text:
George Formby Sr
☰ Contents
Stage persona and technique
Not to be confused with George Formby, his son, who used the same stage name.
Formby in 1919
George Formby (born James Lawler Booth; 4 October 1875 – 8 February 1921) was an English comedian and singer in musical theatre, known as one of the greatest music hall performers of the early 20th century.[1] His comedy played upon Lancashire stereotypes, and he was popular around Britain. His nickname, "The Wigan Nightingale", was coined because of the way he would use his bronchial cough as a comedic device in his act.
Formby was born into poverty in the industrial north west of England; his mother was an alcoholic and part-time prostitute, and during much of his youth he was maltreated. To earn money he would sing for pennies on street corners, before he joined a singing duo in his teens. He began to develop his own act during the 1890s and built up a following in Lancashire. He also developed a series of stage characters, including that of "John Willie", which is described by the cultural historian Jeffrey Richards as "the archetypal gormless Lancashire lad ... hen-pecked, accident-prone, but muddling through."[2] Formby also had a successful recording career and made the transition from music hall to revue in 1916.
His health had always been poor, but a stage accident in 1916 weakened Formby's lungs, and he suffered increasingly for the next few years, reducing his ability to perform. Tuberculosis and influenza—the latter contracted in the pandemic of 1918—weakened his constitution further, and he died of pulmonary tuberculosis in 1921 at the age of 45. Formby's act, and one of his costumes and canes, inspired Charlie Chaplin in the formation of his character the Tramp. Formby's son also used parts of his father's act when starting his stage career and, once established, also changed his name to George Formby; Formby Jr went on to become the top British male star in box office takings between 1937 and 1943.
Early years: 1875–90
"Mine is not an isolated story of the stage. Which of the 'bhoys', I wonder, can say they never knew days of privation and distress? But which of them, I wonder, can tell a more pathetic story than I?"
Formby on his childhood[3]
George Formby was born James Lawler Booth in Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire, on 4 October 1875. He was the illegitimate and only child of Sarah Jane Booth (c. 1856–1912), a poor, illiterate cotton weaver. His father, Francis Lawler, a coal miner, was not named on the birth certificate; six months after the birth of their son, the couple married, both aged about 19.[4][5] Sarah worked as a prostitute; she was small, around 4 feet (1.2 m) tall, and sang in pubs in exchange for alcoholic drinks. She was convicted 140 times for offences that included theft, prostitution, drunkenness and brawling.[4] The marriage was turbulent, and Formby was often neglected, mistreated and suffered malnourishment. Because Sarah was frequently absent from home, and often detained overnight at the local police station, Formby was regularly forced to sleep outside. As a result he developed asthma and became susceptible to bronchitis.[5][6][a] In his later years he recalled that his "childhood was the most miserable as ever fell to the lot of a human creature".[5]
Formby left formal education at the age of eight or nine, and did not learn to read until well into his teenage years.[5][8][b] To earn money for the household, he sang on street corners for coppers; the family's poverty worsened when, in October 1890, Lawler died from pulmonary tuberculosis at the age of 33.[3][11] Formby secured a job at a cotton mill and spent two years as a loom builder. He supplemented his wages by singing in pubs, alehouses and free-and-easies,[12][13] the last being places where informal arrangements were made for patrons to provide their own entertainment.[14] Around this time he joined up with another boy to form an act, "the Glenray Brothers" (also "the Glen Ray Brothers"), which was profitable enough to have a manager; the act continued until Formby's boy soprano voice broke, after which the pair separated.[12][15]
Burgeoning stage career: 1890–1902
Formby's second wife Eliza Ann, née Hoy (c. 1879–1981), whom he bigamously married[16]
Formby began to develop his own stage act during the 1890s, and built a large fan base in Lancashire. He devised several characters with their own costumes, and composed a series of comic songs. By 1896 his assignment book records that he was buying and collecting comic songs and securing the singing rights. He was billed as J.H. Booth until 1897, when he changed his stage name to George Formby. Although rumoured to have picked his new surname after seeing it as a destination on a railway carriage, the main sources agree this story is likely to be apocryphal.[12][17][c] The origin of the Formby name is more likely to have been a suggestion from Dennis Clarke, the manager of the Argyle Theatre in Birkenhead, while George was chosen in honour of the music hall star George Robey.[12] Formby first used his new stage name in Birkenhead in 1897.[20]
One of the earliest characters Formby developed was "John Willie". Baz Kershaw, the professor of theatre, described the character as Formby's "onstage alter ego",[21] while the cultural historian Jeffrey Richards describes Willie as "the archetypal gormless Lancashire lad in baggy trousers, tight jacket, and bowler hat, slow-talking, hen-pecked, accident-prone, but muddling through."[2] His costume included ill-fitting clothes, large boots worn on the wrong feet, and a variety of hats; he would often carry a cane. In 1908 he lent one of his costumes to a young Charlie Chaplin when the latter was touring with Fred Karno's troupe; Chaplin also incorporated Formby's cane twirl and duck-like walk into his act.[22][23]
Formby in examples of his costumes
In 1897 Formby met Martha Maria Salter, a 20-year-old music hall performer, and they married in her home town of Halifax in August. Little is known about Salter, although the 1901 census shows that she was still living with her parents. The marriage does not appear to have been successful, but according to Formby's biographers, Sue Smart and Richard Bothway Howard, there is no evidence of a divorce between the couple and no information relating to when the couple separated.[24]
In 1897 or 1898 Formby was signed to appear at the Lyceum Theatre, Blackburn, supporting the magician Walford Bodie; a 40-week tour followed, with Formby earning 30 shillings a week.[25] In 1898, while performing at the Wigan Empire as part of the tour, Formby met Eliza Hoy, the daughter of the Empire's cashier.[d] The couple married in August the following year at Wigan Registry Office, although this marriage was bigamous because of his union two years previously with Salter.[27][16] In the months after their marriage, Eliza persuaded Formby to join the Roman Catholic Church, which helped her parents overcome their initial distrust of him.[27] Formby and Eliza had thirteen children, of whom seven survived: four daughters and three sons.[28] The cultural historian David Bret states that Formby was "possessed of staggering consumptive virility", as the comedian also had several children with other partners.[27] Eliza became an important figure in Formby's professional life, making his costumes and standing in the wings during his performances to help him. Eliza also continued working as a seamstress and would sell chips during lunchtimes to supplement the family's income.[29]
London, and a growing reputation: 1902–16
In 1902 Formby performed for the first time in London, when he was booked by Ted Granville, the proprietor of the Royal Albert Music Hall in Canning Town, to appear for £3 a week;[e] Granville subsequently became Formby's London agent. Eliza Formby later recounted that Belle Elmore, the wife (and later victim) of the murderer Dr Crippen, saw Formby perform, and was so impressed that she contacted Granville and told him to travel to Leeds to see the act.[31] Formby soon transferred to the London Pavilion music hall, where he was immediately successful, and became "an idol of the town", according to The Times.[32] His popularity increased when Marie Lloyd, the influential music hall singer and actress, said that she would only watch two acts: his and Dan Leno's.[33] Lloyd recommended Formby to the proprietor of the Tivoli Music Hall, who gave the comedian a ten-week run.[34] Robey was also impressed, and in 1905 he recommended Formby as the lead in a pantomime in Newcastle at a salary of £35 a week.[35] He was able to command £325 a week by 1920.[36][f]
Sheet music for "We All Went Marching In", 1913
After the Formbys had lost three daughters to early deaths, their first son, George Hoy Booth, was born in 1904.[2][37] Although the boy was born unable to see owing to an obstructive caul, he gained his sight during a violent coughing fit or sneeze when he was a few months old.[33] Over the course of 1904 Formby purchased the singing rights to 57 songs, more than his normal annual number of between 10 and 20; the average cost of his songs was around a guinea.[38][g] Two years later he made his first recordings, on phonograph cylinders, for the Louis Sterling Cylinder Company, and in 1907 he signed a recording contract with Zonophone. He was one of the few performers who had no difficulties recording clearly with the primitive equipment, and he performed in a relaxed fashion for an invisible audience. He would sing his song and then talk to the listener using a variant of his normal stage patter.[39] Some of those songs, such as "Playing the Game out West" and "Since I Parted my Hair in the Middle" have been identified by Dave Russell, the social historian, as "clever depictions of a provincial innocent let lose [sic] in the capital".[40]
For much of January and February 1908 Formby appeared in various London music halls for which he received £20 a week. The following year, and staying in the capital, he played three halls a night in exchange for £45 a week. One such venue was the Tivoli with Lloyd and Little Tich as the headline acts. When not performing in London, Formby continued to tour the provincial music halls.[41] In 1910 he again appeared at the Tivoli, and was reviewed in The Times, in which the reporter opined that Formby "becomes more of an artist the longer he sings".[42] Later that year Formby recorded what would become his most famous song, "Standing at the Corner of the Street", which he also co-wrote.[43] By 1913 his record sales were strong enough for him to negotiate a new recording contract worth £300 a year.[44][h]
Formby's career received a further boost in July 1913 when he was one of seven acts to appear before George V and Queen Mary in a Royal Command Performance at Knowsley Hall, near Liverpool. The Times reported that Formby's "broad humour succeeded with unexpected ease, and their Majesties praised him very highly after the performance."[32] Formby was embarrassed by his performance. His usual act partly consisted of a running patter with the orchestra conductor, which he again did on this occasion; behind the conductor sat the royal party, and it looked to some that Formby was speaking disrespectfully to them. The king understood to whom Formby was talking, however, and afterwards presented him with a tiepin.[45] In October Formby appeared in his second Royal Command Performance of the year, in a charity show organised by the French actress Sarah Bernhardt. He took part in two acts: a performance of "Ten Little Nigger Boys All in a Row", alongside other music hall entertainers including Robey, Mark Sheridan, Cicely Courtneidge and George Graves, followed by a short solo piece.[46][47]
Formby Jr (right) while employed as a jockey, aged 10, in 1915
In March 1914 Formby appeared in No Fool Like an Old Fool, a 20-minute-long silent comedy film, which is thought to be lost; it was his only film appearance, and little is known about the plot or his character.[48][49][i] When the First World War broke out in August that year, he tried to enlist, but was turned down on medical grounds; instead he, like many music hall stars, was active in the recruiting campaign for the army and spoke at rallies,[51][52] particularly on behalf of the Derby Scheme.[53]
Formby was always worried that his son George would watch him on stage, as he did not wish the boy to become a comic, saying "one fool in the family is enough".[54][55] Nevertheless, although he had sent George away to train as a jockey, in 1915 he allowed his son to appear on screen, taking the lead part of a stable boy in By the Shortest of Heads, a thriller directed by Bert Haldane.[j] After the filming, Formby sent his son to Ireland, to continue his jockey training, and also sent the five horses Formby had purchased that year, which joined others he had previously bought.[57][58]
Worsening health, and death: 1916–21
Formby was injured in June 1916 during rehearsals for the revue Razzle-Dazzle, after a stage collapsed onto him at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. He suffered lung damage and was treated for a pulmonary haemorrhage at Guy's Hospital before recovering.[59] Although he was the lead in the show, the premiere took place without him; it was criticised by reviewers, and The Observer thought that "some of it seemed to have strayed in by mistake out of a second-rate provincial pantomime".[60] Formby returned within a week and the reviews were more positive, with The Observer stating that it was "one of the successes of the season ... Razzle-Dazzle is now one of the liveliest revues in London, and the most spectacular".[61][k] By August the production had transferred to the Empire Theatre, Leicester Square.[63]
Formby, c. 1921
The damage to Formby's lungs from the accident was exacerbated by tuberculosis, and he began to miss an increasing number of his appearances.[64] In 1917 the Southport Palladium took court action against him for failing to fulfil a theatrical engagement as contracted, whereupon his lawyer said that Formby was dying of the lung disease and was working for the short time he had left for the benefit of his large family. Formby lost the case: his plea of ill-health was compromised by his accepting an engagement elsewhere at the same time.[65]
