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Chicago's Rahm Emanuel and Los Angeles' Antonio Villaraigosa have made a friendly wager on which hockey team will advance to the Stanley Cup finals. Twenty-five slices of Eli's Cheesecake including Eli's Original Plain, Strawberry, and Chocolate Chip flavors are riding on the outcome of this soon to be legendary series.
Read more about the mayoral wager here: http://prohockeytalk.nbcsports.com/2013/06/03/here-are-details-of-the-chicago-l-a-mayoral-wager-on-hawks-kings/
and here: http://www.nbcchicago.com/blogs/ward-room/Rahm-Emanuel-Makes-Bet-on–209956611.html


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Posted on November 14, 2013 at 1:47pm 0 Comments 0 Likes
Recently, we helped at a garage sale that was raising funds for several charities. (Tiny Hands International http://www.tinyhandsinternational.org/ and a Honduras Mission I believe it's Nueva Esperanza Honduras http://www.hopeinhonduras.org/). I talked to my kids ahead of time before we went…Continue
Posted on November 13, 2013 at 11:30am 0 Comments 0 Likes
Tonight is the "Packing Party" at my church for Operation Christmas Child (http://www.samaritanspurse.org/what-we-do/operation-christmas-child/), which is something we have been contributing to since my two youngest were babies. It's a fantastic program that helps my kids…Continue
Posted on November 11, 2013 at 2:59pm 0 Comments 0 Likes
I definitely have normal kids that LOVE to get new toys, electronics, stuffed animals, dolls, or anything else a kid wold love to get. However, they love a box, empty paper towel roll and bubble wrap almost equally. I absolutely plan on giving my kids a great Christmas with as many items that I can purchase from their wish list that the spending budget will allow (we set an amount for each child). However, I decided this year to…Continue
Posted on November 7, 2013 at 8:00am 0 Comments 0 Likes
Goals are an absolute essential in relation to money and financial responsibility. There can be a lot of discussion regarding goals. Later, kids need to learn about opportunity cost (giving up one thing for something else more important) and refining our goals into SMART goals…Continue
Thank you for the kind words and compliments. I am blessed to have inspired you. Adoption is such a big choice but such a rewarding one to make...i pray God guide you as a family!
Wow,i love u're blog..good to see believers here..so am i..I am stopping by to say "hello" welcome :.. love from http://cocoon2butterfly.com/"
Hi, Tricia. I loved your first post and that you had a poll - let me know when there is a way for me to follow you and I'll definitely sign up!
Welcome, Tricia! I really like your goals to help children and moms learn more about finances! Stop by Sorry, Mom. I didn't listen some time and say hello!

