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by Amy Herzog
How are we to account for Deleuze's or Bergson's theories of temporality, both based in philosophies of life, creation, and difference, when confronted with an aesthetic object such as film: a fixed, repeatable representation? Exploring the larger processes that drive Deleuze's work as a whole, one is faced with perhaps a more fundamental question: why can or should one use Deleuze to think about film? What potentials does Deleuzian theory offer to those who work on film, and what implications will his work have for the field of film theory?
To begin mapping these implications, I will first examine what might appear to be a contradiction in Deleuze's approach to film. He calls upon Bergson to address the cinema, while Bergson himself used the medium as a model for the forces of rationality that immobilize and fragment time. I will argue, however, that there is no contradiction between Deleuze's and Bergson's approaches when we view film not as a model for perception, nor a reflected image of reality, but as a unique image with its own duration. What this seeming conflict points to is at the heart of the problem of representation (as concept and in practice). At stake are not only all theories that address "the arts," but larger questions regarding the nature of the real. The key to unraveling this problem lies in the complex understanding of time that Bergson proposes. By using this theory to re-evaluate cinema, Deleuze does not misconstrue the mechanisms of film. Instead, following Bergson, Deleuze further expands our understanding of where the real lies, reinterpreting the way in which we understand the temporal nature of film. The result is a fundamental destabilization of the very idea of a representation, displacing notions of signification and association in favor of acts of creation and images of thought.
The greatest achievement of the Cinema books is that they suggest a means of looking at film that explodes static views of the work that the work of art does. Rather than "representing" something, film, for Deleuze, has the potential to create its own fluid movements and temporalities. These movements, while related to formal elements of rhythm and duration within the film itself, cannot be reduced to specific techniques or concrete images. Similarly, the temporality that Deleuze locates within the cinema cannot be pinned to a specific type of shot, nor a particular moment in the shooting, editing, projection, or reception of a film. By refusing to thus situate his theory, Deleuze completely sidesteps psychoanalytic and semiological film theories that would locate the "meaning" of film beneath the surface level of signs. The ramifications of Deleuze's project far exceed the scope of this paper. My goal, nevertheless, is to map several of its threads. The first is an interrogation of what varied meanings the term "representation" might have for Bergson or Deleuze with specific reference to cinema. The second involves the relationship between film and the realm that can be designated as the "real." Finally, the overarching question that motivates me is whether it is possible to maintain a commitment to the "art of living" that Bergson (and Deleuze) so convincingly promote while doing work on the "objects" of visual culture. These are lines of inquiry that I cannot exhaust, but at the same time, they are a movement toward understanding the creative potentials of thinking through and with the work of art.
The Cinema books map a rift in filmmaking which can be roughly situated at the end of World War II. This split, however, cannot be reduced to a historical shift, but exists instead in differing configurations of movement and time. The movement-image, according to Deleuze, is exemplified by classical Hollywood cinema. Time proceeds only as dictated by action (the action of narrative, of cause and effect, of rationality). Temporality in the movement-image, for Deleuze, is governed by the "sensory-motor schema."[2] All movements are determined by linear causality, and the characters are bent toward actions which respond to the situations of the present. Even when temporal continuity is momentarily disrupted (e.g. in a flashback), these moments are reintegrated into the prescribed evolution of past, present, and future. The movement-image is structured, not only by narrative, but by rationality: closed framings, reasonable progressions, and continuous juxtapositions.
The time-image, however, breaks itself from sensory-motor links. The emphasis shifts from the logical progression of images to the experience of the image-in-itself. What we find here are pure optical and sound situations (opsigns and sonsigns), unfettered by narrative progression, and empty, disconnected any-space-whatevers. This move from "acting" to "perceiving" carries over to the characters in the film, who cease to be "agents" and become, instead, "seers." Though Deleuze is hesitant to identify any single film that embodies the time-image, moments in films by Pasolini, Ozu, and Godard, for example, gesture towards that ideal: moments of rupture, hesitation, irrational cutting, or prolonged duration. Movement that is aberrant (i.e. not rational or sensory-motor) can be seen, according to Deleuze, to be caused by time itself. Built through irrational movements and op/sonsigns, the time-image exists thus not as a chronology, but as a series of juxtaposed "presents." What is achieved is exceedingly rare: a direct image of time.[3]
Deleuze's reading of Bergson explodes all the basic assumptions of film theory to date (the separation of subject and object, the primacy of the apparatus, the psychological nature of perception, etc.). But to designate images "time-" or "movement-" related runs the risk of remaining merely descriptive if one does not fully grasp that the distinction between the two is neither a question of form nor content. For Bergson's writing resists being reduced to a structural model; the experience of life, he claims, exceeds the comprehension of the intellect. And the integrated relationship between subject and object, matter and memory, that Bergson proposes results in a shift in emphasis from the aesthetic object to the act of creation. Indeed, Bergson's contribution to thought rests not in a new analysis of art, but in rethinking the practice of "the art of living."[4]
To understand the consequences of this shift for film theory, one must first turn to the distinction that Bergson draws between the methodologies of the intellect and intuition. The intellect, Bergson argues, is always bent on action. It is the component of consciousness which allows a being to comprehend its environment and survive within it. While its mode of perception is essential to life, however, the intellect does not have a privileged access to reality. Bergson writes:
Intuition, by contrast, is the mode through which one gains access to the undifferentiated flow of life, the real. All matter, for Bergson, exists as images defined by the range of their possible actions (real or virtual) upon other images. The human subject is an image/object like any other, with the distinction that, as a living being, it has both the potential to generate its own actions and to function as a perceptive center, organizing itself in relation to other images. While part of this organization involves the mechanisms of the intellect, there is a component that is opposed to spatialization and is inclined instead toward the temporal. Within each "living center" exists a potential delay between the moment of perception and the moment of action. The greater this delay or "zone of indeterminacy" becomes, the greater access the subject will have to an alternative axis of movement: that of intuition.
Bergson's intuition, unlike the popular usage of the term, involves a precise methodology. Rather than immobilizing and distilling from matter that which can be acted upon, intuition delves simultaneously inward to the depths of the self and outward, beyond the self, to grasp objects in their entirety, as they exist in duration. Duration here refers not to "time," which for Bergson is a concept already fractured into spatial components (minutes, seconds, years, etc.). Instead, each image contains its own unique duration, its own capacity for change. Intuition is a mode of unmediated access to the play of forces that comprise existence. Unlike the intellect, which is oriented toward the interest that a being has in the objects it can act upon, intuition is driven by the inward-motion of instinct, a form of sympathy "that has become disinterested, self-conscious, capable of reflecting upon its object and of enlarging it indefinitely."[6] As Deleuze writes about the temporal nature of intuition: "Intuition is not duration itself. Intuition is rather the movement by which we emerge from our own duration, by which we make use of our own duration to affirm and immediately to recognize the existence of other durations, above or below us."[7]
Cinema, for Bergson, or rather the cinematic apparatus, corresponds directly to the function of the intellect. He describes the phenomenon of film as a series of immobile snapshots of reality. The camera isolates fragments of reality, erasing the nuances of transformation occurring between frames. In order to achieve movement, the film must be unwound through the projector, thus restoring the illusion of continuous motion. But the motion we perceive is not the unique movement inherent to the object filmed. The camera/projector apparatus extracts from reality an "impersonal movement," a movement which can be generalized and regulated at a precise duration, a calculable frame rate. "Such is the contrivance of the cinematograph," Bergson writes, "[a]nd such is also that of our knowledge."[8]
The first pages of The Movement-Image address Bergson's theory of "the cinematographic illusion." Deleuze suggests, however, that Bergson makes an oversight in locating cinema and natural perception along the same continuum. Deleuze argues that while the mechanisms of film might mask themselves as those of perception, in actuality the projector "corrects" the illusion from the outset through its regulated reanimation of the image: "cinema does not give us an image to which movement is added, it immediately gives us a movement-image. It does give us a section, but a section which is mobile, not an immobile section + abstract movement."[9] Deleuze's argument is that Bergson's concept of the movement-image might have implications for the cinema that Bergson himself could not perceive at the time. He further asserts that the apparatus of the camera possesses temporal capabilities that complicate and supercede those of the projector.
Deleuze potentially misrepresents the breadth of his theory in this attempt to recuperate the cinematic apparatus.[10] If one considers film to be an attempt to reproduce physical reality, there is no doubt that the image on the screen cannot encompass the complex existence of the matter before the lens of the camera. Clearly Deleuze is writing against such a simplistic reading. At the same time, to argue that the mechanisms of film somehow ameliorate the visual "illusions" that the film audience necessarily undergoes is to leave such an assumption unchallenged. This is not a criticism that I would levy against the Cinema books as a whole. Indeed, Deleuze deftly avoids easy associations between physical "images" and Bergson's more complex use of the term, let alone any confusion between notions of "the real" and the objects that the camera represents. While I have reservations about Deleuze's argument in this instance, the goal of his investigation is, in fact, consistent with Bergson's larger project. The apparent discrepancy between Bergson and Deleuze's approaches to film is a reflection not of contradiction nor oversight, but of a fundamental shift in their understandings of the function of cinema. I see this shift between the way in which Bergson discusses film (as a metaphoric model for a mode of thought) and the way in which Deleuze uses Bergson to discuss film (where film is no longer a "model," but contains its own potential image of thought) as an entryway for exploring the question of representation that lies at the heart of the Cinema books.
When Bergson compares cinema to the processes of the intellect, he describes it as a model of representation. Just as the intellect selects from the swirling movements of surrounding matter only those images upon which the body can act, the cinematic apparatus immobilizes instances, slicing them from the undifferentiated flow of life and reanimating them through the uniformity of the machine. Bergson's discussion of the cinematic apparatus perfectly describes his theory of the intellect (one might even pursue another line of inquiry: how do technological developments enable or influence the evolution of concepts?). But the analogy he makes is not sufficient for describing (or dismissing) the cinematic experience as a whole.
The mechanism of thought that functions "cinematically" creates a "theoretical illusion" for Bergson, obscuring our perception of "the true evolution, the radical becoming."[11] But one would be mistaken to deduce from this that the "reality" which the "cinematographical mechanism of thought" prevents access to would in fact be representable given a more fluid apparatus or model. Or further that Bergson's critique of the mode of thought can be interpreted as or extended to a critique of the medium. What his "cinematographical" model does provide, however, is a powerful critique of the very mechanisms of representation. Representation operates through immobilization, spatialization. The representation becomes a "sign" through which we interpret the always implied referent. It asserts correspondences, analogies, and associations between elements at the expense of their differences, their dynamisms, their movements and changes.
The problem of representation is one that extends almost limitlessly. It is a question that permeates nearly all aspects of human existence: perception, language, and thought. How is it possible to move beyond the realm of representation? And if it is indeed a mechanism that can be overcome, what alternative methodologies might be left in its wake?
Deleuze and Guattari, in their discussion of the rhizome, make a distinction between a map and a tracing. The trace is described in terms strikingly similar to Bergson's model of "cinematographic thought": The trace is "like a photograph or X ray that begins by selecting or isolating, by artificial means such as colorations or other restrictive procedures, what it intends to reproduce."[12] The strength of the map, by contrast, is that it never operates by means of resemblance. While a map functions always in relation to something beyond itself, it engages in those relations as a tool-box, a set of potentialities that are never predetermined and that can in turn effect changes upon the images and objects they come up against:
As such, I would agree with Deleuze that it is inaccurate to describe cinema based on a model of perception. At the same time, both cinematic and perceptive modalities exist in relation to a "real" that is, for Bergson (and Deleuze), more complex than has been indicated thus far. In Matter and Memory, Bergson proposes a definition of matter:
Deleuze's formulation of the film-image as a mobile assemblage (sometimes a frame, sometimes a shot, a sound, or the film as a whole) lends itself to this reading, refusing to reduce the physical image on the screen to a mere reproduction of an assumed "real" object it represents. Such a formulation similarly reevaluates the relationship between the concrete optical and sonic images that comprise the film. Rather than conceiving of each component as a concrete "building block," it allows for the shifting and multiple conglomerations of elements which are themselves dynamic and mobile. A film cannot be distilled to an analyzable structure that originates from outside itself. Instead, each film-image is contingent, particular, and evolving.
The potential affective force of film is not that it more closely resembles the objects that it represents (having a more direct relationship to those objects via the photographic method than more abstract systems of representation such as language or painting). Rather, this potential lies in film's ability to key into durations which would defy the limitations of the intellect, working not toward action, but toward the zone of indeterminacy which lies between perception and action. Bergson writes:
It is this provocation that I see as the true potential of film. The act of creation, for Bergson, is a solution to a challenge from the outside, from life. The question of cinema is not a question of representing or perceiving movement, but of thinking through movement, of creating new movements and new images of thought. Dorothea Olkowski, in her work on representation, returns to Bergson's assertion that the most elemental function of philosophy is to ask whether a problem has been properly stated. One cannot propose to solve a problem in which the terms are falsely established. In such cases, one will be bound up in an illusion, unable to see the qualitative and quantitative differences between the elements in question. Olkowski writes:
These forces are tapped into when perception, rather than isolating an image for the purposes of action, orients itself toward memory, the virtual potential of the past. "When perception is attentive," Olkowski writes, "every perception becomes an act of creation in which the perception opens as many circuits as there are memory images attracted by this new perception, making of every perception a qualitative multiplicity."[18] The act of creation occurs with the introduction of the new. In the case of the body, the new exists as these perceptions and affections, what it creates from impulses and images it perceives.
"Style in philosophy," Deleuze writes, "strains toward three different poles: concepts, or new ways of thinking; percepts, or new ways of seeing and hearing; and affects, or new ways of feeling. They're the philosophical trinity, philosophy as opera: you need all three to get things moving."[19] Cinema, I would argue, contains the potential to transect all three poles. While its relation to percepts and affects have been touched upon in terms of the act of perception, the concept draws cinema toward a new type of image, the image of thought.
D.N. Rodowick notes that the "image of thought" is not a representational image (i.e. the concept is not contained within a concrete, physical image). Rather, the image of thought is a movement, a process of continual differentiation. While this movement, in terms of film, takes its roots in what Deleuze calls the movement-image, Rodowick notes that an image of thought, for Deleuze, only becomes an active force when it takes a step further: "But in order to claim for philosophy what is its activity by right, the philosopher must invoke the more fundamental 'movement' of the impersonal form of time and eternal recurrence."[20] This is what leads to the distinction between the movement-image and the time-image: a qualitative difference, where what is seen, what is conveyed becomes less significant than what is not revealed, what is unknown.
Deleuze's assertions in the Cinema books can be read as a call to action on two fronts. On the one hand, the distinction he draws between images that rely upon movement-images and time-images challenge artists to create works that transcend the representational, that explore the interstices between memory and perception, that approach what we might call a pure image of time, an image of thought. I would argue that Deleuze's work on cinema poses an equal challenge to those who think and write about/through film, a venture with perhaps even higher stakes. In opposing the movement- and time-images, Deleuze inadvertently constructs a structure of valuation that I find suspect (particularly when the images which he cites as most closely approaching the time-image-Godard, Passolini, etc.-coincide with those championed by elitist, modernist traditions). Yet the tools that he provides for conceiving of film beyond the confines of representation carry invaluable potential for theorists to manipulate toward their own ends. A great deal more work remains to be done on the particular configurations of time within popular works that may be driven by the sensory-motor schema, but that are never fully contained by that logic. Likewise, the evolution of digital technology and new networks of image circulation will give rise to new images of thought and new theoretical methodologies.
The provocation,
then, for both the filmmaker and the film theorist, is one posed by philosophy.
The challenge is to see film not as a means of representation, but as an
assemblage of images in flux with the world of images, to see the history
of film and the history of philosophy as convergent. The art of living
remains the becoming of true creation, but the image of thought introduces
the stutters and hesitations that give us access to this movement. "It's
the image of thought that guides the creation of concepts. It cries out,
so to speak, whereas concepts are like songs."[23]
Bergson writes of the creative capacity in art, "[w]hen music cries, it
is humanity, it is the whole of nature which cries with it. Truly speaking,
it does not introduce these feelings in us; it introduces us rather into
them, like the passers-by that might be nudged in a dance"[24]
It is somewhere between the crying out and the song that we can hope to
find the movement of becoming that will carry us thus, beyond ourselves.
1. Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations, 1972-1990, trans. Martin Joughin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 95.
2. Deleuze develops his concept of the sensory-motor schema to describe structures and transitions that are governed by a linear, cause-and-effect logic. It emerges from Bergson's discussion of the faculties of perception and the actualization of images into action. In order to act upon its environment, a body must isolate from the undifferentiated flow that it perceives only those images that interest it in particular, upon which it can choose to act. The complex correlations between objects and images are thus reduced to causal (and spatial) links. Deleuze finds that the associations made between elements in the movement-image progress along a similar trajectory.
3. Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 41, 272.
4. Henri Bergson, The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Mabelle L. Andison (New York: Citadel Press, 1992), 106.
5. Bergson, Creative Evolution, trans. Arthur Mitchell (Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 1998), 155.
6. Bergson, Creative Evolution, 176.
7. Deleuze, Bergsonism, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (New York: Zone Books, 1991), 32-33.
8. Bergson, Creative Evolution, 306.
9. Deleuze, Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1986), 2. Also quoted in D.N. Rodowick, Gilles Deleuze's Time Machine (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 22.
10. Rodowick similarly notes, "Deleuze's reasoning is certainly weak here," for Deleuze, in his attempt to distinguish between film and natural perception, privileges the automated movements of the projector, eliding any involvement of "cognitive correction" in the perception of the filmic event and creating a "curious identity between movement and image." Rodowick, 22.
11. Bergson, Creative Evolution, 272, 273.
12. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. and forward by Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 13.
15. Bergson, Matter and Memory, trans. Nancy Margaret Paul and W. Scott Palmer (New York: Zone Books, 1991), 9.
16. Bergson, Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, trans. F.L. Pogson (New York: Macmillan, 1959), 100, as quoted in Dorothea Olkowski, Gilles Deleuze and the Ruin of Representation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 121. Translation altered by Olkowski.
19. Deleuze, Negotiations, 164-165.
22. Deleuze, Negotiations, 149.
23. Deleuze, Negotiations, 148.
24. Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, trans. R. Ashley Audra and Cloudesley Brereton with the assistance of W. Horsfall Carter (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1935), 30-32 as quoted in Deleuze, Bergsonism, 110.


