Travels with My Aunt (film)

Travels with My Aunt is a 1972 American comedy film directed by George Cukor, written by Jay Presson Allen and Hugh Wheeler, and starring Maggie Smith. The film is loosely based on the 1969 novel of the same name by Graham Greene. The film's plot retains the book's central theme of the adventurous, amoral aunt and her respectable middle class nephew drawn in to share her life, and also features her various past and present lovers who were introduced in the book, while providing this cast of characters with different adventures to the ones thought up by Greene, in different locales (North Africa rather than the book's South America). It was released on December 17, 1972.
Plot.
While attending the cremation of his mother's remains, London bank manager Henry Pulling (Alec McCowen) meets eccentric Augusta Bertram (Maggie Smith), a woman who claims to be his aunt and announces that the woman who raised him was not his biological mother. She invites him back to her apartment, where her lover, an African fortune teller named Zachary Wordsworth (Louis Gossett Jr.), is waiting for her. Shortly after she receives a package allegedly containing the severed finger of her true love, Ercole Visconti (Robert Stephens), with a note promising the two will be reunited upon payment of $100,000.
Augusta asks Henry to accompany her to Paris, and he agrees, unaware she actually is smuggling £50,000 out of England and transporting it to Turkey for a gangster named Crowder (Robert Flemyng) in exchange for a £10,000 fee she can put toward the ransom. The works of art adorning the station are shown. The two board the Orient Express, where Henry meets Tooley (Cindy Williams), a young American hippie who takes a liking to him and gets him to smoke marijuana with her in her compartment. When the train reaches Milan, Augusta is greeted at the station by her illegitimate son Mario (Raymond Gérôme), who presents her with a bouquet of flowers and an ear that supposedly belongs to Ercole.
When they arrive at the Turkish border, Augusta's plot is uncovered by officials who send her and Henry back to Paris. Augusta attempts to secure the money she needs from her former lover Achille Dambreuse (José Luis López Vázquez), but the wealthy Frenchman dies of a heart attack in her hotel suite before she achieves her goal. Efforts to extort $100,000 from Achille's widow in return for their silence about the adulterous circumstances of his death fail, and Augusta decides to sell a valuable portrait of herself she claims was painted by Amedeo Modigliani to raise the money.
After an argument with Henry, Augusta lets it slip that he is Ercole's "other son". Once the painting is sold, they join Zachary on a fishing boat to North Africa, where they pay the ransom and are reunited with Ercole. He removes his bandages, revealing ear and finger intact, indicating he has been the mastermind of a plot to separate Augusta from her money. Henry, who was suspicious from the start, reveals not only that he has deduced Augusta is his biological mother, but that he exchanged "neatly cut pages of the Barcelona telephone directory" for the money in the package they delivered. He wants to use the cash he kept to purchase the portrait Augusta sold, but she tells him she would prefer to use it to finance more travels. Henry decides the matter should be decided with the toss of a coin and chooses 'heads'. Wordsworth tosses the coin, and the film ends on a freeze frame shot of Augusta, Henry and Wordsworth as they await the fall of the coin.
Production.
George Cukor initially gave Katharine Hepburn a copy of the Graham Greene novel and told her he wanted to cast her as Augusta. Upon first reading the book, basically a collection of anecdotes, she felt it couldn't be adapted into a viable screenplay, but after reading it several more times she agreed to make the film. She was ultimately unhappy with the completed script, and Jay Presson Allen finally suggested she rewrite the screenplay herself.
After working on it for months, Hepburn submitted it to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, but studio head James T. Aubrey, Jr. felt it was missing the charm of the book. Additionally, he wanted Augusta to be seen as a younger woman in flashbacks, and he felt Hepburn was too old to do so convincingly. In a phone call to the actress, he told her the project was being postponed, but the next day, her agent was advised she was being given notice for refusing to report to work. Hepburn was outraged and considered suing MGM for payment for her contributions to the screenplay, but finally decided against taking legal action. Allen later claimed only one speech of hers remained in the completed film, but Hepburn was denied screen credit because she wasn't a member of the Screen Writers Guild.
The film was shot on location in England, France, Italy, Morocco, Spain, Turkey and Yugoslavia, with the final scenes shot at Cabo de Gata natural park and Los Genoveses Beach. "Serenade of Love," the film's theme song, was written by Jackie Trent and Tony Hatch and performed by Petula Clark. Costume designer Anthony Powell became a close friend of Maggie Smith and dressed her for her later films "Death on the Nile", "Evil Under the Sun", and "Hook" as well as the plays "Private Lives" and "Lettice and Lovage".
Critical reception.
Roger Greenspun of "The New York Times" said the film's "great charm" lies in
"the surprising emotional complexity it manages in terms of its light tone and its nutty, endlessly involved plotting. Such emotional complexity depends a good deal on richness of characterization and delicacy of human contact, and in this the film sometimes succeeds and sometimes doesn't. Alec McCowen does marvelous things as Henry ... Maggie Smith, playing a woman twice her age, seems to have surrounded her character rather than to have inhabited it ... and she is energetic enough for any five ordinary performers. But it is the energy of caricature rather than personality, and Aunt Augusta is sufficiently an original not to need any eccentricities added on. But the film is full of privileged moments, lucid, controlled and graceful, and any of them might serve to epitomize the style and the meaning of the valuable cinema of George Cukor."
Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" called the film "a whimsical romantic fantasy that works; which is to say, if you are not a fan of whimsical romantic fantasy, it's going to be too much for you." He added "It was nearly too much for me – I found myself wincing from time to time when one of the movie's ornate props seemed about to bean me – but in the end I was won over, I guess."
"TV Guide" rated it three out of four stars and wrote:
"Condensing Greene's novel into a workable screenplay was not entirely successful. Some moments are glossed over; others fly by all too rapidly in a valiant attempt to cram in as much of the book as possible within the 109-minute running time. Though it doesn't always succeed, the spirit is there often enough to cover the rapid-fire plot development. Cukor gives this a sort of tongue-in-cheek direction; at this point in his career his heyday was long past, and the film is no match for some of his earlier successes. Like its central character, it is unusual, unexpected, and not entirely what it projects itself to be, yet it is entertaining."
Home media.
The VHS of "Travels with My Aunt" was released March 26, 1996. An official DVD release came on October 4, 2011 when the film was added to the Warner Archive Collection.


Forge (video game)

Forge was a third-person massively multiplayer online combat game developed and released by Dark Vale Games on December 4, 2012. The game received mixed reviews that praised its uniqueness in its gameplay, and criticized a lack of imagination in its visual presentation. It was developed as a way to play end-game MMORPG player versus player combat, without the hours of work to get there.
The game has now been removed from Steam. Those who purchased it when it was available will have it remain in their Steam library, but because the online service is no longer running, it is unplayable.
Gameplay.
"Forge" is a fast-paced, third-person combat game, styled after the player versus player combat found in MMORPGs. There are a number of different classes to choose from. The combat consists of two teams, pitted against each other in various arenas, competing in a selection of game modes. Each player has 9 different abilities to use. These abilities have a cooldown, ranging from less than a second, to over a minute. Players can use these abilities to damage and hinder their enemies by slowing or blinding them, or help their allies by healing them or giving them a movement boost. The game features a heavy emphasis on vertical movement, which includes a wall jump mechanic.
Development.
The game was originally released at a price, but was later changed to be free to play, due to a lack of players.
Reception.
"Forge" has been praised by critics for capturing the map style and player versus player combat from games such as "Guild Wars 2" and "World of Warcraft", but set in small arena-style zones. It features the typical fantasy class types such as mages, assassins, archers, and warriors. Critics enjoyed that the game avoided an auto-targeting system like other MMORPGs. Auto-targeting systems tend to earn criticism in such other games. The game has been criticized for not having enough interesting content, and for having poor visual design. Map design has been well received.


Happy Socks

Happy Socks is a Swedish manufacturer and retailer of socks, underwear, and swimwear. The company was founded in 2008 by Mikael Söderlindh and Viktor Tell who respectively took on the roles as CEO and creative director. In 2017, Palamon Capital Partners acquired the majority share and Stefan Fragner became CEO. Their merchandise is sold in 90-plus countries, with 12,000 points of sale, as well as online, and over 100 Happy Socks stores.
In addition to its headquarters in central Stockholm, Sweden, in 2018, the company opened its first office abroad in New York City, followed by an office in Munich, Germany in January 2019 in order to operate all wholesale accounts directly.
"Ten years later the company continues to thrive (and keep customers happy). Happy Socks’ colorful, vibrant prints have earned a loyal fan base," according to "Forbes" magazine.
Company history.
Happy Socks began in April 2008, when Mikael Söderlindh, an advertising executive, and Viktor Tell, an illustrator and graphic designer, came up with the idea of colorful, printed socks. Three weeks later, they began production in a Turkish factory. The socks launched for a price point of $10 and were initially sold on the company’s own website. In the first year, Happy Socks' turnover was €1,000,000 (US$1,136,750). Sales doubled the next year. Since then the company has grown about 50% annually.
In 2016, the brand generated retail sales of $106.4 million.
The company opened a new headquarters in 2017. Called the Happy House, the six-story building is located in central Stockholm. The same year, private equity firm Palamon Capital Partners acquired a majority stake from Scope Growth III. At the time, they invested $81.2 million in Happy Socks stock, and Palamon invested about $4.5 million of growth capital that the founders used to build namesake stores around the world.
As of 2018, the brand had sold more than 40 million socks worldwide. Happy Socks expanded to produce underwear and kids socks in 2014, as well as an athletic collection aimed at sneaker wearers and a dressed collection for men more into tailoring in 2015. Later in 2017, they launched Hysteria, a fashion collection in materials such as slinky viscose, glitter, and nylon that is manufactured in Portugal and Italy. With Happy Socks already in upscale stores like Barneys New York and Opening Ceremony, this new collection designed by associate creative director, Paula Maso, moved Happy Socks into retailers such as Selfridges, John Lewis, Urban Outfitters Tessuti, Bloomingdales, Galeries Lafayette, Voo Berlin, and 10 Corso Como.
By the end of 2018, Happy Socks had opened 100 concept stores in cities such as Paris, London, Barcelona, Los Angeles, Stockholm, and Tokyo. In December, the brand opened its third New York City location in Times Square to add to its Soho and Williamsburg, Brooklyn facilities. In May 2019, Happy Socks opened their second Happy Socks store in Los Angeles. This concept store situated in Silver Lake, Los Angeles is also home to The Rabbit Hole, a creative hub for the brand where a small team, which includes both the founders, work on special projects.
Happy Socks began producing men's swim trunks in 2018. In Spring 2019, Happy Socks expanded the swimwear to include a women's line, slider footwear, beach bag, towel and pool float, all using the vibrant prints for which the company is known.
Celebrity partnerships.
Collaborations have always been an important part of the brand's DNA. In addition to the Happy Socks original line, the brand had attracted a number of celebrities who would collaborate on creative projects and sock designs. In 2013, David LaChapelle photographed the fall marketing campaign, which featured male and female dancers with socks and nothing else.
Film director Robert Rodriguez, known for "El Mariachi", "From Dusk Till Dawn," and the "Spy Kids" franchise, created “Sock ‘Em Dead,” a short promotional movie starring Madison Davenport ("From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series") as an actress making a vampire film who utilizes socks as a weapon. Danny Trejo and Wilmer Valderrama also star. Rodriguez's sock designs were vampires.
Video director Tim Erem partnered with Happy Socks to make a promotional video called "Happy Holidays" during 2018 that starred a tap-dancing Pedro Pascal, and choreography by Michael Rooney.
Marking its 10th anniversary in 2018, Happy Socks released designs that paid tribute to Andy Warhol, a collaboration with recording artist Wiz Khalifa, and a second Beatles series, this one celebrating the 50th anniversary of the group's film, "Yellow Submarine". In addition, the company has collaborated with the Elton John AIDS Foundation and released Keith Haring socks and underwear.
Happy Socks' other collaborations include Iris Apfel, Ellen Von Unwerth, and André Saraiva; brands like Adidas, Pharrell's Billionaire Boys Club, and Giles Deacon; and other musicians A$AP Rocky, Miike Snow, Steve Aoki and Rolling Stones.
In April 2019, Happy Socks released a short film collaboration with David Hasselhoff called "The Hoff's Day Off" that includes swimwear in colourful prints and summer accessories for men and women. Hasselhoff stars in the accompanying video campaign.
To celebrate Father's Day 2021, Happy Socks released a series of socks based on music icons, including The Beatles, Queen and Rolling Stones. These socks were distributed in partnership with SOCKSHOP.


