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China's state nuclear energy giant completes deal with Malaysian firm to buy clean energy assets

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Malaysia's state investment company 1MDB said Wednesday that it had completed a deal with China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN) to sell its energy assets to one of China's leading clean energy companies.

Under an equity purchase agreement signed last year, CGN agreed to buy 100 percent of 1MDB's ownership in all its energy assets, including 13 clean energy projects scattered in Malaysia, Egypt, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates (UAE), etc.

1MDB said in a statement that following satisfaction of all conditions precedent, the agreement was successfully completed on Wednesday. Endit

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The Neighborhoods

Dutchtown & Gravois Park

Dutchtown is one of the largest neighborhoods in the city of St. Louis. Located on the south side, Dutchtown’s general boundaries are defined as Chippewa St. on the North, the Union Pacific Railroad to the West, Walsh St. on the South, then Compton to Meramec to Jefferson on the South and East. Gravois Park borders Dutchtown to the north, with the following boundaries: Cherokee St. on the North, Jefferson on the East, Chippewa St. on the South, and S. Grand and Gravois to the West and Northwest.

With a population of close to 16,000 people, Dutchtown also has an above average youth population compared to the city as a whole. Gravois Park is comprised of over 5,200 residents, with over 1/3 under age 18. These neighborhoods are densely populated and in close proximity to a wide range of anchors and institutions.

Within or nearby the neighborhood boundaries you’ll find Marquette Park, the home of Dunn-Marquette Recreation Center (including a public outdoor swimming pool!), the Thomas Dunn Learning Center, Ted Drewes Frozen Custard, the Cherokee Street commercial district, St. Alexius Hospital, and Intersect Art Center.

Not far from highway 55 and 44, it is quick and easy to get anywhere in the metro area (including the Metro East) very quickly. From your home in Chippewa Park, you’ll be very close to these area amenities:

  • Airport: 22 minutes
  • Forest Park: 16 minutes
  • Downtown: 10 minutes
  • Grant’s Farm: 19 minutes
  • Scott AFB: 32 minutes
  • The Galleria Shopping Mall: 20 minutes
Dutchtown and Gravois Park Neighborhoods in St. Louis
Dutchtown and Gravois Park Neighborhoods in St. Louis

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Chubby And Fat Home Page
Fat Young Blonde Toy Masturbation
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text:
Tareq Salahi stepped

Why? Because vaginal lubrication often isn’t enough all by itself in term of lubrication in most cases. So lube helps increase the lubrication therefore lessen the friction which can result in things feeling a whole lot more comfortable and smoother for a lot of people. Vaginal lubrication generally tends too to dry out fast..

If you do have vibrators to be outside, remember to drink lots of water and try and stay in the shade. If you have elderly neighbors who don’t have air conditioning, try and check in on them. We’re hoping the 1,400 residents in NE and SE who lost power early Tuesday morning will have it back soon.

So, it’s important to be honest with yourself about your STI risks when considering an IUD, particularly in the three weeks after insertion. If you know that you can be sure to back up with condoms and be assertive with partners about doing so, you’re good. Or, if you are as sure as anyone can be that you are in a mutually monogamous, long term relationship where you both have screened clear for infections, okie dokie.

Geniessen Sie vielfltige Vergngen mit dem Analplug, den Liebeskugeln oder auch dem G Punkt Vibrator OhMiBod. Einige der OhMiBod Spielzeuge stimulieren mit Musik. Verbinden Sie sie mit Ihrem iPhone oder einer beliebigen Audioquelle und sie werden im Rhythmus und der Intensitt der Musik vibrieren..

The lingerie featured in this movie is mostly push up bras and lace panties. There are some thongs and a couple chemise/babydolls, but it’s mostly just bras and panties. The women always get changed in very high heels, and the women always wear the lingerie for sex as well.

There was the time he commented onthen 23 year old Kelly Clarkson’s “hot new look”in an interview meant to focus on her new album. “Well, I’m back from vacation and you got my attention,” he told her when she questioned him about it. Seen a lot of you lately.” (He went on to ask Hathaway if there was a “lesson learned” from the incident, insinuating that she should adjust her behavior moving forward,instead of the paparazzi.).

It could be submission, or dominance, or chocolate. Whatever it is, I want it to make me feel special, unique, wanted. https://www.vibratorsdildosandsextoys.com I want it to wash out all the other claims on my attention, my heart, my desire. We are all about “Pleasure” at Duncan Charles Designs and with the addition of our new ceramic toy you can share in that too! This is a one of a kind ceramic dildo that once again shows the skill of ceramist Dariusz Napiorkowski and our dedication to taking the design and function of ceramic to new levels. The “Pleasure” is in a progressive ball design that provides smooth, g spot,clitoral or anal stimulation. Colors available or Black/Red and comes with leather storage pouch and Czech crystal accent..

My wife can keep those going for several minutes but once it over she does need a short break to her clit cool before going for more but she does go for more. Usually by climbing up in the cowgirl position riding me for 1 3 more orgasms with my shaft hitting her a spot. My wife was the same way until she learned to have g spot orgasms.

And now, here we are. History will reflect that it was Nov. 24, 2009, when Michaele and Tareq Salahi stepped into the Erwin Gomez Salon Spa of Georgetown, as we see them do here, with Michaele hugs for everyone. The color is a deep, although not dark, shade of blue with a touch of green. It reminds me of the Caribbean Ocean. When it arrived and I first saw the color, I could not help but daydream for a moment about that Caribbean cruise we all need and want to take with our partners!!! Be sure to book a room with a balcony trust me, you’ll be glad you did! The material is lace, satin and cotton (crotch) and has some stretch to it, but you need to size carefully.

My Zeppelin Lounger (in purple microfiber) is 7.5 ft long. My husband is 5 and I 5 and I think the length is perfect for us. The Zeppelin comes in diameters of 7 and 8 Unless you really tiny, or your room is small, I would recommend the 8 to make sure you have plenty of room if you using it as a bed.

The people you date may or may not judge you for being submissive and kinky in the bedroom, that’s true I won’t pretend no one will judge you. Dating is hard, and putting yourself out there with your desires is a vulnerable position. But remember: vulnerability comes from strength, not weakness.

And for massages, it lasts for quite a while, too! You can get a nice, 30 minute massage without having to reapply. When you’re done, you don’t even have to wash it off! The formula is made of some awesome skin conditioners, so it’ll just make you super smooth and soft without being a sticky mess. If you do want to wash it off, just hop in the shower.


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1532/33, Jun 241558-15881588, Sep 4
an English nobleman and the favourite and close friend of Elizabeth I's, from her first year on the throne until his death. He was a suitor for the queen's hand for many years. was one of Elizabeth's leading statesmen, involved in domestic as well as foreign politics alongside William Cecil and Francis Walsingham. Although he refused to be married to Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, Dudley was for a long time relatively sympathetic to her until, from the mid-1580s, he strongly advocated for her execution. As patron of the Puritan movement, he supported non-conforming preachers but tried to mediate between them and the bishops of the Church of England. A champion also of the international Protestant cause, he led the English campaign in support of the Dutch Revolt (1585–87).
 Gallery (1)

 Timeline (4)
09/29/1564-Robert Dudley becomes earl of Leicester
12/20/1585-English fleet and earl Robert Dudley reach Vlissingen
02/04/1586-Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, becomes governor of Netherlands
12/17/1587-Earl of Leicester Robert Dudley's army leaves Netherlands
 Mentions (1)
Sir Robert Dudley [2]
     ***** no match in text
Robert Dudley [1]1532/33, Jun 241558
15881588, Sep 4

Jean de Beaugueunknown1540
 a French soldier who served in Scotland in the 1540s during the war of the Rough Wooing. He wrote...
Anne de Montmorency1493, Mar 151515
15671567, Nov 12
 a French soldier, statesman and diplomat. He became Marshal of France and Constable of France. Wh...
Lamoral of Egmont1522, Nov 181542
15681568, Jun 5
 a general and statesman in the Spanish Netherlands just before the start of the Eighty Years' War...
Matsura Takanobu15291550
15691599, Apr 1
  a 16th-century Japanese samurai and 25th hereditary lord of the Matsura clan of Hirado. He was o...
Juan Perez de Zurita15161536
15791595 ca
 a Spanish Conquistador. In 1536 he began his military career. In 1548 he was in Granada and in 15...
Alonso de Contrerasunknown1580
 a Spanish sailor (captain of a frigate), soldier (captain of infantry and then of cavalry), priva...
Fernando Alvarez de Toledo1507, Oct 291524
15821582, Dec 11
 a Spanish noble, general, and diplomat. He was titled the 3rd Duke of Alba de Tormes, 4th Marquis...
Sir Philip Sidney1554, Nov 301572
15861586, Oct 17
 an English poet, courtier, scholar, and soldier, who is remembered as one of the most prominent f...
Christopher Carleill1551 ca1573
 an English military and naval commander. In 1588, he was appointed constable of Carrickfergus, Co...
Miguel de Cervantes1547, Sep 291569
16161616, Apr 22
 a Spanish writer who is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language and one of...
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All material on this website © copyright 2009-21 by Colonial Sense, except where otherwise indicated.


