Od 1. září 2022 nebude možné provozovat kotle na tuhá paliva, které nevyhovují přísnějším emisním normám. Včasnou výměnou kotle můžete ušetřit. Nejenže snížíte náklady za topení, ale stihnete navíc využít státní dotaci na jeho pořízení. Víte, jak na to? Otestujte své znalosti.

Kvůli koronavirové pandemii lze očekávat silnou recesi. Česká národní banka proto v březnu dvakrát snížila základní úrokovou sazbu z 2,25 procenta na jedno procento. Některé banky na to už zareagovaly razantním snižováním úrokových sazeb na spořicích účtech, což zamíchalo žebříčkem nejlepších spořicích účtů. Ve spolupráci s Finparádou jsme zmapovali aktuální trend a sestavili nový žebříček.

Ze 60 na 80 procent denního vyměřovacího základu vzroste ošetřovné pro rodiče, kteří zůstali doma s potomky v souvislosti s uzavřením škol a školek kvůli koronavirové krizi. Senát novelu schválil v úterý 28. dubna 2020. Předlohu nyní dostane k podpisu prezident Miloš Zeman. Spočítejte si orientačně na kalkulačce iDNES.cz, kolik dostanete.

Podřízení na něj spoléhají v časech dobrých i zlých. A když přijdou opravdové těžkosti, záleží často jen na jeho schopnostech, jak moc se podnik otřese, nebo zda padne úplně.

Zájem o nákup rekreačních nemovitostí je letos výrazně vyšší než v posledních letech. Objektů, které se dostávají do prodeje, je naopak tento rok méně. Viníkem je v obou případech epidemie koronaviru a s ní spojená nejistota kolem letních dovolených. To se podepisuje na cenách, často se dostanou výš, než byly inzerované.

Sbírají jedno ocenění za druhým. Nejvíce si ale váží ocenění zákazníků. Své mošty a přesnídávky rodinná firma vyrábí v Bílých Karpatech, v místě, kde je příroda takřka nedotčená a čistá. Takové chtějí i své produkty.

Splácíte hypotéku, u níž se blíží zlomové datum fixace? Jak na to, když chcete brzy půjčku doplatit nebo ji refinancovat? A lze před doplacením využít odkladu splátek?

Zaměstnaní rodiče mají od dubna nově nárok na ošetřovné ve výši 80 procent denního vyměřovacího základu. Důvod zvýšení je jasný. Původních 60 procent většině rodin na pokrytí nákladů na provoz domácnosti nevystačilo. Potvrzuje to i případ paní Anny.

Mohlo by se zdát, že pojišťovny budou v koronavirové době zaznamenávat zvýšený zájem o sjednání životních pojistek. Zejména kvůli krytí rizika pracovní neschopnosti, což se vztahuje i na onemocnění infekcí covid-19. Praxe je ale zatím opačná.

The finalists are:

• Beneath Ceaseless Skies, editor Scott H. Andrews
• Escape Pod, editors Mur Lafferty and S.B. Divya, assistant editor Benjamin C. Kinney, audio producers Adam Pracht and Summer Brooks, hosts Tina Connolly and Alasdair Stuart
• Fireside Magazine, editor Julia Rios, managing editor Elsa Sjunneson, copyeditor Chelle Parker, social coordinator Meg Frank, publisher & art director Pablo Defendini, founding editor Brian White
• FIYAH Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, executive editor Troy L. Wiggins, editors Eboni Dunbar, Brent Lambert, L.D. Lewis, Danny Lore, Brandon O’Brien and Kaleb Russell
• Strange Horizons, Vanessa Rose Phin, Catherine Krahe, AJ Odasso, Dan Hartland, Joyce Chng, Dante Luiz and the Strange Horizons staff
• Uncanny Magazine, editors-in-chief Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas, nonfiction/managing editor Michi Trota, managing editor Chimedum Ohaegbu, podcast producers Erika Ensign and Steven Schapansky

In this category, everything but FIYAH is available free online, supported by subscriptions / Patreons etc. FIYAH puts a list of contents of each issue, and also publishes a Spotify playlist for each quarterly issue. Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Fireside Magazine and Strange Horizons also all publish podcasts of each of their fiction / poetry, and Uncanny Magazine publishes two podcasts per issue which cover some but not all of the content (as far as I can tell). Escape Pod is of course a fiction podcast to start with, but does provides transcripts of its episodes.