subset: commoncrawl


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Thomas (profile), 14 Sep 2010 @ 9:15pmWell, sure they're being lost, but no middlemen can collect money off their use, so they're not "worth" saving. You want culture, you gotta pay for it.
MrWilson, 14 Sep 2010 @ 10:01pm
Re:It would be one thing if it were only a matter of money. The rights to some films are wrapped up in (overly)complicated contract clauses.
It's why Netflix can't stream some older movies. For instance, Michael Jackson's estate owns some Beatles music and if those songs are played in a movie, the estate gets to demand a separate fee on top of what Netflix pays to the studio. If a rights holder doesn't want a movie containing their song to be licensed for streaming video, they can block it altogether.
Yet another reason why copyright needs to expire within 15 years (or less in the digital era).
ChurchHatesTucker (profile), 14 Sep 2010 @ 10:19pm
Re: Re:It would be one thing if it were only a matter of disentangling the (overly)complicated contract clauses. The rights for some films are completely unknown. The rightsholders have disappeared. And for most of the films in question, copyright had to be declared. Lords of Kobol help us when the post-78 stuff starts to become problematic.
PaulT (profile), 16 Sep 2010 @ 4:09am
Re: Re: Re:"Lords of Kobol help us when the post-78 stuff starts to become problematic."
Already happening.
As far as I know, the only reason why Night Of The Creeps and The Monster Squad (both mid-80s productions) finally made it to DVD was because the strong cult following made it worth untangling the copyright maze they were trapped in. God help any movie that's not so popular...
Anonymous Coward, 14 Sep 2010 @ 9:56pmand by the time the copyright expires the people who own the only copy left will somehow have another copyright on that copy or its digitally enhanced version. Ridiculous.
Anonymous Coward, 14 Sep 2010 @ 10:53pm
Why copy if you can execute better?The reality is that if Conan properly executes, he could have a better show. Thing is that it's been hyped so much that if not properly executed, it will simply flop.
Witness item number 1:
This video should have been pushed out six months ago when the contract was signed and not yesterday:
Sorry to say it, but Conan may ultimately be a victim of bad execution. Bad execution on TBS's part.
Berenerd (profile), 15 Sep 2010 @ 5:23am
Re: Why copy if you can execute better?is it me or is anyone else lost on this post?
ChurchHatesTucker (profile), 15 Sep 2010 @ 8:13am
Re: Re: Why copy if you can execute better?I've got nothing.
Normally I'd assume it was posted to the wrong story, but I've no idea what the right one would be.
Jon Lawrence (profile), 15 Sep 2010 @ 7:32am
Re: Why copy if you can execute better?Haha! You just described 99% of network and cable produced content out there - and 99.999% of indie content.
Too many "creative" folks don't care about execution, they care about "their vision" and never the two shall meet.
We run into bad execution constraints every single day of production when we have not been properly funded, or cash flowed, or people add loads of new ideas, or change original ideas, at the last minute. This kind of decision making always has financial impacts, and in many cases, long term legal impacts as well (as in Conan).
The only way around it A) to do everything by yourself and obsess on execution, or B) quit working with humans. ;)
Anonymous Coward, 14 Sep 2010 @ 11:30pmThose people apparently never heard of redundant systems and why they are so important.
Anonymous Coward, 14 Sep 2010 @ 11:45pm
Deliberate DestructionIt is not just hungry bugs that are destroying the film heritage. Movie studios like to keep all film copies under their control. Then when some film is approaching the date when it would fall into the public domain, they deliberately destroy it. If asked, they would claim to be just having a cleanup and tidying their shelves. The real reason is that they do not want any old stuff competing with their paid offerings.
The only way of fixing that problem is for Congress to write into copyright law that a best-quality copy must be deposited with an official film archive as soon as copyright is granted. If there is no deposit or it is not the best possible quality -- no copyright. The archive must check, independently and skeptically.
Seriously, what are the chances of Congress being that smart?
Michael, 15 Sep 2010 @ 4:50am
Re: Deliberate Destruction'con' is the opposite of 'pro'
Anonymous Coward, 14 Sep 2010 @ 11:51pm"Would Be Nice If People Could Make Copies To Preserve"
Ask that to a certain class of people and they'll explode.
Think of all the children and families that will go hungry if people could copy those things freely never mind that some of those things are 90 years old already, people will never produce anything if those things are allowed to be freely distributed OMG is the end of the world as we know it.
Anonymous Coward, 15 Sep 2010 @ 6:23am
Re:no old movies suck when compared to the 1 good hollywood film worth wacthing for the year
but r sorta good compared to summer blockbusters
Pedro Vasconcellos, 15 Sep 2010 @ 12:10am
The economics don't favor itThe answer is simpler than a conspiracy theory or the situation of the rights. It's simply not cost effective.
I've looked into the issue myself and the consensus is that investing in generalized digitization has a negative return (in other words, even with VOD and whatever you think about, you will never monetize it enough to pay for the digitization costs).
That is why all major film digitization/preservation efforts have somehow been funded with tax-payers' money - CCTV in China, BBC in the UK and so on.
Of course, one could cherry pick what is worth preserving and what is not, but if the choice is left for the rights owners, they will obviously choose only the valuable material - and not necessarily what is historically relevant.
Jon Lawrence (profile), 15 Sep 2010 @ 7:34am
Re: The economics don't favor itThis is an accurate statement.
Film restoration, and scanning to a digital master easily runs into the 6 or 7 figures per film depending on the state of deterioration.
x how many films? And maybe over the next 10 or 20 years they can make how much back? Pass.
From an economic standpoint, it makes no sense. From a cultural standpoint, I'm in agreement it would be nice if they could be saved...
Anonymous Coward, 15 Sep 2010 @ 7:55am
Re: Re: The economics don't favor it"Film restoration"
If the film weren't so old there would be no need for film restoration. If people were allowed to make copies of the film a long time ago we (ie: theaters that owned the film) could have more easily made newer copies of the older film a long time ago before the originals deteriorated. Industries could have later much more easily arisen to convert it to VHS and sold those VHS tapes for a profit. Now that the film is so old and no one was allowed to make copies of it a long time ago we must now work on restoration of the originals.
Anonymous Coward, 15 Sep 2010 @ 8:14am
Re: Re: Re: The economics don't favor it(and its not like people were unable to make copies of films back then. Of course they could, each cinema that played a movie had a copy of the film so clearly copies were made and distributed. They can't all have originals).
PRMan, 19 Feb 2014 @ 1:16pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: The economics don't favor itAnd the contract required them to return the movie "copy" to the studio for destruction afterward.
Anonymous Coward, 15 Sep 2010 @ 12:38am
Why doesn't Google do this?Let's face it, deliberate destruction is something in your head.
I can't see this being true unless your desire is to actually destroy the British film archives in favor of American Capitalistic ideologies. Then, I could see not a conspiracy theory, but a weird series of events.
Didn't copyright originate in Brittan? Sad series of events indeed. Why hasn't Google catalaogued these films? With their amazing ability to troll (err, I meant collect) these archives, I would assume they would resonate with their goal to invade home privacy while also cataloging the world's information.
They should have Google Burgers for everyone.
martyburns (profile), 15 Sep 2010 @ 6:23am
Re: Why doesn't Google do this?wow.
Suzanne Lainson (profile), 15 Sep 2010 @ 1:14am
Preservation is costlyThe cost of preservation, rather than copyright issues, is likely the bigger problem.
National Film Preservation Foundation: Why Preserve Film?: "The laboratory work necessary to save a film is expensive. In 2010, making a new master and viewing print of a seven-reel black-and-white silent feature costs about $18,115, assuming that no special restoration work is required. Making a supervised digital video for public viewing adds another $3,000 to the total. Preserving a sound feature costs even more."
Anonymous Coward, 15 Sep 2010 @ 7:37am
Re: Preservation is costly"The cost of preservation, rather than copyright issues, is likely the bigger problem."
I wish people will stop being so bone headed.
If you look at the Bible or any well preserved historical text do they ever preserve the original? No, the originals that were written are likely long lost in history. What we have is copies. Why try to figure out elaborate ways to preserve the originals for thousands of years when we can simply make copies from time to time and preserve the brand new copies. Only things etched on cave walls are preserved for a very long time.
Anonymous Coward, 15 Sep 2010 @ 8:24am
Re: Re: Preservation is costlyMy guess is that when people say preservation, they really do mean making copies rather than making the original print last until the end of time (minus a day of course). Either they make another film copy or a digital scan, but either way it's a copy. The big difference between this and your ordinary digital copying is that copying an old piece of film to a digital image is time consuming and expensive, whereas digital copying is easily accomplished in minutes by practically anyone.
Suzanne Lainson (profile), 15 Sep 2010 @ 9:43am
Re: Re: Re: Preservation is costlyYes. They aren't trying to save the original. The cost is in preserving the original enough to make a copy from it.
Many of the old films were either recycled or allowed to deteriorate because no one saw the value in saving them. So now, in order to make copies, someone has to pay for the effort.
There are groups saving old films, but they have to raise the money to do so.
Multiple copies were made of the original films, but in many cases they have all been lost. Now there may be one copy left and if it is falling apart, it's an expensive proposition to save it enough to make more copies.
I'm just pointing out that even without any copyright issues, you're still stuck with the same technological problems that there appears to be limited funds to deal with.
xs (profile), 15 Sep 2010 @ 11:12am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Preservation is costlyNo, without copyright issues, there would likely be many more copies of films in much better conditions out there in the wild, making the elaborate effort to restore and preserve that single copy we have left a moot point.
Prevalence of copies is a much better preservation technique than any scheme you could ever possibly devise.
Suzanne Lainson (profile), 15 Sep 2010 @ 12:02pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Preservation is costlyNo, without copyright issues, there would likely be many more copies of films in much better conditions out there in the wild, making the elaborate effort to restore and preserve that single copy we have left a moot point.
But that's what I am trying to say. The old copies were unstable. Even if there had been 1000s of copies, they weren't being kept, or they weren't being kept well. These were fragile items and also more useful when they were recycled, so the idea that they should have been saved for generations wasn't the norm.
It's a bit like saying that if there weren't copyright issues, we'd have multiple copies of your home photos. People just didn't save them.
It was more of a technology issue than a copyright issue why the films weren't preserved. Same with old TV shows. The producers saw them as live shows with no replay value. There are exceptions, like the Lucy shows, but most early TV shows are gone.
xs (profile), 15 Sep 2010 @ 12:18pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Preservation is costlyYou are still missing the point. Had there been no copyright restrictions, it wouldn't be up to the studios and copyright owners to keep copies and decide which one to keep. And if they are freely available for anyone to copy, copying effort will likely happen more or less continuously as people acquires copies of films, shows they are interested in. So we don't need to preserve any particular copies, because we will have newer copies in better conditions available.
This is how old classics from ancient time are preserved, by people copying the original, instead of locking it up in an archive. Those that were locked up for one reason or another had all been lost.
Suzanne Lainson (profile), 15 Sep 2010 @ 1:00pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Preservation is costlyNo, I'm not missing the point. There were also tons of home movies and cheap nickelodeon movies being made when the technology was introduced. Copies of those weren't made and saved either. It wasn't as if big studios locked up those movies. Most of the movies being made were treated as disposables.
How many copies does anyone make of their own stuff? Before there were photocopy machines, how many people made duplicates of what they wrote and saved those? Most people haven't saved their own personal history, so much of it has been lost, too.
When my father died, he had a lot of personal papers that might have been of interest to naval historians. But we didn't have the time or wherewithal to get them to an archivist. So they were destroyed. I know someone somewhere might have wanted them, but we didn't have the time to save them or a place to store them.
xs (profile), 15 Sep 2010 @ 2:52pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Preservation is costlyIf those people made their home movies and then somehow allowed other people to make copies, they probably wouldn't be lost.
If you father had let his personal papers's content be known to the public and allowed people to copy them, as he was accruing them, then you wouldn't have to worry about archiving it after his death. Copies of his papers would have already been out there.
Although these are unlikely scenario because of privacy and other personal reasons, the concept is the same. If you allow people to copy your work from the beginning, it's more likely than not that you can find a copy out there when your original was destroyed.
Going back to the original story, had movie studios not destroyed all but the few copies of movies left for archive purposes, it would have been more likely than not that we would find a copy of a particular film out there in better shape. Thus making expensive restoration unnecessary.
And why was there only a few copies left? Copyright holders don't want the material spread around, so they recovered them all. Why were most destroyed? Because copyright holders have no need for hundreds of copies of the same thing. Why are they in bad shape? Because copyright holders, by themselves, can't find enough economic use for the old copy, and thus don't have the economic incentive to maintain them properly.
