text:
"I heard a rustling in a tree near, and, looking up, saw a large red-haired animal moving slowly along, hanging from the branches by its arms. It passed on from tree to tree until it was lost in the jungle, which was so swampy that I could not follow it."
These are the words of the great naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace, describing how he caught sight of his very first orangutan. Around two weeks later, Wallace found his second individual and, as you would expect for a 19^th century British explorer, he shot it dead. During his fifteen-month stay in Borneo, Wallace 'collected' a further 28 orangutans and his tales of slaughter and science are vividly described in his famous tome, The Malay Archipelago (immortalised here by Google). Wallace wasn't the only explorer to shoot his way through Borneo's orangutan population. Odoardo Beccari shot or saw at least 26 individuals in just over 5 weeks, while Emil Selenka collected around four hundred specimens over four years. All of these records attest to the fact that orangutans were relatively common in the late 19^th century, such that zealous Europeans had no problems in finding them. The same can't be said now. Field scientists working in Borneo rarely see a wild orangutan and when they do, they're usually alone or in very small groups. You can travel down the very rivers where naturalists once described seeing orangutans many times in the same day, and find only nests. Today, we might raise an eyebrow at the trigger-happy antics of Wallace and his contemporaries but, at the very least, they carefully documented what they did. And those tales, together with museum collections, have allowed Erik Meijaard from The Nature Conservancy in Indonesia to reconstruct the history of the Bornean orangutan since the 19^th century. Meijaard studied records from 59 Bornean expeditions and found that the odds of encountering an orangutan on any given day have fallen by 6 times in the last 150 years. This downward trend stayed the same even after Meijaard accounted for the fact that expeditions have become shorter and involve fewer people. In Wallace's time, explorers relied on the skills of local trackers to find orangutans and the focus was very much on these prized animals. Today, scientists often survey orangutan populations by looking for their nests instead. However, when Meijaard only looked at expeditions that specifically set out to count as many orangutans as possible, he still found a sizeable drop between historic rates and modern ones. Finally, it's possible that orangutans have learned to avoid people because of the likelihood of getting shot by an intrepid European. Wallace's accounts certainly suggest a less cautious attitude than one might expect. But Meijaard argues that orangutans, being largely solitary animals, have little opportunity to learn from the death of other group members. Nor would they learn from individuals who escaped 19^th century rifles, for very few did - these slow-moving and large apes were easily shot once spotted. So a more elusive temperament might contribute to the rarity of modern orangutans, but Meijaard thinks that it can't fully explain it. With all these possibilities considered and potentially ruled out, the most likely explanation for the downward trend is that it's real: the ape's population has actually declined. The genes of the surviving individuals support this conclusion. The genetic similarities between orangutans from the Bornean state of Sabah suggest that the population has fallen by around 10 times in the last one or two centuries. The big question is: why? Surprisingly, it seems that deforestation hasn't played a big role. It's true that logging threatens the safety of orangutans today, but the decline in orangutan numbers was well underway some 120 years before logging kicked off. This industry really intensified during the 1960s and 1970s and during that time, orangutans didn't suddenly become harder to see. Disease is another possibility, but one with little evidence to back it up. For Meijaard, one explanation remains – hunting. Orangutans give birth to relatively few young and they have large generation gaps. As such, the adult population takes a long time to replenish. Even before Wallace and his chums arrived in Borneo, orangutans had already been severely hunted by nomadic humans, and been driven to extinction in some parts of Indonesia. Thousands of buried teeth in Borneo and Sumatra harken back to a time when these apes were hunted as commonly as wild pigs. Once Europeans came on the scene, they weren't just killed for food any more, but for scientific study, trophies, and the pet trade, while locals continued to kill them for traditional medicine, or as agricultural pests. Ironically, the colonial ban on head-hunting in Sabah may have made matters worse. By suddenly making large tracts of the jungle safe to travel in, the end of head-hunting tribes allowed Western hunters to spread to the jungle, shooting as they went. Meijaard doesn't think that his study is the final word on orangutan populations. In fact, he openly wishes that he had better data to work on and hopes that other scientists will take up the challenge. But he says that studies like these are important because they conservationists a better understanding of the real challenges facing a threatened species. To work out how humans have affected a particular species, you need to know how that creature was faring before we came along. But usually, scientists assess the health of a species after a long period of exploitation and they end up using a baseline that has already been shifted. The result is what Meijaard describes as "historic amnesia". This is certainly the case for orangutans – it's often said that this red ape has a low population density, even in parts of the forest that haven't been disturbed by logging. The common wisdom says that the orangutan depends on fruit that is sparsely distributed, so a given patch of jungle can only hold so many individuals. This new study suggests that this isn't true. This has the potential to change not only our approach to orangutan conservation, but our understanding of their behaviour. Modern individuals are operating at much lower densities than their ancestors used to, and we need to bear that in mind when interpreting the way they act. How differently would they behave if 6 times as many orangutans lived in the same patch of forest? Reference: PLoS ONE http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0012042More on orangutans:
Orang-utan study suggests that upright walking may have started in the trees
Scientists tickle apes to reveal evolutionary origins of human laughter
If the citation link isn't working, read why here


text:
5 Centimeters per Second (Dub)
Type: Movie
Plot Summary: Tohno Takaki and Shinohara Akari, two very close friends and classmates, are torn apart when Akari's family is transferred to another region of Japan due to her family's job. Despite separation, they continue to keep in touch through mail. When Takaki finds out that his family is also moving, he decides to meet with Akari one last time. As years pass by, they continue down their own paths, their distance slowly growing wider and their contact with one another fades. Yet, they keep remembering one another and the times they have shared together, wondering if they will have the chance to meet once again.
Genre: Drama, Romance, Slice of Life
Released: 2007
Status: Completed
Other name: Byousoku 5 Centimeter, Five Centimeters Per Second, Byousoku 5 Centimeter - a chain of short stories about their distance, 5 Centimetres Per Second, 5 cm per second, 秒速5センチメートル

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Wind River Introduces Software for Rapid Development of Android In-Vehicle Infotainment Systems
- Wind River delivers Android expertise and technologies with specialized software finely tuned for automotive industry needs.
- New automotive software enables developers to quickly integrate complex Android capabilities such as rich multimedia experiences.
- Wind River's series of Android software offerings jumpstart development of Android-based devices and reduce cost and engineering effort.
As consumer electronics and automotive worlds continue to blend, the role of software is becoming increasingly more important. The auto industry is racing to offer sophisticated IVI features but often don't possess the embedded device software expertise and need additional assistance from domain experts, as in the case of Android. Also, properly integrating cutting edge software in advanced IVI systems with the complex automotive environment presents additional challenges.
"Android's capability for rapid innovation has made it a popular platform option for many industries such as automotive. Consumers increasingly expect connectivity and rich user experiences regardless of where they are, including in the car," said Chris Buerger, senior director of product management at Wind River. "Wind River helps customers overcome the complexities of bringing Android into an automotive environment and rapidly develop devices that deliver a rich, connected experience. Wind River has the ideal mix of decades of embedded device experience, successful Android technologies and deep vertical industry knowledge and relationships."
Key features of Wind River Solution Accelerator for Android, Automotive include enablement of iPod/iPhone/iPad docking for rich multimedia capabilities, a customizable user interface that can be modified by the consumer, and FM radio capabilities.
Wind River also delivers expert software and systems integration services to support customers in their various programs. Wind River's professional services provide a vast array of additional automotive capabilities and technologies such as hyperboot to reduce boot time of an IVI system, firmware management delivering updates to Android devices supporting both online and offline update methods and Bluetooth IVI extensions to control personal phones via the in-vehicle center console.
The Wind River Solution Accelerator for Android portfolio of software offers developers a catalog of validated applications and middleware components from which they can pick and choose software elements to fill gaps in expertise and immediately integrate complex, differentiating features. By combining Wind River Solution Accelerators for Android with Wind River support and expert custom engineering services, customers can equip themselves with a high level of flexibility, choice and commercial Android expertise as they create Android-based products optimized for their market specific needs. The addition of the automotive software builds on Wind River's efforts to develop Android components to serve specialized technology and vertical market needs.
For more information about Wind River Solution Accelerator for Android, Automotive, visit http://www.windriver.com/products/mobile/solution-accelerator-automotive/. Wind River Solution Accelerator for Android, Automotive expands on Wind River's existing automotive software portfolio, which includes its GENIVI-compliant IVI platform for infotainment.
Wind River's automotive expertise covers a variety of technologies, including GENIVI, Android and other Linux-based platforms, VxWorks, Hypervisor, and Compiler, enabling it to comprehensively support the auto industry in virtually any project. A founding member of the GENIVI Alliance, Wind River plays a vital role in this consortium and more than two-thirds of the GENIVI Alliance's OEM and Tier 1 members, including Magneti Marelli, are customers of Wind River technologies and services. For more information on the GENIVI Alliance and its compliance program, visit http://www.genivi.org/compliant-products.
Additional information about Wind River's Android solutions is available at http://www.windriver.com/products/mobile/. Wind River possesses extensive Android expertise, recently working with major global players such as Clarion, Samsung, and Fujitsu on a wide range of Android implementations. Wind River offers a diverse portfolio of Android solutions and global support and services, including highly complex customization and optimization work.
About Wind River
Wind River, a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC), is a world leader in embedded and mobile software. Wind River has been pioneering computing inside embedded devices since 1981 and its technology is found in more than 1 billion products. Wind River is headquartered in Alameda, Calif., with offices in more than 20 countries. To learn more, visit Wind River at www.windriver.com or on Facebook.
Wind River is a trademark or registered trademark of Wind River Systems, Inc. and its affiliates. Other names may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
Contact Information
Jessica Miller
Global Corporate Communications


text:
Great news! Debian has been accepted into the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) program this year for the seventh time.
Now we are looking for students to work this summer with us in one
of our exciting
projects. If you are
interested, now would be a good time to get in touch with the mentors;
remember that discussing your application before submitting it is always
recommended so that you can get feedback from the community.
Please also read the FAQ and timeline in the Google Summer of Code website.
Besides contacting with the mentors, you can also get in touch with us on our IRC channel #debian-soc (in irc.debian.org) and the soc-coordination mailing list if you have any questions.
I am hoping to see many great applications from students wainting to improve Debian :)


