Just one month ago we kicked off from the streets of Brooklyn with 3,700 miles ahead of us. Ten days later we arrived by motorcycle in Los Angeles with some sore arses and a few new stories to tell. Yesterday we introduced the bikes and bags that kept us on route, and today we continue with the week-long rundown with an overview of our favorite riding gear. From boots to protective gear and leather gloves, the following is a closer look at what we wore every day without fail, and a survey of how it handled the real road test. Stay tuned for a look at our choice of camping essentials coming later this week.
More "Easy Rider" than modern adventurer, the Biltwell Gringo helmet is as classic as it gets. And, when considering a trip such as ours, we opted for simple aesthetics and timeless style over the tech-laden alternatives. The sleek design has been around for decades, but not until just recently has it received the official DOT-certified sticker. Now, thanks to some crucial safety developments in internal design, the helmet is ready for the road and those with a disposition toward classic motorcycle culture couldn't be happier. The newly reintroduced Gringo sports the same good looks with a lighter weight and comfier fit—two things that make a big difference at long distance. Even after six to 10 hours in the saddle, the Gringo wasn't a bother—save for a bit of road noise and broken clasp or two on the requisite bubble shield. As far as we were concerned, the Gringo was really the only choice for the job. Find more from Biltwell.
We first introduced the West America + Woolrich jacket earlier last month, along with the announcement of the entire collaboration collection designed by Jordan Hufnagel and James Crowe. While CH generally avoids covering the same thing twice, we were lucky enough to receive one of very few production quality samples to test. And, after multiple trips and a few thousands miles, we couldn't have been happier with the results. The heavy waxed canvas shell stood up to everything that was thrown at it—motor oil, bug brains, road grime, and even some road gravel thanks to a few mishaps in West Virginia. In the end it only developed a nice patina, one deserving of an exposé on ACL. The clasp pockets came in handy for carrying everything from my Contax T2 to a trusty pocket-knife, all the while being wide enough to be accessed and re-clasped by gloved hands. The throat-latch was key for keeping cold air out on frigid mornings in the Northeast and bugs out everywhere else.
Although the leather jacket is one of the first things that comes to mind when considering motorcycling attire, it's often difficult to find one without extraneous zippers, patches and other over-design elements—which made deciding on the Enzo Jacket from LA-based custom motorcycle and apparel designer Roland Sands that much easier. The clean, classic design delivers just enough utility without going overboard. Plus the well-oiled leather was exceptionally soft and smelled great—to the point that it doubled as a pillow for a few nights before being entirely covered in bug guts. Break-in only took a few days, with the jacket falling nicely against the body even with elbow, shoulder and back-armor installed. Weight-wise, the medium insulation was enough for cold mornings without being overwhelming once the temperature rose.
With such a refined design, the only bells and whistles seemed pretty useful—an adjustable waistline helped dial in the fit, oversized zipper pull-tabs were helpful when wearing gloves and large mesh interior pockets were great for stashing gloves and other essentials during quick stops. The snap on the throat-latch was a bit finicky though, and made closure all but impossible when wearing gloves and not looking in the mirror. Find more details at Roland Sands.
As the preeminent purveyor of vintage-inspired motorcycle culture and all things that come with it, Deus Ex Machina is never far from mind. We shot for a custom bike, and landed a pair Belted Gloves, which was just as well, as we were genuinely curious to see how they'd hold up when actually put to the test. Coming from a brand that that seems to peddle an aesthetic over all else, there was a fear that they'd underperform. In fact, they held up better than those from some of the industry's shining stars. The supple leather took a bit longer to break in than I had hoped but once enough dirt, sweat and oil had soaked in, they fit like they were made to measure. The lengthier cut was useful during rainstorms, as it kept water from rushing up my sleeve, and because the gloves lack a liner (they're constructed of a single ply of leather) they dried quickly and allowed for full digit articulation. For an unpretentious, vintage look and overall solid construction, the Deus Belted Gloves aren't a bad choice. Check Deus Ex Machina online for more on all things motorcycle.
Compared with the bare-bones Deus Belted Gloves, the Icon 1000 Beltway Gloves are on the other end of the spectrum entirely. Rigid with armor and reinforced leather, the sturdy gloves definitely gave the impression that, should things go pear-shaped, you'd still be able to count to 10 afterwards. Unfortunately because of this high level of protection, the gloves were actually a bit too insulated for the south and took a while to break in, delivering some rather uncomfortable hot spots in the meantime. Once the process was done though, it was nothing but confident cruising. Find more details on the Beltway Glove from Portland's Icon 1000.
We tend to be partial to Red Wings and Danner around here. But after day one in the James Boots from LA's Broken Homme, my mind was changed. Out of the box, the American-made boots fit like I'd owned them for years—the break-in period literally lasted just minutes. And with a Vibram sole, the boots remain lightweight, which—when you're in a pair for 12+ hours a day—can make all the difference. Plus the buttery soft leather was both notably comfortable and aesthetically attractive. Long, sweaty days spent kicking pedals and cold nights trouncing through dirt, grass and gravel put a licking on the leather and sole, but did little lasting damage. To put it simply: The James Boots were the only shoes packed for the entire 10-day trek. Visit Broken Homme for more information.
Images by Hunter Hess. For a closer look at our gear selections see the slideshow. And be sure to see Part 1 to check out the bikes and bags that made the trip possible.
Off Piste encourages exploration. With each feature we'll introduce the people, products and places that make life outside the city possible and life in the city more down to earth.


It's been an incredibly rough few weeks for Danajon Bank and the Central Visayas region of Philippines. Following a 7.2 magnitude earthquake that caused considerable loss of lives and homes, the region was today hit by one the strongest tropical storms on record.
Project Seahorse is pleased to announce the launch of iSeahorse, a brand-new citizen science initiative that allows anyone, anywhere in the world to contribute to seahorse science and conservation with just a few clicks of a mouse or taps on a smartphone.
Project Seahorse and its NGO partner in the Philippines are seeking volunteer, certified SCUBA divers (minimum 15 logged dives) who are interested in participating in a long-term monitoring program for marine protected areas (MPAs) in northern Bohol, Philippines.


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Responsible investing (RI) has been around in one form or another for more than three decades. But interest has boomed in recent years, particularly with individual investors. Climate change, corruption, cybersecurity and a lack of gender diversity in companies are some of the concerns prompting many people to think about changing the way they invest.
Data shows more than $35.3 trillion was invested in RI around the world at the start of 2020, an increase of $4.6 trillion since the start of 2018, according to the Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment (US SIF). In the U.S., $1 in every $3, or approximately $17 trillion, was invested in a RI strategy.
"People are starting to care more about what a company does, and not just what its earnings are," says Kent McClanahan, vice president of responsible investing at RBC Wealth Management–U.S.
That sentiment, coupled with the data-backed realization that companies that pay attention to factors beyond their bottom line perform better in the long run, is pushing responsible investing to the top of many investors' minds, he says.
What is responsible investing?
RI is an umbrella term encompassing several different approaches used to deliberately incorporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations into an investment portfolio. These approaches are not mutually exclusive; multiple stategies can be applied simultaneously within the investment process. There are four main approaches to this data:
1. ESG integration
ESG integration involves systematically incorporating material ESG factors into investment decision-making to identify potential risks and opportunities and improve long-term, risk-adjusted return. This is when investors consider more than traditional financial measures, such as the intangibles of a company's ESG practices.
"This approach considers risks that traditional finance might ignore," McClanahan says. "Increasingly, these risks have outsized impacts on the value of investments. Investors who are not considering these factors may see increased volatility within their portfolios."
ESG integration happens at the same time as traditional financial analysis, and focuses on the material extra-financial, or ESG, factors that are important to the future earnings of a company. E, S and G factors are examined in tandem with fundamental factors to define attractive investments with long-term returns in focus.
"ESG integration goes beyond earnings, debt, ratios, and other items found on the financial statements," McClanahan says. "It's the information about how a firm operates its business, inputs used to make a product, how a firm treats its employees, and the way a company is managed. Material ESG factors could come to bear on the financials of a company."
A few examples of ESG factors include:
Environmental concerns: Climate change, natural resources conservation, pollution and waste management, and water scarcity
Social issues: Data privacy and security, community and government relations, workplace health and safety, human rights and diversity
Governance topics: Accounting practices, board accountability and structure, disclosure practices, executive compensation, corporate ethics, regulatory compliance and transparency
2. ESG screening and exclusion
This approach involves applying positive or negative screening of companies, industries, or sectors to either include or exclude assets from a portfolio. This is often referred to as investing in line with one's values, or values alignment. Screening and exclusions are accomplished by including or withdrawing support from investments to make a financial influence that aligns with predefined values, or identifying assets that meet a defined set of desired ESG-criteria or ESG score threshold.
"More and more, investors are looking to make a positive change by aligning their personal values with their investment choices," McClanahan says.
ESG exclusions and screening can include positive/negative screening, socially responsible investing (SRI), inclusions/exclusions, and more.
Positive screening and negative screening: Identifies assets that meet a defined set of desired ESG-related criteria (which may be a product or conduct based). Positive screening selects only companies that pass a defined ESG score threshold, while negative screening excludes certain companies for poor ESG performance or controversies.
Socially Responsible Investing (SRI): Applies the ESG screening and exclusions approach based on a defined set of ESG-related criteria or norms to exclude specific companies or sectors, generally stemming from a certain principle or set of values. Examples of exclusions could include weapons, tobacco, or alcohol.
Ethical and faith-based screening: Refers to investing in line with certain principles based on international norms and religious beliefs, using screens to exclude assets that are deemed morally objectionable by the investor. As an example, Catholic value funds exclude alcohol, tobacco, and contraceptives.
3. Thematic ESG investing
This strategy focuses on investing in assets involved in a particular sustainability or ESG-related theme, or seeking to address a specific social or environmental issue. Examples of themes may include: water, climate, renewable energy, social housing, human rights and education. With thematic investing, there may be a focus on directing capital across a range of themes and/or targeting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals demonstrating measurable real world impact.
"Sustainability has become a key concern for companies and investors alike, as both can benefit if growth and profits are sustainable," McClanahan says. "Innovation and technology will play a critical role in creating solutions to make a more sustainable global economy."
A number of technologies have emerged to help create a more sustainable planet, with more on the horizon. These are referred to as "SusTech," or Sustainability through Technology. Several specific SusTech themes will likely play an increasingly important role in the economy, including:
GreenTech (green technologies)
AgriTech and FoodTech (agricultural technologies and food technologies)
FinTech (financial technologies)
HealthTech (health care technologies)
4. Impact investing
Finally, impact investing focuses on companies and projects that proactively seek to generate a measurable positive social or environmental impact—alongside a financial return. These investments are seeking to fund change. Impact investing is not charity, and investors still want a return on their investment, but they may be willing to take a capital loss as long as there are tangible, measurable results for the investment.
"Every company has a social or environmental impact, whether positive or negative," says McClanahan. "Impact investments attempt to measure this impact and see that they're having a positive influence on society or the environment."
For example, an investor seeking returns could invest their capital in a project that assists underserved communities through support for low- and moderate-income home buyers, affordable rental housing units, small business administration loans and economic development.
Responsible investing is here to stay
Research indicates that interest in responsible investing continues to grow. A 2021 survey of high-earning and high-net-worth millennials conducted by RBC Wealth Management–U.S. found that 85 percent of respondents said it's important to align their investments with their values, such as ESG principles, and that these types of investments are an integral part of their investment strategy.
Millennials' incomes are rising, and they are set to be on the receiving end of one of the largest wealth transfers in history—approximately $80 trillion is expected to pass from boomers to the next generation, according to a report by Cerulli Associates. As they begin to invest that wealth, millennials might continue to fuel the growth of RI.
Women are also rising in influence. According to the National Association of Women Business Owners, women now control 52 pecent of wealth, which is expected to grow to an estimated two-thirds by 2030. Women are adding to their assets at a rate of $5 trillion per year globally, according to research by the Boston Consulting Group. How they choose to invest that wealth will have a significant impact, McClanahan says.
"The convergence of these demographic shifts and a growing desire among these influential groups of investors to have a positive impact in their community and broader society is likely the beginning of what will be a surge in interest in responsible investing," says McClanahan.
Due diligence processes do not assure a profit or protect against loss. Like any type of investing, ESG and responsible investing involve risks, including possible loss of principal.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Tada. Clean, clear, fresh and tidy right?
Super tak boleh tahan my long long hair.
Good thing, it's pretty and I can have many hair styles.
Bad thing, my hair tangles a lot it takes me ages to blow my hair.
I got my BigBang Still Alive Special Edition Top's Version!
Spot my red mirror like iphone case?


