text:
Call for stamp duty change in UK to boost residential property market
It is almost certain that the UK Chancellor Philip Hammond will address issues in the property market in his autumn statement later this week with stamp duty and landlord tax being flagged as needing reform by the real estate industry.
The latest plea for change comes from estate agents Stirling Ackroyd. Head of residential development Nick Davies says that stamp duty must be cut to get the property market going again after a Brexit lull.
In particular agents believe that it is necessary to cut stamp duty at the higher end of the market which in London has been hard hit and seen prices and sales fall due to stamp duty change a couple of years ago rather than Brexit.
The analysis by Stirling Ackroyd suggests that the top 25% of London properties have seen their house prices cut by 5.4% since the second quarter of and house prices for the top 25% also fell by 1.5% on the previous quarter in the second quarter of 2016, directly following the introduction of the 3% stamp duty surcharge on second homes in April 2016.
The data shows that stamp duty, rather than Brexit, is holding back the top end of the London property market with the introduction of a graduated rate across five price bands and increased stamp duty on properties priced at over £1,125,000, having had a significant effect.
A property in the top band priced at £2 million would have cost a buyer £100,000 in stamp duty before the changes were brought in, but would now cost £153,750 in tax. If the same £2 million property is being bought as a second home, this would now cost £213,750 in stamp duty, more than twice the bill a second home buyer would have paid in 2014.
Kensington has been one of the areas hardest hit by stamp duty reform. West Kensington saw prices drop by 12.3% between the second quarter of 2015 and the second quarter of 2016, knocking over £160,000 off the value of the average home in the area.
A buyer purchasing a second home at the average price for properties in the W14 postcode in 2014 at £1,462,200 would have paid £73,100 in stamp duty. A second home property at the same price would now cost £133,800, an increase of £60,700 or 83%. Nearby Kensington High Street also saw average prices fall 6.2% in the year following the introduction of the reforms, with the average property now costing £1,713,000.
The research also points out that between the second quarter of 2015 and the second quarter of 2016, the period when the first set of stamp duty reforms were introduced, house prices for the rest of the market shot up by 7.8%, taking the average house price for the bottom 75% of properties from £441,000 to £475,500.
Although the government's reforms cut the cost of stamp duty for properties valued at less than £1,125,000, the slowdown in the market at the top end has contributed to a lack of supply in the middle of the market, causing price increases for the majority of London buyers, the report adds.
'Targeting top end buyers of properties valued at over £1 million might have been good politics at the time, but the policy is crippling prime central London, with potentially damaging consequences for the capital's property market down the road. Most Londoners are unlikely to weep for wealthy second home buyers, but the reality is that without movement at the top, the middle and lower end of the chain are being blighted by a shortage of available properties, leading to intense competition and spiralling prices,' said Davies.
'Higher income families are holding on to their homes rather than move up, while buy to let investors have all but disappeared, which in time will have a similar effect on the rental market,' he explained.
'We've seen some renewed interest from foreign buyers since the fall in the value of the pound, but we mustn't be complacent, as the market is incredibly sluggish since the vote earlier this year. Domestic buyers remain worried about whether values at the top end of the market will hold up, and the huge cost of extra stamp duty is only serving to put would-be buyers off. It is also crystal clear that the decline at the top end of the market is nothing to do with Brexit, the big drop in prices is entirely the making of the government,' he added.
'With the new Chancellor Philip Hammond busy working on his autumn statement, the government should take the opportunity to think again on the stamp duty surcharge, and should also look at cutting the cost of stamp duty across the board as the tax serves only as a disincentive to moving home,' he concluded.


text:
What is MTC?
Medullary thyroid cancer (MTC) is a rare form of cancer of the thyroid gland in the neck. When there is no family history of the disease and MTC occurs as an isolated case, it is called sporadic MTC. In 25% (1 in 4) of all cases, MTC occurs as part of a rare inherited (genetic) disorder called Multiple Endocrine Neoplasia Type 2 (MEN2). For this reason, all MTC patients must be offered DNA screening (a genetic blood test) for MEN2. In most cases, patients may notice a lump in the neck which has not been present before. Some patients with MTC may suffer with diarrhoea caused by a larger-than-normal quantity of hormone (calcitonin) being produced by the tumour.
MTC usually develops over a number of years but can spread early on to nearby lymph nodes. If the thyroid and nearby lymph nodes are surgically removed while the cancer is still contained within the thyroid (total thyroidectomy and central lymph node dissection), a patient is usually cured. If, after surgery, calcitonin levels are still raised, this indicates that the cancer has spread (become metastatic) or has not been completely removed, and so further surgery and therapies are used to control it. As yet there is no definitive cure for metastatic MTC, as it rarely responds well to regular chemotherapy or radiation treatments. Nevertheless, it is usually slow growing and may often be managed effectively and without symptoms for many years.
For further more detailed information, please read the AMEND-produced MTC Patient Information Book (we recommend that you discuss the contents of this book with your specialist - it is not for use in self-diagnosis, and not all of the information it contains may be relevant to you)
Author: Jo Grey, AMEND CEO, with the help of the AMEND Medical Advisory Team

subset: commoncrawl


text:
63 Lansdowne Entrance Canning Vale 6155 WA
3 2 2
A Rare Gem
Quality gardens surround this fantastic 3 bedroom 2 bathroom family home.
Separate lounge
Separate Games/home theatre
Great kitchen
Air conditioning
Great patio area with blinds
Lovely reticulated gardens
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Peard Real Estate Canning Vale
3/404 Ranford Road
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Canning Vale WA, 6155
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text:
Ben Palmer - who directed season two of the sitcom - better come with his A-game on this movie and I'm not evne playing. Can I just add that giving us only three seasons of this epic sitcom was a travesty in itself and in other news, Two Pints of Lager is in it's what? Ninth season? DPMO!
Spotted at Mad News


text:
• ArcSin[z] gives the arc sine of the complex number z.
• All results are given in radians. • ArcSin[z] can be input as . • For real z between -1 and 1, the results are always in the range to . • See also: ArcCos, ArcTan.
Here is the InstantCalculator for the ArcSin function. Enter the parameters for your calculation and click Calculate to see the result.
You can paste a template for this command via the Text Input button on the ArcSin Function Controller.
Here is a plot of ArcSin[x] for x from -1 to 1.
This is the derivative.
This is the indefinite integral.
This also gives the derivative.
This also gives the indefinite integral.


text:
A meeting of the Full Town Council will be held on Monday the 5th of June 2017 at 7:30 pm
A meeting of the Full Town Council will be held on Monday the 5th of June 2017 at 7:30 pm
There will be a meeting of Bentham Town Council on Monday the 3rd of January in the lower Town Hall.
There will be a Meeting of the Bentham Town Council on Monday 16 January at 7.00pm in the Lower Town Hall.
The public and press are invited to attend. The press and public may not speak when the Council is in session, but they may make points during the 'comments & concerns' item on the agenda.
Background papers are available for viewing by appointment before the meeting. They will be circulated to Councillors in the days before the meeting.
The Precept Meeting of the Bentham Town Council will be held on Monday 16 January 2017 in the Lower Town Hall to follow the Council Meeting being held at 7.00pm, but starting not earlier than 7.15pm.
The public and press are invited to attend.
The press and public may not speak when the Council is in session, but they may make points during the 'comments & concerns' item on the agenda.
Works are set to commence on Bentham Road, between Wennington and Low Bentham, on the 24th October 2016 for ten days or upon completion of the works if sooner. The works will require a full road closure to allow site personal and associated large plant machinery to work safely.
This is the final phase of the scheme to repair the landslip that occurred as a result of the unprecedented rainfall and flooding late last year. The works to be undertaken involve a series of ground anchors being installed to secure steel netting, along the area that has been repaired, to prevent any of the large stones from moving and falling on to the carriageway. In addition, a small area adjacent to the main repair will also have the same anchors placed to prevent any further smaller slippages occurring.
The audit of accounts for Bentham Town Council for the year ended 31 March 2016 has been completed and are available to view by clicking the following link: Annual Return 2015/16
The return is published in pdf format. If you do not have software on your computer that will open pdf's you can download Adobe Reader from the Adobe website. It's free.
Notice of Public Rights and Publication of Unaudited Annual Return
To read the Unaudited Annual Return (pdf) please click this link: Unaudited Annual Return – 2015-16
Government legislation means that from 1st October 2016 all eligible
private sewage pumping stations in Yorkshire will automatically transfer
to the ownership and responsibility of Yorkshire Water.
This is good news for customers since it'll mean that they are no longer
responsible for future maintenance and repair costs associated with the
stations. The pumping stations included in the transfer will be owned by
Yorkshire Water and will be looked after by their experienced team of operators.
Yorkshire Water predicts that there are more than 700 private pumping
stations in their region and they don't know the location of all of them.
Yorkshire Water are starting a customer campaign this winter asking
people to report their pumping stations to them.
If you have a pumping station please contact Yorkshire Water as soon as possible by calling
0345 124 24 24.
If you are concerned about speeding vehicles in Bentham you can notify North Yorkshire County Council using the Speed Complaint Referral Form.
The form is available in either MS Word or pdf format.


text:
Lost - Series 2 - Part 2 (Box Set)
Shipping Destinations for this item
Sorry, this product is currently unavailable.
The acclaimed series reaches new heights in its spectacular second season as
the survivors of the Oceanic Flight 815 discover they are not alone in their
battle against "The Others" and a contested decision to open the hatch reveals a
new realm of mystery and intrigue.
Now you can experience the non-stop excitement and mystery of the first twelve episodes from Season Two, complete with hours of original bonus material you can't see anywhere else - including unaired original flashbacks - and you'll soon discover for yourself why "everything happens for a reason".
Featuring episodes 13-23 (including the feature-length finale)!
Episodes Comprise:
13. The Long Con
14. One Of Them
15. Maternity Leave
16. The Whole Truth
17. Lockdown
18. Dave
20. Two For The Road
21. ?
22. Three Minutes
23. Live Together, Die Alone (Feature length episode)
Featurettes, Bloopers, Deleted Scenes
Region 2
Aspect Ratio: 1.78 Anamorphic Wide Screen
Sound: Dolby Digital
Production Year: 2006
Main Language: English
For more information and our Delivery Policy see here.
For more information and our Returns Policy see here.


