Installation Piece, made of wood, plexiglass, acrylic.
Light pole installation, metal sculptures and information panels.
Collection of Paintings, acrylic and watercolour on board.
Painting, acrylic and watercolour on board.
Monique Genton is a female artist of the Canadian Pacific Northwest, who works in a variety of art mediums: from painting, to film, to photography, and often combined. Monique's art is socially charged, from earlier work that focused on ideas of the female body as object, and more recently, regarding ideas around land development and architecture.
Monique's childhood consisted of living in the eastern farms and forests of the Ottawa valley, along with the western suburbs of Richmond and the rugged coastline of B.C. These earliest experiences lead to questions of land development, which have now become a big part of her art.
Staring out in a career as a medical radiographer, Monique went on to study art at a variety of schools. From New York (American Independent Colleges of Art), to Halifax (Nova Scotia College of Art and Design), Vancouver (Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, University of British Columbia), and Chicago (Art Institute of Chicago, Art and Technology), Monique learned a great deal about social and technical aspects in art (CCCA).
Monique now lives in Victoria, B.C., and is currently focused on capturing local apartment architecture and indigenous plant and Garry Oak meadow conservation.
The following is an interview with Canadian Pacific Northwest artist Monique Genton, that occurred on October 19th, 2018. The major topics discussed were Monique's art inspirations, education, and her current art work that features local (Victoria) apartment architecture.
Childhood, Architecture, Ottawa, Richmond, Feminism, Public Space.
Edited/Final Draft, October 19th, 2018.
Ashley Riddett (A.R.) Hello and thank you so much for being a part of our oral history project. Today is Oct 19th, 2018, and I'm speaking with the lovely Monique Genton. Genton? is that how I pronounce?
Monique Genton (M.G.) Yes that's correct, Genton.
A.R. Wonderful, my name is Ashley Riddett and I'm a student at the University of Victoria, and I'm doing an interview oral history project of the pacific northwest women artist. Our project is called "voices of contemporary women artists of Canada: Canada's West Coast: An Oral History Collection 2018". So I guess I will start with the first question: Even though you've been to and lived in many other places in the past, you have decided to live and work in the Pacific Northwest, and my question to you is, what are some of the professional or ah personal reasons you have chosen to belong here?
M.G. I think the main reason I live here is really just the natural beauty of it. My family moved to Richmond from Ottawa in 1964, and that was a very exciting time. It felt like a blank slate here, compared to their life in Europe, and life in Ottawa, which was an older city – a lot of established people, businesses, and families. My father was setting out as a new engineer, and BC was like the wild west. So it was good for my parents, but it was great for us too because it was like a clean slate, anything goes. We moved into a brand new sub-division in Richmond [laughter], after having lived on a 100 acre farm in the Ottawa Valley….
M.G. ….and moved to this sub-division to a house on a small lot– it was one of these crazy sub-divisions made of cul-de-sacs, and cul-de-sacs coming off of cul-de-sacs. But it was exciting because everything was new. There were maybe six different house styles and they were repeated throughout the neighborhood. So we lived in a house that was called "the Oak", and I had two friends who also lived in "Oaks" [laughter]. So, it felt like, this very, a kind of a leveling out of social class and financial class, you know? So it was great. The school was brand new, all the kids were brand new, we were all in the same place, so it was pretty exciting. And I had never seen the ocean before, and I had never seen mountains like this, and that first impression of Vancouver in 1964 is still the thing that makes me excited about living here. And I've had opportunities to go east, and I've lived in other places, but I'm always so glad to come back here, so here I am.
A.R. And, so that was in around Vancouver….
M.G. Yeah. Vancouver Island. This is a small city, here, Victoria. My husband wasn't keen about coming here because he's more of a big city guy from Montreal, and liked his urban life and he, he resisted a little bit [laughter], but it was, but we were inspired by affordability, and being able to stay in a similar kind of area with the beautiful nature and we're just so so happy to be here now and to be away from the mainland, and now I don't want to take that ferry over [laughter] to the mainland. I want to stay here. And it's been really exciting discovering. I mean it has some things that Vancouver gave us, but the coastline is varied, the trees are different, this is a really unique little ecosystem here, and I've been learning about this ecosystem and I'm a member of the Native Plant Study Group at UVic now, and I'm now a propagator of native plants and a collector of native plants and that's all good. I never had my own garden before and now I've got my own veggie garden. It's just all the things we couldn't have before, now we have. And people here are more chilled out. The Art scene is different, but I'm finding my way around a little bit and it's taken a long time. We've been here 8 years now and I still feel like I'm landing in many ways, getting used to things, getting our house fixed. Making friends. But it's been a great opportunity too to redefine myself, or to just define myself not necessarily re-define, but there are things here that do echo my life in Ottawa. And I think about that landscape a lot still, every day of my life I think about the landscape in Ottawa, because I was so lucky. We, lived on a 100 acre farm. It wasn't our farm, we just leased the land. My father was in University and my Mum had nine kids, so we were a great big family and we needed all that space, and I just got to wander around this landscape all the time, and I really thought about it a lot. There was a stand of forest, we called it le chateau. And I would spend all my time in that forest, walking through the fields, climbing the trees, and it was–it was paradise. And I'll never have anything quite like that or those experiences again, but I think about them. And sometimes in certain landscapes in this region, I feel the echo of that. Here in Victoria you do see open fields, like the Garry Oak meadows are naturally a more open landscape. In Vancouver I recall when we came and we first went to a forest, and it was like "oh my", you can't walk through the forest here because it's all brambles and shrubs and it's dark and the trees are really tall and they're evergreen and so it's always dark, even in the summer….
M.G. …. and I remember those feelings and I remember seeing the ocean for the first time and noticing "Oh, it has a funny smell". And how come the rocks have these white teeth on them? I thought they were teeth, I thought that the rocks could bite you, because the little….
A.R. ….Yeah the little barnacles look like molars….
M.G. ….Yeah they do [laughter] they look like molars! Scary for a kid. Anyway, so I have a really deep sense of the land that seems to reside in my body and, in certain environments I feel resonance with the land, so, here I am.
A.R. Yeah, well, I think it's an excellent choice [ laughter]. If you're good, I'm going to move on to question….
A.R. …. that I have here so, throughout your career you attended various art schools from all over Canada and the United States. How does your international education background figure into your work that has been done here. Or, in other words, in what way has there been a fusion of styles or techniques that you have learned that were from both international and local in your art? That's a tricky one [laughter].
M.G. It's a big one. But it's a good question. I started out painting landscapes as a young woman in my teenage years and then began to paint again my mid 20s. But I was busy with career and life and I didn't go to art school full time until I was in my mid 30s. I had in my mind an idea of what art school might be like, but it was really a kind of an old-fashioned idea, where I thought there'd be lots of people like me painting landscapes and [laughter], but no. So at the time it was almost an environment in development at that time where painting was not fashionable anymore, and so we were seeing more photography as art, and it seemed like all the cool students were doing video and film making and various kinds of installation art, and so that was something I had to wrap my mind around and, but you know we all want to be cool, right?
M.G. ….We, were going to school to learn and to learn different things from what we'd been doing, and so as I, as I did my studies I took some classes and I started to, post-modernism was the thing and, reading all that stuff around that, and feminism, and this school was just starting at that time to offer classes about, gender, and gender identity and I felt that I really had to expand my thinking now, I realized, okay, there's a part of me that wanted to hang on….
M.G. ….to what I knew best and what I had learned in my painting up until that time, but I saw these other things going on around me and I didn't really go into those directions fully until probably my fourth year, and then graduate school. And I did my graduate studies in Chicago, and actually the school wasn't as progressive as Emily Carr College, in Vancouver, but you could seek out. I thought, well I think I need to stay on this path and so I sought out teachers, and there I did film studies, I also did an exchange with NASCAD in Halifax and I also did film studies there. And I was very interested in experimental film. I knew I didn't want to be a film-maker, it takes too many people, too long, to much money, [laughter] but I liked experimental film. And so I started, that's probably where the–at least the black and white images and the idea of using multiple image–came into my work. In Chicago I was so keen on experimental film that I started going to extra sessions. One of my profs invited me to attend a film society in Chicago that was a by-invitation film society and it was mostly profs and critics and I got to go and be there and they would show a couple of new experimental films….
M.G. …. and I was super excited and I found I actually had things to say when I was there at these meetings, and it was great. So then in my graduate work I did an experiment, well like a video that was actually made completely out of still images which I animated in a kind of a Ken Burnsian way—though I'd never heard of Ken Burns at that time. I came across and old book called Swimming Simplified ,where I found the old photographs of women swimmers and, I think it was published in 1929. And, the book itself is quite interesting in that well, first, to think that you'd read a book to learn how to swim is rather odd….
M.G. …. but that was a time in history when there was a proliferation of manuals on everything. So I used old images from that book. And I had read Kate Chopin's book The Awakening, a famous feminist book, and I was still distilling the ideas around that. I find it a fairly abstract book, and so it's open to all sorts of interpretation, but basically it's about her awakening as a woman, perhaps her sexual awakening. And so I took images from that, from the swimming book and I overlaid it with some narration from The Awakening and I added text from my own life struggles. Anyway, it was a layered, short video called the Science of Swimming. I went to art school to be a better painter and yet my graduate work ended up being a video, with all these layered meanings and texts and stuff and, yeah [laughter]. So, I got pretty far away from my original intentions, but… And then once I finished graduate school, I exhibited that kind of work for a while and then I realized it was kind of, you know, all the feminist readings were kind of making me unhappy….
M.G. …. And so some years later I started to turn back to the thing that had originally inspired me as an artist which is the landscape, but now bringing those techniques and the information from art school into my approach to landscape…… that was a long answer [laughter].
A.R. No, it was, it was an excellent answer! [laughter]. Most excellent answers are longer, so no it's great. No, I really like that, I really like that you were able to use you know a lot of your different, educations that you have from different places and be able to integrate those, but also to go back to initially what you were there for in the first place what you wanted to do. So it's kind of like you went full circle, and I really think that's really admirable so that's great. Okay, so question three: When I was looking at your background, doing a little bit of digging on you, I noticed that in some of your most recent works that I could find online, that you had an interest in the urbanization of space, specifically in the pacific northwest. I believe it was probably when you were in Vancouver or you know [laughter] on the other side of the water.
A.R. Essentially, and I was really interested and really struck by that. And I was just wondering, what are some of your reasons for that interest or specific concerns regarding the development of the local urban landscape. What is it that intrigues you to go that route with your art?
M.G. I think that, well, when we moved to Richmond in 1964, Richmond was a very, flat place with, a one-level shopping mall and, there were still a lot of farms. And then, as we started wandering a little further as kids and going into Vancouver, where you cross the Oak Street Bridge and there were these apartment buildings there, Marpole was the neighborhood. And I used to look at these apartment buildings and just wonder about them. I don't think I had an opinion I just wondered about them. And also, I remember when we arrived by train from Ottawa and seeing the BC Hydro Building on Burrard street and just going "wow, I have never seen anything like that before." And I recall one time after doing some sport, in school and the teacher was with us and another teacher was driving and he dropped her off at her apartment building in Marpole and I just thought "wow that's amazing, she lives in one of these buildings." And this is what you did when you left Richmond. You moved to one of these apartments and had your own place. So it was thinking about what life was like in those buildings. And then as I spent more time in the region, I lived in various places in the Fraser Valley and then moved back to Vancouver in 83 and I was, I think, I probably had been an environmentalist for quite a long time. I went to the first, I forget the name now, the Sea Shepherd people–, anyways I went to the first big rally. It's the only time I ever skipped out of school, was to attend that first Greenpeace rally….
M.G. ….downtown. And, so I had this awareness of the landscape and watching it urbanize. And so as a young teenager having concerns about this, but also a fascination at the same time, so I'm really kind of growing up and just paying attention. My father is a land surveyor so I'm seeing a lot of his work and what he does, a lot of plans lying around the house and all his engineering stuff. Just having this awareness from an environmental perspective and from a development perspective, just having my eye on architecture. And then I did my graduate studies in Chicago and, wow, when you live there you can't help but fall in love with architecture. A co-worker of mine, before I went there, told me "oh my sister lives in Chicago, you could stay with her until you find a place to live." And I said "oh, well were does she live?" "Oh, she lives in the Hancock Tower, and I said "well what's that?" "oh you'll see". [laughter]. So I get to Chicago and I've got this address and I get to this place and oh my god, its 95 stories tall….
M.G. …. The Hancock Tower, the famous Chicago Hancock Tower, black with those big X -shaped exterior, its just this massive metal structure. And I got to live on the 72nd floor, and it was just like, boy, if you weren't paying attention to architecture before now [laughter], I was really paying attention to architecture because this is a life changing moment when you first go up there. It's so tall and the winds in Chicago are really strong and so the walls are actually suspended on these tracks and there's movement, a little movement in the building. You don't really feel the movement but you hear the crackle of the walls adjusting to wind forces.
M.G. ….For the first while I couldn't go and stand near the window because it was so, so tall. So anyways, now coming back to the West Coast here and looking at architecture again and looking at things that echo a little bit with my Chicago experience. And I had done some studies in New York city too, so it was all starting to build up in my mind, and how fantastic architecture is, and learning about some architects and this is artistic expression too. So now living, looking, but still remembering always that excitement I felt seeing those three story apartment buildings that were on the other side of the river from Richmond. So it was as though, those buildings embodied a sense of, this is where you go when you grow up, and you can live on the third floor and have your own space, you can be free, and you know it was the 60s and 70s. It just was like everything goes, the hippie generation. So all these things were forming in my mind and so now, getting/having enough distance from my graduate experience and the different ways, all the different directions I got pulled in. And now coming back to it. I still use my computer as an essential design, planning, and thinking tool, but I'm back to painting, down in a more simple, pared-down way. And I'm collecting these apartment building photos [laughter] from around the city of Victoria now. I did that in Vancouver and now I'm continuing, and here there are so many interesting ones and they're different in that the spaces around the buildings here are wider, and the trees are a little bit different. Because I think there's more space around the architecture there is more landscaping, and you have more outdoor parking lots here, whereas in Vancouver the parking tends to be underground, even in the older buildings, with maybe a couple of little spots. But here it just seems like there are acres of property. So now I'm looking at architecture and looking at the relationship of cars to the architecture, and thinking about the use of land in that way. But on another level just looking at them… There is an experience that I keep having, as I'm out walking and I see a two or three story, maybe a 40s to 60s building and they're often white and the light is hitting the side of that building so that the architecture dissolves into a form, just a form with light hitting it. And this is something that has interested artists for eons if you think about it but, for me, as an artist, having gone through all this education and all the politics of feminism and so on, now I'm back to just what it is that interested me [laughter] in art and landscape, looking at this form hit by light, watching the shadows but also thinking about the use of the land and the number of cars, and its interesting now how these big parking lots around the buildings seem to be sparsely used. So you have a great big building and you see one or two cars, so for me, that I just love, so I'll come and photograph that building, and I may come back six times to capture the light hitting certain aspects of it, and then, I bring that back and I work from those photographs. And I think I've probably strayed off our question quite a ways by now [laughter]. But it is, I guess, the urbanization of space. So, I get to have a resonance with that excitement I felt in the 60s, coming to Vancouver and there's a clean slate, everything looked modern compared to Ottawa with their dark brick buildings and steeped in history and old, old families living there. Here there's that newness, for me anyways, for us….
M.G. …. immigrants and, people moving here. So there's this newness and it resonates with the architecture. I think the architecture of the, the 50s 60s had an optimism about it that I really like too, and I feel it. It could be just the newness, like the break from the old. We're not going to have arches and, brick and now it's this white plaster building and it's practically a perfect cube with just little things jutting out here and there for balconies. It must have been just so exciting for those architects. For the Victoria 150 celebrations, I got a grant to do four paintings of mid-century buildings and that was a lot of fun. So I did that and I wrote about what it is that excited me about it. And now we are seeing these buildings starting to disappear with development and that's pretty sad. The medical building at Pandora and Cook is one of my favorite buildings in Victoria, and now I'm not sure if they're keeping it–it's just a shell, all the windows , and staircases –everything's been removed. There's a big tower going up next door. I'm glad that I photographed it when I did. I probably have 150 photographs of it from all different angles. I didn't know at the time it was going to be demolished. Anyways, so I've painted that from different aspects. Sometimes in a larger painting. That's the one there, Medical Arts. And I've done some smaller works too.
A.R. ….And, so I think that those images might be really valuable later on, you know, like….
A.R. …. considering architecture of that time and, what it meant to you, kinda like the newness and the excitement around them and everything. So that's captured in the photograph and that's really special….
A.R. ….So, thank you, that's great, so on to question four so… In the past I've seen that much of your work has featured women, or at least bodies of the female form. So, as someone who works with the female body and as someone also who identifies also as a female artist, how do you think ideas of women, gender and identity are considered within this local art community, is there something that's special about the Victoria art scene when they consider ideas of women identity, or?
M.G. I don't know that I can really speak for the Victoria art scene….
M.G. ….because I still feel like a new person here but….
M.G. …. the Community Arts Council put on an exhibition earlier this year, to feature women's art, and I participated in that and it was fun and I felt, I kinda felt a bit like it was back in the 80s or 70s maybe, and I do wonder, I have been wondering lately "where did feminism go?" because, young women don't seem to think about it very much anymore I mean I guess they're enjoying the product of our efforts….
M.G. ….but, they can do what they want now, you know you can have it all [laughter]. Family and career and work and be respected in the workplace and so it brought a lot back for me participating in that exhibition, but it's not really a happy thing….
M.G. ….I think having gone to art school when I did with everything steeped so deeply in those issues of gender and feminism. In contrast, the kind of work that I'm doing now, with the abstract images of landscape, and the work my low-rise paintings,–that feels more like the true me: the pre-politicized artist. And I do see politics in everything still, and it's there, it's a layer of meaning in everything, just who made this, who designed it, why do we have what we have? Our landscape, it's layered, everything is layered with meaning. But I'm not now specifically, I'm no longer working with images of women, although my swimmers series I do think is probably the best work I've ever done, but now part of being in Victoria is kind of freeing up for me. Oh, I don't know people here, they don't know me. I don't have a gallery here. I'm just gonna going to see where my heart is and I feel here I'm able to go back to that child who wandered around the hundred acre farm and loved looking at everything, and I can have those eyes again here." Every day my husband and I go out on what I call 'an adventure', well "let's go to a different place and we'll go look at something here and there", and eight years later we're still finding all these fantastic things to go and see in Victoria. And I always have my camera with me, and I usually see, on the way, some building and "oh, have to stop here, photograph this building" [laughter], it's filed for me to work on later. So, so yeah, that's where I'm at.
A.R. It's really nice that you said before in one of your other answers to the questions, the idea that in Victoria, now that you did this move and everything is relatively new for you, it's like a fresh start. You're really able to go back and kind of focus on things that maybe you didn't necessarily have the chance to before, but now you can rediscover and look into those and put energy into that, and that's very exciting….
M.G. ….And I think in Vancouver, I taught at Emily Carr for a few years and, I was friends with some of my old profs and I always felt in a way those eyes were on me. "Whoa I better do the right, I better do the hip thing," [laugh] you know the politically right thing in the art world, if I want to be in that scene….
A.R. …. The scene of expectations….
M.G. ….you do need to embody some of those trends and directions, and artists like to think they're not influenced and that they're totally free to do what they want, but if you want to exhibit and you want to make certain connections, it does influence your work, for sure.
A.R. It's almost like there's a game in a little ways, like there's a set of rules….
M.G. People writing about your work or not writing about your work, yknow it's… yeah.
A.R. Yeah definitely… as my dad would say it's how you play the game [laughter] So, I'm going to go ahead to question 5, so this one's a little bit more meta, a little bit more kind of big ideas broader strokes, so I've written: We live in an unprecedented time of like hyper-connectedness in 2018, near instant accessibility to ideas and art from all over the world, and I was wondering, what are some of the things you feel makes the pacific northwest art unique, and what do you think you would like to have shared about this area and celebrated on a global scale, what do you think makes this area of the world when considering art special?
M.G. I actually never read Emily Carr's books until I moved here, and what an eye-opener. They were written what, 100 years ago, but they read like they could have be written today. Her wide-eyed look at the landscape and I thought, wow, this is this is terrific stuff, going out camping, being in the woods and then engaging herself in Native art, being influenced by that. So when I read her book it just seemed like this is it, everyone should be reading this now and looking at it with our new eyes, but this person has spoken it all. And she was a woman and she struggled, she went to art school in the US and in Europe and she had trouble having people take her seriously and all that is still very prevalent today for women artists. But I think in terms of our hyper-connectedness, I'm paying more attention now to Native culture, and I feel as an artist, as a non-native artist I feel a sense of wanting to step aside and let their voices be heard more, and certainly to make room for it. And I think environment, environmental issues are really something. If we don't save our forests then we'll have nothing. I don't have money to protect, you know, marmots [laughter]. Now I'm looking to adopt a marmot, and that to me just all seems more important than art and the way I've been thinking about it. I think environment, if we don't make it front-and-centre we're not going to have it, and all those things that excited me as a child and all the things I learned from being in the forest, and the land, we're not going to have it. I'm really concerned about whales right now. I'm writing letters and I find it so upsetting when I see all the whale watchers come and encircle the whales when they're offshore, I saw a lot of that this summer and I've been writing letters ever since. Because the whale watchers say that they're actually environmentalists and they're trying to raise awareness about whales. And I'm saying, well then, why not leave them alone? You're not doing anything for them, you're making money bringing people there, and maybe you get to talk about whales more, but the whales would probably prefer you not be there, [laugh] so let's leave them alone. So I think those things are foremost in my mind right now, and I think about. I guess my job right now is how can I be an artist and an environmentalist. Years ago, I was seeing this and some environmental art were, the product of women artists' work. There was an exhibition, I saw in Nova Scotia called "re-photographing the land", and it was great big photographs of clear cuts and things like that. There are other artists doing things like that now but at the time it was really putting this stuff in our face, and it felt really raw, and like, holy smokes, this is actually seeing the images of it, and that being art sort of brought those things together for me. So I think if you have a consciousness around that and you're an artist, those are the questions I have for me, now, I think my Grass Project that I did was sort of around that. It was at a time when I was finishing my swimmer work and then, finding myself drawn to landscape again but having had all that art education where my landscape art thoughts had been pretty much drummed out of me [laughter]. Now trying to find a way back, and that's what led me to all the photography, going back to Richmond, taking photographs. Taking photographs of parking lots that have the little token tiny piece of grass and thinking about that. Did a whole series on that, [laughter] did an exhibition at the Richmond Art Gallery called "The Grass Project". I really enjoyed doing it and I'm still thinking about it. That is really artwork about environment, so I guess I'm getting there [laughter]. It's still on my mind, it's not the flavour of the day because that's where I've been since I was a child starring at the landscape thinking about it. Yeah.
A.R. Wonderful, so I added a couple of extra questions….
A.R. ….Of course [laughter] but they're very straightforward, one of my questions is: Is there anything you would like to add to this interview in respect to our topic of discussion regarding kind of women artists and the pacific northwest, is there anything that we haven't covered that you would really like to speak to?
M.G. I still think that male artists are taken more seriously. So, I don't know what to do about that. I think perhaps that, now that I've been out of art school for a while, I often talk to my friends who went to art school and we think how formed we were by art theory. Now I think we're all trying to find a more of an organic way of being an artist and being in the world. I think it's a difficult thing to, well I think there's a history of characterizing women's work in a certain way and there were certain styles and perhaps, ways of looking at women doing artwork and going "oh isn't that sweet, she does, like … whatever," right. I think that's still difficult for women to find their way in the art world without applying a more aggressive or political, traditionally men's game. Not that politics is essentially a men's game, but historically it's a men's game. There are women who definitely could pull it off–I just wish there was a little bit more. I find that there is a local scene that seems like more of a traditional women's practice, and then there are the academics, or those coming through academia who are doing, addressing the big issues, getting the big shows and getting the big recognition, and some of us are stuck in between the two, because we see the value of looking at smaller views of the world perhaps. I hate to characterize because I don't believe in essentialism, that woman naturally do this, that's a really dangerous place to go and I really hate that. But, perhaps we're not as aggressive in the art world to get our work out there or we're not willing to compromise, or there's something that continues to keep women's art production on the sidelines. Going to that recent Victoria women's' art show and seeing all these women who were just really [laughter] excited. And there was a bit of a 70s feminist feel there, and it was quite exciting actually, it was. And we're all looking at each other and noting, "hey yah, we're all here for the same reason." It was fun, I hadn't felt that for quite some time. But there is probably an evening out in the art of the commercial gallery scene. Victoria is very, ….to me there aren't really that many galleries so I think that makes it even harder for women I think the more galleries there are, the more likely you're going to be in one of them. The same struggles, I feel like they're still there. I think a woman doing art is still more likely to be viewed as a pastime for her, and not a career and not having these ingenious ideas you know? it's still seen to be in the male domain, in my experience.
A.R. Ok. We're not quite there yet. I just have this question. Where would you like to see development, for future generations, like you're ideal, if everything is played out right, what would you like to see happen?
M.G. ….Make it part of somebody's budget, property management budget or whatever.
A.R. There's so many public spaces, like, University of Victoria does a pretty good job, we have art everywhere which is great….
A.R. But I feel like, when I go to like hospitals or other public spaces, there could be a lot more….
A.R. …. art than there is right now, and I feel like, for me there's a disassociation between art galleries and the professional displays, and bridging that gap, like the transition from saying, this is done professionally, this is done in a very sort of, pre-constructed way and its very much to support these things, but to transition to a regular, normal environment with just regular day people walking through and stuff. It's like there's definitely a lack of recognition, a lack of art use that could be really utilized.
M.G. I have a number of my works in Vancouver General Hospital and one of them, they really took a chance, to their credit, they have one of my grass works, it's a large, multi panel piece in one of their buildings, and I just love the idea of that, and they do make it known which artists they have. They have a foundation that pays for the art and it really enriches the space. And they're not just someone's little landscape painting on the wall, they've got some artists who are on the edge of things. They have an installation of mine and some of my early landscapes that were kind of Emily Carr-ish influenced, of abstract landscapes of Vancouver forest areas, and I'm so glad that they have them. I mean if you sell a piece of work for a private collector, it goes into their home and that's great, they've paid for it and it's a kind of recognition, but I love the idea of my work being in a hospital. And how many hundreds of people are going to walk by there every day and see it. I think that's brilliant. And I think most artists, I mean those works were purchased by, what do they call that (a foundation), anyways they were purchased. Donors donate money for their art collection at that institution. There are businesses that will take your work and they put it in business spaces. Personally, I've not had a very good experience with that, I've had my work shown and I've not been paid. I've had my work shown and it was damaged. But it can be done properly, and that is really exciting. Actually about a year ago I got a call from someone in Parliament, in Ottawa, and they were really interested in this piece here, this long piece and would I be interested in letting them have it for their . . . it was the Ministry of Public Safety… anyways there was a lot of back and forth and at the end of the day, they didn't take it because they didn't have the right space for it, and I was just heartbroken because for me to have my work there in Ottawa would have been just fantastic….
M.G. ….in the capital, where I'm from originally. And it's kind of a challenging piece, and the fact that they recognized the value in that felt very satisfactory. It's definitely a feminist piece too and, well, we didn't manage to complete that transaction but I loved the idea of that it would be in Ottawa. In Europe you see a lot of art in public spaces and that's what makes Europe so wonderful, and here we don't [laughter].
A.R. Well there's always hope for the future.
M.G. Yeah. I think so, I think people, if they'd just put a little of their budget into having someone look after the art and keeping the art secure in wherever that little public space is going to be, make it part of the budget. Do it, give artists the opportunity, I think out at the airport here in Victoria there's a space for art….
M.G. ….It's not the best space, but it's something, and I don't know if the artist's get paid for that, they should really. Because they're providing art. A business buys a chesterfield for their waiting room, but they don't seem to be too interested in paying artists for these things. Some maybe do, but I think that one at the airport is. I think you are allowed to sell your work from there and I think some artists do.
A.R. ….But its sort of, more of a….
A.R. Yeah absolutely, I've seen them by that restaurant in there, they have the big ones by the washrooms before you go through security….
A.R. ….That's where I remember seeing them….
A.R. ….It'd benefit not just the artists but everybody….
M.G. ….Yeah, public buildings. All government public buildings should have something.
A.R. Yes, I think it should be plastered with it [laughter] it should be like….
M.G. Schools, Universities, there are lots of places where people have to sit around and wait. That would be great if they had something to look at other than their iPhones [laughter]….
A.R. ….Yeah, get our eyes up. Get us engaged in the environment again, that would be great….
A.R. ….pick your brain a little bit about where we are and where you are and….
This is The Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art's website, that features Monique Genton's artist information. It includes a short biography of the artist, curriculum vitae, and a collection of her work ranging from 1996 to 2004.
The Collections Canada website features some of Monique Genton's pieces, ranging from 1995-2000, in a section called Women Artists in Canada. The site includes written captions, regarding Genton's selected works, that provide important insight from the artist's perspective on what the pieces represent.
The City of Richmond website features Monique Genton and her 2007 art piece Habitat. The piece is a registered public artwork in the city of Richmond, B.C. Included on the site is information on the art piece and a short biography of Genton.
This website is a Vancouver-based news site, that featured an art review of Genton's art show: Tidy, at the Art + Soul Gallery in 2005. The page talks in length about the art show Tidy and features a biography of Genton as well.
A PDF of a pamphlet created for an event: On the Edge of Chaos. This event featured Genton as a speaker on The Limits of Imaging: Portrait of an artist/technologist. The pamphlet features a short bio of Genton and about what she is interested in with her work at that time.


