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CYFI together with its project partner University of Banking and the National Bank of Ukraine held a seminar in Kyiv on July 8th on the role of public-private partnerships and the role of the private and civil society sectors in improving financial literacy and access to basic financial services for young people in Ukraine.
The workshop took place at the Training Center of the National Bank of Ukraine, and saw the participation of more than 30 representatives of the banking sector, financial regulatory and educational authorities, ministries and civil society sector representatives.
The workshop had the following objectives:
- To present the concept of an integrated approach to financial education to local stakeholders in Ukraine;
- To introduce the concept of Schoolbank and its various implementation options;
- Discuss the existing financial education programs for children and youth in Ukraine;
- Presentation of the best practices of foreign private sector involvement in financial education and access to programs for children and youth;
- Discuss potential collaboration and further action plans for the development of financial inclusion and financial education programs for youth in Ukraine.
During the seminar, CYFI presented parts of its Product Development Workshop module, including business and CSR case for financial institutions, and discussed various technological and innovative solutions for Ukrainian FSPs to start investing in savings programs for youth. The guest speaker Eduard Schmitt from Savings Banks' Foundation for International Cooperation (SBFIC) presented the approach of German Savings Banks to improving financial capability of youth, as well as various ways to educate youth to save.
The seminar ended with a panel that discussed the state of the field in Ukraine that featured presentations of the hosts of the event – the National Bank of Ukraine, as well as Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, University of Banking, and the Privat Bank. The workshop offered a platform for an open discussion on various possibilities for collaboration and cross-sector cooperation in this field for institutions from different industries.
The workshop was conducted as part of the project CYFI is implementing with its project partners from 9 countries within the 'Visegrad 4 Eastern Partnership (V4EaP) Program - Flagship Projects'- "Transferring the experience of the Visegrad countries in the Eastern Partnership countries and the development of capacity and technical expertise in the field of financial education for children and youth", supported by International Visegrad Fund.


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Epic Escape Superhero Webcomics 157 – Be Kind, Rewind
on December 14, 2015 at 12:00 am
Chapter: EpicEscape
Characters: Girlpower
Epic Escapers,
So, I've been experiencing technical problems. My tablet for drawing is out of sorts, and has decided not to work with me. It packed it's bags and take a ride on that train called fritz.
I have done this comic on Samsung Galaxy 10 Tablet, using Autodesk Sketchbook. It's not quite as good as what I could produce on Manga Studio, but it's probably the fault of the artist.
Oh well, sorry for the delay. I'll be slow until I figure out my technical issues, so I apologize for the delays to come too.
Thanks for visiting. Tell your friends!
John Cross
NOTE: The next comic will be delayed for some time because of technical issues. My drafting laptop is on the fritz.

subset: commoncrawl


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Tel: 01284 652 531 x2261
Email: firstname.lastname@example.com
Will is a chartered environmental scientist with specialist research and applied expertise in agri-ecosystems, biodiversity, countryside policy and rural recreational activities – with particular emphasis on the integration of these areas with commercial agriculture, forestry and rural development. He is a Defra appointed member of the Cotswolds Conservation Board. Will is also a principal lecturer at the Royal Agricultural University.
Recent Publications
- Books and Book Chapters
- Peer Reviewed Papers
- Reports
- Conferences and Workshops
- Teaching
- Public Service
- Professional Membership
- Other Activities
Ruth Feber, Paul Johnson, Fran Tattersall, Will Manley, Barbara Hart, Helen Smith, David Macdonald. 2015. How can field margin management contribute to invertebrate biodiversity? In: DW Macdonald, RE Feber, eds. Wildlife Conservation on Farmland. Vol 1 Managing for Nature on Lowland Farms. Oxford University Press.
Ruth Feber, Paul Johnson, Les Firbank, Lisa Norton, Will Manley, Dan Chamberlain, Rob Fuller, Fiona Mathews and David Macdonald. 2015. Does organic farming affect biodiversity? In: DW Macdonald, RE Feber, eds. Wildlife Conservation on Farmland. Vol 1 Managing for Nature on Lowland Farms. Oxford University Press.
Jones, L., Norton, L., Austin, Z., Browne, A. L., Donovan, D., Emmett, B. A., Grabowski, Z. J. Howard, D. C., Jones, J. P., Kenter, J. O., Manley, W., Morris, C., Robinson, D. A., Short, C.J., Siriwardena, G. M., Stevens, C. J., Storkey, J., Waters, R.D. and Willis, G. F. (2015) Stocks and flows of natural and human-derived capital in ecosystem services. Land Use Policy, 52. pp. 151-162. ISSN 02648377
Ruth Feber, Paul J. Johnson, James Bell, Dan Chamberlain, Leslie Firbank, Robert Fuller, Will Manley, Fiona Mathews, Lisa Norton, Martin Townsend, David Macdonald. 2015. Organic Farming: Biodiversity Impacts Can Depend on Dispersal Characteristics and Landscape Context. Plos one, - 26 Aug 2015. DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0135921
Rhiannon Naylor, Will Manley, Damian Maye, Gareth Enticott, Brian Ilbery and Alice Hamilton-Webb. 2015. The Framing of Public Knowledge Controversies in the Media: A Comparative Analysis of the Portrayal of Badger Vaccination in the English National, Regional and Farming Press. Sociologia Ruralis, 20 SEP 2015 DOI: 10.1111/soru.12105
DEFRA SoS appointed Member of the Cotswold Conservation Board
Member of the Cotswolds LEADER Local Action Group Executive
FCIEEM - Fellow Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management
C.Env - Chartered Environmentalist
Disciplinary Board member – CIEEM


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Mountain Passages: Bear self-analyzes via his grizzled visage. By Alan Stark
This is your face.
You have earned it.
Much of your mountain history is etched on your face. Other mountain people can look at your face and tell a good deal about you. Some flatlanders can understand your face, particularly those flatlanders who have lived out in the open, away from cities. But most flatlanders won't understand your face. They'll just think you have an attitude, or maybe not enough sense to get out of the weather.
The flatlanders could be right on both counts.
Let's start with the early morning view of your face in the bathroom mirror; it can be a religious experience.
"Jesus Christ, that's a frightening face," you mumble to yourself.
Sometimes, the one nearest and dearest to you, who is also standing at the sink may comment.
"Nice face," Blue Eyes says.
"It's the best I can do at 7am."
"Damned scary,"
"And I can't comment on your face?"
The moment passes and you realize that this is the worst face moment for the entire day, unless of course, you walk into a pole on Main Street because you weren't paying attention.
The steam from the shower softens some of the hard edges on your morning face. If you are male, the shaving routine gives you several moments to reconsider your
first impressions of the morning. Your second thoughts about your face are considerably more positive than your first. If you are female, there is the hair-drying and maybe a makeup routine that allows you a second opinion. In either case, reality is a little less glaring after some careful consideration, rationalization, and self-delusion.
So there is this mythical character who stares at himself in a pool of water and turns into a Republican or a heartless stone. I'm not suggesting that you spend so much time staring at your face that you'll turn into a Republican, but I do want you to consider your face, component by component. Besides—you don't have much chance of turning into a Republican, given your bank account balance.
The hairline is either about where it was when you were eighteen or it is not. Mine has gotten somewhat shallow above both temples, but in general, my hairline is about the same. The problem is that there is considerably less hair above the hairline than when I was essentially a hair machine at eighteen. Male patterned baldness is a totally different issue. My friend Yardman was probably born bald. He's been hair-challenged since I met him in his early thirties. However, the lack of hair seems to have had no appreciable effect on him. He has a kid who has been a real trial but may turn into someone special. He runs a mountain not-for-profit that rebuilds trails on Fourteeners and he's married to Povy the Shooter, who can make just about anything look interesting, if not beautiful. They live in a house in Golden that used to be a whorehouse, or so he claims, probably another lie like the lie he tells about having hair when he was twenty.
Unlike men, women tend to take hair seriously. I think of trying to describe women's hair like walking into a frame shop with a print and looking at all the possible frames on the wall—and then standing there dumbfounded because there were too many choices. So I'll break women's hair down into good hair and bad hair—and that depends on the sort of day you are having. And that may depend on more variables than any male can ever process with his brain—ever. So I'll stand on the comparison that hair frames the face but suggest that a mountain woman has earned her face and should show as much of it as possible—it helps tell us who you are.
The forehead, to be a great forehead, needs a couple of confounded wrinkles in it. You know what I mean—when your boss asks a question that indicates she has been off the planet for a significant period of time and you don't really want to spoil the day by saying, "Are you kidding me?" But then again her question was so stupid and out of context that you need to make some gesture to indicate displeasure—obviously, that gesture is the wrinkled forehead. Those permanent lines indicate incredulity at ongoing stupidities and are usually well-earned. There are a good number of people in this world who are "managers" but are nonetheless just about useful as bowling ball handles. All sexes should take pride in their confounded wrinkles.
Eyebrows are an important indicator of mountainess. You need to have eyebrows to keep the sweat out of your eyes. There are eyebrows that go from the color of snow to the color of walnuts shells in late fall. There are eyebrows that turn up and turn down and unibrows that just ignore convention and worm above a nose. There black eyebrows on brown people who took the chance to come across the border for a better life. There are eyebrows like mine that look like jungles and cause barbers to whack at them as soon as I sit down in the chair.
"Mind if I trim the brows?"
"No, not at all"
"Whack. Whack. Whack. … Whew, that's better."
"Than what?" you ask.
"Than looking like a lower primate," she answers.
Eyes sometimes tell the whole story in an instant. Just a second of eye contact between two human beings can have magical qualities. It's like two Viet Nam vets whose eyes meet and they instantly say to each other, "Welcome home." They just know at that moment of contact who the other person is, and it makes them smile to still be alive and able to send that message with their eyes. It's seeing a set of eyes across the room, and feeling your mouth smile in recognition of someone you want to talk to. It's looking at this person you share your life with and knowing exactly what that person is thinking—mostly.
