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I recently came across Rachel Tomas's article on the importance and value of writing about what you learn, and Julia Evans's advice on why and how to write, and thus I have decided to follow their advice and write an article (for the first time ever!).
This article will be about everything I wish I had known a year ago , when I first decided I want to learn more about Data ScienceÃ¢??-Ã¢??it is meant for anyone who is interested in getting into Data Science, either as a hobby or as a potential career. Having done a MOOC first and knowing some basic Python will help you get the most out of this article, but it is not required by any means. This article is not meant to showcase anything impressive (sorry mom, dad, and potential employers), but rather to go over the basics and help beginners start off strong.
Setting up your own environment.
Overview of the Predict House Prices competition.
Loading and inspecting the data.
Our model: explanation of Decision Trees, biasÃ¢??-Ã¢??variance tradeoff, and Random Forests.
Putting it all together and submitting.
Nowadays, there are several high-quality Machine Learning tutorials and MOOCs available online for free. A year ago, I binged Udacity's Intro to ML, which I found extremely approachable and beginner-friendly, and which did a good job of introducing me to basic ML concepts, several popular algorithms, and scikit-learn's API. After finishing the course, I was very excited to learn more, but felt a little lost.
After conducting some research, I decided the best thing to do next is check out Kaggle, which is a popular Google-owned platform for predictive modelling competitions. Nothing beats hands-on learning through practice!
Competing on Kaggle for the first time is daunting and often frustrating (and achieving a decent score even more so!), and so this article will focus on how to enter your first competition and utilize Kaggle to maximize your personal growth and success.
The two Kaggle competitions which are most suitable for beginners (and serve as Kaggle's version of 'tutorials') are the Titanic (predicting survivalÃ¢??-Ã¢??binary classification problem), and House Prices (predicting priceÃ¢??-Ã¢??regression problem). While I highly recommend checking out and competing on both, this article will focus on the latter. However, much of the content is general and equally applicable to other Kaggle competitions and Data Science problems, so feel free to choose the Titanic or some other competition if you like!
At each competition's Overview tab, you can see some background information about the competition and its dataset(s), the evaluation metric by which submissions will be scored (which changes from competition to competition), and competition-specific FAQ.
At the Data tab you can see a brief description of the data. We will need three files: train.csv, test.csv, and data_description.txt (which is crucial, as it contains a much more detailed description of the data)- put them in a folder which you can easily access.
The Discussions tab is like a competition-specific forumÃ¢??-Ã¢??however, don't underestimate it! In popular running competitions it often contains valuable information, as the competition terms sometimes require participants to publicly share any outside information they use on the Discussions board. For example, data leakage is hard to avoid and deal with and occurs in competitions occasionally . On the one hand, exploiting it well is critical for the purpose of achieving the highest score and winning the competition, but on the other hand, models incorporating data leakage are usually useless for any practical purposes and for the organizers of the competition, as they contain 'illegal' information. Often, a diligent participant will share the leakage publicly on the Discussion board to level the playing field and take away its competitive edge. Other than that, Kagglers often share information in a joint effort to learn and grow as a community. People who rank high on the leaderboard will sometimes share their successful approach (usually either early on or after the competition is finished).
The Kernel tab is basically the applied, code-based version of the Discussion board, and in my opinion the most important tab to explore as a beginner. Anyone can share any script or notebook, connected to any dataset or competition, and complete with documentation, explanations, visualizations, and outputs, which everyone can then go through, vote on, copy and paste from, and even run entirely in their browser! Both of the aforementioned competitions have many interesting, beautiful, and highly successful Kernels, and I strongly recommend going through them later after having first given it a go by yourself. Although a relatively new feature, Kaggle is constantly improving Kernels, and there is even a $100,000 competition going on right now in 'Kernels Only' mode. However, Kernels can often be overwhelming, lacking in conceptual explanations, or assuming prior knowledge. In other words, they often show what works, but sometimes not how they got there or why it works.
I highly recommend using Python 3.6 and working in the Jupyter Notebook environment for anything Data Science related (the most popular distribution is called 'Anaconda', and includes Python, Jupyter Notebook, and many useful libraries). You can then start the environment at any time by typing jupyter notebook into your Terminal (or through the Anaconda GUI). Otherwise, everything shown here can be done in a private Kernel on the Kaggle website (entirely in your browser), which is essentially identical to a Jupyter Notebook.
You can start typing any method name and hit 'Tab' to see a list of all possible options.
Similarly, selecting any method and hitting 'Shift-Tab' a few times will open up its documentation in your notebook.
Typing %time before any statement and executing the cell will print how long it takes to execute.
Similarly, typing %prun before any statement and executing the cell will run it through Python's code profiler and print the results.
For a comprehensive list of 'magic' commands, please refer to the documentation. Onward!
This is a supervised learning problemÃ¢??-Ã¢??meaning we have a training set which includes a number of observations (rows) with various pieces of information about them (columns). One of those columns is the one we are interested in being able to predictÃ¢??-Ã¢??often called the 'target' variable or the 'dependent' variable, sometimes also called 'label' or 'class' in classification problems. In our case, this is the Sale Price (surprise surprise). The other columns are often called 'independent' variables, or 'features'. We also have a test set, which will also have a number of observations, with exactly the same columns except for the target variable, which will be missing and it is our job to predict a value for. Therefore, ideally we want to build a model which can learn the relationship between the independent variables and the dependent variable based on the training set, and then use that knowledge to predict the dependent (or target) variable for the test set as accurately as possible. Since the target variable is continuousÃ¢??-Ã¢??SalePrice, which can take any valueÃ¢??-Ã¢??this problem is called a 'regression' problem.
Now that we have a Jupyter Notebook up and running, the first thing we want to do is load the data into a Pandas DataFrame. Pandas is a popular and powerful library that handles everything related to data analysis in Python, and DataFrame is the name of the object it uses to store data.
The last line loads the CSV file we downloaded from Kaggle (stands for 'comma-separated-values', a common format which can also be viewed directly with any standard software like Excel) into a Pandas DataFrame using the convenient Python 3.6 string format. Since you will be using read_csv a lot, I recommend skimming its documentation now. In general, if you ever come across any method more than onceÃ¢??-Ã¢??it's a good habit to skim through its documentation, and as noted above, you can also do so directly in your notebook! The first time I loaded and looked at the DataFrame, I noticed that the first column in the dataset is Id and represents the index of that row in the dataset, rather than being an actual variable. Therefore, I went back and passed index_col='Id' as an argument when loading the data into a DataFrame to make sure Pandas uses it as the index instead of treating it as a column and adding a new index column before itÃ¢??-Ã¢??see how reading the documentation is already coming in handy?
Now, let's see what the training set looks like!
As we can see, Id is now applied correctly. Additionally, the training set has 80 columns overall (excluding Id), out of which 79 are the independent variables and 1 is the dependent variable. Therefore, we would expect the test set to only have 79 columns (the independent variables), and that is indeed the caseÃ¢??-Ã¢??go check it now!
Most of those numbers and strings don't mean much to us yet, and the sharp observer will notice that the values for the 'Alley' column are suspiciously all 'NaN' (stands for 'Not a Number'), meaning the values are missing. Not to worryÃ¢??-Ã¢??we will deal with that eventually.
The next step is to start thinking about what kind of model we would like to use. Thus, let's take a break from the data for a few minutes and talk about Decision Trees (sometimes instead called 'Regression Trees' when applied to regression problems). I'll come back to the data afterwards, so please bear with me!
The basic idea here is simpleÃ¢??-Ã¢??when learning the training data (usually termed 'being fitted' to the training data), the Regression Tree searches over all of the independent variables, and then over all the values of each one of the independent variables, to find the variable and value which best split the data into two similar groups (in mathematical terms, the tree always chooses the split which minimizes the weighted average variance of the two resulting nodes), and then calculates the score (based on the chosen metric) and the average value of the dependent variable for each of the groups. The tree then repeats this process recursively until there are no more splits to perform (unless max_depth was explicitly specified, like in the picture below). Each of the nodes at the last level of the tree is called a 'leaf', and is each associated with the average value of the dependent variable across all of the observations that are in the group that made it to that leaf.
As a side note, this is a great example of a 'greedy' algorithmÃ¢??-Ã¢??at every split, it checks all the options and then chooses the one that seems like the best option at that point, with hopes of eventually achieving an overall good result. After the tree was fitted to the training data, any observation for which we wish to predict a value for the dependent variable simply has to traverse the tree until it reaches a leafÃ¢??-Ã¢??an end nodeÃ¢??-Ã¢??and then it gets assigned the leaf's corresponding dependent variable value.
Let's take a closer look at the tree shown here: in each node, the first element is the node's split rule (the independent variable and its value), the second element is the Mean Squared Error (MSE) of all the observations in that node, and the third element is the number of observations in that node ('samples')Ã¢??-Ã¢??the size of the group. The last element, 'value', is the natural logarithm of our target/dependent variableÃ¢??-Ã¢??'SalePrice'. As we can see, it seems like the greedy approach of making the locally best split at every node does indeed generally decrease the MSE as the tree expands, and each leaf has an associated 'SalePrice' value.
So let's think back to our objective in supervised learning. On the one hand, we would like our model to be able to capture the relationships between the independent variables and the dependent variable as it gets fitted to the training data, so that it can then make accurate predictions. However, the data the model will have to predict the dependent variable for will necessarily be different than the data the model was trained on. In our case, it is the Kaggle test set. Therefore, we would like our model to capture the general relationships between the independent variables and the dependent variable, so that it can generalize to unseen data and predict well. This is sometimes known as the 'biasÃ¢??-Ã¢??variance tradeoff'.
If our model doesn't learn enough from the training set, then it will have a high biasÃ¢??-Ã¢??often called 'underfitting'Ã¢??-Ã¢??meaning it did not capture all the information that is available in the training set, and therefore its predictions would not be as good. However, if our model learns our training data too well, it will capture the specific relationships between the independent variables and the dependent variable in the training set instead of the general onesÃ¢??-Ã¢??it will have a high variance, often called 'overfitting'Ã¢??-Ã¢??and therefore it will generalize to unseen data poorly and again its predictions would not be as good. Clearly, we must seek a balance between the model's bias and variance.
Imagine we fit a Regression Tree to our training set. What will the tree look like? As you probably guessed, it will keep splitting until there is only a single observation in every leaf (as there are no more splits to perform as that point). In other words, the tree will build a unique path for each of the observations in the training set, and will give the leaf at the end of the path the dependent value of its associated observation.
If I were to then drop the dependent variable from my training set, and ask my tree to predict the dependent variable value for each of the observations in the training set, what would happen? As you might imagine, it would do so perfectlyÃ¢??-Ã¢??achieving basically 100% accuracy and 0 MSEÃ¢??-Ã¢??as it has already learned the dependent variable value associated with each of the observations in the training set.
However, if I were to ask the tree to predict the dependent variable value for unseen observationsÃ¢??-Ã¢??ones it was not trained onÃ¢??-Ã¢??it would likely perform poorly, as any unseen observation would end up getting assigned a dependent variable value from a leaf which was constructed for a single specific observation in the training set. This is an example of 'overfitting'. It is possible to fiddle with the tree's parameters in order to reduce the overfitÃ¢??-Ã¢??for example, limit the tree's max_depthÃ¢??-Ã¢??but it turns out there's a better solution!
In ML, we often design meta-models which combine the prediction of several smaller models to generate a better final prediction. This is generally called 'ensembling'. Specifically, several decision trees are often combined together in an ensemble method called 'Bootstrap Aggregating', or 'Bagging' for short. The resulting meta-model is called a 'Random Forest'.
Random Forests are simple but effective. When being fitted to a training set, many decision trees are constructed, just like the one aboveÃ¢??-Ã¢??only each tree is fitted on a random subset of the data (a 'bootstrap sample', meaning drawn with replacement from the entire dataset), and can only consider a random subset of the independent variables ('features') at every split. Then, to generate a prediction for a new observation, the Random Forest simply averages the predictions of all its trees and returns that as its prediction.
But wait, Oren! All we're doing is building many weaker trees and then taking their averageÃ¢??-Ã¢??why would this work!?
Well, the short answer is that it works very well, and you should try reading up more on Random Forests if you're interested in the statistical explanation. I'm not very good at statistics, but I'll try to give a basic explanationÃ¢??-Ã¢??the bootstrap sampling and the feature subset are meant to make the trees as uncorrelated as possible (although they are all still based on the same data set and feature set), allowing each tree to discover slightly different relationships in the data. This results in their average having much less varianceÃ¢??-Ã¢??less overfitÃ¢??-Ã¢??than any single tree, and therefore better generalization and prediction overall.
In simpler terms, for an unseen observation each of the decision trees predict the dependent variable value of the leaf the observation ends up at, meaning the value of the most-similar training set observation in that specific tree-space. As we remember, each tree is constructed differently on different data and therefore each tree will define similarity in a different way and predict a different value, and therefore for a given unseen observation the average of all the trees is basically the average of all the values of a lot of observations in the training set which are somehow similar to it.
One consequence of this property is that while Random Forests are very good at prediction when the test set is somewhat similar to the training set (in the same range of values), which is usually the case, they are terrible at prediction when the test set is different in some fundamental way from the training set (different range of values), like in Time Series problems for example (where the training set is from one time period and the test set is from a different time period).
Since in our case the test set and the training set have the same range of values, we should be good to go!
One last thing is left to do before we get our Random Forest rolling. Unfortunately, while Random Forests are theoretically capable of dealing with both categorical features (which are non-numerical, so strings) and missing data, the scikit-learn implementation does not support either. For now, we will fill in the missing values using pd.interpolate(), and then convert categorical features to numerical ones using pd.get_dummies(), which uses a scheme called 'One-Hot Encoding'. The idea is simpleÃ¢??-Ã¢??let us imagine a categorical variable with n possible values. This column then gets split into n separate columns, each corresponding to one of the original values (essentially equivalent to 'is_value?' for each one of the original values). Each observation, which previously had a string value for the categorical variable, now has a 1 in the column corresponding to the old string value and a 0 in all the rest (this is called 'One-Hot').
We are now ready to construct a model, fit it to the training data, use it to predict on the test set, and submit the predictions to Kaggle!
This is all the code that is needed in order to submit our model's predictions to KaggleÃ¢??-Ã¢??about 20 lines! I ran this code, and then went ahead and submitted the results to KaggleÃ¢??-Ã¢??the score was 0.14978, which is about 63% percentile currently. Not bad at all for 5 minutes of coding! We can see the power of the Random Forest at work here.
After loading the training set and the test set into separate DataFrames, I saved the target variable and then dropped it from the DataFrame (as I want to keep only the independent variables, the features, in the DataFrame). Then, I added a new temporary column ('training_set') to both the training set and test set that distinguishes between them so that I can concatenate (put them together in the same DataFrame) them now and then later separate them again. I then went ahead and concatenated them, filled in missing values, and converted categorical features into numerical ones via One-Hot Encoding. As mentioned, Random Forests (and in general most algorithms) work better when the training set and the test set have similar values, and therefore whenever I modify anything I try to modify both sets together. Otherwise, interpolate might fill in different values for the training set and the test set, and get_dummies might encode the same categorical feature in two different ways, which would result in worse performance. I then separated them again and got rid of the temporary column, created a Random Forest with 100 trees (in general, the more trees the better the result will be up to a certain point, but also the more time training will take) using all of my computer's CPU cores (n_jobs=-1), fit it using my training set, used the fitted Random Forest to predict the target variable for my test set, put the results together with their respective Id in one DataFrame, and saved it to a CSV file. I then went to the competition's page on Kaggle and submitted the CSV file. Voila!
In the next articles, we will dive deeper into this competition and discuss visualization, a better-informed approach to preprocessing, feature engineering, model validation, and hyperparameter tuning. As homework, try to learn more about these topics, perhaps read a Kaggle Kernel or two, and see if you can improve your score and get into the top 50%, or submit your predictions for the Titanic competition.
Documentation! Pandas and Scikit-Learn both have extensive documentation with many interesting discussions.
For more information about Kaggle success stories, I recommend the Kaggle blog, where they frequently interview competition winners regarding their approach and methods.
For detailed summaries of DataFrames, I recommend checking out pandas-summary and pandas-profiling.
For an excellent explanation on more advanced Random Forest usage, I recommend Intuitive Interpretation of Random Forest.
Reddit for everything related: r/machinelearning, r/learnmachinelearning, r/datascience.
I'd like to thank Udacity for its incredible Intro to ML course, which first introduced me to this amazing world.
I'd like to thank Rachel Thomas and Jeremy Howard of fast.ai, for teaching me 90% of what I know about Machine Learning and Deep Learning. Seriously, fast.ai is amazing, please go check it out. Apart from the interesting blog, they are currently offering top-notch MOOCs on Deep Learning and Computational Linear Algebra for free, and soon their Machine Learning MOOC will be released to the public as well (this MOOC served as the inspiration for this article). If anyone is interested specifically in the ML MOOC and cannot wait, please shoot me an email.

