I survived Christmas. Sometimes, I wonder if I won’t. We did the whole chaotic family get-together on Thursday. Christmas Day, we stayed home and enjoyed a nice intimate family celebration where we lounged around in pajamas, snacked on sinful treats, and didn’t worry about a thing. That’s my favorite part. As an adult, I always find this huge whoosh of thank-God-the holidays-are-over hits me right about now. I think it is because we anticipate this special day, we plan for weeks, we rush to buy presents, and then it is over within a matter of a day.

Today, I am on to better and bigger things. I want to have my erotic shifter story done by New Year’s Day. I’m a little over half way done. I’m probably pushing myself, but I’m going to give it my best shot.

A preview of accessibility for the iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch – Blind Bargains

Access all areas – everyday tasks that are more difficult with a disability, illustrated in this article from the Jerusalem Post.

Accessible Captcha – Purple Dogfish // Free Stuff

Accessible Online Surveys (fully CLF 2 & 508 compliant) – OnlyASurvey.com

Accessites.org – The Art of Accessibility – accessible sites don’t have to be boring!”

Accessibility evaluation tools (A-Z of user experience design resources)

ADA Audio Conference Series – find out about trends and regulations under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Ai Squared Adds their Holiday Specials to the Mix – Blind Bargains – special offers run until the end of the year.

Alertbox: Jakob Nielsen’s Newsletter on Web Usability

An Overview of Website Accessibility at Online Pacific Time (Thursday January 14, 2010) – Upcoming – it’s not really too complicated to make sites more accessible.

BookSense 2.0 Firmware Now Available – get your free upgrade from GW Micro.

Cinema for the Blind – Festival : lifestyle, cinema | euronews – films at the International film festival in Marrakech available with audio description and Braille.

CLiCk, Speak reads web pages in Firefox web browser – The Assistive Technology Blog

Creating Video and Multimedia Products That Are Accessible to People with Sensory Impairments

DAISY: AMIS (Adaptive Multimedia Information System) – this self-voicing DAISY book reading freeware has a new version, 3.1, released Dec. 19th, 2009. 

Language packs and installers for other languages

DAISY: PLEXTALK Pocket PTP1 Firmware Version 3 Now Available – update for this DAISY recording and playback device.

DIADEM project – researches what technology works for older people, and produces front-ends for existing programs that are more suitable for their skill level. Project shared by the UK, Norway and Italy.

Download the Colour Contrast Analyser- Resources – Vision Australia Website

Dyslexia Friendly Fonts and Text Styles – Indigo Dyslexia Centre

EASI: Equal Access to Software and Information – podcasts of conferences on accessibility topics.

eSpeak – free, open-source speech synthesiser for many languages

Firefox Accessibility Extension :: Modules pour Firefox

Free Assistive Technology – OSU Web Accessibility Center – don’t spend your inheritance until you’ve tried these.

[DRAFT] How People with Disabilities Use the Web: Overview document in progress, comments welcome but citations not. from WAI

If you must use a dropdown menu, make sure it’s keyboard friendly | 456 Berea Stree – hear! hear!

KNFBReader V6.3.1 upgrade now available – Blind Bargains – supports more devices, trial version available.

Making Flash Accessible: a quick guide – presented as an inaccessible Shockwave object. Great joke, fellas.

Mobile Speak 4 Information – useful resources on the forthcoming screen reader for mobile phones.

Mozilla Invites You to Help Design Firefox 4 – GigaOM

NCAM and Apple Publish “Creating Accessible iTunes Content” / NCAM – guidelines include how to include closed captions and audio description.

North Carolina Assistive Technology Program – Freware – programs that could help people with a range of disabilities

Oracle’s Accessibility Program

Police ignore disabled in metrobus station protest – Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review – wheelchair protest at an Istanbul bus station causes divided opinions.

PROJECT DETAIL for Lynx text web browser = useful material on this text-only web browser.

Project:Possibility – A Software Collaboration for Persons with Disabilities – aims to bring developers and disabled people together to make a difference by developing open-source software.

ReadTheWords – make an audio file from written text.

Reduce Clutter on Webpages – udl4all

Shareware, Freeware and Demos – The DRM WebWatcher: Assistive Technology – software to make life easier.

The 2010 Accessible Transportation Coalitions Initiative (ATCI) – want to see improvements in your local transport in the USA? This program may be able to help.

Tiresias family of fonts

Trust gives green light to net TV – the BBC will take part in the Canvas Project, which will develop on-demand TV.

TTS: Internet for the visually challenged | My Sinchew – the push for better accessibility in Malaysia.

Typeface or Font Readability – it’s not all a matter of fonts…..

UK Resources for Web Accessibility and the Law

What is accesselearning? – tutorial on accessible distance learning from Georgia Tech.

What is MobileSpeak 4? – Blind Bargains – the new version of the screen reader for mobile phones is scheduled for release in January, 2010.