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My Newborn Sessions involve your sweetly sleeping baby + a variety of classic newborn poses, backgrounds, and simple props. These sessions are all done at my studio, and I have everything we need – from backdrops to swaddles, diaper covers to headbands, etc. Traditionally, Posed Newborn Session images are focused primarily on baby, with a small handful (3-4 images max) to include parents and/or siblings. This type of Session is best done within the first 12 days after birth, as fresh newborns move less and remain asleep far easier, and for longer stretches of time.
To book your pre-session appointment, simply contact me either via email, phone, or my website to schedule!
It is best to inquire at least 8 weeks before your due date to ensure availability, but I recommend reserving your Session as soon as possible since I only take a limited amount of Newborn Sessions per month. Once you deliver, simply contact me within 48 hours so we can finalize the date & time of your Posed Newborn Session.
Please take a few moments to read through through my posed newborn portfolio to really get familiar with my style and process, and don't be shy about contacting me via phone or email should you have further questions.
You will also receive a Newborn Welcome Guide to walk you through session prep, the day of the Session, and what to expect after we are done.
During the Session, my assistant and I will work one-on-one with your newborn, so you are welcome to sit back, relax, and watch (or take a nap!). I have several years of experience with newborn soothing and relaxation techniques, so am comfortable calming baby if they start to become a bit fussy. I will, however, need your help if baby is hungry. but the rest of the time is yours to enjoy!
About 1-2 weeks after your session we will be meeting again either at my studio or at your home. This is when you get to view, love and select all your products and images. I have the right tools to help you so that you are not overwhelmed in the sea of options. I personally fulfill all your product orders to ensure there arent any issues. Once your products chosen arrives, I will be hand delivering all your products to your home and you will be able to enjoy and cherish your art that we created.

