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Artificial intelligence makes smarter security

Sci-fi often portrays artificial intelligence (AI) like this: a computer watches people for a while, blinks darkly and decides the solution to the world’s problems is to kill off the human race. Thankfully we are far away from that. But what AI is capable of today is simulating a specific human brain function – such as pattern recognition. And that’s very exciting for security.

AI makes security practical in the open world
The world is now open, causing disruption in many industries and changing the demands on security.

Pay television has evolved from a walled garden set-top box model to include online services. This opens up tremendous piracy threats that are a nightmare to control.

E-commerce and banking are undergoing open API mandates to enable information sharing among parties. This challenges the financial industry to grapple with cybercrimes such as man-in-the-middle attacks that hijack transactions and steal credentials.

For the automotive industry, cars are getting “smarter” with many connection points that can be exploited by hackers to tamper with systems or steal cars.

Security is no longer about closing borders and locking assets down. Security in the open world depends on being able to quickly spot something bad is happening or has happened. Such as someone putting a pirated video online, or trying to penetrate a service. As more pirated content goes online and more hackers go after high value targets, this means there is more data to collect and process to detect threats. A HUGE amount of data, in fact. You just can’t hire enough people to do this fast enough or cheaply enough.

AI enables us to adapt security to the demands of the open world. We can teach computers to recognize complex patterns among a sea of data that is growing at an exponential rate. Because AI is also advancing at an exponential rate.

AI gets exponentially better year on year
AI progresses so quickly because:

  • Open source enables much faster Information sharing
  • (Cloud) computing power follows the Moore’s law of exponential growth
  • Learnings built on one another leads to better algorithms

Many applications are using AI to deliver great results faster and cheaper – image processing, real time translation and speech recognition to name a few. Their success is based on training computers to process a huge amount of data in order to recognize patterns and derive meaning from the patterns.

Promise: objects may be closer than they appear
When can we use AI to find pirated videos, even when they are modified to evade watermark or fingerprint detection? How can banks and payment service providers extend the use of AI to further reduce risk and keep pace with evolving cybercrime?

When can we take a nap on the way to the ski resort in our self-driving cars and arrive refreshed? 2 years? 10 years? Who knows, but I bet it’s sooner than we think. Our research team is exploring AI’s potential for security, and I for one find it full of promise.

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Tuesday, September 30, 2008

First Thursdays: Open House at the Showroom

Stock up on our fall line! Join eco-conscious and stylish ladies from around the DC area and the TranquiliT team this Thursday (Oct. 2) from 5-8 pm at our showroom and enjoy 10% off our entire fall collection.

Already have plans for this Thursday? Check out our events page for upcoming happenings for TranquiliT both at the showroom and around the DC metro area!

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Sunday, November 15, 2009

tranquility du jour #166: do-gooding + having fun with britt bravo

Bonjour. Welcome to the 166th edition of Tranquility du Jour: a guide to bringing tranquility to your every day. Today’s show menu features happenings and musings on do-gooding + having fun with Britt Bravo.

Tranquilology Teleclass: Join moi for our next tranquilology teleclass "New Year, New You" on Monday, January 4 at 9pm ET. $10. View petals from summer's teleclass.

Workshops + Retreats: Consider the New Year's Gala on January 9 in DC, online creativity circle in January, Hip Tranquil Chick retreat March 26-28, a week long sojourn to lush Costa Rica May 29-June 5, and Kripalu July 5-9. All the scoop is on my workshops page.
Featured Tranquilista:

Britt Bravo is a social web consultant and career coach who helps artists, entrepreneurs and nonprofits realize their big visions and be a powerful force for good.  She writes for five blogs: Have Fun Do Good, BlogHer, The Extraordinaries, WE tv’s WE Volunteer blog, and the Global Center for Cultural Entrepreneurship blog.  She also produces the Big Vision Podcast and the Arts and Healing Podcast, and hosts Echoing Green’s podcast, Be Bold: Create a Career with Impact. Bravo is a frequent speaker and trainer who has presented at events such as the Craigslist Foundation Nonprofit Boot Camp, Bioneers Conference, Stanford Women’s Leadership Conference, San Francisco Writers Conference, Global Engagement Summit, and the BlogHer Conference. Her personal blog, Have Fun * Do Good, is one of the top twenty blogs on the List of Change, and her Twitter feed is on Social Edge’s list of Top 100 Tweeps to Follow.  In 2007, her local paper, the East Bay Express, named her the Best Podcaster/Blogger Most Dedicated to Social Change.

You can find out more about her work at, connect with her on Twitter at @bbravo and on Facebook at

Savvy Sources:
Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul by Stuart Brown
Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
Mobilizing Generation 2.0: A Practical Guide to Using Web 2.0 Technologies to Recruit, Organize and Engage Youth by Ben Rigby
CauseWired: Plugging In, Getting Involved, Changing the World by Tom Watson
Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky
Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media by Beth Kanter
NetSquared, An Initiative of TechSoup: Remixing the Web for Social Change

Signature Eco-Style: Fall fashion is luxe. Featured "Look of the Podcast" is the fabulous flare skirt pant. Watch TranquiliT's video featuring oodles of ways to wear.  Join TranquiliT's mailing list to learn about sales and new designs. Follow TranquiliT on twitter. Become a fan. Add TranquiliT to your blog and become an Affiliate. Help spread tranquility and join our Tribe.

Stay Au Courant: Create a home practice. Join our Facebook group. Become my Facebook friend. Follow moi on Twitter. Download Tranquility du Jour on demand. Watch bi-weekly Tranquility du Jour TV on Explore mentoring with moi. Peruse Hip Tranquil Chick. Deepen your yoga practice at Tranquil Space. Get your do-gooding on with Tranquil Space Foundation. Sign up for my museletter. Reserve a signed copy of Tranquilista. Join Tranquilista's fan page.

Challenge: Send moi photos of you getting your artist date on and I'll share them with our readers. The most creative artist date photo/write up received by December 21 (the winter solstice) will receive a complimentary mentoring session plus my newest Tranquility-to-Go yoga CD. Create away + do share!

Omwork: Explore ways to do good + have fun!

Au Revoir: To close out the show, we’re playing Ou Est Ma Tete? by Pink Martini from promonet. You can learn more about them at
  • You don't need an iPod to listen to the podcast! Click on the player at the top of the post or click here to listen to older episodes.
  • New to podcasting? Get more info at Podcast Alley.
  • Do you have iTunes? Click here and subscribe to the podcast. You'll automatically get the latest edition as soon as it's available.
  • Do you use another podcatcher? Use this link for the podcast RSS feed.

Interested in starting a podcast for yourself, your organization or your business?
Check out nineball media.

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1 comment:

Art Visions said...

I enjoyed this interview quite a bit. Britt seems to be the kind of career and business coach that many people can relate to.


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MA's First Internet of Things Week and Millennials on the Shop Floor

Posted by Natalie Tarutis on Sun, May 04, 2014 @ 10:00 AM

Technology's advancing rapidly, and so too is the manufacturing industry. We're seeing a lot of movement both publicly and privately to communicate those side-by-side advancements. And this week we're making that the central focus of this roundup. From innovations in the internet of things to resurging interest in American manufacturing, there are lots of exciting things happening.

As always, please feel free to email us an article you think might be a good fit for this roundup at or tweet it to me @NTarutis.

InternetofThingsA First? MA Governor Proclaims an Internet of Things [IoT] Week in the Bay State

Governor Deval Patrick has declared May 2-9 as “Internet of Things Week," making Massachusetts the first state to do so. The week is to be comprised of expos, forums, and panels in order to promote discussions around the emergence of new technology and to educate the audience. The location is fitting as the Bay State is the country leader in innovation rooting from companies, both well established and start-ups, focused on software, biotech, robotics, life sciences, and more. Learn about the events taking place throughout the week and how you can get involved, full article.

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Does the Movie “Transcendence” Portray the Future of the Internet of Things?

Continuing with the IoT topic, Gordon Benzie of Apriso provides insight into a recent flick and its connection with the Internet of Things. Transcendence, which hit theaters less than a month ago, questions the role that artificial intelligence plays in the future and touches upon some of the industry foresight around a Fourth Industrial Revolution. The plot begs to ask, what limitations will be (or should be) put on computing machines in the future? If you have seen the film, or even if you haven’t, Benzie’s high-level analysis of Johnny Depp’s newest project will spark the imagination. Read more.

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Preparing for Your Next ISO 9001 Management Review

The ISO 9001 series of standards is critical to managing enterprise quality processes. While many organizations understand the importance of adhering to such standard, some manufacturers only notice the relevance after an audit. This article breaks down the three types of ISO certifications, shares important facts to remember, and discusses the most common pitfalls to avoid when preparing for your next ISO review. ISO refresh.

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7 Things Attracting the Youth to American Manufacturing

It’s no surprise that a gap has been growing between manufacturing workers who are set to retire in the next 10 to 15 years and the younger generations who are moving into the industry. Despite the high degree of innovation and the consistently evolving technology landscape, millennials still have a skewed perception of life on the shop floor. Mike Roberts shares seven ways we can educate and excite this generation and perhaps fill in the gap. Read more.

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Tags: Manufacturing Operations Management, Internet of Things


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A Quick Guide to Google Analytics Real-Time Metrics

Posted by David Murton on Wed, Jul 25, 2012 @ 02:13 PM

google-analyticsIn case you weren't aware, Google Analytics has officially rolled out the BETA version of their real-time metrics for all Analytics users.

By clicking on the 'Home' tab on your Analytics page, you will then be able to see a new tab towards the top left of the screen titled "Real-Time". From this you can go onto view the current real-time metrics of any website you have tied to Analytics.

What features does Real-Time Analytics have?

When you click on the "Real-Time" tab, additional tabs will drop down revealing four different options for viewing the real-time metrics of the respective site you're currently viewing. These four options are:

1. Overview

Overview gives you a quick look at the metrics which will most likely matter to your business. The first metric you will probably notice is a large-font number which tells just how many people are currently on your site and what percentage of them are new and returning visitors. To the right you'll see a graph which gives you an immediate history of activity on your site.

Additionally there is a 'top active pages' to show which pages are currently be viewed and by how many. Top referrals and keywords are also listed showing you whether or not people arrived onto your site via a referring site or what keywords they put into a search engine to discover your site.

