text:
Thief II
|Thief II: The Metal Age
|Looking Glass Studios
|Eidos Interactive
|Steve Pearsall
|Tim Stellmach
Randy Smith
|Alex Duran
William Farquhar
Pat McElhatton
|Mark Lizotte
|Eric Brosius
|Dark Engine
|Microsoft Windows
Thief II: The Metal Age is a 2000 stealth video game developed by Looking Glass Studios and published by Eidos Interactive. Like its predecessor Thief: The Dark Project, the game follows Garrett, a master thief who works in and around a steampunk metropolis called the City. The player assumes the role of Garrett as he unravels a conspiracy related to a new religious sect. Garrett takes on missions such as burglaries and frameups, while trying to avoid detection by guards and automated security.
Thief II was designed to build on the foundation of its predecessor. In response to feedback from players of Thief, the team placed a heavy focus on urban stealth in the sequel, and they minimized the use of monsters and maze-like levels. The game was made with the third iteration of the Dark Engine, which had been used previously to develop Thief and System Shock 2. Thief II was announced at the 1999 Electronic Entertainment Expo, as part of an extended contract between Looking Glass and Eidos to release games in the Thief series. Looking Glass neared bankruptcy as the game was developed, and the company was kept running by advances from Eidos.
Thief II received positive reviews from critics, and its initial sales were stronger than those of its predecessor. However, the game's royalties were processed slowly, which compounded Looking Glass's financial troubles. As a result, the company closed in May 2000, with plans for Thief III cancelled. The third game in the series, entitled Thief: Deadly Shadows, was developed by Ion Storm and published by Eidos in 2004. Thief 2X: Shadows of the Metal Age, a widely praised expansion mod for Thief II, was released in 2005. In 2014, Square Enix published a reboot of the series, developed by Eidos Montréal.
Thief II is a stealth game that takes place from a first-person perspective in a three-dimensional (3D) graphical environment.[1] The player seeks to complete mission objectives and to evade the notice of opponents such as guards.[2][3] The player must minimize the visibility and audibility of the player character, Garrett, to escape detection. Players try to avoid lit areas and loud flooring in favor of shadows and quiet flooring. A light monitor on the heads-up display (HUD) indicates the player character's visibility.[4] While it is possible for the player character to engage in direct combat, he is easily defeated.[3]
The game's 15 missions take place in large levels that can be confronted in multiple ways.[1][5] Guards may be knocked out with a blackjack or killed with a bow or sword, and their fallen bodies may be picked up and hidden.[4] In addition to human enemies, the game features security automatons and surveillance cameras.[6] While completing objectives such as frameups and blackmail, the player steals valuables that may be used to purchase thieving gear between missions.[3][4][5] The player's main tools are specialized arrows, including water arrows to douse lights, moss arrows to dampen the player character's footsteps and rope arrows to reach higher ground.[1]
Thief II is designed to be played methodically,[1] and the player plans ahead by scouting, reading the game's map and observing patrol patterns.[4] The player character has a zooming mechanical eye, which connects to throwable "Scouting Orb" cameras.[2][6] One Scouting Orb may be deployed at a time; when it lands, the player views the game world from its perspective until normal play is resumed.[4] The player can listen for noises, such as footsteps and humming, to determine the locations of enemies.[2][4] On the highest of the game's three difficulty levels, killing humans results in a game over,[4] and in certain missions the player must not knock out any guards.[3]
Setting and characters[edit]
Like its predecessor Thief: The Dark Project, Thief II is set in a steampunk metropolis called the City,[4][7] whose appearance resembles that of both medieval and Victorian era cities.[7][8] Magic and steam technology exist side by side,[9] and three factions—the manipulative and enigmatic Keepers, the technology-focused Hammerites and the "pagan" worshippers of the Pan-like Trickster god—are in operation.[9][10][11][12] Thief II takes place one year after the first game.[13] In the aftermath of the Trickster's defeat and the failure of his plan to revert the world to a wild, primitive state,[2][9][14] a schism in the Hammerite religion spawns the "Mechanist" sect, which fanatically values technological progress.[9][15] The new inventions of the Mechanists are used by a resurgent police force to crack down on crime.[9][13] The pagans are in disarray, and have been driven into the wilderness beyond the City.[2][9] From there, they engage in guerrilla warfare against the Mechanists.[9] The Keeper faction is dormant as the game begins.[2]
The game continues the story of Garrett (voiced by Stephen Russell), the cynical master thief who defeated the Trickster.[1][2][4] Pursuing Garrett is the new sheriff, Gorman Truart (voiced by Sam Babbitt), who has imposed a zero tolerance policy on crime.[4][13] Viktoria (voiced by Terri Brosius), the former ally of the Trickster, eventually joins with Garrett to combat the Mechanists.[5][16] The game's primary antagonist is the founder of the Mechanists, Father Karras (also voiced by Russell), a mentally unstable inventor who despises the natural world.[5][15]
The game begins as Garrett continues his life as a thief. However, he is betrayed by his fence and ambushed after an early mission, and he determines that Truart, the local sheriff, is hunting him.[1] Keepers take Garrett to hear a prophecy about the "Metal Age",[17] which he ignores.[18] As Garrett leaves, Artemus, the Keeper who brought him into the order, informs him that Truart had been hired to kill him,[19] and he gives Garrett a letter that directs him to eavesdrop on a Mechanist meeting.[20] There, Garrett overhears Truart and Father Karras discussing the conversion of street people into mindless "Servants",[21] who wear masks that emit a red vapor capable of reducing themselves and any nearby organic material to rust.[22] Truart promises to provide Karras with twenty victims for the Servant project,[23] not realizing that Karras is recording his words for use in blackmail.[24] Garrett steals the recording from a safe deposit box, in order to coerce Truart into revealing his employer.[25]
However, Garrett finds Truart murdered at his estate.[26] Evidence at the crime scene leads him to spy on the police officer Lt. Mosley. Garrett sees Mosley deliver a suspicious letter, which is carried through a portal by a wounded pagan. Garrett enters the portal and finds himself outside the City,[27][28] and he follows the pagan's trail of blood to Viktoria, who persuades Garrett to join her against the Mechanists.[29][30] On a lead from Viktoria, he infiltrates Karras' office to learn about the "Cetus Project",[31] and inadvertently discovers that Karras is giving Servants to the City's nobles.[32] Garrett travels to a Mechanist base to find out more about the Cetus Project,[33] which is revealed to be a submarine. In order to locate and kidnap a high-ranking Mechanist named Brother Cavador, Garrett stows away in the vehicle.[34]
After delivering Cavador to Viktoria, Garrett steals a Servant mask to learn about a Mechanist technology called a "Cultivator". Meanwhile, Karras hides inside the Mechanist cathedral in preparation for his plan.[35] Garrett and Viktoria learn that it is the Cultivators inside Servant masks which emit red vapor, or "rust gas". Karras had provided Servants to nobles with gardens in order to set off an apocalyptic chain reaction.[36] Viktoria plans to lure the Servants into the hermetically sealed Mechanist cathedral before Karras activates their masks, but Garrett believes this to be too dangerous and leaves.[37] Viktoria goes to the cathedral alone and dies while filling it with plants,[38] and Garrett completes her plan, killing Karras in the rust gas. Afterward, Garrett is approached by Artemus, who explains that Karras' scheme and Viktoria's death had been prophesied. Garrett demands to know the rest of the Keepers' prophecies as the game ends.[39]
Early production[edit]
Looking Glass Studios began designing Thief II in January 1999.[40] The team's goal was to build on the foundation of Thief: The Dark Project,[41] a game that Thief II project director Steve Pearsall later said was an experiment.[9] He explained that the team had played it safe by including certain "exploration ... or adventure oriented" missions with "jumping and climbing puzzles" in Thief,[11][42] and that the new game was significantly more focused on stealth.[9][13] Combat was given less prominence than in the original.[8][13] Based on feedback from players and reviewers of Thief,[8][13] the team decided to scale back the use of maze-like levels and monsters such as zombies in favor of urban environments and human enemies.[8][41][43] Pearsall stated that Thief's monsters were negatively received because, unlike the game's human enemies, they did not clearly indicate when they noticed the player. The team sought to remedy this problem by improving the audio cues given by non-human enemies in the sequel.[40]
Production of Thief II commenced in February.[44] Looking Glass chose to compose the game's team of "half the original designers and half new blood", according to executive producer James Poole.[43] The company tried to select people who meshed well both personally and creatively, in an attempt to guarantee a smooth development cycle.[42] Adrenaline Vault editor-in-chief Emil Pagliarulo was hired as a junior designer, in part because of his positive review of Thief.[45] Rich "zdim" Carlson and Iikka Keränen joined from Ion Storm's Daikatana team, and Looking Glass contractor Terri Brosius was hired as a full-time designer.[9][46] One-third of the team was female, which Pearsall believed contributed to a strong group dynamic. As was typical at Looking Glass, the Thief II team worked in a wall-less space called a "pit", which allowed them to converse easily.[42] Describing the work environment at the time, writer Laura Baldwin noted that "conversations dash madly about the room, [and] when someone is demonstrating something interesting everyone gravitates over to look."[47]
During the first months of development, the team regularly gathered to watch films pertinent to Garrett's character and to the game's visual design, such as The Third Man, The Castle of Cagliostro, M and Metropolis.[8][44][47] Pearsall said that the latter two films were Thief II's "biggest aesthetic influences", while the main inspiration for its plot was Umberto Eco's novel The Name of the Rose.[47] The team also drew influence from Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.[9] The game's story was written in the three-act structure: Garrett was intended to transition from his "cynical self" in the first act to a private investigator in the second, and to a character similar to James Bond in the third.[8][10] The City's technology and architecture were influenced by the appearance of Victorian London, and certain areas were given an Art Deco theme to provide "sort of a 'Batman' feel", in reference to the 1989 film.[8] Lead artist Mark Lizotte captured over two-thousand photographs during his vacation in Europe,[11][46] and these were the basis for many of the game's textures.[10]
Thief II was built with the third iteration of the Dark Engine, which had been used previously for Thief and System Shock 2.[8][13] According to Pearsall, the Dark Engine had become "a very well understood development environment", which made for an easier production process.[42] Engine updates created for System Shock 2, such as support for 16-bit color, were carried over to Thief II. The average character model in Thief II was given close to double the polygons of the average model in Thief, with much of the added detail focused on characters' heads. This was an attempt to give the characters a "more organic" look.[10] Certain artificial intelligence (AI) routines written into the Dark Engine, which allowed enemies to notice changes in the environment such as open doors, had not been used in Thief or in System Shock 2 but were implemented in Thief II.[40] Weather effects such as fog and rain were added,[10] and technology from Flight Unlimited III was used to generate the sky and clouds.[13]
Announcement and continued development[edit]
Thief II was announced during the Electronic Entertainment Expo on May 13, 1999, as part of a contract between Looking Glass and Eidos Interactive to release four new games in the Thief series, beginning with Thief Gold.[48][49] The deal had been signed on May 7, roughly three months after Thief II entered production.[44] A tech demo of the game, which Bruce Geryk of Games Domain described as "about three rooms with some Mages", was displayed on the show floor.[10][50] The demo was used to showcase the updated Dark Engine, which featured support for colored lighting, higher polygon models and larger environments.[41][50] The team revealed their intention to include more levels with human enemies,[41] and announced a projected release date of spring 2000.[50][51] Plans to include a cooperative multiplayer mode were also detailed at the show.[50] IGN's Jason Bates noted that the Thief II display attracted "a bit of a buzz and a small crowd of dedicated onlookers".[44]
By July, the team had begun initial construction of the game's levels.[40] Thief II's increased focus on stealth necessitated new level design concepts: the most stealth-based missions in Thief had centered on urban burglary, but Pearsall explained that this "would get tired pretty fast" if repeated in every level. The team diversified Thief II by designing missions with such objectives as kidnapping, blackmail and eavesdropping.[9] The first two levels were designed to seamlessly introduce new players to the core game mechanics, without a tutorial mission that might lose the interest of experienced players.[10] When creating a mission, the team would often begin by deciding on the player's objective, after which they would produce a rough level design. The mission would then undergo a peer review to determine if it should be added to the game.[43] Each of the game's levels was a team effort rather than the work of a single designer.[8] Designer Randy Smith explained that, while Thief's levels had been designed to fit a pre-existing story, the Thief II team "tried to think of really good missions first" and then adjusted the plot to suit them. He noted that it was highly difficult to harmonize the two.[46]
The game's sound team was composed of Kemal Amarasingham, Damin Djawadi and audio director Eric Brosius.[4][52] According to Brosius, each member of the audio department did "everything", without clear demarcations between roles.[52] Like Thief, Thief II features a sound engine that simulates propagation in real-time.[10][53] To achieve this effect, each level's geometry was input both to the level editor and to a "separate [sound] database", which mapped how sound would realistically propagate based on "the physical room characteristics [... and] how all the different rooms and areas are connected together".[10] For example, noise travels freely through an open door but is blocked when the door is closed.[53] The team used the new "occlusion" feature in EAX 2.0 to make Thief II's sound environment more realistic and to allow the player to listen through doors.[40] The game features more sound effects, music and speech than the original Thief.[9][13] Thief II's score, as with that of its predecessor, was designed to "blur ambient [sound] and music" together. However, Brosius later stated that, while Thief's soundtrack is composed of "simple and hypnotic" loops only a few seconds in length, Thief II features longer and "more thoughtfully" constructed pieces. He believed that this method had positive aspects, but that it resulted in a less immersive audio environment.[54]
