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Firstview
German publisher and saxophonist Andreas Buechel entered the musical stage 2013 with the album Sax O'Groove. Sax O'Groove was a cooperation of Andreas Buechel and John Odio. His sophomore project Together (2015) is beyond the scope of the first work and exceptionally well in the smooth jazz genre with a huge number of musicians involved.
All songs were recorded, mixed and produced by Andreas Büchel, Nils Jiptner, Paul Weimar, Darren Rahn and John Odio in studios in Arnsberg (Germany), Heredia (Costa Rica), Los Angeles, Chicago and Playa Del Rey. Truly international, as it is only possible in the Internet age.
The album starts the journey with the uplifting Together, that knows to convince with a sophisticated horn arrangement decorated with professional saxophone interludes. The heartfelt ballade Love You More is crowned by a solo of famous trumpeter Rick Braun. Also remarkable the keyboard support of studio musician Hans Zermuehlen.
In The Shadows presents in a somewhat gloomy mood well-known English saxophonist Shilts, who also amazingly shines on the keyboards. In the same instrumental pairing Darren Rahn celebrates Keep It Smooth. In his skillful way he makes it light and easily digestible. Really big comes out Brian Culbertson with Jungle Groove. The extensive horn arrangement sounds like a big band.
The romantic song Sea And Back features vocal surprise Michael & Kelsey in a divine duet. Sax player Michael Lington provides the dreamy background. After the first few notes of Feeling Fine, I felt transported back in time to the 70s disco. Keyboardist Bill Steinway is featured artist on this blithely track. Tivives is a picturesque town in the Puntarenas region of Costa Rica with an awesome beach. The group AkusTICOS is advertising their homeland with this exotic tinged tune.
Talented saxophonist Katja Riekermann gives a vivid hello with Here I'm Back. Her own solo album Never Stand Still is just released in the States. The album is called Together, because for Andreas Büchel stands cooperation with the other musicians in the foreground. On the captivating track Missing You he shows his great talent on sax without giving advantage to other guest musicians. Nils aptly adds his chords on guitar to round up the song. Ricardo Ramirez is a virtuoso of violin from Costa Rica feeling at home in all genres of music. Ricardo and female vocalist Racquel bless us with a modern version of Ave Maria.
Sax O'Groove's album Together is a musical and a social project. Coming in contact with the best smooth jazz musicians and producers in the world, exchange experiences and thoughts, develop music and just have fun. We take part in an exciting development in the musical career of saxophonist Andreas Büchel. Together is compelling and worth listening to.
1. Together feat. Marqueal Jordan (3:57)
2. Love You More feat. Rick Braun (4:18)
3. In The Shadows feat. Shilts (4:36)
4. Keep It Smooth feat. Darren Rahn (4:08)
5. Jungle Groove feat. Brian Culbertson (4:26)
6. Sea and Back feat. Michael Lington (5:04)
7. Feeling Fine feat. Bill Steinway (4:37)
8. Tivives feat. AkusTICOS (3:49)
9. Here I'm Back feat. Katja Rieckermann (4:33)
10. Missing You feat. NILS (4:20)
11. Ave Maria feat. Ricardo Ramirez & Racquel (3:21)
Further Reviews:
Sax O'Groove
The musicians꞉
Andreas Büchel - soprano sax (all tracks), tenor sax (1, 2, 5,
9, 10), guitar (1, 6, 9, 11), keys and programming (8, 9, 11),
brass arrangement (1, 5)
NILS - guitar (2, 5, 7, 10), bass (5, 10), keys and programming
(5, 10), programming (2)
Paul Shilts Weimar - tenor sax (3, 7), keys and programming
(1, 3, 7), bass (1, 3, 7)
Darren Rahn - tenor sax (4), keys and programming (4)
Brian Culbertson - piano and trombone (5)
Marqueal Jordan - alto sax (1)
Rick Braun - trumpet (2)
Michael Lington - alto sax (6)
Bill Steinway - piano (7)
Katja Rieckermann - alto sax (9)
John Odio - alto sax, drums, programming, ewi (8)
Walter Chepe Blanco - guitar (8)
Ricardo Ramirez - violin (11)
Racquel - voice (11)
Isaac Quiros - trombone (8)
Allen Hinds - guitar (4)
John Davies - guitar (3)
Ricky Lawson - drums (5)
Oliver Brown - percussion (5, 10)
Richard Rightman - drums (10)
Hans Zermuehlen - keys (2)
Alex Al - bass (2)
Eric McKain - percussion (10)
Michael & Kelsey - voices (6)
String arrangements by Hiro Goto (1) and Alvaro Esquivel (11).


Las Vegas, CES 2013 – January 4th, 2013 – The leading hardware solution provider, Rosewill®, will be show casing their latest innovations and premiere line of products at CES 2013. Rosewill® will debut a world first, Rosewill® Helios RK-9200 Dual LED Backlit Mechanical Gaming Keyboard with Cherry MX Switches in Blue, Red, Brown, and Black. It supports Red or Green Backlit LEDs and allows independent color control of the vital WASD and 4 directional arrow gaming keys while allowing you to choose between 5 global brightness modes. It will stand side by side with the RK-9000 and RK-9100 series Mechanical Keyboards that have already cemented their positions. Rosewill® will also be show casing their line of Computer Cases, Power Supplies, Networking products, Server products, Gaming Peripherals, Surveillance Products, and Computer Accessories that compliment your PC build.
Rosewill® will launch a new gaming case, THRONE, in Black and White, with its sleek angular appeal and aggressive appearance; it's the case to have for any gaming event. Alongside will be the newly introduced ARMOR Evolution mid tower case, the first mid tower with support for E-ATX motherboards and have 2x USB 3.0 front ports. To power your system, Rosewill will have on display a full line of award winning 80 Plus Platinum Power Supplies with up to 1600W of power.
New Server products will also be making their debut with the new 5 and 8 Bay RAID Enclosures with USB 3.0. Alongside Rosewill's IT products, on display will be a diverse product line of consumer electronics that will not disappoint.
Exclusively at Rosewill's Suite; on display will be a PC built for its gaming prowess around the Rosewill THRONE gaming case, powered by a HERCULES 1600W power supply, Intel Core i7-3970x Processor, 3-way SLI NVIDIA GTX680 graphic cards, and other high-end computer components; it's an ultimate gaming system for any gamer.
Rosewill Inc. (www.rosewill.com<http://www.rosewill.com/>) is the leading manufacturer of a vast array of computer hardware, peripherals, consumer electronics, mobile hardware and accessories. Established in 2004, Rosewill brings high quality hardware at affordable prices. Formed from a top team of hardware professionals, Rosewill is dedicated to its mission to compete and succeed on price, quality, and service. Our vision is to become the leading brand in computer hardware and peripherals through integrity, innovative products, and superior customer service.


*** SALE PENDING *** I have a Kiwaya KSL-1 up fpor sale or trade - it's a long neck soprano uke with a concert scale, made with a very thin solid mahogany top and Kiwaya's famous "hyperthin" mahogany laminate for the back and sides for excellent resonance. Rosewood fretboad and bridge, and a compensated saddle for excellent intonation. 14 frets to the body, 20 frets total. Pearl microdots at the 3,5,7,10, and 12th frets with corresponding side dots. It also has upgraded Grover open back geared 14:1 tuners with black knobs.
tone in the standard high G re-entrant tuning. A particularly nice KSL-1. Made in Japan.
Excellent condition except for a dent near the edge of the peghead which you'll notice when you hold the uke at a certain angle to the light - about 1/4" wide and long. The dent was there when the uke was new.
Comes with a padded camo gigbag.
$295 shipped to the USA lower 48.
I'm selling mainly to thin the herd, but I might trade for a soprano scale instrument. I'm sticking with the soprano's these days.
Note: Someone pointed out that the new KSL-1's are made of all laminate. However, the older models of the KSL-1 were adverstised as having a solid top. The serial number on this KSL-1 is #91, so it's definitely an early model, and it was advertised as a solid top wen I bought it new. I looked at the lip of the uke top at the soundhole, and as far I can tell, it is a solid top.
Hi. I know this wouldn't thin your herd, but would you consider a 2-for-1 swap. I would consider trading my brand new Ohana CKP-70 Vita (soprano scale) which I got from MGM in April of this year ($177), plus a Mainland Mahogany Matte soprano which I got directly from Mainland as a "second" (supposedly scratches in the surface before the finish was applied......but I don't notice it) (cost me $150). I could send each in a gig bag.
Any chance you could include the Kiwaya case you show in the picture?
Let me know what you think. I can send pictures if you are interested.
That's a really kind offer, but I really am looking to thin the herd and also to pick up a little needed cash - although I would happily consider trading the Kiwaya for a Pono soprano.
The Kiwaya case shown in the photos is for a concert uke - it is too big for the Kiwaya KSL-1 long neck soprano - it works okay, but it really is too big. I used it here to give a nice background to make the ukulele stand out.
The case is way nice and way expensive too, $75 new. But I would sell it with no ukulele in it for $45 shipped to the USA lower 48. Or I would include it with any ukuele you bought for an extra $35.
Thanks again for your offer!
The Kiwaya KSL-1 is still available.
I'm interested in the KSL-1... PM sent.
SALE PENDING on the Kiwaya KSL-1.
I still have a LoPrinzi soprano available made of all solid quilted maple with a spruce top. Comes with locking Fremont hardhshell case.
I be putting up a post for the LoPrinzi soon!


Here's a great deal on a 2016 Toyota Camry. With just over 15,000 miles on the odometer, this 4 door sedan prioritizes comfort, safety and convenience. It features a front-wheel-drive platform, an automatic transmission, and a 2.5 liter 4 cylinder engine. Toyota paid particular attention to efficiency and practicality with the following features: 1-touch window functionality, a tachometer, telescoping steering wheel, power windows, remote keyless entry, cruise control, and a split folding rear seat. Premium sound drives 6 speakers, providing you and your passengers a sensational audio experience. Toyota ensures the safety and security of its passengers with equipment such as: head curtain airbags, front side impact airbags, traction control, brake assist, ignition disabling, and 4 wheel disc brakes with ABS. Various mechanical systems are monitored by electronic stability control, keeping you on your intended path. We have a skilled and knowledgeable sales staff with many years of experience satisfying our customers needs. We'd be happy to answer any questions that you may have. Please don't hesitate to give us a call.