Hope you can see the point, finally.
Anonymous Coward, 16 Sep 2010 @ 4:05pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Preservation is costly"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." --Linus Torvalds
PRMan, 19 Feb 2014 @ 1:22pm
Re: Re: Preservation is costlyExactly. We have copies of the New Testament from around 125 AD, less than 100 years after Jesus walked the earth.
The Old Testament is longer, but there are manuscripts from around 1000 AD. Some parts can be found from around the time of Christ (interestingly with very few changes compared to the 1000 AD version, mostly musical instrument and animal names). But obviously, the point is very valid that it's easier to preserve through massive copying.
Jon Lawrence (profile), 15 Sep 2010 @ 7:38am
Re: Preservation is costlyWow - that's an understatement.
I've spent over $50,000 just doing a "digital cleaning" of dirt on old negatives for transfer (and by old, we're only talking about less than 2 decades).
I suppose if you had pristine negative you're perfectly happy with, and all you're doing is striking a single new transfer IP, and a crappy one pass scan to digibeta (NTSC), maybe $3k. More common, a decent transfer on a 4k telecine to HDCAM SR (standard digital deliverable today) runs between $10k and 25k, that's if you're not doing any color changes or corrections in the telecine process.
Anonymous Coward, 15 Sep 2010 @ 1:43amSuzanne,
If Dr. Schmidt's engineers were smart, they would have a solution to restoration of films about to enter the public domain. But they get paid by the US Government for driving around cities and making public what they choose or have a vested interest in.
They are focused on aligning ideas to people. Their answer to privacy is to whine to the courts and start over. Brilliant if you work in intelligence, Seems kinda weird if you work for anyone else.
zenith (profile), 15 Sep 2010 @ 2:52amWorth pointing out - the BBC has always done it's best (i.e. more than anyone else on the planet) in preserving it's massive archive.
In a project costing millions, they are currently digitising the BBC archive, with a view to making it available and free.
Gawd bless Aunty Beeb!
Dave, 15 Sep 2010 @ 3:43am
The BeebThe Beeb hasn't always been so far-sighted. Loads of early videotapes were wiped and re-used, thereby losing precious archive material. I understand that a lot of archive material is only still around because of "telerecordings", which is what the industry used to call filming (with REAL FILM!) programmes by literally pointing a movie camera at a CRT screen, although the resultant quality was a tad smeary when re-transmitted, if I remember correctly.
NullOp, 15 Sep 2010 @ 4:49am
ArchiveNever underestimate the power of greed. They would rather let it rot than invest a dime to archive it. After all, what if someone else made money off our work....oh, even the thought...
tuna, 15 Sep 2010 @ 5:13am
non issue as statedIt's not about copyright or making a profit. As pointed out, it is an expensive undertaking to preserve these films.
If it is a major concern of yours, I believe both AMC and TMC have film preservation programs you can donate to.
Anonymous Coward, 15 Sep 2010 @ 6:11am
Re: non issue as statedUnless copyright lasted as long as they could preserve original...
btrussell (profile), 15 Sep 2010 @ 6:13am
Re: Re: non issue as statedWho logged me out?
Anonymous Coward, 15 Sep 2010 @ 6:25am
Re: Re: Re: non issue as statedme
Anonymous Coward, 15 Sep 2010 @ 7:29am
Re: non issue as statedAMC and TMC are part of the problem. They like our broken copyright laws and hence they are part of the reason these things aren't being preserved. As far as copyright not being the cause for this, no one believes you.
Anonymous Coward, 15 Sep 2010 @ 6:27amy dont they srsly just restore them and let the law figure out later
Hephaestus (profile), 15 Sep 2010 @ 7:03am
Simple solutionVacuum seal the films in plastic and replace the air with helium. Wait 100 plus years for the copyright to expire then archive them ... oh wait ... they want copyright to last forever minus a day ... guess I will watch the movies the day before the universe ends.
Anonymous Coward, 15 Sep 2010 @ 7:30am
Re: Simple solutionYou know we're having helium shortages right now right?
Hephaestus (profile), 15 Sep 2010 @ 8:48am
Re: Re: Simple solutionLOL ... yeah and a gram or 2 of helium is going to make a difference on 10,000 movies
Anonymous Coward, 15 Sep 2010 @ 9:01am
Re: Re: Re: Simple solutionI know, I just saw that as an opportunity to bring attention to it.
PRMan, 19 Feb 2014 @ 1:27pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Simple solutionWell, while we're bringing attention to helium shortages, I find it interesting to point out that helium shortages only make sense in a young earth creationist model (6000-10000 years).
In a billions-of-years scenario, there shouldn't ever be a shortage or otherwise we would already not have any helium.
Anonymous Coward, 15 Sep 2010 @ 7:30am
Re: Simple solution(plus, when the copyright does expire, they will demand a copyright on the new rendition of the archived version).
Anonymous Coward, 15 Sep 2010 @ 7:43amPeople, stop being idiots. Copyright IS the problem. There is no need to keep preserving originals if people can just keep making brand new copies of the originals and then copies of those copies, etc... That's the whole point of this post. Especially in this digital era where we can make perfect copies of everything.
Anonymous Coward, 15 Sep 2010 @ 8:19am
Re:I think people talking about the costs are stating that while copyright is a problem, the cost of digitizing a large archive can be expensive in its own right. Basically think about scanning 200,000 badly degraded photos per film. Still copyright is often the blocking factor for films whose copyright holders are unknown/unreasonable.
Manfriend, 15 Sep 2010 @ 9:24amI really wish it were about greed, because then at least they could be bribed and the content could be preserved. Instead it's about control and tossing one's toys out of the pram because you're a spoiled little brat, as this old article from earlier this year clearly illustrates:
Even if outsiders are willing to pay the expensive costs of restoring now public domain footage the big media types refuse to allow it. Things like this are why I do not respect or follow copyright laws. They are meaningless contracts because the other party refuses to keep its end of the bargain.
Errant Garnish (profile), 15 Sep 2010 @ 9:55am
Copies aren't copiesThe argument to crowdsource archiving of content by making digital copies of films freely available falls flat (for now) due to the large size of an uncompressed film vs. the bandwidth and space available to move and store it.
The reason film originals sit in cans on the archive shelf is that 1.) the film is going to last hundreds of years if properly kept, much longer than any digital medium in use today, and 2.) the film original is the highest possible quality copy of the content.
Not long ago DVD's were thought to be the pinnacle of consumer video quality, even though they hold a small fraction of the information on the original film. Now that we have BluRay and HD television we get an idea of what we were missing. But even those formats, thought by the average viewer today to be the best possible rendition, still only hold a fraction of the information of the original.
Giving everyone a "copy" of these films will preserve some but not all of their value. The mold -- or some other form of decay -- will win in the end.
Anonymous Coward, 15 Sep 2010 @ 8:06pm
Re: Copies aren't copies"due to the large size of an uncompressed film vs. the bandwidth and space available to move and store it."
Are you kidding me? Do you have any idea how many hours of video get uploaded to youtube every minute?
PRMan, 19 Feb 2014 @ 1:30pm
Re: Re: Copies aren't copies66 days worth?
PRMan, 19 Feb 2014 @ 1:35pm
Re: Copies aren't copiesPeople would rather watch a VideoCD or Laserdisc version than no version at all once the film gets eaten away.
And I'm pretty sure that we still know how to read VideoCDs and Laserdiscs, so I REALLY doubt that the original will outlast digital.
Suzanne Lainson (profile), 15 Sep 2010 @ 4:12pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Preservation is costlyIf you father had let his personal papers's content be known to the public and allowed people to copy them, as he was accruing them, then you wouldn't have to worry about archiving it after his death. Copies of his papers would have already been out there.
His stuff was on display in his basement. He proudly showed it off to visitors. But as far as I know, no one volunteered to come in to physically copy everything he owned. We had old newspapers articles, old photos, old pamphlets, etc. There may be copies spread out in various people's personal collections, but we had a collection already accumulated which none of us knew what to do with. I have no space in my condo. My daughters went through everything and kept what they wanted. Everything else was trashed. Sadly. I would have loved to have found a home for it all, but didn't have one available.
Is there a group of people volunteering to copy old photos, papers, and movies of everyone who has them? If so, yes, I think we can make a permanent record of every artifact in this culture. But right now, we have more decaying items that need copying than we have the manpower to do it.
All I am saying is that there is stuff being trashed that might someday have historical value but isn't being saved. And not because of copyright issues.
And the reason I say this is that if you want to archive everything, there are more problems than just copyright. Even if there aren't copyright issues, lots of stuff isn't going to be saved. You need to deal with that issue, too.
People who might one day become famous have trashed early writings/art/etc. because no one knows they might be worth something someday. Painters who are short on canvas paint over their paintings, so those get lost.
I have a painting that I saved from my father's house which turns out is worth about $15,000 because I looked up the artist's signature. But the paint is starting to chip off. I'm not sure what to do about that. I know there are art restorers, but how do I get the painting to one of them without further damage?
Anonymous Coward, 15 Sep 2010 @ 8:43pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Preservation is costlyNo one is denying that other factors also contribute to the loss of valuable information. but to say that there are other factors that contribute to the loss of valuable information in no way diminishes the fact that copyright substantially contributes to the loss of valuable information.
Suzanne Lainson (profile), 15 Sep 2010 @ 4:29pm
How many of you are saving/documenting everything you've created?I'll bet none of you is saving every photo you've taken, every video you've shot, everything you have ever written.
Now let's say there are companies that aren't bothering to save what they have created.
And let's say consumers aren't bothering to save whatever copies they might have made of those products, particularly if the copies are starting to rot.
So over the course of 100 years, you discover that something that was available at one point has not been saved by anyone. That's what has happened with certain cultural artifacts. Buildings haven't been saved. Products haven't been saved. Meeting notes haven't been saved. Films and videos haven't been saved.
There are products that were mass produced that have more or less disappeared because no one bothered to save them. Maybe we have pictures of them, if we are lucky, but think of all the stuff produced in the 19th and 20th centuries that are gone, not because people were prevented from making copies, but because no one thought the copies were worth saving. They took up space. They required maintenance. They wore out. They fell out of favor or became a political liability so people destroyed them.
Saving history is a complex issue.
PaulT (profile), 16 Sep 2010 @ 4:20am
Re: Re: Re:I've said it before and I'll say it again - just look as Nosferatu vs. London After Midnight. The former only exists thanks to film pirates, is constant seller, and has been the inspiration for many new works including a remake and a fictionalised "behind the scenes" movie (Shadow Of The Vampire) that garnered an Oscar nomination. The latter is lost to history thanks to aggressive copyright enforcement and a tragic accident that means that while Lon Chaney's makeup design for the movie is iconic, nobody in the modern era has seen it.
If you can't see the problem here, you're a drooling moron who has no business living in modern society, let alone making rules for it.
Anonymous Coward, 16 Sep 2010 @ 7:08am
Re: Re: Re: Re:But ... but ... but ... corporate profits. CORPORATE PROFITS!!!! How will corporations optimize their profits and optimize the campaign contributes they give to politicians without insanely ridiculous laws?????
juidth favourite (profile), 13 Jan 2011 @ 5:49pmWhen humidity is lowered to the unsuitable range for the grwoth of fungus ,the fungus will not be so rampant the key is to control humidity as request anytime, to prevent fungus,you can choose a dry cabinet to keep dry cabinet to ensure dry storage.
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Nintendo Power has confirmed it is to reveal a 3DS Shinobi reboot in its next issue.
Xbox Live update June 11 - CoD, Burnout, Sega Classics
Xbox Live Marketplace's update is pretty massive today.Some you may already know about, some you may not.Here it is anyway. Sega Genesis classics: Altered Beast, Comix Zone, Gunstar Heroes, Phantasy Star II, Shinobi, Sonic The Hedgehog 3 – 400 MS Points each ($5.00) Call of Duty: World at War: Map Pack 2 – 800 MS […]
Sega Vintage Collection 2 arriving in June for PSN and XBL
Sega has decided to bring enhanced editions of its classic games to PS3 and Xbox 360.Called the SEGA Vintage Collection 2, each game will be sold individually for a price yet to be determined. Altered Beast (XBLA) – June 10 – Online Play Comix Zone (XBLA) – June 10 – No Online Gunstar Heroes – […]
Gunstar Heroes, Altered Beast and more confirmed for XBLA, PSN
Sega just confirmed a Vintage Collection 2 for XBLA and PSN, including the long-rumoured Gunstar Heroes.The platform shooter will be coming to both PSN and XBLA this summer, while the rest of the titles – Shinobi, Comix Zone, Phantasy Star 2, Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles – will be XBLA-only.Press release after the break.
Rumor: Sega to unleash more classic arcade titles on Xbox 360
Sega's planning on bringing more classic titles to Xbox 360 in some way shape or form, according to the ESRB website.Altered Beast and Shinobi are on the way, apparently. Both of which were rumored to be part of the Sega Vintage Collection Vol. 2, with Shinobi already included in Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection for PS3 […]
Shinobi latest
Tuesday Shorts – Zynga sued, Shinobi's Creed, indie delights, more
Gunstar Heroes, Altered Beast and more confirmed for XBLA, PSN
Rumor: Sega to unleash more classic arcade titles on Xbox 360