text:
Research, Technology & engineering
Researchers develop a robot that folds towels
By Carol Ness, Berkeley News| April 2, 2010 March 4, 2014
April 2, 2010 March 4, 2014 Carol Ness
Who wouldn't want a robot that could make your bed or do the laundry? Well, a team of Berkeley researchers has brought us one important step closer by, for the first time, enabling an autonomous robot to reliably fold piles of previously unseen towels.
Robots that can do things like assembling cars have been around for decades. The towel-folding robot, though, is doing something very new, according to the leaders of the Berkeley team, doctoral student Jeremy Maitin-Shepard and Assistant Professor Pieter Abbeel of Berkeley's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences.
Robots like the car-assembly ones are designed to work in highly structured settings, which allows them to perform a wide variety of tasks with mind-boggling precision and repeatability — but only in carefully controlled environments, Maitin-Shepard and Abbeel explain. Outside of such settings, their capabilities are much more limited.
Automation of household tasks like laundry folding is somewhat compelling in itself. But more significantly, according to Maitin-Shepard, the task involves one that's proved a challenge for robots: perceiving and manipulating "deformable objects" – things that are flexible, not rigid, so their shape isn't predictable. A towel is deformable; a mug or a computer isn't.
A video — posted on this page — tells the story best. It shows a robot built by the Menlo Park robotics company Willow Garage and running an algorithm developed by the Berkeley team, faced with a heap of towels it's never "seen" before. The towels are of different sizes, colors and materials.
The robot picks one up and turns it slowly, first with one arm and then with the other. It uses a pair of high-resolution cameras to scan the towel to estimate its shape. Once it finds two adjacent corners, it can start folding. On a flat surface, it completes the folds — smoothing the towel after each fold, and making a neat stack.
Pieter Abbeel and Jeremy Maitin-Shepard at EECS
"Existing work on robotic laundry and towel folding has shown that starting from a known configuration, the actual folding can be performed using standard techniques in robotic manufacturing," says Maitin-Shepard.
But there's been a bottleneck: getting a towel picked up from a pile where its configuration is unknown and arbitrary, and turning it into a known, predictable shape. That's because existing computer-vision techniques, which were primarily developed for rigid objects, aren't robust enough to handle possible variations in three-dimensional shape, appearance and texture that can occur with deformable objects, the researchers say.
Solving that problem helps a robot fold towels. But more significantly, it addresses a key issue in the development of robotics.
"Many important problems in robotics and computer vision involve deformable objects," says Abbeel, "and the challenges posed by robotic towel-folding reflect important challenges inherent in robotic perception and manipulation for deformable objects."
The team's technical innovation is a new computer vision-based approach for detecting the key points on the cloth for the robot to grasp, an approach that is highly effective because it depends only on geometric cues that can be identified reliably even in the presence of changes in appearance and texture.
The approach has proven highly reliable. The robot succeeded in all 50 trials that were attempted on previously unseen towels with wide variations in appearance, material and size, according to the team's report on its research, which is being presented in May at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation 2010 in Anchorage. Their paper is posted online (PDF).
The system was implemented on a prototype version of the PR2, a mobile robotic platform that was developed by Willow Garage, using the open-source Robot Operating System (ROS) software framework.
Two undergraduates, Marco Cusumano-Towner, a junior in EECS, and Jinna Lei, a senior math major, assisted on the project.
Maitin-Shepard's research focuses on artificial intelligence, computer vision and machine learning. He studied computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, earning a bachelor's degree in 2008 before coming to Berkeley.
Abbeel received bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering from KU Leuven (Belgium). He earned his doctorate in computer science at Stanford University in 2008 and joined the Berkeley's EECS faculty that fall. During his doctoral work, Abbeel and collaborators developed machine-learning algorithms that enable helicopters to learn to fly by watching an expert pilot fly — resulting in the most advanced autonomous helicopter aerobatics to date. Abbeel's research focuses on robotics, machine learning and control.
Topics: engineering
Cold-hearted science: Supercooling advances human tissue...
UC Berkeley, Georgia Tech, USC launch new National AI...
Meet our new faculty: Iain Clark, bioengineering

