The happiness of seizing one of these tall barriers to a room by the porcelain knob of its belly; this quick hand-to-hand, during which progress slows for a moment, your eye opens up and your whole body adapts to its new apartment.
— Francis Ponge (1899–1988), Les plaisirs de la porte
When is a door
not a door? It might be a rope-bridge or a ladder,
for instance. Inform provides doors for any situation in which some
game object is intermediate between one place and another, and
might on occasion become a barrier. Doors have a good deal in
common with containers, in that they need to be open to allow access and
to this end can also have openable
, lockable
or locked
. Just as with containers, any key they have
should be stored in the with_key
property. The same
actions Open
, Close
, Lock
and Unlock
all apply to doors just as they apply to
containers. There are four steps in creating a new door
:
door
attribute;door_to
property to the location on
the other side;door_dir
property to the direction which
that would be, such as n_to
;For example, here is a closed and locked door, blocking the way into the ‘Ruins’ Shrine:
Object Corridor "Stooped Corridor" with description "A low, square-cut corridor, running north to south, stooping you over.", n_to Square_Chamber, s_to StoneDoor; Object -> StoneDoor "stone door" with description "It's just a big stone door.", name 'door' 'massive' 'big' 'stone' 'yellow', when_closed "Passage south is barred by a massive door of yellow stone.", when_open "The great yellow stone door to the south is open.", door_to Shrine, door_dir s_to, with_key stone_key has static door openable lockable locked;
Note that the door is static
–
otherwise the player could pick it up and walk away with it.
(Experienced play-testers of Inform games try this every time,
and usually come away with a door or two.) The properties when_closed
and when_open
give descriptions appropriate for the door
in these two states.
A door is ordinarily only present on one side of
a map connection. If a door needs to be accessible, say openable or
lockable, from either side, then the standard trick is to make it
present in both locations using found_in
and to fix the
door_to
and door_dir
to be the right way
round for whichever side the player is on. Here, then, is a two-way door:
Object -> StoneDoor "stone door" with description "It's just a big stone door.", name 'door' 'massive' 'big' 'stone' 'yellow', when_closed "The passage is barred by a massive door of yellow stone.", when_open "The great yellow stone door is open.", door_to [; if (self in Corridor) return Shrine; return Corridor; ], door_dir [; if (self in Shrine) return n_to; return s_to; ], with_key stone_key, found_in Corridor Shrine, has static door openable lockable locked;
where Corridor
has s_to
set
to StoneDoor
, and Shrine
has n_to
set to StoneDoor
. The door can now be opened, closed, entered,
locked or unlocked from either side. We could also make when_open
and when_closed
into routines to print different descriptions
of the door on each side.
· · · · ·
Puzzles more interesting than lock-and-key involve writing some code to intervene when the player tries to pass through. The interactive fiction literature has no shortage of doors which only a player with no possessions can pass through, for instance.
Care is required here because two different actions
can make the player pass through the door. In the Corridor above,
the player might type “s” or “go south”,
causing the action Go s_obj
. Or might “enter
stone door” or “go through door”, causing Enter
StoneDoor
. Provided the door is actually open,
the Enter
action then looks at the door's door_dir
property, finds
that the door faces south and generates the action Go s_obj
.
Thus, provided that the door is open, the outcome is the
same and you need only write code to trap the Go
action.
A neater alternative is to make the door_to
property a routine. If a door_to
routine returns false
instead of a room, then the player is told that the door “leads
nowhere”, like the broken bridge of Avignon. If door_to
returns true
, then the library stops the action on the
assumption that something has happened and the player has been told
already.
•
EXERCISE 20
Create a plank bridge across a chasm, which collapses if the player
walks across it while carrying anything.
•
EXERCISE 21
Create a locked door which turns out to be an immaterial illusion
only when the player tries to walk through it in blind faith.
• REFERENCES
‘Advent’ is especially rich in two-way doors: the steel
grate in the streambed, two bridges (one of crystal, the other of rickety
wood) and a door with rusty hinges. See also the iron gate in
‘Balances’.
•The library extension "doors.h"
by L. Ross Raszewski defines a class called Connector
of
two-way doors, which are slotted automatically into the map for convenience.
Max Kalus's further extension "doors2.h" enables
such doors to respond to, say, “the north door” from one
side and “the south door” from the other.


Coming soon in MPDR
This is a list of the planned features for the upcoming versions. (It also serves as a TODO for the developers!)
They are not ordered in any particular order.
- Preset backwards-compatibility with the first version of MPDR (Prototype 1)
- Map patches: So that the doors' colors show up properly in the map.
- Exclude doors: Exclude specific doors from being randomized.
- Power Bomb lockpicking: In a pinch, use a Power Bomb to open a door of any color.
- Easy Doors: When a non-blue door is opened, it will turn to blue permanently.
- Full multi-language support: Allows switching between languages without changing the system languages.
- Multi-language docs: Starting with Spanish.