A picking levy of £2.50 + VAT per lot will be charged. Further details in the catalogue.
Advanced search functionality is available for those wanting to narrow focus to specific brands, styles, sizes or colour of product.
Further detail in the catalogue.


You, too, can improve your organization's customer experience 100% with a positive attitude (for free!). My expeirence at the post office.
I used to hate going to the post office. I have had a number of bad experiences and long wait times. I used to say going to the post office was like going to the Department of Motor Vehicles - it's slow, the people are miserable, there's too much paperwork, it gets confusing, and if feels like you just gave a part of your life away after waiting in line (often up to an hour).
This time I had to go to the post office to drop off my tax returns. I, again, was dreading going. I feared the line, the wait, the frustration.
But I had a completely different experience at the post office. Like, 180 degrees different. I was pleasantly surprised and couldn't believe how great it was.
When I walked in, an official (possibly a manager) came over to ask me what I needed. I told him I wanted to send my package certified mail. He pointed out the form on the counter and told me what to do. I was a little confused at all of the help (I'm not used to this at the post office. This was a new experience). The postmaster (I think that was who it was) let me borrow his pen so I could complete the form and get in line. I then went to the next open clerk at the counter to send my package.
I was in and out of the post office, successfully sending my envelope, in 10 minutes. In the past, this same task would take me up to 20-30 minutes. It was productive and a positive experience.
All that was a result from a shift in attitude from the management and employees. A positive, energetic attitude costs nothing. This new addition to that USPS location turned into a 100% free upgrade in the customer experience.
To further explain why the experience was so great, I'll use the help of the 10 characteristics of great experiences (it's actually 9 of them with a recent 10).
The customer feels supported. Someone helped me find the right form, complete it and process it. I didn't feel like I was trying to figure out what to do alone. Someone was available to help me. Actually, many people were available to help me. Sometimes in business, we think that automating knowledge (putting it online in a knowledgebase or FAQ) is the solution for assistance. It can help, but especially for in-person and live environments, this doesn't help. Having a person available to answer questions makes a world of difference. The challenge at the USPS was always that the person who could help was at the counter. That didn't help productivity and caused long lines. Having someone available before the counter helped customers to be prepared before the counter. Now I could see a postal clerk prepared with me ready to pay.
The customer doesn't feel pressured. I did feel a little pressured when I came in because I wasn't used to getting so much help at the post office. However, they didn't rush me and let me take my time. I could have decided to choose a different product to send the envelope and I would have gotten help. I felt like I could ask questions or change my mind. It was very liberating.
The customer feels secure and confident in his or her decisions throughout the process. Usually at the post office I'm confused in general - too many forms and products to choose from. The individuals working there helped me make the right decisions through the process. Their confidence and positivity helped me feel confident. It's catchy! I knew they had it under control.
The customer feels that he is experiencing progress - whatever that may mean. I got through the line quickly (there wasn't really a line, so to speak), got to the counter and someone helped me get what was needed. I felt like the process went smoothly and I wasn't held up without a good reason. And I wasn't able to hold myself up in the process either with questions, challenges, or confusion. There was too much help available.
The customer feels a sense of accomplishment for an activity. I sure did when my taxes were on their way to the tax center in less than ten minutes! That was just great!
The customer feels informed - knowing all of the options available and understand that there are choices. I knew what I wanted but I felt like I could ask someone questions and get answers if needed. There wasn't a need that day.
The customer has a pleasant experience with it. Everyone was smiling - how could I not? The postmaster of the location had such a great attitude! So friendly and happy. That alone makes you want to return.
The customer feels it is easy to conduct business with this company. I typically find the post office difficult to deal with because of the lines and the wait. And if I ask a question, I didn't always get great advice. Until this time. They gave great help!
Always exceed your customers' expectations. That day, they more than exceeded my expectations. I'd say the post office reset my expectations. Now I know a great experience is possible and that I can return to that post office for a positive one. The only problem is that they have now set the bar so high, I am curious what the experience will be like round 2. If it's the same, in some ways, they have exceeded my expectations. When you experience something once, that's a fluke. When you experience something twice, that's a standard. I look forward to learning if this is the case.
Again, a significant experience upgrade can be made for free just from a shift in attitude. They created a great experience by being helpful with a smile. It's amazing how far positivity can go. Maybe I need to go buy more stamps?


Original silkscreen on a NYC Bike, Subway maps, and canvases: "David Bowie.".
Original handmade silkscreen: "David Bowie". Part of new collection: "Give Peace A Chance."
I love this piece! David Bowie is everything to me that is style, music, and New York.


