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Mantis Bug Tracker

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IDProjectCategoryView StatusDate SubmittedLast Update
0005348OCaml~DO NOT USE (was: OCaml general)public2011-08-25 12:462017-03-03 15:44
Assigned To
StatusresolvedResolutionno change required
PlatformOSOS Version
Product Version3.12.0
Target VersionFixed in Version
Summary0005348: no more identifiers with accented characters
DescriptionJust update to 3.12.0 and, on MAC OS 10.6.8 the accented characters are no longer usable:

$ ocaml
        Objective Caml version 3.12.0

# let carr?? x = x*x;;
Error: Illegal character (?)

The ?? was é

And under emacs:

        Objective Caml version 3.12.0

# Characters 9-10:
  let carré n = n * n;;
Error: Illegal character (\251)

TagsNo tags attached.
Attached Files

- Relationships
related to 0006694closedgasche Do not implicitly use ISO-8859-1 in Char.uppercase/lowercase and derived functions

-  Notes
poirriez (reporter)
2011-08-25 14:44

same with ocaml 3.12.1
xclerc (reporter)
2011-09-05 11:24

Well, I am not sure it is an OCaml issue.
I can locally reproduce the problem by setting encoding
of the terminal to UTF8. When switching back to ISO Latin 1
(which is the encoding actually used by OCaml), everything is

Your can change the terminal encoding in the "Advanced" pane
of the "Settings" page of "" preferences.

gerd (reporter)
2011-10-23 14:53

Maybe the real issue is: ocaml should support UTF8 identifiers (instead of Latin1). Almost the whole world switched to UTF-8 in the meantime (e.g. many Linux distros use it as default now), and it becomes more and more painful that ocaml is so old-fashioned.

The full solution is complicated to implement, though - ocamllex would have to be changed so it can deal with multi-byte encodings. But as a tiny step into this direction, ocaml could at least allow UTF-8 as external encoding but keep Latin1 as internal encoding. That would mean a recoding step for every identifier that is read or written.
doligez (administrator)
2012-01-30 17:38

The real solution is to disallow accented letters in identifiers and accept only ASCII letters, but of course we cannot do that without breaking some existing programs.
frisch (developer)
2012-01-31 22:46

Damien: What about a warning that reports accented letters in identifiers as a deprecated feature?

Gerd: It would be weird to accept UTF8 identifiers, while still parsing string literals as sequences of bytes (i.e. if we assume the source code to be utf8-encoded, String.length on a string literal would not return the length of the literal seen as a sequence of Unicode code points, unless you also change the semantics of strings, but I don't think you propose that).
gerd (reporter)
2012-02-01 00:27

Alain: I agree that a complete solution would also include a Unicode version of "string", maybe called ustring, and with literals like U"xyz". I don't think we should redefine "string", because there is also a need for byte arrays, and we would run into endless compatibility problems. So, having both string and ustring would be the ideal world. I see that there are currently not enough resources for getting there, and the question is how many elements we can nevertheless implement. That could also mean to only deprecate accented letters at the moment.

Btw, for ustring we won't need that much, given that we accept that ocaml only provides basic Unicode support (string literals, one possible representation (ustring = int array), basic input/output, ocamllex), and leave the rest (alternate representations, character classes, transformations, ...) to add-on libraries like Camomile.

But anyway, I hope there is at least consensus that Unicode support is essential nowadays. The world is changing, and it has become irrelevant that Latin1 is still sufficient for most languages.
doligez (administrator)
2012-02-01 11:28

Alain: I would like such a warning but I'm not sure we have a consensus among OCaml developers at this point.
guesdon (manager)
2012-02-06 17:45

+1 for Gerd's proposition on Unicode support in ocaml distro ;-)
doligez (administrator)
2012-07-10 13:57

What we have here are several feature wishes:

1. Deprecate Latin-1 accents in source code and add the corresponding warning
2. Support Unicode strings
3. Have a separate type for mutable byte arrays
ygrek (reporter)
2012-07-10 14:54

Concerning point 3 - what about adding module Bytes equal to current String and provide the compiler switch to expose only read-only access to String module. This way interested people can start migrating some code right now.
dbuenzli (reporter)
2012-08-16 16:43

In my opinion, a first good step would be to

1) Mandate that sources should be UTF-8 encoded.
2) Disallow non-ascii identifiers (which just implies banning any octet
   greater than 0x7F outside string literals and comments).
3) Indicate that an OCaml string is just a sequence of octets
   and that *if* it needs to be interpreted as text it should
   be understood as UTF-8 encoded text (for better library
3) Deprecate latin-1 functionality (uppercase, lowercase) from
   the String module and indicate that all the function of the
   string module operate octet-wise.

The main of advantage of this is that it allows to write UTF-8
string literals and documentation (by passing -charset utf-8 to
ocamldoc). If one needs to work with a unicode string type it's
easy to invoke a suitable of_utf8 on the UTF-8 string literals to
get a kind of U"bla" notation, at the cost of a small runtime

To me UTF-8 identifiers are more a curse than a benefit because
of keyboard and normalization issues (é can be encoded in more
than one way, and I'm not sure the dev team wants to bring in
that whole issue into the compiler). If however some think that's
a good idea note that the Unicode standard has recommendations
for what a unicode identifier should be made of [^]

I have written many programs that deal with unicode by just UTF-8
encoding my sources without any problem. I think that this brings
in more unicode compatibility without having to include a unicode
library in the distribution.

Regarding having unicode string support in the distribution. I'd
rather have nothing than a toy Unicode implementation in the
standard library. I also have written many programs that didn't
need a full blown unicode library and only needed to just
blindly pass around and concatenate UTF-8 encoded strings.
doligez (administrator)
2013-10-09 14:23

Note: 4.01.0 adds a warning signaling Latin1 characters in identifiers as a deprecated feature.
doligez (administrator)
2017-03-03 15:42

Note: 4.02.0 added a type for mutable byte arrays.
doligez (administrator)
2017-03-03 15:44

What's left of the discussion is a wish for support for unicode strings. Unicode support is best left to external libraries and we already have several such libraries.

- Issue History
Date Modified Username Field Change
2011-08-25 12:46 poirriez New Issue
2011-08-25 14:44 poirriez Note Added: 0006104
2011-09-05 11:24 xclerc Note Added: 0006112
2011-09-05 11:24 xclerc Assigned To => xclerc
2011-09-05 11:24 xclerc Status new => feedback
2011-10-23 14:53 gerd Note Added: 0006174
2012-01-30 17:38 doligez Note Added: 0006849
2012-01-31 22:46 frisch Note Added: 0006864
2012-02-01 00:27 gerd Note Added: 0006866
2012-02-01 11:28 doligez Note Added: 0006868
2012-02-06 17:45 guesdon Note Added: 0006890
2012-07-10 13:57 doligez Note Added: 0007680
2012-07-10 13:57 doligez Severity minor => feature
2012-07-10 14:54 ygrek Note Added: 0007683
2012-08-09 08:49 doligez Assigned To xclerc =>
2012-08-16 16:43 dbuenzli Note Added: 0007948
2013-10-09 14:23 doligez Note Added: 0010443
2014-12-07 17:39 gasche Relationship added related to 0006694
2017-02-23 16:36 doligez Category OCaml general => -OCaml general
2017-03-03 15:42 doligez Note Added: 0017546
2017-03-03 15:44 doligez Note Added: 0017547
2017-03-03 15:44 doligez Status feedback => resolved
2017-03-03 15:44 doligez Resolution open => no change required
2017-03-03 17:55 doligez Category -OCaml general => -(deprecated) general
2017-03-03 18:01 doligez Category -(deprecated) general => ~deprecated (was: OCaml general)
2017-03-06 17:04 doligez Category ~deprecated (was: OCaml general) => ~DO NOT USE (was: OCaml general)

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Captured Bliss Photography

Archive for October 2011

I finally have a few moments to breathe– both of my daughters’ birthdays have come and gone (and the enormous, 50+ people- in- my- home- parties that accompanied them this year!) and I am up to date on editing.

SO……what to do?  Well, I started looking at Christmas stuff today!  I absolutely LOVE the holidays and everything that comes with them- the decorations, the lights, the family time, the FOOD (oh yes…I may be a small person but I can PUT SOME FOOD AWAY at a holiday dinner!).  I love watching the holiday events through my girls’ eyes and seeing things their way.  I love Elf on the Shelf. I love pumpkin everything. I love the sights and smells and feel and emotion.

I love the holidays…I think you’ve got that. 😉

I started working on my Christmas wish list today, and while I’m not ready to share it yet, I thought I WOULD share a list of things that I’m loving right now.  Maybe they might be on your list, too? 🙂

Right now, I’m loving:

OPI nail polish in Bubble Bath- the perfect color! One coat is nice and demure, just enough to add some glam to your nails. Two coats and it looks like you’ve been to the salon (even if you’re like me, and you HAVEN’T been to the salon for your nails in….oh, I think 11 years, when my grandma paid for a manicure for me?!)

Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte.  ‘Nuff said.

Or, if you are like me, and Starbucks is a bajllion miles from your house… International Delight creamer in Pumpkin Pie Spice.  Almost as good. 🙂

Caress Evenly Gorgeous body wash with burnt brown sugar and karite butter.  Seriously, I’m not usually a food-smell kind of girl….but I found this this summer and I. Am. In. Love.

