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Apart from checking into the posh grand walton hall first (that had rooms) and being redirected to the less glam and more modern 'Walton Hotel' it was a lovely stay.
It was the first holiday with our 6 week old child and was seamless.
Be sure to also get a leaflet and walk round the grounds for an educational circular walk around Walton taking in some great historical spots.
This user has arrived from Qype, a European company acquired by Yelp in 2012. We have integrated the two sites to bring you one great local experience.


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Stuart, Elizabeth 1963-
Publication Timeline
Most widely held works about Elizabeth Stuart
Most widely held works by Elizabeth Stuart
Introducing body theology by Lisa Isherwood ( )
14 editions published between 1998 and 2000 in English and held by 813 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
This book sets out to examine the ambiguous relationship that Christianity has with the body. Incarnation is central to Christian belief but that doctrine has not encouraged a positive theology of the body. The authors explore why this has been so and examine ways in which a more body-positive theology can be developed using our Christian heritage. Starting from a feminist perspective they reclaim women's bodies from the embrace of patriarchy and in doing so clearly show how this reclamation challenges many systems of oppression. This work illustrates that the personal is political, even in th
Gay and lesbian theologies : repetitions with critical difference by Elizabeth Stuart ( Book )
10 editions published between 2002 and 2004 in English and held by 370 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
Gay and lesbian theology has been one of the most distinctive voices to have emerged in Christian theology in the last 30 years. It has placed lesbian and gay experience at the heart of the theological process. Elizabeth Stuart, one of the most prominent theologians in this field, presents a critical survey of gay and lesbian theology. She charts the development of gay and lesbian theology from an early apologetic phase, to a more confident liberationist outlook which owed much to Latin American liberation theology and feminist theology, and finally to its current wrestling with queer theory
Christian perspectives on sexuality and gender ( Book )
4 editions published in 1996 in English and held by 345 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
The writers represent a variety of Christian (and one non-Christian) responses to issues such as: sexuality and the Christian tradition; sexuality and gender; power and relation; marriage; sexuality and spirituality; love; gay and lesbian sexuality; the body; sexuality and love; sexuality and violence; sexuality and singleness and the family
Religion is a queer thing : a guide to the Christian faith for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people by Elizabeth Stuart ( Book )
5 editions published in 1997 in English and held by 259 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
"This book makes queer theology available and accessible to a general audience and encourages the reader to become part of the ongoing development of this theology. It is aimed primarily at queer people who are new to Christianity or those who are interested in reflecting upon their Christian faith from a queer perspective. It is a study guide which can be used by groups and by individuals, and contains exercises and liturgies as well as explanations of queer theology. Subjects covered include the Bible, salvation, Christ, body theology, God, the Church, death and ethics."--Jacket
Just good friends : towards a lesbian and gay theology of relationships by Elizabeth Stuart ( Book )
6 editions published between 1995 and 1996 in English and held by 168 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
Eating breakfast effects of the school breakfast program by Barbara L Devaney ( Book )
2 editions published in 1998 in English and held by 161 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
The Quantum Opportunity Program demonstration final impacts by Allen Schirm ( )
1 edition published in 2006 in English and held by 147 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
People of passion : what the churches teach about sex by Elizabeth Stuart ( Book )
5 editions published in 1997 in English and held by 106 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
Spitting at dragons : towards a feminist theology of sainthood by Elizabeth Stuart ( Book )
5 editions published in 1996 in English and held by 104 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
Daring to speak love's name : a gay and lesbian prayer book ( Book )
5 editions published in 1992 in English and held by 98 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
Chosen : gay Catholic priests tell their stories by Elizabeth Stuart ( Book )
4 editions published in 1993 in English and Undetermined and held by 68 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
Without honor by Elizabeth Stuart ( Book )
2 editions published between 1993 and 1994 in English and held by 46 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
Heartstorm by Elizabeth Stuart ( Book )
2 editions published in 1989 in English and held by 42 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
Picasso, a contemporary dialogue ( Book )
3 editions published in 1996 in English and held by 37 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
Where love dwells by Elizabeth Stuart ( Book )
1 edition published in 1990 in English and held by 35 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
The trap by Elizabeth Stuart ( Book )
1 edition published in 1992 in English and held by 22 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
Reema, There and Back ( Visual )
1 edition published in 2006 in French and held by 14 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
With a Canadian mother, who until recently was the only family she knew, and and Iraqi father, who wants to get to know his daughter after a sixteen-year absence, young Reema is confronted with difficult questions about her identity
Blind spot the continued failure of the World Bank and IMF to fully assess the impact of their advice on poor people by Elizabeth Stuart ( )
2 editions published in 2007 in English and held by 12 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
The British imagination : twentieth-century paintings, sculpture, and drawings : November 10, 1990 to January 12, 1991, Hirschl & Adler Galleries ( Book )
1 edition published in 1990 in English and held by 11 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
Jn Nvptias Illvstrissimi Principis Frederici V. Comitis Palatini Ad Rhenvm, [et]c. Et Jllvstrissimae, Lectissimaeqve Virginis Elizabethae, Magni, Magnae Britanniae, [et]c. Regis Filiae Epithalamium Abrahami Avrelii by Abraham Aurelius ( Book )
1 edition published in 1613 in Latin and held by 10 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
Audience Level
Related Identities
Associated Subjects
Art, British Art, Modern Canada Catholic Church Children of divorced parents Christian saints Clergy Developing countries Economic assistance Economic development projects--Citizen participation Economic development projects--Social aspects Economic policy Fathers and daughters Feminist theology Friendship--Religious aspects--Christianity Gay clergy Gay men--Religious life Gays--Religious life Great Britain Homosexuality--Religious aspects Homosexuality--Religious aspects--Catholic Church Homosexuality--Religious aspects--Christianity Human body--Religious aspects--Christianity Identity (Psychology) Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.) International Monetary Fund Iraqis Jordan Lesbians--Religious life Mothers and daughters Picasso, Pablo, Poverty Problem youth Problem youth--Education Problem youth--Services for Queer theory Racially mixed children--Ethnic identity School breakfast programs School children--Food Scotland Sex--Religious aspects--Christianity Sex--Religious aspects--Christianity--History of doctrines Sex role--Religious aspects--Christianity Sex role--Religious aspects--Christianity--History of doctrines Single-parent families Stuart, Elizabeth Theology, Doctrinal United States Women saints World Bank
Alternative Names
Stuart, Liz, 1963-

subset: commoncrawl


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Morris Day and the Time B.B. King Blues Club & Grill Friday, July 29 Better than: Watching the bonus Time videos on the 20th-anniversary edition DVD of Purple Rain. (Seriously, it's just the same footage cut faster each time.) Morris Day is to vanity what Jack Benny was to stinginess. No, not th ... More >>
Notes on the Dumb-Buddy Film


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Over the past 5 years or so I have made this recipe for Marinated grilled shrimp countless times. I've taken pictures, but it's really hard to capture with a camera how scrumptious they are. Tonight I was hell-bent to make it work. Daylight was waning and people were hungry. I pulled most of the shrimp off their skewers onto a platter, but took some into our garage to photograph. (Our garage is my "studio" by the way.)
I present to you one of my all-time favorite foods, and perhaps the best picture I can capture of it. What you see was our dinner tonight.
Marinated grilled shrimp
- 1 cup olive oil
- 2 tablespoons dried parsley, or 1/4 cup chopped, fresh parsley
- 1 lemon- zest and juice
- 2 tablespoons hot pepper sauce
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 tablespoons tomato paste
- 2 teaspoons dried oregano
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 2 pounds large shrimp, peeled and deveined, with tails attached
- Lemon wedges for garnish
In a mixing bowl, combine olive oil, parsley, lemon zest, lemon juice, hot sauce, garlic, tomato paste, dried oregano, salt and pepper. Whisk to combine.
Put shrimp in a large re-sealable plastic bag and pour marinade over shrimp. Get as much air out of the bag as possible and close bag. Place the plastic bag of shrimp in a bowl and refrigerate for two hours.
If using bamboo skewers, soak them in cold water for 30 minutes prior to use. Thread shrimp onto skewers, piercing once near the tail and once near the head. Discard marinade.
Clean and lightly oil grill grate. Preheat grill to high (approximately) 500 degrees. Place shrimp on grill grate and immediately turn heat down to medium. Close grill lid. Cook shrimp 5 minutes per side, or until opaque.
Note: Shrimp size is determined by approximately how many of a particular size shrimp make up one pound. I usually use the 21-25 size shrimp.


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Attacking One Budget Category at a Time
Published on - July 1st, 2010 (by Adam Baker)
This video post is by staff writer Adam Baker. Baker previously featured a post on his own blog entitled, 42 Ways to Radically Simplify your Financial Life.
For many people, the process of personal finance cycles between intense motivation and devastating burnout. A life event, a powerful communicator, or maybe even a simple blog post creates an initial spark. Before we know it, we're wound up and ready to pounce: We vow to finally get our finances in order.
We slash our restaurant budget to nothing. We research car-pooling options in our area and collect quotes on refinancing our mortgage. We start clipping coupons, cut out our spending vices, and craft fancy budgets with dozens of categories. Unfortunately, few battles in history have ever been won when waged on so many fronts. Our best intentions soon crumble to the inevitable. We become overwhelmed. Burnout creeps in, and few of our positive changes stick.
This was what happened consistently to Courtney and me several years ago. In the following video, I elaborate on the technique we employed to finally break this pattern and create positive change that lasted.
