Aside from the fact that mango skin does taste good to some people (myself included), the green skin of unripe mangoes helps to relax the muscles around the anal cavity and softens excrement. You will find this as an almost instant remedy when you have to deal with a situation such as when a child has difficulty passing stool (due to prolonged absence from the toilet or from eating too much junk food with no fibre or roughage).

if u are interested in developing your property at reasonable prices, starting from conceputal designs (bundalows, duplexs e.t.c),structural designs to actual construction. Contact us via email of phone
phone no=08066598129, 08055204516
email= givsaji@yahoo.com, osagie.osaro@yahoo.com

A simple way is to create a dummy banner with a script in it to load the real banner as a movie. Users will not notice the difference but when someone downloads the page he only gets the blank dummy banner.

If she is not here on an official visit with the Nigerian government the she has no bussiness being recived by them.
Must our hard working public officers take a break from their official duties to recieve every american diplomat who breezes in to sample our world renown pounded yam and pepper-soup at Iya-basirat's buka?

One expert said "Look them in the eye and speak to them like they owe you money".

maedan:

i'm very sure it's a joke, I mean the packaging looks very poor. No one would think of producing a BOTTLED egusi soup line. How many will they sell? Too risky a business. So I say, HA HA, very funny idea.

Years ago there was tinned egusi on sale in Nigeria by "Jobitex". They had tinned jollof, tinned moi-moi as well. It was quite popular with students.
Like somany food related inventions, the thought might be a little "hard to swallow" but they sometimes do gain ground. Time was when no one could have imagined things like:-
1. instant noodles (indomie, meme, etc)
2. quick fix pouded yam (poundo yam)
3. cold water pap powder
but all these things are common today.

Yes @solioguns, I stay in Lagos.

Cheers.

@tomX:

Ans to question 1)
If you restrict me to Green or Blue then my first consideration is the prevalent tones in my foreground objects. If the foreground tends more towards lighter hues of colors then I will go for Blue since it will contrast better. If the foreground tends towards darker hues then I will use green (since it is lighter) it will contrast better.

With proper planning, you can make the wardrobe contrast with anything, and virtually all human skin has a lot of red, so these don't really factor into the screen color selection too much, but HAIR does.
The basic rule of thumb is that Dark Hair subjects will work best with a green screen and light hair will work better with blue. . . .

I think there is a point of agreement there. Don't also overlook the point he made about proper planning of the wardrobe. Don't go shooting with green screen if your subject is wearing green or hues close to it.

sojioguns:

But the image matte tool is really long journey in premiere. What of if you are dealing with images of different resolution?
[center].[/center]
[center].[/center]
[center].[/center]
Another thing is for an action flick, static camera shots will be very few if there are any

I probably didn't quite explain the matte thing properly.
If you need to take still shots it will be at the prepearation stage, last thing befor the actors come on set. (Don't forget that on a set where they know there will be animation and a lot of tricky editing, the animator/editor works hand in had with the set director all the way. And there is bound to be a lot of mark outs on the set to aid synchronisation of the actors movements etc.)
There is little likely hood of the picture for the matte being of a different resolution. don't forget all I said about your initial set up for your lighting, exposure, focus etc. You will also have to lock the exposure of the camera before taking the shot and during recording so that the camera does not keep adjusting its exposure. The camera also does not move. For a scenerio where the camera has to move then you will use a movable chroma board as a backdrop for the actors and, . . . see the quote bellow.

@tomX:

. . . if the take must be such that the cameras move, try to shoot the video a little close-up and set focus on the subjects. The closeup shots will be normal chroma and you will later key it and replace it with an out-of-focus shot of the environment taken from approximately the same camera position and mimicking as much as possible the same camera track. . .

sojioguns:

. . . Imagine you were given such footage to replace the head, how would you go about it?

I said something about doing a lot of polishing up afterward using other softwares like video paint etc. If you need to digitaly replace a head afterward then that would be a good time. However why would you go all the trouble to shoot the procedure described if you wanted to replace heads, you will simply have been shooting with a stunt double and then doing the head replacement thing.

Replacing a head digitaly on a motion video is also not that easy. Have you tried it? give us some insights.

Ghenghis:

. . . @seun
python is object oriented. . .

