The Refresh Orlando Heirs

Report after report comes in about how many people couldn’t or didn’t escape the wrath of Hurricane Katrina. More reports come in about the disorganized relief effort, the communications problems they’re having and the difficulty in getting survivors to safety even when they are reachable by rescue personnel.

Hopefully, few of us will ever be caught in such a widespread and devastating disaster as Hurricane Katrina. But should a natural or man-made disaster threaten your family or force an evacuation, having a fully-stocked and easily-reached emergency “bug-out” bag could help save your life during the first stages, and help make rescue, recovery and a return to normalcy easier and more successful.

A bug-out bag is basically a duffle bag or other easy to carry luggage piece stocked with the following items:

• Photocopies of important documents such as birth certificates, drivers’ licenses and so on for the entire family. Note: keep the originals in a safe deposit box or other safe place – non-notarized photocopies cannot generally be used for official actions like getting a drivers license, but are more than fine for temporary ID in emergency situations. And don’t forget insurance papers and other items you might need to begin rebuilding.
• A small sum of cash ($20-50) for immediate emergency use.
• A temporary supply of prescription drugs in their originally-labeled containers, regularly rotated for freshness. This is easily done by buying one refill ahead. As you finish your current package or bottle, take the next one out of the bag and replace with a newly purchased refill.
• A supply of meal replacement and energy bars. Look for items that are designed more for calorie and nutrient density, such as protein bars and hikers’ meal bars, rather than those sold as snack products or candy bar substitutes. You can also include dried foods or hiking meals and other lightweight, easy to prepare and eat items such as nuts, small candies and oatmeal packs.
• A water purification kit or hiker’s filter system. Bottled water is bulky, heavy and goes stale quickly. Dirty water, while distasteful, can often be easily found, roughly filtered through cloth to remove large particulate matter and then sterilized for safe drinking. In a worst-case scenario, boiling dirty water for 15 minutes will serve until alternatives can be found.
• A pre-paid phone card and a list of relatives, friends and emergency numbers. Check for expiration date and rotate out or renew as needed.
• A non-battery-dependent, rechargeable flashlight, radio and cell phone charger, if you have a phone (alternatives include solar, squeeze-charge or kinetically charged options). Even when phone service was available, many Katrina survivors could not call out to get help or update relatives because their phones were dead and there was no power. Keep in mind also that even when phone service is spotty, small text messages can sometime get through.
• A multi-tool (the kind with blades, pliers, screwdrivers and so on) for taking care of small but sometimes life-or-death repairs and jury-rigs.
• A small first aid kit containing at least bandages of various sizes, antiseptic ointment, sunscreen, a bottle of contact lens saline solution (good for cleaning injuries and flushing eyes) and OTC pain relievers.
• A safety lighter and a few small candles. Never light these unless you are sure that there is no chance of an explosion from natural gas, propane or other leaking fuels. For safety, use your flashlight for your primary light source. Save the lighter and candles for starting cooking or heating fires.
• An indelible, waterproof black permanent marker (buy new and keep in package until needed, to maintain freshness). Useful for many things including leaving notes for rescuers or others on whatever is at hand, marking your gear at a shelter, and writing ID and medical info on the arms of kids, the elderly, the ill or anyone who may become separated or are unable to speak for themselves. (There are also white markers that can be used for darker-skinned individuals, or simply write on a lighter area of their body). Sturdy hospital or nightclub-style ID bracelets are also handy for this purpose. Note: there is always danger in having children’s ID plainly visible to strangers. Use your best judgment in each situation to weigh the various benefits and concerns.
• Don’t forget the pets! Keep their carriers handy, clean and ready to go. Your kit should have any food, medications, leashes and important papers necessary for them, as well. Not all evacuation shelters will take animals. If you have pets, it is important that you know ahead of time where they can go and how you will take care of them in an emergency.

The bag should be checked and the edibles or expirables rotated at least every 6 months or as needed (schedule a regular check during daylight savings changeovers, when you also check your smoke alarm batteries and do other seasonal activities). Although this will cover most survival situations, you should customize it to fit your needs (toiletries, special gear, food additives, small paperback books, etc). Just keep in mind the weight and size of the final kit and that in an emergency situation you may have to carry it for a long time over rough terrain while tired, hungry or even injured.

