text:
The task for this assignment was 'to select a view from a window or from an open door. Try to find a view that includes some natural objects: trees, shrubs, pot plants, fields or garden plants' also to 'try and find a view that will demonstrate your understanding of aerial or linear perspective – in other words a view that has some depth to it.'
The brief also says to 'look for a view that offers an opportunity to draw straight-lined objects as well as items drawn from nature, buildings, gates, fences and so on. It then says that 'this may all seem like a lot to look for, but most views from windows and doors will offer you a bit of all these things'…
I have spent the best of two months trying to find a window or a door with view with any of these things and came up almost empty handed. The view from the 26th floor of an apartment block in Bangkok only offers you one of the most complex city views you could ever imagine.
I took a camera with me everywhere trying to find a view that would accommodate the criteria for this assignment and almost came up empty handed and then right at the last week of the school term, the last week in February for me I dropped on 2 views (by accident).
One was the view from the top floor of the school, which offered mostly concrete and not much of anything else, the other was a view from the school's second floor window looking out of one of the windows of the school building that I had drawn in both 'A Sketchbook of Townscape Drawings' and a 'Limited Palette Study from Your Sketches'.
I decided to start by having a go at sketching all three, starting with the view from the second floor window, which even on the small preliminary (rough) sketch in my notebook proved very technical.
The second was a half-hearted sketch of the view from my apartment window, working from the photograph I gave up after 5 minutes realizing that it wasn't a drawing suited to the size of paper that they wanted us to do the final drawing on (A3). But maybe it would be something I would like to come back to later with the possibility that it could be painted in a style close to L.S. Lowry.
The third sketch was from the window of the classroom on the top floor, which all though had most of everything, the tree in the view wasn't very big at all and so after a second larger (partial) sketch on A3 I decided that I was to go with the view from the 2nd floor window.
View from the 2nd Floor Window
I started do do a study in line of what I could see from the window. This turned out to be a partially finished drawing but helped me to decide to crop the view to the middle window as it was very technical with the roof beams. It also helped me to decide on getting rid of the railings on the windows.
My next drawing was in A4 and was basically a quick sketch to see if I could meet the assessment criteria in my final drawing.
After the Study of several trees exercise I said that it give me an idea for the final drawing and that was to use oil pastels as I was impressed by the way they left white specs on the paper reminding me of a Seurat painting and if I had committed to the view from the classroom window I would have probably gone with that medium…after trying other mediums first of course. But, with the more intense view out of the 2nd floor window, on the small size paper I decided that it would have to be done in colour pencils.
Still, even though I had already made my mind up the Assignment had asked for broad brush stroke studies to decide on the colours I would use for the final drawing so I tried a couple of mediums that were very different to what I had decided on drawing for the final drawing.
Both of the studies turned out to be quite pleasing and both mediums quite feasible. It was the first time I had used the liquid watercolour as a paint and not as an ink and even though the colours were great, my watercolour painting skills leave a lot to be desired.
I had been plodding on too slowly with this assignment and to be honest that's because I was not happy with the subject and it was very stressful but eventually I had to start the final drawing and it had to be in dry watercolour pencil.
An English language student asked me the other day what I thought has been the hardest medium to draw with and when I replied colour pencil they weren't surprised. The Derwent artist are very waxy so I prefer using the watercolour, dry, but stillI do have problems blending even though my I have come along way since the beginning of the course.
I started by drawing the shape of the window to act as a border then I drew in the window at the side and the roof beams as well as the horizontal line of the fence then I got stuck straight into the colour starting on the fancy Thai style roof beams (or props or whatever you want to call them).
I spent about an hour layering the colours to get each of them a different tone and looking quite accurate but then realized that it didn't really matter how long I spent on those as they wouldn't be the focal point of the drawing.
Next I worked on the window and the wall then the rafters and from there the tree that came up both sides of the fence, through the roof of the outdoor secondary cantine and on the other side. At first I was going to draw the tree with a form of squirkling in colour but when I did the broad brush colour studies I could see a reoccurring pattern of almost star like shapes and so I spent a lot of time trying to simplify the shapes and drawing them by layering yellow over green, from there I filled in the negative space in between to give the tree some thickness.
So far I wasn't looking at all great but then I decided to use a form of squrkling in three colours on the dry fallen leaves with the occasional star shape trying to mirror the green leaves above, the result was quite nice and it made me feel a bit better about the assignment.
Once I hatched in the fence and the double roof of the canteen below everything started to come together but the problem now was that I didn't leave myself enough space to draw in enough of the large orange roof behind and so a lot of the roof is hidden by leaves. I do still feel though that because of the direction of the roof beams and the perspective of the roof that the viewers eyes will still look where I want them to and that is to the temple and the road to the right.
I completed the drawing with one of the worse mistakes ever, I decided that I would draw the wall all the way around the window in oil pastel the result was a complete mess. My only hope is that I can crop and frame it when I come to send off my work for final assessment.
Assessment Criteria
Demonstration of Technical and Visual Skills
Although the final drawing is somewhat messy I do feel that I have definitely shown a demonstration of technical and visual skills in my final drawing especially where perspective is concerned and I feel that the drawing shows a clear understanding of both aerial and linear perspective. I also feel that the final drawing shows a substantial improvement on the way I have been drawing trees.
Quality of Outcome
Well to be very honest I am not satisfied with the quality of this final drawing that looks more like an exercise than an assignment. I really found this assignment stressful, it was very difficult to find a view that I was happy with and the problems we have been having here in Bangkok haven't helped. But a poor craftsman always blames his tools.
I let myself down with the preliminary work on this assignment but this was due to being very busy working all hours to try and make up for loss of income lost through these protests. If I had more time for the preliminary work the quality of the final piece would have been much higher.
The work in the previous exercises in part 3 as been high quality let down by a low quality final piece.
Demonstration of Creativity
I believe I have demonstrated quite a lot of creativity through this part of the course I haven't necessarily shown this in the final drawing. I would say the projects where this was more visible was Drawing Trees and Townscapes where I let go of trying to pay attention to detail and tried being more creative.
The troubles here in Bangkok have been a great drag on this part of the course. I started out feeling really positive and in October when the protests started hit a brick wall. However I do feel like I have learnt a lot from this part of the course and I no longer feel that drawing landscape is a problem for me.
I have tackled every exercise to the best of my ability and even though I'm not happy with my final drawing I do feel that everything I have practiced through this part of the course is evident in the final piece.


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Pitts column: Understanding is the last thing whites want
What we've got here is failure to communicate.
Except it's not really failure. It's actually unwillingness to communicate, fear of what communication might mean. After all, if you communicate, you might understand some painful truths — and then where would you be?
That's why discussing race with a white person is often one of the most vexing things an African-American person can do. You quickly come to understand that understanding is the last thing they want.
Take "Black Lives Matter." Those words, if you are black, are both an assertion of self-evident truth and a way of saying you are sick of unarmed people like you being killed under color of authority while juries and judges shrug and look away.
That message would seem to be clear as mountain air, which, for many white Americans, is precisely what's wrong with it. So they do everything they can not to comprehend.
They pretend confusion: "Black lives matter? Don't all lives matter? Are you saying black lives are more important?"
They rationalize: "It's not the cop's fault. If the man had stopped moving/talking/breathing hard, he wouldn't have been shot!"
They feign outrage: "Black Lives Matter is an anti-police terrorist group. They're the black Ku Klux Klan."
At some point, you begin wondering if the words you hear in your head are coming out in English. How is it you're both speaking the same language, but you're doing such a miserable job of being understood?
It's a frustrating, exhausting experience. If you've ever had it, you'll likely be touched by a recent story out of Vermont. It seems that, with the unanimous support of the school board, the Racial Justice Alliance, a student-led anti-racism group at Montpelier High, is commemorating Black History Month by flying a flag on campus. A flag that says, "Black Lives Matter."
Lord, have mercy. Just when you think you've seen it all.
It's stunning, you see, because there are no black people in Vermont.
OK, so that's not quite true. There are some, but so few — 1.3 percent out of a population of 623,000 — that Vermont didn't muster its first NAACP chapter until 2015. For the record, the student who founded the Racial Justice Alliance is a black senior named Joelyn Mensah. Still, we're talking about one of the whitest states in the Union. So this flag flying at one of its schools is no small thing.
Not that everyone is pleased. State lawmaker Thomas Terenzini — you'll be shocked to learn that he's a Republican — told the local NBC affiliate that Black Lives Matter is "a national anti-police organization."
That isn't surprising. But the moral courage of these students and administrators is, pleasantly so.
We are indebted to them for a message that couldn't be more timely. As appeals to our lowest selves flow down like sewage from the nation's capital, they remind us that conscience has no color. It is a point proven in the past by white people like Elijah Lovejoy, William Lloyd Garrison, Andrew Goodman, James Zwerg, Joan Trumpauer Mulholland and Viola Liuzzo who fought — and sometimes died — for black freedom.
One hopes white people of today will take note. And black ones, too.
Because, for as much as that flag flying in that place speaks to the broad sweep of conscience, it also rebukes excesses of cynicism, shows what can still happen just when you think you've seen it all. To be black talking to white people about race is never easy. You'll be frequently frustrated, often exhausted. But once in a while, you will also be something you never expected:
Leonard Pitts writes for The Miami Herald. Contact him at firstname.lastname@example.com.

