text:
Bianca Biasi (born 13 May 1979) is an Australian producer, director, actress and author who has more recently specialised in projects involving supernatural or reportedly haunted locations, mostly on Sydney's northern beaches.

She appeared in soap opera Home and Away as Constable Pia Correlli.

Acting credits
 Home and Away as Constable Pia Correlli
 All Saints as Elly Chapman
 White Collar Blue as Francesca Decia
 Above the Law as Sheena Clancy
 Breakers as Melanie
 BeastMaster as Elka
 The Junction Boys as Nurse
 Burke & Wills as Asha
 Touched By Fellini as Waitress
 Soul Traces: The Introduction as Jasmine Dahlia
 Delirium as Constable Sophia Larkin
 The Parkway Hauntings as Bianca
 The Quarantine Hauntings as Marina Santini
 CNNNN: Chaser Non-stop News Network as Fungry's Customer
 Life Support

Feature films
In 2006, she made her feature film debut in Burke & Wills (Cake Productions) in the role of Asha.

Producer credits
As of 1 January 2014, Biasi's studio had four films in post-production: The Quarantine Hauntings, The Parkway Hauntings, Delirium and The Q Station Experiment.

The location on Wakehurst Parkway was the subject of "countless anonymous stories online that speak of a girl in a white dress that appears on the Middle Creek Bridge as unsuspecting drivers go through her, or a nun apparition that sits in the back seat of cars," The Daily Telegraph reported. It also reported that both films, The Parkway Hauntings and The Quarantine Hauntings would be released in 2015.

Other activity

Bianca is also an outspoken advocate of LGBT rights in Australia and has appeared with her partner in media coverage across various outlets as a same sex mothers of twin girls, to raise awareness of the increased risk of violence against same sex parents in the lead up to divisive debate that preceded the 2017 Same-sex marriageplebiscite and subsequent legislation allowing same sex marriage.