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Happy Valley Anti-flooding works completed

Happy Valley Anti-flooding works completed

The Happy Valley Underground Stormwater Storage Scheme came into full operation today, boosting flooding protection in Happy Valley and Wan Chai.

Officiating at the launch ceremony, Financial Secretary Paul Chan said the scheme was completed a year ahead of schedule, adding earlier completion and other cost-saving measures have cut construction costs by $60 million.

The cost of the project totalled $1.07 billion.

Construction for the stormwater storage tank underneath the Happy Valley Recreation Ground started in 2012.

The storage tank has a capacity of 60,000 cubic metres, equivalent to 24 standard swimming pools.

It can temporarily store the stormwater runoff collected during heavy rainstorms to reduce flooding risk.

The scheme was implemented in two phases and the first phase started in 2015.

During a black rainstorm in October 2016, the facilities prevented the Happy Valley Recreation Ground and racecourse from being flooded.

← Delay in link project being tackled HNA Group snaps up fourth Kai Tak site →

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Dick Without A Hole (Spear & Jackson No. 3 Mix)

Tuesday 29 December 2015

I started making a more serious video over the Christmas break but had to stop when it turned out that some essential material, which I was dead certain was in my desk drawer, was either missing, in storage somewhere, or lost. Instead, I made this.

Dick Without A Hole

“Hello, Yes, Hello” – Brion Gysin
“Did Dick?” – Graham Kennedy
“Dick Did!” – Ugly Dave Gray
“Why are people ringing telling me jokes?” – Bob Byrne

Bob the late-night talkback radio host is taking your calls on the open line about the issues of the day that matter to you, and our next caller is Gene. Gene wants to ask Bob a riddle. Bob doesn’t get it. Moving right along: Peter is next on the line. Peter also wants to ask Bob a riddle. Bob doesn’t know the answer, but Peter won’t tell him! Perplexed, Bob takes Phyllis’ call and asks her Peter’s riddle, but Phyllis just wants to hear Gene’s riddle again…

Dick Without A Hole was inspired by my love for the genteel stupidity of talk radio in Adelaide last century. The hosts craved the urgency and confrontation of shock jocks in other parts of the world but everyone in Adelaide, announcers and callers alike, were just too nice to carry it off. I still have a few cassettes, somewhere, of some of the better sessions, particularly the 9pm to midnight shift when the demographic got drunk and doddery.

This playful little dance of fumbled verbal exchanges and missed punchlines comes from one of those surviving tapes. Set to a cheerful, semi-funky shuffle, our four protagonists juggle the two dud gags back and forth, never grasping them yet never quite letting them drop. I find that their shared confusion in joke-telling gives a satisfying sense of mystery to this simple yet intractable form of social interaction. Their ritual is consecrated by the hallowed incantation of Messrs Kennedy and Gray, the two Magi of mid-seventies Australian comedy.

Dick Without A Hole (Red Detachment Of Women Mix) made its public debut at John Beagles’ and Graham Ramsay’s Museum Magogo in Glasgow, 1999. After that it toured to PB Gallery in Melbourne, and was revived in 2002 for the Piped Music series at The Physics Room in Christchurch – more specifically, in the toilets of The Physics Room.

For Christmas 2015 I’ve made a video version with a new, improved Spear & Jackson No. 3 Mix. Now with the ipad/smartphone/gaming console of your choice, you too can enjoy Dick Without A Hole in the comfort of your own toilet. For best results, leave it playing on a continuous loop.

LCMF 2015, first three days real quick

Monday 14 December 2015

I’ve spent the last three nights at the London Contemporary Music Festival and plan to spend the next four there, too. No time to put any of these thoughts into a coherent form, so this will have to do.

It’s an incredibly ambitious programme, with an eclectic array of big names and obscurities. The venue’s pretty cool and allows for acts to follow each other pretty much immediately without longueurs.

Friday night didn’t come off. Very short sets for live electronic musicians Tom Mudd and John Wall didn’t allow them enough time to get going. Other pieces tended to be awkward, self-conscious exercises in performance art, which was a bit of a downer. Sets by Shelley Parker and Visionist suffered from being dance music freeze-dried as art.

Saturday was great, focusing on composers who are from or passed through California. Pauline Oliveros and Morton Subotnick each got to noodle around and soak up the acclaim they deserve. Some old favourites (Cowell, Cage), a couple of twists (Terry Riley’s Keyboard Study No. 2, Otis O’Solomon reciting poetry). The highlight was the UK premiere of Catherine Lamb’s duo for bassoongrand bass recorder and (microtonally-intoned) cello, Frames.

It was good to hear Maggie Payne getting some exposure, alongside the Carl Stone piece. I’m still not sure exactly what the fuss is about John Luther Adams.

The space is huge, benches and standing room. There is a cash bar in the adjoining room. Not everything played (e.g. Lamb) is amplified. Everyone keeps quiet and pays attention. Ellen Fullman’s long string instrument was set up in advance, stretching diagonally across the floor. Staff and punters do a sterling job of keeping anyone from falling into it.

Wednesday started with Ellen Fullman premiering a new work, The Watch Reprise. Copies of the score are dotted along the floor for reference as she walks back and forth playing the strings. The tuning system gets progressively crazier; in this cavernous room the bass sub-harmonics come out particularly strong.

Bryn Harrison’s Repetitions in Extended Time is another disorientating labyrinth of interweaving patterns. For forty-five minutes the instruments act as if alone, yet always rubbing up against each other in a passive-aggressive state of forced co-existence. Imagine a late Feldman piece, or the opening of Haas’ in vain, boiled down into an absurdist drama.

Tim Etchells repeats pithy phrases, turning them over like Wittgenstein overhearing gossip on a bus, while Aisha Orazbayeva taps and scrapes away at her violin. This is dumb, I think. But it’s an improvisation, of sorts, I remind myself. A weird kind of improvisation, so I kind of like it. The violin sounds nice, even though it’s making the most meagre of gestures. Maybe the words mean more by the sounds than by what they say, too. I try to listen to it differently, put them together. I’ll need to hear it again.

This Is The New Music: Chain Of Ponds

Wednesday 9 December 2015

I’ve got a new album of music up on Bandcamp, titled Chain of Ponds.

It’s the culmination of various experiments I’ve made over the years using digital feedback synthesis, and I’m finally getting results I find fully satisfactory. I like the textural richness that can be brought out of something so conceptually neat. It’s kind of harsh, but kind of pastoral, to my ears.

You can stream it below, buy it cheap, or contact me (email, direct message on Twitter etc.) and I might still have some free download codes to email you.

Three Days in Huddersfield (Part Two of Two)

Friday 4 December 2015

Part One is here. If you want a better of what was actually happening at the HCMF this year, go over to 5:4 for detailed reviews of practically everything.

I arrived in Huddersfield just in time to hear the Quatuor Bozzini play Jürg Frey’s second and third string quartets. Both nearly half-an-hour long, the second quartet was composed over the turn of the century, the third a decade later. The second quartet sustains a constant mood and method – hushed, isolated chords are played in unison, with recurring harmonies partially obscured by the whispering of the bows against the strings. We’re back in the musical world of toying with extremes.

The third quartet reveals a clear and immediate contrast, with Frey’s recent style. It’s almost “classical music”, albeit on its own terms, within a very attenuated space. Isolated chords appear again, but speaking more fully. More prevalent are the passages of harmonic sequences. Some counterpoint emerges, through long-held notes sustained over an accompaniment of alternating chords. There is phrasing and variations in dynamics, from soft to very soft. Every now and then, a long-held chord acts like a cadence by means of its simple consistency, with tiny variations in timbre and balance becoming perceptible. All this variety suggests a teleology, a functional structure, but the start and the end sound arbitrary – as indeed does all of the middle. Like Morton Feldman, Frey has become a master of non-functional harmony.

