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Thursday, January 19, 2012
Hence this Physicians Formula Shimmer Strips Nude Eyes palette ($10.99 for 0.26 oz). I just couldn't resist, it's so tiny and cheeky with that lace overlay, meow.
As you can see, the palette is not much bigger than a tube of Revlon lipstick, and comes with 9 shades of eyeshadow in one single pan. I'm not a huge fan of this solution, because the individual strips are rather narrow so it's difficult not to mix shades when picking them up with a brush, but I can still live with that for the price of portability. Physicians Formula suggest these 9 shades are in fact split into 3 trios, Natural, Playful and Dramatic, for achieving different looks. Personally, I just like to mix and match.
In terms of formulation, these are definitely not my favorite. They seem a bit bumpy under the brush and after swatching with a (clean!) finger, it looks like there's a bit of a greasy film left on the surface, which makes it difficult to pick up pigment with your brush. It's almost as if they're too hard, but creamy. As a result, the pigmentation is not the best, but can be built up for more intensity. Physicians Formula also claim these can be used wet, however I personally never bother to do that.
I still really enjoy using this little palette for its shades - I'm sorry the swatches are not the best, I couldn't get them to show up exactly right. The shadows perform best over primer, here they're swatched on top of Benefit F.Y.eye base.
Overall, Physicians Formula Nude Eyeshadow Palette is definitely an interesting foray into the world of neutral palettes from a drugstore brand, but the shadows themselves could be better formulated. Does it replace my Urban Decay 'Naked' Palette? Hell, no, but I think I actually enjoy the 'Nude' palette shade selection better; I mean, look at those taupes, people. If you're a neutral palette collector and prefer cooler shades, I do recommend it, but if you're looking for a 'Naked' alternative, look elsewhere.
What are your favorite neutral eyeshadow palettes?
7 comments:
I don't know what my favorite neutral palettes are! I used to have the Naked palette, but then whaddya know, allergic to parabens...it went to my mum (barely used) and she was really pleased :) I think Naked 2 is paraben-free so I'm really tempted, but you know, I don't actually think I wear browns that often! Someone needs to come out with a "naked" type palette that has grays and peaches and pale ivories...things like that.
ReplyDeleteI don't really have a favorite neutral palette..I've never found one that was perfect, but I'll definitely keep looking! But I do agree with Larie..a palette that has peaches, grays and ivories would be great..then it would truly be 'naked' colors...and I would definitely buy!
ReplyDeleteI'm not fond of PF's eyeshadow texture/formula but I like the variation of champagnes and taupes in this palette. The lack of browns is a nice change!

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This Texas Dream House Has a Private Beach, Waterslide, Zipline and More [Pictures]
Looking for a stunning dream home that harbors a human-made private beach along with other luxury amenities, such as a waterslide and zipline? One such gem is currently on the housing market in Southeast Texas.
The multi-million dollar abode is in Fulshear, Texas, on the western edge of greater Houston. As listed on HAR.com — which TheFW first pointed out this month — the fancy homestead has all the makings of an ultra-opulent country bunker.
The 5,500 square foot home sits on a substantial 20 lot acres among Fulshear's Rand & Penn subdivision. The Tuscan-inspired house has four bedrooms, with four full and two half-bathrooms. However, the main attractions of this heavenly dwelling aren't what's inside, but what's waiting on the outside.
Surrounding the house is a veritable vacation getaway at home. There's a private swimming lake complete with the beach, waterslide and zipline mentioned above. Need more? There's also a resort-style pool with two sun decks, a rock slide and a spa. The property further contains a five-stall barn, separate three-bedroom guest house and RV garage. That's all in addition to the unmatched accommodations of the primary domicile.
What can one expect to pay for this Texas dream home? Its listing price comes to a whopping $4,800,000. For those interested, check HAR.com's general description of the immaculate property immediately below, followed by an array of impressive photographs of the luxurious residence.
This one-of-a-kind gated estate on 21 acres offers unparalleled amenities, including a private swimming lake with waterslide, beach and zipline, palapa with outdoor kitchen, firepit, covered veranda with outdoor kitchen, resort-style pool with 2 sundecks, rock slide and spa, plus a 5-stall barn with an office, feed room, and tack room. Luxury awaits in this Tuscan inspired home with Cantera columns, travertine with granite inlays and barrel ceiling, wood flooring, stained wood trim and cabinets, 3 fireplaces, wine cellar with cigar humidor, Viking appliances, study, theater room with bar, and a 4-car garage (currently being used as a man cave). The gourmet kitchen boasts an oversized island with bar seating, wood beamed ceiling, walk-in pantry, and butler's pantry. The primary suite boasts a fireplace, double vanities, spa tub, and dual entry shower. Property also features 3-bed, 2.5-bath guest house with expansive deck, as well as a separate RV storage/garage.


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Flight Partners - Artemis Fey
Release Date: November 15
Cover: Natasha Snow
Length: 80,000 words
When a charming stranger soothes Andy MacKinnon's fear of flight, it doesn't take much before the two are snuggling at 40,000 feet.
Too bad that sexy guy turns out to be Andy's new coworker, Kenneth Ohno.
Oh no, indeed.
As two expats in Japan teaching at the same school, not only will they work together, they'll share a small apartment. It's get along or quit.
After the explosive chemistry of their first meeting, Andy wastes no time in laying down the rules. A relationship is off the table. They aren't even going to be friends—coworkers is enough to manage for two twenty-somethings who can't seem to keep their hands off each other.
But it isn't long before their living arrangements hit turbulence. Kenneth isn't the first roommate Andy's fallen for, and the last relationship ended in a nosedive. Can Andy and Kenneth make a smooth landing?
Or will work and play get mixed up one time too many?
Excerpt from Chapter 1
Andy's PoV
We've reached the head of the runway with two jets ahead of us. Five minutes until departure. Five more minutes of sitting here. I always do wear my running shoes to fly.
There's a tap on the back of my hand. "Nervous flier?"
What gave it away, the white knuckles or the fact that I can hear my own teeth grinding?
My seat partner taps my hand again. "Hey. So. Uh. You've got a charm on your bag. Is it a good-luck charm?"
He's trying to distract me, how sweet. "No, it's a safe-flight charm. Kiyomizu-dera Temple in Kyoto. A friend bought it for me."
"That was nice of them."
"Very. Look, it takes a lot of concentration to not throw up at this part. I'll chat when we hit the sky, but for now, I need to stop opening my mouth."
Next to me, Seat Buddy shifts, no doubt away, or to get out the puke bag in preparation. Not that I've ever actually thrown up, but you never know, I could just make my day. Good job, Andy.
And then warmth covers my clammy knuckles. Fingers squeeze my hand, firm and strong. "No worries, I'll just talk, then. I used to travel with my grandparents a lot, and my grandma gets really nervous when she flies, so my grandpa always told her stories. Probably kind of weird for a stranger to do that, but I figure if I annoy you, you can just throw up on me in self-defense." His thumb is making circles around the side of my hand, slow and steady, the heat of it travelling up my arm. What the hell. Seriously, what the hell. I'm not going to throw up now, I'm going to die of shock. "How many planes to go?"
"One more, then us."
"And you're fine once we hit the air, got it." The low tones of his voice vibrate down my spine, anchoring me tight to my seat. "See, my grandma wasn't, so she'd take a sleeping pill and go out like a light. Problem was, when we were only going from Chicago to Orlando, she'd be groggy once we got there. One time, my grandpa told the flight staff she had sleeping fits, and we just borrowed a wheelchair and bundled her into the taxi from that. We put Minnie Mouse ears on her before she woke up. She walked around wearing them for half an hour before she realized."
Okay, now I'm just picturing the Japanese baa-chan across from us wearing those ears, yelling at her husband about them. To-chan, dame yo! Add that to the fact that this guy is holding my hand and I'm in overload. Why…I can't even…
The plane jolts forward, turning into position. Oh God, here we go. Brace. Two minutes and this will be over. Or we'll be in flames.
Seat Buddy's other hand lands on my forearm, kneading the muscles there. I can't tear my eyes away from the window, but his voice sounds close as he murmurs, "Funny, charging the runway makes you sick, but it always gives me a hard-on."
His gray eyes are six inches from mine, witch-pale, surrounded by eyelashes a touch on the long side. Is he half-Japanese?
He's so close.
The engines have reached a roar. Sudden acceleration slams me back into my seat as we race down the runway, faster, faster. The terminal is flashing by, trollies, other planes, but we're not going fast enough. Oh God, we're not going to make it, we're going to go off the runway into the grass and hit the fence and die.
The wheels lift off, and my stomach swoops. We're flying.
Stories set in countries/places I've never been tend to amaze me. I get geographically starstruck. Flight Partners is set in Japan. I have never been and know little about it's culture. So while I was confused at times I found it to also be fascinating.
Andy is an English teacher ans upon his return to Japan he finds himself seated beside Kenneth. Now, Kenneth is something else! I bet we'd all like to get someone like him to sit next to us on a flight. He's super flirty, super hot, and...dirty but in the good way. But then it gets weird and Andy gets scared and bolts, disappears. When he gets to his apartment his old roommate has moved and a new one is in her place... Kenneth! Now the story starts to get fabulous.
Watching these two co-exist through awkwardness ans the fact they are opposites in a lot of ways was interesting. Andy took some getting used to. Where Kenneth has never been in a real relationship Andy has been hurt so his on again off again attitude toward Kenneth was frustrating.
This is a story about strength and trust no question. Overcoming and discovery. I really enjoyed it on so many levels and absolutely recommend it.
While in university, I studied abroad in Japan for a year. That of course wasn't enough, so having graduated with a degree in Global Studies, I returned to live and work there for nearly three more years.
First I was at an eikaiwa much like the one in Flight Partners. Later I worked at a daycare in another city.
So many of the background details of Flight Partners was taken either from my own experiences, or those I heard from friends. Even things that seem unlikely, like the state of oversight of visas (very lax!), are true to Japan. It's a country of contradictions, but so beautiful it keeps drawing people back.
These days, I live in the US with my husband, writing by day, teaching ESL by night. What can I say, it's a living.
Website: http://artemisfay.com/books/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ArtemisFay


