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Thursday, October 21, 2010
Your Petty Is Not Pretty
1. Of little importance; trivial.
2. (of behavior) Characterized by an undue concern for trivial matters, esp. in a small-minded or spiteful way
We have all had to deal with petty people. My last experience of dealing with a petty person was dealing with my emotional friend. Her pettiness was a clear result of unstableness and chaos within her life. Anything she heard just added to her stress, whether she'll admit it or not. Anything that I did she'll have something negative to say. Misery loves company, now I know the true meaning of that quote. The way I deal with my petty friend was to let her rant, say and do what she wanted to do, because nothing was going to appease her petty ass. If you are dealing with a petty person and this type of behavior gets on your nerves too much I'll advise you to let go and go on a break with the petty muthafkka. I know that sounds like you will be a bad friend (or person), but hey it's only so much a girl can take especially when dealing with a negative attitude.
2 comments:
- Paradise Paris said...
I believe petty people have a lot of growing up to do. Influenced by the wrong people and/or ideas and tend to think that mixed messages are always negative and "cool". Petty people to to encourage ignorance as if they are making a rational statement. Sometimes, all they really want is attention. Or, sometimes, its more than that. Some petty people just tend to have a middle school state of mind. They are constantly trying to see others' faults and point out what others' aren't doing politically correct instead of sweeping on their own front porch. If you have a friend whose constantly being negative and not happy to see others happy, leave them by themselves, because in the end, they'll learn how to discover what real happiness really is.
- October 21, 2010 at 6:14 PM
Wow its so obvious who this goes out to smh yall need to get it together but when mess keeps you separated thats a sure sign that you may have outgrown each other everyone has a petty attitude every now and then no one person is better than the next the only friend you need is God if u cant except that then u'll continue to live a life of drama its so exhausting and lame to dwell when you sit and think about it just saying im sick of people being worried about others i say they should get theirselves together and focused on what really matters and stay silent kill with kindness the last couple of days i been ranting myself but im trying from now on to be positive about everything and everyone it pays more than talking shit anyday yall better than what youve become but if u see fit for it to stay the way it is hey have at it and dont get to feeling like gg disrespected you just saying wht i feel it does say leave a comment lol but mmkay handle that delete it if you must
- October 22, 2010 at 5:27 PM


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The Dangers of Spiritual Amateurism in America
A Death on Diamond Mountain: A True Story of Obsession, Madness, and the Path to Enlightenment
Scott Carney
Gotham Books
In February 2012, Christie McNally and her husband, Ian Thorson, retreated to a cave in the high desert of Arizona for a session of intense meditation. They drank only rainwater, and they ate sparingly. They refused to filter their water—preferring to purify it with their minds. And they became violently ill. McNally recovered and kept meditating, but Thorson fell unconscious. McNally waited two days to summon help, but by then Thorson was beyond rescue. The official cause of death was dehydration, but what killed Ian Thorson was a spiritual quest gone terribly wrong.
How Thorson arrived at his tragic end is the subject of Scott Carney's A Death on Diamond Mountain, a powerful investigation into the appeal—and the dangers—of enlightenment as understood by Thorson and more than a million other American Buddhists. Since the late 1800s, Americans have been collecting religious wisdom from around the world and seeking alternative spiritual paths. The legacy of those movements lives on in today's spiritual seekers, who, like Thorson, were inspired by the 1960s counterculture to turn to Eastern wisdom.
Carney, an anthropologist and journalist, focuses on three people connected by the quest for enlightenment. The first is Thorson's teacher, Michael Roach. Trained in a monastery in New Jersey, Roach was the first American awarded the title of geshe, the Tibetan Buddhist equivalent of a Ph.D. Roach traveled throughout India, made a fortune trading diamonds to raise money for Tibetan Buddhist organizations, and taught courses on Buddhism in New York in the 1990s, where he met Ian Thorson. As a scholar, Roach's contributions were considerable—he founded an archive of Buddhist writings when the Chinese government was eradicating Tibetan Buddhism—but he rebelled against the religion's leadership, and the Dalai Lama denounced him for disobedience.
The second figure is Christie McNally, Roach's ex-wife, whom Roach had ordained as a lama, or Buddhist priest, and eventually proclaimed the incarnation of a Tantric goddess. McNally divorced Roach after his numerous affairs became public, and married Thorson, a sensitive Stanford graduate and one of Roach's prize students. After her re-marriage, McNally stayed on as a retreat leader at Roach's Buddhist facility in the Arizona desert. Her ways were unorthodox. At one point she stabbed Thorson, allegedly to teach him a spiritual lesson about being in a relationship with someone more powerful than himself. The center's board expelled her, but she stuck around in the desert with Thorson to finish their meditation, living in a cave on federal land nearby. Thorson died there two months later.
It would be easy to dismiss this bizarre soap opera as a simple case of three confused New Agers whose quests got tragically out of hand. Carney, however, is a sympathetic and insightful writer about new religions and their history, and the book yields insights into religious psychology, sociology, and history that go beyond the struggles of his main characters.
McNally and Thorson were high-stakes meditators. They took vows to act as guides and teachers for others, even after they themselves had achieved enlightenment. Their commitment would end only after every other being became enlightened, too—even if this took many lifetimes. Thorson was attracted by promises of happiness, ancient and timeless wisdom, and a spiritual humanitarian mission. So when McNally saw her husband dying of dysentery, she had to decide whether to call for help or to trust him to heal his bad karma spiritually. If he failed to do so in this life, she believed, he'd have another chance in the next, or the one after that.
These people were in pivotal moments in their lives and vulnerable to Roach. Thorson and McNally saw Roach as an embodiment of contentment, purpose, and perhaps magical power. At least since Jonestown, Americans have harbored deep paranoia about religious charismatics with outsize personalities, especially when the religion they preach is not mainstream Christianity. In this case the paranoia seems merited. Roach mixed "timeless wisdom" with formidable marketing to establish his legitimacy and persuade Thorson to treat him as infallible and to surrender autonomy for the promise of a happier, better eternity. Thorson's gentle pursuit of happiness snowballed into something else entirely.
Gurus, some dangerous, have been around for years, and Roach is no Jim Jones. But much of the forbidden, obscure, and esoteric knowledge that once made Buddhism and other religions difficult to study has now become accessible—with potentially dangerous results. Practitioners of Tantra, a form of magic that promises the fastest path to enlightenment, have long considered it dangerous in the hands of novices. Now Roach's digital archive brings hundreds of thousands of pages on Tantra to the masses. This is the spiritual equivalent of giving every teen driver a Formula 1 racing car: It'll go fast, but many young innocents will end up splattered on the road. The tragedy of Thorson's death appears to involve a spiritual tradition taken out of context and practiced zealously, without any of the warnings or moderating influence that would have accompanied it before.
The decontextualization involved in learning a religion through DVDs or YouTube videos makes it easy to ignore, for example, the complicated nature of the spread of Buddhism to Tibet—a bloody tale that is more Game of Thrones than A People's History. Western "converts" to Buddhism are often accused of meditating too intensely, as if it were a job or sport. The benefits of meditation are reported constantly in popular media, but few beginners know about the maladies that afflict overzealous meditators. Carney lists a few: restlessness, sleeplessness, and Kundalini syndrome, an uncontrollable oscillation between ecstasy and rage.
Carney ends with his own evolving fears of Roach. As public condemnation of Roach grew, lamas in Tibet offered Carney a protection spell. Carney declined it, and swiftly he was beset by misfortune. Wasps buzzed around him, he grew sick, and his marriage began to fall apart. Carney doesn't say whether he thinks his experiences were coincidence elevated by paranoia or the product of real karmic magic. But his experience shows how potent spirituality can be, even for wised-up outsiders attempting to study it impartially. Hokum or not, this stuff is anything but harmless.
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subset: commoncrawl


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Energy Service Experts (ESE), a residential energy servicing solution provider for the solar and energy efficiency sectors, has completed the relocation of its headquarters from San Francisco to Houston. As part of the transition, ESE's president and chief operating officer, Jonathan Roumel, has been named to also serve as COO of parent company Spruce Finance, a leading owner and operator of distributed generation solar and residential energy assets in the U.S.
ESE has deep Bay Area roots and counts notable venture capital firms such as Kleiner Perkins and Google Ventures among its original investors. But now ESE is turning the page and joining a growing number of renewable energy companies expanding or moving their operations to the Houston area to take advantage of the large knowledge base and experienced talent pool found in one of the global hubs of the energy sector.
ESE leverages more than 20 years of experience servicing consumer accounts directly and through affiliates of Spruce Finance. The company services over $1 billion of residential energy assets and more than 70,000 customers in the United States, providing services including financial asset management, consumer billing and collections, fleet management, homeowner support, and more.
"Solar and other renewables should no longer be called 'alternative energy' resources: they have joined the mainstream energy industry conversation," Roumel said. "As distributed generation continues to expand across the country, ESE and Spruce are ideally positioned to address the convergence of distributed generation and consumer servicing as well as the complexities that come with it. We bring a deep knowledge of the sector and comprehensive support for both portfolio owners and homeowners benefiting from solar installations and energy efficiency improvements."
Roumel has extensive experience in the renewable energy and electric power industries. Before joining ESE, he was VP of operations at Spruce and previously held the same position at NRG Home Solar. Prior to that, Roumel served in management roles at BP Wind Energy and BP Solar, and worked as a management consultant at McKinsey, focusing on risk management, strategy and operations in the electric power and alternative energy sectors. He holds an MBA from the University of Chicago and a BS in commerce from the University of Virginia.
ESE's parent Spruce Finance announced last month that it was acquired by HPS Investment Partners, a leading global investment firm with more than $46 billion of assets under management. Spruce is actively pursuing other M&A opportunities to increase its asset portfolio.
— Solar Builder magazine
[source: https://solarbuildermag.com/news/energy-service-experts-relocates-hq-to-houston-spruce-financial-gets-a-new-coo/]


