text:
Dr Thomas Challenger – Doctors on Call Medcall

By , June 26, 2013 3:06 pm

Dr Thomas Challenger
Medcall Doctors on call to combat flu season

Yahoo!7 Updated June 24, 2013, 6:00 pm

Record demand for house doctors

FIRST ON 7: On-call doctors are gearing up for flu season, which is about to strike Queensland. Kylie Hodge reports.

On-call doctors are gearing up for the flu season about to strike Queensland.

There’s record demand for free GPs who visit patients in their own homes at night, on weekends, and holidays.

Every night hundreds of Gold Coast patients have MedCall doctors come to them for free.

DrTom Challenger started the service alone 13 years ago. He now employs 33 other GPs.

“My grandfather was in a nursing home and he was pretty ill and we couldn’t get a doctor out late at night and he ended up dying as a result,” Dr Challenger said.

In Brisbane, Family Care Friendly Medical Services answers calls from across the south east and interstate.

“We’ve got some very bad influenzas down south – some very sick children, and also some of the influenzas are impacting on elder members of the community,” spokesperson Stuart Tait said.

Every patient the doctors treat, is one fewer waiting in the emergency departments.

“They significantly assist with reducing the number of presentations to the emergency departments.” Dr Christian Rowan from AMAQ said.

“One day Telstra disconnected our phones in the office and all the hospitals on the Gold Coast went on bypass with the load of the patients we weren’t seeing.”

But the AMAQ says recent changes to federal funding for GPs are making it more difficult for practices to provide doctors on call.

“The federal government has made after hours viability more difficult,” Dr Rowan said.

Gold Coast:
Medcall, 55 311 224
Free, bulk-billing on-call GP service

Mon-Fri 6pm-8am, Saturdays from noon, All day Sundays & public holidays

Dr Tom Challenger honoured by White Pages

By , June 20, 2013 12:35 pm

Dr Tom Challenger honoured by White Pages

June 17, 2013

2013/14 Gold Coast White Pages®
Dr Tom Challenger

A commitment to improving the health of his region has landed Gold Coast general practitioner Dr Tom Challenger the cover of this year’s Gold Coast White Pages®.

Dr Challenger is recognised under the theme, Keeping Our Communities Healthy, as founder of Medcall, a medical service that provides after-hours house calls to more than 300 Gold Coast residents per night.

In 2000, after his grandfather died late at night, Dr Challenger established Medcall, a bulk-billing after-hours medical service that makes house calls. Volunteering his services, Dr Challenger would drive up and down the Gold Coast, supported by just one other doctor, to attend to people in need for hours on end.

Since its inception, Dr Challenger has grown Medcall into a key community service helping to take the strain off local hospitals and ambulances. Now with 33 doctors, Medcall provides medical attention to approximately 300 people each night who live between Beenleigh and Coolangatta.

When not on-call himself, Dr Challenger is working on plans to roll out similar services in other cities.

With Medcall operating 365 days of the year, Dr Challenger is a dedicated GP giving locals lifesaving care when they need it.

“On a personal level I know how crucial after-hours medical service is, so providing such important care to homes all over the Gold Coast is very rewarding. Being selected for the White Pages cover for something I’m so passionate about is quite humbling,” Dr Challenger said.

Dr Thomas Challenger Challenger Mission


Content-Type: application/http; msgtype=response

WARC-Identified-Payload-Type: text/html

WARC-Type: response

text:
Skip Ribbon Commands
Skip to main content
Global Catastrophe Recap - November 2017

Impact Forecasting, the catastrophe modeling development center of Aon Benfield, evaluates the impact of the natural disaster events that occurred worldwide during November 2017 in this monthly report.

If you elect to comment or engage with our content via third-party social media websites, you authorize Aon to have access to certain social media profile information. Please click here to learn more about information that may be collected when using these tools on
Copyright © 2016 Aon Benfield
All Rights Reserved

warcinfo:
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-149-109-157.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2018-05
operator: Common Crawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for January 2018
publisher: Common Crawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf


text:
Sunday, February 5, 2012

In honor of Super Bowl Sunday: Tim Gorry makes a defensive touchdown

My dad loves football. He played football in high school for Chaminade High School in Mineola and in college for St. John's University. He's an avid Jets fan and passed that love of his team down to my brother, Denis. I'm more of a Giants fan, but I think I've started to inherit that love of the sport and I know that when we're watching a team together, I can always depend on my dad to explain things to me and answer all my questions. This is a newspaper article from 1970, I think, my dad's senior year of high school, in which he made a defensive touchdown. Go, Dad! And go Giants! :)

  1. Your dad played for St. John's? Would he like to participate in the St. John's Oral History Project I'm working on? I havent gotten to interview anyone who played on the football team.


WARC-Identified-Payload-Type: application/xhtml+xml

WARC-Truncated: length

text:
• Sourcing Solutions
  • Services & Membership
  • Help & Community

Quick Details

  • Place of Origin: Guangdong, China (Mainland)
  • Brand Name: Tiger
  • Model Number: Z280Pro, Z280Pro
  • Support Resolution: 1920 x 1080
  • Features: IPTV
  • WiFi: 802.11n 2.4GHz
  • Gold IPTV: Free 12 months
  • FTA(Free To Air): YES
  • Warranty: 18 Months
  • High Definition: YES
  • Processor: Sunplus 1506A
  • Market: Europe,Arabic,South America,North America
  • Product Name: Arabic IPTV Box
  • Type: Digital
  • WIFI: Surpport

Packaging & Delivery

Delivery Time 30 working days
Product Description

  Features :
          -Main processor: Sunplus1506A chipset

           -DDR: 2 G bit DDR3-1333MHz

           -Flash size: 8 M bytes SPI flash

            -Transponder: DVB-S/S2
           1. Native OSD game(Box Man, Tetris, Hit Rat, GoBang, Sudoku)
           2. NES game

           4. USB WiFi support(only support RT3070/RT5370 chipset WiFi)
           8. Redtube
           14.Google map

* Advanced HD MPEG2/MPEG4/H. 264/VC-1 fully DVB-S/S2 compliant
* Full video resolution 1080P/1080I/720p/576p/576I/480p/480I
* Aspect ratio: 4: 3/4: 3LB/4: 3PS/16: 9/16: 9LB/16: 9PS
* Dolby(AC3, DD+), DTS, AAC-LC, HE-AAC audio support
* Low power standby mode(power consumption is less than 0.5 W)
* 3 hours auto standby if no operation
* 32bits Friendly OSD menu
* Multi-Language:English French deutsch Italian Spanish Swedish protuguese
* Finland Holland Turkish Czech Danish Arabic Greece Russian
*Fast blind scan
* auto and manual search
* Unicable support
* DiSEqC1.0, 1.1, 1.2, USALS support
* Subtitle support
* programs Timers
* Fully support 7 days EPG
* Parents control(programs lock and parental rating)
* favorite groups
* Max 5000 programs
* Default database
* Database editor on PC

Related Products

               Tiger star Z400Pro

SEVER:1year Platinum iptv, 1 year kids movies, 1 month top ten movies for free, Support 3G, USB WIFI, Redcam, Red IPTV

            Tiger star I3000 OTT

Andriod TV Box, 1 year POP TV for free, Support RJ45, CA, USB WIFI, 3G, POP TV, VOD, DLNA, MIRACAT

                Tiger star Z280+

Chipset: Sunplus1506A , 3 months IP TV for free, Support 3G, USB WIFI, Weather, Onlineupgrade, Activecode, Red IP TV, Redcam, VOD.
Our Company

Tiger International Company was established in 2001 in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan were it is specialized in LED TV’s, Digital Satellite Receivers, Alarm Systems and CCTV.
Tiger has a complete team from sales ,marketing ,R&D,Supply Chain,Manufacture to technical support.With advanced crafts design and flow control,stable supply and professional technical support can satisfy our customers quite well.
After more than 15 years efforts and developing ,You can find our products popular in many countries ,like Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman,Qatar,Iran, Egypt,Libya,South Africa,Algeria,Morocco,Nigeria,Tunisia, Afghanistan,Cyprus,Brazil,Ukrain... ...

Packing & Delivery

1* Remote control

1* Z2800pro box
1* HDMI cable
1* AV cable
1* User manual

Delivery :
1, Standard Export Package
2, We will send the package to buyers within 2 days as soon as the payment is received or orders verified.
3, The buyers are responsible for making clearance and paying taxes.

Kindly noted :Before making orders, please make sure importing the satellite receiver/set top box is allowed in your local coutries and you can make clearance in time.

Our Service

1. Help you solve technical problems
2. Keep you inform about any updates
3. Provide best software and hardware service
4. Guarantee the best quality
5. We provide 18 months warranty for each product from us

Technical support website :www.tiger-sat.net

Q1: What is the Minimum order
A1: The MOQ can be 1pc.
Q2: Do you have any discount ?
A2: Discount is available, more quantity more discount.
Q3: How to inspect quality ?
A3: 100% strict testing products. Any problems will be dealt with immediately after we got your feedback.
Q4: What is your warranty policy? How we get support for software?
A4: All products from us with one year warranty , This warranty is void in the event of misuse, alteration, faulty installation, or misapplication of the product.

Meanwhile,we offer 1% full set free spare parts to our regular distributors.

We update our software on time.All models of tiger receiver support online update. And also find the newest software from below link: www.tiger-sat.net

Q5: How long is your delivery time?
A5: Generally it is within 2 working ddays, if the goods are in stock.
Q6: Do you provide samples ? is it free or extra ?
A6: Yes, we could offer the samples ,but need charge not free.
And the sample fee will be refunded to you after you confirm order with us.
Q7: What is the payment terms ?
A7: By T/T, Western Union, Paypal or Credit Card. Payment<=1000USD, 100% in advance. Payment>=1000USD, 30% T/T in advance ,balance before shippment.

                 Contact Details

Name : Sophie
TEL : 0086 136 3148 5269
QQ :1836434485
Wechat :136 3148 5269
Skype :86 136 31487 5269
Whatsapp : 86 136 3148 5269
E-mail :tigersales06(@)hotmail.com

If any question, please feel free to contact me

Transaction History of the Supplier

Below is the information about the supplier's transactions conducted via Alibaba.com. If you require further details regarding the transaction data, please contact the supplier directly.

Transaction Overview

Transaction Details

This supplier has completedtransactions with buyers from .

Shipping Destination
Transaction Value
Transaction Date
Email to this supplier
Trade Assurance
China (Mainland)
Transaction Level:
Supplier Assessments:
83 Transactions 20,000+
The supplier’s transactions conducted via Alibaba.com in the past 6 months.
The supplier supports Trade Assurance – A free service that protects your orders from payment to delivery.
Supplier's Trade Assurance Limit: US $27,000
Learn More


text:
Saturday, March 19, 2011

For Chris H

These photos are on facebook but I know Chris doesn't use facebook much. The room is nearly finished. Just have the floorboards to do and then we can start moving stuff in. The photo of our existing family room shows how cluttered we are. So I can't wait to swing open those doors and finally have more room.

My poor neglected blog :(
Life just keeps getting in the way of updates here. I guess that why I prefer facebook. So easy to update on there.
We've had a crazy few weeks. Unfortunately not all good. Bullying has reared its ugly head again but not with Ashleigh this time.
Nikki has been the victim this time. She tries to be friends with everyone and it has backfired big time. She got caught in the middle of some of her friends fighting this week and 2 of these so called friends turned on her and verbally abused her nearly to the point of a physical punch up. Luckily it didn't get to that. The school were great and I got phone calls from the head of the middle school but unfortunately one of the girls father has bikie connections and they are intimidated by her family. In the school's words - 'We just don't know what to do'
This girl has had so many run ins with other kids and she is still there. The school told us they know Nikki is innocent and just got caught up in typical teenage lies and rumours but she has learnt a very valuable lesson. To keep out of things that don't concern her. She can't solve the world's problems as much as she wants to try.
It was Jarryd's 10th birthday last week. I can't believe my baby boy is 10!! Where did that time go. He had a laser skirmish party with 11 friends which was a huge hit. He asked for money because we bought him an ipod touch and he had to contribute some money towards it. Well he got so much money from family and friends he also managed to buy a new ds lite console and the new pokemon game. So he is a very happy boy.
Ashleigh has a part time job at a local footy club. A good friend of ours has taken over the contract to do all the meals on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday so she will be doing some cooking, dishes, taking orders and taking out the meals. She is absolutely loving it and is getting $10 an hour cash in hand. She is saving for a laptop.
Steve is off to Alice Springs again for 2 weeks. He is getting a lot of breakdown work now so the finances are looking a bit stronger. Just as well. The mortgage has sky rocketed due to all the renovations we are doing. He has been offered another job within the company which is a step up and will get him off the tools but it means being the co-ordinator for all the jobs and he's not sure if he really wants to do it. He's asking for a big pay rise and along with the car that comes with it so we shall see. If they come to the party money wise, then it's meant to be.
My weight loss has stalled a bit. I haven't gain but haven't lost either in the last month. I know peri menapause is playing a huge part in that. I had a blood test the other day and my iron levels are way to low again so I'm back on iron tabs and have been told to eat 3 red meat meals a week. Hopefully that will boost things again when I have the next blood test in May.
I've been trying to post a YouTube link of Nikki playing ukele and singing on here but it's not playing the game. I'll keep trying. She is amazing and so many people have commented on facebook. She is so passionate about her music and I am very proud of her because she has never had any lessons. She has learnt to play the ukelele from the internet. She sure doesn't get her music ability from me!!!
Ok maybe blogger doesn't let you link YouTube so if you want to look go to my facebook page or search YouTube for ukelelefreakxo

Chris H said...

Awww thanks for thinking of me Chick!
Your new room is looking awesome!

FX said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
asicstigershoesonline said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
maryjohin said...

Welcome to our burberry outlet, Our Burberry Haymarket Check Walletbest on sale.

maryjohin said...

Classic fashion chanel bags， latest burberry bags, warm winter ugg boots outlet.

maryjohin said...

Classic fashion chanel bags， latest burberry bags, warm winter ugg boots outlet.

maryjohin said...

Luxury louis vuitton uk, authentic louis vuitton outlet online, cheapest burberry outlet.

moncler jackets said...

Louis Vuitton Canada Now Rises Abruptly In Louis Vuitton Outlet,And It Known To All Over The World. For you.

maryjohin said...

welcome to our shop,our shop website is hollister milano and
Abercrombie and Fitch and Ralph Lauren Italia .

Golden Dilemmas said...

Love the blog, some deep thoughts going through my mind for sure. I can relate to this in a way because I post inspirational quotes on the daily I would appreciate it if you could check it out and above everything follow my post, it would really motivate me! keep up the good work.


text:
Use denture tablets for a shining toilet. Drop into the toilet, let sit for a while then scrub and flush.

View More Home & Garden Tips
Browse All Tips

Sign up for Tiperosity

Join our community for helpful, caring people sharing what they know to help make every day life a little bit better.

Sign Up

Have an account? Sign in


text:
Saturday, December 28, 2013

T-Mobile VPN Fix

Virtual Private Networking (VPN) is a secure (encrypted) way of connecting to private resources (business LAN, home computer) over the public Internet. To make a VPN connection, VPN client software typically connects to VPN server software. VPN types include Point To Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP, deprecated but still useful) and OpenVPN (recommended, secure). But you may have a problem making VPN connections over T-Mobile USA wireless data.
The Symptoms: You are able to do things on your mobile device over T-Mobile data (browse the Internet, send and receive email, etc), and you are able to make VPN connections over Wi-Fi wireless, but you are not able to make VPN connections over T-Mobile wireless data.
The Cause: T-Mobile apparently pushed out a data configuration in late 2013 that set APN Protocol to IPv6. That works properly for most things on mobile devices, but it prevents PPTP (built into Android) and OpenVPN (OpenVPN Connect) clients from making VPN connections.
The Cure: Open Settings > Wireless & Networks > More... > Mobile networks > Access Point Names > T-Mobile GPRS ( > APN protocol, and change the selection from IPv6 to IPv4/IPv6 IPv4 (see update below).
The Caveat: This cure was tested successfully with a Nexus 5 running Android 4.4.2 KitKat on a Prepaid plan, and it might not work properly on other devices or plans. Use at your own risk.
Update: IPv4/IPv6 currently causes issues with some websites (example), so try IPv4.

Saturday, December 14, 2013

Junctions for Cloud Backup

"Cloud" (just a new name for "online") is all the rage, and "cloud backup" can be a computer backup option with advantages, despite Internet speed limitations, including protected remote storage, no need for local backup hardware, and access/syncing with multiple devices.

Many paid cloud backup services are readily available (CarboniteCrashPlan, etc.), but good free options are also available, including Google Drive (currently 15 GB for Drive, Gmail, and photos) and Microsoft SkyDrive (currently 7 GB, integrated as of Windows 8).

The immediate obstacle to using Google Drive or SkyDrive for backup is that both services sync only a single folder to the cloud, and it would normally be a hassle to keep all important stuff in the single sync folder, but fortunately there's an easier way to set up backup syncing in Windows: NTSF Junctions.

An NTSF Junction is a symbolic link to a folder, which has several advantages over a Windows Shell Shortcut (.lnk), including content sync by Windows SkyDrive software. (Shell Shortcuts will be synced, but not the content they point to.) So if, for example, you create a Junction to My Documents in your SkyDrive folder, then Windows SkyDrive will sync My Documents content to the SkyDrive cloud. If you keep your important items in My Documents, this will give you excellent online protection. You can add other folders to sync the same way with their own NTSF Junctions, even Desktop.

The primary limitation of this approach is that Windows SkyDrive does not monitor NTSF Junctions for changes the way it does the regular contents of the SkyDrive folder, so sync of NTSF Junction content must be manually initiated either by restarting Windows SkyDrive or by modifying something in the SkyDrive folder. (Regular sync could also be initiated with Windows Task Scheduler.)

To create NTSF Junctions, Windows has only the command line tool mklink, which is painful to use. An easier and better tool is (free) Link Shell Extension.

So what about Google Drive? Unfortunately, as of this writing Drive doesn't support Junctions for content sync, so the only way to sync a folder like My Documents is to move it to the Google Drive folder. That's quite easy to do as described here and here, and works quite well in most cases.

Friday, December 13, 2013

HDTV Antenna

ClearStream 2V
With increased online HD quality video streaming from the likes of Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube, and with cable TV bills climbing ever higher, it's becoming more attractive and practical to cut the cable, especially if you can get free digital TV signals (HD quality) over the air.

You have the legal right to install your own antenna for over the air reception, and you can check to see what channels you may be able to receive at TV Fool.

Some of the best antenna options for relatively short range reception, as tested in San Francisco (TV Fool report).

Antennas Direct ClearStream 2V

Easy to assemble. High quality construction. Solidly pulled in all green and yellow stations reported by TVFool, both VHF Hi and UHF.

If you need or want the best in this range class, this is the antenna to buy.

If you need longer range reception, Antennas Direct also has more powerful options, as well as a good indoor option, Micron R, which may be available at a bargain price refurbished.

Relatively easy to assemble, except a bolt was missing, purchased replacement from local hardware store. Also purchased cable zip ties to secure coax to mast and boom. One element was loose enough to wobble freely due to poor riveting, had to insert shims to stabilize.

Pulled in all green stations reported by TVFool, both VHF Hi and UHF, but not solid on yellow.

Good value.

ClearStream 2V definitely more sensitive than ANT751, in addition to better construction quality, clear on yellow UHF channels that break up on ANT751, also picked up a very weak (unwatchable) VHF station not found by ANT751.

However, ANT751 may be sufficiently good for many purposes (if yellow stations are not of interest), and is much less expensive ($50 vs $100).


text:
Top 5 Reasons Why you need to redesign your website Today!

Top 5 Reasons Why you need to redesign your website Today!

Like most businesses you probably created your website when you started your business.

Over the years you have made small changes to your website such as adding new products and services you now offer.

Have you considered that your website no longer contains the optimal coding that is now required by search engines?

1. You may still be using old code to build your website

We are not talking about meta data or keywords you have been so diligent over the years to include, but the actual code that is used to create your website.  Chances are that if your website has not be designed in the past 2-3 years using this new format you probably are not taking advantage of the new SEO tools now available to you.

2. New search engine standards are not recognizing your web pages

Recent changes by Google with their Panda and Penguin updates now use a different criteria than meta data to index websites.  The search engines have found better ways to make your search experience better, by making your landing pages more relevant.

3.  Newly Optimized keyword tags help to index your site quickly and correctly

Creating web pages that are already indexed allows the search engines to quickly index your site in the correct category and get your information to your customer who are looking for your products and services.

4. Faster inclusion in search engine results

Gone are the days of waiting 3-4 weeks to see your webpage appear in Google.  We use Google as the standard as they hold 65% of the search market.  Using these new web tools you can quickly update and see your content indexed by the search engines in days not weeks.

5.  Our consultation is FREE!!

Free web design consultation for Orange County customers

Contact us today for a FREE consultation of your website.  Let our Irvine California based company help you optimize your website.  If you have just redesigned your website and would like a second option you are welcome to contact us well.

The internet moves fast and you do not have time to keep up with the trends and best practices of website design.  Let us do that for you so you can concentrate on your business.

Contact us today! at +1 949-542-6128 or e-mail info at  You may also post a question or comment here.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


text:
The survey of qualitative and economic analysis of the penetration level of FACTS device installation on network congestion management

Mohammad Daliri*, Amin Beiranvand and Mohammad H.Moradi

Application Effect of Domestic Sewage on Available Iron Concentration in Different Soil Depths

Ali Gholami and Robabeh Abdi Dezfuli*

The Impact of Domestic Sewage Sludge on the Changes of Manganese and Zinc Concentrations in Soil

Ali Gholami and Robabeh Abdi Dezfuli*

Analyzing the Rate of Rural Women’s benefiting Various Radio and Television Programs

Masoumeh Taghibaygi, Amirhossein Alibaygi and Seyed Alireza Ghadimi*

Investigation of Karoon River Self-Refinement Capacity Exposed to Khorramshahr‘s Soup Factory Based on EC, BOD, COD and DO Parameters Using River Sediments

Ebrahim Panahpour, Soudabeh Asadi* and Ali Gholami

Determining Bush Density Amount, Yield and Zea Maize Seed Moisture in Different Tillage Methods
Ebrahim panahpour, Morteza Eslamdoust* and Ali Gholami

Simulating the Visco- Elasto Plastic Behavior of Glasphalt Mixtures by Using of Modified Burgers Model

Mahyar Arabani and Neda Kamboozia*

Tourism Planning and Rural Tourism Development (Case Study: Rural of Mahidasht District, Kermanshah)

Kamran Noori* and Farhad Zand

The effect of Oil price on the stock efficiency of petroleum production industries in Iran

Narjess Najafi, Esmaeel Ramazanpour and Mohammadreza Monjazeb*

Relationship between the percentage of clay with liquid limit, plastic limit and plastic index in four different soils texture class

Salahedin Moradi* and Eisa Ebrahimi

New technique for global solar radiation estimation by Imperialist competitive and Genetic Algorithms

Hajar Bagheri Tolabi* and M.H.Moradi

Evaluation of yield in some seed potato cultivars grown in high and low altitude regions

Farshid hassani*, Abbas zareian and Seied Mehdi Mirtaheri

The study of Internet_ based evaluation of the faculty members by student and Factors affecting it

Heydar Ali Zarei* and Ahmad marandy

Municipal Waste Water Scrutiny on the trend of changes of Cadmium and chloride Concentrations in Soil Depths

Ali Gholami, Robabeh Abdi Dezfuli* and Ebrahim Panahpour

The Application of Mathematic Model of AHP in Economic Decision Making: Multi-Criteria Decision Making

Mohammad mosavi shahroodi


text:
Latest News

Pickens Doubles Up at Auckland

AUCKLAND, N.Z. (February 11, 2017) — Michael Pickens put on a extraordinary performance in route to winning two features Saturday night at Western Springs Speedway. Pickens won the 40-lap Barry Butterworth Memorial in the midget division and won the winged sprint car feature, coming from the back of the field to win both events.

Shayne Alach and Spencer Bayston rounded out the podium in the midget event.


text:
Sunday, April 29, 2007

Updating AVG Free antivirus

i've been using AVG Free antivirus for quite a while now, and i quite like it. i have a habit of updating it online instead of downloading the updates and applying them manually, so when anyone asked me if i had updates i always answered that i didn't.
recently, however, i needed to do something in my registry, and saw something related to AVG updates there. i didn't pay it too much attention until i wanted to update a fresh install of AVG Free on two computers (my brother's, which rarely goes online, and mine).
i was going to update mine online then manually download the updates, when i realized: the updates had to go somewhere before they were applied, so i started searching. i found the update files at C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Grisoft\Avg7Data\upd7bin. Best of all, the update files weren't deleted when they were applied (note: some people will see this as an annoyance), so i could use them for my brother's computer!
Guess we learn something new everyday.

Saturday, April 28, 2007

i found that i didn't list all the changes i made to the IBPP source file _ibpp.cpp in my last post. plus, i'd only been using it for release build of my projects in Visual C++ 2005 Express edition - until today when i started a project in debug mode - and found i got some compile errors. so, here's the comprehensive list of changes i made to the original source file to compile with a Unicode character set, without further ado. i really should upload the file, but since i have no place to put it...

  • Line 44: from #define REG_KEY_ROOT_INSTANCES "SOFTWARE\\Firebird Project\\Firebird Server\\Instances" to #define REG_KEY_ROOT_INSTANCES TEXT("SOFTWARE\\Firebird Project\\Firebird Server\\Instances")
  • Line 45: from #define FB_DEFAULT_INSTANCE "DefaultInstance" to #define FB_DEFAULT_INSTANCE TEXT("DefaultInstance")
  • Line 87: from ::OutputDebugString(("IBPP: " + p->str() + "\n").c_str()); to ::OutputDebugString((const TCHAR *) ("IBPP: " + p->str() + "\n").c_str());
all other changes remain the same as in my previous post - did you really think i'd want to duplicate effort? Note: as in my previous post, you may want to use a safer way of getting things done than a cast on line 87.

a word of note here: i finally looked through the sources for Flamerobin 0.7.6 sources and there were no changes to the IBPP source. i have no idea how they managed to get it to build under Windows/Unicode. i haven't tried building it myself, nor am i likely to (according to Larry Wall, the creator of Perl, programmers are inordinately lazy. and i intend becoming an excellent programmer).

there's a classic saying: "A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step". it's old, but good wisdom, especially for young people today. we usually think of it as meaning that you need to at least begin something to have a final accomplishment, but we (or at least i) don't usually think of it in the negative, as in: if you don't want to swim with the sharks, don't even go near the beach. so if you start a journey on the road to Rome ("all roads lead to Rome"), you'll eventually get there, so don't start if you don't want the natural result.

far too often, we toy with decisions and actions, ignoring their natural outcomes, maybe subconsciously thinking we can get away with it. think again - you can't sidestep the natural outcomes of your actions forever. sooner or later, the results will come home to roost. and postponing decisions belongs here too - you cannot sit on the fence forever - eventually, the fence itself will probably give up under the influence of your weight. in our ultra-relativistic generation, maybe facing the fact that absolutes do exist may just be our salvation.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

stuff n nonsense

broke my wxWidgets install yesterday when i reconfigured the build. it seems wxWidgets becomes a radically different and undocumented animal when you build it with some settings (such as STL and using std::string) turned on. anyhow, i tried rebuilding it to no avail - it was still broke. so right now i'm uncompressing the wxWidgets 2.8 distribution to rebuild it. kinda sucky, isn't it?

in other news, i found i am unable to build Boost from source with Visualc C++ 2005 Express. the build script (build.bat) is not designed to work with any toolset other than VC++ 7, and it's really annoying that i have to go online and download a prebuilt Jam binary. of course, code that depends on Boost and its build process (like the ASL) also doesn't build. sheesh!

finally, to use IBPP under both ANSI/Unicode in Windows, you're going to have to patch the file _ibpp.cpp. i tried a number of hacks that failed, but i finally got someting working, so here it is for version 2.5:

  • Line 111: change char fbdll[MAX_PATH]; to TCHAR fbdll[MAX_PATH];
  • Line 142: change mHandle = LoadLibrary(path.c_str()); to mHandle = LoadLibrary((const TCHAR *) path.c_str());.
    Note: There has got to be a cleaner way of doing this than just casting. Check MSDN or the Platform SDK for documentation on MultiByteToWideChar() under User Interface, International Text Display, Unicode and Character Sets.
  • Line 167: change char* p = fbdll + len; to TCHAR* p = fbdll + len;
  • Line 170: change lstrcat(fbdll, "\\fbembed.dll"); to lstrcat(fbdll, TEXT("\\fbembed.dll"));
  • Line 175: change lstrcat(fbdll, "\\fbembed.dll"); to lstrcat(fbdll, TEXT("\\fbembed.dll"));
  • Line 194: change lstrcat(fbdll, "bin\\fbembed.dll"); to lstrcat(fbdll, TEXT("bin\\fbembed.dll"));
  • Line 204: change mHandle = LoadLibrary("fbclient.dll"); to mHandle = LoadLibrary(TEXT("fbclient.dll"));
  • Line 209: change mHandle = LoadLibrary("gds32.dll"); to mHandle = LoadLibrary(TEXT("gds32.dll"));
i guess that pretty much covers it. you should go from 12 errors to 0 compiling _ibpp.cpp in Unicode mode with this in Windows. personally, though i don't think this is how the Flamerobin team built the Unicode Windows binary, but i - lacking patience at the time to wade through the code for the Unicode version - just decided to fix my problems myself.

i was finally able to make some headway with learning how to use Crypto++. i'm just a simple guy who wants to hash a password, and i don't want to learn all about cryptography to do that! many thanks to the developers of Hashish for their source code, and to Denis Bider for his Crypto++ User's Guide.

besides my problems with trying to program (and ultimately succeeding), i've been delving into music a bit (at least i know what a chord is now, and can try to play scales other than C major). maybe i'll actually get into digital music someday. oh, yeah, i've also been trying to study so i can be ready for exams when school opens (only God knows when). later!

Friday, April 20, 2007

digital audio stuff

since i got home, i've dabbled into quite a few things, including making my own music and pixel-based graphics. not having the cash to fork out for a program like FL Studio, even the demo download, i've had to set my sights quite a bit lower. i looked in the archives and came up with Psycle and Milkytracker, among others. Psycle is - among other things - a VST host, so you can load up VST instruments and effects into it - some with more success than others, anyway. at any rate, what i really want to say here is that i got an excellent drum machine that never seemed to work for me (JM-1) the way i wanted it to. using soundfonts was also nice, but it was kind of disconcerting to learn the keymap for producing the correct sound. anyway, i was labouring with JM-1 because it had pretty much the same problem as the drum soundfont i had: each key was assigned to a different instrument, except in my case, it was worse because i could not use the snare. and the quality produced by this machine was excellent, relatively realistic. i was almost pulling out my hair when i found out by sending a command to the machine, i could control which instrument's sound it would produce. trying it yielded some results, but i had to turn off the setting i set immediately after, or else the machine wouldn't emit any sound on the next setting. sorry i have no screenshots, but i guess i just wanted you to know what i was up to. hopefully, i won't strike anyone deaf with my twisted idea of what music is...later!

Saturday, April 14, 2007

Who stole my vote???

i realise it's bad to use 3 question marks to end a question, but i think it's important to show my discontent. what happened to my vote? this rubbish about voting at the same point that you registered is the limit. i registered in school, now that school's closed and i'm in another state, does that mean that i registered for nothing? i can't believe i waited almost 4 hours to hear a 'sorry, but you can't vote here because you never registered here - you might have if the electronic voting system was up...' - especially since all those who registered in school asked and were assured we would be able to vote in the governorship and presidential polls. arrgh!


text:
Tuesday, January 11, 2011

I have begun what I haven't done since November - and even then I had help a few times a week - I'm caring for my girls without help.

Well now that my little 9 month girly is old enough to sense that I can be outnumbered, she seems to have brought on her little impish ways full force.  What an angel she is when Daddy is here or when Grandma was here.  Even around the holidays when we were surrounded by family, no one would believe me when I told them what a little scamp she could be.

And why is it, that when the little ones sense you are sick, they decide to be on their worst behavior?  I mean, just having a normal cold or flu for those of you who aren't chronically ill - you know what I mean.  For me, every day is a sick day and I think my kids have gotten used to that.  But definitely on the worst of those sick days, they seem to huddle and work together to foil all the order I have tried to plan for the day as I lay hopeless on the couch.  And I believe the mastermind behind the shenanigans is my speechless 9 month old.

My three year old is a compassionate little soul and I will say she tries to "help" me and please me most of the time. But she is only three afterall and all three year olds can't be expected to act like adults :)  I am convinced that little 9 month old Liv has her sights set on the weak one in the herd just because she knows I can't do much to stop her.

-She knows just the pitch of a loud yell that will pierce the ache in my body and she won't stop doing it until someone picks her up.  I believe that ignoring it is the best course of action and she will stop because I used that method with her big sister when she was that age.  The only problem with that method NOW is that I'm so sick that it's hard to ignore it when it sends your body writhing.  It's amazing how SOUND can cause so much more pain in an already pain riddled body.

Seeing as I simply cannot pick her up and hold her (since she insists I stand while I hold her), I have had to ignore her as best as I can and I do see this method working.  But all it takes is ONE person picking her up when she yells for the whole cycle to start all over again.

-She senses that when I'm in a hurry or stressed (like trying to get the girls food at about the same time) that she can really push my buttons by following my every step, being underfoot, and eventually crying very hard and loudly when I walk out of her eyesight for a minute to get something else.

-She poops 3 times in one awake period, because she knows I just got up to put away the diaper and wipes. :)

-She doesn't finish her bottles or solid foods for a whole day because she can tell that worries me.  Then the next day has a normal day of eating everything I give her just to keep me on my toes.

-And so much more.

Awake times are hard at this point.  Granted we are staying in a timeshare and not our house yet.  The house is not yet ready for us (beds are still being put together, clothes still being put in their drawers, etc).  So I think once we get back into a normal "routine", it will be better.

And it's not all bad.  I mean, for all her devious ways, she does sleep really well.  She takes TWO 2 1/2 hour naps a day.  And sleeps 12 hours at night.  I mean, I guess I really shouldn't complain at all because not many moms can say that about their kid.

But anyway -- I'll say it again -- taking care of two young kiddos while chronically ill is probably one of the hardest things I've ever had to do.

And it's also a joy.  There is so much reward that even on the toughest day I never wish I wasn't a mom.

  1. Heather, we continue to pray for you and your family... than you for giving us a better picture of how we can pray. Love you!

  2. I had to do this week alone with my two kids for the first time in months, too! I feel your pain! It is hard.


text:
DIY Water Filtration Purification Emergencies ebook

Diy Water Filtration - Free download as PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or read online for free.

Briggs And Stratton Repair Manual 14hpvanguard Ebook | wpa

The Frontier Emergency Water Filter System by Aquamira is a small.Learn 5 great DIY emergency ways to filter water in the wild.DIY Water Filtration: Water Purification Made Simple for Use at Home, During Emergencies, and Everywhere in Between eBook: Stephanie Flores: Kindle Store.

DIY Emergency 5 Gallon Water Filter / Filtration System

Super-Easy DIY: Make A Water Filter For About $35! - Truth

So a lot of people are using the LifeStraw Personal Water Filter as their go-to.DIY Water Filtration, San Antonio, Texas. 18 likes. Here to help you get safe clean water for drinking, cooking, and personal care.

I think the Sawyer Mini water filtration system is superior, and.Types of Water Filters. 4 Min Read. My name is Robert and our mission at US Preppers is to help you prepare for emergencies or disasters before they happen.

# Southern Prepper 1 Water Filter - (Step By Step

Ceramic Water Filter Kit | eBay

DIY Natural Pool Manual free version

Emergency Water Filters - Ceramic Gravity Drinking Water Purifier Filters for emergency use.

# Online Magazine Subscriptions - (YouTube) - Infowars

Emergency Treatment Of Drinking Water. DIY Emergency-SHTF 2 Stage Water Filter.Filter out bacteria and other water toxins with water purification. DIY Low-Cost Steel-Target Stand.Gnowfglins Sourdough Bread Ebook Emergency DIY survival food should also account to your basic supply of water,. bring water filter and purifying tablets, quite.

This technologically advanced water filtration system uses a reverse.

Homemade Water Purifier 2012 - [email protected]

The big name water filter. while using the same filters that give awesome filtration, you can do it yourself for just a. preparing for life's emergencies...

DIY Plumbing Repair and How-To Projects for Bathrooms and

The carbon kills all the bacteria in the water and the filter keeps the dirt and sediment.Make your own Emergency DIY Water Filter in under 10 minutes with a handful of tools and some simple supplies.

Water Filter Systems for Preppers - Geek Prepper

Fresh clean water - Berkey Water Filter Review and Giveaway

Boiling is one of the safest and most effective methods of treating water, according to the.Design of Water Filter for Third World Countries Louis Chan Marcus Chan Jingwen Wang A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree experts demonstrate how to install a whole-house filter in the main water line.

# Gnowfglins Sourdough Bread Ebook - (Step By Step

Buy Water Purification: Simple Emergency Water Filtration Techniques to Survive After a Disaster: Read 1 Kindle Store Reviews -

Emergency Water for Preppers Part 2: Purification

The Survival Still is an emergency water purifier that produces pure emergency water.SUMMARY: By building their own water filters,. water purification drops.NASA SUMMER OF INNOVATION. thewater treatment plant, or check into someone from the water treatment plant visiting to speak to your.Here we will show how we make our own water purifiers from used food grade plastic buckets, and Berkey water purification elements.

Tap Water Purification Methods for an Aquarium - The Spruce

Water Purification | Practical Survivor

How to Make A Water Filter: for Emergency & Survival

Here are our top 11 essential tips for making sure your water filter.

Water Purifiers | Water Storage - The Ready Store

Whole House Sediment Water Filter cheaply for your own use or sell it to others.For water filter systems and emergency preparedness products you can rely on, call LPC Survival.

Water Purification: Simple and Inexpensive Methods

Water Purification Project - University of San Diego

WATER PURIFICATION FILTER DIY. food-grade plastic buckets with lids into an emergency drinking water.There are many ways to make a survival or emergency water filter, so I.

Berkey Drinking Water Purification Systems & More | 1-877

The COOL Water Purification Project uses two sources of energy to create potable water.Off-grid water filtration will give you clean potable water.

Whole House Water Filter - Cabin DIY

How to build emergency water filter diy project is an important skill for anyone to learn for bugging in, bugging out or even caught in the wilderness.

Water Filters Archives | The Soft Landing®

Design of Water Filter for Third World Countries

We are your source for emergency water storage, filters and purification products.


text:
Search This Blog

Friday, July 7, 2017

OSU Queer Archives collaborates with German Professor Bradley Boovy

OSU German Professor Bradley Boovy helps archivist for OSU Queer Archives create oral history videos

PHOTO: Still frame of Oregon State University Dr. Bradley Boovy, Assistant Professor of World Languages and Cultures and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies as accessed Jul. 3, 2017 from the video player provided for the OSU Queer Archives Oral History VIDEO: Item 11: Bradley Boovy, June 6, 2017. (Video is part of the "OSU Queer Archives (OSQA) home page - Archival collections and materials in the university's archives that document LGBTQ+ histories at Oregon State, Corvallis, and Benton County" including the OSU Queer Archives Oral History Collection (OH 34), Oregon State University Special Collections and Archives Research Center, Corvallis, Oregon. OSU Queer Archives (OSQA): ORAL HISTORIES & Videos. (Note: the provided video player does not seem to be accessible to Microsoft Internet Explorer browser users like me who are low vision blind and using some standard accessibility settings because the player controls, such as the play button, are not visible, as seen in the still frame above. I was still able to play this video, but only because I could guess at where to hit the button to play or pause the video.)

I am not trained in the library sciences, but I found it interesting to read the journal paper by Natalia Fernández, Bradley Boovy, "Co-Founding a Queer Archives: a collaboration between an archivist and a professor," "Archival Practice," Vol 3 (2016) (also HTML and PDF) This journal describes itself as "A peer-reviewed, open-access journal published biannually, Archival Practice provides a scholarly forum for discussion of real-world application of archival theories and practices in the modern archival repository. This may include archival acquisitions, processing, reference, outreach, preservation, or management in any archival setting."

A new phrase to me that was used in their paper was "intersectional community activism" as one of its core missions. This is clearly a cutting gedge concept because a Google define:"intersectional community activism" links first to the OSU Queer Archives, but a less restrictive search suggests it is "is intentional in exploring social concerns through multiple dimensions of identity" and links to a page discussing "Intersectional Community Organizing for Social Justice" as well as the book "Enacting Intersectionality in Student Affairs: New Directions" by Charmaine L. Wijeyesinghe. This might be a good topic for a future post, if I learn more about it.

Links related to the OSU Queer Archives:

On Jun. 11, 2017, I emailed the second part of my oral interview answers to the OSU Queer Archives, which after it is posted in the Archives I plan to post a link to it from my blog page. Unfortunately, I was unable to do a video interview due to my low vision blindness and partial paralysis -- just visiting a doctor is hard for me to do today -- but I am still able to touch type my answers, albeit very slowly, over a couple of weeks of time. (See my previous post OSU Queer Archives request for my participation (1/28/17))

See previous posts and related links


text:
29 January 2013

Marguerite Duras: Un barrage contre le Pacifique / The Sea Wall (1950)

Marguerite Duras's Un barrage contre le Pacifique (A Sea Wall) is set in Indochina in the early 1930s. Duras herself was born in Saigon in 1914 and this novel is partly autobiographical. It is also a bitter criticism of French colonialism.

Some analogies have been drawn between this novel and the poor white world of the novels of Erskine Caldwell. Largely set in rural Indochina, the book centers on the hardscrabble life of a widow – who is simply known as 'the mother' – and her two children Suzanne (17) and Joseph (20). They live in a bungalow near the coast, on the plain of Ram, on a concession the mother has bought. But the land is useless for growing rice because tides (from the Chinese Sea, but mentally magnified as the Pacific by the mother) and dwarf crabs destroy the crop every July. The family's diet mainly consists of wading birds. The mother's attempts to build a wall against the tides are fruitless. She writes a number of letters to the land registry about their plight (notably a long one towards the end, which aggressively reveals the extent of her anger), but they are ignored.

Life is even harder for the indigenous population, which is often forced to prostitute its women. Many children die of hunger. Corruption is rife. The mother sees a possible salvation from increasing misery in M. Jo, a young but inept and ugly man in his mid-twenties who has become rich through his father's callous business tactics rather than his own skill, and who lusts after Suzanne. M. Jo lavishes drink on the family but manages to extract no more than a glimpse of Suzanne's naked body in return for a phonograph. She refuses to prostitute herself, and the diamond ring he gives her – regardlessly – signals the end of the first part of the book.

The second and concluding part of the novel begins in the town, where the mother discovers that the diamond has a defect and is only worth half of what it should fetch. She persists, but is only given the price she wants by Lina, the older and relatively affluent girlfriend that Joseph meets in a cinema in town, falls in love with, and steals away from her husband. The mother, after paying back her debts, finds that she has little left of the money from the ring. She continues a decline from which she will not recover.

In the end the mother dies and Joseph leaves with Lina and Suzanne, who has gained some wisdom from her first relationship (with Agosti, whom she leaves behind): there is no choice for them, as there is no life for them on the plain. Joseph leaves his rifles to the people who remain, and explains what to do with the bodies and the belongings of the men who come to reclaim the concession: 'If you do it, do it well.'

This grim novel of French colonial life was Duras's third, but it was the first to bring the attention of a wide public to her.

28 January 2013

André Blavier #6: Jules Allix

Jules Allix (1818–97) was a militant socialist and a committed feminist, but he earns a place in Blavier's Les Fous littéraires for his long article in two October 1850 issues of La Presse, which he called 'Communication universelle et instantanée de la pensée, à quelque distance que ce soit' ('Universal and instantaneous communication of thought, from any distance whatsoever'). This article gave details of the 'boussole pasilalinique sympathique ou plus communément les escargots sympathiques' ('The pasilalinic-sympathetic compass, more commonly known as 'sympathetic snails'), or as many have named it: the snail telegraph.

The discovery, made by Jacques Toussaint Benoît and Biat-Chrétien, was that snails have the ability to maintain long-distance contact with each other after having sex. They release a kind of animal magnetism, an electric fluid for which the earth acts as a kind of conductor, developing and unravelling, Allix said, like a spider's or a silkworm's thread, but which never breaks and can continue indefinitely. This 'sympathetic escargotic fluid' is completely invisible and has immediate effect.

With this revolutionary discovery in mind, Benoît and Biat-Chrétien invented a message-conveying machine, a kind of ship's compass which involved the 25 letters of the French alphabet and unfortunate snails stuck to basins. Exactly how it was supposed to work remains obscure to my unscientific mind, but then of course it didn't work anyway: Benoît (who was mentally disturbed) was just stringing his financial backer along, and disappeared when things got too hot.* His 'colleague' Biat-Chrétien, who was supposed to be collaborating with him in America, did not in fact exist outside Benoît's imagination.

But the press made fun of the project for years: one cartoon, for instance, shows snails with quill pens at work at a post office desk.

* Allix too was mentally disturbed, and was an inmate in Charenton on several occasions. He published Curation de l'aliénation mentale: Introduction in 1867: a link to the text is here. His brother was Léon-Émile Allix, one of Victor Hugo's doctors.

Links to my other posts on André Blavier's Les Fous littéraires are below:

André Blavier #1: Jean-Pierre Brisset, Paulin Gagne
André Blavier #2: Alexandre Ansaldi, G. Clair/Rupin Schkoff, Camarasa
André Blavier #3: Hyacinthe Dans
André Blavier #4: Ernest de Garay, aka Karl-des-Monts
André Blavier #5: Francisque Tapon-Fougas

27 January 2013

Arthur Mee in Stapleford, Nottinghamshire

Journalist and prolific author
Originator and editor of
The Children's Encyclopedia,
The Children's Newspaper and
The King's England
Born in Stapleford and
attended school here'

Mee was the son of a railway fireman whose family moved from Stapleford to Woodborough Road, Nottingham in 1889. The same year, at the age of fourteen, he began working as a copy holder for the Nottingham Evening Post, and later worked for the Nottingham Daily Express. By 1896 he had moved to London.

Arthur Cossons in Beeston, Nottinghamshire

Distinguished historian and author
Headmaster at Church Street
Junior Boys School
on this site
Cossons was born in Somerset and came to Beeston in 1922. He wrote several books on turnpike roads and was a regular contributor to the Nottingham Journal.
The shaft of Beeston's 14th century cross
originally at the village centre cross-roads
near the Manor House
Found by historian Arthur Cossons
and re-erected here in 1929'

25 January 2013

Frédéric Beigbeder: 99 Francs (2000)

The importance of 99 Francs (which was the original price of the book, but now the title is the same as its price in euros, and of course it changes accordingly in translations) is in its satire. Octave is a 'child of the millennium': he's in advertising, or 'novelty terrorism' as he terms it, and he's the central character in this novel, which begins as a professional suicide note so he can get the sack ('I don't have the balls to resign') and claim unemployment insurance. He hates his life and hates himself.

Octave is overpaid and lives in a world where coke snorting is the norm, and when you ditch your chick you go to a high-class hooker – everyone and everything can be bought, we are all prostitutes: 'Don't look at the straw in your brother's nostril but the beam in your own pants':

'I'm in advertising: oh yeah, I pollute the universe. I'm the guy who sells you shit. Who makes you dream of things you'll never have. Sky always blue, babes never ugly, perfect happiness, makeover by PhotoShop. [...] I'm three fashions in front, and I'll always make sure you're frustrated. [...] In my profession no one wants you to be happy, because happy people don't consume.'

His firm has a saying: 'Don't treat people like twats, but don't forget that they are twats.' The logos have replaced the Logos. And it's taken 2000 years to get there. To emphasize his point, Beigbeder even introduces mock adverts between the sections of the book, (which are each narrated in different personal pronouns). Example: three Jamaicans are lying beneath a coconut palm after smoking enormous spliffs: smashed out of their skulls. A huge black woman tells them to get back to work. They don't move. She screams at them to get back to work. They don't move. In desperation she waves a tub of Danette chocolate cream dessert at them, and they spring awake singing Bob Marley's 'Get Up Stand Up', dancing around the beach 'tasting the product'.

I started out wanting to hate this book, expecting general emptiness, style triumphing over substance, verbal fireworks without meaning, one joke lasting the whole 282 pages, but it's hard to deny the central premise: advertising is the new terrorism, and consuming is the new colonialism, the new God.

However, it is much too long for what it's trying to say, the excursions to Senegal, Miami and Cannes are tedious, and the senseless murder and the embezzlement sub-plot (ending on Ghost Island) merely add to the distractions rather than enhance the anti-advertising message.

Some of the internet jokes are distinctly unfunny too:

'Allez, e-ciao.
– bye-bye.com!'

Nevertheless this is clever stuff, and Beigbeder can also be very funny, although his writing is far too unruly for its own good.

Below are links to other Beigbeder book reviews I wrote:
Frédéric Beigbeder: Mémoires d'un Jeune Homme Dérangé

Frédéric Beigbeder: Premier bilan après l'apocalypse
Frédéric Beigbeder: Un roman français
Frédéric Beigbeder: L'Amour dure trois ans | Love Lasts Three Years
Frédéric Beigbeder: Vacances dans le coma

24 January 2013

Elizabeth Hooton in Skegby, Nottinghamshire

The snowy photo above is of the village of Skegby near Sutton in Ashfield, Nottinghamshire from Emily Manners's Elizabeth Hooton: First Quaker Woman Preacher (1600–1672) (London: Headley Brothers, 1914). Hooton (née Carrier) married Oliver Hooten in Ollerton and moved to Skegby. She was a Baptist in 1647 when she met the young George Fox, but was to become a prominent, and radical, figure in the Quaker movement.

Hooten's preaching and accusations of corruption in the church and the magistrates led to her being imprisoned several times, which in turn led to her protesting about prison conditions.

In her manuscripts Hooton writes about her various oversea journeys preaching, and of the violent persecution she and others Friends received in the neighbourhood of Boston, Massachusetts.

In 1671 she made her final journey when she went with George Fox and others to Barbados and Jamaica, where she died of unknown causes the following year.

Along with mentioning many manuscripts, Manners lists the following printed works by Hooton:

False Prophets and False Teachers Described [1652].
To the King and Both Houses of Parliament [1670].
A Short Relation Concerning William Simpson (1671).

There are about ten pages of Hooton's writings in this relatively recent publication: Autobiographical Writings by Early Quaker Women, by David Booy (Aldershot : Ashgate, c. 2004).

Above: The Quaker House in Skegby, taken by me in about 1996.

Below is a link to the complete text of Emily Manners's biography of the remarkable Elizabeth Hooton:

Elizabeth Hooton, by Emily Manners

23 January 2013

Anne Tyler: The Beginner's Goodbye (2012)

This is Anne Tyler's latest novel, and it will probably be several years before she publishes another. It's her nineteenth, and like almost all of her others is set in Baltimore, Maryland, this one again specifically in or near Roland Park, where Tyler has lived for decades. She has a knack of writing about essentially similar subjects with similar characters, and yet each of her works remains distinctly memorable, none of them confusing itself with another. This is quite an achievement.
I don't think this is one of her strongest novels, though. It's shorter than most of the others, without anything like the same number of characters, and a certain depth is missing. But although the basic story – a man in a family publishing business who lost the use of his right arm and leg as a young child marries the doctor Dorothy, and after several years she is killed by a tree falling on their house but then returns from the dead to visit him – stretches crediblity almost to the limit, we must remember that this is Tyler and she somehow manages to carry it off.
The man (whom we've met in several different guises before) is Aaron Woolcott, who is only too pleased to escape his smothering mother and unmarried elder sister Nandina for a life with his non-domestic, hardworking wife while he half-pretends to edit tedious vanity publications, and also publishes 'Beginner's' books, a more upmarket version of Dummies.
His world collapses at the same time as the tree collapses on his wife, who collapses under the weight of the upset television. As the house has collapsed too, he must soon bow to the inevitable and take refuge in his sister's house. His bereavement has to take its course, and to smooth him through the process his dead wife makes several appearances. No one else can see her, although she usually talks to him but disappears when anyone else appears: there's not any suggestion that Aaron's going mad, rather this is shown as something the reader just has to, well, accept.
As builder Gil gets to work on the damaged house, his relationship with Nandina grows and he starts staying over: Aaron feels de trop and goes back to his almost repaired house. Soon, his wife's appearances cease and Aaron takes it in his stride. From the time of Aaron's wife's death to near the end of the novel we gradually learn that the marriage had been far from perfect:
'What I do remember is that familiar, weary, helpless feeling, the feeling that we were confined in some kind of rodent cage, wrestling together doggedly, neither one of us ever winning.'
This is almost the claustrophobic marital/familial battle context that many of Tyler's protagonists find themselves in, although by Dorothy's final appearance there seems to be a kind of resolution.
I'm not certain that the happy ending of Aaron's second marriage and fatherhood is one that I'd particularly have wished for though: it's a bit too neat.

My other Anne Tyler reviews are below:
Anne Tyler: If Morning Ever Comes (1964)
Anne Tyler: The Tin Can Tree (1965)
Anne Tyler: The Clock Winder (1972)
Anne Tyler: Celestial Navigation (1974)
Anne Tyler: Earthly Possessions (1977)
Anne Tyler: Morgan's Passing (1980)
Anne Tyler: Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982)
Anne Tyler: The Accidental Tourist (1985)
Anne Tyler: Breathing Lessons (1988)
Anne Tyler: Ladder of Years (1995)
Anne Tyler: A Patchwork Planet (1998)
Anne Tyler: Back When We Were Grownups (2001)
Anne Tyler: The Amateur Marriage (2004)
Anne Tyler: Digging to America (2006)
Anne Tyler: Noah's Compass (2009)
Anne Tyler: A Spool of Blue Thread (2015)

21 January 2013

Tamara Jenkins's The Savages (2007)

There are three main characters in Tamara Jenkins's The Savages: 80-year-old father Lenny Savage (Philip Bosco), his 39-year-old daughter Wendy (Laura Linney), and his 42-year-old son Jon (Philip Seymour Hoffman).

Lenny lives in the retirement community of Sun City, Arizona, with his partner. He is developing dementia.

Wendy works as a temp but aspires to be a successful playwright ('inspired by the work of Jean Genet, the cartoons of Lynda Barry and the family dramas of Eugene O’Neill') and frequently applies for grants. She is in an unsatisfying relationship with Larry, a married man thirteen years her senior. She lives in a tiny appartment in New York City and appears to be mildly addicted to prescription drugs. She is hungry for human contact, and finds consolation in lying: her cervical smear test is clear, but she tells Larry that there are irregularities; and she is turned down for a Guggenheim Trust award but tells Jon she was successful.

Jon is a professor at a university in Buffalo, upstate New York, where he teaches drama. He has been in a relationship with the Polish Kasia, but she has to leave as her visa has expired and he can't see his way to marrying her, and unfortunately he can only cry when eggs are cooked. He specializes in Brecht, and has for some time been writing a critical work on him. Brecht is very appropriate: Brecht's emphasis on emotional detachment has a parallel with Jon's emotional detachment; and at the end, we learn that he is to read a paper called 'No Laughing Matter: Dark ['Black' in the original filmscript] Comedy in the Plays of Bertolt Brecht' – 'dark comedy' would be an accurate description of this movie.

The three Savages have not exactly got on well in the past – there are various references to their father's abuse, particularly of Jon: tellingly (and of course humorously), Wendy explains to her befuddled father that Jon is not a medical doctor but a PhD, a drama professor, 'like..."Theatre of Social Unrest"'. But now that Lenny's mind is going, added to which his partner has died and he is effectively homeless and must be found somewhere appropriate to live, it is time for Wendy and Jon to try and forget the sibling rivalry and take a reality check in terms of their late developing maturity.

Near the end of the film, after Lenny had been dead some months, Jon and Wendy seem to have forgotten their differences and to be happier in themselves. They both watch the rehearsal of  Wendy's play, 'Wake Me When It's Over', in which she's fictionalized some autobiographical elements, such as Jon's father beating him up. There are no frying eggs around, but Jon actually cries: there has obviously been some development in him, and shortly after he reveals that he's reading his paper in Poland so he'll be seeing Kasia. It appears that Wendy has (wisely) split with Larry, although she's equipped Marley – his dog he was going to put down – with a mechanical contraption instead of her useless hind legs. Wendy always did seem to get on better with animals than with humans.

This is an intelligent movie about intelligent, flawed people.

20 January 2013

André Blavier #5: Francisque Tapon-Fougas

Francisque Tapon-Fougas (1810–93) was re-discovered in the 20th century by Raymond Queneau and André Blavier, his writing guaranteeing him a prominent place in the pantheon of fous littéraires, or outsider writers. He wrote many plays (often using the name of the Greek philosopher Thalès de Milet), and many poems (considering himself the 'Lamartine of the Auvergne'), and was convinced that he was a great writer, although none of his plays was performed. Characters in his plays (particularly writers) suffer from persecution, and Blavier speaks of Tapon-Fougas's paranoia, his synaesthetic hallucinations, his delusions of literary grandeur, and his constant changes of address as a defence strategy.

In Sur la mort d'Eugène Sue [1857] Tapon-Fougas speaks of a widespread persecution system using electricity, galvanism, and chemistry, organized by powerful men as an attack on human freedom by paralysing thinking and writing. Blavier notes a distinct evolution in Tapon-Fougas's writing between Sur la mort d'Eugène Sue and Les Antimisérables (1862), which is a huge attack on Victor Hugo. From 1862, there is no more mention of electro-galvanic batteries or Jesuitic-ammoniacal fumes – instead he concentrates on the jealous literary people who are persecuting him. Indeed, the 19th century encyclopedist Gustave Vapereau (ironically) notes that Tapon-Fougas, in Les Désespérés (1864), denounces Hugolatry and Janinocracy (after the drama critic Jules Janin) as the two plagues of the century: they have prevented his plays from being performed, prevented Tapon-Fougas from regenerating the theatre.

From 1871, Tapon-Fougas stood as candidate in all of the regional elections in his three favourite départements: Loire, Puy-de-Dôme, and Rhône – simultaneously. He was also a prolific pamphleteer, and distributed leaflets saying that the electorate had nothing to lose and perhaps a great deal to gain by electing a man who had written forty volumes of poetry and prose. His exhortations fell on deaf ears.

Links to my other posts on André Blavier's Les Fous littéraires are below:

André Blavier #1: Jean-Pierre Brisset, Paulin Gagne
André Blavier #2: Alexandre Ansaldi, G. Clair/Rupin Schkoff, Camarasa
André Blavier #3: Hyacinthe Dans
André Blavier #4: Ernest de Garay, aka Karl-des-Monts
André Blavier #6: Jules Allix

19 January 2013

Ann Hatton (1921–2013)

Earlier this week I learned the sad news of Ann Hatton's death on 11 January this year. It was Ann who had enthusiastically and very helpfully provided me with so much information about the artist Karl Salsbury Wood, particularly from family photos, postcards, and watercolours: Ann's mother Nellie (née Radford) was Wood's cousin, with whom he kept in regular contact.

Ann's father Colan Harrison had moved to Canada before World War I and worked as a logger and a cook before joining the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. He returned to England with the Canadian Regiment and guarded German prisoners of war, and while visiting his sister he met Nellie, married her in 1919, and left for a new life with his wife, sister and mother to a farm in Bowden, Alberta, where Ann was born one very cold November day in 1921. There was no school nearby, so Ann and her siblings were taught by their aunt; it was a very harsh life with poor facilities and the family decided to return to England in 1930.

Karl Wood's representation of Abbey Farm, Renhold, Bedfordshire, where Ann and her siblings were brought up

Ann qualified as an SRN during World War II, and in the course of her work met Igor, whom she married in December 1945. She was a relief matron at Uppingham School sanatorium for eighteen years, and a number of the pupils there maintained contact with her for many years. She also spent nineteen years delivering 'meals on wheels', and was active in fund raising for the church and for charities.

It was only by a series of fortunate coincidences in the mid-nineties that I met Ann: I'd been researching Karl Wood's life with a view to publishing a biography, but there were some missing links during his youth. The local paper made a few column inches out of my appeal for information, and I was quite surprised to receive a phone call from Alan Guest, who by chance had bought a few linocuts of Wood's from the Usher Art Gallery in Lincoln, and who knew Marc Oxley (the owner of a fine art business in Uppingham, Rutland), who knew Ann and was aware that she was a relative of Karl Wood's.

So shortly after learning this I found myself in Uppingham one fine summer's day sitting in front of a table with a host of Wood's postcards, photos and sketches on the patio of Ann's home, recording her wonderfully informative conversation: the missing pieces of the biographical jigsaw were slowly forming a fuller picture, and there were now images of a kilted Wood in his Seaforth Highlanders uniform, or in Nellie's garden with cap, cane and bowtie, etc. And Ann (who had a great affection for Karl) told me to take the relevant postcards and photos home to photograph at my leisure and send back to her, which I thought showed a lovely trusting spirit.

Karl Wood in Nellie's garden, date unknown

My brief book was therefore greatly enhanced by the images that Ann supplied, and it was also enhanced by the knowledge of Wood's activities in his teenage years and during World War I which I gleaned from the postcards. And I'm pleased that Ann was able to make it to Gainsborough for the exhibition of Wood's local paintings put on by the Gainsborough and District Heritage Society.

Still on the subject of art, but a different artist, it seems scarcely credible now that I'd never heard of Louis Wain until Ann showed me a few reproductions of his cats.

It is a great pleasure to have known Ann Hatton, and I shall always remember her warmth of spirit, her keen intelligence, and her (slightly mischievous) sense of humour.

(My thanks to Ann's son John for supplying the biographical information and photo.)

The link below is to my online biography of Karl Salsbury Wood:

Windmill Wood

17 January 2013

Jean-Philippe Toussaint: Fuir | Running Away (2005)

I was reminded of movie director Alan J. Pakula's films when reading Jean-Philippe Toussaint's Fuir (2005), or Running Away, but only because of the importance of the telephone: far from Pakula's realism, this novel is obviously Nouveau Roman inspired, with an (unnamed) unreliable narrator.

Chronologically, Fuir occupies the mid-position in Toussaint's three 'Marie' cycle novels, between Faire l'amour (2002), or Making Love, and the as yet untranslated La Vérité sur Marie, (2009), which will presumably be titled The Truth about Marie.

The novel's first sentence, Serait-ce jamais fini avec Marie? (lit. 'Would it ever be finished with Marie?'), is spoken by the narrator, and immediately we know there's a relationship problem, but that comes in later. Marie has sent the narrator to Shanghai to hand a $25,000 money packet to Zhang Xiangzhi, his slightly reluctant host. At an exhibition he meets Li Qi, a woman who seems to promise sex, and she invites him to take the train to Beijing with her, so he readily agrees to meet her at the train station, but is surprised to discover that Zhang Xiangzhi is going with them too. On the train, while most people are sleeping, the narrator is on the point of having sex in the toilet with Li Qi when the Pakula moment comes: it's Marie on the phone to say that her father has died at his home in Elba. This changes everything, and the narrator's sexual enthusiasm for Li Qi moves into detumescent mode. End of the first of three parts.

Now they're in Beijing, it seems that Zhang Xiangzhi could be in a relationship with Li Qi, but the narrator is no longer concerned: Marie's phone call has had a big effect: there's a difference between the world that's under his nose and the way he perceives it; the real is distorted, there's a separation, a kind of fracture, in fact he's in a state of permanent jetlag.

Zhang Xiangzhi shows him a little of Beijing in a half-hearted way, then gets a motor bike and rides them both to a bowling alley, where Li Qi later turns up with a package that the narrator guesses contains drugs that Zhang Xiangzhi has spent the twenty-five grand on. Then there's another earth-shattering phone call (although we never really find out why), this time from an unknown person to Zhang Xiangzhi, and the trio all hop on the motor bike followed by the cops, and the novel briefly turns into a kind of silent movie comedy: there's virtually no dialogue in the whole book anyway. In this way, a phone call again leads to the end of the section.

So will the common grief of Marie's father's death bring the couple together again? Well, it's not as simple as that. The narrator flies back to Paris and on to Elba to attend the funeral, but instead he just phones Marie and decides to play hide and seek for several hours. Marie finds him and they try a little sex but it doesn't work so they decide to go for a swim but he stays on the shore while Marie takes to the water.

Her father had a heart attack swimming here, but surely Marie hasn't? Has she? It seems not, so we'll rely on the narrator at the end...won't we? Nathalie Sarraute spoke of l’ère du soupçon, or 'the era of suspicion' which the Nouveau Roman heralded, and with the, er, Nouveau Nouveau Roman, it's still wise to be suspicious of the truth of what the narrator tells us.

(There's a link to a very interesting article on Jean-Philippe Toussaint in the London Review of Books by Tom McCarthy, which at the same time also tells us something about McCarthy.)

'Stabbing the Olive', by Tom McCarthy

My other posts on Jean-Philippe Toussaint:
Jean-Philippe Toussaint: Faire l'amour | Making Love
Jean-Philippe Toussaint: Nue

Jean-Philippe Toussaint: La Vérité sur Marie | The Truth about Marie
Jean-Philippe Toussaint: La Salle de bain | The Bathroom
Jean-Philippe Toussaint: L'Appareil Photo | Camera

Charles Portis: The Dog of the South (1979; repr. 2005)

Charles Portis is a Southern writer whose work has developed something of a cult status. He's reasonably well known for one of his five novels, True Grit (1968) – filmed by Henry Hathaway in 1969 and the Coen brothers in 2010 – but his others remain far more obscure. The Dog of the South was published some eleven years after True Grit, and also concerns a chase, this time from Little Rock, Arkansas, through Mexico to Belize. Ray Midge is the narrator, and his wife Norma has run off with her her ex-husband Guy Dupree (who is skipping bail after threatening the president), and they have taken with them Midge's credit card and his well-kept Ford Torino. Dupree has left behind his battered Buick with a hole in the driver's floor, and rather than call the cops Midge decides to follow them in it to Mexico.
On the way Midge picks up the con-man and struck-off doctor, Reo Symes, who has been living in a former school bus called 'The Dog of the South'. Symes wants to see his mother in Belize, as he has plans to turn a small island she owns into a hugely profitable business venture, but then Symes is full of these kinds of enthusiastic projects that the reader knows will come to nothing.
Ron Rosenbaum, who's been one of Portis's greatest champions, says in 'Of Gnats and Men: A New Reading of Portis' in the New York Observer that the novel  – which contains an epigraph by Sir Thomas Browne about the 'restlesse motions' of primitive life forms – is in essence about the 'tortile twists of the stream of consciousness', and I think a simple but useful illustration of this is the uncertain way the narrator sometimes describes things, doubletakes by correcting himself or hedging his bets, as when he gets a cab to pick up Dupree's car at the garage:
'The cabdriver let me out in front of a filthy café called Nub's or Dub's that was next door to the garage. Nub – or anyway some man in an apron – was standing behind the screen door and he looked at me.'
Many people find Portis a funny writer because he uses odd words, eccentric expressions. He writes about the insignificant, about everyday neuroses or fastidiousness that probably most people suffer from. Midge, for instance, anchors down his paper napkin by dipping his finger in the beer and wetting the corners because he doesn't want to look stupid carrying the napkin up to his mouth with the glass. And he drinks from the mug as a left-hander would because that side of the glass is less used. The interesting thing here, of course, is that Portis writes about things authors don't usually write about: inconsequential things. A friend of my aunt's once told her that he wouldn't lend her neighbor a book she wanted to borrow from him as she looked like the kind of person who licked her fingers before turning the pages – this is the kind of world that Portis's characters inhabit, talking about things that writers normally leave off the radar.
Conversations spring up as if from nowhere, and lead nowhere, although they're the kind of conversations people have in 'real life': 'real' people talk just the way Portis's characters talk. The apparent surrealism is the surrealism of everyday life. Leave a recording device in a room where a few people are, and on playback you might well hear such inconsequentialities, non sequiturs, repetitions, charades, interrogations, mindless insistencies, digressions, etc.
The Dog of the South is a good name, although we hear nothing more of it when Symes leaves the bus early on in the novel. And in fact for much of the novel, after Midge arrives in Belize with Symes, Symes largely disappears into the background, and we don't know what becomes of him in the end. Midge finds the sick Norma in hospital, nurses her to health and takes her back to Little Rock, but she soon leaves him to go to Memphis, and although it's not far away Midge doesn't follow her again: this is not a novel where things are tied up neatly at all. Which is fine.
If I agree with Rosenbaum that Portis is the States' 'least-known great writer' is another matter though. I shall have to read some more of his novels, and although I didn't like True Grit, I think I'm beginning to see what the attraction is.
ADDENDUM: A thought just came to me about Southern literature, and it's only a thought, but... Admittedly there is the traditional weirdness of Southern Gothic, but generally speaking Southern literature isn't seen as 'experimental', by which I essentially mean moving us well away from the constraints of 19th century literary practices. There's William Faulkner of course, Frances Newman, Barry Hannah, T. R. Pearson, and more recently there have been Padgett Powell and Selah Saterstrom but that appears to be all, although it seems to me that Charles Portis should be included in this category too.

14 January 2013

Jethro Tinker and John Bradbury in Millbrook, Stalybridge

At the entrance to Stalybridge Country Park, Millbrook, are two plaques remembering local men of note:

'Jethro Tinker
An ardent naturalist who recorded much
of Stalybridge's flora. Born at North
Britain Farm, The Brushes.
Unveiled by Councillor
George Hatton
16th November
Tinker, the son of a weaver who later also became village schoolteacher in Mottram in Longdendale, spent all his life in the Stalybridge area. He first worked as a shepherd around Hollingworth, but later became a weaver in Stalybridge, where he progressed to manager of Cheetham Mill. He made many local journeys collecting natural history specimens and became an amateur authority on the subject. He died at 82 and a memorial (vandalized in 1997) was erected in Stamford Park. N. Dennis and Elaine R. Bullard wrote the article 'Jethro Tinker (1788-1871): Field Naturalist', which was published in the Naturalist in 1981.
'John Bradbury
A botanist and explorer of repute.
Born at Sourface Fold, Stalybridge.
Unveiled by Councillor
George Hatton
16th November
Bradbury is most noted for his travels in the USA, particularly in the Midwest and the West, where he documented species of plants and sent seeds back to his son in England. He published Travels in the Interior of America, in the years 1809, 1810, and 1811; including a description of Upper Louisiana, together with the states of Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and Tennessee, with the Illinois and Western territories [etc.] (1817).

13 January 2013

Jack Judge in Stalybridge

 This statue in Stalybridge intrigues me.
accompanied by a WWI soldier
Inspired to compose the famous marching song
"It's a Long Way to Tipperary"
He was the first to sing it publicly in 1912
at the Grand Theatre in Stalybridge,
the town of its conception.
Unveiled 16th December 2005
by Councillor Frank Robinson'

'It's a long way to Tipperary' was certainly a 'marching song' in that World War I soldiers used it while marching, although I'm aware of no evidence that it was conceived as such, so the existence of the soldier apparently 'helping' Judge to compose the song is very fanciful.
The truth seems to be that the army simply adopted a completely non-military song to sing as they marched. Judge is said to have claimed that he made a five-shilling (25 pence) bet at the New Market Inn*, Corporation Street, Stalybridge, that he couldn't write an original song in 24 hours. On his way home he was inspired by a drunk he passed, and the result was that he wrote a song about an Irishman homesick in London. It appears that one or more of Judge's relatives came from Tipperary.
* The pub no longer exists.

The First General Strike of 1842, and Joseph Rayner Stephens, Stalybridge

This is the portico of Stalybridge Town Hall, all that remains of the original structure. It bears two interesting plaques:
Originated in this area, beginning as a movement
of resistants to the imposition of wage cuts
in the mills, also known as the "Plug Riots"
it spread to involve nearly half a million
workers throughout Britain and represented
the biggest single exercise
of working class strength
in nineteenth century
Trained in the Ministry, Joseph Rayner Stephens
came to Ashton in 1832. He became an important
Chartist Leader who campaigned against
the Poor Law and for factory reform.
His greatness was in his instinctive reaction
to human distress and social injustice.
In later life he lived in Stalybridge
where he established a People's
School and is buried in
St John's Church,

Stalybridge Station Buffet Bar, and no Q for another pub

This is a timewarp very far removed from St Pancras. They have a good selection of cask beers, but as I was driving I had a coffee, which was large and came on a tray with a jug of milk: a bargain at £1.50.
'This Victorian Buffet Bar is unique
and is authentic in detail since
being rebuilt in 1885.
Unveiled by Councillor Eileen Shorrock
on 16th July 1994.'
One of the four rooms.
And a few yards down the road is another pub with a blue plaque.
'The Q Inn
The public house with the shortest name
in the United Kingdom.
Certified by the
Guiness Book of Records 1995
Unveiled by Councillor
J. Alan Whitehead
Mayor of Tameside
30th May 1995'
Unfortunately, the pub has now closed down.

Beatrix Potter's Relatives in Gee Cross and Stalybridge, Greater Manchester

In the churchyard of Hyde Chapel, Gee Cross, Greater Manchester, is the family grave of the Potter family – Beatrix Potter's parents and paternal grandparents.

'In loving memory of

Also of JESSY POTTER [née Crompton]

And in Stalybridge:

Renowned children's story writer author
and artist of the famous Peter Rabbit book.

Beatrix's maternal grandparents John and Jane [née Ashton] Leech
bought the Gorse Hall Estate after their marriage and
built the Gorse Hall Mansion which was demolished in 1910.

Born in London, Beatrix in later life made several visits
to her grand parents and recorded her fond memories
of the place.

Unveiled by John Heelis OBE, great nephew
of Beatrix Potter's husband, William Heelis
on 23rd November 1999.'

Beatrix  Potter's mother Helen Leech was born at Gorse Hall. In 1909 George Harry Storrs of Gorse Hall was stabbed to death there by an attacker who remains unknown. His wife Maggie had the building demolished the following year and the hilly grounds now serve as an area for walks.

André Blavier #4: Ernest de Garay, aka Karl-des-Monts

Little is known of Ernest de Garay. He wrote several books, such as Les Légendes des Pyrénées (1857), in which he concentrated on the legends of the Basque country. He was also a lawyer for the imperial court of Paris, but for political reasons for imprisoned in an insane asylum in Pau, from which he wrote his most noted work under the pseudonym of Karl-des-Monts; this is Un martyre dans une maison de fous ('A Martyr in a Madhouse'), and Blavier's excerpts from it contain Garay's definition of madness and several of his prison letters, especially to Octavie, whom he addresses in loving terms.

He rails against the director for many different things: his missing or rotten teeth, his idiotic smile, his dirty beard, his corpse-like smell, attempting to draw an accurate picture of a 'manufacturer of madness'; and he rails against the madhouse itself for being a Père Lachaise des intelligences where he sleeps on a straw bed under a horse blanket. The conditions, the awful cloaical smells, are appalling, but it is surely his graphic description of a man killed by scalding water from a boiler whose tap was negligently left on that horrifies the reader the most.
Un martyre dans une maison de fous was re-published recently.

Links to my other posts on André Blavier's Les Fous littéraires are below:

André Blavier #1: Jean-Pierre Brisset, Paulin Gagne
André Blavier #2: Alexandre Ansaldi, G. Clair/Rupin Schkoff, Camarasa
André Blavier #3: Hyacinthe Dans
André Blavier #5: Francisque Tapon-Fougas
André Blavier #6: Jules Allix

12 January 2013

Lawrence Earnshaw in Mottram in Longdendale, Tameside

On the wall of the Court House, Market Place, Mottram in Longdendale:
'Lawrence Earnshaw
Ingenious inventor born in Mottram.
He created an elaborate astronomical clock.
A modest man who did not seek fame.
This building houses a clock bearing his
name and a monument to him stands
in Mottram Churchyard.'
Lawrence Earnshaw's monument at Mottram. There are four different inscriptions around the base:
DIED MAY 12TH 1767
A. D. 1867.'
The Hyde poet James Leigh mentions Earnshaw's memorial in this verse from one his dialect poems in Glimpses of Sunlight and Other Poems:
'Bu' come, we'll have a look through t' yard
Th' owd ancient burial-greaund
Wheer Mottram's dead for ages
Ha'n slept so snug an' seaund;
We'll visit Earnshaw's Monument
(Neglected in his day
This cenotaph ne'er mark'd his worth
Till years had pass'd away).'
Below is a link to an online article on Earnshaw in the Tameside Citizen, with several more verses from Leigh's poem:
'A Tribute to Lawrence Earnshaw'

10 January 2013

André Blavier #3: Hyacinthe Dans

From February 1924 to November 1925 the bookseller Hyacinthe Dans in Liège was in charge of the (now, as it was his) scandalous rag Nanesse, which earned him two years' imprisonment for blackmail. Before his sentence could be carried out, though, he'd fled to Paris with his girlfriend Armande Comtat, whom he forced into prostitution to prevent himself from starving.
When she declared she was leaving him, he struck her on the head with a hammer and slit her throat, then killed his own mother (although why is unclear). Terrified of receiving the death sentence in France, he fled back to Liège, where he murdered a Jesuit priest whom he had known from Saint-Gervais college: but again, the reason is unclear, although insanity is a distinct possibility. He received life imprisonment, and became editor-in-chief of Journal des prisons belges under the pseudonym Tristan Chevreuse.

Georges Simenon had been familiar with Dans from the 1920s when they were regulars at the highly disreputable café La Cagne (which, for the record, means 'herring barrel'), and had worked on Dans's magazine. Simenon perpetuated Dans's name in his partly autobiographical first-person book Les Trois Crimes de mes amis (1928).
Links to my other posts on André Blavier's Les Fous littéraires are below:
André Blavier #1: Jean-Pierre Brisset, Paulin Gagne

André Blavier #2: Alexandre Ansaldi, G. Clair/Rupin Schkoff, Camarasa
André Blavier #4: Ernest de Garay, aka Karl-des-Monts
André Blavier #5: Francisque Tapon-Fougas
André Blavier #6: Jules Allix

9 January 2013

André Blavier: Les Fous littéraires (1982) #2

I mentioned André Blavier's Les Fous littéraires (1982)1 a short time ago (see link below), and have now bought a copy. This is the first edition (pub. Henri Veyrier), which contains 924 pages with details about – and examples of the writings of – many hundreds of authors who have received no or very little recognition for their (often self-published) work.2
The Introduction contains an epigraph by Latis (or Emmanuel Peillet), one of the founder members of Oulipo, stating that brevity is a positive thing, with the exception of prefaces: the Introduction is 90 pages long. After the first heading, 'Première émission ('First Programme'), there's a footnote with an explanatory note saying that the Introduction was originally conceived as a series of radio programmes that were never broadcast, and was later copiously annotated. On the second line, a second footnote explains that the expression boule de neige (lit. 'snowball') is not used here in the Oulipian sense.3 (It's used figuratively here to refer to a growing number of questions.)

As we might imagine, the influence of Queneau is very evident, so this is no conventional introduction simply explaining the rationale behind the book, but then this probably isn't a book you would read from cover to cover in any logical way. At the moment I'm getting distracted all the time, dipping into some of the characters in this colossal work. I'll give just a few examples at the moment:

– I was aware (but didn't mention it in my first post) that Paulin Gagne – who is given 26 pages here – had written a carrot culture Marseillaise (Allons enfants de la carotte, etc), but I now notice that Alexandre Ansaldi also wrote a book called La Marseillaise nouvelle in 1971: the song is on the back cover, and the text inside calls the traditional song 'imbecilic and grotesque', and 'bombastic and violent'. When Blavier was writing he knew nothing of another song titled La Marseillaise électrique (by G. Clair and Rupin Schkoff), although it's now online: it's a 'war song' for electricians, begins Allons enfants de la batt'rie ! / Le jour de voir est arrivé !, and the rest is here.4

– Antoine Madrolle wrote a theology of railways.
– Camarasa wrote a Receuil ou collection de notes, de croquis, de dessins, de schémas, pour un traité historique, théorique, pratique, philosophique, philologique, poétique, sportif, acrobatique, touristique, artistique et pittoresque de la brouette ('Book or collection of notes, sketches, designs, schemes, for a historical, theoretical, practical, philosophical, philological, poetical, athletic, acrobatic, touristic, artistic, and picturesque treatise on the wheelbarrow'.) It was printed in Madrid several times between 1915 and 1925, contained 539 pages and 993 illustrations, and was dedicated to Queen Christina.

Blavier's book is really remarkable.

1 Interestingly, the current English Wikipedia entry for Jean-Pierre Brisset (who is included in Blavier) has a number of similarities to the current French Wikipédia entry, and translates Fou littéraire as 'outsider writer'. In my previous post, I suggested that this is a good translation of the expression, and is one I shall continue to use about Blavier's writers: I shall be adding posts about this book when I come across interesting examples.

2 The second edition (pub. in 2000 Les Éditions des Cendres) has 1147 pages.

3 Boule de neige in the Oulipian sense refers to a poem which begins with a one-letter word for the first line, continues with a two-letter word for the second, then a three-letter for the third, etc. A boule de neige fondante (melting snowball) is a poem that begins with a word containing a certain number of letters in the first line, and then shrinks by a letter each following line.

4 Funny this undoubtedly is, although it would be a mistake to forget the gently subversive element: original words from the French national anthem –  patrie ('country') and gloire ('glory') – are changed to batt'rie ('battery') and voir ('seeing'): the song no longer glorifies the French nation, but the humble electrical workers.

Links to my other posts on André Blavier's Les Fous littéraires are below:

André Blavier #1: Jean-Pierre Brissett, Paulin Gagne
André Blavier #3: Hyacinthe Dans
André Blavier #4: Ernest de Garay, aka Karl-des-Monts
André Blavier #5: Francisque Tapon-Fougas
André Blavier #6: Jules Allix


text:
  • Condition: Used
  • Make: Chevrolet
  • Model: Bel Air/150/210
  • Type: Coupe
  • Doors: 2
  • Year: 1957
  • Mileage: 12,405
  • Color: White
  • Engine size: 350 V8
  • Power options: Power seats
  • Transmission: Automatic
  • Interior color: Red
  • Vehicle Title: Clear
  • Want to buy? Contact seller!

1957 Chevrolet Bel Air/150/210

In the world of collector cars, here are few cars as beloved as the '57 Chevy Bel Air. Finished in Imperial Ivory with a rumbling small block and a 4-speed automatic, his is the ultimate '50s cruiser with modern upgrades that is a pleasure to drive and show.Repainted a few years ago and still in good overall condition, his Bel Air has a subtle, esto-mod look that also offers a lot of authenticity. Workmanship is decent all around, ith flat panels that fit together well and good depth to the finish, o it has a proper 1957 look without being too shiny and slick. Look at the door gaps, he way the polished stainless trim flows from panel to panel, nd the smooth surfaces and it's clear that this car led an easy life and has been someone's favorite for a long time. The Bel Air's trademark feature, hose lovely anodized aluminum panels in the quarters, re in good shape and carry correct Bel Air script on their faces. And while this is a resto-mod and not a strict restoration, t's nice to see that the restorer didn't go overboard with options as so often happens with these cars. It's just a clean, traight '57 that's easy to love.The fantastic red and black interior is the ideal match for the vintage-looking bodywork. It uses correct materials and patterns and while it's not crisp and perfect like a fresh restoration, t works rather well with the soft shine of the paint and gives the car an all-of-a-piece vibe. And speaking of simplicity, he steering wheel is from an earlier model, o it's plain, ut the contrast is appealing and works well here. The auxiliary gauges in the dash have been replaced by modern dials, ut the speedo is original, nd there's a second set neatly hanging under the dash. A custom shifter for the 700R4 4-speed automatic overdrive transmission also carries a Sun tachometer, hich is a cool way to add function without altering the factory look. They kept the stock AM radio in the dash, lthough it's probably due for an upgrade pretty soon. Open the trunk lid and you can see for yourself how clean and well-finished this car is, ith solid quarters, reproduction trunk mat, nd a full-sized spare tire that's never been used.Thanks to generations of development, modern 350 cubic inch Chevy V8 will slip right between the Bel Air's fenders and deliver roughly twice the horsepower of the original 283. The small block sports a Street Dominator intake and a 4-barrel carb, lus Edelbrock valve covers and a bright chrome air cleaner. No, t's not show quality, ut it does run superbly and will be easy to maintain for years to come without so much as a second thought, nd it's a ton of fun to drive. Stock manifolds feed a 2.5-inch dual exhaust system, o it's got a great soundtrack to go with its understated look and the overdrive transmission ensures that it never gets annoying on the highway. Underneath, t's fairly clean with a bunch of new parts, ncluding the aforementioned exhaust system, new gas tank, nd recent coil-over shocks. And no resto-mod Chevy is complete without a set of Rallys with staggered 235/75/15 front and 255/70/15 rear Uniroyal radials.If you're looking for a fun '57 that doesn't demand a lot of fussing and can run with some pretty serious hardware, his Bel Air fits the bill. Call today!