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![]() ![]() ![]() When you can make assumptions about where things have to be in a puzzle that's completely tight with only a single solution, introducing lines that zig and zag all over the place to take up space is a new dimension of difficulty, because it challenges my initial assumptions of how the space is dealt with!įor instance, I would start with any straight lines that needed to be made or any lines that went around the edge of the space. Most of Flow Free is that way as well.īut sometimes, Flow Free will throw in a puzzle that has squigglies all over it! Those curve balls are the only type of level that gave me pause. ![]() There are no squigglies or unnecessary knots. Every line is tightly packed into the grid. In Bridges, everything is placed in the optimal way. The level structure of Flow Free is different of that than Bridges. I quickly beat the standard levels and then started to dive into the other packs. I was annoyed with Flow Free: Bridges and so I downloaded Flow Free and bought all of the DLC. And that's frustrating! I wanted "Hard" to actually mean something! The more you do it, the better you become, so when there are larger grids they aren't necessarily harder, they are just about the same. Once you fill in the pipes that are obvious, the rest of the paths become clear. That means that in every level, there are assumptions that have to be true. The problem with the game is that the pipes have to fill the entire square. Sometimes, I would have to put the game down for a couple of days before loading it back up to solve a single puzzle. Train Yard puzzles get progressively harder. I never felt this way about Train Yard, which presents similar gameplay to Flow Free: Bridges. Maybe this game is not about being a puzzle at all, instead it's a distraction. The game was so easy, in fact, that I thought that either (a) I was some sort of genius or (b) the appeal of the game is how simple it is. I finished all 300 levels perfectly in a single day - while traveling and doing work. Each page, I was presented with a variation of the puzzle and each one was solved in mere seconds. It was as if I was reading a book, not playing a game. ![]() I kept thinking the game would get harder, but it didn't. The bright colors on the black background look awesome.įlow Free: Bridges was not a challenge. You cannot mistake Flow Free for any other game. I could easily see why people seem to love the game and why my coworker would be commenting on it. The interface is great once you're inside the game and it's pretty. I have had few, if any, clumsy finger mistakes and even when I did, there is an undo button when you stray too far from an acceptable path (in other words, you disrupt one path with another). The game is very responsive to the player's touch. Let me start with a major positive-Flow Free: Bridges (and Flow Free) are beautifully done. I obsessed over the Cut the Rope puzzles until I finished all of those (and the "Experiments" pack). I was pretty happy with the prospect of a new puzzle game. This variant by the game company included a single "bridge" in the puzzle. Instead, I started with Flow Free: Bridges. And normally, iPhone games are only one dollar, so I can afford to make a mistake every now and then. I understand the "try before you buy" model, but I trust reviews enough to know what I'm going to like. I don't like looking at ads and I can be skeptical about DLC. I have a rule about free games, which is that I mainly don't play them. Each puzzle has a single solution (I presume some of the larger grids have a couple of options, but not many), and the game is elegantly displayed with bright colors on a black background. The game has a simple concept - connect like-colored nodes and fill the entire grid without intersecting. It didn't take long to discover what she was talking about.įlow Free is a free (ad-supported / DLC-supported) puzzle application for touchscreen phones (it looks like the game is available on all of the major platforms). They connect brightly colored lines or something. A coworker that commutes from Brooklyn was telling me about this hot new game, "Everyone is playing it. ![]() ![]() The Expanse plays with these same human traits and adds an interesting twist. The inescapable human characteristics examined in 2001 are curiosity, and its follow-through, the desire to explore and conquer new horizons. We’re practically begging them, “Hey, here we are! Come conquer us!” We just have to mess with the monolith, a Pandora’s Box, even though we know we might wake it up and alert the