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Tight spaces, dark caves, life or death hanging in the balance. If you've seen The Descent you know that a lot of inherent human unease can be exposed and exploited by putting people in tight spots. But while Sanctum is satisfying in its workman-like exploration of tight-spottery, the immediate comparability of its premise with The Descent and other successful survival movies is precisely what threatens to limit its appeal.
Sanctum's big draw is that it is executive produced by superstar director James Cameron. 20 years after he took us underwater with The Abyss, Cameron returns to the deep, passing the reins to Australian director Alister Grierson, who uses the "3-D photography techniques Cameron developed to lens Avatar." Exactly what those techniques are is unknown to me, and while the film has one or two moments of 3-D novelty, for the most part I would have preferred it without the distraction.
Early on, Sanctum makes good use of its beautiful location. A helicopter arrival allows aerial shots off the Gold Coast of Australia, as the chopper lands upon an enormous crater in the jungle. Master explorer Frank McGuire (Richard Roxburgh) and his ragtag team of fellow enthusiasts are in the midst of mapping a system of caves in Papua New Guinea when a severe storm traps them underground. With the way out blocked by rocks and flooding caverns, they are forced to explore deeper than they've gone before in the hopes of finding an exit to the surface. As the reality of their situation sets in, one character lets loose an exasperated "My god...;" our stalwart hero Frank replies "There is no god down here."
This comically emotionless reply is mostly Sanctum feigning savagery. Yes, people will perish and the straits are dire, but the film is rarely harrowing. There's a looseness in the cinematography and editing that fails to inspire viewer discomfort, and eventually you resign yourself to a rousing adventure film, not a thriller. The R rating is squarely for language rather than violence, and, although I would never suggest such a thing I am surprised the filmmakers didn't dub out a few F-bombs in an effort to open the film with a teen-friendly PG-13.
Slight on gore and absolutely not a thriller, Sanctum is nevertheless wholly committed to delivering excitement. The script feels like it was written in a hurry and the film's emotional heft can be literally laughable, but Sanctum chugs along largely on chutzpah. Frank and his team - including son Josh (Rhys Wakefield), project money-man Carl (Ioan Gruffudd), and Carl's girlfriend Victoria (Alice Parkinson) - are consistently placed in life-threatening situations and manage to survive by deep diving and rock-climbing along slippery rocks and through samey-looking tunnels. I watched half expecting a killer creature or alien, and am instead a little impressed that the film insisted on the singular enterprise of extreme sports.
Eventually, the film must have its villain and its savior, but for most of its running time Sanctum's refusal to slow down carries its audience forward in spite of the flaws. We've probably seen much of this film before: the rock climbing, the decompression sickness and the hypothermia, and the use of 3-D isn't likely to inspire many other studios to come banging on James Cameron's door begging for his secret "photography techniques." But a laundry list can also be a wish list, and Sanctum hit enough of the notes on my list to keep my butt in a seat for 100 minutes. Maybe that's all you can ask for in the doldrums of February.