Frey’s found a path of moderation away from some of the extremes of his earlier music. Moderation is too often seen as a bad thing in itself, a deviation from a pure ideal*. The night after hearing Jakob Ullmann’s solo IV, I was at the premiere of his 90-minute sort-of concerto la segunda canción del ángel desaparecido. Once again, I find myself wondering if I’m listening to this the right way. It’s always disturbing when an artist delivers you something other than what you expect. Hearing Ullman’s Son Imaginaire III at Huddersfield a couple of years ago was a concert-going experience that still looms large in my memory. la segunda canción was a surprising moderation of his usual aesthetic, albeit again within a narrow range. Two percussionists did a superb job of adding detail and texture without disrupting the typically fragile surface of Ullmann’s music. Even more surprising was the distinct layering of different dynamics, with a trio of winds (bassoon, basset horn, flute) sounding out above the string quintet. For Ullmann, it was almost strident. The strings would periodically burst into soft, agitated chatter.

I had problems listening to this. The difference in dynamics seemed to separate out the winds and strings too much, with little interplay between the two groups (which were also physically separated, horizontally and vertically). Too often the strings sounded like accompaniment, and when the winds were silent the material they had to play increasingly sounded repetitive and dull. It may have been just because I was hoping to hear something else, more of what I was used to. Again, I got worried I was listening the wrong way.

* What’s really disturbing is an apparent narrowing of aesthetic parameters, where approaching an extreme seems like the only way out of the current impasse. Moving away from an extreme comes across as a pulled punch, like the more famous minimalist composers who were unable to develop their signature style beyond diluting it. Listening to the more “conventional” compositions at the HCMF, there’s a general sense of being trapped where expansion beyond the new seems to be just like a return to the old. (Might expand on this later.**)

** This paragraph was jotted down after a few quick whiskies between gigs, as fortification against the weather.

Three Days in Huddersfield (Part One of Two)

Wednesday 2 December 2015

First night in Huddersfield for the HCMF I went to the first UK performance of La Monte Young’s The Melodic Version (1984) of The Second Dream of The High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer from The Four Dreams of China (1962), which seems a good place to start as a point of reference; not just for the music prominently featured throughout the festival, but also an overt attempt to create an idealised context for reception of such music. As well as the incense and the specially prepared lighting by Marian Zazeela, there were instructions for audience behaviour (no applause) and a sheaf of briefing notes with extensive descriptions of the music, related pieces of music and the thinking behind such music. There wasn’t time to read all the notes before the music started but luckily we weren’t set a test on it afterwards. You could possibly read the notes while the music played although I expect this would be frowned upon.

Those elements that Young introduced into modern music – stasis, non-linear time, a deep awareness of acoustic and psychoacoustic phenomena – reappeared throughout the festival this year. With it, the need for different ways of listening arise. Young addresses this explicitly, while other composers raise it in less direct, but not necessarily more subtle ways.

The Huddersfield punters encountered musical extremes. The premiere of Jakob Ullmann’s solo IV for double bass was almost inaudible, by design. Almost like an Onkyo performance, a thirty-minute silence with only the lightest of inflections, allowing a sublime subtlety to emerge, of the type that John Cage admired in Robert Rauschenberg’s white paintings. All through the trip I wondered if my ears were working right, or if my brain was getting in the way. Can the people up the back hear anything at all? Bassist Dominic Lash ekes out each tiny sound with such care and tenderness, but does the whole thing come across as slightly precious? Of the half-dozen or so works of Ullmann’s music I’ve encountered, this seemed the one closest to relying on a conceptual basis over a musical one.

Later that same day I heard Zbigniew Karkowski’s Fluster for solo electric bass with electronic processing. Earplugs are offered to the punters, signs are posted warning it will be loud. It is. And piercing, or otherwise penetrating. Karkowski’s image seems so much like a caricature, pictured in the programme pointing a handgun, making loud, abrasive noise, railing against “bullshit”. Fluster forces the listener to confront three successive fronts of sound as brute force: a low bass that rattles the speakers, the listener, the building; a relentless blast of white noise; a shrill chatter and screech of high-pitched static. It all goes on for a while, but time has no function here other than to establish the sounds’ physical presence. Virtuoso bassist Kasper Toeplitz becomes increasingly agitated by the demands of executing such precise actions to produce seemingly indifferent noise. The crackle of distorting speaker cones and buzzing of roof beams must be part of the music but who knows for sure? There’s a welter of tiny details within the high-pitched noise, but how much of it is really there and how much of it just the ears struggling to keep up? Extreme loudness guarantees an immediate visceral shock which can soon fade, but Karkowski’s music is not so superficial. The real shock is that people haven’t yet worked out how they are meant to listen to it, or whether in fact they heard it at all, behind all the noise.

This post has already gone on longer than I expected about less than I wanted to say, so I’ll post the rest of it later.

Trailer for December

Monday 30 November 2015

Coming up this week: three days of listening to music of extremes at Huddersfield last week. Also, I’m putting out some new music at last.

Visible cracks, real and illusory

Sunday 15 November 2015

(Originally posted on 6 February 2008.)

As has been proved many times before, it is foolish to pass judgement on a work of art before seeing it for yourself. I finally saw Doris Salcedo’s Shibboleth at the Tate Modern.

There has been plenty of discussion about the artwork since it was first installed – what it means, how it was made, whether or not it’s any good – so much that it is impossible to not be aware of its existence, nor of what the work consists of. (It’s a crack running the length of the floor in the Tate’s Turbine Hall, growing wider and deeper as it descends from one end to the other.) You could picture the entire installation in your head, except for one little detail that I’ve never heard mentioned when people discuss their visits to see it. At close range, the crack is revealed to be an obvious fabrication, with no attempt to conceal the wire forms embedded in the concrete.

For the weekend crowds peering inside its depths, or hopping back and forth over it, Shibboleth may as well be invisible if its success depends on the interpretation given to it by the artist and the museum:

In particular, Salcedo is addressing a long legacy of racism and colonialism that underlies the modern world. ‘The history of racism’, Salcedo writes, ‘runs parallel to the history of modernity, and is its untold dark side’. … In breaking open the floor of the museum, Salcedo is exposing a fracture in modernity itself. Her work encourages us to confront uncomfortable truths about our history and about ourselves with absolute candidness, and without self-deception.

Even ignoring the fact that the history of racism runs parallel to the history of everything, it’s hard not to read this as a fatuous piece of funding-speak. You don’t have to doubt Salcedo’s personal background and beliefs that support her art to see that her public interpretation of her own art reduces Shibboleth to a one-liner, simplistic and ineffectual. The installation is as much a tourist attraction as the building that houses it. Salcedo may be “keen to remind us” of “the existence of a huge socially excluded underclass”, but Shibboleth, in this context, utterly fails to fulfil her intention.

(Strangely, for all her talk of schisms and exclusions, the only interpretations I’ve seen of the formative mesh in the crack have been either abstractly structural or overly symbolic. I would have thought it made an obvious point that apparently natural divisions in race or religion turn out under closer scrutiny to be artificial, human constructs. Then the art could at least function in its own way as a neat little metaphor, if little more.)

In fact, Salcedo makes out her installation to be less of a work of art than it really is, although its true power may be of a type she did not intend, or even recognise.

The immediate image conveyed by Shibboleth when seen plain, beguilingly forging its path of destruction through the crowds inevitably wandering the Turbine Hall, is not one of division but of entropy. Starting almost undetectable at the high end of the hall, it is allowed to progress, or rather deteriorate, along the floor unchecked until it has opened up into a real tripping hazard for visitors. The image of a cultural institution whose foundations have been permitted to shift, and so decay, is potent; but in the Western World of the early 21st century it speaks to a different dilemma than the artist intended.

The Tate’s claim that the crack “encourages us to confront uncomfortable truths about our history and about ourselves” isn’t exactly true. In truth, its presence embodies our culture’s current readiness to doubt itself, and to question its own origins, validity, and integrity – with little or no outside encouragement. The entropy was built into the system. This self-examination and picking apart of the social assumptions that underpin our culture could lead to renewal, or to disintegration. For a jaded society of sophisticates, the threat of destruction and disaster is extremely seductive. (As one reviewer says, “Salcedo’s cut is always varied and pleasurably violent. I’m not sure the pleasure is intended.”)

Salcedo’s professed aim to expose the dark side of modernity began within modernism itself in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. In 1949, Charles Olson reflected on the inability of modernism to cope with the fragmentary nature of reality – it is no coincidence he coined the word “post-modern” two years later – and wrote in his poem “The Kingfishers”:

When the attentions change / the jungle
leaps in
               even the stones are split
                                                       they rive

Postscript to John Cage and Counterpoint

Sunday 1 November 2015

I’ve made a small but vital amendment to yesterday’s post. I should have said “John Cage sucked at counterpoint,” not that he “sucks at counterpoint”. It may have been one of his personal weaknesses, but it did not carry over into his music. Thanks to Philip Thomas for pointing out this error, by tweeting to me that “I think almost all the music since 1951 is great counterpoint. Stuff on top of other stuff.”