subset: commoncrawl


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It's tough on the High Street at the moment, so Mostly Books will be turning to crime over the coming weeks - well, crime fiction at least, with an in-shop event with CWA Gold Dagger award-winner Mick Herron. We've almost sold out of tickets, so email us if you would like us to reserve you a place.
In the meantime, here are three cracking - and very different - crime and mystery thrillers that we definitely think are worth your time and hard-earned money.
The first is 'I Am Pilgrim', the debut novel by legendary screenwriter Terry Hayes (who wrote, amongst many other films, the script for Dead Calm). 'Pilgrim' is the codename of Scott Murdoch, adopted son of a wealthy American couple, and member of the above-top-secret 'The Department' – which polices the actions of other US spies. Having anonymously written the ultimate book on forensic examination, he may have unwittingly allowed 'the perfect murder' to take place – and the NYPD need his help to solve it.
But soon there are bigger, world-threatening activities taking place as terrorist 'The Saracen' plans a frighteningly plausible attack on the United States. If you like your techno-thrillers weighty (in every sense), fast-paced, densely plotted, and nerve-shreddingly plausible you will definitely not be disappointed (oh, and the dialogue is everything you'd expect from a talented screenwriter). The bags under Mark's eyes are testament to how gripping this book is – published in paperback on 10 April, and available to download as an eBook – email us to reserve a copy for you in the shop...
'The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair' by Joël Dicker is another debut, but a totally different animal: a twisty, turny* whodunnit with a novelist as the main protagonist. Harry Quebert is the feted writer of 'The Origins of Evil' and his protégé Marcus Goldman looks to be following in Harry's footsteps, destined to become the great American novelist. But as the deadline for his second novel ticks closer, writer's block gives way to a sinister shock as a young girl's body is discovered in Harry's garden – and he is arrested for murder. Marcus sets off back to the small town of Somerset – but can he discover the truth of what happened to fifteen year-old Nola, clear the name of his mentor – and possibly complete his book?
Translated from the original French by Sam Taylor (who translated Laurent Binet's 'HhHH') the style is deceptively melodramatic and almost cod 'noir' which skillfully pulls you into a story far more complex than you initially think. Exploring recent US history and the turmoil lurking below the veneer of small-town America, it also contains a splendid riff on how to write a great book. Available in hardback in the shop - or downloadable here.
('Twisty, turny' is a technical bookseller term, in case you were wondering)
Thanks to Colin Dexter, we all know that you can barely move in Oxford without stepping over piles of corpses, but Oxford's association with murder mysteries is much older than that. We've loved the British Library Crime Classics, recently reissued, and our favourite is most definitely 'Death on the Cherwell' by Mavis Doriel Hay.
Students discover the drowned body of the college bursar floating in her canoe and begin an investigation into the tangled secrets that led to the bursar's death - and the clues that point to a fellow student. A classic mystery novel, with its evocative setting in an Oxford women's college, is now republished for the first time since the 1930s.
So, much murder and mayhem to enjoy. It's been a bumper year so far for crime, so make sure you pop into the shop for some of our other recommendations...


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Weird Al Skewers Corporate-Speak to the Tune of "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes"
The Wall Street Journal seems like an odd outlet for a Weird Al video premiere—until you listen to "Mission Statement," and realize that it sends up the kind of business jargon that WSJ readers presumably know well. Yankovic wrote the song to the tune of "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" by Crosby, Stills & Nash, explaining to the Journal that he "thought it would be ironic to juxtapose" corporate buzzwords "with the song stylings of CSN, whose music pretty much symbolizes the antithesis of corporate America."
I'm guessing he also liked the idea of singing the word synergy in three-part harmony. The video will be available below later; for now, you can watch it at the Wall Street Journal. This, by the way, is the eighth and final video in Weird Al's eight-day Web blitz marking the release of his new album, Mandatory Fun.


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Former National Poetry Competition winner Christopher James has won this year's Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition for 'Today Cromer is Moscow' – described by judge Daljit Nagra as having the power to 'inspire us all to embrace difference'.
Poetry Society Member Mary Jean Chan won the English as a Second Language category, and fellow Members Virginia Astley, Geraldine Clarkson, Kat Lockton, and Tom Weir were among the shortlisted poets.
The Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre ran its International Poetry Competition for the second time in 2016. Two top prizes of £1000 were on offer in a competition that sought to celebrate the great diversity of poetry being written in English all over the world.
4 October 2016


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Relax & Travel! Huis Ten Bosch Introduces Floating Overnight Sleeping Capsules
The future is here, and things are certainly changing. One theme park in Japan is indeed changing the experience of your average theme park. Today we get a look as Huis Ten Bosch Introduces Floating Overnight Sleeping Capsules. This unique and interesting experience finds the Dutch-themed Japanese amusement park offering these futuristic sleeping capsules to transport attendees to the attractions overnight.
The design can accommodate up to four people and features a glass-enclosed sleeping chamber at the top. The ride looks intriguing and comfortable and is sure to be the most unique way to get to a theme park you have ever seen. Check out the design in the image up top and speak your thoughts on it after the jump. For more information head over to Huis Ten Bosch right now!


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I'm a huge fan of ManGlaze nail polish. You can get them easily on Amazon, too, so they're not even hard to find! They naturally dry glossy but are killer glossed! It's totally a win-win.
Polishes used for this mani:
ManGlaze Fatty's Got More Blood
ManGlaze LesbiHonest
ManGlaze F#&k Off and Dye
I started with two coats of Santorum, then I used my large dotting tool to put dots of Fatty's Got More Blood near the cuticle line. I then switched to the medium dotting tool and put two rows of Lesbihonest. Finally, I used the small dotting tool to put two rows of F#&k Off and Dye. Before you scroll to see the pics, I should tell you that on the bottle of F#&k Off and Dye, the F-word isn't censored and I forgot to cover it with my finger. So, if that word offends you, then you probably should stop scrolling before you get to the 5th picture. :)
Here's a picture of the matte and glossy side by side.
And now for the individual bottle shots. First, let's see the matte version!
And here are the glossy shots. I love how simply adding a glossy topcoat makes the shimmer in these polishes really pop out!


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by Eugene Hernandez
Is it any surprise that a stage featuring Miramax' Harvey Weinstein,
Polygram's Michael Kuhn, producer Lynda Obst, Variety's Peter Bart,
and Viacom's Jonathan Dolgen in a discussion moderated by David
Frost would offer a few tasty morsels of insight, and a window into
a Hollywood film community that is as plagued by production and
distribution issues as the indie scene? The site was last week's
Schroders/Variety Big Picture Conference.
As could be expected so soon after the Oscars, the subject immediately
turned to "the 'Titanic' phenomenon." On that subject, Obst lamented,
"The bar has been raised with respect to studio pictures — I also
think that the bar has been raised in terms of being able to say no
to directors — we've just given enourmous applause on the highest
possible scale that we award to a person who went wildly over budget."
As could also be expected, Viacom's Dolgen — whose company is the
recipient of the steady stream of cash carrying the phenomenon to
unimaginable depths — was defensive. Calling the film "a perfect
thing." He gushed, "He's made a perfect thing on its own terms, its
totally engaging, its totally overwhelming in some ways, it uses
technology in a new and special way. It makes you feel very much
a time and place." While Harvey Weinstein praised the movie for
much more basic reasons, "What they have done is raised the pole
for how much money a movie can gross. The potentiality now is all
changed, and that's exciting for the business."
Obst offered a window into the reality that she and other producers
are currently facing. "It's very difficult to make a $20 million studio
film," she explained. "By and large if you are going to drive an idea
to the market place — a notion as opposed to a high concept, not a
tent pole but a script — you need a movie star in order to do it," Obst
continued, "A small script becomes a $35 million – $40 million
movie." For Obst, this situation is pushing her to work more and
more with the companies that thrive on the lower budgeted, not
quite as star-driven movies. "To me its a problem and its one of
the reasons for making movies with a Polygram or a Miramax or a
Searchlight — because there is possibly a way we in which we can
get talent to reduce their prices and therefore make movies in the
responsible way that these smaller companies are able to do."
Whither the indie-minded emerging filmmakers in a world that will
place them in competition with the under-worked Hollywood writers
and producers? Well, that's going to have to be addressed at the next
film festival seminar or IFP event.
In some ways countering what he calls the "conventional wisdom"
addressed in some of Obst's points, Dolgen said, "I don't really
believe that people are honing to that conventional wisdom as people
would like to say." And Obst countered, "The conventional wisdom
is in crisis right now because the movie stars who make $20 million
a picture aren't systematically opening pictures — the crisis of the
studio system this year is that its not automatic that if you pay $20
million that your baby boomer generation movie star is gonna open
that movie." The new star, she explained, is "production," or the
effects and spectacle that, as in the case of "Titanic," can only be
delivered when studios (in this case Viacom's Paramount and News
Corp's FOX) are involved.
For Harvey Weinstein, the crisis is in the scheduling. Never mind the
"glut of indies" argument that arises at virtually every gathering of
insiders from the indie community. Harvey is battling for screens with
Hollywood. "The distribution schedule looks like a mine field
combined with a chess board, and its just taking unbelievable skills
to be able to dance through that particular situation," Weinstein
commented. Obst interjected, "And its driving up marketing costs
enormously — the only way you can compete with a glut of movies
is by a glut of marketing."
The ever-probing Frost attempted to steer the conversation to the
studio-specialty system that recently saw the addition of a new
company at Paramount. "Do you feel that people are sort of copying
you Harvey, to try an exploit the cheaper picture?" Weinstein
responded plainly, "I feel like Israel and everybody is the six Arab
nations." Frost replied, "Do you feel like Netanyahu or Peres?" Harvey
concluded, "I feel a bit more like Peres, but we have a good Air Force
…" Next question.
With regard to the way that specialty pictures are being distributed,
Peter Bart quizzed Weinstein about the possibility of taking the old
"roadshow" approach. "A picture like the 'English Patient' arguably
could have opened in one city, charged reserved seats, had an
intermission — it needed an intermission — there maybe some
argument in returning to that…how do you feel about that?"
"I've got 'Cinema Paradiso'," Weinstein explained, "We actually have
the director's cut — which contrary to rumor we didn't cut, it was
actually cut by his French producer — and I think we're going to
experiment with that — because its three hours and ten minutes
— and put an intermission in and see what that does."
"I agree with Michael," Weinstein added, "One of the great things about
going to the movies is its so democratic. You just go into the theater.
Everybody pays the same price. Its one of the last bastions where
there isn't a corporate box and you don't have to feel excluded — its
just so accessible — which is why its the more popular medium, so
I don't want to lose that. But I think when a movie is really long
sometimes maybe you can make a special presentation and that way
you subsidize the one performance a night that you can get…and I
disagree with Peter — I thought the 'English Patient" was just fine
and it grossed $200 million dollars around the world.
Finally, a topic that was on the minds of many on the panel was
reactions to Seagram Chairman Edgar Bronfman's comments earlier
in the day suggesting that tickets for bigger budget movies
should be sold at a higher price. "Rubbish," Polygram's Michael
Kuhn stated when asked by Frost for his reaction. He continued,
"When I make a movie such as 'Bean', which is coming off a
250 million gross around the world — it cost 17 million dollars
— why should I be paid less. Because people enjoyed it just as
another movie that grossed $250 million and cost $70 million
to make. I think its a complete nonsense of an argument."
Agreeing, Viacom's Dolgen quipped, "It would have one interesting
benefit — you would actually have the studio lying to up the cost
of their film."
Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.


