How to preserve ground spices? As soon as you grind a spice, it gets exposed to air and starts to lose its potency.  I'm trying to figure out how I can grind them and reduce/prevent this from happening. I guess you could put them in an airtight jar, but wouldn't the air in the jar cause oxidation? Would putting the powder in capsules help, like medical tablets? Are there plastic bags or any bags where you can suck the air out? I can't do a fresh one daily, but need potency after time.  What methods are there to preserve powder from getting oxidized? Just to note the spices in question are black pepper, long pepper and dried ginger.  I guess the former two can be finely ground daily however I couldn't additionally dehydrate and grind ginger daily.
Do spice containers need to be hermetic? Spice containers purchase  I'm planning on upgrading my spice storage. Reading some advice online (e.g. , and ) I came to the conclusion that spice containers should:   Not be exposed to direct sunlight and high temperatures Be airtight   Which means that either you store it inside of some closed cupboard/wardrobe/room or you have containers which do block light and are in a relatively shady place. And the containers need to be airtight.  Available solutions  I've been browsing for some containers available online in my country and the 2 most sensible options I've seen are these:       The problem  The first one is hermetic (it has some rubber around the lid) but it's clear glass. The other one does not have the rubber, just a regular twist-off lid, but it's amber glass.  It'll be hard for me to find any space inside of cupboards to store all of my spices (I need at least 30), so I'd rather buy amber glass container, which I believe will effectively block the sunlight, even when kept on the counter. But I can't find any hermetic amber-glass containers, only ones with regular lid.  The question  Is that regular twist-off lid enough to keep spices airtight and fresh? Or should I focus on buying a hermetic container (like the one in clear glass). I could then for example paint them black to block the sunlight.
During Winterbash 2014, there was a hat called , which was earned by giving an answer scoring 5 or better to question that had a score of −3 or worse at the time of answering and later rose to a score of +3 or better.  I’ve already shared the . Those cases give me a great deal of confidence that this would be a challenging badge trigger that would produce good behavior with a minor tweak. Here are the Red Barons earned on other sites:    (Logan Maingi) Mathematics  (Mike Miller) Mathematics  (Hugo) English Language and Usage  (tchrist) English Language and Usage  (Mr. Shiny and New 安宇) English Language and Usage  (Darth Satan) Science Fiction and Fantasy  (DVK) Science Fiction and Fantasy  (rolfl) Code Review  (Heslacher and Hosch250) Code Review  (Edward) Code Review  (janos and Manny Meng) Code Review  (Mark Mayo, Rory Alsop and MeNoTalk) Travel      (DJClayworth) Christianity  (McMagister) Puzzling   Looking through the timelines, I’m convinced that the answerer’s votes should be excluded from the pre-answer question score calculation. Doing that would have reduced the number of Red Barons to 16 across the network. However, the cost of making a badge harder to obtain is worth the benefit of avoiding giving people an incentive to manipulate question scores¹.  To wrap up, the hat seemed to have encouraged a number of great answers and rescued some questions that would otherwise have been lost to time. My outstanding questions are:   Were there any problems on questions where people were attempting to earn the hat, but failed? (Or any other problems I didn’t observe.) If not, should we  or create a new badge? If we create a new badge, what should it be called?   I’m especially interested in feedback that counters my own bias in favor of this idea. If I’m missing any problems, I’d like to know about them now.    ¹ Several questions were downvoted, answered, edited (sometimes trivially)  and upvoted by the user who earned the hat. Did Dumbledore know that Harry would have to sacrifice himself from the very beginning? Based on the following interchange between Harry and Dumbledore in the pivotal &quot;King's Cross&quot; chapter of Deathly Hallows, I was wondering when exactly Dumbledore put together that Harry would have to die in order to bring about Voldemort's ultimate demise:  &quot;And you knew this? You knew--all along?&quot; &quot;I guessed. But my guesses have usually been good,&quot; said Dumbledore (Deathly Hallows, 599, hardcover).  The conversation that spurred Harry's question includes material dating back to Halloween '81, but also specifically mentions the events of the graveyard from GoF. So, &quot;knowing all along&quot; could refer to everything (i.e., Harry must die, Voldemort ignorantly tethered him to life, etc.) or just that Voldemort tethered him to life. Other important information pertaining to this question can be found in OOTP, when Dumbledore confirms (if he didn't already know) that Harry contains part of Voldemort's soul. He uses the silver instrument to find out that Harry is just like Nagini, having the ability to share mind and soul with Voldemort. He also says the following:  &quot;I guessed, nearly fifteen years ago,&quot; said Dumbledore, &quot;when I saw the scar upon your forehead, what it might mean. I guessed that it might be the sign of a connection forged between you and Voldemort&quot; (Order of the Phoenix, 826-827, hardcover).  While confirming that he guessed that Harry might share a connection with Voldemort from the very beginning, Dumbledore does not confirm with this statement that he knew Harry would ultimately have to give up his life. In Philosopher's Stone, when Dumbledore drops off Harry on the Dursley's doorstep, we know he is not entirely truthful with McGonagall.  McGonagall asks: &quot;How in the name of heaven did Harry survive?&quot; &quot;We can only guess,&quot; said Dumbledore (Philosopher's Stone, 12, hardcover).  