I pretty much agree, and this actually gets to the point of what I was trying to say. Just going back to the Morton Feldman interview I quoted. Feldman also recites the “no feeling for harmony anecdote” and adds, “but like anybody else who had no interest in harmony, he found that which freed music from harmony. He found his Zen for polyphony” (my emphasis). Peter Gena replies, “The rhythmic structure aspect which allows sounds and silences” (ditto). Soon after, their exchange continues:

GENA: So if Duchamp really did free the mind from the eye, to that extent he moved away from craft and picked on ready-mades.

FELDMAN: Especially if you had two left hands, like Duchamp. I mean he was better with a ruler. Once he took up a ruler, he was fine.

GENA: Yes, he was interested in mechanical drawing. Accordingly, Cage talked about his terrible ear for harmony, and once he took up the ruler, as it were, which was time grids and rhythmic structures, it was wonderful. So Cage freed the sounds because he wanted to put them outside of the harmonic context.

FELDMAN: I didn’t bring up Schoenberg’s remark about John’s lack of interest in harmony to imply what you’re trying to say. I said that Duchamp picked up the ruler, not Cage.

GENA: What did Cage pick up?

FELDMAN: He picked up the eraser! He’s bluffing. He’s a Duchamp in Cagean ears. He’s bluffing. He has impeccable ears.

They continue talking about traditional harmony, but something doesn’t add up. Philip Thomas’ observation is that Cage’s counterpoint improves around the time he allowed fewer of his personal choices to determine the finer details of his music, through impersonal means and then through chance. As Cage commented in one of his lectures, “giving up counterpoint, one gets superimposition and, of course, a little counterpoint comes in of its own accord.”

This is also the time when Cage talked frequently about letting sounds be themselves, i.e. putting sounds “outside of the harmonic context”. By then he had been using his above-mentioned time grids and rhythmic structures for nearly 15 years. His mature works begin in the 1930s with his radical use of rhythm as a structural principle, instead of harmony. By the 1940s he had become known as “the percussion composer” (as he himself reminded us in his anecdotes). It would be a neat deflection, to focus people’s attention on harmony, or rather the lack of it, if you didn’t feel too secure in your ability to organise your sounds and silences in your stated rhythmic structure.

The ruler that Cage picked up, like Duchamp’s, was “giving up” and accepting that the less say they had in the detail of their work, the better it was. The best type of aesthetic decisions are not aesthetic decisions at all.

John Cage and the Big Lie

Saturday 31 October 2015

I certainly had no feeling for harmony, and Schoenberg thought that that would make it impossible for me to write music. He said, “You’ll come to a wall you won’t be able to get through.” I said, “Well then, I’ll beat my head against that wall.”

— John Cage, interview in Observer magazine (1982), repeated on several occasions

He’s bluffing. He has impeccable ears.

— Morton Feldman, in conversation with Peter Gena

I’ve wanted to get this off my chest for a while. People who get interested in John Cage almost immediately find out about him studying harmony with Schoenberg, and the above exchange between the two. It’s up there with the one about the anechoic chamber; he was always telling it…

… And because he was always talking about it, it’s always repeated in books, articles and essays about him; it would get raised as in issue in interviews for him to elaborate the point further. As it happened, Cage spent most of his career largely excluded from the public discourse surrounding “serious” music. Fortunately, his skills as a raconteur enabled him to establish a public persona. He was able to use this situation to his advantage: isolated from wider discussions about his musical context, he became his own leading critic by default. Twenty-three years since his death, he still effectively dictates how we interpret his life and work.

(William Burroughs is another example of this phenomenon, with an even greater emphasis on integrating his autobiography with his literary practice. In Burroughs’ case any critic analysing his writing is faced with the task of disentangling it from Burroughs’ own creation myth. Both Burroughs and Cage have been the subject of unsatisfying biographies, in which the author is constrained by the subject’s own well-established narrative structure. The biography cannot help but reiterate a series of events with which the fan is already familiar, or stray outside these bounds to portray a figure the reader does not recognise.)

I don’t have time to look up which critic noticed Cage’s repeated references to his piece The Perilous Night, written in 1944, the year of his “psychological crisis”. The critic observed that Cage was directing attention towards this piece, and away from more personally revealing works written around the same time, such as Four Walls. (The tangential references to a psychological crisis are another revealing omission.) More than shaping public perception of his biographical details, he influenced critical consideration of his own canon of key works.

Cage’s “no feeling for harmony” story is charmingly self-deprecating and firmly in the mould of the mid-century American caricature, disarmingly plain-spoken and determined. It also cunningly invites anyone who worked with him to point that his sense of harmony was, in fact, superb; and of course that is exactly what happened. Cage’s feeling for harmony is just fine, but it’s a bluff. He’s misdirecting you from his true technical weakness, the one with no anecdotes. I’ve never seen anyone mention this, so I’m going to point it out here:

John Cage sucks sucked at counterpoint. *

Lights Out

Tuesday 6 October 2015

Working on stuff with not much to report right now, so here’s a short video I made for the end of another summer, a few years ago.

Michael Vincent Waller: The South Shore

Tuesday 22 September 2015

I got a shock when I first put on this album. It was kindly sent to me by the composer. I opened the package to see an album from Phill Niblock‘s Experimental Intermedia label, cover art by Niblock, sleeve notes by “Blue” Gene Tyranny. Knowing nothing about Waller, all signs pointed to music that would be right up my alley: minimal (if not ascetic), with an underlying logic readily perceptible (if not rigorous). I hit play on track 1 and got mugged by something unambiguously… pretty.

Two CDs, 21 brief compositions of new chamber music, all with the same shamelessly “romantic textures”, to quote from the sleeve notes. It’s relentless, as if the double-length playing time is meant to reassure you that the sweet, modal harmonies and melodic fragments are truly guileless. The avowed simplicity and directness of intention and execution for each piece would like to be seen as disarming, but it put me on my guard. It’s like one of those cultural games that Nabokov played in his novels: the more you know about the subject, the worse you get entangled in his snares.

Those sleeve notes open by describing Waller’s music as “a welcome and rare alternative to the tempo and noise of modern life…. Waller’s music convinces us by its honest emotion, which avoids any artifice that would dramatically pull us toward some effect.” As I listened to each piece I kept waiting for the angle to emerge, the conceptual scare quotes. It didn’t happen. The initial impulse is to compare the music to Howard Skempton’s, but there’s a tangible difference. Skempton also writes tonal or modal miniatures, but his music is reduced to the barest essentials. Waller’s music is clearly informed by the past few decades of “minimalist composers” and the “new tonality” but even in this restricted scale of composition there’s always a suggestion of something grander, a romantic excessiveness of expression.

It’s a dangerous aesthetic no-man’s-land in which Waller has staked out his musical territory, where artistic merit lives or dies by the sureness of the artist’s grip on prevailing aesthetic tastes. At this time such an enterprise seems so foolhardy that I kept my ears pricked for the slightest lapse of sincerity, some cultural or ironic distancing. Tyranny’s notes for each piece seem to invite a disingenuous reading: “I do feel the almost neo-Baroque sensation taking me back to my own trips across Italy.” “There seems to be a mixed emotion in this piece that hints at a troubled memory arising in the morning.” The word “uplifting” is used to describe at least two pieces. We would appear to have entered a post-postmodern aesthetic, of new sincerity.

Other reviews have described this album as gentle, poetic, lyrically beautiful. I found myself listening to music that teetered on a knife edge, threatening to slip at any moment from sweet clarity to trite sentimentality. The starkest moments are usually the most effective: the concluding “Arbitrage” pieces for solo clarinet and bass clarinet with gongs, for example. The Variations for Quintet with its canons and repetitions are pleasingly reminiscent of some of John Cage’s beguilingly blank music from the mid to late 1940s.

Of course, Cage at that time was struggling with finding his true compositional voice. Much like e. e. cummings, whose poetry Cage occasionally set to music, his attempts at disarming directness could sometimes lapse into fey affectation. This happens in some pieces in this collection, such as the piano solo Pasticcio per meno è più, which sounds a little ingratiating. It will be interesting to hear how Waller’s music develops and whether increased confidence in his craft will make his music more self-effacing or more extroverted.

I keep listening for the angle, trying to trip it up, catch it out. Maybe I want a darker undercurrent to throw the lighter shades into relief. Maybe I’m too cynical, too sophisticated in the pejorative sense.

Control Next Week

Thursday 3 September 2015

Next week I’m presenting a new work as part of a group show, Control, curated by Tom Mudd. It’s a sound installation: one knob, one speaker. The show

attempts to call attention to the role that the musical artefacts play in developing musical ideas. A single dial is connected to a single speaker, but the relationship between the two is not fixed; it flits between a range of possibilities composed by a diverse range of artists.