I subscribe to Uncanny Magazine & FIYAH, I had a subscription last year to Fireside Magazine, I support Strange Horizons on Patreon and I'm on Beneath Ceaseless Skies's mailiing list to get notifications of new issues, even if I don't always read them. I'll need to have a bit of a think about how I'll rank them.

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ingredients

• 2 carrots ($.30)
• 2 bananas, sliced and frozen ($.40)
• 1 apple, peeled and chopped ($.50)
• 1 tablespoon agave ($.20)
• 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
• water for blending, about 1 cup

directions

In a blender, puree all ingredients until very smooth. A high speed blender will smooth out all the little carrot bits, and a less high powered one will leave a bit of pulp. If you're very opposed to pulp, juice the carrots instead.




nutritional information: calories: 165 fat: 0 gr carbs: 47 gr protein: 2 gr











ingredients

• 1 avocado, chopped ($.88)
• 2 medium apples, peeled and chopped ($1.29)
• 1 tablespoon chopped onion
• handful arugula leaves ($.50)
• 2 tablespoons olive oil ($.20)
• 2 cups water, for blending
• minced onion
• salt and pepper to taste
• red pepper flakes directions

directions

1. Set aside a few arugula leaves for garnish.
2. In a blender, combine the avocado, apples, chopped onion, arugula leaves, olive oil, and water, and puree until very smooth.
3. Salt and pepper to taste, and garnish with a few chopped arugula leaves, some finely minced onion, and red pepper flakes.
4. nutritional information

calories: 275 fat: 18 gr carbs: 42 gr protein: 7 gr









ingredients

• 1/4 cup walnuts ($1.00)
• 1 large tomato ($1.00)
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 head romaine ($2.30)
• 1 medium onion, thinly sliced ($.20)
• 1 small jalapeno, sliced
• 1 ripe avocado ($.1.00)
• black olives ($.50)
• green olives ($.50)

• 4 tablespoons cashew cream ($.60) {recipe below}

directions

• Make the walnut taco meat first and set aside.
• In a food processor fitted with an "S" blade, pulse the walnuts, half a tomato, cumin, and salt until chopped but still a little chunky.
• To a bed of chopped romaine, add the walnut taco meat, the other half of tomato (chopped), sliced onion, a bit of sliced jalapeno, chopped avocado, and olives. 
• Top with a couple scoops of cashew cream.

cashew cream

• 1/2 cup cashews ($2.00)
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice ($.20)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Blend all ingredients in small blender until very smooth. Store leftovers in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to three days.

nutritional information










ingredients

• 1 zucchini, sliced 1/4" thick ($.70)
• 2 tablespoons olive oil ($.20)
• 2 tablespoons maple syrup ($.40)
• 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar ($.10)
• 1 small clove garlic
• 1/2 teaspoon liquid smoke
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

directions

Slice the zucchini into strips about 1/4" thick. In a small bowl, whisk together the remaining ingredients. Toss with the zucchini until well coated, then dehydrate for several hours or overnight, until just a little bit crunchy but pliable.




Tear the zucchini bacon into pieces and serve over vanilla banana ice cream with maple syrup. To make the ice cream, slice and freeze four bananas. When ready to use, grind them in a food processor with one teaspoon vanilla and a splash of almond milk. Process until smooth, which may take a few minutes and some scraping down on the sides. This will cost about $.30 per serving.



nutritional information: calories: 298 fat: 14 carbs: 45 protein: 2 gr



ingredients

•  2 big handfuls greens (kale, romaine, etc) ($.75)
• 3 bananas, sliced and frozen ($.75)
• 1 cup blueberries ($1.00)
• 2 tablespoon ground flax seeds ($.20)
• 4 tablespoons hemp protein powder ($.90)
• about 2 cups water for blending

I love making big, sweet, hearty green smoothies in the morning, and this is what I had this morning. I'm pretty sure I put just about everything I had in it, hence the name "(everything but the) Kitchen Sink Smoothie!"