After watching the September 10, 2013 kangaroo court on I-502 and medical marijuana I feel compelled to retort. First of all I think that any committee meeting regarding marijuana that is chaired by a cop is 99 percent fake. Rep. Christopher Hurst (heretofore Officer Hurst) proved my point when he openly wished people would not use the I-502 model because the stigma of legalization would be over.
Officer Hurst has a problem holding back how he really feels about cannabis. He claims he supports the will of the people yet he openly talks about how he wishes people would not participate in the process. Officer Hurst should not be involved with this process and as long as he is the process will be 99 percent fake.
As far as the rest of the I-502 portion of the hearing went, it was chock full of proof that the current I-502 model will go broke trying to pay for all of the overhead that will be pushed upon the process. Officer Hurst went on to say that many of these recreational cannabis businesses will go under using the Colorado cannabis model as an example.
The LCB has also made similar comments yet there has been no effort to trim down expenses and create a profitable business concept. In addition, the I-502 hearing also proved it was 99 percent fake due to the lack of participation by interested cannabis parties. You heard from everyone except the genuine cannabis users.
A hearing or working group without all the stakeholders is 99 percent fake and an affront to the true democratic process. Officer Hurst is now well known for his inability to handle dissenting opinion and his continued involvement with cannabis issues will continue to relegate the process to being 99 percent fake.
The medical cannabis portion of the hearing was even more of a joke. Officer Hurst throws out the comment that all medical cannabis is 99 percent fake. "But don't get me wrong he says". Officer Hurst supports medical cannabis. Officer Hurst supports medical cannabis so much, he wants them all to get their medical marijuana from a process he himself admits will go under.
Sorry Officer Hurst you are wrong, you don't support medical cannabis. You support medical cannabis users getting medical cannabis from a process you do not expect to survive. Talk about 99 percent fake.
Furthermore you have never understood anything about medical cannabis and the desired components of cannabis that most medical users seek, which is CBD and CBN. These components have beneficial medical qualities and your "broke on arrival" I-502 model provides no access to the most important medical qualities of cannabis.
Of course the stakeholders you invited to your 99 percent fake hearing process failed to point this out. In fact, the people you did invite underscore the political process in Washington State. Kristi Weeks was there to give the hearing panel what John Lane wanted the panel to hear not to talk about CBD or CBN or the lack of availability for those products in the I-502 model.
The rule making process in this state is a sham. All of the government agencies take the real rule making from the Governors policy office. The state agencies can't tie their shoes without being told how to tie them by the Governor's policy office.
This was proven when the Department of Health was tasked with determining a 60 day supply of cannabis in SB 6032,and the LCB rulemaking in I-502 has been no different. The LCB has the same puppet strings attached to it as the DOH.
Those strings go straight to John Lane at the Governors policy office. With such command and control over rule making, the governor's office can undermine the process at will and develop rule making outside the realm of the Open Public Meetings act.
Here in Washington State the rule making is all done behind closed doors or in chain and serial emails, something that was supposed to be illegal in Washington State according to the Washington State Supreme Court case law. What little open public meetings there are is nothing more than a dog and pony show for the public.
From what I have seen the rule making process in Washington State is also 99 percent fake. The Governor, law enforcement lobbyists WAPA,WASPC, treatment industry lobbyists, banking officials, and a few sell outs from the cannabis movement (Phil Wyatt, Lonnie Johns Brown, Ezra Eickmeyer, John Davis, Muraco, Jeff Gilmore), all huddle in the back room to determine what will really happen.
It is sickening to continue watching the corrupt and 99 percent fake political process in Washington State. The most I can hope for is to reach the interested public that happens to watch TVW, not to actually influence what I already know happens behind closed doors.
My message and plea to all of the legislators that want revenue from cannabis industries, is to take back the process by wrestling it from Officer Hurst and the Governor's office. The I-502 model cannot sustain itself and will become insolvent unless changes are made to it legislatively.
First and foremost the 25 percent tax at all phases must be reduced for the sake of I-502. Every person that has been looking at the I-502 concept knows it will not work with a tax structure that high.
Second, if you want medical cannabis patients to use the I-502 model the taxes must be reduced and the CBD and CBN products must be sold.
Third, do not wait for the banking laws to change. De-schedule cannabis and take it out of schedule on on a state level and trigger de-scheduling on a federal level. This will remove the criminal penalties from Cannabis and allow banking to be done.
A fourth option would be to eliminate the distribution part of I-502 and create an enabling process that allows people to grow their own cannabis in commercial p-patch zones that remove the process from the neighborhoods so the process can be profitable thanks to commercial power rates. These processes can charge for the power, the dirt, the pots, the fertilizers, and not run afoul of federal laws because there is no actual distribution system.
These are suggestions to make I-502 or medical cannabis work for revenue purposes made by a cannabis user with genuine belief that cannabis industries should be a part of our economic process. This suggestion is not a 99 percent fake belief put forward by an entity that has a vested economic interest in the continuation of prohibition, like Officer Hurst and the Governors office.


It is good that there is a special week to recognize how important sleep is to a healthy and happy life. But we really need to be aware of this the other 51 weeks in the year, too.
Children's health, quality of life, and ability to function well in school will be negatively impacted if they do not get their sleep requirements met on a regular basis. Statistics show that children who do not sleep enough are more apt to perform poorly or below their potential at school, to injure themselves, to have trouble controlling their emotions, to make poor decisions, or to simply not feel good or be happy.
Sleep researchers say that it is important to understand that people cannot "get used" to doing with too little sleep. Rather than adjusting, the body simply becomes more and more sleep-deprived. People who do not get enough sleep should begin to look at making whatever changes are necessary to sleeping more rather than trying to adjust to doing without. Sleep is not time wasted – it's time well spent to maintain good health and quality of life.
An adequate amount of sleep is different for children of different ages. Children in pre-kindergarten through first-or second-grade need about 11 or 12 hours of sleep per night. Those in the upper elementary grades need a good 10 hours per night. Middle school students need at least eight and a half to nine and a half hours per night and high school students need a minimum of eight to nine hours of sleep per night.
Stick to a regular bedtime and a regular getting up time in the morning. Making a lot of exceptions to the sleep schedule it detrimental to the child's ability to become rested and to perform well in school.
Provide an environment that is sleep-friendly. Our ability to sleep is affected by a combination of complex biological and behavioral factors that include the lowering of body temperature and reactions to light and sound. Make the sleeping room one that is dark, cool, quiet, and free from intrusions during the time set aside for sleep.
Maintain healthy routines for meals, study, recreation, entertainment, and family time to form a good sleep schedule. Children need routines set by the parent.
Avoid stimulating activities shortly before bedtime. That includes television, using the computer, video games, and listening to stimulating music. It's good to for children to engage in quiet activities such as reading, listening to soothing music, or taking a relaxing, warm bath shortly before bedtime.
Do not discuss stressful subjects or try to deal with difficult issues close to bed time. That should be done earlier in the day.
Avoid foods and beverages that contain caffeine such as coffee, tea, colas and certain other soft drinks, and chocolate at night. Beware of Mountain Dew – though not a cola, it is loaded with caffeine.
Show you care. When young children have trouble sleeping or experience nightmares, it is good to reassure them. Hugs and soothing words from a parent can do a lot of good. But do not take the child to the parents' bed or give the child treats to sooth him or her. This sort of behavior tends to "reward" the problem and form habits that are difficult to break.
The gift of healthy, restoring sleep is priceless. If your child is having trouble with sleep or any other aspect of health, talk to his or her school nurse or the healthcare provider of your choice.
Also, for more information about sleep, visit www.sleepfoundation.org.


