text:
I wrote a new script to launch a gdm login screen when a Plugable Docking Station is attached on the machine. To use this script, I reduced the number of ConsoleKit display.d, session.d and seat.d files. Now there is only one of each kind of file. The current version of my work is hosted at my git repository. To test it just follow the same tutorial of the last post and then attach a Dock Station on the machine. A gdm login should appear at the monitor.
Initialize Seats AutomaticalyPublished July 30, 2010 Uncategorized 2 Comments
Tutorial to set up a multiseat with Plugable Dock Stations, gdm 2.27, ConsoleKit 0.4.1 and Xorg 1.8 on Ubuntu 10.4Published July 13, 2010 Uncategorized 6 Comments
This is a tutorial to set up a multiseat with Plugable Dock Stations, gdm 2.27, ConsoleKit 0.4.1 and Xorg 1.8 on Ubuntu 10.4. Basically is necessary to download and install the latest version of Xorg, gdm (display-configuration branch) and ConsoleKit (multi-seat branch) from git repository. Then is need to create and modify some configuration files to create or modify (xorg.conf, sessions.d, displays.d, seats.d, …). I'm developing scripts to make this instalation more automatic.
First of all, become root user:
$ sudo su
– Install some dependences packages for compile things:
Change the repository to download latest packages from Ubuntu Unstable version. Open the file /etc/apt/sources.list and change the lines:
deb http://br.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid main restricted
deb-src http://br.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid main restricted
deb http://br.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick main restricted
deb-src http://br.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick main restricted
# apt-get update
# apt-get install git-core build-essential automake autoconf libtool libpthread-stubs0-dev libx11-dev diffstat libexpat1-dev libxdamage-dev libxext-dev libxfixes-dev libxxf86vm-dev quilt x11proto-damage-dev x11proto-fixes-dev x11proto-gl-dev x11proto-xext-dev gettext x11proto-xf86vidmode-dev xutils-dev libxt-dev libxmu-dev libxi-dev libpixman-1-dev libgcrypt11-dev libpciaccess-dev x11proto-dri2-dev libfreetype6-dev gnome-common dpkg-dev autogen fakeroot pkg-config module-assistant libgl1-mesa-dri libgl1-mesa-dev
– Compile Xorg 1.8 from git using this tutorial. It will install Xorg at /opt/xorg.
– Compile mouse, keyboard and evdev Xserver drivers:
# git clone git://anongit.freedesktop.org/driver/xf86-input-mouse
# cd xf86-input-mouse
# ./autogen --prefix=/opt/xorg
# make
# make install
# git clone git://anongit.freedesktop.org/driver/xf86-input-keyboard
# cd xf86-input-keyboard
# ./autogen --prefix=/opt/xorg
# make
# make install
# git clone git://anongit.freedesktop.org/driver/xf86-input-evdev
# cd xf86-input-evdev
# ./autogen --prefix=/opt/xorg
# make
# make install
– Download and Install xkeyboard configuration:
# git clone git://anongit.freedesktop.org/xkeyboard-config
# cd xkeyboard-config
# ./autogen --prefix=/opt/xorg
# make
# make install
– Download and Install DisplayLink FrameBuffer Driver:
# module-assistant prepare
# git clone http://git.plugable.com/webdav/udlfb/
# cd udlfb
# make
# make install
# depmod -a
Now, when you plug in a DisplayLink device, you should see a "green screen" as
the driver successfully loads and sets the graphics mode to match your monitor.
– Download and Install DisplayLink Xserver Driver:
# git clone http://git.plugable.com/webdav/xf-video-udlfb/
# cd xf-video-udlfb
# ./configure --prefix=/opt/xorg
# make
# make install
– Make a link in /opt/xorg/bin to xkbcomp
ln -s /usr/bin/xkbcomp /opt/xorg/bin/xkbcomp
– Download gdm (display-configuration branch) from git repository and install it:
git clone git://git.gnome.org/gdm -b display-configuration
sudo apt-get build-dep gdm
# cd gdm
# CFLAGS="-g -O2 -g -Wall -O2" CXXFLAGS="-g -O2 -g -Wall -O2" CPPFLAGS="" LDFLAGS="-Wl,-Bsymbolic-functions" ./autogen.sh --build=i486-linux-gnu --prefix=/usr --includedir="\${prefix}/include" --mandir="\${prefix}/share/man" --infodir="\${prefix}/share/info" --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var --libexecdir="\${prefix}/lib/gdm" --disable-maintainer-mode --disable-dependency-tracking --disable-silent-rules --srcdir=. --disable-scrollkeeper --with-at-spi-registryd-directory=/usr/lib/at-spi --enable-ipv6=yes --with-incomplete-locales --with-selinux
# make
# make install
– Download and Install ConsoleKit (multi-seat branch) from git repository:
# git clone git://anongit.freedesktop.org/ConsoleKit -b multi-seat
# cd ConsoleKit
# CFLAGS="-g -O2 -g -Wall -O2" CXXFLAGS="-g -O2 -g -Wall -O2" LDFLAGS="-Wl,-Bsymbolic-functions" ./autogen.sh --build=i486-linux-gnu --prefix=/usr --includedir="\${prefix}/include" --mandir="\${prefix}/share/man" --infodir="\${prefix}/share/info" --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var --libexecdir="\$(prefix)/lib/ConsoleKit" --disable-maintainer-mode --disable-dependency-tracking --disable-silent-rules --srcdir=. --enable-pam-module --with-pid-file=/var/run/console-kit-daemon.pid
# make
# make install
– Download and Install udev rules to detect the Dock Stations and a script to name the seats in /dev directory. It also install xorg.conf and ConsoleKit files for two seats.
# git clone
# cd usbseat
# ./install.sh
– Fbcon workaround
fbcon is a standard Linux kernel module, which aggressively assumes it can open any framebuffer device and take it over for use as a text terminal. Unfortunately, that's not what we want if we're going to be using that
framebuffer to run its own X server. So we need to add a file /etc/modprobe.d/fbcon.conf to disable fbcon and leave our framebuffers free for other uses.
# echo "blacklist font
blacklist tileblit
blacklist bitblit
blacklist fbcon" > /etc/modprobe.d/fbcon.conf
# update-initramfs -u
Now, when you reboot and run "lsmod" you should not see fbcon in the loaded modules. And in /sys/class/graphics you should see fb0, instead of fbcon.
– To test this new environment restart gdm and ConsoleKit:
# service gdm stop; sudo pkill -f /usr/sbin/console-kit-daemon
# /usr/sbin/console-kit-daemon && sudo service gdm start
This is just the hard work to set up a multiseat with Plugable Dock Stations and latest versions of gdm, ConsoleKit and Xorg. I'm working to make this configuration more easy and automatic. This tutorial is for
a static environment, I'm also working to use 'ck-seat-tool' for make the environment dynamic.
Seted up a multiseat on Ubuntu 10.04 with Xorg 1.8 and gdm 3.30Published July 6, 2010 Uncategorized 2 Comments
Good News! Today I finally finished to configure correctly the xorg.conf files and all the gdm and ConsoleKit stuff. I'm using gdm 3.30 and ConsoleKit 0.4.1 cloned from their git repository. I'm also using Xorg 1.8 cloned from git repository. This post is just to announce the news, still at this week I will post a tutorial to reproduce the steps that I had to make for the things work.
Git repository created and a lot of testsPublished June 20, 2010 Uncategorized 2 Comments
I was missed of GSOC work this last days because in Brazil we are at the end of the semester of classes, so I have a lot of works and tests at University. Well, basically what I have done is configure my account at Freedesktop.org to host the git repository of this project. I also spent some time to compile the GDM 3.30. I'm testing the GDM 3.30 with Ubuntu 10.04 to try to set up a multiseat with this pieces and Plugable's Dock Stations. For this day forward I will work hard to finish those tests, to start to develop ConsoleKit scripts to open several GDM login screens on different Dock Stations.
Seted up a multiseat on Ubuntu 9.04 and new udev rules writtenPublished June 3, 2010 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
In this last days I seted up a multiseat on Ubuntu 9.04 with Plugable's solution (photo above). I also wrote new udev rules to label the seats. Basically, I'm using the Bus ID of the devices to discover the set of devices (mouse, keyboard, display, …) that are at the same Dock Station. When a new device is attached on the machine through the Dock Station, is passed the Bus Id of the USB port that the device was attached to a Bash script. Like all device at the same Dock Station has the same parent Bus ID, this script uses it to label the devices with the same Seat ID. I'm configuring my account at freedesktop.org to host the project, so soon I will publish a git repository address with the source code of the project.
My GSOC 2010 Proposal: Use upstream pieces to make a fully plug-and-play USB multiseat solution.Published May 25, 2010 Uncategorized 1 Comment
Hi everyone! To start this blog I'm posting my accepted proposal on Google Summer of Code. It is useful for everyone who wants to know what are the multiseat's problems and what I will do to solve them. From this day forward I will post weekly the updates of the project.
The Proposal:
Use upstream pieces to make a fully plug-and-play USB multiseat solution. Name: Lucas Nascimento Ferreira e-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com website: www.inf.ufpr.br/lnf07 Synopsis Over the last years many multiseat solutions have appeared, but many are closed projects and some are open projects that never became stable on any distribution. Nowadays a lot of features are being added in Xorg and Linux, and now is possible to make a clear and general solution that distributions can easily include it. One of these features is the correct VGA arbitration in Xorg 1.7 and Linux Kernel 2.6.32 [0]. This allows to set up a multiseat using multiple X servers on different graphical devices, and shows the interest of the X.org community on this area. Another feature that is important to multiseat solutions is the secondary video cards initialization [1], that was included in Xorg 1.7 too. These features make possible to set up a multiseat with multiple instances of X server, but a tool that is extremely useful to manage sessions and seats is the ConsoleKit. All these pieces together and correctly integrated make a clear multiseat solution. Two common problems in multiseat environments are the association and detection of the devices, one solution based on a USB hierarchy [2] makes this environment more controlled and this turns the problem easier to be solved. A USB hierarchy is a way of dispose the devices, a set of devices (keyboard, mouse, ...) are attached in one USB HUB and this HUB is associated to one user, making one seat. The Plugable HUBS [3] are more useful to make a USB hierarchy because the video is also in the HUB, so the seats are totally separated. This kind of solution has some problems, because those USB HUBS must be fully plug-and-play, because user doesn't want to manually reconfigure the devices every time a USB HUB is detached from the machine. This problem can be solved with the udev[4] tool, that provides a way to do a dynamic detection and association of the devices. A USB Multiseat solution based on Plugable HUBS has another advantage, and this is the main attraction to end users, the cost/benefit. The USB terminals themselves are a significant cost savings over buying even low-costs netbooks. The cost of maintaining PCs goes way down, as many terminals share a single server. Plug and play nature also provides big savings. This solution is perfect to "office user", in other words, those users who only use browsers, messengers, text editors and other common applications like these. A hard work must be done to correctly integrate the new features + Linux Kernel tools (udev) + ConsoleKit + display managers to make a fully plug-and-play multiseat solution. What I am going to do is to study the state of all these pieces nowadays and, using the existing source code [5] of Plugable solution, refine and document it to make easily for distributions to include it. Why Multiseat ? I would like to work in the "USB Multiseat Refinement" idea because I think is very important that linux distributions have an easy way to configure a multiseat environment. This is because in Brazil multiseats are becoming very common on public schools and I have saw that they are having many problems with it. Another big incentive to work with multiseats is because this kind of solution decreases the cost of computing, so this is a good tool to the digital inclusion. Three important points that justify the advantages of multiseats are the energy-saving, CPU optimization and ease of management. The first point is the most important, because with multiseats is possible to increase the number of users in a lab just using a little more of energy. This is because there is a large decrease of devices (CPUs, hard disks, etc) by the total number of users. The second point is because in a common "office environment" (with common computers) which people are using only applications like browsers, messengers, text editors, a great part of time the CPU is idle. This is because the user is reading a document, seeing a website that is already loaded or something like these. So if in this environment is changed the common computers to multiseats, the time that the CPU is idle will be decreased, optimizing the use of CPU. The last point occurs due to the decrease of computer amount, so it turns easier the network management and the hardware maintenance. Description To create a fully plug-and-play USB multiseat solution is necessary to solve two common problems of multiseats: detection and association of devices. In a USB multiseat environment is necessary to detect every hub connected to the machine. Actually we need to detect the devices, but they will be plugged on the machine through the hub, for solve it will be created udev rules. Every hub connected will be a seat, so is necessary to create some udev attributes to label this set of devices with a common seat ID. With this settings the detection problem is solved. The association problem will be divided into two classes: basic devices and other devices. What is considered basic devices are keyboard, mouse and video. Other devices are storage/audio devices. To solve it we need to get the devices that were detected and labeled through the udev rules/attributes and write a ConsoleKit script to launch independent GDM/X session to each set of devices (HUB). Before it, is necessary to check if in each hub are connected the 3 basic devices (keyboard, mouse and video). Then is important to create some InputClass rules to cause the primary X session to ignore multiseat-assigned devices, and the appropriate seat to use them. Other devices like pendrives, mp3 players which will be attached on the machine when the sessions is already started, will also need to be detected and associated correctly. Since each seat has its own HUB, each new device attached into a hub must be associated and become available to that session user. By creating some udev rules and X init scripts this can become automatic. Project Plan Following the Google Summer of Code Timeline, these is my program schedule: April 27 - May 24 Basically it is a study period, but detailed it is: - Get some Display Link USB Hubs and set up a multiseat environment with the source code that already exists. - Study the existent source code to become expert in what already been done. - Understand how does udev works - Study the state of Xorg today to know how to set up a good configuration file and explore the new features. - Study if there is some configuration or module that will need to set up on kernel. May 24 - June 7 - Define the udev rules to detect hubs/devices which should be collectively treated as terminals - Define the udev attributes to label the set of devices with a common seat id June 8 - June 30 At this period I will be more busy because I will be at the end of semester and I will have a lot of exams. - udev triggers for on-demand generation of the appropriate Xorg config files, to allow seats to coexist with the primary display/devices. - Implement ConsoleKit scripts to launch independent GDM/X sessions for each USB terminal seat June 1 - July 15 - Write documentation and make a lot of tests (performance, plug-and-play tests, ...) July 16 - Submit mid-term evaluation. July 17 - July 29 - InputClass rules to cause the primary X session to ignore multiseat-assigned devices, and the appropriate seat to use them - udev rules and X init scripts to grant access to audio, storage, and other devices to the person logged into the matching seat July 30 - August 9 - Study the state of some of the principal distros today to assess the best way to include a multiseat solution on it. - Adapt the code to include the solution to an example distribution, like Debian or Gentoo. - Write documentation and make a lot of tests (performance, plug-and-play tests, ...) Personal Information My name is Lucas Nascimento Ferreira, I'm a 20 years old student of Computer Science at UFPR [6] (Federal University of Paraná). I live in Curitiba, capital of Paraná state, Brazil. I have worked with multiseats over the last 3 years in MDM project [7] at C3SL [8] (Center of Scientific Computing and Free Software). In 2008 I wrote a considerable amount of code [9] to MDM project and in 2009 I published a summary [10, 11] (only in portuguese) about the performance of the X Window System on the labs of the Informatics Department of UFPR. I have done one presentation (only in portuguese) [12] about multiseats to students of UFPR explaining the common problems and the MDM solution. From 2009 I started to work with NX server of NoMachine and Google's NeatX. References [0] http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20817 [1] http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20816 [2] http://www.ndiyo.org/systems/hubster/basics [3] http://plugable.com/products/UD-160-A [4] http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/hotplug/udev.html [5] http://plugable.com/2009/11/16/setting-up-usb-multiseat-with-displaylink-on-linux-gdm-up-to-2-20 [6] http://www.ufpr.br [7] http://wiki.c3sl.ufpr.br/multiseat [8] http://www.c3sl.ufpr.br [9] http://git.c3sl.ufpr.br/gitweb?p=multiseat/mdm.git;a=summary [10] http://www.inf.ufpr.br/lnf07/en_us/publicacoes.html [11] http://www.inf.ufpr.br/lnf07/arquivos/apresentacoes/apresentacao-17evinci.pdf [12] http://www.inf.ufpr.br/lnf07/arquivos/apresentacoes/Multiterminal.pdf


