Sewing a new, softer cushion for a structural flower chair

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IBM today announced a new all-flash, high-performance data and file management solution for enterprise clients running exabyte-scale big data analytics, cognitive and AI applications. The combined flash and storage software solution has been certified with the Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP) to provide clients with more choice in selecting the right platform for their big data analytics on data processing engines like Hadoop and Spark.

IBM today announced sweeping advances in its all-flash storage solutions and software to significantly drive down the costs of data and extend its solutions for hybrid and private cloud environments.

The IBM board of directors today declared a regular quarterly cash dividend of $1.50 per common share, payable December 9, 2017 to stockholders of record November 10, 2017.

The IBM board of directors today declared a regular quarterly cash dividend of $1.50 per common share, payable March 10, 2018 to stockholders of record February 9, 2018. IBM has paid consecutive quarterly dividends every year since 1916.

Twitter and IBM today announced a landmark partnership that will help transform how businesses and institutions understand their customers, markets and trends – and inform every business decision. The alliance brings together Twitter data that distinctively represents the public pulse of the planet with IBM’s industry-leading cloud-based analytics, customer engagement platforms, and consulting services.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced today that Workshop FX, a Wellington 3D Computer Animation and Visual FX company, is the first New Zealand customer to implement IBM SONAS, its scalable enterprise-class network attached storage array. SONAS (Scale Out Network Attached Storage) has enabled Workshop FX to significantly increase rendering productivity while preparing the studio for future business growth and emerging industry standards including 3D film production.

IBM anunció dos nuevas soluciones de almacenamiento empresarial completamente basadas en tecnología flash, las cuales ofrecen avanzada eficiencia e incremento en desempeño, así como una sobresaliente confiabilidad para ayudar a reducir costos, y acelerar infraestructuras y aplicaciones con manejo intensivo de datos.

Unitec today announced that the number of people employed in two Delivery Centres at its Mount Albert campus now exceeds 500, and continue to drive benefits for Unitec students and the Auckland economy.

ANZ, one of Australia and New Zealand’s leading banks, has signed a five-year, AU$450 million strategic agreement with IBM. This partnership will provide ANZ with increased capability to drive productivity and innovation across the Group, as well as improving its capacity to deal with the rapidly growing number of customers and transactions across the bank’s branch, digital and mobile channels and support ANZ’s regional expansion.

IBM Research has announced a research agreement with MoleMap New Zealand to help further advance the identification of melanoma using cognitive technology. It builds on planned research with Melanoma Institute Australia. IBM Research plans to analyse dermatological images of skin lesions to help identify specific clinical patterns in the early stages of melanoma. The New Zealand and Australian research aims to help reduce unnecessary biopsies and help clinicians more accurately understand skin cancer, which could help to improve patient care.

Declares Intent to Break the Exaflop Barrier; Develops Exascale Research Collaboratory in Dublin

IBM Poland and WINUEL SA (subsidiary of Sygnity Group), today announced the first Polish Smart Metering software package to enable intelligent electricity use in more than 15 million households in Poland. The solution was developed jointly with the IBM Software Laboratory in Krakow.

SAO PAULO and ARMONK, N.Y., Dec. 27, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- The city government and IBM (NYSE: IBM) signed an agreement to build a public information management center for Rio de Janeiro. The Rio Operations Center, which will be located in Cidade Nova, will integrate and interconnect information from multiple government departments and public agencies in the municipality to improve city safety and responsiveness to various types of incidents, such as flash floods and landslides.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) annonce aujourd'hui un élargissement de son portefeuille de stockage flash pour aider les clients à extraire beaucoup plus rapidement la valeur issues des données afin d’en tirer un avantage concurrentiel. IBM a lancé trois nouvelles baies « tout-flash » dotées d’une performance de pointe – une latence minimum de 250μs (microsecondes) - afin de résoudre le défi consistant à accéder rapidement à un grand volume de données pour les applications et les workloads cloud.

A l’occasion de l’anniversaire des 400 ans de la traversée du navire marchand Mayflower, le nouveau Mayflower Autonomous Ship (MAS) partira le 16 septembre 2020 de Plymouth au Royaume-Uni, pour rejoindre Plymouth dans le Massachussetts aux Etats-Unis. Sans équipage à bord, il sera le premier navire autonome de grande taille à traverser l’Atlantique. Cette traversée unique entremêlant passé, présent et futur propulsera le monde dans l’ère du navire autonome.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced it has signed a one-year extension to its contract with Australian government agency, Medicare, for the provision of IT infrastructure services.