industry_corpus2: Artificial Intelligence


text:
Born and raised in Bothell, WA, I received my BFA in Painting & Drawing from the University of Washington in 2009. I currently live with my husband and cat in a house surrounded by trees just outside of Seattle. My work is inspired by the Pacific Northwest, the cycles of the seasons, and the wild woodland garden that I lovingly maintain.
Prints and cards of many of my paintings are available in my shop. A variety of other products featuring my work can be found on Society6.
A selection of my work is stocked at the fantastic brick-and-mortar shops Venue (Ballard, WA.) and The Gallery at Town Center (Lake Forest Park, WA). Select card designs featuring my illustrations are also available through Artists to Watch.
Please feel free to contact me with all comments and inquiries. I am always happy to discuss the possibility of custom work!
I send out an illustrated letter at the end of every month--it's the best way to stay up to date with my latest work, as well as receive info on upcoming projects, my creative process, and special offers.

industry_corpus2: Others


text:
Rising Hope Academy is designed to disciple students and parents in the process of healing from traumatic events, giving them the tools to foster resilliance and hope in a Christ-centered learning environment.
Our model focuses on these three elements to promote healing and foundational change to break the cycles associated with the life events that cause toxic stress. Without learning the tools of resiliancy to overcome this stress, a child is at much higher risk for long term social, behavioral, health & emotional issues. At Rising Hope Academy, teaching resiliance is the key to unlocking a solid foundation to bring their God-given potential to life.
Rising Hope Academy from Callner Creates on Vimeo.