subset: commoncrawl


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Spring has finally, finally arrived for good. Besides an abundance of blossoms, sunnier days, and friendlier people, long stalks of crimson rhubarb are back in the grocery produce section.
Say the words "rhubarb" and most people think of warm rhubarb and strawberry pie topped with vanilla ice cream. Yum! But Louisa Shafia in her lovely cookbook "Lucid Food: Cooking for an eco-conscious life" offers another tasty use for one of spring's first vegetables: rhubarb spritzers.
The syrup takes only takes a few minutes to make and once it cools you'll have a sparkling drink to toast the magnolia tree blooming outside your window. The ruddy blush of the spritzer is just like the freshness of the sun-and-breeze-kissed faces I see out walking in my neighborhood – a welcome sight after an intense winter kept us all burrowed deep down in puffy coats and woolen scarves for months.
But the scarves have been tucked away and the once icy sidewalks are now laced in delicate petals.
I served rhubarb spritzers at a dinner party this weekend and my guests grinned from ear to ear. Three cheers for spring's arrival!
Rhubarb spritzer
Serves about 8
10 stalks fresh rhubarb
2 cinnamon sticks
Honey, to taste
Sparkling water or seltzer
4 strawberries, thinly sliced
1 spring mint
Slice off the leaves and trim brown parts from rhubarb stalks and discard. Rinse and slice into 2-inch pieces. Place rhubarb and cinnamon sticks in a pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil and simmer until rhubarb is soft, about 3 to 4 minutes.
Strain liquid through a fine mesh strainer, pressing the pulp against the sides of the strainer. Whisk in honey, to taste. Discard cinnamon sticks and pulp (or use pulp to add bulk to a strawberry pie). Allow liquid to cool.
To serve, pour into glasses filled with ice and top off with sparkling water or seltzer. Garnish with a few strawberries slices and a mint leaf.
Related post: Sparkling watermelon lemonade


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A great way to wind up the gardening year is to return to Six on Saturday, a weekly gardening series The Propagator in the U.K. hosts. I've been away for a few months, but this friendly group of gardeners is nothing if not welcoming! Visit his site, and view the comment section for more garden projects worldwide.
ONE – Wind destruction has occurred before at Coppertop taking out some trees, but while I was visiting the east coast on December 14, a massive windstorm wreaked havoc here. The greenhouse was a casualty. Thankfully it was mainly empty, which added to its ability to get airborne and end up in the orchard. It looks like a giant hand spun it like a top. I took the below photo standing on the greenhouses's gravel pad. We've begun the both fun and frustrating job of selecting a new greenhouse.
TWO – I must admit it took me until this week to finish planting all my tulip bulbs for 2019. In these pots and other wine barrels is a riotous, fabulous mix of hundreds of orange and purples, and doubles like white Mt. Tacoma and pink Angelique, plus the AlaSka blend, a Parrot Blend, and the French Blend which are pictured. Oohlala! Every wintery post needs a spot of color. Almost all of my tulips are from Colorblends. I snapped the photo before I finished covering all pots with wire mesh to foil the squirrels.
THREE – An amazing amount of water has been flowing into our pond due to heavy rains. Soon pond grasses and other plants will be cut back in preparation for their late spring emergence. The stream is rushing and its joyful sound accompanies all outdoor, post-storm cleanup.
FOUR – I haven't mentioned our new rose garden since I first dreamed it up and wrote about it here: New Bed: Stop And Smell The Roses. The turf is removed, and the large bed is dug, amended with many truckloads of compost, almost half planted with nine of the eventual 20 baby bushes and climbers, and mulched. The obelisks have arrived and are awaiting early spring assembly. The bed isn't very exciting yet, but I have big hopes for this space.
We do have a rose mystery on our hands: One of three Golden Celebration rose bushes has gone missing since planting. Perhaps the winds carried it off into the forest? Well, yesterday I think I saw it uphill in the pond, stuck in the grasses. So weird. Time to rescue and revive it.
FIVE – Germination is the name of the game down in the shed. Lupine have shot up, as lupine do. Joe Pye Weed is currently in last place with nary a sprout in sight, and delphs and salvias are slowing putting on the green.
SIX – I'll start and end this post with the windstorm, which downed trees and blocked roads all over the area. We lost many branches and small trees, especially in the wild areas of our land. A large hemlock tree landed on our perimeter fence. For the first time, deer have access to my growing zones. Good thing it's winter and nothing's too appealing!
May 2019 be the year each of us fulfills a few more of our dreams, be it in the garden, in the community, or in our personal life. See you in the New Year!


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It seems like somebody or somebodies of consequence succumb to injury daily during the dog days and wind up on the disabled list. Subsequently that puts a strain on waiver wire availability as we see fewer and fewer attractive options. Some leagues will always have someone worthwhile, but others are riddled with retreads and those who are actually getting hurt because roster space becomes too precious to hang onto the disabled. As Roy Oswalt has proven once again tonight (8 ER on 11 H in 5.3 IP), pitching at anything less than 100% is difficult, even for a former star.
With that in mind, understand that these arms may deliver nothing of value once they return (if they return) to the hill. However, as we end the final third of the season, taking chances on upside can be the difference between winning a title and not, securing a money spot or waiting for a check in October that isn't coming. Here are 10 pitchers in various states of disrepair and of various talent levels who could be had for free in a good number of leagues (or at a discount via trade) and end up delivering some high quality innings for you. Keep in mind that some of these guys are still quite some time away, so plan accordingly to that end.
Brandon McCarthy
Out Since: June 19th w/shoulder injury
Status: Literally just started his rehab start as I'm typing this
Availability: On 44% of rosters in Yahoo!; 46% in ESPN
He was hoping to avoid a rehab start altogether, but it wasn't to be so he's starting for Sacramento tonight (Monday evening) and if all goes well then he should take his turn with Oakland later this week. If you think the injuries for McCarthy have been frustrating for you as a fantasy manager of him, try actually being him. I imagine it is especially trying to get in a groove only seemingly every time off the DL only to keep going back on a few weeks later.
When on the field, he has been straight-killin' it this year with a 2.54 ERA and 1.21 WHIP in 78 innings. He was white-hot before hitting the DL the most recent time with a 1.35 ERA and 0.80 WHIP in 20 innings across three starts. Strikeouts aren't really his thing (usually ranging 6-6.5, which is average to slightly below depending on year), but thankfully neither are walks (2.2 BB/9 this year after an amazing 1.3 last year). Love that park, plus the sweet-swingin' A's might line him up for a few more Ws, too.
Brandon Morrow
Out Since: June 11th w/oblique injury
Status: On rehab assignment touching 95 MPH
Availability: On 78% of rosters in Yahoo!; 55% in ESPN
Two things have plagued Morrow as a starter: walks and injuries. He has been improving yearly with the former including a huge step forward in 2012 (2.8 BB/9; 8% BB rate) and appeared to be ready for a full-fledged breakout season before the oblique sidelined him back in June. After fanning just 12 in his first four starts (27 innings in all), he fanned a much more Morrow-esque 55 in 51 innings spanning eight starts. Check your wire if you have roster space as he is out there in some league, but most likely you'll have to see about netting him at a discount* via trade.
*admittedly that discount is probably shrinking now that he is on rehab
Jaime Garcia
Out Since: June 5th w/shoulder injury
Status: Started his rehab on Monday w/2.3 scoreless
Availability: On 38% of rosters in Yahoo!; 29% in ESPN
Before finally hitting the DL in early June, Garcia labored through a pair of ugly starts, the latter of which he probably never should have made as he had already been skipped in the rotation after the shaky outing against the Phillies on May 26th. In fairness, it's pretty easy for me to say that now and the Cardinals were working with a helluva lot more information than I have now or did at the time.
I don't think Mike Matheny would've let his guy go out there if he thought it would eventually put Garcia down for two months. If you discount the Houston implosion right before the DL, Garcia was essentially having his 2011 season again. Now is the perfect time to scoop Garcia up on the sly, especially if you have a free DL spot dying to be utilized.
Shaun Marcum
Out Since: June 14th w/elbow injury
Status: Looking to start a rehab this weekend; could be dealt during waivers deadline in Aug.
Availability: On 68% of rosters in Yahoo!; 64% in ESPN
Don't ask me how/why he is on so many more teams than these other three. I guess it could be his strong strikeout totals (8.4 K/9, 23% rate) that standout above the other three (especially since Morrow got a late start on his) while his ERA, WHIP and walk rate are in the neighborhood or better than them as well. But still, I'm surprised so many have held on as there wasn't much good news throughout July.
Things are looking up now and Jon Paul Morosi of FOXSports speculates that he could be a waive trade candidate. That would surprise me. There might be around $2.5 mil owed to him depending when he hit waivers, but that's it as he is set to be a free agent this winter so surely some wildcard contender would claim him to block a trade to their opposition if he came available. For our purposes, his venue doesn't much matter, as long as he is back on the field there is bound to be some worthwhile production.
Ted Lilly
Out Since: May 23rd w/shoulder injury
Status: Started his rehab Sunday and will probably need a couple outings (results)
Availability: On 42% of rosters in Yahoo!; 37% in ESPN
Lilly had developed one of the most stable skillsets in the games the last several years, but unfortunately those skills have tumbled significantly in 2012. Of course, it's also been a tiny eight game sample and his numbers are heavily influenced by outings of six and five walks in Houston and in Arizona so it'd be a bit premature to bury him. Meanwhile, he has enjoyed success (3.14 ERA, 1.13 WHIP) in spite of the 5.7 K/9 and 1.6 K/BB in 49 innings. I would still take a shot on a healthy Lilly in 12 team leagues or higher. I think he is still a spot starter at best in 10-teamers so no need to rush out and get him before he gets back to the Dodgers.
Brett Anderson
Out Since: June 5th, 2011 w/Tommy John Surgery
Status: Has made 2 rehab starts has a few more slated in AAA before heading to Oak.
Availability: On 4% of rosters in Yahoo!; 0% in ESPN
One of the brighter young pitchers in the game, Anderson fell victim to the Slider Monster who ate his elbow up after he threw the pitch a career-high 40% of the time in his 83 innings last year. He is working his way back from Tommy John and could be this year's Tim Hudson, who put together seven strong starts down the stretch in 2009 in his return from TJS. Jordan Zimmermann was OK in his seven starts in 2010, but better in a real-life aspect than a fantasy one. Stephen Strasburg was unreal in five outings a year ago, but he's on a different level than those other guys.
The issue for Anderson is where he fits into the rotation, especially with McCarthy on the way back. Of course neither McCarthy nor Bartolo Colon are models of health so I'm sure the situation will work itself out by the time Anderson is officially back.
This next group of guys are a good further away, so I'm just putting them on your radar to either make a note about or stash in deep leagues if they're available and you desperately need pitching.
Jeff Niemann
Out Since: May 14th w/broken leg
Status: Threw a bullpen, simulated gm on tap followed by rehab; looking at late-Aug. return
Availability: On 3% of rosters in Yahoo!; 0% in ESPN
Coming back from a non-arm injury gives Niemann a leg up on the others listed, but he is still looking at a late-August return so there won't be much time for him to contribute once he is back. He was in the midst of following up his strong second half from 2011, too, before the freak accident with the broken leg derailed his 2012.
Tim Stauffer
Out Since: May 14th w/elbow injury
Status: Threw a bullpen last week, rehab forthcoming & return slated for late-Aug.
Availability: On 8% of rosters in Yahoo!; 19% in ESPN
Stauffer appeared to be getting his career, one plagued with injuries, back on track after a breakout season at age 29 in 2011 that saw him throw 186 strong innings with a 3.73 ERA and 1.26 WHIP. Injuries limited him to just 14 innings from 2006-2008, including a completely missed season in 2008, so even working his way back into effective relief was a win for Stauffer. Hopefully he gets back in time to make 6 or 7 starts to close out the season especially since 15 of their 26 September games are in Petco Park.
Jhoulys Chacin
Out Since: May 1st w/pectoral muscle injury
Status: Made it through his first rehab pain-free; slate back mid-Aug.
Availability: On 16% of rosters in Yahoo!; 5% in ESPN
Even when he makes it back, how much can he be trusted in that park the way it's playing this year? With the margin for error virtually non-existent in Coors Field these days, his elevated walk rate is especially treacherous (4.3 BB/8 career; 5.5 this year). When he's on, he can be a big strikeout guy, but at 24 he is still very much a work in progress. This is more for keeper leaguers who are playing with an eye on 2013 as I wouldn't trust my contending ratios to Chacin in Denver coming off of injury.
Rubby de la Rosa
Out Since: July 31st, 2011 w/Tommy John Surgery
Status: Slated for rehab in return from Tommy John
Availability: On 0% of rosters in Yahoo!; 0% in ESPN
It remains to be seen whether or not he will pitch in the majors at all in 2012 and then if he does, his role is undecided. He could just get his feet wet as a reliever, though his long-term outlook remains in the rotation so this would be another one for keeper leaguers with an available spot for a highly talented youngster. I am a huge fan of this 23-year old going forward, but he might not pay major dividends until 2014.