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Meet the next generation of air energy storage players
Bill Gates and Peter Thiel are funding it. Power companies are interested in it. Young bright minds are working on it. So what is it? That would be the next-generation of a technology called compressed air energy storage, which sucks up air, compresses it on demand, and stores it in tanks or underground caverns. When power is needed, the air is released.
The technology might sound like some boring power infrastructure system — and it is. Basically. But air energy storage technology could also enable grid storage cheaply enough to help the solve the problem of adding variable clean power to the grid. Solar and wind power can only be generated at certain times of the day. If wind farms and solar projects were coupled with cheap energy storage like compressed air tech, it could make them a lot more economical.
That's one of the reason that entrepreneurs, investors and power companies are looking to develop the next generation of this "air battery" technology. While the idea behind compressed air energy storage has been around for years, a new crop of startups has been working on making the systems more efficient and lower cost. Here's three startups and one consortium that are working on this next-gen tech:
|Tech Details
|LightSail Energy
|Khosla Ventures, Peter Thiel, Bill Gates,
|Isothermal, with water mist as coolant. Tanks to store air.
|Working on 2nd gen prototype. Commercial in 2014.
|DOE grant, RockPort Capital, Polaris Venture Partners, Angeli Parvi, Cadent Energy Partners, General Catalyst Partners, GE Energy Financial Services.
|Isothermal, with water mist as coolant. Tanks to store air.
|40 kW project in West Lebanon, N.H. Next Summer a 2 MW project
|General Compression
|US Renewables Group, ConocoPhillips, Duke Energy, Serious Change, and the Wellford Energy Group.
|Isothermal-like system using caverns for the storage.
|First utility-scale project under development in Texas with ConocoPhillips.
|A consortium which includes GE, utility RWE, contractor Züblin, and the German Aerospace Center.
|Adiabatic technology, with the heat stored in concrete tanks. Air stored in caverns.
|Hopes to have a demon plant of 90 MW up and running in 2019.


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If we would quit being half-ashamed of college sports and assign them some real value, we might just cure some of their corruptions. The NCAA should stop treating athletic departments as ticket offices attached to universities like tumors and instead treat them as legitimate academic branches. In fact, why shouldn't we let kids major in sports? Aspiring athletes should be able to pursue their real interest, as a business and an art.
High-performance athletes study a craft, with a science, theory, history and literature, just like music or dance or film majors do. Varsity athletes deserve significant academic credits for their incredibly long hours of training and practice, and if they fulfill a core curriculum they deserve degrees, too. A school could design a rigorous Performance of Sport major by requiring the following:
Introduction to Sports Law: a broad overview of antitrust law, labor law and contract law, via memorable sports legal battles such as Tarkanian v. NCAA, and Flood v. Kuhn. Textbook: "Sports Law: Cases and Materials" by Michael J. Cozzillio and Mark Levenstein.
The Origins of Sport: A survey of the history of ritual athletics from the Bronze Age to the modern Olympics. Textbooks: "Combat Sports In the Ancient World," by Michael Poliakoff and "Reading Football" by Michael Oriard.
Making Up the Rules: an ethical-studies examination of moral and philosophical issues from amateurism to performance enhancement. Textbook: "Ethics in Sport," edited by William Morgan.
Sports and Public Policy: how our sports-entertainment industries intersect with economics, urban planning, public health, and political science. Textbook: "Sport and Public Policy: Social, Political, and Economic Perspectives," by Charles Santo and Gerard Mildner.
Think about it. Why is an Alabama football player or Tennessee women's basketball player less worthy than a Yale drama student? According to Yale's Theater Studies course guide, drama students learn a "complex cultural practice," and "combine practical training with theory and history, while stressing creative critical thinking." Now substitute the word sport for theater. Isn't sport a complex cultural practice with a body of knowledge, history, and theory? Just to be sure I haven't jumped the shark, I e-mailed the director of the Yale Theater Studies program, Toni Dorfman, to ask whether this is nonsense. "What a wonderful idea," she replied. "The theory and practice of sport are certainly as ancient as those of theater."
With a fundamental shift in the way we think about college sports, by designating them intellectually worthwhile exercises instead of mere obsessions, we might gain some clarity. For one thing, the worth of an athletic scholarship would suddenly be clearer. We could stop worrying about "exploiting" athletes and whether to pay them. Yale drama undergraduates don't get a cut of the box office — their recompense is first-rate training for the stage. They aren't exploited. They're privileged.
Too many college presidents harbor the secret conviction that athletics are trivial, if not evil, entertainments that exist merely to please donors. Back in 2004, former NCAA president Myles Brand was scandalized to learn that some schools gave athletes limited academic credits for varsity participation. "We can't have that," he said.
That attitude has to change. Sports aren't trivial. Among the things college athletes strive to learn: how to bring their best every day, how to deal with the fact that their minds and bodies will betray them under pressure, how to accept the consequences of public performance, and how to withstand violence or pain and create something beautiful and excellent despite it — or even from it. The vast majority of them, even the so-called cheats and chokers, are highly focused, dedicated, self-appraising, self-motivated and highly aspirational.
The NCAA's stated mission is "to integrate intercollegiate athletics so that the educational experience of the student athlete is paramount." So do it. Stitch college sports into the rest of the university by recognizing their value as an academic major. Once college presidents make that fundamental shift in their thinking, they might be inclined to make other changes too. They might mandate that athletics be answerable to an academic dean, like any other discipline. They might decide that coaches should be faculty members who teach.
"Athletics needs to be acknowledged as something legitimate and serious," says Oriard, a former Notre Dame and NFL football player who is now an associate dean and literature professor at Oregon State. Given that college sports have become multibillion dollar industries and national institutions, he says, students should "understand the ethical, cultural, social and historical dimensions of their activity."
Oriard observes that athletes devote as much time to their craft as a student violinist, and "there is an intelligence that is required of athletes that is similar to music, too." We congratulate music majors for their passion, and tell them that even if they don't make it in the symphony, they are acquiring an art and a method of thought that will be theirs forever. But for some reason we tell athletes who aspire to the highest levels that they are academically illegitimate, and look down on them as vocational students (forgetting that without vocational students, our cars wouldn't start).
But what if we taught and talked to them differently? What if we pulled available college courses together into a more coherent, meaningful way for them, instead of herding them into General Studies. What if we taught that athleticism, like musicality, is a "lifelong discovery," Oriard says. Above all, surely we should teach that their performance "is valuable in itself," quite apart from commercial value.
Such thinking would not only benefit athletes, it would sharpen the decision-making of administrators. Because frankly, any resistance to this idea begs the question, "Then why have sports on campus at all?" Why do universities build sports stadiums? Well, why does a university build a hospital? Not to gouge and rip off the infirm for profit. They do it because the research and teaching in a hospital is vital and enhances a university's standing.
There's no reason the NCAA can't reconcile commerce with education in a more honorable way. If presidents see athletes as worthy students, instead of unpaid labor, then they themselves might act more like educators, instead of carnival barkers grabbing for easy cash. What a concept. College sports are salvageable. But first, we have to correct an underlying fallacy — that despite all that money, they are worthless.


