pred_label
stringclasses 2
values | pred_label_prob
float64 0.5
1
| wiki_prob
float64 0.25
1
| text
stringlengths 136
1M
| source
stringlengths 39
45
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
__label__cc
| 0.742727
| 0.257273
|
AfricaUtopia
Africa Utopia: The Review
The Africa Utopia is back for a third year celebrating the act and culture of one of the world’s most beautiful, dynamic and fast-growing continent. The festival looks at how Africa can lead the way in think about culture, community, business and technology and includes topics ranging from fashion, gender and power to politics, sustainability and activism.
This year’s festival features some of Africa’s greatest artistes across music, dance, literature and art. The three day event held at London’s Southbank centre features fascinating and exciting events that reflect the richness of African culture and heritage and in some cases, what to expect from African creatives’ based at home and in the diaspora.
The Festival features also interrogate key themes attributed to the narratives of the continent such as migration, and displacement through visual art and theatre.
There were lots of events lined up at Africa Utopia. Some of the features from the 3 day festival:
Through Dance, music, art and literature the festival showcased appearances from Tavaziva Dance-when king Gogo met the chameleon,
legendary drummer Tony Allen, one of the acknowledged co-founders of Afrobeat,
Senegalese super group Orchestra Baobab;
Phoebe Boswell’s Transit Terminal,
Funmi Adewole,
Maia Von Lekow,
powerfully soulful West African(Mali) singer Kassé Mady Diabaté;
Europe’s first Black and Minority Ethnic classical symphony orchestra, Chineke! and lots of others.
Fashion and food lovers were not left out as there was an African-inspired fashion, a buzzing marketplace and delicious African street food to enjoy.
Eritrean Food
Africa Utopia Friday Day Pass was an opportunity for people to participate in panel discussion, exploring African politics, technology, education and trade. Everything from disruptive innovation to the power and politics of data in Africa were discussed. A panel of writers with African roots explores migrations real and imagined, asking if we inevitably circle back to where we came from.
It was a great and colorful festival.
Image courtesy: AfricaUtopia
|
cc/2019-30/en_middle_0006.json.gz/line7
|
__label__cc
| 0.608587
| 0.391413
|
Before the Bigs
Preview: Sunstock Solar Festival September 9 Aug 23, 2017
Short link https://tfn.tw/9yv/
Sunstock Solar Festival is proud to announce its first wave of music programming. On the Gold Stage we will see headliners Ra Ra Riot, along with Robert DeLong, Run River North, and Wild Club. The Green Stage, focused on local bands, will feature Trapdoor Social, Freedom Fry, Bloodboy, and The Fuzzy Crystals. Additional acts will be announced soon!
For the first time, a VIP package will be available. For $50, attendees will receive separate entry, Sunstock Tote and Swag, and Access to the "Future is Bright" Lounge featuring a Sustainable Mixology Bar by Award-Winning mixologist, Robin Chopra, Free Food and Drink Tastings, Shaded Seating by Hang High and more!
The festival in partnership with GRID Alternatives will be raising funds to provide a rooftop solar installation for A Safe Place for Youth, a shelter for homeless teens on the west side.
In addition to GRID Alternatives, this year’s non-profit partners include the Sierra Club, SoCal 350 Climate Action, Climate Hawks Vote, South Bay Clean Power, Food & Water Watch, and Rootskeeper, with more to be announced soon. Media Partners include LA Weekly and Alt 98.7.
Sunstock Solar Festival impassions, educates and activates our local communities through music, art, food, discussions and more, all centered around building greener cities and better futures. The event will focus on clean energy, sustainability, and social justice in a positive, engaging way, featuring solar-powered light installations, organic food trucks, immersive art, workshops, games, sustainable vendors, social action opportunities and the headlining feature - music powered by the sun. The all-ages show intends to engage festival-goers with the causes and calls-to-action that we need to protect our future.
Tickets are now on sale! Read more for details!
What: Sunstock Solar Festival
When: Saturday September 9th 2:00pm-11:00pm
Where: Magic Box LA
Complete details, along with submissions to participate as a visual artist or vendor can be found at SunstockSolarFestival.com.
ABOUT SUNSTOCK
Sunstock began in 2016 with 2500+ Los Angelenos in attendance, with local bands including Cults, Wavves, The Allah-Las and more, and with a fundraising mission that resulted in a $10k donation of solar power to Kids Cancer Connection. The festival is non-profit, solar-powered, and focused on strengthening the LA community and sustainability movement to create a better future. Sunstock is the brainchild of Trapdoor Social, who also produce solar-powered concerts on tour around the country.
Website: http://sunstocksolarfestival.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SunstockSolFest
Twitter: @SunstockSolFest
Instagram: @SunstockSolFest
Promo Video: https://youtu.be/9UrVWc_ggaA
Latest faves (7/4-7/14)
Arroyo Seco Weekend Day 2: Magic Giant, The Mowgli's, The Revivalists, Fitz & The Tantrums, Weezer, The Shins, and Mumford & Sons
June 9-16, 2019 Favorites of the Week (Playlist)
Favorite of the Week (6/17-6/23): Gethen Jenkins, Half The Animal, Injury Reserve and more!
Latest favorites (6/24-7/3): Omar Apollo, Paco Versailles, Friendly Fires, Royal Teeth, Cold War Kids and much more!
Providing you with the best up-and-coming musicians while assisting their efforts to break into mainstream. We feature artists and their music from a variety of genres including hip-hop, indie/alternative, rock, pop mashups, and electronica/remixes.
Los Angeles, CA 90038, US
zach@beforebigs.com
© 2019 Copyright: Before the Bigs, LLC
|
cc/2019-30/en_middle_0006.json.gz/line26
|
__label__cc
| 0.72698
| 0.27302
|
Brink of Battle: Skirmish gaming through the ages (Review)
This is my first review where I have received a preview copy of a set of rules that are yet to be released - and also being the first person to review them. So it has been very exciting, and I hope you guys find this review informative. Feel free to post questions and comments about it and I'll answer in more detail if there is something specific that you would like to know.
“Brink of Battle: Skirmish gaming through the ages” is a pretty unique set of rules. It is not period or setting specific, instead it allows players to create their own bands of warriors and fight a skirmish battle in any year of human history from ancient times up to modern day. To achieve this without making the game too thin in theme, history is divided into 3 categories. “Ancient/Medieval”, “Early Modern” and “Modern”, each have its own set of character traits for soldiers to pick from, period specific weapons and gear.
The focus is entirely historical gaming, but perhaps the most important thing to know is that this set of rules is a toolbox for your imagination.
Both players roll D10 dice pretty much every time something happens and add various bonuses, skills, penalties, cover etc. Battles are fought on a small scale which means that players takes turns in activating , moving, shooting and fighting with their warriors one at a time. And since the game is played on a small scale, 3-20 models per side, all warriors can be very individual in how their stat line looks like, their weapons and actually conveys a sense of “Dirty Dozen” feel where you can make each soldier different and specialized to a high degree by tweaking the stat lines in the building step.
Models for this game can be 20-54mm in size, and should be single based (unless they are part of a HMG team or similar). Bases also follow a certain standard, but I think the most important thing is to have all models based the same rather than to have the exact correct size. I have for instance already a bunch of stuff based on 30mm bases when the rules recommend 25mm. I don’t think this is a game breaker.
Let’s talk details. The game includes a lot of new ideas which I think sets it apart from other wargames that I know or currently play. This make learning the rules a bit more time consuming since you don’t have the “copy pasted” flow of ideas that is so obvious in many games these days. Much thought has been put into every step, phase and rule.
Building your force
Starting with how you build your warband, perhaps the most fresh take on this formula that I have come across. There are but 3 stats for all warriors in the rules, Command, Combat and Constitution.
Then there are 3 types of forces, Elite, Standard, Horde. You also have 3 types of units – Commander, Veterans and Troopers – each with a cap of how skillful they can be in each of the 3 stats.
So when building your troops you start out by picking what type of force you want to represent. A horde of ill trained peasants for instance in a medieval uprising – then you pick the “Horde” which allows you to include lots of regular “troopers”, 1 commander and 1 veteran. Then you may have the idea of the Commander leading the angry peasant mob to be an old knight so you make him skilled and well armed – while you make the peasants weak, bad at fighting and arm them with crappy weapons. The stat lines for each single model can be different, this is the beauty of this system. Each point of each skill costs a certain amount of “Supply Points”, so you can tweak your warband to be truly unique in composition. You may have one peasant armed with a bow to have a hunter skill and be a good shoot, another peasant may really suck at fighting but have a great constitution and be hard to wound, while a third may be a great fighting but very weak and unable to carry more than a single weapon.
Models in this game are armed according to the “What you see is what you get” (WYSIWYG) rule. So a peasant armed with a spear and tunic will have gear matching his looks. The gear in the book covers pretty much everything you can think of. Most weapons are grouped into categories, for instance the weapon profile of “Cleaver” includes hand weapons that you can chop up your enemies with – including all types of battle axes and heavy single edged swords. The name is but a term under which a lot of different stuff is organized. (The rules actually suggest that you rename the Gear to what you like if you find it “offensive” – so if your peasant general has a Broadsword then just write “Broadsword (Cleaver)” in his unit profile.
The 3 stats Command/Combat/Constitution have several purposes in the game. The constitution number tells you how resistant your soldier is to damage, but also the amount of “gear” he can carry. Command is used to determine how many “tactical points” your commander will generate at the start of each turn but most importantly the morale of a soldier and how he will cope with the mental strain of war. The Combat rating is used to determine how well your soldier handles weapons – but also to which degree he has the skill to avoid injury. All stats are can range from 1-7 and also be increased by additional traits.
The various phases of the game
The game is divided into several phases each turn.
“The Sitrep phase”
Rout Checks – Check whether any side breaks and retreats from battle
Psychology Checks – Check the individual state of panicking soldiers
Random Movement – Sometimes models move out of your control
Recover Shocked models – Soldiers attempt to rally
“Order Phase”
Strategy check – players roll for initiative or “The Edge”. The player who wins will be able to activate first during this turn. The player who lost will receive 1 “Break” action which can be used once per turn to disrupt enemy movement. Very similar to an overwatch action.
Smoke removal - Remove smoke markers generated by weapons or smoke ammunition from the table.
Generate tactical pool – At the start of battle each player gets an equal amount of “activation” tokens as his commander has “Command” rating. You add +3 activation tokens if you won the initiative this turn.
Order actions – Players take turns in placing tokens next to the models they want to activate this turn.
“Exacuting action phase”
This is where the game begins, players take turns in activating one model at a time – from the models that received an order token at the start of the turn. Actions are divided into “combat“ and “standard actions”. The first include 6 different combat actions, such as charging, moving and shooting, taking aim etc. The 6 standard actions include such things as climbing, running, moving , ambushing and so on. Also unless you order a panicking soldier currently fleeing to “steady” he will keep running in a random direction in the next “Sit Rep – Random movement” phase.
Playing the game
So we have built our warband, and generated command points, placed orders and are ready to fight.
The primary stat used here is Combat + rolling a D10 and add the two together. A soldier with Combat 3 rolls 8 on a D10, hence his combat amounts to 11. In the meantime, the opponent rolls to avoid damage. The opponent rolls a D10 and adds half of his Combat rating value to defend himself. If concealed the opponent would roll his full Combat rating in defense, and if in Cover he would roll 2D10 and pick the highest result.
The side which rolls highest wins, be it a successful hit, or dodging a bullet. As you can imagine, Elite warriors will have the edge over untrained mobs (but they will be severely outnumbered). Once hit you roll again to see if you manage to stun or wound your opponent. Here the attacker rolls 1D10 and add the weapon strength while the defender rolls 1D10 and add his constitution. If the defender has his result beaten by 5 or more, the attacker has wounded your model and it is removed from play. If the defender lost by less than 5 his model received a flesh wound and is classed as “stunned”, this state makes the model unable to activate this turn and it has to recover at the start of the next turn.
Cover (hard objects like wood/stone), Concealment (bushes, long grass, smoke etc) and range penalties all come into play as well and affect the attack rolls in an appropriate way and satisfying way. Defenders most definitely benefit from cover as it both gives them 2D10 in defense and allow them full Combat while rolling their defensive value. As the attacker it makes sense to sacrifice Rate of Fire to increase your Combat skill to become more accurate. Blackpowder weapons also have the benefit of creating concealment when fired as the nearby area is covered in smoke.
Weapons, traits and gear
As already mentioned the game is divided into Ancient/Medieval (3000BC – 1450AD , Early Modern (1450AD-1880AD) and Modern (1880- present day). Each period has weapons and traits. You start out with rather archaic weapons in the first period, and then early blackpowder weapons are introduced until you get to machineguns of modern day battles. The neat thing here is that the it is realized that traits, tactics, ideas, skills and technology from the past carries over into the future. As such commanders from the modern period may sport skills available to commanders of the ancient era as well. But of course ancient commanders are clueless about what the future holds.
Weapons have a Rate of Fire, which actually indicates how fast a weapon reloads, how easy it is to handle etc than amount of bullets fired as such. In Brink of Battle you roll and equal amount of D10 dice as you have Rate of Fire in the weapon profile, and then pick the highest result and use that to roll to wound. To do damage with ranged weapons the basic “damage” profile of the weapon is used along with a D10.
Close combat weapons roll 1D10 to hit, but use the damage rating of the weapon + the constitution of the attacker added together and a D10 on top of that. The defender uses his constitution and any armor he might be wearing and combine those two values with a D10 to prevent being wounded. Also, in close combat, the defender always gets to use their full Combat rating when rolling to avoid damage.
As for ranges, everything is measured in inches, and ranged weapons have “point blank”, “effective range” and “long range”. Point blank is pretty much shooting someone in the face, the opponent does not benefit from concealment and cover defensive bonuses are also reduced. Effective range is the regular range of your weapon, no bonus or penalty applies when firing this way. Long range is any shot over 20” in which case it becomes harder to hit your opponent. Weapons have a maximum range of 2x Effective range.
Ranged weapons can also misfire or run out of ammo whenever you roll a 1 to hit, in which case a “weapon check” is made. If you pass it the shot is fired as normal, if failed the shot never goes off.
Winning/Losing battles
Claiming objectives that you’ve made up for your game is one way to win, another is if you or the enemy force simply breaks and withdraw from combat due to mounting casualty numbers. In Brink of Battle each force is allowed to take up to 25% casualties before force morale comes into play. If any or both players have lost more than 25% of their troops then each player rolls 1D0 at the start of the next turn and add either the “Command” rating of their Commander or if he is dead, a Veteran warrior – or if none of those are left then a single D10 without modifiers.
The better command your leader has the more likely your force is to stay in the fight.
Thus a commander with Command rating 7 would roll 1D10 and add 7 to the outcome. The opponent also rolls an opposing roll at the same time, 1D10 + the number of models you have lost and add those two together. If you have lost 4 models it would be 1D10 + 4 against you, and should he roll higher than your result – your force breaks and leaves the battlefield.
Campaign games and “after action report” phase
As this game leans towards campaign gaming as well, there are a number of very cool additional features. Soldiers are able to earn experience if they survive the battle and have inflicted casualties to enemy troops, you get resupply points to spend on new recruits and extra gear and such. What I think is the most exciting part is what happened to your wounded models as they were removed from table. After the battle, if you want to play a campaign game, you roll on a chart for each soldier that was removed from play and see what has happened to him. Here the results range from light and severe wounds to being killed or actually “Missing in action”.
Injuries reduce stats and traits, getting killed is kinda obvious – however the “Missing in action” means that a soldier has been captured by the enemy. This leaves the player holding the prisoner with a couple of possibilities. Either he can execute the captive – and take the gear from the corpse. The captive can be turned over for interrogation and your warband receives 25% of the models Supply Points to add to their own force for their trouble. Or you can make a prisoner exchange with your opponent for one of your own MIA soldiers. I think this is a really neat and unique twist.
Overall impressions
The game mechanics feel very innovative and fresh. There is certainly something about the way hits/saves are handled in this game that make it a bit more dynamic than having a static save. The pace is pretty high as both players are involved all the time in almost every action – each player rolling dice to succeed or prevent something from happening. There are a lot of modifiers and tweaks built into this game but everything is made easy by being consistent.
Combat ratings are divided by 2 when defending in the open, long range penalty is also Combat divided by 2. Concealment allows full Combat rating in defense, Cover allows 2 defensive dice to be rolled and most other stats and attributes are also easy to memorize. The whole is made a lot easier to keep track off since you only have 3 stats for each model – Combat, Command and Constitution – all of which are used for various checks and provide multiple ingame uses.
Combat is used to attack and defend, Constitution to carry stuff and survive hits, Command to generate a pool of tactical markers and when rolling for morale. Long range for all weapons work the same, point blank for all weapons work the same – it is just a simple case of learning what Long range is (2x Effective range). Stats for weapons and characters becomes pretty short and compact this way.
Movement and the way terrain works is all standardized. Traits add flavor to individuals that are meant to stand out. Customizing each soldier to have appropriate Command, Combat and Constitution ratings gives you the ability to write your force in detail.
The book is focused on historical skirmish games for now. Infantry and cavalry rules are there. Vehicles will be added in expansions and there are thoughts about a Fantasy/Sci Fi supplement as well in the future. But this book is pretty much all you need to play a game from ancient times up to Modern warfare. A perfect system for those out there that already have a ton of different miniatures and who don’t want to get into another “range” just to play a new set of rules. This book if anything encourages you to use whatever you already have at home – or just buy random models that you always wanted but could not find any use for in your other games.
The rules are well written and detailed, there are well explained profiles for weapons and traits, a clear division between the 3 provided periods and you also have a very nice collection of charts at the back of the book that summarize all the points costs for ratings, traits, weapons (and what profiles they contain) etc.
The game is, as already mentioned, a toolbox for your imagination. Although it comes with 3 scenarios it is meant to be used by players who want to create their own campaigns and stories.
The lack of proper pictures is obviously explained by the rules being written to be generic – as such you get stylistic silhouettes in all the explanatory pictures and diagrams.
I hope I have given a good picture of what can be expected from the game and given a bit of insight on the game mechanics. I will elaborate on how results are generated in a bit more detail in an upcoming battle report which will be posted tomorrow.
Brink of Battle will be released on March 19th, and the price will be 29.95 USD. The books is 135 pages, paperback and A4 size. It will be available through www.brinkofbattle.com as well as through www.lulu.com
Also check out the flyer explaining the idea behind this set of rules http://www.lead-adventure.de/downloads/BrinkofBattle_MarketingRelease.pdf
Labels: Brink of Battle, Rules review
Faust March 6, 2012 at 9:24 AM
Much thanks for the kind words and high quality review!
Robert Faust
Good review and sounds like an interesting set of rules.
I appreciate that it's difficult, due to these being non-period specific, but how do they stack up against other rule systems?
Anatoli March 6, 2012 at 9:46 AM
@Arlequin, it is completely different from any other system I play. Mainly because the way the 3 stats work, how you build your team and the use of D10 dice. And of course the rules being non-period specific and actually written in such a way that it works and functions on all levels makes this a one stop set of rules for pretty much anything historical you might want to play on a skirmish level.
I have already planned to play and make battle reports from all 3 periods to show how it works. Battle reports will be posted as soon as games are played.
First out will be a French Indian War (Early Modern) game, already played and written so expect it to be posted tomorrow. Then I hope to follow that up with WW2 and medieval period games.
Byteknight March 6, 2012 at 12:36 PM
How easy do you think it would be to add-on with house rules for futuristic weapons? (blasters, phasers, etc)
Ray Rousell March 6, 2012 at 2:32 PM
Hhmm? These sound very interesting!!!
Anatoli March 6, 2012 at 4:11 PM
@Byteknight, it would work. The whole idea behind the rules is that soldiers through time are basically the same - human beings with varied training and physical attributes with the big change being weapons, traits and tactics.
So you could use the rules to create a futuristic warband for a Fallout or Deus Ex like setting. It would take some imagination to write up profiles for weapons such as lasers etc. But most of the rules would work "out of the box" so to speak.
As mentioned in the review, a fantasy and sci fi expansion supplement will be released and work together with the basic "historical" themed rules.
Faust March 6, 2012 at 4:57 PM
Just a note here regarding sci-fi weapons; I have them all mostly worked out. In the next few months, once people have had an opportunity to play the game, I will post the rough draft for futuristic weapons and armor on my website at www.brinkofbattle.com
When we wanted to goof around during playtesting, we would play the Modern period and use our sci-fi minis as proxies. It still worked just fine. I just used Assualt Rifles for my Gauss Rifles and Heavy Armor for my Traveller Marines in Battledress. But don't worry, I have full rules in the works for a kick ass sci-fi release. :}
Eddie March 6, 2012 at 6:07 PM
I love this idea. I currently have "This Very Ground" for my french and indian period. Can't wait to see your batrep with that period using these rules. Are there rules for cannons and such? Or will that come into play with the vehicle expansion?