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According to the latest survey into Digital Trends by Microsoft, some consumers are feeling "overwhelmed" by large social networks.
In turn, they are looking towards more specialized, dedicated apps and niche networks to meet the needs of the different aspects of their online lives.
Microsoft's survey reports: "Users are spending less time on major one-stop-shop platforms and are choosing the private, local, personal and in-depth such as WhatsApp, WeChat, and Instagram, which have all experiencing substantial growth in activity."
This trend for consumers to look for specialist forms of social media – Niche Networks - is one of eight key digital trends that Microsoft has identified as it maps changing and emerging consumer behaviour and attitudes globally toward brands and advertising.
Other insights for brands regarding the evolution of consumers' social choices include:
- As consumer behaviour changes and some look for solutions outside the traditional social networks, brands will need to work harder to prove they can provide access to the niche communities and "walled villages".
- This presents a golden opportunity for brands looking to build closer and more rewarding relationships with consumers, and as the internet becomes even more structured around specialist uses, brands will have to demonstrate relevance and value to each individual.
* From around 1,000 respondents in the UK.
Microsoft Advertising has joined forces with Brand Republic at microsoft.brandrepublic.com to share the findings of its research insights into the future of digital behaviour and technology with brands and agencies.
The first study is called Digital Trends and was conducted with IPG Mediabrands and The Future Laboratory. Visit to find out more on emerging digital consumer trends among early adopters as well as regular and heavy Internet users. The study examined awareness and engagement with trends, and evaluated behaviour and attitudes toward technology.
Follow the debate about these findings on Twitter at @MSAdvertisingUK and use the hashtag #MSFTinsight to join in.


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Walking through a nearby park at dusk the other night, I saw a single spark. Then another. Soon there were too many to count, hovering in the airspace between my chin and my ankles, lighting my way past the pond, the gazebo, and the tennis courts.
Who needs a time machine when you have memory to transport you to another place, another you? Those sparks must have kindled a few synapses, because suddenly I'm six-years-old again, running with my best friend Cindi through freshly mown grass that envelopes us in the signature scent of a suburban summer while staining the soles of our feet DayGlo green. Wild with excitement at being allowed to stay outside after dark, we're relentless, ruthless, giggling predators intent on imprisoning lightning bugs in an empty Miracle Whip® jar.
If you live in the eastern half of the U.S., tell your neighbor or coworker you watched fireflies last night and see happens. I'll bet you, dollars to donuts, their faces will soften and glow as if bathed in the bioluminescence of an impromptu nightlight. It's Proust's Remembrance of Things Past all over again, but with Coleoptera instead of cookies.
That's right, they're not flies and not technically bugs either. They're beetles, a group that doesn't usually garner much affection from the human race. Let's face it—we like our non-human animals to have fur or feathers and large liquid simple eyes. If you can make your butt blink on warm summer evenings, however, folks are willing to see you in a new light.
Special organs in the abdomen convert oxygen and a compound called luciferin into a yellow or chartreuse glow. They're quite good at this, by the way. Common incandescent light bulbs convert only 10% of an energy supply into light; the other 90% is emitted as heat. Fluorescent bulbs transform 90% of the energy into light but fall short of the nearly 100% efficiency of a firefly's "cold" light.
As kids, we learn that fireflies flash to find a mate. What you may not know is that each species—and there are many different species in North America alone—has it's own unique light show. This helps everyone pair up correctly. Males fly around broadcasting a kind of visual Morse code to the females hanging out in or near the grass. When a female spots a familiar pattern she flashes a response, then they signal back and forth until the male finds her.
Some flash patterns warn away predators who've come to associate an unpleasant meal with a specific blink beat. This doesn't work with every predator, juvenile Homo sapiens being one obvious example. Often, though, the biggest threat comes from a relative—some species are able to mimic the unique display pattern of their kin to trick the males and… well, use your imagination. Or, better yet, let Isabella Rossellini explain it to you.
Returning from a reverie of 1965 to present day, I had a vague sense of something missing. Then it hit me—I didn't see a single child with a jar in pursuit of bobbing, weaving cold-light moonbeams! I found this disturbing. Disheartening.
My own lifelong fascination with the natural world wasn't sparked by National Geographic Specials about exotic creatures living halfway around the world (although, in time, those programs came to have an impact as well). There's no doubt in my mind that my love of all things wild started as a toddler, sitting in my mom's lap in the backyard watching cardinals grow bold with curiosity as she whistled their calls—Birdy-birdy-birdy! Cheer-cheer-cheer!—back to them. It blossomed because, as a grade-schooler, I was allowed to raise tadpoles in galvanized buckets, catch crawdads in plastic cups, tie thread-leashes to the legs of June bugs, and run after lightning bugs with mayonnaise jars.
Maybe, if I'd been walking through a subdivision, I'd have seen evidence that the spark that caught fire in me all those years ago still has a chance to ignite wonder in the up-and-coming generation. Maybe there are thousands of children darting across thousands of lawns after millions of flashing yellow lights all across the U.S. I hope so.
But can we really afford to leave it to chance? I don't think so. So do me a favor, would you? Find a kid you know. Pull an empty jar down from a cabinet shelf and poke some holes in the lid. Then go outside after dinner tonight, catch some fireflies, and light a spark.


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GraphicRiver Tech Bug 6252919
Category: Logo Template | Comment: ( 0 )
GraphicRiver Tech Bug 6252919
Logo Template \ Symbols
Software \ Tech \ Template \ Ribbon \ Logo \ Colorful \ Design \ Icon
Logo Template - Tech Bug 6252919 by legendlogo @ GraphicRiver
Logo Template \ Symbols
Graphics Files Included: Photoshop PSD, Transparent PNG, JPG Image, Vector EPS, AI Illustrator, Font ; Layered: No ; Minimum Adobe CS Version: CS ; Resolution: Resizable .
Logo Description.
The logo is Easy to edit to your own company name.The logo is designed in vector for highly resizable and printing.
The Logo Pack includes.
- 100% vector (re-sizable).
- Color mode: CMYK.
- AI file (for Illustrator CS or higher).
- EPS file (for Illustrator / Corel Draw / Freehand).
- Help document with download link of the font used.
For any other information, contact me thro profile page
Please rate if you like it !!
Tech Code; Social App; Social Emblem; Redentos Logo; Movie App; Digital Tree; Video List.
Keywords: app, bug, colorful, design, icon, logo, ribbon, software, tech, template, web.
Download Link


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About 5 months ago, I bought a few floating wall ledges from the Restore for a few bucks each. I painted them white and then they just sat gathering dust. Then I moved and was moving furniture around like crazy and couldn't decide on a spot for them. But once I found an arrangement that I loved, I decided on a spot for the ledges and hung them all by myself :-)
Here we are before...
And here we have the after!!
The shelves are sparsely staged - I feel like I need some special for the bottom shelf but I'm not sure what that is just yet. I plan on shopping my house and will figure out what looks best in the long run but it works for now!
The mirror is from IKEA and I picked up the lamp from TJ Maxx this week. The blue matches my bedding perfectly and I loved the shape! It was $30 but I had a $25 gift card, so it only cost me $5...which is more my style. The camera belonged to my grandpa and I already had the gray vase and just filled it with a few fresh flowers from the yard.
Now I could just end this post here and make you think that everything went super smooth and that hanging these shelves was a breeze. But I can't do that...because it wasn't! I was nervous about hanging them because I've never quite grasped the idea of anchors but knew I would need them for this project. I looked in my supplies and surprisingly had some!
I used a drill bit, hammered in the anchor and then screwed in the screw - but it took me two tries to get it right! The first set was just...how should I say it...off. Kind of loose. It didn't feel quite right. I'm not sure what went wrong but I did what any logical person would do, I
took it down hung the shelf anyway.
And I paid the price because as the shelf fell, I broke this sweet little yellow vase that belonged to my grandmother.
Ugh...after getting over the frustration and anger at myself for breaking that...I carried on. Unscrewed the bad ones and did it all over again...with much better results.
This experience reminds me of this little guy I saw on Pinterest...
Not in this case, my friend, not in this case.
Anyway, the end result is nice and secure (I think!) and has been up for 8 hours with no sign of coming down!
Having this project finished gives me two walls in my bedroom that I absolutely love (the other one is the wall my bed is against.) Of the walls I'm still working on, one stores my hutch (post on that coming soon!) and the other is the window wall with a sewing machine desk and these cane chairs.
I love the chairs but I really want to reupholster them soon and I need another table to put between them, because this one is currently being used as a nightstand. Hmm...I think a trip to the fabric store is in my future!
Until next time...