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(HealthDay News) — Various concerns relate to direct-to-consumer genomic testing, according to an ideas and opinions piece published online Feb. 10 in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
In August 2013, the company 23andMe launched an advertising campaign to sell its Personal Genome Service (PGS). Michael F. Murray, M.D., from the Geisinger Health System in Danville, Pa., discusses the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warning letter issued to 23andMe to discontinue marketing the PGS until it received FDA approval.
The author explains that 23andMe receives DNA samples in the mail and provides detailed analyses of genomic data for consumers, including reports on 254 diseases and conditions. However, these reports are mainly based on genome-wide association studies. For most of the conditions in the reports, there is no evidence that the results of the association studies can be applied as appropriate screening tests. In addition, concerns relating to direct-to-consumer PGS include economic concerns, such as increased health care costs for managing patients post-testing, and a concern that overregulation may limit innovation in this arena.
Continue Reading
"Physicians should push for the building of patient-centered infrastructure to assist them in delivering valid genome-directed care as it develops," the author writes. "As for 23andMe, it would seem logical for the company to invest in research that determines the actual clinical value of their tests, and they should be expected to meet the same evidence standards as other device manufacturers under FDA jurisdiction."


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"He who knows best knows how little he knows."
~~ Thomas Jefferson ~~
Life, breaking free….
I always find it interesting to note how our society/culture observes the various events of community, i.e. holidays, festivals, & celebration of important dates. The passing of the old year, & celebration of the New Year (why is one capitalized & the other not?…. I don't know, but, that's how I've always seen it done….) is one of those holidays, one whose origins are lost in ancient times, subject only to speculation as to why the event came to be an important day. Much of what I've noticed is how the various religions prevalent in each part of the world determines what is important, as well as what version of time, and calendar, is used to mark those days to be celebrated. Since I subscribe to none of them, it's all a fascinating example for me of how little humans really understand themselves, and their own motivation for much of what they find themselves doing….
Fascinating to me, yet also frustrating, for it is our human lack of understanding which leads us into most of the trouble we encounter in society; we believe we know what is real, but, lacking mindfulness of the moment in which we exist tends to cause many of the issues that arise to torment each other, and create problems for all of society…. In modern slang terms, we think we're all that, but, we ain't. We're mostly a large number of silly monkeys, pretending to be cultivated, but, still reacting to the real world as if we still lived in caves, or in trees….
Now, some folks, & even some ffolkes, may call me negative, or curmudgeonly for such an analysis, but, I just calls 'em as I sees 'em. Since most of the society in which I find myself believes in greeting the New Year with positivity, I will forgo any further curmudgeonry in favor of merely getting posted with the little bit of entertaining fluff I've cobbled together for your edification/elucidation. I shall also approach that with a higher degree of efficiency than thus far exhibited, by the simplest method, to wit:
Shall we Pearl?
"I am always doing that which I cannot do,
in order that I may learn how to do it."
~~ Pablo Picasso ~~
For today's musical interlude, I've chosen a set of six concertos by Johann Sebastian Bach, for several reasons, which are, most simply put, not particularly relevant. Suffice to say these are some of my favorites, since first hearing them years ago. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do…. Abondanza!….
Measures of Intent
Hell is never far away; it slips in, then out,
like a ninja, bent on stealth and death.
Living metamorphoses, in the space of a breath,
sordid entropy fills us, within, and without.
Tide turns again; back and forth it tumbles,
like those little wind up toys, yet never stays.
All our efforts, all our silly little ways,
disappear like seaweed, as sanity crumbles.
The duality of reality in which we are firmly caught,
seems to inhabit every part of our natural selves.
Nothing is ever still, nor can it be placed on shelves;
we are dark, and light; balance must be taught.
Life is lived only one moment at a time,
past and future have no power to alter this at all.
We can choose to fly, or choose to fall;
finding truth, and beauty, can never be a crime.
~~ gigoid ~~
Naked Pearls
What did you say?….
"If you are beginning to doubt what I am saying,
you are probably hallucinating."
~~ The Firesign Theatre, "Everything you know is Wrong" ~~
"Imagine there's no heaven… it's easy if you try."
~~ John Lennon, "Imagine" ~~
""Curioser and Curioser!" cried Alice."
~~ from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll ~~
"Nature is not human-hearted."
~~ Lao Tzu ~~
"Whatever occurs from love is always beyond good and evil."
~~ Friedrich Nietzsche ~~
"As great scientists have said and as all children know,
it is above all by the imagination
that we achieve perception, and compassion, and hope."
~~ Ursula K. LeGuin ~~
"Prais'd be the fathomless universe,
for life and joy,
and for objects and knowledge curious."
~~ Walt Whitman ~~
Well, there you have it, such as it is…. I'll continue my stated intention to be efficient, in hopes such will continue to guide my writing in the coming year; that, you may be certain, is as much of a resolution you'll get from me, as it's one I can keep as well as I ever do. Rather than belabor such a delicate point, (too much potential for sarcasm & curmudgeonry… ), I'll leave y'all with the usual caveat, to wit: be well, be happy as you may be, & stay strange. It's worked so far, so, why fuss with it? See you soon, ffolkes….
Y'all take care out there,
and May the Metaphorse be with you;
Blessed Be, dearest Carole, Mark,Theresa, & Richy
and everyone else, too…
When I works, I works hard.
When I sits, I sits loose.
When I thinks, I falls asleep.
Which is Why….
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes,
I just sits.
gigoid, the dubious
The *only* duly authorized Computer Curmudgeon.
"SCRAM!!!!!!!!!!"- Oscar the Grouch
À bientôt, mon cherí….


