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Welcome To
Serene Country Urns
Wholesalers to the Pet Cremation Industry throughout North America
Click Links to purchase from our online retailers
Our goal is to provide the finest quality products available at a fair and reasonable price and offer a variety of styles to suit everyone's needs.
We invite you to browse our site frequently as we will be offering new products from time to time. We are also available to work with you to design and build a line of your own.
If you want to purchase a product, contact your cremation service; or contact us and we will be happy to assist you in any way we can.
Please visit our contact page if you have any questions or comments.
Copyright © 2004
Serene Country Urns


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The Culture Gabfest, "Mooney Clooney" Edition
Listen to Slate's show about The American and the rest of the week in culture.
Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 103 with Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens, and Julia Thomas by clicking the arrow on the audio player below:
You can also download the program here, or you can subscribe to the weekly Culture Gabfest podcast feed via iTunesor directly with our RSS feed. Find the Culturefest Facebook page here. Leave us a note and see what other listeners have to say about the latest podcast.
This episode is brought to you by Carbonite, the leader in online backup. Carbonite backs up your files automatically, whenever you connect to the Internet. Try Carbonite for free. Go to Carbonite.com, and enter offer code SLATE. If you decide to buy the service (after the trial), you'll get two months free with offer code SLATE.
In this week's Culture Gabfest, our critics Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens, and Julia Turner discuss George Clooney's latest flick The American, income inequality with Slate's own Timothy Noah, and the phone-hacking scandal in the Murdoch media empire.
Here are links to some of the things we discussed this week:
Dana's review and Spoiler Special on The American for Slate.
The Euro-snooze review of Clooney's latest in the New York Post.
Watch the trailer for The American here.
The IMDB page for Once Upon a Time in the West.
Once Upon a Time in the West on DVD.
The New York Times Magazine piece on the British phone scandal.
Slate's Jack Shafer on Murdoch's response to The New York Times.
Michael Wolff for Newser on what Murdoch knew and when he knew it.
The Culture Gabfest weekly endorsements:
Dana's pick: Arcade Fire's latest CD, The Suburbs, and the TV show Louie on FX.
Julia's pick: The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg and Super Sad True Love Storyby Gary Shteyngart.
Steve's pick: Philip Larkin's poem "Church Going."
Outro: Cee Lo Green's "Fuck You"
You can e-mail us at firstname.lastname@example.com.
Posted on Sept. 8 by Jesse Baker at 10:55 a.m.

subset: commoncrawl


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That's You! is a party game for PS4 – but unlike most party games, it's played using your smartphone. Weird. But also EXCITING.
We convinced a bunch of NAG staffers that playing games with Michael and I for an hour would be a far more efficient use of their time than, like, actually working, and then filmed the results of our awkward tomfoolery.
The video's below the break.


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- 2/3 cup heavy cream
- 5 teaspoons Grand Marnier
- 2 teaspoons sugar
- Pinch of salt
- 2 ounces semisweet chocolate, finely chopped
Add the cream to a small pot and set it over high heat. Add the Grand Marnier, sugar, and salt. Whisk in the chocolate and bring to a boil, whisking constantly. Remove from the heat and serve warm. If you make this ahead, store covered in the refrigerator. Warm gently in a double boiler before serving.
Recipe Details
- Source: Emeril's Test Kitchen [4]
- Dish Type: Sauces [5]
- Cuisine: French [6]
- Cooking Method: Simmering [7]
- Effort Level: Simple [8]


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Okavango Delta, Botswana
Nestled in the 'predator capital of Africa, Sanctuary Chief's Camp is one of the most luxurious safari camps in the heart of the Okavango Delta.
Named after the Chief Moremi, the hereditary king of the area who used the lands as his royal hunting ground, Chief's Camp comprises of 12 opulent bush pavilions, tucked away in a jackal berry and sausage tree woodland, each with their own private decks, outdoor showers as well as fully-equipped bathroom. Dotting the edge of the Piajio plains, the guest pavilions are in close proximity to the resident wildlife populations.
Take a scenic helicopter flight over the delta, flying over areas unreachable by vehicle or boat, pole through floodways in search of hippo or treat yourself soothing spa treatment at the sala where you can peer off the deck after your Africology massage. Chief's Camp gives you the experience of both a wet and dry camp and its location, within the exclusive Mombo Concession that is home to 52 different lions, offers you opportunities for frequent leopard, lion and rhino sightings – the ultimate in safari destinations.
Chief's Camp Information
- Location: Moremi Game Reserve, Okavango Delta. A 25-minute light aircraft flight from Maun, followed by a 40-minute game drive to the camp.
- Accommodation: 12 rooms accommodating up to 24 people.
- Facilities: Swimming pool, curio shop, mini bar, mosquito nets and ceiling fans, spa services.
- Activities: Game drives, Mokoro around the flood plain in front of camp, helicopter rides, elephant sanctuary visits, 4X4 game drives.
- Weather: Best visited in the dry season which runs from late May to early October. The wet season is from late December to early March.
- Children: Children over 9 years of age are welcome.
Show me more Adventure Holidays or take me to the Botswana Holidays hub page


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Welcome once again to the Frisky Power Rankings, where I rank women's flat track roller derby according to my whims/in-depth knowledge.
AHHH DIVISION ONE PLAYOFFS ARE COMING. Tucson is NEXT WEEK. I'll be seeing Team United play for the first time! Will Bricktator play against BAD? Victoria plays more games! WHOA it's all going to be awesome. THEN DALLAS ACK HELP so exciting.
- Gotham. They've been cruising along all year, crushing all teams in their wake, like usual. *drums on laptop with thumbs, blows airs up through bangs*
- London. Beat Rose City by a handy margin in London. Now, Rose might have been touristing it up a bit, but 129-193 is no small margin.
- Victoria. Will everyone be on to them now that they've studied the tape from Victoria's last visit to the States? Will people ever get that "Victoria" is a proper noun and "Victorian" is an adjective? WE SHALL SOON SEE.
- Rose City Rollers. Hoping they'll stomp everyone with their pegacorn hooves pretty soon. (Biased.)
- Denver. I have to give Denver the edge over Texas here, as they beat them in May. I have a tendency to underrate Denver, too, but they consistently make it happen.
- Texas. You're great, and I can't wait to watch you.
- Angel City. Just lost to Texas, beat out BAD, so let's snuggle them up here between the two. Cozy!
- Bay Area Derby. But seriously, they only lost to Texas by 13.
- Philly. Close result against Denver, win over a surging Montreal. Not a bad August.
- Jacksonville. Daang, looking strong, looking strong.
- Arch Rival. Slide down a bit on loss to Jacksonville.
- Montreal. Just lost to Philly to 12. Don't sleep.
- Minnesota. No games this month, I don't know, so let's just save the cut-and-paste (tough on the wrists after a while, geez) and leave them here.
- Sun State. Are they ready to surprise at playoffs this year, or do they need a year of seasoning? LIKE I SAID ABOUT THEIR FELLOW AUSTRALIANS.
- Team United. So much power, and I've never seen them play. What a world.
- Atlanta. A game against Texas is a pretty good warmup…
- Tampa. …so was a game against Arch Rival.
- Stockholm. Sometimes teams are ranked and it seems like they should have power but I have no clue. Let's be honest here.
- Terminal City. Just beat Rat by one, but at home. WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN.
- Rat City. I ask you.
- Rocky Mountain. They haven't played since June. Yawn. That does it for your power!
- Dallas. Yeah, sure, why not?
- Nashville. Whoo, congrats! A win at D2 playoffs gives you power.
- Kansas City. Sames.
- Ice cream. Hey, we're getting serious this time of year.
What do you think? Who has power? Let us know in the comments. Dish freely, or send me anonymous tips at @littleanecdote so I feel cool. (It doesn't hurt to ask.)


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HAWTHORNE (CBSLA.com) — A boy was arrested and another suspect was being sought Tuesday in connection with the beating of a 43-year-old man at the Hawthorne Metro Green Line Station.
The incident happened at 9:45 p.m. on Feb. 17, according to the sheriff's Transit Services Bureau.
Two boys approached the victim, who was standing on the sidewalk, and started to ask questions that led the man to believe he was going to be robbed, according to authorities.
The suspects began to punch and kick the victim, even using their skateboards at one point.
The attack stopped after a witness yelled that he was going to call the cops.
One of the suspects then used a racial slur to say that blacks "were not welcome around here" to the witness and the victim, the transit bureau said.
The boys then fled.
With the help of the victim and witness, detectives searched one of the suspect's homes and found evidence that linked him to the crime.
The boy was booked for assault with a deadly weapon.
Other charges may be sought in the case.
"The district attorney is looking into the fact that he (the suspect) allegedly used a racial slur while beating the victim, and allegedly used that same slur to attempt to intimidate the witness," Det. Keith Schumaker of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said.
The district attorney's office may also file a hate crime enhancement, according to Schumaker.
The second suspect was described as being between 15 to 19, 5 feet 10 inches tall and 140 pounds. He was wearing a black striped shirt, black pants and a black jacket.
Anyone with information on the attack was asked to call Det. Schumaker at (323) 563-5000.
(©2014 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Wire services contributed to this report.)