text:
Tracking and cracking network performance problems is no easy task. More than a matter of identifying often mystifying bottlenecks, ensuring network efficiency requires an almost preternatural understanding of your organization's IT operations, as well as a thick skin for withstanding the heat when problems inevitably arise.
To keep your network humming, we've outlined 10 areas where tweaking and moderate investment can lead to significant performance gains. After all, as more and more organizations seek to conduct business at wire speed, making sure your systems blaze is essential to the competitive edge your organization needs.
Performance tip No. 1: Speed up that WAN
IT has long been caught in the web of leased lines and costly WAN charges. Linking multiple sites with T1 lines, MPLS, and even Frame Relay used to be the only way to guarantee connectivity, but the scene has changed. Rather than curse at your monthly WAN bill, it's high time to investigate your alternatives.
[ For more hands-on networking tips and techniques, download InfoWorld's Networking Deep Dive | Looking to revise your storage strategy? See InfoWorld's iGuide to the Enterprise Data Explosion. ]
Cogent Communications is one of several providers boasting a significant fiber footprint around the United States. Tapping these outlets might mean a substantial increase in site-to-site bandwidth at a significant cost savings -- it's all a matter of location. Even bringing a few sites into a new WAN design can save enough money to increase bandwidth to the sites that aren't accessible by the same carrier.
You may wind up running your own VPN between these sites, but if the carrier's SLA is strong enough and the network is as low-latency as it should be, this won't be an issue. Think of the benefits of 100Mbps across all your sites and a WAN bill downsized by half.
Sites outside the footprint of the larger carriers, and thus destined to remain on leased-line connections for the foreseeable future, could benefit from a WAN accelerator, such as Riverbed's Steelhead appliance (see the InfoWorld Test Center's hands-on review of Riverbed Steelhead). If you can't increase bandwith to those satellite sites, your only option is to decrease traffic on those circuits without reducing their efficacy. That's where WAN optimization tools come in.
Performance tip No. 2: Lose the leased lines
Unless you're headquartered in the Sahara, it's time to ditch leased-line Net access. Between Time Warner Business Class, Comcast Business Class, and FiOS, there's bound to be a better, cheaper way to bring high-speed Internet into your environment. A ten-fold Internet bandwidth increase in place of existing T1 circuits is not out of the realm of possibility and can be achieved for a fraction of the cost without compromising reliability.
Granted, T1 and T3 leased lines provide more of a guarantee against latency, but the cost differential is extraordinary, and the maturity of these networks -- especially the business-class products -- has grown substantially. It's time to tell your telco to pull its SmartJacks and bring in something better.
Slow Internet access is always a major complaint among users. Bringing them the same relative speed they get at home goes a long way toward appeasing the masses.
Performance tip No. 3: Let auld acquaintance be forgot
Many businesses cling desperately to elderly application platforms, leaving IT saddled with the high-cost, resource-intensive task of shoehorning old platforms into new infrastructures. This is how you wind up with a brand-new VMware vSphere architecture running a handful of Windows NT4 boxes.
Refusing to let go of the past often results in increased costs, downtime, and fragility of core business systems. Instead of holding meeting after meeting to figure out how to get a 10-year-old accounting package transferred to a new infrastructure, launch it into orbit and migrate to something new. The upfront costs may be more, but they will pale against the long-term costs you'll incur by not severing these ties.
This is a personnel issue as much as it is a technical one. There are always those in IT shops who see everything through the prism of their favored technology, facts be damned. It's not always easy to shepherd these folks through the dark and stormy night of new technology, but remember, hanging on to fixed-purpose IT admins can be as detrimental as hanging on to elderly technology.
Performance tip No. 4: Build a lab
There's no excuse. For the cost of a single server, you can build a monster IT test lab. A cheap, dual-CPU, 12-core AMD Istanbul-based 1U server can run several dozen virtual machines in a test scenario for about $1,500. Using VMware Server on Linux or VMware ESXi, you can avoid software licensing fees, while maintaining a perfectly valid platform for testing anything, from software upgrades to new packages, new operating systems, or even network architectures.
Combine a virtualized server lab with tools such as GNS3, and you can build and test just about any planned network or system infrastructure you want. There's no easier way to determine where resource bottlenecks reside than in a test bed, and if that test bed is as easily constructed as it is in a virtual lab, there's no reason not to find them. Moreover, with a virtual lab, you can find the sweet spot for certain servers, including how much RAM and CPU resources they'll need to function under expected (and unexpected) loads, thereby ensuring you waste fewer resources.
Performance tip No. 5: Watch everything
Network and system monitoring is the granddaddy of bottleneck diagnostics. When users complain that the network is slow, the network usually has nothing to do with it. But unless you have the facilities to show exactly where the problem resides, you're left hunting around in the dark for the solution.
Whether you prefer proprietary or open source tools, there's a myriad of options available to monitor everything from network latency and throughput to RAM and CPU utilization, to SAN performance and disk queue lengths -- you name it.
If it exists, it can be monitored. If it can be monitored, it can be graphed. And if it can be graphed, there's a very good chance that a simple perusal of the resulting graph can lead you in the right direction, greatly accelerating the problem-detection portion of any troubleshooting effort.
And when implementing network monitoring, be sure to leave no stone unturned. Monitor the CPU utilization of your routers and switches; watch the error rates on Ethernet interfaces; have your routers and switches log to central syslog servers and implement some form of logfile analysis to alert you when there are reports of anything from IP conflicts to circuits going down. Careful, conscientious implementation and tweaking of your monitoring framework will save enormous amounts of time and energy, especially when it counts the most.
Performance tip No. 6: Know your apps
Infrastructure performance monitoring will only get you so far. All the computing and storage resources that you are offering up on your network are being consumed by your applications. For too many of us, those applications form something akin to a black hole -- we can easily observe their effects on our infrastructure, but it's often difficult to see inside them to know what's going on.
Many IT shops are content to let software vendors install and implement the applications on their networks; after all, that's less work for IT. But be careful -- you're on the hook when the network later slows to a crawl.
Spend time testing your apps with an eye to uncovering their soft spots. Whether it's a particularly expensive stored database procedure that gets called when users log in or a massive performance slowdown during third shift when backups kick off, you need to know ahead of time where your likely performance drains reside.
To accomplish this, insist on testing new applications in your infrastructure before they are purchased. Pay close attention to the amount of resources used as you test and project how much performance the application will require under real-life production loads. This kind of testing can uncover severe architectural flaws in the application that may make it inappropriate for your environment. Better to know that in advance than to find yourself fending off users armed with torches and pitchforks.
Performance tip No. 7: Terabytes and spindle counts, oh my
The past few years have seen explosive growth in disk capacity. With the advent of 2TB SATA disks, it's now possible to jam more than 10TB into a single two-rack-unit server. And that's great -- because now you need fewer disks, right? Not so fast.
It's crucial to understand that today's SATA disks share an important trait with their smaller predecessors: They're fast. While it may be possible to fit 2TB of data onto a single 7,200-rpm SATA disk, you'll still be limited to an average randomized transactional throughput of perhaps 80 IOPS (I/O operations per second) per disk. Unless you're storing a mostly static data bone yard, be prepared to be thoroughly unhappy with the performance you'll get out of these new drives as compared to twice the number of 1TB disks.
If your applications require a lot of randomized reads and writes -- database and email servers commonly fit this bill -- you'll need a lot of individual disks to obtain the necessary transactional performance. While huge disks are great for storing less frequently used data, your most prized data must still sit on disk arrays made up of faster and smaller disks.
Performance tip No. 8: Beware the 10-pound server in the 5-pound bag
Virtualization has to be just about the coolest thing to happen to the enterprise datacenter in a long time. It offers a multitude of manageability and monitoring benefits, scales cleanly, makes disaster recovery simpler than ever before, and dramatically decreases the number of physical servers you need chewing up power and spewing out heat.
[ For more on how best to implement virtualization, download InfoWorld's Sever Virtualization Deep Dive and InfoWorld's Storage Virtualization Deep Dive. ]
If used incorrectly, however, virtualization technology can shoot you in the foot. Remember, virtualization isn't magic. It can't create CPU, memory, or disk IOPS out of thin air.
As you grow your virtualization infrastructure, it should be fairly easy to keep tabs on CPU and memory performance. Any virtualization hypervisor worth its salt will give you visibility into the headroom you have to work with. Disk performance, on the other hand, is tougher to track and more likely to get you into trouble as you push virtualization to its limits.
By way of example, let's say you have a hundred physical servers you'd like to virtualize. They're all essentially idling on three-year-old hardware and require 1GHz of CPU bandwidth, 1GB of memory, and 250 IOPS of transactional disk performance.
You might imagine that an eight-socket, six-core X5650 server with 128GB of RAM would be able to run this load comfortably. After all, you have more than 20 percent of CPU and memory overhead, right? Sure, but bear in mind that you're going to need the equivalent of about 140 15,000-rpm Fibre Channel or SAS disks attached to that server to be able to provide the transactional load you'll require. It's not just about compute performance.
Performance tip No. 9: To dedupe or not to dedupe
As your data grows exponentially, it's natural to seek out tools that curb the use of expensive storage capacity. One of the best such examples is data deduplication. Whether you're deduplicating in your backup and archiving tier or directly to primary storage, there are massive capacity benefits you can derive weeding out similar data and storing only what is unique.
Deduplication is great for the backup tier. Whether you implement it in your backup software or in an appliance such as a virtual tape library, you can potentially keep months of backups in a near-line state ready to restore at a moment's notice. That's a better deal than having to dig for tape every time you have a restore that's more than a day or two old.
Like most great ideas, however, deduplication has its drawbacks. Chief among these is that deduplication requires a lot of work. It should come as no surprise that NetApp, one of the few major SAN vendors to offer deduplication on primary storage, is also one of the few major SAN vendors to offer controller hardware performance upgrades through its Performance Acceleration Modules. Identifying and consolidating duplicated blocks on storage requires a lot of controller resources. In other words, saving capacity comes at a performance price.
Performance tip No. 10: Accelerate your backups
Backups are almost always slower than you'd like them to be, and troubleshooting backup performance problems is often more art than science. But there is one common problem that nearly every backup administrator faces at some point or another.


