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Un retour fracassant

A peine arrivé dans la grisaille pékinoise (brume pollution épaisse ne permettant pas de voir à plus de 500m), je me pointe dans la fille file d’attente qui n’est pas bien longue. Ce doit être mon jour de chance… et bien non !!! Voilà que la grosse valise...




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Frage nach den Anschlägen in Paris: Wurde der Premierminister gewarnt?

Frankreichs Innenminister Manuel Valls soll vor den Anschlägen in Paris Informationen aus Syrien bekommen haben. Angeblich wurden ihm Fahndungslisten verdächtiger Terroristen angeboten, und er soll diese abgelehnt haben - das behauptet der Journalist Yves de Kerdrel nach einem Interview mit dem ehemaligen französischen Geheimdienstcheft Bernard Squarcini. Manuel Valls erklärte am 16. ...




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Free Pascal 3.0 "Pestering Peacock" veröffentlicht: Viele neue Funktionen im größten Update seit 10 Jahren

Am 25. November 2015 wurde der verbreitete Free Pascal - Compiler (FPC) in der aktualisierten Version 3.0 (Pestering Peacock) veröffentlicht. Die Vielzahl der Neuerungen hat die Entwickler zum ersten großen Versionssprung seit 10 Jahren bewogen. Version 2.0 war 2005 eingeführt worden, die letzte Hauptversion war 2.6 aus dem Jahre 2012. Version ...




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A toothache that got out of hand...

I’m starting to get a little bored of telling the story every time I pick up the phone or run into somebody, so I’ll just post it here, and then we can all move along from it.

Headline synopsis: I had a tooth abscess, it was really bad, I got hospitalised, and because I suffer from sleep apnea ended up on a high-dependency unit for a night (because sleep apnea and general anaesthetics don’t mix).

Longer version:

About six weeks ago I got a chest infection. Pretty nasty stuff, and I was coughing quite badly a lot of the time. I took a day off work at one point - which I rarely do for illness - so, you know, horrible.

As that was clearing, I started to develop toothache. I’ll be frank: I hate dentists, and have pretty much avoided them for my entire adult life. The pain was coming from near my wisdom teeth on the right side of my face, which have played up now and again a few times. I self-medicated with paracetamol and ibuprofen after a couple of days. I was unable to eat solids from around the 8th May.

I then travelled to London for business and stayed overnight. At my boss’ wife’s birthday party, I discovered that my jaw was so sore and unable to move, I could barely eat non-solids, and was struggling to swallow even fluids.

Buoyed by medication, the next morning (11th May), I was able to take on about 2 litres of water and a small amount of food, but I was quickly realising I was in pain that needed professional help. Leaving London early that day, I recognised that the following day I would need to seek emergency treatment.

Manchester has the University Dental Hospital. It’s often a struggle to get seen there, but casualties can walk up for 8.30am and get seen - for free - by a student dentist, supervised by some of the best qualified dentists in the country. I made my way out on the Thursday morning expecting to be seen, prescribed some antibiotics and to make my way home.

They took a look, X-Rayed my jaw to be sure, took another look, and referred me to Accident & Emergency. The abscess was large enough that they had become concerned I was going to be unable to breath within the next 24 hours.

The SHO from Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery (“Max Fax” as it’s known), had been told to expect me in A&E within the hour. Off I trudged.

On being booked in at A&E, they took my blood pressure and pulse. They were off the charts. They took my temperature, and it was high. My body was fighting a raging infection, and losing. I was hooked up to an ECG, and they took some bloods. My glucose was off the charts - I hadn’t eaten properly in days, and my body was starting to pull down the fat reserves (of which I have ample supply) and eat itself.

The clincher though was the fact I was no longer able to really comfortably swallow without pain and discomfort. Not even fluids. Barely my own saliva. I was admitted, cannulated (a drip line being put into my hand), and put on saline within about 30 minutes.

Rebecca duly packed a bag of things for me, and being the angel she is, cancelled work and made her way to be my bedside, if for nothing else than to give me a bit of love, support and sympathy.

Things then got weird. They put some antibiotics on my IV, and there was a thought that maybe - strong as they were - I would be able to avoid emergency surgery. However, to give them a hand, the registrar and the SHO wanted to know more about what was in that abscess. They pondered a CT scan. They then realised that my mouth would open just enough to get a syringe in there… they asked to “drain it a bit”.

The local anaesthetic sprayed into the mouth to “aspirate” an oral abscess is meant to taste like bananas. If your banana crop grows in a bath of dilute acid, maybe you would recognise the taste, but it was pretty horrid. My mouth numbed a bit, and then I grabbed onto my chair whilst they did what they had to do - twice - and removed a sizeable amount of horrid stuff.