Melbourne, Australia - 18 August 2014: IBM (NYSE: IBM) and the City of Melbourne today launched a new interactive online experience for this year’s Melbourne Spring Fashion Week (MSFW) to enhance the iconic event and help shoppers hunt down the best retail bargains. The launch of the experience signifies the beginning of a three-year partnership between the City of Melbourne and IBM as the Official Innovation and Technology Partner for MSFW.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the launch of the IBM Institute for Advanced Security in Asia-Pacific, an expansion of its company-wide initiative to provide governments, businesses and other key organisations with a forum to collaborate with IBM’s global network of security research, services, software and technology experts.

Australia's best known diversified entertainment group, Tabcorp, has successfully completed its move to a shared services model for finance, human resources and procurement with the assistance of IBM Global Business Services.

Village Roadshow Limited (ASX: VRL), a leading Australian entertainment company, has selected IBM Cloud (NYSE: IBM) to host its business infrastructure, providing scale and speed to support a premium entertainment experience for customers. The IBM Cloud provides the platform for key operations spanning the diverse needs of Village Roadshow’s four key business divisions - Cinema Exhibition, Theme Parks, Film Distribution and Marketing Solutions.

IBM Research in Australia has announced plans to undertake research with Melanoma Institute Australia to help further advance the identification of melanoma using cognitive technology. This planned research builds on IBM’s existing research agreement with Molemap, which uses advanced visual analytics to analyse more than 40,000 data sets including images and text. IBM Research plans to analyse dermatological images of skin lesions to help identify specific clinical patterns in the early stages of melanoma1. The Australian research aims to help reduce unnecessary biopsies and help clinicians more accurately understand skin cancer, which could help to improve patient care.

A Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre study has demonstrated the potential for artificial intelligence to help reduce the time for clinicians to match lung cancer patients to relevant clinical trials.

Hyro Limited group company, Synergy Plus Pty Ltd (“Synergy”) has been named winner of the award for “Leadership in Optimizing IT Infrastructure” in the annual IBM Beacon Awards competition, honoring IBM Business Partners for their ingenuity, innovation, customer satisfaction and outstanding achievements in providing business solutions.

IBM Australia (NYSE: IBM) and The Sauce, today published the first Australian BPO Report 2012 (ABPO Report), which investigates the current state of business process outsourcing in Australia and points to future trends. Global expansion is seen to be the key driver and benefit of outsourcing decisions amongst 71 percent of organisations surveyed. The report also showed significant anticipated growth in business process outsourcing activity among large organisations with between 1,000 to 5,000 employees (this constituted one-third of all respondents). This group of Australian organisations is expecting an increase of 20 percent over the next two years.

An IBM (NYSE: IBM) study of 26,000 consumers from 14 countries -- including almost 2,000 Australians.-- found that over 60% of Australian consumers identify themselves as “apathetic” in their choice of primary retailer – almost double those who see themselves as advocates of a particular retailer. As such Australian retailers have a significant opportunity to capture shopper loyalty, but they need to capitalise on existing investments in multi-channel and accelerate customer engagement across all channels, including mobile devices and social media platforms in order to win in this globally competitive sector.

UPDATE: Both workshops filled very quickly. I only do these about once a year; apologies for the imbalance. I have set up a system so people who are potentially interested in future small-class lighting workshops can receive advance notice. More info here.

__________
I'll be teaching two, full-day lighting workshops in the suburban Baltimore/DC area on December 6 and 7.

They are two separate one-day events. These are small-group workshops, with a maximum class size of 12 people each day. These are shooting workshops, and you'll be behind (and/or in front of!) a camera for most of the day.

Assuming you arrive at this class with a basic understanding of f/stops and shutter speeds, you will leave with a strong foundation in the fundamentals of off-camera lighting. You will be comfortable using single and multiple lights both alone and/or balanced with a mix of ambient lighting.

All lighting gear will be provided. We will also provide lunch.