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Living in America ain't cheap. Just look at the Consumer Price Index, the weighted average cost of vital consumer goods and services, including food, medical expenses, and transportation. It rose by 2.5% from 2016 to 2017, the highest one-year rise since 2012. Meaning, it's more expensive to live in the U.S. now, relatively speaking, than it was then.
Which is why you need to know how to pull the most coin from your profession. Rather than just punching a clock like Sam Sheepdog and Ralph Wolf, it might be time to pursue a raise. To find out the best ways to accomplish the mission, we asked some of America's top staffing agencies to tell us their strategies.
Don't fall victim to 'premature evaluation'
If you've demonstrated a wide range of abilities that have given you measurable value in your current job for at least a year—and you haven't made an ass of yourself at any corporate outings or been caught having sex with the cleaning lady on your desk—it may be time to ask for a raise.
But—and it's an important but—respect that one-year minimum, as it takes time to prove your true worth.
The exception is if your entire role has expanded to include brand-new responsibilities, not just a heavier workload. Do tread with care, however. "A request prior to a year could make you look like someone who's constantly looking for more, and therefore not a good person to keep in the long-term plans," says Greg Detter, senior VP of staffing firm Creative Circle.
Assume they want to keep you
Don't let yourself be intimidated by the prospect of asking for a raise—your company probably wants to keep you as much as you want to stay, even if that means having to pay you more.
"Recruiting and training a new worker is expensive," says Detter. "The cost of employee turnover could be six to nine months of that person's salary. Most companies want to keep people happy and working.
Accordingly, if you picture yourself staying long term, Detter recommends making this known. "Paying an employee more money is a whole lot more palatable if it means keeping a good person happy for the long haul."
Get the timing right
The ideal time to submit your request varies by fiscal year, as well as an organization's earnings announcement and bonus schedules.
If it's late in the fiscal year, make your request a month or two before the calendar flips, especially if it's a large firm that's more process oriented, so it can go through all the layers of approval, says Lisa Garfinkel, division director of Ajilon Staffing. "Most raises are decided before the end of the budget year, so don't wait until the last minute."
Company size matters, too, says Garfinkel. "If the money isn't in its yearly budget, it can be impossible for a smaller organization."
Personal timing also matters. "If you've just completed a successful project or brought in new business," says Lauren Ferrara, assistant city manager at Creative Circle NYC, "your bosses will be much more open to a salary bump." Follow your instincts and strike while the iron's hot.
Finally, during the season before you seek a raise, stress that you want feedback on your job performance to grow as a team member. "In addition, own up to your failures—turn them into learning moments for others. That way, even if you don't get a formal review, your peers and managers understand your value."
If the timing's not right, here's how to set yourself up to get noticed when it is:
- Don't slack off in your current role. "Exceed expectations, beat deadlines, and offer to do more than your job description calls for," says Ajilon Staffing's Lisa Garfinkel.
- Take on new responsibilities. Volunteer for projects—mentoring a junior staffer, piloting a new initiative. "This shows you're committed to both your own success and the company's," says Lauren Ferrara of Creative Circle NYC.
- Join in on company "extracurriculars." "Don't skip the office happy hours/birthday parties/lunches," says Garfinkel. And if you aren't up to playing on the corporate sports team? "Show up and be a cheerleader."
- Love what you do. "If you're happy at your job, people will see that and know you're committed and an integral part of the firm," says Ferrara.
Know how much money to ask for
"Raises are usually based on percentage, not dollar amount, the average being about 3-5%," says Ferrara. "If you make $40,000 and ask for $10,000 more—a 25% raise—that may not be possible."
So consider the health of the economy, and ask your boss about the company's raise protocol so you can be realistic when determining how much of a raise to request.
Be able to prove your worth
Have you contributed beyond your responsibilities? Why are you an indispensable asset to the company? Did you beat a budget or nab a big new client? Prepare these answers—complete with all the proof you need to back them up—before making your request.
And if you'll be meeting with HR, says Ferrara, to monetize your worth, go a step further and learn their language. For example: "Because of my management skills, I upped productivity in my department X%." Or, "Because of my strong client relationships, I was able to upsell services and generate X amount of new business." Promote yourself—even if that means presenting your boss with a basic worksheet explaining the above.
But remember, there's a fine line between making a case for yourself and looking desperate. "Instead of friending the boss on Facebook and posting a picture from the office over the weekend with #grinding," says Detter, "just work hard and trust that it will be noticed in the right way."
Don't hold a gun to their heads
One big "don't" all our experts agreed on: Don't try to leverage another job offer into a raise at your current job.
"Fewer than 15% of all employees who accept a counteroffer from their current company are still there one year later," says Garfinkel. Why? "The counteroffer may be issued as a Band-Aid—and you'll be labeled a flight risk."
The same goes for using an outside offer to seek sympathy on financial grounds: "Telling them you can't afford to keep a job won't help your cause," Garfinkel adds. "Your finances are your own problem."
Just look them in the eye, make your case, and go for the handshake.
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Haven't done a blog in far too long! .... 8 months apparently.
I have been pretty lazy to be honest. A lot of things going on, and not really going on. So I guess I will try my best to give you just the highlights over the last 8 months.
Back In September I discovered that my Redbubble account (my shop) seemed to be slowly picking up so traction. I have made a few more sales that I was completely unaware of. YAY people want to pay me to do arty things!!!
This gave me a bit of a kick up the arse. To try and get back into the way of things. Yes I know I sound like a broken record!
Since then I now have my own desk set up at home with everything set up and ready to go. I have been researching local artist and looking at so many things. Pinterest is a wonderfully handy tool. I have even started a new sketch book. As if I didn't have enough...
So for a bit of the boring stuff. Since moving in to my house I have been pretending to be a really good cook. I have even been baking! Even using the pears out of my own garden!
I more or less stole these from my Instagram, As you can see I have been doing a lot of baking and a lot of eating. In the last 8 months.
I have recently made a few very big decisions. I have decided to take the plunge and I have opened my own Etsy store: https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/CraicinDesigns
At the moment I only have 1 listing. I am still working on a few other things. The listing that is currently up allows for a custom portrait or action scene. Such as previous ones I have created below.
Almost all of these little prints you have seen before but one of them is new.
So one of my good friends, will randomly call me up every so often asking for unique birthday, and engagement gifts. Usually everything he asks me for is themed. Breaking Bad, Fight Club, Jurassic Park. So just when I thought he could shock me. He asked for the above to be made.
Just to clarify what the above is. One of his friends took his girlfriend to New York and proposed to her in Central Park. He sent me a photo of the magical moment, when he popped the question. Then asked could I draw the groom-to-be as Venkman from ghost busters, and the bride-to-be as Miss Piggy from The Muppet's.....
So I did what every artist does and just created what my client asked me for. While the whole time thinking he is totally mental.I have to admit still an awful lot I am not happy with within the image. It took me a week alone to do the New York skyline and trees in Central Park.
So yes. I take completely random requests!
I have also been experimenting with a few others. Here is a little sneek peak:
none of the above is finished!
It's all just a starting point for me looking into different ways of designing posters for bands, Looking into more detailed patterns, looking into more detail of machines and devices. I am also experimenting with the idea of inspirational quotes and the idea of creating a scene or back ground that is just as powerful as the quote.
So It's all happening. Slowly, but surely. I have also been getting back into designing some wedding stationery. I currently have three brides, which is fantastic! one who continuity changes her mind. however it can sometimes be frustrating. I am getting more design trials done and these can be used for perhaps other clients down the road.
I am trying to keep a positive spin on things. That's all from me, I will try to get back into writing a blog at the end/beginning of every month.
Dinosaurs and Pumpkins
Little bit late with this months blog. I blame Halloween being way too awesome!
So I have actually been up to a lot of stuff this month, not only designing new random things, but...... yea you know what that is basically all I have been doing. So first thing, I am a huge fan of Rock n Roll Bride. and after seeing a photo from their facebook page. I decided to create something a little different.
You may or may not have seen this clue on my Instagram. (little bit of back story) I'm currently working at a printing company, we print a lot of designs for wedding stationery designers soooooooooooooo I thought I'd try my hand at it and after seeing the below picture from the Rock n Roll Bride magazine.
So you've probably guessed it by now. I made dinosaur themed wedding invitations. Now I haven't yet finished it entirely but you get the idea
So yea hoping this month I will be able to get this finished as well as a few other designs I noticed I started and just due to life I haven't managed to get back to finish. So that is my goal for this month.
So for Halloween I did a few different things.
I went to the Crumblin Road Gaol paranormal tour in Belfast. I have to say I didn't see any ghosties, but it was.... interesting, but I have to admit it made me really want to do the actual tour. The most eerie thing that happened on the tour, and also turned out to be the funniest thing. We were standing in the hanging room where they had hung 15 of the 17 men to have been executed at the Gaol (I hope I remembered my numbers right) and when the tour guide began to call upon the last man who had been executed, the whole room fell silent waiting for any noise, any chance of a sign from beyond the grave. All we could hear was an ice cream truck's cheery music about a mile away from the gaol.
Of course there was also pumpkins to be had...... many many pumpkins
I basically sat the rest of Halloween carving pumpkins and watching scary movies. Speaking of scary movies, I even went to see John Carpenter's The Fog in the Barge in Belfast last night. I had never actually seen the movie before, I though it was pretty good. I think I more enjoyed going with my mates though and the atmosphere that was carefully created.
Back to Dinosaurs!
I unfortunately I was unable to make it to a baby shower this month due to going to see Alien Ant Farm in the Empire in Belfast and pretending to be 15 again..... oops. However I was still asked to design a baby bib.... So I created a dinosaur wearing ox blood red DM boots, with the world ending and aliens coming down to save the dinosaurs........
I'm totally sane........ kinda.
Em..... I think that's really it for this month. literally a lot of dinosaur things and pumpkin carving. Hoping to keep this month just as mad, and as I said earlier hoping to slightly back track and have another look at designs I started a little while ago and just finish them off.
Also want to wish my partner another Happy Birthday :D
Firstly Happy New Year! hope everyone had a good night last night, and your heads aren't pounding too badly today. This is my first blog on my new website. As you can probably already tell, the website it's self is still being set up and I am slowly but surely putting up my work as well as some new work.
To explain my new name Craicin Designs. I wanted to be known as a "Norn Iron" artist. So Craicin, being Northern Irish slang for "cracking". It's more of a play on words. I am hoping this will be a new beginning for my art as well as myself.
I am currently in my last year of university, Soon I will have to be an adult and get a big girl job. I have had a few problems with getting started and really trying to find myself in what I want to do within art. One of my problems have been, trying to learn too much and do too much. This being a problem as I haven't really been able to specialize in anything. So I have taken a big step and decided to keep things simple and keep to my photography and illustration. I am aware I have spoken about this before on my previous blog.
So I am up for doing more photoshoots, working with new people within the industry and if anyone wants to work with me, on either. As a model, make-up artist, hair stylist, fellow designer. Or simply wants to give me a job. Awesome!
I will be a very busy bee the next few days as I have 3 different deadlines for 6 different pieces of work. To be handed in before the end of the month. This includes 4 book cover competitions and 2 images for ViewBug competition.
I shall leave you with one of my favorite images I took nearing the end of 2014. I know Christmas is over, but I don't care :) Again guys Happy New Year!
I am an artist from Northern Ireland, I specialize in Photography and Graphic Design. Please follow me on
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April 2018


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This blog is based on the speech held by Raúl Echeberría at the opening of the 5th African IGF in Durban, South Africa, on 16th October 2016.
My colleagues at the Internet Society and myself have already attended many of the national and regional IGFs that are being organised across the world. And it is amazing to see all the energy around those initiatives and how we have created a new way to discuss and to deal in an open and multistakeholder manner, with things that are very important for our societies.
I have been involved in IGF since its inception. In particular, I was involved in the work in the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) from where the recommendation of creating this forum came up, and the negotiations at the Summit in 2005.
Eleven years later, we can say that the IGF has been very successful; we have created something very useful, a real innovation in international governance. This is impressive. What is even more impressive is the large network of national and regional IGFs that have been created. This is very important because most of the policy making happens at the local level, so the closest we can bring the open and multistakeholder discussion to where the policies are discussed, the best to ensure that we take advantage of all the expertise and knowledge that it is available across all stakeholders groups.
Taking advantage of that diversity is the only way to be sure that the outcomes of the policy debates will fit the needs of our societies.
There are two things that impact our discussions:
One is the adoption in 2015 of the Sustainable Development Goals. It's not new for most of us that the Internet is the vehicle for achieving other goals, goals that are the human, social and economic development. But the SDG offer a sound basis for a common understanding about that.
Now it is much more visible that Internet development is a horizontal issue to all the SDGs, that it is impossible to achieve the SDGs without taking advantage of the new technologies. We are not talking just about increasing the number of people connected, but about how to use the Internet for accomplishing the goals of education, healthcare, creating jobs, etc.
This gives us a much more tangible framework for a meaningful discussion.
The second thing is the successful transition of the IANA functions oversight.
This is important for two reasons:
- Because it was a very successful example of how we conducted community-based, open, transparent and bottom-up processes and we produced the expected outcomes . . . and we did it on time.
- We can now focus on other important matters that are the ones related to continuing promoting meaningful access to all the people.
Those who are here today, spending a Sunday on Internet Governance discussions, we are here because we share something. We care about what we do.
We care about the Internet, but we also care about people.
This is our work. We have to connect the unconnected because this is essential, but we also have to continue to build an Internet that contributes to reducing inequities, to give opportunities to those who have not had enough opportunities, an Internet that helps to improve people's lives, an Internet of opportunities.
This African Internet Governance Forum surely will be one important step forward for achieving that objective.


