text:
"Just another brick in the wall" (Fire-brick that is...)
You wouldn't think there was much mileage in a garden wall really. Not a great deal to get the old grey matter working, pique the curiosity or get the juices flowing. It's interesting though how even the most unlikely of sources can pose a conundrum. I suppose landscape detectives can read a certain amount into rural walls - the materials used for example would reflect the cheapest and most easily available resource, whether it be flint, granite, slate or limestone. You can also tell about regional variations in building techniques or dry stone walling which might be instructive. In cities though most garden walls are made of the ubiquitous brick that could have been shipped in from almost anywhere. But what if the wall is made of a completely unexpected and unusual material? Presumably one available locally and cheaper than the cheapest brick. Can that still provide a window on the past like its country cousins?
Take this wall in Abbey Road, South Wimbledon for instance. I've walked past it many times and always thought it to be a not particularly attractive but utilitarian bit of walling. A bit on the grim and foreboding side but doing its job. It runs the length of about ten houses for the end of a whole block, so is obviously not the work of a single house-owner doing a spot of DIY.
I'd have to be honest and say it's not the sort of wall you'd linger over or think particularly worthy of closer inspection....until that is (cue the dramatic music) you went and had a closer look! Straight away the first thing you'd notice was the materials that were being used were all very irregular and not the most obvious choice when building a wall.
The second thing that stands out is that a large number of these irregularly shaped items seem to be man-made and obviously broken pieces of something larger, such as the central slab in the section above.
In fact the more I looked at it the more obvious it was that the rough and irregular dressing of the stones was due to the fact that most of them were covered in a thick layer of slag and not the usual sort of garden walling found at B&Q!
Mixed in amongst the slag covered pots were some bricks, masonry, clinker and seemingly random 'lumps' of indeterminate origin. Definitely not the sort of industrial mix you'd expect to find on a (relatively) quite Merton back street.
The obvious question then is where it came from and how it came to be used in such a manner? As you can see from the buildings their design doesn't suggest that the wall was built at the same time and it actually seems to be a much later addition.
My first thought was that there might be a railway connection as the side of Abbey Road leads into Station Road - a name that seems a little odd at first when you think that South Wimbledon tube is about half a mile away. However I knew that there was a much more direct railway link that was still around up until the early 80s. This was a short branch line - mainly devoted to freight - that ran along what is now Merantun Way.
You can see the route on the google satellite map. The old station was about where the roundabout is now situated and Station Road was originally about twice as long as it is now.
Could they have come from the steam engines furnaces? The fact that they were encrusted onto clay suggested that was unlikely and I don't believe that steam engines generated that sort of heat, so that was one initial (not so) bright idea out of the window.
Then I had a bit of luck. Working my way along the wall I found a couple of bits of clay that had a manufacturers mark on them.
B. GIBBONS JNR. LTD - NR. STOURBRIDGE
I had no idea whether this was significant or not but it was the only lead I had so I made a note of the name and went off for a bit of investigating. It was soon apparent that the Gibbons family seem to have been significant players in the mining and metalworking businesses during the Industrial Revolution. I found records of leases going back to the1830's which describe Benjamin Gibbons and his brother John as being mine-owners and iron-masters.
However, they really seem to have hit the jackpot with their mining of fire clay which initially almost seems to have been regarded as a by-product of the coal industry itself. Its real worth was soon realised and this extract from Black Country Industries by Bev Parker shows how well regarded the Gibbons fire clay was
In this, the Stourbridge and Brierley Hill district, a very extensive business is carried on in the manufacture of fire-bricks of all kinds, used in the construction and relining of blast furnaces, puddling furnaces, cupolas, and air furnaces. The fire-clay deposits here are reputed the best in England, being fashioned into melting pots and gas-making retorts, which fetch high prices; these bricks are exported largely, and are highly prized in all parts of the world, particularly the foreign settlements of the British Empire, the general opinion being that they resist the highest temperatures in smelting furnaces of any others which have yet been produced. Perhaps Ruffords, Mrs. Emily Gibbons, and Pearson and Harrisons, make the best quality. Mrs. Gibbons, relict of the late Benjamin Gibbons, Esq., the well-known ironmaster of the Millfields furnaces, we are informed by Mr. Jones, of the Commercial Gas Works, here stands unrivalled for the manufacture of these Gas Retorts.
Emily had taken over the fire brick side of the company with great gusto after the death of her husband Benjamin and she seems to have been a rare case at the time of highly successful woman running an industrial company. On her retirement in 1880 she was eventually handed it over to her two sons who kept the name going into the 20th century.
I was also very fortunate to come across a newspaper article that not only went into the history of the company, but that also gave some background to fireclay itself. The article was grandly entitled When Gibbons fireclay works of Gornal led the world in gas retorts and it points out that
...from the earliest times the fireclay extracted from the bowels of the Black Country was considered to be of the highest quality. Usually lying beneath the coal seam, the extraction of fireclay occurred within a relatively small area, centred on Lye, Cradley, Amblecote, Brierley Hill, Pensnett and Gornal. It was shaped into articles known as refractories, of which the most familiar kind is the firebrick, and it was noted that Black Country refractories could withstand the very highest temperatures without cracking. When the Industrial Revolution dawned, the Black Country fireclay fields really came into their own, and by the late nineteenth century there was barely a blast furnace, glass cone, pottery kiln, steel works, iron foundry, coal mine, or chemical plant that did not use refractories of one type or another made in the Black Country. Almost every industry in the Empire depended on our brickyard chaps and wenches, who by 1864 were making 30 million firebricks alone every year.
So assuming that our slag encrusted pottery was actually firebrick it suggest it might well have come from a blast furnace, iron foundry, glass cone, pottery kiln or chemical plant, which narrows it down fractionally (I'm ruling out the coal mine and steel works as I'm pretty sure they would have been noticed in South Wimbledon)