My blender is small and weak, poor thing (but has lasted forever), so I blend my greens first. If you don't have a VitaMix or other high powered blender, this might work better for you, too. They get pretty smooth if I process them for a minute or two.

I also used Manitoba Harvest Hemp Pro 50, 50% Protein Powder, 32-Ounce which is my favorite hemp powder. Manitoba Harvest leaves all the good omega-3s intact.

Just blend everything well until smooth and serve.

• 2 bananas, sliced and frozen ($.60)
• 1/2 cup almond milk ($.40)
• 2 tablespoons raw cacao powder or cocoa powder
• pinch salt
• few drops of stevia, if more sweetness is desired

• 1/4 cup melted coconut oil ($.80)
• 1/4 cup raw cacao powder or cocoa powder ($.80)
• 1/4 cup finely ground coconut palm sugar ($.80)
• pinch salt 
• 2 tablespoons chopped pistachios ($.40)

1. Place all fudgesicle ingredients into  blender and puree until very smooth. Add more almond milk or water if needed to facilitate blending. 
2. Pour into popsicle molds and freeze for several hours until fully frozen. 
3. Prepare the chocolate shell coating. 
4. Place all the chocolate shell coating ingredients into a small bowl and stir well until smooth.
5. Remove the fidgesicles from the freezer and pop them out of their molds.
6. Dip the fudgescicles into the hard chocolate shell, or drizzle it over them to coat. 
7. Just heating the coconut oil up enough to melt it and not any warmer will yield the best results. If needed, gently remelt the chocolate hard shell. 
8. Add a sprinkle of chopped pistachios or other chopped nut, if desired. Cacao nibs also work well.
9. Any leftovers can be wrapped and stored in the freezer for a week or so.

These are just insanely good and great for summer. I really don't think there's a conventional dessert that could be any better tasting than these. I used paper cupcake cups and a cupcake pan ... the paper lined pans seemed to make just about perfect sized tarts. They certainly didn't last long in these parts, although theoretically they can be covered and frozen for up to a week.

A note about the dehydrated bananas ... these need to be just dehydrated enough to take some of the moisture out but not hard. I dehydrated my gently for about 6 hours and that seemed to work out well.


ingredients

• 6 dates ($3.00)
• 1/2 cup walnuts ($.50)
• 1/2 cup finely shredded coconut ($1.00)
• 2 tablespoons coconut oil
• 2 tablespoons agave
• pinch salt
• 2 avocados ($1.49)
• 3 bananas, dehydrated ($.45)
• 4 limes, juice and zest ($2.00)
• 4 tablespoons agave ($.40)

directions

1. Make the crusts first. In a food processor with the "S" blade, process the dates until mush. 
2. Add the coconut, coconut oil, agave, and salt and process until it begins to clump. 
3. Last, add the walnuts and process until the walnuts are fully incorporated and the mixture sticks together.
4. Divide the crust mixture evenly into and press into the bottom and sides of eight paper lined cupcake cups. 
5. Put in the freezer for about a half hour, until firm.
6. For the filling, in the food processor with the "S" blade, process the avocados, bananas, lime juice and zest, and agave. It takes a minute or two, but this will become velvety smooth and the consistency of thick pudding.
7. Spoon the filling into the tart crusts and chill well before serving.

Rituals of childhood (content note: gun violence, mass shooting) The Stump That Didn’t Die Growth mindset lessons had no impact The Costs of Reliability Everyone I know is mostly going about their days right now slightly dazed with horror about the detention camps on the southern border. Piece of string? I’m a frayed knot (Included … Continue reading Links — September 1

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Ugh, well, I still didn't finish the video I mentioned last post (it is just a video version of some of my chess papers from this last SIGBOVIK; don't get too excited), but I made a lot of progress on it this weekend. This one has a lot of custom software, some of which is hours of work for like 10 seconds on-screen. This approach is "fun" but not efficient. At least I have a good approach to the video so it's just a matter of turning the crank now.

I finished The Messenger. My verdict is that it is good. Some aspects of it are fantastic (8-bit graphics and writing) and most are very good, but the game was not very hard and the "metroidvania" aspects of it were mostly about retreading ground between distant teleports. I managed to get all the achievements, which I don't usually do, but there was just like one hard one left.

