#and also its a landmark title in gaming history etc

[violetreminder]

Fuck it, I'm gonna play Deus Ex

[miloscat]

[Review] Link’s Awakening (GBC/NS)

I finally got around to one of the few Zeldas I’d never played through properly. And it’s good!

Link’s Awakening has been on my list for a while. I even bought it on the 3DS Virtual Console. I ended up using my Raspberry Pi emulator though, so I could apply some nice quality of life fan patches: font improvement, removing intrusive text popups, etc. What got me to finally bite the bullet though was my friend kindly lending me his copy of the remake, so I decided to play them simultaneously, doing each phase and dungeon in the original then repeating it to closely compare the two.

As for the game, I’m very impressed. I grew up on the Oracle games, Capcom’s successors to LA, and while it’s a little simpler the world has so much charm and life to it. I think it also compares very favourably to its direct antecedent, A Link to the Past (which I always found awkward and bland), especially for a handheld game made initially on the sly. Koholint Island is a vibrant place, with lots of oddball characters including its village of talking animals and the guest cameos from other games, and the dungeons often have quirky ideas to them. The game also innovates with fun items like the Roc’s Feather that enables a jump, which helps in the occasional side-view segments (which are more fun than even when Zelda 2 based the whole game around them), and was the first to introduce a trading sequence.

The game’s story takes an unconventional tone of ambiguity, with the bosses taunting you as you question the ethical implications of your potentially destructive quest. The occasional eerie undertone is offset by the offbeat humour in the script, and your connection with the female lead Marin. In a memorable sequence she accompanies you across the island, following in your footsteps and occasionally commenting on locations (I also enjoyed the feeling of being accompanied by the other temporary followers, like the chain chomp, ghost, or flying chicken).

It’s really an accomplished game, only held back by the limitations of the system ie. only two buttons means lots of opening the menu to swap items, and things like this. So the remake then. It does go a long way to improving on these factors, with dedicated buttons for sword, shield, dash, and lift in addition to two item buttons; plus the enhanced warp system and greatly improved map with much more detail, waymarkers, a history of events, even marking collectibles you’ve found; and bigger screen areas means fewer transitions. It also adds a handy secret seashell detector, extra shells and heart pieces, and a rudimentary fairy bottle mechanic.

A headline feature of the remake (which by the way, stupidly does not have a distinct title) is the art style, where characters are styled to look toy-like, and a tilt-shift effect has been applied (too strongly if you ask me) to the edges of the screen. It’s a nice idea; I always love for a game to aim for a coherent and striking visual theme, but I can’t help missing the lovely pixel art of the Game Boy. Furthermore, I’m baffled by the poor performance of this remake,with stuttering and frame rate drops a common occurrence. I was also frustrated by the combination of mandatory analogue control and locked 8-directional movement, which felt very strange after A Link Between Worlds.

Apart from all of these highs and lows, I can’t help being ambivalent about the remake in the first place. It’s so painstakingly faithful to the original that it does little to justify its existence. I didn’t even mention the new dungeon-“designing”  with Dampé feature (actually just slotting existing rooms into a grid), because I found it tedious and unfun, plus it replaces the adorable mouse photographer, a crime in itself. I cannot in good conscience recommend paying the full Nintendo-tax $80 for the remake when the GBC version is just as good, and can be had for $9 on Virtual Console or substantially less if you’re emulation savvy. Either way, I’m very glad to have played this landmark title in the series: as far as I’m concerned, it’s the first really great Zelda game.

[mrmallardsmobileposts]

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time holds up pretty well!

I bought the Prince of Persia trilogy at my friend's suggestion in 2016. I asked him for some input on a game sale that was going on at the time and he told me that they were some of his favorite childhood games. Based on his recommendation, I bought the trilogy.

I haven't picked up a Prince of Persia game since then. I played the first one for about 30 minutes, hated it and shut off my console.

Here's my reasoning: around the time I played Prince of Persia, I was just coming off of the Mass Effect trilogy. I had only gotten a PS3 in the last few months of 2014 - my first PS3, ever - and ever since that I had been playing catch-up on all the landmark titles I had missed over the console's lifespan. I had played the Jak remasters, but I grew up with all of those. Aside from a gameplay demo of Warrior Within as a kid, Prince of Persia was an unknown series of games to me.

While Mass Effect had its jank, railroading and poorly aged graphics in certain respects, it offered a new dimension of freedom that I was not accustomed to in video games. You spend most of the games farting around hubs, shooting up corridors of enemies and stuff - tackling each new mission on your own terms, at your own pace. It's a game series that prides itself on how free and open-ended it feels.

So to drop into a game like Prince of Persia after that is a bit of a rude surprise.

My initial opinion of Prince of Persia: Sands of Time was that it was too railroaded. I felt like I was being throttled, restrained, and I didn't like it. The cutscenes weren't updated very well, the camera was a jank machine and the VA was pretty bad. All in all, I was unimpressed by it - everything about the game was working against it, in my eyes. It wasn't a game that appealed to my gaming tastes at the time.

That was two and a half years ago. It took a brief fixation on RPG games, a general sense of burnout regarding the rest of my prominent games library and a GVMERS documentary on the history of the series to bring me back around to the idea of playing Prince of Persia.

I'll get the negatives out of the way - Prince of Persia is dated. In some areas more than others, but this game shows its age in all of its crusty glory - poorly remastered cutscenes, rough facial animation and VA work, wonky camera. Prince of Persia: Sands of Time is a 15 year old game, and it shows plain as day.

Combat is pretty clunky too, even in this run I didn't like combat so much. It felt like they were put in to break the flow up between parkour sections, and I frankly didn't like combat all that much.

But when Prince of Persia does something well, it excels at it. The pillars of this game are its gameplay, aesthetic and sense of progression.

First of all - the parkour is fantastic. Looking at it through the lens of a 2003 PS2 game, this gameplay mechanic would have been revolutionary at the time - and as someone who hasn't played Mirror's Edge or Assassin's Creed, it was revolutionary to me as I was playing it. This is the main draw of the game - you're dropped onto a room, the game tells you to get out of it, and the exit leads to another room. Hell, it goes as far as to tell you how to get through most of the puzzles.

When I first played the game, I felt trapped. I felt railroaded. I just wanted to play more open world games, and that is the furthest thing from what Sands of Time actually is. The game is very linear, and I didn't want to play games that were overly linear at the time - I grew up playing games like Jak and Daxter and GTA, and I was chomping at the bit for more gameplay experiences like Mass Effect. That's not to say that I would only appreciate games like Mass Effect at the time - I think I was having a blast with Catherine around the same time, which is a pretty limited puzzle game - but linearity in the same sort of vein as this Prince of Persia game was very much not my thing. Even God of War is less strictly linear than Prince of Persia is imo, because the combat offers a sense of freedom and creativity to it and I feel like I'm always in control when I play those games, even if I'm being sheparded along a straight line the entire game.

The problem I had with Prince of Persia is that I was looking at it through the wrong perspective - it was unavoidable at the time considering my tastes, but it still warrants mentioning. I wasn't looking at the game in the sort of way that really highlights its strengths, and the aspects of it that appeal to me now were lost underneath all the stuff I couldn't stand at first glance.

I'm a sucker for puzzle games - Tetris, Puyo, Tangrams, I love a good puzzle game. I'm not the biggest fan of action games with forced puzzle room sections, though - pressure switches, time gates, collapsing floors etc. So you'd think that I would hate Prince of Persia for how much of the game is made up of these puzzle sections. But it seems to me that the combat, the action of this game, plays second fiddle to the puzzle-solving. I hate this gameplay when it breaks up the focus of the game - the story, the action. I hate when it's used as an arbitrary roadblock. I hate this shit in games like Jak 2. But this game is all about switches and pulleys and wall-running. It's about getting to that next checkpoint and marking your progress as you jump and flip and swing through a collapsed palace in India. The game is very slow and methodical - Prince of Persia, when boiled down to its purest form, is a puzzle game. And that aspect of it has aged really, really well.