Hershey’s Kisses in Peppermint and White Chocolate.  Technically they’re for Christmas….this bag I bought this weekend is gonna be lucky to see this weekend, much less 2 months from now!

Potato soup in the crock pot. Warm, delicious, and smells great in my kitchen.  Perfect for the nights we have dance or other obligations and want to walk in a find dinner ready.

Tres Semme Heat Tamer Spray.  Every day I wash, dry, and flat iron my crazy, unruly hair into submission.  This stuff helps keep it (somewhat) healthy!

The 2011 Toyota Camry XLE.  We bought it to semi-retire my GMC Yukon (12mpg…omg.)  The Camry (or my “little car” as my daughter calls it) gets 30mpg in the city and cruises just perfectly. I love it, and that’s saying something since I am really an SUV kind of person.  Nothing better than being able to drive all over town and NOT have to get gas 2-3x per week.  $600/month in gas gets old REALLY quick!

Adobe Lightroom3.  Amazing editing program that has really helped cut down on my Photoshop time.

OK….I’m pretty well out of things to love now (you know, besides my girls and husband and our families).  Thanks for checking in on CBP and I’ll be back blogging again soon!

Well….welcome to the official blog of Captured Bliss Photography!

I have been a little hesitant to start a blog for my photography company, because I already run a great blog about our family and sometimes have trouble keeping up with that.  However…my website, and Facebook fan site, can be a little limiting at times… what if I want to post some great clothing choices for families to use as inspiration for an upcoming session? Not really possible with what I’ve got.  What if I want to pin an image of mine to Pinterest? No can do!  What if I want to link to something but don’t want to bog down my facebook friends with a million status updates? You get the idea…..

And so, I’ve decided to go ahead and start a blog just for Captured Bliss Photography. This will be a place to give some sneak peeks (especially helpful for the handful of people left on earth who aren’t on Facebook, or who have moved to Google +), chit chat about new stuff and products offered at CBP, showcase some interesting things, and be a neat site to visit.  I’m making NO guarantees about how often I’ll post…but I’ll do my best!

For today, I thought I’d give a little info about myself.  If this looks familiar and you’ve already been to the CBP website, it’s because it’s taken from the About Me section.  I read a great blog post about writing a good About Me section yesterday and thought I would critique my own.

Who am I?

My name is Allison Ferguson and Captured Bliss Photography is my dream come true. I am honored to use my skill and talent to capture moments of joy, laughter, and love and provide them to you to cherish forever.

My dream of becoming a photographer blossomed after the birth of my two children. I quickly realized how valuable photos are since these moments are so fleeting. My true joy comes from working with families to preserve these moments for a lifetime.

What to know about me?

– I graduated from Marshall University and was previously an elementary school teacher. My love of children and families led to my decision to pursue photography full-time.

– I am a huge Marshall fan! In the fall you’ll find me decked out in green and white and tailgating with friends and family. H-E-R-D Let’s Go HERD!

– I am totally goofy and love to laugh.

– I will probably get too excited during our shoot…maybe more excited than your kids! I will run and play and laugh with your family– don’t say I didn’t warn you. 😉

– I will also probably cry during our shoot, especially if you are a couple in love, a maternity shoot, a birth shoot, a newborn shoot, child shoot, or a family shoot.  Oh wait…that’s all the photography I do? Well, again….don’t say I didn’t warn you!  Something about capturing these moments just gets me choked up. I can’t help it!

– My family is my whole world– I am blessed to have an amazing husband and 2 beautiful children. They mean everything to me and without their love and support I couldn’t do what I do!

So there you have it.  A little insight into me and why I am pursuing this as a career now.  Thanks so much for stopping by and checking things out!

I’ll leave you with just a few of my favorite images from the past few months- I have been blessed to have hit the ground running and my business is booming! I’m proud of my work and hope it brings years of happiness to my clients.

— Allison


text:
Road Trip Packs I

Since I was going to be on a road trip from 4 days, I thought it would be cool to pick up a couple of packs along the way from a local Target or Wal Mart.  Living in Portland, we don’t have too many local Wal Marts and Target is my only real retail option, which isn’t bad at all…I’m just saying.

Our first stop along the way was in Amarillo, Texas.  Yes, I know.  EPIC by all possible definitions.  I picked up a couple retail packs of the Football version of Topps Archives.  I already had a couple of Hobby pack versions and was curious what would come out of a Wal Mart.

And here we go!

Love the Wilson Card, great action photo and love the look in his eyes.  Wilson should be one of the next great QB’s in the league for the next few years…just hope his team stops knocking mine out of the playoffs.

13 TA Russell Wilson

Next up was a mini Calvin Johnson Jr. card with some sweet color gradation from top to bottom.

13 TA Calvin Johnson Jr. Mini

and finally, the last card i’d like to present from a retail wal mart pack is a Darrelle Revis gold parallel from the New York Jets  Tampa Bay Buccaneers!

13 TA Darrelle Revis Gold Parallel

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Launching Your Job Search – Job Search 101

Welcome to CareerAlley’s Job Search 101 series, specifically focused for those who are launching a job search for the first time (or those that need some great advice). Over the course of this series, we plan to cover the following job search basics to get you started:

  • General Advice
  • Posting Job Search website links (with brief reviews)
  • Posting headhunter / Executive Search website links
  • Tools and Templates

There are five basic types of “job searchers”:

  1. “Not Happy”People who are not happy with their compensation, don’t like what they are doing, don’t like their manager, are past due on a promotion, or just don’t like their company.
  2. “Worried” – People who are worried about their company (may not survive, may be taken over, etc.), worried about their job (potential job cuts), worried about their industry, etc.
  3. “Career Change” – People who have just finished a degree (while working), people who want to make a career change or all of the above.
  4. “Not Currently Looking” – People who are not actually looking to make a change, but get offered a new opportunity (through a headhunter or a friend)
  5. “Job Loss” – People lose their jobs all the time for various reasons: Company downsizing, job elimination, takeovers/mergers, Company bankruptcy or poor performance.
Job Search Websites: Not all job search websites are created equal. Some allow resume posting, job search tools and general advise while others offer fee based services and “appear” to be job search sites. My general view is that you can get everything you need for your job search without paying a fee, but this is a personal choice and may be driven by the need for specialized help. However, if you are creative and diligent you can find everything you need by leveraging the web, family and friends (and of course, CareerAlley).
Sometimes it feels like there is an endless number of job search websites (many of which are a waste of time). I’ve listed below a very brief overview of two popular job search sites with very different styles to get you started. There will be a more focused job search site article in a future posts.
Every site is different, although most of them have the basics (which I’ve listed below, so you may want to refer back to this in later posts). There are too many options to list them all.
What to look for on a Job Search Site:
  • Resume Posting: Many sites allow 1 or more resumes to be posted. Sometimes there are options to build your resume online, upload a Word doc or cut and paste your resume into their form (depending on the site).
  • Privacy: A Privacy option (which allows you to block companies) can be very useful. Blocked companies either be companies that you don’t want to work for or your current employer (the last thing you want is for your name to come up in a search by your current employer!).
  • Job Search: The job search function allows you to narrow your job search to certain criteria (varies from site to site). Some also allow you to save 1 or more searches (with a number of options). This allows you to quickly run searches for specifics (as decided by you).
  • Job Match Notification: Most sites will send an email to you with the results of your searches (but don’t flood your email with so many that you are overwhelmed).
  • Linked Application: This is the ability to apply directly for the job opportunity. This is typically a link to the company’s career site and will save you time.
  • Other Stuff: Some sites offer career advise, resume building techniques, samples of resumes, samples of cover letters, etc. Some free, some not.
Monster.comThe grandfather (sorry Monster) of all job search websites. One of the first useful job search sites, Monster has spent a lot of time and effort to evolve with the fast changing job search resource landscape (including buying up their main competitor at the time – Hotjobs). Monster is one of the more popular job search sites and their homepage looks more like a job advice site than a dedicated job search site. A brief overview:
  • Resume Posting: This free service allows up to 5 resumes to be posted. You can build your resume online, upload a Word doc or cut and paste your resume into their form.
  • Privacy: There is a Privacy option which allows you to block companies.
  • Job Search: The job search function in Monster is very good. You can save up to 5 searches. Email notification is available.
  • Job Search Advice: Lots of stuff to help you in your search.
Indeed.comIndeed has what I call a minimalist homepage which allows you to focus on the task at hand (job search!). A brief overview:
  • Job Search:  Powerful filters allow you to narrow your search to those opportunities that best meet your criterial. You can save searches and create “job alerts” which will send an email based on your criteria. Lots of choices on narrowing your search.
  • Resume Posting: This site also allows up resumes to be posted. You can build your resume online, upload a Word doc or cut and paste your resume into their form.
  • Privacy: There is a Privacy option which allows you to block companies.

Don’t forget to take a look at CareerAlley’s dedicated Job Search Site ==>> CareerAlley Job Search

Anther great CareerAlley resource to check out: CareerAlley’s Job Search Site List

Career Tip of the Day: Why You Need a Job Search Marketing Toolkit

Suggested Reading: 50 Easy Ways to Job Search and Find Work: Hot Job Hunting Tips that works

We are always eager to hear from our readers. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions or suggestions regarding CareerAlley content.