A brief summary of the video:
- The nature of excitement and change [0:35]
- Benefits of starting with a few, broad budgeting categories [1:00]
- Breaking down one broad category per month [2:00]
- Ensuring positive changes stick [2:50]
- Don't forget to spend one month on increasing income! [3:49]
By budgeting with broad categories and focusing on only one per month, Courtney and I were finally able to maintain our motivation over a longer period of time. Our targeted focus gave us a deeper awareness of problem areas, and enabled us to retain the majority of our new habits.
Have you experienced success with a similar strategy? What other techniques have you used to maintain motivation and avoid burnout?
This article is about Budgeting
The process you're describing worked really well for me when, for specific health reasons, I had to completely change my diet and stick to it.
But for financial matters the blitzkreig approach worked best for us when we had no money (buy nothing! only basics! don't waste food! etc.). Now that we have money and put savings first we don't need to focus on anything.
Though in August we are going to take a financial health day and try to better optimize our retirement plans (since before we satisficed and now I see the option I picked has among the highest fees) and while we're at it, get a will and check out insurance rates since ours have been creeping up to what is likely above market levels the past few years. That's also sort of a blitzkreig approach, but I figure that one day is better than nothing and then we can go back to not thinking about things for another few years.
Or maybe I should just wait until Tyler K posts and then say I agree with him…
Thank you for the idea, Adam. This actually looks refreshingly sober compared to all the magical strategies to make you a billionaire and losing weight at the same time. Although I would mention that you may want to think about the money saved and what best to do with it. But I appreciate the "increasing income" month. Seems you have thought it through quite well!
I will definitely keep this idea in mind when talking to my own clients. Thanks!
- Lorne
Transcripts for videos would be much appreciated. For a variety of well-known reasons, some of us can't/won't do audio and/or video online, so posting a simple transcript (either in the post itself or through a link) would make sure those people aren't excluded from the content of the post.
Thanks for considering my pony request!
Nicole, LOL – I agree. Better a day (or a few days) of concentrated effort and then a few years of coasting, than a system requiring constant attention and maintenance. Feh!
Re: keeping up motivations: paying off debt is and has been our primary objective for the past year. I had to lay out for DH exactly how much we were spending each month to service debt, how soon it could be paid off if we took X-Y-Z steps, and how much "disposable" income we could then have – to save, in our case, for a retirement residence – without working more.
He was a little shocked, I think. He hadn't thought it was possible, but I showed him not only can we be debt free inside two years, we can have a big down-payment saved within five.
So when we get a little frustrated and burned-out with the less-self-indulgent lifestyle, I print out a photo of a house that's for sale, within our projected price range, in the area we want to retire to, and say "We can have this!"
Seems silly, but it helps.
chacha– It really is amazing what is possible when you have a plan. Reading Your Money or Your Life was really eye opening for me… in the back of my mind I now know that if we're really good we can actually move to California permanently and *not have to take jobs we hate* (which would be true if we moved right now), or otherwise suffer, within 10 years. We probably won't be that good, but it is an actual possibility that really changes everything.
A down payment for a house out here would probably take quite a bit longer though. But I think with a plan we could do it too.
Also not crazy about video… not at work, anyway.
p.s. JD, can you send the sun back? We miss it. Thanks.
"For many people, the process of personal finance cycles between intense motivation and devastating burnout. A life event, a powerful communicator, or maybe even a simple blog post creates an initial spark. Before we know it, we're wound up…"
It's not just personal finance. I feel that way about blogging, too. And lots of people do this with exercise, diets, etc.
Spending plans are something that I really struggle with. I do have bills that need to be paid every month and I have written down on my computer how much is needed to pay each bill each month.
But I don't sit down and give myself strict budgets on every category because if I did that then that would just drive me crazy. I've realized with money I do need flexibility, and if I notice a trend in where my money is being blown I do try to cut back.
I noticed that most of my money has been going to eat out, so now I try to eat in for the most part. I do try to save I just dump everything into the savings account, if an emergency comes up I dip into my savings.
Emergencies are really rare for me so I feel fortunate.
Thanks for the reply, J.D. I understand that the blog can't be all things to all people – and you do a great job of maintaining quality and encouraging a good community.
I'll just move on and look forward to the next old-school posts as the videos come up.
btw I don't mind video posts as long as they don't go on forever, they can actually be refreshing from reading, and video posts have their own places
I dislike the video format as well, if you are collecting votes.
I think it depends on the type of person you are. Some people are just better about sticking it out than others. This type of approach would probably work especially well for someone who wants to develop good habits, whether it is personal finance related or otherwise.
For my wife and I, we both knew we wanted to have a budget from the time we got married. So we've never been in a position that we had to "get things under control" as it were. It is more a process of constant improvement and choosing what to focus on next, usually in regards to which debt we should pay off next.
Thanks for the terrific blog! I just wanted to reiterate what some others have said – I'm not crazy about the videos.
I'm a reader and transcripts/summaries would be terrific. I just don't watch the video posts.
I don't like video posts, especially if there isn't a compelling reason for it being a video. Adam's information was decent enough, but I could have read the same content in half the time it took to watch the video. Watching him sit there and talk added absolutely nothing.
After reading through the comments I admit that I was a bit confused as to what the blog post was about. Seems that they were all about the format of the blog rather than the blog itself.
Regardless, your idea is refreshing. Nobody thinks of attacking their finances from very specific fronts. People tend to think of saving as much money as quickly as possible.
This way there will be less of a burden and they will be more keen on saving money.
Although I was never a huge fan of video posts (at work only) it was refreshing. Listening in on someone keeps me up and I was able to take in information at a different level. Thumbs up from me.
I vote against videos – what I love about blogs is that I can power read them: skip boring stuff, scan tag lines / head lines until I find something that piques my interest.
Transcripts help, but why bother …
First, I like this post — I'm going to take Nicole's advice and try to work it into diet!
Format-wise: I'd be good with a 1x/month video, from different authors. Just to keep it interesting and see a different side of the contributors. Obviously would be great if the video added something to the post — such as a tour of JD's garden, a screencast of using an online money-management tool, or a one-on-one interview.
As with others above, my goals were compelling enough that I never lost motivation back in the day when I more strictly budgeted. To do that, I just connected what I was spending with my goal – ie. that new pair of boots would cost me 3 days of retirement, that one week holiday would cost me a month of retirement – is it worth it? Sometimes it was, sometimes not. It must be a sustainable method for me because I still do it over 10 years after getting out of debt.
I went even simpler and went down to one big category of just discretionary spending. It worked for my varied lifestyle far better than more detailed categories.
What a fantastic basic concept.
Hitler lost the second world war because he attacked Russia too soon. udervise ve vood all be speeking Deutsch now.
We employed the alternative massively effective budgetting tool.
Be a self employed Engineer for 15 years with take home pay of £50K a year and spend it all (and more besides, because 'I want one of those NOW') because 'my jobs safe'.
Watch as the banks destroy the worlds finances.
Suddenly realise that over 90% of British industry is ultimately owned by Japanese investment banks, who suddenly have no money to fulfill their legal obligations to complete legislation driven improvment projects.
Watch as my £50K a year take home falls to ZERO.
Start a brand new business with Kleeneze (sorry not available in the USA) Which although it's building really well is , after all, a business and needs time.
Suddenly HAVE to live on £18K a year GROSS.
Best Motivation for re-inventing your budget that anyone can have LOL.
We used to spend about £1,000 a month on groceries, now we spend around £300 a month, AND we eat more healthily.
Fortunately the finance on my car ended a month after our income disappeared saving us £375 a month.
We've sold my wifes' car (THAT hurt) it was a really nice car, but it was costing us £489 a month in finance.
We've moved to a cheaper house saving us £400 a month in rent.
We've cancelled everything that wasn't absolutely essential – including SKY and the TV license (It's true, you don't die if you turn the telly off!)
We still have creditors who we're negotiating reduced payments and frozen interest with, but basically we are starting again from scratch.
We won't fall into the credit trap again
Certainly not in the next six years or more 'cos no-one in their right mind will give us credit now anyway!!
The one thing that keeps coming back to me though is
WHY aren't our schools teaching kids how to budget? It's a thousand times more important than even the basics.
Who cares if you can't spell budgit if you can make one and stick to it.
It CAN'T be one of the things that are left to parents because nobody ever taught us!
Back to subject,
Your article is brilliant and if it helps one person (which I'm sure it already has) to get out or stay out of debt then you've done a service to humanity.
Keep it up &
we'll see you
OVER the top
Another vote for video transcripts. I don't watch videos on the net due to lack of control over how fast and the order I consume the content.
Videos are simply too passive for me.
Maybe put up a survey or vote to get an idea of what the readers like?
As for dealing with budget catagories, very early on I was overwelmed. I found that doing everything on paper first (not using the computer) forced me to keep it simple. I had to think about my major catagories and how to record varous expenses and income in a simple, clear manner so I was not spending huge amounts of time with the paperwork.
The use of the paper and pencil method really did force me to keep refining my budget into something I use, rather than something I pretend to use (like some people's exercise equipment).
Later on I made budgeting into a game (analgous to role-playing games) and budgeting easy and fun now. But at first it was a pain as I did not know the 'rules.'
Another vote for non-video posts here. I think Adam is a compelling writer, I miss reading his stuff – here and at his own site.
I vote no on the video posts. For one thing, it's easier to skip around, backtrack, etc. Plus, I guess I just like reading better.
Personal finance is about building habits, and to build habits you need to really work on them hard at first. Then it's much easier and you focus on something else.