I won’t lie, if you ever need this doing, you need to prepare yourself. You need to breathe through the nose, and know that it will be over in 30 seconds. It is not at all comfortable. But you’ll live, and you’ll feel better within minutes.

Within 4 minutes, I could move my jaw more, and suffered less pain. I could swallow again. Alas, because they might want to do surgery in the morning, I was kept on “Nil By Mouth” (NBM), for the evening.

I was now on a regular rotation of saline to hydrate me, paracetamol on IV to take the pain away, and extraordinarily strong (and expensive) antibiotics to help fight the infection. My temperature remained high, my pulse remained high, and my blood pressure was high. I think at this point I was around 38-39C, 120bpm (resting), and blood pressure of about 170/100. Despite not having eaten in several days, my glucose levels were high and on one chart I saw the phrase “needs fasting”.

I awoke the next morning to some confusion. Some doctors thought I would go to surgery. Others thought the antibiotics hadn’t had a chance yet. I just wanted it all to be over.

The consultant anaesthetist at this point called around to have a chat. He asked me the usual questions about allergies etc, and all was fine. He asked me whether I had any questions. “What are the risks of general anaesthetic given my size and that I have sleep apnea?”. He froze. “You didn’t mention sleep apnea”. It was important.

To be honest, I have never been diagnosed with sleep apnea. Rebecca noticed it some months ago, when she was awake and I was very much asleep. I would stop breathing for 10, 20, maybe 30 seconds. I would then suddenly start breathing oddly. I phoned Rebecca and asked her to describe this to the consultant and for him to decide if this was important.

He decided it was very important. I was told that the night after my surgery, I would need to be closely monitored, and that meant I would need a bed on the High-Dependency Unit (HDU), which is a sister unit to Intensive Care. This was starting to get a bit scary.

For various reasons, over the rest of the Friday I deteriorated. My canular became very painful in use, suggesting it needed to come out and a new one put in. Because I have “collapsing veins”, this caused some problems. It meant I was effectively off all medication, painkillers and saline for several hours, and I got to the point I could barely talk.

At 5pm, I was taken off NBM and told I could eat/drink what I could manage until midnight. I ordered a meal, and struggled to down a jug of water. 45 minutes later, I was called for surgery - surgery I clearly couldn’t have, given I’d just drank so much water. The meal arrived, and I couldn’t eat it. I was now very low. I had missed the chance of getting to leave on the Saturday, and I felt awful.

The SHO who admitted me was back on shift, and did an amazing job of making sure I was looked after. He attempted to recannulate me himself (and failed), and then tracked down an amazing nurse who “felt” her way around my veins and gave me the most comfortable canular (albeit at a strange angle), I’d had all weekend.

At around midnight I was moved from Ward 1 (full of people with broken arms, legs and skulls and the like), to Ward 55 (in the eye hospital), where I had a private room. It was in here that a nurse - whilst moving me over to another batch of antibiotics as I slept -noticed that I had stopped breathing for a little while and woke myself up. She had witnessed the sleep apnea. By that point I was already booked for HDU after the operation, but good job she saw it either way.

Saturday morning I felt good. I had slept for 4 hours (the most I had managed in over a week), and it was FA Cup Final day.

I then received a visit from an Ear, Nose & Throat specialist. There was concern the chest infection I had prior to the toothache had triggered tonsillitis and that I had a quinsy that would need treatment - that this wasn’t dental at all.

This was the only point I refused treatment. She wanted to aspirate the abscess again. I refused consent on a couple of grounds:

  1. Whilst using the tongue depressor to look in my mouth, when I gagged slightly (I have a terrible gag reflex), she thought I was being childish. What she thought I’d do when draining an abscess, I don’t know
  2. She said it would be like my previous aspiration “but further back, near the tonsils”, which frankly scared the crap out of me
  3. I was going to be in surgery in less than 3 hours. There was no clinical need for me to have this aspiration right there and then. If my surgery had been cancelled, it would make sense, but right now? No.

She was annoyed. She wanted to aspirate (I suspect she wanted to do it for clinical experience reasons as much as anything else), and I didn’t want her to. She went away and spoke to some other doctors on the phone, including the Max Fax team, and they - apparently - sided with me. It was an unpleasant, traumatic and painful procedure that was not needed right now. Phew.

Another anaesthetist turned up, and talked me through what he was going to do when I got to surgery. They wanted to shove a camera through my nose and down my throat. Normally they would have done this whilst I was asleep, but on this occasion they needed to do it whilst I was conscious. I still don’t know why. He remarked it would be “uncomfortable, but not painful”. Hmmm.