@Eddie, no rules for cannons. Grenades, smoke grenades, Machineguns, and all kinds of small arms are included. But no cannons, artillery or vehicles yet.
This Very Ground is still good for larger battles, but Brink of War is excellent for smaller more irregular formations and raiding parties.
scotty March 6, 2012 at 9:27 PM
Great review. These seem very interesting. Could be what I am looking for, for my VBCW games
Faust March 6, 2012 at 11:12 PM
@Eddie - For now, I've kept it to mostly man portable weapons. Next year I will release Treadhead which is the vehicle expansion. It will cover heavier stuff.
The core concept of my development is this: Once the skirmish game gains traction with players, I will have a poll to determine which historical micro-set to release. So let's say the poll says French & Indian war; I'd then put together a PDF release that would cover in more detail that conflict within the overall period.
The Fantasy supplement Epic Heroes is scheduled to release by Thanksgiving (November) of this year. After the main rules have had some sales, I'll be asking for play testers on the Fantasy rules.
Should Brink of Battle prove popular enough, I will then release my larger battle game that will work off a modified version of this system.
Smillie March 7, 2012 at 11:35 PM
Nice review, the system sounds interesting
Faust March 10, 2012 at 6:17 PM
We just posted the Force Rosters for download, as well as the Tables from the book that list the Ratings, Traits & Gear.
Go to the resources page at www.brinkofbattle.com to see them!
|
cc/2019-30/en_middle_0006.json.gz/line30
|
__label__wiki
| 0.568228
| 0.568228
|
Mumbai: Cars do vanishing...
Fire brigade begins crack...
Alpesh Thakor Will Soon J...
Second Vande Bharat Expre...
Asaduddin Owaisi Said Ami...
Admin Reporter- Ajay
Delhi University Third Cutoff List 2019 Released, Know In Details
Delhi,09,July,2019
Delhi University's third cut-off will give students an opportunity to get admission in commerce and science programs. Most of the Humanities programs have been closed for general category in many colleges. Programs in this list of colleges in North and South Campus have reduced from 25% to .5%, few colleges have kept it between 1% and 2%. Students on this list can get admission till 11th July. The next list will be on July 15. 44 thousand admissions have been made for 61500 seats of undergraduate courses based on merit based in DU. However, many colleges have more admissions than the seats in the Humanities program, according to which 20 thousand seats are vacant.
Science in Eco, SRCC and KMC in Miranda In some colleges, including the Hindu College, Miranda, LCR, ARSD, Kirori Kamal, the seats for the general are still left. In Miranda House where Eco Honors is at the last cut-off of 97.75%, 96.25% (.25% less) in social engineering, 97.5% in Geography Honors and 94% (.5% less) in Philosophy will get admission to the students. Physics, Zoology, Botany Honors are also open here. At the same time, Dr. Pramila Kumar, the principal of Gargi College told that this cutoff has come down to .25% in BCom, it is at 95%. There are only few seats remaining in BCom Honors, so it has been kept at 96.25%. Maths Honors 94.75%, Chemistry 94.33% and Physics Hons fell 1% to 95%. SRCC has also opened the BCom Honors for General at 97.75% in its third cutoff list, with a fall of 25%. Principal Dr. Simrat Kaur told that fewer seats are available for this course, However, there is scope for reservation category. Kirori Mal College has reduced English to 96% and Eco to 97.5% with a decrease of 5% for general category. Both Bcom and BCom Honors are open at 97%. Physics 96.33%, chemistry 95.66% and Maths Honors 96.5% will be admired in this list.
|
cc/2019-30/en_middle_0006.json.gz/line37
|
__label__cc
| 0.531477
| 0.468523
|
Forum - Are Silicon Valley Workers Abandoning Libertarianism For Socialism?
By EditorDavid from Slashdot's IDE-ideologies department:
Salon writes that Silicon Valley tech workers are "defying their overlords," arguing that recent unionization attempts by Kickstarter employees may be only the beginning:
The workers' Kickstarter campaign is not the first attempt, though, or even the first time rumblings of unionization, have circulated among programmers. In 2018, software engineers at the startup Lanetix announced their intent to unionize -- and were promptly fired by management (It is illegal to fire employees for trying to unionize). The National Labor Relations Board intervened, and ultimately forced Lanetix to pay the 15 fired engineers a total of $775,000. The show of worker power at Lanetix may have paved the way for Kickstarter's workers. Similarly, workers across the video game industry -- generally among the most overworked, underpaid workers within the tech industry -- have been making steps towards unionization. Game Workers Unite, profiled by Salon last year, is building a grassroots movement to organize the ranks of video game makers.
Together, this suggests that a small but visible movement for white-collar software engineers unionizing has been gaining steam in the Valley over the past few years -- suggesting that the people who make up the tech industry, once a bastion of libertarianism, are starting to understand the often subtle ways that their employers exploit them... For decades, libertarianism was part and parcel to the tech industry. Despite a grueling work culture and a high-profile collusion scandal among major tech corporations to suppress software engineers' wages, tech workers were more likely to see themselves as future founders than an exploited underclass -- a point of view encouraged by employers through high wages and generous, often absurd office perks. Recent developments suggest such endearing tactics are no longer working.
|
cc/2019-30/en_middle_0006.json.gz/line41
|
__label__cc
| 0.724255
| 0.275745
|
Development Consulting
Art For Life
Project Outputs
Vertical Brochures
Banglanatak Youtube Channel
https://www.youtube.com/user/banglanatak
Akhra@Baitanik
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEtrmLzUTpxLYCecNdGcKLQ
banglanatak dot com
https://www.facebook.com/Banglanatak-dot-com-1517150615199176/
TourEast:
https://www.facebook.com/villagefestivals/?fref=ts
MusiCal:
https://www.facebook.com/MusiCal-1546624375552582/?fref=ts
Bengal Craft Hubs:
https://www.facebook.com/Bengal-Craft-Hubs-1377119429274795/?fref=ts
Akhra@Baitanik:
https://www.facebook.com/AkhraAtBaitanik/?fref=ts
Sur Jahan:
https://www.facebook.com/Sur-Jahan-101231333629782/?ref=br_rs
Biswa Bangla Haat:
https://www.facebook.com/RCCH-at-Biswa-Bangla-Haat-913844122085239/
Be Alert Raise Alarm
https://www.facebook.com/IfightTIP/
KEY Campaign
https://www.facebook.com/groups/keycampaign/?fref=ts
Green Champions:
https://www.facebook.com/greenearthcause/?fref=ts
Madurkathi:
https://www.facebook.com/Madurkathi-Weaving-Bengal-with-the-World-1519389701694611/?fref=ts
Air Quality:
https://www.facebook.com/Kolkatas-Air-Quality-1624924817804409/?hc_ref=SEARCH&fref=nf
https://www.facebook.com/Women-Empowered-1523765741254628/
Revival of Sholacraft in West Bengal
https://www.facebook.com/Shola-Craft-904196613305761/?ref=settings
https://www.instagram.com/banglanatakdotcom/
https://twitter.com/ifightTIP
https://twitter.com/banglanatak
Banglanatak Blog
http://contactbase.blogspot.in/
188/89, Prince Anwar Shah Road, Kolkata - 700045
58/114 Prince Anwar Shah Road, Kolkata-700045
Delhi Office Address:
E-781, Chittaranjan Park, New Delhi - 110019
Goa Office Address:
Rio Sol Tower
Flat No - 31 , 3rd Floor, Campal, Panjim, Goa - 403001
Rajyashree Mukherjee (Resident Representative)
Phone : +91 9800403759
Purulia Office Address:
S.K. Bechu Lane, Huchuk Para, Purulia - 713101
Prabir Banerjee (Regional Manager)
Landline: +91 03252 222134
Nimdih Office Address:
Nimdih, Seraikela Kharswan, Jharkhand - 832401
Rural Craft and Cultural Hubs (RCCH): To Contact Folk Artists and Crafts Persons, call:
Nirmalya Roy
Landline: +91 33 40047483
Moumita Kundu
Mobile: + 91 8420106396
TourEast : Visiting artist villages
MusiCal : Performance at Akhra and Musical Collaboration
Debalina Bhowmick
Arpan Thakur Chakraborty
Ours is a turbo charged work environment where passion runs high. We are an equal opportunity workplace and summarily apolitical. Here roles are offered with no cap on one’s ability to own responsibilities and demonstrate leadership capability. Candidates should be ready to travel and may be required to stay at project locations for a short duration
+ Work with us
Shows the pop up section when set to on. And make sure give an id name in menu link section instead of URL
Cookies are files with small amount of data, which may include an anonymous unique identifier. Cookies are sent to your browser from a web site and stored on your computer's hard drive. Like many sites, we use "cookies" to collect information. You can instruct your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. However, if you do not accept cookies, you may not be able to use some portions of our Site.
Rallying students against trafficking & child marriage
Swayangsiddha aims to trigger student and youth-led action against trafficking in persons (TIP) and child marriage. Undertaken in association with UNICEF, the initiative is being supported by the West Bengal Government and West Bengal Police. Launched on 18 July, 2017, it is covering 118 schools in the district of South 24 Parganas within 31 August. The next phase, covering 72 more schools, will start after the Puja festivities. The objective is to sensitize students about the various ploys and tactics of human traffickers and their agents as well as the dangers of underage marriage. This can help them to remain alert and combat the twin menace, safeguarding the rights of girls and children. The campaign has already yielded results. Quite a few youngsters provided crucial leads to the police that led to the arrest of traffickers.
www.swayangsiddha.org
www.facebook.com/SwayangsiddhaWBP
banglanatak dot com is the umbrella brand shared by i-land informatics Ltd - a Company and Contact Base - a Society. We are a social enterprise working across India with a mission to foster pro-poor growth and protect and uphold the rights of women, children and indigenous communities. We specialise in communication for development (C4D) using theatre, and developing community-led creative industries based on intangible cultural heritage like performing arts and crafts.
www.banglanatak.com
www.folklibrary.com
www.madurofbengal.com
www.rcchbengal.com
bncmusical.co.in
www.madhubaniart.co.in
www.ruralcrafthub.com
www.toureast.in
www.naturallybengal.com
Designed & Developed By Mad Earth Design and
|
cc/2019-30/en_middle_0006.json.gz/line45
|
__label__cc
| 0.660698
| 0.339302
|
3 Bros Barker
Diplo Net Worth
Thomas Wesley Pentz Jr. who is broadly known as “Diplo” is an American DJ and record maker. He is the co-maker and one of the main individuals from Major Lazer which is an electronic music dancehall venture. Diplo is additionally a crucial individual from another super gathering called LSD. Sia and Labrinth additionally work with Thomas. Aside from his music profession, Diplo likewise remained an educator in Philadelphia.
Thomas likewise worked with M.I.A an English entertainer who acquainted him with the music world. Amid his profession, he worked with numerous stars including M.I.A, Gwen Stefani, Justin Bieber, Shakira, Britney Lances, Trippie Redd, Terrible Bunny, Madonna and Beyoncé. He embraced his stage name “Diplo” from his enthusiasm with dinosaurs.
Diplo’s net worth is $26 million in 2019.
Early Life:
Diplo was born on November 10th, 1978. In 1978 in the territory of Mississippi. Diplo’s dad and mom names are Thomas Pentz and Barbara Jean individually. Diplo burned through the vast majority of his adolescent and youth life in Miami. He took affirmation in the University of Central Florida in the year 1997. Subsequent to finishing contemplates from the University of Florida, Thomas moved to Temple University to additionally carry on his examinations. This is indistinguishable college from where he got consideration from a DJ.
In 2003, Diplo and his individual DJ Low Budget used to toss parties. As these gatherings ended up effective, the pair discharged their diverse mixtapes. “Never Scared”, was one of those mixtapes that made it to one of The New York Times’ main ten collections of 2003.
Diplo wedded Kathryn Lockhart and he has two children with her. He likes football and cricket.
Prior to coming into the music world, when he was concentrate from Temple University, he used to do diverse employments to procure his vocation. He was a social laborer in his town. He likewise filled in as a cinema representative. Those days were tough to the point that he didn’t have the house lease to pay. Thus, Thomas and his similarly invested companions DJ Low Budget began their very own work. They made “Hollertronix”. Under the sign of “Hollertronix”, “Never Scared” mixtape was propelled by both the DJs which was a super hit.
In 2004, Diplo propelled his performance make a big appearance collection with the assistance of “Big Data”. The collection concentrated more on tune and instruments. From that point forward, he completed a ton of impressive work in the realm of music. “Piracy Funds Terrorism”, Vol. 1 mixtape is a standout amongst the most acclaimed works of Diplo. He discharged the mixtape in 2004.
As referenced above, Diplo worked with numerous universal VIPs. “Camila Cabello, Quavo”, and “Travis Scott”, that’s only the tip of the iceberg. In 2017, he discharged many singles under his name.
Diplo’s Net Worth:
Diplo’s net worth in 2019 is evaluated at around $26 million.Show 102550100 entriesSearch:
$26 Million dollars
Full Name: Thomas Wesley Pentz Jr.
Country of Origin: Tupelo, Mississippi, U.S.
Date of birth: November 10, 1978
Source of wealth: DJ/Record Producer
Partner: Kathryn Lockhart (ex)
Last Updated: 2019
Lindsay Lohan Net Worth
Chad Hurley Net Worth
Post Malone Net Worth
Sergey Brin Net Worth
Trevor Noah Net Worth
Fun Facts: Bryson Robinson
Fun Facts: Garren Lake
Fun Facts: OBB
Fun Facts: Jason Drucker
Fun Facts: Xena: Warrior Princess
Rising star Cameron Boyce Dies at 20
Lil Nas X Comes Out as Gay
The Band in the Verizon Wireless Commercial
The Vamps want to collaborate with The Chainsmokers.
Cole Sprouse opens up about Luke Perry’s death
DIPLO TO THROW 2-DAY MAD DECENT BLOCK PARTY
THE MANNEQUIN CHALLENGE in 2019?
Chris Pratt on DEFENSE
‘So far gone’ to stream
GAGA defends CARDI
© 2018 barkerrr.com
|
cc/2019-30/en_middle_0006.json.gz/line47
|
__label__wiki
| 0.970171
| 0.970171
|
Red Army Bet
Brian McClair
RedArmyBet Home
What are United’s best and worst case group stage scenarios?
As the Champions League draw is set to take place, who could United face?
Ben Ibson | 29th August 2018
Whilst Champions League qualifiers have been underway for over a month now, the true action is about to begin as the most exciting competition in club football gears up to make its return.
The Champions League draw will take place on Thursday in Monaco and after a slow start to the Premier League season, United fans will be anxiously watching the draw and hoping for a painless group. Albeit Jose Mourinho’s team are in pot two and will have to take on one of Europe’s best.
Follow RedArmyBet on Twitter here
Despite coming up against the likes of Benfica, FC Basel and CSKA Moscow in the group stage, then topping the group with 15 points out of a possible 18, United still managed to crash out of the tournament in the round of 16 last season.
Juan Mata along with the rest of the squad were disappointed with the way they left the competition last year.
Mourinho’s side looked like a threat, but after two poor performances against Spanish side Sevilla, the Reds bid farewell to one of the biggest competitions in world football.
Ahead of the draw, RedArmyBet takes a look at the best and worst case scenario for United.
Best draw
Lokomotiv Moscow, PSV Eindhoven and Viktoria Plzen
Depending on results of tonight’s qualifying matches, United could also face the likes of Salzburg, Red Star Belgrade, PAOK Salonika or BATE Borisov in a favourable draw.
Out of the first pot fans will be hoping for Lokomotiv Moscow who despite being champions of the Russian Premier League, crashed out of the Europa League last season in the round of 16.
Although PSV Eindhoven did claim victory over the Reds back in 2015, the side have failed to get out of the group stage since and could not get further than the qualifying round of the Europa League last season, meaning that they could be a good side to face in the Champions League.
Viktoria Plzen meanwhile have not been a part of the Champions League group stage since the 2013/14 season and are relatively inexperienced in the tournament.
RedArmyBet is the only bookmakers that share 50% of net profits directly with United fans.
Worst draw
Real Madrid, Monaco and Internazionale
The likes of Bayern Munich, Barcelona, Schalke and Ajax could also await.
Despite only winning two La Liga titles in the last eight years, never underestimate Los Blancos. They have exceptional form in this competition and despite no Cristiano Ronaldo, the team still have the talent to dominate Europe.
Likewise Monaco are a side that could challenge in Europe this year. After securing a Ligue 1 title back in 2016/17, Leonardo Jarim will want success in the Champions League in order to keep up with French rivals Paris Saint-Germain.
Despite a poor decline since their last European victory in 2010, Internazionale are finally back in the Champions League for the first time in seven seasons and will want to make their mark on the competition after such a long absence.
Real Madrid defeated Liverpool in last year’s Champions League final.
United comfortably qualified for the Champions League after finishing second in the Premier League table – unfortunately a huge gap of 19 points separated them from League leaders Manchester City.
Manager Mourinho will be closely watching the draw on Thursday, anticipating a Champions League run that can revive his career at United.
Since United’s last victory in Europe back in 2008, the Reds have struggled with Champions League football, along with their manager who last won the competition eight years ago.
Whilst fans will be hoping for an easy ride in the group stage, that doesn’t always guarantee a free pass into the round of 16 or beyond.
Perhaps a tough group stage for the Reds could bring out the best in their top players, and victory over some of the biggest names in Europe could be a great boost for morale at Old Trafford.
The likes of Paul Pogba and Romelu Lukaku will have had enough time to recover from their World Cup run this summer by the time the Champions League begins and could produce some of their greatest football. United’s stars are struggling to shine in the Premier League, but can they stand up and be counted against European giants?
If United fail to perform in the Champions League as well as the Premier League, will United and Ed Woodward stick with Jose Mourinho? If not, who would you want in charge?
Follow Ben Ibson on Twitter @JournalismBen
Manchester United Champions League United MUFC
Taking a look at the latest #MUFC transfer rumours with @AngelinaKelly...
"A reserved young kid, head down, getting on with his business and trying to forge his way in football."
@westlimkmusc's Brian Murphy says @McTominay10 needs more praise...
More #MUFC transfer talk!
Former United and Scotland striker.
Professional boxer & former British & WBA World Lightweight Champion
Ambassador Bios
* Odds subject to change. Maximum bet regulations may apply. Terms & conditions apply. 18+. Gambling can be addictive. Please bet responsibly.
18+. Gambling can be addictive.
Read more about responsible gambling
RedArmyBet.com is operated by Viral Interactive LTD a company incorporated in Malta, company registration number C66828 with its registered address at 2nd Floor, Cobalt house, Triq Notabile, Birkirikara, BKR 3000. The website RedArmyBet.com is operated and managed by Viral Interactive Ltd (‘’Operator’’) and is licensed and regulated by the UK Gambling Commission with license number 000-042739-R-321859-004. UK resident persons wagering via the website are doing so in reliance on the license issued by the UK Gambling Commission. If you are not from the UK and are playing MicroGaming Quickfire, Play ‘n Go and SB Tech(Sportsbook), then these are governed by Viral Technologies NV, a company constituted under the laws of Curacao, with corporate registration number 123604, and its registered address on Landhuis Groot Kwartier, Groot Kwartierweg 12, Curacao with online E-gaming license is 8048/JAZ2011-015.
Sports betting How to bet on sports Tips & Tricks Sports Rules Bet types
Casino Live casino How to play Casino How to play Live Casino
About redarmybet Responsible gambling Terms and conditions Bonus terms Cookies Privacy policy
See Our Promotions
|
cc/2019-30/en_middle_0006.json.gz/line54
|
__label__cc
| 0.503077
| 0.496923
|
Amber Heard, Johnny Depp reach divorce settlement
Jake Harris
August 16, 2016 celebrity.
Amber Heard and Johnny Depp have reached a settlement in their divorce case, TMZ reports.
In this Jan. 2, 2016 file photo, Amber Heard, left, and Johnny Depp arrive at the 27th annual Palm Springs International Film Festival Awards Gala in Palm Springs, Calif. Heard is withdrawing allegations that Depp physically abused her and has settled her divorce case with the Oscar-nominated actor. Heard filed for divorce in May and days later obtained a temporary restraining order accusing the Pirates of the Caribbean star of hitting her during a fight in their Los Angeles apartment in May. Depp denied he abused her, and police said they found no evidence of a crime. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)
Depp agreed to settle for $7 million and Heard dropped her request for a domestic violence restraining order. Heard filed for divorce from Depp in May, which is also when she alleged that Depp abused her. She has now dismissed the domestic violence case with prejudice, meaning she can’t file it again.