Seun:

As someone who uses Python everyday, I can assure you that you don't know what you're saying.
Python is a multi-paradigm language. It supports OOP, procedural, functional, etc. Anyone you like.
(Unlike Java which forces OOP on you by forcing you to declare classes in every single program.). . .

From Python Programming Language -- Official Website
" Python is a dynamic object-oriented programming language that can be used for many kinds of software development."
- see http://www.python.org/

I do agree that it's (in my opinion) not very nice the way evry thing must be in the context of a class in Java. Most OOP languages give you the choice of creating and declearing objects of your class as and when needed.

OOP paradigm is a solid one though. No contset there.

If the target audience for the "showing" is the right one then they have the tech-savvy to know what to watch out for. This poster has aptly described it:

pie1ect:

There is something to show. But the question is who are you showing this stuff to? Are you trying to show your web-savvy client or colleague OR are you trying to show an everyday website user?

If you are going to show off anything, show it to people who will appreciate what they are seeing. Code is gibberish to the majority of web users and so it should be. People either respect what you do or they don't. . . .
. . . Bottom line, if you want to show your stuff then show it to people who'll appreciate it.

Well one way is to find a way of knocking of the background which in this case is not chroma. I will outline some steps below which will give you a good idea but please note that the result you get will depend a lot on how good your lighting is and on how proficiently you can handle your camera. The quality of the camera also counts. At the end of it all you still have to do a lot of polishing on the video (but for high budget videos it is well worth it).

Now your fundamental tool is the Image mate (I think difference matte in premier - my premier is not installed but I'll look it up). This tool works with an image and it will compare the image with the parent video and knock out all aspect of the parent video that matches with the picture (hue for hue, pixel for pixel). For this to work out right, the exposure and focus and lighting conditions of the mate picture must be the same as for the video(s).

Now make a good story board for each of the dual character and make sure you have gotten your continuity all figured out (it's not as easy as it sounds).

Set up the lighting on your set and position your cameras. (For each take, the cameras must be static, if the take must be such that the cameras move, try to shoot the video a little close-up and set focus on the subjects. The closeup shots will be normal chroma and you will later key it and replace it with an out-of-focus shot of the environment taken from approximately the same camera position and mimicking as much as possible the same camera track).[color=#990000][/color]

Take a still shot at a high resolution with the digital photo function of the camera or just record a few seconds of the set (you will only need one frame for your matte). Note that any object that is supposed to move in any way during the video shot must not be on set at this point in time. And any thing that is on set at that point in time is not suppose to move all through the shooting.

Now the video from this point onwards will depend a lot on the actors, your continuity, your directing and storyboarding. The movements of the dual character must of course be properly synchronised.  A good trick to use when you begin to have difficulties with your synchronisation is to use a different camera angle. This will distract viewers from possible lapses in continuity.
Each of the dual character will act his bit and go away. and you record it accordingly.

Back in your editing studio decide which one is the bottom video, you will not need to key that one unless where nescessary. Apply the image matte to key the top video so that the bottom one will show through thus displaying the bottom video in all areas except where the subject itself appears. It's just like chroma. The result is realy very neat on the first round so you will have to do alot of polishing up using your garbage mate and any other such compositing tools like After effects, of for ulead users Ulead video paint.

If you need to do frame by frame edit in some areas, export the shots as aif and edit in photoshop and reimport the sequence of aif files.

Back breaking routine (that is probably why it's not too common) but it works. Well that is the basics.

Enjoy.

HC:

@tomX, am not stupid; i know what i want.

Hence the need for making your request on a forum as clear and concise as possible (without writing a book of course). We don't all read minds.
Goodluck.

Depends on the story board. In comming to america, most of the duality scenes were shot in such a manner that Eddie Murphys full features never appear on his dual character when they are both in camera at the same time. That could easily be acomplished with stunt doubles for the character whose features are obscured and with good continuity it will be perfect.

Lets skip to Jet-Li in "The One". Typical fight scene btw Jet-Li and himself, both faces showing, fuul bodied, in a factory, Lots of foreground and backgeroung elements. That is a challenge. Present a story board lets work with that.