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- Add the physical drive to the machine, and then format whatever space you want to use on it. Nowadays, I use gparted to do this, as fdisk doesn't seem to support really big drives. So we need to choose "lvm2 pv" (LVM version 2, physical volume) as the type.
Let's suppose that partition is /dev/sdf1.
- Create the physical volume.
> pvcreate -t /dev/sdf1
TEST MODE: Metadata will NOT be updated and volumes will not be (de)activated.
Physical volume "/dev/sdf1" successfully created
> pvcreate /dev/sdf1
Physical volume "/dev/sdf1" successfully created
I always use the "-t" option first, to make sure the command will do what I wish.
- Check your work, if you wish:
> pvdisplay /dev/sdf1For those new to LVM, the "physical volume" is the closest layer to the hardware. It represents actual physical diskspace.
- You can repeat those commands to create more physical volumes if you wish. These can then be grouped together in a "volume group", which basically acts as if it is one huge disk, even though it may physically be spread across a number of devices
- Create a volume group in which our new physical volume(s) can reside:
> vgcreate newvg /dev/sdf1 [/dev/sdg1 ...]
Volume group "newvg" successfully created
- Check your work, if you wish:
> vgdisplay newvg
- Create the logical volume:
> lvcreate -n newlv -l 100%FREE newvg
The -n option gives the volume a name, and the -l option says how much space in the newvg volume group to allocate. There are a lot of ways to give this option. See the lvcreate manpage for info.
- Check your work:
> lvcreate newlv
This will also show you the path to the device. Here on Fedora 20, it is: /dev/newvg/newlv. I.e.: /dev/VolumeGroup/LogicalVolume. I don't know if that can vary from distro to distro.
- Finally, we need to create the actual filesystem:
> mke2fs -L NewVolume /dev/newvg/newlv
Of course, there are other ways to do this, depending upon exactly what you want to do.
Wednesday, August 27, 2014
How To Create an LVM Drive
I posted some time ago about how to add a new physical volume to an existing logical volume, but I need a new logical volume now. So let's write down the steps for doing that.
Labels: Linux
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We strongly believe that school uniform gives our pupils a sense of identity and of belonging to the academy. It helps to ensure that no pupil feels disadvantaged in terms of appearance, removes the need to keep up with constantly changing and expensive fashion trends, and instills a sense of pride.
Infant Uniform (Reception to Year 2)
|Compulsory through the school:
|Compulsory from any retailer:
Junior Uniform (Year 3 to Year 6)
|Compulsory through the school:
|Compulsory from any retailer:
PE Kit
|Compulsory through the school:
|Compulsory from any retailer:
Optional Items
|Only available through the school:
Available from any retailer:
What isn't allowed?
Ordering your uniform
Please contact the school if you need to order or replace new uniform items. You can view the price list by clicking on the below link:
Frequently Asked Questions
- Is the uniform washable?
Yes the uniform is fully machine washable at 40 degrees.
- Can the jacket be tumble dried?
Unfortunately the jacket cannot be tumble dried, but once washed it dries very quickly on a hanger.
- I have a boy and a girl in school but the jackets are gender specific – is there one jacket that I can buy that I can pass down the family?
At primary age there is little difference in the cut of the boy's Saville Jacket and the girl's Colchester jacket. If you want to pass the jacket down through the family we would advise buying the boy's Saville jacket.
- Do school stock most items?
Yes, most items are carried by the school, just contact Penny in the school office who will be happy to help you choose your uniform.


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Harry – Professional Smelly Schnauzer
Our smelly little friend, Harry (short for Harry Truman III), came to us in late May of 2001. He's is really a lot of fun to have around and has a real charisma about him. He's fairly clean, as far as dogs go, as he was house-trained at an early age. He has been neutered, although he hasn't seemed to notice even after 8 years. Harry is surprisingly quite for a terrier; only barking at knocks on the door, strangers outside, and me during our heated Greco-Roman wrestling sessions. Just for fun, I thought I'd list some of his likes and dislikes here:
- Smelling his own pee after he steps in it
- Chewing things, like Angela's expensive shoes
- Going outside every 15 minutes (in between naps)
- People visiting our home
- Other dogs and cats (whom he thinks he can beat up, no matter their size)
- Tennis Balls – you know the things that roll under every piece of furniture.
- Pretending he's chasing a rat, although it's just his
stuffed monkey– Sadly, the monkey is no longer with us, as Harry reduced him into a pile of cotton wadding.
- The vacuum cleaner
- Having to go outside in the rain
- Baths (and consequently, the bathroom)
- When we leave for work
- When the other dogs and cats aren't as willing to let Harry beat them up as he'd like
Here's a web-cam photo of Harry soon after he came to live with us.
Some Schnauzer-ing Links Harry'd Want You To Visit
- The American Miniature Schnauzer Club
- Schnauzer Rescue Message Board – Keeping our little furry friends safe and out of the puppy mills.
- The American Kennel Club – Harry is a bona-fide pooch
- Companion Animal Clinic – Harry's favorite vets
- Schnauzer Ware.com – you won't believe it till you see it.
- Schnauzer Space – These pooch-a-holics have film spoofs starring our favorite bearded mutts.
Harry and I relaxing after… well, probably nothing.
Maggie – The Big Brown Moo
Our new dog, named Maggie (short for Margaret Thatcher), is a black-and-tan Airedale Terrier. Much bigger than Harry, she's 60lbs. of snout, paws, and ears. There's much more to add about Maggie, but she's currently trying to eat the house, so I'll have to do it later…
Some Airedale Links
Dog Related Links
- Engadget's "How to Upgrade Your Organic Dog"


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Sleaford Town Bowls Club claimed a 50-36 ASC Metals League win at Vacu-Lug.
Results: Peter Annison, Julie Cope and Trevor Cope (21-8) and Linda Morris, Gill Annison and A. Bird (16-14) and Steve Morris, Neil Mapletoft and Larry Davies (13-14).
At Collingham in the Hospital Cup, Town moved into round two with a 79-63 win.
Results: Roger Neaverson, Gill Annison and Roy Markham (22-16), Jackie Wareham, Catharine Frain and Bas Gilbert (23-17) and Peter Annison, Colin Grosse and Larry Davies (18-13), Gerald Woodhead, Brian Srawley and Mick Wareham (16-17).
Against Eslaforde Park, two rink wins gave the town four points in a 49-49 draw.
Results: Joan Gilbert, Ken Dye and Tom Bell (18-11), Robin Wilson, Mick Wareham and Bas Gilbert (19-13) and Arthur Norris, Colin Grosse and Roy Markham (12-25).
At Rustons Sports in the EBA League, all rinks were successful to earn 10 points and a score of 54-38.
Results: Peter Annison, Brian Srawley, John Parker and Derek Smith (19-15), Lewis Jobson, Neil Maplrtoft, Phil Musson and Andrew Bird (19-11), Martin Titley, Kris Moore, Mick Wareham and Larry Davies (16-12).
At home to Metheringham in the ASC Metals League the team won six points with a 59-48 aggregate.
Results: Peter Annison, Roger Neaverson and Trevor Cope (26-8), Linda Morris, Colin Grose and Andrew Bird (17-20) and Neil Mapletoft, Brian Srawley, and Paul Jobson (16-20).
l Ruskington Bowls Club won 12 points at Navenby in the City (Evening) League.
Results: George Freeland, Trevor Thackray and Jackie Ray (15-27), George Glover, Les Wilkinson and Andy Snoxell (24-16), Waylon Clarke, Jim Barclay and John Hurst (30-24), Tony Codd, Keith Pilbeam and Paul Shelley (23-18).
The club progressed in the Hospitals Cup Knockout, beating Nettleham at home.
Results: Wendy Pateman, Kath Booth and Tony Codd (29-16), Waylon Clarke, Trevor Thackray and Paul Butterworth (23-18), David Miller, Trevor Harding and Vic Farmer (16-23) and George Freeland.
At home win against Legionnaires in a Woodhall Spa match claimed four points.
Results: Les Jenkins, Carol Croft and John Hurst (19-16), Cecil Hall, Isabel Drain and Les Warren (19-7), Andy Snoxell, Vic Farmer and Jim Barclay (14-25).
The club claimed eight points as they won at Claytons for a City (Afternoon) League match.
Results: Les Jenkins, Carol Croft and Trevor Thackray (22-13), John Booth, Les Wilkinson and Jim Matson (24-13), David Miller, Isabel Drain and Tony Codd (11-18).
In the City (Evening) League Knockout Cup the team lost at Metheringham, the handicap system giving the hosts a 21-shot lead.
Results: David Miller, Trevor Thackray and Paul Butterworth (24-15), Tony Codd, Trevor Harding and Andy Snoxell (19-25), George Glover, Jim Barclay and Jackie Ray (22-27).


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Hi I'm Isabella and I am 9 years old. I am a new school blogger. I wanted to be a blogger because I like blogging and computers.
I am a new school councillor so I will be blogging about all the new things that are happing to are school.
reported by Isabella:)


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Thank you once again to all fantastic participants in our Mixed Medium challenge sponsored by My Creative Classroom! We had an amazing 94 entrants last week. Our Top Three, in no particular order, are:
#21 - Distressed Miss
70 - Gloria Dawson
71 - Gloria Stengel
Congratulations, ladies! Please feel free to display our Top 3 Winner badge proudly on your blog!
From our 94 wonderful participants, Random.org drew number 36, Joanne!
Congratulations, Joanne! You have won a $25 gift certificate to My Creative Classroom! Please contact us using the Contact Me button in the sidebar by Sunday, September 19th!
Remember that you have until Saturday night to enter our Three or More Embellishments challenge for your chance to win one Belles n' Whistles stamp of your choice!
We look forward to seeing your creations!