Imagine someone saying they were going to stop smoking AND jog everyday AND change their diet completely, etc, etc. There might be some people who can do that, but most people will need to focus on just one.
Just don't fall into the trap of never bothering to check everything is right! You might end up in (more) debt simply because you didn't check your account regularly, or another such small thing that doesn't really take any effort.
Count me on the side of preferring the written word, at least here.
In regards to the content, it's a great idea. An opportunity to focus in a completely different manner is exciting!
Another vote against video posts. I don't see that they add any value, I think they actually subtract value since they require more of a reader's time and resources.
J.D., fwiw I don't view video posts because I nearly always read GRS at work. And my speakers are on mute.
A cat video works fine without a soundtrack. PF advice, not so much.
I live in a rural area where high speed internet is either non-existent or very expensive. Unfortunately, watching a video on a dial-up speed of 52 kbps just does not work. Perhaps offering the option to either view a video or read a transcript would enable those individuals with a specific preference or need to choose the option that works best for them.
Another vote against video posts. I usually read at work, in the evening when I'm with my family, or at night while I've got the TV going – none of these work with watching a video. Aside from that, when I do listen I never like them. They talk too fast or slow for me, go into detail about things I don't want or gloss over what I do want, etc.
I don't like video posts either. Reading = fast and exciting. Video = slow and boring.
I really enjoyed watching this video format. I was able to watch it and write notes down while. Again I am reading this on a Sunday morning at home, so video is fine with me. I really liked your strategy. Keep it up!
I really like your story. Creating budgets can seem so daunting for some, while others have no problem making a budget but have real issues sticking to the plan. Often I find that the hardest thing for people is creating a realistic budget. A while ago I wrote a blog about 7 Tips for Financial Success, I suggest that people collect all of their receipts for a specific period of time to see what their spending habits are really like. This will allow them to create a more accurate budget plan and set them on the road to success. This is one of my favourite habits that keeps me focused on my financial goals.
7 Tips for Financial success: http://jaynsteele.wordpress.com/2010/05/28/7-tips-for-financial-success/
Great ideas…
It is very important to target specific areas to budget on. like groceries, car payments, eating out, etc. When you break it down and keep focused you can reduce your spending and begin moving to a positive cash flow.


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Why - People should not be discriminated against based on who they are or who they love. Equality for every person is an innate human and civil right, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. My goal is to promote awareness for LGBT equality and challenge stereotypes, while documenting the modern LGBT rights movement.
Background - Before becoming a photographer, I received a master's degree in criminal justice followed by a ten-year stint as a federal probation officer. Empowered by an overwhelming sense that I should be helping to change the rules, instead of enforce them, I started this business.
Beliefs - I believe in the power of an image, in shaking up the status quo, and that anything is possible. I believe that a compelling photograph is an important tool for social and political change and the most effective way to deliver a message.
Inspiration - I'm inspired by my grandmother whose art, vision, and strength of purpose became the foundation of Amy Mayes Photography long before its existence.
Based in New York City, I also co-own a media company with my husband. I'm on the board of the New York chapter of the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP). I'm also a member of Professional Women Photographers (PWP) and the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce New York (NGLCCNY).


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Arizona man buys original Batmobile for $4.2 million at auction
Posted On 22 Jan 2013 By 814Editor
Fourth Estate Cooperative Staff Arizona, United States (4E) – Rick Champagne, a logistic company owner from Phoenix, Arizona, has bought the original Batmobile, used by actor Adam West in the Batman TV series, at an auction for $4.2 million. The 56-year-old said that this was a dream come true. He was just 10 when original…
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The article below was originally written by Kasper Timm Hansen (@kaspth on github & twitter) about his work during the Google Summer of Code 2013.
Kasper and I worked a lot changing the underlying implementation of the
sanitize helper to give Rails developers a more robust, faster and secure solution to sanitize user input.
This new implementation should be fully backward compatible, with no changes to the API, which should make the update easier.
You can see more information about the previous and the new implementation on this talk I presented in a Brazillian conference this year (the slides are in English).
Now, I'll let Kasper share his words with you.
Scrubbing Rails Free of HTML-scanner
Everyone, at least one time, has already needed to use the
sanitize method to scrub some pesky HTML away.
<%= sanitize @article.body %>
If you were to run this on Rails 4.1 (and before) this would take advantage of the html-scanner, a vendored library inside Rails, for the sanitization. Since the summer of 2013 I have been working to destroy that notion by wiping the traces of html-scanner throughout Rails. Before you become concerned of my mental health, I didn't do this unwarranted. I'm one of the Google Summer of Code students working on Ruby on Rails. My project proposal was to kick html-scanner to the curb (technical term) and grab a hold of Loofah instead. Why did the old library need replacing, though?
The out washed HTML-scanner
html-scanner has been with us for a long time now. The copyright notice in the library clocks it in at 2006, when Assaf Arkin created it. This library relies on Regular Expressions to recognize HTML (and XML) elements. This made the code more brittle. It was easier to introduce errors via complex Regular Expressions, which also gave it a higher potential for security issues.
The Rails Team wanted something more robust and faster, so we picked Loofah. Loofah uses Nokogiri for parsing, which provides a Ruby interface to either a C or Java parser depending on the Ruby implementation you use. This means Loofah is fast. It's up to 60 to 100% faster than html-scanner on larger documents and fragments.
I started by taking a look at the
SanitizeHelper in Action View, which consists of four methods and some settings. The four methods of the are
strip_tags and
Let's take a look at the
sanitize method.
Comparing with the old implementation,
sanitize still uses the
WhiteListSanitizer class to do it's HTML stripping. However, since Action View was pulled out of Action Pack and both needed to use this functionality, we've extracted this to it's own gem.
Developers meet Rails::Html::WhiteListSanitizer
When you use
sanitize, you're really using
sanitize method. Let me show you the new version.
def sanitize(html, options = {}) return nil unless html return html if html.empty?
No surprises here.
loofah_fragment = Loofah.fragment(html)
The first trace of Loofah. A fragment is a part of a document, but without a DOCTYPE declaration and html and body tags. A piece of a document essentially. Internally Nokogiri creates a document and pulls the parsed html out of the body tag, leaving us with a fragment.
if scrubber = options[:scrubber] # No duck typing, Loofah ensures subclass of Loofah::Scrubber loofah_fragment.scrub!(scrubber)
You can pass your own
Scrubber to
sanitize! Giving you the power to choose if and how elements are sanitized. As the comment alludes, any scrubber has to be either a subclass of
Loofah::Scrubber or it can wrap a block. I'll show an example later.
elsif allowed_tags(options) || allowed_attributes(options) @permit_scrubber.tags = allowed_tags(options) @permit_scrubber.attributes = allowed_attributes(options) loofah_fragment.scrub!(@permit_scrubber)
We have been very keen on maintaining backwards compatibility throughout this project, so you can still supply
Enumerables of tags and attributes to
sanitize. That's what the
PermitScrubber used here handles. It manages these options and makes them work independently. If you pass one it'll use the standard behavior for the other. See the documentation on what the standard behavior is.
You can also set the allowed tags and attributes on the class level. Like this:
Rails::Html::Sanitizer.allowed_tags = Set.new %w(for your health)
That's simply what
allowed_tags and
allowed_attributes methods are there for. They'll return the tags or attributes from the options and fallback to the class level setting if any.
else remove_xpaths(loofah_fragment, XPATHS_TO_REMOVE) loofah_fragment.scrub!(:strip) end
StripScrubber built in to
Loofah will strip the tags but leave the contents of elements. Which is usually what we want. We use
remove_xpaths to remove elements along with their subtrees in the few instances where we don't. If you have trouble with the syntax above, they're XPath Selectors.
loofah_fragment.to_s end
Lastly we'll take the elements and extract the remaining markup with
to_s. Internally Nokogiri will call either
to_xml or
to_html depending on the kind of document or fragment you have.
Rub, buff or clean it off, however you like
So there you have it. I could go through how the other sanitizers work, but they're not that complex. So go code spelunking in the source.
If this was the first time you've seen a
Loofah::Scrubber, be sure to check out the source for
PermitScrubber and see an example of how to implement one. You can also subclass
PermitScrubber and get the sanitization you need without worrying about the implementation details of stripping elements and scrubbing attributes. Take a look at
TargetScrubber – the weird
PermitScrubber – and how it uses that to get scrubbing fast.
Before I scrub off though, I promised you an example of a custom scrubber. I'll use the option that wraps a block here, but you could easily create a subclass of
Loofah::Scrubber (in a helper maybe?) and override
scrub(node). So here goes:
<%= sanitize @article.body, scrubber: Loofah::Scrubber.new { |node| node.name = "script" } %>
The code above changes all the HTML tags included in the article body to be a tag
If you're going to introduce bugs, why not make everything a potential risk of running arbitrary code?
Tags: rails
Posted in English | 9 Comments »
We just released Simple Form 3.1.0.rc1 with support to Bootstrap 3.
To make it possible, we leveled up the Wrapper API to make it more extensible and to allow developers to directly configure it instead of relying on global state. After such improvements, it was very easy to change the Simple Form configuration to work with Bootstrap 3. I'll talk more about this in a future post.
Integrating Bootstrap with Simple Form should be as easy as it was before. We are working on the documentation before the final release but you can find examples about how to integrate Simple Form with Bootstrap in our sample application. The app source code is available too.
Besides this main feature, Simple Form's new 3.1.0 comes with a lot of enhancements. You can find the whole list of changes in the CHANGELOG file.