The aesthetic of the game - the arches, the stained glass, the pillars and ceiling domes and ever-present banners and cloths - has aged pretty gracefully as well. The geometry tends to be pretty simple most of the time, but it works - it's not a graphical powerhouse like the God of War titles, but the developers made a very pretty game world with the technology they had available at the time and they made so much of it directly interactive with the player's actions in the game. It's commendable.

Also, regarding God of War - there's no way that the Prince of Persia games weren't a primary inspiration for that series. About halfway through the game, I realised that Prince of Persia is basically an earlier God of War with weaker combat but stronger puzzle-solving. They're both third-person action games that aim to replicate historical settings with some degree of accuracy to the pop-culture impressions that people have of those settings. One of God of War's biggest draws is that gorgeously realised interpretation of Greek mythology - and Prince of Persia is just as successful in capturing that swashbuckling Arabian Nights setting that it uses. On a smaller scale than God of War, but that's not an issue - the compact nature of Prince of Persia's running time and game setting is one of its most appealing factors.

Sands of Time is a short game. I finished it in six hours, spread out over a couple of weeks - I got all the health upgrades, I kinda ballsed up the Sand Orbs but I got a whole lot of them, and I beat the final boss. One thing that kept me motivated was the completion percentage attached to my game file.

Every save point is located somewhere between 2-4% of the gameplay. Every time you hit a save point, you see your progress in the game go up, little by little - so by the time you stop playing, you know you've played though 15% of the game or so. Next time you might play for less time, so you only hit a handful of save points and go about 8% though the game. But now your completion rate is 23% - next time you play, try and reach 30%! From there, you try and get yourself to 50% completion. You tackle the game in these bite-sized chunks and watch your completion number go up little by little, and it motivates you to keep going for a higher number. This aspect of the game has aged amazingly well, at least if you respond to this sort of motivation - if that sounds like it's gonna be a motivating factor for you, then you might just enjoy Prince of Persia: Sands of Time.

This game is a mixed bag due to its age, but underneath the jank and the poorly aged aspects sits a very solid skeleton of a game. You might not like it compared to flashier games like God of War, but I enjoyed its earnest presentation, satisfying campaign length and rock-solid fundamental gameplay.

[thecarexpertuk]

Driving games have been around for decades, and have always been popular. They allow us to pretend we are a Formula One driver racing around Monaco, or participate in some virtual Cannonball Run on public roads in a selection of supercars. Whether it’s arcade-style action or simulator-style challenge, driving games have always been a great form of entertainment.

The continuing development of computing power has meant that video games have improved massively over the last few decades. I remember playing Test Drive by Accolade (on a Commodore 64, no less) in the late 1980s and thinking it was the coolest thing in the world. To be fair, I was about 12 at the time. Track down some footage of its graphics these days and it looks cartoonish.

The latest generation of driving games is bringing unprecedented realism and levels of detail previously considered unimaginable, and the latest games being released in the run-up to Christmas are pushing the limits of current computing power to their limits. Titles like Project Cars 2, F1 2017, Forza Motorsport 7 and Gran Turismo Sport have all taken significant steps forward over their predecessors, with amazing visuals and enhanced gameplay to better replicate the handling characteristics of real cars. The effect is so powerful that it can cause significant motion sickness in players (more of which later).

Car manufacturers are no longer simply involved through licencing their models’ likeness for use in the game. Game developers will spend months working with designers, engineers and test drivers at car companies to make sure that the virtual cars behave in the exact same way as their real cars in any situation. Professional racing drivers spend many hours playing the game to provide feedback to developers about the tiniest nuances of both cars and tracks.

Project Cars 2

The original Project Cars game of 2015 was an unexpected hit. Funded by crowdsourcing, sponsored by racing fans who wanted a properly hardcore driving simulation, Project Cars seemed like it was only ever going to have niche appeal for those who spend a lot of time on driving games. But the finished product was so good, it immediately became a serious rival to established series like Sony’s Gran Turismo and Microsoft’s Forza Motorsport.

That success made a sequel almost inevitable. But unlike many second-edition games, which often fail to match the experience of the original, Project Cars 2 seems to have improved every single area and taken some major leaps forward.

Improvements to visuals and sound are to be expected, even though the new game is designed to run on the same systems (Playstation 4, Xbox One, PC) as the original. But considerable attention has been paid to physics modelling for important areas like tyre and weather behaviour, which massively improve the feeling of realism compared to real-world driving. The majority of the tracks have also been laser scanned for millimetric accuracy.

The number of configurations for different races is staggering. If you would like to recreate the Le Mans 24 Hours, run over the full race distance in real time with both day and night periods, different weather patterns, representative grids and AI opponents, then you can (although the inability to save your progress mid-race is annoying, especially in a longer event). If you’d rather pitch an Indycar against a go-kart and a rallycross car on the old Monza banking in a blizzard at night, you can do that too.

At a recent preview event at Brands Hatch, we got to experience the rather surreal experience of driving a Lamborghini Huracan GT3 in a virtual race, while the real version of the exact same car (including all the same decals) was out racing around the real circuit in a British GT championship event at the same time.

Project Cars 2 hits shelves next week (September 22) for Playstation 4, Xbox One and PCs. We hope to have a full review of the game, and a back-to-back comparison with the original, very soon.

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F1 Racing 2017

Over the years, Formula One video games have been rather hit and miss. There have been some absolute gems, like the Microprose Grand Prix series developed by the legendary Geoff Crammond, but also some very ordinary adaptations as well. Licencing restrictions have also traditionally been very restrictive, limiting the ability to get too carried away with drivers changing teams or swapping sponsors, etc.

Since 2010, British studio Codemasters has had the rights to be the official game of F1. Its first effort, called (unsurprisingly) F1 2010, was well received, but since then it has been a mixed bag with many of the following years’ games offering little to no real improvement. A novel ‘classic’ section was added in 2013, but was very limited and disappeared again the following year.

2016’s game was a step forward for driving dynamics, and F1 2017 looks to have taken another step in terms of gameplay options. And to much celebration, a historic F1 section is back, bigger and better than last time. Rather than being a separate add-on as in 2013, this time around the classic section has been integrated better with the main career section. We are yet to spend more than a few minutes with F1 2017, but hope to spend some time with it soon to produce a full review.

F1 2017 is on sale now for Playstation 4, Xbox One and PC.

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Gran Turismo Sport

The original Gran Turismo from 1997 was a landmark title in driving game history, offering a range of cars and tracks that were vastly larger than any previous effort. And it wasn’t simply a matter or quantity over quantity, as the driving dynamics were also leagues ahead of traditional driving game fare.

Every sequel since has expanded on the previous version, with the biggest drawback being that it was a series developed by Sony – and therefore only available on Sony Playstation consoles. If you played your games on a Microsoft Xbox or PC, then bad luck. But the games have been so good that many Playstation consoles were sold just so gamers could play the latest instalment of Gran Turismo.

The latest game, Gran Turismo Sport, is the first in the series for the Playstation 4 console. Its arrival has been much delayed, which is surprising since Sony launched the PS4 nearly four years ago. In that time, rivals like Project Cars and Assetto Corsa have raised the bar for console driving simulators, so expectations are high that Sony will deliver a stunning new game to wrest GT‘s hard-earned crown back again.

Gran Turismo Sport launches in October 2017 for Playstation 4.

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Forza Motorsport 7

The Forza Motorsport series is Microsoft’s answer to the Gran Turismo family, and the recent editions have certainly been the equal of GT. The Forza brand has also spawned a more open-world series called Forza Horizon. Like Gran Turismo, the Forza titles are owned by the same company that makes the console, so Forza fans will need an Xbox or a PC rather than a PS4.

Forza Motorsport 7 is the latest instalment in the series, and has been developed alongside Microsoft’s latest update to the Xbox, the Xbox One X. Very little information has been released so far, other than that the game will feature more than 700 cars and 200 circuit configurations across 30 locations. Like Project Cars 2, it will feature dynamic weather that can change dramatically throughout a race.