text:
It took us precisely 3.4 seconds to decide that this photograph, on its own was good enough for an entire Phogotraphy write up. At first glance you'd be forgiven for thinking you're seeing a crayon laid upon a beige carpet. In fact, you're looking at a genuine NASA photograph from hundreds of miles above the Earth's surface.
So what are we looking at? According to NASA this is the iconic orange external fuel tank as used in the Space shuttle missions Continue reading

subset: commoncrawl


text:
I thought these cupcakes would be the perfect thing to share in celebration of my second blogiversary! Since I launched Bakin' and Eggs two years ago I have posted over 200 recipes, including 68 from Gourmet Magazine. I love that my blog allows me to share recipes with friends, family and readers from all over and also that Brandon and I now have a great resource of all our favorite recipes.
While we're on the topic of my second blogiversary, I want to use this opportunity to discuss the future of this blog. Many of you know that I launched a healthy living blog back in April. Since then I have been asked many times if I am going to combine the blogs. As of right now, I have no plans to do that. I like that Bakin' and Eggs is dedicated to recipes and that I have the freedom to publish anything I want without feeling that it has to fit in the "healthy living" bubble. And while my version of healthy living includes all things in moderation, I know that it wouldn't work for everyone to see things like cupcakes and macaroni and cheese on Peanut Butter Runner.
Enough serious talk…let's get to the cupcakes. 😉
I made these a few weeks ago for my niece's first birthday. I will admit that I much prefer baking cakes and cupcakes to decorating them but when there's a special occasion I can't resist. Luckily, Brandon is very creative and helps tons when I take on these baking projects.
The simplicity and cuteness of the piglets and frogs seemed like a great fit for a first birthday party and the pink and green color scheme gave them a fun and girly touch. I used vanilla cake for the piglets and dark chocolate for the frogs to offer a flavor choice. I iced them both with buttercream that I colored with food coloring.
They were a hit with everyone at the party…including the birthday girl!
One Year Ago: Flourless Chocolate Cake (my first blogiversary!)
Two Years Ago: Dad's Chili (my very first recipe!)
Piglet Cupcakes
(Inspiration from Parenting)
Cupcakes (your choice of flavor)
Vanilla buttercream
Red food coloring
Black decorating icing (you can buy this in a tube)
Large pink marshmallows
Chocolate chips
Pink decorating sugar
Using a handheld mixer or a stand mixer, color the icing pink with red food coloring. Frost cupcakes.
Snip a ¼-inch thick slice from a marshmallow, crosswise. Dip cut side of thin marshmallow slice into pink sugar to coat. Cut sugared slice in half crosswise and form into two ear-shaped triangles. Save larger piece of marshmallow for the snout. Repeat with remaining marshmallows.
Press the larger piece of the marshmallow, cut side down, onto the lower half of the cupcake for the pig's snout. Press two sugared marshmallow ears into opposite edge of cupcake, as pictured. Press the chocolate chips in for the piggy's eyes, pointed end down (or use the black decorating icing). Pipe a mouth onto the cupcake with the black decorating icing.
Frog Cupcakes
(Inspiration from Cutest Food)
Cupcakes (your choice of flavor)
Vanilla buttercream
Large white marshmallows
Chocolate chips
Red decorating icing
Using a handheld mixer or a stand mixer, color the icing green with green food coloring. Frost cupcakes.
Cut marshmallows into thin slices to form the eyes. Press chocolate chips into eyes (we randomly placed ours so they were not all the same) and press into frosting. Draw smile and tongue (if desired) with red decorating icing.