As 3pm approached, I settled down to watch the FA Cup Final - the first one my team Manchester City had reached in my entire life. I knew I would probably not see the whole game.

Sure enough, 30 minutes in, the phone call came. Time to get into the gown.

It’s odd when you’ve been sat waiting for days for surgery, and finally its time. I can’t deny that given the procedure to knock me out was going to involve pipes through my nose and throat, and I was going to end up on HDU, and one doctor had already suggested my chances of dying whilst under were “only about 1%”, fear was starting to take hold.

Rebecca didn’t know where she was meant to be going, and so the stress of making sure she was going to be OK built slightly. The move into surgery was not how it should have gone.

In the anaesthetics room, things generally went to plan. More of the banana-tasting anaesthetic to numb the naval cavity and throat. I wasn’t getting groggy quickly enough, so he gave me “a couple of beers” - a small dose of something uber-powerful through my canular. Then the pipe came out. Huge. Closed my eyes. Barely felt anything. Then, a rush of fluid in my chest and I started to cough. Then choke. Then he said it was time for sleep. My last thoughts: “I’m choking, I might die here…”

Waking up in recovery is horrid. You’re disorientated, confused, groggy and feeling miserable. Except now I felt something different. No pain at all in my mouth. I could swallow, pain free. Something worked.

To be honest, what happened next is all a bit unclear. A surgeon told me that the abscess had been taken out, along with my upper right and lower right wisdom teeth. I looked at the clock, and realised I had been under for probably near 2 hours.

The porter who took me down appeared with another patient. He knew I was upset about missing the game. He pointed at me and mouthed “one nil”. Nice afternoon for me then - we’d even won.

I asked for Rebecca to be called. Actually, I couldn’t remember her number off the top of my head, so it was my Mum who was called, who called her. Unusually they allowed her into recovery to see me. We were now just waiting for HDU. I realised then that I was in a HDU bed. Some poor bastards had had to lift me into it whilst I was asleep. Poor them. I hope their backs are OK.

I then got admitted into HDU. HDU is an odd place. They just want to watch you, watch everything you do, all of the time. They measure how much urine you produce. They write down every cough, every movement, and you are kept with a blood pressure cuff and pulse monitor on constantly to check your vitals all the time. I was also on humidified oxygen.

I slept little. You don’t really want to go to sleep if you know you have sleep apnea and you’ve come out from general anaesthetic - you’re worried you might die. During the night my oxygen levels went down to 70%. The nurses woke me a couple of times. In the morning, I was told it was serious enough that I should seek advice about it from my GP, but I was never at any point in any real danger - thankfully.

Then it was a waiting game to be discharged. Patients never get discharged from HDU, and so I was a freak occurrence. To one nurse’s mind, I was the first patient to get up, dress myself, and walk out of the doors of HDU she could remember. I’m glad I was able to.

Since then, I’ve only had to take two paracetamol all week. I am banned from smoking or drinking “fizzy drinks” for another week. The fizzy drink thing is to do with CO2 - bacteria near the site of the abscess and surgery will thrive on it, so no soda, lager or tonic water for me for a while.

On the whole, I’m fine. It was horrific, and I would never want to do it again, but that’s the story - scary as it was at the time - of how a toothache got out of hand, and I ended up on a high-dependency unit.




ac

Reading Less, writing more. Or "How I learned to hate Twitter and Facebook"

I love knowing what my friends and family are up to. I love finding out about the latest thoughts going on within my peer groups. I enjoy reading many blogs, newsletter and emails. I used to regularly get over 400 emails a day including group/mailing list traffic, followed over a thousand people on Twitter and was friends with more than 250 people on Facebook. I subscribed to over 200 blogs. I read all of it, all the time.

Mix in LinkedIn, reddit, Hacker News and a few other corners of the web, and we’re suddenly talking about a lot of data flowing into my head.

I’m led to believe that some even value the contributions I make myself from time to time.

However, I’m about to start dialling all that down. I’ve made a start in some places, but over time I’m going to stop reading anywhere near as much short-form (twitter, Facebook, etc.), a little less medium-long form (blogs), and use the time to start reading longer form work again (books) and creating more.

The reason is not because of burn-out, cynicism or some other excuse: I’m not arguing that it’s all pointless, and I’m not being a Luddite. I just want to create more, and there are only so many hours in the day.