text:
Before deciding whether to get an arts education at an art school or university, young artists should examine whether its right for them. Weigh the good with the bad, and make an intelligent decision.
Art school is certainly not for everyone. Over half of my class ended up dropping out because they found that a fine arts education wasn't what they expected. I was also disappointed in some ways, but I stuck with it until graduation. I saw that there were many reasons I should finish what I started, and have no regrets for doing so.
Attending an arts college does have many good points. Listed below are some advantages of art school.
If you would like to share your impressions of art school, please do so in the comments.
You may also be interested in this post: Disadvantages of Art School
Please subscribe above to receive this post right away via email.
Learn new art skills and techniques
Art school should help you to get all the foundational learning to become a full time artist. You should learn principles of design, painting, sculpture and drawing techniques, and working with different mediums.
When leaving art school, there ideally should be good groundwork to focus on certain mediums and techniques, and even develop an individual style.
Art school for myself had a very inspiring affect on me. Art history courses enabled me to learn about art movements and all the artists who came before me. Inspiration also came from seeing the diversity of art from different artists – other students and visiting artists.
The most inspirational part of my college years was my 6 week semester in Harlow England, where we got to tour many landmarks, galleries and museums. We even had a midterm break during that time, when myself and some classmates travelled to Paris and Amsterdam. At Amsterdam we visited the Van Gogh museum, Rembrandt House, etc. Paris was also a place of inspiration, as we visited the Louvre, Eiffel Tower and other locations. If you plan on going to art school, my recommendation is to make sure they offer a similar study term abroad. It will be the highlight of your art school years – especially if you are like me, and haven't travelled abroad before this.
Learn to be critical
Critical thinking is needed in many professions. This is why an art degree added to a resume can be a great asset to acquiring a job with some companies. By learning how to plan artworks, criticism and analytical thinking, artists learn skills that will help them become independent in their creation of art. They will learn to respond to criticism, and even defend it when necessary.
I enjoyed class critiques, as they helped me to see how others respond to art, and aided in development of critical skills.
Learn some skills for critiquing art from this article: How to Critique Art
Get connections in the art world
Some teachers and staff members could possibly be successful artists (though in my experience, some are failed artists who have gave up art, and turned to teaching). A lot can be learned from a successful artist/ art teacher in a studio environment.
Art universities and colleges often have visiting artists programs. My art school had visiting artists twice a semester. They would visit for a week, give lectures and speak with students during studio time.
Get you experience with art shows
There may be opportunities to have group art shows with the college gallery, and even outside art galleries. College art galleries often hire on students. This can be great experience in learning what is involved in working with an art gallery – especially if you are interested in becoming a curator or opening an art gallery of your own.
Here is an article with some guidelines for organizing an art show: Planning an Art Show
Although art school has many good points, there are some things which you should be aware.
Read some reasons why you might want to avoid an art college in our other article on this subject: Disadvantages of Art School
What is your opinion of art school?
What other advantages do you see for young artists?


text:
Ok, way too many "C's" I know. But I am trying to gauge interest in creating a workshop/class that goes over creating "your" costume for this years Convergence convention in July. I know, I like to work with like minded artists while creating costume designs. Thinking this could be an interesting group to put together and at the end show off our collective maker-foo at this years event.
We could go over topics like:
Sewing (yes sewing is fun and guys can be good at it)
Pattern making
Making molds and copies
Fabricating appliances
Latex mask creation
Leather masks
How to not pass out from heat exhaustion.
I'd like to put this together more like a camp. Where there is a topic and it starts with information, but the rest of the day is spent with as much or as little time "making" as you need. A lot of the time a person just needs direction to get from one place to another.
To give an example: You want to make a Mystique from X-Men costume. How would you make her signature skull belt? Well with silicone/latex molding of course. But were do you get molding supplies, and how does it work. Then how do you make copies? These were question I had and I am guessing there are a lot of people interested in coplay but do not know how to get the idea into reality.
Hey, if you are interested, leave a comment. Its never too early to start making a costume, but its often too late…
Image is of the Maker (going by the name of No 96). photo taken by Tokyo Fashion


text:
• All prices are in US Dollar.
• Printed on High Quality matte paper / canvas.
• Fits standard frames, frame not included.
• Print size of artwork includes 50mm white border around the image for better framing
• Packed and shipped in a protective tube.
• Mailed with a Certificate of Authenticity.
• All prints are shipped free worldwide within 2 weeks.
• You will receive a tracking number at the time of shipping.
• Please make a note when ordering if you want an authenticating signature on the print.
$300 – $2,000
Fishermen, Hue, Vietnam
Additional information
High quality matte paper, Canvas
40 x 50 cm, 80 x 100 cm (signed limited of 3)
CERTIFIED DELIVERY: All items will be mailed using reliable international shipping providers with tracking included wherever possible. In the rare case that an item is lost or damaged during delivery, we will provide a complimentary replacement copy.
DAMAGE REPLACEMENT GUARANTEE: Our lifetime damage replacement guarantee means that if your photograph is damaged for any reason, contact us and we will provide a new copy for free. Customer is responsible for any shipping fees incurred.
CERTIFICATE OF AUTHENTICITY: All fine art photographs come with a Certificate of Authenticity that has been signed by Tran Tuan Viet.


text:
I have spent last week making a four-minute video tutorial on how to use a medical database called AccessMedicine.  It has been a while since I have worked on screencasting. And of course, I lost all my documentation I have created in my previous workplace. So, it took a while for me to remember how things are to be done to make a video tutorial effectively.
A little belatedly, I remembered that a crucial thing in making a video tutorial is doing things in the right order (meaning what works for you). So I thought I would share some methods I have experimented in the past. I will call them method A, B, C.
The tools I used are Audacity-free sound-editor-and Camtasia. If you have a Mac, you can use GarageBand instead of Audacity. If you do not have Camtasia and would rather not use Jing or any other free screencasting tool because of the difficulty of recording both voice and screen at the same time, you may want to try MS Powerpoint.
Method A is what works for me best.
Method A
- Outline the tutorial and decide on what is going to be covered.
- Write the script while checking each and every item you want to cover in the tutorial.
- Re-read the script several times to make each narration brief and succinct.
- Record the narration using Audacity and a headset.
- After recording, import all mp3 files into Camtasia.
- Record the video portion of a tutorial while listening to the recording.
(This allows one to create a video clip in which things happen in a way that matches the audio instructions, thereby saving a lot of efforts in video editing later on.)
- Create Title clips (slides or images) and other slides to be inserted into the Camtasia Project file.
- Import the video files, audio files, and slides.
- Add transition effects.
- While playing repeatedly, arrange video, audio, and slides in the right sequence.
- Add special effects such as zooming, notes, spotlights etc.
- Do Audio Enhancement in Camtasia.
(I even out the volume and increase gain by about 1/3 of the original to make the narration loud enough. The new clicking and clipping options are very useful. These sound editing and enhancement can be done in Audacity as well. But doing it en masse in Camtasia saves time. )
- Close all the programs so that the computer can concentrate on producing a smooth video.
- Produce the video in swf and mp4 format.
(Make sure to fill in all the metadata.)
- While the video files are created, don't do anything on the computer. It may cause bumpy transitions or flickering on the produced video file.
- Done!
This procedure works for me because I seem to be unable to focus on the mouse movement and the computer screen while I am also recording instructions at the same time. So I separate voice recording from video recording.
Method B
However, those who have no such problem can easily use Camtasia or Jing-a free screencapture/screencasting software – in order to create a video tutorial in a very short time in a much simpler manner. There are many simple but effective web tutorials out there made with Jing without any special effects. Also, once-recorded, Jing can convert the recorded video so that it can be further edited in CAMTASIA.
Method C
Another way to make a video tutorial fast is to create Powerpoint slides. You can create Powerpoint slides with instructions and screenshots and then narrate your voice over the slides. If you can handle voice recording while simply moving slides, which is much easier than actually doing a live demo and recording the screen, using powerpoint slides for a video and focus on voice instruction is a great way to cut down time spent on creating a video tutorial.
This method works well for instructional tutorials which use a limited amount of screenshots but less so for tutorials that are meant to be a demonstration. I tried making demo tutorials using Powerpoint. It required a lot of screencaptureing, Photoshop editing, and loads of special effects in Powerpoint and the heavy use of animation feature. Once you perfect your Powerpoint this way, you can create a PPS file (Powerpoint presentation) which can be downloaded and run like a movie. So you may not even need Camtasia to create a tutorial this way. But I would not recommend using this method in order to create a demo tutorial because importing sound and image files into Powerpoint and adding effects and using the animation feature heavily can be very time-consuming.