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Monday 9th May 2016 – Kingstown, St. Vincent and the Grenadines: The aspiring football players of the Caribbean and Central America were once again put through their paces as coaches from Manchester City FC (MCFC) hosted the Digicel Kickstart Clinic in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
Footballing talent was on display as the coaches and players took to the field at the Arnos Vale Sports Complex to begin their two days of intense training. Also on hand to observe the MCFC coaches during the sessions were members of the local football fraternity, including the head coach and assistant head coach for St. Vincent and the Grenadines' national men's football team.
At the end of the final game, Lewis and his team selected the top three players who will represent St. Vincent and the Grenadines at the Digicel Kickstart Academy: Joash Nash, Javorn Clasp and Nigel Matthias. The players will join the other top players from across the Caribbean and Central America at the week-long Digicel Academy where they will receive another round of intensive training. The boys will then have the opportunity to impress the coaches further, in the hopes of being among the top players who will get the chance of a lifetime to train at the City Football Academy, Manchester City FC's elite training and youth development facility in Manchester, England.
The top three players from the Digicel Kickstart Clinic in St. Vincent and the Grenadines are looking forward to going to the Digicel Kickstart Academy where they will receive further training from Manchester City FC coaches.
Digicel is the lead sponsor of Caribbean, Central American and Pacific sports teams, including the Special Olympics teams throughout these regions. Digicel sponsors the West Indies cricket team and is also the presenting partner of the Caribbean Premier League. In the Pacific, Digicel is the proud sponsor of several national rugby teams and also sponsors the Vanuatu cricket team.


