text:
Statutory Information and Policies
This school is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.
Term Time Holiday
Please read the following items from the Head Teacher regarding holidays in term time:
Quick Links to Statutory Information
- School contact details
- Values and ethos
- Admission arrangements
- Ofsted reports
- Exam and assessment results
- Primary Results
- Performance tables
- Curriculum
- Primary Curriculum and Timetables
- Primary - Phonics
- Primary - Reading
- Behaviour Policy
- School complaints procedure
- Charging and remissions policies
- Pupil Premium
- Year 7 literacy and numeracy catch-up premium
- PE and sport premium for primary schools
- Special educational needs (SEN) and disability information
- Governors' information and duties
- Requests for paper copies
- SEN Information Report
- Staff List - Wargrave Site
- Staff List - Charvil Site
Health and Safety Guidance and Procedures
- All Health and Safety information can be found by clicking the button below:
Equality Objectives Summary
- Ensure opportunities are offered to skilled and talented staff whilst implementing strategies to retain the breath of appropriate skills and expertise and the stability to ensure high standards are maintained.
- Ensure all staff are aware of their responsibilities to address and report incidents of homophobia, racism, disability harassment, sexual and gender bullying, and religious harassment.
- Encourage equal participation for all in all aspects of school life by actively promoting opportunities fairly in and out of lessons and through other media to which all students have access.
Please download the Equalities Procedures and Objectives statement for further information.


text:
This product contains a proprietary blend of Plantain, Horsetail Herb, Yarrow, Thuja, St. John's Wort, Yucca, Grain Alcohol, and Spring Water.
Available Sizes:
Standard Size(s): 1oz (amber glass bottle w/ dropper)
Special Order Size(s): 2oz (amber glass bottle w/ dropper); 8oz and 32oz (white plastic bottle w/ flip-top lid)
NOTE: Since most of our resellers do not regularly maintain stock of our Special Order Sizes, you may have to order these directly from us; however, please ask your local reseller first as they may be able to order our Special Order Sizes from us on your behalf.
Usage Directions:
For all pets, use 1 drop per 5 lbs. of body weight per dose. Dose can be doubled initially to build up therapeutic properties or as needed for acute situations. Extract can be mixed in a small amount of warm water or apple juice. Extract can also be mixed into food if needed, but double the dose to increase assimilation. Shake well. DO NOT USE UNDILUTED!
Results may vary according to animal's diet and lifestyle. These products are not to be used in lieu of, but as a support to, proper veterinary care.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Ukraine's plans to withdraw its troops from Crimea, which as we reported were announced Wednesday, have apparently been complicated by the issue of whether they will be allowed to take their weapons and other equipment with them.
NPR's Gregory Warner reports from the Crimean capital of Simferopol that the 25,000 or so Ukrainian troops in the region had not been given orders to leave by their commanders as of midafternoon local time on Thursday. Ukrainian authorities want their troops to bring their weapons, vehicles and other equipment with them. But the Crimean local defense forces and Russian commanders on the ground are reportedly raising objections.
Meanwhile, there's word from The Moscow Times that "a Ukrainian officer, detained after pro-Russian forces stormed a naval base in Crimea, was released Thursday after Russia asked the regional authorities to let him go."
Ukraine, as Bloomberg News reports, "plans to reinforce its eastern border with Russia and withdraw troops from Crimea, ceding control of the Black Sea peninsula as tensions remained high over Russian moves to annex the breakaway region."
Update at 6:30 p.m. ET. Ukrainian Ships Seized
Warner reports that Russia on Thursday seized three Ukrainian warships in Sevastopol, "reportedly using stun grenades in one incident."
Russian forces and pro-Russian Crimean militias also took over military bases, a hospital and a candy store, he says, "all mostly without violence," he says.
"But, as the number of armed groups in Crimea multiply, including paramilitary self-defense forces answerable to no clear authority, Crimeans entered a legal grey zone. [They are] no longer protected by Ukranian law, with limited functioning police or courts," he says.
Update at 9 a.m. ET. Some Movement?
Reuters reports that "Ukrainian border guards in Crimea, which is under the control of Russia's military, have started redeploying to regions on the mainland, a senior official said on Thursday."
"We have started the gradual redeployment of our servicemen to the territory of Kherson and Mikolayiv regions," Pavlo Shysholin, deputy head of the state border guard service, told a news conference. Reuters adds that "Shysholin also said about 1,000 civilians had so far left the peninsula."
As the crisis in Ukraine has developed over recent weeks, we've tracked developments. Here's a recap:
Crimea has been the focus of attention as the ripple effects of the protests that led to last month's ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych have spread.
Summing up the history and importance of Crimea to Russia and Ukraine isn't possible in just a few sentences, of course. The Parallels blog, though, has published several posts that contain considerable context:
-- Crimea: 3 Things To Know About Ukraine's Latest Hot Spot
-- Crimea: A Gift To Ukraine Becomes A Political Flash Point
-- Why Ukraine Is Such A Big Deal For Russia
Shortly after Yanukovych was deposed and fled Ukraine, Russia moved to take control of Crimea by sending thousands of troops there to secure strategic locations. Along with "local defense forces," those soldiers surrounded Ukrainian military facilities.
This week, after Crimeans voted to join the Russian Federation, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a treaty to annex the region. The U.S. and European Union have objected, calling that action a violation of international law. Putin says he is supporting Crimeans' right to "self-determination."
We've recapped what set off months of protest in Kiev and ultimately led to Yanukovych's dismissal by his nation's parliament last month this way:
"The protests were sparked in part by the president's rejection of a pending trade treaty with the European Union and his embrace of more aid from Russia. Protesters were also drawn into the streets to demonstrate against government corruption."
It was after Yanukovych left Kiev and headed for the Russian border that troops moved to take control of strategic locations in Crimea.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


text:
BiRetix Skin Whitening Acne Treatment Gel, 50ml
Highly effective skin whitening acne treatment gel for daily use. Reduces existing comedones and prevents their new creation. BiRetix® Gel is especially suited to improving conditions of acne-prone skin and preventing dryness and discomfort. This intensive gel is an oil-based innovative combination of two cosmetic retinoids (retinoic acid and retinol). It has a number of ingredients with exfoliating, softening, antioxidants, whitening and moisturizers properties. Improves skin texture, skin tone and relieves symptoms of acne-prone skin. The synergy of its components helps protect the skin from the agents that cause acne-prone skin providing an even skin tone.
Vitamin A Acid esters → segregating → whitening
Vitamin A in glycospheres → segregating → whitening
Papain in Glycospheres → peeling
R-NMF (Rebuilt-Natural Moisturizing Factor) → moisturizing → whitening
Vitamin E → antioxidant → whitening
Α-Bisabolol → antibacterial
Aloevera → soothing
Regenerate and get rid of acne for a more youthful, smoother, and brighter complexion by using BiRetix® Skin Whitening Acne Gel.
Bisabolol, glycerol, urea, hydroxypineacolone retinoate, aloe vera extract, papain, retinol, perhydrosqualene, malic acid
- Powerful spot treatment
- Reduces the severity of breakouts
- Soothes and hydrates
- Unique gentle daily cleansing gel type texture will achieve a lighter and smoother consistency that is easily absorbed by the skin
- Helps reduce redness
- For oily or acne-prone skin
- Removes excess oil without drying or tightness
- Treats acne
- Dermatologist-developed to address the problems unique to oily and acne-prone skin
- Skin will start to look light and clear
- Skin Whitening, Anti-Acne, Anti-Aging
- Removes and prevents skin aging
- Moisturizes, UV Protection
- Dissolves clogged pores
- Treats acne and blemishes
- Balances oil production on the skin
- Let your skin be nourished and rejuvenated with potent antioxidant properties
- Look Years younger with great moisturizing ingredients
- Be young, radiant and fair with effective skin-whitening, anti- aging and skin-nourishing ingredients
- Improve your skin problems by controlling your skin allergies & inflammation


text:
It's easy to get started with REPAY (formerly known as SigmaPay). Simply click the Register link and complete the information fields on screen. You will receive a registration email with your user ID and a temporary password.
Once registered, simply log in to the portal.
Around the clock, seven days a week, you can:
• Make a one-time payment or set up automatic payments. • Receive payment confirmations via email or print your receipts online. • View your account history.
If you have questions, click on the FAQ button or call your Customer Service Department
Welcome to REPAY (formerly SigmaPay™)! When you use this site to make payments, you can feel confident that we're taking the necessary security measures to protect your information and your identity.
This site is PCI/DSS compliant, meaning that it adheres to the strict technical guidelines designed to prevent credit card fraud, hacking, and other security threats. Another way we protect your data is through SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certification. The Secure Socket Layer protocol is designed to ensure secure transactions between web servers and browsers. All transactions conducted through this site are secure and protected.


text:
She has created a SUPER cute stamp set that will be given away - for free - with each order that is placed this weekend! How crazy/generous is that!?! Scroll down to check it out!
- My Creative Time: Stitched Capture Frame with Arrow Die™
- My Creative Time: Many Greetings Stamp Set™
- My Creative Time: Curly Label Die™
- My Creative Time: Stitched Curly Label Die™
BIRTHDAY GIVE AWAY ALERT!How would YOU like to be the LUCKY winner of this FABULOUS "Project Life COMPLETE Scrapbook Kit BLUSH EDITION"? Yep, Miss Emma had ordered an extra one to giveaway for this special day! ;) All you have to do is leave a comment at EACH stop in this hop! For additional entries you can spread the word on facebook to all of YOUR friends! Once you do that, go ahead & visit my facebook page HERE & let me know that you did so! This is a FABULOUS prize so "Good Luck!"
***SALE ALERT***Okay, are you all ready for an AMAZING sale as well? For THIS WEEKEND ONLY, please use this code: BDAY42 at checkout to get 20% off of your purchase! You can start shopping HERE! This sale will end on Sunday, May 12th at midnight PST! As a Birthday present from ME to all of YOU, I am giving away this ADORABLE stamp set to orders placed THIS WEEKEND ONLY! There is a $20 minimum order required to receive free stamp set!***All orders from this sale will start shipping out on Monday, May 13th~! My Mom will be having the weekend OFF for Mother's day!;)


text:
Madden NFL 15 Glitch Hilariously Launches Eagles' Lineman 40 Yards
We've never seen an Eagle fly like this NFL Blitz-like launch which happened during Madden NFL 15.
Vine user SCKNOWS has recorded and uploaded this hilarious in-game glitch of Madden NFL 15. Thanks to the Bleacher Report, we have seen this video and its lineman-launching hijinks in action. While the video itself is a bit fuzzy in its quality, it looks like Cedric Thornton of the Philadelphia Eagles' defensive line collides with Jake Long, the left tackle for the St. Louis Rams. Their initial impact is what you'd expect from two 300+lb guys colliding on the field. All of this changes when you can see Thornton getting launched 50 feet into the air and 40 yards down the field after hitting the ground. If only Alex Henery could kick a ball like that, the Eagles could be wearing Super Bowl rings next year.
We have also found another video replicating this glitch during a game between the Chiefs and the Giants (courtesy of YoshiuTV):
If you think watching this video was both weird and hilarious, you should listen to Luke explaining the curse that follows every Madden cover athlete.