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SYDNEY — March 31, 2016 — Wednesday at Build 2016, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Terry Myerson, executive vice president of Windows and Devices Group, talked to thousands of developers about the work Microsoft Corp. is doing to help them embrace the new era of conversational intelligence and create more personal computing for every customer, industry and business. Nadella showcased improvements to Cortana and announced previews of new cloud services and toolkits designed to understand the world around us and create intelligent bots. Myerson announced the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, which will deliver significant new innovations for consumers and developers for the Universal Windows Platform.
"As an industry, we are on the cusp of a new frontier that pairs the power of natural human language with advanced machine intelligence," said Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft. "At Microsoft, we call this Conversations as a Platform, and it builds on and extends the power of the Microsoft Azure, Office 365 and Windows platforms to empower developers everywhere."
"With Windows 10 now running on over 270 million active devices, we're celebrating with our fans by delivering the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. This significant update will help you interact with your Windows 10 devices as naturally as you interact with the world around you — using your pen, presence and voice," Myerson said. "We are dedicated to making Windows the most productive development environment for all developers, with all-new capabilities for the Universal Windows Platform and all-new tools for bringing apps to Windows 10 from any platform."
Introducing cloud services that understand, interactive bots and the Cortana Intelligence Suite
The Cortana Intelligence Suite, formerly known as the Cortana Analytics Suite, is powered by cutting-edge research into big data, machine learning, perception, analytics and intelligent bots. Built on Microsoft Azure, these capabilities can be used by developers and businesses to create intelligent end-to-end solutions, including new apps that learn about our world and bots and agents that interact with people in personalized, intelligent ways.
Wednesday, Microsoft announced new additions to the Cortana Intelligence Suite, both in preview. The first, Microsoft Cognitive Services, is a collection of intelligence APIs that allows systems to see, hear, speak, understand and interpret our needs using natural methods of communication. The second, the Microsoft Bot Framework, can be used by developers — programming in any language — to build intelligent bots that enable customers to chat using natural language on a wide variety of platforms including text/SMS, Office 365, Skype, Slack, the Web and more.
Microsoft demonstrated how developers can use services, like those found in the Cortana Intelligence Suite, to transform not only businesses but people's lives. Seeing AI, a research project under development, shows how these new capabilities can help people who are visually impaired or blind better understand who and what is around them.
Wednesday, Microsoft also released the Skype Bot Platform, which includes the SDK, API and Workflows all in the new Skype Bot Portal. With this platform, developers can build bots that leverage Skype's multiple forms of communication, including text, voice, video and 3-D interactive characters. Customers can get started with Skype Bots by downloading the latest Skype apps for Windows, Android and iOS. Developers can start building Skype Bots today using the Skype Bot Platform and reach hundreds of millions of Skype users.
Those interested can learn more about Cortana Intelligence Suite and the new previews here, sign up to learn more about Seeing AI here, download the new Skype client here and sign up for the Skype Bot Platform.
New Windows 10 innovations deliver more personal computing and opportunities for developers
Windows 10 was designed to deliver more personal computing, with experiences that are more natural, more trusted and extend across devices. With features such as Cortana and Windows Hello, Windows 10 began to deliver on this vision. Today, Windows 10 is off to the fastest start in Windows history with over 270 million active devices, outpacing Windows 7 by 145 percent. And, customers have spent more time in Windows 10 than ever before — over 75 billion hours since its launch. As a result of this rapidly growing base, Microsoft is seeing new universal apps from Twitter, Uber, King, Disney, Wargaming, Square Enix, Yahoo and WWE; with new apps on the way from Bank of America, Starbucks, Facebook, Messenger and Instagram. The Windows Store has seen over 5 billion visits as Windows fans are discovering apps for Windows 10, including nearly 1,000 Cortana apps.
At Build on Wednesday, Microsoft shared the next chapter in its more personal computing vision — with an all-new Windows 10 Anniversary Update featuring innovations for Windows Ink, Cortana, Windows Hello and gaming. Windows Ink is a new experience, putting the power of Windows in the tip of your pen. With Windows Ink, you can write on your device as you do on paper, create sticky notes, draw on a whiteboard and easily share your analog thoughts in the digital world. New Cortana features enable you to receive proactive guidance from Cortana throughout the day and speak with Cortana, even while your device is locked1, without logging in. New Windows Hello features extend the security of Windows 10 to multiple devices and to Microsoft Edge, so you can log into your devices and websites with enterprise-grade security. These are just a few of the many features that will become available this summer when the Windows 10 Anniversary Update becomes broadly available.
Microsoft also shipped Microsoft HoloLens Development Edition for the first time, extending the Windows experience to holograms and allowing developers to begin helping build the future of holographic computing. Microsoft highlighted commercial customers in several industries that are using HoloLens today, including Case Western Reserve University and NASA. Developers can use the Universal Windows Platform to create new mixed reality with holograms.
For over 30 years, Windows has been an open ecosystem, welcoming the contributions of hardware and software partners and developers around the world. The Universal Windows Platform extends this commitment, combining the openness of the history of Windows with the best of today's modern application platform. On Wednesday, Microsoft shared all-new capabilities for the Universal Windows Platform. They include full access to Cortana's proactive intelligence and the Windows 10 Anniversary SDK, which offers all-new APIs and tools to integrate the latest Windows 10 innovations into apps, including Windows Ink and Windows Hello. And with the Xbox Dev Mode, any Xbox One can be a developer kit, enabling anyone to develop for the living room.
Microsoft also shared all-new tools for bringing apps to Windows 10 from any platform.
- Web developers, including American Express, BBC Sport, Yahoo Mail, zulily and more, have seen great success with Windows 10 Hosted Web Apps. And now, Windows 10 has support for native Bash with access to the Windows file system and the universe of open source command line tools.
- Microsoft shared its new desktop app converter for Project Centennial, which will enable Win32 and .NET developers to easily bring more than 16 million apps to the Universal Windows Platform. Developers can extend their applications with Universal Windows Platform capabilities and distribute their apps in the Windows Store.
- Xamarin will help make it possible for .NET developers to more easily share common app code across Windows, iOS and Android apps while still delivering fully native experiences for each platform.
Those who want to try the new innovations coming in the Windows 10 Anniversary Update can join the Windows Insider program and install the latest build. Starting today, developers in the Windows Insider Program can access the Windows Anniversary SDK Preview to explore the new features.
Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT" @microsoft) is the leading platform and productivity company for the mobile-first, cloud-first world, and its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
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What are the Best Ways to Lower Blood Pressure Naturally?
Over the past few decades, controlling high blood pressure has been one of the priorities for health care professionals and organizations worldwide. "High blood pressure" is defined as any systolic pressure (the top number) above 140 or diastolic (the bottom number) higher than 90. (See: What do the Numbers on a Blood Pressure Test Mean and What Do They Tell the Doctor)
High blood pressure, while not a disease in and of itself, is a risk factor for several other life threatening conditions like heart attacks, strokes, and kidney failure. The most beneficial way to control your blood pressure is via natural means. This is because medications that control blood pressure all come with some serious side effects. These side effects can sometimes be more harmful than the high blood pressure itself. Your doctor will weigh the risks vs. benefits before he or she decides how to best control your high blood pressure. All medical professionals know, if it can be done, the best way is naturally. So let's look at what we are trying to control and the best natural ways to lower blood pressure.
Blood pressure is simply the intrinsic pressure within your arteries and veins. Your body needs this pressure to adequately supply all your tissues and organs with nutrients. Analogous to the plumbing inside your house, adequate pressure is needed, but if that pressure gets too high, problems can arise. High blood pressure is a combination of environmental risk factors and genes. Things like lack of exercise, bad eating habits, and smoking can cause a buildup of plaque inside your arteries.
Excessive plaque on the interior walls of your arteries makes them, in effect, smaller, known as "Atherosclerosis". When the pipes that transport fluid get smaller, the pressure that same volume of fluid exerts goes up. What happens if your blood pressure gets too high? I'll answer that question with another one. What happens if the water pressure in your houses pipes gets too high? Your pipes burst. Same thing here. Should your blood pressure get too high, your arteries have a greater chance of bursting.
There's another reason too much plaque is bad. If there's too much gunk inside your pipes, that ball of gunk could get too big and clog off your pipes! Seems bad too me! Especially, if those arteries are in your brain or heart.
Your arteries have the ability to get larger or smaller depending on the needs of your body at the time. Excessive plaque makes this increasing more difficult for your body to achieve. If the ability to get larger (dilate) is hindered, this also causes high blood pressure.
The final reason a person's blood pressure can be too high appears to be genetic. While not completely understood, a landmark study published in Nature in 2011 found 29 genetic variants that affected blood pressure. They found any one variant in a gene did not increase your risk of hypertension. However, people with multiple variants were much more likely to have high blood pressure. This study allowed them to develop a "genetic risk score" based on those 29 variants.
Gene therapy hasn't yet allowed us to control genetic factors that affect blood pressure. However, it's the environmental factors we can control which give us the opportunity to naturally control high blood pressure. So let's look at some.
#1: If you smoke, quit. While smoking itself doesn't raise blood pressure chronically, you can have a temporary increase after smoking. Smoking tobacco will speed up the processes involved in making your arteries harder, giving them a decreased ability to constrict and dilate appropriately. Cancer is also bad and we know smoking causes that, so stop! Stop now, for your own sake and those who love you!
#2: Eat healthy. The National Institute of Health created an eating plan based on a study that tested the effects of food nutrients on blood pressure called "DASH" (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension). The study found that foods low in saturated fat, total fat, and "bad" cholesterol helped lower blood pressure. They recommend eating more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, poultry, fish, and nuts. Go figure, mom was right! Reducing intake of red meats, sugared beverages, sweets, and any food high in fats also helped.
Note: when it comes to salt intake, there is a lot of information out there saying excessive salt intake will increase your blood pressure. To date, there are very controversial opinions on the topic. In short, there isn't really any good study ever done that shows consuming excessive amounts of salt will increase your blood pressure long term.
#3: Exercise. We all know that exercise helps in wide range of medical problems. When it comes to high blood pressure, a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in 2002 showed that exercise alone can not only reduce blood pressure in people with high blood pressure, but will also help in people with normal blood pressures. They found that in 54 previously randomized, controlled trials, exercise decreased a person's Systolic blood pressure up to 4.97 millimeters of mercury mm Hg and your diastolic up to 3.35mm Hg. Combined with a healthy eating plan, like DASH, exercise can decrease your overall blood pressure by 15%!
#4: Reduce your stress. When we're stressed, our bodies secrete more sympathetic neurotransmitters (neurotransmitters involved in our fight or flight response). The result is higher metabolic and heart rate, and higher blood pressures. One of the best ways to reduce stress is with transcendental meditation. I know what your thinking- I don't want to sit around for 20 min, twice a day, chanting some "hippie" crap! Well, as a means of reducing stress induced high blood pressure, studies have shown it decreases BP twice as much as progressive muscle relaxation.
#5: Weight control. Numerous studies have shown a link between being overweight and having high blood pressure. The relationship seems obvious, as those who are overweight tend to eat higher calorie foods with higher content of fats in them. Depending on which study you read, someone who is overweight has a 2-6 fold increase in the chance of having high blood pressure. One study (the Framingham Heart Study published in the journal "Circulation") quantified this ratio and found that for every 4.5 kg of body weight over a person's recommended weight, this increased their blood pressure by 4mm Hg. As of 2011, 66% percent of the US population is either overweight or obese. So unless you like chest pain and losing some muscle control from stroke, about 2/3 of us need to trim down!
In the end, if you want to reduce your blood pressure naturally, put down the cigarette and go for a run. Afterward, sit around, find your happy place in your mind, and eat some fruits and nuts, but not too much. Control your calorie intake! Pretty much all the stuff everyone is telling you to do anyways for numerous other health benefits not related to blood pressure. Unfortunately, if you came up short in evolution's gene pool, you might still need medication to help control your high blood pressure, but the above will also help and is something you can do for yourself.
If you liked this article and the Bonus Facts below, you might also like:
- Top 5 First Aid Tricks Everyone Should Know
- How to Treat a Jellyfish Sting
- The Difference Between Farther and Further
- When to Use I.E. Versus E.G.
Bonus Facts:
- Nutrient labels on food products in the United States list their percentages based on a 2000 calorie per day diet. This can be somewhat misleading. Energy requirements can vary significantly based on your age, sex, weight, height, physical activity, and base metabolic rate, ranging on average between 1000-4000 calories. The Merck Manual states 1,600 calories per day are needed for young children and sedentary women; 2,000 for active adult women and sedentary men; and 2,400 for active adolescent boys and young men. These values are also somewhat arbitrary because the average person uses different amounts of energy almost daily. One day you might go for a hike and the next sit on the couch watching football. One month you could lose 5 pounds and increase your base metabolic rate in the process. The next month with the same caloric intake gain 10 pounds and decrease your base metabolic rate. The point being, you should make an attempt, at least once or twice a year to figure out your daily caloric needs. This will help you in determining the amount of food you should eat. Or not… You could always just say "Wal-Mart makes that shirt in extra large, so I'm good!" The "see-food" diet as it were- you see food, and then you eat it!
- Blood pressure is measured in millimeters of mercury. For reference, 1 psi (pounds per square inch) is equal to 51.7149326 millimeters of mercury. If you were bleeding and wanted to stop the blood-loss with direct pressure, and you should, you would only need to use about 3 psi to stop it. Unless they have really high blood pressure, then maybe 4 psi. Basic math saves the day again!
- The first known experiment to measure the exact pressure of blood was performed by Stephen Hales on December 1, 1733. He took a live horse. Attached a tube to her left crural artery, then allowed her blood to rush through the tube and it rose to a height of 8'3". He noted that "when it was at its full height, it would rise and fall at and after each pulse 2, 3,or 4 inches".
- According to the American Heart Association, about 1 billion people worldwide have clinically significant high blood pressure. 50 million of those live in the United States.
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The Happy Life
Sang-woo, the leader of college rock band Volcano, dies and sets up a reunion for Gi-yeong and the other members of the group. Former bass player Seong-wook lives a hand-to-mouth existence working two jobs. Drummer Hyeok-su is a single father struggling to make a living as a car salesman. The jobless lead guitarist Gi-yeong dreams of taking over Volcano as the new frontman. When he suggests they reform the band while the old friends reminisce at the funeral, they all spurn the idea. But Gi-yeong persists and gets each to relent, setting the stage for a rock and roll reunion.
Please scroll down to choose servers and episodes.


