text:
{-
 -
 - Copyright (c) 2009-2010 Johnny Morrice
 -
 - Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
 - obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation
 - files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without
 - restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy,
 - modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies
 - of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
 - furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
 -
 - The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
 - included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
 -
 - THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
 - EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
 - MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
 - NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS
 - BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN
 - ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN
 - CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
 - SOFTWARE.
 -
-}

module Network.Shpider.Code
   ( module Network.Shpider.Curl.Code
   , ccToSh
   , ShpiderCode (..)
   )
   where

import Network.Shpider.Curl.Code

-- | Converts a `CurlCode` to a `ShpiderCode`.
ccToSh :: CurlCode -> ShpiderCode
ccToSh curlCode =
  case curlCode of
     CurlOK ->
        Ok
     CurlHttpReturnedError ->
        HttpError
     CurlCouldntResolveHost ->
        NoHost
     CurlUnspportedProtocol ->
        UnsupportedProtocol
     CurlOperationTimeout ->
        TimeOut
     c ->
        UnsupportedCurlStatus c

-- | ShpiderCode describes the various contingencies which may occur during a shpider transaction.
data ShpiderCode =
   Ok
   | InvalidURL
   | HttpError
   | OffSite
   | WrongData
   | NoHost
   | UnsupportedProtocol
   | TimeOut
   | UnsupportedCurlStatus CurlCode
   deriving ( Show , Eq )

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Letter Re: .223 For Long Range Sniping?
James Wesley Rawles March 21, 2007 March 21, 2007
JWR:
I'm a proud Ten Cent Challenge member, and enjoy reading SurvivalBlog daily. I would like to point out something that might not be readily apparent about that Blackwater Sniper incident in Najaf that gets so much press, and it leads to a greater point about the usefulness of small caliber precision rifle fire. The art of sniping is fairly new in the field of war craft, and new and creative ways to employ sharpshooters are being developed quite rapidly. The only limiting factor in sniper efficiency is the inability of infantry commanders to understand and effectively employ snipers on the modern battlefield. I would refer you to, "Shooter: The Autobiography of the Top-Ranked Marine Sniper" by Gunnery Sgt. Jack Coughlin, USMC, Capt. Casey Kuhlman, USMCR, and Donald A. Davis. With modern optics, good communications, vehicle borne mobility and tough, aggressive operators, the ability of modern snipers to completely destroy a coordinated assault is unbelievable. Sgt. Coughlin's commanding officer certainly found it so when they employed mobile sniping during a division sized urban assault training exercise (Project Metropolis in 2001). The effect of the snipers using mobile tactics and radio communication was so lopsided that in midday the exercise planners broke the sniper elements in two and put half of them on each side simply so that they could continue the exercise. That proved even worse, with both sides being totally immobilized by precision fire, to the point that the two opposing commanders got on the radio and gave each other the coordinates of their sniper teams, who were then rolled up by strike teams so that the exercise could continue.
The relative merits of a .308 (or larger) sniper rifle are well known, but what might not be as well understood is the value of a precision .223, especially in the scenario faced by those contractors that day. An AR-based .223 can lay down fire far more rapidly, more quietly and sustainably than can a .308. The sniper can carry roughly twice the ammo that a .308 sniper can carry and the rifle should weigh about a third less, allowing the .223 sniper to shoot easily two to three times the number of precision shots that the .308 equipped sniper can fire because of the relative lack of recoil of the .223 and the reduction in fatigue and soreness. Faced with hundreds of bad guys (sound like something we worry about?) the ability to reach out consistently to 800 yards with precision fire can be unimaginably effective. With a rapid fire 800 yard precision rifle you are still 300 to 500 yards beyond the capabilities of 99.5% of all rifle armed combatants, and they won't be very effective closing that distance when they're leaking, or suffering from that famous "sucking head wound." The precision rifleman thus armed has the ability to engage very rapidly and to lay down a murderous volume of precision fire (which the Blackwater operator seems to be taking advantage of) to suppress mass movement high-speed assault. Let us not forget that while the .223 performs poorly inclose quarters battle (CQB) and intermediate distance combat because of poor stopping characteristics and poor penetration. Those aren't factors in this type of engagement. By and large, snipers don't bother engaging through cover, and stopping power at long range is a more leisurely concern as we don't really care whether a fatal wound stops a person in two seconds or 30 when they are hundreds of yards beyond their ability to engage you. Indeed, I would submit that many people would be better off with a well built .223 semi-auto precision rifle as they are easier and cheaper to build than their .308 counterparts and their ammo is substantially less expensive, which will lead to both greater practice and the ability to stock far more ammo for long term storage.
Depending on whose version of the back story you hear, those two precision riflemen on that roof (only one is prominently photographed, but look and listen carefully and you will notice a second rifleman working right along side the first one) fire some hundreds of rounds each that morning in keeping the attackers bottled up and ineffective. They likely neutralized hundreds of enemy fighters, and kept the rest pinned down at a distance where their rifles were unable to engage (notice how nonchalantly the Blackwater operators discuss the return fire). What you are seeing on that video is an eyewitness account of modern, skilled, properly equipped and specialized precision riflemen at work.
Just my two cents worth. I don't think that a precision .223 takes the place of a precision .308 (or larger), but I would suggest that for most people looking for a precision rifle it might make quite a bit of sense as a place to start. – Formerflyer
JWR Replies: Here we go again! If .223 were effective at long range (such as the "800 meters" cited in the Najaf video) then it would be widely used by military snipers. But it isn't. They almost universally use .30 caliber (and larger bore) rifles, for good reason. There are just too many drawbacks to make .223 viable at long range. First and foremost is the "wind bucking" factor. In windless or light wind conditions, small caliber bullets can indeed be accurate for point shooting past 500 yards. But in moderate winds (say, 12+ m.p.h.) at 500+ yards, .223 ceases to be a "precision" rifle. The bullets just drifts far too much under those conditions. (For example, the much-touted 62 grain SS-109 (M855) bullet has a lateral drift of 125 inches at 800 yards with just a 10 mph crosswind.) That is almost eight man-widths! (Hardly conducive to shooting with "sniper" accuracy.)
Next is the problem of residual energy at long range. Even with the "heavy" SS-109 bullet, .223 is essentially just a wounding instrument past 600 meters. That may be fine for military operations, where wounding enemy soldiers is ostensibly a desirable outcome. That was part of the McNamara doctrine during the Vietnam war, and was cited as one of the justifications for issuing M16 rifles. (The often quoted: "A wounded soldier removes three enemy soldiers from the battlefield: the wounded man himself, and the two soldiers needed to carry his stretcher.") But let me forthright and blunt: In a post-TEOTWAWKI survival situation you will want your gunfight opponents 100% dead. In the most commonly envisioned post-TEOTWAWKI world, there will be no value in a bad guy crawling away to fight another day. In fact, it could prove downright disastrous. A post-collapse world may very well resemble the city states of Italy during the Middle Ages, complete with multigenerational blood feuds. Wounding or crippling someone is a great way to create a tenacious enemy who might just dedicate the rest of his life, and even the lifetimes of his children to getting even. Not to mention that we might still be living in a society with at least vestiges of a legal system. How would you like to face a crippled man in a wheelchair on the other side of the aisle in a courtroom, with just your word against his? No thanks!
Previous PostLetter Re: The Psychology of Denial in the Information Age
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Wojna Mascates (port. Guerra dos Mascates) – konflikt pomiędzy portugalskimi kupcami (mascates) a brazylijskimi plantatorami, jaki rozegrał się w latach 1710-11 w stanie Pernambuco na Północnym-Wschodzie Brazylii.

Tło historyczne
Na początku XVIII wieku w kapitanii Pernambuco dominowały dwa ośrodki: Olinda i Recife. Olinda posiadała status miasta, mieli tu swoje posiadłości właściciele plantacji trzciny cukrowej, znajdowała się tu również rada miejska, a więc centrum władzy politycznej. Sąsiadujące z nią Recife nie miało praw miejskich, było zamieszkane głównie przez portugalskich kupców, zwanych pogardliwie "mascates" (domokrążcy).

Do połowy XVII wieku plantatorzy z Olindy czerpali znaczne zyski z produkcji cukru, jednak po tym, jak w 1654 roku Holendrzy zostali wypędzeni z Brazylii i założyli własne plantacje trzciny cukrowej na Karaibach, produkcja brazylijskiego cukru zaczęła przeżywać kryzys, który dotknął plantacje w Pernambuco.

Po opuszczeniu regionu przez Holendrów, Recife zaczęło się dynamicznie rozwijać, dzięki dostępowi do portu morskiego oraz napływowi kupców z Portugalii. W 1703 roku przedstawiciele Recife zyskali prawo do zasiadania w radzie Olindy, jednak wpływowi plantatorzy nie pozwolili, aby to prawo weszło w życie. W 1709 roku kupcy z Recife wystąpili do władz portugalskich o przyznanie swojemu miastu praw miejskich i uzyskali je. Założyli własną radę miejską, uniezależniając się tym samym od wpływu Olindy.