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Register for Character Strengths at Work and get 50% off a Specialized Course:
Bridging the science and practice of character strengthsto build a better world.
The VIA Institute on Character is a non-profit organization, based in Cincinnati, Ohio, dedicated to bringing the science of character strengths to the world through supporting research, creating and validating surveys of character, and developing practical tools for individuals and practitioners.
In this video, VIA's founder, Dr. Neal Mayerson, explains why this work around character strengths is so important to us as individuals and also as a community of people living and working together:
Translations available for Adult VIA Survey
Translations available for Youth VIA Survey
Number of research studies on character strengths
The VIA Survey has been taken in every country across the globe
The VIA Survey is a psychometrically validated personality test that measures an individual's character strengths. Character strengths are viewed as our positive personality in that they are our core capacities for thinking, feeling, and behaving in ways that can bring benefit to us and others.
VIA offers a variety of services to help you integrate the latest positive psychology tools and applications into your work. By creating your VIA Pro site you will receive immediate access to your client's VIA Survey results and in-depth reports after they complete the VIA Survey. Additionally, our in-depth online courses and 1-on-1 coaching options will take your strengths knowledge and experience to the next level.
The Character Strengths and Virtues is regarded as the backbone of the science of positive psychology and remains one of the most substantive efforts generated by the field of Character. In turn, it draws interest from a wide range of professions and disciplines – education, management, consulting, psychology, coaching, and many others.
VIA collaborates with, and in some cases provides funding to, researchers across the globe to provide free access to the VIA Survey and raw data for use in research studies. Our on-going relationships with scientists and thinkers at the forefront of character science ensure that we remain at the epicenter of the global movement to advance the science and practice of character strengths.
Peterson and Seligman's endeavor to focus on human strengths and virtues is one of the most important initiatives in psychology of the past half century."
- Howard Gardner, Hobbs Professor of Education and Cognition, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Character may occupy the most central role in the field of positive psychology. Pleasure, flow, and other positive experiences are enabled by good character."
(Park & Peterson, 2009a; Peterson, Ruch, Beerman, Park, & Seligman, 2007).
The "VIA" [vee-uh] in our organization's name is a reference to the role the Institute plays in connecting research and practice. Offering effective applications of character strengths by way of supporting the foundational research required to inform their development. While VIA is most well-known for providing the tools that resulted from original, scientific ground-breaking research, the effort to catalyze new research into key issues related to character strengths – how to best utilize them, what benefits they create, and how they relate to each other - continues to be an active and integral part of our work. Your support of VIA allows us to expand the knowledge-base on character strengths and how they help us all flourish.
In 1998 Dr. Neal Mayerson, President of the Manuel D. and Rhoda Mayerson Foundation and a clinical psychologist, connected with Dr. Martin Seligman, renowned researcher, scholar, and author to explore the newly forming field of Positive Psychology. As they used social science to explore what is best about human beings, they discovered that a key construct in the science of Positive Psychology is character; specifically, the characteristics that define what's best about people.
In 2001, the VIA Institute on Character was established as a non-profit organization to advance the science and practice of character and to fill the world with greater virtue (more wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance and transcendence). Through the support of the Mayerson Foundation and the leadership of Dr. Seligman and Dr. Chris Peterson, the VIA Classification of Character Strengths, as well as the landmark publication Character Strengths and Virtues (VIA's handbook), were written. Upon its publication it was hailed as the "backbone of Positive Psychology".
Once the VIA Classification was complete, a new ground breaking personal strengths test, the VIA Survey, was designed specifically to measure these 24 character strengths in individuals. Since its inception, the VIA Survey has been, and is still is offered, for free by the VIA Institute so that every individual in the world can "know their 24" and use this information to lead happier, thriving lives.
Movies are an art-form highly suited for inspiring character strengths and helping in the discovery, understanding and exploration of these positive aspects in human beings. Ryan Niemiec (VIA's education director) and Danny Wedding explore 1,500 examples in their book Positive Psychology at the Movies, 2nd edition (2014). They explain that the best positive psychology movies meet the following criteria:


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Eating western is leading to increase problems
The Mediterranean cuisine is a philosophy:
Life has to be savored. Foods are made to live better
The Mediterranean is the cuisine of the areas around the Mediterranean Sea.
It's characterized by flexibility, range of ingredients and many regional variations.
Today it's important to understand its basics because its associated with an over all increasing of health benefits.
The Mediterranean cuisine today
The popularization of the Mediterranean diet has created a real business around it.
Today there are a lot of food and restaurants chains that boast to be "Mediterranean friendly".
This has compromised the real cuisine. They haven't spent much time in countries where it was created.
That's why I suggest you to return to the ancient home made traditions and learn how to cook by yourself.
History of the Med cuisine
This is a poor cuisine, made with simple foods and cooking techniques.
The traditional eating habits of the Mediterranean peoples are based on the livestock, fishing and agriculture of their regions.
The climate has not always favored the grow of large quantities of cows. Bovine meat and butter were never very popular.
That's why most foods are lower in cholesterol and healthier.
Foods to eat on a Mediterranean diet
The Mediterranean foods are famous for their combination of great tastes and big healthy benefits.
It's possible to eat these foods while keeping the control of fat and calorie amounts.
To learn more have a look on the food chart and see what are the basic foods:
- Olive oil
- Bread
- Pasta (over 20 types)
- Onions, garlic, and tomatoes
- Wine
- Cheeses made from sheep's milk
- Fish and Seafood
- Meat (Sheep, goats and chickens)
- Dried fruit
- Yogurt
- Italian ham
- Eggplants, peppers, mushrooms, cucumbers, artichokes and various greens and lettuces.
- Legumes
- Fresh herbs include rosemary, basil, cilantro, parsley, mint, dill, fennel, and oregano.
- Nuts and honey
Top Recipes
You'll never be bored with the Mediterranean diet. There is an enormous variety of recipes and foods.
Common principles of the recipes
- Olive oil is essential and everywhere
- Flavors are robust and clear (No complicated sauces and heavy cream and butter)
- Primary role of fresh vegetables
- Seafood remains at the core of the cooking heritage
- Heavy use of tomatoes
- Pasta and bread are the Stars
- Intensive use of salads
- Unique plates (i.e. Pizza is one of the healthiest foods you can eat)
Top 10 Mediterranean recipes
- Greek salad
- Pasta and fresh tomatoes
- Grilled seafood
- Pasta and beans
- Pizza margherita
- Bruschetta (Bread, garlic, tomato and basil)
- Sheep's cheese and honey
- Chicken salad
- Fava Bean Spread
- Fresh vegetables to the brace
You can become a great chef without using sophisticated foods.
It's not the quantity of food you use. It's all about their freshness and quality.
The trick in every dish is to use home-grown aromatic herbs like basil, mint, oregano, and so on…
Ways to cook foods
- Olive oil has a big range of uses in the Mediterranean kitchen: cooking, frying, sauteing, seasoning, marinating, stewing, preserving, dipping, or drizzling on bread.
- Lemon juice is used to marinate row meats and fish.
- Fish, lamb and goat are priceless grilled.
- Cheeses are cooked alone, as condiment in salads or prepared in a sandwich.
- Pasta is always boiled "Al dente".
Learn Cooking basics
- How to easily peel tomatoes
- How to cook legumes
- How to cook pasta
- How to roast meats and fishes
Cooking technics
- Baking is cooking food by dry heat in an oven. (Bread, pastries and fish)
- Boiling is the process of cooking ingredients immersed in water. (Potatoes, pasta, legumes)
- Roasting is putting foods in a bed of hot embers or ashes, or over a wood fire. (Eggplants, Artichokes)
- Frying is cooking food in hot Olive oil or butter. (Sardines, Vegetables, Onion)
- Grilling is cooking food over high direct heat. (Mushrooms, lamb, vegetables,fish)
Cuisine of the Mediterranean countries
The Mediterranean can be crudely divided into three culinary regions:
- North African (Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian)
- Eastern Mediterranean (Egyptian, Greece, Israel, Palestine, Libyan, Lebanon, Syria, and Turkish)
- Southern European (Italian, French, Spanish, Greek, Cypriot, Maltese, Portugal )


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|Brake Products
Auto Magic has direct access to the largest range of brake components and parts in Canada. With direct access to over 38000 brake related parts alone, Auto Magic is biggest single specialist source of brake parts in the country.
Best Buy Distributors
Through our sister company Best Buy Distributors, Auto Magic provides you with the right part to suit any vehicle plus ensure all parts meet or exceed world or vehicle Manufactures standards.
Asbestos Free
The big news in 2003 is the total removal of asbestos in Brake Linings. (Pads and Shoes). Asbestos has in the past been the single best product for friction control however we all know the dangers that have developed with the abuse and use of Asbestos in building and commercial applications.
While less of a worry, Asbestos in Brake Linings has thankfully been officially banned from Manufacture and supply in Canada from the end of 2003. The characteristics of non asbestos friction material is that they tend to dust up a little more than the older materials. However buying the right quality product such as Wagner will help minimize this feature


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- Serves 4-6
- Brian Streeter
- Pairs well with:
- Syrah, Napa Valley
Chef Brian Streeter's take on a classic Greek recipe is outstanding. It is a wintery type of dish but can be enjoyed in summertime as well. While it can be time consuming to prepare, you will find that once complete, it is a very worthwhile endeavor. Paired with our Cakebread Cellars Syrah, this savory wine compliments the luscious lamb and eggplant of the Moussaka.
1 onion, minced
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 T. olive oil
1 lb. ground lamb
1 tsp. fresh thyme, picked
1 tsp. dried oregano
1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 c. white wine
28 oz. plum tomatoes, peeled and chopped
salt and pepper
5 large eggplants
2-3 T. Kosher salt
1/4 - 1/2 c. olive oil
3 oz. butter
1/4 c. flour
2 1/2 c. milk
1 bay leaf
1/8 tsp. ground nutmeg
3/4 c. Gruyere cheese, grated
1/4 c. Pecorino cheese, grated
In a wide bottom pan over medium heat, sauté the onion and garlic in the olive oil until soft and golden. Add the ground lamb, turn the heat to high and cook until brown and cooked through. Stir in the thyme, oregano, and cinnamon. Add the white wine and tomatoes. Simmer over medium heat for 15 minutes to reduce to a sauce consistency and to combine flavors. Season with salt and pepper.
Trim that tops off the eggplant. Cut lengthwise into ½ " thick slices. Lay on a sheet pan and salt on both sides. Allow to sit for 20 minutes. Press on the slices with a dry kitchen towel to absorb the liquid the eggplant releases. Turn over and repeat on the other side. Heat a large skillet over high heat. Add a couple tablespoons of olive oil and cook as many slices of eggplant as will fit in the pan. Brown on one side and turn to cook on the other. Remove to a sheet pan lined with paper towels to absorb any excess oil.
In a small saucepan over low heat, melt the butter and stir in the flour to combine. Cook for two minutes and remove from the heat. In a separate saucepan, heat the milk with the bay leaf to a simmer. Whisk in the butter, flour mixture. Bring back to a low simmer stirring constantly to avoid lumps. Season with salt and the ground nutmeg.
Preheat oven to 375°F. To assemble the moussaka, lay a third of the eggplant slices in a 14"x 10"casserole dish so that they cover the bottom and are slightly overlapping. Spoon half of the meat sauce over top of the eggplant slices. Smooth the sauce with the back of a spoon or spatula and repeat with another layer of eggplant. Spoon the remaining meat sauce into the dish. Smooth and repeat with the remaining slices of eggplant. Spoon the white sauce on top. Smooth with the back of a spoon or spatula. Scatter the cheese over the top and bake for 45 minutes until cheese is brown. Remove from the oven and allow to cool slightly before serving.