Artist Dan Thron returned to create the game's cutscenes, with assistance from Jennifer Hrabota-Lesser.[13][52] Thron later called Hrabota-Lesser "one of the greatest artists I've ever seen".[55] The cutscenes, which Computer Games Magazine called "unique", feature multiple layers of artwork and footage of live actors filmed against a green screen. These components were combined and animated in Adobe After Effects.[10][52] The technique had been developed for the original Thief, as an evolution of designer Ken Levine's suggestion to use motion comic cutscenes. David Lynch's films Eraserhead and The Elephant Man were important influences on their style.[55]
Final months[edit]
By October 1999, the team had cut the game's multiplayer feature.[11] Pearsall explained that Looking Glass did not "have the resources to do a new kind of multiplayer and ship a finely tuned single-player game".[13] Plans were announced in January 2000 to release a multiplayer-only Thief game shortly after the completion of Thief II.[56] As Thief II's development continued, Looking Glass experienced extreme financial troubles. The company's Marc LeBlanc later said that "Eidos was writing a check every week to cover our burn rate" during the last months of the project. The game's final cost was roughly $2.5 million. According to company head Paul Neurath, Eidos informed Looking Glass that "it was not an option" for Thief II to miss its release date, and that there would be "dire consequences if [we] missed by even a day". An anonymous Looking Glass staffer later told Salon.com that Eidos "told us basically to ship [Thief II] by their fiscal quarter or die".[57]
By January, Pearsall confirmed that the game had reached beta, and that most of the team's energy was being spent "tuning, polishing, and fixing bugs".[9] He noted in early February that Thief II had been produced almost entirely on schedule.[42] The company slipped behind near the end of the project and entered crunch time to make up the loss.[57] On February 24, Thief II producer Michael McHale announced that the game had reached "feature freeze", and that the team was in "super crunch mode". Numerous game testers from Eidos joined the project. However, McHale said that the team was energized and that "spirits [were] high".[58] Certain employees slept in the office and avoided bathing so that the game could reach its March deadline. LeBlanc later stated his belief that the game was rushed, and that its quality suffered as a result. Nevertheless, the team met their goal,[57] and the game was released on March 23, 2000 in North America, and on March 31, 2000 in Europe.[59][60] Eidos expedited the company's payment for completing the game.[57]
|Computer Games Magazine
|Computer Gaming World
|95 out of 100[62]
|4 out of 5[63]
|Next Generation
|PC Gamer (US)
|PC Zone
Thief 2 debuted high on the bestsellers list for computer games,[57] and its initial sales were better than those of its commercially successful predecessor.[65] By November 2000, its global sales had surpassed 220,000 copies; PC Zone described these figures as "commercial acclaim."[66] The United States alone accounted for 67,084 sales by the end of 2000, which drew in revenues of $2.37 million.[67] The game later received a "Silver" sales award by the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA),[68] indicating sales of at least 100,000 copies in the United Kingdom.[69] Thief II also received positive reviews from critics, with an aggregate score of 87/100 on Metacritic.[61]
Computer Gaming World's Thomas L. McDonald wrote that "everything in Thief II is bigger, sharper, better, and more effective" than in its predecessor. He enjoyed its story and called its levels "vast and intricate", with "astonishingly complex and often beautiful" architecture; but he found the game's graphics to be somewhat lackluster. McDonald summarized Thief II as a unique "gamer's game".[1] Jim Preston of PC Gamer US considered the game to be "more focused and polished than the original", and he praised the removal of "zombie battles". While he faulted its graphics, he summarized it as "one hell of a good game".[6]
Jasen Torres of GameFan wrote, "If you liked Thief, you'll love Thief 2: The Metal Age; it's more of the stuff that made Thief great, with less of the annoying stuff". He applauded the removal of "zombie killer" missions and believed the game's sound to be "superior to any other game". He considered its story to be "good" but "nothing great" and its graphics to be "decent"; but he commented that the game was "really all about the gameplay", which he praised as "quite compelling and fun".[62] Benjamin E. Sones of Computer Games Magazine considered the game's story to be "quite good", but he faulted Looking Glass for failing to detail the events of the first game for new players. He wrote that Thief II's graphics were passable but that its sound design was "phenomenal". Sones praised its missions as "very well crafted", and noted that they gave the impression of being in "a living, breathing world." He summarized, "It may not be perfect, but Thief 2 has got it where it counts".[2]
Charles Harold of The New York Times called the game a "refreshing alternative to games that glorify violence". He found its story to be "slight", but he lauded its world as "amazingly alive" and its AI as a "remarkable impersonation of real intelligence".[3] Writing for GamePro, Barry Brenesal commented that Thief II "provides a solid gaming experience" but "doesn't startle like its predecessor". He wrote that its missions featured a "great deal of variety", and he praised their "ability to casually suggest a much larger world", but he complained that they were linear. He considered the game's writing to be "among the best in the business". While Brenesal enjoyed the game's textures and lighting, he noted the low detail of the game's human models, whose animations he found to be "arthritic".[63] PC Zone's Paul Presley wrote that the game's levels were larger but easier than those of Thief, and he considered their objectives to be somewhat linear. He found Thief II's graphics to be dated and wrote that its lack of real-time lighting "tends to give each environment a sort of 'false' quality". However, he believed that the game "still has enough atmosphere to immerse you", and he praised its sound design. Presley considered the game to be a straightforward rehash of its predecessor, and he finished, "A more clear-cut case of sequel-itis there has never been."[5]
Jim Preston reviewed the PC version of the game for Next Generation, rating it four stars out of five, and stated that "Great, skulking gameplay, useful new tools, and clever level design make Thief II an excellent first-person 'sneaker.'"[64]
While Thief II performed well commercially, Looking Glass was not set to receive royalties for several months.[57][65] The company had struggled financially since the commercial failures of its self-published games Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri and British Open Championship Golf. Looking Glass's Flight Unlimited III had flopped at retail, and the development of Jane's Attack Squadron had gone over budget and fallen behind schedule. A deal to co-develop the stealth game Deep Cover with Irrational Games had recently collapsed.[65][70][71] According to Looking Glass's Tim Stellmach, the delay in Thief II royalties "faced [us] with the prospect of running out of money."[65] Looking Glass management signed a deal in which Eidos Interactive would acquire the company, but Eidos fell into a sudden financial crisis, in part because of the failure of Ion Storm's $40 million game Daikatana.[57][65][70][71] These factors led to the closure of Looking Glass on May 24, 2000,[72] with the planned Thief II successors Thief II Gold and Thief III cancelled.[57][65]
Later installments[edit]
The Thief series had been planned as a trilogy,[57] and work on Thief III was "in a fairly advanced stage" when Looking Glass closed, according to PC Zone's Keith Pullin.[73] Randy Smith and Terri Brosius were appointed as lead designers, and they developed the game's concept over several months.[74] In an open letter published after the company's bankruptcy, Smith wrote that the third game would have taken place in an "open-ended, self-directed city", and that its plot would have centered on the Keepers.[75] Brosius suggested that Thief III would have seen Garrett "accept[ing] that there are consequences to his actions", and that he would likely have become "ready to give, rather than always take."[57] The player would have uncovered the game's story gradually, while exploring a free-roam environment.[76] Serious plans had been made to include co-operative multiplayer,[13][43] and a new engine, Siege, had been in production.[76] When Looking Glass closed, its assets were liquidated and the Thief intellectual property was sold at auction.[65][77] This raised doubts that the Thief trilogy would be completed,[57][75] a situation that Salon.com writer Wagner James Au compared to Lucasfilm closing after the release of The Empire Strikes Back.[57] However, following rumors, Eidos announced on August 9, 2000 that it had purchased the rights to Thief.[77]
Development of Thief III was delegated to the Warren Spector-supervised Ion Storm, which had recently completed Deus Ex.[77][78] According to Spector, Thief III would have been given to Core Design or Crystal Dynamics had he not accepted it.[77] The game was announced for Windows and the PlayStation 2.[78] On August 10, Spector commented that Ion Storm's first goal was to assemble a core team, composed in part of former Looking Glass employees, to design and plot the game.[79] Thief II team members Randy Smith, Lulu Lamer, Emil Pagliarulo and Terri Brosius were hired to begin the project.[76][80] On August 16, Ion Storm announced its hires, and stated that concept work on Thief III would begin in September.[81] The team planned to "wrap up [the] loose ends" of the series,[79] and they built directly upon the Thief III concept work done at Looking Glass.[82] Thief III was eventually renamed Thief: Deadly Shadows,[83] and it was released for Windows and the Xbox on May 25, 2004.[84]
In May 2009, after several months of rumors, a fourth game in the Thief series was announced by Deus Ex: Human Revolution developer Eidos Montréal.[85] It was unveiled in the April 2013 issue of Game Informer.[86] The game, entitled Thief, is a reboot of the Thief series; and it does not feature the Hammerites, pagans or Keepers.[87] Its plot follows Garrett (voiced by Romano Orzari in place of Stephen Russell) in the aftermath of an accident that leaves his protégé, Erin, missing. Garrett has amnesia after this incident, and the City is beset by a plague called the Gloom.[88][89] The game was released for Windows and the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in February 2014.[90]
Fan expansion[edit]
Soon after the bankruptcy of Looking Glass, a fan group called the Dark Engineering Guild began developing an expansion mod to Thief II, entitled Thief 2X: Shadows of the Metal Age.[91][92] Initially, they hoped to fill the void left by the cancellation of Thief III,[92] but they continued to work on the mod after the announcement and release of Thief: Deadly Shadows.[92][93] Released in 2005 after five years in development, the mod follows Zaya, a young woman who is robbed while visiting the City and who then seeks revenge.[91][92][93][94] She is mentored by a pagan hermit named Malak, who trains her as a thief but who has ulterior motives.[52] The team designed Zaya to be physically capable and to have a "middle-eastern/north-African look", but made an effort to avoid similarities to Mulan.[52] Chronologically, the story starts near the end of Thief and ends in the middle of Thief II, thereby depicting the rise of Gorman Truart and the early days of the Mechanists.[52][92] Thief 2X features 13 missions, with new animated cutscenes and roughly 3,000 new lines of recorded dialogue.[91][94]
The mod was praised by critics and by the Thief fan community.[94] Brett Todd of PC Gamer US awarded it "Mod of the Month" and wrote: "It doesn't quite have the mysterious allure of the original games, but it's awfully close".[91] A writer for Jolt Online Gaming praised the mod's visuals and considered its missions to be "incredibly well designed". While the writer commented that Thief 2X did not perfectly follow the series' tone and that its voice acting was "not the best", they finished by saying that fans of the Thief series had "no excuse not to play T2X".[92] PC Gamer UK's Kieron Gillen wrote that he had expected the mod to be cancelled, given that the "web is full of [...] five-percent finished masterworks from people who aimed far, far too high". After Thief 2X's release, he lauded it as the best Thief fan work and as "one of the most impressive achievements of any fan community for any game".[93]
See also[edit]
- ^ a b c d e f g h L. McDonald, Thomas (May 9, 2000). "Stealing Beauty". Computer Gaming World. Archived from the original on February 11, 2001.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i E. Sones, Benjamin (April 4, 2000). "Thief 2: The Metal Age". Computer Games Strategy Plus. Archived from the original on May 17, 2003.
- ^ a b c d e Herold, Charles (July 6, 2000). "GAME THEORY; Thief II Stress Stealth Over Strength". The New York Times. Archived from the original on February 14, 2011. Retrieved April 11, 2011.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Hart, Dorian (2000). Thief II: The Metal Age manual. Eidos Interactive. pp. 5, 9, 11, 12, 17, 18, 20, 26, 27, 30, 34.
- ^ a b c d e f Presley, Paul (April 2000). "Thief II: The Metal Age". PC Zone (88): 68–71.
- ^ a b c d Preston, Jim (August 2000). "Thief II: The Metal Age". PC Gamer US. Archived from the original on December 28, 2001.
- ^ a b Doke, Shunal (February 20, 2014). "Thieving Through the Ages". IGN. Archived from the original on February 20, 2014.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Laprad, David (July 28, 1999). "Emerging From the Shadows: Thief 2 Developer Interview". Adrenaline Vault. Archived from the original on January 19, 2000.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Aihoshi, Richard (January 26, 2000). "Thief 2: The Metal Age Interview". Vault Network. Archived from the original on August 15, 2000.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Sones, Benjamin E. (February 4, 2000). "Thief 2". Computer Games Magazine. Archived from the original on February 28, 2003.
- ^ a b c d Ward, Trent C. (October 20, 1999). "Thief 2: The Metal Age". IGN. Archived from the original on November 17, 1999.
- ^ Weise, Matthew (June 29, 2011). "Looking Glass Studios Interview Series - Audio Podcast 5 - Ken Levine". Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab. Archived from the original on April 1, 2013.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Pullin, Keith (March 2000). "Thief II: The Metal Age". PC Zone (87): 42–47.
- ^ Looking Glass Studios (1998). Thief: The Dark Project. Eidos Interactive.
Trickster's Note: The world as I once knew it was a place of magic—full of mystery and inhabited by creatures of glamour and terror. The men who lived there lit their bonfires and wondered at what crept and lurked in the darkness outside their weak circles of light. All their dreams, their aspirations and dreads, come from that darkness. Now, as the forces of "progress" cover the meadows in brick and cobblestone, as they replace the majestic loft of tree with the blocky ponderousness of building, they also light the world in their electric, actinic glare. With the lighting of the shadows, man loses his ability to fear, and to dream. [...] I have conceived of a plan to revive the darkness, to bring a resurrection of the ability to fear and dream.