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By Mark Bitterman
By Mark Bitterman
By Mark Bitterman
By Mark Bitterman
Category: Cooking Methods
Category: Cooking Methods
Flour + Water
Home Cooked
Crust and Crumb
Mustards Grill Napa Valley Cookbook
The Great Book of Chocolate
Japanese Hot Pots
The French Market Cookbook
Maximum Flavor
Bread Revolution
"This illustrated volume changed the way I cook."
—Newsday, 2010
"As the FDA considers lower salt standards for Americans, salt has never been a hotter chef's ingredient. This is part cookbook (Roasted Peaches in Bourbon Syrup with Smoked Salt), part salt tract (positing "Five Rules of Strategic Salting)," part reference tome."
—Cooking Light, Favorite Cookbooks, 2010
"This book isn't really a cookbook, not in the recipe-driven sense of the word. It's more of a user guide, and an inspiring one at that. From the lively introduction, in which Bitterman recounts his first experience with sea salt, to the geeky chapters on the history and science of the stuff, to the slim selection of recipes broken into categories like "brining," "curing," "salt crust" and "cooking on salt blocks," this book is aimed at inspiring and educating people on the virtues of natural salt."
—Portland Oregonian, Best of 2010, 12/21/10
"Flipping through the stellar new Salted: A Manifesto on the World's Most Essential Mineral With Recipes, we are reminded that the world is made up of so much more than fleur de sel. You could buy a bottle of $15 tequila to gift along with the book, but you get the sense author Mark Bitterman would consider that a margarita sacrilege on par with using kosher salt ("a battery-operated puppy with no hair, trying to comfort you with its soulless antics"). After all, you're handing over a book written by a man who uses sel gris, three full cups of the pricey French salt, in his preserved lemons recipe."
—LA Weekly, Squid Ink blog, Top 10 Cookbook And Drink Gift Pairings, 12/14/10
"My pick for personal favorite of the season is Salted: A Manifesto on the World's Most Essential Mineral, with Recipes by Mark Bitterman, which I've enthusiastically blurbed. My reverence for salt is bettered only by Bitterman's who sells salt and chocolate at The Meadow. Bitterman writes well about the history of salt, the amazing array of salts available, and offers numerous recipes and techniques for using these salts."
—Michael Ruhlman, Books for the Holidays, 12/13/10
"I am a walking salt lick and Mark Bitterman's Salted more than satisfies. Described as a manifesto, the title contains a useful "Salt Reference Guide" of 150 salts, many of which are Asian in provenance. . . . Salt is salty but if you want to explore their subtle differences, get Salted!"
—Andrea Nguyen, Viet World Kitchen, 2010 Cookbook Picks, 12/11/10
"You might be one of those people who think, 'Salt? What's the big deal?' But turn the pages of this major treatise on the various kinds of salts from around the world (including how they're harvested and what makes them so special), and you'll learn what to do with them as well. Mark Bitterman is a selmelier who owns an artisanal-product boutique that specializes in salt. But you don't need to take a trip there to learn all about salt. Salted is going to be my go-to reference when I find a new type of salt and am wondering what to do with it."
—DavidLebovitz.com, Favorite Cookbooks of 2010, 12/6/10
"Salt is so essential to cooking that a volume on the topic might seem redundant. Not for Mark Bitterman: His book gets into geeky detail about salt types for flavor academics. However, the "Salting" section, which outlines tips and tricks for coaxing flavor out of your meal with the mineral, is very useful for home cooks."
—Tasting Table National, 12/3/10
"In the intimidating world of artisan salts, Salted is our new road map and companion. This book is a trove of good information and we will certainly return to its pages again and again."
—TheKitchn.com, 12/1/10
"Salt is one of those ingredients that isn't often dealt with at length, yet is elemental to the craft of cuisine. In his book, Mark Bitterman seeks to educate the cook on the creativity, flavor, and quality that can be enhanced in a dish by using the correct salt. He approaches his subject scientifically, economically, culturally, and nutritionally. . . .After absorbing Salted the reader will understand Cassiodorus' belief that 'man can live without gold… but not without salt.'"
—StarChefs.com, Top 10 Cookbooks 2010, November 2010
"Everyone writes about exotic salts but no one says how to use them beyond saying sprinkling them on steak and tomatoes, says [Amy] Sherman, 'but Bitterman does.'"
—FoxNews.com, The Fox Foodie: Sixteen Sweet Cookbooks, 11/30/10
"Whether your only exposure to salt is the box of kosher in your cupboard or you've got a gourmet line up, Salted makes an excellent gift for the foodie that has it all."
—Guest blogger Kathy Casey, Al Dente, Amazon food blog, 11/15/10
"In Salted, Mark Bitterman (sommelier at The Meadow in Portland, Oregon) profiles 80 artisan varieties of the magical ingredient. When you're done geeking out, the recipes — popcorn salted six ways, mango salsa with Hawaiian black lava salt — satisfy cravings."
—DailyCandy, The Best New Fall Cookbooks, 11/12/10
"His new book Salted lays it all out methodically, but the text is far from dry or academic for such an info-packed tome. Bitterman is a great writer, his conversational is clear and funny and, yes, occasionally salty. Though I'm deliberately taking my time to soak up Salted, especially the history and the particulars of each type of salt, reading this book has already caused a sea change in my kitchen."
—Al Dente, Amazon food blog, 11/2/10
"Salted is transformative; it will change the way you cook."
—The Christian Science Monitor, 6 best food books coming this fall, 9/16/10
Bitterman explains that his love of salt began after eating a sublime steak at a relais on a trip to France. After learning about the cooking method and cut of meat, Bitterman concluded it was the "hefty nuggets of opalescent salt" that were responsible for his unforgettable meal, and he set out to meet the family of salt makers responsible. After opening an artisanal-product boutique with his wife, which includes a showcase of salts, Bitterman takes on the role of official "selmelier." In this entertaining and well-researched volume, he profiles 80 varieties of artisan salts, along with a quick reference guide to more than 150 salts for an easy-to-understand crash course on salt. The text-heavy though beautifully photographed title covers the history of salt and all things related. Recipes round out the work, and although pedestrian dishes such as hamburgers, potato chips, and sauerkraut are included, beginners may be intimidated by sophisticated selections like roasted marrowbones with sel gris; salt crust–roasted partridge with figs and chocolate-balsamic syrup; and jal jeer (an Indian lemonade). An informative and easy-to-follow "Cooking on Salt" chapter just may have the more adventurous home cooks and the DIY crowd running out for their very own Himalayan salt block. (Oct.)
—Publishers Weekly, 9/20/10
"Salted is a remarkable work. Written with uncommon energy and style and packed with excellent information and recipes, this book should be considered a must-have for any chef worth their salt and anyone who cares about food and cooking. I love this book."
—Michael Ruhlman, author of Ratio, The Making of a Chef, Charcuterie, and co-author of The French Laundry Cookbook
"Salted has a transformative effect. Mark embraces not only those magical crystals but also captures you with his passion for people and exploring the diversity of food and salt. His irrepressible will to learn and share is expressed in his writing."
—Michael Recchiuti, chocolatier, author of Chocolate Obsession
"In this day and age it is imperative to not only know where our food comes from but also to learn about the very thing that brings out all of the flavors we tirelessly source—salt. In Salted, Mark Bitterman takes us on an epic journey, distilling everything from salt's early formation in the primordial ocean to thoughtful recipes and detailed tasting notes on many of the world's finest artisanal salts. A virtual encyclopedia of salt, Salted is a wonderful resource for cooks and lovers of great food everywhere."
—Naomi Pomeroy, chef-owner of Beast Restaurant, James Beard nominee, Food & Wine Best New Chef
Table Of Contents
Acknowledgments . . . viii
Discovery: The Salt Road . . . 1
The Life of Salt . . . 13
History: First Bite • Science: Mind, Body, Salt, Ocean • Craft: Artisan Saltmaking
Salt Guide . . . 73
The Taxonomy of Salt • Salt Reference Guide
Salting . . . 193
Salting Strategically • Uncooked • Curing • Grilling • Brining • Roasting • Frying • Boiling • Baking • Salt Crust • Cooking on Salt Blocks • Saucing • Confectionery • Drinks
Resources . . . 301
Index . . . 305
21 Books You've Been Meaning to Read
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Rupp family
Rupp (Ropp, Ruff), a Mennonite family of Swiss origin. At the disputation at Bern in 1538 (see Bern, section 4) Uli Rupp of Stauffen (probably nearLenzburgin Aargau) and Kläwi Rupp of Signau (see Emmental) are named. In 1540 Hans Rupp, a peasant, is listed among the Anabaptists. Rulandt Rupp, of Lucerne, an Anabaptist, emigrated in 1571. In the early 18th century a Rüby (Rubi) of Frutigen, and a Rupp of Sigriswil moved to Clémont and Montbéliard in 1709, and Hans Rupp, of Gunten near Sigriswil, immigrated to Nijmegen in the Netherlands, and later settled at Deventer. Among the Swiss immigrants to Holland in 1711 were Hans Ruff and Christen Ruff, of Sigriswil, with their families.
In Alsace, Jakob Rupp was living at Markirch, and a Christian Rupp of Kühnheim (north of Neuf-Brisach) intervened for the expellees from Switzerland; he may be identical with the Christian Rupp who also settled in Deventer. In 1779 Hans Rub signed the Ordnungsbriefe for the Colmar congregation. In 1805 Jakob Rupp was an elder at Colmar. In 1950 the name occurred only in the form Ropp(e). Dr. Martha Ropp, of Mulhouse, was a missionary in Indonesia(Java) circa 1950- .
In the duchy of Berg a Rupp family occurred in the 17th century. Thiell (Thilmann) Rupp, a son of Heinrich Rupp, was named in 1624; in 1638 he was at Oberdollenhof and Obercassel (Löwenberg area); in 1650 he settled at Heddesdorf (or Gönnersdorf) near Neuwied, joined the young congregation there, and died in 1666. The Privilege granted by the Count of Wied in 1680 names Heinrich Rupp and his sons Thielmann Rupp and Peter Rupp among the founders of the congregation. Heinrich Rupp (1637-after 1700) was the leader of the Neuwied congregation; from 1698 to 1768, when the church was built, a large room in his house served the congregation as a place of meeting. Peter and Thielmann (born 1649/56) were, however, his brothers and not his sons. Tillmann was the leader of the congregation for 26 years, and his son Leonhard (born 1683, baptized at Crefeld in 1703) for 18 years; Leonhard's niece Anna (born 1711) married Lorenz Friedenreich in 1745. In 1837 an endowment by the Rupp family aided the congregation in its period of decline.
In the Palatinate Philipp Raup (or Rupp), of Nussloch near Heidelberg, was tried on 1 May 1529, with other followers of Philipp Plener, but remained constant. Some members of the Swiss Rupp family were found later in the Palatinate: in 1717 Peter Rupp in Ludwigshafen, 1732 Heinrich Rupp, deacon of the Oberflörsheim congregation, living in Gundersheim near Worms; 1742 Johann Rupp in Heppenheim near Alzey. In 1786 Jakob Rupp, of Heppenheim, exchanged correspondence with Abraham and Rudolph Landes in the Deep Run congregation. In 1936 there was only one Mennonite in the Palatinate with this name.
Some Rupps participated in the Mennonite settlement in Bavaria. Jakob Rupp, of Odenheim, near Bruchsal, was one of the founders of the Maxweiler congregation (1882); Johann Rupp was a former member of theEichstockcongregation.
Among the Palatine Mennonites who immigrated to Galicia in 1784 f. there were also Rupps; Heinrich Rupp (1760-1800), of Harxheim, and Johann Rupp (1745-87), of Alzey, settled in Einsiedel and Rosenberg respectively. Johann's death and burial gave rise to the "cemetery scandal," in which the peasants were compelled by the military to grant him burial in the Greek Catholic cemetery. Peter Bachmann sketched the family trees of both lines of the Rupps. Johann Rupp (1849-96) was the first to become a soldier under the law of 5 December 1868; although he was assigned to the hospital corps, his fellow members bade him farewell as if he were doomed to death. The Rupps did not share in the immigration toRussiain 1796, but the poorest of them were among the immigrants to America in 1880 and following. The Heinrich Rupp branch of the family was active in the life of the church. Daniel Rupp (1817-1905) was a preacher (1849) and elder (1855) in Horozana wielka; in 1909 Heinrich Rupp (born 1856) was leader of the new congregation at Kiernica-Lemberg; Dr. Johann Rupp (born 1883, portrait Mennonitisches Lexicon III) was a founder of the "Mennonite Geselligkeitsverein." Another Heinrich Rupp (1855-1929) was curator of the congregation 1918-21; Jakob Rupp (born 1877) was a district judge. His cousin Theodor Rupp was a teacher at the Gymnasium and a collaborator on the Mennonitisches Lexicon.
After the departure to the Warthe area in 1939 and west, Richard Rupp (born 1913), a son of the curator Rupp, took a prominent part in the establishment of the refugee settlement of Backnang in Württemberg.
Rupp and Smith report that Peter Rupp came to America on the "Harle of London" in 1736; Johannes and Peter Rupp on the "Phoenix" in 1749; Johannes and Christian Rupp (Rub!) of Montbéliard on the "Brotherhood" in 1750, and Johann Jonas Rupp of Reihen, near Sinsheim, with the "Phoenix" in 1751. Johann Jonas Rupp settled first in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, and in 1772 moved to Cumberland Countyopposite Harrisburg. Most of the Mennonite Rupps are still found here. In the Slate Hill congregation three served-—Henry Rupp (1752-1810), George Rupp (1798-1888), and Henry Rupp (1828-98), the first two as preachers, and the third as a deacon.
The fourth of the fourteen children of George Rupp, who was a son of Johann Jonas Rupp (1729-1801), was Israel Daniel Rupp 1803-78), "the father of the local history of the southeastern counties of Pennsylvania"; he was baptized into the Reformed faith by John "Weinbrenner (1797-1860, ordained 1820, founder of the Church of God).
In the 19th century a second immigration of Rupps to America occurred. The Rupps of Maxweiler, Bavaria, settled in Lee Countv, Iowa, joining the Zion congregation near Donnellson, in 1866 moved northward into Washington County and in 1874 to Kansas, where in 1911 an H. Rupp was an assistant pastor in the Einsiedel congregation near Hanston, and Jacob Rupp, at the age of 84, told the long story of the long journey from Maxweiler to Kansas.
A Rupp-Ropp family of Amish origin settled in Fulton County, Ohio, and in Illinois and other states of the Midwest. Two important bishops of this family were Andrew and Christian Ropp. Later most members of the family joined the Defenseless Mennonites (now Evangelical Mennonite Church) or the General Conference Mennonites. Among these was Benjamin Rupp, a preacher and leader, first superintendent of the Salem Children's Home and then of the hospital at Bloomington, Illinois.
Almanach Mennonite du Cinquantenaire 1901-1951. Montbéliard, 1951.
Bachmann, Peter. Mennoniten in Kleinpolen. Lemberg, 1934.
Cattepoel, Dirk. "Die Neuwieder Mennonitengemeinde." Beiträge zur Geschichte rheinischer Mennoniten, Weierhof, 1939: 144-53.
Correll, Ernst."Die Mennoniten im Donaumoos." Mennonitischer Gemeinde-Kalender (formerly Christlicher Gemeinde-Kalender) (1922): 80-91.
Gratz, D. L. Bernese Anabaptists. Scottdale, 1953.
Hege, Christian and Christian Neff. Mennonitisches Lexikon, 4 vols. Frankfurt & Weierhof: Hege; Karlsruhe; Schneider, 1913-1967: v. III, 567-69.
Hege, Christian. Die Täufer der Kurpfalz. Frankfurt, 1908.
Kauffman, Daniel. Mennonite Cyclopedic Dictionary. Scottdale, 1937: 319.
Krehbiel, H. P. History of the General Conference of the Mennonite Church. Canton and Newton, 1898 and 1938: 15, 23, 35.
Krebs, Manfred. Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer. IV. Band, Baden and Pfalz. Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1951: No. 140.
Mathiot, Charles. Recherches historiques sur les Anabaptistes de l'ancienne Principautéde Montbéliard. Belfort, 1922.
Miller. Berner Täufer. 80, 211, 255, 270, 278, 291, 292, 321, 341, 369, 372.
Peachey, Paul. Die soziale Herkunft der Schweizer Täufer in der Reformationszeit. Karlsruhe, 1954.
Ringenberg, Richard. Familienbuch der Mennonitengemeinde Eichstock. Munich, 1942.
Risler, Walther. "Täufer im bergischen Amt Löwenberg." Mennonitische Geschichtsblätter (1956): 39 f.
Rupp, I. D. A Brief Biographic Memorial of Joh. Jonas Rupp, and Complete Genealogical Family Register of his Lineal Descendants, from 1156 to 1875. Philadelphia, 1875.
Rupp, Jakob. Entstehung und Auflösung der Gemeinde zu Maxweiler und erste Pionier Jahre in Amerika. Moundridge, 1924.
Rupp, Richard. "Neue Heimat in Württemberg, die Mennonitensiedlung in Backnang-Sachsenweiler." Mennonitischer Gemeinde-Kalender (formerly Christlicher Gemeinde-Kalender) (1956): 43-53.
Wolfferts, Richard. Genealogy of the Neuwied and Crefeld Rupp family. This family died out in 1839 with Elisabeth Rupp, the wife of Christian Passarin of Crefeld, (copy in the Neff library at Weierhof).
|Ernst Crous
|Date Published
Cite This Article
MLA style
Crous, Ernst. "Rupp family." Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. 1959. Web. 26 Sep 2023. https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Rupp_family&oldid=84780.
APA style
Crous, Ernst. (1959). Rupp family. Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Retrieved 26 September 2023, from https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Rupp_family&oldid=84780.
Adapted by permission of Herald Press, Harrisonburg, Virginia, from Mennonite Encyclopedia, Vol. 4, pp. 378-380, 1148. All rights reserved.
©1996-2023 by the Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. All rights reserved.