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New rule!
They've changed the VAT rules. The change comes in on January 1, 2015. I found out about it today, so I have just two days to make the changes. As you can imagine, I'm more than somewhat annoyed.
Maybe the vatman sent me an email to tell me about it. I get so many emails purporting to be from HMRC, of which the majority are scam/spam/malware pretending to be from HMRC. And the ones that really are from HMRC are always so long and complicated ... and irrelevant.
So maybe they "told me". But I don't think they did. And our accountant didn't mention it, and our bookkeeper didn't know. So how did I find out?
The bridge web site that ladysolly uses is having to close membership in order to make the changes, they put up a notice, she told me, and I found out the details on the web.
Go read it. The big change is, if you're supplying "digital services" (and who isn't these days?) then when someone in the UK sells to someone in Germany, under the old rules, you paid VAT in the UK at the UK rate (20%). Under the new rules, you pay at the rate that applies in the customer's country. Yes. Vat is no longer 20%, it's 28 different rates, most of which are more than 20%. My first thought was, they've found a really good way to make life for a small business 28 times more difficult.
I don't want subsidies. I don't want business advice. I don't even want to avoid paying the tax that I should rightfully be paying. But I do wish that governments (including the EU) should BLOODY WELL STOP TRIPPING US OVER.
Them and the banks. Again, it's not that they're trying to be a nuisance, but the card companies are caught between the desire to make credit cards more secure (which makes them more difficult to use) and the desire to make them easy to use (which makes them less secure) and they keep making changes which reflect this tug-of-war.
On calmer consideration, I decided that maybe it wasn't that bad. I need to track, for 28 different countries, how much I've billed to each. I've always asked customers what country they're in (because non-EU countries don't pay VAT, so I needed to know if they were EU or not). So now I have to add to my software, something that tracks the billing in each of those 28 countries. It's not as hard as it sounds; each time I do a billing, I'll output a line to a file "mosslog.txt" with the date, exchange rate, and the billing amount for each country. Then, once per quarter, I can pull that into a spreadsheet, get 28 totals, and then I know how much I sold in each country. Plus, I'll do a paper copy each day, which will act as an audit trail.
So then, either I register for VAT in each EU country (you must be joking) or use the VAT Mini One Stop Shop (MOSS), which lets me use a single web site to tell it about all the 28 amounts. It sounds fairly simple to use (but until I've actually used it, I can't be sure).
You can register for VAT MOSS here.
If you're using a commercial package for your accounts, maybe you're already covered. But since most people are using some third party software for billing customers cards, and a different third party's software for their accounts and VAT, there's a fair chance that this new rule has fallen between A) the card billing software, which knows what country is being billed and B) the VAT software, which doesn't.
And you have until January 1, 2015, to get this sorted out.
... update ...
I've done the software, it wasn't too bad, because I'm already identifying the customer's country. As well as updating this new "mosslog.txt" file, I'm also outputting the 28 numbers onto the paper printout, so there's an audit trail that could be checked.
Then I tried to register for VAT MOSS. It's a great name, but the web site isn't so great. I logged in with my usual VAT id, and it took me to a place where I could sign up for MOSS, but when I tried to fill in the form, it wouldn't accept a starting date before 1/1/2015. Or after. So I called their support line.
As you can imagine, they have a huge number of callers right now, and as you can imagine, a large number of staff are on holiday. So after holding for a very long time, I eventually talked to a guy who told me that I'd gone to the wrong place (although it was the place that the web site led me to, and it did promise to register me for MOSS). He got me to take another route, and told me that they were getting a lot of people with this problem. So I thanked him, and started filling in that form.
And guess what? I got a lot further, but it *really* didn't like me giving the date of 1/1/2015. So I phoned again for technical support, and since it was 16:30, after waiting another long time, the lady at the help desk couldn't help because there was no-one technical there now. But she did take my phone number, and said I'd be called back within a week.
A week?
And I might not be here. She suggested I give a mobile number, but if I'm in the middle of some muddy field, I can't be talked through registering a MOSS form. And anyway, this is supposed to be starting on January 1 2015. I pointed that out, but she already knew that. And there's nothing she could do.
So far, it's taken me about as long to try to register for MOSS VAT as it has to write the software for it. And I might actually be registered because I made some uneducated guesses, but who knows?
4613 errors
My drive monitor just reported 4613 errors on one of my servers. Investigation revealed several problems.
1) The raid array had "dropped out", and couldn't be accessed. That was generating all the errors.
2) Another drive was away with the fairies, and I still don't know why.
and after I rebooted ...
3) A third drive was reporting that it was a zero gigabyte drive. This is a known problem with Seagate 1tb drives (and others).
I gave that third drive the usual treatment for this problem, but it didn't fix it, so that drive has joined my pile of drives for putting in geocaches, and has been replaced. The second drive decided to return to the land of the living, and the raid worked again after a reboot, and just needs a good fscking to get it back into action.
The drive that is now pushing up daisies, was one of my backups. I think I described my backup system in another blog post; this is the backup that is done on the 11th to the 20th of each month. So all I need to do, is redo that backup, and the server will be ready for full use again.
I survived Christmas
Day one, at the parent's of daughter.2's squeeze. They had some very nice nibbles to start with, including my favourite cashew nuts, followed by a main meal of turkey and stuffing. Not one, but two turkeys! And I got a leg, my favourite. I drive there, ladysolly drove back, so I was able to get a few drinks down me, including a very nice mulled wine - several glasses!
Day two at daughter.1. She also made ... guess what. And it was also good, but even better, it was acompanied by piping hot pigs in blankets, which I love. Also parsnips, brussels, stuffing, roast potatoes and peas. Yum!
I drove there, carefully avoiding all known shopping centers, which meant that the satnav couldn't be used, because Madge doeesn't know about avoiding the Boxing Day shopping frenzy. We went down the M40 then the A40, but then cleverly diverted at Hangar Lane around the North Circular. Not so cleverly, ladysolly bade me go South, then after I'd committed to that, she changed her mind. "North". Doing u-turn on the North Circular isn't recommended, but I soon found a place to change direction. Then, after we were heading the right way (clockwise), she told me to turn off to the right (which, of course, meant leaving the road on a leftward lane, but I can cope with that). What I couldn't cope with, is that she told me to turn just a few seconds after we passed the turn-off. So we went quite a long way further before I could get off. After that, I let Madge do the navigating, and she did it very well.
But we arrived in good time, and the pigs in blankets made up for everything.
Christmas is a time of giving, and I got given socks, gloves, a fake pine cone (that will feature in a forthcoming cache), a boot scraper which will see a lot of use in future, I don't know why we didn't think of getting one before. And a welding kit (160 amp transformer, helmet, gloves, breathing mask) because I have a fancy to learn how to weld, since I've found soldering to be so useful.
And a mountain of books.
I prefer the paper sort of book. It's partly because I like the feel of a book, and partly because it's easier to organise physical books than kindle-stuff. Also, I can give my second hand books to other people, which I don't think you can do with e-books.
But, of course, paper books require physical storage. Last time we moved, I was persuaded to give away my huge book collection to charity, but I've built up another huge collection since then. Many of them are on shelves, but there's also several piles. A pile is about 50 books on their sides, on top of each other, leaning against a wall and against other piles. The spines face out, so I can see what's where. It's all pretty stable, although not completely - I was woken in the middle of the night a few months ago by an almighty crash. My first thought was "House fallen down!", my second was "did I just fall out of bed?" but then I put on the light, and there were books all over the floor. A pile had toppled, and taken two other piles with it.
So anyway. "Books unread" are in a special place, on three shelves. And what's very nice now, is that I have more "books unread" than is room for on those three shelves.
I thought I'd better tell you, in case you hadn't noticed. Ladysolly and I will be spending Christmas sponging off our daughters.
Reigate ramble
I was out today with Ladysolly. We did a circuit of 17 caches "Outwood Bound" of which we found 16. another nine extras brought us up to 25 for the day.
The circuit was very muddy, with very soft ground, and lots of difficult stiles. I recommend NOT trying to take a bike round this!
For lunch, I had a M&S Christmas sandwich - that was also very good.
Aynho adventure
I went out caching today - the weather was clear and bright. But there was still plenty of mud.
I did the COYQ series, where the caches are named after people I've never heard of., and the theme is something I know nothing about. Still, a cache is a cache!
I also tried to do Alpha Quest W, which is part of a very old series that I've done quite a few of. I had the Westing for the cache, but not the Northing, and the cache with the Northing info is currently unavailable. But I thought I might be able to find it with just the Westing. And I could get to it with just a small diversion from the circuit I was on.
I think I was in the right place - there was a really splendid view, which many of the logs had noted. And there was an arable field next to it. But although I spent half an hour there, I couldn't find it.
I finished the circuit at 3pm, got back to the car and had lunch, which was a Tesco Christmas Sandwich, and I can really recommend that. The also offer a really good deal on mince pies, and I was terribly tempted, but managed to resist - Christmas is going to add several pounds as it is.
By the time I got out again, it was getting dark. I tried to find another cache, and then another, but both defeated me, it was getting dark and it was really cold, so I decided to call it a day, go home and give the bike a bath.
SportsDirect do some great gear. I buy a lot of my clothes from them, because most of my clothes are for going out caching, and they don't need to be fashionable. Or good quality. Or even mediocre quality. Actually, their underpants are excellent, and they do trainers with velcro fasteners (and so easy to put on and off) that last for maybe a year, but as they cost £7.50, I'm happy.
In my last order, I also bought a mug. SportsDirect do these big, bold pint mugs (that's the proper 20 ounce pint, not the puny US 16 ounce pints) that are ideal for a nice mug of coffee. The last one I had got broken - ladysolly says the handle just came off in her hand.
The mug duly arrived ... broken. Or rather, so badly chipped around the rim as to be unusable. The reason for this was twofold. A) it hadn't been packed very well, just a little bit of bubblewrap. And B) it was delivered by Yodel.
I sincerely believe that Yodel is the worst delivery company in the UK, and they must be in the running for world leadership. They arrived while I was out, but ladysolly was in. She knew they had arrived, because she saw a torch being flashed around. They didn't ring the bell, nor did they plan to. I think they were just going to toss the parcel over the gates. But even without that toss, the mug was history.
So I told SportsDirect. Their rules seem to say that I have to return the entire order (12 pairs underpants, two pair shoes, one mug) for it to be replaced. But that's surely nonsense, I thought, and I explained about the badly chipped mug, and offered to email them a picture of it. Because do they really want a large parcel of perfectly good underpants back? And a chipped mug?
They didn't. They've emailed me to say that a replacement is on the way.
Three cheers for SportsDirect!!!
Tottering round Totternhoe
Biking, actually. And after that, I did Dunstable. Then on to the BBH event, which was great fun, especially the Shaving of the Beard, and then I did a couple of FTFs with Jeff Bones.
40 caches done today, including one that ladysolly and I had DNFed a few months ago, which is always satisfying.
And I got very muddy, of course, and the bike will have to have a bath. But I got home quite late, so that will have to wait until tomorrow.
Repeating keys
I use a lovely old IBM model M keyboard, made in 1984 and still going strong. I like it because the keys use "buckling spring" technology, which makes them very clicky and positive. Many people agree that these are the best keyboards ever made. I have five of them, so I don't expect to ever use an inferior keyboard. I also have an original IBM PC keyboard, plus an adapter so that I can use it on modern computers.
But there's always a shadow in heaven. Occasionally, one of the keys seems to stick, and I get a letter repeating indefinitely. This isn't the fault of the keyboard, I think, because the key isn't actually sticking. But my computer thinks it is. And I finally decided to do something about it.
To set keyboard delay, the linux command is
kbdrate -d 1000
That didn't seem to do anything. So I had a think, and I decided that it was X windows that needed fixing, and I did
xset r rate 1000 30
which tell is to wait 1000 milliseconds with a key held down before repeating, and then repeat at 30 characters per second.
And I think that's fixed it!
Wandering around Welwyn
Today, ladysolly and I went to Welwyn to do a series called "Ellie's Wanderings". It was a fine day, no wind, bright sunshine but pretty cold.
We arrived at 12:30 with the coffee and sandwiches we'd stopped off for - I had the M&S Chrismas sandwich, and I can greatly recommend it. We set off at 1:30.
For the first cache, I was about to cross the river when ladysolly suggested that it might be on this side, behind a tree she pointed to, and she was right.
For the second cache, we hunted for a long time, but eventually gave up. However, after we finished the circuit, we went back for another try, and this time ladysolly found it.
Most of the caches were interesting - no piles of sticks. And I hopped over a gate to the Roman Bath cache (they're open from January to November ... but not December. I really wanted this cache, though, because it's so close to the motorway. Caches close to the motorway annoy me as I speed along, knowing that there's no way I can stop to pick them up.
So we wound up with 11 caches done today, and a very nice day out.
Henley Regatta
I only once attended the Henley Royal Regatta, and that was by accident. I was caching in that area, and if I'd known that the Regatta was happening that day, I'd have given it a wide berth, because it made parking impossible, and even moving around in the area was made difficult. And even in a field a coule of miles away, I could hear the booming noise pollution of what I guess was some sort of commentary.
A couple of years ago, I got a spam inviting me to attend. I was really surprised that an organisation as august as HRR would stoop so low as to spam. Actually, it wasn't HRR, it was someone selling tickets to their event, on their behalf. I complained to HRR, and the took suitable action with the spammer.
Today, it happened again. Charming Events sent me this miscapitalised email:
Your VIP hospitality package will include: Admission to Temple Island Enclosure River cruise for one and a half hours
with Pimms, Bucks Fizz and soft drinks served on board (optional) Morning coffee on arrival Champagne, Pimms and canape
reception Four course luncheon Fine wines, port and brandy Traditional afternoon tea with strawberries and cream
Complimentary bar throughout the day including Champagne Official programme (one per two guests) Floral decorations
Colour television within the chalet Reserved car parking, just yards from your chalet Live 'official regatta race
commentary' Riverside jazz band featuring morning and afternoon Specialist Hostesses in attendance.
The Specialist Hostesses sound good - I wonder what they specialise in? But even so, I'd pay good money to get out of having to attend. Fortunately, I can not-attend for free.
So I contacted HRR again, to tell them about this latest spam. Curiously, although HRR have a web site, they don't give a contact email address. So I emailed their Press office (for which I did find an email address) to tell them about this article.
I spoke to HRR. Apparently, this is nothing to do with them. They don't own the whole river, and some people hold events on the same date as HRR. And the guy at HRR, seemed to think there wasn't much he could do. "They even claim to be linked to us", he said. And they do - the email is entitled "Henley Regatta - The best hospitality" and headed with "Henley Royal Regatta Temple Island Enclosure".
