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Tuesday, June 16, 2009
New Mural Going up at Herkimer and Nostrand
The NYC Justice Corps, based out of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, are painting a new mural of black leaders on the northwest corner of Nostrand and Herkimer. It looks great so far, and they hope to have it finished today or tomorrow (they started yesterday). A finished example of their work is right down the street at the Herkimer United Garden Club (third photo).
The artist who designed the piece going up right now can be found here. As one painter told me, NYC Justice Corps does murals all over, and are always looking for more work. If you've got a blank wall, give 'em a call.
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pinkcorsetgirl 46-50, F 17 Answers 1 Aug 22, 2014 in Dating & Relationships
Canoe ride and a picnic half way through and maybe some swimming.
Best Answer
When I come back from it knowing more about the person, loving said person more, and wanting to spend far more time with that person..
Best Answer
Something simple.....dinner and a movie....going for a walk...sitting (on a nice day) in the park talking....
Its been a long time since I have been on one
Best Answer
If my wife brought home that hot friend from yoga to join us.
Best Answer
They asked what yours was, and you gave it!
Best Answer
One that didn't end.
Best Answer
depend on what you call perfect ,but I do am to please
Best Answer
19 September, neither too hot nor too cold ;P
Best Answer
i havent think about that.
Best Answer
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subset: commoncrawl


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'The Showtune Mosh Pit' for January 5th, 2011
by Paul W. Thompson
Overheard last weekend under the showtune
video screens at Sidetrack and The Call:
Here we are again, with our twice yearly list of the Mosh Pit "Top Ten Hot Topics!" It's the biannual list of those subjects and shows that have kept our brains all occupied for the last six months (in this case, from July to December of 2010). As the holidays fade away, and the countdown begins to spring break, let's have our own little countdown, shall we?
With no further ado, here are the most commonly mentioned items, out of the 132 distinct topics the last 26 columns have included. Is your obsession on the list?
10. "Cats." Once so 1980s-bound that it usually sported the same spandex and hair-band aesthetic that brought us the Jane Fonda workout videos, this Andrew Lloyd Webber spectacle spawned a litter of recordings of "Memory," and brought environmental staging successfully to Broadway for the first time. It has now been reinvented as sort of an intimate children's story by emerging director-choreographer Brenda Didier and Theo Ubique Cabaret Theatre, at the No Exit Café in Rogers Park. It's been extended into February, too. The possibility of actually liking a show that most youngsters think is passé and most old folks have memorized has us all as fascinated as does catsup-flavored catnip!
9. Theaters Announce Their 2011 Seasons. We love to plan ahead, I guess. And fall is, of course, the traditional time for theater companies to tell us what to plan to see for the coming year. For instance, we learned that Bailiwick Chicago will produce "Violet" and "Passing Strange" this coming spring, and that Broadway In Chicago will finally be bringing us "Next To Normal." The suburban Equity theaters will bring us two productions of "Guys And Dolls," among other hits, and Light Opera Works will have "Brigadoon" and "The Secret Garden." And don't forget Court Theatre's take on "Porgy And Bess" or the new version of "Working" at the Broadway Playhouse. Get your calendars out! Here's a website to help with your scheduling needs:
Shows Coming Soon - Theatre In Chicago
8. Theatrical Real Estate. Speaking of the Broadway Playhouse, the newly renamed and renovated Drury Lane Theater at Water Tower Place is only one of several new or changed theatrical spaces in town right now. Whether as a result of changing economic conditions or just coincidence, several of the places we hang out are changing. Actors' Equity Association completed its move to new digs in the West Loop, the former Theatre Building Chicago (now Stage 773) completed its new signage and announced a major renovation, Theater Wit opened up its renovations to the old Bailwick building, and Noble Fool Theatricals is now called Fox Valley Theatricals. Here's a list of performance venues:
7. Fall Shows at the Marriott Theatre. Lincolnshire's enormous musical theater house, one of the country's most visible showtune venues outside of the biggest downtown areas, packed a one-two punch this fall with very well-received productions of "A Chorus Line" and "The Music Man." Not only are Terry James, Aaron Thielen and Andy Hite (and company) experts at putting proscenium musicals into the in-the-round format, they put classic musicals into your lap, and into the lap of about a thousand of your closest friends. And we like nothing more than a legendary show made fresh and exciting one more time.
Marriott Theatre In Lincolnshire
6. Broadway In Chicago's Flagship Shows. Elton John's latest Tony-winning smash hit show was firmly ensconced in the Loop--until it wasn't. And then an old friend, torn from our grasp and the wound still fresh, returned and sold record numbers of holiday tickets! "Billy Elliot" ran for eight months at the Ford Center For The Performing Arts, Oriental Theatre, which would have been fine. Fine, were it not being compared in everyone's mind to "Wicked," whose two and a half year run was extended by a surprise seven week return run that is still going strong at the Cadillac Palace Theatre. (The show grossed $1.7 million worth of tickets last week.) A show about tap-dancing English boys isn't quite the same as one about American girl empowerment, I guess. Debating the merits of these shows, and the box office wisdom behind all the show shuffling, was a popular topic this fall for Mosh Pit types.
Broadway in Chicago Show and Theatre Tickets
5. Late Summer National Tours Begin Here. Speaking of Broadway In Chicago, the Nederlander-owned local road presenter brought the world premieres of the touring versions of not one but two shows to our Loop in late summer. "Shrek" began in July (debuting a new dragon) and "Rock Of Ages" starring Constantine Maroulis (direct from Broadway in his Tony-nominated role) opened in September. While it's not quite the same cache as a pre-Broadway tryout, the opening of a national tour here shows New York producers that we are informed, active theatrical consumers, and that's always a good thing.
"9 TO 5: The Musical" isn't a tour premiere, but it's coming in January!
4. "Glee." Our favorite TV show wasn't too far from our minds, even though it fell from the number 2 spot it held on this list six months ago. But the storylines, the guest stars (Carol Burnett, Gwyneth Paltrow), the new recurring characters, the theme nights ("The Rocky Horror Show," "Singing In The Rain") and of course the recordings and the hilarious one-liners from Jane Lynch have us all talking about the FOX musical comedy with water cooler conviction. Oh, and the covers of Broadway and popular hits. Well, you know. You either love it or you don't. But you talk about it.
3. Super September. Musical theatergoers in Chicago had a wealth of riches to attend in September, not even counting "Shrek" and "Rock Of Ages." Homegrown productions were doing just fine, thank you. Leading the pack of our interest were new stagings of two shows which originally starred the legendary Barbara Cook: Mary Zimmerman's new version of "Candide" at the Goodman Theatre in the Loop and Writers' Theatre's take on "She Loves Me" up in Glencoe. We also had "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" in Munster, "Big River" in Lakeview, "Daddy Long Legs" in Skokie and "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee" in Arlington Heights. Makes you proud. Here was my rundown on the whole month's doing:
'The Showtune Mosh Pit' for September 29th, 2010
2. Stephen Sondheim. Two musicals by this legendary musical theater creative force were playing side by side at Stage 773 in September, "Sunday In The Park With George" and "Company." This is the way it has gone all year during this celebration of Sondheim's 80th birthday. We had a concert version of "Follies," a college production of "Sweeney Todd," and the DVD releases of the "Evening Primrose" broadcast and New York's "Sondheim: 80" concert to keep us buzzing, making Sondheim the second most popular Mosh Pit topic of the last six months. Then, to cap off the year, came the release of his book, "Finishing The Hat." The biggest Sondheim story of these months was the fiasco benefit concert thrown by the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, which charged a lot of money for a very short but top-notch concert on July 31st, may have scooted people off the lawn prematurely and didn't seem to notice that a LOT of people were offended by actions interpreted as rude, misleading or divisive. At any rate, the artists involved, Patti LuPone, George Hearn, Audra McDonald, Michael Cerveris, Paul Gemigniani and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, escaped unscathed. As did Sondheim.
It looks like the Ravinia benefit in 2011 will feature Gershwin
1. Awards, Awards and More Awards! The number one topic of July through December of 2010 was awards! Who said that "awards season" was in the spring? Not around here! Our own BroadwayWorld Chicago Awards took us from their initial announcement on October 9th all the way through to our Celebration of the Awards on December 29th. Online readers of BroadwayWorld selected "Ragtime," "Jesus Christ Superstar," "Chess" and "The Philadelphia Story" to take half of the 25 awards between them. The Equity Jeff Awards took place in October, with "Ragtime" leading the pack there as well. We also noted "Glee"'s involvement in both the Emmy and Grammy Awards this fall, and took pride in Jerry Herman's Kennedy Center Honor, presided over by Angela Lansbury, Carol Channing and Chita Rivera. And don't forget director David Cromer winning a "Genius Grant" from the MacArthur Foundation! Yes, awards are us, and we loved them a lot lately. Awards and their recipients were our number one Hot Topic, and the pride we show in our love of well done showtunes around here was well evident this fall.
Here are the winners of the 2010 BWW Chicago Awards
So, there you have it. Or, them--the most popular discussion topics around the Mosh Pit lately. What will we be talking about during the next six months? Touring shows? Tryouts? Big budget local shows? Storefront experiments? College experiences? Awards shows or taped performances? Stay tuned to find out. Or better yet--take part in the discourse! For that, I'll see you very, very soon, and it will be under the video screens, won't it?.....--PWT
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From This Author Paul W. Thompson


