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to show off/boast about something

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Idiom Definition - to beat your own drum - to brag or boast about your accomplishments or achievements

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beginning to happen

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Incipient Egg Salad is a photograph by Allan Hughes which was uploaded on July 8th, 2012. The photograph may be purchased as wall art, home decor, apparel, phone cases, greeting cards, and more. All products are produced on-demand and shipped worldwide within 2 - 3 business days.

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admiration of one's one appearance or achievements

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Best 25+ Vanity tables ideas on Pinterest | Makeup vanity tables, Mirrored vanity desk and Dressing tables

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Find and save ideas about Vanity tables on Pinterest. | See more ideas about Makeup vanity tables, Mirrored vanity desk and Dressing tables.

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not secret

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"The name is Bond. James Bond." Is that so, Mr Bond? You don't think that since your job is a secret agent that perhaps you shouldn't tell everyone your real name!? Maybe that's why every supervillain you encounter already knows who you are, ...

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showing lack of thought or mind

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George Packer has a long story in this week's New Yorker about Silicon Valley's newfound zeal for politics. (The piece is so far available online only to subscribers.) In the wide-ranging piece, which is well worth a read, Packer examines the Valley's libertarian streak, its historically uneasy, and at times disinterested, relationship with government, and the rise of the advocacy group FWD.us, for which the group's president, Joe Green, grants Packer a rare interview.

There's much to chew over in Packer's piece, which is mostly fair in pointing out that the entrepreneurial "change the world" ethos doesn't necessarily translate to acting in the interests of the public good, but one particular contention stands out. In the article, Packer argues broadly that the entrepreneurs and startups of Silicon Valley and San Francisco tend to be inward-looking, not curious about the world outside their companies, and intellectually lacking. Packer paraphrases LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman in describing Silicon Valley's intellectual culture as "underdeveloped." (Disclosure: Hoffman's Greylock Discovery Fund is an investor in PandoDaily.)

Just as disdainfully, Packer describes one "aha" moment in his research while interviewing Path founder Dave Morin, who, with his daytime and nighttime iPhones is fast becoming the whipping boy for people looking to fingerpoint the Valley self-unaware. Morin has just finished explaining to Packer the perks of being able to book a room via Airbnb, hire a luxury car through Uber, reserve a table at a restaurant through an app, or get a bike messenger to deliver food to his door using Postmates, when the writer has his realization.

"It suddenly occurred to me," writes Packer, "that the hottest tech start-ups are solving all the problems of being twenty years old, with cash on hand, because that's who thinks them up."

To an extent, Packer is right: there is some bias towards solving rich white-boy problems in Silicon Valley, which might be why the likes of Airbnb, Uber, Postmates, Lyft, Exec, TaskRabbit, TripIt, and HotelTonight get well funded (although it might also have something to do with their business potential). But to dismiss all the "hottest tech start-ups" in such terms is to ignore the work being done by serious entrepreneurs tackling serious problems. In that sense, Packer falls into the same trap - or, depending on how you look at it, deploys the same cynical rhetorical artillery - as Evgeny Morozov, artful academic master of the straw-man take-down.

It's easy to point to the likes of Uber and Exec, which lets you book cleaners for your home through an app at exorbitant prices without having to actually talk to them, and scream "First world problems!" It's unreasonable, though, to use them as evidence for an argument that "Silicon Valley" in general is intellectually narrow and uninterested in the problems that ail the rest of the world. To do so, one must consciously ignore the many Silicon Valley-based entrepreneurs, and founders from other parts of the country, who are starting companies that, all going well, can have a deep and meaningful effect on the way the world does business.

If Packer wanted to write an article that extolled the efforts of entrepreneurs who are turning to startups to tackle important but difficult world problems, he would have found ample material. He could have touched on startups working in healthcare, for instance, such as electronic medical records company Practice Fusion, or expert medical advice network ConsultingMD (which today announced it has raised $10 million in Series B funding), or, if he were willing to expand the scope to Wisconsin, Asthmapolis, which is using data and hardware to help even the poorest people get their asthma under control.

Packer might also have looked at charitable giving, where Bright Funds is hoping to make an impact by making it easy for small and medium-sized businesses to incorporate donations to charities into their payrolls. He could have looked at how startups like Zenefits are looking to untangle the mess of buying and maintaining health insurance plans, or at the other startups hoping to take advantage of the Obamacare reforms. He could have looked at how TurboVote and Popvox are trying to add transparency to the political process, while Causes offers tools for political organizing. You'd think that he might have spent at least some time discussing Tesla, or SolarCity, or Sunrun, all of whom are trying to end our dependency on fossil fuels.