This was prompted by going back over my resolutions posted here in December, and realising I’ve made little progress:

  • I need to get my weight down. I’m finally prepared to do something about it.
I’ve been doing a lot of reading up on this in recent months. Worried that as I attempted to cut calories I actually gained weight, I decided to go back to the science the calorie-counting diets are based on and made a shock discovery: there is no science.
There is absolutely no evidence that calorie counting works. Not one experiment has been able to show that calorie-counting is successful.
Managing carbohydrates? Different story.
I’d like to write about this some more, and I’d like to share my diet in detail and provide some raw data almost “live”. Consider it a series of scientific experiments on one person done in public. I need to think about the details of doing this more, but this is one resolution that I need to kick up a gear on above any other.
  • I want to create more, so will aim to not go more than two or three consecutive days without working on something creative in 2012. It could be writing (here, for example), it could be code for a personal project, or it could be something I’ve never really tried before (music? art? Don’t know yet). I basically want to spend less time reading/consuming and more time doing stuff. David Tate provides excellent inspirationif you want to consider doing the same. I’ll try to document as much of that as possible here.
I have failed at this dismally. I mean, really, really, really badly. I get to be quite creative in my work, but that wasn’t the goal here. My goal was to be somebody who contributed more online than I took, and in that respect, I’ve failed dismally.
I have a lot of ideas in this regard as to how to correct this fault, but it’s going to take a few weeks of planning to commit to it. I know by reading less social network commentary, blog output and community websites, I’m going to have more time to do that planning, and also to create things.
I work long days, and have just a few hours a day in which to address this, so please be patient with me.
  • I’m going to try and shift from always being behind/late for almost everything going on in my life, to being early. I don’t know how I’m going to do this, but I suspect if I can pull it off, I’ll be calmer and happier as a result.

This, I am happy to report, seems to have actually happened for the most part. Public transport not withstanding - including my own self-sabotage - I tend to be where I need to be on-time (or early), far more than I was last year.

Back to the main point: by reading what’s going on out there, by trying out new apps, by listening to all these voices, I am feeling engaged and plugged in, but only as a consumer. The purpose of the Internet is not to simply consume but to create, amend, edit, destroy, vandalise and promote. Ideas, content, products, whatever.

Also, am I the only one who has noticed how exhausting this hosepipe of information can be on a daily - even hourly - basis? I’m tired of consuming. It’s worse than television - at least with television an editor or commissioner has attempted to do some curation.

So I’m not departing, I’m not shutting down accounts, I’m just going to read a great deal less online, to the point the relevant apps might disappear off my phone. In return, I should be able to produce a few new things to share. Watch this space!




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Leeds remortgage package

Leeds Building Society is launching a new fixed rate mortgage in light of new research which has revealed that fixed rate mortgages accounted for over half of all loans in August this year. Leeds two-year fixed rate mortgage offers a...




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Leeds remortgage package

Leeds Building Society has launched a new Base Rate Tracker (BRT) mortgage at only 0.14 per cent above Bank of England base rate. The product, which is currently 4.64 per cent, also allows 10 per cent capital repayments each year...




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Abbey Tracker Remortgage of 4.38%

Abbey has just released a two-year tracker mortgage offering a rate of 4.38 per cent it will cost you £699 you can remortgage up to £500,000, this remortgage is available up to 90 per cent loan-to-value. Barry Naisbitt, of Abbey,...




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El PageRank y los enlaces en la Web

La popularidad de un sitio es un valor calculado basándose en la cantidad de sitios que lo enlazan. Desde ahí se saca una cuenta fácil (PERO ERRONEA), "mientras mas gente apunte mi sitio pues mejor ubicado estará", lo cual no es exactamente así. No obstante algunas personas han confiado erróneamente en la cuenta fácil ...




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Penalizaciones de los Buscadores al mal trabajo de Posicionamiento

El trabajo SEO en los primeros años de su desarrollo se caracterizó por el uso de diversas técnicas dirigidas a "engañar" a los robots de búsqueda. Esas técnicas fueron dejando de funcionar a partir del desarrollo de los robots de búsquedas que cada día son mas sofisticados y son capaces de detectar desde textos invisibles para el usuario hasta la existencia de textos no legibles por personas ...




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El trabajo del Profesional SEO y la relación con los clientes

Muchas empresas se dedican a ofrecer posicionamiento, pero gran parte se caracteriza por la falta de sinceridad hacia el cliente, al prometer cosas que no están en sus manos por el afán de ganar clientes. Pecan también algunas de estas en abuso de herramientas automáticas que no son capaces de sustituir la inteligencia humana, y de la falta de actualización en el tema o abuso de métodos que llevan a los robots de búsqueda a penalizar el sitio...