How do people interact with controls? It depends on the sorts of feedback available to the user – tactile, visual, audible – besides the results or consequences of the controller itself. Computer controls make this problem more obvious: feedback can be nonexistent, apparently independent of action, or present only as a deliberately programmed artefact.

Making digitally-controlled music therefore presents a dilemma. Control is either so direct and precise that all the subtle complexities are eliminated, or obfuscated to introduce uncertainty. Working with an obfuscated system should ideally be a responsive, performative activity; but it can easily become a purely reactive experience.

For my contribution, the knob controls two attributes of a pure sine tone: its pitch and its harmonic treatment. The relationship between the two is simple but it isn’t always clear, thanks to a delay built into the system. Also, there’s a gate which may or may not let each sound come through. A relationship between the knob and the speaker can be intuited, but the nature of the relationship isn’t immediately, or ever, obvious.

This is a microcosm of my dilemma when developing my own system of controls for making live electronic music with computers, but enough about me. Control launches next week at Oto Project Space as part of the gig on Wednesday 9 September 2015, and then is on from 10 to 13 September, from 1 to 9 pm each day. (Free entry.)

Hey nerdboy, you suck! A brief consideration of laptop gigs.

Monday 31 August 2015

(The original version of this text was written for the Collected Collaborations show at Monash University Museum of Art in 2011.)

First, I want to thank whoever it was who once perfectly described laptop performers as having the stage presence of “bored men checking their email”. This is one of the more important reasons why I avoided giving live performances with computers for many years.

Of course, with most experimental musicians being awkward, poorly-socialised geek boys, your typical underground new music gig wasn’t much livelier before computers became affordable, but at least the equipment available at the time enforced a certain minimum of onstage activity.

The role and aesthetics of the theatrical (but not dramatic) element of new music performance don’t get discussed much. I was once on a panel talk with several other experimental musicians, which drifted onto this topic and stayed there for the rest of the session. Nothing much was agreed, except that there are no real models to work from, and everyone has to pretty much work out their own methods for themselves. And, more importantly, that VJs are a blight upon the earth.

What was most interesting to learn was that so many musicians, even though you wouldn’t think it to watch them, are conscious of the visual aspect of their gigs. They may also, however, be at a loss as to what they can do to help it.

Is there a way to be theatrically engaging while using a laptop? I don’t necessarily mean flailing or histrionics, I’m talking about the performer affirming a physical presence in relation to the audience.

String Quartet No. 2 (Canon in Beta) was the first piece I performed live on a laptop computer. My gestures in playing this piece emphasised how little movement or exertion is needed to play on a computer, moving attention instead to concentration and decisiveness. Since then, I’ve treated the computer as a “black box” which performs autonomously. My contribution as a performer is through an analogue component of the performance setup.

I’m now learning to use a MIDI controller to have some input with this autonomous, computerised system. The trick is for me to make it a reactive interface: instead of determining the attributes of the music, I can only respond to situations presented by the computer. The intention is to make the performer’s role closer to that of a listener.

There is also the question of how the performer may interact with the controls. This is a major consideration for Tom Mudd’s Control installation, to which I have contributed a composition and which opens next week. I’ll talk about this issue in my next post.

This Is The New Music: German For Bad Luck (work in progress)

Saturday 22 August 2015

It’s been a while since I posted any new music. The Chain Of Ponds project is in its final stages and I hope will be released soon, in some form or other. In the meantime, here’s an excerpt from another work in progress, German For Bad Luck (Variations on a Theme of Arnold Schoenberg).

The piece began as an attempt to reconcile several supposedly incompatible tendencies in 20th century music: serialism, minimal music i.e. drones, and microtonal tuning. German For Bad Luck is built from a scale of 13 notes to the octave instead of the usual twelve, using tuning ratios from just intonation instead of boring old equal temperament. These notes are arranged into a row. Five different drones play the row simultaneously, but with each one starting on a different note.

Each of the first notes played is held for a long time. Each of the long notes has its own specified duration, determined by its pitch. At the end of each long note, the drone quickly cycles through the entire row until it reaches the next note in the sequence, and so holds that note for its specified long duration.

The piece is, in effect, a 13-note series that simply repeats through different rotations. The result is a series of chords which transform by one note at a time. These transitions are relatively brief, leaving the bulk of the music to stable drones. The note row is composed so that each of these stable chords tends to alternate between ‘consonant’ and ‘dissonant’ harmonies.

Confession: I have a problem with drones, at least when I make them. They sound too simple, too neat. Some element is needed to complicate things. The piece is therefore going to be pressed into service as the basis of an opera, on the apposite subject of Schoenberg’s triskaidekaphobia. I’m working on the libretto now.

Below you can hear an excerpt from the drone. This is the point where the first chord goes through its transition to the second.

Apartment House at 20

Wednesday 19 August 2015

The question is not whether or not what Cage is doing is art. I’m convinced that it will be art without even hearing the piece, only because he does it. The question is, and it is because of John we must ask this question: Is music an art form to begin with? Was it always show biz? And by show biz I mean Monteverdi…. What I mean by show biz is fantastic show biz. That a new piece of Boulez, perhaps, presented in a classy hall in Paris is like Sarah Bernhardt doing a monolog. Without the histrionics, of course. That’s what I mean. By holding the moment. By capturing the moment in every sense of the word.

Morton Feldman, in conversation with Peter Gena.

I often say to people I’m not interested in music, I’m interested in art. And I still believe that; I can point to a composer and say, “That’s an artist,” and I can point to someone else and say, “Well, they’re just a composer.”

Anton Lukoszevieze, in conversation with Robert Worby.

It’s probably this commitment to music as art that makes me go to Apartment House gigs whenever I can. I was going to say that it’s their commitment to playing unjustly-neglected composers, but sadly the state of the arty end of the music business often means the two are the same thing. I got to go to their 20th anniversary gig at Cafe Oto last month but never got around to writing about it. Luckily, the whole thing (almost*) is now on the BBC web site for the next month.

What struck me most at the time was how well the programme flowed, presenting diverse types of music with a strong defining character for the whole evening. The playing order is different on the radio but the strength of the music remains. Listening again, you can hear how each piece alternates between two extremes of musical language – the minimal and the seemingly anarchic. There’s a shared way of thinking behind each of these two extremes: the predominant compositional thought given to the organisation of material, the innovative use of structure and the careful handling of sonic materials to present them in a new light. As art, each piece touches the listener through its own intrinsic qualities without relying on a narrative, a mood, a subject, or other high-falutin’ appeals to sentimentality.

There’s a mix of new composers (Luiz Henrique Yudo, Jennifer Walshe), old stuff (John Cage) and revelations: a new chamber ensemble arrangement of Henning Christiansen’s fluxorum organum (different from the one I heard in Huddersfield in 2013) and George Maciunas played at least as well as Mozart. Maciunas, he’s supposed to be essential, right? Every textbook mentions him, but nobody plays him. He might as well be Josquin. (I’m reading that Feldman interview again. “This whole business of accessibility is a lot of baloney.”)

The radio show also plays a couple of pieces from that Apartment House CD of Maciunas’ music I wrote about early this year, so you get to hear that, too. You also get to hear composer Laurence Crane messing around with various found objects and Lore Lixenberg singing John Cage’s Aria together with his Concert for Piano and Orchestra – a particularly fine rendition of each.

* To recreate the full concert experience at home, break for a couple of intervals and play The Fall** while having a few drinks.

** First Brix era mostly, I think.


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Terrestrial Coupling Index

Determines the magnitude of coupling between soil moisture and surface fluxes using statistical techniques. Specifically, the terrestrial coupling index uses the daily slope of the soil moisture-surface flux relationship as weighted by the standard deviation in soil moisture to determine the degree to which soil moisture changes drive surface flux variability.

Quantifies the degree of coupling between soil moisture, and surface latent and sensible heat flux using a statistical method. One great advantage is that this metric largely resembles results found from phase 1 of the GLACE, but does not require multiple carefully constructed simulations (See Figure 1 from Dirmeyer 2011 compared to Figure 1 from Koster et al. 2004). This method typically requires daily data, but similar signals can be retrieved using monthly data. In general daily data with a long enough time record to return stable linear slopes is recommended.

