Western Australian lithium miner Galaxy Resources has announced an operating loss of nearly $40 million for last year.

The Idea of North

TaikOz

Professor Rick Daley ’78 and Monte Smith ’90, assistant dean for academic affairs, were honored by the Class of 2013 as the Morgan E. Shipman Outstanding Professor and Outstanding Staff Member, respectively.

At the 28th Annual International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference California State University, Northridge (CSUN) conference, IBM brought together accessibility experts from government, major enterprise IT (information technology) providers, mobile OS (operating system) providers, mobile device providers, and industry standards efforts to bring focus and direction to addressing accessibility in one of the most liberating opportunities for people with disabilities in the last decade.

Our Beloved Denver (Big Guy), Thank you for teaching us the true meaning of what love was always meant to be. You were a beautiful dog with a beautiful

Hi my angel Day 283 : Damn Each day is worse than the day before. “Time does not heal anything, it just teaches us how to deal with the pain . . .”

Our Beloved Denver, Thank you for teaching us the true meaning of what love was always meant to be. You were a beautiful dog with a beautiful soul that

Dear Shim Shim, I hate this month, it's so miserable and even more so cos you passed on Halloween eve. I remember it all so vividly, your loss and Zeusy's

Hi my baby girl, How are you? Are you playing and having a good time? Are you staying close to Rufus? I hope you're happy and have all kinds of new friends

Hi my big guy, How are you are you having fun? Are you playing and have you made new friends? Are you keeping an eye on Diana? I hope you are happy and

The LumoPro LP180 is no more.

You could make a strong case that the LP180 was the best manual hot shoe flash ever produced — and maybe that ever will be produced. It was a beast of a flash, with a fluid user interface and features designed specifically for off-camera lighting photographers. Now, it's the last of a bygone era.

Why did it have to die? What made it so good? And what will replace it as the flash of choice for discerning-but-frugal off-camera shooters?

Read more »

Continuing my project to journal all of my travel adventures, we come to an entertaining entry: The Big Island of Hawaii and the Great Luggage Chase of 2013.

The trip was well planned but poorly executed due to weather mishaps. I was supposed to fly DCA-JFK-LAX-KOA but snow dropped visibility to near zero at JFK so my plane was rerouted to Providence, RI after we took off from DCA. After several hours Delta put everyone back on a plane to JFK and rescheduled the connecting flights outbound from there. There was no way I was going to make it out to LAX in time to catch the Delta flight to Hawaii,  but as I was still a shiny Diamond Medallion back then and mattered to the airline, Delta put me on an AA flights to ensure I would get to Hawaii one way or another. The AA flight routed through PDX (Portland) and because of more weather problems our flight into Portland was delayed and I missed my Hawaii flight after all. Now I was stranded in Portland overnight, while my luggage (including my coat) was in LAX (it had remained on my original itinerary). 44 degrees Fahrenheit and I was dressed in anticipation of Hawaii with my sleeveless summer dress and flip-flops. Gah! Are you laughing yet? 

Delta put me up in a hotel for the evening and in the next morning I was back at the airport in my dirty clothes, tired, cranky, and eager to get to Hawaii. Let this vacation start already! I landed on Kona Island (also called Hawaii Island or the Big Island) and was immediately dismayed to find my luggage wasn’t due to arrive until that evening (having missed the evening flight the night before, they put it on the next evening flight available 24 hours later). This was a problem as I was going to be on the road for most of the trip, exploring. I left information with Delta on my whereabouts for that evening and hoped for the best. I hopped into my rental car and headed for Volcano National Park. Along the way, the scenery was gorgeous and for a good portion of the trip my car was the only one on the highways I traveled.

I journeyed to the end of the Chain of Craters Road, which follows along the ocean and dead ends at a lava flow that closed the road beyond.

As I approached Volcano National Park, the sun began to set.

There was a beautiful lava lake in the Halema’uma’u crater (the 2019 eruption of Mt. Kilauea drained it) and I was lucky enough to stand before it that evening and enjoy its stunning ebb and flow. My poor quality cell phone picture cannot capture its essence.