industry_corpus2: Subject Education


text:
For whatever reason, the process of getting a Christmas tree has really brought out my Americanness. I hadn’t considered myself a big stickler for traditions, but suddenly, I’m trying to recreate an American Christmas tree. I’ve made compromises, but I’ve also promised myself to stock up on certain decorations the next time we go to the US.
Despite spending Christmas here before, I’ve remained pretty clueless as to how O’ Tannenbaum works here. These are some of the important questions I’ve been irritating my husband with.
1. Do you know what a tree-skirt is?
I tried to find a tree-skirt on Amazon (Amazon.de that is. Amazon.com has a whole section of them!) without much luck, so I decided to ask my husband if he even knew what one was. He did not. I tried describing it, and he seemed to have no clue what Germans actually put under the tree. When I asked him how he intended to keep needles and sap off of the floor, he suggested we put a trash bag under it.
His lack of a proper solution made me question whether his lack of knowledge about tree-skirts was a German thing or just a Mr. Faultier thing, so I asked a friend whose family had lived in both the US and Germany. She wasn’t sure if they could be found here either, so we asked her mother who informed us that Germans usually use blankets. Not trash bags like Mr. Faultier suggested.
If you don’t know what a tree-skirt is, it’s usually a round blanket or small, festive tarp that is made to wrap around the bottom of the tree. It’s got a hole in the middle and a split from the middle to the outer edge that can usually be tied or velcroed together.
Photo by jenn – She also made it herself! Maybe I should knit one for next year.
Essentially like a skirt for the tree. I had planned on making my own from a table cloth until we stumbled upon a small round rug. It goes under the tree and stand instead of wrapping around, but it has the same look and makes it easier to water the tree. I’d call this a cultural-compromise win.
Bonus points for the Christmas squirrels.
2. Where can I get a star for the top of the tree that lights up?
Apparently like tree-skirts, light-up stars are not a thing here. The most common top-of-the-tree decoration I’ve found so far are these fancy spike things that remind me of Prussian helmets that saw pictures of in history class. There are stars, too, but they just sit on top of the tree and might be covered with glitter and not lights.
Growing up, we always saved the star for last when decorating the tree, and plugging it in was our big sign that the tree was finished, and we were ready for Christmas. I don’t normally get very homesick, but the idea of not having this moment with our tree in Germany made me miss home quite a bit.
My family’s tree from last year. Look how bright the star is!
I haven’t found an adequate replacement yet. My current plan is to buy one of those sparkly stars or spikes and to hunt down a light-up star for next year – even if I have to pick one up over Thanksgiving and make it work with our electricity.
3. Why are all the trees so fat?!
German Christmas tree people seem to leave the trees as nature intended, instead of grooming them in to full, symmetrical cones. This means that they end up puffy on the bottom and sparse on the top, sometimes with empty sticks reaching for the sky at the top that you have to trim off yourself.
We weren’t looking for a big tree, but we needed a fairly narrow one for our apartment. Unfortunately all the small and medium ones were quite wide. It seemed that the width did not vary much, just the height. We managed to find a big one that looked like it had gotten squished on two sides, which ended up fitting into our space perfectly – after we cut off the top bit. It’s much bigger than Mr. Faultier expected. I think he wanted one shorter than me and ended up with one taller than him!
Mr. Faultier also thinks I put up too many ornaments.
We do have these weird bits growing up at the top that I suggested cutting off. But apparently it’s a ‘King Tree’ and I’m not allowed to cut his crown.
I suppose it looks majestic?
I’m pretty happy with the tree, even with my conflicted feelings about its crown. It makes the apartment feel very homey – and it smells good, too!
omg, haha, the crown. That’s amazing. I would have cut it away probably as well, but oh well. I’d be happy to even have a tree. The bf hates Christmas and I am not allowed to buy a tree (this year. pff).
Never heard off a blanket, though. For us the needles fell on the floor – always. We just brushed them away with a broom.
I love reading those different views on things and see how you can feel uncomfortable with some of them, because I can kinda relate to this. Germany and Switzerland can be so different sometimes – and oh well, not having a Christmas, thanks to the boyfriend, tree as well.


text:
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industry_corpus2: Law & Justice


text: The Iroquois Life Skills Association (ILSA) is an organization dedicated to meet the needs of students in the Jr./Sr. Life Skills Classroom. The Life Skills Students, as well as the Life Skills Staff, dedicate their time and effort into creating various different items to sell as fundraisers. The Life Skills students gain many valuable leadership skills and confidence through selling school fundraiser products. Selling a product teaches the students how to think through the sales process and reach their goals. The Life Skills staff help the students work as a team. Teamwork is essential in the classroom and in the “real world” later on. Gaining teamwork skills early on is very important. Educational fundraisers require the students to work with each other, their parents and teachers to meet their overall goal. Learning to compromise and share ideas instead of insisting on having it their way will greatly help the Life Skills Students throughout their lives. The ILSA organization works on developing various different skills. The fundraisers teach essential life skills and the profits also help meet the needs of the Life Skills Students.


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industry_corpus2: Film & Entertainment


text:
I admit, I'm humiliated. I'm so confident in my previous post that the Colts will win no matter what happens. But a surprising miracle happened, the New York Jets won in the AFC wild-card matchup last January 8, 2010.
A lot also predicted that the Colts will surely win and they will have a big chance to make it to the Super Bowl this year, but were disappointed.
The final score is 17-16 in favor of the Jets. Mark Sanchez leads the drive to set up Nick Folk's game-winning kick. As we've seen last Saturday night, Nick Folk made a 32-yard field goal before the game ended. This goal gave the Jets a 17-16 playoff victory over Manning's Colts to wrap up a head-to-head showdown. Everyone was really thrilled, everyone was shouting and screaming before the game ended.
In the last 53 seconds of the game, Manning moved the Colts into position for a go-ahead field. Then the four-time league MVP watched helplessly as the New York Jets drove down the field for the final seconds of the match-up.
Manning and the Colts were really disappointed with their lose. "It's disappointing with the way we lost tonight. Any time you lose on a last-second field goal, it certainly stings", Manning said in an interview.
A year ago, The Colts beat the Jets for the AFC title with a final score of 10-7. But this year is not Colts' year.
Congratulations to the Jets and good luck this Saturday!
Who will be the NFC and AFC champions? Let's find out after the 23rd of January!
It was a mind-blowing game! the NY Jets did great. I also thought that the Colts will win last night. It was so close... but the Jets were also really good and they did everything to win.
Right now, I'm looking forward and is excited to watch the Divisional Playoffs of the Jets vs the Patriots this coming Sunday!

industry_corpus2: Sports


text:
In my last blog post, I promised that I would share my goals for the business for this year.
I always knew that I wanted to have my own business someday. When I was a kid, I hustled to earn money. As an adult, I tried several businesses that never quite took off--I'm pretty sure I know why, but I'll share that another day.
Soap making started as a hobby. There are several problems with soapmaking as a hobby: it's expensive to buy ingredients in small batches, you only NEED one batch a year for the whole family, and it's fun to experiment.
Soap making didn't remain a hobby for me for very long. Early on my husband recommended that I sell at our local farmer's market. The first months were pretty slow, but friends bought some to show their support, and I kept experimenting.
Six months in, I quit my part time job to try to make a go of the business. Three years later, I pay myself a small stipend and keep rolling the profits back into the business. We spent the first year at the market and shows. Our second year, we added some wholesale accounts and a brick and mortar shop. Our third year, we started attending wholesale markets.
Sometimes I run across folks that think my business is cute or a glorified hobby. I'm not trying to pay for my soap habit, I am building an honest to goodness business. The day it becomes a glorified hobby I'll stop making soap.
I try to make smart business decisions to help grow my business. I'm also willing to share some of what I learn along the way to help others thinking of starting their own business. Much of this can apply to all sorts of businesses, not just soap makers.
That's a little bit of background so you can understand my goals a little bit better for 2016 and beyond.
I took a branding class this year to get a better handle on my brand. In the past, I had a hard time putting to words what makes my brand stand out from other natural soaps. I was able to narrow this down which means a few tweaks to my branding including a logo update, new website, new labels and packaging.
I've had an Etsy site since about the beginning, but I only had it so friends and family could order online. It was sad and neglected. Shipping has always seemed like a big hurdle. There is a lot of logistics to work out, and soap is expensive to ship. We have set up a shipping station at the shop, updated our website (you're looking at it), and are reaching out to potential regional buyers. We are ready to ship!
To reach more folks in the region, we have to meet them face-to-face. While our soap is great quality, smells delicious, and makes you feel comfy and cozy, it's easier to convey that in person. Once we reach new customers, they'll feel confident reordering online. We hope to be one of the premier soap companies in the Midwest.
To reach new retailers, we have to attend wholesale shows where shops scout out new products and do their buying. We've been to a couple. They have always been successful, but they are a huge investment of time and money. By having our branding tightened up and more brand awareness, we should have an easier time reaching retailers that are a great fit for our brand.
I have a heart for working with other business owners that are trying to reach their full potential. I will share some of what I've learned along the way in this blog. I'll speak mostly to the art of entrepreneurship. But, I won't be sharing much about the specifics of a soap business. I won't be sharing my top secret recipes, methods, or my suppliers. Though if you are a solopreneur, especially a maker or a retailer, you'll enjoy following my journey.
Being an entrepreneur is not for the faint of heart, but for some of us, we just can't help but push forward with our dreams.

industry_corpus2: Petrochemicals


text: Try searching on regional names & landmarks; shorter searches work better. Leave blank to show all routes.	You can also check out the flag and population of Netherlands.

industry_corpus2: Computing & Telecommunications


text: This file contains fictional yet "realistic" flight plans for the 6th and 9th Air Mobility Squadrons that fly a total of 27 KC-10s out of Travis AFB in California. Appropriate domestic and international destinations are included including "missions" to Bosnia, Saudia Arabia, Diego Garcia, Qatar, Germany, Korea, Okinawa, Guam and many more. Each aircraft undergoes one day of virtual maintenance (static) each week. Project Airlift (PAL) recommends using any PAL AFCAD files that can be found.