Good luck in your search,

New Careeralley Full Logo Small Cropped

what where
job title, keywords or company
city, state or zip jobs by job search

Comments on this entry are closed.


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Exciting Addition to the CLC Team

Good Afternoon!

Man is it a beautiful day in Charlotte.  We have some great news to share with our followers about our new relationship with Carrie Ann Taylor (CAT) and her company Catalyst Unlimited Inc.  She will be providing much-needed support to our teacher and student relations as well as editing our website and maintaining our class management software.

Catalyst Unlimited Inc.
Virtual assistance, event planning, project management, administrative support, marketing/PR, and booking/reservations for organizations, corporations, individuals, and events of all sizes and any industry.
Name the Blog Contest Update – Chalkboard it is

We have a winner and her name is  Mary Douglass Kirkley from Ballantyne.  Mary and I are collaborating now on her blog for us.  Congratulations Mary!

March Classes Enrolling Now – Click on the Class Title for dates, times and locations!
May/June Semester is enrolling as well and we are adding more classes every day.

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Casino games online are but an earthly heaven for people who enjoy gambling. They no longer have to wait for their next vacation leave or fall in line and wait for their turn because they can already enjoy the same challenge and excitement right at their fingertips, especially the Rugby Star. Online gambling games like online slot machines are good mediums for gamblers to extend opportunities to enjoy themselves compared to offline casinos.

    However, online casino gambling, such as online slots, does not come without risk. So, one should be very careful in playing them. One should really understand the rules and the trickery of the Rugby Star game. This is why these games require players who are 21 years and above, whether offline or online. There are many advantages for players when they choose to play the games online. Some of them are even familiar to amateurs.

    What makes such gambling online fantastic is the fact that they allow players to play (almost) for free with free slots. No wonder why online casino slots are very appealing. But, for those that charge fees, the amount is too cheap that one might even consider it as negligible.

    Online casinos offer you with lots of game options. There are games which are famous to one region but not to other areas. You may be astonished when you try to search for a game and you will be prompted with the original version and other different versions. So, you have a lot of options. You are gambling but your cost is cut significantly at the lowest level giving you the opportunity to play even more. If you feel like playing slots, blackjack or other related games, you no longer have to book for a flight just to enjoy the excitement. Just one click away and you will enjoy the pleasure at your own couch sitting comfortably with your dog.


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The Saone, Rhone and onto the Canal du Midi, (Sept/Oct 2008)

Tuesday 30th September

Well, this was the journey we’ve been anticipating with mixed feelings, heading south down the Rhone. We’d spent a lot of time studying the navigation charts, listing the locks and possible moorings along the route, and revising the navigation signs we had learned over a year ago for our International Certificates of Competence.  We’d also studied the weather forecast, but how reliable would that be?

It rained on and off during our journey through France but the traffic was relatively light and we arrived at St Jean-de-Losne going up to four o’clock.  The boat was now back in the water having had its bottom shot-blasted, painted, and the new invertor fitted.  And we were quite a bit out of pocket!   We were both quite tired after our early start, and were in bed by 9.00pm.

Wednesday 1st October

Amazingly, though we woke up at 6.00am, we ended up going back to sleep until almost eight o’clock – almost 11 hours sleep.  Definitely not like us – although we do tend to go to bed early we are generally up with the lark.  The weather was again grey and windy and later became showery, unlike the weather forecast which Neville had been studying whilst we were in England!  He had told me that we were due fine weather for most of our journey down to Lyon and beyond.

There was much cleaning to be done.  Sandblasting the boat had created a huge amount of grey dust, and despite the fact that we had closed all windows on leaving the boat, and had covered the furniture and bedding with sheets, plus the fact that the boatyard had employed cleaners to clean the interior afterwards, there was still a fine layer of dust everywhere.  I guessed it was probably hanging in the atmosphere and would take several “dustings” before it would eventually be and remain clean.  I did the tops of the doors, the ornaments, ledges and other areas, which had been missed by the boatyard cleaners, but despite that we were still finding thick grey dust inside the cupboards and in various nooks and crannies for months to come.

Fortunately, the sandblasting seemed to have thoroughly tee’d off the existing spiders, and now that autumn was under way I was armed with a big bag of conkers gathered by friends from the horse chestnut trees in Huntingdon.  We’d read that spiders hate conkers, so would see just how effective they are.  I made up some little netting bags from the onion and garlic containers that we’d  bought and having filled them with conkers, hung them from the windows (a favourite nesting/spinning place for spiders).

We did a bit of shopping for journey provisions, and a lot of general jobs but were undecided about whether to set off and take the boat down the one lock to the diesel boat moored just below on the Saone.  There was a chance that we could have over-nighted down on the quay in the centre, but ultimately it started raining heavily and we decided not to bother and to set off next morning as soon as the lock-keeper arrived.

Thursday 2nd October

Off we went at 9.00am, and having re-fuelled down in the town, we were underway by about 9.45am. We filled the tank full, paying top price because it was on the river, around 300 euros.  As we were filling the tank, Jazz, a boat very similar to ours from the same builder, went by and we followed them all the way down the Saone throughout the day.  The river was busier than we had thought and we shared the two locks of the day with four other boats.  Because we were towards the end of the convoy of the boats, I didn’t have to speak to the lock-keepers in French, this having been taken care of by the first boat.  That was a relief.  I don’t have a problem being able to say what I need to say, it’s the response that generally foxes me, particularly when it’s over VHF radio!

German hotel boat

At one point we were overtaken by a great hotel boat, an enormous great thing with a very ugly rounded back, and a pair of red lips painted on the bow (ugh!).  It was a German cruiseliner that we were later to encounter quite regularly on our travels.

We cruised non-stop, and moored at Gigny in a disused lock at around 5.30pm.  Good facilities, water and electricity plus a baker calling at 08.30 in the morning.  Jazz carried on, aiming for Tournus where they knew of a good restaurant.  During the evening another great hotel boat passed by whilst we were eating, with a restaurant full of people.  Not my idea of spending an evening, cruising down a river in the dark – seems a bit pointless really.

So that was day 1 over with, a bit uneventful, 2 locks and 92  kilometres.  A further 119 kilometres to Lyon where we join the Rhone.   It’s amazing how much ground you can cover when you are travelling downstream.

Friday 3rd October

The weather was better for most of our cruising this day, lots of clouds but plenty of bright sunny intervals.  We did 63 kilometres and moored at Belleville, where we were about 50 kilometres away from Lyon. It’s a floating pontoon with electricity and water. Nobody arrived to ask us for mooring fees, and there were no signs to indicate where we should go to pay.

River cruising is quite boring, and this day we didn’t even have the company of other boats.  We passed another Sagar boat (Ilovan) and had a brief chat over the VHF.  They were on their way up to the Nivernais after spending 4 years down near Carcassonne.  They said that Jazz was about half an hour ahead of us.  It would be nice to cruise down close to another boat so we thought that  maybe tomorrow we would get away earlier and try and make up some of the ground between us and Jazz.  Though I set the alarm clock for 7.15 we still weren’t away from Gigny until 9.15, having waited a white for the baker to arrive at the moorings, and then filling up with the water.

We noticed that we had a bit of a water leak down in the engine room, not much, but Neville emailed Sagars to ask where it could be coming from.  No reply before we set off.

Saturday 4th October

We were up early, around 6.30am and left just before eight.  While en route Neville went down to the engine room to check the leak and decided that he can see where it is coming from – the cooling system for the engine.  It’s a miniscule drip from a jubilee clip on the hose, so he tightened it later when we moored up.

The confluence of the Saone and Rhone at Lyons

Pretty soon the Saone became wider and wider, something that had worried me about the Rhone, but eventually I became used to the prospect of long stretches of water on either side (way beyond my swimming capabilities) and so it was not too much of a shock when we finally came to the confluence of the Saone and the Rhone at Lyon.

We carried on down the Rhone until we reached Les Roches de Condruire, a terrific

Les Roches de Condruire

mooring in the bend of the river.  There was just enough space for us on the outside of the outer pontoon, and we soon saw why when a few huge barges went past and the boat rocked wildly at its moorings when the wash hit the pontoon.  Not much of a problem, except when you were standing in the bath having a shower.  Not a lot of purchase there, even when you curl your toes up!

The capitainerie was only open Monday to Friday, so unless he were to make a special visit to the boat to collect the charge, we would have saved ourselves 23 euros.  This is an expensive mooring, but well worth it and much better than Chalon sur Saone where we paid 28 euros.

We’d eventually caught up with Jazz at this mooring and he took our lines when we came in to moor.  They had been rushing to get to Lyon for Friday night where they wanted to eat at a favourite restaurant.  Later I had a chat with one of the women (there are 2 couples on board) and found out that they usually winter in Spain too.

We were very tired, and once again were in bed quite early.  You don’t do anything physical whilst cruising rivers (and locking down stream is not taxing at all)  but your concentration is at maximum throughout the day.  I had been particularly apprehensive about joining the Rhone, which has a reputation for being a difficult river in bad weather.  Fortunately the day was fine, with long periods of sunshine, though a cold wind.  The commercial traffic is a bit over-facing at first, but after a while you become accustomed to it.  We had our blue flag all laid out ready to display if the oncoming barges signalled for us to pass on their starboard side, but none did.