WinAmp update fades out critical media player flaws • The Register – users advised to upgrade to the latest version to avoid malware activity.

Zoom into Any Screen on Your iPhone – Fred’s Head from APH – don’t overlook the built-in Zoom feature on the iPhone.

ZoomIt – this tool for Windows is designed to work with software used in presentations. Zoom in on an area and draw on it if you like.

Ini film animasi tentang Lynx, terus smacem bunglon, mole, elang biru, sama kambing gunung,,

jd ceritanya mereka itu ketemu di tempat penangkaran,,sistem tempat ini adalah mengecek keadaan binatang di alam bebas,,jd klo ada yang sakit, baru di bawa ke tempat penangkaran, klo uda sehat mereka bakalan di bebasin lagi, tapi mereka dikasi alat pemantau, jd beberapa lama akan dipantau terus gitu,,

nah si Felix itu adalah lynx cowo,,dia terlahir dalam nasib yang selalu buruk, jd dia sering banget bolak balik ke penangkaran,,taunya dateng lagi lynx laen, female, namanya lynxete,,lynxete lebih garang ketimbang felix hehe,,

terus, ada seorang milyuner gt yang nyewa hunter buat nyulik smua binatang di penangkaran, katanya sih dia bakalan bikin pulau khusus binatang2 itu, biar mereka ngga punah, dan idup senang,,tapi binatang2 itu pengen idup bebas jd mereka usaha buat kabur dan nyelametin yang uda ketangkep,,

milyuner: “tell me: what is the point of being free if you are not alive?”

lynxete: “but what’s the point of being alive if you are not free..”

kocak film nya,,apalagi bawahan2 si hunter nya, sm skali ga berguna, banyak banget kebodohan2 nya,,apalagi yang pasangan angka 10 (yang satu kurus bngt, yang satu gendut banget),,yang mereka lakuin SELALU bikin situasi semakin buruk, sampe2 bawahan2 yang laen lebih milih mati tenggelem ketimbang ditolongin sm mereka berdua,,wkwkwk

ini si Felix, lucu kaann =)

An adult lynx in Colorado warily surveys its surroundings. The wild cats were recently named to a top-10 list of species most at risk from climate change impacts to habitat. PHOTO BY TANYA SHENK, Colorado Division of Wildlife.

Colorado high county could become a haven for global warming refugee species dependent on Alpine habitat

By Bob Berwyn

SUMMIT COUNTY — Endangered Canada lynx could become even more rare if the worst-case climate change scenarios play out as predicted in North America.

And if boreal habitat shrinks in other parts of the continent, the high country of Summit County — and the rest of Colorado — could become an important refuge for lynx and other species that need an alpine environment to survive.

The Endangered Species Coalition recently named lynx to to a  top-ten list of species at risk from global warming. The snow-loving cats are currently the subject of an ambitious Colorado reintroduction program, but they might to move to higher elevations if spruce and fir forests disappear from lower mountain slopes.

“Global warming is like a bulldozer, shoving species already on the brink of extinction perilously closer to the edge,” said Leda Huta, executive director of the Endangered Species Coalition. “Polar bears, lynx, salmon, coral and many other endangered species are already feeling the heat,” she said.

The top-ten list was included in a recent report from the Endangered Species Coalition, available online here. The report focuses on ten species that are listed or being reviewed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act. The global warming threats to these species include increased disease, diminished reproduction, lost habitat and reduced food supply.

Canada lynx numbers have declined throughout most of their range. Biologists estimate that fewer than 1,000 remain in the lower 48 states. In Colorado, lynx were hunted and trapped to oblivion as unwanted predators. Until the Colorado Division of Wildlife launched the reintroduction effort, the last officially confirmed sighting was near Vail in the 1970s.

In 1999, state biologists started releasing lynx from Canada and Alaska in the San Juans of southwestern Colorado, where they’ve established a core population. Since then, the cats have started to occupy former habitat elsewhere in the state, including on White River National Forest lands in Summit County, where parts of the Tenmile Range and the Vail Pass area have been identified as important habitat.

Summit County — and the rest of Colorado’s high-elevation lands — could prove especially important for the long-term survival of alpine species like lynx, said Paige Bonaker, a biologist with the Center for Native Ecosystems.

“Colorado’s mean elevation is higher than other areas where lynx live,” Bonaker said, comparing the state to areas in the northern Rockies where the cats are still more common, including Montana and Washington.

The preliminary results of some recent climate modeling experiments suggest that Colorado’s mountains could become a high-altitude island of refuge as forests disappear at lower elevations. Climate change could be especially devastating to Canada lynx since the cats are dependent on high elevation habitat with cold, snowy winters in order to maintain a competitive advantage over other predators.

