#//just recycling the old bio but adding a little in

[askisabella]

* HARRY POTTER AU ;

alternate universe from January 23rd to February 2nd

Isabella ‘Izzie’ Regina Locksley sofia carson

she is sixteen years old

a sixth year student

sorted into Atticus House at Durmstrang. Slythern house at Hogwarts.

important connections; daughter of Robin and Regina Locksley, twin sister to Henry Locksley. niece to Zelena Greene. ride or dies; Killian Jones, Nathaniel Anthony, Evangeline Kennedy. new friends to Samantha Bradshaw and Wyatt Bruno.

her patronus is a robin.

wand; 11 ½ inch rowan wood with a dragon heartstring core.

things will be tagged [ hp au ]

Isabella Locksley is the epitome of a Slytherin. Due to a somewhat traumatic past and nightmares that still plague her the sixteen year old has thrown herself into all things magical in hopes of becoming the best. The best comes with power; power comes with being able to protect oneself and maybe even approval from her very Gryffindor family. Years at Drumstrang taught the brunette you have no one to rely on but yourself. Izzie is friendly enough unless provoked but really only relies on a handful of people. She deeply misses living in the muggle world where things were simple and her family wasn’t at odds due to the house separation at Hogwarts. She is a bit ashamed of being a Slytherin due to family history and the implications that come along with the house but hides it well from those who don’t truly know her. She excels at anything dark arts, potions and apparition and isn’t terrible at charms. When she isn’t in class, she can be found with friends, practicing anything magical or wandering about Hogsmeade.

FULL BIOGRAPHY

Isabella Locksley came into the world just minutes after her older bother therefore setting the tone for their lives; always second best. Childhood was absolutely wonderful! The Locksley home never lacked love and constantly fostered children’s curious minds. It wasn’t until one night everything changed.

The Dark Lord and his followers attacked Hogwarts which was just feet from the Locksley’s home. The sounds of screams, cackling laughter, the smells of sulfur and something she couldn’t pinpoint, the air tasted of something strong enough to almost gag the young girl. Time was spent hidden in the depth of a closet as the battle raged on unbeknownst to the girl. As if things weren’t bad enough, a strange voice entered her head causing an immense amount of pain but she didn’t scream. Shaking hands remained covering ears with eyes slammed shut in an attempt to block everything out. After what felt like hours the young girl was tucked into a bed beside her brother in their grandparents home.

Growing up in the magical world seemed normal until they arrived on the muggle side of things. No longer were wands, flying brooms and potions. However, like most children, Isabella was resilient and quickly settled in. Nightmares of that evening — everything heard, seen, mother leaving and returning with father near death — never fully went away. Often nights she woke up shaking and in tears, but after a while kept the incidents to herself in fear of bringing back bad memories for mum and father, as well. The muggle world was wonderful to Isabella! Every day memories of their life before began to fade making it a little easier to breath, with the exception of nightmares. Friends were made, activities joined, school excelled in, family close and everyone was happy. This world was safe.

Acceptance letters flew through the door one day causing a sense of dread to set in. They were going back. Not only where they going back but the twins were being sent to opposite schools. Isabella to to Durmstrang and Henry Beauxbatons. Begging and pleading would do no good so Isabella accepted her fate silently with a broken heart. It seemed cruel to separate their family but if mum and father thought it was for the best it must be, right? Bags were packed, supplies were gathered, and meek goodbyes given as every emotion began to internalize. Brown eyes couldn’t even look into parents the day she was sent away. This all just felt — wrong. Most felt excitement but she felt nothing but paralyzing fear.

Once at Durmstrang, Isabella thrived academically! Everything magical seemed to come with ease. It was strange. After learning about the very battle that almost tore apart her family something clicked, the more she knew the better protected. Knowledge is power. Power is protection. Over the years, the darker parts of magic began to change Isabella. It was a bit startling, even to herself, so she sought counsel from her parents during holiday visits and allowed them to ground her whenever needed. Along the way Isabella seemed to collect a handful of loyal friends.

Being around family every day was terrifying. It was no secret Isabella hadn’t wished to be forced back into the magical world, but feeling like an outsider after feeling a pull to the dark arts only seemed to catapult the girl into a depression. Isabella was horrified with the person she had become. Having to face her parents every day feeling like she had failed them hurt. Except Locksley’s don’t show pain — not according to grandmother — so hurt morphed into a wall painted with snarky comments and cold to the touch. As time wore on, the resolve began to crack allowing dad and mum to see there was much pain behind the mask. There was hope she could be the Isabella she once was again, but it was meek. 

Hogwarts 2.0 sorted Isabella into Slytherin without a moments hesitation. It wasn’t terrible considering most of the linage had also belonged to the house, but the moment Henry’s Gryffindor was shouted out it was hard to miss the pride in her parents eyes. Gryffindor was the ideal house for any student after the great battle but even more so for the Locksley’s as a family. Father had been a Gryffindor, mother had wished to be one and now Henry. The feelings were pushed aside to celebrate with those she knew were proud of her; friends.

[moonlit-han]

the perfect cup of coffee ↠ lee minho

genre: fluff, office au word count: 2k warnings: none, unless you really don’t like coffee? request: no (for junhuisflower​, who wrote the initial idea for this fic) a/n: i am reposting this fic because the first time i posted it, on June 13, 2020, it didn’t show up in the general tags. so, i hope you all enjoy it this second time around!

✧ masterlist & tag list info in bio ✧

↠↞

In his impeccably neat and well-fitting suit, Lee Minho walked into the office where he held the position of Manager in Chief. This was not his official title, but one that he had chosen for himself; after all, he did manage just about everything and everyone, when it came down to it.

In reality, Minho was the Assistant to the Administrative Director of the company and was, in theory, meant to delegate the more menial tasks to others. However, this never occurred because Minho did not trust others to do work he knew he could do better. Over that which was not in his job description and, therefore, the responsibility of others, Minho still attempted to exert control. Thus, he was the Manager in Chief. Everything in Minho’s world had to perfect, or as perfect as Minho could contrive.

As he arrived at the office and reached for the company suite’s door, automatically passing something that was not there from one hand to the other, Minho stopped. He’d forgotten his coffee. How had he forgotten his coffee? This was practically unheard of, since he made his coffee at home and brought it to work with him. He did not fully trust coffee made by others.

Coffee was one of the many things that Minho insisted on being perfect. While he cared that his clothes were appropriately smart for the workplace and he prided himself on his small but wonderfully efficient car, he could manage for a time without them being in perfect condition. But, he absolutely had to have perfect coffee. In terms of non-essential costs, Minho spent the most on his cats (plenty of little treats, baubles, and warm places to sleep) and his coffee (fair trade, organic coffee made with care and attention). He was forever trying new ways of brewing coffee, and considered himself a bit of a connoisseur. Oftentimes, he’d even add some cardamom to the coffee as it brewed for a little extra spice and sweetness. Having such wonderfully delicious coffee was the high point of Minho’s day, a way he coped with the monotony of work.

So, when he arrived at the office and had no coffee, Minho was incensed. Sighing and grumbling to himself, he pushed through the door and made his way to his desk. He had back-to-back-to-back meetings and was responsible for leading one of them; so, he needed the caffeine to get through his day. His schedule was so busy that he couldn’t go back out to buy coffee, and couldn’t go back home to make himself a proper cup. Damn. It was against his every rule for coffee consumption to drink that which had not been made by him and to his particular specifications. Well, there was nothing to do now but go into the office’s lounge and drink the fluid that might just pass for coffee.

Minho’s coworkers looked up as they saw him move toward the lounge. Was he really going to drink coffee here? they whispered among themselves. They remained quiet as he passed, not wanting to disturb him in case his lack of coffee unleashed a hitherto unseen wrath (or wraith, even).

As he pushed open the door of the lounge, Minho made a noise of disgust as he took in the smell: a ground-in kind of odor from years of low quality coffee that had seeped into the wood and cushions of the lounge’s chairs and sofa. But today, there was a sweetness floating over the sourness of the smell of old, bad coffee. Perhaps someone had simply brought coffee from the outside world into the room and the dregs still lingered in a cup in the recycling.

Resigning himself to drinking the coffee—Maybe if he gulped down the horrid stuff, he could just get it over with?—Minho took down one of the mugs kept in the cabinet above the coffee maker. As he poured the dark liquid into the cup, a richly sweet and nutty smell met his nose.

Wait, what?

This was the communal coffee pot in the employee lounge of his office. Good coffee pouring out of that pot shouldn’t be possible. Surely his senses were fooling him and the taste would be just as weak and grimy as it had been the one other time he’d made the mistake of trying it.

Gingerly, he stirred a little cream into the mug. Squeezing his eyes shut as if to ward off the assuredly inherent shitty-ness of the coffee, Minho hesitantly raised the mug to his lips and sipped.

His eyes flew open in surprise. This was some of the best coffee he’d ever tasted. Minho took another sip, savoring the taste of the brew. He was stunned, absolutely stunned. He had to find out who had made this wonderful coffee. It was imperative to his proper functioning, since this coffee would now be a regular feature of his daydreams.

During each of his meetings that day, Minho took a minute at the end to ask if anyone knew who’d made the coffee that day. No one knew. With each shake of someone’s head and each “No” he heard, Minho became increasingly more frustrated. How could no one know who’d made the coffee?

The next day, he asked around the office again, but still, no one knew. On the third day, Minho decided to stop asking his coworkers for fear of seeming obsessed, despite the fact that he really was obsessed with the question of who had made that coffee.

Several weeks passed with Minho occasionally checking, with the utmost secrecy, the contents of the office’s communal coffee pot. It was uniformly horrible. But after a full month of furtive coffee sampling, Minho’s work paid off.

It was a Friday morning and he’d ambled into the break room to just spend some time away from the (non-existent) noise of the office. He was surprised to find someone already there … making coffee.

“Hello, Mr. Lee,” she said brightly. “How are you this morning?”

Minho stared at the young woman as she continued making the coffee. So, this is our new hire, he thought, noting the grace with which she moved.

“Mr. Lee?” she prompted.

Minho shook himself. “I’m sorry,” he searched his memory for her name, “Ms. L/N, isn’t it? I’m well, thank you. I hope you’re having a stress-free morning.” Minho leaned against the wall by the counter where Y/N methodically measured tablespoon after tablespoon of rich, dark coffee into the coffee maker. He noticed that it had been cleaned, too. “Do you make coffee here often, Ms. L/N?”

Damn it, that sounded like the worst pick-up line ever, Minho chided himself.

Y/N laughed softly. “Not really, since I’ve only been here a month, Mr. Lee. Would you like a cup when I’m done making this?”

“Oh, yes. Thanks,” Minho said, still in a bit of a daze. Huh, did she make that delicious coffee, then?

“Is it alright if I add some cardamom? I think it gives the coffee a deep, interesting flavor,” Y/N said before she closed the lid of the appliance.

Minho thought he’d died and gone to heaven in that moment; all he could do was nod. Y/N produced a small container of cardamom—she said she’d ground it that morning—and added a bit to the ground coffee. Minho watched as Y/N finished preparing the coffee, thinking to himself. Then, they sat in surprisingly easy silence as the smell of brewing coffee began to suffuse the room, filling Minho’s world. Leaning back in a chair, Y/N had a blissful look on her face at the aroma.

The coffee maker made a gurgling noise as it shut off, and Y/N rose to her feet. She withdrew two mugs from the cabinet, then went to her bag and produced a thermos and a jar of honey. Minho looked on as Y/N poured out the coffee, then measured out honey into one mug.

“Would you like some?” she asked, proffering the honey.

“Definitely,” Minho said, excitedly. “I rarely meet anyone else who puts honey in their coffee.” He smiled, dropping his earlier formal manner.

“Really? It’s the best. You know,” Y/N continued, spooning honey into his mug, “I’ve never met anyone else—other than a Turkish friend, at least—who puts cardamom in their coffee.”

“I had it when I was traveling and fell in love,” Minho said, then cleared his throat self-consciously. How was he talking with her this easily? “And, Ms. L/N, you’re welcome to call me Minho. You are, after all, the Assistant to the Artistic Director here, so our positions are equal.”

“Oh! Well, in that case, my name is Y/N.” She grinned and opened the metal canister, which Minho saw was full of cream. “Do you want to put yours in? I know people are particular about cream in drinks.”

Taking the thermos, Minho thanked Y/N and noticed that his heartbeat was pounding a little louder than he expected. Then again, perhaps not so unexpectedly as he was about to drink what he knew would be delicious coffee. He poured in just enough cream to turn the coffee the color of dark amber, then brought the mug to his lips.

“Enjoy!” Y/N said, smiling brightly as she took back her thermos and stowed it and the other containers in her bag.

Minho took a sip, and almost dropped the mug in surprise. It was just like the coffee he had tasted several weeks ago, and, really, even better. He savored the coffee, taking sip after sip as Y/N looked on.

“Is it good?” Y/N asked hesitantly, not drinking from her own mug yet.

“It’s delicious, Y/N, it really is,” Minho sighed, feeling as if he were drinking ambrosia. “Did you happen to make coffee for the office a few weeks ago?”

Surprise overtook pride on Y/N’s face as she chirped, “Yeah, I did!  Did you have some then?”

“I’ve been trying to find who’d made that coffee ever since,” Minho said, smiling at how odd that must sound. “I just really like coffee, and yours was incredible.”

Y/N blushed furiously and tried to hide her face by taking a sip from her own mug. “Thanks, Minho” she murmured. “I’m glad you liked it!”

Minho couldn’t help but smile softly at how cute Y/N looked when he complimented her coffee. Her dimples even came out when she smiled.

How is she that pretty? Minho groaned to himself. Shit. Well, what do I have to lose?

“Y/N,” Minho said tentatively, and Y/N looked up, her cheeks still pink. “So, there’s this coffee shop I love to go to and they have all sorts of unusual blends—it’s really quite lovely. Forgive me for being so forward, but may I take you there? I’m sure you’d enjoy it!” He rubbed the back of his neck, slightly embarrassed. “But only if you’d like, and it doesn’t have to be anything more than two coworkers getting coffee together. I don’t mean to sound like I’m asking you out or anything,” Minho rambled, then stopped, knowing he’d probably said too much already.

“I’d love to!” Y/N said, her eyes sparkling. “Maybe we will be two friends getting coffee … or maybe something else?”

Minho’s eyes went wide in amazement as he made a little noise that could be taken as a question or a plea for clarification.

Y/N shrugged as she picked up her bag and went over to the door. “You’ll have to wait and see,” she said and winked, leaving Minho to stand in the office lounge, staring at the door.

Still unable to process his luck—was that it?—Minho took another sip of coffee. It was just as delicious as Y/N was sweet. This was going to be quite interesting indeed.