There are three general levels of eye contact, (1) full-on, (2) glancing, and (3) not-at-all.
Full-on eye contact is a tad aggressive and invasive. There are times when you can see all the way to my heart, in my eyes, if I hold your stare. There aren't a lot of people in this world that I trust with that vision. Full-on eye contact is something to be used judiciously, for a good reason, and certainly not just to see if the other person will blink. That's meaningless cow-person bullshit.
Glancing is the way most of us communicate with our eyes. We don't invade another person's privacy with a full-on stare, but we do make sure to make eye contact as we move about, and particularly when we are conversing. It is nothing more than a quick glance to make sure your words are being heard, and an acknowledgement with a quick meeting of eyes that their words are being heard.
No eye contact can mean a number of things starting with, "you are a complete waste of a human being," and ending with, "you scare the shit out of me and the last thing in the world that I'm going to do is make eye contact." But mostly no eye contact means that the person doesn't give a shit, you don't count, and they aren't listening.
Ears are particular and maybe the most unattractive parts our faces. There are several curious phenomenon about my ears. I've noticed that my ears are the cause of a recurring speech pattern particularly in situations where there is a good deal of ambient noise. Life partners tend to describe this phenomenon as "selective hearing" or "programmed inattention" or "spouse listening." The phenomenon manifests itself in a variety of phrases,
"I didn't hear you."
"No, I'm not ignoring you."
The other really odd thing about my ears is counterintuitive. There is a hair challenged spot on the back of my head that will absolutely turn into fire if I neglect to slather it with sunscreen when spring skiing. But why is it that I can't buy hair for the top of my head, hair seems to sprout from just about all over my ears? If I let it go, I could grow my own earmuffs.
As a mountain person, there is a good chance that you have sun, exposure, or wind damage to your ears and they look the worse for wear because of it. And maybe you don't hear as well as you did before, because you spent unnumbered nights close to the stage dancing like the world was going to end in the morning.
The nose is a special indicator. It can have any shape from pug to full banana to "cute as a button," but it needs to be a little rough looking. The surface of the nose isn't exactly smooth like maybe it has been frostbitten at 12,000 feet in a windstorm or scorched on a bike ride out of Moab—little pieces of flaking skin are a good sign. A certain crustiness around the nostrils is normal from an ongoing sniffle from sleeping on the ground or in a really cold room with the dog, two joined-together down bags for a comforter, and one significant other who sleeps naked.
Cheeks start with being well-browned but capable of going pink for a variety of reasons, from embarrassment at being caught reading something serious, to forgetting the sunscreen, to tossing a line in a bar at someone interesting and having the object of interest explain to the surrounding mob that she/he may have just heard the lamest pickup line in the history of the world.
Along with cheeks that we need to discuss beards. There is always the suspicion that the beard is hiding something other than crumbs and dried soup from the last meal. Let's start with a really scruffy looking untrimmed beard that looks pretty much like a gorilla's armpit. The question needs to be posed, is this really ugly beard hiding something even more ugly, or is the owner of this beard such a lazy fuck that he doesn't care? On the other extreme is a beard that is perfectly trimmed. At the very least this beard indicates that the owner has way too much time on his hands or spends way too much time in front of a mirror.
Before we get to the mouth, teeth, and chin, we need to discuss laugh lines between the cheeks and mouth. Laugh lines are a good thing, like waking up to a life partner who sleepily slips a hand across your stomach.
Laugh lines are earned from laughing so hard that tears come to your eyes and the back of your head hurts. They come from a friend who tells a great story, or a slapstick fall on the corduroy that ends in a face plant, or hitting the tongue of the river just right so the boat just slides perfectly into the wave train. There is no way to fake laugh lines, you have them or you don't. And if you don't have them—chances are you need to lighten up.
The mouth is almost as special a place as the eyes; it is where all the truth and lies come from, you just need to know the difference. There's a good chance that if you have spent time in the mountains it's fairly easy to tell truth from lies. The Mountain Gods teach you that truth just feels right, like an old polypro pullover. But sometimes a person can fool you about the truth, but if you are smart, that only happens once with that person. You can also lie to yourself with predictable results. It's looking at a rolling, roiling, rampaging grey clouds of a storm front headed your way and telling yourself you are weatherproof. You know you are lying to yourself, and that in a couple minutes you are going to be cold, wet, and miserable.
"Having a good mouth" on you implies that you can hold your own in a shouting match with a drunk, yell loud enough to be heard down canyon, and quick enough that if someone says something profound, silly, tasteless, outrageous, or just plain fun, you can match them instantly. That's a good mouth.
Teeth are sort of an odd measure of mountainess. In the first place, it is good to have them unless you really like soup. A number of us are not native to the mountains; we came here from other places and lives where straight teeth were some sort of measure of your dad's financial status. So a good number of us have artificially straight teeth. But some of us have missing teeth due to mechanical mishaps or misunderstandings. The mountain life doesn't pay enough to have them replaced so we look a little worn. Bruno the ER doc told me about the teeth to tattoo ratio that he used when evaluating a patient. He said that it's a good bet that if the patient had more tattoos than teeth there was a fair to good chance that this person didn't see docs very often, and only when they were seriously hurt.
The chin is what most of us have landed on at least once given a life in the mountains. I don't have any scars on my chin, but I've entertained my dentist with the sound my jaw makes when moved from side to side. This is no doubt due to a face-first encounter with a third compression bump when I could have sworn I only saw two compression bumps as I came flying under the lift towers.
A good chin tucks into the hood of your parka without thinking just as it juts out when someone does or says something really obnoxious and it is always available as place to put your hand when you are leaning on a table and pondering.
I have reviewed the major components of your face and if you are a mountain person, chances are you have recognized parts of your face. There is only one thing you need to remember and then smile.
This is your face.
You have earned it.


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Professional Roof Cleaning Pricing Expectations.
Soft wash style cleaning is best described as a home or commercial property professional service. The basic soft washing company is structured not unlike a pest control company an ac & heat company or another service company. As in any industry there will be following of a bell curve type model in regards to the capabilities and professionalism of the companies. This means that there will be about 20% of the soft wash businesses that will be unprofessional, unlicensed, unprepared and immature as a company. At the other end of the spectrum there will be about 20% of the soft wash companies which include Superior Shine, that will be very professional, highly trained, licensed, insured, mature and capable. In the middle will be about 60% of all of the soft wash companies that are average, in some state of growth and maturity and in some state of getting their license and insurance in place. These companies will be trained at times and have no formal training at others. It is up to you the property owner to look at this 60% of the available companies and investigate their capabilities.
Superior Shine recommends not doing business with any contractor who might fit into the bottom 20% of soft wash companies or in any industry for that matter. It is common for these businesses to remain in this spot in the bell curve for their entire existence. A start up company may begin here in the bottom 20% but if they are concerned with doing the job right they will quickly grow out of this percentile. The companies who seem to settle into the bottom 20% are usually sole proprietors that wish to do things quick, for cash and operate below the radar. GENERALLY these individuals are not obeying even the most simple and easy to observe laws. Using a contractor like this can open up a property owner to serious liability and even property damages.
When hiring in the top 20 or even 40 percent of any company in the service industry it is important to understand one phrase. "Compliance cost money." This basically means that companies who obey the law, cross their t's and dot their i's, will be a bit more expensive that the majority of their competition. The extra time and effort it takes to observe things like OSHA safety standards and the additional costs like payroll taxes and workers compensation insurance, can make professional companies overhead much higher. Also OSHA standard requires that any roof cleaning truck have a safety monitor or second employee onboard. That significantly raises a complying companies costs over the one man one truck show.
In addition to compliance costs there is insurance. I would never use a company on my property that didn't have at least one million dollar limits on liability insurance as well as million dollar limits on their automobile insurance. Many small contractors skip the insurance thing all together. They may have personal insurance on their vehicle but they will have no liability insurance in place at all. This can be a tremendous issue because if an accident happens or damages are done to your property your own property insurance may forfeit your claim because of hiring an unlicensed, uninsured contractor.
Training is a must as well and keeping employees trained and or certified in their trade can be costly. Add to that keeping track of safety inspections, personal protective equipment training as well as monthly safety meetings, professional businesses are spending a great deal of money in overhead making sure you get the best. Superior Shine professionals also goes through the extra step to make sure each and every employee's background has been checked and are also required to pass an initial drug screen and pass them on an ongoing basis.
Also it is important to realize that we don't have shelves stocked with roof cleaning in a box. Our product is our service and our laborers. Soft washing or roof cleaning is moreover a service we sell to provide you with one to two trained, competent and well mannered employees and a truck. OUR ABSOLUTELY MOST EXPENSIVE COST OF BUSINESS IS PAYROLL! As much as 50% of every dollar a soft wash company takes in will go to payroll or payroll related costs and taxes.
The summery of all of these costs will traditionally make a professional soft wash company as much as 30% more expensive that our nearest competitor. This is easy math when you see where overhead goes to compliance and training.
So what can you expect to pay when hiring a professional soft wash company? This can depend greatly by your location being the cost of living and other economic factors change from region to region throughout the United States and abroad. A good rule of thumb is $200.00 – $250.00 / hour for ever hour on the job and traveling to and from the job. Because any soft wash cleaning project will take a minimum of one-two hours to complete and there will be at least a half hour traveling to the job and a half traveling from the job, we encourage our soft wash professionals to institute a $400.00 minimum charge. This is very much like the service call a appliance repair company or a plumber would charge just to come out and trouble shoot an issue.
When you receive a proposal from a professional soft wash company it will be in writing, clear and concise, with a thorough scope of work. It is VERY common for the lower 20% of contractors to not give a written estimate and during the process of the cleaning raise your price as the job gets more difficult. Superior Shine will always do a written proposal including a scope of work so there is no confusion what was to be cleaned and was not to be cleaned. Then they will stand behind their proposal by honoring the price they contracted to do the job for. No changes in scope or price will happen without written permission by the property owner.