Speaking of hard ones, next up is/was Dead Cells, whose verdict is great. This is a grindy (lots of unlockables/upgrades) roguelike platformer with really excellent controls and "flow", almost feeling like a twitchy fighting game at times. It's no "Spelunky" or even "Crypt of the Necrodancer"; what set those apart for me is how the design of the random level generation really tended to create these interesting situations and puzzles. But this game has an impressive amount of content (the graphics and the sheer variety of weapons/powerups both stand out to me) and is just really fun to play, except when you die (which is always). Just now I finally beat the game on "Hard" (second boss cell) so it may be time to retire. I bought like 9 more games on the Steam summer sale, after all!

Hey.  This isn’t a real post but I thought you might enjoy. Recently the Yorkshire Museum had a curator battle where they challenged museums to post the #creepiestobject in their collection on twitter.  And it was fantastic and a million … Continue reading →

We started going to a personal trainer at the end of the summer, and it’s been really good–building strength, getting healthier. But the one thing that she badgered me about was bread. “You have to stop eating bread! Gluten is terrible for you. It’s what’s making your knees hurt. It’s causing inflammation in your finger […]

Did one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done: I cut up my mother’s wedding dress. Now, Mom always *loathed* her wedding dress. Her mother talked her into a waltz length, ballerina-y dress, and she never enjoyed looking at her wedding pictures. She put it in her cedar chest and never looked at it. […]

It may be tempting at the start of a new project to create the first database tables manually, or write SQL scripts that you run manually, especially when you first have to spend a significant amount of time on sifting through all the migration libraries and then some more to get it working properly.

Going through this process did slow me down at the start of the project but I was determined to use a migration tool because hunting inexplicable bugs that only happen in production just to find out there is a definition mismatch between the production and development databases is not fun. Using such a tool also motivates you to write both the setup and teardown steps for each table while the current design is still fresh in your mind.

At first I considered a standalone migration tool because I expect them to be very good at that single task. However, learning the idiosyncrasies of a new tool and trying to make it fit seamlessly into my development workflow seemed like more trouble than it is worth.

I decided to stick with a Common Lisp library and found the following seven that work with PostgreSQL and/or Postmodern:

• Postmodern-passenger-pigeon
• database-migrations
• cl-migrations
• Mito
• Crane
• Orizuru-orm
• cl-mgr

I quickly discounted Crane and Mito because they are ORM (Object Relational Mapper) libraries which are way more complex than a dedicated migration library. Development on Crane have stalled some time ago and I don't feel it is mature enough for frictionless use yet. Mito declares itself as being in Alpha state; also not mature enough yet.

I only stumbled onto cl-mgr and Orizuru-orm long after making my decision so I did not investigate them seriously. Orizuru-orm is in any case an ORM which I would have discounted because it is too complex for my needs. CL-mgr looks simple, which is a good thing. It is based on cl-dbi which makes it a good candidate if you foresee switching databases but even if I discovered it sooner I would have discounted it for the same reason as CL-migrations.

CL-migrations looks very promising. It is a simple library focusing only on migrations. It uses clsql to interface with the database which bothered me because I already committed to using Postmodern and I try to avoid adding a lot of unused code to my projects. The positive side is that it interfaces to many different databases so it is a good candidate if you are not committed to using Postmodern. It is also a stable code base with no outstanding bug reports.

The two projects I focused on was Postmodern-passenger-pigeon and Database-migrations because they both use Postmodern for a database interface.

Postmodern-passenger-pigeon was in active development at the time and it seemed safer to use than Database-migrations because it can do dry runs, which is a very nice feature when you are upgrading your production database and face the possibility of losing data when things go awry. Unfortunately I could not get it working within a reasonable amount of time.

I finally settled on Database-migrations. It is a small code base, focused on one task, it is mature and it uses Postmodern so it does not pull in a whole new database interface into my project. There are however some less positive issues.