Formby's health was further damaged in the influenza pandemic of 1918, during which he contracted the disease while appearing at the Manchester Hippodrome and was unable to work for a month.[66][67] He was taken ill during the runs of pantomimes in both 1918 and 1919, was forced to rest for three months in 1919,[68] and collapsed on stage during a performance in Newcastle upon Tyne in the 1920–21 pantomime season.[32] Formby was advised by doctors to emigrate to South Africa for the benefit of his health, but he preferred to stay in Britain, with his wife and children, and continued to work. During his performances his wife would wait in the wings with ice for him to suck to stop internal bleeding,[69] and an oxygen tent was present in the stage wings ready for emergencies.[70]
In early 1921 Formby was appearing at the Newcastle Empire in Jack and Jill when he collapsed after a show. He returned to his home near Warrington, where he died of pulmonary tuberculosis on 8 February, at the age of 45.[71] He was buried in a family plot in the Catholic section of Warrington Cemetery.[72] He left over £25,000 in his will,[l] listing Eliza as executrix. As their marriage had been bigamous, he described her as "my reputed wife Eliza Ann Booth, otherwise Eliza Ann Hoy".[74]
The obituarist for The Manchester Guardian wrote that Formby was one of the "great drolls" of the music hall whose humour "always seemed to take its rise in a sympathetic perception of human vanities and weaknesses".[75] The Dundee Courier considered him a great comedian, made all the greater by his continuing to perform through his illness,[1] while the drama critic J. T. Grein, writing in The Illustrated London News, thought that Formby, "along with [Harry] Lauder, Robey and [Albert] Chevalier, formed the leading quartette [sic] of the profession".[76]
His art seemed absolutely guileless and childish, in the vein of the Hatter's madness, but there was method in it—that wonderful form of humour which the Londoner appreciates, but cannot imitate. It was racial of the Lancastrian soil.
J. T. Grein, The Illustrated London News[76]
Formby was the first comic to use a delayed entrance as a joke to make the audience laugh before he arrived: his orchestra played his entrance music, and then he failed to appear on stage.[77] His act included songs, described by Smart and Bothway Howard as "characteristically simple, some with tunes derived from Methodist hymns, and with catchy choruses",[78] and he would chat to the orchestra conductor and front rows, punctuating his stage patter—delivered in a deadpan style—with his cough. He used his health—particularly the coughing—as part of his act, and would say that he was "Coughin' well tonight!" He also created the phrase "It's not the cough that carries you off – it's the coffin they carries you off in!"[23][79][80] One of Formby's nicknames, "The Wigan Nightingale" was coined because of the way he used his bronchial cough in his act.[81]
The "John Willie" character, like much of Formby's act, used pathos as one of the comedic drivers, "but it was not contrived and was never mawkish", according to Alan Randall and Ray Seaton, two of Formby Jr's biographers.[82] In his examination of British screen stars, Geoffrey Macnab agrees, and identifies that although Formby's jokes were about himself, "there was grit in the routines, a resolute denial of self-pity".[81] The Times examined the performer's style of humour, and considered it "often crude, and always simple, but it was always true humour, and, what is more, it was invariably clean."[32]
Much of Formby's humour was based in his north western roots, particularly Wigan, which he told people was where he was born, rather than Ashton.[75] He would refer to taking his holidays at Wigan Pier, which was a small wooden platform on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal for loading coal, rather than a pleasure pier.[83] The Manchester Guardian called him "Lancashire's accredited representative on the London variety stage ... clown-satirist of genius".[75]
When he performed in London, Formby would change his act, introducing himself as "Good evening, I'm Formby fra' Wigan ... I've not been in England long"; he slightly modified his stage persona, and he played "the naïve boy trying to fit in with the sophisticated south".[34] Smart and Boothroyd consider that "the contrast between his northern accent and metropolitan bravado was humorous, and the more urbane and sophisticated his audience the more George exaggerated his provincial gormlessness".[34]
The unveiling of Formby's memorial
Six weeks after Formby's death, his son George first appeared on stage in a copy of his father's act; he initially appeared under the name George Hoy—using his mother's maiden name—but soon took his father's stage name.[36][84] Formby Jr went on to become the top British male star in box office takings between 1937 and 1943, and the highest-paid entertainer in Britain.[2]
Chaplin, who derived some of his stage persona from Formby's, sailed in 1908 with Karno's troupe to the United States, where he developed the character of the Tramp, the image of which became universally familiar by 1915.[85] George Orwell later used Formby's humorous concept of "Wigan Pier" in the title of his 1937 study of depression and unemployment in the area, The Road to Wigan Pier.[86]
Formby left over 190 recordings,[39] and after his death The Times commented, "There cannot be many people who have not heard at some time in their lives either the words or the refrain of 'John Willie – Come On', 'One of the Boys', 'I was Standing on the Corner of the Street', or 'Playing the Game in the West'",[32] songs described by Fisher as "afizz with gaiety and champagne".[87]
In October 1922 a large marble memorial was unveiled at the site of Formby's grave, in the presence of Formby Jr, Eliza and a large crowd.[88][89] The memorial later became the resting place for both the younger Formby and Eliza.[36] In June 2012 a blue plaque was unveiled at Hodgson Street, Ashton, Formby's birthplace.[90]
^ Formby was not alone in developing a chest complaint: the mortality rate from bronchitis was 20% higher in the north west than the rest of the country.[7]
^ Details—including dates—for Formby's activities are scant: his biographers, Sue Smart and Richard Bothway Howard, write that "little is known about the period between 1884 and 1892"; many of the stories Formby related later in life are contradicted by extant records. One of Formby's claims was that he ran away from home when he was seven and worked in a steel foundry near Wigan. Official census records, however, show that in 1891 he was still living with his mother, his father having died the previous year.[9][10]
^ Those main sources are the biographies of Formby's son, George: David Bret, who published George Formby: A Troubled Genius in 1999;[18] and Sue Smart and Richard Bothway Howard who, in 2011, wrote It's Turned Out Nice Again!.[19]
^ Sources disagree on Eliza's age. Bret states she was 21;[8] Smart and Bothway Howard put her at 19.[20] The Formby memorial, including her grave, states that she "Died July 1981, Aged 102 Years".[26]
^ The £3 weekly salary in 1902 is approximately £284 in 2014.[30]
^ Formby's weekly salary of £35 in 1906 is approximately £3,000 in 2014; the £325 weekly salary in 1920 is approximately £15,000.[30]
^ A guinea for a song equated to approximately £100 in 2014.[30]
^ £300 is approximately £25,000 in 2014.[30]
^ Although he was keen to undertake further film work a later project never transpired.[50]
^ Formby Jr played a stable boy who outwits a gang of villains and wins a £10,000 prize when he comes first in a horse race.[56] The film is now considered lost, with the last-known copy having been destroyed in 1940.[57]
^ In July Formby also appeared for a week at the Victoria Palace Theatre during the run of Razzle-Dazzle, after the impresario Alfred Butt refused to release him from a long-standing booking.[62]
^ £25,000 is approximately £965,000 in 2014.[30][73]
^ a b "Famous Comedian Dead". The Dundee Courier. Dundee. 9 February 1921. p. 5.
^ a b c d Richards 2004.
^ a b Formby, George (25 November 1911). "My Life When Singing for Coppers". The Red Letter. 13: 322.
^ a b Bret 1999, p. 1.
^ a b c d Smart & Bothway Howard 2011, p. 4.
^ Randall & Seaton 1974, p. 21.
^ Fisher 1975, pp. 10–11.
^ Office for National Statistics, "1891 UK Census", RG12; Piece: 3277; Folio 127; p. 13; GSU roll: 6098387.
^ Smart & Bothway Howard 2011, pp. 5–6.
^ Smart & Bothway Howard 2011, p. 7.
^ a b c d Bret 1999, p. 2.
^ "London Notes". Variety. Los Angeles, CA. 7 (11): 8. 24 August 1907.
^ Richards 2001, p. 324.
^ a b Smart & Bothway Howard 2011, pp. 65–67.
^ Smart & Bothway Howard 2011, p. 14.
^ Wilkes, Roger (19 May 2001). "Beryldene: The death of George Formby's wife freed him from a loveless marriage, but new-found bliss was brief". The Daily Telegraph. London. p. 4.
^ "Turned Out Nice Again as Research Bears Fruit". Eastern Daily Press. Norwich. 8 October 2011. p. 21.
^ a b Smart & Bothway Howard 2011, p. 16.
^ Kershaw 2007, pp. 85–86.
^ a b "George Formby Senior – Entertainer". BBC online. BBC. Retrieved 29 August 2014.
^ Smart & Bothway Howard 2011, pp. 67–68.
^ Bret 1999, p. 244.
^ a b c Bret 1999, p. 4.
^ Louvish, Simon (6 December 2002). "That Lad will go Far!". The Guardian. London. p. B2.
^ Smart & Bothway Howard 2011, pp. 22 & 30–31.
^ a b c d e Clark, Gregory. "The Annual RPI and Average Earnings for Britain, 1209 to Present (New Series)". MeasuringWorth. Retrieved 13 September 2014.
^ a b c d e "Death of Mr. George Formby". The Times. London. 9 February 1921. p. 8.
^ a b c Smart & Bothway Howard 2011, p. 24.
^ a b c Skinner, Frank (27 October 2011). Frank Skinner on George Formby. BBC Four.
^ Smart & Bothway Howard 2011, pp. 18 & 24.
^ Russell 1997, p. 132.
^ "The Tivoli". The Times. London. 4 January 1910. p. 11.
^ "The King Spends a Merry Evening". Daily Express. London. 13 October 1913. p. 5.
^ St. Pierre 2009, p. 40.
^ Bret 1999, p. 7.
^ "Native For American Humour". The Times. London. 21 September 1916. p. 21. Retrieved 13 September 2014 – via Newspapers.com.
^ Quigley 1916, p. 100.
^ Randall & Seaton 1974, pp. 28–29.
^ "George Formby: A Man With Pride in his Roots". The Guardian. Manchester. 7 March 1961. p. 16.
^ Bret 1999, pp. 6–7.
^ Fisher 1975, p. 49.
^ "Razzle-Dazzle!". The Observer. London. 25 June 1916. p. 7.
^ "Dramatis Personae". The Observer. London. 2 July 1916. p. 7.
^ "Formby Doubling". Variety. New York, NY. 43 (7): 4. 14 July 1916.
^ "The Empire: Razzle-Dazzle in its New Home". The Observer. London. 20 August 1916. p. 8.
^ "Action Against George Formby: The Comedian's Ill-Health". The Manchester Guardian. Manchester. 4 April 1917. p. 2.
^ "The Influenza Grip: Minor Social Effects". The Manchester Guardian. Manchester. 4 July 1918. p. 4.
^ "Formby Back on Stage". Variety. New York, NY. 55 (7): 9. 11 July 1919.
^ "Mrs George Formby's Own Story". The Sunday Post. Dundee. 13 February 1921. p. 16.
^ "Warrington Cemetery" (pdf). Warrington Borough Council. Retrieved 16 July 2014.
^ a b c "Mr. George Formby". The Manchester Guardian. Manchester. 9 February 1921. p. 4.
^ a b Grein, J.T. (26 February 1921). "The World of the Theatre". The Illustrated London News. London: 277.
^ Krishnamurthy 2009, p. 240.
^ a b Macnab 2000, p. 94.
^ Gildart 2013, p. 255.
^ Bret 1999, pp. 11 & 14.
^ Robinson 1986, p. 210.
^ "Comedian's Memorial". Daily Mirror. London. 21 October 1922. p. 9.
^ Memorial Unveiled Aka Beautiful Memorial 1922. London: Pathé News. 23 October 1922. Retrieved 20 September 2014.
^ Williams, Jennifer (4 June 2012). "By George! A Plaque to Formby Snr". Manchester Evening News. Manchester.
Bret, David (1999). George Formby: A Troubled Genius. London: Robson Books. ISBN 978-1-86105-239-1.
Fisher, John (1975). George Formby. London: Woburn-Futura. ISBN 978-0-7130-0139-6.
Gildart, Keith (2013). Images of England Through Popular Music: Class, Youth and Rock 'n' Roll, 1955–1976. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-137-38425-6.
Kershaw, Baz (2007). Theatre Ecology: Environments and Performance Events. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-87716-9.
Krishnamurthy, Aruna (2009). The Working-class Intellectual in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-century Britain. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. ISBN 978-0-7546-6504-5.
Macnab, Geoffrey (2000). Searching for Stars: Stardom and Screen Acting in British Cinema. London: A&C Black. ISBN 978-1-4411-8425-2.
Quigley, Joseph (1916). The Slogan – Sidelights on recruiting with Harry Lauder's Band. London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co. OCLC 35122379.
Randall, Alan; Seaton, Ray (1974). George Formby. London: W. H. Allen. ISBN 978-0-491-01771-8.
Richards, Jeffrey (2001). Imperialism and Music: Britain, 1876–1953. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-6143-1.
Richards, Jeffrey (2004). "Formby, George (1904–1961)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/33205. Retrieved 27 May 2014. (subscription or UK public library membership required)
Richards, Jeffrey (2010). The Age of the Dream Palace: Cinema and Society in 1930s Britain. London: I.B. Tauris. ISBN 978-1-84885-122-1.
Robinson, David (1986). Chaplin: His Life and Art. London: Paladin. ISBN 978-0-586-08544-8.
Russell, Dave (1997). Popular Music in England 1840–1914: A Social History. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-5261-3.
Russell, Dave (2004). Looking North: Northern England and the National Imagination. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-5178-4.
Smart, Sue; Bothway Howard, Richard (2011). It's Turned Out Nice Again!: The Authorized Biography of the Two George Formbys, Father and Son. Ely, Cambridgeshire: Melrose Books. ISBN 978-1-907732-59-1.
St. Pierre, Paul Matthew (2009). Music Hall Mimesis in British Film, 1895–1960: On the Halls on the Screen. Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Press. ISBN 978-0-8386-4191-0.
Recording of six of Formby's songs from the Internet Archive
Biography at George Formby fan site
Links to the lyrics of many of Formby's songs
List of Formby's songs
George Fomby Senior includes two recordings
Original: Original:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Formby_Sr


