Strir-crazy

From New York:



From the UK:

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2020/mar/31/nigel-slater-midweek-meal-dinner-polenta-mushrooms-broccoli

My breakfast, from Montreal:

Made the polenta with teryaki salmon and salad for dinner. It was rich!!

                                                             *     *     *

Steve now mover left and right on the stage.Hurrah!

                                                         

StandUp

"Why did the Penguin celebrate Easter?"

"Actually, he doesn't give a hop..."

*     *     *

Wabbit_Day2

Day(2) with wabbit the Dancer. there is now a stsge, the
points hae disappeared, and so has the mouse cursor. I could
actually remake the film and it wouldlooklike an actualperformance
(using the pen on my tablet to guide the flips.

Naw! I at the user to make Wabbit dance with Left and Right keys.
Indeed, as thing stands, yellow never glides because it is the default setting.

Tomorro, Tomorrow.

Dancing

Adapted the javafx code I had for switching buttons.
We have a dancing rabbit in the works.

Will try automating the whole thing, tomorrow.

                                    *     *    *

Not sure on how I feel about this new app - for Paris -
where people agree to be geolocalized as their Covid-19 status
changes.

Still, a lot of coders worked like mad to make it possible...


www.nouvelobs.com/coronavirus-de-wuhan/20200326.OBS26600/coronapp-une-application-francaise-pour-geolocaliser-les-porteurs-du-virus-covid-19.html

Infected

It remains true that it is the over-70 most likely
to die from the virus, but the most vulnerable population
for becoming infected are the 50-59 year olds. This is
true worldwide.

https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2020/03/26/le-tiers-des-personnes-infectees-ont-moins-de-40-ans-au-quebec

the BBand

Have I been indoors a little too long!?

Below, work has begun on my Easter project.

The BBand does a cover of Miami sunrise if one
puts thesettingsasbelow onVLC media player.

https://freemusicarchive.org/music/King_Elizabeth/Miami/07_Miami_Sunrise

*     *     *

You didn't hear it from me!!

                                                                        *     *     *


https://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2020/03/23/jeux-video-notre-selection-de-titres-rendus-gratuits-pour-le-confinement_6034149_4408996.html

Serology

One form of testing that was done in China - and not elsewhere - is
serology testing. A blood test will show who has anti-bodies for the
virus, thus who has been exposed to it. It has no value as a diagnostic
test, but is a tool for epidemic control.

Let's not be silly and have a 'you've got it or you don't' view of this
infection. And getting through with a mild case might just mean having been
exposed to a small dose of the virus.

                                               *     *     *

WHAT!?

What is the difficulty the House is having in passing thr pandemic Aid
package. The ship has sailed on maintaining Parliamentary Integrity; they are
already meetingin limited  numbers  on the logic of health measures. The
government wants the ability to act to the horizon it sees, end of 2021.
Of course, should the House be able to meet before that, they would. The Opposition
fears being delegated to obscurity. Not informed!? Not consulted!? What??

                                                          *     *     *
8 am Wednesday 25 March, 2020

New version, according to the Globe and Mail:

The Transition

Philippe Couillard thinks we should worry now about how the post-pandemic transition
will work:

https://journalmetro.com/actualites/national/2432032/covid-19-philippe-couillard-reclame-une-cellule-de-sortie-de-crise/

source: Metro/ the Canadian Press

author: Jocelyn Richer

translation: GoogleTranslate/doxa-louise

Philippe Couillard calls for a coronavirus crisis exit unit

QUÉBEC - Recognized expert in the health field, former Prime Minister Philippe Couillard has agreed to make an exception to the silence he had imposed on himself since October 2018, in order to comment on the impact of the coronavirus pandemic in Quebec, a health crisis of a scale never seen before.

As well, he has allowed himself to make some recommendations to Prime Minister François Legault on the approach to adopt so that Quebec emerges from this tragic episode without too much disruption.

Because now, his government must tackle the task of apprehending "what is coming," said the man who led Quebec from 2014 to 2018, in an exclusive interview with The Canadian Press, published on Monday, premiere political outing in the media since his bitter defeat in October 2018.