Last but not least there is also a map showing the general locations of where your visitors are currently viewing your site from. This allows you to assess with immediacy what geographic region the largest amount of visitors are coming from.

2. Locations

If you want to look more closely at the geography of your visitors, you can click on the Locations tab. On this page Analytics will break down how many visitors are coming from which countries. If you'd like to further define the location of your visitors, you can click on a respective country and get a summary of the city/localised region that a user is from.

3. Traffic sources

With traffic sources you can find out exactly where your traffic has come from, whether they're the result of a site referral, direct traffic, organic search, etc. You will be given an overall percentage of each as well as a table which breaks down each source.

4. Content

This section allows you to find out what pages of your site your visitors are currently viewing. Listed in a table, you can see the URL extension, how many people are on a page, and what percentage of your total active visitors are currently on any given page.

What Real-Time Analytics is good for

While Real-Time Analytics is a very neat feature, there have been critics who have wondered what the use of it is. This is because even without real-time metrics, you can still ultimately determine when your traffic peaks occur and which of your pages earn the most views, engagement, time on site, etc.

What Real-Time Analytics does bring is immediacy, making it a very ideal feature for when you want to track the success of certain marketing efforts in real-time. Perhaps you want to see how much traffic a certain competition or new marketing campaign brings. As an example, you could have TV or radio ads running for your company at night and you want to see if there is a sudden influx immediately after the advertisement plays.

Also, keeping an eye on your real-time metrics throughout the day allows you to more efficiently and accurately note down when your site really builds in traffic. When it does you can put up some new content. Or perhaps you can identify when your traffic is dwindling and try to entice people to your site (such as with links on your social media pages to a landing page on your site).

This is what Real-Time Analytics offers you - the ability to adapt your marketing efforts immediately as opposed to waiting a few hours or days to revise and then refine.

What do you think of the new Real-Time Analytics? A useful tool or a gimmick? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.

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Topics: Guide to Content Marketing, SEO Resources


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Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Green tea and the French connection

François-Xavier Delmas, whom I met through the filmmaker who made The Flavors of West Japan, has the most envious job in the world — touring the world's tea plantations.

He is also a founder of French tea purveyor Le Palais des Thés.

François-Xavier, I look forward to enjoying a nice cup of tea with you on a tea plantation somewhere, someday.

Another Frenchman who has made a name for himself in the world of tea is Weugue Florent, the first citizen of France certified as a Japanese tea instructor by the Nihoncha Instructor Association.

A great shot François-Xavier took of a wonderful tea house in Kunming, China.

—Mellow Monk

blog feed, facebook, reviews, steepster, teas, tweets, videos


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Highlights from the American Academy of Neurology’s Annual Meeting

The American Academy of Neurology’s (AAN) 65th Annual Meeting took place in San Diego, California in March. This large medical conference presents the latest findings in research and treatments for neurological conditions, including multiple sclerosis (MS). MSAA has compiled important highlights from the meeting in the following article on mymsaa.org: http://www.mymsaa.org/news-msaa/871-aan-highlights-2013

This entry was posted in Multiple Sclerosis Association of America and tagged , , , , , , by MSAA. Bookmark the permalink.

About MSAA

As a national nonprofit organization, the Multiple Sclerosis Association of America is a leading resource for the entire MS community, improving lives today through vital services and support. MSAA provides free programs and services, such as: a toll-free Helpline; award-winning publications including a magazine, The Motivator; website featuring educational videos and research updates; S.E.A.R.C.H.™ program to assist the MS community with learning about different treatment choices; a mobile phone app, My MS Manager™; a resource database, My MS Resource Locator; equipment distribution ranging from grab bars to wheelchairs; cooling accessories for heat-sensitive individuals; educational events and activities; MRI funding and insurance advocacy; and more. For additional information, please visit http://www.mymsaa.org or call (800) 532-7667.

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Dallas Football Classic to debut in 2010 at the Cotton Bowl

Cotton Bowl Stadium has a new postseason college football tenant.

The Dallas Football Classic will debut at the 77-year-old venue in Fair Park after the 2010 season with teams from the Big Ten and Conference USA, the Associated Press is reporting.

The AT&T Cotton Bowl Classic, matching teams from the Big 12 and the Southeastern Conference, will be played after this season at the $1.15 billion Cowboys Stadium in Arlington.

The Big 12 and the SEC will continue to send teams to Cowboys Stadium starting in the new bowl cycle, from 2010-13.

Jerry Briggs


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Austin musican gets the boot on ‘Bachelorette’

What a heel, the Austin singer was! But at least that heel is history.

Jillian Harris gave Texan Wes Hayden the boot tonight on “The Bachelorette.”

While driving away, he confirmed her fears and Jake’s accusations: that he had a girlfriend and he came on the show to sell his CDs.

He actually gloated over the fact that he was the first one on the show ever to make it as far as the final four with a — gulp — girlfriend.

Before she even sent him home, in fact, we heard him say to the other three guys: “If it’s me, just know I’ll be back home having lots of sex” or something to that effect.

Good choice, Jillian. Besides, you’ve got all that chemistry with Ed!

What’s regrettable? With the Texas bad-boy gone, the show just lost its juice.

Jeanne Jakle


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LeAnna Kosub – Racks & Reels http://blog.mysanantonio.com/racksnreels News and information on hunting, archery and fishing in South and Central Texas. Boating, lake level and river level information provided for Braunig Lake, Lake Calaveras, Canyon Lake, Medina Lake and others. Whitetail deer and turkey season information and tips. Thu, 06 Oct 2016 21:48:58 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.6.1 Weather worries eased somewhat for coastal fisheries http://blog.mysanantonio.com/racksnreels/2011/02/10/weather-worries-eased-somewhat-for-coastal-fisheries/ Thu, 10 Feb 2011 18:42:43 +0000 http://blog.mysanantonio.com/outdoors/?p=605 By Shannon Tompkins

Houston Chronicle

Texas coastal fisheries manager are considerably less uneasy today than they were one week ago, when a major winter storm swept the length of the Texas coast dropping water temperatures to levels and for lengths of time that threatened to trigger a major die-off of marine life.

While warily eying this latest round of cold weather predicted to push temperatures below freezing as far south as the Laguna Madre, fisheries managers say still-incomplete aerial and on-the-water assessments indicate this past week’s frigid weather didn’t result in wide-spread, severe damage to the state’s inshore marine fisheries.

“I’m feeling better as every hour goes by,” Robin Riechers, director of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s coastal fisheries division, said Tuesday. “But I’m still not quite ready to breathe a complete sigh of relief.”

Much of that relief comes from bay surface water temperatures coast-wide rebounding to above 50 degrees — and even as high as the mid 60s in the upper and lower Laguna Madre — early this week after falling to 35-45 degrees for most of the weekend.

Most inshore marine fish begin suffering effects of cold when water temperature drops below about 45 degrees.

Preliminary assessments indicate only scattered fish kills along the Texas coast, with forage species such as mullet, pinfish and silver perch, along with hardhead catfish, accounting for the majority of the freeze-killed marine life. Losses of the most socially and economically valuable species — speckled trout, redfish and black drum — appear to have been limited to small areas and involve relatively low numbers of fish.

“So far, in those areas seeing kills, we’re talking, at most, hundreds (of game fish), not thousands. And certainly not anything like the losses in the ’80s,” Riechers said, referring to catastrophic freezes in 1983 and 1989 that killed an estimated 32 million inshore fish and crippled coastal fishing for years. “I’m hoping that doesn’t change.”

“We’re still looking at it; we’ve got people out there on the water, right now, doing assessments, counting fish and collecting data” said Lance Robinson, upper coast regional director for TPWD’s coastal fisheries division. “But from the information we have so far, it looks like (loss of fish) is less than we saw in 1997.”

That January 1997 event, the last significant freeze-triggered fish kill to strike Texas, claimed an estimated 300,000 fish in Texas bays. The shallow Lower Laguna Madre was hardest hit, losing about 200,000 fish, including an estimated 86,000 speckled trout.

As with the 1997 fish kill and a smaller one that occurred in January 2010 most of the losses from this past week’s weather appear to have been in the shallower bays systems of the middle and lower coast, where fish could not as easily escape to deeper, more insulated water such as that available in Galveston Bay.

Preliminary surveys of the Galveston Bay system turned up only scattered dead fish, mostly forage species, said Bill Balboa, TPWD’s Galveston Bay ecosystem leader.

Aerial and on-the-water surveys indicate pockets of freeze-killed speckled trout in the Pringle Lake area and other “back-bay” lakes of the San Antonio Bay system, with other scattered dead specks in East and West Matagorda bays, and the shoreline of San Jose Island on Aransas Bay.

“The places like Pringle that historically have seen problems in cold weather are where we’ve seen most of the fish,” Riechers said.

Silver perch, hardheads and mullet account for the vast majority of freeze-killed fish TPWD crews have seen in East Matagorda Bay, reported Leslie Hartman, Matagorda Bay ecosystem leader for TPWD’s coastal fisheries division.

“We’ve seen just a few spotted seatrout,” Hartman said. “I think we’ll be fine. But we’re going to keep monitoring things.”

While TPWD surveys of the Upper and Lower Laguna Madres are on-going (aerial surveys both bays and the Land Cut between them were scheduled for Wednesday), initial reports are of only scattered loss of speckled trout and redfish. Black drum along with forage species — mullet, silver perch, etc. — appear to have suffered modest mortality.

It could have been worse.

In an effort to help prevent freeze-related losses of fish in the Upper and Lower Laguna Madre, the Gulf Intracoastal Canal Association, a trade group comprised mostly of tow/tugboat operators that use the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, issued a request that members voluntarily suspend transits on the ICW between Corpus Christi and Port Isabel this past Thursday to Saturday.

The man-made ICW provides almost all of the available deep-water refuge for fish in much of the upper and lower Laguna Madre; the section of the ICW connecting the upper and lower Laguna, commonly called The Land Cut, is the only relatively deep water in that part of the system.

Fish seeking refuge in the ICW can be killed when the stunned, highly concentrated fish are hit by towboat props or when prop wash mixes the cold surface water with the warmer deep water.