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Mr. Speaker, in January the Prime Minister promised to work with first nations and to consult with them before introducing any policy changes. He broke that promise with unilateral changes to the Indian Act in Bill C-45.
On December 10, grassroots organizers of Idle No More will be gathering outside the constituency office of the Prime Minister, demanding more accountability from the government.
During these education funding negotiations, will the minister commit to a clear, open and honest process?


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Rain Delays Start of Game
Driving to Bright House Field at 7:30 this morning was strange. Heading east on Ulmerton, the big, orange sun was starting to rise. As bright a sunrise as I've seen this spring. In the rear mirror, dark clouds hovered over the Gulf of Mexico. Overhead, were some thin clouds that produced rain drops. Sort of a triple play.
By the time I got to Bright House Field at 8, the sun was overtaken by clouds. As the 1:05 p.m. game time approached, there were showers, no rain, thunderstorm, no rain and then rain again. In Florida, if you're not happy with the weather, just wait a little. Things change.
Things did change. At 2:17 a cheer went up from the fans in the park when the ground crew took the tarp off the field. First pitch was scheduled for 3 p.m.
Sunshine is supposed to return tomorrow. Yankees come to Clearwater for an ESPN national telecast at 1 p.m. John Kruk will be in the booth.
While the team was in Lakeland, Werth, Polanco, Schneider and Ibanez took batting practice at Bright House Field. Dave Huppert was the pitcher. Nobody shagged so the outfield was filled with baseballs. Kind of resembled an easy-to-find Easter egg hunt.
Once BP was over, the players spread out and did their Easter egg hunt, picking up the baseballs.
Spring Training Memories
Throughout spring training, Phillies Alumni are providing their spring training memories. Three questions were posed: (1) Memories of their very first spring training; (2) What they liked the most about spring training, and (3) What did they like the least.
Greg Castserioto obtained some of the same memories from the current players. It is among the features in the Spring Training program on sale at Bright House Field.
Current Player
Chase Utley: "First uniform number was 80. Didn't have a roommate but remember staying at the Hampton Inn. I was just overwhelmed about being at a major league camp for the first time. Seeing my teammates again after a long layoff is what I like the most. Personally, the length of spring training is my least favorite. To me, it's a week too long."
Gary Matthews (OF, 1981-83)
"Casa Grande, AZ, with the Giants minor leaguers in 1968. Wore #36. Had three roommates, Garry Maddox, Horace Speed and Randy Moffitt. My fondest memory of the first day is when Willie Mays gave the outfielders a Kangaroo hide glove. This may sound strange, but I loved intrasquad games. It gave the winner bragging rights for the rest of the season. Didn't like shagging fly balls in batting practice at all."
Next Post: tomorrow


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A jury began deliberating Wednesday whether former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby obstructed the investigation into who leaked the identity of a CIA operative married to a prominent Iraq war critic.
The eight women and four men heard 14 days of testimony, a full day of closing arguments and more than an hour of instructions from U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton before beginning their discussions.
The jurors include a former Washington Post reporter, an MIT-trained economist, a retired math teacher, a former museum curator, a law firm accountant, a Web architect and several retired or current federal workers. There are 10 whites and two blacks - unexpected in a city where blacks outnumber whites more than 2-to-1.
Libby, who was the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, faces five felony counts that carry a combined top penalty of 30 years in prison. If convicted, Libby probably would be sentenced to far less under federal guidelines.
The case against Libby
The trial provided behind-the-scenes details of the interaction between top reporters and government officials and of Cheney's efforts to rebut criticism of him and the administration.
The investigation began with the public identification of CIA operative Valerie Plame on July 14, 2003, eight days after her husband, ex-ambassador Joseph Wilson publicly accused the Bush administration of distorting intelligence to push the nation into war with Iraq.
Months later, Libby told the FBI and a grand jury that he first learned that Plame worked for the CIA from Cheney on June 11. But he said that amid the press of war issues and other national security concerns he forgot that and was surprised to learn it from NBC Washington bureau chief Tim Russert on July 10 or 11. Thereafter he said he told reporters he had heard the information only from journalists and could not confirm it.
(MSNBC.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.)
Russert testified he and Libby never discussed Plame. Judith Miller, who had been a reporter with The New York Times, testified Libby told her about Plame's CIA job before the Russert conversation. Matt Cooper, then of Time magazine, testified Libby confirmed her employment for him. Six government officials testified they either told Libby about Plame's job or discussed it with him between June 11 and July 10 or 11.
Walton explained to the jurors that they must weigh the truth of several different statements by Libby in the various counts.
Possibly penalties
On the obstruction count, Walton said they could find Libby guilty if they unanimously decided any one, or more, of three Libby statements were lies: that Russert asked Libby if Plame worked at CIA and said all the reporters knew it, that Libby was surprised to learn the Plame information from Russert or that Libby told Cooper he'd heard it from reporters but didn't know it was true.
Other political news of note
Animated Boehner: 'There's nothing complex about the Keystone Pipeline!'
House Speaker John Boehner became animated Tuesday over the proposed Keystone Pipeline, castigating the Obama administration for not having approved the project yet.
- Budget deficits shrinking but set to grow after 2015
- Senate readies another volley on unemployment aid
- Obama faces Syria standstill
- Fluke files to run in California
- Animated Boehner: 'There's nothing complex about the Keystone Pipeline!'
On one count of lying to the FBI, jurors could find Libby guilty if they found either or both of his statement about the Russert call were lies, Walton explained. The other count of lying to the FBI hinges on Libby's statement about the Cooper call.
On two counts of perjury, jurors would have to weigh various Libby statements to the grand jury about how he learned about Plame's job and whom he told, including four separate statements in one count, Walton said.
Prosecutors argued that Libby concocted lies to make his discussions of Plame with reporters appear to be innocent gossip so that he would not risk losing his job for giving them classified information without authorization.
The defense argued that Libby had an innocent lapse of memory, and his lawyer attempted to show that government witnesses also had memory flaws.
© 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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Jason T necesitaba un nuevo diseño de logotipo y lanzó un concurso de diseño en 99designs.
Un ganador ha sido elegido entre 211 diseños de 35 diseñadores freelance.
The Change Agents (also known as: TCA and TCA Solutions)
We use our knowledge and/or our technology to improve the experience between our client (usually banks and phone companies) and their customers over the phone or web. Our success is measured by our clients financial success and their customers' desire to promote our client's products and services to their family and friends. The Change Agents combines experience with sophisticated analytical technology to improve interaction experiences.
Therefore our tagline is "where technology, customer experience and analytics converge".
The techniques we use focus on greater recognition of who is calling or surfing, and which staff member is available and best qualified to assist a call or web based interaction.
We host technology on behalf of clients and offer pay-as-you-go (pay per use, pay per click) as well as profit share based commercial models.
We need a logo that projects strong emotions and meaning to our customers, staff and partners.
• Confident
• Reliable
• Definitive in our purpose
• Measured in our advice
• Practical in our implementation
• Progressive in our commercial models (how they pay us)
Our clients are large banks, telecommunications providers, large government and insurance agencies. They live in a world of human interaction where human behaviour, complexity and chaos prevail. They are torn between the forces of relationship building and increasing sales targets whilst having to decrease their operating expenses. Our clients focus on many small improvements over time to make the difference, nothing too drastic. They are quite conservative in nature.
Our business cards will be left with those in the contact centre who own the budget to fix the problems.
Preferred colours (not absolute):
• Modern
• Simple, crisp and sharp, clean.
• Preferably no more than two colours
• Can work in colour or black and white.
Font preference: something sophisticated and contemporary which represents the complexity of our technology, a high degree of innovation as well as the considered (measured) way in which we deploy it.
Design concept (again, not absolute, more than happy for the designer to show flair):
• a Venn Diagram with the three domains of Customers, Technology and Analytics converging.
• No animals or complex graphics.
• Prefer text or basic shapes.
• We would like to try to incorporate the acronym TCA into the design.
• We want to incorporate the concept of change, morphing, transition, evolution into the design.
• Please try to use the tagline. Is the back of our business card a good spot for our tagline?
This logo will be used to showcase our brand to Call Centres around Asia Pacific. See attachment below "Sample logos" which represents logos we like or loathe from web query results for "The Change Agents" and "TCA".
Descubre cómo funciona un concurso de diseño u obtén más información sobre nuestros servicios de diseño de logo.


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Once there I typed in the keywords London newspapers and 720 hits emerged... but only 15 (I had to hand count them) were 100% hits and they floated to the top of the list. Of the 15, most were New London Connecticut newspapers, available on GenealogyBanks Historical Newspapers 1680-1980 collection. 2 hits pointed me to books from Heritage Books. The hit was based on the two word each being somewhere in the description.
But the number one hit --top of the list -- told me that Footnote.com's database included images from The Times (London from 1785 – 1820). There well may be more out there -- clearly Live Roots is selecting hits from relatively few large databases -- but it did find a hit that might be helpful to me.
What databases is LiveRoots searching? Ancestry, GenealogyBank, Footnote, World Vital Records, the Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild website, Olive Tree and Heritage books are ones I notices in the 720 results. Is there a listing of what all is being serached? Hmmm... here is all I could find:
We've created a unique genealogical database by combining databases from large commercial repositories (e.g. Ancestry.com, Footnote.com, et. al.), publication listings from a variety of publishers, individual web pages and collection of offline resources.When you search Live Roots the results will be presented in two categories: surnames and resources. In the above search, I ignored hits for London surnames because I wasn't interested in London as a surname. There is no better test of a surname search in a database than the surname Smith... so I searched that, even though, thank heavens, I have no Smith ancestors.
184 hits from the LiveRoots Index -- and 14 for the surname Smyth.
1857 from the subscription Index -- and 114 for Smyth.
and... 889 Resource Results.
The Live Roots Index appears to index websites, many of which would have to be explored to find where the name appears. Because there are only 184 hits the number of websites being searched must be quite limited. The Subscription Index consists of a collection offered by GeneaogyToday -- who also offer the Live Roots search. The resource results for the name Smith consists of resources available from ancestry.com etc. that have the word "smith" in the description. Definitions also appear, for example Black Smith.
I only spent about 20 minutes on the site and as with most sites, especially new ones, it takes time and effort to familiarize yourself with the best practices for using the site. But my conclusion after this 20 minute visit is that it is a site worth bookmarking and visiting on a regular basis.
Thumbs up.