In a crisis situation, like the one that is currently shaking Quebec and the whole world, governments must be prepared for the most urgent, and are often caught in the turmoil of decisions to be taken day by day, their noses glued to the glass.

However, this is not enough, he argues, because it is necessary, at the same time, to already prepare the next phase of things, even if the crisis has only just begun.

He therefore recommends to his successor to equip himself with a kind of political periscope, by setting up now a crisis exit unit, intended to anticipate the decisions to be taken when the storm has subsided.

"We need someone somewhere, or a small group of people, who look through the periscope, who look well at what is happening elsewhere, what is coming, what is before us, and perhaps guide the government in the choices that have to be made, the choices to end the crisis, ”suggests the former Prime Minister, who is about to give a new turn to his career.

Now 62, Mr. Couillard will henceforth act as a consultant and principal advisor to the Montreal office of the law firm Dentons, one of the largest in the world, with 183 offices in 75 countries. He will give his advice and will be called upon to deliver conferences all over the world in his areas of expertise, including health.

Regarding the current coronavirus pandemic, he insists that Quebec must quickly go beyond the "daily operational vision", to go "beyond the immediate horizon", project "further  in time", reflect on the lessons  learned, and, finally, plan now "for when we release the pressure a little", a delicate decision amongst all.

For now, this moment must be postponed, because he is convinced that "the intensity of the restrictive measures" deployed to date must be maintained.

Praise for Legault

For the most part, however, the former Liberal leader is full of praise for his successor and former rival, a past master in how to manage the COVID-19 crisis, the consequences of which are still difficult to assess.

"As a Quebecer, I am quite proud of the way our state, our government, reacted during this difficult period," comments Mr. Couillard, adding that the time was not for partisanship.

Doctor and former Minister of Health for five years, he therefore wholeheartedly approves the government's approach, namely to have imposed on the population, a little before everyone else, strict instructions relating in particular for the closure of public places, the ban on assemblies and confinement.

It was certainly "the right way to do it", he said.

He has the same confidence in the National Director of Public Health, Horacio Arruda, and his entire team, "people of international caliber", whom he encountered in his former life.

"Many other states around the world would be happy to have them at their disposal," he said.

The network will hold out

Despite the gloomy and worried climate that has reigned in Quebec since the virus settled , Mr. Couillard is reassuring for the immediate future.

He believes that despite the enormous pressure exerted on the health network in the coming months, with a possible explosion in the number of people affected, the Quebec Health System will hold up.

"I have great confidence in the network's ability to adjust," to adapt to the new prevailing context, he said, praising the commitment of  hospital staff in passing.

One day, the epidemic will eventually subside, and Quebec "is, well, capable, I believe, of withstanding the enormous pressures that there will be", both in terms of public finances, that of the economy, that of the health network, which has had its share of trials in recent years.

Against the background of a forced return to balanced budgets, the reign of Mr. Couillard was marked by major budget cuts, particularly in health.

As soon as he came to power in April 2014, he decreed $ 3.7 billion in budget cuts to the state apparatus. In health, cuts reached $ 219 million in 2014, $ 450 million in 2015 and $ 247 million in 2016.

Whatever his critics still say, associating his government with an austerity regime, Mr. Couillard maintains that it was the right thing to do.

"Today, everyone is reaping the benefits," believes Mr. Couillard.

It is this past strategy that today allows the Legault government to "spend much more than expected" to support the economy and the health network, an operation that risks depleting the public treasury of many billion dollars in the coming months.

"We have given ourselves the means to do it, it must be something that we keep in mind," he said.

Despite the criticisms, he sticks with the difficult “fully justified” budgetary choices made in the past.

"Fortunately we went decisively, because there, now, the room for maneuver exists", observes the former Prime Minister, reaffirming that the aim of the exercise was to reduce the rate of annual growth in spending, without touching direct services to the population.

Thanks to this disciplined budgetary approach, he would not be surprised to see Quebec go through this ordeal more easily than elsewhere in Canada, since it has given itself "the means and the room for maneuver that allow us to 'absorb it (the COVID-19 crisis), maybe better than  other Canadian provinces,' he argued.

Before and after

Certainly, "there will be a before and after" the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr. Couillard believes that the current crisis will change many things in our lives and that we will have to learn many necessary lessons.