The truth is, however, that those companies, and the entrepreneurs behind them, don't fit neatly into Packer's narrative about the startuppers of Silicon Valley being an intellectually hobbled, self-interested lot whose rhetoric about changing the world ultimately rings hollow. Packer's argument, then, is really only half an argument, its well-reasoned points giving way to a blindspot that not only does a disservice to the do-gooders of the Valley, but also detracts from the article's important point that progress in the tech sector does not necessarily amount to progress in the wider economic, social, or political spheres.

Silicon Valley, after all, is more complicated than Dave Morin's two iPhones would have us believe.

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Yes, the Valley can be vacuous - but it's more complicated than the New Yorker would have us believe

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George Packer has a long story in this week's New Yorker about Silicon Valley's newfound zeal for politics. (The piece is so far available online only to subscribers.)

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the starting point of an activity

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comicsodissey:  el Mundosueño.  Sweet “Inception” poster

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destroy utterly: obliterate

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The leader of a Christian group who claimed that the world would end on Wednesday has admitted his prediction was "incorrect".

Chris McCann, head of the eBible fellowship, warned that the planet would be destroyed "with fire" on 7 October. This did not happen.

"Since it is now 8 October it is now obvious that we were incorrect regarding the world's ending on the 7th," McCann said.

McCann originally told the Guardian that by Thursday the world would be "gone forever: annihilated". McCann based his claim on an earlier prediction by Christian radio host Harold Camping , who said the world would end on 21 May 2011. Camping's forecast also turned out to be incorrect.

As the clock struck 12 in timezones around the globe, turning Wednesday into Thursday, it became apparent that the planet had not been destroyed. McCann, who is based in Philadelphia, said on Thursday it was "surprising" that the world was still in existence.

Prior to 7 October he said there was a "strong likelihood" the world would be wrought asunder, but did admit there was a chance he could be incorrect.

"Well, a strong likelihood means that something was pretty well set to happen (in this case according to the biblical evidence)," he said. "Yet there is a possibility it may not happen.

"So it was surprising that it did not occur. But the comforting thing is that God's will is always perfect."

In 2011 Camping used his radio station, Family Radio, to notify people that the world would end. When that turned out to be incorrect, he revised his prediction to October 2011. That also turned out to be incorrect, and Camping retired from public life soon after. He died in 2013, at the age of 93.

The eBible Fellowship believed that Camping's 21 May 2011 was actually "judgment day". The fellowship thus claimed the world would end 1,600 days from that date: hence 7 October 2015.

McCann said "one of the big pieces of evidence" in his prediction was that 7 October 2015 was the last day of the feast of the tabernacles, or sukot. (Most online sources say sukot ended on 5 October.)

"Once the last day of the feast passed it soon became apparent that we were incorrect about the world's conclusion on [7 October]," McCann said.

While the world did not end, McCann said on Thursday it would be obliterated "soon".

"I also know that God knows exactly when that end will come," he said. "So we'll keep studying the Bible to see what we can learn."
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2015

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Christian cult that predicted Wednesday's world annihilation will study Bible for revised deadline

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The leader of a Christian group who claimed that the world would end on Wednesday has admitted his prediction was "incorrect". Chris McCann, head of the eBible fellowship, warned that the planet would be destroyed "with fire" on 7 October. This did not happen.

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an opening, hole or gap

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Recently I've been writing a series on elements that photographers need to learn in order to get out of Auto mode and take well exposed images.

I've largely focussed upon three elements of the ' exposure triangle' - ISO, Shutter Speed and Aperture.

I've previously written about the first two and today would like to turn our attention to Aperture.

Before I start with the explanations let me say this. If you can master aperture you put into your grasp real creative control over your camera.

In my opinion - aperture is where the magic happens in photography. Being able to control aperture can mean the difference between single and multi dimensional shots.

What is Aperture?

Put most simply - Aperture is 'the opening in the lens.'

When you hit the shutter release button of your camera a hole opens up that allows your cameras image sensor to catch a glimpse of the scene you're capturing. The aperture you set impacts the size of that hole.

The larger the hole the more light that gets in - the smaller the hole the less light.