--- layout: page slide_id: 0 ---
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rotten > Library > Crime > Corporate Crime > McDonald's
McDonald's
Anyone who's ever consumed a Shamrock shake and reveled in how it transformed the color of their feces has experienced the alchemy of McDonald's food. But the cuisine is not without its detractors.
Synonymous with mass-marketed crap, McDonald's is generally reviled as lowest common denominator fare. Greasy, salty foodstuffs concocted to satisfy your most unhealthy gastronomic cravings in the maximally-profitable manner. It is cheap, ubiquitous, and marketed to the working class. All of which makes it the perfect target for budding culture snobs.
As such, people commonly bitch that McDonald's is selling "junk food" -- substandard fare, marginally suitable for human consumption -- as if its customers are somehow hypnotized into buying food that doesn't really appeal to them.  McDonald's delivers a consistent, if somewhat bland, product that competes quite well in the marketplace. If people didn't want Big Macs and french fries, they wouldn't buy them.
Most people who hate McDonald's are really just anti-establishment wannabes. Maybe they were raised by hippie parents, maybe they listened to a lot of punk rock in high school, or maybe they're pretentious jerks. Whatever the issue, these people feel compelled to reject the modern-day corporatocracy, but deep down they know there's no way they could live a whole month without Starbucks or Comedy Central.  They're just -- the food, y'know? Yuck. And the rainforest... |
| FAMISHED: |
Burger King, then? |
| IDEALIST: |
Sure, whatever. |
Feel free to slam McDonald's, but you should resist the urge to blindly rail against their product offerings. Especially when there are plenty of good reasons to oppose the multinational corporation behind them.
First of all, the company can't be trusted to keep its own story straight. Consider the lionization of Ray Kroc. Kroc's business card bore just his name, the golden arches, and the word "Founder." Except that Richard and Maurice McDonald were the actual founders. By the time Ray Kroc entered the picture, the McDonald brothers had already opened eight restaurants. Kroc joined on as their franchise agent. (Ever wonder why it isn't called Kroc's?) But he bought them out six years later for $2.7 million and went on to minimize their role in the official company history.
"Sometimes after reading excerpts from an article on McDonald's, I began to wonder if the McDonald brothers ever had anything to do with the success of McDonald's," observed Richard McDonald. "During the years from the time we first met Ray Kroc in 1954 and hired him in 1955 to be our franchise agent, there was never any mention over the years that Ray was founder of McDonald's. However, after we sold to Ray and his associates, he was elevated to be the founder."
As far as megalomaniacal Ray Kroc was concerned, there was one problem with the buyout arrangement: it allowed the McDonald brothers to maintain ownership of the original McDonald's restaurant in San Bernardino, California at 14th and E Street. So what did Ray Kroc do? First he forced them to change the name of their restaurant (which became "The Big M"). Then he opened a McDonald's franchise as quickly as possible just one block away at 15th and E, purposely driving the McDonald brothers out of business. This event illustrates not only Ray's overweening vanity, but also his single-minded philosophy about competing in the fast food industry:
"It is ridiculous to call this an industry. This is not.   You're talking about the American way -- of survival of the fittest."
- "McJob" bellyaching.
- McLibel trial.
- McDonald Clan and Scottish trademark law.
- San Ysidro shooting spree.
- Coffee crotch lawsuit.
- Beef tallow in veggie french fries.
- Deforestation.
- Mad cow.
- Monopoly game fraud.
- Canadian poultry shortage resulting from Chicken McNugget craze.
- The McRib.
- Mishaps.
Around the world, the McDonald's Corporation serves as a glaring reminder of U.S. hegemony. The restaurants are themselves seen as outposts of American corporate culture. And their relentless encroachment into new regions has caused a huge backlash from globalization foes and people who distrust anything originating in the United States... not to mention legions of vegetarians, environmentalists, labor organizers, wannabe anarchists, and elitist food critics. And so, the fast food chain suffers a relentless onslaught from these forces as well.
But none of that is any reason they deserve your pity. The multinational hamburger empire has repeatedly abused its substantial power, thereby pissing away any claim to moral superiority.
Quotes
"We have found out... that we cannot trust some people who are nonconformists... We will make conformists out of them... The organization cannot trust the individual; the individual must trust the organization."
--Ray Kroc
"Everything went downhill from the moment the McDonald's chain was allowed to invade England."
--Morrissey
"I am in complete solidarity with France's farm-workers, and I detest McDonald's food."
--Jacques Chirac
"The Israeli people are infected with Americanization. We must not be concerned for culture only as culture, but understand what Israeli culture is, and Israeli religion. We must be wary of McDonald's; we must be wary of Michael Jackson; we must be wary of Madonna."
--Israeli President Ezer Weizman, summer 1999
"You people are destroying the rainforests of the world by grazing your cheap cattle.
--Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
Timeline
| 12 Dec 1948 |
In Los Angeles, Richard and Maurice McDonald open their first hamburger stand, featuring the "Speedee Service System." |
| 2 Mar 1955 |
Ray Kroc founds "McDonald's Systems Inc." It is later renamed "McDonald's Corporation" in 1960. |
| 15 Apr 1955 |
The first McDonald's franchise opens in Des Plaines, a suburb of Chicago. Because it is the first one launched by Ray Kroc, he names it "McDonald's #1" despite the fact that the McDonald brothers had already opened eight of their chain restaurants before they began accepting licensees. Kroc's unfortunate numbering system guarantees perpetual confusion for amateur fast food historians the world over. |
| 1956 |
McDonald's CFO Harry J. Sonneborn introduces the company to the real estate business by creating a subsidiary called the Franchise Realty Corporation. Looking back on it decades later, Ray Kroc observes: "Harry alone put in the policy that salvaged this company and made it a big-leaguer. His idea is what made McDonald's rich." |
| 1958 |
100 million McDonald's hamburgers served. |
| 1961 |
Ray Kroc buys out the McDonald brothers for $2.7 million. |
| 1961 |
500 million McDonald's hamburgers served. |
| 1962 |
McDonald's launches the Hulaburger: a vegetarian cheeseburger with a large ring of pineapple instead of the meat. |
| 1963 |
One billion McDonald's hamburgers served. |
| 1967 |
The first McDonald's outside the United States opens in Richmond, British Columbia. |
| 1970 |
McDonald's opens in Costa Rica, serving beef from cattle ranches on former rainforest land deforested in the '50s and '60s. |
| 1971 |
The first Makadonaldo restaurant opens in Japan, inside the Mitsukoshi Department Store in Tokyo. |
| 1971 |
President of McDonald's Japan, Den Fujita, declares: "The reason Japanese people are so short and have yellow skins is because they have eaten nothing but fish and rice for two thousand years." Going further, he says: "If we eat McDonald's hamburgers and potatoes for a thousand years we will become taller, our skin become white, and our hair blonde." |
| 1971 |
Maurice "Mac" McDonald dies. |
| 1972 |
McDonald's CEO Ray Kroc funnels $250,000 to President Richard M. Nixon in exchange for a 20% reduction in the minimum wage for teenagers. |
| 15 Jan 1973 |
President Richard M. Nixon gushes in a letter to McDonald's CEO Ray Kroc:
One of the highlights of my sixty-first birthday celebration was when Tricia suggested we needed a "break" on our drive to Palm Springs, and we turned in at McDonald's. I had heard for years from our girls that the "Big Mac" was really something special, and while I've often credited Mrs. Nixon with making the best hamburgers in the world, we are both convinced that McDonald's runs a close second... The next time the cook has a night off we will know where to go for fast service, cheerful hospitality -- and probably one of the best food buys in America.
|
| 1974 |
Twoallbeefpattiesspecialsaucelettucecheesepicklesonionsonasesameseedbun. |
| 1975 |
Stealing an idea from its competitor Wendy's, McDonald's opens its first drive-thru restaurant in Sierra Vista, Arizona. |
| 3 Nov 1982 |
McDonald's announces a voluntary recall of 10 million Playmobil toys, distributed in Happy Meals in October 1982. The toys posed a potential choking hazard for children under three. |
| 15 Oct 1984 |
During a campaign stop at a McDonald's restaurant in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, President Ronald Reagan asks an aide "What am I supposed to order?" |
| 4 Nov 1985 |
McDonald's launches the 680-calorie McD.L.T. sandwich. It has a bipartite product package and the advertising slogan: "The hot stay hot, and the cool stays cool." |
| 18 Mar 1986 |
An internal memo from the marketing department declares: "We can't, at this stage of the situation, really address or defend nutrition. We don't sell nutrition, and people don't come to McDonald's for nutrition." |
| 10 Nov 1986 |
McDonald's announces a voluntary recall of LEGO toy sets distributed in Happy Meals between October and November 1982. The toys posed a potential choking hazard for children under three. |
| 12 Aug 1988 |
Mac and Me released in theaters. This horrible, low-budget ripoff of E.T.: The Extraterrestrial was financed by McDonald's and the Coca-Cola Company. It also features Ronald McDonald as himself. |
| 31 Jan 1990 |
A McDonald's restaurant opens in Pushkin Square, Moscow, making it the first one inside the Soviet Union. |
| 1990 |
The first Mai Dang Lao restaurant opens in China. |
| 1990 |
McDonald's restaurants in America switch to 100% vegetable oil to cook its french fries. For the previous 35 years they had used a mixture of 7% cottonseed oil and 93% beef tallow. |
| 1991 |
McDonald's launches the 320-calorie McLean Deluxe sandwich. It is removed the menu just five years later. |
| 8 May 1992 |
McDonald's announces a voluntary recall of 8 million Doc DeLorean toys, distributed in "Back to the Future" Happy Meals in April 1992. The rear tires were prone to breaking off and potentially lodging in a child's larynx. |
| 26 Nov 1993 |
David Letterman mans the McDonald's drive-thru, with hilarious results. |
| Apr 1994 |
McDonald's indicates its intent to file suit against a topless sandwich shop in Melbourne, Australia named McTits. |
| 14 Apr 1994 |
During the McDonald's Biennial Worldwide Convention, chairman Michael Quinlan announces that the company has exceeded 100 billion hamburgers served. He recommends that, from now on, franchisees post "BILLIONS AND BILLIONS SERVED." |
| 23 Mar 1996 |
McDonald's announces that, due to Mad Cow Disease, it will stop serving British beef in the United Kingdom. |
| May 1996 |
With a $200 million marketing campaign, McDonald's launches a sandwich aimed at the Baby Boomers generation: the 560-calorie Arch Deluxe. |
| 1997 |
Engaging in a price war with its competitors, McDonald's slashes prices. The result? Four months of diminished sales. |
| 28 Jan 1997 |
Mence Powell is arrested for dealing marijuana out of the drive-thru window at a McDonald's in Monroe, Connecticut. |
| 14 Jul 1997 |
Richard McDonald dies. |
| 9 Nov 1997 |
On Meet the Press, President Bill Clinton declares: "It's funny, you know -- I haven't eaten at McDonald's a single time since I've been President." White House spokesman Joe Lockhart later clarifies that the President has enjoyed McDonald's coffee on a number of occasions. |
| 1997 |
McDonald's launches the 810-calorie Big Xtra sandwich, informally nicknamed the "Whopper Stopper." It is removed the menu a little more than two years later. |
| Mar 1998 |
McDonald's launches the ill-conceived Made For You program, promising made-to-order meals in just 90 seconds without any heat lamps. The corporation spends $400 million retrofitting its kitchens, whose primary achievement is slower service. |
| 20 Aug 1998 |
Jennifer Wiebe and Tessa Lowinger convince their coworkers at a McDonald's franchise in Squamish, British Columbia to unionize. |
| 18 Dec 1998 |
McDonald's opens a french fry stand inside Disneyland, housed inside a covered wagon in Frontierland. |
| 6 Jan 2000 |
McDonald's employee Remy Millet is fired for having given five cheeseburger tokens to a gypsy woman begging inside the restaurant in Lescure-d'Albigeois, France in November 1999. |
| 2 May 2000 |
In his book The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas L. Friedman proposes The Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention: any nation with a McDonald's franchise is too economically developed to suffer a war. |
| 6 Sep 2000 |
In a press conference, representatives of Christian Industrial Council accuse McDonald's restaurants in Hong Kong of selling Happy Meals toys made with child labor in Chinese sweatshops. |
| 13 Jan 2001 |
Italian health officials declares that Cremonini, the exclusive beef supplier to McDonald's in Italy, had a cow suspected as being infected by bovine spongiform encephalopathy. |
| 5 Mar 2001 |
After three reported injuries, McDonald's announces a voluntary recall of 234,000 "Scooter Bug" toys, distributed in Happy Meals between November 2000 and February 2001. The antennae were prone to breaking off and lodging in a child's larynx. |
| 21 Aug 2001 |
The FBI arrests Jerome P. Jacobson and seven others suspected of rigging a recent McDonald's promotional game called "Pick Your Prize Monopoly." |
| 27 Dec 2001 |
The Egyptian government demands the return of two mummies buried under a McDonald's in Tamworth, England. |
| 23 Jan 2002 |
In France, Ronald McDonald is replaced by French comic book hero Asterix as the McDonald's mascot. |
| 10 Apr 2002 |
McDonald's employee Stephanie Renee Coleman is arrested in Phenix City, Alabama for leaning over the counter and repeatedly stabbing customer Nelani Walton in the forehead with a ballpoint pen. |
| 8 Aug 2002 |
Slater Smith, manager of a McDonald's in Tampa, Florida, is arrested for allegedly robbing another McDonald's across town on July 3. |
| 17 Sep 2002 |
McDonald's announces a voluntary recall of 100,000 bobblehead figurines depicting Chicago Bears players Brian Urlacher and Anthony Thomas, distributed in Happy Meals between August and September 2002. The toys were slathered in poisonous lead paint. |
| 9 Oct 2002 |
Former President Bill Clinton patronizes a McDonald's restaurant with actor Kevin Spacey in Blackpool, England. |
| 21 Feb 2003 |
Moody's Investors Service reduces McDonald's long-term bond rating two notches, from Aa3 to A2. |
| Jun 2003 |
The 11th edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary includes the term "McJob," which it defines as "a low-paying job that requires little skill and provides little opportunity for advancement." McDonald's CEO Jim Cantalupo complains that the definition amounts to "a slap in the face" of 12 million McDonald's employees worldwide. This despite the fact that the Oxford English Dictionary has a much less flattering definition: "An unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, esp. one created by the expansion of the service sector." |
| 28 Aug 2003 |
McDonald's Corporation promotes Ronald McDonald to the newly-formed position of Chief Happiness Officer. According to the company's press release: "Throughout his 40-year career with McDonald's, Ronald has become a magical friend to children of all ages, and has worked tirelessly to make the world a better place." |
| 6 Sep 2003 |
The Baltimore Sun reports: "American interrogators here have come up with a few new weapons as they try to pry loose the secrets of prisoners captured on the battlefields of Afghanistan. 'It could be cupcakes, it could be Twinkies, it could even be a McDonald's hamburger,' says Warrant Officer James Kluck, who, as the ranking food service officer, helps supply some of the unlikely ammunition. 'Sometimes, they go up on the base and get [the prisoner] a Happy Meal.' A McDonald's Happy Meal? 'Oh, yes, from what I'm told. It's got a toy and everything.'" |
| 4 Nov 2003 |
Marnita Gordon, assistant manager of a McDonald's in Moore, Oklahoma, is arrested for allegedly conspiring to rob her own restaurant. |
| 9 Dec 2003 |
Pop singer Pink admits taking LSD while on duty at a Doylestown, Pennsylvania McDonald's: "I would open, because I'd be tripping on acid... and I would say, 'Could I have bathroom duty?' And I would sit in the bathroom and watch the tiles." |
| 19 Apr 2004 |
McDonald's Chairman and CEO Jim Cantalupo dies of a heart attack. |
Lawsuits, fines
| 1990 |
McDonald's files suit against five members of London Greenpeace over a leaflet they produced in 1986, entitled What's Wrong With McDonald's? The fast food giant drops charges against three of the activists after they issue public apologies, but continue to fight against the remaining two, Dave Morris and Helen Steel. The McLibel case would ultimately become the longest-running court trial in British legal history. |
| 27 Feb 1992 |
Trying to get the lid off her McDonald's coffee to add cream and sugar, 79-year-old Stella Liebeck accidentally splashes the 180-degree beverage on herself, causing third-degree burns to the thighs, genitals, and buttocks. After skin graft surgery and weeks of recuperation, Liebeck asks McDonald's to turn down the temperature of their coffee and pay
$20,000 to defray her hospital bills.  Eventually, a jury awards Liebeck $2.9 million in the resulting lawsuit, which immediately triggers a renewed call for legislative tort reform. The judgment is reduced to $680,000 on appeal, after which the case is settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. |
| 12 Oct 1992 |
Mark Hopkins dies from electrocution while working at a McDonald's in Manchester, England. |
| 28 Jun 1994 |
The McLibel trial begins against Dave Morris and Helen Steel. It will ultimately last three years, making it into the Guinness Book of Records. |
| 1995 |
McDonald's agrees to pay the federal government $5 million after failing to notify the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission of playground injuries involving the Tug-N-Turn. |
| 5 Jul 1995 |
5-year-old Kagan Akdogan is critically wounded falling 10 feet off the Jungle Gym in the playground of a McDonald's in Istanbul. |
| Jan 1996 |
McDonald's threatens to sue Vegan Action over their McVegan t-shirt logo, a parody of the Golden Arches. |
| 15 Feb 1996 |
Linda Gump breaks her right foot slipping on a McDonald's french fry while leaving the Wal-Mart in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. Gump sues Wal-Mart and wins $35,173.22. |
| Feb 1997 |
In Perry, Michigan, Raymond Bills drinks a mouthful of bleach that was supposed to be McDonald's iced tea. He later sues for $10,000. |
| 11 Sep 1998 |
In Menomonie, Wisconsin, Veronica Minor discovers a rolled-up condom in her chicken sandwich. |
| 24 Jul 1997 |
The British government slaps McDonald's with fines totaling $13,850 for polluting an English waterway. |
| 9 Jun 1999 |
A McDonald's in Walsgrave, England is shut down by government health inspectors after four hours of serving food with raw sewage on the kitchen floor. |
| 29 Jun 1999 |
McDonald's agrees to pay the federal government $4 million after failing to notify the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission of playground injuries involving the Big Mac Climber. |