But what are these gas retorts that everyone praises so highly? Not being a chemist or an engineer I had to dig around a bit further to find out and they seem in essence to have been used in the manufacture of gas from coal (I believe this was the basis of the old 'Town Gas' before we all went over to the North Sea variety). Retorts were large pottery tubes (described as looking like torpedoes) in which coal was heated at very high temperatures and which eventually produced coal tar, gas and various other by-products. Could these bits of pottery be the remains of broken retorts then?
The possible presence of retorts had me thinking that there might have been a small gas works on the site, using the coal coming in from the railway to make gas for local consumption. As it turned out there was indeed a power station on the line for whom the coal was intended. Sadly for me it turned out to be a large power station in Croydon, not a little gas-house in South Wimbledon! Things were looking a bit grim on the detective side when I found myself straying off the path somewhat. In my researching I had discovered that on the other side of our lost railway line was the site of an equally lost factory - the Line Bothers 'Tri-Ang' Toy Factory complex (There were three Lines brothers, and as everyone knows three lines joined together make a tri-angle!). Not only that, in the thirties it was regarded as the largest toy factory in the world and during the second world war had been the worlds largest manufacturer of the Mk III Sten submachine-gun! This is a fascinating company with a fascinating history of its own but what grabbed my attention was the fact that a commentator noted it was one of only a couple of manufacturing sites large enough to have its own private siding. You can get an idea of the size of the site in the picture below. The railway is to the left of the factory, converging at the top left of the. site with the Abbey Railway station.
(Addendum: This Pathe newsreel shows toy testing in Morden in 1951 and by the type of toys being tested I would be pretty sure that it was filmed at the Tri-Ang factory itself)
TOY TESTING
Fascinating as this was, what really caught my attention was one of the other site important enough to have its own siding was The Eyre Smelting Co. Ltd. Well if I was looking for a local site that might be interested in using fireclay, this was surely it!
Grace's Guides have an interesting illustration of an Eyre Smelting Works catalogue which give some indication of the range of metallurgical products they were involved with.
Some further searching led to a railway site with photos of the old line, including picture number S03 a 1968 photograph of a derelict Merton Abbey station with the chimneys of the Eyre Smelting works in the background. I haven't as yet found a potted history of the company - and for all I know it may still exist in some shape or form somewhere - but there are occasional references to the works on the internet, including the odd publication, advertisements in aviation trade magazines, notice of the production of a commemorative calender for the Festival of Britain and, most intriguing of all - its role in role in the scrap business. For those who are nostalgic for the golden age of flight the Eyre Smelting Works seems to have been the last resting place for a huge number of decommissioned aircraft, including Spitfires, Spitefuls, Meteors, Vampires and all manner of other post war planes whose eventual destinations have been logged by enthusiasts. But it wasn't only British and American planes that succumbed to the Eyre Eorks furnaces. Immediately after the war a large number of German aircraft were flown to Britain for testing and evaluation before suffering in the harsh winter of 1949
Many of the aircraft were overturned in the gales, and others suffered from falling trees, and shortly after this, the wholesale scrapping began... After all useful pieces and large metal areas had been removed, the mortal remains were buried in twenty feet deep holes where they remain to this day. This burial process was quite common with another pit being sited out beyond Brize Norton village in farmland, to accommodate the remains of aircraft that had been stored in dispersed sites.
The last recorded "movement" of a German aircraft took place on the 16th of December 1948, when Siebel Si 204D AM 46 was sold to the Eyre Smelting Co.
I haven't found exactly when the Eyre Smelting works closed down but the railways stopped in the mid-70s and Merantun Way was built in the early 90s. My guess would be that the smelting works had melted down its last jet-fighter within a few years of the 1968 picture and had then been demolished itself. Its furnaces and fireclay had then been smashed and broken up, revealing its lining of petrified slag and clinker. Quite who the enterprising builder was who spotted a convenient use for the waste I doubt I'll ever find out but you have to admire their parsimony and I wonder if any of the occupants of the houses realise that part of their garden wall may once have been flying above them during the Battle of Britain?
All this is conjecture and guesswork of course and quite possibly totally inaccurate, so I'm looking forward to hearing from anyone who can provide a bit more information about the Eyre Smelting Works and the unlikely South Wimbledon garden wall. I hadn't realised what a historical journey I was setting out on when I first thought to have a closer look at it but it's amazing where a bit of old clinker can take you!
Labels: Eyre Smelting, Firebricks, South Wimbledon, walls
What a splendid account! Really nice to see that level of investigation and detail. Reading all of that into a piece of brick is - or should be - a salutory lesson for everyone.
Sebastien Ardouin said...
Amazing story and great detective work. You're definitely a real mine of information! More about Merton Abbey station and the Tooting, Merton & Wimbledon Extension Railway can be found at: http://www.subbrit.org.uk/sb-sites/stations/m/merton_abbey/index.shtml
All the best and keep up all the excellent work.
Boydongood said...
Excellent and fascinating piece of detective work - many thanks for sharing it with us! I'm also intrigued by the Triang factory - I had heard it was there but know very little about it. Perhaps someone out there could post a link to further information?
Duncan said...
What a fantastic post. So interesting.
I have some great photos of Merton Abbey Station and here is one I put on Flickr. I'll upload the others when I get the chance
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarflondondunc/4077235141/
I also have this advert for the Lines Brothers Tri-Ang works.
SOE heroine Violette Szabo even worked here for a while during the war.
Brilliant detection! Utterly admirable.
trellis said...
There are more walls like this in North London, specifically Edgware and Mill Hill. I have been puzzling about why they appear to be made of melted and glazed firebrick for ages. Thank you for shedding some light on it.
This is really strange. I posted my appreciation of this article back in December 2009, and on the weekend I was doing some weeding in my front garden when I noticed that some of this black stuff had been used in a low retaining wall! Even stranger, my house used to be owned by a builder who recycled much old material around the house. I wonder if he could have built these very walls?
Diana Somerton said...
My husband worked at Fry's Metals, Tandem Works, Merton Abbey from 1969 to 1991. He recalls a notice board with Fry's name on it and in brackets Eyre Smelting Company. They were taken over by Fry's who were part of the Cookson Group. He remembers old planes being melted down at their Willow Lane site. Fascinating piece of detective work.
Tom Cresswell said...