Your bug-out kit should be placed near the main entrance and exit, or in an easy-to-reach central location. Every member of the family should know where it is and to make sure it is part of any emergency evacuation. (It is important to stress, however, that no one ever go after any item, even the emergency bag, in the case of a house fire. In that case, focus only on getting out as soon as you can.) Smaller versions of this bag can also be kept in offices and vehicles.

Although having a bug-out kit cannot guarantee your safety, it goes a long way toward ensuring that you and your family have the best chance possible of making it through any unforeseen emergency as healthy and safe as possible.

About the author

Soni Pitts is a professional freelance writer who provides copywriting, editing and related services in addition to her regular freelance work. She also covers the Networking beat as an associate writer for http://www.wordbrains.com>Wordbrains. Need copy? Email Soni at writer@sonipitts.com for more information.

In the good old days, back when the Internet had about 10 users and the web was a far off vision, PCs were called Home Computers and anyone could learn to write computer games. Three of us set up in business to write and sell our own games for the ZX Spectrum (Aka Timex/Sinclair) and Commodore 64. We didn’t sell many games but we were saved by getting into the game conversion business. A publisher would release a hit on the Commodore 64 and we’d write the Timex, Amstrad, MSX, CBM 16 etc versions. It took about 3 months for one person to produce a game.

That was 20 years ago and things have changed a lot since then. The games industry is now a massive multi billion dollar business and development teams can number 50 or more. My first game had me as programmer, artist, and beep designer – (well it wasn’t proper sound!). I did everything. Back then games were written in assembler and you had to learn 6502 and Z80. Nowadays with a few exceptions games are written in C and C++. The days of back room programmers aren’t entirely gone- there is also ‘retro remake’ and ‘indie’ scene, e.g. http://retrospec.sgn.net/ but unless you have an exceptionally brilliant idea, you are not likely to get into the mainstream game business as a one man outfit writing Blockbuster PC games.

It’s not all bad news though- if you can program to a very good standard and have learnt some of the techniques- eg 3d maths, artificial intelligence (ai), and can produce demos of your code then you may be able to get a job in the market. There are plenty of books and websites that will guide you through the intricacies of DirectX and before long you’ll be a guru on vertex shaders etc. Sign up on games development sites like http://gamasutra.com/ (it’s free) and look for jobs. You will have to be good to get a job and prepared to work long, in some case very long hours. It is quite a tough business – when a game is under development, you’ll live breathe and eat it for 18 months-two years. And you probably won’t work 9-5 all the time.

There are however other ways to get into the games business and I don’t mean console development. There are other ‘genres’ of games that are much easier to get into.

1. MUD – Multi-user dungeons. These have been around for 30 years and were the precursor to the MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games) that now exist. These are still popular and you can find the source code to several of these. I don’t know if any make money- most people are now used to playing them for free. Look here: http://www.ability.org.uk/mud.html

2. Internet/Web based games. There are hundreds of these around. A good starting point is the vast directory at http://www.mpogd.com/ . These range from free to monthly subscriptions. Anyone can set up their own website and games using any web technology- e.g. Perl, PHP, Java.

3. Play By Mail. This has now largely but not entirely moved into the Internet/Web Games area. Flagship magazine is a good source of information – their website is http://flagshipmagazine.com/

4. Flash Games. Flash development is a skill in itself, though programming in ActionScript (which is JavaScript under a different name) is not that hard. There is a definite career path available through programming Flash games and there are plenty of books to teach you to write games in Flash. Flashkit website http://www.flashkit.com/index.shtml is a good starting point online.

5. Mobile Phone and PDA games. This has become a big growth area recently and is likely to continue its growth as phones get more powerful. Its also one of the easiest to get into though not all phones are the same. All you need to know is how to write Java games running on the J2ME (Java 2 Mobile Edition) platform. Unlike the console world, Software Development Kits (SDKS) are available for free from mobile phone manufacturers. E.g. http://www.forum.nokia.com/main.html and the best IDEs for J2ME development (Netbeans and Eclipse) are available free. Expect to see MMORPG (Mobile Multiplayer Online Role Play Games) before too long.