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Tuesday, April 19, 2016 to Thursday, April 21, 2016
As our premier customer driven event, it is designed to drive simulation creativity and inspire users to understand what is possible with heat transfer simulation. Attending ThermoAnalytics' UGM gives customers a chance to collaborate with our software users, who come from a wide variety of industries and backgrounds. In addition to user driven presentations, we will host a number of technical and training sessions surrounding the event.
Please click on one of the links below for more information.
NOTE: Our agenda has not been finalized and is currently in a draft format.
Hilton Munich City
Rosenheimer Str. 1581667 Munich


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Centres rely on you to make sure their courses run smoothly – you're the engine behind their business. To keep the engine well-oiled, your qualifications must enrich the learning process and be simple for centres to administer, assess and verify so that learners get the optimal learning experience. Digital Assess makes you more efficient with accurate, credible tools for assessment. Know more.
Digital Assess simplifies workflow between you and your centres, including managing qualification specifications and notifying learners without delay. Everything is stored in one secure location online, accessible through a single intuitive interface. You get a clear view of the whole workflow and centres can submit digital coursework within seconds – no more paper; no more printing; no more postage.
You need to be confident that your customers assess work against robust standards. We provide a simple, consistent approach to measuring the application of knowledge, even in creative, open-ended projects. Digital Assess provides assessors, verifiers and moderators with tools to give feedback digitally on learners' progress. Drag and drop assessment criteria into individual pieces of digital evidence and demonstrate exactly how learners have met learning milestones. And you'll be creating a clear audit trail from start to finish.
Let Digital Assess take away the hassle created by common mistakes in marking and submission, saving time and cost for you and your centres. Everything is securely submitted and tracked online, so coursework won't go astray. You define submission windows and marking rules, meaning that you're much less likely to receive incorrect or incomplete submissions. Do it all online from a single application that allows you to track submission progress in real time – no need to wait for centres to submit evidence.
Gain deeper insight into what your learners really understand. Our tools capture evidence of the whole learning process so your customers get a thorough view of learner progression at every stage of a course. Assessors, verifiers and moderators gain a richer, more meaningful view of learners' ability to apply newly-acquired knowledge, including evidence of 'soft' skills that are essential in the workplace.
A full trail of the assessment workflow gives you peace of mind and, during an appeal, undisputable evidence of achievement. On the assessor side, Digital Assess gives your customers insight into performance, so they can quickly identify learning obstacles, step in to take action and improve attainment.
-Alison Pearce,
Sector Specialist, Oxford, Cambridge and RSA Examinations


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Although this method is not foolproof because sometimes even forecasters are wrong, watching the clouds at certain times of the day can help us predict the kind of weather that will appear in the coming hours, whether we are going to rent a sailboat or a motor boat.
If we are sailing on the Mediterranean Sea as well as if we are to undertake a voyage, this clouds observation can help us take decisions such as finding some warm clothes or staying on board to schedule our next moorings.
Signs of bad weather:
- The appearance of cirrus accompanied by a lowering of the barometer.
That indicates the arrival of a low-pressure area near the observer.
- Abundant cirrus clouds in the sky.
They can indicate that a low-pressure area is close or that it is very deep.
- Cirrus traveling at high speed.
They announce a low-pressure area that is rapidly approaching or the formation of a very heavy low-pressure area.
- The direction cirrus move.
Usually indicates the direction where the low-pressure area is.
- If after appearance of cirrus we see a halo effect around the sun or moon, accompanied by a lowering of the barometer, the low-pressure area is about to arrive.
- Small clouds that quickly grow.
- The fog disappears slowly behind the mountains situated on the coast instead of disappearing in the morning.
- White clouds on top of a mountain.
- White clouds on a mountain top and gray ones at its base.
This announces rain.
- If contrails produced from jet engine stay for a long time in the sky, the bad weather is about to arrive.
Signs of good weather:
- Facing the wind, cirrus come from the left and there is no lowering of the barometer.
- Contrails produced from jet engine quickly disappear from the sky.
This indicates that the good weather is established.
- Clouds observed during sunrise dissipate quickly.
- Large cloud formations quickly dissipate.
- Small white clouds with a north wind.
They foreshadow several days of good weather.
- Land and sea mist in times of full moon.
This indicates that we'll have a good day.
- If the mist comes after the bad weather, good weather has arrived.
Finally, some proverbs and sayings that are mostly loaded with reason:
- " When rain comes before the wind, halyards, sheets and braces mind, but when wind comes before rain, soon you may make sail again. "
- " When the wind is blowing in the North, no fisherman should set forth, when the wind is blowing in the East, 'tis not fit for man nor beast. "
- " Orange or yellow, can hurt a fellow. "
- " When a halo rings the moon or sun, rain's approaching on the run. "
Sergi Alós


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X of X Larger
LM Wind Power
The power to deliver
LM Wind Power is the world's leading component supplier to the wind turbine industry. The company needed to unite its different divisions and provide a clear and compelling profile to take advantage of the expanding market for wind energy. We worked closely with LM Wind Power to develop a new brand hierarchy in which the different divisions of the company could have their own voice yet contribute to the overall corporate brand – the power to deliver.
Value proposition
Concept development
Positioning strategy
Brand architecture
Brand strategy
Visual Identity
Corporate com.
Marketing communication
Digital media


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Altaba (NASDAQ:AABA) just published an update on the focused investing company's financial health. The company formerly known as Yahoo! is a very different beast since it sold its operations to Verizon (NYSE:VZ) and refocused on the management of a few investments overseas.
The company owns 14.7% of China-based e-commerce giant Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) and a 35% stake in former subsidiary Yahoo Japan, an online search and marketing service in the land of the rising sun. How have these core investments treated Altaba since the July update?
Let's have a look.
By the numbers
Fair Value as of Sept. 30, 2017
Fair Value as of June 16, 2017
$66.2 billion
$51.8 million
Yahoo Japan
$9.6 billion
$8.7 billion
Total Altaba Investments
$84.8 billion
$74.2 billion
Beyond the two flagship holdings, Altaba holds $5.5 billion of corporate bonds, $1.6 billion in certificates of deposit, and another $1.2 billion in an assortment of smaller investments. The Excalibur IP operation, which holds the licensing rights to Yahoo!'s portfolio of technology patents, did not move over to Verizon, and accounts for $675 million of Altaba's asset value today.
But 78% of Altaba's total investment portfolio consists of Alibaba shares. Alibaba's stock has gained 39% since Altaba was formed, and Altaba shares followed along with a 37% gain. Over the same period, Yahoo Japan offered a 5% return, and the S&P 500 index gained 6%.
In other news:
Altaba is not a very active trader. The company has neither sold not bought a single share of Alibaba or Yahoo Japan in its (admittedly short) history, and also leaves most of its smaller holdings untouched. The company did unload a $69.3 million stake in Snap (NYSE:SNAP) in September, but that's a rounding error next to its pair of multibillion-dollar holdings.
As always, Altaba shares are trading roughly 30% below the combined value of its investment assets. As my fellow Fool Frank DiPietro has explained, that's due to the tax costs that would be involved in moving those international funds back to American soil. If Altaba ever finds a way to wind down its Asian assets without triggering a large payment to Uncle Sam, share values should rise closer to the firm's net assets value.
Under a $5 billion share repurchase program, Altaba has bought back $3.3 billion of its own shares as of Nov. 16. The program is sure to be reapproved with a new multibillion dollar target, since Altaba has promised to return all its cash and holdings to shareholders over time.
Anders Bylund owns shares of Alibaba. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Verizon Communications. The Motley Fool recommends Altaba Inc. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.


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A professional video producer and filmmaker has made a video tribute to Tinker Field, the historic Orlando ballpark threatened with demolition.
In "Tinker Field: A Love Story," Orlando-area native Scott W. Smith shares his own memories of Tinker as a way of explaining its history. Through video and still photos, he also shows its slow decay. He calls it a "snapshot in time."


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This shield provides GPRS/GSM service to Arduino. With this shield attached (together with a SIM card), Arduino could join its local mobile service provider's cellphone network and start communication via SMS, Voice, DTMF, and GPRS service.
This shield connects to Arduino with long-wire headers, which keeps the pin layout intact and allows another shield to be stacked on top.
- Selectable HW/SW serial port via onboard jumpers.
- Quad band global network support.
- Integrated TCP/IP stack.
- Onboard earphone and microphone connectors.
- Onboard LED indicators for Ringing, Status, Network and Power.
- DTMF enabled SIM900 firmware.
- High-efficient onboard DC-DC convertor.
- ESD Protected SIM card and Audio interface.
- SMT machine assembled and high quality PCB
Pin Configuration
The pin usage is basically the same with the official version.
- D0: HW Serial Port SIM900->Arduino
- D1: HW Serial Port SIM900<-Arduino
- D2: SW Serial Port SIM900->Arduino
- D3: SW Serial Port SIM900<-Arduino
- D7: Ringing Indicator, active LOW
- D8: SIM900 PowerON
- D9: SIM900 Reset
- VIN: Drawing power from Arduino
NOTE: By default, the serial communication is done via the SW serial port (D2, D3) and the RI is connected to D7 via a jumper. To use the HW serial port (D0, D1), two jumpers should be changed so that they connect the SIM900 TX pin to D0 and SIM900 RX pin to D1. If the Ringing Indicator feature is not needed, the jumper could be removed from the header denoted "RI".
- S-POWER: Power switch button of SIM900.
- S-RESET: Reset button of SIM900.
- A-RESET: Reset button of Arduino.
LED Indicators
- RING: On when there is a incoming call
- Flash@inverval 800ms: SIM900 not registered to cell phone network.
- Flash@inverval 3000ms: SIM900 registered to cell phone network.
- Flash@inverval 300ms: GPRS communication is established.
- STATUS: On when SIM900 is powered on.
Quick Start Guide
- Download the Library and Example code. Do not unzip the downloaded library, leave it as is.
- In the Arduino IDE, navigate to Sketch > Import Library. At the top of the drop down list, select the option to "Add Library".
- From the prompted window, navigate to the .zip file's location and open it. The library and example should be ready for use1.
- Attach the shield onto the Arduino Board.
- Connect a DC power supply(7V-12V) to the barrel connector of the Arduino board.2
- Open an example sketch under File > Examples > GSMSHIELD. Available examples are:
- GSM_GPRSLibrary_AT
- GSM_GPRSLibrary_Call
- GSM_GPRSLibrary_Client
- GSM_GPRSLibrary_GPS
- GSM_GPRSLibrary_Server
- GSM_GPRSLibrary_SMS
- Upload the sketch to the Arduino board.
- Press and hold the S-POWER button on the shield until STATUS LED goes on in order to turn the SIM900 on.
- Press the A-RESET button to reset your Arduino in order to run the sketch.
Note1: The automatic installation of library described in Step 1-3 requires Arduino 1.0.5 and above. If earlier version of Arduino is used, manual installation of library may be required.
Note2: The peak current of the SIM900 module may reach up to 2A. External power supply via the barrel connector is recommended because it provides sufficient power to the shield. Without the external power supply, the SIM900 module may lock up or suffer from unexpected reset.