In any given day a property owner can expect a professional soft wash company to work quickly and more efficiently than other companies. In any given day Superior Shine's production goal is $1,500.00 – $1900.00 in the residential market. This would be for any 8 hour work day. This is the national starting point and some areas of the country may be higher based on economic factors.
What would this translate to for you the property owner? An average soft wash crew of two men and a truck will complete about three 3,500-5500 sq foot roofs in one day. If that residential crews goal is to complete $1,500.00-$1900.00 that day in production then your roof cleaning should come in at about $550.00-$1100.00 after any discounts and depending on the size, etc. If you own an apartment complex and it has 20 building and will take a week to clean your project will most likely cost around $10,000.00. These are just estimates so that you can have a point of reference on what to reasonably look for in pricing from a soft wash professional.
There are many soft wash contractors out there that like to start bidding wars. Those do not benefit you the homeowner or us in the soft wash industry. These bidding wars just drive down prices and those contractors now start looking for ways to cut service, quality or compliance in order to do the job at the bidding war price. I would plea with property owners to reward professional compliance based companies for their attention to detail, customer service and law abiding compliance. All of these soft wash professionals have families, employees and responsibilities. Please allow them to profit and grow their businesses because they do it right.


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Sewer and stormwater rehabilitation
This work occurs in all areas of greater Sydney.
Work is underway and will continue until 2020.
We're lining stormwater and wastewater pipes to prevent leaks.
About the rehabilitation work
We're upgrading our wastewater and stormwater pipes across Sydney. This work will help prevent leaks in pipes for the next 50 years.
We may need to reline pipes at night to minimise impacts on traffic.
The work includes:
- relining about 6.3 kilometres of small wastewater pipes
- relining about 1.8 kilometres of large wastewater pipes
- rehabilitating junctions in the wastewater pipe network
- inspecting and repairing maintenance holes
- cleaning wastewater and stormwater pipes
- using closed circuit television (CCTV) to inspect wastewater and stormwater pipes before and after the work.
Specialist crews usually need to make several visits to affected properties. Each project takes about four weeks to complete.
This work is part of our SewerFix Program to:
- improve the wastewater and stormwater systems
- reduce wastewater overflows
- protect public health and the environment.
- calling us on 13 20 92
- sending a letter to:
Community Relations - SewerFix
PO Box 399


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Harry Harrison named Grand Master by SFWA
::: sing-song voice :::
~/o I'm going to the Nebulas, I'm going to the Nebulas o/~
From SFWA:
Harry Harrison, creator of The Stainless Steel Rat and author of the novel that inspired the movie Soylent Green, will be honored as the next Damon Knight Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America during the 2009 Nebula Award Weekend® in Los Angeles, Calif.
Harrison's selection was announced by SFWA President Russell Davis after consulting with the Board of Directors and participating past presidents. The Nebula Awards Weekend will be held April 24-26 in Los Angeles, Calif., with the awards presentation banquet to be held on the UCLA campus to tie in with the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. Past SFWA President and Grand Master (2004) Robert Silverberg will be presenting.
"There are few moments in life that can be taken out and savored in memory. One happened today," Harrison said. "A phone call from our President Russell Davis with the startling news that I was to be the 2009 Grand Master nearly led to the collapse of a stout writer!
"It's still soaking in," he said. "But may I express my fervent thanks to all involved for this signal honor."
Already an established illustrator and freelance non-fiction writer, Harrison published his first science fiction story, "Rock Diver," in the August 1951 issue of Worlds Beyond. From that point he went on to produce more than 62 novels, eight short fiction collections, six non-fiction books and countless short stories. He also found the time to edit 35 anthologies over the span of his career.
His active involvement in the science fiction community throughout the 1950s led to his becoming a charter member of SFWA.
"Why, I can recall with a tear in one rheumy eye, when SFWA was a just a wild idea put forward by Damon Knight," Harrison said. "A few of us nodded and agreed with him and thus, with great hope and no money, this organization was born. I won't dwell on the fact that this was over 50 years ago…
"Enough! Let's look to the future not the past as we go from strength to strength and march—banners flapping—into the SF future," he said.
Harrison was born in 1925 and served in the U.S. Army during World War II, an experience that made a strong negative impression on him and inspired his satirical Bill, the Galactic Hero novel series. A regular contributor to the legendary John W. Campbell's Astounding, Harrison's work often reflected his interest in environmental issues and non-violent resolutions to conflict. His best-known creations are The Stainless Steel Rat and Make Room! Make Room! on which the film Soylent Green was based. His more recent works include best-selling alternate world trilogies West of Eden and Stars and Stripes Forever!
Harrison is the 26th writer recognized by SFWA as a Grand Master. He joins Robert A. Heinlein (1974), Jack Williamson (1975), Clifford D. Simak (1976), L. Sprague de Camp (1978), Fritz Leiber (1981), Andre Norton (1983), Arthur C. Clarke (1985), Isaac Asimov (1986), Alfred Bester (1987), Ray Bradbury (1988), Lester del Rey (1990), Frederik Pohl (1992), Damon Knight (1994), A. E. van Vogt (1995), Jack Vance (1996), Poul Anderson (1997), Hal Clement (1998), Brian Aldiss (1999), Philip Jose Farmer (2000), Ursula K. Le Guin (2003), Robert Silverberg (2004), Anne McCaffrey (2005), Harlan Ellison (2006), James Gunn (2007) and Michael Moorcock (2008).
Until 2002 the title was simply "Grand Master." In 2002 it was renamed in honor of SFWA's founder, Damon Knight, who died that year.
More details about the Nebula Awards Weekend are available at http://www.nebulaawards.com/
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Rumor: More PlayStation Phone videos leak out, bare all
We've already seen the PlayStation Phone strut its stuff on video once, but we're using the term "see" loosely here. The previous video could very well have been incontrovertible proof that Jesus Christ once wrestled an army of space T-Rexes; thanks to all the blurring and shaking, we certainly wouldn't have known any better. These new videos uncovered by Engadget, though, are crystal clear. No "I learned all my film techniques from pictures of Bigfoot" here.
Check out both videos of the hardware – which is rumored to be just under a week away from a big unveiling – after the break!


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Tea Guy Speaks
life's short. drink good tea.
Sunday, January 19, 2014
Arty Kusmi Tea Commercial
In the category of arty tea commercials, this one for Kusmi Tea is certainly worth a mention. It's apparently part of a series of four similar tea commercials for their various blends.
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Best Shots: Cap, Rogues' Revenge, Avengers & more
Greetings! Welcome back to the big column. First, links to our Best Shots Extra from this week . . .
And now, regular reviews . . .
Captain America #40
From: Marvel
Writer: Ed Brubaker
Art: Steve Epting
Review by Richard Renteria
Ed Brubaker and his artists, this issue's being Steve Epting, continue to tell a solid espionage tale with enough twists and turns to keep readers enthralled in a story that has been unfolding since issue one. As the story has progressed Brubaker and his collaborators have managed to elevate the Captain America book into a must-read title. With this issue the bar has somehow been raised again on this title as Brubaker tells a parallel story of the internal and external struggles that James "Bucky" Barnes and Sharon Carter endure as they fight to save the legacy of Steve Rogers and Captain America.
Brubaker does a tremendous job of bringing real tension to the struggle of our lead characters while employing his past issues and continuity to propel the story forward in a believable and organic manner. The effective use of both Bucky's and Sharon's internal monologue adds to the weight of their ensuing battles as they are both at physical disadvantages and must rely on their wits to defeat their enemies. Bucky handles his situation by throwing "Captain America" a curve with the revelation of his identity. As Bucky faces his opponent a drugged Sharon attempts an escape with potentially fatal results. As effective as the parallel stories are, it's the brief scenes with the Red Skull, Dr. Faustus and Armin Zola that are the real eye opener moments of this issue. Brubaker has been hinting about the disharmony faced by this triumvirate of evil since the early issues of his run and for the most part the three egos have managed to work with each other, but as plans seem to begin to unravel so does the alliance. The cliffhanger scene is sure to leave most readers shocked and hotly anticipating the next issue.
Steve Epting complements Brubaker in an effortless manner. At times the art was a little confusing due in part to some heavy use of blacks, but the overall effort rises above any minor shortcomings. There have been times when Epting's action sequences seemed a bit stiff with posed characters, in this issue Epting manages to elevate his action scenes and gives them a more fluid feel from panel to panel. Expressions and character consistency continue to be Epting's strong suit, as the characters deal with each other up close and personal and their reactions and expressions are important elements to effectively convey the unfolding drama.
Brubaker has really been writing a solid story with his run on Captain America and even though the title character is dead the story being told will impact his legacy. The plot threads that were seeded in early issues begin to bare fruit and readers continue to be rewarded as they read the title and go back to see how Brubaker and company have managed to weave a rather large and complex story that never seems to confuse the reader and is always adding layers as Brubaker lays the groundwork for future issues. I also like the Dr. Doom subplot that has been running for the last dozen or so issues. I have a feeling the device in question is a time machine and the Red Skull has a plan for a Steve Rogers from the past, but at this point that is purely speculation.
Final Crisis: Rogues' Revenge #1 (of 3)
Written by Geoff Johns
Art by Scott Kolins
Published by DC Comics
Review by THE Rev. O.J. Flow
A while back, I tried to get back in the Flash game when the current volume was relaunched with Mark Waid writing and Daniel Acuña doing the art. When it became clear two to three issues into it that this team was, putting it politely, short-term, I moved on just as quickly. But it was a done deal for sure that I was going to check out the anxiously awaited reunion of Geoff Johns and Scott Kolins back doing the character(s) they made so vital seven years ago in The Flash. It's hardly a coincidence either that the two Final Crisis spinoff series I'm most interested in are written by Johns, even more so than the main book that's fueling all of these other stories. Shoot, I have no idea what's even going on in Wally West's own regular book these days, but it's a good statement on Final Crisis: Rogues' Revenge #1 that I was gotten up to speed so quickly. If you've followed the adventures of the Scarlet Speedster in any way in the last few years and you're jumping back into it like I am, you should be good to go.