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BioCoRE is a collaborative work environment for biomedical research, research management and training. A resource-centered platform, BioCoRE offers scientists, working together or alone, a seamless interface to a broad range of local and remote technologies such as discipline-specific and general tools, data, and visualization solutions. To harness and streamline collaborative capabilities across temporal and physical boundaries in research and training, BioCoRE builds on the transparent use of and communication between technological resources (hardware and software) and databases. BioCoRE features powerful yet easy-to-use tools, among them co-authoring papers and other documents, running applications on supercomputers, sharing molecular visualization over the Internet, notifying project team members of recent project changes by email, chatting, keeping a lab book, and other practical features. |
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a) Check whether there is any damage to the screen. If yes, please back up your data and take your device and proof of purchase to our repair center to get more professional technical assistance.
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Talkback is a screen reader primarily for people with blindness and low vision. In this mode, you need to quickly touch a button twice to select it.
To navigate when using Talkback:
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Please go to "Settings"->"Accessibility"->"TalkBack" ->"Use TalkBack", touch the toggle switch to turn it on or off.
c) If the issue occurs while using a third-party app, make sure the app is compatible with your device and Android version. Try uninstalling the third-party app.
d) Check if the issue occurs during charging. If yes, we recommend trying the official charger and data cable.
(Note: The voltage instability of non-standard chargers and data cables may cause the touchscreen to become unresponsive).
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f) If there is a screen protector on the screen, see if the touchscreen works after removing it.
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- Fundos
- 1941, 1948-2006
Fonds reflects Foster's artistic processes and practices, research interests, pedagogy, and her relationships with galleries, patrons, students and friends. Fonds consists of sketches, tracings, small paintings and prints, paint samples, printing plates, notes, correspondence, photographs, slides, negatives, exhibition catalogues, newspaper clippings, art publications, receipts and sales documents, inventories, Foster's diplomas, and various ephemera.
Correspondents include Ed Hill, Barbara Demaray, Fritz Eichenberg, Anna Vakar and several businesses and galleries.
The fonds has been arranged into three series: Art practice, Publications and clippings, and Teaching.
Foster, Judith A., 1930-2000