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The Perfect Traveler
Travel Books: He was cool, steady and prone to breaking rules. Pico Iyer celebrates the life and work of Somerset Maugham.
The perfect traveler must be a perfect contradiction. She should be open to almost everything that comes her way, but not too ready to be taken in. He should be worldly, shrewd, his feet firmly on the ground; but he must also have the capacity to give himself over to moments of real wonder. He or she must be curious, observant, spirited and kind—ready to spin a spell-binding tale of adventure and irony at the Explorers' Club, and then throw it all over for a crazy romance in the South Seas.
Really, I suppose, the ideal traveler, or travel companion, offers a happy blend of steadiness and surprise. I make up such lists of characteristics often, in my head, and scroll quickly through some of the obvious suspects (Graham Greene, D.H. Lawrence, Herman Melville, Annie Dillard). And then, somehow, I alight, over and over, on a man who seems to be wearing a silk dressing gown and is best known for his novels (though in his lifetime he was celebrated as a dramatist). We read "Of Human Bondage," "The Razor's Edge" or "The Moon and Sixpence" for their familiar characters, their unembarrassed intensity and, perhaps, behind all that, their exotic scenes; but the reason Somerset Maugham is still commanding readers almost 50 years after his death, and the reason Hollywood keeps turning to him for new movies ("Up at the Villa," "Being Julia," "The Painted Veil") is that he was a classic traveler, disguising his hunger for romance, and even for transcendence, behind the cool demeanor of an unillusioned, above-it-all, often feline Englishman.
In reality, however, Maugham was born in Paris and all his early letters were written in perfect French. As a teenager he studied in Heidelberg and then, having already mastered Greek, Latin, French, German, Italian and Russian, he went to Seville for 16 months in his early 20s and learned Spanish. He served in World War I as a volunteer ambulance driver and nurse—though he had four plays on at the time in London's West End—and he became the West's main source of intelligence in Russia during the weeks leading up to the Bolshevik Revolution. And all of that was before he undertook the long, almost never-ending series of journeys, to Borneo and China and the Pacific and Japan, that made him perhaps the defining teller of far-flung tales. Look at him enjoying himself with Noel Coward and Winston Churchill, and it's easy to forget that he spent the last 39 years of his life in France, where he had a secret symbol to repel the evil eye painted on his outside wall (and had that same symbol slipped into the cover of his books).
Only four of the 78 books Maugham turned out are officially placed on the travel shelves: his classic account of a journey from Rangoon to Haiphong, "The Gentleman in the Parlor" (still the best book on Southeast Asia I know), brought out in 1929; a series of far-sighted, ironic sketches and snapshots called "On a Chinese Screen," from 1920; a very early, boyish series of wanderings around southern Spain, "In the Land of the Blessed Virgin," from 1905, that he delighted in repudiating in later years for its flowery romanticism; and a meditation on some figures in Spanish history—not, he said, "a book of travel," though it is generally characterized as such—called "Don Fernando," from 1935.
Yet travel lay behind nearly all his work, and the traveling impulse—the wish to steal into the untried alleyway, to slip into a foreign heart, the wish to be away from the stuffy drawing-rooms he knew too well, and out among dramas and mysteries that would challenge and expand his mind—was really the engine that drove all his writing. His early book on Spain is full of the excitement and rebellion of a boy eager to be away from England's enclosedness, at loose in a world of sunshine and passion, a "romancer by profession," as he calls himself. In his youthful novel, "The Merry-Go-Round," published when he was 30, a burning young medical student, Frank Hurrell (much like Maugham himself—even the name sounds like Larry Darrell, the questing hero of "The Razor's Edge" almost 40 years later), cries, famously, "My whole soul aches for the East, for Egypt and India and Japan. I want to know the corrupt, eager life of the Malays and the violent adventures of the South Sea Islands ... I want to see life and death, and the passions, the virtues and vices, of men face to face, uncovered." The phrasing may be purple, jejune, but the sentences are as alive as anything in "Siddhartha" or "On the Road." When Maugham, at the end of his life, looked back on his experience, in "The Summing Up" and "The Writer's Notebook," he began returning again and again to formative experiences "on the wing."
Much of the particular beauty of Somerset Maugham as travel model, for me at least, is that he breaks every rule you might find in Travel Writing 101. He generalizes wildly. He claims not to be interested in the places he's visiting. He admits that he's only hunting for material and, very typically, in the middle of Southeast Asia, goes off on such a long digression about a novelist in London that we lose all sense of where we are. Trees in a Thai village he likens, unusually, to "the sentences of Sir Thomas Browne," Asian clothes he calls much less interesting and various than what you'd see in Piccadilly and, in the middle of wildly colorful and unvisited landscapes, he confesses that his great delight comes from reading F.H. Bradley's "Appearance and Reality."
Yet the net effect of all these transgressions is to suggest he's having fun. He seldom loses his temper on his travels, and he never seems bored. He always, in fact, seems to be just where he most wants to be. He wins our trust by telling us frankly that he's lazy, unfair and uninterested, and his sense of ease and general perambulating is so intense, you can easily overlook that he's sleeping for days in an open rowboat, has a temperature of 105 (just before offering one of the most brilliant synopses of Buddhism I've read) and went on a 60-day march when he was close to 50.
More deeply, Maugham's background—growing up in a foreign country, training as a medical student (which is to say, a keen observer of both the body and the mind), and suffering from a lifelong stammer—all schooled him in listening, in hearing others' symptoms more than just listing his own, in seeing how much he could get by being not a somebody at home but a no one abroad. He'd grown up hearing his father bring back stories from Greece, Turkey and Morocco, and his mother, whose own father had served in India, "could prattle Hindustani much better than English." And over and over he saw that he could most powerfully engage with life undistractedly in some place not his own. As he put it in his autobiography, "I never felt entirely myself till I had put at least the Channel between my native country and me."
Part of what made Maugham such an engaged traveler was that he had already had his fill of so-called success and high society, and quickly saw that "I would much sooner spend a month on a desert island with a veterinary surgeon than with a prime minister." He was eager to try everything—to smoke opium, to visit prisons as much as churches, to do the very things that another part of himself would denigrate as reckless or susceptible. "A novelist must preserve a child-like belief in the importance of things which common sense considers of no great consequence," he wrote late in life. "He must never entirely grow up."
What this meant in practice was that, like all the great travelers, he brought a freshness as well as a knowingness to everything he saw, and did not just try to excavate the past, but, more, to outline the future. Go to Chiang Mai tomorrow, and you will almost certainly meet a man who threw over his comfortable life in London for the less visible benefits of a cozy room in the wilderness, a local girl with whom he shares few words and, nearby, a missionary raging against all such men, and such girls: a classic Maugham triangle. Visit the China being "definitively" covered by tomorrow's foreign correspondents and you're unlikely to find anyone who catches the country's character and mysteries so well as Maugham did 90 years ago. It's hard not to go to an expat dinner party in Hong Kong, Paris, Buenos Aires, and not realize that you're in a collection of half-exotic types that you've met before in a Maugham short story.
Maugham was able to write about the British in China, say, because he could find an Englishman in himself, but he could also sympathize with—and longed to explore—everything that was the opposite of that. He could give us unusually sensitive accounts of Confucianism, of Buddhism, of mysticism and hedonism because he could locate elements of all of them in his own make-up. He was at once the archetypal denizen of the Belgravia lounge and, by virtue of that fact, a lifelong rebel who always longed to be as far from such civilities and boredoms as he could.
This made for a blend of anti-moralism and philosophical enquiry much rarer than it might seem. D.H. Lawrence, for example, traveled everywhere at the same time as Maugham, and caught Ceylon, Australia, New Mexico with a vividness and fury that few travelers have matched in the 80 years since. Almost preternaturally attentive and alive, he could pick up the smells, shapes, instincts of a place, grow bewitched by them and then grow violently disenchanted—all inside a week. Every place became a reflection of his mood. Aldous Huxley, meanwhile, who later became one of the most open-minded explorers of different traditions, bumped across Asia in "Jesting Pilate" like many a modern travel writer, looking only for an excuse to show off his superior wit. Evelyn Waugh is great fun to read, but you never come away from him feeling that you've really seen or visited Ethiopia or South America.
Perhaps that is why Maugham is so alive even now, stealing into many of the travel writers we most enjoy. It's hard to savor Graham Greene, for example, without seeing Maugham's ghost in the mix of worldliness and romanticism, the persistent investigations into faith, the condition of the lonely man in a scruffy room abroad (the two of them even both wrote works called "The Tenth Man" and both ended up living on the French Riviera). Pick up Paul Bowles' harrowing stories of travelers consumed by the places they visit and you realize that Maugham is one of the few writers who has claimed those depths before him. Jan Morris' blend of tolerance and acuity—her very British longing for a counter-Britain everywhere—powerfully evokes her great predecessor, and when I read "Hotel Honolulu" by Paul Theroux, I feel as if I'm paging through a Maugham anthology of the South Seas, though updated to the modern moment, and with sexual explicitness and rage added. V.S. Naipaul began his escape from his native Trinidad by writing a schoolboy essay on Maugham—it won a competition—and, more than 50 years later, was endowing the protagonist of two late novels with the curious name, "W. Somerset Chandran."