text:
Forgot your password? Enter the email address you signed up with and we will send you a link to create a new password.
Your password reset has been submitted to the address provided.
Design plus words, letters, and/or numbers
Exercise ball which can be used for exercising, sitting or stretching
Business in Frederick, MD


text:
|04 Jan 2014
2nd HD Keeps Disappearing!
The secondary hard drive in my Win 7, 64-bit system keeps disappearing from explorer! It is usually there on boot-up, but then disappears sometime thereafter. I thought that the drive was starting to fail, so I replaced the drive with a new one, and transferred all my data. But the same thing is happening with the new drive! Is this a motherboard issue or what?
Thanks for any and all replies!
|My System Specs
|04 Jan 2014
Windows 7 Home Premium 32-Bit - Build 7600 SP1
Have you plugged the HD into different SATA ports?
|My System Specs
|04 Jan 2014
|My System Specs
|Thread Tools
|Similar help and support threads
My CD/ROM Drive keeps disappearing
Hi, I am new to the forums but have seen a few posts whilst trying to fix my problem. You seem like a helpful bunch :) so I decided to join up. I regularly google if I have a computer problem I cannot sort myself. Please accept my apologies if the solution to my question has already been...
|Hardware & Devices
Disappearing Files
I don't know that this is a hardware issue, but I'll post here regardless. A couple of days ago, a file that I had encoded never appeared in it's destination folder, even though the encoder took the normal amount of time, and announced that it had completed successfully. This happened again...
|Hardware & Devices
Wallpaper Disappearing D:
Well at first my laptop was running Windows Vista, but it crashed while I was at a cousin's house and I updated it to Windows 7 using her operating system disk (because that was all that was there and I needed my computer)... xD I have been using my laptop without a problem for maybe three...
|General Discussion
Disappearing HDD?
What the title says, got a new HDD the other week there (750GB Seagate, forget the serial code) and slapped it on the computer. Went and formatted it and it runs fine on my PC, except earlier today (a week after installation) the thing has mysteriously disappeared from My Computer. Its a...
|Hardware & Devices
Disappearing toolbars
Hello, I have recently started using W7, and I am encountering the following problem: On W7 the taskbar can be customized with user-defined toolbars. I have defined several to simplify my work. However, every so often (every 3-4 boots) my toolbars disappear, and I have to redefine them. Is...
Things Disappearing, AGAIN
Hey, something strange is happenning to my PC, a few weeks later when installed W7 prof x64 on restart settings I did would disappear, adobe flash player plugin and stuff like that. That was another thread, that problem was fixed by adding something in the registry. The current problem is that...
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Windows 7 Forums is an independent web site and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Microsoft Corporation. "Windows 7" and related materials are trademarks of Microsoft Corp.
© Designer Media Ltd
All times are GMT -5. The time now is 11:01.


text:
FRANKFURT, May 10 (Reuters) - German property group TLG Immobilien is preparing a takeover offer for peer WCM as it seeks to buy stakes from the company's largest shareholders, three people close to the matter said.
TLG is close to striking a deal to buy a 26 percent stake in WCM from DIC Asset and a 14 percent stake belonging to the Ehlerding family, the people said.
Following the acquisition of these stakes, TLG would launch an offer to buy out all remaining shareholders, they added.
The deal may be announced as early as this week, they said.
TLG, DIC and WCM declined to comment, while Ehlerding was not immediately available. (Reporting by Alexander Hübner and Arno Schuetze; Editing by Maria Sheahan)


text: I don't want to start any fires here, I just thought that the Disboard community might like to know about this. I have no ties to the group mentioned in this newsbrief, nor do I consider myself to be a politically-charged person. It is part of a weekly newsletter I get as an employee and I find the facts they state to be very disturbing and thought that I should share them with the rest of you: Loyola to host Bangladesh Workers Tour On Friday, Oct. 4, Loyola will host the Bangladesh Workers Tour that will be in Chicago on a nationwide tour to kick off the Campaign for the Abolition of Child Labor and Sweatshop Abuses. The tour is organized by Loyola alum Charlie Kernaghan, executive director of the National Labor Committee for Worker and Human Rights and a catalyst in the founding of United Students Against Sweatshops. The public is invited to attend the free presentation at 12:30 p.m., in the Mullady Theater, Centennial Forum, LSC. As part of the presentation, two young Bangladesh women will discuss how they sewed Disney garments 15 hours a day, seven days a week, while being paid just 5 cents for every $17.99 shirt they sewed. The workers were beaten, deprived of overtime pay and denied their legal maternity leave and benefits. This event is supported by a contribution from the Arrupe-King Fund and co-sponsored by Loyola Students Against Sweatshops, the Higher Education Student Association, the Center for Faith and Mission, the Center for Ethics and Social Justice, University Ministry and student affairs. For more information, contact Jennifer Haworth, Ph.D., associate professor, School of Education, at 5-6358 or at firstname.lastname@example.com, or Russ Plywaczynski, Loyola Students Against Sweatshops, at 773-381-1447 or at firstname.lastname@example.com.


text:
[ki-zahng-gah-nee, kee-sahng-gah-] /kɪˈzɑŋ gɑ ni, ˌki sɑŋˈgɑ-/
a city in the N Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the Congo (Zaire) River.
a city in the N Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaïre), at the head of navigation of the River Congo below Boyoma Falls (Stanley Falls): Université Libre du Congo (1963). Pop: 475 000 (2005 est) Former name (until 1966) Stanleyville
Tagged: k
Read Also:
- Kiselevsk
[ki-sel-yawfsk; Russian kyi-syi-lyawfsk] /kɪˈsɛl yɔfsk; Russian kyɪ syɪˈlyɔfsk/ noun 1. a city in the S Russian Federation in Asia.
- Kisetla
[kee-set-luh] /kiˈsɛt lə/ noun 1. a pidgin language based on Swahili, formerly used for communication between Europeans and Africans.
- Kish
[kish] /kɪʃ/ noun, Metallurgy. 1. a mixture of graphite and slag separated from and floating on the surface of molten pig iron or cast iron as it cools. 2. dross on the surface of molten lead. [kish] /kɪʃ/ noun 1. an ancient Sumerian and Akkadian city: its site is 8 miles (13 km) east of […]
- Kishi
[kee-shee] /ˈki ʃi/ noun 1. Nobusuke [naw-boo-soo-ke] /ˌnɔ bʊˈsu kɛ/ (Show IPA), 1896–1987, Japanese statesman: premier 1958–60.


text:
Funerals scheduled for today.
Bruce, Claudius Jr., 68, of Commerce, 2 p.m. at the chapel of Little-Ward Funeral Home.
Denham, Willard, 88, of Commerce, 3 p.m. at Mt. Zion Baptist Church.
Donaldson, Peggy Ann, 55, of Lilburn, 2 p.m. at Ivie Chapel.
Stephens, Clarence Edward Sr., 72, of Eatonton, 2 p.m. at McCommons Chapel, Greensboro.
© 2017. All Rights Reserved. | Contact Us


