100Mb), you'd tend to use the **Serial** collector
* On a **Single**-processor machine, mostly concerned with **maximizing throughput**, you'd tend to use the **Serial** collector
* On a **Single**-processor machine, mostly concerned with **minimizing pause time**, you'd tend to use the **Concurrent** collector (consider enabling incremental mode)
Again, though, the VM does a pretty good job of selecting a collector for you, and you're better off not overriding that unless and until you discover that it's not working well enough for your application. | Some collectors are better for throughput, others are better for response time. The difference is usually in how the collector chooses to pause the application. Some such as CMS use mutiple passes to triage the garbage before stopping the application. This triage can happen in a background thread while the application is running, and thus not interfere with your application as much as one that "stops the world" to do a GC.
**Edit**
Check out [this document by sun](http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/Programming/turbo/). Also, about half way down there is a nice image showing the default mark-compact collector against the CMS collector. A picture is worth a thousand words, but the article is a good read too ;) Also worth reading is all the documents on the new G1 collector. |
1,533,323 | Recently I heard Kirk Pepperdine speak about changing garbage collectors for better performance -- but what exactly does that mean and what makes one garbage collector better or different than the other? | 2009/10/07 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1533323",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/117783/"
] | You ask two questions:
**What does it mean to change garbage collectors in Java for better performance?**
This is a huge topic, and like some of the other responders, I urge you to do some reading. I recommend [Java SE 6 HotSpot[tm] Virtual Machine Garbage Collection Tuning](http://java.sun.com/javase/technologies/hotspot/gc/gc_tuning_6.html) from Sun. The information below mostly comes from there. The "turbo-charging" java article recommended in another answer is older.
In brief, one of the many options we have when running the JVM is to select a garbage collector, of which there are presently three:
* The serial collector (selected with the -XX:+UseSerialGC option) - this uses a single thread to do all collection work, and everything waits while it happens.
* The parallel collector (selected with the -XX:+UseParallelGC option) - this does minor collections (of the young generation) in parallel, but everything waits during the major collections.
* The concurrent collector (selected with the -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC option) - this allows most collection operations to happen while the application is running.
**What makes one garbage collector better than another?**
Your application does. Each of the garbage collectors has a "sweet spot" - a range of application profiles for which it is the superior collector.
First, know that the VM is pretty good at selecting a collector for you, and as with most optimizations, you should not consider second-guessing it until you've identified that your application is not performing well, and that garbage collection is the likely culprit.
In that case, you have to ask these questions: 1) is your app running on a single-processor machine, or multi? 2) Are you more concerned with "minimizing pause time", or with "maximizing throughput"? That is, if you had to choose between the application never pausing but getting less work done overall, versus getting more work done overall, but pausing from time to time, which would you pick?
Roughly speaking, as a starting point:
* On a **Multi**-processor machine, mostly concerned with **minimizing pause time**, you'd tend to use the **Concurrent** collector (consider enabling incremental mode)
* On a **Multi**-processor machine, mostly concerned with **maximizing throughput**, you'd tend to use the **Parallel** collector (consider enabling parallel compaction)
* On a **Single**-processor machine, with **small datasets** (up to roughly 100Mb), you'd tend to use the **Serial** collector
* On a **Single**-processor machine, mostly concerned with **maximizing throughput**, you'd tend to use the **Serial** collector
* On a **Single**-processor machine, mostly concerned with **minimizing pause time**, you'd tend to use the **Concurrent** collector (consider enabling incremental mode)
Again, though, the VM does a pretty good job of selecting a collector for you, and you're better off not overriding that unless and until you discover that it's not working well enough for your application. | The basic problem is that the way that Java program sees memory (you call "new MyObject" and there it is, and when you are done with it you just forget about it) does not map very well to the underlying operating system and hardware.
The job of the garbage collector is to identify those memory areas which are not in use by an object, and "melt" them together to give a LARGE memory area from where new objects can be allocated. This is very vaguely worded in the Java specification HOW this is done, most likely in order to provide maximum flexibility for the designers of this important task.
Several approaches exist, with advantages and disadvantages. What you usually want is a garbage collector that can keep up in the background with the rate of objects being abandoned, as the only way for it to catch up is to stop the program while catching up. That gives really bad user experiences.
A typical trend for Java objects is that either they live for a very short time (current block or method) or a very long time. Modern garbage collectors deal with this by having multiple pools so that young objects are treated differnetly than old objects. |
15,379 | I am the director and only employee of a nonprofit with 2500 members. The president of our Board has set up a modest website hosted on GoDaddy, and now expects me to implement a membership database in CiviCRM, including online membership registrations with multiple levels, mass emailings, events including discounts for purchasing tickets for an entire series, etc. Our membership information is currently in a 20-year-old product called Alpha5 that is no longer supported, and the need to adopt a new database is becoming more urgent as the only computer that holds our current system is getting flaky. We have no money to hire consultants, and in fact I think the main benefit my Board president sees is that the CiviCRM product is free. I am a skilled computer user but I am not a developer. I am a half-time employee whose work day is more than filled with other tasks. My sense is that CiviCRM is more than I can manage, and that even if I got it started, it would be very difficult when I retire in a couple years to find a staff person at half-time low pay who would be able to continue using and supporting it as needs change.
I would appreciate a reality check from you people who are working with CiviCRM. Would you recommend this product for a busy administrative person who is an expert Word and Excel user, with some Access experience, who has never built a website or used Drupal or Wordpress, written SQL, or programmed anything but Visual Basic? | 2016/10/13 | [
"https://civicrm.stackexchange.com/questions/15379",
"https://civicrm.stackexchange.com",
"https://civicrm.stackexchange.com/users/3865/"
] | Good question.
In broad terms I'd agree with the answer from William, with some reservations. To answer your question: "Can CiviCRM be implemented by a nondeveloper with limited time?" I would say yes, and to do so will take some learning and a good deal of trial and error, so if time is limited, don't expect to be able to get up and running in a few hours.
I'd say that your skill set is really helpful, but you would need to plan to build on that.
You have a number of challenges there: not least getting the data you need out of your old system and into a new one.
You current hosting with GoDaddy is unlikely to be friendly to CiviCRM, so you need to plan to move to a better specified hosting platform that will give you fewer (and ideally no) issues.
And of course you'll need to get CiviCRM suitably configured and customised to meet the specific needs of your organisation.
Realistically, unless you are willing and able to put in a good chunk of time above and beyond what you have available, to learn how to do all this and then do it for real, you are not going to get a result.
Your board president needs to get real - a project like this in any context demands substantial dedicated time and resources, and it sounds from what you've written that they have not considered this.
My advice would be to get some expertise in to do the following tasks:
1. Assess whether CiviCRM is the right product given your organisation's needs.
2. Assuming that it is, to sort out suitable hosting and get Civi installed.
3. Work with you to configure and customise Civi so that it works for your organisation.
4. Ensure that you, and ideally at least one other person within the organisation, know how to use CiviCRM, so that you can cascade that learning to others.
These are one-off tasks that it makes sense to outsource unless you've got a pile of time on your hands (which you don't). If your organisation doesn't have the resources to fund this work, then it needs to find those resources, otherwise I would say you have a recipe for disaster.
Hope this helps. | Thanks for your interest in CiviCRM!
CiviCRM is a fantastic system for managing membership. However, it requires a reasonable degree of technical ability to install and maintain. It is much more complex than setting up a simple website for an organisation.
I would suggest that, in your case, you would be better off looking for a partner to set up and maintain the CiviCRM system for you. They will deal with all the technicalities for you and set up the system to meet your needs. Most importantly they will ensure that the data that you store on the system is kept secure.
To find a local partner: [look at the CiviCRM partners page](https://civicrm.org/partners-contributors)
Alternatively you could look for a hosted version of CiviCRM and set this up for yourself. This doesn't require technical understanding but will require you to spend some time learning how CiviCRM works.
For more information: [read the manual](https://docs.civicrm.org/user/en/stable/)
While CiviCRM is free in the sense that there is no license fee to pay, you will still need to budget for implementation, hosting and maintenance - both in terms of time and money. It is important to be realistic about this commitment before choosing any CRM system (not just CiviCRM). If you don't currently have the funds to pay for this I would suggest that you look for funding to cover these costs. |
15,379 | I am the director and only employee of a nonprofit with 2500 members. The president of our Board has set up a modest website hosted on GoDaddy, and now expects me to implement a membership database in CiviCRM, including online membership registrations with multiple levels, mass emailings, events including discounts for purchasing tickets for an entire series, etc. Our membership information is currently in a 20-year-old product called Alpha5 that is no longer supported, and the need to adopt a new database is becoming more urgent as the only computer that holds our current system is getting flaky. We have no money to hire consultants, and in fact I think the main benefit my Board president sees is that the CiviCRM product is free. I am a skilled computer user but I am not a developer. I am a half-time employee whose work day is more than filled with other tasks. My sense is that CiviCRM is more than I can manage, and that even if I got it started, it would be very difficult when I retire in a couple years to find a staff person at half-time low pay who would be able to continue using and supporting it as needs change.
I would appreciate a reality check from you people who are working with CiviCRM. Would you recommend this product for a busy administrative person who is an expert Word and Excel user, with some Access experience, who has never built a website or used Drupal or Wordpress, written SQL, or programmed anything but Visual Basic? | 2016/10/13 | [
"https://civicrm.stackexchange.com/questions/15379",
"https://civicrm.stackexchange.com",
"https://civicrm.stackexchange.com/users/3865/"
] | Good question.
In broad terms I'd agree with the answer from William, with some reservations. To answer your question: "Can CiviCRM be implemented by a nondeveloper with limited time?" I would say yes, and to do so will take some learning and a good deal of trial and error, so if time is limited, don't expect to be able to get up and running in a few hours.
I'd say that your skill set is really helpful, but you would need to plan to build on that.
You have a number of challenges there: not least getting the data you need out of your old system and into a new one.
You current hosting with GoDaddy is unlikely to be friendly to CiviCRM, so you need to plan to move to a better specified hosting platform that will give you fewer (and ideally no) issues.
And of course you'll need to get CiviCRM suitably configured and customised to meet the specific needs of your organisation.
Realistically, unless you are willing and able to put in a good chunk of time above and beyond what you have available, to learn how to do all this and then do it for real, you are not going to get a result.
Your board president needs to get real - a project like this in any context demands substantial dedicated time and resources, and it sounds from what you've written that they have not considered this.
My advice would be to get some expertise in to do the following tasks:
1. Assess whether CiviCRM is the right product given your organisation's needs.
2. Assuming that it is, to sort out suitable hosting and get Civi installed.
3. Work with you to configure and customise Civi so that it works for your organisation.
4. Ensure that you, and ideally at least one other person within the organisation, know how to use CiviCRM, so that you can cascade that learning to others.
These are one-off tasks that it makes sense to outsource unless you've got a pile of time on your hands (which you don't). If your organisation doesn't have the resources to fund this work, then it needs to find those resources, otherwise I would say you have a recipe for disaster.
Hope this helps. | Focussing on the two question marks first ;-)
**Can CiviCRM be implemented by a non-developer with limited time?**
Very much depends on 'what' you need the system to do, and what your abilities are in general. We have had clients who thanks to having an IT adept person having basically picked up the system and run with it, but there have been others who have struggled with seemingly simple concepts.
I think it may help if you could spell out what you need the system to do. Is it effectively a global 'address book' for the organisation, or will you be managing complex arrangements and work flows, such as case managing housing needs? How many people will be using the back end of the system and what will they need to do - eg will they need a simplified interface (such as Drupal Views and Webforms can provide) or will they be okay seeing 'everything' that CiviCRM has to offer (which can be mitigated by the permission settings of course)
**Would you recommend this product for a busy administrative person who is an expert Word and Excel user, with some Access experience, who has never built a website or used Drupal or Wordpress, written SQL, or programmed anything but Visual Basic?**
Mostly yes though it depends if you are also trying to take on 'installation' which I am not clear about. Perhaps that is something el presidente is going to undertake since they have 'set up' the website. Otherwise agree with other answers, get a hosted solution so that aspect is managed by experts.
Clearly you need something to manage your data. So the time it will take you to wrap your head around CiviCRM is time that would otherwise be spent spinning up some other system and workflows, even if that was purely Excel. And, in theory at least, CiviCRM will be easier for those who follow in your wake, than a plethora of excel/google sheets, and there will be a community to support them.
An expert Excel user combined who also has some knowledge of Access is beyond what many adminstrators who use CiviCRM have, and civi has been built for users without those skills sets by and large - certainly for what you get 'out of the box'.
Finally, there is a great community, and lack of budget is hopefully not a show-stopper. If you spell out what your projects 'mission' is you may find either a sympathetic 'expert' who will give you a hand via mentoring, or an organisation with similar usage who may also be able and willing to share their knowledge, and perhaps give you a demo of how they use their system. |
15,379 | I am the director and only employee of a nonprofit with 2500 members. The president of our Board has set up a modest website hosted on GoDaddy, and now expects me to implement a membership database in CiviCRM, including online membership registrations with multiple levels, mass emailings, events including discounts for purchasing tickets for an entire series, etc. Our membership information is currently in a 20-year-old product called Alpha5 that is no longer supported, and the need to adopt a new database is becoming more urgent as the only computer that holds our current system is getting flaky. We have no money to hire consultants, and in fact I think the main benefit my Board president sees is that the CiviCRM product is free. I am a skilled computer user but I am not a developer. I am a half-time employee whose work day is more than filled with other tasks. My sense is that CiviCRM is more than I can manage, and that even if I got it started, it would be very difficult when I retire in a couple years to find a staff person at half-time low pay who would be able to continue using and supporting it as needs change.
I would appreciate a reality check from you people who are working with CiviCRM. Would you recommend this product for a busy administrative person who is an expert Word and Excel user, with some Access experience, who has never built a website or used Drupal or Wordpress, written SQL, or programmed anything but Visual Basic? | 2016/10/13 | [
"https://civicrm.stackexchange.com/questions/15379",
"https://civicrm.stackexchange.com",
"https://civicrm.stackexchange.com/users/3865/"
] | Good question.
In broad terms I'd agree with the answer from William, with some reservations. To answer your question: "Can CiviCRM be implemented by a nondeveloper with limited time?" I would say yes, and to do so will take some learning and a good deal of trial and error, so if time is limited, don't expect to be able to get up and running in a few hours.
I'd say that your skill set is really helpful, but you would need to plan to build on that.
You have a number of challenges there: not least getting the data you need out of your old system and into a new one.
You current hosting with GoDaddy is unlikely to be friendly to CiviCRM, so you need to plan to move to a better specified hosting platform that will give you fewer (and ideally no) issues.
And of course you'll need to get CiviCRM suitably configured and customised to meet the specific needs of your organisation.
Realistically, unless you are willing and able to put in a good chunk of time above and beyond what you have available, to learn how to do all this and then do it for real, you are not going to get a result.