More— Remember: ‘Magic Mike XXL’ star Amber Heard is one of Austin’s own
According to TMZ, Heard and Depp released a joint statement through their lawyers Tuesday that said,
“Our relationship was intensely passionate and at times volatile, but always bound by love. Neither party has made false accusations for financial gains. There was never an intent of physical or emotional harm. Amber wishes the best for Johnny in the future. Amber will be donating financial proceeds from the divorce to a charity.”
The Cassowary died 31 years ago today: The genius life and sad death of an Austin ornithologist
Michael Phelps shows Katie Ledecky best way to wear her Olympic medals
|
cc/2019-30/en_middle_0006.json.gz/line61
|
__label__wiki
| 0.511521
| 0.511521
|
Home > Girls > Laguna Hills’ Pankowski claims WCHA women’s weekly honors
Laguna Hills’ Pankowski claims WCHA women’s weekly honors
Laguna Hills native, Anaheim Lady Ducks graduate and University of Wisconsin junior forward Annie Pankowski was named the WCHA Offensive Player of the Week for the week ending Nov. 20, 2016.
Pankowski tallied Wisconsin’s first natural hat trick since 2012, leading the top-ranked Badgers to a 4-1 win at No. 3 Minnesota-Duluth in Saturday’s series finale.
The junior scored an even-strength goal, a power-play marker and a short-handed strike, becoming only the fifth Badger in program history to collect a hat trick with the three types of goals.
Returning to the UW lineup after missing the previous four games while playing with the U.S. National Team at the Four Nations Cup, Pankowski’s three goals led the WCHA last weekend and matched six others for tops in the NCAA.
This is Pankowski’s first WCHA weekly award of the 2016-17 season and her sixth career honor (including three Rookie of the Week accolades).
Lady Ducks grad, Laguna Hills native Pankowski named WCHA Forward of the Week
Lady Ducks closing in on 20 years of grassroots player development, 100-plus NCAA athletes
WCHA tabs Lady Ducks alum, Laguna Hills native Pankowski Forward of the Week
|
cc/2019-30/en_middle_0006.json.gz/line76
|
__label__wiki
| 0.738045
| 0.738045
|
faculty of medicine, memorial university of newfoundland (13)
health sciences library, faculty of medicine, memorial university of newfoundland (13)
newfoundland. dept. of education (12)
memorial university of newfoundland (7)
howley, james patrick, 1847-1918 (4)
linda white (4)
white, linda, 1950- (4)
chas. e. goad, ltd. (3)
jarvis, dale (3)
image/jpeg (111)
application/pdf (100)
image/jpeg application/pdf (58)
text/xml (17)
canadian newspapers -- newfoundland and labrador -- st. john's -- 19th century (797)
government agencies -- newfoundland and labrador (71)
moon -- phases (71)
newfoundland and labrador -- directories (71)
newfoundland and labrador -- registers (71)
school boards (71)
All fields: detailed
LibQUAL+ 2007 Survey Memorial University of Newfoundland [Canada]
Academic libraries--Administration; Academic libraries--Evaluation; Academic libraries--Use studies; College students--Attitudes--Statistics; Memorial University of Newfoundland. Libraries--Statistics; Memorial University of...
The LibQUAL+ survey was conducted by Memorial University of Newfoundland Libraries from March 12th through April 9th, 2007 to assess user perceptions of how well the libraries are meeting the needs of students, faculty and staff. 5,024 LibQUAL+™...
Morning Courier, 1849-01-23
The Morning Courier was published in St. John's from 21 October 1844 to 28 December 1878. The frequency stabilized into semiweekly in mid-1849 and the "Morning" was dropped after 1853.
The Weekly Herald And Conception-Bay General Advertiser, 1849-01-30, vol. 07, no. 325
The Labrador Garden Project: Annotated Bibliography and Research Notes
Knowledge of the land/water and environment;
The Labrador Garden Project: Annotated Bibliography and Research Notes, from The Agricultural History Society of Newfoundland and Labrador. Document prepared by Lisa Wilson, January 15th, 2015.
The Newfoundland Patriot, 1834-02-18, vol. 01, no. 33
Journal of the House of Assembly of Newfoundland 1919 (8th Session)
Newfoundland and Labrador--Politics and government--1855-1934
The journal of the Newfoundland House of Assembly.
Number 156, Newsletter - Association of Canadian Map Libraries
Association of Canadian Map Libraries; Association des cartotheques canadiennes; Map collections--Canada--Periodicals; Cartography--Periodicals;
The Colonist, vol. 05, no. 087 (16 April 1890)
The Colonist began on 6 March 1886, changing its name to The Newfoundland Colonist after 18 July 1891. Having printed local and international news Monday to Saturday for six years, the paper came to an abrupt end when its offices were destroyed in...
|
cc/2019-30/en_middle_0006.json.gz/line81
|
__label__wiki
| 0.765276
| 0.765276
|
Home Unlisted Couple takes fight for treehouse to Supreme Court (video & poll)
Couple takes fight for treehouse to Supreme Court (video & poll)
After spending tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees, Lynn Tran and Richard Hazen are taking the fight to keep their Florida beachfront treehouse all the way to the Supreme Court.
Prior to beginning construction on the treehouse, which was built around an Australian Pine on their property in 2011 on Anna Maria Island on Florida’s west coast, Hazen asked the city whether they needed a permit. They were told “No.”
An anonymous complaint was later lodged about the treehouse, which sparked an investigation. The city then learned that the couple did actually need to go through the permitting process, because the treehouse was found to be located in an area where building is prohibited. The couple asked if they could get around that legal snafu by having local voters weigh in, but were denied.
Holmes Beach Mayor Bob Johnson acknowledged how the courts have sided with the city, and he called the situation “quite honestly a waste of time,” according to an Associated Press report.
“For some reason these people have this fixation on it,” he said.
The treehouse cost the couple about $30,000 to construct and probably five times that in legal fees as they’ve fought local authorities over it, Tran said. The Supreme Court is their last hope.
The justices had their first opportunity to consider taking the case at a closed-door conference Friday, and a decision on whether they will weigh in could come as early as Monday, according to Detroit News.
Attorney David Levin, who’s representing the couple, says that his clients’ rights were violated by the city of Holmes Beach.
“Part of me still believes there’s got to be justice out there and we didn’t do anything wrong,” Tran told reporters. She noted that in hindsight, they could have taken the money they’ve spent on the treehouse and built an actual house somewhere else.
They’ve been accumulating a $50-a-day fine for not taking down the treehouse which has reached tens of thousands of dollars.
“It’s kind of fun to have around,” said Tran as she cherishes each moment that the structure still exists.
A beachfront treehouse on Anna Maria may get the attention of the U.S. Supreme Court. Will it stay, or will it go?https://t.co/mppGj0B8bu
— Herald-Tribune (@HeraldTribune) January 6, 2018
We’ve like YOUR opinion – please take our poll below:
Below is another video filmed in 2013 with additional details on the situation.
Previous articleList grows as over 1 million workers now getting “tax bill” bonus
Next articleWhite Nationalist charged with terrorism in Amtrak plot (video)
|
cc/2019-30/en_middle_0006.json.gz/line86
|
__label__wiki
| 0.849651
| 0.849651
|
“I’ll run for President”, Carlo Croce unveils Election Manifesto for World Sailing re-election
by Michele Tognozzi -
Today the World Sailing President Carlo Croce presented his manifesto for re-election. Values promoted are of course fully endorsable, though as they are absolute and general, in case others will decide to run, they’ll end up saying more or less the same, so at the end the man with the strongets support and personality will win.
The UK based communication Consultancy Vero Comunication is a step up in World Sailing history, as never before such kind of professional approach to comunication was used in former ISAF/World Sailing elections.
We will present all documents that any candidate will present and whish the best to sailing.
The opening page of the Manifesto PDF
Press release below:
“Carlo Croce, who is standing for a second and final term as President of World Sailing [WS], has today unveiled his election Manifesto “A New Era for World Sailing” [attached]. His Manifesto builds on what has already been achieved in his first term as President and includes six themes which would underpin and guide his final Presidential term. The Decision to elect the next WS President will be made at its Annual Conference which will be held in Barcelona in November 2016. The six themes that underpin “A New Era for World Sailing” are:
· Ensure World Sailing is a global leader in sporting governance
· Become a world leader in ocean sustainability
· Embrace innovation to drive the global growth of Sailing
· Establish one-design standards to ensure athletes are competing fairly
· Consolidate Sailing’s place in the Olympic Games
· Ensure the return of Para Sailing to the Paralympic Games
Carlo Croce, President of World Sailing said:
“My Manifesto builds on what has already been achieved in my first term as World Sailing President, and I am confident that the ideas I have outlined are not only deliverable, they would also herald an exciting new era of growth for our organisation and for the sport of Sailing. My Manifesto is rooted in the opportunities of tomorrow and our unique heritage. It is this approach that would underpin my second and final term as World Sailing President if I have the honour of being re-elected.
“Since being elected President of the International Sailing Federation (ISAF) in 2012, I am proud of what we have achieved together, particularly a significantly enhanced Emerging Nations Programme, steps to improve governance, the appointment of a top class Chief Executive in Andy Hunt, the development of a new Sailing World Cup strategy and securing a five year deal with GAZPROM International as a top level sponsor.”
“I believe that given my track record as President of World Sailing and the measures I have outlined in this Manifesto, that I am the right person to help lead our sport into a new era of opportunity, innovation and modern governance. I very much look forward to speaking to the global Sailing family over the coming months to listen and exchange views on ensuring our great sport continues to prosper and flourish in the years ahead. It would be an enormous privilege for me, working in full partnership with the Sailing family, to serve as President for a final term, and I believe that we have much to look forward to as we prepare for the next phase of our development.”
Carlo Croce
Olympic fever countdown… 49er, the battle of the giants
Olympic fever… Vasilij Zbogar (SLO, Finn) talks about his fifth Games
|
cc/2019-30/en_middle_0006.json.gz/line87
|
__label__wiki
| 0.679231
| 0.679231
|
To Preserver and Interpret Dundee's Historic Past
Our Attractions:
Verdant Works
Dundee Heritage Trust
Collections Database
Curators' Choice
Visit our other sites Dundee Heritage Trust RRS Discovery Verdant Works
Search Website>
Welcome to the Online Collections Database of Dundee Heritage Trust
This website is your chance to discover Dundee Heritage Trust's unique and varied collections, which are split between the Royal Research Ship Discovery and the associated polar materials and the industrial textile collections based in the 'A' listed Verdant Works, originally a 19th century flax and jute mill. Both of which are Recognised Collections of National Significance.
The Antarctic scientific research vessel RRS Discovery is part of the UK's National Historic Fleet of pre-eminent historic ships. The polar collections tell the story of RRS Discovery and the men who served on her. Items vary from navigational instruments and scientific specimens collected on the ship's expeditions to more personal objects which vividly represent daily life for polar explorers of the period. The polar collections are not limited to the Discovery though and feature material from many other expeditions, most notably Captain Scott's second fateful journey to the Antarctic onboard the Terra Nova.
The textile collections at Verdant Works give an insight into the history of Dundee's textile industries from the dominance of the jute industry to the later manufacture of man-made fibres in the city. As well as the large working machinery that illustrates the processing of jute; smaller objects and archives reveal topics such as the industry's Indian connections, research and development, textile products, textile engineering and the lives of the workers.
Our Database
Please be aware that the Collections Database is a 'work in progress'. Although we will be continually adding and updating, it does not contain everything in our collections and the level of detail that accompanies each record varies. Records which currently do not have an image available will show the Dundee Heritage Trust logo.
If you cannot find a particular object, wish to find out more information or arrange a viewing of material not currently on display, please do get in touch through our contact page.
We are always looking for ways to improve this resource so please let us know if you have any information about our collections, comments or if you find any errors. All information is welcomed so please get in touch quoting the relevant object number through our contact page.
Both collections are constantly growing and we would be very pleased to hear from you if you have relevant items which you might consider loaning or donating.
Please select browse collections or search using the search bar at the top right of the page
The Trust sprang from a small dedicated band of local people concerned that unless action was taken important aspects of the city’s history would be lost forever. Trustees are drawn from a diverse range of community and business interests in Dundee and Tayside.
All donations to help support Dundee Heritage Trust will be very gratefully received. Donations can be general or specific to particular projects or aspects of our work e.g. Education, collections care or ship restoration. If you would like to discuss the options available, please use the link below
Discover more about Dundee Heritage Trust’s unique and varied collections, designated by the Scottish government as ‘Recognised Collections of National Significance’, demonstrating their uniqueness, authenticity, comprehensiveness and national value.
Dundee Industrial Heritage LTD
E: admin@dundeeheritage.co.uk
Website design , Development and Hosting by mtc
© Dundee Heritage Trust
All text and images are protected by copyright and are only available for reproduction on request. Although we strive to ensure all published images do not breach copyright any omissions are entirely unintentional, please let us know if you believe an infringement has occurred.
|
cc/2019-30/en_middle_0006.json.gz/line88
|
__label__wiki
| 0.885974
| 0.885974
|
Leadership Group
Variety Guide
Disease Ranks
Variety Trials
Facts on Friday
CSD TV
Variety Performance Comparison
Single Variety Performance
Soil Temperature Network
Canopy Temperature Network
Cotton Fields Weather Network
Cotton Planting Rate Calculator
Seeds Per Kilogram
Statement of Seed Analysis
Boll Factors
2016/17 Weather Summary
Annual Disease Surveys
Replant Calculator
Synchrony 746
Got the green light for planting?
SEED INCREASE
Seed Increase Application Forms
AGENCY NETWORK
Agency Portal
Seed Ordering
Cotton Breeding Australia
Home > News > Vale Dr Stephen Allen
Vale Dr Stephen Allen
The Australian cotton industry has lost one of its long-time contributors, with the recent passing of renowned plant pathologist Dr Stephen Allen.
Dr Allen spent 39 years serving the industry, including 16 years with Cotton Seed Distributors. He made major contributions to the understanding, management and control of diseases affecting cotton production in Australia, most notably Fusarium wilt.
Dr Allen received a number of awards over his career, including Researcher of the Year in 1990 and 2007, and the Honorary Membership Award from Crop Consultants Australia in 2014. He was included in the Australian Cotton Industry Awards roll of honour in 2016 after his retirement in 2015.
Cotton Seed Distributors extends condolences to Dr Allen’s family and friends.
For more on Dr Allen’s career, please see a media release which was first published by CSD in December 2015.
Dr Stephen Allen announces retirement
After 39 years serving the cotton industry and the wider farming community Dr Stephen Allen has announced his intention to retire at the end of 2015.
Dr Allen has made a major contribution to the understanding, management and control of diseases affecting cotton production in Australia and around the world. He is recognised as a global leader in dealing with Fusarium Wilt in cotton.
In Australia Dr Allen’s ability to relate to growers and understand their needs saw him develop disease management strategies and tactics that fitted within the Australian cotton production systems and contributed to the profitability of those systems.
After completing his science degree (with First Class Honours and a University Medal) and his PhD at the University of New England, Stephen joined the NSW Dept. of Agriculture at Narrabri in 1983. Dr Allen’s initial challenges included Bacterial Blight, Verticillium wilt and seedling diseases. He established the annual cotton disease surveys and contributed to the development of an effective seed scheme controlling blight in the very susceptible Deltapine varieties.
Dr Allen’s research also included significant contributions on mycorrhizae, microbial fibre damage in rain-delayed harvests, control strategies for Verticillium Wilt, the first record of black root rot on cotton in Australia and a major role in formulating and implementing the Australian cotton industry response to the escalating threat of Fusarium Wilt. He also completed an exhaustive evaluation of seed treatments based on Systemic Induced Resistance. His ‘Come Clean-Go Clean’ slogan has been widely adopted.
His efforts earned him the Researcher of the Year award twice – in 1990 and again in 2007. In 2014 he received an Honorary Membership Award from Crop Consultants Australia.
CSD recruited Dr Allen in 1999 and he was immediately seconded to CSIRO as a visiting scientist working with the CSIRO cotton breeding team based at ACRI Narrabri. Here he played an important role in focusing research into managing Fusarium (including developing and maintaining the F.rank and V.rank systems) as well researching and developing methods to control other diseases of importance such as Alternaira and Black Root Rot.
Mr Peter Graham, Managing Director at CSD said that the industry had been fortunate in being able to secure the services of Dr Allen who helped CSD provide expert and ongoing strategic direction to research into combating the Fusarium threat.
CSD’s Chair Mr James Kahl has also thanked Dr Allen for his work more broadly in cotton based plant pathology. “Steve Allen led a collaborative approach to this that effectively leveraged knowledge and technology from across and outside the cotton industry which enhanced the sustainability of cotton production In Australia.” Mr Kahl pointed to the development and commercialisation of Bion seed treatment as an example of this leadership.
CSD thanks Stephen, his wife Kristine and the entire family for their contribution to the industry.
New Extension and Development Agronomist for Cotton Seed Distributors
Cotton Seed Distributors shaping young futures with six new appointments
Winning cotton growers announced for the 2018-19 FastStart™ Establishment Awards
Partnership extension to grow cotton industry collaboration in 2019 and beyond
CSD reflects on the year that was 2018
© 2019 Cotton Seed Distributors Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Facebook | Terms of Use | Privacy | Contact
|
cc/2019-30/en_middle_0006.json.gz/line91
|
__label__wiki
| 0.943701
| 0.943701
|
'''2015/2016:''' meanwhile there is in addition to BotE Alpha 7 (PC) a further developed version called '''BotE Android''' 0.6.73 and out of this Android version there is also a Windows version (0.6.66) of "BotE Android" http://www.forum.birth-of-the-empires.de/viewforum.php?f=102
2015/2016 BotE Android: meanwhile there is in addition to BotE Alpha 7 (PC) a further developed version called BotE Android 0.6.73 and out of this Android version there is also a Windows version (0.6.66) of "BotE Android" http://www.forum.birth-of-the-empires.de/viewforum.php?f=102
|
cc/2019-30/en_middle_0006.json.gz/line98
|
__label__cc
| 0.598276
| 0.401724
|
Topic: Max Remy
APSU student-athletes post department-wide 3.0 GPA for a record fourth straight semester
By APSU Sports Information | May 22, 2019 |
Clarksville, TN – Austin Peay State University (APSU) student-athletes posted a departmental grade-point average of 3.0 or better for a program-record fourth consecutive semester finishing the Spring 2019 semester with a 3.096 mark.
A department-record 70 percent of Austin Peay’s 289 varsity student-athletes earned academic honors for the spring semester. The last eight semesters dating back to Fall 2015 have yielded eight of the top-10 semester GPA’s since tracking data began in 1993. For just the fourth time, more than 100 Govs earned a spot on the Dean’s List, with 48 posting perfect 4.0 GPA’s for the semester.
Sections: Announcements, Associations, Austin Peay State University, Baseball, Basketball (Men), Basketball (Women), Beach Volleyball, Colleges, Cross Country, Featured Story, Football, Golf, NCAA, Ohio Valley Conference, Soccer (Women), Softball, Sports, Tennis, Track & Field, Volleyball | No Comments
APSU’s Garrett Spain’s first collegiate homer delivers Janssen’s 200th career win
By APSU Sports Information | March 6, 2019 |
APSU Sports Information
Clarksville, TN – Center fielder Garrett Spain picked the perfect time to hit his first collegiate home run, his eighth-inning blast giving the Austin Peay State University (APSU) baseball team a 12-11 come-from-behind win against Lipscomb, Tuesday, on Joe and Cathi Maynard Field at Raymond C. Hand Park.
Austin Peay Baseball comes from behind to beat Lipscomb at home 12-11 Tuesday. (APSU Sports Information)
Sections: Associations, Austin Peay State University, Baseball, Colleges, Featured Story, NCAA, Ohio Valley Conference, Sports | No Comments
Austin Peay Govs stun No. 1 Vanderbilt in extras
By APSU Sports Information | February 27, 2019 |
Nashville, TN – The Austin Peay State University (APSU) baseball team scored seven unanswered runs and stunned No. 1 ranked Vanderbilt, 7-6 in 10 innings Wednesday night at Hawkins Field.
Trailing 5-3 entering the ninth, Austin Peay (3-4) turned a moment of anguish into a rallying point. With a runner on base and one out, first baseman Parker Phillips was called out on strikes and in the ensuing moments the Governors head coach was ejected.
Austin Peay Baseball rallies to tie #1 Vanderbilt in the ninth then scores two in the tenth to beat the Commodores, 7-6. (APSU Sports Information)
Sections: Associations, Austin Peay State University, Baseball, Colleges, Featured Story, NCAA, Ohio Valley Conference, Southeastern Conference, Sports, Vanderbilt University | No Comments
Governors student-athletes set department record with 3.15 GPA in Fall 2018
By APSU Sports Information | January 4, 2019 |
Clarksville, TN – Austin Peay State University (APSU) student-athletes set a department record with a 3.15 grade-point average for the Fall 2018 semester.
For the first time, Austin Peay student-athletes have posted a department-wide GPA of 3.0 or greater in three consecutive semesters. A record 209 student-athletes received academic recognition for the Fall 2018 semester, including 107 recognized on the dean’s list. It’s the third time 100 or more student athletes have been named to the dean’s list.
Sections: Associations, Austin Peay State University, Baseball, Basketball (Men), Basketball (Women), Colleges, Cross Country, Featured Story, Football, Golf, NCAA, Ohio Valley Conference, Soccer (Women), Softball, Sports, Tennis, Track & Field, Volleyball | No Comments
Austin Peay Govs look to improve tourney position with OVC set at SIUE
By APSU Sports Information | May 3, 2018 |
Austin Peay at SIU Edwardsville
May 4th-6th, 2018 | 6:00pm, 1:00pm, 1:00pm
Edwardsville, IL | Roy Lee Field
Clarksville, TN – Assured a spot in the 2018 Ohio Valley Conference baseball championship with six league games left, Austin Peay State University’s baseball team continues jockeying for seeding with a three-game OVC set at SIU Edwardsville, Friday-Sunday, at Roy Lee Field in Edwardsville, Illinois.
The Govs enter the weekend tied for fourth place with Southeast Missouri but are in a four-team logjam which includes the second through fifth seeds in the upcoming tournament.
Austin Peay Baseball tooks to improve it OVC Tournament position heading into weekend series at SIU Edwardsville.
APSU Govs can’t complete series sweep against Redhawks
By APSU Sports Information | March 31, 2018 |
Clarksville, TN – Austin Peay State University’s baseball team could not get on track and dropped its Ohio Valley Conference series finale against Southeast Missouri, 20-4, Saturday afternoon at Raymond C. Hand Park.
Austin Peay (17-11, 7-5 OVC) still clinched the series victory by virtue of winning both games of Friday’s doubleheader.
Austin Peay Baseball junior Garrett Giovannelli had three hits in loss to Southeast Missouri at Raymond C. Hand Park, Saturday. (APSU Sports Information)
Kueber’s grand slam sends Austin Peay Govs to sweep of Racers
Clarksville, TN – Shortstop Garrett Kueber hit a grand slam and drove in six runs as Austin Peay State University’s baseball team corralled Murray State, 19-7, Sunday at Raymond C. Hand Park to complete a sweep of the three-game Ohio Valley Conference series.
Sunday’s finale started much like Saturday’s contest with Murray State (10-10, 2-4 OVC) grabbing an early 2-0 lead on right fielder Brandon Gutzler’s two-run home run in the first inning.
Austin Peay Baseball beats Murray State Sunday for three game sweep. (APSU Sports Information)
Austin Peay Bat Govs downed by Blue Raiders early charge
Clarksville, TN – Austin Peay State University’s baseball team fell behind early and could not recover, dropping a 9-0 nonconference decision to Middle Tennessee, Tuesday night at Raymond C. Hand Park.
Middle Tennessee (9-8) jumped out a quick lead when it sent 11 batters to the plate in the first inning, scoring six runs. Left fielder Blake Benefield had a two-run double and catcher Jake Hagenow added a two-run single to help build the 6-0 lead.
Austin Peay Baseball loses to Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders at Raymond C. Hand Park Tuesday night. (APSU Sports Information)
APSU Govs baseball a week away, preseason OVC poll released
Clarksville, TN – In just seven days Austin Peay State University’s baseball team will take the field at Raymond C. Hand Park to begin its 2018 campaign, opening with a 3:00pm, February 16th contest against Maryland Eastern Shore.
Third-year head coach Travis Janssen has led the Governors to the Ohio Valley Conference baseball tournament in each of his first two seasons after they missed the tournament the two years before his arrival.
Austin Peay Baseball kick off the 2018 campaign February 16th against Maryland Eastern Shore at Raymond C. Hand Park. (APSU Sports Information)
88 Austin Peay Governors named to OVC Commissioner’s Honor Roll
By APSU Sports Information | August 11, 2017 |
Brentwood, TN – Eighty-eight Austin Peay State University student-athletes were named to the Ohio Valley Conference Commissioner’s Honor Roll, Friday, following the 2016-17 academic year.
Student-athletes must have achieved a 3.25 grade-point average, were eligible and on the team throughout the competitive season in their chose NCAA-sponsored sport(s) and used a season of competition in that sport.
Austin Peay’s numbers include 22 athletes who competed in multiple sports during the season and are counted just once in the department’s total.
88 Austin Peay Athletes make OVC Commissioner’s Honor Roll. (APSU Sports Information)
Sections: Announcements, Associations, Austin Peay State University, Baseball, Basketball (Men), Basketball (Women), Colleges, Cross Country, Featured Story, Football, Golf, NCAA, Ohio Valley Conference, Soccer (Women), Softball, Sports, Tennis, Track & Field, Volleyball | No Comments
|
cc/2019-30/en_middle_0006.json.gz/line107
|
__label__wiki
| 0.763226
| 0.763226
|
Daily Domestic Gross Tue, Nov. 24 2015
Tue, Nov. 24 2015
1 The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 $11,356,003 33% 4,175 -- $2,720 $122,562,341 1 Lionsgate
2 The Peanuts Movie $2,207,063 38% 3,671 -231 $601 $103,157,472 3 Fox
3 Spectre $2,185,908 39% 3,659 -270 $597 $157,901,967 3 Sony / Columbia
4 The Night Before $1,543,127 36% 2,960 -- $521 $12,557,536 1 Sony / Columbia
5 Secret in Their Eyes $803,449 34% 2,392 -- $336 $8,057,729 1 STX Entertainment
6 Love the Coopers $606,704 39% 2,603 0 $233 $16,172,372 2 CBS Films / Lionsgate
7 The Martian $510,274 15% 2,086 -702 $245 $214,090,849 8 Fox
8 Goosebumps $306,230 10% 1,787 -1018 $171 $76,701,051 6 Sony / Columbia
9 The 33 $284,752 15% 2,452 0 $116 $10,536,118 2 Warner Bros.
10 Bridge of Spies $240,956 10% 1,532 -1156 $157 $65,698,276 6 Disney / DreamWorks
1 Spotlight $461,514 30% 598 538 $772 $6,621,020 3 Open Road
2 Brooklyn $143,707 14% 111 88 $1,295 $2,439,949 3 Fox Searchlight
3 Hotel Transylvania 2 $137,555 11% 828 -1006 $166 $166,707,072 9 Sony / Columbia
4 Suffragette $89,841 23% 517 21 $174 $3,730,730 5 Focus
5 Pan (2015) $63,308 23% 365 2 $173 $34,126,843 7 Warner Bros.
6 The Intern $57,802 11% 514 -341 $112 $74,279,972 9 Warner Bros.
7 Sicario (2015) $38,493 -8% 285 -244 $135 $45,865,954 10 Lionsgate
8 Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials $36,747 7% 309 -60 $119 $80,896,860 10 Fox
9 The Last Witch Hunter $33,081 -19% 624 -855 $53 $26,896,445 5 Lionsgate / Summit
10 Woodlawn $29,362 -1% 303 -519 $97 $14,095,398 6 Pure Flix
11 Burnt $26,824 -8% 326 -1288 $82 $13,499,308 4 Weinstein Company
12 Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension $25,359 -7% 361 -424 $70 $18,300,124 5 Paramount
13 Minions $23,605 36% 182 -24 $130 $335,673,715 20 Universal
14 By the Sea $22,050 1% 126 116 $175 $364,584 2 Universal
15 Everest (2015) $16,815 32% 134 -62 $125 $43,276,740 10 Universal
16 The Visit (2015) $12,310 8% 153 -52 $80 $65,092,855 11 Universal
17 Steve Jobs $11,395 13% 126 -200 $90 $17,635,768 7 Universal
18 Crimson Peak $10,155 -15% 184 -347 $55 $31,079,055 6 Universal
19 Black Mass $9,521 23% 160 -72 $60 $62,520,881 10 Warner Bros.
20 Rock the Kasbah $9,492 -11% 189 33 $50 $3,002,440 5 Open Road
1 Carol $30,111 5% 4 -- $7,528 $312,286 1 Weinstein Company
2 Legend (2015) $12,092 9% 4 -- $3,023 $109,982 1 Universal
3 The Man in 3B $2,131 -34% 31 -4 $69 $267,214 3 Freestyle Releasing
4 Our Brand Is Crisis (2015) $1,897 12% 50 -451 $38 $6,949,684 4 Warner Bros.
5 No Escape (2015) $1,189 10% 16 -15 $74 $27,288,219 13 Weinstein Company
6 Ingrid Bergman in Her Own Words $1,006 -6% 2 1 $503 $22,095 2 Rialto Pictures
7 Big Stone Gap $424 -44% 10 -11 $42 $975,527 7 Picturehouse
8 Rififi (2015 re-issue) $403 12% 2 0 $202 $54,472 12 Rialto Pictures
9 Army of Shadows (2015 re-issue) $171 10% 1 -- $171 $27,723 13 Rialto Pictures
|
cc/2019-30/en_middle_0006.json.gz/line108
|
__label__wiki
| 0.613301
| 0.613301
|
Dungeness crabbing trip in southern Puget Sound reveals eye popping experience
I’d been hearing for more than a month now about how stellar the winter Dungeness crab fishery has been going, and just needed to get an up close and personal account of it myself.
So on the day after Christmas I had a chance to fish with Tony Floor, the director of fishing affairs for the Northwest Marine Trade Association who’d been scoring big numbers of monster-sized Dungeness crabs for the past few weeks in southern Puget Sound.
I was joined by retired Seattle Times outdoors columnist Brad O’Connor and my son Tegan who boarded Floor’s boat “The Starship Truth” at the West Bay Marina in Budd Inlet as we made the quick 20 minute ride near the southwest side of Hartsene Island.
This was also a chance for me to catch up on old times with O’Connor, and our conversation was quickly interrupted by Floor as we neared the shoreline where his six crab pots were soaking overnight at a depth of 130 feet.
“I guarantee they’ll be loaded with Dungeness crabs,” he said.
There is a lot of excitement when you first pull in that buoy, toss it on the boat and attach the electric pulley winch to the rope and begin pulling up the pot.
“Look on the fish-finder and you can see the pot coming up, 50 feet, 40 feet, 30 feet,” said Floor.
This sure beats the old school method of the human winch, which is simply using your own brute strength of arms and shoulders to pull up the rope from the bottom.
Once the first giant commercial-sized pot came to the surface we saw the color of the crabs we pulled up from the briny depths that had about a seven Dungies, and each one was well over the minimum size limit of 6 1/4 inches. We sorted and kept the four of the largest crabs, and then re-set the pot with fresh (or stinky and frozen) squid and salmon carcasses.
“I liken these to a filet mignon steak,” says Floor who holds up one of the giant crabs. “You don’t need any butter and should just enjoy the rich flavor of a fresh crab boiled in saltwater.”
We moved the boat over to the next two smaller-sized pots that had a few legal Dungeness crab, and also contained a handful of red rock crabs and pretty starfish that we released.
The fourth pot had the mother-lode of more than 25 Dungies, and all of them were jumbo-sized with some measuring well over eight inches.
We had our daily limit of five crabs apiece before we even pulled the final two pots, and each of those contained 20 more “jumbos.”
“This has been going on all winter long, and it’s not just in this spot,” Floor pointed out. “I’ve been hearing about good crabbing in many other areas of the sound as well.”
This past summer and the current winter crab fishery will likely go down in the crabbing history book as one of the most stellar sport fisheries seen in a long time around the inland marine areas of Puget Sound.
“Once we tally up all the catch cards and we get the numbers of crab caught, it’ll most likely be a record year for the recreational fishery,” said Rich Childers, the state Fish and Wildlife crab manager.
More than 240,000 sport crab licenses were sold this past summer generating a catch of slightly more than two-million crabs. Add to that another 25,000 or more licenses issued this winter, and while harvest figures aren’t known yet, word has it that catches remain excellent.
“In the (inland marine) areas that remained opened this winter all were doing quite for crabs, except for (the San Juan Islands) where it is more like a normal harvest year,” Childers said.
“Everyone agrees that crab abundance is very high and their size is much bigger,” Floor said. “You can go back not that far in time like about 20 years ago when the state didn’t even recognize a crab population in south sound. Whether the current carried the crab larva down there or there had always been a population. I truly believe the crab had already been in South Sound, and back then most crab fishers would go to Hood Canal and from Tacoma north up into the San Juan Islands.”
“It has been a windfall of a new sport fishery in South Sound, and the greatest populations of crab are in the Nisqually Delta, which is a wonderful habitat for crab,” Floor said. “It is different from most other areas in Puget Sound, and the best success comes from 130 to 190 feet in the northern section of the delta and that depth range has been money for the past few summers and winters now.”
Floor says the delta isn’t the only place to find huge populations of crab, and points out the southeast corner of Anderson Island, and the region from the Puget Marina and off Zittel’s Marina are good crabbing zones.
Floor says that Childers had a fact that got him pretty excited, and that is for every male crab that was 6 ¼ inches or greater is a surplus to the rest of the population.
A Dungeness crab won’t win any beauty contest, and some say their mouth resembles the ugly creature from the movie Alien.
Their hard as armor shelled body is a brownish-purple color, and each is equipped with two ferocious looking pincers. But they’re by far the tastiest creatures you can pull out of Puget Sound.
While setting crab pots by boat is the most popular way, I’ve had a great time about a year ago during the winter time venturing out in the pitch black dark of night with chest waders, a headlamp and a dip-net in search of Dungies on the outgoing tide.
The best spots are lagoons and bays with a sandy bottom and extensive beds of eelgrass like we had found off the south side of Whidbey Island on that cold winter night.
Simply wade out into the water and look for them by using a strong spot light type lamp, and when you spot them simply scoop them up.
It does sound a lot easier than it really is and takes more than a tries to be successful as the crabs will quickly move away from your net kicking up a cloud mud and silt.
State Fish and Wildlife enforcement increased their patrols on the waters this past summer to see how well sport fishermen are following rules, and according to Childers were quite surprised at how well they complied with all except for one rule that stood out.
“We know compliance was very good in all areas like not keeping any undersized crabs, no female crabs kept, and no over limits,” Childers said. “It was just across the board good except for failure to punch their catch cards immediately after the land the crabs. We need to stress to people that right after they keep their crab they need to mark it down. It isn’t something you do when you get home. We even had crabbers tell us that they’ve had a great season of crabbing, and then when we look at their cards they have nothing punched on them.”
Floor mentioned that writing down your catch on the punch card is a new rule that was implemented this season.
“It is a new rule and there will be a learning curve so it will improve over time and get better,” Floor said.
Childers says as part of the new crab policy he’ll provide a yearly report to the state Fish and Wildlife Commission in February on the performance of the recreational, non-tribal commercial and tribal treaty fisheries.
The commission has the right to change the policy, but that is unlikely to happen in the near future.
It’s still not too late for people to take advantage of the fishery, which can be accessed using pots or traps from boats or piers, or wading the shorelines at low tide with dip nets or rakes.
Open areas through this Saturday are the Strait of Juan de Fuca east of Neah Bay; San Juan Islands; east side of Whidbey Island; most of northern Puget Sound; and south central and southern Puget Sound.
The daily catch limit in Puget Sound is five Dungeness crab, males only. In addition, you may keep six red rock crab of either sex daily.
Reporting your catch is now mandatory, and must be mailed or done on-line by Feb. 1. Crabbers who fail to file reports will face a $10 fine that’ll be imposed when applying for a 2012 fishing license. For details, visit http://wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/shellfish/crab/crc.html.
The summer Dungeness crab season will reopen in most areas of Puget Sound on July 1.
(Photos by Brad O’Connor)
|
cc/2019-30/en_middle_0006.json.gz/line111
|
__label__wiki
| 0.856195
| 0.856195
|
What McGregor/Khabib Camps Are Saying After Fight-Night In Las Vegas
— Окт 10, 2018
The post-fight meleé has gained so numerous headlines but the fourth round finish will rankle McGregor for a while yet.
Here is Tukhugov talking about McGregor last week.
Unpleasant to hear but McGregor would do well to pay them some heed.
This fight marks McGregor's return to the Octagon since being stripped of his title at UFC 223 due to inactivity.
What happens next wasn't caught on the original UFC footage however as McGregor tries to vault the cage too, just as one of Nurmagomedov's coaches is doing likewise.
Читайте также: South African finance minister criticized after testimony
White said that it would be now up to the Nevada State Athletic Commission to decide if Nurmagomedov would face further sanctions.
Apparent fans of Khabib Nurmagomedov and Conor McGregor got into a confrontation with police on October 6 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
Despite McGregor tapping his arm to indicate his submission, Nurmagomedov seemed to hold on to the winning choke rather than releasing it, encapsulating the bad blood between the pair.
"Again, we need to see how this plays out. What about this...?" Nurmagomedov asked during the press conference. "I know this is not my best side". "There's gonna be an investigation by the Nevada State Athletic Commission, and. there's gonna be big-money fines, and these guys are in big trouble". I thought people would throw whatever they had into the octagon and it would be a risky situation, so I didn't do it.
Nurmagomedov was not given the belt in the ring after the fight and was escorted from the octagon by police and security staff. I'm a human being, but I don't understand how people can talk about jumping on the cage when he talks about my religion, he talks about my country, he talks about my father and he comes to Brooklyn and he broke the bus and nearly killed a couple of people. I always say you should aim for peace, but if you can't aim for peace, aim between the eyes.
The post-fight meleé has gained so numerous headlines but the fourth round finish will rankle McGregor for a while yet.Here is Tukhugov talking about McGregor last week.Unpleasant to hear but McGregor...
http:///2018/10/what-mcgregor-khabib-camps-are-saying-after-fight-night-in/
Unai Emery happy with Arsenal's 'confident' game at Fulham
SpaceX successfully launches - and lands - rocket in Southern California
Israel PM's wife goes on trial in delivery meals case
Def Leppard, Stevie Nicks Lead 2019 Hall of Fame Nominees
This year's nominees have just been announced and there are a handful of fan favorites in the fray. Leading the bunch are LL Cool J and Janet Jackson , who are joined by Stevie Nicks .
Caroline Wozniacki wins her 30th WTA singles title
World number two Caroline Wozniacki secured her third win of the campaign at the China Open after beating Anastasija Sevastova . Argentine top seed Del Potro was far from his best and has been fighting flu or a cold for several days in the Chinese capital.
Taylor Swift gets political at awards
Additionally, several of gospel and R&B's heaviest hitters will assemble for what's sure to be a touching Aretha Franklin tribute. Some of music's top stars, including Drake, Ed Sheeran , Beyoncé, Ariana Grande, Rihanna and Kanye West, were absent on Tuesday.
Crude Oil Price Surges on Iran Sanctions, Gulf of Mexico Fears
Brent crude prices are now hovering around US$86 a barrel and global traders are betting that they will go past US$100. On Monday, petrol and diesel were selling at Rs 82.03 per litre and Rs 73.82 per litre, respectively, in New Delhi .
International Monetary Fund lowers SA's economic growth forecasts
In several key economies, moreover, growth is being supported by policies that seem unsustainable over the long term. It said that a full-blown trade war between the U.S. and China would put a significant dent in economic recovery.
Star Trek: Discover Has Spock With A Beard
But fans were surprised to see Michelle Yeoh , who is returning as Empress Georgiou, and Wilson Cruz, whose Dr. Culber was killed last season. " Discovery has been an incredible joy this season", said Kurtzman.
Should Red Sox Expect Retribution From Yankees Over Unwritten Rules?
Against the Red Sox this season: 1-0 in two starts, 3.46 ERA, 15 strikeouts, five earned runs on 10 hits over 13 innings. In the seventh, still leading 10-1, Benintendi swung at a 3-and-0 pitch from Yankees reliever Jonathan Holder .
Hurricane Michael Expected to Grow into a Major Hurricane
Roy Cooper said, adding, "A number of homes have rooftop tarps that could be damaged or blown away with this wind". A hurricane warning was in place from the Alabama-Florida border to the Suwannee River in Florida.
Taylor Swift gets political with rare endorsement
Bredesen is thankful for Swift's support, writing in a tweet over the weekend, "Thank you for the kind words, [Taylor Swift]". She also acknowledged her past reluctance to address political issues but said that had changed in the past two years.
Mental Disorders Identified To Be The Cause Of Students Failures
Discussing a difficulty with a trusted confidant greatly assists in resolving issues which consequently reduces stress levels. These assessments help them provide recommendations that prevent mental illnesses, Dr Emmanuel Alhassan said.
Trump said Kavanaugh was ‘proven innocent.’ He wasn’t.
But when asked again Sunday about it, he said different rules might apply if the same party controls the Senate and White House. Collins, a four-term United States senator, cast what was a crucial vote on Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court.
U.S. Ambassador to United Nations Nikki Haley Resigns
Trump spoke to reporters at the White House before departing for an event in Iowa, hours after announcing that current U.N. Trump told Haley that "hopefully you'll be coming back at some point. maybe a different capacity, you can have your pick".
Hurricane Michael takes aim at 300-mile Gulf Coast target
Monday, Michael's top sustained winds were around 85 miles per hour (140 kph) as it headed north at 12 miles per hour (19 kph). He also has declared a state of emergency for 35 counties and asked President Donald Trump for assistance ahead of the storm.
Steelers’ WR Antonio Brown Reported $80K, Gun Stolen From Florida Apartment
Brown, a Miami native in his ninth National Football League season, has until Thursday to respond to the lawsuit, KDKA reports . The incident was investigated by security personnel, who determined Brown was responsible for throwing the objects.
IOS 12.0.1 Release Notes, Changes, Security Content Detailed By Apple
A bug was causing some of these models to hook up with a slower 2.4GHz Wi-Fi network instead of a faster 5GHz signal. Apple first addressed the new iPhone's charging issues ( Chargegate ) in a beta release of iOS 12.1 .
|
cc/2019-30/en_middle_0006.json.gz/line114
|
__label__wiki
| 0.943597
| 0.943597
|
Manchester United fans turn on Paul Pogba after performance vs Southampton
They will now turn their attentions towards preparing for their crunch home clash against Arsenal at Old Trafford on Wednesday night in the Premier League.
"Another is to compare ourselves with what Manchester United was in the past because it is impossible".
Stuart Armstrong and Cedric Soares handed Saints the dream start, before Marcus Rashford teed up Romelu Lukaku and Ander Herrera for two United goals in six minutes. "But that second level is not what Manchester United is".
The former Liverpool midfielder said: "Awful is... yeah".
Mourinho said some clubs could buy multiple full-backs at the same time, a comment he has made before when referencing City's transfer policy.
It was very bad from United.
Many have been upset by the way the manager continues to criticise them in public and Mourinho is struggling to keep harmony in the group.
Читайте также: Former U.S. President George H.W. Bush dead at 94
United have spent nearly £400 million (US$510 million) on players since Mourinho arrived at the club in 2016, but the manager claims buying top-level players is becoming increasingly hard.
"This is what you have to do as a professional footballer when you're playing week-in, week-out for one of the biggest clubs in the world is be ready". The manner in which they let it slip, however, definitely brought them back to the ground - scoring 2 goals in 20 before letting in 2 in 19 minutes. At least with Rashford you know he's trying.
De Gea has been one of United best players of recent years and he has been a regular victor of the club's Player of the Season award.
"I can not say the answer because one of the answers you had a few weeks ago".
"You have no chance in the transfer market unless you go to insane numbers, or instead you go to what you call the second level players and still have insane numbers".
Michael Obafemi fed Armstrong inside the area and from a tight angle the Scottish worldwide smashed the ball confidently past De Gea for his third goal in two league games.
They will now turn their attentions towards preparing for their crunch home clash against Arsenal at Old Trafford on Wednesday night in the Premier League."Another is to compare ourselves with what Ma...
http:///2018/12/manchester-united-fans-turn-on-paul-pogba-after-performance/
Former Springboks star Naka Drotske shot in suspected house robbery
Markets may have misread Powell speech, analysts say
Google Hangouts to be shutdown in 2020
NYPD hunt couple who lost ring during romantic proposal
CCTV images show the romantic proposal going wrong and the pair unsuccessfully trying to retrieve the piece of jewellery. US Police have an urgent message for the couple who lost their engagement ring in Times Square: We have the ring.
China halts scientist's controversial baby gene-editing project
He said he would monitor the two newborns for the next 18 years and hoped they would support continued monitoring thereafter. The Crispr gene editing tool he claims to have used is not new to the scientific world, and was first discovered in 2012.
Box Office Report: Close to 100 cr in worldwide gross
Out of the ₹74 crore, the Hindi version of 2.0 contributed about ₹21 crore, while collections from Tamil Nadu stood at ₹20 crore. Rajinikanth and Akshay's latest movie 2.0 has created hype as the film is doing great at the box office.
Callum Hudson Odoi could be latest England youngster to move to Germany
The teenager then set up sub Alvaro Morata to make it 4-0 to the Premier League side, with the Spaniard scoring with his first touch the game.
South's military: North Korean soldier defects to South
Kim agreed to travel to Seoul after hosting Moon in Pyongyang in September for their third summit this year. In the weeks before, both countries had also withdrawn parts of their troops and weapons from a few posts.
AWS enters blockchain market with 2 dedicated services
Enterprises migrating to AWS often need to manage a large number of accounts, distributed teams, and applications. Outposts let AWS scale while making building, electrifying and cooling data centre space its customers' problem.
New Zealand clinch sixth Dubai Sevens title
The Scots scored four tries plus a penalty try against the Shujaa's two tries for the comfortable win. In the rematch, New Zealand took a 7-0 lead, but the US capitalized on a penalty to make it 7-5.
Putin high-fives MBS at G20, but did he shake Trump's hand?
Trump, who was seen passing by MBS and Putin without interacting with either, is not expected to meet with the crown prince . The comments were made in a private conversation between two leaders during the ongoing G20 summit Friday, Reuters reported.
Ebola kills 198 in Democratic Republic of Congo
The outbreak is the tenth in DRC since Ebola was first detected there in 1976. "We will not rest until this outbreak is finished". The combination of rebel violence and pre-election unrest is creating a "perfect storm" for an even worse epidemic, he said.
NASA chief tells Elon Musk to stop drinking and smoking pot
But after several extensions, that competition ended quietly this year with none of the finalists even attempting a launch. He gave the example of retroreflectors - essentially, fancy mirrors that reflect light in the direction it came from.
No-deal Brexit would not be a disaster, says Fox
As numerous European leaders have made clear in recent weeks, the alternative to the Prime Minister's deal is a no-deal scenario. She declined to entertain questions about what alternative she might offer if the current agreement is rejected December 11.
New Jersey Man Charged With Killing Brother, Family In Colts Neck
The prosecutor's office has not discussed a possible motive in the crime. "His family fully support his defense of this charge". Hours later, the blaze at the home of his brother Keith was reported about 10 miles (16 kilometers) away in Colts Neck.
Trump agrees to USMCA agreement with LGBT provisions
Asked Thursday why the two had no meeting scheduled, Trump said: "I would have met with him but we didn't set that one up". But he said he could support it with a "few tweaks that move it in the direction of a more pro-trade agreement".
Pelosi wins Democratic nomination for leader as opposition crumbles
In January, she will face a final decision and vote among her caucus on whether she will regain the speakership. Kim was one of 32 Democrats who opposed Pelosi's nomination during a closed-door caucus meeting in Washington.
Former police officer charged with the murder of St Lucian
She said most officers are good, but in this case, "We're talking about bad cops that go out there and do things against the law". The indictment came three months after Guyger fatally shot Botham Jean , 26, on September 6, after she returned home from work.
|
cc/2019-30/en_middle_0006.json.gz/line115
|
__label__cc
| 0.543946
| 0.456054
|
Spotlight and Review - Earth's Blood (Earth Reclaimed, Book 2) by Ann Gimpel
Earth’s Blood
Earth Reclaimed, Book 2
by Ann Gimpel
Publisher: Musa
Release Date: 2/7/14
Genre: Urban Fantasy/Romance
99,000 words
Clinging to their courage in a crumbling world, Aislinn and Fionn vow to save Earth, no matter what it takes.
In a post-apocalyptic world where most people have been slaughtered, the Celtic gods and a few humans with magic are all that stands between survival and Earth falling into alien hands. The combination of dark sorcery leveraged by the enemy is daunting. Destruction is all but certain if the small enclaves of humans who are left can’t get past their distrust of the Celts.
Captured by the enemy, Aislinn Lenear wonders if she’ll ever see her bond wolf or Fionn, a Celtic god, again. She’s had nothing but her wits to rely on for years. They haven’t failed her yet, but escape from her current predicament seems remote.
An enticing blend of urban fantasy and romance, this second volume of the Earth Reclaimed Series provides fertile ground for Aislinn and Fionn’s relationship to deepen. Headstrong and independent, the pair runs up against each other’s demands time and time again. Fireworks spark. In the end, they learn to savor every moment in a bittersweet world where each day may well be their last.
Fionn tumbled through a gateway and leapt to his feet. Something was decidedly wrong. The wolf and raven were right behind him, but he’d lost all sense of Aislinn’s presence in the traveling portal. It made him half-crazy with fear, but there was nothing he could do until the spell spit him out. Mouth dry, heartbeat thudding in his ears, he waited to see who would follow him out of the ragged hole he’d left in the ether.
For the love of the goddess, please let me be mistaken about this.
Rune emerged. A howl split the still air. “Where is she?” the black and gray timber wolf demanded. He reared up and plunked his paws on Fionn’s chest. “What happened to my bond mate? I cannot feel her anywhere.” He howled again. It was a mournful sound, full of grief. Fionn wrapped his arms around the wolf, but Rune dropped to the ground, apparently not interested in comfort.
“Yes, where did Aislinn go?” Bella demanded, bouncing forward with her awkward avian gait. Ever cantankerous, the raven was bonded to him, so Fionn was used to her moods. She spread her large wings, took to the air, and cawed her displeasure. He stared after her and struggled to manage a mounting sense of panic while balling his hands into fists. Both bond animals knew the truth: Aislinn had disappeared somewhere between Ely, Nevada and wherever they were now. He barked a word to close off his magic. The place they’d rolled out of shimmered and disappeared.
He loosed a string of Gaelic curses. “What the fuck went wrong?” he muttered. Fionn drew magic to augment his night vision and gazed wildly about for clues. They were in the midst of rubble that could well be Salt Lake City. So at least that part of his casting had been true. No, an inner voice corrected him, I doona know that. This could be anywhere. He shoved straggling strands of blond hair out of his eyes and sent his magic spinning outward to gather data. His heart beat a worried tattoo against his ribcage.
The air to his right took on a pearlescent hue. Bran and Arawn leapt through a portal in a flash of battle leathers, the snug-fitting garments indistinguishable from Fionn’s attire. Arawn barked a command; their gateway winked shut. His midnight gaze scanned the small group. “Why is Gwydion not here?” he demanded. “He left afore any of us.”
Rune threw his head back. Another desolate howl split the night.
Bran’s coppery eyes narrowed. “Aye, and where is the lass?”
“And that Hunter scum, Travis,” Fionn growled. He spread his hands in front of him. “I havena felt Aislinn since a few moments after we entered the portal. Join your magic to mine so we might figure out what has happened.”
Bran nodded curtly. “Aye, Travis must have lied to us, but to what purpose?”
“To save his own sorry hide, what else?” Fionn snapped. “Or mayhap because he wanted Aislinn for himself.”
The air took on an iridescent waviness. Gwydion stumbled out of the odd-looking place. Tangled in a welter of blue robes, he clutched an intricately carved staff; blond hair swirled around him. “Be gone, I say—Wait, what happened to—?” He took in the tableau as he lurched unsteadily to his feet. Fionn almost heard wheels turning as Gwydion tallied who was missing. The warrior magician pounded the end of his wooden staff into broken asphalt. Lightning crackled from the end of the staff, betraying his annoyance.
Something snapped in Fionn. Bright, brittle anger lanced through him He launched himself at Gwydion and drove the other Celtic god to the ground. “Bastard,” he screamed. “Ye were in charge of Travis. What? Ye couldna control a simple human? Look what your slipshod seeds have sown—” He raised a fist and drove it into the side of Gwydion’s face. It was more satisfying than using magic. Closer and more personal.
Rune jumped into the fray and sank his teeth into Gwydion’s leg. Bella cawed her disapproval. She tangled her talons in the mage’s long hair and pulled as she pecked at him. Gwydion bellowed in pain. The air thickened and developed an electric quality as he reached for his magic.
Fionn had just cocked his arm back to hit Gwydion again—before his fellow Celtic god shielded himself—when strong arms closed about him and dragged him back. Magic surrounded him, forming a barrier.
“That willna help,” Arawn, god of the dead, revenge, and terror, said, voice stern with command.
“Aye, it willna get your lass back,” Bran agreed. God of prophecy, the arts, and war, he often had a gentler approach than the other Celtic deities.
Gwydion rolled to a sit, looking dazed. He placed his hands on the wolf and raven, muttering in Gaelic. After a time, both animals retreated. He touched the bloodied places on his thigh; the flesh mended quickly. The master enchanter and god of illusion did not make any move to get to his feet. He settled his blue gaze on Fionn, bowed his head slightly, and said, “I am most sorry. Ye are right to be angry with me. The lad came at me flanked by Lemurians. I never even knew how many. When I sent my magic spiraling out to find Travis, he was gone beyond my reach.”
“Why didn’t ye tell me?” Fionn growled.
“How?” Gwydion countered, sounding weary. “Communication isna possible in the portals.”
Fionn groaned inwardly. He knew that. Where were his brains? Taking a wee holiday, a sarcastic inner voice suggested. Fionn jerked against the magic holding him. “You can let me go now,” he told Arawn and Bran. “I’ve returned to my senses.”
He stepped forward and extended a hand to Gwydion, who grasped it. “I am sorry I lost my temper.”
Something sparked from the mage’s blue eyes—compassion laced with pity. Gwydion stood, and then brushed off his robes; dust flew in all directions. He bent to retrieve his richly carved staff. It glowed blue-white when he touched it and he arched a brow at Fionn. “See, the staff knows battle lies ahead. The important thing is what we do now. A good start would be not tearing one another to bits.”
Though Fionn agreed, he secretly wondered if Gwydion might have tried harder were it not for the bad blood between them over Tara, Aislinn’s dead mother. As a MacLochlainn, Aislinn was bound to him, just like her mother had been. But Tara had loved Gwydion. To avoid marrying Fionn, she’d given herself to a stranger and run away to America, effectively severing an age-old bonding. Tara MacLochlainn had been an Irish queen. Under laws of blood and dynasty, she should have belonged to him, Fionn MacCumhaill, Celtic god of wisdom, knowledge, and divination…
Guess she had other ideas about that. What a fankle. Mayhap one we are still paying for. Fionn forced his mind to stay in the present. No point in dragging old bones out and chewing them half to death. Rune’s large black and gray head rammed his side. The wolf bared his fangs and growled.
“I understand.” Fionn settled his blue gaze on Rune. “We have to find her. And we will.”
“Let us go over what we know.” Bran stepped closer. Blond braids were tucked into tight-fitting battle leathers. He had a dreamy look about him, but Fionn wasn’t fooled. The god of prophecy’s mind was sharp as a whip.
“Good idea,” Arawn echoed. Dark hair cascaded down his leather-clad shoulders. Looking as grim as the dead he commanded, his face etched into harsh lines. Eyes so dark iris and pupil were indistinguishable, flashed fire.
“Let us ask the goddess’ blessing,” Fionn intoned. A weight like a cold stone settled into his guts. They couldn’t afford to make any mistakes. Aislinn’s life depended on them getting this right the first time. And my life right along with it. Fionn thought about the next thousand years without the only woman he’d ever truly loved; his soul shriveled. He cursed his immortality. Life without Aislinn wouldn’t be worth very damned much.
Gwydion began a Celtic chant. The other three joined in at proscribed intervals punctuated by Bella’s shrieks and Rune’s barks, whines, and howls. Night yielded to a sickly orange sunrise as they sang.
“I believe we are ready,” Gwydion murmured.
“Aye, I feel a goddess presence.” Arawn spoke reverently. “’Twill provide a balance point against all our male energies.”
“Let us return to cataloging what we know.” Fionn gestured impatiently. Though he understood the wisdom of securing divine assistance, he wanted to get moving before something lethal happened to Aislinn. A vision of her being tortured—long limbs splayed over a rack—rose to taunt him. He muffled a cry, but his mind wouldn’t clear. Blood ran down Aislinn’s face and blended with the red of her hair. Her golden eyes were glazed with pain. He bit down hard on his lower lip, feeling powerless. Adrenaline surged; it left a sour taste in the back of his throat.
“We are, indeed, ready.” Bran nodded.
Fionn latched onto the sound of Bran’s voice and let it pull him out of the black pit his mind had become.
Bran inhaled sharply. “The Hunter, Travis, sought us out. I dinna try verra hard to test his words, but there was enough truth in his tale to satisfy me.”
“And I, as well,” Gwydion agreed. “So mayhap his small group of humans truly was set upon by Lemurians—”
Fionn snapped his fingers. “I have it. That putrid poor-excuse-for-a-human cut a deal to save himself. Mayhap part of it was designed to wrest Aislinn away from me since he was in love with her, too. She told me—” The words curdled in his throat. He couldn’t bear the thought of Aislinn fucking anyone else. She’d been with Travis once. If she was telling me the truth… Mayhap she was with him many times and softened the telling to spare me.
Arawn cocked his head to one side. “Even though ye stopped midstream, what ye did say made sense. Travis agreed to serve as bait in exchange for his life—and mayhap the life of his bond animal as well. If he had his eye on the lass afore all this, well, the pot would have been all the sweeter.”
Fionn waved him to silence. “Ye say ye felt Lemurians?” He looked at Gwydion who nodded. “Well, then, she must be in Taltos. Where else would they take her?”
Relieved to have a destination and something to do, Fionn pulled magic, intent on leaving immediately.
“Hold.” Gwydion put up a hand.
“What?” Annoyed, muscles strung tighter than a bow, Fionn locked gazes with him. Blue eyes sparred with a nearly identical set.
“Ye canna go off half-cocked. There are not enough of us.” Gwydion hesitated. “As the god of wisdom, knowledge and divination, Fionn MacCumhaill, I would think ye would know that without me having to tell you.”
Frustration fueled rage. Fionn opened his mouth to tell Gwydion what he really thought of him. “Why you sanctimonious—”
“Never mind that,” Bran spoke up. “We need a strategy.”
“And mayhap more of us,” Arawn added.
“Aye, and what about Dewi?” Ignoring Fionn’s bitten off words and the challenge beneath them, Gwydion furled his brows.
Fionn blew out an impatient breath; his anger receded. The others were right. Dewi, the blood-red Celtic dragon god, was linked to the MacLochlainn women. She’d also spent centuries in the tunnels beneath Taltos, spying on the Lemurians. Yes, they definitely needed the dragon.
“All right,” he ground out through gritted teeth. “I get it. I agree we need Dewi, and probably more of us as well.”
“We must return to Marta’s house. As soon as we can.”
The wolf’s voice startled Fionn. He turned to look at Rune. The wolf padded closer. “I have been to Taltos both ways,” the wolf reminded him, growling low. “It is much easier and more direct if we enter through the portal in Marta’s basement. That way we maintain the element of surprise. The Mount Shasta gateway is akin to going to their front door and ringing a bell.”
Fionn kicked himself. Even the wolf is thinking more clearly than I am.
Rune had been bonded to Marta and knew her secrets. She’d been onto the Lemurians, delving deep into the extent of their lies. Before they’d killed her, she’d managed to figure out that the war against the dark gods was a sham. The Lemurians were actually in league with the dark. They were the ones who’d masterminded cracking the veils between the worlds to allow the dark ones access to Earth. An ancient race, the Lemurians understood they were dying. They needed an infusion of magic so they’d cut a deal. Access to Earth in exchange for—
Fionn filled his lungs with air, blew out a breath, and did it again. He had to get hold of himself or he’d be less than useless hunting for Aislinn. That will not happen. Focus, goddamn it. Pull it together. Fionn pushed the ache in his heart aside and buried it deep. He couldn’t afford emotion. Not now. Or mental forays into Lemurian treachery. When he’d met Aislinn, she’d been a foot soldier in the Lemurian army, branded so she couldn’t use her magic against them.
Voices flowed over him. When words fell into coherent patterns again, he heard Gwydion ticking off a plan on his fingers. Apparently one the others had formed without any input from him. How dare they? Anger flared hot and bright. Fionn welcomed it like a drowning man might grab a spar. He needed the energy to find the woman he loved.
“…agreed, Bran will hunt for Dewi. Arawn will return to the Old Country to muster as many of us as he can find. Fionn and I and the bond animals will return to Marta’s house. We will sneak into the tunnel a time or two to see what we can discover, but we will not move to rescue the lass until you arrive with reinforcements.”
Gwydion nailed Fionn with his blue gaze. “Aye and ye have returned to us. Did ye hear—?”
“Aye.” Fionn cut off Gwydion’s next words. “Let’s get moving.”
The master enchanter inclined his head. “As ye will.”
Fionn looked at him and wondered if it were mere coincidence Gwydion would end up babysitting him. He decided to test those waters. “I really would be fine with just the bond animals, feel free to join either Arawn or—”
“Pah!” Gwydion interrupted. “Not on your life. I know you, Fionn MacCumhaill. If ye returned alone, ye would turn Taltos upside down to find your lady love. Then the rest of us would have two to search for.”
Arawn moved forward and laid a hand on Fionn’s arm. “Remember,” he said, “the Lemurians came from Mu. They may still have a way to retreat there. If they do so, we will not be able to follow. Or they might strike a deal with the five remaining dark gods and go to one of their worlds if they feel threatened. We can travel to the border worlds, but it isna pleasant. Nay, if they have truly taken Aislinn to Taltos—and we do not know this as a fact—it is imperative they remain there. So, doona do anything foolish.”
“I understand.” Fionn clamped his jaws shut. Thoroughly chastised, he felt like a child again. He hadn’t considered either of the alternatives Arawn had just outlined. Apparently they’d come up in the part of the conversation he’d missed while wrestling with himself.
“I know ye do.” Arawn favored him with a rare smile. “Bran and I are leaving.” The words had scarcely left his mouth when the air around both mages took on a numinous quality.
Fionn locked gazes with Gwydion. “Are ye ready?”
“I am.” Rune took up his traveling position next to Fionn’s side.
“As am I.” Bella settled on his shoulder in a flutter of wings.
Fionn stared at the bond animals. They’d returned to audible speech; that must mean they’d gotten their anger under control. If they can do it, so can I.
Gwydion nodded slowly. “I do not believe there is aught else to be done right now, so the answer to your question would be aye.”
The air thickened as Gwydion drew magic to open a portal. Blessedly numb inside, Fionn added his own to the mix, buried a hand in Rune’s neck ruff, and stepped through.
After they returned to Marta’s house in the ruins of Ely, Nevada, Fionn spent the next hour rattling through it looking for clues that might help them. He started in the bedroom, but Aislinn’s scent, a mix of honey and musk, clung to everything and nearly undid him. When he caught himself pulling her pillow to his nose, he threw it against the wall and stormed out of the room they’d shared.
The rest of the house hadn’t yielded anything. Fionn didn’t bother going up to the attic. Marta’s parents were there, trapped in a state of suspended animation by a strong spell. Best leave them to their rest since they held the gates between the worlds open.
Because there wasn’t anything else to do, he settled at the kitchen table with a bottle of mead and nearly emptied it. The anesthetic effect he hoped for hadn’t happened, though. At least not yet.
“Would ye like to talk about it?” Gwydion’s melodic voice interrupted Fionn’s bleak thoughts. He swiveled his head to look at the mage standing in the doorway, flanked by Rune and Bella. Dirt clung to his robes; Fionn wondered where he’d been. Gwydion had told him where he was going, but Fionn hadn’t paid much attention.
Hmph. Even the animals deserted me.
I’d have deserted me, too, a different inner voice inserted dryly. The way I banged around in here wanting to kill something—anything—if only it would bring Aislinn back to me. Fionn understood at a level beyond reckoning, if he ever laid eyes on Travis again, the Hunter would be dead before he saw what hit him.
He tipped the bottle in Gwydion’s direction. “Not sure what there is to say,” Fionn mumbled.
“Och and there is much to be said between us.” Gwydion clomped to the table, hooked a chair out with one of his perpetually bare feet, and sat heavily. “For example, we havena ever truly talked about Tara—”
“With good reason,” Fionn snapped.
Gwydion shook his head. “Ye doona trust me. I sense your hesitation. We must clear the air.”
Fionn opened his mouth, but Gwydion shook his head. “Hear me out. That empty place inside you? The one ye’re trying your damnedest to ignore—or drown with spirits? ’Tis akin to how I felt when Tara fled Ireland to escape having to choose you or me. She wanted me, but the ancient bond demanded she wed you.”
“I know all that. I still doona see—”
“For the love of the goddess, would ye stop interrupting?” Gwydion’s blue eyes flashed dangerously. Fionn subsided against the back of his seat. “’Twas no skin off your ass when the lass left Ireland, yet I mourned her loss every day. It’s been years, but I miss her still. ’Twas a gift to see her once again in the tunnels under Slototh’s lair—even if she was already dead.”
Something in Gwydion’s words penetrated the desolation surrounding Fionn. He’d known Gwydion cared for Tara, but he’d never appreciated the extent of his loss. Truth hit home and shame washed over him. When Gwydion waved it in front of his nose—no, make that shoved his nose right in it—Fionn recognized kindred pain. He drew his brows together. “Why were ye not angrier at me? We had words, but it seemed we made things up soon enough.”
“Nay, I simply buried my resentment. What would have been the point in holding a grudge? I tracked Tara to America. By then she’d wed another and made it painfully clear she wanted nothing to do with you or me—or the dragon—ever again.”
“At least part of that was my fault. I could have—”
A bitter laugh bubbled past the close-cropped red-blond beard on Gwydion’s face. “Aye, ye see it now. Ye dinna see it then. All ye could see then was that she was the MacLochlainn. Your MacLochlainn.”
Fionn looked at his hands. What Gwydion said was true. He hadn’t loved Tara and he’d known she didn’t even like him, yet he’d insisted on pressing forward with marriage. Of course, there was the niggling problem he already had a wife, so he’d been finagling a divorce. That had been when Tara, finally eighteen, took matters into her own hands and left Ireland.
“I really am sorry. I should have been more considerate—of both of you.”
“Och, aye.” A thread of magic forced his gaze to meet the master enchanter’s. “I forgive you.”
A corner of Fionn’s mouth turned downward. “The question is whether I can forgive myself.”
Gwydion held out a hand for the mead. Fionn passed it to him. Eyeing what was left of the bottle’s contents, Gwydion said, “There never was a drink that offered enough oblivion to purge Tara from my thoughts.”
“Wasna working for me, either.” Fionn snorted. “I should know this. Ye told me, but I wasna paying attention. Where did you and the animals go?”
“We did the same outside as ye were supposed to be doing within. That would be hunting for clues Travis may have dropped while he was here.”
Fionn waited. Instead of talking, Gwydion tipped the bottle and drank until it was empty. “Did ye find aught?” he asked after it appeared the other mage wasn’t going to say anything else.
Gwydion’s forehead creased. He shoved blond hair over his shoulders, pulled a leather thong out of his robes, and bound it out of the way. “It was odd,” he murmured. “At first we all,” he gestured toward Rune and Bella, “thought we sensed Old Ones—ah, I meant to say Lemurians. When I looked more closely, though, whatever had been there was gone.” He shrugged.
Something tugged at Fionn’s internal alarm system. Attuned to danger, it rarely failed him. “Do ye suppose they were after Marta’s parents?”
For a moment Gwydion looked confused. His features smoothed. “Och, ye mean the Lemurian-human hybrids ensorcelled in yon chamber.” He waved a hand over one shoulder. “Mayhap. There is little else here to draw the Old Ones.”
Fionn thought about the genetic manipulation that must have gone into hybridizing the couple in the attic and shuddered. Did the Old Ones want Marta’s parents’ blood so they could do the same thing to Aislinn?
“At least Aislinn is likely still on this side of the veil,” Gwydion muttered.
Fionn looked sharply at Gwydion, realizing the other mage must have read his thoughts. He dragged a hand down his face. “Aye, we all hope that.”
Something sharp closed over his calf. Rune had bitten him. “It is time. We should go into Taltos. I must see for myself whether my bond mate still lives.”
“Can ye feel her?” Fionn asked.
The wolf’s amber eyes gleamed in the dim kitchen. “No, but if she is in Taltos, I will know it once we open the gateway and I cross over.”
“They might have her shielded in some way—” Fionn cautioned.
“Enough words.” Rune nipped Fionn again. As if to support her fellow bond animal, Bella landed on Fionn’s shoulder and dug her talons deep.
A wry smile split Gwydion’s face. “It would appear the animals have spoken.”
“We did tell the others we’d do a reconnaissance.” Fionn stood.
Gwydion followed suit. Both men went to the corner of the kitchen with the hidden trap door. Fionn kicked the rug aside and tugged the door upward. When he looked back he saw Gwydion’s staff glowing with a blue-white light.
Fionn worked his way down the ladder, helping the wolf. It was awkward. When Aislinn had gone into Taltos without him, she’d used magic to transport the wolf to the gateway. The thought of her seared his soul. His throat felt thick. A pulse pounded behind one eye, promising a mother of a headache if he didn’t focus magic to soothe the inflamed blood vessels.
At the bottom of the ladder, he strode to the section of wall holding the gateway and began the incantation from Marta’s journals. Gwydion’s energy vibrated next to him. Stones scraped against one another as the gateway swung open. Fionn bent to give Rune instructions, but the wolf bounded through the opening and disappeared into the dark.
“Damn it.” Fionn swore softly. “Ye stay with me,” he said to Bella.
“I am not going past this doorway,” the bird informed him. She fluttered from his shoulder to a chair and perched on it. “Fewer of us, less chance of discovery. Safer for Aislinn.”
Fionn couldn’t help but agree with her. His bird had warmed to Aislinn much to his relief, since she’d taken a perverse delight in making all the other women in his life—including Tara—miserable.
“Mind speech,” Gwydion said sharply. “And precious little of that.”
“I suppose we follow the wolf. He gave us little choice.”
“After you.”
Fionn stepped through into a dark tunnel. Careful to mute his magic in case the Lemurians had posted guards nearby, he turned left and trailed after Rune. Guts tight, barely breathing, he moved beneath Taltos, the city built by Lemurians deep inside Mount Shasta. Desperation thrummed through him.
I have to find her. Failure is not an option.
My Mini Review:
This story was just a great as the first in this awesome series! It starts off exactly where Earth's Requiem (find it here) ended and I found myself again drawn into this tale. The romance between Aislinn and Fionn continues to heat up as they navigate the challenges of their growing relationship. This is a fantastic mix of Urban Fantasy, romance and action. More secrets get unveiled and the fight for earth continues across countries, planets and realms. I highly recommend this book but with a warning that the first book should be read to fully enjoy this one! *This is a mini review because I did not want to post any spoilers at all! Just read this series for yourself and I am positive you will love it as much as I do!*
Ann Gimpel is a clinical psychologist, with a Jungian bent. Avocations include mountaineering, skiing, wilderness photography and, of course, writing. A lifelong aficionado of the unusual, she began writing speculative fiction a few years ago. Since then her short fiction has appeared in a number of webzines and anthologies. Her longer books run the gamut from urban fantasy to paranormal romance. She’s published 19 books to date, with several more contracted for 2014.
A husband, grown children, grandchildren and three wolf hybrids round out her family.
www.anngimpel.com
http://anngimpel.blogspot.com
http://www.amazon.com/author/anngimpel
http://www.facebook.com/anngimpel.author
@AnnGimpel (for Twitter)
Spotlight - Wanton Heat by Nicola Marsh
Title: Wanton Heat Author: Nicola Marsh
Publisher: Entangled Brazen
At his majesty’s service…or so he thinks.
With her job and her self-respect on the line, advertising executive and reformed bad-girl Zoe Keaton heads to Italy to score a vital business deal. Unfortunately, the guy she needs to convince is the wickedly hot—and totally closed-off—Prince Dominic Ricci, who has no intention of listening to her pitch. So with the queen’s help, Zoe does the only thing that will get the job done. She kidnaps him.
But the joke’s on her when the queen’s matchmaking strands Zoe and the prince on the royal family’s secluded island. Zoe vows not to mix business with pleasure—and prove that she’s more than a spoiled rich girl who bought her way to success—but when the prince turns up the heat, the chemistry between them ignites. Is it just sizzling sex, or could an Italian prince with a tragic past fall for a take-no-prisoners American?
Amazon (only 99 cents)
ABOUT NICOLA MARSH:
USA TODAY bestselling author Nicola Marsh writes flirty fiction with flair for adults and riveting, eerie stories for young adults.
Based in Melbourne, she has published 45 books and sold over 5 million copies worldwide. She writes contemporary romances for Harlequin Mills & Boon, Entangled Publishing and is self-published. Her first indie release, Crazy Love, was a 2012 ARRA (Australian Romance Readers Award) finalist. BANISH, a thriller with Harlequin Teen Australia, is her young adult debut (August 2013), closely followed by the release of a paranormal YA series starting with Scion of the Sun (Month9Books, November 2013)
She’s also a Waldenbooks and Bookscan bestseller, a 2013 National Readers’ Choice Award and RBY (Romantic Book of the Year) winner, a multi-finalist for awards including the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award, RBY, HOLT Medallion, Booksellers’ Best Award, Golden Quill, Laurel Wreath, More than Magic and has won several CataRomance Reviewers’ Choice Awards.
A physiotherapist for thirteen years, she now adores writing full time, chasing after her two little heroes, barracking loudly for her North Melbourne Kangaroos footy team and her favourite, curling up with a good book!
She also loves interacting with readers. She blogs, tweets incessantly, chatters on Facebook and answers emails.
TWITTER * FACEBOOK * WEBSITE * GOODREADS * BLOG
Cover Reveal - Catch (Broken #1.5) by Michelle Congdon
Broken # 1.5
By- Michelle Congdon
Genre- New Adult Contemporary
***Recommended for ages 18+ due to mature situations, sexual content and language***
Even the best fall down sometimes…
Ryan Fox thought he had it all: money, women, fast cars, and a stellar baseball career. He also thought he could hide the memories of his dark past behind the witty charm and the devilish smile. Truth is, he had almost everyone, including himself, fooled. But the past cannot be ignored forever and eventually it finds a way of catching up.
When it all came crashing down, one girl was there to mend the broken pieces. Evangeline Montgomery. Not only did the troubled heiress turn Ryan’s world upside down but she helped him to see what’s most important: It’s not the past that defines you.
In Slide, we heard from Evangeline. It’s now Ryan’s turn to share his story about the girl who stole his heart and changed his life forever.
Release Blitz and Giveaway - Spark (Spark Series #1) by Jennifer Ryder
Title: Spark (Spark Series #1)
Author: Jennifer Ryder
Not many people know that I, Eevie Lawson, have a problem. An addiction to romance novels. I eat them for breakfast. I hide it the best I can, but I need them to breathe. It’s how I cope.
I’ve had a swag of book boyfriends, but now that I’m free from the responsibility of caring for my three younger brothers, it’s time to find one in the flesh.
In real life, no girl meets their hero on page one, or even at the end of chapter one. I should know.
My journey is real. It’s not perfect, and it sure as hell isn’t easy—but the fight for something worthwhile never is.
New Adult and erotic romance writer. My debut novel 'Spark', part of a four part romantic suspense series will be released on 28 February 2014!
A sexy imagination, a life-long love of books and a sucker for romance, Jennifer Ryder couldn't stifle her creativity any longer. Writing steamy adult romance has become her new focus. Living on a rural property in New South Wales, Australia, she enjoys the best of city and country. Her loving husband is ever willing to provide inspiration, and her two young cherubs, and sheep that don't see fences as barriers, keep life more than interesting. Jennifer placed third in the International Stringybark Erotic Short Fiction Award 2013.
Connect with Jennifer:
Facebook | Goodreads | Twitter
Spotlight and Giveaway - How to Be a Man by Tamara Linse
How to Be a Man
by Tamara Linse
Genre: Literary Short Story Collection
Publisher: Willow Words
ASIN: B00HKSLFSQ
Word Count: 59,650
Amazon Kindle Amazon Print Smashwords Scribd Google Books
“Never acknowledge the fact that you’re a girl, and take pride when your guy friends say, ‘You’re one of the guys.’ Tell yourself, ‘I am one of the guys,’ even though, in the back of your mind, a little voice says, ‘But you’ve got girl parts.’” – Birdie, in “How to Be a Man”
A girl whose self-worth revolves around masculinity, a bartender who loses her sense of safety, a woman who compares men to plants, and a boy who shoots his cranked-out father.
These are a few of the hard-scrabble characters in Tamara Linse’s debut short story collection, How to Be a Man. Set in contemporary Wyoming—the myth of the West taking its toll—these stories reveal the lives of tough-minded girls and boys, self-reliant women and men, struggling to break out of their lonely lives and the emotional havoc of their families to make a connection, to build a life despite the odds. How to Be a Man falls within the tradition of Maile Meloy, Tom McGuane, and Annie Proulx.
The author Tamara Linse—writer, cogitator, recovering ranch girl—broke her collarbone when she was three, her leg when she was four, a horse when she was twelve, and her heart ever since. Raised on a ranch in northern Wyoming, she earned her master’s in English from the University of Wyoming, where she taught writing. Her work appears in the Georgetown Review, South Dakota Review, and Talking River, among others, and she was a finalist for an Arts & Letters and Glimmer Train contests, as well as the Black Lawrence Press Hudson Prize for a book of short stories. She works as an editor for a foundation and a freelancer. Find her online at tamaralinse.com and tamara-linse.blogspot.com
from short story “How to Be a Man”
Never acknowledge the fact that you’re a girl, and take pride when your guy friends say, “You’re one of the guys.” Tell yourself, “I am one of the guys,” even though, in the back of your mind, a little voice says, “But you’ve got girl parts.”
You are born on a ranch in central Colorado or southern Wyoming or northern Montana and grow up surrounded by cowboys. Or maybe not a ranch, maybe a farm, and you have five older brothers. Your first memory is of sitting on the back of Big Cheese, an old sorrel gelding with a sway back and—you find out later when you regularly ride bareback—a backbone like a ridge line. Later, you won’t know if this first memory is real or comes from one of the only photos of you as a baby. You study that photo a lot. It must be spring or late fall because you’re wearing a quilted yellow jacket with a blue-lined hood and your brother’s hands reach from the side of the frame and support you in the saddle. You look half asleep with your head tilted to the side against your shoulder, a little sack of potatoes.
Your dad is a kind man, a hard worker, who gives you respect when no one else will. When you’re four, if he asks, “Birdie, do you think the price of hogs is going up?” ponder this a while. Take into account how Rosie has just farrowed seven piglets and how you’re bottle-raising the runt and how you’ve heard your brothers complaining about pig shit on the boots they wear to town. Think about how much Jewel—that’s what you’ve decided to name the pig—means to you and say, “Yes, Daddy, pigs are worth a lot.” He’ll nod his head, but he won’t smile like other people when they think what you say was cute or precocious.
Your mother is a mouse of a woman who takes long walks in the gray sagebrushed hills beyond the fields or lays in the cool back bedroom reading the Bible. When your brothers ask “Where’s Mom?” you won’t know. You don’t think it odd when at five you learn how to boil water in the big speckled enamelware pot and to shake in three boxes of macaroni, to watch as it turn from off-yellow plasticity to soft white noodles, to hold both handles with a towel and carefully pour it into the colander in the sink while avoiding the steam, to measure the butter and the milk—one of your brothers shows you how much—and then to mix in the powdered cheese. You learn to dig a dollop of bacon grease from the Kerr jar in the fridge into the hot cast iron skillet, wait for it to melt, and then lay in half-frozen steaks, the wonderful smell of the fat and the popping of ice crystals filling the kitchen. When your brothers come in from doing their chores, they talk and laugh instead of opening the cupboards and slamming them shut. And your dad doesn’t clench his jaw while washing his hands with Dawn dishwashing liquid at the kitchen sink and then toss big hunks of Wonder Bread into bowls filled with milk.
When you wear hand-me-downs from your brothers, be proud. Covet the red plaid shirt of your next older brother, and when you get it—a hot late summer afternoon when he tosses three shirts on your bed—wear it until the holes in the elbows decapitated the cuffs. If you go to town with your dad for parts, be proud of your shitty boots and muddy jeans and torn-up shirts. It shows that you know an honest day’s work. Work is more important than fancy things, and you are not one of those ninnies who wear girlie dresses and couldn’t change a tire if their lives depended on it.
Be prepared: when you go to school, you won’t know quite where you fit. All the other kids will seem to know something that you don’t, something they whisper to each other behind their hands. They won’t ever whisper it to you. But they won’t make fun of you either because—you’ll get this right away and take pride in it—you are tough and also you have five older brothers and the Gunderson family sticks together. Be proud of the fact that, in seventh grade social studies, you sit elbows-on-the-table next to a boy about your size, and he says with a note of admiration, “Look at them guns. You got arms bigger than me.” It’s winter, and you’ve been throwing hay bales every morning to feed the livestock.
Your friends will be boys. You understand boys. When you say something, they take it at face value. If they don’t understand, hit them, and they’ll understand that. For a couple of months—until your dad finds out about it—your second oldest brother will give you a dime every time you get into a fist fight. The look on your brother’s face as he hands you those dimes will make your insides puff to bursting. Use the dimes to buy lemons at the corner grocery during lunch time. Slice them up with your buck knife and hand them out to see which of the boys can bite into it without making a face.
Tamara Linse grew up on a ranch in northern Wyoming with her farmer/rancher rock-hound ex-GI father, her artistic musician mother from small-town middle America, and her four sisters and two brothers. She jokes that she was raised in the 1880s because they did things old-style—she learned how to bake bread, break horses, irrigate, change tires, and be alone, skills she’s been thankful for ever since. The ranch was a partnership between her father and her uncle, and in the 80s and 90s the two families had a Hatfields and McCoys-style feud.
She worked her way through the University of Wyoming as a bartender, waitress, and editor. At UW, she was officially in almost every college on campus until she settled on English and after 15 years earned her bachelor’s and master’s in English. While there, she taught writing, including a course called Literature and the Land, where students read Wordsworth and Donner Party diaries during the week and hiked in the mountains on weekends. She also worked as a technical editor for an environmental consulting firm.
She still lives in Laramie, Wyoming, with her husband Steve and their twin son and daughter. She writes fiction around her job as an editor for a foundation. She is also a photographer, and when she can she posts a photo a day for a Project 365. Please stop by Tamara’s website, www.tamaralinse.com, and her blog, Writer, Cogitator, Recovering Ranch Girl, at tamara-linse.blogspot.com. You can find an extended bio there with lots of juicy details. Also friend her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter, and if you see her in person, please say hi.
www.tamaralinse.com
http://tamara-linse.blogspot.com
www.facebook.com/tlinse
www.twitter.com/TamaraLinse
www.pinterest.com/tlinse
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/1481856-tamara-lines
Tour wide giveaway
$100 Amazon of BN Gift Card
Spotlight and Giveaway - The S.E.R.A. File (Volume 2) by C.T. Green
The S.E.R.A. Files
by C.T. Green
Genre: PNR
Publisher: Soul Mate Publishing
Number of pages: Approx. 105
Word Count: approx. 30, 400
Cover Artist: Cass Green
SATISFYING SIMON
Will satisfaction be guaranteed?
For Serena Roberts, getting to know her new SERA partner is an uphill task. Simon’s distant and ‘by the book’ demeanor is at odds with his playboy past. Serena believes she’ll never find out the real story behind the torture Simon endured at the hands of a demon nor discover a way past the Fae warrior’s ice-cold reserve.
Simon doesn’t mind his reputation for being hard to please, but when he meets Serena he finds there is something he cares about more than keeping his distance from others. As they hunt for a kidnapper can he trust Serena enough to leave them both satisfied?
PROTECTING PENELOPE
Angels and demons don’t mix. Prepare for an apocalypse.
Adar works as a special operative for SERA. He’s a demon who loves the thrill of close calls and blood-pounding action. But no way in hell is he ready to do protection detail for an angel. After all, everyone knows those guys are short tempered and deadly.
Penelope, a messenger angel, is minding her own business when she witnesses a crime. Now she’s under the care of a big, strong SERA agent and she’s determined to go for his heart. When the bad guys catch up with them and Adar is forced to unleash his inner demon, will the angel he’s fallen in love with still want him?
CATCHING FLAME
A fire prince always knows how to light a girl’s fire.
Saskia “Sass” Boots has been watching Flame, and he’s every bit as absorbing as his namesake. But as an agent with SERA, she’s determined to keep her mind on the job and off the fire prince’s smokin’ hot body. A pyromaniac’s on the loose and Flame is SERA’s top suspect.
When Sass announces she’s moving in with him, Flame knows it’s going to be hard to resist the girl of his dreams while chasing a murderer. There’s no way Flame is going to let some creep kill innocent people, but when things become heated, the scorching chemistry between him and Sass might prove a fatal distraction.
TOUCHING TORREN
SERA Agent. Werewolf. Guard Dog. No one said anything about ‘walkies’.
After Sophy Bancroft is blinded by a spell, Torren is determined to protect the human from a killer still at large. But for a werewolf, playing at being a guard dog is tough work. He hates deceiving the woman he’s fallen in love with, but until Sophy’s sight returns there’s no other way to ensure her safety.
Sophy’s delighted to regain her vision. When she discovers her beloved canine companion is a seriously gorgeous werewolf will she be able to trust him not to shed on the furniture, and more importantly, save her from the creature determined to end her life?
AFTER OBLIVION
Not even Hell itself is going to keep these lovers apart.
Mia Haviland and Avenian of the Fae mourned the loss of Oblivion, the demon prince who bound the three of them together. Now their lover is back and determined to re-take his place in Mia and Aven’s life.
Oblivion endured two years in Hell, imprisoned and tortured by a sadistic killer who escaped SERA’s justice. Now he wants his beloved Fairy and Fae back by his side and his captor’s head on a platter. Can he destroy his nemesis and convince Aven and Mia that neither Hell nor high water will ever keep him from them again?
Before becoming a writer C.T. Green worked in advertising for ten years. She also completed a Bachelor of Arts with majors in communication and literature.
C.T. Green now lives in regional Australia with her husband, children and extensive collection of animals - amongst which are the world's bossiest goldfish.
In between writing, i.e. arguing with her characters and occasionally posting to her blog, she reads, drinks vanilla coffee, kid wrangles, enters writing contests and avoids the goldfish.
http://www.ctgreen-author.com/
http://www.ctgreen-author.com/blog.html
https://www.facebook.com/C.T.GreenAuthor
https://twitter.com/CTGreenAuthor
https://plus.google.com/+ctgreen/posts
https://www.pinterest.com/ctgreenauthor/ct-green-likes/
http://www.amazon.com/C.T.-Green/e/B009F86386
Tour giveaway:
$15 gift voucher from Amazon
1 ebook copy of The S.E.R.A. Files Vol. I
1 ebook copy of The S.E.R.A. Files Vol. II
|
cc/2019-30/en_middle_0006.json.gz/line116
|
__label__wiki
| 0.782672
| 0.782672
|
Armenia and the European Union launched negotiations Monday on a new agreement to deepen their cooperation, after a previous deal fell apart over the country's decision to join the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union. Brussels (dpa) - "We aim for
Shortened tax haven blacklist
The European Union has removed eight countries - including Panama, the United Arab Emirates and South Korea - from its 17-country blacklist of international tax havens, just seven weeks after the list was compiled. Brussels (dpa) - The eight
German Diesel scandal widens
The crisis gripping the German car industry has emerged as a new election campaign battleground, forcing Berlin to call auto bosses to an emergency summit on Wednesday to help restore confidence in the motor vehicle sector ahead of the September poll. Berlin
Opel under the PSA banner
The sale of the German carmaker Opel by General Motors to the French is sealed. In Germany people are asking: What is in store for Opel under the PSA banner? Frankfurt (dpa) - A "European Champion" is what Carlos Tavares, head of the
Berlin's airport again delayed
A fresh set of technical glitches is expected to further delay the opening of Berlin's new airport by another four to six months, city mayor Michael Mueller said on Wednesday. Berlin (dpa) - "There is a chain of nuisances," he told state
Draghi facing the parliament
European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi on Monday tried to quell European lawmakers concerns about historically-low interest rates amid questions about uneven growth and low inflation in the eurozone. Strasbourg, France (dpa) - "It is true that
BASF accused of avoiding taxes
The German chemicals giant BASF used aggressive tax strategies to avoid paying 923 million euros (1.03 billion dollars) in taxes over a five-year period, according to a study commissioned by the Green Party in the European Parliament, released Monday. Brussels
Wallonia destroys years of work
Since Belgium's French-speaking region of Wallonia decided earlier this month not to back the EU-Canada free trade deal CETA, many questions about the future of CETA and the EU‘s ability to commit to other international trade deals have emerged. Brussels
Fresh money for Greece
Eurozone finance ministers have given their go-ahead for Greece to be granted 1.1 billion euros (1.2 billion dollars) in bailout aid, while holding back on a further 1.7 billion euros until Athens clears outstanding arrears. Luxembourg (dpa) - The
Social democrats backing CETA
Germany's Social Democrats (SPD) - junior coalition partner to Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) - agreed Monday to back the EU-Canada trade deal CETA after some convincing from their party leader. Berlin (dpa) - The majority of
EU-Commissioner attacks VW
Volkswagen appears to have violated EU consumer protection rules, a top official from the bloc said Monday, pointing to complaints about a lack of transparency from the German automobile giant during its emissions scandal. Brussels (dpa) - The United
Klishina allowed to compete
Russia's lone athletics team member at the Rio Games, long jumper Darya Klishina, on Monday welcomed the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruling to allow her to compete and is thankful she can turn her attention to the competition. Rio de
Google surpasses Apple
Google has overtaken Apple to take the top spot as the worldÄs most valuable brand, according to an annual report released Wednesday. Washington (dpa) - With a value of 229.2 billion dollars, Google is 32 per cent more valuable than a year ago,
Goris
"Goris" (Armenian: ; until 1924, "Geryusy", "Geryusi" or "Gerusi"; formerly, "Goraik", "Gores", "Hin Kores", "Kores", "Korus", "Koru", "Kuris", "Zangizour", "Zankazour", and "Kyuryus") is a city in the Syunik Marz of Armenia. It is about 240 km away
Spitak
:"For the nearby village, see Spitak (village).""Spitak" (; formerly, "Amamth", "Hamamlu" ) is a city in northern Armenia located in the region with a population of 18,237. It was mostly destroyed by the devastating Spitak Earthquake in 1988, and
Sisian
"Sisian" (, also Romanized as "Sisavan") is a city in Armenia in Syunik province,historical Zangezur province. It is located on both banks of Vorotan River, 6 km south of the passing highway Yerevan - Meghri, 217 km from Yerevan and 115 km from
Stepanavan
"Stepanavan" (, also Romanized as "Step’anavan" and "Stepahavan"; also, "Stepanawan-"; until 1938 "Dzhalal-Ogly", meaning "Son of Jalal", also Romanized as "Dzhelaloglu" and "Dzhalalogly") is the second largest city (after Vanadzor) in the
Eriwan
|
cc/2019-30/en_middle_0006.json.gz/line126
|
__label__wiki
| 0.687051
| 0.687051
|
When Life Imitates Art - The Wire
Bullettyme
Post subject: When Life Imitates Art - The Wire
Of course it could also be art imitating life.
Crazy case of police corruption in Baltimore, it's like something out of The Wire or a movie:
A federal jury has found two Baltimore police officers guilty for their role in a sprawling police corruption case that involved robbing city residents.
Daniel Hersl and Marcus Taylor were convicted of racketeering and robbery charges and cleared of others.
They were part of an elite unit tasked with seizing illegal firearms. But instead the squad went rogue, stealing cash and guns and reselling drugs.
Thousands of cases could have been affected by the unit's corruption.
Baltimore Police Commissioner-Designate Darryl De Sousa issued a statement after the verdict, noting the trial uncovered "some of the most egregious and despicable acts ever perpetrated in law enforcement".
"Our job moving forward is to earn back the trust and respect of the community," he said, adding that it would "be a process".
Baltimore police have struggled to regain public trust after Freddie Gray, a young black man, died in police custody in 2015.
The city's police department is currently subject to federal monitoring as part of court-ordered reforms due to discriminatory and unconstitutional policing.
The verdict follows three weeks of explosive testimony in a federal courtroom.
Additional officers named in the testimony have either been suspended or announced their retirement.
A jury deliberated on Thursday and Monday over a series of charges stemming from an FBI investigation of the Baltimore Police Department unit, the Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF).
In additional to the guilty findings, they cleared Hersl and Taylor on charges of possession of a firearm in a crime of violence. They face a maximum sentence of 60 years.
After the verdict on Monday State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby called the facts revealed at the trial "deeply disturbing" and said her office was "continuing to comb through the cases" potentially implicated by the officers' illegal acts.
According to the Baltimore city's Office of the Public Defender, as many as 3,000 cases could have been affected by the GTTF.
All but one member of the task force was indicted and arrested in March 2017.
Six former officers pleaded guilty, and four of those - Maurice Ward, Jemell Rayam, Evodio Hendrix and Momodu Gondo - were called to the witness stand to testify against their former colleagues.
They detailed a series of thefts that went back years, including pilfering cash during street arrests, cracking safes, stealing kilograms of drugs to resell and armed robberies committed by wearing masks and brandishing guns.
Over the years, the thefts amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Although Hersl and Taylor were on trial, much of the most shocking testimony centred on the actions of the unit's officer-in-charge, former sergeant Wayne Jenkins.
Ward testified Jenkins liked to stop anyone over the age of 18 carrying a backpack, and pulled over specific vehicle models he called "dope boy cars" without cause.
The unit routinely filed false police reports to cover their tracks, according to court testimony.
Former detectives also testified they went into houses without search warrants for so-called "sneak and peeks" to see if there was money or drugs inside.
Jurors were shown Halloween masks, an 18-inch (46cm) machete and a grappling hook the men said Jenkins intended to use in home invasions.
Jenkins advised them to carry realistic looking BB guns, two detectives said, so they could plant them if they shot an unarmed citizen.
Jurors also heard from Donald Stepp, a bail bondsman who said he resold an estimated $1m (£720,000) worth of stolen drugs for Jenkins, including two garbage bags full of prescription opiates that Stepp said were taken from pharmacies during the civil unrest following the death of Freddie Gray.
Throughout the trial, the defence attempted to discredit the testimony of the former officers, saying they lied about Hersl and Taylor's participation in hopes of getting reduced sentences. They also picked apart the credibility of witnesses who admitted they were dealing drugs at the time they were robbed.
Hersl's lawyers also argued the 17-year veteran was being unfairly held accountable for some of the task force members' most egregious acts.
"The government lumped Daniel Hersl's wrong conduct - there's no excuse for it - into a racketeering enterprise where other officers did commit real robberies, real drug trafficking and real extortion," said defence lawyer William Purpura.
While Taylor's family declined to be interviewed, Hersl's older brother Steve Hersl sobbed outside the courtroom and expressed outrage at the verdict.
"My brother was innocent," he told reporters. "Let's talk about the corruption on top - everybody starts from the bottom, the little guy. My brother was a little guy."
But prosecutors argued both officers were just as involved as their colleagues were, showing specific instances of theft.
During the trial, about a dozen additional names of Baltimore police officers were mentioned in connection with illegal or improper acts, including one who tipped off GTTF that they were under investigation.
The testimony had real-time effects - one officer was suspended. Another high-ranking officer announced his retirement on the day he was mentioned.
A special agent for the FBI told the court a wider corruption investigation is active and ongoing, opening up the possibility of more charges.
Post subject: Re: When Life Imitates Art - The Wire
BokJock
More The Shield than the Wire
BokJock wrote:
Just because it's Balmer.
Beaver_Shark
Location: Mzansi
Inch high hogs eye
naki
You play in dirt, you get dirty
Although this thread turned out better than I hoped.
tabascoboy
Location: 曇りの街
crash 669
I assume some of the images I couldn't view covered "SHHEEEEEEEIT".
I love the Woody Allen quote "Life doesn't imitate art, it imitates bad television". Or good telly in this case.
hermie wrote:
Andalu
If there's anything positive it's that it's a black guy and a white guy working together.
mabunch78
During the first series of Undisclosed (about a miscarriage of justice in Baltimore) it was mentioned that David Simon shadowed members of the Baltimore police force just prior to writing the screenplay for the first series of The Wire. Some of the corruption he depicts in the series are exactly what some of the police were up to in the case, mostly around manipulation of evidence to fit a preconceived narrative that suited individuals involved in the investigation for personal reasons. A healthy dose of cognitive dissonance was required in order to see it through, which they did with success given their knowledge of the weaknesses and pressure points in the city judicial system. The implication is that the art was imitating life. It seems Simon produced a faithful depiction of policing culture in the city that lives on...
mabunch78 wrote:
Tehui
I watched the Wire for the first time last year. I completed all 5 seasons in about 6 weeks. A terrific TV series with a great story.
Bullettyme wrote:
Dubya Howard
Location: Bondi Centrelink
Tehui wrote:
Lucky fu*ker. Wish I could erase it from my memory and rewatch it from scratch...
Dubya Howard wrote:
Same. As golden as this age of television is, I don't think there's been anything as good recently.
Did the same about 3 years ago. And all because it kept being mentioned on the bored as a brilliant piece of television.
I ended up binging all 5 seasons in about 3 weeks. Then went back and re-watched seasons 1 and 4 because they were so fantastic.
covrich
Location: Middle England
Beaver_Shark wrote:
Was season 4 the season that focused on the school aged youth? If so, that was probably my favourite season of the lot.
Yep, an absolute masterpiece. My favourite season along with S2.
3 and 4 are the best. I'd possibly say 4 with a gun to my head.
DragsterDriver
Location: Gypsy Jack Nowell
I absolutely loved it, the wire and sopranos are something i'll sit and watch again someday
DragsterDriver wrote:
I've still yet to watch the Sopranos. Or Breaking Bad. I'll give them a go soon as they've been well reviewed.
The Wire is in my fav top 3 TV shows of all time with Game of Thrones and Lost.
mr bungle
I've watched S01E01 so far, about 4 years back. Lucky me to have this to look forward to.
Deadtigers
Location: I. S. Of The Bronx
Andalu wrote:
I literally did laugh out Loud. Teamwork makes the dreamwork!
FFS you haven't watch the Sopranos or Breaking Bad either?! What the fudge have you been doing with your TV life?
That's my top 3 right there. If I was to rate them it would be
mr bungle wrote:
The first 3 or 4 episodes are slow burners so you just need to hang in there. Once you get pass those, you'll end up watching the whole lot in a couple of months its that good.
I did the same with Breaking Bad. Took me 5 years to finish the first series, then boom.
UncleFB
I'm kind of the same. I watched the first episode and loved it, watched the second and thought it was average and then didn't watch for another 4 years. I enjoyed it, especially S3, but BB doesn't come close to The Wire in my books.
With The Wire a mate had it on DVD and said why don't you watch first episode, it's really good - I did that and then watched another 5 that night before getting up and finishing S1 in the morning. Then watched the rest over the next couple of weeks.
I do know people who can't watch it because they find it dated - I tell them to watch it as a period show.
Location: Spiritual Guardian
The wire is excellent. Best TV show ever imo, though GoT is pretty close.
Couldn't get into breaking bad at all. Seemed more like a dark comedy/satire than a seriously TV show (which is fine, just not my cup of tea). Am I wrong about BB?
dam0 wrote:
Each to their own I reckon - as an example, GoT is not even close to The Wire for me. The first few seasons it was top class but only been good since then, but then again I'm not a fantasy fan so for it to keep me watching is a good effort.
That was my experience. I watched a few episodes and found it very slow going. The only reason I stuck with it was due to the reviews it received, and the people who recommended it to me. I'm glad I stuck at it.
Users browsing this forum: assfly, BBB, booji boy, Cullen, Google Adsense [Bot], Google [Bot], guy smiley, kingswood, Lenny, Majestic-12 [Bot], Mick Mannock, MungoMan, Rumham, The Man Without Fear, Wendigo7, Wilderbeast and 1 guest
|
cc/2019-30/en_middle_0006.json.gz/line144
|
__label__cc
| 0.73806
| 0.26194
|
Articles tagged with: Generator
Home » Publishing on Demand
10 Years of Diffusion
Submitted by Giles Lane on September 17, 2010 1:10 pm4 Comments
10 years ago this month we published the very first series of Diffusion eBooks, Performance Notations, launching our particular brand of hand-made hybrid digital/paper publishing on an unsuspecting public. Over the past decade we have followed that series with several others of our own (and a few by partners and collaborators) such as : Species of Spaces, Liquid Geography, CODE, Short Work, Topographies and Tales & Transformations and published well over 400 eBooks (and nearly 200 StoryCubes too). In 2002 we published the design schematics allowing others to create their own Diffusion eBooks (with recent updates for all 4 design variations and right-to-left reading too) and followed that in 2006 with the first version of our online web application for creating eBooks & StoryCubes, the Diffusion Generator. Hundreds of eBooks and StoryCubes were created (not all published here) by its users over a two and a half-year period. For a more in depth history of Diffusion read this post from 2007.
In 2008 we won a small grant from the Technology Strategy Board to build a new prototype service that would be vastly more powerful and flexible than the old Generator – what eventually became bookleteer.com. The alpha version was launched at the end of September 2009 and we now have several hundred users who have created almost one thousand eBooks and StoryCubes with it during its first year, including some in languages such as Arabic and Hindi. In the past 6 months we’ve rolled out lots of new features, such as new sizes, customisable front covers and our exclusive Publish & Print On Demand service. We have also created a crowdfunding scheme for collaborators, partners and friends to support bookleteer’s technical development, Alpha Club. We’ve run a series of events, Pitch Up & Publish, introducing bookleteer to new users – both in our own studio in Clerkenwell and around the country with the Empty Shops Network.
To kick-off Diffusion’s next decade we’re devising a new series of events, Pitch In & Publish, and adopting a new model of participatory publishing for our curated series. Rather than selecting individuals to create eBooks as we have done for previous series we will host events where people can collaborate in designing and creating a series of publications with others. Proboscis will define the series theme and individual topics for each issue, which will be put together during a one-day event. We will be publishing the collaborative publications (which could be an eBook or a series of StoryCubes) on this site and we will be inviting the participants to use bookleteer to create their own personal contributions to the series. A limited edition run of the publication will be printed using the PPOD service for participants. Pitch In & Publish will launch in October 2010 with the first series, City As Material. Topics will include: river, streetscapes, skyline and underside.
Details on dates, guests, topics and how to participate – http://cityasmaterial.eventbrite.com/
eBook Observer – Diffusion categories | bookleteer blog
[...] http://proboscis.org.uk/projects/diffusion/ http://diffusion.org.uk/?page_id=2 http://diffusion.org.uk/?p=2152 [...]
Diffusion – 10 years old | bookleteer blog
[...] written a post over on diffusion.org.uk recapping on the past decade and looking forward to what we’re planning to…
10 Years of Diffusion | Proboscis
[...] first series of Diffusion eBooks – how time flies! Over on diffusion.org.uk we’ve written a short recap of what…
Tweets that mention 10 Years of Diffusion | Diffusion eBooks + StoryCubes -- Topsy.com
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by proboscis, Giles Lane and Rob Annable, bookleteer. bookleteer said: RT @gileslane: its…
Home » Community & Events, Events, Publishing on Demand
Pitch Up & Publish
Submitted by Giles Lane on September 21, 2009 12:41 pm4 Comments
Starting in October we will be running regular informal evening workshops for people to literally pitch up and publish using bookleteer.com. Initially these will be held at our Clerkenwell Studio for up to 15 participants – all you need is a laptop and some content (text /photos/ drawings etc) you’d like to create and share as eBooks or StoryCubes (shareables). We will provide free user accounts to bookleteer and guide you through the steps of preparing and generating your shareables to share online, via email or as physical publications. Once created you can publish them on your own website or, if appropriate, we can publish them on Diffusion.
The first workshop will be held during the week beginning October 12th 2009 (date tbc) between 6.30-9pm.
To reserve a place please email us at diffusion (at) proboscis.org.uk
Participants will be asked to make small donation to cover materials and refreshments.
Click to continue reading “Pitch Up & Publish”
Bookleteers : les successeurs des Diffusion e-Books sont là | Lire.Ecrire.Jouer
[...] j’espère pouvoir en envoyer un compte-rendu à Giles à temps pour la prochaine édition de Pitch Up and Publish,…
Bookleteers : les successeurs des Diffusion e-Books sont là
Hi Sho, the Generator/Bookleteer service is not yet public. I'll contact you separately about how we might help.
Sho Halajian
I am interested in the Diffusion generator and would like information on the cost and formatting guidelines. Where can I…
Diffusion Generator: latest news (May 09)
Last month we completed our Feasibility Study for the Technology Strategy Board to investigate the potential for third parties to use Diffusion Generator to create and publish eBooks and StoryCubes via an API. As part of this process we developed a completely new platform for the Generator which makes it much more flexible – the prototype now includes numerous new features:
creation of portrait and landscape eBooks
use of both ‘classic’ and ‘book‘ binding methods for eBooks (see our design schematics)
creation of single and double sided StoryCubes
offline content design ability for eBooks & StoryCubes (via PDF upload)
ability to flow HTML content into eBooks & StoryCubes
Unicode support for non-Roman typefaces for languages such as Chinese, Arabic, Cyrillic, Greek, Japanese, Korean, Hebrew, Aramaic and many others
eBook templates supporting right-to-left languages (e.g. Arabic)
support for personalised/branded eBook & StoryCube templates
support for future shareable designs to be incorporated into Generator
We have been testing the system since late March and shortly will publish some eBooks created recently using the new Generator to demonstrate some of the new formats (e.g. landscape and ‘book’ binding options). Meanwhile we are fundraising for the next stage of development to build a web interface for individual access, as well as some demonstrator projects with 3rd party partners (a museum, a university, a data aggregation platform, a visitor attraction centre) exploring how institutions might use the Generator to offer “tangible souvenirs” of digital experiences.
The “tangible souvenir” concept has been developed by Proboscis over the last couple of years based on our own experiences of creating projects that engage people with digital technologies (e.g. Urban Tapestries, Snout, Feral Robots etc) but which require digital technologies (e.g. a web browser) to review. We frequently find that people want to refer back to an experience with others but are often in a place (the pub, a cafe, over the dinner table etc) where they don’t have access to a suitable screen or fast web connection for showing what they experienced. The idea behind “tangible souvenirs” is simply to create physical outputs culled from digital assets created or engaged with during a ‘digital’ experience (such as using an interactive museum guide). A personalised eBook or StoryCube is then provided which can be kept in a pocket, passed around, given away and re-created as often as the person likes.
More updates next month…
Generator developments
In Autumn 2008 Proboscis won a Feasibility Study grant from the Technology Strategy Board to investigate the potential for third party sites to add access to our Diffusion Generator online software to their systems, enabling their own users to be able to create and publish eBooks and StoryCubes directly from their sites. Over the next couple of months we will be developing a re-engineered prototype of the Generator designed to allow 3rd parties to hook into it through an open API (Application Programming Interface) and offer their own users eBook and StoryCube creation.
As the popularity of Diffusion grows – we have now passed an average of 110,000 downloads per year – Proboscis needs to develop sustainable revenue streams (e.g. from licensing the API to 3rd parties) to keep Diffusion going, and to create successful and meaningful partnerships with potential users (museums, galleries, universities, companies etc) who wish to add this unique publishing system to their own sites. The feasibility study and the re-engineered Generator will enable us to model these potential revenue streams and demonstrate a functioning service to other potential partners.
Later this year we aim to unveil the new Diffusion Generator and welcome expressions of interest from organisations and institutions who would like to test the API. I’ll be at BookCamp on January 17th and would be delighted to hear from anyone interested in working with us.
Diffusion Shareables Film
Diffusion Shareables from Proboscis on Vimeo.
JoycMAjiski
Hey yu guys I am at a friends place using his computor with most recent flash viewer and a…
Publishing as a conversation
Submitted by Giles Lane on March 6, 2008 12:53 pmNo Comment
One of the most transformational aspects of Diffusion as a platform for publishing-on-demand is our ability not only to commission and publish new writing and ideas, but to enable other people to participate by creating their own eBooks and StoryCubes through the Generator and have them included alongside commissioned authors; publishing as a conversation rather than a privileged monologue.
We have been interested since the late 1990s in utilising network technologies to create alternatives to the traditional ‘centre to the margins’ nature of the media; the broadcast and publishing model sustained since the 19th century and only beginning to be seriously challenged in the late 20th Century through the rise of the internet and its distributed network structure. We have been exploring how, through concepts like ‘public authoring’ and ‘cultures of listening’, we can create new ways for people to participate more widely in the creation of the cultures and societies they live in – such as in our Urban Tapestries project and Social Tapestries research programme, as well as our current Anarchaeology projects (with Render in Canada & ICE in Australia).
A key feature of future series of Diffusion commissions will be this conversational aspect – where we will be inviting the public to participate in the series by using the Diffusion Generator to create eBooks & StoryCubes of their own – the best and most relevant of which we will include in the series alongside the authors we commission directly. This will be different to the kinds of conversation that happen through blogging and commenting – creating an eBook or StoryCube is a much more considered affair, requiring time and reflection to create what is, after all, a publication that exists not only on the web but as a physical entity too.
The first of these ‘conversation series’ will be Transformations – we will be announcing the initial commissions in April and publishing the outcomes later in the year, inviting contributions from the public once the first 3 or 4 are available. Watch this space.
Home » Community & Events, Events, Publishing on Demand, Residencies
Diffusion Discussion Day, 30/11/2007
Submitted by Orlagh Woods on December 18, 2007 10:15 pm3 Comments
On Friday 30th November, an informal evaluation of the Diffusion Generator Case Study Residency programme took place at the Proboscis studio. Those who participated included Bev Carter, artist and community development consultant; Paul Goodwin, a writer, curator and urban researcher; Andrew Hunter, artist, writer and the Director/Curator of RENDER, University of Waterloo, Canada; Michelle Kasprzak, curator, writer, artist and the Programmes Director of New Media Scotland and finally Tony White, a writer – author of novels including Foxy-T (Faber and Faber), and the non-fiction work Another Fool in the Balkans (Cadogan). They were hosted by Karen Martin who facilitated the residency programme, Phil Ayres, an architect, programmer and lecturer at the Bartlett School of Architecture (programmer of the Generator), Giles Lane, Alice Angus, Orlagh Woods from Proboscis.
The day began with an informal look at the different approaches and processes taken by each of the participants in the residency programme, exploring and sharing how they each used the Diffusion Generator to create and publish eBooks (as well as the occasional StoryCube). These included two way communications between children in the UK and Nigeria, a way to collate research for a book creatively, as a means to document an exhibition and research programme, as a visual journey through the city, as a series of interviews with curators and as a storytelling device.
In the afternoon, several other people were invited to take part in a larger discussion to explore other ways the Generator could be used. Among our guests were Linda Doyle of Trinity College Dublin, Michael Bhaskar of Pan Macmillan, Ellie Smith and Charles Beckett of Arts Council England, London.
Some of the various ideas for future uses of the Shareables and Generator included:
as an evaluation tool for conferences or events
within galleries or museums as interpretation tools
for community engagement projects
for internal marketing within organisations
as a brand consulting tool
to collect conversations and feedback dialogues
for a short story competition
to promote emerging writers alongside mainstream first publications
for sampling ideas
for rapid publishing of poetry slams
and as educational tools
A more detailed evaluation will be published as an eBook in the new year.
Biogeek29
yo, I LOVE BIOLOGY! especially diffusion. like biology is totally an art, if i could i would…
well i wish i was there and i love talking about diffusion. tell me when the next one…
Michael Bhaskar
Thank you for having me over; it was an extremely enjoyable afternoon. I wrote on our blog how I thought…
Home » eNotebooks, Learning, Schools & Education, Publishing on Demand
eNotebooks: learning diaries, field notebooks and evaluation tools
In addition to using the Diffusion eBook format to publish essays and artists books, Proboscis has also been using it to create notebooks for specific activities and projects. The eBook format allows us to design and distribute a notebook that participants in a project or workshop can fill in by hand (writing, drawing or adding stickers as they wish) which can then be scanned and turned back into a PDF file for sharing – either within the group or more widely. This ‘virtuous circle’ moving from digital to material to digital is at the core of the ‘Shareables’ concept. We have designed the Shareables so that they can be used without always needing a computer, but still providing a path for capturing and sharing digitally.
Proboscis has successfully used ‘eNotebooks‘ in our schools projects as learning diaries (e.g. Sound Scavenging, Everyday Archaeology and Experiencing Democracy) and, in our community projects as a simple means of gathering local knowledge and information (e.g. Robotic Feral Public Authoring, St. Marks and Conversations and Connections).
Learning Diaries
The eNotebooks have been very effective for the schoolchildren participating in our projects, giving them a single place to record and reflect on what they have learned from the different activities and how they are integrated into everyday learning. Over the three years we have collaborated with the Jenny Hammond Primary school on Social Tapestries projects, we have worked ever more closely with the teachers to use the learning diaries to make the bridge between the activities of the workshop and what the children are learning as part of everyday school. The diaries themselves are also an invaluable tool for the teachers and us to gauge each child’s engagement with the project and its concepts – some children choose to do the minimum whilst others spend considerable time and effort embellishing their drawings and writings. This serves an additional function in helping to assess the impact on learning that the workshop has had – the diaries show how the children are absorbing new ideas, vocabulary and improving their spelling as the project progresses.
Examples: Sound Scavenging, Everyday Archaeology, Experiencing Democracy
We have also used the eNotebooks in community-based projects and workshops to record knowledge about places and communities. The eNotebooks offer a familiar ‘interface’ and technology (paper and pens) that is very inclusive and engaging – allowing people to write, draw or stick photos into them. In communities and situations where access to computers and broadband internet was not possible the eNotebooks allowed us to design a simple and effective means of asking open (but targeted) questions and enabling people to complete them there and then or post them back to us at their leisure. We see many other possible uses of this kind of eNotebook for researchers in the field doing ethnographic or anthropological studies.
We have also speculated on using the Diffusion Generator in brainstorming activities, where the eBooks are used to create iterations or snapshots of the process in situ. This would both provide an immediate outcome to the activity, but also document the creative processes along the way.
Examples: Robotic Feral Public Authoring, St Marks, Havelock Community Mapping
Proboscis has begun to experiment with creating structured notebooks for people to give feedback and evaluation on an event (such as a conference or workshop) or project. The StoryCubes have also been used in this way – at the Enter Festival in Cambridge (April 2007) conference delgates helped create a landscape of ideas, images and themes relating to the event. Futurelab also used the StoryCubes to engage delegates at their Why Don’t You… conference (October 2007) in mapping and exploring ideas relating to new education practices and uses of innovative technologies in schools and learning. Proboscis also uses the StoryCubes as a notetaking tool (instead of taking minutes) for its own advisory group meetings, enabling us to combine the questions and observations that the group members note down in an ever-growing and evolving landscape.
Examples: Enter Conference,
One of our key aims for Diffusion is to explore its uses in places (such as developing countries) with poor access to publishing technologies (both traditional print and electronic). A Diffusion eBook can, of course, be made with nothing more than some blank sheets of paper which can then be written and drawn on – or even have sections of typwritten text pasted onto them. Once made, these unique handmade books can be scanned and turned into Shareable eBooks (PDF files), endlessly reproducible and distributable through email and web downloads.
Examples: we plan to make some illustrative examples available soon
New! Improved!
Submitted by Karen Martin on November 10, 2007 1:50 amNo Comment
Welcome to the new look Diffusion website. This blog will track all of the various projects, publications, authors and collaborations which take place around the DIFFUSION eBooks, the DIFFUSION Generator and the StoryCubes. On this site you will find posts about each eBook we have published (and in the future StoryCubes too), posts about the authors as well as the various series of eBooks we have published over the years. The site also has a page with details on how to make eBooks and StoryCubes, as well as the Library listing all the published eBooks in a single, browsable page. There is also information about Proboscis’ DIFFUSION Generator – a prototype publishing-on-demand service we are currently testing (examples of which are listed on the blog), with details about how to join our private beta trial.
We are also inviting people to add reviews of their favourite eBooks as comments to individual posts, as well as comments about how people are using them; for instance we know of one example where the Performance Notations series was used as a ‘set text’ for students at an art school. As we add new eBooks and StoryCubes to the site we hope that it can become a more useful forum for sharing ideas about how they can be used as well as a site for downloading the publications themselves. Enjoy…
A brief history of Diffusion
Diffusion began life back in 1999 as a response to the increasing difficulty that I was having in distributing the books and journals I was then publishing – both for Proboscis and for the Royal College of Art‘s Computer Related Design Research Studio. The bookselling world had been changing rapidly in the previous few years – from the collapse of the net book agreement to the increasing consolidation of bookshops into chains and closure of independent outlets and distributors. These shifts affected the practice of bookselling too – large chains became less willing to stock niche publications and ordering became computerised across the chain rather than by buyers in individual shops with responsibility for specific subjects. In short, our publications were becoming harder for our readers to find and more expensive to print, warehouse and distribute.
Working for an interaction design research lab and having previously investigated the nascent printing-on-demand systems then available, it occurred to me that it would be possible to create an ‘eBook’ that could be downloaded from the internet and printed out on home printers to be folded into a paper book format. I was also skeptical that electronic books would take off in the form that was then being touted – who would want an ugly device with a small screen and poor resolution costing hundreds of pounds, and then have to pay for the ‘books’ to read on it? It seemed so odd considering the obvious pleasure and tactile enjoyment that people derive from handling physical books, as well as their relative low cost, to replace them (as was being widely prophesied) with a much poorer experience.
Diffusion then became a research project to devise a paper folding and layout format that could be used to create small files using Adobe’s PDF file format. A conversation with an officer in the Arts Council of England’s Combined Arts department led to a funding proposal and grant to develop the format and a first series of commissioned publications – Performance Notations. In the Autumn of 1999 Paul Farrington (my design assistant at the RCA) and I set down to develop the format. Over the next six months we looked at a number of ideas before Paul devised the unique Diffusion folding format (experts at the British Library informed us later that they had nothing similar in their collection). The first series of eBooks was completed and published in September 2000.
From this beginning we began to develop ideas for many different uses that the eBooks could have, but lack of time, funding and other commitments meant that Diffusion developed slowly. With further assistance from the Arts Council’s Collaborative Arts Dept, we developed and published the design schematics for the eBooks as a way of ‘open sourcing’ the format in Spring 2002 (with the help of Nima Falatoori). However we quickly realised that very few people would be able to benefit from them as they needed some graphic design skills to interpret and make use of, not to mention access to costly professional desktop publishing software (such as Adobe InDesign or QuarkXPress). This meant that very few of the people we thought might make most use of Diffusion could do so, as they would not likely be designers themselves.
So in 2003 I began researching whether we could create our own software application that would enable people to create eBooks simply and without needing graphic design expertise. I discovered the Reportlab open source software solution for creating PDF files and a summer intern from Kings College London’s computer science department (Diab Al-Kudairi) developed a working proof-of-concept prototype for the Diffusion Generator which we demonstrated at the People Inspired innovation conference in September 2003 (held at BT’s Adastral Park research campus). It then took a while to find a programmer who could use the prototype to develop a proper application, and in Spring 2004 I was introduced to Phil Ayres, who was teaching at the Bartlett School of Achitecture and developing a python-based intranet for the school. Phil soon began to develop a framework combining Zope, the Plone content management system and Reportlab. A first stage prototype was tested from March to June 2006, followed by a second stage in November 2006. The current prototype (stage 3) is in private ‘beta’ testing and has been used extensively during the 2007 case study residencies, which have been ably facilitated by Karen Martin, who also developed the new diffusion website.
Our next aims for Diffusion are to advance the Generator from its current state towards being a public online service and to focus on creative projects using it in the developing world.
London, November 2007
[...] http://proboscis.org.uk/projects/ http://proboscis.org.uk/projects/diffusion/ http://diffusion.org.uk/?page_id=2 http://diffusion.org.uk/?p=2152 http://diffusion.org.uk/?p=202 [...]
Home » eBooks, Residencies
Ahead in the Line by Tony White
Submitted by Giles Lane on November 9, 2007 3:51 pmNo Comment
About : Ahead in the Line is part of the Balkanising Bloomsbury project for the Generator Case Studies. The story was created by cutting up, remixing and re-narrativising fragments from various sources including the Richard Burton translation of The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, the letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and transcripts from the trial of Slobodan Milosevic at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Ahead in the Line was written for Barbara Campbell’s 1001 Nights Cast project.
Tony White is a writer. He is the author of novels including Foxy-T (Faber and Faber), and the non-fiction work Another Fool in the Balkans (Cadogan). Editor and co-editor of the fiction anthologies Britpulp (Sceptre) and Croatian Nights (Serpent’s Tail/VBZ). Tony White has edited and published the artists’ book imprint Piece of Paper Press since 1994 and contributed to numerous magazines and journals – he is also literary editor of the Idler magazine. Tony is currently working on another novel and undertaking research into creative writing in interdisciplinary and research contexts which is supported by Arts Council England through Grants for the Arts.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Gobbledegook by Tony White
About : Gobbledegook is part of the Balkanising Bloomsbury project for the Case Study Residencies. The story was created by cutting up, remixing and re-narrativising fragments from various sources to tell a completely new story. Sources include Alan Burgess, Lawrence Durrell and transcripts from the trial of Slobodan Milosevic at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Further titles and the first version of a rolling, iterative bibliography for the whole series will be published shortly.
booktwo.org Notebook » Paper eBooks
[...] author of one of my favourite books, Foxy-T, and literary editor of The Idler, has just published a series…
|
cc/2019-30/en_middle_0006.json.gz/line146
|
End of preview. Expand
in Data Studio
No dataset card yet
- Downloads last month
- 13