The first issue is a hindrance during development. Every time the migrations ASDF system (or the file containing it, as ASDF prefers that all systems be defined in a single file) is recompiled it adds all the defined migrations to the migrations list. Though each one will only be applied once to the DB it is still bothersome. One can then clear the list with (setf database-migrations::*migrations* nil) but then only newly modified migration files will be added. The solution then is to touch the .asd file after clearing the migrations list.

The second negative point is quite dangerous. The downgrade function takes a target version as parameter, with a default target of 0. This means that if you execute downgrade without specifying a target version you delete your whole database.

I am currently using Database-migrations and it works well for me. If for some reason I need to switch I will use cl-migrations.

Using Database-migrations

To address the danger of unintentionally deleting my database I created a wrapper function that does both upgrade and downgrade, and it requires a target version number.

Another practical issue I discovered is that upgrades and downgrades happen in the same order as they are defined in the migration file. If you create two tables in a single file where table 2 depends on table 1 then you can not revert / downgrade because Database-migrations will attempt to delete table 1 before table 2. The solution here is to use the def-queries-migration macro (instead of def-query-migration) which defines multiple queries simultaneously . If you get overwhelmed by a single definition that defines multiple tables the other option is to stick with one migration definition per file.

I have finally obtained the first batch of the printed "Programming Algorithms" books and will shortly be sending them to the 13 people who asked for a hardcopy.

Here is a short video showing the book "in action":

If you also want to get a copy, here's how you do it:

1. Send the money to my PayPal account: $30 if you want normal shipping or $35 if you want a tracking number. (The details on shipping are below).
2. Shoot me an email to vseloved@gmail.com with your postal address.
3. Once I see the donation, I'll go to the post office and send you the book.
4. Optionaly step: if you want it to be signed, please, indicate it in your letter.

Shipping details: As I said originally, the price of the dead-tree version will be $20+shipping. I'll ship via the Ukrainian national post. You can do the fee calculation online here (book weight is 0.58 kg, size is 23 x 17 x 2 cm): https://calc.ukrposhta.ua/international-calculator. Alas, the interface is only in Ukrainian. According to the examples I've tried, the cost will be approximately $10-15. To make it easier, I've just settled on $10 shipping without a tracking number of $15 if you want a tracking number. Regardless of your country. I don't know how long it will take - probably depends on the location (I'll try to inquire when sending).

The book was already downloaded more than 1170 times (I'm not putting the exact number here as it's constantly growing little by little). I wish I knew how many people have, actually, read it in full or in part. I've also received some error corrections (special thanks goes to Serge Kruk), several small reviews and letters of encouragement. Those were very valuable and I hope to see more :)

Greetings from the far away city of Lima, Peru!
I loved this part: "Only losers don't comment their code, and comments will be used extensively"
Thank you so much for putting this comprehensive collection of highly important data structures, i'm already recommending this to two of my developers, which I hope i'll induce into my Lisp addiction.
--Flavio Egoavil

And here's another one:

Massively impressive book you've written! I've been a Lisp programmer for a long time and truly appreciate the work put in here. Making Lisp accessible for more people in relation to practical algorithms is very hard to do. But you truly made it. You'll definitely end up in the gallery of great and modern Lisp contributions like "Land of Lisp" and "Let Over Lambda". Totally agree with your path to focus on practical algorithmic thinking with Lisp and not messing it up with macros, oop and other advanced concepts.
--Lars Hård

Thanks guys, it's really appreciated!

If you feel the same or you've liked the book in some respect and have found it useful, please, continue to share news about it: that definitely helps attract more readers. And my main goal is to make it as widely read as possible...

It was all I could do, when I was reading the Futel Party Line zine, to not just call up their operator and say “I want a free pay phone. In Randolph.” Because, hey, that would be cool. But realistically, someone would have to manage that project. And, if I am being honest, I am […]

So I’d been kind of waiting until I had a positive “Hey I’m feeling better!” update. I had my head down, doing my thing, being basically okay but a little crabby at having felt kinda lousy since August. And two things happened. 1. COVID-19 2. The medicine my doc gave me for GERD (or something […]

The Grand Master Sabazius has provided some useful information and advice to O.T.O. members about how to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Worst Things For Sale is Drew's blog. It updates every day. Subscribe to the Worst Things For Sale RSS!