If I had any one complaint about Rogues' Revenge, and it's not anything that diminishes the impact of the story, it's the noticeable lack of, well, the Flash. To be fair, the title DOES underscore the principal players involved, but it wouldn't be a Rogues party without the Flash, am I right? Fortunately we're already a third of the way through this miniseries, and Johns' & Kolins' pacing already belies a turbocharged epic that could have big ramifications in the DC Universe. The creators waste little time setting the scene for our leads, Captain Cold, Weather Wizard, Heat Wave and Mirror Master, four of the Flash's baddest who are still on the run after breaking the number one rule of the Rogues: never kill a speedster. Cold realizes and convinces his cohorts that they have no one in their corner. Libra, the Final Crisis mastermind who has successfully aligned the most vile DCU villains to follow a new agenda, wants them to accept his invitations into the fold, though they're not having it. Just when they are ready to pack it in and get out of the villain game due to being America's Most Wanted for the murder of Bart Allen, the whippersnapper who duped them into their predicament, Inertia, has escaped captivity, and they know they have one last task to complete before moving on.
Not much turns me off in comics more than the idea of multiple spinoff series tied into an already massive companywide crossover. If it's not good enough for the main miniseries and the regular monthly titles that feature all these characters anyway, what's the point? I may be rethinking that now. I give all the credit in the world to the creative team involved here. Johns and Kolins know these characters inside out, and it shows. The guys are even crushing it with a character I believe they had little or nothing to do with, Inertia. And Johns knows how to handle the Final Crisis bits more prominently under the stewardship of Grant Morrison & Co. Turning down Libra's overtures to join the latest version of the Society is not going to do them any favors, to be sure. Plus the one prominent "unofficial Rogue" featured here, Zoom, is the one key villain who chose to ally himself with Libra in the main story, yet he's sill an invaluable component of Rogues' Revenge and he's got crazy designs on the fate of the Flash hierarchy.
The sublime artistry of Scott Kolins is razor sharp, too, and it totally sells the overall heft of this epic. "Book One" of Rogues' Revenge takes place around Keystone City primarily in the pouring rain during the mother of all thunderstorms (those paying a lot of attention lately will probably have a good idea what -- that is, who -- the likely catalyst of the storms is), and Kolins deserves a lot of credit for singlehandedly handling all the extra detail required of a cast who spends a lot of the issue soaked. Heck, in one instance during a major escape, the action takes place indoors, but the fire alarm sprinklers are tripped off and all hell breaks loose in the form of more downpours. Colorist Dave McCaig also should get credit for using a color palette that conveys the impending hell that's about to be unleashed upon Keystone as Captain Cold and his band of Rogues ready themselves for a mission of vengeance.
It's hard to tell who's going to come out of Final Crisis: Rogues' Revenge in one piece. The hints are there that we may even witness some sort of resurrection and/or redemption in this story when it's all said and done, I can only guess, but if the debut issue is any indication, Geoff Johns and Scott Kolins are going to blow some minds in the process.
Mighty Avengers #16
From: Marvel
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Art: Khoi Pham and Danny Miki (with Dean White)
Review by Troy Brownfield
Readers of big events have come to disdain what is called the "Red Sky" crossover; that means that a book is labeled as a crossover tie-in when in essence only a tiny part of the action reflects that larger event. The Avengers issues related to Secret Invasion have been the polar opposite of that; they're all deep background issues that thoroughly examine a small part of the big picture. No one says, "Hey, Skrulls are here," and that's it; we've gotten to see near-complete development of both the Spider-Woman and Hank Pym infiltrations. Similarly, this issue takes us back to a few key points in the Elektra/Skrull storyline.
There are a couple of decently sized revelations contained in this issue, with the first stretching back to New Avengers #1. In fact, the dialogue there made me pull out a few old issues, and you can bet that some of that will make its way into a future installment of "Damn Dirty Skrulls: What We Know Now". Yes, it really does look like all of this was there all along, though it was played with incredible subtlety. That actually enhances the experience of reading this one, as in of itself its kind of choppy. I understand the effect that Bendis is pursuing (short vignettes of the larger Elektra switch), but it came off as seemingly incomplete. I think that if you went back at the end of this issue and re-read the Ronin arc, it would feel more cohesive.
On the art chores, Pham and company do solid work, particularly in two major fight sequences. There's a nice flow to Pham's panel-to-panel action, and you get a fluid sense of motion. Pham also draws some nice combination Super-Skrulls, an ongoing feature that's one of my favorite bits of the whole SI affair ("Look! That one's Spider-Man crossed with Moon Boy and Madcap!").
While it will be a kick to get back to reading Avengers team adventures in the Avengers team books, Bendis has quite cleverly deployed his knot of titles to present a stronger overall narrative. Some of the individual stories may be more entertaining than others, but it's smart work.
Joker's Asylum: Poison Ivy
Writer: JT Krul
Art and cover: Guillem March
Published by DC
Review by Lan Pitts
With The Dark Knight in full swing, DC is churning out everything and anything with Joker's name on it. Makes sense, right? Joker's Asylum is a series of one-shots with Poison Ivy being number three out of five. The issue plays out like an origin story and a story by itself, though told by the Joker. I loved it almost instantly after the second page because not only does the Joker "tell" the story, he does it in the way that pays homage to Tales from the Crypt. I loved that show as a kid. And when I say "kid", I mean eight or nine years old. I have been told that all the stories are, in fact, narrated by the Joker and they make a pretty dang good read.
The script, written by JT Krul of Aspen fame, plays out almost like an adult version of Batman: The Animated Series. Poison Ivy is killing people for the love of nature. Batman does his detective work, discovers a pattern. Though while in B:TAS, she would be stopped and sent back to Arkham. Instead, she really does a number on her final victim that is truly worthy of Tales from the Crypt. There are two more issues of this set and I can only imagine what it's store for Scarecrow and Two-Face. I still need to pick up the first two issues, but moving, packing and unpacking is taking a chunk of my time and to run to my comic shop is a bit of a pain now.
I like how this issue makes every Bat-villain seem like they impose a threat and that Joker isn't the only crazy one abound. We really see what Batman faces almost everyday with the chaos that even Ivy can bring to the table. She's more than an overzealous plant nut, she's an eco-terrorist that can "talk" to the trees and plants of our planet. She will stop at nothing to save anything from the mightiest redwood, to the tiniest blade of grass. She is to be taken just as seriously because she can be just as dangerous as the big boys.
The art is by the talented Guillem March, who has worked on Playboy Magazine Spain and other miscellaneous magazines and design projects, really shines in this title. His style is quasi-anime with some pretty solid line work. He draws Ivy as like a forest nymph, whose skin reflects the color of green life without her looking like a She-Hulk rip-off or appearing sea sick. I should go out and try to find this set, if they're just as good as this one; it's going to be worth the trip.
Too Cool To Be Forgotten
Writer/artist: Alex Robinson
From: Top Shelf Productions
Review by J. Caleb Mozzocco
After the amusing little tangent of his Dungeons & Dragons-like Lower Regions, Alex Robinson returns to somewhat more serious and sustained work with Too Cool To Be Forgotten, a deceptively powerful work that lives up to his very best work in graphic novels Box Office Poison and Tricked while narrowing the focus from a cast of characters to a single protagonist.
And make no mistake, Robinson is a true graphic novelist; that's not just publishing buzz-speak or a term grown from embarrassment over funnybooks. Robinson's works are built, function and read like novels, albeit novels with panels instead of paragraphs.
He's working rather high concept here, as his middle-aged protagonist Andy Wicks goes to a hypnotist at his wife's urging in an attempt to give up smoking. Something goes unexpectedly, however, and he finds himself back in 1985, attending high school in his high school body, but with his forty-something brain and memories.
Not entirely sure what's going on, but eventually assuming he's been sent back in time to before he started smoking so that he could refuse his first cigarette, Andy tries to re-muddle through high school, with the perception of a grown man.
Getting a second chance to re-do one's formative years right is a common fantasy, and Robinson plays it as both a dream come true and a bit of a nightmare, as Andy asks out the girl he was too shy to ask out in high school, shows his mom how much he appreciates all she's done for him, and so on.
However Andy has a bit of pressure some of us might not have—in the future, he's a parent, so if he doesn't retrace his steps exactly, his daughter might not ever be born, potentially dooming him to reliving his whole life as he already did to make sure he still meets his future wife and makes his daughter with her.
I won't say of this book that "I laughed, I cried," but I certainly snickered to myself a few times, and I did tear up a little near the end, when Andy seizes the second chance he most needed to take. Shorter and less sprawling than Box Office Poison and Tricked, Too Cool To Be Forgotten might seem like a slighter work, but it may just be Robinson's best work to date. And considering the man's resume, that's really saying something.
Props to cover designer Matt Kindt and Top Shelf for a killer book design too; the squat book is shaped and designed to resemble a giant pack of Kool brand cigarettes.
Amor Y Cohetes
Written & Illustrated by Gilbert Hernandez, Jaime Hernandez & Mario Hernandez
Published by Fantagraphics
Reviewed by Michael C Lorah
The Education of Hopey Glass
Written & Illustrated by Jaime Hernandez
Published by Fantagraphics
Reviewed by Michael C Lorah
From 1981 to 1996, Los Bros Hernandez, Gilbert and Jamie, created fifty issues of their seminal comic book series Love & Rockets. Amor Y Cohetes is the final of seven books that collect the entirety of those initial fifty comic books by the brothers, compiling all of the non-Locas tales by Jaime, Gilbert's non-Palomar shorts, and a handful of narratives by the occasional contributor, Gilbert and Jaime's brother Mario.
