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Can Bourkes & Budgies Live Together?
BananaStock/BananaStock/Getty Images
Bourke's and budgies are both Australian parakeets in the Psittacidae family. The two species have similarities and differences. Both are small parakeets, ranging in size from 7 inches to 13 inches. They are easy to care for and make good pets.
Bourke's are quieter and less playful than budgies and don't demand as much human interaction. Some people might consider the Bourke's parakeet too dull, while others might find the budgie too loud. Choosing one over the other depends upon how much you want to interact with your pet bird as well as the level of noise you tolerate and prefer.
Bourke's Parakeets
Bourke's parakeets are named for Sir Richard Bourke, who was governor of New South Wales, Australia, from 1831 to 1836 and was known for advocating equal rights and religious tolerance. Bourke's are quiet, calm and gentle parakeets. They are not as active as budgies, the typical pet parakeet, nor as rowdy. They also are more independent birds, not as needy as budgies for attention, and they can amuse themselves. Bourke's don't climb the cage bars and normally don't talk, though they do make quiet little noises. They are the only parakeet without any green colouring, and their tails, though long, have a wider, flat end.
Budgie Parakeets
"Budgie," which is short for "Budgerigar," is the British name for the same birds Americans call "parakeets." They are friendly, active, intelligent birds that love to climb, chew, play with their toys, chirp and sing. Some can be taught to "talk" or imitate sounds and to do tricks. Budgies are hardy and easy to care for, but they do like interaction, either with a companion bird or their human caregiver. Most pet parakeets are budgies; they are readily available in pet stores and are among the least expensive pet birds. Budgies make good pet birds and good "first" birds, as long as their owners give them regular attention and ample playthings for their amusement.
Living Together
Though Bourke's and budgies are both in the parakeet family, most experts and parakeet owners who have tried it do not recommend housing Bourke's and budgies in the same cage. Some budgies can be quite aggressive, and owners who have caged the two together report that sometimes the budgie pecks at the Bourke's. Another reason not to cage them together is a difference in their innate habits. While budgies get around by climbing the cage bars and flying short distances between perches, Bourke's fly horizontally and therefore require a horizontal flight cage. Bourke's parakeets' wings should never be clipped, because they continue this flight pattern even in captivity. So if you want to try to cage them together, you need to put them in a cage that's horizontal for the Bourke's but also high enough to please the budgie that likes to climb.
Other Solutions
Instead of housing Bourke's and budgies in the same cage, put their separate cages next to each so they can feel as though they have a companion but also have their independence. Bourke's seem to coexist well with finches, canaries and cockatiels in the same cage. Outside of their cages, roaming and flying freely in a large room, budgies and Bourke's do not bother each other but do not interact either. Budgies do best paired with another budgie from a young age or kept alone with lots of toys and human interaction.


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Killing 'Pedro' bad policy for region, say officials
CHERRY POINT MARINE CORPS AIR STATION — Allies for Cherry Point's Tomorrow, a group best known by the acronym ACT, welcomes a Congressional push to protect the Marine Corps search and rescue (SAR) mission from being disbanded.
The Marine Corps' 2015 Aviation Plan called for the phase-out of the local SAR mission, affectionately called 'Pedro,' by the end of 2015. A March 25 letter from a bipartisan coalition of North Carolina and Arizona members of the US House called for the prohibition on funds that would be used to disband Marine Corps SAR missions. These "vital units" must not be disbanded at least for next fiscal year, the letter concluded.
"ACT has worked closely with our Congressional delegation to bring our concerns about Pedro to the attention of the Pentagon and key House and Senate committees," said Pete Rose, who represents ACT in the nation's capital. "In one of his first joint letters with Rep. Walter Jones, Senator Thom Tillis wrote to the Secretary of the Navy about his serious concerns over Pedro's future. This most recent letter is a clear signal to the Congress and Pentagon that SAR is a core Marine Corps mission that should not be thrown off," he added.
"I believe we need to carefully evaluate the full consequences of removing Pedro from the Marine Corps' capabilities. ACT is concerned that losing Pedro will end MCAS Cherry Point's role in SAR without a viable replacement plan," said Greg Lewis, President of ACT.
"If the U.S. Coast Guard werr to assume the SAR mission for eastern North Carolina, the air assets would have to be located outside of the operational training areas for MCAS Cherry Point, and MCB Camp Lejeune. This would result in lengthened response times during critical emergencies, not only for the Marines but also for any Air Force units that Pedro supports in times of emergency," said Frank Bottorff, Havelock City Manager and former base commanding officer at MCAS Cherry Point.
Bottorff's comments refer to the Aviation Plan which states — without any details or explanation — that the U.S. Coast Guard will take over Pedro's over-water SAR responsibilities.
"Although Pedro is a vital part of the Marine Corps presence in our region and is greatly valued by our local citizens, the plan to eliminate SAR from MCAS Cherry Point has not been explained or justified to the local community or our elected officials. ACT feels that the Aviation Plan does not address several key issues critical to MCAS Cherry Point and their civilian partners throughout the local region," said James Norment, a local member of ACT's legal and lobbying team.
ACT urges local governments and interested persons to raise important questions about the loss of Pedro. For more information, visit www.alliesforcherrypoint.com or call Marc Finlayson at (252) 617-0757.

subset: commoncrawl


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B.o.B., Santigold Transform Boring, Ore., Into a Brilliant Place [Sponsored Post]
Earlier this month, B.o.B. and Santigold joined forces with vitaminwater® and invaded Boring, Ore., to make a town with a dull name into a place where some magic happened.
While on a first glance, Boring is no South Beach or Ibiza, but the innovative folks at vitaminwater® had the idea to bring some high-energy to the West Coast to liven things up a bit with the help of B.o.B. and Santigold in addition to Matt & Kim.
In the video below, Bobby Ray takes over the stage to perform his current hit 'We Still in This Bitch' and even does a one-arm handstand for some added enjoyment. Santigold has some gold pom-pom shaking cheerleaders to assist her during her set, making the singer's performance one to watch.
Looks like Boring is actually pretty brilliant.


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Classes in Toruń for 5th year students (dates changed AGAIN!)
Submitted by robert.debski on Thu, 03/16/2017 - 23:07
This year classes in paediatrics for 5th year students are held at the Department of Paediatrics, Haematology and Oncology (Antoni Jurasz University Hospital in Bydgoszcz), at the Department of Paediatrics, Endocrinology, Diabetology and Neurology in Toruń and at the Department of Paediatrics, Allergology and Cardiology in Toruń. Both departments in Toruń are located at Wojewódzki Szpital Zespolony, ul. Konstytucji 3 Maja 42.
Here are the dates of the classes in the hospital in Toruń:
- 20/03/2017 to 21/03/2017 (Department of Paediatrics, Allergology and Cardiology; resp. person: dr. Janusz Czarnecki)
- 06/06/2017 to 07/06/2017 (Department of Paediatrics, Endocrinology, Diabetology and Neurology; resp. person: dr. Barbara Iwaniszewska)
Please, contact the Office of the Centre for Medical Education in English regarding your journey to Toruń.


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The Home of the Friendless and The Shadow on the Quilt
"Here lies Julia Adams … who died of thin shoes." That's an actual epitaph, according to a book of epitaphs I just tried to find here in my office. Sometimes my books seem to take on a life of their own and just when I need a specific title—poof—it's gone. But that's another blog post.
Today, I thought I'd share a book idea that sprang up over ten years ago and then just wouldn't go away. I saw this sign at a local cemetery. H. of F.? Hunh? I asked at the cemetery and was told the letters stood for Home of the Friendless. The phrase wouldn't go away.
Since I love prowling about in the historical archives here in my home town, I finally asked about the "Home of the Friendless" one day. (This was before we could "google" and know everything.) I learned: "In 1876 … charitable women of Nebraska organized a society known as the 'Home of the Friendless,' … to furnish a refuge for friendless children, girls, young women, and old ladies." By 1881, "so many friendless and deserted children came to our doors requiring protections that the state legislature … appropriated the sum of $5,000 to assist the society by the erection of a permanent building." Here's a photo of the Home of the Friendless from around 1917.
Most of us don't really think of the 1870s and 1880s as a time when many people were "friendless." We think of it as a kinder and gentler time. Sort of "little-house-on-the-prairie-ish." But 1876 was a dismal time in Nebraska. Thanks to hordes of grasshoppers, "property fell to ruinously low prices, farmers had little to buy with, and hundreds not only left their farms, but the town of Lincoln also."
I spent several days at the archives squinting at hand-written meeting minutes from the early days of this organization, and the more I read, the more enthusiastic I became about writing a story that would revolve around this compassionate ministry.
They hired a full-time Matron (for $25 a month.) A Matron. Ah … a character for a story. (You'll meet mine if you read The Shadow on the Quilt).
"Mrs. X will furnish the parlor and hall with carpets and curtains, parlor and back parlor for a bedroom …" Ah. Mrs. X must have been rich. (Enter Juliana Sutton, the heroine in my novel.)
I kept reading. More story ideas emerged. In August of 1883 an "interesting old lady" was admitted at $3 a week board. "Two little babies were brought to the home … we do not think they will live." A boy who had been adopted out was being brought back because of "dissatisfaction." He was returned to the home and then taken by another couple "who had his little sister." "Mrs D. was hired to work in the nursery for $8 a month plus the boarding of her three children."
A note in the meeting minutes from July, 1886, made me think of that sign at the cemetery. "The committee on cemetery grounds reported the old lots nicely planted with bedding plants from the greenhouse and the new lots to be graded and sodded by fall." Ah. I could have someone interested in the final resting places of the "friendless."
And so, finally … The Shadow on the Quilt, just released by Barbour Publishing.
Some of the entries in those historical documents broke my heart. Some inspired me to thank my heavenly Father for the boundless blessings I knew when I was raising my four children. When I became as single mother, I wasn't friendless like this woman in 1881: "A young mother was brought to the gate of this Home with a three days old baby. I took the child as she came to the steps and carried it to the nursery. Also assisted her to a room. In a week she was able to work and we found her good help. Her child is healthy and growing nicely. She has given it to the home."
Today, never-married mothers aren't treated like pariahs. "July 8—I received a letter asking the admittance of a young girl, one of the deceived and deserted ones. At first my heart rebelled when this class of inmates came, but after knowing them better my heart turns toward them, and I have done what I could to lead them to a better life."
The Shadow on the Quilt is my tribute to the women who created the Home for the Friendless in 1876; God's extraordinary women who saw a need and filled it. Extraordinary women who believed in an eternity where the word "friendless" will no longer be needed.
July 28, 1881 "Our dear little patient Hazel has gone to the home where sin and poverty will never enter, and where she will not be friendless, for Jesus has taken her to himself."