Your board president needs to get real - a project like this in any context demands substantial dedicated time and resources, and it sounds from what you've written that they have not considered this.
My advice would be to get some expertise in to do the following tasks:
1. Assess whether CiviCRM is the right product given your organisation's needs.
2. Assuming that it is, to sort out suitable hosting and get Civi installed.
3. Work with you to configure and customise Civi so that it works for your organisation.
4. Ensure that you, and ideally at least one other person within the organisation, know how to use CiviCRM, so that you can cascade that learning to others.
These are one-off tasks that it makes sense to outsource unless you've got a pile of time on your hands (which you don't). If your organisation doesn't have the resources to fund this work, then it needs to find those resources, otherwise I would say you have a recipe for disaster.
Hope this helps. | This is an interesting question without a simple answer.
A number of providers provide "Civi as a Service" for a subscription fee. That may be your best option, and will take care of the setup aspects. Configuring CiviCRM to do what you need is fairly easy, including the features you've mentioned.
With all software systems there is overhead to learn how to use it. My suggestion is bite the bullet and dive in.
If you're a non-profit, could you consider recruiting a volunteer to manage your CRM for you? |
219,606 | [KernelDevViewpoint](http://kernelnewbies.org/KernelDevViewpoint) (an apparently serious source) makes kernel development look like an accessible art. According to them:
>
> Contrary to popular belief, kernel developers rarely need to know math
> at the calculus level. You need to be good at basic arithmetic and
> you must know Boolean algebra to work on device drivers.
>
>
> One skill that many kernel developers learn on the job is the ability
> to build state machines in your head of what the code is doing. (...)
>
>
>
and
>
> Technical skills for kernel developers include experience with the C
> programming language, and knowledge of Git.
>
>
>
Is that the basis of kernel development? Basic arithmetic, Boolean algebra, C and Git?
Obviously, I don't expect to read "C in ten days" (or whatever similar book) and start contributing to the Linux kernel development, however, I wonder how difficult will be to obtain the skills to do that? | 2013/11/26 | [
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/219606",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/109856/"
] | >
> Is that the basis of kernel development? Basic arithmetic, Boolean
> algebra, C and Git?
>
>
>
I have never contributed to a kernel project, but unless you are working on certain parts like threading locks, security, etc. you don't need advanced math. You defiantly need to know how to work with others, communicate effectively, and use a version control system with a public repository, e.g. Git. You will have to learn the ethos of the group and expect to receive constructive criticism. Unit testing is big on the projects I do and it is the unit test and documentation that take most of the time.
On many projects don't expect to have the ability to commit updates to the project without passing through one or more layers of reviews. You must earn trust by proving your skills. On large projects don't expect to master all of the code, you will most likely become good at one section that you work on and over time learn other parts. You will see lots of different styles and skill levels unless they have a good set of standards to follow.
As you can see there are lots of checks and balances in good projects and it is more than just coding. If you think you can make a contribution make a change and submit the update. Expect it to get rejected at first then heed the comments, make the changes and soon you may become part of the team. It will take a lot of your time. | Even though the source is respectable. I'd say it's a gross generalisation to say you only need Basic arithmetic, Boolean algebra, C and Git. When you see the code, almost everything has been reduced to plain and simple C code. But the code implements something that's far more complex than, say basic arithmetic. Some examples:
1. floating point emulation. Linux started on i386 which didn't have fpu. Someone wrote an emulation for fpu which includes geometry.
2. Algorithm analysis. At some point, someone proposed an AVL tree memory allocator. Why would anyone do that? Because to balance the tree it takes O(1) on average and O(log n) on maximum. Takes more than basic math to figure it out.
3. Not on linux. See <http://www.ertos.nicta.com.au/research/l4.verified/> to see how formal methods is used in developing a kernel. |
37,416 | Due to impermanance of everything, Are there anything to be happy or sad about ? Even about **dhamma** ?
If something seems like to be happy, there are some reasons to not to be happy.
1. It is impermanant for sure. but also,
2. That **happiness make sadness in the future (future includes next lives)** (I need to be sure about this sententce, please mention about this in your answer)
Are enlightened people happy ? Or neither happy nor sad ? | 2020/03/16 | [
"https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/questions/37416",
"https://buddhism.stackexchange.com",
"https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/users/17744/"
] | I think Buddhism recommends you focus on what's virtuous and moral instead of on what's feels pleasurable.
For example, lying, killing, stealing -- are all to be avoided -- and that's important.
Conversely, generosity, kindness, keeping your promises -- that's important too.
There is a word -- [sukha](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukha) -- which might be translated "happiness". It's used in contexts like the [Sukhavagga](https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/dhp/dhp.15.budd.html).
I suspect it's a happiness conditioned or caused by an absence not by a presence -- for example not happiness because you have something ("a chocolate bar") but happiness because of not having something ("anger", "greed", "remorse"). | yes you can care about 4 ''karmas'', with the last one being the intention to get enlightened, ie not getting any birth
>
> And of what sort, brahmin is the deed that is neither dark nor bright,
> with a result that is neither dark nor bright, which, itself a deed,
> conduces to the waning of deeds?
>
>
> In this case, brahmin the intention to abandon this dark deed with its
> dark result, the intention to abandon this bright deed with its bright
> result, the intention to abandon this deed both dark and bright with a
> its result both dark and bright, - this intention is called "the deed
> that is neither dark nor bright, with a result that is neither dark
> nor bright, which, itself a deed, conduces to the waning of deeds."
>
>
> These four deeds I have myself comprehended, realized and made known."
>
>
>
<https://obo.genaud.net/dhamma-vinaya/pts/an/04_fours/an04.232.wood.pts.htm#p1> |
37,416 | Due to impermanance of everything, Are there anything to be happy or sad about ? Even about **dhamma** ?
If something seems like to be happy, there are some reasons to not to be happy.
1. It is impermanant for sure. but also,
2. That **happiness make sadness in the future (future includes next lives)** (I need to be sure about this sententce, please mention about this in your answer)
Are enlightened people happy ? Or neither happy nor sad ? | 2020/03/16 | [
"https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/questions/37416",
"https://buddhism.stackexchange.com",
"https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/users/17744/"
] | **Are there anything to care about in this universe?**
Yes, you should care about other sentient beings and practice putting their well-being foremost in your mind. If you have no experience with this, then try [practicing the four immeasurables.](https://thubtenchodron.org/meditation/03-prayers-practices/01-recitations/four-immeasurables/)
**Due to impermanance of everything, Are there anything to be happy or sad about?**
Rejoice in other's happiness! Rejoice when other's wishes come true! Rejoice in other's sorrowless bliss! Rejoice in other's progress on the path of dhamma as this is the hope of the world!
**That happiness make sadness in the future (future includes next lives)**
You've got it completely and totally wrong friend. How can happiness make sadness in this life or in the next? The problem is sentient beings don't know what happiness is or how to get it. We chase after things that *do not* lead to happiness thinking they will and we shun things that *do* lead to happiness thinking they won't. We are like a dog tied to a pole and wound round-and-round... we pull harder and harder to get free, but only succeed in binding ourselves tighter to the very thing that makes us miserable. We are quite silly and ignorant.
**Are enlightened people happy?**
Of course! They are immeasurably happy. Indescribably happy. Happy to such an extent that it is impossible to conceive. How do we know this? Because in order to become enlightened they must work for countless lifetimes at accumulating and working at the causes of happiness! They must perfect all virtuous conduct! They must perfect all virtuous minds! Take them to their zenith! Imagine a mind as wide and deep as the ocean filled with the most altruistic and peaceful thoughts. With absolutely zero ill-will and focused on other's well-being to the limit. Such a mind... we cannot even begin to describe the happiness it entails!!
**Or neither happy nor sad?**
You need to work on discovering what happiness is and the causes and conditions of happiness. Fortunately, that is exactly what the dhamma teaches. Your confusion is caused by misunderstanding. Rest assured you have it blinkered, but keep working at it and working at it and working at it... don't stop! and you'll slowly unwind that leash holding you to the pole.
Dhamma is the Ultimate Medicine. Buddha is the Ultimate Doctor. The Sangha are the Ultimate Nurses.
The disease is dhukka and unhappiness. The cure is happiness... immeasurably so! | yes you can care about 4 ''karmas'', with the last one being the intention to get enlightened, ie not getting any birth
>
> And of what sort, brahmin is the deed that is neither dark nor bright,
> with a result that is neither dark nor bright, which, itself a deed,
> conduces to the waning of deeds?
>
>
> In this case, brahmin the intention to abandon this dark deed with its
> dark result, the intention to abandon this bright deed with its bright
> result, the intention to abandon this deed both dark and bright with a
> its result both dark and bright, - this intention is called "the deed
> that is neither dark nor bright, with a result that is neither dark
> nor bright, which, itself a deed, conduces to the waning of deeds."
>
>
> These four deeds I have myself comprehended, realized and made known."
>
>
>
<https://obo.genaud.net/dhamma-vinaya/pts/an/04_fours/an04.232.wood.pts.htm#p1> |
37,416 | Due to impermanance of everything, Are there anything to be happy or sad about ? Even about **dhamma** ?
If something seems like to be happy, there are some reasons to not to be happy.
1. It is impermanant for sure. but also,
2. That **happiness make sadness in the future (future includes next lives)** (I need to be sure about this sententce, please mention about this in your answer)
Are enlightened people happy ? Or neither happy nor sad ? | 2020/03/16 | [
"https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/questions/37416",
"https://buddhism.stackexchange.com",
"https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/users/17744/"
] | >
> **OP:** Due to impermanance of everything, Are there anything to be happy or sad about ? Even about dhamma ?
>
>
> Are enlightened people happy ? Or neither happy nor sad ?
>
>
>
From [AN 9.34](https://suttacentral.net/an9.34/en/sujato) (translated by Bhikkhu Sujato):
>
> Ven: Sariputta: “Reverends, extinguishment (Nibbana) is bliss!
>
> *“sukhamidaṃ, āvuso, nibbānaṃ.*
>
>
> Ven. Udayi: “But Reverend Sāriputta, what’s blissful about it, since
> nothing is felt?”
>
> *“kiṃ panettha, āvuso sāriputta, sukhaṃ yadettha
> natthi vedayitan”ti?*
>
>
> Ven. Sariputta: “The fact that nothing is felt is precisely what’s
> blissful about it.
>
> *“Etadeva khvettha, āvuso, sukhaṃ yadettha natthi
> vedayitaṃ.*
>
>
>
Sukha or happiness for an unenlightened person is experienced when encountering pleasant feelings (from the six senses, including thoughts and the intellect) or when encountering the cessation of painful feelings (from the six senses). But for an arahat, sukha or bliss (in this context) is experienced when encountering neutral feelings, no feelings and Nibbana.
Please see [this answer](https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/a/31463/471) for commentaries by Nyanaponika Thera. The supporting suttas are [MN 44](https://suttacentral.net/mn44/en/sujato), [SN 36.5](https://suttacentral.net/sn36.5/en/sujato) and [AN 9.34](https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an09/an09.034.than.html). | yes you can care about 4 ''karmas'', with the last one being the intention to get enlightened, ie not getting any birth
>
> And of what sort, brahmin is the deed that is neither dark nor bright,
> with a result that is neither dark nor bright, which, itself a deed,
> conduces to the waning of deeds?
>
>
> In this case, brahmin the intention to abandon this dark deed with its
> dark result, the intention to abandon this bright deed with its bright
> result, the intention to abandon this deed both dark and bright with a
> its result both dark and bright, - this intention is called "the deed
> that is neither dark nor bright, with a result that is neither dark
> nor bright, which, itself a deed, conduces to the waning of deeds."
>
>
> These four deeds I have myself comprehended, realized and made known."
>
>
>
<https://obo.genaud.net/dhamma-vinaya/pts/an/04_fours/an04.232.wood.pts.htm#p1> |
37,416 | Due to impermanance of everything, Are there anything to be happy or sad about ? Even about **dhamma** ?
If something seems like to be happy, there are some reasons to not to be happy.
1. It is impermanant for sure. but also,
2. That **happiness make sadness in the future (future includes next lives)** (I need to be sure about this sententce, please mention about this in your answer)
Are enlightened people happy ? Or neither happy nor sad ? | 2020/03/16 | [
"https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/questions/37416",
"https://buddhism.stackexchange.com",
"https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/users/17744/"
] | I think Buddhism recommends you focus on what's virtuous and moral instead of on what's feels pleasurable.
For example, lying, killing, stealing -- are all to be avoided -- and that's important.
Conversely, generosity, kindness, keeping your promises -- that's important too.
There is a word -- [sukha](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukha) -- which might be translated "happiness". It's used in contexts like the [Sukhavagga](https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/dhp/dhp.15.budd.html).
I suspect it's a happiness conditioned or caused by an absence not by a presence -- for example not happiness because you have something ("a chocolate bar") but happiness because of not having something ("anger", "greed", "remorse"). | A few comments on happiness...
“By stilling thought one kills
Both good and evil deeds:
Self-stilled, abiding in the Self,
One wins unalterable happiness.”
Maitri Upanishad
“People often suppose that the realization of nirvana means the annihilation of all forms of existence. This is not true. What really transpires is that the illusions arising from our ignorance are extinguished, and we know true happiness, independent of any causes or conditions. And we continue to exist.”
The Dalai Lama - *Reflections from the Journey of Life*
“…[A]ccording to Aristotle, ‘it is necessary that there should be an eternal unchanging substance’ (Metaphysics 12, 6). This will impart change to other things, but will not itself change. Moreover, it will be immaterial, since it is beyond any sort of change or corruption. … It cannot itself change, because all change would be for the worse. And it contemplates the most perfect and best of things, and so exists in pure bliss or beatitude. What is the most perfect of things? Well, it is, so it must be thinking of itself. So God enjoys contemplating the divine being itself, knowing that it is the best thing there is. ‘Its thinking,’ says Aristotle ‘is a thinking on thinking.’ That is, it is the object of its own knowledge, and in such knowledge lies supreme happiness.”
Keith Ward - *God: A Guide for the Perplexed*
“It is possible to live in a state of stable happiness only when we are completely free of ignorance. Awakening puts an end to unconscious rebirth, and then the conditions and causes of painful effects disappear. This is the realization of a state of happiness which no longer depends on our external circumstances, nor on our emotions.”
The Dalai Lama - *Reflections from the Journey of Life* |
37,416 | Due to impermanance of everything, Are there anything to be happy or sad about ? Even about **dhamma** ?
If something seems like to be happy, there are some reasons to not to be happy.
1. It is impermanant for sure. but also,
2. That **happiness make sadness in the future (future includes next lives)** (I need to be sure about this sententce, please mention about this in your answer)
Are enlightened people happy ? Or neither happy nor sad ? | 2020/03/16 | [
"https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/questions/37416",
"https://buddhism.stackexchange.com",
"https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/users/17744/"
] | I think Buddhism recommends you focus on what's virtuous and moral instead of on what's feels pleasurable.