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Densidad e identificación de las palabras claves por parte de los buscadores

Un abuso de frecuencia en la palabra a menudo es interpretado como spam y es penalizado. Debemos mantener siempre el contenido de las Webs legible para las personas, pues además del tema de las penalizaciones de contenidos hechos solo para buscadores debemos tener en cuenta que el objetivo final de nuestras Webs e llegar a los usuarios y ofrecerles contenidos de calidad que ...




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Manejo de errores 404 - Implementación

¿Como logramos el manejo de los errores 404 ? Para no depender de acciones por parte de los administradores del servidor donde tengamos nuestra Web, o de las posibilidades que ofrezca el panel de control del servidor de hosting, podemos nosotros mismos colocar la siguiente línea en el fichero .htaccess en el caso del Server Web Apache...




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La accesibilidad y su aporte al Posicionamiento Web

La accesibilidad ayuda al buen posicionamiento Web. Persigue, entre otros, el objetivo de que ningún usuario este discriminado ante el acceso y asimilación de los contenidos, ya sea por problemas físicos (visión ejemplo), a causa de usar navegadores con pocas capacidades, poseer conexiones muy lentas, personas sin ratón, con pantallas pequeñas o de baja resolución, pantallas en blanco y negro, etc. ... ¿Como lograr esto? ...




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Aplicaciones y Servicios de Estadísticas para el Posicionamiento en buscadores

Las herramientas mencionadas de análisis de registros no siempre logran diferenciar bien cuando un acceso fue generado por un robot de búsqueda, otro tipo de software, visita de usuario y otros tipos de accesos, puesto que la variedad de estos es muy grande. De ahi surge la necesidad de poder separar eficientemente las estadísticas del acceso de usuarios del resto de los tipos de acceso, pues para el análisis con miras al posicionamiento Web resulta de interés manejar estos datos por separado, ya que cada uno representa...




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Acualización al Toolbar SEO Developers4Web

Publicada nueva versión de Developers4Web Seo Toolbar con funcionalidades para obtener el PageRank de los enlaces en una página, actualizaciones a la obtención del AlexaRank y otras mejoras.




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JabTV Presents - DNA Slot Machine featuring Britney Spears

Michael Jackson with Britney Spears legs! Oh my! It's the DNA slot machine, bet on mixing and matching celebrities DNA.




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The Crossland Team is Back at Keller Williams Realty Austin SW Market Center

And the real estate journey continues … Sylvia and I started Crossland Real Estate in Jan 1993, and remained independent until we sold our property management portfolio in 2004 and “retired” for a year. We didn’t actually formally retire … more of a sabbatical … as we were still in our 40s with kids 9 and 12. But we did take a year off from active real estate “production”. We weren’t sure whether we wanted to remain in real estate forever or not. I started a telecom services company and dabbled in Business Brokerage, both of which were interesting pursuits worthy of a full effort, and which I could have succeeded at doing, but after some time off from the daily real estate routine, something happened… The phone rang. It was Real Estate. It wanted us back. Sometimes distance from something brings perspective and a renewed appreciation of it. So, ... Read more



  • Austin Real Estate
  • Business and Technology

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The Growing Acceptance of Real Estate Value Inaccuracy

What is your Austin home worth, right now? When considering a sale, it’s generally worth “market value”, defined loosely as the highest price a buyer would pay, and that a seller will accept in an open, competitive market. This assumes neither buyer nor seller are under any undue stress or duress external to the transaction itself. Many homeowners want to know their home value even when not considering a sale. Such as when protesting assessed property value at Travis County. Or maybe you are just curious, or you want to update your Net Worth spreadsheet with a current value. If you don’t want the “market” to determine your home value, because you don’t want to sell, there now exists a plethora of “Automated Valuation Model” (AVM) tools that will tell you the supposed value of your home online based on mathematical algorithms and data. The most well know is perhaps ... Read more




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İsrail Filistin Sorunu – Zalime Okunacak Kunut Duaları

Peygamber efendimiz (s.a.v.) Müslümanlar zulüme maruz kaldığı zaman, hanefi mezhebine göre sadece sabah namazının farzında, diğer bazı mezheplere göre ise vakit namazlarının farzının son rekatında “rabbenâvelekelhamd” denileceği zaman yani rükudan […]

The post İsrail Filistin Sorunu – Zalime Okunacak Kunut Duaları first appeared on Amerikada Birgün.