text:
Personnel monitor
The University believes it is important that you are happy in your work. This is why we gauge your opinion with the personnel monitor. We use the results to make improvements that enhance job satisfaction.
Results of the 2022 Personnel Monitor announced
In 2022, employees were invited to take part in the Personnel Monitor from 17 October to 11 November. In total, the questionnaire was completed by 58.9% of employees and 33.2% of PhD candidates. A big thank you to all the colleagues who took the time to make their voices heard! Would you like to know the response rate of your faculty/unit? See here for an overview.
What are the most important results?
Employees enjoy their work and their immediate environment
- Employees have good contact with their supervisor, and there is a feeling of mutual trust.
- Employees generally enjoy a high degree of autonomy in their work.
- Employees have workable agreements with their supervisors about working from home, and these agreements are respected.
Employees generally feel safe working at Leiden University
- Employees feel accepted for who they are.
Work pressure remains a topic that requires attention
- Employees are often unable to complete their work to their satisfaction within their contract hours. Important reasons for this are the amount of work, the regulatory pressure, and the lack of clear expectations and deadlines.
- Managers are under pressure; they experience more work pressure than other employees. A lot is required of them, and they need better support and facilitation.
Pride in Leiden University has declined
- Employees feel less engaged with the University. A majority of respondents report having too little opportunity to contribute to discussions relating to the University's vision.
- Employees would like management to communicate more regularly about relevant developments, and to be more open to new ideas.
Better support in dealing with undesirable behaviour
Structural attention for social safety remains crucial. We aim to work together to create a safe work and learning environment. Employees know where they can report unwanted behaviour, but they do not always feel adequately supported in dealing with these incidents.
Would you like to view all results?
The results of the Personnel Monitor can be viewed until 31 March 2023 in the secure online environment of Effectory, the external agency that organises the monitor for us. On Monday 19 December you received an e-mail from Effectory with an access link. If you are a manager, you received an additional link to a separate environment where you can gain insight into the results and actions you can take in response.
How to view the results
- Click on 'View the results' in the Effectory e-mail. This will take you to the 'My Feedback' online environment.
- Create an account using your Leiden University e-mail address. Select a password with at least one uppercase letter, one number, and one special character.
- Log in and view the results. You can compare your answers to those of your team or unit (on condition that enough people completed the questionnaire) and with the University as a whole.
If you need help logging in, or if you would like to know more about how to compare the results of the Monitor, read the manual or watch this short video.
If you cannot log into the online environment, if you have another technical question about the results, or if you did not receive an e-mail from Effectory, don't hesitate to contact the Effectory Helpdesk. They can help you further.
As a manager, you received two separate e-mails from Effectory on Monday 19 December. One of them allows you to log in to the My Feedback secure environment (see above: 'I'm an employee'). The other e-mail contains a link to log into the My Effectory secure environment. Here you will have access to the results and actions you can take.
To log in to My Effectory
- Click on the 'View the results' link in the Effectory e-mail. This e-mail also contains your username.
- If you previously logged in to My Effectory, you can use your chosen password. If this is your first time logging in to My Effectory, you can create a new account. Select a password with at least one uppercase letter, one number, and one special character.
- Log in and view the results. Note: as a manager you have access to the results of both the staff questionnaire and the PhD questionnaire. Via the 'Group' drop-down menu at the top of the page, you can select which results you want to view.
If you would like to know more about how deeply you can delve into the results or how you can create an action plan in My Effectory, read the manual or this short article.
If you cannot log into the online environment, if you have another technical question about the results, or if you did not receive an e-mail from Effectory, do not hesitate to contact the Effectory Helpdesk. They can help you further.
Discussing the results
The survey does not stop at the results. On the contrary, the results are the start of an open conversation with each other about what works well, what requires attention, and where we can improve things. Faculties and units have been asked to devise and initiate concrete action plans to improve work experience where needed. Deans, operational managers, directors and managers discuss the results with each other and their employees.
Webinars for managers
To support managers in talking to their staff about the results of the Monitor, we organised webinars in the week of 9 January 2023. The English webinar took place on Thursday 12 January.
During the webinar, we talked about how you can interpret the results of the Monitor, and how you can work with these results in your team. Vice-chairman of the Executive Board Martijn Ridderbos joined the webinars on behalf of the Executive Board.
Would you like to view the webinar presentation? You can download the slides via the 'Documents' menu at the top right corner of this page.
Read the Executive Board column from Martijn Ridderbos: 'How can we act on the results of the Personnel Monitor?'
To the columnYour anonymity is guaranteed
It is crucial that the answers cannot be traced back to an individual in the results and reports. Anonymity is guaranteed in several ways:
- No group or team reports are generated for units that have fewer than ten members of staff, and at least five members of staff from each unit must have responded.
- Answers to questions concerning social safety are only available as a report if a unit counts at least 75 staff members. We have chosen for these criteria because these answers are particularly sensitive, and the results refer to the percentage of employees who have experienced a given situation.
- We deliberately chose to not include open-ended questions in the Personnel Monitor. In this way, we avoid answers accidentally being traced back to an individual, for example through a description of a specific work situation or experience.
For more information about the design of the Personnel Monitor, see the FAQ.
Important themes
The Personnel Monitor explores important themes. These themes were chosen based on current developments, the 2021 Personnel Monitor Light, and broad consultation. The University Council and Local Consultative Committee were also involved in the discussions.
Besides standard themes such as enthusiasm and engagement, the Monitor focuses on
• Work opportunities, including facilities and conditions
• Wellbeing and workload, including social safety, overtime hours, and the causes of work pressure
• Leadership and autonomy, including cooperation within teams, self-management, and the relationship with the supervisor and management
• Inclusion, including equal treatment and being allowed to be yourself
• Enduring employability, including opportunities for advancement, mobility, and development
PhD candidates were also asked some additional questions that focused specifically on their work experience as a PhD candidate.
Prize for the highest response rate
Our congratulations to Operational Management and Advisory (Administration and Central Services), Communication & Marketing (Faculty of Humanities), Finances (Administration and Central Services) and Digital Services (Leiden University Library), which were the first to achieve the highest response rate this year! As a thank you, they were treated to a half-day of great coffee, tea, and smoothies from a Bar Company mobile barista. This prize was sponsored by Healthy University.
And a special mention for Theoretical Chemistry (Faculty of Science) and Learning & Development (Administration and Central Services).


text:
Huckleberry Hound Weekly from City Magazines Ltd was the first British comic based on Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters. It dedicated its pages to the likes of Mr Jinks, Pixie and Dixie, Yogi Bear And Boo Boo, The Flintstones, Top Cat, Wally Gator, Atom Ant and Space Ghost, amongst others. And, for a time, that included Jonny Quest! Huckleberry Hound Weekly incorporated its companion comic Yogi Bear's Own Weekly on March 4, 1964, (becoming Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear Weekly) and finally stopped publication on August 28, 1967, after 308 issues.
This publication ran a serialized comic strip adventure of Jonny Quest for more than 100 issues in the mid-1960s. Information on the Jonny Quest serialized adventures are listed in the table below.
Scans of almost all serials pages are available, with a new chapter being added each week. More information is available in our Display Policy.
Information for this article and almost all the scans in this section were provided by Martin Sentmanat. Many thanks, Martin!
More than half of the serials are untitled, so we've noted that below but added our own titles in the style of the originals.
Jonny Quest and distinctive likenesses © Hanna-Barbera. All other images, image designs and other image work on this site are © ClassicJQ.com, © Hanna-Barbera or as noted. Text content is © ClassicJQ.com, except where noted otherwise, and may not be shared or re-published without the consent of the author. This is strictly a fan-based site, and is in no way affiliated with or approved by Hanna-Barbera or any other organizations, unless specifically indicated otherwise.


