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Nicole Petallides
|Nicole Petallides
|Nicole Anais Petallides
September 20, 1971
|United States
|FOX Business Network Anchor/Reporter, FBN
|Nicholas Tsiolas
|2 Sons
Nicole Anais Petallides (born September 20, 1971 in Queens, New York) is an anchor for the Fox Business Network, which began broadcasting on October 15, 2007.[1] Petallides, along with Jenna Lee, were the first two anchors on the air when the network made its debut.
Petallides is the daughter of Fannie Holliday and John C. Petallides.[2] Her father owns U.S. Amfax, a New York company that does telemarketing and promotions,[2] a similar company called Salesforce 911, and Parent Reach, an emergency broadcast company. Her mother, an immigrant from Cyprus,[3] is the founder and chief operating officer of Proini, a Greek-language daily newspaper,[2] and of The Greek American, an English-language weekly newspaper.
Nicole graduated from Buckley Country Day School in 1985 and the American University in 1993. In 1998, she married Manhattan dentist Nicholas Tsiolas in a ceremony performed by Archbishop Spyridon of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of the United States.[4]
Prior to joining FBN, Petallides was an anchor at Bloomberg Television, where she reported from the New York Stock Exchange for the nationally syndicated shows, Bloomberg Business Report and Bloomberg Market Update. While at Bloomberg, she also covered weekend news and served as a business news anchor for CW11's WPIX morning news program in New York. Before joining Bloomberg, Petallides served as an assistant producer for CNBC, where she produced daily floor reports from the NYSE. Prior to CNBC, she was a segment producer for Dow Jones Televisions's The Wall Street Journal Report with Consuelo Mack and international programs Asian Business News and European Business News. She has also contributed to Fox affiliate WNYW's morning show Good Day New York, NY1 News, CNN, and News 12 Long Island.[5] She has been a guest panelist on the Fox News Channel's late-night satire show Red Eye w/Greg Gutfeld.
- ^ "Fox Business Network Adds Four More Anchors". Crain Communications, Inc. Retrieved 2007-10-03.
- ^ a b c Neo Magazine: "FOX Business anchor Nicole Petallides: puts the fun with the facts on the stock market" by Dimitri C. Michalakis November 11, 2009
- ^ The Cyprus-U.S. Chamber of Commerce: Directors - Fannie Petallides-Holliday retrieved June 30, 2014
- ^ "WEDDINGS; Nicholas Tsiolas, Nicole Petallides". New York Times. 1998-05-10. Retrieved 2007-10-02.
- ^ "Fox Business Network - Anchor Bios". News Corporation. Retrieved 2007-10-02.
External links[edit]
- Multichannel News - This Just In - Fox Business Network to Launch Teaser Site Oct. 1
- FoxBusiness.com bio
|This biographical article related to television journalism in the United States is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
- 1971 births
- Living people
- American women journalists
- American people of Greek descent
- American reporters and correspondents
- American television journalists
- American University alumni
- American writers of Greek descent
- Buckley Country Day School alumni
- Fox Business Network
- People from Astoria, Queens
- American television journalist stubs


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89 Fore Street, Kingsbridge, Devon, TQ7 1PG
01548 531899
Send an email to Gifts & Presents now >>
Gifts and Presents from Kingsbridge in Devon offer a wide selection of quality gift ideas for all the family. Children are catered for with wooden climbing frames, trampolines and pedal go karts being firm favourites. Adults also find plenty to choose from including nautical gifts, wooden games, croquet sets and bird box cameras.
The wooden climbing frame selection offers Blue Rabbit climbing frames that are available in modular form so that you can build your own play centre. Gifts and Presents offer a choice of towers with climbing walls, rope ladders and firemans poles as well as accessories. Swings and slides can also be added.
Pedal Go karts are available from leading manufacturer Dino Karts. These offer a high end, stable go kart that will provide years of fun for children of all ages. Some of the go karts even accommodate adults. This Devon climbing frame shop offers a wide selection of goodies with a returns policy and free delivery to the UK mainland.
Gifts & Presents is a Devon toy shop that specialises in climbing frames.
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Waveform will be available soon!
All rights reserved. No usage without prior licensing. Please be fair. Thank you!
Mysterious intro with great restraint... maintains an emotion that is both relaxing and haunting, builds gradually... enchanting female vocalist... a powerful piece... Gregorian chantlike tones... dreamy, ambient yet still classical.
A swirling pad emerges to provide a soft accompaniment for piano and guitar sharing a melodic refrain. Moments of calm interspersed with more emotional surges create a perfect light latin pop track full of sincerity.
Mid-tempo, Ambient World Heartfelt Ballad with Loving Dialogue between Indian male and female embraced by Solemn Solemn Female Church Choir and Organ, and carried on a bed of Ambient Pads, Tubular Bells and Symphonic Strings.
A solo piano plays simple and sparse, heartfelt chords accompanied by lush tremolo strings, evoking a sensitive, dreamy romantic mood that concludes with a positive resolution. Good for scenes depicting blooming romance, tender precious moments and more.
A soft and dreamy soundtrack that is ideal for evoking a tender, heartwarming atmosphere. Mid-tempo, with calm and steady guitar picking, delicate piano melodies, bells, lush string lines, bass and percussion.
A doubtful and melancholic piano piece. Reflective, melancholic, loving and slightly wistful.
Piano music. A Philip Glass inspired track - dramatic and passionate, yet reflective and romantic. Perhaps depicting wwo lovers longing for each others powerful embrace, this piano duet deals with sorrow, hope, emotion, nostalgia and past events. Good film score / drama underscore for personal stories, real people and emotions.
Calm, Comforting, Warm


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One of the four charges laid against a couple accused of plotting to blow up the BC Legislature has essentially been dropped.
John Nuttall and Amanda Korody are no longer facing prosecution for allegedly facilitating a terrorist act.
The judge has instructed the jury to enter a not guilty verdict 'due to legal reasons.'
BC Supreme Court Justice Catherine Bruce has also reminded them they are not allowed to speculate on why that charge has been dropped or whether this ruling has any impact on the other three charges laid after the couple was arrested on Canada Day in 2013.
The defence is expected to wrap up evidence today.
Nuttall and Korody will not be testifying.


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Fredss Photographer
Chrissy GilbertsonModel Female Redondo Beach, California, US
My Website: Facebook PageMy MM URL: http://www.modelmayhem.com/chrissykemmer
Mayhem # 1342513
About MeIf you would like to book Chrissy, please contact:
BRAND Talent
601 North Baker Street
Santa Ana, CA 92703
(714) 850 - 1158
EM Talent
email: firstname.lastname@example.com
phone: (818) 264-4047
Please 'like' her professional Facebook Fanpage at:
Since the ModelMayhem profile is limited to a certain amount of pictures, you can find her entire portfolio on this Facebook page and contact through the page as well.
(**see above booking information**)
Chrissy Gilbertson is a Los Angeles based model working with Brand Models and Talent in Santa Ana, CA and EM Talent Agency in Woodland Hills, CA. She graduated from Mission Viejo High School and the University of California, Irvine with a B.S. in International Studies and Minor in Political Science. She can be seen on LA based area billboards, in various commercials, as a spokesmodel for products and magazines, and in numerous fashion shows across the United States. She has experience in runway, glamor, swim suit, fit, editorial, and commercial modeling. In her spare time, she likes to play sports, participate in community service, play the violin, and dance hula. She welcomed her first child, Skylar Reese, in January 2014. She currently lives in Redondo Beach, CA with her daughter and their dog Walter.
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"Amazing to work with. Knew how to pose and I didn't have to coach at all. Very pleasing to work with as well! Would definitely work with again!"
See Sample Worked together 1 times; Most recent: November 2015
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Glenn Fontane Model
Nikki V Model
BretJet Model
Brian Levine Photographer
Elena Gr Retoucher
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- Description
Essential item for all 4WD Cosworth Escorts and Sierras! Safeguard those expensive driveshafts should the standard engine mounts fail. Direct replacement for original engine mounting. Gives much reduced engine movement yet rubber insert still provides a degree of noise and vibration isolation. This original version can be used on big horsepower road and competition cars. For Road cars use FOR21M. Two mounts required per car.Application:
- Ford Sierra Sapphire RS Cosworth 4wd 1990-1992
- Ford Escort RS Cosworth 4wd T34 1992-06/1994
- Ford Escort RS Cosworth 4wd T25 06/1994-1996
- Ford Sierra XR4x4 2.8i & 2.9i V6 1985-1992
- Ford Sierra XR4x4 2.0 DOHC 8v 1989-1992
- Ford Granada/Scorpio Mk3 2.8/2.9 4x4 1985-1991
- Additional Information
Additional Information
Part No VIBFOR20MX Product Group Mounts: Engine & Gearbox Stock Status Available From Stock Catalogue 2016 Page Click HERE to view this part on page 83 of our 2017 catalogue Brand Logo Fits Model Variant Ford Escort Cosworth, Ford Sierra (4WD Cosworth), Ford Sierra XR4x4 Free Shipping
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Bottom end/conversion gasket set 4wd Ford Cosworth YBNo Tax, Each £30.83 Taxed, Each £37.00
Rear differential mount: Ford Sierra RS Cosworth, RS500, Sapphire RS Cosworth 2wd/4wd & Escort RS CosworthNo Tax, Each £126.71 Taxed, Each £152.05
Water pump: Ford Sapphire & Escort Cosworth YB 4wd & RS500No Tax, Each £121.84 Taxed, Each £146.21