References

1979 births
Actresses from Sydney
Living people

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
TRICHOSTRONGYLUS spp, parasitic roundworms of CATTLE, SHEEP, GOATS, PIGS and HORSES. Biology, prevention and control.
Trichostrongylus, also called hairworms, is a genus or parasitic roundworms belonging to the family called Strongylidae that affects cattle, sheep, goats and other ruminants, as well as pigs, horses and poultry. It also infects wildlife (deer, antelopes, camels, monkeys, wild boars, zebras, etc.).
It is found worldwide. In ruminants, Trichostrongylus worms are mostly found in mixed infections with other gastrointestinal roundworms (e.g. of the genera Cooperia, Haemonchus, Ostertagia, etc.).
There are about 30 species worldwide. The most relevant for livestock are:
Trichostrongylus tenuis. Infects poultry and other birds worldwide
Trichostrongylus axei. The stomach hairworm. Infects cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and horses and many wild mammals. Found worldwide
Trichostrongylus colubriformis. Bankrupt worms, black scours worms. Infects cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and horses and many wild mammals. Found worldwide
Other less frequent species are Trichostrongylus probolurus and Trichostrongylus vitrinus.
Neither dogs nor cats are affected by this species.
Some Trichostrongylus worms can incidentally infect humans if they ingest water or vegetables contaminated with infective larvae, which happens more frequently in rural regions with poor sanitary conditions. Human infections with Trichostrongylus have been reported mainly in Asia and Africa. Most infections are rather benign.
The disease caused by Trichostrongylus worms is called trichostrongylosis or trichostrongyliasis.
Are animals infected with Trichostrongylus worms contagious for humans?
NO. Direct contact with infected livestock, horses, birds or their fresh feces is not contagious for humans because the eggs shed with the feces have to mature in the environment to become infective. For more details about the life cycle of these worms see below.
Final location of Trichostrongylus worms
Predilection site of adult Trichostrongylus worms is the small intestine.
Predilection site of Trichostrongylus axei is the stomach, occasionally the small intestine.
Predilection site of Trichostrongylus tenuis in poultry is the cecum.
Anatomy of Trichostrongylus worms
Adult Trichostrongylus worms have a slender form and a brownish-reddish color and are 5 to 10 mm long, depending on the species.
As other roundworms the body of these worms is covered with a cuticle, which is flexible but rather tough. The worms have no external signs of segmentation. They have a tubular digestive system with two openings. They also have a nervous system but no excretory organs and no circulatory system, i.e. neither a heart nor blood vessels.
Males have two spicules for attaching to the female during copulation. The spicules of Trichostrongylus colubriformis have the same length, whereas those of T. axei and T. tenuis are different.
The eggs are ovoid, have a thin shell, measure ~40x80 micrometers, and are embryonated when shed.
Life cycle Trichostrongylus worms
All Trichostrongylus species have a direct life cycle, i.e. there are no intermediate hosts involved. Adult females lay eggs in the large intestine of the host that are shed with the feces. Once in the environment the eggs release the L1-larvae that complete development to infective L3-larvae in about 5 days by suitable weather (hot and humid), significantly longer by cold weather. These infective larvae can survive in the environment and remain infective for up to 6 months.
Livestock becomes infected after ingesting such larvae while grazing or with contaminated soil. After ingestion, larvae of Trichostrongylus axei complete development to adult worms in the stomach, where they may penetrate into the lining of the abomasum. Larvae of other species reach the small intestine, where they get into the crypts of the lining and complete development to adults.
The prepatent period (time between infection and first eggs shed) is 3 to 4 weeks, depending of the species and the host.
Harm caused by Trichostrongylus worms symptoms and diagnosis
As other gastrointestinal roundworms, Trichostrongylus worms damage the lining of the small intestine or the stomach (T. axei) of the host, which can lead to enteritis, gastritis, and sometimes anemia as well. Typical signs are diarrhea (mucous and/or hemorrhagic) or constipation, general weakness and wasting, loss of appetite, reduced weight gains or even weight loss, etc.
Acute severe infections in young animals may be fatal. Since most infections are mixed with other gastrointestinal roundworms (e.g. Cooperia spp, Haemonchus spp, Ostertagia spp, etc.) it is not easy to ascribe the damage to Trichostrongylus or to other worms.
Trichostrongylus tenuis is also seriously harmful for poultry, particularly for young geese. It is usually not a problem in modern industrial poultry production, but can be a serious threat under traditional outdoor farming conditions.
Diagnosis is confirmed after detection of characteristic eggs in the feces. However, determination of the species requires post mortem examination of adult worms after necropsy.
Prevention and control of Trichostrongylus infections
In cattle, sheep and goats Trichostrongylus worms occur mainly in mixed infections with other gastrointestinal roundworms (in ruminants Haemonchus, Ostertagia, Cooperia, etc; in horses Cyathostomins and Strongylus spp) and increase the damage. Consequently, whatever reduces pasture contamination with infective larvae (e.g. adequate pasture rotation) or exposure of livestock to such larvae will diminish the impact on the herd. Such preventative measures are the same for all gastrointestinal roundworms and are explained in a specific article in this site (click here). Infection of livestock indoors is infrequent but possible.
In the case of Trichostrongylus axei it must be considered that infective larvae are rather resistant to cold and dryness and can survive on pasture for up to 6 months.
Numerous broad spectrum anthelmintics are effective against adult worms and larvae, e.g. several benzimidazoles (albendazole, febantel, fenbendazole, flubendazole, mebendazole, oxfendazole, etc.), levamisole, as well as several macrocyclic lactones (e.g. abamectin, doramectin, eprinomectin, ivermectin, moxidectin). A few other narrow-spectrum anthelmintics such as tetrahydropyrimidines (e.g. morantel, pyrantel) are effective against adult worms but may not control larvae and other roundworm species that often infect livestock simultaneously with Trichostrongylus worms.
In numerous countries monepantel, an anthelmintic of a new chemical class, is also available as a drench for use on sheep and goats. It is effective against Trichostrongylus axei, Trichostrongylus colubriformis, Trichostrongylus rugatus, and Trichostrongylus vitrinusadults and immature L4 larvae, even those resistant to other anthelmintics., but only against inhibited larvae of Trichostrongylus axei. It is not approved for cattle.
Depending on the country, most of these anthelmintics for livestock are available for oral administration as drenches, feed additives and/or tablets. Levamisole and most macrocyclic lactones are usually also available as injectables. A few active ingredients are also available for livestock as pour-ons and slow-release boluses. Most anthelmintics for use on horses are available as oral pastes or gels.
Numerous commercial products contain mixtures of two or even more active ingredients of different chemical classes. This is done to increase the chance that at least one active ingredient is effective against Trichostrongylus and other gastrointestinal worms that have become resistant, or to delay resistance development by those worms that are still susceptible.
Excepting slow-release boluses, most wormers containing benzimidazoles (e.g. albendazole, febantel, fenbendazole, flubendazole, mebendazole, oxfendazole, etc.), levamisole, tetrahydropyrimidines (e.g. morantel, pyrantel) and other classic anthelmintics kill the worms shortly after treatment and are quickly metabolized and/or excreted within a few hours or days. This means that they have a short residual effect, or no residual effect at all. As a consequence treated animals are cured from worms but do not remain protected against new infections. To ensure that they remain worm-free the animals have to be dewormed periodically, depending on the local epidemiological, ecological and climatic conditions. An exception to this are macrocyclic lactones (e.g. abamectin, doramectin, eprinomectin, ivermectin, moxidectin), that offer several weeks protection against re-infestation, depending on the delivery form and the specific parasite.
There are so far no true vaccines against Trichostrongylus worms. To learn more about vaccines against parasites of livestock and pets click here.
Biological control of Trichostrongylus (i.e. using its natural enemies) is so far not feasible. Learn more about biological control of worms.
Resistance of Trichostrongylus worms to anthelmintics
There are numerous reports on confirmed resistance of several Trichostrongylus species to most used anthelmintics (benzimidazoles, ivermectin, levamisole, etc) in sheep, goats and cattle. So far not on horses or poultry.
This means that if an anthelmintic fails to achieve the expected efficacy against Trichostrongylus worms, there is a significant risk that it is due to resistance to anthelmintics, particularly in sheep, goats and cattle.
Ask your veterinary doctor! If available, follow more specific national or regional recommendations for Trichostrongylus control.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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By Richard G. Ll. Kendall
Kyrylo Anatolyevich Zuev does not record his motivation for beginning the 'Sphere of Immeasurable History' in his otherwise exhaustive diaries. We are therefore left to speculate on the origins of the idea, whether the Histogram of James B. Sparks published in 1931 influenced the project, or if the satirical cartographies that emerged in the Russo-Japanese war and the Great Patriotic War itself were more direct inspirations. Certainly, the importance of the works of Kandinsky and other abstract artists of the period has long been acknowledged, as has the wider tendency in Russian art towards the visualisation of geography and society (exemplified by the famous 'Pyramid of Social Hierarchy' published by the Union of Russian Socialists in 1900). While the influence of these works is never explicitly stated by Zuev, the transmutation of society into colour, accompanied by the clear attempt at universality inherent in the project, demonstrate the impact of these works on the Sphere without doubt.
Nevertheless, it is also certain that Zuev did not receive formal artistic training before beginning the project, or at any stage in the production process. Nor had he any official training in history, philology, archaeology, or any of the disciplines now termed social science, which makes the exactitude of his design staggering. Rather, Zuev was a soldier, from a poor family in North Eastern Ukraine, who was schooled between the ages of seven and fourteen, and received army training from seventeen to nineteen, before his deployment in the Great Patriotic War in 1940. At this point in the war, the Russians were being forced back by the relentless Nazi advance and, his survival aside, there is nothing distinguishable about the private at this point. After the victory at Stalingrad, which Zuev played no part in (being stationed at the Finnish border), and the subsequent change in the fortunes of the Soviet forces, the fervent patriotism of the young man was noticed by his superiors, leading to his promotion to Sergeant in 1943, at this point based in Pannonia.
After the war, Zuev spent six months walking east toward his hometown. The route he took was one of near total devastation. It is highly likely that for much of this journey he was without food, shelter or company. He arrived in the spring of '46 to find a town of ruins. Nothing remained of his house, school, or family. His whereabouts for the subsequent thirteen months remain a matter of speculation.
His diaries begin with the first application of paint to the medicine ball he had dedicated as the core of his 'great project'. It is 13th May 1947 and he is in the city of Astrakhan on the Volga, where he remained until his death. The name 'Sphere of Immeasurable History' appears to be colloquial, as it appears nowhere in his writings. He describes in detail the brush used to apply the coat of ebony black paint, listing not only its size, shape and make, but the number of hairs it has, and the position of his fingers around the grip of the handle. He also records the precise time he began the application, and its endpoint: 16:43 and 17:14, respectively. It is thought this exactitude is a legacy of his army days.
The only display of creativity in the entry, beyond the essential act of painting, is also the only indication of the overarching aim of the project, and serves as definitive proof that the conjecture of Vassily Ivanovich Larionov (that Zuev changed the aim of his project midway through the 1950s) is false. This is his description of the fúnkcija, 'function', of the paint: magma.
The following two thousand, four hundred and forty-three entries are nearly identical to this opening account: one coat of ebony black paint applied to the project each day. The only consistent change is the hour of its application and the time it takes to apply: likely reflective both of the constraints of Zeuv's variable employment as first miner and then butcher, and of the increasing size of the sphere. In the two thousand four hundred and forty-fifth entry, however, the first substantial change takes place. After listing the regular brush, and colour applied across the sphere, Zuev adds information regarding a second brush, much smaller than the first, with finer hairs that end in a precise, taut point. Following this inventory is a record of the colour and location on the sphere where this brush was used: хаки; олдувай. Khaki; Olduvai Gorge.
It appears this application was minimal in the first seventeen days of its appearance: the start and end times of this paintwork are identical. Progressively, however, it appears that this work took a longer and longer time to complete, and expanded its area of application to a larger part of the East African region, although the brush used remained the same. This remains the case even when, after a further one hundred and sixty-seven days, a second colour is added to this area: оливковый цвет. Literally, olive-coloured.