Ans to question 1)
If you restrict me to Green or Blue then my first consideration is the prevalent tones in my foreground objects. If the foreground tends more towards lighter hues of colors then I will go for Blue since it will contrast better. If the foreground tends towards darker hues then I will use green (since it is lighter) it will contrast better.

Ans to question 2)
Depends on the scope of the project and the difficulties I have.
For Basic video editing with motion graphics effect, I Key with my editors, I use Premier Pro Or Ulead Media Studio 8. Since I also work alot with Flash, I am biased to ULEAD Media studio 8since it supports direct importation of swf format which premier pro dosen't.
For difficult keying situations that my Editors cant handle elegantly, I use srious magic Ultra kEy.

All said and done, while there is a myraid of hardware and softwares out there to help us come that much closer to keying nirvana, understanding the fundamentals in keying is one of the greatest weapon we should have in our arsenal. It will save us a bundle in time and cash.

Yeah we are already digressing from the primary issue, the whole point I am trying to make is that while blue and green are the two most widely used keying colors (for good reasons too), being well grounded in your fundamentals will ensure you get a great result irrespective of the color you use for your background of the softwre you use for compositing.  And at very difficult spots, there are third party softwares that come in very handy and some are more effective than others.
Adobe affter-effects may have a cult following amongst its users but there are other softwares that are great out there. Use what works best for you. But for me as far as after-effects is concerned, used-it-dumped-it-and-not-a-fan!!!

We are comming closer to a converging point now. When you are faced with a challenging keying situation as you just confessed you will probably have to go through a lot more dilly-dallying with some softwares as compared with others. I can achieve the result I want even using premiere pro (without after-effects) but I get better result using softwares that were built for just those kinds of challenge.

sojioguns:

The difference between Hollywood chroma keying and ours is actually the acquisition format. You cannot compare full res HD 4:4:4 footage to DV and HDV 4:2:0 or even DVCPRO HD 4:2:2.

And before the advent of HDV cameras what were the Hollywooders doing? Even if you shoot your video with a camera phone and you follow the tips I gave earlier viz

1). Is the color of the background distinctly different from the color of the object(s) on the fore ground? The clothes, props and other items you wish to retain in your video should not have the same color as the background.
2). Is the background homogenoeusly lit? If the lighting on the background is not homogeneous either due to too much wrinkles in the background material or uneven arangement of background ligthing (you should have a seperate set of lights for the background) or whatever reason, then you will have problems in knocking off the background due to uneven tone.
3). Is the shadow of the fore ground object casted on the background? This is another problem area. If the shadow of the foreground object falls on the background, then the color of the background in no more honogeneous and it will be hard to knock it off. Try to give as much space as possible between your forground objects and your background and set the fore ground lights at such angles as to make their shadows not fall on the background , making sure the foreground objects are well lit of course.
4). Do you have transparent objects in the foreground? If foreground objects such as bottles or wine glasses are present and the background shows through them then you will have a real dificult time knocking off the background in those areas . Softwares like "Serious magic ultra chroma" are designed for just such situations though.

you'd still get good results with your chroma.

I remember once when I witnessed a friend trying to shoot a low budget musical. They had so much difficulting editing the messed up chroma shots and he called me to aid him. His next attempt was not much better though he had "Stepped-up" somwhat and rented a Cannon XLS.

At his third attempt I forwarded my arguements to him convinved him to let me arrange his set for him. Honest to God all we hav to work with was a couple of 500watt hallogen (no gels), a number of 100 watt bulbs and a white cloth to use as a background. I suppervised the costumes to make sure they where color compliant and shot the video for him with a Mini-DV camcoder (CCD not even 3CCD). He had no problems with his keying on those rushes.
If we could achive such good results under those horribly frugal conditions then I think more amazing feats could be expected with higher budget and proper equipments.

Let me use a building project as an example. Iron benders are one of the most important artisans for any reinforced concrete building project. They are the people who bend and cut the iron rods to the specific shapes and sizes that will make them structuraly useful for the successful completion of the building. These rods provide the strenght for the skeleton of the building. If you muck them up then the builder is a time bomb.
When the building is built, the users and passers by only see the architectural master piece and praise the architect. They may even praise the painters and the bricklayers who plaster the building since their work can be visibly assessed by all and sundry. You don't get to see the Steel reinforcement except there is a major problem with the building. So the only people who get to appreciate them are probably the architects and structural engineers that they work with. The role of the structural engineers, quantity surveyors, etc are also not appreciated by the public.

