text:
The Craftsman
On Dominik Graf
Prolific, eclectic, and wholly disinterested in highbrow pretentions, Dominik Graf never sought the distinction of auteur for himself—he prefers 'craftsman'—but others bestowed it upon him regardless, as with sundry other genre mavericks across film history, from Jacques Tourneur to Paul W.S. Anderson. This anointment has for the most part occurred in his home country of Germany and neighboring Austria, given that the bulk of Graf's oeuvre, some 70 films shot over four decades, was produced for television and is all but unavailable in a language other than German. (So far, from his mammoth TV catalog, only The Wire-like miniseries In the Face of Crime [2010] has been distributed with English subtitles.) A warmly received retrospective at the 2013 International Film Festival Rotterdam, co-curated by the critic/programmer Olaf Möller, helped spark wider interest in the director's work. Möller is now bringing eight of the titles he presented in Rotterdam, as well as four new releases, to Anthology Film Archives for Graf's first American retrospective, running May 24 to June 2.
The earliest film in the program, The Cat (1988), is a breathless, hugely enjoyable heist movie that harkens back, visually and tonally, to 1970s macho flicks à la Sam Peckinpah. Graf's only big-screen hit to date, it's one of his most compact and polished works, though not necessarily one of the more representative, precisely because of these qualities. The action takes place over a single day and is almost fully contained within one location, a bank and an adjoining high-rise hotel, from one of whose top floors the film's villain orchestrates a robbery-cum-hostage situation inside the bank, executed by two accomplices. Flitting through the many characters and available vantage points, Graf amasses a staggering multitude of perspectives without sacrificing coherence, gradually revealing the robbers' improbably intricate plan while also charting the countermeasures of the police. Within this complex construction unspools a sordid narrative—the robbers betray one another, the bank manager's wife is in cahoots with the villain, the police screw over the hostages—that doubles as a reflection on the West German collective psyche of the late 1980s.
Although The Cat was released a year before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the deliciously cynical ending, with the bank manager and his wife agreeing to get back together solely because it's in each of their best interests, now reads as a prescient comment on German reunification—one entirely in line with the withering critique expressed in many of Graf's subsequent works, particularly The Invincibles (1994) and City for Ransom (2006). The former's original title, Die Sieger, translates to "The Winners" and is meant to be taken about as literally as the repeated use of Eric Burdon & The Animals' "Good Times" in The Cat. There is again nary a virtuous character in this convoluted plot involving a police special forces team that gets embroiled in a political conspiracy. What's going on might not always be easy to follow, but the message expressed loud and clear is that fascism is very much alive in the newly reformed Federal Republic, the elite are hypocritical, short-sighted and self-serving, and the bourgeois family is an institution rotten to its core.
The Invincibles is Graf's masterpiece manqué, and after it bombed at the box office he didn't make another cinema film for 18 years. This commercial failure isn't difficult to make sense of. For one, it's an exceptionally dark film—it opens with a man murdering his newborn and doesn't lighten up much thereafter—that clashed with the optimistic, self-congratulatory zeitgeist which formed its historical context. That this was intentional did not help its prospects, though the resulting rejection did arguably prove its point. Moreover, it's an immensely ambitious yet bloated paranoia thriller in the vein of Alan J. Pakula, marked by wild tonal shifts as it incorporates elements from another half-dozen genres: one minute there's a violent shootout, the next a melodramatic love affair, and the next the protagonist is attending his son's kindergarten play. Such freewheeling pastiche would become a trademark of Graf's TV work, but it was too risky for a big-budget cinema production, and the film was mutilated across a long and contentious struggle with the producers which Graf to this day describes in traumatic terms.
Graf has said in interviews that he owns a three-hour cut of The Invincibles on VHS that he would re-watch every few years, trying to see if the film could be salvaged. He eventually had the chance to try: a new, longer cut was produced under his supervision and unveiled at this year's Berlinale (both versions are included in the Anthology retrospective). As the original negatives had been destroyed, the missing scenes had to be sourced from Graf's private tape and their image quality stands out from the rest, making the redux version a unique document of a resuscitated film. Although a belated gratification, as Graf tells it, the real damage was done to the script during pre-production, meaning that his original vision will never be realized.