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Q: Touch switch with conductive ink as thin as possible First for all. Am not an electrical enginner, am just an amateur artisan, pretending make intetesting gadgets.
So the situation is this. I need to make a circuit in a sheet of paper for just turn on and turn off a very very little led light. The challenge: make this as thin as possible. Ideally with 0.5mm of thickness.
What I already made: I found a very interesting example in this link https://www.electroschematics.com/5996/touch-switch-circuits/
But the problem is, again, the thickness, only the  ic 555 has a 3.5 mm, for me its to much. In summary, is there another way to do this circuit but in a very very thin way?.

A: If all you need is a very weak light, use a neon lamp and a safe, low current power supply. Bridging two conductive ink traces between the lamp and supply with a finger would light the lamp. Using audio-frequency or low frequency RF would make the circuit easier to turn on, since it would bypass skin resistance with capacitive coupling.

A: 0.5mm rules out most packaged ICs (that's about the thickness of a sawn wafer.) If you could use chip-on-board it's possible, or something in chip-scale packaging you might be able to make that.
That said, a Silego GPAK device gets pretty close, at about 0.75mm.
You didn't mention your battery - how are you dealing with that?
More: have a look here. Some candidates that meet your criteria possibly. What are the smallest microcontrollers?

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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2010s, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Birdman, or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014)
December 15, 2014 filmfreedoniaBroadway theatre, criticism, Magic realism 10 Comments
Director/Coscreenwriter: Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu
Most filmmakers portion out what talent they have in small, polite courses. Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu throws messy, teetering banquets every time. Since his debut with 2000's Amores Perros, Iñárritu has made technically bravura, deeply felt and seriously intended works that push at the edges of narrative cinema, sometimes to the limits of credulity and patience. His second film, 21 Grams (2003), was radically told soap opera. His Oscar-nominated Babel (2006) displayed all of his best and worst traits—intense and vibrant portraiture of characters and the worlds they live in, conveyed with powerhouse cinema, tied together with threadbare contrivances and inchoate emotional connections and impulses. Iñárritu has been quiet for some time since his bruising break-up with his screenwriting collaborator Guillermo Arriaga—only the exhausting, Spanish-made drug-addiction drama Biutiful (2010) was released in the interval. Now he's come roaring back to prestige-clad attention again with Birdman, or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), a film that seems intended to give Iñárritu's rival in the Latin-American wunderkind stakes, Alfonso Cuaron, some more competition. Following Cuaron's showy technical extravaganza Gravity (2013), with its epic-length shots and special effects, Iñárritu ripostes with a more earthbound drama that nonetheless one-ups Cuaron by offering a film that affects to be composed of one, constant, driving shot.
Iñárritu uses this device to illustrate the drowning wave of anxiety and detail that threatens to swamp his protagonist, actor Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton), who's directing and starring in his own adaptation of Raymond Carver's What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. Riggan is a former movie star, famed for his part in the "Birdman" franchise of nearly 20 years earlier, and he feels like he sacrificed too much of his credibility and talent for a paycheque. Now he is dogged by the alter ego by which too much of the public knows him, constantly hearing a droning, mordant voice mocking his efforts to reinvent himself as an artist, his Birdman characterisation become his personal daemon.
Riggan has managed to pull together the theatrical production and steered it to the very threshold of opening in the St. James Theatre on Broadway, but has just realised how bad his supporting male star Ralph (Jeremy Shamos) is. By serendipitous fortune, or perhaps contrivance, a lighting rig falls on Ralph's head during a rehearsal, badly injuring him. Riggan has to find another actor quickly. He consults with his lawyer and confidant Jake (Zach Galifianakis) and rattles off a list of potentials, like Woody Harrelson and Jeremy Renner ("Who?"), but they're all busy playing the current wave of superhero films. Costar Lesley (Naomi Watts) suggests her boyfriend, Mike Shiner (Edward Norton), an actor of the stage who has great critical favour and a reputation for uncompromising artistry—that is, he's a pain in the ass.
Because he knows Riggan's play inside out from helping Lesley rehearse, Mike is able not just to slip quickly into the role, but also immediately coax Riggan to make improvements. Riggan is delighted at first with his new costar, but soon Mike's loose-cannon ethic starts to make Riggan's situation feel even more nightmarish. Iñárritu has described himself as a frustrated musician, and he once composed scores for Mexican films before he broke through as a director. The intimate flow and relentless tug of music is clearly what he's after here, translated into visual terms. The constant sense of headlong movement created by his tracking shots is matched to a syncopated jazz drum beat, lending a neurotically arrhythmic yet propelling heartbeat—at one point, the drummer is even glimpsed as a busker outside the theatre and then, later, inside, playing merrily in the theatre's kitchen. The cumulative effect of this scoring suggests just such a nerveless, neurotic beat has invaded Riggan's ear and won't leave it. Iñárritu's camera aims to transform his chosen setting into a multi-levelled, pan-dimensional stage, sweeping up and down stairwells, in and out of the most cramped confines of the theatre, and out into the expanse of the Manhattan night where crowds reel and neon blazes.
Iñárritu records the teeming, electrified ambience of this location in a way that few recent films have managed, recalling classic works whose grungy-glamorous portraits of urban gods captured both the city's boiling, stygian ferocity and vigour, a crucible of possibility—movies like Sweet Smell of Success (1957), as well as the specific canon of Broadway films like A Double Life (1947), All About Eve (1950), and The Country Girl (1956). In Birdman, powerful theatre critic Tabitha Dickinson (Lindsay Duncan) sits in a solitary vigil with pusillanimous pen poised for takedowns in a nearby bar, recalling Sweet Smell's savage columnist J. J. Hunsecker, whilst Riggan seems to be threatened with a schizoid breakdown along the fault lines of the real and fictional persona like Ronald Colman's Anthony John in A Double Life. Riggan keeps moving because, like a shark, he'll die if he stops—he's invested all his money into the production. His actors share and amplify his brittle, egocentric, dedicated gusto, particularly Laura (Andrea Riseborough), who's also his girlfriend. He recounts to Mike his "origin story" and its connection to this obsessive venture: as a young performer in a school play, Riggan impressed Raymond Carver, who sent a congratulatory message backstage to him written on a bar coaster, inspiring Riggan to choose acting as his career. Mike ripostes by noting this clearly indicates Carver was drunk at the time.
Riggan's daughter Sam (Emma Stone), a recovering drug addict who's just of out of rehab and is working as Riggan's PA, stands outside of the stream. She's angry at her father for his false promises as a parent and has been inoculated with a raw and cynical understanding of this niche world, plainly contemptuous of her father's hoped-for redemption via art in a scene that's scarcely relevant beyond a few city blocks. She lets loose this contempt on Riggan after he confronts her about smoking dope. Mike, on the other hand, is deeply impressed with his own integrity as anointed artist-hero who brings edge and danger to the stage, and constantly tests the limits of Stanislavskian realism. He erupts in a fury during a preview performance when the real liquor he's been drinking proves to have been replaced with water. During another preview, when he and Lesley are being wheeled on stage in a prop bed, Mike, in the thrill of imminent performance and momentarily overcoming the impotence that's been besetting him, attempts to ravage Lesley there and then. Lesley, appalled and infuriated, promptly breaks up with him, and when Laura consoles her, they lock lips, caught up in the whirl of passion. Mike further antagonises Riggan by giving an interview where he steals Riggan's Carver anecdote, and postures as the saviour of the show.
Mike is often insufferable in this manner, but also candid and committed in his bullshit artiste way. He tries to warn Riggan that he's headed for a fall, locked on the wrong side of a perceived opposition between artist and mere celebrity. Mike reveals a far less aggravating side as he forms a bond with Sam, whom he encounters at her favourite hideaway, perched on the edge of a balcony high above Broadway, ironically calling to mind the similarly poised, detached yet omnipotent Batman that Keaton played a quarter-century ago. Mike is drawn to the damaged and sceptical young woman, and seems almost like a different person when calmly admitting his fears and faults to her, though his attempts to convince her of her worth are met with good-humoured derision. Nonetheless, the sideways-glimpsed romance between Mike and his daughter adds another worry to Riggan's already overloaded psyche. Riggan is having semi-hallucinatory experiences, introduced at the start when we see him floating like a bodhisattva in his dressing room, and then seeming to use superpowers to move objects and, eventually, trash that dressing room—except that when the camera steps back and takes on a more objective viewpoint, he's revealed to be smashing things the old-fashioned way. Finally, the mocking voice is revealed to be Riggan in his Birdman guise, sweeping down through the city streets to preach like Mephistopheles the gospel of entertainment and the security of low expectations with high pay.
Casting Keaton as Riggan was a coup of uncommon fortune for Iñárritu, giving him as it does a legitimate hinge not just of performing ability but potential satiric and thematic impact. Keaton's stint as Batman was his apotheosis as a movie star and also the start of a long wane, though he's long been a difficult actor to contain, too impish and odd to make a standard leading man, too self-contained and nonchalant to behave as comic fount. In a similar way, Iñárritu's other actors are cast to play off associated roles; Watts' pash with Riseborough clearly is a skit based on Watts' breakthrough role in Mulholland Drive (2000), whilst Norton plays a variation on his public persona. Such conceits are entirely understandable in a film that is both about theatricality and possessed by it. The way Iñárritu films his actors and lets them combust in big, showy spiels and set-piece rants may only indulge rather than critique that theatricality, but there's nothing much wrong with that, especially as it all contributes to the hothouse atmosphere and, moreover, delights in acting, raw and untrammelled, as the ultimate source of spectacle, both on stage and screen. Iñárritu lets his actors go wild with their tools just as he's doing with his camera.
Meanwhile, Iñárritu manages a cunning and sinuous control of tonal shifts whilst never seeming to demarcate his moves officially, leading from farce to drama to elegy through virtuoso manipulation of elements and the connective sinew of Antonio Sánchez's score. Riggan's encounter with a hot-to-trot Laura in the lowest hallways of the theatre sees her transformed by lighting into a sultry and beckoning sylph in the labyrinth, then the camera follows her up to the stage, segueing into the first preview performance where a tone of elegy dominates, the tone Riggan wants for it, until Mike suddenly violates the mood with an outburst. Iñárritu cues a shift from hyped-up intensity to punch-drunk eeriness after the dispiriting impact of Sam's excoriation of her father and his bleary, defeated suck on her worn reefer: the camera slides out and across the stage in the midst of dry ice and blue light, picking out Laura as a ghostly figure in mid-flight of elegiac speech in one of Riggan's stylised dream sequences. A trip out the door of the theatre plunges first from exhausting claustrophobia to the mad tumult of the street to the shadowy and sheltering refuge of the bar. A quick recourse to a salving cigarette shimmers with a sense of relief and relaxation. Mike and Sam making love on a catwalk high above the stage sees camera hover and then float out above the actors at work below with swooning romanticism falling into gentle diminuendo. Iñárritu almost wills style into substance in such pirouettes, lending his vision of this hothouse of creation the quicksilver changeableness of creative vision and dramatic mood.