Brilliant detective work, I think you
are right to think that the wall comes from the Eyre Smelting Co. I left school in 1957 on a Friday and started work at the Eyre Smelting Works on Monday. We worked on blast furnaces, rotating furnaces, both types had to be shut down periodically to be relined, The slag combined with the fire bricks would make ideal walling. I left working there in 1965, but I recal that it did not close for some years after this, very interesting account by you well done.
I've found an old special alloy ingot which says eyre smelting co ltd . Merton abbey connery printed on top. Anybody got any info on this please.
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Railmaster London said...
As others have noted it before the building of Tandem Retail Park, the Colliers Wood site of Fry's Diecastings (Tandem Works) stood until demolition, I cannot remember the exact late but late 1990s seems about right. They too had a couple of private railway sidings connected to the Merton Abbey Branch (See ariel photographs) and Merton and Morden UDC handbooks of around 1946 showed Eyre/Fry's as apparently the UKs LARGEST processor of non-ferrous metals. I guess some of their output would have gone to Corfields / TI Crown Merton / Judges whom were to the west along Station Road opposite the Merton Abbey station buildings, again private sidings entered their complex. The walling materials could equally have come from the Former Merton Board Mills, prior to their rebuilding and re-constitution in the 1920s as The (New) Merton Board Mills (1928), again the largest manufacturers of corrigated cardboard packaging in the UK. The Abbey Road properties appear to be built before the 1920s though and the wall looks as old as that (its certainly pre 1960s) so its wierd. Needs listing building status really.
Whyperion said...
Further research, there was a company making slag blocks in the South Wimbledon Area, later it moved to Boundary Road Colliers Wood, Some houses in Nelson Grove Road had front garden walling from it, as do some in Milner Road. The Wimbledon Town Gas works was in Haydon's Road near The British Queen in North Road. I think it closed in the 1920s and could have been a source of these replacement homes. Censuses of the 1820s onwards showed fewer residences in Abbey Lane but I can trace few of them.( Most of the East Side of Abbey Road was the garden and (brick) Wall of Abbey Gate House(Demolished 1914), located itself on Merton High Street around the Abbey Parade / Wimbledon Palais Area)
Oops, Abbey Gate House (Isaac Smith's Residence) Demolished 1904-1906) depending on sources read
The Eyre Smelting Co became Fry's Metals Ltd, part of The Lead Industries Group and then latterly Cookson Group. The Factory closed down in 1991 and operations moved to Croydon. Fry's products still exist to this day, being market leaders in the industrial solders and fluxes segment. Fry's Diecastings were a separate company and were based in Prince Georges Road and not Tandem works.
I just found half of a Eyre brick & 5 other pieces of alloy in a creek in Brampton Ont Canada! For real weird right lol. Thanks for all the information guys I wish I knew how to share a picture.
About us said...
Thanks for the post. I live in suburban east London, on an Edwardian housing estate. There are quite a few of these clinker brick front garden walls around here. I had always assumed that they had been built using recycled building material from the blitz, but the insides of old smelting furnaces makes more sense. It seems to have been quite a fashion to replace front fences with walls made with this cheap and available material. It's like a wall equivalent of crazy paving!
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The aim of this article is to propose a new database allowing a comparative evaluation of the relative performance of schooling systems around the world. We measure this performance through pupils' achievement in standardized tests. We merge all existing regional and international student achievement tests by using a specific methodology. When compared with other existing databases, our approach innovates in several ways, especially by including regional student achievement tests and intertemporal comparable indicators. We provide a data set of indicators of quality of student achievement for 103 countries/areas in primary education and 111 countries/areas in secondary education between 1965 and 2010.
Nadir Altinok & Claude Diebolt & Jean-Luc Demeulemeester, 2014. "A new international database on education quality: 1965--2010," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(11), pages 1212-1247, April.
Nadir Altinok & Claude Diebolt & Jean-Luc De Meulemeester, 2012. "A new International Database on Education Quality: 1965-2010," Post-Print halshs-00910062, HAL.
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In 2008 I rode 32,000 kms in 60 days through all 50 states including Alaska & Hawaii. "Twisting Throttle America" recounts the ride.
At Buffalo Bill's there was all manner of grilled and fried food, and this motorcycling connoisseur had a hard job choosing his burger. I decided to make the meal educational. Many will be wondering about the difference between buffalo and bison. Are they the same animal? The answer is a resounding no! Bison comes with a pickle, lettuce, melted cheese and shoestring fries. With buffalo, you get red onion, no cheese and curly fries. It's good to be able to clear that up.
No sooner had the ointment started to work after Mike Hyde's 17,000-kilometre motorcycle circumnavigation of Australia than his mid-life itch returned. This time his goal was 50 states in America in 60 days, and Twisting Throttle America is the result - classic roadside tales of an ordinary Kiwi bloke doing it alone, on the smell of an oily rag and cholesterol pills. The Land of the Free is also the Land of the Bizarre Roadside Attraction, and, if Bill Bryson was a middle-aged Kiwi biker on a budget, he might have written this book. Come on a road trip with Twisting Throttle - he's funny, irreverent and definitely not taking himself seriously. Thrill to close encounters with American wildlife, join his fantasy ride around Washington with Motorcycle One, share the excitement and wet underwear of out-running Hurricane Ike, and enjoy his unforgettable attempts to understand diner waitresses.
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If you look up round trip flights from London to Tokyo, you'll see economy fares costing between $600 to $1,600. From Manchester to Boston, it'd be $600 to $1,800. And from Edinburgh to the Canary Islands, a flight would cost you about $400. A guy named Jack, however, found these flights for $335, $246 and $38, respectively.
Jack is a flight hacker based in the UK who, over the last three years, has traveled to 43 countries for a fraction of the price you'd expect to pay, mostly by taking advantage of airline mistakes, capitalizing on flight sales and knowing where to look. A $22 flight from the UK to Belize? Yup, he found it. His email newsletter—which launched two months ago— promises to save you an average of $496 per ticket and already has more than 2700 subscribers. Yesterday, he revealed some of his traveling tips in a Reddit AMA.
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Clearing cookies and using incognito mode is the one hack mostly everyone knows, but when someone asked if it actually helps, Jack said not so much, but try anyway.
When one Redditor asked Jack the best place he's traveled for the least amount of money, he recommend Sri Lanka.