text:
You know that saying – "Insanity is hereditary, you get if from your kids"?
Well, I think I inherited compassion from my daughter.
Until recently it was widely believed (in Western cultures anyway) that babies were born innately selfish, that it was our moral duty as parents to turn them from self obsessed little savages into beings fit for human society, through training them with reward and punishment. It seemed to make sense – after all, newborns are famously demanding in getting their own needs met no matter how exhausted their parents.
Now science is finding that even very young babies have the building blocks of empathy, showing a preference for helper characters rather than hinderers in scenarios demonstrated with puppets and even just with shapes. By toddlerhood, their empathy has become altruism, where they will interrupt an enjoyable activity to assist people who seem to be having a problem, for example in picking up a dropped pen. It seems we really are wired to help others.
The kicker seems to be that having their own needs met – being shown empathy – strengthens their ability to empathise. If being on the receiving end of compassion can reinforce the outward expression of empathy and compassion in babies, what can it do for adults in our 'looking after number one' culture?
Zoe may have been a child with a finely tuned sense of empathy and compassion from birth (she would help to feed babies their bottle at daycare before she could even walk), but I believe her experience with cancer and the empathy and compassion she received from those who surrounded us at that time made her even more sensitive to others feelings – and more inclined to reach out to them with compassion.
The kindnesses we received at that time were countless. Friends, acquaintances and strangers rallied around. Toys, food, flowers, gifts of all descriptions just started arriving and the Child Cancer Foundation provided practical help we hadn't even thought of.
In the beginning I was embarrassed and overwhelmed with people's generosity. I also worried (and it seems so ridiculous now when I would give her everything I could) that Zoe would be "spoiled" by the gifts. But no, she just understood that all these tokens were expressions of empathy. In her eyes, the nurses loved us, people, the world was a good place where even strangers wished us well. And it was natural to her not only to want to return the favours and affection but to listen for others feelings and pay the love forward. One of her favourite activities at this time was to have me crouch behind the couch or at the end of the hospital bed and use her soft toys as puppets acting out their feelings and helping each other. Watching how Zoe's spirit blossomed, even as her body struggled with cancer and cancer treatment, changed something in me too.
Before this, I considered myself a pretty independent person, who certainly didn't need any charity or help. This was probably why I had struggled to deal with a refluxy baby who did not sleep. I felt I should just be doing and coping with everything myself and not admit that I was exhausted and depressed. I was one of those parents constantly on edge thinking my job was to 'train' my child.
But at some point, I just made a decision to say yes to the help that was offered and the gifts people gave us when they didn't know what else to do. What those gifts were really saying was, "We hurt with you. We wish we could make this cancer go away. We know a teddy bear won't do it, but it's the only thing we can think of doing."
I'm not exaggerating when I say that making that simple decision to say yes changed my life. I let go of guilt, I let go of feeling that I was unworthy and undeserving. I let myself feel the love that was inherent in every sticker book and batch of baking that was given to us. I started to ignore all the 'shoulds' of parenting and began parenting by heart.
The next step was inevitable. Like Zoe, having been on the receiving end of compassion, I learned to push past my comfort zone and reach out to others with the same sense of compassion. I stopped trying to teach my child to grow into a better person and let her teach me to be a better person.
Most dictionaries define sympathy as being a feeling of pity or sorrow for another person's situation, and empathy as the ability to put oneself in someone else's shoes and feel what they are feeling. Some dictionaries describe compassion as being interchangeable with empathy, which makes sense, since the roots of the word compassion literally mean "suffer with."
Other definitions however make a slight distinction. Compassion, they say, is empathy accompanied by the urge to take action to alleviate someone else's pain.
All of these have their place. Sympathy is sometimes all we are capable of. Empathy is a gift. To have someone simply listen to, feel and sit with your pain is itself enormously healing. I'm not a natural at it, but I'm better than I was. Compassion is something I now actively look for opportunities to express, both as part of The Angel Zoe Kindness Project and in my every day life. I don't always succeed at it, but I hope I'm getting better.
And if I could learn compassion from Zoe, who might I pass it on to? And who might they pass it on to? I don't really believe it's hereditary. It's contagious. Pass it on.
This post is part of the 1000 voices for compassion project #1000speak


text:
« AnkstesnisTćsti »
powerful and brilliant intelligences If he has Childe Harold on his table, across the same region, is free and glo- and reads it at breakfast, he must rious still, and no invasion of the orbit sleep with Don Juan under his pillow, of that glittering leader of the day. and make it the matter of his dreams.
The true doctrine is, thåt imitation The nobler genius will turn away cannot be laid to the poet's charge, but from this prone idolatry, both because : where there is an adoption of defect. he cannot stoop, and because, if he
Servility is the soul of imitation. It could, he disdains to stoop. He will must be laid in the indictment that the not insolently reject the inventions of 1. author has been excited to the com- other men when they can assist him
mission of absurdity by the instigation in the common object of all the greater
of some potential evil spirit that has minds—the delight and instruction of si made the offence prevalent over his his species. If on the height to which
feebler love of common sense. To con- he had climbed by the vigour of his vict him on the statute, proof must be natural powers, he finds the wings brought not of excellence, but of error. which had been invented by some Parnassus will throw out the bill, al- powerful wanderer through the bril
leging that a writer has been guilty liant realm that lies above the reach : of Byronism, on no more substantive of ordinary mankind, he would not
charge, than that he has force of ex- fling himself wingless upon the air. 1. pression and depth of thought-that his The noble invention would be turned
imagination is vivid, or his sensibility to a purpose worthy of its nobleness, exciteable. To secure a conviction, it and some unconquered portion of the must be proved that he has a propensity new region 'would be brought within to laud and magnify the bolder vices; the common dominion of the mind. to select for his heroes compounds of The perfection of poetry consists in the desperate aud the malignant; and the problem, " to express the greatest to feel his triumph in making the ruf- number of thoughts in the smallest fians of the earth estimate their talents number of words." Condensation is by their profligacy. The same induc- power. The finest poetic mind is the tion may lead us to the imitators of most fertile of thought ;-the most the other prominent writers; but, in vivid poeticexpression is the most comall cases, the conclusion is irresistible, pressed. Prolixity is in poetry what exthat, as imitation is a literary crime, pansion is in physics, -the waste, the and as excellence is not criminal, de- scattering away into an invisibility and ficiency must be the object of the charge. feebleness, the mighty agency that The imitator must imitate to the ex- wants only compression to move, or tent of losing his judgment—he must perhaps disrupt the frame of the world. be so bowed down before his Pope, that But these truths are as old as Homer, he cannot recover his posture, but or as man. Lord Byron has failed in must continue in a perpetual oscula- dramatic writing, the first in dignity, tion of the pontific toe. He must swear by the want of this compression. The that
my Lord Peter's loaf contains the bonds of rhyme seem essential to his essence of bread, mutton, beer, and all vigour. Blank-verse suffers him to other nutriments and condiments. He wander away into endless diffusion. must gradually acquire the inverted He is thus still below the summit of taste that loves the worst as well as, poetry, and must be so until he shall or better than the best of the ensla- have produced a drama capable of ver's attributes ;-not merely worship standing beside those of the elder glothe jewels on his Sultan's cap, but lick rious time of England. up the dust shaken from his slippers.
Epistle General.
NOTWITHSTANDING of our having given this month an extra sheet, we find that we shall be obliged to put Asmodeus again into the chest, to satisfy our numerous, kind, and ever-valued Correspondents. In fact, we are compelled to have recourse to this expedient, not only to satisfy Correspondents, but Patrons. Our worthy Subscribers, on binding up our ninth volume, stared with astonishment on seeing us not at all so jolly as we were wont to be. All our attempts to convince these excellent characters, that five Numbers never can be equal to six, have been quite ineffectual. In order to please all our Friends, whether Correspondents or Patrons, we shall indulge them with another extra Number, to crown their Christmas jollities, and Nos. LVIII. and LIX. will therefore appear together on the 31st of December.
In the meantime, although our Devil is one of the most impartial extant, and we have no doubt will give as much satisfaction as on the Coronation occasion, we feel ourselves constrained to say a few words to all whom they may concern :
What an abominable hand Dr P*** writes! Here we have been half an hour trying to decypher half a page of compliments to us. Why, if a ram-cat dipt his paw in an ink-bottle, and dabbled it over a page, it would be more Christian writing. We were horror-struck when we came to this passage, " A is a chamber-pot," but on more close inspection, it turned out to be "a is a charming poet;" and in the end he describes us as being what we, to our amazement, thought was Grand Lama, &c. but which in reality is "Grande lumen Scotiæ." What a sad thing this would be in the hands of a careless compositor. Indeed, most of our regular correspondents write awfully. Tickler is almost unreadable. We have a mind to give fac-similes of them all, and strike terror into the hearts of the writing-master population of the empire.
P. Q. (Manchester) R. S. (Norfolk) J. P. (Liskeard,) and many more alphabet men, are under consideration,
The first detachment of our Irishmen burst in on us this morning. What a kind-hearted people they are,—and what pretty modes they have of expressing their kindness! For instance, J. N. M. writes us to say, that " Our image shall remain deeply engraved on the marrow of his heart until the last moment of eternity!" How tender ! and how true!
Our Sligo friend is too droll,-indeed we think Sligo men are in general most facetious. We know a president of a scientific society from that bonny town; and, good heavens, what a funny man he is !
1 Doctor U****** writes us from Limerick, that the dysentery raging there is much abated, principally in consequence of the good people there taking considerably to reading us. We have no doubt of the fact, though the trum
pery men of the faculty here may dispute it. But let them look to Galen, and: then deny it if they dare. It gives us great pleasure to hear of the increasing health of that respectable brick-town.
" De arte Punnandi per Johannen Dominum Norburiensem, Libri duo," We are afraid is a hoax.
The Rev. T. Kennedy, T.C., Dublin, has had good reason to be surprised at a notice of his edition of Homer, which appeared in one of our late num
bers. This, we have ascertained, was a hoax played upon us, and cannot have - affected Mr Kennedy in the opinion of any one who knows him.
We shall not publish the letter just received from Sappho the younger, of Blowbladder Street. It is too truculent. The people recommended for chas." tisement deserve it-but we must mix mercy now and then with our justice. True it is, that forty stripes save one, is infinitely too good for such poachers
on the domains of tragedy as Haynes, Cornwall, Knowles, Dillon, &c.; but, A gentle reader, we leave it to you, if the following verses do not breathe rather zi too wicked a spirit, against poor men in this unfortunate situation, to be inserted in our kind and benignant pages :
"Why do you slumber, Christopher the mighty,
Brutal and beastly!
Three-penny scribblers,
Table-talk Billy.)
Just for his Drama.
Skiver and slay 'em.
Merciful Heaven, here's a bloody-minded poetess. She mistakes us much. We would not forfeit the character of benevolence which makes us so universally beloved, with such unchristian punishment.
The Noble Lord's letter, relative to Anastasius, has just been received, and is under consideration. We had no idea that we travelled so rapidly beyond the Appennines. But what has become of our promised poetical packet?
Months ago we ought to have acknowleged the communication from our repected friend at John-a-Groat's, "Upon the Present State of Jeffrey's Edinburgh Review." But really that old concern is now a sickening subject; and, judicious as are our friend's remarks, he, as well as our million of readers in both hemispheres, must rather wish to see our pages filled with such good things as Mrs Ogle of Balbogle," than with the exposure of tlie antiquated sophistry and unpatriotic effusions of the Blue and Yellow.
Our fair friends in East-Lothian may expect another slice of " The Widow's Cow" at Christmas. The elegant poem,
"Bombazeen," from Aimwell, is too personal for our Co-. lumns. It may do for the Morning Chronicle.
Mr Brougham will see that we have lost no time in inserting " The Man in the Bell." He can best explain the true meaning of this most mysterious and appalling narrative.
We received Mr Alfred Beauchamp's polite note, for which we beg to offer him our best thanks. We rejoice to see he is doing so well, and wish him all manner of success.
" December Tales,"_" The Greek and French Tragedians,"—"Regulus to the Roman Senate," and several others, (by Correspondents from whom we hope frequently to hear) are in the chest.
A song beginning " Divinest of all earthly maids"-we have hardly patience with. Does the writer imagine we can cram our columns with stuff of this description? It would do very well for the ancient woman of the High Street ; but to give it to us, is the coolest insolence imaginable.
We have a letter from Baillie Nicol Jarvie of Glasgow, detailing a very mysterious and delicate transaction in the West Country. We are at present too merciful to publish it; but let the parties beware, or perhaps the benevolent fit may pass.
A very polite note from W. Wastle the contents of which we must keep private.
" Parson Gobble of Kidderminster;" a spirited sketch, but too strong to be inserted without proper verification. We shall write to our Kidderminster agent about it.
East India mail arrived.-Several parcels for us. Our good friend at Calcutta writes in great spirits. Our last October number had just arrived, and he is quite gratified at the flattering account of our sale in the Hour's Tête a Tête. He sends us what he calls "jottings" of our progress in the Eastern World; and really we conceive we are doing an immensity of good by our increasing diffusion. We have a great mind to manufacture an article out of Mr ****'s hints, under the title of " Progress of Civilization in Hindostan."
Our respected Correspondent at Yeovil will see we have availed ourselves his communication. We hope to have the honour of hearing from him frequently.
While we return a thousand thanks to " Carril," we regret we cannot give a place to his communications.
LONDON, Mr T.C. Hansard, printer, will shortly In the Press, Cicero de Officiis de Ami. publish in one volume 4to. Typographia ; citiâ et de Senectute, printed in 48mo. with an Historical Sketch of the Origin and Pro- diamond type. By Corrall. Uniform with
gress of the Art of Printing ; with de- Horace and Virgil, recently published. ne tails of the latest improvements, and prac- Memoirs of the Court of King James
tical directions for the mode of conducting the First, by Lucy Aikin. the various branches of the Art, including An Abridgment of a Voyage to Mada
the process of Stereotyping and of Lithogra- gascar, by the Abbé Rochon, containing a It phic Printing
description of that Island, its Manners, Mr Robert Bloomfield, author of the Customs, &c. with a Portrait of Prince Ra. Farmer's Boy, announces a new work un. tafia. By Thomas Toune. der title of the May-day of the Muses. On the 1st of January will be publish
Tales of the Drama, by Miss Macauley, ed, Part I. of a Technical Repository of founded on the most popular acting plays. Practical Information, on subjects connect.
Mr Peter Nicholson's System of pure ed with the present daily improvements and mixed Mathematics for the use of and new discoveries in the useful arts. By BB schools.
Mr Gill, many years Member of the ComDr Leach will speedily publish a Sy. mittee of Mechanics, of the Society of Arts nopsis of British Mollusca ; being an ar- in the Adelphi, assisted by mechanical rangement of bivalve and univalve shells, friends. according to the animals inhabiting them, Speedily will be published, the Glories intended as an introduction to the study of of the Messiah ; a Poem, in four cantos. conchology. Illustrated with Plates. By the Rev. Robert Moffat.
Mr M. Cary, of Philadelphia, intends to Miss Edgeworth will soon publish Frank, publish, in the ensuing spring, a new edi. a sequel to her History on the Early Lesetion, revised, improved and enlarged, of sons. Vindiciæ Hiberniæ, or Ireland Vindicated. Biblical Fragments. By Mrs Schimmel,
Berkeley Anecdotes: or Abstracts and pennineh, author of the Narrative of the V Extracts of Smyth's Lives of the Berke- Demolition of Port Royal.
leys, illustrative of ancient manners, and A Treatise on Cancer ; in which will of the Constitution, with a copious History be detailed, a mild constitutional method of Berkeley Castle. By J. T. Fosbroke, of treatment for the alleviation and cure of M. A. author of British Monachism. this distressing malady. By W. Farr, au
Mr Goörres, the author of some poetical thor of a Treatise on Scrophula. works, is about to produce a new publica- Original Tales of my Landlord's School, tion, entitled Europe, and the Revolution. embellished with Engravings. By W.
An Apology for the Freedom of the Gardner. Press. By Rev. Robert Hall, A. M. of The third Edition of Rolle's Trader's Leicester.
Safeguard. A new Metrical version of the Psalms The Universal Traveller ; containing an of David. By the Rev. Basil Wood. Abstract of the Chief Books of Travels in
A Treatise on the Practice of Elocution, all ages. With one hundred Engravings. and on the Cure of Impediments of the A third edition of the Rev. T. Broadspeech. By Mr G. R. Clarke.
hurst's Advice to Young Ladies, on the A third volume of the Tour of Africa. Improvement of their Minds. By Miss Hutten.
In the press, a General Index to the A new and improved Edition of Mr First Fifty Volumes of the Monthly Ma. Henry Siddons's Translation of Engel on gazine. Gesture and Action.
Travels in the Interior of Africa, by The Wit's Red Book ; or Calendar of William Burchall, Esq. Gaiety for 1822.
The Beauties of Ireland. By Mr J. R. Dr John Mason Good will speedily pub- Brewer, embellished with Engravings by lish The Study of Medicine, comprising its Storer, after original drawings by Petrie Physiology, Pathology and Practice, in of Dublin. four vols. 8vo.
A new volume of the Annual Obituary. Mr Savage's second volume on Decora- In quarto, a General History of wines ; tive Printing
containing a Topographical Account of all Shortly will be published, a new and the principal modern wines, and a chronoimproved edition of the Rev. David Wil- logical History of the Wines used in Engliams' Laws relative to the Clergy, inclu- land. ding Instructions to Candidates for Holy The Weald of Sussex, a Poem ; by E. Orders.