That’s part of the reason that environmental groups have once again sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over its decision to leave Colorado out of a critical habitat proposal for lynx. Click here for more information about lynx biology and the status of the cats in the southern Rockies.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service designated about 39,000 designated square miles in Maine, Minnesota, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, and Washington as protected habitat for lynx. But the federal agency said it didn’t include the Southern Rockies because there isn’t a sustainable lynx population, although the 218 lynx released in the state have produced more than 100 offspring, including several second-generation kittens.

The groups involved in the suit are the Sierra Club, the Center for Native Ecosystems, and the Wild Rockies Alliance.

This tutorial explains how bloggers can make their images more accessible for people with visual impairments by adding ‘alt-text’. While most web accessibility tutorials assume that the all creators of web content code in raw HTML, it is 2009, and most bloggers today probably do not know HTML.

This tutorial also assumes that the blogger uses a blogging software (such as WordPress) and creates web content through a graphical interface. While this tutorial uses WordPress examples, the vast majority of this tutorial is applicable to any blogging software, content management system, and even to those who build webpages from scratch.

Tutorial

Understanding how to add ‘alt-text’ requires understanding how to edit a post in HTML mode, as well as understanding the structure of a HTML tag. These two prerequisites will be explained first. The content of this tutorial consists of the following sections:

1. Accessing the HTML of your post
2. Understanding HTML tags
3. Adding ‘alt-text’ to images

Note that if you are only a blogger and you do not create WordPress themes or Blogger templates for your blog, then you do not have complete control over the HTML of your blog layout. Some blog layouts—such as the current theme of my Restructure! blog at WordPress.com—are less accessible than others, because the designers did not take accessibility issues into consideration. However, as a blogger, you still have control over the HTML of your posts, which would make at least the content of your posts more accessible.

1. Accessing the HTML of your post

In WordPress, when you compose or edit your post, you can access the HTML source by clicking on the “HTML” tab, which is pointed to by the big blue arrow in the following screenshot:

After you click on the HTML tab, you should see the HTML source of your post:

You can create or edit a post in HTML mode, including adding features to your post to make it more accessible.

2. Understanding HTML tags

HTML consists of HTML tags, which have the basic form:

<TAG />

or

<TAG>something goes here</TAG>

Some tags take first form, and other tags take the second form. An example of a tag that takes the second form is the following:

It is extremely difficult to imagine how somebody with "credentials" as an academic or intellectual could believe that it is acceptable for him to contradict himself, and believe, further, that <em>contradicting himself makes him intellectually superior to his logically-consistent peers</em>.

The ‘em’ tag is used to emphasize a part of the text, and appears in italics in a standard graphical web browser.

Attributes

Other tags have attributes. A tag with an attribute has the basic form:

<TAG X="a value for X" />

or

<TAG X="a value for X">something goes here</TAG>

For example:

In February, <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2009/05/06/hospital-charges.html">two security guards in Toronto allegedly beat an aboriginal man</a>, sending him to the hospital with three broken ribs and a punctured lung.

The ‘a’ tag is called an anchor tag, and is usually used to hyperlink text and make it link to another webpage. The anchor tag has the attribute ‘href’, and href has the value of “http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2009/05/06/hospital-charges.html”.

More than one attribute

However, a tag can have more than one attribute, and they are of the form:

<TAG X="a value for X" Y="a value for Y" Z="a value for Z" />

or

<TAG X="a value for X" Y="a value for Y" Z="a value for Z">something goes here</a>

Here is an example of the anchor tag with two attributes:

In February, <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2009/05/06/hospital-charges.html" title="Criminal charges unlikely against security guards accused of beating aboriginal man">two security guards in Toronto allegedly beat an aboriginal man</a>, sending him to the hospital with three broken ribs and a punctured lung.

In this example, the anchor tag has two attributes, ‘href’ and ‘title’, which have the values of “http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2009/05/06/hospital-charges.html” and “Criminal charges unlikely against security guards accused of beating aboriginal man”, respectively. Attributes must have particular values, e.g., the ‘href’ attribute must have the value of a web address or e-mail address, etc.

If a tag has more than one attribute, the order of the attributes does not matter.

<TAG X="a value for X" Y="a value for Y" Z="a value for Z" />

is equivalent to:

<TAG Y="a value for Y" Z="a value for Z" X="a value for X" />

For example:

In February, <a title="Criminal charges unlikely against security guards accused of beating aboriginal man" href="http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2009/05/06/hospital-charges.html">two security guards in Toronto allegedly beat an aboriginal man</a>, sending him to the hospital with three broken ribs and a punctured lung.

is equivalent to the earlier example of an anchor tag with two attributes.