industry_corpus2: Aerospace


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How Much Can I Earn Per Month With Options Trading?
In my own trading, I target short standardized equity options positions that would return at least 2% per month.
Despite having a 2% target per position per month, I don’t hope to make that each month. In fact, my best advice is to not focus on that at all. Instead, if you are a beginner it is better to focus on losing a little money in the first few months and learn a few staple options strategies. Also important to focus on not risking more than 20–30% of your available capital by investing no more than 1–2% in each position.
Over the coming months, if you start to make money then you will understand how much you could make if you went all in.
Then please take a cold shower, sit down, breathe, and make a blood oath that you will never put more than 50% of your account at risk and if you see more than 5% drawdown in a month then you liquidate and stop trading.
This may not be a direct answer, but I hope it provides you even more value in your journey to becoming a successful trader.

industry_corpus2: Finance & Economics


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The Nyamezela Group of Companies is one of Africa’s leading professional business solutions and innovative product service providers.
Nyamezela Metering is one of the continent’s best metering solutions providers, with a global footprint. With innovation at the core of its business, Nyamezela Metering provides superior quality products and solutions at highly competitive rates – always striving to make metering more smart!
Nyamezela Consulting Engineering is an Architectural Design, Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Surveying and Project Management business. The Company is guided by the highest possible industry standards including membership of the Engineering Council of South Africa and the South African Association of Consulting Engineering Code of Conduct.
Nyamezela Business Advisory Services offers premium, integrated Business Advisory Services that are custom-made to client specifications by our highly skilled business consultants. Areas of expertise include, but are not limited to, Assurance, Auditing, Corporate Finance, Financial Modelling and Management, Due Diligence, Governance, Forensic Services and Management Consulting.

industry_corpus2: Power & Energy


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In today’s edition of Bitcoin in Brief, we cover two decentralized exchanges – an Irish team that’s launching its Local Token Exchange and the already operating Bancor that has reported a security breach and admitted the loss of $12.5 million worth of coins. Also, hackers in China have mined cryptos worth $2 million using malware installed on 1 million computers, and in the US, digital forensics firm Chainalysis claims a fifth of all bitcoin is missing.
Two Irish entrepreneurs are behind a project to set up a new decentralized crypto exchange in Europe. Joe Haslam and Conor O’Connor plan to launch Local Token Exchange (LTE) in August, according to the Irish Independent . The platform aims to enable trading in over 100 cryptocurrencies by the end of the year. It has already gathered a team of nine employees and six advisors.
O’Connor notes that most crypto transactions currently take place on centralized exchanges while there are very few decentralized trading platforms operating at the moment. “Our approach is peer-to-peer and it democratizes the process. Our transactions take place using smart contracts and escrow,” the cofounder explains.
While the Irish team is still raising the funds to complete their project, another crypto exchange branded as decentralized proves that maintaining an operating platform of this kind comes with challenges. On Monday, Bancor reported it had experienced a “security breach”. In a tweet , the company assured its customers that “No user wallets were compromised” and informed them that the platform is currently under maintenance.
Updating users on the situation, the exchange later said the details of the breach are still being investigated but released some of the findings. According to the tweeted statement , a wallet used to upgrade some smart contracts has been compromised and used to withdraw ethereum from the BNT (Bancor’s native token) smart contract. The stolen amount, 29,984 ETH, is worth approximately $12.5 million.
The post details that “The same wallet also stole: 229,356,645 NPXS (~$1M) [and] 3,200,000 BNT (~$10M).” Bancor claims that “once the theft was identified, we were able to freeze the stolen BNT”, explaining that the ability to do so was built into the Bancor protocol to be used in an “extreme situation.” However, the exchange notes that it’s not possible to freeze the ether or any other stolen coins.
The heist and Bancor’s countermeasures prompted comments on social media questioning the decentralized status of the hacked crypto exchange which doesn’t square with the centralized freezing of tokens and shutting down the network.
Police in the Chinese Da Lian city have arrested 20 suspects, employees of a computer tech company, who allegedly infected over 1 million computers with mining malware. According to the local news outlet Legal Daily , they reportedly mined more than $2.2 million USD worth of digital coins over a period of two years.
The publication details that the hackers developed and embedded the malware in plugins promising faster browsing speeds and other “improvements”. It has been estimated that the ads have reached 5 million computers in the People’s Republic. The hackers also employed a network of more than 100 agents to spread their malicious software.
According to the Chinese investigators, more than a million users have installed the plugins so far. The hackers have mined a total of 26 million units of digibyte, decred and siacoin worth around 15 million yuan. These altcoins do not require a lot of computing power and background mining is harder to detect, the article notes.
According to a research conducted by New York based company Chainalysis, about a fifth of all bitcoin is missing. The total amount of lost cryptocurrency, mostly bitcoin (BTC), is worth $20 billion dollars, The Wall Street Journal reported. The blockchain-analysis firm says the main reason is the loss of access to the funds as a result of users failing to securely store their wallets or remember their passwords and secret phrases.
Chainalysis does not help people find their lost bitcoin, its senior economist Kim Grauer said. The digital forensics firm noted, however, that it can point out “at least one counterparty for 80 percent of all bitcoin transactions.” It has been reported as well that the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has successfully tracked down almost $1 billion in lost cryptocurrency revenue in the last two years.
At the end of 2017, Chainalysis published a similar report claiming that access to almost 3.8 million bitcoins might be permanently lost. Wallet Recovery Services, a company that helps users remember passwords to their crypto wallets, claims it has about a 30 percent success rate.
What are your thoughts on today’s news tidbits? Tell is in the comments section below.
Now live, Satoshi Pulse . A comprehensive, real-time listing of the cryptocurrency market. View prices, charts, transaction volumes, and more for the top 500 cryptocurrencies trading today .
The post The Daily: Decentralized Exchanges – New and Hacked, and Some Lost Coins appeared first on Bitcoin News .


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Wellcome back GR8 day out , bream , Plaice . dogfish rays ,mackerel Mark is one of the most professional, knowledgeable, helpful and willing skippers we have had the good fortune to sail with. Thanks to Marks efforts a disastrous trip was salvaged and a good days fishing was had by all on board. If you want a good days fishing Mark is the skipper I would choose every time.
Had a fantastic day on she likes it II. easy to book, fantastic boat. Well equipped. Mark done his upmost to find fish and gave us loads of local knowledge to help us have a successful day. Very helpful with the novices on board. I have been on a lot of trips and this was by far the best.
A few of us from our angling club from the northeast of england travelled to the south coast for some channel congering. We were let down at the last minute by the skipper we had originally booked but another local skipper put us in touch with Mark on She Likes It II. What a stroke of luck for us !! We found Mark to be one of the most professional, knowledgeable, helpful & willing skippers we have sailed with (and we have sailed with a number around the UK). Within the first hour of anchoring on the wreck one of our group had their first ever conger on deck. We will certainly make the long journey down to Shoreham again to fish with Mark to sample the varied fishing he offers. What sets Mark apart ? Not just his knowledge and ability but here is a skipper who genuinely enjoys taking people fishing and seeing them catch, not just a businessman. If you are looking for a skipper on this stretch of coastline choose Mark, you won’t be disappointed.
After fishing on most on the charters in the Brighton/Newhaven area over the years , I think the skipper of SHE LIKES IT II is by far the best in the area, Mark puts you on the fish , offers advice and nets your fish (which happens a lot on this boat). and best of all makes a cracking cuppa !!!!!will be booking loads more trips from now on !
Great Skipper, great boat, great day!!! I haven’t been sea fishing in Sussex for many years and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Can’t wait to get out there again!
Thanks Mark for a great day, we were mostly beginners and you were very patient and an excellent teacher. We’d be happy to recommend you and your boat to anyone. And thanks for all the tea!
Fantastic skipper and a fantastic day was had by all ,thank you Mark,see you again very soon.