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Football fans come in all shapes and levels of dedication. From the bandwagon jumpers to the life-long fans, it's hard to find someone who doesn't enjoy the sport.
You regularly refer to Green Bay as "Title Town"
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Oklahoma State coach Eddie Sutton, Chapman's coach at Kentucky, declined comment through a university spokeswoman.
Blackmon said Monday he wasn't aware of any pressure put on Chapman about his dating habits but added, "If Rex said that that stuff happened, I'm pretty sure it did.""I know that atmosphere was around him a little bit," Davender said, referring to Chapman.
Davender said no one at Kentucky tried to influence his dating choices."I dated who I wanted to," he told the AP.
Under a licensing agreement, Vancouver Bay Clubs Ltd.
Upon completion of assessments, the coaches will make any placement adjustments necessary.
Players will be contacted by their coach regarding practice day and time.
-- Former Kentucky star Rex Chapman told a newspaper that school officials tried to stop him from dating black women or at least "hide it" rather than inflame fans."There were certain aspects of my time there that were really ugly," Chapman, who is white, said in a story published by The Courier-Journal on Monday.
"I don't know how it is today, but that's how it was 20 years ago."Chapman said scrutiny of his private life by athletic department officials, boosters and others hastened his departure from Kentucky.
The athlete is also seeking unspecified damages for using his name at the clubs.