Of course, this was a lie. Dumbledore already knew how Harry survived, otherwise he wouldn't be delivering Harry to Lily's sister to extend the blood sacrifice. By proxy, he also knows that Voldemort will return b/c of Horcruxes, otherwise he wouldn't be so worried about Harry. Finally, when asked in the same scene if he could remove the scar, Dumbledore says:  &quot;Even if I could, I wouldn't. Scars can come in handy&quot; (Philosopher's Stone, 15, hardcover).  So, did Dumbledore know at this very moment that Harry would have to die? Did he at least guess it to be true during this scene? We know he gains perfect confirmation in OOTP, but did he know it &quot;all along,&quot; as a particular reading of the King's Cross interchange in DH would have us believe? What is the limit of $n \sin (2 \pi \cdot e \cdot n!)$ as $n$ goes to infinity? Is it same number of candies for any stage of evolution while transferring pokemon to professor? I was just wondering if the number of candies we get while transferring the pokemon to professor is same for any stage of evolution ?   For example, you would get a pidgey candy for transferring a pidgey. Is it same number of candies for transferring pidgey, pidgeotto or pidgeot ? Best way to migrate a huge SQL Server database with low downtime over network Problem definition  Our database server needs to be transferred to an other datacenter. It runs on Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Enterprise (64-bit) and contains two databases of about 2TB and 1TB.  Having little to no downtime for this would be ideal.  Workload  Those databases are used for a .NET website and are constantly getting updated.   Having it not available over the weekend would be acceptable though. The currently in use DB would remain the only one in use until the switch over to the new one.  That switch would ideally be made just by changing DNS entries to point to the new DB server while making sure the DB is not being updated.  Also, time taken by this operation does not really matter as long as the switch from one server to the other (downtime) is kept low.  Approaches considered   Backup and restore  This has been done in the past but involved a high downtime even though it was done through an internal network, so more efficiently than through Internet Log shipping  As far as I understand, this approach would minimize downtime by configuring a master/slave and transferring  an exact copy of the master DB to its slave being read only. As mentioned above, no access to the slave would be necessary and we just need a way to have a replica of the master DB without data corruption.   It also seems to be quite efficient in terms of resources utilization and wouldn't impact to much the master performance.   I might be wrong about this approach so feel free to correct me. Database mirroring  I'm not too aware of that approach but it seems like a valid option. No need to have real time sync and performance of the master is quite important so asynchronous would be the way to go if this approach were to be chosen. Other options?  That server runs directly on bare metal hardware so lower level solutions are unfortunately not an option. Maybe there is a better way to get this done?   Constraints  As described, those databases are quite big to the point they are hard to maintain but that's an other problem.  The versions of SQL Server will be the same (Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Enterprise 64-bit).  It will have to be transferred over network between two datacenters so most probably over Internet. Having disks sent from one site to the other for an initial sync is unfortunately not an option. Having some sort of security for the transfer would be ideal but we will do the best of this situation.  That should give a quite good overview of our needs for this task and hopefully some of you had to face that situation before. Why am I constantly running out of space on my Galaxy S2? Ubuntu 20.04 graphics driver problem I have upgraded from Ubuntu 19.10 to 20.04, and now I have a problem with my graphics rendering (strange squares on background and font problems). I use the i915 driver. Graphics card: Skylake GT2 HD Graphics 520. I tried to reinstall GNOME shell and Xorg server. Nothing helped. Also Chrome browser breaks on most of pages. Drawing Roman laurel leaves (SPQR) in TikZ I was trying to get the symbol of the old .  I'm actually interested in the laurel leaves, and not so much in the banner per se.  What I would like to have is something like this (in Tikz, as oppose to simply \includegraphics).  With the possibility to change the stylish A to any other simple roman letter.    I'm a complete newbie with TikZ, and even though I know this question sounds like do this for me, I would really appreciate if someone could at least throw in an sketch where to start. I am searching for [free] software that can produce nice looking graphical models, e.g.     Any suggestions would be appreciated. Why are these pistons pushing? I've lately become hooked into building computers in Minecraft and today I decided to build a giant hard drive. I've built HDDs before, but not at the scale I'm currently attempting, and I anticipated problems. As I was wiring some pistons, they activated and pushed forward oddly. As far as I can tell, there's nothing powering them.    I thought at first that it might be the redstone torches (top left of above pic) but they aren't powered.   Here's a top view of the same pistons. I also thought the line of redstone above  them might be the problem (middle of above pic), but when I destroy it, the pistons stay extended.  Is there a reason why my pistons are extending? If so, is there a way to get them to power (when I want them to) without disturbing the pistons above? Cut points and connected space Check for Process if Same is Running Performing multiple layer intersection in QGIS? How to view the system console message after Blender crashes? I am testing a script in Blender game engine. I can view the helpful message on the external system console when the script throws exception. Sometimes the bugs of the script cause the Blender to crash and close the console immediately.    