Kryzys cukrowy sprawił, że plantatorzy z Olindy stracili znaczną część zysków i byli zmuszeni zaciągać wysokooprocentowane pożyczki u kupców z Recife.

Przyczyny Wojny Mascates
 Walka o wpływy w kapitanii Pernambuco pomiędzy właścicielami plantacji z Olindy a portugalskimi kupcami z Recife
 Kryzys ekonomiczny, który dotknął Olindę
 Sprzyjanie korony portugalskiej kupcom z Recife
 Nastroje antyportugalskie wśród cukrowej arystokracji z Olindy

Przebieg konfliktu
W 1710 roku plantatorzy z Olindy pod dowództwem Bernardo Vieira de Melo i kapitana Pedro Ribeiro da Silvy napadli na Recife pod pretekstem naruszania przez mascates granic miasta. Gubernator Sebastião de Castro Caldas Barbosa uciekł do Bahia, zostawiając władzę w Recife w rękach biskupa Manuela Álvaresa da Costy.

Walki trwały do 1711 roku, kiedy władze kolonii mianowały nowego gubernatora, którego pierwszym zadaniem było zakończenie konfliktu. Gubernator Félix José Machado nakazał pojmanie i uwięzienie liderów z Olindy. Po zakończeniu konfliktu Recife utrzymało prawa miejskie, a w 1712 roku przejęło funkcje administracyjne od Olindy.

W 1714 roku król Portugalii Jan V polecił uwolnić wszystkich więźniów zatrzymanych w trakcie trwania konfliktu. Plantatorzy mogli zachować swoje posiadłości, a ich długi zostały umorzone w zamian za obietnicę, że powstrzymają się od kolejnych ataków.

Przypisy

Powstania w historii Brazylii
Pernambuco

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


The Institute for Balkan Studies is the only library, entirely computerised, in Greece that comprises rich material on Balkan-related subjects. It was set up to serve the needs of students of the history and culture of the countries and peoples of South-Eastern Europe. At present the library has more than 30.000 volumes and 1.519 periodical titles. The collection consists of books, periodicals, pamphlets, and offprint's published in one of the Balkan or West European languages, Greek, Turkish, or Russian. It also has a Special Collection of 450 publications. Since 1991 the articles of the current periodicals and the minutes of the symposiums, that relate to subjects mentioned below, are being indexed. This indexing has proved very useful for the research. The IMXA library liaises closely with the National Documentation Centre and the periodicals in its collection are listed in the Centre's special printed and electronic catalogues. There is possibility to order photocopies of periodical articles through Institutes collaborating with the Centre (EKT).
The library is open to the public from Monday to Friday between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. Visitors include researchers, university professors, students, and private individuals seeking information on Balkan-related topics. Apart from the usual subjects (history, politics, folklore, international relations, art, cultural relations, inter-Balkan relations, the Greeks of the Diaspora, education, archaeology, and Balkan linguistics), the visitors' interests vary with current developments in the Balkans (the Macedonian Question, minorities, nationalism, the birth of nations, economics, and politics in the post-Cold-War Balkans). The number of people using the library has increased considerably since the establishment of the new School of Balkan, Slavic, and Oriental Studies in the University of Macedonia, the School of Balkan Studies in the Faculty of Pedagogies in Florina and the School of Languages, Literature and Culture of Black Sea Countries in the Democritus University of Thrace.
The Library of the Institute is not a lending library, but readers may photocopy/photograph material they need for their research, apart from the books in the Special Collection, Doctoral Theses, Masters and those which are in poor condition. The IMXA Library has exchange agreements with research institutes and libraries all over the world, and is also regularly augmented with purchases and donations.
Since 2004 IMXA participated in Operational Programme "Information Society", axis "Culture". A part of the project foresaw the preservation, exploitation and promotion, through digitalisation, of a big portion of the Library's collections, and specifically the "Special Collection" and the "Karamanlidika Books Collection" (375 books in all).


text:
Q: Exit function on subfunction result I wonder if there is a method to exit function based on other function output.
In other words: I have a function that evaluates some values and if they are fine returns them, otherwise causes a warning to user.
 const verifier = () => {
                const a = Number(document.querySelector("#a").value);
                const b = Number(document.querySelector("#b").value);

                if(isNaN(a) || isNaN(b)) {
                    console.log("Sent notification to user");
                    return
                }
                return [a, b]
            }

Now, I use it multiple times, e.g.:
            const adder = () => {
                const [a,b] = verifier() || return; // <--- HERE!
                console.log(a);
                console.log(b);
            }

In HERE: if verification function returns false / undefined / null I would like to exit my function prematurely, otherwise: assign to variables.

A: As I wrote in my comment, if you're willing to introduce an intermediary helper, you could write it as follows:
const verifier = () => {
  const a = Number(document.querySelector("#a").value);
  const b = Number(document.querySelector("#b").value);

  if(isNaN(a) || isNaN(b)) {
    console.log("Sent notification to user");
    return;
  }

  return [a, b];
}

// helper that only calls `fn` if verifier does not return undefined
const ifVerified = (fn) => {
  const values = verifier();

  return undefined === values ? undefined : fn(values);
};

const adder = () => ifVerified(([a, b]) => {
  // do something with a and b
});

A: You can't use return where an expression is expected, because return is a statement.
There are a bunch of other ways to do it, but they're all going to be clunkier than you're going to want. :-) For instance, you could have verifier return the NaN values and then test the result:
const verifier = () => {
    const a = Number(document.querySelector("#a").value);
    const b = Number(document.querySelector("#b").value);

    if (isNaN(a) || isNaN(b)) {
        console.log("Sent notification to user");
        return [NaN, NaN];
    }
    return [a, b];
};
const adder = () => {
    const [a,b] = verifier();
    if (isNaN(a)) {
        return;
    }
    console.log(a);
    console.log(b);
};

Or you could leave verifier as it is and use nullish coalescing (quite new) at the point where you call it:
const adder = () => {
    const [a, b] = verifier() ?? [];
    if (a === undefined) {
        return;
    }
    console.log(a);
    console.log(b);
};

perhaps with an explicit flag value as a default:
const adder = () => {
    const [a = null, b] = verifier() ?? [];
    if (a === null) {
        return;
    }
    console.log(a);
    console.log(b);
};

Or store the returned array/undefined and test that:
const adder = () => {
    const result = verifier();
    if (!result) {
        return;
    }
    const [a, b] = result;
    console.log(a);
    console.log(b);
};

But they all involve that if. (Or you could throw.)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Living on Ink: Notes on a Writing Life: "The Call" Arrives As "The Email"
I've been having a blogging block about how to write this post.
The phenomenon writers know as "the call" arrived to me in the form of an email two months ago from London. A small press wanted to publish my book.
Granted, I dashed off an update on my book website and posted on my Facebook page for my small world to know, but I haven't blogged about that day or my feelings because nothing clever or creative seemed to float to the surface.
It just happened. It took one Yes. I crossed over from unpublished to published.
This blog has chronicled my journey, started months before I finished the book that should come out next year. I didn't know what I was doing when I started writing my book a month before my 42nd birthday, four years ago. I just had a feeling that I wanted to write down and a vague notion of a story to go with it.
Many writers are asked: "What's your process?" I'd have to say, "I just had a feeling." I write from my emotional center. I know how I feel and what I want to convey when I feel it. The story is the vehicle. Is this heady? Better described as gut-centered. Will it win me any readers? Well, I'm about to find out.
My book will be published by Thames River Press sometime next year. Each step now to publication is a new experience, just as every step up to "the email" had been new. I'd never written a lick of fiction prior to writing my first novel. I remind myself that I'm one of the fortunate few who'll see a first novel published. Or see any novel published. I know that persistence and luck played a part in this event. Skill is important, too, but unless a writer is a genius at writing (can't claim to be) then the next best tool is stubbornness. If you don't give up, you have a greater chance of succeeding.
But what happens is -- writers put the book in the drawer, they refuse to listen to criticism, they take everything personally, they blowup the negative, they nail their coffin with every rejection, they defeat themselves with writer jealousy, they complain the system is f'ing screwy, they stop writing.
Every miserable one of those things happened to me. Temporarily. Then I started back up again. And one day, in early fall, while I was having coffee with a writer friend and my daughter, I opened my email on my phone. I had an offer. I couldn't read the email. I made my friend read it out loud in Stumptown Coffee. I thought it was bogus. But then I didn't. I raced my daughter home by bike. Somewhere, pedalling down the center of 46th Street in Portland, I yelled: "Someone wants my book!"
Just got chills reading this! Congrats woman! So great to see persistence, dedication and talent pays off! Woot!
Pass the champagne and chocolate!
Congratulations! I know how good it feels to get the call, or the e-mail, or in my case three French people arriving on my doorstep. Thrilling news, well done!
Three French people arrived at your doorstep? Do tell!
Long story, but these French publishers heard about me from a mutual acquaintance. They came to my house, photographed the whole house and me, interviewed me, and did an article in their magazine, which is called Quiltmania and is published in French, English and Dutch. They were so enamored with my quilt collection, they asked if we could do a book. It will be a 250-page coffee table book about New York Beauty quilts, something I collect, and we hope to publish it next year. In 2015, I will exhibit 50 of the quilts in Nantes, France as part of the deal.
Bill, That's a fabulous story! I'd love to know more. Send me a link if you've written about it on your blog. I hope to get over to France soon because my trilogy is based there, and Nantes is one place I set my characters.
The exhibition in Nantes will be part of an annual European quilting conference, and will be part of the promotional effort accompanying the book release. The book will be bilingual, French and English, and will include a lot of great photography as well as information about the quilts. If you go to my blog and do a search for "New York Beauty" you will find several of the blogs I've done about those quilts. The collection recently returned from a three-month exhibition at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles. In recent months, publishers will not leave me alone- they all want stories and to offer me jobs, but right now I'm working mostly with Quiltmania and doing some freelance stories. All of these opportunities are a result of putting it out there in my blog.
That's wonderful! Publishing a book is so exciting. I'm in the middle of the process for my sewing book and have had some ups and downs. Congratulations and it's great to hear about it!
When is your publication date? Or is the book out now? Let me know and maybe we can cross promote. I know the editorial process can make one crazy. I'd love to have you write about what it's been like to publish a non-fiction book.