text:
Learn How to Draw whatever You See or Imagine
Continuing the Classical Art Tradition
The Drawing Academy is an online Drawing Course and Art Community, where you can learn how to draw in the comfort of your home, and benefit from the support of Academy tutors and fellow students.
It was founded and is lead by professional fine artists and art teachers.
What You will Get
- 45 'How to Draw' Video Lessons
- Multiple Bonus Videos, Art Albums and Books
- Personal Support by Academy Tutors
- Lifetime Membership
- Diploma of Excellence in your name
- Drawing Academy Art Community
- Questions Answered Directly by your tutors
- Student Gallery
- Artwork Critique by the Academy Tutors
- Art Competitions
- Article Publishing
- Art Newsletters
Free Drawing Academy Newsletter
Get latest Drawing Academy news and updates to your mailbox.
You will also receive a free access to demo videos:
What makes Drawing Academy unique:
There are 7 specific reasons that make the Drawing Academy unique:
1. You'll learn how to draw using time-proven techniques;
2. You'll be taught by professional fine artists and teachers;
3. You'll learn how to draw whatever you see or imagine;
4. You'll progress from basic to advanced levels;
5. You'll discover human anatomy;
6. You'll get a lifetime of unlimited, personal support by tutors;
7. You'll get great value for your money.
[VIDEO] Why study with us? »
What you will learn:
In the Drawing Academy, you will learn how to draw, progressing from basic to more advanced topics:
- You'll start with information on drawing materials and how to use them;
- How to draw with pencil the correct way;
- How to render tonal values using various pencil hatching methods;
- You'll learn principles of constructive realistic drawing;
- You'll discover golden proportions and how to use them in your compositions;
- You'll learn how to use perspective in drawing;
- Classical ways of drawing realistic portraits from life, memory and imagination;
- Traditional ways of drawing human figures;
- You'll learn the human anatomy for artists and its application in figurative drawing;
- How to draw still-life, animals, botanical objects, etc.;
- And trade secrets of unique, creative techniques that are not taught anywhere else.
The Drawing Academy Curriculum:
Month 1
- Drawing materials
- Rendering tonal values
- Drawing in perspective
- Constructive drawing principles
- Drawing facial features
- Constructive drawing of a human head
- Classical head drawing
- Anatomy of a human head
- Sketching the Old Masters
See all Month 1 video lessons »
Month 2
- Skeletal anatomy for fine artists
- Traditional ways of portrait drawing
- Drawing a human body
- Drawing hands
- Constructive drawing of architecture
- Golden proportion principles
- Drawing in pen and ink
- Drawing in silverpoint
- Botanical drawing
See all Month 2 video lessons »
Month 3
- Muscle anatomy for fine artists
- Proportions of a human body
- Life model drawing
- Drawing in charcoal
- Drawing in silverpoint and pen and ink
- Unique drawing techniques
- Drawing animals
- Drawing cityscapes
- Calligraphy drawing
See all Month 3 video lessons »
The Course Tutors
The Drawing Academy is founded by professional fine artists and art teachers – Vladimir London and Natalie Richy. Combined, they spent over 20 years studying art and have more than 47 years of professional experience in art. Now you can benefit from their extensive knowledge and creative experience. Vladimir is an internationally published author of many fine art books. Natalie Richy is also the founder of the Web Art Academy – an online course on traditional oil painting techniques.
Our Vision, Purpose and Mission
We have the Vision that fine art portrays the beauty and meaning in life. And we created the Drawing Academy with the Purpose to promote realistic fine art and continue the Old Masters' traditions.
Our Mission is to give you proper and professional art education, teach you traditional art skills and methods, and help you develop your individual art style based on the values and legacy of classical fine art.
Is this Course for You?
The Drawing Academy is designed in such a way that whatever level you're at, you will learn something new to improve your drawing skills.
The course is very friendly for beginners, yet sophisticated enough for advanced students in developing their art skills. You will gradually progress from basic topics to comprehensive lessons.
Personal Support by Academy Tutors
Whether you have art related questions, need assistance with your creative progress, or just simply want an opinion on an artwork you've done, Drawing Academy tutors are ready to help. You can send your questions and drawings for critique at any time.
This personal support is unlimited, going beyond the course duration.
Drawing Academy Course Assignments
If you learn best by strictly following coursework, we have assignments for every topic in the course. If you have your own subject matter and themes to draw from, we support you in this as well. The course is totally flexible in this respect. Our mission is to give you necessary knowledge and know-how, so you can use them to improve your drawing skills.
Assignments are there if you need them in addition to unlimited personal support by the Academy tutors.
Drawing Academy Diploma of Excellence
This Diploma commemorates your completion of the course. However, it is not a token give-away.
We want to make sure you benefit from the course and want to see your creative progress. We'll be asking to see examples of your drawings created before and after the course.
What Happens After Three Months?
In three months you will learn a great deal about traditional drawing techniques. We will support you all the way. Our personal support is unlimited and will continue beyond the three-month period.
From time to time we add new videos and books to the Drawing Academy course. You will receive all future updates free of charge even after the course completion. Yes, that's right – at no extra cost for a lifetime.
Drawing Academy Video Lessons are Compatible with all Devices
How You Will Benefit From Our Art Community
Art Competitions
You could win a complete course at the Drawing Academy!
Do you have works of art that you want to share and friends who support you? Simply enter your artwork into the Art Competition and ask your friends to comment on it, "Like" it on Facebook, Tweet about it, or Pin it on Pinterest! Every three months we award the most popular competition participant with the Drawing Academy's Complete Course!
Publish Art Articles
You can write your way into the Drawing Academy!
Do you have a story to tell? Write articles about fine art and become a student at the Drawing Academy for free! Every 5 articles you publish will give you access to 15 'How to Draw' video lessons. It only takes 5, 10, or 15 articles to get 1, 2, or 3 months of video lessons, respectively. You can also use this deal to upgrade your membership free of charge.
Ask Tutors Questions
Do you have questions that could benefit everyone?
Academy tutors are ready to help you with any art-related questions you may have. This service is free and available to everyone. Your questions, together with the tutors' answers, may be published and commented on by Academy students and visitors. Gain the knowledge you need from professional artists and the Drawing Academy community!
Drawing Academy Students' Club
Student Gallery
Showcase your creative development.
Students can exhibit their artwork and the progress they have made in the Drawing Academy Gallery. You can show your drawings from before, during and after taking the Drawing Academy course. You can benefit from additional online exposure and gain valuable feedback from other Drawing Academy students and visitors.
Critique my Artworks
Benefit from professional feedback.
Do you want a professional opinion of your drawings? You can receive personal comments and support from Drawing Academy tutors, advice on how to improve your art and develop your drawing skills, and additional feedback from other students and visitors. You are not alone—the art community is here to help!
Share Your Feedback
What do you think about the Drawing Academy?
We want to know your honest opinion of the Drawing Academy's courses, tutors, and art community. As a student at the Drawing Academy, you can publish your unfiltered feedback on how the course works for you. Share your opinion with us, fellow students, and any who are thinking of enrolling in the Drawing Academy.
Here's what Drawing Academy students say:
Great Value for Money
The Drawing Academy will save you time and money.
The value of the course is $4,455 (45 lessons at $99 each). However, you can get it for an incredible low fee of only $257 for the complete course. This is equivalent to the cost of one cup of coffee per day!
Compare this to an average art college tuition, which can be up to $100,000 for 4 years, and comes with no guarantee that you'll graduate with good drawing skills.
In the Drawing Academy, you will get by far the best value for your money!
How to enroll
You are just one click away from starting your art education.
You can choose:
1. Instant access to all video lessons for a one-time discounted payment of only $257;
2. Or enroll on a monthly basis, making three installments of $97 per month.
You can pay by credit or debit card or via PayPal. After payment, you will automatically be redirected to the account set-up page.
- Receive 15 new videos monthly (45 in total)
- Incredible discount – $4,164
- Bonuses - Fine Art eBooks and Videos
- Drawing Academy Diploma of Excellence after course completion in 3 months
- Personal coaching by Drawing Academy Tutors
- Lifetime membership. Free after the 3rd month
- Immediate access to all 45 video lessons
- Incredible discount – $4,198
- Bonuses - Fine Art eBooks and Videos
- Drawing Academy Diploma of Excellence after course completion in 3 months
- Personal coaching by Drawing Academy Tutors
- Lifetime membership. No more payments
To your creative success,
Vladimir London and Natalie Richy
Drawing Academy founders
Is your creative success more valuable than a cup of coffee? If so, act now and secure your lifetime membership in the Drawing Academy Club!
Save this page in print-friendly format – About Drawing Academy Course »
(Right-click the link above and choose "Save link as.." or "Download linked file")
I love Drawing Academy!
Trusted by fine artists all over the World


text:
Integrating Law, Politics, and Spirituality
From the website for The Project for Integrating Spirituality, Law, and Politics (PISLAP):
[PISLAP] is a nationwide network of lawyers, law professors, law students, and others interested in the progressive transformation of law. Our aim is twofold. We seek to develop and articulate a new vision of law's relationship to social transformation. This involves an emphasis on the need to overcome the alienation that separates self and other and seeks to connect the inner and the outer aspects of our social existence. We also seek to bring together leaders and activists in such spiritual/political/humanistic legal movements as Restorative Justice, Understanding-based Mediation, Collaborative Law, and Humanizing Legal Education under a common theoretical and practical vision that can unify their respective efforts.
Our mission can be summarized in a single sentence: We seek to transform legal culture, within the United States and internationally, so that law can become a vehicle for creating a loving and caring world.
The unique quality of PISLAP in this movement is their integration of political and spiritual change with the law. More information is available at http://www.spiritlawpolitics.org/.
One of the purposes is to develop a way of understanding law that goes beyond the framework that we've inherited.
Peter Gabel