[liamoreillygevert]

05/08/2020

Big Wednesday again. But instead of winning a boat we can win X Challenge and get some cash. Zed and I have decided to enter our idea into X Challenge cause why not try and win some more cash, but now on a more serious note we were a bit lost with the project. We didn’t quite know where to start so the first part of the day went kinda in circles, me making models of the shape of our hut then discussing where we were at over and over again. I wrote up a simple statement of intent, it is as follows: To create an adaptable temporary emergency shelter for the refugee crisis and others.

After this we finally had a chat about what to do now. We discussed our idea, talked about how our simple shelters would be different to all the other ones out there. There are already flat pack shelter such as the Ikea ones that are made of heavy plastic an can be quickly clipped together to be assembled but due to its quality they are harder to come by. There are also more long term ones such as the Cortex one which is made up of a concrete fabric which when water is added drys up to harden, the only issue with this is that it take a while to complete. 

The first thing that we talked about to make them different is to make them bio degradable. Since our shelter is a short term solution to last until better accommodation is available having it be biodegradable would be efficient. If it was made on cardboard then once it’s no longer in use it could be broken down into compost for gardens and crops. 

Next we thought about time, the Ikea shelter can be assembled in a day although there are only a limited amount of them and the Cortex take at the least 24 hours to assemble and once again only a limited amount of them. The cardboard ‘Shell’ hut would come as a flat pack set that could be folded into place in a matter of minutes. Pop them out of the mold and connect the joins to create the shelter. As for water proofing and condition proofing the design style including colours and shape would assist with that, for example having it painted black would make it absorb more sunlight making it warmer, and having a white paint would absorb less making it cooler, as for conditions like wind the shape of the shelter would be streamlined almost like a sports car to make the wind glide over top of it making it less effected by the wind. As for water proofing the treated cardboard would assist with this but a water proof fabric could be applied to the top of the shelter to stop rain effecting the tenant. Within a matter of minutes they would have a temporary shelter to call home till better accommodation arrives or is built. 

The next upside we found to this is the price, card board is a cheap and in abundance. Mass production of these flat pack sets would be easy, cardboard and a laser cutter to cut out the shape. On an industrial scale it would be easy to produce. The light weight cardboard would make shipping easy and with the flat pack style it could be stacked to save more space. With cheap production cost and shipping cost it would be an effective way to house people for a short time.

Pitch:

After coming up with these ideas I pitched them to some other ears in the form of the lectures. I explained our idea of making the shelters and all of the differences compared to other styles. The feedback was good, Claudine it actually conducting her masters around bio materials, especially bio plastics. She suggested that if we wanted to focus on using cardboard for composting after the shelter had served its purpose then it would take to long for it to break down, alternatively we could use it for fire starters for warmth and so forth. A better idea she gave us is to use bio plastics, certain bio plastics can break down quicker and still be used for composting and growing other plants which would also serve its purpose. In future for the project we are going to have to compare material samples and do tests with them. As well as this we could also incorporate seeds into the material it’s self which would be useful as food would grow while people used the shelter. She also suggested we look into the future and how the future will look with bio materials and things of the such.

Another topic brought up was that of recycling. As for the water proof outer sheet it could be arranged to gather up old tents from festivals and reuse the water proofing on that to fashion new ones for the ‘Shell’ shelters. This would take waste from somewhere else and incorporate it into another situation with little to no cost. 

Now a big part of these refugee camps is the community around it. Some families using them may be larger than other which is something we have to think about. A modular style was suggested in the fact that clipping the shelters together could create a bigger shelter and house more people. Due to the isometric design of the ‘Shells’ and the fittings on each segment, hypothetically all of the shelters could be clipped together. Thus making larger housing for families more accessible with no worry. 

One more large suggestion was to select a location that these shelters would be used in. For example if we were to use these in a dry, hot place then we could focus on aspects needed for that location.  

Now just to reiterate, the ‘Shell’ housing is for short term use until better more effective shelters come along but that is not where there uses are going to end. Whether it be for compost, fire starters or just plain old recycling into other products it is meant to be an efficient short term product to help people in need. An emergency shelter to assist people. Links to the Ikea and Cortex shelter are as follows.   

Ikea shelter: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/jan/27/why-ikea-flatpack-refugee-shelter-won-design-of-the-year 

Cortex Shelter: https://www.dezeen.com/2019/09/17/cortex-shelter-cutwork-refugee-architecture/    

[imogenbennettblogsdp]

Transmedia storytelling - session 6

again as said in previous blog (week 5) I am virtual learning from my home, which as in that blog I felt not as productive as I would have in a class room but under the circumstances I find I accomplished and learnt quite a bit. Also the working in Pjs is a plus...

Web 2.0 is something we have touched on before, in the first sessions which is important as Web 2.0 has become something everyone is very familiar with (even if they don't know what the word means) and that Social Media, with social media its very much broadened to a active audience, we are contanstly looking, creating and thinking about what we are seeing which can be pretty much anything. take my edit instagram account for example, I am constantly seeking new techniques by others (almost collaborating by sharing editing styles with people and I am making ‘User Generated Content’. Also Web 2.0 offers audience participation ‘Participatory culture’, for example the Comment section. this allows the viewer to give feedback, praise and even abuse (even though that's not what its particularly meant for) This gives the viewer a feel of incorporation towards the creator (or photo, video, information- if on wiki).

*Referring to the voice over presentation video* the way marketing use ‘User Generated Content’ is very interesting and it has changed the ways we receive ads and how marketers approach sponsoring etc, I wanted to look more into it/ provide evidence to this and with two popular examples being - Youtube and Game ads.  when you watch a video on youtube by a content creator what do you usually get:

Ads. 

Youtube (a popular Web 2.0 website) is a Queen Bee hive for Ads... swarming. compared to old visual Ads being Ads on tv in the commercial break or flyers, these ads can be incorporated in the video, being at the beginning of the ad like the 1st picture above, or in collaboration with the creator of the video. I found this very intriguing and interesting, Im quite fascinated by idea of marketing and this little investigation (even tho I'm pretty familiar by being a YouTube veteran) so perhaps in future I can explore it more.

As I am watching the ‘Harry Jenkins film’ I now feel more supported in what I have said previously in the Blog, Mostly where I mention my instagram account, he says “what were seeing in the digital age people are taking media into their hands... and innovating and experimenting” with that media which Is exactly what I am doing, I am taking content and mixing it up making it into my own.

‘Conversion Culture” Having different platforms to see it (say youtube, insta and TikTok) which is shaped by us rather than corporations, we have control. we can all collaborate and mix information together (on say wiki) which leads to much more complex ‘than what someone in a board room can come up with on their own’. I also found this interesting and very off topic to the video but I realised that a very Recent and Popular example can  be how the Convid-19 information is spread out, TikTok a very content creator based app which mostly is used by younger generations and if you go on it now you'll see a lot of information on how to stay safe and social distance during this pandemic which is very interesting... Could it be argued that kids are paying more attention because they see this entering ‘their world’? not just seeing it on the news (which they might not watch as heavily as the app). 

interesting as It creates more of a world for the viewer

Talking on the Transmedia topic of having multiple platforms I was shown the Blair witch project website. This fascinated me and reminded me of my personal experience With this, ‘Ingrid goes west’ a film near and dear to my heart, which is mostly based on instagram (and how it effects us) #LIFE. I was reminded of this film as the creators also made Ingrid's and Taylor’s (the influencer in the film) instagram account real which is quite fun and I enjoyed looking into it and felt like she semi excited in a way, provided more of a world outside of the film.

Taylors instagram* I found this so clever and funny, with the captions down to the T. also something to note that loads of fans are allowed to interact with Taylor like Ingrid did, Commenting quotes (especially “Damn girl that looks yummy as fuck!” which is a popular comment you'll see). Its clever if you ask me. I myself have to admit to commenting that quote as- well. (but I'm being involved!) 

Watching the ‘Transmedia storytelling’ video with a cinderella adaptation. watching this had made me think. about A- what story I want to create/adapt. and B- how it links so well to todays generation. And yet again watching this reminded me of something I have seen that is off similar structure. An Ad for the social media app ‘Own it” created by BBC. showing how little connections through sharing can lead to bigger things. (this made helped me understand the Transmedia storytelling video more as I know its all about the connections between things and seeing it visually really helped.)Im not looking forward to doing this task though, storyboarding and mind maps are not my friend and I don't enjoy them, (I may have mentioned this before) but I like to freestyle it and see where it takes me instead of planing and expecting etc. Also Im not a fan of Lucid Charts, I find it hard to use and complicated to what it is which I know is unproductive as I should be using a variety of sites to improve my skills but you can't help but hating something... Lucid chart is my kryptonite.  

For my Transmedia story I decided to do it based off of Joker (2019), I chose this as it has a major event in it which I felt I could use events for, also I really like the film so why not.

I started to think about what I would focus the story around and it was hard to pin-point a certain one, I did pick joker killing the 3 men on the subway (Spoiler!) as that is essentially in my opinion what cracked him into becoming the ‘Joker’. *Refer to the story map in google docs*. Being honest I didn't enjoy it as much as I though I did, I found it quite confusing for what I had to do for a while (so like what directions do I go in? what characters do I use?). Something I also didn't like which is strange is that I didn't like making all the social media accounts... strange because I usually make tons in my own time (I have 6+ personal instagram accounts :/) 

I did start using the software ‘Zeebob’ but I found it quite (this will make me sound snobbish but,) cheap. I just felt it limited me and to what I could create and just didn't seem realistic, 

so I made two on here but ditched it and went for the real thing... making actual accounts for the posts. Guess which is which... the 1st one is zee bob and second is an actual account I made. The upside of making the actual accounts is having the freedom and more ability to do more things (like on twitter I can retweet stuff that I feel the character would and who they follow which adds personality to the account. 

Of course the downside of making actual accounts is that I couldn't fake the likes or followers which takes away the realism to the accounts. 

Out of all the accounts and social media’s I created, surprisingly the @GothamNews was my favourite, probably because i spent the most thought on this; creating the logo (on Canva) .. and finding the cool retweets like the van which I thought was like striking gold to add to the realism.

I did make a mistake that i knew occur from using the same account and changing it (E,G, I made a twitter account and kept changing the name,pictures, retweets etc)... Notice that Arthur’s and GothamNews background photo is the same... well I just noticed that too and its why I need to pay attention to it. so tiny lesson to myself for future and if I was going to do this for real I would create separate accounts and spend more time to trying to find the fitting photos for each character and why? it makes more sense for the news account to have trash as (in the film) Trash was the relevant topic, but joker not so much - he doesn't strike me and the recycling type.

While making the accounts I tried to add as much passive detail as I could... adding the subtle detail, like (as I mentioned) who they follow, retweet, like, what's in their bio, what's their background photo etc. referring a little to one of the earlier sessions in visual design (semiotics 'Denotation and Connotation'). 

(especially Jokers) I paid attention to the way joker writes, to my knowledge he isn't very educated so his writing is very childlike and he writes how he hears (eg  when we see him write ‘hope my life makes more cents etc) it so that was a nice detail I added. 

here are some notes I made for when I was thinking about the map:

- plan event - riot

- bruce Waynes dad saying “stop trash/ campaign

- joker “maybe my life would make more cents if I was dead” 

- Marty “tonights show will be interesting “ 

- jokers video going on air

overall I think I will take the idea of broadening the ‘World’ I create (with film) by creating different platforms. I found this lesson a lot harder than I would of found it in class due to my focus being lost and feeling like im not putting 100% into it unfortunately. 

And who knows maybe ill get loads of followers on one of the accounts and become famous.

[xenosgirlvents]

Codex Craftworlds 8th Edition

The Codex has come, lets take a look at it and see what GW has done with the first Xenos Codex of 8th Edition;

I like that the intro bit is written to be just a positive look at the Aeldari/Asuryani, I never enjoyed that both Chaos Codices have their intros written from the perspective of an Imperium faction with; ‘lo! Turn back! Tis foul losers in here!‘ and such as it feeds into the meta-narrative that even players of other factions should always be most concerned with the Imperium instead of their own.

The opening Key Art is well drawn, sure, but dumb as it depicts something that’s never happened with two important characters (Magnus and Eldrad) and since its obvious the Asuryani are going to lose its baffling to put it as the first major artwork in their own Codex.

We then again get lengthy bits on the the Asuryani’s past, basically nothing new worth mentioning, though once again we get this ‘none could challenge them’ fallacy considering we know DAoT humans were just more widespread, powerful and advanced, so GW really just needs to sort their timeline out and get some consistency for a change.

We get info on the Path, little on civilian culture sadly, then we do come to one new piece which is the, apparently mandatory now, ‘how your army is setup’ bit which is fine and introduces some markings and ranking systems and is perfectly adequate.

We then get to a lengthy section per each Major Craftworld; Biel-Tan, Ulthwe, Iyanden, Saim-Hann and Alaitoc. I’m really disappointed with the lack of actual fluff here, its mostly just flavour text again telling us ‘They are X they do Y’ with almost no feats listed at all. Sigh. Sadly, yeah, we again see that if you compare it to, say, the list of feats the individual Chapters got in Codex Space Marines, the Major Craftworlds are renowed really for only 1 thing; getting invaded and losing a lot.

Anyway, each one in detail; Biel-Tan’s gives us a little bit of post-GS Fluff. I’m very happy to see we get confirmation on its fate, its is still intact, but damaged, and is still inhabited, they did not abandon it en masse. Yay! Less happy to see that it’s lost Half its entire population, so now 3/5 of the Major Craftworlds are ‘Shadows of their former selves’ whilst Chapters like Scythes of the Emperor, Crimson Fists and Blood Angels all recover to full strength in hand waves. Sigh. The female Autarch looks nice though.

Ulthwe; they are now the only Major Craftworld specified as being ‘populous’ which is at odds with their former characterization. Then again I guess when already 3/5 are explicitly wrecked they need to make a new one the ‘big one’ to explain why we should even care about this useless faction. Anyway they’ve splintered into three groups; the biggest are just still Ulthwe citizens, a second group’s gone nomadic following exiled Eldrad and the third are just the people following the Ynnari.

Iyanden; they are apparently very united in supporting the Ynnari...which clashes with what was said in Ghost Warrior and makes me wonder why they aren’t Ynnari then. I think I like the art of the Spiritseer and Wraithguard a lot though, its cool.

Saim-Hann’s section is best, gives more insight to them, fleshes them out in a general sense, the Wild Rider Clans, their customs, how they interact with others, relationships with Orks/Necron/Harlequins/Imperium and so on, so very good world building. No events, activities or feats really listed, but still good and, I feel, the best of these exposes.

Alaitoc is mostly nothing new, although we get random info on the Ynnari (this is still the Asuryani Codex isn’t it?), we also learn that most of the Imperium’s knowledge of the Asuryani is because Alaitoc sucks so much that the Inquisition keeps managing to capture their agents and torture them. Go Alaitoc? Not really sure how being told your faction just sucks is great, since we’re given no reciprocal feats of Alaitoc’s to counter it. Ugh. At least Eldorath is not mentioned once.