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First of all, I would like to answer a few background questions.
Feel free to skip these and scroll down to "My Ayahuasca Experience" if you just want a detailed account of what happened to me.
Did you actually die?
Yes, I did.
The dictionary calls death the total and permanent cessation of all the vital functions of an organism. By dictionary, I did not die. But I did lose total functioning of my brain, minus my brain stem, that is only in control of my heartbeat and my breathing.
Since I lose total brain functioning minus my brainstem, and entered a realm that lies beyond ego death, I consider myself to have died.
Whether or not you want to agree with me, is up to you. I'm not here to convince you of anything. I'm just here to tell you my story.
What is Ego Death?
Ego death is a well documented state of being. It is when you lose your sense of self: and I mean all parts of yourself. Your body, your five senses, your memories, your voice, your ability to think and speak and understand words, your sense of time, your ability to see and understand the world…everything you are. And yes, you are also the ground you walk on, and the sky above. Without your ego, there is no seeing the planet.
Ego death happens when you take a huge dose of hallucinogenics. For most, this dose has to be big enough to be dangerous. I drank two 300ml glasses of strong, potent Ayahuasca at once, freshly harvested from the jungle surrounding the Marañón River.
Before you shout and tell me you've drank more, please understand I am a tiny skinny girl. I am 5'3, weigh 102 pounds, a mere 46kg. I'm also missing some organs: I only have 1 kidney, and I also have no gallbladder.
You're probably wondering why the shamans allowed me to have such a big dose. I told them that I had no health problems. I hid the fact that I'm missing organs in my body, I hid the fact that I'm hypersensitive to whatever goes into my body.
Of course, I knew logically, I should've had a small dose. But all my life, I've been engaged in reckless behavior. This is because all my life, I've been suffering intense suicidal ideation that hit me many times a day, no matter where I was. On my plane ride to Peru to drink Ayahuasca, I was wishing I could jump out of the plane through the emergency exit.
When you walk life with a desire to die, you become numb. You are an epitome of apathy, and you no longer care what happens to you. So drinking a dangerous dose of the most powerful entheogenic in the world in a foreign country deep in the jungle as a tiny helpless girl is not a daunting task at all.
Needless to say, I truly had no idea what I was in for. They say nothing can prepare you for your first Ayahuasca trip, and this is may be the truest sentence in existence. Of course, I read stories about other peoples' experiences. I thought I knew what I was in for, but I didn't actually have any idea. There is no way to conceive of the experience in our mind. I repeat, if you've never drank Ayahuasca, there is no way to know what it's like. You could study Ayahuasca experiences for fifty years, you could meditate for another eighty, there is absolutely no way to know what you just signed up for.
The only preparations you can do is making diet adjustments, staying away from alcohol and other drugs, and do yoga and meditation to help with your anxiety, and soothing your anxiety may make the experience 0.00001% smoother. This is the only power you have to prepare for your experience. You are completely powerless otherwise.
What I expected was what I read. I figured I would go to other realms and meet entities, which may heal me from my suicidal ideation. I figured if I had a bad trip, it would just be like a nightmare, and I would recover quickly.
This was no nightmare. This was an actual-death experience.
Do we have souls?
The answer is yes.
Ayahuasca is not like dreaming. It is not like hallucinating. It is a literal out of body experience. She actually kicks your soul out of your body. And if you retain your sense of self or not, that all depends on how big of a dose you took, and on what she needs to show you, and I took one gigantic dose, and she decided to kill me.
I highlighted the word soul because prior to Ayahuasca, I didn't know we had souls. I grew up as an atheist and converted to spiritual agnosticism after studying Buddhism. So while I wouldn't exactly dispute the ideas of us having souls, I also didn't really believe in it. It never made sense to me how we could exist outside of our bodies.
We all have this idea of our souls being like ethereal versions of ourselves: it's not like this at all. Our souls, once fully integrated outside of our bodies, have no sense of self attached to them. Our souls have NO memories, NO bodies, NO sense of self, NO form, NO ego, NO senses, NO emotions, NO thought. Yet they somehow exist. We each have one.
A metaphor I got for this is: imagine our souls like air. No consciousness at all, no body, no nothing. Our soul inhabits a body, and after we die, our souls return to being air.
You would think it would be like complete nothingness, like an atheist point of view, but its not like this at all. Death is merely a transformation, from form into no form, so there is no true nothingness, no true death, there is merely transformation.
And it is like a Christian point of view, in the way our souls leave our body, and go to another place. Whether this place is heaven or hell, it doesn't really matter, because you're going to lose your concept of words and your ability to identify what you're experiencing. All of that comes from our ego- our physical brain construct- and after we die, we don't get to take this with us. Yes, that includes our memories.
It would be nice to bring memories with us after we die, but where we are going, there is no way we can conceive of memories. We completely transform. The only thing I can compare it to is like transforming into a galaxy. We are entirely formless, vast, and we exist as an infinite amount of dimensions. But we have no way to know if we are a galaxy or not, we lose the ability to know anything. I figured I would at least retain knowledge of space- but even space as we know it is just a reflection of ourselves.
Space and Earth as you know it doesn't exist after you die. Every piece of knowledge you acquire in life, every memory you gain, every emotion you feel, every person you meet, and everything you touch and see, is all just yourself.
Nothing is separate from you, and when you die, you're going to lose all of it.
This is scary to think about now that I've returned to my body. Honestly, my transformation was the most terrifying thing I've ever experienced, because I was not ready to die. But once I had accepted my death, and completely transformed and traveled to the "other side", I no longer had emotions. No more fear, no more suffering. My soul was just existing as infinite dimensions.
This is good news. This means you can relax into your being.
Death is nothing to fear.
My Ayahuasca Experience
"Please, take me back to my BODY!"
These words still haunt me. They are the sounds of my own voice- but with more desperation and agony I have ever heard. Not only that, I couldn't even pronounce the word "body". My words were falling away from me. Everything was just falling away, as my entire being was ripped out of me.
It did not completely start out like this. At first, it was beautiful.
I had my first drink, and the girl beside me started to sing and sweat. She seemed like she was in heaven, but I felt absolutely nothing, except for a bit of nausea when I lied down. So I stayed upright in a meditative posture.
The shamans were singing beautiful songs- called icaros. It is said the spirit of Ayahuasca teach them how to sing these songs, and I have no doubt that this is true. They are tunes so spiritual and healing, they can only come from a different realm.
I focused on one soft icaro in particular. I massaged my shoulders while I listened. I imagined the pain being ripped out from my spine as I massaged my back, and wondered if this could be what the plant was telling me to do.
But still, I didn't feel much of anything.
My shaman asked me if I wanted a second dose. I, being the fool I was, said yes.
After drinking a second dose, I left the space to pee in the jungle. On my way back, I felt lightheaded and drunk. I thought to myself that this was nothing, since I was used to drinking alcohol, I must've built up a tolerance. I remember gazing at the stars before I went back to the ceremony. I sat back down in a meditative posture, and that is when I saw my first fractal. But I could barely see it, because I had left my body.
The feeling of leaving your body so quickly is just…I have no words to describe this. The atmosphere changed, everything changed, I was in a different realm. And it was no hallucination, no alternation in reality. I was literally in another dimension, that was so different from the one I'm used to, and I knew instantly that I have a soul. I was able to feel the very core of my soul, without my body. There is surely no way that death is just nothingness, that we do not have souls. We have souls.
I was transported to another world, full of radiant colors. I remember saying "I'm so happy, thank you, thank you!" even though I couldn't really pronounce these words right. It was like "ZANK YOU", "I'M ZAPPY!".
I said "You're beautiful." to all these beautiful, colorful, fractal entities. I created some sort of celestial body, I rolled around in all these colors, feeling what may have been my water bottle, or my purging bucket, but I'm not sure.
I had experienced a completely lightness- I was happy at first to be out of my body. No more back pain, and I was happy to know I could just pee here- I didn't even have to pee ever, or I could pee all I wanted. Yeah, I'm not too sure why I was thinking about that- I think needing to pee all the time is an important part of my body. I have one kidney!
Now that I'm writing this, I can tune into the fact that I had a lovely experience at first. It was fun, rolling around in this celestial realm, seeing just what I could do. I could also hear icaros, which made the experience even more beautiful and profound.
I assume this is what most people experience on Ayahuasca, and it is why they drink it many times in their life. The lightness of being outside of your body, playing with these gorgeous and friendly spirits, is gentle and healing indeed. But Aya is not known to be gentle. If you need healing , she is going to give it to you in the most brutal way possible, and that is exactly what she did to me.
I lost grasp of my body. I gained a full awareness that I was actually outside of my body, and I couldn't go back to it. I needed help to get back to my body, so I shouted the name of my shaman. But it was like shouting into nothingness. I couldn't even pronounce his name right. I was trying so hard to say his name, but failing. He didn't come. I couldn't hear his voice. I still heard icaros, but I stopped understanding into the fact they were coming from my reality. I lost full connection with my body and my world.
I said "I have a body, you know!" at the fractal spirits. Then I felt "them" slowly ripping into my ego. They completely disassembled my soul and my ego, and I realize that the fact I was still able to speak (even if it was incoherent) still meant I had a body. Words disintegrated from me….and that is when I was grieving and shouting in desperation.
"I've learned too much!" I cried, "I just want to go back to my body, please…"
Now in my life, I've experienced intense grief. That grief is part of the reason why I decided to drink Ayahuasca in the first place. But NOTHING compared to the grief of losing my body. This grief and sorrow I will remember for the rest of my life. I missed my back pain, my hair, my skin, and my world.
I felt it all of it just scatter into pieces, my soul completely separating to the point I could no longer touch a single piece. I stopped talking, as I no longer knew what words were. But each time a piece of my soul disappeared, I mourned it, and I tried everything I could to grasp it, but it all just fell away.
I had no choice but to accept my death.
It was an awful feeling, each piece of my ego fading into nothingness. I was sucked deeper and deeper into the spirit realm, except I was no longer a spirit, I was nothing. I clung onto whatever I had left- a memory of my partner, but I could no longer remember who he was or his name. My world- I tried to cling to my memory of the stars, but even that faded away. I could no longer remember what stars were. I couldn't remember what I was, who I was, or my life. Each time I tried to remember something- even a little piece- it would just scatter away. as if it was all being sucked into a tunnel.
One of the last things I tried to remember was how I died. I remembered the word "drink", but that word was sucked up by the dark tunnel. That was the last word I would conceive of. I gave up fighting, and allowed the tunneled realm to consume me.
I died. In every sense of the word, I died. I can't even tell you if at this point I could see colors, or entities, because I had no senses left. No more icaros, no more sensation, no words, no memories, no form. I could never find my world ever again.
I was so lost, so gone. But I no longer realized I was lost or gone.
At this point, I was on the other side of the tunnel.
I had completely transformed, into multiple dimensions. I was existing, but as something I can't even explain, because it was so vast, so formless. It had no thoughts, no memories, no words, no vision, no senses. It was as if I became a galaxy. But of course, I had no way to understand I was a galaxy. I just…was. I was simply existing.
No suffering as we know it, no joy as we know it, just the being of interdimensions.
This being was not empty. It was full of activity, full of connection and vastness, and there was life everywhere, but not life as we know it. I can't describe to you what anything looked like here, since that would be like describing to you a brand new color. I couldn't actually see anything. I felt it, using a sense not known to humans.
My ego remembers everything as being dark. But I also know it wasn't dark, not at all, because there was a lot happening. I just can no longer conceive of what it was, since at that time, I was feeling it all using a celestial sense.
I know there were twinkles of lights glowing everywhere, lights full of life. The lights gleamed with love, and I felt connected with all of them. We were all communicating together, but not in a way I could ever describe. I was connected to everything.
If a star could feel love, it would love how brightly it glowed. It would love being in the sky, communicating and shining with all the other stars.
That is how I can describe to you that even after dying, I was able to experience love.
I was only in this peaceful state of "life after death" very briefly. It was so brief, that I feel like I only caught a millisecond glimpse of it, if time even existed.
Then I was shot back through the tunnel and I opened my eyes back into my world.
I was shocked. I vaguely saw a symbol written in white on the wall. I had glimpses of the symbol, then my soul would escape my body again and enter the tunnel, then it would return for a brief second.
I had brief glimpses of my shaman sitting a person away from me (on his phone of all things!), then my soul escaped into a tunnel again.
I said to myself, "If I return to my body, I am never doing this again. I don't HAVE to do this again. I will recover and go home." I was so panicked, not even realizing that the fact I could think again meant I was alive.
Finally, I could think again!
I fought hard to get back into my body. I clung and CLUNG to that symbol on the wall. I purged, grabbing my bucket, trying to connect to the bucket. I never fought so hard for my life. I connected to my world as much as I could, staying with every glimpse of it I had. Then, I fully returned, but with a lot of fear. I was terrified of my soul leaving again.
I felt like some newborn baby. All I wanted to do was curl up and cry for years.
At this point, I completely forgot about that brief second of peace that I saw after the tunnel. My mind was taunted with memories of my ego being ripped apart.
My ego was back to its harsh self, screaming at me, "WHY THE FUCK DID YOU DO THAT FOR. WHAT THE FUCK,YOU ARE FUCKING STUPID, GO THE FUCK HOME NOW, GET YOUR ASS OUT OF HERE, YOU ARE THE BIGGEST IDIOT ALIVE."
This is why I had a hard life before. I identified too much with these thoughts. But these thoughts are my beautiful ego construct. My ego construct is merely just a grumpy grandparent, trying hard to keep me healthy and alive.
I touched my bucket, surprised I had purged entirely in the bucket, when I died and couldn't even conceive of a bucket. I looked around as much as I could, taking in the scenery of the ceremony space.
I touched my hair- oh my beautiful hair! I kicked my feet out and waved my arms- my beautiful body! I touched my little boobs and my tiny tummy- I had it all!
I was SHOCKED I was alive. I was so flabbergasted, how I was alive, I can't even begin to explain to you the shock factor of this.
After that, I didn't say a word, I just literally just stood up and went outside and had a piss. I can't believe after that, my body just got up and pissed, like nothing happened!
I was fully alive.
After taking the best piss of my life, I looked up at the stars. They looked completely normal. My body was tingling, my brain still repeating to me like a broken record "What the fucking hell, you need to get out of the jungle and go the fuck home before you develop schizophrenia, because that was NOT normal."
And I felt, for the first time, as if my life was the biggest gift. All of this: my beautiful tingling body, my swearing and terrified brain, the beautiful ground, the beautiful stars above, the bustling night sounds of the jungle…
It was all a miracle.
I couldn't sleep that night. People beside me were snoring, and I wondered just how they could just FALL ASLEEP. I was afraid if I fell asleep, I would lose my body again. I wanted nothing more than to be in my body. I just wanted to stay in my body, forever.
I love my body, and life is a precious gift. All my life, I've never felt connected to my world or to my body in any way. I connected more to the stars in the sky, compared to my own physical body. My physical body is what keeps me in this plane of existence- this Earth, this space, this dimension- and I love it here.
I no longer feel a need to be anywhere else. This Earth, this life ,this reality, is perfect just the way it is. I honestly have an amazing life, just from being here. I just want to cultivate love and kindness. Love is the most important energy there is, and it can be found in every dimension, in many different and wonderful forms.
Stay tuned for a part two to this, where I will write about how of all this has completely changed my life, and healed me.
Thank you so much for reading!
-Shunya Rose