text:
Kula (njemački: Josefsfeld ) je naselje u Požeško-slavonskoj županiji, u sastavu grada Kutjeva.

Zemljopis
Smještena je 20 km istočno od Požege, na cesti prema Našicama

Povijest
Kula je do Drugog svjetskoga rata bila naseljena Nijemcima selo se tada zvalo Josefsfeld, nakon rata Nijemci su protjerani, a u njihove kuće kolonizirani su Srbi, a nakon progona Hrvata iz Srijema poglavito iz sela Hrtkovaca sada u Kuli žive većinom Hrvati.

Stanovništvo
Prema popisu stanovništva iz 2011. godine Kula je imala 331 stanovnika.

Sport
U naselju je do 1991. godine djelovao nogometni klub NK Mladost Kula.

Izvori

Naselja u Požeško-slavonskoj županiji
Nijemci u Hrvatskoj

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
San Francisco School Board Set to Vote on School Renaming, Again
AP News California News
SAN FRANCISCO — The San Francisco school board is poised to reverse a much-criticized decision to purge 44 schools of names it said were linked to racism, sexism or other injustices, a turnaround aimed at avoiding costly litigation and toning down outrage at what critics denounced as ill-timed activism.
Just over two months ago, the city's elected Board of Education voted to strip schools of the names of historic figures including Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Robert Louis Stevenson. A school named for longtime Sen. Dianne Feinstein is on the list as well.
Board Criticized for not Prioritizing the Return of In-Person Instruction
Parents, students and elected officials blasted the board for some of its targets — and its timing. The decision in late January came while all of San Francisco's public classrooms were closed because of coronavirus restrictions. They still are. Mayor London Breed, among others, called it "offensive and completely unacceptable" for the board to focus on changing school names rather than getting children back into classrooms.
Some of the city's youngest students are expected to begin returning to in-person instruction this month after more than a year of distance learning because of the pandemic. There is no timetable for middle and high school students to return.
The renaming effort also was criticized for shoddy research and historical inaccuracies. A renaming advisory committee wrongly accused Paul Revere of seeking to colonize the Penobscot people. It also confused the name of Alamo Elementary School with the Texas battle rather than the Spanish word for "poplar tree."
Feinstein Elementary made the list because when she was mayor in 1984, she initially replaced a vandalized Confederate flag that was part of a longstanding display outside City Hall.
Amid the outcry, board president Gabriela Lopez said in February that the process would be paused until all children were back in school. Lopez acknowledged in a statement that mistakes were made in the selection of schools and said that when the board returns to the issue, it will engage historians for a "more deliberative process."
Renaming Vote may be on Hold as Board Faces Other Issues
The board is scheduled to vote Tuesday on a resolution to rescind its January decision and revisit the matter after all students have returned full time to in-person learning.
Since the renaming vote, the board has faced multiple lawsuits, including one from City Hall and the mayor to pressure the school district and board to reopen classrooms more quickly. Another was filed in March by San Francisco attorney Paul Scott, whose children attend public schools, alleging the school board's renaming decision violated California's open meeting law and did not involve the community.
San Francisco Superior Court Judge Ethan Schulman issued a ruling calling on the board to do what the lawsuit requests — rescind the vote and dissolve the renaming advisory committee — or show by April 16 why it shouldn't be compelled to do so.
The resolution being considered Tuesday does not address the criticism but denounces the lawsuit, saying it "wishes to avoid the distraction and wasteful expenditure of public funds in frivolous litigation."
In other recent controversies, the school board has been widely criticized for a plan to end merit-based admissions to San Francisco's top public high school, Lowell, and use the same lottery-based system that admits students to other high schools.
Tuesday's meeting also will be the first since the board voted last week to remove one of its members, Alison Collins, from her role as vice president and other titles over her tweets about Asian Americans dating to 2016.
In the tweets, Collins said Asian Americans use "white supremacist" thinking to get ahead. She has resisted calls to step down and last week sued the school district and five of her six colleagues, accusing them of violating her free speech rights. She is seeking $87 million in damages.
Related Topics:San Francisco
US Job Openings in February Reached Highest Rate on Record
World Powers Seek to Bring US Back into Iran Nuclear Deal
San Francisco Proposes $5 Million Reparations for Black Residents
SF Art Gallery Owner Who Hosed Down Homeless Woman Finds it 'Hard to Apologize'
Apartment Rental Tech Company Exits San Francisco
San Francisco Police Make Rare Apology for Officer Shooting
San Francisco School Board Suspends Plan to Rename Schools
San Francisco School Board Member Sues Over Tweet Response