| Oct 1999 |
Veronica M. Martin suffers a second-degree burn and a permanent scar on her chin when a hot pickle drops from her hamburger. Later she files suit against the franchise, which is ultimately settled. |
| 28 Nov 2000 |
Katherine Ortega receives a deep-fried chicken head in her meal at a McDonald's franchise in Newport News, Virginia. |
| Jan 2001 |
In Hong Kong, Lui Siu-chung loses his lawsuit against a local McDonald's for a bit of paper he claimed to have found in his hash browns. The judge orders Lui to pay the defendant $30,000. |
| 8 Feb 2001 |
When Stephanie Felty bites into a Chicken McNugget purchased at a McDonald's in Alcoa, Tennessee, a broken hypodermic needle lodges in her jaw. |
| 6 Apr 2001 |
McDonald's admits that their "vegetarian" french fries contain "a small amount of beef flavoring." A company spokeswoman says: "We use something similar to beef broth, just to enhance the flavor." |
| May 2001 |
University student Yazna Llulle is knocked unconscious at a McDonald's in Santiago, Chile when a large sign falls on her head. The only help offered by the restaurant manager is the address of dental clinic, which turns out to be closed. |
| 1 May 2001 |
On behalf of 16 million vegetarians, a class-action lawsuit is filed in Seattle against McDonald's over the "small amount of beef flavoring" included in its french fries, which the chain had claimed were cooked in "100% vegetable oil." |
| 4 May 2001 |
Midway through her McDonald's cheeseburger, Jackie Wollenberg notices blood stains on the wrapper. When she confronts the bandaged employee of the Largo, Florida franchise, he reassures her: "I just had a blood test last week, and I'm clean." |
| 19 Jun 2001 |
In Detroit, 11-year-old Vincent Ingram bites into a McDonald's cheeseburger and notices that it infested with live maggots. He later files a $1 million lawsuit against the restaurant. |
| Sep 2001 |
Wendy Robinson lifts the bun off her Big Mac to discover a wad of chewed gum. |
| Jan 2002 |
During an argument with a McDonald's employee in West Palm Beach, Florida, customer Carmen Beauchamp is allegedly dragged into the kitchen and repeatedly punched and kicked by two of the workers. She later files suit against the restaurant. |
| 1 Feb 2002 |
In Panama City Beach, Florida, John O'Hare bites into a tough McDonald's bagel, breaking some teeth and bridgework. He files suit against the franchise a year later. |
| May 2002 |
McDonald's sues Italian food critic Edoardo Raspelli over an unfavorable review published in La Stampa. "The ambience was mechanical, the potatoes were obscene and tasting of cardboard, and the bread poor. I found it alienating and vulgar." The chain seeks $24.7 million in damages. |
| 29 May 2002 |
Two managers of a McDonald's in Utah strip search an 18-year-old female employee, then force her to pose nude and jog naked in front of them. She quits her job the next day and later files suit against the restaurant. |
| 28 Jul 2002 |
In Sacramento, California, Ta Van Le and his wife Huyen Ta Le bite into some McDonald's Sausage McMuffins with Egg and notice that they are infested with live maggots. The couple later files a $50,000 lawsuit against the restaurant. |
| 18 Nov 2002 |
In Houston, cancer patient Marcus Long bites into a McDonald's breakfast burrito heavily laden with black pepper. After two weeks of nosebleeds, he decides to file suit against the restaurant. |
| 24 Nov 2002 |
A woman bites into her apple pie at a McDonald's in Eunice, Louisiana and cuts her lip on the razor blade hidden inside. 18-year-old employee Adam Joseph Fontenot later pleads guilty to shoving razor blades into three apple pies, and receives 5 years in prison. |
| 29 Dec 2002 |
Sharon Offak, manager of a McDonald's in Painesville, Ohio, allegedly adds liquid hand sanitizer to the coffee before serving patrons their free refills. She is later arrested and charged with contaminating substances for human consumption, a felony. |
| 26 Feb 2003 |
In Detroit, Joseph Taylor bites into a McDonald's salad at the franchise on Wayne State University campus. To his horror, he discovers an already-chewed piece of gum. Taylor later sues for $25,000. |
| Apr 2003 |
While at a McDonald's drive-thru in Ardeer, Australia, Paul Corda allegedly hears employees calling he and his friends "poofters" and "faggots." When he complains to the manager, Corda is offered a free meal coupon. Seven months later, he files suit against the company. |
| 4 Jul 2003 |
Government authorities shut down a McDonald's and a Burger King near Buenos Aires, Argentina after discovering E. coli bacteria there. |
| 10 Jul 2003 |
Two sheriff's deputies in Tampa, Florida are hospitalized after eating McDonald's hamburgers laced with broken glass. |
| 19 Oct 2003 |
While eating a hamburger at a local McDonald's, a Marine stationed at Cherry Point naval base in Havelock, North Carolina is jabbed by the broken tip of a small-gauge hypodermic needle hidden inside the sandwich. |
| 26 Nov 2003 |
The British government's Advertising Standards Authority bans an ad for McDonald's french fries which claimed: "We peel them, slice them, fry them and that's it." Somehow the company omitted other steps in the process, including par-frying, freezing, and adding sugar and salt. |
| 7 Dec 2003 |
At a McDonald's in Maryville, Tennessee, Janet Woodby's 6-year-old daughter nearly chokes on a bone fragment allegedly contained inside a chicken McNugget. |
| 15 Jun 2004 |
The McDonald's Corporation is sued by the family of Cynthia Molino, one of three employees killed in May 2002 when Frank Nastasi crashed his Cadillac into a company-owned (non-franchise) restaurant in Mount Ephraim, New Jersey. McDonald's apparently refused to honor Molino's life insurance policy, claiming that she was ineligible for death benefits -- because the two-year veteran had recently been promoted to manager and was still within her probationary period. |
Protests
| 16 Oct 1985 |
First annual International Day of Action Against McDonald's. |
| 1990 |
Phil Sokolof runs a full-page ads in major newspapers proclaiming: "McDonald's, Your Hamburgers Have Too Much Fat!" |
| 28 Jun 1994 |
McLibel trial begins. |
| 20 Mar 1996 |
The Animal Rights Direct Action Coalition dumps a 600-pound cow carcass in the middle of a McDonald's drive-thru in Huntington Beach, California. |
| 15 Feb 1997 |
The Animal Liberation Front spreads butyric acid inside a Troy, Michigan McDonald's and spray paints "McShit, McMurder, McDeath" on the bathroom walls. |
| 16 Aug 1997 |
The Animal Liberation Front burns down a McDonald's in West Jordan, Utah. |
| 5 Mar 1998 |
Using a Harley Davidson Cobra lock, college student Jennifer Beatty attaches herself to the metal gate outside the McDonald's Student Center at Morain Valley Community College in Palos Hills, Illinois. For her act of disobedience, Beatty is arrested and expelled. |
| 12 Aug 1999 |
In Millau, France, Jose Bove uses tractors to tear a portion of the roof off a McDonald's under construction. He also paints the slogan: "McDo Dehors, Gardons le Roquefort" -- McDonald's Get Out, Let's Keep the Roquefort. (It rhymes in French.) |
| 31 Aug 1999 |
The Animal Liberation Front burns down a McDonald's in Fulton County, Georgia. |
| Oct 1999 |
In a press release, PETA declares this "Slam McDonald's Month." |
| 3 Apr 2000 |
PETA demonstrators burn a McDonald's flag on the steps of the U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City, Utah. |
| 16 Oct 2000 |
Protesters in 20 Italian cities splatter McDonald's windows with blood and hurl raw meat at police. |
| 24 Feb 2001 |
In Paris, protesters hurl stink bombs at 20 McDonald's restaurants. |
| 4 May 2001 |
Hindu protesters hurl wet cow dung at a McDonald's in Thane, India. |
| Jun 2001 |
During an assembly at Stonington High School sponsored by McDonald's, 15-year-old Tristan Kading antagonizes his school officials.  "She said that won't get you a job at McDonald's." |
| Jul 2001 |
Vandals set fires at seven McDonald's in Montreal. |
| 8 Sep 2001 |
The Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front jointly burn down a McDonald's in Tucson, Arizona. |
| May 2002 |
McDonald's sues Italian food critic Edoardo Raspelli over an unfavorable review published in La Stampa. "The ambience was mechanical, the potatoes were obscene and tasting of cardboard, and the bread poor. I found it alienating and vulgar." The chain seeks $24.7 million in damages. |
| 7 Nov 2002 |
A McDonald's under construction in Voreppe, France suspiciously burns down less than a month prior to its grand opening. |
| 3 Mar 2003 |
A McDonald's franchise in Chico, California is vandalized with "MEAT IS MURDER" and "ANIMAL LIBERATION FRONT" in red spray paint. Beneath the graffiti sit two unlit molotov cocktails. |
| 21 Jun 2003 |
Protesters in Thessaloniki, Greece set fire to a local McDonald's with molotov cocktails. |
| 16 Oct 2003 |
Police in Cardiff, Wales arrest three protesters outside a McDonald's and beat the shit out of them. |
Senseless violence
| 18 Jul 1984 |
James Oliver Huberty opens fire at a San Ysidro McDonald's, leaving 20 dead and 16 wounded. He held off police for an hour, sometimes taking time to finish off victims already wounded. A witness reported Huberty, a recently dismissed security guard, as saying that he'd "killed many people in Vietnam and wanted to kill more." |
| 26 Sep 1984 |
A work crew destroys the San Ysidro McDonald's. It is later converted into a neighborhood park. |
| 10 Aug 1993 |
Dion Terres kills two and wounds a third with a .44 Magnum revolver in a Kenosha, Wisconsin McDonald's. |
| 1 Jun 1996 |
A man with a shotgun in northern Australia shoots up a house, a police station, and a four SWAT team officers near a McDonald's restaurant. |
| 24 Jun 1996 |
A university student gives birth in the parking lot of a McDonald's in Tukwila, Washington. She then dumps the baby in a garbage can and cleans up in the McDonald's restroom. The woman is arrested later that day on campus. |
| Dec 1996 |
One person is shot to death and two others injured when a former McDonald's goes postal at his old jobsite in Vallejo, California. |
| 27 Feb 1997 |
Shawn Michael Demers allegedly shoots a mother and child at a McDonald's in Lakeland, Florida. |
| 8 Jun 1997 |
A mother is shot to death in front of her children outside a McDonald's in Rancho Cucamonga, California. |
| 16 Jun 1997 |
A 9-year-old girl is shot to death during an armed robbery at a McDonald's in Barstow, California. |
| Mar 1999 |
Miguel Cano shoots at Ismael Ramos Jr. inside a Las Vegas McDonald's, accidentally killing bystander Crystal Lee Ledesma. |
| 14 Feb 2000 |
Three teenagers accidentally set a Houston, Texas McDonalds on fire while trying to cut open its safe with a blowtorch. Two firefighters are killed trying to extinguish the blaze. Allen Jerome Davis, Juan M. Torres, and Pedro Isreal Loredo are later charged with two counts of felony murder. |
| 1 Mar 2000 |
In Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, Ronald Taylor goes on a shooting spree, starting his rampage at an apartment complex, then continuing on to a local Burger King and a McDonald's. |
| 19 Apr 2000 |
A dynamite bomb explodes at a McDonald's in Dinan, France. One employee is killed by the blast. |
| 28 Jun 2000 |
Willis Lee, janitor at a McDonald's in Houston, Texas, shoots two armed robbers while they are holding up the restaurant. |
| 5 Jul 2000 |
Zsolt B. shoots up a McDonald's in Budapest, killing one person and wounding three. |
| 14 Dec 2000 |
Seven soldiers from Fort Carson allegedly rob a McDonald's in Fountain, Colorado. They are arrested at the base a four hours later. |
| 25 Mar 2001 |
In Richmond, California, Khante "Kiki" Johnson allegedly stabs her boyfriend in the heart with a steak knife, killing him. Japaicka "Pecka" Colon had returned from McDonald's with a ham, egg, and cheese bagel and coffee instead of the two sausage McMuffins and orange juice she requested. |
| 9 May 2001 |
A 23-year-old man is shot to death outside a McDonald's in San Francisco. |
| 10 May 2001 |
A 50-year-old woman is shot to death outside a McDonald's in St. Petersburg, Florida. |
| 28 May 2001 |
After receiving some cold french fries, a disgruntled customer in Orlando, Florida shoots out the front window of the responsible McDonald's with a BB gun. |
| 6 Jun 2001 |
Employee Genoveva Velasquez is shot five times in the McDonald's parking lot in Wheaton, Maryland. Her alleged killer, boyfriend Michael Alfonso, is arrested in Mexico three years later. |
| Sep 2001 |
A bomb explodes inside an Istanbul McDonald's, injuring one person in the leg. |
| 15 Dec 2001 |
A suicide bomber strikes a two-story McDonald's in Xi'an, China, killing two and injuring 26. |
| 1 Apr 2002 |
Students rioting near Cairo University vent their frustration against the local McDonald's franchise. |
| 15 May 2002 |
Believing it to be empty at 4:20am, Frank Nastasi crashes his Cadillac into a McDonald's restaurant in Mount Ephraim, New Jersey, killing three female employees. Shortly before his excursion, Nastasi sent an email to a friend saying: "John Nash, there is no way to save it, you are right it would take a miracle, think and John Lennon and Yoko, Occam's razor, Catch 22, too imaginable." |
| 14 Jul 2002 |
In the parking lot of a McDonald's franchise in London, two men are shot and stabbed by a group of black males. |
| 23 Sep 2002 |
A car bomb explodes in a McDonald's parking lot in Jounieh, Lebanon. |
| 11 Oct 2002 |
An ammonium nitrate bomb explodes in front of a McDonald's in Vantaa, Finland. The blast kills seven. |
| 19 Oct 2002 |
A car bomb explodes behind a McDonald's franchise in Moscow, killing one and injuring at least seven. |
| 25 Oct 2002 |
A pair of deer jumps through the plate glass window at a McDonald's franchise in Washington, D.C., injuring four women. |
| Nov 2002 |
A gunman threatens a McDonald's employee at a franchise in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, then sets fire to the restaurant. |
| 5 Dec 2002 |
A bomb explodes inside a McDonald's in Makassar, Indonesia, killing three. |
| 6 Dec 2002 |
An explosion at a Bombay McDonald's injures 17. Officials later claim it was just a faulty air conditioner. |
| 1 Feb 2003 |
Istanbul police manage to defuse a time bomb left inside a two-story suburban McDonald's. |
| 22 Feb 2003 |
Angry that his take-out order was lacking two hamburgers, Danny Thomas returns to the McDonald's in Portland, Oregon and jabs a ball-point pen into manager Antonio Mapapalangi's left cheekbone. Then Thomas goes to his 1996 Infiniti and uses his Taurus .357 Magnum revolver to fire six rounds into the drive-through window. He later receives a 13-year sentence. |
| 25 Feb 2003 |
A man tosses an unlit molotov cocktail into a McDonald's in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. |
| 22 Mar 2003 |
A grenade explodes in an empty McDonald's near Athens, Greece. |
| Apr 2003 |
The Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front sets off a bomb at a McDonald's in Istanbul. |
| 5 Apr 2003 |
A stick of dynamite explodes in the bathroom of a crowded McDonald's in Beirut, Lebanon, injuring three people. Simultaneously, a car bomb in front of the restaurant malfunctions, breaking only the rear windshield. |
| 23 Apr 2003 |
At a McDonald's parking lot in Houston, Waynetta Nolan runs down the restaurant manager in a hit-and-run because her request for mayo on her cheeseburger was initially refused. Nolan receives 10 years in prison for the crime. |
| 17 May 2003 |
At a McDonald's in Germantown, Maryland, Milika L. Hayes allegedly smashes fistfuls of hot fries into the face of a 4-year-old boy after he accidentally brushed against her shirt with his ice cream cone. She is arrested by police and charged with first-degree assault and disorderly conduct. |
| 15 Jun 2003 |
A bomb explodes at a McDonald's restaurant in Xi'an, China. Xu Yonggang is later arrested and charged with the crime. |
| Jul 2003 |
In Muncy, Pennsylvania, McDonald's manager Danielle S. Baum takes a rifle from her truck and kills a feral cat in the parking lot. She later pleads guilty to animal cruelty and pays a $375 fine. |
| 6 Sep 2003 |
Herbert Butler allegedly kills his wife, then drives a McDonald's in Johns Island, South Carolina and shoots employee Christopher Simmons in the chest. |
| 1 Oct 2003 |
In the bathroom of Columbus, Ohio McDonald's, Larry T. Scott allegedly shoots Charles Mintun twice in the chest. |
| 18 Oct 2003 |
During an argument at a McDonald's in the south side of Chicago, an unidentified 27-year-old man brandishes a gun at a female employee. He is later shot by police a few blocks away. |
| 29 Oct 2003 |
A man walks up to the drive-thru window at an Atlanta McDonald's and shoots employee Carl Goodman three times. |
| 31 Oct 2003 |
A former employee crashes his car into a McDonald's training center in Amsterdam. |
| 12 Nov 2003 |
Two men suffer gunshot wounds to the leg in a possibly-gang-related shooting outside a McDonald's in north Minneapolis. |
| 25 Nov 2003 |
An off-duty Chicago police officer shoots and kills 21-year-old Steven Curry, an unarmed man, outside a McDonald's in Hyde Park. |
| 27 Nov 2003 |
After kicking out all the employees and customers, Donald Jaworowicz stages an eight-hour armed standoff at a McDonald's in Springville, Utah. |
| 1 Dec 2003 |
An 18-year-old man sitting in the drive-thru of a Madison, Wisconsin McDonald's is struck by a shotgun blast delivered by a minivan which had pulled alongside him. |
| 5 Dec 2003 |
60-year-old Mary VanDosen is killed by a runaway vehicle after its driver suffered a seizure and plowed into a McDonald's parking lot in Sturgis, Michigan. |
| 10 Dec 2003 |
Robert Crawford is shot and killed outside a Phildelphia McDonald's. |
| 13 Dec 2003 |
Sitting in a McDonald's drive-thru in Mission Hills, California, Sergio Ernesto Reyes is shot dead in his truck waiting for his order. |
| 20 Dec 2003 |
Caltone Cockrell is arrested for allegedly shooting Zahmall Davis at a McDonald's drive-thru in Madison, Wisconsin. |
| 13 Feb 2004 |
One man is shot dead during a heated argument in the parking lot of a McDonald's in Riverdale, Maryland. |
| 24 Apr 2004 |
Around 10pm, Raymond Lewis Young II allegedly shoots two men in the parking lot of a McDonald's in Greenville, South Carolina. |
| 7 May 2004 |
Sometime before dawn, an alleged auto thief is killed when he crashes his stolen car into the McDonald's drive-thru in Riverdale Park, Maryland. |
| 12 Jun 2004 |
During his son's birthday party at a McDonald's in Selma, Alabama, Lorenzo Walker allegedly whips out a pistol and fires eight shots, twice wounding his girlfriend's pregnant sister Latoya Powell. |
| 22 Aug 2004 |
The Tampa Bay Area Bomb Squad safely detonates a pipe bomb discovered earlier that night in the parking lot of a McDonald's in Port Richey, Florida. |
| 14 Oct 2004 |
Jason Eric Steif is shot to death at a McDonald's in Reading, Pennsylvania while sitting in the drive-thru. |
| 24 Oct 2004 |
A bomb explodes outside a McDonald's in Trabzon, Turkey, injuring six people. |
| 21 Jan 2005 |
During an alleged armed robbery at the McDonald's on Paradise Road in Las Vegas, Charles Anthony Walker allegedly shoots to death 49-year-old conventioneer Thomas Latimer. |
| 8 Feb 2005 |
In Rockford, Illinois an unidentified gunman in a Pontiac four-door drives up to the McDonald's on Auburn Street and fires three shots into a dining-room window. A few diners are injured by shards of glass. |
| 23-May-2006 |
46-year-old Lanny Barnes is pulled from his green Honda Accord and arrested after allegedly mowing down two adults and three toddlers at a McDonald's parking lot in Covington, Georgia. |
Pornopolis |
Rotten |
Faces of Death |
Famous Nudes
|