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Can bartenders swill and spit, and can sommeliers shake? Chris Losh reports from the front line as the two teams tackle a series of demanding tasks in the second part of our Bartenders vs Sommeliers Challenge
A warm sunny day in June, and the courtyard at the splendid Atlas pub in London's Fulham already has a feeling of déjà vu about it. Immaculately attired bartenders have, like last year, arrived early; the more, er, casually dressed sommeliers arrive in dribs and drabs.
Sitting in their separate camps, it's obvious which disciplines are worrying them the most. The sommeliers test each other on the components that go into various cocktails, the bartenders discuss what wines to match with Peking duck, using the Imbibe Sommelier Wine Awards booklet as a guide. Listening to bartenders tossing around words like 'citrussy minerality' is something of an eyebrow-raiser.
'Bartenders are inherently competitive, and we have much more practice in doing competitions,' says team captain Julian de Feral.
Nigel Lister, two-time veteran leader of the sommeliers, takes a different approach – possibly out of necessity. 'We're less well-prepared than last year,' he says cheerfully. 'But I think it helps being more laid-back. We've only just found out what a 125ml measure of wine looks like in a glass…'
As the bookies hastily adjust the odds in favour of a second win for the bartenders, the judging panel, featuring Colin Dunn of Diageo Reserve Brands, Ransome's Dock head sommelier Martin Lam, bar manager of Duke's Hotel, Alessandro Palazzi, and Bibendum prestige sales manager Jamie Wynne-Griffiths, take up their positions. Let the bibulous battle commence…
|The Varietal Vineyard Crew
|Captain: Julian de Feral, Lutyens; Luca Cordiglieri, China Tang; Rich Hunt, Kanaloa; Dino Koletsas, Bourne & Hollingsworth; Lewis Wilkinson, Met Bar
|The Wine Bar Barians
|Captain: Nigel Lister, Royal Thames Yacht Club; Andrea Briccarello, Galvin La Chapelle; Virgilio Gennaro, Locanda Locatelli; Jade Koch, HG Wines; Chris Zoeller, Asia de Cuba
Round 1
Free-pouring spirits
The test here is to free-pour a 25ml and 50ml measure of spirits with the right and the left hand. It is a discipline that ought to favour the bartenders, but nerves can
do strange things to the formbook, and
the sommeliers did well on this last year.
Andrea Briccarello goes first for the sommeliers. He seems calm, and his technique is good, snapping off the flow of the liquid like an old pro. His two 50ml pours are a little under, his two 25ml pours a little over, but overall it's a good effort and puts some pressure on Rich Hunt for the bartenders. He is similar in his execution – two under, two over – by about the same amount. Honours more or less even.
Round 2
Free-pouring wine
In theory, free-pouring a 125ml and a 175ml measure of wine into a Riedel glass ought to favour the sommeliers. In practice, it's something they rarely do, and last year the bartenders were significantly better at it. This year, Dino Koletsas continues the pressure, with two excellent pours that are
a combined total of just 8ml out.
Jade Koch, though, is equal to it. Her first pour
– the 175ml – is bang on the money, earning her impressive bonus points. Possibly flushed with success her 125ml serve is a niggardly 107ml, but it's enough for the sommeliers to take the lead after two rounds. The scores: sommeliers 113, bartenders 104.5.
Optional bonus round
Both teams are now offered the chance to earn an extra 10 points. The challenge: to free-pour a 50ml measure of Tanqueray No. Ten into a cognac balloon, from an open neck. If they get within 5ml either side, the bonus points are theirs. But outside that, they lose 10 points.
With an early lead, the sommeliers decide this challenge doesn't favour them, and sit it out, to good-natured clucking sounds from their competitors. Eager to get back on level terms, the bartenders go for it, and Koletsas steps forward once again. There are no marks for speed or style, so he's very careful, and there's a tense silence as the judges measure his pour.
Cruelly, he's poured 44ml – literally a drop more and the bartenders would have been catapulted into the lead. Instead, they fall further behind. Almost 20 points back is a serious deficit. Will they be able to regain parity? Suddenly, the bookies are looking nervous.
Round 3
Setting a table
This is another test that ought to favour the sommeliers, but which they messed up last year, failing to spot dirty glasses and even forks with bits of food on them. No such problems this year. Nigel Lister is methodical in checking the glassware and manages to bring all 12 glasses out at once, chatting easily to the table of judges as he does so. While the judges liked his manner, missing a small fleck on one glass cuts his score back, and a full-marks score to Lewis Wilkinson, whose slow, methodical approach (and better eyesight) allows him to present an immaculate table and sees the bartenders start to chip away at the deficit. After the third round: sommeliers 127.5, bartenders 114.5.
Round 4
Taking a wine order
The contenders here have to take a wine order, retrieve the bottle and open it at the table, with all the necessary protocol. Luca Cordiglieri goes first for the bartenders. He looks immaculate, greets the judges with an attractive mix of warmth and irony, and seems to be enjoying himself. He chooses to open the wine bottle at a neighbouring table, to avoid awkward corkscrew-fumblings, and while this might be something of a bail-out option, the judges don't mark him down for it.
'It wasn't a problem, I could see the bottle the whole time,' says Diageo's Colin Dunn. Also, rather than offering the wine to the table to test, he checks it himself; a less-usual, but utterly acceptable technique. Impressively, he scores maximum points…
For the sommeliers, Chris Zoeller, dressed like he's just come from Brighton beach, gives a very different performance. He's relaxed, laconic, in control – and if the judges are unsettled at being served by someone in an orange straw hat, they don't show it. He keeps the bottle label presented at all times, and doesn't even seem to be trying. It's an impressive showing, and he, too, gets full marks. The sommeliers are now in the lead with 147.5 points to 134.5.
Round 5
Round of drinks
A deceptively simple bartending task: take an order for a round of drinks, including two Diageo perfect serves, make them and serve them – preferably to the right people.
De Feral goes first for the bartenders. He interacts very well with the judges, making suggestions where appropriate and generally proving attentive and open, though there are a couple of minor quibbles. He doesn't mention that the Tanqueray No. Ten and tonic is served with a slice of grapefruit, for instance, which could come as a surprise for your average punter.
But it goes more seriously downhill in the 'creation' and 'serving' parts of the task. De Feral seems to use different sized measures for the G&T and the vodka and Coke, he fails to pour the beer at the table, presents the G&T half-poured, but the vodka and Coke fully-poured, and, most seriously of all, gets Dunn's Johnnie Walker Blue and Alessandro Palazzi's G&T the wrong way round. Nerves seem the only plausible explanation.
For the sommeliers, Virgilio Gennaro starts the task well. He gives the 'customers' information about each drink – although it's unlikely that Dunn would be too impressed to hear that Tanqueray No. Ten is 'distilled 10 times'. He remembers to mention that he's putting ice in Dunn's water, accompanying his Johnnie Walker Blue, and also checks with Palazzi that he's ok with a grapefruit garnish in his G&T. There are flaws in his presentation, but nothing major and, if he talked a bit too much – 'a lot of information, but not much small talk,' muses Jamie Wynne-Griffiths – it was probably to hide nerves.
The net result is that, at the end of this task, the sommeliers have pulled even further into the lead, with a score of 170 to the bartenders' 156.5.
If the judges are unsettled at
being served by someone in an
orange straw hat, they don't show it
Round 6
Blind tasting
In this exam-style round, all team members must blind-taste and identify six wines and six spirits using a multiple choice system. The wines, kindly supplied by Bibendum, include six 'staple' restaurant wines, from Aussie Riesling to claret and Burgundy, while the spirits feature four brands from Diageo Reserve Brands among the two whiskies, two rums and two gins.
Last year, the bartenders out-performed the sommeliers in this task, nailing all the spirits and most of the wines. But this year the situation was reversed, with three of the five sommeliers getting every single drink right. The bartenders, meanwhile, did well on the spirits, but they consistently mixed up the Katnook Shiraz and the Château Lezongars Bordeaux, and by the end of the discipline, far from clawing back some ground, they had fallen a little further behind. With over 20 points in it, and just two disciplines left, the pressure was mounting on de Feral and his team. Though with the two toughest disciplines yet to come, anything, as John Motson might say, could happen… After the sixth round: sommeliers 278, bartenders 256.5.
Round 7
Food and wine matching
Without a shadow of a doubt, this is the round that was most worrying the bartenders. Can they take starter and main-course orders from a table of four and come up with decent wine matches
for each dish? Moreover, can they answer the questions that will come their way from the judges?
Hunt goes first for the bartenders and despite an anguished 'noooo!' when his name is pulled out the hat, he does a fine job. He chats happily to the table, and is decisive in his suggestions, managing to come up with one bottle to cover three of the starters and carry through into the main course. He gives Palazzi a plausible explanation of why he should have Chardonnay with his mushroom risotto, and is confident enough to describe lamb and claret as a 'classic match'.
There may have been questions over the accuracy of some of his suggestions (Peking duck and Pinot Noir rather than Aussie Shiraz, for instance) and there is a near miss when he almost suggests a Sancerre with Thai green curry, but
the panel are impressed by his ability to make common sense decisions quickly, and that he gives thumbnail taste-sketches of each of the wines.
'With the small wine menu that he had, the matches he made were more or less the ones I would have chosen,' says Wynne-Griffiths. And Martin Lam, too, is impressed. 'He's clearly done his homework,' he says.
For the sommeliers, it's the turn of Gennaro of Locanda Locatelli. He starts well, mentioning the different serving options available (by-the-glass and carafe), and he seems keen to push champagne both before and during the food. For each chosen dish he explains carefully how various different wines might work with it, though his attempt to sell Riesling to the diners as 'tasting of burned rubber' isn't exactly rapturously received.
The problem is that his thoroughness to work out what every diner wants, his tendency to explain each wine in great detail and an unwillingness on his part to take the lead and actually make suggestions means that it takes Gennaro forever to come to a conclusion. By the end of his performance, the panel are more confused than before he started.
'It was all about information rather than informing,' says Lam, while Palazzi growls that 'if he was my waiter I'd have shot him.'
With too much knowledge a dangerous thing, Hunt's nigh-on flawless performance manages to pull back points against the head for the bartenders, and they go into the day's final round scenting blood. The sommeliers have 304.5 points, the bartenders have 293.5 points.
Round 8
Classic cocktails
It's not just the participants who are drawn out of the hat here – it's the cocktails themselves. Zoeller (as Beppe Digiese last year) gets off lightly with the Negroni; de Feral gets a Bloody Mary.
Zoeller goes first, and it becomes obvious that, despite having got the simplest drink, he is winging it. He knows the right proportions for the drink, but doesn't measure them out, opting to free-pour them, and the result is a drink that is totally out of balance – too much Campari and nowhere near enough gin. The judges are uneasy about the rather industrial way in which he pokes his sliver of orange peel with his fingers, and his ironic attempts to deflect the fact that he doesn't know the drink's history backfire badly.
'For a bartender, the knowledge about the Negroni is important,' says Palazzi. 'He tried a few jokes, but I didn't really like them.'
De Feral's performance, by contrast, is imperious – it more than makes up for his disappointing display in the speed round earlier. Admittedly, he takes a while to prepare his pitch, enlisting the help of what appears to be most of his team mates. But once he starts, it's a masterclass in bartending. His manner is relaxed, informative and helpful, but never cocky. He explains exactly what he is doing and why, outlines the drink's history and, in a final flourish, presents it alongside a spare lunchtime sandwich 'because it's a brunch drink' – a beautifully timed punchline to an absorbing five minutes. The drink, too, served in a silver tankard, is fantastic, and the judges drain it enthusiastically.
De Feral's maximum points, with Zoeller's undercooked display, marks a comeback to rival that of Lazarus. From being dead and buried at half past two, by four o'clock the bartenders have nosed back in front: 333 points to the sommeliers' 325.5.
But the battle's not over yet – there is still the Champagne Magnum, the Blazer, the Cascade Challenge, as well as the Quiz yet to come. Will the sommeliers catch fire? Or the bartenders fall flat? All will be revealed when they compete in front of a live audience at Imbibe 2010 this July…
Our heartfelt thanks to Diageo Reserve Brands for supplying the spirits, Bibendum for supplying the wines, and Riedel for the glassware. Also, thanks to The Atlas for hosting the event.