text:
After taping John Stossel's show on May 16 in New York, the Mrs. and I took the 10 a.m. Acela back to Washington. Once we had boarded the train, who should come waddling up the aisle but Bill Kristol.
The Weekly Standard editor seemed cheerful, and we chatted about the surge in Mitt Romney's popularity and prospects.
I did not ask what he had been doing in New York, but thanks to the website Mondoweiss, I found out. Kristol was there for a May 15 "debate" with Jeremy Ben-Ami of J Street, the pro-Israel organization, at B'nai Jeshurun synagogue on the Upper West Side.
After listening to Kristol, writes Phil Weiss, "I am still reeling."
"Kristol was treated like royalty and came off as … a Republican Party warlord," bragging "about how all the hostile elements to Israel inside the Republican Party were purged over the last 30 years—(and) no one (now) dared to question the power of the Israeli lobby."
"The big story in the Republican Party over the last 30 years, and I'm very happy about this," said Kristol, is the "eclipsing" of the George H.W. Bush-James Baker-Brent Scowcroft realists, "an Arabist old-fashioned Republican Party … very concerned about relations with Arab states that were not friendly with Israel … ."
That Bush crowd is yesterday, said Kristol. And not only had the "Arabists" like President Bush been shoved aside by the neocons, the "Pat Buchanan/Ron Paul type" of Republican has been purged.
"At B'nai Jeshurun," writes Weiss, "Kristol admitted to playing a role in expelling members of the Republican Party he does not agree with." These are Republicans you had to "repudiate," said Kristol, people "of whom I disapprove so much that I won't appear with them."
"I've encouraged that they be expelled or not welcomed into the Republican Party. I'd be happy if Ron Paul left. I was very happy when Pat Buchanan was allowed—really encouraged … by George Bush … to go off and run as a third-party candidate."
Kristol's point: Refuse to toe the neocon line on Israel, and you have no future in the Republican Party.
Ben Ami seemed equally exultant: "We've won the war; we won the war," he told the audience. Ninety-nine percent of Congress now votes almost 100 percent pro-Israel.
But Ben Ami appeared nervous about how this unanimity in the Congress behind Israel had been achieved:
"I very seriously and absolutely do believe that a significant percentage of American members of the House of Representatives and the Senate are intimidated on this issue (of Israel). … They worry about the ramifications of speaking out. … They are worried about the attacks that they will receive."
Ben Ami said the 50 members who have criticized Israel are courageous, but, "Another 200 are scared to do it." Haaretz.com reports Ben Ami as saying congressmen "live in fear" of the Israeli lobby.
Kristol laughed at this and dared Ben Ami to name them.
When Ben Ami brought up the destruction of Palestinian rights on the West Bank and said Hillary Clinton repeatedly raises this issue with Israel, writes Weiss, "Kristol sniggered."
It's a "myth," said Kristol, that Arabs care about Palestinians. The Israeli occupation on the West Bank can last for 45 or 60 years more. Bill Kristol on Palestinian rights sounds like Bull Connor talking about Negro rights in Birmingham in 1965.
Another source says Kristol predicted that Sen. Joe Lieberman, whose voting record is closer to Socialist Bernie Sanders' than to conservative Jim DeMint's, will be secretary of state in the Romney administration.
A former head of the Israel lobby AIPAC describes Lieberman as "the No. 1 pro-Israel advocate and leader in the Congress."
Joe led the cheers for our last three Middle East wars—and has pushed for two more, against Syria and Iran.
About Kristol's comments, a point of personal privilege.
George W. Bush never "encouraged" me to go third party. At the Iowa straw poll in 1999, he asked me to stay in the party, and party chair Jim Nicholson came to my home to make the same request.
At the synagogue, Kristol was never asked about his role in the Iraq War that he and his collaborators pressured Bush to wage as "Israel's fight against terrorism is our fight."
Some 4,500 Americans died in that war, 35,000 were wounded, and 100,000 Iraqis perished, leaving half a million widows and orphans.
Result: U.S. influence in the Middle East is at a nadir. Al-Qaida has spread into Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Syria and North Africa.
Now the neocons are worming their way into the Romney camp, dropping us hints on whether John Bolton or Joe Lieberman will be the next secretary of state.
Has Gov. Romney imbibed the Kristol Kool-Aid that caused the war and cost the party Congress in 2006 and the presidency in 2008?
Hard to believe, but we should find out before November.


text:
We Adhere to the Science of Best Practice
Olin is strongly committed to excellence in protecting the environment, health, safety and security of our employees and those that live and work around our plants. Olin operations worldwide comply with all local requirements and implement other standards as required to protect the environment, health, safety and security of our operations. This includes our membership in REACH in the EU and Responsible Care around the globe.


text:
WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama's chief campaign strategist is dismissive of the Republicans who want his boss' job, saying they are eager to criticize the Democratic incumbent without offering substantive ways to help the country.
David Axelrod says it's too early to start sizing up the competition, but he took on the emerging field of candidates when asked to assess the GOP' first major debate of the campaign season last Monday in New Hampshire. Republicans at that forum condemned Obama's handling of the economy and pledged to repeal his health care overhaul.
"There seemed to be a unanimity of antipathy toward the president," said Axelrod, who left the White House this year to return to Chicago to work on the re-election campaign. "I didn't hear a lot of ideas," but rather "a lot of pat partisan platitudes," he told CNN's "State of the Union."
Axelrod seemed intent on going after former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the perceived frontrunner, and citing the support that former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, a Republican who was Obama's ambassador to China, had given the president.
Romney, who sought his party's presidential nomination in 2008, already faces questions from his rivals about his record of changing positions on social issues including abortion and gay rights, shifts that have left conservatives questioning his sincerity. In addition, Romney championed a health care law enacted in Massachusetts that's similar to Obama's national health overhaul, which conservatives loathe.
"It's not unusual in politics for people who are ambitious to change their points of views on fundamental things to try and win an election," Axelrod said in the broadcast interview. "But that's not what people want in the president of the United States."
By contrast, he said, Obama is "one of the most consistent people that I've ever met."
Huntsman's moderate stances on some issues and his service in the Obama administration could hurt him with the Republican Party's right-leaning base.
Axelrod said that when he was in China in the fall of 2009, he had a chance to talk with Huntsman. "He was very effusive about what the president was doing. He was encouraging on health care. He was encouraging on the whole range of issues. He was a little quizzical about what was going on in his own party. And you got the strong sense that he was going to wait until 2016 for the storm to blow over."
Axelrod said that "obviously circumstances change. So I was surprised when he emerged as a candidate. But certainly I take him seriously."
Assessing the GOP debate, Axelrod said Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, "who was relatively unknown, probably did herself some good there."
He noted that some politicians who weren't yet candidates may join the race. "That will add to the fun," he said.


text:
Would the government let Jesus cure cancer?
By Jon Rappoport
In the 1990s, I watched a federal trial in a Los Angeles courtroom. The defendant was charged with selling medical drugs without a license to practice medicine.
The defendant was prepared to argue that a) the substance he was selling was naturally produced in the body and b) it was effective.
The prosecution moved to exclude such testimony, on the grounds that it was irrelevant.
The judge agreed. Therefore, the trial was nasty, brutish, and short. The defendant was found guilty and sentenced to prison for several years.
This is how the federal bureaucracy operates. "Do you have a government-issued license to heal? No? You're a criminal. End of story."
I believe that if Jesus of Nazareth were walking the Earth today, in the United States, he would be arrested on the same grounds.
This would be particularly so if he were curing cancer.
Imagine this extreme case: In a stadium packed with 50,000 people who have been diagnosed with cancer, Jesus of Nazareth waves his hand and cures all of them in a few seconds.
Now he is threatening the profits of many companies, to say nothing of the power of the government, which backs the chemo-radiation-surgery monopoly to the hilt.
So he is arrested. He is put on trial. He opts to defend himself without an attorney. He tells the court that curing cancer is no crime.
The prosecuting attorney objects. "Your Honor," he says, "whether or not this man has cured cancer is beside the point. He has no license to practice medicine. That is why we are here today. We are simply establishing that a) he was practicing medicine and b) he has no government-issued license. That is the scope of this proceeding."
The judge agrees. The verdict is issued. Guilty.
Of course, on another front, the major media, who depend for their existence on pharmaceutical advertising, take the ball and run with it. The networks and major newspapers seek out "experts," who emphatically state that what Jesus of Nazareth "performed" in the stadium was mere hypnotism. It was placebo effect. Whatever sudden "remissions" may have occurred are just temporary. Tragically, the cancers will return.
Not only that, these 50,000 people have effectively been sidetracked and diverted from seeking "real care from real doctors." With chemo, with radiation, with surgery, they would have stood a chance of surviving and living long normal lives.
Other media pundits send up this flag: "Many of those present in the stadium were clinging bitterly to their religion. They refuse to accept science. They are living in the past. They favor superstition over real medical care. In fact, they are threatening the whole basis of healthcare, since other confused and deluded Americans may now turn away from doctors and seek snake-oil salesmen and preachers for healing."
From the highest perches of political power in this country, the word quietly goes out to the media: don't follow up on those people who were in the stadium; don't try to track them; don't compile statistics on their survival rates; move on to other stories (distractions); let this whole madness die down.
But among the citizenry, an awareness spreads: the government is controlling healing through its issuance of licenses. That's how the government is essentially protecting one form of "healing" and enabling it to become an all-encompassing cartel.
What would be the alternative to licenses?
Contracts are agreements entered into by consenting adults, who assume responsibility for the outcomes. In the case of healing, a contract would specify that people have a right to be wrong.
Let's say two consenting adults, Jim and Frank, agree to allow Frank to treat Jim for his arthritis with water from a well on Frank's land.
The two men acknowledge that no liability will be attached to the outcome. In other words, whether Jim gets better or gets worse, no one is going file a suit. No one is going to go to the government for redress of wrongs.
The well water may be wonderful or it may be completely useless. Both men understand and acknowledge that. But they assert a right to try the treatment, because they are free.
Immediately people say, "This is ridiculous. Water can't cure arthritis. Frank is cheating Jim. Jim is a victim. He needs to see a doctor. He needs to go on arthritis drugs."
No, Jim doesn't have to do anything. He is free.
To put it another way, Jim has the right to be right or wrong. It's his decision, which is beyond the scope of any authority.
If government tries to remove that right from all of us, it is essentially saying it knows what is correct, it knows what is true, it knows what we need and require, and it's going to give it to us even if it has to shove it down our throats. Does that sound like freedom to you?
If Jesus of Nazareth lived in the United States today, and if he went around curing cancer, he would be arrested. He wouldn't be charged with blasphemy or treason. He would be charged with something much simpler and more mundane: practicing medicine without a license.
And he would be convicted and sentenced.
Because the government, in its throne of corruption, in its partnership with corporations, wants to monopolize proprietary and illegal interests.
TLB recommends other informative articles from Jon Rappoport.
Jon Rappoport is the author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.
The Liberty Beacon Project is now expanding at a near exponential rate, and for this we are grateful and excited! But we must also be practical. For 7 years we have not asked for any donations, and have built this project with our own funds as we grew. We are now experiencing ever increasing growing pains due to the large number of websites and projects we represent. So we have just installed donation buttons on our main websites and ask that you consider this when you visit them. Nothing is too small. We thank you for all your support and your considerations … TLB