While each of the six previous editions Fantagraphics has put out is the gold standard for comic books, the stories in Amor Y Cohetes are primarily of interest to fans of Los Bros. Much of the work in this book was created before either brother had developed his cartooning voice or established the central core of what became their respective magnum opus. Consequently, the first half of Amor is a jumble of not-quite-developed shorts and odd gags.
Fortunately for fans of the family's creative output, the quality quickly picks up as each brother finds his muse, and later tales are focused and clear, deliberately playing against type or pushing boundaries that are not open for exploration in their central work. Jamie's "Rocky" stories are whimsical, sci-fi exploration at its finest, while Gilbert plays with biographies Frida Kahlo and unleashes the surreal "My Love Book." Mario, the comics dabbler, shows enough promise to make you wish he'd do more L&R work, but the peculiar political satire of his Marzipan strips never feels entirely coherent. Mario's Harvey-Kurtzman-gone-banzai artwork does become extremely worth reading in later stories, however. Long-time readers will certainly love seeing Jaime's Maggie and Hopey characters filtered through Gilbert's surreal prism, while Jaime takes Gilbert's cast for a humanistic stroll.
While Amor Y Cohetes collects early stories, The Education of Hopey Glass is Jaime's most recent book, two novellas that focus on long-time protagonists Hopey and Ray. "Day by Day with Hopey" is Jaime as his finest, tracking the titular protagonist during the final week before starting a new job. For established Love & Rockets readers, there's plenty of meat, including Hopey's possible maturation (a real job? for Hopey?) played against her emotional and social irresponsibilities. For new readers (and I say this based on actual evidence; my L&R-neophyte girlfriend having read this book before I did), the fundamental core of the characters is easy to pick up, and Jaime's elegant depiction of their relationships remains among the most nuanced and engaging character work in fiction today.
The second narrative tells of the evolving relationship between Maggie's one-time paramour Ray and Vivian, while also exploring Maggie's current relationship and Vivian's recent abusive boyfriend. Slick and clean, the linework is gorgeous as ever, while the storytelling is pristinely clear.
Praised by nearly everybody for twenty-five years now, there's little I can say that hasn't been said thousands of times. Amor Y Cohetes and The Education of Hopey Glass are both testaments to how varied Los Bros's voices are and the indisputable quality of their legendary cartooning. You'll find few books, if any, this year that I'll recommend as highly.
Writer: Elizabeth Genco
Artist: Sami Makkonen
From: Desperado Publishing
Review by J. Caleb Mozzocco
The Bluebeard fairy tale gets a modern update in this original graphic novel by writer Elizabeth Genco and artist Sami Makkonen, in which the evil duke/ogre is a successful rock star and his young victim is his ex-girlfriend, a waitress in a café who does music on the side (and presumably keeps it realer than her sellout ex).
The update elements all work rather well, with rich celebrity being the new royal, a many-roomed mansion being the new castle, and collecting ninja weapons giving a perfect excuse for a sword to be lying around when someone needs a good stabbing.
The comparisons between the original work and the modern dysfunctional relationship are a natural fit too, particularly in our post-post-modern fairy tale world in which the reading of our great-great-grandparents' bedtime stories for symbolism is old hat (And it's worth noting that, even if you don't know what Genco and Makkonen are riffing on, the story still works just fine as a supernatural thriller with some magical realist elements—although I believe the publishing industry it term for such elements is "urban fantasy" these days).
Oddly, it's not the villain but the heroine who has the blue hair here, and it's on top of her head, not sprouting from her chin, contributing to the post-punk Suicide Girl aesthetic of our girl Blue (I'm going to go for my personal record of the most usages of the prefix "post-" in a single review, apparently).
Even odder, she also gets a superpower for some reason—Genco and Makkonen do know comics don't have have superpowered people in 'em, right?— she can turn into animals, though only small ones that she understands on an emotional level (thus negating the possibility of turning into a gorilla or tiger and superpowering her way out of her dilemma).
Makkonen's artwork bears a passing resemblance to that of Ben Templesmith and Bill Sienkiewicz, and more than a passing resemblance to that of Ashely Wood (If a Wood-drawn woman and a Makkonen-drawn woman were both in a police line-up, I would likely have trouble picking out the one who mugged me).
His character designs are sketchy and abstracted, but not to the point of losing cohesion. He uses a lot of elegantly applied lines, giving the work a lot of texture; it all looks somewhat flat and two-dimensional, but the lines all seem to have weight to them.
The color scheme is a sort of gray-filled black and white, with Blue's blue hair the only color, aside from the blue color-scheme that any animal shape she takes on keeps. The black, white and one-color gimmick is an older trick, but it's a clever one, and it's employed to good effect here.
It, with Makkonen's line-work, helps elevate the story, so that even the parts that might seem a bit trite if read in straight prose take on a lyrical quality that can only come from well-drawn comics.
Rounding out the book are about twenty pages of back matter, including a previous collaboration from the creative team (a short story entitled "Yes, Mother"), rather extensive notes from Genco, including the text of the original popular version of the fairy tale and some insight into some of her particular creative choices, plus sketches from Makkonen.
ZMD: Zombies of Mass Destruction #1
From: Red 5 Comics
Written by: Kevin Grevioux
Art By: Geraldo Borges,
Reviewed by Tim Janson
Red 5 Comics gave us when of the best new independent series of the past year with their quirky and retro Atomic Robo. Their latest series is a bit more conventional in plot as they jump on the zombie bandwagon with ZMD: Zombies of Mass Destruction. The comic shelves are getting pretty crowded with books on the living dead these days. Everybody wants to try their hand it seems with their own take on the flesh-eating ghouls. Kevin Grevioux's story mixes zombies with current political events of continued tensions in the Middle East. It's funny…I say current political events but there's been tension in the Middle East ever since I've been alive and it dates back long before me.
The setting is Iran, realizing many American's fears of a war with Iraq's neighbor. Reports of fighting in Iran are denied by the Vice President however his words are pasted over a stealth bomber that is dropping biohazard canisters over the war zone. However, this is not a chemical or biological agent, these are actual zombies, who becoming living (or is that dead?) weapons of death against Iranian soldiers. The zombies attack and kill everything in their path. The most ingenious part about the zombies is that the scientists have created them with something called photonecrosis which means, like vampires, they turn to dust when the sun rises. When an American team comes in for the clean up, however, they find one of the zombies unaccounted for.
ZMD takes the traditional zombie tale and gives it a needed twist. How many tales can you read about small bands of people trying to survive a zombie plague? It's been done to death…or undeath…whatever…Grevioux at least gets his story out of the box and provides a fresh approach to zombies.
Art wise, Geraldo Borges art is competent but not spectacular. It seems a bit uneven in spots and that might be chalked up to the book's having three different inkers. His best work comes on how he depicts the zombies. They are suitably decomposed and horrific and the gore spouts freely. Red 5 has done a solid job putting out interesting mini-series and while I'm not ready to put ZMD in the same class as Atomic Robo, I'll certainly be back for issue #2.
The Rabid Vol. 1
Writer: Jason M. Burns
Artist: Guy Lemay
From: Viper Comics
Review by J. Caleb Mozzocco
A perhaps inevitable side-effect of the number screenwriters being welcomed into the world of comics and the number of comic books getting picked up to be turned into movies is the number of comics that seem read like movies.
I don't necessarily mean that as a value judgment, since there are good movies as well as bad movies, but there the last few years have seen a sharp increase in comics that read like rejected screenplays illustrated by comics artists, or auditions for film adaptations.
The Rabid is an example of the former—it's very easy to imagine that prolific writer Jason M. Burns began this project as an on spec screenplay, as it's structured as a C-movie horror project, something that might get released in January or February, covering every single cliché of the zombiepocalypse genre and even ending with an "Oh no the menace isn't over after all!" shock scene. I half expected the credits to roll when I finished.
As unimaginative as this particular comic might be, Burns is actually something of a minor master of the high-concept pitch. His other comics include a ventriloquist/ventriloquist's dummy buddy cop team, an underground railroad that usher's dead folks into the next world before the devil can get them, and others I'd need more too long to explain. The comics aren't always that hot (I loved Dummy Guide's To Danger, but had to struggle through Underground Railroad, and couldn't even make it through The Expendable One), but the ideas tend to be big ones.
The concept here isn't quite so high. There's this 28 Days Later-like virus that turns people into cannibals who, for all intents and purposes, are zombies, even if they're not technically undead (You wouldn't believe how many arguments I've had over whether or not 28 Days Later is a zombie movie or not, based on that distinction). Dogs get it through the air, but transmit it to humans through their saliva, and humans pass it on by biting other humans.
So when it breaks out in a small town, pet dogs start going bonkers and biting their masters, and then they start turning on each other. The town's sheriff, his family and two fellow officers, and a couple of other characters from central casting make their way to the police station, try to hold off a siege of the infected, and then try to make a break for it.
The expected action, gore, violence, interpersonal conflict, quip-heavy Hollywood banter and occasional bursts of horror humor (like a little fluffy dog getting batted down with a frying pan) ensues.
The thing is, Burns nails all these clichés so, as rote an exercise as it is, it's hardly a failure. The bar is so low it's laying on the ground, but he hops over it gracefully enough.
The art is provided by Guy Lemay, and here The Rabid really separates itself from the pack of wannabe/wanted-to-be movie comics. Lemay eschews the typical style for such projects, boasting a Paul Grist-like flat, semi-abstracted, square-filled style that subverts the script's Hollywood pastiche nicely, essentially comic book-ing the thing up as much as humanely possible.
Write Now! Magazine #18: Stan lee 85th Birthday Tribute
Published by: TwoMorrows Publishing
Edited by: Danny Fingeroth
Reviewed by Tim Janson
Write Now is one of the many outstanding publications put out by TwoMorrows Publishing. The latest issue is a special 85th birthday tribute to the one and only, Stan Lee. Lee certainly has his detractors. He's been labeled at times an unapologetic self-promoter and others claim he doesn't give due credit to those artists who helped create many of those great Marvel Comics characters. Hogwash! I've read and seen dozens of interviews with Stan over the years. Self-promoter? No! Comics and Marvel Comics promoter? Absolutely! I've seen and read Stan gush about the fantastic work of artists who have no business being called fantastic. People get caught up in Stan's mystique. He's a modern day P.T. Barnum, a brilliant showman and orator who is always "on".