In terms of taxation, for example, governments should, in his view, consider offering all citizens a guaranteed minimum income, to prevent some of them from finding themselves unemployed and without income in times of crisis.

Medical practices are also called to be transformed. Telemedicine, or remote consultations by telephone, "we must keep this", even after the epidemic has passed.

From a broader perspective, the pandemic reveals all the “fragility of our world”, struggling with a globalized economy like never before, therefore dependent on other countries.

We are discovering, for example, the “fragility of complex and international supply chains”, which should lead us to favor short food production chains from now on.

For Quebecers, he advises focusing on the government message and relying solely on validated information. He wanted to send them the following message: "We must keep a cool head, also a form of optimism and especially humanism".

Jocelyne Richer, The Canadian Press

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The European Internet is not overloaded:

https://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2020/03/23/coronavirus-le-reseau-internet-tient-malgre-la-demande-pendant-le-confinement_6034160_4408996.html

source: Le Monde

author: Martin Untersinger

Updated 3/24/2020

translation: GoogleTranslate/doxalouise

Coronavirus: Internet network holds up despite demand during containment

Large online services have announced a reduction in their speed to avoid congestion, more under political pressure and as a precaution than as an immediate necessity.

Is the Internet threatened with saturation by confined teleworkers and idle students glued to online videos? To believe the announcements of some of the major online video distributors, one would be tempted to believe it. In the space of a few days, YouTube, Facebook, Amazon Prime Video , Twitch , Apple TV , Canal + , TikTok and Netflix have announced measures to reduce the amount of data consumed by their users from within the European Net and avoid saturation. The Disney + video service has even postponed its release in France to April 7 rather than March 24, "at the request of the government" .

The latter, in fact, put the major providers of content on the Internet under pressure, in unison with the European Commissioner for the internal market, Thierry Breton . On his Twitter account, on March 18, the senior official evoked a telephone discussion with the CEO of Netflix and urged him to "switch to standard definition when HD is not necessary" . The next day, in a statement , the Secretary of State for Digital, Cédric O, called on "content providers with high bandwidth consumption to take appropriate measures to limit the consumption of their services" .

A robust Internet

However, if there is one observation shared unanimously by all the “supporters” of the network, it is that the French and European Internet is not threatened with congestion in the short term.
The first week of confinement was a test and it was successful: the network was able to absorb the significant increase in traffic among individuals. At Orange, it is explained that that related to telework (emails, VPN, sending files) has been multiplied by seven, that videoconferencing has been doubled and that WhatsApp traffic has increased fivefold. At SFR, we claim to have seen a doubling of traffic to Netflix, last week.

Figures corroborated by what is observed on certain Internet nodes, where the various network players connect. At the Amsterdam node, one of the largest in the world, we notice an increase of 20% compared to the traffic for the month of February. But we are far, very far from the maximum allowed. Within this node of the network, the total capacity, regularly reinforced, is 34.6 terabits per second: the maximum peak observed in recent days took place on Sunday March 22, at 7.8 Tbits / s.

"These are things that our network can absorb, we have no concern for our customers,"  Orange has confirmed. “I have all the operators in France in my data center, and not a single one today has declared himself in serious saturation or having been overwhelmed by traffic. There is a significant increase, significant sometimes, but nobody declares saturation ", estimates Sami Slim, assistant director of Telehouse, a Parisian company where several hundred Internet companies interconnect.

On the network of a content broadcaster he knows well, "the peak of consumption remains three times higher than the average consumption of the day" , sign that the network is shocked, advanceded Clément Cavadore, network expert and  vice-president of the main French Internet node.

Anticipating the unknown

How then to explain the concern of the access providers which motivated their activism so that the public authorities are requiring a reduced flow to  content providers?

First, in addition to the increase in the load to be supported, the access providers note an evolution of the traffic: the peak of connection in the evening hardly changes, but the activity is more sustained throughout the day, according to several operators interviewed. “Usually, we have predictable traffic growth curves, there we enter the unknown. We wanted to put the odds on our side. We had figures from Italy, where there is a strong and daily growth. We wanted to protect ourselves from that. The best solution is for content providers to limit traffic, ” explains Jean-Paul Arzel, network manager at Bouygues Telecom.