October 3 is launch day for Forza Motorsport 7, for Xbox One and PC systems.

Which of the above games are you most looking forward to and why? Let us know in the comments below…

Driving games take realism to new heights Driving games have been around for decades, and have always been popular. They allow us to pretend we are a Formula One driver racing around Monaco, or participate in some virtual Cannonball Run on public roads in a selection of supercars.

[hermanwatts]

Sensor Sweep: Haggard Art, Paperbacks, David Drake, Lankhmar RPG

Books (Wasteland & Sky): The common Joe was abandoned for fandom. Unfortunately for them, pocket paperbacks is the key to reaching the largest possible audience. This was part of the secret to the form’s success. Pocket paperbacks were meant for normal people. Abandoning the masses is never a smart idea.

D&D (Jeffro’s Space Gaming Blog): New school games typically give the players latitude to play whatever type of character they want. This ranges from GURPS where classes and levels are dispensed with and every conceivable character ability is broken down into point values all the way up to recent editions of D&D where there are a bewildering range of races, classes, feats, and so on. The newest of new school games emphasize elaborate player character backstories that the Dungeon Master is expected to somehow tap into in his campaign story.

Art (DMR Books): “The collector who commissioned it was a Haggard fan with a Haggard room. He had several well-known illustrators do paintings for his room, i.e. Jeff Jones, Michael Whelan, etc. A few years ago he decided to give it all up and sold all of his books and paintings.”

Guides (Pulp Net): A pulp magazine price guide? Yup. Bookery’s Guide to Pulps & Related Magazines by Tim Cottrill is the second edition of this work and came out in 2020 from Heritage Auctions via Ivy Press. The first edition came out in 2005, which was actually an update of The Ultimate Guide to the Pulps from 2001. Tim Cottrill owns a book/collectibles store called Bookery Fantasy in Ohio, hence the name.

Pulps (Michael May): So was Planet Stories all that bad? Certainly it featured plenty of space opera and sword-and-planet action. Many of the best of Leigh Brackett’s stories appeared in Planet Stories, including her classic Eric John Stark tales of Mars. In fact, she was instrumental in carrying on the vision of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Mars as a world of strange wonders. This in turn gave Ray Bradbury a place to grow his Martian Chronicles with stories like “The Million Year Picnic,” “Rocket Summer,” and “Mars is Heaven,” standard texts in classrooms and libraries as serious literature.

Book Review (Scifi Movie Page): When the first Assassin’s Creed game was released back in 2007 it became one of those landmark games that you purchased a game system (in this case the Playstation 3 or Xbox 360) just to play. This massive, oversized, 256 page hard cover book covers the complex history, storylines, and characters that have made Assassins Creed one of the most successful videogame franchises of all-time.

RPG (Matthew J. Constantine): Lankhmar is one of the definitive cities of the Fantasy genre.  Created as a backdrop to match leading characters Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser, Fritz Leiber gave us a marvelous playground for the imagination.  Like Leiber’s stories, the city has inspired many in the tabletop RPG hobby over the years. From the City State of the Invincible Overlord to Waterdeep and beyond, it is the proto-urban setting for Fantasy games, and it’s been made and remade by various companies over the years.  The latest is Goodman Games, who’ve produced an impressive set of resources to help guide characters into the world of Nehwon and the city of Lankhmar.

Culture Wars (Kairos): You probably have a favorite movie franchise, TV show, or comic book series that hooked you as a kid. It’s a good bet that many of your fondest childhood memories are associated with that franchise. Compared to the fun, uplifting IPs of yesteryear, the new versions run the gamut from pale imitations to brazen impostors. The magic is missing, but you can’t put your finger on what happened to it. Is something wrong with the product itself, or is it just you getting older? It’s not just you.

Science fiction (M Porcius): If you type “Barry Malzberg” into the search field at the indispensable internet archive one of the things that comes up is The Mammoth Book of Erotica, edited by Maxim Jakubowski and published in 1994. There are also offerings from Anne Rice and Clive Barker, in whom I have little interest, and Robert Silverberg, Ramsey Campbell, and Samuel R. Delany, writers whose work does interest me and about which I have written several times at this little old website of mine.

Cinema (Red Planet on Film): Devil Girl From Mars (1954). I love this movie. If I had to choose a dozen movies to take to a desert island for the rest of my life, this would be one of them. Many will find this a disturbing admission. “How,” some people would wonder, “could a sane man, a competent author, say such a thing about this movie … in public even?” Those who are familiar with this film will remember that the story seems to revolve around the kidnapping of earthmen to take to Mars for breeding purposes—which nearly all the summaries of the film focus on right from the outset.

Fantasy (Sorcerers Skull): What would Middle-earth be if presented in a more pulp fantasy (not just Robert E. Howard) sort of way? You could do a really comprehensive overall, sure, where maybe only the names remain the same, but I think a few tweaks here and there would make a big difference. Just take a look at things that are already pretty pulpy: 1) a fallen age following the sinking of a “Atlantis”; (2) Orders of beings with some more advanced and others more degenerate than others; (3) a lot of ruins strewn about.

D&D (CBR.com): Dungeons & Dragons is one the oldest, most beloved traditional gaming series in history. For over forty years, gamers have taken on the roles of human barbarians, elven druids, dwarf paladins and half-orc bards — or whatever other brilliant mix of races, classes and personality traits they could conceive. It is a game perpetually limited only by the players’ and dungeon master’s imaginations. However, when Gary Gygax created the game, he didn’t come up with everything from scratch. Rather, he read the most popular books in the fantasy genre at the time — and many underrated books that have since faded into obscurity — and picked the elements of fantasy best suited to springboard off of.

Art (DMR Books): Artist Tom Gianni died on March 30, aged sixty years old, from cancer. His day job was working as the top courtroom sketch artist for several Chicago TV stations. However, what he did off the clock falls squarely in DMR Blog territory. First, though, let’s look at that courtroom job–believe me, it has relevance. This is what Tom’s own website says: “He has drawn Mafiosos, corrupt politicians and serial killers. He recently covered three high profile trials: the trial of Illinois governor, Rod Blagojevich, the Jennifer Hudson family murder trial, and the trial of the notorious Drew Petersen.”

Science Fiction (Free Beacon): David Drake’s books always seem to carry a blurb from the Chicago Sun-Times—a line extracted from an old review that claims Drake has a “prose as cold and hard as the metal alloy of a tank.” He “rivals Crane and Remarque” as a writer of military fiction. And there you have it: The Red Badge of Courage (1895) and All Quiet on the Western Front (1928) are joined by Drake’s tale of intergalactic mercenaries, Hammer’s Slammers (1979).

D&D (Skulls in the Stars): The Dragonlance Game (1988), by Michael S. Dobson, Scott Haring and Warren Spector.  Here’s a boardgame that was a huuuuge deal when it came out, but I was somehow unaware of until I saw a used copy come by recently! It probably wasn’t on my mind when I was a teen, as I was into RPGs, not board games. The board game is based on the hugely successful Dragonlance novels and D&D modules that started in 1984 with the released of Dragons of Despair, by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman.

Weird Western (David J. West): I’ve got a short weird western tale in the newly released A Mighty Fortress anthology. It is a Porter Rockwell short titled, The Tears of Nephi. Its a little light on steampunk, but I put in a little – the collection as a whole has the unexpected grouping of being Mormon Steampunk tales, and was initially inspired by the incredibly awesome Dave Butler.

Sensor Sweep: Haggard Art, Paperbacks, David Drake, Lankhmar RPG published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/

[rebeccalucyba3a]

Draft Report

‘If unreal engine 4 becomes industry standard, will it allow individual creatives to thrive independently?’

 Chapter 01. Historical and contemporary uses of rendering.

In this chapter I will cover historical and contemporary uses of rendering and the development of using real time as opposed to offline. This chapter looks at the advancements in Unreal since it’s initial release in May of 1998, as well as key points from the history of computer aided design and rendering for 3D animation. I will also discuss the importance of real time rendering and how rendering has evolved over the past 55 years since the first example of computer-rendered drawing. I also intend to make comparisons between software and hardware capabilities, demonstrating how technological advancements have changed the way the industry works, leading on to the future of rendering CG animation and expectations within the contemporary setting.