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Victorian VampireMature
A tall figure hummed softly as he made his way through the Victorian streets, such a lovely night for a stroll in the not-so-well lit Garden district. The man chuckled, musing at his attempts to try and sound mortal. No, he thought, that's terribly hard when you hold nothing akin to humans except for your appearance. The man tilted his head, listening to the songs of the violins, flutes, and the singing of drunken men. Carriage horses snorted and pawed at the stone beneath their hooves, eager to carry onward with their journey. It was the music of the night, a lullaby only known to those who lived with it's darkness.
Each little noise bounced off the streets and rattled around in the flower rimmed gardens. Soft New Orleans breezes tossed and mixed the stench of sweat, alcohol, and the swamps through the air like a sickly breath. It was a city of beauty, of lust, and of pestilence. The man drank it as though it were a fine wine, grinning.
The gray cold cobblestone under his boots, created a loud echoing tap to match the sounds of city. Women passed by, flaunting with men in their low cut dresses and their tender soft skin. Occasionally, he said a greeting and watched as they swooned. Garret was the perfect gentleman, charming and witty.
He laughed at their petty ideas, he was not who they thought he was. After 147 years his old habits managed to hang around, cloaking his true nature, his vampire nature. Garret turned his crimson irises to the blackened sky, opening his mouth to taste the air. In the starlight, everything felt right and his fangs hungered for blood. His body trembled at the thought, his veins crying out in a sheer burning pain. It had been a few days since his last hunt.
Garret turned his head, a sudden rush of air and the clanging of metal roaring in his ears. His brow knitted together as a strange shape tore across the night, splashing the sky's canvas with flames. What the hell? Then just as suddenly as the mysterious craft had appeared, it was gone. Smashing into the swamps in a loud crashing explosion, as if some large building had fallen from the sky.
This could be interesting. His curiosity peeked, Garret strolled though the swath of bugs, tree limbs, and creatures of the night to see what this ship, of sorts, was. His strides were stretched out and his eyes hungrily searched the wilderness.
That's when he found it and gasped in surprise and excitement. Whatever the hell it was...it didn't belong in Victorian New Orleans, he'd never seen anything like it. Garret grinned mischievously, looking over the large round ring like shape. From the way it was sitting in the water, he guessed that it had to be at least halfway sunken into the swamps murky waters.
Slowly, he moved around the waters edge lurking in the shadows. His eyes ran along it's sleek surface that reminding him, oddly, of a large child's toy resting calmly. Where did this thing come from...and why did it come to my city?


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Marseille, France, Sep 29 (UNI) India and the European Union (EU) today asked Pakistan to commit itself to rooting out terrorism without any reservations and said they stood by Islamabad in defending the values of democracy.
French President Nicholas Sarkozy, addressing a joint press conference alongwith Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and EC President Jose Manuel Borrosso, said the EU wished to support Pakistan if that country wanted to fight the Taliban and extremists.
''We stand by Pakistan in defending the values of democracy...We need Pakistan to make sure that Afghan people get the peace and development they are entitled to,'' Mr Sarkozy said.
''If Pakistan effectively deals with terrorism, there is no question of pursuing of terror elements in the Pakistan teritory,'' Mr Sarkozy said in reply to a question on whether he supported hot pursuit of terrorists inside Pakistani territory.


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Your Relaxing Music Mix
On Now Smooth Love Songs With Danny Pietroni
Text 65588Listen Live
Some of our favourite artists are back with albums just in time for Christmas - Adele, Enya and The Corrs to name just a few!
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He recently announced that he's coming out of retirement and will make new music but in the meantime, Phil has released remastered deluxe versions of his 1981 solo album 'Face Value' and his LP 'Both Sides'. The albums feature the original studio material alongside live and demo versions so fans can hear the development of the songs.
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(1897-1972) a popular US radio and newspaper journalist in the 1930s and 1940s. He began his radio broadcasts with the phrase 'Good evening, Mr and Mrs America and all the ships at sea'. His style of reading the news was very dramatic and he was one of the first journalists to add his own comments to news stories. From 1929 to 1969 he wrote a regular column about politicians and entertainers for The Mirror in New York.jump to other results
Walter Winchell
BrE ; NAmE
Check pronunciation: Walter Winchell