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As your Denver real estate broker, my primary focus is determining and meeting your true objectives. I pride myself on personal, direct, and caring customer service. Buying or selling a home is a life-changing event (especially if you are relocating to Denver). I am committed to making the process enjoyable and ultimately successful for you.
Newly married…growing family…working from home…your great changes are probably making your home feel cramped. New needs require a different space, maybe even a switch in neighborhoods. But life's transitions can be tricky and unpredictable (as a new parent, believe me I can relate). So selling your first home while finding a new one can feel overwhelming.
You need a real estate agent who will can help you navigate a seamless transition between your transactions. I'm at your service!
My approach will help you successfully…
- Determine your new needs for the next home.
- Strategize your home's listing to fit your timing, schedule and etc.
- Provide properties which make your home search efficient.
- Manage all the details between the agents, buyers, sellers, and real estate professionals.
Hiring me to expertly handle your sell-buy can free you to focus on the other major priorities during this new season. After all my passion is to make sure you have a peace of mind as I work hard to make sure you get the best return on your sale and find the right, new home!
Since 1982 RE/MAX of Cherry Creek has been years welcoming families home and opening doors to new beginnings. They attribute their success to devoting time and energy to building strong customer relationships.
Planning to buy a home? I'm at your service!
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask! Or if you'd like to schedule a consultation, contact me by phone, text or email.


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Sweet Stamps
>> Friday, March 30, 2012
Stamps are always one of my very favorite products. Their image can be stamped on almost anything and you can use them over and over and over. What's not to like?
Today I have a couple stamped cards to share with you. They have a spring theme so they are perfect to send out this time of year. The stamp set I'm using today is the Victoria Park line set that has a feminine and nostalgic feel.
This first design picks up the colors of the line for a vibrant design. The flower is inked up with three different inks before stamping so that I could add variation of color to the leaves. This is easy to do with markers or small ink pads.
Another thing to notice about this stamp set is the images are scaled to work together. The bird and the birdcage are stamped separately. You can perch the bird anywhere by itself or stamp it inside the cage for the most flexibility.
This second card has a lighter and more vintage look. I've done all my stamping in black ink on this one. The little frame is stamped onto kraft cardstock and filled with a stamped sentiment from the set.
I also wanted to create a stamped accent for this card. The little floral sprig is stamped onto the Princess Avenue paper and then adhere to the back of a clear glass cabochon accent. I love how it magnifies the image and turns some simple stamping into a beautiful custom embellishment.


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One of the few remaining works clubs playing senior football in England, VTFC, severed their ties with the company that gave birth to them last month, and set off for pastures new under the name of Sholing FC. Neil Cotton takes a moment to mark the separation of a local employer from the football club that it gave birth to, but will this be a new chapter for this particular club?
In the depths of the pyramid the disappearance of another name from the league tables is an occurrence so regular it generates less attention than the noise from a tree collapsing in the middle of a forest. Only a few would surely lament the announcement that the Zameretto Division 1 South and West play-off semi final defeat to Bridgwater Town had been the last time VTFC would appear in the results section of the local paper much less attach any importance to it. This though would be an oversight of drastic proportions for VTFC were one of the last of an endangered species clinging on to survival like the red squirrel; the works team.
The club although officially formed in 1960 as Vosper Thornycroft FC can trace its lineage as far back as a works team from 1884; claiming along the way successive post-war sides associated with the Thornycroft shipyard famous for its warship production on the banks of the Itchen a short hop downriver from the works which produced the Spitfire. One of these sides Thornycrofts (Woolston) even found their own fame holding first division Burnley to a goalless draw in the first round proper of the FA Cup during the 1919-20 season.
History and tradition are however, no match for less sentimental forces. The yard which had employed generations from the adjoining streets closing its gates in 2003. VTFC though continued as a works team, changing their name the same year to reflect the rebranding of the parent company to the VT Group which had maintained a head office elsewhere in the city. Continued success on the pitch, resulting in promotion to the Southern League in 2009, could however, not repair the ties with the area further diluted by a the VT Groups recent merger with Babcock International and it comes as no surprise that the VTFC and VT PLC have gone their separate ways.
This story is one which has been repeated many times. As the factories and works which once dominated areas physically, economically and socially are expunged from the landscape works teams, part of the industrial eco-system, have also vanished. There is a certain irony to the fact that as commercialism becomes ever more salient at higher levels of the game with corporate branded stadiums and even branded teams the grassroots-level works team heads towards extinction. Some clubs who choose to continue, left to fend for themselves by corporations which no longer have a stake in the community, can also face the additional blow of losing their grounds and facilities sold-off from beneath them.
The story of works teams in British football is, however, a chequered one. In 1974, the Scottish Football League allowed the works team Ferranti Thistle to join their closed ranks on condition that they changed their name – the club chose Meadowbank Thistle instead. A better known example of a successful works team would be the one be that of the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway at Newton Heath, which changed its name to Manchester United in 1902. Works teams tend to be better established abroad, and famous names that started out in this way include PSV Eindhoven and Bayer Leverkusen. This may be a little beyond this club under its new name, but it's an indication of one of football's fundamental truths: the sky can, in spite of everything we know, be the limit – just.
VT FC themselves will continue in their present location; Taking their first tentative post-works team steps as Sholing FC, the name of the area in which their ground is located. The club hope that this re-instating of ties between club and community will help attract more support and investment from the local area cementing the future of the club. Meanwhile a few miles away, beside the river, a large expanse of land lies empty. Gone are the gigantic sheds and towering cranes. Silence replacing the sound of the hordes of workers pouring in from their nearby homes. A blank canvas for visions and dreams, Sholing FC and the district for which it is named awaits a new future with trepidation.


text: Well, well, well, what do we have here? Some very happy fabric for the fabric store! It's called Pop Garden, if you didn't already know, and it's by Heather Bailey. It has that color combo that I'm such a sucker for - red, blue, and yellow. I think I'm going to have to make a table cloth or a table runner out of it. It doesn't really go with my house, but then again nothing really flows in terms of theme in my house. I'm forever going in and out of phases, and my budget doesn't really allow me to completely redecorate every 3 to 6 months. Instead, I just put it together and hope no one notices that I have a beach theme living room with bright modern art in the dining room and handmade country looking stuff mixed with a little Greek art in the family room. I once read somewhere, and I'm paraphrasing, "never pass up a great find purely on the basis that it doesn't go with the house. If you like it you like it." I've held on to that.


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Featured Artists in 'Sophie's Choice'
Angelika Kirchschlager (Sophie Zawistowska); Rod Gilfry (Nathan Landau); Gordon Gietz (Stingo); Corey Evan Rotz (Rudoph Höss); Clayton Brainerd (Zbigniew Bieganski); Erin Elizabeth Smith (Wanda); Philip Horst (Doctor); Trevor Scheunemann (Larry Landau); James Shaffran (Librarian); Michael Nansel (Bartender)
Angelika Kirchschlager
Mezzo-Soprano (Sophie Zawistowska)
Angelika Kirchschlager is recognized as a leading interpreter of the operas of Mozart and Richard Strauss. Her Mozart roles include Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro, Dorabella in Cosi fan tutte, Sesto in La Clemenza di Tito and Idamante in Idomeneo.
Other key roles in her repertory include Octavian in Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, Nicklausse in Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann, Valencienne in Lehar's The Merry Widow, and Sesto in Handel's Julius Caesar. In 2002, she created the role of Sophie in the world premiere production of Nicholas Maw's Sophie's Choice. She also sang that role in Vienna, as well as in the opera's American premiere at the Washington National Opera.
On DVD Kirchschlager can be seen as Sesto in the acclaimed Glyndebourne production of Julius Caesar, with conductor William Christie; as Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro, with conductor René Jacobs; and as Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier from the Salzburg Festival.
Kirchschlager lives in Vienna, and teaches at Salzburg's Mozarteum.
Rod Gilfry
Baritone (Nathan Landau)
Along with his operatic career, Rod Gilfry also has extensive experience as a master of ceremonies, a cabaret artist and a voice-over artist.
Gilfry gained widespread attention when he created the role of Stanley Kowalski in the 1998 world premiere of André Previn's opera A Streetcar Named Desire, with the San Francisco Opera. More recently, he created his fifth world premiere role as Jack London in the new Libby Larsen opera Every Man Jack. He also appeared as Prospero in the American premiere of Thomas Ades' The Tempest at the Santa Fe Opera, along with his performance as Nathan in the American premiere of Nicholas Maw's Sophie's Choice, a role he created in London in 2002.
Gilfry has made 23 audio and video recordings, including DVD and CD releases of his one-man show, My Heart is So Full of You.
Gordon Gietz
Tenor (Stingo)
Gordon Gietz created the role of Stingo in Sophie's Choice in the opera's 2002 world premiere, at London's Royal Opera. He also appeared at the Royal Opera during the 2005-06 season, in performances of Sir Michael Tippett's The Midsummer Marriage, as part of the centenary celebration of the composer's birth.
Also during the 2005-06 season, Gietz performed as Don José in Bizet's Carmen, in concert with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra; in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with the Baltimore Symphony and Edward Gardner; in Handel's Messiah with the Saint Louis Symphony and conductor David Robertson; and in the world premiere of Kaija Saariaho's Adriana Mater, directed by Peter Sellars and conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, at the National Opera in Paris.
Gietz has appeared at Milan's La Scala as the Chevalier in Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmélites, at the Houston Grand Opera as Kudrjas in Janacek's Katya Kabanova and at Glyndebourne Festival as Lysander in Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream. He created the role of Camille Raquin in Tobias Picker's Thérèse Raquin, and also sang that role at the Dallas Opera, l'Opéra de Montréal and the San Diego Opera.
Gietz's concert career has included concert appearances with the New York Philharmonic and conductor Kurt Masur, the Cleveland Orchestra with Leonard Slatkin, the Montreal Symphony led by Charles Dutoit, and the Philadelphia Orchestra with conductors Simon Rattle and Wolfgang Sawallisch.