I was once called upon to build a site for a company after designing a software for them. I wasn't too keen on working with the shody materials they presented so I let them contract it out to some web-designer (I heard he got 45K for the 10 page site). I however got to design one page for them which interfaces with the software I built for them. I simply copied one page from the existing ones, removed all unnescessary elements and all I needed was a text box and a submit button. I wrote my codes and got my 175k. The web site doesn't bear my name nor is it linked to me in any way (credit wise). My page was the barest in the site but that was where all the true functionality lies. The end user wont appreciate that but the company understood what I was about.

When someone comes on a forum and ask specific help (politely) he should be helped albiet in a manner that encourages him/her to learn.

When some one like this @zero2 guy asks specific code on a language he has not even bother to learn I don't supply such because peeps like that are market spoilers. These are the kind of peeps who go about under-bidding for jobs they cn't even handle and off load the technical burden on others (free of charge). Where I consider this dangerous for the industry is that it trivialises what we do in the eyes of a client. The client won't understand why you expect him to pay 200K for his interactive site when a certain zero guy did something of the sort for him once at 20k. He keeps looking around for zero-capability-webmasters and when one gets the contract, takes an upfront and realises he has bitten more than he can chew, he bales on the client. The result is that the disgruntled client tell all whom may listen that Nigerian webmasters are incompetent and not trustworthy.

Please let's not crap where we eat.

Talk to your local telecom providers. If you can meet there criteria I'm sure they will oblige you.
Feel free to come back and share your experience so that others may benefit.

In a vegetarian restaurant

I take an average of 6 litres of water a day. It's almost impossible for me not to take water while eating.

It's actualy disgusting when people lick spoon or blow into things etc while cooking. But lets face facts: How many of the germs in the mouth can survive the over 100 degree centrigrade heat of the boiling food or soup for the several minutes it remains on fire.

Lets practice as decent a hygine as practicable in the kitchen but lets keep in mind the african saying that "if you must drink off a stream do not scrutinise the bank". Else no body will be able to eat anything prepeared by anyone else.

@sojioguns,
Thanks for the heads up. Now shoot a video using a green screen as a background and let one of your actors wear a green costume with green designs on it then try knocking off the background. The result is like what you see on AIT's Kaakaki when a guest appears on screen and part of his cap or atire seems invisible.

sojioguns:

The reason why green and blue have been the most widely used colours for chroma is because the are the least colours that can be similar to the common colours we come in contact with eg skintone. A yellow/orange/red chroma cloth will most likely NOT key.

Have you ever wondered why in the matte options in your favourite video editor, apart from the popular green screen and blue screen you have the choice to pick any matte color using a color picker? I have done splendid chroma works using even white screen. Any single color background chroma will key properly if the background is homogeneously lit and its color is of a distinct tone from anything in the foreground. This is even on the easy side.

It is possible (and I have done it a lot) to even knock of the backgroung of a video without even using any form of screen. You just have to broaden your understading of the matte concept. How do you think such video works where an actor plays a dual and interactive role in a scene is achieved. Imagine a scene where a character is lying on a bed gisting and interacting with his twin (actualy himself) and there is full interaction between the subject(s) and other elements in the shot. If you are presented with such a story board trust me simple chroma keying will not cut it.

sojioguns:

As per the software for keying, basic keying filters in compositing apps like after effects will do the job.

People don't spend millions of dollars inventing specialist keying softwares when they know that "basic keying filters" in available editors and compositing softwares will do the trick. Set up a minature set for yourself with your favourite green screen or blue screen. Place a transparent red toned glass cup infront of the screen and shoot. Then try keying out the background as seen through the glass cup with out lossing the lustre of the glass (good luck with your after effects).
Take a video that involes small area artifacts like wisps of hair strands shot against a chroma background and try keying using your basic software keying function (once again goodluck).
Finaly consider a situation where an amature shoots a chroma video with poor lighting and lots of shadows (a basic chroma nightmare). You are then presented with such a video to key in the studio. You can either complain and rightly pass the blame to the poor footage and the amature who shot it (like many editors would do) or you can get magical with "Serious Magic Ultra Chroma". It was built for such scenerios. Try it before you D-I-S it.

sojioguns:

, Good luck to us all.