Sunday October 5th

Early morning mist

A barge went past in the middle of the night, sending the boat rocking like crazy once again, but we soon went back to sleep.  Up at 7.15 am to find the river covered in a thick mist.  We had planned to set off at 8.30 but decided we would wait until the sun had a chance to burn the mist off.  You don’t want one of these huge barges looming up out of the mist without warning.

Suddenly around 10.45am the mist lifted to reveal a cloudless blue sky and we followed Jazz out of the marina, closely followed by the red Swiss yacht moored on the opposite side of our pontoon.

The wind got up around lunchtime, and we were scudding into the waves, spray from which sometimes showered over the top of the wheelhouse.  I certainly wouldn’t want to tackle this river in any kind of bad weather!

We went through a couple of deep locks in a convoy of three, and then had to wait at the final one to let a heavily laden 85 metre barge take precedence.  We all managed to get in behind him quite easily.   Then we reached Valance, a city where we have stayed many times on our journey down by car, and moored up in the Port de Plaisance.  No one at the capitainerie again –like another night’s free mooring..  A yacht came in just after us and moored up alongside on the opposite side of the pontoon.  English people making their way up the Rhone..And in a hurry too, as they want to get across the English Channel before the weather gets too wintry.  Rather them than me.

Monday 6th October

We were up at 7.15am and away just before 8.00am.  Even so, as we rounded the bend in the river we could see that Jazz was already well ahead of us.  They had carried on for a couple of kilometres after we pulled into the Port de Plaisance last night and had moored up at the first lock where we caught up with them and had to wait the best part of an hour as there was a problem with the gates on the lock.  Eventually we got through and we followed them down all day.

Jazz, sharing the BolleneWe went through the second deepest lock in Europe (Bollene) at 23 metres.  I thought this might be intimidating, but to be honest the locks have been getting deeper and deeper as we have navigated down the Rhone, and it was nothing special, though extremely cold when you’re down at the bottom there.

We finally arrived at St Etiennes les Roches where the occupants of Jazz had moored before.  With a bit of jiggling around of the existing boats we both got in there, and were late joined by a smaller German craft.  We

The mooring at St Etienne les Rochers

were roped three abreast, with us as the anchor boat attached to the floating pontoon, and hanging over the end of it quite substantially.  We didn’t realise it until later, but there was electricity available on the other side of the river wall.  Went to the little corner shop which sold practically nothing.  Came back with a packet of milk and a packet of biscuits.  There was apparently a good wine cellar which opened at 8.00am, and Jazz were going there first thing so we said we probably would too and then carry on following them down.  It’s great following someone who has done it before, and best of all the woman, Gill, is quite good at French and she is radio-ing the locks ahead so that we stand the best chance of them being ready for us.

A rainy morning but still bright, and then later on the clouds disappeared and we had a cloud free blue sky and warm sunshine.

We didn’t have a great deal further to go on the Rhone now, and then we would branch off onto the Canal du Rhone.  The next big obstacle would be L’Etang de Thau, which is a wide lake (an inland sea)  right by the sea, full of oyster beds on one side, and sandbanks on the other, and with a narrowish unmarked channel which we need to follow.  There are strong winds around this area, and we read of a couple in a wide beam narrowboat who set off in calm clear sunny weather and then a strong wind developed which blew them onto the sandbanks.  They had to call out the rescue services to help.  The first question the rescue service asked was “do you want us to take you off the boat” or “do you want us to get your boat off the sandbanks”.  Hmmm!  Neville and I might pose different answers to that question.

As usual to bed early, and were awoken about 4.00am by the steady droning of the engine of a large boat coming up the river. Some of the working boats are enormous and create quite violent wakes, and this one was no different.

Typical of commercial traffic on the Rhone

The boat went past and the engine noise began to fade away but a minute or so later the wake hit our raft of boats and we were all tossed around like crazy, with cupboard doors flying opening and banging shut and the sound of things falling down in the cupboards.  The motion went on for ages, steadily decreasing and I was worried about the ropes holding us fast, having images of the three of us, rafted up and drifting off down the Rhone.  Eventually we went back to sleep again, only to have the same thing happen again around 6.00am.

Tuesday 7th October

After our early morning wakening by the wash, we were up at just before 7.00am, having heard footsteps crossing our bow from the third boat rafted out from us.  Probably going to the bakers.  Then I went up to the little shop for some bread, and after breakfast we went with Ian from Jazz to the wine cave in the village.  Stocked up with boxes of wine.

The distant Alps

We then set off on the last leg of our journey down the Rhone, which was reasonably uneventful.  We went through two locks on the Rhone itself, then one leading onto the Petit Rhone, and a further one which put us on the Canal du Rhone a Sete.  It feels good to be off the river – for me anyway.  More relaxing, more in touch with nature…. And closer to the bank!

The journey had taken less than time than I had anticipated – two and a half days on the Saone, and three and a half days on the Rhone, but that of course was going downstream and in very good weather, apart from a couple of stretches with strong winds against us.  It would be a different story going upstream, and even a strong wind behind us might not help as it would probably just cause more turbulence against the current.

le petit Rhone

We followed Jazz all the way down, but left them at the junction with the branch that goes to Beaucaire, where they decided to “wild moor” and we went on along the branch in search of two pontoons which were about half a kilometre further up.  These were taken, so we ourselves “wild moored”.  But the verges seem fairly vertical here (unlike where Jazz moored) and quite firm.  A guy on the next boat took our lines and gave us a lot of advice about where (or rather where we would not be able) to moor in Sete, should we choose to go there.

Hope there are other boaters going through to the Etang at the same time, as we are losing Jazz’s company while they spend a day or two in Aigues Mort.

The little French computer is on the blink again – what a waste of money it has been.  No doubt we will have to find an SFR place in Carcassonne and get the whole thing rebooted again, with the consequent loss of emails and data.

Wednesday 8th October

We were awakened at 4.30am by a violent thunderstorm which circled around for over an hour, with torrential downpours and strong winds.  How lucky it was that we were finished with our river navigation!   When we awoke it was raining quite steadily, but was not forecast to last the whole day so maybe we could get some cruising in later on.

As it happened, it rained most of the day, but towards 4.30pm the sky seemed to lighten somewhat and the rain lessened, so we decided to get a couple of hours cruising in before nightfall.  Our friend on the next mooring came out to offer advice on the route ahead and we said goodbye to him.  We had to go a good way up the canal to turn round and come back down onto the Canal Rhone a Sete, but soon we were back on the wider canal where we carried on until Franquevaux and moored up there, just a bit upstream from another

Mooring near Franquevaux

boat.  There was a beautiful sunset beneath the leaden sky which reflected onto the canal and we got a couple of good shots.

According to the navigation books, we have about 68 kilometres to do to get to the Frontignan Bridge, which only has three opening times a day.  That’s also the place to wait if the winds are too strong to cross the Etang.  For the moment, strong winds are forecast for tomorrow but the outlook changes from day to day.  Once we have crossed the Etang, which will take maybe a couple of hours, we would then be on the Canal du Midi.  Our journey to Carcassonne would  then be about 135 kilometres – more than two days as we would not have the benefit of currents and would have to slow down for moored boats.  So with fine weather, (so far only forecast for Friday) we could be in Carcassonne by Tuesday of next week.

We had discovered that there was a direct train from Carcassonne to Dijon, and then our plan was to drive back to the UK, staying overnight at Rheims.  We would then stay there for a few days to prepare the house for winter and say goodbye to friends for the winter, before driving  down again through France to the boat at Carcassonne and then on to Spain.

Thursday 9th October

Rhone a Sete

We carried on from around 8.40am, along a fairly boring stretch of the Canal Rhone au Sete which in turn led to an even more boring stretch, along man made waterways with funny little concrete cabins lining either side of the route.  We think these were the homes of the fishermen who probably work the Etang du Thau, as each one had its own rickety little mooring with a small motor boat outside.  The scenery began to look very much more like Spain.  As we continued we were in a channel on either side of which were huge etangs, or salt lakes.  You could see the occasional clutch of pink flamingos standing out in the lakes, and the sides of the waterway were crunchy with hordes of black mussel shells.

Eventually we arrived at Frontignan, where the bridge only opens three times a day to let boats through, so we moored up at 3.00pm and canvassed the moorers on the other side of the bridge to see whether any were coming through so that we could take their mooring if they did.  One guy was, so we shot through quickly when the bridge opened and Neville manoeuvered us into a space with maybe just a metre at front and rear to spare.  We had got chatting to another British couple in a hire boat, and had helped them to moor upstream of the bridge, so we offered them the opportunity to breast up with us once we’d gone through the bridge, which they did.

We had a nice relaxing evening, lighting candles in the wheelhouse to avoid attracting mosquitoes through the open windows – it is much warmer down here.

Friday 10th October

Leaving Frontignan

We were up early in readiness for tackling the Etang.  The weather really couldn’t have been better, clear blue skies, no wind and the lake like a mill pond, except for when a few speedboats went past.  I don’t know whether our mooring companions bottled out, but they turned into the first harbour on the etang.  I’d heard them say they were planning to go on to the Midi.