Much of this can be done part time in your evenings/weekends but be careful that you don’t let it take over your life and also that your employer doesn’t have any claim on software that you develop. Some employers have clauses that let them claim anything you develop. There are ways round this, often involving a wife or loved one who can be assigned ownership but take legal advice if in any doubt.

If you are learning to program games, don’t neglect the power of the web. Sourceforge.net is home to thousands of open source projects and many of those are games. Also game source for commercial games Quake I, II and III has been released by ID and can be found here http://www.idsoftware.com/business/techdownloads/

These are GPL’d so you wouldn’t be able to write games based on them and sell them without giving away the source code but you could write Mods. Several game modders have released very popular Mods free and have managed to get into the industry because of their quality. There are many games projects where you can sign up and program- this is an excellent way to learn new skills and make friends.

David Bolton is a software developer with an extensive past programming games. He co-founded Choice Software in Carrickfergus, N. Ireland between 1984 and 1987 and won an award for his original computer wargame Johnny Reb II (published by Lothlorien). He designed and programmed the Postal game Quest, which has also won awards and is still played (postally and online) 15 years after it was first developed. He worked for 12 months as game designer at Microprose (Manchester) in 1992. He is currently designing a large multiplayer role-play game, but it’s not due out until 2006.

YOU MIGHT THINK I AM STRONG

I THINK YOU GOT IT WRONG

I LIVE LIFE DAY TO DAY

HOPING IT WILL GO MY WAY

I HAVE MY FRIENDS AND MY FOOD PLAN

MY THERAPIST AND MY THOUGHTS

MY EXERCISE AND MY EXCITEMENT

THEN SOMETHING HAPPENS AND I GET CAUGHT

CAUGHT IN THE ARMS OF ED

TURNING MY EYES AWAY

FROM MY FOCUS TO WIN THE FIGHT

THAT I THOUGHT WAS GOING TO STAY.

HE TELLS ME THAT I AM SELFISH

THAT I SHOULD DOUBT MY EVERY MOVE

ONE MINUTE I AM HAPPY

DO I HAVE A RIGHT TO FEEL THIS GOOD?

DOUBTING MY STRENGTH AND CONFIDENCE

AS ED ALWAYS KNEW I WOULD

I AM LOSING INCHES AROUND MY WAIST

AND MY PANTS ARE FALLING OFF

I SEE THE FACE OF ED IN MY HEAD

AS HE BEGINS TO LAUGH AND SCOFF

YOU THINK YOU ARE GOING STRONG

YOU THINK YOU GOT ME BEAT

LET ME SEE YOU LOSE EVEN MORE

YOU WILL SEE THAT YOU WERE WRONG.

THE LITTLE VOICE IS ALWAYS THERE

CHATTERING AWAY

CAN’T I SEND HIM TO DETENTION

OR KILL HIM FOR GOOD TODAY?

EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE I GET CAUGHT UP IN MY LIFE

AND REALIZE THAT I AM HAPPY AND STRONG

AND FORGET TO FOCUS ON THE FIGHT

PLEASE TELL ME THAT YOU CARE

DON’T LET ED BE RIGHT.

Mary Pat shares her words so that others may find theirs.
http://www.reflectingrace.com

I’m not even sure how old I was when I got the gift for Christmas, but I remember thinking it was a pretty impressive piece of electronic hardware. It was really cool looking (technologically speaking), and I was awfully proud to own it. It certainly made for lots of fun times.

What was this high-tech gift, you ask? Why, it was a tape recorder! It was a monographic, reel to reel tape deck that came with it’s own plug-in microphone. I could hold that mic up to my transistor radio’s speaker and record songs onto tape. I could also play the guitar and sing and record every second of it. I could even hide and record conversations from unsuspecting family members. I was in recording heaven!

Years later I owned an 8 track stereo recording deck (ok, that was a mistake). At another point in time I had a stereo cassette recording deck that would physically flip the tape over when one side was finished recording or playing. Now I own a more conventional stereo dual cassette deck, but I no longer use it for recording or much of anything else for that matter.