GICA members almost universally complied with the request, said organization executive director James Stark. Only one barge carrying what Stark described as a “critical commodity” transited the ICW’s lower reach during the Thursday-Saturday period, and that transit occurred early in the freeze event.

“Reducing barge traffic through places such as the Land Cut during this freeze certainly is something that we greatly appreciate,” Riechers said.

While the freeze appears to have impacted relatively few fish, it had a profound effect on marine reptiles and provided evidence of a growing sea turtle population in Texas bays.

In the wake of the freeze, more than 1,200 sea turtles — almost all juvenile green sea turtles — were collected from Texas bays by state and federal wildlife and law enforcement staff, members of turtle rescue organizations and an army of volunteers.

The majority of the cold-stunned turtles found during the first couple of days of the freeze, including more than 800 turtles pulled from the waters near Port Isabel, were recovered alive. The flood of turtles overwhelmed available spaces to hold the threatened species until they warmed and recovered.

“We were running out of places to put them,” said Kat Lillie of Sea Turtle, Inc. on South Padre Island.

When beachfront water temperature rose to 52 degrees — the minimum safe water temperature for sea turtles, said Donna Shaver of the Sea Turtle Stranding and Salvage Network — the animals were released into the Gulf.

While the majority of the turtles recovered early in the freeze survived, hundreds didn’t. Dead turtles have been recovered from every Texas bay except Sabine Lake. Sunday, 22 cold-killed turtles were collected along the shore of East Matagorda Bay, TPWD’s Leslie Hartman said.

The number of dead or cold-stunned turtles recovered was a record for such events; in the wake of the record-setting 1989 freeze, only 26 dead or injured turtles were found along the entire Texas coast.

While the loss of the turtles killed by the freeze is unfortunate, the number of stranded turtles found indicates the population of the long threatened species is growing in Texas waters, particularly along the middle and lower coast.

TPWD will continue surveying the freeze’s impacts and monitoring the bays for signs of fish kills, aiming to have a near complete assessment within a couple of weeks.

“I’m not yet ready to say we’ve dodged a bullet, but it’s beginning to look that way,” Riechers said. “When the freeze started, I just knew we were going to have a lot of fish killed.

“So far, it seems like we got lucky this time.”

Read : A history of the freezes on Texas’ coast

TPWD issues anthrax, parasite statements http://blog.mysanantonio.com/racksnreels/2010/06/30/tpwd-issues-anthrax-parasite-statements/ Wed, 30 Jun 2010 22:11:45 +0000 http://blog.mysanantonio.com/outdoors/2010/06/tpwd-issues-anthrax-parasite-statements/ One case of anthrax has been confirmed in a white-tailed deer herd on a game ranch in Uvalde County and avian trichomoniasis, a parasite, is the likely cause of minor dove die-offs in Texas, Texas Parks and Wildlife announced in separate releases on Wednesday.

Anthrax is a bacterial disease that often shows up when a period of drought is followed by heavy rains. According to TPWD and the Texas Animal Health Commission, soil conditions are right to produce anthrax outbreaks in a triangular region bounded by Uvalde, Ozona and Eagle Pass, which covers portions of Crockett, Val Verde, Sutton, Edwards, Kinny and Maverick counties.

“During an anthrax outbreak, hunters in the affected areas are

discouraged from taking feral hogs because they consume the meat of dead

animals and could be carrying the bacteria,” the news release stated.

“Fortunately, by the time deer hunting season starts, cool weather

usually puts an end to the often seasonal anthrax outbreak.

“At minimum, hunters should harvest only healthy-looking

deer and other hoof stock. If a deer has ingested anthrax bacteria,

within hours it will stagger, tremble or exhibit convulsions, and death

is inevitable.”

As for the dove parasite, it poses no human health risk.

However, to minimize the impact on dove populations, TPWD dove program

leader Corey Mason recommends the removal of dead birds and of

artificial water and feed or routine cleaning of artificial watering

areas and daily replenishment of bird feeders with fresh feed. He also

recomments decontaminating platforms and other surfaces where feed may

collect with a 10 percent solution of household bleach in water.

Parks in projected path of Alex closed http://blog.mysanantonio.com/racksnreels/2010/06/29/parks-in-projected-path-of-alex-closed/ Tue, 29 Jun 2010 21:43:26 +0000 http://blog.mysanantonio.com/outdoors/2010/06/parks-in-projected-path-of-alex-closed/ With projections that Tropical Storm Alex will become Hurricane Alex and make landfall south of the Texas-Mexico border late Wednesday or early Thursday, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department have closed three state parks in the lower Rio Grande Valley.

The three parks temporarily closed are Resaca de la Palma in Brownsville, Estero Llano Grande in Weslaco and Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley in Mission. All operate as World Birding Center sites and are primarily day-use parks, although Bentsen offers primitive camping.

Camping reservations at Mustang Island and Goose Island are being cancelled through at least Thursday. No new reservations are being accepted, but if the storm stays on its projected path, the campgrounds will be open for the Fourth of July weekend.

Beach camping at Mustang Island is closed in anticipation of high tides, but the water-and-electric campsites remain open.

Go to the TPWD websit for a more detailed explanation of the department’s preparations.

Fish consumption warning for Leon Creek http://blog.mysanantonio.com/racksnreels/2010/06/29/fish-consumption-warning-for-leon-creek/ Tue, 29 Jun 2010 20:24:53 +0000 http://blog.mysanantonio.com/outdoors/2010/06/fish-consumption-warning-for-leon-creek/ Fish caught in Leon Creek between the Old US 90 bridge downstream to the Loop 410 bridge should not be consumed, according to an advisory issued by the Texas Department of State Health Services on Tuesday.

Tests show elevated levels of PCBs in the tissue of fish caught in that area.

A smaller section of the creek has been under advisory since 2003.

Health officials note that the the results do not indicate any risk for people swimming in the creek.

The Texas Parks and Wildlife website offers more information about fish consumption bans and advisories.


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Posts filtered on Category

Category: construction

Trinity gets a gold star for its first LEED building

Trinity University on Tuesday will celebrate its first building to achieve certification under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program. Miller Residence Hall, a 1953 dormitory that

Cool building book: “Built to Last”

Tis the season for publishing, evidently, because I’ve received some nice review copies of architecture and design books recently. Among the coolest is “Built to Last” by Caldecott Medal-winner David

What the Dallas Fed says about Texas real estate

The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas released its latest Beige Book today, with some mixed comments on the Texas real estate market. It says that new home sales have stablized in the wake of the federal

Home buyer and building seminar

The Abrego Development Co. is having a free seminar for individuals thinking of buying or building a new home. The event is from 2-4 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 26, at its Eden Crossing community at 650 Live

ABC: Construction prices down

What’s happening with construction prices? A new report from the Associated Builders and Contractors says that they are inching lower. “The expectation going forward is that construction materials

New Cibolo Green elementary strives to be truly green

Cibolo Green Elementary, in the North East Independent School District, is one of the first green schools in San Antonio. Built by Satterfield and Pontikes to meet LEED Silver standards, Cibolo Green

Update on Air Force Village

Construction continues at both of the Air Force Village I and II retirement campuses on San Antonio’s far West Side, with new residents moving into some of the new sections. Air Force Village is in

Not enough construction in the pipeline

The Associated Builders and Contractors checked their cupboards. They aren’t bare, but things are not looking too good. The ABC’s Construction Backlog Indicator declined by 9 percent between November

Crystal ball forecast from the cement association

How’s the construction industry faring? Ask the cement folks. Their product is used in basically every construction project. The Portland Cement Association says cement consumption peaked in 2005 and

AIA: No relief in sight

The American Institute of Architects has released its concensus Construction Forecast. The outlook: not so good. Overall, nonresidential construction spending likely will decrease 16 percent this year


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UTSA 9, Sam Houston St. 7, 15:49 1st

Quick start for Devin Gibson with five points, but the Roadrunners are struggling to run their offense with four turnovers so far. Another bad omen: Melvin Johnson III just picked up his second foul, so he’s likely gone for the next 15 minutes plus.

Solid defense so far, though. Bearkats workhorse Gilberto Clavell has yet to attempt a shot, and his teammates are just 1 for 4 on 3-pointers.

Dan McCarney


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Thursday, October 9, 2014

Estimation involves forecasting level and type of resources required for project execution till closure. Many organizations would have developed methods for arriving at project estimates based on past experience.

Having said that, every project or service is unique and there will be some level of uncertainty, thus risk, associated with each service. A tool to define, iterate, measure, improve and streamline this process will be very helpful in managing projects/ services in a more efficient and productive way. You utilize such tools to transform your organization from a "GUESS" based working principles to a "MEASURED" and "ORGANIZED" organization.

We are very happy to introduce you to a new and powerful addition, that is sophisticated and robust, in Papilio, to manage estimating process effectively and efficiently. Papilio not only provide you with estimation, but also gives you required tools and reports to analyze monetization of every hour that is spent for a service. It gives you reports to understand work in progress, completed and unbilled inventory, billed vs realized, over utilized inventory, under utilized inventory, yield, variance at multiple levels and many more insights into every service/ client/ employee of your organization.

Estimating requires setup of following information -
  1. Enable "Estimation"
  2. Defining levels within the organization
  3. Defining hourly rates for each level
  4. Associating user to a level
  5. Give access to additional right - "Access to financials"

1. Enable "Estimation"
Under "Settings", enable "Estimation" (by selecting "Yes"). Anytime, to disable, select "No". This will enable all features related to "Estimation". Logout and login again to see changes related to Estimation.

Note that this setup can be done by only users having "Super Administrator" rights. Read further to setup this information.

2. Defining Levels:
Each staff is associated with a level. These levels needs to be defined first.

Under "Settings", click on "Configure Lists" under "Categories, Service Types and Lists". Here, you are presented with a list of lists. Choose "Staff Level". Click on "Add a new item" to add level.

For example, staff levels could be like - "Jr. Article", "Sr. Article", "Paid Assistant", "Team Lead", "Manager", "Senior Manager", "Partner" etc.,

You can order this list by dragging and dropping each of the items in that list.

3. Hourly Rates
Each level has a rate associated it. Define rates for each of this staff level under "Admin" -> "Your Company" -> "Rate List". Click on "Rate List" to see list of staff that is defined under settings. For each staff level, define hourly rates.