industry_corpus2: Travel & Geography


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Host your next party, meeting, or celebration with us! Call (02) 986 3712 and ask for recommended party specials for reservations.
There have always been a number of frequented haunts in the Greenhills area, and Choi Garden has consistently placed that list for the past decade. While other branches have since blossomed around Manila, the original two-story, free-standing restaurant in San Juan remains an institution. A favorite on the menu would be the crispy fried pigeon, which is served with the ubiquitous kropek on the side and priced per piece.
Residents up north may be found frequenting EDSA Shangri-La’s Summer Palace for its Cantonese fare, which it has mastered from day one in 1992. Today, it keeps each of its 180 offerings on its menu worth coming back to. Executive Chinese chef Tony Sum, however, brings innovation to traditional Cantonese recipes by infusing culinary techniques that he’s picked up from his travels around Southeast Asia. Apart from dim sum on offer, the selection of signature dishes called the 8 Treasures is worth saving room for.
Steamed crab with shredded garlic and glutinous rice.
Since joining the highly competitive Cantonese dining scene in Greenhills two years ago, Xiu has carefully carved out a name for itself, considering it had big shoes to fill after taking over prime lot once occupied by Lugang. The outcome is exactly what you would expect from the same group behind Tuan Tuan Chinese Brasserie and The Dessert Kitchen. Now a favorite among Manila’s discerning crowd, Xiu offers tried-and-tested flavors in a modern setting that steps away from typical Chinese interiors. Signature dishes include the honey-glazed-prime cut char siu and the stewed U.S. beef short ribs.
The swanky setting at China Blue by Jerome Leung makes it worth the trip to the Conrad Manila. Diners feast on an array of dim sum and roasted duck, while treated to majestic views of Manila Bay from the floor-to-ceiling windows. But that’s not the only thing China Blue is famous for. Chef Leung is revered among the gourmand circles for his research and expertise in Chinese cooking techniques, which he spent the ‘90s perfecting. From his kitchen comes a contemporary take on traditional dishes, including the signature Australian Candy Heart Abalone with Dried Fish Maw in Superior Sauce on the menu.
Perhaps the newest establishment on this list, No. 8 China House opened early this year. Its sleek dining space and dim lighting make it conducive for intimate conversations over the house Peking duck, which is slow roasted for a good hour in a wood-fired oven. The stylish function rooms and attentive staff are a few factors that contribute to the immediate success of this new establishment.
Homey and fuss-free, Hai Shin Lou distinguishes itself by omitting MSG in its Cantonese specials. It’s also the sole restaurant on this list that still offers the option of choosing live seafood straight from the tanks on display. Chef Tommy Yao ensures that ingredients are delivered fresh from Hong Kong and his hardworking staff ensures that each guest is well taken care of. Frequent diners come for the famed peppercorn sea mantis, as well as Peking duck and steamed lapu-lapu.
For years, Shang Palace—with its chandeliers, red motif, and latticework walls—has been the quintessential Chinese fine dining spot in Makati's business district. It’s become well-known for its unlimited dim sum buffet for lunch, as well as the extensive range of classic Cantonese dishes on offer. Executive Chinese chef Ben Lam puts his own spin on the roasted duck, served two ways, as well as the savory shrimp with cucumber, minced pork, and superior stock.
Apart from Cantonese cooking, Canton Road adds Huaiyang cuisine to its menu, infusing it with delicate Guangdongcai flavors, which are apparent in the seafood, dim sum, noodles, and soups. At Canton Road's opulent and brightly-lit dining space, diners can expect a contemporary presentation of regional specialties and signature roasted meat. Must-tries include the stuffed suckling pig and steamed Iberico pork dumpling with abalone and black truffle.
These establishments come to mind when one gets a hankering for Chinese takeaway.
Located in a convenient corner at a Petron gas station along EDSA and near Dasmariñas Village, 8 Treasures Roasting has been the go-to for takeout roast duck and roast goose.
Our spicy beef noodle soup will keep you warm when the weather can't.
Luk Yuen has been dubbed the nostalgic haunt, a reminder of the times the taipans were still busy cementing their success.
There are many memories associated with the original Gloria Maris in Greenhills, which is why its authentic seafood dishes, dim sum, and hot pot will always be branded as comfort food.

industry_corpus2: Hospitality & Catering


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100% grown and milled in the USA, we use ring-spun long staple acala California Cleaner Cotton™ in our knits.
Interested in wholesale? Please inquire.
We add no toxins or petrochemicals, just a little wax and wash it off with hot water and soda ash.
Our bio whites are brightened with about 3% hydrogen peroxide (no optic brighteners or petroleum based softeners).
Acala is a long staple pima-like cotton breed that has exceptional sheen, strength and length.

industry_corpus2: Agriculture & Fisheries


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If the first thing you think of when you hear “learning management system” is online education, you wouldn’t be wrong; however, if you think that’s all there is to an LMS, you have more to learn about the concept.
An LMS may perhaps be most closely aligned with educational institutions, whereby university students can access lecture notes, connect with fellow classmates, complete online quizzes and tests and access course grades. Colleges and universities aren’t the only organizations benefiting from the systems, though. Businesses have also instituted the use of LMS to train and offer professional development courses to their employees.
Associations, too, can gain from adopting an LMS. How? Below are four examples of how association executives can use an LMS for their organization.
This classic use revolves around online education with certificate for your members. Since some LMS providers, including TelSpan’s UpAbility, allow e-commerce capabilities, members can select the required continuing education courses, pay for them and complete the courses through the LMS, all without needing assistance from association staff. An LMS maximizes association profits from accreditation, as it not only brings in non-dues revenue but also minimizes administrative time spent by staff, opening up capacity for other projects.
Further, because an LMS should allow members to easily connect to their social media accounts, your association can enjoy more engagement from members sharing their continuing education accomplishments through those channels. That social exposure can even prompt prospective members to look into joining your association, as research shows that up to 50 percent of buying decisions come from such word of mouth. Twitter research in particular shows that 49% of the platform’s users depend on influential accounts for recommendations. Allowing for members to easily share word of the benefits they receive from your organization is an easy way to use their influence to further your association.
Once your annual event is over, all the work you put into it doesn’t have to stop its usefulness. If you live stream your event and video capture the keynotes, breakout sessions and even interviews with speakers, association staff members and attendees, you can use your LMS to grant access to the content. Just set up the video segments from the conference as separate webinars in your LMS and charge members and non-members to view.
Oftentimes, speakers you feature in your webinars will want to share links to those webinars through their websites, email subscriber lists, social media accounts and newsletters. Since the speakers likely have audience members outside your membership, this sharing expands the reach of your association online. For more on this process, download our e-book, 3 Ways Your Association Can Boost Non-Dues Revenue and Member Engagement Through Social Media’s Next Big Thing: Live Event Video Streaming.
Standardize your internal training and save your human resources team some time in the long run by creating modules on topics such as onboarding and induction, sexual harassment training, benefits and leave. Starting off new employees with the same videos will make for a team that is on the same page, working from the same baseline in terms of information. If your industry updates its policies and procedures frequently, it is a great idea to offer those on your LMS, since the system allows administrators easy access to update existing content.
You’ve amassed a great deal of talent and experience in your team of association executives, so put that expertise to work for your association’s brand by featuring your team members in a professional development series for members and non-members.
Have your executive director repurpose a speech she gave at a recent networking meeting. The more facetime your members get with your executive leadership, the more they will trust not only your leadership, but also your association as a whole. Anytime your executives can reuse content such as a speech, blog post or seminar discussion, have them do so, as repurposing your previous work saves time and energy.
Your communications director could talk about a recent challenge the organization faced and walk members through how he used best practices to solve the issue, giving the audience a blueprint for handling similar challenges of their own. A case study is always a great topic, and by using your association itself, you let your members behind the scenes, helping them feel more of a connection with your association.
Ask your membership director to talk about the three most underutilized benefits that come with membership. For any members who didn’t realize those benefits were included, you’ve just given them more out of their membership. For non-members, maybe those few benefits are enough to push them over the edge in their decision to join the association.
By featuring your own executives in this external training series, you portray them as industry experts, enhancing your association’s brand.
Before you choose your LMS, it is important to know what you want it to accomplish for your organization. Learn more about UpAbility, a product of TelSpan, at upability.com. Request a free demo today!


text: Buy Magnolia Home By Joanna Gaines Kivi 2-Foot 7-Inch x 10-Foot Runner in Fog/Mediterranean from $279.99 at Bed Bath & Beyond. The Kivi Rug from Magnolia Home By Joanna Gaines boasts an heirloom-quality aesthetic inspired by well-worn antique Persian rugs. Power-loomed of durable polyester and features multiple layers of distressed patterns and color to enhance any decor.The Kivi Rug from Magnolia Home By Joanna Gaines boasts an heirloom-quality aesthetic inspired by well-worn antique Persian rugs. Power-loomed of durable polyester and features multiple layers of distressed patterns and color to enhance any decor.


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So, without further a do, here are this year’s highlights and some behind the scenes from weddings, fashion shoots and trips!
When Kelsey, one of my second shooters, catches me off guard shoving yummy wedding cake in my mouth. LOL.
2019 couple! New York City engagement session!
Caught me, again, Kelsey! LOL!
Loved meeting and working with Hunter Premo from Nashville during Memphis Fashion Week!!
Second home: New York City.
Red Rock Canyon was breathtaking. Wish we had spent more time there!
Editing & traveling. The hustle is real.
The three traveling musketeers! Oh how I love these two!
Christmas at Graceland Hallmark movie screening in Memphis with Collins, Megan and Laura!


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How can I tell ed-indent-lisp about flet??
onto this list to affect their indenting.
of FLET, LABELS, and MACROLET.
list is in turn contained within an flet.

industry_corpus2: Programming


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I offer evidence-based gynecological and fertility care to people of all backgrounds, with a focus on including queer and trans individuals. As a member of the queer community, I understand the logistical and emotional complexities the LGBTQI+ population often faces when seeking medical treatment. I therefore, aim to create a safe and affirming space for them to receive quality healthcare.
With a background as a nurse-midwife, I bring a holistically-minded, integrative approach to both fertility and overall healthcare. I place a strong focus on nutritional counseling and maintain connections with a wide variety of alternative healing practitioners and mental health professionals for patient referrals as needed. As a fertility provider, I also aim to create a warm, individualized experience for all clients seeking fertility guidance and treatment. Our mission at CFA is to provide patient-centered care with highly accessible providers and nursing staff. We also recognize the sensitive nature of fertility care and strive to support our clients not only physically but emotionally as well.
-Health screenings, Pap tests, STI testing, birth control, IUDs, lab work, etc.

