Rake

Rake may refer to:

Arts

Music

Rake (band)

Rake. was an art rock/noise rock musical ensemble from Northern Virginia (near Washington, DC), founded in 1989. Not aligned with the post-punk/hardcore bands more commonly associated with the local underground music scene, Rake. took a more experimental route and were more closely associated with fellow Virginia-based bands Pelt and Wingtip Sloat. Throughout the 1990s, a relationship cemented via their principal label, VHF Records.

Band members Vinnie Van Go-Go (a.k.a. VVGG, a.k.a. OASTEM! Jim), Bill Kellum, and C-Man (Carl Moller) released their first record in 1989, a 7” 45 rpm single called "Cow Song" and the follow-up EP "Motorcycle Shoes" in 1990. The punkish leanings on these recordings were soon superseded by more experimental offerings such as the cassette "The Day I Remembered Seeing Ice" and the LP Rake Is My Co-Pilot, the latter featuring a sidelong extemporization on the lead song from the "Motorcycle Shoes" EP. The band's early recordings featured (mostly shouted) vocals, but the band's later work was generally instrumental in nature. Although Rake.'s main instruments were electric guitar, bass and drums, they made liberal use of tape loops, synthesizers, static, and anything else they saw fit. The band's sound reached a highbrow, minimalistic/ambient peak on 1998 album Resume The Cosmos, which was released by Australian label Camera Obscura but their aesthetic is best summed up by their double CD release The Art Ensemble of Rake/The Tell-Tale Moog which combined lengthy improvisations with found sounds, field recordings and harsh edits. The second disc was largely indexed at 60-second intervals, regardless of the musical content, although one 5-second section was simply a recording of a male voice saying, "Look out: rattlesnake!".

Rake (angle)

A rake is an angle of slope measured from horizontal, or from a vertical line 90° perpendicular to horizontal.

A 60° rake would mean that the line is pointing 60 up from horizontal, either forwards or backwards relative to the object.

Use

There are many ways in which the term can be used.

The rake of a ships prow measures the angle at which the prow rises from the water (the rake below water being called the bow rake). A motorcycle or bicycle fork rake measures the angle at which the forks are angled down towards the ground.

In machining the rake angle is that which measures the cutting angle of the cutting head to the object being worked on. In geology it measures the angles at which one rock moves against another in a geological fault.

In a theatre or opera house the stage can be raked to slope up towards the back of the stage to allow better viewing for the audience.

References

Rake (cellular automaton)

A rake, in the lexicon of cellular automata, is a type of puffer train, which is an automaton that leaves behind a trail of debris. In the case of a rake, however, the debris left behind is a stream of spaceships, which are automata that "travel" by looping through a short series of iterations and end up in a new location after each cycle returns to the original configuration.

In Conway's Game of Life, the discovery of rakes was one of the key components needed to form the breeder, the first known pattern in Life in which the number of live cells exhibits quadratic growth. A breeder is formed by arranging several rakes so that the gliders—the smallest possible spaceships—they generate interact to form a sequence of glider guns, patterns which emit gliders. The emitted gliders fill a growing triangle of the plane of the game. More generally, when a rake exists for a cellular automaton rule (a mathematical function defining the next iteration to be derived from a particular configuration of live and dead cells), one can often construct puffers which leave trails of many other kinds of objects, by colliding the streams of spaceships emitted by multiple rakes moving in parallel. As David Bell writes:

Rake (poker)

Rake is the scaled commission fee taken by a cardroom operating a poker game. It is generally 2.5 to 10 percent of the pot in each poker hand, up to a predetermined maximum amount. There are also other non-percentage ways for a casino to take the rake. Some cardrooms will not take a percentage rake in any community card poker game like Texas hold 'em when a hand does not have a flop. This is called "no flop, no drop".

Poker is a player-versus-player game, and the house does not wager against its players (unlike blackjack or roulette), so this fee is the principal mechanism to generate revenues.

It is primarily levied by an establishment that supplies the necessary services for the game to take place. In online poker it covers the various costs of operation such as support, software and personnel. In traditional brick and mortar casinos it is also used to cover the costs involved with providing a dealer (though in many places tips provide the bulk of a dealer's income) for the game, support staff (from servers to supervisors), use of gaming equipment, and the physical building in which the game takes place. The rake in live games is generally higher than for online poker.

Lock picking

Lock picking is the craft of unlocking a lock by analyzing and manipulating the components of the lock device without the original key. In addition, ideal lock picking should not damage the lock itself, allowing it to be rekeyed for later use, which is especially important with antique locks that would be impossible to replace if destructive entry methods were used. Although lock picking can be associated with criminal intent, it is an essential skill for the legal profession of locksmithing, and is often pursued by law abiding citizens as a useful skill to learn or simply a hobby. The move towards combination locks for high security items such as safes was intended to remove the weakest part of the lock: its keyhole.

In normal situations, it is almost always easier to gain access by some means other than lock picking. Most common locks can be quickly and easily opened using a drill, bolt cutters, padlock shim, a bump key, or a hydraulic jack. The hasp, door, or fixture they are attached to can be cut, broken, unscrewed or otherwise removed, windows can be broken, etc. Therefore, a lock that offers high resistance to picking does not necessarily make unauthorized access more difficult, but will make surreptitious unauthorized access more difficult. Locks are often used in combination with alarms to provide layered security.