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Whether or not statistics back it up, conventional thinking holds that men want sex more than women. As I've mentioned in previous posts, I see sex as cyclic to men, like eating when hungry. Women, untroubled by semen accumulating in their testes (or whatever it is that drives us), could arguably be categorized as a-cyclic. To them sex isn't a reflexive response, but a choice that's the product of a series of events on any given day that make them feel especially valued and attractive. Unfortunately, it's tough to reproduce those circumstances — or get men to — in the workaday world.
In an article in last Sunday's New York Times magazine, Women Who Want to Want, Daniel Bergner explored low libido in women. Men operating at the level of lowest common denominator find this condition puzzling, because to them, women are the repository of all things sexual. All women have to do, we assume, is look at themselves naked in the mirror to be turned on. Alas, body image is as capable of casting a pall over sex as any other factor.
The article chronicles the work of psychologist Lori Brotto, one of the world's leading specialists in what is known as hypoactive (the opposite of hyperactive) sexual desire disorder in women. She's in charge of creating a new definition of the condition for the American Psychiatric Association's next Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
What's her suggestion for women who shy away from sex? To act, in so many words, "as if." (Not the dismissive way teenage girls use the phrase, but as support groups traditionally have — that is, behave like you're sober even when you want a drink.) In other words, proceed with sex even when unmotivated and see if you become aroused. Yes, that's all she's got. If that came from a man it would sound like the bloodcurdling "relax and enjoy it" response to women's concerns about rape.
Sex is scarcely the only area where men and women have different priorities. The need for sex to produce something tangible, also known as children, might be another. In fact, when attempting to list what men and women like equally — besides the obvious such as, should said children manifest themselves, their happiness — all I came up with is:
- 1. Coffee. I couldn't find a study that broke down consumption by sexes. But anecdotal evidence — in other words, my not entirely unprejudiced eye — makes me think women treasure coffee more highly, but men drink it in larger quantities. Let's call it even.
2. Cell phones. I found a couple of old studies that suggest male usage slightly exceeds women's. But anecdotal evidence doesn't bear this out. That is, the streets of Manhattan are full of women (young women, anyway) speaking on cell phones. Again, for the sake of argument — even.
It's at this point, we turn to our readers for help. True, you may be forced to resort to sweeping generalizations. But, for the sake of harmony between the sexes, kindly use the comments section below to list activities, objects, or qualities that you've observed men and women value in equal proportions.


text:
When she returns to the prestigious Berklee College of Music in a few weeks, singer-songwriter Sarah Tollerson will have something tangible to share with her classmates when the conversation works around to "what I did during the summer."
The 21-year-old Winder resident spent a portion of her summer recording her debut album "Keeping Old Love Letters," which was recorded, mixed and mastered in just 25 days. The album features Tollerson's soulful voice with a folk-pop sensibility on nine original tunes, all of which she says are love songs.
"Every song is a love song in a way," says Tollerson, a 2004 graduate of Winder-Barrow High School. "I write about love - it's either a curse or a blessing, but people can relate."
An album release party for "Keeping Old Love Letters" is set for Friday at Tasty World in Athens, following one last week at her family's establishment, 106 West, in Winder.
Tollerson's devotion to music was instilled by her father Thom, who is reuniting with some old friends as The Kindred Spirit, which served as the opening act for the performance at 106 West.
Sarah Tollerson
And The Big Fantastic
CD release concert
When: 8 p.m. Friday
Where: Tasty World, 312 E. Broad St.
Call: (706) 543-0797
Online: www.sarahtollerson.com
"As far as influences, my dad always comes to mind first," says Tollerson, whose shows locally include her band The Big Fantastic - Trevor Wooden (guitar), Alec Wooden (bass) and Joe Bleakley (drums). "(My dad's) an amazing guitarist and vocalist and he instilled my interest in music. I grew up listening to him play all these Beatles tunes and I didn't realize until years later, when I heard the Beatles themselves, that he was doing their songs."
Many years in the high school marching band also kept Tollerson's musical torch burning.
"I played saxophone in the marching band at school," says Tollerson, who these days primarily plays the guitar. "I can still play it, but I can't claim it. But I loved band because I got my musical background there. I was in the marching band for three years and the chorus all four years. I was a music geek for sure, but I don't regret any of it for a minute."
After high school, Tollerson enrolled at the University of Georgia but moved to Boston to begin her studies at Berklee in early 2006.
"A friend who had also gone to Georgia, then went to Berklee saw me perform and said that's where I should be going," she says. "Berklee is more focused on contemporary music and I also have a sense of adventure - I wanted to see some other part of the world."
Living a block away from the famed Fenway Park (which she admits she hasn't visited yet), Tollerson is enjoying her time in Boston and expects to graduate next August. She's a songwriting major and is also studying voice and performance.
"I wrote my first song when I was 16," Tollerson says. "But Berklee has taught me how to write a more structured, commercially friendly song. My first songs were just outpourings - I didn't really know anything about choruses or formats. ... I haven't written as many songs as I'd like because I'm a slow writer. I don't have a huge catalog, so I'm going to have to force myself to write, even if I don't like what I'm coming up with."
Among her instructors at Berklee are songwriting teacher Jon Aldrich, who has taught at the school for 30 years and is one of America's most successful commercial jingle writers, and voice teacher Livingston Taylor, the brother of superstar James Taylor and a well-known performer in his own right.
While at Berklee last year, Tollerson recorded six of her compositions for a class assignment, but her recent residency at Patrick Rives' The Odyssey Studio in Colbert was infinitely more rewarding, she says.
"The only studio experience I'd had was in Boston and it was just me singing," she says. "I loved what we did at The Odyssey. I was in charge every step of the way; it's good to have that kind of control and input."
Tollerson began as a solo act, performing at open mic night in the basement of the Washington Street Tavern. She's played in most of Athens' best-known venues and in 2004 won the Athens MUSIC Project Open Mic competition.
Besides recording an album while home for the summer, Tollerson also found time to work two jobs - one that she quips is decidedly "un-rock 'n' roll."
"My rock 'n' roll job is working at Chastain Park in Atlanta," she says. "In fact, as we speak, Clay Aiken is onstage. I'm usually responsible for making sure the artists have what they need in their dressing rooms and I'll also drive them around if necessary. My non-rock-star job is working at the Mayfield Dairy in Braselton, although I really do love it there. It will be hilarious to tell people in Boston that I worked in a milk factory this summer."
Tollerson is a well-known face at 106 West, as her family owns the venue, which also doubles as a music school.
"I played solo there a couple of times this summer and I probably played there 50 times when I was in high school," she says. "That's where I got my stage experience and that's where I started to believe that music was really something I could do."
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- What is the current version of ANT in RAD 8.5?
- If I download ANT source and build it in RAD, is it possible to associate that to the ANT build and debug into that ANT source from within RAD when running a script?
I need to do this to figure out why the Java 6 wildcard path works with simple jdk but not when using an ANT task.
Is it possible to do what I want to do?
What are the detailed steps to set it up, if it is possible?
Thank you