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Recent Posts
- The Russ Liquid Test returns to Phoenix this March!
- Steve Aoki coming back to Scottsdale next Saturday to perform at the Birds Nest
- The Record Company >> Getting Up Off The Ground in Los Angeles [El Rey]
- Go HAIM or Go Home >> Going Under the Wire in Los Angeles [The Fonda]
- Hirie & Nahko and Medicine for the People >> Healing the Santa Cruz Crowd [The Catalyst]
- Nathaniel Rateliff >> Night Sweats in Los Angeles [Greek Theatre]
- All Rap Matters >> Atmosphere and Brother Ali in San Francisco [The Masonic]
- Crystal Castles in Phoenix [The Pressroom] >> Where's Alice?
- The Kills >> Killing It in Los Angeles [The Wiltern]
- Crystal Castles are coming back to Phoenix in September!
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Tag Archives: datsik
DATSIK >> Drops the Dream in San Francisco [Regency Ballroom]
DATSIK >> Music genres go through a similar cycle each time they are 'pioneered'. There is always a beginning – with someone, somewhere. The genre lives in obscurity. It cultivates a feverishly loyal but small fan base. The music sounds 'new', … Continue reading
Posted in music, party, rando, shows Tagged benga, brostep, creed, datsik, dj, dj shadow, dubstep, eddie vedder, ghostwriter, grammy, grunge, hip-hop, men in black, molly, my own prison, pee wee herman, portishead, regency ballroom, rjd2, rolling stone, san francisco, scion, skream, tequila, underworld, will smith Leave a comment


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I have been archiving messages into a sub folder titled Archives for years. I recently noticed that this folder no longer exists on my main computer's PocoMail program but fortunately still exists in my laptop's install.
I do not see an option in the import wizard for importing selected folders from another install and am wondering what the best way to proceed should be. I do not want to overwrite the other folders' data.
Version 22.214.171.12400


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Groom Matthew Blaine Hendren, and his bride, Charity Nicole Berman, both from Florida, exchanged romantic wedding vows at 11 p.m., Nov. 11, under the decorated arch with the stars shinning from above at their outside ceremony at the A Amore Weddings location. The couple then celebrated with a toast to each other while the professional photographer took additional photos. Lee Flowers, owner of A Amore Weddings in Cape Coral, performed the ceremony, and was also their wedding coordinator. Pete Fournier, professional photographer captured special moments of the wedding evening. Family, friends, and the public can view this couple's additional wedding photos at www.amoreweddingsswfl.com select album, right click on this couple's first photo, then click on "Slideshow" in red at top of page to open slideshow to automatically display photos.
Article Photos
Matthew Blaine Hendren and his bride Charity Nicole Berman


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« Back to Tree Recycling
The state of Georgia is well-known for its recycling efforts, and its Christmas Tree recycling program is another one of its many successes. Cleverly titled "Bring One for the Chipper", the program is organized by Keep Georgia Beautiful in cooperation with private sponsors such as The Home Depot, The Davey Tree Expert Company and WXIA-TV in Atlanta.
The Chipper program involves hundreds of Georgia communities and thousands of volunteers. Communities have the option of coordinating a pick-up program or relying on designated drop sites; the trees are then turned into mulch that is used for playgrounds, beautification projects and individual yards. The program was first started in the Atlanta metro area in 1987 and went statewide in 1990. Since its inception, the program has recycled 4 million Christmas Trees.
The Chipper mascot encourages Georgia citizens to give new life to their Christmas Trees by recycling them for mulch.


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Intel has demonstrated a new 7-foot-6-inch multi-user, multi-touch Intel Intelligent Digital Signage concept at the National Retail Federation Convention (NRF) in New York. Intel said the prototype device could change the way people interact with digital signage technology in environments such as stores, airports, banks and hotels.
Multiple consumers can use this side-by-side window display simultaneously to explore augmented reality-enabled maps of each floor of the store, on which retailers can superimpose images such as coupons and sales promotions next to product visualizations on the glass, improving the customer's shopping experience, Intel said.
Intel's digital signage concept also brings a new opportunity for advertisers through the use of anonymous video analytics. As a viewer looks at the system screen, a built-in camera analyzes data such as gender and age, audience composition, time-of-day and other criteria, which enables the system to display tailored content and graphics based on estimated demographics. The system anonymously sends audience information to advertisers who can use that information to understand the type of content and messages that are most popular with viewers. This, in turn, helps advertisers target their advertising to maximize the impact on the audience.
The media player platform, integrated in Intel's concept, is running on the recently released Intel Core i7 processor and the Microsoft Windows Embedded Standard 2011 platform optimized for digital signage applications. The jointly developed platform is expected to be available in the second quarter of 2010.
Digital signage systems based on 2010 Intel Core processors would also include Intel vPro Technology with Intel Active Management Technology, allowing administrators to manage systems remotely even when powered down, which reduces operational costs and increases energy savings, Intel noted.
Intel Intelligent Digital Signage concept
Photo: Company


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Aaron_D brauchte ein neues Logo Design und hat einen Wettbewerb auf 99designs gestartet.
Aus 455 Designs von 91 Designern wurde eine Gewinner gewählt.
Many people spend their days in boring environments doing boring things. Most of the companies they interact with are BORING too. We want to brighten their day. Interactions with our brand should be exciting, surprising and fun.
Wondermill (http://www.wondermill.com/) has been around since 1998. Over our history we've made sites, and web services, often geared to small and medium-size businesses.
"Upgrade Me" is a new direction for us. We'll be offering information and advice in the form of free and paid courses to help people improve (or "upgrade") themselves in specific areas.
Our courses will be built on the latest research in the areas of cognitive psychology and behavioral economics.
We'll translate research results into practical tips that people can use right away. Our first course will be helping people to be more productive, but eventually we plan to offer courses to help people lose weight or have better relationships. The brand (Upgrade Me) is intentionally general to leave us room to grow and develop.
You can see a few of the productivity tips we've started with at http://www.upgrademe.org/blog/
Entrepreneurs, knowledge workers, people who work on computers all day and for whom being productive matters.
Personality: We want to reach people who "can" be inspired. We want to find people who look at our site and feel inspired to sign up because they're a little bit unhappy with where they are, and because we look like we can and want to help. They're open to new things.
Feeling: The logo should make people feel INSPIRED.
* The logo should feel bold. It should have or give off energy.
* It should be in CAPITAL LETTERS.
* It should match nicely with the blues on our site.
* It should look good on a white background.
* It should be relatively simple, so it could be printed on a t-shirt someday.
Open to your creativity:
* It'd be great if it could (very subtly!) convey a feeling of "superhero" but it shouldn't be too obvious. We want to appeal to the part of people that's still a kid, and wants to be a Super, BUT without being so obvious that the site feels like it's for kids, and not business-people. I hope that makes sense. We've tried to do that now with blue colors and grey vertical lines and stars at http://www.upgrademe.org/blog/
The feeling shouldn't be one of "sitting back" and passivity. It should shine OR give off energy OR have some upward movement OR feel like it's bursting out... etc.
Here are some examples that are **NOT** subtle enough, but convey the right feeling.
Finden Sie heraus, wie ein Designwettbewerb funktioniert, oder lernen Sie mehr über unsere Logo-Design-Angebote.


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Have you tried Fine Wines Hand Picked by a Sommelier?
We are bringing what has become the World's Largest Wine of the Month Club to our Friends in the USA, Australia, Germany, UK, and Canada! This wine of the month club is already growing at a record pace. Go here to join the club or participate as a representative –http://2e52.com/fine-wine/
|Related Link: Click here to visit item owner's website (0 hit)
|Target State: All States
Target City : All Cities
Last Update : Jun 14, 2019
Number of Views: 81
|Item Owner : Jim Foss
Contact Email:
Contact Phone: (None)
|Friendly reminder: Click here to read some tips.


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SnowLittle is a childcare introductory service based in the French Alps.
We take great pride in finding the perfect nanny for each family, leaving you assured in the knowledge that your little ones are in safe, experienced hands, creating memories of their own while you're on the slopes.
Covering the famous Dream Resort Paradiski and the Tarentaise Valley:
Les Arcs 1600, Arcs 1800, Arcs 1950, Arcs 2000, Plan Peisey, Vallandry, La Plagne, Les Coches, Montchavin, Villaroger, Sainte Foy, La Rosiere, Montorlin and surrounding areas.


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An Auburn man was arraigned yesterday on charges of motor vehicle homicide and driving under the influence of alcohol for an accident on Interstate 290 early Sunday morning that left a Connecticut man dead.
Keith M. Leblanc Jr., 26, of 25 Barbara Ave., Auburn, was ordered held on $20,000 cash bail at his arraignment in Central District Court yesterday. Bail was later reduced to $12,500 in a subsequent bail hearing in Superior Court.
At the district court arraignment, Assistant District Attorney Jeffrey Travers said Mr. Leblanc was driving a black Jeep on Interstate 290 in Auburn at 4:30 a.m. Sunday when he rear-ended a Nissen bread truck. That truck was being driven by Duane Race, 45, of Putnam, according to the police report.
Mr. Race was thrown 80 to 100 feet from his vehicle, landing in the middle of the highway, according to the police report. A passer-by, described in the police report as an Army medic, tried to revive him.
Mr. Race was rushed to UMass Memorial Medical Center — University Campus in Worcester with critical injuries, including a head injury. A spokesman for Worcester District Attorney Joseph Early Jr. said Mr. Race died at the hospital yesterday.
Witnesses said that the Jeep, which rear-ended the bread truck and forced it to crash into the guardrail, never stopped after the accident. Witnesses said the Jeep was heavily damaged, emitting smoke and leaking fluids.
Auburn police, helped in part by a trail of leaking fluids from the Jeep, followed the trail to Mr. Leblanc's home in Auburn.
When interviewed by police, Mr. Leblanc admitted he had been driving at the time of the accident, and said he had consumed "two to three" alcoholic drinks before getting behind the wheel. He failed a field sobriety test administered by police when he could not stand on one foot without swaying. Mr. Leblanc refused to take a walking field sobriety test outside his home, and refused to take a Breathalyzer test at the state police barracks in Holden.
In addition to two charges of motor vehicle homicide — one by driving under the influence of alcohol, and the other by negligent driving — Mr. Leblanc was charged with leaving the scene of an accident that caused personal injury or death; using a motor vehicle in commission of a felony; driving under the influence of alcohol, and a number of moving violations.
Attorney Michael C. Wilcox, representing Mr. Leblanc, told the court that Mr. Leblanc is a 2005 graduate of Bay Path Regional Technical High School in Charlton and is employed at Johnstone Supply, and has another job, working a total of 60 to 70 hours a week.
"He's a hard-working young man, beloved by his family and friends, many of whom are in the courtroom today," Mr. Wilcox said.
He said Mr. Leblanc suffered a head injury in the accident, and that he should not have been allowed to take the field sobriety tests that police administered to him in front of Mr. Leblanc's house.
"This was a tragedy, an accident that occurred," Mr. Wilcox said.
At times in court yesterday, Mr. Leblanc appeared emotional, as he looked over at his family and friends seated in the courtroom.
After the arraignment, his family and friends declined to comment.
Mr. Leblanc, should he post the $12,500 bail, would have to wear a GPS monitoring bracelet, report weekly to the Probation Department, remain drug- and alcohol-free, and submit to random screenings for drugs and alcohol.
His next court date is Dec. 12.