As a statement about the soul of the actor and the eternally tendentious nature of creative endeavour, Birdman works best through such epiphanies and flourishes of stagecraft, transforming mundane realities into mimetic canvas where Riggan's terrors and inspirations collide and crossbreed. The problem here is that when one examines each facet, the film seems composed of a great mass of clichés. The washed-up star striving for a second chance. The sassy, irate, burn-out celebrity's daughter. The young tyro prick. The nutty, oversexed actress. The vituperative critic who has appointed herself as guardian of culture determined to cut down our hero. It's worth noting that 2014 has seen a small glut of films that seem like obvious metaphors for their makers' troubled relationship with the business of art, the demands of family, and the pundits who approve or dismiss their work; there's a strong undercurrent of this in Mike Leigh's Mr. Turner, John Carney's Begin Again, and Jon Favreau's lightly comic Chef, which strained to transfer the theme onto the world of celebrity cooking. Birdman shares with the last two films the figure of the unruly, ageing male talent and his efforts to balance a relationship with a child against renewing artistic success. Yet Chef was more sophisticated and accepting than any of the more self-righteous and noisy versions, particular when it came to the hero's relationship with his critic-antagonist, who curiously pointed out that their battles on Twitter were "theatre." Iñárritu, bluntly and ridiculously, portrays Dickinson as an outright creep who announces her intention to destroy Riggan's project for even daring to try.
The best defence one can offer is that Birdman is an exercise in cut-up aesthetics, an extended jazzlike improvisation based in stirring, familiar melodies and refrains that reflect the distorting intensity of such a feat as Riggan is intending. We could accept the film's stereotypes and cornball ideas as mere extensions of his enthused, but not terribly original mind—and I would, except Iñárritu's technique, wonderful as it is, subtly foils his excuse, as he readily leaves behind Riggan's viewpoint when he feels like it. This isn't exactly a deal breaker in terms of the film's worth, especially as Iñárritu and his cast make the characters vibrate with such energy and offer many segues of contradiction and surprise. More problematic is the film's approach to the art it portrays. Unlike the makers of such stalwart works of artist-meltdown portraiture as 8½ (1963) and All That Jazz (1979), Iñárritu doesn't suggest much deep knowledge or interest in the art form he's portraying, and scarce interest in whether Riggan's boondoggle project is worthwhile; reasonable questions about just how worthwhile this project is are subordinated to an imposed desire to see Riggan win through. The snatches we see and hear of Riggan's adaptation may strike one as effectively stylised and lyrical or stilted and graven, and there are dancing reindeer in his dream sequences, which, in spite of what Laura says, isn't a good idea.
In terms of artistic commentary and perspective, Birdman poses as specially relevant to the moment: it mentions superhero movies. But its cultural presumptions are actually passé. Iñárritu's idea of cutting-edge satire of actor vanity is to show Riggan pulling off his wig. Appearing in superhero movies might have hurt the careers of some actors in the past, but the idea that it's some sort of ticket to serious career oblivion is dated. Perhaps if Iñárritu had cast a more obviously limited actor than Keaton, some classically bland leading man crumpled by time and anxiety, his points might have landed with more urgency and specificity. When Tim Burton cast Keaton as Batman, he did so precisely to avoid cliché about square-jawed heroes, a subtlety that seems lost on Iñárritu, who plays up the presumed entrenched dichotomy between capital-A Art and lowbrow fantasy with thudding simplicity as food for the sorts of self-congratulatory pseuds Riggan's supposed to be battling. Theatre critics line up to bathe in the aura of celebrity like everybody else these days, and Hollywood stars regularly use the Great White Way to give their careers a retooling.
Iñárritu does fruitfully use his dichotomy at one interval, when Riggan's Birdman alter ego finally appears and unleashes a wave of blockbuster destruction, offering the balm of such regressive but buoyant destruction fantasy as a cure for the terror of "seriousness," an eruption of Michael Bayisms that scarcely feel out of place in this work's sturm und drang. Riggan responds with his own, stripped-back fantasy of flight, evoking Marcello Mastroianni's escapades as a kite in 8½. Birdman needed to embrace its inner Robert Altman film more, given flesh to the potential in Riseborough and Watts' characters, and kept the film a grand extravaganza of comic types crashing against one another. Because Birdman steadily loses steam in spite of its propulsive method, as the conflicts of ego and temperament that pop and fizz so well in the first half give way to more sustained contemplation of Riggan's hapless state. This doesn't work very well as Riggan isn't that detailed or empathetic a protagonist: there's no sense of who Riggan was before Birdman—did anyone ever take him seriously as an actor?—and his major failings, including infidelities and neglecting of Sam and his warily understanding ex-wife Sylvia (Amy Ryan), are all safely vague and past. Also bordering on inane is the subplot where one of Riggan's antics makes him an online superstar, with Sam translating and exploiting for the social media sceptic the power he doesn't yet understand. This element feels shoehorned in (again, Chef actually did this better), perhaps to make sure we know the film is set in the present rather than in 1965.
The constantly unstable sense of reality certainly invokes the Latin-American traditions of magic-realism, with which Iñárritu, a fan of Borges and Cortazar, is clearly conversant: most every moment tingles with the mysterious, transformative energy of the imagination, or maybe lunacy. Time folds in upon itself, reality bends to one's will, invented personae torment their creators, and dream states infuse and upend all certainty. But Birdman may be viewed best as a screwball farce, as much a lampoon on the idea of artistic endeavour as anything else, sharing more in common with the Marx Brothers of A Night at the Opera (1935) and Room Service (1938), the early scenes of Some Like It Hot (1959), and Looney Tunes than Fellini or those old Broadway films. The script is littered with good lines, like Riggan's furious self-description as Birdman prods him to return to the cape: "I look like a turkey with leukaemia!" Even if Iñárritu isn't a comic filmmaker of great finesse or originality yet, he still manages to pay off with some sequences of slapstick zest as well done as anything I can think of recently, particularly when the infuriated Riggan drags the supposedly ascetic Mike out of his sunbed in a rage over the newspaper interview and starts a fight. Norton reveals surprising comic grace as Mike scrambles and flails like Jerry Lewis cast as hapless henchman. One sustained sequence varies a very old bit of comic business, as Riggan steps outside of the theatre's rear entrance for a smoke during his break, only for the door to swing shut and catch his bathrobe: Riggan is stranded outside, and forced to dash in his underwear through Times Square and back in through the front entrance of the theatre, with enthused tourists and gabby New Yorkers taking photos of him all the way. Inside, he has to dodge Ralph and his lawyer who have come to try and squeeze money out of him, and once he gets back into the theatre, has to start acting a scene from the aisle, a disaster that becomes gold as the audience is wowed by the unique staging and Riggan's seemingly raw and risky playing.
Fittingly, the film's climax is based on another old showbiz joke, one memorably used by the Looney Tunes cartoon "Show Biz Bugs," with its immortal punch line "I can only do it once!" as the artist self-conflagrates on stage, totally breaking down the barrier between act and deed. Frustratingly, though, Iñárritu can't quite commit to the joke and its black comedy triumph and gives a coda that offers instead triumph through going above and beyond in a not-too-costly fashion. In a crowning visual joke, Riggan, masked by dressings that resemble his Birdman guise, has become the hero at last, but only in the most ironic and self-punishing of fashions. Although farce is the official frame here, on another level none of this is a joke, but rather an attempt to articulate flurrying artistic worry and ecstasy with deadly, transcendental seriousness. Riggan's climactic gesture is offered as an ingenious as well as tragicomic solution to his quandary, an act of daring that can wow even the most jaded or hateful. Except that it would fairly be taken as a sign of deep mental illness in real life, and indeed Riggan may well be ill. Either way, Birdman's very end obfuscates too much. The film's weak and shop-worn ideas can't be entirely forgiven when it yearns so badly to say something of substance. Yet Birdman still counts as a major work of cinema purely because it loves cinema so much, and evokes that line of Orson Welles' about a movie studio being the greatest toy train set a kid ever had.
→ Confessions of a Film Freak, 2014
← Mr. Turner (2014)
10 thoughts on "Birdman, or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014)"
Inarritu's films, for me, always seem on the surface to be about a whole lot more than they actually are. In BIRDMAN, the dazzling camerawork, the driving jazz score and the intensity of the performances all imply a life -or-death level of urgency that the rather banal story doesn't merit. I was deeply disappointed by it, but I enjoyed your thoughtful review.
Roderick says:
And yet the pleasure of Iñárritu's films lies to me precisely in that driving intensity, Pat; the vibrancy of the surface is its own point, and to a certain degree that's enough. But yeah, only to a certain degree; it's hard to ignore just how banal some of this is. Riggan's confrontation with Dickinson was the worst kind of straw man dramaturgy, suggesting Iñárritu's great dream is less a world of cultural dialogue than of clearing the way for his own monologue.
Fair enough, Rod – and, in retrospect, I was a bit harsh. I did like the way Innaritu perfectly captured the authentic atmosphere of the theatre district/Times Square area of NYC and that's what staying with me 2 days after seeing the film. Some fine acting, too. But ultimately, not a lot of substance.
Just got to it yesterday. One of those movies that I'm fully engaged in on an artistic level, but that slowly deflates along the way, as the pileup of cliches become too much for the conceit (fever-dream camera barreling forward in this case) to sustain. So many great performances to hang onto. But the final moment/facial expression asks us for too much: that we should accept Riggan's dementia as a version of heroism instead of pity him or, God forbid, actually pull him out of the deluge of his neuroses. I felt for this guy, have even been him once or twice or thrice, and the last thing I needed was for someone to believe me when I said I had superhuman powers – when what I needed was help. All that aside, you're right, the movie is a major work of art that, while your inside its mind, fills you with the perverse thrill that can only come from near failure at reaching too far. (Extra bonus points for somehow not mentioning the film's half-sister "Black Swan" – cause who needs to be reminded of that sad mess! This film builds up to a much greater statement using many of the same show-biz cliches.)
I can only agree with you, Robert. I took Riggan's flights of fancy as metaphor for his driving creative urge, constantly erasing and remaking aspects of truth he couldn't handle, and that the very end was the sign that at last Sam could finally join in with his vision. But I don't blame others for interpreting it as rank lunacy — my father thought so like you — and that the film didn't know where to draw the line. And it's not real ambiguity either, just a kind of opportunist indecisiveness, a "let's keep 'em guessing" approach that's just bullshit. I did of course think of Black Swan when watching it, but the arguments about that I'm not keen on opening up again as you say, and besides, it didn't invent this sort of tale. Great filmmaking throughout that is its own point, but yeah, its main problem is that it offers such great pleasures on the level of farce but keeps showing signs that it wants to be taken seriously on another level it just doesn't earn.
Eric Trommater says:
I actually watched this movie a second time (a rarity for me). On second viewing it dawned on me that the visual technique is partially responsible for the seemly mundane plot. The film feels stage bound, like watching someone's phone camera recording of a Broadway show. Without edits to give each scene a pace and bring events into focus the film the story feels like it plods along while the film itself feels almost as if it is breezing by at a very fast pace. It is the dichotomy between the slow developing story and the fast paced dialog and mise-en-scene that drew me back for a second viewing. I liked the movie a lot more than Roderick and in hindsight feel like a less conventional plot may have been a distraction from (as Roderick pointed out) a major work of cinema.
Well, Eric, I thought I liked it just fine without being over the moon about. But you do have a point — the style might not leave a huge amount of space for subtle nuance and surprise, but it does offer the magic of watching an extended, as-it-happens performance; as with stage performing, there is no escape from the omnipresent now.
But I still feel no need to let Inarittu and company off the hook for placing themselves in the position where all they could explore were received ideas and cliches.
Lol. Bad punctuation use on my part. My comment should have read "I liked the movie lot, even more than Roderick," instead of "a lot more than Roderick." Great review as always. It was this review that made me go see the film in the first place and, as usual, you were spot on.
Ha, fair enough, Eric. I'm glad I inspired you to see it. Birdman, for all I've critiqued it for, is above all a movie to be experienced as an experience; it wraps you in its little world with such enthusiasm and skill, and not enough films try for that.