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|ACS Instrument Handbook for Cycle 26
The Wide Field Channel of ACS was designed primarily for high throughput observations at visible wavelengths. The use of protected silver mirror coatings, the small number of reflections, and the use of a red sensitive CCD have provided the high throughput required for this camera at the expense of a 3700 Å blue cutoff. The WFC detectors are two butted 2K x 4K thinned, backside-illuminated, SITe CCDs with a red optimized coating and long-λ halo fix. The plate scale is 0.050 arcseconds per pixel, which provides a good compromise between adequately sampling the PSF and a wide field of view. The WFC PSF is critically (Nyquist) sampled at 11,600 Å and undersampled by a factor 3 at the blue end of the WFC sensitivity range (3700 Å). It is possible to achieve a final reconstructed FWHM of 0.100 to 0.140 arcseconds for well-dithered observations. Because the WFC PSF FWHM is largely dependent on the blurring caused by CCD charge diffusion, dithering will not be able to recover the full resolution of the optical system. See Section 7.4 for more discussion of how to use dithered observations to optimally sample the PSF.The optical design of the camera introduces a two-component geometric distortion. The detectors themselves are at an angle with respect to the optical axis. This produces an 8% stretching of one pixel diagonal compared to the other. As a result, WFC pixels project on the sky as rhombuses rather than squares. These effects are purely geometrical and are routinely corrected in the ACS data reduction pipeline. The second component of geometric distortion is more complex. This distortion causes up to ±9% variation in effective pixel area and needs to be taken into account when doing accurate photometry or astrometry as the effective area of the detector pixels varies nonlinearly with field position. See Section 10.4 for a detailed discussion of the distortion in ACS.5.3.1 Filter SetFigure 5.10 shows the filter wheels used by the WFC.All of the most commonly used WFPC2 filters are included in the ACS filter set. In addition to a medium and a broad V-band filter (F550M and F606W), there is a complete Johnson-Cousins BVI set (F435W, F555W, F814W).The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) griz filter set (F475W, F625W, F775W, F850LP) is designed to provide high throughput for the wavelengths of interest and excellent rejection of out-of-band wavelengths. The filters were designed to provide wide, non-overlapping filter bands that cover the entire range of CCD sensitivity from blue to near-IR wavelengths.The Hα (F658N), [ΟΙΙΙ] (F502N), and [NII] (F660N) narrow band filters are full-size, and can be used with both the WFC and HRC.ACS includes a complete set of ramp filters that provide full coverage of the WFC wavelength range at 2% and 9% bandwidth. Each ramp filter consists of three segments. The inner and outer filter segments can be used with the WFC only, while the middle segments could be used by both WFC and HRC. Unlike the WFPC2, where the desired wavelength is achieved by offsetting the telescope, the wavelength of ACS ramps is selected by rotating the filter while the target is positioned in one of the pre-defined apertures. The monochromatic field of view of the ramp filters is approximately 40 x 80 arcsec2. Details of how to use the ramp filters are given in Section 7.3.Figure 5.10: WFC and HRC filter wheels layout.The WFC/HRC filter wheels contain polarizers with pass directions spaced by 60°, optimized for both the UV (POL0UV, POL60UV, and POL120UV) and the visible (POL0V, POL60V, and POL120V). All the polarizer filters are sized for the HRC field of view. They induce vignetting when used with the WFC, for which the FOV will be about 72 x 72 arcsec2. More information on the use of the polarizers is given in Chapter 6.

subset: commoncrawl


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Tennessee State forward Robert Covington was named to the Portsmouth Invitational All-Tournament Team for his play in his squad's three games.
Covington was fourth in the tournament in scoring, averaging 17.7 points per game. He also recorded 8.7 rebounds and 2.3 steals per contest.
Covington joins 11 other players on the team including Ian Clark of Belmont, Ed Daniel of Murray State and tournament MVP Brandon Davies of BYU.
The Tigers played Davies's Cougars on Nov. 9 of this past season.
Each year for 60 years the P.I.T has invited 64 of the best college basketball players (seniors) from across the nation to participate in a four-day, twelve game tournament in front of representatives from every NBA team.
Covington and the rest of the P.I.T participants will wait for their names to be called in the NBA Draft, held on June 27.
--TSU Tigers--


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Kakadu has gained world-wide renown for our amazing "art mats".
The question we're asked most often: "Can I really walk on them?" The answer: "Absolutely". Don't let their delicate beauty belie their toughness and durability - our art mats are perfectly suited for your highest foot-traffic areas, even kitchens or hallways. Kakadu's advanced carpentry and finish techniques ensures easy cleaning and many years of enjoyment.
Our art mats also make beautiful wall hangings.
Scroll through our
Floor Mats
find the selections that match your tastes.


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A BlankTV Premiere Presentation:
The Scally Cap Brats - "You Never Know"
Artist Bio:
The Scally Cap Brats are a 4-piece band from Ottawa Ontario. They combine the sounds of Oi!, Folk, and Street Punk into a unique and energetic blend. With one full length album under their belt, the Brats are set to release a new E.P entitled "Don't Look Back". This will be the bands first release with their new line up, and a precursor to their next full length which will be released in 2014.
About The Video:
This video was made in a truly DIY fashion, at the band's rehearsal space in downtown Ottawa. Mandolin player, Mike Franey decided to try his hand at making a music video (something he hadn't done since his high school tech class). The result was a gritty video, that finally came to fruition through trial and error. We had a blast making it and plan on doing more ambitious videos down the road, now that we sort of know what we're doing.
>> Get all The Scally Cap Brats goodies from their online merch store NOW! <<
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I was offered a pretty cool new gig just after I had returned to my old job from maternity leave. I had been working from home part-time at the old place, but couldn't pass up this new opportunity, so I scrambled to find some quality childcare, fired up my pump, and returned to the corporate world full-time. This is the first time I've had to leave one of my little nuggets full-time before they were a year old, and it has been a serious emotional challenge, but I'm doing my best to find balance in my life and have decided that part of that balance will include some occasional visits to HMD....because I miss y'all.
Since I am barely squeezing in the time to write this post, I realize that it is time to come to terms with the fact that the nursery, while I had big plans for its "completion" that involved diy roman shades, painting and some flea market scavenging, will need to be considered, for all intents and purposes, to be complete. So, it is with that foreword, that I present to you, the Frank Tank:
|Sheets are from Dwell Studio. Bird Mobile from Bla Bla.
|Lamp from Ikea, pillow from Etsy seller Robin and Mould, and fox from Bla Bla.
|My painted rug! Came out kind of awesome if I do say so myself.
|Sara Jane Studios print (also in love with this one)
|A few more DIY's- My faux zinc letters and some homemade versions I whipped up of these prints .Smaller art pieces are greeting cards from Rifle Paper Co, and the giraffe is by Sharon Montrose.
I spared you pics of the changing table- cause it's nothing spesh- but overall, it's kind of cute. Not as cute as these guys though:
Yes, that is a massive wound on his forehead, and no, they don't let me brush their hair.
I'm back.