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Fiscal crises don't stop the legislative process.
Here is a sample of bills introduced at the City Council lately, some of which are destined to drift about in legislative purgatory. The council is ready to consider bills that include requiring food inspector grades be posted on street carts to mandating a super majority for tax hikes.
Watching Stimulus Funds
The city is eligible to receive millions -- if not billions -- of dollars in stimulus funding from the federal government as part of the stimulus package approved earlier this year. Already, the city has received $271 million in funding for transportation projects.
To keep track of it all, Councilmember Bill de Blasio, who is a candidate for public advocate, introduced legislation (Intro 957) that would create a Web site detailing all of the stimulus funds awarded to the city. Recipients of funds, according to the bill, would have to give monthly progress reports and detail how the project would increase economic activity in the city.
The site would be called SunlightNYC.
"Without accountability, we risk another AIG," said de Blasio in a prepared statement. "SunlightNYC will require all stimulus spending to be tracked and transparent. The public deserves to know how their money is being spent, down to the last dollar."
City agencies would also have to detail what projects did not receive federal funding that they applied for.
The Bloomberg administration has launched a stimulus tracker detailing the types of funding the city can receive, and the projects that have been awarded federal money.
Posting Food Grades
The city already grades schools, why not pass or fail city food vendors? That is the question Councilmember Daniel Garodnick is asking.
Under legislation (Intro 958) introduced by Garodnick, the city would be required to give laminated grade placards to vendors 72 hours after inspections. Vendors would have to then post visibly on their carts at all times.
Noticing Foreclosed Properties
Under legislation (Intro 959) also introduced by Garodnick, any bank or individual issuing a foreclosure on a property with more than six units would have to notify all of the tenants of the building.
A similar bill introduced by Councilmember Thomas White (Intro 956) would require an entity notify tenants in buildings with between one and five units.
They would have to notify the tenants within ten days of the action, if not, the entity could be subject to a $1,000 fine per day.
Bulletproof Banks
In 2008, according to the council, bank robberies increased by 50 percent.
In hopes of curbing that trend, Councilmember Oliver Koppell introduced legislation (Intro 960) that would require all banks install bulletproof glass at teller windows. The legislation would not apply to atm machines.
If banks fail to comply, they could be fined up to $1,500 under the bill.
Super Majority for Taxes
The council's Republican trio wants to curb taxes. Despite Democrats more than super majority over the governing body, members Jimmy Oddo, Vincent Ignizio and newcomer Eric Ulrich want to require an official super-majority for any approval of a tax hike.
The bill (Intro 961 ) would require any fee, tax increase or decrease be approved by two-thirds of the City Council instead of a simple majority. That means 34 votes in the affirmative instead of 26.
Council Member Salaries
Councilmember Tony Avella, a mayoral candidate, introduced legislation (Intro 946) that would ban any City Council member salary increase within 30 days of a general, primary or special election. Any increase the council approves would not take effect until after the next general election, according to the bill.
Avella voted against the council's pay increase in 2006, which upped salaries from $90,000 to $112,500.
"The purpose of this legislation is to prevent the travesty that occurred in 2006 when the City Council voted itself a 25 percent pay increase," Avella said in a prepared statement. "It is sheer self interest when a legislative body votes to increase the salaries of its current members and only serves to further erode the public's trust of the body as a whole and of each individual member."
Unattended Idling
After a drunken driver stole an idling car and killed two pedestrians in Middle Village, Queens in February, Councilmember Elizabeth Crowley set out to prevent it from happening again.
Crowley introduced legislation (Intro 947) that would increase the fine for leaving a vehicle unattended and idling from $5 to $250.
Though the city has had idling legislation in place since the 1970s, it has been sporadically enforced. Earlier this year, the council passed legislation to step up that enforcement by allowing sanitation and parks officials to issue tickets for idling. The council also recently passed legislation implementing stricter idling guidelines in school zones.
Fire Commissioner Power
The city's fire commissioner has a lot of discretion. He or she can close firehouses -- if fiscal times require -- as he or she sees fit, but needs to notify the council.
Now, Councilmember de Blasio would also like to have the commissioner notify the council when ambulance routes are terminated permanently -- or for more than six months. The legislation ( Intro 949) would require the department notify the City Council 45 days before a route was eliminated. Ambulance services are within the fire department's budget.
The administration is proposing to do away with 30 EMS routes this budget cycle, which many council members were caught by surprise by.
Retirement Age for NYPD
Legislation ( Intro 953) introduced by Councilmember Peter Vallone would increase the city Police Department's mandatory retirement age from 63 to 65.


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"Magical Thinking" Photographs by Matej Peljhan
From http://www.thisiscolossal.com: Slovenia-based photographer Matej Peljhan recently teamed up with a 12-year-named Luka who suffers from muscular dystrophy, to create a wildly imaginative series of photos depicting the boy doing things he is simply unable to do because of his degenerative condition. While he can still use his fingers to drive a wheelchair and to draw, things like skateboarding and swimming are simply not possible.
After having a conversation with Luka about his understandably normal desire to play sports or go swimming, Peljan was struck with the idea to create a non-digitally manipulated series of photographs showing the boy conquering a number of imaginary physical feats. The photographer used sheets and other props as a backdrop and shot Luca from above to capture each image, showing clearly the boy's strength and shared sense of humor. See more photos from the series on the photographer's website. All images courtesy the artist. (viapeta pixel)


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Sensible and straight-forward Jane is a straight stitch machine with a speed of 1,500 stitches per minute. She is entrepreneurial and business-minded to help you achieve your goals. And with the extension table and Precision Feed System, you can create to your project's needs. Jane is the hard-working friend you've been waiting for! Reliable and solid, Jane will be a good partner for anyone interested in sewing. Jane has mastered the straight stitch, making her especially helpful for garment sewing and quilting. She even comes with a bright LED light to help users see the details of their projects.Read more
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HIBISCUS is a multidisciplinary team of architects, engineers, planners and professionals in related fields from Haiti and it's global diaspora.
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Before we get into this, let me just clarify a few things.
I am a parent.
My child has a scooter.
My child loves scootering.
I let her scooter frequently.
This is not an altogether anti-scooter piece.
I fucking HATE scooters.
In particular when scooters are allowed on busy pavements or on the school-run. Stay with me parents-who-let-their-children-scoot-on-the-school-run. I have no beef with it if they have to walk a long way and scootering is the only way some parents can get their little darling to go the distance. It's especially fine, if they're considerate enough to make said child/children get off their scooters once they get near the busy pavements by the school gate. I'm totally here for considerate scootering. However, it is not fine when children on scooters are weaving between hordes of people at potentially 25mph on the pavement. It is also not fine when children are so far ahead of their parents on scooters, the parents can't really see if they're knocking into people.
Here is the Oxford dictionary definition of the word pavement: A raised paved or asphalted path for pedestrians at the side of a road.
Here is the Oxford dictionary definition of the word pedestrian: A person walking.
Now I'm not about to suggest that children should be scootering in the road.
(Or am I?)
No…maybe…NO, I'm definitely not, BUT if a child knocks into me at speed whilst I'm WALKING on the PAVEMENT one more time, then well, I'll probably just mumble under my breath or say something passive aggressive, but you get my point.
There is also, the danger aspect. I have seen children speed into roads on their scooters without really looking or if they have been taught to stop and wait for Mummy before crossing (kudos for this at least) then they stop so suddenly that if you're unlucky enough to be behind them, you almost fall over them.
Also (nope I ain't finished yet), if one lets one's child scooter everywhere a) have they got one leg weaker than the other? b) if they're not regularly walking to places on their own two feet, is this not detrimental to the development of both their muscles and mental approach to walking?
I have veritably seen a parent park their car, get their child out of the car, pass the child a scooter and let the child scoot no more than 20 steps to the entrance of a building. Is it an actuality that the child couldn't have coped walking those few steps to the entrance of the building? This was also on a busy street plus the child fell off the scooter in front of me and almost knocked me over (relax, the child was fine, but that isn't important right now).
Worst of all, are the (albeit minority of) parents who allow their children to freely scoot through the school gates and around the school playground with no regards to anyone else. It's the attitude being perpetuated that WALKING PEDESTRIANS had better move out of the way as a child on a scooter is coming through. For me, a busy school playground is not the place to do this. It's crowded, lots of people are walking in all different directions, toddlers are toddling about and playgrounds contain adults and children alike with different mobility issues.
Arguments I've heard in favour of letting your child scoot everywhere include:
"It's healthy exercise". Yes it is, but do you know what else is healthy exercise for your kids? FUCKING WALKING.
"It's fun". Correct, but do you know what else is fun? Space hoppers. Shall we let out children space-hop into school too?
"It's helps get them to school on time". Tough one. I don't know, maybe…try…GETTING UP 5 MINUTES EARLIER.
Other reasons to hate scooters; I hate the way they swing round and whack you in the shins when you try to pick them up.
Also, thank God I don't live in London anymore as some actual grown up actual adulting adults are choosing scooters as a form of transport to get to work on. I mean ACTUAL adult human beings. Scootering. To work. KILL THEM WITH FIRE.
There's a time and a place for scooters and it's not on busy streets, it's not in school playgrounds and it's not on the way to bloody work (you gigantic, inconsiderate adult-babies). People walking on the pavement should always have priority.
Right, now I've clearly turned into Mary Whitehouse, I'm off to complain to the council about people parking badly (I'm not even vaguely joking, readers).


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Strengthened by a "strong Jesuit" tradition, Loyola Marymount University on the Westside of Los Angeles places an emphasis on both "social justice" as well as "the education of the whole person." Importantly, the school also offers interested students the "ability to [participate in] research," something not always afforded to undergraduates. In addition, LMU's fabulous L.A. location is "amazing for networking opportunities [as well as potential] future employment." Students also greatly benefit from an "academic program [that] promotes learning in multiple...fields rather than just the major you choose." Hence, "an engineering major will be proficient in writing. An English major will understand higherlevel math. [And] a business student will be experience[d] in art history."
Loyola Marymount's "small size" is certainly a boon to the academic experience as well. After all its 11:1 student-to-faculty ratio makes "it...really easy to get to know your professors and advisors." As one insightful undergrad explains, "All my professors know my name, which makes it really easy to find someone to write recommendations for internships, jobs, and grad school." And speaking of professors, students find the majority of their instructors to be "passionate...about [their] subject matter." Professors generally "encourage students to participate in discussions." Even better, they're "very understanding," and they make it known that they truly "care...about your success."