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) wants to ensure your streaming video experience stays smooth. A research team led by MIT professor Mohammad Alizadeh has developed an artificial intelligence (dubbed 'Pensieve') that can select the best algorithms for ensuring video streams both without interruption, and at the best possible playback quality.
The method improves upon existing tech, including the adaptive bitrate (ABR) method used by YouTube that throttles back quality to keep videos playing, albeit with pixelation and other artifacts. The AI can select different algorithms depending on what kind of network conditions a device is experiencing, cutting down on the downsides associated with any one method.
During experimentation, the CSAIL research team behind this method found that video streamed with between 10 and 30 percent less rebuffing, with 10 to 25 percent improved quality. Those gains would definitely add up to a significantly improved experience for most video viewers, especially over a long period.
The difference in CSAIL's Pensieve approach vs. traditional methods is mainly in its use of a neural network instead of sticking to a strictly algorithmic-based approach. The neural net learns how to optimize through a reward system that incentivizes smoother video playback, rather than setting out defined rules about what algorithmic techniques to use when buffering video.
Researchers say the system is also potentially tweakable on the user end, depending on what they want to prioritize in playback: You could, for instance, set Pensieve to optimize for playback quality, or conversely, for playback speed, or even for conservation of data.
The team is making their project code open source for Pensieve at SIGCOMM next week in LA, and they expect that when trained on a larger data set, it could provide even greater improvements in terms of performance and quality. They're also now going to test applying it to VR video, since the high bitrates required for a quality experience there are well suited to the kinds of improvements Pensieve can offer.


text:
package com.hazelcast.transaction;

import javax.transaction.xa.XAResource;

/**
 * Provides a context to perform transactional operations: beginning/committing transactions, but also retrieving
 * transactional data-structures like the {@link com.hazelcast.core.TransactionalMap}.
 * Any method accessed through TransactionContext interface can throw TransactionException if transaction is
 * no longer valid and rolled back.
 */
public interface TransactionContext extends TransactionalTaskContext {

    /**
     * Begins a transaction.
     *
     * @throws IllegalStateException if a transaction already is active.
     */
    void beginTransaction();

    /**
     * Commits a transaction.
     *
     * @throws TransactionException if no transaction is active or the transaction could not be committed.
     */
    void commitTransaction() throws TransactionException;

    /**
     * Rollback of the current transaction.
     *
     * @throws IllegalStateException if there is no active transaction.
     */
    void rollbackTransaction();

    /**
     * Gets the ID that uniquely identifies the transaction.
     *
     * @return the transaction ID
     */
    String getTxnId();

    /**
     * Gets xaResource which will participate in XATransaction.
     *
     * @return the xaResource.
     * @deprecated since 3.5 please use HazelcastInstance.getXAResource()
     */
    @Deprecated
    XAResource getXaResource();
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


One of two men accused over the murder of a US-born nun in Brazil has said he shot her in self-defence, contradicting earlier statements he made to police.
Rayfran Sales said he thought Dorothy Stang was pulling a gun from her bag, when she instead reached for a Bible.
Mr Sales and another man went on trial on Friday for allegedly killing the nun on the orders of ranchers with whom she was quarrelling over Amazonian land.
Sister Dorothy had fought for peasant farmers' right to own land in the area.
The 73-year-old activist's body was found on a dirt track in a remote part of Para state earlier this year.
Her death galvanized the Brazilian government to send thousands of troops to the region in an effort to end illegal logging and forest clearance.
Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has promised to bring the nun's killers to justice and to end what he has described as a culture of "impunity" surrounding land disputes in the Amazon.
Mr Sales told a court in the northern Brazilian city of Belem that he shot Sister Dorothy because he feared she had a gun in her bag.
He told the court she reached into her bag with the words: "The weapon I have is this".
Instead of a gun, however, he said she produced a Bible.
Mr Sales' co-accused, Clodoaldo Batista, is said to have encouraged him.
The court heard that in earlier testimony to the police, both men had spoken of an execution-type killing, in which Sister Dorothy was shot several times at close range as she read from a Bible.
Contradicting this in court on Friday, Mr Sales said he had acted impulsively in self-defence.
He also said one of three men alleged to have ordered the killing was not involved.
The three men, two of them ranchers, are in custody awaiting trial next year on charges of paying and arranging for the killing.
Many landowners in the area have openly argued that Sister Dorothy's murder was in legitimate defence of property.
Hundreds of the nun's supporters have travelled to the city of Belem for the trial, being held amid tight security.
The campaigning nun was a thorn in the side of the region's most powerful political and economic interests, reports the BBC's Tom Gibb, often denouncing illegal logging and forest clearance and multi-million dollar corruption by local politicians.
She pushed for land to be granted to landless peasants as an environmentally-friendly alternative to large-scale ranching and logging.
Environmentalists and activists say they operate in fear of their lives in many parts of the Amazon region where landowners' militias still hold sway.


text:
Q: Conditions for a comonad arising form an adjunction be idempotent. Given a topos $E$, the subobject classifier $Ω_E$ is known to be the initial internal frame. On the other hand, the unique frame morphism $i:{Ω_E}\rightarrow{H}$ is known to have a right adjoint $τ$ as the classifying map of the top over $H$ (see Topos Semantics for Higher-Order Modal Logic. S Awodey, K Kishida, HC Kotzsch. arXiv:1403.0020). The resulting comonad $i\circτ$ models the S4 system of Modal Logic.
Is this comonad idempotent as in previous works (A topos-theoretic approach to reference and modality. Reyes, Gonzalo E. Notre Dame J. Formal Logic 32 (1991), no. 3, 359--391)?
In general: which are the conditions for a comonad arising form an adjunction be idempotent (I am looking for conditions beyond the case of the base category being a poset)?