All my recording is now done on my computer. The audio and midi software available today for computer recording is quite amazing. You can record multiple tracks, edit the recordings and add special effects as desired. Many of the audio recording programs come with their own native special effects such as reverb, compression, flanger, and chorus, to name a few. Some of the recording software can also accept third party effects such as vocal removers, tube amp effects and many more.

Multitrack recording software allows for recording various live instruments, vocals, etc, onto individual tracks. After recording one track, you can play it back while recording another. Once finished, you can mix all the individual tracks down into one stereo track. Some recording software will import and record both audio and MIDI, some audio only. If you have a MIDI keyboard or other MIDI instrument, be sure to pick software that handles both formats.

Creating a simple home audio recording studio is easy. In addition to software, an audio and/or midi interface will allow you to plug all kinds of audio components, microphones and instruments into your computer for live recording, recording from tape or even from your old vinyl lp’s. You can also use a home stereo system as an interface for audio components by running cables to it from your computer’s sound card. A laptop with recording software and a USB interface can serve as a totally portable recording studio. And again, if you have MIDI instruments, be sure to get an interface that will allow connecting them in additon to audio components and instruments.

The digital revolution has made music recording easily available to anyone with a computer. If you enjoy music and want to do more than just download mp3’s from the Internet, get some multitrack recording software and start your own home sound studio.

The author is a computer technician and sound hobbysist. His website, at www.pcmusicstuff.com, contains information and diagrams on computer music recording.

India, the dominant player in outsourcing touted as the “back office of the world,” would soon have to contend with a third-world rival—the Philippines.

A highly skilled English-speaking labor force. A reliable telecommunications infrastructure. Low cost of qualified personnel. These are some significant reasons for choosing India or the Philippines for outsourcing support.

IT OUTSOURCING IN INDIA

India, a former colony of the British Empire for almost two centuries, has the second-largest IT talent pool in the world, a result of its Britain-influenced education system that places great emphasis on science and mathematics. With 120,000 trained IT professionals added to the Indian workforce yearly, India is gearing to be an IT giant in the third world and is ranked as the first choice of U.S. companies for software outsourcing. According to Nasscomm, a conglomerate of India-based software and services companies, Indian companies are software solution provider to more than half the Fortune 500 companies.

The launch of India’s first private undersea cable has tremendously improved the international bandwidth situation. In addition, considerable bandwidth is available with the state-owned Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited, partially owned by India’s largest business conglomerate. The privatization of telecom industry has also resulted in a significant drop in telecom rates. Observers predict that the entry of newer industry players will see a further drop in telecom prices. In the last ten years, telecom costs in India have dropped by 85 percent.

Over the years, India has built a strong brand equity as an attractive destination for software development and support. India is host to established IT companies such as IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco, Sun, HP, and Alcatel.

OFFSHORE DESTINATION: PHILIPPINES

But the Philippines—one of the world’s second-largest English-speaking populations—is fast catching up to India.

With a literacy rate of 94%, the Philippines has a large pool of information technology professionals and a cost-competitive telecoms infrastructure. The country ranks third in Knowledge and Information-based jobs in the 2002 Global Technology Index research done by the META Group. Three million college graduates join the workforce each year, providing a tremendous source of talent.

An American colony for close to 50 years, the Philippines has a Western-influenced culture, a unique trait that clearly distinguishes the country from other offshore destinations. Although Asian in orientation, Filipinos watch American TV and are thus able to communicate effectively in American English.

PHILIPPINES: CALL CENTER HUB

In recent years, the Philippines has become the offshore destination of choice for call center outsourcing, specializing in customer support services. Because of the Filipinos’ high level of English proficiency and strong customer orientation, many leading multinationals have used the Philippines as a global center for customer service. American OnLine, the largest U.S. Internet service provider, maintains a staff of 600 at its call center in Clark, Pampanga. Caltex, Procter & Gamble, Barnes and Noble, among others, have built large-scale service centers in the Philippines.

One very promising industry that has sought outsourcing support in the Philippines is the medical transcription business. The Philippines boasts a large talent pool of medical professionals, including doctors, nurses, and medical technologists. The demand for medical transcription has risen as U.S. hospitals are now required by federal regulations to convert medical records into data format. Seventeen medical transcription companies are now in operation, employing 1,200 Filipinos.