I hope you are excited about this release as much as we are. Please try out the release candidate and if you find an issue, report at the Simple Form issues tracker.
We plan to release the final version in a month or so, and we'll write a new blog post with more details about Simple Form 3.1.
We, at Plataformatec, have worked hard to get this release out, with Lauro Caetano and Rafael França (it's me!) working together on this final sprint. Also kudos to Gonzalo Rodríguez-Baltanás Díaz and the whole community for helping us to improve the sample application.
Tags: bootstrap, rails, simple_form
Posted in English | 5 Comments »
Rails 4.1 was just released this week and I already had a great experience trying out the release candidates on my latest project, so I decided to write a bit about my favorites features on this release and some things I have learned by using them so far.
1) secrets.yml
Placing your configuration in a YAML file isn't exactly a revolutionary feature, but the usage of the
config/secrets.yml file that comes with Rails 4.1 holds a more important idea: the promise of a default approach for environment aware custom configuration on Rails applications. Over the years the community created several ways to manage such configuration so every app out there deals with this differently, but now we can use the Rails default as a standard just like we do with the app folder or the routing patterns, taking the configuration madness outside the list of things to worry about when working with Rails. So instead of dealing with multiple YAML files or constants left out inside initializers, we can go with the
secrets.yml as the default for our apps.
Remember that you can place any kind of configuration – not just secrets like tokens or passwords – that need to be handled differently through your application environments, like API Endpoints or S3 bucket names. And for any gem maintainers out there, you can make your gem read these settings from the
secrets.yml automagically through an initializer block and maybe remove a configuration step from the gem setup. Adding this to Devise on this pull request was easier than I expected and I suggest you to try it out on your gems as well.
If you want to try to organize your configuration through the
secrets.yml without having to update to Rails 4.1 right now, Andrew White backported this feature on the rails-secrets gem for Rails 4.0 apps.
So, if you are dealing with some configuration mess or aren't using something like dotenv for your application, I strongly suggest that you try to migrate your config to use the
secrets.yml file and see how it goes for your application.
2) Action Pack Variants
Variants are proving to be a great solution to render device specific views when mixed with any device detection solution like the useragent or browser gems, which you integrate quickly with just a
before_action block:
class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base before_action :set_variant private def set_variant if browser.tablet? request.variant = :tablet elsif browser.mobile? request.variant = :mobile else request.variant = :desktop end end end
Even though the main examples are dealing with User Agent sniffing, this feature can be used in any context where you want to have more control of which views are rendered by your application, like:
- A/B Testing different partials based on the user cookies.
- API versioning for your Jbuilder templates.
- Maintaining current and redesigned views for the same controller.
- Authorization aware views, like
In the end, Variants are just a way for you to have more control over how your views will be used by the app, helping you to remove boilerplate logic from your code and letting the framework handle it through a more elegant solution.
3) The improved cookies serializer
The changes on how Rails serializes cookies are a great improvement when it comes to security and stability of web apps. Before this, any object placed in the cookies Hash would be serialized (and deserialized) through
Marshal.dump and
Marshal.load, which could possibly lead to remote code execution if an attacker got hold on your application secret.
Now this serializer is configurable through the
config.action_dispatch.cookies_serializer configuration option, and new apps will ship with a smarter default: a JSON serializer that won't recreate complex objects besides Strings, Integers and other JSON data types. And for a smooth upgrade, you can use the
:hybrid serializer that will convert your existing marshalled cookies into JSON cookies, so this upgrade can be transparent for your application users.
This upgrade highlights a possible bad practice in our applications where we end up placing more complex objects in the session that can't be completely restored by the JSON serializer, when we should be using more simple structures for the data stored in cookies. Thanks to a related issue reported on the Devise issue tracker we could simplify the gem code a bit, so instead of serializing
Time objects we could work with numbers.
So, when updating your application to use the
:hybrid serializer, don't forget to do a double check of whatever kind of data the app stores in your users cookies and look for possible backwards incompatibility. And if you want to take a closer look on how this was implemented, be sure to check the related issues and pull requests on the Rails repo: #12881, #13692 and #13945.
Keeping up to date with the latest Rails changes
Following the activity on the Rails repository over GitHub helped a lot to understand better these features and the rationale behind their implementations, but going through all the commits and discussions on Issues and Pull Requests would demand a lot of your time. If you want some of the inside scoop but don't have that much time to go through the Rails activity over the week, Godfrey Chan has put up a weekly digest about Rails named This Week in Rails. I suggest that you subscribe to the list and even check some of the previous editions on the archive page.
Try it yourself!
Take some time and upgrade one of your Rails 4 apps and try out some of the new features! I bet that some of them will help you improve your codebase or make your coworkers life a bit easier, and we are eager to hear from your experience with the 4.1 release.
Tags: rails, rails 4.1, ruby
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We are glad to announce that Devise 3.1.0.rc is out. On this version, we have focused on some security enhancements regarding our defaults and the deprecation of
TokenAuthenticatable. This blog post explains the rationale behind those changes and how to upgrade.
Devise 3.1.0.rc runs on both Rails 3.2 and Rails 4.0. There is a TL;DR for upgrading at the end of this post.
Note: We have yanked 3.1.0.rc and released to 3.1.0.rc2 which fixes some regressions. Thanks everyone for trying out the release candidates!
Do not sign the user in after confirmation
In previous Devise versions, the user was automatically signed in after confirmation. This meant that anyone that could access the confirmation e-mail could sign into someone's account by simply clicking the link.
Automatically signing the user in could also be harmful in the e-mail reconfirmation workflow. Imagine that a user decides to change his e-mail address and, while doing so, he makes a typo on the new e-mail address. An e-mail will be sent to another address which, with the token in hands, would be able to sign in into that account.
If the user corrects the e-mail straight away, no harm will be done. But if not, someone else could sign into that account and the user would not know that it happened.
For this reason, Devise 3.1 no longer signs the user automatically in after confirmation. You can temporarily bring the old behavior back after upgrading by setting the following in your
config.allow_insecure_sign_in_after_confirmation = true
This option will be available only temporarily to aid migration.
Thanks to Andri Möll for reporting this issue.
Do not confirm account after password reset
In previous Devise versions, resetting the password automatically confirmed user accounts. This worked fine in previous Devise versions which confirmed the e-mail just on sign up, so the e-mail both confirmation and password reset tokens would be sent to were guaranteed to be the same. With the addition of reconfirmable, this setup change and Devise will no longer confirm the account after password reset.
Thanks to Andri Möll for reporting this issue and working with us on a fix.
CSRF on sign in
Devise's sign in page was vulnerable to CSRF attacks when used with the rememberable feature. Note that the CSRF vulnerability is restricted only to the sign in page, allowing an attacker to sign the user in an account controlled by the attacker. This vulnerability does not allow the attacker to access or change a user account in any way.
This issue is fixed on Devise 3.1.0 as well as 3.0.2 and 2.2.6. Users on previous Devise versions can patch their application by simply defining the following in their
def handle_unverified_request super Devise.mappings.each_key do |key| cookies.delete "remember_#{key}_token" end end
Thanks to Kevin Dew for reporting this issue and working with us on a fix.
Store digested tokens in the database
In previous versions, Devise stored the tokens for confirmation, reset password and unlock directly in the database. This meant that somebody with read access to the database could use such tokens to sign in as someone else by, for example, resetting their password.
In Devise 3.1, we store an encrypted token in the database and the actual token is sent only via e-mail to the user. This means that:
- Devise now requires a
config.secret_keyconfiguration. As soon as you boot your application under Devise 3.1, you will get an error with information about how to proceed;
- Every time the user asks a token to be resent, a new token will be generated;
- The Devise mailer now receives one extra token argument on each method. If you have customized the Devise mailer, you will have to update it. All mailers views also need to be updated to use
@token, as shown here, instead of getting the token directly from the resource;
- Any previously stored token in the database will no longer work unless you set
config.allow_insecure_token_lookup = truein your Devise initializer. We recomend users upgrading to set this option on production only for a couple days, allowing users that just requested a token to get their job done.
Thanks to Stephen Touset for reporting this issue and working with us on a solution.
Token Authenticatable
Jay Feldblum also wrote to us to let us know that our tokens lookup are also vulnerable to timing attacks. Although we haven't heard of any exploit via timing attacks on database tokens, there is a lot of research happening in this area and some attacks have been successful over the local network. For this reason, we have decided to protect applications using Devise from now on.
By digesting the confirmation, reset password and unlock tokens, as described in the previous section, we automatically protected those tokens from timing attacks.
However, we cannot digest the authentication token provided by
TokenAuthenticatable, as they are often part of APIs where the token is used many times. Since the usage of the authenticatable token can vary considerably in between applications, each requiring different safety guarantees, we have decided to remove
TokenAuthenticatable from Devise, allowing users to pick the best option. This gist describes two of the available solutions.
Thanks to Jay Feldblum for reporting this issue and working with us on a solution.
TL;DR for upgrading
As soon as you update Devise, you will get a warning asking you to set your
config.secret_key. By upgrading Devise, your previous confirmation, reset and unlock tokens in the database will no longer work unless you set the following option to true in your Devise initializer:
config.allow_insecure_token_lookup = true
It is recommended to leave this option on just for a couple days, just to allow recently generated tokens by your application to be consumed by users.
TokenAuthenticable has not been affected by those changes, however it has been deprecated and you will have to move to your own token authentication mechanisms.