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adidas Privacy Statement
1. Who is in Charge of the Protection of Your Data
adidas International Trading BV, Hoogoorddreef 9a, 1101BA Amsterdam, Netherlands (adidas, we or us) determines the purposes and means of the processing of your data and is the controller for this website and all (mobile) applications which refer to this privacy statement, according Dutch Data Protection legislation. adidas is committed to take all responsibility to protect and secure your personal data.
For this privacy statement, the adidas Group consists of all group entities which are involved with or responsible for the adidas Group brands (including Reebok and TaylorMade).
2. What Personal Data is Collected
All our activities are based on stringent ethical principles and we are committed to protect the privacy of all visitors to our website and users of our (mobile) applications. For this reason, the way in which we collect and store information is dependent on how our website and related services are used.
Various technologies may be used on our websites and our (mobile) applications in order to improve them, make them more user-friendly, effective and secure. Such technologies may lead to data being collected automatically by us or by third parties on behalf of us. Examples of such technologies are cookies, flash cookies and web analytics.
2.1 Data collected through your interaction with us
A visit to one of our websites results in data that is sent from your browser to our server. This data makes it possible to optimize our services and improve your experience on our websites and apps. The data is automatically collected and stored by us or by third parties on our behalf. This data can include, in particular, the following:
2.1.1 Click-stream data
• the visitor's IP address
• the date and time of the visit
• the referral URL (the site from which the visitor has come)
• the pages visited on our website
• information about the browser used (browser type and version, operating system, etc).
2.1.2 What you should know about cookiesFirst of all… what are cookies?
Cookies are small text files that are stored on your computer or mobile device. For this section, we conveniently use "cookies" as an umbrella term for techniques such as cookies, Flash cookies, web beacons and JavaScript. They don't take much space and they will be removed automatically when expired. Some cookies expire at the end of your internet session, while others will be saved for a limited amount of time.
Secondly… why do we use cookies?
adidas uses cookies to ensure your visit to our website is as pleasant as possible. There are different types of cookies with different uses. Some are there just to allow you to browse the website and see certain features. Some give us an idea on your browsing experience, i.e. when you have trouble finding what you are looking for, so we can improve and make your future visit as pleasant as possible.
Next… what are the different cookie types we use?
The most important cookies are the required cookies. They are essential and help you to navigate on the website and to use basic features. Then there are functionality cookies that enable you to save your shopping bag, create a wish list and to save your shipping details for a quicker checkout. The performance cookies we use to improve our website. We also like to show you relevant offers. To manage this we collect browsing data. Interaction cookies are used for you to interact with social media or to submit reviews. Targeting cookies. These cookies capture your preferences in order to show you relevant ads outside adidas sites. Below you see a more elaborate overview of the types of cookies we are using:
1. Required Cookies
are essential and help you navigate, move around on the website and see certain features. I.e. these cookies make sure your basket is saved during all the steps of your checkout process.
2. Functionality Cookies
are there so we can give you an even smoother customer experience. These cookies help you to save and remind you about your shopping bag and enable you to create a wish list.
3. Performance Cookies
help us to understand shopping behavior of our visitors. This enables us to keep improving our website, so shopping becomes easier and more pleasant for you.
4. Interaction Cookies
are used for you to express your opinion. We love to know what you think about our product, our website and about us in general. These cookies will enable you to like or recommend us on social media and to chat with our service agents. But you can also advise our other (potential) customers by rating and reviewing our products.
5. Targeting Cookies
will remember your product and buying preferences. We believe advertising is all about relevance. These cookies enable us to share what you like with our advertisers. So if you are browsing on i.e. Google, the advertisement you see can be more relevant to your preferences.
Finally… what if you don't like cookies?
You can change your browser settings to delete or prevent cookies from being stored on your computer or mobile device without your explicit consent. The 'help' section in your browser should provide information on how to manage your cookie settings. Find out how this works for your browser here:
Internet Explorer: http://support.microsoft.com/gp/cookies/en
Mozilla Firefox: http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Cookies
Google Chrome: http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=95647
Safari: http://support.apple.com/kb/PH5042
Opera: http://www.opera.com/help/tutorials/security/cookies/
Adobe (plug-in for flash cookies):http://www.adobe.com/security/flashplayer/articles/lso/
2.2 Data provided by youBesides the data collected by automated means, we also process data which you have provided to us. This includes, but is not limited to:
- • your contact information, including your first and last name, billing or delivery address, birthdate and email address and, optionally, your telephone number. We need your e-mail address and (optionally) telephone number so that we may contact you if we have questions or information for you regarding your order;
- • other information required to be able to process your order, such as information concerning the products you have ordered, the billing and delivery address, banking and/or credit card details;
- • if you have created an online profile, the preferences and interests stored in this profile (please see below for further information concerning the profiles);
- • if you have contacted customer service, the details of this contact and the contact history.
All of this data is characterized by the fact that you have provided this information yourself. We use this information for the purposes described in this privacy statement. You can always have your personal data corrected or object to further processing (please see subsection 5).
3. How is Collected Data Used
We will use your personal data for purposes relating to your order; e.g., to notify you regarding the status of your order or delivery. We may use your data to assess your creditworthiness, for which we may use third parties.
If you have provided us with your personal data in relation to a promotion, event, (mobile) application, etc, we may send you emails or other messages which relate to the service you have requested. If you contact customer service, we will use your personal data (including your contact history) so that customer service is able to process your request and provide you with the best service possible.
If you have given us your personal data during the sale of a product or service, we will inform you about similar products and services. We may also contact you to ask for your feedback after the sale of a product or service. In case of an interrupted sales process we will send you a reminder. You can immediately unsubscribe from any of these notifications at any time at no cost by clicking on a link in the corresponding e-mail or other message (see further below in parapraph 5).
With your explicit consent, we may contact you via the contact details provided by you (including per regular mail, e-mail, SMS, telephone or any other electronic means) for marketing, advertising and opinion research purposes of the adidas Group. This includes for example information related to products of the adidas Group, ecommerce activities, special offers, promotions as well as information on local store openings, local store activities of the adidas Group or sporting events. In order to be able to contact you with information which is of special interest for you, your overall interaction with adidas and adidas AG (such as but not limited to your shopping behaviour in e-shops, in adidas physical stores, your use of loyalty programmes, your ratings and reviews of products, your contact history with our customer service, your newsletter clicks/ opening results, your surfing behaviour (web tracking), the newsletter types you are subscribed to, your participation in promotions or events, your interactions with mi coach and your use of (mobile) applications), will be combined analysed and used. We may provide your contact data to adidas AG for marketing, advertising and opinion research purposes. In section 5 you can find information on your rights, for example on how you can withdraw your consent or correct your personal details.
4. Disclosure of Information
One of our core principles is that we will treat your data with care and confidentiality. We will not sell your data to third parties. If required by law, your data may be disclosed to third parties. Provided that this is allowed under applicable law, we may transfer your data to other companies of the adidas Group.
We may use service providers and data processors working on behalf of adidas. The services can include hosting and maintenance services, analysis services, e-mail messaging services, delivery services, handling of payment transactions, solvency check and address check, etc. These third parties are granted access to such personal data they require in order to be able to carry out the particular service. The service providers and data processors are contractually obliged to treat such information in the strictest confidence. It is also contractually forbidden for them to use the data in any other way than required. The necessary steps are taken to ensure that our service providers and the processors working on behalf of adidas protect confidentiality of your data.
There may be occasions on which we disclose non-personal data to our partners in an anonymous form. Such non-personal data includes, for example, information about the number of visitors to a website or a (mobile) application during a certain period of time. Such information is generally only disclosed in a 'bundled' form.
5. Your Rights
If you provide us with personal data via our websites or other channels, this is done on an entirely voluntary basis. If you choose not to provide requested information, various customer benefits may not be available. In certain cases, only those people that have submitted the necessary personal data to us are able to order products, use certain services and in other ways avail themselves of the activities and offers available on our website and (mobile) application. As transparency and fair play are particularly important issues for us, we provide various options, depending on the exact circumstances, in order to help you retain control over your data. These options may include displaying and editing your data online. It may also be possible to unsubscribe from services or delete user accounts or to receive information about the data held.
E-mails that adidas sends to you that for instance contain a newsletter or marketing content, include the option to unsubscribe to the receipt of such e-mails by following the relevant instructions in the respective e-mail. If you want to stop receiving emails from us, you can simply click on this unsubscribe hyperlink and we will stop sending you emails forthwith.
5.1 Right to object and unsubscribe
If you do not wish information about your behavior at our website or (mobile) application being collected and assessed, you can opt-out of the gathering of the web analytics data as described below in subsection 10.
If you wish to object to receiving promotional information and offers in general, including by regular mail, e-mail, per SMS, by telephone or by any other electronic means, or if you want to withdraw your consent, you may also do so at any time by writing to adidas International Trading BV, Hoogoorddreef 9a, 1101BA Amsterdam, the Netherlands, reference: data protection, or sending an e-mail. In case we have doubt about your identity, we can ask you to identify yourself (e.g. by sending a copy of your passport ID). Other than regular costs for communication this is free of charge.
With regard to other types of messages you may receive, such as maintenance announcements or administrational notifications, the receipt of these can only be terminated by deleting your account, as such messages are a mandatory part of user accounts and the related use of our websites and (mobile) applications. You can delete your account by sending an email to our Customer Service who will delete your account for you.
You have the right to be informed at any time about the personal data stored about you, its origin and recipients as well as the purpose for which it is being stored. Information about stored personal data can be obtained by using the contact details in the Contact Information section below.
5.2 Right to request information