text:
Traveling Luck for Alligator Head Boat Sheds Marina, Texas, United States
Where is Alligator Head Boat Sheds Marina?What's around Alligator Head Boat Sheds Marina?
Wikipedia near Alligator Head Boat Sheds Marina
Where to stay near Alligator Head Boat Sheds Marina
The timezone in Alligator Head Boat Sheds Marina is America/Rankin_Inlet
Sunrise at 06:54 and Sunset at 17:29. It's Dark
Latitude. 28.4366°, Longitude. -96.4213°
Weather near Alligator Head Boat Sheds Marina; Report from Port Lavaca, Calhoun County Airport, TX 46.9km away
Weather :
Temperature: 10°C / 50°F
Wind: 0km/h North
Cloud: Sky Clear
Weather :
Temperature: 10°C / 50°F
Wind: 0km/h North
Cloud: Sky Clear
Satellite map around Alligator Head Boat Sheds Marina
Loading map of Alligator Head Boat Sheds Marina and it's surroudings
Geographic features & Photographs around Alligator Head Boat Sheds Marina, in Texas, United States
- inlet;
- a narrow waterway extending into the land, or connecting a bay or lagoon with a larger body of water.
- Fishermans Cut (1.2km)
- Little Marys Cut (2.2km)
- Big Bayou (2.5km)
- Boggy Bayou (3.6km)
- Mitchells Cut (5km)
- Saluria Bayou (5.5km)
- Broad Bayou (5.8km)
- Big Dam Bayou (6.1km)
- Huckleberry Bayou (7.2km)
- LaSalle Bayou (8.7km)
- Mule Slough (9.1km)
- Blind Bayou (17.6km)
- island;
- a tract of land, smaller than a continent, surrounded by water at high water.
- Blackberry Island (4.2km)
- Bayucos Island (4.6km)
- Pelican Island (9km)
- Grass Island (10.3km)
- Farwell Island (11.6km)
- Dewberry Island (14.1km)
- Indianola Island (15.6km)
- Vanderveer Island (20.8km)
- channel;
- the deepest part of a stream, bay, lagoon, or strait, through which the main current flows.
- Fishermans Cut (1.1km)
- Mailboat Channel (1.9km)
- Little Marys Cut (2.2km)
- Mitchells Cut (5.1km)
- Cavallo, Pass (9.2km)
- Matagorda Ship Channel (11.3km)
- Powderhorn Bayou (14km)
- Local Feature;
- A Nearby feature worthy of being marked on a map..
- Alligator Head Boat Sheds Marina (0km)
- Saluria (6.7km)
- Matagorda (13.8km)
- Indianola Fishing Center Marina (14.2km)
- Matagorda Island Lighthouse (14.8km)
- S and S Marina (16.8km)
- Matagorda Club (17.5km)
- cape;
- a land area, more prominent than a point, projecting into the sea and marking a notable change in coastal direction.
- Mailboat Point (2.3km)
- Teller Point (6.4km)
- Decros Point (8km)
- Bayucos Point (8.5km)
- Sand Point (21.7km)
Accommodation around Alligator Head Boat Sheds Marina
- bay;
- a coastal indentation between two capes or headlands, larger than a cove but smaller than a gulf.
- Barroom Bay (1.2km)
- Whitakers Bayou (8.4km)
- Big Pocket (10.4km)
- Lighthouse Cove (13.2km)
- Espiritu Santo Bay (19.3km)
- airport;
- a place where aircraft regularly land and take off, with runways, navigational aids, and major facilities for the commercial handling of passengers and cargo.
- Phi Heliport (1.8km)
- Port O'Connor Airport (3.2km)
- Matagorda Peninsula Airport (16.5km)
- Pierce Field (17.4km)
- Big Dukes Place Airport (19.7km)
- lake;
- a large inland body of standing water.
- Fish Pond (11km)
- Powderhorn Lake (14.6km)
- Pringle Lake (21.8km)
- bar;
- a shallow ridge or mound of coarse unconsolidated material in a stream channel, at the mouth of a stream, estuary, or lagoon and in the wave-break zone along coasts.
- Everett Reef (2.3km)
- Bill Days Reef (4.7km)
- Josephine Reef (20.1km)
- populated place;
- a city, town, village, or other agglomeration of buildings where people live and work.
- Port O'Connor (2.7km)
- Indianola (14.2km)
- swamp;
- a wetland dominated by tree vegetation.
- Live Oaks Bayou (2.4km)
- oilfield;
- an area containing a subterranean store of petroleum of economic value.
- Powderhorn Lake Oil Field (13.6km)
- stream;
- a body of running water moving to a lower level in a channel on land.
- Coloma Creek (18.6km)
- cemetery;
- a burial place or ground.
- Indianola Cemetery (16.9km)
Wikipedia entries close to
Alligator Head Boat Sheds Marina
- Port Lavaca, Texas city city o
- Seadrift, Texas city city o
- Point Comfort, Texas city city o
- San Antonio Bay landmark bay
- Turtle Creek (Matagorda County, Texas) landmark landmark
- Palacios, Texas city city o
- Austwell
- La Ward, Texas city city o
- Lolita, Texas city city o
- Vanderbilt, Texas city city o
- Blessing, Texas city city o
- Bloomington, Texas city city o
- South Texas Nuclear Generating Station landmark building
- Lake Texana city city o
- Inez, Texas city city o
- Edna, Texas city city o
Airports close to Alligator Head Boat Sheds Marina
Palacios muni(PSX), Palacios, Usa (48.8km)
Corpus christi international(CRP), Corpus christi, Usa (174.5km)
William p hobby(HOU), Houston, Usa (232.9km)
Ellington fld(EFD), Houston, Usa (239.1km)