text:
What does science have to say about the origins of love in the scheme of things? Not a lot. In fact, it is still virtually a taboo subject, just as consciousness was until very recently. However, since feelings are a major component of consciousness, it seems likely that the ontology of love is now likely to emerge as a significant question in science.
Within Christian culture, as in many other religious traditions, love has its origin as a primal quality of God and so is co-eternal with Him. His creation is an outpouring of this love in shared relationship with beings that participate in the essential creativity of the cosmos. As in the world of Shakespeare and the Renaissance Magi, it is love that makes the world go round and animates all relationships.
This magical view of the world did not satisfy the emerging perspective of Galilean science, which saw relationships in nature as law-like, obeying self-consistent logical principles of order. God may well have created the world, but he did so according to intelligible principles. It is the job of the scientist to identify these and describe them in mathematical form. And so with Newton, love turned into gravity. The rotation of the earth around the sun, and the moon around the earth, was a result of the inverse square law of gravitational attraction. It was not a manifestation of love as an attractive principle between animated beings, however much humanity remained attached to romantic feelings about the full moon. Love was henceforth banished from scientific discourse and the mechanical world-view took over.
Now science itself is changing and mechanical principles are being replaced by more subtle notions of interaction and relationships. Quantum mechanics was the first harbinger of a new holistic world of non-local connectedness in which causality operates in a much more intricate way than conventional mechanism. We now have complexity theory as well, which seeks to understand how emergent properties arise in complex systems such as developing organisms, colonies of social insects, and human brains. Often these properties are not reducible to the behavior of their component parts and their interactions, though there is always consistency between levels: that is, there are no contradictions between the properties of the parts of a complex system and the order that emerges from them. Consciousness appears to be one of these emergent properties. With this recognition, science enters a new realm.
Consciousness involves feelings, or more generally what are called qualia, the experience of qualities such as pain, pleasure, beauty, and ŠŠ. love. This presents us with a major challenge. The scientific principle of consistency between levels in systems requires that feelings emerge from some property of the component parts (e.g., neurones) that is consistent with feeling, experience. But if matter is 'dead', without any feeling, and neurones are just made of this dead matter, even though organized in a complex way, then where do feelings come from ? This is the crunch question which presents us with a hard choice. We can either say that feelings are epiphenomena, illusions that evolution has invented because they are useful for survival. Or we can change our view of matter and ascribe to the basic stuff of reality some elementary component of feeling, sentience, however rudimentary. Of course, we could also take the view that nature is not self-consistent and that miracles are possible; that something can come from nothing, such as feeling from dead, insentient matter, thus returning to the magical world-view of the early renaissance. But if we are to remain scientific, then the choice is between the other two alternatives.
The notion that evolution has invented feelings because they are useful for survival is not a scientific explanation, because it gives no account of how feelings are possible as properties that emerge in the complex systems we call organisms (i.e., consistent emergent properties of life). So we are left with the other hard choice: matter must have some rudimentary property of sentience. This is the conclusion that the mathematician/philosopher A.N. Whitehead came to in his classic, Process and Reality, and it is being proposed as a solution to the Cartesian separation of mind and matter by some contemporary philosophers and scientists. It involves a radical reappraisal of what we call 'reality'. But it does suggest a world in which love exists as something real, in accord with most peoples' experience. And goodness knows, we could do with a little more of it in our fragmented world.
BRIAN GOODWIN is a professor of biology at the Schumacher College, Milton Keynes, and the author of Temporal Organization in Cells and Analytical Physiology, How The Leopard Changed Its Spots: The Evolution of Complexity, and (with Gerry Webster) Form and Transformation: Generative and Relational Principles in Biology. Dr. Goodwin is a member of the Board of Directors of the Sante Fe Institute.


text:
Amy Miraflor felt inadequate as a budget-conscious stay at home mom …
But when she decided to quit her job as a fourth-grade teacher to become a homemaker, money became extremely tight. Then she noticed other mothers easily sewing all kinds of garments for their families to save money.
The problem?
It seemed like everyone could sew but Miraflor.
So Miraflor borrowed her mother's sewing machine and she taught herself how to thread and operate a sewing machine with help from her mother-in-law, a professional seamstress.
Miraflor, who also maintained a family blog at the time, showed off some pictures of the hoodies she had sewn for her family's vacation to Disney World.
Immediately, people began asking if they could purchase the hoodies.
I put a PayPal link on my blog and sold fifteen hoodies in a half hour," Miraflor recalls. "That's the day my business was born.
But the business needed a name…
"Is that Evy's tree, mama?" asked Jacob when he noticed his mother sewing a hoodie with an owl face on the chest. Evy is short for Evelyn, the Miraflors' second child, and the hoodie reminded Jacob of Evy's bedroom wall which was painted with an owl sitting on a tree branch.
But as Evy's Tree began selling high-end hoodies to women around the world out of Miraflor's garage, the company ran into a major problem …
Since Miraflor was still a beginning seamstress, she couldn't sew fast enough to keep up with demand.
Hoodies That Come With Names
Turns out, pre-schools are great places to find top-notch employees.
Or, at least, that's where Miraflor initially met several of the women who would later become employees at Evy's Tree; their children happened to attend the same school.
"Amy is amazing," says Samantha Donohue, the IT expert at Evy's Tree and one of the employees who met Miraflor at the pre-school. "These aren't just ordinary hoodies. They're made to help women feel special and beautiful."
Each is named after a woman. And each comes with a story about that woman and why she's so inspiring.
"Each of our hoodies has a meaning and a purpose," Miraflor says. "We want women to feel like a million dollars when they put on one of our hoodies and know they belong to a community of women all over the world."
But building that community required a big leap.
Evy's Tree, which until a few years ago operated out of Miraflor's garage, had to begin mass producing its hoodies to meet demand. She spent almost two years searching for factories that would produce quality hoodies that felt like luxury.
Finally, in the fall of 2013, she received her first mass-produced line. Today, the company produces what it calls luxury pieces sourced from high-end fabrics from around the world.
While the brand story has been key in attracting an extremely loyal customer base, the company's unique product launch strategy is also a key differentiator.
"No one is searching Google for luxury hoodies," Donohue says with a laugh. "It's why we tell a story with each hoodie while simultaneously building suspense for its launch."
Instead of simply offering new products for sale on its site, Evy's tree works in advance to build anticipation and prime customers; think of a two-week marketing blitz that invites customers to pre-order and capped off by the equivalent of a flash sale.
Here's the launch formula and how it works:
First, a new hoodie inspired by a real woman is named, created, and topped with a story about why that woman is an inspiration.
Second, Evy's Tree doesn't immediately offer the hoodie for sale. Instead, it launches a sneak peek three days prior to the release. It slowly introduces the hoodie and tells the story behind the hoodie via its Facebook and Instagram channels.
Third, on launch day, Evy's Tree sends out an email to its VIP email list letting everyone know the item is finally for sale and includes a link to a dedicated product landing page. Preorders are taken, with a delivery date somewhere between 2-4 weeks.
"We build a lot of suspense prior to offering each product for sale," Donohue says. "Since the hoodies are special we want to offer a luxury experience as well."
Evy's Tree launches 5-6 products like this per month.
It's akin to a brick-and-mortar Black Friday event in which customers who have been waiting impatiently outside overnight are finally allowed to burst through the doors and purchase what they've been longing for.
But with the intense surge in demand comes a silent threat …
The company's site needs to be just as special as its hoodies to handle the spikes in traffic.
Scripts + Rewards = Radical Retention
Evy's Tree is undoubtedly a hit with women around the world …
The company has doubled and tripled year-over-year sales thanks, in part, to the suspense it builds prior to product launches. Having a reliable site that can handle the traffic spikes that come with each launch is crucial.
"When a product goes live hundreds of customers immediately begin ordering at the same time," Donohue says. "If our site crashes that'd be really bad because we're committed to offering a luxury experience with the minimal number of clicks necessary to check out."
It's why Evy's Tree upgraded to Shopify Plus, an enterprise ecommerce platform for high volume merchants who require a platform that can scale on demand.
Shopify Plus has been a great move for us," Donohue says. "Reliability is super important to us and we know we can count on Shopify when we launch a product.
Besides a customized checkout that Evy's Tree says allows it to retain its branding throughout the customer journey, the company credits Shopify Scripts with helping the company offer promotions that have yielded increased average order values.
"We use scripts to offer a variety of discounts and to repackage our pricing and merchandise," Donohue says. "Being able to offer different discounts allows us to pinpoint emotional triggers that lead to more sales."
Separately, Evy's Tree says Scripts, which are implemented by the developers over at Disco Labs, also significantly improves the customer experience as well. Instead of offering discount codes that can be difficult for mobile customers to enter, Evy's Tree uses Scripts to automatically calculate and apply discounts at the checkout.
"It's a win for us and the customer," Donohue says.
Remember, Evy's Tree is focused on reducing the number of clicks it takes to checkout. Evy's Tree uses Scripts to automatically calculate discounts in real time instead of asking customers to enter a discount code.
This removes two clicks- and potentially a lot of frustration for the 75% of Evy's Tree customers accessing the site on a mobile phone- from the checkout process.
Just as important, according to Evy's Tree, is that Scripts can be used in tandem with Smile.io, which powers Evy's loyalty program. Specifically, Smile.io helps merchants earn loyalty via the Shopify Plus platform by offering program participants flexible choices when it comes to redeeming their points including:
- Customers may redeem points for an additional product discount
- Customers may redeem points for free shipping
"Shipping is a high priority for many customers but can be really expensive for merchants," says Alex McEachern, a Loyalty Marketing Specialist at Smile.io. "Rewards diversity is huge. Not only does allowing customers to choose how they'd like to redeem their points communicate that the merchant respects and values the customer, but it also positions brands to better compete with Amazon Prime."
The results of integrating rewards and discounts at the checkout?
- Evy Tree's retention rate, or the number of customers making more than one purchase, is over 50%
- Many merchants see repeat customer rates around 15%, according to Smile.io
"Smile.io has played a huge role in our customer retention efforts," Donohue says. "Our products are not cheap and rewards offer the incentives necessary to convince customers to purchase our hoodies more often."
The results Smile.io has helped Evy's Tree achieve are impressive:
- $1,032 savings in monthly ad-spend
- 58% lift in repeat customer rate
- 65% redemption rate
- 83X overall ROI
But there's another part of this story that's even sweeter … honey.
The Mommy-and-Me Market
Customers are worried about Evy's Tree.
If the company continues to double and triple in size some customers have wondered aloud whether Evy's tree will still be able to provide the same level of customer service.
Rest assured though, the company's size may change, but its commitment to improving the customer experience won't.
Customer satisfaction will always be at the top of our list," Donohue says. "We will always strive to offer a luxury experience.
In fact, it's a priority that will guide all Evy's Tree does going forward. Though Donohue was sparse in terms of dropping hints about the future, she did tell us Evy's Tree will soon expand into new areas and may even consider alternative sales options such as subscriptions or exclusive clubs for customers willing to pay an annual membership fee.
Recently, the company introduced a girl's line of hoodies under the name Honey by Evy's Trees. It's a different storefront but powered by the same back end as the parent company. "We want to capture the mommy and me market with Honey," Donohue says.
The new line's name may not have been inspired by a newborn. But it's just as sweet.
Read more
- Ecommerce Migration Case Study: Leading UK Retailer Migrates 11.1M+ Data Points in 16 Weeks
- How Velour Lashes Automates Holiday Ecommerce Sales & Won Beyoncé's Loyalty
- The Multi-Channel Menace: Young & Reckless, YouTube, & Mastering Customer Engagement
- How DailySteals.com Used Shopify Plus to Resurrect Itself from the Dead & Generate Millions in Sales
- How Nanoleaf Expands Internationally & Allows Charitable Donations at Checkout
- After Its Black Friday Sales Surge, Socks For Living Is Ready For Back to School
- How an Organic Beauty Brand Automates International Ecommerce in 12 Countries
- How Memobottle Reimagined the Water Bottle & Sparked a Movement That Crashed the Oscars
- Digital Transformation: How YM Inc. Is Using Shopify Plus to Reimagine Its Retail Future … Online
- How a Seller of Outlandish Party Costumes Optimized Its Warehouse to Grow 400% & Compete With Amazon