In due course, this second colours supplants the first and expands across a region which gradually begins to resemble the central and eastern areas of the African Continent. This colour, in turn, is then replaced by another, сине-зелёный цвет (cyan), which is correspondingly superseded by a further colour, Лесная зелень, forest green. In the meantime, it is known that Zuev married a local woman ten years his junior, who suffered five miscarriages before succumbing in childbirth. In all of this time, he never once missed a day of working in his project: even on the day of his wife's death (reported in the local newspaper), his diary reveals that he spent three hours sixteen minutes painting his sphere, now a light grey colour reaching to an area corresponding to the Sinai.
On New Year's Day 1960 his paintwork finally extended out of Africa and reached the Fertile Crescent. It was soon after this that he began using a wider palette of colours. In the autumn of 1962, for example, two colours, цвет морской волны, blue-green, and тёмно-синий, navy blue, are used to pick out Нехен and Урук (Nekhen and Uruk). These colours gradually multiplied as the decade progressed, stretching across the Central Asian plain and into Northern India.
In 1963, with the world transfixed by the nuclear standoff on Cuba, Zuev was locked in calculations of the coordinates of Anyang in Oriental China, which he painted in a rich алый ('scarlet').
In 1965, with America landing their first troops in Vietnam, Zuev was the other side of the Eurasian continent, picking out the Aegean Islands in бордо, maroon.
In 1968, as the Soviet state crushed the revolutionaries in Czechoslovakia, Hittite armies, picked out in оранжевый, orange, spread themselves across the Anatolian plain.
In 1971, as war split East from West Pakistan, the dark blue of Sea Peoples overran the Mediterranean basin.
In 1973, the pale blue of Greece first stopped the advance of Persian green, and then, later in the year, as the Six-Day War threw the Middle East into conflict, spread across Asia into the Upper Ganges.
1975 saw Roman purple spread itself across Europe, and the yellow and pink of Maurya and Gupta empires rise and fall in South Asia, while the red of China stretched ever wider.
1978 saw the rainbow that had been Central Asia at last united under the yoke of Mongol brown. By the next year it had all but disappeared.
1979 saw the introduction of colour to America: bold golds and silver in Mexico and Guatemala, and a patchwork of dry blues and browns across the northern continent.
From 1980 to 1983, Zuev overtook the extraordinarily difficult and time-consuming exercise of plotting exactly the fluctuating borders and peoples of Europe, Africa and Asia in amazing detail, precise to the very millimetre. The rise of the Solidarity Movement in Poland did nothing to interrupt the process.
In 1984, as a Soviet leader died and was replaced by another also terminally ill, Zuev increased the brush size for the first time in six years, to a medium size object better suited for depicting the vast swathes of land now conquered by the European Great Powers. In pink he depicted the might of British rule, in cobalt blue the stretch of the French domain, and in terracotta red the expanse of Tsarist Russia.
1985 was a landmark year in many ways.
Firstly, Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union. He was the first leader born after the 1917 Revolution, and for Zuev that fact alone ensured existence of the U.S.S.R. forever.
More importantly for our interests, however, 1985 was the year that Zuev designated the project complete. There is an increasing sense of excitement discernible in his diaries of this year: the meticulous records remain the same, but the hours spent on the work increase, as does the variety of brushes used simultaneously. It is know that by this point Zeuv had quit his work, which we can speculate was to devote his full energies to the project.
From January to May, he plotted the battlements and shifting power struggles of the First World War. May to September was spent on the Interbellum period, the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires presenting particular difficulties to the now elderly Zuev.
It is his accounts of the 27th September to the 24th December that present the most enthralling passages to be found in his entire archive. At last the monotony of records is broken by occasional comments, quips even, denigrating the advance of Hitler with the benefit of hindsight. They are not sophisticated, often things like 'Szkop thought he was through to Moscow — he learnt Russian zeal the hard way!', or 'Fricis couldn't topple the Slavic giant, try as he might!', but they reveal more of the man behind the project.
Finally, on Christmas Eve 1985, we have the final record. It is possible to imagine even Zuev, not known as a sentimental man, sighing, satisfied at the end of his great work. He certainly enjoyed the final application of paint. Exclamation points accompany each record for the only time in his writings, with five following the measurements of the paint brush, which was unusually large for Zuev's work: not since the Mongol hordes of '78 had such a brush been used.
There was only one colour used: красный, pure Soviet red.
A huge expanse from Germany to Korea, all in red: 'это красиво', 'It is beautiful' wrote Zuev. The Nazi black completely eradicated by the glorious red of the Soviet Union. 'это закончено', 'It is finished', he writes at the bottom of the final page.
Forgive me an indulgence: It seems to me pertinent at this point to posit my own hypothesis for the overarching reason for the project, given that it follows logically from the exuberance seen in Zuev's own account of these final coats. I believe he wished to demonstrate the ultimate triumph of the Soviets, across all history and all lands. The largest continuous area, under one state, one system, and overcoming one evil: the Nazis who had destroyed his home and family in the Ukrainian North East. To a fervent patriot, the Great Patriotic War assumed an epic status as the defining battle of Good versus Evil, and Zuev, lacking skill as a writer or conventional artist, chose this medium as the sole way he could express the cosmic enormity of the Soviet victory.
It is also to be noted that the majority of Russian scholars, and many in the West (where, alas, there is significantly less interest in the project), reject this theory of mine, seeing in it a theological element that they argue would have been anathema to the committed atheist Zuev. I leave it to my readers to decide which of us is right.
Following the completion of the project, Zuev began publicising his work. It was at this time that the name 'Sphere of Immeasurable History' is first attested. He charged seventy kopeks to view the work, which he hung from the ceiling in the front room of his apartment.
For five rubles, however, the visitor could partake in an extraordinarily innovative venture. Zuev had constructed a glass tube, slightly smaller in diameter than a one kopek piece, with edges so fine that it could well have served as a tool for trepanning. With this device, Zeuv could produce, with a quick push in and out, a cross section of any area of the sphere, and show the visual history of any point of the earth. Paying visitors could choose a spot anywhere on the earth's surface and see this cylinder of the past, and for four rubles extra they could have the colours explained to them in exhaustive detail by Zeuv himself.
I personally experienced this excellent feature of the project when I first visited Astrakhan in 1988. I heard news of the sphere from a friend who ran an art gallery (and was hoping to inherit the ball once the frail Zuev finally passed on), and arranged an appointment the next week. It was important to give notice not only of arrival but also of whether you intended to pay for a cylinder viewing, as it took time for the glue placed on extracted cylinders to set and keep the ball complete.
I chose the view the cylinder corresponding to contemporary Elista, the main urban area of the Autonomous Republic of Kalmykia, and an area I felt had perhaps not been previously asked for, despite its relative proximity to the native Astrakhan. To my surprise he replied: 'Another one? You aren't a separatist are you, I won't have terrorists in my home.'
I explained that I was just an interested observer. 'Good,' he replied, 'Well that's all right then.' I assumed this was the crankiness of age, until I discovered before I had arrived that the various separatist groups of the region had indeed been playing frequent call to Sergeant Zuev, whose strict adherence to historical fact had inadvertently served to provide evidence for historical claims to self-determination. In the last week alone, I was told, over a dozen Ossetians had arrived at Zuev's door, where they were told in no uncertain terms that they were not welcome.
He had already prepared the cylinder by the time I reached his apartment. There it was, a long prism of colour, showing the history of that place in the steppe, hardly even a town by Muscovite standards. Yet even here, in this backwater of nomads and antelope, history had layered herself. There the Khazar mauve, then Kievian light green and the brown of Genghis Khan's Mongols. The Oirats appeared as a pale pink, before the terracotta and pure red of the Tsars and Soviets took over. Very early in the cylinder, however, there was a shade of yellow I could not interpret. I paid my four rubles and asked for an explanation.
'That, that is the culture known to us as Indo-European. They started here and spread their influence across the continent forever.'
The omnipotence of history struck me suddenly. Here, in this wasted steppe, lived those whose language we speak a bastardised form of to this day, corrupted by the centuries. There, manus had first rasied a suhnus and a dhukter. There, deyn had first been split from nokwts, and the yeh first measured by the seasons. I thought of the great nebhos above us, a near dead-ringer for my modern небо, and felt at once connected to the great unending spread of history and culture. I looked from the tube to Zuev, from Zuev to the tube, and stayed in a state of utter reverie until the old man began coughing at alarming volume and length. I left quickly after he had recovered, thanking Zuev without ceremony.
I did not think much on the sphere for a long time after this, overtaken by work and family. It was not until I heard the news of Zuev's suicide that I even remembered my brief encounter with Immeasurable History.
In a small obituary focusing largely on his military accomplishments, a brief sentence intrigued me and made me investigate further: 'Recently Zuev had caused controversy in disputes with the local administration regarding the standards in accommodation.' For one so dogmatically committed to Communism, complaining about his Soviet apartment seemed unusual. I called my friend who had first mentioned Zuev to me to see if he had any further information.
'Yes, he hanged himself; I'm told it was the new regime, although yes he did seem to have a gripe about the housing. There was some talk of a hunger strike, but I guess he chose the quicker option.'
I was not in the mood to laugh. I discovered that, until a decision had been finalised about its permanent location (with many various local and regional galleries vying for it) the sphere remained in the apartment. Feigning an interest in its acquisition for the hastily invented Museum of Russian Folk Art, I was able to book a viewing for the coming week. I cleared that whole day in my schedule, unsure of what I might uncover.
Times were changing in Russia. Even in this provincial city you could feel it. The local Party official who met me outside the apartment and gave me the keys dropped in an English 'cool' when I described the ease of my journey. I left him outside and walked up to the third floor, unlocked the door and entered.
I saw the beam from which he had swung before I saw the sphere, but there it was, in the same place as it had all those years ago. I turned on the light switch and was greeted by an electric spark from the decades-old Soviet lamps. I looked up and saw the peeling ceiling, and smelled the damp in the air. I could see why he would complain about these conditions, particularly now that western products were in every shop window, but my instincts led me on, knowing that the fervent Zuev would never have betrayed his glorious Republic for a facile infatuation with the West.
As I looked around the room, investigating the bookshelves and rifling through Zuev's possessions for an answer, it came to me. First, as a sound: a single drop of water. I turned and I saw: above the globe, directly above, there was a damp patch in the ceiling, from which fell a single drop of water every few minutes. It landed with an almost silent plop on the sphere itself, and then trickled down and across the artefact. Moving closer, I investigated the damage.
The drop had landed directly on the area of Eastern Europe. It seemed to have hit around Warsaw first, and then the Baltics before dripping down into Bulgaria, Romania and the Balkans. It was difficult to be sure as this area had become smudged. The damage was extensive: the red had paled in places, and in others was peeling right off, revealing once again the colours of the Interbellum period. The continuing dripping was making the colours of the blot run even as I stared at it.
I realised what had happened. I sat down on the floor and looked from the globe to the beam from which I knew Zuev had hung. I could imagine his growing anger at the world around him, his countrymen's rejection of all that was communist for the shallow fancies of the West, and then — here — in his own room, the sudden encroachment of the failings of his state onto his most prized possession. The water, falling sporadically, but fatally, was hardly noticeable even now in the silence of the apartment; Zuev could not have seen what was happening until it was too late. I looked again up at the ceiling: desperate hooks hanging from beams nowhere near substantial enough to hold the weight of his work, and a world gone to ruin outside. He had watched the project he had dedicated his life to falling apart from its own fragility, and I saw that he resolved to use the one other suitable beam to hang his second and final piece: his own response to the end of history. Tears came lightly to my eyes as I thought about it; but the official was outside, and wanted an offer, so I had to get up and explain brusquely that I was no longer interested in purchasing the Sphere.
'Yeah, it's that blotting isn't it? It's put a lot of your sort off. Sure it can be fixed though if you wanted to — certainly if you were as dedicated as the old guy in there.'
He laughed a little as he locked up the apartment.
'Still, we'll find a buyer. People are buying everything these days, even old junk like that Sphere.'
I must have shown my irritation as he didn't speak again. We descended the stairs and left.
Pato Bosich
Pythia in trance
Oil paint, silver leaf, adhesive, on printed paper
From the series 'The Dying Pythia'
https://www.patobosich.com