You have the right to request to correct, supplement, delete or block the personal data stored about you. We will notify you within four weeks of receiving the request as to whether and, if so, to what extent, we will comply with your request. If for any reason we don't comply with your request, we will provide you with the reasons.
5.3 Right to request correction
6. Security of the Information and Data Integrity
We take appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect personal data against accidental or unlawful destruction, loss, alteration, unauthorised use, disclosure or access, in particular where the processing involves the transmission of data over a network, and against all other unlawful forms of processing and misuse.
7. Protection of Children's Personal Data
The protection of children's personal data is extremely important. adidas understands that it has a responsibility to protect the privacy of children and has no intention of collecting the data of children under the age of 16. We encourage parents and other guardians to surf the Internet together with their children and enjoy the internet in a responsible manner.
If a child under the age of 16 attempts to submit a registration application, this will be rejected. For that reason, we ask parents and other guardians to check on and monitor their children's Internet usage in order to protect them.
8. Social Networks
Our website and (mobile) applications provide you with Social Plug-ins from various social networks. If you choose to interact with a social network, your activity on our website or via our (mobile) applications will also be made available to social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.
If you are logged in on one of these social networks during your visit to one of our websites or (mobile) applications, the social network might add this information to your profile. If you are interacting with one of the Social Plug-ins, this information will be transferred to the social network. In case you do not wish such a data transfer, please log off on your social network before you enter one of our websites or (mobile) applications.
We cannot influence this data collection and data transfer via the Social Plug-ins. Please read the privacy policies of those social networks for detailed information about the collection and transfer of personal data, what rights you have and how you can achieve satisfactory privacy settings.
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/privacy
Google +: http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/
9. Geolocation Services
We offer location-enabled services within some of our (mobile) applications, such as Google Maps and Bing Maps. If you use those (mobile) applications, they may receive information about your actual location (such as GPS signals sent by a mobile device) or information that can be used to approximate a location. You can generally enable or disable your location services in your device or browser settings.
We use the Google Maps service or the Bing Maps service to assist you in finding the next adidas store. To facilitate this, we load an image from Google Maps or Bing Maps, saving the route data and map image on our server.
For further Information on Google Maps and their privacy statement please read their privacy statement.
Google: http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/
For further information on Bing Maps and their privacy statement please read their privacy statement.
Bing Maps: http://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/fullnotice.mspx
10. Web Analytics
The web analytic services on our website and (mobile) applications are provided by Webtrekk GmbH (www.webtrekk.de).
Webtrekk considers the protection of internet user data privacy to be of utmost priority and adheres strictly to the Data Privacy laws of the European Union and Germany. Some data from website visits is used for our internal analysis. The collection of internet user data occurs with via a pixel method that is built into each of the pages of our website.
The following data is collected :
Request (File name of the requested file)
Browser Type and its Version (for example, Internet Explorer 6.0)
Browser Language (for example, English)
Operating System
Browser Resolution
Screen Resolution
Java : 'On' or 'Off'
Cookies : 'On' or 'Off'
Color Depth
Referrer URL
shortened IP Address for geographical analysis to the City level
E-Commerce information such as, Order Value, Products, Quantity, etc.
Form Content : Free text fields such as Name, Email, Account Number and Phone Number are tracked as 'completed' or 'empty'. The actual values are not tracked.
Webtrekk acts as an agent to adidas, which means that adidas solely determines the purposes for which the data is being used and that Webtrekk does not pass any data on to third parties.
The IP Address is sent with every request, so that the Server knows where to send its responses. Each internet user attains an IP Address from an Internet Service Provider (ISP) as soon as they connect with the internet. The ISP knows which IP Addresses were used at which time and by which internet user. The law requires that the ISP retains this information.
Webtrekk does not save the IP Address. Webtrekk immediately shortens the IP Address for session recognition and the geographic analyses in our tool. Then Webtrekk deletes the IP Address. It is not possible to link data we process on behalf of adidas with any individual person or to identify any individual person with this data.
The geographical analyses function via a database that contains the IP Address information of various ISPs with the geographic location of the IP Address included down to the city level. The individual address of the internet user is unknown.
Webtrekk uses cookies. Most of the cookies Webtrekk sets are so-called "Session Cookies". There are also cookies used to recognize returning visits. These cookies do not cause any harm to the internet users' hard drive and do not contain any viruses. This data can not be associated with individual people.
Webtrekk uses the following cookies :
Last Click (used for session timeout; Duration is a session)
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AN: I just wanted to stay thanks so much for sticking with me and reading and reviewing. It's been quite a ride!
Steve would never be able to understand why Connor forgave his parents. Granted it hadn't been an easy decision for him to make but nonetheless Steve had been shocked at how easily Connor had managed to return to the house that had rejected him.
After several inconclusive visits from social services, Mr and Mrs McKinley had become lax if not indifferent to their son. Connor didn't mind. With less than a year until he set off on his mission he had no desire to rekindle any sense of what he once had with his parents.
Steve was a different matter. He'd stopped walking Connor home, stopped waiting for him outside english, stopped sitting with him at lunch. Steve barely ate anyway now.
He was more than just angry and jealous at Kevin taking Connor away from him. He was disgusted with himself for letting him go. In Steve's mind, there was nothing that Connor could tell him that would explain what happened. It was all buried deep in excuses and time by this point.
It was natural for Connor to gravitate towards Kevin as a result of this rejection. But all Steve saw was Connor vanishing further and further away.
Steve didn't see any point in not being amiable to Kevin. Soon he'd be rid of both of them and he'd be able to carry on with his life. He dreaded to think what that meant.
The school year dragged slower than ever and Steve found himself blindly passing through his daily routines and numbly carrying out tasks.
Steve had no plans for his life. He wasn't creative like Connor and he wasn't smart like Kevin, he wasn't athletic or attractive or talented at really anything. In fifth grade he'd seen Connor McKinley as annoying and not worth his time. Now he was stuck in a paradox of both wanting Connor and pushing him away.
By himself Steve Blade was no one and all alone Connor McKinley was lost. They both desperately needed each other but neither of them was able to see it.
Steve still kept Connor's drawings and pictures stuffed away in the draw by his bed. He tried to look at them a few times but found himself crying.
Soon, without warning, their final year came to an end, the summer came and went, and Connor was due to leave on his mission in a week.
It took a lot of courage for Steve to speak to Connor again. He'd spent the whole summer at the missionary training centre but he was back for the last few days gathering his things and saying his goodbyes.
Steve knew what the commitment of a mission meant and he also knew that within a few days Connor might be lost forever and he was determined to do something about it.
The last time he'd rung the McKinley household's doorbell had been a year ago. It had been to tell Mrs McKinley to tell her son that a boy named Rowan had written to him. He told her to say that he was fine and was now living with a foster family in Idaho. He said he was happy. Since then Steve hadn't had a reason to go back.
As the last peal of the bell finished echoing round the house, Steve was tempted to run but his feet remained firmly rooted in the doormat. He looked at the now peeling sticker above the doorbell that read 'Jesus loves you'. Over the years he had watched its progress from shine to dilapidation.
When the door opened Steve couldn't tell if he wanted to slam it first or if Connor would get there before him. The moment was tense. They stared at each other in a mix of disbelief and longing. It was Connor who spoke first.
"We should talk"
"It's a bit late for that"
Connor shuffled his feet on the carpet avoiding Steve's gaze.
"We could try"
"Yeah we could"
Connor joined Steve on the step and shut the door behind him. Such closeness a few years ago would have warranted touch. Now it just felt awkward and detached.
Connor sat down on the step and Steve silently joined him. There was something missing already and they both knew it was something they'd once had and lost.
"I'm leaving in a few days"
"I know"
"I'll be gone a long time"
"I'll miss you"
"Will you?"
Steve then realised how ridiculous the statement had been. They hadn't spoken in a very long time. In any case Steve already missed Connor, the sentiment was already present.
"Where are you going?"
So Connor would be miles and miles away. So far that there wasn't even the vaguest hope that they could meet even by chance.
"It's an underfilled mission, there's space for more missionaries to come"
"I've told you already, I'm not converting" Steve's almost joke made Connor smile just a little.
"I've been made district leader"
"Is that good?"
"Well I was surprised. I'm not really leader material"
"Yes you are"
"I've never led or guided anyone anywhere in my life"
"That's a lie" Steve looked up at Connor their eyes meeting in a familiar but dusty glance, "And you know it"
"I have to uh pack and stuff" Connor said awkwardly beginning to stand. He knew what Steve meant and he didn't agree. He was firm in the belief that it was the other way round. And in a way perhaps they were both right.
Steve didn't say anything to stop Connor going back inside. He waited on the steps for a while before deciding to head home. If he'd known it was the last time he'd see Connor for two years he might have found something else to say. Maybe.
On the eve of Connor's departure Steve found himself sitting on the end of his bed with a well handled piece of paper in his hands. The seven year old painting could have been in better condition but Steve was as proud of it as he was on the day Connor had given it to him.
The blue of the sea was fading, the sky dull. The outline of the desert island was wearing away and the two swimming figures unrecognisable as Connor and Steve anymore. But he knew and that was enough. He held it close to him as he thought back on his patchy school life. He tried to imagine what his life might have been like without Connor and he found it impossible. It would be too empty, almost like he'd never existed.
His thoughts of how one of the happiest and turbulent times of his life had come to an end he fell into sleep. These thoughts dissipated as he slipped deeper and deeper in dreams and he found himself drifting into a realm he did not belong in...
He saw through the haze Connor walking towards him. Despite the torturous heat he folded Connor into him and held him tight. A red glow lit up their faces and Steve was beginning to sweat uncomfortably but he was determined to stay as close as possible forever.
"I was hoping to never see you here" Connor said eventually.
"Where are we?"
"I come here every night"
"Oh. It's not as bad as I thought it would be"
"It's usually worse, but usually you're not here"
"Why am I here?"
"I don't think you really are. I don't think I'm really here either. At least not in your dream anyway"
"I don't understand"
"I think you expect me to be here so you're dreaming about being here too"
"I guess that makes sense"
"There's something you need to say and it's too late to tell the real me so this will have to do"
Connor was still in the crook of Steve's shoulder and he hadn't seen his face yet. There was so much Steve needed to say to Connor. So much he hadn't said and so much he'd said wrong. And now Connor was going off on his mission and he'd missed his chance and whatever he told this Connor wasn't real. He could say what he needed to say but what would it really mean?
Still Steve realised the importance of saying some certain words that he should have said a long time ago. So for whatever it was worth Steve drew back from Connor so he could look him in the eye. Clinging on tightly never wishing to let go his voice was clear.
"Connor, I love you"
And never had Steve spoken a truer word in his life.