text:
Twa Detachable Droplets - White Sapphire
by AYA
£2,150.00Gemstone | White Sapphire |
Carats | 1.80cts White Sapphires |
Gold Type | 18kt Yellow Gold |
Designed with versatility and timeless elegance in mind, you can mix and match your favourite gemstones with a variety of 18kt gold diamond hoops for a multitude of different looks to suit any occasion.
All our AYA pieces are made from sustainably sourced materials and ethically sourced gemstones.
If you would like to get in touch or have any questions on any of our AYA designs please contact the AYA team at email@example.com and we will be happy to help in any way we can.


text:
- Description
- Fit Notes
- Instructions
- Reviews
Factory Fit rear body harnesses are manufactured according to the original General Motors specifications. Each part number is fully assembled, taped and ready to install upon arrival. The rear body light harness typically connects to the dash harness or rear body intermediate harness in some applications.
This harness will follow the original routing, and most rear body light harnesses will include all lamp sockets for the rear of the vehicle. Some applications (specifically the 1961-65 Fullsize passenger car models) will require separate jumper harnesses for tail lamps. Please check your original harness, or a factory assembly manual to verify the harnesses required for your restoration. If in doubt, do not hesitate to contact our Sales team for assistance!
Rear Body Light Harness For
- Chevrolet Chevelle 1968
REAR BODY LIGHT HARNESS, Chevelle deluxe 4 door


text:
This poem is very true in the life of a Christian. God answers prayers by sanctifying him/her.
Prayer Answered by Crosses
By John Newton
I asked the Lord that I might grow
In faith and love and every grace,
Might more of his salvation know,
And seek more earnestly his face.
'Twas he who taught me thus to pray;
And he, I trust, has answered prayer;
But it has been in such a way
As almost drove me to despair.
I hoped that, in some favoured hour,
At once he'd answer my request,
And by his love's constraining power
Subdue my sins, and give me rest.
Instead of this, he made me feel
The hidden evils of my heart,
And let the angry powers of hell
Assault my soul in every part.
Yea, more, with his own hand he seemed
Intent to aggravate my woe,
Crossed all the fair designs I schemed,
Blasted my gourds, and laid me low.
Lord, why is this? I trembling cried;
Wilt thou pursue this worm to death?
This is the way, the Lord replied
I answer prayer for grace and faith.
These inward trials I now employ
From self and pride to set thee free,
And break thy schemes of earthly joy,
That thou may'st seek thy all in me.


text:
Coordinates: 33°N 44°E / 33°N 44°E / 33; 44
Iraq (/ɪˈræk/, i/ɪˈrɑːk/, or /aɪˈræk/; Arabic: العراق al-'Irāq, Kurdish: Êraq), officially the Republic of Iraq (Arabic: جمهورية العراق Jumhūrīyat al-'Irāq; Kurdish: كۆماری عێراق Komar-i 'Êraq), is a country in Western Asia. The country borders Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, Kuwait to the southeast, Saudi Arabia to the south, Jordan to the southwest, and Syria to the west. The southern part of Iraq is within the Arabian Peninsula. The capital, Baghdad, is in the centre of the country and its largest city. The largest ethnic groups in Iraq are Arabs and Kurds. Other ethnic groups include Assyrians, Turkmen, Shabakis, Yazidis, Armenians, Mandeans, Circassians, and Kawliya. Around 95% of the country's 36 million citizens are Shia or Sunni Muslims, with Christianity, Yarsan, Yezidism, and Mandeanism also present.
Iraq has a narrow section of coastline measuring 58 km (36 mi) on the northern Persian Gulf and its territory encompasses the Mesopotamian Alluvial Plain, the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, and the eastern part of the Syrian Desert. Two major rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, run south through the centre of Iraq and flow into the Shatt al-Arab near the Persian Gulf. These rivers provide Iraq with significant amounts of fertile land.
The Kingdom of Iraq under British Administration or Mandatory Iraq (Arabic: الانتداب البريطاني على العراق al-Intidāb al-Brīṭānī 'Alá al-'Irāq) was created in 1921 following the 1920 Iraqi Revolt against the proposed British Mandate of Mesopotamia, and enacted via the 1922 Anglo-Iraqi Treaty.
Faisal ibn Husayn, who had been proclaimed King of Syria by a Syrian National Congress in Damascus in March 1920, was ejected by the French in July of the same year. Faisal was then granted by the British the territory of Iraq, to rule it as a kingdom, with the British Royal Air Force (RAF) retaining certain military control, though de facto; the territory remained under British administration until 1932.
The civil government of postwar Iraq was headed originally by the High Commissioner, Sir Percy Cox, and his deputy, Colonel Arnold Wilson. British reprisals after the murder of a British officer in Najaf failed to restore order. The most striking problem facing the British was the growing anger of the nationalists, who continued to fight against the imposition of British authority. British administration had yet to be established in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Mesopotamia (/ˌmɛsəpəˈteɪmiə/, from the Ancient Greek: Μεσοποταμία "[land] between rivers"; from Ancient Armenian՝ Միջագետք(Mijagetq), Arabic: بلاد الرافدين bilād ar-rāfidayn; Persian: میانرودان miyān rodān; Syriac: ܒܝܬ ܢܗܪܝܢ Beth Nahrain "land of rivers") is a name for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, roughly corresponding to modern-day Iraq, Syria and Kuwait, including regions along the Turkish-Syrian and Iran–Iraq borders.
Widely considered to be the one of the cradles of civilization by the Western world, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the Akkadian, Babylonian, and Assyrian empires, all native to the territory of modern-day Iraq. In the Iron Age, it was controlled by the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Empires.
The indigenous Sumerians and Akkadians (including Assyrians and Babylonians) dominated Mesopotamia from the beginning of written history (c. 3100 BC) to the fall of Babylon in 539 BC, when it was conquered by the Achaemenid Empire. It fell to Alexander the Great in 332 BC, and after his death, it became part of the Greek Seleucid Empire.