Simple As Me. nav take me simple lyrics genius lyrics. simple minds wikipedia. follow me kids songs super simple songs youtube. nav take me simple lyrics genius. bullies why me fozzyfitness. can you solve this simple math question youtube. moments with your grandchildren pictures photos and images for facebook tumblr pinterest. a simple life bluegrass lyrics with chords. don t you forget about me simple minds don t you forge flickr. simple birthday frame freeproducts. [Bangsandbeardcomics.com].


text:
the iconic original cover for Captain Corelli's Mandolin
Books In one of those strange coincidences which happen, from time to time, in the week the Matisse art book exhibition opens at The Walker, I've been sent a review copy of Derek Brazell and Jo Davies's Making Great Illustrations, a collection of interviews with contemporary artists working in similar fields. While it's still too early, with a couple of exceptions, to tell whether any of the illustrators featured will have the same cultural impact as Matisse, or to be fair would ever claim to be aspiring in that direction, it's still useful to see how in some ways, sixty years later, the profession of creating art books and art for clients in the advertising and publishing industry hasn't changed that much.
Like Matisse, these artists are very careful to make sure they're able to pursue private projects even whilst they're slaving away for commissioning clients and find some demarcation between the two (the few exceptions being those creating books and graphic novels where both impulses are intertwined like Matisse's own later work). They all have stories of working for clients who're more interested in asserting control over the work rather than offering useful suggestions but similarly they're all able to talk about clients who value their creative impulse understanding that they're only able to produce their best work when left to use the brief as a starting point.
To my surprise there are loads of illustrators whose work I recognise. Emma Dibben is the key illustrator for Waitrose and her goache and ink drawings define their food range and its their distinctiveness which makes it my supermarket of choice. I'm gratified to know that she will refuse a job if she feels the food has been sourced unethically. Jeff Fisher produced the iconic original cover for Captain Corelli's Mandolin and he's an example of an artist who's become subtly pervasive across different subjects. Children's illustrator Quentin Blake is perhaps the best known thanks to his work with Roald Dahl, and as he says, often his drawings are more introspective than the text.
On top of that, there are some real discoveries. Catalina Estrada's fashion designs which smash together Japanese iconograohy with a Spanish sensibility are enthralling and utterly wearable and only make me curse once again the uniformity of male dress. In a similar tone, David Downton's spare, abstract fashion illustrations have been employed when a client wants something different to a more typical photograph and is perhaps best known for his painting of Cate Blanchett which graced the fiftieth anniversary issue of VOGUE. Mairan Bantjes's textual experiments have led to a table created to support Doctors Without Borders, a message urging donations laser-etched into the wood.
Illustrators should gain insight, empathy and a rich seam of passive advice within the deftly distilled thoughts of these artists. There is some repetition, but quite often the repetition in and of itself is interesting. Each interview includes a location note and almost every artist has moved from their birthplace, having had to go where the work was or now comfortable enough to be able to choose their place of work. There's a sense of ambition on display here, that you have to make yourself noticed. Which I suppose is a lesson even those of us who've never been that visually creative can learn from.
Making Great Illustration by Derek Brazell and Jo Davie. AC Blacks. 2011. RRP: £35.00. ISBN: 978-1408124536. Review copy supplied.
[A blog by the authors covering the writing process is available here].
on Saturday, October 22, 2011 0 comments Labels: book reviews
Review 2011: Call For Entries: The Opinion Engine 2.0
It's that time of year. Again.
Each December, as some of you will know, I try to write (or ask you to write) a series of posts grouped around a single theme or mode. Sometimes these are epic projects that cover the entire month, otherwise it's simply something to fill the days between Christmas and New Year.
This year I want to try to be epic. Yet again.
What I would like is for you to suggest topics for me to offer an opinion about.
Could be anything. Something cultural, a film, a book or some music. A current affairs story. A person. A concept. Even just a word.
You can be as specific as possible, phrase the suggestion as a question. Or simply a sentence or a title.
There are no restrictions although I reserve to the right not to use it or to ask you to come up with something else if I simply can't find the inspiration or feel as though I've covered it already somewhere in the past nine and half years of my blog. Unless I've changed my mind. I do that a lot.
Some readers will notice that this is essentially also what I did last year when it worked well enough, so I've decided to repeat the exercise. Even this introductory post is almost exactly the same.
You will of course receive credit for your suggestion and links to your website/twitter account/anything you're trying to publicise.
I want to try and post something for every day in December so want to start writing now so that I have something "banked".
You can contact me through the usual virtual channels:
on Saturday, October 22, 2011 0 comments Labels: review 2011
I've got another year of Doctor Who ...
TV Oh dear, Matt's past tensing. Eccleston fans will know what that means:
"Well, hopefully soon, you know. I've got another year of Doctor Who, but then I'm certainly going to come and give it a shot, come and hang out in LA... as you say, people like Andy [Garfield] have come over, and he's a mate of mine. I'm very proud to see him doing Spider-Man, 'cause we did a play together, and, you know, Spider-Man now. It's incredible. And he'll be brilliant, he'll be so brilliant."
That still, potentially, (depending on this stuff) puts him into 2013 and it seems right that there should be a regeneration in the show's fiftieth year. But we'all had been led to believe he'd be sticking around for at least a couple more years.
I bet he just means, film another year, move to LA and hang out then come back and film another. Yes, I'm sure that's it. Or it will be once he and Moffat and everyone else connected with the show have had to endure the same question for the next twelve months. "So I just wanted to ask, is Matt leaving at the end of the next series?"
Update! 24/10/2011 Yes, indeed, he's gone. From Radio Times:
"Speaking in an interview in the new issue of Radio Times, he told Gareth McLean, "When I finish [Doctor Who], I'll be…" before checking himself and continuing, "Well, I don't know how old I'll be, but by the end of next year I'll be 29 so…"
He would have been no good on Spooks would he?
Update! 28/10/2011 Or is he? New comments promoting the Season Six shiny disc release at the Press Association:
"We work very long hours every day for nine months. The schedule is pretty brutal, but I'd never complain about it. I love playing this role, and I don't want to give it up any time soon," he continued.
"I feel very lucky. In the current climate for actors, I'd never say, 'This is too much' - quite the opposite, in fact. I'd say, 'Bring it on'."
David Tennant said he didn't want to give up Doctor Who after he'd announced he was leaving because he'd decided it was time to go. We'll see.
Update! 29/2/2012 He's changed his tune a bit in this report from Daybreak:
To paraphrase: he's not going to stop playing the Doctor any time soon.
on Friday, October 21, 2011 0 comments Labels: doctor who
The Walker's new exhibition [...] The Art Books of Henri Matisse
Art Yesterday I attended the press launch for The Walker's new exhibition and the experience was literally, and to use a description they've been far too tasteful to put in the publicity materials, like walking into the pages of a book. The Art Books of Henri Matisse displays sixty three illustrations on leaves which were originally part of four volumes published between 1932 and 1950 during at the peak of the artist's career. In a bit of a coup, they're a loan from Bank of America Merill Lynch's art collection as part of a kind of community outreach programme which has seen this exhibition tour and other major shows across the world. Here's another one in Paris.
We begin with a short primer which includes the nugget that he only began painting at the age of twenty when his mother gave him a paint box. The wikipedia elaborates on this with the detail that he was convalescing after an attack of appendicitis and that it felt like "a kind of paradise". Even though he was disappointing his father, he pressed ahead with becoming an artist and if the late photograph featured, by Cartier-Bresson of Matisse working at home, his room filled with doves flying loose is anything to go by, the lifestyle consumed him. He sits with his fist around the body of one of the poor birds, calmly sketching away.
A Matisse landscape from the Walker's collection is also included, an impressionistic, a nondescript thing which demonstrates why he only really found fame at the turn of the last century when he began to follow fauvist ideas. These books are part of the onrush of work which developed from that as, like many artists of the period, he took advantage of printing technology to disseminate his material to a middle class audience greedy to demonstrate their cultural credentials but unable to afford his canvases. With the scarcity of paper and small print runs, these were apparently still much sought after and it's the mission of the curatorial collaborators to convince us why.
Opposite the biography is a short display explaining the four main techniques Matisse employed in his work with examples of four printing plates: Linoleum (lino) is easy to cut and shape and offers nice clean lines, pochoir (stencil) which he used to create bold abstract shapes, etching on copper and lithograph, the results of which gave impression of crayon drawings. There's also a display cabinet containing the tools which were required in these processes all of which were clearly very tactile but whose nature also must have informed Matisse's artistic choices. Perhaps what makes him a "great" artist was his decision engine.
The bulk of the display is the four books themselves. Originally produced as loose leaves, they're easily frameable but inevitably the gallery environment changes them and our experience of what Matisse was trying to achieve. These are not the complete books, so the sense of creative or narrative flow the artist would have built into them is lost, as are the juxtaposition of images from page to page, the symbolic repetition of colour. You're also unable to contemplate them in quite the same way, especially if like me, you're the kind of person who's easily distracted from concentrating on anything by your fellow humans with their walking around and breathing.
The Private View.
That accepted, it's impossible not to enjoy the prints as individual objects, even Posesis de Stephane Mallarme from 1932, the most "book"-like of the four publications, in which Matisse's creations are visually most separate from the text, each appearing on opposite pages. The press notes explain that Matisse was in Tahiti (see, the lifestyle) when his Swiss publisher Albert Skirta asked him to create etchings for this publication. Over the next year and half, and with his eye most interested in women and nature, he produced dozens of suggested drawings of which twenty-seven were eventually chosen.
Translating Mallarme's poetry was a consideration at the planning stage for the show but it was ultimately decided that since the text is deliberately obscure, meta-physical, an English version would be too much of an interpretation and couldn't ever reflect the sense. Interestingly, that's generally what Matisse is attempting visually, translating the text through the prism of his own imagination. There are caricatures, of Edgar Allen Poe and Baudelare, but mainly we see the beginnings of some of the motifs which would reappear throughout his career, especially the abstract, cluttered group of naked females.
Next in the room, travelling in a clockwise direction, is Pasiphae, Chant de Minos (Les Cretois) from 1944, a joint project with the French author Henry de Montherlant in which Matisse illustrated a contemporary retelling of the origins of the Minotaur myth. Even without an inability to understand the text, the highlights of the narrative punch through in the drawings influenced by Greek vase paintings, King Minos defying Poseidon and refusing to sacrifice the white bull, his wife being put under a spell and to fall in love with the animal, their deed and the half man, half beast who was the product.
In the eight years since the Mallarme, his artistic confidence has also grown taking full advantage of being as much part of the publication process as the author by over seeing such details as producing lithographed designs for the opening capital letters. Some of the illustrations are initially difficult to distinguish forcing us to look ever closer until we realise that it's a female form. Pasiphae in-flagrante? Such was his poise that he was even capable of reducing a human form to a single line, as he did with one image of Minos, then imbuing it with great emotion, the king screaming, having realised what his wife has done.
Le Cheval, l'ecuyere, et le Clown (The Horse, the Rider, and the Clown)
© Succession H. Matisse / DACS 2011
Jazz (1947) show his ability and philosophy move another step on, as illustration and text become equal partners and though he was even less interested in having the subject matter match, aesthetically the effect was and is perfect. There's no particular narrative to speak of, just a set of images experimenting with colour and stencilling, each a work of art which could be complete in and of itself more clearly than many of the other sheets in the exhibition which must be what makes them so immediately accessible. It includes one of Matisse's most reproduced images, Icarus, floating in a royal blue night sky filled with golden stars, a red circle representing his destination.
This is a collection often as straightforward as cave paintings yet also infinitely complex because of the chosen colours, because of the shapes, which despite seeming haphazard and random have to have been deliberately designed due to the printing process. A controlled hullabaloo. Plus after a series of images in the other books which have to be titled after part of the accompanying text because they lack their own, there's something relatively comforting about returning to a world were titles less enigmatically reflect their content. The Wolf. Pierot's Funeral.
Frontispiece From "Poemes de Charles D'orleans"