Relationship killers: Is self-doubt ruining your romance?
Is self-doubt killing your relationship?
The relationship killers are often not what you think. It's not necessarily cheating… or some dramatic story line from a film.
It's the day-to-day wearing down of the energy between you and your partner that slowly kills off what you once had.
The good news is, that if you both want to turn your relationship around, becoming deeply aware of what you're both doing is your first step in the right direction.
You complain instead of ask.
You've stopped putting yourself first.
You're always pre-empting your partner's needs.
Pleasure comes last on your to-do-list.
You haven't healed the wounds.
Neither of you is focused on your happiness anymore.
Why is it so important to put yourself first?
If you put yourself first repeatedly, your partner has to, too. If you don't, they won't. You can't just put yourself last repeatedly and hope they put you first. What a ridiculous notion! And yet so many people unconsciously do this because we've been brought up to believe that means you're doing 'it' right.
If their priorities come at the top of your list but yours don't? There's a problem.
Putting yourself last for the good of the family will kill your relationship quicker than anything else. It seems like a good idea at the time, but it only leads to resentment, exhaustion and arguments. You can't resent your partner if you're fully supported.
So the antidote is to consciously put yourself first this week. Serve yourself first at dinner, with the best food. Ask your partner if they can do the school run tomorrow so you can skip out to the gym. Some people are so good at looking after themselves that they expect others to do the same. People like this don't realise that you've been brought up to put yourself last and you're still battling with it.
Why is self-doubt one of the biggest killers of a relationship?
Because nobody wants to think they've bought the wrong product. If they're with you? It's because they LOVE you. They've chosen you.
If you're walking around doubting yourself… doubting how they feel about you, doubting if you're good enough, doubting how you look, then eventually your partner will start to doubt their decision. It's not a conscious thought, but more a whisper… maybe I can do better.
Is your doubt making them doubt?
No one wants to think they've made a mistake – imagine someone asked you, "Does my bum look big in this?" And then when you answer, 'No", they don't believe you and goes to get changed? Is that attractive to you? Own your beauty and your brilliance!
Why should pleasure come first on your to-do-list?
Because without it – what have you got? A whole lot of errands, and commitments. You came together because of the fun you two had – because you couldn't wait to be with them, not because you couldn't wait to pay a bill together!
Fun and pleasure will draw you together, and re-ignite the energy between you two, so the busier you are, the more in love with scheduling you have to be! Schedule it! Make time.
Pleasure isn't a luxury; it's a necessity for a great relationship.
Get creative. It doesn't have to cost a cent. It might be taking a silky smooth bath together at the end of a busy day, it might be kissing them deeply when you get home tonight, it might be scheduling a weekly salsa dance class where you can boogie your cares away. Pleasure is the reason you're together.
Sydney-based Marina J is a renowned relationship coach, speaker & best-selling author of 'Turn Yourself On'.


text:
Q: Fatal Exception:Audio Recorder Thread and File not Found Exception I am trying to implement audio recorder in my application.I tried this code and I got the error
11-27 08:21:12.394: W/System.err(1476): java.io.FileNotFoundException: /mnt/sdcard/AudioRecorder/1385540472372.mp4: open failed: EACCES (Permission denied)
11-27 08:21:12.414: W/System.err(1476):     at libcore.io.IoBridge.open(IoBridge.java:416)
 11-27 08:21:12.414: W/System.err(1476):    at java.io.FileOutputStream.<init>(FileOutputStream.java:88)
11-27 08:21:12.454: W/System.err(1476):     at java.io.FileOutputStream.<init>(FileOutputStream.java:128)
11-27 08:21:12.454: W/System.err(1476):     at java.io.FileOutputStream.<init>(FileOutputStream.java:117)
11-27 08:21:12.464: W/System.err(1476):     at com.example.sms.OtherActivity.writeAudioDataToFile(OtherActivity.java:150)
11-27 08:21:12.484: W/System.err(1476):     at com.example.sms.OtherActivity.access$3(OtherActivity.java:141)
11-27 08:21:12.504: W/System.err(1476):     at com.example.sms.OtherActivity$3.run(OtherActivity.java:121)
11-27 08:21:12.524: W/System.err(1476):     at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:856)
11-27 08:21:12.545: W/System.err(1476): Caused by: libcore.io.ErrnoException: open failed: EACCES (Permission denied)
11-27 08:21:12.564: W/System.err(1476):     at libcore.io.Posix.open(Native Method)
11-27 08:21:12.564: W/System.err(1476):     at libcore.io.BlockGuardOs.open(BlockGuardOs.java:110)
11-27 08:21:12.614: W/System.err(1476):     at libcore.io.IoBridge.open(IoBridge.java:400)
11-27 08:21:12.614: W/System.err(1476):     ... 7 more
 11-27 08:21:12.614: I/System.out(1476):
 FATAL EXCEPTION:Audio Recorder Thread

11-27 08:21:12.674: E/AndroidRuntime(1476): java.lang.NullPointerException
11-27 08:21:12.674: E/AndroidRuntime(1476):at com.example.sms.OtherActivity.writeAudioDataToFile(OtherActivity.java:163)
11-27 08:21:12.674: E/AndroidRuntime(1476):     at com.example.sms.OtherActivity.access$3(OtherActivity.java:141)
11-27 08:21:12.674: E/AndroidRuntime(1476):     at com.example.sms.OtherActivity$3.run(OtherActivity.java:121)
11-27 08:21:12.674: E/AndroidRuntime(1476):     at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:856)

I get the file name as,I/System.out(1476):
Filename/mnt/sdcard/AudioRecorder/1385540472372.mp4Start writing to file[S@411b4610

And this is my code,
 private void startRecording() {

     recorder = new AudioRecord(MediaRecorder.AudioSource.MIC,
     RECORDER_SAMPLERATE, RECORDER_CHANNELS,
     RECORDER_AUDIO_ENCODING, BufferElements2Rec * BytesPerElement);
     System.out.println("Start recording");
     recorder.startRecording();

     isRecording = true;

     recordingThread = new Thread(new Runnable() {

     public void run() {

     writeAudioDataToFile();
     System.out.println("In run recording");
     }
     }, "AudioRecorder Thread");
     recordingThread.start();
     }

writeAudioDataToFile method,
 private void writeAudioDataToFile() {
     // Write the output audio in byte

    String filePath=getFilename();
     System.out.print("Filename"+filePath);
     short sData[] = new short[BufferElements2Rec];

     FileOutputStream os = null;
     try {
     os = new FileOutputStream(filePath);
     } catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
     e.printStackTrace();
     }

     while (isRecording) {
     // gets the voice output from microphone to byte format
     recorder.read(sData, 0, BufferElements2Rec);
     System.out.println("Start writing to file" + sData.toString());
     try {
     // writes the data to file from buffer stores the voice buffer
     byte bData[] = short2byte(sData);

     os.write(bData, 0, BufferElements2Rec * BytesPerElement);

     } catch (IOException e) {
     e.printStackTrace();
     }
     }

     try {
     os.close();
     } catch (IOException e) {
     e.printStackTrace();
     }
     }

getFileName method,
private String getFilename() {
         String filepath = Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory().getPath();
         File file = new File(filepath, AUDIO_RECORDER_FOLDER);
         if (!file.exists()) {
         file.mkdirs();
         }
         return (file.getAbsolutePath() + "/" + System.currentTimeMillis() + file_exts[currentFormat]);
         }

When I click the start button this error will occur at the same time start button is got invisible and stop button came to visible. Can anyone tell me why could I get this error?I coded permission in manifest file also.Any help is greatly thankful.