text:
Hide contents , Show contents
Intro, Shape of the tree and branches, Adding flowers etc, Example flowers, Colours, Output, More options, Picture Quality, Commercial Use, Images
To get started making virtual flowers quickly, try the various wizards. Or follow through this short introduction which introduces some of the main features of the program.
To find the example virtual flowers that come with the program go to File | Open, or easier, File | Virtual Flower Files and you will find a drop list of them all there. You can use these to make your own virtual flowers. See Commercial Use.
Most of the help is within the program itself in the form of tool tips and extra help for the tools. To see a tool tip, hover the mouse over any tool - any drop list, text field, up or down arrow, button, radio button etc.
Many of the tips end with a three dot ellipsis like this this:
Choose pattern of trees to make...
This hows you that it is one of the ones with extra help. Use F1 to show the help window - then hover the mouse over the tool again to see its help.
In the case of pictures (tree, leaf etc), hover the mouse over the picture to see its tool tip.
Nearly all the windows are resizable - even when they have text fields, drop lists and buttons etc - hover mouse over lower right corner until it turns to a double headed arrow. Then keeping it as a double arrow, press the left button down and with it held down, drag to resize.
top, start of section
You can change the overall shape of the tree by dragging on the image. Click on the relevant option at top left of the picture. This lets you change the branches, which changes the overall shape, the stalks, which change the way the leaves and flowers are arranged at the tips of the branches, then you can move the tree around, or you can hide the navigation text - when it is hidden, click at top left of the picture to show it again.
With these options, the effect you get depends on whether you click with the left button, right, or both together, and whether you drag horizontally or vertically. Experiment and see what these all do, or see its F1 help for the details.
To make the branches and trunk wide or narrow use Shape | Branches and adjust the radius. You can change the number of sides too - more sides make them more circular in cross section. You can also make them look rounder in the VRML output if you set the crease angle accordingly in Out | Output Options | Crease angle. If you set this greater than ninety degrees, even square trunks will get shaded in such a fashion as to seem fairly rounded when you use your model in a VRML scene.
To change the overall structure of the tree, see Shape | Tree. Increase the number of Layers to make a tree with more levels of branching and smaller twigs. You can also choose which type of leaf to use for your tree here, and then click and drag to change its shape - or do the same using Flowers Etc. | Leaves . The F1 help for the leaf picture gives more information about how to use it..
top, start of section
Then, to add various things to the tree, depending on what you want, select sheet flowers, 3D flowers, or leaves, from the Flowers Etc. menu. You also need to select Tree has leaves and Flowers, and use the Add To window to choose which shape to add to which stalks.
If you want to make a geometrical shape with Virtual Flower, rather than a tree, go to Flowers | Objects, choose the geometrical shape from the menu and click the Single Object tree button. Or easier probably, use the new Objects wizard.
top, start of section
You can also open any of the example virtual flowers and edit them to make new ones of your own. Go to File | Virtual Flowers Files and select one of the examples from the drop list. These also are the ones that get shown in the Screen Saver.
To turn your virtual flower around and see it from other angles while you are working on it, go to Picture | Picture. Here you can use click and drag to turn your virtual flower (two ways), right click and drag to move it about in the window, and hold down both together while you drag with the mouse to zoom in / out, and turn it in another way.
To set the tree spinning, drag on it and let go while the mouse is still moving. To stop it rotating again, click on it and release the mouse button while keeping it stationery - or use Options | Reset Zoom etc to get back to the original position.
top, start of section
You can change the colours from Colours | Colours. Click on one of the colour bars, and then in the Colour Wheel that pops up, click to change the hue, saturation and brightness. Tip: you can also click on the Result patch and use the Insert and Delete keys in combination with Ctrl, Shift, or both, or on their own to vary the hue, saturation and brightness.
To have leaves, flowers, branches or stalks in several colours, click on the relevant colour bar. Then in the colour wheel choose Duplicate Colour, and change the second colour as you desire it.
By default each colour is used in turn, so if you have two leaves at the end of each twig, then one is in the first colour and the other is in the next colour. If you had a clump of six leaves at the end of each twig, and three colours, the colours would be used as: first, second, third, first, second, third. If you want to use the colours in some other order than this, unselect Colours | Colours | cycle branch colours (or cycle stalk colours), and then set the order for the colours you want to use in the Numbers | Numbers A window..
When you use the sheet flowers - flat polygonal or snowflake like symmetrical shapes, you can have several of the shapes in use at once, and they are linked with the colours, so the first sheet flower is used wherever the first colour is used, the second for the second and so on.
With the petals, the colours are used for each petal cluster in the flower in turn - e.g. you could make the inner cluster one colour and the outer cluster in another. If you want alternating colours in the same cluster, then do two at the same angle from the centre of the flower, with one of them rotated, and with half the number of petals for each. The example flowers may make it clearer how this works. With daisy like flowers, the sheet flowers colour is used for the flower heart.
With the geometrical shapes, from Flowers etc | Objects, by default each colour is used for one of the objects, selecting from the petal colours. However, you can also select the option to colour polygons by number of sides - then the first petal colour is used for the polygon with least sides (e.g. maybe triangles), the next for the next number of sides (maybe squares) and so on.
To add textures to your flower or tree, see Colours | Colours | Textures.
There's lots more to discover - look out for more details in the F1 help for all the buttons and other controls.
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When ready, you save it as VRML from Output | Output.
This window has a drop list of scenes to place the tree in, and a drop list of viewpoint files to select to add viewpoints to your scenes.
You can also use the Viewpoints window to add one more viewpoint to your scene, or to build up a viewpoints file one viewpoint at a time using Viewpoints | Add to viewpoints.
If you really get into VRML then you may well use other programs to build your scenes - the scenes in the drop list are just by way of a few examples to get one off to a quick start. You'll find many scene building programs at the VRML depository.
You need to install a plug in to see the scenes. The best one is probably the Cortona VRML client. Just visit their site and follow the instructions.
Try stepping through the view points in the view menu of Cortona to see the tree, flower, forest or avenue from various angles.
The examples are all saved with an animated tour as the first viewpoint, which keys in three seconds after you load or refresh the scene in your browser. To step off the animated tour, simply click on the scene. The tour stops at the point you have reached, and you can proceed to explore the scene on your own. Alternatively, move to the next viewpoint in the scene by selecting it from the drop list, or by using Page down in Cortona.
You can choose whether to add an animated tour of all the viewpoints to the virtual flower scene when you save the file - from Output | Viewpoints | Animated tour.
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You can animate the trees so that they sway, rustle or grow using Output | Animations. You can randomise the forests or avenues from Output | Randomise.
There are many other options. Here are a few highlights: Anaglyphs and stereoscopic pairs, Higher dim., Musical Geometries, How to make the musical geometries.
Tip: Each menu also has a multi-tab dialog with all, or the most frequently needed windows. You can change which windows you show in these, and change the order in which they are shown. Show the Organise window (also in Help | Organise Tabs), select which of the tabbed dialogs you want to edit from the drop list, click with the right mouse button to select / unselect until it shows all the ones you want to show in red, or drag to change the order, then click Apply Now.
Tip: you can use fractions for input, such as 1/3. More generally, you can use formulae too - see the help for Flowers Etc. | Petal Curve | Formula.
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Virtual Flower doesn't yet use your graphics card acceleration to show the trees and flowers, and so isn't nearly as fast at refreshing the picture as Cortona. I plan to add OpenGL rendering, which will be much faster. You will notice this if you show a tree with many layers or with many flowers each with a large number of petals, or other complex shapes.
Meanwhile, you may well want to set it to show a line or wireframe picture while editing the tree in Virtual Flower, to speed things up, especially when you do this interactively with click and drag. So, this is the preset when dragging. When you release, it changes back to a shaded tree / flower.
To choose change these settings go to to Picture | Options and vary the Speed / Quality.Varies from -1 to 5.
There are two settings in this window - one sets how the picture is shown while moving - either animated or because you are changing the shape or moving it (preset to wireframe), and the other sets how it is shown when you stop moving it (preset to solid and shaded).
Quality level 4 is suitable for many of the trees and flowers - this paints the shapes from the back of the scene forwards so that nearer shapes get overlaid on the more distant ones, which is often just what one wants.. However, if you use this method with polygons that intersect with each other, one of them has to go in front of the other, and whichever is the nearer of the two goes in front which isn't what you want.
The only setting that lets you see intersecting polygonal shapes is quality 5, which is also by far the slowest - but it lets you see any type of intersection - even very complex polygonal self-intersecting shapes (that's why it is so slow).
Finally, for a schematic layout, see Quality level -1- this shows all shapes as circles and branches and stalks as lines. So it lets you see how the leaves, flowers etc are connected to each other, and the number of layers in the tree. It's called the Connection graph in Shape | Tree. It can be handy to switch to this level when working with the more intricate shapes - such as a tree with many layers, or one with a large number of flowers each with many petals. The idea is that if you have a very complex shape you could switch to this level for a while so that you don't need to wait for the picture to refresh while you change the settings, then switch back to one of the others when you are ready to show the final version.
If you want to make the complete picture, and give it as much time as it takes to draw it, then use Picture | Show complete tree. Or if you want to wait as long as is needed to make the picture always in the normal course of events go to Picture | Drawing Options and set the time out high. When you have a high time out you may need to hold down the Control key to interrupt the drawing if it takes too long to do. The escape key has the same effect.
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Since these are demo shapes particularly included to help users get started, then it is fine to use them commercially. You can copyright your own shapes made with Virtual Flower. You have my permission to use the ones that come with the program too.
The installer itself is freely distributable.You may include it on any program download site or CD compilation - for program details see the pad file: vf_pad_file.xml.You may not sell the evaluation copy. You may not charge for other users to use Virtual Flower. If you wish to use the program itself in a commercial fashion (rather than images or animations made with it), or use the program itself to promote other commercial products, please contact me first to discuss ideas or make arrangements.
I hope this is reasonably clear. If you have any questions or want anything particular clarified then let me know. Robert Walker firstname.lastname@example.com
(This is not to be considered as a legal document, it is just information to help Virtual Flower users understand how I see the situation).
You can save the images using Images | Image Size and Save Image As - you set the size of the image to save there and can choose from various file formats. The Bitmap (BMP) and PNG formats are lossless so are the best to use if you want to edit it in another program and resave it. Use jpg alternatively if this is your final copy and you want a small file size. Most of the images work well either as Pngs or as jpgs.
You can also save the animation as animation frames which you can convert into an animation in other programs - for instance you could use a gif animator to convert them into an animated gif.
Or you can make an animated jpeg in flash format directly from Virtual Flower. You can also save as an animated png - generally that is a good format with a high quality losssless save, but when used in flash movies using the method used here then the size of the pngs approximately double so you will probably find high quality animated jpegs are a bit better.
You do all that from Images | Animation Frames.
Finally, you can also copy the image to the clipboard - go to the main window so that it is your active window (e.g. click on its caption) and use Ctrl + C. Alternatively, use Ctrl + Shift + C at any time when working with any of the Lissajous windows.
You may be interested to know that my music composing program Fractal Tune Smithy can make e-cards. This only works wth programs that can read the raw "eml" format - Outlook Express can however I don't know of any other that can. You can use any image on your computer so could use it to send your Virtual Flower images as e-cards. They are musical e-cards so optionally you can also add music to the card - as an attachment, or indeed if your recipient also uses Outlook Express you may be able to include the music as background sound so that the recipient hears the tune playing as soon as they look at the card. Alternatively you can also use FTS to make an html page for the e-card which you can then send in another e-mail program.
There is no gif or animated gif save yet - the plan is to add this in summer 2004. The reason for this is that patent royalties are high (thousands of dollars) for any programmer who wants to include a save in the .gif format as part of a program. The patent is for the LZW compression method used to make the gifs small, so strictly speaking, it is acceptable to add a save in gif format without compression, but the images will be huge files without it so no-one usually bothers with that idea. The patent doesn't run out in Europe until summer 2004 though it has already run out in the US. Since the software author lives in the UK then the Europe patent law surely has to apply.
The File | Save As option saves your work in the Virtual Flower format (*.LJ) which is only understood by the program itself - has data about things like the number of waves in every direction that wouldn't mean anything to any other program. Save your work in this format too so that you can come back to it later and edit it in Virtual Flower.
The idea is that you save your work as Virtual Flower files when you are working on them in Virtual Flower - and then when you want an image or animation to use in a document, web page or other program, you save those in these image and animation formats understood by other programs.
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VRML is a kind of 3D version of HTML. You can have hyperlinks etc just as for HTML - instead of clicking on a link on a web page you click on a signpost or door or such like in a 3D world, which then takes you to another web page or 3D world. Just as with Html by clicking from one VRML world to another you could end up almost anywhere.
At least - that was the idea. But computers were too slow to be up to it and the format a bit too complicated for most users. Now VRML has moved on to become the basis for X3D, which has become a widely used 3D format for showing and sharing 3D models. VRML models can be converted easily into X3D, which uses the same basic format, but with HTML like tags instead of the original curly braces (technically, it is now a form of XML). I plan to add an X3D save option to Virtual Flower in the near future.
The HTML type idea hasn't really taken off yet - X3D and VRML is generally most used for stand alone models and scenes, and they don't often have links that take you to other completely different scenes elsewhere on the web, not yet anyway..
It is still possible that some time in the not so distant future something like this will be the next standard to replace HTML once computers are fast enough so that everything tends to be done in 3D rather than 2D. As it is right now you would have to keep jumping out of the 3D models to get anywhere, search for things, or navigate sites etc.
Meanwhile, VRML, and X3D, is mostly used for making 3D models and scenes which are embedded in web pages, or linked to from web pages. X3D is also often used for those 3D world type sites where you can visit and interact with others using an avatar.
You will find many scenes here:
Web3D applications gallery.
See also Mark Connell's The Most Complete List of VRML 2.0 urls
To view them (and your output from Virtual Flower) get the Cortona VRML client and follow the instructions.
You can embed a VRML model in a web page just as you do for any plug in:
<EMBED SRC="sunflowers.wrl" HEIGHT="400" WIDTH = "600"> </EMBED>
<NOEMBED>3D picture of sunflowers - needs a VRML plug in to view it</NOEMBED>
or link to it directly as you would to an html page : Sunflowers
When making Virtual Flowers for web pages, you will want them to be as small as possible to reduce the download time.
To reduce the size of the file for publication, use File | Virtual Flower Files | Compress Source File or Compress All.
This uses gzip compression, which is the standard for VRML models.
Virtual Flower also removes all the comments and extra white space before compressing the file. It also removes the virtual flower info from the end of the file.
Leave these in if you want your web site visitors to be able to show your virtual flowers in VF (and edit them) as well as the VRML browsers - select / unselect the appropriate check boxes in this dialog accordingly.
The best on line site for applications, tips, FAQs etc. is the VRML depository.
The best book I know on VRML is Teach yourself VRML 2 in 21 days by Chris Marrin and Bruce Campbell, Sams.net, 1997. Chris Marrin is one of the authors of the VRML 2 spec.
The best program for editing the VRML source must surely be vrmlpad from Parallelographics - the same company who develop Cortona.
They also make a free VRML screen saver - using this, you can install any of your Virtual Flower scenes as a screen saver;
Another great site for VRML info is VRML Works. Also, Micro Goodies VRML Tutors..
Daly Realism - and see particularly the Working Examples
You can reduce download times for textures in your scenes using Universal Media, which also has a great library of textures to use.
You can use any of your VRML files with an excellent free screen saver from Parallelographics designed to show Virtual Reality Modelling Language files.
First install the Cortona screen saver. You can configure it as you do other screen savers using Right click on desktop | Properties | Screen Saver | Screen Saver | Cortonal Saver, and click Settings.
Then in the Playlist, click on the ... button after the scene and browse to the file random_virtual_flower.wrl in your Virtual Flower folder.
You only need to select this single scene, because this one shows all your other virtual flowers in turn automatically. Each gets shown for a short while, together with a randomly chosen audio clip.
The audio clips used here are any ones in your Virtual Flower folder, and Virtual Flower files that you mark as okay to add.
Remake this file whenever you want to add new scenes or new audio clips to your screen saver scene, using Files | Virtual Flower Files | Remake random_virtual_flower.wrl
The example audio clips (in MIDI format) were made using Fractal Tune Smithy - which makes music like this from a short musical seed. So if you like them - give it a go and you can make many more such. You don't need to be able to read music or anything like that to use it - just select seeds from a drop list and play around with the various parameters to transform them into your own tunes.
You can also use any audio clips you may already have in any of the audio formats recognised by Cortona. It recognises mp3s for instance. To add them to the screen saver, just copy your audio clips into your Virtual Flower folder so that Virtual Flower can find them, then remake random_virtual_flower.wrl
To add / remove virtual flowers from the screen saver scene random_virtual_flower.wrl, go to Files | Virtual Flower Files, select the files in turn from the drop list, and select Ok for random virtual flower, for all the ones you want to include.
Ones that get left out will be shown with an *Excl* in the drop list.
Any virtual flowers that you have made with audio clips already are shown wtih *Aud* in the drop list. These get shown as usual in the screen saver, but are always accompanied with their own audio file instead of a randomly chosen one.
You'll find that the flowers and trees you make with Virtual Flower turn much more readily than other VRML models of similar complexity. Also, you'll find that the files are small - often only five or six KB or less after compression - so they are really fast to download as well.
Why is this? It's because the trees and flowers are made fractal fashion. To explain about fractals - let's take a tree as an example. It may divide into two branches,and each of those into two, and so on. It may continue in this fashion for maybe seven or more layers down to individual twigs. Real trees don't divide in quite such a regular fashion. but close enough to it so that this pattern is seen as "tree like".
The twigs and branches of a tree have the same kind of structure as the tree itself - a branch can look much like an entire tree. A shape that has the same or a similar structure at many different scalings is called a fractal. Strictly speaking a mathematical fractal looks the same or similar at infinitely many scalings. In some cases you can't tell the scale of the picture at all when you look at it - and others look very much the same at any of the scalings.
If you did all the branches and twigs of a tree as separate objects, the model would be several megabytes in VRML - an extremely long wait for a download!. It would also be very slow to turn and view from various angles. Because of this, most VRML scenes with trees in them do them as a texture, up until now anyway :-). This means that the tree is a flat object meant only to be seen at a distance. If you try to walk round the tree, it will probably rotate to face you, so that you always see it from the same side. If you are able to look at it really closely, you may also see the individual pixels of the texture.
However, it just so happens the VRML language lends itself very well to a fractal definition of an object, - some kinds of fractal anyway, and the trees get tiny in size. In fact, that's the origin of this program - my nephew had converted a 3D tree he made from another format into VRML, but found that it came to several megabytes in size. I figured out a way to make a tree (not the same one, but a tree) in a few Kb instead. This program was the result.
Leemon Baird's site: VRML Fractals - The First VRML Fractal Site on the Web - he made them some years before I did - though I didn't know that at the time. You can make them interactively on his page using an applet.
Fractal Garden includes some examples of another way to make a VRML tree, which is to have a script within the scene that makes it for you. This makes small VRML files too, though they are slower to rotate than these ones. The shapes of the script based trees can have random elements to them, while the Virtual Flowers ones can't if you want the branches to connect with each other smoothly.
This is a way to embed your VRML files into web pages in a format suitable for visitors who don't yet have a VRML plug in.
They follow the X3D standard - which is a subset of the VRML spec. designed to make small java applets practical.
You need to use a suitable java applet such as Anfy 3D (from Anfy), Blaxxun 3D Viewer,
The pages on the web site use Blaxxun 3D Viewer. Virtual flower is configured to use that one, so if you have it, this is how to use it:
You can use these instructions with the free version of Blaxxun, however, nowadays when placed on a web site on-line, it displays a logo in front of the models when used for free.
See Configuring for other applets to use it with one of the others.
To add the applet to your folders, you need to download the Blaxxum SDK of course, and then look for the wizard bxWizard in the wizard sub-folder.
You then need to go through all those .wrl files one at a time and load them using the wizard to convert them to valid X3D recognised by the wizard. Then use the wizard to deploy them as X3D models. Make sure you don't overwrite the old version if you deploy it as a .wrl file. You can deploy it as a file with extension .wrl or .x3d.
You'll probably want to select all the options in the wizard | scene | scene exporting section.
If using the old version of Blaxxun, from when it used to have separate Walk and Study modes, for at least one of them choose Walk, and then Study in the wizard | extensions, so that the walk.class and examine.class applets also get copied into the install folder (or just copy those files there yourself).
In Virtual Flower - if using the old version of Blaxxun, from when it used to have separate Walk and Study modes, then select File | Gallery with Applets | Old Blaxxun....
Then in Virtual Flower, use File | Gallery with Applets | Make gallery for folder.... to make all the virtual flowers in your java applets folder, and the html files to navigate them with Blaxxum.
If you want to make any changes to your models at this point to make it suitable for Blaxxun, one way to do it is to browse to the .wrl file in the java applets folder in Virtual Flower, edit it in VF, and resave - that way you can maintain special versions of all your.wrl files for Blaxxun in the java applets folder
Tip: with the Blaxxun wizard, often you want to convert a large number of models one after another, and most don't need to be changed. An easy way to do that is to deploy each in turn as say, a.html, then show that in your browser. So when you go to the next scene, just click Load Scene, then Deploy in Blaxxum, over-writing the old version, and then Refresh in your browser to see what it is like. Many will be fine as they were so you can go through those quickly, and then pause at the ones that need more work.
Some changes need to be made, particularly, java applets generally don't support protos, so you need to unselect Output | Options | Make from Protos. Virtual Flower automatically saves them like that when you use the Save .wrl and applet web page for current file button.
This can change the shape of a few of the virtual flowers, for instance, with bell flower you will find the flowers and stalks get out of sync.. That's because in order to use the alternative method without protos, it has to get resaved with Shape | Angles | Sync. order to apply A, R, & T with stalks if necessary selected.
Also Blaxxun only implements a single sky colour - so you need to make changes to the scenes that use gradations of colour for the sky and separate sky and ground colours. The "java_applets" sub folder already has suitable versions of the scenes that come with Virtual Flower already made. When you save a virtual flower from VF, it uses the scene in the folder it gets saved into in preference to the one in the install folder, if you provide one. This means your java flowers will automatically use these new versions of the scenes.
If one of the virtual flowers doesn't work and you decide to just leave it out you can do that in VF - unselect File | Gallery with Applets | Set Ok for Java Applets|. and resave. You could then delete its html file - or indeed, delete all the html files in the java applets forlder for all other models as well - as the File | Gallery with Applets | Make gallery for folder... button will remake them anew anyway.
With the old version of Blaxxun, you may decide that some of the virtual flowers may be suitable for viewing in study mode - such as the geometrical ones and the ones with no land or sea. For those, select Java Study.Then when you are ready, click on the Prepare for Java Applets | All button to remake all the html files. With the new version, they all have to be in study mode as there is no Walk mode any more.
When you upload the files to a web site, you only need ot upload the BX3D, class, jar, and htm files.
You can configure for other applets by editing templates\java_applet.htm in your Virtual Flower folder (in Program Files). Make sure you have "Old blaxxun" unselected.
Here, **SCENE** gets replaced with the file name without the .wrl extension,**TITLE** gets replaced by the file name converted into a title by replacing underlines with spaces, and capitalising the first word, **NEXT** gets replaced by the url for the next web page, and **PREV** by the url for the previous web page.
Also **STUDY** gets replaced by a link to the study html file - you can just leave that out if you the applet doesn't use separate pages for Study and Walk mode.
The template file used to be called java_applets\java_applet_template.htm - if you have made this file already and want to use it, move it to the new file name and location.
Then to make the gallery, as for blaxxun, use File | Gallery with Applets | Make gallery for folder...
At present, VRLM worlds have no shadows, because ray tracing is still far too slow for interactive models. If interested in making ray traced scenes, I suggest you explore Povray, which is also free.
You can convert some VRML files to Povray format using Paul Thiessen's vrml2pov. This is a beta that it seems hasn't yet made it to release. Works best for the save without protos and few layers, or the single object tree - try Flowers Etc | Objects | Single Object Tree in VF. It's a command line utility and if it works, finishes fairly quickly - if it hangs, it means it didn't work, just close the MSDOS window and try another file. One would expect the result to need some editing afterwards.
Some time in the the future I plan to add a save in Povray format to Virtual Flowers.
If you like Virtual Flower, you may be interested in my other fractal program Fractal Tune Smithy - many have commented that the fractal music and the fractal flowers go together. You can add a midi clip to your Virtual Flower using Output | Audio. Also use them in the Screen Saver.
You can also send musical e-cards of some of the virtual flowers on-line from my Music and Virtual Flowers page - this has a selection of virtual flowers, together with a selection of tunes from Fractal Tune Smithy for the background music.
You can also make cards off-line, with your own fractal music, and then send them directly via e-mail using Fractal Tune Smithy program. The music is sent as an attachment, and is also embedded in the e-mail as background sound. Most users of Outlook Express hear the tune start to play at once, when they look at the e-mail in their in box, though users of other e-mail clients will normally need to click on the attachment to hear it.
To make a Virtual Flower card in this way, first show your scene in the browser, use Alt + Print Screen to copy the image to the clipboard. edit in your graphics program, and save the graphic image with the same name as the .WRL file, though of course with the .jpg, .gif or .bmp extension.
Then copy the image into the e-cards folder for FTS, and you will find you can send it as a musical e-card in FTS by selecting the image in a drop list - see the help for the musical e-cards section of FTS for more details. Copy the .wrl file into this folder too, and you will be able to automatically send it along with the e-card, as another attachment.
Save several images and .wrl files into your FTS e-cards folder in this way, and you can send any of them whenever you like, or select one of them at random for each card. You can also customise the html templates for the e-cards.
Purchase on-line, Other order methods, Product Levels,
See also, Will my program be hardware locked when I purchase it?
Click here.
Choose the order type, then click Order Now and Continue after that. The order gets processed when you fill in your details and click the Place your Order button on the third page.
Secure order - for details - see the Privacy Statement.
You are welcome to try the process out first, as far as the order page to see how it works. If you have any questions about the order process be sure to ask :-). firstname.lastname@example.com
Buy now - Secure order
You will receive an unlock key code instantly when you complete the order. It is valid for all future releases of Virtual Flower.
You use this key to unlock the program you already have - if you haven't downloaded it yet, see Download Now. This means you have the opportunity to evaluate it first and make sure it is suitable for your needs.
When you get the key, enter it into the Unlock window you see at the start of the session, or use Help | Unlock .
For an extra few dollars, you can buy Virtual Flower as well.
Buy Virtual Flower and Virtual Flower
(you will also find this as an option in the order form for Virtual Flower).
You can also pay in your own currency, if you are in any of the supported countries. To do that, go to the order page (on-line), then in the next page, select either bank/wire transfer, invoice, or giro payment. Global Collect will then send you an invoice in your own currency, which you can pay by your chosen method, after which you will be sent the unlock code.
You can also pay by Telephone or Fax (on-line)
Alternatively, fill in one of these forms and send it to my agent Register Now!
Post, Purchase order
Or if you can pay in GB pounds you can send a cheque to me directly - fill in this form: Post UK (on-line).
If you aren't able to view the on-line forms, then use the off-line versions of these pages - but send me an e-mail or letter first to check the current prices.
Telephone or Fax, Post, Purchase order, Post UK
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Individual user and Home Use. Home users are free to use Virtual Flower on any of their machines - you don't need to buy a site license for home use.
Site license - You only need this if you are getting Virtual Flower for an organisation. . It allows use of Virtual Flower on any number of computers belonging to your organisation, and any number of users. In the case of educational institutions, the teachers may also use the program at home.
Also check the web site for any special offers - Robert Inventor's Programs
What you purchase is the unlock key. This is the help for the program, together with the tool tips and context sensitive help. If anything isn't covered yet, or indeed, if you want to know where to find out what you need to know, then for friendly help contact: email@example.com
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text:
Zebra THE DVD Trailer (2008)
"Zebra Live" 18 March 2008 120 mins
This DVD was recorded live in 2006 at House Of Blues in New Orleans and at The Downtown in Farmingdale, New York. Here Zebra (featuring Randy Jackson, Felix Hanemann and Guy Gelso) put on one hell of a show!
Watch the official Zebra THE DVD 2008 trailer in HD below or find more Zebra THE DVD videos on Vidimovie.