Produced concurrently with both of these was Poemes de Charles d'Orleans (1950) whose publication was saw the end of a nine year odyssey which began while he was bed-bound in occupied France. He was an admirer of d'Orleans's poetry and during three arduous years he created 54 full-colour lithographs to accompany the 15th-century text, which he also reproduced in his own hand, in a similar technique to Jazz though it's clear that for various reasons, Matisse wanted to venerate the text rather than distract from it, returning to the simpler shapes of his Stephane Mallarme work.
The result is nothing short of magnificent, drawing inspiration from illuminated manuscripts yet making them totally contemporary and they're just as fresh sixty years after publication. There's a repetitive use of a green fleur-de-lys motif which evokes tapestries of the earlier period and 15th century portraits translated into line drawings, which again initially seem primitive and defy the laws of what a less forgiving teacher might consider well proportioned but could actually be different eras of art history touching. Many of those old pictures were equally inconsistent about such things.
The exhibition ends with examples of artist books from the Walker's collection, from photographer Edward Ruscha, Gilbert and George, Tom Philips and Jess Nutall. Tactile objects necessary held behind glass, they're an excellent example of the difficulty of showing artist books and how much has been gained in taking the Matisse works out of their usual environment. You might even wonder what it would be like to display other books in this way, all of Pride and Prejudice or a Booker prize winner spread across a series of rooms forcing us to walk from one read page to the next, dozens of people reading the same book together.
Until 15th April 2012. More details here.
[The Independent has a gallery of images from the exhibition].
on Friday, October 21, 2011 0 comments Labels: museum review
Treasure Hunt, without Wincy Willis, the magenta jumpsuits or cross looking pensioners
TV Of all the actors who might have been cast as Tim Rice, the almost similarly named Tom Price wouldn't have been my first guess, but there he was in last night in BBC Four's Holy Flying Circus in a perfectly observed performance, wordlessly failing to properly referee the epic exchange between one third of the Pythons and Malcolm Muggeridge on Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. All of which was fine. But did anyone else shout "It's PC Andy!" when he first appeared on screen. Because however rubbish much of Torchwood is, Andy has been one of its best creations.
As I notice below in this old review, Andy doesn't appear in Small Worlds, but that's the least of its crimes. As you can see, after giving Cyberwoman a mixed response, this is when the wheels really came off and whatever hopes I might have had for the series were driven straight into and sunk in Cardiff Bay. As you can see, I was even concerned about what effect it might have on series three of Doctor Who but since that brought us Blink and Martha Jones amongst other things, it just probably demonstrated that Russell T Davies, as he'd admit himself later, wasn't paying enough attention to what this sister series was doing.
Another dispiriting fifty minutes in the company of Torchwood. I mean I've been largely positive about the series up until now, but this was a mess, and everything you could fear that show might descend into being. I really, really left tonight's episode afraid for the safety of Season Three of Doctor Who. They're different series, to be sure, but the same production team were happy to see tonight's drama broadcast as is despite the litany of problems. Why is it for every very cool moment, there's some bit of dialogue, or acting, or direction that makes you want to throw a pillow at the screen?
The positives first. Captain Jack's mystery is developing nicely and the revelation that he was knocking around on the planet in the very early 1900s was a nice surprise and beautifully ambiguous in relation to whether those scenes happened before or after The Doctor Dances. The flashback scene was shot well too, and it wasn't made completely clear whose side he was on in the war. My impression is that they didn't and that in fact he was romancing the old fairy woman before he went travelling in the Tardis and looked her up when he reappeared on Earth just recently. Otherwise we're in Highlander/Angel/Eighth Doctor Earth-arc territory, which wouldn't be such a bad thing as confusing -- were two of them knocking around during World War Two? The touching scenes between Jack and his old girlfriend helped to fill out this background -- he obviously loved her very much.
It was a good premise too, building upon the famous hoax pictures, fairies being some elemental shadows looking for children to join with them. In fact one of the highlights were the exposition scenes in which those photos were debunked again and the nature of the beasts was revealed even if 'evil since the dawn of time' seems a bit incongruous in a series that was supposed to be priding itself on its reliance on the gritty urban landscape and crap which haunts those street. You can see the actual pictures and the camera that took them at the National Museum for Film, Television and Photography in Bradford and the facts mentioned here were completely correct. For all of his cleverness, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was seduced by the children's story. The eventual monsters were very pretty, perfectly painterly like those fairies, almost the product of some late Victorian painted picture book.
Shame it was dogged by some extraordinarily listless storytelling and poor structuring. As with The Ghost Machine, the teaser was good and the first few scenes in which Jack looked up an old friend were sweet (although would Gwen really have been that rude in the talk about the fairies with all the eye-rolling? Surely that's more like Owen behaviour? This inconsistency of character from episode to episode is really irritating). The chase through through Cardiff Market and the flower petals were pleasingly gruesome (even if that imagery wasn't satisfactorily explained).
Beyond that once and again, we were treated to the girl being threatened, the timeless ones using the weather to defend her, Torchwood noticing the weather fluctuation and then chasing it up. It was a bit like watching an episode of Treasure Hunt, without Wincy Willis, the magenta jumpsuits or cross looking pensioners in stately homes on a coach trip.
This isn't necessarily just a problem with Mr. P J Hammond's work. All of the episodes have suffered from this repetition of action in one form or another, almost as though no one can get a grip of those extra five minutes which have been added to Doctor Who's usual running time. They've also suffered from moments of threat going on far too long, the cutting back, over and over to something which has already been established, like the kids in peril in the wind, or the spooky monsters looking at our heroes from above. This stylistic holdover from the parent series and seems out of place in the 'adult' world.
Time which could better be spent charting Jack's passage through history or providing Tosh with some character development outside of an upcoming episode that will no doubt include all of her character development or giving the characters a believable social life was instead used in the company of a vast range of characters that were no doubt supposed to be normal but were instead, well, boring. The strategy of the series is for largely than life characters to brush up against the realistic, but that's no reason for the so-called 'real people' to have nothing in the way of interesting characterisation, or anything to make you actually care if they lived or died. Compare and contrast the sinister lump of a step-father here with any of Gwen's colleagues from the first episode and there are some massive inconsistencies at play. Normal doesn't have to mean dull. Look at Spooks.
In this vein, were we supposed to care for Jasmine, the little girl? The Chosen One (and really, people, you're invoking Buffyology here?) needed to either be a sweetheart, someone the audience could really get behind, or The Omen's Damien in a dress. She was neither, and although the opening near abduction scene was winceful and said lump probably deserved to die for hitting the poor lamb, she was largely left standing around grinning as the elementals snuffed out her enemies. The resolution was troubling too -- Jack essentially advocated that offering up the odd small child for sacrifice was perfectly fair if it kept the 'aliens' at bay. Err, right. And you're expecting us to like Captain Jack after this? I mean his story doesn't really resolve itself. Perhaps if they'd spinned it into something related to him trying and failing to be The Doctor but ... oh no ... this is all we've got time for ...
On the subject of characters, a continuing annoyance is the non-reappearance of Gwen's police partner from the first episode. By making the police's participation irrelevant, they've lost one of the characters who could have been a secret weapon throughout -- he was the source of the oft quoted CSI: Kebab joke and his good humour would have provided much needed levity, particularly in a story like this. Why not make him the person who picked up the mad childcatcher at Cardiff Market? Recurring characters are a good thing.
But this was an episode filled with mini-irritations. The close-up of the name of the street in which the Chosen One lives as though this was supposed to be a big important plot point. The over reliance on that music cue which ends loudly and abruptly to signal 'ooh sinister'. The caption on the flashback even though Jack's voiceover was actually telling us the time and place. Oh and Jack holding back vital information about the enemy they were fighting to create false tension and fake climaxes when he reveals some piece of information, even though most of it was probably jibberish. UNIT syndrome strikes the van too -- they're a secret organisation (outside the government etc) so we'll have the name of it carved in the side -- did anyone else find it's sliding appearance into shot retina searingly irritating? And hey, why not the Mara? What's to say the Krotons didn't have a hand in it also?
[Well alright that reference was nice, and PJ might not have included it as a direct Doctor Who reference, but you can imagine Russell squealing with glee when he read it).
It takes me no pleasure in writing this, since obviously everyone involved had the best of intentions and it makes me look like the judges who lambasted Carol Smilie on Strictly Come Dancing on Saturday (I mean do they want Emma Bunton to win or what?). The cast were doing their best with the material and some of the direction was OK. But there are ongoing issues with the series, a kind of unsurety of tone and writing which is making it very difficult to watch, amplifying the faults rather than the successes. Fundamentally, the question must be -- was it scary? And unfortunately on this occasion, I'm sorry, no it wasn't. At least not in the way that was intended.
PS That Strictly reference dates this doesn't it? In the event Mark Ramprakash was victorious. Smilie was last seen punditing about the programme on The Alan Titchmarsh Show and advertising the Postcode Lottery.
on Thursday, October 20, 2011 0 comments Labels: doctor who, Torchwood
Aaton, ARRI and Panavision
Film An obituary on the death of the movie camera. The three major manufacturers of motion picture film cameras — Aaton, ARRI and Panavision — "have all ceased production of new cameras within the last year":
"digital cinema will become so adept at mimicking the look of film that within a couple of decades, even cinematographers may not be able to tell the difference. The painterly colors, supple gray scale, hard sharpness and enticing flicker of motion picture film were always important (if mostly unacknowledged) parts of cinema's mass appeal. The makers of digital moviemaking equipment got hip to that in the late '90s, and channeled their research and development money accordingly; it's surely no coincidence that celluloid-chauvinist moviegoers and moviemakers stopped resisting the digital transition once they realized that the new, electronically-created movies could be made to look somewhat like the analog kind, with dense images, a flickery frame rate, and starkly defined planes of depth."
How long before insurance negatives stop being struck and major films will only exist digitally? Or is that already happening?
on Thursday, October 20, 2011 0 comments
on Wednesday, October 19, 2011 0 comments Labels: enough said
six-inch heels and a thong
Theatre Woody Allen, Ethan Coen and Elaine May have collaborate on a portmanteau theatre production of three one act plays at a theatre in New York. The local Times has May interviewing the other two "in depth", which gives Woody the opportunity to offer some of his best material in years:
"Q. A miraculous being with divine powers appears to you and says, "You have a choice. You can be fabulously attractive and have an even better physique or you can reverse climate change." What do you say to her?
ETHAN COEN Those are my choices?
WOODY ALLEN The question becomes moot since I am already more than sufficiently attractive. Of course the actual impact of my physique might not be apparent to the naked eye at first glance, but with some laser surgery or perhaps corneal transplants the viewer will be amply rewarded. The real question is, who is this miraculous being with the divine powers who has suddenly appeared and what is she wearing? If it's six-inch heels and a thong the best idea would be to take her to a hotel room and see just how many other-worldly tricks she is capable of performing. As for climate change, all the good hotel rooms are air-conditioned.
Woody's play looks to have Steve Guttenberg as his avatar. That's amazing.
on Wednesday, October 19, 2011 0 comments
The Man Who Never Was.
TV Sob. For much of its duration The Man Who Never Was offers an excellent, fairly typical example of The Sarah Jane Adventures albeit with a slightly subversive undercurrent that allows for geriatric flirting and a nob gag. But then, oh then, the montage with its clips from most of the stories past, a glimpse of Maria, glimpse of K9, shot of the Tenth Doctor hugging again and, well, buckets. The show has always had a poignantly nostalgic undercurrent for fans of the classic series, indeed it was brought into being because of that. But this is about celebrating this corner of the Whoniverse, the attic, the family, and now it's gone.
But this isn't just the end of The Sarah Jane Adventures, but the premature end of the British Russell T Davies era of Doctor Who, a project begun when he was given the go-ahead, in a corridor fittingly, to bring the parent show back from the dead. He's made Torchwood's Miracle Day since, but these episodes produced before that American folly, albeit executive produced from across the pond, are the final expression of the aesthetic and mood begun with Rose. That's why the choice of David over Matt is interesting. Even more than Chris, he was Davies's Doctor. Perhaps that's also why the episode ends on what could almost be Rose's opening shot running in reverse, pulling away from the Earth.