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kidzmatter necesitaba un nuevo diseño de logotipo y lanzó un concurso de diseño en 99designs.
Un ganador ha sido elegido entre 79 diseños de 28 diseñadores freelance.
new startup needs logo. Kidz Matter is a company focused on developing life skills and leadership skills for children. Looking for clean, fresh, positive look.
Kidz Matter
Update*** - the company is about kids, however the target is equally Parents. Therefore, appeal needs to be professional and not too "cutesy." Looking for a clean, fresh, positive logo for company. No set parameters for artwork ... be creative. Kidz Matter teaches children and parents how to develop life skills, fitness/health and leadership skills, through education, interactive website, activities, and other resources. Target audience is families with children 3-12 - primarily US market. Logo will brand company on website and all marketing materials. Founders have 40 years experience developing and implementing activity-based programs to children. Now extending programs to the web to capture larger market share. website is http://www.mykidzmatter.com only a shell up at this time.
- prefer simple color scheme. no preset conditions on colors other than it should cater to kids and families.
- logo should be "cool" enough not to "turn-off" 10-12 year-olds.
- company name is Kidz Matter
- easy to read - not too abstract
- 5-8 colors
- do not want BLACK as primary color
- do not want a pre-school or toddler look/feel
Descubre cómo funciona un concurso de diseño u obtén más información sobre nuestros servicios de diseño de logo.


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Richwood 'Master Series' Handmade D20 Acoustic Guitar....
Product Code: D20
Reward Points: 0
Availability: In Stock
Fantastic new range of Hand Crafted guitars from Richwood the 'Master Series'
First in the Range is the D20 Handmade Dreadnought Acoustic Guitar with Solid Sitka Spruce Top and Solid Mahogany Back & Sides. Mahogany neck with voluted Headstock, Rosewood Fretboard and Derjung Machine Heads with Chrome buttons. Herringbone soundhole rosette and black body binding set off this fine instrument.
Check out the videos!!!.
The Richwood Master Series are all handmade acoustic guitars, made of premium selected tonewoods, professionally set-up before packing.
The technical and aesthetical advanced features include bone fittings, double action trussrod, a voluted headstock joint, plus cotton capped X-braces,
mahogany back braces, high grade geared die-cast Derjung machine heads, USA D'Addario EXP16 coated phosphor bronze strings....
- solid Sitka spruce top
- solid mahogany back and sides
- rosewood fingerboard and bridge
- herringbone rosette
- attractive black body bindings (see image)
- satin finish
Write a reviewYour Name:
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'Idol' winner Kris Allen in 'really bad wreck'
Kris Allen, 27, kicked off the new year in a hospital bed. The Season 8 American Idol champ was in a car crash on Tuesday that left him with a broken wrist.
His mother, Kimberly Allen, tweeted the news and a photo of her son, writing, "From Kris: he's in a lot of pain, arm broke, may not play guitar for a while. Prayers welcome please! #headoncollision."
Kris also shared the news with his fans, noting that his wife, Katy, and dog, Zorro, were in the car, too.
He also shared other news, tweeting, "Yes, I got in a really bad wreck tonight and yes I'm having a lil baby."
The singer, who won a Ford car from Idol in 2009, thanked "@ford for equipping me with a car that kept my whole family @katyallen @ZorroPup and the little one we have on the way safe."
Congrats to Kris and Katy!
He also assured his music fans, "Don't worry everyone I may have broken my wrist but the#OutAliveTour is still on."


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Here's one proven way to win the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race: Let others take the early lead in the 1,000-mile trek to Alaska's wind-scoured western coast.
That approach might seem counterintuitive to the novice fan of the famous sled dog race. Running the Iditarod is as simple and straightforward as hitching 16 dogs in front of a sled and bolting off into the snowy horizon, right?
Uh, no. Just ask some top mushers. Lagging behind to let dogs conserve their energy is among strategies employed by top mushers. But holding back can also backfire for various reasons, if the timing is miscalculated, for example, or a fierce blizzard strikes at the wrong time.
Four-time champion Martin Buser had the early lead Monday, pulling into the Rohn checkpoint at 9:53 a.m. He arrived about four hours ahead of the second place musher, Matt Failor, who also is in the checkpoint.
He was followed by another musher with impressive Iditarod credentials - four-time champion Lance Mackey. He pulled into the Finger Lake checkpoint on Sunday night, also spending just a couple minutes resting before heading out again.
For defending champion Dallas Seavey, patience and an unwavering trust in the capability of his team paid off last year, when he became the Iditarod's youngest winner ever at age 25. He didn't charge to the front until later in the race, but still reached the finish line in Nome an hour before his closest competitor. To rest some of his older veteran dogs more, Seavey sometimes carried them in his sled for long stretches.
"It takes an uncommon amount of confidence in your dog team to watch those front-runners get away from you," said Seavey, who turned 26 Monday.
Rushing on, however, can exhaust a team to the point of losing. Two Rivers musher Allen Moore, who is running the Iditarod, just won the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race in February by choosing to rest his dogs. His main rival, last year's Quest winner Hugh Neff, chose to run.
"He gambled that he could go," Moore said. "I was gambling that this rest would help me to be faster. It's like this in the Iditarod, too. We're just gambling on things we think will work."
And then there's the winning strategy of deception, as employed in 2008 by Mackey.
Mackey and four-time Iditarod Jeff King were running neck and neck, prompting Mackey to pull off a stunt at the Elim checkpoint - 123 miles from the Nome finish line. Mackey had arrived at the checkpoint three minutes ahead King and made a big show of settling in for a nap. King's team settled in, too.
But Mackey had told checkpoint volunteers to wake him in an hour. He sneaked out of the checkpoint 70 minutes ahead King and won the race.
Follow Rachel D'Oro on Twitter at https://twitter.com/rdoro


text:
I spent two days in Berlin, training 25 developers at an event sponsored by DOAG. Then I headed over to the Netherlands to spend a couple of days with 37 developers at an AMIS-sponsored training.
But on Tuesday, after I completed the first day of training without the assistance of a microphone, my voice said "Bye, bye!". I woke up Wednesday morning to discover I had lost the ability to speak above a whisper. DOAG hustled, did what was necessary, and brought in a portable microphone/speaker system. AMIS made certain to have the same ready to go on Thursday.
And so for three straight days, I whispered about new features of PL/SQL in 11g and much more besides. The attendees were very good natured about this less than optimal situation. One person said it made the whole class more exciting - it was as though I was giving away secrets, that no one should hear- except for the very special people in attendance.
Several students in the Dutch class even found themselves whispering to me when they asked a question - whispering, it turns out, is socially contagious! And I was quickly anointed the "PL/SQL Whisperer." Well, I can think of worse names, but I sure hope that soon I will recover my voice.
This was only my fourth business trip all year, which is a truly wonderful change from previous years (a less than fantastic result is that I will lose my Platinum status on American Airlines next week, so it will be tough to even get exit row seats when I do fly).
It was, unfortunately, a bit of a hard week on the road. Besides losing my voice, my flight on Wednesday from Berlin to Amsterdam was cancelled. I had to reroute through Zurich, but the flight to Zurich left late, so while I was able to just make the connection to Amsterdam, my bag did not follow along with me. By the end of the first day of training at AMIS offices, I had quite the five o'clock shadow. But the bag was delivered on Thursday, so it wasn't really such a big deal.
And then on Friday, I celebrated the end of a long week with a night in Amsterdam. Had a nice dinner with good friend, newly-minted Oracle ACE, AMIS consultant and father of three wonderful children, Patrick Barel. Then I went back to my hotel room to catch up on email and call my wife via Skype.
But the wireless network was not available. So the manager dutifully visited my room with an ethernet cable and (as far as I could tell) had to jam the cable a bit forcefully both into the wall and into my laptop. That made me uncomfortable. And still no Internet access.
So then he agreed to let me use the Internet in a different room - which led to a very irritating discovery: the ethernet plug would not come out of the back of the laptop. The spring that holds the cable in place had snapped. Manager Jon poked at it for a while, making me more uncomfortable, but it would not come out. Oh, I was very bummed and finally gave up, had him cut the cable so I could take the darn thing home, and figured I would have to have a technician get it out.
But then the day manager visited in the morning before I left for the airport. He had better tools and was able to quickly remove the plug. Whew, what a relief.
Both classes went well (of course, the students might feel differently, I suppose) - the PL/SQL community in Germany and the Netherlands is wide and deep: lots of very experienced developers attended. So I learned a few things along the way, which will soon make themselves known in PL/SQL Challenge quizzes.
I also made an interesting discovery about how students concentrate on and extra information from the hundreds of slides and hours of talking I give them to them in a two day class. I covered FORALL in the class, also its SAVE EXCEPTIONS clause. I showed slides, ran code and talked about how if at least one statement raises an error, Oracle will save the exception information and then raise the ORA-24381 error. I talked about how you should avoid writing an exception handler like:
WHEN OTHERS THEN IF SQLCODE = -24381and instead you should declare your own exception and assign it to this error, so
you can write an exception handler like:
WHEN my_errors.forall_failureThen right at the end of the course, I talked about avoiding the hard-coding of error numbers and showed -24381 again as an example.
In the AMIS class, we ended with a short quiz. Two players tied for highest score (they selected 19 of 21 choices correctly across 5 questions - quite good!). So it was necessary for these two hotshots to engage in a sudden-death tiebreaker. The way I do this is I show a slide with a question and the first person to answer correctly wins.
The first slide asked: "Which feature of PL/SQL does this number relate to?" And then I showed "-24381". I thought there would be an instant response, given how often I showed and mention this number in the class.
And I was shocked to discover that neither of the students recognized the error code. I stared at them, surprised. Really? When I talked about it, referenced it multiple times, in the last two days?
Well, OK. We went on through several questions without success and then Christian Rokitta identified correctly that the optimizing compiler was first introduced in Oracle Database 10g. So congratulations to Christian for his first place showing, and to Danny Ven for the other score of 19 and his second place.
I am not exactly sure what to conclude from the inability to recognize the -24381 code. Perhaps students in my courses are confronted with so much information that they automatically filter out low level details. That way, they will be able to concentrate on the bigger picture.Certainly, people usually do not complain about how little I cover in my classes or how slowly I go through the material. And right at the beginning, I tell them to focus on principles and concepts, don't worry about all the technical details.
So I guess they took my advice!
In any case, now it is 4 AM on Sunday and I am (a) back in Chicago (hurray!) and (b) awake due to jet lag and (c) still without a voice and (d) most sadly, without a PL/SQL Challenge website. For some reason, it is unavailable but hopefully that will be fixed really soon.