Nick Phillips (graphic designer)

Nick Phillips is a graphic designer who co-founded The Designers Republic and has produced award-winning work for Sony games.
Background.
Phillips studied sculpture at Sheffield Hallam's Psalter Lane college. He played organ in an early line-up of World of Twist. Through the Sheffield music scene, Phillips became friends with graphic designer Ian Anderson. Together they set up The Designers Republic in July 1986.
Career.
The Designers Republic.
As a duo, Phillips and Anderson have been described as 'the design gurus associated with electronic music'. They produced album artwork for artists such as Pop Will Eat Itself, Pulp, Supergrass, The Orb, and Warp Records including Aphex Twin. "Q magazine" included a Designers Republic sleeve in their list of the 100 Best Record Covers of All Time.
Work by Phillips and Anderson is held in the permanent collections of MoMA and the V&A.
Other work.
Phillips went on to help design the Sony Psygnosis game Wip3out, which won the BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Award for Best Design in 1999.
His cover for Richard Hawley "Lady's Bridge" was nominated for Best Art Vinyl in 2007.
Phillips worked on the first editions of SingStar, and on Sony's EyeToy. Other games credits include"Wipeout 3: Special Edition", "Global Domination", "", "Pilot Academy", the LMA Manager series and Lemmings Revolution.
Phillips now works solo as Phink, producing sleeve art for Richard Hawley and print work for Sheffield Doc/Fest.


Ruth Crisp

Ruth Crisp (1918–2007) (born Margery Ruth Edwards, who compiled under the names "Crispa" and "Vixen") was one of "The Guardian"s most noted crossword compilers – producing puzzles for them from 1954 to 2004. She also produced crosswords for "The Daily Telegraph, The Times, The Independent", the "Financial Times, The Sunday Times", and other publications. Crisp's favourite clue of her own creation was: "Men's my one failing, (mother of nine) (9)". The solution is "Mnemosyne".


Map seed

In video games using procedural world generation, the map seed is a (relatively) short number or text string which is used to procedurally create the game world ("map"). This means that while the seed-unique generated map may be many megabytes big (often generated incrementally and virtually unlimited in potential size), it is possible to reset to the unmodified map, or the unmodified map can be exchanged between players, just by specifying the map seed. An example of a map seed in "Minecraft" is "-2242547518357798464". Map seeds are a type of random seeds.
Games which use procedural generation and include support for setting the map seed include "", "Minecraft", "Factorio", "SCP - Containment Breach" and the desktop version of "Terraria". For "Minecraft" especially, there are websites and articles dedicated to sharing seeds which have been found to generate interesting maps.
The map seed only has meaning in the context of the algorithm used to generate the map (that algorithm is often based on Perlin noise). So if the map generation algorithm changes, the map generated by a given seed will also change. Such changes are particularly obvious in "Minecraft", where they are handled (or rather, not handled) by simply generating any newly explored chunks of an existing map using the new algorithm, leading to obvious and jarring discontinuities after upgrading.
Favorable seeds can be used when speedrunning video games by specifying the map seed manually.


Korby Lenker

Korby Lenker is an American folk and Americana singer-songwriter as well as an author of short stories. He is known for his album "Thousand Springs" and his book of short stories, "Medium Hero." The son of a mortician and a school teacher, Lenker was born in 1976 in Twin Falls, Idaho, and now resides in Nashville, Tennessee. Lenker maintains an active touring schedule.
Career.
As a high school student in Twin Falls, Idaho, Lenker fronted the alt-rock band Clockwork Orange. In 2001, he relocated to Bellingham, Washington, where he founded the alt-bluegrass band The Barbed Wire Cutters while attending Western Washington University. The band released two albums, the self-titled "The Barbed Wire Cutters" (2002) and "Full Moon to Rise" (2003). While still touring with The Barbed Wire Cutters, Lenker began recording solo work, including the albums "First Takes" (2001), "The Ghost of Whiteboy" (2002) and "Bellingham" (2003). Lenker then moved to Seattle, Washington, to continue his solo career, before relocating to Nashville in 2007. In 2017, he released "Thousand Springs." The album was recorded outside the recording studio at locations that held special meaning to Lenker, from his favorite bookstore to his father's mortuary. His album "Man in the Maroon" will be released May 21, 2021, on GrindEthos Records.
Other works.
Lenker's first book "Medium Hero: And Other Stories" is a collection of twenty-seven short stories inspired by Lenker's years as a touring indie artist. The original version was self-published. Turner Publishing acquisitions manager Stephanie Beard picked up the book at one of his performances. As a result, Turner Publishing offered Lenker a contract and consequently published the book on December 1, 2015.
In 2018, Lenker launched the web series "Morse Code" about a struggling musician trying to balance his personal and professional life. It was produced in part by funds raised in a Patreon campaign. The pilot episode "Boomerang", which was written by and stars Lenker, released to the public on August 3, 2018 on Vimeo.
Collaborations.
In 2004, Lenker collaborated with Stell Newsome (performing together as David Goliath) to produce an album of bluegrass gospel standards called "David Goliath's Old Time Gospel Hour". He co-wrote the song "Friend and a Friend" with Molly Tuttle. The song was consequently released on Lenker's album "Thousand Springs" and Tuttle's album "Rise" in 2017. In 2017, he co-wrote the song "Let's Just Have Supper" with Nora Jane Struthers. The song and its accompanying music video premiered on NPR. Lenker appears as an actor in Rebecca Frazier's 2018 music video for "Darken Your Doorway," playing her love interest.
Awards.
In 2006, Lenker won second place in the country category during the Chris Austin Songwriting Contest at MerleFest with his song "Handful of Dice." In 2007, Lenker took first place in the Chris Austin Songwriting Contest in the gospel category with his song "Blessed Be That Day." " In 2016, he won first place at the Rocky Mountain Folks Festival Songwriters' Showcase.


British Independent Film Award for Best Costume Design

The British Independent Film Award for Best Costume Design is an annual award given to the costume designer(s)'s work that has been deemed "best" in a particular year for their work in independent British cinema. The award was introduced in 2017. Before its inception, cinematography was included in the category British Independent Film Award for Best Technical Achievement.
Winners & nominees.
2000s.
Best Technical Achievement
2010s.
Best Costume Design