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Key Verses
2 Kings 13:22-23
Now Hazael king of Syria oppressed Israel all the days of Jehoahaz. But the Lord was gracious to them and had compassion on them, and he turned toward them, because of his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and would not destroy them, nor has he cast them from his presence until now.
As I read through these chapters in 2 Kings, I'm struck by the long-suffering patience of God. After almost 300 years of being independent of Judah, there has not been one king of Israel that did "right" in the eyes of the Lord. Even Jehu, who demolished Baal worship, "was not careful to walk in the law of the Lord, the God of Israel, with all his heart. He did not turn from the sins of Jeroboam, which he made Israel to sin" (2 Kings 10:31).
But God continued to show mercy… continued to wait for repentance. Consider the example from today's Key Verses: "The Lord was gracious to them and had compassion on them." God seemed to give Israel every chance to repent. He waited and waited and interceded and sent Elijah and waited and sent Elisha and waited and waited some more. But in the end, Israel did not repent, and Israel would be destroyed.
God's mercy to Israel reminds me of a quote from Charles Spurgeon…
Slow to anger. He can be angry, and can deal out righteous indignation upon the guilty, but it is his strange work; he lingers long, with loving pauses, tarrying by the way to give space for repentance and opportunity for accepting his mercy. Thus he deals with the greatest sinners, and with his own children much more so: towards them his anger is short-lived and never reaches into eternity, and when it is shown in fatherly chastisements he does not afflict willingly, and soon pities their sorrows.
From this we should learn to be ourselves slow to anger; if the Lord is longsuffering under out great provocations how much more ought we to endure the errors of our brethren! And plenteous in mercy. Rich in it, quick in it, overflowing with it; and so had he need to be or we should soon be consumed. He is God, and not man, or our sins would soon drown his love; yet above the mountains of our sins the floods of his mercy rise.
– taken from The Treasury of David (Psalm 103:8)
Yet above the mountains of our sins the floods of mercy rise. Beautiful. Both the truth and the words… are beautiful!
Keeping up with the Kings
- Judah: Rehoboam, Abijam, Asa (good), Jehoshaphat (good), Jehoram (son of Jehoshaphat), Ahaziah (killed by Jehu), Queen Athaliah, Jehoash (only surviving son of Ahaziah: good), Amaziah (good)
- Israel: Jeroboam, Nadab, Baasha, Elah, Zimri, Omri, Ahab, Ahaziah, Jehoram (or Joram, son of Ahab), Jehu, Jehoahaz, Jehoash, Jeroboam II


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With a retrospective of the artist Edward Ardizzone opening at the House of Illustration this week, I wanted to showcase one of his lesser known works – Jean Webster's 1912 classic Daddy Long-Legs.
Jean Webster was the grand-niece of Mark Twain; a relationship that suggests literary nepotism but was in fact fraught with difficulties. Her father had been the great author's business partner and had published works including The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The success and responsibility heaped upon Charles Webster brought him to a nervous breakdown, and Twain later severed ties, leading to his eventual suicide. Jean was fifteen when her father died and it affected her deeply, particularly influencing her views on injustice and patriarchal authority figures – themes that would feature heavily in her own writing.
In Daddy-Long-Legs we follow the eduction of Jerusha Abbott, a foundling who is saved from a life of drudgery by a mysterious benefactor, who she names after the unpleasant arachnid having caught a glimpse of his elongated shadow in the halls of her orphanage. He pays for her college education, on the proviso that she write a letter to him each month and allows his true identity to remain a secret.
So the novel unfolds as a series of unanswered letters to her benefactor, and this is what makes it so compelling. Jerusha renames herself Judy and begins to experiment with her identity – in part to fit in with her well to do college friends, but more importantly as a means of self discovery. She invents the character of Daddy-Long-Legs and uses her letters to him as a proving ground for her own literary experiments, learning to produce her own authorial voice as she goes.
The original book came with illustrations by Jean Webster herself – the faux naive style, perfectly capturing the playful spirit of the central character. But the book was later republished with an accompanying set of plates by Edward Ardizzone. The effect of seeing the work of the master alongside these childlike efforts could have been a little jarring, but somehow it works, emphasising the two different sides to this multi faceted character.
Although there is comedy and romance at its core, Daddy-Long-Legs is also a deeply political book, reflecting the views of its author who was an active suffragette and Fabian (like her British counterpart E. Nesbit). Judy becomes a committed Socialist, always with one eye on inequality and her own precarious place in the world. She is determined not to be indebted to the generosity of a rich, male benefactor, and her writing becomes an escape route from 'marrying an undertaker and being an inspiration to him in his work.' Before any sort of romance is allowed to blossom she is determined to pay off her debts and stand on her own two feet.
An incredibly modern Young Adult novel, Daddy-Long-Legs set the template for smart romantic comedies like I Capture the Castle and Bridget Jones's Diary; books that detail the inner lives of young women who never sacrifice their own distinctive character or ideals for the men in their lives.
Daddy-Long-Legs (without Edward Ardizzone's illustrations) is published by Puffin Classics.


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Today's Fifteen Second Movie: Ready Player One
What are Fifteen Second Movies? What it says in the title of course. It's an outlook on upcoming films which follow the 3 S's: Short, Sweet, and Surreal. We release these in tandem with the actual movie's release date. You might like it, you may not.
NOTE: This video is a fan-based parody and neither reflects the opinions of the creators of the video nor sponsored by the movie itself. It is not meant to be taken seriously.


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The Australian leg of Green Day's 21st Century Breakdown tour took a slight turn to the scary when the band had to cancel and reschedule the last night in Melbourne unexpectedly. It seems that the day before, one particular member of the band… the lead singer to be exact… had a bad case of the runs after eating something bad. Greendaylove38 suggested that it was a bad kangaroo, but who knows what the heck he ate?
Proudweirdo from the GDC was at the rescheduled show and posted this video of the band performing "East Jesus Nowhere," and Billie mentions the "d" word (dysentery) and the band goes on to save five lucky Australian souls:
Potty and Salvation Time – "East Jesus Nowhere" – Green Day — Melbourne, December 16, 2009
Thankfully, he's doing good now, and Australia experienced a number of wonderful things, including Jet pranking Green Day at the Melbourne show (male strippers, can't wait for that video) as well as Tre's birthday celebration, where he turned 37 years young. Thanks to Cynnasaur, we have birthday cake madness during "King For A Day":
A birthday cake for Tre – "King for a Day" – Green Day – Brisbane –
December 9, 2009
The lovely Kerry from Australia was lucky enough to experience all of Rocktober in England as well as the Down Under Rampage in Australia. She posted a shiteload of photographs on Facebook, but unfortunately, they are set to Friends only. I asked her if I could post a some from the tour (I'll post more if I get a chance), and here are a few of my favorites:
Green Day now moves on to the Kiwis, with two shows in Auckland on December 18th and 19th. Hopefully no one will come down with dysentery there!


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Sponsored Edition: A Lock in the Park
For you, shopping is the ultimate game – hunting down the perfect pair of pumps and scoring the best deals. But lately, you haven't felt like playing. In fact, just getting to the field has you totally defeated thanks to your bitter rival, parking.
Every time you shop, you either circle for hours, waiting for a space to open; you park really far away and end up with marks on your hands from hauling all your junk back to your trunk; or you're forced to park somewhere truly expensive and rush through your shopping with the clock ticking at $13 per hour.
Stop rolling the dice and head straight to Royal Hawaiian Center (do not pass go and certainly do not spend $200 on parking). With more than 600 stalls spread over 10 floors of parking, the Center is truly Park Place. Plus, its new automated validation system makes getting out the garage easier than ever. Basically, when it comes to parking, the Royal Hawaiian Center has a Monopoly on awesome.
Just keep your ticket with you while you shop and get an additional validation ticket with any purchase. Then, when you're done cruising the mall's 100-plus stores and eateries, simply take both tickets to an automated machine – there's one on each of the first four floors of the garage – and pay off your balance. Don't believe us? Watch this video.
Parking is free for the first hour, then $1 per hour for the next three hours, so you can afford to stay and peruse your favorite shops. Roll on in to Sunglass Hut for their Win With Oakley promotion – buy a pair of sexy shades and for each gold medal the U.S. Olympic team wins, you'll get a dollar off another pair. Or head over to Furla where select handbags are 40 percent off. Then hit up Zumiez's back-to-school BOGO half-off sale, and Laki Hawaiian Designs, where Misaki Jewelry is 70 percent off.
At the end of the day, you'll cruise out of the parking lot like the winner you are. Because, let's face it. While you were never that great at ball sports, boy, do you rock the mall sports.
That's really all the validation you need.
Royal Hawaiian Center is located at 2201 Kalakaua Ave. in Waikiki. For more information about current promotions and hours of operation, click here.


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How would you feel tomorrow if you lost access to your mobile, the Internet, TV and other technologies that you take for granted. How would you feel?
Google Glasses and dozens of other brands of Augmented Reality goggles hit the road running for Christmas 2013 and over the next couple of years AR applications went from Wow to business as usual. Today people look at you sideways in many cities if you aren't wearing glasses. But there has been a downside. People can't bear to be without them.
Not that long ago people had separation anxiety when they didn't have their mobile with them, then their smartphone. Now its their AR glasses. Hospitals and A&R clinics are reporting many people are presenting with a feeling of vertigo with some patients reporting in an almost psychotic state, saying they feel they have been detached from the real world.
Others are describing the real world without AR glasses as flat, 2 dimensional, when they don't have access to features they take for granted such as information about locations, deals, games and access to their friends…
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I was pleased as punch when not only did Thor get the movie treatment, but it was good! Bonus that he will appear in Joss Whedon's Avengers alongside equally dreamy Captain America. The comics are even pretty decent lately, though I'm not a big fan of the chain mail. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Kirby's design was flawless. Forsooth!
Michael Troy is a deeply superficial person. Born in the midwest in the '70s, Michael came to Los Angeles to pursue his bi-polar career path as an actor and artist. 2005 saw the release of Michael's first published book, Homo-Hero's Big Book of Fun and Adventure (www.greencandypress.com). Michael has contributed to the Lady Gaga comic book from Bluewater Productions and has his hand in various other upcoming projects. Michael has performed stand-up comedy at all of the major comedy clubs in Los Angeles and is making his triumphant return to the main stage of The Comedy Store in September. Michael offers an off-beat sense of humor as the star of such youtube cult classics As The Gays on Film (www.youtube.com/fullfrontaltv), A Minute With Margot, a loving tribute to Superman legend Margot Kidder (http://www.youtube.com/user/rktcommander), and currently hosts a vlog style series Lethally Blonde over at www.monsterburg.com. Sitting alongside industry heavyweight Phil Jimenez at the "Divas and Lassoes" panel for the 2010 San Diego comic-con, Michael maintains and cherishes his "underground" status. A staunch believer in Blonde Ambition, Michael hopes his new comic about shallow blonde super heroes in Los Angeles, The Blonde Squad, will set the world on fire (or at least brighten it a bit). Check out Michael Troy and Lethally Blonde updates here!!!