When it comes to Chroma I trust more on research and practical experience and expertise than luck. But hey, we all need some luck right!

If you are looking to print on mere plastic cards then simply look for a sign that says "Plastic ID Card" in any major bustop in Lagos.

If you are looking to print on cards with imbeded chips like you have on your ATM then you have to order for such cards ussualy from an overseas firm. The chips are also useless unless programmed to do something and thats another hurdle to cross.

In actual fact it realy doesn't matter whether you use green, blue, white or whatever color of screen. What you should be more concerned about are
1). Is the color of the background distinctly different from the color of the object(s) on the fore ground? The clothes, props and other items you wish to retain in your video should not have the same color as the background.
2). Is the background homogenoeusly lit? If the lighting on the background is not homogeneous either due to too much wrinkles in the background material or uneven arangement of background ligthing (you should have a seperate set of lights for the background) or whatever reason, then you will have problems in knocking off the background due to uneven tone.
3). Is the shadow of the fore ground object casted on the background? This is another problem area. If the shadow of the foreground object falls on the background, then the color of the background in no more honogeneous and it will be hard to knock it off. Try to give as much space as possible between your forground objects and your background and set the fore ground lights at such angles as to make their shadows not fall on the background , making sure the foreground objects are well lit of course.
4). Do you have transparent objects in the foreground? If foreground objects such as bottles or wine glasses are present and the background shows through them then you will have a real dificult time knocking off the background in those areas . Softwares like "Serious magic ultra chroma" are designed for just such situations though.

Compliments of the season, one and all.

Seun:

Programming is not about modelling reality.  It's about solving problems.  Sometimes, the problem involves modeling virtual objects e.g. game characters and GUI widgets, and that is where OOP is really useful.  But when you're executing complex mathematical calculations, doing complex text/html processing, or manipulating a complex corporate database, OOP can be more of an obstacle.

One of the best and recomended aproach to working with ADO database in C++ is to create a class modelled after each the table or result set to be returned by your sql query. You need to try out that method to know how powerful it can be.
Besides even mathimatical calculations are not to be viewed as abstract symbols that are conjoured up from some magical realm, they are models of real world problems. OOP is not restricted to games and GUIs and stuffs. If you look for an object in a problem space you will quite easily find one.

Seun:

What happens to your classes when your database changes?

If and when your database changes, certainly a lot of the codes in your program that interfaces with the database are bound to change (weather you declare classes for tables in the database or not) so simply update your class as well. In working with database you ussualy have to properly plan your database before you start coding away that way you don't easily run into such troubles.
Using classes to manipulate your database does not shield you from sql querries, you will still use them extensively. But what happens when the values returned from the sql querries have to go through some turturous manipulations to which sql is ill suited before being written back to the database or displayed to the viewers? In procedural programming models you will have to work with variants and it will qiuckly become cumbersome for all but the simplest applications.

Seun:

, There is no modern procedural language that doesn't support OOP, and there is no OOP language that doesn't support procedural programming.  The point is to use the right tools for the right job,

Lets hold you to those words. Then critisising OOP is like a typist who is used to using an IBM electronic type-writer saying the computer with it's word processor is an over-kill.
Only a misuse of the OOP paradigm will create problems for a programmer. The concept of OOP itself is wonderful. If you are uncomfortable with OOP then stick to using the procedural method of programming that you are used to. Leave the playing field of OOP for those who have a stomach for it. As long as you solve your problems in a manner that gives you result and joy then it doesn't matter much to me if you killed your Goliath with a sling or a balistic missile.

Well, at least I get to design my own website and softwares so that makes me my own client.

Lets do a little recall to our JSS1 days when we were introduced to bussiness studies. You probably learnt a little about the difference between a large office and a small office.
One key difference is the issue of specialization. When you are running a small web development outfit with (sometimes) just a staff or two, you will be at a disadvantage if you begin to segrgate tasks inthe manner that large companies with specialist ought to. In small firms you will probably play a swiss-army-knife kind of role where you are the designer, programmer, graphic artist, marketer etc. In a larger company they will value more specilised roles. In the graphic department alone you could have a graphic director, one ore more sketchers, photographers, modellers and so on. Something similar will apply to the programming department.