Furthermore, the Devise mailer now receives an extra token argument on each method. If you have customized the Devise mailer, you will have to update it. All mailers views also need to be updated to use
@token, as shown here, instead of getting the token directly from the resource.
With those changes, we hope to provide an even more secure authentication solution for Rails developers, while maintaining the flexibility expected from Devise.
One more thing, we're writing a free ebook about Devise!
If you want to know more about Devise, we're writing a free ebook about it.
Fill in the form below so that we can send you updates with new chapters and beta releases.
Tags: devise, rails, security fix
Posted in English | 6 Comments »
Devise has been reported to be vulnerable to CSRF token fixation attacks.
The attack can only be exploited if the attacker can set the target session, either by subdomain cookies (similar to described here) or by fixation over the same Wi-Fi network. If the user knows the CSRF token, cross-site forgery requests can be made. More information can be found here.
Note Devise is not vulnerable to session fixation attacks (i.e. the user cannot steal another user session by fixating the session id).
Devise 3.0.1 and 2.2.5 have been released with fixes for the attack.
If you can't upgrade, you must protect your Devise application by adding the next three lines to a Rails initializer:
Warden::Manager.after_authentication do |record, warden, options| warden.request.session.try(:delete, :_csrf_token) end
Notice the code above and the updated Devise versions will clean up the CSRF Token after any authentication (sign in, sign up, reset password, etc). So if you are using AJAX for such features, you will need to fetch a new CSRF token from the server.
We want to thank Egor Homakov for reporting the issue and working with us on a fix.
Tags: devise, rails, security fix
Posted in English | Comments Off
Here at Plataformatec we use Github Pull Requests a lot for code review and this usually yields tons of constructive comments and excellent discussions from time to time. One of the recent topics was about whether we should use scopes or class methods throughout the project to be consistent. It's also not hard to find discussions about it all over the internet. The classic comment usually boils down to "there is no difference between them" or "it is a matter of taste". I tend to agree with both sentences, but I'd like to show some slight differences that exist between both.
Defining a scope
First of all, lets get a better understanding about how scopes are used. In Rails 3 you can define a scope in two ways:
class Post < ActiveRecord::Base scope :published, where(status: 'published') scope :draft, -> { where(status: 'draft') } end
The main difference between both usages is that the
:published condition is evaluated when the class is first loaded, whereas the
:draft one is lazy evaluated when it is called. Because of that, in Rails 4 the first way is going to be deprecated which means you will always need to declare scopes with a callable object as argument. This is to avoid issues when trying to declare a scope with some sort of Time argument:
class Post < ActiveRecord::Base scope :published_last_week, where('published_at >= ?', 1.week.ago) end
Because this won't work as expected:
1.week.ago will be evaluated when the class is loaded, not every time the scope is called.
Scopes are just class methods
Internally Active Record converts a scope into a class method. Conceptually, its simplified implementation in Rails master looks something like this:
def self.scope(name, body) singleton_class.send(:define_method, name, &body) end
Which ends up as a class method with the given name and body, like this:
def self.published where(status: 'published') end
And I think that's why most people think: "Why should I use a scope if it is just syntax sugar for a class method?". So here are some interesting examples for you to think about.
Scopes are always chainable
Lets use the following scenario: users will be able to filter posts by statuses, ordering by most recent updated ones. Simple enough, lets write scopes for that:
class Post < ActiveRecord::Base scope :by_status, -> status { where(status: status) } scope :recent, -> { order("posts.updated_at DESC") } end
And we can call them freely like this:
Post.by_status('published').recent # SELECT "posts".* FROM "posts" WHERE "posts"."status" = 'published' # ORDER BY posts.updated_at DESC
Or with a user provided param:
Post.by_status(params[:status]).recent # SELECT "posts".* FROM "posts" WHERE "posts"."status" = 'published' # ORDER BY posts.updated_at DESC
So far, so good. Now lets move them to class methods, just for the sake of comparing:
class Post < ActiveRecord::Base def self.by_status(status) where(status: status) end def self.recent order("posts.updated_at DESC") end end
Besides using a few extra lines, no big improvements. But now what happens if the
:status parameter is
nil or
Post.by_status(nil).recent # SELECT "posts".* FROM "posts" WHERE "posts"."status" IS NULL # ORDER BY posts.updated_at DESC Post.by_status('').recent # SELECT "posts".* FROM "posts" WHERE "posts"."status" = '' # ORDER BY posts.updated_at DESC
Oooops, I don't think we wanted to allow these queries, did we? With scopes, we can easily fix that by adding a presence condition to our scope:
scope :by_status, -> status { where(status: status) if status.present? }
There we go:
Post.by_status(nil).recent # SELECT "posts".* FROM "posts" ORDER BY posts.updated_at DESC Post.by_status('').recent # SELECT "posts".* FROM "posts" ORDER BY posts.updated_at DESC
Awesome. Now lets try to do the same with our beloved class method:
class Post < ActiveRecord::Base def self.by_status(status) where(status: status) if status.present? end end
Running this:
Post.by_status('').recent NoMethodError: undefined method `recent' for nil:NilClass
And :bomb:. The difference is that a scope will always return a relation, whereas our simple class method implementation will not. The class method should look like this instead:
def self.by_status(status) if status.present? where(status: status) else all end end
Notice that I'm returning
all for the
nil/blank case, which in Rails 4 returns a relation (it previously returned the Array of items from the database). In Rails 3.2.x, you should use
scoped there instead. And there we go:
Post.by_status('').recent # SELECT "posts".* FROM "posts" ORDER BY posts.updated_at DESC
So the advice here is: never return
nil from a class method that should work like a scope, otherwise you're breaking the chainability condition implied by scopes, that always return a relation.
Scopes are extensible
Lets get pagination as our next example and I'm going to use the kaminari gem as basis. The most important thing you need to do when paginating a collection is to tell which page you want to fetch:
After doing that you might want to say how many records per page you want:
And you may to know the total number of pages, or whether you are in the first or last page:
posts = Post.page(2) posts.total_pages # => 2 posts.first_page? # => false posts.last_page? # => true
This all makes sense when we call things in this order, but it doesn't make any sense to call these methods in a collection that is not paginated, does it? When you write scopes, you can add specific extensions that will only be available in your object if that scope is called. In case of kaminari, it only adds the
page scope to your Active Record models, and relies on the scope extensions feature to add all other functionality when
page is called. Conceptually, the code would look like this:
scope :page, -> num { # some limit + offset logic here for pagination } do def per(num) # more logic here end def total_pages # some more here end def first_page? # and a bit more end def last_page? # and so on end end
Scope extensions is a powerful and flexible technique to have in our toolchain. But of course, we can always go wild and get all that with class methods too:
def self.page(num) scope = # some limit + offset logic here for pagination scope.extend PaginationExtensions scope end module PaginationExtensions def per(num) # more logic here end def total_pages # some more here end def first_page? # and a bit more end def last_page? # and so on end end
It is a bit more verbose than using a scope, but it yields the same results. And the advice here is: pick what works better for you but make sure you know what the framework provides before reinventing the wheel.
Wrapping up
I personally tend to use scopes when the logic is very small, for simple where/order clauses, and class methods when it involves a bit more complexity, but whether it receives an argument or not doesn't really matter much to me. I also tend to rely more on scopes when doing extensions like showed here, since it's a feature that Active Record already gives us for free.
I think it's important to clarify the main differences between scopes and class methods, so that you can pick the right tool for the job™, or the tool that makes you more comfortable. Whether you use one or another, I don't think it really matters, as long as you write them clear and consistently throughout your application.
Do you have any thought about using scopes vs class methods? Make sure to leave a comment below telling us what you think, we'd love to hear.
Tags: activerecord, rails, rails 3.2, rails 4, scopes
Posted in English | 18 Comments »


text:
Full Review
Nicki Minaj recently released the visual to her song "Beez In The Trap" Ft. 2 Chainz. The track serves as a single off her new album, entitled Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded. Next week, the disc will debut at #1 and sell around 200-225k copies in the first week. The video was shot in Miami and directed by Benny Boom. Music mogul Birdman and A&R/Hypeman SB both made a cameo in the video, which features a lot of big booty females shaking their cakes. Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded available here.
Follow me @donbleek88


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Guilin Bravo Hotel
No availability found through our partners. Please contact the business directly or check some of our recommended alternatives.
How has this hotel rated in the past?
- Restaurant
- Swimming pool
- Room service
- Wheelchair accessibility
- Fitness/Health center
- Business Services
Travelers also recommend:
TravelPod Member ReviewsGuilin Bravo Hotel
Buffet breakfast was good, room very comfortable and staff pleasant. Lobby had a nice seating area. Would stay here again. Sorry we didn't have time to use the pool.
This review is the subjective opinion of a TravelPod member and not of TravelPod.com.
One of the better hotels we have had & the only one with a pool
This review is the subjective opinion of a TravelPod member and not of TravelPod.com.
The rooms are spacious and well appointed and the pool a good size and well tended. The staff are also friendly and generally attentive. However the hotel loses points for its food. The breakfast is ok but a bit limited but dinner was a major challenge. We put in a fairly simple order but it came so slowly the kids had finished before ours had even arrived. They were quite apologetic and gave us some fruit to compensate but overall they don't seem on the ball with the food.
This review is the subjective opinion of a TravelPod member and not of TravelPod.com.
This was a nice hotel at which to stay. The Staff were very good and many spoke English and appreciated our Mandarin. The rooms were well appointed and comfortable and the Hotel well placed in town to visit markets, shops, rivers and lakes. We had a great pizza here for dinner and very good cocktails. Hot breakfast was disappointingly cold. Otherwise a nice place to stay
This review is the subjective opinion of a TravelPod member and not of TravelPod.com.