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Motorola's Droid has a tough game of catch-up to play, but not as tough as what faces Palm's Pre as both challenge Apple's iPhone. Longer term, this may be a two horse race, with Android winning in the end and BlackBerry still chugging along.
That does not mean Apple actually "loses," mind you. There is room in the market for at least two and probably three smartphone platforms. Think Android, Apple, and BlackBerry. (Here is our Droid vs. iPhone comparison report).
That leaves Palm and Microsoft and Linux and whatever else shows up in trouble. Microsoft should find a way to cut its losses. Palm may find the rug pulled out from under it by this time next year, if the Pre's fortunes do not dramatically improve.
I don't have hard research to back-up these conclusions, but I've spent 25 years reporting on computers and technology and here's what I think:
The Droid is has had a spectacular launch, better than the Palm Pre; though initial sales have yet to occur. The Pre seems to be relegated, at least for now, to the shadows, which is a hard place for a smartphone to survive.
The Google name is hard to beat and the company seems to be using Android to launch its next-generation applications. This will upset some third-party developers but, from Google's perspective, it cannot be helped.
Customers are happy when Google adds value without adding expense. Its Maps Navigation Service is, right now, perhaps the single best reason to choose a Droid over an iPhone.
Maybe I lack imagination, but I cannot figure out what Palm would have to do in order for the Pre to become a big success. Summer was the Pre's window and Palm missed it.
Developer support is critical and it is unclear how many platforms smartphone app creators are willing to support. Palm loses if the number isn't at least four.
BlackBerry is benefitting, I think, from a huge installed base and is largely seen as being outside the current fight. As a rule, I don't think any handset without a "real" keyboard can be considered a BlackBerry killer. Score one for Droid and even the Pre Pixi handset.
Android has had a slow ramp-up, largely thanks to so-so hardware. There is a danger that all Android hardware will be lumped into a single category by potential customers and that the large number of Android handsets expected to become available will be more confusing to customers than helpful.
Google needs to help would-be smartphone customers by explaining how to tell if a given application is appropriate for a particular handset. There may need to be some distinction drawn between the various classes of Android handsets, perhaps with a naming scheme similar to what AMD has done with its Vision processor family.
Feedback from readers makes it clear to me that Android does not have to match the iPhone application-for-application to be competitive. Your e-mails cause me to believe that application parity, as a practical issue, will come earlier than next summer, as I have previously imagined.
Apple will have, for the near future, iTunes, and the Music Store as an advantage, but Google ought to be able to change that. Whether it will organize the Android music business, or rely on third parties and a mishmash of solutions, is unclear.
Google and its partners would do well to begin promoting applications that are available for both Android and iPhone, as a way to calm the nerves of anxious would-be Droid purchasers.
Apple's iPhone, the current market leader, has become vulnerable. Google's Android operating system, now at its 2.0 release, is growing legs. If there are really 40-50 Android phones available by next summer, as some predict, the platform could be much more interesting than iPhone.
To compete, Apple needs to rely on its ability to completely concentrate on a single hardware/software combination. People are very clear about what "iPhone" means, less clear about the meaning of "Android" or "Droid."
Apple is playing catch-up in some areas, but has the potential to leap ahead by concentrating on things Google is not likely to do. Apple must take advantage of being able to design and build its own hardware, operating system, applications, and shopping.
At the same time, Apple must reject the Steve Jobs dogma that can make the iPhone seem less competitive. Sure, a removable and replaceable battery would break the iPhone's lovely lines, but is that such a big deal?
The Droid has its work cut out for it, but the road is not as difficult as it may seem. The highest peak of smartphone technology remains Apple's to lose, but if Steve and Co. fail to aggressively respond to Android–and not just with advertising–that loss is a real possibility.
David Coursey tweets as @techinciter and can be contacted via his Web site.