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Israeli security officials reached a face-saving compromise today with a leading Palestinian moderate, Sari Nusseibeh, to allow him to reopen his office here. Its closing brought Israel a rare rebuke from the Bush administration.
At the same time, Israeli officials continued to hold out the prospect that they might ease the plight of other Palestinians by releasing some of the hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue Israel has withheld from the governing Palestinian Authority and withdrawing from some of the West Bank territory that Israel has seized.
Israel said it released $20 million of the sequestered Palestinian money today. But there was no immediate sign of a more substantial concession of money or land, and Palestinian officials dismissed the Israeli proposals as mincing.
Israeli officials seem anxious to avert what Palestinians, aid workers and diplomats call a looming human crisis as the army continues to maintain 24-hour curfews, with sporadic breaks, in seven of the eight major Palestinian cities and towns in the West Bank. A recent study has shown significant malnutrition among Palestinian children, diplomats familiar with its results said.
''They want to stop a total collapse,'' said one European diplomat here, referring to the Israelis. Israel has recently made it easier for some aid groups to distribute food in the West Bank.Continue reading the main story
Although Israel has taken control of most of the West Bank and accused the Palestinian Authority of sponsoring violence against Israelis, it appears reluctant to shoulder the costly burden of providing services like education and garbage pickup to the Palestinians.
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told Israel Radio today that the government was prepared to withdraw troops from some West Bank cities and to release 10 percent of the $600 million it has withheld over the course of the 22-month conflict.
Israel collects the money under the terms of the Oslo agreement -- which set forth steps toward peace and for self-governance by the Palestinians -- but says it has withheld the money because it may be used to kill Israelis.
Other Israeli officials said no Israeli withdrawal was likely in the short term.
Mr. Peres spelled out conditions for his proposed steps: none of the tax money could be diverted to finance terrorism -- a condition that seemed intended to draw in the United States or another party as a monitor -- and the Palestinian security services must ensure Israeli security in areas from which the army withdraws.
That second condition has been negotiated repeatedly over the last year and a half as Israel's forces seized West Bank land in what it called efforts to prevent or punish Palestinian attacks. But it has never been achieved for long.
Speaking to Israel Radio, Mr. Peres cited Hebron and Bethlehem as the cities from which Israel might withdraw.
Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, met with Mr. Peres and other officials for almost three hours on Saturday night in Tel Aviv. He said that Mr. Peres raised his proposal for a partial withdrawal then and that the Palestinians rejected it. ''We told him we don't want a fragmented approach,'' Mr. Erekat said. ''We don't want to be notified; we want to be part of it. We offered to them a comprehensive approach that will include all Palestinian reoccupied areas within an agreed time frame.''
Mr. Peres, a leader of the left-leaning Labor Party and an architect of the failing Oslo peace effort, is at times out of sync, when it comes to diplomacy, with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the leader of the rightist Likud and an opponent of Oslo.
But Mr. Erekat said the Saturday meeting had been ''one of the most serious I've been at in several months.''
He said groups of Israeli and Palestinian officials would meet in the coming days to discuss releasing the tax money and improving daily life for Palestinians. He said there might also be a meeting on security.
The agreement to allow Dr. Nusseibeh, president of Al Quds University, to reopen his office came after he signed a statement making a commitment that the university and those working for it ''will operate without any connection to the Palestinian Authority.''
Uzi Landau, Israel's public security minister, closed Dr. Nusseibeh's office here on July 9, accusing him of serving as a ''Trojan horse'' for the Palestinian Authority to undermine Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem.
Dr. Nusseibeh, a professor of philosophy, is also the representative in Jerusalem of the Palestine Liberation Organization. He has been leading a careful debate among Palestinians over halting suicide attacks, and some Israeli politicians said the government's move against him undermined its stated goal of encouraging moderate Palestinian leaders.
In the statement, released by Mr. Landau's office, Dr. Nusseibeh also promised not to ''engage in any actions related to my post as 'holder of the Jerusalem portfolio' on the grounds'' of the university.
Dr. Nusseibeh said he had merely confirmed what he had said previously: that he was not working for the Palestinian Authority.
For Israelis, fears of Palestinian violence have subsided somewhat because of the new West Bank offensive, which began more than a month ago after back-to-back suicide bombings in Jerusalem. Perhaps as a consequence of that change, debate among Israelis over domestic differences is heating up.
In particular, the divide between the largely secular Israeli majority and a strictly Orthodox minority has re-emerged this week as Parliament takes up measures relating to benefits accorded to highly observant Orthodox Jews.
Today a legislative committee rejected a measure that would have required yeshiva students to perform two weeks of duty in the civil guard. Yeshiva students are exempt from the three years of compulsory military duty that other Israeli men perform, and their studies are subsidized by the government.
Writing in the newspaper Maariv, the analyst Ben Caspit declared today, ''It is becoming evident that the true problem threatening us from within, threatening our existence here as a Zionist and democratic country, is the problem of the ultra-Orthodox takeover.''
He called the extremely religious groups ''our brothers'' but added that they were ''no less dangerous than our bitterest enemies.''Continue reading the main story


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NEW YORK (Oct. 17)
Americans planning to visit Israel need not worry about the recent outbreak of polio there, according to an expert at the federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.
"Polio is not a reason not to go to Israel or to change our travel schedule while there, so long as the standard of your immunization is updated," said Dr. Walter Orenstein, director of the Division of Immunization at the Atlanta health agency.
His statement was made public this week by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, through its National Committee on Tourism to Israel.
Earlier this month, a health adviser at the CDC urged tourists to get inoculated before departing for Israel. "We strongly advise a traveler getting the vaccine at this time," Jim Mize told the Jewish Exponent of Philadelphia.
The Conference of Presidents stressed in a statement issued Monday that the nationwide vaccination program launched by the Israeli Health Ministry this month was a preventive measure, not an emergency.
Most countries in the world inoculate their entire populations against the disease, the World Health Organization has reported.
Tourists coming to Israel need not have prior vaccination, the Israeli Health Ministry said. But it advised those who have never received the polio vaccine to consult their physicians.
Tourists in Israel have been able to receive vaccination free of charge under a program begun Oct. 12, the Israel Government Tourist Office announced.
For more information, persons planning visits to Israel may call the hot line maintained by the National Committee on Tourism to Israel, at (800) TRAVL-40.