For example, lying, killing, stealing -- are all to be avoided -- and that's important.
Conversely, generosity, kindness, keeping your promises -- that's important too.
There is a word -- [sukha](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukha) -- which might be translated "happiness". It's used in contexts like the [Sukhavagga](https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/dhp/dhp.15.budd.html).
I suspect it's a happiness conditioned or caused by an absence not by a presence -- for example not happiness because you have something ("a chocolate bar") but happiness because of not having something ("anger", "greed", "remorse"). | You can enjoy looking at a lovely flower, even though you know it will die at some point. The colour and scent are not diminished by the fact it only lasts a few weeks/months. |
37,416 | Due to impermanance of everything, Are there anything to be happy or sad about ? Even about **dhamma** ?
If something seems like to be happy, there are some reasons to not to be happy.
1. It is impermanant for sure. but also,
2. That **happiness make sadness in the future (future includes next lives)** (I need to be sure about this sententce, please mention about this in your answer)
Are enlightened people happy ? Or neither happy nor sad ? | 2020/03/16 | [
"https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/questions/37416",
"https://buddhism.stackexchange.com",
"https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/users/17744/"
] | **Are there anything to care about in this universe?**
Yes, you should care about other sentient beings and practice putting their well-being foremost in your mind. If you have no experience with this, then try [practicing the four immeasurables.](https://thubtenchodron.org/meditation/03-prayers-practices/01-recitations/four-immeasurables/)
**Due to impermanance of everything, Are there anything to be happy or sad about?**
Rejoice in other's happiness! Rejoice when other's wishes come true! Rejoice in other's sorrowless bliss! Rejoice in other's progress on the path of dhamma as this is the hope of the world!
**That happiness make sadness in the future (future includes next lives)**
You've got it completely and totally wrong friend. How can happiness make sadness in this life or in the next? The problem is sentient beings don't know what happiness is or how to get it. We chase after things that *do not* lead to happiness thinking they will and we shun things that *do* lead to happiness thinking they won't. We are like a dog tied to a pole and wound round-and-round... we pull harder and harder to get free, but only succeed in binding ourselves tighter to the very thing that makes us miserable. We are quite silly and ignorant.
**Are enlightened people happy?**
Of course! They are immeasurably happy. Indescribably happy. Happy to such an extent that it is impossible to conceive. How do we know this? Because in order to become enlightened they must work for countless lifetimes at accumulating and working at the causes of happiness! They must perfect all virtuous conduct! They must perfect all virtuous minds! Take them to their zenith! Imagine a mind as wide and deep as the ocean filled with the most altruistic and peaceful thoughts. With absolutely zero ill-will and focused on other's well-being to the limit. Such a mind... we cannot even begin to describe the happiness it entails!!
**Or neither happy nor sad?**
You need to work on discovering what happiness is and the causes and conditions of happiness. Fortunately, that is exactly what the dhamma teaches. Your confusion is caused by misunderstanding. Rest assured you have it blinkered, but keep working at it and working at it and working at it... don't stop! and you'll slowly unwind that leash holding you to the pole.
Dhamma is the Ultimate Medicine. Buddha is the Ultimate Doctor. The Sangha are the Ultimate Nurses.
The disease is dhukka and unhappiness. The cure is happiness... immeasurably so! | A few comments on happiness...
“By stilling thought one kills
Both good and evil deeds:
Self-stilled, abiding in the Self,
One wins unalterable happiness.”
Maitri Upanishad
“People often suppose that the realization of nirvana means the annihilation of all forms of existence. This is not true. What really transpires is that the illusions arising from our ignorance are extinguished, and we know true happiness, independent of any causes or conditions. And we continue to exist.”
The Dalai Lama - *Reflections from the Journey of Life*
“…[A]ccording to Aristotle, ‘it is necessary that there should be an eternal unchanging substance’ (Metaphysics 12, 6). This will impart change to other things, but will not itself change. Moreover, it will be immaterial, since it is beyond any sort of change or corruption. … It cannot itself change, because all change would be for the worse. And it contemplates the most perfect and best of things, and so exists in pure bliss or beatitude. What is the most perfect of things? Well, it is, so it must be thinking of itself. So God enjoys contemplating the divine being itself, knowing that it is the best thing there is. ‘Its thinking,’ says Aristotle ‘is a thinking on thinking.’ That is, it is the object of its own knowledge, and in such knowledge lies supreme happiness.”
Keith Ward - *God: A Guide for the Perplexed*
“It is possible to live in a state of stable happiness only when we are completely free of ignorance. Awakening puts an end to unconscious rebirth, and then the conditions and causes of painful effects disappear. This is the realization of a state of happiness which no longer depends on our external circumstances, nor on our emotions.”
The Dalai Lama - *Reflections from the Journey of Life* |
37,416 | Due to impermanance of everything, Are there anything to be happy or sad about ? Even about **dhamma** ?
If something seems like to be happy, there are some reasons to not to be happy.
1. It is impermanant for sure. but also,
2. That **happiness make sadness in the future (future includes next lives)** (I need to be sure about this sententce, please mention about this in your answer)
Are enlightened people happy ? Or neither happy nor sad ? | 2020/03/16 | [
"https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/questions/37416",
"https://buddhism.stackexchange.com",
"https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/users/17744/"
] | **Are there anything to care about in this universe?**
Yes, you should care about other sentient beings and practice putting their well-being foremost in your mind. If you have no experience with this, then try [practicing the four immeasurables.](https://thubtenchodron.org/meditation/03-prayers-practices/01-recitations/four-immeasurables/)
**Due to impermanance of everything, Are there anything to be happy or sad about?**
Rejoice in other's happiness! Rejoice when other's wishes come true! Rejoice in other's sorrowless bliss! Rejoice in other's progress on the path of dhamma as this is the hope of the world!
**That happiness make sadness in the future (future includes next lives)**
You've got it completely and totally wrong friend. How can happiness make sadness in this life or in the next? The problem is sentient beings don't know what happiness is or how to get it. We chase after things that *do not* lead to happiness thinking they will and we shun things that *do* lead to happiness thinking they won't. We are like a dog tied to a pole and wound round-and-round... we pull harder and harder to get free, but only succeed in binding ourselves tighter to the very thing that makes us miserable. We are quite silly and ignorant.
**Are enlightened people happy?**
Of course! They are immeasurably happy. Indescribably happy. Happy to such an extent that it is impossible to conceive. How do we know this? Because in order to become enlightened they must work for countless lifetimes at accumulating and working at the causes of happiness! They must perfect all virtuous conduct! They must perfect all virtuous minds! Take them to their zenith! Imagine a mind as wide and deep as the ocean filled with the most altruistic and peaceful thoughts. With absolutely zero ill-will and focused on other's well-being to the limit. Such a mind... we cannot even begin to describe the happiness it entails!!
**Or neither happy nor sad?**
You need to work on discovering what happiness is and the causes and conditions of happiness. Fortunately, that is exactly what the dhamma teaches. Your confusion is caused by misunderstanding. Rest assured you have it blinkered, but keep working at it and working at it and working at it... don't stop! and you'll slowly unwind that leash holding you to the pole.
Dhamma is the Ultimate Medicine. Buddha is the Ultimate Doctor. The Sangha are the Ultimate Nurses.
The disease is dhukka and unhappiness. The cure is happiness... immeasurably so! | You can enjoy looking at a lovely flower, even though you know it will die at some point. The colour and scent are not diminished by the fact it only lasts a few weeks/months. |
37,416 | Due to impermanance of everything, Are there anything to be happy or sad about ? Even about **dhamma** ?
If something seems like to be happy, there are some reasons to not to be happy.
1. It is impermanant for sure. but also,
2. That **happiness make sadness in the future (future includes next lives)** (I need to be sure about this sententce, please mention about this in your answer)
Are enlightened people happy ? Or neither happy nor sad ? | 2020/03/16 | [
"https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/questions/37416",
"https://buddhism.stackexchange.com",
"https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/users/17744/"
] | >
> **OP:** Due to impermanance of everything, Are there anything to be happy or sad about ? Even about dhamma ?
>
>
> Are enlightened people happy ? Or neither happy nor sad ?
>
>
>
From [AN 9.34](https://suttacentral.net/an9.34/en/sujato) (translated by Bhikkhu Sujato):
>
> Ven: Sariputta: “Reverends, extinguishment (Nibbana) is bliss!
>
> *“sukhamidaṃ, āvuso, nibbānaṃ.*
>
>
> Ven. Udayi: “But Reverend Sāriputta, what’s blissful about it, since
> nothing is felt?”
>
> *“kiṃ panettha, āvuso sāriputta, sukhaṃ yadettha
> natthi vedayitan”ti?*
>
>
> Ven. Sariputta: “The fact that nothing is felt is precisely what’s
> blissful about it.
>
> *“Etadeva khvettha, āvuso, sukhaṃ yadettha natthi
> vedayitaṃ.*
>
>
>
Sukha or happiness for an unenlightened person is experienced when encountering pleasant feelings (from the six senses, including thoughts and the intellect) or when encountering the cessation of painful feelings (from the six senses). But for an arahat, sukha or bliss (in this context) is experienced when encountering neutral feelings, no feelings and Nibbana.
Please see [this answer](https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/a/31463/471) for commentaries by Nyanaponika Thera. The supporting suttas are [MN 44](https://suttacentral.net/mn44/en/sujato), [SN 36.5](https://suttacentral.net/sn36.5/en/sujato) and [AN 9.34](https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an09/an09.034.than.html). | A few comments on happiness...
“By stilling thought one kills
Both good and evil deeds:
Self-stilled, abiding in the Self,
One wins unalterable happiness.”
Maitri Upanishad
“People often suppose that the realization of nirvana means the annihilation of all forms of existence. This is not true. What really transpires is that the illusions arising from our ignorance are extinguished, and we know true happiness, independent of any causes or conditions. And we continue to exist.”
The Dalai Lama - *Reflections from the Journey of Life*
“…[A]ccording to Aristotle, ‘it is necessary that there should be an eternal unchanging substance’ (Metaphysics 12, 6). This will impart change to other things, but will not itself change. Moreover, it will be immaterial, since it is beyond any sort of change or corruption. … It cannot itself change, because all change would be for the worse. And it contemplates the most perfect and best of things, and so exists in pure bliss or beatitude. What is the most perfect of things? Well, it is, so it must be thinking of itself. So God enjoys contemplating the divine being itself, knowing that it is the best thing there is. ‘Its thinking,’ says Aristotle ‘is a thinking on thinking.’ That is, it is the object of its own knowledge, and in such knowledge lies supreme happiness.”
Keith Ward - *God: A Guide for the Perplexed*
“It is possible to live in a state of stable happiness only when we are completely free of ignorance. Awakening puts an end to unconscious rebirth, and then the conditions and causes of painful effects disappear. This is the realization of a state of happiness which no longer depends on our external circumstances, nor on our emotions.”
The Dalai Lama - *Reflections from the Journey of Life* |
37,416 | Due to impermanance of everything, Are there anything to be happy or sad about ? Even about **dhamma** ?
If something seems like to be happy, there are some reasons to not to be happy.
1. It is impermanant for sure. but also,
2. That **happiness make sadness in the future (future includes next lives)** (I need to be sure about this sententce, please mention about this in your answer)
Are enlightened people happy ? Or neither happy nor sad ? | 2020/03/16 | [
"https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/questions/37416",
"https://buddhism.stackexchange.com",
"https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/users/17744/"
] | >
> **OP:** Due to impermanance of everything, Are there anything to be happy or sad about ? Even about dhamma ?
>
>
> Are enlightened people happy ? Or neither happy nor sad ?
>
>
>
From [AN 9.34](https://suttacentral.net/an9.34/en/sujato) (translated by Bhikkhu Sujato):
>
> Ven: Sariputta: “Reverends, extinguishment (Nibbana) is bliss!
>
> *“sukhamidaṃ, āvuso, nibbānaṃ.*
>
>
> Ven. Udayi: “But Reverend Sāriputta, what’s blissful about it, since
> nothing is felt?”
>
> *“kiṃ panettha, āvuso sāriputta, sukhaṃ yadettha
> natthi vedayitan”ti?*
>
>
> Ven. Sariputta: “The fact that nothing is felt is precisely what’s
> blissful about it.
>
> *“Etadeva khvettha, āvuso, sukhaṃ yadettha natthi
> vedayitaṃ.*
>
>
>
Sukha or happiness for an unenlightened person is experienced when encountering pleasant feelings (from the six senses, including thoughts and the intellect) or when encountering the cessation of painful feelings (from the six senses). But for an arahat, sukha or bliss (in this context) is experienced when encountering neutral feelings, no feelings and Nibbana.
Please see [this answer](https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/a/31463/471) for commentaries by Nyanaponika Thera. The supporting suttas are [MN 44](https://suttacentral.net/mn44/en/sujato), [SN 36.5](https://suttacentral.net/sn36.5/en/sujato) and [AN 9.34](https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an09/an09.034.than.html). | You can enjoy looking at a lovely flower, even though you know it will die at some point. The colour and scent are not diminished by the fact it only lasts a few weeks/months. |
376 | I find the format of the [moderator elections page](https://gis.stackexchange.com/election) confusing. I had to read it several times before it was clear to me that Mapperz' post was actually a response and not the author of the elections announcement:
Everywhere else in Stack Exchange the opening question/post is followed by a signature block and some other elements before the responses are listed. Please don't break the usual pattern without good reason (and I don't see one here. Maybe I'm missing something).
*((update: edited pics to make it apparent they are screenshots))* | 2011/04/18 | [
"https://gis.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/376",
"https://gis.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://gis.meta.stackexchange.com/users/108/"
] | We have added a header to the top counting the number of Candidates across all election tabs. We appreciate feedback and will continue to make changes that help with usability. | Well, we've had 12+ elections and this is the first I've ever heard of this. There is a tab block and a HR there, so to me it's pretty clear..
I guess we could add
12 Candidates
=============
where we have
3 Answers
=========
above, if that helps... |
47,528 | I know that the demo for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning has a 45 minute time limit, but how does it enforce that limit?
Is it 45 minutes of play time from starting up the game or creating a character, then thats it?
Or is it 45 minutes playing a character, then if you want to play some more, you need to start again with a new character, and can do so as many times as you like?