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Darren Sproles A Pro Bowler 'For A Reason'
While the Redskins have had much greater success on special teams this season, they have their biggest task to date this season on Saturday: stopping Darren Sproles.
While DeSean Jackson, Kirk Cousins and the Redskins offense will get plenty of attention Saturday evening when Washington takes on the Philadelphia Eagles, the quiet matchup that could make the difference is on special teams.
PHOTOS: Redskins-Eagles Through The Years
A look back at some of the top images in games between the Washington Redskins and Philadelphia Eagles.
Washington Redskins Sean Taylor(21) in action against the Philadelphia Eagles on November 11, 2007 at FedEx Field in Landover, Maryland. The Eagles beat the Redskins 33-25.(AP Photo/David Durochik)
Washington Redskins quarterback Doug Williams, left, is congratulated by his Philadelphia Eagles counterpart, Randall Cunningham following the Redskins 10-3 upset win in NFL game at Philadelphia's Veterans Stadium, Nov. 13, 1989. (AP Photo/Amy Sancetta)
Washington Redskins safety Sean Taylor (36) is upended by Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb (5) after his interception of McNabb's pass in the third quarter Sunday, Nov. 21, 2004, in Philadelphia. Behind them is Eagles' guard Hank Fraley (63) and tackle Tra Thomas (72). (AP Photo/Miles Kennedy)
Philadelphia Eagles tight end L.J. Smith is pulled down by Washington Redskins safety Sean Taylor during the second half of an NFL football game Sunday, Nov. 11, 2007, in Landover, Md. (AP Photo/Haraz Ghanbari)
Haraz Ghanbari/2007 Associated Press
Quarterback Doug Williams (17) of the Washington Redskins releases a pass n a 17 - 10 win over the Philadelphia Eagles on Sept. 18, 1988 at RFK Stadium in Washington, DC. (AP Photo / Al Messerschmidt)
Washington Redskins Art Monk catches a 16-yard second quarter touchdown pass from quarterback Mark Rypien as Philadelphia Eagles Eric Allen watches during Wildcard playoff game Saturday, Jan. 5, 1991 at Philadelphia's Veterans Stadium. (AP Photo/Amy Sancetta)
Washington Redskins tackle Jermaine Haley causes Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb (5) to fumble in the second quarter Sunday, Nov. 21, 2004, in Philadelphia. The Redskins recovered on the play. (AP Photo/Miles Kennedy)
Eagles' Terry Tautolo tackles Washington Redskins' John Riggins, but is too late to keep Riggins from scoring a touchdown after catching a pass during game at Philadelphia, Oct. 7, 1979. (AP Photo/Steven Falk)
Washington Redskins Dexter Manley sacks Philadelphia Eagles Randall Cunningham for a loss of five yards in first quarter NFL action in their game at Philadelphia's Veterans Stadium, Nov. 13, 1989. Cunningham fumbled the ball and the Redskins recovered en route to a 10-3 win. (AP Photo/Rusty Kennedy)
Billy Barnes (32) Washington Redskins back, keeps tight grip on the ball as he scores touchdown from 3-yard line despite swarm of Philadelphia Eagles defenders in second period of Eagles - Redskins pro-football game in Philadelphia on Oct. 21, 1962. Trying to stop Barnes are Eagles backs Bob Harrison (42) and Mike McClellan (23). At top is Redskins end Bill Anderson (42), Redskins won, 27-21. (AP Photo/Bill Ingraham)
Philadelphia Eagles' Greg Lewis, left, and J.R. Reed, center, chase Washington Redskins' Ladell Betts (46) as Betts returns the opening kickoff 70 yards Sunday, Dec. 12, 2004, in Landover, Md. The play set up a short touchdown run for Clinton Portis. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Philadelphia Eagles fullback Clarence Peaks (26) is brought down by Washington Redskin tackle Will Renfro (71) after a six-yard first quarter running gain at Griffith Stadium, Dec. 6, 1959, Washington, D.C. Swarming in on Peaks is fullback Chuck Drazenovich (36) and end Ed Meadows (83), both of Washington. In the background is Chuck Bednarik (60), Eagles center. (AP Photo/Tom Fitzsimmons)
Washington Redskins running back Clinton Portis (26) scores a third-quarter touchdown past Philadelphia Eagles safety Brian Dawkins (20) and safety Michael Lewis (32), Sunday, Nov. 6, 2005, in Landover, Md. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
In the return game, the Redskins must find a way to keep Darren Sproles – who was one of two return specialists selected this week for the 2016 NFL Pro Bowl – at bay.
Sproles, an 11-year veteran out of Kansas State, currently leads the NFL in punt return yards (446) and is the only player to score twice on punt returns.
The 5-foot-6, 190 pounder scored an 89-yard punt return touchdown in an Eagles victory over the New York Jets in September, then scored once again from 83 yards out in Philadelphia's upset win over the New England Patriots earlier this month.
"Darren Sproles does a really good job," said fullback Darrel Young, who is tied for second on the Redskins in special teams tackles with seven. "There's a reason he made the Pro Bowl being a returner. He's definitely one of those guys you have to account for. They've been winning a lot of games on special teams. Not saying the rest of the team isn't playing good, but they're playing good and they've got some key guys over there."
Recently signed Redskins running back Pierre Thomas, who played with Sproles for three seasons with the New Orleans Saints from 2011-2013, said Sproles is a special talent due to the work he puts in day in and day out.
"He works hard day in, day out," Thomas said. "I see him even through walkthrough, it's called walkthrough for a reason [as] you're trying to pace yourself, this dude is taking off. He's not walking. He's full-go from the beginning of practice until the end of practice. He's a hard work and he shows that. He works on all the little details of certain things, and I know if he drops the ball he's always working to catch extra after the practice. He's a pro, he's a vet. He understands the nature of this game and what it takes to be a great player. As he's shown to the world, he's one of the elite players in this league."
As the Redskins have an opportunity to seize their second NFC East title in four seasons, they'll need contributions from all active players tomorrow evening.
For some, it's been the culmination of years of hard work with the team, for others, they've only been in Washington for a short time period.
Regardless, the special teams haven't missed a beat with the constant roster changes this season.
"That's the goal and that's basically what you've got to do to be in a good position in this league," Young said of younger players and newcomers contributing on offense. "You've got to start somewhere. Everyone has played special teams in this league unless, you were a first-round pick, everyone's covered a kick and done something to help special teams-wise. Just having some of our roles, like myself and some other guys, that's what we're here to do."
Commanders select Christian Holmes with No. 240 overall pick
The Oklahoma State cornerback garnered All-Big 12 honors in 2021.
Commanders select Sam Howell with No. 144 overall pick
Howell was named a Manning Award finalist and has shown he can be a dual threat.
Commanders select Brian Robinson Jr. with the No. 98 overall pick
Robinson's rushing earned him spots in the Alabama record books.
Washington selects Jahan Dotson with 16th pick
Penn State WR is the first-ever pick of the Commanders era.


text:
Desiree Reed-Francois
Athletic Director, University of Missouri
Desiree Reed-Francois was named the Director of Athletics at the University of Missouri in August 2021, bringing with her more than 25 years of experience in intercollegiate athletics.
Already in her short tenure, Mizzou has made changes to enhance the gameday experience of guests, implemented Black & Gold Fridays across the state and made several prominent organizational hires towards the Department's pursuit of excellence.
Reed-Francois came to Mizzou after serving four years as the Director of Athletics at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. While with the Rebels, she hired head coaches in men's and women's basketball, football, women's soccer, softball, volleyball and women's track and field, with three of those coaches earning Conference Coach of the Year honors early in their tenures.
In Las Vegas, Reed-Francois oversaw the completion and opening of a $35 million on-campus football training complex and successfully negotiated a joint-use agreement with the NFL's Las Vegas Raiders for UNLV's use of the new $2-billion Allegiant Stadium. During her time at UNLV, she completed or implemented more than $70 million in facility upgrades. An adept fundraiser, Reed-Francois led a $60 million development drive during her tenure, including an $8 million estate gift, the largest estate gift in the school's history. Football season ticket sales and premium revenue jumped by 200% and 70% respectively, and Reed-Francois introduced a new apparel agreement with Nike.
Prior to arriving at UNLV, Reed-Francois served as the deputy athletics director at Virginia Tech, overseeing external relations and the day-to-day operations of the department and as a senior associate athletics director at the University of Cincinnati. At the University of Tennessee, she became the first woman to oversee a men's basketball program in the SEC, which followed stints at California State University-Fresno, Santa Clara University, San Jose State University, the University of California Berkeley, and the University of San Francisco.
Reed-Francois earned a Bachelor's Degree from UCLA and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Arizona College of Law. She is a member of the State Bar of California and taught law classes at the University of Tennessee and at Santa Clara University. Prior to her work in college athletics, Reed-Francois worked as a legal associate for the Oakland Raiders and the NFL's Management Council.
Reed-Francois is the first female athletic director in Mizzou's history, the first female athletic director in a public institution in the SEC and was the first Hispanic female and woman of color athletics director at the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) level.
She and her husband, Joshua, have a son, Jackson, who will be attending MU in Fall 2022 to study journalism.
Transforming College Athletics: AD's Discuss the Challenges and Opportunities Facing their Programs
Moderator: John Ourand, Staff Writer, Sports Business Journal
Joe Castiglione, Vice President, Intercollegiate Athletics Programs; and Athletic Director, University of Oklahoma
Desiree Reed-Francois, Athletic Director, University of Missouri
Dr. Derrick Gragg, Athletic Director, Northwestern University
Martin Jarmond, Athletic Director, University of California, Los Angeles


Retreats are a vital part of CCF's ministry. Nothing helps build Christian community like getting away form campus as a group for a weekend devoted to worship, fellowship and spiritual formation.
CCF goes on four retreats throughout the school year. Two are during the fall semester.
In September, CCF goes to Epworth for our Beach Retreat. This retreat is full of fun, fellowship and community-building (with some worship and teaching time mixed in for good measure).
In November, CCF heads 45 minutes up the road to the Coastal Empire Christian Camp for our Fall Retreat. Highlights of this retreat include singing around the campfire, our Saturday night Talent Show and our annual Flamingo Football game.
Our other two retreats are during the spring semester.
In February, CCF travels to Hampton, Ga. for our Winter Retreat. Highlights of this retreat include singing and the annual CCF winter Olympics.
In April, CCF visits the Tattnall County Campground for our Spring Retreat.
E-mail a staff member for more information and to sign up for retreats.


text:
The newest member of the Golden State Warriors is known for his shooting stroke.
Jonas Jerebko is a career 36.3 percent 3-point shooter, and the 31-year-old shot 41.4 percent from beyond the arc with the Utah Jazz last season. That ability earned him a very flattering nickname from his former bosses: Boston Celtics president Danny Ainge and owner Steve Pagliuca.
Ainge acquired the Swedish sharpshooter from the Detroit Pistons in February 2015. When he was asked if Boston would re-sign the Swedish sharpshooter at his end-of-season press conference that year, Ainge compared him to a longtime teammate.
"The Swedish Larry Bird, you mean?" Ainge jokingly replied, according to ESPN's Chris Forsberg.
Ainge and Bird played together for parts of eight seasons, winning NBA championships together in 1984 and 1986. Bird, of course, is a Basketball Hall of Famer who led the NBA in made 3-pointers in the 1985-86 and 1986-87 seasons, and finished in the top 10 in four other seasons. Bird finished his career as a 37.6 percent shooter from deep.
Jerebko played with the Celtics for parts of three seasons, and he took the tongue-in-cheek comparisons to a Boston legend in stride.
"I laugh about it," Jerebko told the Providence Journal in February 2016, "like everybody else. I don't dislike, I don't like it. People can say whatever they want. It's not like I'm going to go home and tell them I'm the Swedish Larry Bird. If people think it's funny and they like to say it, go ahead, but it's not like I'm going to call myself that or use that nickname in any manner."
On a team that features Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, Jerebko probably won't draw comparisons to any Warriors legends. Plus, DeMarcus Cousins already has the title of third Splash Brother locked up.