text:
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Volume 35 Issue 2: (Feb/Mar 2012)
Blazing A New Trail
Karen Moltenbrey
Issue: Volume 35 Issue 2: (Feb/Mar 2012)
Blazing A New Trail
In 2007, actor Nicholas Cage enthralled audiences with his burning portrayal of the comic-book antihero Johnny Blaze in the film Ghost Rider—with a great deal of assistance, of course, from digital effects. Five years later, the actor reprised his role in the sequel Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, and once again a VFX team had to up the ante in terms of creating the character's fiery form with CG controllable fire and smoke, but they also had an even bigger challenge in that the film is in stereo 3D.
Smoke and fire are essential elements in the sequel, just as they were in the original movie. The premise of the story is that by day, stunt motorcyclist Johnny Blaze assumes his human form, but by night, he becomes the blazing skeletal biker Ghost Rider. In the sequel, the action—and the smoke and fire—are dirtier and grittier than before, as the antihero cuts a path of destruction through Eastern Europe in an attempt to rescue a young boy, and the world, from a burning fate.
"The directors brought a different aesthetic to this film. They have a much more down-and-dirty type of style," says The Creative-Cartel founder Jenny Fulle, who served as VFX producer on the movie. "So while the effects are similar in nature to those of the first film, they were executed in a way that is darker and more gritty."
This time around, the VFX team at Iloura in Australia heated up the screen as the main visual effects vendor for the movie. Their work ranged from creating digital doubles and machinery/vehicles, to the decaying and withering effects, as well as the scene-stealing CG fire. According to Glenn Melenhorst, Iloura's VFX supervisor for Ghost Rider 2, of the 450 shots the studio completed, approximately 30 percent were for fire-related effects on objects or on Ghost Rider himself (see "Fire Effects," pg. 40).
Iloura created the visual effects for the movie, including the fire, which was done digitally.
They puppeteered the fire to achieve the desired effects for the smoke and flames.
According to Fulle, the fire had to act like a character; it had to show emotion. As if creating realistic, emotive fire throughout the film weren't daunting enough, there was also the matter of the stereo 3D, since the movie would be filmed in 2D and then converted to stereo 3D for release. "You cannot get the three-dimensionality of fire when you are converting it during a post process," Fulle explains. "3D fire is transparent and moves organically, so there is no way to pull it from the plate and place it elsewhere without it looking like a flat plane, especially when it is close to the camera. It is so integrated with its environment that it ends up looking like a pop-up storybook. It's hard to deal with anything that has transparency when you are doing a conversion. So we knew we had to come up with something clever to pull this off."
This challenge prompted Fulle and her Creative-Cartel team, including CTO Craig Mumma, the stereographer on the film, to meet with Iloura and Gener8 3D, the visual effects facility and conversion house, respectively, to come up with a better way to tackle the problem at hand.
"Necessity is the mother of invention," says Fulle. "We were budgetarily challenged. We were also technically challenged. How were we going to convert all this fire? Early on we made sure that all the vendors were willing to sit together at the table and come up with a hybrid pipeline to eliminate redundant work and enable us to render some VFX shots natively."
Fire Effects
For Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, VFX house Iloura had the challenge of creating all the 3D fire effects throughout the movie.
Due to budget, these effects had to be generated digitally rather than practically. To accomplish this, the artists did all the modeling and animation in Autodesk's Maya, and then moved the files into Autodesk's 3ds Max, where they employed Sitni Sati's FumeFX, a Max plug-in, to craft the fire. Compositing, meanwhile, was done using The Foundry's Nuke, and Cebas's ThinkingParticles within Max was used for some of the simulations. Although Iloura has a matchmove department in-house, the decision was made to send the work outside to Yannix.
"The [filmmakers] covered the action in a wild manner, throwing the camera around with few, if any, tracking markers," says Glenn Melenhorst, VFX supervisor at Iloura. "So we had rolling-shutter and tracking issues. Yannix managed to track stuff that we thought was pretty much untrackable."
While a handful of vendors worked on the movie, Iloura did the lion's share of the effects, including the fire and smoke. Perhaps most challenging was art-directing the fire on Ghost Rider's skull to accomplish a range of emotions. "We were puppeteering the fire to get what we wanted out of it, blending the smoke and flames in such a way that it still felt natural but also performed as required," says Melenhorst. "Yet, we didn't want it to seem like you were looking at all-digital stuff all the time. It had to appear natural and photoreal."
Directing the fire, Melenhorst notes, also required a great deal of trial and error, and scripting. The group also used Thinkbox Software's Krakatoa, which enabled them to more easily control the billions of little particles—to make the fire wrap around a finger, for example. Compared to the fire in the first Ghost Rider movie, these flames were blacker and sootier, with embers and heat haze.
Because fire simulations can take a long time to do, Iloura code writer Jordan Walsh devised scripts that enabled the team to simulate multiple variations of the same simulation, allowing, for example, the group to dial up or down the heat level and speed, and output a QuickTime of those iterations—variations of cold/slow to hot/fast—to review. "We found that tool to be useful because the overhead of the simulations is so great," Melenhorst says.
Each time Ghost Rider touches an object, it becomes a hellish version of what that object had been—including his signature motorcycle and an earthmover used in the climax. In addition, there is lots of death and destruction, all of which required Iloura's magical touch. –Karen Moltenbrey
A New Workflow
From the onset, Ghost Rider 2 was planned as a 3D film. Initially, Mumma's intention was to shoot everything practically in 3D using stereo cameras. But shooting in 3D is like bringing NASA on set—there are lots of moving parts. And it soon became apparent that the filming style of the directors, Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, with their fast cuts and wildly moving, untethered cameras, would not lend itself to that method. As a result, the stereo would be done through post conversion, a method that has not always yielded stellar results.
Aware of that fact, Mumma said it was important that the parties come up with a methodology for the conversion that made sense and provided the quality everyone was looking for. "If we were going to go down this path, then we needed to develop a workflow that we could take to a conversion house that was savvy enough to understand visual effects, and adapt a whole pipeline to share everything—and get the results out of a good conversion rather than a bad one," Mumma says.
The underlying question, notes Mumma, a former VFX supervisor, seemed simple enough: Why couldn't they come up with a way to treat 3D conversion like they have visual effects for years, whereby the various build images are mapped back onto a 3D model? That concept became the starting point for the new 3D conversion workflow devised mainly by Iloura and Gener8.
"We needed to have a visual effects understanding with our conversion vendor and a conversion understanding with our visual effects vendor," Fulle says.
The key was to work in a non-linear way within a shared pipeline, particularly for the hybrid, or pre-conversion shots—those containing visual effects. For the 3D conversion on these shots, the plates and assets moved back and forth between the effects house and the stereo vendor, as opposed to the usual process of effects finishing a shot before passing it to the conversion vendor (sometimes supplying pieces or elements of a shot, albeit at an added cost). On Ghost Rider 2, the shots were converted ahead of visual effects, and then the effects group would render the CG elements, like the fire, in a true stereo environment, resulting in a much higher-quality product with a more efficient scheduling process, as shots constantly moved through the pipeline.
Due to the fire and other factors, a new pipeline was devised to deal with the stereo
3D conversion on the film.
The workflow went like this: Iloura would first receive the plates and perform the 3D tracking, roto, and cleanup, and prep the plate for the CG elements. Then they would send the plate, along with the roto and other elements, including the CG camera, to Gener8, which would extract the 3D data from Iloura's assets and produce a left- and right-eye camera. Next, Gener8 would send those plates, along with the CG and stereo cameras, back to the VFX studio to complete the visual effects work, render the elements, and composite them into the 3D scenes.
"Everything fit perfectly into place. Our VFX house didn't have to guess on the 3D work, ever," says Mumma.
The facilities also had to contend with two other types of shots that followed more traditional workflows: straight conversion, for live-action, non-VFX shots, which were given directly to Gener8, bypassing Iloura; and post-conversion shots, whereby Iloura would do its work before passing the plates and the assets (roto and track) to Gener8 for stereo completion.
And while each studio used specific software to get its job done, there were shared tools in the pipeline, including Autodesk's Maya and The Foundry's Nuke. A key component of the pipeline, notes Mumma, was Gener8's proprietary conversion tool set, which he calls "the kingpin of the operation."
As Gener8 producer Paul Becker explains, what sets his company aside from other conversion facilities is that Gener8 re-creates scenes in true 3D space. "We create a camera track, which is exactly what effects does to create their workspace in which to place objects like fire and smoke," he says. "So we are more like visual effects' little brother in the sense that we live in a true 3D space. The prevailing (and cheaper) method of conversion neither understands actual 3D photography nor plays by its rules."
Gener8 typically uses what Becker calls a "model and project" method, which provides exceptional results but is thought to be costly and slow. However, the company has integrated programming into the manual steps, making it more efficient and eliminating human error. For the most part, Gener8 also employs off-the-shelf software whenever possible: 3D animation programs, such as Maya, Imagineer's Mocha Pro or SilhouetteFX's Silhouette for roto, and Nuke for finishing and painting. Proprietary tools, such as Gener8's StereoComposer, facilitate communication among the packages. "We come from a game-development background, and we are used to building pipelines to suit each project's needs. We don't force our clients to do it our way. So when Jenny [Fulle] said, 'Let's try something new,' we thought, 'Awesome.' We like to innovate and change, and we liked the idea of economizing without adversely affecting the quality of the 3D."
The Advantages
Indeed, the 3D fire was the driving point of the hybrid process, enabling the group to get depth and volume from the CG pyro. But there were also time/money considerations. If he had to estimate the timesavings reaped from the pipeline, Mumma would put it at months. "Shared pipelines are usually so scary, but The Creative-Cartel team managed the process so well. I was blown away," he says. "Usually you come crashing and burning into the final date, and this was a soft landing."
For Iloura, though, it was not so much about timesavings as it was having its CG imagery fit comfortably within the stereo scenes. "However, it was more back-and-forth work than we usually do," Melenhorst adds.
At Gener8, Becker estimates that the unique workflow saved his company nearly two months' production time. "Jenny [Fulle] found a way for us to solve the more challenging elements, which were fire and smoke, by implementing this new pipeline," he says. "We never had to worry about extracting Ghost Rider's fire from the shot; it was under the control of visual effects." That workflow was quite different from Gener8's conversion process on a previous project that contained fiery CG characters.
"The cost of breaking out fiery elements was high for our client—and perhaps unnecessary. What Jenny has done is eliminate redundancy by providing the effects house with stereo assets prepared by Gener8—maximizing on the scheduling time," Becker notes. "We didn't have to wait for the shot to be done before converting it; the CG was added after the conversion. This gave the effects artists more time to make things sexy and not worry about setting stereo."
Fulle, who is a proponent of shooting traditionally and then converting to 3D afterward, believes the new workflow gives filmmakers more freedom on set and allows them to make choices later compared to if they would have been filming in 3D from the start, forcing them to commit to decisions during the shoot. "It allowed us to get more boom for our buck," she says.
Studios have been doing stereo conversion for a few years now, and since that time, conversion has often been considered a postproduction process—and it is not, contends Fulle.
Typically, conversion is done after visual effects, and the plates are not shared back and forth. And that process is best suited for filmmakers who want to see the whole film in context or who make a lot of changes in editing. But for those who can cut and shoot in their mind and know exactly what needs to be changed when they see the cut for the first time, the benefits they can reap from this type of hybrid pipeline can pay off big.
"We didn't have the luxury of waiting until the whole cut was locked. We had to turn over sequences as they were ready, so we could push the sequences through and keep the pipe full," says Fulle.
The converts to such a new workflow extend beyond the immediate facilities working on this movie. For instance, Mumma points to a tent-pole film that shot in 3D. After the pickups, the production team was going to reshoot some sequences in stereo—until they saw this hybrid pipeline. It prompted them instead to completely retool their own pipeline to match the hybrid one and better handle the changes. "I showed them the work and the pipeline, and they completely changed their methodology," he adds.
Becker also knows of a number of studios interested in this pipeline. "It's a new paradigm," he says, adding that any film with CG in it would benefit from the workflow. "Filmmaking often is a conflict between art and industry. In tough economic times, the desire to save money can often result in inferior products. But what we did here was create a better product while saving time and money."
While he agrees that this new method is not for everyone and that there are still shots that will call for using 3D cameras on set, Mumma does not believe the 3D cameras are the solution for every film, either—especially given that so much conversion is still done on 3D filmed projects due to alignment and calibration issues with the cameras, among other factors.
"This is a maturing industry and everyone is learning a lot," says Mumma. "This is a way of finding a happy medium for hybrid shots."
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text:
Ispahan rose, also known as "Rose d'Isfahan" or "Pompon des Princes", is one of the most beautiful and finest Damask roses.They were introduced in Europe during the Crusades on the XIII century, brought from Persia. Damasks flowers are renowned for being the most fragrant roses from the Old Garden. Their fine petals are used to make rose oil, perfumery, rose water, food flavor and teas.
Ispahan is also one of signature creations of the celebrated French patissier Pierre Hermé: "A subtle combination of sweet rose cream flavored with lychees, whose taste extends those of rose and raspberry while establishing a contrastwith its acidity and power. All of this goodness is contained in a tender,crisp macaron shell". This edible masterpiece is certainly one of the most delicious and beautiful dessert I have ever tasted.
I came up with this cupcake after seeing some varying forms of this dessert that I found on his book Pastries. First I prepared a light cupcake recipe flavored with rose water. Then I used raspberry compote with a fresh lychee as filling, and rose mascarpone custard for frosting. To embellish then I tried to reproduce a sugar Ispahan rose. Unfortunately I couldn't find nearby an Ispahan rose to photograph, so my inspiration came from some photos that I have looked online.
I love my cupcakes. They brought me delightful memories from Paris, when I had the pleasure to enjoy a Ispahan from Pierre Hermé boutique at the Luxemburg Gardens, accompanied by my dear friend Layla. I hope that my cupcakes bring you good feelings too.
Have a good weekend!
Ispahan Cupcakes
Rose Cupcakes
makes 6
makes 6
1 cup cake flour, sifted
½ cup sugar
1 egg, room temperature
½ cup butter, softened
½ teaspoon rose water
½ teaspoon baking powder
3 tablespoon milk
6 whole fresh or canned lychees
3 tablespoon milk
6 whole fresh or canned lychees
Line 6 cupcake cups with papers lines. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Combine all ingredients in a stand mixer bowl and beat with the paddle attachment for about a minute or until light and creamy.
Fill each cupcake line two-thirds full with batter. Bake for 20 minutes or until risen and just firm to the touch. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.
Assembly: With a small paring knife cut a cone out of the center of each cupcake. Add about 1 tablespoon of the raspberry compote (recipe below) and 1 whole lychee. Fill a pastry bag fitted with a star tip with the rose mascarpone custard (recipe below) and pipe on the cupcakes.
Rose Custard (Créme Anglaise à la rose)
from the book Pierre Herme Pastries
2 gelatin sheets
Scant 1 cup (225 g) heavy cream)
2 ½ egg yolks (50g)
1/3 cup (65g) superfine granulated sugar
2 Tbsp (30 g) rose syrup
½ tsp (3.5 g ) rose extract in alcohol
Soak the gelatin in cold water for 20 minutes. In a saucepan, bring the cream to a boil. In a bowl, whisk the egg yolks with the sugar. Pour the boiling cream over the egg-sugar mixture, beating hard. Pour the custard back into the saucepan and cook, stirring, just until it reaches a temperature of 185°F (85°C). Remove from the heat. Drain and squeeze the gelatin of excess water and incorporate it into the custard. Add the rose syrup and the rose extract. Blend with a handheld immersion blender and set aside to cool.
Rose mascarpone custard
1 cup (250 g) mascarpone cheese
1 ¾ cups (375 g ) rose custard
In a bowl, beat the mascarpone by hand with a whisk until smooth, and then incorporate the rose custard. Transfer the mixture to a piping bag fitted with a star tip. Decorate the cupcakes with swirls of rose custard.
Raspberry compote
from the book Pierre Herme Pastries
from the book Pierre Herme Pastries
¾ cup (200g) raspberries
2 tbsp (30g) superfine granulated sugar
2 ¼ Tbsp (40g) still mineral water
Puree the raspberries in a blender. In a saucepan, combine the superfine sugar, still mineral water and raspberry puree and boil until the temperature reaches 185F (85F).