You will need to bring a camera that is adjustable in manual mode and has a hot shoe connection for a flash, a lens that covers normal and/or portrait range, one or two fully charged batteries and an empty storage card. Maybe a notebook and pen if you like.

That's it. Just show up ready to learn and to have fun. Leave the rest to me.


Details

Dates:
December 6 and 7, 2019

Time:
9:30am - 5:30pm

Price:
$259

Location:
Sandy Spring Friends Lyceum
17715 Meeting House Road
Sandy Spring, MD 20860


Note; These are the only small-class lighting workshops I'll be teaching in the US this year. In the past, these have tended to fill very quickly. So if this is something you'd like to do, I'd suggest signing up sooner rather than later.


Sign-Up Links

Friday, December 6 [FRIDAY'S CLASS HAS BEEN FILLED]

Saturday, December 7 [SATURDAY'S CLASS HAS BEEN FILLED]

COVID-19 Update:

Things are kinda crazy right now. And as a result we have temporarily suspended our workshop program until it is safe to resume them. But we'll be back! And if you think you night want to join us, make sure to add your name to the list below.

Thanks,
David

I very much enjoy teaching small-class lighting workshops. But because of time constraints they only happen about once or twice a year.

When workshops do open up, they fill very quickly — often before many people even know they were available. So I have decided to create an interest list to help make notification of an upcoming workshop a much fairer process.


About the Classes

Strobist^® Lighting Workshops are held as both single- an multi-day events. They have small class sizes and feature lots of time behind the camera. In the longstanding tradition of Strobist.com, our goal is to deliver as much value and knowledge as possible while keeping the costs economically accessible.

We work in an environment of rotating small teams, with lots of one-to-one instruction. We have fun, and I can guarantee you'll have a solid understanding of lighting principles before you leave. Or I won't let you leave.



Single day workshops are usually held near my home base in the Baltimore/Washington area, but are occasionally held elsewhere. That is why I am also collecting geo-information, so I can notify people if a one-day workshop would be occurring near their home.

Extended lighting workshops (usually 2-3 days in length) are generally held in an area that is both economically accessible, and very much worth the trip. Because if you are going to travel for something like this, why not go to a cool destination?

The goal for multi-day workshops is a fast-paced/fun/firehose weekend, in a fantastic setting, while working to keep everything to a manageable cost.


Might Be Interested? Let Me Know.

The interest sign-up list approach has proved to be both fair and efficient for our X-Peditions trips. So I am going to use that approach for single- and multi-day small-class lighting workshops as well.

Here's how it works.

1. If you think you even might be interested in a single- or multi-day lighting workshop, please submit your name and email below. This confers no obligation on you whatsoever.

2. I will only use your email for the purpose of giving you advance notice for small-class lighting workshops. I do not sell, rent or otherwise share your email. Because I hate companies who do that.

3. When I have an upcoming workshop, you'll get an email notice well before it is publicly announced. In fact, because of this interest list, future lighting workshops likely won't be publicly announced at all.

4. Make sure to include your city/state/country. If I suddenly find I have 30 people from Pitchfork, Nebraska who are interested, it may well make sense to reach out to those people and work out a nearby location.

That's it!

Thanks,
David

How best to put this?

The Godox TT600 is, objectively, a screaming bargain. It is a full-sized manual-only speedlight with power comparable to OEM speedlights that cost over eight(!) times as much.

It features a reliable, built-in transceiver, a suite of different remote triggers and is part of a ridiculously comprehensive lineup of lighting gear.

I honestly don't know how they can possibly sell them for under $70 and still make a profit. Read more »

Hey, there's a pandemic. Have you heard?

Looks like we might be spending a lot of time in the house with our immediate family these days. Maybe that family includes kids. And maybe they are starting to go a little stir crazy.

Keep reading for some ideas for any lighting photographer who might be looking to make the best of some unscheduled family time.Read more »

IBM, (NYSE: IBM) today announced the findings of its 2016 Global Customer Experience Index (CEI) Study, which showed that Australia is above the global average when it comes to providing a good shopping experience for consumers, with a CEI rating of 43 percent compared with 40 percent globally. The results provided a snapshot of the Australian retail sector, revealing that some businesses are still struggling to provide a seamless cross-channel experience, personalisation and convenience for customers.