  • İsrail Filistin Sorunu

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Europe Faces Negative Power Prices Amid Renewable Energy Surge

In recent months, Europe has witnessed a surprising and significant economic event: negative power prices. This phenomenon, where electricity producers must pay consumers to take their power, has raised eyebrows across the continent. While it may seem counterintuitive, negative power prices are a direct result of the evolving energy landscape, particularly the rise of renewable energy sources. Understanding Negative Power Prices Negative power prices occur when electricity supply far exceeds demand. This situation often arises during periods of low consumption, such as weekends or holidays, combined with high levels of electricity generation. In such cases, power producers, unable to store excess energy, must pay consumers or other utilities to absorb the surplus. This is especially common in countries with a large share of renewable energy, where generation can be unpredictable. The Role of Renewable Energy Renewable energy, particularly wind and solar, has played a pivotal role in driving negative power prices. Europe has been at the forefront of the transition to green energy, with substantial investments in wind farms and solar panels. However, these energy sources are inherently variable—wind patterns fluctuate, and solar power is contingent on daylight and weather conditions. On particularly windy or sunny days, renewable energy production...




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NNPC’s $6bn Debt Admission: Impact on Nigeria’s Oil Industry

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), a state-owned entity, recently acknowledged its substantial debt of $6 billion to petrol suppliers. This admission, made in early September 2024, marks a significant development in the Nigerian oil industry, which has been grappling with various challenges. The debt revelation came after months of speculation and denials. The NNPC’s financial strain has been attributed to the gap between fixed pump prices and international fuel costs, exacerbated by the removal of fuel subsidies in 2023. This policy change led to a sharp increase in petrol prices, with motorists now paying over 45% more per litre. The financial burden has had a ripple effect on the NNPC’s operations and the broader oil industry. Suppliers have reduced the volume of petrol provided to the NNPC, resulting in a six-week-long petrol scarcity across Nigeria. This scarcity has caused significant disruptions in daily life and economic activities, highlighting the critical role of the NNPC in ensuring national energy security. Despite these challenges, the NNPC reported record crude oil sales of N14 trillion ($8.6 billion) in 2023, a substantial increase from the previous year. However, the company’s ambitious target of achieving two million barrels per day of crude oil production...




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How to Track your Study Time with Google Forms and Sheets

Learn how to use Google Forms as a time tracking app for studies and analyze how much time you spend on each subject. You can also analyze the study pattern with charts inside Google Sheets.

The post How to Track your Study Time with Google Forms and Sheets appeared first on Digital Inspiration.





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Tic-Tac-Toe 1.1

This is a simple implementation of the childhood favorite of the same name. The object is get three in a row. Can you beat the CPU?

New in Version 1.1:

- Updated the algorithm so the computer (almost) always makes the "correct" first move. (Thanks, Chad, for the tip!)




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Sundial: Basecamp Time Tracking Made Simple

I am excited to announce easily my most sophisticated widget ever, Sundial. In the past I have sort of hacked my widgets together. This project was for work, so I was really thorough and did things according to the Apple guidelines (imagine that!). What is Sundial, you ask? Sundial makes it easy to track time on projects through Basecamp. Check it out!




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PHPfr 1.0 fast approaching!

I blogged today about the imminent release of PHP Function Reference 1.0 (and it’s about time!). PHPfr has been stuck at version 0.9.6.2b for over a year now, but the project is fast approaching this important milestone. There are some great new features and it’s localized in English, German and Romanian so far, with more to come. Watch this space for the big announcement sometime (hopefully) in the next week!




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Malformation of Intellectual Capacity

That esteemed pseudo journalist, Bill O'Reilly, again expressed outrage over a judge ruling against the Defense of Marriage Act. O'Reilly, known primarily for a sexual harassment episode and draft avoidance, compared same sex marriage as "like being married to a duck."

The question to be asked is simple. Bill, what do you have against ducks? Duck eggs are tasty in baking recipes; the birds eat numerous insects and are good friends to humans. Methinks Bill has a bird fetish he is denying and will avoid as he does discussing the $15 million settlement with Andrea Macklin, the woman he sexually harassed. Obviously, O'Reilly is no fan of Donald Duck nor Daffy. Someone needs to pull Bill aside and besides checking his citizenship, request his sexual orientation. In the meantime, ducks beware.

____________________________________________________________________

Our lovable airhead, Sarah Palin, was a guest on the O'Reilly MisFactor, and Bill actually got upset with her lack of concrete answers. Palin really didn't possess any facsimile of knowledge concerning immigration, border problems, etc.; but was willing to discuss moose breeding habits along the Alaska-Canadian border. Sarah has considerable background of shopping with Republican party funds and could have filled Bulbous Bill in on many helpful points. Alas, she seemed intellectually departed and needs a recharge in her home probably built free by Bridge To NoWhere contractors. Sometimes, honor, credibility and knowledge are hard to obtain.