Our application development teams are experts at building GPS data exchange and file transfer programs needed to enable the transmission of location based data to your company's 3rd party software applications. Our servers use proprietary redundant back-up systems along with secure transfer protocols to make sure your data is protected and delivered securely. Our GPS driven location data can give a software development expert the tools needed to greatly enhance existing corporate legacy systems or those used for dispatch, appointment tracking and/or mobile workforce management. Our flagship GPS Tracking device, the SmartAntenna, is the flashpoint from where this data transfer activity begins. Then, after transmission over a wireless network, the data is delivered to our servers - where it is sorted and cataloged and then sent, via a specified file format, to the client server for dissemination into the designated 3rd party application. We can also use multiple file formats for data transfer such as XML, FTP and Web Services so that we may satisfy your file sharing requirements.


text:
\section{Introduction}
In the community of animation, comics and games, the majority of artistic works can be created from sketches, which consumed a lot of time and effort. \textbf{If there is a method to apply the style of a painting to a half-finished work in form of sketches, many redundant work will be saved}, e.g. using an existing picture of a specific character as a style map and then apply the style to a sketch of the character. The neural algorithm of artistic style \cite{Gatys2015A} can produce amazing and perfect images combining of content maps and style maps, but it lacks the ability to deal with sketches. The paintschainer \cite{pc}, as well as pix2pix \cite{Isola2016Image}, can turn sketches into paintings directly and the result can be even perfect with pointed hints added, but it cannot take the advantage of existing paintings. We investigated residual U-net and auxiliary classifier GAN (AC-GAN) as a solution and our network can directly generate a combination of sketch and style image. Our model is fully feed-forward so as to synthetize paintings at a high speed. Furthermore, we find out that U-net and conditional GAN (cGAN) relatively declines in performance with absence of a balanced quantity of information of paired input and output, and we propose using residual U-net with two guide decoders. In addition, we compare many kinds of GANs and find that conditional GAN is not suitable for this task, resorting to the AC-GAN finally.

\textbf{Our contributions are}:
\begin{itemize}
\item{A feed-forward network to apply the style of a painting to a sketch.}
\item{An enhanced residual U-net capable of handling paired images with unbalanced information quantity.}
\item{An effective way to train residual U-net with two additional loss.}
\item{A discriminator modified from AC-GAN suitable to deal with paintings of different style.}
\end{itemize}

\section{Related Works}

\textbf{Neural Style Transfer} \cite{Gatys2015A,Gatys2016Image,Gatys2016Preserving,Johnson2016Perceptual,Ulyanov2016Texture} can synthesize admirable image with art style from an image and content from another, based on an algorithm that minimize the difference in gram matrixes of deep convolution layers. Nevertheless, our objective is to combine a style image and a sketch. Unfortunately, the neural style transfer is not capable of this kind of task. In fact, the results of neural style transfer on sketches from style images can be really strange, far from a proper painting.

\textbf{Pix2Pix} \cite{Isola2016Image} and some other paired image2image transfers based on conditional GAN \cite{Mirza2014Conditional} are accomplished in transformation between paired images. In our research, the quality of the outputs of networks based on cGAN depends on the "information gap degree" between the inputs and outputs. That is to say, if the input and output are similar in the quantity of information, the result can be reliable. In the experiment of Pix2Pix's edge2cat, based on users' input edges, small circles always means eyes, triangles regarded as ears, and closed figures should always be filled with cat hair. If we shuffle the datasets of cat2edge, bag2edge, and even more like house, bicycle, tree, dog and so on, the quality of outputs will decline accordingly. Our task is to transfer sketches correspondingly to paintings, which is far more complicated than cats or bags, and the generator of cGAN needs to learn semantic features and low-level features simultaneously. Actually, a conditional discriminator can easily leads the generator to focus too much on the relationship between sketches and paintings, thus, to some extent, ignore the composition of a painting, leading to ineluctable overfitting.

\textbf{Paintschainer} \cite{pc} has abandoned cGAN and resorted to an unconditional discriminator due to the same reason as above, and obtained remarkable and impressive achievements. It becomes a powerful and popular tool for painters. Users only need to input a sketch to get a colorized painting. They can add pointed color hints for better results. With massive existing finished paintings, though the demand for a method to colorize a sketch according to a specific style is extremly high, there is no reliable and mature solution for it.

\section{Methods}

We combine an enhanced residual U-net generator and an auxiliary classifier discriminator as our adversarial network. We feed the generator with sketch maps and style maps. Our discriminator can tell whether its input is real or fake, and classify corresponding style simultaneously.

\begin{figure}
\centering\includegraphics[width=.5\textwidth]{f8.pdf}
\caption{The architecture of our adversarial network. The discriminator is modified from AC-GAN, which not only has the ability to reveal whether the map is real or fake, but also tell the classification. We notice that the global style hint can be regarded as a low-level classification result with 2048 or 4096 classes.}\label{fig:discriminator}
\end{figure}

\begin{figure}
\centering\includegraphics[width=.35\textwidth]{f4.pdf}
\caption{In the experiment of copying images, the mid-level layers of U-net receives no gradients.}\label{fig:copy}
\end{figure}

\subsection{Architecture and Objective of Generator}
The detailed structure is in fig.~\ref{fig:generator}. We are not the first to add the global style hint to mid-level layers of a encoder-decoder or a U-net\cite{Ronneberger2015U}. In \emph{Iizuka et.al's} \cite{Iizuka2016Let} and \emph{Richard Zhang et.al's} \cite{Zhang2017Real} the global hint is extracted from a high-level layer of a classification network as a high dimension vector and then added to the colorization network. For photograph colorization, the shadow, material and texture is known variables in inputs and the network only need a spot of information to analyse the color distribution. In \emph{Iizuka et.al's} \cite{Iizuka2016Let}, they only use vectors of 1$\times$1$\times$256 as global hints. However, it is far from enough for the network to paint sketches into paintings with various unique styles. Therefore, We integrate style hint at size of 1$\times$1$\times$4096 or 1$\times$1$\times$2048. But we failed to train such a generator directly and finally found some "nature" of the well-known structure U-net. The failure result is in fig.~\ref{fig:fail}.

\textbf{The U-net is "lazy".} That is to say if the U-net find itself able to handle a problem in low-level layers, the high-level layers will not bother to learn anything. If we train a U-net to do a very simple work "copying image" as in fig.~\ref{fig:copy}, where the inputs and outputs are same, the loss value will drop to 0 immediately. Because the first layer of encoder discovers that it can simply transmit all features directly to the last layer of the decoder by skiping connection to minimize the loss. In this case, no matter how many times we train the U-net, the mid-level layers will not get any gradient.