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In July, my family traveled to the San Juan Islands in Washington State. It had been a long time since we traveled anywhere in the Pacific Northwest. I was not disappointed with our choice to travel here last year. After living in a beautiful area for so long, I have forgotten how beautiful the PNW is!
The San Juan Islands were very cold (which is typical of the PNW). The sun was out most of our trip, but it did rain for a bit.


text:
Chateau Aspen Condominiums
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Day 43 - Independence Pass & Aspen
... a really nice little place called Aspen Over Easy. They did breakfast along with normal lunch. The food was so good and we are already planning on revisiting here when we hopefully go back for the X-Games in January.
After a little walk around Aspen we headed back home which took just under 2 hours.
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Day 40 - Exploring and $20.15 Dinner
... enjoy the offer...we picked a restaurant up in Beaver Creek called Golden Eagle Inn which you could pick 2 courses for that price. I had Chicken confit with apple butter and Darren had Elk Meatloaf, then we had a Palisade peach pavlova and Profiteroles to share. It was so delicious....they also gave us homemade sourdough bread with a butter that had been mixed with paprika and other herbs!! What a treat!
At last some rest/ Un peu de repos enfin
Hello everyone,
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Colorfull Colorado....
Aspen reminded me a bit of Banff, cute little ski/snowboard town with lots of hikes in the summer.
Unfortunately, I did not realize how high up Aspen is (2400m above sea level) and once we started our hike at Maroon Bells, I felt quite dizzy and tired. Turns out I must have had some sort of altitude sickness at 3000m above sea level... That happened on our hike in Santa Fe as well.. well, now I know :)
I recovered quickly and finished the hike at least...
Day 22
... a wiser individual with an abundance of new life experiences.
When Darren and I got back to Boulder we had to come to terms with our second out of the three goodbyes we would face during our time together. It was hard pulling away from his house and leaving Boulder. My heart felt heavy and was telling me to stay, yet I also wanted to see my family at the same time. I headed an hour south ...