- ^ a b Dean, Paul (October 7, 2012). "Thief 2: The Metal Age retrospective". Eurogamer. Archived from the original on January 12, 2013.
- ^ Staff (2000). "Readers' Choice - The Ten Best Female Characters". GameSpot. Archived from the original on February 10, 2001.
- ^ Looking Glass Studios (February 29, 2000). Thief II: The Metal Age. Eidos Interactive.
Garrett: Nice poem. / Keeper: Not poetry: prophecy. The Metal Age is upon us.
- ^ Looking Glass Studios (February 29, 2000). Thief II: The Metal Age. Eidos Interactive.
Garrett: Well, you've got the danger part right anyway. Tell you what: you Keepers can plant a few shrubs about town and I'll take care of me. I'll find my own way home.
- ^ Looking Glass Studios (February 29, 2000). Thief II: The Metal Age. Eidos Interactive.
Keeper: You have trouble, my friend. Danger from someone who hired Truart to kill you.
- ^ Looking Glass Studios (February 29, 2000). Thief II: The Metal Age. Eidos Interactive.
Letter: If you seek the private knowledge of the Sheriff, go to the Eastport Mechanist seminary tomorrow night. With stealthy discretion, overhear what you may, at a certain very timely meeting.
- ^ Looking Glass Studios (February 29, 2000). Thief II: The Metal Age. Eidos Interactive.
Karras: Behold, Sheriff Truart! From the lowly street rot emerges the loyal worker. That which I call 'The Servant.' / Truart: This is one of the tramps I delivered to you? The transformation is spectacular! / Karras: And neither want nor worry has he.
- ^ Looking Glass Studios (February 29, 2000). Thief II: The Metal Age. Eidos Interactive.
Karras: I must ask thee to step away from the Masked Servant. That's right. And meanwhile, I will retrieve our 'volunteer.' A most unfortunate guttersnipe who waits just outside. Come, come, gentle beggar. And stand ye just there, next to the masked man. [...] / Truart: My word! The mask emits a red vapor! [...] They're gone! And what remains in their stead? Sand? No--rust!
- ^ Looking Glass Studios (February 29, 2000). Thief II: The Metal Age. Eidos Interactive.
Truart: You need subjects for your Servant project, and I can supply them. Vagabonds, street scum, prostitutes: those who will not be missed by anyone of consequence. They'll be rounded up, charges invented, et cetera. Still, there's always risk. So I will give you twenty; no more.
- ^ Looking Glass Studios (February 29, 2000). Thief II: The Metal Age. Eidos Interactive.
Karras: Now, behold, my wax cylinder machine. I've used it to capture the Sheriff's very words, even as they moved through the air, today. [...] With his voice thus preserved, Truart dare not betray me or he'll have the scandal he fears so much.
- ^ Looking Glass Studios (February 29, 2000). Thief II: The Metal Age. Eidos Interactive.
Garrett: That recording should let me exert a little pressure on Truart to find out who hired him to kill me. [...] The Mechanists put the recording in a safety deposit box earlier today but since I have a copy of the key, I should be able to open it. [...] It didn't take much to learn that the Mechanists do all their banking with First City Bank and Trust, one of the wealthiest establishments in town, catering to the financial needs of the city's upper crust.
- ^ Looking Glass Studios (February 29, 2000). Thief II: The Metal Age. Eidos Interactive.
Garrett: Damn! Someone beat me to the Sheriff. I better keep a low profile or else I'll be pinned as the killer.
- ^ Looking Glass Studios (February 29, 2000). Thief II: The Metal Age. Eidos Interactive.
Garrett: The keyring I found at Truart's house belongs to Lt. Mosley of the City Watch[. ...] And sure enough, she just left the local Watch station well before schedule carrying a letter. This is my chance. If I can trail her without being spotted, I should be able to find who's on the other end of this little conspiracy.
- ^ Looking Glass Studios (February 29, 2000). Thief II: The Metal Age. Eidos Interactive.
Garrett: The portal from the graveyard deposited me in a grove of trees and the wounded pagan I was following is nowhere in sight. He's carrying Mosley's letter and I'd still like to know where he's heading with it.
- ^ Looking Glass Studios (February 29, 2000). Thief II: The Metal Age. Eidos Interactive.
Garrett: I'm hoping he's in too much of a hurry to stop and tend to that wound so he'll leave a trail of blood that I can follow.
- ^ Looking Glass Studios (February 29, 2000). Thief II: The Metal Age. Eidos Interactive.
Viktoria: Sometimes enemies must join forces to overcome a more terrible foe. So tell me, Garrett, yes or no. Are we agreed to work together, sharing knowledge and skills against the Mechanists? / Garrett: I... agree.
- ^ Looking Glass Studios (February 29, 2000). Thief II: The Metal Age. Eidos Interactive.
Viktoria: ...you must find out whatever you can about the Cetus Project, a name our agents have overheard repeatedly. Karras has an office in the tower. Try to obtain some information there.
- ^ Looking Glass Studios (February 29, 2000). Thief II: The Metal Age. Eidos Interactive.
Viktoria: You say he's giving these 'Servants' as gifts? / Garrett: Yes[. ...] The servants are weapons, and the nobles have just invited them into their homes.
- ^ Looking Glass Studios (February 29, 2000). Thief II: The Metal Age. Eidos Interactive.
Viktoria: And the schematics confirmed what my agents presumed: Markham's Isle is the staging area for the Cetus Project.
- ^ Looking Glass Studios (February 29, 2000). Thief II: The Metal Age. Eidos Interactive.
Garrett: And now I know more about the Cetus Project than I ever wanted to. They've built a ship that can can sail underwater. [...] The only way I can reach him is to hitch a ride in its belly. [...] 'Course it's not enough just to find Brother Cavador at this mysterious "K.D. site", I said I'd bring him back in one piece.
- ^ Looking Glass Studios (February 29, 2000). Thief II: The Metal Age. Eidos Interactive.
Viktoria: ...and some sort of agricultural device called a Cultivator. / [...] Garrett: I think I know where we can lay our hands on one of those masks. There's a collector named Bram Gervaisius with an interest in masks and headdresses. / [...] Viktoria: Gervaisius is planning an exhibition. He's bringing his collection with him from his summer home. / [...] Garrett: Karras is holed up inside the Mechanist cathedral and it looks like whatever he's up to, we're running out of time.
- ^ Looking Glass Studios (February 29, 2000). Thief II: The Metal Age. Eidos Interactive.
Viktoria: The reaction will continue if it finds more organic material. [...] Garrett, for what purpose would the Mechanists use these Cultivators? / Garrett: Well, we know Karras has installed them in the masks of servants. / [...] And the servants have been placed in the homes of the wealthy. / Viktoria: Yes! The homes with the gardens. The plants there could sustain a reaction large enough to destroy everything!
- ^ Looking Glass Studios (February 29, 2000). Thief II: The Metal Age. Eidos Interactive.
Viktoria: We must go to the Mechanist cathedral. The beacon you've heard about, you could find it, try to activate it, to draw the servants to the cathedral! Then you must somehow get Karras to signal them, to release the rust gas! You see, if I fill the cathedral with plants, enough to fuel a chain reaction, then it should cause the same effect we just saw, but it would take Karras with it, instead of the City! / [...] Garrett: Your plan is suicide. I'll think of a better way. And I work alone.
- ^ Looking Glass Studios (February 29, 2000). Thief II: The Metal Age. Eidos Interactive.
Keeper: Viktoria has begun an assault on the Mechanist cathedral. / [...] Viktoria: I'm plant enough!
- ^ Looking Glass Studios (February 29, 2000). Thief II: The Metal Age. Eidos Interactive.
Garrett: Viktoria's death... and Karras... was it written? In your books? / Keeper: All is... as it was written. / Garrett: And there's more? / Keeper: Yes. / Garrett: Tell me!
- ^ a b c d e Bergerud, John (July 18, 1999). "Steve Pearsall, Project Director on Thief II". GA-Source. Archived from the original on October 10, 1999.
- ^ a b c d Staff (July 30, 1999). "Looking Glass Talks Thief 2". Next Generation. Archived from the original on January 29, 2000.
- ^ a b c d e Harris, Tricia (February 5, 2000). "Steve Pearsall of Looking Glass Studios". GameSpy. Archived from the original on March 3, 2000.
- ^ a b c d Jensen, Chris (March 4, 2000). "Thief II: Exclusive Interview with James Poole". CheckOut. Archived from the original on January 11, 2001.
- ^ a b c d Bates, Jason (May 13, 1999). "Thief 2: The Metal Age E3 Update". IGN. Archived from the original on October 13, 1999.
- ^ Staff (March 27, 2009). "GDC 2009: Fallout 3 lead opens game design vault". GameSpot. Archived from the original on February 19, 2014.
- ^ a b c Galpern, Fred (Producer, Director, Editor); Thron, Dan (Camera Operator) (1999). The Making of Thief II. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Looking Glass Studios.
- ^ a b c "Thief 2 Development Team TTLG Exclusive Interview". Through the Looking Glass. November 17, 1999. Archived from the original on March 5, 2012.
- ^ "Eidos Interactive Announces 'Thief II: The Metal Age'". Business Wire (Press release). Los Angeles. May 13, 1999.
- ^ Laprad, David (May 13, 1999). "E3 - DAY 1". The Adrenaline Vault. Archived from the original on August 17, 2000.
- ^ a b c d Geryk, Bruce (May 15, 1999). "Thief 2: The Metal Age". Games Domain. Archived from the original on April 20, 2000.
- ^ Sones, Benjamin E. (June 13, 1999). "Thief 2: The Metal Age First Look". Computer Games Magazine. Archived from the original on July 3, 2003.
- ^ a b c d e f g Dark Engineering Guild (September 2008). T2X Making Of. PC Gamer UK.
- ^ a b Sharp, Brian (April 24, 2004). "Thief: Deadly Shadows - Volume I". GameSpy. Archived from the original on December 26, 2005.
- ^ Weise, Matthew (July 27, 2011). "Looking Glass Studios Interview Series - Audio Podcast 7 - Eric Brosius". Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab. Archived from the original on April 1, 2013.
- ^ a b Weise, Matthew (January 18, 2012). "Looking Glass Studios Interview Series – Audio Podcast 9 – Terri Brosius and Dan Thron". Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab. Archived from the original on April 1, 2013.
- ^ Ward, Trent C. (January 26, 2000). "Thief 2: The Metal Age Preview". IGN. Archived from the original on August 17, 2000.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l James Au, Wagner (June 20, 2000). "Game over". Salon.com. Archived from the original on April 28, 2009.
- ^ Laprad, David (February 24, 2000). "Thief 2 Development Update". The Adrenaline Vault. Archived from the original on April 12, 2000.
- ^ Fudge, James (March 23, 2000). "Thief II: The Metal Age Released". Computer Games Magazine. Archived from the original on May 25, 2003.
- ^ "Gone Gold - European Releases". Archived from the original on 2000-12-14. Retrieved 2023-10-21.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
- ^ a b "Thief II: The Metal Age for PC Reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved January 24, 2018.
- ^ a b Torres, Jasen (April 4, 2000). "Thief 2: The Metal Age". GameFan. Archived from the original on June 6, 2000. Retrieved November 14, 2010.
- ^ a b Brenesal, Barry (April 21, 2000). "Thief II: The Metal Age". GamePro. Archived from the original on February 12, 2005.
- ^ a b Preston, Jim (June 2000). "Finals". Next Generation. Vol. 3, no. 6. Imagine Media. p. 104.
- ^ a b c d e f g Opii, Valoria (2000). "Once more through the Looking Glass". GameSpy. Archived from the original on August 16, 2000.
- ^ Staff (November 2000). "Ion Storm Steals Thief". PC Zone (95): 23.
- ^ "It's All in the Numbers". PC Gamer. Future US. 8 (4): 40, 41. April 2000.
- ^ "ELSPA Sales Awards: Silver". Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association. Archived from the original on February 21, 2009.
- ^ Caoili, Eric (November 26, 2008). "ELSPA: Wii Fit, Mario Kart Reach Diamond Status In UK". Gamasutra. Archived from the original on September 18, 2017.
- ^ a b McDonald, T. Liam (August 2000). "Game Theory; Beyond the Looking Glass". Maximum PC: 31.
- ^ a b Sterrett, James (May 31, 2000). "Reasons for the Fall: A Post-Mortem On Looking Glass Studios". Through the Looking Glass. Archived from the original on March 8, 2014.
- ^ Asher, Mark (August 2000). "read.me; Looking Glass Shuts Down". Computer Gaming World. No. 193.
- ^ Pullin, Keith (July 2003). "The great game robbery; Thief 3". PC Zone (130): 36–39.
- ^ Weise, Matthew (June 22, 2011). "Looking Glass Studios Interview Series - Audio Podcast 4 - Randy Smith". Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab. Archived from the original on April 1, 2013.
- ^ a b Keefer, John (May 24, 2000). "Looking Glass Studios closes down". GameSpy. Archived from the original on June 21, 2000.
- ^ a b c Gillen, Kieron (August 2001). "Ion Storm in Heaven: The Genesis of Deus Ex 2 and Thief III". PC Gamer UK. No. 85. pp. 34–38.
- ^ a b c d Au, Wagner James (10 August 2000). "Ion Storm catches Thief". Salon.com. Archived from the original on May 18, 2015.
- ^ a b "Eidos Interactive To Continue Critically Acclaimed Thief Franchise For The PC and PlayStation® 2 Computer Entertainment System" (Press release). San Francisco: Eidos Interactive. August 8, 2000. Archived from the original on November 2, 2000.
- ^ a b Parker, Sam (August 9, 2000). "Eidos Confirms Thief 3 Plans". GameSpot. Archived from the original on August 15, 2000.
- ^ Osborn, Chuck (August 2001). "After the ION Storm". PC Gamer US. 8 (8): 37–42.
- ^ Parker, Sam (August 16, 2000). "Thief III Team Update". GameSpot. Archived from the original on January 10, 2016.
- ^ Staff (December 5, 2000). "Thief 3 Infobit". Vault Network. Archived from the original on July 29, 2003.
- ^ Holden, Anthony (April 2004). "Thief: Deadly Shadows". PC Zone (140): 36–40.
- ^ Adams, David (May 25, 2004). "Thief: Deadly Shadows Ships". IGN. Archived from the original on March 6, 2005.
- ^ Rossignol, Jim (May 11, 2009). "4 Real: Thief 4". Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Archived from the original on May 16, 2009.
- ^ MacDonald, Keza (March 5, 2013). "Thief 4 Coming in 2014". IGN. Archived from the original on March 8, 2013.
- ^ Martin, Tim (February 24, 2014). "Thief review". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on April 29, 2014.
- ^ Orland, Kyle (February 24, 2014). "Review: Thief reboot should have stayed hidden". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on March 7, 2014.
- ^ Young, Shamus (March 11, 2014). "10 Great Things About the Thief Reboot". The Escapist. Archived from the original on March 14, 2014.
- ^ "Thief on IGN". IGN. Archived from the original on March 22, 2014.
- ^ a b c d Todd, Brett (October 2007). "Like Seagulls and 747s". PC Gamer US. 14 (11): 98.
- ^ a b c d e f Staff (September 18, 2005). "Mod Spotlight: Thief 2X: Shadows of the Metal Age". Jolt Online Gaming. Archived from the original on November 10, 2005.
- ^ a b c Gillen, Kieron (August 2005). "Five Perfect Crimes". PC Gamer UK. No. 151. p. 106.
- ^ a b c Staff (December 2008). "The Love of the Fans". Game Informer. No. 188. p. 137.
External links[edit]
- 2000 video games
- Action-adventure games
- Dark fantasy video games
- Eidos Interactive games
- Looking Glass Studios games
- Stealth video games
- Steampunk video games
- Thief (series)
- Video game sequels
- Video games developed in the United States
- Video games scored by Eric Brosius
- Windows games
- Windows-only games
- Video games about crime
- Immersive sims
- Single-player video games