A: Make sure that you have set these permissions in your Manifest file:
android.permission.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE and
android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE


text:
Na całej połaci śnieg - piosenka z repertuaru Kabaretu Starszych Panów, pierwotnie wykonywana przez Kalinę Jędrusik w Wieczorze IV z 2 stycznia 1965 roku. Singel promocyjny Anny Marii Jopek z głosem Jeremiego Przybory, wydany w okresie okołobożonarodzeniowym 1999 roku. Singel należy do jednych z najczęściej prezentowanych w stacjach radiowych w okresie świątecznym i zimowym. Numer katalogowy Universal Music Polska 156 547 2.

Lista utworów
 Na całej połaci śnieg (+ Jeremi Przybora) 2:18 [muz. Jerzy Wasowski, słowa - Jeremi Przybora]
 Lulajże Jezuniu 4:18
 Bóg się rodzi 2:28

Wykonawcy
 Anna Maria Jopek - wokal
 Jeremi Przybora - głos męski w utworze nr 1
 Marek Napiórkowski - gitara w utworze nr 3
 Paweł Betley - instrumentarium, aranżacje, produkcja muzyczna

Inni
 Tomasz Broda - ilustracje singla
 Joanna Piasek - projekt graficzny

Single Anny Marii Jopek
Single wydane w roku 1999

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Summer is finally here! The temperature is going up, which can make it harder to cool down–for you or your yard. You want your yard to be at it's best, so you can continue to reap the benefits, so here are some simple tips you can implement this summer to keep your yard healthy while the heat is on.
Plant power: Not all plants are created equal. Some trees and shrubs are better at navigating the hot, dry months of summer than others. We can help you get set up with drought-resistant plants that are better equipped to handle Georgia summers.
Maintain upkeep: Pruning is necessary for plants to grow their strongest. Getting rid of the old branches to help the plant focus on growing new, healthy limbs is an essential part of landscape maintenance, no matter what season it is.
Check the soil: Healthy soil is necessary for healthy plants. Avoid potential problems by making sure you are using the right soil for your plants. With the right soil, trees and shrubs are protected against disease, pests, and other stressors.
Water well: All plants are unique, and they all need water to survive. Making sure they have enough water (but not too much) is crucial to plant care. Here are some tips for watering trees and shrubs to help them flourish.
Patrol for pests: Plant pests can be a pain! Be on the lookout for any unusual signs of pest activity on your trees and shrubs so you can prevent any issues before they happen.
At Alternative Environments, we are committed to making the customer happy by keeping your yard in it's best health. Request an estimate today and see how Alternate Environments can support you and your lawn this summer.


text:
15-year-old wanted for felony arrested after...
Australia suffers deadliest day of pandemic as...
Peru communities reject latest proposal to end...
Is Weakness In Pushpay Holdings Limited...
New campaign aims to stop more encrypted apps
UPDATE 1-Germany's Scholz says any threat to Ukraine unacceptable
(Recasts after news conference)
BERLIN, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Germany's Chancellor-in-waiting Olaf Scholz expressed concern on Tuesday about Russian troop movements on the Ukrainian border and said any attempts to cross the frontier would be unacceptable.
"It is very, very important that no one rolls through the history books to draw new borders," Scholz said at a news conference after signing a three-party coalition agreement.
U.S. President Joe Biden is to tell President Vladimir Putin later that Russia faces tough economic sanctions if it invades Ukraine, U.S. officials have said, as thousands of Russian troops mass near the Ukrainian border.
"It must be quite, quite clear that it would be an unacceptable situation if there were a threat to Ukraine," Scholz said, stressing that borders could not be violated.
Scholz, a Social Democrat, is due to take office on Wednesday after being elected by the Bundestag lower house of parliament.
He will head an alliance also including the Greens and the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) that brings to an end 16 years of conservative-led government under Angela Merkel, who did not stand for a fifth term in a September election.
Incoming Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck, who is co-leader of the Greens, said the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which is to transport gas from Russia to Europe, bypassing Ukraine, had not yet received approval and political discussions had to continue.
The Greens have traditionally taken a tougher line with Russia, as well as with China.
Asked about China, Scholz said he would consult closely with European partners. He skirted questions on whether Germany would join a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.
"(We) must know our differences and nevertheless get on with each other", said Scholz, appearing to stick closely to Merkel's favoured approach of seeking dialogue.
He praised Biden for strengthening a community of democratic countries, saying his priority would be to work with states sharing the same values and to strengthen the European Union. His first trip abroad will be to Paris.
The Greens' Habeck also said that results of investment in renewable energy would take two or three years to be seen.
The coalition deal, entitled Dare More Progress, aims to accelerate a green transition and modernise Europe's biggest economy as well as introducing some progressive social reforms, such as making dual citizenship easier.
(Reporting by Madeline Chambers and Kirsti Knolle; Editing by Nick Macfie and Angus MacSwan)
Joe Biden has left the West "rudderless" as Vladimir Putin becomes increasingly aggressive, British politicians told Insider.
U.S. website to order free COVID-19 tests up and running
The U.S. government's new COVIDTests.gov website, set up for American households to order four free COVID-19 tests amid the Omicron variant surge, is up and ...
Under criticism after weeks of shortages, President Joe Biden's administration is working to make COVID-19 rapid test kits more available and accessible to...


I have an Ajax bound grid with a simple textbox in the editor template. This works fine with simple value binding.
The template no longer works. It does not even show the value anymore so it looks like the binding fails.
Is this supposed to work at all?
I hope this helps, but if it does not, please describe the scenario and the desired functionality in further detail, and send us an isolated runnable project, similar to the one above, that illustrates the issue, so we can inspect it, and provide further more to-the-point suggestions, if the scenario is supported. Thank you in advance.


We make smart looking websites which are clear, concise and easy to author.
What are your strongest features?
What are important features of your new website?
Which terms would you associate with your style/branding?
Number of pages you'll need?
Number of contributors to the site?


text:
Q: Is it possible to prove that the Grz axiom is valid in a modal frame iff the frame is reflexive and transitive? We need to prove (or disprove?) that $ \square (\square (A \rightarrow \square A) \rightarrow A) \rightarrow A $ is valid in the Kripke modal frame $ F = <S, R> $ iff R is transitive and reflexive.
I think that more is required of R for this to be correct. Am I right?

A: Consider following structure: $ U=\{ w_{1},w_{2},w_{3}\}$, $R$ is transitive, reflexive plus $(w_{3},w_{2}) \in R$ and following valuation $v(w_{1},A)=0, v(w_{2},A)=1, v(w_{3},A)=0$. It's easy to check that Grz axiom is false in this structure with respect to given valuation. In general this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_analytic_tableaux method is helpful for such issues.


In the new release (17.1.5) there is now access to Appointment Book Rules via the "Reports & Utilities" section of the Appointment Book.
The release notes say "Access to the Appointment Book Rules icon in the Appointment Book Reports & Utilities section is now controlled by the "System Information" user access setting."
Can someone please show me where this specific access control is, as I cannot, for the life of me, find it. As of right now, everyone in our Practice has access to and can change, delete etc. appointment book rules - (insert stressed emoji here).
Hi SydSportsMed. Quick access to Appointment Book Rules via the Reports and Utilities section of the Appointment Book is tied to System Information access.
As a side note, if you require support urgently please contact us by opening a support case at www.smartsoft.com.au/support or calling the helpdesk. Urgent questions should not be posted here as we cannot guarantee the same high level of service.
If you untick the system information option does this then remove access to everything in the reports and utilities section as we use that for cancellation information?
One of my staff had her system information untick in her access setting and I found she can still access Appointment Book Rules from Reports & Utilities. Is there any reason for that? I have been trying to take that access off from her but unsucessful.
I think this button is better tucked away somewhere that only the people knows how to use it able to find it.
Hi Bing. Access to Appointment Book Rules via the Reports & Utilities section was restricted to users with System Information access in Front Desk version 17.1.5. Please ensure that you are running version 17.1.5 or later to see these changes.
Thanks for replying. I have upgraded FD to 18.0.0 which is the only one available on your website. So far not successful.
Before, I only had one staff that I couldn't take her off from accessing to the Appointment Book Rules. Now everyone can access to Appointment Book Rules even though all of them had this System Information unticked. Please refer to the image attached. On top you can see that there's no System Information icon but at the bottom, the Appointment Book Rules is visible.
Hi Bing. Thank you for your reply. We will investigate further to determine how this is occurring and will aim to resolve this in our next upgrade, which is due for release within the next week.