This is a very nice state park located about 12 miles off Interstate 30, and about 10 miles from the city of Hot Springs. It's a very convenient yet quiet location in between both places. The park sits adjacent Lake Catherine one of three major lakes in the general area. There are plenty of fishing and boating options available, the on-site marina offers several rental options by the hour, half-day, or even full day. Several hiking options are available, including a short 2 mile hike to a really nice waterfall. Other trails go to slightly higher elevations and a bit more climbing, but rewarded us with loads of blooming wildflowers and butterflies.
Most (but not all) of the campsites are fully paved, including the ones with full hookups. The park itself is very hilly and many of the campsite reflect this; you will definitely need to do some leveling side-to-side in your trailer to feel comfortable. I did not see any pull-thru sites so be prepared to back into your space. The campsites themselves are very generously spaced; both sites adjacent to ours were occupied yet those trailers were at a distance of about 70'-80'. Several sites offer a clear view to the southern sky for satellite reception; we did so with no problems and saw numerous other sites that had satellite antennas setup.
We stayed here in our travel trailer and would stay here again, although there are several choices in the immediate area that may be just as comfortable.
This is a wonderful place to stay for a few relaxing days. Very quiet and very remote. No cellular phone service, no wifi, and no over-the-air television channels are available; we were able to use our satellite antenna quite easily as there are a handful of campsites that have a clear view to the south. There are several shaded sites if you'd rather have that as an option. Some of the most generously spaced campsites that we've ever seen, and all are fully paved.
It's a beautiful lake with plenty of waterfowl present almost all of the time. Excellent hiking trails so be sure to take advantage of those if possible. We stayed here in our travel trailer, and yes would stay here again.
Very convenient to several nearby attractions in Grand Prairie and Arlington. It is onsite with the outdoor flea market and easily walk-able. There is some shade, all concrete pads, mostly level but you'll probably want to self-level your trailer before setting everything up. The sites are very close but overall really well kept and all equipment was in good working order.
No cable tv, but my rooftop antenna scanned over 90 available over-the-air channels including all 4 major networks. Wifi is solid, it does tends to slow down in the evening when there is high demand. There is a small municipal airport adjacent, a few early morning small planed but mostly quiet the rest of the day. Laundry service is robust with several machines and not expensive to use. There is a small store with a few basic grocery and rv supplies.
It's a pretty quiet rv park after dark with some street lights. We stayed here in our travel trailer for 4 night visiting attractions in Grand Prairie and Arlington; never had to drive more than about 5 miles for anything that we needed. Yes, we would stay here again.
We spent 7 days here in our Travel Trailer primarily for the easy beach access. This place has a wonderful wooden well-kept private boardwalk to the beach, it's about a 5 minute walk from most spaces in the park. It's a pretty quiet RV park, just be sure to get a space away from the main highway out front.
Spaces are pretty narrow but well maintained; we had no trouble getting into/out of our space. With almost no trees here our satellite television reception worked very well, but I couldn't get any network television channels with the roof-top antenna guess they are too far away in Corpus Christi. There is a charge to use the cable tv service. Also electricity is billed separately; we spent $16 on electricity over 7 days so just over $2 per day for 30 amp service. There is daily trash service right at your parking spot. Wifi is slow most of the time because there are so many other guests using it; the smartphone was pretty slow but the laptop computer much faster. There is a small RV store in the office area, mainly just the basic essentials. Really nice laundry service with lots of machines although we thought the cost was a bit higher than most. There is a huge rec hall with daily/weekly social events, and a really nice game room. Propane is also sold on-site. There are numerous RV maintenance companies in the local area that will perform service (or cleaning) right at your rig on-site.
This place has just about everything you could ask for in an rv beach resort, yes I would stay here again but there are also a few other choices in the area that seem excellent as well.
Stayed here only one night passing thru Waco on my way to S. Texas. Could not get the cable tv to work at all, good thing I had satellite reception to fall back on. Wi-Fi did not work at all, good thing I had a data plan on the smartphone to fall back on. Gravel sites are ok, but standing water and water puddles are not. The office seemed very unorganized; I don't think they get many visitors but primarily are setup to handle their permanent residents.
On the plus side it was off the main highways so very very quiet at night. There are other choices in the area, I'd suggest checking those out before stopping here especially for an extended amount of time. I would not stay here again.
Convenient to all Branson attractions yet still a very quiet and comfortable place to spend one night or a few days. No more than 5 minutes to the main road thru the city of Branson, this place has everything you need for an enjoyable stay. Easy access off the state highway 165, it's about one half mile back so there isn't any highway noise at night.
Level sites, plenty of shade, relatively large spaces for your rig compared to many. Excellent cable television lineup (48 channels), and pretty good wifi. Propane is available on-site at a very competitive price.
Most of the sites are gravel, there was one very rainy day while we spent 5 days here; it was pretty noticeable that more gravel was needed at our site. It wasn't muddy but a little wet with some puddling in a few spots.
We stayed here in our travel trailer and yes would stay here again. Beware of falling acorns during the Fall season!
The campground is pretty basic, with electric only on-site. Quite a bit of shade, every site has a picnic table. There are several fresh water faucets thru the loop if you need to fill your fresh tank, but know where they are located before you pull into your site to avoid having to loop around again. The dump station is just outside the campground if needed. The campground itself is quite hilly however the RV sites are mostly level or nearly level. Most of the sites are back-in, a few are pull-thru.
There is no cable tv, no wi-fi but a nice place to get away from things and have a wonderful view of the lake, waterfowl, fishing boats, marina, etc. There is a short hiking trail near the campground that circles around back to the campground, it's about 5 miles in length, somewhat hilly in spots but not strenuous. It offers some beautiful views if you enjoy hiking.
If you're looking to get away from the rat race this is a great park to visit for a few days. Extremely quiet park with a small stream running adjacent the campground, a few waterfalls, and some great hiking trails. Sites are very level, most are paved. Full hookups on-site, somewhat rare with most state parks. No cellular service in the park (enjoy the solitude), no wi-fi service in the park, only 2 tv channels on my antenna. It was great to get away for 4 nights here, a bit pricey for a state park but we would stay here again.
An excellent park with everything needed for a great stay. Great wi-fi, very good cable tv, spacious level sites, very convenient to the Badlands NP. A bit pricey compared to others in the area but also offers more. Lots of shade, that's important because it gets very hot in this area of SD. Easily in/out, most all of the sites are pull-thru. Yes we would stay here again.
Good for an overnight stay but a pretty run down campground. Sites need some attention and general clean up. Convenient location, wi-fi works fine, no cable tv service but a few channels with antenna. Would not stay here again, keep driving for something better if spending more than one night.