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Puerto Vallarta Fly Fishing
For all you fishermen who are headed to Puerto Vallarta we have the best fly fishing guide in Puerto Vallarta. He has been fishing these waters for well over 50 years. He has guided in Colorado and Alaska and prides himself with his many years of expertise. If you are a serious fly fishermen or even a novice, Chuy will humbly guide you every step of the way. To reserve a day with him click on the following link: Fly Fishing in Puerto Vallarta
We have also regular sportfishing available all year round with many species to target depending on the time of year you are visiting us here in Vallarta! We have a wide variety of packages from single fishermen at $179 U.S.D. and up. Send your inquiries to: email@example.com! We look forward to seeing you here in Vallarta! Tight lines!
Re: Puerto Vallarta Fly Fishing
Are you Chuy?
Re: Puerto Vallarta Fly Fishing
Air fare is totally out of line right now for Pv! OVER $400 more than last year!
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Unity3D and UDK are the two foremost free game engines in the independent, student, and amateur game development world. Unity was developed sometime around 2006 by Unity Technologies, while UDK, or Unreal Development Kit, was released by Epic Games in late 2009 as their own bid in the indie-friendly world. Both engines became available for free roughly a week apart from one another, and both, by this point, are getting a fairly strong following. Therefore, much in the way that you hear modelers discussing the merits of Maya versus 3DSMax, you hear a lot of discussion about whether Unity or UDK is the better game development platform. This article will serve as a comparison/contrast of the two for the benefit of this discussion, as I've had a lot of experience working with both.
Trying to define a "better" game engine is always tricky, because different engines offer different things. Virtually any engine can accomplish any task, it's just a matter of how much work you have to do to make different tasks happen in one as opposed to another. It's less that one game engine is actually "better" than another, and more that they're better-suited to specific kinds of production. In the case of Unity and UDK, both Unity Technologies and Epic Games are firmly set in developing an engine that caters to a wide variety of different kinds of projects and publishing needs, so it's an especially tricky discussion that requires a peek into a lot of details. We'll break this down in terms of Unity's features, then UDK's, and then a comparison.
Editor Interface and Pipeline
Unity3D is generally regarded as the easier of the two to pick up and run with. It has an especially easy art asset pipeline that effectively amounts to dragging your Maya files into a folder… and that's it. Unity automatically imports it. If you've ever worked with Maya, in fact, Unity has the exact same navigation controls by design, banking on the familiarity. Meanwhile, it comes with Monodevelop, a built-in scripting interface with autocomplete and syntax highlighting for the various programming languages that Unity supports, those being Javascript, C#, and Boo. Ease-of-use is the defining trait here. Many game engines are based on 15-year-old code-bases and interfaces, but Unity elected to build from scratch something that took advantage of modern sensibilities and usability structure, trying to make everything visual and accessible.
Everything in it is based on "GameObjects," which are simply containers that you attach mesh renderers, materials, scripts, particles, and various other components to. Where other engines would require you to define a set of sockets, here you can design an object directly in the level editor by lining up all the parts, then grouping them in a GameObject, effectively locking them all together. You can then go on to stick GameObjects you've defined into a "Prefab," which is a pre-defined object that can be instanced repeatedly. An instance of a prefab can be changed in any way without affecting the others, or you can edit the "master" prefab in your library, and changes will take effect in all of them. This is a convenient pipeline that makes creating content very smooth and intuitive, with convenient parallels to working in Flash game development — prefabs and gameobjects aren't terribly dissimilar to Movieclips and other Symbols.
Programming Tools
The coding setup similarly prides itself on convenience, offering not one but three scripting languages to work with: one in C#, one in Javascript, and one in Boo. The C# language is the most powerful and efficient, in that it's the most low-level. The Javascript language, meanwhile, offers a convenient introductory ground to people coming in from Flash game development, as it shares its roots with Actionscript. Boo is similar to Python, but beyond that I can't say much about it as I don't use it.
No particular language here is weaker than the others — Unity Technologies went the whole nine yards, writing equivalent functions for all three for whatever you might want to do. This flexibility is largely without precedent, as most engines say "this is our scripting language, and you're going to use it." The only respect where one might be "better" is performance, in that C# runs significantly faster than the other options and has the benefit of accessing all the .NET libraries for C#.
Learning Resources
The real highlight of Unity3D, though, is its extremely lively community of developers both amateur and professional who are all willing and eager to be helpful, and its documentation. The Unity3D resource page has several avenues for getting your questions answered, including UnityAnswers (an "Ask.com" type of site specifically for Unity), documentation on all major topics, and the best Scripting reference I've ever seen. You can rest assured as you approach Unity that whatever it is you're trying to figure out how to do, you can probably find it.
Publishing Options
In terms of its publishing options, the free version of Unity can publish to PC, Mac, and to a special web browser-based player developed by Unity Technologies. Unity Web Player was one of Unity's biggest features on release, as it's the first engine to really challenge Flash as a medium for browser games. Additionally, users can invest in packages for even more publishing options, including ones for iOS, Android, and major consoles. Most recently, Unity Technologies rolled out a Flash Player 11 option, enabling people to get around the download for Unity Web Player and just jump right into the game. Any way about it, Unity defined flexible publishing options. All of these options, though, come with a fee — $400 per team member for the basic publishing packages, and $1500 per head if you want to upgrade to Unity Pro and get the latest features. The good news is that publishing at all is royalty free–once you've paid your dues (if you really have to), Unity won't take a taste of your profits, but you have to front a lot of money to get a really pro-level development tool.
Unreal Development Kit
Editor Interface and Pipeline
The Unreal Development Kit is basically a free version of the Unreal Engine 3, featuring everything the engine has to offer short of source-level access–IE, access to the C++ code that includes native functions, the graphics, lighting, and physics engines, and other super low-level elements. Epic does significant updates to UDK every month, sharing every feature that they give to the AAA development teams that they license to. If you have a machine that can do it, yes, you can play with DirectX11 features.
The downside is that using the engine is generally more technical, as the editor is based on a 15-year-old codebase. Many un-intuitive conventions are still left over from the Unreal Engine 1. In the updates since 2009 a lot of them have been ironed out to reflect more modern sensibilities: subtractive world is gone forever, for better or for worse, the content browser in particular is vastly better for displaying assets than Unreal Tournament 3's generic browser, and all kinds of new gadgets have been added, including a new terrain editor that works like Zbrush, putting it miles ahead of Unity's terrain editor in many ways. But that doesn't change that there's an awful lot of work-arounds and technical mumbo-jumbo that needs to be done to put a game together.
Importing assets is, while not a pain in the ass, a rather picky process involving grabbing things and putting them in a compressed package, which requires careful organization in order to assure loading efficiency. For modelers it can be a little bit of a pain, as it requires adding an extra plugin to their modeling program called ActorX; UDK recently made a move to integrate the FBX standard, but it's still not as reliable as ActorX, mainly because different modeling programs output FBX files slightly differently from one another. A friend of mine had no end of hell trying to make Blender's FBX exporter play nice with UDK.
Additionally, unlike with Unity, which will import a complete asset direct from the raw source files, UDK requires you to basically disassemble and reassemble a model's components. In other words, what you get when you import it is a blank model, and you have to re-assign animations, rebuild materials, and then re-assign them after already putting them together in your art program. In order to make a complete, working game asset or object, meanwhile, you need to script a class — no easy click-and-drag interface here, you fill in file paths for everything manually with good old fashioned brute force programming busywork.
It's not that this technical mumbo-jumbo is all that hard that's the problem. UDK is using standards that are employed across an entire industry of game and software development tools, and honestly does a lot more to save time and effort than most people realize. Rather, the problem is that it's very intimidating and that it can be easy to get lost within the huge array of pre-canned tools the thing comes with. Where Unity3D's free/indie license cuts out a lot of tools and functions, forcing you to buy a $1500 per head license in order to get the rest, UDK gives you everything, and I mean everything. Here's a list of the things that UDK comes with:
- Level editor featuring CSG brushes for blocking out levels.
- Animtree editor for composing animation logic visually. Very little code necessary.
- "Kismet" visual scripting editor for level design.
- "Matinee" interface built-in to Kismet for composing cinematics.
- Node-based Sound editor, enabling networks of sounds to be integrated together.
- Node-based material editor, allowing artists to compose materials visually.
- Skeletal and Static mesh editors, including configurations for cloth, fracture meshes, native collision mesh tools, and LoD generation.
- Node-based post-processing chain editor.
- A whole bunch of assets, default gametypes, and scripts from Unreal Tournament and Epic's GDC demos.
- Scaleform, a programming resource allowing you to integrate Adobe Flash UIs into your game.
- Cascade, a particle editor with support for a huge array of particle features.
The benefit is that if you master these tools, your projects will glide. You wouldn't believe how much time they save if employed properly and judiciously. You don't have to write new shaders, you don't have to hand-script every door opening — you don't even have to hand-program most animations, because the Animtree for a character just looks at what state it's in or what direction it's moving in and how fast, then blends animations accordingly. There's always quirks and limitations, but a basic understanding of Unrealscript can alleviate them, giving you an in to developing custom nodes in any of these editors. I myself have developed a handful of custom animtree nodes and plenty of custom kismet for the games I've worked on — they're just little containers that access a function call or a variable.
Programming Tools
Speaking of which, the programming tools are … well, there aren't any. People ask me all the time "where exactly IS Unrealscript? I can't find the editor!" That's because there is no Unrealscript editor integrated with the Unreal Engine interface at all. Rather, what you're meant to do is grab ConTEXT, Notepad++, or Visual Studio, get an Unrealscript library for it, and use that to program. The upside is that if you can get your hands on Visual Studio, it's the best programming tool around — NFringe's autocomplete and syntax highlighting for Unrealscript is fantastic and will save you tons of time. If you can't afford Visual Studio or aren't at a University with a cushy student deal with Microsoft, then Visual Studio Shell will work just fine as a free alternative.
Fortunately, UDK comes with a huge library of Unrealscript files, ranging from kismet nodes to weapon assets, player pawns, and gametypes, offering lots of examples you can follow to start scripting. UNfortunately, none of these were actually made with the intention of being learning examples; the most complete stuff comes from Unreal Tournament and is so bloated with stuff that's not necessarily relevant to what you're trying to do that it's really impractical to try and dissect. What's more, there's a very specific hierarchy to how Unrealscript is meant to be organized, with classes extending from classes extending from classes and whole trees of them already laid out.
This organization and codebase is very intimidating at first, and takes a bit of time to learn, but it ultimately benefits you an awful lot more than it holds you back once you get to understand it, in that it's highly consistent and supplies you with a solid base for whatever you need to program. There's already a "Weapon" class that covers all the basics of giving a character a weapon, for instance, and you can extend that into potentially dozens of scripts, each of which only features just enough code to do what you want, keeping them clean and easy to look through.
Learning how the pre-built sets of classes fit together and communicate is a little intimidating at first, but actually is rather easy as you start to learn that they sort of sit in different "families" that can be explored from the bottom up when you aren't sure what to do or can't figure out what function needs changing. Classes can be instanced, found, and referenced at the drop of a hat, referred to in the same way that you'd refer to any standard variable (int, float, etc.) and are extremely reliable and efficient once they're working.
This, kids, is called object-oriented programming. It's a standard of software development designed to make big programs like this efficient, and it's here to help you a lot more than it is to hurt you. Unity also supports it, but not as intuitively, and for beginner game developers in Unity it's easy to fall into bad habits with it. You can extend and inherit Unity classes in a similar way, but remember, a Unity class is a behavior–only a piece of a full, functioning asset. To do the same things with GameObjects as you can with Classes, you have to go well out of your way and do some things that aren't necessarily terribly efficient, mitigating a lot of the benefits of object-oriented programming.
Learning Resources
If there's a real problem, it's that understanding how all of these things fit together takes time, and Epic's documentation and community, although it's improved significantly in the last year, is still not very friendly to use, let alone able to compete with Unity's. The editor documentation and resources are fantastic, but the coding resources in particular are awful, half because the script library changes all the time and half because there just aren't a lot of good places to look. It's getting better all the time, but for a beginner, figuring out what basic "parts" come together to make up a fully working game is the problem a lot more than understanding what an Integer or a Float is, and very few people are willing to give a good explanation. This, though, is a problem holding back game development education universally, not just UDK.
Publishing Options
UDK out of the box is able to support PC and iOS publishing. Epic has support for virtually every other platform, but you need to go through them to get that support. There's a license of $99 that you need to pay in order to publish a game commercially… but you pay that once, for your entire production team — not per head, and not getting this license doesn't preclude you from receiving any of the editor's tools; you get exactly what AAA game devs get no matter what level of user you are. When you publish your game, however, once you make $50,000 off of it, Epic is entitled to a 30% royalty, making the licensing model a bit of a double-edged sword. Obviously that isn't the case if you become a full Unreal Engine licensee, but that license fee is in the millions of dollars anyway.
Bottom Line
So, let's get to the point, finally — which one is better? Again, it depends on the type of game you're trying to make.
Where Unreal Wins
If what you want is to create a real-time action or puzzle game of any kind, then UDK is far and away a much better choice. With the libraries and tools that it already has, you can accomplish in a week what it'd take you a month to set up in Unity and generate content faster and more reliably–yes, I said faster. The pipeline might take time to understand, but it's also non-destructive, and many of the "extra steps" I talked about, if you care about performance and fidelity at all, you would have to do in Unity anyway. You'd have to program new shaders to get things looking the way you want, which means you'd have to reassemble your art assets anyway, and you'd have to do real object-oriented programming instead of fake object-oriented programming. Worse yet, you'd have to go out of your way to accomplish these very basic things that UDK makes easy or has already covered for you.
I want to make this absolutely clear: Unity doesn't have Matinee. It doesn't have Kismet. It doesn't have an Animtree editor. It doesn't have Scaleform, unless you're willing to pay a $200 license for that and a $1500 license for Unity Pro (yes, compatibility with third-party plugins is one of the things they hold back). It doesn't even support animated particles out of the box unless you script that by hand yourself.
This extends all the way down into the source, into the graphics engine. Unity can accomplish visually most of the things that UDK can, but because it's aimed at the indie market, which isn't expected to create as ambitious a set of projects, it cuts a lot of corners that can end up crippling a project. There isn't native level-of-detail support, you have to code that for yourself. There isn't native culling support, it renders everything. If you put together the exact same environment in both engines, UDK will come out way ahead in terms of framerate and performance because it doesn't cut these corners.
Basically, everything that UDK goes out of its way to help you do, you need to script for yourself, or else you need to develop your own tools for it. It has a fistful of pre-built classes that can be helpful for kick-starting your projects, like the Character Controller, but where Unity has this bare minimum, really superficial effort's worth of scripts available (I never use the default stuff, the details are always way off), Unreal has the foundations already laid for entire games — you just need to be savvy enough to know what you don't have to code for yourself to take advantage of them.
Where Unity Wins
If you're trying to create virtually any other type of game other than a real-time, action-based game, then Unity comes out miles ahead. For as much as I talk about Unreal setting a better professional standard and being more efficient, there are many times when its vast library of resources and tools get in the way.
If you're creating a turn-based RPG, for instance, it can be much more of a pain in the butt than it's worth to try and make the UDK Pawn into a battle character, being that all you need is something that looks like it's working, not something that actually has collision and weapons and whatnot. You're basically going to program all the functionality from scratch anyway, so what's the point? If you're making a strategy game, then what good is it to have Kismet and Matinee at your disposal? Your cinematics just aren't that big of a deal. If you're making a casual game aimed at iOS or Android, what's the point of all the extra guts? You have to cut down the graphics anyhow.
Better yet, what's the point of having to jump through an extra set of hoops just to add Android to your list of platforms? Unity's attitude is "if you can pay, you can play," giving you a direct line to the tools and features you want without a fuss where Epic requires you to negotiate with them. The initial investment is more expensive than running with UDK, at hundreds and even thousands of dollars per head, but the long-term is much better, with no royalties to worry about.
Even better still, Unity web player! If you don't want to shell out thousands of dollars, you can jump straight into doing browser games that're on par with Playstation 2 to early Xbox 360 production values, which can be both incredibly fun and incredibly lucrative. For the same support … oh wait, Unreal doesn't have equivalent support. Epic is working on Flash Player 11 support, but it's uncertain at the time of writing when this is actually going to see the light of day with UDK, or even if it will since Unreal Engine 4 is on its way.
Meanwhile, just because Unity doesn't have a lot of the tools UDK has by default doesn't mean it can't have them. That lively community I was talking about has developed a whole world of editor extensions that you can purchase through Unity's in-editor Asset Store. Among my favorites are an XML/JSON serialization library I found for $15, and uScript, a visual scripting interface for Unity that works exactly like Unreal Kismet. There's tons of tools and libraries like this specialized to many different niches and types of productions, including branching dialogue tools and even toolsets that enable you to make 2D, tile-based games. Unlike Scaleform, many of these are compatible, to at least a certain extent, with the free version of Unity.
Oh, this stuff costs. Many of them range $50-100 or even $200, so again, big initial investment. If you were to add it up, UDK's built-in tools total about $4000 worth of Unity extensions (including a Pro license). Still, there's a certain benefit to being able to pick and choose specialized tools, and there's more of a benefit still to how open the platform is. In Unreal, there's no possibility of added editor extensions; what Epic ships it with, you're stuck with, unless you're a full Unreal Engine licensee. With Unity, you can use Unityscript itself to build these extensions — the entire Unity editor is even built in Unity's GUI system, so all your conventions from gameplay programming carry over directly to extension programming.
Conclusion and Additional Reading
So, there you have it — my breakdown of Unity vs. UDK. Hopefully folks will find this informative and useful information. I would love to add a few more perspectives to this analysis, like how they measure up to CryEngine, but alas, my experiences with it are very limited compared with these two engines, which have been my tools of choice for five years. I could talk about XNA and the merits of programming your own engine, or GameMaker, perhaps, but it seems like those are discussions best kept to another day — for right now, the 3D game development tools will do fine.
If you'd like additional resources on these engines, here's a list of extra reading:
Unreal Development Kit
- My Tutorials — A set of tutorials walking through the creation of basic game assets. Some may be in need of an update.
- Mougli's Portfolio — Another tutorial site with additional resources.
- UDN Documentation — Epic's official documentation.
- Unity3D Documentation — Unity Technologies' official documentation.
- Unity Script Reference — The most kick-ass script reference page ever made.