                                                               Fig. 1. A Screenshot taken from ‘A Computer Animated Hand’,    (1972).

              55 years ago, Ivan Sutherland, an electrical engineer and computer scientist, was responsible for the creation of ‘Sketchpad’, software that is credited to being the ancestor of Computer Aided Design (CAD). In 1988 he was awarded the A.M. Turing award for his “

pioneering and visionary contributions to computer graphics, starting with Sketchpad, and continuing after.

” Sketchpad may have been revolutionary, although it could only render certain shapes such as circles and lines. This is important contextually, to understand how quickly rendering has evolved, from rendering 2D lines to fully rendered CG films. In 1972 there was the first fully rendered 3D animation, a ­project by Fred Parke, now a lecturer on Visualisation Sciences and Ed Catmull, who later we­­nt on to be the president of Pixar. This project was called ‘A Computer Animated Hand’ and featured a rendered hand and face, both animated to display their work in its entirety.  This short was inducted to the National Film Registry in 2011, as it’s been considered as an ‘early landmark in the development of computer animation.’ (Utterson, A) and ‘represent[ed] a significant advance in the rendering and animation of the human form.’

           Real time rendering was built for interactivity and immediate results for the user of the software or game, being able to move around in an environment that is rendered instantly as assets move or change. This is only a recent development as Utterson also discussed how laborious the technical process was for ‘A Computer Animated Hand’, being described as complex due to the making of a cast and drawing of co-ordinates prior to working on a computer. This complexity has decreased as availability and capabilities of software has grown as shown by the number of films and 3D work made by individuals. Software is developing faster than ever, with the quality of a final render (see fig. toy story) improving across both the animation and gaming industry. With a higher pixel density, it is possible for more detail as well as more realistic rendering, with more possibilities for lighting and colour exploration. Toy Story was released in 1995 as the first full length CGI film, and since then there have been an abundance of CG films, with one of the more recent ones being Toy Story 4. This is a great opportunity for comparison, considering Pre-rendering or offline-rendering involves rendering frames for a longer period, not allowing for immediate results. Before recent advancements this used to mean that the quality was higher in offline rendering, which is why it was used in animation as it often didn’t need to be played in real time with immediate reactions to a player’s input. But over time a computer’s capabilities have improved, with GPUs such as the GeForce GTX Titan X allowing for faster rendering and a higher quality, with more core processors.

 It is important to understand how quickly Unreal Engine and other similar pieces of software (such as Arnold and Vray) have developed, and how this trend may continue for the foreseeable future. Unreal Engine was built as a game engine, to build a game called ‘Unreal’, a first-person shooter developed by Epic Megagames. Unreal Engine has been used by several developers for AAA titles such as the Bioshock series (2K Games, 2007 - 2013), Tom Clancy’s series (Ubisoft, 2004 – 2006) and the Borderlands series (2K Games, 2009 -2019) and since 2014 has been free software. Both the games and animation industry have grown over recent years, with a predicted rise in the animation market of 5 billion U.S. dollars worldwide, expecting to grow to 270 billion by 2020. Because the industry is thriving, developers are looking for the most efficient way to produce creative content, Unreal Engine perhaps being the next step forwards to be able to

 The purpose of real time rendering has also evolved as the entertainment industry has significantly grown, resulting in a higher demand for high quality content at a faster rate. Today Unreal is industry standard and is used for several reasons, being used for content across a wide range of platforms. These platforms include PC, console, VR (virtual reality), AR (augmented reality) and mobile, meaning that content created using the software is widely accessible to the public and plays an important role in the development of entertainment for a large audience.

 develop games and animations. The software has grown in use significantly. According to Wikipedia, the first release was used to produce around 20 games, in comparison the recent, fourth version, has contributed to around 280 games that have been recorded.

 Hardware has also played a large role in the development of rendering, as more computing power allows for faster processing. There are lots of elements to the build of a computer,

 -What did they have when the first 3D render was made? -

    Chapter 02. Use of Unreal Engine in Games and comparisons between Unity, Arnold, V-ray, Render-Man and Unreal Engine 4.

Unity is a game engine that is like Unreal yet is argued to be stronger at developing mobile and 2D/3D games, whilst Unreal is known for its impressive graphic quality and photorealism.

    Chapter 03. The future of Unreal Engine 4 in the animation pipeline and for individual creatives.

-          Rate of progress

-          Platforms, online tutorials and classes

-          University, more specific courses available.

As I have briefly discussed in a previous paragraph, Unreal engine has significantly upgraded in every way that the software is able. From the tools available and user interface, to the render speed and graphic quality.

 Here I can also discuss how the pipeline is in it’s current state, and how it may or may not be evolving to match the growth of the industry and number of people interested in the industry. The pipeline for animation depends on what is being produced, whether this is a short episode for a well-developed children’s TV show, or a cinematic for an upcoming AAA game. There are other variables too, including the size of the studio. Having spoken to Peter Monga, a former art director for Nickelodeon, there have been doubts as to whether being an individual creative is accepted within the broadcasting world, and how even if a short film or series is to be developed as a sole person, whether this will be able to be sold or put out there by broadcasters. In this case, Monga approached many broadcasting studios, yet was declined and suspects that ‘people simply don’t understand how it can work, they have their way of doing things and it seems strange to them.’. This suggests that it may take a while for Individual creators to get their work into the public eye via TV. On the other hand, platforms such as YouTube, vimeo etc are an increasingly popular place to show work to a larger audience and gather a following.  There is also the concern that the older generations who simply didn’t work using this software are going to accept this change, Monga briefly mentions that ‘in some of the studios I’ve worked in, it’s been the older generation who is against new developments in technology’.

 This is perhaps why it is important to begin working Unreal engine into academia, beginning to teach the evolving software to the younger generation.

 Having completed my research regarding real time rendering in animation, it has emerged that Unreal engine may not become industry standard despite its recent place as an alternative to offline rendering. It is inevitable that in time, real time rendering will become standard use, with developments to produce renderers specifically for animation. In the meantime, however, Unreal Engine offers creatives the opportunity to explore ideas from home, creating whole worlds that can be reviewed in an instant. This can be extremely rewarding for someone honing in on their craft, as well as being ideal for faster feedback in the workplace. The companies that have begun to implement the use of Unreal have experienced positive feedback and a successful outcome, in contrast to this the individual creative Peter Monga, despite his professional background, has struggled to get his work out there. There is the issue that ­­­­within the Animation industry there are people

[sempiternalsandpitturtle]

Website SEO: Why It Needs To Be Perfect

Welcome to the first step on your journey towards SEO perfection. We say “towards” because your website SEO will never be perfect. Sorry if you feel horribly misled. But please bear with us.

What we can do in this blog post is to show you why you should still strive for perfect website SEO. Even if you know you’ll never quite get there.

So, with expectations suitably managed, let’s jump right in. Here’s what you’ll get if you keep reading:

First, we’ve picked our landmark moments in the evolution of Google’s search algorithm. Ranking in Google’s search results is a moving target, which is part of the reason why the quest for SEO perfection never ends. We’ll look at how some of the more significant changes affected SEO.

Second, we’ve dug out some examples of what happens when website SEO is not just imperfect, but downright disastrous. Check out some classic SEO fails and what you can learn from them in part two.

Third, we’ve got some SEO hacks to share. There are a million blog posts on SEO hacks, but we’ve selected just a handful of the less obvious tactics you can try on your site right now.

PART ONE: LANDMARK MOMENTS IN SEO HISTORY

As we said in the intro, Google’s search results are a moving target. The tactics you need to succeed at SEO have to constantly evolve. That’s because the algorithm that decides what should rank where is constantly being tweaked and updated.

If you want a comprehensive rundown of the 200 or so algorithm changes dating back to the year 2000, then look no further than Moz’ Google Algorithm Search History. But if you’re interested in what we consider to be the really big moments then keep reading.