The Etang is like an inland sea, there is a sandbank and a reinforced structure separating it from the Mediterranean, but to all intents and purposes it looks like the sea.  All the red marker buoys signalling our route and destination, that we had been led to believe would be visible right from the moment we left the canal, were nowhere to be

Our destination, across L'Etang de Thau

seen.  Neville took readings from the GPS system to maintain our heading, and eventually we seemed to get into the corridor that we had anticipated, slightly to the left of the oyster beds.  The crossing took about an hour and a half, and then we were onto the Canal du Midi.

Boats moored close to the mouth of the Midi

Immediately you could see that the light was different down here in the southwest of France – it’s a kind of golden glow, everything seems to be perceived in shades of gold, brown and dark green.  The canal was much busier than we had anticipated for this time of the year, and all the locks were full of hireboat craft, mostly Germans.  We were now into the second week of October, so it was really strange to see so much activity, probably more than we saw during the peak weeks when we on the northern canals.  Probably because the weather is better down here, and also because it can be quite expensive to hire during peak season down on the Midi, and people tend to take later holidays.

We did two or three locks, which are quite strange, sort of oval shaped, and the one at Agde, which is a junction lock was in fact completely circular.  So you can imagine what bedlam it is inside with small pleasure craft of every description crowding in at once, each taking a different way out of the lock.  Weird.

The circular lock at Agde

We cruised on until Villeneuve, where we decided to stop as we were short of water.  Water had been free everywhere else we stopped in France, but down here we had to pay 1 euro for 120 litres. Five euros left us with only a three quarter full tank.  In this particular town there were moorings on opposite sides of the canal.  One, where we got the water, was fee paying, whilst the other, with no services, is free.  So we pushed the boat across once we had filled with water, as there is no way we were paying to stay somewhere where it had just cost us 5 euros for water!

Saturday 11 October

In the end we decided we were too tired to bother showering and changing to go out, and we ate on the boat.  Villeneuve is an attractive town at night, with illuminated quay-side shops.  However, the benches alongside the opposite side of the canal, which had accommodated at least a dozen old chattering men and women during the course of the afternoon and early evening, turned into a meeting point for noisy youths on their way home in the early hours, and we heard lots of shouting and banging.  When we got up a rubbish bin had been pushed into the canal on the opposite side, and we were glad that we had decided to move across to the opposite bank once we had filled up with water.

Went to the bakers in the morning and a quick visit to the market where we bought some potatoes.  Then we set off up the lock, initially with another foreign couple in a pleasure cruiser.  Again the lock are oval shaped, and the bollards, set back from the edge of the lock, are not really conveniently placed for a heavy boat like ours which needs two ropes up when we are going up the lock.  The other couple dropped back after the second lock, and then we caught up with another bunch of foreigners, Scandinavian I think, in another plastic pleasure craft.  It was with this crew that we negotiated the six-lock staircase at Fonsérans, and what an experience that was.

Six rise at Fonserans

The locks were almost dog-bone shaped, two oval chambers with a narrower neck between them.  When we approached the first chamber the other crew were in and started shrieking at us , apparently wanting us not to enter.  Why, we could not imagine, and they just kept shrieking in foreign tongue at us.  I pointed out (equally shriekingly) that there was no point them doing this as I hadn’t the foggiest idea what they were saying.  It seems (we think) they thought that we were too big to share the lock with them.  Fat chance!  So we went in and sure enough the chamber would comfortably accommodate two boats of our size side by side.  They had the grace then to look uncomfortable.

Then the lockie’s assistant (a young girl) came along.  In French she explained that when she opened the gates to the other half of the “dog bone” we were to stay in place, and that one of us should at all times be on the quayside holding a rope.  We could see why!  After the gates opened and we saw the rest of the double chamber, the water came gushing from high out of gate paddles in a torrential flow that would swamp any boat which was in that chamber.  We watched in some alarm as all this water forced its way through the narrow neck into our half of the chamber, and for a few minutes it was quite turbulent.  It put me in mind of white water rafting as the thundering waters covered the cill between the two chambers, thus enabling the passage of boats to the next. Once it became calmer, the lockie signalled for us to move into the next half of the chamber, which we did, with me on the bank, climbing steps and holding the rope so that I could secure it in this chamber and go back to take the middle rope from Neville.  In this way we proceeded up the six staircases until we got to the last chamber which was a single one, thus putting both boats closer to the gates.  Here the other crew got into some bother when the paddles opened and the force of water threw their boat away from the wall, diagonally across the lock.  Their rope (well, on plastic craft the rope seems to be nothing more than a thin blue polypropylene fibre) raced through the female crew member’s ungloved hands. No doubt this would inflict a severe burn or two (which is why we always wear gloves for rope handling), and the impact of the boat hitting the other lock wall almost threw her off.  She was very lucky.

The whole procedure had attracted a barrel load of sightseers, (gongoozlers in boating language) and they certainly had their money’s worth throughout this procedure.  Many of them were boats who were waiting at the top to lock down, and I think the whole spectacle filled them with horror.  It wouldn’t be anywhere near so bad going down though, far less turbulence.

The rest of the day was quite uneventful, apart from a low bridge at Capestang which Neville successfully negotiated without us having to drop the wheelhouse, and then we moored up around 4.30pm in a more open stretch where we hoped we could get a satellite signal to watch the Formula 1 motor racing on TV early next morning.  It was quite a peaceful place, but with boats going past too quickly we were in danger of losing our mooring pins, and there were lots of flies around, one of which inflicted a nasty bite on my arm which soon became a big angry lump.

About Sandra

I cruise the French waterways with my husband four or five months a year, and write fiction and poetry. I love animals, F1 motor racing, French bread and my husband, though not necessarily in that order.
This entry was posted in Cruising in France and tagged , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

3 Responses to The Saone, Rhone and onto the Canal du Midi, (Sept/Oct 2008)

  1. Paul Kent says:

    I found this most interesting. I did the same trip in 1984 in my Seamaster 30 Hot Potato and this certainly broght back memories.
    I now own a Narrow Boat which is moored in Brittany.

    • Sandra says:

      Thanks for commenting Paul. Yes, it was an interesting trip. We did the return trip last year, but it was a lot slower! And there were a lot more mooring places by this time, which made the trip more interesting. Looking forward now to exploring central France this year. We used to have narrowboats, mainly moored along the Grand Union near Weltonfield.
      I’ve heard Brittany is really lovely, hope you’re enjoying it.

  2. Pingback: A Quick Trip South, September 2014 | castelsarrasin

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text:
To Write or Not to Write?

Casual Aggro, Dungeons and Dragons, Chronicles of Mystara, Paladin

That is the question. Well, it’s the question that’s been on my mind for such a casual blogger like myself, anyway.

I started Casual Aggro back in April of 2012 essentially as a way for me to take my hobby of gaming to the next level. I found myself in comments sections writing tiny novels as reactions to articles. You know the type. Not the ones that were being very critical, or trolling, but the ones that are just walls of text. Even if I was making a solid point, something others might want to read and comment on itself, I was putting a lot of effort into something that was mostly being passed over. The people seeing it had already read an article by a paid professional, why would they read my similar-sized (or sometimes bigger), amateur response?

So I joined the very first Newbie Blogger Initiative, sponsored by Syp the Mighty, and started this little page as a way to explore my hobby from a new perspective. But from the very beginning, I felt like an impostor. Here I was, some random MMO player, who didn’t even have that special of a perspective, just another joe-shmoe who thought that what he said could even compare a little bit to those who did this for a living. And in a way, even attempting to be on the same level as paid professionals felt like I was somehow insulting their profession.

At the same time, I had no realistic aspirations that I would ever be on their level. I already have a day job. I focused my education on math and science, not writing. I have, aside from the standard classes most universities force every student to take, zero experience writing. I would’ve much rather sat down and worked on a physics problem that took up three pages than write a three page paper. Because I felt like such an impostor my static friction, if you will, was much higher than I believed it would ever be. Just starting the ball rolling became a daily fight. And the days that I lost that fight, which were most days, I felt awful about it.

No Time to Explain, Existentialism

Basically this.

But I still wrote. Not every day like some other bloggers, and sometimes not every week. But I still put something out when I can. Some nights, especially after a long day, I felt like relaxing the way I already knew how. By playing, you know, games. So some nights it became a fight to play games or to write about them, and guess which usually won out.

When I did write, the reactions were… well, not exactly what I thought they’d be. I was writing to further myself, explore my hobby, and improve my own skills, sure, but when you put hours into a post, when you try your best, and get back in return only a handful of eyeballs? The return on investment seems not worth it. Seeing others celebrating hitting milestones that I knew I could never reach just hit me harder, and made me feel a little more alone.

Every month, though, is a new month and this is not just your standard month, this is Blaugust! The month of the Blog! So, let’s try this again, yeah? I’ve been picked up by the all-around geekery goodness site, Sub-Cultured, to be a regular contributor. Now being part of team the amount of friction already feels less and is so far significantly different than being alone. The success of my own site I never cared that much about, but the success of the group isn’t just about me, but the team’s success. And isn’t teamwork what it’s all about? Isn’t teamwork why we play the MMO genre in the first place? In fact, I’ve already put up a review of Star Trek Online’s new Agents of Yesterday to the site!