3. Adding ‘alt-text’ to images

In practice, in its most basic form, the HTML for inserting an image into your post looks something like this:

<img src="http://restructure.wordpress.com/files/2009/11/blackface_universitytoronto_racism.jpg" />

The ‘img’ in the ‘img’ tag stands for ‘image’. The attribute ’src’ stands for ’source’, which is the web address of the actual image file. This way of inserting images into your post (i.e., having only the ’src’ attribute) works in graphical web browsers, but it is technically incorrect, because the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) says that an ‘alt’ attribute is required. The W3C requires that the img tag must have an ‘alt’ attribute not because they are trying to make things more difficult, but because the presence of the ‘alt’ attribute would make things easier for people who have visual impairments and browse the web using screen readers, for example. ‘Alt’ stands for ‘alternative’, i.e., the alternative to the image.

Thus, the proper HTML for inserting an image into your post, in its most basic form, requires both a ’src’ attribute and ‘alt’ attribute, and looks something like this:

<img src="http://restructure.wordpress.com/files/2009/11/blackface_universitytoronto_racism.jpg" alt="Photo of U of T students in blackface ''Cool Runnings'' Halloween costumes" />

The value of the alt attribute is a text description of the image. In my example, I attempted to describe the image for someone who cannot see the photo. I probably should have also noted that there were five costumed young men, consisting of four young white men with their faces painted brown, and one young black man with his face painted chalk white.

If you have a WordPress blog and you view the HTML of your post using the WordPress post editor, the img tag would probably look messier, because it has additional attributes:

<img src="http://restructure.wordpress.com/files/2009/11/blackface_universitytoronto_racism.jpg" alt="Photo of U of T students in blackface ''Cool Runnings'' Halloween costumes" title="Blackface stirs debate" width="400" height="300" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-8000" />

You can ignore the other attributes of the img tag by leaving them alone; you do not have to understand them, as long as you know that they are other attributes of the img tag.

To make your image more accessible, you just add or edit the ‘alt’ attribute of the img tag so that the value of the ‘alt’ attribute is a useful text description. Remember, the order of the attributes does not matter, so if the ‘alt’ attribute does not exist, you can add it to the end, or wherever.

When I say that you can “just” add or edit the alt attribute, I mean that the process of adding or editing the alt attribute is fairly straightforward if you know how to edit HTML. Ensuring that your text description is “useful” is not as straightforward, as translating an image into relevant text is a creative skill, and there is no one right way to do it. Your text description does not have to perfectly and completely describe the image, as that is impossible. However, one way to evaluate the appropriateness of your image is to see how your post looks like in the text web browser Lynx (Lynx for Windows / Lynx for Mac).

More examples

Here is another example of an img tag with an alt attribute. In this example, the image is of a bar graph:

<img class="size-full wp-image-1602" title="How Americans voted" src="http://restructure.wordpress.com/files/2008/11/howwevoted.jpg" alt="White Americans, 43% for Obama, 55% for McCain, and 2% for Other. Black Americans, 95% for Obama, 4% for McCain, and 1% for Other. Latino Americans, 67% for Obama, 31% for McCain, and 2% for Other. Asian Americans, 62% for Obama, 35% for McCain, and 3% for Other. Other Americans, 66% for Obama, 31% for McCain, and 3% for Other." width="580" height="185" />

As you can see, the value of the alt attribute is a description of the percentages displayed on the graph. The image description conveys the relevant information; the value is not just “Bar graph”.

However, sometimes an image is decorative and extraneous to understanding the text of the post. In this case, you can set the value of the alt attribute to an empty string (“”):

<img src="http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/1961/canadianimmigrationface.jpg" class="alignright" alt="" />

If the image is decorative, it is better to have an alt attribute with an empty value than to omit the alt attribute altogether. If an image is unnecessary, it is better for the screen reader to ignore the image than to read out the file name of the unviewable image, which is what would happen if the alt attribute is omitted.

Why I made this tutorial

Brownfemipower (BFP) at Flip Flopping joy! recently criticized a Bitch Magazine post on web accessibility. Among other things, BFP writes:

The “description” (from the bitch article) about how to write good link text made no sense to me at all, and didn’t include how make a link text to begin with. So I know I won’t be doing that any time soon.

My first reaction was also, “How hard could it be?”, but then I clicked the link, and it was a link to a W3C guidelines page, which is something that I did not expect to be linked from a blog about social issues and intersectionality (and not about code). After all, W3C guidelines are intended for coders, not bloggers who are not blogging about code.

While conventional wisdom would require that bloggers know HTML to be competent in what they do, this is no longer reasonable or necessary. Bloggers do not have to know the basics of a HTML document, such the ‘body’ tag and ‘head’ tag. Bloggers who want to make their posts more accessible only need to know the structure of an XML tag, and how to implement specific HTML tags, such as img.

In any case, the length of the tutorial section of this post demonstrates that “step 2″ of the Bitch Magazine post How to make your blog accessible in five not-very-complicated steps is actually quite complicated, which is BFP’s point. It was fairly complicated for me to write this tutorial, since I wanted to break down “add ‘alt-text’ to images” to specific actions instead of vague, conceptual instructions that assume the reader knows how to view and read the HTML source of a webpage. For the original author of the five steps, “step 2″ was not-very-complicated, because her description was very poorly written as a “how-to”. The lack of code snippets makes the post appear more user-friendly and not-very-complicated, but hand-wavy, high-level explanations about HTML are unhelpful to most people.