industry_corpus2: Health & Medicine


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There are many different ways to take a vacation, but when it comes to yacht charter Ft Lauderdale, you want to ensure that your vacation is customized specifically for you. This, of course, can be done! When you visit the website or even the charter location, you can specify what sort of activities you will want to be undertaking when you take the boat out. Don’t worry! If you don’t want any activities scheduled, there is most certainly a package for that too! There is no problem whatsoever with simply drifting among the islands and taking in the incredible sights crafted by nature herself.
If you want a bit more of a complex vacation however, why not take a look at some of the available activities? You’ll be on the water after all! Scuba diving, jet skis, island exploration, and plenty more are available with most yacht chargers, and you certainly cannot forget to visit the various ports of call. Ft Lauderdale FL yacht charters are able to visit the various islands and essentially see what you can see. While the locals might not find island hopping or exploration to be that interesting, you, as an outsider, will obviously see them as one of the most amazing opportunities to be had, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that! On a good yacht charter you will see incredible sights – sights that you may never get to see again, so enjoy it!
When you are onboard the yacht there are a number of things that you can come to expect, one of which is the ability to enjoy yourself. This is not a simple boat ride; it is a luxury yacht stuffed with all of the amenities you could possibly need. As you explore a yacht like the Sunseeker you will find a dining room, living quarters for both crew and passengers, a fully functional kitchen, and plenty of places to relax while you are on the trip of a lifetime. In fact, it’s almost like being in a hotel on the water!
While you are onboard the yacht on any Ft Lauderdale FL yacht charters you will come to notice that there is a full crew, prepared to help you with anything you could possibly want, and there is of course, a captain. You won’t have to worry about steering the boat, meaning you can go anywhere you want under the guidance of an experienced sailor. There is nothing quite like a yacht charter, aside from owning your own boat of course, and even then, the experience is barely comparable.
The Bahamas are an amazing place, even though they have a sad history. Though they are inhabited right now, there was a time when the entire population was forced to leave, and they left much of their culture behind. In fact, many things about them actually remain a mystery! There is no telling just what you might discover while you are walking those white sandy beaches and exploring those incredible places. In fact, you might find something completely new! No matter what you find however, you are certain to bring home a story unlike any that your friends or co-workers has to share. So they’ve been to an amusement park, or maybe they visited Myrtle Beach, or perhaps even went fishing on Lake Erie. These are great stories, of course, but none of them really compare to your island hopping adventure, nor do they stack up to your luxury yacht experience. Now is the time to create a legend, perhaps not only for yourself, but for your family as well!
As you can imagine, when it comes to a vacation as amazing as a yacht charger, there is going to be a waiting list, and if you try to book at the last minute, you probably aren’t going to get anything. That being the case, you will want to make sure that you have a plan in place, and that you make your reservations far ahead of time. There are some who actually make their yacht vacation reservations up to one year in advance, and it is well worth it. Check times and availability of the yacht charter service, and of course, make sure everything lines up. If done right, you should have an amazing experience.
The open water can be an incredible place, and an outstanding location for your vacation. There are many who dream of spending their time on the sea and either lack the experience, the time, or the money. A good yacht charger will take care of all three for you, and ensure that you’re back home in time for dinner, unless of course you elect to have dinner on the yacht.


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Following Wednesday’s action in the Champions League, attention now switches to Man City versus Manchester United.
Both clubs come into the game on the back of impressive midweek wins.
City beat Shakhtar Donetsk 6-0, while United claimed a shock 2-1 win against Juventus.
Will Jose Mourinho have an injury crisis in attack when United visit City"
In both the recent matches against Bournemouth and Juventus, Alexis Sanchez started the match as Man United’s central striker.Get notified!
Sanchez has been deployed in that position as Romelu Lukaku is injured.


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Showing results for tags 'acacia obtusifolia'.
Hi folks, I have packs of seeds for sale. You won't get fresher than this, harvested a few days ago as the pods started to open but before the cockatoos got them all! Packs of 20 seeds -$7 Packs of 50 seeds -$12 Packs of 100 seeds -$20 Price includes postage within Australia. I can do international sales -add $5 aud for postage. These are an excellent strain, you won't be disappointed. Packs of 100 get a bonus pack of Acacia longifolia "active" seeds. This tree is very vigorous in it's growth, I have tree close to 6 metres high and nearly the same across that I started from seed less than 3 years ago. Please pm me for details. Thanks, Glaukus.
Mites on my A. obtusi?


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Small CNC engraving machine High-Z S-400 with trapezoidal spindles. Engrave various materials with outstanding precision.
The bestseller among the CNC engraving machines is the right solution for engraving aluminium, brass, wood or plexiglass. These are popular materials for sign engravings, for example, door signs and nameplates. The High-Z S400 will engrave these materials with excellent reliability in single production as well as in serial production.
In most engraving operations a tool mills, scratches or grinds on the surface of the material. In this infeed depth, the High-Z S-400 works rapidly and precisely. The additional module GranitoGrav turns the CNC machine into a photo engraving machine for glass and granite.

industry_corpus2: Manufacturing


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At our family dental clinic in Burwood East, our objective is to always ensure that you have optimum comfort, function as well as a much brighter smile for tomorrow and the years to come. We do this by helping to make sure you understand your oral health and what treatment works best for you.
We put a large focus on prevention, and believe that this can be maintained and started from any age. We welcome patients of all age groups, and will work with you to get your oral health to a level that is easy and healthy to maintain.
We have a modern dental clinic that includes the latest European dental chairs as well as digital X-rays, intra-oral cameras and ceiling TV’s for your entertainment. Each time you walk in our premises, you will be greeted by our amazing before and after gallery of our amazing smiles. Having a healthy and beautiful smile is life changing!!
We are currently open on Sundays to care for your requirements as we appreciate there are quite a few young families that work six days a week and may recognize it is just too difficult to find the opportunity to see an accessible dentist. We take great pride in ourselves to enable you to be provided with fine quality dentistry without any subsequent extra cost to you even on Sunday or Public Holidays any time you arrive at Unity Dental. We wish to be the most economical dental centre in Melbourne for our patients.
We enjoy a state-of-the-art facility, experienced staff that happen to be dedicated to your comfort and care, and also the capability to work within essentially any price range.
We are linked to a selection of health funds which are HCF, BUPA, Medibank Private Members Choice providers, CBHS. Members of all these health funds may be confident of a known, lower out-of-pocket expense as you are going to be given a higher rebate from your health fund.


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I started the series From Good to Great by advising you to find your own way of being Agile. The next blog focuses on radical transparency. Let’s be truthful for a moment, how many organizations you worked for have real transparency, and how many are hiding information behind the teams or department walls, encourage by processes and claimed necessity of being compliant. Lack of transparency is a strong weapon which eventually can kill any Agile transformation as it makes collaboration and self-organization almost impossible. Lack of transparency is a great friend of hierarchical structures supported by fear and politics. “If I’m the only one who has the information, no one can jeopardize my position, and I’m safe being manager… All I need to do to be promoted is wait and make sure that no big mistake happens.” Sound familiar?
Once you really mean it with your Agile journey, radical transparency is the key enabler. Together with the empowerment raising from the self-organization, it brings the energy and people start to take over the responsibility and ownership. They don’t wait until someone promote them to any function, they don’t wait for any orders. They take it over and collaborate on the solution.
To understand the organizational vision and have a clear evolutionary purpose is crucial to successful collaboration and self-organization. In order to take over any initiative, people have to understand where are we heading, who are we, and who we don’t want to be. There is a very simple test. All you need to do is to take a random employee and ask him/her what is the vision/purpose/uniqueness of this organization. For simplicity, you can start with the executive leadership team to see if they didn’t lose the track of why they are there. 🙂 The good news is they usually know exactly what is the vision and can explain it in a very clear and engaging way. But when you do a cross-check across the organization, very likely there is a disconnect (usually several or even too many) which results in a very disruptive chaotic way of working. To fix it, storytelling is your best friend. Nothing can set up the stage better. Using serious of collaborative workshops like worldcafe, openspace, etc. involve people in co-creating the vision and help them to be part of it. Storytelling will set the directions. They need to own it, they need to believe it, they need to feel a need to be part of it. That’s the energy you need to begin. It brings innovative thinking, creativity, and empowerment, when people start offering help, ideas, and are ready to sacrifice personal goals in exchange for being part of something bigger.
The next step is run experiments. At every level, you need to be transparent and openly share experiments at the early stage, and last but not least be ready to adapt through feedback. The downside is that before you learn how to collaborate and pass a test that you have the same understanding of the vision, it’s going to be very inefficient, and frustrating. “If we can just do it our way”, “they don’t understand it”, and “we know what to do so why shall we ask for feedback” people often say. But if you are strong enough and sustain the need for shortcut pre-baked solutions, very soon you see the results in higher collaboration, better understanding and some kind of harmony, which all over results in a high-performing environment.
Together with that, you need to run regular retrospectives and be transparent about the action steps. Share the backlog internally and externally. Simply there is no or very few information which needs to be hidden. If you believe you find any, try to double-check it by playing the “Five Why” and make sure you have a plan on what needs to be done so you can make it fully transparent.
The last necessary step on the radical transparency journey is to be inclusive. There is no such thing as a closed meeting. They shall be publicly visible with an open invitation so people can join if they are interested and have something to say. If there are many people, the facilitator can use some diverge and merge facilitation techniques, but no restriction shall be applied for the sake of efficiency.
It’s not about being fast without alignment, it’s about building alignment so you can be even faster.
Radical transparency is hard. You first need to have the courage to say things how they are, don’t be afraid to hear difficult feedback, have trust people will help you, and be ready to help others because after all, you all have the same vision, the same evolutionary purpose to achieve. It’s not easy but is a great investment and it will pay back in forming a highly adaptive (agile) high-performing organizations – the organizations which are formed to crack the challenges of the nowadays complex world.
Agile become part of our lives and you can see some sort of “Agile” in every other company, but still, many companies are failing to be Agile and understand the mindset. Ron Jeffries talks about “Dark Scrum” for years and I see more and more frustrated people around than ever. So why are the companies failing?
The most appealing way how to fail is to copy someone. When it worked somewhere else, why shall we take a hard time trying to invent it ourselves when we can just apply it. It usually starts with a big push from the top and has often wrong expectation from such a change. Being Agile is going to be hard, you might not see the results right away, and renaming a few roles and departments would not be enough.
Instead, you need to start from the bottom, get the experience from the teams, learn on the way through your own failures, do experiments, have the courage to do things differently. At some time, when you got used to this way of working at the team level and can imagine what needs to change in the business, systems architecture, culture, and organizational design, you might need to get ready to the next step – scaling.
Which to tell you the truth shall be called ‘descaling’ instead as in order to work, you need to turn the organization around and build it around the cross-functional teams who can actually deliver value end to end. Be business value driven, customer-centric. Hold on, yes, you need to understand what the business value actually is and think about the organizational purpose which is matching that value at the same time. Why are you here as an organization, and what would happen if you disappear from the market tomorrow? Would someone miss you? Are your employees living that purpose?
Having the evolutionary purpose is an enabler for Agile culture to finally settle down and stick. Only then, when you have a higher purpose, you can talk about truly being Agile and forming the Agile organization. How many ideal organizations I’ve seen? None. How many companies I’ve seen, being on this Agile journey? Hopefully enough to demonstrate that we can make it. Give us the light at the end of the tunnel that we can actually turn the organization around and make it a better place to be. Make work fun again. It’s not about being ideal, Agile is about inspecting and adapting, learning from experiments, learning from failures. So instead of looking for some ideal organizations to copy, how about if we start with ourselves, get the courage to do things differently. Be brave. Be Agile.
As one of the CSTs – Certified Scrum Trainers – I’ve got a unique opportunity to travel around the world during the last two years and teach Scrum at a variety of businesses, organizational environments, and very different cultures. I must admit that Scrum is awesome as it is universal. You can apply it to software, hardware, marketing, HR, executive teams and be rapidly successful, significantly better, change the way of work and become the best of the greatest. The flip side of the coin is, that despite the easy way how Scrum is defined, there are still companies, teams and individuals completely failing to understand what Scrum is and therefore failing to implement it.
I draw this picture to illustrate that becoming Scrum is a journey. You can’t just do Scrum, you have to embrace it. You have to become Scrum yourself first. It’s often not that straightforward as we’ve been got used to the traditional processes throughout the history, but at the same time, this is the very best strength of Scrum. Once you master it, it becomes the part of your life. It’s not just a process, it is a way of living.
First, let me say explicitly that “Technical Scrum” is not Scrum. It only pretends to be Scrum. It’s a camouflage. However, it might be the necessary first step in certain organizations to move to the real Scrum. How do you recognize Technical Scrum? People “do” Scrum. They are looking for ways how to remain the same as they used to be. They are eager to get checklists of practices which need to be done, in order to do proper Scrum. Therefore Technical Scrum is all about estimations techniques, burn-downs, measuring velocity. The very important metric would be individual utilization, so they usually insist on time task estimates, capacity calculations, and time-sheets to be filled. They have identified new roles, but in reality, they just renamed the traditional roles and didn’t change the behavior. Scrum meetings are usually long and felt redundant. Managers use Scrum to micromanage. The overall team focus is on “how”. The team is not any team but a group of individuals working on similar items. The individual accountability matters. They are looking how to split responsibilities instead of how to collaborate to achieve the goal. Product Backlog is usually a to-do list where most things have to be done.
In the real Scrum, your team understands the mindset and they are “living” Scrum. They take it as the way how to focus on customers, how to innovate, how to collaborate. The estimates, efficiency, and utilization become quite unimportant, as they focus on delivering value to the customer and overall long term results. The first step here is usually “Team Scrum” where the development team becomes a real self-organized and cross-functional team which works together. The team creation process produces a huge trust internally among the team members but also externally to the organization. It’s the first tiny ‘snowball’ which afterward starts the whole transformation and creates forces to change how we run our business and how the organization itself is structured.
Such transformation can take years. It’s not uncommon that companies are falling back and restarting the whole initiative again. It’s hard. To succeed you need a good reason for change and courage. Eventually, every company has to change as the word is getting more complex and fast. The same way as industry revolution changed the way we were hundred years ago, the complexity of our current life is changing us now. To succeed in a long term, we have to be more flexible and dynamic – more Agile.