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Celebrating illustration, design, cartoon and comic art of the mid-20th century.
Saturday, January 09, 2010
Who was Albert Dorne?
Illustrator Kent Steine, who studied under former FAS instructor Owen Kampen heard many first-hand accounts about Dorne from his teacher. In a recent email to me, Kent wrote, "Owen said that Albert Dorne not only knew the name of every one of his employees... right down to the custodians... but also knew and cared about them individually and personally. A lot of people wept when Albert Dorne - accidentally and unexpectedly- passed away."
A lot of mail has come my way this week from far and wide with stories about Albert Dorne. Canned biographies are fine for laying down facts and statistics; born on such and such a date, worked at this place or that, died on this date. But nothing is quite so interesting as learning about the character of a man from the stories told by those who knew him.
Just who was this Albert Dorne?
What I have told to only a handful of people until now is that I've been corresponding off and on for the last couple of years with Albert Dorne's daughter, Barbara. With her generous permission, I'm delighted to share some terrific tales about one of the truly legendary giants of the mid-20th century illustration business. Some confirm the public persona of Dorne the magnanimous Samaritan...
... others of a ... saltier nature reveal the complexities of character of this most remarkable man. And believe me, Albert Dorne was quite a character!
In one of her first notes to me Barbara wrote of her dad, Yes, I will happily provide you with some vignettes of "Life with Father" which, I can assure you, was something considerably more than mundane. He was a very caring, very loving man, and after all these years, remains my hero... [but] no man is an angel, and probably derives much of his genius from treading where no angel would go. "
"The Stork Club was a favorite "hang-out" for Dad. I had the pleasure of dining there with him on numerous occasions. Some of his guests who joined us for dinner at The Stork were Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester, and while Dad steered Elsa around the dance floor, I was recruited to teach Charles the latest fox trot. My feet have never recovered."
"Dad was a phenomenal dancer, having participated early on in a quintet of straw hat and cane "shuffle off to Buffalo" tap dancers and singers known as "The Kent Boys."
"When I was visiting him at his condominium on East 57th Street in NYC, and with me wearing the very high stiletto heels of the time, my safety was always in question; he refused to carpet the floor of his very large studio."
"Why? Because he could dance himself (and me) silly on the polished teak floors - pulling me around with him to a devastatingly complex tango."
One of the people who sent me an Al Dorne anecdote was Thomas Sawyer, whose own illustration career has been featured here on Today's Inspiration. Tom wrote, [Dorne] "was really a great cartoonist in the guise of an "illustrator." Always loved his humor. I only met him once or twice, but we both lived in Westport, and I'd occasionally see him driving his huge 4-door Mercedes around town."
"One of my favorite Dorne stories -- perhaps apocryphal but in keeping with his rep for being this basically poor, wrong-side-of-the-tracks kid who'd become successful but never quite got over it -- involved his having invited to dinner at his home a very wealthy, prominent type (a man whose name I've long-since forgotten - possibly a Brit)."
"And over drinks, while they were waiting for the meal to be prepared, Dorne took him on a tour of the house, showing off his pricey possessions and furnishings, somewhat boastfullly specifying the (high) price he'd paid for each item. And when they finally sat down to dine, Al, with carving-knife in hand, asked his gentleman-guest how large a slice of roast beef he desired. The man's alleged response: "Oh, I'd say -- about eight dollars' worth."
Barbara good-naturedly responded to that story: "Dad did, in fact, want "only the best" - something he had alluded to even as a child living in rather dire circumstances," she wrote. "He often complained to me that his mother could have done something less exhausting and with better pay than scrubbing the floors of the Greeley Office Building on her hands and knees at night. Grandpa Dorne, Al's father, was busy wildcatting oil in Texas and seldom returning home to New York while the kids were growing up."
"I can tell you that Al made a few bucks after school painting features on porcelain doll faces at some factory in New York - and his reward, after turning over his wages, were two cuban cigars which he smoked under his bed while doing some utterly fantastic embroideries on hand towels. His mother (my grandmother) never "noticed."
"So, yes, he wore magnificent leather shoes, made from a last taken of his feet by an Italian bootmaker who was brought to the U.S. for that sole purpose; his amazing clothing - suits and jackets tailored to order by a British tailor who came to the U.S. at my Dad's request, carrying bolt upon bolt of magnificant Scottish woolens with which to make Dad's sport jackets (of which he had 32, all hung in one closet)."
"He was a gourmand of no small repute (I cried when I read Tavern On The Green had closed - Dad and I enjoyed many, many a wonderful repast at the extraordinary venue). And money was no longer an object (or, should I say, the lack of it, was no longer an object). He was very generous with me throughout his life and always reminded me to "see what you're lookin' at, Baby, - - lookin' ain't good enough. Ask any artist."
"And, yes, Dad was something (something?) of a "ladies' man" - with his fabulous good looks, agility on the dance floor (and his commentary on his agility in the bedroom), why wouldn't those ladies be captivated. Made him all the more fun to be with."
"For me, of course, he was "my Dad" and his painting and lifestyle were just perfectly normal to me."
"I still feel the need to thank you each time you send me an anecdote from someone who had (in my opinion), the good fortune to have spent time with Al. I, personally, treasure those moments - they were less often than I (or he) would have wanted, but life sort of got in the way for both of us as we both "grew up."
If you missed it in one of the comments sections last week, here's a wonderful al Dorne anecdote from TI list member, Dave Broad:
"After viewing your latest TI on Dorne I want to relate an experience from 1947- just back from the army in Europe and enrolled at Pratt Institute I had the chutzpah to call Mr Dorne to request a visit. He was very kind and invited me to his studio. It boggled my mind and though I can't remember the details I shall never forget upon entering the studio in the foyer were dozens of beautifully framed works of all the famous artists of the times. The actual studio was huge and luxurious with a large window, more framed pictures. a pool table and a large tabouret and drawing board. He was extremely gracious and kind when I showed him my portfolio and generous in his criticism and advice."
"At one point a gorgeous blonde lady came in and he introduced her to me. (Can't remember if she was his wife, friend or model) All I could think was that this was the life! He was a wonderful person."
Barbara fills in the details on the "gorgeous blonde lady" in Dave's story:
"I knew the lady well," she writes, "her name was Pauline - and she was a most empathetic and gracious friend to me when Dad died. She loved him almost as much as I did. She was an architect by schooling and very much involved in the operations of The Famous Artists Schools."
And speaking of the Famous Artists Schools, Kent Steine shares some hilarious Al Dorne stories that came to him from his old teacher FAS instructor Owen Kampen, who taught at the school:
"Here are two fun Al Dorne anecdotes by way of the late Owen Kampen. They represents the flamboyance and influence of Albert Dorne, and his apparent relationship with Owen," writes Kent.
"During the time Owen was working at the Famous Artist Schools in Westport... he and his famous author wife, Irene, had built a home there a few years before. One day Mr. Dorne comes up to Owen with a one-way train ticket for Owen. This would be around 1956."
"Owen wasn't sure if this was yet another one of Dorne's pranks. They were a daily occurrence. They would do things like glue someone's art materials and tools to their drafting table... and all sit back and watch the guy go ape. Anyway..."
"It turns out... this is a one way ticket to Las Vegas. Mr. Dorne wants Owen to ride out by train to pick up the Jaguar XK-140 he has just purchased from Dean Martin. He'll ride out there and be picked up by car and taken to Martin's dude ranch to stay the night before driving the Jag back the next day. Now divorced, a date has even been arranged for Owen."
"Unfortunately, his train is late getting in. It is now well after midnight. When the car arrives to take him back to the ranch, he is informed that his date waited all night, and had only recently left to go home."
"As Mr. Kampen said to us, "and that little girl who was waiting for me all evening was none other than Liz Montgomery." It would be safe to say that Albert Dorne was well connected."
Barbara remebered the story of the magnificent car somewhat differently. here's what she wrote...
"I have no problem with anyone using these wonderful stories and I do appreciate having the opportunity to read them and to make any adjustments necessary, vis-a-vis Owen's story about the Jaguar. As it turns out, it was not a Jaguar but a Mercedes-Benz. Dad had been having a problem with the IRS (dastardly folk) and wanted to buy the Mercedes. He had always driven a green Cadillac with a white convertible top. So, he asked Steve Dohanos, a neighbor of Dad's (Steve and Margo had a lovely house just down the road from Dad's, in Westport), to buy the car while Steve was in Germany doing some kind of research for a potential Saturday Evening Post cover."
"Steve bought the car in his own name, had it shipped to New York via the USS Lusitania, and Dad proudly drove his six grandchildren all over Westport in this magnificent piece of machinery re-pleat with bud vases in the back seat, a pull-out bar in back of the front seats, a horn with a star sapphire embedded in it and Dad's initials engraved in the silver plate in which the gem was embedded."
"The dashboard was a gorgeous burled walnut. The headlights were those big round jobs. There was a walnut case in the trunk of the car; it bore a brass plate with the name of the mechanic who had completed the assembly of the car and the tools used were neatly clutched in red velvet apertures made expressly for those tools. My husband was invited by Dad to spend a few days at the house in Westport; my husband said he had never seen a car like this and was absolutely thrilled to be asked if he would mind driving my Dad around Westport. Bill was ecstatic."
"When Dad passed away, the house in Westport was sold, with the Mercedes, to Zuban Mehta, conductor of the New York Symphony Orchestra."
And then there's this hilarious anecdote from Owen Kampen via Kent Steine (and I'll warn those with sensitive dispositions that they may want to skip ahead or risk being shocked by Dorne's salty language!)
"Another anecdote is when Mr. Dorne and Owen went to meet Norman Rockwell in NYC," writes Kent, "to take him back to Westport by train. It was when Rockwell was about to join the staff at FAS. This was their introductory meeting."
"Albert Dorne was an old fashioned man's man; worldly, sophisticated, and powerful. At the time, I believe he was actually making more money for his work than even Rockwell. Norman, on the other hand, was an old fashioned boy scout type of guy. Except for a possible "damn" I can't even imagine Mr. Rockwell cursing."
"Kampen recognized this difference between the two men, and was worried about their first meeting. As a confidant, he related his concerns about possible conflicting personalities to Mr. Dorne. Obviously, everyone was excited about the possibility of Norman Rockwell joining the staff of the FAS."
"Albert Dorne assured Owen that there was no problem, and that in fact, he would have Rockwell eating out of his hand by the time they got back to Westport."
(What Mr. Dorne actually said was, and I quote: " Don't worry Owen. I'll know whether or not he farts when he fucks by the time we get to Westport.")
"Before the train had arrived at the station in Westport, Norman Rockwell had signed on as a staff member of the Famous Artist Schools."
Barbara wrote this to me about here dad: "- his vocabulary of "unusual" descriptive adjectives and adverbs could have earned him an Oscar for outstanding performance in the realm of expletive proficiency. He called it "artistic license."
And on another occasion, "I'm looking forward with great excitement to reading all that you've written about a man who openly cried his eyes and heart out when Mike, his dalmation, had to be put to sleep. The photograph of Dad leaning over his drawing board shows a chair in the background. It was dark green leather, and Mike's own, special "kennel" where no one but Mike could sit."
"Thanks so much for this wonderful effort to keep my Dad's legacy alive. He was, indeed, a unique man, a doting Dad, and a very proud grandfather. My son, Robert Grayson is named after my Dad's beloved sister, Grace, who passed much too early in life. And my son's little daughter, Ryan Olivia, just having turned five years of age, knows exactly who Albert Dorne is - "Albert Dorne is your Daddy, Grammy." Yes!"
Doting dad, flamboyant man-about-town, tough-as-nails businessman, respected illustrator... rascal? Yes, Albert Dorne was all of these things - and more. Now you know him a little bit better. And in this second week of showcasing Dorne's career, we'll learn even more!
* My Albert Dorne Flickr set.
* Thanks to Heritage Auctions for allowing me to use the Wurlitzer ad scans in the above post. The original art from these two ads - plus three others - will be available at auction later this month.
11 comments:
Wooooow! These latest scans are simply stunning--inspiring and awe-inspiring!ReplyDelete
I don't understand why anyone would even want to debate whose rendering skills are superior over another artist's if the two artists being compared have styles and techniques that contrast each other. Al Dorne's work seemed to rely quite heavily on his own raw drawing skills--from the initial concept sketch to the finished product. I really couldn't imagine a great deal of photography and models involved in most of his pieces. It's like assuming Jack Davis went and found models for his work. Fawcett seemed to be more of your classic scene-setting illustrator that relied heavily on models and getting the lighting correct--and basically attempting to capture and enhance reality. Dorne seemed to be a cartoonist with phenomenal drawing and painting skills. Comparing Fawcett with Dorne would be like comparing Alex Raymond with Walt Kelly. And again, I have to say these magnum-opus Dorne pieces are just eye-boggling.
Thanks for the time and effort with these scans, Leif!
Fantastic post, Leif. Thanks for putting all of these wonderful stories together.ReplyDelete
Here is another Dorne story for you: When Bernie Fuchs first moved to New York, he was a skinny young kid who didn't look old enough to order a beer. But he did good work, and that did not escape the eagle eye of Al Dorne. So Dorne called Bernie out of the blue, introduced himself and said he wanted to arrange a lunch where Bernie could meet some of the established illustrators. When Bernie showed up, all of the greats were there (apparently, when Dorne invited you to something, you didn't say "no"). He sat Bernie next to Norman Rockwell, and Rockwell talked to him about his work.
At this time, Bernie had no reputation. He was just starting out. But Dorne plucked him out of the crowd because he saw something in Bernie's work. Years later, when the rest of the world had caught on, Dorne (together with Austin Briggs) invited Bernie to join the faculty of the Famous Artists School.
Thank you Leif for glimpses of an a personal nature of an artist I have always admired.ReplyDelete
Crazy eyebrows, but cool workReplyDelete
These stories are a lot of fun.And it's only monday.Great stuff,thanks Leif.ReplyDelete
- Chad Sterling7:47 PM
Man,are those eyebrows for real? Not sure if he looks like Al Jolson or Ed Asner.ReplyDelete
Look, Dorne found a route to the American dream and he took it.With his kind of energy he'd have been a success at anything.
Personally, I find his work a bit too hokey. But wotta guy, kind of an illustration Jack Kirby.
- Anonymous7:50 PM
Absolutely fantastic! Thanks for the walk down memory lane.ReplyDelete
- Anonymous10:39 PM
"And, yes, Dad was something (something?) of a "ladies' man" - with his fabulous good look"ReplyDelete
Good looks?? The man looked like an ugly Abe Vigoda...and that's saying something.
HE could certainly draw though (Dorne, not Vigoda).
Your post was quite good than other blogger, so simple yet imformational.ReplyDelete
mind if I put a link back to you?
men's suit
anyway I'm william
- Anonymous1:17 AM
Are there any pics of the faculty member arriving at the train station?it is signed with a partial address on it.ReplyDelete