It's also, and it's impossible not to say this without some exhaustion, the end of one of the longest chronological unbroken runs of Doctor Who related first run television episodes in living memory, begun on 14th July with Episode One of Miracle Day. And if it feels even longer, it's because the first chunk of Who season 6 ended just six weeks before. Accepting that gap we've been doing this since the 23rd of April and The Impossible Astronaut. That's ages. That's almost as long as a classic season, with a similar in built sense of anticipation of what the next serial will hold. I hope we've all savoured it, because unless Captain Jack really is back in January, barring a special, there'll really be nothing of Who on television now until next Autumn.
Luckily, as I've already intimated, The Sarah Jane Adventures, the British Russell T Davies era and um, loads of stuff this year have all gone out on a high. Gareth Roberts's The Man Who Never Was is amazing entertainment from beginning to end, blissfully funny, camp and forever undercutting our expectations in the way the best drama always should. Beginning as a gentle parody of the reaction of Apple fans to the latest e-book of Job from the technological simulacrum, the Steve parody is quickly exposed to be an actual simulacrum, controlled from below by artists of light, only for it be revealed that it's all work of yet another dodgy human subjugating aliens and their technologies, James Dreyfus on Master-ful form, beard included.
Even before they were revealed as an oppressed minority, it was almost impossible not to find these Skullions (perhaps named for Porthouse Blue's college porter) too threatening, with their Jawa cloaks and welding masks. But that's important because we have to sympathise with their plight and the market in alien slaves shows, the earth is still a planet which is not only constantly visited but with the awareness of humanity. Admittedly, Adriana, the character designed to subliminally hammer the point home about foreign workers being habitually employed in menial jobs, did seem to register some surprise at the appearance of the space ship on the roof so perhaps the effects of the cracks are still being felt. Lord knows what she'll be like when she's working for UNIT.
If this wasn't planned as the series finale, it made for a fitting conclusion, not least because it also gave the whole ensemble a proper send off, even Luke, back from university for a visit having developed, away from Clyde's guidance, the hipster look. Luckily he can now just about carry off the scarf. As with Sky's first story, this would have been another major turning point as Luke passed his mantle, and the rest of his bedroom on to his new little sister, the production team very carefully underscoring their differences (he's massively observant and she's electric) neatly bypassing the short circuit that usually develops whenever K9 and Mr Smith are in the same attic and human ingenuity becomes superfluous.
Good episode too for Clyde and Rani, forever now to be known as Clani (and luckily not Ryde which not only isn't as catchy but has a whole set of other connotations). Their banter in particular is going to be missed, especially now that Anjli and Daniel have developed into such a good double act. Their chemistry is even voiced in scene here with an unusual call back to last week's episode. Is Clyde now regretful of his behaviour with Ellie? Not sure. Perhaps in an unfilmed story, Rani's jealousy was given greater weight and this comment was a bookend. Either way, the business in the attic, the goggles investigating the laptop and infiltration of the press conference another expression of SJA's filtering of 80s kids television for a new audience.
But this was also, and it's impossible to say this without some sadness, an encapsulation of everything which was great about Sarah Jane and Liz Sladen. Part of the approach of the series has been to turn her into a Doctorish figure (as some clever person has said this week and (I'm sorry I forget who) that to some extent Sarah Jane will have been the Doctor for some kids just as Tom Baker or Peter Davison was for a lot of us). The battle of wills between Sarah and Harrison mirrored a similar struggle between Ninth and Margaret Blaine in Boom Town and infiltration disguised as a cleaning lady an old Third Doctor trick from The Green Death, albeit in a slightly less disturbing way.
Roberts's episode also gives her the opportunity to flirt with Peter Bowles as an old boss and old flame in a piece of casting that also looks backwards as much to an era of television as Doctor Who itself, almost, like Nigel Havers, the production team taking advantage of the franchise's new found popularity to take in actors who somehow never managed to appear on the show when it was last in full bloom. Bowles was of course marvellous, and it's perhaps a pity he wasn't given more to do, though in the alternative vision of the series, he might have been a returning character, which has to be the only reason you'd employ such a massive acting figure in such a tiny part. Unless you're John Nathan Turner and trying to get Larry Olivier to essay the role of "Mutant" in Revelation of the Daleks (apparently).
Ashley Way began his television Who adventure at the same time as Roberts with the interactive Attack of the Graske with all of the Tardisodes for the 2006 season (remember those?) close behind. He directs The Man Who Never Was with his usual efficiency, making good use of whichever multiplex was employed for the Serfboard launch and loads of close-ups in the attic giving it a genuine feeling of size (though not that even he could making something of the episode's one bum moment in which Clyde conveniently sits fidgeting with his hard won pen). The Sarah Jane Adventures was never quite as cinematic as its parent series, but given the tiny budget it's obviously produced on, it always looked smashing.
Which is the problem. Even if I've managed to write the majority of this review in the present tense, The Sarah Jane Adventures is now in the past. There'll still be the endless repeats on CBCC. The inevitable complete box-set. The spin-off reading. All of that will still keep it in our collective memories, still make it available for kids just becoming old enough to watch, a way for parents to indoctrinate their offspring at an earlier age, an age when they might not be ready for Scaroth and the Bandrills, let alone The Weeping Angels or Daleks. Who knows perhaps in twenty or so years, those kids will be showing it to another generation.
That we can still think of it so fondly is a tribute to Russell T Davies for convincing the BBC to base a spin-off series for kids around a much loved character from his own youth, our youth, the BBC for financing it in a way which you can't imagine another television company doing, and Elisabeth Sladen, Lis for starring and reminding us why we loved her back then and still do. Eventually it'll just become another chapter in the rich tapestry of stories diverging from Doctor Who, some in books, some on cd, and sometimes, magically, on television. The Sarah Jane Adventures may be over, but we fans can take some comfort in that final caption: "And the story goes on … forever …" Because it will.
on Tuesday, October 18, 2011 0 comments Labels: doctor who, the sarah jane adventures
all about harmonies
Music Take this with a grain of sodium chloride, especially since Keisha denied it herself on Twitter in July (which was admittedly four months ago), but WhatYouGot say that the Sugababes (as opposed to the "Sugababes") are demoing some new material, having another go. Very exciting if true, but there's been false rumours of this for months.
As anyone who lived through the All Saints comeback will know, it's not just about getting the band back together, it's about the tunes. I suppose the trick will be if they produce something genuinely interesting (ie, something which sounds like One Touch), rather than simply approximating what's already in the charts.
That album was all about harmonies. Some of those please.
on Tuesday, October 18, 2011 0 comments Labels: Sugababes
on Monday, October 17, 2011 0 comments Labels: enough said
Not quite sticking a Harry Potter under your jumper in WH Smiths
If you're one of those people and looking to steal a very rare book, whatever you do, never, and this should be underlined and repeated, never, steal a Shakespeare First Folio. Not because stealing a Shakespeare First Folio is necessarily that hard; if the heists detailed in Eric Rasmussen's The Shakespeare Thefts are an example, it's actually a relatively straightforward process to steal a Shakespeare First Folio. Not quite sticking a Harry Potter under your jumper in WH Smiths, but security in some places has been strangely loose and based on much trust between a reference library and the person purporting to be an academic.
No, the problem with stealing a Shakespeare First Folio is that you'll never be able to sell it on. Well, you might, on the black market, assuming you have the right contacts, but only for a fraction of what it's actually worth. The problem is, at least for a prospective thief is that not only do Rasmussen and a team of researchers have a record of the location for all the couple of hundred or so Shakespeare First Folios in existence, they've also tirelessly created a descriptive record of them all so that if a Folio is stolen and then another Folio appears on the market, they can tell relatively quickly if they're one and the same.
Soon this data will been published. It's in The Shakespeare First Folios: A Descriptive Index and although – based on the section quoted in this supplementary book – it's going to be a fairly dry read it also provides added security to those owners who've agreed to have their Folio recorded. You may have seen the documentary on television last year, the story of how Raymond Rickett Scott carried a Folio into the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington claiming to have bought it in Cuba, and although it was missing its covers and first pages, they were very quickly able to identify it as the copy stolen from Durham University ten years before.
The Shakespeare Thefts is a cautionary tale and there are numerous other examples of less educated thieves who've fallen into the same trap of assuming that stealing a Shakespeare First Folio is just like any other rare book. But Rasmussen seeks to underscore the point by revealing that it's not simply the description of each book which identifies it, but it's provenance. They've been able to identify who originally purchased each of these Folios and the book's journey through time, some simply sitting on a shelf in the intervening years, some having escaped war zones, some even having apparently saved lives, taking a bullet themselves.
All of which is very exciting, but the book itself is something of a curate's egg, not quite sure what it wants to be. On the one hand it is about the thefts of the folios and on the other it is about their history. Then there's a third hand about the actual processes of recording the folios and some anecdotes about that and the inevitable forth about those Folios out of reach, locked away in private vaults with orders for them not to be seen the frustration of which Rasmussen returns to on a number of occasions. He returns to a few subjects on a number of occasions even repeating the same information. This is a messy book.
Perhaps a more schematic approach would have helped. The Descriptive Index promises to have full provenance details and perhaps a better approach here would have been to simply pick the more interesting Folios and offered the story of those with an anecdote about its recording as this attempts to do in a few chapters. But that would also have a required a slightly more academic tone and the other slightly problem is Rasmussen (who amongst other things co-edited the RSC Complete Works with Jonathan Bate) is attempting to write for that market and the popular history section which in some cases makes it very readable but in others slightly insubstantial. I managed to finish the book in about two hours.
It's worth adding, I think, that these comments are based on an Advanced Reader's Edition ("an uncorrected version") received through Amazon's Vine scheme which has warnings all over it that the quotes should be checked for accuracy. Interestingly although this copy has 214 pages, the published copy advertised on Palgrave Macmillan's website (and pictured above) boasts 240 pages but given the size of the text here, unless the font's even bigger, there has to be more content. So it's possible this might be an early text too and due for much editing before it hits the shops or online retailer attempting to do away with shops. Expect this review to be edited when I have more news.
As it stands, what is here is never less than enthralling and the slightly random approach does give it the tone of an extended after dinner speech or spending an entertaining evening in the office of an academic after hours as they regale you with war stories or fishing tales, the Folio destroyed in fires or nibbled by rats. There's an excellent short chapter about the preparation of the text for the recent RSC Hamlet with David Tennant, the production we didn't see, and the appendix is as clear a description of the process of the original publication of the folios as I've ever read. Approach it in the right spirit and this is a thoroughly entertaining read.
The Shakespeare Thefts In Search of the First Folios by Eric Rasmussen. Palgrave Macmillan. 2011. RRP: £16.99. ISBN: 9780230109414. Review copy supplied.
on Monday, October 17, 2011 0 comments Labels: book reviews, shakespeare
The Shakespeare Thefts: In Search of the First Folios. Eric Rasmussen.
on Monday, October 17, 2011 0 comments Labels: book reviews
tones of gray and beige, bare materials
Psyschology I'm a huge fan of modernist architecture. While I understand the general view that it's bland, functional, featureless and inhuman, the very best examples can also offer a haven of placidity, quiet and orderliness in opposition to the chaos which engulfs our daily lives. But in this year old post, Psychology Today wonders if it can actually make us depressed (reacting to the Unhappy Hipsters tumblr which is now a book):
"Modern design was born out of a desire to leave behind the ornamentation and excesses of 19th century Europe. In essence, it's a stripped back, pared down style of design, favoring clean, often angular lines, neutral colors in tones of gray and beige, bare materials, and a general sense of spareness and minimalism. (I'm generalizing here for the sake of discussion — not all modern architecture is about cold gray cubes. Volumes have been written highlighting examples of brightly colored, joyfully curvy modern furniture and dwellings. Dwell itself attempts to celebrate this side of modernism. But the prevailing experience of modern design for most of us in the mainstream is stripped down, hard-edged, and cool verging on cold. Or as one Unhappy Hipsters caption reads, "still, gray, and gravel-strewn.") Though these aesthetics are often intended to create a sense of zen-like tranquility, the result is frequently closer to melancholy isolation, which is what Unhappy Hipsters is lampooning. The question is, why?"
Personally, I think that if you are depressed the architecture of your living environment will either help or hinder, but it won't every be the cause of it. Not really.
on Sunday, October 16, 2011 0 comments
the iconic original cover for Captain Corelli's Ma...
The Walker's new exhibition [...] The Art Books of...
Treasure Hunt, without Wincy Willis, the magenta j...
Not quite sticking a Harry Potter under your jumpe...
The Shakespeare Thefts: In Search of the First Fol...