| Competition Name | Reward | Teams | Deadline |
|---|---|---|---|
| $3,000,000 | 1182 | 9 months | |
| $10,000 | 14 | 2 months | |
| $25,000 | 8 | 2 months | |
| Kudos | 80 | 46 days | |
| $10,000 | 17 | 38 days | |
| Jobs | 321 | 16 days | |
| $22,500 | 314 | 9.1 days | |
| $1,000 | 104 | 5.1 days | |
| $500 | 76 | 5.1 days | |
| $20,000 | 703 | 8 days ago | |
| $8,000 | 658 | 22 days ago | |
| $8,000 | 171 | 22 days ago | |
| $100,000 | 156 | 54 days ago | |
| $17,500 | 265 | 54 days ago | |
| $7,030 | 114 | 56 days ago | |
| $1,000 | 48 | 2 months ago | |
| Kudos | 50 | 2 months ago | |
| $10,000 | 52 | 2 months ago | |
| $5,000 | 241 | 3 months ago | |
| $10,000 | 113 | 5 months ago | |
| $10,000 | 571 | 5 months ago | |
| $5,000 | 926 | 6 months ago | |
| $5,000 | 206 | 7 months ago | |
| $500 | 28 | 8 months ago | |
| $10,000 | 105 | 8 months ago | |
| $10,000 | 279 | 8 months ago | |
| $10,000 | 94 | 9 months ago | |
| $3,000 | 72 | 10 months ago | |
| $500 | 259 | 13 months ago | |
| $10,000 | 181 | 13 months ago | |
| $1,000 | 30 | 14 months ago | |
| $950 | 176 | 15 months ago | |
| $5,000 | 204 | 16 months ago | |
| $10,000 | 356 | 16 months ago | |
| $150 | 57 | 16 months ago | |
| $950 | 117 | 17 months ago | |
| $500 | 42 | 19 months ago | |
| $617 | 252 | 19 months ago | |
| $0 | 145 | 20 months ago | |
| $500 | 55 | 21 months ago | |
| $500 | 107 | 23 months ago | |
| $100 | 68 | 2 years ago | |
| $100 | 63 | 2 years ago | |
| $1,000 | 22 | 2 years ago |
Showing 1–44 of 44 competitions found (9 active)
with —