So I explained to him A) about spam, and that they should hit them with that, and B), more importantly, that this looks to me to be very like "Passing off", where one company tries to hijack another company's brand. The use of the phrases "Henley Regatta" and "Henley Royal Regatta" certainly made me think that they were associated.
So I wished him luck in pursuing this.
Facebook password change
I got this email:
Your Facebook password was been reset on Friday, December 12, 2014 at 03:36PM (UTC) due to suspicious activity of your account.
IP address: 214.127.120.199
Estimated location: Bluff, UT, US
To restore the password complete this form please, your request will be
considered within 24 hours.
The Facebook Security Team
Facebook, Inc., Attention: Department 425, PO Box 10005, Palo Alto, CA 94303
It is, of course, a scam. The link they give to click on leads to howardrobbinsconstruction.com, and I rather doubt that this is a URL used by the Facebook Security Team.
I think most email clients don't bother to tell you where a link goes. I use Pine, and it does.
This kind of scam is called "Phishing". I first encountered it on AOL some 20 years ago; people would send an IM that was trying to get your password by pretending to be coming from AOL.
It works, of course. Not on everyone, obviously, but it works on the gullible. It works on people with more faith than reason. It works on people who think that everything is what it says it is.
If more mail clients told you where a link is taking you *before* you click on it, phishing would be a lot less profitable. Am I wishing for the moon?
Repowering the robot arm
I wanted to put the pi that controls the robot arm, onto the relays I've set up. But the distance from the relays to the pi is more than allowed by the rules, more than five meters.
But what are rules for, if not to be broken? The problem I had before, was that the voltage drop between the relay and the Pi was too great, so the Pi wouldn't work. And the reason for that, is that USB wires are very fine, they aren't expecting to be used over more than five meters.
So I made my own. I'm using bell wire (a pair of single code copper wires, but a lot thicker than USB wire). I soldered the female to a strip of metal, soldered a few inches of multicore to the positive and to the negative connectors, and put a terminal block on the end of that. Then I did the same for the male, except without the strip of metal. Then I ran a long length of bell wire from one to the other, and I was ready.
I connected this up to the relays at one end, and to the Pi at the other, and it works fine. But the Pi also has a relay controller, and that won't work with the small amount of current it can get from the Pi, so I'll give it a power supply from the relay box. To do that, I've ordered a USB splitter cable, so I don't have to run a second wire from the power source.
Mud, mud, glorious mud ...
I went out today to the north-east, hoping to avoid rain. It rained as I drove up the M11, but I didn't get rained on while I was caching.
I did get mudded on, though.
The worst part was when I followed a track across a little bridge; it should then have taken me along the side of a field. The problem was, the farmer had recentlyscooped out his ditch, and the scooped-out mud was lying along where I would be going - thick, brown and gooey.
Cleverly, I decided not to cross the bridge, but to go along on the wrong side of the ditch, where it wasn't thick, brown and gooey. that worked well for about 100 meters, but then I couldn't go any further, and I had to cross the ditch. It would have been a difficult ditch to cross on foot - the ditch was deep, the sides were steep and the mud, although gooey, was also slippery. Getting across with a heavy electric bike was a nightmare. I pretty much had to throw it across, then scramble after it.
And the nightmare wasn't over - I was right about the terrible difficulty of making progress over that mud - I had to pretty much carry the bike, and that's about 80 pounds. Eventually, I got to a place where I could progress over grass ... except that the grass was soft and squidgy, and had been very badly torn about by horses hooves.
I covered about 9 miles today, and a couple of those were on foot, either carrying or dragging the bike. My elbow hurts (I think I strained it a week or so ago, but I thought it had mended) and my back hurts.
But ladysolly has promised me a hot dinner, so I'm still good.
And here's the hippopotamus song.
Disk drive diversions
The problem when you put 15 drives in one computer, is that it's 15 times as likely to develop a bad drive. But that takes up a lot less space and electricity than 15 computers, so that's why I do it. I have a drive monitor on each computer that reports back to my central monitor system when drives are looking bad.
Last night, my drive monitor reported that drive sde on Dovda wasn't quite right. I left it till the next day to look into it. The drive sde (on a raid array md0) had "dropped out". I don't really know what this means, it's an expression I use when a drive stops responding. The fix is to power-cycle the computer; this resets the drive and it's OK ... until it does it again at some time in the future.
So that's what I did for Dovda. And when I ran the SMART drive check, only 14 drives responded. "Oh rats," I thought, the power cycle didn't do the trick. But on more careful examination, it had. The drive that wasn't working was sdi. A couple more reboots didn't help, so I got Dovda onto the work bench, opened it up and booted with a monitor connected. The problem was immediately obvious; drive sdi was showing up with zero gigabytes. Not a big problem, I have two separate backups of this, but I'd rather not replace the drive unless I have to.
This is a known problem with Seagate drives, it's called the "Seagate 0 LBA" problem. I've had it a few times, it happens, I think, after you start up the drive 256 times. Or something like that, I never really tried to understand it, because it seems to only happen with 1tb Seagates, and I stopped buying those several years ago, the standard is 6tb now. Here's Seagate's explanation.
There's a fix for it. You have to connect to the serial port on the hard drive, from the serial port on a computer. I have a little PCB with the necessary wires to do this, and you run Minicom, 38400,N,8,1 and type in a series of commands. This resets something inside the firmware, and the drive then starts working again. So I did it, and it worked, except that when previously it knew that it had 89 bad sectors and had mapped them out, now it thought there were zero bad sectors, and that sounds like trouble for me in future. Oh well, it's "good enough", so I started the computer up again.
This time, it recognised all 15 drives, hurrah! But the raid array wouldn't start up, it was telling me that drive sde was unsuitable. Huh? It was perfectly suitable before. I tried re-creating the raid drive, but that didn't work either. So I had a bit of a think, and a bit of a google, and eventually realised that there was already a raid running that called itself md127 using that drive (and two others). So this is an example of a misleading error message. Where did md127 come from? Heaven knows.
This happens far too much for my liking. The software has realised that something is wrong, but has misdiagnosed the problem. It's difficult to write the logic for diagnosing errors, because it's very difficult to test. So I just changed all references to md0 in my startup for Dovda, to md127, and it worked ... nearly.
Now I'd finally got back to the original problem. The file system on the raid was in an inconsistent state, and it needed to be fscked. So I fscked it, and then everything was OK.
The only atheist in the restaurant
I am, as you might have noticed, an atheist. I used to be agnostic, but then I realised that if I were agnostic about all the things that can't be proved false, then I'd still be harbouring doubts about the Zeus, Jupiter and the Tooth Fairy.
But when it comes to food, I'm definitely jewish; Ashkenazi jewish. Chopped liver. Chicken soup with lockshen. Roast chicken, salt beef, chrane, kneidlach, latkes ... I better stop now before I start drooling. Oh, and bacon sandwiches, of course.
So when ladysolly suggested we have dinner at Nandos, I had a counter-suggestion - Reubens. We had our "Class of 59" reunion there a couple of weeks ago, and I was keen to go back.
They were full, of course, and we hadn't booked. But there was space upstairs, in the self-service area, so we went there. And we got waiter service anyway!
I started off with lockshen soup with kneidlach. I didn't find out that the Italians had laid claim to noodles until I was past my teens, I always thought it was jewish food.
This is a hearty chicken soup, hot and filling, a meal in itself. Indeed ...
I was in California, where you'll find many weird people, and I was taken to a nice restaurant, and they had lockshen soup on the menu, and I ordered that for a starter. Then the waiter came back and asked about main courses. The soup had been so good, I ordered lockshen soup as my main course. He was a bit surprised, asked if I was sure, which I was.
When he came back for the desert, I could not resist the temptation. I ordered lockshen soup for desert. He looked at me, moggiedawed, as if to say "This isn't happening". But it was, I repeated my request, and got what I wanted. They're not really weird in California. They don't know from real weird.
So with the lockshen soup done, I moved on to the next course - chopped liver. Ladysolly can't stand chopped liver, I don't know why. She doesn't like the smell, I don't think she's ever got as far as the taste. Chopped liver has all the taste of liver (which ladysolly doesn't like either), plus more, because they add onion, and a little egg, and I don't know what else, am I a chef?
A good portion, with rye bread on the side. When we go to my sister or ladysolly's brother for Seder, I always overdose on the chopped liver. And ladysolly gets it sometimes in a shop she know in Ricky. But you can never have too much chopped liver. This chopped liver was light, moist and delicious. We got some as a takeaway afterwards, for lunch the next day.
Then on to the main course. Ladysolly had roast chicken, which you can get anywhere, plus a mediterranean salad, which you can get anywhere.
I had salt beef.
Salt beef sandwiches are ambrosia; you can get excellent ones at the Brass Rail at Selfridges. You used to be able to get them at Harrods, but Harrods closed their salt beef bar, which is why we don't go to Harrods any more. And Blooms, sadly, is no more. Occasionally, I come across a place that does salf beef sandwiches, and I make a note, and visit as soon as possible,
But I didn't have sandwiches, I just had a salt beef platter, because with that, you can easily justify ordering ...
Latkes.
The finest destiny for a potato is to be made into latkes, and these latkes were large, fluffy and crispy. And piping hot, which is good because it forces you to eat them slowly and carefully. These are so large, you only get one in a portion. So I ordered two.
With the salt beef and latkes, I had a little chrane, which is horseradish and beetroot, an unlikely pairing, you might have thought, but in practice it works very well.
And so to desert. Tempted as I was by the thought of another round of chicken soup, I went all conventional. The choice was between lockshen pudding ...
... which is a confection made of lockshen, sultanas, cinnamon and I don't know what else, am I a cook? Or else I could have strudel
I was torn between them, and was tempted by the compromise that would be "both", but not wanting ladysolly to think me greedy, I plumped for strudel. Which was gorgeous.
And then we walked to Marylebone station and got the train home.
My irony meter broke
Dennis Higgins, a Catholic priest, told the children of St Thomas More's school that Father Christmas isn't real.
This is so wrong, it isn't even wrong. And my irony meter just went "spong!".
He's telling a bunch of children too young to be able to apply critical thinking, that their invisible friend isn't real, but that his invisible friend is real. I'm tempted to visit his church and tell his parishoners that Higgins' invisible friend isn't real either. Tempted ... but I won't do it, because they probably won't believe me.
And the children of St Thomas More's school didn't believe Higgins.
This is a common meme. You often get reports in newspapers of christians saying that Father Christmas doesn't exist, although you rarely get newspaper reports of atheists saying that the christian god doesn't exist. I've tried, in my small way, to rectify this by posting on the Dennis Higgins support facebook page.
But I think that Father Christmas fills a valuable role. Apart form bringing the presents, that is. He's the first time that children meet the fact that their parents lie to them, firmly and consistently, about something of great importance. It teaches them to doubt the existence of invisible friends, just on the say-so of people in authority.
Not enough volts
I tried to connect the second Pi to my new Pi controller. But this one is several yards from the controller. So I used a length of USB cable to carry the power. I used two five meter lengths.
When I tried to run the Pi, I got some very variable results. Sometimes the ethernet worked, sometimes it didn't. Sometimes the keyboard worked, sometimes it didn't. I messed around with it for ages. I even reloaded the operating system. No joy. So I went to bed.
Sometimes, to solve a problem you have to stop working on it. It came to me, in the night, as it were, that the problems were all to do with the USB (on a Pi, the USB and the ethernet are intimately linked at the hardware level). So I thought, maybe the Pi has become faulty, maybe change the Pi for another one and see if that works? But then I had another thought.
The Pi wants five volts. It can cope with a bit less or a bit more, but if it's a lot less then it's not happy. I measured the voltage on the Pi, and it was 4.05 volts, and that definitely isn't enough.
So I messed around with the cable a bit, and instead of using two five meter lengths, I got it down to one. I measured the voltage again - 4.5 volts. And that seems to be enough.
So if your Pi is acting foolishly, measure the voltage at the TP1 and TP2 points.
A sea of mud
I went out caching today. I've done a lot of Izaak Walton's caches, he's the most prolific cache setter in the UK. Or rather he was - apparently, he's retired.
As a tribute to his efforts, MarcusMaximi has set up "The Izaak Wilson Memorial Series ... and Back!". This is a reference to the fact that all of Isaak's series were "Somewhere and back". The cache page says "A 6 mile walk over mud". He's not wrong about the mud, and although I brought home quite a lot of it, there's still plenty left.
The problem for me, is that it was the sort of mud that sticks to the bike tires, clogs up the wheel and stops it from rotating. Which means that travering that sea of mud is very tough work.
I found a nice patch of grass at the side of the road for parking (that's why I like having a 4WD, it means I can be fairly sure of being able to get off the grass afterwards). And I started to get the bike ready.
Just as I was doing that, Spindlewood turned up, a pair of cachers I've often seen in these parts. We talked a bit, and they pressed on, and I continued to prep the bike. By the time I was ready to roll, they were well out of sight.
I had two problems. I've recently fitted a new rear rack, and one of the bolts is too long, and it fouls the chain when I'm in top gear. So I spent the day avoiding top gear. I'll fix that, it's not a big prpoblem. The other problem I had, is that my PDA refused to work. However, I take two PDAs, in case of this sort of problem, so I just switched to the spare.
So off I went. The caches were going nicely, until I got to number five. The coords were well out, and I couldn't find the hint item; after a long search I gave up. But later on, I caught up with Spindlewood, and asked them about this cache,and they gave me details that meant I was able to find it later. Actually, all I'd needed to do was stand up and look around me - I'd gotten fixated on a hedge. So I made a radical revision to the route, so that I could pass that cache again and sign the log.
After finishing that series, I had lunch in the car, then set off on the bike to Great Gidding, sto do several more caches. I got back to the car at about 16:00, but I was so cold by then (and I was seeing some drizzle) that I decided to go home.
39 caches done today, no DNFs.
I looked at one of the many marketing letters I get on its swift and painless journey to my waste paper bin, and I noticed that it had a PS.
PS is short for "post scriptum" (I have the Latin). It works like this. You write a long and interesting letter, sign it at the bottom, and then realise that there's something important you forgot to say. So you put "PS" and add this at the bottom, rather that rewrite the entire letter with the information included. Back in the days when letters were written by hand (with a fountain pen, remember those?) this made a lot of sense.
It makes no sense when you're using a computer.
It makes even less sense when we're talking about a carefully designed and thought out marketing letter. What, you realised at the last minute that you'd forgotten to say something?
So why a PS?
It's because the marleting people think you're more likely to read that.
I resent this - I'm being played for a punter. So - new rule - anything that has a PS at the bottom got straight into the waste paper bin. Or if it's an email (and yes, I've seen emails with a PS), into the bit bucket.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Clean cut, pristine, classy and bold. These are the perfect ways of describing our Serrato Range. The Cubic nature of the range with soft and smooth curves, leaves this range looking very charismatic and will adorn any bathroom. This exclusive concealed shower mixer will allow the valve to be mixed with a single water outlet, best with a shower head or handset. The Shower Mixer is easy to operate, finished with a Ceramic Disc Technology Lever. The mixer is extremely resistant, manufactured from the highest quality materials the Serrato Shower Mixer will feel like luxury at your fingertips.