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Hi everybody,
I first met Wayne Watson at the Fellowship of Contemporary Christian Ministries (FCCM) gathering in Fort Wayne, Ind., back in the early 70's. Recently I had the opportunity to catch up with Wayne and confirmed that he is still going strong…having released another new CD this very week! Go to www.waynewatson.com and get a copy of Simple Life…it's amazing.
On this episode you'll hear the classic from Wayne like Touch Of The Master's Hand, Man In The Middle, Friend of A Wounded Heart and so much more! You don't want to miss this in-depth conversation with Wayne and recall songs that set him apart as a premier singer songwriter in early CCM. Go to www.fullcirclejesusmusic.com and click Episode #214 and share with a friend.
Just a reminder…many of my listeners inquire how to help support FULL CIRCLE and underwrite the next show…but honestly, I don't hear much from them from that point on. If you'd like to step up and underwrite the next show…let me know when you visit www.fullcirclejesusmusic.com. Thanks.


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When talking to cancer survivor or cancer patient, do not assume that you understand what we went through. Do you go through chemo 6 times?
It was, or it is...a traumatic experience which some of us are still going through. Do you have any lufe endangering growth in you?,
It was so devastating that some of us may panic. Have you ever being told that you will be given a.medication that will also destror your healthy cells?
It's not encouraging at all to say, hey, at least you are at stage 1. Or hey at least your cancer is not as bad as my uncle's.
No matter how much treatments or prevention actions are taken, having cancer, any cancer at all, or surviving it means only one thing.
My name is zatul and i have #breastcancer.
Siap da regrowth lagi. Twice u olsss...so yang ke tiga neh, i nak try alternative treatments la. Unless if they manage to talk me out of it. I dont know. Tunggu.la.selasa depan.


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As Douglas MacArthur once said, "Rules are mostly made to be broken and are too often for the lazy to hide behind". In LARP however, it's a different story. Following rules at a LARP is one of the key factors that can help others and ourselves get as much out of a game as possible. This is primarily down to the power of creative constraints. The idea that it's easier to create something and indeed live in something, that has these predefined rules.
That being the case however while LARP rules are indeed not made to be broken, they are in fact made to be altered and revised. Almost all LARP systems big and small will revisit their rules, whether for balancing tweaks or adding new mechanics. With this in mind, let's take a trip down memory lane and look at how one such rule has evolved with the times and trends. Today we're going to be having a look at the mage's favorite, counterspell.
The first recorded UK LARP began at Peckforton park during 1982. The system called Treasure Trap took inspiration from a myriad of fantasy tropes but more importantly set the stage for the bombardment of sucessors that would follow. Before that, however, let's take a step back eight years. In 1974 Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson brought us the first ever iteration of Dungeons and Dragons. One of the first fantasy role playing games of its kind. The system introduced a whole selection of tropes that would soon be mimicked and copied for generations to come. Including abilities, classes and magic items.
The catalyst – Dungeons and Dragons
In 1977 the Dungeon and Dragons rules were revised with a more unified approach. This is where our story on how the 'counterspell' as we know it today has evolved. In the AD&D (Advanced Dungeons and Dragons) rules there is an Abjuration Spell called Dispel Magic.
"A dispel magic spell will not affect a specifically enchanted item such as a scroll, magic ring, wand, rod… It will destroy magic potions (They are treated as 12 level for the purpose of this spell), remove spells cast upon persons or objects or counter the casting of spells in an area of effect. The base chance for success of dispel magic is 50%. For every level of experience of the character casting the dispell magic above of the creature whose magic is to be dispelled, the base chance is increased by 5%."
– Dispel Magic | AD&D
The rule is long winded and worded in a form that is mostly no longer used however it's purpose can be seen quite clearly -Perform a spell that can remove the effect of magic from a person or object. Looking at it, this is quite a reactive approach. Instead of directly stopping the spell taking effect you are instead removing it after the fact.
As well as this a mechanic that has stayed with most tabletop systems but has faded almost entirely from LARP is the chance factor. Only if the caster is 10 levels above the target is the spell 100% guaranteed to take effect.
Roots of the UK LARP scene – Treasure Trap
Moving forward a handful of years we can look at 1982 where the UK LARP scene was still an infant. While the original club closed in 1985 various splinter groups carried on the Treasure Trap name. As the original Treasure Trap rules are quite hard to get your hands on we're going to be looking at the rules for one of these splinter groups. The Durham University Treasure Trap is still active today and their rules can be found from a quick search.
Following the trend from a sizable part of Treasure Trap's inspiration, Dungeons and Dragons, the rules system for Treasure Trap are quite complex. However, the premise of magic can be broken down into four rules:
- Elementalism is magic cast by manipulating the energy of the elemental planes.
- Mages use a 'focus' to channel the power of the elements to cast spells.
- Mages have an amount of 'mana' that determines how many spells they can cast per day.
- Attempting to cast a spell with insufficient mana causes the mage to die in the process.
Also continuing the trend from AD&D the rules of Treasure Trap include a spell called 'Dispels'. A Dispel in Treasure Trap has three main purposes. These being:
"A dispel cast on a character or item will remove all spells of a level equal to or lower than the dispel currently affecting the target. Only spells with a duration may be removed, the effects of instant spells are not counteracted.
Alternatively, you may cast a dispel to counteract another character casting a spell of equal or lower level to the dispel. This use of Dispel does not require a spell vocal, simply the activation phrase. For the spell to be successfully countered, you must cast the dispel immediately upon the opponent completing their spell vocal.
Elemental elves and elementals take damage from dispels cast against them. If an elf has any ongoing effects then these are simply dispelled as normal. If the elf is not under the effect of any spells then they take damage equal to half the level of the dispel…"
– Dispels | Durham Treasure Trap
After reading the two it's easy to see where the inspiration for this spell came from. That being the case, however, Treasure Trap also built onto the skill with additional features that would later be used across the LARP scene. The second part of this spell is especially interesting. This is because this is where the premise of the 'Counterspell', we see today, originates. This spell is also interesting because of its diverse nature. I can see such mechanics today being split across multiple skills, being a: Dispel magic, Counterspell, and a Dismiss spell. This is definitely an approach that has been taken over time. This is possibly down to the influx of players and the need to spread skills across the player base.
The 'old school' LARP – Legion of Dreams
Going a few more years forward we can look at another LARP, that was around before many of us the LARPers in the scene today. In 1986 to the early 90's Legion Of Dreams "An old-school fantasy setting" LRP, was created. Like Durham Treasure Trap, Legion of Dreams (or LoD) is still running weekend events in 2017, 31 years on. Legion of Dreams runs a rules set called 'Realms Of Eldritch' and has been continuously updating them over time. That being the case however the rules do keep the flavor from the time.
This is however where we can start seeing rules becoming more bespoke to the game teams running them. It becomes less of a question of 'is this something we can do?' to 'is this something we want in our game?' The question of if a spell fits a setting and does it fit the playstyle of the game team. While LoD does not have a direct Counterspell or Dispell Magic mechanic we can see some similarities to the Treasure Trap dispell rule. This is also where we can start to see the more diverse rule in Treasure Trap being broken down as predicted earlier. 'Dismiss' is a spell in the 'Rules Of Eldritch' system. (EDIT: this effect was added later on, around 2007/2008).
"Holds a single lower level undead creature in the power of the caster. So long as appropriate chanting and concentration is maintained the undead is powerless to act against the caster and will be slowly forced in whichever direction the caster directs. If backed into a solid object, the undead is destroyed… This will generally not work on undead whose power is 8 or greater."
– Dismiss | Legion of Dreams – Rules of Eldritch
This has direct similarities to the aforementioned Treasure Trap rule. The trend of being able to directly harm or dismiss a creature, be it elemental or undead, by the use of a 'dispell' of some kind. This is also a trend that will continue as its own skill in more modern LARP systems.
Modern Day LARPs – Lorien Trust
Taking another jump in time, this one to the early 90's. 1992 was the year Lorien Trust, a popular LARP fest system, took roots. Lorien Trust, also know as LT, has gone through a plethora of changes, both rules and structural over time. The LT system now stands in the same format it has for at least half a dozen years.
Magic in LT is broken down into three main sections; Incantation, Healing, and Spellcasting. Most of the player base at an LT event will have access to one of these trees of magic. With that in mind, all of these fields have access to a spell called 'Countermagic'.
"This stops a level 1 or 2 ranged effect from occurring, except for dismiss or control… Countermagic must be started within 3 seconds of the completion of the casting of the effect to be countered, and cannot counter Mass effects. You can still cast this spell even if the effect that you are countering would prevent you from doing so."
– Countermagic | Lorien Trust
This rule continues the trend of the bigger, more diverse, rule being broken down into more situational rules. In LT this could have been done for a myriad of reasons however the two most apparent come down to making skills that are low ref intensive and allowing for players to vary in skill sets.
Something else of note here is the simplicity of the rule. This mechanic also continues the trend of 'levels' of magic. If at a more simplistic level. Unlike the original Dungeons and Dragons ruling, this mechanic is broken into two parts. These being countermagic and High countermagic. If you can perform High countermagic then you can 'counter' high-level spells, otherwise, you cannot.
Years of experience – Empire LRP
If this was a movie this section would be the deleted scenes as I could not decide if this section fitted the narrative. However, as I mentioned above I think it's important to know when LARPs have decided to add rules and in some cases keep them away. Empire LARP was set up in 2013 and is the latest of LARP settings from Profound Decisions (PD). The system adds to several years of experience from the PD team and features a magic system unlike most in the hobby.
When creating the rules for Empire the conscious decision was made to keep skills like counterspell out of the setting. This was for a plethora of reasons, including the use of implements in the system and the clunkiness of the mechanic. This cements our theory mentioned when discussing LoD. The idea that LARP systems have developed to the stage where systems are being designed around having specific rules sets, for taste or setting reasons, over implementing rules because other systems use them.
LARP in 2017 – Futures End
Now our last stop, 2016. March 2016 was the first event for Futures End. An event that has won a myriad of awards at the UK LARP awards 2017. The Futures End setting is one of super heroes, pyskers, and magic. Futures End continues our trend of the counterspell, however, takes our prediction of stripping down skills to the next level. Up until now, a counterspell has allowed someone to nullify the effect of a spell from any source to any target. That being the case, however, Future's End breaks this up into two parts; being able to counter spells targeted at yourself, and being able to counter spells targetted at others. The first of these is shown below:
"You have the ability to counter any psychic technique or magical spell which s targetted at you. This cannot be used to target mass or global effects."
– Counterspell (self) | Futures End
This is an interesting change as it continues the trend of making skills more unique for the individual. Instead of having one skill in Treasure Trap we have the possibility of four. This forces players to work together in performing all of these skills when needed. This also serves the need of players feeling 'special' when they find themselves with a skill that few others possess. Finally, it's also interesting to look at how the simplicity of LARP and role-playing has changed. From the 93 words of Dungeons and Dragons to the 144 of Treasure Trap. The same, or at least similar, spell in Future End is only a mere 27. This, of course, makes the rules far more inviting and easier to learn for new players to the system or hobby as a whole.
The Evolution – Conclusion
So that's been a journey down memory lane, whether we were there at the time or not. When it comes to the wire, however, what can we learn from the evolution of the counterspell? Well we can learn a few things:
- We've learned that spells and skills are no longer a catch all. Spells now are less diverse to allow more players a chance to feel special and to add that extra challenge to overcoming problems.
- We've also learned that the simplicity of these skills and spells has improved. Whether it's having shorter word counts or removing the complexity of endless levels.
- What we've also learned is how far this hobby has come, from it's roots to being a place where we have over 1500 players at fest events.