This explains so much, Octodad, Dadliest Catch

Or, it at least explains a bit of my absence, anyway.

So, if you’re reading this, and I sincerely thank you for still hanging around despite my lack of posts, maybe throw Sub-Cultured onto your Feedly as well. Expect posts from all around the world of geek, from comic books to television, from conventions to gaming, from current news to opinion pieces and all points in between. Who knows, you may even see little ol’ me hitting up a convention or two on *gasp* an official capacity!

But don’t expect it to be cultured, expect it to be Sub-Cultured.

// Ocho

P.S. – Alright, I just made up that tagline and I made myself groan when I wrote it. Still, though. Check it out. And as usual, a big shout out to Belghast the Prolific for once more throwing his leader hat in the ring for Blaugust. May it be a fruitful month of posts for all.

P.P.S – Now, to maybe work on getting myself onto a podcast or something of the like… I should really redesign this place, too. Maybe a new coat of paint, maybe a new door, couple of throw pillows… we’ll see.


text:
catallaxy files

catallaxy in technical exile

Another admin note

with 12 comments

In order to avoid a repeat of what happened last time when I used the thread culling knife to get a thread back on track and ended up wasting my time time arguing with a dissatisfied customer, commenters should check out the ‘fatwas’ I have now released (link above).

Written by Admin

October 18, 2006 at 8:10 pm

Posted in Uncategorized

12 Responses

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  1. Hey Jason.

    I’m trying to get a post going analysing Edneys deep deep fears of warmer winter mornings in Jutland and every time I try anything I get diverted to google.

    What do you make of this?

    October 20, 2006 at 7:03 pm

  2. No idea Graeme. Edney is merely reflecting the received opinion on this.

    Jason Soon

    October 20, 2006 at 7:10 pm

  3. What I mean is why do I keep getting diverted to Google everytime I try to start making a comment?

    October 20, 2006 at 7:33 pm

  4. Do you mean there’s something wrong with our commenting box? I don’t get it? you’ve made long comments here before?

    Jason Soon

    October 20, 2006 at 8:31 pm

  5. Maybe the whole PC thing has affected Google.

    Funny, that.

    October 20, 2006 at 8:36 pm

  6. Its only on that thread.

    And it skips to google with the first letter.

    It seems that its a SAFARI phenomenon.

    Because if I go to explorer the same weird shit isn’t there.

    But then I’ve got to log off and log in and get a new password and this sort of JIVE.

    And its only on that one thread.

    October 20, 2006 at 9:13 pm

  7. Its a godamned conspiracy of communists/jihadists/peadophiles/cut-throats and Institutional-Economics-Devotees that don’t want me to join the LDP.

    Its not the first obstruction I’ve encountered and I’m sure it won’t be the last.

    October 20, 2006 at 9:18 pm

  8. c8to,
    When you get a few minutes you might want to have a look at the character set being used. Quote marks seem to be morphing into question marks – it makes some threads where there is a lot of quoting going on (banking is a good example) difficult to read. Both of the below are quote marks, double quotes first –

    Andrew Reynolds

    October 23, 2006 at 4:53 pm

  9. Odd – the above worked. Retry:
    Ã¢â‚¬Å“Double quotesÃ¢â‚¬Â, Ã¢â‚¬ËœSingle QuotesÃ¢â‚¬â„¢.

    Andrew Reynolds

    October 23, 2006 at 4:55 pm

  10. Andrew, importing posts you have written in Word are often the source of quote mark substitution.

    October 23, 2006 at 6:11 pm

  11. fatfingers – I tried that with the second one. I am mystified as to what is happening on the banking thread now. Th eover-abundance of question marks is puzzling me.

    Andrew Reynolds

    October 23, 2006 at 6:17 pm

  12. This was happening to me yesterday. I found using fixed the problem, rather than

    I have no idea why.

    October 23, 2006 at 7:10 pm

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Catalog Record: The rejuvenation of Aunt Mary | Hathi Trust Digital Library

The rejuvenation of Aunt Mary, by Anne Warner ... With four full-page illustrations.

Main Author: Warner, Anne, 1869-1913.
Language(s): English
Published: Boston : Little, Brown, and company, 1907.
Physical Description: vi p., 1 L., 323 p. front., 3 pl. 20 cm.
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Catalog Record: Thomas Jefferson; an address, delivered at Columbia, Mo., on June 4, 1885 | Hathi Trust Digital Library

Thomas Jefferson; an address, delivered at Columbia, Mo., on June 4, 1885, by G.G. Vest.

Main Author: Vest, George Graham, 1830-1904.
Language(s): English
Published: St. Louis, Buxton & Skinner Stationery Company, 1885.
Subjects: Jefferson, Thomas, > 1743-1826.
Note: Cover-title.
Physical Description: 24 p. 23 cm.
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Catalog Record: Red as a rose is she : a novel | Hathi Trust Digital Library

Red as a rose is she : a novel / by the author of "Cometh up as a flower" [i.e. R. Broughton].

Main Author: Broughton, Rhoda, 1840-1920.
Language(s): English
Published: London : R. Bentley, 1873.
Physical Description: 450p., [1] leaf of plates : ill. ; 19cm.
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International Business - Bachelor of Business Administration

This program is intended for those who plan to work for government agencies or firms with operations abroad or between the United States and foreign countries. The program prepares you for positions requiring knowledge of international payments, foreign exchange markets, world marketing techniques for products, export and import procedures, and international investments.

In addition to completing the general education common core, College of Business foundation and business core, Viewing a Wider World requirements, and general electives (to bring the total credits to 120), every candidate for this major must complete these courses with a grade of C- or better:

ECON 251GPrinciples of Macroeconomics3
ECON 252GPrinciples of Microeconomics3
A ST 251GStatistics for Business and the Behavioral Sciences (or equivalent)3
or A ST 311 Statistical Applications
MATH 142GCalculus for the Biological and Management Sciences3
or MATH 191G Calculus and Analytic Geometry I

Candidates must earn a minimum cumulative GPA of 2.5 in the following major course requirements:

International Business Core Courses 1
I B 351International Business3
I B 450International Economics3
I B 475International Finance3
or I B 449 Open Economy Macroeconomics
I B 489Senior Seminar in International Business3
Select 3 credits from the following:3
Developing Nations3
Economic Development of Latin America3
International Business and Economic Environments3
Comparative Economic Systems3
Functional area in business ( 15 credits of upper-division courses in a single functional area of business beyond those elsewhere required for the I B major) 215
Total Credits30

At least 12 of the 15 credit hours counted toward the international business core courses must be earned at NMSU (not to include courses completed on study abroad).

At least 9 of the 15 credit hours counted toward the international business functional area must be earned at NMSU (not to include courses completed on study abroad).

Other Requirements for the Major

Students must earn a cumulative GPA of 2.5 in courses counted toward the I B major (core and functional area).

Foreign language: Students must demonstrate oral and written proficiency at the intermediate mid-level according to ACTFL (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) proficiency guidelines. (Process for demonstrating proficiency to be coordinated with the NMSU Department of Languages and Linguistics. Any costs associated with proficiency demonstration will be paid by the student.)

International experience requirement: Students must partake of an international experience equivalent to a semester abroad in a university where the language of instruction is not English. The department will determine appropriateness of international experience. Study abroad programs must be pre-approved by IB advisors and Department Head.


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Thursday, April 05, 2012

Cardinal Schönborn backs Pope in word- now he has to back it up with action

Österreich: „Ein paar sehr ernste Fragen“:

Austria: "Some very serious questions"

Cardinal Christoph Schönborn sees in the words of the Pope's Homily at the Chrism Mass in St. Peter's Basilica today an "encouragement to the Church in Austria", The Archbishop of Vienna told Kathpress in a written statement on Thursday afternoon. At the same time the Pope had set the Parish Priest Initiative "some very serious questions." It is apparent from the words of the Pope, how importantly he regards the debate over the future of the Church in Austria and how well he understands the situation there according to Schönborn.

And the Cardinal said further, "This is pastoral care, which encourages people." In a very detailed and thoughtful way, Pope Benedict XVI has addressed on the other hand, the fundamental problem of any renewal- the temptation instead of fulfilling God's will to fulfill one's own Benedict had noted the fundamental basis of every renewal: To regard Christ, and him in humility being obedient to the Father, who is, as we believe as Catholics is disclosed in the Church and her teachings are disclosed.
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On the Memorial of St. John XXIII in the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite; and on the anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council. For more legally free ebooks, you may access the List of Free eBooks (Arranged by Title) and the List of Free eBooks (Grouped by Subject). Blessed be God in His angels and in His saints!


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13 Apr

By / cliffordlc

How to Make Things Easier for Your Residential Movers

Moving is a major project, whether you are moving down the street or across the country. Hiring residential movers in Norcross can make the process significantly easier and less stressful, leaving you to worry about more important details. A little preparation is extremely helpful to ensure that moving day goes smoothly for both you and your movers, so read on for moving


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3 calibrate speakers audio mastering daw

Learning and calibrating your speakers for your DAW in audio mastering is a very important step in the audio mastering process.  When I first start out with NEW speakers (though I never change them now), I listen to my favorite hit songs in every genre and style.  Songs that I know from my years of experience have X amount of bass, X amount of brightness, etc.  I know how these songs are "supposed" to sound.