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Page Content
Research Project
"Men, Motorcycles and Modernity; A Social History of Motorization during the Weimar Republic"
Motorization tangibly altered German society – changing city and landscapes, patterns of circulation of people, goods and capital. Men, Motorcycles and Modernity; Motorization during the Weimar Republic, argues that the socially dynamic and historically specific process of motorization in Weimar Germany, during which there was a numerical superiority of motorcycles in relation to cars, offers a multi-layered basis for exploring the everyday construction of social categories such as urban, rural, class, gender, generation, production, consumption and leisure. This dissertation, drawing upon methodologies of the everyday, historical anthropology and social histories of technology, challenges standard historiographical interpretations of gender and consumption during the Weimar Republic. Based on an analysis of economic, institutional, juridical and discursive sources, modern man is revealed as an active participant in an emergent consumer society, his masculinity defined not only by what he produced, but also by what and how he consumed.
Also central to my project is an analysis of how motorization concretely transformed both urban and rural landscapes, as well as how the spatialized place relationship between city and countryside changed discursively. While on the one hand motorization contributed to homogenizing the imagination and metaphorically shrinking the space of the national landscape, on the other hand, the motor vehicle provided its users the opportunity to explore spaces and personal liberation, free from place-bound constraints. Motorization also produced everyday conflicts over the right to define how public space was used and over risk and safety. Although personal motorized transportation held the promise of greater freedom, new forms of control and governance were being developed to monitor and regulate the motorized population. As Weimar society was in the characteristically ambivalent throes of modernity, social and spatial heterogeneity persisted despite the homogenizing tendencies of the process of motorization.
During my TGK fellowship, I will revise my original dissertation project for publication for a wider audience. In addition, I will expand the scope by analyzing transformations produced in the context of a modernizing and motorizing society from an urban and transnational perspective, in terms of culture and economy, governance and infrastructure.
Lebenslauf / Curriculum Vitae
|Akademische Berufserfahrung
|Dozentin an der New York University Berlin: "Comparative Modern Societies: Politics and Society in 20th Century Germany"
|Januar-Mai 2014
|Freischaffende Wissenschaftlerin für die Auto-Uni, Institut für Arbeits- und Personalmanagement (IFAP), Wolfsburg Projekte: Literaturstudie zur "Wandlung im Unternehmensformen – Von der T-Form zu der M-Form" Unterstützungsarbeit an dem Projekt "Über Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft des Fließbandes in der Automobilproduktion" (Unter die Leitung von Prof. Dr. Ulrich Jürgens und Prof. Dr. Horst Neumann)
|seit Dezember 2013
|Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin von Professor Bruce Kogut (Columbia University Business School) an seinem Projekt zu betrieblichen Organisationstechnologien und Netzwerken in der Wirtschaft in Deutschland 1890-1940.
|November 2012 – Juli 2013
|Gastprofessur "Gender und Stadt", TU Berlin, Fak. VI, "Planen Bauen Umwelt": Institut für Soziologie und Fak. I "Geisteswissenschaften": Fachbereich Historische Urbanistik im Rahmen des Berliner Programms zur Förderung der Chancengleichheit
|Juli 2010- August 2011
|Post-Doc, Transatlantisches Graduiertenkolleg, Berlin - New York, Center for Metropolitan Studies, "History and Culture of the Metropolis during the Twentieth Century"
|Mai 2008- April 2010
| Studium
|Ph.D. in Modern European History, New York University Dissertation: Men, Motorcycles and Modernity; Motorization in the Weimar Republic Erstbetreuerin: Prof. Mary Nolan (NYU); Zweitbetreuerin: Prof. Atina Grossmann (Cooper Union); Drittbetreuerin: Prof. Manu Goswami (NYU); LeserInnen: Prof. Linda Gordon (NYU); Prof. Anson Rabinbach (Princeton)
|Mai 2008
|BA, Program in History, Program in German Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz Highest Honors in the Degree of History, Honors in the Degree of German Studies
|März 1997
Publikationen, Vorträge etc. / Publications, Lectures etc.
Thick Space: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Metropolitanism, with D. Brantz and G. Wagner-Kyora (eds.), Berghahn Books, Oxford/New York, forthcoming.
Review of Umbach, M., German Cities and Bourgeois Modernism, 1890-1924. Oxford University Press, 2009, in European History Quarterly, forthcoming.
"The Image of the 'Tourist Trophy' and British Motorcycling in the Weimar Republic", in The International Journal of Motorcycling Studies, Special 100-year-TT-Issue, November 2007. ijms.nova.edu/November2007TT/IJMS_Artcl.Disko.html
Nachwort zum Nachdruck – Abel – Zeitschrift für Sklaverei, Verlag Thomas Franz, Frankfurt am Main, 2001
"Stehend reiten auf zwei Gäulen. Der Schriftsteller und Anarchist Erich Mühsam," in Essays. Schwabing. Kunst und Leben um 1900, Munich and Tucson, 1998
Adjunct Instructor, "Modern European Social and Political History in Global Context," The Cooper Union, New York City, Fall Semester 2007
Instructor Summer Session II, "Western Civilization II; The Rise of Modern Europe", Department of History, New York University, June 2005- August 2005
Research and Teaching Assistant, New York University, Department of History, 2001-2008.
Freelance Editorial Assistant/Translator, June 1999-present
Assistant Curator "Schwabing. Kunst und Leben um 1900", Münchner Stadtmuseum, Munich, Germany, June 1997-June 1998
"Joyriding and Drunk Driving; Risk and the Regulation of Motorization During the Weimar Republic," Prospective Students' Weekend, History Department, New York University, February 2008.
"The Image of the 'Tourist Trophy' and British Motorcycling in the Weimar Republic", Upcoming Conference: "The Isle of Man TT Races: Heritage, Place and Spirit" held at Villa Marina, Isle of Man, May 28th - 30th, 2007.
"Sex in the Sidecar; Motorization, Gender and Sexuality in the Weimar Republic," History of Women and Gender Seminar, New York University, December 4, 2006.
"Noise and Nerves in the "Roaring" Twenties; Class, Gender and Generational Conflicts between Motorcyclists and other Road-Users During the Weimar Republic;" Tamiment Seminar in the History of the Labor and the Working Class, New York University, April 11, 2006.
"Promoting Motoring, From Pioneers to Global Dominance: The Motorcycle Industry 1885-1933," Modern European Colloquium, New York University, April 26, 2005.
"Männer und Motorräder, Eine sozio-kulturelle Untersuchung des Habitus der Motorradfahrer während der Weimarer Republik," Forschungskolloquium des Instituts für Philosophie, Wissenschaftstheorie, Wissenschafts- und Technikgeschichte, Technische Universität, Berlin, July 12, 2004.
"A Dog's Day; Violence and Ethics in the Motorcycling Community during the Weimar Republic", Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies Colloquium, Freie Universität, Berlin, June 16, 2004.