This approximately 42 to 60 credit Western Washington University program leads to an endorsement in Special Education (P-12) based on Washington State Special Education P-12 Endorsement Competencies. It is open to teachers who hold a valid and endorsable Washington State teacher's certificate, and is offered in Bellingham, Bremerton and Everett. The program provides coherent preparation in all areas of the Special Education curriculum, and may include an optional internship experience. Successful completion of the entire program results in Western's recommendation for the P-12 Special Education Endorsement.
Cumulative grade point average of 2.75 or higher overall or for the last 45 quarter credits or 30 semester credits.
Retention in the program requires continuous demonstration of competence in standard oral and written English in all course work. Retention also requires the maintenance of a 2.75 quarterly GPA for each quarter. The State of Washington requires students to earn a "C" or better in all endorsement courses and WWU extends this requirement to all professional education courses.
You may also email application materials to the Program Advisor.


The About-Page wp-admin/about.php usually lists all who contributed to the German translation, if you use German (default). When installing the formal translation German (Sie), the section listing the translators is missing.
Confirmed. http://api.wordpress.org/core/credits/1.1/?version=4.5.2&locale=de_DE_formal doesn't return the validators block, probably because it's not in the list of GlotPress locales.
Same for nl_NL_formal and de_CH_informal.
This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #polyglots by pixolin. View the logs.
Credits API: Add support for language variants.