#1: PANDA

We know what you’re thinking: Why the fox picture?

Like every big Google algorithm update, Panda has generated millions of pieces of content. All those blog images and memes and not a red panda in sight. Until now.

What was Panda?

That should be: what is Panda? Because Panda is a series of updates rather than a single event. Moz has tracked no fewer than 28 Panda updates since February 2011.

Panda first arrived in year one for us. We had just opened up in Sydney and were in the very early days of building our content marketing agency.

Our USP at the time was our ability to generate fresh, original content at scale. So, Panda, as you can imagine, was pretty helpful. SEOs were falling over themselves to get their duplicate content taken down and their lightweight pages beefed up with relevant, useful content.

That’s because Panda’s primary targets were pages or entire sites that offered little or no unique value to users.

Google said the first Panda update affected up to 12 per cent of English language queries. Some websites lost enough traffic to put their businesses at risk literally overnight.

The impact was significant enough for SEO to make the mainstream news. As The Guardian cleverly put it: Google had “put some websites on the endangered species list”.

Why does it still matter?

Panda was a line in the sand for Google’s quality drive. They knew that if search results were packed with lightweight, unhelpful or completely useless content they would lose their audience.

The Panda updates have been the tip of the spear as Google continues to find and rank pages that users want to see.

#2: PENGUIN

Baby penguins are another under-used stock image resource when covering Google. Righting that one here too.

What was Penguin?

Penguin, like Panda, was a series of Google updates. Where Panda was about weak content, Penguin was about black hat SEO.

Black hat SEO is a broad church. And there’s lots of grey around the edges. But it usually refers to SEO tactics that break Google’s guidelines.

Penguin went after two popular black hat SEO practices: link manipulation and keyword stuffing.

When Google first launched, links were its USP. Rather than relying almost solely on words on the page, Google’s algorithm used inbound links. If another site is linking to this page, it must be a good resource for whatever the anchor text says.

No surprise then that Google has gone to some effort to protect the integrity of inbound links. Penguin pecked away at link farms (sites set up purely to give out links) and suspicious link graph signals (too many links with your favourite keyword as the anchor text).

Penguin also flagged pages with keywords crammed into the bits everyone knew Google paid more attention to (page title, H1 tags, image alt tags etc).

The impact of the first Penguin update wasn’t as widespread as Panda. It affected around three per cent of English language queries.

But for the sites that got hit, it was no less devastating. We helped one particular client with the clean-up from another agency’s paid link scheme. They had dropped from #1 to nowhere for their most important keyword. The impact on their business was almost fatal.

Why does it still matter?

It still matters because it can still get you. Penguin was incorporated into Google’s core search algorithm. So it now runs in realtime.

That means if you get caught out stuffing keywords into your title tags or cruising bad neighbourhood for links it will be thanks to Penguin.

#3: FRESHNESS

We know. It should have been cookies. Sorry.

What was Freshness?

If you asked 100 SEOs to name a Google algorithm update then Panda and Penguin would be your top answers for sure. But while Freshness didn’t anywhere near the same attention and digital column inches, Google said at the time that it affected 6 to 10 per cent of search results.

Freshness, as the name suggests, was about rewarding pages with more recent content. It applied to particular queries where the user was likely to be looking for something new or recently updated.

Why does it still matter?

We included Freshness in our list because it drove two important content strategy trends.

First was to use news stories in our clients’ industries as hooks for search-friendly blog posts. During big events or when a story was trending, Freshness meant that new content could punch well above its weight.

Second was the internal linking strategy HubSpot later dubbed “pillar and cluster”. SEO-savvy news sites would throw up landing pages for trending topics and then link back and forth to all their news stories on that topic. We did the same with clients’ landing pages and blogs. That worked largely because of Freshness.

#4: MOBILEGEDDON

Because all the mobiles would be broken during the “mopocalypse”.

What was Mobilegeddon?

Google’s big mobile update in April 2015 was heavily trailed. Months earlier, the company had said it was planning a major shake-up of its mobile search results.

But what really caught everyone’s attention was a comment from Google analyst Zineb Ait Bahajji who told attendees at an industry event that the impact would be bigger than Panda and Penguin.

As this Moz study 7 days in demonstrated, Mobilegeddon was a slow burn. But it makes our list because it represented Google’s first big move against pages that provided a poor user experience on mobiles.

This came a year after then Google CEO Eric Schmidt made his famous “mobile first” declaration. Mobilegeddon was about making that commitment a reality for sites whose SEO started and stopped on desktops.

Why does it still matter?

We work with a lot of B2B websites and often see a damaging mobile traffic feedback loop.

That’s when website owners misinterpret a low number of sessions on smartphones and tablets for a lack of demand. Often times the site is too hard to use on those devices so its pages just aren’t showing up in mobile search results.

#5: RANKBRAIN

Not an original idea this one. But fancy-looking brain image.

What was Rankbrain?

Rankbrain was and is Google’s flagship machine learning project.

It’s not artificial intelligence exactly (but then hardly anything that calls itself AI is actually AI). But it is Google handing over some level of control from bodies to bots.

Rankbrain can adjust the weighting of the various signals Google uses to organise search results. This juggles the results around with the goal of improving user satisfaction.

When page one results get a high bounce rate, low dwell time or other negative engagement metrics that suggests something is wrong. That link shouldn’t be among the top results. It’s Rankbrain that steps in to fix it.

Why does it still matter?

Back in 2015, when it was first rolled out, Rankbrain was pointed at the 15 per cent of queries Google handles every day that have never been searched before.

Now, Rankbrain is one of Google’s most important tools in its ongoing effort to serve up results users want and expect.

It should mean that if you’re a white hat SEO, creating genuine, valuable content for your audience, your strong engagement metrics should filter through to better rankings. If they do, you have the machines to thank.

PART TWO: WHEN WEBSITE SEO GOES BAD

#1: JC PENNEY GETS DINGED FOR UNNATURAL LINKS

via GIPHY

What happened?

Essentially this boiled down to a Penguin violation before Penguin existed.

This was February 2011. JC Penney had been smashing the competition in the run up to the previous Christmas, ranking on page one for a range of highly competitive product keywords.

They either had the best website SEO game in town or they were breaking the rules to gain an advantage.

There were a number of notable elements to this story. First was that it started with an expose by The New York Times. They enlisted an SEO expert to uncover what reporter David Segal called JC Penney’s “dirty little secret”. The answer was of course link farms.

Second, was that it took The New York Times story for JC Penney to get found. Their black hat tactics had worked. It was only when the story broke that Google imposed a manual penalty (although Google’s head of anti-webspam, Matt Cutts, claimed at the time the algorithms had already started to work it out).

The third noteworthy piece was what happened next. JC Penney’s manual penalty saw them booted off page one. Their rankings and organic traffic tanked as a result. But just 90 days later, as this Search Engine Land follow-up piece confirmed, they were out on parole.

What can we learn from this story?

The first lesson is that in 2011, Google was largely reliant on the myth that it was all-seeing and all-knowing. In reality, black hat link building tactics were very hard for its algorithms to spot and adjust for.

Second, if you engage in black hat SEO, outsource it to an agency so you have someone to fire when you get caught.

And third, don’t assume that JC Penney’s 90 days in the organic search wilderness is indicative. If you’re a small website that gets dinged for a breach of Google’s guidelines on that scale there’s no telling when you’d recover – if at all.

#2: EBAY GETS SWATTED BY RAMPAGING PANDA

via GIPHY

What happened?

In our section on Google’s Panda updates we mentioned that the effect on some websites was pretty devastating. There were lots of stories at the time about small ecommerce sites going out of business because their organic traffic had disappeared overnight.

This was because e-commerce sites would often use duplicate product descriptions. If you were a small business stocking thousands of items it’s understandable that you might just import the descriptions provided by your suppliers.

But post Panda, sites that had invested the time and effort in creating unique, in-depth product descriptions got a big uplift. These sites found themselves outranking much bigger rivals for the first time.