A busy but pleasant hotel with good amenities although I can't think why they gave us a breakfast toekn for only 1 person when we had a double room (so we had to buy a breakfast). Quiet, nice morning view of lake and mountains.
This review is the subjective opinion of a TravelPod member and not of TravelPod.com.
TripAdvisor Reviews Guilin Bravo Hotel
Travel Blogs from Guilin
A day in the country
Starting our day at breakfast in Guilin. The hotel is great the only problem I can find is the shower water was only warm. So after a good breakfast we are off to see some of the country side & the terraced rice fields. More on that later.
Had to travel about 2.5hrs west of Guilin to visit the terrace rice fields. Was only about 85k but …
Snip, snip!
Day 30 - It's still raining today; cats and dogs! We don't really do a lot in the morning, the room is very comfortable and has a great view, but we do book the hotel in Shanghai. We did plan to go to the Reed Flute cave but we don't fancy a cave in this weather!
In the end we go out for a little walk and end up at the hairdressers as …
Guilin lakes
Day 29 - Today it's raining, a lot, it's the trail end of the typhoon that hit the Philippines. We nearly went to Hainan, off the southern tip of China in search for some sun and rest, I'm so glad we didn't, as they evacuated most people! We have a lazy morning and do a bit of planning; maybe go to Shanghai for a few days, a week in Hong Kong, two …
Relaxing by the pool
Day 28 - Today we decide to sit by the pool in the hotel in an attempt to relax, we don't really seem to fit much of that in. Also we are learning that doing big tourist attractions on the weekend is a no, no.
I'm struggling though, as my teeth are really beginning to hurt me, I'm quite upset about it, Mark is a massive comfort and …
Li river boat trip
Day 27 - Today we had an early start for our four hour Li river boat trip. The boat leaves from just outside Guilin and goes to Yangshuo. We booked onto a Chinese tour as it was a lot cheaper and we figured how important is the commentary, we can see it for ourselves. The bus picks us up and so far so good, we end up waiting for some very late …


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A blog for musicians and music industry people. It is a free educational resource and it is also the way I advertise my music consulting services. I am an entertainment professional with deep roots in the music industry. Throughout my music career I have been a major label A&R representative, a music supervisor, an artist manager, a reality show producer, a bass player and the head of a digital record label.
Posts Tagged 'performing rights organization'
British Music Industry, Fair Trade Music and Music Composer News June 9, 2013
Industry experts discussed whether or not popularity of British music is declining worldwide. And a new global support organization for music creators that want to better understand the music business launched. Also, a new study showed that the total income of music composers has actually gone up in the Digital Age.
Brit-pop: In Decline?
Music fans' tastes are becoming more globally diverse as they turn to local music and music produced in their home countries, according to the results of a recent study reported by the Daily Mail and published in the Economic Journal. The percentage of the pop music charts occupied by British artists has been in decline since The Beatles and the Rolling Stones dominated during the British Invasion of the 1960s.
Joel Waldfogel, a professor at Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota and his co-author Fernando Ferreira analyzed data from charts in 22 countries during 2001 and 2007 – representing 98 percent of the total music market. They discovered that Britain still has a strong presence on the charts, fans have begun to gravitate towards more of their own domestic artists.
The project examined 23,000 artists and showed that in the 1960s, 30 percent of charting music was British. While British music received a boost in the 1980s thanks to Duran Duran and Wham!, its popularity has dropped overall. Dido and Robbie Williams were the only two recent British artists that made it to the elite list of chart toppers.
Waldfogel and Ferreira found that American music has definitely grown in the 21st Century, but the Internet has been a huge help to musicians in small countries. American music now comprises 60 percent of the charts, going up from 40 percent in the mid-80s. And of the 31 artists that showed up on the charts of 18 countries simultaneously for at least one year between 2001 and 2007, 23 – such as the Backstreet Boys, Christina Aguilera, Eminem and Jennifer Lopez – were from the U.S.
The "superstars" list consists largely of American artists. But this economic project showed that fans have also been buying a lot of music by stars within their hometowns and indigenous countries. In the 1980s, half of music was bought by domestic artists; by 2007, that number rose to 70 percent. This increase can be attributed largely to MTV and the Internet, which together helped get exposure for smaller artists.
Waldfogel and Ferreira stated, "Some smaller countries actually benefit substantially in this global market, as they are able to achieve market shares that are sometimes two or three times larger than the relative sizes of their economies … Moreover, new technologies that lower trade costs do not appear to have a destructive effect on local production and consumption of music."
Waldfogel added that while many see MTV and the Internet as saturating the music industry and "killing diversity," the Internet has actually had the opposite effect: "Overall, our findings suggest that concern about cultural domination by large economies – particularly the US – may be misplaced for music."
The study did offer some more good news for the British music economy: The UK is one of only six countries with a music industry share that is greater than its GDP share, along with Sweden, New Zealand, the U.S., Finland and Canada. British music sales were 52-percent higher than its GDP share.
An article late last week on Billboard.biz confirmed Britain's continued high music industry share and gave a first look into what new digital technologies are doing for artists worldwide. In 2012, One Direction and Adele pushed British artists towards a record album sale share of 13.3 percent, the highest ever recorded. The BPI described the surge as "something of an invasion and noted that one in seven of artist albums sold last year were by musicians from the UK. The only artist to interrupt a British world's top-selling album in the past six years was Eminem, with 2010's Recovery.
BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor said that music is "fundamental to Britain's identity as a nation" and added, "As music goes digital, Britain has the potential to be even more successful, connecting instantly with fans who love our music wherever they may live. The time is right for government to back innovative businesses like music that can lead the economy back to growth."
Brand New Fair Trade Music Network Launched
The music industry made history last week when more than 25,000 songwriters and composers from 50 countries in Europe, North America, South America and Africa formed the Fair Trade Music Network, a new independent support group for music creators. A press release on Businesswire reported, "its immediate goal will be the championing of a set of Fair Trade Music Principles designed to ensure transparency, fair compensation, and autonomy for music creators in an increasingly complex and non-transparent music business landscape.
Founders call the group a "network of independent alliances," and it will not only act as an advocate for music creators, but also provide a set of resources about international legal and business information that affects songwriters and composers. Founding members include the European Composer and Songwriter Alliance (ECSA), Music Creators North America (MCNA), the International Council of Creators of Music (CIAM), the Pan African Composers and Songwriters Alliance (PACSA) and the Alliance of Latin American Creators of Music (ALCAM).
The group's first project will be the Fair Trade Music initiative, about which the group released the following statement: "… more than any other sector of the music community, the songwriter and composer community has been hit the hardest by the catastrophic losses that have financially decimated the music industry since the beginning of the 21st Century. Our Network recognizes the drastic need for music creators to independently analyze the reasons for these devastating setbacks, devise solutions that benefit creators as the bedrock of the music industry, and advocate for the implementation of those solutions with our own voices. The initial result of this process has been the formulation of the Fair Trade Music Principles, which provide a framework for ensuring that music creators can survive and flourish in the future, to the benefit of individual songwriters and composers, consumers, and culture in general. It is those principles that we have come together to champion."
Principles of the organization include fair compensation, transparency, recapture of rights, the right of musicians to form independent music creator organizations and freedom of speech. The Network has already started to develop activities that will help it promote these principles, including advocacy in favor of a system of "exclusive assignment" of performing rights in musical works to PROs outside of the U.S., opposition to non-transparent, direct performing rights licensing agreements currently being exercised in the U.S. and support for stronger and more creative approaches to tackling piracy.
Alfons Karabuda of ECSA, Rick Carnes of the Songwriters Guild of America and MCNA, Eddie Schwartz of the Songwriters Association of Canada and MCNA and Lorenzo Ferrero of CIAM talked about the historic foundation of the new Network: "Only a unified global music creator community can meet the challenges of survival in a fully internationalized music industry. It took many decades to accomplish the enormous task of organizing such a diverse geographic Network, but now having done so, we have embarked on a new course designed to ensure that the voice of the music creator is heard on every issue, loud and clear, throughout the world. We think for ourselves. We act for ourselves. And we speak for ourselves. We have many partners and allies, but ultimately, we take responsibility for our own futures. That is the new narrative, and it will be pursued in our own voice."
Artist Incomes Up in the Digital Age
A new study indicates that the net incomes of music composers have actually gone up in the last 15 years, in spite of the challenges attached to file sharing, announced Peter Suciu of redOrbit.com.
Music downloading has been a hot-button issue that has led to lawsuits, including Metallica's attack of Napster in 2000, which had them alleging that Napster was committing copyright infringement and violating the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). Of course, the lawsuit led to Napster's demise and forced music tech companies to rethink the business models for their music downloading and sharing services, which led to iTunes and the newest music streaming services, all of which have actually helped increase revenues.
The above are some of the discoveries within the doctoral thesis "Nothing New under the Sun – Essays on the Economic History of Intellectual Property Rights in Music." The thesis comes from the School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg and reveals how the total incomes of composers within the music business have increased in the past 15 years.
Study author and researcher Staffan Albinsson said, "In 2011 their income from music streaming increased by 70 percent from the year before, and today downloads are generating more income than CD sales."
Research focused on Swedish stats from 1980-2009 and found that the music industry has definitely lost revenue courtesy of illegal downloading. But composers of the music have also seen great increases in their income during the same time period thanks to substantially-higher revenues from concerts, radio and TV. And these revenues have experienced even more explosive growth since 2010.