With its lower production values but greater creative leeway, television proved a better fit for Graf's sensibilities, and the excellent City for Ransom helps one imagine how The Invincibles might have turned out with less interference from above. In an opening likely inspired by Die Hard with a Vengeance, in which criminals threaten to blow up bombs all over Leipzig unless a ransom of diamonds is paid, Graf shows off his talent for breakneck composite set pieces as several police teams execute a coordinated operation across the city and a nearby forest, attempting to track down the criminals while following their increasingly fanciful demands, which include handing the diamonds over to a trained dog. (Graf upped his own ante with an even more elaborately staged chase in 2016's fun but overall lesser Manhunt: Escape to the Carpathians.) The typically dense and conspiratorial plot that follows brings the police to a nearby town engaged in a struggle against an expanding strip mine. The town used to be part of the GDR and the prospect of it being swallowed up by the mine, whose imminence Graf visualizes with a racing helicopter shot, is just one of many elements in the film that symbolize the socioeconomic subjugation suffered by the former East since reunification. The explosive finale—one of the bleakest in a filmography replete with unhappy endings—leaves no doubt about where Graf's sympathies lie.
Graf fully indulges his melodramatic tendencies in Bitter Innocence (1999) and Cold Spring (2004), bookends to a trilogy (with Your Best Years [1999], which is not included in the retrospective) that savages the image of the upstanding German family with a causticity worthy of Fassbinder. In Bitter Innocence, a man blithely takes advantage of a rape-in-progress to steal some documents he can use to get ahead at work, thus initiating the downfall of his picture-perfect family. Graf deploys cheesy music cues, overemphatic zooms and a plethora of other soap opera devices, taking dross and turning it into gold. Cold Spring implements a much more restrained, even classy, aesthetic in the service of an all the more outrageous script. Here the only daughter in an upper bourgeois family loses her stake in her father's business after she contracts syphilis (and for some reason tells her parents) and flunks law school. Her odyssey to regain what she believes is her due will see her run away from home, shack up with a crack addict and then become, in effortless succession, homeless, a prostitute, a lawyer's assistant and a corporate shark. Oh, and along the way she hires the man who gave her syphilis to sleep with her mother, while in a throwaway scene with no apparent narrative function the father is shown having an affair with his niece.
It'll be interesting to see how an American audience receives Smoke on the Water (2014) and The Red Shadow (2017), episodes of the hugely popular series Polizeiruf 110 and Tatort, respectively. Tatort started in 1970 and is the longest-running series in Germany, while Polizeiruf 110 is a year younger and was born as the GDR's equivalent, though it continued after 1989. Most Germans grew up watching these feature-length telefilms and they're such mainstays of popular culture, especially Tatort, that people will get together to watch the new one every Sunday, with dedicated reviews and discussions then appearing in all main newspapers. Foreigners lacking the requisite nostalgia are for the most part baffled by this phenomenon, given that these are largely conventional (and sometimes downright schlocky) police procedurals of the type that airs anywhere in the world without fanfare. Graf's contributions might be vastly superior to the average, but they too feel hamstrung by having to adhere to a template, however loose, with recurring locations and detectives, each with their idiosyncrasies, backstories and trademark investigative methods. (When Samuel Fuller was invited to direct an installment of Tatort in 1974, Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street—which Graf reveres—he blew off the template, sidelining the regular protagonist by having him shot right away, and the reception was overwhelmingly negative.)
Smoke on the Water follows a detective (vaguely recalling an aristocratic Columbo) on a streamlined investigation into a vague arms trade conspiracy. The main appeal is the ridicule heaped upon a character transparently modeled after the odious, uber-aristocratic former Minister of Defence, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, but all in all it's the most impersonal film in the retrospective. The Red Shadow is significantly better, with a murder case sending two detectives on the traces of surviving Red Army Faction members and, once again, uncovering a conspiracy, though this time one that is pleasurably pulpy and overwrought. And incendiary: the episode aired on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the RAF leaders' supposed suicides in Stammheim prison, and Graf uses the fictitious narrative, supplemented with fake archive footage convincingly shot on 8mm, to revive the theory that the government had a hand in their deaths. The episode provoked widespread outrage, with Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German President, publicly berating the show for upholding the terrorists' "martyr legend." Considering that 9.3 million viewers tuned in for The Red Shadow —compared to the 1.3 million tickets sold for The Cat—Graf clearly found the right medium to have his voice heard.