However, I am someone who has had years of experience with HTML, so perhaps I am also assuming too much background knowledge in some areas of this tutorial. What do you think? Is my lengthy post on alt-text better than the web accessibility post at Bitch? Does a post littered with code snippets in monospace font with syntax highlighting scare off non-technical readers? Which one results in more bloggers learning how to add alt-text to their images?

WE WILL ALWAYS HAVE PIX LIKE THIS, LOTS. LYNXES. YAY.

we love lynxes. why? because.. LOOK AT THEIR EARS! ALIEN CATS! THAT’S WHAT THEY ARE! AND THEY’RE SO CUTE! ANTENNAE EARS! LYNXES! MIND CONTROL! ahem. anyway, we love them so much we’re dubbing our weekly (or multi-weekly..?) links post.. S-N-T LYNX. (hohoho we so clever hohoho) we’ll round up the awesome/weird/ridiculous/repulsive links we found during the week and post them to you with a.. PICTURE OF A LYNX(ES). it’s really supposed to go up at the end of the week, so don’t ask why we’re posting this on a tuesday. we don’t know either.

* top 10 quirky science tricks for xmas parties [richard wiseman]

* dance routine set to electric six’s ‘dance commander’ [youtube]

* slacker parkour.. aHAHA (but we don’t like your website name.. why would you want to be a hipster of any sort, let alone an artificial one?) [the artificial hipster]

* i LOVE me some muppets. especially when 3 muppets who don’t actually SPEAK in the regular sense of the word are SINGING (?!) ‘carol of the bells’ [youtube]

* i’ll realign your chakras, muthafucka! [my love for you]

* amazing photography of abandoned/industrial NYC areas [kensinger photography]

* a letter that will seriously melt your heart (and includes the phrases ‘disco menace’ AND ‘bunnyhead genius’) – AMAZING [icing]

* super crazy vibrant HD photography.. whoa [too much glass]

* on the subject of lynxes.. OHMYGODDDDD [apparently i can't write 'flickr' without it disappearing out of this post, so.. FLICKR, fuck you wordpress]

* ahem. if that didn’t blow your mind with cuteness, TRY THIS [youtube]

If you have ever used an Axe body product and not immediately been mobbed and publicly molested by beautiful women, you should consider legal action.  Twenty-six-year-old Vaibhav Bedi has.  He filed suit against Unilever, parent company of Lynx cosmetics (marketed as Axe in India), saying, “the company cheated me because in its advertisements, it says women will be attracted to you if you use Axe. I used it for seven years but no girl came to me.”

If you watch television, you’ve probably seen commercials for Axe body spray, body scrub, shampoo, and hair gel, all of which have a scent that make hot chicks jump your bones; you don’t even need things like personality, intelligence, a sense of humor, thoughtfulness, wealth, etc.  The problem is, though, that while the advertisements imply that Axe products make you sexually irresistible, actually using the items apparently doesn’t guarantee it.  Only lots and lots of money and/or fame can do that.

Unilever has refused to comment on the case, probably because no one could do so without laughing.  The company might want to take this a bit more seriously, however, because New Delhi court officials are.  They have collected samples of Axe products for forensic tests, though I’m not exactly sure what they’ll be testing.  If in a randomized, double-blind trial, Axe causes comely lasses to start humping chairs, but it didn’t work with Bedi, did he buy a defective product?  For seven freaking years?  Or is there something so repulsive about him that it counteracts the vaunted Axe effect?  Should there be prominent disclaimers on all Axe products, warning that while you’ll probably get action, it’s not guaranteed?  There must be something to this, since Ram Jethmalani, supposedly India’s leading compensation lawyer, weighed in: “There is no data to substantiate the supposition that unattractive and unintelligent men don’t attract women.  In fact, some of the best looking women have been known to marry and date absolutely ghoulish guys.”  Top chemists and biologists are currently researching whether these men wore Axe Body Spray.

The legal community will no doubt be keeping a close watch on this case, which if decided in the plaintiff’s favor could lead to the largest class action lawsuits ever on behalf of involuntarily abstinent smokers, drinkers, and shavers everywhere.  Beer ads, even those dating back thousands of years, have featured a schlubby dude transformed into a sex machine simply by ordering a Michelob at a neigborhood bar or grabbing a Coors 12-pack from a convenience store cooler.  (Note: it helps that these places are always crawling with gorgeous, exotic women slumming for wild loving in lower tax brackets.  Quick, order a Bud Select or they’ll go next door to Paddy McO’Flanneryhans and sleep with the balding, beer-gutted dude requesting a Miller Lite.)  And cigarette ads?  There’s a reason they can’t be shown on television.  They’re too powerful and give away long-held secrets: Kools and Camels will give you the sex appeal of a super-fit 28-year-old investment banker with a shiny button-down shirt and spiky hair who wears a five-o’clock shadow well and unironically, who is being stared at by a lingerie model at the bar in a tight but classy dress.  Shaving cream and razor commercials go even further, suggesting that these women have already spent the night with you, and wander into the bathroom right as you’re getting the closest damn shave of your life, and they can’t help but feel your face and touch foreheads.