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To Sleep Better…Just Stretch!
Having trouble falling asleep? According to experts, most of us are! But don't just stare at the ceiling or start watching TV (or obsess over those bills). Instead, do these stretches right before bed to fall asleep faster and sleep better.
Celebrate Your Health! LIKE BDO on Facebook!
Remember: With each pose, breathe in and out through your nose for a calming effect on the nervous system.
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About Us
Turtle Beach announces Ear Force X12 headset for Xbox 360 and PC
posted: 7/26/2011 9:05:00 AM
More On:
Today, Turtle Beach announced the
Ear Force X12 Amplified Stereo Gaming Headset
for the Xbox 360 and PC. Whew, that's a mouthful. The
will feature massive 50mm speakers and an in-line amplifier for precision audio control, as well as several other features. Coming in at around $59.99, the
will be available this fall at gaming and major retailers or on their site at
Turtle Beach Announces the Ear Force® X12 Gaming Headset
for Xbox 360® and PC
The Next Evolution of the Best-selling Xbox 360 Stereo Headset Ever, Ear Force X12 Elevates Game Audio Performance and Value to New Heights
Elmsford, NY, July 26, 2011 –
Turtle Beach, the market leading pioneers of the gaming headset category, today announced the Ear Force X12 Amplified Stereo Gaming Headset for Xbox 360 and PC. The X12 features massive 50mm speakers for enhanced audio immersion along with an In-line Amplifier for precision audio control at your fingertips. With Microphone Monitoring and Variable Bass Boost included, the X12 continues the Turtle Beach tradition of delivering superior gaming audio at an affordable price.
Designed primarily for the Xbox 360, but compatible with PC, the X12 is the next generation of the best-selling and battle-tested X1, which created the console headset category in 2007, and the X11, which has been the best-selling Xbox headset in history. The X12 features vastly improved sound quality and a rugged but lightweight, ergonomic design that provides gamers with an enhanced audio experience and comfort during long gaming sessions. Powered by USB, the X12 never needs batteries and combines crystal-clear audio with advanced features for an attractive and affordable package no gamer can pass up.
"As the record breaking sales of the X1 and X11 have already shown, avid gamers are serious about audio and will seek out equipment that will enhance their experience and skills." says Michael Arzt, VP of Marketing and Sales for Turtle Beach. "Turtle Beach strives to support serious gamers of all levels by constantly refining and improving even our best-selling products and the new X12 represents this commitment to audio quality and high performance while still retaining the unmatched value that the X-series is known for."
Key features and benefits of the Turtle Beach Ear Force X12 include:
· Amplified stereo audio for crisp highs and deep lows
· Premium 50mm speakers for highest fidelity sound
· Variable Bass Boost adds depth and realism to the game audio
· In-line amplifier that allows for independent control of chat, bass and game volume
· Microphone Monitoring so you never have to raise your voice to hear yourself
· Completely powered by USB so you will never need replacement batteries
· Lightweight design with breathable, fabric mesh ear cushions for enhanced comfort
· Fully-compatible with the DSS 7.1 Surround Sound Processor
The Turtle Beach Ear Force X12 Gaming Headset will be available this Fall at an MSRP of $59.95 at gaming and major retailers or at
About Turtle Beach
Turtle Beach (
) designs and markets premium audio peripherals for personal computer and video game platforms, including its acclaimed line of Ear Force gaming headphones and headsets crafted for Xbox 360 and PS3 game consoles and PC games. Turtle Beach's Ear Force X41 wireless headset is
Official XBOX Magazine's
"2009 Peripheral of the Year
Turtle Beach, headquartered in Elmsford, New York, is a brand of Voyetra Turtle Beach, Inc., which has been at the forefront of music and audio technology for more than three decades and is recognized as a pioneer of today's PC audio industry.
Turtle Beach and Ear Force are registered trademarks of Voyetra Turtle Beach, Inc. XBOX 360 is a registered trademark of Microsoft, Corp. All other trademarks are property of their respective holders and are hereby acknowledged.
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Iberdrola hopes for 'fair' price after Bolivia nationalisation
Spanish energy group Iberdrola said Saturday it hopes Bolivia will pay "a fair price" for four electrical utilities nationalised by La Paz earlier in the day.
"We hope we will get the real value of our share" in the expropriated companies, an Iberdrola spokesman told AFP.
He did not say how much the Spanish company expected to be paid or whether an estimate had already been made.
Quoting market sources the Spanish press estimated Iberdrola's share in the nationalised electrical utilities in Bolivia at 100 million dollars.
Bolivian President Evo Morales announced earlier Saturday a decree targeting Iberdrola-owned utilities in the cities of La Paz and Oruro. They are called Electropaz and Elfeo respectively.
In La Paz, soldiers later took control of power plants that until now were run by Iberdrola, while police seized corporate offices.
It was the latest in a series of such seizures by the outspoken leftist who is a key member of a group of populist South American presidents led by the now-ailing Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.
In May, Morales nationalised a subsidiary of another Spanish power group, Red Electrica Corporacion, which distributed electricity.
This time, Morales said he was acting because Iberdrola charged more for electricity in rural areas than it did in cities, and service was also uneven.
"We are forced to take this measure so that utility rates will be uniform" and service will be of the same quality in the country as in urban areas, the president said at a ceremony at the presidential palace.
He said Iberdrola would be compensated after an evaluation of its seized assets. This will be done by a private Bolivian company and can take up to six months.
Iberdrola owns 63.4 percent of Iberbolivia de Inversiones, which holds 89.5 percent of Electropaz and 92.8 percent of Elfeo, according to stock market data.
"To date we have not received the text of the nationalisation decree," signed by Morales, said the Iberdrola spokesman, but added that the company expected to get the paper soon.