As a young man, Maugham was taught, he says, by an anatomy teacher that "the normal is the rarest thing in the world," and when he was traveling he spent little time looking at the sights, but went off instead "on the search for emotion," as he put it in his early book on Spain, collecting "characters," picking up stories at the bar, using the Alhambra or the temples of Thailand as a launching pad for inquiries into beauty and impermanence and illusion. And what gives his work its particular power is that, you can tell, he remained all his life a stowaway at heart, whose spirit lay with the wastrel and the seeker. You see that most obviously in "The Moon and Sixpence," about a man (based on Gauguin) who throws over his successful job in Paris to go to live in Tahiti, or in "The Razor's Edge," about a quintessential young American who leaves behind the comfortable circles of Chicago to look for wisdom in the Himalayas. But even the lesser stories and travel books are likewise full of runaways, men of the cloth, drifters committed for life to a place they know will never be home (or pining for an England they know they'll never see again).
We're not used to thinking of Maugham as a hippie, but it's worth recalling that he was roughing it around India for three months when he was 63, seeking out swamis and yogis; he told his friend Christopher Isherwood, a few years later, that his great wish, when he turned 70, was to return to the subcontinent and study Shankara. He had no time for the likes of Henry James, with his country-house themes, and from early on was sounding much more like a vagabond Thoreau ("What is the use of hurrying to pile up money when one can live on so little?"). Read his great apologia, "The Summing Up," and you find him as metaphysically alive and excited as that German who just spun out his creed to you over dinner in a candlelit restaurant in Ladakh last night. Indeed, Maugham read philosophy every morning when he woke up, the way others might do yoga.
At the beginning of his short story, "Honolulu," Maugham writes, in tones we instantly recognize as his own, "The wise man travels only in imagination." In his early book on Spain, he concluded, "It is much better to read books of travel than to travel oneself; he really enjoys foreign lands who never goes abroad." Yet the strength of Maugham is that he would not listen even to his own advice, and was permanently breaking the rules he'd so clearly and logically laid down. He does, after all, go to Honolulu, and there meets a Western traveler whose story, perhaps, he would never have listened to, or heard, if he'd met the man in London or New York. On his 90th birthday—he'd enjoyed Japan and Italy in his 80s—he confessed that perhaps his greatest wish now was to go back to Angkor Wat. "I have one desire left," he wrote, his powers failing, "which is to return to that lost village in the jungle in the Far East." In truth, though, as every reader of the man knows, he'd never really left the place at all.
Adapted from the introduction to The Skeptical Romancer: Selected Travel Writing of W. Somerset Maugham, edited by Pico Iyer, to be published by Everyman's Library, a division of Alfred A. Knopf, next week.
16 Comments for The Perfect Traveler
Lauren Quinn 10.28.09 | 2:14 PM ET
And he looks like Vito Corleone! (a little…)
Thanks for a great essay. I hadn't come across Maugham yet, and am super excited to dig in to some of his work. Especially seeing as though he was a predecessor to so many of my travel writing favorites.
Roger 10.30.09 | 9:19 PM ET
I read "On Human Bondage" for a high school lit class in about 1980. It was easily one of the most interesting books I'd ever read. I am disappointed that I have never read another. I didn't know that he was such a travel writer. Thanks, Pico, for rekindling my "have to find out more" curiosity.
Greenhousecarol 10.30.09 | 10:43 PM ET
This is a wonderful exploration of Maugham. Truly. Thanks!
Ramesh Raghuvanshi 10.31.09 | 3:25 AM ET
Travelling is adventure.I think those who want to +conquer the fear of death they are very eager to travel.Those who love life very passionately, they are curious for each and everything so they take any risk for travelling.
From my childhood Iam very curious and when planing for travel I loss myself and when I start to travel I dance just like small child forgoting all surrounding.
rzr 10.31.09 | 6:26 AM ET
mr maugham was indeed a great writer, adventurer, and observer; his work remains crisp, lively, and readable; this essay is welcome, but neglects several points; maugham's prose was deadlly thanks in great part to the work of Eddie Marsh, a friend who scoured and edited maugham's work for free;
also, maugham's great love of travel through the orient was no doubt connected to a passion for eastern mysticism etc; but it was also, without doubt, connected to his physical passion for boys; his life-partner, Gerald Paxton, would procure local boys for maugham; he would, in current terms, be called a "sex tourist"
William 10.31.09 | 10:37 AM ET
W. Somerset Maugham has always intrigued me. I've read most of his books & all of his short stories. In my opinion, he's one of the greatest writers of all time—his sentences, passages, etc., etc. flow off the page gorgeously, yet for some reason, he seems to have never received the credit he so deserved.
His output was & is massive—Maugham was the epitome of prolific, while always remaining a superior writer. His work is eminently readable, being, as he was, a true master, and it is a great pleasure for me to introduce his work to those few out there that still love a good read.
Thanks for so appropriate an essay, Pico—very well put.
chaszz 10.31.09 | 10:49 AM ET
I have been reading Maugham for over forty years, and periodically seek out more of his work I haven't yet read. He never disappoints. Scorned by the elite literati of his own time as a popular writer without depth, he is on the contrary a real artist, a great observer of human nature; and his prose is always alive albeit uncomplicated and transparent. His work breathes an irresistable romance of exotic places and people encountered by a knowing, cynical yet interested observer. It is always compellingly plotted. There is an enormous deal more to him than "Of Human Bondage." I would recommend reading anything with his name on it.
chaszz 10.31.09 | 11:00 AM ET
And by the way there are and have been other great artists who are pedophiles, and another few who were murderers. Certainly one should not excuse these crimes. But the Muse, being another name for blind Mother Nature, does not know or discriminate where she distributes her special flowers and plants.
Jim 10.31.09 | 11:19 AM ET
Excellent article. Noticed a typo, though: Gentleman in the Parlour with a "u" in "Parlour."
korski 10.31.09 | 1:08 PM ET
For someone of Pico's talents, going from she to he to he or she in the first paragraph makes him look like a sycophant to everything PC. Pathetic for a writer as good as he is. Stick with he or she, period.
Philip 11.01.09 | 10:09 AM ET
Almost 40 years ago I sttood on the banks of the Sarawak River in Kuching and looked across to Brooke House on the opposite shore and thought "Maugham stood here". I walked the streets of the town, parts of which were essentially unchanged from Maughams day and I felt his presence among the winding streets and hawkers of skewered chicken. I even visited an opium den there and thought of Willie as I lay beside an elderly, Oriental gent and shared a pipe or two.
In Samoa I felt both his and Sadie's spirits and to stretch the Maugham/Thompson influence a bit I used to, after a hard days work in the banana fields of St Lucia, have a drink at Rain on Brazil Street in Castries.
In Cuernavaca I've looked at sights unchanged through the centuries and although I know Maugham was here it is Lowery that walks those streets with me. I can't help but think of Maugham as being exclusively of the Orient or the Pacific.
For a young lad from a small, northern Ontario town Maugham provided a look into a wider, more exotic world and gave me, not a wish to travel, but an actual physical need to explore that world. I own him a debt of gratitude for a most interesting life.
Anand Rao 11.02.09 | 7:40 AM ET
Excellent essay - have read a few of Somerset Maugham's books and have always enjoyed them! For me the best part of this essay was a description of the perfect traveler! Superb!
Sandy 11.10.09 | 4:02 PM ET
I've read alot of Somerset Maugham and probably wouldn't be living the life I am without his books (most notably the "Razor's Edge"). The funny thing is, I'd never thought of him as a travel writer until my father sent me this article. No other author I've read has captured human behaviour so perfectly or honestly, but now that you mention it I suppose the travel was a major facet of his work. I've always just found that the locations were incidental to the story being told about the people in the place. If anyone hasn't read his books, I'd suggest starting with his short stories. There's more than a few that leave you walking around with a blank expression on your face for a few days as you realise "the bottom has dropped out of your world".
chinatourpackagemaker 11.12.09 | 1:34 AM ET
So nice the article. He is a real perfect traveller!
Henry Pelifian 11.15.09 | 12:46 PM ET
Somerset Maugham's work really goes right to the center of life, emotionally and psychologically. The short story "Rain" is a classic example. Hollywood can't keep their hands off it, for it has been made into movies at least three times. The short story "The Letter" also was made into a movie starring the great Bette Davis. On and on he wrote great stories, Mackintosh, The Pool, The Painted Veil. And so many more!
He is among my favorite writers. How he gathered so much information on his travels and weaved it so well into a coherent story makes him one of the masters of fiction that transcend fiction to life, to reality.
Purejoy 11.16.09 | 11:05 AM ET
This is like 2 scoops of my favourite ice cream:)
I have loved the writings of W S Maugham since I was 12, I still re-read his books:)
And I have been hooked onto Pico Iyer since my University days way back in 1986.
So so happy to read this:) And I look forward to the Sceptical Romancer.