Beings Much More Advanced and Older than we. 2001: A Space Odyssey played with the idea that our civilization was deeply influenced by an alien presence millions of years old and not by God, but by the time we’re advanced enough to realize it, we still haven’t developed enough. What’s so different about The Expanse? Well, if I didn ’t convince you earlier, in science fiction certain storylines recur: the stranger in a strange land (main character’s assumptions are thrown off balance by some kind of travel: time or other), dystopias where various human flaws have finally done us (almost) in, battles for power in distant stars in the distant future, twists on gender roles and power, and so on. What about this series has so caught the hearts and minds of fans that they refuse to let it go the way of Firefly? It’s About Human Curiosity, its Dangers and Promise - Lisa Mahoney He invited the cast to a gala dinner for his new space-exploration venture, Blue Horizon, and laid out his vision for colonizing the solar system. ![]() Fans lobbied Amazon and Netflix to pick up the show.Īt the eleventh hour, Jeff Bezos came through, announcing that Amazon Prime would pick up the show. Another Twitter storm blew up, and an online petition to keep the show going gathered in excess of 100,000 signatures. ![]() Then, in early May of this year, Syfy declined to renew the series for a fourth season, effectively canceling the show before Season 3 was even half over. Syfy didn’t sign up for the third season until a Twitter storm erupted in fandom. Corey, completed Season 3 last week. That the show is still running is something of a fan-created miracle. The acclaimed TV series The Expanse, based on the sprawling novels by James S. ![]() ![]()
![]() I found him relaxing in a chaise lounge on his deck, shoeless, dressed in a T-shirt and a pair of shorts. Serblin is a man with a sonic aesthetic that's as well developed as his visual one. I chose to review a system consisting of a pair of Grand Piano DOMUS for front L/R, the Center DOMUS ($1,295), a pair of Concertino DOMUS ($1,495/pr.) stand-mounted speakers for the surrounds and a Gravis DOMUS subwoofer ($2,495).Īfter a tour of the original Sonus faber factory a number of years ago (the company has since built a large new facility next door to the original one, which it still uses), I was privileged to have dinner with founder and chief designer Franco Serblin and his family. ![]() Weighing in at approximately 57 pounds, and standing three and a half feet tall and more than a foot deep, the Grand Piano DOMUS represents a substantial upgrade to the HREF=" "> Concert Series Grand Piano Home speakers I reviewed for Stereophile Guide to Home Theater back in 2002, yet it costs only 1/3 more. The front-ported design features dual 7" woofers, a 6" midrange, and a 1" ring radiator tweeter. That's roughly a little more than half the price of a pair of Cremonas. With the introduction of the new fully shielded DOMUS series, Sonus faber brings the elegant lute shape of its highly regarded (and gorgeous) Homage and Cremona series speakers to a much more affordable price point: a pair of floor-standing, three-way Grand Piano DOMUS costs $4,795. And make no mistake: early Sonus faber products made waves both for their spectacular looks and their intoxicating sound. Once your products become the object of lust, you feed the hungry beast. ![]() ![]() That's what high-end companies do after establishing a strong reputation at the upper echelon of the marketplace. A decade ago Sonus faber introduced the Concert line, a series of loudspeakers designed to deliver Sonus faber performance and industrial design at a more affordable price point. ![]() ![]() ![]() Helix P4V is a cross-platform, enterprise version control software to compare and merge source files, web pages, manuals, OS code, and more. With text filters ( Preferences > Text Filters), you can ignore text that matches a particular pattern or even use regular expressions to create complex filters.The text editor supports line numbers, whitespace, syntax highlighting, and text wrapping for a user-friendly experience.The built-in version filter helps you compare any changes with the repository file. Integrates with version control systems, such as Git, Bazaar, Mercurial, and SVN.The changes update in real-time, no matter how big the file gets. Three-way comparison of files and folders.Click the arrows in a segment to copy or merge a block of one file with another. They give you a bird's-eye view of all changes, whether it's inserted, deleted, changed, or in conflict. On either side of the panels, you'll see two vertical bars with colored blocks. Any differences between them appear highlighted to make individual changes easier to see. ![]() To start a comparison, click the File module and select your files from Finder. On first launch, the app gives you an option to choose a comparison module. It has many customizable settings to make file and folder comparison on Mac quick and easy. The user interface is intuitive and neatly packs all its functions into a handy menu. It's available for Mac via third-party binaries or package managers like Homebrew. Meld is a simple, cross-platform diff and merge tool. ![]() ![]() D'oh! Did you know it's AUTOMATED Teller Machine and not AUTOMATIC. 