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Judges 9.22-10.18; Luke 24.13-53; Psalm 100.1-5; Proverbs 14.11-12
Have you ever had your hopes dashed? By "hopes," I don't mean things that may or may not have come to pass. I mean things that you put all your dreams into, everything you were about was focused on the possibility of this thing coming true. You absolutely knew it would happen. Only it didn't. While the comments of the two men on the road to Emmaus were sad, perhaps even sadder was the fact that Jesus was indeed the Messiah, they just had to go through a time of doubting that it was true. When have you thought Jesus was not going to provide salvation for you?
Describe a time when you have spouted off brags and boasts, only to have it come back to haunt you.
Why do you think it was through the breaking of the bread that Jesus' followers finally recognized him?
What are ways we acknowledge that the Lord is God today?
Why would a seemingly right path lead to death?


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With rental homes, bathrooms tend to be plain and outdated. Are you looking to spruce up yours? While a complete overhaul is out of the question, there are simple and practical touches you can add to turn the space from drab to fab. You can also get the best bathroom makeovers services in Perth.
Storage accessories
Bathroom in rental apartments seldom come with built-in storage. Mount shower caddies or shelves against the walls, so you will have something to hold your toiletries, candles, or scented oils. Just make sure the ones you pick out are suction-cupped, tension-mounted, or silicone-glued. This way, you are assured the tile will not be damaged.
Look for a cover-up, heavy-duty appliques, or stickers that can be applied to tiles, in case the wall surface is decked in not-so-attractive patterns. Most require just peeling off the paper backing and pressing them into place. The removing process is easy, just heat each section for a few minutes using a hairdryer.
Freestanding furniture
Since you cannot incorporate any permanent installations, go for freestanding furniture. Depending on the floor area, you can add a bathroom stool, chair, cabinet, or chest. Besides being functional, such additions can make the space feel homey, cozy, and luxurious. But remember to select only waterproof pieces, as steam and moisture can damage uncoated surfaces.
From window treatments to storage and comfort add-ons, there are various ways to jazz up your rental bathroom and disguise any of its imperfections. Just do not forget to review the lease rules before beginning your makeover. Remember, there is no need to fight against the tide, with a little resourcefulness and creativity, you can work around any obstacle.


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The murderous maniac who plowed his car through the heart of Times Square told cops he was hopped up on pot and PCP at the time, officials said Friday — as sources revealed another victim is likely to die.
"I smoked marijuana. I laced the marijuana with PCP," suspect Richard Rojas said, according to a criminal complaint.
Rojas, 26, allegedly zoomed the wrong way up Seventh Avenue then onto the sidewalk in the center of Times Square on Thursday afternoon, intentionally steering his Honda Accord into fleeing pedestrians for more than three blocks.
He was arraigned on a second-degree murder charge for killing 18-year-old tourist Alyssa Elsman and 20 counts of attempted murder for all the other people he hurt, including four critically.
One of the victims has taken a turn for the worse and is now likely to die, police sources said Friday.
Investigators are still waiting for official lab results but said preliminary tests jibe with Rojas' admission that he was on PCP, said NYPD Chief of Manhattan South Detectives William Aubry
"There's preliminary tests that were done, they confirm what his statements were," Aubry said Friday. "There's also a more thorough exam that has to be done with the medical examiner, and that's the blood results. Those are the results that we're waiting for."
Aubry said police are also looking into whether mental illness fueled Rojas's blood lust — an assertion twice made by Mayor de Blasio at separate appearances Friday.
"I spoke to Commissioner [James] O'Neill this morning and one thing that's abundantly clear now is that this very troubled individual, who committed this heinous act, had a long history of mental-health problems," de Blasio said during an unrelated press conference in the Rockaways. "Those problems clearly did not get addressed over the years."
During his arrest, Rojas shouted that he had expected cops to shoot him dead, police sources said.
But Aubry painted a different picture of Rojas's mental state, arguing that the suspect calculatingly waited for an opening in traffic before he started his rampage — in order to maximize the pedestrian body count.
"He waited for those cars to pass, and he accelerated, striking down these pedestrians — that goes to his state of mind and his motivation," Aubry said.
Judge Tamiko Amaker remanded Rojas during an arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court on Friday.
Additional reporting by Max Jaeger


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Sororities at Frostburg State
Historically, sororities were organized for social reasons; for women to make friends and connections on a college campus as women were just being allowed to apply for collegiate studies. Sororities offer female students a place where they can build leadership skills, pursue philanthropic work, promote scholarship, offer mentorships (big little process) and keep their members engaged in collegiate life by offering activities such as formals and mixers, homecoming rituals, and other social events. While one perk of joining a sorority might be its easy access to an active social life, the benefits of building ties with one's "sisters" don't end at graduation. National Greek alumni organizations help students network for potential employment opportunities once they've received their degrees, seek our fellow members from other chapters across the entire United States and other countries and encourage members to build bridges through newsletters, meetings, and special events.
Alpha Sigma Tau Sorority is committed to developing scholars, philanthropists, leaders, and sisters among our collegiate and alumnae members. The Sorority strives to have a cooperative relationship with their host colleges and universities as well as educate their members on who we are as Alpha Sigma Taus. More >>
Nickname: "AST"
Colors: Emerald and Gold
Symbol: Anchor
Flower: Yellow Rose
Motto: Active, Self-Reliant, Trustworthy
Philanthropies: Alpha Sigma Tau National Foundation, Inc.; Women's Wellness Initiative - this far-reaching philanthropy empowers members to impact women's wellness in their communities through fundraising and service projects.
Locally: Special Olympics Maryland, Union Rescue Mission of Western Maryland, American Cancer Society
National Service Partners: Dress For Success, Girls Who Code
Established: 1899
Chartered at FSU: 1975
President: Grace Lapid
Advisors: Brittany Baer
The purpose of the sorority is to unite its members in the bonds of sincere and lasting friendship, to stimulate one another in the pursuit of knowledge, to promote the moral and social culture of its members, and to develop plans for guidance and unity in action, objects worthy of the highest aim and purpose of associated effort.
Nickname: "DZ"
Colors: Old Rose and Nile Green
Symbol: Roman Lamp
Mascot: Turtle
Flower: Pink Killarney Rose
Motto: Friendship, Justice, Character, Education
Philanthropy: Hearing & Speech Impairment; Starkey Hearing Foundation; national partners: American Society for Deaf Children; Serious Fund Network; Galludet University ; local partnership: Allegany County Animal Shelter and American Cancer Society
Established: 1902
Chartered at FSU: 1993
President: Jenna Alexander
Advisors: Latisha Cooper
Alpha Sigma Alpha promotes high ideals and standards for its members throughout their lives by emphasizing balance among their four aims of intellectual, physical, social and spiritual development. Alpha Sigma Alpha provides opportunities through:
Sisterhood — forming strong bonds of unconditional friendship based on common values and experiences;
Heritage — expressed through creed, ritual and history; and
Leadership and Service — enhanced by chapter, campus, and community involvement.
Nickname: "ASA"
Colors: Crimson, Palm Green, Gold, and Pearl White
Symbol: Crown
Mascot: Dot the Ladybug
Flower: Narcissus, Aster (genus)
Motto: Aspire, Seek, Attain
Philanthropy: Girls on the Run and Special Olympics
Established: 1901
Chartered at FSU: 2010
President: Amber Greenbaum
Advisors: Jacqueline Durst