Quantifies that atmospheric background state by the variable θBM and hBCL. Higher θBM and hBCL translate to drier, more stable atmospheric background state with respect to convection. Practically these variables put the local surface forcing within the context of the background state. See Figure 7 from Part I, and Figure 1 from Part 2<

A similar method can be applied to surface fluxes and boundary layer height and the lifting condensation level to return the atmospheric segment of coupling. Combining these two segments, the terrestrial and atmospheric segments, yields the two-legged coupling index that gives a measure of land-atmosphere coupling from a statistical perspective and guided by physical relationships. These coupling indices can be readily calculated from models and most reanalysis datasets. See Figure 1 from Dirmeyer et al. 2014

Required Input Data:

Needs surface fluxes (either sensible or latent heat flux depending on what coupling is being investigated) and soil moisture. These can be daily averages or monthly averages so long as the number of data points are large enough to produce stable statistical relationships.

Can work with the atmospheric leg of land-atmosphere coupling process chain as well so long as atmospheric variables are used (e.g. boundary layer height and/or lifted condensation level).

As this is a statistical technique all general caveats related to significance apply. This metric is guided by knowledge of that soil moisture may exerts some impact on surface fluxes, but note that this interpretation may not be correct when applied to monthly or seasonally averaged soil moisture and surface flux values. Additionally, correlations between soil moisture and surface fluxes are seasonally dependent so the terrestrial coupling parameter should be applied most broadly at the seasonal scale to avoid aliasing relationships that may emerge when applied to the annual averages.

Prototype Subroutine Call

subroutine terra_coupling ( dim2, ntim, soilm, flux, tcp, missing )

Required Input

*** Note: This subroutine simply calculates the standard deviation of soil moisture and multiplies it by the slope of flux-soilm and currently does not perform any significance testing of the relationship. This is currently left to the user, but there are plans to include a significance mask.

How to Calculate

Relevant Citations

Method Description

Dirmeyer, P. A. (2011), The terrestrial segment of soil moisture–climate coupling, Geophys. Res. Lett.,  38, L16702, doi:10.1029/2011GL048268

  Detailed Evaluation

Dirmeyer, P. A., Z. Wang, M. J. Mbuh, and H. E. Norton (2014), Intensified land surface control on boundary layer growth in a changing climate, Geophys. Res. Lett., 41, 1290–1294, doi:10.1002/2013GL058826


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Friday, September 3, 2010

It Finally Happened!

It took 3 weeks and 4 days, but I finally captured Alexander's smiles on camera. Adorable little smiles too!

My Handsome Little Guy is doing pretty good. I had him at the Pedi yesterday and he has gained a whole pound since birth. He now comes in at a whopping 8 pounds and 5 ounces. LOL!

The Princesses are still more than enjoying the addition to our little family and simply can't keep their hands off of him. :)

Donna. W said...

Don't you LOVE how the experts say babies don't smile until they're like two months old? Any mother knows better. IDIOT EXPERTS!

Anonymous said...

So cute! And I'm with Donna on this. It's only gas blah blah blah. Bull our babies smile and are extremely happy:)

Kaci said...

Sweet little boy!!

danette said...

btw, love your header pic :)


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ASP.NET Event Handler

Asp.Net bases on Events. These are actions that occur on objects such a mouse click on a button. Below is an example of some of the events available:

OnClick                                      Execute when a button is clicked
OnSelectedIndexChanged              Executes when an option in dropdownlist is selected
OnCheckChanged                         Executes when a checkbox or radiobutton are checked

When an event is triggered it requests a piece of program to be executed. If you want an email to be sent you must click on the send button, this is linked to a program that will send the email over the internet. These programs are called Event Handlers, they execute at an event’s request. Below is an example of pre-defined Event Handlers:

Page_Load                                     Executes when the page load
Page_Unload                                  Executes when the page is close

Subroutine: Sub program that can take data called parameters (optional) and execute a task. It does not return a value. Subroutines are used to define event handlers.

Sub AnyNameHere(info As String)

End Sub

An event handler must be declared as follow:

Sub BTN_Click(sender as Object, e as EventArgs)

End Sub

Note that the event handler passes two arguments; sender as Object represents the object raising the event. And e as EventArgs represents the data specific to the event which is being sent to the server (if any). This is called Event Argument.

To relate an Event to an Event Handler use the following syntax on the object that will raise the event:

<asp:button id=”btn” runat=”server” text=”Enter” OnClick=”BTN_Click()”/>

<script runat="server">
            sub Display(sender as object, e as EventArgs)
                        lbl.text = "some one has clicked on the button to show this message on a label"
            End sub
            sub Hide(sender as object, e as EventArgs)
                        lbl.text = " "
            End sub

<form runat="server">
            <asp:Label runat="server" ID="lbl"></asp:Label>
            <asp:Button runat="server" ID="BtnDisplay" Text="Show message" OnClick="Display"></asp:Button>
            <asp:Button runat="server" ID="BtnHide" Text="Hide Message" OnClick="Hide"></asp:Button>


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Monday, November 30, 2009

Money Card Holder

Hey Everyone,
My oldest niece and nephews want cash this year for Christmas. They are growing up too fast. It was only 14 years ago that my niece was a flower girl at my wedding and now she's learning how to drive.
Today's Gypsy Spot challenge was to create something with a snowman and/or snowflake. Well since I'm giving cash this year, I thought this challenge was a perfect time to make money card holders.

I love using UTEE (Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel) on my projects and not too long ago I found a great video tutorial at apieceofcraftdotcom on how to add glitter to UTEE. Her technique was on Prima flowers, but you can certainly do this on anything you cut out from your Cricut.

I'm sure you all need a video fix, so here you go.....

Thanks for watching and I hope to be back later this week with a Wild Card Series video.

Friday, November 20, 2009

Christmas Stocking Card

Hi Everyone, It feels like forever since I did a regular card video.

Todays project I used the Gypsy to weld 2 shapes together to make a card. I made a Santa card for the Gypsy Spot on Monday so I thought I would show you how make one. If you don't have the Gypsy you can do this with Design Studio as well. Enjoy!

Supplies: Gypsy (or Design Studio); Cricut Expression; Glue Glider Pro, Red and White Bazzill Cardstock, White Satin Ribbon-Stampin' Up!, Holiday Brad-Making Memories Tinsel Collection, Martha Stewart Crystal Glitter,

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Advent Calendar supplies video and giveaway

Happy Tuesday!
I had tons of requests for more info on my advent calendar that I made for the guest design spot over at Christmas with the Cricut. I decided the best was to do this was to make a video of supplies and a few tips.
Make sure you watch to the end for a little giveaway. To be entered to win just leave a comment on this post.

Advent Calendar Kit Supply List
2-Heavy Weight 4x5 Chipboard
2-My Minds Eye 4x5 pattern paper
12-Light weight top note shape chipboard
24-My Minds Eye top note shape pattern paper
16-Bazzill textured 6x6 cardstock (4 red, 4 green, 4 brown, 4 white)
2-Binder Rings
5-Extra Large antique copper eyelets
1-medium brown brad
1-Tim Holtz swivel clasp
12-15in pieces ribbon (various colors)
1-Back and front cover template
1-Top note template

Monday, November 16, 2009

Gypsy Spot

It's Gypsy Spot day
Todays challenge is to make a shape card. I whipped out the Gypsy and some dazzling diamonds glitter and WHALAH! If I could figure out how to add a cute file I would :o)

I used Santa from the Cricut Cartridge Joys of the Season and welded it together. I love this cartridge! Wait...haven't I said that about all my cartridges?

Supplies: Cricut Expression, Cricut Gypsy, White and Red Bazzil Cardstock, Blush Blossom Stampin' Up! Cardstock, Dazzling Diamonds Stampin' Up! Glitter, black Pigma Micron 01 pen, and Pink Pirouette Stampin' Up! ink with blender pen for Santa's cheeks.

Head on over to the Gypsy Spot to see what the other designers have created.

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Christmas with the Cricut-Gift Item

I know I've said this already, but this week just flew by.
I want to thank Joy, Melanie and Tammy for inviting me to be a part of Christmas with the Cricut. I had a lot a fun and really enjoyed making these Christmas projects and reading all of your comments. Thanks to all of you for stopping by and following along this week. It's been a joy.

I also want to send big hugs, to my sweet dear friend Teri. I've always admired your work and it was an honor to share the same week of CWTC with you. You are a true friend!
Now for today's final project: Today is Crafty Gift day. If you remember back a few days ago when I posted my gift packaging project, well I made this to go inside my package.

My gift item is a glass ornament that I etched with the Armor etching cream. I cut a snowflake on Cricut vinyl from Winter Woodland, and etched my ornament. I then added a little gem to the center to give it a little something extra. I also cut a tag from Storybook and stamped a little holiday sentiment. The ornament fits nicely into my gift box.

For somemore inspiration on gift items head on over to Teri's blog and check out her project for today. And of course you need to go to CWTC to comment and be entered to win one of the many generous giveaways.

Thanks again and I'm so glad you stopped by.