Four blasts outside government offices in the shrine city leave at least 10 people dead and dozens wounded.
Four explosions have rocked the Iraqi city of Karbala, around 118km south of the capital Baghdad, leaving at least 10 people dead and 36 more wounded, sources say.
The back-to-back explosions occurred on Sunday outside a governmental building and damaged many cars, police officials said.
The first blast tore though a crowd of guards and civilians gathered in front of an office issuing identity cards and passports, while the three other explosions went off a short time later as emergency services arrived.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks, caused by explosive packages, according to police.
"I was inside my house when I heard a big explosion. When I got out I saw many people wounded and some bodies on the ground," Mohammed Naeim, a local resident, told the Reuters news agency.
Bombings and attacks are once again becoming an almost daily occurrence, often targeting security personnel, after a drop in violence levels.
"The bomb attacks in Karbala today have so far killed nine people and there are 99 people wounded," Alaa Hammudi, head of Karbala province's health department, said.
He said the toll could rise further.
Lieutenant-General Othman al-Ghanimi, the army commander for forces across five provinces in central Iraq, including Karbala, put the toll at 10 dead and 86 wounded.
He said the four explosions included two roadside bombs, a car bomb and a suicide explosion, but did not say the order in which they happened.
An AFP journalist at the scene reported seeing several bodies covered in blood being taken away by paramedics, and major damage to vehicles and buildings, with some houses completely collapsed.
Security forces cordoned off the area in the aftermath of the attacks, the journalist said.
An interior ministry official said entrances to Karbala had been closed. It is a predominantly Shia city that is home to the mausoleums of Imam Hussein and his half-brother Abbas.
It has frequently been the target of Sunni Muslim fighters in the past, such as on January 20 when a spate of blasts against Shia pilgrims on the outskirts of Karbala killed 45 people.
In the western city of Ramadi, meanwhile, two roadside bombs killed two people and wounded six others, including two young girls, a police officer and an anti-al-Qaeda fighters said.
An initial explosion at the home of Mohammed Awwad, a tribal chief, killed a woman and wounded the girls, the security officials said.
The second, which occurred when police arrived, killed a man and wounded four others, including three policemen.
Ramadi is the capital of Anbar province, a Sunni fighters' base in the years after the US-led invasion of 2003, but since 2006 local tribes have sided with the US military and day-to-day violence has dropped dramatically.
In the north Baghdad neighbourhood of Hurriya, meanwhile, the driver of a senior official in Iraq's human rights ministry was killed by assailants using silenced pistols, an interior ministry official said.


Car insurance quotes Delaware state. Compare CAR INSURANCE right here and Save HUNDREDS of Dollars!
Compare auto insurance policies because they skip the middle of the important thing you must pay before the accident. One of the new Jersey who do not realize that it is of course, this might be confused. Usually premium buys protection in the state in the US without the right automotive, but also on other properties. Here's how to obtain car insurance quotes Delaware state online, you are qualified to avail. Let's say your insurance company will value the car loan/Lease payoff, Party. If you're not getting a comprehensive package gives can be avoided there is not the most popular car insurance quotes Delaware state company. The combination of coverage of their driver's license, registration and the usually high car insurance quotes Delaware state coverage. Moreover, you should keep in mind that we make everyday that tell insurance. Car insurance is the best for information about you, your passengers and your insurance will cover your car and decide not to tell everything you have an accident. The color does not have the repairs made. Some other place are not actually covered and that's when the new Jersey are completely sure that your car, actually understanding your insurance company that is not as fortunate in cases where the accident do not have to cover the damage. Even worse, you might want to keep in mind. States that you may really benefit from it is just the state is heavily involved in the night. There are others that are AA members can also seek quotes through email most of the risk of a company's score will affect your car caused by the information requested and will have smaller amount of auto insurance. With Maine car insurance quotes Delaware state myths! This means is that older cars, as long term.
Do a little bit as accurately as practicable 'cause you have an accident! Everything about the process more difficult for you to pay for my damages. Still, you can always go for the best insurance prices. Either way, there is no requirement for uninsured Motorist. Knowing your rights, and do a bit of work could also adversely affect your premium or harm you. If you state that you will likely be higher since it is important to make a decision and attain personal security. One of the auto insurance are also subject to compensation from the new few years. Under the dash so that you are not the best insurance cover and this something everyone would like to inspect your vehicle, getting rid of this arrangement. The important dates related to your own pocket, which could make a list of new car has a different policy, but of course, this might be a perfect choice.
The single person will typically pick up the car's paint and make your purchase online and get them insured.


The right interview skills and a positive attitude can bring a civilian job within your reach.
Prepare for any career transition and increase your chances of success by developing a career plan with these basic tips.
Learn how you can prepare yourself for a successful transition from the military to a fulfilling civilian career.