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P.O.D. via their oficcial facebook page, recently announce that the release time for their new album 'Murdered Love' have been pushed back from June 19 to July 10, 2012.
Track list for the standard edition as seen below.
1. Eyez (ft. Jamey Jasta of Hatebreed)
2. Murdered Love
3. Higher
4. Lost In Forever
5. West Coast Rock Steady (ft. Sen Dog of Cypress Hill)
6. Beautiful
7. Babylon The Murderer
8. On Fire
9. Bad Boy
10. Panic & Run
11. I Am


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Training for Mediterranean NCPs on H2020
From the 9th to 11th December 2013, the MED-SPRING project organises in Amman (Jordan), a three-day training activity (21 hours) hosted by HCST, in collaboration with DLR, UNIMED and CIHEAM-IAMB called "Training on H2020 for Mediterranean NCPs". With the idea of carrying out a "Training for Trainers", the event aims at providing Mediterranean-NCPs with fresh knowledge and insight of H2020, which would help them to organize training and coaching of local researchers and professionals in their own Countries and get them acquainted with the structure of H2020.
The training programme is available here.
The first section of the "Training on H2020 for Mediterranean NCPs" will be livestreamed from Amman - starting from 2PM, Jordan time.
We welcome all those interested in following the event live!
[UPDATE - Livestream ended. Thanks everyone for participating and sharing!]
12/10/2013 - 11:23
12/10/2013 - 14:18
12/10/2013 - 16:17


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Today, I have been mostly thinking about the pros and cons of working from home, which I'd like to share.
I'll begin with the bad news:
I'll begin with the bad news:
1. Working from home can mean extensive periods of isolation, leading to a catastrophic degeneration of socio-personal skills. In extreme circumstances, this can mean going to ridiculous lengths to avoid human contact, such as using the sewer network to get to the post office, or leaping from branch to branch in the overhead tree canopy to avoid footpaths.
2. Conversely, working from home can also mean getting so ridiculously over-excited at the possibility of human contact, that when the postman delivers a parcel, you end up speaking in the jumbled, rapid manner of a psychotic:
ME: Oh, hi, sorry I took ages ... I was upstairs in the bathroom … Ha ha ha! Ooh! I'm so out of breath though ... can't believe how unfit I am ... still, what's it like OUT THERE? Haven't been OUT today! Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! Least it's not raining though! Do you want to step into the hallway?
POSTMAN: (looking alarmed and holding handset with attached pen-thing at considerable distance from body) "This just needs signing for".
3. People who work from home typically end up reporting hostile feeling towards their house. One woman told me that she fantasised about drawing a giant spurting cock on to the living room wall, even though it had JUST been painted in Farrow and Ball heritage colours! Another had a recurring dream about digging an escape tunnel under the hallway floorboards. Thankfully, I don't have this problem. No siree bob! (So, yes, ok, there is THAT smell, and yes, I did spend last Friday sniffing the skirting boards, on all fours, trying to locate it), but for the most part I love being in the house all day every day with hardly a break.
|courtesy of Modern Toss
But then, there are the PROS! Yay!
1. Working from home offers healthier snacking opportunities. Yesterday, I ate an entire packet of cherry tomatoes. In one sitting. By 10am. Admittedly, this did trigger a fair amount of gastro-intestinal disturbance (and at one point I had to cross-reference my symptoms with those of Violet Beauregarde from Charlie and the Chocolate factory, especially the bloating), nevertheless, this is not the kind of snacking choice you could make in an office, without getting looks.
2. Working from home offers ample opportunities for reflection. Just the other week, I spent an extremely constructive twenty-two minutes staring at a tree outside the window. To the untrained observer, it probably looked like I was catatonic (what with the horrible, glazed expression, the drool dribbling down my chin, and the pyjamas), but then, the same thing could easily be said of the untrained observer, by which I actually mean our Peeping Tom of a fucking window cleaner, what with the horrible, predatory expression, the drool dribbling down his chin like a perv, and the unsettling pinky ring.
3. But most importantly, there are far fewer interruptions at home. Because the hardest thing about working in an office is trying to do ANY actual motherfucking work:
COLLEAGUE: See Paul Hollywood on the Jonathon Ross show? I'd so DO him. Remember Terri, she used to do that train the trainers course with Helen Pickering, well, she went to the live roadshow he did at St David's Hall couple of weeks ago. Loads of people went up on stage and …
ME: Yeah, right, thing is I've got to finish this newsletter by midday, so …
COLLEAGUE: My mum's gonna get us tickets for the Bath show in a coupla weeks. We'll probably end up making a weekend of it and … blah blah blah blah ad infinitum, until blood is gushing out of your ears, the newsletter is beyond fucked, and all you can see, dancing in front of your eyes, is Paul Hollywood, waving his big, yeasty-smelling breadstick about the place. Like a twat.
Which is, I should add, easily the best reason EVER to work from home.
|If this kind of calendar ever appears on the wall at your workplace, it is a contravention of your human rights, and you have the right to sue, or to demand to work from home. According to the U.N.
PS Feel free to share yours pros and cons, as I'm hoping to syndicate this blog to a TOP business magazine! Yeah!


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This year, I was desperate to go to IMATS!
I'd read ALOT of blog posts about past imats experiences, etc & I got myself sooo hyped up & way too excited for it!
I haven't found any blogs that have said this, and feel like an outcast but it was soooo disappointing! :(
I went because my main aim was to learn how to do stuff, get lots of tips & ideas, inspirations & everything but I got none of that! There were hardly any demonstrations.. on the main stage, I didn't even know what they were doing! I'm sorry but it just looked rubbish! Me & Craig were sat having a drink at a little cafe next to the main stage and we were both just like 'what is this?'
We only stayed at imats for an hour & a half :/
The main stage.
After looking at blog posts from the L.A Imats, I thought it looked amazing! but after going to the London one.. it's a fact that America really does do everything better!
Me & Craig got there early and queued for 45 minutes. We were about 5 people from the front of the queue so that got me excited!
My cutie in the queue.. so adorable! That smile! :) <3
So, when we were allowed in, we gave them our e-ticket and they gave us wristbands.
As soon as we got our wristbands, I took a picture of our view!
My friend Charmaine, wanted the D'Lilac Lime Crime lipstick, so as soon as I got in, I saw a little stall that sold a bit of everything and there was the Lime Crime logo, so I went and purchased the one she wanted.
They only had about 7 shades of the Lime Crime lipsticks, maybe they sold out the day before? I don't know.
After that, I saw a NYX stall.. and really wanted the Jumbo eye pencil in milk after seeing pretty much everyone I watch on youtube use it as an eyeshadow base.. so I went to have a look for it and saw it straight away! A guy who worked there was setting the milk pencils out.
I said I wanted one and he said "we've only just got these. They all sold out yesterday!" so he handed me one! :) it cost £3.50! :)
The picture below is how the NYX stall was when I went.. bearing in mind it was the 2nd stall I went to.. an hour later, we walked past the stall again and the queue was HUGE!!! It went all around the stall! I'm so glad I went when I did! :)
Then I went to the Nars stall! A lot of the people i've watched on youtube tutorials own the Nars 'Orgasm' blush so I was looking for that and a woman said they didn't sell it on it's own.. they were selling blush duo's and the 'Orgasm' blush came with the 'South Beach' blush.. it looked super pretty! The woman there explained that they retail at around £21 and these were being sold at £12.50 so I thought why the hell not for that price! because I knew Nars was quite expensive!
When me and Craig sat down for a drink, I searched Google for the blush duo that i'd just purchased and they were being sold for £22 - £30!!! Actually couldn't believe it! :)
Orgasm & South Beach.. beautiful shades! Can't wait to try them! :)
I kept thinking about the stall that sold the Lime Crime lipsticks & I had wanted one for ages, so I decided to go back to it and buy myself one! :)
I got Airborne Unicorn! :)
I'm in love with the pretty packaging!
Mine and Charmaine's lipsticks! :)
Airborne Unicorn on the left & D'Lilac on the right!
I don't know how much Lime Crime lipsticks are originally.. but these were £9.20 each! :)
(Sent this cheeky picture to Charmaine to tease her:) she's literally obsessed with Lime Crime lipsticks)
As I said, the stall sold abit of everything.. and I saw this pack of Real Techniques brushes for only £16.80! so I couldn't NOT get it! because I know Real Techniques brushes retail from at least £8 PER brush! This was an absolute bargain! :D
They're sooooo soft! I don't want to use them! :( hahaha!
I desperately needed a new foundation and i've wanted a mac foundation for months and months now! So I went and had a look :)
I said that if I was going to spend £20+ on a foundation, I was going to get help on getting the right shade to match my skin tone! so I waited for awhile and a guy came over and helped! :) he was so helpful and found me the perfect foundation after stating I wanted a full coverage one :) he'd put a bit onto my chin and I said I definitely wanted it! :) he then asked if I wanted anything else and I said i'd been looking at the Mac mineralize skin finishes for awhile, so he showed me 2 of them- 'Soft & Gentle' & 'Lightscapade'
he suggested the Soft & Gentle one and patted some on my cheek bones.
It gave a lovely, warm glow! so I said I wanted to buy it! :)
it was 15% off Mac so instead of my 2 items costing me £45.00, the total came to 38.74! :)
I'm so, so happy with my purchases from imats and cannot wait to paint my face with all my new makeupppp! :)
Here are a few random pictures from the day!
Inglot stall!
Craig looking at all the eyelashes! :')
This was sooo weird! I had a feel of the tongues and they felt sooo real! :')
Weird zebra woman..?
It's actually insane how real these look! :|
Hahahaha! How cute is craig's smile!? <3
This is the view looking down the hall!
I'm glad I went on the Sunday because it was a nice atmosphere, plenty of space to walk around, not too many crowds etc..
Looking at people's instagram pictures from the Saturday imats, it looked HECTIC! and too crowded! however, it did look better, there were more demonstrations & so much more going on!
But yeah.. it was quite disappointing :( so happy with my discounted purchases though! :)
& everyone got given an imats bag for all their buys! i'm keeping mine as a little memento! :)
Thank you for reading!
Did anyone else go to the Sunday imats? If so, what did you think to it?!