Then we get mini-pieces on Altansar, Ill-Kaithe, Lugganath, Iybraesil, Yme-Loc (how are you handling being bitch-slapped by the Ad-Mech oh ‘greatest of Vaul’s Smiths’?) and Mymeara in which we are told pretty much nothing worth mentioning which hasn’t been said before.

Now we get to the ‘timeline’ section and I’ll keep track of battles won/lost as well as new fluff.

We start off with a ton of the old normal about the fall of the Empire, little to nothing worth saying about it. We then get the old sections on GC-era Asuryani too.

Our first two battles are Eldrad getting curb-stomped by Fulgrim and Lugganath’s near-death in he Shattering. (1 loss/1 win).

We then get Rasilena mentiond vaguely, but apparently going into detail about the only major Asuryani victory, and their most badass moment ever, over Space Marines would look bad in their own Codex, so it is skipped over. (1 win).

We get more old Fluff in the Ghost Harvest and stuff ripped out of the Iyanden Supplement. (2 wins).

We get the horrible War in the Webway, old as before.

We get one nice expanded bit on when Saim-Hann beat rando Slaanesh Daemon of the week. (1 win).

We get the victory over some Titans again. (1 win). 

We get new Fluff...in which we find the Craftworlds once gathered for a meeting and then started killing each other. G-great. 

We get Eldrad’s big failure on Maedrax again (1 loss).

We get the Death of Gnosis Prime again (1 win/1 loss).

Doom of Malan’tai (1 loss). Is there this much recycled Fluff in the other Codices? I should check sometime, feels like basically nothing new was added.

Perfect War, Iyaden, same old. (1 win).

Clash of Scorpions gets added that after it the Craftworlds purged the followers of Arha.

What is hilarious here is we learn Eldrad made Armageddon 2 happen to save Idharae, and then they just died anyway cause a couple of Space Marines attacked them. Will the inability of Eldrad to achieve anything ever end? Probably not.

In probably the biggest piece of positive Fluff we find out Yriel is insanely successful as a Corsair, though once again GW is okay with it being mentioned that he has stolen ships from pretty much everyone but Space Marines, because I am fast becoming convinced GW literally worships them and would consider it heresy to say poor of them in another faction’s Codex.

Kyaduras makes his ‘we’re screwed’ prophecy and Doom of Iyanden happens. (1 win).

Ulthwe helps drive away Ahriman, old Fluff again. (1 win).

Bio-purge, old. (1 win).

Necron Rising, old, but Alaitoc wins its only battle against Necron ever so good for them. (1 win).

Then we get Altansar back, Cadia Falls, Biel-Tan goes cccracky, Yvraine’s up and Ynnari are here fighting at Iyanden. 

Now we are Post-GS so new Fluff developments. Biggest one; All Craftworlds have been discovered, boarded, and attacked by Daemons. At least Two Craftworlds are probably dead (there must be like 10 Craftworlds in total left by now, with 70% them at least half-dead). (2 losses. 1 win.)

We get told about the Iyanden bout from the Rulebook, nothing new, how does Iyanden even exist anymore? (1 win).

Biel-Tan kills Daemons, I’m beginning to feel that when writing this Codex the authors were like; ‘superiors, we wish to give the faction battles to win against foes!’ and then the heads went; ‘Okay...but only Daemons, no-one else’. (1 win).

We find out the 2nd time the Blood Crusade was fought to a stand still was by five Clans from Saim-Hann...but the other time it took Ghazghkull and the Swarmlord together...and two Vectorums of the Death Guard (not even 1000 men) were able to board and destory part of Saim-Hann while battling their whole fleet...I...do not understand...head hurts...logistics. Anyway more Daemon dead. (1 win).

We get our only example of Asuryani actually manipulating when they release Necron to kill Nurgle Daemons.

We get told a bit about Ulthwe being dumb, then Kairos invades it and Eldrad saves it. (1 win AND a win against a named character...a Daemon...wow this Codex literally only lets Daemons lose).

Then Yvraine has a meeting.

Overall feeling: Could the Asuryani beat someone other than Daemons for a change? If you just make Daemons lose always its just as bad as the Avatar of Khaine, it stops meaning anything if anyone beats them, at this point a kid with a stick could beat an army of Daemons.

Overall tally: 17 wins too 6 losses. Comes out to about 73% which isn’t bad at all. It isn’t Loyalist Space Marine level at all, but its above Chaos/Guard level so honestly I won’t complain about the ratio actually. What I will complain about is the lack of diversity, since its padded out heavily with a ton of wins against Daemons and almost no-one else. In particular not a single victory against Space Marines is mentioned at all.

Named Character wise they beat Kairos and that’s it. Sadly this means nothing as Greater Daemon Characters are almost as weak as the Avatar of Khaine.

Anyway more art then some info on individual units. This section is largely not needing commentary, very little new is told. There is a startling lack of little in-text stories about victories the units achieved, about two in total I think, which is odd. Other than that just lots of lies; Howling Banshees do not stand a chance against dedicated Marine CQC Units, do not believe this Codex, and Eldar Farseers are not great Seers how dare you lie to me like this. Avatar of Khaine just gets generic drivel not mentioning its greatest power; to lose against anything and we get 0 on the Phoenix Lords except now they are apparently so stupid that they once fought each other and Fuegan (characterised as furious, belicose and with an uncontrolled temper) was described as the calm and level-headed one trying to hold everyone back. I don’t even get it anymore ;_;.

Illic is still a nothingburger who’s greatest accomplishment in Fluff is when he failed to do anything and was caught by the Nemesor and saved like a Damsel in Distress by Ko’sarro, way to give Asuryani agency Codex. 

Yriel’s Spear/Cronesword is again killing him and he is still Cursed cause...you expected positive change? What did you think you were reading? A Space Marine Codex? Shame on you.

We’re also again told that nothing in the Webway is as dangerous as the Black Library’s Guardians which is just hilarious since Magnus has been in the Webway and Aeldari never stand a chance against anything Space Marine-related at all. I do wish the Codex wouldn’t lie so much.

We then get a showcase of Miniatures.

Next we’re on to the rules for the Army has a whole and only one thing to note; apparently spending thousands of years mastering and perfecting the art of command and dedicating centuries to the exploration of its every facet in a religious way makes one...just a worse version of what every Ultramarine Chaplain and Librarian is. Great!

For some reason, again, Eldrad is simply not able to Deny as many Psychic Powers as Voldus. I really don’t even know why GW pretends Aeldari are the best Psykers anymore.

I like Warlocks, don’t know why, but they’ve always been so cool to me. They look awesome to me in Art and I wish, considering they are still trapped on the Path of Khaine, they were better individual fighters, as I’d love to actually use them for some cool fighting more often, cause I dig their appearance and lore.

Don’t quite see why Phoenix Lords and the Avatar of Khaine don’t get LD10.

Also weird that Phoenix Lords don’t get a generic Inv Save seeing as GW hands out Inv Saves to HQ’s so much now.

Still dig the Phoenix Lords though, super-cool, but I again must point to this as evidence to those people I meet who insist ‘Phoenix Lords=Primarchs’ because they do not. It is sad, I wish they did, but they just don’t. At best their Chapter Masters and even that’s iffy since most named Chapter Masters could probably easily defeat the Phoenix Lords. Its sad considering each Phoenix Lord has more experience than any Primarch even, but apparently Aeldari just suck that much compared to humans.

Apparently Spiritseers aren’t even as powerful Psykers as Librarians, they are just as good as normal human Psykers. Yeah not realling seeing this ‘we are the best Psykers’ everyone keeps saying.

Banshees are cool, I dig the Exarch’s ability. I also think Iyanden Wraithlords might be pretty cool. 

Then we get Warlord Traits, Craftworld Attributes, Stratagems and a whole bunch of technical stuff which I don’t feel qualified to comment on so I’ll stop here. 

So yeah that’s the Codex in a nutshell. Not sure how I feel right now, certainly I’ll admit I actually expected more, but not sure of my overall feelings. I’ll digest it a bit and compare it to the list I made before to see where I stand and make a decision on whether bothering to continue later. 

One thing that is just a fact, and does honestly disappoint me, is it is becoming clear that GW simply isn’t very willing to let any major Space Marine force ever be defeated in another faction’s codex, but are willing to let Space Marines beat other major factions (just discussing Asuryani alone in the 8th Edition Codices; Alaitoc (twice), Ulthwe and Iyanden have all already been beaten in the Fluff). 

[spoiled-bracket]

Soma

Soma is a “survival horror” game by Frictional Games. The story is made of some interesting sci-fi stuff, reminiscent of the darker Philip K. Dick or Greg Egan stories: You play as Simon, an unremarkable man who is suffering from a fatal brain condition. In a last ditch effort to save himself, he agrees to undergo a ‘brain scan’ procedure. The scan goes through as normal, but upon waking up he finds himself in a weird H.R. Giger inspired version of Bio Shock, running away from scary monsters wrapped in Christmas lights. Woven into all this is a story about how the world wound up the way it did, and what happened afterwards.

The gameplay itself is intuitive. You navigate in the first person through a world which is densely populated with physics objects, and interact with them to solve puzzles. For anything that isn’t physics based, problems are resolved by tinkering with the hundreds of computer terminals scattered around the environment.

The graphics and audio are both excellent. The dark environments cover up a lot of the asset reuse, and some clever placement means that while you’re essentially wandering around the same few corridors most of the game, it never feels recycled or stale. The creepy ambient sounds are brilliant. Gurgling sploshes of water, loud metallic clanks in the distance, computer whirring lifelessly to themselves. It all comes together to create a genuinely unsettling world.

However, while Soma is very good, it isn’t perfect.

The story is interesting, but it has a lot of plot holes, and quite honestly the main character often (particularly during end game) comes across as too stupid for his own good. Little things don’t start adding up pretty early on, but by the time you get to the last stages of the game, it feels like the story is starting to disintegrate. Also, while there’s a lot to do, none of it has any real impact on the story or how it pans out. Interaction is good, but if knobs and dials aren’t attached to anything, the allure of fiddling with them is quickly diminished.

Likewise, the horror elements start off strong, but they quickly start to fall apart. Soma, like a lot of horror games, suffers from a fairly fundamental problem: While horror is a genre that relies a lot on the concept of the unexpected, games are a medium that only succeed by allowing the player to anticipate outcomes.

That is, horror depends on the audience not being able to catch up with what’s happening in front of them. That sense of not knowing is core to what makes scary things so scary. Games on the other hand, especially games that are difficult and allow you to die, rely on the exact opposite condition. They require that the player be able to analyse their action, learn from mistakes, and get better through repetition.

Repetition is not good for horror. A scary monster is scary so long as you don’t understand it. But when it kills you enough times that you start to understand its behaviour, it stops being scary and becomes just another obstacle to overmount. And depending on how difficult the monster is, scary can very quickly become a tedious obstacle. And nothing ruins the feeling of being scared faster than the feeling of being bored.

While playing Soma, a lot of the times I genuinely came close to feeling something like fear were almost always undermined by a much stronger driving force: the requirement to understand the enemy in front of me enough that I could circumvent it and get to the next set piece. Soma felt like a good game, but it also felt like half the time the medium chosen to tell the story was doing its best to fight against it.

The end result is that while Soma is amazing in so many ways, it also feels like there are lot of points where the implementation just doesn’t fit together as nicely as it could have. There were more than a few times I felt like long sequences could have been cut out entirely, and other times where the included backstory felt far too barren. Although I generally liked the protagonist, there were more than a few times I was bowled over by his inability to grasp what was going on around him. Although that kind of character might have worked fine enough in a movie or novel, in a game, where the lines between the character’s thoughts and the audience’s are far less defined, Simon’s whining did a lot to break the sense of immersion.

And on a related note, even though the game does a great job of building up a sense of interaction with the environment, it was kind of annoying that my only viable response to the monsters was to hide or run. I’m not saying that the game should have had weapons, or turned into a shooter, but it would have been nice if I could at least trap the monsters behind doors, or fool them into killing themselves or something. I get that the feeling of being chased is pivotal to the mood Soma is trying to make, but by about the halfway point it started to get a little old.

Despite these gripes, Soma is worth playing. It has its shortcomings, but when it’s good, it’s very good. Some of the sequences are just brilliant. For example, bringing the simulation of a dead man back to life over and over in different environments, trying different permutations to see which one will loosen him up enough to reveal a security password. You just won’t find a lot of this kind of stuff outside of a game like Soma.

If you have a weekend free, you should put this on your list of things to do.

[thegloober]

Sustainable Cosmetic Packaging Revolutionizing the Beauty Industry

This is the fourth of a five-post series looking into environmental issues with the beauty industry, areas it’s excelling in sustainability and where we can expect to see sustainability efforts improve in the future. You can find the previous post here.

While environmentally friendly personal care companies originally marketed primarily to those with a hippie or new age mindset, today, beauty product manufacturers who ignore trends toward sustainability risk becoming obsolete. Conscientious consumers, especially millennials and Gen Zers increasingly demand products that treat the planet kindly. As science develops ever more eco-friendly packaging materials, cosmetic manufacturers benefit both the Earth and their bottom line by utilizing these innovations to decrease their carbon footprint.

As consumers, we want to spend money wisely, and seeking products packaged in environmentally sound ways gives us a good place to start. Selecting toiletries packaged in recyclable materials completes the sustainable cosmetic packaging puzzle.

Ocean Plastic and Bioplastics

A stroll down the personal care aisle leaves you awash in a sea of plastic. Indeed, plastic continues to make up the majority of packaging for several reasons: They prevent product contamination and cost relatively little to produce. Sadly, the majority of single-use plastics do not get recycled. Therefore, manufacturers are ringing in change from the top.

One innovation involves the use of bioplastics. Instead of stemming from petroleum, bioplastics are made from vegetable sources such as sugar cane. The natural-base material makes these plastics biodegradable. Unlike petroleum-based plastics which take hundreds of years to decompose, these biodegradable plastics dissolve in just three to six months.

Ocean plastics offer an unconventional but ecological packaging material. Plastic waste in oceans gathers and created huge patches of floating trash hazardous to marine life. By scraping these patches of recyclable plastic, manufacturers enjoy an economical and green source of plastic for packing their wares for sale.

Greater Glass Transparency

While you can recycle 100 percent glass multiple times without any reduction in quality, previously, many manufacturers incorporated plastic into the glass to prevent breakage. This resulted in nonrecyclable pseudo-glass.

Fortunately, many companies now have returned to good old glass to create packaging that can see more than one use. As an added bonus, glass comes from common materials such as sand and limestone, so using glass saves money as well as the planet.