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Data is an integral part of your business. You use it to build marketing strategies, forge customer relationships, and much more. Losing important client and company information can be harmful to the health of your business. Here are backup solutions you should implement to ensure the safety of your data.
Tape drives
Tape drives are the oldest backup solution still in use today because they offer high-capacity data storage and are very cost-effective. Modern tape drives come with 114 TB native capacity and 360 TB compressed capacity, which is larger compared to most hard disk drives.
In addition, well-maintained tape drives can store data for over 30 years. Other devices, such as hard drives, become less reliable overtime. Also, tape drives are stored offline, which means they'll be safe should your business fall victim to an online attack.
External hard drives
An external hard drive is a portable hard drive that can be connected to a desktop or laptop through a USB port. External hard drives come in varying storage capacities ranging from 1 TB to 18 TB.
For companies that can't afford multiple servers or cloud storage, external hard drives are a cost-effective way of backing up valuable data. External hard drives are portable and let you access your files even when you're offline.
When using external hard drives, however, you need to update your backups regularly to include new files. Also, there's a risk these devices can be misplaced or stolen if they are not stored in a secure location.
USB drives
USB drives are an inexpensive and simple data backup solution. While they don't have the capacity of external hard drives or tape drives, newer flash drives can store up to 1 TB of data, making them the ideal option if you're not planning to store a huge amount of files. And because USB flash drives have a compact design, they are easy to carry around.
USB drives are compatible with both PC and Mac devices as long as they have a USB port. Modern ones are designed with transfer speeds of up to 4.8 GB per second. This allows you to copy files faster compared to hard drives which only have a transfer rate of 150 MB per second. The only drawback with USB drives is that they can be misplaced easily, so be sure to store them in a safe and secure place after use.
Cloud storage
Cloud storage allows you to back up your data online. This reduces the need for physical storage, helping you cut down on hardware maintenance costs and office space. And since your data is stored online, you can access your files from anywhere with a stable internet connection. This makes file sharing easier, thus facilitating remote and hybrid setups, which became the norm during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In addition, most cloud providers offer encryption services to ensure only authorized personnel can access the stored data. Keep in mind, however, that there are still providers out there that do not have sufficient security protocols in place, exposing sensitive data to cyberthreats. So before you decide to use cloud storage, make sure the provider you choose is familiar with data regulation laws and uses the latest cybersecurity protocols to ensure the safety of your data.
Data backup may seem like a chore, but having copies of your files offline, off premises, or in the cloud will ensure the continuity of your business in the event of a disaster. Call our data backup experts today to learn more.


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Kubota Genuine Part- Kubota Switch Oil of Part No. 15841-39013
-is Compatible with a Range of Diesel Engine Lines
-Approximate Shipping Dimensions:
-Length(mm):25 -Width(mm):25
-Height(mm):32 -Weight(Kg): 0.03
-Country of Origin: Japan
-Always Use Genuine Parts to Protect Your Engine.
The Category:
Kubota 15841-39013 Switch Oil belongs to the category of: Electrics/Electronics.. All Electronic and electric devices need to be of prime and Genuine quality to permit proper functionning of the Generator.
The Brand:
As for the Engine Brand: Kubota engines are highly durable engines with proven long engine life. Hence, a comprehensive range of parts per engine series is available for Kubota engines series. Thus, always compare your engine type with "Engine Compatibility" information available per part. All displayed parts are genuine Kubota Parts.
Always view complete collection of Kubota parts through: https://shop.ghaddar.com/product-category/kubota-engines-parts/.
Kubota Engines power Ghaddar generators- check the complete range on https://www.ghaddar.com/ghaddar-generators-powered-by-kubota-22/.
The Company:
Ghaddar Machinery Co. operates in the field of Electrical Power Generating Sets, Green and Hybrid Power Solutions, Sound attenuation. In addition to all types of Power control and automation systems. Moreover, The company holds distributorship and OEM agreements with world leaders in the design and manufacture of industrial diesel engines and industrial alternators.
Kubota Engines Japan.
John Deere Engines USA.
Cummins G-drive Engines USA.
Leroy Somer Alternators France.
Since 1980, Ghaddar Machinery Co. is a major supplier of engines and alternators and complete Generating Sets. they range from 9 to 4000 kVA. This in addition to Diesel Engine Based Power Solutions. The company holds the biggest stock of engines and alternators in the Middle East and Africa. Moreover, the company has 5 branches across the MENA region as well as a widespread network of overseas power dealers covering Middle East, Near East, Africa, Europe in addition to South America.


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Consider the following in Microsoft Dynamics SL:
You enter a Time and Expense batch for certified payroll with prevailing wages, and send this batch to Advanced Payroll.
When you do this, you notice the rates in Advanced Payroll are not exactly the prevailing wage. As an example, if the prevailing wage is 46.08, Advanced payroll might show rates of 46.07, 46.08 or 46.09, depending on the units and earnings.
Hotfix information for Microsoft Dynamics SL
A supported hotfix is now available from Microsoft. However, this hotfix is intended to correct only the problem that is described in this article. Apply this hotfix only to systems that are experiencing this specific problem. This hotfix might receive additional testing. Therefore, if you are not severely affected by this problem, we recommend that you wait for the next Microsoft Dynamics SL Service Pack that contains this hotfix as specified in the "Status" section in this article.
To resolve this problem, click the link for the appropriate version to obtain the hotfix.
Microsoft Dynamics SL 2015 CU2
Note If additional issues occur or any troubleshooting is required, you might have to create a separate service request. The usual support costs will apply to additional support questions and issues that do not qualify for this specific hotfix. To create a separate service request, visit the following Microsoft Web site:
File information
The English version of this hotfix has the file attributes (or later file attributes) that are listed in the following table. The dates and times for these files are listed in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). When you view the file information, it is converted to local time. To find the difference between UTC and local time, use the Time Zone tab in the Date and Time item in Control Panel.
Microsoft Dynamics SL 2015 Cumulative Update 2 (CU2)
Changed Files |
Date |
File Version |
TMPLI00.exe |
22-Jan-2019 |
9.02.61322.00 |
TM060.rpt |
22-Jan-2019 |
Bug39169ALL.sql |
22-Jan-2019 |
Installation information
Install this hotfix by following the installation instructions that are included in the hotfix download.
For information about the prerequisites for this hotfix, refer to the installation instructions that are included in the hotfix download.
Restart requirement
If you are prompted, restart the computer after you install the hotfix.
Removal information
You cannot remove this hotfix.
Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section.
This problem was reported as issue number 39169.
More Information
For more information about software update terminology, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
Description of the standard terminology that is used to describe Microsoft software updates


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Sheyman – Cover Me
After the continuous success of "Ball Properly" Oluseyi "Sheyman" Ademoye follows up with a new hit single 'Cover Me' produced by fast rising producer 'Krisbeatz'.
Final touches are been put to the video which was shot and directed by the super talented Patrick Elis in Atlanta, USA.
According to him "Cover Me" was inspired by different things that happened around him and is also a way of praying to God for protection while thanking him for the good things that have happened in his life.
Sheyman will embark on a media and club tour from this week.