text:
package org.batfish.grammar.question;

import org.batfish.common.BatfishException;

public enum VariableType {
   ACTION,
   INT,
   IP,
   PREFIX,
   RANGE,
   REGEX,
   ROUTE_FILTER,
   SET_INT,
   SET_IP,
   SET_PREFIX,
   SET_ROUTE_FILTER,
   SET_STRING,
   STRING;

   public static VariableType fromString(String typeStr) {
      switch (typeStr) {
      case "set<route_filter>":
         return SET_ROUTE_FILTER;
      case "set<ip>":
         return SET_IP;

      case "set<prefix>":
         return SET_PREFIX;

      case "set<string>":
         return SET_STRING;

      case "set<int>":
         return SET_INT;

      case "action":
         return ACTION;

      case "int":
         return INT;

      case "ip":
         return IP;

      case "prefix":
         return PREFIX;

      case "range":
         return RANGE;

      case "regex":
         return REGEX;

      case "route_filter":
         return ROUTE_FILTER;

      default:
         throw new BatfishException("Invalid variable type string: \""
               + typeStr + "\"");
      }

   }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Gavin Clarkson announces run for U.S. Senate
Hannah Grover
FARMINGTON — Gavin Clarkson hopes to take experience he gained while working for President Donald Trump's administration and use it to draft legislation.
Clarkson announced plans to run for the U.S. Senate today. He will run as a pro-life candidate who supports Trump's immigration policies.
The Las Cruces resident visited Farmington the evening before making his announcement. He teased the announcement during a Tax Day Rally Monday hosted by the Republican Party of San Juan County at Farmington Museum at Gateway Park.
"If you're going to run statewide for a federal office, you've got to run statewide," he told the audience at the rally.
Clarkson will run for the seat being vacated by Democratic Sen. Tom Udall. He is the second candidate — and first Republican — to announce plans to run for Udall's seat. U.S. Rep. Ben Ray Lujan, D-NM, announced his candidacy shortly after Udall announced he would not run for reelection.
Clarkson, who is a member of the Choctaw Nation, formerly served in the Department of the Interior. He came in third in a four-way race for the Republican nomination for the Second Congressional District seat in 2018. Afterward he became the Republican nominee for Secretary of State.
He said he already has two pieces of legislation he wants to introduce: a tax plan he said would create a $2 billion stimulus for New Mexico without raising taxes, and one that eliminates telework requirements for federal workers.
During the rally, Clarkson spoke about undocumented immigrants crossing the border in the southern part of the state and expressed support for Trump's policies.
He said immigrants should be funneled toward the ports of entry so they can legally enter the country.
Clarkson says platform is economic expansion, empowerment and immigration enforcement
After speaking during the rally, Clarkson said his number one focus will be jobs. He said his platform will be economic expansion, empowerment and enforcement.
In terms of expansion, Clarkson said he wants to reduce regulations that make it hard for businesses in New Mexico.
Clarkson also spoke about the importance of the coal industry in the Four Corners.
"The religious fervor to go after the coal industry is irresponsible," he said.
He said he supports investing in technology to make coal-fired power plants cleaner.
When it comes to empowerment, he said he wants to empower young women so they do not seek abortions.
In terms of enforcement, Clarkson said he wants better enforcement of immigration policies at the border. He said he is not anti-immigrant, highlighting that his wife is an immigrant who came to the United States legally.
During the rally he spoke out against asylum fraud.
"I do not fault people for wanting to come here because they want to earn money to take care of their family," he said during the rally. "Every parent wants to do that. But you don't have to commit asylum fraud to do that."
Hannah Grover covers government for The Daily Times. She can be reached at 505-564-4652 or via email at hgrover@daily-times.com.
Read More New Mexico Politics:
Luján announces bid for US Senate
Toulouse Oliver again shoots down gun law referendum petition
Udall will not seek reelection in 2020