text:
Thursday - 10:45-11:45, Room 2
Sacramento City College; Business Department
Dyan attended San Diego State University for both her B.A. and my MBA. She traveled for a year internationally before embarking on a management career. After ten years of management experience in the public and private sectors, Dyan switched gears and started teaching full time at Sacramento City College. Dyan has taught for ten years at Sacramento City College. She teaches face to face, hybrid and fully online courses in the Business Department. Dyan has used the ideas presented in this workshop for a year and welcomes the ideas generated by the class to expand her use of the technology.
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Written on: 25/11/2012 by Diane1968 (1 review written)
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Sports massage
Sports massage to aid recovery and maintenance
Sports massage is one of the most requested by professional athletes and people who play sports regularly or sporadically but intensely. During any type of sports training we use our muscles to exert the force we need to achieve our physically and competitive objectives. During these training periods some muscles are loaded more than others, this imbalance may cause muscle fatigue, tight damaged muscles and pain that limit the performance. A sports massage will alleviate the discomfort and disappear.
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Wednesday, April 15, 2009
My Memories of 1984 (Part 1)
During the summer break at school, my mother, brother and I had gone to visit my maternal grandparents at Chandigarh, while my father staid back at Hardwar in the state of Uttar Pradesh, where he worked for a public sector unit. One fine day, curfew was imposed on the city with shoot-at-sight orders, for which no one really knew the reasons. People could not even procure essential supplies, since they risked being shot at if they ventured outside their houses. Fortunately, we had a relative in the local police force, who was able to help us during the few days that there was no relaxation in curfew.
Then, we heard on All India Radio that Sri Harmandir Saahib (Golden Temple) at Amritsar had been stormed by the Indian Army. A day or two later, the curfew was lifted and life went on, though not the same as before, as I was going to find out subsequently. When my father came to fetch us home towards the end of my holidays, a neighbour of my grandfather's, whose son was an army officer, offered to have a batman sent along with us, but my father refused. On the way, ours appeared to be the only car that was stopped and searched at several army and police check-points. They not only searched our luggage, but also made my mother open her hand-bag and the bag containing my brother's diapers, even as vehicles with non-Sikh occupants sped by, unchecked. Out of the handbag's contents, one of the policemen found a pen that could also be worn as a bracelet to be highly suspicious. He made my mother use it to write on a piece of paper, while he and his colleagues at that particular check-post stood at a safe distance, just in case there was to be an explosion.
From all that happened between then and the carnage that took place in the month of November, a couple of incidents stand out in my mind. In the first instance, I was walking alone along a street near where we lived, to run an errand for my mother, the details of which I do not recall now, when a man on a bicycle rode past and then turned around to shout, "Oye aatank-waadi!" (Terrorist!). The same epithet was hurled at me in the second one as well, by a boy a little older than myself, while he and I played with toy guns in a park in the neighbourhood.
3 comments:
- Sidhusaaheb said...
I really don't know what to say to this, but thanks for sharing…
Deep | Homepage | 04.15.09 – 5:48 pm | #
I am sorry for what happened with you.
Well, it's innocent people like you and many others who have to go thru the actual pains. It happens in all religions. And the ppl who do it, don't feel anything.
Thanks for sharing this.
Cuckoo | Homepage | 04.15.09 – 8:03 pm | #
Sad how innocent ppl have to stand thru such bias hurled towards them. Being judged on the basis of race,ethnicity and religion. Much of what nearly every Muslim faces today. The need to prove oneself just because of ones belief. Religion was meant to maintain decorum and knit ppl together and we humans hav successfully turned it into another weapon to b used on our own kind. Sad bitter truth of our lives.
Sana | Homepage | 04.16.09 – 9:19 pm | #
One more harsh evidence/reality that religion has done more harm than good… it does the job of dividing people with at most perfection when every other things fail…
Coolgeek | 04.17.09 – 7:36 pm | #
Sorry for what happened to you..Its really sad to see people behave like that in such circumstances..they forget even their friends, neighbors and start judging people on their religion,race,color …
Sandeep | 04.20.09 – 8:04 am | #
- Friday, 22 January 2010 at 13:11:00 GMT+5:30
- Sidhusaaheb said...
And such things stay with you forever!
Mridula | Homepage | 05.15.09 – 11:49 am | #
Am starting from part I while I see other two parts also have been written. I am late here.
I can relate to all these details and more. '84 was hell unleashed on us-from both sides.
Manpreet | Homepage | 05.29.09 – 2:25 am | #
- Friday, 22 January 2010 at 13:12:00 GMT+5:30
- Sidhusaaheb said...
Rahul Sharma Says:
April 20, 2009 at 1:49 pm | Reply edit
I was in Daly College, Indore. IV class.
- Friday, 22 January 2010 at 13:12:00 GMT+5:30