4. Associating user to level
Edit each user profile and choose appropriate level and save profile. Doing so, you associate each user to a level and in turn, each user level has hourly rate defined.

Above mentioned four steps comprise all necessary base settings to be done to setup Estimation.

5. Access to additional right
This right helps user to define "Target Recovery", provision to view Estimated and Actual service cost. This right is listed under "Administrator" rights. So, please be choosy in giving this right as users having this right will have access to certain financial information, which you might not want to disclose.

Working with Estimation

Another change related to Estimation is actual estimation of number of hours required to complete and close a service. This may include multiple levels of users working on a service (like partner, assistants, manager, team lead, finance team, QC team etc.,) from initiation to complete and closure. Also, you can input "Estimated Bill Amount". You can view and change these, under the people tab of the service.

While associating users to a service, enter number of estimated hours required to be spent by each user. This will compute estimated cost of service based on level of user associated to the service (Rate defined for each user is multiplied with number of hours). Note that number of estimated hours can be modified. And this will modify estimated cost of service accordingly.

Estimation combined with Timesheets is a powerful system. As users enters the timesheet, the actual vs. estimated unfolds. This can be seen at multiple levels - service, category and client.

Multiple reports are being written to incorporate this, and they will be coming out in the following days.

For a services organization, Time is the main and crucial resource. We had many suggestions, from you, to improvise and bring in a mechanism where, every hour spent in work is captured in a more meaningful way. We spent considerable amount of time to bring the best way of capturing and analyzing this important resource called - Time.

A major change that is being introduced, is changing the way time is captured, and analyzed. Following are two major changes from concept of Time:

"Categorizing Time" for certain major activities within your organization.
All this while, time has been entered in service for each task or for a specific service. Though it serves basic purpose of capturing time, it was lost in many other numbers. What we mean here is, time entered was not grouped in a meaningful way. Imagine if you wanted to know how much time has gone towards "vouching" alone, or how much of time in client meetings across services, and across clients, during a certain season, or how much of this time is chargeable or non-chargeable. There was no mechanism to know answers to these questions.

Secondly, Time spent in an organization is not just on services, but for various other activities of organization. Some of it would include marketing, sales, CSR, internal meetings, trainings, seminars, participating in recruitment activities like interviews, resume scrutiny, etc., or performance reviews, unplanned time outs, team meetings, so on and so forth. Till now, it was captured in various ways by different organization. Either by creating multiple services for each such activities and log time against this services or having one general service where time spent for all such activities was grouped.

To address above mentioned concerns, "Time" in Papilio is revisited and revised completely. We are introducing "Time Sheet", a group of time logs. Also, time logs can further be classified as "Chargeable" or "Non-chargeable", "Regular" or "Overtime".

"Approval" of Time Sheets
Time entered by various levels of people on activities were disclosed by executives and the same was not verified or approved by managers. Due to this, time entered was never checked for accuracy and secondly, there was no regularity and discipline in entering time.

We are happy to introduce approval mechanism for each such submitted time sheets. Managers will have option to approve or reject time sheets.

These new features are detailed in the following section:

Time Sheet
Timesheets are group of time logs for a week. Each timesheet starts with Monday as first day of week. Each timesheet will have multiple entries. Each entry corresponds to a service or activity, for which, time can be entered for the entire week. Each entry can belong to any of the following types -

1. Chargeable - Billable time, spent during regular working hours
2. Non- Chargeable - Non-billable time, spent during regular working hours
3. Overtime - Extra hours spent (other than regular working hours), which is billable. Note that, there is no non-chargeable overtime.

A time log is one entry made for a day against a specific activity. There are multiple time logs for a given timesheet spanning a week for one or more activities. Such entered time logs are all visible within those services, similar to how it use to appear earlier under a service. Also, note that, such time logging can be done from services or from tasks. And such entered time logs will become part of a time sheet.

Once a time sheet is filled for a week, the same can be submitted. You can choose to have an approval mechanism for time sheets.

If time sheets require approval, submitted time sheets will wait at approving manager's desk. And approving manager has right to approve or reject time sheets. Notifications are sent on submission, approval/ rejection of time sheets. If time sheets does not require approval, all submitted time sheets are considered approved on submission.

1. Enable Timesheet feature

Under "Settings", you can choose to enable time sheet or disable Time module completely by choosing appropriate option. After time sheet is enabled, save settings to choose whether you require approval flow or not and to set minimum work hours per week. By default, it is set at 45 hours.

2. Create Chargeable codes and Non-chargeable codes

Under settings, click on "Configure Lists".

In the following screen, select appropriate list name to define codes.

After selecting appropriate type, click on "Add a new item" to add list values. After adding, you will be provided with an option to reorder the list the way you would like to see them in the drop down while entering time.

3. Set Approving Manager for each user

Select Approving Manager for each user by editing user. On submitting time sheets, approving manager, on his login, will get list of time sheets waiting for approval.

4. Linking Chargeable codes to "Service Type"

This is an advanced option, where you can link chargeable codes to service types. Doing so, for a given service, depending on its service type, chargeable codes will appear accordingly for every time entry. To link, go to "Settings" >> "Configure Categories". Click on "Edit" against a service type to link chargeable codes to that service type.

Important Note

You need to enable "Timesheets" to see/ access time that was captured earlier.
Changes you will notice are:
  • Each timelog is considered to be chargeable
  • Each timelog will be part of a timesheet
  • Each time sheet till date is approved by default
  • All time logs till date are grouped under "General" chargeable code.

Friday, September 13, 2013

Security is very subjective

We keep repeating to all our friends, family and clients that internet security at their premises is not difficult to get compromised. Few people argue they have best firewalls and best wi-fi settings, but we persist to make them understand.

Recently I came across this interesting article that says "Google knows nearly every 'Wi-Fi' password in the world". Even WPA2 encryption or long random passwords offer no protection and easy to break. And with current news of NSA, CIA and FBI are tracking everybody's data, you will never know if your Wi-Fi passwords are already known to many others than just you. Go read this article  to know more.

What is important to understand with respect to security is that its only as secure as your weakest link. The data bleed can happen anywhere in the chain of connections from your harddisk to the servers that you access and work with. The primary reason why we built Papilio on top of the AWS infrastructure is the confidence that they give us with respect to security.

Thursday, August 15, 2013

Happy Independence Day

The individual may die for an idea; but that idea will, after his death, incarnate itself in a thousand lives. That is how the wheel of evolution moves on and the ideas and dreams of one nation are bequeathed to the next - Netaji

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

On top, as always.

We are proud. Really proud to announce an important metric. As you all know, Papilio is a cloud based practice management system. Being on cloud, we have to make sure Papilio is available, always. There is no compromise on that. We work extensively on making sure you have uninterrupted access to your work (we call it virtual office).

And in this half of the year, we achieved it and we would love to share this news with you all. We have a goal of achieving 99.99% availability. And, our continuous effort in making it happen, we are proud to share with you this beautiful number. As per our up-time tracker (we use host-tracker), this year, until now, we reached best score possible. You guessed it right. 100%

We met our goal. In fact, we surpassed it. We are pretty confident, we are in elite league of service providers in providing such availability. Thanks to the team who made it happen.

We love to provide this level of service for ever and thank you for being part of it and giving us the opportunity to serve you better.

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Keynote from ICAB Conference

Proud to see a pioneer like CA Guru Prasad M, from Guru & Jana talking about the need for technology in a country like Bangladesh which is budding.

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Working with tasks made simpler

For an executive, completing a day's work is made simpler. All actions that can be performed with in a service can now be performed in completely changed "My Tasks" page.

Tasks can be viewed either by service or by due date. If tasks are viewed "By Due Date", all pending tasks till current weekend are displayed in chronological order. To view pending tasks, choose a client (or enter client name if you are part of active services of more than five clients). All tasks of multiple services related to this selected client will be displayed.

As highlighted in the image above, multiple actions like - file uploading, linking, time log entry, commenting and completing a task can be performed in one page for multiple services. To see all tasks within a tasklist, simply uncheck "Show only tasks assigned to me".

Hope you like this new feature. Please drop in your comments or suggestions on how we can improve it further.


WARC-Truncated: length

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Quarter notes: Fourth

Russell Wilson

In a nutshell: Seahawks 20, Rams 13. The Rams tied the score at 13 with 11:23 left in the quarter on a 25-yard field goal by Greg Zuerlein to cap an 11-play, 52-yard drive that began at the end of the third quarter. But the Seahawks came back and drove 90 yards in 10 plays to a 1-yard scoring run by Russell Wilson with 1:39 left. The big play was Golden Tate’s leaping catch of a 44-yard pass from Wilson at the Rams’ 29. The Rams drove to the Seahawks’ 29 in the closing seconds, but Richard Sherman intercepted Sam Bradford’s fourth-down pass at the goal line.

Players of the quarter: Tate and Wilson. Before he made his big catch, Tate recovered a Marshawn Lynch fumble on the second play of the drive. Wilson passed and then ran the Seahawks to the winning score.

Play of the quarter: Facing a third-and-5 from their 27-yard line on the game-winning TD drive, Wilson went to Tate, who made a leaping grab over cornerback Trumaine Johnson for a 44-yard gain to the Rams’ 29.

Non-plays of the quarter: Facing a third-and-9 from their 35-yard line, Wilson uncorked a deep pass that Doug Baldwin came down with for a 49-yard gain to the Rams’ 16. But a holding penalty on tight end Anthony McCoy nullified the play, and the Seahawks had to punt. Then, it appeared Chris Clemons came up with a fumble-forcing sack of Bradford and Malcolm Smith returned the ball for a touchdown. But the officials reviewed the play and determined it was an incomplete pass.

Numbers of the quarter: 8 and 0. As in the Seahawks went 8-0 at home for only the third time in franchise history, and first time since 2005, when they made their run to Super Bowl XL.