Jakarta Servlet

A Jakarta Servlet (formerly Java Servlet) is a Java software component that extends the capabilities of a server. Although servlets can respond to many types of requests, they most commonly implement web containers for hosting web applications on web servers and thus qualify as a server-side servlet web API. Such web servlets are the Java counterpart to other dynamic web content technologies such as PHP and ASP.NET.
Introduction.
A Jakarta Servlet processes or stores a Java class in Jakarta EE that conforms to the Jakarta Servlet API, a standard for implementing Java classes that respond to requests. Servlets could in principle communicate over any client–server protocol, but they are most often used with HTTP. Thus "servlet" is often used as shorthand for "HTTP servlet". Thus, a software developer may use a servlet to add dynamic content to a web server using the Java platform. The generated content is commonly HTML, but may be other data such as XML and more commonly, JSON. Servlets can maintain state in session variables across many server transactions by using HTTP cookies, or URL mapping.
The Jakarta Servlet API has, to some extent, been superseded by two standard Java technologies for web services:
To deploy and run a servlet, a web container must be used. A web container (also known as a servlet container) is essentially the component of a web server that interacts with the servlets. The web container is responsible for managing the lifecycle of servlets, mapping a URL to a particular servlet and ensuring that the URL requester has the correct access rights.
The Servlet API, contained in the Java package hierarchy , defines the expected interactions of the web container and a servlet.
A is an object that receives a request and generates a response based on that request. The basic Servlet package defines Java objects to represent servlet requests and responses, as well as objects to reflect the servlet's configuration parameters and execution environment. The package defines HTTP-specific subclasses of the generic servlet elements, including session management objects that track multiple requests and responses between the web server and a client. Servlets may be packaged in a WAR file as a web application.
Servlets can be generated automatically from Jakarta Server Pages (JSP) by the Jakarta Server Pages compiler. The difference between servlets and JSP is that servlets typically embed HTML inside Java code, while JSPs embed Java code in HTML. While the direct usage of servlets to generate HTML (as shown in the example below) has become rare, the higher level MVC web framework in Jakarta EE (JSF) still explicitly uses the servlet technology for the low level request/response handling via the . A somewhat older usage is to use servlets in conjunction with JSPs in a pattern called "Model 2", which is a flavor of the model–view–controller.
The current version of Servlet is 4.0.
History.
The Java Servlet API was first publicly announced at the inaugural JavaOne conference in May 1996. About two months after the announcements at the conference, the first public implementation was made available on the JavaSoft website. This was the first alpha of the Java Web Server (JWS; then known by its codename "Jeeves") which would eventually be shipped as a product on June 5, 1997.
In his blog on java.net, Sun veteran and GlassFish lead Jim Driscoll details the history of servlet technology. James Gosling first thought of servlets in the early days of Java, but the concept did not become a product until December 1996 when Sun shipped JWS. This was before what is now the Jakarta EE was made into a specification.
The Servlet1 specification was created by Pavni Diwanji while she worked at Sun Microsystems, with version 1.0 finalized in June 1997. Starting with version 2.2, the specification was developed under the Java Community Process.
Life cycle of a servlet.
Three methods are central to the life cycle of a servlet. These are codice_1, codice_2, and codice_3.
They are implemented by every servlet and are invoked at specific times by the server.
The following is a typical user scenario of these methods.
Example.
The following example servlet prints how many times its codice_2 method was called.
Note that codice_16 is a subclass of codice_17, an implementation of the codice_18 interface.
The codice_2 method of codice_16 class dispatches requests to the methods codice_21, codice_22, codice_23, codice_24, and so on; according to the HTTP request. In the example below codice_2 is overridden and does not distinguish which HTTP request method it serves.
import java.io.IOException;
import javax.servlet.ServletConfig;
import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;
public class ServletLifeCycleExample extends HttpServlet {
 private Integer sharedCounter;
 @Override
 public void init(final ServletConfig config) throws ServletException {
 super.init(config);
 getServletContext().log("init() called");
 sharedCounter = 0;
 @Override
 protected void service(final HttpServletRequest request, final HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException {
 getServletContext().log("service() called");
 int localCounter;
 synchronized (sharedCounter) {
 sharedCounter++;
 localCounter = sharedCounter;
 response.getWriter().write("Incrementing the count to " + localCounter); // accessing a local variable
 @Override
 public void destroy() {
 getServletContext().log("destroy() called");
Container servers.
The specification for Servlet technology has been implemented in many products. See a list of implementations on the web container page.


Bronica

Bronica also Zenza Bronica (in Japanese: ) was a Japanese manufacturer of classic medium-format roll film cameras and photographic equipment based in Tokyo, Japan. Their single-lens reflex (SLR) system-cameras competed with Pentax, Hasselblad, Mamiya and others in the medium-format camera market.
History.
Before introduction of the first of what would become a dynasty of Zenza Bronica cameras in 1959, the Latinized Zenza Bronica name was already a popular Japanese luxury goods brand of the Shinkodo Works (in Japanese: ) since 1947, specialized in the production of intricate crafted and decorated personal accessories, such as metal cigarette lighters and cases, cosmetic compacts, and watches, of diverse styles and designs.
The company's founder Zenzaburō Yoshino (in Japanese: , b. 25 January 1911 — d. 23 November 1988), wherefrom the Latinized Zenza Bronica brand name is derived, was the third son born into a Japanese rice merchant family. At an early age Yoshino showed deep reverence for the technical innovation and mechanics of world-renowned cameras produced by the likes of Leica, Contax and Rollei. Both fascinated and yet increasingly frustrated by the limitations of the cameras produced at that time period, where each camera's merits and demerits were not solved by just one camera, Yoshino visioned creating a high-precision interchangeable single-lens reflex camera modular system of his own design.
Yoshino's ambition, however, would require substantial investment, which he gradually self-funded from his family business in transportation and his passion for cameras by the establishment of a small camera store in Tokyo's Kanda district. Yoshino's camera store and his immense familiarity with deluxe foreign cameras became a huge success with photography enthusiasts in Japan, buying and selling luxury Leica and Contax cameras, which also gained popularity with US Army soldiers stationed in Japan after World War II. This formed the funding basis for his founding in 1947 of the Shinkodo Works with a vision of camera production, which at first produced Bronica brand luxury art deco accessories such as cigarette lighters and cases including watches, and positioned Bronica as a luxury brand in Japanese department stores, with popularity thriving among US Army soldiers in Japan.
The Shinkodo Works was Yoshino's precursor production base and funding source for what would later serve his Bronica camera and photographic equipment manufacturing; later consolidated under the "Zenza Bronica Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha" (Zenza Bronica Industries, Inc) company. On 17 January 1952, the Shinkodo Works was directed by Yoshino to begin research and development of the Bronica prototype camera.
Film camera production.
The prototype was a modular camera named the "Yoshino Flex". In June 1956 the Shinkodo Works created its first handmade example camera, and on reaching perfection in October 1958 with Yoshino's eighth prototype camera, the development costs had reached a sum of 200 million Yen, a huge sum at that time. The final prototype bore the Latinized nameplate "ZENZA BRONICA"—the Bronica Z ("Zen-za") rollfilm camera—and first appeared at the Philadelphia Camera Show in March 1959, where it received ecstatic industry press coverage and left a deep lasting impression of being the world's dream camera. The Bronica Z modular camera system, shortly later with slight modifications renamed the Zenza Bronica D (Deluxe) and successor Bronicas, using large-coverage film format, high-quality Nikkor lenses supplied by the then Japan Optical Industries Co., Ltd., (Nikon Corporation) became instant successes in the deluxe camera market worldwide. The Bronica D was the Japanese answer and first serious challenger to the Swedish Hasselblad cameras, and in several technical ways outclassed the Swedish offerings. Such was the design success of Bronica, that in the United States it attracted influential figures from the photographic industry such as Burt Keppler who met with Yoshino. Bronica later introduced optics and lens units of its own manufacture incorporating Seiko shutters with its later camera designs and held a portfolio of international patents.
Acquisition and product discontinuation.
Bronica was eventually acquired by the lens manufacturer Tamron Co., Ltd., in 1998 with emphasis on Bronica's optical lens manufacturing. In May 2000, Tamron introduced under the Bronica brand the RF645 rangefinder camera. Tamron discontinued the brand's single-lens reflex camera models (ETRSi, SQ-Ai, SQ-B and GS-1) between June 2002 and December 2004, sales having suffered from the lack of consideration to a digital camera back and loss of market share to digital photography and digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) cameras, particularly for the wedding and portrait photography business which had previously been a heavy user of medium-format photographic film but switched quickly to digital photography for its commercial workflow benefits. Bronica's last model, the RF645 rangefinder camera, was discontinued in September 2005, and marked the termination of the Bronica camera brand business.
Bronicas were workhorse photographic film cameras used by professional photographers for many years until the process of digital photography became widely adopted. Bronica cameras are, however, still widely used by photographers—both professional and advanced amateurs—whilst the commercial production of photographic 120 film remains available, in no small part due to superior image quality of 6x4.5, 6x6 and 6x7cm photographic film formats over smaller film (35mm) and digital image sensor formats.
JCII camera museum.
The Japan Camera and Optical Instruments Inspection and Testing Institute (JCII) at its camera museum located in Ichibanchō district, central Tokyo, has a selection of Bronica camera models preserved among its museum display collections; as part of the museum's designation "preserving cameras considered of historical significance".
Bronica models.
Bronica SLR system-cameras employed a modular design: The major components of the camera—lens, body, film-back and viewfinder were separate and interchangeable, providing options to match the specific photography or workflow needs of the photographer.
Classic models.
From its start, Bronica introduced a number of 6x6 cm medium-format SLR cameras with focal plane shutter, which used Nikkor lenses from Nikon, until this line was discontinued with the introduction of the successor Bronica SQ-series. These models included:
Notably, the Bronica EC was the first medium-format SLR camera with an electrically operated focal plane shutter (Japan Patent No.: 43/94431 24 December 1968; US Patent No. US3696727), while the EC-TL was the first medium-format camera with Aperture priority automatic exposure (AE).
The range of Nikkor lenses for these remarkable cameras reached from 30mm (fisheye) to 1200mm and comprised about 30 lenses. Lens optics supplied by Carl Zeiss in Jena, Tokyo Optical Co., Ltd., Norita optics, Komura-Komuranon (Sankyo Kohki), Schneider Kreuznach, as well as lens optics later manufactured by Bronica itself based on designs by Zeiss and Japanese lens manufacturers were available, as well as a wide range of accessories, including different film magazines, bellows, and viewfinders.


Li Tian

Li Tian (; 2 October 1938 – 11 April 2018) was a Chinese physicist and aircraft designer. An expert in aerodynamics for aeronautics, he served as chief scientist of the Shenyang Aircraft Corporation. He was also an adjunct professor at Beihang University.
Biography.
Li was born in October 1938 in Jilin City, Jilin province. He graduated from Tsinghua University in 1963 with a degree in fluid mechanics. He was assigned to the then 601 Institute as a technician afterwards, and was banished to western Liaoning during the Cultural Revolution.
Li was responsible for the aerodynamic projects when developing Shenyang J-8 and Shenyang J-11, he is known as one of the founders of Chinese stealth technology for aircraft. He improved Chinese fighter configurations and stealthy designs by combining electromagnetic scattering characteristics with aerodynamic theory.
Li was elected as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2005.
Li's father, Li Pengshu, taught Chinese literature at a high school. Li was the third of five children. After his mother died in 1948, his father remarried in 1950 and had two more children. Li died on 11 April 2018 in Shenyang, aged 79.