text:
The Victoria-area owner of 45 dogs surrendered on April 12 to the BC SPCA, could be facing animal cruelty charges.
The dogs, Havanese and Havanese-cross, are being cared for by BC SPCA staff and volunteers at shelters on Vancouver Island and are being assessed for their physical and psychological condition. Marcie Moriarty, chief prevention and enforcement officer for the BC SPCA, says a member of the public reported the property owner on April 10. Officers with the SPCA investigated and the owner surrendered the dogs. Moriarty said workers and volunteers have been washing and grooming the dogs all weekend.
They were found inside the home, she continued, living in unacceptable conditions including high levels of ammonia inside the home. The dogs' fur was severely matted with feces and urine, making any assessment of their condition troublesome.
"It was hard to tell tip from tail," she said.
Moriarty added the individual was co-operative and surrendered the animals. The owner had been a breeder and seller of the dogs in the past, but had not done so for around five years. Moriarty said the individual appeared to have become overwhelmed by the number of dogs and was not sure how to find new homes for them.
Moriarty stressed that the dogs are not yet up for adoption, as their overall health must be determined.
She said the individual and where they live are not being identified at this time.
Moriarty added the BC SPCA s working with government about new breeder regulations to help avoid such conditions from happening again.
"Whether it involves a puppy mill where a breeder is putting profits before the welfare of the animals, or a situation where an individual becomes overwhelmed with the number of animals in their care, we need to have standards for breeders and a way for members of the public to identify legitimate breeders from those who are not providing good care and welfare for their animals," she stated in a media release.
Maturity added in a later interview that the purpose of seeking animal cruelty charges in this case, would be to have an animal ownership ban in place against the individual.
For more information, check the BC SPCA website (spca.bc.ca/adopt) for updates.
Donations for the care of these dogs, and other abused and injured animals in the BC SPCA's care, are gratefully received at spca.bc.ca/emergencyalert.
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text:
NVIDIA Announces Legacy Support Plans For D3D10 Generation GPUsby Ryan Smith on March 12, 2014 3:04 PM EST
All good things must come to an end, and for NVIDIA's Direct3D 10 generation GPUs that end is just about here. NVIDIA has posted a document to their support website this week announcing their plans to drop driver support for their D3D10 GPUs, and how future support for those products will work.
With the forthcoming Release 340 driver set NVIDIA will be moving their D3D10 GPUs to legacy status, which will make R340 the final driver branch to support these products. The branch after R340, R343, will drop support for D3D10 GPUs, leaving Fermi, Kepler, and the new Maxwell as the only GPU families supported in newer driver releases.
As for R340 and their D3D10 GPUs, while the move to legacy status means that these GPUs will no longer receive performance optimizations and new driver features, NVIDIA does leave the door open to further bug fixes with further R340 releases. Officially R340 will support these GPUs until April 1, 2016, so NVIDIA is planning on continuing to support these products in some fashion up until then. But it's worth noting that legacy products aren't on a planned driver update schedule like current generation products are, so bug fix drivers are issued on an as-needed basis. For comparison, NVIDIA's DX9 GPUs, which went legacy back in October of 2012, have received a driver update as recently as February of 2013.
Meanwhile it's worth pointing out that this move to legacy status will be for all of NVIDIA's product lines using these GPUs: GeForce, Quadro, and Tesla. So along with GeForce cards ranging from the GeForce 8800GTX to the GeForce 405, the move to legacy will also impact NVIDIA's first-generation Tesla 1000 parts, the Quadro FX series, and more. The extensive list of affected products can be found in NVIDIA's announcement.
On a tangential note, compared to NVIDIA's legacy D3D9 products it looks like NVIDIA's D3D10 products will have received roughly the same length of mainstream support. With GeForce 8800GTX turning 8 this year and GeForce 405 turning 4, NVIDIA's D3D10 products have been supported for between 4 and 8 years. This is about a year less than D3D9 on the low end and roughly the same length of time on the high end. Unsurprisingly, those products from earlier in the generation have received a longer period of support overall, due to the fact that NVIDIA retires products whole generations at a time.
Wrapping things up, today's retirement announcement means that D3D10 GPUs as a class are just about at the end of their lives. With AMD having moved their D3D10 GPUs to legacy status back in 2012 and now NVIDIA in 2014, both of the major dGPU vendors have put their pre-D3D11 products out to pasture. This leaves Intel as the only vendor with D3D10 parts still receiving mainstream support, as Intel did not gain support for D3D11 until Ivy Bridge in 2012.
As such it will be interesting to see how forthcoming game development is impacted by this. With D3D10 GPUs now existing as legacy products, and with the current-generation game consoles being D3D11 based, will developers as a whole continue to support D3D10 GPUs after 2014? We will have to see what the future brings.
Source: NVIDIA (via SH SOTN)
33 Comments
View All Comments
blanarahul - Wednesday, March 12, 2014 - linkIntroducing TechReport subscription!
edzieba - Wednesday, March 12, 2014 - linkFrom the out of support list: "NVS 295, NVS 300"
Ding dong the witch is dead! Now there's half a chance I can persuade Upstairs to have the damn passively-cooled fail-o-matics yanked from all our chassis and replaced with actively-cooled cards (or at least kick them out for the next OOW & upgrade cycle). Sure, they're fine if you have the airflow I guess, but whoever specced our workstations for the last rollout didn't check that first.
Kevin G - Wednesday, March 12, 2014 - linkIndeed. I see a couple of these units at work and hoping to some nice low power, passive Maxwell cards as a replacement. Don't need much power but I'd love the nice multimonitor support. Hopefully the maximum number of displays has increased and there is support for MST hubs. I have a reason to test a setup with 8 displays and running them all off of one video card/system would greatly simplify things.
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, March 12, 2014 - linkMaxwell is still limited to 4 displays per GPU.
Mr Perfect - Thursday, March 13, 2014 - linkMatrox has M-series cards capable of 8 displays each, if you don't want to have two normal cards in a system for some reason.
Kevin G - Friday, March 14, 2014 - linkMirroring across two cards has been flaky in my experience which is necessary in the setup. While true that I could just have all the mirrored displays connected to a single card, it quickly becomes a pain to support if you have to troubleshoot remotely and have to have some one else be your hands if necessary.
I was hoping that with both nVidia and AMD pushing multimonitor setups as well as 4K, the number of logical displays their cards would increase. I'd be content if this required MST hubs as large multi-display setups are rather niche.
jasonelmore - Wednesday, March 12, 2014 - linkThis will cause Minimum System requirements to go up in some games since drivers wont be updated with new game profiles. Nearly every AAA game has the 8800GT w/ 512GB as the minimum GPU.
inighthawki - Wednesday, March 12, 2014 - linkThat depends on how you define "up." There are plenty of newer cards on the market with the same performance. The 8800 line just happens to be incredibly popular, so it's a good "target."
DanNeely - Wednesday, March 12, 2014 - linkWhat's actually likely to start pushing min specs up will be when cross platform titles start dropping the PS3 and XB360 because supporting really old/slow PC cards was doable using the quality level that was already created to support the last generation consoles.
tipoo - Wednesday, March 12, 2014 - linkI have to hand it to them, this is only happening now, while AMD already isn't supporting the HD4000 DX10.1 series in Windows 8.1.