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Friday, July 24, 2009
Nobody Asked Me, But...
Look, I like cops. I think they have the toughest job in the world, keeping assholes safe from being assholes and other assholes. But in this instance, they acted precipitously and yes, "stupidly," as our black President, who you know is probably the first in our nation's history to actually suffer police harassments, put it.
Forget the race. A 60-something man walking around a house with a cane is not a robber and the frikkin' cops simply blew the call. Period. End of story. That's the way I'd be reporting it if I was a journalist, and any news organization that is reporting it any differently "the man wasn't acting professional," "police departments nationwide are angry with Obama," is not doing their job.
2) If these guys were Islamic, how much of a hue and cry would be made? This would have moved from a crime story to a national security "crisis" in seconds.
3) I feel good about this. We need all the friends we can get.
4) I'd be happy if we can get out without embarrassing ourselves. The war we should have been fighting since September 11 seems to be slipping away from us.
5) For the first time in its history, Windows sales declined last quarter.
6) Lance Mannion has posted a very interesting comparison of the Harry Potter novels/movies to Star Wars.
7) "I feel the earth move under my butt." I'm a big fan of outdoor sex, but this would probably put the fear of Thor in me...
8) The inventor of WD-40 has died. World's smoothest burial follows.
9) Revenge....
10) ...Ironic blowback!
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Maybe We Ought To Do Away With Marriage?
Fort Myers Beach town council voted 5-0 to fire Scott Janke "without cause" after Mayor Larry Kiker called an emergency meeting Tuesday night.Kiker said he learned that afternoon that Janke's wife is an adult film star, and word quickly spread. The elected officials took the action a few hours later."At no time did we make a judgment call on the activities of Mr. Janke or his wife," Kiker told The Associated Press. "It's a matter of how effective he becomes after this situation. How much disruption there is."
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
A Sign of Sanity
The Senate voted Tuesday to kill the nation's premier fighter jet program, embracing by a 58-40 margin the argument of President Obama and his top military advisers that the F-22 is no longer needed for the nation's defense and a costly drag on the Pentagon's budget in an era of small wars and growing counterinsurgency efforts.
[...] (Defense Secretary Robert) Gates had depicted the F-22, which was conceived in the 1980s, as a "silver bullet solution" to a high-technology aerial warfare threat that has not materialized. He said other warplanes will adequately defend the country for decades to come, and won support from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Air Force's two senior leaders. But his view was strongly opposed by others in the Air Force and by military contractors and unions that have benefited from the $65 billion program.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Matt Drudge: Fucking Moron
The purchases for sliced ham and other contracts - including mozzarella and other cheeses - were to provide soup kitchens and homeless shelters with food for the needy.
And governmentese references to 2 pounds of frozen ham and other sizes was to the products' packaging, not the overall amount of food purchased.
In fact, the Agriculture Department purchased some 760,000 pounds of ham with that $1.19 million - a cost of about $1.50 a pound, Vilsack said.


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Many visitors to my site reach through Google search for The Hindu Crossword (THC) solutions. I write about this crossword occasionally - see the sidebar section "The Hindu Crossword" for posts on this, or posts labelled "the hindu". If you're looking for daily commentary on THC, there are a couple of places you could go to:
Orkut community "The Hindu Crossword Solutions": A community of 1000+ members from the world over, with the excellent Chaturvasi and Ganesh as moderators, this forum solves the crossword everyday with members contributing a max. of 4 answers per person. There are special runs sometimes, such as "US solvers only" or "one man's blog". The solving is interspersed with learned insights from experienced solvers, occasional clue-writing threads and general crossword-related chitchat. For beginners and veterans alike, a great place to participate, contribute, question, learn.
Col. Gopinath's Blog: An active member of the above community, Col. Gopinath also writes his own blog about the Hindu Crossword. He publishes the solutions around 8.30am everyday. A specialty of his blog is the links he provides for word meanings. Very helpful if you're building on your GK/vocabulary.
Anokha's Blog: The first place to publish the THC solutions each day. Anokha lives in the US time zone and has the crossword wrapped up before those of us in India have even seen the grid. He (she? I don't yet know, Anokha!) writes in a direct, no-nonsense style, no mincing words here - good clues get lavish praise, bad ones get sharp reprimands.
The Hub: A group solving space on which "hubbers" together work on the puzzle. The more you participate, the higher you move up the "hubber" chain (junior to regular to devoted to veteran). Mrs. PP, the owner, posts clapping smileys when the day's crossword gets completed.
Related Posts:
The Hindu Crossword Solutions/Evaluation
If you wish to keep track of further articles on Crossword Unclued, you can subscribe to it in a reader via RSS Feed. You can also subscribe by email and have articles delivered to your inbox, or follow me on twitter to get notified of new links.


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For immediate release | June 6, 2013
ALA calls for accountability and transparency in nation's surveillance laws
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The American Library Association (ALA) is gravely concerned, but unfortunately not surprised, at this week's revelations that the U.S. government obtained the phone records of all Verizon customers for the last seven years. Leaders of the association again call upon Congress to provide more accountability and transparency about how the government is obtaining and using vast amounts of information about innocent people.
"The library community welcomes a renewed public debate on how to balance the need to fight terrorism and the need to protect personal privacy and civil liberties," said ALA President Maureen Sullivan. "Millions of innocent customers, at least Verizon's, have had their personal phone records released to the government without their knowledge and without allegations of specific facts supporting the relevance of their records to a federal terrorism investigation. We must demand more accountability and transparency in all of these surveillance issues. Our nation's libraries are a tremendous information resource for those who want to better understand the issues and a place to begin debates about these issues," she added.
ALA's response follows media reports that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) has every three months, for seven years, been renewing a Section 215 order to obtain phone records of all Verizon customers. The FISC is a secret court authorized to issue such orders under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA.) In a public hearing on Thursday morning, Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) indicated that the order identified in yesterday's news reports is just a "regular" renewal of an order that started seven years ago.
Under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, the government may obtain "business records and other tangible things," including phone records about who makes the call, who is on the other end of the line and where they are located. Other statutes address wiretapping and the collection of the contents of phone calls and other electronic communications. Companies receiving Section 215 orders are forbidden by law from divulging any information about the subpoenas to their customers.
Section 215 became known as the "library provision" because of the library community's concern that the provision could be used to obtain library users' reading records as well as huge amounts of personal information on anyone and everyone. Protection of readers' privacy, including what people read, how they use the Internet and other communications is part of ALA's long standing principles to protect and foster First Amendment rights and the privacy of library users and others.
Barbara Jones, director of ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom, said, "The lack of transparency is symptomatic of the growing trend in our secret laws and we must correct the flaws. Are these new revelations just the tip of the iceberg? Did other companies receive such subpoenas and what other records has the government been obtaining on such a broad scale? What about library records and those of our users? The public needs to know."
"Our community calls for public dialogue about how to open up FISA and other surveillance laws so that there can be true accountability and an improved balance between individual privacy and the need of government to investigate terrorism and other crimes, said Lynne Bradley, director of ALA's Office of Government Relations. "We need to make changes to our surveillance laws."
About the American Library Association
The American Library Association is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with approximately 58,000 members in academic, public, school, government, and special libraries. The mission of the American Library Association is to provide leadership for the development, promotion and improvement of library and information services and the profession of librarianship in order to enhance learning and ensure access to information for all.
Jazzy Wright
Press Officer
American Library Association
Washington Office
Featured News