Is there any way to view the message after the Blender crashes? How to write the message to a text file for later viewing? Any suggestion? How do I use the Cherokee keyboard layout to type English characters? Wow, I've really done it this time. I've locked myself out of my machine.  In preparing for a Cherokee language course, I added the Cherokee keyboard layout to my options. However, I was unable to generate any Cherokee characters by selecting that input device.  I found an article on the web which instructed me to use the dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration command in a terminal.  Once I did that, I rebooted as instructed. Once I was presented with the login screen, I entered my password as usual only for it to fail.  After failing a few times, I gave my attention to what is usually a mundane exercise (i.e., logging in).  While I carefully entered my password, each time, I get the message, "Sorry that didn't work..."  So, I brought up the onscreen keyboard... But the password box displays an asterisk for only the first character of my password.  I attempted to use the direct Unicode input method (ctrl-shift-Uxxxx) but the Cherokee keyboard has no "U" key.  Can anyone please help me troubleshoot this? Please tell me which choice below (or rather a better choice that I need to know) works better in my sentences in informal English:     I got myself out on a limb. I need to clear my check by tomorrow. No matter how, I must ............ 2 million bucks by tomorrow.   a) line up [to prepare, organize, or arrange something]  b) hook up [hook somebody up with something to help someone get something that they need or want]  c) fix up [to arrange for someone to have something that they need]  For me, all three options work in this sense with the same meaning and informality degree. Dr. StrangeNumbers or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Floating Point Arithmetic Let $x_1,x_2,\ldots,x_n$ be the roots for $1+x+x^2+\ldots+x^n=0$. Find the value of   $$P(1)=\frac{1}{x_1-1}+\frac{1}{x_2-1}+\ldots+\frac{1}{x_n-1}$$   Source: IME entrance exam (Military Institute of Engineering, Brazil), date not provided (possibly from the 1950s)  My attempt: Developing expression $P(1)$, replacing the 1 by $x$, follows $$P(x)=\frac{(x_2-x)\cdots (x_n-x)+\ldots+(x_1-x)\cdots (x_{n-1}-x)}{(x_1-x)(x_2-x)\cdots (x_n-x)}$$    As $x_1,x_2,\ldots,x_n$ are the roots, it must be true that   $$Q(x)=(x-x_1)\cdots(x-x_n)=1+x+x^2+\ldots+x^n$$ and  $$Q(1)=(1-x_1)\cdots(1-x_n)=n+1$$ Therefore the denominator of $P(1)$ is  $$(-1)^{n} (n+1).$$ But I could not find a way to simplify the numerator.  Another fact that is probably useful is that  $$1+x^{n+1}=(1-x)(x^n+x^{n-1}+\ldots+x+1)$$ with roots that are 1 in addition of the given roots $x_1,x_2,\ldots,x_n$ for the original equation, that is  $$x_k=\text{cis}(\frac{2k\pi}{n+1}),\ \ k=1,\ldots,n.$$  This is as far as I could go...    Hints and full answers are welcomed. Do the electric and magnetic components of an electromagnetic wave really generate each other? Frequently when EM waves are taught, it is said that the change in electric field causes a change in the magnetic field, which then causes a change in the electric field, and so on and so forth.   But from my understanding of basic electromagnetics, it is not necessarily a changing electric field that creates a change in magnetic field, but instead an accelerating charge. and it is this charge that creates both the electric and magnetic field. Again, from my understanding, a changing magnetic field is not generated by a changing electric field, but instead just happens to always be present perpendicular to a changing electric field due to the laws of electromagnetism.   Am I wrong? Or is the "mutual generation" concept between the electric and magnetic components of an EM wave an actual thing? My model has a clear plastic (or glass) dome with objects inside.  The objects appear dark.  I've tried the glass shader with color 100% RGB, with very small IOR, and using just a refraction shader.    I know Cycles has problems with caustics, but I just want broad illumination to fall clean through the glass.  The light-to-column path can ignore refraction, but is blocked or tremendously attenuated. The camera-column path needs refraction, and seems to work fine anyway.  This demo image offers all optical paths of interest:   light upon object, seen directly light upon object, seen through glass (looks okay) light through glass onto object, seen directly. This is the shadow on the lit side of the column just below the glass tubing.  I expect full illumination, but there is shadow.  There is some light, but it's diffuse light from the floor. light through glass onto object, seen through glass. This     I did at one point try non-progressive rendering, and find extremely coarse light where there shouldn't be shadow, but this is not a practical way to make nice images. I've even tried cranking up certain sampling settings to many thousands, but still get bad noise though less, at the cost of long render times. I  would like to finish my creations sometime before "Star Trek, the Generation After the Next" becomes real life, if you know what I mean.  The next image is an example. I think Transmission in Sampling was 5000, but not sure.    I'm using Cycles in Blender 2.67 on a quad core Linux machine, 16GB RAM. Machine limits have never been a problem for 3D rendering.  Possibly, I screwed up some setting when I made my startup file, and just need to fix it. OTOH maybe this is just a limitation of path tracing, or of the way Cycles does it. If that's the case, what to real-world Blender artists do when they need to produce images on a budget and schedule?  What is the practical real-world fix?