Also, does anyone know if they will let you use the save games from the demo in the full version? (assuming you can actually save the game, I'm still downloading it) | 2012/01/18 | [
"https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/47528",
"https://gaming.stackexchange.com",
"https://gaming.stackexchange.com/users/10389/"
] | The 45 minute limit is from after your encounter with the Fateweaver after you leave the tower (the starting dungeon). From there it is 45 minutes of gameplay (menus and dialog stop the clock), and you would seem to be limited to the area around the village of Gorhart for the duration of the demo. Areas not available will have the shimmering barrier there. | To extend upon CyberSkull's answer:
No, the character you create in the demo does not carry over to the full game once you buy your copy. I just found that out over [here](http://reckoning.amalur.com/r/faq). Suuuper disappointed. |
1,535,925 | Is anybody know how to pull contact list from Microsoft Exchange 2007 using c#? | 2009/10/07 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1535925",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/-1/"
] | Probably the best way to do this would be through [Exchange Web Services](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb204119.aspx). | Exchange web services is your best bet for this, or you can host a PowerShell runtime in your app and access Exchange that way. |
12,988 | Assume a search committee is reading my CV and in the publication section they notice some of my papers are only submitted or claimed to appear in a journal (or accepted for publication in a journal). Sometimes the journal which has accepted the paper for publication lists the title of accepted articles before actually publishing them, but in the rest of cases there is no evidence to prove that the referee process of the paper is over and the journal has accepted the paper for publication. Also assume preprints of my papers are available in ArXiv. So, my questions are:
>
> 1. How a search committee interprets and evaluates those papers which are just submitted or are claimed to appear?
> 2. Does a search committee consider these types of publications less valuable than the published ones (assuming the same quality)?
> 3. Does a search committee refer to my preprints in ArXiv to evaluate my submitted or accepted papers?
>
>
> | 2013/09/26 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12988",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | It's a tiered system:
1. **Peer-reviewed published articles**. Published means published in any form, so it includes papers in all states published online on the journal's website, including “in print”, “ASAP papers”, “just accepted papers”, etc.
That's top notch: it demonstrates your ability to perform research, write it up and publish it. Those are key requirements for the job.
1b. **Peer-reviewed accepted papers**. All search committees I know will assume good faith, and accepted papers not yet published (thus without proof) are considered as good as published papers. If you want to (and the application format allows for it), you can actually join a copy of the manuscript (not as proof, but for committee members who may want to read your paper to judge its quality).
2. **Submitted papers, non peer-reviewed papers**. This has some value, as an indication of your recent activity. It is especially useful to the committee if you have few papers (junior researcher) or have not published much recently (so that it is clear you are still active). Again, you may want to join manuscript(s) to your application, or give a link to arXiv if you deposited it there.
3. **In preparation**, **in writing**, … There is no clear standard on threshold for what is a paper “in preparation”, so these are usually worthless on a CV. The only exception is if you have very very few (or no) published papers: applying for a PhD position, or early application for post-doc position, with 1 or 2 published papers. Otherwise, my advice is simply not to mention manuscripts you have not finished writing. | First you need to distinguish between publications that have passed the review process (accepted, in press) with those who have not (in prep, in review etc.). The first group are just as published as those that are printed and should/could be listed among the published. The others have not received the accept decision and despite their quality are not yet officially approved by peers and journals. Hence they are equated with manuscripts.
You can divide your manuscripts and papers in as many categories you like in the CV but the bottom line is that those that are not through the peers review will not be counted as highly since no-one yet knows of their deemed quality. But, that said, manuscripts (of all forms) indicates activity so they are not a complete loss in the CV. Unfortunately people have very wide views on what can be included. One person stated that a manuscript existed if it had a title, an abstract, some text and some references. With experiences like that it is perhaps not difficult to imagine that a list of manuscripts in different stages may not count for much other than an indication of activity (no matter the reality).
As for manuscripts in public archives, there will be a middle ground. They obviously exist but have not been peer reviewed. An evaluator should be able to check its quality fairly easily, even if they are not necessarily an expert on the topic. It is also doubtful reviewers search for papers on their own, commonly what they receive to review is what they look at. So the value of such papers is less clear but I would definitely set up a separate category for these sorts of papers in the CV between published peer reviewed and unpublished manuscripts. |
24,908 | An odd discussion came up on a role-playing game forum recently. Some people were speculating about how a mediaeval society would be different if it had wizards, with the spells described in the game rules. One of the spells creates heavy rain - the rules specify 1 inch per hour, over a certain area. Somebody was commenting whether or not this spell would have a big effect on agriculture, and added "unless the crops can't take an inch of rain in an hour, in which case we're looking at this spell all wrong".
This turns out to be surprisingly difficult to look up. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places, but I'm having difficulty finding out how commonplace one inch of rainfall in an hour is or what it actually looks like in practice. A lot of information about rainfall averaged over a month, and the Met Office classify rainfall greater than 4 mm per hour as "heavy", but don't say how common "heavy rain" according to this criterion actually is.
What does 1 inch of rain per hour mean in practice, how often does that much rain or more happen (say, in the UK), and what would it do to a field of crops? | 2023/02/16 | [
"https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/24908",
"https://earthscience.stackexchange.com",
"https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/users/28501/"
] | Just one inch of rain in one hour, and that's it, or an inch of rain per hour that is sustained over multiple days? Keep in mind that rainfall rates of over an inch of rain *per minute* have been observed. On the other hand, one inch of rain per hour for two or three straight days, nonstop -- been there, done that, don't want to do it again.
Also, time of year is important. If that semi-heavy rainfall (I would not call a rainfall that drops one inch of rain over the course of an hour and then stops a heavy rainfall) falls right after farmers plant their fields or right before they were planning on harvesting, that might be damaging. Farmers expect their seeds to not wash away, and they depend on plants drying out prior to harvest. | There are crops that do require periods with little or no rain to be successful. A wheat crop for example can be ruined or degraded by untimely rainfall; dry conditions are needed for the wheat seeds to mature and the wheat heads need to be dry for harvesting.
Whilst not affecting plant growth, hay crops can be ruined by rainfall between the cutting and baling - it needs time without rain to dry out. |
61,315 | ***Context.*** I plan to grow a tall tree on the front yard to achieve a natural look. The surrounding area is limited by walls and powerlines in the ground. So this tall tree better not have its roots expand horizontally too aggressively as it will damage the walls and powerlines. Horizontal expansion of roots must be roughly limited within **2** by **2** meters.
***Question.*** Which trees can grow up to 5 meters tall (at least) such that their roots expand vertically mainly, and not much horizontally? | 2021/10/16 | [
"https://gardening.stackexchange.com/questions/61315",
"https://gardening.stackexchange.com",
"https://gardening.stackexchange.com/users/38058/"
] | Typically, deciduous North American and European trees grow roots 50% beyond their canopy, so a 5 meter tree with a 5 meter wide canopy will require a root run of 7.5 meters, regardless of whether it has deeper roots (like an oak) or not. Conifers are a littler more compact, but any tall conifers will still require much, much more room than a 2 meter wide "flower pot". Even if you were to plant a tall tree in the area you want, the lack of root run will dwarf the tree, as if it were a bonsai, which will stress it and most likely lead to an early death.
It seems to me that you either have to vastly downscale your tree or think 'large, tall, shrub'. For a tree, you could, perhaps, try a fastigiate (columnar) serviceberry (*Amelanchier* sp.) at 3m x 2m would work. For tall shrubs (technically, small trees but usually sold as shrubs), there are fastigiate arbor vitaes (*Thuja occidentalis* 'Emerald Green' at just under 3m x 1.5m. for example) or junipers like 'Skyrocket' that could work, but the tallest of those would be no more than 3 meters. | Tree roots grow where they want regardless of what a book says, although there may be preferences. Southern pines, oaks and sweet gum grow roots randomly based on trees cleared from my lot: the dirt man pushed over many with a bulldozer so the roots were visible. I have dug hundreds of smaller trees to transplant and never noticed a particular growth habit. I notice my fig tree has many surface roots. I live in an E. TX rain forest and have not noticed utilities ( buried electric, gas, water, sewer) having problems with tree roots damaging facilities. Southern pines are generally 100 feet tall here. |
14,222,890 | I have following problem with my Sharepoint website. (The view cannot be displayed because the number of lookup and workflow columns it contains exceeds the threshold (8) enforced by the administrator) but any solution I have found online points me to change the throttle settings in web applications settings under central administration. My problem is I simply do not have Central Administration > Web Applications etc... The problem is appearing on a document library for me and I have explored very settings options on the site but cannot find anything about trottleing or column threshold. I just have Site Settings > Library settings etc...
How can I increase the column threshold in this case?
I am working on a Sharepoint website and have Workspace and Designer 2010. | 2013/01/08 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/14222890",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/1869677/"
] | The information you found is correct. You must access the Central Administration site from the server itself. It sounds like you are not logging into the server, but using SPD and the Sharepoint site from your workstation. If you don't have access to RDP to the server, you must contact someone who has access.
On another note, it's [not recommended](http://sympmarc.com/2012/07/23/sharepoints-list-view-lookup-threshold-and-why-we-dont-change-it/) to increase that threshold. | Use caution when changing this setting:
This does have a very significant impact on SQL performance. In the article below you can see that in this persons tests, using 8 and executing the query there was about 7% CPU utilization on SQL. Moving that to 10 and executing a query that pulls back 10 columns increases the CPU utilization to almost 40%.
<http://sympmarc.com/2012/07/23/sharepoints-list-view-lookup-threshold-and-why-we-dont-change-it/>
You can also read the whitepaper here: <http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff608068(office.14).aspx> |
14,222,890 | I have following problem with my Sharepoint website. (The view cannot be displayed because the number of lookup and workflow columns it contains exceeds the threshold (8) enforced by the administrator) but any solution I have found online points me to change the throttle settings in web applications settings under central administration. My problem is I simply do not have Central Administration > Web Applications etc... The problem is appearing on a document library for me and I have explored very settings options on the site but cannot find anything about trottleing or column threshold. I just have Site Settings > Library settings etc...
How can I increase the column threshold in this case?
I am working on a Sharepoint website and have Workspace and Designer 2010. | 2013/01/08 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/14222890",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/1869677/"
] | Application Management > Manage Web Application.
In the Web Application list, select the web application you need.
Then go to General Settings > Resource Throttling.
In the Resource Throttling window, scroll down to List View Lookup Threshold and change the value to the number that suits your needs. | Use caution when changing this setting:
This does have a very significant impact on SQL performance. In the article below you can see that in this persons tests, using 8 and executing the query there was about 7% CPU utilization on SQL. Moving that to 10 and executing a query that pulls back 10 columns increases the CPU utilization to almost 40%.
<http://sympmarc.com/2012/07/23/sharepoints-list-view-lookup-threshold-and-why-we-dont-change-it/>
You can also read the whitepaper here: <http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff608068(office.14).aspx> |
7,164 | My wife was telling me about a movie or tv shows she saw a long time ago...but can't remember what it was.
A group of people have numbers on their foreheads, which is atypical. They don't know what the numbers are for, but eventually realize that they are the number of days they have left to live. When the countdown reaches 0, something will come for them.
I know this isn't a lot to go on, but it sounded so intriging that I'm very curious. Any ideas? | 2011/11/22 | [
"https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/7164",
"https://scifi.stackexchange.com",
"https://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/159/"
] | It's only tangentially related, but Michael J. Fox's 1996 movie [The Frighteners](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116365/) features a ghostly serial killer who puts numbers on his targets' heads. Only ghosts (and Michael) can see the numbers.
It's not a close fit to what you describe, but it could be what was being referenced, since you're getting this description second-hand. It's possible your wife got this confused with the Nickleback video Dav referenced in the comments. | Maybe not exactly on foreheads... "The brand New Testament"
>
> God lives in an apartment in Brussels which he shares with his meek wife and his 10-year-old daughter Ea, to whom he is emotionally and physically abusive. God is a grumpy sadist who created humankind specifically to have something to torment. He manipulates reality via a personal computer which he forbids his family from accessing. One day, Ea sneaks into his office and discovers how He has been mistreating humans. This enrages God who then whips Ea with his belt. Ea decides to rebel against her father. She steals the key to His office and accesses the scheduled dates of death of every human in the world and releases the information to them via their portable telephones
>
>
> |
7,164 | My wife was telling me about a movie or tv shows she saw a long time ago...but can't remember what it was.
A group of people have numbers on their foreheads, which is atypical. They don't know what the numbers are for, but eventually realize that they are the number of days they have left to live. When the countdown reaches 0, something will come for them.
I know this isn't a lot to go on, but it sounded so intriging that I'm very curious. Any ideas? | 2011/11/22 | [
"https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/7164",
"https://scifi.stackexchange.com",
"https://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/159/"
] | It's only tangentially related, but Michael J. Fox's 1996 movie [The Frighteners](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116365/) features a ghostly serial killer who puts numbers on his targets' heads. Only ghosts (and Michael) can see the numbers.
It's not a close fit to what you describe, but it could be what was being referenced, since you're getting this description second-hand. It's possible your wife got this confused with the Nickleback video Dav referenced in the comments. | I think the movie you are looking for is called, In Time. Time is currency. It stars Justin Timberlake. |
7,164 | My wife was telling me about a movie or tv shows she saw a long time ago...but can't remember what it was.
A group of people have numbers on their foreheads, which is atypical. They don't know what the numbers are for, but eventually realize that they are the number of days they have left to live. When the countdown reaches 0, something will come for them.
I know this isn't a lot to go on, but it sounded so intriging that I'm very curious. Any ideas? | 2011/11/22 | [
"https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/7164",
"https://scifi.stackexchange.com",
"https://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/159/"
] | There was an episode of [Medium](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0412175/) (season 6, episode 9, "[The Future's So Bright](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1541338/?ref_=ttep_ep9)") in which Allison starts seeing numbers on or over people's heads, indicating how many days they have left to live. Lee Scanlon's number is 1, indicating that he'll die tomorrow. The plot involves her (a) figuring out what the numbers mean, and (b) trying to prevent Scanlon's death.
This episode aired November 20, 2009, so that's probably inconsistent with your statement that she saw it "a long time ago". | Maybe not exactly on foreheads... "The brand New Testament"
>
> God lives in an apartment in Brussels which he shares with his meek wife and his 10-year-old daughter Ea, to whom he is emotionally and physically abusive. God is a grumpy sadist who created humankind specifically to have something to torment. He manipulates reality via a personal computer which he forbids his family from accessing. One day, Ea sneaks into his office and discovers how He has been mistreating humans. This enrages God who then whips Ea with his belt. Ea decides to rebel against her father. She steals the key to His office and accesses the scheduled dates of death of every human in the world and releases the information to them via their portable telephones
>
>
> |
7,164 | My wife was telling me about a movie or tv shows she saw a long time ago...but can't remember what it was.
A group of people have numbers on their foreheads, which is atypical. They don't know what the numbers are for, but eventually realize that they are the number of days they have left to live. When the countdown reaches 0, something will come for them.
I know this isn't a lot to go on, but it sounded so intriging that I'm very curious. Any ideas? | 2011/11/22 | [
"https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/7164",
"https://scifi.stackexchange.com",
"https://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/159/"
] | There was an episode of [Medium](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0412175/) (season 6, episode 9, "[The Future's So Bright](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1541338/?ref_=ttep_ep9)") in which Allison starts seeing numbers on or over people's heads, indicating how many days they have left to live. Lee Scanlon's number is 1, indicating that he'll die tomorrow. The plot involves her (a) figuring out what the numbers mean, and (b) trying to prevent Scanlon's death.