text:
Soft teals and luscious creams team up to illustrate todays card layout.
Here is the card sketch and the card that was inspired by it.
Download The Free Card Sketch Here
If you want the sketch, just right click on the image below and choose "save as…" or "save image as…" and store it in a folder on your computer or print it out to save offline.
A Little Video
Fancy watching how I cobbled together the card? Great! Just click play…
That's about it for this one.
If you have any questions or thoughts about the content of this post, please feel free to pop them in the comments section below. I look forward to hearing from you.
Many thanks for stopping by and hope to see you again soon!
Bye for now.
Stay In Touch
If you would like to hear from me about future creative adventures, please consider subscribing to the mailing list by entering your email address below.
Tip: If you are already subscribed, the text below will say, 'You Are Following This Blog'. Many thanks if you are!
More Creative Inspiration On This Blog
There are literally hundreds more posts in the archives so please do check out the suggested posts at the bottom of this page or visit one of the category archives below or check out the related posts section at the end of this post.


text:
On the Road with Rick Holmes: Flipping Texas
Rick Holmes, an award-winning journalist and longtime GateHouse Media columnist, is on the road in search of the ties that bind Americans — and the forces that pull them apart. With all eyes on Washington, Rick reports from real places too often reduced to primary colors on an election map.
Georgetown, Texas – Here in Texas, all the buzz has been about Beto.
Beto O'Rourke is the three-term Congressman from El Paso who is waging what is invariably called a long-shot campaign to unseat Republican Sen. Ted Cruz.
Long shot, say the political insiders, because a Democrat hasn't won statewide office in Texas since 1994. Because top Democrats in Washington have too many incumbents to defend and can't afford to give money to candidates who don't have a chance. And because Texas is a red state, and the demographic wave isn't projected to turn it blue until 2024, or 2030.
Don't tell that to the hundreds of voters who crowded into the grounds of a meeting hall in this Austin suburb on a recent Sunday afternoon. Like Democrats all over the country – especially women, especially in the suburbs – they are fired up over guns, racism, women's rights and Trump, and they are all-in for Beto.
And don't tell O'Rourke he can't win. He's running a frenetic campaign that feels like it's catching fire. He raised nearly three times as much money as Cruz in the first reporting period of the year and CNN just moved the Texas race from "solid GOP" to "likely GOP." As for the national Democratic establishment, O'Rourke isn't listening. He doesn't take PAC money, and he hasn't hired outside consultants or pollsters.
O'Rourke looks younger than his 45 years. He's got the spare frame of a runner – he now incorporates early-morning runs into his campaign team-building. He looks like he could be Bobby Kennedy's grandson.
The similarities go beyond appearance. Like Bobby, O'Rourke brings a moral sensibility to policy questions. He spoke here of "moral obligation to accept refugees from El Salvador" and other Central American nations because U.S. policies helped create the crime and poverty afflicting their countries.
O'Rourke wasn't yet born when Robert Francis Kennedy launched his presidential campaign 50 years ago, but he sees a similarity in their campaigns. Kennedy wasn't listening to polls or consultants either, he told The New York Times, but "seemed to be grounded in the things he found important."
Then there's the name. While he's been called by the Spanish nickname Beto (pronounced "Bet-toe") since he was a baby, his full name is Robert Francis O'Rourke.
He's also old-style. He wants to meet voters face-to-face. O'Rourke has already visited 223 out of state's 254 counties and promises to hit every county before November. Cruz hasn't done that, O'Rourke notes, though Cruz has promised to visit every one of Iowa's 99 counties.
That's not what most party establishment consultants would recommend. Their playbook calls for micro-targeting demographic groups. They frown on lawn signs because they are too broad-brushed. They put their trust in algorithms, not door-knocking. They put resources into getting out the base in places they'll win rather than strengthening the grassroots in places where they are far behind.
That kind of thinking is one of many problems with our red state/blue state political shorthand. It intensifies tribalism, implying that individuals must be one or the other. It oversimplifies political geography. Texas is typically deep red on the national maps, but its cities – Houston, Dallas and Austin – vote reliably Democratic, as does most of the poor and heavily Hispanic Rio Grande Valley. Its rural counties vote Republican, but it's not unanimous even there, which is why O'Rourke visits even the most conservative towns to share his thoughts and listen to theirs.
The red state/blue state shorthand implies a permanence to political attitudes that are always changing. It devalues voters whose parties are in the minority. Thanks to the winner-take-all Electoral College, their votes don't count. A conservative Republican in Massachusetts – or a liberal Democrat in Texas – might as well stay home on Election Day.
In Texas, they often do. The state consistently ranks near the bottom in voter participation. "Texas isn't a red state or a blue state," O'Rourke says, "it's a nonvoting state."
That's another problem with the red/blue model: It hides the people who don't vote. Will a blue wave wash over Texas in November? Watch the turnout in the state's party primaries March 6.
Don't be fooled by metaphors. People aren't born red or blue; they make up their minds as they go along and are subject to persuasion. Political waves, of whatever color, aren't natural events – candidates don't ride them, they make them.
The insiders at CNN still rank the Senate race "likely GOP," but the election is still eight months away. We'll see what kind of waves O'Rourke and his Texas Democrats can make.
— Rick Holmes can be reached at email@example.com. You can follow his journey at www.rickholmes.net. Like him on Facebook at Holmes & Co, on follow him on Twitter @HolmesAndCo.