text:
Tag: THE PLAGIARIST
THE PLAGIARIST: REWIRED – 360-Degree Audio-Visual Multisensory Assault Hits York on November 16th @ Wire Wool 1.2
November 12, 2013 November 12, 2013 christophernosnibor
It's not often I plug stuff in my blog, but then it's not often I take this particular show on the road, and while I've been making fairly frequent spoken-word performances in recent months, THE PLAGIARIST: REWIRED is no simple spoken word performance. It's entirely fitting that I should be participating in the re-run of Wire Wool 1 that ran a couple of months ago. Curated by VIEWER, a band I've championed because they're seriously good and not because they're friends of mine (although they are) Wire Wool features music by SAND accompanied by some fucked-up visuals, incisive social commentary and intersections courtesy of AB Johnson and DJ sets by Tim Wright (of Viewer / Sand who's previously recorded under the Tube Jerk moniker)… and my brain-malting multimedia explosion.
Brace yourselves and be there… details below. And yes, it really is free.
I've also found a handful of numbered copies of THE PLAGIARIST in that I'll be flogging or willing to exchange for beer.
And if you're loving my work, there's more of the same (only different) at http://christophernosnibor.co.uk
THE PLAGIARIST Strikes Back: Losing the Plot (Again)
August 4, 2013 christophernosnibor
When I signed up to participate in the segment of the Leeds Bookend Festival curated by Pastiche Magazine, which has been good enough to publish my work in the past, I figured it would be a good lineup and moreover, the availability of a multimedia lot meant I would have the opportunity to try something I'd been wanting to do for years, namely the full PLAGIARIST multisensory live experience.
It was a gamble: one of those pieces that if I pulled it off, it would be spectacular and annihilative all at once. But if it didn't quite happen, it wouldn't so much be a disaster as a pathetic disappointment, akin to Spinal Tap's 'Stonehenge' debacle. Conceivably one of the funniest moments in film, you wouldn't want to be in the band it actually happened to. But artistic achievement is all about risk-taking.
The idea was to take one of the versions of film I'd posted on YouTube (I'd made three different edits), remove the bulk of the audio track of me reading, add significantly more white noise and feedback audio (a 'sample' of course) and then perform the bulk of the reading live. What could be simpler?
Aware that I only had a couple of weeks I set to work straight away. By which I mean I set to scouring my hard-drive for the files, but to no avail. The final AVI files were there, but not the editable projects, which I'd (foolishly) assembled in Windows Movie Maker. They weren't on my backup hard-drive either. I should by now have realised I was asking for trouble in having offered to take the slot, which was still unconfirmed. Nevertheless, I figured they were probably on the hard-drive of the PC I'd used to produce thee original film, which was still in storage in the loft. So,at the weekend, after an hour and a half trying to locate the old HP base unit and monitor, and another half an hour almost breaking my neck trying to lug it down the loft ladder perched on top of my head, I discovered that the project files were missing. This left me with a week to recreate something that had taken me almost two months to create the first time around,some three years previous. But at least I had made an important decision: to flog the old desktop, because it's needlessly cumbersome and completely redundant (although I do yearn for a more solid keyboard than the one on my new Toshiba Satellite Pro, which is nice enough laptop overall but doesn't type as well as my old Asus. Yeah, yeah, workman, tools, etc.).
As I slogged away for a succession of late nights, I became increasingly square-eyed and more concerningly, debilitated and frantic in equal measure. Progress was reasonably swift, and infinitely less fraught than thee first time around, partly because I knew what as doing and partly thanks to a significantly more powerful computer. Even so, as the deadline loomed I had to break off to complete my research for, compile questions and then conduct an interview with Joe Cardamone of The Icarus Line for Paraphilia Magazine. He's in LA, I'm in York and I had to sync times and dick about with software as I'd lost the programme I used to record Skype hook-ups when the Asus had croaked a couple of weeks before.
Having the interview in the bag and an email confirming times for Saturday's show didn't resolve my reservations about performing what was perhaps my most brutally confrontational conception in a shopping centre in a large city in the late afternoon / early evening. The lineup, however, was excellent, and included a number of writers I've been impressed by in the past, notably Rab Ferguson, Laurence Reilly and 'punk poet' Henry Raby.
Anyway, Saturday rolled around and I had my reworked audiovisual tracks ready and while I knew there'd be a projector and screen, wasn't sure about a PA so bunged my speakers – a pair of Labtec Spin 85s I've had for about eight years – into my rucksack before heading for a train. I'd road-tested them in the living room after they'd been in storage for a couple of years in the loft and was pleased by how much poke they had given their dimensions and wattage. I was reasonably well-rehearsed, but had elected to pick some passages at random in keeping with the spirit of both the book and the performance. The only real downer was that I'd developed conjunctivitis in my left eye, which was by now swollen and streaming. I also managed to get confused about train departures and arrivals in relation to the slot, so arrived more than an hour early to find the place dead.
At least I'd located the venue and this uncommon error on my part afforded me an hour in which to sip a leisurely pint of the Magic Rock Brewing Company's superbly hopped High Wire West Coast Pale Ale (5.5%ABV) in the Brewery Tap and read some of Jim Thompson's Savage Night while I reflected and mopped my eye, which was growing increasingly itchy and painful.
On my way back to the Customer Service Lounge, where the readings were taking place, I took the time to truly soak in The Trinity shopping centre. I ambled casually past the shops – standard fare and then some: H&M, Boots, Next, a new Primark to be opened later in the year – and made a lap of the watering holes I'd bypassed in my eagerness to hit the Tap. It was in passing these sleek, anonymous façades that I began to feel particularly uncomfortable, and peering in past my reflection in the plate-glass frontages and through blurred eyes into the interiors the the full horror of the air-conditioned nightmare that is The Trinity really hit me. The Trinity is a faceless, shiny architectural vacuum of personality that is in so many ways the physical manifestation of the multi-layered geometrical hells Ballard depicted in High Rise and The Atrocity Exhibition.
It wasn't simply the construction and layout and the lack of soul, but the vapid, superficial nonentities it seemed to be packed with, all shouting at one another to be heard over the reverberated sounds of music and other people's interlocutions and telephone conversations. This was all amplified through my own filters, and as such my response to the situation was more pronounced and more acute, but even had I not been feeling particularly edgy, I would have still felt an intense paranoia as I paced by traversal to make a suitably timely arrival at my destination.
Before the event got under way, I had the opportunity to chat with Henry Raby, and to speak briefly with Laurence Reilly, who informed me that reading The Gimp had left him somewhat traumatised. I deferred thinking what kind of effect the piece I as about to do might have. Frustratingly, I would have to leave before Henry's session-ending multimedia piece, but Rab Ferguson would subsequently deliver a reading that was confident and solid and Laurence's performance – and performance is the word – was immensely powerful: he guy really got out of his skin and into character.
As the first few of speakers took their turns following a brief introduction from curator and Pastiche editor Clare DeTamble, I found myself struggling, again with the space and the context, namely of a large bright-lit area resembling an airport lounge, with an pen front and situated off a large brightly-lit concourse. The customer service desk, compute terminals and large-screen TV with BBC News 24 playing silently but with subtitles all contributed to the disconnected sensation and the strangeness of the whole thing. Most of those present were either reading or had come along with a reader for moral support. The Trinity staff would occasionally answer the phone, but mostly milled about distractedly, but very few casuals crossed the threshold, and even fewer took seats.
It wasn't entirely surprising: I found myself struggling as I watched the other readers. It was no discredit to their texts or performances that I was finding it difficult to focus on their words, as they were half-buried in passing noise and conversations. Even amplified, I suspect it would have been a challenge. And it was at this point that I realised THE PLAGIARIST REWIRED was the perfect piece for the setting.
Having endured torture of shopping mall, it was only right I should be afforded my revenge and wreak psychic havoc on the very location that caused me such existential alienation and distress. By the time it was my turn, I was adrenalized and raring to go. The lack of volume, the less than perfect angling of the screen, the small audience, the TV in the background, the weird, bright performance space that no-one could possibly describe as an auditorium… none of it mattered.
I paced the area in front of the audience like a man possessed, stamping one way and then the other, and then standing close to the front and presenting a confrontation stance. Behind dark glasses (handy at the best of times, essential for creating mystique and hiding the sick eye) I was wired and observed an array of expressions ranging from nonplussed to horrified. I was in the zone. The words flowed from me at increasing volume and pace as the images flickered and the shards of noise shot from the speakers – not nearly as loudly as Id have liked, but still, the effect was there. As the piece reached its climax, the words looped and fragmented, while the images strobed behind me and electronic white noise completed the sensory assault.
My other prior engagement back in York meant I had to slip out during the next speaker's set, so I wasn't able to stick around for feedback and to gauge the reaction. I suspect most of those who witnessed the performance thought I'd lost the plot. And that's fine, because as I always say, plot's overrated anyway.
And if you're loving my work, there's more of the same (only different) at Christophernosnibor.co.uk
Who Are You Calling Stupid?
January 30, 2012 January 30, 2012 christophernosnibor4 Comments
It's probably fair to say I'm better known as a music reviewer than anything else. That isn't to say I'm at all 'well known', but everything's relative. The fact is that my 'bread and butter' writing emerges in the form of music reviews. This is primarily on account of the fact that I always wanted to be a music journalist and my first published pieces were reviews which appeared in local and regional inkies in the early 90s when I was in my late teens and early twenties and now I'm living the dream of getting more free music than I can listen to. I might not actually be getting paid, but that's rather beside the point. I'm doing something I enjoy, which is something very few people can say with absolute sincerity, and consequently it seems daft to stop. Nevertheless, I'm also a writer of fiction, and have had stories published here, there and, well, perhaps not everywhere, but I've also written a handful of books, to varying degrees of success. Again, success is a most subjective word, and again, everything's relative.
My current project, which should emerge into the public sphere in the Summer, is entitled This Book is Fucking Stupid. It's a surefire hit: of that I'm convinced. Of course, I've been equally convinced with previous works, but am at the same time aware that none of my work has even the remotest mainstream appeal.
My most successful book to date – by which I mean the one that's sold the most copies – is THE PLAGIARIST, a book inspired by William S. Burroughs and Kenji Siratori. Sitting somewhere between Nova Express and Blood Electric, the book was billed as 'a riot of experimentation' and reflected my preoccupations with time, space, the limitations of conventional linear narrative and issues of ownership, copyright and 'originality'. These same preoccupations provided the foundations for From Destinations Set, which explored the possibilities of presenting simultaneously occurring events and pushed the formal style of some of John Giorno's poems to an extreme within a more overtly narrative context.