Friday, November 6, 2009

Christmas with the Cricut-Fancy Card

Well it's Fancy Card Friday over at Christmas with the Cricut.

Today's card features UTEE (Ultra Thick Emobssing Enamel). I'm a little addicted to it. I just love that glass look that is gives.

Here is the info on today's card.
The card measures 3 x6. I wanted to do something a little different since I always make standard size cards. This was a nice change. The bottom pattern paper layer measures 2 3/4 x 5 3/4. The next layer is 2 1/5 x 5 1/2 followed by a smaller layer of pattern paper measuring at 2 1/4 x 5 1/4. I cut my Sleigh from Winter Woodland and then used UTEE to add the nice glass look to the sligh and the holy. I finished off my card with some green satin ribbon from Paper Trey Ink.
Head on over to Teri's blog to check her amazing card. She totally ROCKED this card.

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Thursday, November 5, 2009

Christmas with the Cricut-Layout

I can't believe it's Thursday already! Wow this week has gone by fast for my guest design spot over at Christmas with the Cricut.
Today we're doing a layout. This is great, I have a head start on my layout for this coming Christmas. OK OK...I must confess, I'm many many many years behind on Christmas layouts.

I'm an 8in x 8in scrapbooker:0) I find myself overwhelmed with 12x12 pages and can never decide what to addd to my pages. So I started scraping 8x8 and found that is really my perfect scrap page size.

Today's project features the Winter Woodland Cricut cartridge. I cut the snowman at 4 in.'s and "Frosty" at 2in.'s. Head on over to Teri's blog to check out her take on today's layout!

Supplies: Winter Woodland Cricut Cartridge, Pattern Paper by Basic Grey (Figgy Pudding); Cardstock: White, Scarlet Jewel, and Ocean Tide by Paper Trey Ink; Ribbon: Ocean Tide by Paper Trey Ink. Fiskars punch.

Thanks for stopping by and check back tomorrow for my fancy card project.

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Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Christmas with the Cricut-Gift Package

Today is Gift Package day for Christmas with the Cricut. I really love this cute box and wanted to show you how I made it, but when I went to Michaels and AcMoore they didn't have anymore paper mache boxes on the shelves:( So I decided to make a video of a smaller version of today's project.

Supplies: Cricut Cartridges: Winter Woodland and Storybook, pattern paper, poinsettia flower, brad, satin ribbon, and a whole lotta love.

Now head on over to Teri's blog and check out her project for today. Teri is so awesome and talented, we have become such good friends. Thanks T, you are a sweetheart!

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Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Christmas with the Cricut~Home Decor

Today is Home Decor with Christmas with the Cricut.
Like I said yesterday, Christmas is my all time favorite holiday:)

I had so much fun making this advent calendar. I remember as a kid getting so excited about Christmas, and fighting with my brother and sister on who's turn it was to open the little doors on our advent calendar.

There was so much I wanted to show you with this project, that I had to make a video.

Thanks for watching!

Head on over to Teri's blog to see what she's done for home decor. She is amazing!

Supplies: Cricut Cartridge (Winter woodland, Storybook) pattern paper (Paper Loft); chipboard (DCWV); brads, button, and grommets (misc), Top Note Die (SU), Binder Rings (Staples), UTEE, ribbons and thread, Clasp (Tim Holtz), and Cardstock (SU and Bazzill)

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Monday, November 2, 2009

CWTC-Simple Card Monday

Happy Monday,
I'm so excited to be a Guest Designer this week for Christmas with the Cricut. When I got the email from Joy, Melanie and Tammy I almost jumped out of my seat.

My favorite holiday is Christmas. I love the whole season! Spending time with the family, decorating shopping, wrapping presents, eating, eating some more, baking cookies, eating the cookies. Did I mention shopping?

We were asked to use two Cricut cartridges for our projects this week. Winter Woodland and Storybook. I love both of these cartridges!

So without further ado.....It's SIMPLE CARD MONDAY
Here is my card....

and of course a video too:

Supplies: Paper Trey Ink Scarlet Jewel and Dark Chocolate cardstock , Basic Grey Pattern Paper (Figgy Pudding), Making Memories Ribbon, and Winter Woodland Cricut Cartridge

And now head on over to my dear friend Teri's blog to see what she has done for Christmas with the Cricut.

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Sunday, November 1, 2009

Gypsy Spot Challenge

This week kicks off the Gypsy Spot site and I'm so excited to be a designer.

The challenge this week was to create something using Gypsy Wanderings, Gyspy Fonts or both. So I went with Wanderings. I love this cute little butterfly. I used black cardstock for the base of the card and the pattern paper is by Basic Grey (ambrosia). This pattern paper is totally not my norm but I love how it came out. The butterfly was cut at 2 in. and Thanks is cut at 1.25 in. I used the blackout feature on both cuts. The black stitched ribbon is from a Making Memories ribbon set and I pulled out my nestabilities labels (set 3) and ran the black cardstock and pattern paper through my Big Shot.
Hope you enjoy and don't forget to check out the other designers over at the Gypsy Spot.

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Remarkable Things You Can Pick Up From Online Video Game.

An on the internet video game is simply a computer game which is either partly or completely played through the Net or a few other computer network around the globe. Gamings are established for consoles such as Sony PlayStation 2, Microsoft Xbox and also Nintendo Wii along with PCs. On the internet games are supported by graphics cards, sound tools and specialized on-line servers. Usually all the elements of an on the internet video game are powered by a broadband Web connection.

There are several benefits of using Xbox Live as a form of video gaming. One advantage is that the game play is largely synchronized between the server and the clients. This guarantees that no solitary device loses on game play. Second Of All, Xbox Live ensures that each player get to all the information about a game that has been played. So, gamers can get detailed details regarding a specific game, consisting of video game ratings, gamers and various other relevant realities.

Some of the best online gaming have taken the cutting-edge method of including that right into the gaming experience. This means that players have the ability to connect with each other through text or voice. This attribute is also supported by the prominent social networking internet site, Facebook. Many gaming business have integrated voice conversation alternatives with their video games. In this manner, players are able to make questions as well as requests of various other players. They are also able to make new friends as well as share individual data.

Gamers enjoy the sophisticated innovation as well as the latest technology is used by these business to bring brand-new experiences right into the gaming worlds. For example, some companies have developed a system called “roid.” This system is made to simulate the activities of a the real world animal. Practical audios are made by the Roids to make sure that gamers do not quickly obtain burnt out with the game.

One more excellent technology of today period is the introduction of on-line video gaming to youngsters. The majority of kids play games such as Disney’s Tinkerbell online. The purpose of this is to supply the much necessary interaction between children and grown-ups. Some children play such games as virtual babysitters. This enables these youngsters to find out housekeeping and also caring while having a good time.

This virtual setting allows gamers to connect with each other in a more significant method. Players have the ability to make use of devices such as eye get in touch with to communicate their messages successfully. Kids likewise discover it easy to establish friendship and trust fund amongst peers. As a matter of fact, most of these online video games enable gamers to collaborate as a group. This assists players to collaborate for an usual cause.

Lots of people think that on-line pc gaming calls for a big investment to begin playing. However, they are shocked to see that it does not. All that they require is a computer and also a great net connection. Once they have those, then they can start to play their preferred ready free. Hence, they do not require to invest too much money for it.

Video gaming console producers such as Microsoft and also Sony have actually made it feasible to have a delightful on-line pc gaming experience through the Xbox Live service. With this, the game play developers have been provided the chance to connect with countless individuals across the globe. If you as well wish to experience the same, then you need to experiment with the Xbox real-time solution today.

Among one of the most interesting video games that are readily available for players to play are World of Warcraft. This is an enormously multiplayer online role-playing game that allows gamers experience what it feels like to be a part of this virtual world. Gamers are able to check out the huge globe map, engage in combat, make friends, and build partnerships with various other players around the world. Players also get the chance to earn gold and various other in-game currency which can be utilized to purchase new gears, weapons, remedies, and various other items.

Other preferred on the internet video games include Age of Conan, aria, aria, as well as Linea I and also II. One more multiplayer role-playing game that is getting popularity is the Enormously Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game or MMORPG. Unlike Wow, Age of Conan has a single player project where gamers battle against a single opponent. On the other hand, in World of Warcraft, gamers are pitted against each other in huge groups. The gamer fights versus the monsters and also other characters in an atmosphere with practical graphics and also results.

There are lots of various other excellent on the internet video games that allow players to submerse themselves entirely in a fantasy setting. Several of these video games consist of the Lord of the Bands Online, enchanted, Linea I and also II, and also the Neverwinter Nights Online. These games let players step into a brand-new dream globe where they can engage with their character as well as with a number of other players. They are embeded in abundant environments, and feature real-time physics so gamers can obtain a real feel of the activity. Many of these games are cost-free, while others are readily available at a fee. The option depends upon the type of in-game action that the player wishes to participate in.