text:
moments in the history of oil
Oil has used as fuel for cooking and lighting for centuries.
The earliest drilled wells were found in China around 300AD.
Early Inuit cut blocks of oil-soaked tundra from natural seeps.
Marco Polo wrote about oil laden ships of the Caspian Sea.
crude post
I'm so sorry: we are up to our gills in this, yes? but offshore oil drilling is pertinent to NYHarbor, for its yield is what makes us run. Tugster caught Guardian, whose last position ±10° is recorded here, in the 6th boro a year and a half ago. (Boat doodle above is not of Guardian.)
While looking at photos of offshore supply vessels (OSV) of the Gulf, I noticed: they do get amazing weather.
"It is beautiful there," said the mariner who worked in the Gulf. He mentioned each rig he worked with pride.
"Drilling is high tech. It's hard. And they are good at it—very good. But they don't always know what will happen when they hit that reservoir. I've seen so much burned off in a control flare, and if you're anywhere around it, it's HOT. I would feel my skin crackle as it dried from the heat. I'd have to go inside the boat, and the flare's heat would blister the paint off the boat. Then you'd hear on the radio: "Mud! more mud!" and they'd pump drilling fluid through the rod string inside the drill pipe, out through the bit, and some guy would be there, taking measurements of the mud and mixture until they got it just right…When you see a photo like that, with those flames all over, ohhh, it just makes you sick to your heart…"
The fondness for the Gulf and the work is also evident in this wonderful voice.
I know nothing about oil rigs. How many oil rigs are in operation? a peek at this one directory will dizzy you with the numbers of projects and companies at it. (But I couldn't find the answer.)
The Energy Information Agency is a great resource. But still, no one quite knows the best thing to do to check the gushing:
• at the U.S. Minerals Management Service, MMS: "To submit alternative response technology, services or products please call (281) 366-5511."
• at the EPA: fill out this form if you have an idea to try. A question: "Have you field-tested your proposed solution?"
I suppose they have to ask, but I would have to check off "No. I did not test my idea in 5,000′ depth of water in heavy seas. And neither did you. Y'all."
• at the source: this pdf form to fill out with your suggestions.
THIS is an impressive website for the Offshore Oil and Gas industry: offshore-technology.com!
top row: 1. Brutus in a water ballet, 2. Blindfaith being pushed by Tern, 3. Genesis on Transshelf cutting through the ice of Finland, reaching the Gulf in 24 days;
bottom row: 4. Mars eases on down the road, 5. Genesis floats through the Corpus Christi shipping channel, 6. Baldpate's base skates into place.
I could spend hours (er, I have spent hours) gawking at the photos (credit, please? who took them?)
The names of the rigs, fields and ships are poetic, the images are striking, the feats–and implications–are awe-full. (I didn't say awful.)
Heartfelt support to the crews working there, the crews stranded and waiting.
And heart-full apologies for the loss of life: human, plant and animal. We are all complicit.
Tugster weighs in in "Deepwater Miracles", and wonders what you think…


text:
FRIDAY, June 13, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Hard liquor, especially vodka, is chosen by nearly half of all underage binge drinkers in the United States, a new study finds.
Beer is used in less than one-third of binge-drinking episodes, according to the survey of teens and young adults, aged 13 to 20.
And most binge-drinking episodes involve a relatively small number of brands, the study found.
Researchers asked the survey respondents about their drinking habits in the past 30 days. They also asked specifically about binge drinking, defined as five or more drinks in a row for males and four or more drinks in a row for females.
"Each year, approximately 4,300 young people under 21 die as a result of alcohol use, and underage drinking costs an estimated $24.6 billion," said study co-author David Jernigan, director of the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
"This study underscores the need to redouble our efforts on the national, state and local levels to address youth alcohol access and consumption," he said in a Hopkins news release.
For the study, published online May 30 in the Journal of Substance Use, respondents were asked about their consumption of about 900 brands of alcohol within 16 different categories of alcoholic beverages.
The participants reported that they used hard liquor, or spirits, in nearly 44 percent of recent binge-drinking episodes. Vodka was used in nearly 27 percent of all binge episodes involving hard liquor and in nearly 12 percent of all binge episodes.
Brands mentioned most often by binge drinkers were: Bud Light (13.5 percent of all youth in the study); Jack Daniel's bourbons (7 percent); Smirnoff malt beverages (6.8 percent); Budweiser (6.5 percent); Coors Light (6.1 percent); and Smirnoff vodkas (5.6 percent).
Of all the alcohol brands included in the survey, just 25 accounted for almost half of all binge reports, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health-funded study.
The study also found that binge drinking accounted for 67 percent of all youth alcohol consumption.
"Binge drinking accounts for most of the alcohol consumed by youth in the U.S., and is associated with a host of negative consequences, including drunk driving, sexual assaults and suicide," said study lead author Dr. Timothy Naimi, an associate professor at the Boston University School of Public Health.
"Identifying the types of alcohol and specific brands youth are choosing when they binge drink is important for the development of public health interventions designed to curtail this dangerous public health problem," he said in the news release.
More information
The U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has more about underage drinking.
This article: Copyright © 2014 HealthDay. All rights reserved.


text:
(Cross posted from my other blog.)
Remember the Ashlee Simpson Saturday Night Live debacle? No? Let me refresh your memory: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RrLAgi_mBY
Ashlee Simpson got busted for lip syncing on live TV. It's not like we, the public, didn't know it was common in the industry. But we like our pop stars perfect. Perfect hair, perfect bodies, perfect pitch, perfect behavior. Of course, the perfect hair is weaves and extensions, the perfect bodies are courtesy of a liposuction-starvation-cigarette-spray tan-breast implant-personal trainer cocktail, the perfect pitch is due to autotune, and the perfect behavior? Well, as long as they look good doing it, we're pretty OK with it; at least we seem to be OK with it, since we keep watching, listening, and buying the music.
The irony is that we love to moan about how vapid the pop music industry is. We complain – while we try to look like them, sing along with them in the car, and (don't lie) even have our moments of envy.
Back to Ashlee. (Or substitute Milli Vanilli if you'd prefer. Same idea, different generation.) We knew she was largely a manufactured product, and yet it was the talk of the town when she was exposed. The problem is, we too often value perceived perfection over character, raw talent, and a strong work ethic. We want glamour and glitter and glitz.
What does this have to do with photography? Everything.
Every time I read about a photography industry "rock star" I laugh to myself. Because it's so damn accurate. Rock stars in the current music industry do not necessarily have to be musically gifted or unique. They simply have to look good, be willing to turn themselves into whatever sells, pay people who do have talent to provide the material, and not be ethically opposed to the occasional lying, cheating, and stealing to preserve their façade.
Sound familiar? Sure does. Ouch.
(Now, before I proceed, let me clarify that I'm not asserting that all well-known photographers are "bad." Not at all. There are some, although not many and not enough, who shoot good, honest work and are true to themselves, and have gained a following accordingly. Those are not the ones I'm addressing here. Read on.)
Unless you've had your head in the sand, you probably know what I'm alluding to here. Yes, those two photographers who were caught plagiarizing, but also so many others. We want our "rock star" photographers perfect. Talented, preferably attractive, well-spoken, entertaining, humble, and constantly churning out pretty pictures that look exactly like what we expect. We eat it up. We expect it. We know that nobody is perfect, but we still want to believe that they are. When those "rock stars" are caught doing something wrong, we are either shocked by it, or we choose to dismiss it. We simply must have someone to idolize, and we reward the appearance of perfection in our idols. We fall for the PR and marketing ploys hook, line, and sinker, because we want to. Was that meatloaf claim really modesty, or is it a PR move to increase likeability? (Wink, wink to those who got that reference.)
Here are the inevitable results of the "rock star" culture we've cultivated in our industry.
– The "rock stars" will do whatever it takes to keep our attention and maintain the illusion. That can certainly include plagiarism, stealing images, usurping materials, and playing on our sympathies when they get caught. They are not entirely to blame; they are simply filling a role that we created for them, by any means necessary.
– The "rock stars" will not risk losing their status through risk taking and vulnerability. They put out only the best of the best of their work, and only the work that they know will appeal to the masses. They don't take many real chances. They rarely grow in any meaningful way. What you see now will always be what you get. And that creates an environment, an industry mind set, that says, "This is what good photography is supposed to look like." And so, by emulating those "rock stars" we convince ourselves that our images must fit that standard. If they don't, we consider them weird and less valuable. This is how we've turned our industry into vanilla pudding. The homogenization of art.
– We're overlooking some pretty amazing talent out there who choose not to play the game. Photographers whose work is deep, unique, emotive, groundbreaking, challenging, difficult to view and demanding to understand, work that requires actual thought. And we, as a whole, have forgotten to appreciate the work of the trailblazers who came before us. We bemoan the fact that our teenagers know every word Beyonce or Taylor ever sang, but have never heard of Ella Fitzgerald; meanwhile, nearly every photographer I work with knows who Jasmine Starr is, and few have ever heard of Imogen Cunningham. (Apologies, but I simply refuse to use that trite marketing-gimmick abbreviated notation of Jasmine Starr's name. It would be like dubbing myself C-Nic.) It's just much easier to look at the slickly marketed photographer-du-jour who has managed to get himself/herself plastered all over the Internet, than to actually seek out the photographers who are more concerned with their art than their Google ranking.
I so want to see us take our industry, our art form, back. What does that mean, and how do we do that? Here are some thoughts to consider, as a starting point.
Stop idolizing and learn how to draw inspiration instead. That means not trying to make your work look like so-and-so's, and to focus on figuring out how to express yourself. Learn to look critically at a body of work and understand the "how" and "why" instead of setting out to duplicate it. It requires effort, and the effort is also the reward.
Seek out photographers whose work is way off the beaten path. Just because you're a child portrait photographer does not mean that you should only draw inspiration from other child portrait photographers. Look at landscapes, at still life, at journalism. Explore Eastern European photographers, Asian photographers, anything that is outside of your immediate realm. Look at color, at black and white. Study alternative processes and conceptual work. While you're at it, look at movies, sculpture, paintings, any visual art. When you find work you strongly dislike, take the time to figure out why. When you find something interesting and challenging, share it. Learn from it. The world of photography is so much bigger than Facebook, or that forum, or your blog circle.
I want us to start challenging the norm and start taking some risks. If I had a dollar for every photographer I've critiqued whose website is full of "vanilla pudding" images because the deeply effective, vulnerable, rule-breaking images they really love might not get as many thumbs on Facebook, I would be one rich woman. And that leads me to:
We must stop being so thin-skinned that we cannot handle it when everybody doesn't applaud our work. We have got to start creating according to our own artistic eye, instead of for the masses. I've said it for years: I'd rather have 100 people who deeply appreciate my work, than 10,000 who think it's "pretty." Stand behind your work. Be open to critique, but apply it as it makes sense to do so, to tell your story in your own voice. You cannot bend to fit every trend and every opinion; trying to do so will mean that you will lose yourself in the process.
Please stop spending money on things just because everyone else is buying them, or because That Photographer uses one. If you're going to spend money on a lens, a prop, a workshop, know why you're doing it, why you need it, and what you will get out of it. Don't throw money at a "rock star's" workshop unless you specifically need to know the information that person is teaching. Trust me, if they have nothing groundbreaking to say, their mere physical presence is not going to make you a better photographer.
And please slow down. Rome wasn't built in a day. You will not be an educated, experienced, confident, unique photographer overnight. It takes blood, sweat, and tears. Buying the action that makes your work look like That Photographer's is not the answer, it's just masking the problem. You do not need to be in business just because you've been shooting for a year and people like your pictures. It is not a race, and there are no shortcuts. Anybody that tells you otherwise is probably putting you on their mailing list for their magical workshop right now.
Once you've figured out who you are as a photographer, gain your fans and followers through honest, unique work. As tempting as it is, resist the urge to "vanilla pudding" your way into mass approval. Be willing to work happily in near obscurity. You do not need to be idolized to have a client base who appreciates your work and allows you to be your own creative, imperfect self.
And as tempting as it is, don't make excuses for the "rock stars" when they're caught being dishonest. If you wouldn't accept it from your child, don't accept it from a photographer. You'd discipline your child for copying another student's test paper, wouldn't you? Everyone makes mistakes and I'm a huge believer in second chances, having been the recipient of more than a few of them myself; that is entirely different than excusing the behavior and defending illegal or unethical actions. Being popular is not a good reason to not be held accountable.
When you do find the photographers out there who are creating strong, unique, effective, honest work, learn from them – but do not idolize or imitate them. It is not about finding a photographer who you want to be when you grow up. It's about learning the lessons that photographer learned, and applying them to your unique growth and path. And learn from as many of them as you possibly can. If you take all of your knowledge from a single person, you will inevitably wind up looking like a knock-off.
At the end of the day, this industry simply doesn't need rock stars. It needs role models, and people who know how to both teach and learn. We should all aim to do more of both.