Bernhard Steffen (computer scientist)

Bernhard Steffen (born 31 May 1958 in Kiel, West Germany) is a German computer scientist and professor at the TU Dortmund University, Germany. His research focuses on various facets of formal methods ranging from program analysis and verification, to workflow synthesis, and to test-based modeling.
After his PhD at the University of Kiel he spent two years as a research fellow at the LFCS (Edinburgh, Scotland) where he co-developed the Edinburgh Concurrency Workbench and authored one of the earliest papers on how to adequately model probabilistic processes, before joining the University of Aarhus in 1989 as a postdoc.
From 1990 to 1992 he was associate professor at the RWTH Aachen, before he became full professor at the University of Passau. Since 1997 he holds the chair of programming systems at TU Dortmund University where he was Dean of Computer Science between 2002 and 2006 as well as a member of the Senate in 2006 and 2007.
Furthermore, Steffen is member of the editorial board of LNCS.
Journal and conference foundations.
Bernhard Steffen co-founded the following journals and conferences


Flag of Shetland

The flag of Shetland is a white or silver Nordic cross on a blue background. The flag uses the colours of the flag of Scotland, but in the form of the Nordic cross in order to symbolise Shetland's historical and cultural ties with Scandinavia. As with all Scottish flags, its proportions and colour shades are not fixed. It was created by Roy Grønneberg and Bill Adams in 1969, to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the transfer of the islands from Norway in the Kalmar Union to Scotland and the 500 years before as part of Norway.
The flag is widely used privately by Shetlanders both on land and sea and is now seen as a symbol of the Shetland identity. In 2007 a "Shetland Flag Day" was introduced by the Council, who hope the day will be used to "celebrate all things Shetland". After almost forty years of unofficial use, the flag was formally granted by the Lord Lyon King of Arms, the heraldic authority of Scotland, on 1 February 2005, in time for the Island Games in July 2005 in Shetland.
The flag is practically identical to the former unofficial national flag of Iceland (the "Hvítbláinn") in use by Icelandic nationalist activists from 1897 until 1915, when it was in part abandoned due to its similarity to the Greek jack and the Swedish flag, which critics reasoned would be hard to tell apart at sea, a major issue in a time of war. The white and blue is still used by the Icelandic Youth Association.


Dolly Rudeman

Dolly Rudeman (born Gustave Adolphine Wilhelmina Rüdemann, 3 February 1902 – 26 January 1980) was a Dutch graphic designer who produced posters for some of the most famous directors and film stars of her day, including Sergei Eisenstein, Charlie Chaplin, and Greta Garbo.
Born in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) to Dutch parents, her father died before she was born and her mother took the family back to the Netherlands when Rudeman was in her teens. Rudeman studied art and drawing from an early age, and in the early 1930s embarked on a career in design. Concerned that there was little financial stability in art, she turned towards the medium of poster design. In the twenties, she was the only woman designing posters for the film industry, and was a prolific designer of posters and printed programs for the Netherlands Cinema Trust.
Although work dried up during the Second World War—during which she aided Jews hiding from the occupying Nazis—she returned to poster design after the war. The 1950s have been termed her 'golden age', and during this decade she expanded into other forms of design such as for postcards, chocolate boxes, and ceramics. She never achieved the fame that she had before the war, however, and died in relative obscurity in Amsterdam in 1980.
Early life.
Dolly Gustave Adolphine Wilhelmina Rüdeman was born on 3 February 1902 in Salatiga, Java. She was the second child to Adolf Rudeman, a sugar factory proprietor, who died six months before Dolly's birth, and his wife, Gerardina van Elsbroek. After Adolf's death Gerardina remarried, and the family moved to Batavia, in the Dutch East Indies. By 1916 they had moved to The Hague. Rudeman had one sister, who spent much of her life in Indonesia; they had very little contact in adulthood.
Rudeman attended high school for two years before joining the Hague Drawing Institute where she studied art. She later moved to The Hague's Royal Academy of Art, where, in August 1922, she obtained a teaching certificate in drawing. A classmate of Rudeman's later recalled that most of the class "went on to be more or less unknown" and "became housewives", while Rudeman, now in her twenties, was "already riding around on a motorbike". Initially, she considered a career in portraiture, but decided against it on the grounds, as she explained some years later, that she was "not well-off, and most Dutch people consider it a scandalous waste of money to have yourself painted."
Early career.
Rudeman enrolled at the Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten (the Royal Academy of Art) in The Hague and studied drawing, graduating in 1922. Wanting to design posters, she travelled to England to study under the illustrator and cartoonist, Charles Exeter Devereux Crombie. In the mid-1920s, having returned to the Netherlands, she began drawing posters for the Netherlands Cinema Trust. Having moved into her own studio, she taught private pupils and produced general illustrations.
Rudeman's first poster—and one of the most famous of this period, which made her name—was the "vicious Cossack" for Eisenstein's 1925 movie "Battleship Potemkin". A then-unheard of 7,500 copies were printed for the film's promotion. At the time it was "virtually unheard of" for Dutch film promoters to produce a particular poster for a single show, and they often resorted to the expediency of merely painting over the titles of foreign-produced posters. "Het Vaderland", a Dutch evening newspaper, published from 1869 to 1982, declared that the "designer of the poster must be of the same persuasion [gender] as the director of the film." That same year, Rudeman was offered a permanent contract with the Netherlands Cinema Trust, and so achieved financial security.
Rudeman also designed many program covers, producing about seventy between 1926 and 1927. In 1928 she left for Paris, where she worked under the painter Cassandre. The following year saw her travel to Berlin. In the course of her career she created posters for Marlene Dietrich (in "Dishonored"), Greta Garbo, and Asta Nielsen, comedians Charlie Chaplin (for "City Lights") and Buster Keaton's "The General", as well as for some who declined into obscurity, such as Dolores del Río ("The Loves of Carmen" and "Ramona").
In 1928 Rudeman attended the International Film Exhibition at The Hague, and that same year she received a major commission to redesign the many wall paintings and lampshades at the Cinéma Palace, a movie theatre in Groningen. This was despite her complete lack of experience with interior design. The results were well received; coverage ranged from in-house, cinematic trade publications to popular women's magazines such as "Het Rijk der Vrouw". The latter wrote that although the local community was "highly conservative in their taste [they] learned to appreciate her ultra-modern work." The magazine also wrote that although in post-war Europe they were "used to seeing women in men's jobs... It was a surprise... when we saw Dolly Rudeman's posters and learnt that this was the work of a woman!" The same year her poster for Charlie Chaplin's "The Circus" became the flrst poster to win the Dutch government's official seal of approval.
The Cinema Trust commissions dried up for Rudeman when Barend Lugend, from whom Rudeman had received some of her earliest commissions, left the organisation in 1929. Of her work until 1932, an estimated 150 posters and 70 programs remain. She continued to produce special assignments, and was exhibited as a solo artist and in group shows.
Rudeman had to work quickly in producing her posters. She had no time to actually see the films she was illustrating because her posters had to be out before the films they depicted. All she had to work with was a script scenario and sometimes a photograph of the stars. Sometimes she had to work on two or three posters per week, in addition to other work designing chocolate boxes, letterheads, packaging and magazine designs, and on one occasion, a luxury wall calendar.
Exhibitions.
The first time Rudeman's work was exhibited was in a one-day exhibition on 17 October 1927 in Amsterdam. The show was a success, to such an extent that trade paper "De Reclame" lamented the fact that it was so short. A follow-up exhibition opened on 31 October 1927 in the Hotel Krasnapolsky.
One of the major exhibitions of her career was held in February 1931 at the White House, opposite the Peace Palace, in The Hague. This was an "extremely exclusive" gallery operating on an invitation-only basis, and had the benefit of not only promoting Rudeman and her work, but the cinema poster as a form of art in itself. Rudeman was, a contemporary commented, "mounting a courageous front against the bad taste of the film poster." Her original work was on sale for between 75 and 500 guilders .
Post-war career and death.
One of her last works before the outbreak of World War II was a work commissioned by the Committee for Warning Against Unilateral Disarmament. This was an evocative piece, illustrating "a pale man, symbolising the despair, fear and self-reproach of a defenceless war victim. A slipping national flag is the only thing covering his naked body. Behind him stand ruined, burning buildings." During the war, poster production was halted, partly due to a lack of basic materials but also because a number of people in the industry were deported under the Nazi occupation of Holland. Rudeman continued to live in The Hague, but was forced to relocate temporarily to Amsterdam twice, in 1941 and 1944, due to allied bombing raids. The second occasion saw her remain in Amsterdam for good.
In Amsterdam, Rudeman lived with her cousin, Prul Rudeman. During the occupation, they took in a Jewish man named Rubens, who hid behind one of the Rudemans' cupboards when there was a police raid. They successfully kept him hidden from the Nazis until the end of the war. She stayed in touch with Lugend too, who would bring a hare for their annual Christmas meal; friends of Rudeman's from her early days at the Academy also joined them.
Rudeman's post-war career was mainly built around postcards, portraits and watercolours, as well as some posters, particularly for the K.N.M.V Motor Races. The 1950s, in fact, have been described as Rudeman's Golden Age; she received many good commissions, and worked for Organon (in Oss) and Mulder and Zoon in Amsterdam, which further spread her work in America. Her work at this time included decals for porcelain, jugs, vases, and the like. She also contributed illustrations for picture books (not only works such as Hans Christian Andersen's "Fairy Tales", but her own children's publications). Her partnership with Mulder ended in the 1970s, and Rudeman concentrated on children's portraits on private commission. She never again, however, received the national publicity and attention that she had before the war; likewise, it has been suggested, she never found the artistic freedom she wanted.
Rudeman died in Amsterdam on 21 January 1980 of pulmonary emphysema. There were no obituaries.
Late twentieth-century popularity.
Although Rudeman died in relative obscurity—"and her interesting work, her hundreds of film posters, seemed lost"—towards the end of the century the Dutch film poster archives received a thorough inventory, in which many of her pieces were rediscovered. This led to renewed interest in her work and a major 1985 exhibition in the United States, "The Modern Dutch Poster: The First Fifty Years", at which her "Battleship Potemkin" was displayed.
Artistic style and criticism.
Rudeman was known for her "bold, futuristic style", being both "austere and dynamic," and the influence of early German Expressionism on her work has been noted. Although constrained by being able to work only from film stills, her portrait style has been described as "exchanging realism... for a suggestive atmosphere." In 1929, contemporary journalist Kate de Ridder wrote of Rudeman's work that, whereas a female artist's work usually demonstrated a feminine touch, Rudeman's bold style was far less so. "De Groene Amsterdammer" described her design for Battleship Potemkin as making "a strong impression," whilst "Het Vaderland", from The Hague, noted how "boldly drawn" it was, suggestive of the work of as much an artist as those who made the film itself. The same newspaper incorrectly ascribed the poster for "Potemkin" to a man, and corrected this in a lengthy article describing the artist and her work, in which she was called a promising young woman. Later commentators have noted the emphasis by contemporary newspapers (such as "Het Vaderland") on Rudeman's youth. The same newspaper also described the film industry's advertising as "the epitome of ugliness," consisting of "gaudy sheets... overloaded with letters... clumsily drawn." In contrast, Rudeman's work made an immediate impact in the national press; her work was popularly seen as being in tune with the "modernity" of the twenties. Her style and works have been compared favourably to many of her contemporaries, including Ludwig Hohlwein, Hap Hadley in the United States and the Stenberg brothers in the Soviet Union. It has been defined as possessing three main identifying features: "good taste, a feel for colour and originality."
Major works.
Rudeman herself believed she had designed over 250 film posters in her career. It has been estimated that only about half of her oeuvre has survived, of which at least 90 are extant in public and private collections. Her works include:


Ruchika Pandey

Ruchika Pandey is an Indian film actress and fashion designer who acted in several Hindi films.
Biography.
Pandey's film "Pyaar Ka Saudagar" was released in 1991. Her film "Yaara Dildara" was also released in 1991 where Aasif Sheikh was her co-star.
Pandey's film "Mr. Bond" was released in 1992. In this film Akshay Kumar was her co-star. She also appeared in "Umar 55 Ki Dil Bachpan Ka" in 1992.
Pandey is now living in Dubai and she is working there as a fashion designer. She lost AED 3,00,000 in 2018 following a SIM-swap fraud.


Henry Hook (crossword compiler)

Henry Hook (September 18, 1955 – October 27, 2015) was an American creator of crossword puzzles, widely credited with popularizing the cryptic crossword in North America. With Henry Rathvon and Emily Cox, he wrote the crossword for the "Boston Globe".
Hook began constructing crosswords at age 14, when he sent a rebuttal crossword to Eugene T. Maleska. Maleska's crossword contained the hidden message:
You Have Just Finished The World's Most Remarkable Crossword
Hook's crossword contained the hidden message:
What Makes You Think Your Puzzle Is More Remarkable Than Mine
Maleska subsequently became Hook's mentor.
In 1980, Hook joined the staff of "Games".
In the mid-1980s, he collaborated with novelists Patricia Moyes and Herbert Resnicow to create crosswords for crossword-themed mystery novels.
In 1990, "CROSSW RD" ranked his "Hooked on Puzzles #3" the best book of the year; Hook subsequently recused himself from future awards.
Stanley Newman has described one of Hook's puzzles as "one of the toughest crosswords (Newman) has ever published".
Matt Gaffney, the crossword constructor for Slate.com, described meeting Hook as being like "meeting Elvis", while Will Shortz called him "ingenious, (and) a truly brilliant puzzlemaker." Crossword editor and historian Ben Tausig, in his 2013 "The Curious History of the Crossword", described Hook as "an under-recognized, polarizing genius with a sometimes tense relationship with audiences."
Hook died on October 27, 2015, after a long illness.


Ria Keburia

Ria Keburia () born Lia Keburia is a Georgian fashion designer based in Paris. Keburia studied at American University of Paris and Institut français de la mode. She established her brand in 2012. Keburia is mostly active in the Russian fashion scene. Japanese cultural interest made her change her stage name from Lia to "Ria".


Magritte Award for Best Production Design

The Magritte Award for Best Production Design (French: Magritte des meilleurs décors) is an award presented annually by the Académie André Delvaux. It is one of the Magritte Awards, which were established to recognize excellence in Belgian cinematic achievements.
The 1st Magritte Awards ceremony was held in 2011 with Eric Blesin and Marc Nis receiving the award for their work in "A Town Called Panic". As of the 2020 ceremony, Catherine Cosme is the most recent winner in this category for her work in "Lola".
Winners and nominees.
In the list below, winners are listed first in the colored row, followed by the other nominees.


Alex Randolph

Alexander Randolph (4 May 1922 – 28 April 2004) was a Bohemian-American designer of board games and writer. Randolph's game creations include TwixT, Breakthru, Inkognito (with Leo Colovini), Raj, Ricochet Robot, and Enchanted Forest (with Michael Matschoss).
Biography.
Randolph was a son of self-described "rich parents" who attended private school in Switzerland.
He spent his early years in various occupations, including military intelligence and as an advertising copy editor in Boston.
In 1961, Randolph moved to Japan and became a professional game developer, performing initial work on TwixT. During this time, he became a dan player in shogi.
In 1962, Randolph (along with Sid Sackson) was commissioned to start a new game division for Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing (also known as 3M). Through 3M, Randolph created and published such games as Breakthru, Evade, Oh-Wah-Ree, and TwixT.
Randolph moved to Venice, Italy in 1968, continuing his career as a game developer with the company Venice Connection established with Dario De Toffoli and Leo Colovini.
Randolph died aged 82 in Venice on 28 April 2004.
Remembrance.
In 2016, as a testimony to his career, Fabulous Games published ADDX - the first ever digital game from Alex Randolph.
Awards.
Spiel des Jahres
Origins Awards Hall of Fame


Appalachia Waltz

Appalachia Waltz is the first album from the trio of cellist Yo-Yo Ma, double-bassist and composer Edgar Meyer, and fiddler and composer Mark O'Connor. Sony Classical released the disc in 1996. It was recorded over three days, 14–17 August 1995.
In its June 1997 issue, "Bass Player" magazine named it one of "30 Essential Bass Albums You Must Own", due to Meyer's exceptional work on the album. The trio followed up this album with "Appalachian Journey" in 2000. The album reached No. 1 on the Billboard's Top Classical Albums chart.


Dave Needle

David Lewis Needle (December 17, 1947 – February 20, 2016) was an American computer engineer. He was a key engineer and co-chief architect in the creation of the Amiga 1000 computer with Jay Miner, Dave Morse, and R. J. Mical. He was one of the main designers and developers of the custom chips of the Amiga computer. Later he co-invented the Atari Lynx and the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer with Morse and Mical.
A 1995 article in "Next Generation" commented: "It's true that of the machines that Mical and Needle have created, only the Amiga has been a true global mass market hit ... But it's only fair to put forward the argument that this is down to the marketing of the machines rather than the quality of the product."
Dave Needle died on February 20, 2016.


