| Hot Chip, Young Knives and other pop geeks - too cool for school?
Yet, unlike nerds, whose only hope is to grow into software billionaires, geeks are redeemable. If they are music obsessives, they can emerge from their bedrooms with hits of their own and, suddenly, it’s hip to be square. Once tagged to a subset of US college rock (Weezer, They Might Be Giants, Fountains of Wayne), "geeky" now crops up in relation to various bands in various genres: Hot Chip play electropop, Lightspeed Champion countrified chamber-folk, the Whitest Boy Alive – lanky King of Convenience Erlend Oye’s latest project – immaculately minimal synth-funk. Being thorough, you could say that Vampire Weekend (preppy) and Los Campesinos! (twee) seem kinda geeky – or even Kanye West, with his faux-freshman act. And cardigans are everywhere.
Review: 'Tir na nÓg' a bumpy ride
It's a disappointing outing for both Smith, directing his last play as the Magic's outgoing artistic director, and O'Brien. Her inventively constructed and tantalizingly oblique "Triptych" in '03 remains one of the highlights of Smith's five-year tenure. "Girls" and the succeeding novels that make up "The Country Girls Trilogy" ("The Lonely Girl" and "Girls in Their Married Bliss") were the books that established O'Brien as one of Ireland's leading contemporary writers (getting banned in Ireland didn't hurt). But the lack of descriptive clarity that haunts the novels carries over into the dramatization in ways that will frustrate those who know the books and perplex those who don't. Characters who play important roles in young Kate's life are reduced to broad caricatures - or, in the case of Michael Louis Wells' Hickey, touching anomalies - whose relationship to her or purpose in the story is left unexplained.
Store shootings may be connected 1:48 PM
ROCK HILL, S.C. -- Four people shot at three different crime scenes has investigators looking into whether the shootings are tied to the same person. They haven't confirmed the connection, but say they are concerned that is the case. The most recent shooting happened Thursday afternoon at Cash On The Spot check cashing in York County. The suspect is still on the loose. The shooter was caught on surveillance video. Investigators hope someone recognizes him and has information that could lead to his arrest. .
Back up photos on the road
Every minute of footage can fill 100MB or more of storage. To save space, you may want to edit video on the camera to remove the less interesting parts. This kind of feature is available on newer Canon, Olympus, and other cameras. It's no iMovie, but it typically allows you to trim a series of frames from the beginning or end of a clip. Create backups There's a downside to relying solely on media cards for storage: if a problem develops with your card, you could lose all your photos. Flash-memory cards are susceptible to accidental erasure and even corruption. They're also small (especially SD cards), and therefore easy to misplace. That's why it's a good idea to back up images. Here are some options: Transfer to an iPod Using the $29 Apple iPod Camera Connector, you can transfer images from a digital camera to a photo-capable iPod (except the iPod nano, alas) via your camera's USB cable (see “Image Go-Between").
Phil Tippett a special-effects pioneer
Tippett walks into his upstairs conference room with his shirttail out and a wild ring of long gray hair that only adds to the mad professor vibe. Tippett is friendly, but anxious - co-workers say that's his permanent state. He relaxes a bit when he starts a film reel, which is heavy with stop-motion work from two of his biggest influences: "King Kong" special-effects worker Willis O'Brien and "Jason and the Argonauts" mastermind Ray Harryhausen. "It was this scene right here that I saw at the (Berkeley) Oaks theater, when I was 7 years old in 1958," Tippett says, pointing at the screen as a few actors throw spears at a four-story-tall Harryhausen creation. "This was the thing that inspired me, that scene with the Cyclops in 'The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad.' And I was never the same since." With no special-effects industry jobs to aspire to, the young Tippett mowed lawns for the money to make his own stop-motion films.
More guns will not solve the problem of violence
This is the second mass shooting in Illinois in the past few weeks. Perpetrators knew their law abiding victims were defenseless. Illinois is one of only two states that do not allow any form of CCW. Comment by Si Vis Pacem Para Bellum -- February 14th, 2008 at 5:56 pm Mr Klopfenstein shows he doesn't know what he is talking about. "…how many innocent people would have been killed or wounded in the hail of bullets from the guns of 35 basically untrained and unskilled shooters?" Mr Klopfenstein seems to have forgotten about the training requirements that go along with obtaining a concealed carry permit. "Since the letter writer seems to think that taking away the concealed-carry permit is sufficient punishment for those who use their guns illegally, I certainly hope that Mr.
Bureaucracy makes a mockery of RTI
The bureaucracy in Haryana has virtually reduced the Right to Information Act to a toothless law, which is being observed more in its breach than observance. The most common ploy used by bureaucrats is to supply misleading or contradictory information to those seeking information under the Act. The other standard gambit is to force the applicant to move the appellate authority, thus passing the buck upwards. RTI activists allege that the dilatory tactics of the senior bureaucrats has over a period shown the way to junior officers to follow suit and harass applicants. This has led to a sharp increase in the cost of seeking information. An avid RTI activist, Anil Bhatia, says he has been fighting against the control being exercised by the DAV Colleges Management Committee based in New Delhi over its colleges in Haryana for the past 20 years.
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