text: This is very exciting for us. We would like to thank everyone that has helped us make this possible. Aaron, Andy, Brian, Chris, Dan, Dave, Doug, Dustin, Helen, Jeff, Johnny, Kat, Ken, Mark, Melissa, Merlin, Rainer and Special Interest Auto Service; this would have been very difficult without you all. We would also like to thank the organizations that believed in our mission prior to launch even. Arduino, DIGI International, Digi-Key, Hackaday, Open Garages, and the EFF. Most importantly all of the car nerds out there that encouraged us to keep going and get this built.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Your neighbors have once again focused attention on a major issue for many Chicago neighborhoods. We appeared on Fox News again last night.
The lack of police response to certain types of 911 calls in our neighborhood has contributed to a diminished quality of life in Chicago's less affluent wards and districts. We are pleased that the Better Government Association has joined us in demanding data from the Office of Emergency Management (OEMC) that can be used to ensure fair and equitable police allocation for all communities. How can you manage police allocation if not by the level of crime? We all have a right to know whether our community suffers from long waits or no service at all because the other communities have more officers assigned due to political clout. The OEMC argues that providing response times will somehow alert the criminals that they can conduct more crimes if they expose that data. We believe there are many ways to mitigate this fear. If we simply setup four data buckets and lump the total number of calls dispatched by priority (and not by type) within 15 minutes, then total number of calls dispatched within 30 minutes, and the total number of calls dispatched after 30 minutes and total number of calls not dispatched at all; couple that with total number of officers available for dispatch during those target days across all wards, and we can began to understand how to allocate officers. We believe this longstanding problem may be a human rights issue when you deny specific communities equitable city resources while collecting tax dollars from all. We hope the city respects all communities regardless of wealth or political power. We also hope that open air drug dealing, street gambling and public drinking do not become simply a quality of life 911 call that continues to not merit a response.
We seek a comprehensive solution for all of Chicago that includes:
- Off-load some types of 911 calls to other agencies thereby freeing up more community police officers
- Police re-allocated monthly based on actual crime
- Standard levels of service for all communities where we share equally in managed response times for each call type priority
- More beat officers who actually live and work in our community and fewer roving units with no ties to our neighborhoods
- Specific training on how best to interact with our youth where a record and incarceration is the last resort
- Develop a city wide process and protocol for addressing drug dealers, substance abusers and loitering that removes them from the streets but makes incarceration and a criminal record the last resort.
- Engage our City's best minds to create the Chicago "System of Healing" instead of a "System of Incarceration" for our citizens, neighbors and youth to be "Caught Up In" that deploys the same investment as our prison industry.
To view the Fox News story aired last night, please click on the link below:


text:
Get Boneless Bites & Chicken Wings in Silver City, NM
There's a lot more to Domino's than memorable pizzas. When you want tender, juicy, sauce-smothered chicken, satisfy your hunger with Domino's chicken wing delivery in Silver City, NM. From hot but creamy Classic Buffalo Boneless Wings to sweet and savory BBQ Wings, get chicken wings and pairing sauces for a party of one or 50. There's food for every mood at Domino's Silver City!
And best of all, you get a variety of chicken options made with the best ingredients — tender white meat chicken bites, crunchy breading, and a great selection of sauces that range from mildly spicy to smoky sweet.
More Than Just Chicken Wing Delivery in Silver City, NM
What makes Domino's Silver City chicken wing specialty menu so special? You can take control of your dinner or lunch experience by picking from our delicious menu options like Spicy Pineapple Jalapeno Bites or perfectly crisp oven-baked BBQ wings. And there's always more! Choose between picking up your dinner to-go, or if you'd prefer to get chicken wings delivered to your house, workplace, or even a local Domino's Hotspot®!
Bone-In or Boneless Chicken Wing Delivery in Silver City, NM
Domino's chicken is tasty any way you order it, whether that's crispy oven-baked Hot Wings, or breaded boneless bites drizzled with your favorite dressing. Does the word "drizzle" make your taste buds sizzle? Explore Domino's Silver City specialty chicken menu.