Most good speakers have EQ adjustment switches on them, and the sub-woofer has a volume control on it.  After several listens, I'll slightly adjust the EQ on the monitor speakers and the bass amount on the sub-woofer so that my favorite reference songs sound "true" to me.  I'm making my speakers sound true to life, not exaggerated in any sonic area.  Once the songs playing through these speakers sound "true" to me, then anything I mix or master will be done correctly.

How could speakers sound untrue to me?  An example, if I'm playing a few commercially hip hop songs and the bass sounds very weak on every song, the speakers I'm using are untrue because I know in reality the bass should be much higher/louder in hip hop.  I know the sub-woofer needs the bass volume adjusted and maybe the studio monitors do too.  And I adjust them accordingly.

If I worked with these untrue speakers, I would improperly raise the bass on every song, thinking it was too low when in reality the speakers aren't properly playing the bass.

It's easier when working with true speakers because what you hear correctly represents the audio material you're working on.

Click here for HUNDREDS of AUDIO MASTERING articles, tips and secrets!

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chromosome bridge

Switching off Cancers Diversity

Posted on

JCS paper

A defining feature in over 2/3rds of all solid tumours is the continual loss and gain of whole are small parts of chromosomes. This instability, or CIN for short, strongly implicated in tumour initiation, progression, chemoresistance and poor prognosis. CIN is created through failures during mitosis, whereby whole or parts of a chromosome are segregated incorrectly, thereby created daughter cells with unequal chromosome numbers. Consequently, understanding how mitosis is regulated is essential for uncovering the mechanisms allowing CIN to arise and drive cancer. In our recent publication, we discovered the mechanisms controlling the key regulatory pathway critical to ensuring cells exit mitosis correctly. At the centre of this pathway is a gene call MASTL (short for ‘Microtubule Associated Serine/Threonine Kinase-Like’). The primary function of MASTL is to ensure that the cellular breaks (the phosphatase PP2A), is turned off during mitosis so that the accelerator (Cdk1 kinase) can drive the cell into mitosis. Much like a car, having the accelerator and breaks on at the same time is a bad idea, unless you like the smell of burning rubber. To successfully exit mitosis, and to perfectly segregate chromosomes, the cell must take the foot off the accelerator and turn on the breaks. Because MASTL is the central regulator ensuring the breaks are coordinated with the accelerator, it is essential to understand how MASTL is controlled. To this end, we uncovered that MASTL must be rapidly turned off to allow cells to exit mitosis, and this inactivation is carried out by another cellular brake call PP1 phosphatase (Rogers et al, JCS 2016). Now that we have identified and mapped this novel mitotic exit switch, we hope to be able to shed new light on how CIN drives the initiation and evolution cancer. We believe that with further study we will be able to better predict patient response to chemotherapy, and also identify new ways to ‘switch off’ highly unstable tumours, thereby improving treatment for patients that currently have a very poor prognosis.

Image of Interphase HeLa cell stained for Actin (red), DNA (blue) and the co-localisation of MASTL and PP1 by Proximity Ligation Assay (PLA; green).
Credit: Sam Rogers and Cell Division Lab

Public Talk “Killing Cancer One Cell at a Time ” now on YouTube

Posted on

Here is a recent talk I gave to some members of the public at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research.

It is a very general and simple over-view of explaining 1) how cells in your body proliferate, 2) how this goes wrong in cancer, 3) the challenges we are facing in treating and killing cancer, and 4) most importantly how we hoping to improve current treatments in the near future.

A big thanks to all the fantastic Garvan Foundation Team who hosted, filmed, and edited the event.

Anti-Oxaidants and Cancer…A complicated story!

Posted on

There has been a bit of press lately suggesting that Antioxidants might actually be bad for cancer… not good as they are commonly promoted in the media.
IFLS has put together a great article on some of the reasons why antioxidants might not be such a great thing [Link].

In addition, we recently wrote a review article about how different ‘stresses’ including oxidation can affect mitosis, and cancer. We also came to a similar conclusion in our review,  that antioxidants were a complicated and not always benifical for treating cancer. One of the main reason we suggested this was due to the fact that many common antioxidants are part of the Flavonoid family. On the surface that sound great, but many Flavonoids also happen to potently inhibit cyclin dependent kinases (Cdks). Coincidentally, our other recent article in Cell Cycle, showed that partial inhibition of Cdk1 can dramatically disrupt mitosis and drive severe cytokinesis defects and polyploidy (see video below). These mitotic defects are the foundation of chromosome instability  (CIN), which is a hallmark of more aggressive cancer types, that are also resistant to most chemotherapies and treatments. In simple terms, there is a possibility that in some cases, taking large quantities of dietary Flavonoids (e.g red wine, dark chocolate etc) could drive the formation of more aggressive cancers. This is definitely an area that needs a lot more research, and as always make sure that you fully discuss any dietary and supplements with your oncologist.

This is what happens when a ‘fairly normal’ cancer cell is treated with low doses of a Cdk1 inhibitor.

Here is a picture of a polyploid cancer cell, which was produced by partially inhibiting Cdk1.

ImageJ=1.48f unit=micron

Our Latest Review Article “Stressing Mitosis to Death” is now online !

Posted on Updated on

Great news, our latest review article “Stressing Mitosis to Death” has been accepted for publication by Frontiers in Oncology. You can access the provisional pre-press version here.

The review is about how common stresses affect mitosis, and the impact these stresses can have on the blockbuster mitotic chemotherapy drug Taxol (paclitaxel)

Finally here is one of the beautiful figures drawn by our own Sam Rogers for the Review!  Hope you enjoy the read !

Fig. v4

Were the front cover feature image on this months issue of Cell Cycle !

Posted on Updated on

Some more good news to coincide with today’s official release of our manuscript, one of our images has been chosen to be the feature image on the front cover.

It’s a great honour, one that I am very proud of, and is the first time I have ever had a front cover !
You can view the current issue (Volume 13 – Issue 9 – May 1, 2014) here.

Or jump directly to our paper here

Front Cover

Read the rest of this entry »

Cell Image of the Week – Mitotic Catastrophe

Posted on Updated on

Here is one of the images that we took using a Leica SP8 confocal microscope this week in the lab.
It is a 3D image of a HeLa cell that has completely stuffed up mitosis (undergone mitotic catastrophe). It has separated whole chromosomes randomly into 2 daughter cells instead of separating the two identical chromatids in two.

And here is an artistic version just for fun !

A brief Intro to Greatwall Kinase…The King of Mitosis

Posted on Updated on

Our favourite protein in the lab is Greatwall kinase. It was first discovered in 2004 to be critical for cell division in fruit flies (1,2) . The trail then went cold for a few years as to its exact function, but in 2009, while I was working as a post-doc in France, I was fortunate enough to be in the lab that uncovered its exciting mode of action. For cells to get into mitosis they must activate a key protein called cyclin dependent kinase 1 (Cdk1). I like to think of this as the accelerator in a car. So to get moving cells push on the gas!
And conversely to get out of mitosis you need to hit the brakes. These brakes are the phosphatases which reverse the action of kinases like Cdk1. That’s great but what is missing from this equation?
Well like any car it’s pretty useless without a driver to co-ordinate the accelerator and brakes. And this is where Greatwall (Gwl for short) comes in. It makes sure that when Cdk1 (accelerator) turns on that the breaks get turned off and vice versa (3,4). Without Gwl the cell gets into a lot of trouble very fast, which you can see in the image below. Here I depleted the human version of Gwl (a gene called MASTL) and watched what happened as cells tried to undergo mitosis (5). As you can see they don’t do a very good job… the result is cells fail to divide correctly, resulting in multiple defects and often cell death.

Gwl Figure

I hope you enjoyed part one of my feature on Gwl, and in part 2 I will into more details about this amazing and exciting new protein.

1. Bettencourt-Dias, M. et al. Genome-wide survey of protein kinases required for cell cycle progression. Nature 432, 980–987 (2004).

2. Yu, J. et al. Greatwall kinase: a nuclear protein required for proper chromosome condensation and mitotic progression in Drosophila. J Cell Biol 164, 487–492 (2004). [Link]

3. Vigneron, S. et al. Greatwall maintains mitosis through regulation of PP2A. EMBO J 28, 2786–2793 (2009). [Link]

4. Lorca, T. et al. Constant regulation of both the MPF amplification loop and the Greatwall-PP2A pathway is required for metaphase II arrest and correct entry into the first embryonic cell cycle. J Cell Sci 123, 2281–2291 (2010). [Link]

5. Burgess, A. et al. Loss of human Greatwall results in G2 arrest and multiple mitotic defects due to deregulation of the cyclin B-Cdc2/PP2A balance. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 107, 12564–12569 (2010). [Link]

Mitotic Control Lab now has a Redbubble Store

Posted on Updated on

For a bit of fun way for us to show our research to the public, we have opened up a Redbubble store with some great Mitotic themed items inspired by the research that we do.  100% of any profits made will be used to directly fund further research (and or coffee) to keep us awake so that we can do more research. You can find a great selection of items including T-shirts, stickers and iPhone cases.