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Region & Activities
The Schladming-Dachstein Region is famous for its beauty. The pristine landscape with its abundance of water - there are about 300 mountain lakes, 100 waterfalls and a great amount of springs of water – also appears with an abundance alpine flower, a flora that sparks people for hundreds of years. The mountain's kingdom spells the fauna as well: with a little luck you have look at marmots, roedeer, stags and chamois. But what about a farm without its own milk products? Fresh alp butter, best buttermilk, bacon and a snack that is hearty and tasty. That's what belongs to an alp and into the world of mountains.
Enjoy your winter vacation in our HOTEL AT THE SLOPES of one of Austria's »Top 5 Ski Resorts« - where you will find the biggest selection of slopes and lifts anywhere in Austria.
The 223 km of superbly groomed ski slopes are within quick, convenient reach via 109 modern cable and chair lifts.
The most modern snowmaking equipment in Europe guarantees enjoyable skiing until well into our sun-drenched mountain springtime. The impressive Dachstein Glacier even makes it possible to ski on 365 days a year.
is a »skiing hub«. It encompasses the famous winter sports resorts of Haus im Ennstal, Schladming, Rohrmoos and Pichl/Reiteralm.
Schladming-Dachstein - be there, live and in person - Ski amadé
The Schladming-Dachstein Region is a member of the »Ski amadé«, offering you the broadest selection of slopes and lifts in all of Austria, all on a single pass. »With just one ski ticket, you can be a part of it all«: 5 ski regions with 860 km of slopes and 270 lifts.
There are lots of activities almost without any limit except your own. We give you tips and information round our region! Have a nice time.


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Dangling Flower Belly Ring
KC544 Clear QS
All Metalsmiths Sterling Body Jewelry is made with implant grade surgical stainless steel (316 LVW), which is the best material for body piercings.
Once the shafts are created, they are sanded, polished and hand buffed to eliminate any machine marks. This creates a much smoother shaft and is done to greatly reduce any irritation which in turn reduces chances of infection.
The high intensity cubic stones are hand set and not glued in. This means the stones will not fall out during normal wear and are guaranteed. (Stones that are glued in tend to fall out, especially when exposed to water.) The dangling charms are set in sterling silver and attached using a lead-free soldered "O" ring to help ensure the dangling charms won't be lost.
The shafts are 14 gauge implant grade surgical stainless steel, 3/8" long and externally threaded. The gemballs are 5mm in diameter.


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Free Delivery
to UK Mainland
Mon - Fri: 8am-5pm, Sat 8am-12pm
The Stihl HSA 86 is a Powerful professional cordless hedge trimmer with a bar length of 62 cm/25" and double sided double-edged cutter teeth. Featuring a 36 V lithium ion battery with a running time of up to 45 minutes, a high stroke rate for rapid progress and special diamond ground cutter blades with a high cutting capacity.
These technical features on the STIHL HSA 86 will benefit professional gardeners and landscapers as well as private garden owners. In addition to their tremendous performance and stamina, the new STIHL cordless hedge trimmers offer high levels of working and operating comfort. Their comparatively low-noise running makes them especially suitable for use in noise-sensitive areas.
Shrub shear blade length - 25"(65cm)
Displacement - 36 volts
Weight - 3.0kg
Warranty - 1 year Professional/2 year Domestic
Functional design - The engine housing has smooth surfaces and round contours. This prevents the tool from getting caught on branches. The hedge trimmers are easy to clean.
Double sided cutting blades - STIHL hedge trimmers with double-sided cutting blades cut both vertically and horizontally.
Blade tip protector - The tip protector comes as standard and makes cutting near the ground or along walls easier while protecting the special cutters from damage.
Optimised cut protection - The wide gaps in the tooth spacing allow thicker branches to be cut.
Scabbard - Protects the cutting blade for safe storage and transport.
Hanging eye - The hedge trimmers can also be conveniently hung up on the wall with the practical hanging eye.
Stihl offer a range of batteries that can fit this machine offering different power and charge times. For full specs and info please feel free to call us.
Chargers - All 3 Stihl chargers can be used with all the normal batteries, while the AP300 and AP500 will charge the backpack batteries too. Charging times vary depending on battery capacity and charger. E.G. AP200 battery in AL200 charger will charge to 80% capacity in 30mins, and 100% in 55mins.
This Machine will be fully PDI'd prior to delivery to Stihls exact Pre Delivery Inspection checklist, ensuring you receive a working machine.
Free Delivery
to UK Mainland
Spares Department
In 1969
By SagePay


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Run Windows Guest in CentOS 6 Linux Host using Virtualbox 4 via the command line
I wanted to be able to run Windows applications on the Linux server without having to pay for the extra money for a separate Windows server. There is a lot of unused capacity on the Linux server, so this won't interfere with its performance much. I already use Virtualbox for development because it is free and very fast.
Now, I finally learned how to control Virtualbox with command lines. Virtualbox is able to run the same virtual machine file on Linux, Windows or Mac and even run inside another virtual machine on any of those. So I installed Windows in virtualbox on my local Windows machine, and then deployed it to the Linux server.
The initial Windows 7 installation resulted in a 15gb VDI file, but I was able to bring it down to 8gb with shrinking it, and then it compressed to just 3gb with 7-zip, which took only 5 hours to upload to the production server.
Remote desktop to virtualbox virtual machines make remote management easy!
Virtualbox has the ability to run a virtual remote desktop connection to the guests without needing the OS to be running. This VRDE technology lets you see the guest OS before it has even finished booting, which makes it easier to debug start-up issues compared to using RDP in Windows itself. It also prevents you from needing a GUI / desktop installed in Linux, which most server installation don't come with a desktop installed and it's not recommended to have a desktop on a server.
Check out my documentation on how to do it
I have the whole process documented in my server installation notes including steps for removing drives, adding cdroms and shrinking the virtual machine. I have published my documentation notes here, so you can setup a Windows guest in Linux Virtualbox too!
Installing Virtualbox on Centos 6.x Linux with command line
Download virtualbox repo and put in /etc/yum.repos.d/virtualbox.repo
# Now you can install it in the Linux host
yum install VirtualBox-4.2
This extension is needed for remote desktop to work - download the file into Linux host:
# install the extension (you can delete the file afterwards)
VBoxManage extpack install /path/to/Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-4.2.6-82870.vbox-extpack
# I had to enable forwarding on ipv4 in Linux host in order for the Windows guest to share the public Internet:
# Add the following line to /etc/sysctl.conf
# restart the network
service network restart
#If virtualbox complains about kernel drivers, then run these:
yum install kernel-headers kernel-devel gcc
/etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup
Installing Windows 7 in Virtualbox with VBOXManage command lines
I recommend you install Windows in virtualbox on your Windows or Mac system using the virtualbox GUI to make it easier and faster since your OS install disc is probably running on your local machine and it would be slow to upload it to the production server which is probably hosted remotely. The steps below are useful when migrating that VDI and virtual machine configuration to the Linux server that has no desktop/GUI installed.
Make sure to update /path/to/ below to be a path on your system.
# Find the OS name you are trying to install
VBoxManage list ostypes
# Create the virtual machine
VBoxManage createvm --name "Windows7" --ostype Windows7 --register
# size is in MB
VBoxManage createhd --filename "/path/to/windows7.vdi" --size 30000
VBoxManage storagectl "Windows7" --name "Sata1" --add sata --controller IntelAHCI --sataportcount 3 --bootable on
VBoxManage storageattach "Windows7" --storagectl "Sata1" --type hdd --medium "/path/to/windows7.vdi" --port 0
VBoxManage storageattach "Windows7" --storagectl "Sata1" --type dvddrive --medium host:/dev/cdrom --port 1
# Use this command when installing guest additions (Makes guest os faster and more integrated with host)
VBoxManage storageattach "Windows7" --storagectl "Sata1" --type dvddrive --medium additions --port 1
# enable nat network (host and guest can't see each other) - we use shared folders instead.
VBoxManage modifyvm "Windows7" --nic1 nat --nicpromisc1 deny
# add a shared folder
VBoxManage sharedfolder add "Windows7" --name "shared-folder" --hostpath "/path/to/shared-folder/"
# remove a shared folder
VBoxManage sharedfolder remove "Windows7" --name "shared-folder"
# give the virtual machine more cpus / memory and hardware assisted virtualization if possible
VBoxManage modifyvm "Windows7" --memory 1024 --cpus 4 --ioapic on --hwvirtex on --vtxvpid on --nestedpaging on
# set that back if virtual machine fails to start
VBoxManage modifyvm "Windows7" --memory 1024 --cpus 1 --ioapic off --hwvirtex off --vtxvpid off --nestedpaging on
# open access to the virtual machine via RDP protocol. Make sure the IP below matches an IP you can access. I.e., make it a public IP if necessary - Note: you may was to read more about security in the virtualbox documentation here: http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch07.html#vboxheadless
VBoxManage modifyvm "Windows7" --vrdeaddress 127.0.0.1 --vrde on --vrdeport 5889 --vrdeauthtype null --vrdemulticon on
# starting the virtual machine without a GUI / Desktop installed
VBoxManage startvm "Windows7" --type headless
# shutting down the virtual machine
VBoxManage controlvm "Windows7" poweroff
Miscellaneous commands that were helpful
# output the virtual machine's configuration
VBoxManage showvminfo "Windows7" | more
#remove hard from vm (If you make mistakes / need to update it later)
VBoxManage storageattach "Windows7" --storagectl "Sata1" --type hdd --medium none --port 0
#remove from virtualbox AND delete disk file
VBoxManage closemedium disk "/path/to/windows7.vdi" --delete
# insert OS install disc in host and allow it to run in virtual machine
VBoxManage openmedium dvd /dev/cdrom
VBoxManage modifyvm "Windows7" --dvd /dev/cdrom
# after install, detach the cdrom
VBoxManage modifyvm "Windows7" --dvd none
Shrinking the vdi file for a Windows Guest:
# defragment and move all the data to the beginning of the partition. I used http://www.mydefrag.com/ in the Windows guest. It was a free app that uses the Windows defrag API so they say it is relatively "safe" to use.
# download sdelete.exe into the windows guest.
# run command in windows guest - It zeros the free space and cleans it - Note: this will expand the disk to use 100% of the space you allocated, so be careful not to run out of space!
sdelete -p 1 -z -c c:
# shutdown the windows guest and run this command on host - the new file will be approximately the same size as the used space within the Windows guest.
VBoxManage modifyhd --compact "/path/to/Windows7.vdi"
VBoxManage clonehd "/path/to/Windows7.vdi" "/path/to/Windows7smaller.vdi" --variant Standard
There you have it, Virtualbox can be easily used without a GUI!
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Winter can be brutal for motorcyclists! Like any other type of machinery, you have difficulty in operating your vehicle. While cruising down country roads or motorways, the wind chill factors can make your experience nearly unbearable. Your body can instantly transform into a human icicle. Thus, you should take certain precautions to ensure that you and your motorcycle are aptly prepared for the wintertime. Here are some guidelines to help you achieve that goal:
1. Use a windshield
This step is vital. The weather's wind chill factor can make a cold day, simply freezing. Use a windshield to safeguard yourself from such bitter-cold gusts.
2. Review road condition reports and weather reports
It is vital that you are aware of the weather and road condition reports for the particular course that you will be taking. The farther away from home you ride the more important it is to get the latest versions of these reports.
3. Keep an eye on motorcycle fluids
Several types of motorcycle oils are available on the market. Which one is ideal for winter riding? The 10w-40w would be ideal for winter cruising.
Also, if your motorcycle is of the liquid-cooled variety, verify that the anti-freeze reading is adequate for the temperature range in which you will be riding.
4. Wear warm boots
Make sure to wear warm motorcycle boots, such as Harley Davidson motorcycle boots. Most importantly, keep your feet dry! Some boots contain a waterproofing treatment on the outside, or a waterproof liner on the interior of the boot.
5. Keep your body covered and airtight
Make sure that you expose none of your body to the winter air, or that cold air could penetrate your clothing easily. You can find specialized winter clothing that manufacturers designed for motorcyclists.
6. Keep your battery powered up
Any battery is only useful if you have powered it up. Do some test runs to verify that your battery can withstand the rigors of icy gusts. In addition, use a Battery Tender to keep the battery charged.
7. Never sacrifice mobility for warmth
When selecting your wintertime riding gear, avoid choosing gear that will hinder your overall mobility while cruising. For instance, bulky clothing and full-face types of helmets could prevent you from moving easily and freely.
8. Consider electric gloves and vests
These battery-operated items can add extra warmth on frigid days.
9. Consider the dangers to you and your bike
Wintertime can be downright dangerous to you and your motorcycle. It is important that you take certain precautions, to ensure the safety of you and motorcycle. In fact, it is not enough to simply pile on more gear and then reveal how Herculean you are, by riding in the coldest of temperatures. If you are going to enjoy winter riding, do it safely.
Many of us are hesitant to enjoy motorcycling during the frigid temperatures and relentless winds of wintertime. The conditions may make us cold to the idea. However, by taking some basic precautions, we can keep our motorcycles and ourselves warm and running!