This episode aired November 20, 2009, so that's probably inconsistent with your statement that she saw it "a long time ago". | I think the movie you are looking for is called, In Time. Time is currency. It stars Justin Timberlake. |
7,164 | My wife was telling me about a movie or tv shows she saw a long time ago...but can't remember what it was.
A group of people have numbers on their foreheads, which is atypical. They don't know what the numbers are for, but eventually realize that they are the number of days they have left to live. When the countdown reaches 0, something will come for them.
I know this isn't a lot to go on, but it sounded so intriging that I'm very curious. Any ideas? | 2011/11/22 | [
"https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/7164",
"https://scifi.stackexchange.com",
"https://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/159/"
] | Maybe not exactly on foreheads... "The brand New Testament"
>
> God lives in an apartment in Brussels which he shares with his meek wife and his 10-year-old daughter Ea, to whom he is emotionally and physically abusive. God is a grumpy sadist who created humankind specifically to have something to torment. He manipulates reality via a personal computer which he forbids his family from accessing. One day, Ea sneaks into his office and discovers how He has been mistreating humans. This enrages God who then whips Ea with his belt. Ea decides to rebel against her father. She steals the key to His office and accesses the scheduled dates of death of every human in the world and releases the information to them via their portable telephones
>
>
> | I think the movie you are looking for is called, In Time. Time is currency. It stars Justin Timberlake. |
46,956 | My understanding is that the Catholic Church teaches that when the Pope speaks ex cathedra, he is infallible, because what he says in such instances is divinely protected from error. There are a lot of questions that the Church considers open, e.g. the question of whether infants who die without being baptized are saved. It seems like it would be a great idea for the Pope to *attempt* to assert ex cathedra that they are saved. Either the pronouncement would succeed, in which case we would know with certainty that it is true, or else something would prevent the pronouncement from going through, in which case we would have a hint that it is false.
I assume that I am misunderstanding something about papal infallibility and there is a catch somewhere. **What's the catch?** Naturally, I'm interested in the teaching of the Catholic Church.
Here are a couple of possible answers:
* Technically, the Pope *could* "exploit" infallibility in this way, but it would be immoral.
* If the Pope decided to try this sort of thing, he would be divinely prevented from making the ex cathedra pronouncement regardless of whether the doctrine in question was true or false, so we wouldn't actually learn anything from the exercise.
In either case, I'm left wondering: What exactly differentiates "legitimate" ex cathedra pronouncements, like the pronouncement of the immaculate conception in Ineffabilis Deus, from the sort of "illegitimate" ex cathedra pronouncement that I suggested? | 2016/02/12 | [
"https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/46956",
"https://christianity.stackexchange.com",
"https://christianity.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | You massively misunderstand the process of promulgating doctrine. It's not a magic process where God causes true statements to be generated out of thin air. Doctrine is developed through prayer, research, consultation, discernment and much more, and involves the whole church, not just the Pope. The belief is that God guides this process to ensure it is correct. Shortcutting the means would be equivalent to cheating God. | Do not put the LORD your God to the test (Deuteronomy 6:16).
We know the Pope is infallible because God gave Peter specifically, and the Apostles generally, the Keys of the Kingdom. What the Apostles can do collectively (like in an Ecumenical Council), Peter can do as an individual. Same keys, but different ways to excerise them.
Furthermore, the Pope and the Bishops generally aren't creating new doctrine, but rather discovering or emphasizing or interpretating the Revelation the Christ already gave us.
Christi pax,
Lucretius |
46,956 | My understanding is that the Catholic Church teaches that when the Pope speaks ex cathedra, he is infallible, because what he says in such instances is divinely protected from error. There are a lot of questions that the Church considers open, e.g. the question of whether infants who die without being baptized are saved. It seems like it would be a great idea for the Pope to *attempt* to assert ex cathedra that they are saved. Either the pronouncement would succeed, in which case we would know with certainty that it is true, or else something would prevent the pronouncement from going through, in which case we would have a hint that it is false.
I assume that I am misunderstanding something about papal infallibility and there is a catch somewhere. **What's the catch?** Naturally, I'm interested in the teaching of the Catholic Church.
Here are a couple of possible answers:
* Technically, the Pope *could* "exploit" infallibility in this way, but it would be immoral.
* If the Pope decided to try this sort of thing, he would be divinely prevented from making the ex cathedra pronouncement regardless of whether the doctrine in question was true or false, so we wouldn't actually learn anything from the exercise.
In either case, I'm left wondering: What exactly differentiates "legitimate" ex cathedra pronouncements, like the pronouncement of the immaculate conception in Ineffabilis Deus, from the sort of "illegitimate" ex cathedra pronouncement that I suggested? | 2016/02/12 | [
"https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/46956",
"https://christianity.stackexchange.com",
"https://christianity.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | Pope Pius XII—in his apostolic constitution that defines the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, *[Munificentissimus Deus](https://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_p-xii_apc_19501101_munificentissimus-deus.html)* (1950)—describes the process in which he sought counsel from all the bishops of the world in the letter *Deiparæ Virginis Mariæ* (1946), where he asked them ([§11](https://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_p-xii_apc_19501101_munificentissimus-deus.html)):
>
> Do you, venerable brethren, in your outstanding wisdom and prudence, judge that the bodily Assumption of the Blessed Virgin can be proposed and defined as a dogma of faith? Do you, with your clergy and people, desire it?
>
>
>
The response was almost unanimous.
Although a pope has the authority to define a dogma without asking for counsel regarding its "definability," it would be rash not to seek counsel. | You massively misunderstand the process of promulgating doctrine. It's not a magic process where God causes true statements to be generated out of thin air. Doctrine is developed through prayer, research, consultation, discernment and much more, and involves the whole church, not just the Pope. The belief is that God guides this process to ensure it is correct. Shortcutting the means would be equivalent to cheating God. |
46,956 | My understanding is that the Catholic Church teaches that when the Pope speaks ex cathedra, he is infallible, because what he says in such instances is divinely protected from error. There are a lot of questions that the Church considers open, e.g. the question of whether infants who die without being baptized are saved. It seems like it would be a great idea for the Pope to *attempt* to assert ex cathedra that they are saved. Either the pronouncement would succeed, in which case we would know with certainty that it is true, or else something would prevent the pronouncement from going through, in which case we would have a hint that it is false.
I assume that I am misunderstanding something about papal infallibility and there is a catch somewhere. **What's the catch?** Naturally, I'm interested in the teaching of the Catholic Church.
Here are a couple of possible answers:
* Technically, the Pope *could* "exploit" infallibility in this way, but it would be immoral.
* If the Pope decided to try this sort of thing, he would be divinely prevented from making the ex cathedra pronouncement regardless of whether the doctrine in question was true or false, so we wouldn't actually learn anything from the exercise.
In either case, I'm left wondering: What exactly differentiates "legitimate" ex cathedra pronouncements, like the pronouncement of the immaculate conception in Ineffabilis Deus, from the sort of "illegitimate" ex cathedra pronouncement that I suggested? | 2016/02/12 | [
"https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/46956",
"https://christianity.stackexchange.com",
"https://christianity.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | You massively misunderstand the process of promulgating doctrine. It's not a magic process where God causes true statements to be generated out of thin air. Doctrine is developed through prayer, research, consultation, discernment and much more, and involves the whole church, not just the Pope. The belief is that God guides this process to ensure it is correct. Shortcutting the means would be equivalent to cheating God. | "it would be a great idea for the Pope to attempt to assert ex cathedra that they are saved"
Probably not. God would probably have to kill or otherwise divinely stop the mouth (or pen in this case) of said pope before he did so, as stated by another person here, else the Church would have been overcome by Satan (the true faith is anathematized and lost and error taught in its place) in which impossibility the infallibility of the Church (in an extraordinatary sense with regard to the successor of St. Peter—due to the fact that he overrides the authority of all bishops and has the authority to bind all Catholics to a certain interpretation of the deposit of Faith whereas individual bishops do not—and in an ordinary overall sense with regard to the world's bishops) exists.
Papal infallibility precludes that such a 'trial dogma definition' could ever happen, ever. It would breach the infallibility of the Pope (more a descriptive fact about the Church than a 'power').
That is, your question is like 'what if water wasn't H2O' and is meaningless to ask (sorry, in the logical sense, not that it has no value in being asked).
Papal infallibility is a necessary consequence of 1) the infallibility of the Church as a whole (that the gates of Hell will not prevail against it—which a new faith/false doctrine being taught would constitute) and 2) that the Pope has the authority to teach and bind all to his teaching, in a way other bishops cannot and therefore do not require, and are not protected by, this kind of infallibility. They possess an infallibility which basically means no amount of bishops teaching heresy x will result in the same overcoming of the Church by Hell—a much more descriptive 'infallibility' than even the Pope.
It isn't some magic power. |
46,956 | My understanding is that the Catholic Church teaches that when the Pope speaks ex cathedra, he is infallible, because what he says in such instances is divinely protected from error. There are a lot of questions that the Church considers open, e.g. the question of whether infants who die without being baptized are saved. It seems like it would be a great idea for the Pope to *attempt* to assert ex cathedra that they are saved. Either the pronouncement would succeed, in which case we would know with certainty that it is true, or else something would prevent the pronouncement from going through, in which case we would have a hint that it is false.
I assume that I am misunderstanding something about papal infallibility and there is a catch somewhere. **What's the catch?** Naturally, I'm interested in the teaching of the Catholic Church.
Here are a couple of possible answers:
* Technically, the Pope *could* "exploit" infallibility in this way, but it would be immoral.
* If the Pope decided to try this sort of thing, he would be divinely prevented from making the ex cathedra pronouncement regardless of whether the doctrine in question was true or false, so we wouldn't actually learn anything from the exercise.
In either case, I'm left wondering: What exactly differentiates "legitimate" ex cathedra pronouncements, like the pronouncement of the immaculate conception in Ineffabilis Deus, from the sort of "illegitimate" ex cathedra pronouncement that I suggested? | 2016/02/12 | [
"https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/46956",
"https://christianity.stackexchange.com",
"https://christianity.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | Pope Pius XII—in his apostolic constitution that defines the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, *[Munificentissimus Deus](https://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_p-xii_apc_19501101_munificentissimus-deus.html)* (1950)—describes the process in which he sought counsel from all the bishops of the world in the letter *Deiparæ Virginis Mariæ* (1946), where he asked them ([§11](https://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_p-xii_apc_19501101_munificentissimus-deus.html)):
>
> Do you, venerable brethren, in your outstanding wisdom and prudence, judge that the bodily Assumption of the Blessed Virgin can be proposed and defined as a dogma of faith? Do you, with your clergy and people, desire it?
>
>
>
The response was almost unanimous.
Although a pope has the authority to define a dogma without asking for counsel regarding its "definability," it would be rash not to seek counsel. | Do not put the LORD your God to the test (Deuteronomy 6:16).
We know the Pope is infallible because God gave Peter specifically, and the Apostles generally, the Keys of the Kingdom. What the Apostles can do collectively (like in an Ecumenical Council), Peter can do as an individual. Same keys, but different ways to excerise them.
Furthermore, the Pope and the Bishops generally aren't creating new doctrine, but rather discovering or emphasizing or interpretating the Revelation the Christ already gave us.
Christi pax,
Lucretius |
46,956 | My understanding is that the Catholic Church teaches that when the Pope speaks ex cathedra, he is infallible, because what he says in such instances is divinely protected from error. There are a lot of questions that the Church considers open, e.g. the question of whether infants who die without being baptized are saved. It seems like it would be a great idea for the Pope to *attempt* to assert ex cathedra that they are saved. Either the pronouncement would succeed, in which case we would know with certainty that it is true, or else something would prevent the pronouncement from going through, in which case we would have a hint that it is false.
I assume that I am misunderstanding something about papal infallibility and there is a catch somewhere. **What's the catch?** Naturally, I'm interested in the teaching of the Catholic Church.
Here are a couple of possible answers:
* Technically, the Pope *could* "exploit" infallibility in this way, but it would be immoral.
* If the Pope decided to try this sort of thing, he would be divinely prevented from making the ex cathedra pronouncement regardless of whether the doctrine in question was true or false, so we wouldn't actually learn anything from the exercise.
In either case, I'm left wondering: What exactly differentiates "legitimate" ex cathedra pronouncements, like the pronouncement of the immaculate conception in Ineffabilis Deus, from the sort of "illegitimate" ex cathedra pronouncement that I suggested? | 2016/02/12 | [
"https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/46956",
"https://christianity.stackexchange.com",
"https://christianity.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | Do not put the LORD your God to the test (Deuteronomy 6:16).
We know the Pope is infallible because God gave Peter specifically, and the Apostles generally, the Keys of the Kingdom. What the Apostles can do collectively (like in an Ecumenical Council), Peter can do as an individual. Same keys, but different ways to excerise them.
Furthermore, the Pope and the Bishops generally aren't creating new doctrine, but rather discovering or emphasizing or interpretating the Revelation the Christ already gave us.
Christi pax,
Lucretius | "it would be a great idea for the Pope to attempt to assert ex cathedra that they are saved"
Probably not. God would probably have to kill or otherwise divinely stop the mouth (or pen in this case) of said pope before he did so, as stated by another person here, else the Church would have been overcome by Satan (the true faith is anathematized and lost and error taught in its place) in which impossibility the infallibility of the Church (in an extraordinatary sense with regard to the successor of St. Peter—due to the fact that he overrides the authority of all bishops and has the authority to bind all Catholics to a certain interpretation of the deposit of Faith whereas individual bishops do not—and in an ordinary overall sense with regard to the world's bishops) exists.
Papal infallibility precludes that such a 'trial dogma definition' could ever happen, ever. It would breach the infallibility of the Pope (more a descriptive fact about the Church than a 'power').
That is, your question is like 'what if water wasn't H2O' and is meaningless to ask (sorry, in the logical sense, not that it has no value in being asked).
Papal infallibility is a necessary consequence of 1) the infallibility of the Church as a whole (that the gates of Hell will not prevail against it—which a new faith/false doctrine being taught would constitute) and 2) that the Pope has the authority to teach and bind all to his teaching, in a way other bishops cannot and therefore do not require, and are not protected by, this kind of infallibility. They possess an infallibility which basically means no amount of bishops teaching heresy x will result in the same overcoming of the Church by Hell—a much more descriptive 'infallibility' than even the Pope.
It isn't some magic power. |
46,956 | My understanding is that the Catholic Church teaches that when the Pope speaks ex cathedra, he is infallible, because what he says in such instances is divinely protected from error. There are a lot of questions that the Church considers open, e.g. the question of whether infants who die without being baptized are saved. It seems like it would be a great idea for the Pope to *attempt* to assert ex cathedra that they are saved. Either the pronouncement would succeed, in which case we would know with certainty that it is true, or else something would prevent the pronouncement from going through, in which case we would have a hint that it is false.