Aperture is measured in 'f-stops'

You'll often see f-stops referred to at Digital Photography School as f/numbers. For example f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6,f/8,f/22 etc.

Moving from one f-stop to the next doubles or halves the size of the amount of opening in your lens (and the amount of light getting through).

Keep in mind that a change in shutter speed from one stop to the next doubles or halves the amount of light that gets in also. This means if you increase one and decrease the other you let the same amount of light in.

One thing that causes a lot of new photographers confusion is that large apertures (where lots of light gets through) are given f/stop smaller numbers and smaller apertures (where less light gets through) have larger f-stop numbers.

So f/2.8 is in fact a much larger aperture than f/22. It seems the wrong way around when you first hear it but you'll get the hang of it.

Depth of Field and Aperture

There are a number of results of changing the aperture of your shots that you'll want to keep in mind as you consider your setting but the most noticeable one will be the depth of field that your shot will have.

Depth of Field (DOF) is that amount of your shot that will be in focus.

Large depth of field means that most of your image will be in focus whether it's close to your camera or far away.

For example the landscape shot above has an aperture of f/22 and the result is that both the mountain in the background and the trees in the foreground remain in focus.

Small (or shallow) depth of field means that only part of the image will be in focus and the rest will be fuzzy (like in the portrait of the gentleman from Papua New Guinea below.

You'll see in it that the subjects eyes are in focus but the background is blurred. Even her hair which is only a little behind his eyes and his nose which is only a little in front of his eyes are blurred.

This is a very shallow depth of field and was taken with an aperture of f2.8).

Here's one more example with an even wider aperture of f1.4 that leaves the flower in focus but everything else blurred.

Aperture has a big impact upon depth of field. Large aperture (remember it's a smaller number) will decrease depth of field while small aperture (larger numbers) will give you larger depth of field.

It can be a little confusing at first but the way I remember it is that small numbers mean small DOF and large numbers mean large DOF.

Another example of large and small aperture

Let me illustrate this with two pictures I took earlier this week in my garden of two flowers.

The first picture on the left was taken with an aperture of f/22 and the second one was taken at f/2.8. The difference is quite obvious. The f/22 picture has both the flower and the bud in focus and you're able to make out the shape of the fence and leaves in the background.

The f/2.8 shot on the right has the left flower in focus (or parts of it) but the depth of field is very shallow and the background is thrown out of focus and the bud to the right of the flower is also less in focus due to it being slightly further away from the camera when the shot was taken.

The best way to understand this topic is to get your camera out and do some experimenting.

Go outside and find a spot where you've got items close to you as well as far away and take a series of shots with different settings from the smallest setting to the largest.

You'll quickly see the impact that it can have and the usefulness of being able to control aperture.

Some styles of photography require large depths of field (and small Apertures)

For example in most landscape photography you'll see small aperture settings (large numbers) selected by photographers. This ensures that from the foreground to the horizon is relatively in focus.

On the other hand in portrait photography it can be very handy to have your subject perfectly in focus but to have a nice blurry background in order to ensure that your subject is the main focal point and that other elements in the shot are not distracting.

In this case you'd choose a large aperture (small number) to ensure a shallow depth of field.

Macro photographers tend to be big users of large apertures to ensure that the element of their subject that they are focusing in on totally captures the attention of the viewer of their images while the rest of the image is completely thrown out of focus.

I hope that you found this introduction to Aperture in Photography helpful. Be sure to also check out our introduction to Shutter Speed and introduction to ISO.

Here's a few other related posts you might also enjoy:

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An Introduction to Aperture in Photography

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Recently I've been writing a series on elements that photographers need to learn in order to get out of Auto mode and take well exposed images. I've largely focussed upon three elements of the ' exposure triangle' - ISO, Shutter Speed and Aperture.

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rejection of all religions and moral principles

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Explore cyg's photos on Flickr. cyg has uploaded 3444 photos to Flickr.

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make ineffective

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http://eternalmotor.blogspot.com A better description and explanation of how to negate the Lenz's Law by shorting a generator coil. Also an easy method to compare "normal generated power" with the generated power of shorting the generator coil in which there is much more available "power" than the generated power itself!

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a person who deserts and betrays an organization

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78 Renegade Stock Illustrations, Cliparts And Royalty Free Renegade Vectors

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Renegade Royalty Free Stock Illustrations. Big collection of cliparts, vectors, illustration and vector arts