And because Panda is a rolling update this is a story that has repeated itself. Take Panda 4.0, for example, which was rolled out in May 2014. One of the highest profile casualties of that particular iteration was ebay, the online auction site.

Some estimates put ebay’s loss in organic rankings at 80 per cent. The impact was especially damaging because ebay had made a strategic shift away from paid search to focus on SEO. It was therefore much more reliant on traffic from organic search when Panda 4.0 landed.

What can we learn from this story?

There are two useful lessons from ebay’s Panda 4.0 experience. The first is that unique content that offers value to users is always a good investment for SEO.

The second is that it is dangerous to rely too heavily on one single source of website traffic. Even if you are a website SEO master, you remain at the mercy of Google’s algorithm updates.

That makes it important to diversify. You can do that by investing in paid search and social media ads. Building up your referral network. And leveraging marketing automation to run a proper email strategy.

#3: TOYS R US AND THE $5.1 MILLION REDIRECT

via GIPHY

What happened?

It’s fair to say the iconic toy shop chain Toys R Us has had bigger problems than SEO in recent years.

But back in 2009, they had SEO nerds all excited about what happens when you do a 301 redirect of an entire domain.

Toys R Us had just paid USD $5.1 million for the toys.com domain name. According GoDaddy.com, which sells domain names, that was the 25th most expensive domain name deal of all time. Carinsurance.com is the current #1 at just shy of USD 50 million.

Toys.com wasn’t just a parked domain. It was a living, breathing website with strong domain authority and useful organic rankings for some valuable keywords.

At first, Toys R Us ran it as a separate website, but after a few months took the decision to redirect the entire domain to toysrus.com.

What Toys R Us did was to effectively remove toys.com from Google’s index without any obvious benefit – at least from an SEO standpoint – for its main domain. This on the face it looks like a very expensive SEO fail.

What can we learn from this story?

The problem here is that redirects do not necessarily pass on SEO value from old page to new page.

If you have a page about premium widgets and you set up a 301 redirect to your new, improved premium widgets page, chances are the new page will keep the old page’s standing in organic search.

But when there is a significant difference between the content on your new page and the content on your old page, there’s no guarantee that will be the case.

And that’s pretty logical. If you made a really great page about apples, it ranked because it was about apples. If you redirect that page to a new page about oranges then it shouldn’t keep ranking for all those old apple keywords.

This is important to keep in mind if you run more than one website, acquire a new site in a merger or fancy breaking into GoDaddy’s top 25.

#4: GOOGLE CATCHES GOOGLE IN DOORWAY PAGE SCHEME

via GIPHY

What happened?

Doorway pages are a black hat SEO technique that shows one thing to search engines and another to users.

The most famous case of a doorway pages scheme getting detected and punished was BMW. Back in 2006, Google delisted the car giant’s German website from its index. The BBC called it a “death penalty”.

But a much more interesting example of this SEO bait and switch is when Google caught Google doing it.

It was 2010 when bloggers noticed some Google Ads (or AdWords as it was then) help pages showing content to search engine crawlers that differed from what was actually on the page.

Important to note here that it’s unlikely Google was trying to game its own algorithm. And if it was the company was big enough even in 2010 for the AdWords and anti-spam teams to be as separate as two completely different businesses.

More likely this was a mistake. That’s how a Google spokesperson described it to Search Engine Land at the time.

What can we learn from this story?

Website SEO should be about making your pages easier for Google to crawl and index. But any tactics designed to trick Google into ranking your content higher than it deserves will eventually backfire.

What this story shows is that you can go black hat by accident. Breaking Google’s rules not because you have a nefarious plan to get ahead of the competition. But because you made a mistake.

It highlights the importance of employing or outsourcing to genuine website SEO experts. They can ensure your strategy stays white hat at all times.

PART THREE: OUR FAVOURITE WEBSITE SEO HACKS

#1: BACKLINKO: CLICKTHROUGH RATE METHOD

Brian Dean of Backlinko developed what he called the Clickthrough Rate Method. The idea is to play to the same signals that Rankbrain is thought to be looking at when it stirs the pot to boost user satisfaction.

You’ll remember from part one, Rankbrain is the machine learning algorithm that adjusts the weighting of ranking factors based on engagement metrics. So, if content in position #10 has great engagement, bump it up. Content in position #3 has poor engagement, push it down.

Dean’s idea is to look at the top Google Ads for your target keyword. Then use some of the same language in your headlines and meta descriptions of the pages you want to rank organically.

The assumption is that the copy used in ads will have been tested and refined over time to maximise clickthrough.

If you can transfer some of what makes those ads work into your organic links, you should get more clicks. If the content is good enough, users will engage with it. And Rankbrain should do the rest.

#2: BRAFTON: CONTENT DEPTH

Jeff Baker, one of our friends at Brafton, has done extensive research on the relationship between content depth and organic rankings.

Content depth is about the number of popular and important topics a particular piece of content features.

So, rather than focusing on word count to improve their content, SEOs should focus on topics.

You start with pages on your site that already rank in search. The idea being that it is usually easier to move up a few spots in Google’s search results than to hit page one from nowhere.

Next step is to find the topics.

You can do that manually by reviewing pages that are currently ranking among the top results for your target keyword.

Or you can use a tool like MarketMuse or SEMrush to do the legwork for you.

Once you have identified the topics most commonly featured by the top-ranked pages, you can adjust your content to make it the most comprehensive resource for your target keyword.

#3: NEIL PATEL: RELATED SEARCHES

This is apparently Neil Patel’s favourite organic traffic hack.

We like it because it’s similar to Jeff’s work on content depth and it’s about creating richer, more useful content.

The idea here is to use Google’s suggested searches to find new topic ideas.

So, if you’re creating a cornerstone blog post on purple widgets, you would start typing “purple widgets” into Google and make a note of the drop down suggestions.

You can then incorporate content that answers these suggested queries into your cornerstone blog post. Or you can create dedicated posts to target them that link to and from that cornerstone piece.

If you don’t fancy researching suggested searches manually, Patel has a free tool that can do it for you called Ubersuggest.

from http://bit.ly/2WbL3jq

[travelure]

‘Tuscaloosa – Roll Tide!’ is the second part of a two-part story. It deals with everything connected with the University of Alabama. (To read the Part-I, click ‘Black Warrior Alert – Tuscaloosa’)

Tuscaloosa – Roll Tide!

Well, it is time to introduce you to some Tuscaloosa slang. In fact, just two phrases would do. First, Bama is Alabama for short and you will find this word used variously here. Right from the Bama Theatre, a hub of community events and cultural activity in Tuscaloosa, to Bama Belle, a pedal wheel cruiser on the Black Warrior River, you’ll find Bama everywhere.

The façade of Bryant-Denny Stadium

The second phrase – Roll Tide – is a bit more complex. It originated as a clarion call for the Crimson Tide – University of Alabama’s Football Team. During a game, the crazed fans would urge their team to do better by screaming ‘Roll Tide’. But today, it could mean anything from hello to goodbye and all things in between. It is used as a phrase of hope, a grunt of disgust, a chuckle of ‘how-did-you-manage-to-get-into-this-mess’, an acknowledgement of ‘see-you-for-coffee-at-4′, and more. In fact, today it bonds not just the Tuscaloosa folks, but people across Alabama.

Bryant-Denny Stadium – the home of Crimson Tide

How did Roll Tide become all pervading?

Alabama’s Crimson Tide is one of the all-time ‘Top 5’ college football teams in the US. In fact, it has won 4 national titles in the last 10 years alone, including the 2017 title! For a town with a population of 100,000, such victories are a heady mix. Their weddings get planned around the football calendar – they want their friends around when an important match has to happen. Important social events avoid any clash of dates with a football match. In short, college football is as much a part of life for a Tuscaloosa family as breakfast. It is like cricket and Bollywood for India.

Little wonder the team’s call of inspiration is today a bond that unites the people of Tuscaloosa.