The fact is that Stan Lee is the most important, and influential person in comic book history and there's not even a close second. Look beyond the characters he created (or co-created if you will) and look at his body of work. He's been in the comic book business from virtually the day they started, straight out of high school, no less. In the late 1940s and again in the mid-1950s, when the comic book business was at some of it's lowest points, it was Lee who virtually kept Timely/Atlas afloat. When superhero comics all but died out, Stan switched over to westerns, war, romance, and Sci-Fi…whatever he could to stay in business.
When the Comics Code Authority was put in place, killing off many companies, Stan was able to adjust Atlas' content to meet the tighter restrictions. Likely, without Stan's astute management, the company doesn't even survive until the 1960s to give us The Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, the X-Men, and all the rest. And lets not forget, Stan hired many artists and writers who would go on to be come legends in the industry. Guys like Jack Kirby and Roy Thomas were going nowhere at DC and Stan gave them new life at Marvel.
Write Now presents a fitting tribute from dozens of artists and writers, past and present. Some of these take the form of interviews while others submit their memories of working with Stan. Those paying tribute reads like a who's who of the industry: John Romita Sr., Stan's brother Larry Lieber, Gene Colan, Joe Sinnott, Roy Thomas, Denny O' Neil, Marv Wolfman, Todd McFarlane, Dan DiDio, and film producer Michael Uslan, to name just a few.
One thing that is very evident from reading each of the pieces is Stan's extraordinary enthusiasm and energy. Many mention the legendary plotting sessions where Stan would jump on tables and desks and act out how he thought scenes should be done. Many of the artists noted that Stan was very trusting of their abilities. Rarely did he ask them to re-draw or change their work. He may advise a different way to do it in the future but it's clear Stan showed his artists a great deal of respect and they enjoyed working with him. And lets not forget, many of these guys have known Stan for over fifty years!
One of my favorite interviews in the magazine is with "Fabulous" Flo Steinberg, Stan's secretary in the 1960's who handled opening and reading all the fan mail that fans sent it, passing the best letters on to Stan to be answered. Flo was often mentioned in the comics during the 60's and it was great to hear from her.
Reading through the magazine is like being a part of a Stan Lee tribute roast…without the bad jokes. It's filled with great stories and great memories. Definitely pick this one up!
Spike: After the Fall #1 (IDW; review by Troy): I'm somewhat given to think that this spin-off mini is a little unnecessary, almost like the story could have been told in the regular Angel book. On the other hand, we just had a big flashback arc there, and that needed to move forward again. So, here we are. Clearly this is a story that all involved wanted to tell, and Spike is indeed an entertaining character. Lynch has, after all, handled Spike as writer for work prior to the ongoing Angel series, and his easy comfort and humor with the character does indeed make the book worth a look. I'm still not totally sold on the art of Franco Urru; I think that it might be really sharp with a separate inker; as it is, I think certain elements lack definition. I'll recommend this one to fans, but the real action is the main title (and Buffy, of course).
The Flash #242 (DC; review by Troy): I've gotten more into Tom Peyer's take on the book, and he does a good job with the dilemma of the rapidly aging Iris. Many elements of the Flash mythos are in positive play here, including the welcome appearance of Gorilla City. I'm also warming up a bit more to the art of Freddie E. Williams II. He seems to be finding his stride, even if his faces on Wally are occasionally oddly angular.
Trinity #7 (DC; review by Richard): Seven issues into the series and it has been an enjoyable ride. The stories tie together nicely and do a good job of keeping the reader engaged while continually moving the story forward. The biggest problem of the series remains the abrupt endings that happen at the end of every story. Just as a reader gets into the story it is "To Be Continued", sure the wait is only a week, but the structure of the story and the back-up tales should allow for a little more page control to balance out the story's flow. This issues backup is a perfect example of this problem. Sure it was neat to see Firestorm learn about Kronas and the Cosmic Egg, but it seems that update could have been handled more efficiently to allow more pages to the main story (although I do admit I quite enjoyed the sly reference to the JLA/Avengers mini-series). Bagley's art continues to remain consistent, but his Superman looks a bit to young compared to his look in other titles. Bagley is a workhorse though and has been improving issue to issue. Solid read from a solid creative group.
Incredible Hercules #119 (Marvel; review by Troy): The pure fun of this book turns a bit more serious as the God Squad suffers a staggering betrayal. This is just top-flight super-hero action. Pak and Van Lente do a tremendous job month-in/month-out on this thing, and Rafa Sandoval and Roger Bonet hold up their end terrifically. It's almost an internet cliché to praise this book by now, but it deserves it. Marvel has a huge head of a steam with some of its "smaller" books (Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain Britain and MI:13, this one), and I'd like to see that continue.
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Response to Intervention (RTI)
Response to Intervention (RTI) is a comprehensive student-centered assessment and intervention framework used to identify and address individual student difficulties before referral to special education. In using the RTI approach, students receive research-based intervention and assessment. Rather than waiting for a student to fail, interventions and assessments are designed to meet the needs of each student with individualized instruction.
The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) launched its RTI initiative with statewide institutes in Roanoke in November 2007 and in Newport News in December 2007. A third institute convened April 1-2, 2008, in Fredericksburg.
The Virginia RTI guidance document, Responsive Instruction: Refining Our Work of Teaching All Children (PDF), was disseminated in fall 2007 and sent to all school divisions in our state.
Below are links to Virginia's RTI guidance document and supplemental monographs along with information related to RTI and special education.
- Universal Screening as a Component of RTI (PDF)
- The Two Models of RTI: Standard Protocol and Problem Solving (PDF)
- RTI and the Special Education Eligibility Process: Frequently Asked Questions (PDF)
- About RTI (Handout) : Fast Fact (April 2010) Response to Intervention (RTI): Parent Notification (PDF)


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If you've been searching for a WordPress theme on ThemeForest lately, you may have noticed a service named'Envato Hosted' being promoted. As you may have figured, this recently launched service is from Envato, the site's parent firm, and is supplying managed WordPress hosting. Envato Quora
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As well As managing a number of the chief facets of your WordPress website (something we are going to be covering in more depth below), and supplying you with everything you want to begin a new website, one of the principal selling points of the innovative service is access to one of the participating ThemeForest topics as part of your subscription fee.
Having a Single point of contact for domain registration, site hosting, theme provision, and the managing of items like website updates and backups sounds really convenient, but is that this service worth your money? And does it deliver the functionality your site requirements?
Let's Have a look.
About the Envato Hosted Managed WordPress Hosting Service
Envato Aim to simplify the process of establishing a WordPress site with their new hosting service. Now, rather than registering a domain name with one company, buying a WordPress theme out of a different, and then signing up for an internet hosting service elsewhere, and of course linking all those bits together, with Envato Hosted, you can access all these components through one single account, with one recurring monthly payment.
Not only That, however the Envato Hosted team will also take good care of website copies, core software upgrades and much more to help ensure your site is always running smoothly.
What Do You Get With Envato Hosted?
The Convenience of a one-stop shop for all your WordPress website needs does seem attractive. We'll cover the pricing details in more depth later in this review, however at $19.99 per month, it is clear that this isn't cheap, hosting. So let us see what you get for your money.
The Envato Hosted theme installation and setup service is ideal for anybody who is new to WordPress or brief time. After a clean installation of WordPress was performed, your subject of choice (from the available options) will be installed and activated in your brand new website.
If You already have a WordPress website, you'll be very happy to know the Envato Hosted package comprises a migration of your website and its content into your new hosting account. Additionally, it includes optional domain name registration and configuration, and connects your domain to your server space to ensure your website can be seen at your preferred URL.
ThemeForest Is the most significant WordPress themes marketplace, with more than 8,000 options. Among the greatest attractions of Envato Hosted is you get one of these themes included as part of your hosting program.
Regrettably, In the time of writing, just a small selection of WordPress themes were available as part of their Envato Hosted service. Hopefully, in the future, more theme authors will choose to opt in, but, for the time being, you may select from the best selling, multipurpose Avada, Enfold, Bridge, Jupiter, and The7 themes, amongst others.
WordPress Website hosting packages tend to fall into two classes, managed and unmanaged. Envato Hosted are in the former class, and, as a part of the managed service, updates into the WordPress core software and security checks will be carried out on your own behalf. Your site will also be tracked in real time for errors, ensuring any issues are detected after they arise. Envato Quora
Click Here to sign up to Envato Marketplace now!
As Part of the managed hosting security measures, the Envato Hosted system engineers are proactive in scanning websites for malware and other issues, and DDoS protection can also be set up to keep your website online. If an issue is discovered, the support team will start work solving it, while also notifying you of this situation. This proactive strategy also applies to assisting with hacked websites.
Contemplating It's not unheard of for some web hosts to just take your site offline if they detect a potential security issue, it is excellent to see that the Envato Hosted team will be able to work as soon as an issue is struck, while also keeping you in the loop as to what's happening.
Maybe Unsurprisingly, the Envato Hosted service runs on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure. As a result of this, your WordPress website will be hosted on the effective AWS cloud-computing servers.
More Information about the Envato Hosted hosting environment comprises:
· Websites mostly hosted in Virginia, US, with a few limited availability in Europe.
· PHP version 5.6 with plans to push PHP7 in Q1 2017.
· Apache and NGINX nodes.
· HTTP/2 upgraded network protocol allowed across the plank.
· SSL supplied for all domain names, free of charge, via Let's Encrypt.
Currently, There's no website staging service provided, but this has been considered for the future.