40A: Source of 20s, for short (ATM) - I could not, for the life of me, figure out what "20s" was supposed to mean until I got the answer from crosses.36A: Satirist Mort (SAHL) - see also the far less common => STAN.26A: Eightfold (OCTUPLE) - really wanted the (made-up?) adverb OCTUPLY.Then try not to get him confused with EVA Longoria ( 39A: Longoria of "Desperate Housewives"). Look also for baseball's EVAN Longoria, 2008 All-Star and American League Rookie of the Year. EVAN could show up as the name of any number of people, but Hunter is a favorite way to clue it. One of the very first vintage paperbacks in my now enormous collection was a first edition 50s paperback edition of "The Mugger." Super fantastic (book on right is from my collection as well). It's "Club MED" and only ever "Club MED" been to several, never heard anyone use "MED" independently.Ĭrosswordese 101: EVAN Hunter (18A: Author Hunter) - If you know him at all, you probably know him better as Ed McBain, the name under which he had a prolific and successful crime fiction-writing career. 51A: Cocktails at an exotic resort club? (MED DRINKS) - from "mixed drinks" this one felt iffiest.47A: DVDs? (NON-TAPES) - from "Nixon tapes".32A: Where hogs go hog-wild? (SWINGING STIES) - from "Swinging Sixties" (idea of swinger pigs = highly amusing). ![]() 22A: "Make him an offer he can't refuse," e.g.? (DON QUOTE) - from "Don Quixote". ![]()
![]() ![]() This recipe is also available as a Google Web Story here. Feel free to skip to the recipe card if you'd like to get right into it. Seal the shaker and shake vigorously until the outside. Gently stir, garnish and enjoy Download Recipe Card. Fill a cocktail shaker with the remaining 1 cup crushed ice, 1 ounce dark rum, 1 ounce white rum, 1 ounce pineapple juice, 1 ounce lime juice, 1/2 ounce banana liqueur, 1/2 ounce blackberry liqueur, and 1/2 ounce grenadine. Combine spirits and juices over ice, then top with Quirk Cherry Blossom & Lime. We include lots of process pictures in the body of the text, as well as ideas for substitutions and more. Fill a cocktail glass with 1 cup of the crushed ice. So go ahead, mix these up to enjoy those long summer nights, or in the middle of winter when you wish you were on a beach somewhere! Strain into an old-fashioned glass over with fresh ice. Compare that to a regular rum runner cocktail that usually has about 37g of sugar and carbs per serving! YIKES! No thanks. In a cocktail shaker filled with ice, pour the rum, grapefruit juice, and sour mix. This rum runner cocktail recipe is officially low carb, with only 11 net carbs and 9g of sugar per drink. Yes, admittedly it will take a little extra time (but extremely little effort and ingredients!!) to prepare your own liqueurs at home, but they will keep in your pantry indefinitely, and you will be super happy to have them to mix up fun and festive drinks for the rest of the year. A recipe: Is authored using Ruby, which is a programming language designed to read and behave in a predictable manner Is mostly a collection of resources, defined using patterns (resource names, attribute-value pairs, and actions) helper code is added around this using Ruby, when needed Must define everything that. We love a great cocktail, but hate all the added sugar that this is normally found in drinks like a rum runner! Fortunately, we found a way to enjoy this drink without all the added sugary liqueurs by preparing our own. A recipe is the most fundamental configuration element within the organization. ![]() ![]() ![]() Find high-quality stock photos that you wont find anywhere. Activists blame the extreme weather on climate change due to fossil fuels. Search from 801 Austin Texas Traffic stock photos, pictures and royalty-free images from iStock. "Bare-breasted and bare-chested in the streets to denounce the obscenity of the government, which continues to watch impassively as its citizens die from extreme weather events and feeds the cause by unscrupulously subsidising the fossil industry," the movement said in a statement.