(I know I've been scarce lately -- it's been a bad two years or so -- and I keep swearing I'm going to get back to posting regularly and it keeps not happening, but this was worth using up some spoons for.)

Background

The context, for those who've missed it: The Archive of Our Own was awarded the 2019 Hugo Award™ for "Best Related Work" in August by the voting membership of this year's Worldcon™. As fandom does, a lot of people predictably joked about "welp, my Stucky tentacle porn just won a Hugo" or "my Stucky A/B/O has won 0.0000482% of a Hugo!" The World Science Fiction Society™, who holds the service mark for "The Hugo Awards"™ and licenses the ability to award those awards each year to the independent organization that seeks the license to throw each year's Worldcon™, decided that they would like us all to know we should stop doing that and this award being given to "The Archive Of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works" does not mean that we, users of the AO3 or members of the OTW, are 'Hugo winners'. (Repeatedly. In great detail and at great length.)

( cut for length )

comments

dollypopinspiration:

nanushka

Pull up a chair ???? via

@jaynemckenna

edit by

@veronika.breuer

#nanushkanyc

dollypopinspiration:

nanushka

Open space with natural light in the Lousiana Museum of Modern Art ✨ via

@mariavannguyen

Photo by 蜷川実花

Woohoo!!! SPARK made the Florida Sunshine State Young Readers Award 2020-21 list! Thanks so much, Florida librarians! You have absolutely made my day!

https://www.floridamediaed.org/ssyra.html 

 

A piece I finished five years ago today, on April 15, 2012, for the blog of Gollancz, my UK publisher: Triggers, FlashForward, and Me by Robert J. Sawyer Thanks to the good people at Gollancz, I was recently interviewed in SFX, the world’s top-selling English-language magazine devoted to science fiction. I spoke in that interview […]

Some of us who are disabled and/or fat are worried we'll be denied access to scarce medical resources during the pandemic. This document describes our legal rights (in the US) and ways to maximize our likelihood of getting care.

#NoBodyIsDisposable Guide to Surviving COVID-19 Triage

Crips and fatties made this.
Please share with everyone who needs it.

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The voice of Ahsoka Tano tells StarWars.com about writing the new Little Golden Book and rewatching Star Wars: The Clone Wars for inspiration.

Download the Padmé-starring novel at no charge from May 1 - 8.

Darth Sidious’s master plan becomes reality, and the galaxy will never be the same.

That second slice of cheesecake when the Cheesecake factory was running their $0.88 a slice promo. The late night boardgame marathon when I had to work early the next morning. Hosting a dinner party every night for 12 days during the 12 days of Christmas. I fell in love with the idea of all these things, but once I experienced them, I realized they were mismatched to my temperament. They were so enticing, and they whispered to me with promises of fun, but I couldn’t love them the way I wanted to. That’s what Shadows in Kyoto did to me too. I picked up a copy of the game based solely on the artwork. It’s beautiful, as we have come to expect from Maisherly Chan. I should have known what I was getting into because we already own other games that lean heavily toward the abstract - such as Hanamikoji (another game for which Maisherly provided artwork; see my review for it here: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1718238/what-jenni-said-about-hanamikoji) - and I have never come to love those games the way I do others in my collection. Perhaps it is because my frustration tolerance is pretty low for repeatedly losing game after game and that’s what happens with these 2-player abstract games in my collection. I play them against my husband (who holds a PhD in statistics) and I bend and twist and strain my brain to outwit him and it doesn’t work. I just end up with a headache and feelings of self-loathing. That’s exactly what happened every time we played Shadows in Kyoto.

The game puts players in the roles of Spy vs Spy in a battle between Oniwaban agents (backed by the Japanese Shogunate or military government) and ones employed by the new government that replaced the Shogunate. It’s a great theme that wraps around the strategic gameplay well. In our household there was much speculation as to whether the designers started with the historic theme and designed a game that fit it or created a theme around an abstract game they designed first.

The components are well made and include a sturdy center board, high quality thick cards, and wooden pawns.