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Prospective Candidates + Recruitment Marketing = Top Talent on Board This equation appears so simple, isn't? However, in reality, it is far more complexed as anyone can imagine. We all understand that employees are the asset of every business that can make or break any organization. Therefore, hiring the right person at the right time...Read More
Job Postings Essentials – How to Write an Awesome Job Advert?
Do you want your employees to be enthusiastic and skilled or incompetent and lazy? The former can improve your business's odds of success; the latter can contribute to your business's failure. Finding the qualified talent can be a challenge. The entire story of sourcing and recruiting the right person at the right time starts with...Read More
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While going to the parking lot at the holland casino Breda, I saw the cutest thing on my way to a parking space!
It's an aquarium it the shape of an arrow.
Why is it cool?
Walking to a parking lot is sometimes boring and even scary!
But walking to a parking lot with Fishy arrows? That's something totally different.
it not only gives you a feeling of comfort but it also looks impressive! It's really authentic just because they're using fishes instead of just a painted arrow.
The reason why this might have future potential is cause maybe from now on people would like to be entertained even when their leaving a place/city store etc...


text:
In this Newsletter:
– Greetings
– Stuff I Like This Month
– November GOAL Assignment: Symmetry
– December GOAL Assignment: Groups
– Tech Update: OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2
– Cameras: Nikon D600 Versus D800
– eBook Review: The Photographer's Guide to Nik HDR Efex Pro 2.
– Product Review: Picosteady
– Workshop and Business Updates
As I travel around the world, I am fortunate to have the unique opportunity to speak with people from all walks of life. A couple weeks ago I was traveling on a plane and had a conversation with a man in the seat next to me who was in the midst of rebuilding his marriage. The conversation began with him asking what I did for a living. After I told him about my photography career, he became very enthusiastic and asked all kinds of questions about photography. We talked about what kind of camera he should get, software, creating beautiful images, Bayer pattern color filter arrays … you know, nerdy camera stuff.
Soon enough though, we moved into deep conversation that immediately went to the soul of this man. He shared his heartbreak over his struggling marriage. We talked long about what it means to sacrifice one's self for the good of a marriage and a family. We had an intense conversation, yet only shared that one brief moment of life together.
Last week, while I was in San Diego running photo workshops, a photographer-friend invited me over to his house for dinner. Like my airplane conversation earlier, our dinner conversation began with cameras (should he buy the Nikon 200-400mm f/4 lens?), then morphed into family and children. We shared stories of our lives while we enjoyed ate gumbo soup and warm chocolate chip cookies. We laughed and shared old times of photo trips into the wilds. All because of the bond we've developed around our passion for photography.
These stories and relationships are what I truly love about my job. I cherish the opportunity to meet amazing people and build friendships all around the world. Photography often opens the door into their lives, but it is the relationships and stories that endure. As we near the end of 2012, I encourage you to remember the situations where photography brought you joy and helped build relationships. As you look towards 2013, ask yourself how you will use photography to build relationships as you explore the world with your camera.
1. Time Magazine top 10 photographs of 2012.
2. Adobe has released new versions of Lightroom and Camera Raw to support the Nikon V2, D600 and D5200 cameras. Here are the links to update your software:
3. Earlier this year I transitioned to the Adobe Creative Cloud for my use of Photoshop, Lightroom, In Design, Premire Pro, etc. A few days ago, Adobe announced free access to video training for Creative Cloud members. Their video training includes videos from the best in the business, such as Lynda.com and KelbyTraining.com. Here's the press release: http://blogs.adobe.com/creativecloud/get-a-leg-up-creative-cloud-training-now-available/
4. I enjoy reading the 1001NoisyCameras blog and they regularly compile a blog post titled Photography Soup where they summarize the most interesting photo related articles on the web. Check it out: http://www.1001noisycameras.com/photography_soup/
The equator monument at Mitad del Mundo (Center of the Earth) in Ecuador. I used symmetry to create a simple composition with the line of the equator splitting the scene in half. Nikon D800, 14-24mm, handheld. Processed in Nik HDR Efex Pro 2.
I used the dining room table of the Ecuadorian Presidential Palace to split the scene from left to right for a symmetrical composition. Nikon D800, 14-24mm, handheld.
This long straight highway was a good subject for creating a symmetrical composition. The dividing line was an obvious choice for splitting the frame in half. New Mexico. Nikon D800, 14-24mm, handheld.
One of the first things you learn in photographic composition is that you shouldn't center your subject. In fact, photographers often adhere to a compositional rule called the rule of thirds. This states that you should divide your frame into thirds, and then place your subject on one of those thirds lines. This is a good rule and we follow it because we know it helps us produce visually compelling images.
Even though we use this rule, I still feel it is important to break it on purpose every once in a while. Breaking a rule every now and again helps us find photographic inspiration, which elevates our overall photographic game. That's why last month's GOAL (Get Out And Learn) Assignment was to create photos of symmetry.
Creating photographs that follow the rule of thirds will help produce a sense of dynamic tension while a symmetrical photo doesn't do this. The rule of thirds image leads the viewer's eye throughout the frame. When executed correctly, this compositional technique gives the viewer's eye a starting point and an ending point in the photo, by way of a clean and organized diagonal path.
In many symmetrical images, the eye jumps from the right to the left or from the top to the bottom, never starting at one point or ending at another. Often, symmetrical photographs lead to a viewer feeling unsettled about the picture. Since the eye doesn't have a place to stop moving, the viewer sometimes feels incomplete.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing because symmetry often leads to dramatic results as long as you put some thought into the photograph. Here are three suggestions I have for creating dramatic symmetrical images.
1. Split the frame perfectly from left to right or from top to bottom. By its very definition, symmetry requires that the two halves of the frame are equal in design and shape.
2. Position the camera directly in front of the subject. Standing even a few inches to the left or the right of the centerline will cause the image to appear skewed and off-kilter. Be diligent about this.
3. Scan all edges of the frame to make sure you aren't cutting off important elements. If the subject is truly symmetrical, then similar shapes/objects will appear on the left and right of the frame in equal proportion. I like to use my viewfinder gridlines to compare the left/right or top/bottom of the frame. If a similar object appears at the same (but opposite) locations in my viewfinder grid, then I know I've done a good job lining up the photo.
As with everything in photography, a little bit goes a long way. What I mean by this is that you shouldn't use symmetrical compositions for all your images of a given subject. In fact, you should use symmetry sparingly. It should be used to offer a different point of view or to compliment your more traditional compositions. Pepper symmetrical images throughout your slide shows or web galleries as a visual break from the normal rule of thirds compositions.
If you didn't take any photos during last month's symmetry GOAL Assignment, then now's your time to get out there and do it. I'm sure there's a Christmas tree in your living room that will serve as a perfect subject.
Your GOAL Assignment this month is to photograph groups. Groups of sunglasses. Groups of cars. Groups of hats. Groups of … you name it. This is an easy shooting assignment, with the goal of keeping your creative eye actively looking for photo subjects. I always encourage people who want to improve their photography to take photographs every day. This month's GOAL (Get Out And Learn) Assignment is designed to do just that, so get shooting!
Storing digital photographs is an exercise that requires constant attention and regular technology upgrades. The more we shoot, the more data we have to store, and the more difficult it is to manage it all. My shooting style and shooting volume means that I tend to upgrade my disk drives about once every year. Now, since I'm shooting much more with the Nikon D800 and D600 cameras, I find that I'm just about doubling my data storage requirements each year.
Two weeks ago, I purchased a full contingent of new 12TB OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 drives to replace my older 4TB drives. The Mercury Elite Pro drives are quad interface, which means they can be attached to a computer via eSATA, Firewire 400, Firewire 800 or USB 2.0. They aren't the fastest drives available on the market today, but they have a very good price to performance ratio. I connect the Qx2 units to my MacBook Pro with the eSATA connection for the quickest possible transfer speeds.
I purchased these drives at B&H Photo Video. Here's a link: OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2
I configured the drives as RAID 5, which means that 25% of the overall drive space is taken up by internal RAID backup. Therefore, 12TB overall storage capacity is reduced to 9TB of available storage for actual use. I use one of the Mercury Elite drives on my desktop as a working drive and keep a second drive on a shelf in my office as an off-line backup. I sync the two drives on a regular basis using Carbon Copy Cloner. I also maintain a third drive off-site that I use as a tertiary point of safety for my photo collection.
These OWC drives are the fourth set of drives I've purchased from this company. I started with 1TB drives, then upgraded to 2TB, then to 4TB, and now I'm using 12TB drives. I've never had a drive failure with the OWC products and can highly recommend them for your own use.
To read more about the process of managing your digital images, check out my most recent book titled "Thousands of Images, Now What?" Link: http://visadventures.com/shop/thousands-of-images-now-what/
I took delivery of a new Nikon D600 about a week ago and have to say that I've fallen in love with this little camera. The body size is smack dab in-between the Nikon D800 and the Nikon D7000, so it serves as a great travel camera and packs a punch at 24MP.
Lots of people are asking about the difference between the 24MP files of the D600 and the 36MP files of the D800. I've written quite a bit over the last six months about how much I love the 36 MP files from the Nikon D800. Love them! However, the file sizes are huge and I often find myself beating my head against my keyboard waiting for software to render images or for panoramas to merge in Photoshop. Last month, I created a 9-frame HDR panorama from a D800 that was over 50GB in size. And that's before I added any adjustment layers of filters. Holy cow. Sometimes, the resolution of the D800 is just too much and sometimes we need a smaller, more portable camera body. That's where the D600 comes into play.
Nikon knows that the D800 files are huge, so they used a 24MP sensor in the D600. In my opinion, this resolution is the sweet spot for cameras right now, given the current state of computer performance. I'm sure my opinion will change as computers get faster and data transfer rates improve over the next few years. But for my goals and my usage, the D600's 24MP files are great.
Another aspect that I like about the D600 is Custom Settings Menu e4. This menu item called "Exposure comp. for flash" (available on the Nikon D4, but not on the D800) allows you to change exposure compensation on the camera independently from flash output compensation. This is significant because on all past Nikon cameras, changing exposure compensation meant that the camera would alter ambient light in addition to flash output. For example, if you were photographing an outdoor scene and wanted to darken the sky, you'd have to dial down exposure compensation, then dial up flash output. Now with the D600 and D4, CSM e4 allows you to dial down exposure compensation (to darken the background), but keep flash output right where it was (for the foreground). Finally!
The D600 is a decent sports/action camera. Since the D600 has a faster frame rate than the D800 (5.5fps vs. 4 fps), many assume that it is better suited to sports photography. The faster frame rate really helps, but the downside to using the D600 for sports is that the autofocus isn't as fast or snappy as the D800. While field-testing the camera at a soccer match, I found the slower D600 AF performance hindered my ability to keep up with the action on the field. The D800's AF performance is top notch, but it's frame rate is only 4fps. I have to give AF performance to the D800 but frame rate performance to the D600.