text:
How a person leaves their office desk can tell you a lot about them.
Is it organized chaos, bursting with new plans and ideas to take the world by storm? Do sentimental photos of family and moments adorn the area surrounding the workspace? Is the desk organized, meticulously cleaned, and orderly?
The structure of a person's work environment, along with the routines they use for enhancing productivity while at the office, can help give us insight on how they work best – and this becomes especially interesting when we look at the strategies and tactics used by some of the world's most extraordinary people.
Famous desks and what we can learn
Today's infographic comes from the Pens.com, and it highlights the work habits, routines, and desks from extraordinary people like Albert Einstein, Ernest Hemingway, Arianna Huffington, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg.
Let's see what we can take away from these examples:
Each approach above is unique – and each set of tactics helps that extraordinary person in getting closer to reaching their objective.
Lessons from the greats
Here are some of our favorite lessons that we thought were the most tangible:
Mark Zuckerberg
Consistent with his grey t-shirt and jeans approach to his wardrobe, Zucks also keeps his workspace simple. He doesn't have an office, and instead works with the same desk setup as every other Facebook employee.
Lesson: As a leader, the way you dress and set up your work environment also communicates your values to the organization and the outside world. Mark Zuckerberg keeps his environment simple to help him focus on the bigger problems, and this vision shines through crystal clear to inspire the people around him.
Elon Musk
At the Tesla office, Elon Musk set his desk up at the end of the Model X assembly line so he could personally inspect each finished vehicle.
Lesson: When doing something bold and visionary, there must be constant attention to detail to ensure that the end product meshes with the vision. Elon could have put his desk somewhere with a nice view, or in a corner office. Instead, by setting up his desk in this strategic position, it gave him assurance that the vehicles coming off the line were going to meet his uncompromising quality standards.
Albert Einstein
Einstein believed that cluttered desks were the sign of a cluttered brain, with lots of things going on. As such, he wondered what was going on in the brains of people with perfectly tidy workspaces!
Einstein also thought that combining unrelated concepts to generate new, creative ideas was a secret of genius.
Lesson: Studies have shown that messy desks are linked to creativity – something that Einstein needed when solving "outside the box" physics problems like relativity.
Arianna Huffington
For anyone that has read her book, Sleep Revolution, it's clear Arianna Huffington believes that people are generally quite sleep-deprived. For these reasons, she encourages naps to boost productivity in the workplace.
Lesson: Arianna Huffington has "owned" the discussion around sleep, and how proper habits can help with work productivity. It's no surprise she walks the talk, as well.
Ernest Hemingway
Hemingway thought he did his best work standing up, and he also kept a tally of his daily word count in front of him.
Lesson: While studies show working while standing up can enhance productivity by 10% – more importantly, Hemingway did what works best for him, even though it was unconventional. He also knew that monitoring his most important KPI, and keeping that metric right in front of him, would allow him to best gauge his progress on achieving his vision.