Skating on fresh ice is a treat, especially when life gets complicated
by Ben BoltonA couple and their dog visited a lake in Chickaloon, Alaska, in mid-November. And lucky for us, they brought their ice skates!
The video above shows them majestically gliding along the freshly frozen ice, with mountains and snow as a beautiful backdrop.
It's fun to watch them weave in and out as they move quickly across the cold reflective surface, even doing some fun dance moves along the way.
The outing, while fun to watch, was also a much needed break for the woman you see skating in the video.
"The skater in the video is my partner, Daisy Moser, who is currently going through chemo for breast cancer," John Giraldo, the man who filmed the outing, told ViralHog. "She had just gone through her fifth infusion four days before we took this video. Only one infusion left to go."
It's not only a beautiful glimpse of ice skating in Alaska, but a reason to be thankful for the little things in life — no matter what life throws your way.


DOS-386 v1.0
Home
Games
About
C:\GAMES>cd WAR
C:\GAMES\WAR>WAR.EXE
-fullscreen
Starting WARCRAFT DEMO...
Click inside the game window for mouse capture (lock mouse inside the game, press ESC to release)!
C:\GAMES\WAR>cd
..
▮


SAMPLE ACTIVITY CALENDAR (subject to change)
| Sunday | Arrival and Check-in | Busch Gardens® | Family Day |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | Testing and Target Shopping | Beach Trip | Disney's Animal Kingdom |
| Tuesday | Campus Tour and Welcome Mixer | Celebration Station | International Mail |
| Wednesday | St. Petersburg Beach and Pizza Party | Trampoline Park | Mystery Event |
| Thrusday | Ice Skating & Shopping | Hockey Game | Island of Adventure* |
| Friday | Disney's Magic Kingdom® | Outlet Shopping | Graduation and Farewell Party |
| Saturday | Family Picnic | Universal Studios* | Departure |


Lorem ipsum dolor..
Some text about who we are and what we do.
Resize the browser window to see that this page is responsive by the way.


A simple jQuery function to get the 7 day weather forecast. The data is pulled from the weather.gov feed here. Also, check out the web page here to see examples of what you can get from this feed.


Quartz Scheduler MetaData
| Name | Value |
|---|---|
| Scheduler is running | |
| Scheduler name | Value |
| Scheduler instance Id | Value |
| Scheduler version | Value |
| Number of jobs executed | Value |
| is started | Value |
| is in standby | Value |
| is running since | Value |
| Thread pool Class | Value |
| Thread pool size | Value |
| Scheduler is remote | Value |
| Scheduler Class | Value |
| JobStore Class | Value |
| Job store is clustered | Value |
| Job store supports persistence | Value |


Consultation outcome
Ref: Ofqual/16/5934 PDF , 245KB , 5 pages
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need a version of this document in a more accessible format, please email<EMAIL_ADDRESS>. Please tell us what format you need. It will help us if you say what assistive technology you use.
We have decided to adopt most of our consultation proposals unchanged, but have made changes to our guidance to be clear that we expect exam boards to ensure assessments are equally demanding in all languages.
This means that:
Published: PDF , 457KB , 20 pages
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need a version of this document in a more accessible format, please email<EMAIL_ADDRESS>. Please tell us what format you need. It will help us if you say what assistive technology you use.
There were 30 responses to the consultation – 19 from individuals and 11 from organisations. One of the organisations did not comment directly on our proposals, but instead provided general comments on the reform of modern foreign languages.
Respondents broadly supported our proposals, but views were mixed in some areas, most notably:
This consultation ran from
to
A consultation on our approach to regulating new GCSEs, AS and A levels in modern foreign languages.
Ref: Ofqual/16/5838 PDF , 887KB , 80 pages
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need a version of this document in a more accessible format, please email<EMAIL_ADDRESS>. Please tell us what format you need. It will help us if you say what assistive technology you use.
This consultation builds on our earlier decisions on the rules and guidance for new GCSEs in French, German and Spanish , and the corresponding decisions for new AS and A levels in those subjects. It sets out:
Published: 22 February 2016
Updated: 18 April 2016
From: Ofqual


Welcome to Mr.Robogers Neighborhood
Enter a number to see how Mr. Robogers would say it
Enter Number Here!
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Mr.Robogers says...