I had an intense dinner at Thai Thai in Volcano. It was the hottest Thai food I have ever had outside of Bankok and it brought on an instant headache and the feeling that my lips were on fire. I recommend the place only if you can stand the heat.

The next morning I was up at 4am with plans to visit the highest point on the island and the summit of the tallest mountain in the world – Mauna Kea. From its base, Mauna Kea is over 10,000 meters tall (Mt. Everest is just 8,850 for comparison). It was a cold journey as my luggage still had not arrived into Hawaii (Delta was frantically searching for my bags and could not locate them in the system at all) and so I had only my summer dress I wore on the flight to Hawaii and the t-shirt/shorts combo I purchased the day before. The view from the top proved more than worth the discomfort of the cold.

As I was descending from the summit, Delta called with some good news. They found my bags at KOA. They said they would hold them for me till later that evening when I arrived for my flight to HNL. And they gave me a $200 delta voucher for my trouble. That made me feel a little bit better, but it reinforced the universal travel truth: checking luggage for a weekend trip is almost always a bad idea.

It was a leisurely drive back to KOA, with more scenic shots along the way.

When I got to KOA airport, Delta had some fun news for me. My bags weren’t at the airport anymore where they were supposed to be. As a “courtesy”, Alaska had picked them up from Delta baggage and sent a courier across the island to the hotel I stayed at the night before (2.5 hours away) to hand deliver them to me. With just a few hours before my departing flight for HNL, I told Delta they needed to get ahold of the driver and advise him to race his ass back to this side of the island to the airport. I was doubtful I would ever see my luggage again, but thirty minutes before takeoff, a very tired and sweaty courier waved at me and handed me my bags. As soon as I got to Waikiki and checked into my hotel, I took a long shower and enjoyed the luxury of putting on clean clothes- a ritual I usually take for granted.

I enjoyed a couple of relaxing days taking in the sun and fruity cocktail drinks on the beaches of Waikiki before heading home to Virginia.  That trip was delayed too, because of storms in Virginia, and I ended up spending the night near LAX and coming home a day later. All in all a good trip, excluding the weather and luggage fiascos. I have since been back to the Hawaiian Islands two or three times (to Oahu and Maui) but the Big Island is definitely the most spectacular of them all.  Go to Oahu for the history and shopping, go to Maui for the food, but go to the Big Island for the rugged scenery that will take your breath away.

I'll be at KATSUCON Feb. 15th-17th, in MD! More info at the Katsucon site!

We'll be at table #D17 and #D18 in the AA with my buddies Lochi and Cucoo! Look for Starfighter/Bone Menagerie! -Hamlet

I'll be at YAYCON in Amersfoort, Netherlands on April 6th!

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE THAT DONATED FOR THE TRIP! It seriously blows my mind that you made this possible and I'm so happy for a chance to go abroad and meet new friends at Yaycon!

For those that will be attending the convention: I will have your prints available for pick-up! And for those of you are ordered but can't attend, your prints will be mailed out after the con!

I HOPE TO DO YOU ALL PROUD!

(I will have to leave in a few days, so there won't be a page this week but I will do my best to make a treat for you!) -Hamlet

I WILL BE AT OTAKON! IN THE AA! We'll have some copies of Coven, as well as my new witch zine Devil's Dance!