For each layer in U-net's decoder, features can be acquired from higher layers or from skip connected layers. In each iteration of a training process, these layers select other layers' outputs with nonlinear activations in order to minimize the loss. In the experiment of copying image, when the U-net is initialized with Gaussian random numbers, the output of the first layer in encoder is informative enough to express the full input map while the output of second-to-last layer in decoder seems very noisy. Thus the "lazy" U-net gives up the relatively noisy features.

\begin{figure}
\centering\includegraphics[width=.35\textwidth]{f6.pdf}
\caption{The ideal architecture of a residual U-net. Additional losses are applied to all mid-level layers so as to provide gradients for these layers.}\label{fig:iealunet}
\end{figure}

Because a hint of 1$\times$1$\times$256 is far from enough for sketch painting, we resorted to a hint of 1$\times$1$\times$4096, from the output of VGG 19's \emph{fc1}, without the \emph{Relu} activation. The 4096 hint vector is very informative and powerful. However, for a newly initialized U-net, the output of the mid-level layers can be extremely noisy if we add the vector of 4096 directly to the layer. As mentioned above, the noisy mid-level layer is given up by U-net and these layers cannot receive any gradient as a consequence.

Inspired by LeNet \cite{LecunLeNet} and GooLeNet \cite{Szegedy2014Going}, We resort to residual networks in fig.~\ref{fig:iealunet}. If we attach additional loss to each layer which is possible to be "lazy", no matter how noisy the output of a mid-level layer is, the layer will never be given up by the U-net and all layers will get stable gradient in the whole training process. Thus, it is possible to add a very informative and to some extent noisy hint to the mid-level layers. We implemented two additional loss, in the "Guide decoder 1" and "Guide decoder 2", to avoid the gradient disappearance in mid-level layers. The loss trend with or without the two Guide Decoders can been seen in fig.~\ref{fig:wo}. Significant difference of the networks' prediction can be seen in fig.~\ref{fig:fail}.

The loss is defined as:
\begin{equation}
\label{eqn3_2}
\begin{aligned}
L_{l1}(V,G_{f,g_{1},g_{2}})=\mathbb{E}_{x,y\sim P_{data}(x,y)}[||y-G_{f}(x,V(x))||_{1}+\\\alpha||y-G_{g_{1}}(x)||_{1}+\beta||y-G_{g_{2}}(x,V(x))||_{1}]
\end{aligned}
\end{equation}

Where the $x$, $y$ is the paired domain of sketches and paintings, and $V(x)$ is the output of VGG 19's $fc1$ without $Relu$, and $G_{f}(x,V(x))$ is the final output of U-net, the $G_{g_{1}}(x)$ and $G_{g_{2}}(x,V(x))$ are outputs of the two guide decoders at the entry and the exit of mid-level layers accordingly. The recommended value of $\alpha$ and $\beta$ is \emph{0.3} and \emph{0.9}. We also find out that the distribution of color can be improved by feeding the Guide Decoder located at the entry of mid-level layers with grayscale maps, so the final loss is as below, where $T(y)$ can transform y into grayscale image.
\begin{equation}
\label{eqn3_2}
\begin{aligned}
L_{l1}(V,G_{f,g_{1},g_{2}})=\mathbb{E}_{x,y\sim P_{data}(x,y)}[||y-G_{f}(x,V(x))||_{1}+\\\alpha||T(y)-G_{g_{1}}(x)||_{1}+\beta||y-G_{g_{2}}(x,V(x))||_{1}]
\end{aligned}
\end{equation}

\begin{figure}
\centering\includegraphics[width=.5\textwidth]{f7.pdf}
\caption{Loss with or without the Guide Decoder}\label{fig:wo}
\end{figure}

\begin{figure}
\centering\includegraphics[width=.48\textwidth]{f10.pdf}
\caption{The style map and sketch map are same with fig.~\ref{fig:tit}. The neural style algorithm fails to transfer a sketch to a painting. Though normal U-net can predict meaningful paintings when the global hint is 1$\times$1$\times$256, the result can be rather disappointing when the hint of 1$\times$1$\times$4096 is applied. Our residual U-net with two Guide Decoders is very capable of handling such an informative global style hint.}\label{fig:fail}
\end{figure}

\subsection{Architecture and Objective of Discriminator}

As we mentioned, the traditional cGAN is not suitable for our project. Painting is a complicated work and needs human artists to take color-selection, composition and fine-tuning into consideration, and all these need an artist to focus on the global manner of the painting. However, a conditional discriminator has always a tendency to focus much more on the relationship between sketch line and color than the global information. In our experiments with Pix2Pix, if a conditional discriminator is applied, the generator will resist fiercely and the color surrounding the line can be extremely over-colorized. Tuning parameters is not enough to reach a balance.

Furthermore, it can be appreciated if the discriminator has the ability to tell the style and provide gradient accordingly, in order to fit the main task: style transfering. We finally integrate AC-GAN and our discriminator has exactly 4096 outputs, which will all be minimized to 0 when the input is fake and approach to the same value of VGG 19's \emph{fc1} when the input is real in fig.~\ref{fig:discriminator}.

The final loss is defined as:
\begin{equation}
\label{eqn3_2}
\begin{aligned}
L_{GAN}(V,G_{f},D)=\mathbb{E}_{y\sim P_{data}(y)}[Log(D(y)+(1-V(y)))]+\\\mathbb{E}_{x\sim P_{data}(x)}[Log(1-D(G_{f}(x,V(x))))]
\end{aligned}
\end{equation}

Unfortunately, to minimize the loss, it requires a large memory size in GPU. We also employed the traditional discriminator of DCGAN for fast speed and large batch size. We fine-tune our networks by shifting the two loss functions.
\begin{equation}
\label{eqn3_2}
\begin{aligned}
L_{GAN}(V,G_{f},D)=\mathbb{E}_{y\sim P_{data}(y)}[Log(D(y))]+\\\mathbb{E}_{x\sim P_{data}(x)}[Log(1-D(G_{f}(x,V(x))))]
\end{aligned}
\end{equation}

The final objective is:
\begin{equation}
\label{eqn3_2}
\begin{aligned}
G^{*}= \arg \min \limits_{G_{f}} \max \limits_{D}L_{GAN}(V,G_{f},D) + \lambda L_{l1}(V,G_{f,g_{1},g_{2}})
\end{aligned}
\end{equation}

\begin{figure*}
\centering\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{f12.pdf}
\caption{Additional results of our network. All the reference paintings are from Pixiv. The creditions for all artists are available in the github page "style2paints".}\label{fig:4}
\end{figure*}

\section{Limitations and Discussions}

Our network is capable of drawing on sketches according to style maps given by users, depending on the classification ability of the VGG. However, the pretrained VGG is for ImageNet photograph classification, but not for paintings. In the future, we will train a classification network only for paintings to achieve better results. Furthermore, due to the large quantity of layers in our residual network, the batch size during training is limited to no more than 4. It remains for future study to reach a balance between the batch size and quantity of layers.

\nocite{*}

\bibliographystyle{plain}%

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


text:
ADGA's Executive Leadership Team
ADGA's Strategic Advisory Council
Kim Butler, CPA, CMA, ICD.D
Kim Butler is a seasoned professional with more than 30 years of executive financial and operational experience with Canadian and multinational organizations. She led finance and integration at Ericsson Service Assurance, and has served as CFO and interim CEO at both CENX and Benbria, an enterprise software company. She was SVP Finance and CFO at Bridgewater Systems, and held senior finance roles at Asea Brown Boveri and Mitel Corporation.
She is a member of the board of directors of Hydro Ottawa, and also serves as a member of the board of directors of Canada Health Infoway. Kim is a member of the board of directors for the Center of Excellence in Next Generation Networking (CENGN). In addition, she sits on the Executive Committee of the Ottawa Chapter of the Institute of Corporate Directors, is a member of Ottawa Climate Action Advisory Board, and Regional Ambassador for Women Get on Board. She has previously served as board member and chair of the finance committee for the Queensway Carleton Hospital Foundation, and is a past member of the Industry Advisory Committee for Entrepreneurship at Algonquin College in Ottawa. Currently, she is a volunteer coach and mentor for SheBoot, a program in conjunction with Invest Ottawa, supporting and empowering female technology entrepreneurs.
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Steeve Bergeron
Vice-President, Finance
Shaun McEwan
Caroline-Anne Juszczakiewicz-Tylko
Vice-President, Human Resources
Rick Fawcett, OMM, CD
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Lieutenant-General (Retired) Jean-Marc Lanthier, CMM, MSC, MSM, CD
Lieutenant-General (Retired) Guy R. Thibault, CMM, MSC, CD
Glenn LaRusic, CPA, CA