Crocs

Crocs, Inc. is an American company based in Niwot, Colorado that manufactures and markets the Crocs brand of foam clogs.
The company has since established a considerable following with American middle school and high school students, with many opting for Crocs to use as school shoes for the school day.
History.
Crocs was founded by Lyndon "Duke" Hanson, and George Boedecker Jr. to produce and distribute a foam clog, the design of which was acquired from a company called Foam Creations, based in Quebec City, Canada. The shoe was originally developed as a boating shoe. The first model produced by Crocs, the "Beach", was unveiled in 2001 at the Fort Lauderdale Boat Show in Florida, and sold out the 200 pairs produced at that time. It has since sold 300 million pairs of shoes.
Manufacture and patents.
In June 2004, Crocs purchased Foam Creations and their manufacturing operations to secure exclusive rights to the proprietary foam resin called Croslite. Croslite is a closed-cell resin, described by third parties as an injection-moulded EVA foam. The foam forms itself to a wearer's feet and offers purported medical benefits, according to a number of podiatrists. Crocs holds one patent covering "breathable workshoes and methods for manufacturing such", U.S. Patent No. 6993858 B2 issued February 7, 2006, and three design patents covering various ornamental aspects, U.S. Patent Nos. D517788, D517789, and D517790 issued on March 28, 2006.
As of 2007, the company had applied to register "Crocs" and the Crocs logo as trademarks in over 40 jurisdictions around the world, including the U.S.; many such applications were pending approval. Crocs also extended the scope of their trademark registrations and applications for both the Crocs mark and logo to cover non-footwear products, such as sunglasses, goggles, knee pads, watches, luggage, and some of their Internet sales activities.
Products.
Crocs are made in a variety of styles and colors. The Classic styles are available in more than 20 colors; most other styles are produced in a palette of four to six colors or two-color combinations. Thus there are different styles for each season.
Crocs also sells other fashion accessories. Jibbitz are decorations that can be clipped to the ventilation holes in the shoes. These include designs, mainly aimed at children, which feature Disney characters. The company has also released a line of purses in a variety of colors.
A "Fuzz Collection" with removable woolly liners extend the brand's range to winter wear.
In 2008, the company entered the golf shoe marketplace, acquiring golf shoe manufacturer Bite Footwear. A Croc-styled pair of golf shoes, the "Ace," was introduced.
In 2020, in response to the coronavirus pandemic, the company launched "A Free Pair for Healthcare" offering healthcare workers a free pair of the comfort shoes. Additionally, Crocs sent out 100,000 pairs of shoes to hospitals to be distributed to staff.
Imitations and counterfeits.
Crocs announced in 2006 that it filed complaints with the United States International Trade Commission (ITC) and the United States district court against 11 companies that manufacture, import or distribute products, called "croc-offs", that Crocs believes infringe its patents.
Seizures of counterfeit Crocs occurred in 2007 in the Philippines and Denmark, and were under litigation in South Africa. In 2010, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held that Crocs' design patent had been infringed.
In 2007, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission requested a voluntary recall of Crocs-like clogs due to a potential choking hazard involving detaching plastic rivets.
Crocs-like brands include Airwalk, Crosskix, Poliwalks, USA Dawgs/Doggers, Veggies, among others. Versions of the Croc style clogs have appeared in children's fashion catalogs, usually under their own name brands or as no names. Other knock-offs are in discount stores, amusement park stores, beach stores, department stores, and superstores.
Health and safety.
Some Crocs shoes were tested and recommended by the U.S. Ergonomics company in 2005 and were accepted by the American Podiatric Medical Association in 2009. In 2008, the U.S. government Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services approved a model of Crocs with molded insoles as diabetic footwear, to help reduce foot injuries.
Footwear such as Crocs and flip-flops came under scrutiny in 2006 in the U.S. and 2008 in Japan when children suffered injuries after the shoes became caught in escalator mechanisms. This was due to the soft shoe material combined with the smaller size of children's feet. In 2008, Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry, after receiving 65 complaints of injuries, requested that Crocs change its design.
Internationally, some healthcare facilities introduced policies in 2007 regulating Crocs. Rapid City Regional Hospital in South Dakota changed its dress code to prohibit the sandal variants and those with holes, citing safety concerns, but allowed closed-top "Professional" and the healthcare-focused "Rx" Crocs to be worn. Over 100 hospitals in Canada were advised to implement similar policies. Blekinge and Karolinska University hospitals in Sweden banned the wearing of "Forsberg slippers" ("Foppatofflor") by staff, due to high voltage static electricity buildup which was observed to interfere with electronic equipment. City hospitals in Vienna, Austria announced banning Crocs, often worn by nursing staff, to comply with antistatic requirements.
Crocs announced the Fuse and two others in 2009, formulated to dissipate static electricity in accordance with European standard EN ISO 20347:2004 (E), for use in the medical sector.
Acquisitions.
In October 2006, Crocs Inc. purchased Jibbitz, a manufacturer of accessories that snap into the holes in Crocs shoes, for $10 million, or $20 million if Jibbitz met earnings goals.
In January 2007, Crocs acquired assets of Ocean Minded for $1.75 million in cash, plus potentially $3.75 million based on performance. Ocean Minded makes leather and ethylene-vinyl acetate-based footwear. In July 2007 Crocs agreed to buy shoe- and sandal-maker Bite Footwear, based in Redmond, Washington for $1.75 million, or up to double that based on earnings results.
In April 2008, Crocs acquired Tidal Trade, Inc. ("Tidal Trade"), the company's third party distributor in South Africa, for $4.6 million. The company recorded $1.4 million in customer relationships on the date of acquisition. Crocs repurchased inventory previously sold to Tidal Trade and accordingly recognized a reduction of revenue of approximately $2.1 million. Also in April the company acquired Tagger International B.V. ("Tagger"), a private limited liability company incorporated under Dutch law that manufactures messenger bags. Tagger was partially owned by the Managing Director of Crocs Europe B.V. The company acquired all Tagger assets for $2 million – $90,000 for inventory and $1.9 million for the Tagger trademark. Later in June, Crocs liquidated Fury, Inc. two years after acquiring it, after efforts to sell it off were unsuccessful. As a result, Crocs wrote off $250,000 related to the remaining customer relationships, intangible assets and trademarks over three months.
Influence on fashion and culture.
Starting in 2006, sales of Crocs increased dramatically, with first-quarterly sales roughly tripling from 2006 to 2007, according to "The New York Times". An article in "The Washington Post" described the phenomenon: "Nor is the fashion world enamored of Crocs. Though their maker touts their 'ultra-hip Italian styling,' lots of folks find them hideous." Tim Gunn, fashion consultant, told "Time" magazine, "... the Croc – it looks like a plastic hoof. How can you take that seriously?" A 2008 anti-Crocs essay by Steve Tuttle in "Newsweek" generated much response from readers who both agreed and disagreed with it.
In 2007, then-President George W. Bush wore black Crocs with socks publicly. In August 2009, First Lady Michelle Obama was spotted wearing Crocs with her daughter. On June 14, 2015, 23-month-old Prince George, son of Prince William and Kate Middleton, was photographed at a charity event wearing navy blue crocs. After one week, this had created a 1,500 percent increase of sales, according to an Amazon.com spokesperson.
Crocs were ranked #6 on the "Worst" list of "Maxim"s "The 10 Best & Worst Things to Happen to Men in 2007." In May 2010, "Time" magazine listed Crocs as one of the world's "50 Worst Inventions".
The shoes have been targets of satire: on "Real Time with Bill Maher", Maher called for a "New rule: stop wearing plastic shoes," and "The Daily Show" "Senior Public Restroom Correspondent" Rob Corddry, following up on the Senator Larry Craig June 2007 lewd conduct arrest, "reported" that anyone wearing Crocs is signalling "anything goes".
A blog named IHateCrocs.com was founded by two Canadian college students (one, Kate Leth, referred to the shoes as "hideous"), while the website CrocFans.com documents uses of the shoes. The Facebook group, "I Don't Care How Comfortable Crocs Are, You Look Like a Dumbass", has been mentioned in the media.
Crocs was the title sponsor of the Association of Volleyball Professionals (AVP) Tour from 2006 through the 2009 season.
Stock.
Crocs completed the initial public offering of its common stock in February 2006. It began trading on the NASDAQ Stock Market under the symbol CROX. On October 30, 2007, the stock dropped 24% when the company announced decreased revenue projections. On April 14, 2008, during the midst of the financial crisis of 2007–2008, the stock dropped 30% in after-hours trading after the company issued a press release in which they significantly decreased earnings estimates for the first quarter. In the same statement they also said they would lay off its 600 Quebec City factory employees as retailers have been reducing orders, though about 100 sales and marketing positions would remain. "The retail environment in the U.S. has become increasingly challenging as consumer spending and traffic levels have slowed," chief executive officer Ron Snyder said. During the financial crisis, CROX dropped to as low as $0.79 before rebounding ($15.50 by November 2010). On October 18, 2011, Crocs stock suffered a single day drop of about 39.4% on lowered earnings and revenues forecast.
In June 2013, Crocs reported a 42.5% decrease in net profits from a year before. As a result, the stock fell 20.2% in one day.
In December 2013, embattled hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors disclosed a 5% stake in Crocs, just over a day after The Blackstone Group said it would invest $200 million in a convertible preferred stock offering that would allow the company to replace its CEO and buy back $350 million in stock. In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, SAC Capital management said it had accumulated a 5% passive stake in Crocs.
Restructuring.
On 21 July 2014, Crocs Inc. announced a restructuring plan to streamline its operations and workforce by eliminating 180 jobs, close 75 to 100 stores (out of 624 worldwide) as well as scrapping underperforming product lines. Crocs has previously eliminated 183 positions, including 70 current and planned positions in its corporate headquarters in Niwot, Colorado. Crocs also announced they would open a "global commercial center" with 50 to 75 employees in Boston, Massachusetts in 2014, for merchandising, marketing and retail functions. In August 2018, Crocs announced it was closing its last company-operated manufacturing plants in Mexico and Italy.


Rick Heinrichs

Richard Heinrichs is an American production designer, effects artist, art director and film producer. He is well known for his work on the "Pirates of the Caribbean" series, Ang Lee's "Hulk" and "The Nightmare Before Christmas". He started his career on visual effects on the other world sequence in "The Watcher in the Woods", Tim Burton's "Hansel and Gretel" and "Vincent" to later work on "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and '. He also worked on "Frankenweenie". He won an Academy Award for Best Art Direction (now called the Academy Award for Best Production Design) for "Sleepy Hollow" (1999) and received further nominations for "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events" (2004) and ' (2006).
He also contributed conceptional designs for Tim Burton's failed "Superman Lives" project.
Biography.
Graduated from the California Institute of the Arts (in Valencia, California), he started to work at Disney where he met Tim Burton and became a regular collaborator of his.


Bo Welch

Robert W. "Bo" Welch III (born November 30, 1951) is an American production designer, art director, film and television director and occasional actor.
Early life.
Welch was born in Yardley, Pennsylvania.
Career.
Welch worked as a production designer on the Tim Burton films "Edward Scissorhands", "Beetlejuice" and "Batman Returns", as well as on the Barry Sonnenfeld films "Men in Black" and "Wild Wild West", among other films. He made his directorial debut with "The Cat in the Hat" but it was a critical and commercial disappointment. He has been nominated for four Academy Awards for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, three of them shared with set decorator Cheryl Carasik and another one with J. Michael Riva
and Linda DeScenna. The four films are "Men in Black", "The Birdcage", and "A Little Princess" with Carasik, and "The Color Purple" with Riva and DeScenna.
Personal life.
Welch met actress Catherine O'Hara on the set of "Beetlejuice" in 1988. They married in 1992 and have two sons: Matthew (born 1994) and Luke (born 1997).


Charles S. Roberts

Charles Swann Roberts (February 3, 1930 – August 20, 2010, Baltimore, Maryland) was a wargame designer, railroad historian, and businessman. He is renowned as "The Father of Board Wargaming", having created the first modern wargame (a boardgame) in 1952, and the first wargaming company in 1954. He is also the author of a series of books on railroad history, published by the small publishing firm, "Barnard, Roberts, and Company, Inc."
As a wargame designer.
In 1952, Charles S. Roberts created the first board wargame for the mass market, "Tactics", from his house in the Avalon neighborhood of Catonsville, Maryland. In 1954, he began selling it via mail-order as The Avalon Game Company; and Roberts formed gaming company Avalon Hill in 1958 to publish "Tactics II" (1958), the newest incarnation. "Tactics II" improved on the basic game design of his earlier effort, and formed the genesis for the concept of the combat results table. In 1958 he published "Gettysburg", considered to be the first board wargame based upon an actual historical battle, with subsequent versions in 1961 and 1964.
Hard hit by a recession, Roberts turned over Avalon Hill to one of his creditors, Eric Dott of Monarch Services, in December 1963. Tom Shaw, an old friend of Roberts and the only person to stay on from the original company, oversaw the company's successful period from 1963-1982. After six years in Roberts home, the company moved to a dedicated building in the Parkville neighborhood of Baltimore.
Starting in 1988, Roberts' name was given to the Charles S. Roberts Awards, given for excellence in the historical wargaming hobby. He was a charter member of the Charles Roberts Awards Hall of Fame.
In 1999 "Pyramid" magazine named Charles S. Roberts as one of "The Millennium's Most Influential Persons" "at least in the realm of adventure gaming."
As a railroad historian.
Following the sale of his wargame company, Avalon Hill, Charles Roberts held various positions in the publishing industry. In 1973, he founded a small press, Barnard, Roberts, and Company, which he has described as "publishing to the Catholic market", even though Roberts himself is non-Catholic. Over time, the company's emphasis shifted away from religious publications and toward railroad history.
Roberts took pride in coming from a long line of railroaders. One of his great great uncles was Thomas Swann, president of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad from 1848 to 1853. Roberts' father and grandfather (also named Charles Swann Roberts) had long careers with the Baltimore and Ohio. In one of his books, Roberts reminisced about childhood trips with his father to observe the operations of the Pennsylvania Railroad, of which Roberts had always been an enthusiast.
The firm of Barnard, Roberts, and Company published numerous books about railroad history, many written by Charles Roberts himself. Earlier volumes focused on the Baltimore and Ohio, and later books documented the Pennsylvania Railroad. The first in this series was "Triumph I: Altoona to Pitcairn: 1846-1996", and the last was "Triumph IX: Salt Sea to Bays, Valleys, Dells, and Firestorms: 1927-2007". In "Triumph IX", Roberts includes reminiscences about his life and movingly pays tribute to his late first wife, Patricia.