subset: commoncrawl


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Facebook Exec Mistakenly Tweets Hot Music Feature Prior To Today's Release
Facebook creative director Ji Lee tweeted then deleted a hot new music feature: group listening. Could this be a turntable.fm killer or just a great way to share music online? Watch the announcement live today with us here. The tweet:
via @mitchellholder


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Oystercatcher Press, 2009 £4.00
Reviewed by Marcia Menter, Rob A Mackenzie and Helena Nelson
Marcia Menter:
I was predisposed to dislike this pamphlet because 1) it consists of prose poems, which I distrust, and 2) it's about a mother mourning a child given up for adoption, an absolute minefield of a topic. I braced myself for sloppy explosions of sentiment, but instead found myself guided through a graceful, unsentimental (yet deeply felt) liturgy of loss. I say 'liturgy' because there are several poems in the form of catechisms, because the collection reads like a ceremony, and because there's a feeling of absolution at the end.
About those prose poems: they really are poems, each one an imagined encounter with a son now "old enough to vote, too young to drink"—as the narrator herself was when she gave birth. The encounters are surreal, dreamlike. She follows him through endless stairways in a Texas motel, hears the Southern drawl of his voice on her car radio, or finds herself a passenger on a turbulence-tossed plane he's piloting. ("Your life in someone else's hands, someone not really grown up yet," he tells her—or is he talking about her younger self?)
In one poem, he's a delivery man (get it?) who shows up at her flat in Bradford on Avon. Since Etter is an American poet now living in that very town (I found this out online, since there's no bio in the pamphlet), one is led to believe that she's telling her own story here. Certainly the emotions ring true; and every meticulously chosen image adds a different kind of resonance. We know how she feels, in dozens of ways. She gets a little wordy in spots, but mostly practises an admirable steely restraint.
Is it awful of me to hope the story is true, and that Etter really did give up a child? She's an emotionally talented poet who could, perhaps, have imagined all this. But I don't want to think she did.
Rob A Mackenzie:
This pamphlet is mainly a collection of prose poems: twelve 'Imagined Sons' in which a thematic unity develops around loss of memory, expectation or identity, interspersed by four poems titled 'A Birthmother's Catechism', which take the form of answers to a repeated question. The word 'catechism' summons a world of religious ritual, although these ones aren't tied to a system of belief. They have a liturgical quality, more universal than a private relationship between mother and son. From birth, motherhood becomes the locus of letting go, which connects to nature, the mind, and personal/national tragedy:
.......What is the anniversary of loss?
.......Where the swan's nest had been, widely scattered branches
.......and some crumpled beer cans
.......What is the anniversary of loss?
.......Sometimes the melancholy arrives before the remembering.
.......What is the anniversary of loss?
.......Some believe it is impossible to spend too much on
.......the memorial
..............[ 'A Birthmother's Catechism (September 11, 1986)']
The answers may be oblique. Together, they add up to something, even if singular truth remains elusive. The events of 9/11 are alluded to only in poems dated five years before and after, but the questions posed by mingling notions of private and public loss give this 16-poem pamphlet an emotional range that many full collections get nowhere near.
The prose poems are narratives about 'imagined sons'; the title suggesting loss can take the form of unfulfilled desire. Characters often seem to be chasing their tails. 'Imagined Sons 2: Seed Corn' has a son plucking ears from cornstalks. The mother follows him unseen. The son eventually suspects another human presence "once lost and now, possibly retrievable. That's what he senses as he increases his pace and at last breaks into a run, always gaining on a memory he can't quite catch."
This image, accurately and painfully, enacts the human experience of trying to retrieve shrouded memories, and such a chase features in several poems with only an illusion of definitive progress. When a mother considers something as basic as "taking up knitting, so I could busy my hands and eyes as needed," we're told that "instead I have become nondescript, the murky darkness of dishwater" ('Imagined Sons 5: The Courthouse'). Personal identity is in flux, never coherent. Recurrently, characters fail to recognise one another, despite having an obvious past relationship. On rare occasions when someone finds what they want, like the mother in 'Imagined Sons 11: The Baker' who wants to buy a loaf, it's as though the desire didn't belong purely to her in the first place. Before she asks, the man at the counter offers a loaf to her, "his awkward posture belying some uneasiness as he says, 'This is it, right? This is what you wanted?'"
What impresses me is how complex ideas have been made so enjoyable to read. The narratives are fluent, intriguing, somewhat surreal, and often humorous. They seem simple, yet strange, and are deeply affecting. They mine the deep pit of memory and expectation, and are haunted by what they don't know, what isn't said, what remains lost or unfathomable.
Helena Nelson:
I have a son of my own. The voice behind this sequence has lost hers. She starts with 'A Birthmother's Catechism' (September 11, 1986). Here is the last section of that poem:
.......What is the anniversary of loss?
.......Sometimes the melancholy arrives before the remembering.
.......What is the anniversary of loss?
.......Some believe it is impossible to spent too much on
.......the memorial.
.......What is the anniversary of loss?
.......When I say sometimes the melancholy comes first, I know
.......the body has its own memory.
.......What is the anniversary of loss?
.......The wishbone snapped, and I clung to the smaller piece
My son was born in 1982, so hers would have been four years younger than mine. Mine grew up with me, more or less and he is now 27. Hers, it becomes apparent, was adopted shortly after birth.
I make the comparison with my own son because it partly explains how closely I related to the poems in this pamphlet, and the intense sense of loss that makes them both beautiful and painful to read.
How do you react if you lose your baby—but you know he's alive somewhere? You imagine what he might be like. You go about and see young men of the approximate age your own son would be, and you imagine they might be him. So here we have twelve 'imagined sons' and three catechisms. The questions that drive everything are: What is the anniversary of loss? When will you let him go? How did you let him go? and What day is today?
The son and 'the sun', on his twentieth birthday, the twentieth anniversary of his absence, make it "too bright to see" outside.
I have no idea whether this pamphlet has been generated from personal experience. It became personal to me when I was reading it. 'Imagined Sons 3' seems to me to be a dream, and I feel as though it's a dream I've had myself. (I am aware that this is an inappropriate way to review a poetry pamphlet. No matter.) This is my dream in Carrie Etter's pamphlet: my son is surfing and I am watching. "I've been here for years." There's another woman sitting near me, "a tall woman in a cream-coloured suit". I am small. I point out my son to her as he glides in on a wave. This is what happens:
......."He's mine," she retorted. She pulled out my pointing arm as easily as if it were a mannequin's and cast it into the water. She ran into the ocean and .......swam towards him. Knocking his surfboard aside, she slid under his feet and floated to the surface: hair the dark red of a nectarine pit, lips fixed in .......a victorious smirk. All the while my pointing arm drifts slowly, surely toward him – and toward her.
This is a moving collection of texts: some are prosy and some are lyrical. It is not like anything else I have ever read:
.......How did you let him go?
.......Who hangs a birdhouse from a sapling?
How that hurts!