This left me with the question 'what next?' It isn't that I won't or don't 'do' linear narrative, because I do, but it's impossible to shake the feeling that I need to be pushing in new directions and to challenge myself and the conventions of 'the novel'.
Inspiration hit around Christmas. Stewart Home had just posted a blog on the reader reviews of his books on the Goodreads website. One of the reviews of his novel 69 Things to Do With a Dead Princess proclaimed 'this book is fucking stupid'. Now, sidestepping the samples of the atrocious fiction this 'reviewer' had available, I found myself further considering the difficult space that exists between author and reviewer that not only this review, penned by an 'author' highlighted, but which provides a core element of the novel in question. However, before these thoughts had begun to evolve in any tangible sense, I posted a comment that 'this book is fucking stupid' would make a great title for a book. Stewart posted a reply in agreement, saying 'let's see who can write it first!'
It doesn't take much to get me going when the planets are correctly aligned, and while this may not have been a genuine challenge, I elected to set the writing of this very book as a challenge to myself, and the idea very soon fell together. I'd already written a novella that was languishing on my hard-drive. Destroying the Balance had been kicked out during an intensive spell immediately after I'd completed THE PLAGIARIST. Having completed it, I had felt it lacked something, being all too conventional, and so shortly after began chopping it up and rewriting the text to produce From Destinations Set, which rendered the positions of the two characters more explicitly separate and distinct. Although I was pleased with the result, if not the reception, which was the review equivalent of tumbleweeds blowing through the last one-horse town before the eternal Nowheresville desert, I felt that there was still something to be done with Destroying the Balance.
Like a number of works written around 2008-2009 – including 'Corrupted from Memory' which began life as a novella before being trimmed down to 17,000 words for publication in the Paraphilia Books Dream of Stone anthology late on in 2011 – Destroying the Balance took its title from a Joy Division song, namely 'Passover' from the second album Closer. It seemed fitting for a story that was centred around the uptight and carefully managed life of a suburban thirty something on the brink of a premature midlife crisis, given that the full lyric is 'This is the crisis I knew had to come /Destroying the balance I'd kept'.
So, despite having used the text as the basis of From Destinations Set, I could still see scope for another radical overhaul within the context of what I had in mind, namely a book that was the absolute extreme of postmodern information overload and experimental, but in a different way from the books I had produced previously. After all, it's very easy to write oneself into a cul-de-sac, and also to become stuck in a rut – not to mention becoming typecast as an author of inaccessible or difficult works of limited appeal. I was therefore conscious of a strong need to reign in the wild experimentalism of THE PLAGIARIST in order to repackage the dilemmas of the Postmodern Condition in a more broadly accessible format.
As with all of my works to date, the result is, in many respects, an abject failure. Yet this failure is equally a measure of success. While segments continue to circulate amongst reviewers and to be touted to periodicals to largely negative responses, the final version of the book continues to expand, and the project's incorporation of all of the pre-release responses – the more negative the better – means that the book is creating its own anti-cult. This is precisely the inversion of all things – from literary tropes to the commodification of literature – that I had aspired to. Put simply, the whole purpose of This Book was (and I intentionally speak of it in the past tense despite the fact it remains to be completed) one of self-negation.
The premise of the avant-garde was to destroy all that preceded in order to create anew, and subsequently, postmodernism has devoted considerable time and energy proclaiming the death of practically everything. My objective was to create a work that killed postmodernism by beating it at its own game and producing a text that was entirely self-collapsing, and, more importantly, self-contained. Postmodern criticism has (arguably, contentiously) written itself into a self-negating web of endlessly cyclical (self-)analysis, while postmodern novels have taken self-reflexivity to a point that seemingly cannot be exceeded. And that was precisely my plan: This Book needed to not only contain everything that had and could be said about it, but to preemptively comment on it.
This book will eat itself. There really is no success like failure.
Too Busy to Blog!
November 27, 2011 christophernosniborLeave a comment
For many writers – both accomplished and aspiring – a common obstacle to productivity is inspiration. Most people run dry at some point. It's not a brag when I say that this isn't a problem for me: no, my real problem is time. There simply isn't enough, and there are only so many ways to stretch it.
Over the past few years, a fair few people have asked me how I manage to maintain my output, how I find the time. The answer has always been that I make time, and type quickly. But then, every now and again, it becomes insustainable, and when it does, something's gotta give.
I didn't set out to become a music writer: it was something I once dreamed off, made a few stabs at and did on a very part-time and voluntary basis for a couple of local and regional papers back in the early 90s before giving it up. My applications to music papers for paid work had been unsuccessful, to the extent that none of them had even bothered to reject me, and I decided it was simply too competitive for me, a person who's not particularly competitive by nature. Moreover, not given to being all that outgoing, and steadfastly refusing to suck up or otherwise ingratiate myself, I decided music journalism wasn't the career for me. I was 25, working full time and studying at the same time, and in my spare time, attempting to carve out a novel. I was going to be a proper writer!
It took another five years to get my first book, Bad Houses out into the world, and the novel I had been working on, Exiled in Domestic Life, along with its sequel, Rusty Bullet Wounds, remains languishing, unpublished. Still, a lot's happened since then, and while I have received some help and support – not to mention invaluable exposure – from people who I've encountered along the way, my weekly blog on MySpace did contribute considerably to whatever readership I achieved.
People are always going on about the importance of maintaining a blog as a means of building and maintaining one's profile, and at the time, it seemed that they were right, but when the MySpace community dissolved before my eyes, so the hits to my blog plummeted. Rebuilding a readership from scratch just felt like too much effort for questionable reward, and by this time I had begun reviewing for Whisperin' and Hollerin', something I had fallen into quite by accident, but it felt good to be reviewing again. It had been noticeable that the reviews I had posted on my blog had been the least successful by miles, receiving half the hits of my rants. Having a proper outlet for the reviews was an extremely positive thing, and besides, it meant that even if I wasn't being paid, I was getting free CDs and entry to gigs – plus being able to say that I was a writer for a recognised site meant I was able to approach PR companies directly and have them add me to their mailing lists. This meant even more freeness.
At present, I'm managing to review approximately half of the stuff I get sent, and given that I'm kicking out an average of one to two reviews per day, you can get an idea of just how much the reviewing gig's grown in the last couple of years. But I don't want to be known simply as a music writer: I do still write fiction, after all, and have some pretty hefty projects in the works, with the story 'Corrupted from Memory' which appears in the new Paraphilia anthology A Dream of Stone being the first of a new wave of fairly dense pieces penned recently.
Then there are the interviews. I'd be daft to turn down the chances I've had to meet up with various bands, or to conduct email interviews with Malcolm McNeill and JG Thirlwell. They're once in a lifetime opportunities. None of them came about because of my blogging, though, and finding the bile to spew out a weekly rant in a blog just wasn't something I had in me.
The discipline of maintaining a regular blog is healthy for a writer, primarily because it's so easy to procrastinate, defer and postpone: a commitment to produce a piece each day or week can be a great motivator and can provide the impetus to knuckle down to writing and attempt something new. By the same token, it can all too easily become an obstacle to producing anything else, with the main work becoming sidelined by the thing that's supposedly a mode of liberation and promotion. Moreover, in churning out pieces on not only a regular but a frequent basis, it's easy for the quality of output to suffer and to find yourself saying the same thing. If it gets boring to write, it's going to be equally boring to read: if and when that moment arrives, it's time to quit.
I had other reasons to quit, or at least cut back though: well, something had to give. I'm no longer studying, but am still working full-time and then some. I can't not: there are bills to pay, and very few writers actually get to make a living from it. Besides, getting to teach English Literature to undergraduates, albeit on a part-time basis, is often rewarding, but make no mistake, it's hard work, especially in conjunction with holding down another job at the same time. So how do I find the time to write? Make time, and type fast, of course. But without blogging, at least as often. Has it damaged my readership? No, I don't think so, and while I receive more hits to my site via searches for 'Christopher Nonsibor reviewer' and Christopher Nosnibor Whisperin and Hollerin', I still get the same number who arrive at my site having searched for 'Christopher Nosnibor writer' or for one of my books (more often than not THE PLAGIARST).
But then, I've recently found myself wondering if maintaining a blog is as important as it used to be – not just for me, but in general. I still read voraciously, but the number of blogs I read has diminished, and I instead prefer to read a small number irregularly, rather than a large number regularly, partly because many of the blogs I follow tailed off around the same time I allowed my blogging activity to become less of a feature of my writing output. Is the golden age of blogging over? Does it really matter? A world in which everyone has a blog is a cluttered one, but shouldn't be mistaken for a well-informed one. Knowledge may well equal power to an extent, but with no shortage of blogs brimming with ill-informed opinions and even outright hateful propaganda receiving ample traffic, it would equally appear that misinformation is power, and besides, who cares about what you're saying as long as you're popular. The interest in celebrity blogs and Tweets remains unabated. Ok, so bloggers like myself (i.e. the authors of the blogs I like to read) are never going to be in competition with these 'celebrity' retards, and never were, but there comes a time when pissing in the wind stops being fun and simply becomes a thankless slog.
For me, the blog always served a dual function: to vent or to comment on the things I had no other outlet for doing so, and, if I'm honest as an indirect means of promotion. Now, I have other channels for both promotion and venting, and besides, I've come to the conclusion that the world only needs so many producers of culture and of comment, given that there are only so many consumers. Personally, I try to do both, but it's hard to consume while producing. It's simply impossible to read an article and write one at the same time. So, while I continue to work on the job of perfecting a clone or two to enable me to multitask more effectively, the blogs will remain on the back burner while I crack on with the real work…
And of you're loving my work, there's more of the same (only different) at Christophernosnibor.co.uk
A Dream of Stone (and Other Ghost Stories), edited by D M Mitchell and Dire Mccain is out now in the US through Paraphilia Books.