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Cube Galaxy switches up a seemingly familiar game style on Facebook
Puzzle games that can be played in short spurts of time are often ideal in casual or social gaming platforms such as Facebook. Cube Galaxy is one such title, offering players a seemingly familiar game style that comes with a handful of simple changes that make it play drastically differently. Credited to developer TribePlay, the app is centered completely around earning high scores. Surprisingly strategic, you can make use of power-ups and special boosts to out perform your friends within a span of 60 seconds.
Play works similarly to games like Collapse. When the clock starts, randomly colored cubes will begin falling from the sky and slowly fill up the game space. Should any breach the green bar at the top, you will fail and the game will be over. This isn't too terribly hard to avoid though, as clicking on any set of three connecting cubes of the same color will remove them from play and score points. The idea is to score the most amount of points possible in one minute.
This in and of itself is not terribly unique, but Cube Galaxy also throws in the prospect of cube swapping. By clicking on any cube, it can be swapped with any other by clicking that other. It can even be "swapped" with an empty space. This isn't so much about making it easier to avoid failure, but to allow you to create bigger sets of same-colored cubes to remove. And bigger sets are worth more points. This adds an extra level of strategy as, in order to be effective, you must wait for more of the game space to fill up. However, the risk of failure becomes greater as you are not removing the smaller groups of cubes (not to mention that time is ticking away). It comes down to a choice of trying to remove many smaller groups or waiting to remove larger ones.
With the completion of each game, you will also receive experience toward new profile levels. As you increase your level in Cube Galaxy, new perks will become available that can further increase your high scoring potential. These include point multipliers, lightning strikes that remove all cubes of a selected color, time bonuses, and more. This also adds, moderately, to the social aspect of play as they can be both gifted and purchased (before a game starts, they can be purchased and up to three activated) with coins earned from each play through. Once used, they will randomly fall into the play field in the same way as cubes.
Upon leveling up, you can also unlock passively activated "Super Abilities." These include the boosts of "Overdrive" and "Time Bonus." The former compounds scoring as you remove groups of cubes quickly (and stays active so long as cubes are still being removed quickly), while the latter adds time to the clock depending on how many cubes you remove. Once again, strategy appears here.
As for any other mechanics warranting mention, you will earn extra coins each match depending on how many friends are playing the game with you. And friends are needed to make the game truly fun. It is amusing the first handful of times you play it, but without the prospect of competing against other players, it loses its novelty fairly quickly.
Simple though Cube Galaxy may be, it is a nice addition to the social, puzzle-game genre. Well polished and visually appealing, the game takes a highly used game concept and adds a handful of new mechanics that actually change up the play style dramatically. Offering strategy and high score competitiveness, it is an app that can be gratifying to play so long as other friends join in. Cube Galaxy is an amusing puzzle game that is certainly worth a try, and since each game is only one minute, it's easy to know if you will like or not, right away.


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Friday, 6 February 2015
Guests Coming
18 comments:
What a cute bag, I hope it makes you smile every day.ReplyDelete
It's gorgeous!ReplyDelete
Great idea. I have an embroidery class at Quiltcon that it would be perfect for.ReplyDelete
Is there an App that can just fill in a 'Gorgeous' comment into every blogpost you do, to save me the bother?!ReplyDelete
I thoroughly believe that after fulfilling your domestic goddess duties, you are allowed to do some fun sewing. I subscribe to that theory too, and if I mow the lawns, then I pay myselff with a fabric or book purchase too.ReplyDelete
Have a great weekend.
we too have houseguests this weekend, and I have changed all the beds and cleaned the house, moderately. I even baked and burnt 2 doz buns. Unfortunately I didn't make a lovely pouch. Have a nice weekend. And, by the way, I love the pouch.ReplyDelete
I love the idea of a happy place in fabric form, and yours is fabulous! Such detail. Enjoy your guests!ReplyDelete
Aw that's a sweet pouch! Have a lovely weekend. JxoReplyDelete
So cute - love all the little fussy cuts!ReplyDelete
So sweet. This really is happiness in a tiny form. xReplyDelete
Ah, it's fabulous! A tiny treasure...ReplyDelete
Hi Susan! You made adorable pouch! I love all those tiny squares and the stitiching! Fabrics are of course really fun! Good idea to put it some where to see easily and smile when passing it. x TejeReplyDelete
Wonderful! I hope it's yours for keeps, you deserve it :-)ReplyDelete
Very cute, glad to hear the grumps have been banished!ReplyDelete
I can see why it makes you smile - it's so cute! And practical too!ReplyDelete
It's lovely and it makes me smile, too - HR magic :) Great stitches, as always.ReplyDelete
Love the pouch!ReplyDelete
Just sewing with tiny 1" squares is magic. This is really cuteReplyDelete
Thank you for leaving a comment. I read them all and I love them all. I do my utmost to reply to comments as often as possible. If you comment and never receive a reply from me there is the possibility that you are a no-reply commenter.


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Welcome to Business Bliss
The Small Consultancy For Big, & Soon To Be Big Businesses.
I'm a one man, worldwide consultancy firm. I specialise in the core aspects of business in order to increase satisfaction & profitability.
I can be with you, anywhere in the world within 24 hours.
Dinosaurs Are Dead - Don't Choose A Consultancy Battling It's Own Issues
You require leanness, simplicity, and effectiveness. The passion and mindset of an experienced entrepreneur. Someone with a lust for results. Couple this with your knowledge, resources and market position - you harness evolution.Our Products
Simple, Clear, Effective
You can judge me and how I work, by your experience of my website. Straight to the point, easy to work with and effective – that's Business Bliss.
Stunning Solutions
Like diamonds, good solutions are clear, rare, hard to find, worth a lot of money and highly visible. Through Business Bliss I provide nothing else.
Killer Apps
The Business Bliss Consultancy utilises real world apps. These are business documentation tools that provide a framework to assist us in getting results.
Support As Standard
Once we've worked together, for a modest fee, I'll be around to drive home results throughout the entire working relationship.
"Each and every business is undergoing a process of continual evolution of some sort. This fact remains whether it is known or not!"
− Barclay Littlewood, Business Bliss
"Every problem is gold, an opportunity to improve. In the solutions to the root causes of it's problems lies a business's future."
− Barclay Littlewood, Business Bliss
"Good solutions are like diamonds. Clear, rare, hard to find, worth a lot of money, and highly visible."
− Barclay Littlewood, Business Bliss