We should herald Vaibhav Bedi’s bravery for taking on the false promises of the, well, everything industry.  I myself smoked, drank, and shaved for years because I was a lonely, hideous, impoverished man who trusted advertising companies.  Did I ever once wake up with a Beyonce look-alike, who sauntered into my enormous light-grey-tiled bathroom the morning after our rock-star screw session, just as I was wiping the condensation away in the mirror so I could shave with a Gillette 15-blade nuclear-powered Fission Shavinator, then give her a sly look because we both know we’ll hit it again before late breakfast at a nice little bistro where she’ll order a fruit plate and I’ll try the buckwheat pancakes?  No, but that’s what my shave gel promised.  Keep fighting, Vaibhav.  We’re behind you all the way.

Valcourt, Québec – December 7, 2009 – (Motor Sports Newswire) – In 2010, BRP will inject US$1.6 million into its Can Am X Team ATV Contingency Program. From Canada, across the United States, down to Mexico, Can-Am ATV racers should be eligible for a cash payout through this program during the 2010 ATV racing season.

Building on its successful 2009 Can-Am X-Team ATV Racing Contingency program, BRP is expanding the 2010 program to include more cash and more national and regional series in North America.

“Enhanced racer support from the pro racer to the amateur is our goal with this program,” says Denis Morin, vice–president, Product Development & Racing at BRP. “As racing is key to improving all of our products at BRP, it is nice to be able to expand our contingency program to reward those who have committed to continuing Can-Am success on the race track.”

In North America, BRP is committing to pay out contingency cash in 19 race series, including the Can-Am Grand National Cross Country series (13 classes), the ITP/Moose Racing AMA ATV Motocross Championship (17 classes), the SCORE International Baja 1000, the High Lifter Mud Nationals and the CMRC Canadian MX National series. In addition to those events, BRP has pledged support to just about every major regional race series on the continent.

Racers who meet the terms of the contingency program will receive a cash payout in the amount earned based on his or her placing in the event, with payment mailed directly to the participant or legal guardian. BRP is also awarding contingency for overall championships at the end of the season.

For more information on Can-Am racing, the entire 2010 schedule, the 2010 contingency program and DS 450 amateur racer support program, please visit www.can-amxteam.com.

Bombardier Recreational Products Inc. (BRP), a privately-held company, is a world leader in the design, development, manufacturing, distribution and marketing of motorised recreational vehicles. Its portfolio of brands and products includes: Ski-Doo and Lynx snowmobiles, Sea Doo watercraft and sport boats, Evinrude and Johnson outboard engines, direct injection technologies such as E-TEC, Can-Am all-terrain vehicles and roadsters, as well as Rotax engines and karts. With manufacturing facilities on three continents, BRP products are distributed in more than 80 countries.

www.brp.com

Sea-Doo, Ski-Doo, Lynx, Evinrude, Johnson, Can-Am, Rotax, E-TEC and the BRP logo are trademarks of Bombardier Recreational Products Inc. or its affiliates.  All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

For information:

Johanne Denault
Manager, Corporate Communications
Tel: 450.532.5173
johanne.denault@brp.com

For product information:

Chaz Rice
Manager, Media and Public Relations, Can-Am
Tel. 450.532.5120
chaz.rice@brp.com

####

Fun Festivities from Lynx – still very much on brief and on target. Long may it continue.

Right now there is a lot of discussion going on about the planned exclusion of the GIMP in the Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) Live CD, for example in this thread. The Result is at the moment of this writing 43% against GIMP in the Live CD and 57% for GIMP in the Live CD, so maybe the Ubuntu team should rethink its design, right? Well no – the situation is more complex. Some voices from the thread and a few bits of my opinion:

Gimp will only be an apt-get install away and it frees up a lot of space on the liveCD.

This is a lame excuse. Telling people “You can install something to make it do that” is a bit better than “You can’t make it do that”, but much more dangerous, because people tend to push functionality into addons or additional packages without taking some time to think what should be included in the application by default. Configuration options may be desirable for some users (mostly experienced ones, but not limited to), but that does not remove the need for sane defaults!

I think you guys are forgetting something. The LiveCD isn’t just an installation disk. It’s also a showcase for what Ubuntu and linux in general can do. New users who try the live cd will base their opinion on what they see in the first 10 minutes or so.