You can visit the store here [Link]

You had me at Prophase T-Shirt

New Mitotic Movies

Video Posted on Updated on

The Garvan recently took possession of a fantastic new Leica SP8 confocal microscope, which we have been lucky enough to have play with. Here are the results from our first go with the microscope. Very impressive, and we are yet to push the system to its fully potential. The massive increase in resolution and quality will greatly help in rapidly advancing our understanding of key mitotic events.


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Inserting Your Passion Into Your Life

Just in case it wasn’t obvious already, my oldest and most personal passion is musical performance. Living in a city with the tagline Live Music Capital should make it easy for me to get what I need, but I’m not always so sure about it. But I am a Broadway brat, and New York will always be my hometown.

Broadway Background

The first time I saw the lights of Broadway, I was about 9 or 10 years old. It was on the way home from seeing the Radio City Christmas Spectacular – a family tradition for a few years. In that moment, my gut and every nerve ending in my body reacted. It wasn’t about the lights themselves, but about what was lying beyond those lights. I could get lost in the incredible talent, music and stories of Broadway. I knew this even before seeing my first Broadway show. It is the only instance of love at first sight that I have ever experienced.

For my twelfth birthday, mom and dad bought tickets for the whole family to see Les Miserables. I was never the same again. From the moment that the curtain went up my entire life became about that stage. Through the years I’ve been on stage, back stage, promoting what’s happening on stage, and simple in the seats enjoying the story unfolding on the stage. No matter where I was in life, Broadway was my perfect escape. It was a place where I could laugh, cry, and feel changed. (Funny side note: I specifically became obsessed with Les Mis).

Growing From My Passion

Since musical performances are clearly my passion, I have always found my way into roles that reflected that – Broadway marketing, Carnegie Hall, etc. One day I realized that my biggest strength was not in my passion, but how I expressed it. I was writing and speaking about music with clarity and high energy, and the people listening or reading were picking up on that spirit and becoming my audience. I had created my own stage.

After moving to Austin, my participation in musical performance dropped to zero. It’s not because options are limited, but it’s because… well there is just no Broadway here. That is a terrible reason, I know.

So now what do I do? How do I re-inject my passion for musical performance back into my life? Passion for Music


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The staff at TU-CESE extend our thoughts and prayers to those affected by Hurricane Harvey. Many of our customers, participants in our seminars and conferences, instructors plus family and friends reside and work in that area.

IPEC 2017 will be held in San Antonio as planned in late October. San Antonio did not sustain the damage and flooding of areas nearer to the Gulf Coast.

Thank you to our Sponsors and Exhibitors!

...developing and implementing technology to address and resolve E&P environmental problems. This year's conference will be held October 30-November 1, 2017 in San Antonio, Texas and features: INDUSTRY DAY one-day registration; CURRENT UNIVERSITY STUDENTS Reduced Registration Fee: $250; Enhanced IPEC EXHIBITION; current issue TOPICS and PRESENTATIONS, and top industry experts from E & P companies as KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Industry professionals, academia, and those in government agencies are encouraged to submit abstracts on the topic of petroleum environmental issues and solutions in exploration, production, refining and distribution (see Call for Presentations for a more complete listing of topics). Speakers and co-authors receive a discount on the registration fee. Presenting at the IPEC conference allows you to showcase your research, raise your company’s profile, create new business relationships, and receive national and international recognition.

We invite your company to join the prestigious list of organizations who have chosen to have their names associated with IPEC, one of the industry’s most highly-respected conferences focusing on the environmental concerns of industry. It is with the support of our corporate sponsors and exhibitors that this conference has grown to be one of the best of its type in the nation.


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Tag Archives: Larry Hogan

New Maryland Governor Gets “Ban Fracking” Message

By Elisabeth Hoffman and Margaret Flowers, www.popularresistance.org

When Gov. Larry Hogan took office Wednesday, protectors of Marylanders’ air, water, soil, health and climate were in attendance. By our presence and signs, we let the new governor know from Day 1 that fracking is not safe for Maryland.

ted imageDuring the inauguration, about 20 people stood in the cold and, eventually, the snow — including folks from BXE (Beyond Xtreme Energy), who turned the PA inauguration, Maryland’s  inauguration and a monthly FERC meeting Thursday into a 3-day roadshow.

We ended up in an area the state police (or other police agency) had designated for protesters. Officers said they were expecting protesters — and we were duly photographed by men with earpieces — but it was a good spot. We were behind the smallish crowd there for the inauguration, facing the stage (but not visible to the new governor because of trees). Many people had to walk by us, coming and going. We didn’t yell — we stood with our signs and answered questions. We were cordial, and we got some thumbs up and thanks.  As we were the only opposition around, several reporters and TV folks talked to us. Continue reading New Maryland Governor Gets “Ban Fracking” Message

Fracking: Snake Oil for Marylanders

Fracking_MD_skeletonsBy Elisabeth Hoffman, ClimateHoward

We have until Feb. 9 to tell the state’s Department of the Environment (MDE) what we think of proposed regulations for fracking in Maryland. And we have only to look at the “assumptions” listed in the regulations to know they are little more than snake oil, offering no protections from this industry.

Here are three key assumption used for these regulations:

E(1).  “There will be positive economic impacts to environmental consultants and laboratories for the additional work that will be required by the regulations.”

Of course, we will also see “positive economic impacts” for physicians who treat people complaining of rashes, headaches, shortness of breath or hair loss. As some of the chemicals used in fracking and the emissions from well pads and compressors are known endocrine disrupters and carcinogens, we might years hence also see “positive economic impacts” for oncologists or hospitals treating babies with birth defects. These regulations are positive only in the sense that hurricanes are positive for builders and car crashes are positive for lawyers. Continue reading Fracking: Snake Oil for Marylanders


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NEW VIDEO: “Read My Lips” by King Deco

giphy24Brooklyn based Jordanian born artist King Deco fuses indie pop and elements of her Middle Eastern background to create music that’s truly global in scope.
After releasing her empowering anthem “Read My Lips” earlier this fall, King Deco fully welcomes listeners into the Decosphere with visuals for the track. Co-directed by the singer and Aaron Dean, the video is a swirling kaleidoscope of colors, vivid imagery and interloping scenes that embody King Deco’s world.
“I grew up in Jordan, a small monarchy in the middle of a desert, with remnants of the Roman Empire sprinkled throughout the country,” Deco says about the video. “It’s left me fascinated with the aesthetics of ancient empires, so I tried to express that in the ‘RML’ video through textures and architecture that convey regality. There are also a lot of underwater landscapes and aquatic tones, reflections of the fact that Jordan endured a severe drought while I was growing up. While spiraling through different age-old empires and water worlds, I also filled the video with hidden quotes and subtle references to famous art pieces that speak to some of the larger themes running through my music: themes of empowerment, strong women and the idea of breaking free.”

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Animal Index by Hiroshi Sasagawa

Cute as hell little dividers for your books
20.00 € *

Please select a variant

If you love books just as much as we do, then you'll have a vast selection of all kinds of literature, from the obscure to the factual, the weird to the romantic and so on. How do you keep track of all your topics that are undoubtedly all in one shelf? You'll need dividers, right? Right! That's where this goodie comes in.

3 lovely divider sets, always front and back shaped either like a Giraffe, a Deer or a little Piggy. Just slide them between your books and within an instant it looks as if the little guys are peeping out of or disappearing into, your books...

Lovely, just lovely...

Design: Hiroshi Sasagawa
In the box: 2 Indexes per package (front and back of animal)
GIRAFFE: Head: 21.5cm W x 30.7cm H / Tail: 15.6cm W x 19.5cm H.
REINDEER: Head: 18.6cm W x 21.7cm H / Tail: 20cm W x 21.3cm H.
PIG: Head: 19.5cm W x 18.4cm H / Tail: 16cm W x 19.5cm H.

Designer Hiroshi Sasagawa Brand +d
Origin Japan

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Utterly delicious goodness going on with this tomato and white bean stew.

Think of this as a bed if you will, for pan fried polenta, grilled halloumi or baking with feta. Or eat as is.

Do y’aw thang, the basic stew is vegan as it is.

15 mins | serves 2 | vee easy

1.5 tbsp olive oil
4 banana shallots, peeled, halved lengthways and sliced
2 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
3 sprigs thyme, leaves only

200g cherry tomatoes
1 tbsp baby capers

150ml veg stock
400g tin cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
basil leaves, shredded
sea salt and black pepper

Heat the oil in a decent sized frying pan and gently cook the shallots for 6-7 mins until really soft. Add the garlic for the last few seconds of this cooking time, then stir in the tomatoes and baby capers to get the tomatoes coated.

Add the stock and beans and simmer for another 7 mins or there abouts, until the tomatoes start to burst.

Stir most of the basil through, season and taste. Serve with more basil on top.

A paired back (and veegs) version of Bon Appétit’s white beans with tomatoes and spinach, and very summery it is too.


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Corn And Black Bean BBQ Pizza

Until recently, the idea of making my own pizza seemed scary and complex. That was, until I discovered Trader Joe’s ready to bake pizza dough. Less than $2 a package, this delicious crust is easy to work with and goes well with almost any topping. For a summery twist on this American staple food, I switched out the tomato sauce for BBQ, and topped it with fresh avocado slices. This is a simple recipe that will be sure to impress your guests!

Continue reading