text:
Intel Core i5-2410M
The Intel Core i5-2410M is a fast dual core processor at the time of introduction in Q1 2011. It is based on the Sandy Bridge architecture and offers Hyperthreading to handle 4 threads at once (for a better usage of the pipeline). Compared to the faster Core i7, the i5 offers a smaller last level cache of 3MB. The base clock speed is 2.3 GHz but due to Turbo Boost it can reach 2.6 GHz (2 cores active) and 2.9 GHz (1 core active). Compared to the 2510M, the 2410M does not support AES, VT-d, and Trusted Execution functions.
Sandy Bridge is the evolutionary successor of the Arrandale architecture. The most noteable improvements is the improved Turbo 2.0 and the integration of the graphics card into the 32nm CPU core.
The i5-2410M offers an integrated graphics card (Intel HD Graphics 3000) which is clearly faster then the older Intel HD Graphics in the Arrandale CPUs. As the new GPU is included in the CPU, it is also manufactured in 32nm and shares the fast level 3 cache with the CPU cores (using a new ring bus). In the 2410M it is clocked from 650-1200MHz (with Turbo Boost). The faster Sandy Bridge CPUs are clocked up to 1300 MHz (like the i5-2520M).
Furthermore, an improved dual-channel DDR3 memory controller is included on the CPU die that is used by the CPU and GPU part.
Due to the improved architecture and the new Turbo Boost 2.0, the average performance of the Core i5-2410M is higher than a similar clocked Arrandale Core i5. In our benchmarks, the 2410M was able to beat the fast Intel Core i5-560M with 2.7-3.2GHz and is therefore suited for even demanding tasks.
The 35W TDP rating includes the integrated GPU and memory controller.
|Intel Core i5
|Sandy Bridge
Series: Core i5 Sandy Bridge
|Clock Rate
|2300 - 2900 MHz
|Level 1 Cache
|Level 2 Cache
|Level 3 Cache
|Number of Cores / Threads
|2 / 4
|Power Consumption (TDP = Thermal Design Power)
|35 Watt
|Transistor Count
|624 Million
|Manufacturing Technology
|32 nm
|Die Size
|149 mm2
|Max. Temperature
|rPGA988B / BGA1023
|HD Graphics 3000 (650-1200MHz), DDR3-1066/1333 Memory Controller (max 16GB), HyperThreading, AVX, Quick Sync, Virtualization
|Intel HD Graphics 3000 (650 - 1200 MHz)
|64 Bit
|64 Bit support
|Announcement Date
|Product Link (external)
|Intel Core i5 2410M