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Hello Everyone- I had read alot and done alot of research on vaser liposelection. I am in my mid 30's, never had children and for the last 10 years I have been pretty dedicated to working out at my gym and eating somewhat healthy. I decided to choose vaser because it sounded promising-less invasive than traditional lipo and the procedure used ultrasonic technology and was overall a safer way to go.
About myself, I am 5'9", medium build, (145 lbs), I have bigger upper thighs, and I carry my weight also in my midsection. No matter what, I never saw much results over the years. Unfortunately, I wasn't genetically blessed with a tight body. I decided to finally do vaser lipo because I didn't want to get any bigger and wanted to maintain a healthy weight, esp. as I get older, and grow old gracefully! :)
I chose a plastic surgeon, highly trained in this specialty to perform my lipo. It's been 3 weeks since I had it done in my inner and outer thighs. The procedure was okay, no major problems, I did not feel hardly anything. I had to take some pain medicine for about 1 week post-op-no big deal. I had some bruising, felt somewhat sore for about 1 1/2 weeks. Today, I still have some swelling in certain areas and am numb in other areas. I am wearing my compression garment 24/7, unless I wash it. To be honest, I'm not sure if I am pretty much at my final result? If I am, I really don't see much difference.
Tomorrow, I am having my abdominal section and my love handles done. I am a little nervous. Right now I am asking myself if it is worth it, esp, if I am not going to see much results afterwards. I already paid-I can't get my $$ back. I was reading on the website that vaser lipo results won't really be completed till at least 3 months-6 months-Does anyone know if this is true? I am a patient person, but my surgeon said I would see results in about 2 weeks-I'm not seeing much.
Anyone who has had vaser, I would like for you to share your results with me. I hope this helps someone. By the way, I am not putting the procedure down, I just don't know what to really expect, like I thought I had expected before I went through with it.
Sincerely, your hygienist


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Returning Soldier Has Heartwarming Reunion With 6-Year Old Daughter on Her Birthday
Six-year old Baylee was celebrating her birthday with her kindergarten class by sharing a poster of her favorite things. Among them were chocolate and her father, Sgt. Adam Page, who has been serving in Afghanistan for as long as Baylee has been alive. Just when Baylee mentioned her beloved dad, her teacher told her to turn around because there was a surprise.


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Gaylussacia baccata
Ericaceae (Heath family)
Description: This low deciduous shrub is 1-3' tall, branching occasionally. Young stems are yellowish green to reddish brown, pubescent or hairless, while older stems are light gray to nearly black. The wood of the stems is relatively brittle and weak. The blades of alternate leaves are 1-2¼" long and ½-1" across; they are oblong-ovate, obovate, or narrowly oval and smooth along their margins. The upper surface of the blades is yellowish green and slightly shiny, while the lower surface is dull yellowish green and more or less covered with fine resinous dots that are yellow (more visible with a 10x hand lens). The petiole is short and slender. Short fine hairs are often present on the lower blade surface and petioles. The flowers develop in raceme-like clusters from the axils of the leaves. Individual flowers are up to 1/3" (8 mm.) long and a little less across, consisting of a short yellowish green calyx with 5 broad lobes and a tubular corolla with 5 tiny lobes along its rim that are strongly recurved. The red corolla (rarely white) is slightly constricted toward its throat, forming an urn-like shape. Each flower also has 10 inserted stamens and a pistil with a single style. The pedicels and calyces of the flowers are covered with short fine hairs and/or yellow resinous dots. The blooming period occurs from late spring to early summer, lasting about 3 weeks. Later, the flowers are replaced by globoid berries up to 1/3" (8 mm.) across. These berries are initially green, but they become blue-black at maturity. The interior of each berry is fleshy and sweet; it contains 10 seeds, which are individually up to 2 mm. long. The woody root system is shallow and branching; it can develop clonal offsets from underground runners. Colonies of plants are often produced. The leaves turn red during the autumn before falling to the ground.
Cultivation: The preference is partial sun, mesic to dry conditions, and an acidic soil that is sandy or rocky. Plants that are grown in too much shade may fail to produce flowers and fruit. The flowers are self-fertile, but fruit production is better when there is cross-pollination.
Range & Habitat: Black Huckleberry is a native shrub that is found primarily in northern and southern Illinois (see Distribution Map), where it is occasional in sandy or rocky areas. Elsewhere in the state, it is rare or absent. Habitats consist of upland rocky woodlands, wooded slopes, sandy savannas, openings in sandy woodlands, sandy shrub prairies, rocky bluffs and sandstone cliffs, sandy or rocky thickets, and stabilized sand dunes. Outside of Illinois, this shrub is sometimes found in bogs. Because it is able to resprout from underground runners, this shrub adapts to fire-prone habitats. In sandy shrub prairies, it is occasionally the dominant plant.
Faunal Associations: The flowers are cross-pollinated primarily by honeybees, bumblebees, and Andrenid bees. Other floral visitors include the Karner Blue butterfly and various Syrphid flies. These insects seek primarily nectar from the flowers, although the Syrphid flies probably feed on the pollen. The caterpillars of the butterfly Callophrys henrici (Henry's Elfin) feed on Black Huckleberry, as do the caterpillars of several moths, specifically: Amorbia humerosana (White-Lined Leafroller), Chrysanympha formosa (Formosa Looper Moth), Croesia curvalana (Blueberry Leaftier), Cyclophora pendulinaria (Sweet Fern Geometer), Melanomma auricinctaria (Gold-Lined Melanomma), Pangrapta decoralis (Decorated Owlet), Psectraglaea carnosa (Pink Sallow), Sphinx gordius (Gordian Sphinx), Synchlora aerata (Wavy-Lined Emerald), and Zomaria interruptolineana (Broken-Lined Zomaria). Another insect that feeds on Black Huckleberry is Melanoplus fasciatus (Huckleberry Spur-Throated Grasshopper).
Among vertebrate animals, the fruit is eaten by many species of upland gamebirds and songbirds (see Bird Table). Mammals that eat the fruit include the Gray Fox, Red Fox, Raccoon, Opossum, Striped Skunk, Fox Squirrel, Gray Squirrel, Eastern Chipmunk, and White-Footed Mouse. Dense colonies of Black Huckleberry in shrub prairie provide nesting habitat for the Northern Harrier and probably other birds. Such colonies provide protective cover for small animals.
Photographic Location: The photo of the flowers was taken in a sandy savanna at the Oak Opening Nature Preserve in NW Ohio, while the photos of the leafy shrub, twig, and leaf underside were taken in an upland rocky woodland near a ravine at The Potholes in west-central Indiana.
Comments: The berries of huckleberries are very similar to the berries of blueberries, except the latter usually contain more seeds (8-20) that are smaller in size. The foliage and woody stems of Black Huckleberry are quite similar to those of low-bush blueberries (particularly Vaccinium pallidum), except the leaf undersides of the former shrub are covered with resinous yellow dots, while the leaf undersides of blueberries lack such resinous dots. In Illinois, Black Huckleberry is the only species in its genus, although other huckleberry species can be found in the southeastern United States.