Spotify and other streaming music inventions have made a huge impact: "The consumer can access a lot of material without breaking the law, and the rights holders are getting paid. There is no need for a discussion until next time new technology is introduced."
Albinsson also found that new technology has historically not been embraced by the music industry when it is first introduced, which almost always has claimed that technology will lead to lost revenue. The printing press, the gramophone, radio and cassette tapes all caused debate about intellectual property rights when they were first released.
Albinsson does hope that intellectual property laws will continue to get scrutinized in order to improve the landscape for music creators and fans: "I'm convinced that different forms of intellectual property rights have different qualitative implications … The most illegally downloaded music is probably also the most expensive music to produce, and if the high costs cannot be recovered, this music won't be there to enjoy."
Major Label Lawsuits, SESAC and Columbia Records News, March 4, 2012
Lawsuits took center stage last week in the music industry as an audit shed light on the problems major labels are facing, and performing rights organization SESAC struggled with an anti-trust lawsuit. Also, the co-chairmen of Columbia Records talked to the Los Angeles Times about the secrets to their label's success.
What is at Stake for Major Record Labels?
The music industry has been buzzing with lawsuits stating that major labels have been substantially under-paying digital royalties to artists including Kenny Rogers, Sister Sledge and Rob Zombie. These artists have continued to claim that this has happened because music companies have been falsely identifying online music purchases as "sales" – which bring artists only 10-20 percent of total revenue – instead of "licenses" – which are supposed to give them 50 percent.
Up to this point, the courts have had no answers for either artists or labels about how to prevent this miscalculation of revenue from happening and what fair distribution of profit should be. But solutions could be coming as soon as April, according to an article in The Hollywood Reporter.
In 2010, a groundbreaking case was filed by Eminem's producers, FBT Productions against Aftermath Records, a subsidiary of Universal Music Group that first introduced this problem to the public. (And we got the inside scoop on this case last summer on the Musician Coaching site from entertainment lawyer Patti Jones, Esq.) An audit report leaked to The Hollywood Reporter, that was prepared by the plaintiff's accountant and will be critical to the appeal case – a jury trial – when it begins on April 4, showed that millions of dollars that should have gone to FBT have been claimed by Aftermath already. It also provides insight into the many other methods record labels use to keep income from their artists, including exaggerating the costs associated with TV advertising.
The audit report covered the period between July 1, 2005 and December 31, 2009, the time period when iTunes first became a major source of income for the industry. It showed $3,810,256 in licensing fees were lost by the artist and his production team. Aside from digital income, the audit also explored underreported income in other areas, including vinyl sales of more than four of Eminem's albums, units sold at U.S. military bases, proceeds from litigation wins against Kazaa Napster and YouTube and royalty miscalculations on tracks that used samples or contributions from other artists. And Aftermath also allegedly kept $2 million in order to pay for legal costs attached to the upcoming trial during that 2005-2009 period. Audits have also been prepared for the years 2002-2005 and 2010-2011.
U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez responded to the original case in October stating that the 50-percent royalty amount was just an amount applied to the general issue of how to handle digital income that did not apply across the board and had to be determined on a case-by-case basis. He said, "The 9th Circuit only determined that the Masters Licensed provision dictates the royalty rate for proceeds from permanent downloads and mastertones. Under the Masters Licensed provision, FBT and Eminem are generally due royalties of 50 percent. It remains to be determined what figure that 50 percent is applied to." Gutierrez added that the language of the agreement regarding medium and container deductions was ambiguous, but that there was evidence that record labels knew it could only be applied to audio tapes and CDs, not digital downloads.
The judge ruled in the original case in favor of the record label in one area – Eminem's side projects. He stated that these should not be included in the 50-percent royalty calculation rate. However, Aftermath now wants the judge to reject the audit report in the upcoming trial.
Regardless of the outcome of the case, it does provide proof that millions of dollars could be at stake for just one artist. And hundreds of millions of dollars are likely to be at stake across the entire label system when all the other artists missing digital royalties are considered.
Sale of SESAC Hindered by Anti-Trust Suit
An anti-trust lawsuit filed against Nashville-based performing rights organization (PRO) SESAC continues to inhibit its sale, according to the New York Post. Owners – including investment bank Allen & Co. and hedge fund Och-Ziff – hired Goldman Sachs to shop it for $500 million in mid February.
The anti-trust suit was filed against SESAC by over 1,000 television broadcasters who license songs for jingles and theme songs in a Manhattan federal court in November 2009 and alleged that SESAC was practicing anti-competitive tactics. The broadcasters claim that SESAC continues to enforce a blanket annual fee for all its music, which makes the process of negotiating with individual artists for song rights difficult. They also claim that SESAC charges much higher fees than other PROs – BMI and ASCAP.
SESAC, the only for-profit PRO defended itself stating that it could not gain monopoly power because it is much smaller than the other PROs. The company attempted unsuccessfully to get the suit dismissed and has failed to get parties to reach a settlement.
A prospective buyer stated that the suit was "troubling" and could definitely break SESAC's business model if lost. The source added, "Part of SESAC's sales pitch is that they have a lot more flexibility on pricing [than competitors]."
Another potential buyer stated that the sales book did not make reference to the law suit, though the company has been openly discussing the issue in sales meetings. SESAC has not issued an official statement.
Co-Chairmen, on the Secret of Columbia Records' Success
Rob Stringer and Steve Barnett, co-chairmen of Columbia Records have attributed the success of the label to their dedication to collaborative decision making, said a piece in the Los Angeles Times published on March 2.
Of course, their success has also been bolstered by its artists, which include Adele. The Grammy winner's album 21 has spent 22 non-consecutive weeks at #1 on the Billboard 200 list. It has also sold 7.6 million units, and has helped bring Columbia to the point where it represents almost 10% of sales of all current releases in the U.S., according to a recent Nielsen SoundScan report, figures which have brought it from fourth to first place in the past year.
Adele herself said it was CEO Stringer and COO Barnett and their passion for music that drew her to Columbia: "They're still huge fans of music. I haven't met many record company execs of huge labels who still feel like that."
Headquartered in New York but born in England, the executives insist on making all decisions for the label together, speaking nearly 40 times per day. And like an old married couple, they have been known to complete each others' sentences. Stringer said, "I know it sounds like some bloody Disney thing, but we don't argue."
Barnett moved to the U.S. in 1986, and came to Columbia in 2005 from Epic Records, a subsidiary of Sony. Nine months later, Stringer –who is the younger brother of Sony president and CEO Howard Stringer – came on board after relocating from London, where he ran Sony Music for Britain and Ireland, where he worked for 20 years.
And Columbia has been thriving. The music industry had its first positive sales year in 2011. While many other long-standing record companies are losing artists and fading into obscurity, Stringer and Barnett have been able to resign legendary artists such as Barbra Streisand and have also add new artists like Foster the People, the Shins and Jack White. Columbia has been around for 125 years, and has 94 artists such as Tony Bennett, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Diamond and Beyonce.
Stringer and Barnett admitted that they had a difficult time rejuvenating the label when they first arrived. Barnett dropped Jonas Brothers, Katy Perry and several acts that went onto become platinum artists at major labels. But they decided to start again, because, as Stringer said, "I thought we needed a revolution." They managed to attract major producer Rick Rubin as the label's "creative guru," who was co-chairman of the label as it was restructured until 2011 and produced five tracks for 21.
Stringer and Barnett also branched out into television, which helped Columbia advance even further. In 2007, they joined forces with Nickelodeon to co-produce tween shows Victorious and Big Time Rush alongside companion albums. And in 2009, when Barnett showed him a scene from an upcoming TV series Glee, Stringer flewto L.A. and met with the show's co-creator. Every Tuesday, Columbia puts songs from the each new episode on iTunes and releases Glee compilations. The label has sold 6.9 million of these albums and over 33 million song downloads. The co-chairmen intend to launch a similar campaign with NBC's new show Smash.
And Columbia has also branched out into branding, attaching itself to Wal-Mart – which sold 784,000 copies of the 2008 AC/DC record Black Ice in the first week. Columbia also attached to QVC with Susan Boyle, who sold 36,000 albums on the channel in the first 13 minutes.
Ian Montone – owner of the company that manages artists including Jack White and Foster the People – said the label succeeds because of its flexibility and artist friendliness. Columbia let White keep his masters and use his own label, Third Man, in partnership with Columbia to manage a release: "They don't get too penned in to any one structure … If there's an artist they want, they will make it happen."
Stringer and Barnett are currently working hard on Columbia's 125th anniversary. The celebration will last one year, starting in the Fall with the coffee table book 360 Sound: The Columbia Records Story." The deluxe version will provide the stories of 263 important releases, including John Philip Sousa's "Washington Post March" and will also have a USB flash drive of all the songs.
What is SoundExchange and why you should care
Neeta Ragoowansi is the Director of Artist-Label Relations for SoundExchange. She is also an attorney, a keyboard player and the singer for an eight piece group called the Oxymorons. Her experience as a musician, as the Assistant General Counsel for the Kennedy Center and The National Symphony Orchestra and as an advocate in the music industry were what landed her in her current position. She explains her job educating and helping to find the thousands of artists and labels that are owed SoundExchange royalties
Music Consultant:
Tell me how SoundExchange differs from the other Performance Rights Organizations (PROs) like ASCAP, BMI and SESAC.