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A Jamie Sinclair Novel
Jamie Sinclair's father has never asked her for a favour in her life. The former two-star general turned senator is more in the habit of giving his only child orders. So when he requests Jamie's expertise as a security specialist, she can't refuse—even though it means slamming the brakes on her burgeoning relationship with military police officer Adam Barrett. Just like that, Jamie hops aboard a flight to London with a U.S. State Department courier carrying a diplomatic pouch in an iron grip.
Jamie doesn't have to wait long to put her unique skills to good use. When she and the courier are jumped by goons outside the Heathrow terminal, Jamie fights them off—but the incident puts her on high alert. Someone's willing to kill for the contents of the bag. Then a would-be assassin opens fire in crowded Covent Garden, and Jamie is stunned to spot a familiar face: Adam Barrett, who saves her life with a single shot and calmly slips away. Jamie's head—and her heart—tell her that something is very wrong. But she's come way too far to turn back now.
A few months ago, I reviewed The Kill List, the first novel in the Jamie Sinclair series. I liked the feisty female security specialist with a take-no-prisoners attitude. The Kill Shot is the second book in the series, and Jamie returned in full force.
The Kill Shot saw Jamie off-balance from the beginning. When her father, a hard-ass senator whose approval Jamie desperately desires, asks her to do a 'favour', she finds herself in London. What was supposed to be a basic security detail job turns into a race against time to keep a Middle Eastern defector safe from the political forces who want to see her dead – or kept alive to be used as a bargaining tool.
I like political thrillers, so was familiar with the shady way that the players were conducting their business throughout this novel. However, there were times when Jamie, a professional, seemed a little behind the eight ball. Perhaps it was all the romance throwing her off balance…
While there were romantic undertones to the first book (the lovely Barrett was quite the charmer), in this book Barrett faced competition in the form of posh, gorgeous, cheeky Philip (who also was quite the charmer). With the two men vying for her attention, Jamie was at best a little distracted during her time in London. Understandable, I would have had trouble choosing between these two guys!! That said, there was a fair bit of focus on the romance in this book, perhaps at the detriment of the thriller aspect. However, it was well written, and kept me hooked… though perhaps a little more invested in the Barrett/Philip storyline than the political aspect!
While I enjoyed this book, I must admit that I preferred the first book in the series. It seemed a little more focused, and the mystery was more developed. That said, I'm partial to a little chick lit, and don't mind when romance pops up amid gunfire! This book is definitely still worth a read. I'm looking forward to seeing where Christoff takes the character next!
I received a copy of The Kill Shot by Nichole Christoff from the lovely Lisa at TLC Tours, in exchange for a review and my honest opinion.