The show is specifically designed for those who want OUT of homosexuality, bisexuality and gender confusion as well as other sins of the flesh. The format highlights the teaching ministry of Rev. Charlene E. Cothran, former gay rights activist, turned Bible Teacher/Evangelist. Check out our broadcast schedule and podcasts at www.TheEvidenceMinisgtry.org. What an awesome way to begin the New Year! Please SHARE!!


text:
module Language.TECS.Deck.Parser.Tokens where

import Data.Word
import Data.ByteString.Lazy (ByteString)

data Token = CommentStart
           | Comment ByteString
           | CommentEnd
           | Identifier String
           | Value Word16
           | Function
           | Label
           | Add
           | Sub
           | Neg
           | Eq
           | Gt
           | Lt
           | And
           | Or
           | Not
           | Push
           | Pop
           | Goto
           | IfGoto
           | Call
           | Return
           | Argument
           | Local
           | Static
           | Constant
           | Pointer
           | This
           | That
           | Temp
           deriving (Eq, Show)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


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I need a writing pad. I need to see my father. My father asked me who had visited him the day before. The train will depart soon. There's a lot of competition in business. It seems to be cold again this summer. I'm not the person you think I am. I know that Mike likes basketball. Can I use this? Clare likes Greek yogurt.
There are ten exercises in the book. He was affected by the heat. I'm sorry, but the answer's no. I'd like to know where you stand. I wonder what it could be. I'm not going to allow that. The rain was beating against the windows. So, you do admit that you've lied, right? Generally, Japanese people are shy. I'm not ungrateful.
Ronald decided to say nothing until everyone else had given their opinions. How many times have you been arrested? Now there is some left over. I like watercolors more than pastels. I have no idea what's happening. No one has seen him for years. I wanted to run home. He may have taken the wrong train. This is the first time I've ever been to Boston. It's finally Friday.
We're hungry. Did Mehrdad say how he did it? I'll make you proud of me. Let's move! There was a parade to mark the occasion. How are rights and duties correlative? I couldn't get him to wake up. He is remarkable for his wisdom. Your room isn't empty any more. "Oh, boy..." Al-Sayib sighed. "Well, how much do you need? I've got about 10 grand just sitting in my offshore account."
A large bird landed on the window sill. The life lesson: giving people the benefit of the doubt can further your career and personal relationships! Galen was obviously pleased to see Mohammad. I thought Malloy was stealing from us. I want to learn toki pona. Greece is an old country. I am familiar with this subject. You are the doctor. She doesn't play soccer. Isidore is going to do it.
That's what doesn't make sense. Malloy began to get very tired. Stefan never graduated from high school. Do you mind if I sit here? Were they with you? I know that he is a famous musician. Well, what are you singing? We'll make a restroom stop at the next gas station. I thought we could make it by 2:30. Would you pipe down?
When Hotta was a teenager, he would often sit on the front porch and write songs in the evening after dinner. Illness kept me from attending the meeting. She told him "Nice job!" He answered "No big deal." He has already begun. Some economists estimate that housewives' services, valued in money, would amount to about 25% of GNP. Wilson is having trouble sleeping. You're a very handsome young man. It was an easy choice. I'm dead tired, I can't take one more step! I think you fall well within 'cute girl'. You'd easily go and pass in his judgement.


The candidate should be MBA with around 10 years of relevant experience. He should be thorough in Welfare Activities, Social compliances, IR activities and Training and Development activities.
The candidate must be Graduate any discipline with relevant Diploma or Degree in Personnel Management from a recognised institute with around 5 years experience in a manufacturing industry.
Exposure to pay roll, Personal Files, Appraisal System, Training and Development and Welfare activities besides routine job is a must.
Good command over spoken and written English will be an added advantage.


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Shortly after we bought our home/land I was eyeing the neighbors land that bumped up next to mine. I really wanted to add 5 acres of fully farmable, black dirt land. So I made some phone calls to see who owned it. We weren't from around this area when we moved out to the country and I suppose the best way to get to know your neighbors is to ask other neighbors who's land is who's. I found out rather quickly.
It took a lot of gumption to pick up the phone and make that call. Hard because no one could say no if I didn't ask. However, no one could say yes either. So that's what I banked on and picked up the phone.
I called and asked him about the land and if he'd ever be willing to sell me five acres. Preferably the area that floods a little at the bottom of a hill. I thought this would make it more desirable for him to sell since his crops really never took hold on that 1/4 acre spot.
Well, I was wrong. He was very attached to his property as most farmers are. I explained what I wanted to do with the land including build a barn, permaculture design the land, add fruit trees, and have more foraging area for my pigs. Farmer's around these parts aren't huge supporters of sustainable, save seed crops so I might as well have been talking to myself. It was his land and I could feel there would be a premium that would come with it.
He said he would think about it and chat with his wife and get back to me.
six months went by.... no call. So I called him again. Squeaky wheel gets the grease right? Or the annoying neighbor girl that wants to grow her own crops keeps calling...whatever you want to call it.
He asked me what I was thinking about pricing and in the meantime I had done a little research for the area. I had two real estate agents both give me approximate amounts of currently selling/sold prices so I felt prepared the pay that.
Well, he wanted twice that amount. GULP. Ahem. barf.
UGH, I wanted this land. And I have never made an emotional purchase decision on homes/land before but I really wanted it. After discussing with the husband, we figured it would be more expensive for us to cut up our woods to build a barn etc. so regardless of the price at that point, we decided it would be worth it since his bumps right up to ours.
So I called him back and counter offered. He said he would ask his wife and call back. No call, so I called one month later. They are sticking to what they wanted and never really wanted to sell anyway he informed me. I told him we would think about it.
So I slept on it two nights, called him back and said ok. We went to his house the next week to discuss where we would be buying the said property.
I thought WAAAHOO! I bought 5 extra acres. Oh how I wish that were true. Now we had to get a survey which was about one month out with any contractor you called. Then we had to ok it with each other and write a purchase agreement, sign it, and set up a title time. He also had to get a partial loan agreement from the loan holder on the land to free that part to be sold. Uff da. Not to mention having to get it all ok'd with the county and having to follow their paperwork trail to make it legit.
Buying land was more than I thought. It's not a good handshake and just handing over the money.
But needless to say, we DID get the process done, I jumped through all the hoops, paid all the fees and found victory in buying five additional agricultural acres for twice the current market price...Yay me :/ I guess that's what happens when you try to buy land that isn't for sale. Regardless, it is pretty super exciting. It's mine mine mine now. I badgered my neighbor for a total of 2 years from start to finish of the sale and it was worth it in the end.