Exactly! But what does that mean in our situation? Is GIMP good for showcasing? It will certainly appeal to people who want an image manipulation software on amateur level but at the same time it can easily scare away users who only need very basic photo manipulation. Once again, it all depends on the audience.

That would be quite sad. The GIMP is a great and useful program. Whether you do simple image manipulation or complex; it completes the multimedia desktop.

But do we want a multimedia desktop? What exactly is a multimedia desktop? Is GIMP really a good choice for both the basic things and the complex things?

this discussion pops up every time they propose to change the app mix on the cd and will as long as we are limited to 700mb . Everyone has their own idea of what should be included and what should be left out or changed .

Amen. And that’s why we shouldn’t target everyone. Design for everyone is design for no one.

I feel sorry for this man…..

Via BBC News

Library officials in Leicestershire have banned a regular reader from their building following complaints about his “pungent” body odour.

The council said they were forced to act as visitors left Wigston Library when 27-year-old Stuart Penman arrived.

Staff said they have advised Mr Penman about his personal hygiene, but it had not improved after a year.

Margaret Bellamy, head of the county council’s library services, said: “He has been using the library for a while and we’ve been getting complaints about his personal hygiene for about a year.

“We’ve sat down with him to see what can be done and even asked him if he’s been washing, using deodorant and regularly changing his clothes. Continue Reading…

Instead of blabbing to BBC News Margaret why not buy Stuart the entire Lynx deodorant range for Christmas?

What is a Caddy to do whose boss can’t keep his Dick in his pants???  Without Tiger Woods playing on the Lynx, it will be hard for his caddy, Steve Williams to earn any Money. I hope he has a Good Pension Plan!!

While it’s true that Steve can caddy for others, the “others” don’t make nearly as much money on the PGA Tour as Woods.

I think Caddys work on a Percentage. While it is too early to see what will happen with Wood’s career, Steve may want to go out into the Job Market and see what’s available, just in case Woods is Sidelined for a while. It is obvious that Woods will need time to repair his Marriage, or he just may need time to go thru the Divorce Proceedings. Either way, Woods will be out of Commission for Months is my guess.

I hope these Broads were worth it Woods. You will lose Millions in Tour Wins, and YES, Endorsements, even though Nike and Gatorade are Standing by their Man for now, I feel that won’t last, when all the rest of this Shit comes pouring out into the limelight. They will drop Woods like a Hot potato. There must be a Clause in his Contracts regarding leading a Clean Life or something like that. Unless of course Woods stipulated in his Contract that he could Fuck all the Broads he wants!!!!

Btw, Woods picked some real losers when he chose to fuck around with the girls he did. A couple of them aren’t real lookers in my opinion. They must have had some sort of talent  for Woods to Fuck around with them, such as Sucking a Golf Ball Through a Garden Hose!!! You get the idea!!!

So to Steve Williams, Good Luck to you Sir, as you may soon be out of a Job. Believe me, Woods really ain’t even given you a second thought right now, with all the Shit he is dealing with. And we haven’t seen anything yet!!!!

Hey Steve, did you have a Prenuptial in case Tiger Left You???

YUCK! USA TODAY reveals why USDA officials allowed meat they knew could be tainted with salmonella to make it into school lunch programs.

New Columbia Heights has footage of street musicians.

Miles Grant discusses how he shopped for a new desk and coffee table made from sustainable lumber.

WAMU 88.5 FM reports that the Army Corps of Engineers has released a list of chemical warfare materials recovered from Spring Valley in northwest DC and now want resident feedback on the cleanup process.

Hawaiian honeycreepers, New England lynxes and Rocky mountain grizzly bears were among the critters named to America’s top 10 list of threatened species already suffering from global warming, according to a new report by the environmental groups.

Since finishing Peckerwood: Population 336, I have decided to go back to the shapeshifter lynx story (untitled at the moment) I didn’t have a clear direction where the story was headed when I started it, but my little break from writing brought some new elements and a new direction that I’m pretty excited about. Words have been pouring out, and I’m back on solid footing. Can’t wait to share more with you all later.

I love working with alpha characters. Oh my! *fans self* Granger, my hero, is oozing his alpha status. Right now, Chloe, my heroine, is discovering a whole new world within the lynx family and has just been told that she is the female alpha in the group. Things are getting interesting.

I’m also waiting for the revisions from my editor on Didja Know…? Once those are done, we’ll see if I can get a contract on that baby.

Aqui les dejo esta imagen que ilustra las fechas de liberacion del proximo Ubuntu: Ubuntu 10.04 Lince Lucido. Por cierto, que ya falta poco para la primera alpha (10 de Diciembre).

Via | Another Ubuntu

Lynx Cars præsenterede super-el-sportsvognen Lynx GT i slutningen af august. En bil baseret på en Opel Speedster, men med dansk elbils teknologi under karossen.