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S.F. Urban Prototyping Festival opens
Shortly after San Francisco's Urban Prototyping Festival opened Saturday, the garden planter-slash-urinal wasn't getting much business, but there was a sizable crowd watching the graffiti war unfold and kids were lining up to bounce on the LED-lit hopscotch.
"The kids are really intrigued by these games," said Stephen Popper as he watched his son and daughter fight over who got to use the hopscotch next. Five-year-old Hannah was winning. Nearby, four graffiti artists were quietly spray-painting colorful designs on 6-foot-tall panels.
The family hadn't stopped by to visit the urinal yet.
"My son likes anything involving planting. He really liked the fruit fence," Popper said, referring to the sacks of fruit trees attached to a chain-link fence around the corner from the hopscotch mat. "He wants to do that on the fence at his school now."
Perhaps only in San Francisco, and only at a street party with "urban prototyping" in the name, could hopscotch, graffiti, fruit fences and garden-style urinals share space. They were among the 23 projects spotlighted at the festival, which was part art installation and part urban experimentation.
The festival began this summer in Singapore, and Saturday's event was the first stop in the United States, taking up three blocks near Fifth and Mission streets. The idea is to create a "living laboratory" of inventions that transform public spaces and make them useful, educational, interactive or just plain fun.
Turning problems around
Take the garden urinals, for example. The urinals are attached to planters, and the wastewater is filtered and used to water trees or flowers. The idea - which the designers call a "PPlanter" - is to take an urban problem like public urination and turn it into something beneficial.
Down the street was an audio installation that the inventors described as "data sonification," which is basically using sound as a means of representing data. The inventors mounted 19 speakers to a chain-link fence, each speaker representing a neighborhood in the city. Each speaker issued a sound - like the tides from San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean, recorded throughout the day - unique to its neighborhood.
"Hopefully, it just makes you stop and listen to what's going on in the city," said Emily Shisko, a San Francisco musician who co-designed the installation. "This could be another means of getting information across, but in a way that's totally enjoyable."
Shisko's project was meant to be both educational and entertaining, while others were more practical - like a spotlight to shine on people using crosswalks at night, or "urban parasols" made of renewable materials to provide shade and shelter.
Many ideas clearly were sprung from the first urban prototype hit: the parklet. These miniparks that transform parking spaces into green zones have blossomed all over San Francisco and, now, the rest of the country. At Saturday's festival, garden- and park-themed installations were a common sight.
"There are so many opportunities to make the city more livable," said Mona El Khafif, an urban design professor at California College of the Arts and one of the people behind a project called the "10-mile garden."
Their proposal is to plant gardens in the streets in front of fire hydrants, which are currently wasted space, El Khafif said. If every fire hydrant in San Francisco had a garden in front of it, all of that space added together would be 10 miles of extra greenery in the city, she said.
Replanting if needed
And if there happens to be an emergency requiring use of a hydrant with a garden in front of it? "The trucks can just run over the garden," she said. "We'll replant if we have to."
But not all urban inventions need take their cues from parklets, festival organizers said. "We don't need more parklets, we need more parklet-like ideas," said Alex Michel, director of the 5M Project, which hosted the festival.
"So many people have ideas for civic participation, but there's nowhere for them to take their ideas," Michel said, walking among the installations. "This is like a pinball machine. Ideas are bouncing all around here."
Erin Allday is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com


text: Plans for Dover High School, one of the largest publicly funded projects in Delaware history, are complete. The $82 million, 280,000-sf school will have capacity for 1,800 students and feature a 900-seat theater, a 2,500-seat gymnasium, and a 5,000-seat football stadium. Hord Coplan Macht, Baltimore, and ABHA Architects, Wilmington, Del., created a design with plenty of natural light and outdoor classrooms to meet LEED for Schools requirements.