Toward a Sustainable Squeeze

Think about the last time you brushed your teeth. Chances are, you squeezed the gel out of a tube. Tubes make up a large part of cosmetic packaging but weren’t always recyclable or sustainable.

Thankfully, change has come from companies such as Adelphi, which manufactures not only recyclable cosmetic tubes, but also recyclable implements used during the manufacturing process such as tube fillers. As more companies switch to reusable tubes, polishing your pearly whites will no longer mean creating landfill fodder.

Bio-Friendly Papers and Boxes

Just about anything shippable comes in a box, but this practice results in the chopping down of numerous trees. Luckily, Mother Nature provides an alternative to paper products generated from wood pulp: hemp paper and cardboard.

Anyone who has ever stood downwind of a paper mill knows the noxious odor of chemicals could easily gag a maggot. That’s because various toxic chemicals, such as bleach, go into the manufacturing of traditional paper products. Hemp paper helps the environment by requiring no harsh chemicals to break down into usable pulp.

That’s far from the only ecological benefit of switching to hemp. While trees take years, even decades, to reach full growth, hemp grows quickly and can be harvested as soon as four weeks after planting. In addition, the same acre planted with hemp instead of trees produces four times as much paper.

With innovations in industrial hemp technology, switching to hemp paper saves money as well. That benefits any business’s bottom line, including manufacturers of personal care products.

Search for the Recycling Seal

By far the easiest way to make beauty products more sustainable involves utilizing recyclable materials — and recycling starts at home. Instead of ditching your half-empty cosmetic containers, wash them out and repurpose them.

Old mascara wands, for example, make fine brushes for scrubbing shower grout and eliminating those yucky brown stains that build up around faucets. Keeping an old compact in your car’s center console gives you a handy mirror for making quick lipstick touch-ups. Speaking of lipstick, if you’re truly ambitious, use old tubes to hold homemade lip balm created with beeswax and your favorite essential oils.

Many manufacturers have incorporated cosmetic container recycling programs so you can return used cosmetics for recycling. Burt’s Bees, for example, provides customers with a prepaid label to return empty tubes and vials. Other companies offer customers a substantial discount when they bring back bottles to refill versus buying new.

Think Big

One simple way beauty manufacturers and consumers alike can become more eco-friendly is by producing bigger packaging sizes and buying in bulk. Who doesn’t love another excuse to make a Costco run?

Large containers cost less to produce than numerous smaller containers, and they utilize fewer raw materials. In addition, on the consumer end, buying in bulk results in fewer trips to the store and fewer carbon emissions from car exhaust.

Even some hotel chains are jumping on the bulk bandwagon. Hotel giant Marriot recently announced a switch from small sample-size shampoos, conditioners and body washes in lieu of larger, in-shower containers. While this may mean taking home one less souvenir the next time you travel, the benefits to the planet make ditching the sample sizes worth it.

Moving Forward

Where demand exists, supply will follow — and consumers have made it clear that environmental sustainability drives their purchasing decisions. With further innovations in technology, a world where beauty and personal care products become 100 percent sustainable may soon become a gorgeous new reality.

Source: https://bloghyped.com/sustainable-cosmetic-packaging-revolutionizing-the-beauty-industry/

[wp-yahoo-style-1042-yahoopa-blog]

Nikki Reed says we don't need to mine for diamonds anymore

Money might not grow on trees, but Nikki Reed is growing diamonds.

The actress, environmentalist, and entrepreneur visited the Build Series studios on Friday to discuss style for Brit + Co’s #CreateGood summit, which aims to help people be the best versions of themselves possible. Reed’s sustainable lifestyle brand, Bayou With Love, launched a revolutionary recycled jewelry line in January with the help of Dell. But she just added diamonds to the collection, and she opened up about the innovative addition during her #CreateGood panel.

The diamonds are part of Bayou With Love’s new bridal line, which is stocked with simple engagement rings and dainty bands.

The controversial diamond industry may seem like an unnatural move for the eco-conscious woman. But she’s not mining for diamonds. She’s growing them. With seeds.

New mom Nikki Reed discusses her new bridal line for Bayou With Love. (Photo: Build)

“With our engagement line, we’re using all cultivated diamonds,” Reed told Brit + Co co-founder Brit Morin. She admitted to not knowing that cultivated diamonds were until now. “I’m learning too,” Reed said. “Cultivated diamonds are diamonds that are — they’re bio-identical diamonds,” the Twilight alum said. “So for a long time the diamond industry didn’t want to acknowledge them and wanted to call them man-made diamonds, and lab diamonds, and synthetic diamonds, and words that would naturally turn you off from that type of stone,” she continued. “Truthfully, they’re 100 percent diamonds. They’re bio-identical diamonds, and they’re grown from diamond seeds,” she said. “And we’re using diamonds that are actually grown above ground using solar energy in California.”

They’re grown in a lab, and Reed’s not the first to do it; the process has been in development for decades but is still being perfected. De Beers started selling the gems earlier this year. “You buy cultivated diamonds grown from these little particles,” Reed explained.

This felt like the right move for Reed, who gave birth to her first child with Ian Somerhalder in July 2017, just before launching Bayou With Love. “So it’s very exciting because this, to me, was so inspiring — the thought that we can create something that’s beautiful, and luxurious, and also good for the planet. And merging this world of fashion and tech and sustainability, it was just really exciting for me,” she said. “Because this is — it’s not the future, it’s now, right? We don’t need to be mining for things anymore.”

Read More from Yahoo Lifestyle:

• Kendall Jenner smolders in season’s hottest puffer coat: Steal her style starting at $45  • Old Navy’s Sherpa coat is the only one you need for fall — and it’s under $100   • Meghan Markle wears the season’s best transitional coat—shop the look starting at $50

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day.

[ntrending]

NASA is learning the best way to grow food in space

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/nasa-is-learning-the-best-way-to-grow-food-in-space/

NASA is learning the best way to grow food in space

“Our plants aren’t looking too good,” astronaut Scott Kelly tweeted from the International Space Station on December 27, 2015. He was right: The attached picture showed four baby zinnias bathed in magenta light. Three of the four leafy stalks were discolored and curling in on themselves. The station’s garden was struggling to recover from a mold problem. It’s an issue familiar to terrestrial gardeners. And while on Earth, the problem means a trip to the local nursery for replacements, in space you can’t do that.

The zinnias, brightly colored flowers in the daisy family, were part of an experiment called Veggie, whose ultimate mission is to provide crews with a long-term source of food. In prior tests, astronauts had successfully harvested lettuce. The zinnias had a longer growth ­period—60 to 80 days—and then would bloom, producing neon-hued blossoms that look like they belong in a psychedelic corsage. They were practice for something finickier and tastier than leafy greens: tomatoes. If station crews were ever going to grow something that intricate, they needed to figure out—among other things— how to vanquish mold.

Veggie is a relatively uncomplicated way for astronauts to develop their green thumbs. “It’s a very simple system,” says Gioia Massa, one of the project’s lead scientists. “It doesn’t control much at all.” Instead, the humans do.

Space gardening will be essential someday if space travelers are to go beyond low-Earth orbit or make more than a quick trip to the moon. They can’t carry on all the food they need, and the rations they do bring will lose nutrients. So astronauts will need a replenishable stash, with extra vitamins. They’ll also require ways to make more oxygen, recycle waste, and help them not miss home so much. Space gardens can, theoretically, help accomplish all of that.

Veggie and other systems aboard the space station are helping researchers figure out how radiation and lack of gravity affect plants, how much water is Goldilocks-good, and how to deal with deplorables like mold. Just as important, scientists are learning how much work astronauts have to put in, how much work they want to put in, and how plants nourish their brains as well as their bodies.

For all its potential importance, Veggie is pretty compact. It weighs 41 pounds, just a hair less than the station’s 44-pound coffeemaker. The top—an off-white rectangular box that houses the grow lights—resembles an old VCR. From this, a ­curtain of clear plastic hangs to encase the ­1.7-square-foot planting surface. Astronauts preset how long the lights stay on each day; how brightly they emit red light to optimize photosynthesis, and blue light to control the plants’ form and function. They can also ­activate a built-in fan to adjust the humidity.

The most important part of Veggie, though, is the fragile bounty it is meant to cultivate. That begins as seeds encased in little ­Teflon-​coated Kevlar pouches. The scientists call them plant pillows. “You can think of it like a grow bag,” Massa says of these packets stuffed with seeds, water wicks, fertilizer, and soil.

People have anticipated this scenario for more than a century. In 1880, science-fiction author Percy Greg wrote Across the Zodiac, a novel about an astronaut who traveled to Mars with plants to recycle waste. Fifteen years later, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a Russian rocket scientist, wrote Dreams of Earth and Sky, which laid out how space farers and flora could live together inside a closed system.

In the 1950s, green things burst from book covers and into the lab. NASA and the U.S. Air Force started growing algae to see if it could help with life support (turns out, it tasted bad, was full of indigestible cell walls, and had too much protein). Then, Soviet scientists experimented with nearly self-sufficient ecosystems in which humans survived on oxygen, water, and nutrition produced mostly within an enclosed habitat. In the longest run, a 180-day trial inside a facility called BIOS-3, an earthbound crew got 80 percent of its food from its own wheat and vegetables. Finally, in 1982, plants in space became a reality when Soviet cosmonauts grew Arabidopsis thaliana, a flowering species related to cabbage and mustard, to maturity aboard their Salyut 7 space station. The yield was too small to be a source of food.

Around this time, in the mid-’80s, ­Veggie’s Massa was in middle school, and her ­seventh-​grade teacher returned from an astro­agriculture workshop at Kennedy Space ­Center with reams of information on the topic. Inspired, a teenage Massa kept taking ag classes as she moved on to high school, and later teamed up with her middle-school ­mentor for a hydroponics project.

While Massa continued her studies and self-guided experimentation, NASA began building orbital plant-growing apparatus, most notably the Biomass Production System. Designed to be used for experiments on the space station, it was a rectangle with sides each about the length of an arm. Four cube-shaped growth chambers rested like safes inside. Designed by scientists at a Wisconsin-based company, ­Orbitec, the Biomass Production System joined the space station in 2001. There, Brassica rapa field mustard soon sprouted tall, illuminated by plain white fluorescent light.

When researchers compared the harvest to a control plant on the ground, though, they found that the space mustard had more bacteria and fungus. “The significance of the difference is uncertain,” states NASA’s official conclusion. By which the agency meant it didn’t know why the microbes proliferated, not that their presence wasn’t important. In fact, as Veggie’s mold would show, it was critically important.

NASA retired the Biomass Production System in 2002, but Russian cosmonauts picked up where the U.S. left off. Over the decade, they successfully grew dwarf wheat, leafy mizuna, and dwarf peas. Bonus: In four successive generations of orbiting dwarf peas, the vegetables didn’t show signs of genetic messiness.

Meanwhile Orbitec, in consultation with NASA, cultivated another plant-growing ­instrument. So when NASA awarded a grant in 2012 for a new space garden, the company had something to show for itself: Veggie, which, unlike its predecessor, was meant to produce food on an edible scale. Massa, by then a postdoc, tested different types of ­media and crops for the plant pillows. It was the kind of tinkering she’d been preparing for since she was 12. The United States’ first real space garden launched in 2014, not long after Massa advanced from her postdoc to become a Veggie project scientist at the space agency.

All went pretty well for Veggie until the flower flap. Most of its initial ­edible plants—a lettuce variety called Outredgeous—sprouted as they should have in 2014, and the astronauts shot them back down to Earth for testing. Massa says they’re still working on all the analyses. “But in general, the plants are pretty similar to our ground samples.” When they’re finished, they’ll know about chemical contents like antioxidants, anthocyanin (pigments), and phenolics, which protect plants against stress. Short term, the priority was mealtime: Could we have consumed the harvest? The crew, Massa, and NASA all wanted to know. Yes, it turned out, the produce was microbially safe to eat.

Still, when the astronauts planted a second set of seeds, in summer 2015, Massa ran into a new challenge: With harvest approaching, NASA had no protocol to approve the crew chowing down on the leaves of their labor. “We said, ‘We have only 28 days, and then they’re going to have to eat it,’” Massa recalls. With the clock ticking, management found a way to ��officially add the lettuce to the astronauts’ diet.

On August 9, Kelly snapped a picture, standing in front of the unfurling greens. His brow was furrowed, faux serious. “­Tomorrow we’ll eat the anticipated veggie harvest on @space_station!” he tweeted. “But first, lettuce take a #selfie.” Soon he crunched the harvest live on NASA TV. It might seem like no big deal, but a single leaf can make a big difference to someone who’s been eating rehydrated fare for months. During a later harvest, astronaut Peggy Whitson would use them to wrap a reconstituted lobster salad. “Even with a really good diet with hundreds of items, there’s dietary fatigue,” Massa says. “People get bored. Adding a new flavor or texture—like something crisp and juicy—could spice up your regular meal.”

That’s not the only brain boost. Sure, astronauts can gaze down at Earth and see its most beautiful spots—literally all of them—every 90 minutes. But those places are always out of reach, reminders of how far away sea level is. Having something nearby that photosynthesizes might cheer the crew. “It’s the psychological aspect of something green and growing when you’re far away from home,” Massa says.

In the next growing cycle, the astronauts fostered the ill-fated zinnias. About two weeks in, Kjell Lindgren saw the first warning signs. Water leaked from the wicks that hold the seeds. Then moisture began seeping from the infant leaves, which started to curl in on themselves. Veggie staff on the ground, in charge of the operation, decided it was time to turn the airflow fan from low to high. But an impromptu spacewalk to fix a broken robotic arm delayed the change because, in space, nothing is as simple as flicking a switch on your way out of the spaceship. While reprogramming Veggie’s settings takes only about 15 minutes, NASA prefers astronauts move anything lower priority out of the way when they have a high-priority task.

And then the leaves started to die.

That’s bad enough on its own. But, worse, dying vegetation can be a breeding ground for mold, which had somehow come to space with the astronauts and cargo. Soon, menacing white fuzz began choking the plants.

By this time, Lindgren had returned to Earth, and Kelly had taken over the garden. On December 22, with instructions from ground control, Kelly snipped away the moldy parts like bad spots from a piece of cheese, and swabbed the remaining zinnias and equipment with cleaning wipes. He left the fans on high to help dehydrate the setup.

It was a good try but not without a cost: It made the plants thirsty. Kelly relayed that to ground control and asked to water them. Sergeants who were set on sticking to the drill told Kelly it wasn’t time yet. Not till December 27. “You know, I think if we’re going to Mars, and we were growing stuff, we would be responsible for deciding when the stuff needed water,” Kelly told them, according to NASA’s write-up of the event.

Eventually, they gave autonomy to the person who was actually next to the plants, along with one page of instructions called “The ­Zinnia Care Guide for the On-Orbit Gardener.”