We are a performance rights organization, but we represent the performers and recording artists- that is, we protect the performers who go into the studio and put down the sounds- instruments or voice – onto a track. ASCAP, BMI and SESAC collect for songwriters and composer of the underlying musical work – the notes and lyrics on paper. So if you're a songwriter or composer, sign-up with one of those. If you're a recording artist, and put your talent down in a sound recording, sign up with SoundExchange. You can be a member of one of the three songwriter PROs AND SoundExchange – and you probably should be. It's in no way a conflict. PROs help to collect and distribute the royalties that accrue when others publicly perform your copyrighted work. When you talk about music, you have two copyrights involved: the songwriter's right to the music and lyrics on the page, and the musician or artist's right to the sounds on a track – they may be the same person, but there are still two different rights. SoundExchange is the PRO that administrates the rights that come under the public performance of the sound recording. 50% of the royalty on each track goes to the performers or artists on the sound recording – 45% to the main recording artist and 5% to the session musicians and back up singers on that track, through RARoyalties.org. The other 50% of the royalties on each track goes to the owner of the master recording, which might be a record label or an independent musician.
Music Consultant:
Does SoundExchange cover all different kinds of mediums, or are there specific types of mediums that you cover?
SoundExchange collects royalties when sound recordings are used on satellite radio (like SIRIUS-XM) , Internet radio (like Pandora), on cable TV music channels, and certain other streaming services. SoundExchange DOES NOT collect for digital downloads (like iTunes or "podcasting") or "on-demand" and "interactive" services like YouTube or MySpace, where a user can select and immediately play the song she wants to hear. SoundExchange also does not collect for the streaming of any audiovisual work, including music videos. We also don't collect for sound recordings used on radio, because radio doesn't pay artists for using their work – yet.
SoundExchange is hoping that will change, and we've teamed up with lots of organizations and artist advocates to support a bill in Congress called the Performance Rights Act (PRA). If it passes, PRA would mean that for the first time, corporate radio would have to start paying a royalty to artists and labels for the use of their sound recordings. Radio makes almost fifteen billion dollars a year in ad revenue from music stations alone, and they don't share any of it with the artists who create the music. They do pay composers and publishers via ASCAP, BMI and SESAC; but because of a loophole in copyright law, the creators and copyright owners of the sound recordings are not getting paid. In the rest of the world, almost every single country pays their artists this way – the US's only company on this is China, Rwanda, North Korea, Iran. That's not good company to be in which it comes to protecting rights. Using an artist's work to make money and not paying them a royalty is just wrong. We're trying to get that loophole changed, so artists and rights owners can be paid fairly.
Music Consultant:
There was no SoundExchange until ten years ago?
SoundExchange began in 2000, and became an independent nonprofit in 2003. Legislation passed in 1995 (The Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings Act of 1995) and in 1998 (The Digital Millennium Copyright Act) finally recognized the rights of artists and copyright holders to be compensated when others use their work, and the laws set up a stream of royalties for the recording artist and sound recording copyright owner. After some negotiations to decide what those royalties would look like, SoundExchange started collecting, and made its first distribution in 2001. We distributed $4 million that year. In 2009 we distributed $147 million.
Music Consultant:
There's a ton of money that's unclaimed by artists. Can you estimate how much outstanding money is owed?
There are millions of dollars owed to thousands of recording artists who've not yet registered with SoundExchange. Because SoundExchange and the performance right are relatively young, a lot of artists don't know they're owed this money, or they just haven't signed the forms. Remember, unlike ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC, who collect only for their members, SoundExchange collects royalties for everyone who's getting played, whether they've ever heard of us or not. Then we have to try to track down those artists and rights holders and get them to register so we know where to send the check. We regularly partner with industry associations, services and companies like ReverbNation, CD Baby, iLike, Sonicbids, The Blues Foundation, The Folk Alliance, The Vocal Group Hall of Fame and lots of others, to help get the word out about this right and these royalties. We match their member lists against the lists of artists we have money for, and then have them send an e-mail or a letter to that unclaimed recording artist and/or indie record label. In 2009 alone, we notified more than 15,000 artists, owed more than $9 million in all. If you think there's even a chance you might be owed money, register at SoundExchange.com. It's always 100% free.
Music Consultant:
So, a lot of your job right now is just an awareness campaign.
Yes, it's a huge awareness and marketing campaign and it's mostly about educating – outreach and education. Through conference panel, doing things exactly like this interview, talking one-on-one to artists at festivals, and making sure we get the word out every way we can. Maybe finally getting paid for their work just sounds too good to be true – sometimes artists think we're an email scam. We find that even when artists have received emails from trusted sources (like their manager, their booking service, whatever) saying, "Hey, SoundExchange has money for you," they don't always believe it or do anything about it. But then they go to CMJ as a showcasing artist, for example, and get an email from CMJ saying we have money for them, and see our trade booth and see a poster with their name on it, that they finally remember the name SoundExchange and realize that this really means money for them. Sometimes it takes 3 and 4 and 5 contacts before people recognize that SoundExchange is legit, and sometimes a few more before they fill out the forms. People are just naturally skeptical, and this sounds like 'free money,' so it must be too good to be true. But it's not 'free money' – it's better – it's money they've already earned. All an artist has to do is register with SoundExchange, and they can get paid when they get played.
Music Consultant:
At what point would you sign up for SoundExchange as an artist?
When you go into the studio to record and you come out with a recording that you release. As soon as you start sending out your recordings, you should sign up with SoundExchange. But I tell artists, anyone that's even planning to do a recording, should go ahead and register. It usually only takes 10 to 20 minutes, and it's free. We just need to know you exist, where you are and where we would properly send a check. In terms of recording artists, anyone that is a member of a band or featured artist in general should register with SoundExchange. There are certain housekeeping things that a musician needs to do and registering with SoundExchange is definitely one of them!
Music Consultant:
Is there any pre-requisite to sign up?
NR: There is no prerequisite other than that you are a performer on a commercially released sound recording and/or you're the owner of the sound recording copyright (sessions musicians and back up singers on sound recordings are entitled to a royalty as well and they should go to www.raroyalties.org to claim theirs). The copyright in the sound recording is automatic, as soon as the original creative work (like the sounds made on your instrument) is fixed to a tangible medium (a CD, a digital track, MP3). You don't have to go to the Copyright Office and register in order to claim royalties from SoundExchange.
Music Consultant: Where does this money come from?
At SoundExchange we administer the public performance royalty that derives from the non-interactive, digital transmissions of commercially released sound recordings. So when a streaming service like the ones we talked about before use a track, it generates a small royalty. At the end of the month, those services that use your track total up all the royalties they owe, and give that money to SoundExchange. They are also required to provide us with reports of use (playlists in a sense) so we know what they've played, and how to divide up that lump payment. This is very different from what's happened historically with other performance rights organizations, where they tend to pay out based on sample data – a few weeks a year to represent all of what they play. SoundExchange strives to get what's called census data – that is, the exact tracks they are playing, every time they play them. That's the fairest way to pay, and so far, 95% of the royalties SoundExchange distributes have this track-level census data. How much each service pays for a track is determined by the kind of service they are, and how many listeners hear the track, under rules set by the Copyright Royalty Board at the Library of Congress. For the most part, artists get paid more the more people hear their tracks. So if you can get played on more stations, to more people, or even on SIRIUS-XM, or cable TV music channels (not the video channels, but the high-numbered radio-like channels), you'll get paid more.
Music Consultant:
Do you have any general advice for artists?
Know all the places you can generate income from, know about all the special payment funds available to you out there, know your licensing rights/copyrights and educate yourself. Knowing licensing is the number one thing that artists can do for themselves. If you're going to make a living, you have to know the income you can generate from various sources. Once you send a creation out into the world, it generates different streams of revenue – but it's your responsibility to make sure they lead back to you. So, keep creating, know your licensing, go collect on that licensing and push your stuff out there in areas where you're going to see income, such as the digital streaming of your music and recordings. And register with SoundExchange, so you can get paid when you get played!
Check out Soundexchange


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the way he's proud enough to show this
the way he's proud enough to show this
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drool, drool, drool!
God your so handsome.
- Lana del Rey
Ratty Matty <3
Blake: Give me one kiss and I'll leave you alone.
Adam: He's so strong! [x]
Adam is adorable!
Adam, Adam, Adam!
Adam Levine is beautiful!


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نحن نعيش على أمل الغد والغد لا يجد لنفسه أمل لنا فيه...
I don't know what maight have happened to you,but don't forget that "Where there's life there's hope"
So never say die and do your best to make a better and happy life.We both know that "Where there's a will there's a way".I have many problems in my persoanl life,but that's not a good reason to lose my hope.We should fight against them and not give ourselves up!The problems are for making us powerful.I have text which is worth reading,If you have email I can send it to you?I think It can be of some help to you.
thnx :)
yeah i guess having kids maybe the answer lol but i really need something .
اعتقد ان الحاغز ينقص بعض الاشخاص في الحياه :(
I can't read Arabic,so I don't understand your real problem!Can you write in English?
Jesus Christ gives me HOPE! He will give you hope too if you want it. :)
Jesus said to him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. John 14:6
"And now, Lord, what do I wait for?My hope is in You."Psalm 39:7
"Every word of God is flawless; he is a shield to those who take refuge in Him. Do not add to his words, or he will rebuke you and prove you a liar."
Proverbs 30:5-6
thnx lizy :)
رحيم الله قال شيخ محمد العييني
و أن يجعلك ممن إذا أعطي شكر, وإذا ابتلي صبر, وإذا أذنب استغفر, فإن هذه الثلاث عنوان السعادة.
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