Along with this AF performance issue is the lack of an AF-On button on D600. Over the last few years, I have become a convert to the back button focusing method, which uses the AF-ON button. The D600 doesn't have an AF-ON button like the D800, so I customize the AE-L/AF-L button to perform the AF-ON activation instead. Then, I program the Function button to serve as the AE-L. In the big scheme of things, it isn't a big deal, but I do miss using the function button for other purposes such as activating spot metering.
So far, in my limited use of the D600, I think Nikon has created a winner. I like the ergonomics. I like the quality of the images. I like its performance at high ISO settings.
As with any piece of equipment you purchase, it should fulfill a specific purpose in order to deserve a coveted spot in your camera bag. In my case, the D600 will be used for trips when I need a smaller camera body, but high resolution. I'll be taking the D600 with me on a trip to Florida in a few days and I am looking forward to seeing how it does for sunrise and sunset landscape photography. I'll be sure to post more images to the blog.
I've been using Nik HDR Efex Pro for many years and have grown to rely on this excellent piece of software for most of my HDR processing needs. A few months back, Nik released HDR Efex Pro 2, which has proven to be a substantial and worthwhile upgrade from the previous version. The processing engine is better and the anti-ghosting method is superior. I can say without hesitation that I highly recommend this product and that I use it almost every day.
Even though I've been using it for a long time, I still enjoy reading how other photographers use the program. I like learning from their experience and know that I will always pick up a new technique that I end up using in my workflow. Jason Odell of http://www.luminescentphoto.com/ has created a great eBook on using Nik HDR Efex Pro titled The Photographer's Guide to Nik HDR Efex Pro 2. Jason has been around the photo industry for quite a while now and knows his stuff. He's produced at least seven eBooks and training videos on software and cameras.
The Photographer's Guide to Nik HDR Efex Pro 2 is an eBook published PDF format. As with other PDFs, you can read it on most tablets as well as any desktop or laptop computer. I read this eBook on my iPad and found it to be well suited for this technology. I have a Tether-Tools Wallee pivot stand that I use to raise the iPad to the same height as my computer monitor. That way, when I'm reading though the book, I can keep the two side by side so I can edit pictures in real time with Jason's examples on the left, and my working screen on the right.
Jason has done a great job of providing real-world examples throughout his eBook. He includes screenshots of the software along with well-written instructions on how to achieve a certain look. In fact, one of my favorite parts about Jason's book is his description of how to use selective tone mapping in HDR images to achieve a more realistic look. Most photographers who create HDR images know that it is easy to overdo the HDR effect. Being able to selectively apply tone mapping using a control point is one of the most powerful features of Nik HDR Efex Pro 2 and Jason elegantly shows how to implement this technique.
Almost 100 pages of the book are dedicated to real-world HDR examples. This is cool, since often the best way to learn a technique is by watching how it is accomplished on an actual image. In the first part of this section, Jason gives very-helpful a 10-step plan for working in HDR Efex Pro 2.
The Photographer's Guide to HDR Efex Pro 2 is 233 pages and organized into five main sections:
1. Introduction to HDR Photography
2. Getting Started
3. Image Adjustment Controls
4. Tone-Mapping Techniques
5. Working with Presets
I recommend Jason's eBook for photographers who are learning Nik HDR Efex Pro 2, as well as photographers who already have been using the program for a while. I learned quite a few new features about the program and appreciated Jason's thorough descriptions.
Buy a copy of Jason's eBook here:
Picosteady with Canon Vixia HF R300 camcorder.
The Picosteady ships with the stabilizer unit, a full set of counter weights, mounting screws and the universal smartphone mount.
Here's the Picosteady in use with a smart phone.
This image shows how you pivot the counterweight to balance the Picosteady from side to side. Since the LCD screen is extended on the camcorder, the counterweights need to be pivoted to the other side to keep the camera level.
Lots of companies make excellent camera stabilization equipment for video equipment, but much of the available gear is expensive and complicated. The designers of Picosteady recognized these issues and set about designing a small, functional, and inexpensive camera stabilization unit that anyone could afford. The Picosteady is specifically designed for small video cameras like a camcorder, GoPro, mobile phone, Mirrorless camera or small dSLR like a Nikon D3200.
A few months back, I found Picosteady fundraising campaign on KickStarter.com and asked the designers if I could test out their product in the real world. They shipped a sample to me and I've been testing it in a few travel and local scenarios over the last few months.
The PicoSteady ships with a stack of weights and a universal smartphone mount that is used to hold an iPhone and or similar-sized phones. My current mobile phone is the Samsung Galaxy SIII (which I totally love), but is too big for the universal smartphone mount on the Picosteady. The designers at Picosteady tell me they are working on new smartphone mount solutions, so expect to see these in the near future.
For my testing, I used the PicoSteady on my Canon Vixia HF R300 camcorder. This is a palm-sized video camera that I use for "grab and go" filming on-location and for my kids' soccer games. Balancing the Vixia camcorder on the PicoSteady was extremely easy. Simply mount the camera to the top of the stabilizer, then add counterweights until the unit is balanced. The base of the Picosteady has a built-in pivot for the counter weights to make it simple to level the camera. I'd guess that it only took me 5 to 10 minutes to set up the Picosteady and begin filming. The designers at Picosteady have created a "how-to" web page for those setting up the camera for the first time. Here's the link – http://www.picosteady.com/howto.html
The PicoSteady isn't designed for larger SLRs, so don't try to use it with something like a Nikon D800 and a 24-70mm f2.8. It will work with smaller SLRs like a Nikon D3200 with a kit lens, but I think that you'll get the best results from something like a point and shoot or a Nikon 1 V2 or a Panasonic GH-3 mirrorless camera. Larger dSLRs and video cameras should really be mounted on something like the Steadicam Merlin for best results.
So, the big question is, "does it work?" My answer is "yes." Using the PicoSteady greatly reduced camera shake while improving the overall fluidity of my shots. I was able to achieve steady video in a variety of situations from wildlife to kids to walking outside. The key to obtaining excellent quality video footage is in how you hold the unit. Every move you make has to be as smooth and steady as possible. To get the best video, you'll need to bend your knees and avoid any quick/abrupt movements while recording.
One of the more difficult aspects of shooting with a unit like the PicoSteady is figuring out how to rotate the camera during the shoot. For example, let's say that you are panning with a subject as it moves from left to right. With a regular hand-held camera, you would simply twist your torso as the subject moved across your field of view. Things are different with a stabilizer like the Picosteady though because they are designed to be stable in all three dimensions. This means that when you rotate, the inertia in the system keeps the camera pointed straight ahead.
Other stabilization products are designed with built-in thumb wheels or similar devices that allow the operator to rotate the camera around the pivot axis. While the PicoSteady doesn't have the thumb wheel, you can still use your thumb in-between the pivot point to rotate the camera. It isn't as elegant as the more expensive units, but it does work pretty well. The other option is to rotate very slowly and deliberately. This will allow the Picosteady to slowly come around since the pivot point and anti-dust boot provides just enough static friction to allow the rotation.
In video production, slow camera movements are essential for creating a great viewing experience. Moving quickly is a recipe for disorienting the viewer, so slow and steady wins the race. Therefore, the slow rotation rate on the Picosteady isn't a problem.
I recommend the Picosteady for videographers needing a stabilization platform for small cameras. It is flexible, lightweight, and small. I was able to easily fit the Picosteady into just about all of my camera bags, which is a big consideration for my travels. In fact, I'll be bringing it with me on my Christmas vacation to Florida next week. I like the Picosteady and know you'll like it too.
To learn more about the PicoSteady or order your own, visit their website: http://picosteady.com
The Picosteady retails for $149.00 plus shipping.
Join me on a photographic journey to the land of fire and ice. I've set up this trip with renowned photographer and trip leader Tim Vollmer to show off the best of Iceland in the summer. We'll be photographing birds, landscapes, cities and villages as we travel in our own private vehicles around the stunning country. I've limited the number of participants to 10 so photographers can get the most out of this adventure.
Find more information here:
We only have four more seats available for the November 2013 photo safari to Tanzania. This will be our fifth Tanzanian photo safari and I would love to have you come along to experience the adventure of Africa.
Here's the link for more information:
I've just returned from four days of workshops in San Diego. The D800 and D4 workshops were extremely popular and full of vibrant photographers asking a million questions on these top-tier cameras.
Join me in 2013 for more of these Masters Series workshops in cities all around the USA. We've already posted workshops in Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, Los Angeles, and New Jersey. We'll be adding more very soon.
Kissimmee/Orlando – Jan 10-13, 2013
Fort Lauderdale – Jan 17-20, 2013
Los Angeles at Samy's Camera – Mar 7-9, 2013
Fairfield New Jersey at Unique Photo – Apr 4-7, 2013
Check out our workshops here: www.nikoniansacademy.com
Our Nikonians Academy camera and flash photography workshops have all been completely revamped to include the Nikon D800, Nikon D4, Nikon D600, Nikon D7000 cameras as well as the Nikon SB-910 and SB-700 flashes.
Adobe Lightroom 4 is one of the best software programs out there for digital photographers. We've updated our Lightroom workshops to show the best of LR4, so if you've ever wanted to learn how to leverage the power of Lightroom in your workflow, then this is the right workshop. I'll be running these all around the USA through the Nikonians Academy.
Lightroom 4 Essentials Workshops
You can stay current with our new workshop by watching for news to be posted at the blog (visadventures.com/blog/), on Facebook (www.facebook.com/MikeJHagen), Twitter (@MikeJHagen) and Google+ (http://gplus.to/MikeHagen).
Our Visual Adventures website www.VisAdventures.com is the new hub of our business operation. You'll find links to everything we do including our books, workshops, products, newsletter, blog and photo galleries. For now, our previous website www.outthereimages.com will stay put in its present form, but we won't be adding new content there.
This last August, I ran a custom photography trip for six photographers who wanted to improve their nature photography. We spent a few days in a beautiful national park working on photography techniques and learning new skills. Next year, I'll be running a custom trip for a small group of people to Tanzania.
If you have a group and want to arrange a custom photo trip similar to this, contact us and we'll put together an incredible itinerary just for you. I run custom trips for people all around the world on topics ranging from nature photography, landscape photography, urban photography, location portraits, and just about anything else you can imagine. Simply email or call and we'll give you all the details for how to go about creating the trip of your dreams.
Every month I run private workshops for people who want to learn in a one-on-one environment. These are great for folks who want to focus on specific topics related directly to their interests. Topics have included product photography, learning your camera, Lightroom, Photoshop, Aperture, Capture NX2, wedding photography, color management, nature photography, digital workflow, macro photography, location portraiture and many others. I also regularly consult with businesses, schools, organizations and museums to assist with their photographic and digital workflow needs.
If you have questions about private tutoring or business consulting, call (253) 851-9054 or visit our site here: http://visadventures.com/services/private-travel-tours/ .
I sincerely wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. My hope is that this newsletter inspires you and encourages you to keep improving your photography through daily practice.
As always, if you need more photo encouragement during the month, be sure to check out http://visadventures.com/blog/ for regular updates, news, tips and commentary. Also, I encourage you to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Best regards,
Mike Hagen
Visual Adventures (previously Out There Images)
PO Box 1966, Gig Harbor, WA 98335
web: www.visadventures.com
blog: http://visadventures.com/blog/
twitter: @MikeJHagen
Google+ http://gplus.to/MikeHagen
newsletter: http://visadventures.com/newsletters/
email: [email protected]
office: 253-851-9054
mobile: 360-750-1103
fax: 206-984-1817