Īfter months of drought which raised concerns about the low levels of the Po, Italy's largest river, heavy rains lashed the northern Emilia-Romagna region earlier this week, causing extensive damage. Police intervened within minutes to clear them. Pedestrian deaths make up a high percentage of these incidents, amounting to roughly a third of all motor vehicle fatalities in Austin. On Thursday, Last Generation released footage showing a small group of activists kneeling on zebra crossings in Rome and taking off their tops or - in one case - stripping naked. In 2018 Austin witnessed 74 traffic fatalities, many of which occurred at known accident hotspots. The group previously hurled paint at Milan's La Scala opera house and at the headquarters of state lender CDP, and also threw soup at a Van Gogh painting in Rome and flour at an Andy Warhol-decorated car in Milan. The stunt marked a change of tactics by the Ultima Generazione (Last Generation) group after Rome's right-wing executive introduced stiff fines against protesters who target monuments and heritage sites. A recent study has shown traffic in Austin to be steadily worsening: Austin. Nolen wrote in a letter to Congress that “about 5 percent of delay minutes can be attributed to FAA staff shortages.ROME, May 4 (Reuters) - Topless climate activists on Thursday blocked traffic on a busy street in central Rome to protest over the Italian government's climate policy after torrential rains killed two people. First of all, Austins economy is doing very well: low unemployment numbers. But this is part of why we’re working so hard to train new air traffic controllers.” Drivers Crash Report (Blue Form) - This report is completed by a driver involved in a traffic crash when the crash is not investigated by a law enforcement officer and apparent damage is 1,000 or more or when the crash resulted in injury or death. 'If you don't have a reliable, fast, convenient alternative for. Across the region about 76 percent of people commute alone in their cars everyday- that's approximately 800,000 people. According to the Austin Strategic Mobility plan, 74 percent of people who live in Austin drive alone to work every day. This is nothing that we can’t prepare for going into this summer. The following definitions are used by the Austin Police Department. By 1998 the traffic trouble was imminent. “The (staffing) gaps that we’ve seen have built up over years. ![]() Photo: Travis P Ball/Getty Images for SXSW Out-of-towners are often surprised at Austins horizontal as opposed to vertical traffic lights. Traffic signs and signals Driving safety and laws Bicycle and pedestrian safety Mailboxes on state highways Transportation systems management and operations Smart Work Zones Traffic Incident Management About Stay up to date with the latest news and learn more about who we are. “Controller availability is not the cause of most cancelations and delays that we see,” he said in the CNN interview. Why Austins traffic lights are horizontal Asher Price Check out that horizontal traffic light. Airlines flying their planned summer schedules would cause a spike in delays due to the shortage, the FAA predicted.īut Buttigieg argued that most delays travelers experience are not the cause of air traffic controller short-staffing. About 500 of those hires will hold positions that are currently empty.Įarlier this spring, the FAA asked airlines to dial back flights this summer in the New York metropolitan area, where a key radar facility is only 54 percent staffed. Learn more and see a map of Austin’s commute patterns. The cities with the most similar traffic scorecards to Austin are Grenoble, France, and Plymouth, England. Recently, Nolen told reporters that the agency’s planned 3,300 hires in the next two years will mostly replace those who are retiring. In 2022, Austinites lost 53 hours in traffic a 23 decrease from 2019 at an estimated cost of 892 per driver. ![]() The FAA also experienced more controllers leaving the job last year than it had planned, and is further short-staffed because the coronavirus pandemic “has resulted in delayed certification for most existing developmental controllers.” That report showed the agency hired 1,026 controllers last year, just shy of its targets, acting FAA administrator Billy Nolen told Congress in a letter. FAA creates safety review panel after string of close calls at US airports Austin, TX Live Traffic Videos > Cameras Near Me. ![]() ![]() ![]() In mid-2019, a video of her performance of the