text:
Millar, Mark; JG Jones, Paul Mounts (2008), Wanted, Top Cow
Millar, Mark; John Romita Jr. et al. (2010), Kick-Ass, Titan Books
This isn't the first time, nor will it be the last, that I confess my admiration for Mark Millar's work. I consider Millar's books to be among the best published in comics these days, although at least half that admiration is owed to his artists. His comics have pencils by major artists as J.G. Jones (Wanted), Brian Hitch (The Ultimates) and John Romita Jr. (Kick-Ass). I try to read as much of his work as possible, even when, as in Ultimate X-Men, it appears to be slightly sub-par. In books like Kick-Ass or Wanted, it isn't. Mark Millar is known to publicly overemphasize his importance and brilliance, but sometimes, his material just works perfectly. On the other hand, Millar keeps bothering me in different ways. In comics, the fact that every character and action comes with its visual representation, the fact, too, that you can't bury essentials in pages of text, can create problematic depictions of various issues. Many comics touch upon some of these issues,, and Millar is no exception. However, while a lightweight series like Y: The Last Man provides a quietly reactionary soap opera, Mark Millar, clearly enjoying his role as provocative writer, dishes up a densely narrated drama in his books, where all the elements are so well posited and constructed that they heighten the importance of each individual element, including the troubling ones. The Ultimates, for example, is a clever and sparsely told disquisition about military power and its relationship to basic elements of culture, from the treatment of women, to chauvinism, racism and much more. Every character, every line, every panel in the comic seems to be designed to work that angle. The Ultimates is almost flawlessly executed.
Both great writers like Grant Morrison and bad ones like Jeph Loeb tend to use the serial nature of mainstream comics to write expansive, associative work. There's a line threaded through a series of books like Morrison's fantastic run on the New X-Men, but images and characters tend to touch on many issues and moods. In comparison, Millar is uncommonly obsessed with the same topics and ideas within one book or one run. Although Millar's run on the Ultimate X-Men pales beside Morrison's work with more or less the same characters (more in a few weeks on this blog), it's still strong, and most of all: it's a taut, concentrated genre exercise. Millar reconstructs the X-Men from the bottom up, he re-introduces them and their themes for a new audience; in their case it makes for a certain dullness, because we know the X-Men by now, we're familiar with their themes. Additionally, his X-Men work was largely penciled by Adam Kubert, who, despite his fame, is clearly not a very good fit. Millar, as the X-Men stories, or, to an extent, his work with the Fantastic Four has shown, is a writer with a limited palette. He's excellent in what he does best, but remove a few of the variables, or change them, and his work can quickly seem dull and uninteresting. But if the artist, the material and the setting is right, as in the aforementioned Ultimates, his writing is incredible: it's hard to deny the perfection of The Ultimates. On the other hand, two of his more original graphic novels, Wanted and Kick-Ass, seem very divisive. In my opinion, both of these books compare well to the best 'regular' literature I've read this year, but their highly violent content has not gone over very well with all their readers.
Kick-Ass is especially violent, both in terms of actual, depicted violence, and in terms of emotional violence. It's a borderline-surreal tale that seems to be premised on the idea of what super heroes would look like 'in the real world', but, as any closer look will immediately reveal, is anything but that kind of book. Kick-Ass and Wanted are books soaked with decades of superhero (or supervillain) history. Not just the history that surfaces in explicit and implicit references to canonical works, but the whole idea of superhero comics, their iconic and intellectual function in our cultures. Not even Morrison is so obsessed with the minutiae of comics and comics references alone. Millar's books seem to have soaked up heaps and heaps of comics and internalized them, and seem to develop their ideas further and further. Millar's work on The Authority is similar to The Ultimates, grappling with similar themes, but it lacks the incredible polish and concentration of the later work. Plot-lines and concepts seem to complete or prolong questions raised in the earlier work. In the same way, Kick-Ass, while not a regular superhero comic, is a continuation of an earlier Millar book, and is best read in that context, I think. That earlier book is Wanted, published in 6 issues between 2003 and 2004. Wanted is the story of Wesley Gibson, a frustrated young white man, who finds out his father was an extremely talented killer and takes up with a gang of super-villains. Given that the main character is a super-villain-in-waiting, its not surprising that the comic deals with hate a lot. The narrator is the protagonist, who, in the fourth panel, complains that he's "taking shit from my African American boss".
The word "boss" is helpfully printed in bold to point out Wesley's incredulity at having to take flak from someone who is not as nicely white as he is. This line of thinking continues throughout the comic, which glories in mass shootings, rape and other distasteful actions. Apart from calling him a villain, the book never once breaks through that mood, effectively providing an appraising account of one of the least likable characters in fiction. At the end of the book, Wesley turns even on the readers of the comic, accusing them of weakness. The penultimate panel has, however, a striking image. While telling us that we're "going to close this book and buy something else to fill that big, empty hole [they]'ve created in [our] life", we see the hand of a customer buying a couple of comics. One of them is an issue of Wanted. I'd argue that that image short-circuits the book, inviting us to read it in terms of comics and iconicity. J.G. Jones' clear and highly detailed art creates an extremely realistic world that houses an fantastical story. The contrast between the narrative, characters, the voices, and the visual representation of them turns a ratio upside down that tends to dominate graphic novels. If we take, for instance, Vaughan and Guerra's Y: The Last Man, we find a regular Science Fiction story, clearly intent upon finding out "what would really happen" if all men died, and "what really could have caused it". Vaughan, as in much else of his work, strains to find a believable voice, and dialogue that sounds "real".
Pia Guerra's pencils, in contrast, while depicting a realistic setting, indulge in iconicity. Every depiction of humans is extremely idealized and refers not to a sketch of an actual person (however they were actually created) but to a culturally developed idea of a shape. The female form, the depiction of pregnant women, of militant women, of black women, all the details of the eponymous man: this is superhero comics material, just without the spandex. JG Jones' far more sophisticated work aims for more realism while reflecting a discussion of issues of iconicity in countless details of the depiction of the characters. Jones' art is so detailed it slows the story down, scattering it into a series of tableaux. There is a tension between the superhero aspects, like the glossy poses that many of the uber-cool villains assume, or the odd, surreal accessoires they wear, and the wrinkly realism of the artwork itself. The results are intriguing, and absolutely stunning. While none of this is Millar's art, he did write the content for Jones to fill in, and the very choice of Jones (who is, after all, famous for his style, cf. Greg Rucka's Wonder Woman run) as artist was inspired. In a book like Wanted, which, as I pointed out, thrives off the kind of tensions that mark J.G. Jones work, nothing seems off. Everything here fits like a glove. The problem with this is, from a reader's perspective, that it naturally reinforces any troubling issues raised in Millar's script. However, Wesley is such an exuberantly bigoted character that the book makes more sense in a reading that assumes it to be a satire, than a reading that takes the opinions and ideology of its characters at face values. It's a satire, and a sharp-tongued one at that, drawing on more than just media criticism. In a time-honored comics tradition, from the Skrulls to Morrison's and Moore's masterpieces, it questions conventional narratives and perceptions.
There is still more to it, though. The criticism it contains isn't really new or spectacular, following lines established by the comics I mentioned and movies such as Natural Born Killers. Millar's dense and focused way of telling and constructing his story is fairly rare, however. Additionally, at least for me, it's hard now to disregard Kick-Ass when reading and commenting upon Wanted, which is much enhanced when assuming that it is part of a narrative or intellectual trajectory that includes Kick-Ass. On a surface level, the two books couldn't be more different. Kick-Ass' art is almost the exact opposite of Jones'. While Jones did both pencils and inks in Wanted, John Romita Jr. only did the pencils in Kick-Ass. Its inks are handled by Tom Palmer, and one feels an odd disconnect here. This is worth noting, since Palmer is one of the most legendary inkers in the business today. His inks in Byrne's X-Men run (although I'm not partial to Byrne's pencils) are nothing short of stunning, for example, and his influence in the industry is hard to overestimate. But in Kick-Ass, his work and Romita Jr.'s are a bad fit. The point is that J.G .Jones' art is of a piece and hits you straight in the face. It overwhelms you, lets you examine the world of Wanted in full dark detail. None of that here. It's not just the inks, however. Romita Jr.'s art is low on details, and the few panels that contain many can seem almost sloppily done. In Romita Jr.'s art, objects and people merge, and objects in different states of matter (liquids, gases, solids) start to resemble one another. The effect is both disconcerting and cartoonish. So, on the level of the art, you have a focused, detailed, fully coherent book, and a book where the different elements don't quite fit, where the art in general is always slightly out of focus. But the connection is, of course Millar. The two novels' art is similar in the sense of perfectly fitting the writing. The changes in the art correspond directly to the changes in the narrative.
Instead of reveling in super-villains, Kick-Ass looks at super-heroes. Wanted's super-villains were created as amalgams of more traditional villains, with references hidden in slogans, details in costume or bearing. The villainy was established by creating a vile protagonist, and making his fellow super-villains even worse. The writing told us what to look for, and the art scattered hints and clues all over the gorgeous pages. Kick-Ass is different. It's reference to comic antecedents is far more specific and less playful. It doesn't allow us to distance ourselves from the writing and its implications. A few lines earlier, I called some of Wanted's panels "tableaux" – the implied act of leaning back and contemplating a panel or a whole page, this doesn't quite work for Kick-Ass. The art doesn't ask you to stop and look, instead its completely immersive, attracts you into its haze of idealism, fear, anxiety and hate. Hate is one of the things that you'll notice very early on. The narrator doesn't vocalise his prejudice quite like Wesley, but the art draws your attention to a similar mind-set. In Wanted, the narration needed to be fueled by hate, because the art, due to its detailed realism, suggested impartiality, showing things as they were. Romita Jr.'s art doesn't even pretend to be impartial. Instead you get sucked into the maelstrom of the protagonist's teenage mind from the very first panel. Like Wesley, the eponymous Kick-Ass (his mild-mannered name is Dave) moderates the first few panels, telling us what we're seeing. Unlike Wesley, he abandons narration rather quickly. He doesn't need to keep it up, however, because the art is clearly doing it for him now. Hate is less expressed and more implied. For instance by the fact that all the villains of the book, and I do mean one hundred percent, are non-white. Latinos, African-Americans, Italian-Americans (for the whiteness of Italian- and Irish-Americans I recommend reading select works of Whiteness Studies (Roediger and others)). The protagonist, on the other hand, is blond. What's more, he's ethnically unmarked. As in his best work, Millar uses everything to full effect. We're never in doubt about the ethnicity of people in the book. Language, color, clothes, all adds to the basic impression: a white blond boy, constantly victimized at school, and, by extension, in his world as well, has enough and fights crime.
Fighting crime in Kick-Ass means fighting all the ethnically marked rabble. There is a plethora of critical writing on superhero comics that addresses this question of marked and unmarked actors, and the use and import of wearing a costume, as well as the racial and sexual fault-lines in a tradition that focused on and even expanded notions of masculinity and manliness. Dave is a perfect representation of the fear and anxiety of white males in this new century, afraid to lose privileges and calling frequently for an emancipation for men and accusing people of being racist towards white people. Phenomena like the American Tea Party movement are symptoms of that growing feeling of being threatened by a wave of otherness. And Dave is fighting back. Brilliantly, Millar creates an ambiguous motivation for his protagonist. Dave is beset both by local and global fears, and the local fears are mostly connected to his being a teenager and grappling with the process of growing up. There isn't enough bile or strength in him to call the adults out, calling them 'phoneys'. Instead he retreats first into his imagination, and then into violence. In his imagination, as a scrawny comic geek, he learns the symbolic language of comic which works largely through displacement and metaphorical representation. The rhetorical flourishes of right wing attacks, constructing scapegoats, using ideas of purity and evil, Dave has learned all this from comics, in short: he's perfectly equipped to be a small hateful thug with ideals. There isn't a patchwork of allusions and references here. There is just one big paradigm in Kick-Ass: it's Batman. Mostly Frank Miller's Batman, but Millar uses small details that suggest other Batman-related characters, too. Dave corresponds in many details to the Batman in Frank Miller's Batman: Year One. The trajectory, from the unsuccessful first bout with criminals which ends with the superheroes-in-waiting bleeding profusely, to the successful second fight and the subsequent establishment, is similar, but what's more important is that the criminals and the heroes conform to a normal/other dichotomy.
The other canonical Miller text on Batman relevant here is his masterful The Dark Knight Returns. In this book, Batman has turned into a hateful muscled old man, disdainful of political correctness and leniency towards criminals, and largely dismissive of democracy. In Kick-Ass, Millar creates the characters of Hit Girl and Big Daddy to reflect that side of being Batman. Like the Cassandra Cain-incarnation of Batgirl, Hit Girl was trained by her father (as Cassandra was trained by hers) to become an excellent killer at a very young age. The rigorous and excessive training has produced a killing machine without many social skills. Without even blinking, Hit Girl slices through hordes of criminals. Neither she nor her father care whether someone is actually guilty of a crime. Being a criminal means being guilty by association. So they kill not just a drug dealer, but also his mistress and all his friends. The utter disdain for human lives and the violent, bracing righteousness connect these two to Miller's old Batman. Between David, Hit Girl and Big Daddy, Millar has gathered many of the facets of Gotham's crime-fighter. He has picked up on Miller's reading of the character as a reactionary, fascist madman, and made a book that reflects that attitude. There is no lee-way in Kick-Ass that would allow for a critical or satiric reading. On the contrary: Mark Millar has, as he does in the best of his books, created an incredibly focused book where every detail is put in the service of one idea. Here it's right wing hatred. Not criticism of it, but depiction of it, with a clarity and assiduity that makes it almost an anatomy of that attitude. Nothing here is extraneous, everything, the art, dialogue, and the story is extremely focused on one thing and one thing only. In fact, I think that Kick-Ass might well be his best book, because despite the strengths of his other work, this one might just be the most focused and densely told of all his tales.
This is not to deny that his method has its problems. Depicting hate and violence, without even attempting to contain or criticize it, is a risky business and just as The Dark Knight Returns affirms its protagonist's reactionary values, so does Kick-Ass provide an apology for the dark dreams of Dave. In his review of Haneke's US remake of Haneke's own Funny Games, New York Times critic A.O. Scott writes: "voyeuristic masses are implicated in the gruesome spectacle of senseless cruelty. Are we, though? What if the guilt trip never takes off? Or, even worse, what if the American audience, cretins that we are, were to embrace Mr. Haneke's vision not for its moral stringency but for the thrill of, say, watching Ms. Watts, bound at the ankles and wrists, hop around in her underwear? Who will be implicated then?" This moral ambiguity is characteristic for much of Millar's work, and while reading him is always an awesome experience, his readers may feel increasingly uneasy. The divide between being a moral writer and an excellent craftsman is not often as wide as it is in Millar's case. Millar's work is often problematic and often difficult to stomach, and if we look at the way his oeuvre develops, it seems that there is much more to come. His clean work with the Ultimate X-Men eventually lead to the fascist ambiguities of Civil War, his playful game with hate and villainy in Wanted turned into unfettered racism and violence in Kick-Ass. I am both excited and afraid of what's to come next from Mark Millar's busy pen.
As always, if you feel like supporting this blog, there is a "Donate" button on the right. 🙂 If you liked this, tell me. If you hated it, even better. Send me comments, requests or suggestions either below or via email (cf. my About page) or to my twitter.)