Site Snapshots can also be taken nightly, and backups are stored for 30 days (and stored offsite in Amazon S3 storage for extra safety). At the moment, if you'd like to restore a backup, you will need to open a ticket to request the support team to carry out this task. But, Envato Hosted hopes to enable self-initiated backups and restores from the first quarter of 2017.
Regrettably, The Envato Hosted service does not include any email hosting or management solutions. However, you can join your own Envato hosting accounts to one of the supported email providers.
Therefore, If you're already using an email provider like google Apps or Office 365, you can link your domain name to the service. If not, signing up with one of those services is the best alternative for receiving and sending mails using your site's domain name.
After You have signed up using Envato Hosted, you can contact the support team around the clock. Tickets may be opened from within your Envato hosting accounts dashboard, giving you a central place for managing your site and helpdesk correspondence.
Although Live chat is being considered for the long run, there's no telephone support service, with email being the only way to get in contact with the team. During the testing with this particular review, the Envato Hosted service team responded quickly to any tickets that were opened.
As part Of the client onboarding process, you will also receive a one-on-one session with a member of the support team. This is a great chance to ask any questions that you may have or iron out some problems that may occur while establishing your site. Envato Quora
After You've signed up using Envato Hosted, you will have the ability to log in to your account dashboard. From the dashboard area, you can view your active hosting plans, the details of your WordPress website, along with other important details.
We will Cover the usage limitations in the pricing section. But, it's possible to easily view how much of your visitor, disk quota, and bandwidth allowance you've absorbed from your Envato Hosted dashboard.
Envato Hosted Performance
Having Your pick from a choice of high quality WordPress themes, as well as all the other fantastic features covered above, is good. But perhaps the most important reason to select 1 web host over the following is how quickly they could serve your site to your visitors.
This Guide explains why website speed is so essential. Suffice to say, if you want to have more visitors, a better consumer experience, and increased target conversion rates, then you need to do all you can to improve the speed of your WordPress website. With that in mind, let's look at the loading times we experienced while analyzing Envato Hosted for this review.
Envato Hosted User Experience
On Paper, Envato Hosted offers everything a brand new WordPress user may want. So, let us find out how easy this support would be to use in practice.
As This is a hands-on Envato Hosted review, for testing purposes, we did sign up and launch a new WordPress site. Even though the time from beginning the signup process to being able to log into the new WordPress site wasn't instant, it only took about five minutes. But a significant part of that time was spent staring at a screen wondering what was happening.
There Were a few hiccups along the way, like the links into the site and control panel which were sent over not yet being busy. This was probably due to domain name system (DNS) configurations taking some time to spread, and also the new URL being in the process of going live. But because there's no mention of those delays and possible issues during the setup process, it somewhat taints the suitability of Envato Hosted for inexperienced WordPress users.
Straightforward Progress messages and notices about flaws would be a simple way to overcome these issues and keep users informed.
In General, Though, getting started with Envato Hosted and launch a brand new WordPress website is relatively straightforward. You really can register a domain name, select a theme, and choose which demo to have set up, all through a single signup process. But whilst everything did work, the enrollment procedure felt somewhat rough round the edges compared with this of Envato Hosted's competitors.
GTmetrix Website Speed Test Results
The Loading times of the test site were also quantified with GTmetrix, another popular performance reporting instrument. Envato Quora
GTmetrix Recorded the webpage loading time in 2.2 seconds, which can be comparable with the Pingdom results.
For the Sake of comparison, another test WordPress site, also using Avada and also the same Agency demo, took just over a second longer to load on a cheap, entry-level shared hosting account.
Pingdom Site Speed Test Success
Pingdom is a popular monitoring service, and Among the greatest ways to assess the performance of a website. After signing up using Envato Hosted, the Avada theme was installed along with the Agency demo website content imported.
As The Avada Agency demo homepage includes a multimedia slider with video content and other big files, it was decided a more standard page in the demo, composed of text and images, would yield more relevant results. Once the test WordPress site was put up, Pingdom listed the loading times of the internal blog article at 30-minute intervals.
After Monitoring site rate with Pingdom, the average load time over the previous seven days for our WordPress site, hosted by Envato with the Avada theme and its own Agency demonstration, was 2.96 seconds, with a YSlowperformance grade of 85/100. The loading times were recorded at regular intervals during the testing period.
Website Uptime was also tracked with Pingdom. During the testing, six cases of downtime were detected, with the site unavailable for 15 minutes in total. This resulted in a uptime of 99.85percent based on Pingdom. Although the website returned to its available state with no intervention, the longest period of downtime as could be seen from the image below — has been a slightly worrying nine minutes.
Envato Hosted Pricing Details
Envato Will host your WordPress site for $19.99 per month or $190 yearly, and taxes.
This Price also includes any qualifying WordPress theme out of ThemeForest, such as best-selling options such as Avada, X Theme, and Enfold. Also contained in the service is the setup of your preferred theme and its presentation, as well as continuing support for your site. Free migration of a current WordPress site to your hosting account is also included.
As Mentioned, because the Envato Hosted support is completely managed, the staff will treat WordPress core upgrades, provide base-level safety, monitor your site for mistakes, and back up the site daily.
When it Comes to use, your own $19.99 per month or $190 annually comprises 100,000 monthly visits, 5GB of disk space, and 100GB of monthly bandwidth. These quotas are soft limits, and nothing automatic will happen if you go over them. Instead, if excess usage is detected, expect to be contacted by the support team to discuss a solution which works for both parties. There are no overage fees in place at the moment.
For Comparison, the entry level WP Engine managed WordPress hosting plan comprises 25,000 monthly visits, 10GB of disk space, and unlimited bandwidth for $29 a month. To get a more budget-friendly option, SiteGround provide their own take on managed WordPress hosting for as little as $9.95 a month, which includes an allowance of up to 10,000 monthly visitors and 10GB of disk space. Envato Quora
But, Neither of these competitor options comprises a premium ThemeForest WordPress theme and installation. The allure of the Envato Hosted service is having everything in 1 location, under one account, including your domain name, hosting support, WordPress theme, and service team.
You can Attempt Envato Hosted for free within a seven-day trial. You'll have to enter your payment details to begin, but the trial period is a fantastic way to learn for yourself how the agency functions.
Components is a service out of Envato That intends to provide creators and makers having an ever-expanding library of digital assets for their own projects. If you'd like access to a large and expanding collection of movies, sound files, photographs, graphics, illustrations, fonts, HTML templates, and WordPress themes and plugins, as well as other content afterward Envato Elements might be just what you're looking for.
Moreover, Envato Elements subscribers now also get access to 1,200 video classes and eBooks from EnvatoTuts+. As a result of this, you do not just get access to nearly 1 million digital assets but also the educational content to help you work with them effectively.
Inside This Envato Components review, we will explore what this service offers, how it functions, and how much it costs to help you determine if this is a great alternative for your requirements.
Testing with the Seventeen WordPress Theme
Although Avada is among the most popular WordPress themes around, its wealth of features and performance may be overkill for some projects. If your requirements are more modest and you'd love to know how Envato Hosted plays a more minimal WordPress theme, we also tested a website using the free Twenty Seventeen theme from the WordPress.org team.
Contrary to Avada, the free Twenty Seventeen motif does not contain or rely on any plugins. Therefore, this no frills WordPress theme gave Envato Hosted a great chance to demonstrate how fast it could deliver a web site. With an average loading time of 335 milliseconds, along with also a grade operation more than seven days of testing, Envato Hosted certainly has the capacity to quickly serve a WordPress site to your viewers.
Although An uptime of 99.85percent was listed by Pingdom during our first round of testing, there was no downtime listed in our second seven-day phase of testing.
Your Requirements and the last configuration of your website will likely sit somewhere between one of those full-featured Avada demos as well as the minimal Twenty Seventeen theme. Your results will definitely vary from ours, but ours should give you a rough idea about what to expect from Envato Hosted. What's more, using a seven-day free trial, you should have sufficient time to carry out speed testing of your site prior to making a final decision on Envato Hosted.
Do not Overlook, there are lots of approaches to create WordPress quicker that we didn't make use of on our test site, such as optimizing your content more efficiently and choosing your plugins wisely. Think of your primary site speed testing results as a baseline that can be improved in a number of ways. Envato Quora
It is Also worth pointing out that though Envato Hosted does not prohibit using any specific plugins (like any other handled WordPress hosts), they do indicate avoiding caching plugins, as Envato already applies server caching to all websites in their own platform. However, while Envato Hosted doesn't yet preserve their own content delivery network (CDN), you are free to take advantage of a third-party CDN of your choice — another popular way to speed up a WordPress website.
Testing The speed of a web site and its web host isn't as easy as it may seem. Running a manual test with a reputable service like Pingdom or GTmetrix can produce wildly varying outcomes from one moment to the next. To counteract this, for our evaluations, the premium Pingdom service was used to mechanically record the rate of this evaluation site at 30-minute spans around the clock for seven days.
There Are so many elements that could impact the load times of your website, including your choice of motif, which plugins you're using, what sort of content you are publishing, just how many visitors are trying to get your site at the same period, and where these visitors are located. However, these test results must provide you some notion about what to expect from Envato Hosted.
What is Envato Elements?
Envato Elements is A subscription service which provides you with access to over 900,000 downloadable electronic assets for your projects. To keep things easy, Envato Elements offers two pricing strategies — monthly and annual — with both supporting unlimited downloads. Thanks to a recent change to their own pricing model, the two alternatives (rather than just the annual plan) now consist of access to this 900+ WordPress plugins and themes accessible Envato Elements.
Unlike some other Premium picture and digital asset services, you won't have to worry about credits and download limits. This strategy from Envato Elements is excellent since it provides you the ability to experiment with different files prior to making a final decision on which to use to your own project.
When it comes to Content creation, the Envato Elements assets are made by a community of independent designers. These designers are compensated for their efforts by means of a revenue sharing model. Fifty percent of net revenue is reportedly shared with all the content creators who provide the assets for Envato Elements.
Who's Envato Elements For?