The gameplay for Shadows in Kyoto is deceptively straightforward. Each player places their six pawns on the six starting locations on their side of the board as they see fit, with the markings for which ones are carrying real intelligence and which ones are carrying fake intelligence facing the player, so that the opposing player cannot see the markings. To win, a player must complete one of the following objectives:

• trick the opponent into capturing three of the player’s agents carrying fake intelligence
• capture both of the agents carrying real intelligence from the opponent
• get one of their agents carrying real intelligence to the back row of the opponent

Movement is controlled, in part, by playing location cards, which allows players to move to the designated type of space, following the movement rules (move only forward, move only 1 space at a time, cannot move into a space already occupied by your own agent). Instead of playing a location card, players can also play tactic cards that trigger movement. For example, the tunnel card allows a player to move any 1 of their agents horizontally to any other space on the same row, stopped only by an encounter with another pawn.

Encounters between pawns (when a pawn of one player moves into the space of the opposing player, “attacking” it) are resolved by revealing the markings on the back of the defender’s pawn and then comparing it to the markings on the back of the attacker’s pawn (which remains visible only to the attacker). If the comparison reveals the attacker’s pawn wins the encounter (3>2, 2>1, 1>0, and 0>3), then the attacker captures the defender’s pawn. Alternatively, if the defender’s pawn wins the encounter, it stays in its location on the board with its markings revealed and the attacker moves his pawn back to the location it was in before the encounter.

To spice up the game, Shadows in Kyoto also includes Charisma and Equipment cards. These cards can be distributed to the players to provide enhanced powers or abilities that alter some aspect of the rules in favor of the player. For example, the Ayane card allows a player to return a location card to their hand after playing it instead of putting in their discard pile.

No matter which way I placed my pawns initially, my husband was able to deduce my hidden information (i.e. the markings on the back of my pawns) after just a few encounters or find a way to move one of his agents carrying real intel quickly to the back row of my board. Again and again, I tried to make some kind of strategic progress and always failed to do so. I wanted to cry. I’m pretty sure I did cry at one point.

How could something with so few components and such basic rules be so difficult? Really, that’s the beauty of the game, if you’re one for elegant logic puzzles. In this way, Shadows in Kyoto is a fantastic game that should be highly appreciated by its target audience. It’s simple to learn, plays quickly, and requires a great deal of reasoning and strategy, both in the initial placement of one’s pawns and the ensuing gameplay. And the artwork is an exquisite bonus. The game’s just not right for me though, and that’s why I’m giving it one “oui”.

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Publisher: Deep Water Games
Players: 2
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): About 20 minutes
Game type: abstract deduction
Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

It's official! Starfighter t-shirts are ready for PRE-ORDER!

Black American Apparel t-shirts with silkscreen print, available in different sizes! We got the first batch in and the print quality is fantastic! Shirts are estimated to ship on 8/20/09! Limited quantity for the time being!

ORDER AVAILABLE ONLINE @ STARFIGHTER SHOP
http://shop.starfightercomic.com/

Thank you guys so much! More merchandise is on the way! -HamletMachine

Hamlet and I have been super busy getting the first Chapter of Starfighter ready for printing - it's actually kind of a complicated process and we're both learning as we go. On the plus side, it's going to be a really nice looking volume, I think you all are really going to like it.

Also, I want to give out a HUGE thank you to everyone who ordered a t-shirt, the response was fantastic and I know Hamlet was really touched by all the supportive comments you guys left. So the pre-order is officially over, anything you order from the shop now will be shipping immediately. Did I mention how much you guys rock? -Thisbe

P.S. We got some requests for additional sizes of the Starfighter shirt so we now have a few each of the larger sizes (2X and 3X Large) in stock at the Starfighter Shop.

Thank you all for your patience! I've had a lot of computer problems over the past two weeks and lost what I had been working on for page 26 of Chapter 2… But don't worry, very much like Narsil of King Elendil, IT HAS BEEN REMADE! My apologies for the delay! I really appreciate the continued love and support. And yes, I have a new hard drive now.

Also, the long awaited second Starfighter T-Shirt IS NOW AVAILABLE! This shirt had previously only been available at MoCCA and Yaoi-con, but now it's ready for purchase on the shop! This is actually the first t-shirt I designed, so I am quite fond of it!

Along with the new shirts, we've gotten in another shipment of the original Black Starfighter T-Shirt as well.

Thank you all so much! Enjoy! -HamletMachine