If you're feeling spicy, get a kick out of the Spicy Jalapeno Pineapple Boneless Bites: breaded chicken breast bites garnished with sweet and spicy mango habanero sauce and topped with diced jalapenos and pineapple chunks. Plus, did we mention that Domino's specialty chicken bites are nestled in a melted combo of real mozzarella and shredded cheddar? For a different type of spice, get boneless Buffalo Chicken Bites delivered. They are tender, spicy, and covered in melted cheese with a drizzle of ranch.
For something lower on the heat scale, consider our crisp and creamy Bacon & Tomato Bites. They're breaded to perfection, dressed with garlic parmesan sauce, and then crowned with a mix of bacon and diced tomato. Craving something slightly sweet and utterly satisfying? Delight your taste buds with lightly fried chicken breast bites, dipped in smoky barbecue sauce under a blanket of cheese and bacon. YUM!
If you prefer more classic bone-in wings, then you've found a new top wing restaurant in Silver City. We have plenty of oven-baked wing options for you to choose from. Each chicken wing is marinated and oven-baked to tender perfection. Next, we baste them with the chef-inspired sauce of your choosing or leave them plain for you to dress up on your own.
Want a clean "plate" to sauce your wings your way? Calm the hunger grumbles with plain boneless bites or plain chicken wing delivery near you in Silver City, NM. Plain chicken wings are delicious on their own Drown them in zesty ranch dressing, spicy buffalo sauce, or all of the above! We don't judge double-dippers!
Not into the plain wing game? Scratch your itch for flavor by ordering a saucier option — we'll cover them in sauce before and after cooking them! Simply choose how you want to get saucy. For a sweeter taste, order BBQ Wings. For a real kicker, order the Hot Wings. take a bite out of the Sweet Mango Habanero Wings. And for an all-you-can-eat party, get a bit of every-wing to satisfy your senses.
Get Chicken Wings Delivered in Silver City, NM
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. But, how much are Domino's Silver City Chicken Wings? Check out our affordable prices on wings in Silver City and use Domino's coupons to boost your savings. In the meantime, decide if you want your wings to-go or you want a couple orders of boneless wings delivered to your home. Then choose whether you want Spicy Jalapeno Pineapple Boneless Wings, Hot Buffalo Boneless Bites, the OG BBQ Wings, or a little bite of everything on Silver City's specialty chicken menu. Dip 'em in your favorite sauces, and you'll be licking your fingers sooner than you can scream, "Domino's is here!!"


text:
Watches and Jewellery sales rose by 8% to almost €2 billion (£1.7bn) in the first half of 2018 at LVMH. The category contributed to a group-wide rise in revenue of 10% for the luxury conglomerate LVMH, hitting a record high of €21.75 billion.
Profit from recurring operations rose by 28% compared to the same six months in 2017.
The rise in revenue was particularly impressive because the comparative strength of the euro against key global currencies. Excluding this effect, LVMH's Watch & Jewellery sales rose by 16% and profits from recurring operations were up 46%.
"Bvlgari had an excellent first half and continued to gain market share," LVMH reports. "This performance was especially notable in jewellery and in the Chinese and American markets. The iconic lines Serpenti, B-Zero 1, Diva and Octo made strong progress. Chaumet unveiled its new high-end jewellery collection," the financial statement adds.
"The momentum at TAG Heuer was reflected in the innovations of its flagship collections Carrera, Aquaracer and Formula 1, and a smaller version of its smart watch was launched. Hublot enjoyed strong growth and benefited from the enhanced visibility of the brand as the Official Timekeeper of the FIFA World Cup," according to the LVMH report.
Commenting on the results, Bernard Arnault, chairman and chief executive officer of LVMH, remarks: "The excellent results of the first half of the year attest to the strong desirability of our brands and the effectiveness of our strategy. The performance of the first half is even more remarkable given the unfavourable currency environment.
He adds: "The standards of quality and creativity required from our Maisons, which combine both modernity and tradition, are key to LVMH's success, always driven by a long-term vision. Despite buoyant global demand, monetary and geopolitical uncertainties remain. In this context, we will stay vigilant and rely on the talent of our teams and the shared entrepreneurial passion to further increase our leadership in the world of high quality products in 2018."