Under the On-Orbit Gardener’s thumb, half of the zinnias revived, unfurling and growing green. NASA spun the whole thing as a positive: They now knew that crops could survive floods, drought, and disease, and that excising the problem plants and cleaning the remainder could keep the fungus from taking over.

Kelly loved the now-flourishing flowers and carried their container all over the space station for photo shoots, like those people who snap shots of themselves in Hard Rock T-shirts all over the world. “He asked if he could harvest them on Valentine’s Day,” Massa says. He’d been in space, away from everyone ­except his smelly crew mates for more than 300 days. NASA let him make the bouquet.

It was one of Massa’s favorite moments. “We had been a part of something that gave him pleasure,” she says.

In upcoming Veggie experiments, scientists will learn more about that part of gardening—the mental part. “We’ve heard a lot anecdotally,” Massa says, “but we’ve never been able to collect data.” They’ll also investigate how much farming crewmembers actually want to do, how much is fun versus how much is a chore, how their sense of taste changes in orbit, and which plants can survive human error (no offense, astronauts).

Veggie’s experiments will continue in tandem with those of a brand-new Type-A companion, the Advanced Plant Habitat, an 18-inch-square self-sufficient laboratory with more than 180 sensors and automated watering. Scientists can establish their variables and thus nail down the specific conditions that cultivate plants—and how those plants can ­cultivate humans. A temperature-­control system keeps the air within 0.5°C of the thermo­stat setting. Sensors relay data about air temperature, light, moisture, and oxy­gen levels back to base. While the Advanced Plant Habitat will quantify the circumstances for successful gardening, Veggie will help qualify how—and why—humans can facilitate their own food supply. In other words, through the habitat’s tight controls, researchers can learn how to grow which plants best. Then, using those parameters, they can set up a system like Veggie that astronauts get to interact with.

Astronauts assembled the habitat over six hours in October 2017, after it rumbled into space in two shipments. The automated contraption looks like a microwave that could survive… being shot into space. Wires stream from here to there and there to here on a control panel. Red indicator lights blink next to toggle switches. And inside the plant chamber, LEDs beam from the ceiling, illuminating the plants below with concert-stage color combinations. It has red, green, and blue lights like Veggie—plus white, near-, and far-infrared ones.

Robert Richter, director of environmental systems at Sierra Nevada, which acquired Orbi­tec in 2014, monitored its progress from the earthbound Space Station Processing Facility. He’d helped design and build the new lab, as well as Veggie and Biomass. When he started in the field, almost 20 years ago, he was a bit ­naive. “I thought, How hard is it to grow plants?”

He’s partly joking, of course—and he knows, now, that when you’re trying to keep the humidity level within 3 percent of a given ­number, when you must make and measure light and moisture, and when you maintain the temperature to a fraction of a degree, there’s a long row to hoe between growing some basil in a cup and farming lettuce in space.

The team powered up the unit in November 2017. And by February this year, test crops of Arabidopsis thaliana and dwarf wheat sprouted. Soon, they’ll begin experiments like investigating plants’ DNA and physiological changes. A lot of the previous plant research has been focused on whether things would grow at all, says Robert Morrow, Sierra Nevada’s principal scientist. Will they reproduce from generation to generation? And are they as productive in space as on the ground?

Yes, he says. Scientists are beyond those basics now. They need to dig into the dirtier details and more-complicated ecosystems. ­Astronauts, for instance, exhale carbon ­dioxide that plants can inhale. The plants then exhale oxygen, which humans can inhale. ­Human waste can become plant fertilizer and hydration. Nothing wasted, everything gained.

Ultimately, Morrow believes, a garden on a deep-space mission will be more like Veggie than like the Advanced Space Habitat. “It’s really not practical to put all the stuff you have in APH in a system like that,” he says. With so many sensors and tubes, lots can go mechanically wrong, and it’s easier to repair a Veggie than an APH. For now, scientists need APH to home in on optimal guidelines for plant growth and understand how leaving the planet changes them so they can instruct future astronauts how to better manage Veggie-esque systems.

Looking toward the future, Massa is interested in observing astronaut interactions with the instruments. “Do you always want to pick your ripe tomatoes, but maybe you don’t want to have to water them every other day?” she wonders. She’ll have a chance to find out ­because Veggie will grow its first dwarf tomatoes, a variety called Red Robin, early next year.

Other nations continue to experiment too. China, for instance, intends to send silkworms and potato seeds to the moon this year aboard its Chang’e-4 spacecraft. When the silkworms hatch, they’ll create carbon dioxide, which the potato plants will suck up and turn into oxygen, which the silkworms will then take up.

All this research doesn’t just help ­people above the atmosphere. Creating ­self-­contained growth systems might help farmers on Earth grow crops year-round or foster plants with extra protein and high yield. Someday, the work will lead to gardening systems ­substantial—and stable—enough to support space journeyers. Then, those travelers can wrap anything they want in lettuce and crunch their way through the cosmos.

Contributing editor Sarah Scoles is the author of Making Contact: Jill Tartar and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

This article was originally published in the Summer 2018 Life/Death issue of Popular Science.

Written By Sarah Scoles

[tssfhr-blog]

[C-1 / M-18] Text Two

i planned writing a poem

it's like a small bio, but harder, so i got nervous again a loot, but i did it, a lot, i hope you're doing great in you life, i wish you success, you are sweet, i wish you success

talking about silence

nobody heard silence

noone ever seen nobody

this is an answered question

obvious answers are not silent enough

shocking discoveries are mess

you hear what you expect

you live in sound like this

everybody have to ask any question

do you even care about silence

1 group. no is the question, some respondents answered

2 group. no is an animal instinct, fear of death, quite primitive, they noticed

world is safe now, thanks to group 1. for defending happiness of group 2. group 1 is happy also, but may seem

a little be bothered, dead bodies, beautifully positioned

on the main square, smells of kandinsky and rothko and

other death artists, but there's a theory, that they killed

their twins, because it could become a huge risk for their

reputation, and money, and power, and pizza delivery services all around disneyland

thinking about silence

way more intimate

immortal imposible

patient patience

fighting for

[how to be a good patient\\\\]

time to wait

[how to succeed in modern patienting\\\\]

for irrationalize

[you'll never know\\\\]

his being

[you killed me, bark bark: how to avoid pranks & counterprank a veterinarian\\\\]

why irrationalizing

[Foucault's kiss-off-ers: best interviews with dead leaders of modern world by Michel F. 1358-1503

is not a scientific method

why it is bad

it's underrated, i am angry, u r g h video birds opening their mooouuths to mcdoalds radio ad, and then go wild and angry, how come, birdiies, did Ronald hurt your feelings, birdeyed pigeons? No, you just filthy hippunk you smell trashcan i ate from last month, losers, birds go away from my trashcan, it's my land

Rebrand, repack, retype, reposition, reclaim, react

Since next season...

[hanz zimmer was killed during the recording of this 40 sec. audio piece for local TV Show. Only a few knew that he lived in poverty, he had nothing to it, but he did great career as a sound-designer, he reinvented the "new sincerety orchestra" concept of music genius deathstyle by his own death. Death of hanz - by Hanz Zimmer. We will never foget how cool u sound, espesically when you pretend to die at a first time, when you created automated algorythm of psycho-movie-sound-epic-beautifullness laboratory, buy zip from piratebay now]

Bad guys get even more powerful

Now its scientific and defence-friendly

IRRATIONALIZATION. THE METHOD.

use accordingly to your heart. be yourself, you are doing great, xx

doctor fighting

for time of patience

against the patient

who's not fighting

at all

he actually was saying that

"Doctor, I'm not fighting at all, and I feel great"

"I know your mother who is 132 now, yeah, am i right 132?"

"Damn, I gonna fight" he mumbled as a featuring vocalist on track of Dr.Dre, all sales will go directly to good people suffering from bad thing, that's god's plan, patient, patience, money tree plantation, dr.dre said detox is still bad, it was released as a secret wu-tang album long time ago, and it's still bad, ofc, i hoped it gonna be eaten by snakes, or some creatures like that.

I fight all the time anyway, so why stop now? - patient said to himself with a voice of a old turtle

world is full of sympathy for fighters, n turtles, and fighters for turtles, fighters are cool guys

non-fighters have never did something really meaningful

but they have the right to be that kind of people, i suppose, its their choise. New gig "Difference! Hoo-ray!" will be announced soon. Early-bird tickets earlier than bird tickets. Dont mess up poor birds. Thx xx

acceptance pr compaign is great

prepare your bad mood FOR AN UNBELIEVABLE ADVENTURE

WE ARE AGAINST

hypocricity and ignorance

suffering and offering

Open letter of \-generation reps to all of our freedomers

it's very well designed, wow, looks like every next letter from this generation is their best hit. So, lets do it, analyzeee! Decodeee! There will be a cola-break in 1 hour. hwg/..

kids must be adulting us

*poof* *click* money out of nothing

they owe us a lot forever

this is my house,

and this is my flag

you must be home by 10 p.m.

you understaand. ten!!! P MMM!!

you must be home dead, 100% heroic,

unkissed and unpacked

colgate toothbrush ad-kids

clean&clear cream ad-kids

dead virgins face

with scars so natural

with scars so juicy

with scars as a passcode

()

brother laptop

browser porn history

videos shoot only in

the dark, no face can be seen

only superbowl sounds

, alone in the dark

screaming out loud!!!!!

I AM NOT HUNGRY DAAAMMMIT, U GET IT

I AAAAM NOOT HUNGRY ANYMORE

I AM FREE AND LIGHT

DAD I DON'T NEEED YR

MONEY SWEATY FILTHY GREEN ROT ON

THEM, NOT DEAD PRESIDENTS

SWEATY PRESIDENTS YOU KNOW

POLITICS HAVE HEART PROBLEMS

POST TRUTH, WHERE'S YOUR SYMPATHY

I AM FREE OF WHATEVER I AM EXPECTED TO BE

I AM NOOT YOUUR SOLDIER, U FEAR MEE?

I AM NOT YOUUR LOOOVER, U FEEL MEE?*

[than lyrics were optimised for his presidental

company motto, now two phrases collide into one, fuck tautology]:

I AM NOT A SOLDIER 2026

dead virgins face

counted, dead virgin face one

dead virgin face two

bigdata-friendly

analyzed bodies

SoC-inc statistics show

fatal backpageness

of dead virgin faces in national memory

in their school friends' memories

as a brand signs, woow, great idea arthur, really, thanks

cost per mille

(0.99$ - the metaphor of

a glass of water, one more

drop of water and it will

become a drop in the ocean

so fast

tour-guiding through

the joke-hood

fools in love

modern dad moves

april 1st fooling

around carefully

shame on you

oh stop it you

shame is a protection mechanism

i truly believe it helped me a lot

it blocked some irrational intentions

irr-stuff sucks

i am happy i can share my problem

with so much of you

support you give - is priceless

thanks

there will be no wars

we are fed up with dead virgin faces

so we created a revolutionary app

TrashWar

Subscribe, only 2339% yearly

TrashWar - War is trash, we recycle trash in good things,

Out now

i am completely ok and safe thx, bye bye

__________________________________________________________

Telegram Channel

[the-fitsquad]

Computer systems, Electronics, And Technology

Private digital assistants (PDAs) are hand-held microcomputers, but have become much a lot more than that over the years. Later this year, Dell will improve the quantity of recycled supplies that it utilizes to make its products. Ahead of the end of 2015, the firm will commence using excess carbon fiber and other scrap supplies in a handful of Alienware and Latitude devices. The effort with expand across those two lines in 2016 as the Dell says its strategy to use the recycled carbon fiber is “an sector initial.” The company is teaming up with the supplier SABIC on the initiative, and it says estimates show the duo can keep 820,000 pounds of carbon fiber from hitting landfills. The laptop maker started making use of recycled plastics for enclosures back in 2014, re-utilizing 4.two million pounds because that time in a quantity of displays and its OptiPlex desktops.

Supplier energy is the opposite of purchaser energy. When buyers have a lot of alternatives then buyer energy is higher but if purchasers do not have a lot of selections then buyer energy is low. It is completely opposite for supplier energy. If purchasers have several selections then supplier energy is low but if they do not have a lot of alternatives then supplier energy is high. Firms attempt to create a competitive advantage to make it more desirable than their competitors. Dell Computer systems do the identical. They use IT enable processing to decrease their buyer energy.

Formaspace Laptop Workstations and LAN Stations supply higher flexibility in job-oriented function environments. Our style engineers and design consultants will be committed to your project no matter how small or how massive your custom workbench project is. Dell vostro is the new series that has added a number of striking desktop computer systems that resolve the decision of the buyers. Vostro is the gorgeous pc model that is exclusively built for tiny business. The author is a technician at Techvedic technologies, a firm that delivers end to finish Dell assistance to customers. On the internet computer repairs, Dell Technical Support , Laptop Technical Support, Dell Service Help are few solutions provided at this one particular platform along with a lot of other folks.

If you are comfortable with technology I would get a Google Chrome OS laptop. The price point is great, they can use all of the solutions by Google such as Google Chrome for web browsing, Google Drive for word documents and so forth. My little six year old nephew just got 1 and it has been excellent for getting him engaged with a typical pc. He was currently using mom and dads iPad and the such but they wanted him to find out a typical personal computer as effectively and so they went with the chrome OS by Samsung and it is operating wonderful.

KVM switches have a multiplatform design and style, which means that they can handle computer systems and servers based on numerous platforms such as Dell, HP, MAC, IBM, SUN, Linux, Unix, Windows and Netware. These switches are also effortless to use in that you just require to press the KVM buttons on the screen display to switch from server to the next. The KVM Switches buttons are well investigate this site abbreviated and as such you can easily determine whatever server you are working on. Most respectable switches feature the multilingual alternative on their screen show menus, and they also allow for the creation of user profiles and OSD hot important combinations.

MAINGEAR is an innovative higher overall performance Computer technique builder that provides custom desktops, custom built laptops, pc workstations, modest type issue PCs, media center PCs, SteamOS powered steambox’s, and VR ready systems. Each and every program is hand crafted for ultimate efficiency with uncompromising high quality that has won numerous Editors’ Option awards from publications such as Computer World, Maximum Computer, Laptop Shopper and much more. With a passion to develop the best high functionality computers and custom gaming computers, MAINGEAR will continue to set the regular. MAINGEAR’s expert group custom builds and supports all merchandise in the United States. Customize yours now.

Raising query mark on the reliability of Dell laptop or laptop is tough. Isn’t it? But the brand itself can’t put the word guarantee when it comes to software part. Though, each and every single Dell product enjoys roughly three years of warranty in terms of hardware functionality, which begins quickly when you obtain it. Dell Service assistance is typically obtainable in each city round-the-globe to let you go smooth with the Dell Technology. But that doesn’t quantity to be called once more and once again. Obviously, being aware of some fundamental laptop troubleshooting is must.