Supplies used are all Close to My Heart: Artbooking Cricut Collection, unknown retired paper packet, Cardstock (Colonial White, Sunset, & Chocolate), and Brown & Tan Glitter Paper.
I just love this layout! Everything from the overlay to the border and title. I added other glitter stars throughout the page.


This is a placeholder page for Tanya Gardini, which means this person is not currently on this site. We do suggest using the tools below to find Tanya Gardini.
You are visiting the placeholder page for Tanya Gardini. This page is here because someone used our placeholder utility to look for Tanya Gardini. We created this page automatically in hopes Tanya Gardini would find it. If you are not Tanya Gardini, but are an alumni of Las Lomas High School, register on this site for free now.


MyTransfers is a young company, created in 2018, however, and due to the extensive experience of more than 14 years in the tourism sector of its founders, we are sufficiently prepared to become a benchmark for quality and service in private transfers with "door-to-door" service throughout Europe.
We do not pretend to be the biggest, but we do give the best service. We know how important it is that everything goes well when our clients are on vacation. That is why we carefully choose one by one our suppliers, whom we contractually enforce with a high quality service.
At MyTransfers we offer private door-to-door transportation services, forget the long queues and the endless waiting times, hire our services and dedicate yourself just to enjoy your holidays. MyTransfers will take you from the Airport, Train Station or from the Port to your hotel or destination, without stops, without queues and with a personalized and high quality service.
You can choose the type of vehicle that best suits your needs, from a private car, a conventional taxi, vans of up to 8 people to even minibuses and buses with a capacity of up to 54 seats. Without forgetting our VIP transfer services.
Email us or call our customer services team on the number below to speak to one of our agents who will help you with all of your needs.
Only private transfers, no waiting times, no queues.
Directly from the Airport to your destination.
The driver will be waiting for you in the arrivals hall.
No additional costs to your booking, rates are final.
Cancel your booking for free up to 48 hours before your arrival.
© 2018 MyTransfers.com All rights reserved.


text:
Q: How to call a POST-action in a API-controller? I don't know how send values strings or models to a HttpPost-action
I want to send a value to a HttpPost-action in a API.
He reach the HttpPost-action. But the value of parameter name is NULL.
What do I wrong?
By example the value of "name" = "Netherlands".
public async Task<long> UpdateCountry(string name)
{
    string url = $"{myApi}/Address/UpdateCountry";
    var model = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(new KeyValuePair<string, string>("name", name));
    long id = await Post(url, model);

    return id;
}

than the process starts in the BaseClass... in the function Post.
protected async Task<dynamic> Post(string url, string data)
{
    var client = new HttpClient();

    var httpContent = new StringContent(data);
    HttpResponseMessage responseMessage = await client.PostAsync(url, httpContent);

    var result = await responseMessage.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();

    return JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<dynamic>(result);
}

And in the API the value of parameter name is NULL.
[HttpPost("UpdateCountry")]
    public async Task<long> UpdateCountry(string name)
    {
        var countryId = _countryService.GetIdByName(name);

        if (countryId == null)
        {
            var dto = new CountryDto() { Name = name };
            ....
            countryId = await _countryService.Insert(dto);
        }
        else
{
dto.Name = name;
            countryId = await _countryService.Update(dto);
}
        return countryId.Value;
    }

A: in the Client
public async Task<long> UpdateCountry(string name)
{
    string url = $"{myApi}/Address/UpdateCountry";
    var json = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(name);
    long id = await Post(url, json, "text/json"); // or "application/json" when  you use a model.

    return id;
}

... and the BaseClass
protected async Task<dynamic> Post(string url, string data, string mediaType)
{
    var client = new HttpClient();
    var content = new StringContent(data, Encoding.UTF8, mediaType);
    var response = await client.PostAsync(url, content);
    if (response.IsSuccessStatusCode)
    {
        var result = await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();
        return JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<dynamic>(result);
    }

    return null;
}

... and in the API
    [HttpPost("UpdateCountry")]
    public async Task<long> UpdateCountry([FromBody] string name)
    {
        var countryId = _countryService.GetIdByName(name);

        if (!countryId.HasValue)
        {
            var dto = new CountryDto() { Name = name };
            ....
            countryId = await _countryService.Insert(dto);
        }
        else
        {
            ....
            dto.Name = name;
            countryId = await _countryService.Update(dto);
        }

        return countryId.Value;
    }

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


"The magic of movies today—the animation involved—makes an extraordinary difference. It really draws you in. What's it like putting a movie like that together?," asks Mike Barnicle of filmmaker Marielle Heller about her new live action and animated film 'The Diary of a Teenage Girl,' which follows a 15-year-old girl who longs for love and acceptance. Watch the Morning Joe conversation here among Mike, Marielle and Christopher Meloni, an actor in the film. Only on MSNBC.


text:
This is a statement by Tore Halvorsen
that grants permission to relicense its copyrights in the libzmq C++
library (ZeroMQ) under the Mozilla Public License v2 (MPLv2) or any other
Open Source Initiative approved license chosen by the current ZeroMQ
BDFL (Benevolent Dictator for Life).