News Source : professionaljeweller.com
Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and TJM Media Pvt Ltd. is not responsible for any errors in the same.


text:
In a recent Digital Handbook article, I said that digital is not a marketing channel: It is a whole new version of the real world, and you can choose to replicate your existing business model and processes – or harness its vast potential to transform and improve your business. In particular, I'm interested in the opportunities it presents to transform how you engage with and build relationships with customers.
I'm now going to look at pharma's current digital marketing model. Currently, the brand team develops a channel strategy and messages, which are communicated to doctors by the brand team. The end result is that brand-centric messages are pushed out to doctors (or hosted somewhere doctors are expected to visit), with little support from the parent brand in terms of digital reputation or a trust-building PR strategy.
Since there is sometimes little value to the doctor, engagement is low, it's difficult to demonstrate any effect on prescribing or sales, and the customer has no reason to enter into a long-term relationship with the brand or parent company. Consequently, there is little or no ROI on many brand.com projects – we all know how expensive it is to build and host websites, and keep them updated.
I believe, therefore, that pharma's disillusionment with digital is somewhat misplaced. Digital, as we all know, can deliver hugely valuable and engaging experiences. Perhaps it's marketing and, in particular 'push' marketing, that doesn't work very well – it's like throwing expensive mud at expensive walls and hoping you hit some of the right audience with the right message at the right time. 'One size fits all' has never worked very well in offline channels and it's especially ineffective online. Therefore, rather than questioning digital, pharma should question its push marketing tactics.
So how can pharma change its marketing model? In theory it's easy (and with buy-in from leadership teams it's very possible). You just need to put your customer at the heart of your strategy. So the customer in this model replaces the brand team and the brand team become the facilitators and the translators of the doctors' needs into really valuable content, products and services that they will actually use and really want.
The steps and stages needed to make this change are different for every company, depending on how well accepted and adopted the Customer Experience/Engagement model is and the levels of support for digital (not just marketing but strategy). But ultimately, it's time to move away from creating marketing materials to developing valuable, tailored products and services that customers will feel are 'built for them'. The only way to do this is hand in hand WITH customers at every stage.
For more information on M3, the global provider of technology services in healthcare, and its European Division which includes www.doctors.net.uk, www.mdlinx.com, and www.networksinhealth.com, please call Jenny Cowderoy on +44 (0)1235 828400, or email firstname.lastname@example.com
No results were found
CSafe Global is the only global provider of a full line of cold chain solutions and is the world's largest...


text:
Program Highlights for St Andrews, Scotland
- Study at one of the Top 100 World Universities by Times Higher Education and ranked first in Scotland and third in the UK by the Guardian University Guide
- Benefit from an overall academic staff to student ratio of 1:10
- Join in a range of extracurricular activities and over 100 student societies
- Live in a charming city with medieval architecture and easy travel access to all of Scotland, Wales, and England
- Play all seven world-renowned golf courses in town at a discounted student rate in the ancestral home of golf
Why Study in St Andrews?
The St Andrews program offers students the opportunity to live and study in a medieval city and centuries-old university, while enjoying Scottish culture and everyday life in a charming seaside college-town. A wide range of courses at the University of St Andrews in a variety of disciplines are offered in such diverse subjects as Astrophysics, Biblical Studies, Chemistry, Comparative Literature, Earth Science, Economics, Environmental Sciences, International Relations, Medieval History, Modern Languages, Philosophy, Psychology, and Scottish History, just to name a few. You may enroll for one semester or a full year.
Quick Details
2023-24 Application Cycle
- Spring 2024: Open
- Deadline: Oct 1
2024-25 Application Cycle
- Fall/Yearlong 2024-25: Open
- Deadline: March 15
- Spring 2025: Open
- Deadline: Oct 1
- Minimum GPA: 3.2
- Minimum class standing: Junior (strong Sophomore applications may be considered)
- Open to degree-seeking students attending a 4-year institution at the time of application
Program Type
Program Capacity
20 students


text:
July 28, 2009
After presiding over the Madoff disaster, by far the greatest regulatory failure in the history of our nation, the SEC finds itself in an awkward spot.