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We are going to meet at 6:15 p.m. in Downtown Fullerton near the SE corner of Harbor Blvd. and Wilshire Ave. You can park in the nearby parking structure surrounded by Wilshire Ave., Pomona, E. Amerige and Harbor Blvd. The address is 114 East Wilshire Avenue , Fullerton.
Corrin's Run (3.9, 4.4, 5 mi)
From Harbor/Wilshire
WEST on Wilshire
RIGHT on Woods Ave.
LEFT on Valley View Dr.
RIGHT on Euclid
RIGHT on Hiltsher Park Trail
RIGHT on Loop Trail
(Juanita Cooke Greenbelt)
At end of Trail Continue EAST on Berkely
For 3.9 miles RIGHT on Harbor to Wilshire
For 4.4 miles RIGHT on Lemon , RIGHT on Wilshire to Harbor
For 5 miles RIGHT on Wilshire to Harbor
Happy Birthday Cherie. Her Birthday is today! We hope you had a great day!


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Exhibition curator Ying-Chen Peng talks during the unveiling of "Empress Dowager, Cixi" (AP Photo/Chris Carlson) Photo: AP
For more than a century she has been known as the woman behind the throne, the empress who through skill and circumstance rose from lowly imperial consort to iron-fisted ruler of China at a time and in a place when women were believed to have no power at all.
But it turns out Empress Dowager Cixi was much more than that. The 19th century ruler, who consolidated authority through political maneuvering that at times included incarceration and assassination, was also a serious arts patron and even an artist herself, with discerning tastes that helped set the style for traditional Asian art for more than a century.
That side of Cixi comes to the Western world for the first time with Sunday's unveiling of "Empress Dowager, Cixi: Selections From the Summer Palace" at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana. The wide-ranging collection, never before seen outside China, will remain at the Southern California museum through March 11 before returning to Beijing.
A 1901 Duryea Surrey (AP Photo/Chris Carlson) Photo: AP
Consisting of more than 100 pieces from the lavish Beijing palace Cixi called home during the final years of her life, "Empress Dowager" includes numerous examples of intricately designed Chinese furniture, porcelain vases and stone carvings, as well as several pieces of Western art, rare in China at the time, that she also collected. Among them are a large oil-on-canvas portrait of herself she commissioned the prominent Dutch artist Hubert Vos to create.
Other Western accoutrements include gifts from visiting dignitaries, among them British silver serving sets, German and Swiss clocks, a marble-topped table from Italy with inlaid stones in the shape of a chessboard and even an American-built luxury automobile. The latter, a 1901 Duryea touring car, is believed to be the first automobile imported into China and as such may have involved the empress in the country's first automobile accident when her driver is said to have hit a pedestrian.
Dragon Dancers perform before the unveiling of the exhibition (AP Photo/Chris Carlson) Photo: AP
"We already have a lot of scholarship on who she is and how she ruled China. But this show brings you a different angle," said exhibition curator Ying-Chen Peng, as she led a recent pre-opening tour of it through the museum that was kicked off by a raucous performance of Chinese lion dancers accompanied by musicians loudly banging gongs cymbals and drums.
"This exhibition seeks to introduce you to this woman as an arts patron, as an architect, as a designer," the American University art historian said.
Catherine Shiao looks at the exhibition (AP Photo/Chris Carlson) Photo: AP
That's an approach that may finally have gotten it to the Western world. Anne Shih, who chairs the museum's board of directors, noted recently that she spent 10 years trying to persuade the Chinese government to lend Cixi's art.
The Bowers has built an impressive international reputation over the years by hosting exhibitions of priceless, historical, often larger-than-life artworks from Tibet, the Silk Road, the tomb of China's first emperor and other historic sites.
However, Shih says the Chinese government initially turned her down repeatedly. Officials told her the empress, who outlived two much younger emperors, including one who died mysteriously of arsenic poisoning, was just too controversial. She's been portrayed in numerous films and books and not always positively.
Orange County's Bowers Museum (AP Photo/Chris Carlson) Photo: AP
Shih finally prevailed, however, when she emphasized this show would focus on art, not politics.
Although it does, it still becomes apparent to visitors what a formidable presence Cixi must have been as they enter a recreation of her throne room to be greeted by a larger-than-life portrait of her covered in jewels and razor-sharp fingernail protectors as she glares ominously at her audience.
Nearby, however, are objects that quickly make her passion for art clear. Prominent among them is a towering calligraphy work of black ink embossed on a sheet of paper that, stretching to about 6 feet (2 meters), is taller than the dowager was. She is said to have made it by wielding a large heavy brush while standing on a stool as some of the eunuchs who served her stretched out the paper.
Catherine Shiao looks at the exhibition (AP Photo/Chris Carlson) Photo: AP
Not far away are ink-and-paper drawings of flowers the empress also created, although Peng notes with a laugh that when it came to painting, Cixi was a much better calligrapher.
Placed into the emperor's harem as a low-level teenage consort, she quickly elevated her status by giving birth to his only son in 1856. When the emperor died six years later she installed the boy as his successor and, as the woman behind the throne, ousted opponents, brought in loyalists and ran the country herself for the next 43 years. She died in 1908 at age 72.
Although she led her country through numerous wars launched by foreign invaders during those years, she also found time to visit with dignitaries from other countries and to pursue her own passion for art.
Her real artistic skill, however, lay not in making art but in envisioning works that would stand the critical test of time and then finding skilled artisans to create them.
"Her personal preference actually led to the further development of these very ornate designs," Peng said, observing some of the intricately carved, gold-inlaid furniture and hand-painted porcelain objects. "Nowadays when you go to antique shops, you can see quite a few pieces in this style. You can say she was a trendsetter."


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Mohnkuchen with Nutmeg & Crème Fraîche Ice Cream
One year ago today, I woke up with an unusually steely resolve for what I was going to accomplish that day: I was going to start a foodblog. It had only been a short time since I had stumbled upon this mysterious universe – a slow day at work and a sudden curiosity about the cuisine of the Seychelles had dumped me unceremoniously in the archives of Chocolate and Zucchini – but my induction had been thorough. I had read my way, feverishly, around the food blogosphere, awed at the effort and talent that people were putting into these online food journals, and absolutely over the moon that there were apparently so many people out there, who like me, couldn't spend a day without thinking about food. Although it's very uncharacteristic for me to take any potentially life-altering plunge without thoroughly considering the ramifications – I am a Libra, after all – this one didn't require even five minutes of debate. I had just found a community of people all talking about my favorite topic, and what I wanted more than anything was to join in.
I had, at that point, no clear idea of what I was going to write about or how long I would keep going – I just figured I'd write about whatever, whenever, as long as it had to do with food. Somehow that has managed to span everything from hot chocolate to whiskey; haggis to squash blossoms; weddings to breakups; homecomings to home-leavings to family secrets; humorous personal disasters to gut-wrenching faraway catastrophes. Along the way I've probably just about managed to circumnavigate the globe in recipes. Reading, interacting, cooking and writing this way have proven to be more than just an ongoing culinary education for me – it's been an education in culture, in history, and in people.
Just as amazing have been the unexpected and delightful ways in which the consequences of starting this website have spilled over and affected my 'real life'. The friends I've made, both in the flesh and virtually, the countless positive interactions I've had with people through emails and comments, and even the professional opportunities that have come my way, have made each and every day of the past year a little bit brighter. Who would have thought that a little food blog could do all that?
And today, 365 days and 86 posts later, the journey still feels like it has barely begun. My passion for food is as great – if not greater – than ever before, and I'm constantly thrilled to discover how many more avenues there are to explore. So to all of you who have taken time out of your busy lives to drop by here and share your thoughts, your knowledge and your experiences with me, and to all my wonderful fellow foodbloggers, who make this community so dynamic, so supportive, and so mouth-wateringly delicious: thank you. You have all helped to make this one decision I have never regretted even for an instant.
And as promised, the recipes:
Mohnkuchen (Flourless Austrian Poppyseed Cake)
Serves: 8
Source: Rick Rodgers' Kaffeehaus
Notes: This unusual cake caught my eye the first time I leafed through Rick Rodgers' Kaffeehaus, a gorgeous exploration of the pastry-making traditions of Central Europe. Unlike most poppyseed cakes I'm familiar with, this one contains no flour, instead relying on ground poppyseeds to provide both flavor and bulk. The result is something both visually striking – the color is almost blue-black – and delicious, as the cake is deeply imbued with the poppyseeds' uniquely nutty, floral fragrance. If you grind them coarsely, you'll have a lovely crunch as well. Just make sure to purchase your seeds from a place with high turnover (such as a bulk source, or an Eastern European market), as they go rancid and bitter all too quickly. Also note that I've suggested some optional flavorings for the cake – while the poppyseeds are good on their own as the original recipe presents them, I think they're even better with a hint of vanilla, almond or citrus in a supporting role.
10 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks/150g) unsalted butter, at room temperature
5 large eggs, at room temperature, separated
1 cup (225g) sugar
1 3/4 cups (9oz/275g) poppy seeds, coarsely ground in a coffee grinder or mini food processor
1/2 cup (125ml) heavy cream
flavoring (optional): 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla or almond extract, and/or the grated rind of 1 orange or lemon
nutmeg & crème fraîche ice cream (below) or lightly sweetened whipped cream
Preheat the oven to 350F/180C. Lightly butter an 11×8-inch baking dish (I used a 9-inch/23cm springform pan).
Beat the butter with a hand-held mixer until smooth, about 1 minute. One at a time, beat in the egg yolks and continue beating for another 2 minutes. Beat in the sugar. Using clean beaters, beat the egg whites in another bowl until they form soft peaks. Stir about 1/4 of the beaten egg whites into the butter mixture, then fold in the remainder, stopping before all the whites are completely incorporated. Fold in the poppy seeds, then the cream and optional flavoring. Spread the batter evenly in the pan. Bake until the top of the cake is puffed and lightly browned, about 40-45 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack and cool completely before serving.
Nutmeg & Crème Fraîche Ice Cream
Yield: about 1 quart
Notes: I concocted this ice cream on the spot, imagining that the slightly acidic crème fraîche and spicy nutmeg would compliment the mohnkuchen well, especially as I had used orange peel to scent the cake and thought this would make a lovely flavor trinity. It did in fact, and I was also happy to find the ice cream equally good on its own (though I am a nutmeg lover – Manuel, on the other hand, couldn't get the thought of frozen béchamel sauce out of his head…).
1 cup (250ml) heavy cream
1 cup (250ml) whole milk
1 cup (225g) sugar
pinch salt
1 teaspoon freshly-ground nutmeg
6 large egg yolks
2 cups (500ml) crème fraîche (sour cream will do in a pinch)
In heavy saucepan combine cream, milk, 3/4 cup sugar, salt and nutmeg and bring just to a boil. Remove pan fro
m heat, cover, and allow to infuse for 30 minutes. in a bowl whisk together egg yolks and remaining 1/4 cup sugar and hot cream and milk mixture in a stream, whisking. Return custard to pan and cook over moderately low heat, stirring, until it thickens and registers 170°F on a candy thermometer.
Remove pan from heat. Stir crème fraîche into custard until combined well and strain through a fine sieve into a bowl. Chill custard until cold and freeze in an ice-cream maker according to its instructions. Alternatively, freeze in a covered container, stirring vigorously to break up the ice crystals every couple of hours.