text:
Chuck Booth (Owner/Lead Analyst) Follow @chuckbooth3024
Follow The MLB Reports On Twitter Follow @mlbreports
You simply couldn't have asked for a better start to a winter in 2015 for Arizona. They are legitimate contenders in the NL West, and still should have the wherewithal to spend another $20 – $25 MIL on salaries for 2016.
I love the aggression set forth by the management. I hope they keep the pedal to the metal on this one. A nucleus of a team lasts 3 – 4 years for a mid market club, and by the acquisitions the team has done here completely reflects that.
We have discussed how the Houston Astros developed their young club for a few years now. It is clearly the best way to rebuild a team.
Another reason why the team has had the financial flexibility to create these maneuvers is that they have Paul Goldschmidt on perhaps the best valued contract in the game of baseball right now.
The other Infielders in the mix for the Diamondbacks need to step up the production for he Arizona squad in 2016. Whether it is Chris Owings at 2B or Nick Ahmed at SS, these positions were not league average for the slots, as was third base either.
Arizona was carried offensively by Goldschmidt and a great productive OF in A.J. Pollock, David Peralta and Ender Inciarte.
The club dealt Inciarte in the Shelby Miller deal, but could pick up the slack with giving his OF position to Yasmany Tomas full time in 2016.
Welington Castillo was one of the most prolific Catchers in the Majors least year, featuring a 3 slash of .255/.317/.496 with the Diamondbacks, clubbing 17 HRs and knocking in 50 RBI during his 254 AB this past season
In a roundabout way, he bettered what the club had previously in Miguel Montero, who incidentally was the reason why Castillo was flipped to Seattle initially.
That trade made up for the previous fiasco that was the trade for Mark Trumbo the previous season. (more…)


text:
So for the last few weeks I have been jumping from project to project at work unable to really get focused on any one of them or given the time to complete any of the said projects. It is a real problem as I am now completely unfocused now at work even though I don't have the time to waist on this bullshit.
I have always been good at letting side projects fester to the side of my mind while I knock out whatever project I am doing at the moment. Hell that is part of the reason I started my old blog on my.ddo was to try and clear my cache some and get DDo out of my system so I would free up some more brain cells for the important things at the moment.
But now I find myself once again preoccupied with so many side projects that I can't seem to focus on the main goal. Which is killer as once again I have a last min/high priority project that is about 3 weeks of work that needs to be done and about 2 weeks to get it done.
But I can't seem to clear the side buffers. I find my foremind wondering about this work project or that on or DDo or my farm stuff. I find myself brain locked and needed to take 5 to try and regroup.
I found myself wondering around the Vale last night running explorers when I had intended to xp/speed run in the Vale quests but my mind shifted to work thoughts and not game thoughts and what was left of my goals at least kept my moving in some helpful way. But I more or less lost the nights gaming to work and I hate that.
I don't know what to do, or how to help myself. I am half thinking that I need to start taking long baths at work so to have more eureka moments and push through my blocks but what I realy need is to be able to work at home and play at work so when my mind has answers I can jump on them and not try to save them from 12 hours past….
Anyway, pretend I said something inspiring and mind blowing in this closing and not this and maybe it will allow you to be the laser beam and get work or play done.


text:
Writing from a place of pain is incredibly valuable. Writing can be release, personal therapy, a way of overcoming a struggle or trauma. At a few times in my life, I've written from a place of sadness or pain, and the writing has helped me.
However, I write best when I'm happy or relaxed. Joy, exuberance, or contented peace are usually more inspiring to me than sadness or pain. Not that I always have to be a good mood to write (it's about discipline, not just feelings), but being happy certainly helps to boost my creativity.
Music is one of my greatest sources of inspiration; and so here I'm sharing some of my favorite "happy" tracks. These are pieces of music (mostly instrumental) that fill me with joy and help me to get into writing mode. Enjoy! Continue reading


text:
Fairchild Park in Harbour Landing is the Best in Regina!
Dream Development picked up the Best Landscape Project in 2014 for Fairchild Park at the Regina & Region Home Builders' Association awards!
Located in the Harbour Landing community right next to where the school will be located, the park features an athletic field with portable soccer nets, a large playground and a walking path that connects to the creek. There's also an outdoor rink and two basketball courts and a special dig area where kids of all ages can pretend to be archeologists as they discover replicas of dinosaur bones. They can also rock climb and climb ropes, all amongst replica dinosaur skeletons.Back to news


text:
I've been studying, hence my blog silence!
Last September I started a PgDip in Therapeutic Radiography (treating people with cancer and some other conditions with radiation). It's a 2 year course, 12 weeks in university and the rest of the year we learn on the job in a hospital. I've just finished my exams so now I have a few weeks off before I start 2nd year! (as long as I pass my exams!!)
Anyway, while I was studying, I had nightly cravings for Ice Cream. Specifically Ben & Jerry's Phish Food! It has little chocolate fishes in it!!
To make it even more calorific, we added ½ a tub of yogurt to it, and some crumbled digestive biscuits!
Needless to say I may possibly have put on some weight, but I consoled myself that I would have plenty of time to exercise after my exams! My exams finished on Thursday last week, so on Friday I decided to make a start!
Its a long time since I've done any running (Long ago, as my Nana used to say, I ran for a club, but that really was long long ago!)
I really was quite fit back then!
A friend of mine started running about 8 years ago, and now regularly completes triathlons! I would love to do one, but I can only swim the breast stroke so I don't think I could manage the swimming bit! This year he has also done several marathons including the London & Brighton marathons, in preparation for a monster race! He has just completed the Comrades Marathon in South Africa for a 2nd year. Only 55.1miles!!! It is the world's most brutal ultra marathon, and even though it's winter in South Africa in June, the temperature is usually in the 20's! To make it even worse, if it takes you more than 12 hours to finish it you don't even get a medal!!
I don't think I will go that far… but I do still want to run a Marathon! It's been over 3 years since I made that decision, and even though I've started training a few times, I've never got much past 3 miles. This time I hope I will manage to get a bit further!
Anyway, the day after my exam, (Friday before last) I started. I downloaded an app to give me some guidance, because left to my own devices I would run 15 miles on the first day & then not be able to move for a month & then give up! It was hard! I came back looking like a beetroot, but I did it! Then I did another run on Sunday, and have managed to do 7 runs since then including one in a complete downpour, and Woody has come for all except 2 of them!
I'm not however expecting to lose any weight any time soon! I am counting the calories that I am eating just to see how bad things really are, and despite cutting out processed sugars like cake, chocolate & ice cream, I still seem to manage to sometimes eat double my recommended calorific intake for the day!
It seems like this is going to take time 😦 That's the problem with getting old. Getting fit takes SO much longer than it used to!!
Anyway, watch this space! I really do want to run the Clarendon Marathon, a cross country marathon from Salisbury to Winchester along the ancient Clarendon Way with a few extra turns here and there to make up a full 26.2 miles. More than 90% is off road, with the trail following country tracks and paths – many of which have not changed since being traveled by the ancient Kings and Queens of England.
Today I managed 3.4 miles, which is quite an improvement from my first run which was 1.8 miles! Now… time to tackle the garden!


text:
Looking for cheaper, quality dental care in Iowa? You found it! You can get discounts at dentists and dental specialists. So, whether you need treatment for a toothache, or you're ready to get your whole smile back in shape, now you can afford to see a dentist and get the treatment you need.
Dental savings plans are accepted by dentists throughout Iowa. To find dentists near you enter your zip code into the dentist finder search tool. Then click "Search for Dentists" to see which Iowa dentists accept what dental savings plan.
With a dental savings plan, you don't have to wait before you can access discounted dental treatments. You start saving as soon as your plan activates – within 24-72 hours, depending on the plan you choose.
There are no annual spending limits either. Dental insurance typically has a maximum of $1,000-$1,500 – about the cost of one root canal and crown! Happily, you can use your dental savings plan as often as you want, at any participating dentist or dental specialist in Iowa .
With so many choices, you're sure to find the plan that provides the discounts you want, at a price that fits your budget. And if your dental care needs change during your membership, talk to us – we can check to see if you can save more with another plan and if so, we'll be happy to transfer you to that plan. Plus, our 30-Day Money Back Guarantee assures that you'll be satisfied with your plan and dental savings!
Ready to save on dental care in Iowa ? Join now, it's easy! And if you have questions about the plans you're considering, call us today! We are always happy to assist you.
Dental savings plans for residents of Iowa start at $79.95. Prices vary depending on the plan you choose. You can use your plan to save 10-60% at any of the 100,000+ participating dentists in a nationwide network (yes, you can save on dentists outside of Iowa too – great if you're travelling or have kids at out of school states).
Dental savings plans, also known as discount dental plans, are affordable alternative to dental insurance, designed to help Iowa residents save on all their dental care – especially those expensive treatments that you probably need if you haven't seen the dentist in a few years. So many of us put off getting dental care until we have a mouthful of problems that will take a lot of money to fix. And insurance doesn't help, once you have broken, missing or fragile teeth. You need another solution. You need a dental savings plan.
Many general dentists in Iowa accept dental savings plans. If you want to see a particular dentist, you can use the search tool to see what plans he or she accepts.
For dental specialists, it depends on the plan you choose. Many plans include savings at specialty dental care, so you can find dental savings plans that help you save at:
Endodontists: these dentists treat diseases of the dental pulp, with procedures like root canals.
Oral Surgeons: These surgeons handle complicated tooth extractions (like impacted wisdom teeth) and also perform bone grafting and may place dental implants.
Periodontists: If you need treatments for severe or persistent gum disease, such as deep cleanings, you might choose to see a periodontist.
Pediatric Dentists: Pediatric dentists provide dental care for infants and children.
Orthodontists: these specialists fix misaligned bites, and other conditions that keep your teeth from fitting together properly. You might see an orthodontist if you need braces.
|Dental Savings Plans
|Dental Insurance
|Quick Plan Activation
|No Health Restrictions
|No Annual Limits
|No Paperwork Hassles
|No Waiting for Dental Care
|Cosmetic Dentistry Savings*
Our :DP AtYourService® team would be happy to help you choose the dental plan that offers the greatest savings for your specific needs.
Please wait while
your results load.