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An excerpt from www.HouseOfNames.com archives copyright © 2000 - 2017
Anglo-Saxon culture. Their name reveals that an early member worked as a worker who was a dike or ditch maker.
Diker Early Origins
Sussex and either Upper Dicker or Lower Dicker, villages that date back to 1229 where they were listed as Diker. The place name is derived from the Middle English word "dyker" which means "ten" as in a plot of land for which ten iron rods were paid in rent. [1]CITATION[CLOSE]
Mills, A.D., Dictionary of English Place-Names. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. Print. (ISBN 0-19-869156-4)
Diker Spelling Variations
Diker Spelling Variations
Before the last few hundred years, the English language had no fast system of spelling rules. For that reason, spelling variations are commonly found in early Anglo-Saxon surnames. Over the years, many variations of the name Diker were recorded, including Dicker, Decker, Deeker, Dyker, Dikkers, Ditcher and many more.
Diker Early History
Diker Early History
This web page shows only a small excerpt of our Diker research. Another 515 words (37 lines of text) covering the years 1210, 1066, 1296, 1327, 1327, 1327, 1379, 1572 and 1632 are included under the topic Early Diker History in all our PDF Extended History products and printed products wherever possible.
Diker Early Notables (pre 1700)
Diker Early Notables (pre 1700)
Another 18 words (1 lines of text) are included under the topic Early Diker Notables in all our PDF Extended History products and printed products wherever possible.
The Great Migration
The Great Migration
To escape oppression and starvation at that time, many English families left for the "open frontiers" of the New World with all its perceived opportunities. In droves people migrated to the many British colonies, those in North America in particular, paying high rates for passages in cramped, unsafe ships. Although many of the settlers did not make the long passage alive, those who did see the shores of North America perceived great opportunities before them. Many of the families that came from England went on to make essential contributions to the emerging nations of Canada and the United States. Research into various historical records revealed some of first members of the Diker family emigrate to North America:
Diker Settlers in United States in the 19th Century
Diker Family Crest Products
Diker Family Crest Products
See Also
See Also
Other References
The Diker Family Crest was acquired from the Houseofnames.com archives. The Diker Family Crest was drawn according to heraldic standards based on published blazons. We generally include the oldest published family crest once associated with each surname.
This page was last modified on 9 June 2016 at 08:15.
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MOVIE SYNOPSIS [ General Audiences ] With production of USA, this film of 2014 has been directed by Nate Sutton. You can watch We Don't Fear the Dead online on TV cable or theaters with original audio in English at different dates. This film premiered in theaters in 2014.
Rating: 5 by 10 users./
Runtime: 12 minutes
Nate Sutton and Amber Marovitz.
Short film, Drama, Terror.
12-minute film (full movie) directed by Nate Sutton.
The original audio of We Don't Fear the Dead has dialogues in Dolby Digital, it was produced in USA.
It premiered in cinemas or television in 2014.
Screenplay written by Nate Sutton.
Gabriel Gonzales.
Nate Sutton.
Composed by Nick Smyrniotis.
Without commercial breaks, the full movie We Don't Fear the Dead has a duration of 12 minutes; the official trailer can be watched in streaming on the Internet. You can watch this full movie free in EnglishDolby Digital in movie TV channels, renting the DVD or with VoD services (Video On Demand player, Hulu) and PPV (Pay Per View, Netflix).
See the page of this full movie, We Don't Fear the Dead in FULLTV Movies.