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Brace yourself because Christmas is on its way! With no Thanksgiving standing in the way between today and Christmas, London is in full holiday swing. The lights are up, the ice skating rinks are open and the store windows are filled with Christmas delight. I have to say that I am already in the holiday spirit. I came across these adorable holiday postcards from Rifle Paper Company. I thought a postcard would be a fun way to spread the holiday cheer, and a nice reminder to your friends that you're thinking of them.
{images via Rifle Paper Company}


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A little while ago, Liz posted a rainbow themed moodboard and I managed to find a small tub of plastic seed beads that had come free with a papercrafts magazine. At the time they had been separated by colour, but at some point I must have mixed them altogether - perfect for making something multi-coloured. Mainly because I could never be bothered to try separating them again. Ahem!
The other day, I came across a length of pure white ribbon and decided to try threading it through the backs of the safety pins to create a choker style necklace. Lo and behold, it works - and it looks pretty cool with my white shirt for work.
Now, I must confess that I started writing this post with the intention of scheduling it as this week's Finally Finished Friday, but figured that if I posted it tonight, I'd have extra incentive to complete another project by the end of the week. I'm pushing myself people!


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Anchorage Man sentenced to 60 months in prison for felon in possession of firearm conviction
Anchorage, Alaska-U.S. Attorney Karen L. Loeffler announced today that a man from Anchorage was sentenced in federal court in Anchorage for one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm.
Menes Weightman, 34, from Anchorage, Alaska, was sentenced August 23, 2013, by U.S. District Court Judge Sharon L. Gleason to 60 months in prison and 3 years of supervised release. Weightman had previously pled guilty to count one of an indictment charging him with being a felon in possession of a firearm.
According to Assistant U.S. Attorney Kelly Cavanaugh, who prosecuted the case, in December 2012, Anchorage Police responded to a residence in Anchorage to investigate a report of an individual being threatened with a firearm. Weightman was contacted at the residence and was found in possession of a stolen sawed off shotgun, a .38 caliber revolver, and ammunition. Weightman has 3 prior felony convictions punishable by more than one year imprisonment, and is prohibited under federal law from possessing guns.
Prior to imposing a sentence, Judge Gleason informed Weightman that she hoped this sentence would deter him from committing similar crimes in the future and that this would protect the public from Weightman's criminal behavior while he is in prison.
Ms. Loeffler commended the Anchorage Police Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for the investigation leading to the successful prosecution of Weightman.


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The state is also known as the 'Dev Bhumi' or 'Land of God' because it houses various religious places and places of worships that are regarded as the most sacred and propitious areas of devotion and pilgrimage. Uttarakhand was created by joining a number of districts from the Northwestern part of Uttar Pradesh and a portion of the Himalayan Mountain Range. The state is mostly famous for its scenic features and affluence of the Himalayas, the Terai and the Bhabhar. The autonomous territory of Tibet is situated to the north of the state.
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This blog and "Bring back, Lean out…" published a couple of weeks ago are a much shortened version of an article published in the September '14 edition of the LeanManufacturing Journal.
The article explores the reshoring of production out of low labour cost sites to a range of Western countries and introduces the servitization of manufacturing companies to deliver advanced services, one form of servitization.
Combining the two potential transformations described above brings a manufacturing operation closer to your critical mass of people and closer to your customers. Being closer and how you allocate your resources can be used to maintain the same business model or try and take advantage of a servitization model offering advanced services. Those services might include a life cycle support or Rolls Royce pounds of thrust type solution. Those services might be a game changer in the field, supporting growth that can only be financially supported by an efficient, fast response, low in WIP supply chain. The key will be going back to the Voice of the customers (VOC) to work out what they will buy and how the value can be provided. That will drive the real purpose of the re-shoring, rather than just "bring them back home".
How Lean helps
With the purpose clear, and the value understood, now we should look to apply the right Lean tools to deliver a new value stream map. Consider:
· The longer the process to be transferred back the longer each transfer step will be. Look to standardize and transfer in chunks, keeping the work going through your transfer team at a manageable level. Consider moving part-manufactured goods for finishing in the home market. Consider machining parts in the home market and finishing them off shore. Prove each step is capable first.
· As-is and future Value Stream Maps (VSM)s are an obvious tool. Consider, what steps can be removed with re-design? If products are rented to customers for use then financial transactions will become flows instead of lumpy one-off transactions. Credit control and accounts receivable processes will change in size and type. Similarly by changing to an Advanced Service Business Model the organization structures and span of control of a business can change
Servitization and re-shoring need supply chain operations
Servitization clearly puts 'value creation' and 'value delivery' at the forefront of the competitive strategy. Value creation is closely related to demand creation and value delivery is closely related to demand fulfillment. Consequently, the implications of servitization are not only to the supply chain (demand fulfillment side) but also to where the demand is created in the first place.
What's next?
In my experience almost any business faced with decisions about re-shoring, changes to business models such as servitization and lean implementation find themselves stretched. There can be housekeeping activities required to prepare for such large changes and a significant amount of "headspace" required to work out what it all means and how to tackle it effectively and competitively.
So having explored the topic and some ways to tackle it what are the next steps, where do we go from here? Machan Consulting is working in association with Professor Tim Baines from the Servitization Centre at Aston University and Dr. Benny Tjahjono at the Cranfield School of Management to research who has done what already and what new entrants need to know.
We are looking for businesses to contact us with their experiences and what they are hoping to do. With a good enough response we plan to run a spring 2015 forum at Aston for those volunteer businesses to share, explore and learn from each other. We also anticipate some solid research to publish in late 2015 to help the whole sector.
So if you are a manufacturing business that is:
o Looking to do this, and looking for help/involvement in this project
o Or preparing their structure/organisation for the change
o Or have been there and would like to share their learnings,
To indicate your interest with this research and join us go to www.machan.co.uk/reshoreservitize


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Ryan Zawodny updated the NMU McNair program on his experience thus far at the Northern Arizona University for the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) in forestry. Ryan applied and was accepted to this REU opportunity made available through funding from the National Science Foundation. Ryan is a rising junior at NMU, a biology major, and a member of the 2017/18 McNair cohort. He came to NMU from Marlette, MI.
" I cannot say I have quite acclimated to the elevation change yet, but I have definitely settled into Flagstaff and my lab.
Last Wednesday my fellow program participants and myself ventured out to the Merriam Powell Research Station in Coconino National Forest and conducted an introductory study of an ecological observation that we made in the area. We stayed for four days and ran through the basic components of the scientific method and some key points in planning and executing a research study.
Now, back on Northern Arizona University's campus, I am in my lab for the summer within the Forestry Department. I am helping a graduate student with his research for his PhD program and also receiving assistance on my own proposal. My study is on local conifers, how they tolerate excessive heat, and whether they differ in their thermostability based on their predominant elevation range. The technique to expose these species to heat shock and run the protocols have never been done. Hopefully, by the end of the study, we will find a significant result.
Flagstaff is an amazing city, both for its building and vibrant community. I have already experienced some activities that take place in town and plan to attend many more. There is also no end to the opportunities to explore the Arizona area and even beyond (I will be traveling to Utah to plant pine trees, and potentially driving through Zion.) Although I do love NMU's campus, I do have to say that the campus at NAU is also very beautiful and has some ingenious ideas for sustainability and community connectivity.
I am looking forward to learning more about the research process I am undertaking and seeing the final result in just eight weeks. "
*Ryan Zawodny is far left with his fellow REU program participants.