We'll look at some Of the articles available in more detail later within this Envato Components review. However, to give you a clearer idea of that could benefit from signing up for this service, some groups in the target market comprise:
Site owners who need a varied choice of WordPress theme and plugins.
Bloggers who demand high-quality images for their articles. Envato Quora
Web designers who require WordPress topics, HTML templates, and other assets for their websites.
T-shirt along with other merchandise creators who hunt starter graphics and templates for their designs.
Graphic designers along with other illustrators who would enjoy more brushes, fonts, actions, and layer styles.
Business owners who'd appreciate ready-made stationery, business card, and site templates.
Audio producers looking for sound effects to their compositions.
Vloggers looking for stock video files and video templates for their content.
Podcasters who'd discover a large library of sound idents for their episodes useful.
As you can see, Anybody generating visual information, and now audio content, is a portion of their Envato Elements target market. If you've ever struggled to get a suitable featured picture for a blog article or you would like to accelerate your design workflow by simply starting with a template or utilizing activities and presets to your favourite applications, Envato Elements might aid you. Now that WordPress themes and plugins are also available within the ceremony, anybody who owns a WordPress site or works on this platform should also think about signing up using Envato Element.
As you can see from The aforementioned image, there are two options for subscribing to Envato Elements:
daily plan: $33 plus applicable local taxes charged monthly.
Yearly plan: $198 plus applicable local taxes charged annual (equal to $16.50 per month).
As mentioned Earlier in this Envato Components review, you no longer have to pay annually to access the 900+ WordPress plugins and themes (along with the other assets) as it now does not matter if you choose to pay monthly or yearly, you can download everything available from Envato Elements while your subscription is active.
But, there's Still a benefit of paying annual, and that's that you'll save 50 percent over the year in comparison to paying yearly.
Another Fantastic reason To consider joining Envato Element is you can cancel your subscription at any time and still retain the rights to use any things that you downloaded and registered throughout your time as a contributor. However, we'll be covering the permit details in more depth later on in this Envato Elements review.
What Can You Get Access To?
In the time of Writing this Envato Elements review, the things in the resources repository consist of:
WordPress Themes (914 items) including blogging, portfolio, company, ecommerce, and multi-purpose themes.
WordPress Plugins (315 items) including email advertising, forms, media player, and societal media plugins.
Photographs (634,637 objects ) including high quality landscape, food, folks, and tech royalty-free stock photos.
Pictures (16,157 items) including illustrations, wallpapers, vectors, icons, and objects.
Graphic Templates (29,694 items) including product mockups, UX and UI kits, and infographics.
Add-ons (1,250 objects ) including actions and presets, brushes, and layer styles. Envato Quora
Fonts (3,718 objects ) including serif, sans-serif, and decorative fonts.
Presentation Templates (7,506 items) including PowerPoint and Keynote templates.
Web Templates (1,786 objects ) for example email, admin, site, and landing page templates.
CMS Templates (842 items) such as Shopify, Drupal, Magento, Ghost, and Tumblr templates.
3D Renders (18,257 items) including a wide array of objects.
Stock Video (98,085 objects ) including stock video footage and moves images.
Video Templates (7,031 items) including broadcast packs, product promos, and names.
Music (11,187 items) including royalty free music tracks and idents.
Audio Effects (77,893 items) including animal, game, character, and animation sounds.
WordPress users Will observe that there are now WordPress plugins and themes available within Envato Elements. There is not the selection to match ThemeForest, the biggest WordPress theme marketplace, or CodeCanyon, the plugin marketplace, both also owned by Envato, but new things are being added on a regular basis. Royalty-free stock photographs have also been inserted to Envato Elements with over 600,000 to choose from.
It's also worth Pointing out that even during the process of composing this Envato Elements inspection more items were added to the library of assets. However, despite there being numerous items available, it is quite easy to locate what you're searching for. To assist you narrow down your search for the right asset, lots of the top-level groups are divided up farther into sub-categories.
You can also filter The items by other properties, such as responsive or retina prepared, when browsing the internet templates category, for example. If you are using a particular software application, you may also filter the items by this criterion. A number of the software application filtering options include:
Adobe Illustrator.
Adobe InDesign.
Adobe Lightroom.
Adobe Photoshop.
Adobe Premiere Elements.
Affinity Designer.
But in many Cases, you need to have the ability to open, edit, and use the resources in a harmonious software of your choice as well as the prescribed applications.
How Can the Envato Elements License Work?
Envato Elements Keeps things incredibly simple in regards to licensing. As mentioned, the items which you can download are covered by a commercial license, which you can discover more about this. As a consequence, that you may use the assets you download on your own work, as well as client projects.
When downloading an Asset, you may choose from two licensing-related choices:
Project Use — register the item with a certain project for eternal use.
Demo Use — a no registration option that is great for examining an asset before making a decision whether to use it.
The trial use Option is excellent for exploring an asset to learn more about it, until you're sure if, and in which, you will utilize it. Once you're prepared to use an advantage, you can choose the project use option and then enter the necessary details. Registering a download for a job is as simple as inputting the title of this undertaking. You really don't need to submit much information at all to'permit' a download.
In Summary, if you've Paid for accessibility to the Envato Elements library it is possible to use any of those files in commercial endeavors. Canceling your subscription means you can not download some more items, but any items you've downloaded and registered to a project can continue to get used with that undertaking. For more information, it's worth watching the short video on the Envato Elements licensing page. Envato Quora
User Experience
When it comes to User encounter , again, Envato Elements retains things incredibly straightforward. To help you decide whether to join with Envato Elements, then you can first browse the library for free. Should you see any assets which you like, it takes just a moment or two to sign up and start downloading.
After You've created a no cost Envato account, you can register to Envato Elements on the monthly subscription plan or the greater worth early plan. After entering your PayPal or card payment details, you can start downloading the files immediately.
After You've seen something that catches your eye, you can find out more about the asset on its own page, prior to making a choice whether download it or not. If after closer review, the item still looks like a fantastic fit for your requirements, you can hit the download button to get access to the files.
Before Downloading the item, you'll have to either register it to be used on a specific project or download it for trial use. The latter is the ideal alternative in the event that you just wish to have a closer look at an item, before choosing to put it to use on a specific project. It is worth pointing out that when you've registered an item to be used on a particular project, it is possible to continue to use the product even after you've ended your subscription.
When you've made a Choice, a zip archive of these documents is downloaded into your PC. You can then extract the files in the archive and open them using a compatible software application or service.
It's good to see That in the event that you download a background image or other type of picture, you will also get access to the JPG or PNG versions of the documents as well as the editable Photoshop or Illustrator documents (based on the kind of file you have downloaded). Having a JPG or PNG version of the advantage means you can quickly use it without having access to a specific software application.
If you do not Currently have access to the right tools, simply download a document, upload it in your WordPress blog and crop or scale it there before publishing it on your site. Obviously, when you would like full editing capabilities then having the ideal software program is recommended. But it is fantastic to be aware that there are other choices.
While you're logged Into your Envato Elements account, you can view the items that you've downloaded from your dash. This makes it easy to quickly download something again to register it with a different job or add a license to a trial item to enable it to be used on a live project.
If You want to acquire your new WordPress site online with minimum effort possible, Envato Hosting is definitely worth considering. Providing you're pleased to use among the WordPress themes that are available as part of the ceremony, Envato Hosted may function as hands-off done-for-you handled hosting service you're looking for. Envato Quora
Also, if You are looking for a more managed hosting agreement for an existing WordPress website, it's well worth repeating that Envato Hosted offers a totally free website migration support as part of the signup process. Although you ought to contact the service team first to discover if they'll be able to migrate your specific WordPress website configuration.
The Envato Hosted monthly fees of $19.99 are fair from the managed WordPress hosting space. But you can, of course, host your site for a lot less — and in case you're prepared to do more of this setup and ongoing maintenance work yourself, then there are quite a few good alternatives that are worth considering.
Even though That the Envato Hosted service is a comparative newcomer to the hosting area, the business has many years' experience working together and supporting WordPress users — and also the fact that they're using the Amazon Web Service infrastructure must give you some reassurance, also.
If You've been putting off starting a new WordPress site because of all of the various elements you'll need to understand, such as domains, themes, installing WordPress and looking after your site, then Envato Hosted could well be a smart choice.
Click Here to sign up to Envato Marketplace today!


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Now I must admit I did not see this coming. I love sugar/maple syrup/raw honey/fruit/desserts/juices, heck, sweets in general and I used to eat massive quantities of sugar each day. I used to have an enormous sweet tooth but I am here to say that it is gone! Though I still crave an occasional cookie, it's not an overwhelming/ gotta have it NOW kind of craving and it passes if I don't satisfy it and I can go on with my day. This is really, really odd and I have no explanation other than maybe I am eating cleaner and all foods are tasting better so sweets are no longer needed. No clue.
The other weird observation that has totally blown me away is that I have a much smaller appetite. Sometimes I can skip breakfast and lunch and so as to not screw up my metabolism I have to force myself to eat dinner. It is the strangest thing! I haven't been really hungry in days! So odd!
I have officially lost TEN POUNDS and I am thrilled. I look a lot better but I am going to keep it going until I get under 150. Right now I weight about 154.6 but to see the scale at 149.something will be SO AWESOME! I can't wait! The other thing I am going to start to do is lift weights. I never did get into Bikram yoga and unfortunately after this week vacation will be almost done. Without child care at yoga studios I won't be able to try it out. Someone should really open a studio with childcare. I'd be all over that but in the meantime I will continue to focus on my walking and doing stairs and squats. What I am doing is working so I plan to continue!


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Home > Rooms
Villa Giorgia has 18 rooms. There are three types of rooms: Classic, Superior and Deluxe, some of them also have an external private terrace.
Warm wooden floors and handmade furniture will immediately make you feel at home, creating a pleasant and elegant atmosphere. A beautiful view will also keep you company during the your entire stay.