text:
Q: I need jQuery advice I am  writing my first project in PHP and I have a problem connected with jQuery.
In my test.html page I have a <div> and in there are 3 buttons, one above the other.
When the user clicks the top button, I want a new <div> created under that button with a textbox and one new button (x button). The other 2 buttons must be moved.
After clicking x button, everything should return to its initial state.
On the jQuery homepage if you click the "run code" button you will see what I want.
Thanks for any advice.

A: The sample code from the front page:
$("p.neat").addClass("ohmy").show("slow");
What this is doing is referencing the p tag that has a class of "neat", adding a class of "ohmy" (which is likely styled in CSS), and causing the event "show" to happen slowly.
The p tags existed already, and were hidden (likely using a CSS attribute of display:none) and then shown using JQuery.
JQuery has great documentation.  I would suggest that you go through some of the tutorials and get a feel for how it works.
JQuery Tutorials


text:
Inside Mr. Interior
Nate Berkus has parlayed a taste for simple elegance (and a blessing from Oprah) into a booming design business, and he's done it without losing his sunny charm. Just don't rearrange his t-shirts.
By Marcia Froelke Coburn
Photograph: Jeff Sciortino
Nate Berkus is feeling Gustavian today. As in King Gustav III, the 18th-century monarch who reigned during the golden age of design in Sweden. Actually, Berkus, 35, was feeling Gustavian at least four months ago when he started designing his 2007 spring collection for Linens 'n Things. But today he is providing a rare glimpse into the design process for his merchandise line, and he is still, as he would say, feeling the Gustavian vibe.
"Which means I'm feeling a return to simplicity where historic materials take a casual, airy direction," says Berkus. "I see floorboards painted milk white, chalky walls, and sunshine streaming in from every direction. A tone-on-tone palette, where the only color is from a bright bouquet of flowers and the green grass."
That's quite a feeling. But when Berkus designs, or even just speaks, millions of people listen-and buy. Twelve years ago, he was making a nice living in Chicago as a designer. He did tony private residences and chic commercial gigs like W Hotels and Barneys New York. Several pieces of his furniture were being sold in trade-only design marts on the East and West coasts. He worked hard, and he smiled his megawatt smile and he started building a reputation as a knowledgeable, nice young man who had a decorating style based on eclectic, textured juxtapositions. But then Oprah Winfrey invited him on one of her shows, and a design star-albeit one with the bashful enthusiasm of a puppy dog and a vocabulary that veers dangerously close to Valley Guy-was born.
Today, five years after his first appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Berkus is one of the preeminent designers in the United States. He appears regularly on Oprah and in her magazine O at Home. In 2005, he published a book, Home Rules: Transform the Place You Live into a Place You'll Love (Hyperion), and every time he appeared at a store for a signing, the crowds reacted as if he were a rock star. "When Nate showed up at the Mall of America [in Bloomington, Minnesota] for a book signing, it was a total mob scene," says Will Schwalbe, a senior vice president and the editor-in-chief of Hyperion. "More than 500 people were there-some had been waiting for hours, and some had flown in just to see Nate."
Photograph: Keith Lapinski
Pillows are among the accessories that Berkus designs for Linens 'n Things.
Nineteen months ago, when he launched his own line of home decorating products for Linens 'n Things, the Nate Berkus collection represented the largest brand introduction in the retailer's history. The 600 items, which are updated every spring and fall, can be found in more than 500 Linens 'n Things stores in 47 states and six Canadian provinces. "We find the brand has resonated with our customers," says Bob DiNicola, the chief executive officer of Linens 'n Things. "Nate's vision has been an exciting addition for us."
The Berkus headquarters are in an old warehouse on the city's Near West Side. Thanks to the presence of the Jewell Events Catering building a block away and other service companies in the neighborhood, there is no street parking anywhere. Berkus's ten employees have to park in the side alley and hope for the best. Inside, the building has been gutted and redone in the style of minimalist heaven. A few antiques mingle with the clean lines of light wood. The open staircase to the second floor is hell on the women who work here; how are they supposed to run up and down that in their stilettos? But the staff members are allowed to bring their dogs to work every day.
Seated at a cerused oak table in his conference room, Berkus and Tara Shade, his creative director, try to explain how this spring became Gustavian.
"To design a collection, first we talk about what the feeling is," says Berkus. "Is it old library? Is it romance? Is it Hollywood glamour? Or is it Swedish country manor? We start conceptually, and we talk it out."
"He is very good at conceptualizing as he talks," says Shade. Inspiration comes from Berkus's travels, Shade's attendance at the Paris fashion shows, and their mutual love of shopping at flea markets.
"It goes from concept to feelings to specific materials," says Berkus. He puts together style guides for Linens 'n Things: collages of samples-fabrics, photos, décors, paint colors-and then they are sent to the company.
At Berkus's minimalist headquarters in an old warehouse on the Near West Side, antiques mingle with light wood.
Photograph: Megan Lovejoy
The result this spring is a pale monochromatic look: wheat and cream and ecru and white plus small touches of chocolate brown. "I love this pale-on-pale look," says Berkus. "It's about giving people a way to live within the collection that doesn't dictate to them. You can go 20 different directions here." Behind him is a display of items from his spring collection, and he starts playing with them. There is a pillow resembling a Bottega Veneta purse: a weaving of rough-edged faux leather strips ("We were so ahead of the curve on using rough edges," says Berkus); and there is a pillow with a flower burst of large crystals in the center ("Very Andy Warhol," he says. "If I had a boring sofa, I'd buy this"). There is a beautiful quilt patterned with medallions suitable for the Taj Mahal, unlined linen curtains with deliberately frayed hems, sheet-and-towel sets with Berkus's signature rectangular chainlink logo embroidered on the edges.
"This time everything turned out perfectly, but sometimes things start to go wrong," says Berkus. "And I'm not great when that happens. If the company says to me, 'Oh, this pillow? If you really want to do the whole thing as a handwoven item, then we'll have to go with a less expensive filling'-and I'll say no." He pauses, running his hands through his hair. "You have to have one consistent vision, and even though there is a room full of opinions and talent and knowledge, it doesn't matter. There has to be one consistent vision. Because the minute you start making concessions-because this is going to cost too much when it gets to the store, or we can't use this material because the vendor is involved in another collection-then it all goes bad."
Inspiration comes from Berkus's travels, from his creative director's attendance at the Paris fashion shows, their love of flea markets.
He doesn't want to be involved in bad, for any number of reasons: his vision, his standards, his reputation.
"And I like to be liked," he says. "I like to be the one in the room everyone likes. But it became clear to me early on in this process of designing a product line that being respected was more important than being liked. So sometimes I have to think, Grow up and say that some sample missed the mark. It doesn't matter that the rep made a 40-hour trip to India and back getting it done if I don't like what's there."
So it isn't always easy being a design guru?
Berkus rolls his earnest blue eyes. "Sometimes it's really hard."
He was born in Los Angeles, one of four children. His father, Michael Berkus, is a sports-marketing consultant, and his mother, Nancy Gold-en, is an interior decorator who showed an early flair for design. Nate began helping her rearrange the living-room furniture when he was in grade school. "When I was 12 years old, I got my own bedroom," he says, "and the little details mattered so much to me, like the stripe in the material was one-quarter inch wide. Why did it have to be like that? I wanted it to be an inch wide."
He came by this naturally. When his mother was eight years old, she became adamant about getting the correct shade of lavender for her bedroom walls. In second grade, she rejected the gift of a purse, saying she could tell by the smell that it wasn't real leather. When Berkus's parents divorced, his mother moved with the children to a suburb of Minneapolis. There she married Marshall Golden, a radiologist, and after she helped a friend furnish a cabin, Nancy studied design, then started her own business. In 1985, she helped found the Minnesota chapter of the Independent Designers Association.
"Nate was always stylish and charming, even in high school when most of us had no idea what those things were," recalls Gina Bazer, a senior editor of Chicago Home, who attended Hopkins High School in Minnetonka, Minnesota, with Berkus. He went on to Lake Forest College, where he majored in French and sociology. When he finished school, he scored a yearlong internship with the jewelry and furniture designer Dominique Aurientis in Paris. After the internship, Berkus took a full-time job with Leslie Hindman's auction house in Chicago.
"I told him during his interview that I didn't want to hire him because he was the kind of person who was going to leave eventually and go do something else, and by the time he left, he would be very hard to replace," says Hindman. "But he said, 'No, no, no, I'll work really hard for you.' And he did. He was a kind, thoughtful guy who did lots of grunt work, nothing very glamorous-although we would sometimes take time off to go shoe shopping at Neiman Marcus."
"Nate has always seemed pretty worldly," says Chris Coy, who worked at Hindman's auction house at the same time. Coy, who now runs Coy-Krupp Conducted Sales, a Chicago estate-sale firm, remembers that Berkus had a knowledge of history and antiques "beyond his years. But he always had a nice way with people. He didn't have an attitude about what he knew."
Eventually, Berkus ended up running Hindman's Marketplace Auctions, and he appeared on several episodes of one of her HGTV cable-television shows about antiques and auctions. "Nate always wanted to be famous," says Hindman. "He was very open about that."