I assume that I am misunderstanding something about papal infallibility and there is a catch somewhere. **What's the catch?** Naturally, I'm interested in the teaching of the Catholic Church.
Here are a couple of possible answers:
* Technically, the Pope *could* "exploit" infallibility in this way, but it would be immoral.
* If the Pope decided to try this sort of thing, he would be divinely prevented from making the ex cathedra pronouncement regardless of whether the doctrine in question was true or false, so we wouldn't actually learn anything from the exercise.
In either case, I'm left wondering: What exactly differentiates "legitimate" ex cathedra pronouncements, like the pronouncement of the immaculate conception in Ineffabilis Deus, from the sort of "illegitimate" ex cathedra pronouncement that I suggested? | 2016/02/12 | [
"https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/46956",
"https://christianity.stackexchange.com",
"https://christianity.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | Pope Pius XII—in his apostolic constitution that defines the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, *[Munificentissimus Deus](https://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_p-xii_apc_19501101_munificentissimus-deus.html)* (1950)—describes the process in which he sought counsel from all the bishops of the world in the letter *Deiparæ Virginis Mariæ* (1946), where he asked them ([§11](https://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_p-xii_apc_19501101_munificentissimus-deus.html)):
>
> Do you, venerable brethren, in your outstanding wisdom and prudence, judge that the bodily Assumption of the Blessed Virgin can be proposed and defined as a dogma of faith? Do you, with your clergy and people, desire it?
>
>
>
The response was almost unanimous.
Although a pope has the authority to define a dogma without asking for counsel regarding its "definability," it would be rash not to seek counsel. | "it would be a great idea for the Pope to attempt to assert ex cathedra that they are saved"
Probably not. God would probably have to kill or otherwise divinely stop the mouth (or pen in this case) of said pope before he did so, as stated by another person here, else the Church would have been overcome by Satan (the true faith is anathematized and lost and error taught in its place) in which impossibility the infallibility of the Church (in an extraordinatary sense with regard to the successor of St. Peter—due to the fact that he overrides the authority of all bishops and has the authority to bind all Catholics to a certain interpretation of the deposit of Faith whereas individual bishops do not—and in an ordinary overall sense with regard to the world's bishops) exists.
Papal infallibility precludes that such a 'trial dogma definition' could ever happen, ever. It would breach the infallibility of the Pope (more a descriptive fact about the Church than a 'power').
That is, your question is like 'what if water wasn't H2O' and is meaningless to ask (sorry, in the logical sense, not that it has no value in being asked).
Papal infallibility is a necessary consequence of 1) the infallibility of the Church as a whole (that the gates of Hell will not prevail against it—which a new faith/false doctrine being taught would constitute) and 2) that the Pope has the authority to teach and bind all to his teaching, in a way other bishops cannot and therefore do not require, and are not protected by, this kind of infallibility. They possess an infallibility which basically means no amount of bishops teaching heresy x will result in the same overcoming of the Church by Hell—a much more descriptive 'infallibility' than even the Pope.
It isn't some magic power. |
955,788 | I have a view for an inbox. In the view I can currently show 10 sms messages. After 10 sms messages, I need to be able to scroll the messages.
In other words, how do I implement a scrolview in iPhone programming like the one in the mail inbox or the SMS application? | 2009/06/05 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/955788",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/108639/"
] | Firstly, you don't want a UIScrollView for a list of SMSs. UIScrollview - which is often referred to simply as a 'Scroll View' is a more general scrolling view.
To implement a list of scrolling cells like 10 SMS Messages, you should use a UITableView. You get get a log of help on UITableView programming here on [Stack Overflow](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/uitableview) or in Apples docs or on Google. | Use UIScrollView class <http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/documentation/UIKit/Reference/UIScrollView_Class/Reference/UIScrollView.html> |
8,633 | You would note the use of the word 'again' in the title of my question.
I wrote a number of short stories many years ago. This was when I was doing my first degree (in literature) just after high school. There were no creative writing courses but just analysis of novels, plays and poetry in the first degree. The 'creative writing' part of me came out one day when I thought of entering into a student run short story writing competition.
Fast forward many years later: I started working, did my postgraduate degrees (including a doctorate) but these are not in literature. They are in economics. I am a researcher and the research is of the 'academic type', not creative writing.
Now that I have some free time (I am certainly not retired!!), I want to go back to creative writing. I know I can write because I have written 15 short stories and had them published in the local papers.
However, I get this lingering feeling that I cannot write any more.
Question: How can I overcome this anxiety of writing?
I saw a number of other related questions but in my case, it is neither a lack of motivation nor skill; it is just the fact that I cannot bring myself to write! | 2013/08/12 | [
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/8633",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/5208/"
] | My answer for you is the same I gave for other related questions: **just write**.
There's a nice saying -- "*the good is a sworn enemy of the optimum*". I've seen people like you and one of the main reasons they become anxious about writing is because they don't understand that they can't aim too high if they don't grab the arrow. The bible has an interesting story about David and Goliath, which is very illustrative for the writer's life.
Your goal is to defeat Goliath. Goliath is your master goal and probably is not only getting back to write but to write something good. You have your stones and sling ( *your writing tools and skill* ) and hope to achieve defeat your anxious with the help of God ( *Creativity and willpower* ) but some how it seems not powerful enough to kill a giant. The problem is that most people forgets that David didn't kill the giant from nothing. First he killed a bear and a lion, and probably empty beers bottles too. ;-)
That's your case. You need to start hitting empty bottles. Just write. Start with small chronicles. A blog is an outstanding tool for that. They doesn't need to be good at all, at least for a start. **You will see that as you write, you will write**. And I'm not being redundant here.
**It's the inertia. You have the tendency of doing what you are doing, liking it of not**. You stopped writing and it's hard to invert that tendency so, you need to force yourself to do it. There's no other way. I guess the anxiety is related to the acceleration, because nobody can reach 200km/h without passing trough 30km/h. But, then again, it's all about start writing. | If creative writing is one of your talents and creative ideas are coming to your mind. Don't hesitate to do so. Take a pen and start writing those. For first few days, you will feel uncomfortable but afterwards you will be habituated and things will go smoothly as it was before when you used to write.
Thanks.. |
8,633 | You would note the use of the word 'again' in the title of my question.
I wrote a number of short stories many years ago. This was when I was doing my first degree (in literature) just after high school. There were no creative writing courses but just analysis of novels, plays and poetry in the first degree. The 'creative writing' part of me came out one day when I thought of entering into a student run short story writing competition.
Fast forward many years later: I started working, did my postgraduate degrees (including a doctorate) but these are not in literature. They are in economics. I am a researcher and the research is of the 'academic type', not creative writing.
Now that I have some free time (I am certainly not retired!!), I want to go back to creative writing. I know I can write because I have written 15 short stories and had them published in the local papers.
However, I get this lingering feeling that I cannot write any more.
Question: How can I overcome this anxiety of writing?
I saw a number of other related questions but in my case, it is neither a lack of motivation nor skill; it is just the fact that I cannot bring myself to write! | 2013/08/12 | [
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/8633",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/5208/"
] | My answer for you is the same I gave for other related questions: **just write**.
There's a nice saying -- "*the good is a sworn enemy of the optimum*". I've seen people like you and one of the main reasons they become anxious about writing is because they don't understand that they can't aim too high if they don't grab the arrow. The bible has an interesting story about David and Goliath, which is very illustrative for the writer's life.
Your goal is to defeat Goliath. Goliath is your master goal and probably is not only getting back to write but to write something good. You have your stones and sling ( *your writing tools and skill* ) and hope to achieve defeat your anxious with the help of God ( *Creativity and willpower* ) but some how it seems not powerful enough to kill a giant. The problem is that most people forgets that David didn't kill the giant from nothing. First he killed a bear and a lion, and probably empty beers bottles too. ;-)
That's your case. You need to start hitting empty bottles. Just write. Start with small chronicles. A blog is an outstanding tool for that. They doesn't need to be good at all, at least for a start. **You will see that as you write, you will write**. And I'm not being redundant here.
**It's the inertia. You have the tendency of doing what you are doing, liking it of not**. You stopped writing and it's hard to invert that tendency so, you need to force yourself to do it. There's no other way. I guess the anxiety is related to the acceleration, because nobody can reach 200km/h without passing trough 30km/h. But, then again, it's all about start writing. | Some famous guy said that writing was opening a vein onto the page.
I wish I was that easy.
Writing is reaching into the most vulnerable parts of your soul and raising them from the depths to show their horrid beauty for all to see.
You are shining light on the best and worst facets of your being and it is scary. Being that open and vulnerable is terrifying.
But it's okay. They don't know you and how you fit together and they guess wrong all the time.
Don't be afraid, you've already conquered yourself. Write and be free. |
8,633 | You would note the use of the word 'again' in the title of my question.
I wrote a number of short stories many years ago. This was when I was doing my first degree (in literature) just after high school. There were no creative writing courses but just analysis of novels, plays and poetry in the first degree. The 'creative writing' part of me came out one day when I thought of entering into a student run short story writing competition.
Fast forward many years later: I started working, did my postgraduate degrees (including a doctorate) but these are not in literature. They are in economics. I am a researcher and the research is of the 'academic type', not creative writing.
Now that I have some free time (I am certainly not retired!!), I want to go back to creative writing. I know I can write because I have written 15 short stories and had them published in the local papers.
However, I get this lingering feeling that I cannot write any more.
Question: How can I overcome this anxiety of writing?
I saw a number of other related questions but in my case, it is neither a lack of motivation nor skill; it is just the fact that I cannot bring myself to write! | 2013/08/12 | [
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/8633",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/5208/"
] | My answer for you is the same I gave for other related questions: **just write**.
There's a nice saying -- "*the good is a sworn enemy of the optimum*". I've seen people like you and one of the main reasons they become anxious about writing is because they don't understand that they can't aim too high if they don't grab the arrow. The bible has an interesting story about David and Goliath, which is very illustrative for the writer's life.
Your goal is to defeat Goliath. Goliath is your master goal and probably is not only getting back to write but to write something good. You have your stones and sling ( *your writing tools and skill* ) and hope to achieve defeat your anxious with the help of God ( *Creativity and willpower* ) but some how it seems not powerful enough to kill a giant. The problem is that most people forgets that David didn't kill the giant from nothing. First he killed a bear and a lion, and probably empty beers bottles too. ;-)
That's your case. You need to start hitting empty bottles. Just write. Start with small chronicles. A blog is an outstanding tool for that. They doesn't need to be good at all, at least for a start. **You will see that as you write, you will write**. And I'm not being redundant here.
**It's the inertia. You have the tendency of doing what you are doing, liking it of not**. You stopped writing and it's hard to invert that tendency so, you need to force yourself to do it. There's no other way. I guess the anxiety is related to the acceleration, because nobody can reach 200km/h without passing trough 30km/h. But, then again, it's all about start writing. | Javeer, I think you are so afraid of writing that you don't even want to seriously address the issue. You have yourself so tied up in knots that you are talking in self-contradictions. You say "it's not lack of motivation, I just can't bring myself to write." I would say "just can't bring myself to write" is *precisely* a lack of motivation. You say "I know I can write," and then you talk about your "lingering feeling" that you can't write! Again, you're contradicting yourself. You're talking in circles because you don't want to face the fact that it's easier to talk about why you can't write than it is to actually WRITE SOMETHING.
But I think that's the crux of the problem. You're simply afraid of failure. Well, forget it, Javeer. So is everyone! ALL writers are afraid of failure. The greatest writers are probably more afraid of failure than anyone. It's what drives them to write more, to work harder, to do everything they can to improve so they will be successful.
Writing is a terrifying thing. You're putting your heart, soul, and the contents of your mind out in front of the world for everyone to see. Wouldn't that be scary? Of course it would! It's absolutely bone-chillingly horrifying, and it's what stops most of the world from being writers.
So here's the news, and I'm not going to sugar-coat it. Do you really want to write? Then let me tell you something. All the tricks and devices and gimmicks and ways of fooling yourself into getting something written aren't going to help if you can't take a deep breath and say, BY GOD I AM GOING TO DO THIS! You have to overcome the terror of the blank page, as it used to be more commonly called in the days of pens and paper and good old-fashioned typewriters. Just looking at an empty white sheet of paper onto which you were supposed to put some new writing could send some writers into something approaching panic attacks, and I'm not talking about would-be writers; I'm talking about world-class ones.
So there you have one helpful note of reassurance: You are in very good company. And here's the one trick that actually works: Remember there is no such thing as failure. If you write something, you have already succeeded. You have overcome the terror of the blank page. Tell yourself this: You're not going to die if you write something. Does that sound silly? It's not. Writing isn't a matter of life and death. Put it in its place. Don't let it defeat you. You are the master of your own writing. If you really want to write, then that means you want to tell the world something, don't you? SO TELL IT. You can talk, can't you? TALK TO THE WORLD. In your writing. Just start talking. In written form.
Does any or all of this sound harsh, too tough? Fine. So be it. I teach writing. I edit writing. I have never seen anyone become a successful writer if they couldn't handle this tough love. This is the reality, Javeer. You're either a writer or you aren't, and that's defined by whether you can have the courage to write. I say put aside your fear. Believe that what you say matters, because it does. You can play around with gimmicks, or you can pick up your sword and slay the dragon.
Choose. |
8,633 | You would note the use of the word 'again' in the title of my question.
I wrote a number of short stories many years ago. This was when I was doing my first degree (in literature) just after high school. There were no creative writing courses but just analysis of novels, plays and poetry in the first degree. The 'creative writing' part of me came out one day when I thought of entering into a student run short story writing competition.
Fast forward many years later: I started working, did my postgraduate degrees (including a doctorate) but these are not in literature. They are in economics. I am a researcher and the research is of the 'academic type', not creative writing.
Now that I have some free time (I am certainly not retired!!), I want to go back to creative writing. I know I can write because I have written 15 short stories and had them published in the local papers.
However, I get this lingering feeling that I cannot write any more.
Question: How can I overcome this anxiety of writing?
I saw a number of other related questions but in my case, it is neither a lack of motivation nor skill; it is just the fact that I cannot bring myself to write! | 2013/08/12 | [
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/8633",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/5208/"
] | My answer for you is the same I gave for other related questions: **just write**.
There's a nice saying -- "*the good is a sworn enemy of the optimum*". I've seen people like you and one of the main reasons they become anxious about writing is because they don't understand that they can't aim too high if they don't grab the arrow. The bible has an interesting story about David and Goliath, which is very illustrative for the writer's life.
Your goal is to defeat Goliath. Goliath is your master goal and probably is not only getting back to write but to write something good. You have your stones and sling ( *your writing tools and skill* ) and hope to achieve defeat your anxious with the help of God ( *Creativity and willpower* ) but some how it seems not powerful enough to kill a giant. The problem is that most people forgets that David didn't kill the giant from nothing. First he killed a bear and a lion, and probably empty beers bottles too. ;-)
That's your case. You need to start hitting empty bottles. Just write. Start with small chronicles. A blog is an outstanding tool for that. They doesn't need to be good at all, at least for a start. **You will see that as you write, you will write**. And I'm not being redundant here.