For those that have actually been betting quite a long time now, they know the in-game neighborhoods such as the InWorldPNW Alliance and the out-of-game social media networks such as the Norrath or the AHY (Anarchy’s Hosting). Gamers in this age also to get to know each other with blogs, discussion forums, podcasts as well as video clip sharing websites such as YouTube and Metacafe. Via this, they establish long lasting relationships not only with each other however additionally with the gamers they satisfied in the past. Among the advantages that they obtain from this is that they get to know what other people are carrying out in the video game, their progress, suggestions on how to play much better and obtain help from those that are more knowledgeable.

This type of gaming additionally reveals players to various other kinds of media such as flicks, music, publications as well as television. As an example, there are multiplayer Xbox games wherein gamers can collaborate and also select a protagonist. They can likewise enter into a group of gamers as well as take turns selecting a specific character to lead them via quests. Furthermore, there are anime, manga, film and game adaptation of multiplayer Xbox games in which the Xbox 360 is made use of to regulate the characters in the game. dsplay slot online

This is just but one form of on the internet video gaming. It’s currently proven that it is a wonderful way to link individuals. In the future, with more technologies as well as improvements, even more features will be included in this type of video gaming. But also for now, what is truly remarkable is the truth that on the internet gaming offers young people with a method to connect with each other no matter their age and also place. The power of this can currently be seen incidentally youngsters enjoy to play with each other.

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Easy (Yet Vital) Things To Bear In Mind Regarding Food Blogger.

Food blogging stands for a distinct mix of premium passion as well as internet blogging. The majority of blogs concentrate mainly on food digital photography as well as, while lots of still use message to blog about food, many others use images taken by the blogger themselves. Blogging as a hobby is likewise getting in popularity and also food blog writers are locating that it is simpler to attract readers and also have a better possibility to make money online than with conventional blog writing. The blog sites focus more on food-related subjects than are located in various other types of writing. Blog sites focus much more on the procedure of food preparation rather than providing dishes. This sort of web content allows the food blogger to share info on kitchen devices or cooking suggestions with their readers.

A food blog site is not the like a recipe site. A recipe website will usually consist of recipes along with step by step directions for preparing a certain recipe. The food blog writer typically surpasses these recipes and shares methods on how to use the methods they learn to create brand-new recipes. A food blog will usually feature both dishes as well as non-recipes for various foods as well as meals. Numerous food blogs also have sections for points like red wine as well as beer, treats and also desserts.

If you have an interest in signing up with the rankings of foodies and blogging experts, the first thing you must do is identify what sort of food you wish to talk about. Are you thinking about examining food? Or are you more right into food preparation and creating easy dishes that you can after that assemble right into delicious dishes that you can after that provide to your visitors? You can even choose to end up being a recipe programmer for a food blog if you really feel that you are qualified adequate to develop fascinating and mouth-watering recipes that you can after that upload to the blog site.

As pointed out over, food blog owners all have their own one-of-a-kind style as well as method of offering the recipes they have actually produced. There are some food gazers that utilize video clips, while various other food blog owners choose to utilize pictures as well as composed descriptions. Still others still prefer to write their own article and have links back to their web sites where they can share links and also details about the recipes they have actually produced. If you have fantastic dishes but you locate composing challenging, you should take into consideration using one of the many software programs on the marketplace today that will certainly assist you produce and develop your own composed post.

The first thing you require to think of when deciding which software program to download for your food blog is exactly how well it will work with your blog writing activities. For example, if you have a cellphone, you might not wish to utilize the programs that are readily available for desktop computers or laptops. Some programs are created specifically for mobile phones, so ensure that you take this right into consideration when downloading and install the software program. Also, some programs are just suitable with certain kinds of computers, so see to it that you choose one that works with your computer system type in addition to your blogging activities. It is likewise essential that you see to it that your computer has the proper memory to run the software that you are considering making use of.

Some software programs provide dish data sources that are already built right into the software program while others supply search attributes that will allow you to sort via different recipes based on ingredients or topics. Whether you choose a data source or search attribute, you will certainly intend to take into consideration locating a specific niche within the food blog writing that fascinates you and after that discovering a series of appropriate blogs within that specific niche that are also utilizing the exact same software program or comparable programs to promote their very own dishes. Find a few blog sites that have the same general topic that you are interested in blogging about and go to those blogs. You might want to talk to the blog writers as well as ask them concerns regarding the content they have actually developed and also whether or not it would interest your audience. If so, you might intend to do some more study on the food niche that you have actually chosen to concentrate on within your blogging initiatives.

Food blog writing represents a complex interweave of food lover’s interest for premium food, blog writing as well as personal photography. Most blogs, also the most sophisticated, all focus on food digital photography; nonetheless, there is one more side to the food blogging world. Blogs that are focused on food can also be a fantastic location to make some money online! Food blog writers are available in all shapes and sizes; from city slickers who take a trip to severe mountain towns to individuals from the big city that enjoy gourmet coffee as well as food preparation. Food blogging stands for an excellent tool for any person wanting to obtain his/her blog discovered.

If you want food or understand someone that does, start your own blog site! Producing your own blog site allows you to display your talents as well as interests in such a way that no other web site can. You can also showcase dishes that you love and also attempt to make them on your blog. As an example, if you enjoy to cook and share recipes with your friends and family, you can produce a dish directory for those who visit your site and can discover the dishes they desire from you!

Start by selecting a couple of locations within the food blogger specific niche that interests you. This will certainly be an excellent place to begin since possibilities are, others in your particular niche will certainly be doing the exact same thing. This will certainly lead them to your site to discover more regarding you as well as the job that you do. As soon as you are established, you can broaden and also supply more solutions to aid other blog writers. You will certainly require to research your particular niche market and also find out what people desire and also what info is demanded to make their favorite recipes stick out from all the rest.

In the food blogger area, there is frequently a need for media suppers, especially at neighborhood events such as a glass of wine samplings as well as picnics. If you like to prepare and also like to entertain, this is a wonderful area for you to be a part of. There are numerous blog writers that like to cook and more than happy to share their dishes with others. They also enjoy to inform others regarding new things they discover and this is where your solution company will certainly come in. The more media dinners you intend as well as host, the much more prospective customers you will certainly have. Basenjimom

When you have your specific niche chosen, the following step is to look for websites or blogs related to your specific niche. There are lots of bloggers around as well as most of them might have the same kind of recipes you are wanting to provide. You can begin sending short articles to these sites or providing your own dishes free of charge. As your appeal expands within your particular niche, you will find your services end up being more valuable and you will certainly get acknowledged in the area.

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Category: Eats

From SF to NY, we’ll let you know which restaurants are worth all the hype!

China Live: Food, Decor, and Assimilating Into Westernized Culture

China Live is an upscale market, dining hall, bar, bar and boba shop set in the heart of San Francisco Chinatown. However, it’s more than just that— it’s an ambitious venture to bring Chinese culture and food to the masses.


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Article Details

Iron-Induced Fibrin in Cardiovascular Disease

[ Vol. 10 , Issue. 3 ]

Boguslaw Lipinski and Etheresia Pretorius   Pages 269 - 274 ( 6 )

Accumulating evidence within the last two decades indicates the association between cardiovascular disease (CVD) and chronic inflammatory state. Under normal conditions fibrin clots are gradually degraded by the fibrinolytic enzyme system, so no permanent insoluble deposits remain in the circulation. However, fibrinolytic therapy in coronary and cerebral thrombosis is ineffective unless it is installed within 3-5 hours of the onset. We have shown that trivalent iron (FeIII) initiates a hydroxyl radical-catalyzed conversion of fibrinogen into a fibrin-like polymer (parafibrin) that is remarkably resistant to the proteolytic dissolution and thus promotes its intravascular deposition. Here we suggest that the persistent presence of proteolysis-resistant fibrin clots causes chronic inflammation. We study the effects of certain amphiphilic substances on the iron- and thrombin-induced fibrinogen polymerization visualized using scanning electron microscopy. We argue that the culprit is an excessive accumulation of free iron in blood, known to be associated with CVD. The only way to prevent iron overload is by supplementation with iron chelating agents. However, administration of free radical scavengers as effective protection against persistent presence of fibrin-like deposits should also be investigated to contribute to the prevention of cardiovascular and other degenerative diseases.

Cardiovascular disease, fibrinogen, free radicals, inflammation, iron, parafibrin, thrombosis.

Department of Physiology, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Pretoria, Private Bag x323, ARCADIA, 0007, South Africa.

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