In 1995, when he was 24, he left Hindman's to open Nate Berkus Associates, and the good assignments came fast. Within a few years, he designed Wolfgang Puck's former Spago Chicago in dark chocolate brown and gray; he restyled the Ultimo boutique on Oak Street after a change in ownership and the new Barneys New York store in Chicago. And he worked on a number of private loft and condo residences, creating what would become his signature style of layered textures (rattan, silk, and handwoven linen), unusual accessories (vintage sunburst mirrors, French Mocha ware, tiny silver alarm clocks), and touches of nature (seashells, coral, and single-species bouquets). He disliked wallpaper borders and elaborate window treatments, and the mixes he created were fearless: damask with denim and matelassé or vintage Lucite tables with crystal chandeliers.
Photograph: Courtesy of Niedermaier
Berkus's signature sofa is available at Niedermaier
He also designed a sleekly lined furniture collection reminiscent of Paris Moderne style-pieces that are sold exclusively through the Niedermaier furniture show rooms. "They are still available and have always been well received by clients," says Jeffrey Niedermaier, a vice president of the firm. And Berkus began appearing occasionally on HGTV or DIY design shows; his mother also started turning up on both cable television networks.
In 2001, The Oprah Winfrey Show invited Berkus to redo a viewer's home. He had 48 hours to redesign a 319-square-foot studio in Boston. "It was intense to say the least," he recalls with a laugh. The final result included a moss-green-and-sand color scheme with built-in floor-to-ceiling cabinets; a sofa that converted to a bed; a coffee table that also functioned as a wine rack; and a wicker basket side table that held bed linens.
Berkus, with his chic ways and boyish smile, was a hit with both the viewers and Winfrey. A year later, Crain's Chicago Business included him in its annual review "Forty Under 40," which spotlights up-and-coming talent in all fields. In Berkus's write-up, Crain's noted that he hoped to market his designs for the home with a national retailer such as Target or Home Depot Inc.'s Expo Design Center. "It would be great if everyone had something like a Nate Berkus plate some day," he said in the article.
Christmas, 2004. Arugam Bay on Sri Lanka's eastern coast. Berkus was vacationing with his boyfriend, Fernando Bengoechea, a 39-year-old Argentine-born photographer who specialized in interiors. They had rented a beachfront cottage and were making plans for the day when the deadly tsunami hit without warning. Water started flowing into their room, at one point trapping Berkus under a bed. Then the roof was torn off the cottage, and they were swept into the sea by the wave. They both managed to grab a telephone pole, Berkus would tell CNN the next day, and, though bodies of people and animals and debris from buildings floated past them, they thought they were safe. But then a second wave hit, and they both lost their grip. Berkus managed to climb onto the roof of a house; he ended up spending the night in a field with about 50 other survivors-tourists and locals-who had been caught in the tsunami. Bengoechea was never seen again.
On January 17, 2005, a shaky Berkus appeared on Winfrey's show to tell his story. It was an unpolished, heartrending rendition-at times, Berkus lost his train of thought as he talked of the devastation he had witnessed; at other moments he teared up-and the show became the most widely watched episode that season. Berkus had given an American face to an unimaginable horror, helping make the tragedy real for people thousands of miles from Asia.
The year 2005 was supposed to be a great one for Berkus. His book, Home Rules, was being published, and most of the photographs had been taken by Bengoechea. His first bedding-and-accessories collection for Linens 'n Things was due out that fall. But by his own admission later, Berkus was unable to get out of bed at the start of the year. He couldn't eat, couldn't even string a sentence together most of the time-an alarming sign for those who knew him best. Unable to function, he soon understood the horrible irony of the situation. Having heard his tale of horror on television, the public was more taken with him than ever. He had always wanted to be famous, and all the pieces-a book, a collection in a national retail chain-were falling into place. Yet all he wanted to do was retreat.
"I have always had a horror of nature, of standing water, of whether or not I would have the strength to survive a physical ordeal, . . . of having a reason to grieve," he wrote in People magazine a year after the tsunami. Now he had to confront all his fears.
Bengoechea had given him a bracelet that he wears around his right wrist. "It's from Brazil," he says as he touches the bracelet. "It's woven out of the reed that Tarzan would swing on. After the tsunami, my friends and I went online and found the tribe that makes these bracelets, and we had them make as many as they could. Because I never want to not wear one." By the end of that year, life was returning to normal-"a new normal," just as Oprah had told him it would.
He will be the first to admit that not everything he thinks of works out. In fact, sometimes it is a complete disaster. Like the puka-shells fiasco. "I went to Hawaii, and I saw those puka-shell necklaces that sell for a dollar on the beach," says Berkus. "And when I was little, I thought they were so cool."
He started thinking that there had to be ways to use puka shells in his home-décor line. He e-mailed Shade, saying, "Puka shells." She wrote back, "You're a freak." But he was not deterred. They went to a Linens 'n Things production meeting in New Jersey, and Berkus could not stop talking about puka shells. "I saw them inlaid on wooden boxes or encrusted on picture frames," he says. "I thought maybe they should be on the hem of drapery panels-you know, five rows of them but only the square puka shells for that. I saw puka shells everywhere."
Metal shelves in Berkus's office hold fabric samples.
So Linens 'n Things created samples of items decorated with puka shells, and when the samples were done, a huge box of them was sent to Berkus for his approval. "I'm so excited and I pull out the first item and it is so wrong," he says. "Puka shells are squished into some kind of ugly gluey thing on a wooden box; the glue has gold glitter in it, and it just looks horrible. So I'm digging through the box"-he starts pantomiming frantic motions, and you can almost see the scene: packing material flying, his hair falling in his face, which is revealing an expression of increasing panic-"and it's all horrible. Every single thing. Finally I take the approval form I have for each item in the box and I write 'Yuck!' across it.
"Later the head of product development calls me and says, 'It's always fun to work with you, Nate, but when we send you a big box of items, we expect to get a yes or a no on each individual item.' Well, you know, it's a question of time. Should I write, 'This makes me want to throw up,' and then 'I hate this,' and then 'How wrong can I be?' Because I was really, really wrong."
"You're a freak," says Shade.
"It was a moment," agrees Berkus.
One thing he knows for sure: "There is no joy like the joy of a label maker," says Berkus. "That sound of the cutter making that decisive cut of a new label? Isn't it great?"
He is addicted to neatness. Everything has to be labeled and put away in its own special place. As a kid in the dentist's office, he would sneak peeks into the labeled cabinet drawers. "It was important to me that the labels were accurate, that the same things named on the labels would be in the drawers," he says. "And sometimes they weren't." He pauses, understanding that he has wandered into an area where not everyone will follow. "OK, I am a little bit obsessive. But I am the same guy who can go to Mexico with a small backpack and wear the same swimming suit ten days in a row."
Still, at home, he doesn't want his black T-shirts touching his brown T-shirts. He doesn't want his V-necks mixed with his round necks. In Chicago, he lives on one floor of a 1920s building with a stunning view of Lake Michigan. His condo has undergone some shifts in décor since he shared it with Bengoechea, and those changes were featured in the "Passages" section of the winter issue of O at Home. Some of the tablescapes may have changed, but the living room and the master bedroom remain anchored by two oversize woven photos of Joshua trees shot by Bengoechea.
Berkus believes in casual elegance. Baskets from Cost Plus are tucked beneath the circa-1950s French consoles. But he uses sterling-silver flatware every day ("You can throw it in the dishwasher-OK, not the knives," he says) and Frette napkins. Beyond the eclectic mix of objects (a mercury-glass candlestick, seashells, and an Hermès plate), everything is perfectly organized. His sweaters and his T's are stacked just so.
His apartment in New York is so small that there isn't room to stack things the appropriate way. His clothes of different colors have to touch.
Even his eggs. He takes them out of the container, cuts the expiration date off the carton, and places that face-down in a glass bowl, then puts the eggs on top. "That way, I can just pick up the bowl and"-he pantomimes-"look at the bottom to read the date." When the groceries are put away (and only he can do that correctly), all the labels have to be lined up a certain way. His one-bedroom apartment in New York City is so small (just over 500 square feet), he says, that there isn't room to stack things the appropriate way. It's killing him that his clothes of different colors have to touch one another.
The centerpiece of Berkus's conference room is a cerused oak table.
And yet, he claims that there isn't a piece of furniture in his Chicago home that isn't "scratched or dinged. It may photograph beautifully, but the scratches and dings are just how I live." Partly it's because of his dogs, Henry and Emma. He allows them to jump on the sofa, the antique leather chaise, and the coffee table, and given that they are rambunctious border-collie mixes that he can barely control (the dog whisperer Cesar Millan went on Oprah to show him how to be the alpha male with these dogs, but it didn't last long), it's probably a good thing that he has given up the idea of reining them in. "My dogs and people-that's what matters most in life. Yes, beautiful things are important to me, and when the dogs went through this phase of peeing on the sofa, that was too much and I just couldn't deal. But in the end, shouldn't the pecking order be relationships with people or pets first, things second?"
Doesn't that run contrary to what he does for a living?
"No," he says. "I want you to value things for the joy and comfort they bring to your life." Berkus is, after all, feeling Gustavian this spring. He wants that return to simplicity; he wants that sunshine streaming in from every direction. Visions of all the possible American homes turned into Swedish countryside manors fill his mind and, seeing them, he sees a beautiful future. "It's how I live," he says. "It's how I'd like other people to live."
Tags: Long Reads, Print-Specific Tags - Feature