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Our esteemed Arizona Guv, Jan Brewer, has made some wonderful statements befitting only the classier fear mongers. Arizona Senator Russell Pearce and Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio have run fast and easy with the Arizona National Socialist Party (Nazi) attending rallies and extolling virtues. The Guv was confronted with this during a press conference and stated her father had died battling the Nazis.

Reality check: her father died in 1955; not during World War II, but its the thought that counts. Right, Jan.


Also, digging very deep to defend SB1070, the notorious immigration enforcement law, the Guv stated: a) most coming over the border were lugging drugs (mules); and later, border crossers were beheading many victims. Both were adamantly denied by the Border Patrol and even John McCain, back from a soma holiday, denied the mule fantasy. Fact is, and don't tell the Guv this, crime along the border is down considerably and JanBrew has to make up stories to justify the new Arizona law. Sighhhhhh, it becomes addictive...lets call it the Palin Syndrome....out of state Republican candidates are flocking to Brewer for endorsements, but she has to figure out where they are from first. Bring maps, candidates, and beware of the trip down to Fantasy Island...da plane, da plane, boss, da plane.

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It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native criminal class except Congress which exceeds all expectations. One cannot imagine all the perks Congress possesses and would be shocked to the extent luxury replaces accountability. Personally, the idea of barracks housing for single members and government housing for married couples has an appeal. Yearly classes should be offered in ethics, the Road Kill book, interpersonal relationships, and psychological testing to detect the mentally challenged. Space, the final frontier, should not be allowed in Congress; only massive perks and pocket lining. Ask J.D. Hayworth; he knows and appreciates Abramoff as does Senator John Kyl.
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News sources the media should squelch:
1. Britney Spears...still alive, dating her bodyguard, and wanting all the money

2. The Kardashians....wow, American culture has really advanced to the point where sex videos on the net makes one rich.

3. Speaking of which, Danielle Staub, the New Jersey Reality Housewife witch, has promised us her sex video will be even better. Introduce her to Bill O'Reilly's duck, pleaseeeeeeeeeee.

4. Lindsay Lohan......please, stop it. Cannot compute, Cannot Compute. Just let her go to jail, serve the time, come out, screw up, go back, come out, screw up, go back, come out, screw up. Repetitious, isn't it? Just like Lindsay's life....being accountable isn't a movie, but reality.

5. Snookie, the New Jersey shore item. Who, where, how, when, did she become an American icon. No more comment.

6. Mel Gibson....used to like him and his movies, but where has his head moved into? Mel, go to Alice Springs, absorb the Australian sun, relax, and rebuild your career. Don't take Snookie with you; she doesn't where Australia is.

7. Glenn Beck...this guy was a Phoenix disk jockey who got up tight around ratings time. In fact, he called the wife of a dj competitor on the air and chastised her for having a miscarriage. Hey, he needs serious psychiatric intervention and preferably a hot lead enema to straighten him out.

Enough....ranted and raved...got it out of my system...still haven't got over the Nixon deal, but that's another blog subject.

Over and Out....oh, support Dave Rabbit....Google that name.




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Introducing Monster’s Award Winners: SEOPress, WP Weekly, and WP Academy

In the vast realm of digital innovation, where every click and keystroke shapes the landscape, three remarkable individuals stand as beacons of excellence, each wielding their expertise to redefine the boundaries of possibility. We are honored to be able to sit down with the visionaries behind SEOPress, WP Weekly, and WP Academy, Monster's Award Winners, […]

The post Introducing Monster’s Award Winners: SEOPress, WP Weekly, and WP Academy appeared first on MonstersPost.




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Body Pump 69 Tracklist

Fellow blogger Glen Stollery has posted the Body Pump 69 Tracklist... Our quick thoughts: Kid Rock and Rihanna join Fall Out Boy on a release that has more "top 40" tracks and artists than most of late... Good to have 3 Doors Down serving up a quick encore to their BP 68 Chest Track thriller, while Pink's becoming almost as regular on BP releases as E-Type once was on the shoulder tracks. Pop Quiz: Who remembers the last release on which "Castles In The Sky" made an appearance? (bonus: Which workout track was it?)




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Notice The Longer Lunge Tracks?

Fellow blogger, instructor, and long distance friend Mr. Timothy dropped us a line this morning with a couple of rather interesting observations. He points out that over the last 10 or so releases (since Glen Ostergaard took over as lead choreographer) there's been a definite uptick in the lunge track length. To be sure, 9 of the 10 longest lunge tracks are Ostergaard-choreographed routines. Since Pump soundtracks need to fit within a ±49 minute time window, something has to give - and it looks like the bicep track has been the primary donor. Which isn't all bad, really... the longer lunge tracks work a much larger group of muscles, burning more calories and building core strength.
Bottom line: Now may be the time to amp up your bicep workout with an extra plate on both sides of the bar. And take an extra deep breath between tracks 6 & 7!