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La Maison Rouge
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Blender Cycles Landscape, Backdrop
Blender Cycles render 3D landscape material node
Blender Cycles
Awhile ago, the Blender team started work on a new renderer for Blender, called Cycles, driven by the work being done on the next open movie project. The latest releases of Blender include this renderer, and if you haven't looked into it yet you're kind of missing out. Cycles is neat. I've started tinkering with it lately, and I have to say it's won me over. One of the main selling points of Cycles is that it can use your GPU to perform the rendering calculations, taking advantage of the hefty parallelization of graphics hardware. But to me, that is actually one of the least of the neat things about Cycles. (My lack of enthusiasm for that might come from the fact that I only have an older, wimpier ATI card, and currently OpenCL support is leagues behind Cuda in Cycles.)
The Path-tracing Renderer
First of all, Cycles represents a whole different style of rendering than the Blender Internal renderer. The Blender Internal renderer basically works as a ray-tracer, tracing rays from light sources and mapping photons to illuminate the scene. Cycles, however, is a path tracer that works in the opposite direction. It traces rays from the camera into the scene, and models the light rays as they bounce around using random scattering functions and material settings such as glossiness, translucency, glassiness, refraction, etc... A camera ray strikes a surface and is bounced at a random vector, depending upon the surface properties of the object. It might bounce through multiple bounces until it either dissipates, meets a light source, or sails off into the sky.
One key component of the renderer is the scattering. Because the scattering is random, the renderer basically amounts to a sort of statistical sampling simulation. The renderer must make several passes, each time tracing a new ray that scatters differently. The more passes you perform, the more the scene will converge to the final result; it is simply a matter of how long you are willing to wait. The drawback to this technique is that it can take awhile for the scene to converge to an acceptable state, and beforehand it will have speckles. Some call these speckles "fireflies". They are pixels in the image that happen to catch a lucky break, so to speak, with the ray scattering away to meet a light source that none of the surrounding pixels have met yet, so the illumination at that pixel stands out from the background. This is especially prevalent with small lightsources that are "hard to hit"; ie, require many randomly scattered rays to be cast before encountering the light. Also, glossy and other reflective materials are strong sources of fireflies, due to how they really bounce the light around. The Cycles renderer does do certain things to reduce these occurrences, but as with any system that is founded upon random sampling, the chief solution is to perform more passes. Many photorealistic scenes I have seen in the past couple days have required as many as 1500 passes to converge to a smooth, noiseless render.
As an example, here are some renderings of a simple scene. The first render is after 1 pass of the renderer. The second is after 10 passes. The third is after 100. And the final is after 1000. You can see how the lighting and shading converge over time, to reduce the noise and speckling. The scene is a simple one, with a glass sphere, a glossy/diffuse sphere and a light emission sphere on a checkerboard.
You'll note how the image quality improves over time. However, even the 1-pass render is sufficient to provide information on how the scene will look when finished, and at this point the render layer's Z buffer is fully populated, so if you are still tweaking the scene or the composition nodes, one pass should be enough to work with. The renderer lets you hit Esc to bail out at any time.
In these 4 scenes, you can see how the statistical nature of the random scattering creates "fireflies". Look at the checkerboard to the right of the spheres, especially in the 10 and 100 passes. You can see random bright speckles. These are a result of those one-in-a-million rays that happen to hare off on some path that leads them to a bright light source, while their neighbors do not. In this case, I suspect those pixels are catching an oblique bounce off the glass sphere and to the emitter sphere on the left. The only real solution to the fireflies is more iterations, just as the answer to statistical noise in any random sampling is to generate more samples. The noise gets averaged out. Also, glossy/reflective materials in the scene tend to generate vastly more fireflies than dull matte materials, so the more gloss you have, the more passes you're going to want to use in your final render. Luckily, the 1000 passes above only took about 15 min to render. Unfortunately, that is a rather simple scene, and more complex scenes can take hours to render to an acceptable level of noise. (Of course, those same scenes would probably take hours under Blender Internal as well, so this really isn't a drawback.) If you get a good, fast Nvidia card, you can whittle those hours back down to minutes again. Many of the "pros" will outfit their gear with a good Nvidia card just for that reason.
One interesting thing about the iterative renderer is that you can set it to some arbitrarily high number, then halt it whenever you feel it is "good enough". During the scene construction phase, you can halt it after just a few passes which may be sufficient to show you what you need to know in order to go back and make changes. When you are nearing completion, you can let it run longer to see how it will look after iterative improvement. This, in my opinion, is far superior to Blender Internal's method of splitting the render output into tiles or blocks and filling in each block sequentially. You don't have to wait for the scene to finish rendering to see how it's going to turn out. You can stop it as soon as you see what you need to see.
Material Nodes
The path-tracing renderer is neat, and it makes possible many lighting and shading effects that are difficult to do in the Blender Internal, such as the ability for objects to emit light into the scene. However, the new renderer isn't the only enhancement. Along with the renderer comes an expanded Material node system, modeled somewhat after the "traditional" node system that Blender has included for several major releases now, yet beefed up and improved. For many users, the node system may be the most attractive part of Cycles, making complex shading effects easily accessible.
In a way, the shift from Blender Internal to Cycles is a lot like the shift from fixed-function rendering in OpenGL or Direct3D to shader based rendering. It, in effect, removes the "fixed function" aspect of materials, textures, environment and compositing. In Cycles, gone are the traditional long panels full of buttons and sliders under the Material and Texture windows. In their places are chains and trees of Nodes, including texture images, shaders of all sorts, mixing nodes, and so on. All material and texture functionality in Cycles is implemented within the Node system. And while this fact introduces a bit of complexity to the system (you have to think about your materials now, instead of just ticking boxes in the panel) the tradeoff is a vast increase in flexibility and power, just as with the evolution of rendering APIs to shader-based.
In my previous post I talked briefly about implementing tri-planar texturing. I have wanted to implement this sort of texturing in Blender for some time now. Tri-planar texturing can help with the problem of stretching when mapping a terrain texture onto a heightmap. Implementing this technique really helped show me the power of the new node system.
The node system, as with shaders, is built upon the idea of programmability. Under Blender Internal, you could use material nodes to an extent, but you were fairly limited in what you could do. The interface with the geometry being rendered was crude, for one thing. The capability of performing various effects was limited. And you still had to make use of the panel buttons a lot in order to achieve various results. It was sort of like a mix between fixed-function and shader rendering. But under the new material system in cycles, it has become almost completely node based. There are one or two buttons still in the panel (literally, one or two), but for the most part the vast majority of shading and bump-mapping is done via nodes.
A node represents an atomic "instruction" in the shader pipeline. You have nodes for mapping pixels from images, nodes for mapping pixels from procedural noise textures, nodes for composing or breaking down RGB colors, nodes for performing vector and scalar math, etc... You also have special "shader" nodes. These are the basic building blocks of the material surface effects such as glossiness, refractivity, etc...
I won't go into a lot of detail here. The building blocks are very simple and easy to understand, and you can read all about them at the Blender wiki: http://wiki.blender....l/Render/Cycles
A few caveats about Cycles' node system: it is new technology in the Blender trunk, and still in the work-in-progress stage. At this point in the game, you are going to run into things that just flat don't work, missing features, etc... For example, when I went to implement tri-planar texturing, I discovered that for whatever reason, they don't have an Abs math operation. I know, right? I hacked a workaround, but the lack seems sort of glaring.
Building a Simple Scene
To learn more about Cycles, I implemented another landscape scene. With this one, I wanted to use Cycles' flexible node system to implement tri-planar texturing in order to reduce the amount of stretching being done on landscape textures applied to a heightmap.
To begin with, I wanted to render a backdrop. You might recall from my earlier post about forest rendering that I will frequently render out backdrops to be used later in other scenes, in order to reduce the rendering times of those other scenes. That is what I did here. I generated this backdrop in basically the same fashion as described in that earlier entry. That is, I constructed a heightmap terrain, textured it, populated it with trees, and rendered it with some fog to make it appear distant and in the background. The basic process was the same, but the differences were in the materials and in the fog pass.
In Blender Internal, fog is one of those things you can do with just a tick of a checkbox and the setting of a few value parameters. But since all that fixed function stuff goes away in Cycles, you have to implement fog in another manner. I chose to do it as a compositing pass using the Z-buffer of the render layer. I'll talk about that more in a bit.
First thing I did was to set up a basic scene with a plane, a camera, a sun lamp and a skybox. One thing that I had to puzzle out when I first started with Cycles is that under the new system, a lamp has a Size parameter. Even a sun lamp, which is basically just a directional light, has a Size. I didn't realize this, and the default Size of a sun lamp is 1, which is actually pretty big. This results in a very soft shadow. For hours, I banged my head in frustration, thinking that Cycles was broken and just couldn't support sharper shadows. I completely overlooked that Size parameter altogether. Finally at some point, I noticed it and something sort of clicked. "Hey," I thought. "I wonder if making that smaller will do the trick." It did. To show you what I'm talking about, here is my starting plane with a sphere rendered on top of it, using a sun of size 1 and a sun of size 0.1. You can see how decreasing the size sharpens the shadows. Decreasing the size all the way to 0 will create a perfectly sharp shadow. (Which, of course, I don't want since I'm not rendering scenes in the vacuum of outer space.)
Anyway, with the basic scene set up, I went ahead and added a material to the plane to texture it. I posted a screenshot of a 1-texture tri-planar mapping in the previous entry. In this case, I extended it to two textures, dirt and grass. No cliffs for this backdrop. Both dirt and grass are tri-planar mapped, and they are blended between using a simple noise texture. Here is a screenshot of the node setup:
Summary of Tri-planar Texturing
It's hard to read the values in this screenshot, but if you really care about the specifics I have included the .blend file for this backdrop at the end of this entry. Select the terrain and go to the Node pane to view it. I have annotated it above, and here is a brief rundown of the sections:
A) This section takes the normal of the terrain at the given point and extracts out the X, Y and Z coordinate components. It corrects them from the (-1,1) possible range to the (0,1) range (by scaling them by 0.5 and adding 0.5) then normalizes the result vector to unit length and separates it out again into component parts. Each part is then used to index a black-and-white color ramp that ramps from (1,1,1) at 0, to (0,0,0) at 0.5, and back to (1,1,1) at 1. This color is then converted back to a scalar value.
This part is a bit of a hack. You see, typically I would just take the abs() of each component of the normal vector, but for whatever reason there still is not an abs() modifier for a scalar value in Cycles. It baffles me how such an elementary and foundational operation isn't yet supported, but... well... there we are. There is also limited capability for constructing a vector from 3 scalars. You can do it using a Compose RGB node, but Color components are clamped to 0 and 1, so if you have a scalar that is <0, it'll be clamped.
So the point of my hack here was to take the object normal at the terrain point, separate the components, hack an abs() function on them, then use them later as blend factors. They will be used to weight the texture contributions of the 3 planar textures.
B) This section sets up the 3 planar textures. In tri-planar texture mapping you have a texture that is essentially repeated 3 times. The first one projects the texture down on the object from the top. The second projects it onto the object from the front. The third projects it onto the object from the side. These three textures are blended together to get the final pixel. The blending contributions depend on the dot-product of the object normal with each of axis vectors. So a normal that is pointing straight up will have a contribution of 1 from the top-projected texture, and a contribution of 0 from the front and side vectors. A normal pointing straight to the side will have 0 contribution from the top and front, and 1 from the side. Most vectors in a terrain will not point directly along any given axis (except for perfectly flat ground) but will instead be a weighted combination of two or three of the planar textures.
This section works by taking the object coordinate, separating it out into X, Y and Z, and using those components to index the texture. For the top plane, we need to use X and Y as the texture coordinates. For the front plane we need X and Z. And for the side plane we need Y and Z. You can see in secton B that I have three paths leading from the object coordinate input. The first one is used as-is (X and Y are already in the right spots), but for the second and third I need to decompose the vector and swap components around. A crude form of swizzling, if you will.
The texture coordinate vectors are then fed through a vector mapping that allows me to tweak the Scale of the vector, in order to alter the coverage of the texture on the object. A higher scale will repeat the texture more times, a lower scale will repeat it fewer times across the object.
C) and D) These sections implement the three planar textures. On the left of each section are 3 Image nodes which are loaded with the dirt and grass textures respectively, dirt in section C and grass in section D. Inputs to the Image textures are taken from the mappings in B. This causes the textures to be mapped by way of the swizzled coordinates calculated in B. Following the Image nodes are 3 Mix nodes. These cause the output color to be mixed between color (0,0,0) and the texture color. The factor used to perform the mixing is taken from the extracted normal blending factors calculated in A. In essence, these mix nodes multiply the texture color by the blending factor. Finally, two chained Add nodes will sum the weighted colors together to get the final color contribution for the pixel.
E) This section implements a procedural Noise texture and maps it to a color ramp. This color ramp is used to control exactly how the texture blends between dirt and grass.
F) This section implements the mixing of the dirt and grass textures using the factor derived from the color ramp in E. E's output, then, simply blends between dirt and grass. Here also, the output of E is scaled to use as a bump map on the terrain.
G) This is the final output for the material. It has inputs for Surface, Volume and Displacement. Surface, of course, affects the coloration and shading of the object's surface. Volume is useful for modeling the behavior of light if it passes inside the object (for translucent or glass shaders, etc...). Displacement is used to apply bump-mapping and surface distortion. Here, we feed the output of E into the Surface and Displacement tabs.
It's kind of complex-looking, but the node system is not really that hard to understand. It is an example of complex systems built from simple building blocks. Let's go ahead and render the scene and see what it looks like:
It's... well, it's a terrain. A flat plane with grassy dirt on it. You can see some banding, as a result of the displacement applied by the blend texture, but it's not really going to affect the final render. In truth, given that I am creating a backdrop image here, and not a foreground rendering, the use of the tri-planar mapping is sort of overkill. This backdrop is going to be pretty heavily fogged in the final version, so any texture stretching in the result would be unnoticeable. However, I was working on the tri-planar mapping anyway, so this seemed as good a place as any to test it out. So there.
Now, as with the earlier entry on forest rendering, I will import a heightmap texture and use a Displace modifier to displace the plane and create a mountain range:
You can see that the tri-planar texturing results in no stretching in the texture where the hills get steep. This is cool. Granted, the mixing operation results in textures that are somewhat more blended and less crisp than I would like, but I would still take overly blended textures over stretched textures, any day of the week. Stretching is the bane of my existence.
At this point, it is a simple matter to add in the trees, as described in my earlier forests post. In this case, I'm going for a distant, thickly-forested mountain look, so I dropped the scale on the trees fairly low and rendered... uh... 80,000 of them.
That looks pretty cool, I think. It certainly gives the impression of vast mountains covered in forest, at least. Now, it just needs some fog.
In Blender Internal, you can use nodes in the Compositing layer, but you don't have to use them in order to implement Fog. Fog is done on the World tab. Under Cycles, though, the World tab is just another set of Nodes. All of the old options (excepting Ambient Occlusion) are gone. In order to do fog in Cycles, you have to use compositing nodes.
That's no problem for us, though. We love nodes. We LURVE them, don't we guys? Here is the node tree I built to do fog for this backdrop:
This chain is pretty simple. Note that the three nodes along the bottom are simple Viewer nodes, that let you visualize the process along the way. They come in very handy for visualizing the process.
We begin on the left with the Render layer. This is the data that is generated by the renderer. It consists of the color image, the alpha (for transparent areas) and the Z buffer. If you are just interested in the color map, you can feed the output of the Image tab directly into the final node in the Compositing chain, and you're done. By default, this is how the nodes are setup. In our case, though, we need to add fog. We want the fog to thicken as distance increases, so we need to use the Z buffer.
There are a couple problems with using the Z-buffer as-is. The first problem (which you can't see because I left out a Viewer when I was taking the screenshot) is that, depending on the clip settings of the camera, the spread of the Z values might not be in any kind of useful range. The second is that places where the sky is shown are given a depth of maximum depth.
A simple fix for the first problem is to scale the output of the Z-buffer. I chose, arbitrarily, 0.3. This at least puts our mountains' Z values into the (0,1) range, and leaves the sky at >1.
Our fog technique works by fading the color to blue based on depth. The problem is that we used an HDRI texture for the sky, and we don't want to fog out all that sky detail, so we need to mask out the sky. For this, we can use a Less Than scalar node. This scalar node will evaluate the incoming value, and if its less than a certain threshold, output 1. Otherwise it will output 0. If we set the threshold to 1, this will mask out to 0 any values that are 1 or greater (sky) and set to 1 any values that are less than 1 (mountains). We can use this mask in a color Mix node to mix between 0 and the output of the Z buffer. The result is the Z-buffer as is, but with the sky's depth set to 0. This means the sky will not be mixed with blue.
After the sky is masked out, the Z value is fed into a color ramp. This color ramp gives us control over fog starting and ending depth, falloff, etc... By sliding the bars around, you can control the fog application.
The output of the color ramp is then used in another Mix node, to mix between the base color of the render layer, and the blue color. The blue color was chosen to match the color of the sky box at the horizon. The output of the mix node is fed into the Composite node as the final step. After some considerable tweaking of the multiplicative factor and the color ramp, we get something we can use:
And there we have it. We can render that out to an image to later be mapped to a plane and used as a backdrop for a foreground scene. Since this entry is already a long bastard, though, I'll save that part for next time.
cycles_backdrop.zip (25.86MB)
downloads: 372