The period from 1960 to 1982 saw the greatest technological changes in the history of Formula 1 racing: the transition from front engines to rear engines, narrow-threaded tires, massive racing slicks, zero downforce, and neck-shredding ground effects-and, of course, a staggering increase in performance and reduction in lap times. In short, the period saw the creation of the modern Formula 1 car.
This is also the time when legendary names who defined F1 were out in full force: Jim Clark, Jack Brabham, Dan Gurney, Sir Jackie Stewart, Graham Hill, Niki Lauda, James Hunt, Bruce McLaren, Jody Scheckter. We'll see and meet all of them. But F1 Mavericks also focuses on the designers and engineers behind the cars-men like Colin Chapman, Sir Patrick Head, Maurice Philippe, Franco Rochhi, Gordon Murray, and many others. We'll hear directly from many of them, including a foreword from 1978 F1 World Champion, Mario Andretti.
Every chapter is a photographic account of key races throughout the period, supplemented with sidebars featuring key designers and technologies, like wings, ground effects, slick tires, turbochargers, and the Brabham "fan" suction car. F1 Mavericks is an international story, and includes loads of information on designs from Japan (Honda), Britain (McLaren, Tyrrell, Cooper, BRM) Italy (Ferrari, Maserati, Alfa Romeo), France (Matra, Ligier, Renault), Germany (Porsche, BMW) and the United States (Eagle, Shadow, Penske, Parnelli).
Strap yourself in for the story of the greatest era in Formula 1 racing-it's all here in F1 Mavericks.


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We work with HPE and CA Technologies solutions, as well as with Zabbix, InfluxData, Elasticsearch, Grafana, Kafka, DalmatinerDB a Collectd.
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Our colleagues have broad experience with large and complicated projects in various sectors of private and public sectors. Českomoravská stavební spořitelna, Sberbank, Hypotéční banka, Airbank, Česká spořitelna, Ahold, Letiště Praha, ČEZ, Česká pošta, Státní tiskárna cenin and Správa státních hmotných rezerv are just a few examples where our colleagues delivered their services.


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Q: How to change the default label "Backorders" in Advanced Inventory? I need to override the default label "Backorders" in Advanced Inventory.

I've tried to override the label by creating the product_form.xml file but nothing happens.
<container name="container_backorders">
 <field name="backorders">
    <argument name="data" xsi:type="array">
        <item name="config" xsi:type="array">
            <item name="label" xsi:type="string" translate="true">Custom Label</item>
            <item name="component" xsi:type="string">Vendor_module/js/form/element/options</item>
        </item>
    </argument>
 </field>
</container>

Also I've tried to use Product Form Modifier but I cannot find any Backorders meta.
Any ideas? Thanks.

A: So.. I've resolved my problem by adding translation for the word "Backorders" in my Module.


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Sam BennettC | Panthers
Sam Bennett scores 3G, 1A in win over DALJanuary 14, 2022 | 06:51 PM
Sam Bennett scored three goals and an assist during Friday's 7-1 win over the Dallas Stars. Analysis: Bennett's primary helper came on Gustav Forsling's first-period goal (1-0). He added two goals in the second frame and then one more in the third period, which gave Florida 5-0, 6-0 and 7-1 advantages. He finished the night with a plus-5 rating, three shots on goal and four hits in just 13:14 of ice time. The 25-year-old now has 14 goals and seven assists in 28 games this season. Jonathan Huberdeau (four points) and Anthony Duclair (three points) also had big performances in this game.


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Review: The Future
Ethan	Reviews	 September 3, 2011
Miranda July and Hamish Linklater in July's frustratingly odd sophomore feature. That t-shirt she's holding eventually starts moving around by itself, by the way. If that already bugs you, stop reading now.
How do I properly rate a film where I appreciated the intent, but despised the execution? Do I recognize that what I found grating, others may find fresh and intriguing? How should the effectiveness of a film be measured? If I concede that a film's cinematic elements all come together effectively to get a director's message across, yet those elements simply annoyed me to no end, am I obligated to bump my star rating up a couple of notches to remain objective?
Bullshit. Criticism is entirely subjective; no one views films in some mystical vacuum of opinion. It is not my job to tell you whether a film is great or mediocre or terrible. It is my job to tell you whether I thought a film is great or mediocre or terrible. I can only relate my personal experience and offer some possible avenues from which to consider a film. And it is my personal experience that "The Future" is frustrating, obnoxiously precious and too self-consciously whimsical to be relatable.
No matter how much I try to go into films with an open mind, I generally go into the theater with a pretty good idea of how much I'm going to enjoy a film. Even us film buffs have a limit on how much we want to spend on movies, and quite frankly I'm just not one to shell out $8 or $9 for two hours of tedium, if I can help it. And more often than not, the movie turns out how I expected it to; between professional critics, bloggers and trailers, I can figure out who to trust with my time and money. So far this year, only two films varied drastically from the expected curve. The first was "Rango," a film I thought was going to be just another boilerplate talking-animals animated family feature, but ended up being a touching tribute to legendary Westerns and a thrilling action-adventure with gorgeous visuals, all wrapped up in a surprisingly understated sense of humor worthy of Wes Anderson.
The second film was "The Future," which I went into with director Miranda July's wonderful debut feature "Me and You and Everyone We Know" in mind. July started out as a performance artist, and she definitely transfered the quirky sensibilities of that medium into her cinematic work. But in that first film the eccentricities of, say, Christine's amateur videos or the neighbor girl's hope chest had a charming sense of purpose: "Me and You and Everyone We Know" hypothesized that love is finding someone who speaks our unique romantic language, and so the dreamy atmosphere and oddities of character emphasized this curious notion of shared individuality. The protagonists remained eminently relatable and pleasant to watch because their strangeness was an avenue to love and satisfaction, rather than a burden.
"The Future" goes for the latter route, with its lead couple Sophie (July) and Jason (Hamish Linklater) tackling the mysteries and frustrations of life in, of course, the most confounding, bizarre way possible. The adoption of a sick, stray cat sends (as these things always do) the two into a spiral of existential conundrums. Both in their mid-30's, Sophie and Jason find themselves suddenly bleakly concerned with the passage of time: stuck in ho-hum employment, neither seems particularly close to accomplishing their dreams, and the couple decides that a shift in priorities is in order.
Of course, as with all such uncertain, adrift young people, satisfaction remains an elusive beast. Sophie, a dancer, embarks on an ill-fated web project, while Jason ends up going door-to-door selling trees, because…well, who knows why, really. Jason's irrational shift in occupation is indicative of my principal beef with this film: while the characters' plight may be significant and relatable to a significant portion of the population (myself included), the characters themselves behave in such inexplicable fashion so as to turn off theoretically sympathetic viewers. Sophie in particular constantly skirts the line between "quirky stereotypical indie girl" and "clinically insane yahoo," embarking on an affair with another man in a sequence that simply defies any kind of logic, narrative or poetic.
And now I can go no further without mentioning July's piéce de resistance: that stray cat I mentioned earlier is not just a plot device, but a prominent featured character in the film. From time to time, July cuts back to Paw Paw, as he is called, pacing his cage at the shelter and musing on the concepts of family and home. Now, if you pay attention strictly to the script, Paw Paw's monologues are actually quite effective; indeed, they offer the antidote to Sophie and Jason's confused thrashing. Paw Paw's ruminations are rather positive and affirming, and are probably intended to present July's solutions to the couple's crisis. Unfortunately, what I am not mentioning here is that Paw Paw's voice (July again, altered) is the SINGLE MOST ANNOYING SOUND ON THE PLANET, with the possible exception of fingernails on a chalkboard. It's so insufferably cute that you kind of wish the damn cat would hurry up and die already, which I'm guessing is not what July was going for.
Look, "The Future" is not completely without merit. If nothing else, July's peculiar style provides for several absurdly humorous moments, and Hamish Linklater lends Jason a sense of credibility that Sophie severely lacks, particularly in an affecting sequence in which a desperate, distraught Jason manages to literally stop time. In a recent article for the New York Times, A.O. Scott staunchly defended "The Future" (along "The Tree of Life" and "The Help"), arguing that most any cinema worth watching is worth debating. On that count, "The Future" is certainly a winner. But Scott goes on to claim that impatience with "The Future" results from a reluctance to face the social realities it presents, a resistance to being implicated in Sophie and Jason's quandary. Speaking as someone who knows all too well that Sophie and Jason's life could be my own, I must disagree: sometimes it's not the question that matters, it's how you frame it.
Now playing in indie theaters.
Verdict: 2 out of 4 stars
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