By Luis Prada  Published: May 07th, 2020 

By JM McNab  Published: May 07th, 2020 

By Dan Duddy  Published: May 07th, 2020 

VIDEO: MOVIES: CARTOONS: REVIEW: My Little Pony: Equestria Girls (2013) Claire: 4/5 stars, 8/10. Carolyn: 5/5 stars, 8.6/10. “I am a chick and I like cartoons, so I am allowed to love My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.” (Notice how she leaves me in the lurch there?) Jesse: 3/5 stars, 7/10. “OK, I actually enjoyed […]

VIDEO: MOVIES: REVIEW: Oblivion (2013) Claire: 4.6/5 stars, 8.8/10. Carolyn: 5/5 stars, 8.6/10. Native rating: 7.1/10 IMDB. Don’t see this on Netflix for some reason. This had a little bit of everything – mankind moving off planet because the planet is inhabitable, Matrixy aspects, “Go out into the radiation zone to find out the truth”, […]

VIDEO: MOVIES: REVIEW: The Colony (2013) Claire: 3/5 stars, 7/10. Carolyn: 3/5 stars, 7/10. Evan: 3/5 stars, 6.5/10. Native ratings: 5.2/10 IMDB. Not available on Netflix. This was OK, but it could have been better. It started off really strong, and then had a tipping point where you realized it was Just Another Movie(tm). The […]

Rapture-Palooza (2013) Claire: 4.6/5 stars, 8.8/10. Carolyn: 4.4/5 stars, 8.4/10. “Underrated. Funny. Original. Dark yet humorous.” Native ratings: 2.8/5 stars Netflix, 5.1/10 IMDB. I found this movie to be very original. It had dark, dark, messed up black humor, but also had a lot of standard humor as well.  Events in the movie were disturbing […]

Trip to Destin JuneJuly 2013Day 1 June 29thWe left the house at 0730 and drove a very LONG 12 hours to get there due to traffic. We went and checked out our condo which was really nice then did some grocery shopping. When we got back Rob and

Trip to Oregon on May 2013 Honeymoon tripDay 1 May 25thWe left Knoxville at 1240. We had a very long flight to Oregon that included long layovers. But had some awesome chocolates at the Charolotte Airport. We didn't get to the hotel in Medford

Marseille Arles Avignon in Southern France 9 and 10 Aug 2013 After driving towards Marseille pronounced Marsay just before lunch we hit the bumper to bumper traffic of the French Riviera in summer holidays again. We crawled along but finally got

Pamplona. Friday 28th Dec 2012We left Cucuta at 7.30 on a bus for Pamplona where we had planed to stay the night. The night before Bernie asked how long would it take to get from Merida to Pamplona. I did my lonely planet calcul

We should have taken it as a sign of what was to come a gruff taxi driver who reeked of cigarette smoke greeted us with little more than a grunt and yelled out arschloch half a dozen times during our short journey to the train station. One scary frau

It's St Patrick's Day 2013. The pubs are open, you can shake all the hands in the world, and Ireland Women are on the cusp of a historic Grand Slam. Join us here for a trip down memory lane.

The Times' Editorial Awards for 2013, handed out in a ceremony Thursday night, honored both accountability journalism and what Editor Davan Maharaj called "the ever-growing types of journalism we produce in this Digital Age."

The OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) recently published new preliminary figures for aid in 2013.

It showed official development assistance (ODA) aid from wealthy governments had increased to just under $135 billion in 2013 (at constant 2012 prices). This is roughly 0.3% of GNI (Gross National Income) of the donor nations.

Yet, over 40 years ago nations promised to reach 0.7% of their GNI by the mid-1970s. While each year the amount of aid falls quite short of that 0.7% target (less than half of that target), the quality and effectiveness of that aid is often questionable, sometimes benefiting the donor more than the recipient due to the types of conditions attached to this aid.

This update includes a number of new and updated charts and graphs.

Read full article: Foreign Aid for Development Assistance

oscon: Alumnus of #OSCON can save an extra 20% on their 2013 registration. Use code ALUMNI when you register http://t.co/E0JKpcj1Rp #opensource

strataconf: A detailed agenda for #StrataRx 2013 is now posted: workshops, sessions, speakers + more http://t.co/RtaRpQroaN #healthdata

• Zero Dark Thirty Review
• Our Top 10 Most Anticipated Films of 2013
• What We Watched: Jiro: Dreams of Sushi, Take This Waltz, Futurama, The Great Happiness Space, Indie Game: The Movie, Somewhere Between, Lincoln & Chasing Ghosts