When you need to have to acquire a laptop technique you will locate a wide array of achievable selections obtainable and that producing a final decision at times is a matter of individual preference and your budget. Most persons have a excellent thought what they want to use the pc for nowadays and in the future but don’t know exactly the how to fit that with what is obtainable to choose from. This individual user information is the guide along with this report in discovering a ideal personal computer selection from netbook, notebook (laptop), mini-laptop, or desktop systems.

(27) Application to allow remote support of pc workstations is incorporated as element of the SOE and as a result access to workstations will be completed remotely by the relevant Technologies Solutions administrator. More than the final four years, I’ve watched one UK “mainstream” IT firm, in specific, create a range of “workstation” PCs, specification tuned to particular purposes. This is the 3XS division of Scan Computer systems, in Bolton, UK. Two years ago when I rebuilt my principal Pro Tools Host Pc, I did so in very close liaison with their professionals and managed to dodge a couple of bullets on the way.

Download Dell drivers supplies you the latest graphic, audio, bios, Bluetooth, network, monitor, touchpad, and other hardware drivers for you to download and update, so you can get pleasure from your Dell computer music, film and game. There are at present a lot of image processing systems offered for use in clinical and analysis environments. These systems variety in complexity from straightforward, inexpensive microcomputer systems to big sophisticated systems with dedicated image processing hardware. Until lately, good overall performance was limited to bigger systems. Nonetheless, the inflexibility and prohibitive price of these systems restricted their availability in healthcare imaging applications.

When most individuals acquire a personal computer there are two principal components that they acquire. A single is known as a monitor. Monitors take the information sent by the personal computer and then display it in image that humans are able to see. The other principal element of a program is the pc itself, sometimes recognized as the tower. This element of the laptop requires all of the information that you give it, no matter whether it is an MP3 file or a MP4 file, and then processes it and sends it to your monitor. When all of this comes collectively you have a fully functioning personal computer.

Have you already wiped out your hard drive or want to do it now in order to reinstall Microsoft Windows on your Dell personal computer? If yes, then you surely need to have aid carrying out it in the appropriate manner as installation or reinstallation of an operating technique is the most sensitive process. It has to be carried out smoothly from beginning till end. Failing of which could result into significant difficulties in your computer. Don’t be concerned the under pointed out guide will support you reinstall Microsoft Windows on your Dell computer in the easiest manner. This basically signifies that you do not require spending time on phone with a Dell tech assistance to help you do so.

Place the laptop computer laptop encounter up and open up the fluid crystal monitor lid all the way. put a small, flat-head screwdriver in to the essential pad bezel’s appropriate side. The bezel is generally a thin strip of protective plastic situated one of a lot of fluid crystal monitor and key pad assemblies. Pry the bezel from the laptop’s prime casing and set it aside. The on the internet internet sites of Dell arranges computers according to model and price. Special Finance it is a scheme exclusively for the privileged purchasers.

It is extremely effortless to make a music track nowadays with all the killer tools out there. You don’t have to convince a bunch of musicians to show up in your garage to record a session, nor do you require to grow to be a multi-instrumentalist like Prince All you want is a decent digital audio workstation like GarageBand or Ableton Reside, and you can place collectively your own version of a hit song in a surprisingly brief quantity of time. Not everyone is savvy about creating tunes with their pc, even so. In order to help, the folks behind Ableton Live have a new web site called Studying Music to support any individual with a web browser understand the basics of modern day music production.

The desktop vs Notebook Computer systems war can be traced back as early as 1970s, when the idea of portable computers was born. Even even though Laptop Akku provides some of the highest top quality in components and batteries for computers, they provide their items at low costs. Simply because they sustain such an comprehensive inventory of items, they are able to purchase at discounted costs which they pass on to their customers. At instances, the savings can be dramatic, and this is only enhanced when they provide their normal specials and deals to the public, as a result saving consumers even much more cash.

As soon as upon a time (study: the 1990s), the distinction amongst a true workstation Computer and a desktop or customer technique had been impossible to miss. Workstations weren’t just souped-up versions of consumer systems with far more RAM or a larger-resolution display. They ran distinct operating systems, used various CPUs and graphics solutions, and had specialized hardware components that have been difficult or, in some circumstances, impossible to fit into a regular x86 customer technique. As the WinTel alliance gained market place share, these variations have been increasingly confined to niche hardware, until they all but vanished.

Following checking all of your security programs and discovering absolutely nothing, you could be tempted to throw in the towel, or at least throw your machine out the window, but never shed hope. Solving this dilemma is basic, taking extremely little time or work on your component. Editing your Windows registry can repair these problems, and remove the error 2753 message for great, and good riddance to it. Care must be taken with the registry although, since this holds all of your technique operating files and other crucial data and applications necessary for your pc to even start and boot up. This tends to make deleting or changing any entry in the registry by hand a quite high risk.

Appear at the left side, in this side of the machine is equipped with a lot more interfaces, there is a notebook lock slot, power connector, two USB3. interfaces and a multi-card reader. Sadly, this pc is not equipped with a VGA connector frequently utilized for company folks. Each and every motherboard has at least one CD which consists of the drivers software program or other necessary software program of your laptop. At present, there are several motherboard producers in the market place. The software program of one particular brand or model does not support the other brand or model. So, you need to have the application of your own motherboard organization. If you don’t have the CD, you might download them type the Internet.

This contrasted with the batch processing or time-sharing models which permitted larger, more high-priced minicomputer and mainframe systems to be utilised by many individuals, generally at the exact same time. Unlike the installation of industrial panel PCs, which can trigger major upheaval and disruption to provide chains, laptop workstations for use in industrial settings do not need drastic adjustments to computer software, processes and infrastructure. In reality, you can customise Industrial Pc Workstations to suit any industrial provide chain.

(1) A higher-performance, single-user machine geared to the specialist rather than the customer. Employed for video editing, computer-aided design and style (CAD), software program development, healthcare imaging and scientific applications, workstations use a quickly multicore CPU with large amounts of memory (RAM) and storage. These days, a workstation is usually an x86-primarily based laptop running Windows, Linux or Mac OS X. In the previous, RISC-primarily based machines from Sun, HP, IBM and SGI fell into the workstation category.

Filed under: Tagged: computer, computers, forum, hubpages, software from KelsusIT.com – Refurbished laptops, desktop computers , servers http://bit.ly/2CjI9A3 via IFTTT

[kelsusit]

Computer systems, Electronics, And Technology

Private digital assistants (PDAs) are hand-held microcomputers, but have become much a lot more than that over the years. Later this year, Dell will improve the quantity of recycled supplies that it utilizes to make its products. Ahead of the end of 2015, the firm will commence using excess carbon fiber and other scrap supplies in a handful of Alienware and Latitude devices. The effort with expand across those two lines in 2016 as the Dell says its strategy to use the recycled carbon fiber is “an sector initial.” The company is teaming up with the supplier SABIC on the initiative, and it says estimates show the duo can keep 820,000 pounds of carbon fiber from hitting landfills. The laptop maker started making use of recycled plastics for enclosures back in 2014, re-utilizing 4.two million pounds because that time in a quantity of displays and its OptiPlex desktops.

Supplier energy is the opposite of purchaser energy. When buyers have a lot of alternatives then buyer energy is higher but if purchasers do not have a lot of selections then buyer energy is low. It is completely opposite for supplier energy. If purchasers have several selections then supplier energy is low but if they do not have a lot of alternatives then supplier energy is high. Firms attempt to create a competitive advantage to make it more desirable than their competitors. Dell Computer systems do the identical. They use IT enable processing to decrease their buyer energy.

Formaspace Laptop Workstations and LAN Stations supply higher flexibility in job-oriented function environments. Our style engineers and design consultants will be committed to your project no matter how small or how massive your custom workbench project is. Dell vostro is the new series that has added a number of striking desktop computer systems that resolve the decision of the buyers. Vostro is the gorgeous pc model that is exclusively built for tiny business. The author is a technician at Techvedic technologies, a firm that delivers end to finish Dell assistance to customers. On the internet computer repairs, Dell Technical Support , Laptop Technical Support, Dell Service Help are few solutions provided at this one particular platform along with a lot of other folks.

If you are comfortable with technology I would get a Google Chrome OS laptop. The price point is great, they can use all of the solutions by Google such as Google Chrome for web browsing, Google Drive for word documents and so forth. My little six year old nephew just got 1 and it has been excellent for getting him engaged with a typical pc. He was currently using mom and dads iPad and the such but they wanted him to find out a typical personal computer as effectively and so they went with the chrome OS by Samsung and it is operating wonderful.

KVM switches have a multiplatform design and style, which means that they can handle computer systems and servers based on numerous platforms such as Dell, HP, MAC, IBM, SUN, Linux, Unix, Windows and Netware. These switches are also effortless to use in that you just require to press the KVM buttons on the screen display to switch from server to the next. The KVM Switches buttons are well investigate this site abbreviated and as such you can easily determine whatever server you are working on. Most respectable switches feature the multilingual alternative on their screen show menus, and they also allow for the creation of user profiles and OSD hot important combinations.

MAINGEAR is an innovative higher overall performance Computer technique builder that provides custom desktops, custom built laptops, pc workstations, modest type issue PCs, media center PCs, SteamOS powered steambox’s, and VR ready systems. Each and every program is hand crafted for ultimate efficiency with uncompromising high quality that has won numerous Editors’ Option awards from publications such as Computer World, Maximum Computer, Laptop Shopper and much more. With a passion to develop the best high functionality computers and custom gaming computers, MAINGEAR will continue to set the regular. MAINGEAR’s expert group custom builds and supports all merchandise in the United States. Customize yours now.

Raising query mark on the reliability of Dell laptop or laptop is tough. Isn’t it? But the brand itself can’t put the word guarantee when it comes to software part. Though, each and every single Dell product enjoys roughly three years of warranty in terms of hardware functionality, which begins quickly when you obtain it. Dell Service assistance is typically obtainable in each city round-the-globe to let you go smooth with the Dell Technology. But that doesn’t quantity to be called once more and once again. Obviously, being aware of some fundamental laptop troubleshooting is must.

When you need to have to acquire a laptop technique you will locate a wide array of achievable selections obtainable and that producing a final decision at times is a matter of individual preference and your budget. Most persons have a excellent thought what they want to use the pc for nowadays and in the future but don’t know exactly the how to fit that with what is obtainable to choose from. This individual user information is the guide along with this report in discovering a ideal personal computer selection from netbook, notebook (laptop), mini-laptop, or desktop systems.

(27) Application to allow remote support of pc workstations is incorporated as element of the SOE and as a result access to workstations will be completed remotely by the relevant Technologies Solutions administrator. More than the final four years, I’ve watched one UK “mainstream” IT firm, in specific, create a range of “workstation” PCs, specification tuned to particular purposes. This is the 3XS division of Scan Computer systems, in Bolton, UK. Two years ago when I rebuilt my principal Pro Tools Host Pc, I did so in very close liaison with their professionals and managed to dodge a couple of bullets on the way.

Download Dell drivers supplies you the latest graphic, audio, bios, Bluetooth, network, monitor, touchpad, and other hardware drivers for you to download and update, so you can get pleasure from your Dell computer music, film and game. There are at present a lot of image processing systems offered for use in clinical and analysis environments. These systems variety in complexity from straightforward, inexpensive microcomputer systems to big sophisticated systems with dedicated image processing hardware. Until lately, good overall performance was limited to bigger systems. Nonetheless, the inflexibility and prohibitive price of these systems restricted their availability in healthcare imaging applications.

When most individuals acquire a personal computer there are two principal components that they acquire. A single is known as a monitor. Monitors take the information sent by the personal computer and then display it in image that humans are able to see. The other principal element of a program is the pc itself, sometimes recognized as the tower. This element of the laptop requires all of the information that you give it, no matter whether it is an MP3 file or a MP4 file, and then processes it and sends it to your monitor. When all of this comes collectively you have a fully functioning personal computer.

Have you already wiped out your hard drive or want to do it now in order to reinstall Microsoft Windows on your Dell personal computer? If yes, then you surely need to have aid carrying out it in the appropriate manner as installation or reinstallation of an operating technique is the most sensitive process. It has to be carried out smoothly from beginning till end. Failing of which could result into significant difficulties in your computer. Don’t be concerned the under pointed out guide will support you reinstall Microsoft Windows on your Dell computer in the easiest manner. This basically signifies that you do not require spending time on phone with a Dell tech assistance to help you do so.

Place the laptop computer laptop encounter up and open up the fluid crystal monitor lid all the way. put a small, flat-head screwdriver in to the essential pad bezel’s appropriate side. The bezel is generally a thin strip of protective plastic situated one of a lot of fluid crystal monitor and key pad assemblies. Pry the bezel from the laptop’s prime casing and set it aside. The on the internet internet sites of Dell arranges computers according to model and price. Special Finance it is a scheme exclusively for the privileged purchasers.

It is extremely effortless to make a music track nowadays with all the killer tools out there. You don’t have to convince a bunch of musicians to show up in your garage to record a session, nor do you require to grow to be a multi-instrumentalist like Prince All you want is a decent digital audio workstation like GarageBand or Ableton Reside, and you can place collectively your own version of a hit song in a surprisingly brief quantity of time. Not everyone is savvy about creating tunes with their pc, even so. In order to help, the folks behind Ableton Live have a new web site called Studying Music to support any individual with a web browser understand the basics of modern day music production.

The desktop vs Notebook Computer systems war can be traced back as early as 1970s, when the idea of portable computers was born. Even even though Laptop Akku provides some of the highest top quality in components and batteries for computers, they provide their items at low costs. Simply because they sustain such an comprehensive inventory of items, they are able to purchase at discounted costs which they pass on to their customers. At instances, the savings can be dramatic, and this is only enhanced when they provide their normal specials and deals to the public, as a result saving consumers even much more cash.

As soon as upon a time (study: the 1990s), the distinction amongst a true workstation Computer and a desktop or customer technique had been impossible to miss. Workstations weren’t just souped-up versions of consumer systems with far more RAM or a larger-resolution display. They ran distinct operating systems, used various CPUs and graphics solutions, and had specialized hardware components that have been difficult or, in some circumstances, impossible to fit into a regular x86 customer technique. As the WinTel alliance gained market place share, these variations have been increasingly confined to niche hardware, until they all but vanished.

Following checking all of your security programs and discovering absolutely nothing, you could be tempted to throw in the towel, or at least throw your machine out the window, but never shed hope. Solving this dilemma is basic, taking extremely little time or work on your component. Editing your Windows registry can repair these problems, and remove the error 2753 message for great, and good riddance to it. Care must be taken with the registry although, since this holds all of your technique operating files and other crucial data and applications necessary for your pc to even start and boot up. This tends to make deleting or changing any entry in the registry by hand a quite high risk.