In all operators, we point to the need to anticipate this unknown and to hold out as long as the crisis requires, with very limited resources in terms of maintenance. "There has been a concern expressed by operators about their ability to maintain their network in the medium term," explains Sébastien Soriano, president of the regulatory authority for electronic communications and posts (Arcep), the network policeman. Feedback from other countries shows that there may be spikes in new uses. These are the exceptional peaks that everyone dreads. "

For all operators, it is therefore a welcomed  decision on the part of the major content providers to limit their throughput, thereby making it possible to gain "flexibility in daily management" . The government will also oil the wheels, bringing together content operators and ISPs to adapt to the situation and, if necessary, "get messages across , " says Soriano.

What about net neutrality?

Will this lead to breaches of net neutrality, guaranteed by law and requiring  ISPs to treat all data flows fairly? This is what some fear. "There is a temptation to seize this moment of possible overheating of the networks to make an exception to the principle of net neutrality, and why not after the crisis make it last, which is a danger for the digital world" , fears Sami Slim.

“The current situation should not be used as an excuse for short cuts that we would regret later. Nobody wants to question the neutrality of the Net, I have not heard that from the operators' side , tempers Sébastien Soriano, who prefers to highlight the particularity of the crisis that France is going through.

“When operators tell us they have capacity constraints, we normally tell them to increase it. However, in the short term, operators cannot double their capacity overnight! " , Further specifies Mr. Soriano, who knows well that the European framework on the neutrality of the Net is precisely what makes it possible to limit certain flows to counter congestion. Especially since, for him, "today, the big [content providers] have a particular moral responsibility given the volume of traffic" .

Confinement_H

Bubbles

Playing Bubbles from the Der Spiegel site. (Better on
Chrome for translating the instructions). Cleared level 1,
going on to level 2. It's a shooter and a puzzle at the same time...

https://spiele.spiegel.de/bubble-shooter/

Level 3, and I'm mortified1 Haven't been able to reach the minimum
points level...

Modest standings, but I am getting through:

Level 5 looks hard; working with 15 bubbles, I have down 100 and make 700 points!!

...

Ricky Ricardo

1957 was a tough year for me: I entered Grade 1 - although I
had not been to Kindergarden - and ended up suffering through
three major illnesses over the course of the year: Measles, Mumps and
WhoopingCough. Nothing much could be done about the first two, so
I powered through. The third is treated with antibiotics, and was how I found
out I was allergic to penicillin. I was 6, 7 years old and don't remember much;
I was sick, really feverish, miserable. It was before vaccines. It never occured to
me I might die, my parents made light of it, kids' diseases. My mother would
prop me up in the parental bed and turn on the (black and white) television
in the living room. Our antenna picked up American shows because we lived close
to the border. My favourites were I Love Lucy in the morning and Edge of Night
in the afternoon. Slept through the rest.

That's how I learned English.To this day I speak it with something of an accent,
part French with a bit of Ricky Ricardo. This is not a joke, years later someone
pointed that out to me...

Mutations

https://www.facebook.com/lefigaro/videos/2842366609185292/?t=214

Down Them!

Today is Lyse's BDay, and given that we had received a booklet of
deals from McDonalds yesterday, we headed out this morning.

It's sad; yes they are open, but for takeout only. We brought the goods
home.

My virtual candle moment is okay. I adapted the Moneybags game and
added a soundtrack.

https://freemusicarchive.org/search?adv=1&quicksearch=Coffee&&

Tried my hand at making a game for a male child... It is a Down the Meteorites game.

St-Patrick's

Working on a javafx project today. The elements: I'm
integrating music to an animation.


HAPPY SAINT-PATRICKS!

The music is from Soularflair, Melourne Australia!

The Tab

Le Monde is keeping a running tab of coronavirus questions:

                                                         *     *     *

What makes viruses formidable is that - given their small size - they
can replicate quickly and copiously. Thus, they can mutate to forms that
outrun the immune system, (Drugs like redemsivir slow them down).

GGamer

All this corona talk is getting pretty grim: did housework this morning
and it struck me that the major undones on my bucket list were in the Baked
Goods category.😃...Not that serious!