Op til 900 hestekræfter og en accelerationsevne så heftig, at den får en Ferrari California til at ligne en tumling i paradedisciplinen 0-100 km/t. Det er klaret på under tre sekunder i hidsigste race-setup.

I en mere human udgave med færre hestekræfter og pakket i en Lotus Elise-karosse kan Lynx GT blive din for 650.000 kroner. Så velkommen til en ny æra. Elbilen er landet, og Lynxcars har store ambitioner.

Lynx GT pakket i en Opel Speedsterkarosse. Den endelige bil ligner en Lotus Elise, men kører i cirkler om sit britiske ophav!

Bag bilen står duoen Brian Hoehl, 43 år, og Lars Munksø, 51 år. Den ene er reklamemand, den anden ud af Winther-slægten. Dem med cyklerne. Sammen har de på fem år opbygget en virksomhed, der først er tromlet over elcykel-markedet, siden elscooter-markedet, og nu er turen kommet til bilerne.

Man kan ikke høre på ham, at han lige er stået op. Klokken er 6.07 i LA og 15.07 i København. Brian Hoehl er 100 procent på, når emnet er Lynxcars. Og han er det med en entusiasme, der skinner rent igennem den halvdårlige telefonforbindelse.

»Lars og jeg startede for fem år siden med at udvikle en elcykel. Vi vidste allerede dengang, at vi ville lave en bil. Men det var simplere med cykler, hvor udfordringerne var de samme.«

Udfordringerne med batteridrevne el-køretøjer er: Et let batteri, stor radius, kraftig ydeevne og hurtige opladninger. Hverken Lars eller Brian er ingeniører, så for dem handlede det om at samle de løse ender i et setup, der virkede. Opgaven for duoen var altså at finde ingeniørerne, teknologien, fabrikkerne til produktionen og så at lancere produkterne succesfuldt på markedet.

»Vi tog til Asien og fik udviklet batteriet derude. Vi udviklede vores egen lithium-polymer-celle, et såkaldt softpack-batteri, der ligner og føles som blødt tyggegummi og er en fantastisk celle, som vi kan kontrollere. Og netop det er vores kernekompetence: Kontrol – eller batterimanagement, som det hedder. At koble flere celler sammen og kontrollere dem.«

Det kan synes som noget af en omvej at starte med en cykel, hvis man vil lave en bil. Men grunden var simpel. De ville viske tavlen ren og ikke falde i samme faldgrube som den uheldsramte og mildt komiske Ellert, der huserede i 1980erne. Ved at starte med elcyklen, kunne de finjustere og udvikle på batteriteknologien samtidig med, at de fik testet løsningerne af i praksis.

Cyklen blev en succes, og dermed kunne Lars og Brian fokusere på det endelige mål. En dansk elbil.

Fast forward til 2009. Lynx har fået så meget tjek på teknologien, at parret er klar med deres første elbil: Lynx GT. Et showcase, hvis primære opgave er at skabe opmærksomhed om projektet og vise, at de rent faktisk er lykkedes med en elbil, der på præstationsfronten kører i cirkler om elbil-branchens wunderkind – elsportsvognen Tesla fra Californien.

»Lynx GT er en fantastisk demonstration af vores batteriteknologi, men vores grundlæggende mål er at lave en danskproduceret mellemklasse elbil.«

Et ikke ydmygt mål. En af de største udfordringer ved elbiler er ladetiden. I dag tager det fire-seks timer at lade de bedste elbiler, og hvem gider stå på den lokale OK-tank og drikke kaffe så længe?

»Vi har forbedret batteriet meget undervejs, og det er faktisk teoretisk muligt at lade batteriet på ti minutter. Batteriet er klar til at modtage sådan en quickcharge, problemet er i den forbindelse infrastrukturen. Vi mangler simpelthen en lader og en kontakt med nok juice i til at løfte opgaven.«

LÆS RESTEN AF ARTIKLEN PÅ FRI.DK HER: http://www.fri.dk/bil/el-tempo-gigante?page=0,1

OG SE WEB-TV INDSLAGET FRA TESTKØRSEL: http://www.bt.dk/biler/elbilen-der-sparker-roev

Had this nice little ad for Lynx sent to me this morning and couldn’t help but smile. I’m not a massive fan of the Lynx Bullet TV advert (just doesn’t cut the mustard as far as I’m concerned), but this xmas special is right on the money. Takes you a couple of seconds to piece the story together from the photo, but this only adds to the smile that eventually forms on you face. Great photography, and the gloved hand holding the spray (gloveless in all other Bullet adverts) is a really nice touch.

What’s also great about this ad, is that it somehow manages to feel warm and christmassy, even though the advert is about two people shagging up against the side of a house – kudos to the Art Director. Should the street name have been changed to add extra mirth? Maybe, but perhaps that would have been too much for Santa and his little elves.