Comments Off on Quarter notes: Fourth


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Monthly Archive for April, 2010

: April, 2010

In Portland this Weekend? Check Out a Rare Old Lompoc Release

In the past, I had a very strange almost uninterested attitude about the New Old Lompoc Brewery down in Portland, Oregon. To me, the brewery was a random neighborhood novelty that made a pretty impressive hoppy ale (Lompoc’s C-Note Imperial Pale Ale).
I was wrong. I know that now. I am sorry to you Lompoc, you […]

The Cellar: Beer Lineup Includes Cigar City, Great Lakes, Three Floyds & More

Here are some sexy shots of recent interesting pulls from the cellar. We are going to be brief, but wanted to let you all know what we liked, and what some bottles are tasting like right now.
Great Lakes Blackout Stout (Imperial Stout)
ABV — 9%
Vintage — 2010

RateBeer — 100
Commercial Description –
A Russian Imperial Stout with a […]

Notes of a Beer Nerd: Sierra Nevada 30th Anniversary — Fritz & Ken’s Ale

***Notes of a Beer Nerd is a column written by resident cellar dwelling mammal, Timperial Stout. Feel free to e-mail him at with any questions, concerns or comments***
Enjoyed on 4/20/2010
Brewery: Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. (Ken Grossman) in collaboration with Fritz Maytag of Anchor Brewing Co.
Location: Chico, CA
Beer: 30th Anniversary — Fritz & Ken’s Ale
Web: […]

Latona Pub Celebrates Earth Day with Human Powered Beer Delivery

This is a very cool event that warrants a little love from the blogging community. It also molds nicely into the Earth Day motif for the day.
Latona Pub, one of the 3 Pubs collection around Seattle, will only be serving beer from kegs that were transported to the bar by human powered devices — thus […]

Celebrate Earth Day with Beer!

Prior to living in Seattle, New Orleans is where I called home. I think it is safe to say that New Orleans is one of the least environmentally conscious of the larger American cities.
In all fairness to this wonderful city, while I was living there (2005-2007), she was going through a rough patch…to say the least.  Now, after […]

Events for Week of April 29, 2010

As we sit in anticipation of Seattle Beer Week (kick of is May 13, 2010), we at Beer Blotter continue to bring your weekly events. Drink up!
Monday, April 19, 2010
IPA Fests in Seattle: Seattle, WA
All day @ Cooper’s Ale House
All day @ Beveridge Place Pub
IPApril continues for just 11 more days, so stop by Cooper’s […]

Beautiful Days Go Best With Beer

We decided to take advantage of the amazing weather and bike around Seattle today. Of course, a stop for fueling includes a tasty pint.
Some suggestions for a warm and sunny day in Seattle:
The Dray — Phinney/Ballard
This was our venue for the day — and my current position. The Dray has open garage doors/windows today and […]

Beer Blotter News: New Logos, New Syndication & Props to Shane Long

Filed under: The Events Tagged: beer blotter, Buddy Bogus, Seattle Post Intelligencer, Shane Long, Ugly Bogus

Georgetown Brewing Wows with Lucille IPA at Beveridge Place Pub in Seattle

So, we went and we conquered. Beveridge Place Pub’s Georgetown Brewer’s party was certainly a hit, adding interactive fun to an afternoon/evening of drinking.
The night centered around the two year anniversary of Beveridge Place Pub’s new location at the Fauntleroy and California junction. But the hit of the party was Georgetown’s first ever IPA release […]

Beer Law & Legis: BevLog’s Website is Helpful Resource for Brewers

I stumbled across a wonderful website that is both informative and incredibly entertaining/intriguing that I thought we would share with the rest of you.
I have been searching for a viable and intriguing beer law blog for some time now. There just is nothing out there. In fact, if you were to google beer law blog,” […]


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Monthly Archive for May, 2010

: May, 2010

Tacoma paper likens McGinn to 3-year-old child

There is something about Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn that seems to particularly vex newspaper editorial boards.

Birthers base: 14 percent say Obama not born in the USA

Fourteen percent of Americans believe President Obama was not born in the United States, according to Washington Post/NBC News poll.

Initiative would privatize booze sales in Washington

A proposed initiative that would privatize liquor sales in Washington has been filed with the state.

The wonderfully ‘Loony’ British political system

David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party, celebrates with Alan Hope of the Monster Raving Looney William Hill Party, early Friday morning. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth) There are many differences between the political systems of the United States and the United Kingdom, the most obvious, of course, being that the U.S. is a constitutional republic and the U.K. has a parliamentary system.

Poll: Majority of Americans favor offshore drilling

Despite the highly-publicized oil spill off the Louisiana coast, a majority of American say they want to increase offshore drilling, a new poll shows.

David Cameron: U.K ‘wants new leadership’

From The AP:

Polls: Conservatives fall short of majority in UK

All eyes in the political world are looking across the pond at elections in the United Kingdom.

Report: McGinn to offer transportation measure

From PubliCola:

Former McGinn aide fined

From The Seattle Times:

Raising money – the Seattle culture

With 1,800 people on hand, and $20 million in hand, the Cascade Land Conservancy touches all the key bases on how to do a successful recession-era fundraiser in the Emerald City.


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Posts filtered on Tag

Tag: Seattle Residential Blog

DSA Density Report Shows Spike in Downtown Residential Growth

The DSA has released a detailed report of all of the benefits of the density of Downtown Seattle, and their findings examine everything from employment and residential density, to the effect on

Seattle Housing Prices Reach Biggest Year Over Year Gain Since 2000!

Seattle housing prices continue to rise, and have jumped another 12.1 percent in April from a year ago, according to the Case Shiller price index, released today. Our housing market posted a slight


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Monthly Archive for January, 2012

: January, 2012

Microsoft gives some testers an early look at Office 15; beta coming this summer

Since it finally took the wraps off the radically reworked Windows 8 last year, Microsoft hasn’t been shy about providing details about how its operating system will look. But that’s not the case with the next version of Office, the productivity suite that’s traditionally been developed alongside new versions of Windows. Sure, there have been […]

Linkpost | 1.31.2012

Updated 12:51 p.m. • EXCLUSIVE: The IM Conversation In Which 19-Year-Old Zuckerberg Decided To Build Facebook, This Year’s $100 Billion IPO – Interesting, and not too different than what was portrayed in The Social Network. [Language alert!] • Changing our privacy policies, not our privacy controls – Google responds to questions about its privacy policy […]

When your iPhone is stolen, better hope the officer that helps you is this savvy

Stories about people whose stolen iPhones and iPads have been recovered via the location-based Find My iPhone feature are now common. You’d think the first thing thieves would do is turn off Find My iPhone, but for some reason these criminal masterminds never do that … Many recovered-iPhone stories include law enforcement officers who have […]

Linkpost | 1.30.2012

• Old Techies Never Die; They Just Can’t Get Hired as an Industry Moves On – They may have years of experience, but if they haven’t kept up with tech trends and new ways of thinking, older geeks have a hard time making it in SiliValley. • Stepping down was a hard decision, but the […]

Linkpost | 1.29.2012

• T-Mobile To Offer Additional Unlocked iPhone Support Beginning January 30th – Even though T-Mobile doesn’t sell iPhones, the telco will help those using unlocked models on its network. • Firefox 12 will feature long-awaited New Tab Page and Home Tab – The design is very similar to the new tab and home pages of […]

Linkpost | 1.28.2012

• Letter to Twitter Executive Chairman Jack Dorsey urging him not to cooperate with censors and Twitter isn’t censoring you. Your government is. – Reporters without Borders urges Twitter not to go forward with its plans to censor tweets on a country-by-country basis. And Why Twitter’s new policy is helpful for free-speech advocates • How […]

Anatomy of a phishing attempt

The cyberscum who seek to pilfer your personal information have many ways to lure victims into their traps, and a favorite is the phishing scam – bogus emails that link to a rogue site into which the hapless type private data. The creators of these emails try their best to make them look authentic, and […]

Open comments and a head’s up on the 10th anniversary Geek Gathering

It’s Friday, and you know what that means: It’s time once again for the TechBlog open comment thread. It works thusly: You leave a comment about anything related to personal technology, and I’ll approve it. Check back often to see what others had to say about what you had to say. Then, say some more. […]

Linkpost | 1.27.2012

Updated 6:03 p.m. • Facebook Readies IPO Filing for Next Week and NYSE, Nasdaq battle for Facebook listing – The IPO could value Facebook as high as $100 billion. • Microsoft’s latest home for Kinect technology: portable computers – It makes sense that Microsoft would include Kinect in notebooks. • Amazon Kindle Fire cuts Galaxy […]

If this is January, these must be new iPhone rumors

In his new book, Inside Apple: How America’s Most Admired — and Secretive — Company Really Works, Adam Lashinsky spends quite a bit of time focusing on the company’s penchant for secrecy. Yes, it helps keep the competition guessing, but it also has a monetary benefit: You can’t buy the kind of advertising and publicity […]


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Zachary Quinto: ‘I’m not leaving Star Trek’

Zachary Quinto has been forced to dismiss rumors he’s quit “Star Trek,” after comments he made in a recent interview about “stepping away” from the movie franchise sent fans into a spin.

The “Heroes” star plays Spock in J.J. Abrams’ 2009 revival of the sci-fi saga, and is expected to return for a series of sequels.

But “Star Trek” devotees went into a panic this week after the actor’s interview with, in which he hints at a hiatus from the franchise, hit the internet.

He said, “I’m stepping away from Star Trek for at least two years – no movies, no conventions, no anything for a while.”

But Quinto is adamant his comments were misconstrued.

In a post on his official blog, he writes, “Obviously I will be a part of any upcoming films… reprising my role as Spock. What I meant was that in the meantime I won’t be making any public appearances related to the franchise – or doing any more auxiliary projects pertaining to the Trek universe (sic). I will be focusing my efforts on other projects and preparing to shoot the next film – which will be released in June of 2012… two years from now. Hence the no Trek for two years remark. Worry not Trekkers. It was a misunderstanding of context.”


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Tim Goodman Blows The Lid Off Vegas

What do Sharpie, Tupac Shakur and Timothy Goodman have in common? One heck of a live art mural in none other than hotter-than-hot, Las Vegas!

This amazing wall mural Tim created for FlexFit Headwear at the MAGIC S.L.A.T.E. trade show in Las Vegas back in August is just the latest in Tim’s amazing hand lettering feats (remember these!?!).  FlexFit is a headwear company located in Los Angeles that—like all the companies at the MAGIC show—appeals to the urban or ‘streetwear’ fashion community.