Crimson Tide Cheerleaders’ Buggy

So why did I talk about ‘Roll Tide’?

The sprawling university campus is spread over an area of almost 2000 acre and is seamlessly intertwined with the town. The centrepiece of this gigantic campus is the Bryant-Denny Football Stadium – the home stadium of Crimson Tide. Its location and history make it an intrinsic part of Tuscaloosa’s folklore. Interestingly, the Bryant-Denny Stadium seats almost 102,000 people while the population of the city is a shade fewer than 100,000!

Rama Jama’s – the eatery famous for serving the Champions Burger

Like most football stadia, even Bryant-Denny Stadium is rich in infrastructure. Besides the usual offices, team, and visitors changing rooms, conference rooms, auditoriums, cheerleaders’ room, a walk of champions, etc., it also houses a memorabilia museum. No trip around the city is complete without visiting the hallowed innards of this magnificent stadium.

Inside Rama Jama’s. At mealtimes, people have to queue up for ordering food.

In fact, a small but popular eatery just outside the stadium – Rama Jama’s – has further iconised Crimson Tide’s achievements. They serve a Champions Burger that has over a pound of meat including 16 strips of bacon – one for each year the team won the National Championship. I am sure now they would have added another strip as in 2017, Crimson Tide has won their 17th Championship too!

A beautiful church inside the UA campus

And while you checking all this out, knowing about the significance and meaning of Roll Tide becomes necessary. So necessary that if you do not understand the phrase, you can never hope to have any meaningful conversation with any resident of Tuscaloosa!

What about the University of Alabama (UA)?

In Tuscaloosa Part-I, I had mentioned the town was the capital of Alabama for 20 years – from 1826 to 1846. During that period, in 1831, the University of Alabama was founded. Over the last 185+ years, the University is inextricably woven into the fabric of the town. Its sprawling campus is both – eye-pleasing and strewn with iconic institutions. I will talk more about these a little later.

1831 – the founding year of the University of Alabama

An abstract metal installation outside the Department of Art and Art History, University of Alabama

As the educational hub, it not only manages the immediate campus but also manages the multiple educational research centres and facilities in and around Tuscaloosa. One such facility of note is the Moundville.

Moundville lays about 25-km from Tuscaloosa. This 320-acre park contains numerous prehistoric earthwork mounds and burial sites. These are linked with the Mississippian culture era of Native Americans i now established. The larger mounds lie closer to the Black Warrior River. As one goes farther from the river, the mounds become smaller. This receding size might well be an indication of the relative ranks of the builders of these mounds.

Diorama showing the Native American lifestyle of the Mississippians inside the Jones Archeological Museum

The small museum called Jones Archeological Museum at Moundville attempts to recreate the prehistoric era through dioramas and various other audio-visual techniques. While it is interesting to understand the more recent history of this town, a visit to Moundville accords you a glimpse into prehistoric Tuscaloosa!

President’s Mansion, University of Alabama

UA Campus

This enormous campus has almost 300 buildings containing over 10.5 million sq. ft. of space! The general layout of the campus is stringing together of multiple quadrangles – each quad being either a specific department or a specific set of institutions.

Russell Hall – an erstwhile students’ infirmary where classes are now held

While the campus has been continuously growing ever since it was instituted and has numerous modern buildings, some of the historical buildings of note include the President’s Mansion, Denny Chimes, McLure Library, Foster Auditorium (a National Historic Landmark), Russell Hall, Maxwell Observatory, Gorgas-Manly Historic District, and Morgan Auditorium. Additionally, UA boasts some of the most outstanding theatres like Allen Bales Theatre, Marion Gallaway Theatre, and the Frank M. Moody Music Building that houses the Tuscaloosa Symphony Orchestra and the UA Opera Theatre.

McLure Library, University of Alabama

Denny Chimes

Jewels in the Crown

And then, there are two jewels in the crown of the UA campus – The Alabama Museum of Natural History at Smith Hall and The Paul W. Bryant Museum. The Natural History Museum has numerous exhibits ranging from the largest meteorite that struck a human being, to a complete skeleton of a dinosaur. And the Bryant Museum houses the memorabilia on the glorious history of UA’s athletic programme, most notably the tenure of football coach Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant.

Main hall of the Alabama Museum of Natural History (Smith Hall)

Given the football-fetish of the town, honouring Bryant comes naturally. In his 25-year tenure as head coach, he helped the team win 6 national championships and 13 conference championships. When he retired in 1982, he held the record for most wins as head coach in college football history – a mind-numbing 323 wins!

The glittering crystal National Football Championship Trophy called the Coach’s Trophy

In conclusion, I am sure you would agree that Tuscaloosa, University of Alabama and Roll Tide are inextricably linked and talking of one without the other is definitely out. So, as and when you visit Tuscaloosa, just say ‘Roll Tide’ and you would find the town is your friend!

During a game, the crazed fans would urge their team to do better by screaming 'Roll Tide'. But today, it could mean anything from hello to goodbye and all things in between. Read about it at Tuscaloosa - Roll Tide! #VisitTuscaloosa #OneAndOnly 'Tuscaloosa - Roll Tide!' is the second part of a two-part story. It deals with everything connected with the University of Alabama.

[s0022527a2film-blog]

Creative Investigation Y1 Summer work.

Stanley Kubrick.

Stanley Kubrick was an American director, editor, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and photographer. Kubrick is often seen as one of the greatest and most influential directors in cinematic history. His films were mostly adaptations of novels or short stories which covered many genres such as: Drama, Horror, Sci-fi, Adventure, Mystery, Comedy, Crime, War and Film Noir, many of which were categorized as Psychological Thrillers as well as other genres. His films as generally known for their realism, unique cinematographic style and dark sense of humour.

Born in Manhattan, his parents were Jewish immigrants from Romania, Austria and Russia. Kubrick was considered an intelligent child, despite his poor grades. He was sent to live in Pasadena, California to live with his uncle, Martin Perveler when he was 12 years old in hope that the change of scenery would somehow have a better effect on his grades. He returned to live in Bronx, New York City at 13 bringing with him, little change in attitude towards school (William Howard Talt High School). Desperate for his son to use his intelligence for some purpose, his father introduced him to chess. Kubrick took to the game passionately and later on would use its ideologies to deal with uncooperative actors and using it at an artistic motif as a whole. An even smarter idea of his fathers was giving his son a camera for his thirteenth birthday. Kubrick became an avid photographer, later selling a photograph to Look Magazine at 17 years old. After this, Kubrick began to associate with the staff and was offered an apprentice there. During his time there, Kubrick taught himself all aspects of film production and directing, became a regular movie-goer and had read his first book for pleasure at 19 years old.

He made his first major Hollywood film, The Killing in 1956 but as reported, this was not a pleasant experience as differences with his ex-wife, Toba Metz, led onto their divorce in 1957. Kubrick went on to collaborate with Kirk Douglas, who, was one of the last living people of the Hollywood Golden Age, for Paths of Glory (1957) and the praised Spartacus (1960). Shortly after, Kubrick had moved to the United Kingdom in 1961 due to creative differences between himself and Douglas and a general distaste for Hollywood film studios as the system did not allow for much creative control over his movies. He had spent the majority of the rest of his life in a home at Childwickbury Manor in Hertfordshire with wife Christine Kubrick. Moving to the UK, allowed Kubrick almost complete creative control over his films with the rare advantage of having financial support from major Hollywood film studios.

His first British productions were Lolita (1962) and Dr. Strangelove (1964) with Peter Sellers. As mentioned, I had gathered that Kubrick was a demanding perfectionist and made sure that he had much of the creative control over his films, making him a considerable Auteur. He often asked for countless retakes of the same scene in a movie which, expectedly caused some conflict between him and his actors. Despite the difficulties during filming, Kubrick managed to break new ground in cinematography when he had released 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968 with the innovative special effects and scientific realism. The film earned him his only personal Oscar for ‘Best Visual Effects’. Spielberg regarded it as one of the ‘Greatest films ever made’. When Kubrick was in the process of making The Shining, he was one of the first directors to have used a Steadicam for stabilized and flued tracking shots.