text:
Home Food Avoid these foods for kidney health
Avoid these foods for kidney health
Vikram Deo
Foods for kidney health
Kidneys are bean-shaped organs that perform vital functions. They filter the blood and expel waste as urine from the system. They also assist in hormone production and the balancing of minerals and body fluids. But they can also get damaged, and hence eating foods for kidney health is very important. When the organ malfunctions, it leads to fluid and waste build up in the blood.
What is renal diet?
Avocados: not a part of renal diet
Dark-colored sodas have additives
Canned items: harmful foods for kidney health
Whole wheat bread has avoidable substances
Bananas are not the best foods for kidney health
Dairy products: not the best foods for kidney health
Brown rice is not best for you
Apricots are full of potassium
Processed meats are unhealthy
Packaged meals: bad foods for kidney health
Pickled items have excess salts
The associated risk factors and diseases include high BP and diabetes. Kidney problems can be chronic and reach an end or late-stage with renal failure. So, the patients have to limit their intake of sodium, potassium, phosphorus, and proteins. Phosphorus intake has to be less than 800 mg to 1000 mg per day, while sodium and potassium limits per day are 2000 mg.
Avocado is a pear-shaped, versatile fruit with many nutrients. It looks enticingly green and has fats, fibers, vitamin E, and anti-oxidants. But the avocado is also an incredibly rich source of potassium. Just one cup or 150 g of the fruit has a whopping 727 mg of potassium. Those on a renal diet have to restrict their intake of this salt. So, you have to avoid it along with related dishes like guacamole.
The calorie-rich drinks are sweet, sugary, and popular. But their darker varieties have unhealthy additives like phosphorus. The manufacturers add it to the beverage for flavor, color, and longer shelf life. But unlike the natural phosphorus, this additive does not bind to the protein. It gets excessively absorbed by the intestinal tract in the form of a salt. Also, 200 ml of dark soda has about 50-100 m of phosphorus content. Hence, such liquids are a definite no-no if you have kidney issues.
See also Tim Hortons Gift Card Balance Check | Gift Card Granny
Inexpensive canned beans, vegetables, and soups are easy to carry. But they also have very high amounts of sodium. The salt is a natural preservative, but it affects those with renal problems. You can avoid these products and stay healthy. Alternatively, limit their consumption or choose cans with "no added salt" or "low sodium." Foods like tuna and beans are best when drained and rinsed to reduce the sodium content by 33% to 80%.
Bread is a part of everyone's diet, and selecting the right variety is very difficult. Healthy consumers prefer whole wheat bread over refined, white flour bread. Yes, whole wheat is nutritious, bran and fiber-rich. But it also has high amounts of salts that are not renal friendly. A bread serving of 1 ounce or 30 g has 57 m of phosphorus and 69 m of potassium. The equivalent amount of white bread has only 28 mg of both. And both these bread varieties have high amounts of sodium as well. So, choose suitable bread after reading the nutrition labels. And restrict the quantity of consumption.
Bananas do not have much sodium, but the potassium content is high. One medium-sized fruit has up to 422 mg of the substance. Please do not make it a part of your staple diet as renal patients can't consume more than 2000 mg of potassium per day. You have to avoid such tropical foods for kidney health. Pineapples are a good alternative as they are more renal-diet friendly.
Milk and dairy items are nutrient-rich and consumed daily by everyone. They are a rich source of calcium and healthy fats. You can build up strong muscles and bones by relying on these foods. But they are not suitable for those who have kidney problems. A 240 ml cup of whole milk has 350 mg of potassium, 222 mg of phosphorus, and 8 mg of protein. These excessive amounts not only damage the kidneys but also weaken the bones. You will also build up protein waste in the body. Try milk extracted from almonds and un-enriched rice instead.
Brown rice, similar to whole-wheat bread, is not suitable for renal patients. A cup of cooked brown rice has 150+ mg of potassium and phosphorus. On the other hand, white rice of the same quantity contributes only 1/3 of these avoidable substances. You can consume brown rice but make sure the intake is moderate and balanced. There are, however, many substitutes like buckwheat, couscous, and pearled barley.
This yellowish-orange stone fruit is good for digestion and eyesight. It also has plenty of fiber, vitamin C, and vitamin A. But apricots have a negative effect on those on a renal diet. A cup of fresh apricots has 427 mg of potassium, and a dried cupful of the fruit provides up to 1500 mg of salt. So, do not consume such foods for kidney health, functioning, and vitality.
The protein-rich foods that come in a can undergo processes for preservation using salts like sodium. Some brands offer dried and cured meat. These processed meats have taste, flavor, and a lot of protein, but renal patients have to monitor their salt and protein intake. They have to exclude bacon, hot dogs, beef or pork jerky, sausage, etc. from their daily diet. If you cannot resist, consume only in moderation.
Packaged foods, instant dishes, and pre-made meals are not healthy for those with and without kidney problems. Noodles, microwave dishes, and frozen pizza are some of the examples of such packaged meals. These highly-processed foods do not even have essential nutrients. Besides, their high sodium content leads to high BP, kidney malfunctioning, and stress.
Processed olives, relish, and pickles are tasty but cured and preserved using sodium. Two tbsp of sweet, pickled relish has 244 mg of sodium. You find more than 300 mg in a single pickled spear or cucumber. Pickled green olives also have 195 mg of sodium. Some stores sell low sodium pickle jars, but you still have to look out for other additives and chemical preservatives that replaced sodium. Watch your portions and limit them in a renal diet.
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This was great publicity for our lecture and we did get a chance to talk about the film with Eugenie today. She is truly worried about its nasty anti-science sentiment portrayed in the film. She mentioned that National Center for Science Education (NCSE) will soon have a website countering some of the propaganda of the film. The problem is that any controversy is good publicity for the ID movement - perhaps after the Dover defeat, these media cheap tricks is the only strategy left for the movement.
In any case, the lecture by Eugenie Scott on "Creationism & Evolution: A Historical Perspective" was great! I will post the video as soon as it is available.


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Oh this girl looked like a doll. And her guy.... Wow. I feel like I always get the Beautiful People when I'm hired to do a Proposal Caricature.
As usual, the man was the one who had hired me to create the picture. So he could use it to propose to his intended. And this time, he made a point to contact me about the ring. To let me know that it's a dark stone surrounded by diamonds. So I used that information to make his Proposal very Clear.
Did you ever notice that the same picture looks different in different settings? That the same clothes look different when you get to the Party than when you're dressing at home? The same attitude looks different in your family's kitchen than at your friends' Party?
Studying my technique. I felt like I would be able to interpret it better if I saw it posted on my blog. Looks different than when I just look at the pictures here on the papers. I want to see if it's really better if I put in the extra steps.
I think it is. So it makes me wonder when clients tell me to cut back on details so they can get More More More papers. I, myself, would rather buy one picture that I'd want to hang up than buy three pictures that I just think are good ideas. Basically the same artwork, the same vision from the same artist. But the extra steps make the pictures better. And here I'm just dealing with black/white.
The first picture is my direct pass ~ just the Caricature. The second picture is the same picture with an Outline added. Better. The third picture is the same picture with the outline and then also a little bit of Shading. Even Better.
A Simple Party. A snowy day. I had parked on a Snowy hill-road. Set up in a small living room.
Nobody too wild. Nothing P A R T A Y !!!! And I was so glad to be there. With those unpretentious people. Their quiet feel made them feel Special in my heart. I'm glad to have these pictures to remember them.


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Home Arts & Culture How a strobe-lit Happy Mondays video captured an era of cultural change
How a strobe-lit Happy Mondays video captured an era of cultural change
Dave Haslam marks thirty years since Wrote For Luck was filmed in a former bomb shelter in Manchester
Dave Haslam
In the 1980s getting videos played on MTV and Channel 4's The Chart Show was an important means to boost a music act's profile and sales.
The video for Wrote For Luck by Happy Mondays, made by a Newcastle-born, Manchester-based duo called the Bailey Brothers, was one of the most significant of the 1980s. It was filmed thirty years ago this week.
Happy Mondays had recorded the album Bummed in 1988's summer of love, as waves of ecstasy and acid house washed through the Hacienda.
Bummed was a collection of great songs more than adequately produced by Martin Hannett, but the feeling at Factory was maybe it didn't reflect the attitudes and rhythms of dance music that were turning the band on in 1988, so a series of remixes was commissioned.
One remix of Wrote For Luck, by Paul Oakenfold, was known as the Think About the Future Remix.
When aspiring film-makers, the Bailey Brothers – Philip Shotton and Keith Jobling – were given the task of making the Wrote For Luck video, they called on the services of Richard Heslop. He'd worked on Derek Jarman's experimental film Imagining October, and directed the video for The Queen Is Dead by the Smiths.
Legend, on Princess Street, was hired for the day and the evening of 19th October 1988. It was a basement club that had once served as a bomb shelter and later became known as 5th Avenue.
Why film the Mondays video at Legend and not the Hacienda? It had just had an upgraded lighting system installed, and the space was more suited to their purposes as well. They didn't need such a big crowd to make the video work.
The Bailey Brothers decided to the shoot the video in an observational documentary style, as if they were filming kangaroos in the outback. The intention was to show the Mondays in their natural habitat. No storyline, nothing forced or stylised.
"We didn't want it to look like a pop video," says Philip.
The Bailey Brothers enjoyed a good relationship with Factory. For one thing, there was never any intervention in the finished video. "It was always the director's cut. Total control. But that's what it was all about wasn't it, with Factory?" says Philip. "It was about making a space for creativity."
Happy Mondays videos cost between six and ten thousand pounds (as a rule of thumb, about a tenth of the New Order video budget).
The idea for the Wrote For Luck video required a crowd of ravers – not actors but genuine people on the scene. A few dozen were invited by rave ace-face Eric Barker.
DJ Dave Rofe was playing the tunes, everyone was dancing, but there was a slight hiatus. Shaun Ryder said he wouldn't move until more ecstasy arrived and kicked in. Dave Rofe played on. Then Shaun was ready, the cameras rolled, and it was all done in two takes.
It's an extraordinary video; a full-on, freaky, psychotropic, anthropological triumph.
Tony Wilson loved it. His Factory Records co-director, Rob Gretton, also responded positively. "I have two words," Rob said. "Sex. Pistols."
There was a sense that a moment of cultural change as great as punk had arrived, and the video had captured that.
After a short discussion about whether the enthusiastic use of strobe lighting in the video would destroy peoples' brains or not, the video was biked over to The Chart Show. The record managed to slide into the independent charts but didn't trouble the Top 100.
Phil Shotton described it to me as "an advert for the scene". It was an era before instant social media could shed light on anything emerging.
Back then, you might hear a rumour or a song or see a photograph, but getting a glimpse of all the elements of a scene, including the visual, lifestyle elements, was rare. That's why the Wrote For Luck video was so important; those few minutes broadcast so many aspects of the acid house revolution, from the associated fashions, to the raggedy dance moves.
In the 1960s, mod fashions, music, and dance moves were transmitted into the nation's living rooms by the TV show Ready, Steady Go.
Similarly, we'd heard the music, but films like Beat Street extended our knowledge of hip hop culture in the early 1980s, showing us breakdancing, DJing and new styles of graffiti.
The Wrote For Luck video was a giant shout in the process of spreading the word. Almost exactly one year later, the world had caught up; the Happy Mondays appeared on Top of the Pops, on the same episode as the Stone Roses, a feast of flares and raggedy dance moves.
Tony Wilson loved the Bailey Brothers. I remember leaving Rob's funeral in 1999 where I'd gone with Philip Shotton. We were walking away down the road. Tony and his girlfriend Yvette were alongside us, but what do you say? We silently shook Tony's hand, and then he looked at Philip. "Let's meet next week, discuss that project."
The remark might not have been as substantial as the circumstances called for, but it was certainly a reflection of the Factory ethos. There's always the next project. Let's crack on. Think about the future.