(WWW, W3, The Web) An Internet client-server hypertext distributed information retrieval system which originated from the CERN High-Energy Physics laboratories in Geneva, Switzerland.
An extensive user community has developed on the Web since its public introduction in 1991. In the early 1990s, the developers at CERN spread word of the Web's capabilities to scientific audiences worldwide. By September 1993, the share of Web traffic traversing the NSFNET Internet backbone reached 75 gigabytes per month or one percent. By July 1994 it was one terabyte per month.
On the WWW everything (documents, menus, indices) is represented to the user as a hypertext object in HTML format. Hypertext links refer to other documents by their URLs. These can refer to local or remote resources accessible via FTP, Gopher, Telnet or news, as well as those available via the http protocol used to transfer hypertext documents.
The client program (known as a browser), e.g. NCSA Mosaic, Netscape Navigator, runs on the user's computer and provides two basic navigation operations: to follow a link or to send a query to a server. A variety of client and server software is freely available.
Most clients and servers also support "forms" which allow the user to enter arbitrary text as well as selecting options from customisable menus and on/off switches.
Following the widespread availability of web browsers and servers, many companies from about 1995 realised they could use the same software and protocols on their own private internal TCP/IP networks giving rise to the term "intranet".
The World Wide Web Consortium is the main standards body for the web.
An article by John December.
A good place to start exploring.
WWW servers, clients and tools.
Usenet newsgroups: news:comp.infosystems.www.misc, news:comp.infosystems.www.providers, news:comp.infosystems.www.users, news:comp.infosystems.announce.
These are transformed into hypertext links when you access it via the Web.
HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is an application of SGML for marking up and rendering documents within the World-Wide Web environment on the Internet.
Andreessen and Bina were recognized "for developing a multi-platform browsing tool for the World-Wide Web.
IFSI) today announced Net Shepherd, the first product designed to democratically rate and filter World-Wide Web sites and selectively supervise access.


Rebekka85 . Cream18Girl. UCandyLips. sinichka.
RebbecaFisherBlueEyedFloyd01blondBlondeAlicejain .AlicejainUrSparkleEyesKeishaKillsTRANSASIANSEX .xxxBestGirls1EXOTICGIRLNickKLAUSNickKLAUS .LatexErikaANDRESFLIPENatasha2016DEREKWYLER .wildCOCKmisstresOllga1975ANDRESFLIPEblondBlonde .sweetgirl86xCleoMooreeLatexErikasinichka .anahi9LatexErikaMaretaDreamNatalyFlower .SantiNaughty10LusieSRebbecaFisherCleoMooree .urYoungG0ddessRosseAmbberSsexyStelaMenasca .andressalascalisuzysuaveTheaDiamondzMINONA93 .sweetgirl86xNickKLAUSTenderLadieTRANSASIANSEX .
Italianbaby69AmmyNext2UxxxBestGirlslilosweety .KiraaAmmyNext2Uanahi9BBWLily83 .MrsDariawildCOCKmisstresLittlehotBBLusieS .00NightAngels00NightAngelsHannaNeedLoveSweetChealsey .wowgirlwooowTotalyDirtyNatasha2016fantastiqeyess .LiluStarXCreamyRomaniaSHIIBAARIIAllenSue .AanisUrPinoyFantasyNatalyFlowerAestheticboy .ShinySusandearNatalieGreatKathleenHannaNeedLove .KiraaKeishaKillsBlueEyedFloyd01UrPinoyFantasy .sweetgirl86xaHUGEcockALIYAHAanis00NightAngels .TroySanderhoneysweetxxx00NicolebellaRosseAmbber .


text:
Darren Aronofsky movie quotes
Darren Aronofsky Movies
Darren Aronofsky movie quotes, phrases and lines
Mark Margolis (1939)
Ajay Naidu (1972)
Jennifer Lynn Connelly (1970)
Keith David (1956)
actor, voice actor
Marlon Wayans (1972)
Ellen Burstyn (1932)
actor, singer-songwriter, musician, film director
Christopher McDonald (1955)
Hubert Selby Jr. (1928 - 2004)
Laurence Fishburne (1961)
actor, film director, film producer
Stanley Tucci (1960)
actor, film director
Don Cheadle (1964)
Nicolas Cage (1964)
Robert Downey Jr. (1965)
Kevin Spacey (1959)
film director, actor, producer, scriptwriter, singer
Darren Aronofsky quotes
| Found in The Art of Acting |
"I think when you're working with professional actors, it's all about trust."
[Tag: actors, trust]
"My favorite part of filmmaking is the actors."
[Tag: actors]
"I couldn't sleep one night and I was sitting in my office and I realized that I was an independent filmmaker."
[Tag: awareness, director]
| Found in Actors in real life |
"When I go to movies I generally want to be taken to another world."
[Tag: imagination, movie, public]
"Comic books and graphic novels are a great medium. It's incredibly underused."
[Tag: books]
Take a look here
The Art of Acting
Actors in real life