A portion of the commits made by the Github handle "demozon", with
commit author "Tore Halvorsen <tore.halvorsen@gmail.com>", are copyright of Tore Halvorsen.
This document hereby grants the libzmq project team to relicense libzmq,
including all past, present and future contributions of the author listed above.

Tore Halvorsen
2017/03/20

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Q: Dagger 2.11, difficulty when create new module for retrofit and rxjava Looking at some examples I was able to work with Dagger 2.11 for activities and fragments, however, I'm not getting any progress when creating modules for calls to Webservice using Retrofit + RxJava. Sorry if it is a repeated question, I have not found solution here.
Follow my application code below:
App.java
public class App extends Application implements HasActivityInjector {

    @Inject
    DispatchingAndroidInjector<Activity> activityDispatchingAndroidInjector;

    @Override
    public void onCreate() {
        super.onCreate();

        DaggerAppComponent.builder().create(this).inject(this);

        if (BuildConfig.DEBUG) {
            Timber.plant(new Timber.DebugTree());
        } else {
            Fabric.with(this, new Crashlytics());
            Timber.plant(new FirebaseCrashReportingTree());
        }
    }

    @Override
    public AndroidInjector<Activity> activityInjector() {
        return activityDispatchingAndroidInjector;
    }
}

AppComponent.java
@Singleton
@Component(modules = {
        AppModule.class})
interface AppComponent extends AndroidInjector<App> {

    @Component.Builder
    abstract class Builder extends AndroidInjector.Builder<App> {
    }
}

AppModule.java
@Module(includes = {AndroidInjectionModule.class})
abstract class AppModule {

    @Binds
    @Singleton
    abstract Application application(App app);

    @PerActivity
    @ContributesAndroidInjector(modules = MainActivityModule.class)
    abstract MainActivity mainActivityInjector();
}


MacMillan World's Biggest Coffee Morning is BACK!
It's back! The yearly cake-fest that is MacMillan's World's Biggest Coffee Morning returned last Friday and there was no way in high heaven we could pass up this chance to munch on some bakes and rustle up some cash for a good cause. So that's exactly what we did!
We've got a top team in Lucy and Lindsay who have been putting together our charity and community arm for a good while now, and one staple of our fundraising is this event on the last Friday of every September for a charity in MacMillan that I'm sure is close to everyone's hearts.
This year was particularly delicious, with both a show-stopped element and a general donate-to-eat element.
The bake offerings on show this year came from the very top drawer. Joe made a tiramisu (minus the booze!), Dale made his now signiture battenburg cake. There was about 10000 types of brownies, of which Emily's salted caramel sticky brownies won the day, and Laura's excellent bakewell tart effort deserves a huge round of applause. But as well as cakes, we also had games. Oh did we.
As far as games went, the guess the size of the sausage roll on a picture game was a particularly popular game, with Foodies even trying to measure the sausage roll to scale compared to other objects on the example picture. Never has there been more of an argument over whether a cupcake is 4cm or 6cm long.
That game ended in a win for our newest Foodie Lucy B, who guessed right with a wonderful shout of 43cm long (which I think brought the aforementioned cupcake in the image at around 4.8cm long). So well done Lucy. You'll get used to our competitive edge quickly!
Finally, we played a lovely game of stick the cherry on the cake which involved sticking a sticker of a cherry on a bigger image of a cake, all the whilst being blindfolded with Jane's lovely, massive scarf. This was great fun, and nobody had more fun than Lindsay, who moved the picture of a cake around the wall so that nobody had a competitive advantage when it came to knowing where to stick the cherry.
The winner of the day was MacMillan, for whom we raised a heck of a lot of money. And with the amount of cake we had left, we're probably still raising money to this very moment. And for days and weeks into the future. So that's a bonus.
Thanks a lot to Linds and Lucy who helped raise both money and blood sugar levels for a great cause! Huzzah!


Huge garage / workshop and Two Living Areas!
Positioned in a quiet cul-de-sac in ever popular Summerhill, is this awesome family home – perfect for a first home buyer, investor or the entertainer. This home has many positives including two massive living areas, with the rumpus area leading onto the outside entertaining area.
Call today to arrange your inspection, this one won't last long!