| PshellServer | index /home/riovine/tools/pshell/python/src/PshellServer.py |
A Lightweight, Process-Specific, Embedded Command Line Shell
This API provides the Process Specific Embedded Command Line Shell (PSHELL)
user API functionality. It provides the ability for a program to register
functions that can be invoked via a command line user interface. There are
several ways to invoke these embedded functions based on how the pshell server
is configured, which is described in documentation further down in this file.
This is the Python implementation, there are also corresponding C/C++ and Golang
implementations.
The functions are similar to the prototype of the 'main' in 'python', i.e.
'def myFunc(string)', there are several ways to invoke these embedded
functions based on how the pshell server is configured, which is described
in documentation further down in this file.
A complete example of the usage of the API can be found in the included
demo program pshellServerDemo.py.
Functions:
The main API calls to register PSHELL commands and start the server
addCommand() -- register a pshell command with the server
startServer() -- start the pshell server
cleanupResources() -- release all resources claimed by the server
Function to allow a parent application to call it's own PSHELL function
runCommand() -- run a registered command from the parent (i.e. registering) program
Functions to allow extraction of internal log messages from parent application
setLogLevel() -- set the internal log level for this module
setLogFunction() -- register a user function to receive all logs
Functions to help in argument parsing/extraction, even though many of these
operations can easily be done with native Python constructs, they are provided
here for consistency of the API across all language implementations
tokenize() -- parse a string based on token delimeters
getLength() -- return the string length
isEqual() -- compare two strings for equality, case sensitive
isEqualNoCase() -- compare two strings for equality, case insensitive
isSubString() -- checks for string1 substring of string2 at position 0, case sensitive
isSubStringNoCase() -- checks for string1 substring of string2 at position 0, case insensitive
isFloat() -- returns True if string is floating point
isDec() -- returns True if string is dec
isHex() -- returns True if string is hex, with or without the preceeding 0x
isAlpha() -- returns True if string is alphabetic
isNumeric() -- returns True if string isDec or isHex
isAlphaNumeric() -- returns True if string is alpha-numeric
isIpv4Addr() -- returns True if string is valid ipv4 address format
isIpv4AddrWithNetmask() -- returns True is string is valid ipv4 address/netmask format
isMacAddr() -- returns True if string is valid MAC address format
getBool() -- returns True if string is 'true', 'yes', 'on'
getInt() -- return the integer value from the string
getFloat() -- return the float value from the string
The following commands should only be called from within the context of a
PSHELL callback function
printf() -- display a message from a pshell callback function to the client
flush() -- flush the transfer buffer to the client (UDP/UNIX servers only)
wheel() -- spinning ascii wheel to keep UDP/UNIX client alive or show progress
clock() -- hh:mm:ss elapsed time clock to keep UDP/UNIX client alive or show progress
march() -- marching ascii character to keep UDP/UNIX client alive or show progress
showUsage() -- show the usage the command is registered with
isHelp() -- checks if the user has requested help on this command
getOption() -- parses arg of format -<key><value> or <key>=<value>
Integer constants:
These are the identifiers for the serverMode. BLOCKING will never return
control to the caller of startServer, NON_BLOCKING will spawn a thread to
run the server and will return control to the caller of startServer
BLOCKING
NON_BLOCKING
Constants to let the host program set the internal debug log level,
if the user of this API does not want to see any internal message
printed out, set the debug log level to LOG_LEVEL_NONE, the default
log level is LOG_LEVEL_ALL
LOG_LEVEL_NONE
LOG_LEVEL_ERROR
LOG_LEVEL_WARNING
LOG_LEVEL_INFO
LOG_LEVEL_ALL
LOG_LEVEL_DEFAULT
Used to specify the radix extraction format for the getInt() function
RADIX_DEC
RADIX_HEX
RADIX_ANY
String constants:
Valid server types, UDP/UNIX servers require the 'pshell' or 'pshell.py'
client programs, TCP servers require a 'telnet' client, local servers
require no client (all user interaction done directly with server running
in the parent host program)
UDP
TCP
UNIX
LOCAL
These three identifiers that can be used for the hostnameOrIpAddr argument
of the startServer call. ANYHOST will bind the server socket to all interfaces
of a multi-homed host, ANYBCAST will bind to <IP_ADDRESS>, LOCALHOST will
bind the server socket to the local loopback address (i.e. <IP_ADDRESS>), note that
subnet broadcast it also supported, e.g. x.y.z.255
ANYHOST
ANYBCAST
LOCALHOST
Typedefs:
These typedefs/prototypes are used for the main pshell function callback
function and the log function callback functions respectively
def pshellFunction func(args)
def logFunction func(string)
| Modules | ||||||
|
| Functions | ||
|
| Data | ||
| ANYBCAST = 'anybcast' ANYHOST = 'anyhost' BLOCKING = 0 LOCAL = 'local' LOCALHOST = 'localhost' LOG_LEVEL_ALL = 3 LOG_LEVEL_DEFAULT = 3 LOG_LEVEL_ERROR = 1 LOG_LEVEL_INFO = 3 LOG_LEVEL_NONE = 0 LOG_LEVEL_WARNING = 2 NON_BLOCKING = 1 RADIX_ANY = 2 RADIX_DEC = 0 RADIX_HEX = 1 TCP = 'tcp' UDP = 'udp' UNIX = 'unix' |


I will write the list of apps that I use to finish my task. This list of applications does not mean to say that foo app is better than baz app, every app has it is own audience.
other than that, I keep this list to know what app that I have to consider my self to donate.
the last line is the current app I use.
Applications
Audio
music player
- audacious (past 3 year)
I like the tabbed playlist UI from audacious, and I think this is the only music player in GNU/Linux that has tabbed-playlist - cmus
I love tabbed-playlist, fortunately cmus can :load
and :save
playlist.
audio editing
- audacity
Accounting
- hledger
Really helped me, I enjoy using it, rather than using LibreCalc to track my transaction.
Chat Clients
- Quassel (past 2 year)
- Hexchat (past 1 year)
- Irssi
Data Backup and Recovery
- DejaDup (past 1 year)
- Borgbackup
Desktop customization
- Arc Theme
- La Capitaine Icon Theme
- Papirus Icon Theme
Development
Database
- DBeaver
- MyCLI
- MySQL
- MariaDB
Java
- Netbeans
PHP
- Laravel
Common Lisp
- SBCL
- quicklisp
- SLIME
Supporting tools
- Git
- Pencil
Editors
- Emacs
I do everything with text mostly with emacs. from taking notes, maintainging TODOs, writing code, and etc.
- Kate (past 2 years)
- Mousepad
only for supplies.
- Mutt
File Manager
- Nemo (past 2 year)
- Dolphin (past 1 year)
- Midnight Commander
- Thunar
Most of the time I use MC, but in some occasion, I launch Thunar.
Graphics
Graphic Creation
- Inkscape
Image Editor
- GIMP
Image Management
- Gwenview (past 1 year)
- feh
feh does not support viewing gif, so I move to xsiv - xsiv
Screen Recorder
- kazam
Screenshot
- Kscrenshot (past 1 year)
- scrot
Gif
- Silentcast.
I use Silentcast since 1.5 year ago. but moving to i3 make Silientcast does not work, but wait :). I already solved, thank lot Sir Colin Keenan.
Video editor
- Kdenlive
I think I have to try Flowblade to avoid KDE depedency.
Internet
- Firefox
Firefox Extension
Office
- LibreOffice
- Org-mode
Productivity
- Chill and Relax ambient noise ( now, I just play the sound file with mpv)
- mpv
I move to mpv to play multiple sounds, because I think I just waste my RAM to run Apache just for playing this ambient. I use the script, put in PATH, so I just run it, whenever I want.
bash
#!/usr/bin/env bash
cd /var/www/html/chillnsound/app/sounds
(mpv beach.mp3 --loop-file &);mpv birds.mp3 --loop-file
thanks ignite
PDF Tools
- Okular
willy nilly, I have to use it, even it comes with many KDE depedency, no other tools in GNU/Linux that support multiple features for anotation. I also like the way Okular anotates the pdfs by saving the xml for each pdf to it’s folder. So I can easily share the clean pdf with my friends, and export the anotation when in case I need.
Security
- keepassX
I don’t try keepasXC yet. pass is also awesome, I will give it a try later. - GnuPG
Sharing Files
- aria2
- Filezilla
I use to share files beetwen my andorid and laptops.
Terminal
- Konsole ( past 2 year )
- Tmux
- Uxrvt
since I have Tmux, I can work on any terminal emulator.
Utilities
- Gramps geanalogy software
- NCdu
- Syncthing
I use Syncthing to sync ebooks and org files accross my devices.
- Nitroshare
I use nitroshare when someone ask big files from my machine, I use it with crossover cable. before nitroshare, I use dukto.
- Octopress
I use octopress for blogging.
Love it.
Video
- mpv
I use it most. - vlc
only for supplies.
Virtualization
- Qemu-KVM
I use qemu to experiment with fresh debian without harming my productive machine
- Virtualbox
only for supplies.
Wiki Software
- Ikiwiki
Writing
- Beamer - A LaTeX class for producing presentations and slides.
- Latex - LaTeX is a high-quality typesetting system; it includes features designed for the production of technical and scientific documentation.
- Org-mode - Org mode is for keeping notes, maintaining TODO lists, planning projects, and authoring documents with a fast and effective plain-text system.
Desktop Environments
- i3-gaps
- xfce
only for supplies.
Display manager
- LightDM
Andorid
- swiftp
- Syncthing client
Emacs Packages
- Auctex - AUCTeX is an extensible package for writing and formatting TeX files in GNU Emacs and XEmacs.
- Helm - Emacs incremental completion and selection narrowing framework.
- Porjectile - Project Interaction Library for Emacs.
- Org-mode- Write notes, GTD, authoring, publish and wash dishes.
- Ox-gfm - Github Flavored Markdown Back-End for Org Export Engine
- Markdown-mode - a major mode for editing Markdown-formatted text files in GNU Emacs.
- Zenburn - (dark) Vim’s “Zenburn theme” ported to Emacs.
Programming
- Company - Modular in-buffer completion framework for Emacs.
- Emmet-mode - Emmet’s support for emacs.
- expand-region.el - Emacs extension to increase selected region by semantic units.
- Flycheck - On the fly syntax checking for GNU Emacs.
- Magit - It’s Magit! A Git porcelain inside Emacs.
- use-package - A declaration macro to isolate package configuration in a way that is performance-oriented and tidy.
- smartparens - Minor mode for Emacs that deals with parens pairs and tries to be smart about it.
- smart-mode-line - A sexy mode-line for Emacs.
- Super-save - Save Emacs buffers when they lose focus.
- Rainbow-delimiters - Emacs rainbow delimiters mode.
- Web-mode - Web template editing mode for emacs.
- WhiteSpace - Minor mode to visualize TAB, (HARD) SPACE, NEWLINE.
Article Changelog
31.08.2017
- Initial publication
So what do you think ? Leave your comments below.


--- title: Contact permalink: contact/ --- {% include head.html %}
The best way to get in touch with me is to email me. You can also find me on Facebook, Google+, or Twitter. If you want to find out more about me, you can look at my code on GitHub, or view my profile on LinkedIn.
{% include foot.html %}


Paramekkavu Bhagavathy TempleOne of the most historically important Palakkad tourist places is the Palakkad fort or Tipu’s fort. Spend a day celebrating picnic in the sprawling green grounds of the fort with your family and enjoy looking at the various statues in the complex. Or go for a morning or evening jog on the running track running along the moat surrounding the fort. History aficionados can spend a few hours enjoying the museum located within the grounds admiring the renovation of the fort by Archaeological Survey of India. Architecture buffs are attracted to the fort for its beautiful French style construction. Distance: 1.8km from Palakkad bus stand Timings: 8 AM to 6 PM Entry Fees: No entry fee |
|
Thrissur Zoo and State MuseumSmack in the middle of the city is one of the most alive and beautiful of all Thrissur Tourist Places. Also known as the State Museum & Zoo, the Thrissur Zoo is located at about 2 km from the city centre, the zoo is more than just a place for showcasing the beautiful flora and fauna of the region. There is also a natural history museum and an art museum that have exhibits capturing the social and cultural heritage of Thrissur. With it being one of the two Zoological Parks in Kerala, the zoo experiences a good number of visitors every year. Location: 2.7 km from Thrissur bus stand. Timings: Tuesday to Sunday, from 9 AM to 5 PM. Entry fees: INR 5 for adults, INR 3 for children, INR 5 for a camera, and INR 500 for the video camera. |


public interface Modification extends Comparable
| Modifier and Type | Field and Description |
|---|---|
static int |
AVERAGE
Constant to indicate the position of the average mass in the mass array.
|
static String |
CTERMINUS
The residue code for the C-terminus.
|
static int |
MONOISOTOPIC
Constant to indicate the position of the monoisotopic mass in the mass array.
|
static String |
NTERMINUS
The residue code for the N-terminus.
|
| Modifier and Type | Method and Description |
|---|---|
double |
getAverageMassDelta(String aResidue)
This method returns a double with the average mass difference
conferred on the sequence by this modification for the specified residue.
|
String |
getCode()
This method returns the short code for the modification, eg.
|
int |
getLocation()
This method returns the location of the modification in the sequence.
|
double |
getMonoisotopicMassDelta(String aResidue)
This method returns a double with the monoisotopic mass difference
conferred on the sequence by this modification for the specified residue.
|
Collection |
getResidues()
This method reports on all the residues that can be modified by this Modification.
|
String |
getTitle()
This method returns the title of the modification,
eg.
|
boolean |
isArtifact()
This method indicates whether this modification is considered an artifact.
|
void |
setLocation(int aLocation)
This method allows the setting of the location for this modification.
|
String |
toString()
This method returns a String representation of the Modification.
|
compareTo
static final int MONOISOTOPIC
static final int AVERAGE
static final String NTERMINUS
static final String CTERMINUS
int getLocation()
boolean isArtifact()
String getCode()
String getTitle()
double getMonoisotopicMassDelta(String aResidue)
aResidue
- String with the residue for which the mass delta needs to be calculated.double getAverageMassDelta(String aResidue)
aResidue
- String with the residue for which the mass delta needs to be calculated.void setLocation(int aLocation)
aLocation
- int with the location for this modification within the parent sequence.Collection getResidues()
Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved.