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Inspirational asanas, positivity and a gentle calmness were the three things that immediately attracted us to Jacqui Noël's, a yoga teacher living in Munich, Instagram account, and with a curiosity about what it is like to make yoga your living we knew we had to get in touch to find out more.
We love Jacqui's story, originally from New Zealand her career path has taken her from ballet dancer to digital producer to now yoga teacher and mama-to-be. She has lived across the world in New York, Sydney and London and is now based in Munich, Germany. Jacqui quit corporate life in 2018 to focus on yoga, and now teaches classes in Munich, where she currently calls home.
We find out more about what a Day in the Life looks like for her.
Morning Routine
I wake up between 7:00-7:30am when my husband gets up to go to work. I always start my day with a shower. This helps me wake up and feel fresh for the rest of the day. Then my husband and I will have breakfast together. My typical breakfast is a mix of muesli and granola with yoghurt and fruit. For liquids, I stick to just water. I actually don't like the taste of coffee so you'll never find me with a cup of coffee in my hand!
After breakfast, I'll do a morning yoga practice. Lately this consists of just gentle stretching and movements to open up my body after being stiff all night long.
Day Routine
During the day, I'll plan my next yoga classes. I like to spend the time coming up with creative sequencing so I keep my students interested and challenged. I always try to keep it varied and diverse as that is what I like in my own practice.
For lunch, I'll either have leftovers from dinner the night before, or I'll whip up something quick like eggs and avocado on toast. Lately I've been loving to add chives from our garden. Again, I'll have only water. I know I don't stay hydrated enough so I'm trying to be better about that!
If I'm teaching in the evening, I'll prepare to go out a couple hours before as we live in the countryside. I ride my bike to the station, and then take a train into the city.
My husband and I love to travel and explore new places and cultures. Currently we have Eastern Europe on our list of destinations. So I'll spend some time during the day planning our next trips or creating photobooks of our previous trips. At the moment though, all my free time is taken up with the arrival of our little one who is due in November! So I've been researching everything from car seats, to prams, to preparing the nursery and everything that goes with it!
Evening Routine
In the evenings, I'll either be teaching yoga or you'll find me in the kitchen. On the weekends we tend to cook more elaborate meals. Usually I'll be in charge of the main meal and my husband likes to bake, so he'll take care of the sweets. It's a perfect partnership!
I love to experiment with food and make dishes from different cultures. We don't eat out very often as we like to be in control of what we put in our bodies. And nothing beats a home cooked meal! Our diet consists of a little bit of everything. Our belief is moderation is key! And as my husband is French, our meals are typically in the French style. We will have a starter (usually fresh tomatoes or grated carrots with homemade vinaigrette), main meal, salad, cheese and dessert (usually fruit but maybe a fruit tart or cake if we've prepared well). We also have our own small vegetable patch in our garden where we grow our own tomatoes, zucchini, lettuce, radish, herbs and more. So we use vegetables from our garden in our cooking. As for everything else, we always try to buy organic products and stick to whole foods.
We spend a fair amount of time at the dinner table. My husband and I will catch up on each other's days, and then after dinner, we'll wind down, relaxing, reading a book, or maybe watching a movie. Before bed, I'll stretch a bit. We're usually in bed by around 11:00-11:30pm.
To see more of Jacqui's yoga practice visit her website here and make sure you follow her on Instagram here.
Want more interviews? Click here to see out 'Taking Five With..' interview series where we interview some of our favourite instagrammers, bloggers, and creatives.


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The Leading Auto Repair Shop In San Leandro
Wheel Alignment in San Leandro
Doral's Auto Repair offers complete San Leandro wheel alignment service – whether drivability issues signal the need for alignment, or you got new tires and want them to last. Wheel alignment may be required even after something as innocuous as bumping into a concrete parking stall – though it most cases, it takes something more drastic, like hitting a big pothole, or hitting a curb.
Driving with wheels out of alignment can significantly shorten tire life, will likely cause vibrations while driving, and can make the ride a lot noisier. Severe misalignment has been known to negatively impact handling of a vehicle. So if you notice signs of misalignment (see bullet points below), bring your vehicle to our San Leandro auto repair shop, and we will use our computerized alignment machine to get your car in top shape. When the alignment is done, you can expect that your vehicle will ride more smoothly, it will definitely improve tire life, and fuel economy will increase, according to industry research.
Since Bay Area roads are not well maintained, and potholes are a fact of life, we suggest alignment check once a year. If you have any concerns about wheel alignment, just mention them during your next oil service visit – we can do an alignment check and let you know if you vehicle requires wheel alignment or not. Some of the symptoms that are commonly associated with misalignment can be caused by other problems. We will check your car out and let you know exactly what needs to be done. In most cases, though, it is the alignment and the problem can be quickly remedied.
How Wheel Alignment is Accomplished
Special machines have been produced to check wheel alignment – they can detect misalignment on the order of a hundredth of a degree – obviously not something a human eye can catch, so we rely on computers built into the alignment machine to diagnose and correct the misalignment. As mentioned previously, if your vehicle has not had its alignment checked within last year or so, we recommend alignment check – it's fast, and can be done at the same time as the regular oil service.
Here is the list of symptoms that indicate that alignment check should be performed:
- The steering wheel pulls to the left or right
- You feel vibration when turning
- The steering wheel is not straight when driving on a straight roadway
- Tires are wearing out unevenly
Wheel alignment at Doral's Auto Repair is a multi-step process. Here are some of the main points:
- We check and compare tire alignment to automobile manufacturer guidelines
- We check and asses the suspension, and the steering system
- We check tire inflation
- Check of tread wear – in particular, we are looking for uneven tread wear
- The final step is the alignment on our computerized alignment machine.
If you have any concerns about wheel alignment, or the car does not handle "quite right" – give us a call. Our nationally certified technicians will inspect your vehicle, and if wheel alignment is indicated, they will perform professional wheel alignment using computerized alignment equipment. Correct wheel alignment improves ride comfort, benefits your car, and extends tire life. Call today for an appointment.


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VigLink, a startup that helps publishers and bloggers monetize their outbound traffic, has closed a $5.4 million Series B funding round led by Emergence Capital, with participation from existing investors Google Ventures and First Round Capital. The company raised $800,000 in January 2010 and has now raised a total of $7.3 million. The company is also revealing that SoftTech VC took part in an earlier round (their participation was not previously disclosed).
VigLink's goal is to help publishers monetize their content more effectively and without much effort. After installing a small snippet of code on your site, VigLink will detect whenever you create an outbound link to any of 12,500 merchant sites. It will then automatically convert this link to an affiliate link, which means that you get a kickback whenever someone clicks it and eventually completes a purchase on the linked merchant site. VigLink generally takes 25% of this cut, but given that many publishers don't monetize their outbound traffic at all, it's a lot better than nothing. Of course, you could always sign up for an affiliate program yourself, but VigLink is more convenient.
In addition to converting these links, VigLink is also gradually rolling out a new product that automatically inserts affiliate links whenever a relevant keyword is mentioned (for example, if you mentioned Nike shoes in a blog post, the site might automatically add a link to that text). This is a more aggressive feature, but CEO Oliver Roup says that the company's goal is to make their links unobtrusive. They're totally optional for publishers, and the service will also cap the number of links in any given article at four.
Since launching in February 2010 the service has been embedded on 15,000 sites, which serve some 2 billion pageviews per month. The company isn't talking about how much revenue it's generated for publishers, other than to say it's been "meaningful" to their bottom lines. VigLink acquired one of its competitors, DrivingRevenue, in August. Other competitors include UK-based startup Skimlinks.


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√LIVE private viewing: Intimate, private and dark, a room full of warm folks watched as the French-speaking Pop star sang and danced for two hours.
On a Monday night, Stromae shared an exclusive preview of his first-ever live concert video: √LIVE. It was at a luxe venue I've never visited. Intimate, private and dark, a room full of warm folks watched as the French-speaking pop star sang and danced for two hours. It was magical. From his outfits to his hair and vocal tone, everything was perfect. He'd been performing this material for a while as most, if not all of it, comes from his 2013 release for "Racine Carrée."
In the dark, old friends and new ones laughed, commented and sung along to the Rwandan-Belgian artist's unique upbeat dance music. At one point, one of us mimicked the odd, spider-like dance moves he does when "Quand c'est ?" cued. To say the least, I think the unlimited champagne and branded macaroons begun to work its magic. His immaculate set design, geometric logo and the beautiful faces of his fans are unlike anything else I've seen on-screen—and my personal favourite track is "Moules frites," after "Papaoutai."
What I enjoyed most about Stromae's live performance is that he looks comfortable, and looks great when he sweats. It's almost like he purposely walked through a water sprinkler for a risqué Thom Browne ad. Now known for playing to a sold-out crowd in New York City at Madison Square Garden, Stromae has an everlasting hold on you when you lay eyes on him —even if you don't understand what's he saying.
"√LIVE" is a 120-minute long video that features 17 songs and comes with a specially designed digi-book hardcover accompanied by an exclusive 80-page booklet with behind-the-scenes souvenir pictures from the 209-date tour. Luc Junior Tam, Gautier & Leduc are responsible for its direction, and it's setting is at Bell Centre in Montreal during his Square Root Live tour. Support great artistry and purchase the √Live DVD on Amazon or iTunes.