text:
News Archive
Thursday, October 5 2017
Iowa State architecture professor on international team of scholars working to conserve Rome's Flaminio Stadium
Thomas Leslie, Iowa State Morrill Professor and Pickard Chilton Professor in Architecture, is on an international team of scholars awarded a Getty Foundation grant to pave the way for conserving a threatened, mid-century architectural masterpiece. The Flaminio Stadium was designed and constructed by Pier Luigi Nervi and his son Antonio for the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome.
Change Agent: Tomas Gonzalez-Torres, aerospace engineering lecturer, NASA veteran
Tomas Gonzalez-Torres, a 1998 Iowa State graduate, is back on campus after working as a NASA flight director. He's passing on some of the lessons he learned at NASA while helping students with senior design projects related to space and courses in lab techniques and computer applications.
Researchers demonstrate engineering approach to combine drugs, control parasitic worms
Iowa State University's Santosh Pandey helped lead a project that demonstrates an engineering technology used in cell studies can also be used for drug testing on parasitic roundworms used as a model whole organism. In this case, the technology quickly developed a cocktail of four drugs that was effective in paralyzing the roundworms. The discovery is reported in the journal Science Advances.
Iowa State University project: Prairie strips yield big environmental benefits
The ISU Prairie STRIPS project has found the strategic use of native prairie plants among agricultural fields yields a wide range of environmental benefits, including erosion and runoff reduction and increased wildlife habitat. The findings, published this week, draw on 10 years of data and cover dozens of environmental metrics.
High-intensity workouts send the wrong message, says Iowa State professor
As high-intensity interval training, or HIIT, has grown in popularity, so has the debate over whether it is an effective public health solution. An Iowa State University professor of kinesiology says the workouts are not sustainable for the majority of people who are trying to lose weight and move more.
2017 World Food Prize Laureate will present Iowa State's Borlaug Lecture Oct. 16
Akiniwumi Adesina, the 2017 World Food Prize Laureate, will present Iowa State's Norman Borlaug Lecture. "Betting on Africa to Feed the World" will be at 8 p.m. Monday, Oct. 16, in the Memorial Union Great Hall. A reception and student research poster display will precede the lecture at 7 p.m. in the South Ballroom. The free, public lecture is held in conjunction with the annual World Prize celebration.
Bovine embryo transfer helps ISU veterinarians improve herd genetics
Iowa State's College of Veterinary Medicine offers students and current veterinarians opportunities to get hands-on experience with bovine embryo transfer, a growing practice that helps cattle producers pass on desirable genetics to more calves. But it requires a trained eye.
Photojournalist Lynsey Addario — witness to the human cost of war — will speak at ISU
A Pulitzer-Prize winning photojournalist who has covered every major conflict and humanitarian crisis of the past 15 years will speak at Iowa State University. Lynsey Addario will present "It's What I Do" at 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 12, in the Memorial Union Great Hall. Addario works regularly for The New York Times, National Geographic and Time Magazine. Her public talk is free and part of the university's World Affairs series.
U.S. Air Force general and Iowa State alumnus will speak on defense and security Oct. 9
An Iowa State alum and U.S. Air Force general who develops and evaluates requirements for Air Force-wide modernization programs at the Pentagon will speak at Iowa State University. Maj. Gen. Clinton Crosier will present "National Defense and International Security" at 7 p.m. Monday, Oct. 9, in the Memorial Union Great Hall. His public talk is free and part of the university's World Affairs series.
School, health and behavior suffer when children have TV, video games in bedroom
A new Iowa State University study is one of the first to demonstrate the consequences of allowing children to have a TV or video game system in their bedroom. Researchers found children spent less time reading, sleeping or participating in other activities when they could go in their room and watch TV or play video games. As a result, they did not do as well in school and were at greater risk for obesity and video game addiction.
80th anniversary of massacre time for remembrance and recognition of solidarity
October marks the 80th anniversary of the 1937 Haitian massacre, which killed an estimated 20,000 Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent. Megan Jeanette Myers says the anniversary is a time for reflection and recognition. The ISU assistant professor is a co-founder of Border of Lights, an organization that provides support to border communities and commemorates the lives lost in the massacre.
Three Iowa State College of Design programs rank in top 25 nationally
The latest survey of practitioners by DesignIntelligence placed Iowa State's graduate interior design program ninth in the nation for 2017-18. ISU's undergraduate landscape architecture program ranked 11th and the undergraduate architecture program 22nd. DesignIntelligence is a quarterly publication for leaders in design professions. Its annual report, "America's Best Architecture and Design Schools," is the only national college ranking survey that focuses exclusively on design. It ranks programs from the perspective of leading practitioners who hire and supervise recent graduates.
MEDIA ADVISORY: Iowa State University ag experts available for comment on 2017 harvest
ISU agricultural experts explain the grain markets, agronomic conditions and weather trends that will shape this year's harvest. All four experts are available to news media for interviews.
Midlife depression may stem from tension with mothers and siblings, Iowa State study finds
Relationships with our mothers and siblings continue to have an effect on our well-being, particularly at midlife. A new study led by Iowa State University researcher Megan Gilligan found that tension with our mothers and siblings, similar to our spouses, is associated with symptoms of depression.
Team PrISUm steps up to world stage, prepares to race across Australian Outback
Team PrISUm is preparing to take its new "Solar Utility Vehicle" on a 1,900-mile race across the Outback of Australia. The Bridgestone World Solar Challenge is Oct. 8-15. Iowa State's student-engineers think they've designed and built a car that can comfortably make that journey.
Iowa State announces $145 million endowment to support College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
A gift initially reported in January will result in a new endowment of approximately $145 million to support the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The endowment is made possible through a gift from an anonymous donor couple of an equity stake in Curriculum Associates, LLC, which recently entered into a capital partnership.
High-skilled workers leaving Iowa because of lack of jobs
A shortage of high-skilled jobs is a primary factor driving Iowa's brain drain, according to a new analysis by Iowa State University researchers. The report measured Iowa's competitiveness in attracting and retaining highly skilled, educated workers as compared to the rest of the country.
U.S. News rankings: Iowa State 53rd among national publics; first in ag/bio engineering
The latest undergraduate rankings from U.S. News and World Report magazine have Iowa State tied for 53rd among public national universities. Iowa State's program in agricultural and biosystems engineering is tied for No. 1. And Iowa State's learning communities program is recognized by the magazine.
Iowa State receives $50 million commitment to name College of Business
Debbie and Jerry Ivy's $50 million gift is the largest-ever commitment to the college. In recognition of the couple's generosity, the college will be renamed the Debbie and Jerry Ivy College of Business, pending approval by the Board of Regents, State of Iowa. Once approved, the Ivy College of Business will be the first donor-named college at Iowa State.
$14 million committed by Kent Corporation, Iowa Corn Promotion Board and Sukup Manufacturing Co. for Iowa State feed mill, grain science project
Kent Corporation is committing $8 million, the Iowa Corn Promotion Board $4 million and Sukup Manufacturing Co. $2 million in support of a new Iowa State educational and research facility for feed milling and grain science. The $14 million in gifts are the first to be announced for the $21.2 million feed mill and grain science complex, which will be funded entirely through private giving.
Fall enrollment is second highest on record
Iowa State's fall 2017 enrollment is 36,321, the second-largest in school history. Overall enrollment is down about one percent from last year's record 36,660 students. The new student body number reflects a "leveling off" university leaders have predicted over the past year, following a decade of growth and eight consecutive years of record enrollment. Iowa State's student body is the most diverse ever, and ISU continues to enroll more Iowans than any other university in the world.
Iowa State physicists contribute to Higgs boson analysis, understanding
Iowa State University physicists have been part of an international search for evidence that the Higgs boson, as predicted, most often decays into two bottom quarks. That search has been a challenge -- billions of bottom quarks are produced inside the Large Hadron Collider and most have nothing to do with the Higgs boson. But physicists believe they finally have evidence of the hard-to-find decay.
Network to prepare students of color for math degrees receives NSF grant
The National Science Foundation has announced a grant for an Iowa State University-led initiative designed to provide a network of support for students of color interested in mathematics. The network will include mathematicians of color from U.S. colleges, universities and industry who want to invest time in, share their expertise with, and learn from students of color and their teachers.
ISU professor helping lead effort to expand digital literacy in Iowa
Access to digital technology has far outpaced the availability of educational resources to promote responsible use. Douglas Gentile, a professor of psychology at Iowa State University, fears what the consequences might be if that trend is not reversed. That is why Gentile is working to expand digital literacy programming in schools.


text:
Film Score Monthly
New Releases
Previous Releases
Rare, Out of Print or Used CD Releases
Clearance Sale
Anime Music
Video Game Music
Company Labels
Film Music Genre
Varese CD Sale
Gift Certificates
Original Cast
Film Genre
Your Account
Your Cart
Order Problems??
Disc One 1. Main Title 2:00 2. Search for Runaway Slave 2:26 3. Aiding the Runaway 4:38 4. Pedro and Juan 5:03 5. De Vargas' Terrace 2:12 6. Pedro and Luisa 3:24 7. Pedro Captured by Inquisition Guards :40 8. The Inquisition 4:14 9. Duel with De Silva and Escape 4:17 10. De Vargas Family Escape 5:19 11. News of the Expedition 5:18
Disc Two 1. The Shores of Cuba/Villa Rica 5:46 2. Catana's Dance :15 3. Zarabanda 2:48 4. Pledge of Love 1:43 5. Cempoala 8:18 6. Pedro Moves to Recover the Jewels 4:07 7. Escape from Traitors 3:38 8. Watching Over Pedro :53 9. Destroying the Armada 5:35 10. Cholula Hostages/Ominous Drums/Catana is Enciente 5:13 11. Cortez Returns from Villa Rica/De Silva Reappears 5:41 12. De Silva Murdered 6:48 13. Assembly 1:59 14. Conquest 4:11
In this big-budget historical adventure, Tyrone Power stars as Pedro De Vargas, a young and impetuous nobleman in 16th Century Spain. Pedro helps to free a slave who belongs to Diego De Silva (John Sutton), but this proves to be a mistake, as Diego is one of the leaders of the Inquisition. Diego soon brands Pedro a heretic, puts his family behind bars, and subjects his 12-year-old sister to torture so horrible it kills her. An outraged Pedro plots his escape, with the help of his friend Juan Garcia (Lee J. Cobb) and hot-blooded peasant girl, Catana Perez (Jean Peters). Pedro and his friends help his parents make their way out of Spain, and he soon joins forces with Hernando Cortez (Cesar Romero), who has an ambitious plan to sail to the new world in search of gold. However, a vengeful Diego uses his powers to foil Cortez, and when Diego is murdered, Pedro becomes the key suspect in the crime. Captain From Castile was shot on location in Morales, Mexico, where an active volcano slowed production, causing delays that expanded the film's budget to a then-extravagant $4.5 million. Also stars Antonio Moreno, Barbara Lawrence, and Thomas Gomez. 1947


text:
Snakes on the plains?
The problem with the alarming spread in The Oklahoman – replete with the headshot of a frightening-looking Burmese python – is that the danger of a snake invasion is really quite remote, as the newspaper's own story makes clear.
So, why did the Oklahoman play this non-story in the sensational fashion it did? I left a phone message for editor Ed Kelley and, so far, haven't heard back.
But I did have an interesting conversation with zoologist Gordon Rodda of the U.S. Geographic Survey, one of the scientists whose research formed the basis for the story. Here is what he said:
The USGS undertook a study of what climates in the United States theoretically could support the spread of a growing population of non-indigenous Burmese pythons that have taken up residence in the Florida Everglades. The areas warm and humid enough to support the non-poisonous constrictors could include Oklahoma, depending on how global warming shakes out over the next 100 years.
"But, if the implication in the newspaper story is that it is going to happen next Thursday, that's irresponsible," said Gordon. "It is a very dramatic way they portrayed it."
The particular irony of the Oklahoman's story is that it was so thoroughly reported by staffer Josh Rabe that no reasonable editor could have inadvertently misconstrued its significance.
In but one example, Josh quotes a local snake expert as saying it is "just absurd" to fear a Burmese python invasion in Oklahoma. "If you put one out in the front yard on a day like today," said snake breeder Bob Clark in a week when low temperatures were in the mid-20s, "you would have a snake-sickle by the end of the day."
To be sure, an onslaught of Burmese pythons would terrifying. The snakes can grow to lengths of 20 feet and become as fat as a telephone pole, says Gordon. Although the creatures are not poisonous, they instantly wrap themselves around their prey, squeezing the life out of the victim before gulping it down.
Although the snakes are capable of traveling as far 20 miles in a day, Gordon can't imagine them bellying all the way from Florida to Oklahoma City. "It is unlikely they would keep moving long enough in the same direction, given the randomness of their movements," he explains.
If the danger is negligible of telephone poll-sized Burmese pythons slithering 1,500 miles from the Everglades to Oklahoma City, then why would the newspaper have played the story in the way it did?
"With newspapers," says Gordon, "it's their business to make a big deal out of things."
Is it any wonder why four out of five people don't trust the media?