Notice any other trends in the Pump workout over the last couple years? Tell us about it!




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Abracadabra

Rocana dasa lays out his view of fundamentals required for ISKCON reform.




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Fix for auto door lock continually activating

I recently bought a 2009 Fit for my son and it was having an issue with the doors continually locking. I searched several threads and found some good suggestions but I never saw a concise answer....



  • 2nd Generation (GE 08-13)

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May 19 2009 Radio Station History Australia - 2LT Lithgow - Macquarie's Central Western Network Station

Radio Centre 2LT, controlled by Lithgow Broadcasters Pty. Ltd. and an offshoot of Western Newspapers Pty. Ltd. commenced entertaining its 26,000 town listeners on June 7th, 1938. As Lithgow's "Sunshine Station," 2LT has won the confidence...




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June 1 2009 FM Radio - India FM radio - Abuzz with activity

The year gone by was a time when years of hard work and patience finally paid off for the radio industry in India. It was a year of intense competition, aggressive marketing and marginal creativity as private FM finally flowered in metros as well as tiny towns throughout the nation...




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June 15 2009 Long Lost Radio History Image - Isareli Racule, FBC Suva

Isareli Racule was the first head of the Fiji section, Fiji Broadcasting Commision in 1954...




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July 05 2009 NZ AM Radio - Access Manawatu 999AM

Ten years on, and this radio station team hasn't let anything get it down. Supporters of community-run station Access Manawatu yesterday raised their glasses to a decade of bringing the "voice of the people" to Palmerston North...




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July 12 Pacific AFRS Radio History - KTLG Radio, US Naval Station Sangley

By Matt McGuigan. Before enlisting in the Army in 1952 I had done some commercial broadcasting at a local radio station...




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July 12 Pacific AFRS Radio History - KTLG Radio, US Naval Station Sangley

By Louis McClure Snr. I was sent TDY to the Naval Air Station, at Sangley Point, across the bay from Manila...




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July 12 Pacific AFRS Radio History - The KYOI Story

By Calvin Melen. The idea for a pop / rock station on Shortwave first appeared in early 1980. At the time there was an upsurge of popularity in shortwave listening amongst teenage Japanese...




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July 21 Pacific AFRS Radio History - 9PA Port Moresby - By Adrian Petersen

For a period of around two years during the Pacific War, there was no radio broadcasting station on the air in Port Moresby. ...




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July 27 2009 Radio Heritage Foundation - Tema Beach Bungalow Beach Stays

Enjoy a refreshing beach stay at our heritage 1920's beach bungalow. North Beach, Christchurch, New Zealand.




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August 24 2009 Radio Station History Australia: 4MK Mackay, Queensland 'We Strive to Excel'

Mackay Broadcasting Service Pty. Ltd., is a 100 per cent. Mackay organisation established firmly in a very prosperous district...




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January 12 2010 Radio Heritage Foundation - Annual and Lifetime Supporter Packages

Welcome! It's thanks to people like you that we're able to save our radio heritage and make it freely available through this website....




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February 20 2011 Pacific-Asian Log (PAL) MW PDF updated

The mediumwave PDF for Bruce Portzers Pacific-Asian Log Online Radio Station Guide has been updated.




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April 18th 2012 Radio Heritage Foundation - New Amateur Radio Feature - Amateur QSL Gallery : ZL2ADN Collection Radio Shacks

In the first of this new series, amateur radio stations from around the world that have worked ZL2ADN Palmerston North, New Zealand, are featured...




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September 3rd 2012 Radio Heritage Foundation - Pacific Newsletter 33

US$240 in gifts available to donors...




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March 3rd 2013 Radio Heritage Foundation - New Media Release: Radio Heritage Advisory Group Vacancies

If you're interested in global radio, here's a great opportunity to join the all volunteer team at the Radio Heritage Foundation for a short project starting April 1 2013...




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July 13th 2013 Radio Heritage Foundation - New Media Release: Two new Pacific stories this week

Two new Pacific stories this week...




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RAF Nacton - Ipswich Airport in 1945

Ipswich Airport (IATA: IPW, ICAO: EGSE) is a former airfield on the outskirts of Ipswich, Suffolk England. It was known as RAF Nacton when No. 3619 Fighter Control Unit of the Royal Auxiliary Air Force were based there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipswich_Airport