If our firm expanded 1,000 times over, then took all its clients' money, dumped it in a ditch, and burned every scrap, the total loss would be far less than the loss due to Madoff's actvities. Beyond all the losses of all of Madoff's clients, honest advisers and their clients have also suffered from the indirect fallout of that scandal. The Agency's response to its gargantuan dereliction is to say, "GIVE US MUCH MORE POWER."
Having reviewed the many cogent objections already made to the custody proposal S7-09-09, and considerable further deliberation, we are unable to see any reason that such a step is either logical, benefical, or desirable.


text:
What's the meaning of the Seal of Wisconsin »
Seal of Wisconsin
This page is about the meaning, origin and characteristic of the symbol, emblem, seal, sign, logo or flag: Seal of Wisconsin.
The Great Seal of the State of Wisconsin is a seal used by the secretary of state to authenticate all of the governor's official acts, except laws. It consists of the state coat of arms, with the words "Great Seal of the State of Wisconsin" above it and 13 stars, representing the original states, below it.
* Forward, the state motto
* A badger, the state animal
Center, the state shield:
* Top left: A plow, representing agriculture
* Top right: A pick and shovel, representing mining
* Bottom left: An arm and hammer, representing manufacturing
* Bottom right: An anchor, representing navigation.
* Center: The U.S. coat of arms, including the motto E Pluribus Unum
* The shield is supported by a sailor and a yeoman (usually considered a miner), representing labor on water and land
* A cornucopia, representing prosperity and abundance
* 13 lead ingots, representing mineral wealth and the 13 original United States
The state seal emphasizes mining and shipping. At the time of Wisconsin's founding in 1848 the mining of lead and iron was a major industry that ended by the early 20th century. According to the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey "Significant remaining tonnages of lower grade ore have been identified by magnetic surveys and limited core drilling in [Gogebic District in Iron and Ashland Counties]." The state was also a particularly important navigational link from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River via Wisconsin rivers. This was gradually phased out with the advent of railways in the mid- to late-19th century.
The Secretary of State is the keeper of Wisconsin's great seal. The seal is displayed in all courtrooms in the state, often alongside the county seal.
- 959 Views
Graphical characteristics:
Asymmetric, Closed shape, Colorful, Contains both straight and curved lines, Has no crossing lines.
Category: Emblems.
Seal of Wisconsin is part of the U.S. State Seals group.
More symbols in U.S. State Seals:
More symbols in Emblems:
An emblem is an abstract or representational pictorial image that represents a concept, like a moral truth, or an allegory, or a person, like a king or saint. Although words emblem and symbol are of… read more »
Have a discussion about Seal of Wisconsin with the community:
Use the citation below to add this symbol to your bibliography:
"Seal of Wisconsin." Symbols.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2023. Web. 23 Sep. 2023. <https://www.symbols.com/symbol/seal-of-wisconsin>.


text:
What if the kingdom of heaven were the opposite of what we were expecting? What if we we were wrong about the guest list (Matthew 22)? What if our intuitions and expectations of heaven were ill-founded? What God's life was a dim bulb that drew only the quiet and humble seekers, rather than a spotlight drawing all from across the valley?
Christ suggested this time and again, with the Kingdom of God being likened to counterintuitive analogies that are head scratchers to this day. Regardless of what the Kingdom is, Jesus seems to be saying again and again it what was we expect.
Mosiah warned us we would be uninterested in heaven if we are not interested in serving the undeserving (Mosiah 4:17-18).
Indian Jones understood in time that the Holy Grail was not inherently desireable, but humble and plain. What if heaven, and the kingdom of god on earth, was the same?
C.S. Lewis paints a similar image in the Divorce of Heaven, with the weak and flimsy souls of purgatory repulsed by heaven and its unwillingness to bend to their comfort and expectations.
Perhaps the gate is straight and the way narrow because it is unintuitive, not difficult in terms of tasks and obedience. In fact, what if the way to get there was to let go and submit?


text:
High-Speed Tachometer
Our tachometer measures the angular position of a rotating target. The rotation speed pictured is that of the GE90 engine used on Boeing's 777 aircraft.
Level Sensor
This measures the liquid level using its buoyancy. Since all electronics and mechanics are outside the container, even corrosive liquid levels (such as acids) can be measured. Our sensor solves common issues around accessing the liquid such as being restricted to the vessel's existing opening or being unable to create new ports for measurement


text:
It's been a long time since I last wrote something here. I'm seeing the same thing happening with my Journal. I used to write in it daily and I would write a full page or more. Now, I'm lucky if I write a paragraph every week. Aging? Of course, everything is aging. From the time I get up in the morning with whimpers until I fall asleep at night with a sigh of relief. Maybe it's the drugs? I have this feeling that I would like to start this pharma experiment over again. Stop all of the various drugs and begin again with just one. But which one?
Still on the subject of aging; at 10 this morning we're going to our grandson's graduation from middle school. He's 13 and the our two youngest grandchildren are 11. In two years they will graduate and go on to high school. We have no babies to pamper! And all of this reminds us of how old we are.
Enough of that...We're still going to the gym on a regular basis and our mental processes seem to be fine enough. I paint all of the time but at a slower pace. I can't stand in one place for a long time without pain. When I paint with acrylics, I need to be standing, as I paint 'large'. I like a big canvas. 24"x24' at a minimum. My dream would be to have a 30'x10' canvas and all the paint I needed. With watercolors, I tend to paint 'small' and I can sit down to do that. Same with oil pastels. Although...painting a big canvas with oil pastels would be great fun! And expensive.
We had company over last night and I was very pleased when one of the guests took me aside when they were leaving and told me that he thought my paintings were beautiful. Now these were very abstract paintings and I had never heard anyone tell me they were beautiful. I had told myself that they were because I saw the beauty in them. For someone else to see what I had seen was most gratifying. And stimulating! I will return to my painting with a renewed sense of purpose.


text:
Always a popular thread at the other place.
I'll kick this one off.
It was my birthday the other day. I was expecting a bottle of my favourite perfume (I've been dropping hints I was running low) and woke up to a Land Rover Freelander on the drive. I've always wanted a 4x4 and now I've finally got one courtesy of my Mum and my Significant Other Half.
Okay, so it's not a new one and it's not an all singing, all dancing model, but that doesn't bother me. It's a freaking Freelander, dudes!
Mine's a white soft top like the one in the foreground.
Downside - I'll have to fund my own bottle of smellies. Oh hold on - there's Mother's Day coming up...
I'm celebrating the fact thay I have a new job after 6 weeks unemployment.
Oh, Congratulations, Aschwin! I really hope you will be happy!
Congrats hope it is a good one and not too far away from home (I hate it to have long ways to get to work)
RGBstock is celebrating the new random section of the site.
It's great ! ;-)
impressive, very nicely done. It's hard to stop from scrolling on and on...
great! And it never ends...:)
Wow! Very nice. I could spend far too much time scrolling through these...
Yes, it is a fabulous feature, Jay. Thank you.
Pinterest inspired. Nice job!
BTW. I uploaded my 3000 picture here. Wow...
I am celebrating that my second book about photography (this time about how to get better holiday pictures) is now at the printshop ;-)
That's great news, John!
Well done, John. It's always nice to see one of our own achieve good things. :D
Congratulations, Michal! It takes a lot of stamina to upload that many pics. A great gallery, too!
John, well done. You have real skill and it's fabulous to have that shared with the rest of us mere mortals! :)
It is good to see that we have nearly reached 70 K photos @ RGB now :)
Yes, we're not far off now. We need cake to celebrate. I'll buy the balloons.
Okay, let's prepare for the big party...
Sanja has tasty cakes in store for us already
Here are my balloons:
We have 70,000 photos on line!!
and on Alexa our traffic rank dropped under 40.000!!!
And everystockphoto.com has promised to add rgbstock.com to their index.
Also we do great in Google search . If you search for 'free stock photos' you will find us on position 6.
Today we are celebrating the arrival of my new camera, Nikon D90, along with a 50mm f/1.8. I found a really cool mp3 player (around 70$ value) inside the pack, now that's a nice gift! More dynamic range and higher ISO here I come! :D
Always nice to improve on the tools :-)
I just added a Pentax K-5 and some lenses to my small toolsbox ;-)
@ 335 and 336: congratulations both of you.