**It's the inertia. You have the tendency of doing what you are doing, liking it of not**. You stopped writing and it's hard to invert that tendency so, you need to force yourself to do it. There's no other way. I guess the anxiety is related to the acceleration, because nobody can reach 200km/h without passing trough 30km/h. But, then again, it's all about start writing. | I think the question of motivation is dependant on exactly what you want to achieve. You cant get motivated about a goal thats as amorphous as "start writing again". What I've found to be useful is to decide on smaller writing targets, and accomplishing those. Initially, just personal goals (for example, my goal for this month is to write a 2000 word story about regret).
Start by writing a particularly bad story, a real stinker, bad spelling, weak characterization etc. I usually find that helps me get the wheel turning, and after about 15 minutes, I find my brain starts coming up with interesting ideas and, before I know it, I'm into [flow](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29) again. |
8,633 | You would note the use of the word 'again' in the title of my question.
I wrote a number of short stories many years ago. This was when I was doing my first degree (in literature) just after high school. There were no creative writing courses but just analysis of novels, plays and poetry in the first degree. The 'creative writing' part of me came out one day when I thought of entering into a student run short story writing competition.
Fast forward many years later: I started working, did my postgraduate degrees (including a doctorate) but these are not in literature. They are in economics. I am a researcher and the research is of the 'academic type', not creative writing.
Now that I have some free time (I am certainly not retired!!), I want to go back to creative writing. I know I can write because I have written 15 short stories and had them published in the local papers.
However, I get this lingering feeling that I cannot write any more.
Question: How can I overcome this anxiety of writing?
I saw a number of other related questions but in my case, it is neither a lack of motivation nor skill; it is just the fact that I cannot bring myself to write! | 2013/08/12 | [
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/8633",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/5208/"
] | I think the question of motivation is dependant on exactly what you want to achieve. You cant get motivated about a goal thats as amorphous as "start writing again". What I've found to be useful is to decide on smaller writing targets, and accomplishing those. Initially, just personal goals (for example, my goal for this month is to write a 2000 word story about regret).
Start by writing a particularly bad story, a real stinker, bad spelling, weak characterization etc. I usually find that helps me get the wheel turning, and after about 15 minutes, I find my brain starts coming up with interesting ideas and, before I know it, I'm into [flow](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29) again. | If creative writing is one of your talents and creative ideas are coming to your mind. Don't hesitate to do so. Take a pen and start writing those. For first few days, you will feel uncomfortable but afterwards you will be habituated and things will go smoothly as it was before when you used to write.
Thanks.. |
8,633 | You would note the use of the word 'again' in the title of my question.
I wrote a number of short stories many years ago. This was when I was doing my first degree (in literature) just after high school. There were no creative writing courses but just analysis of novels, plays and poetry in the first degree. The 'creative writing' part of me came out one day when I thought of entering into a student run short story writing competition.
Fast forward many years later: I started working, did my postgraduate degrees (including a doctorate) but these are not in literature. They are in economics. I am a researcher and the research is of the 'academic type', not creative writing.
Now that I have some free time (I am certainly not retired!!), I want to go back to creative writing. I know I can write because I have written 15 short stories and had them published in the local papers.
However, I get this lingering feeling that I cannot write any more.
Question: How can I overcome this anxiety of writing?
I saw a number of other related questions but in my case, it is neither a lack of motivation nor skill; it is just the fact that I cannot bring myself to write! | 2013/08/12 | [
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/8633",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/5208/"
] | I think the question of motivation is dependant on exactly what you want to achieve. You cant get motivated about a goal thats as amorphous as "start writing again". What I've found to be useful is to decide on smaller writing targets, and accomplishing those. Initially, just personal goals (for example, my goal for this month is to write a 2000 word story about regret).
Start by writing a particularly bad story, a real stinker, bad spelling, weak characterization etc. I usually find that helps me get the wheel turning, and after about 15 minutes, I find my brain starts coming up with interesting ideas and, before I know it, I'm into [flow](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29) again. | Some famous guy said that writing was opening a vein onto the page.
I wish I was that easy.
Writing is reaching into the most vulnerable parts of your soul and raising them from the depths to show their horrid beauty for all to see.
You are shining light on the best and worst facets of your being and it is scary. Being that open and vulnerable is terrifying.
But it's okay. They don't know you and how you fit together and they guess wrong all the time.
Don't be afraid, you've already conquered yourself. Write and be free. |
8,633 | You would note the use of the word 'again' in the title of my question.
I wrote a number of short stories many years ago. This was when I was doing my first degree (in literature) just after high school. There were no creative writing courses but just analysis of novels, plays and poetry in the first degree. The 'creative writing' part of me came out one day when I thought of entering into a student run short story writing competition.
Fast forward many years later: I started working, did my postgraduate degrees (including a doctorate) but these are not in literature. They are in economics. I am a researcher and the research is of the 'academic type', not creative writing.
Now that I have some free time (I am certainly not retired!!), I want to go back to creative writing. I know I can write because I have written 15 short stories and had them published in the local papers.
However, I get this lingering feeling that I cannot write any more.
Question: How can I overcome this anxiety of writing?
I saw a number of other related questions but in my case, it is neither a lack of motivation nor skill; it is just the fact that I cannot bring myself to write! | 2013/08/12 | [
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/8633",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/5208/"
] | I think the question of motivation is dependant on exactly what you want to achieve. You cant get motivated about a goal thats as amorphous as "start writing again". What I've found to be useful is to decide on smaller writing targets, and accomplishing those. Initially, just personal goals (for example, my goal for this month is to write a 2000 word story about regret).
Start by writing a particularly bad story, a real stinker, bad spelling, weak characterization etc. I usually find that helps me get the wheel turning, and after about 15 minutes, I find my brain starts coming up with interesting ideas and, before I know it, I'm into [flow](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29) again. | Javeer, I think you are so afraid of writing that you don't even want to seriously address the issue. You have yourself so tied up in knots that you are talking in self-contradictions. You say "it's not lack of motivation, I just can't bring myself to write." I would say "just can't bring myself to write" is *precisely* a lack of motivation. You say "I know I can write," and then you talk about your "lingering feeling" that you can't write! Again, you're contradicting yourself. You're talking in circles because you don't want to face the fact that it's easier to talk about why you can't write than it is to actually WRITE SOMETHING.
But I think that's the crux of the problem. You're simply afraid of failure. Well, forget it, Javeer. So is everyone! ALL writers are afraid of failure. The greatest writers are probably more afraid of failure than anyone. It's what drives them to write more, to work harder, to do everything they can to improve so they will be successful.
Writing is a terrifying thing. You're putting your heart, soul, and the contents of your mind out in front of the world for everyone to see. Wouldn't that be scary? Of course it would! It's absolutely bone-chillingly horrifying, and it's what stops most of the world from being writers.
So here's the news, and I'm not going to sugar-coat it. Do you really want to write? Then let me tell you something. All the tricks and devices and gimmicks and ways of fooling yourself into getting something written aren't going to help if you can't take a deep breath and say, BY GOD I AM GOING TO DO THIS! You have to overcome the terror of the blank page, as it used to be more commonly called in the days of pens and paper and good old-fashioned typewriters. Just looking at an empty white sheet of paper onto which you were supposed to put some new writing could send some writers into something approaching panic attacks, and I'm not talking about would-be writers; I'm talking about world-class ones.
So there you have one helpful note of reassurance: You are in very good company. And here's the one trick that actually works: Remember there is no such thing as failure. If you write something, you have already succeeded. You have overcome the terror of the blank page. Tell yourself this: You're not going to die if you write something. Does that sound silly? It's not. Writing isn't a matter of life and death. Put it in its place. Don't let it defeat you. You are the master of your own writing. If you really want to write, then that means you want to tell the world something, don't you? SO TELL IT. You can talk, can't you? TALK TO THE WORLD. In your writing. Just start talking. In written form.
Does any or all of this sound harsh, too tough? Fine. So be it. I teach writing. I edit writing. I have never seen anyone become a successful writer if they couldn't handle this tough love. This is the reality, Javeer. You're either a writer or you aren't, and that's defined by whether you can have the courage to write. I say put aside your fear. Believe that what you say matters, because it does. You can play around with gimmicks, or you can pick up your sword and slay the dragon.
Choose. |
69,826 | >
> Two long sharp teeth
>
>
> Two holes beneath
>
>
> My bite is neat
>
>
> I do not eat
>
>
>
What am I? | 2018/08/17 | [
"https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/69826",
"https://puzzling.stackexchange.com",
"https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/users/22895/"
] | Well this is far fetched, but let's try:
It is
>
> scissors
>
>
>
Two long sharp teeth
>
> Scissor has two blades
>
>
>
Two holes beneath
>
> you can make two holes with their blades, or as @Shahriar Mahmud Sajid mentioned in comments, it can refer to the two holes used to hold the scissors.
>
>
>
My bite is neat
>
> When they cut something, they cut neat
>
>
>
I do not eat
>
> they don't eat :)
>
>
> | You are
>
> a stapler.
>
>
>
Two long sharp teeth
>
> the sharp ends of the staple pointing out
>
>
>
Two holes beneath
>
> the two holes at the bottom force the staple to bend
>
>
>
My bite is neat
>
> bites through paper
>
>
>
I do not eat
>
> yep
>
>
> |
69,826 | >
> Two long sharp teeth
>
>
> Two holes beneath
>
>
> My bite is neat
>
>
> I do not eat
>
>
>
What am I? | 2018/08/17 | [
"https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/69826",
"https://puzzling.stackexchange.com",
"https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/users/22895/"
] | Well this is far fetched, but let's try:
It is
>
> scissors
>
>
>
Two long sharp teeth
>
> Scissor has two blades
>
>
>
Two holes beneath
>
> you can make two holes with their blades, or as @Shahriar Mahmud Sajid mentioned in comments, it can refer to the two holes used to hold the scissors.
>
>
>
My bite is neat
>
> When they cut something, they cut neat
>
>
>
I do not eat
>
> they don't eat :)
>
>
> | Let's give this a try:
>
> a paper punch
>
>
>
>
> Leaves two neat holes in paper with long metal rods and doesn't require to eat.
>
>
> |
1,306,579 | I am really tired of struggling with Maven 2 all the time. Build tools should not be in the way. Recently I have been looking at Buildr and Gradle. Maven 3 seems to fix some of the struggles. So, what should I go for now? Buildr? Gradle? Or wait a year for Maven 3? | 2009/08/20 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1306579",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/160082/"
] | I wouldn't expect too much from Maven 3. The people behind the Maven pedigree of build tools have always held the assumption that project builds are homogeneous, that is: all build problems fundamentally boil down to the same problem. This view of the world can be held fairly consistently in the face of opposing views but comes at a cost. The absence of scripting logic in Maven ("when you want to script you know you're doing something wrong"), the cumbersome plugin API ("no ordinary Maven user should want to write a plugin") and the central repository ("we all have the same dependencies") are all testaments of this overarching assumption.
In the real world build problems are heterogeneous because people build software for a wide variety of reasons. They all 'develop' like we all 'drill holes' once in a while for solving unique problems. Regardless of your level of abstraction you'll always find similarities when comparing arbitrary build problems. It is the reveration of these similarities and the condemnation of differences that is the downfall for Maven's design and the reason why it draws so much flak. Basically, Maven is authoritarian and utopian in its outlook.
PS: Maven has good features, like convention-over-configuration and the idea of using repositories (the Maven implementation of this idea is troublesome). | We use Maven here, but I find that once you get outside of a simple project, the pom.xml starts to get more and more complex. You start spending a lot of time working out how in the heck to configure your pom to do what you want, and how to work around the various issues.
The thing that really got me was the ear we're building. We have multiple wars in that ear file, and Maven normally sticks the libraries in the wars. However, to reduce the size of the wars, and to keep the jars all the same, we wanted to put the jars shared between the wars in the ear's lib directory.
Unfortunately, Maven doesn't handle this very well. We needed to manually configure this for each of the wars' poms, and then add all of these dependencies into the ear's pom.
In another project we have HTML based help files. The people who write the help write them in Microsoft Word then use a program to translate them into HTML. A single character change can reverberate throughout hundreds of files.
To get around this issue, our help system is stored in our source repository as a single zipped file. When our documentation team creates a new set of help files, they zip it up and replace what is in the repository.
So, part of my build is unzipping this file and placing it in the war. Easy to do in Ant, can't do it in Maven unless you use the Antrun plugin which allows you to write Ant code to handle issues that Maven cannot handle without a full blown plugin.
I can see what Maven is doing, but theory got ahead of reality. What I found is that Ivy and Ant can do most of the dependency checking that Maven does without all the issues of writing and maintaining the poms.
If you're not already using Maven, try Ant with Ivy first. Then when, Maven 3 comes out, try that. I remember the transition from Maven 1 to Maven 2. They were entirely incompatible with each other and anything you learned using Maven 1 was obsolete. It would be silly to learn and redo your projects in Maven 2 to suddenly find yourself redoing everything for Maven 3. |
1,306,579 | I am really tired of struggling with Maven 2 all the time. Build tools should not be in the way. Recently I have been looking at Buildr and Gradle. Maven 3 seems to fix some of the struggles. So, what should I go for now? Buildr? Gradle? Or wait a year for Maven 3? | 2009/08/20 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1306579",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/160082/"
] | I wouldn't expect too much from Maven 3. The people behind the Maven pedigree of build tools have always held the assumption that project builds are homogeneous, that is: all build problems fundamentally boil down to the same problem. This view of the world can be held fairly consistently in the face of opposing views but comes at a cost. The absence of scripting logic in Maven ("when you want to script you know you're doing something wrong"), the cumbersome plugin API ("no ordinary Maven user should want to write a plugin") and the central repository ("we all have the same dependencies") are all testaments of this overarching assumption.
In the real world build problems are heterogeneous because people build software for a wide variety of reasons. They all 'develop' like we all 'drill holes' once in a while for solving unique problems. Regardless of your level of abstraction you'll always find similarities when comparing arbitrary build problems. It is the reveration of these similarities and the condemnation of differences that is the downfall for Maven's design and the reason why it draws so much flak. Basically, Maven is authoritarian and utopian in its outlook.
PS: Maven has good features, like convention-over-configuration and the idea of using repositories (the Maven implementation of this idea is troublesome). | Give Lattice <https://github.com/hackingspirit/Lattice> a try. I am the author. Here is the scoop:
In Lattice build files are written not in XML, but in the Python language. The ben- efits are much better readability and powerful imperative build scripting supported by Python.
For multi-module projects. Lattice uses topological sorting to decide the correct order to build each module. It’s also planned that Lattice will analyze the module dependency to determine how the module compilation can be parallelized.