text:
Q: Mysql error #1064 I am trying to create some tables on phpMyAdmin, but when I use the code below I am getting this error:
#1064 - You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '(32) NOT NULL,

activated enum(0,1) NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (id)
) E' at line 8
Here is my code:
    CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `users` (
  `id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `username` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
  `first_name` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
  `last_name` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
  `email` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
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A: DATE data type takes no length
`sign_up_date` DATE NOT NULL

A: Try following code. I have resolved your mistakes in code
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `users` (
      `id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
      `username` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
      `first_name` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
      `last_name` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
      `email` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
      `password` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
      `sign_up_date` date NOT NULL,
      `activated` enum('0','1') NOT NULL,
      PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
    ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=1 ;

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Omani Navy Launches New Warship
The Royal Navy of Oman (RNO) has launched its second foreign fighting Corvette, Al-Rahmani, at Portsmouth Naval Base, UK. The Al-Rahmani is capable of serving sustained periods overseas and is designed to support the naval force in defending Omani waters and in tackling pirates in the
The Royal Navy of Oman (RNO) has launched its second foreign fighting Corvette, Al-Rahmani, at Portsmouth Naval Base, UK.
The Al-Rahmani is capable of serving sustained periods overseas and is designed to support the naval force in defending Omani waters and in tackling pirates in the Arabian Sea.
The 99m-long corvette will be capable of accommodating a crew of up to 100 with a navigational range of 3,500 miles.
The vessel also has a helicopter flight deck and can cruise at a maximum speed of 25kt.
Part of the Khareef contract signed in 2007, it is the second corvette of three designed and built by BAE Systems for the RNO.
BAE Systems Oman project director John Richardson said the ship with its leading edge technology is capable of operating in the high sea temperatures in Oman.
"There'll be further sea trials for the engine, conflict systems and air conditioning as summer temperatures can reach 50° in Oman, when a realistic working temperature should be about 20°," he said.
The first of the three corvettes, the Al-Shamikh, was commissioned in July 2009 and the third ship, the Al-Rasikh, is scheduled to be launched by the end of 2010.
The Naval Vessels and Surface Combatants Market in Saudi Arabia to 2025: Market Brief
The Police Modernization Market in Saudi Arabia to 2025: Market Brief
The Submarine Market in Saudi Arabia to 2024: Market Brief
BAE Systems Plc
BAE SYSTEMS, OMAN


description Phatch (PHoto bATCH Processor) is an application to batch process images. With phatch, you specify a group of images that you want to process, and then specify the effects you want to apply; once you click apply the process is run automatically without having to edit each image individually. Phatch has many effects you can apply to your images, including resizing, rotating, renaming, colour effects (like desaturation and color warmth), drop shadows and adding a background.


"It's like [Game #1] meets [Game #2]". We've all heard that line before. It tends to be the easiest way to describe a game that's difficult to place in a traditional genre. Spellforce 3, even the Spellforce series as a whole has always eschewed sticking to a genre's style. So how to best describe SpellForce? It's Dragon Age meets Company of Heroes. It's a mash-up of RPG and RTS. Something that has become more commonplace since the original SpellForce's release in 2003.
SpellForce 3 in particular moves more towards RPG aspects, or at least that's the perception I got when playing the game. Under new developers and publishers, and set half a millennium before the first game, SpellForce 3 looks to be resetting the series. Why this change? The original developers, Phenomic, were bought and eventually disbanded by EA. The publisher, JoWood, went into administration and were bought by Nordic games, who then bought the THQ trademark.
That little history lesson behind us, let's look at the history of Eo. Long before The Order of Dawn, the first of the series, mages were hunted and persecuted following the actions of one mage, Isamo Tahar. In the main campaign you take on the role of Tahar's child who was spared execution and you fight against rebel mages for the crown. In addition to this is a problematic cult known as the Purity of Light. While they don't believe that magic itself is a sin, they vehemently oppose the use of it. Bar those that use it in service of the crown, or themselves, of course. As such, they've decided that their own version of the Salem witch trials is the best option.
This, in addition to a plague that is spreading across the world, is creating a huge amount of pressure that's beginning to boil over. Your job will be to help relieve some of this pressure. Find out about the plague, fight some evil mages and do a bit of diplomacy along the way. It's all pretty trite. In countless games you've been finding out about a plague, facing against an evil mage or attempting to improve relations with other races. There's also talk of a returning god by the anti-magic cult.
Grimlore, the new developers, truly want to draw you into their version of Eo. There's little doubting they really care about the world they have built and want it to be compelling. They certainly do this to an extent, linking a number of story aspects together in intricate ways rather than opting to segment each storyline or ham-handedly clump them together. It's a shame that this intricacy couldn't be used with the text, which can very often overwhelm.
At times, SpellForce 3 can truly suffer from verbal diarrhea. Too often will you be stuck in an interminable conversation. The game seems to think you want the Encyclopaedia Britannica description of every event. I found myself more than a few times just switching my brain off and not paying any attention to long pieces of dialogue that tried to force-feed me too much information.
It's strange that Eo actually feels limited. The number of playable races has shrunk to just three here, where previous titles featured a myriad of races. There are a number of traditional fantasy creatures to meet and fight along the way, of course, but removing any control limits the game severely.
It's mostly an issue because when it does come to controlling the three factions, they all feel alike. SpellForce 3 creates a connection between RPG and RTS better than the series has ever managed before. It doesn't feel like there's a distinct drop-off point from one before moving into the next, and that's due to the scale given. Moving around the map, interacting with people, talking and continuing quests are all performed simply by clicking on the relevant area. So long as a hero is selected, that is.
While you're wandering around with this hero, you can also be building up a little base of your own. Simply select the building you want to build, pop it down in a valid location. Fortunately, workers are purely automated. This limits on the micromanagement on the RTS side, letting you focus on the RPG side of things. Equipping items, selecting skills and abilities, everything features and makes these hero characters stand out from the regular troops you can hire.
Particularly within combat. Each character can carry, for lack of better word, three abilities to take into battle. These are from a host of abilities that are learned, improved and upgraded using experience gained through battle. In addition to this, they can be swapped out to suit whatever you need at a particular time. The way these skills are both presented and used in combat is certainly inspired by RPG's with a more tactical air about them, such as with Dragon Age. Want to use a particular ability, simply hold down to slow down time a bit, target what you want and there you go.
Combat, away from the heroes, is where the RTS side of the game rears its head. It's certainly functional and doesn't make any real missteps, though is still left wanting. This is because of just how basic it ends up feeling. The aforementioned lack of races in the game leaves you with a fairly limited number of units to pick from. None of them feature any sort of duality either, there are no melee units with a weak ranged attack. No ranged units stand a chance up close or have any real means of escape. It's the traditional rock, paper, scissors that features in every strategy game.
Of course, there is truth in the saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". SpellForce doesn't suffer from the rather basic nature of general army units. What it suffers from is just how simple the game is tactically. The AI shows no tactical nuance, simply opting to charge head-on, constantly. What this invariably means is that there's no real joy in trying to position troops tactically or create a balanced mixed group of units. Eventually, every battle ends up in a mass brawl reminiscent of Braveheart.
Outside of battles, you have to build up and gather the resources required to fund the fighting. This system is similar to Northgard. Much like Northgard, maps are divided into distinct regions. You need to settle in that region, building yet another outpost, to be able to start gathering resources. These resources are automatically gathered by workers, provided you have built the necessary gathering building. These resources are also limited and opponents are more than happy to take them. It tends to mean that battles keep up the pace. Especially since these battles feature a number of side objectives, creature encounters and aspects like loot stashes to collect.
It works because everything is so grand in scale. SpellForce 3 actually makes it feel like you're just controlling a few people in a vast world. While the strategic layer can make good use of this, the RPG side doesn't. Once you're on the slower, more contemplative side, you see how sparsely occupied some maps are. Moving from one conversation to the next can genuinely feel like it takes an age. Some areas also seem designed simply for the sake of looking good, ignoring functionality and enjoyment, making some areas a slog to go through.
At least that's ignoring the gameplay enjoyment side of things. While some of these places may be a slog to walk through, they're excellent to look at. The grandeur of certain structures. Huge varieties of terrain, flora and fauna pop to life on the screen. Everything genuinely looks fantastic, with every creature and person fitting in perfectly. There's little to fault with the aesthetic quality of SpellForce 3, only a few graphical glitches with the shadows when rotating the camera.
It's a shame, then, that the audio wasn't as good. The soundtrack is truly fitting for SpellForce 3, with some fantastic tracks that can really enhance the game. What also assists greatly is the ambiance. From the sounds of battle as swords clash with shield, the roar of a flame or the death cries of soldiers. The atmosphere is second to none. The only thing here that lets the game down is some of the worst voice acting I've heard where delivery is forced and the emotional range is non-existent, bar a few very over-the-top parts. It can truly take you out of the game and only makes you want to skip cutscenes more.
Sadly, the graphical glitches aren't the only thing. I've encountered a few bugs here and there. Dialogue repeats itself, which is especially irritating considering the voice acting on show. Quests sometimes don't trigger correctly. Fortunately, I haven't encountered the same number of issues others have but, in addition to this, the folks at Grimlore have been fairly consistent so far in releasing early patches to smooth the game out.
SpellForce 3 isn't a bad game. Hell, at times it's genuinely pretty decent. It certainly has its problems, such as the sparsely occupied areas, basic AI and atrocious voice acting. However, it is still an engrossing game despite this. There is an interesting story in there and you visit some stunning looking areas. Most of all, the gameplay is, for the most part, solid and entertaining as a result of the fast pace on the RTS side.
Review code provided by the publisher. You can purchase the physical Standard Edition on Amazon.
SpellForce 3 isn't a bad game, it can even be pretty good at parts. A vast world is left for you to explore with far reaching problems to solve. The game merges RPG and RTS in a great way, never leaving one side the worse for it. However, it can often fall foul of leaving you with little to do outside of RTS, with areas impressive to look at, but boring to walk through. There certainly is something interesting to find out with the story as well, but the delivery leaves a lot to want with too much exposition and terrible voice acting. You can certainly have fun with SpellForce, particularly the fast paced strategy side of things, but it can feel like a slog at times.