text:
Has anyone on this forum used this scale? The "My Weigh KD-8000 "Baker's Math" Scale"? I found this scale at the following web site http://www.oldwillknottscales.com/my-weigh-kd8000.aspx and thought to myself, "well how cool is that for those of us that are mathematically challenged." Before I order it I wanted to check here first to see if any one has used one of these scales and if you have any problems with it? Is there a better scale out there within the same price range? Thank you for your input.
On another thread the matter of how things show up on others monitors came up and I thought I would shed some light on the subject for those who care about the way things look.
In general all operating systems (MS-Apple-Unix) are made to display a jpeg image to a standard. The OS has a calibration capability that is used by artists and those who care about rendering exact colors on various media like paper, film and a wide range of monitors. As a rule, so long as the image is of natural colors and not the super saturated bright ranges, they display accurately enough to not draw attention. Our brain is able to pick out an un natural flesh tone quickly. We accept a known flesh tone and white and black as a basis for true color. Everything else is assumed to be good if the white is white. Think about a photo of a bride in a white dress that rendered as light green while her face was a normal flesh tone. This is the daily battle for a wedding photographer. Multiple light sources, bright colored carpets and wall colors all effect the light as it bounces around the room. If you want to reproduce accurate colors, you must control the primary light. In the case of the wedding photog, the bride needs to be bathed in soft white light from a powerful flash, softened by a diffuser to eliminate sharp shadows. Our eyes will tell us instantly if the white fabric has an off tint, especially in the shadow areas. The flash needs to overpower the ceiling lights and bounce from the red carpet.
Shooting breads, we have a much wider range of acceptable tones since the only known true colors are whites and black. Look at the right side bar titled "Also On The Fresh Loaf". All the breads look pretty good but the top image of Peter Reinhart looks a little green to me. You see, it's much harder to get a flesh tone right.
Lighting and the settings on a digital camera play a large part in starting down the path of rendering an off color. For example, all cameras today have an auto white balance setting. The sensor measures the light source and adjusts the color saturation of certain colors depending on what it sees. Many cameras also have alternate white balance settings like "incandescent or tungsten and florescent". When you change to the florescent setting, the camera adjusts to eliminate the green hue that florescent bulbs give off and warm the image. Using incandescent settings in daylight would produce a warmer image.
The problem gets difficult when we have multiple light sources. For example, I have a florescent kitchen light fixture with daylight bulbs but I usually use the on camera flash for better rendering of the colors. It's a compromise I sometimes have to adjust for later in Photoshop. Daylight images with the sun out are the easiest because the colors are perfect with the daylight settings.
In the end, all you have control over is your own environment. You must adjust the lighting and camera settings to look right on YOUR monitor. If you think the image looks a little orange, try taking the picture using the incandescent white balance setting. If it looks a little cool(blue or green) try using the florescent setting. Idealy the best image is natural lighting in sun. But I know last night when I finished baking it was 2 AM lol.
I hope those who are interested in this sort of thing find this useful. If anyone has questions about all things photographic, please fire away and I'll try to help.
ADDED BY EDIT: I noticed that the images in the right side bar chage with every refreshment. So if you want to see the image of PR, frefresh a few times and I think it will rotate back.
David Snyder was kind enough to point me to Susan at the Wild Yeast. I couldn't do his two recommendations because I have no mixer, so after lurking around Susan's web site, I thought I'd give her Norwich Sourdough a try. It called for the use of a mixer, but I mixed the ingredients by hand. This recipe is adapted from Hamelman's Vermont sourdough.
Susan's instructions were easy to follow, and I followed her steps to the letter...well almost. I overlooked a few things which may have contributed to the final product being less than perfect. Entirely my fault. But as a first attempt, I was tickled pink.
Here's what came out of my oven last week:
I reduced Susan's recipe by half so that if I ended up with a fiasco, I wouldn't feel so guilty about wasting that much flour. She said to shape into a loaf, but I was forced to form a ball instead because the dough was very wet. It was difficult to handle; to my surprise, it still was unmanageable after a 12-hour fermentation/retardation in the fridge. On hindsight, I should have remembered Susan's advice to hold back on the water. Next time I'll add the water gradually and not in one fell swoop.
The taste was excellent. The sourdough flavor was there all right, and I'm glad I gave my starter the TLC it deserved. I started the culture on the 17th of December but deliberately left it in the fridge for a whole month before using it. I had read some posts that sourdough novices won't taste the sour with their first bakes, but for this first attempt, I'm glad the flavor came out - firing on all cylinders!
Another mistake: I didn't take out the pan holding the water for steam after 12 minutes as Susan instructed. I left it there for all the 35 minutes and while I liked the color, I probably would have obtained a fuller, richer brown if I had taken the pan out.
So, if I were to produce a report card for this initial try, it would look like this:
The crumb had a chewy, dense texture. I'm going to aim for a lighter crumb with more holes.
And this is where I ask TFL's sourdough experts for some help/advice:
a) should the stretch and fold technique really replace the standard 10-minute kneading that I normally do for sweet rolls, yeasted breads and others? My impression is that the folding and stretching should be done gently, but I stumbled upon Richard Bertinet's youtube here, and he was slapping that dough around. If dough could talk, it would scream "ouch"! Has anyone tried his method? He recommends this for sweet dough. He teaches in Bath, England. Here's the link to that video: http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/video/2008/03/bertinet_sweetdough: Can his method be used for sourdough?
b) holes: are they the result of stretch and fold or high hydration, or both? Stretch and fold - the way I understand it - is primarily to trap the gas, hence creating those holes. Is this correct? And then I read somewhere that it's the high water content that brings about more holes. So the wetter the dough, the more holey the bread becomes?
I welcome your opinions!
Next time I make this recipe, I must:
a) pour the water gradually
b) take out the steam-generating pan after 12 minutes
c) learn David's scoring techniques pronto!
Anything else to add to my to-do list?
Sometimes you just have to admit it: you messed up. My turn! Again...
This time it was this sad loaf of Pugliese, sitting along side the boule of sourdough that is my redemption for the day's baking. Here they are together.
Resuscitation: I had another go at Rose Levy Berenbaum's "Brinna's Pugliese" Friday night, but this time I tried it with a 20% substitution of semolina flour. I started the biga on Thursday night and let it ferment in a back room cupboard (about 60F) till Friday afternoon. Then I put all my things in place (Ha!) and prepared the dough. Everything was going along just fine until, about 90 minutes into the bulk fermentation I noticed... nothing. The dough had not grown at all. I had it in a warm spot, so I left it for a while, until I realized the truth: Except for the biga, I had not put in the yeast. I had gotten distracted with rechecking the flours after the semolina substitution, and never even got the yeast out of the refer. So much for "everything in place"! Oh, no, now what?
I opened up the container and sprinkled the yeast (IDY) over the top, and folded it in. I got out my board and did several folds to incorporate it as well as I could, but this dough was wet, slack, super-sticky and gloppy. I had to continually wet my fingers to handle it at all without becoming part of it myself. I managed to get the yeast worked into it, and got the dough back into the bowl where it immediately took off. I could not believe it, but it nearly doubled in an hour. I formed it into a boule as well as I could and turned it upside down into a very well floured banneton. It filled the banneton and topped out in just another hour.
I could not resist compounding my errors. The recipe says to bake on a sheet with steam added, but I had already baked the sourdough that follows below, and my La Cloche baker was in the oven already hot. I was determined to make this baby jump after having made such a mess of it. So I turned it out onto my superpeel ( a mistake), slashed it (another mistake since it was so fragile) and then "dropped" it off the superpeel into the preheated La Cloche (final insulting mistake for this poor loaf). It collapsed. It fell, flatter than one of my plain flour pancakes. As soon as I saw it I realized my error(s), and knew they were all my own. I put the cover on and baked it.
The good news about baking for a hobby is that, most of the time, you can eat your errors. That will be the case with this pugliese. As you can see in the crumb shot here:
this loaf only turned out poor, not really bad. It forgave me more than I deserved here I think. The La Cloche pumped some spring into it so that it has a little bit of loft and a nice tender crust. The crumb is pretty dense for pugliese, but as you can see, there is a nice gelling of the starches, and it came out okay considering all the insults. The flavor is quite excellent, and the semolina addition has really had a positive impact on the taste. I will certainly be revisiting this loaf again with even more semolina in the dough. In the end this loaf resuscitated me after my near apoplexy at the glaring chain of mistakes.
I'll learn from my mistakes and go on. After all, in a couple of days nearly all the evidence will be gone anyway!
Redemption: The sourdough loaf was actully baked first. This is another of "my" sourdough loaves, but this time I was determined to proof more fully than last time. This formula is one that I've been using to break in and get used to my new willow proofing baskets, and I'm quite happy with the results so far, considering the low 64% hydration. Here is the loaf:
As you can see, I'm still not doing a proper job of preparing the banneton before I put the loaf in for proofing. I'm hoping that as I use them more, things will level off. Right now there are sticky spots where lots of flour stays, and there are dry spots where very little to no flour at all will stay. I'm currently layering on AP flour first, then white rice flour lightly on top of that. The flour that remains on this loaf is dry in places, and pretty oily in others. The oil is from the initial spraying of Baker's Joy flour/oil spray I used to "season" the banneton initially in accordance with the instructions. Since then I've just been applying the flours, proofing the dough, then letting the bannetons dry out on the counter. When dry, I brush them thoroughly and put them away till next time.
The crumb of this loaf is better than my last effort thanks to better proofing, and the loaf did not explode so much in the oven when baked. It was baked in La Cloche for 15 minutes covered, with the temperature at 500F for the first 10, then down to 460F for the rest of the bake. The cover came off at 15 mintues, effectively ending the steaming time at that point. I let this loaf bake a little extra long because I was trying to darken the crust. I got most of what I wanted, but ended up with an internal temperature of 209F when I finally gave in and declared it done. It is not the least bit dry though, and the crumb is very tender. Here is the shot:
There were really two loaves, and the crumb shot is of the "other" one. The cut loaf is already gone, and the uncut loaf was gifted to a neighbor. I'll just have to try again I guess. Darn. :)
I've never had really good Greek bread. But, I have heard enough about how great it is that I've been interested in working on it for some time. When dsnyder and I were discussing the formula a while back, he let on he has a daughter-in-law from Greece and maybe she would help tune this up to a respectable loaf.
Here is Davids posting of the improved version, after experimenting with his DIL.
I followed Davids suggestions except for the mixing and folding. I mixed in my DLX after a 30 minute rest, for a total of 3 minutes, using the roller. Then I folded it 3 times in a bowl over the next 3 hours as it fermented. It was a silky smooth dough, very nice to handle. After dividing in two and pre shaping, I tightened the boules and placed them in linen lined baskets for proofing. It took 1-1/2 hours for the proof and the dough temp was 74F.
I also added a few drops of toasted sesame oil to the dough, hoping to get some of that great aroma and boost the lightly toasted seeds on the surface. I'm afraid I would say the desired effect of the oil was not realized. There is a definate sesame aroma but I think it's from the seeds.
After reading Davids comments about his oven temperature and the brown color he got, I thought I would start with 430F and reduce to 410 when I rotated the loaves. The crust color isn't as dark as it appears. I like the color but I also think it could be a little more golden and less orange/brown. A lower and slower bake perhaps.
There is a little bitterness in the taste I'm not sure about. I don't have a lot of experience with Durum flour. Does anyone know if that is normal with Durum? My daughter was bugging me to cut it so after 20 minutes I relented and had her carve it up. There isn't a hint of sweetness, with 2 T of honey, I'm a little surprised.
Today's bake:
I was asked by a TFL member who had already packed his copy of Advanced Bread & Pastry in preparation for a move for the formula for this bread. I have added it, below. Happy baking!
Amount (Lbs & Oz)
Bakers' %
Bread flour
2 1/2
Medium rye flour
1 1/4
Starter (stiff)
2 1/8
Mix all the ingredients with a DDT of 70ºF.
Ferment 12 hours at room temperature (65-70ºF).
Final dough
14 7/8
10 7/8
5 3/4
2 lb
Mix to medium consistency.
Ferment 3 hours with 1 fold. (I did 2 folds at 45 minute intervals.)
Divide into 1 lb pieces.
Preshape as light balls.
Rest 20-30 minutes.
Shape as boule or bâtard.
Proof 12-16 hours at 48ºF, 65% relative humidity.
Score as desired.
Bake 35 minutes at 450ºF with steam.
Crackly Crust
Yesterday I made yet another one of Susan's Sourdough with a couple of new (to me) tricks. The dough was much wetter than usual and I kept it warm in between stretch and folds in the oven with the light on. Then it went into the refrigerator for the overnight chilling at about 4.30pm. Then I found out that my DIL and the grandgirls were taking me to eat at an English Teashop, a belated birhday treat, and I needed to leave here at 9.45 am so that we could catch the 10.30 am ferry. So the shaped boule sat in the refrigerator for 24 hours (I don't do early mornings) by which time it had nearly filled the banneton. Glad to report that the loaf had great oven spring and sang like a bird as it cooled! Too soon to check the crumb but I am just happy it wasn't a disaster, A.
This is Potato Leek bread from SteveB's "Bread cetera" blog. His breads are amazing, and this one is no exception. The potato and leek go so well together. I used Yukon Gold potatoes instead of the red potatoes called for in the formula. I've made it both ways though and both are good (I think). The only other change I made was to use my firm starter in lieu of the 100% hydration starter.
This is my first try at the "fendu" shape. This shape is traditional for potato breads but I don't see it around much. I don't think I got it tight enough before going into the brotform, it kind of exploded. Oh well, I like the shape, and it's nice to not have to score sometimes.
here's the crumb from the other (small) loaf that was made with this batch of dough:
This one's a winner, and if you like leeks you should try them in this bread :-)
The first rye that I made can be found here. It was a 80% Rye with a Rye Flour Soaker from Hamelman's Bread. I have to add to my previous post, that the flavor developed over the next few days and the crust softened up. I liked the bread a lot and it was good with just a little butter on it :-) At first I wasn't that impressed but as time went on I came to really like it. I saved the last third or so of the loaf for use as altus.
The next rye I tried was a 70% Rye. The formula for this loaf can be found here. It is Hansjoakim's favorite rye using dmsnyder's write-up. (thanks for the clear instructions!)
I really liked this rye! The taste was really good- hard to describe, but better than my last rye. I think this was partly due to the fact that I had used Hodgson Mills whole rye flour with the first loaf (which is course ground) and with this loaf here I used an organic medium whole rye flour from PCC. The texture was dense but moist and the crust was perfect- not too hard. I was happy to get this "cracked" pattern on the bread from placing the dough seam side down in the brotform. I love how it looks- Hansjoakim's turn out way better of course.
Overall, I like this bread. I think I may use it as a base in the future for a bread with caraway seeds, anise and something else in it- cardamom maybe.
Third Rye:
This is a Jewish Deli Rye using (again) dmsnyder's write-up which can be found here. I didn't know if I like caraway seeds or not, turns out....I do! This bread is really good and would make a great sandwich. Very flavorful.
I used First Clear Flour for the first time with these loaves, and again used the organic PCC medium rye flour. I built-up my rye starter over the preceding three days to make this loaf which calls for 750 grams rye sour. I'd like to try this bread again with a WHITE rye sour instead of the whole rye starter/sour that I used. I think it would have been lighter in color and more authentic? tasting. I don't know- I have nothing to go off of since I have not had rye breads before except the ones that I have made!
It is important to me to try different breads, and rye bread in particular. I appreciate history and learning of different people groups, their culture and heritage, and making these rye breads is a tiny way to be better connected to them. Every country in the world has their own breads, and I find it interesting and poignant to eat the same types of flavors they did/do, and learn the "why" behind the ingredients they use. Fascinating to me.
So, I'm going to keep on with rye for a while. I was going to move on to the Detmolder Rye's but I think I may wait until I can fashion a proofing box for that (you have to keep certain temperatures for each sour build). Next rye? I'll take suggestions. Maybe "Eric's Favorite Rye" or a swedish rye...we'll see.
My 1st attempt at the Nury (very) Rustic Light Rye and Bouabsa (non) Ficelle's, I found both dough's quite challenging to work with as i'm not used to such wet dough's but they tasted great!, will have to work on my shaping/slashing technique!