As a small operator you have to be above average in as many things as possible since this will save you cost on the long run. In larger companies you can afford to segregate tasks for efficiency and thats when you probably need to make distinctions between web designer and graphic artist.

When it comes to it, in my small firm I am the pitcher, marketer, graphic designer, computer programmer, video editor, animator/modeler, accounts officer, logistics director, Janitor, creative director, sound engineer, and on some realy dry months I am the friggin client!!!

The funny thing is that the rules change with locations. for instance:

iice:

Don't slurp especially soup

In China it is actualy considered to be a compliment to the host if you slurp your soup or noodles loudly since it means you are realy enjoying the meal.

When you work on such projects you will not just stick to one Video editor or animation software. You will probably find yourself working with several.

Lets say you need to do a composite animation for Omo where ther a r real people interacting with say an animated omo packet that stretches and spins, etc. You will probably shoot your video and edit the rushes acording to your storyboard using a video editor like ulead media studio or premier pro. You will then use the segment(s) of the video where the animation will appear as a viewport background in 3d studio max where you will model and animate the omo packet. You will achive your composition by employing vairous animation techniques like cameara matching, camera tracking, motion blurring etc. You will probably export the finished animation as an AVI clip and take it back to your video editor to integrate it back into your project. You might also find yourself using a lot of other softwares to generate effect (example are After-effects, flash, particle illusion, etc). You might need other softwares to work on your sound (e.g adobe audition, cake walk, friutyloops, etc). If you did a bit of chroma you might edit the chroma bit in your video editor or use other more power softwares like "serious magic ultr chroma".

This is just a general gist on how these things go.

There are several ways of going about making Ogbono soup. Ogbono soup also has so many combinations (with fresh okro, or dried okro, or egusi, etc) and the choice of ingridients can vary. You may also prepare it with leaves (such as ugwu) or without.

I will give an outline on how to prepare one variant of it using only some of the most basic ingridients. Feel free to experiment when you get the hang of it.

List of Ingridients:
Ogbolo - grinded with or without oil
Palm oil
Dried fish
Beef cuts
Pepper - dried and grinded
onions
salt
maggi or any prefered seasoning cubes
A whisk (you could use your desert spoon. it's not quite as effective though).

Put your meat in a pot and add water, salt, pepper, seasoning cubes, onions etc. Let it cook until the meat is just done but not too soft. Remove the meat (you will add it back in later).

If your ogbolo is the dry-grind type put a desert spoon full of it in a bowl and disolve it in about four desert spoon full of hot water and be sure to mash in all the lumps (with this procedure you will not need a whisk).

If your ogbolo is grinded with palm oil to form a paste, you will be needing a whisk when you introduce it into your soup.

Let the pot of broth (meat water) boil on on the cooker as you introduce your ogbolo into it. Continue ti stir/whisk until the ogbolo becomes homogeneous with the broth. The thickness will depend on how much ogbolo you used.

You will need to keep stirring the soup every now and again so that it will not begin to burn. Put your meat cuts back in the soup. Measure about half a desert spoon of palm oil and strir it into the soup. If you are using vegetable leafs (like ugwu, or bitter-leaf) this will be a good time to add it to the soup. Stir in any additional ingredient like dried fish, etc. Add any extra salt or seasoning to taste. Let the soup cook for about 10 more minutes (or however much longer it takes the added ingridients to get well cooked.

Please do not cover the pot after addind the ogbolo to the broth. The pot shpild remain open until the soup is done. This will prevent condensed moisture from seeping back into the soup and thining it out. Even when the soup is done, Leave the pot open or half open until the temprature is just warm before covering and refrigirating.

Please make sure the taste of the seasoning is just a little less than your desired optimal (if you intend to eat the soup over several days). This is because the seasoning in the soup tends to become more concentrated each time you warm up the soup since moisture will evaporate from the soup. It will end up tasting saltier and more seasoned than it did on the first day. Do not add water to it when you warm it up subsequently.

This is just a rough directive. If you go through the first thread on this board you are bound to find something more comprehensive from some of the more seasoned cooks on the forum.

Good luck