FlexFit challenged Tim to come up with an idea for a mural that he would draw, real-time, during the first day of the show. Tim’s focus was based around creating not only a great piece of work but an entire experience for people stopping by,  “While it was important that the mural was relative to the culture of both FlexFit and MAGIC, I also wanted to create an experience for the passersby that wasn’t too literal to the brand.” And boy, did he! Just check out the video below!

image via Timothy Goodman

Get the full low-down on Tim’s website along with EVEN more photos from the event!

Do it, to it.

2 thoughts on “Tim Goodman Blows The Lid Off Vegas

  1. that was AWESOME i am soooooo obsessed with sharpies!!!!
    i do everything i can with sharpie product
    i even ordered some that tell u 2 keep off i cant wait till i get them

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Jim’s Journal

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Vintage Cars in Havana, Cuba/iStock
Vintage Cars in Havana, Cuba/iStock

If you are seeking a Caribbean vacation with a serious dose of culture, then Cuba makes for a great getaway. And it’s never been more accessible, thanks to regularly scheduled flights from the U.S., which are expected to begin in the fall. My trip was amazing. For now, it’s still... Read More

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Jim's Journal: Ireland
Flickr/Phalinn Ooi

It is hard to believe, but despite taking numerous trips to the UK and Europe, I had never been to Ireland — and that needed to change. This New Year’s, rather than head to a sunny destination, where hotel prices and airfare were exorbitant, I decided to book an... Read More

Vienna Austria Parliament

I traveled to Vienna this year to attend the Life Ball, the largest fundraiser for AIDS research in the world. The event is televised on Austrian TV and is notable for the procession of elaborately costumed partygoers walking the red carpet to the ornate City Hall. This year’s event... Read More

Four Seasons Gresham Palace

I have been to Budapest several times and, on each visit, I adore staying at the Four Seasons Gresham Palace. In the off-season (winter, or shoulder season in fall or early spring), rates are quite reasonable relative to other 5-star properties in Paris, London, or New York City. (Think... Read More

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Lots of American travelers make their way to Germany, and, in fact, it’s recently edged out France as our third most visited European destination, after the U.K. and Italy. The most popular German destinations include Berlin and Munich, but two delightful smaller cities to see Regensburg and Bamberg, both... Read More

Protaras, Cyprus/iStock

I like traveling to resort destinations that aren’t filled with Americans. It isn’t that I dislike American tourists. I just find it so much more interesting to meet people from other cultures — something I couldn’t do back home in the States. Cyprus, not a typical destination for Americans... Read More

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Adventure in Iceland

After spending five days in Iceland, I can’t understand what took me so long to visit. The country is a mere five-hour flight from New York (like flying to California) but it’s a world away in terms of the scale of its nature adventures. Iceland is truly an outdoor... Read More

Limassol Cyprus Escape

When I began planning my trip to Cyprus, I didn’t have a good understanding of the island; few friends had been and I hadn’t read any travel stories about the destination. Naturally, some asked why I was going; well, I knew Cyprus was a popular vacation spot for Europeans... Read More

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Cartagena City Guide

Upon arrival in Cartagena, you’re immediately struck by the Caribbean feel of the city. The pastel colored low-rise buildings, high humidity, and infectious salsa music reminds you that this coastal enclave is very much part of the Caribbean. The old town of Cartagena, a walled city, is charming and... Read More

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Bogota, Colombia

The first thing I noticed when I arrived in Bogotá was how new, clean and organized its international airport is (I wish JFK were as pleasant). Around the capital city there are new buildings going up alongside gleaming office and apartment towers. Colombia is showing off a new face... Read More

Vista Grill

When I travel to a new destination, I always like to ask for advice and tips from my well-traveled friends who might have been to that place and probe for any suggestions before I get on the plane. And then, upon landing, I try to check those recommendations with... Read More

Garza Blanca Puerto Vallarta

I had never been to Puerto Vallarta, so I was very excited about the prospect of visiting over the New Year’s holiday. Coming from New York, it is, obviously, a longer trip than heading to the east coast of Mexico. However, it is worth the extra few hours of... Read More

St. Petersburg

Coming to St. Petersburg is a special treat for me since I was last here as a student 25 years ago, before the fall of communism. I wanted to return to see just how much the city had changed. Back then, the average person waited in line for several... Read More

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Revolution Museum

It’s been 25 years since I was in Moscow, when I was a student of the Russian language. I wanted to return to see all the changes since the end of Communism. To start off with some context, nothing is better than a visit to The State Central Museum... Read More

Grand Hotel Stockholm

I arrived in Stockholm for what would be the start of a seven-week journey through Europe. I figured I would start up north and make my way to warmer climates in the days ahead. Stockholm in summer is terrific because the days are long and the way the sun... Read More


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Monnie McGee

General Education Review committee named

The Office of the Provost has named all members of SMU’s General Education Review Committee. The office plans to establish a website on which faculty and staff members can track the Commitee’s progress and provide feedback.

“The members have all agreed to participate in this important venture on behalf of, and in consultation with, the entire University community,” said Provost Paul Ludden in an e-mail to SMU faculty and staff.

The General Education Review is a key objective of SMU’s Centennial Strategic Plan 2006-2015. The review will examine how the University’s general education requirements “prepare students for citizenship and leadership roles in an educated society.” Copies of the Centennial Strategic Plan 2006-2015 may be picked up in SMU’s libraries.

The committee membership:

Dennis Cordell, Dedman College General Education, Co-Chair
Thomas Tunks, Associate Provost, Co-Chair
Shelley Berg, Dance
Denise DuPont, Foreign Languages and Literatures
Vicki Hill, Altshuler Learning Enhancement Center
Robert Krout, Music Therapy
Monnie McGee, Statistical Science
Mark McPhail, Corporate Communications and Public Affairs
Rachael Morgan, student representative
Ellen Pryor, Associate Provost
Miguel Quiñones, Management and Organizations
Gale Roid, Teaching and Learning
Nina Schwartz, English
Harold Stanley, Political Science
Susan Strobel-Hogan, Residence Life and Student Housing
Brian Stump, Earth Sciences
Alisa Rata Stutzbach, Hamon Arts Library
David Willis, Mechanical Engineering
Jo Geisler, staff support
Michael Tumeo, staff support

October 17, 2008|News|

Woodward honored at Fall General Faculty Meeting

Statistical Science Chair Wayne Woodward was honored as the 2006-07 United Methodist Church University Scholar/Teacher of the Year at SMU’s fall General Faculty Meeting Aug. 29. President R. Gerald Turner updated the faculty on important developments in campus life and the status of the George W. Bush presidential library complex. More under the link.

August 31, 2007|News|
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25 September 2009

Hip Products: Darcy Clarke lighting

I'm feeling all beachy at the moment, and these gorgeous lamps from Darcy Clarke Object Design perfectly suit my mood for an indoor-outdoor Australian lifestyle.

Based in Brisbane, Darcy Clarke creates a range of sculptural cane lamps, wooden stools and rattan screens, all with the trademark nature-meets-modern design look. You may have seen Darcy's amazing pieces in hotels, restaurants, cafes and other commercial settings, but you may not know that they are available for residential use also. The lamps above are definitely going on my (early) Christmas wishlist.

You can find Darcy Clarke Designs at stockists in Australia listed on the website (under contacts). Read more about Darcy Clarke Design on the blog.

Images: Darcy Clarke Object Design

  1. I love that first shot - it's so Australian looking. They remind me a bit of lobster pots... in a good way!

  2. Hi Eleni and Lisa - that first shot had me sold too. A bit different to the standard designer lighting and definitely has a strong Aussie feel.

Your comments make my day :)

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Ask Different Podcast #12: Jin Yang

September 12, 2011 by . 0 comments

This is the twelfth episode of the Ask Different Podcast. Your hosts this week are Kyle CroninJason Salaz, and Nathan Greenstein.

  • We have been featured on the Stack Exchange Podcast, Episode #16. We recorded a short 30 second ad that Stack Exchange offered to air. You can listen to the entire episode, and note Kyle’s comment listing our ad’s air time, at Episode #16 on Soundcloud.
  • Additionally, Ask Different wants to be part of Blog Overflow! We’re looking for dedicated, dependable users able to write regularly on topics you are interested in. If you would like to be part of a team of writers, we invite you to post some details about your ideal topic(s) on the meta post on Ask Different.
  • Our guest today is the Stack Exchange designer-in-residence: Jin Yang!
  • We start by asking Jin how he came to be employed by Stack Exchange. Even though he knew Jeff already, he had to work hard to get the job. The first work he did for Stack Exchange. His debut was Area 51, which he created in one night! Next came Super User, and then the Stack Exchange 2.0 sites. Today, he’s designed 27 sites!
  • Next, Jin goes over his design process, and we ask him about his experience designing Ask Different. He started by asking fellow designer Mike Rundle for a mockup. Jin liked it and started making some tweaks. He soon realized that it took a lot of extra CSS to make the design work. We appreciate the extra effort he put into our site!
  • We also discuss a recent blog post by Mike Rundle about designers who can code. Jin tells us that he used to program, using ColdFusion and ASP/ASP.NET, though his work with Stack Exchange is dedicated as a Graphic Designer.
  • We briefly talk about the visual evolution of Apple-branding that has occurred since the official launch of Ask Different, and whether or not certain Apple style changes should make their way to Ask Different in some form.
  • As previously covered, we discuss the traffic-bump as a result of an Ask Different ad being placed on Daring Fireball, and how Stack Exchange could be improved to display better user referral metrics for site moderators to view.
  • This brings us to note how the growth of Stack Exchange has led to many additional sources needing uniquely designed graphic work. In additional to all of the website work Jin does, he’s also begun designing logos and layouts for T-shirts, business cards, and promotional fliers.
  • If you view Jin’s Twitter Profile, his biography includes the words “Professional bacon eater”. The discussion of bacon leads to Reddit, as Kyle and Jin discuss Reddit inside jokes, and the Alien Blue iOS app for Reddit.
  • Jin explains more about community design involvement and other details that go into creating a Stack Exchange logo and site design. This leads to a discussion of how the design should fit into the language and culture Stack Exchange sites, such as EnglishJapaneseFrench, and Jewish Life & Learning among others.
  • Since employment, Jin has not done every single site. He discusses his reasoning for contracting out the work to Alex Charchar for the English Stack Exchange site, and Dmitry Fadeyev for UX Stack Exchange. Though not covered on the show, note also that the design Ask Ubuntu was done by a graphic artist within Canonical, Ubuntu’s controlling company.
  • We briefly discuss the Area 51 proposal process, how it could be intimidating to non-technical users, and how that may prevent some of the best ‘civilian’ proposals from becoming available on Stack Exchange’s network.
  • Thanks so much to Jin for appearing on the show! You can find Jin on Twitter and his blog.