GIVING INDIA A RUN FOR ITS MONEY

While the Philippines may not be as a huge an offshore provider of web and software services as India, it holds great promise in the customer service industry. Although India does charge lower than the Philippines—for data encoding work, India charges around $4 (U.S.) versus $10 in the Philippines—more multinationals are choosing the Philippines because of the high quality of work. Moreover, Filipinos make good customer service agents not only because they are fluent in American English but also because of their helpful and friendly nature.

More companies are choosing the Philippines for offshore support. Among the services offered in Philippine-based outsourcing companies are copyediting and indexing; web design and maintenance; data conversion, data warehousing, data capture and data entry; OCR and scanning services; proofreading; encoding and keyboarding; imaging services and graphics design; call center and customer service; abstracting and document conversion; typesetting; and tagging, among others.

About The Author

Winston Pepito is the President of Phil-Am Outsourcing Solutions, Inc. (one of most successful outsourcing companies in Asia) based in Cebu City, Philippines. More details about his company can be found at http://www.outsourcing-services.net

winston@outsourcing-services.net

In order to meet regulatory and corporate compliance requirements reporting members will require a cost effective solution that may be installed at one side of the data transfer without being tied to any proprietary protocol.

Considerations include:

- is it designed for use in most enterprise environments?

- is it flexible & adaptable to suit an unlimited range of needs for secure file transfer internally and externally?

Functionality and benefits should include:

+ can easily be adapted

+ Automatic transfer to single or multiple destinations of any file.

+ Monitor an ‘inbox’ directory for a file, or wait for a triggering event.

+ Take a copy of the file and generate a checksum.

+ All actions audited

+ Alerts raised for specified conditions – including email

+ Option to retrieve a response file after a successful upload

+ Date and timestamp added to avoid duplicate names

+ Pre and post processing available for transfers

+ solution runs as a service

+ All files archived with a date & time stamp.

Transferring data to the FSA using System to System Interface

The Financial Service Authority (FSA) is in the process of implementing the interfaces for Transaction Reporting System (TRS) Product Sales Data (PSD) and Securities Trades Reporting (Markets) XML documents using the System to System Interface.

The FSA has not recommended any specific tools for this transfer, but has provided links to web resources which can be used to identify appropriate SFTP client tools and recommends that additional automation is used.

The current choice of tools for SFTP transfers is very large, but generally these are designed for interactive use, and provide little in the way of automated operations or audit trail for the client.

To address this need reporting members will require automation and auditing for SFTP clients.

Any solution should provide an easily configured service, which will transfer files using SFTP to predefined destinations. It also has the ability to collect response files, with configurable names and time intervals. With a combination of trusted open source tools and a flexible, configurable controlling service it should be ready for the FSA launch and adaptable for future requirements.

Solutions that have been designed to meet these and other requirements, and have sample configurations provided for both the FSA and Council for Mortgage Lending (CML) reporting environments. It is designed to be easily configured for future systems from these and other regulators (such as NYSE & NASDAQ) as well as corporate requirements (for secure file transfer internally and with business partners) and compliance with HIPAA, SOX, Privacy and Data Protection laws.

ProAtria™ http://www.proatria.com

Pro:Atria was established in 2001 as a specialist consultancy and distributor for enterprise software products with a focus on multi-platform solutions and include solutions for Network Performance and Diagnosis, Identity Management & Provisioning, Managed File Transfer, Enhanced File Transfer, Secure File Transfer & SFTP, SOA & Web Services integration of legacy with J2EE & java applications.

Development & Technical support skills are available in the UK as well with the product vendors. These skills, together with listening to customer needs, have led to the development of SFTPPlus - enhanced SFTP. Programming skills include all important options.

Consultancy and Meetings. We are often called upon to offer consultancy and advice on the best way of achieving the objectives and the best solution.

UK customers include some of the largest names from Banking, Stockbroking, Consultancy, Outsourcing, Insurance, Government and Local Authority, Travel, Engineering, Retail, Accountancy, etc.