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Basic concepts
equivalences in/of -categories
Universal constructions
Local presentation
Extra stuff, structure, properties
cosmos, multicategory, bicategory, double category, virtual double category
The notion of Segal category is one of the models for that of (∞,1)-category, given by regarding an -category as an ∞Grpd-enriched (∞,1)-category.
So the notion can be understood as modelling the notion of an sSet-enrichment up to coherent homotopy, i.e. a weak enrichment. As such it is closely related to the notion of complete Segal space, which models the notion of an internal category in sSet.
Indeed, Segal categories may be considered with enrichment not just over sSet, but over other suitable model categories. In particular, an iterated enrichment over itself gives rise to the notion of Segal n-category which is a model for (∞,n)-categories.
Since the major difference between (small) -enriched categories and -internal categories is that in the first case the objects (as opposed to all the hom objects) form an ordinary set, while in the second these form an object of , too, accordingly the definition of Segal category is like that of (complete) Segal space, only that the simplicial set of objects is required to be an ordinary set (a discrete simplicial set).
A Segal category is
a simplicial simplicial set ( bisimplicial set) ,
where we call the simplicial set of objects, the simplicial set of morphisms; and for the simplicial set of sequences of composable morphisms of length ;
such that is a discrete (= constant) simplicial set;
and such that the Segal maps
(With the defintion of X_k, shouldn't X_k be equal to X_1 \times_{X_0}… X_1?)
induced by the spine inclusions are weak equivalences of simplicial sets for .
There is no condition that a Segal category be fibrant with respect to the Reedy model structure on bisimplicial sets.
For a Segal category, the fiber product simplicial set is manifestly the space of pairs of composable 1-morphisms in , and the weak equivalence
given by the above definition together with the remaining face map constitutes an ∞-anafunctor
given by the span
This encodes the composition operation in the Segal category .
Accordingly, the analogous spans out of for encode the associativity of this composition as well as all its coherences.
The category of bisimplicial sets carries a model category structure whose fibrant objects are the Reedy fibrant Segal categories. This model structure for Segal categories is a presentation of the (∞,1)-category of (∞,1)-categories.
The operadic generalization of Segal category is that of Segal operad. Segal categories are precisely those Segal operads whose only inhabited operations-spaces are those of unary operations.
Let be an ordinary small category and write for its nerve. Regard this as a bisimplicial set under the inclusion .
Then is a Segal category. Each simplicial set is discrete, for all , and all the morphisms
are in fact isomorphisms / bijections of sets. This property of the nerve of an ordinary category goes by the name Segal condition and is what gave Segal categories its name.
One may also form the -fold comma object-fiber product of a choice of base points with itself. This yields a Segal category incarnation of where in degree 1 we have the groupoid core of the arrow category of . For more on this see at Segal space – Examples - From a category.
The idea of Segal categories goes back (implicitly) to
They were named Segal categories in
An overview is on pages 164 to 169 of
A discussion with emphasis on the comparison of the various model category structures is in
The generalization to Segal n-categories is discussed in section 2 of
In the more general context of enriched (∞,1)-categories, this is discussed in
and in section 2 of
Last revised on August 30, 2021 at 14:55:12. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.


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I recently reviewed a couple of books on Amazon and Goodreads. Nothing so remarkable about that. But I found myself hesitating a long time before hitting the "submit" button on the Amazon reviews.
What confounded me was not writing the reviews but choosing the accompanying star rating. I felt like a woman in labor who finds herself paralyzed by the nurse's well-meaning question, "On a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being no pain at all and 10 being the worst pain you have ever experienced, how do you feel?" (I have seen this happen in the course of my work as a birth doula.)
How can you even answer that question? What if you say 6 now, but the pain gets more than twice as bad later and you run out of numbers? How much worse is 4 than 2? Is the scale linear or exponential? Most important, does the number mean the same thing to the nurse as it means to me?
My nine is your three
In fairness to the medical profession, the universal pain-assessment tool is tremendously valuable in helping to alleviate suffering among people who are ill or injured. (The pain-scale question might be somewhat irrelevant for women in labor since labor pain is intermittent, temporary, and part of the normal process of giving birth.)
The star rating system is a different beast. How can you hand out stars when—at least in the case of Amazon—they mean different things to different people?
Goodreads, at least, gives some guidance about what each star indicates:
* didn't like it
** it was o.k.
*** liked it
**** really liked it
***** it was amazing
Reviewing books by friends and acquaintances
I do agonize more when reviewing books by authors I know. I want to be honest, but I don't want my input to hurt their sales. This is why I have decided to follow my father's edict: "If you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all." Not the best child-rearing motto, perhaps, but helpful in this situation.
That said, what if I really liked the book? Would it kill me to give it a 5-star rating? No… but I find myself unable to do that just because I know the author. Maybe I'm unusual, but to me, if 5 stars means "it was amazing," it has to be amazing. And readers may be on to the possibility of star inflation. A friend's publisher mentioned to her that five-star ratings often are looked upon with skepticism by readers.
I've decided to stick to my tough reviewer stance, in which five stars are reserved for absolute standouts. (I have given five stars to only three titles on Goodreads: William Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying," Norton Juster's "The Phantom Tollbooth, and Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried.")
I'd love to hear from readers and writers: what do review stars mean to you? And if you've ever given birth, what was your pain level during labor? (Just kidding.)
Here are a few interesting discussions of ratings and reviews:
Article from Techcrunch on Amazon reviews
Goodreads forum discussion of star ratings
Discussion by Elle Lothlorian on Digital Book World about why authors SHOULD respond to negative reviews
Fascinating tale on the Conjugal Felicity* site about author Robert Stanek and his Amazon reviews
*I sincerely hope I never appear on this site, which is devoted to "the sporking (detailed, page-by-page, snarky critique) of poorly written books. We also chronicle the dubious promotional methods of certain self-published authors."
ROW80 Update
I am plugging away. I have done paper edits on about half the book and entered about half of those. I am probably not going to make my goal of a complete edit before handing off to my writing partner, who wants to take the manuscript with her on vacation in early August. That's okay. I will edit for the next week and print whatever I have for her at the beginning of August.
Look for some thoughts about the editing process in future posts.


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One of my favorite parts of reading are the descriptions of all the delicious food in books. I always fixated on the candy bars in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the giant pancakes in Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs, the giant feasts in the Redwall series. And in a funny twist, my sister and I always loved really random food scenes in Disney movies: the cake in Sleeping Beauty, the butter clock in Alice in Wonderland, the "when! WHEN!" sugar bowl in Sword in the Stone, etc etc.
Food in media is great! But ironically, this list was a little difficult to pinpoint what food from which stories I wanted to include… there were a few musts but my mind was blank after that. Luckily, I found a lot of wonderful lists online (like this one!) that gave me great ideas (and some recipes too).
Spiced Pumpkin Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting (Heartless)– Oh my GOSH the baked goods in Heartless!!! The descriptions! I immediately think of the lemon tarts first but for me, this cake sounds like my absolutely favorite cake in the world so I had to choose Cath's baking contest entry for my list 🙂
Peanut Butter Brownies (To All The Boys I've Loved Before)– I assumed I was going to pick one of Lara Jean's cookie recipes until I started flipping through the book and came across these brownies. I've never had them but I love Reese's and I bet they're chocolate and gooey and perfectly proportioned just like everything Lara Jean makes.
Strawberry Cordial (Redwall)– I haven't read any Redwall books since middle school but one of the things I remember best is just how much FOOD there was- pages and pages of food descriptions. And maybe it's the word cordial, but strawberry cordial sounds so refreshing- ice cold and maybe a little syrupy or fizzy.
Pecan Pie (The Dream Thieves)– I am what one might call a picky eater so I only found out last year that I like Pecan Pie, specifically the brown sugary filling. I couldn't resist including Persephone's pie after that.
Lemon Cakes (A Game of Thrones)– A Song of Ice and Fire is another series, like Redwall, with a multitude of feasts, pages and pages of them. But when I think of Game of Thrones, I think of Sansa Stark and her love of lemon cakes. I found some mini frosted lemon bundt cakes at Whole Foods once and ate them as I watched the show and felt SO decadent and Sansa-like. It was divine.
Whipple-Scrumptious Fudgemallow Delight (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)– out of all the creative, delicious, wacky sounds Willy Wonka foods, I always thought I would love this candy bar the best. It sounds like all my favorites wrapped into one and I adore the name.
Gingerbread (Timekeeper)– Gingerbread is one of my favorite seasonal foods and honestly this just makes me want to reread Timekeeper so I can eat gingerbread while I read!
Cheese Buns (Catching Fire)– I haven't read Catching Fire in years but it's impossible to think of the series without thinking of Peeta's delicious bread and what sounds better than cheesy bread?! I'm picturing them like cheese biscuits from Red Lobster, yummm.
Waffles (Six of Crows)– Waffles are delicious and I like knowing that one of the lighter aspects of this darkly wonderful series is The Dregs bonding over Nina's favorite fluffy food.
Cauldron Cakes (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone)– made of rich chocolate, Cauldron Cakes sound extremely decadent. A good moist chocolate cake with a bit of filling or frosting is honestly the best classic dessert, especially when it's in an individual size!
Kreacher's French Onion Soup (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows)– I'm not sure if I like French Onion Soup but whenever I read this description it sounds so enticing. Maybe it's the coziness of the scene, or the addition of crusty buttered bread, but it just sounds like a good meal.
November Cakes (The Scorpio Races)– these sticky gooey honey cakes have become synonymous with Maggie Stiefvater's atmospheric book. My friend Wendy even made November cakes one year!
Lots of cake on this list- whoops 😉 I know I probably forgot so many other delicious foods from books I've read over the years but that means I'm excited to see everyone else's posts! Do we have any of the same foods? What would you most like to try? Let me know!