Player-killing


Katharine Hamnett

Katharine E. Hamnett CBE (born 16 August 1947, in Gravesend, Kent) is an English fashion designer best known for her political T-shirts and her ethical business philosophy.
Career.
Hamnett graduated from Saint Martin's School of Art and founded the Katharine E. Hamnett clothes label in 1979.
Media exposure.
Hamnett's oversized T-shirts with large block letter slogans, launched in 1983, were adopted by pop bands, including Wham!. George Michael wore his white "CHOOSE LIFE" shirt in the music video for "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go." The t-shirt also appeared in Queen's video for "Hammer to Fall" (worn by Roger Taylor). Taylor wore Hamnett's "WORLDWIDE NUCLEAR BAN NOW" shirt during Queen's historic appearance at the first edition of the Rock in Rio festival in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
In 1984, ZTT's Paul Morley designed a series of "FRANKIE SAY..." T-shirts to promote the record label's chart act Frankie Goes to Hollywood (FGTH). Morley has stated that these designs were consciously based on Hamnett's slogan T-shirts: "What persuaded me was reading Katharine Hamnett saying she wanted the T-shirts ripped off, which reminded me of Mark P, saying he wanted "Sniffin' Glue" to be ripped off. And I mean, I did a fanzine, so when I read that I thought, great, fanzine T-shirts!" The official FGTH designs were particularly successful, and spawned many imitations of their own.
Models such as Naomi Campbell have appeared in Hamnett shirts bearing the slogans "USE A CONDOM" and "PEACE."
Hamnett viewed her t-shirts as a way of getting her message across: "If you want to get the message out there, you should print it in giant letters on a t-shirt." Her first shirt featured the "CHOOSE LIFE" slogan. Inspired by a Buddhist exhibit, it was a comment against war, death and destruction. Hamnett has spoken out several times against the slogan's use by pro-life activists in the U.S. She wrote on her website, "It's not about the anti-abortion lobby. The US anti-abortion lobby attempted to appropriate CHOOSE LIFE. We are taking it back and promoting its real meaning. Ours is authentic and I believe in a woman's right to choose."
In 2015, Hamnett designed a t-shirt reading CHOOSE LOVE for the charity Help Refugees (which is now known as Choose Love).
Outside her own label, in 1984 Hamnett was involved in the founding of Tanya Sarne's Ghost label.
Political activism.
Beginning in 1989, with research showing pesticide poisoning in cotton-growing regions, and sweatshop labour a major part of the textiles industry, Hamnett began lobbying for major changes in the way the industry operated. After disappointment with the results, Hamnett terminated most of her licensing arrangements, and in 2005 relaunched her line under stricter ethical guidelines, including manufacturing and agricultural practices.
At one point, Hamnett met with then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher wearing her own t-shirt with the slogan "58% DON'T WANT PERSHING", a reference to polls showing public opposition in the United Kingdom against the basing of Pershing missiles in the country. In 2003, at a London fashion show, Hamnett's catwalk models wore shirts with "STOP WAR, BLAIR OUT", a reference to the looming invasion of Iraq.
In 2008, Hamnett said that fashion designers participating in the London Fashion Week were racist due to what she views as increasing exclusion of black models, stating:
In 2013, Hamnett designed two different t-shirts for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament: "EDUCATION NOT TRIDENT" and "NHS NOT TRIDENT". As an additional sign of her commitment to the anti-nuclear cause, Hamnett joined the 55th edition of the Easter demonstration at Aldermaston, on 1 April 2013.
Hamnett was one of several celebrities who endorsed the parliamentary candidacy of the Green Party's Caroline Lucas at the 2015 general election.
Monsanto.
In June 2014, Hamnett joined Nimrod Kamer to perform a stunt outside Hackney Town Hall, aiming to make Hackney Mayor Jules Pipe ban the weedkiller Monsanto Roundup being used in the borough.
Awards and honours.
Hamnett won the first ever British Fashion Awards, and in 1996, was voted Britain's favourite designer by readers of "Cosmopolitan". Hamnett was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2011 New Year Honours, for services to the fashion industry.


Dwight Franklin

Dwight Franklin (28 January 1888 in New York City – 19 January 1971 in Santa Monica, California) was an American artist, taxidermist, naturalist, museum curator, and designer of costumes for Hollywood films.
Career.
Dwight Franklin began working in 1906 as a taxidermist for the American Museum of Natural History. In 1910 he participated in a Museum-sponsored expedition to Mississippi's Moon Lake, part of the habitat of the American paddlefish. Franklin created many figurines and sculptures. He built historical dioramas for the American Museum of Natural History, the Brooklyn Children's Museum, the Newark Museum, and the Museum of the City of New York.
With John Treadwell Nichols and Henry Weed Fowler, he was a founder in 1915 of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists.
In the early 1930s Franklin moved from New York City to Los Angeles to work as a costume designer for Hollywood films.
Personal life.
Franklin married Mary C. McCall Jr. (1904-1986), novelist and screenwriter, in January 1928. They divorced in February 1943. He married Eliza Moultrie Franklin (1901–1982) in 1947, and they remained married until his death in 1971.


Eric Goldberg (game designer)

Eric Goldberg is an American game designer who has worked primarily on role-playing games.
Career.
For Simulations Publications, Incorporated (SPI), Eric Goldberg designed "Commando", a man-to-man tactical combat game featuring character creation and skills. Goldberg also designed "DragonQuest" (1980), SPI's biggest roleplaying game and perhaps its first true roleplaying game. Goldberg also contributed to Chaosium's "Thieves' World" (1981). Goldberg and his long-time friend and SPI co-worker Greg Costikyan approached Dan Gelber about turning Gelber's RPG design called 'Paranoia' from a game he ran for his local group into a professional product. Gelber gave Goldberg and Costikyan his notes and they turned those ideas into a complete manuscript. During his time working at SPI, Goldberg also designed "Eric Goldberg's KURSK" which was subsequently published in 1980. This project was the 2nd Edition of SPI's original "KURSK" game (1971). In 1983, Goldberg took a job at West End Games as the new Vice President of Research & Development. Gelber, Costikyan, and Goldberg licensed "Paranoia" to West End Games, and Ken Rolston helped rewrite the rules before it was published in 1984. Goldberg designed "Tales of the Arabian Nights" (1985), a paragraph-based storytelling board game.
Greg Costikyan and Goldberg left West End Games in January 1987, forming the short-lived Goldberg Associates. When West End Games declared bankruptcy in 1998, Costikyan and Goldberg tried to recover the rights to "Paranoia"; although West End's founder Scott Palter fought this, a judge gave the rights back to the creators in 2000. Costikyan and Goldberg licensed "Paranoia" to Mongoose Publishing, which began producing new books for the game in 2004. In writing the new edition called "Paranoia XP", Varney, Goldberg and Costikyan reached out to and actively collaborated with "Paranoia"'s online fan community through an official blog and through Paranoia-Live.net.


Hiroshi Minagawa

, also known by the nickname "Nigoro", is a Japanese video game artist, designer and director.
Career.
Minagawa had worked at Quest Corporation alongside his colleagues Yasumi Matsuno and Akihiko Yoshida before they all decided to switch to Square in 1995. He continued collaborating with his co-workers as the art director of "Final Fantasy Tactics" and "Vagrant Story". For the "Final Fantasy XII" project, he was originally the graphics and real-time visual director. However, when the original director Matsuno left the company due to an illness, Minagawa was put in charge of directing the game in cooperation with Hiroyuki Ito. He felt that the pressure of working on a "Final Fantasy" installment helped him and influenced his decisions. Minagawa most enjoyed the period in which the team continued to come up with new ideas, but he ultimately had to decide to abandon many features in order to finish the game.
Following the positive reception of ', a decision was made to remake Quest's '. Minagawa directed the game and took on the laborious task of assembling the original 1995 staff members—including Matsuno—who were now working at different companies. Upon finishing his work on the project, Minagawa was asked to join the "Final Fantasy XIV" team as the lead user interface and web designer. This was part of a plan to salvage the game after its initial negative reception by critics and players. Director Naoki Yoshida considered the fact that one of the "Final Fantasy XII" directors was now solely responsible for one aspect of "Final Fantasy XIV" an indication of how serious Square Enix was about improving the game. The new and improved version of the game called "" was eventually released to critical acclaim.


FreeMarker

FreeMarker is a free Java-based template engine, originally focusing on dynamic web page generation with MVC software architecture. However, it is a general purpose template engine, with no dependency on servlets or HTTP or HTML, and is thus often used for generating source code, configuration files or e-mails.
History.
FreeMarker had a somewhat hectic history until about 2004, caused by paradigm shifts and other significant changes on multiple occasions. FreeMarker 1 (now known as FreeMarker Classic, a separate project) was originally written by Benjamin Geer and Mike Bayer.
From 2002, the new project lead was Jonathan Revusky, who released FreeMarker 2, which started a sequence of several substantial changes. The main goal of the changes was to make the template language more strict, i.e., to detect as many of the typos and other typical mistakes as possible. Also, automatic object wrapping was introduced, along with gradual advancement of the type system of the template language. The language has gained many power-user features, such as more powerful macro programming capabilities and namespaces. The language has reached a quite settled state with version 2.3, released in 2004 Q3. As of 2016, the product has remained backward compatible. No significant backward incompatible changes are expected in the FreeMarker 2 series in the future.
In late 2015, FreeMarker was granted to the Apache Software Foundation, where it has entered the Apache Incubator, and in 2018-03-21 it has become a fully accepted Apache project.
Example.
The following template:

Hello ${name}! You have the following messages:
<#list messages as m>

${m.from}: ${m.body}

</#list>

processed by FreeMarker will produce something like:

Hello Joe! You have the following messages:

Tim: Please don't forget to bring the conference papers!

Cindy: Can you give me a visit this afternoon?