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Mass Effect 3's "Leviathan" DLC has finally received a release date from the official Bioware blog:
"We are very pleased to officially announce that the Mass Effect 3 Leviathan single-player DLC will be released on August 28th, 2012 for PS3, Xbox 360, and PC. Please note that on Playstation 3 in Europe, it will be available on August 29th.
To help us celebrate this joyous occasion, we are also releasing a fresh batch of Leviathan wallpapers for you to enjoy. Get 'em here."
The "Leviathan" DLC has promised more content, missions, and another factor that will alter the ending of the game. Here's to hoping all of this content will be worth the cost!


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How can I contact Customer Service?
Email us at email@example.com, or call us directly at (424) 284-8470.
What are your customer service hours?
We are readily available Monday - Friday from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM PST. Weekend inquiries will be answered in the order of receipt on Monday (there is no need to resend as we answer the oldest messages and emails first).


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The Newcomer
And then, time froze.
"Hmm..." said a voice. "What a peculiar scene we have here."
The bar was packed with a ridiculous variety of characters, the floor was shining with a superficial cleanliness, the walls were like the boundaries of a video game, and the black hole in the floor was threatening to swallow the scene whole.
The observer hummed. "It was a long journey for me to get this far. I have watched every move, every ripple of fabric, every sound wave. And now time has come to an end. I have reached the all famous present with only the edge of the infinite future before me."
The observer materialized as a character. His face was sculpted and chiseled, and yet, it was certainly not the type to be found on a statue. His eyes were deadly yet warm, seeming to notice not only ever move, but every intention.
He sighed. "That description was a little much for this scene. But no matter. Let's get the scene rolling again."
The bar jumped back into life, but there were a few minor changes. For one, the band was now playing an orchestral rock, the floor was a polished wood, and everyone was dressed in casual evening attire.
And there was a section of bare floor, in which there now stood a new character. "Good day," he said.
"Er...welcome," said Bella.
"What can I get you?" asked Sly.
"Your finest green tea, thank you sir."
Sly scoffed a moment before he turned around and noticed the full and bustling kitchen behind him. A chef with a giant head poked his head out of the door with a face-splitting smile made up of two giant red pepper lips. "No need to say a word. His order is on it's way!"
Mckenzie swivelled around on his stool to give the new restaurant an inspecting gaze. "You better not have replaced the bar section of this affair," he said.
The newcomer realized that the detective was talking to him, and he gave a gracious smile. "I just thought you all might be getting hungry. If you order a steak, it'll come with your choice of alcohol."
McKenzie's face lit up, though he tried to hide it. "Say no more," he said gruffly.
The dance floor was still teeming with life, and it seemed like Nick was throwing up a storm. The newcomer had hardly been noticed by the rest of the bustling crowd who were now rippling with the rhythm of the new beat music.
The newcomer sighed. "Now that this is a little more manageable..."
"You talking to yourself?" asked Eloosive. "Or planning something devilish?"
Bucknuck gave the newcomer a careful look. "You look like a thoughtful chap. Make sure you don't go changing things too much. I already saw your smooth move at the start there, stopping time and all to go all descriptive on us."
"I rather prefer a lack of plot, now and again," McKenzie said from across his candlelit dinner. "It makes my job a whole lot easier."
The newcomer smiled again. "Don't worry," he said. "You won't notice a thing. Your dinner has as many courses to it as you would like. And Sly: look the other way. There's a lineup of people ready for you to take their orders."
And then the newcomer disappeared into the crowd.


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|incl. VAT
|£11.20 £8.50
|excl. VAT
Punching bag action will bring a lot of fun to all young athletes. Bag can be hung anywhere and basically little boxer can train on it even hits your observation. The package also includes gloves, everything is brought out in the original design of the American flag.
45 x 15 cm
Package contents:
Punching bag
Two boxing gloves
Recommended age:
Toy meets European Parliament and Council Directive 2009/48 / EC of 18 June 2009 on the safety of toys and all legal standards under Czech legislation. Of course there is a declaration of conformity.
Specifications can be changed without notice. Images are for illustrative purposes only. Retail Price (MSRP) means the manufacturer's/supplier's suggested retail price.
Link to Manufacturer's Website: Enter link to the external review