Part availability and clarity are two focuses of the ShapeOko project. This page is your resource to find the descriptions and discussion links for each part you will need in order to build a ShapeOko mill.
The following is a detailed list of parts required to build a ShapeOko CNC machine. In addition, there are a number of commodity items found in most hardware/home improvement stores which may be of use when building, upgrading or operating the machine (please see the list under Additional / Commodity Items below). Other parts, such as Stepper Motors, stepper drivers, power supplies, or microcontrollers are less likely to be found in a local store, and will probably have to be purchased from specialty shops or ordered from the online suppliers. Other parts, such as the open end plates and the motor mount plates were designed specifically for this project and are custom manufactured (but CAD files are available, and for the open end plates there are even instructions for making them with basic hand tools).
Shapeoko3_Master_Assy_v0.1.zip c.f., Shapeoko 3: Drawings.
See also MachineDesigner: How to design your own ShapeOko a (Windows) tool for (re)designing a machine, esp. useful for implementing and verifying upgrades.
XL and XXL versions and upgrade kits are also available from Carbide 3D.
Note that the SO3, being a larger machine, uses some larger hardware.
Note: Part images shown below not to scale.
One of the most important aspects of a CNC mill is linear motion and the resultant need for parts to be in rigid, fixed relationships. One way to do that is w/ various sorts of spacers which are available in a myriad of sizes and a variety of materials.
If your kit is missing spacers, or they are unavailable in your locale, then a suitable stack of washers is a workable alternative.
3/8" x 1-1/4" x #12 bore, Aluminum Spacer A pair of spacers is used for each of the M5 x 70mm bolts in the Z-assembly Carriage --- providing slightly more space than the 53mm of spacing which was used in the SO1 Double MakerSlide upgrade they provide for space between the rails to run cables (~0.16").
Discussion of measurements and alternatives here.
Commodity hardware used to make fasteners hold more securely and to prevent them from damaging the underlying surface. Note that spring / lock washers may be suited to some usages. Note that the SO3 also uses M6 hardware.
The Shapeoko 3 has begun using precision shims rather than the commodity part.
M5 Flat Washer Inexpensive in packs of 100 or more at hardware or fastener stores.
Stacks of them can stand in for spacers, and if need be they make a suitable temporary stand-in for a precision shim in an idler wheel if one comes up short.
For the most part, commodity hardware used to allow bolts to fasten. There are also specialty post-assembly insertion nuts which are designed to be inserted into MakerSlide slots (rather than the openings at each end of a rail) allowing one flexibility in the placement of parts after assembly.
Note that the SO3 also uses M6 hardware.
M5 Hex Nut One option is to grind these down so that they fit in the MakerSlide slots in lieu of the insertion nuts below.
Some have used nyloc nuts instead.
M5 insertion nut Used in MakerSlide to hold belt anchor clips and the Z-axis in place. See also post-assembly insertion nuts.
At need, a 3/16" carriage bolt can be used as a(n awkward) substitution.
Threaded fasteners used to hold the machine together and attach accessories and components. Availability of specific lengths may be a constraint locally --- one option is to use the "ship-to-store" option of some chain stores.
The SO1 used socket head cap screws (SHCS) throughout, while the SO2 has switched to mostly button head caps screws (BHCS). The selected head is mostly a matter of price, convenience or style and doesn't affect the functionality so long as it doesn't interfere w/ the machine's motion.
Similarly, while black oxide is the finish used for the fasteners in current (and previous) kits, there's no especial reason for it other than cost / availability, and while hardware is available in a number of different grades, even the standard grade are more than strong enough.
Note that when securing a fastener, one must be careful to not overtorque or twist, or even bend it.
The steel plates are laser cut and powder coated for the SO2 and SO3 (depending on the vendor, some parts may be punched on a turret press). Tolerance for the laser is (roughly) +/- .02mm - .10mm. The thickness of the powder coat is .08mm to .127mm. If the laser errs on the minus side and the powder coating is on the thicker side, it may be necessary to remove the powder coating with a file, sandpaper or other tool.
Note that the Shapeoko 3 plates are made of 10 gauge (~3.42mm thick) steel.
Some production runs, depending on vendor may instead be punched out using a turret press (and other machines?).
X/Y/Z Axis Rail MakerSlide Extrusion The Shapeoko originally used Makerslide, a linear motion rail system developed by Bart Dring. It is an aluminum extrusion (Aluminum 6105-T5) w/ an excellent combination of strength, functionality and price/performance ratio which combines both structure and a V-rail system. Since then, the Shapeoko 3 has changed to custom extrusions, a much heaver, 85mm x 55mm for the X- and Y- axes, and a specialized extrusion for the Z-axis.
Makerslide has the same basic profile as Misumi HFS5-2040 and one can add rail such as Openrail or V-groove rail as an alternative. See the Makerslide page for details.
Motor Mount Plate (12ga) Needs to be a minimum of .0747" (~2mm, 14ga) thick if made of steel for a small machine (the end plates on the original machine were 10ga mild steel) . Further discussion. 1/4" noted as being "overkill". The eShapeOko uses 2mm stainless steel (forum post on this and theorization about 3.175mm aluminum being enough in Re: New new end plates) --- confirmed by a machine on Reddit. 6mm aluminum would be more rigid and lighter, but arguably not worth the extra expense.
They may also be used as end plates as was done in: Marty's Shapeoko2 Deluxe.
For convenience, the motor and limit switch holes may be threaded, eliminating the need for nuts.
End Plate (12ga) The original machine used end plates which reached from one Y-axis rail to the other, closing the machine in, hence the characterization of the new plates as "open".
AFK66 made a set out of 1/4" carbon structure plate.
Forum post for manufacturing w/ only a drill: Re: Upgrade Parts!
Linear motion is a fundamental aspect of CNC, and usually has two aspects, motion and guidance.
Note that Delrin may be damaged by exposure to certain lubricants such as WD-40.
Note that due to the reduction of wheels for the X-axis plate in the current SO3 design, it is especially important that the bearings for it be properly pre-loaded.
Please check your wheels after assembly to be certain that they work smoothly and that the bearings stay aligned. If you have any difficulties, check that the plate is flat, and that the washers are okay. If necessary, take the V-wheel apart and check that the bearing is seated all the way in and that there is no debris between the outer race of the bearing and the lip inside the V-wheel, because that could cause the bearing to twist (and seize) as the bolt was tightened. Sometimes, a bearing will get two rubber shields on one face -- check for that too.
They are turned out of Delrin rod. They may develop (temporary) flat spots if a machine sits idle, these will go away w/ usage.
Adding additional wheels does not help as much as simply stiffening the part in question.
Note that Delrin is an insulator and actually dissipates static electricity.
Please check your V-wheels against the reported dimensions of your vendor and a CAD file before ordering. Shapeoko 3 seems to use different dimensions.
(625-2RS) 5x16x5mm Bearings Sealed Miniature Ball Bearings. These are used in the Delrin V-wheels and Smooth Idler Wheels.
2RS indicates 2 rubber side shields. ZZ would indicate steel.
Bearings are rated by ABEC (Annular Bearing Engineers Committee) grades. Even the lowest, ABEC-1 bearings have a very low run-out (0.0003"), much less than the tolerance of the V-wheels or MakerSlide.
For some batches of V-wheels the inner races are too narrow, some users have reported success replacing them with fiber washers (.032" thick, #10-ID x 3/8" OD 4.8 Fiber).
Shim Flat Washer, 18-8 Stainless Steel, 3/32" x 5/16" Bolt Size, 0.206-0.211" ID, .305-.310" OD, 0.020"
Eccentric Spacers These are used to allow for fine adjustments of the Delrin V-wheels against the MakerSlide. The original iteration used these in combination w/ a washer and nut, taking up more space, but allowing for simpler adjustment.
Note the standard design is intended for steel plates --- for plastic or aluminum: Amber Spyglass.
The cylindrical portion is termed a boss.
The ShapeOko 1 and 2 used belts, pulleys and idler wheels for motion along the X- and Y-axes, the Shapeoko 3 introduced a belt-driven Z-axis.
Pulleys GT2 pulleys 5mm bore x 3 or GT2 pulleys 1/4" bore x 3. The original ShapeOko used MXL belts and pulleys, but GT2 offers better performance and less backlash. Note that while the set screws should take a 1.5mm hex key, a 1/16", which is slightly larger may also work, and being a snugger fit, will allow for applying more torque. Alternately try a Torx bit? Metric set screws are usually M3 and ~4.75mm long and available from hardware stores, or specialty vendors(robotdigg). If clearance is suitable an ordinary M3 may be used.
Note that the original SO1/2 and early versions of the SO3 used 6mm wide belts and matching pulleys. Newer SO3s and XL/XXL units use 9mm wide belts --- see Belts and pulleys.
6.35 mm width (SO2 and initial SO3s) (at least one user has Upgraded to 9mm wide belts) and later runs of the SO3, and all XL and XXL units use 9mm wide belts.
M8 x 1.25mm Threaded Rod Stainless Steel, 200mm (PS20011) The Shapeoko 1 used a 608ZZ Bearing 8x22x7 held in a Delrin or HDPE bearing plate.
Please note that this is a commodity part intended for fastening, so is not guaranteed to a high degree of precision (just enough to ensure that a nut will work anywhere along its length). If you need precision, then you should test/evaluate before assembly (it may be that one end will be accurate enough).
The Shapeoko 3 uses a belt-driven Z-axis, requiring an endless loop 6mm wide GT2 belt. Belike this could be replaced by a length of belt and a clamp which could be affixed where the fixed pulley is placed.
Universal Spindle Mount (PS20012) Note that this can easily be adapted to fit a wide range of spindle sizes by varying the length of screws used. The original machine used a muffler clamp, and making a new spindle mount is something of a rite of passage.
Universal Spindle Mount strap (PS20013) A mending bracket of suitable dimensions would be a reasonable alternative.
Some people have used pipe strapping.
Please see the Electronics page for a brief overview of the different components.
Stepper Motors The Shapeoko 2 uses NEMA 17 or NEMA 23 stepper motors with 58 oz./in. or more torque, w/in some reasonable weight, and up to a maximum of ~125 oz./in. Ideally current rating would be matched to the electronics, for a gshield, 1.7--2A.
Cat5 Ethernet cable doubled up may work., but the connectors aren't sturdy enough.
Interesting potential (unshielded) is the wiring for LED strips.
Another unshielded option Trailer wire: Hopkins PVC Primary 4-Wire Spool — 16 Gauge.
Shielded 5 conductor 22 AWG with drain @ 0.33 per foot.
Typically the Power Supply consists of 3 parts, a cord to connect to a wall outlet (this will vary based on locale as discussed at: http://docs.carbide3d.com/shapeoko-faq/will-shapeoko-work-with-220-volts/, a transformer which converts AC to DC current of the appropriate voltage at a suitable amperage with a suitable number of Watts of power, and a wired connector which attaches to the control board.
The Nomad 883 Pro uses a power supply which accepts up to 264V 3.5A, and outputs 24V at 7.5A.
Since then, the Shapeoko has switched to a commercial power supply which does not need to be modified.
Included for reference only / out of stock when last checked.
Power Pigtail (30313-01) The Shapeoko 2 used a Power Supply Adapter Cable/Connector-Adapter: 5.5 mm x 2.5 mm Barrel Plug (Male by some descriptions, female in others --- Receptacle/socket seems to be the proper terminology). Please note that this is a convenience, to provide a pair of raw wires to plug into the gShield, and a connector which maps up w/ that of the stock power supply for the SO2. It should have a central post (Male) which matches w/in that of the Output connector: 2.5mm x 5.5mm straight female center positive of the power supply. Alternately, you may want to get a power supply which just provides screw terminals and accepts bare wires.
Batteryspace:Connector/Adaptor: 5.5 mm x 2.5 mm Barrel Male Plug --- apparently this is actually a female plug more properly termed as a Jack --- try Batteryspace:Connector/Adaptor: 5.5 mm x 2.5 mm Barrel Female Jack which should be male instead (or buy a matched pair).
2.5mm x 5.5 DC Power Plug Extension Cable -6' Male-Female --- this part should have at least one end which matches, but will need to be cut in half.
The Shapeoko 2 full kit ships with a 90 Watt power supply. See the Electronics page for more details. If you can't source a Power Pigtail then it would probably be most expedient to source a power supply which has direct terminals for connecting wires to. Please see Power Supply to GRBL for a discussion of wire colour. Described as having a "Output connector: 2.5mm x 5.5mm straight female center positive" which is more typically described as a "Jack".
MPJA.com: 24 Volt Power Supply, 8.3A 200W --- uses screw terminals, so doesn't require a power pigtail.
The microcontroller may be an all-in-one board such as an Azteeg X5 mini, or a pair of boards which fit together, one provides the logic (Controller Board), the other the high-voltage control circuitry (Stepper Shield), depending upon one's needs and budget.
Carbide Motion Machine Control Board --- included w/ the Shapeoko 3 as sold by Carbide 3D --- for replacement contact support@carbide3d.com and it will be replaced under warranty, or a purchase link provided to Shapeoko 3 owners.
Microcontroller: Azteeg X5 mini (All-in-one, no gShield necessary) --- well-suited to a combination machine which also does 3D printing in addition to milling, see RepStrapOko.
Stepper driver board gShield. The shield is an expansion board which plugs into a controller board and provides an input for the higher voltage needed to drive the stepper motor and the electronics for controlling the stepper motors.
Will either include, or need stepper drivers.
An all-in-one board will incorporate stepper drivers and will not need a separate shield for them.
Another alternative would be to use the RAMPS board w/ Grbl: Grbl for RAMPS.
End mills must be considered a consumable item, and can be a significant portion of one's CNC budget. See the Endmills: Specific Bit and Brand Recommendations on the Endmills page for some specific end mill suggestions and the Vendors page for a potential places to purchase from.
Thread on this here: What else should I have on hand?
This page was last modified on 27 March 2019, at 08:10.