This episode was recorded on September 9, 2011. You can subscribe to this podcast via RSS or iTunes. We’d love to hear from you! Please feel free to leave a comment on this post or e-mail us at

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GO Arts

Everything new on the walls, stage, screen and streets of Tacoma and South Puget Sound.

NOTICE: GO Arts has moved.

With the launch of our new website, we've moved GO Arts.
Visit the new section.

Tag: Crafts of the Past

“Crafts of the Past” brings live artisans to Fort Nisqually museum every weekend

As if there weren’t enough history already at Fort Nisqually, the historical open-air museum at Tacoma’s Point Defiance Park now has live artisans every weekend in summer.  They’ll be demonstrating and displaying 19th-century craftforms like blacksmithing and puppetry in a cool program called “Crafts of the Past.”

One month into the program and there’s been a lot to see already – but luckily for us, many of the artisans are returning in late July and August. They’ll be at their posts all day on Saturdays and Sundays, showing what they do and helping others do the same (except

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Davis’ unibrow trademarked (whither Mayben?)

Anthony Davis, the likely first pick in Thursday’s NBA draft, has trademarked his unibrow.

From CNBC:

Davis, known for his connected eyebrows, trademarked the phrases “Fear The Brow” and “Raise The Brow” earlier this month.

“I don’t want anyone to try to grow a unibrow because of me and then try to make money off of it,” Davis told CNBC. “Me and my family decided to trademark it because it’s very unique.”

Mark McGuire


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CBS sloppy in first half of Siena-Ohio State telecast

You could tell that the CBS broadcast crew based in Dayton is working its fourth game of the day.

The first-half telecast of the Siena-Ohio State game seemed a bit disjointed. Play-by-play man Verne Lundquist mispronounced Edwin Ubiles’ last name, and referred to the Saints’ Josh Duell as “John.” In fairness, it’s tough on any announcer to prepare for eight teams for one day of broadcasts.

Both Lundquist and analyst Bill Raftery talked about Siena’s poor shooting and good rebounding, but we rarely saw graphics supporting that.

Lundquist’s best comment of the half: “This is not a work of art.”

He was referring to the game. He could have been talking about the telecast.

Pete Dougherty

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The most useful gift

Making your registry can be fun. You get to walk around the store(s) of your choosing, with control of the gun, scanning anything you want! Sounds pretty fantastic, right?

One thing to keep in mind is to keep reasonable items on your list. You don’t want guests looking at your registry trying to figure out how they’ll ever afford that engraved invitation by Tiffany & Co.  Of course having some bigger ticket items is more than okay, as people often times will chip-in together, especially on a shower gift, but you always want to make sure you include items of different price points.

Other things to keep in mind:

  • What will you use regularly?
  • What’s something you’ve always wanted, but wouldn’t necessarily buy for yourself?
  • What do you need?

What were you sure to put on your registry? For those of you that are already married, what ended up being the most useful gift? Any surprises?

Audrey Mangini


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Rich Tehrani : Communications and Technology Blog -
Rich Tehrani
| Communications and Technology Blog - Latest news in IP communications, telecom, VoIP, call center & CRM space

artisan tag

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TMC Dallas Video Interviews 2011

Recently I spent some time in Dallas doing video interviews with companies in the Dallas, Texas area and during the course of the discussions I was able to get a sense of where the markets have been and are going....
Featured Events


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Gift Guides

Gift Lab: Connor’s Kit for Kids

June 3, 2011

The weather’s warming up, Memorial Day has passed and soon school will be out for summer! Customer Service representative Seneca and her son, Staccato, are excited to get in some quality mother-son time this summer. Their first project? Conner’s Kit for Kids—Crystal Explosion. Seneca hopes the activity proves educational. Will Staccato find the kit entertaining as well?

1.) Product name: Connor’s Kit for Kids–Crystal Explosion.

2.) Background Research:

My 9-year-old son and I are always looking for new and fun ways to spend some quality time when at home. I want him to have fun. However, learning and exploring new things is a top priority. Lucky for me, my son loves science! We recently completed a Science Fair project for school, yet still had the science bug and wanted to do more…for fun! Enter Connor’s Kits for Kids. We decided to try the Crystal Explosion first.

3.) Hypothesis:
This hands-on experiment is kid friendly and one of the easiest and most fun kits I have ever seen. This will encourage him to have confidence in his own ability as well as show him how fun learning (and science) can be outside of school!

4.) Experiment:
We took all of the items out of the packaging to ensure that we had everything and set them out on the table. The following items are included:
3 large plastic cups
1 small plastic cup
2 pieces of string
2 wooden stirrers
1 plastic bag
1 bag of crystalizer mix

We had all of our items in front of us and I told my son to feel free to grab the directions and follow along as I watched. He was hesitant at first, worrying about creating a mess or not getting the experiment right. The instructions are very easy to follow and any mess can be easily cleaned. How do I know this? Well, we did indeed have a mishap and spilled some of the crystalizer mix on the table and wood floors in our house. Easy clean up! I was also impressed by how simple each step was and my son had no trouble at all following along.

1. He poured 2 1/2 cups of the crystalizer mix into one of the larger cups first. (This is where the spilling accident occurred).

2. He then filled the small cup with hot water twice, pouring both into the larger cup with the crystalizer mix. (The directions note that the temperature of the water from the tap should be at least 108 degrees Fahrenheit. Ours is a bit hotter, so I provided my son with the water in a measuring cup so it could cool a bit before he used it. Don’t fret! The temperature of most people’s tap water is indeed 108 degrees Fahrenheit. )

3. He stirred the water and crystalizer mix with one of the wooden stirrers for two minutes until much of the crystalizer mix was dissolved. (Timing is very important for this experiment so we had a timer handy.)

4. We then let it sit undisturbed for 5 minutes.

5.  Once the 5 minutes was up, he stirred for another two minutes with the wooden stirrer. (Don’t be concerned if there’s still a lot of the un-dissolved crystalizer mix left in the cup. As long as you used the correct temperature water and stirred for the noted time, you’re fine!)

6. He got one more of the large sized cups and poured the mix that he made into it, leaving all the un-dissolved crystalizer mix behind. (At this point we worried about making sure that none of the un-dissolved mix got into the new cup. However, the directions noted not to be concerned if a small amount snuck into the new cup.)

7. It was finally time to put this new cup in our refrigerator. We found a good place on the bottom shelf where it would not be disturbed.

Note: There are two other experiments that you can do with this kit. We tried a second, which has the same directions as above except that the final cup mixture was left in a windowsill where it would receive a lot of sunlight instead of putting it into the refrigerator. The third experiment we have not yet done. It involves placing one of the formed crystals into a fresh batch of the water/crystalizer mix. This is done by attaching it to the string and dangling it from one of the wooden stirrers into the mix and letting it sit.

What we did next:
1. We removed the cup from the refrigerator after 5 days. (The instructions say to remove it after 24 hours or more. We did not see significant results after 24 hours and my son decided he wanted it to sit longer.)
2. He then used his fingers to gently hold the crystals in place as he poured the liquid out. (He poured it into the drain, which is safe as per the directions.)
3. He also removed the cup from the windowsill, repeating the same careful draining process.

Note: The crystals are VERY fragile so be careful! After they dry out, we placed them in the plastic bag that was provided for safekeeping and travel to show his friends!

5.) Results:
My son and I were both pleasantly surprised by how easy these experiments were, and look forward to trying the third! The experiment took only about 15 minutes to do (not including the time in the refrigerator and windowsill of course!) and we enjoyed the control we had over how big to grow the crystals. We found that the crystals in the window formed faster; however, the ones in the refrigerator were larger. The kit also includes a great FAQ section, which has information about the crystalizer mix as well as how the crystals are formed. This experiment is a great way for your child to feel independent and learn in a fun way! I hope to check out the other kits with him soon and watch my little scientist go to work!

What Staccato thought:
“I felt this experiment was very fun! I liked all of the steps it took to make the crystals. It was also fun to do the experiment with my Mom because we never did an experiment like this together before. It was interesting to see how the water helped to turn the mix into crystals and to watch them grow every day. I would not mind doing an experiment like this again.”

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  • Reply adiaha June 5, 2011 at 11:27 pm

    That is great. Your harvest looks amazing. Thanks for sharing your results.

  • Reply Our Favorite Motivational Quotes | Inspiration | UncommonGoods June 21, 2013 at 12:22 pm

    […] assurance specialist Seneca also shared an aphorism from someone with a big imagination. She keeps this Michael Jackson quote […]

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Frame by Frame

Posts Tagged ‘The Reward’

The Reward (1965)

Tuesday, May 29th, 2012

Emilio Fernández (kneeling), Gilbert Roland (with gun), Efrem Zimbalist Jr. (lying on the ground), and Henry Silva (back to camera) in Serge Bourguignon’s The Reward (1965).

Here’s my essay on the remarkable and deeply eccentric film The Reward in the Noir of the Week website; this is the beginning of the text, and you can read the rest by clicking here, or on the image above.

“If you are looking for the latest news, Señor, you’re out of luck. News reaches us like light from the stars – it takes a long time.” — Gilbert Roland as Captain Carbajal in Serge Bourguignon’s The Reward.

“I’m not going to deny that Serge Bourguignon’s The Reward is an odd film in many respects; it’s often classified as a Western, which it isn’t, despite the fact that most of the film was shot in Death Valley, and the film has a definite Western edge to it, with much of the dialogue spoken in Spanish with no translation. Produced as a West German/French/English co-production, the film seems to exist in no man’s land, a zone in which no nationality is dominant. Indeed, English is very much a second language here, and the equally eccentric casting of the film drives this home even further.