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Apparently American newspaper editors aren't the only ones who fold under criticism after initially approving an editorial cartoon. The German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung apologized for a cartoon criticizing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that appeared in its pages last week. The image, which Dieter Hanitzsch drew in the wake of the Gaza massacre, was seen by some as anti-Semitic.
After the artist refused to apologize for his cartoon, he was dropped by his long-time paper. His editor-in-chief tried to get out of the controversy by abdicating all responsibility for the decision-making process, and intimated the artist had "sneaked" the piece into the paper — something Hanitzsch denies.
A journalist in Nazareth took a look at the fallout from the decision as another example of how the secular Israeli government often uses accusations of anti-Semitism to deflect criticism of its actions.


text:
Q: disable WP_error: authentication_failed I am modifying my wp-login.php but from within functions.php (in order not to hack the core).
I need to disable one WP_error with code: authentication_failed.
if i hack the core and modify wp-login.php at the code:
foreach ( $wp_error->get_error_codes() as $code ) {
    $severity = $wp_error->get_error_data( $code );
    foreach ( $wp_error->get_error_messages( $code ) as $error_message ) {
            if ( 'message' == $severity )
                $messages .= '  ' . $error_message . "
\n";
            else
                $errors .= '    ' . $error_message . "
\n";
        }
}

to:
foreach ( $wp_error->get_error_codes() as $code ) {
        $severity = $wp_error->get_error_data( $code );
        if($code !=='authentication_failed'){ <======= ADDED
            foreach ( $wp_error->get_error_messages( $code ) as $error_message ) {
                  if ( 'message' == $severity )
                        $messages .= '  ' . $error_message . "
\n";
                  else
                        $errors .= '    ' . $error_message . "
\n";
            }
         }
}

It works. But I don't want to hack the core, is there a way to disable it from functions.php?

A: You can use the pluggable function wp_authenticate to override the core.
https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/wp_authenticate/
Important caution: Test this code on a sandbox before deploying live!
function wp_authenticate($username, $password) {
    $username = sanitize_user($username);
    $password = trim($password);

    $user = apply_filters( 'authenticate', null, $username, $password );

    if ( $user == null ) {
        $user = new WP_Error( 'authentication_failed', __( 'ERROR: Invalid username or incorrect password.' ) );
    }

    $ignore_codes = array( 'authentication_failed' );

    if ( is_wp_error( $user ) && !in_array( $user->get_error_code(), $ignore_codes ) ) {
        do_action( 'wp_login_failed', $username );
    }

    return $user;
}
add_action( 'init', 'wp_authenticate' );

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Matumona Lundala (Goliath) (nacido el 1 de octubre de 1972) es un exfutbolista angoleño que jugaba como portero. Ganó la Copa Angoleña 2005 con el Sagrada Esperança. También integró la selección de Angola en la Copa Africana de Naciones de 2006.

Futbolistas de Angola
Futbolistas de la selección de fútbol de Angola

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
GC Comp 2016: The Stock Awards Edition
From Corporate Counsel | By Jennifer Williams-Alvarez
In many of our general counsel compensation categories, the winner just narrowly edges out the runner-up. In the case of total take-home cash, for example, The Walt Disney Co.'s Alan Braverman's haul was not even $200,000 more than the GC in the No. 2 spot. And with base salary, the No. 1 came out on top by only $500,000.
We see a different picture when it came to stock awards. Apple Inc.'s Bruce Sewell, with his $20 million in shares, beat out the others who joined him on our 2016 General Counsel Compensation list by more than $10 million.
Call him the $20 million man.
Now, for a deeper look: Stock awards for general counsel have bobbed up and down in the last few years. Following a drop in 2013, the 2014 results showed a whopping 49.4 percent increase in average stock awards. Even when ignoring the $40 million that outlier Google Inc.'s David Drummond received in shares, the increase was still nearly 22 percent on average. But in 2015 (the year covered in our survey), the numbers took a dive. Sewell's $20 million in stock awards (technically, $20,000,105), didn't change the fact that the overall average dropped by 19.1 percent.
Surprised? You shouldn't be. Given the sluggish economy, this doesn't go against expectations, says Bob Graff, a partner and recruiter in the in-house practice group at legal search consultants Major, Lindsey & Africa. "Growth was much more rapid after the recession, now it's leveled off. So the variable part of executive compensation is going to reflect that slower growth," he says. "Last year was a tough year for companies to perform, and the stock market didn't do too well, so it's not surprising that these numbers went down."
These numbers are in line with what's been going on in the market, says Bob Barker, managing partner at executive recruiting firm BarkerGilmore. "Overall the market was higher in 2014 than it was in 2015," he says. "The stock market was booming in 2014. But it was down in 2015, so that would tie into the awards that would be given."
Down-market or no, there's no denying that Sewell's stock award is more than a little impressive. Let's see how the others in this category fared. Below Sewell was Amgen Inc.'s GC, Jonathan Graham, who received $8,599,985 in stock awards. At No. 3 was John Finley of New York-based The Blackstone Group with $8,188,928. In fourth place, we had Brad Smith from Microsoft Corp., who received $4,833,835. And wrapping up the top five was General Motors Co.'s Craig Glidden, with $4,475,042. For the top 10, see the accompanying chart.


text:
Q: boost::future::then() not returning future that blocks on destruction I wrote this sample code to test boost::future continuations to use in my application.
#include <iostream>
#include <functional>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <exception>