Are you traveling to Utrecht by car? Park your car clever and cheap at a P&R location, like the P+R Transferium Westraven near the exit Jaarbeurs next to the A12. From here you easily take the bus or the tram to the city centre. With a combi-ticket for one of the Utrecht P+R locations you only pay € 5,00 for a whole day of parking and that includes the fee for your transfer to the city centre. On the map below you'll find the three P+R transferiums, so you can navigate to them real quick.
Would you rather park in the city centre of Utrecht? From the Ring Utrecht follow the signs to centrum into the city centre. You will then automatically enter the city via the main roads. It is wise to follow the main roads as long as possible. This is faster than driving through neighborhoods and residential areas. The parking places are indicated near by the center.


text:
'use strict';

angular.module('confusionApp')

        .controller('MenuController', ['$scope', 'menuFactory', function($scope, menuFactory) {

            $scope.tab = 1;
            $scope.filtText = '';
            $scope.showDetails = false;
            $scope.showMenu = false;
            $scope.message = "Loading ...";

            menuFactory.getDishes().query(
               function(response) {
                   $scope.dishes = response;
                   $scope.showMenu = true;
               },
               function(response) {
                   $scope.message = "Error: "+response.status + " " + response.statusText;
               });

            $scope.select = function(setTab) {
                $scope.tab = setTab;

                if (setTab === 2) {
                    $scope.filtText = "appetizer";
                }
                else if (setTab === 3) {
                    $scope.filtText = "mains";
                }
                else if (setTab === 4) {
                    $scope.filtText = "dessert";
                }
                else {
                    $scope.filtText = "";
                }
            };

            $scope.isSelected = function (checkTab) {
                return ($scope.tab === checkTab);
            };

            $scope.toggleDetails = function() {
                $scope.showDetails = !$scope.showDetails;
            };
        }])

        .controller('ContactController', ['$scope', function($scope) {

            $scope.feedback = {mychannel:"", firstName:"", lastName:"", agree:false, email:"" };

            var channels = [{value:"tel", label:"Tel."}, {value:"Email",label:"Email"}];

            $scope.channels = channels;
            $scope.invalidChannelSelection = false;

        }])

        .controller('FeedbackController', ['$scope','feedbackFactory', function($scope,feedbackFactory) {

            $scope.sendFeedback = function() {

                console.log($scope.feedback);

                if ($scope.feedback.agree && ($scope.feedback.mychannel === "")) {
                    $scope.invalidChannelSelection = true;
                    console.log('incorrect');
                }
                else {

                    feedbackFactory.getFeedback().save($scope.feedback);
                    $scope.invalidChannelSelection = false;
                    $scope.feedback = {mychannel:"", firstName:"", lastName:"", agree:false, email:"" , tel:""};
                    $scope.feedback.mychannel="";
                    $scope.feedbackForm.$setPristine();
                    console.log($scope.feedback);
                }
            };
        }])

        .controller('DishDetailController', ['$scope', '$stateParams', 'menuFactory', function($scope, $stateParams, menuFactory) {

          $scope.showDish = false;
          $scope.message="Loading ...";
          $scope.dish = menuFactory.getDishes().get({id:parseInt($stateParams.id,10)})
            .$promise.then(
                            function(response){
                                $scope.dish = response;
                                $scope.showDish = true;
                            },
                            function(response) {
                                $scope.message = "Error: "+response.status + " " + response.statusText;
                            }
            );

          }])

        .controller('DishCommentController', ['$scope','menuFactory', function($scope,menuFactory) {

            $scope.comment = {rating:"5", comment:"", author:"", date:""};

            $scope.submitComment = function () {

                $scope.comment.date = new Date().toISOString();
                console.log($scope.comment);

                $scope.dish.comments.push($scope.comment);

                menuFactory.getDishes().update({id:$scope.dish.id},$scope.dish);

                $scope.commentForm.$setPristine();

                $scope.comment = {rating:"5", comment:"", author:"", date:""};
            };
        }])

        .controller('IndexController', ['$scope','menuFactory', 'corporateFactory' , function($scope, menuFactory, corporateFactory) {

          $scope.showDish = false;
          $scope.showPromotion = false;
          $scope.showLeader = false;
          $scope.message1="Loading Featured Dish information ...";
          $scope.message2="Loading Promotion Dish information...";
          $scope.message3="Loading Specialists...";

          $scope.featuredDish = menuFactory.getDishes().get({id:0})
            .$promise.then(
                function(response){
                    $scope.featuredDish = response;
                    $scope.showDish = true;
                },
                function(response) {
                    $scope.message1 = "Error: "+response.status + " " + response.statusText;
                }
            );

            $scope.promotion = menuFactory.getPromotions().get({id:0})
            .$promise.then(
                function(response){
                    $scope.promotion = response;
                    $scope.showPromotion = true;
                },
                function(response) {
                    $scope.message3 = "Error: "+response.status + " " + response.statusText;
                }
            );

          $scope.member = corporateFactory.getLeaders().get({id:3})
          .$promise.then(
              function(response){
                  $scope.member = response;
                  $scope.showLeader = true;
              },
              function(response) {
                  $scope.message3 = "Error: "+response.status + " " + response.statusText;
              }
          );

        }])

        .controller('AboutController', ['$scope','corporateFactory' , function($scope, corporateFactory) {

          $scope.showLeaders = false;

          corporateFactory.getLeaders().query(
             function(response) {
                 $scope.leaders  = response;
                 $scope.showLeaders = true;
             },
             function(response) {
                 $scope.message = "Error: "+response.status + " " + response.statusText;
             });

        }]);

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
What happens when a living kidney donor needs a transplant?
by Zhai Yun Tan, Kaiser Health News
Becoming a living kidney donor can be a heroic act, but it has its downsides: increased risks of health complications and occasionally, diseases that may create the need for the donor to have a kidney transplant later in life.
In recognition of these possible consequences, living kidney donors who are in need of a transplant have, since 1996, been given priority status to shorten their time on the waiting list.
But according to a study published Thursday in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, prior living donors do not always receive that priority status in a timely manner. Some had to wait for years and go through dialysis before moving to the front of the line - while some possibly never got to priority status.
"This is a big deal to donors and the transplant community," said Jennifer Wainright, an analyst at the United Network for Organ Sharing research department and the study's lead author. "Living kidney donors should know that they are entitled to priority ... if they ever need a kidney, and also that most prior living donors receive their transplant quickly."
Wainright stumbled upon this issue when she was examining data on donors, wait-list candidates and transplant recipients from the national Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network for another project.
"We put the original project on hold, explored the data, and figured out a way for UNOS to help transplant programs try to prevent the problem in the future," she said.
The researchers sought to characterize how quickly prior living donors were added to and activated on the transplant list. They studied data related to living donors and their transplant needs from January 2010 through July 2015. During that period, 210 transplant candidates who were prior living donors with priority status were added to the transplant waiting list. As of Sept. 4, 2015, 167 of them received deceased donor transplants, six received living donor transplants, two died, five were too sick for transplants and 29 were still waiting.
Because of the "priority" designation, most of these patients were able to receive transplants quickly, the study found. But a number waited a long time.
For example, among the living donors studied, only 40.7 percent were added to the transplant waiting list before they needed dialysis, which is a treatment that becomes necessary when the kidneys are no longer functioning optimally. Half of the patients in the study were on dialysis for 332 days or longer before their priority was recognized.
The process of requesting the priority status goes like this: If a prior living donor needs a kidney transplant, the transplant program at the hospital will submit information and contact the UNOS Organ Center to request priority. The center is supposed to complete the request within a day. Patients healthy enough to receive the transplant immediately will be listed in an active status.
The reasons for the delays in this process detected by the study may be, in part, due to a patient's ill health or to paperwork and bureaucratic problems. These can include incomplete data submission and insurance issues, or a lack of awareness among patients and transplant programs about living donors' priority.
In an effort to smooth out the process and raise awareness among living donors and transplant programs, UNOS since last year has linked their list of living donors with the current kidney waiting list. The goal is to identify transplant candidates who were living donors but have yet to receive priority status. UNOS will then contact the person's transplant program to see that the situation is addressed.
But there are limitations to the data collection. The data tracking living donors only goes back to 1987, and have only included Social Security numbers since 1994. If a person donated a kidney before 1994 and changed his or her name, UNOS wouldn't be able to identify the person - thus still missing prior living donors who may have not been informed of their priority status.
Another solution Wainright identifies is ensuring use of the current Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network policy that requires transplant programs to inform living donors about their priority on kidney waiting lists if they need a transplant after donation.
Between Sept. 2, 1996, and July 31, 2015, a total of 422 living donors were added to the kidney transplant waiting list. According to the National Kidney Foundation, being a living kidney donor is relatively common - there were 5,538 living kidney donors in 2014 compared with 7,761 deceased donors. Living donors may face a 25 percent to 35 percent permanent loss of kidney function after donation on average, but their risks of getting end-stage renal disease is less than 1 percent 15 years after the donation.
Peter Reese, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, said his center always makes sure the living donors know about their right to a priority status. He was not associated with the study.
"If you tell kidney donors that, they will remember," he said. "I'm surprised by this UNOS data, I think it's a shame that centers are not getting their donors registered in a timely way."
Are promises made to living donors being upheld?
More information: Delays in Prior Living Kidney Donors Receiving Priority on the Transplant Waiting List, DOI: 10.2215/CJN.01360216
Journal information: Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology
©2016 Kaiser Health News
Citation: What happens when a living kidney donor needs a transplant? (2016, September 5) retrieved 17 July 2019 from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-09-kidney-donor-transplant.html
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text:
Miss Timmins' School for Girls
Nayana Currimbhoy (Author)
FORMAT
Paperback$14.99(English)