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OPEN Kick-off Conference for U.S. Department of Labor Grantees
UncategorizedThe Open Professionals Education Network (OPEN) – led by Creative Commons – is holding a conference tomorrow for grantees of the $500 million U.S. Department of Labor's Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training Grant Program (TAACCCT) program. Grantees will learn how to openly license (under CC BY) all educational materials created under the program so that they may be freely accessed, shared and reused by anyone. CC BY is a requirement of the funding. Grantees will also be shown how to:
- use tools and techniques for improving access to their materials and universal design;
- maximise interoperability, and
- conform to best practice e-learning open standards and specifications.
Grantees will meet other grantees with similar projects for potential collaboration. Collaborating may increase the quality and speed of course development, and free up more time to adapt courses to local needs (for example to major employer needs). Collaboration is also important given many new courses are in emerging industries – such as robotics, mechatronics, health information technology, green construction, green energy and geospatial technologies – where existing materials are not as prevalent and where many projects aim to use innovative teaching tools such as virtual labs.
The conference is fully booked, which indicates strong interest in learning the best ways to enable open education practices.
OPEN includes Creative Commons, Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative, CAST, and the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges. It has been funded by the The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to provide free support to grantees to help them meet grant requirements. For more information on OPEN see http://open4us.org.
The TAACCCT program supports President Obama's goal of having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020 by helping to increase the number of workers who attain degrees, certificates, and other industry-recognized credentials. Openly licensing the materials created under this program may create a multiplier benefit to course content and development nationwide. Benefits may include: accelerated course development and learning, improved pedagogies and retention, and broader access for citizens regardless of their location and wealth. Open licensing optimizes the impact of taxpayer funds spent on the TAACCCT grants.
Posted 29 May 2012


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By Rebeca Oliveira and John Ruch/Gazette Staff
The MBTA has quietly restored some of the Green Line streetcar's runs to Heath Street, which had been eliminated last year as part of controversial budget-related service cuts. But the MBTA's budget crisis hasn't gone away and it may face "unpleasant choices" again this year, according to spokesperson Joe Pesaturo.
Last July, the MBTA stopped running the E branch of the Green Line all the way to the end of the line at the Heath Street stop on S. Huntington Avenue. Instead, the service halted at Brigham Circle at Huntington Avenue and Tremont Street.
Starting in October, the MBTA began experimenting with running some of those weekend trains all the way to Heath Street, without changing the schedule or adding any trains or personnel. The experiment worked and the partial weekend service is now part of the official T schedule.
"Customers seemed to respond favorably to the change, and the decision was made to make it permanent," Pesaturo said in an email to the Gazette.
The Green Line cutback was among the most controversial parts of the service cuts and fare hikes the MBTA announced last year in response to its massive debt and other budget troubles. Hundreds of people protested the decisions at two local community meetings hosted by the MBTA.
Service cuts and fare hikes could be on the table again this year. The MBTA faces a budget gap of approximately $132 million to $140 million—a bit lower than last year's gap.
"If a legislative solution is not identified by the spring, the MBTA will have no choice but to present the [MBTA] board of directors with some unpleasant choices for balancing the [fiscal year 2014] budget," Pesaturo said.
The MBTA has hosted several public meetings about this year's budget situation, but unlike last year, none of them have been held locally.


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What if instead of the Napoleonic Wars pushing 18th century Europe into conflict, it was actually a supernatural threat – a zombie pandemic – that plunged the continent into war? That brain-eating alternate history is the central conceit of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, director Burr Steers' nearly straight-faced adaptation of author Seth Grahame-Smith's novel of the same name. The genre-bending parody transforms Jane Austen's Regency era novel of manners into a zombie-slaying tale of love, classism, and kung fu.
Although the film's title is fairly self-explanatory, it is the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies opening sequence that does the necessary worldbuilding a mashup like this requires. Creative Director Ben Smith and the team at The Mill were tasked with developing a prologue that would ground the utterly insane concept in some semblance of reality, and, at the same time, explain the differences between this zombie-filled history and our own. To encapsulate this turbulent time, the team employed the talents of renowned political cartoonist Martin Rowson to illustrate the sequence in the style of 18th century caricaturist James Gillray. The results are magical; the viewer gets the impression that, if not for the legions of undead eating their way across the pages, this commemorative tunnel book should be in a museum somewhere.
The finished sequence takes the form of a bedtime story being told by Mr. Bennet (Charles Dance) in between the hushed whispers of young Elizabeth and her sisters. Bolstered by beautifully timed animation and Rowson's irreverent illustrations, the prologue plays out not as some fairy tale dreamt up to scare children, but as practical, life-saving advice being passed from one generation to the next – from a well-meaning father to his well-mannered and very well-armed daughters.
A discussion with Executive Creative Director BEN SMITH and Visual Effects Supervisor YONGCHAN KIM of The Mill and Illustrator MARTIN ROWSON.
Could you give us some background on yourselves and your respective roles at The Mill?
Ben: I'm currently one of the executive creative directors here at the New York office. I've directed projects, before that I was a co-director, before that I was Head of CG. I've been at the New York office for about 10 years, I was at London for about four years before that, so I've been at The Mill for quite a long time.
Yong: When I was in university in Korea I was really enthusiastic about motion graphics. But I wanted to go abroad to learn more about 3D and visual effects. I thought I might be limited if I just stuck with motion graphics. I got the opportunity to attend the School of Visual Arts in New York when I graduated college and a year later I met Yann Mabille, who was my thesis advisor and the head of 3D at The Mill. He gave me the chance to work at The Mill as a junior 3D artist after finishing my thesis. That was about five years ago.
Martin, you work primarily as an editorial cartoonist in the UK. Is title design a field you ever thought you'd work in?
Martin: It's not the sort of thing I ever thought I'd be doing, although I'm aware of my fellow cartoonists who've done this kind of thing – Ronald Searle, obviously. It came along out of the blue, which was very exciting.
But I'll tell you what was so wonderful about it: It was engaging work of a completely different kind. It also happened during the election we had over here last year. It was so boring! I thought, I've got to do another fucking cartoon about Ed Miliband talking bullshit or David Cameron talking bullshit or people speculating on what the Scottish nationalists are going to do… Oh no I haven't, I can go and draw some 18th century zombies instead! Brilliant! [laughs]
Let's talk about those zombies. How did you go about making this opening?
Ben: The first meeting was in person at a place called Light Iron, where they were renting some editorial suites. We met the director, Burr Steers, and we got on. He gave us an outline of the film, the main tenets of what it was about, and then what they were looking for.
Originally it was a prologue only, to explain the history up until the moment the film takes place. It's quite an unusual premise, it's a real mashup of cultures – Jane Austen's Regency England with all that intricacy, mixed with the blood-dusted zombie genre and also kung fu!
Together at last!
Ben: [laughs] Yeah, so it needed a bit of explaining. Burr wanted to do that through the prologue. One of the things that stuck with me from the beginning was that he described the film as being inherently humorous but played straight. That really resonated with me.
Was the prologue in the screenplay or was it developed later?
Ben: No, it was completely us. In the second meeting Burr gave us a PDF with a timeline – it was a history of the zombie plague. It went all the way through the 18th century, from 1706 to 1800, which was around when the Jane Austen novel takes place. So 100 years of history in a couple of minutes was the ask.
There was very little input from the director, but he outlined some things that he liked. One thing that really inspired me was his parallel universe idea. He wrote down "the Bubonic Plague = the Zombie Plague" and "the Napoleonic Wars = the Zombie Wars". I am a big fan of sci-fi, alternate realities, and things like that, so I started thinking about it along those lines. OK. If the zombie plague is taking the place of the Bubonic Plague, how can we tweak things synonymous with the Bubonic Plague to have a zombie tilt?
The key was thinking about known moments of history or cultural components of history from that era and then twisting them to be driven by a zombie plague. I thought about was the unification of Great Britain in 1706, where Scotland and England joined – I suggested that the unification was driven by the need to collaborate in fighting the zombie plague. But the thing that I liked that actually made it in was the madness of King George. Instead of it being a genetic disorder that caused his illness, it was actually witnessing some horrific zombie attack that made him mad. That's why he went mad, nothing else.
That sounds like a lot of fun to develop. Yong, at what point did you get involved?
Yong: I actually saw Ben working on the treatment in passing and it caught my attention. There were a bunch of images of old classical and grotesque illustrations that he was using as mood reference for the pitch. I went to the scheduler right away to see if I could help out. We ended up creating about a five-second render test of the tunnel book using those images he found.
So let's talk about that tunnel book concept. What was the origin of that idea?
Ben: Once I had that parallel universe idea developed, I looked at the timeline again and it seemed clear that it needed to be a story, like a nursery rhyme or fable. In one of the opening scenes of the film, you see the father, Mr. Bennet – played by Charles Dance – with his daughters all around in the drawing room, and instead of doing sewing and knitting and the things a proper lady from that time period would be doing, they're cleaning weapons! [laughs]
It was an awesome moment, so along those lines I thought: what if Mr. Bennet is telling a story to his daughters when they're younger? Maybe the story could be told by him almost as a warning to his daughters, voiced by Charles Dance with his lovely, deep, commanding voice…
You can certainly do worse than Charles Dance for a narrator…
Ben: I know! Exactly. Voiceover was not a mandate but it fit really well with his voice and his character. So then I thought it should be a book, maybe a bedtime story. I worked with Burr and another writer to make that, trying to fit in all those parallel universe moments. I wanted to make it more like a paragraph from story prose as opposed to just a list of key dates.
Then I started to look around for the vehicle to bring this to life. Tunnel books were something that I was aware of and liked, and they are actually from that era. They were the first pop-up books and were often used to commemorate historical events. It was perfect. This can be a tunnel book history lesson commemorating the 18th century from start to finish, which just so happens to correlate with the beginning and end of the zombie invasion. We did a test for the pitch where we cut out some images from James Gillray and faked this little diorama. We then presented it to Burr and the team along with other visuals.
Ben: I knew about Gillray already, but Burr had specifically mentioned that he loved him. It just seemed to fit so well. The whole film has a seriousness to it, but it's taking the piss as well. Gillray is the master of satirical piss-taking and doing it in a really subtle way. So we went for this high fidelity, beautiful and textural sequence, with these illustrations that have a sense of humour to them.
Where do you find a modern illustrator who can recreate the style of an 18th century satirical cartoonist?
Ben: [laughs] That was the next challenge. I wrote a brief and gave that to a number of illustrators but nobody really came close, to be honest. I started to get worried and turned to the Internet, as you do. I came across Martin Rowson. Martin has written about Gillray, he can mimic Gillray's style, so I thought he would be perfect.
Martin: I'm a huge fan of Gillray's and Ben had this vision of these images in the style of Gillray. I can do a pretty good Gillray pastiche! I'm a professional satirist. I know how Gillray thought, I know how he would have responded to these things because it's what we all do. It's one of those unquantifiable things – it's like how you can tell a replicant from a human being – it's that added ingredient which he obviously felt he needed.
Ben: It was actually quite difficult to get hold of him though. We tried through the normal channels and we couldn't get ahold of him. We ended up managing to get ahold of him through Twitter. He replied to a tweet that we'd written and we had a phone call from there.
How did the production process for the illustrations work, considering much of the team was in New York and Martin was in London?
Martin: The process actually worked really well, considering the time difference. They would email over very rough ideas – referring sometimes to some of the Gillray originals they were thinking of or that they wanted me to reference. I would then work up a rough illustration, and they would then say can you change this, can you change that.
Yong: Our initial idea was to use Martin's black-and-white illustrations as-is, since they not only tell the story very well but also have great depth as pieces of art. We did a lighting test with those using a saturated candle light, but we decided to colour them when it came out a bit flat.
Ben: We did the colouring here, but Martin did a couple of versions for us that were coloured in the same technique that Gillray would have done.
Martin: I only coloured about three or four of them, just to show the palette I was looking at. Gillray had a specific colour palette. He would engrave them or etch them, and then they would be printed in black and white. The ones that we see nowadays, the most famous Gillray prints from the end of the 18th century, were actually hand-coloured by anonymous women. It was so you could sell them for more money. The print shop that he sold his prints to would send them out to these women, who would go in blind painting these things. But there was a very distinct palette of colours which he used, so I established that palette and then they reproduced it.
Ben: He supplied the rest of the illustrations to us as black-and-white imagery, which we then coloured digitally in that Gillray palette.
Martin, how many illustrations did you produce for the sequence?
Martin: I produced something like 150 or more drawings in different stages. Some of them took no time at all. "You want this person standing there, this person standing over there." I would scan them, email them over, they would say, "Yes, can we have them like that," and it worked extraordinarily well.
Ben: What was amazing about working with Martin was just how fucking fast he could do everything!
Martin: Yeah, most of the stuff I produce, I produce in about three or four hours and it's really quite finished artwork. I kept thinking, hang on, they're paying me by the day. I've got to slow down! [laughs] I hate doing roughs for newspaper cartoons because it's a waste of time, but on this occasion it was different, a different kind of deadline. They were surprised by how quickly I work, but that's because newspaper cartoonists do work really quickly.
Was there a particular Gillray print or engraving that informed your process on this project?
Martin: All political cartoonists in the UK, we all look back to Gillray because he was more or less the father of the profession. He did this famous image called "The Plumb-Pudding in Danger," which was Pitt the Younger and Napoleon Bonaparte carving up the world between them and it's a plum pudding.
Martin: In zoological terms you'd call this the type specimen; it's the thing you'd have in the natural history museum. So that's the type specimen of a political cartoon, where you take recognizable, real human beings, you transform them through caricature into marionettes that are being controlled by the cartoonist, and then you set them up in a narrative of your own choice which is meant to mock them. And this does it perfectly. It perfectly describes the geopolitical struggle between Bonaparte and Pitt the Younger, but we've all stolen it, over and over and over again because it works for anybody. I've done Saddam Hussein and Clinton, I've done Iran and Condoleeza Rice, and on it goes. So it was that one that was always at the back of my mind.
With Martin's illustrations completed, what were the next steps?
Ben: Then we started putting it into the computer and doing that camera move that drifts through. We did a couple of scratch reads based on the script and then through 3D animation we lined up how we would reveal the different elements from Martin through the camera.
Yong: That process was extremely helpful for us to determine the camera work. We created EPS vector files from Martin's illustrations. We then put this rough sketch layer into the 3D tunnel book set and tested the timing with voiceover from Ben's script. We also had a chance to test lens depth of field at this stage, which was useful for figuring out when we had to focus on which layer based on the VO.
Was trying to shoot this practically ever a part of the conversation?
Ben: It was always VFX. I knew that because things would need to change up until the very last minute, we needed to have the flexibility to do that. Wonderful as it would have been to try to shoot it with a periscope lens or something, we would never have been able to get the single camera move – we would have ended up having to cut in places.
Ben: I was really confident from the get-go that we had the skills and the people here, as well as the technology, to be able to put in all the fine details that make it believable. The dust, the crap on the lens, the slightly shaky way the camera moves, the jerky fashion of the cards entering, the scratches in the paper, the little folds – all the little details that make it feel a bit fucked up and a bit old – that was what made it feel real, as well as the magnificent lighting the guys did. Much credit needs to go to Yong for executing it the way he did.
Yeah, the cut-outs look absolutely photoreal! How did you simulate paper and candlelight?
Yong: We really struggled to find the right kind of candlelight. It was difficult to determine exactly what would fit the mood of the film, so we ended up creating about 1000 frames of the sequence that mixed four or five different light sources.
We also put a lot of effort into creating a realistic-looking cut-out layer. The most effective method was to add detail into the 3D models, as we couldn't get what we wanted simply with a flat layer mesh even though we'd added a lot of detail to the textures. We physically distorted each single layer mesh by bending, deforming, folding, or rolling the tip of the edge.
Yong: Our previs actually isn't that far from the final result, and this was because we had a solid rough sketch based on the script that Ben wrote. This also let us focus on the little details at the end of the job more than ever, as opposed to wasting our time on visualizing a director's vague idea.
Ben: I'm over the moon about how it looks. The rendering quality, the dustiness, the level of reality that we managed to get in there. Martin was kind enough to sign a bunch of the illustrations and give them to me, so I've got quite a few of them framed on my wall. My two favourite images are the egg and soldiers one and the Battle of Kent.
Martin: The one I like the best is the Battle of Kent where you have these monstrous, giant zombie figures looming out of the horizon vomiting over London, which is a very 18th century Gillray image. I really liked that one. What I also did – which is something English cartoonists frequently do – is I actually put Ben and the director in various crowd scenes.
Ben: [laughs] Yeah, Martin told me at the premiere at Leicester Square in London a few months ago. I still haven't found myself!
Martin: Also there is a rotting zombie figure in one of the crowd scenes who is actually the British Finance Minister, George Osborne.
Ben: [laughs] Really? I love it.
Always have to keep it political!
Martin: [laughs] Got to keep it political!
How big was the production team on this?
Ben: It was maybe about five people working on it at once. After Martin's work was done it was down to Yong, an animator, and a compositor.
Yong: Damien Bastelica did the colouring on Martin's illustrations. Sam Crees did a nice job on the animation, Emily Meger and Lauren Shields worked on lighting. Dan DiFelice and John McIntosh worked on comping. Chet Hirsch came up with the design of the title card at the end.
Ben: The one thing we did have a lot of was time. I think it was almost eight months or something from winning the pitch to delivering it. That's really rare, but really wonderful to be able to give it the level of polish that we did.
So which tools and software did you use to put this all together?
Ben: Well, we used this great biometric piece of software called Martin Rowson for the drawings… [laughs]
Martin: I work on bristol paper, which is a very nice, smooth paper. You can do a lot of damage to it and it will withstand it. I normally sketch something out in pencil just so I know where it lies on the page. I outline it in Indian ink and send them that. If they were happy with that, then I'd put in the detail.
Yong: We used Photoshop to do the colour, Softimage to create a mesh from the illustrations, Maya for lighting and rendering, and NUKE for all the compositing.
Ben, when we spoke about Marco Polo in 2015, you mentioned Strangers on a Train as one of your favourite title sequences. Has anything caught your eye lately?
Ben: Have you seen Under the Skin? The Jonathan Glazer movie? That opening is amazing. It's one of my favourite film; I absolutely love that movie. Once you go back and watch the title sequence again, it just makes so much sense. It sets you up in a really scary way, but the language of the imagery is just bang-on. It's really clever.
Yong: I'm still a big fan of the title sequence of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. This piece got me thinking about how huge the impact could be when you have a strong concept paired with a strong visual medium. I'm also a fan of Elastic's work nowadays for similar reasons.
What about you, Martin?
Martin: I'm wracking through the rolodex of my memory for an answer… The Charge of the Light Brigade. It's by the great animator who made Roger Rabbit, Richard Williams. It had this sequence in which they took 19th century cartoons and animated them so they would suddenly start moving. I remember watching that film when I was very young and just thinking, look at that, this is absolutely extraordinary!
You mentioned illustrator Ronald Searle earlier. Do you have a particular favourite of his out of the titles he created?
Martin: There was the Gilbert and Sullivan film he made, which of course wasn't just the titles of course… Dick Deadeye? There's something about his line, the way he breaks things up. Somehow he turned from being a really good cartoonist to a truly great cartoonist sometime in the 1950s when he stops worrying about lines crossing over each other. [laughs] He could do something with a line which was breathtaking.
Martin: If you try to recreate it, it's thin and then it's thick and then it goes thin and sort of catches on a bit of the fabric of the paper and it spatters. When Gerald Scarfe or Ralph Steadman or Steve Bell or I do that, those spatters are blood or shit, but when he did them they were champagne bubbles!
Searle seems to have had a huge influence on your work.
Martin: For British cartoonists there are certain giants who we're always looking back over our shoulders and thanking them. I presented a TV show about 11 years ago where I was actually drawing to camera. I realized while I was doing this that actually every line in British cartooning for the last 60 years is impossible without Ronald Searle.
He refused entirely to collaborate with the makers of this BBC programme, which is fair enough since he valued his privacy. But then about six months after it was broadcast I got a letter and I said, "Hang on, I recognize that writing!" And it was from Ronald Searle, which is now framed and hanging on our kitchen wall. "Thank you very much for the laurels you laid on my head," and things like this. Then, six months before he died, he sent me a box of his pens which he'd found in the back of a cupboard he'd bought in Paris in 1962. He said, "I have enough of these to last me out, so I thought you'd like them." And I use them, I mean, I did put them away, but they're brilliant pens. It's like getting a high-five from God!