Appear at the left side, in this side of the machine is equipped with a lot more interfaces, there is a notebook lock slot, power connector, two USB3. interfaces and a multi-card reader. Sadly, this pc is not equipped with a VGA connector frequently utilized for company folks. Each and every motherboard has at least one CD which consists of the drivers software program or other necessary software program of your laptop. At present, there are several motherboard producers in the market place. The software program of one particular brand or model does not support the other brand or model. So, you need to have the application of your own motherboard organization. If you don’t have the CD, you might download them type the Internet.

This contrasted with the batch processing or time-sharing models which permitted larger, more high-priced minicomputer and mainframe systems to be utilised by many individuals, generally at the exact same time. Unlike the installation of industrial panel PCs, which can trigger major upheaval and disruption to provide chains, laptop workstations for use in industrial settings do not need drastic adjustments to computer software, processes and infrastructure. In reality, you can customise Industrial Pc Workstations to suit any industrial provide chain.

(1) A higher-performance, single-user machine geared to the specialist rather than the customer. Employed for video editing, computer-aided design and style (CAD), software program development, healthcare imaging and scientific applications, workstations use a quickly multicore CPU with large amounts of memory (RAM) and storage. These days, a workstation is usually an x86-primarily based laptop running Windows, Linux or Mac OS X. In the previous, RISC-primarily based machines from Sun, HP, IBM and SGI fell into the workstation category.

Filed under: Tagged: computer, computers, forum, hubpages, software from KelsusIT.com – Refurbished laptops, desktop computers , servers http://bit.ly/2AVsFOv via IFTTT

[sarakaybct-blog]

SPACESHIP EARTH 2050

Week 1: Discover and Define 

So far I’ve researched as much as possible on E-waste. Now it is time to 

Find an artefact of e-waste. 

Take it apart,

Research and analyse its components. 

Detail as much metadata as possible about that artefact. Metadata: a set of data that describes and gives information about other data

It honestly took me a while to find old and unused electronics laying around my house. My mum usually throws things away every year during the inorganic waste collection held by the Auckland Council. However, I did mange to find a few bits and bops to take apart. 

This step of the project allowed me to see what kind of chemicals, materials and components are found within these electronic products. To question and research “ Can they be recycled?”  “Are they harmful to our environment? If so, How?”  “How does this chemical pose a threat?” 

                                                 Here Is What I Found 

Mouse, Flip Phone, Samsung Phone, Two Remote Controls,  ADSL Cable, 

If you look at the artefacts of e-waste, they’re not related to one another, like some people have decided to focus on cellphones only or laptops only. 

Taking these electronics apart was some-what quite difficult. Some things I had to pry open with a screwdriver and accidentally cut my hand in the process. I couldn’t find a way to open up the external hard drive and the laptop battery that I found so I just skipped them. Even though I found more than one artefact,  I am choosing to discuss, research and analyse only two on my blog which are the two remotes and two cellphones. I realised that majority of the artefacts that I opened are made up of the same components, from what my eyes could see.  Here is the the first artefact:

Looking at the images above, there doesn’t seem to be many components inside these TV remote controls and they seem very similar to one another. The materials I was able to distinguish before research was plastic, silicon buttons, a printed circuit board that contains the electronics and the battery contacts. I had no idea what the little electronic components on the circuit was called so I hopped on google and did some research. On a remote control there is a small integrated circuit  (also known as a chip). This “is an electronic circuit made up of small semiconductor devices and other electronic components that are manufactured on a semiconductor material.” (1)  The chip is packaged in what is known as an 16 pin Dual Inline Package, or a DIP.  This is “an electronic component package with a rectangular housing and two parallel rows of electrical connecting pins.” (2)  

The remotes also contain a LED light, in other words, a light-emitting diode. They are made up of  semiconductor materials - “ The particular semiconductors used for LED manufacture are gallium arsenide (GaAs), gallium phosphide (GaP), or gallium arsenide phosphide (GaAsP)”. (3) “Impurities within the semiconductor are used to create the required electron density. The impurities commonly added are zinc or nitrogen, but silicon, germanium, and tellurium have also been used. As mentioned previously, they will cause the semiconductor to conduct electricity and will make the LED function as an electronic device.” (3) 

TV remotes also consist a capacitor (dark blue) and a transistor (black, with three leads).  A capacitor is a  device used to store an electric charge, consisting of one or more pairs of conductors separated by an insulator. (4)   A transistor is a semiconductor device used to amplify or switch electronic signals and electrical power. It is composed of semiconductor material usually with at least three terminals for connection to an external circuit. (5)  This is most often made of silicon, the second most abundant element in the earth’s crust, after oxygen.  However, as applications for these transistors get demanding, Gallium Nitride (GaN) and Silicon Carbide (SiC) are getting  increasingly popular for the power electronics market.

Lastly, we have the printed circuit board.  This is a “thin piece of fibre glass that has thin copper "wires" etched onto its surface. Electronic parts are assembled on printed circuit boards because they are easy to mass produce and assemble. In the same way that it is relatively inexpensive to print ink onto a sheet of paper, it is inexpensive to "print" copper wires onto a sheet of fibre glass. It is also easy to have a machine drop the parts (the chips, transistors, etc.) onto the sheet of fibreglass and then solder them on to connect them to the copper wires.” (6) 

“ The substrate most commonly used in printed circuit boards is a glass fiber reinforced (fiberglass) epoxy resin with a copper foil bonded on to one or both sides. PCBs made from paper reinforced phenolic resin with a bonded copper foil are less expensive and are often used in household electrical devices” (7) 

Now to answer the questions asked above...do these electrical and electronic equipment contain different hazardous materials which are harmful to human health and the environment if not disposed of carefully? I found that printed circuit boards contain compounds which are hazardous. Here is why: 

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are a class of organic compounds use in a variety of applications, including dielectric fluids for capacitors and transformers, heat transfer fluids and as additives in adhesives and plastics. PCBs have been shown to cause cancer in animals. PCBs have also been shown to cause a number of serious non-cancer health effects in animals, including effects on the immune system, reproductive system, nervous system, endocrine system and other health effects. PCBs are persistent contaminants in the environment. Due to the high lipid solubility and slow metabolism rate of these chemicals, PCBs accumulate in the fat-rich tissues of almost all organisms (bio-accumulation). The use of PCBs is prohibited in OECD countries, however, due to its wide use in the past, it still can be found in waste electrical and electronic equipment as well as in some other wastes. (8) Are transistors dangerous? Left to themselves, discrete transistors are typically not toxic.  Silicon, Carbide, and Gallium are not toxic, nor are the plastic case or wires making up the package of the transistor.   Solder used to connect the transistors to the rest of the product may contain lead (Pb) which can cause nerve damage, reproductive problems, damage to the fetus in pregnant women, and poor muscle coordination.  Lead is an even more serious problem in children as it can delay neurological development and decrease IQ.   Fortunately lead-free (ROHS compliant) solders are available.   Some ceramic fillers used in discrete transistors and other discrete electronic components may contain alumina whose dust may cause lung disorders.  Plastic packages can also cause harm when burned.

What parts of a transistor can be recycled?The metal legs or leads can be separated from discrete transistors and recycled as scrap metal.   Unfortunately, the remainder of a transistor is typically not recycled and discarded as waste (although this waste is usually non-toxic). (9) 

Are capacitors dangerous? Capacitors themselves are not dangerous. They are mostly dangerous when charged because of the energy stored in them. During direct contact, at low energy, a capacitor can give someone a electric shock. But at high energy for larger capacitors such as those used in heavy duty appliances like furnaces or in power systems, it can make a person unconscious or be potentially fatal.Different capacitors use different types of metals; therefore, their health effects vary. For example, in the unlikely case that these metals are ingested or inhaled, direct consumption of aluminum or tantalum dust can cause respiratory problems and coughing. What parts of a capacitor can be recycled?Capacitors decay by developing higher internal resistance and losing their ability to store energy over time. A useful life of a discrete capacitor is about 700 hours. After some time, the leakage current in between the metallic plates increases, which allows the current to flow through the insulator between capacitor plates and defeating the intended operation of the capacitor.  Like resistors, when disposed of, small capacitors are typically disposed of as ordinary waste although e-waste recycling centers will accept these components for recycling.  Oil filled capacitors contain PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) which are toxic and should be treated as hazardous waste. (9) 

Are diodes dangerous? Some diodes contain trace amounts of heavy metals, like arsenic which, over chronic exposures, can cause cancer and neurological problems.  Diodes often use Indium which is a rare earth material which can lead to political tension, conflict, and violence as demand continues to rise for limited supplies in certain areas of the world.  LEDs containing blue light impair circadian rhythms and sleep when used as nighttime or evening lighting. Ultraviolet LEDSs cause damage to both skin and eyes but these are mostly common in medical procedures.

What parts of a diode can be recycled? Discrete diodes and LEDs are often disposed of in landfills, but the presence of rare earth materials in many diodes is likely to lead to new recycling practices which recover these materials for reuse. (9) 

Reference 

http://www.brighthubengineering.com/diy-electronics-devices/62185-how-are-integrated-circuits-made/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_in-line_package

http://www.madehow.com/Volume-1/Light-Emitting-Diode-LED.html

https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=capacitor&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi2--XVtLPTAhUC2LwKHUMcDPQQ_AUIBSgA&biw=1366&bih=589&dpr=1

https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=a+transistor&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi1pM7FsLPTAhUMgLwKHWM0CMkQ_AUIBygA&biw=1366&bih=589&dpr=1 

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/inside-rc1.htm

http://www.madehow.com/Volume-2/Printed-Circuit-Board.html

http://ewasteguide.info/hazardous-substances

http://ewaste.ee.washington.edu/students/electronic-autobiographies/

[freedinsidelove1]