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Rents are Increasing. What are your Options?
This article originally appeared on ColoradoBiz Magazine. See it here.
Maybe you've heard of it happening, maybe it's happened to you: You get a notice from your landlord that your rent is going up 30% once your current lease expires.
"How can they do that?" you may ask.
"We paid rent on time and have a great relationship with our landlord!" you may lament.
Although your indignancy is well-founded, the unfortunate reality is that this isn't all that uncommon. Landlords follow a simple business model: raise your rents and make more money.
For many companies, office space is the second biggest line item on their budget after staff salaries. For startups it can be an even bigger share. Is your company prepared for that kind of increase? Probably not. Fortunately, not all is lost. Even when facing a seemingly insurmountable cost increase, there are still options at your disposal, some more palatable than others.
Option of Greatest Resistance
Downsize. Obviously, this isn't the first choice for any growing company (or static company for that matter), but sometimes there just isn't enough revenue to keep your operations running while maintaining your current head count. Are there ancillary services you provide that aren't core to revenue generation? Is there an option to take advantage of cheaper college-level interns or lower-cost recent grads? Companies such as Handshake, which helps pair students with companies looking for younger talent, can be a good place to start. Of course, prior to such a drastic decision, it's crucial to rule out any alternatives (see below).
Option of Less Resistance
Relocate. When cutting your head count is a non-starter, it might be time to consider some lower-cost alternatives to your current space. This option is oftentimes the best place to start, regardless if it isn't your final decision, as just the threat of relocation will likely earn you better terms from your current landlord. Relocation comes with its own considerations however:
- Will your new space give you the same recruiting and retention ability as your old space? If you're in a high-profile building in downtown Boulder – loaded with amenities, close to restaurants, and with easy access to the outdoors – a move deep into Louisville, will probably leave your employees feeling cut-off, and will have an impact on your ability to recruit new talent.
- Or maybe you're downtown and looking at moving south toward the Tech Center. How many of your employees are already commuting from up the 36-corridor? Will they be willing to drive an extra 45 minutes for the same salary? You could increase their pay, but then why move to a cheaper area in the first place?
- Where is your competition located? Can your employees be lured to a similar job with similar pay closer to home?
- Will your operations take a hit by moving your headquarters to a new location? If you're managing a manufacturing or distribution center, supply chain logistics and delivery times are of vital importance. How much extra cost will you incur if it takes an extra 30 minutes to deliver your products? How many additional major capital expenditures will be required to get your operations up and running at a new site? Can you afford the time it will take to move?
The most important thing to keep in mind when relocating is that it takes time: time to tour the market and find the right location, time to negotiate the right terms on your lease, time to work with the architect and determine the best layout, time to get permits from the city, time for construction and time to move and get settled into your new space. Think six months is enough? Try two years before your lease expiration.
Option of Least Resistance
Rethink workplace strategy. Rather than laying off employees or moving your operations across town, perhaps it's time to rethink how you use your current office space. Technology advancements have made coming into the office everyday less of a necessity for most employees. Deals can get done on the road, and culture doesn't have to sacrifice when remote employees can video conference into daily meetings.
Collecting data on your employees working habits are a critical first step to any restructuring. Do all your employees come to the office every day of the week? Do they need large private offices to conduct their business? Does each employee need their own desk, or can they set up shop at any conceivable workspace? How many conference rooms do you need? How many small huddle rooms? How many phone booths?
With this data in-hand, the process of figuring out how to free up space becomes clearer. Maybe you offer employees the opportunity to work from home on certain days of the week. Maybe you move away from an office-intensive setup to a benching system, thus increasing your employee density. Maybe you set up a smaller satellite office in a more affordable part of town. Whatever your data tells you, there are technological solutions to support your decision.


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2-Zimmer Apartment in Berlin Schöneberg - SALA2-6
2 room apartment in the middle of the gay neighborhood
: 66 qm, im Erdgeschoss. Preis inklusive Kaffee und Tee. Eigene Küche und eigenes Badezimmer. 2 Stationen entfernt vom Stadtzentrum "Zoologischer Garten". Das Objekt liegt mitten in der Gay-Area. Nächste Haltestelle: Nollendorfplatz (U1, U2, U3, U4). Gastgeber spricht Englisch und Deutsch.
Objektbeschreibung des Gastgebers:
My accommodation is ideal for gays, lesbians and their friends.
KaDeWe is only 5 minutes away and Nollendorfplaz metro station 3 minutes away. Do to its position, you can travel very easy everywhere in the city.
Nearby are a lot of bars , restaurants and shops.
House Rules: smoking is allowed only on the balcony, no parties allowed, you'll have to keep quiet after 10 p.m.
The standard check-in time is between 15h and 22h.
-early check-in: free of charge, depending on the availability.
-late check-in (22h-24h): 50 Euro, depending on availability.
The standard check-out is before 11h (self check-out).
-late check-out: free of charge, depending on the availability
smoking is allowed only on the balcony. the penalty for smoking inside the apartment is 200 euro!


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Philadelphia Zoo - is pleased to welcome a new addition to the family: a western lowland gorilla born to Kira, the Zoo's 17-year-old female and 32-year old Motuba on Friday, June 2. This is the first birth for Kira and third offspring for Motuba, who is also father to baby Amani born at the Zoo last August. The newborn can be seen with the rest of the gorilla troop in PECO Primate Reserve.
Mother and baby appear healthy, but will be monitored carefully by Zoo staff in the coming weeks and months. Like a newborn human, a baby gorilla is essentially helpless, relying completely on its mother for care. "We are very excited to welcome Kira's new baby," says Dr. Andy Baker, Philadelphia Zoo's Chief Operating Officer. "This important birth is an opportunity to engage our visitors in caring about the future of gorillas in the wild."
Gorilla Baby
On Thursday, June 1 keeper staff noticed signs that Kira had begun labor, but as of Friday morning she had not delivered. She appeared to tire and behaved as if she were feeling worse over the course of the morning and there were no signs of the labor progressing. Typically, gorilla labor is quick and the mother does not appear tired, distressed, or show symptoms of feeling poorly. Concerned about the health of both Kira and her baby, the Philadelphia Zoo's veterinary staff contacted a pre-determined team of consultants who were prepared to assist if there were any problems with the pregnancy or delivery. The team of professionals, from the veterinary and human medical field, includes an ob-gyn, surgeons, anesthesiologists and others, and came from leading area institutions such as University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Presbyterian Hospital and Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. A similar team was in place for the gorilla birth last year, but the emergency response was not needed. Once onsite, the medical team examined Kira after she had been placed under anesthesia and determined that she was fully dilated and that the baby was in position for a vaginal delivery.
After 1.5 hours the team delivered a healthy 5lb, 0 oz. baby boy, the process requiring many of the same tools and techniques used for human deliveries, including forceps and episiotomy. While there have been several successful C-section deliveries for gorillas over the past few years, the most recent case of an assisted vaginal delivery the Zoo is aware of occurred in 2000.
Because mom Kira was recovering from anesthesia, vet staff provided the newborn with initial neonatal care, holding and feeding him through the night. By the next morning, Kira was fully recovered and was quickly reunited with her new baby, and has been continuously cradling and nursing him since.
"Our veterinary team had an advance plan in place that had us prepared for scenarios like this – and in this case that plan, and the skill of our keeper team, enabled a safe delivery for both Kira and her baby," says Dr. Andy Baker. "We often take advantage of the expertise in Philadelphia to optimize health care for our animals, and working with valued partners such as Penn Medicine, Penn Vet, and Jefferson, we were able to intervene and save both lives. It was an anxious and dramatic day at the Zoo, but in the end a tremendously rewarding one," said Baker.
"Though Kira is a first time mom, we're not surprised she's acting like an expert already. She was a great older sister to younger siblings and has been very attentive while our other female gorilla Honi has raised baby Amani, " says Baker. "Everybody is excited about these two future playmates."
Western lowland gorillas are listed as Critically Endangered in the wild by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), with threats including habitat destruction due to palm oil and timber plantations as global demand for palm oil and paper continues to rise. The Zoo works with the Species Survival Plan® (SSP) program of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA), whose goal is to manage populations of endangered and other species across AZA zoos, to maintain long-term genetic and demographic viability.
The newborn currently lives in PECO Primate Reserve with mom Kira, dad Motuba and other troop mates Honi and her baby Amani. Viewing times may vary - visitors can see the family inside PECO Primate Reserve, in their outdoor habitat or hanging out in the Zoo360 trails, or when mom wants quiet time she might retire to her back-of-house space with the newborn. The Zoo plans to work again with the Gorilla Rehabilitation and Conservation Education Center (GRACE) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to choose a name for the infant.


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The 2012 season wasn't much to remember.
And yet, it did have its moments -- some exciting, some funny, some poignant -- all worth remembering via photo.
I'm trying this for the first time; our new format allows us to do photo galleries like this one. Hover your mouse over the photo and a caption will appear at the top.
So, enjoy 50 photos from the 2012 season, with players, Wrigley Field, team management and more. Hope you enjoy this look back through the past season.


text: The importance of motivation in the process of self-improvement is a fundamental aspect, which is not usually considered enough. Doug McMillon may help you with your research. It is common that is unable to fully comprehend the weight that has personal motivation in the achievement of dreams but don't worry, because we will see the practical recipe to understand the process and launch the first steps in your Personal self-improvement today! Let's look at the passion is the engine of motivation, because there must be a reason that is important enough to be motivated. This reason should have its own weight and be powerful enough to give you the energy needed to take action, and this only succeed you when something you love deeply. With this formula, you're ready to face any obstacle, nothing can stop you. It will be better with an example a hockey team performs a sufficiently frequent and proper training to deal with a rival team. When we speak of global meetings, teams who face tend to be pretty even in terms of her physical preparation, level of training, etc then, what is what makes a team to make a big difference with its competitor? It is what we usually call the morale of the team, enthusiasm, the hunger for victory; well, all that is not more than the motivation of the team. In Argentina we have seen it recently with the participation of Las Leonas, in which cohesion as team and passion with which they played were the factors that made the difference, transforming itself into a kind of magnet for the prize they managed to visualize previously with such force. In our everyday life, sometimes there are situations for which we do not believe capable there was one occasion in which a man was invited to cross an existing Cliff between two buildings of 50 flats through a narrow rope. His immediate answer was NO!.