Iran's Supreme Court has approved the death sentence of an Iranian researcher accused of spying for Israel.
Ahmad Reza Jalali, who has been jailed since April 2016, was shown on state TV earlier this month confessing to providing information to Israel's Mossad spy agency about Iranian military and nuclear scientists, including two who were assassinated in 2010.
The semi-official ISNA news agency reported the court's decision Monday. It is not clear when the sentence will be carried out. The ruling is not subject to appeal.


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Music Education Webinar: Dr. Nasim Niknafs
Date & Time: April 17, 2021 •11:00am – 12:30pm
Academic Opportunities and Experiences • Alumni and Friends • Arts and Culture • Conferences, Symposia and Colloquia • Lectures • Performances
The Department of Music welcomes music educator Dr. Nasim Niknafs for an interactive webinar "Popular Music Education Revisited: An Engaged Global Perspective".
The Adelphi University Music Education Webinar Series offers music educators exciting opportunities to engage with renowned experts in the field while exploring current topics in music education. All sessions will consist of informative presentations and moderated Q&A sessions.
Popular music education has deservedly gained momentum in the field and is now an official strand of inquiry, practice and theoretical analyses. Many scholars and music educators have paid apposite attention to this mode of music making and learning and begun to integrate it more in their curricula and pedagogies. Nevertheless, there is not much said about its global aspects in the field, namely, popular music's roles and meanings in different cultural and subcultural practices, and the ways in which they are learned, exchanged, and developed. In this talk, I will first elaborate on my longitudinal research with rock and fusion musicians in Iran and provide examples of different modes of engagement with popular music such as activism and anarchism. I will, then, open up the conversation to other possibilities for music educators to integrate popular music in their teaching and curriculum from many kinds of localities and cultural practices even if unfamiliar to them. I will conclude by arguing against familiar deficit models such as fear of the unknown, lack of skill sets necessary, or logistic limitations which can interfere with joys of learning in and through popular music.
Born and raised in Iran, Nasim Niknafs is an Associate Professor of Music Education at the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto. The recipient of the Connaught New Researcher Award, Faculty Mobility Grant, and OMEA's Agha Khan Initiative, Nasim's research areas include social justice, activism, and politics of contemporary music education, cultural politics, and popular music. Concluding a longitudinal research on the music education of rock musicians in Iran, Nasim has recently begun another longitudinal research on the music education and cultural programs provided for the refugee newcomer populations in Canada. Nasim's research has been widely published in venues such as the Philosophy of Music Education Review; International Journal of Music Education; Music Education Research; Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education; Music Educators Journal; Punk Pedagogies; Difference and Division in Music Education; The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical and Qualitative Perspectives on Assessment in Music Education; and General Music Today. At the university level, Nasim has taught courses and seminars such as "Politics of Sound and Music Making," "Multimodal Approaches to Music Teaching and Learning," "Music and Contemporary Politics," "Cultural Perspectives in Music Education," "Advanced Topics in Research in Music Education," and "(Un)Popular Music Education." In addition to her research and teaching, Nasim is active in her field by serving in multiple editorial and steering committees; co-chairing the 7th International Conference on Narrative Inquiry in Music Education (NIME7); and guest editing Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education's special issue on Anti-Racism, Anti-Fascism, and Anti-Discrimination in and through Music Education. Nasim holds degrees from Northwestern University, New York University, Kingston University, London, and University of Art, Tehran.
Register for the entire series of workshops by clicking here.
Additional Webinars in this series:
Eric Whitacre – Saturday, March 20 – 1:00 p.m. EST
Dr. Latasha Thomas-Durrell – Saturday, April 10 – 11:00 a.m. EST
Dr. Lazslo Norbert Nemes – Saturday, April 24 – 11:00 a.m. EST
Franklin Willis – Saturday, May 1 – 11:00 a.m. EST
College of Arts and Sciences,
Education and Teaching,
Guests,
Performing Arts,


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The Four Sorcerers
Aidan is a young flameshaper who lives in a post-apocalyptic world where magic and mechanisms develop together. After a fire in which his parents die, Aidan goes to an orphanage where he is trying to find out the truth about what happened and prove to everyone that he is not guilty of this incident.
Raising Hell: A Demon's Guide to Parenting
The greatest Demon to walk upon this land realizes his powers are completely useless in raising a magical human child he adopts.
Kazuki happened to be there witnessing a girl's heartbreak but who knows his life would change upside down.
For most of his life, Erik Dansen has always been alone. At a very young age, he became an orphan, was forced to live and survive on his own. For many years, Erik wondered how long he's going to get by. There was no denying that sadness existed. In his heart and in his mind, his everyday life. Until one morning, a woman knocked on Erik's door, a woman named Elsbeth who would soon change his life.
War Of Rhinn
Ton Erchade, the chosen king by a Maia, has to stop the endless war, defeat the ancient kingdom and its false king, the dragons, orcs and many more. Can he saves the world of Rhinn from the darkness?
Just a prank
When a prank goes wrong it may lead to different things.
This a story of an actor and a dancer who have a syndrome , and a guilt of loosing her sister.
Before The Gems Glowed
RomanceFantasy
Azia hasn't been following how humans have evolved and invented. She lived in peace until one day a strange man passed out in her garden... Who is he and where is the world going?
Arianna is a self serving witch that is desperate for control over her life. She's always believed that her god has cursed her with a lifetime of misfortune. So she moves across the world to live in the elven city of Armillii, famously known for its long violent history of magic and being a source of power. However, after one too many tragedies,arcane magic is on its way to becoming banned and punishable. Furious and unwilling to accept these changes, Arianna must take extreme measures to ensure that nobody gets in her way from trying to be forgiven by this god by becoming the new threat to the city's wellbeing and becoming the next cult leader!


Passed away unexpectedly on Monday, April 28, 2008 at the age of 67. She is survived by her loving husband Don; two sons: Kurt (Candace) of Kelowna, Keith (Lisa) of Vancouver; four grandchildren: Jackson, Nia, Daelyn, Charlie; brother Bob Robertson (Marlene) of Salmon Arm and sister Jean Baehr (Joe) of Hixon, BC. Predeceased by her parents Charlie and Jean Robertson and by her sisters Ruby and Ena. Despite her life's challenges, Sandy was a loving wife, mother and grandmother who will be dearly missed. A Memorial Service was held on Wednesday, May 7th at 10:00 am at the Chapel of Springfield Funeral Home, 2020 Springfield Road, Kelowna, BC. Cremation. Interment at a later date. Should family and friends so desire, memorial donations may be made to the Alzheimer Society of BC, 865 Bernard Avenue, Kelowna, BC, V1Y 6P6. A gift in living memory of Sandra will be made to "Hospice Care" by Springfield Funeral Home. Condolences may be sent to the family by visiting www.springfieldfuneralhome.com, 250-860-7077.


Brexit – the biggest spin-off of all time?
Head-to-Head Blog: Are company meetings really necessary?
Small-cap manager MATT CABLE and North American value manager, DAN WHITE discuss their different views on the subject.
An easy way to boost profits – ignore costs!
The first valuation method most investors learn is the humble Price/Earnings (P/E), as in theory it's both easy to calculate and easy to compare across companies. Unfortunately in my experience, this is a long way from the truth due to the lack of consistency in the earnings number used.
The chairman is a human too!
Company boardrooms have undoubtedly evolved over the past twenty-odd years, but the human characteristics and traits needed to be an effective board member remain largely unchanged. A lot can be achieved with trustworthy, capable individuals, something which, in my humble opinion, is truer today than it has ever been.


This morning Facebook announced that big changes were coming to the design of their business pages, with a renewed focus on the connection between you and your clients. With a renewed visual aspect, content directly from your veterinary team as well as beautiful design will be important when you showcase your clinic as well as your services.
Updating Pages: We're redesigning Pages on mobile to make it even easier for people to interact with local businesses and find what they need most. For example, you can make a reservation at a restaurant; book an appointment at a salon; or see most recent photos, upcoming Events, and Offers. You can also now see Stories on Pages to get to know the people behind the business.
Making Recommendations from your community more helpful: People use Recommendations to ask their communities where to go, where to eat, or where to shop. We're making those Recommendations more prominent on Pages.
Continuing to build Events: 700 million people use Facebook Events each month to find things to do in their communities. This includes organizations like CUESA, a local agricultural nonprofit, that uses Events to connect local farms with shoppers in person. And if want to get tickets to an event, you can buy them right from the Event on Facebook. Events that sell tickets directly on Facebook have seen two times more people getting tickets than when they're ticketed on a website alone.
Expanding our jobs tool to help more people find work: Local businesses create more than 60% of new jobs. We want to help people find those jobs and help local businesses hire the right people, so we're expanding our job application tool to everywhere in the world.
Taking steps to make finding a local spot quicker: You can now browse a "Local" section in your Facebook app and a standalone Facebook Local app for businesses around you, see what places are most recommended, and check out which events your friends are attending.
The WhiskerCloud social media team is here to help you adapt to these big changes and to help you make sure you're putting your best foot forward on Facebook. Stay tuned for more design ideas as the changes continue to roll out! We'll be updating this story as we get more information.