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It's a random Saturday around 10:32 p.m. You find yourself and a few pals in a bar frequented by young, hipster-leaning Chicagoans. Ordering your fourth whiskey with a Coke splash, you observe the scenery. You manage to catch the eye of a girl and her friend who are completely losing their minds to a No Doubt song. You've got a bit of liquid courage and she looks cute enough. What do you do?
Stay put: Read No. 1.
Approach them: Read No. 2.
1: She seems well and good, but you just got out of a crappy situation and, hey, this whiskey isn't going to drink itself. You polish off your cocktail and have another. A late-arriving friend is in a hurry to catch up with the party and promptly pays for several rounds of shots, which you happily consume. A few hours later, you end up angrily texting your ex, accusing her of cheating on you back when you dated. This leads to you spending 12 minutes outside of the bar loudly yelling into your phone. You blow off your friends and drunkenly stumble home, waking the next day at 1:50 p.m. on your couch, fully clothed and with your contacts still in. END SCENE
2: You just got out of a crappy dating situation and figure there's no time like the present to break your slump. With renewed confidence, you dance over to the girl and her friend. The girls are very nice and welcoming, and you proceed to order a round of shots. Everyone is getting along nicely, and the girl's friend is not-so-subtly trying to push you two together. Your friend saunters over and the suggestion to change locations is presented. Before you can finish your last drink, you get a text from a former hookup who's in town from D.C. and looking to meet up. The last time you "met up," you walked funny for three days. What do you do?
Ignore the text: Read No. 3.
Pursue the booty call: Read No. 4.
Text your ex because you're drunk and feeling some feelings: Read No. 5.
3: You take a moment to consider, then decide that you'd rather see what happens with this current situation. Your whole group moves to a late-night bar known for inspiring bad decisions. The place is bumping and you all quickly start dancing, letting "the rhythm take you over" as Enrique Iglesias used to put it. After a few more rounds of drinks, you become those a-holes making out in the bar. Your friend interrupts you to let you know that your "friend" from D.C. just walked into the bar and is heading right for you. Being kind of a chump, you duck into the bathroom. When you come out, the girl you were kissing is leaving because her friend wants to go home. You reconnect with your friend from D.C. and depart to your place for a night of passion. Unfortunately, you're unable to perform due to having consumed large amounts of alcohol. At best, you muster an awkward attempt at morning redemption, but the damage is done. Six months later, you discover your new nickname in the Chicago social circle is "WD-40." (a jab at your stamina and unability to perform.) END SCENE
4: Let's be honest. Summer is coming; there will be plenty of time for bar romance. A rare visit from a quality sexual companion is a treat that shouldn't be passed up. You text the girl back, only to discover she actually was en route to the bar you're currently at. You plan to meet her at her hotel room and get a cab over. You have a night of wild passion. Waking up in the morning, you head out to brunch and run into your ex ... who's with the dude you always suspected she cheated on you with. A big fight breaks out, there's challah French toast flying everywhere and you end up getting a shiner and one hell of a story on Monday. END SCENE
5: Against the wishes of everyone, you abandon your conquests to text your ex and wax poetic about the good ol' days. She isn't having it. Feeling dejected, you go to 7-Eleven and get a turkey and cheese sandwich. You choke on it and die. Lesson here? Don't ever text your ex when you're drunk, you idiot. END SCENE
What have we learned here? Love truly is a battlefield, friends. Proceed with caution.
Ernest Wilkins is Chicago's wingman.
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At UW-Green Bay, students experience hands-on learning from award-winning
faculty on a naturally beautiful campus. Learn more about academics,
campus life, affordability, and how to apply.
This department offers three interdisciplinary programs of study:
Public Administration (PA) prepares students for careers in public or nonprofit organizations, as well as for further study in graduate programs. Majors choose an area of emphasis in public management and policy, nonprofit management or emergency management.
Environmental Policy & Planning (EPP) is an environmental studies program based in the social sciences. It prepares students for a variety of professions involving the planning, analysis, design, and administration of policies and programs dealing with the natural and human-made environment.
Urban Studies (US) offers students introductory and advanced coursework in the many social science disciplines that contribute to the study of our urban world, including economics, geography, political science, sociology, as well as professional fields such as urban design and urban planning.
More about the program »
The Center for Public Affairs enhances civic engagement and quality of life in the community. Learn more