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Chapter 1: T-MawMature
After a botched robbery a woman is dead with a thousand diamonds in her mouth, a man in a yacht has gone missing, and the only lead happens to be insane.
"My gums were sour, and tender. Every damn inch. It was the tenth one in all of my life and this was the only way I knew how to cope with it, you know. I had put in 5 pouched of wintergreen dip. Yes, the sort that gives you mouth cancer, bad breath, and yellow teeth. I've heard it all before. But that doesn't matter too much does it? Should it even? Yeah so, there I was, sweaty and smacking away at the little baggies in my mouth. There were still about 2 hours before anything of the NAME would actually be taking place and still I couldn't get myself to leave the room. Even to grab some fresh air or ride around for a half hour, maybe pick up one of those crab cake sandwiches my neighbor Damien keeps telling me about. He's always barging in, in account that my lock has been broken for the past 8 months which isn't any fault of mine considering I have called the maintenance man about 18 times. Anyway he's always telling me to head over to Cardin Grooves and pick up one of their crab cake sandwiches. Or, if it's too much trouble he tells me that he can go get one for me. He's a nice guy Damien, and at most times when I'm hungry I do think of heading over to Cardin Grooves to get one of those sandwiches. But every time he comes in, he's always fumbling around with my things, you know. It would be bearable if it was out of admiration or even a fleeting sense of interest, but no, it's out of Damien not being able to cope with situation that he put himself in. Because he has 1. Intruded on my place and 2. Is able to comprehend my passive aggression towards him, he finds that he has lost control of his hands. Then, in the tenth attempt, in the week mind you, of getting me to grab some god damn crab cake, he will start fondling my pictures, keys, cellphone, magazines, books, and switch blade, while pitching the idea. The switchblade is what really gets me nervous. It's always those goddamn crab cake sandwiches too, as if he eats nothing else. Hell that might actually be all he eats for all I know. Some variety would be nice Damien, godammit, you one trick pony. He moved in about 6 months ago, with Margery. She's his aid, his mental aid that is, you know. Damien suffers from severe Autism and a small bit of Schizophrenia. That's why he's a nice guy enough, I just wished he would be able to come into my room without touching my things and making an ass out of himself. It's probably best I hadn't eaten the crab cake sandwich though, before the heist that is. It would have all came up at some point.
There I was, sitting in my room, TV off, computer off, lights off, and letting my thoughts melt. I was trying to distract myself from thinking too much about the NAME, because it was the biggest one we had ever tried to do. I was sweating pretty badly and Damien had just come in about 30 minutes ago talking about his crab cakes. So that was still fresh in my mind, heading out and grabbing some of that crab cake. But then I started thinking about Margery, the nurse and her curves because she was the last person I had seen that day besides Damien. She was pretty enough, I think, though a bit on the chubby side. It really showed in her bottom, her ass, but I like a girl with a little bit on that side you know. Something to grab onto and push onto from time to time. She was nice enough too, always dealing with Damien's bullshit. He probably touched all of her things and talked about who knows what to her. Whoa, that Margery really made me think. And think. And think. It wasn't enough though, the NAME was still in my mind, like an itch you have right before you get to sleep. I kept thinking about the heist and Margery and Damien, the maintenance man, the itch on my side, the computer, Clutch, Clutch's fucking teeth, my sweat, Santra's new boob job, the man in the glass submarine, the mech- Oh, I'm sorry. I always start rambling, you know. Especially when I talk about what I was thinking or doing, I was rambling a bit. Then and right now I guess, I apologize. You want to know about the heist, right? Well it all had to do with that fucking girl Santra and her goddamn boob job. You don't think it was anything else do you? The money sure, yeah, but the tits were the thing that did it. They were the reason why Clutch even fucking agreed to any of it, you know. Those fucking tits, they had him slobbering the moment she came in. I saw it in his eyes right then and there. They had me going to for a minute, right before she opened her mouth and started talking to us like we were on a leash. Boy does that turn me off, you know, when a girl gets sloppy like that. Always fucking asking for respect than dishing out that goddamn bullshit all the time. With her fucking tits too. Clutch will tell you all about them, those tits soon enough. And if he won't then I can tell you about them. She got them did at that plastic surgery place off the Wells Walk and Bortundra, next to that Yokuzuna Sushi the one with the huge sumo wrestler statue out in the front. Great place to eat by the way, the owners a fucking man's man, you know. But yeah, she got them done there, for 8,000 fucking dollars. The only reason why I know that, and don't think of me as some snoop who has to know all that kind of stuff because I'm not, the reason was Roofer kept fucking spouting away that nonsense. Don't ask me where he got that information from cause' I don't want to know, but he knew confident enough. Roofer didn't lie much either, and he didn't care for those tits as much as Clutch did. He's a better guy you know. At the heist business too, not just as a person. But he knew how much she paid somehow and wouldn't shut up about it. The moment she called us in, she called us her "boys" like as if she owned us or something. On a leash I tell you, she thought anyway. Then she was always talking about that submarine and that man inside of it, the glass one. No not the man, he was made of flesh like you and me. The submarine was glass, you know right. I always forget his name. Dortmund or something like that. Dartright, maybe? I don't remember, and it doesn't really matter, does it? He's dead now anyway.
I apologize for not making much sense, sir. I just can't get my head wrapped around that goddamn heist without sweating too much. I don't know why I can't just get it out of me, cause' back at my apartment with Damien and Margery that's all I could think about. But now, now that it's over I can't get my head around it at all. I barely even remember it, you know. I have a problem with that, my thoughts always get jumbled up like this. I apologize, I know I promised to tell you all about it, to get those fucking goons who killed that woman and that man in the submarine you know. But it doesn't make much sense does it, the heist that is, anymore. But I swear it happened, hell you know about it. That's why I'm here right? RIGHT!? Yeah yeah. At Least you know that woman died, that much you guys know. You've got to be patient with me. I remember Roofer loved her, he cried because she was dead. Whatever you do don't put Roofer on the chair please, he's lost a good deal. Not just from the NAME though, he'd lost a lot before I even met him. He's a good guy really, he's the best guy around. This business makes you know all these shitheads who don't know what they're talking about. Everyone's all on and on about the take, the ways it's gonna be split, and all that nonsense. But Roofer always got that stuff out of the way in his head before it all happens. Making sure everyone's safe and all that, all caught up and in the know. Maybe that's why he knew about that tit job, because he wanted nothing to be a secret. It was a dumb thing to spill out but I can't argue that it wasn't fact. And the more facts you know, especially about the heist you're doing, the better for everyone. Clutch could never think that clear, for NAME or otherwise, he was always pestering himself about the money and the cut and the share, equipment we had and all that nonsense. I was the one who made all those things, the equipment that is, and I didn't really care for it as much as he did. People dig their own holes, you know. He always told me I was a great guy for building all the detectors, the goggles, the sticky pads we used for coverage, and all the other things, which when I first met him I thought he might have been being honest. The more I got to know him, the more we worked together, I began to figure out it wasn't me that he appreciated as much as he appreciated the goddamn automated glass cutters I made. They're not that hard to figure out if you take some time to learn circuitry and some simple engineering. But Clutch cared so much about the things, you know. God it got my stomach tugging in eight different directions thinking about Clutch and his fucking teeth, and the things he said. Before the heist, in my room, I kept thinking about him saying "you're the man." It was not in any way, in any sort of way I could look at it, genuine. That made me sweat more than anything, and I swear to you if I could get a mapping out of the whole thing, the heist that is, I could prove to you if he had just never said those words "you're the man" that woman wouldn't be dead. He said it like it was some stamp he gave everyone. I could never make that map though, I just get caught up with myself. It isn't all nonsense, I hope, because I swear it makes sense all this stuff, even if right now I can't figure it all out. I always forget her name too. That woman who died. It starts with a C. Carly, Catie even? I can't remember, I apologize. It'll come back to me though, some time, and I'll be sure to tell you all of everything. She was really beautiful, inside and out you know. Roofer could tell too, he knew it instantly, I think that's when he fell in love. He told me all about it, how he fell in love and all that, but that doesn't matter right now. To tell you the truth, I can't even remember when he told me, but I'm sure if I back track enough, if I can get all of this out of me, I could get around to telling you. All of it, to all of you guys, to get those assholes. They killed her, I swear. And that man in the glass submarine.
Anyway, there I was sitting in my room, sweating away, and chomping on that wintergreen. About an hour out, Clutch gave me call. He told me that the something had changed and that we had to meet up immediately if we were to pull the whole thing off. He told me that they were meeting at the usual place, out in the Isle's. There we had set up a sort of meet up, deep in. There was an abandoned building from the 20's which used to be a jail and a water treatment place. Unrelated times of course, could you imagine convicts fucking clearing water and that nonsense back in those times. It was a jail before it was a treatment place is what I'm getting at. After that, sometime in the 50's or something, they changed it into a water treatment place. All that matters now is that it had been abandoned for quite some time. Until we set up shop that is, in that crumby old building. It's off the river, deep into the isle, I could show you guys if you took me there. I'm bad with explaining directions, but if we were headed there in a car or something I could get there for sure. Hundred percent sure I could get you guys there, if you let me of course. But yeah, he told me that we were meeting up, and something had gone wrong. A "hiccup" he said. I could see his teeth through the call I swear. Smiling. Calling it a fucking "hiccup." He told me to bring all of my things, and that they'd explain the problem when I got there. I agreed and that's when he said it again, that thing that gets me going. I almost lost it there on the phone, I was already sweating so much. He said, "You're the man" and then hung up. God, I'm sweating now just thinking about it. That motherfucker and his fucking words I swear to god he killed them. He's the one you should put on that chair. Not Roofer. Anyway, I got my things together, even past my sweat and the dip in my mouth, I got all of my things into my duffel bag. I believe you guys found it, there at the hotel, with the camo print. No, it had the Vietnam print, the duffle bag that is, the one you guys found at the hotel. I fit everything in there, for everyone. In my duffle bag. I just can't believe, my duffel bag you know. I left it there. At the hotel, there, I was the one. Me of all people left it there. For fucks sake how could I just leave it there? SO STUPID! FOR FUCKS SAKE! HOW COULD I HAVE LEFT IT THERE?"
"I apologize, I had to turn off the tape recorder for a second. I was getting real worked up but I've forgotten about it now, I think. I remember talking about the isle I'm pretty sure. Yes, had to be the isle I was talking about. Anyway I grabbed all of my things, the things that they needed, and put them all in my duffle and headed out. Out to my car. I don't necessarily have a driver's license but I have never been pulled over my whole life. It's true and if you don't believe me then go ahead and look up my name on one of your computers there out in the lobby or in the office rooms you have and try to find me. Because you won't. At Least not anything about my driving or having a license or anything. I haven't gotten pulled over once, even when I've been drunk. And I drink and drive a lot you know, cause you have to get where you're going doesn't matter how. That's always been my saying, most definitely. You gotta get there, no matter what even if you don't know where it is you're going. You have to try and get there. Just try, you know. I never meant to drive with no license, but I did it. It wasn't on purpose, I just didn't have the time, but I tried to get where I was going. Didn't matter if I was drunk or not, cause it usually doesn't anyway. That piece of plastic in everyone's wallets, which stick out when you open them, it don't really mean anything. It just tells them, and by "them" I guess I mean you all, it tells you all who I am and what I've done. But that doesn't usually cut it when you're trying to get to know someone. You gotta talk to them, you know, not just any old talk. You gotta spend time with someone to know um, not by talking down to them through a badge and such. You have to try and understand why someone might stammer, or not talk, or fidget, or grab some of your things from time to time, or sniffle every three minutes, or ruffle through their pockets for nothing in particular, you know. It isn't as easy as just that card sometimes. That's what I say anyway. Even if you don't get to understand everyone, you gotta understand some people. Even if you hate them to death, like that shithead Clutch. But that's why I appreciate what you all are letting me do here, though it may be a little unprecedented. I appreciate you guys letting me tell my side for a bit, so you can figure me out. I hope it all helps and I'm not just making up nonsense. I try not to speak to people because I always end up saying too much about something and people get lost. They get lost with me. I think that scares them, you know. That's why I keep quiet most of the time. As hard as that might be to believe right now. I understand them, everyone. Every single person. I know they don't need to hear this. But you're letting me so I'm having a bit of fun. Not with you, I'm not trying to make you guys confused or anything. I'm having fun with myself, I'm getting it all out. You should try it sometime. Getting it ALL out you know. That's important, I think.
Anyway I headed out to my car and fell into the seat and headed over to the isle. The drive isn't so bad, it's about fifteen minutes from my place, but I remember that drive in particular was cumbersome. Mostly because I had no idea what that "hiccup" clutch was talking about could have been. So many thoughts were racing through my head until I started imagining scenarios where I would have needed to make maybe one more glass cutter or another c4 charge. That got me really nervous and I couldn't help but sweat until I drenched my clothes. I was dripping there in the car, all over the place I tell ya. I had the A/C all the way up too, it was freezing in there. That much I can admit, but I was still sweating so much, getting so cold, just thinking about that goddamn heist. I probably looked like a lunatic. But I made the drive out to the isle no problem, like I said. I always get there, no problems, no matter how much I sweat. I always get to where I'm going.
The thing about our little hide out in the isle is that there is some walking to be done to get to the actual building. To get to that old abandoned jail/water treatment place I was talking about earlier. It's about a fifteen minute walk if you really hurry, you know, and at that point, being all sweaty and nervous, I ran there. I checked my watch, to see how long it would take me in this state I was in, of anxiety you know, for future reference. It took me only seven minutes, a new record in my book, to get past the long grass and find the path marked with the purple spray paint unicorn. The path is all uphill too, a good workout for the calves and hamstrings if you're into those sorts of things. I was carrying my duffel bag, full of our stuff, too. If I didn't have that damn duffel bag, I would have probably gotten there, to the building, much faster. Probably a minute or two off those seven minutes, but that doesn't matter too much does it. That duffel bag, I swear there's something wrong with it. It's cursed like I said, I think it always has been. I bought it out in a flea market in New Jersey near Little Rock. It was at some church, the flea market, and the whole thing was great like all flea markets are. But that bag it was haunting you know, when I saw it I could feel it. But I needed a duffle bag, and I wasn't going to go to some outlet mall or to a specialty place just to get one. I don't need all that. Plus the flea market is a much more appropriate place for a person like me I think. No thrills you know, nothing unexpected. 'Cept that bag that is, it was calling out I swear. I knew it was no good, but I needed to get it. To get to where I was going. To the heist that is, I needed it for the heist for sure! Some army man must have died with that bag, out in Vietnam, out in the Charlie, 'cause I could feel it. The moment I picked it up, the weight that is, it was all wrong. Like someone was clinging on to it as if it was the last thing they had but they never really wanted. I could feel. I should have known then, to never get it. That cursed bag and its fucking luck. My luck. It was a bad mix, me and that goddamn bag. I should have known, for fucks sake. That poor woman, that man. Inside that goddamn submarine. They would have been fine if I hadn't mixed with that bag, I know. Me and my luck, Charlie's fucking words, and that bag brought this whole thing down, I'm sure of it. That poor woman. I wish I could remember her name. For fucks sake. Roofer, I'm so sorry. I didn't know. Well, I was guessing then that it was no good, the bag, this scheme we had, the heist, the collective of all these things, but I had to get to where I was going you know. Roofer, you know that right, if you ever listen to this. Just don't take him to the chair please. Take me instead. I brought my own catalyst for this whole thing. I was a cause. FOR CHRIST SAKE!"


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