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Actress Rani Mukerji at the trailer launch of her upcoming film "Hichki" in Mumbai on Dec 19, 2017.
New Delhi, Dec 3 : Rani Mukerji-starrer "Hichki" has found a place in a list of the top five movies sold in India at Google Play Store this year.
"Black Panther", "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle", "Justice League", "Deadpool 2" were the other four movies among the top five.
"Drops: Learn 31 new languages" which has been downloaded over 1 million times in just about a year emerged as the best app of 2018, Google India said.
Among the books that made it to the top five list were "How to make money in intraday trading" by Ashwani Gujral, "Hands on computer science & IT" by Professor Neelima, "Calling Sehmat" by Harinder Sikka, "Will you still love me?" by Ravinder Singh and "Factfulness: Ten reasons we're wrong about the world - and why things are better than you think" by Hans Rosling.


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If you want to grab a bite to eat, sit for cup of coffee, and “treat yourself” with a little shopping, the Mosaic District is absolutely the perfect place to go.
I have spent many many hours here with both friends and family. This place is like a little hub and I am beyond in love with this place~ enough to want to move into the Modera Mosaic Apartments or the Avalon Mosaic after I finish college. I can see myself waking up in a modern style apartment, getting in a morning workout, then heading down to grab some Thai food with a friend then talking over coffee at Mom & Pop. Also, Target trips would be so much easier since it’s just a block away from the apartment.
Here’s my insight on my favorite restaurants, coffee shops, and shops (with links).
True Food Kitchen: If you’re craving clean healthy food but still want a sit down restaurant, this is the place. It also has a bar if you’re into it. Their pizzas are really good, and any drink with ginger is perfection.
Matchbox: Pizza. They’re pizza is amazing. All I have got to say.
CAVA: It’s like healthy Chipotle. It has a modern take on greek food. Cava runs have replaced my Chipotle runs when I’m home.
Sisters Thai: Cute does not even begin to explain what I think of this restaurant’s decor. Not only do they have amazing thai food, their decor is on point. It’s like a mix between “cute cafe where you’d meet “the one”” mixed with hipster chic?
Nando’s: It’s Nando’s Peri Peri chicken, what else do I have to say?
Dolcezza: Marble table tops and cute coffee mugs, Instagram worthy. I recommend their Vanilla Bean latte, Chai Tea latte, and Iced Chai Tea Latte. Their gelatos are also very popular.
Mom & Pop: Click on the link and just go look at this coffee shop. This is the cutest little coffee shop ever. They have outdoor seating, and the store is basically all windows, their drinks are perfect. Just perfect.
By far, one of my favorite places to go when I’m home from college. If you’re ever in the Northern Virginia region, I highly recommend this spot for a date night, girls day, lunch with family… They also have the Angelika for movies… I ca go on for forever about the Mosaic District. Hope you visit one day!


text: If Jesus couldn’t avoid temptation, then neither can we. We will notice sin, feel its pull, and be tempted by it every day. That’s where self control comes in. The story of the Proverb’s young man and the adulterous woman is proof that it’s wise to stay far away from the sins that lure you.


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Hi, I bought a Stepduino the other day, plugged it in to the Mac, booted up the latest Arduino IDE and can't see a modem connection.
Tried an earlier Freetronics board and all is good.
I've tried using just the 5volt supply via microUSB as well as the 12 volt connection.
The LCD lights up (no cursor or text on the LCD), leds on the pcb illuminate, but I just don't get the USB connection appear.
Arduino (etc) sometimes have issues with USB 3, if you can try a USB 2 socket (you may need to use a hub).
Next, if you haven't already done so, please try another USB cable - and check the board type is set to Arduino/Genuino Uno in the IDE's Tools menu.
I've been using USB2. Did try a different micro USB cable (a few of them) direct connections and via hub.
No joy with the Stepduino, but one of the other boards (using mini USB) works fine and the connection appears almost immediately I plug in.
Is there another setting (programmer type ?) which is likely to affect ?
Jumpers on the Stepduino, or anything, or do you think it might be DOA?
Sounds like you may have a faulty unit. If it was purchased from Jaycar they can exchange it for you, otherwise please email support@freetronics.com.


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Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on July 25, 2016.
With the 2016 Democratic National Convention officially underway in Philadelphia, Mayor Jim Kenney is embracing the national spotlight as his administration hosts its first major event.
For months, speculation about the tone and safety of political protests has dominated coverage of the city's preparations, particularly in the wake of recent violence over patterns of racial injustice and police brutality in the United States.
Appearing Monday on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Kenny spoke forcefully in defense of the Black Lives Matter movement, tracing its validity to a history of subjugation and disenfranchisement. After fielding a number of questions about the logistics of the event, Kenney took a more pointed query from co-host Willie Geist.
"One of the things we'll hear a lot about tonight — we'll hear about it this week, as a matter of fact — [is] Black Lives Matter. We'll hear mothers of victims of police violence," Geist said. "How have the events of the country over the last couple of years ... changed the way you talk to your police about dealing with your community?"
Kenney quickly replied: "The issue of Black Lives Matter is that they do because they haven't mattered in our country over the history of law enforcement and in the criminal courts, and in the way people have been treated from the 1600s up until now."
Geist later pressed Kenney on the denial of a DNC protest permit to the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign led by activist Cheri Honkala. Kenney said the permit couldn't be issued for Broad Street because it was already held by another group.
Since Kenney took office in January, some activists have maligned him for seemingly modifying his views on the practice of stop-and-frisk policing in black communities.
At a heated town hall meeting in May, Kenney apologized for the city's "unconstitutional stops," which had been targeted and condemned in a report earlier this year from the Pennsylvania American Civil Liberties Union. Kenney pledged to fully eliminate stop-and-frisk over time, adding that his work to decriminalize marijuana has greatly cut down the number of African-American arrests. Recently passed legislation also downgraded several nuisance crimes to civil citations, greatly minimizing the prospect of mass incarceration during protests in Philadelphia.
On Tuesday night, several members of Mothers of the Movement — including Gwen Carr (mother of Eric Garner), Sybrina Fulton (mother of Trayvon Martin) and Lezley McSpadden (mother of Michael Brown) — will speak alongside former president Bill Clinton at the Wells Fargo Center.

industry_corpus2: Politics & Administration


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I'll be holding a lightning talk at the conference Agila Sverige 2009 (June 8/9), having the topic "En lättviktsmodell för gradering av agila team och organisationer" ("A light-weight maturity model for agile teams and organizations"), coindidentally the same topic as this blog post.
From the looks of the program, the conference will be great. I hope to see you there.