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Disclaimer — All the way back in 2013, elsewhere on this site, I sung the praises of Mark Lawrence's Grimdark Fantasy trilogy, the books of the Thorns: Prince, King, Emperor. They're very good. If you haven't read them and you like that sort of thing, you should check them out. Unexpectedly, my faint voice of high praise reached Lawrence himself and he has such a commendably fine memory (or perhaps more commendably, fine record keeping practices) that he offered me the opportunity to read 'Road Brothers' a little earlier than many and for free. He didn't specifically ask for a review (I don't think), but I intend to give one and in the interests of open transparency, I felt you should know about how I came to read it. I judge this a fair & frank review, but you're welcome to make your own judgement too.
First, the spoiler-free:
This is a collection of short stories set in Lawrence's 'Broken Empire' and featuring characters from the two series he has set in that world.
If you know these characters, you learn a lot more about them, get to spend more time with them, understand their histories, gain insights into the thoughts and motivations which inform their actions… all of which is great if you've read the earlier books. I have, and I enjoyed (most) of these stories largely for those reasons. More on that later.
I wouldn't recommend this collection as an entry-point to Lawrence's work, but in this I'm in accord with the author himself. It opens with the advice to people who haven't read his earlier work, and who are picking this up without that existing familiarity with his world and characters, not to buy the book.
The author. Telling potential readers. Do not buy this book.
Lawrence has a gift for metaphor and simile. He scatters quotable bon mots and wry observation throughout these stories. He often holds up a critical mirror to our own world in the world of his Broken Empire. He asks if ours is less Broken, after all.
To the complaints:
Below, my thoughts story by story. I took these notes contemporaneously, sometimes immediately upon finishing the story, sometimes as I was reading. I've cleaned them up for spelling, grammar, etc, but they're otherwise my thoughts as they occurred.


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Park arrives at Seoul court for hearing
Seoul, South Korea —South Korea's disgraced ex-president arrived at a Seoul court Thursday for hearing on a prosecutors' request to her arrest for corruption allegations that have already toppled her from power.
Live TV footage showed a stern-looking Park Geun-hye entering the Seoul Central District Court building amid a barrage of camera flashes. She did not comment to reporters. The court is expected to decide by Friday morning whether to approve her arrest.
If the court approves the arrest warrant, Park will be immediately sent to a detention facility as prosecutors can detain her for up to 20 days before laying formal charges.
If the court rejects the arrest request, prosecutors can still indict and charge her.
Prosecutors accuse Park of colluding with a confidante to extort from big businesses, take a bribe from one of the companies and commit other wrongdoings. The allegations prompted millions of South Koreans to stage streets protests every weekend for months before the Constitutional Court ruled to dismiss her on March 10. Park's presidential powers had already been suspended after parliament impeached her in December.
It was a dramatic setback to Park, a daughter of a late dictator who serves as an icon for South Korean conservatives who revere him as a hero who pulled a war-torn country out of poverty in the 1960-70s despite a record of severe human rights abuses.
Earlier Thursday, hundreds of her supporters, mostly elderly conservative citizens, gathered near her Seoul home, waving national flags and chanting slogans when she left for the court.
Prosecutors say they want to arrest Park because her alleged crimes are "grave" and other suspects involved the scandal, including her confidante Choi Soo-sil, have already been arrested.
In the coming weeks, prosecutors are expected to formally charge Park with extortion, bribery and abuse of power. A bribery conviction alone is punishable by up to life in prison in South Korea.
Park and Choi deny most of the allegations. Park has said she only let Choi edit some of her presidential speeches and got her help on "public relations" issues. Choi made similar statements.


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Small and midsize businesses often can't afford file servers, and struggle with the best way to provide their users with enough space to store data and keep it safe from hardware failure. Windows 8's new feature called Storage Spaces has three benefits: bringing the safety of RAID to the desktop, creating an expanding space to store files, and providing these features at lower cost than other hardware options.
How much disk space do you need, and how reliable is it? Storage Spaces addresses the problem that matter how much space you buy, odds are good that you'll fill it. Disk space is cheap, and USB drives are easy. This generally results in an assortment of variously sized USB drives attached to your computer, requiring numerous drive letters you need to spread your data across. If you want disk space that's protected against hardware failure, mirroring two disks requires they be identically sized or else you lose the extra capacity of the larger disk. For a level-5 RAID, that strips data across more than two disks, and you lose the capacity of each disk larger than the smallest in the RAID.
1. Expandable Space
To avoid the hassle of having multiple drive letters to store your data on, StorageSpaces allows you to create a virtual drive that you can expand when needed. It behaves much like a virtualmachine, where you can create a disk that pretends to be 100GB in size, but initially may take up only 10GB of real space on your hard drive. As you add data to the virtual disk, the size of the real file grows as needed. Using thinprovisioning, which gives the appearance of more space than actually exists, Storage Spaces can do the same thing, allowing you to create a storage pool in which multiple Spaces can exist that use the space they need, as they need it. If the Space you created fills the maximum size you initially set, you can even reset it to a larger size, resulting in the equivalent of a bottomless disk.
2. Protected Space
Making a bunch of disks look like one is handy, but could be dangerous if one of them should fail. Storage Spaces incorporates RAID technology to provide protection, ensuring that at least one copy of all your data is available, even in the event of a hardware failure. Windows 8 isn't the first to offer software RAID, as Windows 7, XP and even 2000 included this capability. The difference is that the older versions required a static, predefined assignment of disks, whereas Storage Spaces allows you to dynamically add disks of varying sizes to grow the storage pool while still retaining redundancy of your data.
3. Cheaper Space
What Storage Spaces offers isn't new, Data Robotics provides a hardware RAID system called Drobo that offers the same benefits, and other vendors have similar offerings. Unfortunately, these can costs hundreds of dollars for the base device, require specific types of disks, and are limited in expandability to the number of slots in the device. Windows 8 Storage Spaces requires no extra hardware–you connect any internal or external disks that you have, and it uses them. This gives a business the flexibility to add space as needed, with an ever-expanding virtual disk that's protected from hardware failure, keeping its data safe.
Joseph Fieber has 25 years experience as an IT pro, with a background in computer consulting and software training. Follow him on Google+, Facebook, or Twitter, or contact him through his website, JosephFieber.com.


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Though famous for her famously breathy voice and sexy dance moves, Dev may shoot to infamy against her will. The 'Dancing Shoes' singer is in the midst of a sex tape scandal.
TMZ reports that the alleged sex tape was shot last year with an ex boyfriend in the same style as Paris Hilton's infamous home movie: in night vision. While Dev hasn't commented on the tape, she'd likely be unable to deny that it's her in the video. Why? Because the starlet in the tape apparently has all of Dev's signature tattoos, including a diamond on her front left shoulder and two sparrows on her lower back.
A third party is currently shopping the tape around to various media outlets, waiting for the highest bidder. No one knows for sure just yet exactly how said third party snagged the tape to begin with.
If Dev sues to stop distribution and sale of her sex tape, it won't be the only legal headache the California native has on her plate right now. She's in the midst of suing her label, Indie-Pop, and her former management team, on counts of fraud for taking advantage of her when she got signed.
Aside from her sex tape and lawsuit drama, Dev may also be bummed about her longtime collaborators, the Cataracs, potentially breaking up. David Singer-Vine left the production duo that discovered the starlet.
While Dev relies heavily on a sex-drenched image and lyrics, we doubt the proud mom would want her own sex life made public — especially when she's got her daughter, Emilia, looking up to her. But if worse comes to worst, this may boost her record sales and get her a reality show: It worked for Hilton and Kim Kardashian!
Watch Dev + Enrique Iglesias 'Naked' Video


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I think this was the first Simplicity 1577 I made — I can't be absolutely sure, but I'm within a reasonable margin of error.
The reason I'm fairly sure that this was the first 1577 is that this fabric is pretty much my "ideal first try for a new pattern" fabric. First off, it's quilting cotton, so it's easy to sew and medium weight. Also, with most quilting cottons, if I make the dress within a year or so after buying the fabric and end up *really* screwing up, I can generally buy more on Etsy or Ebay, even if the stores are sold out.
Also, it's really busy, so any weird seam bobbles or fitting issues tend to get lost in the print. And if I end up having to do some repairs, as I did here, they blend in a little better, too:
The perfect fabric for a "wearable muslin" is something where, if the dress is a success, I will be happy to wear it, but if it ends up in a tear-stained wad on the sewing room floor, I'm not inconsolable.
Occasionally I try out two new things at once with a new pattern, like this pocket piping — it's called the "What the Hell Effect": I'm already trying something new, what the hell, let's try two things!
I would say my wearable muslins have about a 60-70% success rate, in terms of ending up with a wearable garment. My "I'm just going to jump right in with some fabric that I really love and see what happens" first tries have about a 40-50% success rate. So I do try to make up a new pattern in a less-dear fabric first. Ideally, it's a fabric I like, but that I bought for $1/yard and have ten yards of … that's perfect, since I can get two or three muslins out of something like that.
This one turned out to be really wearable — I've worn it a LOT.
Do you have a "wearable muslin" strategy?