#define BOOST_THREAD_PROVIDES_FUTURE
#define BOOST_THREAD_PROVIDES_FUTURE_CONTINUATION

#include <boost/thread/future.hpp>

void magicNumber(std::shared_ptr<boost::promise<long>> p)
{
    sleep(5);
    p->set_value(0xcafebabe);
}

boost::future<long> foo()
{
    std::shared_ptr<boost::promise<long>> p =
    std::make_shared<boost::promise<long>>();

    boost::future<long> f = p->get_future();

    boost::thread t([p](){magicNumber(p);});

    t.detach();

    return f;
}

void bar()
{
    auto f = foo();
    f.then([](boost::future<long> f) { std::cout << f.get() << std::endl; });
    std::cout << "Should have blocked?" << std::endl;
}

int main()
{
    bar();

    sleep (6);

    return 0;
}

When compiled, linked and run with boost version 1.64.0_1, I am getting following output:
Should have blocked?
3405691582

But according to boost::future::then's documentation here.
The execution should be blocked at f.then() in function bar() because the temporary variable of type boost::future<void> should block at destruction, and the output should be
3405691582
Should have blocked?

In my application though, the call to f.then() is blocking the execution till continuation is not invoked.
What is happening here?

A: Note that the only time a future would ever block in the destructor used to be documented as when you use std::async with a launch-policy of launch::async.
See Why is the destructor of a future returned from `std::async` blocking?
The answer lists the many discussions that have taken place around this subject. The proposal N3776 made it into C++14:

This paper provides proposed wording to implement a positive SG1 straw poll to clarify that ~future and
  ~shared_future don't block except possibly in the presence of async.

cppreference.com documents std::async

Your code never used async, so it would be surprising if any future derived would block on destruction.
More gener
ally, it is clear that the consensus is that blocking destruction is an unfortunate design wart, not something you'd expect being introduced on newer extensions (such as .then continuations).
I can only assume this is a case of documentation error where the wording

*

*The returned futures behave as the ones returned from boost::async, the destructor of the future object returned from then will block. This could be subject to change in future versions.

should be removed.


Los Carneros County Park is a nature preserve and bird habitat with a large lake. A network of trails meander across the park through rolling meadows and a forest of eucalyptus, oak, and pine trees. A wooden bridge crosses the northern end of the lake.
Please keep dogs on leash at all times, and remember to pick up after them.


Packaging Solutions for the Food Industry | The Food Packaging Specialist – Food Processing Technology (IRL) LTD.
Welcome to Food Processing Technology (IRL) Ltd.
Our product range includes Boneguard, Bonecovers, Bone in Bags, Edible/Non Edible Collagen Casings, Fibrous, Plastic and Cellulose Casings, Meat Shrink Bags, Food Vacuum Bags, Cook In Bags, High Abuse Bags, Thermofoming, Lidding Film, Printable Film and General Food Packaging.
We offer 24hr delivery on all in stock products if the order is placed before 12 noon.
"We're really happy with the service from all at FPT! Very quick and friendly service. We can always rely on the guys for the best quality packaging for our meats at a competitive price. Thanks for all of the service over the years!"
We competitively price all of products so you can keep your costs low. Take a look at our products and get in touch for a quote.
Let us know if you need advice on the best way to package your product. We have industry experts on hand to help!
We take a number of steps to ensure our production methods are as innovative and sustainable as possible.
FPT believes that great business is built on partnersips with great suppliers and industry bodies.
Take a look at some of the businesses and organisations we currently partner with.


text:
Dylan Lovan
As COVID-19 cases wane, vaccine-lagging areas still see risk
The 10 states with the fewest new cases per capita over that time frame all have fully vaccinated rates above the national average.
2 detectives involved in Breonna Taylor's death are fired
January 6, 2021 at 4:45 p.m.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Two more officers involved in the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor have been fired — a detective believed to have fired the fatal shot and another...
Grand jury audio details raid that killed Breonna Taylor
October 2, 2020 at 10:10 p.m.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Police said they knocked and announced themselves for a minute or more before bursting into Breonna Taylor's apartment, but her boyfriend said he did not hear...
2 Louisville officers shot amid Breonna Taylor protests
September 23, 2020 at 11:11 p.m.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Hours after a Kentucky grand jury brought no charges against Louisville police for Breonna Taylor's death and protesters took to the streets, authorities said two officers...
'Say her name': Louisville to pay $12M to Breonna Taylor's family
September 15, 2020 at 9:19 p.m.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Months after the police killing of Breonna Taylor thrust her name to the forefront of a national reckoning on race, the city of Louisville agreed to...