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Could you benefit from employing simulation activities?
Would the use of simulation techniques enhance your current and future operational systems?
Simulation offers many benefits. It allows you to test new concepts, systems or operators in a realistic way without using your actual platform or compromising operational safety.
All the simulation work conducted by Think Research is operationally focused. Every simulation should give a return on investment and, through careful planning, execution, analysis and reporting, we ensure that investment is realised.
These activities are too valuable to leave to chance. Think Research are simulation specialists and understand the uses, benefits, considerations and methods better than any other consultancy.
What type of simulation is best for you?
How do you know which options to choose?
Our strategy can cover rapid, low cost activities for less mature ideas or concepts, up to large scale activities for pre-operational concepts and systems.
Our experience covers all the traditional techniques such as prototyping, fast-time simulation, real-time simulation, human-in-the-loop, shadow mode trials, flight trials and operational trials. (For more information on Fast Time Simulation see our dedicated page)
Do you need support with a simulation?
Do you need help with planning, conducting, analysing or reporting on a simulation?
We can plan a simulation better than anyone else. We can manage a simulation more effectively than any other consultancy. We can report on the simulation results quicker than you ever thought possible.


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Prof.Bhim Singh, Chief Patron of National Panthers Party presented his latest book, 'Unbelievable-Delhi to Islamabad' to S. Prakash Singh Badal, Chief Minister of Punjab during his meeting with the Chief Minister in New Delhi. Prof.Bhim Singh also congratulated Shri Badal for his efforts to eradicate drug culture in Punjab and mobilize the youth against militancy, violence by involving the new generations in developmental works.
Shri Badal appreciated Prof.Bhim Singh initiative to provide free legal aid to the youth in difficult days and expressed hope that his services shall be useful to strengthen and promote emotional integration between the people of J&K and rest of the country. Prof.Bhim Singh expressed hope that the initiative taken by Punjab with a new coalition to run Punjab government may prove to be more useful and fruitful for the development of Punjab. He said that coalition experiment between PDP led by Mufti Mohd. Sayeed in J&K and BJP has proved a disaster for both the regions, Kashmir and Jammu for several reasons. He said the J&K coalition was for power and money with no mission for the good of the people and that's why it failed. He also felt that Punjab experiment cannot be compared with the experiment in J&K for two parties in J&K have been working in different directions and political interests poles apart from each other. In Punjab the coalition experiment has strengthened national integration whereas in J&K it has worked for the promotion of disintegration thus weakening the bonds of secularism and nationalism.
A Panthers Party delegation from Bihar led by Shri Yogendra Singh Gambhir met Prof.Bhim Singh and invited him to a state convention of Bihar Pradesh National Panthers Party in Patna next week. Bihar Pradesh National Panthers Party also sought approval of the national leadership for contesting forthcoming Assembly election in Bihar.


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I just finished watching the first season of Damages on DVD. Before I launch into a review of how it presented women, I want to detail a couple of visceral reactions I had to the show, so you can judge for yourself if they colored my view:
- The premise is basically Devil's Advocate crossed with a touch of season 1 of Alias. And they say "Trust no one" (from "X-files") a lot. That's okay.
- They repeatedly lifted entire scenes from Devil's Advocate, like every five minutes, or so it felt. That's not okay. Dear TV Writers Who Call Intellectual Property Theft An "Homage": you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
- That really got on my nerves. I concluded the show was derivative and overly stylistic, and highly predictable. I didn't like it.
But – yes, there is a but – I have similar opinions about a lot of shows. At least there's a lot of positive to say about Damages when it comes to the women.
First, that it features two of 'em. Yikes! Run for the hills, it's a hoard! Yes, according to the film and TV community, two female leads is at least one and half too many for most viewers. And they really are leads. The show isn't nominally about them but spending most of its screen time on the guys. In fact, the name of Glenn Close's character, Patty Hewes, gets spoken about eleventy billion times per episode and everyone thinks about her all the time. Everyone wants to work for Patty. Everyone is scared of Patty. Everyone wonders what Patty is up to. Everyone needs to know where Patty is. I see this on a lot of shows and am never sure if it's just lamentable writing (it's like fan fiction where all the characters are obsessed with that fabulous Mary Sue during all their waking moments) or a ham-fisted TV convention for WE WEREN'T SURE YOU KNEW WHO THE LEAD WAS 'KTHANX. But since it is so common for male lead characters, so I'm willing to take it as a step toward equality for female leads.
Another positive is that it's not a show about two women, it's a show about two people who happen to be women. Patty and Ellen (Rose Byrne) have a sort of mentorship, except that Patty is using Ellen and Ellen's story arc is to figure that out. This is typically a male dynamic, as seen in a number of TV spy dramas over the years (and Devil's Advocate). Alias broke the mold by making the apprentice female. Damages takes the next step and makes the mentor a woman, too, a la The Devil Wears Prada. Patty's gender comes without explanation, which is a beautiful thing. No one's ever questioned how a woman could be one of the most feared and revered lawyers in New York. She just is.
Patty's deceit and manipulation could easily have looked like a female stereotype, but almost no character in the show can be trusted. Everyone's got an agenda, and this includes the men. Against this backdrop, Patty is just an individual who's mastered the culture of her profession.
Ellen's naivety is a bit overplayed for my taste – note how her voice goes from whiny and girlish in the flashbacks to deeper and more authoritative in the up-to-date scenes – but I must admit it would be hard for even a piece of moss watching the show to miss the point: the naivety gets stripped away by the end of the season. Not only does she realize Patty has played her, she hatches a plan to play Patty right back. This is why I think I'll watch season 2 and give the show another chance. I'm interested to see if they carry this off.
The one glaring negative for me is that in a show where almost every single character has an agenda, the only two women of color have pretty much nothing going on. They are Felicia, one of Patty's associates, and one of the cops investigating the crime from which the whole season is a flashback. They're exactly what they appear to be, and they don't do much. And I predicted as much from about the third episode. This is frustrating because even an unnamed character listed as "Blonde Woman" in IMDB gets to hit on a guy and then later try to shoot him, all in about three minutes of screen time.
But all in all, I put this show in the win column for those of us who see no reason why characters should always default to male unless their vaginas are required for story advancement or titillation.


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Good gracious, another ginormous recall. (I heard about this recall of 9 million Mattel toys on CNN, but you can also check it out on the CPSC site.) I think we'll just make toys for Baby J ourselves.
So far, we haven't been affected by any of the recalls that have come about in recent weeks, but I'm just waiting.
Too bad the lead in the paint that's causing the recalls isn't iron instead. Apparently Baby J is iron deficient. I've been trying to give him iron drops for the past week of so, and it's a nasty experience for both of us. (Plus, did you know that iron oxidizes when it's out of the bottle; i.e., now there are weird brown spots all over my bedspread from where drops of it were seemingly invisibly flung, only to leave their mark hours later...) So today I have to take the poor lad to have additional blood drawn to do a more complete lab workup to see if he really needs the iron supplement of if he's just "borderline."
I really hope there is a way to increase his iron without the drops. Isn't it better to get nutrients from food anyway, instead of supplements? I just need to be more intentional about what he eats. I feel like a total tool in the feeding department these days anyway. Being on 100% breastmilk was soooo much easier. Now I'm worried that I all the good I did breastfeeding will be for naught because he's eating so sporadically with table food.


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New York based State Bar Association's trusted Lawyer Referral and Information Service recently introduced an online platform that seeks to help people in need of a lawyer to find one. The lawyers to be sought after on this platform include those dealing with criminal matters, child custody issues, will writing as well as any other legal issues.This has provided a very convenient way of finding competent lawyers. Here, clients are assured of being matched with attorneys in better legal standing whose credentials have been reviewed and approved by the New York State Bar Association.
For one to get a lawyer through the platform, one has to simply follow a series of steps which include; visiting the website via their domain which is https://nysbalris.legal.io and filling a questionnaire which describes the kind of legal issue one has. The State Bar staff reviews the questionnaire, and then matches the client with attorney who can easily be accessed. The client is then referred to an attorney and pays a small consultation fee. In case the client wants to proceed with the lawyer, they both agree on a compensation fee.
This leads us to shining a light on Jeremy L. Goldstein. Having attended New York University School of Law, he is a partner and the founder of Jeremy L. Goldstein & Associates LLC. He has previously worked at the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen and Katz. The firm specializes in giving advice to compensation committees, management teams and corporations in executive compensation as well as corporate governance matters.
Goldstein has been involved in many of the largest legal corporate transactions. This has sharpened his skill set over time. Jeremy's main aim is helping and working together with the client in handling the legal issues. This way, the clients are assured of great results. If you live in New York, then finding a lawyer is one of the easiest things you'll ever do.
For updates, check out Jeremy Goldstein on Facebook.


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