MY NAME IS ANNIE SPRINKLE AND I AM A SYBARITIC COUGAR WITH ECOSEXUAL TENDENCIES. I am new bride, recently married to the Earth, the Sky and the Sea, and engaged to marry the Moon. Never had I imagined that I’d be so lucky in love, or become so consumed with seemingly crazy, taboo, sexual desires. Nothing prepared me for this kind of relationship, and for this strange, new sexual identity. There is so much to learn that I feel like a total eco-virgin, sun kissed for the very first time. Last night I arrived here in Akumal, Mexico by plane, from my home base in San Francisco, California. It is the perfect setting for a honeymoon adventure; a comfy condo apartment with floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows, which open right onto a white sand beach, a baby blue sky and a florescent turquoise-green Sea. Tropical birds sing me joyous songs as my Sky lover blows ocean-scented breaths all over my face, arms, and under my soft, slinky, leopard-print floor length nighty, which I bought special to wear on this honeymoon. It drapes nicely over my curves, and frames my abundant cleavage to perfection. You’d never know I got it at Target, unless you had one just like it. My gut is filled with anticipation, as though I’m about to eat the ripe, juicy apple from the Garden of Eden’s tree of knowledge. I wonder will the apple send me into rapture, or be poisoned? Or both at the same time? I can almost taste it, because in truth I’m no eco-virgin at all. I’ve been ‘round the planet more than once, and its no secret that I’ve had far more ecosexual experience than most other gals my age. It wasn’t just the great ecosex that brought me to this pregnant honeymoon moment. For years, the Earth, Sky, Sea and Moon and I were, you could say, just friends. We liked each other a lot, and had what I’d describe as an ‘erotic platonic’ relationship. We didn’t see much of each other, as I was a city girl; born in Philadelphia, raised in L.A., and spent most of my adult life Manhattan. There weren’t a whole lot of opportunities in my life for meaningful connections with the Earth, Sky, and Sea, with the exception of four wonder-years I spent in Central America, in Panama, from the age of thirteen to seventeen when Dad worked for the US Agency for International Development. Panama was a lush, jungle paradise filled with ecosensual delights. My teenage experiments with psychedelics on “Tits Beach” made for some transcendental connections with nature and its elements. It’s possible that’s where my relationship with the Earth, Sky, Sea and Moon really took hold. Or perhaps this relationship actually goes back to the womb, or further. Since I took my wedding vows, ‘to love, honor and cherish the Earth, Sky and Sea until death brings us closer together forever,’ my love grows bigger, deeper and more Universal every day, and penetrates every aspect of my life. I’m quite certain that we will be together for the rest of my life. I would be nothing without them. On this honeymoon I expect to get to know more about my lovers and what makes them happy and satisfied. But all is not sunshine and daffodils. Last night when I first arrived here at the condo with my luggage in tow, what was the first thing I saw in front of me? Nothing less than a huge, dreaded, killer Palmetto bug—aka the water bug—that indestructible, dinosaur cockroach. Was this a warning sign from the Universe that danger lies ahead? I’m scared. Will my new relationships work? Will I be worthy? There are issues; my fears of intimacy, old coping mechanisms, negative thought patterns, baggage from past relationships, societal taboos, not to mention the earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis. There were also things that happened in my childhood. Between the ages of about seven and ten my younger sister chased me with giant water bugs whenever she found them. I’d run screaming into the safety of the bathroom and slam the door. She would then put them under the door and they would crawl towards me while she laughed, taunted and terrorized me. This created some deep wounds--for which she has since sincerely apologized. A shaman-therapist suggested that in a past life I had lived in the jungle, been tortured, and when left to die my body became covered with crawling water bugs. There were maggots involved too. Will I ever be able to overcome my childhood (and past life) nature abuse? In any case, I can no longer deny my romantic, and erotic, attraction to nature. Society does not support this kind of relationship. Look at the eco-sex negative names like “tree hugger,” “hedonist,” “beach bum.” “Pagan,” “dirty girl,” “tom boy,” “flower child”… The list goes on. We must reclaim these! Say it loud, say it proud, “I am a nature lover!” Those of us that can, must come out of the closet. Perhaps when people get to know us and realize we are part of their communities and in their families things will get better. Of course lots and lots of people don’t even realize they are ecosexual. They need to be educated. We need an Ecosex Community Center, an Ecosex Film Festival, a march on Washington to demand more environmental protections. Oh dear, here I am, working again--and on my honeymoon. OK, so I realize that I am anthropomorphizing the Earth, Sky, Sea, and Moon—attributing them human-like qualities, the way people anthropomorphize “God.” The Earth, Sky and Sea are not human beings, and human beings are not the Earth, Sky and Sea. --Or are we? This experience is so new that anthropomorphizing is the only way I can manage to even begin to explain it. Hopefully I will find better ways to speak of these things in the future. Here in Akumal, I’m grateful that I can share this honeymoon with my beloved, human life-partner, Elizabeth Stephens, aka Beth. She and I are walking hand-in-hand on this amazing bio-sexual adventure. We came to these life-changing self-discoveries at the same time. We fell madly in love nine years ago. For the first couple years of our relationship we desired to be totally monogamous. A couple years later we decided to practice what we call “adventurous monogamy.” We’d have erotic adventures together; like going to a neo-burlesque show and getting a lap dance, or doing a sensual massage evening with our sacred intimate, Joseph Kramer, or we’d find ourselves being voyeurs at a friend’s sex party. Things really changed five years into the relationship when we bought a little cabin in the woods of Boulder Creek, California. It was there that we found ourselves turning green-- what with all the talk of solar power, global warming, recycling, … green was in the zeitgeist. We discussed it and decided to open up our relationship to become what we call ‘pollen-amorous.’-- to take the Earth as our lover. Looking back, Beth and I can see how the experiences in our lives shaped us and brought us to this--our destiny. Perhaps she and I were drawn to each other by greendar, sensing each other’s latent ecosexuality. In any case, we are glad we found each other. There aren’t too many other partners that would let their wives marry, and make love with, the Earth, Sky, Sea and Moon. Now Beth and I want to share our enthusiasm for this kind of love, and the things we’ve learned and are thinking. We hope our story will help and inspire others like us, or help others who aren’t like us understand us, and ultimately we hope to help to protect our beloveds the Earth Sky, Sea and Moon. WHEN I KNEW -- CHILDHOOD When I first knew that I was an ecosexual I was five. My family moved from to sunny California from dark Pennsylvania. My parents bought us a house with a sparkling blue swimming pool. I remember, the first time I jumped into our. The rush of the cold water; my heart pumping, lips tingling, toes curling, the pure body pleasure. I floated, buoyant, the light twinkling on the top of the water like fairy glitter. The sound of the splasssshhhh, then the silence of the deep end. I became one with the water. I was a water ballerina, beautiful, graceful, at peace. I loved the taste and scent of the chlorinated water. I became renewed, refreshed. Even though I knew it was naughty, I peed in the pool. They don’t call me Sprinkle for nothing. When I knew that I was an ecosexual I was nine. My dad discovered Yosemite and he fell in love. In retrospect, my dad must have been an ecosexual too. Our family visited Yosemite several times a year. That’s when it started, between me, and the redwood trees. I liked them BIG. And they were HUGE! Big, round, hard, but soft, redwood trees. Gentle giants. I loved the scent of the trunk, like vanilla mixed with soil. I have a strong memory of coming across a redwood that had fallen over from a storm. I walked around and peeked at its freshly exposed roots. So soft, so sensuous, so sexy! I had to touch them. When I knew that I was an ecosexual I was ten. It was at night, when we were camping. My family would gather wood and make a fire. I was a Camp Fire Girl! We crumpled newspaper, topped it with kindling and lit it with a match. When the flames got going we added logs. It would start slowly, then build. Eventually the fire became raging, hot, I could feel the heat on my skin. I loved the smell of the burning wood and smoke. I could stare into the dancing flames for hours, and find so many colors; reds, oranges, yellows, even blues, greens and purples. Flames licking wood with intensity. The logs florescent with burning embers, like a painting on black velvet. I would watch until the fire went completely out. That’s when I knew. MY GREEN TEEN YEARS My first oral sex experience was in communion with nature, on a secluded beach two hours north of Panama City. Mathew Van Guilder Howell was a sweet older man at twenty-four years old. He owned The Golden Frog, a hippie coffee shop. I was a shy, sweet sixteen, high school student and budding hippie. We did what young people did in 1969 on their first date; a hit of mescaline. That night there was but a sliver of a moon, and the stars were only how stars can be on a jungle beach on the equator—more bright and abundant than anywhere else on the planet. There were so many shooting stars it was like a fireworks display, but way, way better. The gentle, rhythmic waves massaging the sand were filled with plankton, which made them glow in the dark with magical phosphorescent sparkle. Nature was at her most glamorous and seductive, dripping in diamonds. Van and I got naked. My heart was open and pumping, my senses aroused, and I was in love for the first time. I laid on my back, dug my feet into the sand, and let my knees open like butterfly wings to welcome the Universe in between my thighs. The splash of a wave spit on my belly and vulva. For a few timeless moments the Universe and I made an exquisite, erotic, cosmic connection. Then Van kissed his way down my body and gave me, what we called at the time, “head.” To this day Van and I remain friends, but it is the Earth, Sky, and Sea that I ultimately married. As I think about it, my most memorable teen ecosex experiences were when I was in an entheogen induced altered state. Like when I took a hit of orange sunshine (LSD) and sat by the stove and watched, transfixed, the miracle that is water boiling in a metal pot for a long, long, long time. The sounds the bubbles made against the steel pot were hypnotic and beautiful. Like when I ate psilocybin mushrooms, buried myself up to my neck in cool sand and lay cuddling with the Earth for an eternity. Like the time I smoked opium and watched a giant sea turtle lay her eggs on the beach. Like when I ate some peyote buttons in the Arizona desert and made love with a big, erect, suaro cactus. There was no touching of the cactus for obvious reasons, but I swear, that cactus and I exchanged our sexual energies. These experiences, and a few others like them, I treasure highly and wouldn’t have missed them for the world. MY ECOSLUTTY NEW YORK CITY YEARS At eighteen I moved to Manhattan. Like leaving a high school sweetheart behind when one goes away to college, I just didn’t have much use for nature anymore and was just fine without it. For years and years the city satisfied all my needs. I had an exciting and happy life in the sex industry, working in massage parlors, making porn movies, doing burlesque, and posing for sex magazines. Eventually I successfully transitioned into the art world, touring internationally with my one-woman performance-art-theater shows about my life. I also became a sex educator, and the first porn star to get a Ph.D.. On the rare occasions when I did venture out of the city into the country, it was mostly to the Wise Woman Center near Woodstock. In summers women would gather there to learn “wise woman traditions” at the famous, eccentric herbalist, Susun Weed’s rustic old house and barn-like studio located in an old, abandoned rock quarry. The WWC was surrounded by numerous acres of woods, rivers, and waterfalls. There was a lake, which had a thick blanket of green algae across the top but you could still swim in it, sky clad. Gardens, goats, geese, pet spiders, insects and fairies were all part of the curriculum. It was at the WWC that for the first time I heard someone mention, in passing, the concept of the “Earth as a lover” as an alternative to “Earth as a Mother.” This grabbed my attention! My motto had always been “eroticize everything.” Sex was my thing, my path, my language. Maybe I, a big city slut, could reconnect with nature by thinking of the Earth as my lover. The first time I went to the WWC was for Blood of the Ancients, a week-long gathering with rituals and workshops honoring menstruation. My curiosity about what such a gathering would entail led me to sign up. Women spun stories of walking into the woods, sitting on moist moss and letting their menstrual blood drip down on it as a way to nourish and connect with the Earth. Women spoke of bleeding into cotton cloth pads, then soaking the pads in water and using the bloody water to nourish their plants, and to feel earthy. While I definitely thought these practices were pretty out there, I also liked the idea of these intimate, symbolic gestures and later tried the bloody-rag-water idea out for myself for a few months on my two motley houseplants. The women all sang songs together about blood and the Earth around the campfire and in sweat lodge ceremonies. “Blood of the Ancients, flows through my veins. Forms die, but the river of life remains.” “The Earth is our Mother. We will take care of her. Hey yunga, ho yunga hey yung yung.” “Earth my body, water my blood, air my food and fire my spirit!” “The river is flowing, flowing and flowing. The river is flowing, back to the Sea. Mother carry me, a child I will always be. Mother carry me, back to the sea.” Even though it felt a bit silly, it was nice to sing about, and to, the Earth. In any case, there was no denying that shit grew like crazy all around the place. The next summer I returned to the Wise Woman Center for Green Witch Week. Just after my green witch initiation, Susun Weed invited me to teach there. So for ten years, every summer I went and taught a four-day Sacred Sex workshop with my friends Jwala, Barbara Carrellas, and Linda Montano. I had come to fancy myself a red witch and a sacred prostitute. We taught the usual stuff about g-spots, erotic massage, sex magic, tantra, and had Sluts and Goddesses dress up and performance nights. But on the fourth afternoon of our workshop, when the workshopees were ripe and ready, I’d give them a most unusual assignment; “go out into the woods alone and have sex with something in nature, like a tree, a rock, a cloud, or a waterfall.” I’d coach them. “Use all of your senses, smell, touch, taste, lick, kiss, rub, hump…” Sometimes I would do a little demo—like I’d lay across a hot granite boulder, kiss it, lick and taste it, sniff it, hug it, hump it, breathe it in... We’d all have a good laugh then off to the woods they’d go. Two hours later, we’d gather again in a circle for kiss and tell. “I made love with a waterfall, and it was the best sex I ever had.” “It was amazing. I got totally into this lavender bush.” “I never thought of doing this before but I had a great experience with some lichen and can’t wait do it again.” “I fell asleep by the river and when I woke up there were butterflies all over my body. It was so beautiful.” The women were overwhelmingly excited, amazed and satisfied. Of course there were always the Goddesses of Distention who held back. They just couldn’t, and wouldn’t go there. “Way too kinky.” But those that gave themselves over to the assignment agreed; nature was one hell of a hot lover. We teach what we want to learn. In the late 80’s and early 90’s I wrote a series articles for Penthouse magazine. One was about a Native American shaman, sex magician and teacher named Harley Swiftdeer and his five-day Quodoshka workshop. He was the real deal. Harley taught me the best sex technique in the world--the Fire Breath orgasm-- also known as the FBO. It’s a circular breathing technique to breathe ecstasy energy into and up one’s body and then out into an electric energy orgasm release. With the FBO one can learn to harness, build, and move sexual energy, which can then be utilized for all kinds of things; hotter partner sex, physical healing, emotional cleansing, spiritual nourishment, shamanic journeying, and more. When I saw his more advanced students all demonstrate it, I knew I just had to learn it. It took me a couple years of practicing to get the total hang of the FBO. I’d practice it at home alone or with other people who knew how to do it. But it was the day that I practiced the FBO in Central Park by the lake near the Alice in Wonderland statue, that I really GOT it and had my first big, electric, full body, blissful energy orgasm. The technique can be done with clothes on, standing or laying, and could be interpreted as someone doing yogic breathing or some sort of tai chi moves, so I don’t think anyone in the park knew what I was up to. Watching the light dancing on the water, breathing in the scent of the dirt, and the sounds of the pigeons around me were just the inspiration I needed to get me over the energy orgasm hump. Learning the FBO was pivotal for me in my ecosexual evolution. Through my breath, some kegals, undulation, and intention, I could make love with the Earth, Sky and Sea energetically. Over the years that followed I taught hundreds of others; men, women and trans people, to do it too in workshops I called “Ecstasy Breathing” or “Fun With Breath and Energy Orgasm,” and often gave the technique a bit of an ecosexual twist. Certainly a person does not have to be outside of a city to have good ecosex. For example, there was the time I was laying on my living room couch masturbating with my Hitachi magic wand when I looked out my eleventh story window, over the skyscrapers and into the sky when a big, white puffy cloud cruised me. Earlier I’d been reading the book Sexual Secrets and there was a quote I resonated with. “I am the sun, the moon and all the stars. There is no temple as sacred, no temple as blissful, as my own body.” I medibated on that thought and found myself fantasizing that the cloud was watching me, coming closer to me, then enveloping me in its pillowy puffs. This was very pleasurable, and triggered a series of deep clitoral orgasms, accompanied by a burst of emotion, which I call a crygasm. My favorites. As I came out of a divine afterglow, a wave of shame washed over me. Was I some sort of cloud pervert? Was there a difference between what Shere Hite told me was a totally normal recurring rape fantasy doing a live sex show with a horse, vs. a fantasy of making love with a cloud? I decided to ask the cloud, is this for real? Is this consensual? Am I totally nuts? In that moment a red helium balloon floated up into the sky and pierced the cloud, like with Cupid’s arrow. I took this to be a sign that indeed our love was real. Then before my eyes the sky darkened and it started to sprinkle. A cloud ejaculation! That was one of the best sexual experiences I had ever had, and I’d had many. For a long time I never spoke to anyone about this experience. It was a love that dared not speak its name. Occasionally I would find people with whom I could talk about ecosex. My friend Michael L. confided that once when he was camping he had an affair with a bright yellow flower that grew outside his tent. He masturbated with, and ejaculated on the flower a couple times. When it the flower started to die from old age, it made him so sad that he ate the flower and they became forever one. My friend Andrew R. shared with me about his tree in the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, which had a big hole in its trunk. He would sneak inside that tree, masturbate, and come inside the tree. He developed a very strong bond with the tree, a deep love. Jasmine D. a yoga teacher friend, told me about the day her boyfriend broke up with her. She was crying face down on the grass. Suddenly she felt the life force of the Earth shoot into her, which triggered a full body Kundalini orgasm, the biggest she had ever had, which was for her a profound, beautiful and healing experience. She never cried over that boyfriend again. Although I didn’t have a name for them yet, my ecosexual proclivities continued. Vegetables were a favorite dildo; namely the classic cucumber and the occasional carrot—I admit this was before we knew about washing off the pesticides. Water has always my favorite of the elements. On some special horny occasions, I’d lay on my back in the bathtub, straddle the faucet, turn on the water, and have beautiful watergasms. Or straddle a hot tub jet when I could find one. I loved doing clay masks, and to exfoliate in the shower with scrubs made of oatmeal, honey, lavender and rose. Steam baths, spa treatments with natural products, and aromatherapy scents made life extra pleasurable. As a sex worker I relished the occasional mud-wrestling photo shoot, the outdoor sex scenes, and the nice John with the yacht in the 79th street boat basin. In my personal life, having sex in the great outdoors was always a very special, all too rare, treat. Such was ecosex in the city. MY MERMAID YEARS Around my fortieth birthday the Sea began to beckon. “Come to me. You can’t resist me. Come to me. I want you.” Like the time I was in Scotland with my lover Mary. We were standing at the edge of Loch Ness looking for the monster when I heard, “Come to me, come to me…” My tears could not be withheld and Mary hugged me tight. “I feel so disconnected from nature,” I cried. “No wonder,” she said, “it’s the middle of winter for Christ’s sake.” But I knew it was more than that-- I was out of touch, and I knew in my heart that I had to get back to the Garden. So I inched myself away from Manhattan to live by the Sea. First I moved to East Hampton for a year. Then made my way to live in Provincetown where I fell in love with the humpback whales. After a couple years I was called to the Pacific Ocean, got a houseboat in Sausalito and lived right on top of the water, happily in rhythm with the tides. When my houseboat burnt down while I was out of town I learned about the power of fire. Free of material belongings, I took off with a male-to-female transsexual, named Captain Barb. We floated north on her fifty-five foot boat three years in a marina on Orcas in the San Juan Islands. I recreated myself as a mermaid. A WORK IN PROGRESS TO BE CONTINUED.