The discovery last week of another major flaw in TLS was announced, nicknamed "Logjam" by the group of prominent cryptographers who discovered it. It's getting so hard to keep track of these flaws that researchers at INRIA in France created a "zoo" classifying the attacks (which is not yet updated to include Logjam or the FREAK attack discovered in March). Despite the fact that these attacks seem to be announced every few months now, Logjam is a surprising and important finding with broad implications for the Internet. In this post I'll offer a technical primer of the Logjam vulnerability.
Logjam is actually two related but separate vulnerabilities in the way that certain common types of secure connections are established. The first is a novel active attack whereby a man-in-the-middle can force a connection to downgrade to a decades-old key exchange algorithm with well known vulnerabilities. This is a clever combination of cryptanalysis and a break in the protocol logic of TLS. The second attack, while generally known for years, was demonstrated by the researchers to be much more feasible in practice than commonly realized. It appears that the NSA may have been able for years to decrypt a significant portion of secure traffic on the Internet. Most disconcertingly, this would mean that instead of working to fix this widespread problem, the NSA intentionally left us all vulnerable.
Logjam affects TLS and other protocols which use traditional (i.e., non-Elliptic Curve) Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Normally this approach is preferred to "static" RSA because it enables forward secrecy, but it can be broken by an adversary who can compute the relevant discrete logarithms-that is, an attacker who can solve for x in the equation gx = y (mod p) given g, y, and p (which is a prime number). This is a famous and thoroughly studied problem in cryptography, and its difficulty depends mostly on how large p is. For large enough p, this is believed to be infeasible, and the Diffie-Hellman key exchange algorithm is considered secure.
If p is a 512-bit prime (considered too small to be secure), after a large but feasible amount of precomputation one can compute discrete logs in a matter of minutes. This is so fast that it enables a devious downgrade attack on TLS. Much like with the FREAK attack, many TLS servers still support an archaic "export mode" ciphersuite which uses a 512-bit prime. An active network attacker can modify the message from the client so that it looks like the client is only willing to use the export Diffie-Hellman algorithm. Unlike with FREAK, which took advantage of servers failing to check if such a downgrade happened, for Diffie-Hellman ciphersuites servers do check when the client later re-sends its list of supported ciphersuites. Unfortunately, 512-bit Diffie-Hellman can be broken so fast that the attacker can delay this response and then replace it with a forged one re-affirming that only the weak ciphersuite was supported. This attack affects a non-trivial fraction of servers: 8.4% of the top 1 million web servers as well as mail servers and many others.
If p is a larger prime, in particular a 1024-bit prime which is the most common choice in software implementations of Diffie-Hellman today, then it may be feasible for a nation-state-level attacker (e.g. the NSA) to precompute the information needed to compute discrete logs modulo a few common values of p. Once this work is finished, an active downgrade attack is no longer needed. The attacker can simply record 1024-bit Diffie-Hellman exchanges happening naturally and compute the shared secret at their leisure, no longer needing to finish in minutes to be successful. The precomputation is quite expensive, requiring several million computers running for a year to break a single prime. With some algorithmic speedups and with custom hardware, however, this attack might be feasible with a budget of tens to hundreds of millions of dollars. Given the NSA's budget, it's plausible that this precomputation may have been performed several times, once for each the most common values of p used on the Internet. This would enable the NSA to break a single connection in something like 30 CPU-days. This is too costly to speculatively break all traffic on the internet, but cheap enough to break a large number of specific connections of interest. The Logjam authors and others have further speculated that this might be the large-scale cryptanalysis breakthrough by the NSA described by James Bamford in 2012 and alluded to in some of the Snowden documents. There's no definitive proof here, but it's a plausible (and disturbing) interpretation.
On the technical side, the fix is simple to the first problem. Export-grade Diffie-Hellman ciphersuites need to be banished to the dustbin of history. The major browsers have all announced plans to disable 512-bit Diffie-Hellman permanently. Fortunately, there's no evidence that this attack has been performed in the wild, and this fix should cause relatively few compatibility problems.
The second problem is a bit trickier because there are still many legitimate servers preferring 1024-bit Diffie-Hellman. The Logjam authors estimated that about 25% of popular HTTPS (web) servers, 25% of SSH servers and the majority of VPN servers employ Diffie-Hellman with a vulnerable prime as their most preferred key exchange algorithm. This makes it hard for browsers to disable support for these algorithms. Instead, sysadmins need to upgrade all of these servers to use stronger methods to prevent passive eavesdropping.
If you're a sysadmin you can follow this guide to upgrade to eliminate old ciphersuites. Moving from 1024-bit Diffie-Hellman to 2048-bit Diffie-Hellman works, but the best bet is to forget the traditional prime-based Diffie-Hellman and move to elliptic-curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH), which is not vulnerable to these attacks and is more efficient.


As business owners, we all want customers, but what's the goal we should really set to sustain a successful eCommerce business? If your answer is turn customers into loyalists you thought right. Sure, we all want as much traffic to our site as we can get and we are happy with any sales that come our way, but how do we turn buyers into full-fledged brand loyalists?
One of the best ways to market is through word of mouth. Nothing beats a review than one coming directly from someone you trust. Traditional marketing has its value, but there is no better marketing tool than having your customers become advocates for your brand.
Having customers that feel passionate about your business will not only show up as an upside to your revenue but also will help your business grow. Scaling a new business relies on its supporters.
One company I believe that has truly excelled in this area is Uber. Uber has done an exceptional job at marketing and taking the term "brand loyalist" to a whole new level. Giving out promotion codes to get the first ride free and allowing their customers to share these codes with their contacts really did wonders to help Uber spread the message about their service. I still cannot wrap my head around how fast people took to this service once their pricing became affordable for the everyday person.
Actions speak louder than words. All the marketing material in the world won't equate to the way you treat your customers. In order to convert customers into fans, you must put your fair share of work into making your customers feel appreciated.
The first step to turning your customers into brand loyalists is to ensure your customers have a top- notch experience every time they visit your page or contact your customer service. If you make your customer feel like they are the only thing that matters in that moment in time, they will be sure to remember it. Engage with your customers on a personal level, become their friends, not just a business they frequent.
Statistics have shown that 75 percent of brands do not know what engagement means but are "measuring" it. Don't be one of these brands. Engagement is the definition of what it takes to convert customers into fans. Social media has opened up so many different avenues to communicate with your customers there really is no excuse not to be active around the clock to boost your brand. The better you manage your channels, the higher quality the experience will be for your customers.
Another way to earn brownie points with your customers and turn customers into loyalists is to make all your customers feel special no matter the circumstance. Don't be selective. Reward your customers whether they are shopping with you for the first time or the fiftieth. Even if it's something small, a token of appreciation can truly make a difference.
Many companies make the mistake of only rewarding those who dish out the cash, but this doesn't have to be the case. Rewards don't always have to mean discounts or giveaways right off the bat. A simple "Thank you for your purchase, we see you liked this product, please enter your email to be among the first 25 customers notified when we run a secret shopping day. This means you have VIP access along with 24 other customers to purchase our products at a highly discounted price for a limited time." As an online business, chances are you will eventually get an overstock of something. What better way to sell these products than a fun rewarding activity for your customers?
If you haven't made converting your customers into fans a priority, it's time to re-strategize. Don't let your competitors have the advantage by being more connected with your customer base. Treat your customers the way you want to be treated at a five-star resort — nothing but the best. This will turn customers into loyalists.
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