text:
Lost treasure needn't be found in the distant past; the 21st century hides many artists who disappeared into the great wide yonder. BC Camplight is one such example. The alter-ego of American songwriter Brian Christinzio released albums in 2005 and 2007, both gems of a certain psych-pop vintage, combining eloquent songwriting with a self-destructive bent. Christinzio certainly knew it – he's described himself as, "the guy who blew it."
But this sublime talent with the keening vocal and fearless approach to lyrical introspection has another chance. His new album 'How To Die In The North', recorded in his newly adopted home of Manchester, England, is a fantastically rich, stylistically diverse trip. From dramatic, layered pop to a haunted take on Sixties sunshine-pop, from blue-eyed soul to speedy surf-pop, from sparser piano balladry to psychedelic showstoppers and a grand finale that's part Nilsson and part Broadway showtune.
Originally from New Jersey, Christinzio started playing piano aged just four, inspired by his mum's Jerry Lee Lewis and Nilsson records and his Dad's classical collection. Depression and crippling hypochondria clashed with captaining the football team and a penchant for boxing. Post-school, he fell in with people, "willing to go through shit to be a musician," which saw him relocate to Philadelphia where he occasionally played live with Philly faves The War On Drugs and guested on Sharon Van Etten's album 'Epic'.
He's already done two sessions for long-term fan Marc Riley at BBC 6 Music, which featured Christinzio's band of Mancunians who he met at The Castle Hotel pub, a watering hole in the city centre particularly popular with musicians. Christinzio also heard John Grant's album on the jukebox there, which encouraged him to approach Bella Union. Grant's cocktail of depression and self-sabotage thwarted an outrageous talent, but he took his second chance. The same deserves to happen to Christinzio, a similarly outsize, sharp and funny personality with a non-conformist streak. Far from dying, BC Camplight has been reborn in the North.


text:
There is really only one word to use for this style: ZELDA. Otherwise called "Zeldaesque", this style of RPG is arguably NOT an RPG style, although by definition it certainly is. This game style blends elements of the Action and Traditional styles, but generally is broken down into two major play areas: battling enemies, and collecting items.
Famous Adventure RPGs: The Legend Of Zelda, Neutopia, Druid, Dungeon Explorer


text:
Wherein I write about Rails' current implementation of logging and ActiveSupport's greatest feature that was added in 3.0.
I've been thinking a lot about logging lately. I'm a big fan of logging. I also spent some quality time with a Rails app again recently. I'm not a big fan of Rails' logging. Something needs to change, either me or Rails' logging. I opted for the latter.
After some digging in I found that Rails 3 has improved quite significantly on the logging front. The output is still the same unparsable mess it used to be, but the way logging is implemented has changed quite drastically, and much for the better, I'd argue.
With Rails 3, one important thing was added, that drives parts of the both logging and benchmarking (e.g. for ActiveRecord's query measurements). Everything is now built around notifications and instrumentation. When ActiveRecord fires a query, it measure the time required and then triggers an event with the recorded time. Whether someone picks up the event is not of its concern. Which is exactly what the new notifications are about: separation of concern.
I was surprised to find that not a lot of people seemed to know about them. Let's have a short look at what it allows you to do.
The idea is far from new. The Pragmatic Programmer talked about blackboards, a similar mechanism, Cocoa has had something similar for ages, and now Rails has something like it too.
The basic idea is that you have a centralized repository where you can subscribe to events, for example to the event ActionController triggers when it process an action. Here's the code to extract the path that was requested by a user.
ActionSupport::Notifications.subscribe('process_action.action_controller') do |event|
puts event.payload[:path]
Any number of subscribers can be attached to a message, they'll get notified. The default implementation is synchronous, but nothing could and should keep you from adding an implementation that uses a message queue instead.
This is pretty cool. I started using it to track metrics and not clutter the code with the specifics. When something of interest happens, an event is triggered. If someone listens, cool, if they don't we'll keep going. I could have one subscriber that collects metrics and another one for tracer logging.
Rails uses these notifications all over the place, in particular for logging. To avoid having lots of manual subscriptions to specific events, Rails also added a mechanism to subscribe to events for the sole purpose of logging them and without adding subscriptions manually for all of them. The LogSubscriber was born.
LogSubscribers are exactly that: easy ways to subscribe to events whose purpose is logging. Of course what you do with the events is up to you, but that's their main purpose. Every Rails component uses them, and every component has its own implementation of a LogSubscriber. Here's an excerpt of the one used by ActionController.
Every public method defined, except for logger
, will be attached to an event
of the same name. So the three relevant events for this subscriber are
and process_action
To make the improvement of notifications and log subscribers more visible, here's the code that did the same in Rails 2.3. You decide which you like better. I certainly enjoy the decoupled-ness of the log subscriber a lot more.
When you defined your LogSubscriber, you can attach it to a namespace:
ActionSupport::LogSubscriber.attach_to :action_view
This creates a new instance of the LogSubscriber and attaches all methods to
their corresponding events. The event names are along the same lines as the
example with process_action.action_controller
. First the event's name, then
the component's name.
Rails' Logging
The example above nicely brings me to Rails' logging. First up: I like Rails' idea of logging everything, for development purposes it's awesome and pretty helpful. When things are moved into production the fun stops for me though. The logging out put is hard to parse, and it's hard to make sense of because it's usually multiple lines per request.
Rails 3.2 recently added tagged logging and a request identifier to work around that. But that still doesn't solve the problem of the output in general being too noisy and hard to parse for a centralized logging service, or any logging service. If you don't care about your logs then I'm sure you're fine, but I care a great deal about my logs. When things break, they're the sole source of truth, and I like to make sure they're valuable enough to fulfill that premise. Rails' request logging gets in the way of that for the reasons outlined above.
To remind you of what we're talking about, here's an example log output for a single request:
Started GET "/" for 127.0.0.1 at 2012-03-10 14:28:14 +0100
Processing by HomeController#index as HTML
Rendered text template within layouts/application (0.0ms)
Rendered layouts/_assets.html.erb (2.0ms)
Rendered layouts/_top.html.erb (2.6ms)
Rendered layouts/_about.html.erb (0.3ms)
Rendered layouts/_google_analytics.html.erb (0.4ms)
Completed 200 OK in 79ms (Views: 78.8ms | ActiveRecord: 0.0ms)
It reads pretty nicely for sure, but as soon as you add more processes that dump their output in the same log, things get mingled and some of the information is, in my opinion just not necessary in production.
So we have a pretty centralized approach to logging, and me wanting to do something to improve the logging. Clearly the two could be made to work together.
Towards a Better Logging (in Production)
My ideal request logging is a single line per request, nothing more. That's clearly at odds with the output above, but thanks to the fact that (almost) everything is wrapped in log subscribers. Here's a line of something that would fit my purpose pretty nicely:
GET / format=html action=home#index status=200 duration=58.33 view=40.43 db=15.26
It's one line, it contains all the relevant information, it's pretty easy to parse for a machine, and it's easy to read for the human eye. Some told me the latter shouldn't be necessary, and I'm certainly not hung up on it, but I like to be able to skim logs.
The message is pretty clear: the HTTP method, the URL and an slew of optional parameters. If there's an exception that too should end up as single line. You can log the stacktrace of course, but it's much harder to make sense of for the same reason multiple lines of log output are hard to make sense of. They drown in a river of log output from multiple sources. I thought about only storing relations to an exception in the logs instead, e.g. an identifier or an error code. Throw in a request identifier as metadata stored with the exception, and you've got yourself a nice way to correlate exceptions and log lines.
How can we get to the output above? It turns out, it's actually pretty simple. We need to unhook the log subscribers for ActionView and ActionController events and hook in our own. The result is Lograge, a logging experiment I extracted into a library from the Travis CI source code, where I first started playing with the ideas I had around logging.
It adds its own log subscriber, discarding all irrelevant events, only accepting two events instead of the whole bunch included by default. The result is a single log line. Easy on the eyes, easy on the machine.
An Experiment in Logging
My main goal is to eventually have a saner way of logging requests in Rails (or any web framework, for that matter). Lograge is the beginning of that. I already got great feedback on the general idea and on specifics like the log output.
I have also yet to solve how to properly log request parameters, so this is only the beginning. I care a great deal about logging and I'd like to see that eventually improve in Rails so that other people start caring for their logs too, if only in production mode or as an optional feature. If not, Lograge will be here for you. I also have Rails 2.3 on my radar if you're still using that. It's a lot messier to implement, but not impossible.
If you want to know a bit more about the internals, the README is a good place to start. If you have any input on the ideas implemented in Lograge, the log output or anything else, feel free to open an issue. Let's talk about logging, and let's make it better.