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I use design to solve problems and communicate solutions. I have a wealth of experience in web, print, product and digital design. I’m focused on UX because I value process, research and human-centered design. I believe getting to the heart of a problem comes from understanding where user needs are not being met. I’m inquisitive, driven and reliable. In my spare time you’ll find me: biking, doing Pilates, gardening, reading about design, human nature, and politics, or out on an adventure.
Shift Perspectives. Nature By Design. OCAD Student Press.
Designlines Contributing Writer. Azure Publishing.
See what I’ve been reading lately.


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Thank you so much Janette! I loved hearing about the workshop with Archie and Susan. I wish I had found a way to be there.
Your welcome Rebecca! It's a privilege to write about such an exciting event. It would have been even more special to have you there.
Thank you Janette for exhibiting the Weatherford workshop with such a caring touch.
Thanks to you, my two daughters were able to see and briefly be part of such special and unique event!
Your welcome Cristina. I thoroughly enjoyed my week in Weatherford and I'm glad your daughters enjoyed the blog. It was great to have you and Myra visit the studio last week too!

industry_corpus2: Others


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Mr. Murray practices as a civil litigator. He has extensive experience in the field of insurance defense litigation but concentrates his practice on the defense of professional liability claims. He has defended many physicians, dentists, hospitals, nurses, and other health care providers in malpractice lawsuits. He has defended hospitals in actions involving physicians objecting to the modification or revocation of their staff privileges, and has represented physicians and nurses in administrative proceedings before regulatory boards.
His practice is diversified. For example, he defended one of the nation’s largest oil companies in an action by landowners claiming they suffered injuries and damages as a result of groundwater contamination. He also defended a general contractor in actions by property owners alleging negligence in the design, construction, and maintenance of a large apartment complex.


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The Emirates NBD Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) rose from 54.0 in December, its lowest level since October 2016, to a seven-month high of 56.3 in January. The index thus climbed higher above the 50-point threshold that separates expansion from contraction in the non-oil producing private sector.
The improvement in business conditions in January came primarily on the back of a strong uptick in output growth, which rose at the fastest rate since last August. New order growth also accelerated after softening in December; however, growth in new export orders fell, seemingly confirming the weakening of external demand observed over the past few months.
Thus, the non-oil economy in January appeared mainly driven by domestic demand, which was supported by ongoing price discounting from firms. Indeed, output prices continued to fall—albeit slightly—in January, as they did in eight of the last nine months. Input cost inflation, on the other hand, accelerated somewhat, further putting pressure on firms’ margins.
Purchasing activity meanwhile gained steam in January, responding to higher output and larger order books, but businesses tapped into their pre-production inventories for the second month in a row. This signals firms’ efforts to keep costs down to preserve profitability amid prolonged price competition. Similarly, employment levels and staff costs rose only modestly in the month, and some businesses reported that cost-cutting efforts prevented them from hiring.
Finally, business confidence regarding output in the year ahead rose in January, with just over two thirds of survey respondents expressing optimism regarding the outlook.
FocusEconomics Consensus Forecast participants expect fixed investment to increase 5.1% in 2019, down 0.1 percentage points from last month’s forecast, and 3.8% in 2020. Panelists expect GDP to expand 3.0% in 2019, which is down 0.1 percentage points from last month’s forecast. For 2020, they see the economy expanding 3.4%.


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SEA VIEW VILLA FOR SALE IN A GREEN DEVELOPMENT LOCATED IN PATONG BEACH PHUKET, THAILAND.
New spectacular Sea View Pool Villas, designed by the renowned design company Design Worldwide Partnership. Residents can enjoy Patong’s vibrant beach resort lifestyle and retreat to relax in a lush natural environment designed to complement the serene private hillside setting. Off-plan sales means that buyers are offered a lower than market price to get in early.
This stunning new design for a Sea View Villa is unique to Phuket and hits an attractive price point for Patong Beach real estate. Facing the sunsets and all ocean view these 20 hillside Villas are the perfect investment. They combine a good location with a quality builder. The company profile contains background of being a strong developer with properties in Bangkok and an established hotel operator with 8 years of experience in managing and operating properties.
This Group created Phuket’s exclusive Private Pool Villas amidst the nature and greenery of the Patong Hills. A concept called they call “The Green Oasis of Patong”. The property will feature a range of facilities designed to offer owners an escape to serenity with its private hillside setting and the opportunity to enjoy a true urban resort lifestyle.
They are currently offering a Guaranteed rental yield of 6% per year for 30 years.
Construction on the Sea View Private Pool Villas will commence in Q4 2015 and is expected to be completed in Q1 2017.
In December 2015, Dinso (the developer) decided to remove from the Real Estate market all unsold units and put them into the Hotel’s rental inventory. They realized they could make more money keeping them as rentals.

industry_corpus2: Real Estate & Construction


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Burns, C. A. | Lease #203032 | BUFFCO PRODUCTION INC.
Wells on Burns, C. A.
oil and gas production for Lease #06-203032 | Burns, C. A.
Wells Located on Burns, C. A.
• White Oak Production Co.


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Over 3 hours of master level video instruction on how to type anyone including celebrities. Learn how to identify type by facial structure, micro-expressions, body type, language use and more.
Features Michael Jackson, Angelina Jolie, Dr. Phil, President Obama, Hilary Clinton, BIll Gates, Tom Cruise, Jennifer Anniston and many more.

industry_corpus2: Subject Education


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ARC Technologies is showcasing its wide range of capabilities to solve microwave and RF interference, radar absorbing, and EMI control challenges at 2015 Design Con(www.designcon.com) in Santa Clara, CA.
Visit ARC Technologies at Booth #503 to see new testing capabilities and solutions, including their Focused Beam Testing system providing electromagnetic test capabilities up to 110 GHz, the new ARC Clear Conductive Electromagnetic Shielding AC2ES, and the latest automotive anti-collision radar materials.
Staying ahead of today’s technologies, ARC Technologies Inc. has expanded its’ electromagnetic test capabilities up to 110 GHz with the addition of a focused beam system. Measuring a material’s permittivity (ε) and permeability (μ) is critical in the design and development of high frequency materials and systems. The ARC Technologies Inc. focused beam system allows for non-destructive, accurate measurements of these material parameters, including reflection and transmission loss, from 2-40 GHz and 75-110 GHz. This new testing service provides customers a more affordable and fast way to turn around their testing needs.
The newly released AC2ES is an advanced, optically clear, transparent, thin-film conductor that provides excellent EMI shielding and conductivity. It is a robust, ultra-thin, flexible film incorporating conductive nanoparticles and a low-cost direct replacement for Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) films. AC2ES is available in flat or 3D form, or can be supplied pre-cut to exact customers’ specifications.
Addressing automotive radar designers and autonomous vehicle technology needs for accuracy and reliability, ARC Technologies has perfected a family of optimal RF noise mitigation materials. These materials can be formulated, molded or otherwise fabricated to best suit the application. ARC Technologies can help get technology up to speed with new radar absorber products SB1009, SB1006, and MC1000. Its SB and MC series absorbers are weather and chemical resistant and are suitable for use on the vehicle body, bumpers and other exterior surfaces.
At the ARC Technologies booth #503, request a free Engineering Survival Kit (ESK). ESK is intended to get material engineers started in solving EMI/RF noise issues and help select the product best suited for their application.
ARC Technologies is the leading supplier of microwave absorbing materials for commercial and defense applications. While providing a complete range of standard absorber products, ARC Technologies also offers dielectric materials, composites, radomes, and radar absorbing structures (RAS). For more information, visit www.ARC-Tech.com.

industry_corpus2: Technology & Research


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This is an ongoing effort to provide various simple controls and components of a production quality for free, for general use. Anybody can use these tools, whether in free or commercial software. At the moment we only have one control in the toolset, but we hope to expand it shortly. If you have any ideas (simple tools only please) feel free to contact us about them.
Note that there is no installer for these tools. Just extract the archive into a directory of your choice, read the license and use the choose items command in the Visual Studio toolbox to add the controls to your toolbox, if desired.
Many people have a need to display richly-formatted content in Silverlight, and at present the options for doing so are very limited. There is no document model or rich text facilities, and certainly no support for embedding HTML. This control allows you to embed HTML anywhere in a Silverlight application by simply specifying raw HTML to display or, if you prefer, the URL to a web page.
The control works by asking the host browser to create a DIV tag in which to display the HTML, and positioning it cleverly to match up with the Silverlight layout system. You should find that this "just works" as the HtmlHost control is dynamically moved or shown (on a tab page, for example) or even if the Silverlight plugin itself is moved. You must be using the Silverlight plugin in windowless mode to use this control.
This is how you use the control to host live or external web content.
And this is how you create HTML on the fly.