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Business travel can be a hassle—and connecting flights create the greatest hassle of all. Connections result in more than just headaches, though: Our research shows that longer travel times can significantly hurt the bottom line.
We studied some 1,200 companies over a 13-year period, focusing on Japanese businesses and their U.S. subsidiaries. The mean travel time between headquarters and subsidiaries, including ground transport, was 16 hours—as we'll discuss, a tipping point of sorts. We found that the longer it takes to travel between the two, the less likely the subsidiary is to be profitable. If all else is equal, a unit that's an hour farther from headquarters than another unit has a 7% lower chance of making a profit.
Note that the important factor is time, not distance. For example, after controlling for local economic and industry differences, we found that a subsidiary in Lexington, Kentucky, was about 25% less likely to be profitable in a given year than a subsidiary in Houston, even though the two cities are essentially equidistant from Tokyo. The reason: Flying to Lexington takes more than two hours longer than flying to Houston, because the former trip requires a connection. Factor in ground travel, and the time is well above the mean.
Why is extra travel time such a profit killer? Interviews with dozens of executives, along with the findings of other researchers, suggest several contributing factors.
Added time in transit, and the resulting fatigue, hamper executives' ability to share knowledge and learn from the local operation. They can lead to poorer oversight of people, projects, and operations; result in slower strategy execution; and reduce opportunities to develop relationships, teamwork, and trust. Over the course of 13 years, we saw 23% more turnover among general managers of units that were farther than 16 hours from headquarters. Indeed, increased travel time from headquarters is linked to lower employee satisfaction and retention at the staff level as well. And traveling impairs executives' performance in general: Managers reported productivity losses of about 90% while in transit and 50% while at the remote location. Longer travel times can only exacerbate this effect.
Successful multinationals recognize the downsides of having hard-to-reach subsidiaries and tend to expand geographically in ways that minimize executives' transit time—choosing cities that can be reached by direct flights and finding sites close to the airport. Companies with less experience abroad often choose far-flung locations, unaware of the costs of interacting at a distance. Many of them change their minds, however: Subsidiaries farther than 16 hours from headquarters are more likely than other subsidiaries to be relocated. One additional hour of travel above the mean increased the likelihood of relocation by 11% during the course of our study.
Managers often fret over the impact of rising jet-fuel prices on travel budgets, but airfares pale beside the damage that extended travel time can cause. Smart companies will keep this in mind when choosing locations for their subsidiaries. Although mobile technology has increased managers' ability to be productive on the road, time wasted in airports—and the host of cascading consequences—can take a big financial toll.
A subsidiary that's an hour farther from headquarters than another division has a 7% lower chance of making a profit.


text:
From Black Book comes another odd, charming Bill Murray run-in that may or may not be true, given how many Bill Murray run-in stories are out there. But this one seems plausible.
We'll pick up the tale from the middle, an as-witnessed-to, by the friend of a Packer fan named Matt, and you can go over and read the rest of it at BB:
That's when he was blatantly shoved from behind. Turning to catch a glimpse of his assailant, he discovered his pusher was none other than Bill Murray, a huge Chicago Bears fan, who was unapologetically enjoying the moment.
Matt's friend managed to capture a photo of Murray in mid-celebration, laughing at the rival fans. Naturally, Matt wanted a picture with the legendary actor. Murray's response to his request? "Nitschke is a pussy.
Thanks for your continued support of Deadspin. Brian Hickey and Nico return for weekend duties.


text:
Virginia Ordinance of Secession
AN ORDINANCE to repeal the ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America by the State of Virginia, and to resume all the rights and powers granted under said Constitution.
The people of Virginia in their ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, adopted by them in convention on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, having declared that the powers granted under said Constitution were derived from the people of the United States and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression, and the Federal Government having perverted said powers not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern slave-holding States:
Now, therefore, we, the people of Virginia, do declare and ordain, That the ordinance adopted by the people of this State in convention on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, whereby the Constitution of the United States of America was ratified, and all acts of the General Assembly of this State ratifying and adopting amendments to said Constitution, are hereby repealed and abrogated; that the union between the State of Virginia and the other States under the Constitution aforesaid is hereby dissolved, and that the State of Virginia is in the full possession and exercise of all the rights of sovereignty which belong and appertain to a free and independent State.
And they do further declare, That said Constitution of the United States of America is no longer binding on any of the citizens of this State.
This ordinance shall take effect and be an act of this day, when ratified by a majority of the voter of the people of this State cast at a poll to be taken thereon on the fourth Thursday in May next, in pursuance of a schedule hereafter to be enacted.
Adopted by the convention of Virginia April 17,1861
[ratified by a vote of 132,201 to 37,451 on May 23, 1861]
This work was published before January 1, 1928, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse


text:
More from Frankenweenie.
Friday, November 16, 2012
Frankenweenie Part 2!
Posted by Helen Chen at 5:59 PM
7 comments:
- robin_chyo said...
SO GUD....i love that kitchen! awesome job, helen!
- November 16, 2012 at 10:49 PM
- Dan said...
That electricity sequence was stunning. Hats off the the animators in the FX department, and of course you guys in Vis Dev!
- November 17, 2012 at 7:55 AM
- Jelter said...
Cool stuff! That living room is almost identical to my grandma's house!
- November 17, 2012 at 11:07 AM
- Wendell Dalit said...
Hey Helen, you critiqued my work at the Disney booth the other day at CTN. Amazing frankenweenie stuff. Just wanted to thank you for the great feedback!
- November 18, 2012 at 8:49 PM
- C.Deboda said...
I like it! New fan here.
- November 25, 2012 at 3:12 AM
- Shane said...
Wow, your work is incredible.. especially your matte paintings.! Thankyou for sharing.
Shane =)
- November 26, 2012 at 4:02 PM
Great job, I love the vibe! It was a fun feature, it is really great to see more Visual Development work!
- September 9, 2014 at 12:38 PM
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)


text:
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The pricing was amazing for the product we purchased. We saved almost 50% on the cost of our new tabletop cutter. Thank you so much Clary
We had a wonderful experience with Clary Business Machines. Kevin Wong was knowledgeable and helpful
I was looking all over for a simple part for a folding machine we own and thank GOD I was able to get a hold of Clary Business Machines. Mujtaba and Travis were able to help me with no problem. They found the item number, gave me a quote and the product is on its way. All in a matter of two days. Thank you. I definitely would recommend them to everyone.
Purchasing from Clary's website was very easy, cost effective, and the shipment was quick and exactly as ordered. Thank you very much.
Clary Business Machines was extremely professional to work with - very thorough in providing sales information, very competitive in their pricing, and very accommodating in meeting our budget and timeframe for our particular need
This website had some of less expensive machines, I already own one of these machines and it works really good for making books! And beside it makes them look more professional!!! :)
Great Support. Fast Shipping. Best Prices. Everything a buyer need. Will recommend Clary to everyone
The salesman was very helpful in helping me decide which folding machine to purchase for the volume of paper we will be running through the machine


text:
Loblaw Companies Limited Announces Timing of Fourth Quarter 2013 Earnings Release
20 Jan, 2014, 18:26 ET
BRAMPTON, ON, Jan. 20, 2014 /CNW/ - Loblaw Companies Limited (TSX: L) announced today that it will be releasing its fourth quarter results February 20, 2014 at 6:30 a.m. (ET). The release will be followed by a conference call at 11:00 a.m. (ET), as well as an audio webcast. To access via tele-conference please dial (416) 642-5212 or (866) 321-6651. The playback will be made available two hours after the event at (647) 436-0148 or (888) 203-1112, access code: 6708138. To access via audio webcast please go to the "Investor Centre" section of loblaw.ca. Pre-registration will be available.
About Loblaw Companies Limited
Loblaw Companies Limited, a subsidiary of George Weston Limited, is Canada's largest food retailer and a leading provider of drugstore, general merchandise and financial products and services. Loblaw is one of the largest private sector employers in Canada. With more than 1,000 corporate and franchised stores from coast to coast, Loblaw and its franchisees employ more than 134,000 full-time and part-time employees. Through its portfolio of store formats, Loblaw is committed to providing Canadians with a wide, growing and successful range of products and services to meet the everyday household demands of Canadian consumers. Loblaw is known for the quality, innovation and value of its food offering. It offers Canada's strongest control (private) label program, including the unique President's Choice® no name® and Joe Fresh® brands. In addition, the Company makes available to consumers President's Choice® financial services and offers the PC® points and PC Plus™ loyalty program.
SOURCE: Loblaw Companies Limited
For further information:
Investor Enquiries, contact:
Jonathan Ross
Investor Relations, Loblaw Companies
(905) 861-2153
[email protected]
Media Enquiries, contact:
Kevin Groh
VP, Corporate Affairs and Communication, Loblaw Companies
(905) 861-2437
[email protected]