Top lining the film is Max Von Sydow as Scott Swenson, a down-on-his-luck crop duster whose plane isn’t even his own; as the film opens, Swenson is making one last flight for some much needed cash, but his plane crash lands after hitting an exposed pipeline, taking out a water tower and utterly destroying the aircraft. Crawling from the wreckage as the plane explodes behind him, Swenson coolly surveys the damage, and then walks to a local cantina, where he uses his last few dollars to buy some drinks. All of this is shown with almost no dialogue, and Bourguignon’s smooth CinemaScope framing makes the desert seem arid, endless, and infernal, a living Hell for all who inhabit it.”

It’s only a shame, as I note in my essay, that this isn’t on DVD; it runs occasionally on the Fox Movie Network in a “pan and scan” version that destroys the visuals in the film, but the real film is lost in the vaults, and will probably never get the restoration it so richly deserves.

Read the complete essay here.

About the Author

Headshot of Wheeler Winston Dixon Wheeler Winston Dixon, Ryan Professor of Film Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, is an internationally recognized scholar and writer of film history, theory and criticism. He is the author of thirty books and more than 100 articles on film, and appears regularly in national media outlets discussing film and culture trends. Frame by Frame is a collection of his thoughts on a number of those topics. All comments by Dixon on this blog are his own opinions.

In The National News

Wheeler Winston Dixon has been quoted by Fast Company, The New Yorker, The New York Times, the BBC, CNN, The Christian Science Monitor, US News and World Report, The Boston Globe, Entertainment Weekly, The Los Angeles Times, NPR, The PBS Newshour, USA Today and other national media outlets on digital cinema, film and related topics - see the UNL newsroom at for more details.

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First laps on skates

What a better place than the ice ring in front of the magnificient townhall for a first skate.  (click on picture to enlarge)

Leica M9 with 35mm Summilux Asph at F1.4, 1/350, ISO160

One Response to “First laps on skates”

  1. Nick dit :

    Thank you for taking that photograph & posting it.

    I thought the fellow looked a little like he was anticipating some great action. Here’s a drawing:

    Thanks again for posting!


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- Blog - http://blog.youngsurvival.org -

Breast cancer stole my pretty, but I snagged it back.

Ten days after my diagnosis, I started chemotherapy. I decided to take some sexy photos before my mastectomy. I never intended to show them to anyone. These photos were just for me. I wanted to capture and freeze this time in my life — my confidence and my body — before I entered the unknown.

amanda nixon guest blog 03.jpg [1]All of my hair fell out about three weeks later. My right breast was removed. I had daily radiation treatments to my bare chest wall for eight weeks. I had to bare my chest to doctors, nurses, medical students and surgeons on a weekly basis. This was the most humbling experience of my life.

I spent an entire year without my right breast.  I barely felt alive, let alone beautiful. My fingernails blackened, my eyebrows diminished, I stared at myself in the mirror – bald and lopsided – and the only thing I could do was remind myself that “pretty is as pretty does,” but I sure didn’t feel pretty. Breast cancer stole my pretty until I stumbled upon www.keep-a-breast.org [2].

I had been searching online for a photographer that would be willing to take photos of me with a single breast but was not impressed with what I was finding. I was interested in a snapshot of this time … single photo where I could see a glimmer of the old confident me would suffice. I was just about to let that wish go when I found Keep A Breast.

Keep A Breast made plaster molds of women’s busts and auctioned them off to raise funds for breast cancer awareness. I thought this was just fantastic. I emailed right away and days before my reconstructive surgery, I had a plaster mold made of my torso by the Co-founder of the organization, Shaney jo Darden. When the mold was complete, she took a photo of me with my cast, and we hugged goodbye.

Several months later she invited me to the Roxy Headquarters for their annual Think Pink event and, to my surprise, presented me with my beautifully painted cast in front of the entire company. The cast was inscribed, “No Gain, No Loss, Only Change.” I cried when I first saw my form because it was the first time I had seen myself as beautiful since my diagnosis.

My completed cast. [3]

My completed cast.

Seeing myself as a work of art, with my body immortalized, allowed me to appreciate the beauty of my body at that time: the balance of femininity and strength.  The cast helped me see the juxtaposition of my two sides and life. It was time for me to embrace life and get my sexy back.

I opted for a modified micro-vascular DIEP flap [4] reconstruction on my right breast. Basically, the doctors created a breast out of my stomach tissue. After this reconstruction, I finally felt balanced: both physically and mentally.

I slowly began dating and found myself in a long-term relationship with an amazing man who loved my scars. And everyday I wake up to see the man-made breast, the scar from my left hip to my right hip, tattooed nipple and I remind myself: THIS IS BEAUTY.

Ironically, in 2010 I helped start and run the support program that allowed me the opportunity to see the beauty in my form and myself six years ago. Partnering with the Young Survival Coalition in 2012, the Treasured Chest Program offers a variety of events throughout the country where breast cancer survivors can receive their own breast cast, meet other young breast cancer survivors and participate in other support activities.

The Young Survival Coalition/ Keep A Breast Foundation’s Treasured Chest Program [5] is a free program that provides DIY Breast Casting Kits to any breast cancer survivor who would like to make a mold of their torso at any point in their breast cancer journey (before surgery, after lumpectomy/mastectomy or after reconstruction).

Through the Keep A Breast Foundation and Young Survival Coalition partnership, we have expanded our reach to more young women diagnosed with breast cancer, as well as our ability to offer education and support.

Please share our program in your community and help other women find their beauty.

Amanda Nixon


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Home / Music / An Interview with Christopher Cross

An Interview with Christopher Cross

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With the release on Tuesday of his first studio album in twelve years, Doctor Faith, singer/songwriter Christopher Cross believes his career has come full circle.

“I did the first record with no expectation,” Cross says, recalling his 1979 eponymous debut, which spawned such defining hits as “Sailing,” “Never Be The Same,” and “Ride Like The Wind” and garnered him five GRAMMY® Awards. Additional hits included “Think of Laura” and “Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do),” the latter winning the 1981 Academy Award for Best Original Song, but neither those accolades nor a string of subsequent albums stood to rival the windfall of his initial effort.

“I never expected in a million years that my first album would be successful at all,” Cross says, maintaining that his modest aspirations back then in many ways mirror his outlook today. “It was pure belief in the process and in the craft and the desire to do it,” he reflects, “and that’s kind of the same with Doctor Faith.”

Cross crafted the new album, which he produced, with deft and distinctive musicianship — guitarist Eric Johnson and vocalist Michael McDonald make select appearances — while writing with Rob Meurer, with whom he has collaborated to various extents since his career’s inception.

“Music has been my solace through my whole life,” Cross confides. “I’ve had a lot of marriage failures and personal problems like everybody has, but music’s always been there for me, and it continues to be. I’m enjoying it more than ever.”

You reflect a certain amount of insecurity and vulnerability in some of the songs.

For Rob and I, who write the songs, it’s about growth as men. At this point in life you do realize there is a lot of vulnerability and mortality. So it’s really a time for reflection. Songs like “Still I Resist” and “Prayin’” express our personal spirituality and struggles with our own growth and life. That’s clearly what it’s about.

Was it difficult or daunting to confront those kinds of issues?

No. I think a lot of it is cathartic; it’s freeing. I’m older, done a lot of therapy and a lot of self-investigation. It’s like an exorcism. It allows you to get all this stuff out and express it, be truthful and honest with yourself, and express that with other people in the hopes that they can relate to it. At this point it’s too late for pulling punches; it’s what it is…. We’re expressing a lot of real important things to us in the songs at this point, because you never know how much time you have left to express it.

Before you began writing this record did you have any preconceived objective as far as what you wanted it to sound like? There’s a lot of guitar on this one.

What happened in the last two or three years is I started to really get back into the guitar, buying pedals and guitars and just getting back into playing. I hadn’t produced on my own. This record I knew I was going to do on my own and so I just approached it completely from a guitar perspective, spending hours and hours in the studio just layering guitars. I didn’t really know what it would come out like in any way. I didn’t know what to expect; I had no preconceived notions. I just kind of did it pretty naturally, and I followed my instincts as I went along.

In the years subsequent to that first rush of success did you ever question if perhaps you peaked too early as an artist?

Well, yeah, of course. Of course you’re going to feel that way. You wish you could have a different kind of arc. I mean, let’s face it. If you asked me would I have rather had a career like Sting — where he starts out in the rock genre and moves on to pop and has a long, illustrious, very well-deserved career that’s still going based on great songwriting and records — yeah, I’d love that.

At this age, I don’t look a gift horse… If you walk out on the street and say to most people, “Do you know who Christopher Cross is?” They’ll say, “Yeah, he’s that guy who did ‘Sailing.’” At least I have a name. I can go out and tour. I’ve got some hits, and I can do music for a living and continue to do what I do. I’ve learned over the years to look at it as the glass half-full instead of half-empty, but yeah in the beginning it was very tough, because all I seemed to be doing was live down that. But I don’t look at that [now] as trying to live that down. I just try to be proud of it, and when I play the songs live it’s wonderful to see that kind of reaction and the connection with people.

With the new album now complete, can you look back and tell if you learned anything about yourself as an artist?

If anything, maybe I have some confidence from a producer’s standpoint that I can put a record together. I worked with Michael Omartian on my early records, who was absolutely brilliant; I learned a lot from Michael. I’m kind of like a baby bird out of the nest on my own now. So I do have some confidence that if I do follow my instincts it’ll turn out okay. And songwriting-wise, too, we had that early success and the whole meteoric thing happened. There’d been a lot of years where I put out records that didn’t do as much. All that big fanfare and pressure drifts away. Now I’m doing what I love to do for the right reasons.

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About Donald Gibson

Donald Gibson is the publisher of www.writeonmusic.com and a freelance music journalist whose byline has appeared in such publications as No Depression, Spinner, The Seattle Post Intelligencer, Cinema Sentries, Blinded by Sound, and Blogcritics, where he was the Senior Music Editor (2011-2012) and Assistant Music Editor (2008-2011). He has interviewed and profiled such artists as Tony Bennett, Lucinda Williams, Jakob Dylan, Allen Toussaint, Boz Scaggs, Johnny Marr, Charli XCX, Justin Hayward (The Moody Blues), Susanna Hoffs, Bruce Hornsby, Delbert McClinton, Jonny Lang, Alan Parsons, Bill Frisell, Rickie Lee Jones, Christina Perri, Don Felder (The Eagles), Jimmy Webb, Katie Melua, and Buddy Guy, among many others.