Rohan is a Scindian with a passion for the outdoors. A trained pilot with a degree in English from Delhi University, Rohan has gone on numerous treks, roamed through various wildlife sanctuaries and wandered across the length and breadth of India. He did the Basic Mountaineering Course(BMC) from HMI Darjeeling where he met Jai and after a short stint at Cohezia Technologies he joined Renok.Rohan believes he is the creative engine at Renok a claim we cannot verify.


Abstract : We study atmospheric wind turbulence in the framework of universal multifractals, using several medium resolution (10 Hz) time series. We cut these original time series into 704 scale invariant realizations. We then compute the moment scaling exponent of the energy flux K(q) for 4 and 704 realizations, in order to study qualitative difference between strong and weak events associated with multifractal phase transitions. We detect a first order multifractal phase transition of the energy flux at statistical moment of order qD ˜ 2.4 ± 0.2: this means that when the number of realizations increases, moments order q =; qD diverge. These results are confirmed by the study of probability distributions, and wind structure functions. A consequence of these findings is that it is no use to compare different cascade models in turbulence by using the high order wind structure functions, because a linear part will always be encountered for high enough order moments. Another important implication for multifractal studies of turbulence is that the asymptotic slope of the scaling moment function is purely a function of sample size and diverges with it; it implies the same for D8, which has often be considered as finite.


The German Panzer V Panther was probably the best 'battlefield' tank during WW2. It was lighter than a Tiger, faster, more mobile with better sloped front armour and a deadly gun that could penetrate more armour than the Tiger's 88mm gun.
This looks like an excellent kit from Hobby Boss, highly detailed with many parts. The tracks are individual links and the model includes a Zimmerit (Pre cut to shape) coating and photo etch metal grills.


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Black Swan- Shake The World (Frontiers Records)
I interviewed bassist Jeff Pilson last year and he told me Frontiers Records had asked him to put together and produce some of their newer projects. Black Swan is one of the first and features Robin McAuley on vocals, Reb Beach on guitar, Jeff on bass and Matt Starr on drums. This is not your normal Frontiers cut and paste project, there's real history here. Jeff played on the last McAuley Schenker album and was best man at Robin's wedding, Robin's twin boys are the 2 kids pictured on the booklet for the Lynch/Pilson Wicked Underground album. Reb played on Dokken's Erase The Slate with Jeff. Matt played with Robin in Vegas as part of the Raiding The Rock Vault show. The band recorded the album at Jeff's studio under his stewardship.
Robin has also never really been involved in something like this, a supergroup if you want to call it that. Reb hasn't done a project for Frontiers since The Mob in the early 2000s. Jeff is a class act, you know anything he gets involved in will have quality written all over it. So having lived with the album what does it actually sound like? It sounds like MSG, a little bit. Dokken, a little bit. Winger, a little bit. Reb's guitar tone on this at times is very different from what you hear on a Winger album especially on Big Disaster and Johnny Came Marching. It's great to hear a different aspect to his playing so late in his career.
Wisely Frontiers left the band alone to write the album and from what I've been told are ecstatic with the result. This really is it's own entity and at times is a little darker and more modern sounding then expected. Sure the likes of Make It There have that 80s sound, it's Black Swan's version of John Waite's Missing You and Sacred Place is the other big ballad but then there's brooding stuff like She's On To Us and Long Road To Nowhere. Unless We Change and Shake The World are great up tempo rockers and the album closes with the piano led Divided/United that is very Beatles sounding.
It's a grower of an album for sure and hats off to the 4 guys for coming up with something that doesn't sound jaded and dated. Robin told me he feels it's the best vocal performance he's ever performed on an album, he might be right and he still sounds great for someone approaching 70. This album is brilliant, man I would love to hear some of this live. With Revolution Saints, Dirty Shirley and now this Frontiers are off to a strong start in 2020.
Richie.
https://www.frontiers.shop/black-swan/
Posted by Irish Richie at 5:34 PM
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Jewcy.com | Happy Birthday, Harry Styles!
A big mazal tov to One Direction star Harry Styles, who turns 21 today. With 23.5 million Twitter followers, Taylor Swift's most famous ex is bigger than Jesus, Pope Francis, McDonald's, and the Beatles combined. He's also an enthusiastic philo-Semite—which, I know, is a terribly old-fashioned word—but truly the only way to describe this boy-band goy who just really, really, really loves Jews.
And so! In honor of Styles reaching the legal drinking age in the U.S., we proudly present his nine most philo-Semitic Twitter moments of all time. Biz a hundert un tsvantsik yor, Harry!
It's Yom Kippur tonight so just wanted to wish my Jewish followers well over their fast. Gemar Tov!!
Congratulations to @benwinston for his VMA last night.. I'm filled with nachas. Mazeltov!