"An irresistible novel that hurls forward at breathtaking speed toward an unpredictable climax."
--Thrity Umrigar, bestselling author of The Space Between Us
"Beautifully written, atmospheric...contains entire worlds. I couldn't put it down."
--Gary Shteyngart, bestselling author of Super Sad True Love Story and Absurdistan
Miss Timmins' School for Girls is the truly dazzling debut of a major novelist, Nayana Currimbhoy. Set in India during the monsoon of 1974, it tells the story of a conventional young girl who leaves her cloistered small town home to teach at a remote boarding school run by British Missionaries. Part coming-of-age novel, part suspenseful murder mystery, Miss Timmins' School for Girls is a brilliant evocation of a colorful time and place--India during the love, drug, and rock 'n' roll era--complete with the sights, sounds, and music of the period seamlessly woven into the page-turning tale.
Harper Perennial
5.4 X 7.98 X 0.92 inches | 0.95 pounds
Historical - General
Romance - Historical - General
"Exotic, mysterious, and haunting, MISS TIMMINS' SCHOOL FOR GIRLS kept me up late for some delicious, spooky reading nights. I adored this book."--Katrina Kittle, author of The Kindness of Strangers and The Blessings of the Animals
"Beautifully written, atmospheric and very funny. Ms. Currimbhoy's debut novel contains entire worlds. I couldn't put it down."--Gary Shteyngart, bestselling author of Super Sad True Love Story
"An irresistible novel that hurls forward at breathtaking speed toward an unpredictable climax."--Thrity Umrigar, bestselling author of The Space Between Us and The Weight of Heaven
"A vivid debut novel."--National Geographic Traveler
"Currimbhoy's fiction debut is an absorbing atmospheric thriller. . . . [A] gripping tale."--Publishers Weekly
"The intimate portrait the novel offers of India at this specific point in its history is compelling, as is the dramatic relationship between Charu and the deeply troubled Moira."--Booklist
Books for the Autumnal Equinox VIEW LIST (30 BOOKS)


text:
Q: how to stop sound on pressing a button I am Using Following code to play sound
 NSString *laughSoundPath = [[NSBundle mainBundle]pathForResource:@"laugh" ofType:@"wav"];
    NSURL *laughURL = [[NSURL alloc]initFileURLWithPath:laughSoundPath];
    laughTone = [[AVAudioPlayer alloc]initWithContentsOfURL:laughURL error:nil];
    [laughTone prepareToPlay];
    [laughTone setDelegate:self];
    [laughURL release];

-(IBAction)play
{
[laughTone play];
}

i am Using following line to stop sound
-(IBAction)stop
    {
    [laughTone stop];
    }

Problem is.. When i play sound again, its starting from the point where it was stopped.. i mean to say its working as pause.. help me out

A: -(IBAction)stop
{
    [laughTone stop];
    [laughTone playAtTime:0];
}

A: Try resetting the time and then playing, again put the code in your play method:
laughTone.currentTime = 0;
[laughTone play];

A: Try this:
NSString *Str = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"Ahhh" ofType:@"wav"];
AVAudioPlayer *audioSound =[[AVAudioPlayer alloc] initWithContentsOfURL:[NSURL fileURLWithPath:ahhhPath] error:NULL];

-(IBAction)btnStopsound(id)sender
{
  [audioSound stop];
  audioSound.currentTime=0;
  [audioSound play];  //restart the player

}


This 10 inch 33 1/3 sports a fabulous cover. The graphic promotes not only Perry Como, but RCA's table top set (17T200) in blond.
There is an awesome version of Summertime on this album.
All the London Phase 4 albums I have in the collection come in nice heavy book-fold jackets that feature glossy covers. This jacket is a gatefold, but printed on thin stock in the European style of the period. The disk features a Telefunken label as shown above.
This is a book-fold jacket that features a fold out comic book styled insert so that you can follow the disc story in pictures.
Also check out Arriba a quirky offering, which apparently, came quick on the heels of this release.
The two albums feature the same basic formula, slightly quirky instrumentals including one or two odd vocal tracks that, I assume, features Ros singing.
Paul Mauriat - Listen Too!
Here is another Mauriat easy album that features a graphically dynamic cover art.
Read more about Paul Mauriat on wikipedia.org.
Light, fun and just a touch quirky.
Easy listening from Morton Gould. Downloads are available from usual sources. I recommend the track, Speak Low.
This was the 17th "Moods" release. The April 19, 1969 Billboard "spotlighted" the album saying: Their (Moods) revolutionary sound in music will again prove to be another sales giant.
Mystic Moods sets blend natural sound effects, easy listening, 60 pop and quirky arrangements. The albums are like concept projects even though popular tunes are covered. On this album your will find a beautiful cover of The Beatles Norwegian Wood. And there is also a cover of Mac Arthur Park on the B side that is totally outrageous!
From Billboard - November 17, 1962: Bright and tightly swinging performances of a flock of tunes in bossa nova rhythm including the current hit "Desafinado," by the big-sounding Zentner crew. Also included are "Caravan," "Midnight Sun," "Maria" and "Star Eyes." Could move to bossa nova fans.
This is the second Sears produced LP I've found. My first find (Golden Voices In Hollywood) was a bit of a treasure because Sears tried to cover pop songs with studio vocalists. That release was a campy 60s disaster. Sears, however, left the vocals off this release and gifted us with a straight forward and smooth mood set.
The Sears price was $1.49.
Here is an album sporting a great cover and excellent Phase 4 Stereo engineering. Musically it a quirky mix of light pop songs, including covers of Get Me To The Church On Time and Hello Dolly.
Here's a festive cover on a budget record. The music is straight forward easy listening. Ravel's Bolero has a touch of "rose clenched between the teeth" feel to it, but that's about it.
Here's a fun private press album found today at one of the thrifts I frequent.
From the back cover: The Singing Zither belongs to Willie Dittrich of the Amana Colonies in Iowa (Homestead, Iowa).
Although none of the venues are named, Dittrich played at least one local restaurant as well as other local venues including "one of eastern Iowa's local television programs."
This is an Enoch Light label release. Mottola made a number of albums for Light. The arrangements on this set are just quirky enough to hold the attention. Check out Spinning Wheel! Mottola manages to make something out of this song.
There are some great tunes on this album including a solo cover of a blend of Yesterdays/Yesterday by Harbach/Lennon.
This is one of my favorite space age covers that features a Grumman F11F-1 Tiger.
This album is a follow up to Mure's excellent Fireworks LP. I also have a blog post up featuring Mure's work on Blue Hawaii.
Tracks from this album are available online. I suggest Flaming Guitar as a download.
Excellent space age pop with awesome supersonic guitar playing!
Read more about Billy Mure on spaceagepop.com.
Great vintage cover on this album.
Saul Bihari, head of Crown Records, announced in a 1965 issue of Billboard a "new label" called Custom. Custom would feature his answer to Living Strings and be sold at discount prices ($1.98 or less). Recordings would be made domestically and in Europe.
There are a number of Lush Strings albums out there, including a few with interesting titles such as Spellbound and Ebb Tide.
This album is fully orchestrated mood that features some nice vocal touches to give the music a hint of tropical mysteriousness. However, I picked a nice dramatic cover of Hawaiian War Chant to feature as the sample above.
Narrated by Peter Waldron. Produced by Gershon Kingsley.
This halloween record really isn't scary and the cover isn't all that garish but the album was a fun listen. Each side is like a weird electronic mini-opera with sparse narration.
From Billboard - June 16, 1960: The success of the Enoch Light percussion albums has led to much recording activity in this field. This is in that groove – and it's a mighty good album at that. It features percussion with guitars, played by top musicians and recorded beautifully in stereo. The arrangements by Al Caiola are Smart, and the packaging is excellent. Tunes include "Gone With The Wind," "Just In Time," "Charleston" and Early Autumn."
Club 15 was a construct of The Campbell Soup Company. Club 15 was an "exercise club" for teenage girls. A former olympic gymnast and coach, Muriel Davis Grossfeld was contracted through a New York advertising firm, BBD&O to travel the country visiting schools and teach exercises to teenage girls.
I think the album was made in 1968 or 69 or shortly after Muriel did coaching chores for the U.S. Women's Gymnastics Team came back from Mexico City. Read more here.
Written by Frank Daniel. Produced by Wade Denning.
This is a great sound "effects" record! Out of all the "haunted house" albums I've listened to the production values on this record are, by far, the highest. I think kids listening to this might actually get a fright out of it. The tracks are sort of like mini-stories with a brief spoken word introductions followed by a rich blend of sound effects. Your imagination will then take over finish the story of terror. Great stuff.
From the back cover: So don't try to sit back and relax because your feet won't let you and your ears will agree." That's a awkward sentence if I do say so. But you get the drift that this is a rocking album. The cover is misleading, designed to look white in a effort to do crossover sales.
The vocal treatments, by both Buddy and Ella Johnson and Ricky Harper and Gil Askey are smoking.
This album falls about in the middle of Mancini's discography. This album is a bit lighter then his earlier work, but there are still plenty of those Mancini musical twists and turns to keep you engaged.
Hawaiian War Chant, the first track on the B side is especially cool.
Soundtrack by Tony Crombie, an accomplished jazz drummer and composer from the UK. The TV series, starring Richard Wyler, that was purchase by NBC in 1960.
This is very cool space age lounge/jazz that happens to available on CD.
Here's a Billy Daniels album sporting a graphically sweet cover.
Daniels was an active singer in the United States from the mid-1930s to 1986, two years before his death. Read about Daniels on his widipedia page.
This is a rocking lounge styled record with some pretty peppy electric guitar breaks. Downloads are available online. I Found A New Baby would be the sample track I would download for a listen.
Budget release with a cool exotic cover.


LockWood Landscapes are specialist designers and installers of playgrounds, play areas, natural playscapes and natural landscaping. Our work can be found in a large number of locations at schools, nurseries, public spaces, domestic properties, commercial areas, local authorities and parish councils.
We carry out play area and landscaping projects in locations throughout Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire.
We are a family business and have over fifteen years experience in this industry and have built up a large portfolio of satisfied clients with projects both large and small.
Much of our work comes from repeat business or from recommendations, this we feel is a testament to our professional approach, superb design and great installation teams using quality products and planting.