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Tom Kurke Promoted to President and COO, VP Sales and VP Marketing Named; Poised for Continued Growth, Innovation as 3D Technology Reinvents Manufacturing
Tom Kurke Promoted to President and COO, VP Sales and VP Marketing Named; Poised for Continued Growth, Innovation as 3D Technology Reinvents Manufacturing
MORRISVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA -- 9 August, 2012 -- Geomagic®, a global company providing 3D technology solutions for digital reality, today announced promotions and appointments to its executive team, following record sales during the fiscal year which ended June 30, 2012. These include the promotion of Tom Kurke, the company's chief operating officer to the position of president and COO; the promotion of Len Chamberlain from sales director to vice president of worldwide sales; and the appointment of Joan Lockhart, who joined Geomagic via the company's April acquisition of the Sensable® 3D design and haptics businesses, to vice president of marketing. Additionally, Karl Matthews, formerly vice president of product management will serve as vice president of the newly acquired Sensable Group from its offices in the Boston area.
Ping Fu, Geomagic's co-founder, continues as the CEO and will expand her visionary role in the 3D technology industry, her national service fostering entrepreneurship, such as the White House National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the National Council on Women in Technology, and serve as a spokesperson on breakthrough technologies in sensor-enabled 3D digital reality and the makers' movement. At a time when the additive manufacturing industry is experiencing "accelerated growth" and longstanding gaps in the digital workflow are being streamlined, the executive appointments give Geomagic an exceptional foundation from which to capture expanding market demand and to deliver transformational solutions.
"I am incredibly pleased with the leadership team we have built at Geomagic, one with diverse talents and skills, and proven understanding of the challenges and the opportunity facing our users and the industry," states Ping Fu, CEO. "In the last three months, our teams not only delivered exceptional performance and value for Geomagic's scanning and metrology solutions, they also have successfully integrated Sensable's 3D modeling and haptic businesses, which resulted in growth for the Sensable business, good will with employees, customers and partners, and tremendous momentum. The new leadership team will position us for greater performance in the coming years as we develop new products that will democratize 3D capture, modeling and interaction. The challenge is no longer about access to data; it is about extracting intelligence from it and doing smart things with it to benefit humanity."
Executives' Backgrounds
Tom Kurke, president and COO, joined Geomagic in 2009 from Bentley Systems, where he was instrumental in growing that company's annual revenues to over $500 million and managing the global software subscriptions business that represented nearly 70% of the company's revenues. In his added role as Geomagic's president, Tom will continue to drive global sales while maximizing operational readiness throughout the company for expanded growth and the launch of new products. He will continue to work closely with CEO Ping Fu to drive the company's 3D technology and marketing strategy. A former practicing attorney with a mechanical engineering degree, Tom is himself a frequent industry speaker and blogger on digital capture, additive manufacturing and intellectual property rights.
"I am confident that Geomagic will achieve an outsized impact on the way people capture and interact with 3D content in the coming months," said Tom Kurke. "I'm proud to be a part of the Geomagic family of employees, users and partners and feel especially fortunate to work with the members of this leadership team."
Len Chamberlain, vice president sales, has been with Geomagic since 2006, most recently serving as Sales Director: Americas, Asia & Strategic Partnerships, where he developed OEM channels and also managed direct sales teams. Len brings 20 years of design, operations, development and sales experience to his new role at Geomagic. A mechanical engineer by training he has held senior positions with Konica Minolta, Image Guided Technologies (acquired by Stryker), Gambro and Medtronics.
Joan Lockhart, vice president of marketing, joined Geomagic during its acquisition of the Sensable 3D design and haptics businesses, where she served as vice president of sales and marketing for the past 6 years. She has 20 years of executive experience, concentrated in marketing at companies such as GeoTrust (acquired by Verisign), RSA Security, Avid (IPO), PictureTel and MCK (IPO). She will continue to be based out of Geomagic's Sensable Group office in Boston.
Karl Mathews, vice president, Geomagic Sensable Group, has been with Geomagic for four years, previously serving as vice president of product management. For ten years prior to Geomagic, he was with Adobe Systems overseeing product strategies and marketing for several business lines. While retaining responsibility for the Company's customer support and training functions, Karl has relocated to Geomagic's Sensable Group office in Boston to drive the continuing integration of Sensable's business operations into Geomagic as well as to lead the Sensable Group's team.
Biographies of the entire Geomagic management team are available on the Company's website.
About Geomagic
Geomagic (www.geomagic.com) is a global company dedicated to advancing and applying 3D technology for the benefit of humanity. Geomagic's scanning and design software solutions are used to capture and model 3D content from physical objects, organically sculpt complex shapes, and prepare products for manufacturing. In addition, the company produces powerful 3D metrology and inspection software that verifies dimensional quality by comparing as-built products to master designs. Geomagic's Sensable Phantom haptic devices simulate the sense of touch in a digital environment.
Geomagic's software and hardware are utilized by world-class customers in a variety of industries, including aerospace, automotive, medical, consumer products, toys, collectibles, coindesign, jewelry, fine art, heritage restoration, research, education, mold making, entertainment, training and surgical simulation. In fact, some of the world's leading companies and research organizationsuse Geomagic software, including Ford, BMW,Boeing, Harley Davidson, Timberland, Mattel/Fisher Price, Lego, Pratt & Whitney, NASA, Schneider Electronic, 3M, Danaher and Invisalign. Geomagic is based in Research Triangle Park, N.C., USA, with an office in Boston, subsidiaries in Europe and Asia, and channel partners worldwide.
Geomagic, Geomagic Studio, Geomagic Qualify, Geomagic Qualify Probe, Geomagic Spark, Wrap, Geomagic Wrap, Phantom, OpenHaptics, Omni, Freeform, Claytools, Sensable and Sensable Technologies, Inc. are trademarks or registered trademarks of Geomagic Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.


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A reporter asked President Trump if he was giving up on the proposed two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians. Trump responded by saying he could live with either a one or two-state solution.
REPORTER: Are you ready to give up of the notion of two-state solution that was adopted by previous administration?
TRUMP: So I'm looking at two-state and one-state and I like the one that both parties like. I'm very happy with the one that both parties like. I can live with either one. I thought for a while that two-state looked like it may be the easier of the two. But honestly if Bibi and if the Palestinians, if Israel and the Palestinians are happy, I'm happy with the one they like the best. As far as the embassy moving to Jerusalem, I'd love to see that happen. We're looking at it very very strongly. We're looking at it with great care. Great care, believe me, and we'll see what happens. Okay?
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Image: Group photo at Treptower Park's Soviet War Memorial
Two months after the lecture on Berlin, we went to the city itself. The arrival day was marked by extremes. Having survived the bus journey to the hotel – our bus driver got a bad case of road rage over our flight delay – we were greeted by some exciting developments on the USS strike front. Later that night, our perhaps premature celebrations in a Vietnamese restaurant were uncomfortably interrupted by the close hovering of a drunk right wing guy who took a dislike to the composition of our staff table. Thankfully, the remainder of the trip proved less emotionally stressful.
It usually takes me a while to tune back into Germany, as the process is initially done with some reluctance. For the first few hours, I pick up all the wrong vibes and experience a tension between my expat self and the supposedly native environment. I speak the language clumsily and encounter fellow Germans with mixed feelings of rejection and curiosity. After a while, the tension mellows, and I cannot decide anymore whether I am opening myself to my obviously more welcoming surroundings, or whether I am blocking out the tension with an edited nostalgic imaginary. I decide that it's a mixture of both and proceed to consume tons of local junk food: Berlin, here I am! The city is also becoming increasingly familiar since a few friends and family moved there over the last few years. This especially translated into vital recommendations for Italian gelato parlours.
Image: Acclimatisation via halloumi döner and ayran – with two fingers to the current German Minister of Interior (see this article).
The trip was preceded by an intense refamiliarisation with German history (see Part 1). In school, I was not keen on history lessons, but now the books I consulted spoke to me very differently. I had the feeling that I could finally make sense of my country and its place in the world, and also connect it to my family's history. While my family is not from Berlin, it was affected by various historical events associated with the city including the division of Germany, the Third Reich and various migrations: I grew up in a divided Germany that, due to our close proximity to the border, also divided my family. In the Third Reich, my family encompassed the whole spectrum from SS officer to Jew and had to negotiate this in very particular ways. In addition, my German education – including the family stories told to me by my parents – prepared me to deal with the role of the perpetrator-educator and to illustrate the actions and fates of ordinary people. Having come from a town that doubled in size with refugees from East Prussia and related regions, I could also explain how such events in German history influence the current refugee debate. The stories of friends and family who play an active role in the debate, partly because they themselves have different migrantion backgrounds, helped illustrate further how 'das Deutsche Volk' currently tries to construct itself (I always struggle with the inscription 'Dem Deutschen Volke' on the front of the Reichstag, as friends, family and many other people in German society remain excluded from this category).
Image: Inscription on the Reichstag. Source: Wikipedia.
To gain a fresh image of German history, I immersed myself in books and German newspaper articles. Here, I especially chose English language books – not only would this give me the correct English vocabulary for German events, but also an outside perspective. I tried to cover a range of positions and styles, including Neil MacGregor's book and podcasts based around the exhibition that I had missed at the British Museum, and David Olusoga and Caspar W. Erichsen's 'The Kaiser's Holocaust' on the German genocide in Namibia. I also consulted a few German books on colonialism to gain a sense of how the subject was treated in local discourse. The literature made me wish that more Germans, especially Germans in positions of power, read not just their Nazi history more critically. It is worrying that a generation that never experienced the empire and barely remembers the 'Eastern territories' seems to long for this past so much that they form alliances with right wing movements.
During this research, I not only found aforementioned German anti-racist and 'postcolonial' activist projects, but also some amazing video projects, including the Germania channel that shows song-length documentaries on musicians of different migration backgrounds. What I like about this project it that, through its choice of countries – such as the UK, Thailand, Turkey, Russia, Denmark, Sudan – it challenges who we understand as a 'migrant'. Why are some people 'migrants' and others 'expats'? I also revisited channels such as the Datteltäter (Dattel = date (fruit) and Täter = perpetrator), a German Muslim-run political comedy and slam poetry series, and the programme of the Maxim Gorki Theatre, a Berlin 'institution' that provides acerbic political commentary and is currently staffed not just by a majority 'minority' German cast, but also a separate refugee ensemble. Sadly, our delayed flight made me miss their 'Gorki – Alternative für Deutschland' show, which explores the role of the theatre in countering the growth of right wing sentiment.
Image: Berlin's 'Datteltäter'. Source: Die Welt
Not having had the opportunity to do a 'recce' (a new word I learnt from my colleagues – I had no idea this use of military slang was more widespread!), the main promise I made about my theme day was: enough food and toilet opportunities. While I knew I could pull this off quite well, the rest of the day was a bit more nerve-wracking, because I was not sure what to expect at any of the sites. The first place we visited in person was the building site of Berlin Palace and the adjacent Humboldt Box, a temporary museum that gives a taste of the forthcoming Humboldt Forum and other aspects of the Palace. I expected the box to be tiny, but it turned out to be a huge complex of five floors, including a viewing terrace. Upon entering the space, we were given a spontaneous tour by one of the staff, Bernd Busse, who not only turned out to be from my father's tiny hometown in rural Northern Germany, but also a former resident of Leicester. This made the tour a lot less dull, despite the group's reservations about some of his explanations (my colleagues' favourite: "this was the area before your grandparents bombed it to pieces"). It was interesting to hear 'live' how our guide justified the reconstruction: Berlin needed a centre that wasn't a nondescript modern looking building such as the Palace of the Republic that could be from anywhere in the world. For the remainder of the tour, Busse detailed the painstaking reconstruction efforts. It was interesting to see that the gift shop contained a book on the Palace of the Republic and hadn't been completely purged. We thanked our guide and moved on to inspect the Humboldt Forum related exhibitions.
Image: Berlin Palace donations represented in the form of stickers on an architectural model.
While the first floor mainly contained Prussian baroque architecture and sculpture models, the next two floors, to our surprise, contained mostly audio exhibits – presumably because these collections could most easily be moved and served to illustrate how the works and artefacts of other cultures would be engaged with. The exhibition encompassed both evolving recording technologies and the 'negotiation' of recordings from other cultures (see panel below). The sounds were experienced through headphones that changed songs in front of every exhibit. The students returned with mixed opinions and speculated on how the material could have been presented differently to better engage with the respective communities. They also wondered how the material related to their 'container' – the Palace. How do migrant community music projects (an example pictured below), for example, sit within a neo-Prussian imperial palace? The remaining floors contained the results of an architectural competition for a section in the Palace and a posh-looking café. The students noted that the competition featured many geographical themes (see third image below) such as exploration and colonial connections – sadly, some very interesting project descriptions were only available in German.
After our visit, we hopped on a train to Potsdam at Alexanderplatz for a comparison with another controversial building project. I was not aware of the reconstructed Potsdam City Palace at the time – the Potsdam equivalent of Berlin Palace – otherwise we probably would have visited that one, too. Instead we visited the Garnisionskirche (garrison church). This reconstruction project was the focus of a recent multi-page article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), a relatively conservative newpaper known for its investigative journalism. I wanted the students to see Potsdam to gain a sense of the German Empire in a more condensed form. The city (170,000 inhabitants), capital of the federal state of Brandenburg, was – and still is – something like an elite playground that also translates into the built environment. The residing aristocrats constructed whatever they fancied: baroque palaces, Russian houses, Dutch houses, Chinese pavilions, English and French gardens – it even has its own Brandenburg Gate. In 1911, the city even got its own airship port and film studios. Today, Potsdam's villas mostly are populated by German 'new aristocrats': wealthy media and business personalities.
Image: Travel advertisement for Namibia, spotted in Postdam.
According to the article in the FAZ, which focused on the centrality of the church to royalists and (neo-)Nazis, and the suppression of a public vote around its reconstruction, the church was basically irredeemable. It was the place where Prussian soldiers had to swear their oath of loyalty, where the orchestrators of German colonisation and African genocide received their awards, where the royalists and fascists plotted against the Weimar Republic, and where the Nazis held their first parliament ('Day of Potsdam') since they weren't able to congregate in Berlin's burnt out Reichstag. The church was to be reconstructed with its original decoration of weapons and war trophies, and much of the money was found to come from right wing and army sources, as had the money for the already restored bell tower that stands in a nearby park (and which had been inaugurated by a guy who had questioned the legitimacy of the current German-Polish border!). After protesters accused the church of not having a congregation, some district rigging managed to pull together roughly a dozen members. The most damming turn of events was a governmental intervention (a joint Christian and Social Democrat action) which forbade a public vote. A similar referendum had already prevented the reconstruction of a church in Magdeburg.
Even the BBC reported on the controversy.
I was not entirely sure what to expect. An ordinary building site? Swastika graffiti? Protesters? German-style left vs. right-wing street fighting? To me, the site felt rather odd in what it tried to perform. As we turned around the corner, the first thing we saw was a big wire cage containing reconstructions of the church's weather vane ornaments. The box was located between the reconstructed belltower (that is apparently too small for the actual church) and the building site. It was quite funny how everyone was taken aback for a moment before letting out something like: 'oh my God!', 'are they serious?!' or 'this is so ugly!'. I had to laugh: if this was a taste of what was to come, one would have to protest against aesthetic crimes alone – the pieces looked like a gigantic parody of Prussian clichés. The building site itself felt rather ordinary. The only sign of protest that we (or, rather, my colleague Gavin Brown) spotted, was a big sign in the window of the 'de-GDR-ification' endangered 'Rechenzentrum' (former GDR data centre, now artist studios) saying 'Love thy neighbours'. There was also another red banner which we unfortunately could not decipher.
We also discovered not only an exhibition next to the building site, but also a provisional space of worship called the Nagelkreuzkapelle (Cross of Nails Chapel). The Community of the Cross of Nails is a network of churches that is invested in reconciliatory projects, having started as a project of Coventry Cathedral after its partial destruction during German bombing in WW2. To our surprise, we found that the church was networked with Coventry Cathedral and had official support from the Queen who had even donated to the project. The friendly staff inside the church talked about how the GDR government, like other communist governments, had persecuted Christians and destroyed a large number of churches (around 40) in 1968. For them, the project was part of a movement to reclaim sites of Christian worship and the church's role in peace building. Indeed, many of the churches destroyed in WW2 and 'finished off' by the GDR government are currently being rebuilt despite lack of worshippers. While the exhibition itself was not that revealing (although it did feature an interesting GDR propaganda video about the church's destruction), the space itself was interesting in its juggling of different aspirations and justifications.
We were also given some brochures in English that emphasised the role of the church as a 'focal point of Prussian identity' and a 'positive symbol of Prussian values' fused with Christian faith. To me, the church perfectly symbolised the tensions within Prussian culture across absolutism, militarism, conservatism, egalitarianism, enlightenment and faith. Against this background, it feels as if the church could continue on its path as a controversial symbol, but also that its reconstruction diminishes its symbolic power, making it just another ordinary place in provincial Germany. Perhaps this depends a lot on how the different people it will attract are being managed and on how Germany continues to deal with its identity.
In the remaining hours, we visited Sanssouci Palace, which, I had to realise, looked rather bleak in the winter. No wonder this was classed as a summer residence (Berlin Palace was the Hohenzollern's winter residence). It took us a while to work out that the odd grey boxes dotted around the park were in fact protections for the white marble statues. Alternative suggestions included bat boxes, puppet theatre stages, Christo-and-Jeanne-Claude-style public art, and idiosyncratic garden sheds. Although the splendour of the building was somewhat palpable, a couple of majestic looking Mandarin ducks clearly stole the show: animals not empire rule! On that note, we decided to end the day at a trashy fun fair on the way to the station, where we swapped Prussian imperial ambitions for a round of dodgems.
Overall, it was a rather interesting experience to talk about German culture and history as a German. I realised how much I took for granted and had to explain to students. It was good to have non-German colleagues with me who, in addition to the student queries, pointed towards some uniquely German issues and habits that I should elaborate further, including questions around German flag waving, public nudity and the influence of federal states. I left with a feeling that I wanted to spend more time in Berlin and with German history to be able to improve my theme day for the next trips (the other theme days so far include migration, urban nature and Cold War geopolitics). How could I teach better about colonial history and how it affects Germany? Should I take the students to the Natural History Museum instead of Potsdam to see how colonialism doesn't just affect human affairs? Should I take them to the Afrikaviertel – and, if yes, how? Should I restart efforts to contact activists or academics? Or will the changing nature of the Humboldt Forum and Potsdam provide enough material? Planning for the next trip has already started, so this is something that I will have to think through now. Hopefully this will warrant another 'recce' to Berlin in the summer or winter.
'Debriefing' with my cousin after my theme day at his favourite gelato parlour, we both agreed how much more interesting history becomes when you are older and can see the weirdness of it, including the fact that things that took place thousands of years ago still shape today's life. It fitted the weirdness of discussing our different experiences with "Germanness" over eating excellent gelato in a generic looking shopping centre next to the only surviving building from the WW2 air raids (a wine store that was especially sturdily built to carry the weight of all the alcohol!) and on the spot of the former Berlin Wall. Although I felt that the day could have been more lively, perhaps through more interaction with local people, I wondered whether I managed to convey at least a little bit of this intense co-shaping (co-weirding?) of geography and history. I hoped that the students, too, went away with a sense of the strangeness of identity and place-making, even if they might not yet know what to do with all the information they received on this trip.
Many thanks for advice on theme day planning (and local food options!) goes to: Sukit Manthachitra, Tahani Nadim, Regina Sarreiter, Uli Beisel, Sandra Imelmann, Brigitte and Friedhelm Last, and the whole field trip team.


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20th Century Fox have released three new TV spots over the Labor Day weekend for director Ridley Scott's upcoming sci-fi movie, The Martian.
The new promos feature some snippets of brand-new footage, including a blink-and-you'll-miss-it look at Community's Donald Glover and Game of Thrones and all-around fan fave Sean Bean. Check it all out in the new TV spots about Matt Damon's Robinson-Crusoe-on-Mars below:
During a manned mission to Mars, Astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is presumed dead after a fierce storm and left behind by his crew. But Watney has survived and finds himself stranded and alone on the hostile planet. With only meager supplies, he must draw upon his ingenuity, wit and spirit to subsist and find a way to signal to Earth that he is alive. Millions of miles away, NASA and a team of international scientists work tirelessly to bring "the Martian" home, while his crewmates concurrently plot a daring, if not impossible rescue mission. As these stories of incredible bravery unfold, the world comes together to root for Watney's safe return.
The movie is based on Andy Weir's best-selling novel and stars Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Sebastian Stan, Kate Mara, Michael Pena, Jeff Daniels, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Donald Glover and Sean Bean.
The Martian will hit movie theaters on Oct. 2. Will this one be a must-see movie for you?
(via Comic Book Movie)


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Best Buy Co., Inc. is set to bring its electronics recycling program to all of its 1,006 stores on Feb. 15. The program is the latest addition to the initiatives offered by Best Buy called "Greener Together," which provide ways to recycle, reuse or trade-in end-of-life (EOL) electronics. Previously, Best Buy's e-cycling had only been available at 117 test stores.
A $10 recycling fee per unit will be charged for items with screens, such as televisions, laptop computers and monitors (recycling at California stores and any Best Buy-branded products will not incur this fee). Although there is a small charge, recyclers will instantly receive a $10 Best Buy gift card in exchange for the recycling fee.
Through Greener Together, Best Buy is looking to expand its earth-friendly initiatives to not only include recycling, but supply chain management and waste reduction. The company is working together with employees, manufacturers and partners to reduce its carbon footprint, while providing consumers with an increasing number of energy-efficient and recyclable options, from components to packaging.
Do Recycle…
Starting Feb. 15, you can recycle up to two units per day, per household, at any U.S. Best Buy store. Most electronics are accepted, including:
- Televisions and monitors up to 32"
- Computer CPUs and notebooks
- Small electronics
- VCR and DVD players
- Phones
- Accessories, such as keyboards, mice and remotes
Don't Recycle…
Some consumer electronics aren't accepted through the Best Buy program. Some of these include:
- Televisions or monitor screens greater than 32"
- Console televisions
- Items containing Freon, including air conditioners, dehumidifiers, and mini-refrigerators (according to Best Buy, local, municipal recycling options are best for these products)
- Microwaves
- Other appliances
Recycling kiosks at the front of every store will make it easy for you to recycle smaller items at no cost, like ink cartridges, rechargeable batteries, cell phones, CDs, DVDs, and PDA/smart phones.
If you have large appliances that are difficult to recycle, or are not accepted in stores, Best Buy provides alternate programs:
- Appliance and television haul-away: Best Buy will remove an old or obsolete appliance or television free of charge from a consumers' home when a new product is purchased and delivered by Best Buy Home Delivery or Geek Squad Home Theater Installation Service.
- Appliance and television pick-up: For $100, Best Buy will arrange a home visit to remove up to two appliance units and/or televisions for recycling, with $20 for each additional unit.
- Tech Trade-In: Check out Best Buy's Trade-in site to trade in various, gently used electronics for a Best Buy gift card.
The program will expand sometime in fiscal 2010 to Puerto Rico stores.
Feature image courtesy of Mike Mozart


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Best Revlon Eyeliners – Our Top 10
Eyeliners and girls are very good friends. Many of us can't go out without applying one. Today, we are listing down 10 best Revlon eye liners available in India.
1. Revlon Color Stay Eyeliner in Black:
This rotating type eyeliner has a sharpener attached at the bottom making it travel friendly. The color is jet black and it stays for an entire day (read 10 hours). It is smudge proof and waterproof too. The price is also decent and it's a 'must have'.
2. Revlon Colorstay Gel Eyeliner in Brown:
Gel eyeliners are getting more popular day by day. The brown one from this range is quite attractive. The staying power is amazing at 10-11 hours. The packaging is very cute and the applicator brush that comes along with it is very good. The texture is creamy and thus it glides easily.
[ Read – Top Rated Reviews About Revlon Products ]
3. Revlon Eyeliner Pencil in Black:
Girls who don't like rotating type pencil can try eyeliner pencil by Revlon. The colour is very intense and it does not sting your eyes at all. It stays for around 4-5 hours without any primer. The texture is nice and smooth.
4. Revlon Color stay Eyeliner – Teal:
'Teal' is very much the 'IN' color these days and if you're looking for this colour then try Revlon color stay eyeliner in this shade. The pencil is retractable with an in-built sharpener which makes it travel friendly. It is highly pigmented and one swipe is enough to get desired color. It stays for 7-8 hours without smudging.
5. Revlon Eye Pencil in Green:
Eyeliners can change your entire look. Revlon makes amazing eyeliners and when the colour is green, it's just awesome. It comes in a pencil type and the texture is creamy. It glides easily and stays on the eyelids for 6 -7 hours. It's decently priced too.
[ Read: Smokey Look ]
6. Revlon Magic Eyeliner Pencil Smokey Black:
The colour of this eyeliner is not perfect black but it's 'Grayish Black'. It's highly pigmented. It stays for 3 hours without any primer but you can use primer to increase the staying power. It's very good eyeliner to create natural looking eyes.
7. Revlon Color stay One Stroke Defining Eyeliner:
These pencils have many amazing shades like turquoise and blue. They are highly pigmented and come with reasonable price tag. They do not sting and stays for around 4 hours without primer. The texture is creamy and it glides easily on eyelids and also on waterline.
8. Revlon Beyond Natural Defining Eye Pencil – Black:
This is 'blackest black' shade with some glitters which are no OTT. The texture is not very creamy but then also it glides easily on your eyelids. The lasting power is good with 5 hours. If you're searching for a good eyeliner, then this is for you.
[ Read: Eyeliner Brands ]
9. Revlon Color Stay Sparkling Eyeliner:
10. Revlon Colorstay Liquid Liner:
The staying power of this Revlon liquid eyeliner is commendable and it stays for whole day until you don't remove it using makeup remover. Also, it doesn't flake off which is icing on cake. The price is inexpensive and you'll not regret buying it.
*Subject to Availability
Hope you enjoyed the article. Shoot a comment!
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The Japan Information and Culture Center (JICC) of the Japanese Embassy in Washington DC opens an exhibit on November 15, 2017 on "Art from the Garden: Ceramics & Sculptures by Marc Peter Keane." The show runs through December 27, 2017.
Keane, a landscape architect whose artworks are inspired by nature and draw from Japanese traditional culture. The current exhibit of his works is called bontei, or "tray garden." Each is a reflection of the natural world made from simple objects. Stones and plants are incorporated in the artworks and presented on trays, with particular attention to time and space. "In these works," he says, "I am not trying to create gardens in miniature but rather to distill from the culture of Japanese gardens some essential aspects and reapply those as the basis of the sculptural process."
Keane lived and worked in Kyoto for nearly 20 years and he has designed and built many private gardens for individual clients, companies, and temples.
Keane will discuss his works on November 15 at the JICC from 6:30-8pm. Registration is required at https://artfromthegarden.eventbrite.com


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Miners have long taken a canary into the mine, and if it dropped dead, they knew the air was deadly and they should get out of there.
Consider the global climate as the mine atmosphere; we'd like to test it. Bring the hypothesis that the globe is warming into the science observations and models (like the canary into the mine) and check to see if GW survives to explain the many phenomena observed, or falls dead by predicting things that don't happen. It may tell us if we need to get out of this climate. (OK, GWDs, I know that in this case, if the canary (GW) survives, it says we should get out of here (or try to do something), if it dies it doesn't tell us anything. The analogy isn't perfect, but it's effective.)
So far, the science observations suggest that there's a change (usually a deterioration, but some temporary improvements like the increase in some wine qualities!) in the environment that can be explained by a warmer climate. We've discussed a lot of them, but here's a few more just arrived:
• There is a growing conviction that life on Earth has already entered mass-extinction six. (An expert panel of scientists, convened by the International Program on the State of the Ocean (IPSO). Increased CO2 causing acidification is a large cause.)
• The Arctic stratosphere suffered severe ozone depletion during the spring of 2011. Early results suggest that this may be the most severe Arctic ozone depletion seen in the record. (Subject of an American Geophysical Union session in SF this Dec.)
• About one-third of the warming predicted over the next century comes from direct warming by greenhouse gases, with the rest being due to amplifying feedbacks. This means that the largest expected warming mechanism and the largest sources of uncertainty are coupled through moist processes in the atmosphere. (Subject of an AGU session in SF this Dec.)


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If God decreed all things, did He actively decree that some would sin, be unbelievers, and thus be punished forever? If we were to ask Jesus for an answer to this question, He might point us to His words in Matthew 25, a prophecy of the judgment of believers and unbelievers to come at His return.
In this setting, Jesus will say to those on His right hand, "Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world" (Matt 25:34). Those on the right were blessed by Father to inherit a kingdom that He planned to give them even before the time He created the world. The Father knew who these kingdom citizens would be and planned to bless them in this way. To state it in terms of this article's title, He decreed in eternity past that there would be a kingdom and that these blessed would be its citizens.
As for unbelievers, however, Jesus does not state that a place of damnation was prepared by the Father in like manner for them. He states to those on His left, "Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels" (Matt 25:41). There is no mention of the Father, and the place of punishment was not even prepared for them but the devil and his angels. The implication is that the unbeliever is not guilty of not being one for whom the Father prepared the kingdom. Rather, the unbeliever, like the devil and his angels, rejected God and was cursed and would be held responsible for his unbelief by being punished forever.
In short, the Father prepared a kingdom for those would believe. The Father is not said, however, to have prepared eternal fire for unbelievers. In all of this, we see one of the texts in the Bible that holds the mystery of the sovereignty of God side-by-side with the responsibility of man. God did not prepare a kingdom for some, but these outcasts chose to shun His kingdom, for which they find themselves cursed and forsaken to eternal fire.
Seeing that men shall answer to God for how they have loved and lived for Him, may we implore the lost all the more to repent and turn to Him!
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Pastor David Huffstutler
Pastor Huffstutler regularly writes articles for our Sunday bulletin. See his bio on our pastoral bio page.
May 2020


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(follows from the look-at-me-diagrams post)
Having railed against the 'look at me' diagram (see previous post), I thought it might be helpful to see what can be done about them.
If you have such a mega-diagram, then whilst it might be useful for you, it's not going to look great when printed, especially if your readers will need sticky tape and scissors to make sense of it.
So chopping it into bits seems like the way forward. But this isn't just a tedious bit of drag & drop to some new, smaller diagrams. It's an opportunity to do that thing we do – model – and increase the value of that bit of our model, and add to the collective knowledge of our organisation.
So here's an example.
It's always good to go to the experts to get an example model, so I chose the People Who Know – the OMG. These are the people who tell us all how to model, so they should have some helpful stuff. And, as it turns out, they do. But perhaps not in the way they intended. Below is one of the examples which they publish to show what the BPMN language can do for modelling business processes:
OK, so I have inserted the diagram quite small: you can find the original, with a great explanation, at the OMG/BPMN site, but my point is that this is a large and complicated diagram; I count about 75 boxes, and, more importantly, about 10 different modelling constructs. But this is the OMG showing-off BPMN, so its not too surprising that its complicated. I'm just going to use it as an example starting point to see how mega-diagram can, and should, be broken up into smaller pieces.
An Overall Structure
This is the easy bit.Sometimes.
To make a diagram like this easy to understand, we need to 'chunk' it. Make it into the smaller bits. Very few mega-diagrams are uniformly complex – they mostly have natural 'clusters' of things, and this example shows that really well.
The two big yellow blobs (BPMN Processes) look like good candidates, as do the bottom right-hand and top right corners.
So I decided on a few initial 'chunks' and made those bits which weren't already sub-processes into their own sub-processes.
Even the act of drawing the red boxes (which are just for illustration, not part of our model) makes the model easier to understand: the reader can start to concentrate on smaller bits, and not get intimidated by the whole.
Now we can start to make progress. Having decided that there are 6 big boxes, we can put just those bits into a new diagram, and hook them up with events:
To create this diagram, I've added EVEN MORE BOXES. This is ok – making stuff simpler doesn't mean the same as making it smaller. I've chosen to link my top-level processes with Business Events (see process modelling with style), but it gives a sense of purpose and achievement to the overall process:
- stuff happens, which creates a business event (which we might expect a business person to understand),
- ..which in turn allows further processing to take place.
- …which results in another business event
It's this kind of analytical thinking which is where we earn our living as modellers. Anyone can copy/paste boxes from one diagram to another. We're adding-value and helping understanding. By the way – it took me quite a while to do this, and I kept the mega-diagram to make sure I'm not messing-up the overall picture.
The Sub-Processes
Now that we're freed from the mega-diagram, re-organising the smaller ones isn't so hard, but there's still work to do.
If left un-edited, one of the boxes looked like this:
..which I found hard to understand, so I re-structured and re-drew it to look a bit simpler:
This diagram is simpler for a number of reasons:
1- I have removed some of the diagram elements, namely, the notes and the Messages, to the black box pools. These appear on another, similar diagram which has all the detail.
2 – I've added the business events (not part of BPMN) top left and bottom right, to show how the sub-process starts and ends. This immediately suggests that I may have forgotten something: the process has no error conditions. Something to look into…
Simplifying things is Complicated
I probably spent a good few hours simplifying this process, but in doing so found lots of questions which I'd like to ask the authors. So that's me doing my job of using the model to Analyze stuff .
At the end of it, I think I not only understand what they are trying to say, but I could also give someone a document which would help them to understand it too. It would have the top-level diagram, then the sub-process diagrams, and some additional diagrams with supporting details.
The process is then not just a big, clever-looking diagram which nobody understands. It's been added to our collective knowledge. I don't need the authors in order to understand it, nor a PhD in BPMN notation. Anyone who knows a little BPMN could understand it and even improve the process.
Job Done.
PS. If you'd like a copy of the 'before' and 'after' models (as an XMI file out of Sparx Enterprise Architect) then email me at ian at abilityengineering.co.uk


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Varietal Sofa Black by Zuo Modern
Modern all the way, the Varietal Sofa is a definite looker! With buttons and tufting in leatherette and a brushed stainless steel frame, it has strong form that works in many work spaces. It is available in both black and white.
Product Information:
- Designed by Zuo Modern
- W 29.9" / L 64.6" / H 29.9" - 67 lb
- Brushed Stainless Steel
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Following Shane Richmond's detailed analysis of wikis and factors hindering their growth as news tools (namely vandalism and inaccuracy), Jemima Kiss has an interesting article highlighting another: PR companies, "after Microsoft apparently paid a blogger to work on various technical entries". It's a trap that blogs have already fell foul of – from fake blogs like Cillit Bang's Barry Scott's and the even faker WalMart couple-travelling-across-the-USA blog, to PR companies who are employed to seed positive mentions of their clients' products/services across blogs (among other sites).
Press releases, sponsored 'surveys' and PR-organised media events have always provided a large amount of journalistic fuel, so this is nothing new, but one skill the future editor must have is the ability to spot these tactics in their blogs and wikis.


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Mountain Inn - eSwatini
Swaziland's most prominent family owned and operated hotel, with spectacular views over the grand Ezulwini valley, "The Valley of Heaven".
Conveniently located just 2 km from Mbabane and right off the Mbabane – Manzini highway. With 52 modern en-suite bedrooms, including tea facilities, TV, AC, telephone, complimentary WIFI and more. Facilities include swimming pool, croquet, outdoor chess, exercise room, Al a Carte restaurant, Pub and conferencing. All this and with secure parking your rest is assured and you are ideally located to discover all Swaziland has to offer.


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The Reason For The Gold Dump?
Yesterday, saw a huge drop in Gold, which made a recent high at $1755, when a massive 24 tonne sell order (7,800 contracts) hit the market at 08:20 a.m. New York time. The range for the day was from $1743.10 to $1705.50. Gold finished off 21.40.
Ross Norman, CEO at Sharps Pixley thinks it was not profit taking, for a trader would ease himself out of the market, rather than dump 24 tonnes in a five minute period. Norman thinks it was a short seller or someone short trying to panic the shorts. An obvious sell point is $1700 just under the last pullback (see chart).
None of our sell stops on Gold and Silver were triggered yesterday.


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Submitted by ????? <email@example.com> on 09/Nov/2018 in reply to http://www.atomy.me/ posted by ??? on 06/Nov/2018
The next time I read a blog, I hope that it doesnt disappoint me as much as this one. I mean, I know it was my choice to read, but I actually thought youd have something interesting to say. All I hear is a bunch of whining about something that you could fix if you werent too busy looking for attention.
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Our Services
We craft websites and marketing campaigns that represent your values and generate traffic, engagement, and conversions. Our team takes a tailored approach to your needs; below you can read about many of our services. We provide analytics reports on all our services, so you can more fully understand your audience and increase sales, sign-ups, donations, or other kinds of conversions.
Local SEO & Organic Search
Search engines have become the first line of inquiry for a majority of people in the U.S. when deciding what to buy, where to play, and how to live. And nearly 50% of consumers will look at multiple pieces of content before they ever act on their inquiries. That means that today the value of search engine optimization (SEO) as a marketing practice is more important for your local business than ever. If you're easily found online, you increase the audience of people who will interact with your business—and more importantly, draw in the right audience. What we do: we use tools built specifically for local SEO to establish your presence for your local community, primarily by editing local directory listings, using specific keywords on your website in the foreground and background, and tracking progress as you climb the ranks each month.
Keyword Research & Tracking
The goal of all SEO work is to draw in not just any audience but the right audience—the people who will love your work and invest in what you do. Keyword research is about finding the right people and learning how they search, what your market is like, what types of digital content will perform well, and where the biggest opportunities are. What we do: we research and track the search terms and phrases connected to your business and customer types, and generate insights about how to create a more vibrant presence online.
Review Monitoring
Many types of business thrive on their online reviews, but don't have any way to track various kinds of reviews all across the web. Keeping up with them all can create a burden on your time. What we do: our tools allow us to monitor customer reviews across the web, and we can take care of quick thanks to individuals or help you quickly address negative customers.
Custom Market Analysis
Great content marketing is about understanding what people need and delivering them something of value that meets that need. So, we'll naturally start by identifying the needs of consumers in your market and designing a holistic plan to meet those people where they're at. What we do: we start with your expertise and work outward from there. After collaborating with you and conducting research on the digital space you want to occupy, we design Buyer Personas for several types of people we want to target; map Customer Journeys to a plan for drawing these people toward your conversion opportunities; and draw up a 6- or 12-Month Marketing Plan for our work together.
Content Marketing Strategy and Setup
Content marketing is where technical analysis meets creative output. Our team can create a strategy for you to succeed in your space. What we do: after we conduct market research and create a 6- or 12-Month Marketing Plan for your business, we'll set up the primary website pages and Customer Journeys we agreed on together, integrating social, professional email, analytics, and more. We'll stand up every tool you need to succeed at content marketing and track performance.
Content Development & Copywriting
Creating beautiful, effective content that speaks to your audience is the name of the game. We're a team of highly trained writers, designers, and web developers—and you can read more about us here! What we do: the result of our research is creating content that matters to your customers. We can write your website pages, articles, and landing pages, design graphics to use across social media and email campaigns and newsletters, and much more—it all depends on what you need.
Social Media Marketing
Social media isn't as one-size-fits-all as many assume. Our team can assess which platforms will work best for your business and how to leverage them. What we do: we will create a strategy for you and perform regular analysis on your social presence, so we can get beyond the sometimes-arbitrary markers of "followers" or "likes" to the things that really matter: results for your business. If your team wants, we can even have our in-house writers stay on top of your platforms for you, so you can focus on the work you really want to be doing.
Integrated Email Marketing
Email marketing can be the most effective channel of conversation (and conversion) for a small or medium business because unlike with social media, you own the contact information of everyone who signs up. What we do: we integrate the MailChimp email marketing platform into your website, design a custom look for your emails, and strategize about how best to grow your list and utilize email to drive business.
Technical On-Page Optimization
You may know that the way a search engine works is by "crawling" each page on your website and deciding (via algorithms) whether or not the information there is relevant or not. Much of what search engines look for to return the best results is hidden in the background data of your pages. What we do: we perform a technical website audit and improve the structure of your background data, so search engines and social media sites can pick up your pages more easily and quickly.
High-Speed, Mobile-Friendly Websites
Your website deserves intelligent solutions, not just cosmetic fixes. We pride ourselves on thoughtful design: every element, every piece of content, every step of your user experience is considered in relation to the whole. What we do: We build on WordPress so that you can expect a stable, intuitive interface that's mobile-friendly and easy to edit. (Plus, you'll have access to an entire ecosystem of plugins and technicians should your business needs ever change or grow beyond our expertise.) We work with the world's most powerful managed WordPress host, WP Engine, so that you can expect high security and incredible customer service. And we integrate with Google Analytics, so you can see for yourself all the traffic your new website is attracting.
Premium Website Hosting
Your site host affects how secure your website it, how up-to-date it stays, how fast it runs, and lots of other performance issues. What we do: we work with the world's most powerful managed WordPress host, WP Engine. We've been working on websites for over a decade, and WP Engine provides the most phenomenal hosting and customer service we've ever found. Why not have the best?
Custom Branding
A perfect brand is one where aesthetic form fulfills business function. Our team is highly skilled at creating brand elements from scratch or taking existing, aging brands and refreshing them. What we do: develop brand elements from logo to style sheet to email signature to print elements. We'll create a cohesive visual brand and language across your website, social media, email, print work, internal office, digital products, and more.
Custom Website Design
Our goal is to make you a high-performing website that's easy to use and integrate into your business. If your business can benefit from custom site elements, we'd be delighted to set them up to your specifications. What we do: we'll start with a well-tested template and can work in everything from custom CSS style sheets to change the hardwired elements of the site to integrating higher functions like website storefronts, interactive pages, paywalled content, and more.
Website Optimization
A website is only as beautiful as it is fast, easy to understand, and results-driven. What we do: our team goes beyond User Experience (UX); we get into the background script on your website and streamline it, so your pages load at wicked-fast speeds and look great on any device, whether a laptop, tablet, or smartphone.
Analytics & Reporting
Our team is driven by data science in all that we do. The good news is that digital marketing analytics have made the space more transparent than ever, so we can report on a regular basis how your website and campaigns are performing, and hone our strategies together as we go. What we do: integrate your site with Google Analytics and provide weekly, monthly, and quarterly reports on the splash you're making online, your growing search engine rankings, your social media results, and more.
Competitive Analysis
It can be quite helpful to learn more about what the competitors are doing and how they're ranking online when designing a holistic website or marketing plan. What we do: we will track your main competitors' online in much the same way we track your business's progress—and discover how to gain a true competitive edge for your work.
Website Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
Conversion rate optimization is all about ensuring that a high percentage of people who interact with your business's website and digital content are "converting" to customers, followers, readers, donors, or other kinds of audience members. What we do: we collaborate with your business to understand your goals and design a "funnel" or Customer Journey that people can travel along toward the end-goal. Our web designers will comb your site and make sure there aren't any technical or UX problems along that journey stopping people from converting. And our analytics software will track the various movements of your audience, so we can hone our strategies together as we go.


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Tuesday of the Fourth Week
Of Ordinary Time
St. John Bosco
Hebrews 12:1-4
Mark 5:21- 43
Every day when I get out of bed, it takes me a few minutes to get my feet to move properly. I shuffle a bit before I can begin walking normally. It is a bit harder to move my feet properly in the mornings. Do you have a time of day or hour that is difficult for you? I also have to spiritual time that is difficult, and that is Monday's my day off. I Mondays' I am not here, I am not in my clerics and the evil one play havoc with my soul. I have to get to what I call my "hour of power" prayer time to set my life back in order. The thing I do every Monday morning in prayer is hold onto a very old crucifix that someone gave me, and I just stare at Jesus and talk right to him. Our readings are about staring at Jesus and knowing he will help us.
In our first reading from the letter to the Hebrews, the writer is so encouraging them to continue to stare at Jesus by knowing there is a whole huge crowd of witnesses that are cheering for them. He then goes on to say, "Run the race to win, but know it is a marathon, not a sprint." Finally, he simply says, "Just look to Jesus and find him in all you do, because he is looking for you."
In our Gospel, there are people who are looking for Jesus because they know that he can help them and heal them. Jesus has the great power to heal, and he does both these healings with very little words. His presence is enough.
May we come to the Eucharist today to be reminded that Jesus Christ is already healing us, protecting us from all harm of the evil one? May we be at peace!


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Angular Js is an open-source JavaScript library which is built by Google. Angular Js development allows you to extend & dynamically change the HTML vocabulary. The result of using Angular Js web app development is extraordinarily readable, expressive, dynamic and quick. Angular is the most powerful tool that helps to develop a highly interactive and innovative web application, without any hustle. Technource has a team Angular Js development experts that chooses to extend their experience in web application development.
AngularJs Development Services by Technource
As a trustworthy, AngularJs web app developers use their core knowledge and latest trends of Angular JS to clear all milestones successfully. We strive to build robust web applications with sophisticated features to cater complex business needs of every business. Hire Technource, a top notch Angular Js development company, to get a smart combination of industry-friendly features that can mingle the technology & business functionalities.
To present the data, Angular JS framework uses web services and HTTPS interface to interact with the server that keeps your application secure from any malware and unauthorized access.
Data binding is the most impressive feature of AngularJS development. As it becomes efficient to move data between DOM and the model.
AngularJS manages the app's all attributes, like properties, permissions, and other attributes are well managed here.
"Release Planning"
"Final UAT+Launch"
How do I protect my idea?
We sign confidentiality agreement to protect your idea prior to gather the requirement from you and we take it very seriously. You can ask for our confidentiality agreement to our representative.
How much does it cost to develop my app?
It is hard to define price to develop your idea at this point. Our business analyst team will help you to draft your complete requirement and based on that we will be able to share the price of development.
How long does it take to finish development?
Timeline of project depends on your requirement and sprint size. Again, our business analyst team will help you to define exact requirement and based on that we will share the estimated timeline to complete the development.
What happens after development/ delivery of system?
80% of our clients works with us for further phases of development with us or they make annual maintenance contract to maintain their system.
I do not possess any technical knowledge but I have an idea, would that work?
Absolutely, that will work as we speak your language when we talk with you. Many stakeholders do not come from technical background but they understand us very well.
How good your team is? My idea is very precious?
We focus on our team very much, we take time to hire our resources to make sure that they will follow our vision of delivering best product to our clients and keep our vision intact.
How do I communicate with your team? I am at overseas.
We use easy communication channels like phone, email, Skype and Hangout whichever is convenient for you.
Do I need to purchase any server to host my application?
Yes, you will need to have a server to host your application and our development team will assist you in choosing right server and configuring it.
Amplify your business and take advantage of our expertise & experience to shape the future of your business.


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Our Outlet
Cafe Sydney
Cafe Deco Group's first venture outside of Hong Kong materialised as Cafe Sydney in Sydney, Australia, which opened in June 1999.
Cafe Sydney, with its unparalleled vantage point over the Sydney Harbour, has established itself as one of the city's top dining and entertainment venues for locals and tourists alike.
Cafe Sydney features chilled crustaceans, freshly shucked oysters, grilled ocean fish and quality cuts of meat, etc.
At weekends, the atmosphere changes with Sundays a cause of celebrations as musicians play laid back music from jazz to classical conducive to sun-drenched dining.
For more information on Cafe Sydney, visit the website: www.cafesydney.com.
This Just In!
Members' Section
Our Location
Fifth Floor
Customs House
31 Alfred Street
Sydney, Australia
Mon - Fri
12:00 noon till late
5:00pm till late
12:00 noon for lunch
Tel: +61 2 9251 8683
Email: email@example.com
Locate us on Google Maps
Event Planner
For inquiries about weddings, functions or events, please contact:
Tel: +612 8298 0322
Email: firstname.lastname@example.com


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Live updates
Cumbria Police target road traders on M6
Cumbria Police have taken part in a day of action targeting rogue traders in the county.
The multi-agency operation saw them work with Trading Standards, and other organisations, to stop and search vehicles on the M6.
More than 25 vans and trucks at the Todhills site were searched, in a bid to stop criminals using the county's roads.
Traders sign up to protect customers
Ever been targeted by a rogue trader?
A new scheme in Dumfries and Galloway aims to protect customers, and more than 50 traders have already signed up.
The Trusted Trader scheme sees home improvement businesses get online feedback - you can see reviews of their work, and decide which tradesman to chose.
Traders can join the project for free, but they need to have been in business for six months.
Police crackdown on rogue traders in Dumfries and Galloway
Bogus builders in the region are being warned that there's nowhere to hide, with the launch of a new initiative to target the problem.
Today was a so called 'day of action' as police in Dumfries and Galloway performed road side checks and high visibility patrols.
The aim is simple - to protect vulnerable people from being ripped off by rogue traders.
John Bevir reports:
- ITV Report


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Back in the days before smart phones, Internet and Pokemon, my sewing machine was a quillow factory. I was going through a divorce, adopting my second older special needs child, changing venues, changing jobs, and recovering from a motor vehicle accident that destroyed all my camera equipment. I had to find a way to feed my adopted kids.
My new job was in the biggest office in which I'd ever worked... something like 120 employees! And we had more offices all over the country. About 900 employees nationwide.
Many of my co-workers had kids. They liked handmade things. When they found out I could whip out a quillow, a quilt you turn into a pillow by stuffing it into a pocket on its back, in a couple of nights, I was in consignment heaven. I started buying every single quilt panel I could find and turning out two or three quillows a week, which I'd then sell for $25 or $50 each, depending upon the price of the fabric.
Do you remember when fabric was that inexpensive?!?
Back then, my personal "office" at work was a closet, and I could work on craft projects when there wasn't any proofreading to be done and between calls while I manned the office switchboard during lunch and after hours. I could do the hand-sewing while I was at work. Back then, there was lots of hand-sewing because I didn't know how to free-motion quilt at all. I'm not sure it existed then!
I think this may have been the oldest WIP in my collection.
Eventually, I moved into a higher-paying position at the same office. By that time, everyone I worked with had quillows. I could finally sew for my own kids instead of always sewing for other people's kids. Both my kids ended up with at least five or six quillows on their futon beds!
I still had a bunch of panels I hadn't used. For years! A wildfire in California brought the call for Project Linus quilts. I whipped up almost everything remaining in my panel stash into 18 quick flimsies (because there were size requirements, and some of the panels weren't big enough without additional sashing or borders), and the women at church crafted them into tied quilts which then were donated to families who'd lost everything.
A few years later, I joined Ravelry's quarterly quilting WIP challenge in an effort to finish up non-panel projects that had become so numerous, they were denting my creativity and taking up too much valuable space. The goal is to finish at least one WIP every quarter. One early quarter I finished a small wall quilt that wasn't on my official list, so it didn't count. (Although it still got cheered!) So I pulled out every single project I could find and made a WIP inventory list so every finish from now on will count.
I did not remember buying this fabric or making the three Dresden plates, probably my first Dresden plates ever. I did not remember hand-sewing the Dresden patches onto blocks cut the same size as the cheater panel blocks. I didn't remember piecing the blocks together, and I definitely didn't remember setting aside the last remaining cheater panel block for the quillow pocket. I snapped a photo of the finished flimsy for my official WIP list, then set the project aside again until this year.
This year's personal goals include finishing enough WIPs to give all 13 cousins a quilt at Christmas. (All the existing nieces and nephews got quilts last Christmas.) After revising my WIP list in January, I decided I should try to finish as many of the really old projects this year. I pulled out this charmer, working name Long Forgotten, and noticed the pillow pocket block for the first time since stashing it away two decades or more ago. My goal was to finish it by June. But I wasn't sure I wanted to make another quillow. The project got set aside again, but this time, near the sewing machine so it wouldn't be forgotten again.
Once I settled into the idea of finishing the project as a quillow because it would be quick, it took me only a few hours one night to complete it. I pieced a back from the remnants of the Dresden plates, then pillow-case seamed the layers and hand-stitched the opening. I sandwiched the pillow pocket layers and pillow-case bound them. I (rather sluggishly once again) practiced free-motion quilting on both the quilt and the pillow pocket. Every time I take a many-month break from free- motion quilting, I feel like I have to start all over again learning to set the machine and smoothly move the fabric beneath the presser foot. Some of the stitching is fairly jerky, but if I work on another free-motion quilting project again soon, perhaps I can develop a steadier hand once again. Any improvement would be welcome!
After finishing all the quilting, I machine-stitched the pocket to the back of the quilt. Back when I was doing these to supplement our Ramen noodle diet, I hand-stitched the pockets to the quilts. Talk about speeding up the process!!!
Which might be a good thing because when I pulled this project out again in January, I discovered not all the "remnant" fabric matched. There is yet one more long forgotten quillow panel in this particular stash, and I'm highly suspicious my quillow projects pulled some hanky panky while stuffed away in a dark basement. I think they multiplied and reproduced to prevent extinction!
Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts and Confessions of a Fabric Addict.


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- Description
DetailsThe Snowbee-Waldron Vice offers the advanced fly tier faultless engineering precision coupled with a silky smooth operation. Its appeal is its simplicity.
Superbly CNC engineered to tolerances of less than 0.01mm using 303 grade Stainless Steel, aluminium and CR12 tool steel for the jaws, hardened to Rockwell C 58.The main head axle runs on two sealed stainless steel ball-race bearings. Tension for the 360° rotating head is by means of a tension screw at the rear, operating on two delrin washers.
The vice jaws are joined to the main head by means of a simple link-arm. Two Allen screws allow setting up of the jaws for total rotational symmetry about the centre line, irrespective of the hook gape. The precision jaws feature two precisely milled grooves to allow different sized hooks to be held securely - from as small as #30's right up to large single Salmon irons and the largest saltwater fly hooks available.
All vices come with a purpose designed carrying bag, allen key adjuster tools, full instructions and a 5 year Manufacturers Warranty.
- Size Charts
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Additional Information
Gender No Brand Snowbee Product Code 19080-P Barcode 4710681591280 Stock Location L058 Pack Size No Size No Colour No
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Return of boys! Oy! Welcome back to our boys. It's another episode of show. This week show about IT. There are other things discussed in show. Boys discuss having to put down a dog, Stephen King books, and plans for end of show. It good boy time. Nice show. Wow. Good. Me like show.