text:
The Empire State Building is glowing in red and yellow to honor the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China -- or the Communist takeover of the Chinese government -- an honor that has elicited both questions and protests in New York City.
Several supporters of Tibet demonstrated Wednesday outside the iconic building. China has occupied Tibet since the 1950s.
"It's kind of like a red star over the Empire State Building," Lhadon Tethong, executive director of Students for a Free Tibet, told the New York Times.
The Empire State Building often changes its lighting to mark holidays and big events. There's even a Website with the schedule of color changes.
China's Consul General in New York, Peng Keyu, took part in the lighting ceremony. He called the event " a great gesture."
U.S. & World
The skyscraper will be bathed in the colors of the People's Republic until Thursday.
Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner said the lights should not be used to pay tribute to what he called "a nation with a shameful history on human rights."
Building spokeswoman Marisa Picker had no immediate comment.
In China on Wednesday, the capital of Beijing was wrapped in tight security ahead of a massive military parade marking 60 years of communist rule.


text:
This bird can do anything an authentic copter can do including going up and down, left and right, forward and backward plus it rotates clockwise, and counter-clockwise. The helicopter runs on a rechargeable 7.4V 1500mah Li-Po battery and the transmitter runs on four �AA� batteries (not included). The controlling distance is about 100 yards. This unit is a safe and affordable entrance into the hobby and sport of remote control helicopter flying.
- 4 channel helicopter RC flying technology
- Lightweight yet strong to take the abuse from learning how to fly
- Large diameter main blades and on board gyro the F645 provides stable and precise flight characteristics
- Fully assembled and ready to fly out of the box
- Great for any beginner or expert
In Depth
- Functions: up, down, left, right. forward, backward, rotate clockwise, counter-clockwise
- Charging time: About 120 minutes
- Flying time: About 8-10 minutes
- Controlling distance: About 100 yards
- Product Size: 27.5" x 4" x 7.8"
- Helicopter Battery: Rechargeable 7.4V 1500mah Li-Po battery
In the Box
- 4Ch 3-axis quadcopter
- Mode 2 Transmitter
- Rechargeable 7.4V 1500mah Li-Po battery
- Tail Blade
- Extra Main Blades
- Instruction Manual
- (4) AA batteries for Transmitter (not included)