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AKEBONO (EXOS-D) is an aurora observation satellite launched by the M-3SII-4
launch vehicle from Uchinoura Space Center (USC) on February 22, 1989. The objective
of AKEBBONO is to investigate the magnetospheric phenomena associated with the
acceleration process of
aurora particles. Aurora is a luminous phenomenon that occurs when solar-wind particles
trapped in the magnetosphere collide with Earth’s atmospheric particles. A better
understanding of this phenomenon will help us understand the physical processes taking
place in the Sun and the reaction on Earth. AKEBONO observes these physical processes to
create a greater understanding of the structure of the magnetosphere and the flow and
momentum of energy from the Sun through the geospace. AKEBONO is an ambitious satellite
carrying a number of "world-first" technologies. AKEBONO carries eight sets of instruments
for scientific observation. It also has a radiation monitor, and anti-radiation technology
that has been applied to a satellite for the first time in the world. This technology
provides protection against radiation, even in the near-Earth radiation belt, as it is
designed to tolerate about ten times the intensity withstood by conventional satellites.
Other world-first technology applied to AKEBONO includes an extension mast for antenna and
surface electrical conduction processing, to gain better conductivity and protection from
charged particles. The GEOTAIL and NOZOMI satellites have inherited these technologies.
GEOTAIL operates in the world-best quiet environment, which has never before been possible
without the electromagnetic compatibility test conducted by AKEBONO. The AKEBONO has
operated for more than 20 years. Although the aurora imager camera has deteriorated due
to the severe radioactive environment, all the other instruments are in good order. The
direction of the major magnetic field of the Sun is known to reverse in a 22-year cycle.
The Sun’s activeness, which is typically measured by the number of sunspots, increases and
decreases twice in this 22-year cycle. In other words, the Sun’s behavior is changing in
an 11-year cycle. To study the response of the magnetosphere to various activities of the
Sun, we need to acquire data for 22 years. The AKEBONO will, therefore, continue its
observations. [From: http://www.jaxa.jp/projects/sat/akebono/index_e.html]
Version:2.2.2
AKEBONO (EXOS-D) is an aurora observation satellite launched by the M-3SII-4
launch vehicle from Uchinoura Space Center (USC) on February 22, 1989. The objective
of AKEBBONO is to investigate the magnetospheric phenomena associated with the
acceleration process of
aurora particles. Aurora is a luminous phenomenon that occurs when solar-wind particles
trapped in the magnetosphere collide with Earth’s atmospheric particles. A better
understanding of this phenomenon will help us understand the physical processes taking
place in the Sun and the reaction on Earth. AKEBONO observes these physical processes to
create a greater understanding of the structure of the magnetosphere and the flow and
momentum of energy from the Sun through the geospace. AKEBONO is an ambitious satellite
carrying a number of "world-first" technologies. AKEBONO carries eight sets of instruments
for scientific observation. It also has a radiation monitor, and anti-radiation technology
that has been applied to a satellite for the first time in the world. This technology
provides protection against radiation, even in the near-Earth radiation belt, as it is
designed to tolerate about ten times the intensity withstood by conventional satellites.
Other world-first technology applied to AKEBONO includes an extension mast for antenna and
surface electrical conduction processing, to gain better conductivity and protection from
charged particles. The GEOTAIL and NOZOMI satellites have inherited these technologies.
GEOTAIL operates in the world-best quiet environment, which has never before been possible
without the electromagnetic compatibility test conducted by AKEBONO. The AKEBONO has
operated for more than 20 years. Although the aurora imager camera has deteriorated due
to the severe radioactive environment, all the other instruments are in good order. The
direction of the major magnetic field of the Sun is known to reverse in a 22-year cycle.
The Sun’s activeness, which is typically measured by the number of sunspots, increases and
decreases twice in this 22-year cycle. In other words, the Sun’s behavior is changing in
an 11-year cycle. To study the response of the magnetosphere to various activities of the
Sun, we need to acquire data for 22 years. The AKEBONO will, therefore, continue its
observations. [From: http://www.jaxa.jp/projects/sat/akebono/index_e.html]
| Role | Person | |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | ProjectScientist | spase://SMWG/Person/Toshifumi.Mukai |
| 2. | ProjectScientist | spase://SMWG/Person/Toshifumi.Mukai |
Akebono web site
Additional information on the Akebono spacecraft.


Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less. ~ Marie Curie
Weather App Selene Coded by Meghan Jacquot Click here to access my github


Tolko Industries curtails all B.C. operations during two-week holiday break
VERNON, B.C. - British Columbia wood products company Tolko Industries says continuing low lumber prices and high log costs have forced it to schedule a two-week shutdown affecting all its B.C. operations.
The privately owned, Vernon-based company says the curtailment will run from Dec. 21 to Jan. 6, while the head office will be closed from Dec. 23 to 27.
A statement on the company website says only essential services will be maintained during the downtime.
Tolko has operations in the Okanagan, near Kamloops and Williams Lake and a terminal in Richmond.
The curtailment comes just a week after the company announced the permanent closure of its Kelowna mill, effective in January.
Troy Connolly, Tolko's vice-president of solid wood, says the B.C.-wide downtime will reduce output by 21 million board feet at its lumber operations and cut 10 million square feet of panel production at its plywood and veneer plants.
Pino Pucci, vice-president of marketing and sales, said Tolko will do its best to minimize the impact of the shutdown on customers.
"Our customers are understanding of current market conditions and aware of our ongoing commitment to serve them," he says in the statement.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 15, 2019


Andrés Felipe Jején
Software Engineer
About Me
Portfolio
Hi! I'm Andrés
Full-stack software developer with more than 7 years of professional experience in teaching. I love robotics and new technologies. Also, I'm passionate about photographing and trips. I'm an agile, innovative, ambitious, and adaptable man. I feel comfortable taking on responsibilities and new challenges.


I will not permit any form of bullying in my home
Bullying can be:
- Physical: pushing, kicking, hitting, biting etc
- Verbal: Name-calling, sarcasm, rumour spreading and teasing
- Emotional: Excluding, ridicule, humiliation, tormenting
- Racist: taunts, graffiti and gestures
Being bullied can result in the victim having depression, low self-esteem, shyness, poor academic achievement, isolation and in extreme cases threatened or attempted suicide.
If a bully is left unchecked they will learn they can get away with violence and aggression. A bully has a higher chance of acquiring a criminal record and not being able to have good relationships when they become an adult.
 I will work with you to support your child to resolve the problem.
If your child is being bullied:
- I will reassure them that the bullying is not their fault
- Tell them that I care about them and am 100% on their side
- I will give them lots of praise, encouragement and responsibilities to help them feel valued
- I will work with you to help the child to develop techniques to deal with the bully- assertiveness, walking away etc.

- If you have any concerns regarding your child please discuss them with me as soon as possible. It is much better to deal with these problems before they become major issues.
Suggested further reading:
- Preventing Bullying A Parents Guide
- You can beat bullying A guide for young people
Both these publications are available from www.kidscape.org.uk.


| Name | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
renderer |
SINT.WebGLRenderer |
The renderer this manager works for. |
Extends
Members
-
renderer SINT.WebGLRenderer inherited overrides
-
The renderer this manager works for.
Methods
-
Fill 1s equal to the number of acitve stencil masks.
Returns:
Type Description number The bitwise mask. -
Setup renderer to use the current stencil data.
-
destroy () overrides
-
Destroys the mask stack.
-
Generic method called when there is a WebGL context change.
-
Removes the last mask from the stencil stack. @alvin
-
Applies the Mask and adds it to the current stencil stack. @alvin
Name Type Description graphics
SINT.Graphics The mask
-
Changes the mask stack that is used by this manager.
Name Type Description stencilMaskStack
Array.<SINT.Graphics> The mask stack


Hello, Everyone.
I am a Ph.D. candidate in DYROS Lab (Prof. Jaeheung Park) at Seoul National University, Republic of Korea.
In 2013, my colleagues and I had participated in KOREA AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE CONTEST 2013 as Team Smart Mobility and I was student subleader of our team. My main roles were conducting vehicle control tests, lane detection using lidar sensors, and managing the entire team schedule.
In 2015, my colleagues and I had participated in DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals 2015 (DRC Finals 2015) as Team SNU My main role was to carry out the first mission of the challenge using a humanoid to control the steering of the vehicle to the parking lot without colliding with obstacles.
Main keywords of my reasearches are Intelligent Vehicle, Motion Planning and Path Following, Optimal Control, and Machine Learning for object recognition.
In this website, you can find my projects, publications, videos, and source codes. And my Curriculum Vitae (CV) is here (uptated, 05.16.21).
2003-2010 B.S.
Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Chung-Ang University, Seoul
2010-2011 Student Internship
Digital Human Center Advanced Institute of Convergence Technology (AICT)
2011-2021 Ph.D
Dyros Lab, Seoul National University
Programming: C, C++, Python, Matlab, etc
Simulator: V-Rep, Carsim, CARLA, RLab, Gazebo, etc
Library: Eigen, CVXGEN, Gurobi, FCL, IPOPT (IFOPT), qpOASES, RBDL, etc
Others: Latex, GIT, ROS, etc
Scholarship Half Scholarship for academic excellence at Seoul National University, 2013
KOREA AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE CONTEST 5th in overall 2013
DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals 12th in overall 2015, World No. 1 team using platform THORMANG