Lattice’s source code is extremely lean, currently it consists of about 500 lines of Python source code. |
1,306,579 | I am really tired of struggling with Maven 2 all the time. Build tools should not be in the way. Recently I have been looking at Buildr and Gradle. Maven 3 seems to fix some of the struggles. So, what should I go for now? Buildr? Gradle? Or wait a year for Maven 3? | 2009/08/20 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1306579",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/160082/"
] | **maven 3.x is already embedded in IDEs** (at least on netbeans, check [this link](http://www.scribd.com/doc/14458957/Jasons-Maven-3-Presentation) for more infomration). You can play today with maven 3.x simply building a Maven project with netbeans.
Another nice news is that maven got more 'enterprise' support with integrating EJB/WS in IDE projects (again, at least on netbeans).
So I would stick to maven 2.x for production builds and play with maven 3.x for development. | I think people complaining about Maven should spend a little extra time investigating available plugins. In response to comments complaining that Maven is rigid and makes it hard to use custom build logic / provide fine-grained control over the build process - I would recommend looking into Ant plug-in for Maven (there are actually several, but here is one: <http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-antrun-plugin>). I have had great success customizing Maven builds with it over the years. Basically, it allows you to run any Ant command as part of the Maven build, and you can do pretty much anything with Ant ;) |
1,306,579 | I am really tired of struggling with Maven 2 all the time. Build tools should not be in the way. Recently I have been looking at Buildr and Gradle. Maven 3 seems to fix some of the struggles. So, what should I go for now? Buildr? Gradle? Or wait a year for Maven 3? | 2009/08/20 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1306579",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/160082/"
] | We use Maven here, but I find that once you get outside of a simple project, the pom.xml starts to get more and more complex. You start spending a lot of time working out how in the heck to configure your pom to do what you want, and how to work around the various issues.
The thing that really got me was the ear we're building. We have multiple wars in that ear file, and Maven normally sticks the libraries in the wars. However, to reduce the size of the wars, and to keep the jars all the same, we wanted to put the jars shared between the wars in the ear's lib directory.
Unfortunately, Maven doesn't handle this very well. We needed to manually configure this for each of the wars' poms, and then add all of these dependencies into the ear's pom.
In another project we have HTML based help files. The people who write the help write them in Microsoft Word then use a program to translate them into HTML. A single character change can reverberate throughout hundreds of files.
To get around this issue, our help system is stored in our source repository as a single zipped file. When our documentation team creates a new set of help files, they zip it up and replace what is in the repository.
So, part of my build is unzipping this file and placing it in the war. Easy to do in Ant, can't do it in Maven unless you use the Antrun plugin which allows you to write Ant code to handle issues that Maven cannot handle without a full blown plugin.
I can see what Maven is doing, but theory got ahead of reality. What I found is that Ivy and Ant can do most of the dependency checking that Maven does without all the issues of writing and maintaining the poms.
If you're not already using Maven, try Ant with Ivy first. Then when, Maven 3 comes out, try that. I remember the transition from Maven 1 to Maven 2. They were entirely incompatible with each other and anything you learned using Maven 1 was obsolete. It would be silly to learn and redo your projects in Maven 2 to suddenly find yourself redoing everything for Maven 3. | Keep your code well maintained and broken into well defined modules and porting between build systems becomes a minor problem.
As for now, maven-2 is a good choice for the middle 2/3rd of projects. For the really simple, ant is still ok. For the really complex, a hybrid of maven-2 and other tools (like antrun) becomes inevitable.
Not sure why you are having problems with maven-2.
It differs from ant and buildr in that it is a tool for describing your build process, not scripting it. Complex builds, the ones with multiple dynamic parts and nested and/or transient dependencies are hard to build because they are hard to describe. |
1,306,579 | I am really tired of struggling with Maven 2 all the time. Build tools should not be in the way. Recently I have been looking at Buildr and Gradle. Maven 3 seems to fix some of the struggles. So, what should I go for now? Buildr? Gradle? Or wait a year for Maven 3? | 2009/08/20 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1306579",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/160082/"
] | I think people complaining about Maven should spend a little extra time investigating available plugins. In response to comments complaining that Maven is rigid and makes it hard to use custom build logic / provide fine-grained control over the build process - I would recommend looking into Ant plug-in for Maven (there are actually several, but here is one: <http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-antrun-plugin>). I have had great success customizing Maven builds with it over the years. Basically, it allows you to run any Ant command as part of the Maven build, and you can do pretty much anything with Ant ;) | Ant with Ivy does the same dependency management Maven does (in fact, it uses Maven's whole dependency management infrastructure including the same URL repositories), but without all the POM configuration mess.
Ant with Ivy might be a way of handling the dependency issues for people who really don't want to use Maven. It solves 90% of the stuff that Maven was suppose to solve. |
1,306,579 | I am really tired of struggling with Maven 2 all the time. Build tools should not be in the way. Recently I have been looking at Buildr and Gradle. Maven 3 seems to fix some of the struggles. So, what should I go for now? Buildr? Gradle? Or wait a year for Maven 3? | 2009/08/20 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1306579",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/160082/"
] | We use Maven here, but I find that once you get outside of a simple project, the pom.xml starts to get more and more complex. You start spending a lot of time working out how in the heck to configure your pom to do what you want, and how to work around the various issues.
The thing that really got me was the ear we're building. We have multiple wars in that ear file, and Maven normally sticks the libraries in the wars. However, to reduce the size of the wars, and to keep the jars all the same, we wanted to put the jars shared between the wars in the ear's lib directory.
Unfortunately, Maven doesn't handle this very well. We needed to manually configure this for each of the wars' poms, and then add all of these dependencies into the ear's pom.
In another project we have HTML based help files. The people who write the help write them in Microsoft Word then use a program to translate them into HTML. A single character change can reverberate throughout hundreds of files.
To get around this issue, our help system is stored in our source repository as a single zipped file. When our documentation team creates a new set of help files, they zip it up and replace what is in the repository.
So, part of my build is unzipping this file and placing it in the war. Easy to do in Ant, can't do it in Maven unless you use the Antrun plugin which allows you to write Ant code to handle issues that Maven cannot handle without a full blown plugin.
I can see what Maven is doing, but theory got ahead of reality. What I found is that Ivy and Ant can do most of the dependency checking that Maven does without all the issues of writing and maintaining the poms.
If you're not already using Maven, try Ant with Ivy first. Then when, Maven 3 comes out, try that. I remember the transition from Maven 1 to Maven 2. They were entirely incompatible with each other and anything you learned using Maven 1 was obsolete. It would be silly to learn and redo your projects in Maven 2 to suddenly find yourself redoing everything for Maven 3. | I think people complaining about Maven should spend a little extra time investigating available plugins. In response to comments complaining that Maven is rigid and makes it hard to use custom build logic / provide fine-grained control over the build process - I would recommend looking into Ant plug-in for Maven (there are actually several, but here is one: <http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-antrun-plugin>). I have had great success customizing Maven builds with it over the years. Basically, it allows you to run any Ant command as part of the Maven build, and you can do pretty much anything with Ant ;) |
1,306,579 | I am really tired of struggling with Maven 2 all the time. Build tools should not be in the way. Recently I have been looking at Buildr and Gradle. Maven 3 seems to fix some of the struggles. So, what should I go for now? Buildr? Gradle? Or wait a year for Maven 3? | 2009/08/20 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1306579",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/160082/"
] | No build system is a magic bullet. I find Maven solves more problems than it causes for me, but I'm quite comfortable writing plugins to get round its shortcomings, I also deal with hundreds of projects, so Maven's inheritance and dependency processing is quite helpful for me.
Browse SO a bit and you'll see Buildr and Gradle both have issues too (same for Ant and Ivy), generally you're trading one set of problems for another and its a case of finding the least painful.
Is there anything in particular that is bothering you about Maven or is it a general itch? If it is a particular problem it is worth looking at the [Maven 3 issues on Jira](http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/MNG), if the problem isn't addressed, you can raise it, or else there may be little point in you waiting | Ant with Ivy does the same dependency management Maven does (in fact, it uses Maven's whole dependency management infrastructure including the same URL repositories), but without all the POM configuration mess.
Ant with Ivy might be a way of handling the dependency issues for people who really don't want to use Maven. It solves 90% of the stuff that Maven was suppose to solve. |
1,306,579 | I am really tired of struggling with Maven 2 all the time. Build tools should not be in the way. Recently I have been looking at Buildr and Gradle. Maven 3 seems to fix some of the struggles. So, what should I go for now? Buildr? Gradle? Or wait a year for Maven 3? | 2009/08/20 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1306579",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/160082/"
] | I wouldn't expect too much from Maven 3. The people behind the Maven pedigree of build tools have always held the assumption that project builds are homogeneous, that is: all build problems fundamentally boil down to the same problem. This view of the world can be held fairly consistently in the face of opposing views but comes at a cost. The absence of scripting logic in Maven ("when you want to script you know you're doing something wrong"), the cumbersome plugin API ("no ordinary Maven user should want to write a plugin") and the central repository ("we all have the same dependencies") are all testaments of this overarching assumption.
In the real world build problems are heterogeneous because people build software for a wide variety of reasons. They all 'develop' like we all 'drill holes' once in a while for solving unique problems. Regardless of your level of abstraction you'll always find similarities when comparing arbitrary build problems. It is the reveration of these similarities and the condemnation of differences that is the downfall for Maven's design and the reason why it draws so much flak. Basically, Maven is authoritarian and utopian in its outlook.
PS: Maven has good features, like convention-over-configuration and the idea of using repositories (the Maven implementation of this idea is troublesome). | Maven 2 and 3 have both been working perfectly for me on a variety of projects. I am currently using Maven 3 alpha 7 which works very well, especially in conjunction with the Eclipse Maven plugin.
Maven integrates seamlessly with Ant - in both directions. In my current project, we invoke Maven from Ant multiple times in order to perform complex integration test. Likewise, we use Ant via Maven's AntRun plugin, and we also wrote our own Maven plugins. This, by the way, is a matter of minutes and boils down to writing an annotated Pojo.
Maven gets a lot of flak because many developers don't like rules or conventions. Quite simply, nobody forces you to use Maven. If you want ultimate freedom - by any means - re-write your own build process for every project you join. However, if you like to create software rather than re-inventing the wheel with a custom-made build process on every project, go for Maven. |
1,306,579 | I am really tired of struggling with Maven 2 all the time. Build tools should not be in the way. Recently I have been looking at Buildr and Gradle. Maven 3 seems to fix some of the struggles. So, what should I go for now? Buildr? Gradle? Or wait a year for Maven 3? | 2009/08/20 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1306579",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/160082/"
] | No build system is a magic bullet. I find Maven solves more problems than it causes for me, but I'm quite comfortable writing plugins to get round its shortcomings, I also deal with hundreds of projects, so Maven's inheritance and dependency processing is quite helpful for me.
Browse SO a bit and you'll see Buildr and Gradle both have issues too (same for Ant and Ivy), generally you're trading one set of problems for another and its a case of finding the least painful.
Is there anything in particular that is bothering you about Maven or is it a general itch? If it is a particular problem it is worth looking at the [Maven 3 issues on Jira](http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/MNG), if the problem isn't addressed, you can raise it, or else there may be little point in you waiting | I wouldn't expect too much from Maven 3. The people behind the Maven pedigree of build tools have always held the assumption that project builds are homogeneous, that is: all build problems fundamentally boil down to the same problem. This view of the world can be held fairly consistently in the face of opposing views but comes at a cost. The absence of scripting logic in Maven ("when you want to script you know you're doing something wrong"), the cumbersome plugin API ("no ordinary Maven user should want to write a plugin") and the central repository ("we all have the same dependencies") are all testaments of this overarching assumption.
In the real world build problems are heterogeneous because people build software for a wide variety of reasons. They all 'develop' like we all 'drill holes' once in a while for solving unique problems. Regardless of your level of abstraction you'll always find similarities when comparing arbitrary build problems. It is the reveration of these similarities and the condemnation of differences that is the downfall for Maven's design and the reason why it draws so much flak. Basically, Maven is authoritarian and utopian in its outlook.
PS: Maven has good features, like convention-over-configuration and the idea of using repositories (the Maven implementation of this idea is troublesome). |
1,306,579 | I am really tired of struggling with Maven 2 all the time. Build tools should not be in the way. Recently I have been looking at Buildr and Gradle. Maven 3 seems to fix some of the struggles. So, what should I go for now? Buildr? Gradle? Or wait a year for Maven 3? | 2009/08/20 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1306579",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/160082/"
] | **maven 3.x is already embedded in IDEs** (at least on netbeans, check [this link](http://www.scribd.com/doc/14458957/Jasons-Maven-3-Presentation) for more infomration). You can play today with maven 3.x simply building a Maven project with netbeans.
Another nice news is that maven got more 'enterprise' support with integrating EJB/WS in IDE projects (again, at least on netbeans).
So I would stick to maven 2.x for production builds and play with maven 3.x for development. | Give Lattice <https://github.com/hackingspirit/Lattice> a try. I am the author. Here is the scoop:
In Lattice build files are written not in XML, but in the Python language. The ben- efits are much better readability and powerful imperative build scripting supported by Python.
For multi-module projects. Lattice uses topological sorting to decide the correct order to build each module. It’s also planned that Lattice will analyze the module dependency to determine how the module compilation can be parallelized.
Lattice’s source code is extremely lean, currently it consists of about 500 lines of Python source code. |
31,367 | I use Google Apps email to send out details of a product I sell to people who enquire about it via a web form.
After a month or so I go through my *Sent Mail* folder and send a follow up email to all those I haven't heard off. Each email is the same except for the person's name in the greeting.
So in summary, periodically I need to send the same email to recipients in my *Sent Mail* folder that meet certain criteria: I emailed them in the past 2 months, the subject of the email was "My Super Product", I haven't had a reply off them since my last email.
Is there any tool available that can do this automatically? | 2012/09/21 | [
"https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/31367",
"https://webapps.stackexchange.com",
"https://webapps.stackexchange.com/users/24814/"
] | Gmail filters only act on messages when they arrive. There's not a way to do what you want with filters.
For a pure Gmail solution, you can accomplish almost what you want by judicious use of search and the [Canned Responses Lab](http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/new-in-labs-canned-responses.html). That will make sending identical messages to a bunch of people relatively easy.
Another option would be to use some third-party tool. You can get your email via POP3 or IMAP, so virtually any desktop email client can get your messages. There are probably tools out there that will allow you to do what you're looking for. (That's outside the ken of WebApps, though.)
Alternatively, what you really need is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution. Salesforce.com and its ilk probably already have the tools that you want. | You should try [Boomerang](http://www.boomeranggmail.com/), I think it will do what you want
>
> **Schedule an email to be sent later. Easy email reminders.**
>
> Boomerang for Gmail is a Firefox / Chrome plugin that lets you take control of when you send and receive email messages.
>
>
> |
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