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Macau Hosts Inaugural The Super 8 Counties Back Ian Botham's Proposal EuroLeague Presents Calendar Proposal UCI Elects Lappartient As President League Notes France Refuses To Back Shorter 6 Nations Botham Criticizes Cricket's Transfer System ARU CEO Faces Senate Grilling AFL's 'Yes' Vote Divides Fans, Players No Room For Oceania In Asian Games, OCA Says
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SBD Global/May 16, 2014/Leagues and Governing Bodies
Cricket Hit With Fresh Fixing Evidence From Former New Zealand Batsman Lou Vincent
Published May 16, 2014
CA SPEAKS OUT: In Sydney, Chloe Saltau reported Cricket Australia's own anti-corruption detectives "have been assured that no Australian players, teams or matches are being investigated." But the scandal "has widespread implications for world cricket." CA "has a financial stake" of 30% in the Champions League. While CA "has no reason to believe any of its players are under scrutiny, its surveillance team remains on high alert after an explosion in betting on the Big Bash League last summer" (SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, 5/15).
ECB RESPONDS: In London, Richard Hobson reported the England & Wales Cricket Board and Lancashire "refused to comment." The ICC said "it does not comment on ACSU investigations." The publicity "is a timely reminder of the threat posed by illegal bookmakers in the subcontinent on the eve of the revamped Twenty20 competition in England." The ECB "is not planning to alter a strategy for policing the threat of spot-fixing, believing that it worked successfully in 2013" (LONDON TIMES, 5/15).
NZC REACTION: In Auckland, Dylan Cleaver reported New Zealand Cricket "have confirmed that games involving the Auckland Aces at the 2012 Champions League in South Africa are being investigated by the ICC." NZC CEO David White said, "We can confirm the following: No games played in New Zealand are being investigated by the ICC. No current Black Caps are being investigated. No matches involving New Zealand national teams are being investigated, however we have been informed by the ICC that some Auckland Aces matches in the Champions League in SA in 2012 are being investigated" (NZ HERALD, 5/15).


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4 things you must consider when conducting a workplace investigation
When you are conducting a workplace investigation, there are a lot of things going on…
You're trying to plan the investigation process, collate evidence, interview witnesses and co-ordinate a number of different parties – all while having to ensure that you are conducting the investigation in a procedurally fair manner.
So it's not surprising that sometimes you can become so focused on getting an outcome that you forget other factors that could expose you to legal liability.
Well to help you with this difficult process, the Employment Law Practical Handbook has prepared a brand new chapter on workplace investigations (written by Grevis Beard and Lisa Klug of Worklogic Pty Ltd).
Here are 4 things discussed in the new chapter that you should consider when conducting a workplace investigation (which you may not have thought of!):
- Effective communication and pre-investigation dealings with all parties. You need to remember that being involved in a workplace investigation can be very stressful for all participants – and you should take steps to provide support and clear explanations to each person. This will minimise the risk of a participant feeling negatively impacted by the investigation and making a stress claim or other claim against you.
- Confidentiality. Workplace investigations are confidential processes – and you need to ensure that this is always the case. Remind all participants that they cannot speak about the investigation with other employees or with other witnesses involved in the matter. If a participant feels that confidentiality has been compromised, they may lose confidence in the process and feel they are not being protected.
- Anonymity. While you must maintain confidentiality, if a participant requests anonymity, you may not be able to grant their request as you could breach the principles of natural justice. In most cases, it will be necessary for you to disclose the identity of the complainant and/or respondent in order for witnesses to provide relevant evidence.
- The reluctant complainant. Sometimes a complainant does not want to be named or formalise a complaint, but you should explain to them that as an employer, you have a legal duty to investigate the matter under workplace health and safety laws and discrimination laws.
For more information on how to conduct thorough and legal workplace investigations, check out the brand new Workplace Investigations chapter in your most recent Employment Law Practical Handbook update (due on your desk about now!). It includes very clear and practical guidance on who should conduct workplace investigations and how they should be conducted.
Not yet a subscriber to the Employment Law Practical Handbook? Click here for more information on how you can trial a copy for free in your workplace for 14 days!
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Tags: Workplace Investigations


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Rolling for Initiative is a weekly column by Scott Thorne, PhD, owner of Castle Perilous Games & Books in Carbondale, Illinois and instructor in marketing at Southeast Missouri State University. This week, Thorne looks at some upcoming revivals of popular things from the past.
The title is an old lyric but after the announcements and releases of the past six months, that was the line that sprung to mind when writing this column.
First, we had the release last summer by Wizards of the Coast of reprints of the original AD&D 1st edition Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide and Monster Manual, with part of the proceeds going to the Gygax Memorial fund, a worthy cause.
However, in the last month or so, I have seen announcements of several other product re-launches or revisions that date back to the same era. Coincidence?
First, the recently revived TSR Games revealed the company would start up Gygax Magazine (see "TSR Games Returns"), with a number of luminaries from the previous TSR era associated with the project. Just recently I read that Phil Foglio will revive his What's New with Phil and Dixie strip. Most people today know Foglio for his Girl Genius series of graphic novels but he did a lot of work for TSR and later WotC, including Dragon Magazine and several early Magic cards. However, he was best known during the period for his What's New strips, which poked fun at RPG and board games during their Dragon Magazine run, and CCGs during the later Duelist Magazine run. The strips were collected in three volumes, all of which have been out of print for years.
Finally, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, I am a big fan of Tunnels and Trolls, both because of its longevity and its usefulness as an introductory role playing game. However, I am not a big fan of Kickstarter projects, which require investment up front with no guarantee the product will ever launch. That is why I am of two minds regarding the recently announced Kickstarter projects by Flying Buffalo of Tunnels and Trolls 5th edition and Citybook 8. With the current edition unavailable through distribution in recent months, if using Kickstarter is the only way for Flying Buffalo to get Tunnels and Trolls back into print, I guess I can live with it but will wait to see how funding goes before deciding whether to back the project or not, as I really hate tying up scarce capital for several months before I have any product to show for it. I am glad to see the launch of another Citybook, which was one of the earliest generic RPG resources, and hope FBI has some form of promotional campaign planned to announce the first new Citybook in over a decade.
With all this, and reports of another edition of Villains & Vigilantes on the horizon and FASA coming back to life, announcing its first new products in over a decade, when can we expect the revivals of Fineous Fingers and Bunnies and Burrows?
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflct the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
Column by Scott Thorne
Posted by ICv2 on January 6, 2013 @ 11:06 pm CT
As Modiphius Launches 'Infinity RPG'
September 22, 2017
Modiphius Entertainment is poised to unleash Corvus Belli's science fiction skirmish game Infinity on a new quadrant of the gaming world with the Infinity RPG.
From NECA and Alcon Entertainment
September 22, 2017
NECA has partnered with Alcon Entertainment to release The Art and Soul of Blade Runner 2049 ,
Column by Rob Salkowitz
September 19, 2017
This week, Rob Salkowitz shows the power of social media analytics.
Column by Scott Thorne
September 18, 2017
This week, Scott Thorne shares three books that can make store owners more successful.


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Alright so after a few weeks of my cousin Hair bugging me to join I did. Thus i will add my story.
I'm honestly still a little on the fence. Not because i still believe, but because if i leave the church i leave my friend base. I dont have many friends outside the church, and the friends i have inside the church some are great friends while other people choose not to acknowledge your existence.
i've never been a popular guy. I always seemed to be the scape goat for being made fun of. Since i was in Cubs in my home ward, every week i was always being made fun of, into scouts, deacons, teachers, priests, outside of church doing sporting activities. It never ended. Eventually they grew out of it. It should be mentioned that it was never abusive. They were never beating me up, or anything, just being mean and unkind. They were reciprocating what had been done to them. Being that it was a cyclical thing, what goes around comes around. But i was happy for those years when they moved up. I was a smaller kid quiet kid too. Fast forward to now, i still feel as though I dont fit in. The friends i've got get in touch when they have time, but the friends i think i have talk to me when they have time. And as i said above, many dont acknowledge my existence. Its a two way street i know, but einstein said something to the effect of, Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results.
so here i am. Sick and tired of not fitting in, wanting to have genuine friends and feel included. I apologize if this was a little bit of a rant, but its my reason. I dont and wont waste my time with people who dont appreciate me, and who i am. I am weird. I love motorsports, and race go-karts in the summer. I didnt know anyone else before starting this who raced, or loved motorsports like i do. I'd almost rather worship motorsports. but who the hell is normal?! My uncle has mentioned to me, do not waste your time if your not getting your needs met. Move the hell on. so I'm trying, but its difficult to break the routine.
Feel free to comment, and suggest anything.
PS would someone tell me how the hell i can stop thinking of hymns to sing in my head!?!?
Views: 310
I'm 26. been in the same YSA ward since 18 and while hopping to others has helped i'm sick and tired of being myself, and not being accepted. So i'm gonna continue being myself, and join the religion of motorsports, coffee, a little booze now and again, and absolutely as much sex as i can haha.
Jeff, I am so curious ....... how are you now?
2 years on leaving, and couldnt be happier. I've gotten deeply interested in the cocktail culture of making exceptional drinks from scratch, and adding alcohol to liven them up.
Sexually, couldnt be happier. I've learned and enjoyed much with my GF who is NMO(?) im a little out of touch with the TLA's haha.
When I moved to ontario for a year, she flew out to visit me, where we had direct one on one time for around a week at a time. It was glorious exploring and having adventure. Around the time of your post Lori, I was in the process of moving back to Alberta and re-acclimatizing to home. Though I'm back to living with my parents while i save money...that sucks.
All in all no complains at all!