Aneesh Gupta, Ayooluwa Balogun, Gaurav Uppal, Jason Wang, Norah Tan, Scott Heng On, Winston Yau, Vivek Sahukar
See Our Github RepositoryAccess to electricity is one of the most important requisites to economic and societal development. It is associated with decreased maternal mortality, increased education levels, and decreased poverty. [P. Alstone, et al. Decentralized energy systems for clean electricity access. ] However, 1 billion people still lack access to electricity. To enable electrification and grid expansion in energy-poor regions, it is crucial to know where the existing infrastructure is. This information can help policymakers and businesses decide on whether to expand the national grid, build a microgrid, or provide direct off-grid solar PV. Current approaches to identifying and mapping energy infrastructure tend to be expensive and time-intensive, consisting of aggregating survey data from the ground level and roughly scaling it across regions. This is where we want to help.
For three years, the Duke Energy Data Analytics Lab has worked on developing deep learning models that identify energy infrastructure, with an end goal of generating maps of power grid networks that can aid policymakers in implementing effective electrification strategies. Researchers have already been able to create an object identification model that can ID different types of energy infrastructure, as shown here: [2018-19 Bass Connections Team]
The high-resolution satellite imagery displays various infrastructure such as building, car, tower clearly and visibly. Using Low resolution images won’t give higher prediction accuracy.
We use the model to detect different objects in the training dataset such as energy infrastructure such as transmission lines and towers in addition to cars, buildings too. The identified objects are bounded by blue boxes.
Finally, the model is tested on new images, where each identified object (bounded by red boxes) was assigned a probability score of belonging to a certain class.
Image Segmentation is a deep learning model which can segment images and identify target objects at scale by assigning each pixel to a probability. Each Satellite image then can be simplified and partitioned into different segments based on object features, such as color, texture, and gradient, and offer insights on the model's generalizability across different geographic domains. We chose Models for Remote Sensing (MRS) [B. Huang et al. Large-Scale Semantic Classification: Outcome of the First Year of Inria Aerial Image Labeling Benchmark.], an encoder-decoder model to perform the segmentation. Then, we need:
The output of the model is the predicted bounding boxes around the object of interest - in our case, buildings. In order to apply Intersection over Union to evaluate an (arbitrary) object detector we need:
Precision measures how accurate our predictions are. i.e. the percentage of our predictions are correct.
Recall measures how accurately we can find all the positives.
Area of union is the area encompassed by both the predicted bounding box and the ground-truth bounding box.
Area of overlap is the common area between the predicted bounding box and the ground-truth bounding box.
Dividing the area of overlap by the area of union yields our final score — the Intersection over Union.
A detailed blogpost explaining the accuracy metrics with an example can be found here.
The task was to identify transmission lines across the four cities shown.
In these plots, each colored precision-recall curve corresponds to a single city, and the black curve model has been trained on all cities. The higher the area under the PR curve, the higher the performance of the model.
As we can see from the plots, the USA model performed best in each test case, and the models trained on single cities performed equivalently to the USA model only in the same city and performed poorly in other cities.
Source: Mapping electric transmission line infrastructure from aerial imagery with deep learning, Hu, Alexander, Cathcart, Hu, Nair, Zuo, Malof, Collins, Bradbury (2020)
As shown in the table, the most accurate model for a given city is the model that is trained on that same city, and models trained on a single city don’t necessarily generalize well to the other cities. Furthermore, we found that training a model on all of the cities results in higher test accuracies across the board. To address this problem of transferring learning across geographic domains we want to: Visualize the model’s representation of the current training domain(Goal 2). Provide ways to diversify this training domain (Goal 3).
As seen in the two object detection tasks, the model accuracy increases if the model is trained on different cities. The geography and building types of each city is enormously different. The reason for improvement in accuracy is that the model is able to learn features of the different cities.
The buildings in Austin and Kitsap are widely spaced, whereas the buildings in Chicago and Vienna are tightly packed. The Kitsap has more green cover and the color of cover is also more green compared to all other cities. The texture of Vienna buildings has a peculiar reddish tone. Due to the difference in the physical features of each city, the training dataset should be representative of all these different features for the model accuracy to improve significantly.
Synthetic imagery can thus help us diversify our training data, by adding more examples of different, representative satellite images.
Diversified training data, such as the "All Cities" example we see in the table above, can help us overcome the geographic differences, and build robust models, agnostic to geography.
Another great thing about synthetic data is that it removes the need for hand-annotation and manual labelling.
Example of Synethetic Images from the Synthinel-1 Dataset
However, synthetic imagery is visibly different in its textures and styles from real
satellite imagery. We can see from the three synthetic satellite images above, that they do not have enough resemblance to real life buildings - there is something "off" and different about them.
To make them more realistic, we plan on transferring textures from real satellite imagery to
synthetic imagery:
The reason for switching to buildings is because the INRIA Aerial Image Labeling dataset(link) has high resolution satellite imagery of cities with labeled buildings. If we can build models that identify buildings, they can be expanded to identify other types of infrastructure as well.
Source: INRIA Dataset
In order to automate the extraction, synthesis, and substitution of building rooftop
textures, we created a pipeline that takes any of the 2500 images of cities in the INRIA dataset,
capture the building rooftop texture in each city, then transfer the visual content and style onto a
texture patch while maintaining image resolution, and finally, substitute these rooftop textures on top
of buildings in simulated environments to create synthetic cities that are geography-agnostic.
Once we have obtained the largest rectangular roof patch, we want to be able to transfer the visual content and style of this roof texture to buildings in any other image. Using a picture of red peppers shown above as an example, the model should be able to take a snapshot of the red peppers’ color, shapes, background, and other characteristics and reconstitute them in a new image, shown on the right.
In our situation, we accomplished this by applying a feed-forward convolutional neural network model that recreates the color, gradient, rooftop structure, and more in a new texture patch, as seen below with the example of a roof of a building in Austin.
We then apply this model on unique rooftops for all 2500 images of 5 cities in the INRIA dataset, and create a bank of rooftop textures arranged by the city from which they were extracted. This way, we have a bank of textures to draw from when we create synthetic imagery, as seen in the example below with the city of Vienna, Austria.
Using building rooftops as a proof-of-concept in our goal to include more diversity in landscape and infrastructure types in training data, we envision creating a whole scene or a simulated environment with buildings and landscapes such as rolling hills and rivers from our rooftop texture bank. With successes applying our model on forests, rivers, carparks, and farm fields, we are one step closer to truly being geography agnostic and creating a range of scenes simulating actual landscapes in our target regions.
Once we are equipped with the texture bank, we move onto the next step: feeding textures from our synthetic texture bank to the texture substitution algorithm.
The last part of our pipeline is texture substitution. Now that we have extracted rooftops from source images and generated synthetic textures, we want to substitute these synthesized textures to new target geographies. Figure 8 shows our texture substitution process.
We take a source image, choose a target image, and match rooftop textures based on the sizing of the target rooftops. This can help make our synthetic cities more realistic, which can do a better job of diversifying training data.
As shown in the figure on the left, the rooftops are flat, solid colors. However, they can provide the basis of realistic, textured synthetic cities. This is the process laid out in the figure on the right.
At this point, we can supplement our real satellite imagery with textured synthetic imagery, where the rooftops have been replaced. This will allow us to convincingly represent new regions and create more accurate building maps. As this research progresses, the team will expand this pipeline to other types of infrastructure besides buildings, eventually allowing us to map out entire energy grids around the world.
Class of 2020
Mechanical Engineering
Class of 2021
Computer Science & Statistical Science
Class of 2021
Computer Science
Class of 2022
Computer Science & Mathematics
Class of 2022
Public Policy & Physics
Class of 2020
Masters in Interdisciplinary Data Science
Class of 2021
Mechanical Engineering
Duke University Bass Connections Program
Duke University Energy Initiative’s Energy Data Analytics Lab
Duke University Pratt School of Engineering Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Dr. Kyle Bradbury
Dr. Leslie Collins
Dr. Jordan Malof


BNM cuts statutory reserves ratio to 3pc
KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 8 — Bank Negara Malaysia will cut the Statutory Reserve Requirement (SRR) ratio to 3.00 per cent from 3.50 per cent effective November 16, 2019, to ensure sufficient liquidity in the domestic financial system.
The last time BNM reduced the SSR was in 2016, when the ratio was lowered to 3.50 per cent from 4.00 per cent.
“The decision to reduce the SRR is undertaken to maintain sufficient liquidity in the domestic financial system.
“This will continue to support the efficient functioning of the domestic financial markets and facilitate effective liquidity management by the banking institutions,” it said in a statement today.
The central bank said the SRR is an instrument to manage liquidity and is not a signal on the stance of monetary policy.
The Overnight Policy Rate (OPR) is the sole indicator used to signal the stance of monetary policy and is announced through the Monetary Policy Statement released after the Monetary Policy Committee meeting, it added. — Bernama


Source code for webgme_bindings.exceptions
"""
Collection of Exception-classes that correspond to exceptions thrown within the
running nodejs process.
"""
[docs]class JSError(Exception):
"""
Base class for exceptions/errors raised from coremq on the java-script side while handling a request.
"""
def __init__(self, err_data):
# Call the base class constructor with the regular message
super(JSError, self).__init__(err_data['message'])
self.js_stack = err_data['stack']
self.req = err_data['req']
[docs] def get_js_stack(self):
return self.js_stack
[docs] def get_req(self):
return self.req
[docs]class CoreIllegalArgumentError(JSError):
"""
CoreIllegalArgumentError should be thrown if the type of the input parameters is not what it should be.
"""
def __init__(self, err_data):
super(CoreIllegalArgumentError, self).__init__(err_data)
[docs]class CoreIllegalOperationError(JSError):
"""
CoreIllegalOperationError should be thrown if the set of input parameters are correct but the request\
or the operation do not apply to the current context. Here we followed the basic javascript principles\
in terms that whenever the user try to access a 'field' of a 'field' that does not exist, we throw.\
For example if someone tries to get the member attributes of an non-existing member.\
Trying to modify read-only nodes are captured within this category.
"""
def __init__(self, err_data):
super(CoreIllegalOperationError, self).__init__(err_data)
[docs]class CoreInternalError(JSError):
"""
CoreInternalError should be thrown if some internal ASSERTION fails, it triggers some fault inside the core\
and should typically be checked by the developer team, not the one who uses it.
"""
def __init__(self, err_data):
super(CoreInternalError, self).__init__(err_data)