text: Jesus Franco's campy women's prison film is worthwhile for genre devotees primarily due to an outstanding cast. Mercedes McCambridge is unintentionally hilarious as sadistic lesbian warden Thelma Diaz, spitting tacky dialogue with exuberant venom in a performance so overbearing that it verges on classic. The plot is standard for the genre, as three women (Maria Rohm, Elisa Montes, Luciana Paluzzi) are sentenced to an island prison off the Panamanian coast, only to encounter torture, rape, and lesbianism. When sympathetic Warden Caroll (Maria Schell) replaces Diaz, the prisoners assume that conditions will improve, but their agony only worsens until they decide to escape. Rosalba Neri co-stars, and Herbert Lom runs the corrupt men's prison nearby. 99 Mujeres was heavily censored in various prints, with versions running anywhere between 70 and 108 minutes. Edits running 84, 86, and 94 minutes are most commonly available.


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Noticed this write-in tip from Matthew Hakeman in the most recent issue of The Family Handyman. Googling discovered the title image in a thread over at GarageJournal.com, from user evintho. Looks like he's put a metal strap around the key between the handle and the teeth. The illustration to right is from WoodworkingTips.com, and shows an alternate method for attaching the key ring to the chuck key using a short wooden dowel.
I like this tip a lot, and I happened to have one of those retracting spring-reel key rings lying around, so I tried it on my own small drill press, as shown in the picture below. I was able to use a small split ring to secure the chuck key at the end of the chain. Figuring out how to get the split ring in place without taking the chuck key apart is left as a homework assignment/tavern puzzle.
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Architects: WA Design Inc
- Area: 1400 m²
Text description provided by the architects. Just north of San Francisco is the largely suburban and rural County of Marin. The bay side has been developed with upscale suburbs, but with zoning rules the west side, which borders the Pacific Ocean, has remained an agricultural and rural preserve. The Marin coastline is one of green rolling hills that slope down to the rugged palisades that meet the Pacific.
The small town of Stinson Beach is one of the few Marin coastal towns where the rocky coastline yields to a beach—in this case a beautiful, five-mile-long beach. We searched for years and in 2006 we finally found a south-sloping vacant parcel of land that was ideally suited to the energy-efficient second home we envisioned. The small site was connected to the ocean to the west via filtered views and the sound of the surf. To the east, above the site, was a neighboring home, beyond which the view extended to a skyline ridge of Mount Tamalpais. Addressing and enhancing this ridge view proved a starting point for the home's design.
We were strictly limited by both budget and zoning regulations to a home of 1400 square feet. Space was at a premium. By developing the house plan around a great room, we were able to create an inviting and large environment for all the activities of extended family and friends. The bedrooms were downscaled to fit a bed and little more. The massing that emerged in the design process was an elevated south-sloping roofline with extensive clerestory windows that accessed the views to the ridges above. Corrugated Galvalume metal, paired with cement board siding, created a sturdy and economical exterior shell for the house.
With an eye towards sustainable design we used open-cell foam insulation, concrete floors, natural ventilation, and recycled materials. The ceiling decking was milled from wood salvaged from the old Stanford University gymnasium. The south-sloping roofline provided ideal orientation for an extensive photovoltaic and solar thermal array. The annual energy needs of the home are entirely supplied by the rooftop arrays.


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EXETER, Calif. (AP) — A week of freezing temperatures in early December wiped out nearly a quarter of California's $2 billion citrus industry, an industry group estimated on Monday.
The group, California Citrus Mutual, said the damage was confined to the state's Central Valley, where about $441 million in mandarin and navel oranges and lemons were lost during seven consecutive nights of freezing temperatures in early December.
Consumers are likely to see at least a slight increase in the price of oranges at the grocery store and can expect a shorter season for California citrus, the group said.
"It's a significant loss, but most of that's going to go to the grower's bottom line," said Bob Blakely, director of industry relations for California Citrus Mutual.
Temperatures fell into the low 20s during the freeze, forcing growers to turn to irrigation and wind machines to propel warm air through the fields. The cold temperatures also put other crops such as lettuce and avocado at risk.
The mandarin crop was of particular concern because the tiny fruit is thinner-skinned than other oranges, making it more susceptible to cold.
California Citrus Mutual said about 20 percent of the mandarin crop had already been harvested when the freeze set in, but about 40 percent of the remaining oranges, or $150 million in revenue, was lost. The navel crop suffered a 30 percent loss, with the dollar value of the damage hit $260 million, the group said. About $24 million in lemons also were lost.
The group estimated that citrus growers spent $49 million to protect the crop through early January.
The vast majority of California's citrus crop is consumed as fruit, not juice, so the loss will not affect juice prices, Blakely said.
The industry, additionally, is wary of prices going too high, said Joel Nelsen, president of California Citrus Mutual.
Prices climbed significantly after a 2007 freeze, Nelsen said. The result was more competition from offshore citrus and a switch by consumers to other fruits.
"We don't want to lose shelf space, the consumer focus on California citrus," he said. "We don't want to lose their purchasing habits. We don't have that option to recapture all of what was lost."
Farmers have crop insurance, although it will not likely cover all of their losses, Nelsen said.
One change consumers are likely to see is a shorter season for California oranges. The industry expects to ship them to the marketplace through mid-May, versus the traditional availability into July, Nelsen said
California's drought will not affect this year's crop, but it could be a factor for the following year, he said.