Richard: Don't forget the papers this time!

Variables like "name" and "messages" are coming from outside the template, and thus the template author has to deal with the presentation issues only. The template remains the same regardless if these variables are coming from a database or from a cookie or calculated in whatever other ways. Also the exact Java API (and hence the class) of the values can be hidden in FreeMarker using a technique called object wrapping. For example, "messages" seems to be a list or array of JavaBeans that have "from" and "body" properties, but it might as well be something very different, and the template is not affected (as long as a proper object wrapper is used).


Marc Lankhorst

Marc Martijn Lankhorst (born 1968) is a Dutch computer scientist, researcher and consultant, known for his publications on enterprise architecture, and as key developer of ArchiMate, a modelling language for enterprise architecture.
Biography.
Born in Naaldwijk, Lankhorst received his MS in computer science in 1991 at the University of Twente, and his PhD in 1996 at the University of Groningen with a thesis entitled "Genetic algorithms in data analysis" under supervision of Nicolai Petkov.
After graduation Lankhorst started his academic career as faculty member at the Department of Mathematics and Computing Science of the University of Groningen. In 1996 he started working at the Telematica Instituut as Member of Scientific Staff, in 2000 he became Manager Application Engineering, in 2006 Expertise Group Leader, and in 2009 Principal Advisor. By then the Institute had changed its name to Novay. From 2003 to 2007 he was also Module Manager at the Delft TopTech, School Executive Education of the Delft University of Technology. In October 2013, he left Novay and joined BiZZdesign.
At the Telematica Instituut between 2002 and 2004 Lankhorst managed the development of enterprise architecture modeling language ArchiMate, in cooperation with representatives from government, industry and academia.
In 2013 Lankhorst is representative of the Netherlands Architecture Forum at the Federation of Enterprise Architecture Professional Organizations.
Publications.
Lankhorst has authored and coauthored numerous publications in his field of expertise. Books, a selection:
Articles, a selection:


Carri Munden

Carri Munden is an English fashion designer. Born as Carri Munden, she is credited as Carri Mundane and CassettePlaya, her fashion label. She currently works as a stylist and creative director and lives in London.
Career.
Carri as cassette playa has presented her work four times at Fashion East MAN, an initiative for new menswear as part of London Fashion Week, and also showcased her work in a Pitti Immagine sponsored exhibition as part of the Milan Fashion Week. Her first MAN showcase was a film installation (MAN Fall/Winter 2006/07), then a show "L.S.I" for Spring/Summer 2007, followed by a film shown on the runway and then her "Future Primitive" show for Spring/Summer 2008.
Carri has collaborated with Nike on designs on 3 occasions. In collaboration with Nike, a Cassette Playa Nike Blazer Premium shoe was exclusively created and featured in her Spring/Summer 2008 show. It was then released in selected international stores in late 2008. 2009 saw the release of both a capsule collection of clothing - "Nike x Cassette Playa Rivalry Collection" and a cassette playa Nike Dunk shoe.
In addition to her line, Munden has worked as a stylist for music videos and tours. She says of those she works with, "We have the same references... I translate their sound into clothes." She met artist and friend Mathangi Arulpragasam while the latter was looking to include a subject in one of her films; she describes the two as "the only weirdos in west London" at the time.
Carri has worked with artists including M.I.A. , 2NE1, Nicki Minaj, Skepta , Boy Better Know (JME modelled in the first cassetteplaya catwalk), Ruff Sqwad , MNEK, Mykki Blanco , Brooke Candy , Riff Raff (rapper) and
Danny Brown Her designs have also been worn by Kanye West , Lil Wayne, Rita Ora and Rihanna.
Munden was a contributing fashion editor of Super Super magazine, contributor and stylist for "i-D," and has collaborated with Nicola Formichetti of "Dazed & Confused".
Munden has also styled and art directed Billionaire Boys Club lookbooks and an editorial shoot for Dazed & Confused, and "Dunk Be True", an exhibition in the East End of London, focusing on the iconic Nike Dunk, in which she also appeared. She was commissioned by M.I.A. to contribute artwork for her 2007 album "Kala".
Munden graduated in fashion design at the University of Westminster.
In 2007, Munden was nominated for "Best Menswear Designer" at the British Fashion Awards, alongside Christopher Bailey and Alexander McQueen.
In 2008, she was named by "Rolling Stone magazine" as "Best Fashion Designer" of 2008 in their "Best of Rock" issue.
In July 2008, her work is presented in the "Fashion V Sport" exhibition at London's V&A (Victoria & Albert Museum).
International outlets where her clothes sell include Dover Street Market in London, Colette in Paris, SlamJam in Milan, Seven in New York, IT Hong Kong, and GR8 in Tokyo amongst others.
Munden was commissioned by Nintendo DS to provide vinyl and foil artwork rooted in customisation for the console's MySims world game. A 2008 live video jumpdance installation work at the Pitti Uomo in Florence, Italy was particularly well received -showcasing "street gang pixel warriors joined by Sci-fi grime boys" sporting varying garments.
In 2010, Munden appeared in a fashion-themed episode of series six of "The Apprentice".
In February 2010 Carri collaborated with London College of Fashion to produce "The worlds first augmented reality fashion show". This was presented at Somerset House as part London Fashion Week
In September 2010 Carri created an interactive photobooth designed by KIN design and in collaboration with Onedotzero. "Inspired by Japanese purikura and clad in striking Cassette Playa fabric, the booth offered visitors the opportunity to create their own animated gif using 4 photographs taken inside the booth and overlaid with Cassette Playa graphics of their choice" This booth was also installed at barbican as part of Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion , the British Film Institute, Tate Britain and as part of Dazed Live by Dazed and Confused
Carri will be working on a "collaboration" with SHINee's Key in their next concert outfit, hopefully.
After a brief hiatus working on external design projects Carri Munden made a return in SS15 with the newest release from her label Cassette Playa." The range is an exercise in eccentricity, decorated in bold, psychedelic prints and using meticulously chosen messaging to create a collection that is as distinct as it is astute"
A lot of Korean Idols wear her clothes like SHinee's Key and 2NE1
Aesthetic.
Influenced by her subjects' art, Munden has also cited several global traditions including '90s skater fashion, Japanese anime, African prints, neon, and '90s rave as influences in addition to animals, science and science fiction. She describes the CassettePlaya universe as "techno, primal, positive, tribal." CassettePlaya is known a pioneer of the new rave genre in fashion although CassettePlaya has distanced herself from the term, saying it is "Vacant in retro. It's just a marketing machine... I guess it was a fun time but I'm more excited about what happens now. The next level – the next generation. There's a mood of neo-spiritualism and futurism that excites me." Her use of paw print fabrics and "evil looking animal masks" led some to describe her fashions as having "a certain wrath-of-Technoticlan vibe." She says "I draw really heavily from ancient hunting rituals, but my collection was also inspired by Eighties and Nineties skate culture...I wanted to bring that ancient Shamanic vibe to the city today." Aztec art was cited as inspiring her use of orange in early lines. She describes some of her designs as "quite cartoon" but that she has "no intention of making people look funny". Designing wear for men, she feels her designs make male wearers more 'masculinated', stating "You have to be hard to carry it off." Interested in video games, her most recent line references YouTube, text messaging and circuit bending, propelled by her desire to create a matrix with wearers "stepping into the gaming world with no way to get back out."


Jeff R. Leason

Jeff R. Leason is a game designer who has worked primarily on role-playing games.
Career.
Jeff R. Leason co-wrote the "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" adventure "The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan" (1980) with Harold Johnson.
As a staffer for Mayfair Games, Jeff Leason worked with Troy Denning, Louis Prosperi, and David Ladyman on the second edition of "Chill" (1990).


Office of Integrative Art

The Office of Integrative Art () is a German group of artists. Based on artistic practices and current discussions of public processes, the office was founded in 2000. Since then Jörg Amonat (born 1960) and Stefan Krüskemper (born 1963) have developed suggestions and realized contributions in changing team constellations. Fields of work are public art, the urban space, and contemporary art strategies.
Solo projects have included:
Group exhibitions have included:


Hum Award for Best Sitcom

The Hum Award for Best Sitcom is one of the Hum Awards of Merit presented annually by the Hum Television Network and Entertainment Channel (HTNEC) to production company of their producers working in the television industry. As of 3rd Hum Awards, there have been 9 sitcoms nominated for the Best Sitcom award.
History.
Hum Television Network and Entertainment Channel presented this award to producers of Pakistani TV industry, as of first ceremony total of four sitcoms were nominated and currently Danish Nawaz was honored at 1st Hum Awards ceremony 2012 for his sitcom in "Extras (The Mango People)". The name of the category officially termed by the channel is:
Winners and nominees.
In the list below, winners are listed first in the colored row, followed by the other nominees. Following the hum's practice, the sitcoms below are listed by year of their Pakistan qualifying run, which is usually (but not always) the sitcom's year of release.
For the first ceremony, the eligibility period spanned full calendar years. For example, the 1st Hum Awards presented on April 28, 2013, to declared the best sitcoms of the years that were released between January, 2012, and December, 2012, the period of eligibility is the full previous calendar year from January 1 to December 31. How ever Sitcoms are eligible for nomination even if they are still running during nominations announcement.
Date and the award ceremony shows that the 2010 is the period from 2010-2020 (10 years-decade), while the year above winners and nominees shows that the dramas year in which they were telecast, and the figure in bracket shows the ceremony number, for example; an award ceremony is held for the dramas of its previous year.


Zaj

Zaj was an experimental music and performance art group formed in 1959 in Milan, Italy by composers and intermedia artists Walter Marchetti and Juan Hidalgo with the support of the American composer John Cage. The group received major contributions by different artists from the Spanish avant-garde scene, notably from the writer and diplomat José Luis Castillejo and from the interdisciplinary artist Esther Ferrer. During the 1960s, members of Zaj took part in different Fluxus events organised by George Maciunas. With the help of John Cage and his agent Mimi Johnson, Zaj also toured in different cities in the United States in the late 1970s. The group was disbanded in 1993 by Walter Marchetti.


David S. Hall (art director)

David S. Hall (23 July 1905 – 23 July 1964) was a British art director. He was nominated for two Academy Awards in the category Best Art Direction.
Selected filmography.
Hall was nominated for two Academy Awards for Best Art Direction: