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No Third Runway?

The 41st Annual Gloucestershire Vintage and Country Extravaganza will be held at South Cerney Airfield GL7 5DQ on Friday 31 July and Saturday 1 and Sunday 2 August 2015. Look out for the N gauge layout Terminal 1 in the model tent.Although locally focused, Gloucestershire Transport History has never been parochial and with the county’s commercial air access to the outside World beyond the British Isles being mainly channeled through large airports at Bristol, Birmingham, Cardiff and London Heathrow it is only appropriate to comment on the state of this infrastructure.

In fact relatively little has changed since this topic was last discussed in depth in 2012 but I have just discovered the following article from The Week of 15 September that year which adds to the perspective already established.

“Point to Point” vs “Hub and Spoke”

The question of what to do about London’s airport capacity is being argued out against the backdrop of a much bigger debate over the future of air travel.  Since the 1960s, and the introduction of huge jets such as the Boeing 747, civil aviation has searched for the perfect balance of aircraft size, efficiency and range, weighing the convenience and cost of direct flights versus connecting flights.  This is how the “hub and spoke” model emerged: large jets carry passengers between the world’s major cities and hub airports, with smaller aircraft running “spoke” routes off them.

Air_Airbus_A380_SingaporeBut the world’s two largest aircraft manufacturers, Boeing and Airbus, are betting on alternative versions of the future.  Airbus, with its huge A380 (pictured above in Singapore Airlines colours), is in the hub and spoke camp.

Air_Boeing 787 Dreamliner_demonstratorBut Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner is the world’s first medium sized passenger aircraft to have the range and fuel efficiency to make hundreds of long distance “point to point” flights economical.  Boeing says that the 787 will connect at least 450 pairs of cities, particularly from the USA to Asia, and the Western US to Europe, which have relied on connecting flights in the past.  In other words, with 851 Dreamliners already ordered, hubs such as Heathrow could end up far less important than they used to be.

Are London’s airports full?

As a group, no.  London has five airports, and four of them have room for many more flights.  Gatwick operates at 78% capacity, Stansted 50% and London City Airport 56%.  Luton has announced plans to at least double its capacity without adding another runway or terminal.  The great exception is Heathrow.  It is by far London’s largest and most important airport: almost a third of the UK’s 235 million annual air passengers pass through Heathrow, flying to 183 worldwide destinations.  More than a million tonnes of freight – much of it valuable – also travel through the airport.  It might be the single most important piece of travel infrastructure in the UK.  It is also completely – well, 99% -full.

Can’t the other airports share the load?

Not as things stand.  Heathrow is what aviation experts call a “hub”.  The whole idea of hub airports is that they are enormous, and by amassing enough passengers, airlines and possible destinations all in one place, you can fill planes up sufficiently to make it economical to fly them from one side of the World to another.  Hubs are the vital cogs in global aviation and Heathrow is Britain’s hub: 35% of its passengers are there to transfer from one flight to the other.  For years the World’s airlines have queued up to pay for the profitable slots on its two runways and five terminals, giving British people and businesses, in turn, access to almost every city on Earth.  With Heathrow unable to expand however, airlines and passengers – especially from the World’s growing economies – are feared to be heading for other hubs.

Which hubs?

Heathrow’s rivals are just a few hundred miles away.  Frankfurt airport  (four runways), Paris Charles de Gaulle (four) and Amsterdam’s Schipol airport (six) all operate at about 75% capacity and are better placed to serve the expanding demand for flights to the world’s growing economies in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.  Charles de Gaulle offers 3 500 flights a year to Chinese cities to Heathrow’s 1 700.  “We are London’s second hub and we call one of our runways Heathrow’s third runway.” says Jos Nijhuis, the CEO of Schipol.  As Heathrow fills up, it is missing out on precious “connectivity” – a measure of its access to foreign markets – itself a threat to London’s long-term economic future.  Britain does 20 times more trade with emerging economies that have a direct flight to the UK than those that do not.

So what is the answer?

Britain’s aviation industry – led by British Airways and the British Airports Authority (BAA), the private company that owns Heathrow – have been trying to expand the airport for many years.  In 2009 the Labour transport secretary Geoff Hoon approved a third 2 200m long runway and a sixth terminal that would increase the total number of take-offs and landings – or “Air Traffic Movements” (ATMs) – at Heathrow from 480 000 a year to 600 000, an increase in capacity of 25%.  In 2010, however, David Cameron and Nick Clegg reversed this decision.  “We will cancel the third runway at Heathrow.” they said in the coalition agreement.

What is the case against it?

First, people in west London have had enough.  Starting life as a troop-carrying airbase (RAF Heston) in WWII and mushrooming from there, Heathrow has always been, in Boris Johnson’s words, “a planning mistake”.  Owing to the prevailing wind, 70% of flights at Heathrow take off or land towards the west: that creates a constant queue of aircraft descending over London.  Around 700 000 people suffer from the resulting aircraft noise (28% of all those in Europe so affected), and some 35 000 are exposed to chemical pollution.  A third runway would mean a third flight path over London, more noise and more fumes – all this for no good reason, say the critics.

But wouldn’t it help meet the rising demand for air travel?

The assumption that air travel will continue, as if naturally, to increase is misplaced, say the critics.  The Government has already reduced its forecast of passenger numbers in 2050 by 10% since 2006 and that’s before factoring in a future of rising oil prices and environmental controls – not to mention a shift in the aviation industry away from hub airports.  Equally misguided is the assumption that increased traffic will boost economic growth.  Only 15% of passengers at London’s airports (37%) are on business.  The real engine of growth in air travel in the last 20 years has been mass tourism: the number of British families on low and middle incomes flying abroad grew by 50% between 1996 and 2009.  Since they spend their pounds abroad, a rise in their number would, if anything, depress growth not increase it.

But wouldn’t a third runway ease congestion at Heathrow?

There are other better ways of doing so, say opponents.  Why not, for a start, reconfigure direct flights to Orlando or the Med to another airport?  Or adopt some of the measures that Heathrow has already experimented with to ease congestion during the Olympics?  These have included simultaneous landings and take offs on its two runways.  A move to full “mixed mode” (using runways for landings and takeoffs at the same time) could increase the airport’s capacity by up to 25% by some estimates – about the same as a third runway.  Then there’s the option of radically improving connections between London’s five airports, possibly via new high speed rail links  Finally, there is the dramatic solution, which would cost about £ 40 billion: build a new hub airport.  This is the option beloved of Johnson, who has sworn to oppose any Heathrow expansion.  But it’s unlikely to happen at his proposed site -an artificial “Boris Island” in the Thames Estuary.  A sanctuary for migrating birds, it is, as the head of Britain’s air traffic control service sees it, “the very worst spot” in the Southeast for a new airport.

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  1. alan | |

    Further information about a plan to combine a longer, mixed mode northern runway with a road and rail transport hub nearby can be found at

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: 1.25 billion vehicles by 2015

04-24-2009, 01:12 AM
You gotta love progress. Global warming aside, we are looking at some mighty high oil world demand.

Environmental concerns spark all variety of debate and the hottest topic at the moment is Global Warming and CO2 emissions. Some of us believe that our requirement for energy is the root cause of increasing CO2 levels and others believe it would be happening anyway and is a process the earth has undergone before in its history.

As always, it is human nature to find an easy target as a scapegoat and the car (once again) seems to be a good place to point the finger. Now, the car certainly contributes its share of CO2 but it’s not a patch on industry or even nature for that matter, but it is an easy and perennially popular target.

So, as manufacturers worldwide turn to clean diesels, hybrids, bio-fuels and hydrogen in order to reduce emissions and reliance on fossil fuels and comply with tightening legislation, comes the news that despite record high oil prices the World’s car fleet is expanding and is expected to hit the billion mark by the end of this decade. What’s more, it is then expected to increase a further 20 percent in the following five years!

So, where does that leave our war against CO2? It is expected that most of this growth will take place in the developing world as the traditional markets such as Eastern Europe, Asia and North America reach saturation point, markets such as China and India are just getting into gear. So, it won’t be expensive hybrids or clean diesels that are being sold by the million, it will be cars such as Tata’s new Nano Minicar, sold to folk whose last set of wheels was a donkey and a cart or a humble push-bike.

So as oil becomes prohibitively expensive and Global Warming threatens our very existence (according to many) manufacturers gear up to make the basic petrol burning car available to the half of the World’s population who don’t yet have one. Now, I’m not against decent transport for anyone and am the first to admit they I wouldn’t want to surrender the car keys, hell, I like cars so much I write about them daily – but it seems to me that all of the good work being put into cleaner cars in developed countries will be dwarfed by the rest of the World’s requirement for basic fossil fueled transport.

It’s a mad world…

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Wednesday, 26 August 2015

Star Wars: A Long Time Ago...

Archie Goodwin, Carmine Infantino & many, many others
Star Wars: A Long Time Ago...
Doomworld (1978)
Dark Encounters (1980)
Resurrection of Evil (1981)

This time it was J.G. Ballard boring me shitless, in combination with which a load of personal aggravations - significantly one of the cats breaking her leg - conspired to reduce my attention span as applied to literature which is probably important and good for you but isn't much fun to actually read; and these three collections were just sat there promising comforting retreat into a less troublesome past, so...

I was twelve when Star Wars came out, and naturally I was excited about the whole thing before I'd even seen it. I'd read the two giant-sized Marvel specials - weird collectors editions the size of tabloid newspapers - and I'd read that first issue of Starburst, and a couple of those other tie-in making of magazines they just couldn't get into the newsagents fast enough. I was excited because this was a film which looked like real life rather than special effects, even Gerry Anderson special effects. The robots seemed like real robots, as did the spacecraft; and I know we had 2001: A Space Odyssey, but no-one ever really understood what the hell happened in that film, and the adventures of Luke Skywalker promised to be significantly more exciting. Star Wars didn't disappoint when it arrived, although on close inspection I realised it somehow lacked the bite of the strips I'd begun to follow in 2000AD comic; and neither did the action figures disappoint, nor Star Wars Weekly which reprinted the two collectors editions and then went off somewhere else altogether, following its own trajectory.

These three volumes collect the first fifty or so issues of the American comic, as reprinted in shorter weekly helpings in the English version. Star Wars Weekly was never anything like so essential as 2000AD for me as a kid, although some of the back up strips came fairly close - Warlock, Guardians of the GalaxyMicronauts and so on. The main feature seemed variable, and suffered from each episode having been broken down into awkward lengths for the sake of a weekly schedule, but it still had its moments, or so I recall, although nostalgia has bitten me in the ass before...

A New Hope as it has since become known, adapted by Roy Thomas and Howard Chaykin - apparently drawn using a nail on a sheet of hardboard - is pleasant enough, and interesting for its featuring the first version of Jabba the Hut as played by Graeme Garden of The Goodies. With the adaptation out of the way, the story takes a brief detour through a slightly shite but hugely enjoyable Han Solo version of The Magnificent Seven, before really getting into gear with Archie Goodwin and Carmine Infantino at the controls. But for a few digressions and fill-in issues, the first two volumes of these collections more or less represent a continuing story, one which deftly avoided doing too much which could be contradicted when The Empire Strikes Back came out. The story is nicely paced, laying down intriguing plot points far in advance of their being required to explain anything, and delivering regular big ideas sufficient to keep it interesting. Of course, one problem with the comic is that it tends to expose Star Wars lack of any actual characters, or at least no-one deeper than they killed his mum and dad and now he wants revenge, or the rough and ready outlaw with a heart of gold and the like. This isn't really a problem in the film, at least not in the first one, given that scale and spectacle were the main point; and it did both pretty well, so all you really needed from anyone was at the level of the lowly farm boy who had a date with destiny. Whilst the comic strip could never really hope to achieve the scale of the celluloid, it had the next best thing in the form of Carmine Infantino's weird angular style, a sort of Vorticist translation of traditional Japanese art. Doomworld - set around a city-sized sailing ship rigged together from the trunks of underwater trees on a planet without dry land - impressed the shit out of me when I was a kid, and amazingly it has stood the test of time, albeit as something patently angled towards younger teenagers; and subsequent episodes of Luke and pals battling representatives of the House of Tagge actually work better than I remember them doing, possibly benefiting from being read over a few more concentrated sittings. Inevitably there's a degree of clunk and cliché because it's Star Wars, but I swear Carmine Infantino's art could be some of the most beautiful stuff Marvel have ever published, regardless of yer Kirbys and yer Ditkos, so it seems churlish to roll one's eyes at yet another creaking instance of C3PO testily pointing out that R2D2 has just made him look a right cunt.

Sadly it wasn't to last. Al Williamson's art on the adaptation of The Empire Strikes Back is beautiful but, as with the film, the fucking thing doesn't actually have a story.

Luke is over here, then he's over there.

Let's hope he doesn't run into Darth Vader.

Oh shit - look what they did to Han Solo.

The End.

Even as an easily satisfied teenager I thought it was bollocks and stopped buying the comic, which seems to have been the right choice going by the remainder of the third volume. Having adapted Empire, it's as though the story fell and hit its head and was never quite the same again. Carmine Infantino's beautiful art gets buried beneath the linework of a roster of lesser talents, Archie Goodwin drops in and out of the mix, and we get a succession of shorter, less ambitious adventures, essentially filler material. Luke and Leia guest in a dinosaur-infested Doug McClure vehicle, or a story from the 1974 Star Trek annual, or Larry Hama's impressively dire The Third Law in which her nibs goes to the banking planet to take out a loan so the rebels can buy more X-Wing fighters; and oh what a coincidence, Darth Vader just happens to be there as well, making a loud farting noise as Leia meets with the chancellor, waving a hand in front of his face and commenting, 'I would say there was a Brussels sprout on the end of that one, your royal highness.'

That doesn't happen, but it comes close in places. The Third Law isn't actually a Davy Jones strip from Viz, but it could have been.

Never mind. Nothing lasts forever, and the point to remember is just how good the first two volumes are. Apparently they're not considered Star Wars canon, but really - who gives a shit? I'd still take Doomworld over almost anything which has appeared on the big screen since the first one.

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A fun and cute interactive app for Kids!

Follow alongside a Dump Truck as it drives through a neighborhood. Help the dump truck pick up rocks, sand and stones using a crane, an excavator and a bulldozer! Then visit various construction sites to dump the load! A real treat for those little construction vehicle enthusiasts and a great way to encourage curiosity and interaction for all. Touch the driver and he honks the horn. Touch a cloud as it passes by and it smiles and hums. Touch the backhoe and it digs! The neighborhood is interactive. When your child touches people, animals, or vehicles they make sounds and perform actions. Its like a moving story book!

A great way to explore the sights and sounds of a Dump Truck!


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Saturday, February 25, 2017
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Eldon Bartmess, 70 - January 24, 2007

Eldon K. Bartmess, 70, of Elwood, died Friday, Jan. 19, 2007, at his home.
Services were held on Tuesday, Jan. 23, at the United Methodist Church of Elwood with the Rev. Connie Karr officiating. Interment was at the Morning View Cemetery at Wallace with military honors.
Bartmess was born on May 5, 1936, at Wallace to George C. and Alice M. (Kendall) Bartmess.
He attended rural school at Wallace and graduated from the University of Nebraska School of Agriculture at Curtis.
Bartmess served in the U.S. Navy from 1958 to 1962 and, on June 11, 1967, he was married to Lorain Nielsen at Wallace.
He and his wife made their home at Wallace where he worked a ranch, later moving to Sutton where he worked on a farm. The couple then moved to Fairfield where he was a bookkeeper for an elevator.
In 1978, they moved to Elwood where he was manager of the Elwood Grain Company until his retirement in 1997.
?Bartmess was a member of the United Methodist Church of Elwood and a member of the American Legion.
?He was an avid sports fan, especially supporting the Nebraska Cornhuskers, according to family members.
?Bartmess was preceded in death by: his parents; two brothers—Gerald and twin, Lester; a sister, Nadine; an infant brother.
Survivors include: his wife, Lorain of Elwood; a daughter, Shalene (Todd) Anderson of Elwood; granddaughter, Kimberly; sister-in-law, Barbara Bartmess of North Platte; two nephews—Jodie Bartmess of North Platte and Noel (Suzanne) Bartmess of Bellevue; a niece, Julie (Joe) Roos of Crawford.
Memorials are suggested to Central Plains Home Health and Hospice or donor’s choice. Condolences may be shared with the family online at

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The only way to confirm what you are being told is the truth
is to check with other professionals, people who work with bands and DJs all the time.

We invite you to ask around about us. We are confident you will like what you hear!

Here is a slide show of unsolicited, written quotes from a few of our many satisfied customers:


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Video on Demand Report: Men in Black 3, Step Up 4, and the One and Only Sparkle

The Headliner

Men in Black 3

The high point of my relationship with Men in Black 3 came the first time I saw the trailer, and witnessed for myself the majesty of Josh Brolin playing a young K, the character originated by Tommy Lee Jones. Because, come on, that is killer casting, and (from what I saw in the trailer) Brolin nailed the impression. But then I never saw the movie, and the Brolin/Jones MIB3 casting was pretty much forgotten after the Gordon-Levitt/Willis young/old casting showcased in Looper a few months later.

But even if you, like me, missed MIB3 when it was in theaters, it might be worth catching on home video for its importance as a cultural artifact. You can scrutinize Will Smith’s performance to see whether it’s changed now that he’s (allegedly) a Scientologist. You can make it a two-screen experience, looking up photos of Smith’s infamous megatrailer while you determine whether Smith’s offscreen comfort improved the film. But if the meta stuff doesn’t do it for you, there are probably aliens.

New and Notable

Step Up: Revolution

The fourth installment of the venerable Step Up franchise is better than the last one (but not as good as the series-best Step Up 2 the Streets). Moose (Adam G. Sevani) is hardly in it!

Shia LaBeouf and Tom Hardy play bootlegging brothers in this Prohibition drama. Based on a true story!

Misfit kid Norman becomes his neighborhood’s only hope when the town gets attacked by ghouls and stuff.

This remake of the Dreamgirls-y musical stars American Idol winner/Excedrin spokeswoman Jordin Sparks, as well as Whitney Houston in her final role.

The Apparition

Spooky things become real if you believe in them. Maintain your mask of skepticism, Ashley Greene!!!

Going through the Catholic Church’s “Engagement Encounter” pre-marriage course gets couples to confront issues in their relationships in what promises to be a gentle comedy despite the presence of Giancarlo Esposito (as a priest!).

Boy Wonder

A kid gets screwed up by witnessing the murders of his parents, but falls short of becoming Batman.

The Day

Five survivors of an apocalypse have to defend the farmhouse they’re squatting in from predators in a fictional film that dramatizes the scenarios all those people on Doomsday Preppers are so paranoid about.

“In Theaters” VOD Picks

Addicted to Fame

In the tradition of The Queen of Versailles and The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Addicted to Fame covers the bad decisions of a fascinating blonde — in this case, it’s a documentary about the making of Illegal Aliens, Anna Nicole Smith’s last film.

Walk Away Renee

Tarnation filmmaker Jonathan Caouette takes a road trip with his bipolar mother in this grim-looking documentary.

Sushi Girl

A grindhouse-y crime/heist/revenge situation, revolving around a woman whose job it is to let creeps eat sushi off her naked body.

Young and Wild

The story of a sexually adventurous teenage blogger was a Sundance award winner earlier this year.

Weird Indie of the Week

The Understudy

Marin Ireland (recently of 28 Hotel Rooms and Homeland) tries to kill the woman whose part she’s understudying in this Heathers-y black comedy.

Early VOD Premiere of the Week

A Dark Truth

Andy Garcia and Eva Longoria headline this generic thriller in which a CIA agent discovers that the agency might have been involved in some dirty dealings.

Masochist’s Choice

Heaven’s Door

Charisma Carpenter (formerly of Buffy and Angel) and Dean Cain play the parents of a kid who becomes an earthly assistant to actual angels.

Filed Under: Lawless, VOD OCD, Whitney Houston


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Welcome to the Governor's Grants Program!

Welcome to the new home of the Governor's Grants Program.  This new website should provide for better communication and information between our staff and prospective and current subgrantees.  Additionally, you will find information concerning our new training initiatives and programs.  Please make sure to look around the website and familiarize yourself with the new navigation.  Of course we are still glad to offer our assistance should you need it.

Shawn Cowing, Administrator


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Mysterious Font – A Mystery No More

Mysterious Font – A Mystery No More
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Once upon a time there was an English teacher that did the most awesome class projects in the world. She would come up with a story for each of her students and hand them over on sheets of paper, each with its own personalized font, custom made to suit the tone of the story. If it was one that had princesses it would be cursive and almost sparkly, if it had monsters it would be more rough and, dare I say it, a bit scary. Or as scary as a font can be. Either way, she used fonts to get her pupils sucked into the stories she created and make them want to solve the puzzles and do their homework.

Had I not been 10 or 11 at the time it would’ve been easy for me to ask her how she’s doing it all but I was so until recently this memory faded, only to be brought back by coming across a tool that would’ve helped a lot back then. WhatFontIs is a website that lets you find a font you’ve been looking for but can’t quite pick out. Of course, there’s the traditional way of finding it, going to the respective bar and scrolling down until you manage to see one that resembles it, jot it down and then move on until the end of the list. Or you can upload the file that has the font, a picture of it or put in the link to it and let the website do its magic.

Lailaa Font

The process is easy and straightforward but there are a few rules to take into consideration. Firstly, because it’s not Mafalda or any other Madam Whatsherface that can predict stuff, you have to let it know which way the contrast goes with the font, namely if the background is lighter or darker. You get a tick box on the first page about it and you just have to make sure the correct option is selected. Secondly, you have to make sure that the characters are somewhat separated and don’t overlap, as shown in the picture below:

Separate font Characters

Thirdly you just have to go ahead and confirm the letters WhatFontIs managed to recognize for you from its 280,000 strong database of fonts. As a side note, with that many options to search through you’re pretty much covered and even if you can’t find the exact match you’ll find one that’s so close it won’t even matter. Nevertheless, you’ll almost certainly find the font you’re looking for.

Font identifier

The only thing left to do now is to hit the Continue button and sit back. In a few seconds you’ll have a list of 100 of the fonts that look like the one you uploaded and you can take your pick. I’ve included below an example of the results with two fonts that look so much alike that you can choose either one:

Font Identifying Result

That’s all there is to it and if you need to find a certain font to use on your project click here to visit:

Naveed Ahmed working as a freelance content writer for more than 1 years. He take pride in his work and he will do the best to provide the high quality and fresh contents.

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Over 1.8 million nonprofits and charities for donors, volunteers and funders

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Causes: Brain Disorders, Cancer, Health, Pediatrics

Mission: Through participation in extreme endurance events, The Endurance Trust helps to bring awareness children suffering from PLGA - the most common form of children's brain tumors. By facing self imposed challenges we highlight the seemingly insurmountable challenges faced by these kids - and in doing so we try to raise the funds that will help fund research. With research there will be a solution. With a solution these children can once again fight for their dreams instead of their lives.

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Causes: Public Utilities

Mission: Provision of electricity to members in rural alaska.

Programs: Provision of electrical services to members in rural alaska.

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Causes: Disaster Aid, Disaster Preparedness & Relief Services, International, International Migration & Refugee Issues, International Relief

Mission: As the humanitarian relief and development arm of The United Methodist Church, UMCOR transforms and strengthens people and communities. Compelled by Christ to be a voice of conscience on behalf of the people called Methodist, UMCOR works globally to alleviate human suffering and advance hope and healing.

Programs: Humanitarian Relief (US & International Disaster Response), Global Health and Development

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Rating: 5

I concur with one of the other reviewers about how UMCOR operates. We have an offering in the United Methodist Church called One Great Hour of Sharing. The money collected during that offering goes to pay operating expenses. 100% of all other money donated goes for disaster relief, rebuilding, and all of the other programs that UMCOR supports worldwide. I have been a part of UMCOR as an early responder and have helped with home rebuilds after a disaster. UMCOR is usually one of the first NGO's on the ground and stays until the community is rebuilt whether that be 1 year or ten years. During Katrina while I was in Mississippi, I helped operate a food bank for UMCOR and we also distributed food in the rural communities. I constantly heard from the people in that area that they had recieved no aid from anybody including the Red Cross until we came. I am also a donor to UMCOR.

Review from CharityNavigator

Rating: 5

UMCOR is my #1 favorite place to donate if something happens in the world. You can give to their general relief fund, used around the world, or to a specific cause, like Haiti, or Katrina, or the E.Asian Tsunami - and you can know that 100% of the donation goes to the specified effort. Nothing for administrative, operations or advertising. That's ONE HUNDRED PERCENT! They show the love of God not with words about love, but by loving people enough to help with their most pressing needs - not by talking, but by doing.

Rating: 5

UMCOR is one of only 4 agencies that received an A+ rating from the American Institute of Philanthropy for its response to Haiti (as of January 23, 2010). UMCOR is one of the largest relief agencies in the world, working in over 100 countries and in the United States. It is currently the only relief agency still working in Louisiana and Mississippi to provide permanent housing for thousands of families who are still in need. Other non-profits are helping, but they rely on UMCOR, as a relief agency, to do the case management, logistics, and provide funding and volunteers. Families work with UMCOR to rebuild their houses at no cost, so they finish the work debt-free. 100% of all donations to UMCOR go directly to relief because all of the administrative costs are covered by United Methodist congregations.


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Review for Michigan Eye-Bank, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

Rating: 5 stars

What great cause and a dedicated staff! I have been to several outreach events and have walked away amazed every time. Midwest has helped to restore the gift of sight to people all over the world.

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Review for Tisbest Philanthropy, Seattle , WA, USA

Rating: 4 stars

Recently I celebrated my 70th birthday. My husband and daughter, Debbie arranged a surprise birthday party with about 30 friends and family. Debbie arranged for each guest to receive a TISBEST gift card. The feedback we received from our friends and family was so reallypositive. They liked that the site offered a wide choice of nonprofits to choose from and were surprised at how easy it was to use the site. But most of all they really liked the idea that their gift was meaningful. We especially received positve comments from the middle and high school children who really liked the idea that they could help someone else.

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Wow! Such a beautiful way to share a birthday together. We are inspired! Thank you for your support and generosity.


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Review for Needham Community Council Inc, Needham, MA, USA

Rating: 5 stars

The Needham Community Council has been part of my world for many years. I have borrowed medical equipment for my father, donated canned goods through the elementary schools, purchased clothing for my entire family, donated goods and services on a regular basis, encouraged my teenagers to contribute their time volunteering for a great organization, and enjoyed attending many of their annual functions. The slogan People Helping People is true in hundreds of different ways.

I've personally experienced the results of this organization in...

While traveling with my father it has been wonderful to borrow a light weight wheelchair.

If I had to make changes to this organization, I would...

Create a better way to drop off donations. Possibly having the donor separate clothes from toys from household goods so the sorting process is easier for the volunteers.

Role:  Donor & I recently assisted the Needham Community Council by providing engineering services for their new building on Hillside Avenue in Needham.


text:
Hong Kong – the better parts of town

Aberdeen typhoon shelter

Our first morning in Hong Kong started off a bit misty, but cleared to a fine day. We joined our guide, Biddy, and a dozen other travellers for a half-day tour of Hong Kong. She rattled off stats like a pro, and I’ll try to remember the most important ones. 245 islands, the largest is Lantau, the next largest is Hong Kong. The islands, plus Kowloon and the New Territories, have a population of seven million. Most of them live on Hong Kong and in Kowloon. Housing is very expensive, but the Government subsidises poorer people – usually in housing estates on the outskirts of town (sound familiar?). Real estate is sold by the square foot. Most people live in apartments, with blocks becoming taller all the time. Biddy lives on the fortieth floor of a sixty-story building.

The crowded boats are not as crowded as they used to be

Our first stop on the tour was the Aberdeen typhoon shelter, where a dwindling number of boat people live on small boats. It’s also the site of the famous Jumbo floating restaurant. I remember having lunch on a tour there in the 80’s. Peter could remember when the little Chinese boats were so close together, you could walk across the harbour from one boat to the next. These days, some of the boats are… um… a bit more up-market, shall we say?

Some people still live on the boats

This isn’t a bum boat

The front of the jumbo restaurant

The back of the Jumbo restaurants isn’t quite as flash as the front

From there we went on to Stanley, one of the more affluent suburbs of the island. Apartments here are expensive, with views across the water. We poked around in the market near the waterfront, bought a very nice leather backpack at probably multiples of the price we could have paid in Mong Kok, and bought a very expensive cup of coffee. Like most parts of Asia, you’re better off going to one of the big chains – Macdonalds, or even Starbucks if you’re desperate (sorry, Americans). Asians don’t make coffee with real milk, so flat whites are just not the same.

Stanley street markets. It’s not busy yet – too early

Hong Kong is trying to preserve some of its past. The Murray building used to be a military barracks set on the site of the Bank of China tower. It was dismantled brick by brick and rebuilt on the waterfront at Stanley. Nowadays it’s full of dress shops and restaurants.

Murray barracks and the beach front at Stanley

Next we went up to the peak. Back in the day you drove up the long and winding road to a lookout – just a walled terrace – with panoramic views over the city. The views are still there, but now there are buildings all over the summit, with the best views offered from restaurants, or a (paid) viewing platform. You can buy souvenirs and very expensive ice cream. We’re talking around AU$20. We passed. Biddy pointed out a couple of the large houses nestled against the mountains. You don’t need to be a Rhodes scholar to work out the people who own private houses on the peak would have a bit of money. We were told the going rate was HK$89,000 per square foot. Which means the room in which I’m writing this at c80 square feet = HK$7,120,000 or roughly AU$1,300,000. If you look at that article I linked, you’ll see HK$89k is peanuts.

Hong Kong from the Peak. This was a fine day – that air pollution was a constant. Across the water is a typhoon shelter

It seems Stanley Ho was the first Chinese to own a property on the Peak. He’s a fascinating man, a Eurasian who married a Portugese woman. It’s said on Hong Kong that he had four wives, but our Macao guide told us he had one wife and three very good friends. He’s still alive at 95, and had seventeen children. This Wikipedia article gives some basic information about him. Anyway, back to the Peak. That was where the British colonial masters lived. I got the idea that the Chinese weren’t allowed to live up there, or maybe (until Mr Ho) they couldn’t afford to.

We took the Peak tram down the mountain. It hasn’t changed in its century plus years, but today it’s packed with tourists. Towards the end of the trip there is a very interesting optical illusion which illustrates how the human brain interprets what it sees. There are towers on both sides of the tram line. We KNOW they are upright. They do not lean. But that’s what we see – buildings leaning to compensate for the fact that we are sitting at an incredibly steep angle, which our brain decides is impossible. Peter took pictures, but the camera sees the truth, so I haven’t posted them. Trust me, my brain said the buildings were set at an angle.

We drove past one of the most powerful places in Hong Kong. Or maybe I should say the people who run it have the power. Happy Valley race course, run by the Hong Kong Jockey Club, is adjacent to the city. Horse racing is the only form of legal gambling in the territory, and the Jockey Club runs it all. As a result, it is fabulously wealthy and owns many other business interests in Hong Kong. One of the more prominent is Ocean Park perched high on a hill above the city. It’s reached by cable car, with fabulous views over the water. I went there in the eighties. We didn’t visit this time. Nor did we visit Hong Kong Disneyland, which is on Lantau Island. There’s plenty of room for it there.

So far we’d seen the more affluent side of Hong Kong. Later in the afternoon we took a short wander around the Causeway Bay area, then took a tram more or less back to the general area near our hotel. The trams are double deckers, following a short route of about nine kilometres long. We expected that would be one line – but there are a couple of branches. One went through a local shopping area, where the residents do their food shopping. Greengrocers, grocery stores, bakers, and butchers all plied their wares from open air shop fronts. Sides of beef hung from hooks and butchers chopped up cuts for customers as the tram, bells ringing, inched its way between meandering shoppers. I would have loved to get back there with a camera, but it never happened.

In the evening we made our way back to the ferry jetties near the CBD to catch a boat for a ninety-minute trip on Victoria Harbour to admire the city lights. A fifteen-minute laser show happens every night, with many of the glittering towers participating in lighting up their edifices. In fact, I think many of them leave the displays to run all night. For today I’ll leave you with photos of the night. They were taken with my hand-held 70D at a very high ISO, but they’re good enough for the internet. (In case you’re wondering, using a tripod would not have helped, because the boat tossed around a bit. The swell – mostly caused by the wash from the many boats on the harbour – was enough for a couple of people to be seasick.)

Everybody has to have an Eye. This one has lit up trees to go with it.

Many boats carry visitors out to enjoy the spectacle

A junk, its red sails illuminated, adds to the spectacle

Hong Kong – then and now

The city and Perth Water from King's Park

The city and Perth Water from King’s Park in Perth, Western Australia. Clean and clear and flat.

We’ve just come back from a week in Hong Kong and Macao. I remember my first visit to Hong Kong in the eighties very, very well. I’d grown up in clean, flat, thoroughly Anglo-Saxon Perth, capital of Western Australia. My then-partner taught at a TAFE college, preparing students, many of them from Hong Kong, for the examination which would give them entry to Australian universities. So when we decided to make our very first foray outside Australia, we went to Hong Kong. In hindsight it wasn’t the best place for such a baptism. A starker contrast to Perth I can hardly imagine. Instead of sprawling suburbia where a two-story house was rare, we flew into a teeming metropolis which resembled an anthill. Towering apartment blocks lined narrow streets, covering every flatish piece of land – of which there wasn’t much. People crowded the footpaths. Washing fluttered from grubby balconies. Scaffolding was bamboo, not metal. Shops selling just about anything huddled together, dwarfed by up-market department stores. Hong Kong island itself was dominated by Victoria Peak, where the rich people live. Even landing at the airport was an adventure.

Kai Tak airport was well known as one of the most dangerous approaches in the world, with the flight path on approach going between those towering apartment blocks and down onto the runway at Victoria Harbour. Even down in cattle class you could almost wave to the people in their apartments as your plane landed. Peter had the privilege of being in the cockpit for one of those landings. Wow. Just wow. Together, we’ve had a drink in a bar overlooking the airport, watching the traffic coming in and going out. Ah. Those were the days. Here’s a few pictures you might enjoy.

Kai Tak closed in 1998, replaced by a huge airport off Lantau, largest of the 245 islands that make up Hong Kong. Guides were at pains to stress that ‘Hong Kong’ includes all the other islands, and also incorporates the Kowloon Peninsula and the New Territories, all leased for a trivial sum by the British from the Chinese. The 99-year lease ended in 1997, and from there, the character of Hong Kong has changed.

Since that first visit in the distant 1980’s I have been to Hong Kong several times, and Pete has been a lot more often than that. For Australians, Hong Kong and Singapore were the usual stepping stones to the rest of the world. The journey to Hong Kong takes about 9 hours, and from there planes leave for Europe. It’s a good place to break the 24 hour journey, especially on the way home when jetlag is an issue, so many Australians have spent a day or two in Honkers, picking up some bargains and seeing the sights. On this trip, Pete and I spent four nights in the city, rather longer than we’d stayed on other occasions. Moreover, this was a holiday, not a business trip.

We stayed in the Harbour Plaza North Point, on the island with views over the harbour. I’m not sure why we got upgraded to a harbour view suite, but we weren’t complaining. The apartment had a kitchen, dining area, sitting room with views across to Kai Tak on Kowloon, a king bed you could have used to host an orgy (while admiring the view), and a well-appointed bathroom. I shudder to think what an apartment of that size would cost to buy. We certainly couldn’t afford it.

Bedroom with view

Dining area. Open door is to bathroom

The sitting room.

It was kind of nostalgic that we could see the end of what used to be the end of Kai Tak’s runway from our suite. These days it’s a port for cruise ships. Since the airport was relocated, the height restrictions on buildings in that part of Hong Kong have disappeared and the suburbs have crept up, and out.

I made a point of taking a photo every day from our sitting room across the harbour.

Tomorrow I’ll tell you about our city tour and our visit to Aberdeen Typhoon shelter, Stanley, and the Peak. And then the light show from the harbour. For now, enjoy some views of Kowloon from Hong Kong’s North Point.

Kowloon from our suite. A cruise ship is leaving port – maybe for a journey to international waters where gambling is legal.

Early morning on the first day. Sun’s coming up and dissipating the mist. The site of the runway is clearly visible just behind the ship.

By late afternoon the sky had cleared – or at least, as much as it was going to

Next day the mist was fairly thick

The mountain behind the apartment blocks is invisible.

A Western dilemma

This is my blog, so I can talk about whatever I want. And today I’m going to spill some thoughts that trouble me. And here the emphasis is ME. I expect some of you (especially those who communicate regularly with Himself) will have another point of view. As is your right. So here we go. This blog is about Jews, Muslims, Islam, and ‘racial’ hatred. For I hasten to add that neither the Jews, nor the Muslims, are a race, .

I cringe at the notion of pointing fingers at people and saying, “You’re a <insert religion of choice> therefore I hate you.” I hate extremists of any ‘faith’ who will kill and maim in the name of god. This includes Crusaders, Inquisitors, Conquistadors, Sinn Fein – and, of course, the followers of Mohamed who surged across Africa and the Middle East in record time in the sixth century.  Most people are not extremists. But even so I do not want to open the flood gates to Muslim immigration. Immigrants who are prepared to integrate with Western culture are fine. But people who come here and cannot and will not integrate because their basic beliefs are different should go somewhere else where they will fit in.

The Koran was written in the sixth century – the world was a different place. Rules that made sense then no longer make sense now, but Muslim clerics persist in peddling this antiquated belief system. We don’t need Sharia law here. We don’t need women having to wear clothing so they don’t provoke men. (It doesn’t work, anyway.) National hijab day? Give me a break. I don’t care what anyone says, it is a form of dress dictated by the mullahs. Look at pictures of young people before the overthrow of the Shah in Iran, or in the streets of Afghanistan before the Taliban. If women want to wear head scarves, that’s up to them. But the fact is the hijab (let alone the burqa) has become something that singles out Muslim women in our society. They’d be better off without it. This article from the Sydney Morning Herald expresses that view from a more compelling source than me. Note her comments about little girls wearing head scarves.

You might be wondering why I mentioned Jews at the beginning of this. Ah, that’s the other side of the argument, the point at which I am faced with a quandary. The Jews have been persecuted for thousands of years, because their religion was different, or they were an easy target, or they were rich. European Jews in 1920-30 Germany didn’t pose a threat to anybody. They contributed to society, paid their taxes, ran businesses. Lived. They were part of the community. But that all changed when the Nazis pointed fingers at them, and blamed them for everything that was wrong with the German world. Ordinary people either joined in, or turned a blind eye. The end result is well-known, although I fear it is starting to recede into distant memory, something that happened so long ago it doesn’t count in our modern world. Take heed, people. The Holocaust was genocide, a deliberate attempt to wipe anyone labeled JEW off the face of this earth. Sure, other people – homosexuals, the intellectually disabled, gypsies and others – died in  front of the firing squads, or in the gas chambers. But the vast majority of those six million people were Jewish. And for those who say it never happened, here’s the proof, pictures taken by the Allies as they liberated the death camps.

Think it can’t happen again? May I remind you of Rwanda. And of Kosovo. And of what’s happening right now in Sudan. And the slaughter of Christians in Syria by Daesh. In the name of Allah.

We must protect our nation from extremists. I watched the horror of the Lindt Cafe siege unfold.  I saw a kid shoot down an accountant in Sydney because he worked for the police. I recoiled at events in Nice, Brussels, Paris, Berlin. Some of the perpetrators were imported, but most were home grown. Home grown happens because the immigrants don’t integrate, don’t feel part of the society in which they find themselves. I can’t help but feel we’d be better off spending our money to help them stay at home, to rebuild their homelands and create a place like Lebanon used to be, when Beirut was the Paris of the Middle East.

Where do I stand with immigration to Australia? I’m an immigrant myself, tagging along with my parents not long after WW2. My parents got nothing from the Government, not even the ten pound Pom thing (on account of not being Poms). My family was dropped off at Northam and basically told to get on with it. No instant welfare, no handouts. I’m not saying it was ideal – but then, the country had just finished a punishing war and needed to rebuild. We integrated. Nearly twenty years later, my husband’s experience in 1974 when he arrived from UK was no different.

And there is the dilemma. On the one hand we have desperate people wanting a better life, on the other, people taking advantage of what we offer without contributing anything in return, in fact wanting to change the way we live. Yes, I’d prefer to allow Christians into Australia – because I think they would be more likely to integrate.  No, we should not let in everybody, because if we do, we will sow the seed for the destruction of the very thing they want to come for – our prosperity and our peace.

Bear in mind, too, our society has changed over the decades. Back in 1955 jobs were plentiful. Now, not so much, especially for unskilled people. Which is a good reason not to bring more unskilled people here. And we should certainly vet anyone who does want to live here, and extend the amount of time before people can claim Australian citizenship. Those who flout our laws should pay the price, as happened recently with a father arranging an underage ‘marriage’ for his 12-y-old daughter.

The very best thing the world could do for places like Syria is first, to end the fighting, and then offer the people help to stay at home and rebuild, just as what happened in Japan and Germany (and the rest of Europe) after WW2.  Accepting thousands of refugees won’t change things, anyway. I urge you to watch this 6 minute presentation that illustrates why it’s better to help the people where they come from.

Yes, folks, fundamental Islam frightens me. Any ‘religion’ which subjugates women and treats them as inferior frightens me. What is especially terrifying is that the barbaric custom of female genital mutilation is rising in the West – and this torture is carried out BY WOMEN on their female children. Seems to me the West is becoming a fast-dwindling outpost of sanity.Unlike the Jews, Islam is more than a religion; it’s a set of social mores than do not sit well with our democratic principles. I don’t want that in my country. Equally, I don’t want people being burnt at the stake because they espouse a different faith. For me it is a moral dilemma with no easy answers. We cannot change Islam. Only Muslims can do that. And they don’t seem to be in a hurry to consider the possibility.

If I were in the least bit religious, I’d be praying that we stand fast. Since I’m not, I’ll just have to hope our ‘leaders’ take note. One more thing – this is long, and was probably the reason I’ve written this post. History doesn’t repeat precisely – but it has trends. Things are trending right now.

And on that happy note, it’s picture time.

The Rhine at sunset

Eagle with snake in its talons

A Brahmani kite carries off dinner – a sea snake

Picture of a Noisy Miner Bird bathing

Noisy Miner Bird bathing in the swimming pool

The abbey at Melk

The trials of technology

It has been an interesting week as far as household goods go. We prefer to cook with gas, on account of it being easier to control than electricity. These days we have to contend with idiot regulations that stipulate one cannot own a cooker with gas burners, grill, and oven. One must choose either a gas grill OR a gas oven to go with a gas cook top.  So we elected to have a gas oven.

We don’t have household gas mains in our part of town, so we use bottled gas. And it appears some bottled gas is not as equal as other bottled gas. Before Christmas, being in somewhat of a hurry, and having 5 9kg bottles to refill, we bought ‘swap and go’ gas instead of waiting an hour or more to get them refilled. For those who don’t know, swap and go allows you to swap your empty gas bottle for a filled one for just the price of the gas. It’s also a good way of getting rid of your “soon to be” ten year old bottles that then need re-certifying.

When the oven started to play up, we called the gas fitters. We were informed that swap and go gas is not of the highest quality – although it’s fine for barbecues. Apparently our law makers, (yet to find out if it was State or Federal, suspect Federal), a few years ago passed a law that stated that bottled gas only needed to contain 51% gas or phrased another way, must contain at least 51% gas. We don’t know what the other (possibly) 49% is made up of but oil of some description is certainly part of it. Anyway the gas fitter explained that this “other” component of the gas cylinder’s content, (let’s call it gunk) will clog up your regulator and in particular the jets in the oven which although still working will reduce the pressure and result in less heat.

There you go. Lesson learnt, but only after the lasagne came out of the oven at the same temperature it went in. Thank goodness we have an outside oven/bbq. Needless to say, a late dinner ensued.

So we resurrected an idea we’d had for a time. Why not try an air fryer? We did some homework and decided upon a not very expensive model with good reviews.  You know the old saying, you get what you pay for? It’s not always true – you can often get a better deal by shopping around – but there are times when, yeah, it might have been wiser to shell out a little more. Anyway there were a heap of these things, all the same model, with prices from $110 to $299, so we took the $110 one and paid for delivery. Many others offer “free shipping”.

It wasn’t so much the unit’s performance. When it comes down to it, they all do the same thing – super heat air and circulate it quickly around the food to cook it with a minimum of oils or fats. But there are differences in the design of the oven. The one we bought looks a bit like a UFO, with a stainless steel removable tub. It said it came ‘with accessories’ but didn’t nominate which ones, so we ended up with less ‘accessories’ than the slightly more expensive units, some of which also had a non-stick tub. The one we bought was the same as the unit in this link – but we didn’t get the four items on the left (oil spray bottle, two flat plates, and the sort-of rotisserie thingy).

Hey ho. I had decided that we would try cooking a chook using a rotisserie provided with the oven. The (very meagre) instructions said that a whole chicken (and chopped roast potatoes, pumpkin, and carrot) would take 15 minutes at 250 degrees. After working out how to turn the bloody thing on (not explained in the Chinese Engrish) we gave it a whirl. Pun intended. We didn’t think the chicken would be cooked in 15 minutes and we weren’t disappointed. Apart from that, the prongs to keep the chicken on the rotisserie were a bit dinky. The chook slid down the pole to one end of the device and stopped turning – fortunately the cycle finished before we ended up with burnt on one side. The vegies weren’t cooked, either. We took the chook off the rotisserie and placed it in the tub with the veg and gave it another 20 at 220. Then we turned the chook over and gave it a final 15. By this time the green veg (on the stove top inside) was over cooked. But the chicken was lovely and moist.

Even after all that time the chicken could have used a little more cooking – it was still a bit pink at the joints. But that’s trial and error, isn’t it? And the oven was very easy to clean.

Apart from that, I have been watching the train-wreck that is America with growing trepidation. And I know it’s not just me. The highly respected New Yorker has an extinguished flame of liberty on its cover and Der Spiegel caused uproar with that highly evocative cover of somebody vaguely resembling Trump holding up the cut-off head of Liberty. There has been a rash of videos from many European countries urging Mister Trump to – sure, have America first – but what about us for second? I’m proud to say the Dutch started it. Many countries have joined in, but I think the best is Germany’s entry. (You’ll find the others listed on the Youtube page.) I don’t recall ever seeing a country’s leader lampooned quite so severely in his own country, and outside.

Meanwhile in Washington Trump has surrounded himself with a cabal of billionaires who know bugger all about the portfolios they have been given. The legislature’s descent into right wing Christian fundamentalist ideology is breathtaking.

On the other side of the world in Moscow several people who were suspected of being complicit in the West finding out about Russian hacking in the US election, have allegedly ‘disappeared’, and it seems one of Putin’s rivals has succumbed to mysterious poisoning. What’s the bet Putin will take over Eastern Ukraine any minute now?

And on that happy note, a few photos that have been artified by Photoshop.

Ancient hills in the Pilbara. Photo taken from the car (so a bit blurring and not great) but rendered acceptable by a PS filter. Paint daub.

Changing of the guard at Windsor Castle. This one was filtered as a poster, accentuating all those lines.

Autumn on the Rhine. I evened out the light in the water bottom left, and took out the power lines. The paint daub filter really brought out the Autumn colours

Geikie gorge. This was a good photo – but the dry brush effect is rather nice.

The Stuff of Legend is live!

It has been a long time coming, but I’ve finally finished what was for a very long time “the current WIP”. I had hoped it would be out in 2016, but life-as-we-know-it got in the way. Anyway, it’s finally done.

Dreams2Media’s Rebecca Poole has done a wonderful job on the cover (as usual) and I had some fun with the graphics. The story revolves around an open cluster in that galaxy far, far away and the legends and tales that have been told about that formation. (No, not that one.) As an analogy, consider the Pleiades, also known as the Seven Sisters. Just about every society on Earth seems to have had a legend around it – many very similar tales about maidens escaping from a suitor, whether they are Greek, Roman, or Australian aboriginal.

My two protagonists have very different views on ancient tales. History professor Olivia Jhutta thinks there’s often a core of truth; Admiral Jackson Prentiss is only interested in facts. This snippet illustrates their differences. Olivia and Jak are walking through the woods.

“How much do you know about the Ghria?” Olivia asked.

Jak shrugged. “Space demons that lie in wait for the unwary. They swallow ships whole. And that’s about it. Oh, and I’ve seen the pictures.”

Fanciful illustrations of non-existent creatures with huge mouths and slavering jaws. “That’s very likely fabrication.”

He chuckled. “You think?”

“We don’t know for certain, do we? What we do know is the Gh’ria legend dates back thousands of years. Although it pops up across Confederacy space, it has its roots here, in the Helicronian planets.”

Jak brushed an errant leaf off his shoulder. “I didn’t know that.”

“It’s because in its original form, the Gh’ria are linked to the Maidens. That thing about space demons is later, much later. The earliest stories are about maidens protecting a dragon’s hoard. ‘Cloaked in stardust, draped in shadow the maidens guard the dragon’s hoard’. From a poem written by Elivior San Brindel two thousand years ago.”

Smiling, Jak shook his head. “That’s better than space demons, is it?”

“It’s interesting. The story goes that if you get past the dancers protecting the place, you still have to avoid being swallowed up by a dragon.”

He laughed. “Oh please. A dragon? We have swirling gowns making up the dancers’ clothes, and now we have a dragon as well? That’s a first. Can you show me?”

Show him? Olivia riffled through the images she kept on her implant, including a few for the Maidens which she’d collected recently. “Can I transfer an image to your implant?”

“Please do.”

She waited for the invitation to access his private inbox, then transferred the one with the three women superimposed over the stars. “This shows the dancers.”

“Sure. Where’s the dragon?”

His tone bristled with scorn. But then, she should have realized he’d react like that. Bracing herself, she said, “The dragon is invisible. It’s beyond the ability of humans to see it.”

Jak shook his head slowly. “Professor, I deal with facts, not made-up stories. These legends are just idiotic notions made up by ignorant people trying to understand something beyond their knowledge. I can see it now. Some kid asks the teacher what that thing up there is, so teacher tries to explain, using things he understands. But there are no star women up there. Just an open cluster with a nebula behind it. If you look at the Maidens from Rigmont or Sallazar, the stars don’t look the same. As for an invisible dragon… give me strength.”

The Stuff of Legend

When history professor Olivia Jhutta receives a distress call from her parents, she sets out into space with their business partner, her grandmother and injured Confederacy Admiral Jak Prentiss to find them. But she’s not the only one interested in the Jhutta’s whereabouts. The Helicronians believe Olivia’s parents have found an ancient weapon which they can use to wage war on the Confederacy.

Jak goes on the trip to fill in time while he’s on enforced leave, helping Olivia follow cryptic clues in what he considers an interplanetary wild goose chase in search of a fairy story. But as the journey progresses and legend begins to merge with unsettling fact, Olivia and Jak must resolve their differences and work together if they are to survive. The two are poles apart… but it’s said opposites attract. If they can manage to stay alive.

You’ll find The Stuff of Legend here.  Amazon  Google iBooks  Nook Kobo  Print

Be sure to visit everyone else participating in the showcase.

It’s all a matter of perception

Everlasting daisies in King’s Park

A few days ago a friend shared a set of pictures from Gardening Australia on Facebook. They are stunning photographs of flowers taken by Craig Burrows. It’s a shame they didn’t tell us what the common name was for each photo because with the “ultraviolet-induced visible fluorescence” process, they are transported to the extraordinary. In fact, I was very much reminded of the world-building in the movie Avatar. Just for fun I took the above photo and changed the photo’s temperature right down to purple. This is what it looked like.

Not quite ultra-violet

Which got me thinking. We see the worlds around us very much from our own point of view, and we miss so much. Bees see the world in ultraviolet. I wonder if their view is like those pictures? Our sense of hearing is vastly inferior to that of dogs and other predators. I love Terry Pratchett’s description of sense of smell as experienced by the Watch’s werewolf, Angua. For her, smell tells a great deal about the maker of the smell. It comes in layers, and it has a history, so dogs can sense how long ago bitch X was here.

Then there’s hearing. Once again, dogs and cats can hear things we don’t. Elephants can communicate in wave lengths so low we can’t hear them, while dolphins use much wider frequencies that overlap our sense of hearing only to a limited extent. Here’s a brief article on that subject. Dolphins in fact use sound to ‘see’.

And all this is on our own small blue dot. We can’t begin to know what’s out there in the vastness of space. What will a;ien species be able to do? How will they use their senses? And you know, that was the disappointing part of Avatar for me. Pandora was inhabited by wondrous, diverse (if recognizable versions of Earth) creatures. But the dominant species was a new version of pick your location of indigenous tribe. I suppose that was necessary in a romance movie for humans.

For this week I thought I’d share some lorikeet pictures. They brighten our lives, amuse, and annoy. We wouldn’t have it any other way.

Jostling over the apple juice. Note that one hanging upside down. I think they think that’s how the apple juice gets there. Also the two in the middle about to have an animated discussion.

This bird inserted himself between the two arguing – because there was a tiny gap

Things get a bit raucous

And sometimes they look like they’re dancing on the air

Who you gonna call?

This is a tale of woe we want to share with you because it’s interesting – and it’s a great example of ‘buyer beware’. It’s technical, so read on at your own risk.

Like everyone else (almost) on the planet, we believed we had to have a third party anti-virus system on our computers. We’ve had a few over the years – Macafee, Norton, AVG. A few years ago we switched to Avast’s freebie, then I decided to upgrade to a paid plan because it countered risks like malware. We had the Premium package, and have run that for a couple of years. Last November, I splurged on the $80 secureline option which was supposed to secure my internet connection.

In the last few weeks, around Christmas time, Avast started coming up with error messages informing Pete, whose machine is connected to the router, that such and such network had been changed from private to public.  At first, we didn’t take much notice, but as it became more common, we paid attention. We didn’t even recognise some of the network names. We couldn’t find out anything much about the message, so we contacted what we thought was Avast’s Australian online support. This was conducted via a chat interface.

Peter explained the issue and asked if the network switching from private to public was something to worry about. Yes, was the answer. We were transferred to someone else, who put us in contact with technical support. The tech’s name was (apparently) Jones. He asked for permission to take over the machine so he could check the status of the firewall and settings. Since we were connected to Avast we granted permission, and the conversation proceeded. Here’s a transcript.

11:36 AM Connecting…

11:37 AM Connected. A support representative will be with you shortly.

11:37 AM Support session established with Jones.

11:37 AM Jones restarting application as Windows system service

11:37 AM Connecting…

11:37 AM Application running as Windows system service

11:37 AM Connected. A support representative will be with you shortly.

11:38 AM Support session established with Jones.

11:38 AM You have granted full permission to Jones. To revoke, click the red X on the toolbar or press Pause/Break on the keyboard.

11:38 AM Remote Control started by Jones.

11:39 AM Jones: Hi, May I have your full name and your email address please?

11:39 AM Customer: Gret Johanna van der Rol gretavdr@gmail.com

11:39 AM Customer: Greta

11:40 AM Jones: Thank you, May I chck your fire wall settings?

11:40 AM Customer: Please do

11:41 AM Jones: Thank you, please dont move your mouse while I check

11:47 AM Jones: do you see those errors?

11:47 AM Customer: Yes, windows update failure

11:48 AM Jones: Most of the services were got effected. It seems already the security layer of your computer might have severely got effected  that may allow others to access your computer without any authorization anytime.

11:49 AM Jones: Did you download anything from internet recently?

11:49 AM Jones: From a non reliable resource

11:49 AM Customer: Free books from Instafreebie?

11:50 AM Jones: Okay, Let me check one more thing

11:50 AM Jones: Please wait

11:51 AM Jones: Do you see that, windows has stop defending itself

11:51 AM Jones: The defender is not working anymore

11:52 AM Customer: Yes. Can you turn it back on?

11:52 AM Jones: Sure, Even If I turn it on the onfection on your computer might turn it off soon

11:52 AM Jones: Let me show you something important

11:54 AM Jones: I hope you cane see the number of infections

11:55 AM Customer: Yes. What should I do?

11:55 AM Jones: We need to get rid of all these values fast, they could alter the functionality of software on your computer and may finally crash it. Eventually when the other programs are executed, even more programs may get “infected” with these self-replicating infected files.

11:56 AM Customer: Sure. How do we do that

11:56 AM Jones: Not to worry, We will do that for you. we found the exact locations to fix it. Today we will do a complete clean-up of your PC, fix your email issue, secure all the Pc and email ports, reconfigure all infected programming files, so that this issues is fixed and your computer would be safe without any data loss and computer crashes.

11:56 AM Customer: Excellent

11:57 AM Jones: Now for me to perform this task, we have few fix options for you. Let me give you a brief about the options. May I?

11:57 AM Customer: Yes please

11:58 AM Jones: 1. One time fix [Manual Clean-up + Today”s Fix] : $179.99

  1. Unlimited Tech support & Protection Plan for 1 Year : $299.99 (Includes today’s fix)
  2. Unlimited Tech support & Protection Plan for 2 Years : $399.99 (Includes today’s fix)
  3. Unlimited Tech support & Protection Plan for 3 Years : $499.99 (Includes today’s fix)

* The Unlimited plan also includes today’s fix.

* We will also install a calling card on your computer wherein you can reach our technicians automatically just by one click at any time.

Benefits of Unlimited Tech Plan : (Best value for money)

  1. Help to protect your privacy, data and online identity.
  2. Support for all kinds of Software related issues.
  3. Security against hackers programs, Viruses, spywares.
  4. Complete manual check-up periodically
  5. Cleanup of Registry & infected files.
  6. On Demand System Security Check.
  7. Fixing will be done in no time.
  8. We are just click away, no hold time to reach us.

I would suggest you to go for the long term as there are several issues on your PC and better value for your money.

12:00 PM Customer: Isn’t this what we’re paying Avast for, so this doesn’t happen?

12:00 PM Jones: the truth is no anti-virus is fool proof, so that’s the need of manual clean-up of any threats like Trojans, spywares at least once a month so that you can eliminate any threats immediately. This is where the human intervention is required.

12:01 PM Jones: Manual clean up is completly different from software clean up

12:03 PM Customer: I’ll do the option 1. Please make sure everything that should be turned on, is.

12:04 PM Jones: We will ensure that all the issues will be fixed

12:04 PM Jones: Shall I proceed with the one time fix

12:04 PM Customer: Yes please

12:06 PM Jones has sent a link: daskanini.com

12:08 PM Customer: Jonesy, we thought we were talking with Avast.  How did Log Me Rescuue get involved.

12:09 PM Jones: We do support for Avast products

12:09 PM Jones: Logmein rescue is the remote tool which is used to take the remote control

12:09 PM Jones: Thats a third party tool which everyone use

12:10 PM Customer: So who are you?

12:10 PM Jones: We are daskanini LLc

12:10 PM Jones: We support for Avast products

12:11 PM Customer: Well we’ll talk to Avast before we do anything.

12:11 PM Jones: Okay, I understand that, we gurantee 100 percent fix, if not you will get your money back

12:14 PM Customer: Send me your email address so we can get back to you, shortly.

12:18 PM Customer: You still there?

12:19 PM Customer: Email info@tekfixgo.com

12:19 PM Customer: Thks

12:19 PM Customer has revoked all permissions.

12:19 PM Remote Control by Jones stopped.

12:20 PM You have denied full permission to Jones.

12:21 PM Jones has ended the session.

We started getting suspicious at the size of the fee, although we seemed to be trapped between a rock and a hard place. So we got an email address, and closed the call. Then we did some homework.

First , note this statement.

11:51 AM Jones: Do you see that, windows has stop defending itself

11:51 AM Jones: The defender is not working anymore

In fact, when a third-party product like Avast is installed, Windows Defender has to be turned off.

Next, here’s a screen shot of Event Viewer from my machine. This was what Jones was showing us when he says ‘do you see all those errors?’ (Remember, my machine was fine – we were working on Peter’s)

Note the error messages. Scary stuff, huh? Well, no, actually. Scammers use that technique to trick people into thinking there’s a problem.

The next thing to do was make sure the system on Peter’s machine was clean of any malware. I followed the steps detailed in this PC World article. Make sure you download a malware program such as MalwareBytes before you reboot your machine in safe mode. We were not surprised to discover there was nothing wrong with the machine and made sure to get rid of logmein, the program the scammers used to take over the machine.

We were pretty incensed that the support person had put us through to a scammer, so we contacted the company via email. After some discussion, we learned that we had not been talking to Avast at all. If you google Avast support you’ll see a list of sites purporting to support Avast customers. A couple of them are Avast.antivirussupportaustralia.com and getavast.net/support. They’re all scammers. We should have gone to the Avast site (Avast.com/en-au/support.) There’s nothing Avast or any of the other companies hit by these people can do to stop the scammers. They buy a domain name that sounds right (antivirus support australia). That’s perfectly legal. If we’d looked more carefully at the site, we would have found a very badly written disclaimer in the footer, stating that the company had no affiliation with Avast. But we didn’t.

So, we’ve learned a lesson. However, at least we had the sense to back off and investigate.

Take care out there, people. There are unscrupulous people who want to take advantage of you.

Oh, and by the way, I’ve good a new book out if you’re into SF romance. Not too much romance, lots of intrigue and planet-hopping.

When history professor Olivia Jhutta receives a distress call from her parents, she sets out into space with their business partner, her grandmother, and injured Confederacy Admiral Jak Prentiss to find them. But she’s not the only one interested in the Jhutta’s whereabouts. The Helicronians believe Olivia’s parents have found an ancient weapon which they can use to wage war on the Confederacy.

Jak goes on the trip to fill in time while he’s on enforced leave, helping Olivia follow cryptic clues in what he considers an interplanetary wild goose chase in search of a fairy story. But as the journey progresses and legend begins to merge with unsettling fact, Olivia and Jak must resolve their differences and work together if they are to survive. The two are poles apart… but it’s said opposites attract. If they can manage to stay alive.

Buy it now on Amazon  Google iBooks Nook Kobo  (I’ll add them as they go live)

A brave new world for America

As it happens, this post coincides pretty much with the inauguration of the the incoming President of the United States of America, Donald Trump.

Brave new world indeed. I have quite a few (online) American friends and most of the people I’m close to await the coming months and years with trepidation. That’s honestly amazing. I’ve never seen this happen before. George W wasn’t popular, but he didn’t meet with the bitterness Trump has engendered. Sure, it has a bit to do with fake news, social media, back-stabbing campaigns on both sides. But from where I’m standing, it’s not about the president – it’s about the Republican party, which has blocked and dodged and prevented for the last eight years. It’s not for me to judge Trump –  from what I know of him, he is not a person I would like. But then, leaders don’t have to be liked. They have to be respected. And many of my friends don’t respect him. For me, what is really frightening is that the conservative, god-fearing, anti-science, pro-gun, paternalistic stance of so many American leaders will come to the fore. Too bad if you’re not a white, heterosexual, male.

But… the people have spoken according to the US political system, which is in as much need of an overhaul as our own. I shall watch with interest, and thank my lucky stars that I live in Australia.

For myself, my latest science fiction romance novel will be hitting the internet in a week or so. Keep an eye out if such things interest you.

And here are a few photos to admire.

Early morning on my beach

Eucalyptus bark

Cloud across the hills in South Australia

Moonrise over water

The garden at Greendale #15

Sunset over the Wombat forest

This is my last garden post. It has been fascinating for me, going back through what we did at Greendale. I’m so glad I had enough ‘before’ photos to see the difference. I thought this would be a good place to answer some questions.

Where is this place?

Look in the top left corner. You’ll see Greendale nestled next to the dark mass of the forest

Do you have a map of the property so we can see what went where?

This is a Google earth image, marking the main areas talked about in the blogs

Wasn’t it high maintenance?

No, it wasn’t. The original intention in many of our projects was to reduce maintenance. No more having to brush-cut steep slopes, no more manoeuvring between groups of trees. Sure, we had to edge, but that was part of mowing.

Although we had to do some weeding, especially in new gardens, I used Peter Cundall’s philosophy that if there’s a plant there, a weed can’t grow. It worked. I used perennials and shrubs, and never lifted bulbs (unless I wanted to divide them). Apart from the on-going labour of love of filling holes and replacing failed experiments, the main tasks were pruning and mulching, and that was once a year. And part of the enjoyment of the garden was wandering around in it, maybe pulling a weed here, dead-heading a rose there, trimming a branch somewhere else. That sort of maintenance is invisible.

Did you do all the work yourselves?

Not absolutely everything, no. We brought in a contractor to lay the cobbles for us, and to build the formal pond at the front of the house, and the circular planter in the terrace. Peter constructed the fence at the drive side of the terrace, and the little fence at the fernery, but we hired a contractor to build the long fence that stretched around the back of the terrace around to the end of the back border near the kitchen door. I painted all the external woodwork at least twice. Peter’s oldest daughter helped me with mulching the forest, and she did the western border by herself. I was eternally grateful. Everything else was done by us. It was our home, and our hobby.

Wasn’t water a problem?

Yes, it was. I tried to use plants suited to their location, so the Med garden and the Terrace and rockery all had natives or drought tolerant species. We also set up watering systems – underground soaker hoses in the Med garden, overhead sprinklers in the shade house and fernery. We put in a recycling septic system so we could reuse the water on the garden. And we tried drilling for bore water. Other people in Greendale had been successful in finding reliable underground water. But it wasn’t to be. The contractor went down four hundred feet to find even a bit of dampness, and beyond that depth it would have cost a fortune in pumps. We didn’t water often, but as the drought tightened its grip, we had to consider the thousands of dollars’ worth of plants. It was worth buying a few truckloads of water, or carting water from Greendale’s communal spring. But we only watered the gardens close to the house. Everything else was left to fend for itself. From 2003 onward I recorded all our rainfall every day. The graph below comes from those figures.

Annual rainfall by month 2003-6

Wasn’t it hard to leave?

I’ve heard this expressed in a dozen different ways, and I understand the sentiment. The thing is, life changes. We moved there with a mission of sorts – finish the place, inside and out (because while the garden was being built, things were happening inside, too). Then around 2005 we were hit with enervating health problems that required multiple visits for tests to hospitals in Ballarat and Melbourne, and appointments with Melbourne specialists. Eventually, one doctor told us to go and sit on a beach somewhere and veg out. So we went on a week’s holiday in Queensland. We got home on a cold, dark Victorian night. Next morning, wrapped in woollies, I took my cup of tea out on the deck under a grey sky and gazed at the forest, remembering the glint of sunlight on water and warm sand between my toes. It took me back to my younger days at the beach in Perth. A few moments later, Peter joined me. “You know, Gret,” he said, “I think we should retire somewhere warmer.”

And that was the beginning of the end.

Greendale was too big, too steep and too remote for an ageing couple with health problems. We put the house on the market in Spring, hoping the garden would sell it. Mind you, the house had plenty to offer – 4 large bedrooms with built in robes, 2 bathrooms, separate study, formal lounge, formal dining, meals area, family room. But even so, Spring went, Summer arrived and passed. And we didn’t even get a visit. The place took over a year to sell. By this time we’d cleared all the junk, had the garage sale, thrown away the hundreds of accumulated plastic plant pots, and sold a few things we wished we hadn’t.

It was a great experience, something I’ll cherish. I really enjoyed putting these posts together, reliving the work we did, and basking in our achievement. But time doesn’t stand still.

We closed the door behind us without regrets, and moved on to a new life.

The garden at Greendale #14

Bruce with some of his ladies

If you choose to live on the edge of a national forest on a hectare of land, you’ll be visited by wildlife. There was a resident mob of kangaroos in the valley which went from property to property keeping the grass down and fertilising. We saw them often, at any time of day or evening. And sometimes we didn’t see them at all.

I took one memorable picture quite early in our tenure. I knew the roos were close to the house, so I fetched my camera and walked around the corner to where the front patio would be. The alpha buck and his ladies were right there in front of me. He stood up with a surprised look on his face but he didn’t react, although a couple (not all) of the ladies bolted. I backed off quietly and took a few pictures, then left them to it. The alpha male (we called him Bruce) was enormous. He stood well over six feet, with an upper body Arnie would have envied. I have never seen a bigger buck.

This was taken just outside the kitchen

The nice thing about the roos was that, although wild, they were comfortable with people, and behaved completely naturally. Mums would let their joeys out for a run around and I saw one mum refuse to let a joey that panicked at the sight of me, back into the pouch. I wasn’t a threat.

The young bucks would practice fighting, and check on the girls to see if they could have a quickie while the boss buck was away. They would lounge on the grass, relax in the shade, and generally be kangaroos.

This is a large buck, on his own and working up to being a challenger to the alpha

The Wombat State Forest was home to wombats (I saw one crossing the road once) but we didn’t see them much. We had possums, both brushtail and ringtail, and we saw the occasional koala. We heard them more often, the big males growling from the forest above our house. Here’s what they sound like.

But apart from the roos, the most abundant critters were birds. Sulphur-crested cockatoos in their thousands called the Wombat Forest home. We would see them in the early morning, warming up their wings in raucous groups, planning their day. In the evening, they would perch up in the highest trees to catch the last of the sun before they went off for a last noisy fly-around before they settled down in the trees to roost. They’re lovely birds living to a ripe old age of 50+ years in the wild, but they are big, loud, and destructive. They are the bush’s native tip pruners, and they love soft wood like western red cedar window frames. They didn’t mind a bite of treated pine, either, so we didn’t encourage them too much.

A squadron (just one) of cockatoos doing a warm-up run

Gang gangs. The male has the distinctive red head

Gang-gangs visited in the Summer, obvious by their distinctive call which sounds like a creaking gate. And, of course, pink and grey galahs. They loved lining up on the power lines on the road and performing acrobatics. We also had heaps of crimson rosellas. They loved the purple wisteria, but weren’t so much interested in the white one. They also loved the catkins on the silver birches.

The rosellas loved the purple wisteria

This young rosella is enjoying catkins on the silver birches in the rain. They go red as they age

Of course we had magpies. They very quickly learned we were friends. They nested in the three gums near the dam, and popped in for snacks at a feeder table we set up just outside the kitchen. Kookaburras visited, too. When we replaced the washing line with a rotary hoist, they liked to sit on the central high point. A few birds quite liked sitting on the hoist’s arms and going for a ride in the breeze.

The little birds, in particular, loved our garden because we had so many dense bushes. Superb blue wrens nested in a number of places, including the shade house. A blackbird set up in there, too.

This white-browed wren built a mud nest in the fernery. Here, she’s caught a moth

Here’s a better view of her

This male superb blue wren is perched on a rhododendron flower. He had a nest in the bushes in the front border

A pair of baby kookaburras on the deck rail

These are Australian wood ducks, probably parents with nearly grown kids. The females are mottled.

Wood ducks nest in tree hollows (up in a tree). Their kids have to jump down, and from there mum and dad take them for their first swim.

The year the dam had water

We had frogs, too. In particular the pond at the base of the waterfall in the terrace garden became a frog pond. Every year we’d see the eggs and later the tadpoles around the rushes.

Tiny frog on a waterlily

You’re going to ask, aren’t you? About the spiders and the snakes. And the simple answer is ‘of course’. This is the Australian bush. On a number of occasions, I caught large huntsmen spiders in the house and escorted them outside. (That was my job – Pete just told me where they were.) Pete killed two snakes with the brushcutter when he was hacking back the long grass when we first moved in. I don’t condone killing animals for no reason. Snakes are normally pretty keen on minding their own business. One ventured onto our front veranda and we encouraged him out to the grass with brooms – just guiding, not attacking – where he hightailed it out of there. In the years we lived at Greendale I saw a snake four times, and never in an aggressive pose. Don’t do anything stupid like stand on them, or try to attack them, and you’re usually pretty safe. Given a chance, they’ll get out of your way.

So that’s about it. Join me for FAQ’s in the next post – the final one.


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Find Initiatives

Welcome to the global social responsibility initiatives website of the Worldwide Brewing Alliance. This website includes details of initiatives, funded by the brewing sector worldwide, to help encourage only the responsible consumption of beer and reduce the harmful use of alcohol.

Brewers play a leading role in, and commit significant financial investment to, all the initiatives included, either individually as brewers, by subscribing to trade associations and their confederations, or by funding Social Aspects Organizations and their international affiliations. The majority of the world’s brewers actively participate in these initiatives and have a proven track record of doing so.

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About Us

The WBA was established in 2003 with the objective of disseminating and exchanging good practices and information on social responsibility and product integrity issues. One of the ways in which this has been achieved is to publish details of social responsibility initiatives funded by the brewing sector worldwide. Two printed editions have been published to date. The information they contained has been updated and is now included on this website. It also includes initiatives undertaken since the last edition was published in 2007.

It has also compiled regular reports specifically covering Drinking and Driving and in 2011 released a report on environment and utilities sustainability.

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Global Brewers Demonstrate Strong Commitment to Responsibility

The Worldwide Brewing Alliance (WBA) has unveiled a major update to its existing database of the global brewing industry’s alcohol responsibility efforts.

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Global Brewing Industry Highlights Commitment to Responsibility

This new website launched by the Worldwide Brewing Alliance (WBA) shows how deeply engaged the global brewing industry is in working  to help reduce harmful and illegal use of alcohol.

  • 28/06/2012

Our Members

Beer Canada
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Brewers Association of Japan
British Beer & Pub Association (BBPA)
Cerveceros Latinoamericanos
Chinese Alcoholic Drinks Industry Association
Korea Alcohol & Liquor Industry Association (KALIA)
The Brewers Association of Australia & New Zealand Inc
The Brewers of Europe
The Union of Russian Brewers
Ukrpyvo The Ukraine Association of Beer Producers


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"The Playground" Your Guide to What to Do Tonight In NYC

by Kristina Lopez · January 22, 2015

Tonight the Museum of Modern Art is hosting its first "Modern Party" and The James Hotel teams up with Grey Area to unveil their new public art project. As always, for full details and more events, check out our calendar.photo via @curioussun


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Finishing My Flight Training at Guidance Has Been One of the Best Decisions I’ve Made

Guidance Aviation student pilot, Justin Tamashiro
Current student Justin Tamashiro describes why he decided to finish his flight training at Guidance Aviation and what sets it apart from other flight schools.

I am really excited to continue my flight training at Guidance. I heard great things from my friends who were training here and I wanted to experience it for myself.

I’ve wanted to be a pilot ever since early elementary school. It was at the El Toro Air Show where I was first exposed to aviation and it forever captured my imagination.

Ideally I’d like to fly for Arizona Department of Public Safety because of their diverse operations. A close second would be Customs and Border Protection.

I heard about Guidance Aviation through friends while attending Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Some of my friends had decided to complete their flight training at Guidance and had nothing but good things to say about their experiences. I heard the culture here was very laid back, yet still professional, and very enjoyable.

I decided to finish my flight training at Guidance because of the reduced cost compared to other schools. Guidance’s program was short and simple where other programs required twice as long [to complete]. The organizational culture and friendly, family like atmosphere were also big factors in switching to Guidance.

Enrolling at Guidance Aviation was quick and simple. The whole process took about an hour to fill out the paperwork and make copies of required documents. Both staff and management were extremely helpful and readily available to answer any questions.

Finishing my flight training at Guidance has been one of the best decisions I’ve made.

They’ve provided an excellent training environment and really allowed me to discover myself as a pilot. I feel both staff and management genuinely have a vested interest in my success. Most importantly, Guidance Aviation made flying fun again.

—Justin Tamashiro


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BIOS 20234 Molecular Biology of the Cell

Resources for students enrolled in Molecular Biology of the Cell Autumn 2016

Librarian Presentation

Thank you all for attending the workshop on your first Saturday of the quarter.  I know we covered a lot of material in a short amount of time but I hope you picked up at least a few tricks and tips.  The PDF of the presentation on Box is available for you to review at any time.

Remember, ask a librarian if you have any questions!

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Sphinx Marine is a leading marine electronics and navigation equipment, sales and service provider, headquartered in UAE. Sphinx Marine markets, distributes and services marine automation, communication, navigation equipments and systems of the highest quality. The company offers week-long, round-the-clock sales, after-sales support and service, primarily to meet the needs of the region’s marine industry.

Sphinx Marine has a strong team of trained professionals with years of extended experience and a fully equipped in-house workshop for maintenance. Further, a well planned distribution infrastructure guarantees excellent service to all clients at any given time. This is also reflected in the company being awarded the ISO 9001/2008 for servicing, installing and inspecting of marine communication/navigation/safety equipments

Navigation & Communication: Servicing and supplying of marine communication and navigation Equipments including all GMDSS Equipments , Autopilot and Steering Control Systems, ARPA & Navigation Radars, Gyro Compass & Magnetic Compass, Inertial Navigation System, Voyage Data Recorders (VDR & S-VDR), Electronic Chart & Display Systems ( ECDIS) , Speed logs & Echo Sounders, Gyro fin Stabilizer.

Safety: Servicing and supplying of different safety equipments such as, Life Jackets, Life Rafts. Life boat, Distress Flares, Fire Extinguishers, First Aid, Lifebuoys, Man Overboard Equipment, Bilge Pumps, Radar Reflectors, Anchors, Anchor Windlass & much more.

Business Territory: Our services areas include: Middle East, North of Africa & Gulf Area

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