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Album Covers of the Year 2020
We've finally made it to the bitter end of 2020, and believe it or not, human beings are still making amazing art in the midst of crisis and a pandemic. After a five-year hiatus, our Album Covers of the Year feature is back with a deep dive of artwork from...
Psychoactive Soundscapes: The Trippiest Psychedelic Albums of 2014
The idea that the multiverse is more akin to an art project than a science experiment (or an art experiment, if you're so inclined) is one of those Occult themes that typically gets dismissed by both overly scientific and religious types alike, even though it quite inarguably resonates now more than ever. One of the stranger aspects of human psychology that we essentially avoid touching in typical academic or spiritual discourse involves the fact that your average person now consumes roughly a hundred thousand times more art in a given year than they did even a mere century ago. We used to rely on mediums like galleries, plays, symphonies, and libraries to dispense our art, most of which weren't super accessible to people who weren't wealthy or close to an urban center. Now the fact that the internet and cable television beam recreational distractions into our homes 24/7 seems almost like a trivial afterthought.
Album Covers of the Year 2014 Interviews
In contrast to modern patterns in music consumption comes our annual Album Covers of the Year feature, where, instead of forgetting album artwork even exists, we hyperextend ourselves to assert that it is an artform that is vitally connected to the spirit of the music. This feature, which is divided at times into thematic elements and at times into artistic medium, incorporates interviews with not only musicians, but also artists involved throughout the artistic process. We pride this list in being diverse and multi-faceted, as well as philosophically exploratory. See all of our entries from previous years or get started by choosing a category below. Happy travels through the artistic universe we've crafted for you.
Top Albums of the Year 2014: Staff Picks
With wide-reaching arms and hungry ears, each of our writers has compiled his or her top albums of the year, for you to peruse our eclectic, atypical, and only occasionally overlapping tastes. You'd be well-served to check out every single record here.
Vivian Hua - dance, indie, pop, psychedelic, electronic Troy Micheau - metal, electronic, experimental, ambient Jason Simpson - pop, soul, electronic, ambient Ian King - electronic, ambient, instrumental, pop Peter Woodburn - ambient, metal, garage, indie Judy Nelson - dance, electronic, indie, pop, hip-hop
Pickathon Festival 2014 Live Show Review (w/ Mac DeMarco, Diarrhea Planet, Parquet Courts & More)
Pickathon Festival started out as a much more roots, folk and bluegrass-oriented festival. As those genres were gobbled up by eager indie-whatever kids looking to break into a new style, Pickathon adapted with the change. Although bands like Nickel Creek, The Barr Brothers, Shakey Graves and Della Mae hearkened back to the festival's old style, a surprisingly rock-heavy lineup was the face of the 2014 version of Pickathon Festival. Bands like The War on Drugs, Foxygen, Mac DeMarco and Brownout/Brown Sabbath were the big draws -- but looking back at it, you couldn't really tell much of a difference in the end. The 2014 version of Pickathon was still the excellently curated, family-friendly (and even more adult friendly) affair that the 2013 Pickathon, and every year before that, was. The reason for that is that in this day and age where festivals are hardly differentiated by anything except for stage names, Pickathon sets itself apart from the rest of the musical wasteland by removing its wasteful tendencies. Everything happens at Pickathon for a reason. The end result means that the random stages set up throughout Pendarvis Farm are stellar and sound issues are rarely a problem. Many of the shows are recorded and broadcast live courtesy of a horde of volunteers, which also creates a massive musical archive in the process. Beer, medical attention, phone chargers and general information are all handed out by bright-eyed and cheerful volunteers who are as excited to be there as anyone else. The devil is in the details at Pickathon, stretching from wall art in the portable bathrooms to showers set up within earshot of a stage. For one weekend a year, Pendarvis Farm in Happy Valley, Oregon, becomes the happiest place on Earth for a few thousand people smart enough to know one of the best festivals in the country is happening on someone's backyard. There is every reason to trek down the dusty roads to any of the stages at Pickathon, and no reason to leave.
"Let's cut down this forest with a buzz saw army of guitars." Jordan Smith, of Diarrhea Planet
This year, it seemed like the Pickathon lineup was for the boys and girls of rock and roll. No band epitomized that approach like a double billing of the six-piece Diarrhea Planet. The band has four guitarists all shredding a pop sensibility through the power of metal and punk, and in the grand scheme of things, their music sounds like their name -- explosive and relentless. A band of this magnitude of rock can sometimes be a bit off-putting, but a smart time slot and the jovial approach the band takes live makes it seem like you are watching your best friend's band play its first real show. Their first set of the weekend began at 1 a.m. on the first night, with an apology to Gavin, the sound guy in the Galaxy Barn, for helping four guitarists and four vocalists close out the night. Once apologies were dispensed, Diarrhea Planet proceeded to relentlessly shred through their material, and despite the oppressive temperature inside the barn, the crowd responded accordingly. A new song devoted to the lost art of crowdsurfing had Pickathon attendees leaping on top of each other as the sweating, seething mosh pit took over the whole barn. When all was said and done, a hundred-plus people made the long walk back to their tents covered in a variety of different sweats, only to do it all again the next day. Diarrhea Planet's second set at the famed Woods Stage Saturday afternoon was just as raucous. Although the cry for crowdsurfing fell on deaf ears, perhaps due to the gentle nature of the stage setup, the six-piece had no issue picking up the slack. Amplifiers were climbed on top of, crowd members were thrown on top of band member's shoulders mid-guitar solo, and outside of the fact that the sun was still up, it was hard to distinguish any less enthusiasm from the drunken barn burner less than 24 hours previous. At the end of it all, it could all be summed up in guitarist/vocalist Jordan Smith's approach to the afternoon, as he said, "We are playing in the woods. Let's cut down this forest with a buzz saw army of guitars."
GOAT Live Show Review (Neumo's, Seattle)
Here is a quick summary of GOAT, and the story is meant to be taken with as many grains of salt as possible. GOAT originally hail from Korpilombo, Sweden, from a community that has a history of voodoo worship. At various times, the incarnation of GOAT has lived on for 30 or 40 years amongst members of this village, and now, the current incarnation of GOAT contains three members from Korpilombo, augmented by a few folks from Gothenburg. All bands need good stories, and GOAT's is one of the better ones. A quick Google search of Korpilombo and voodoo yields nothing but GOAT-related results. Combine this wonky backstory with the fact that live, the members of GOAT all wear cloaks and masks and operate in a shroud of mystery, and it is enough to be almost too much of a schtick. But what makes the tradition of GOAT work is that the band doesn't let this aura undermine the music.
Every year, we interview a number of musicians and artists about the intimate details and philosophical underpinnings of their album cover artwork. It's an ever-massive undertaking, but we make sure to include every genre, from doom metal to disco, minimal electronic to mainstream pop, with the intention of highlighting the best visual art, regardless of why or who created it. You can see entries from previous years here, and browse 2013's entries by either scrolling down or selecting a category below. > Narrative & Mythological Album Covers > Photographic Album Covers > Illustrative Album Covers > Mixed Media & Collage-Based Album Covers
A lot of the problem with viewing the universe as being comprised of matter comes with the idea that it's devoid of conscious experience somehow. More and more, little by little, we're starting to wake up to the insane limitations of this philosophy. Renders people humorless if you ask me. Nothing adds up, which creates profound existential desperation resonating throughout the collective psi-grid of humanity. There is no explanation for why anything happens, so we instead focus on how things go down in obsessive detail. Not to knock this approach, as it creates order by combining with the mystical chaos of internal infinity. Too much mystic psychic sizzle and you'll get torn to shreds, but when you look at only shared perceptual experience, you're editing out the vast majority of reality. It's all dark matter through those eyes. Endless blacked out pages on a declassified UFO report. What I've found is that by shifting models of reality interpretation just slightly from conceiving the world as being made of matter to one comprised from conscious experience, coherent macro concepts of conjoined narratives learning lessons throughout cycles of shifting lifetimes starts to take shape (which I talk about all the time on Facebook; friend me). When you start looking at things through the neo-Occult lens regarding the meaning of our existence as participants in a small cog of a much larger 5th dimensional art creation device, things begin to click into place on an even deeper level. Try it; it's fun. What works about this model is the fact that art is getting more plentiful and expansive by the day. Whether or not that was the purpose, that's what's happening. The average person now spends their time lost in a greater collective imagination in a way that wasn't even possible a decade ago. We've entered the era of the information addict. We're turning ourselves increasingly inward and tying together disparate narratives without asking why we're so unconsciously compelled to veer in that direction. I'm more helplessly entrenched than anyone, spending my time existent in my own celestial enclave of sonic enchantment. Fact of the matter is, more people are taking psychedelic drugs at this point in history than ever before. The loosening of the pot laws is just going to ensure that trend continues to spike upward. Unsurprisingly, this has created a congruent upsurge in fantastically brain-altering tunage. I can't even begin to keep up with it all, and I'm an obsessive music weirdo. For all intents and purposes, there are an infinite number of great albums being made every single year, but I'd say Joe Sixpack isn't truly aware of that fact. I can't imagine any of the records on this list sold a ton, which is sort of the problem and why you need geeks like me. Next time you want to trip out on the weekend rather than getting blitzed drunk, go pick up any of thesem and they'll serve to lift you on high rather than binding you to the lower dimensions. Now, I almost apologize, because there really should be more trip-hop and electronic freak outs on here in general -- that's where drug music is heading and has been since I was a kid. But I've listened to a lot of the higher profile releases this year and most of it was decent, and little of it struck me as sufficiently psyche-warping. I've got to dig deeper next year. I will say that Seattle's Debacle Records consistently brings the strange vibes (Editor's Note: See the mixtape they made for us earlier this year) -- and as if intentionally living up to our newly minted west coast weed city status, more great psychedelic albums came out of Seattle this year than ever, so this list is also a bit heavy on that because no one else is really talking about it. You've been warned.
Wire, Helmet Live Show Review (Portland, OR)
This evening, the spirit of the '60s seems alive and thriving in the Crystal Ballroom. You can sense the remnants of bands like New Riders Of The Purple Sage or The Byrds, as you set foot upon the legendary bouncing dancefloor. It is a grand West Coast ballroom, in the tradition of the Fillmores; there's an epic chandelier, worthy of the Phantom Of The Opera, and Renaissance paintings al fresco on the walls. It's a classy place to see a real rock n' roll show. I don't know what it is about these ballrooms, but they always seem primed to go off. Maybe it's because they were designed for getting down, with wide open wooden dancefloors and killer sound systems. Imagine the surprise of the 1914 founders, if they could peer through time and hear the hardcore racket that would be pummeling out on a Wednesday night, nearly 100 years later. This was basically a double-headliner bill between two influential bands of different eras: Helmet, from the early '90s, and the most famous of the '70s school of artpunk, Wire.
The Body – To Attempt Openness Music Video (w/ Band & Alexander Barton Artist Interview)
This audio-visual collaboration between Portland-based avant-garde metal outfit, The Body, and NYC mixed media artist Alexander Barton has been a long time coming, a homage to an enduring friendship. Combining their mutual shared interest in intensity, abstraction, and religious themes, the music video for "To Attempt Oneness" pits The Body's guttural, distorted screams and noisy, rumbling guitars against Barton's bleeding ink painting -- an extension of his earlier performance which used real pig's blood. The final product holds a viewer's fascination with its impressively slow and minimal unfolding, the most entertaining way possible to watch paint dry. To celebrate the very recent release of The Body's Christs, Redeemers on Thrill Jockey Records, we offer you a side-by-side interview with artist Alexander Barton and The Body's drummer Lee Buford, as they speak of music, aesthetics, and the world. The Body are currently on a nation-wide tour; dates at the bottom of this post.
Russian Circles – Memorial Album Review (Sargent House)
Russian Circles Memorial Sargent House (2013) "Memoriam", the opening track off of Russian Circles' latest effort, Memorial, is exactly how a band of such heavy magnitudes should begin each album. The guitars are quiet; ambient tones echo throughout as a violin softly plays in the background; and for those short 90 seconds, the brain is lulled into a soothing beauty that the band rarely grants its listeners. After 91 seconds, Memorial is full of carnage. "Deficit" begins with a thunderous crash of drums, bass and guitar, before Mike Sullivan's wailing guitar tones lead into the other kind of beauty Russian Circles creates so well. As with all Russian Circles albums, Sullivan loops, Dave Turncrantz wails on the drums, and bassist Brian Cook masters the low end like few other trios can. They are experts at making the most amount of noise possible, yet it all remains perfectly restrained. Turncrantz throws in stellar fills, but at no point does he ever go off the deep end to overtake a whole song. Sullivan is the main focal point of the slow trudge forward, but rarely does he hop off and dazzle in a way that stands out extraneously.
thisquietarmy – Hex Mountains Album Review (Denovali Records)
thisquietarmy Hex Mountains Denovali Records (2013)Hex Mountains is a black mass, that rends the veil of consensual reality, plunging the listener into a twilight afterlife of elder gods and ancient wisdom. It's good to have post-rock back. For years, it seemed that all the genre could produce was ham-fisted Mogwai knock-offs that lost the emotional subtlety and expansive listening habits of the original movement. Imitators with long names sucked the marrow right out of post-rock's bones until it was an embarrassment, a shell of its former self. People forgot how thrilling it could be to combine the crushing weight of metal with the sonic possibilities of electronic music, and the weird eeriness of drone. The Denovali Records release of two albums from Montreal drone alchemist Eric Quach, who has released over 50 albums under the name thisquietarmy, suggest that this is about to change, and that it is again okay to appreciate epic instrumental rock 'n roll; people are finding new and interesting things to do with the format. Hex Mountains suggests a new phase in Thisquietarmy's extensive catalog. After touring with heavyweights like Year Of No Light and Deafheaven, Eric Quach wanted to turn up the intensity. He shattered the traditional isolation of TQA's somnolent soundscapes, to enlist members of Alashan, Northumbria and Monarch. It's some of his most pummeling work to date.


Touring and a vacation are usually 2 very different types of travel experiences.
Vacations bring to mind simple plans at the beach, amusement parks or even a cruise. Touring is designed to spark a passion, build foundations, enrich understanding and inspire a sense of wonder.
Our roots began when Murdock Travel was founded by Franklin Murdock to handle travel for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints' missionaries.
Are you a single traveler? Do you hate paying a higher price for a private room? Check out our Single Traveler Share Program and let's see if we can find you a vacation buddy!
Interested in becoming a tour guide for a departure or cruise? Have a group ready to travel with you? Click here to find out what your fantastic options are.
We absolutely enjoyed our LDS Historical Site Tour with Anthony and Cindy Sweat. It was such an amazing tour we were spiritually lifted every day through the knowledge that Anthony shared with us along with the humbling places we explored. I am so glad that I was able to share this experience with some of my family.


크레이지슬롯 사이트EuchMad : Light Off.
Hypnotic and touching, euchmad immerses us in a fantasy world.
Mysterious and dreamy, like a Tim Burton movie, this album immerses us in childhood, in a fantasy world.
Piano, celesta, pizzicato, glockenspiel, electronic percussions, Music box, and choir are the main instruments.
All the songs were composed in a cinematic mood.
License Hypnotic and touching, euchmad immerses us in a fantasy world by EuchMad for your project.
Play the music of EuchMad in your restaurant or store.