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Friday, February 12, 2010
Happy Valentine's Day: Allie's Quilt Skirt Giveaway--Extended
As a quick pattern description, the skirt has a solid color yoke with an elastic waist. It has gathered tiers made of 5" squares, and embellished with trims within the squares and pompoms along the bottom. This skirt was designed by my daughter. It is her first design and we are quite proud. The shirt she is wearing with it was made from out Easy Knit Top/Dress pattern. The flower clip in her hair is in our tutorial section.
To win the quilt skirt e-pattern all you have to do is comment. There are a few other ways you can get more entries also. If you do any of the extra entries, make sure you post a seperate comment about each of them. The winner will be announced on Monday at 5:00 pm ET. The winner will need to email us at SquigglyTwigs to claim their prize. I'll post our email in the winner's post on Monday.
How can you enter?
1. Post a comment about what you'd love to sew.
2. Follow Us
3. Facebook the contest
4. Twitter the contest
5. Blog about the contest and link it in the blog post.
Don't forget to check back Monday after 5:00 pm ET.
Happy Sewing and Happy Valentine's Day!
14 comments:
I'm always looking for new patterns!ReplyDelete
What adorable patterns you have! I have sewn many things from curtains to dresses to pajamas to aprons. I love creating new things! My favorite out of all of those was probably the skirts I made for myself. They are so comfortable and took only 2 hours to make.ReplyDelete
I also facebooked about the contest at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Colorado-Springs-CO/All-Things-Granola/110232997252?ref=tsReplyDelete
- AnonymousFebruary 13, 2010 at 11:08 AM
Hi thereReplyDelete
I love to swew sew sew. I am always looking for new fun things and you have them :)
Thanks for the opportunity to win.
- AnonymousFebruary 13, 2010 at 11:09 AM
Hi thereReplyDelete
I am a follower :)
I'd love to sew this patchwork skirt for dear daughter!
yogawithgaileee at gmail dot com
I'm following you as "gaileee"!ReplyDelete
yogawithgaileee at gmail dot com
I twittered about the contest, and in my twitter feed, fed the link to my facebook account, with the #fb tag....ReplyDelete
yogawithgaileee at gmail dot com
What a fun pattern. I love to sew--especially for my granchildren. This would be a wonderful pattern to use up lot of scraps.ReplyDelete
I would like to sew theReplyDelete
Allie's Quilt Skirt.
Thank you.
Happy Valentine's Day
Hi I love to come and look at what you are making I am a nervous sew-er but I love all your patchwork patterns and would love to try one of them.ReplyDelete
Hi I am following as Cheryl :)ReplyDelete
On behalf of M from email: That skirt is adorable. My 9 yr dd is learning to sew and I am re-learning with her. We would love to sew things for her to wear.ReplyDelete
On behalf of M from email: I also signed up to follow you in google reader for a second entry.ReplyDelete


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Until now I was using a "traditional" version of Nautilus: that that comes with Ubuntu 10.10. Now I'm using 3.6.3, included with Ubuntu 13.04 (most likely any recent version is equivalent for the scope of my question, anyway).
One major difference between the two is the search-as-you-type behavior: in classic versions of Nautilus, when you typed an input, the file with the closest alphabetical match would become the selected one, the eligible files/folders being restricted to the current directory.
The new behavior is to perform an optionally-global search instead.
Can one configure Nautilus to provide the previous functionality ?


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GB Paralympian Stef Reid has taken time out of training for Tokyo 2020 to help encourage and mentor leprosy patients.
A Paralympic long jumper and sprinter, Stef went to Nepal to literally walk in the shoes of locals. She switched her state-of-the-art prosthetic foot with one made in the The Leprosy Mission's Anandaban hospital workshop, which makes prosthetic limbs for those who have lost limbs as a result of leprosy.
The London 2012 Olympics silver medalist lost her right foot in a boating accident, aged 15. Stef, who's since gone onto win medals at European and World level, commented:
A lot of the way they did the casting was really similar to what I experience in the UK, and this is bearing in mind I go to a very amazing private clinic.
You can always tell someone knows what they're doing by the way they interact with your stump, your residual limb. You can see the guys at Anandaban Hospital have done the casting many times before.
But in many ways it was also really hard this morning and actually after seeing the things they make, I think I almost felt a little bit embarrassed about the leg that I have, in that my leg is so advanced and it does have the best technology.
It's amazing to see how great their casting is, they are doing everything right. It's just that hurdle of prosthetic legs just cost so much and that's hard to know.
Stef met patients whose homes were destroyed in the 2015 earthquakes, which killed 9,000 people in Nepal. She added:
Before I travelled to Nepal I think there was that hesitation of 'I really hope I'll be able to communicate well and they are going to understand me.'
But in the end it didn't even matter. I had people coming up to me just wanting to hold my hand. We just stood there and didn't really have to say anything at all!
It has become so clear to me that it doesn't matter where in the world you are or what culture you are from, we all want the same things.
But leprosy is a really hard disease on so many fronts and not just because of the health problems it causes. We have seen that sometimes the things that can be most difficult is the loss of community and stigma associated with leprosy.
Anandaban Hospital in Nepal was designated a Disaster Response Centre by the Government of Nepal in the wake of the 2015 earthquakes, after it reached out to 18,000 earthquake victims, as well as leading the world's fight against leprosy.
In addition to being the national specialist leprosy referral hospital for Nepal, it is an International Leprosy Training Centre training doctors and surgeons globally.
To support the work of the hospital and The Leprosy Mission, visit www.leprosymission.org.uk. All donations made to its Heal Nepal campaign before 27 April will be doubled by the UK government.
Picture: The Leprosy Mission


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Train or bus? With federal and state governments facing fiscal meltdown and with transportation expecting some of the biggest hits, the question is frequently asked: Why not convert proposed LRT lines to BRT as a cost-saving measure?
The question is a good one, but the answer isn't as clear as it seems.
First let's define our terms. LRT is light rail transit, a mid-sized electrified rail technology that's smaller than a subway but larger than a streetcar. The Hiawatha Line (opened in 2004) and the Central Line (under construction) are examples in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
BRT is bus rapid transit, a far more amorphous idea. At the high end, BRT is nearly identical to LRT except that its vehicles run on rubber tires on exclusive paved roadways and are powered by diesel fuel. Passenger amenities are similar: stations, ticket vending machines, raised platforms and 5- to 12-minute frequencies all day long. At the low end, BRT is just a glorified express bus system that runs mostly during rush hours. Locally, Metro Transit is developing BRT incrementally along Interstate Hwy. 35W between downtown Minneapolis and Lakeville, and along Cedar Avenue between Lakeville and the Mall of America.
Is BRT a bargain?
Now to the questions. Is BRT cheaper?
Generally, yes, but its cost advantage isn't quite what it appears to be. Construction costs run one-third to one-half lower, depending on the sophistication of the BRT line. An upper-end BRT line costs $50 million per mile to build, for example, compared to $80 million per mile for a typical LRT line. But operating costs for BRT tend to run higher, especially on high-demand routes. That's because it takes more drivers to haul the same number of passengers and because fuel costs for buses are higher and more volatile.
"The general consensus is that the more BRT tries to emulate LRT with higher levels of service and with better vehicles and stations, then you might as well have LRT, because the operating costs are less and because LRT tends to draw more riders," said Nacho Diaz, a transportation consultant and former Met Council transportation director.
In other words, while initial costs are cheaper with BRT, you might get more bang for your buck with LRT, especially in a high-potential corridor and over longer periods of time.
Not only do trains draw more riders than buses (a new LRT line typically draws double the riders of a new BRT line), they lure more auto drivers to switch to transit. Transport analysts refer to the tendency as "rail bias" or the "coolness factor," meaning that people simply prefer trains over buses.
LRT generates development
Another big LRT advantage is that it usually increases property values and it generates new jobs, new housing and new riders along its route. Results are, in some cases, dramatic. That gives LRT a big advantage in fairly dense corridors with high growth potential. BRT's record in the United States is incomplete by comparison.
LRT may provide an environmental advantage as well, not only with its electric motors but with its ability to concentrate dense development in some areas while leaving others more pristine.
All in all, the LRT/BRT argument is something of a mismatch. In high-value corridors with lots of jobs and appealing opportunities for density and redevelopment, light rail makes sense. In less dense, more suburban-type corridors where there's less all-day activity, BRT is probably a better choice.
"It's not an either/or proposition," said Jim Erkel, transportation director for the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy.
"The main point here is that it's the potential of the corridor that determines the mode," said Hennepin County Commissioner Peter McLaughlin. "These are not five-year, short-term decisions to be made because of political expediency; they are decisions with time frames of 50 years or more.
Converting drivers to riders
"Another thing to remember is that we're in the process of trying to rebuild transit's reputation in this market," McLaughlin continued. "It had devolved into a system that was just for 'other people,' you know, people who didn't have other options. Now we're expanding ridership to a broader audience and elevating the reputation.
"The other point is that we're not neglecting BRT," he said. "We're building it, and we're going to build more of it in corridors where it's most appropriate."
BRT's advantages for secondary corridors are considerable. BRT provides more flexibility; buses can operate on exclusive lanes along major corridors, for example, then branch out to cover more territory as the destination approaches. That means a better chance at getting closer to where people live and work. BRT can also be phased in gradually, as with Metro Transit's lines between downtown Minneapolis and the Dakota County suburbs. Politicians tend to like BRT because it allows them to spread transportation improvements more quickly to wider geographic areas at lower initial costs.
With cities clamoring for dwindling amounts of federal LRT money, some cities are giving BRT a closer look. The low-cost, high-use system in Curitiba, Brazil, [PDF] is often held up as a model. Los Angeles is investigating whether to give buses exclusive lanes along heavily-traveled Wilshire Boulevard, [PDF] thus copying the successful Orange Line BRT route running through the San Fernando Valley.
Ottawa considers rail conversion
BRT's limitations are also on display, however. Ottawa, which launched its extensive system in 1986, is usually held up as the continent's best BRT example. Busways there are credited with generating $1 billion (Canadian) of development over its first two decades of operation. But apparently the system has been victimized by its success. So many articulated buses crowd the downtown streets that the city is considering a conversion to higher-capacity light rail.
The capacity problem is one reason light rail was chosen for the Central Corridor. (Computer models showed buses bunching up at the University of Minnesota and failing to keep their schedules.)
"With ridership projected at more than 40,000 per day it wasn't that hard a decision to choose light rail," said McLaughlin, who chairs the Counties Transit Improvement Board. Light rail has also been selected for the Southwest Corridor (downtown Minneapolis to Eden Prairie) and may be the favored choice for the Bottineau Boulevard (downtown Minneapolis to Maple Grove) and Gateway (downtown St. Paul to Woodbury) corridors. Other corridors being studied (Rush, Red Rock, Robert Street) are likely to become busways, largely because their ridership projects don't rise to LRT levels.
The fact that money is short right now changes the political dynamics for transit expansion. But it doesn't change the 50-year potential for corridors in the MSP metro.
Here are some sites to explore:
Light Rail Now!
Bus Rapid Transit Policy Center
BRTvs.LRT [PDF]