In any event, working on and thinking of making games...

                                                                    *     *     *



Test results can change, but someone who has been sick will not relapse!

Lving It Up!

Isn't this the life: been playing MoneyBags from my GitHub code.
Nice game, with nothing in the way...

Code requires IntValue, LongValue and Sprite as adjunct classes.

Briefcase and Moneybag images are on the site; but I had to copy them, and run
them through Paint 3D and Expression design to get two 32 x 32 png images.

Venice

This is Venice as I remember it. It was the Cold War years and tourists were scarce.

I also remember wandring the narrow streets and looking for pizza (wrong part of Italy,
at the time). We did find a newspaper with internatoonal news and learned that Pierre Trudeau
had been re-elected Prime Minister. That would make it around October 30, 1972!🙎

Point2D

My last foray with my gaming code tutorial brought home
the point - very visibly - that coding on key presses produces changes
that last the time of the press, and no further. Those buttons look like homies
that keep their assignment, but are not. Code is everything.

The code in this next tuto is on the button control, which does introduce
a permanent change: we are dealing with an event handler on an image required
to move. Below:

The code has interesting features: both the circle and the integer value have their
own class on their own separate page). Here is the game logic:

Found the final 'draw' instruction fascinating. It is a boolean.

The distance command is part of Point2D.

                                                    *     *     *

Mechanics

Starting to get the mechanics of animation with javafx.
Went back to GitHub for the code which would give acceptance
to Animated Image. One just enters the class definitiion as a new
class in the application package...

The code:

Progressively smaller rocket:

The result:

Armements

Yes, it is true that there is a facility in Wuhan for highly
dangerous pathogens; but nothing indicates either an accident or
a voluntary act in this case...

https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2020/03/06/le-coronavirus-arme-biologique-le-vrai-du-faux-d-une-video-virale_6032098_4355770.html

                                               *     *     *

The grim situation in Wuhan Critical Care Units:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/03/07/how-doctors-treat-sickest-coronavirus-patients/

More controls

Made a copy of the controls from the animation tutorial. Need
to work up the code, next. Should I launch the little rocket!?

*     *     *

Been running the original code from 2015.

https://github.com/tutsplus/Introduction-to-JavaFX-for-Game-Development/blob/8c4e5630444d9aec01405858ffd6d003b55d068d/Example4K.java

Here is what goes down as I press capital L or R or both:

Odd, I know. Will be trying a Github more recent version...

Insta

Lyse just joined Instagram yesterday; I'm actually

'following' her...

*     *     *

Lyse's graduation picture is up on her Facebook page this morning 

(UQAM, Communications). I couldn't be more proud and happy for her.

The ceremony is in May and I am looking forward t it.

As she commented to me yesterday. I DO look tired. Yup!

Congratulations, Sweets!

At It!

It had to be! Working on animating the little rocket...

Ended up using path code from online code, and substituted the
rocket for the original ball.

http://zetcode.com/gui/javafx/animation/

Changing the cubic curve parameters:

Ride isn't smooth because my keyframes are haphasard!!

Savory

I often pick up recipes from the Web thinking I'll make them in the future;

I rarely do. But today I stumbled on a recipe for a savory cake that seemed like

just the thing to cope with winter blues. Below: eggs, yogurt, cabbage, onion and

parsley. It turned out fine, and I had some with cheese and salad for dinner, with

a few Julienne fries thrown in.

Familiar ingredients, but seemed new anyway. 😏

                                                        *     *     *

So I pretty much followed the recipe, but omitted the garlic. I also

used red onion whose sweet taste is rather nice cold, for example

in Greek Salad. 

Am planning to put thin slices in the toaster, and have them with Maple Syrup

later this morning for breakfast.

Weird but nice! Like being in a sandwich and dessert loop...

Enhancements

Just discovered a very interesting feature of windows Media Player.
this is for playing videos: One can right-click on the MP screen
and ask for enhancements. One is then free to request various features.

The very last one - video settings - les one change the visual tonality of the
video.

Number two - the graphic euqlizer - lets one alter the sound.  Efectively,
one can change the volume of the audio by frequency bands, individually or in
groups. The human voice is the middle frequencies...