finale of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. ![]() In 2019, Lisitsa recorded the complete piano music of Tchaikovsky for Decca. Lisitsa has appeared at top venues including Carnegie Hall and the Royal Albert Hall, but she faced controversy in 2015 as her appearance with the Toronto Symphony was cancelled due to provocative tweets supporting the Russian-backed insurgency in Ukraine (Lisitsa herself is of Russian and Polish ethnic background). Most of her recordings have focused on Romantic and Russian repertory, but she also issued a recital of music by Philip Glass in 2015. Decca issued her Rachmaninov recordings singly, and she has continued to record for Decca at least yearly. By 2012, with Lisitsa's online views mounting toward the 50 million mark, she was booked at London's Royal Albert Hall and signed to the Decca label. This required the investment of their entire life savings, but it paid off. They self-financed a recording of the four Rachmaninov piano concertos with the London Symphony Orchestra. In 2010, Lisitsa and Kuznetsoff executed the next step in their plan. She issued a solo recital of works by Beethoven, Schumann, Liszt, and Sigismond Thalberg on Naxos in 2010, and accompanied Hahn on an Ives sonata recording for Deutsche Grammophon the following year. and Europe as an accompanist to violinist Hilary Hahn. Her videos did both: in the late 2000s decade she toured the U.S. Lisitsa hoped that internet stardom would propel her to success in conventional channels of touring and major-label recordings. She posted a video on the internet in 2007 and found immediate success in that medium, topping charts in early metrics. ![]() However, Lisitsa's career stalled, and she became interested in the possibilities of new media for promoting classical music. Recently, she was propelled into notoriety for a number of hate-filled Twitter postings. They had some success in the U.S., appearing at the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York in 1995 and making recordings, both as a duo and by Lisitsa as a soloist, on the Audiofon label in the late 1990s. Little-known American pianist, Valentina Lisitsa, created her own popularity out of thin air by posting videos of her performances on YouTube. They won the Murray Dranoff Two Piano Competition in Miami in 1991 and moved to the U.S., settling in North Carolina. ![]() There she met pianist Alexei Kuznetsoff, and the pair began performing as duo pianists. Lisitsa attended the Lysenko School of Music in Kiev and then enrolled at the Kiev Conservatory, studying with Ludmilla Tsvierko. She took up the piano at three and was giving concerts within a year, but for a time she hoped to become a professional chess player. Lisitsa was born in Kiev, Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union, on March 25, 1973. Her strategy was successful: in the 2010s decade she was signed to the major label Decca and has been a fixture in its stable of artists. But for sheer fun, the Hungarian Rhapsody is a terrific closer for this versatile artist.Pianist Valentina Lisitsa was among the first classical musicians to use an internet video service as a significant method of promoting her career. Perhaps her most compelling performance here is of Erlkönig, which she brings off with such immediacy and intensity, it raises the hairs on the back of the neck. In a sense, though, this is equally a portrait of Lisitsa, showing all of her abilities in pieces that run a wide expressive range and demonstrate her physical power and subtlety of interpretation. 12, offering a well-rounded potrait of the Romantic master. 2 in B minor, and the Hungarian Rhapsody No. The program is an agreeable mix of Liszt's ornate transcriptions of five of Franz Schubert's lieder, an arrangement of the Danza sacra e duetto finale from Giuseppe Verdi's Aïda, the seldom heard Rondeau fantastique sur un thème espagnol, "El contrabandista," the Ballade No. She has the right balance of sensitivity and showmanship to make Liszt's music work, first of all as genuine musical expressions that have the power to move, and secondarily as fiery displays of technique that have the power to excite. That is, if relaxing is playing a recital of virtuoso solo piano pieces by Franz Liszt, one of the most demanding composers for the instrument and apparently an ideal match for Lisitsa's prodigious talents. Now that Valentina Lisitsa has proved herself in some of the toughest concerto repertoire and won herself a devoted following, initially via YouTube but eventually through her critically acclaimed recordings on Decca, she can relax. ![]() |