Many of Kubricks films faced some mixed reviews and backlash for their controversially violent, sexual, and indecent scenes. This was particularly the case with A Clockwork Orange (1971), Film critic, Stanley Kauffmann commented ‘Inexplicably the script leaves out Burgess’ reference to the title’ and Roger Ebert called it an ‘Ideological mess’. This was such a controversy at the time that Kubrick himself made sure that it couldn’t be viewed in the UK to avoid even more issues. Despite this, the film had grossed over 26million on a budget of 2.2 million and had won an Academy Award for ‘Bets Picture’. Kubrick accepted this award with the now quote ‘Anyone who has ever been privileged to direct a film knows that, although it can be like trying to write a War and Peace in a bumper car at an amusement park, when you finally get it right, there are not many joys that can equal that feeling.’ Along with Night of the Living Dead, Straw Dogs, The Wild Bunch etc. the film is considered a landmark in the relaxation of control on violence in cinema. Kubrick completed his last film, Eyes Wide Shut (1999), before his death of a heart attack at the age of 70.

Why do you find this topic for consideration interesting?

I find this interesting because I like his cinematographic style. I enjoy his movies not only because of the aesthetics but also because they’re thought provoking. Many of his films leave many people thinking about them days later, I like that you can’t just watch and forget that you ever watched one of Kubrick’s films twenty minutes later. I hope find out exactly how much I can imitate his style with the limited resources and millions of dollars that I do not have. I’d like to explore whether Kubrick can be considered an Auteur or not.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

I have chosen this film because of it’s ground-breaking cinematography that I would like to look into in much more depth.

A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Seen as though I am going to explore whether Kubrick can be considered an Auteur, I wanted to include this film as I think the Mise en scene and Cinematography, even plot, displays his cinematic style very well.

The Shining (1980)

The shining also has many scenes which could be described as Kubrick exclusive. I think his adaptations to the plots of the novels that he became inspired by would also be an interesting topic for exploration.

Quotes

‘I think Stanley got it in his head, he was a man of theory, and unless they could be disproved quickly, you could be in an awful lot of trouble’ - Malcolm McDowell

‘There was one actor that, I think did two days worth of takes, on one line that never made it in the movie’

‘Stanley's approach was very simple, he wanted to test everything’

Kubrick Remembered (2014) by Gary Khammar 

These quotes are useful to me as they show exactly Kubrick’s way of working and how particular he had to be in order to be able to create the works that he did. They are even more useful ad they were drawn directly from the people that he had worked with. 

Outline of my rough idea

I will create a film sequence totaling no more than 5 minutes. with only being in the early stages of the film coursework process, I am not entirely sure what the film is going to be. It is going to be a challenge attempting to recreate Kubrick’s style of cinematography, let alone the ideologies. I’m Thinking of perhaps creating a short in which I explore genres such as , Thriller, Dark Comedy and Drama. The idea is a murder that had just occurred and the murderer, who will look innocent, will be documenting this murder directly to the police and the whole thing will be based off of the initial phone call. Again, I plan to develop this idea much further but, that would be a very brief concept.

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New Post has been published on Webpostingpro

New Post has been published on https://webpostingpro.com/how-beauty-lovers-in-atlanta-can-book-a-consultation/

How beauty lovers in Atlanta can book a consultation

Girls seeking out advice on splendor trends will find no shortage of records online. splendor influencers, as YouTube stars are recognized, have quick come to be the brand new makeup moguls.

This week Forbes released its inaugural listing of “Top Influencers” which blanketed Top beauty vloggers like Zoe Sugg, the British blogger who has 11 million YouTube subscribers, a bestselling line of splendor merchandise and a set of hit novels, Michelle Phan and Huda Kattan.

But the properly that means advice of these on-line experts can be taking Women down the incorrect route when it comes to their beauty exercises.

“There are such a lot of Instagram and YouTube tendencies that Ladies blindly follow however it doesn’t work for all of us,

Said Lena Koro, Worldwide Creative Director for NARS cosmetics. “It can look truly heavy. makeup shouldn’t take over your face. Your makeup shouldn’t appearance lovely, you should look beautiful.”

Koro, who began her career as the first assistant to the brand’s founder François Nars and has worked with various celebrities inclusive of Jennifer Lopez and Salma Hayek, is making a rare personal appearance in Atlanta on Friday, April 14.

The event, which is open to the general public,

Will be held at the NARS boutique inside the Shops Buckhead Atlanta. It gives locals the opportunity to work one-on-one with Koro to update and remake their splendor routines. Consultations are by means of appointment most effective from 11 a.M. – 6 p.M. And price $one hundred which can be used towards the purchase of merchandise.

As the global Inventive director, Koro travels the arena operating backstage at fashion shows which include Prada, Marc Jacobs, and Valentino similarly to participating with Pinnacle style publications. Here’s a video of Koro operating her magic in a current video from Cleo Thailand:

The Difference Between A Model And A Beauty Queen

There’s a huge difference between splendor pageants and modeling. Competition youngsters are added make-up believing that the spotlight is all approximately them; how they appearance, what they are able to do and the way they come across as an individual. They may be taught to sell themselves. Regrettably, in the real style world, it’s miles all approximately the product and promoting the product. Although fashion and runway fashions do want to have specific aesthetic qualities and certain competencies, their major reason is to make a product look top, excite the purchaser and lead them to want to buy.

Competition moms are known for being extraordinarily aggressive.

They all need to be at the pinnacle of the sport, understanding the maximum about the enterprise, winning the maximum titles and crowns and having the most stunning, gifted, international-peace loving child inside the entire complete world. However what those moms do not realize is that They’re selling their children fake wish after they promise them that, sooner or later, all the late rehearsals, dance instructions, American history classes and hair tugging might be well worth it. This isn’t always the case. So many younger Festival princesses desires are crushed when they discover that all those years of excessive schooling; skipping rhythmically down the runway, smiling all enamel bared and cutely flipping their hair as they wink and flirt with the audience, has absolutely moulded them into precisely what a style organisation is not looking for in a high-style version.

A huge amount of time, attempt and money are placed into beauty pageants.

Quite a few Competition moms will lease Pageant coaches and dance coaches, each at a first-rate cost. They’ll then spend a fortune on clothes for every of the distinctive rounds. Elaborate, custom-made ball gowns, one among a type swimming gear portions, costumes, props and degree furniture for the skills display, crowning gowns and many others. Then there’s the foot excessive, 30-inch length hair pieces, custom molded dental flippers to cover any child/imperfect enamel, copious pairs of diamond encrusted footwear, fake lashes, jar after jar and tube after tube of bright pink blusher, thick degree foundation, lipstick, and glitter. All of that is used to decorate the Competition princess’ capabilities, body, and universal image and make them look as un-life like as possible, all within the hope of being topped Queen of Pageant.

Style designers will also make investments an significant amount of time, attempt and cash right into a style show for his or her garb. This money can be spent on lighting fixtures, sound engineers, level guide makeup, models, stylists, and hair and artists, all geared toward making sure that their clothes entice the target market of buyers and celebrities.

Some Popular Attractions in Atlanta: Get Information About It

Atlanta Records-Middle: This is a big building and you will find more than one artwork stuff right here. There’s a sports activities museum, special Olympic Games museum, Atlanta Records Museum and so on. This place has wealthy Records and so there is a lot you would like to understand about this town. The region additionally has 6 ancient gardens which make this region a destination for tourist’s attraction.

The Fox Theatre: This Theatre was built within the 12 months 1920 and whilst it turned into built

It becomes created because of the Yaarab Temple Shrine. Now, it’s far the theater for performances. But it has varied Records and it’s miles positioned at 660 Peachtree Road. It is not most effective on the National ancient Register, However also taken into consideration as one of the maximum cherished landmarks inside the metropolis owing to its authentic memory maker for the human beings of Atlanta.

Piedmont Park: That is one among the largest parks within the town location. It did no longer have many centers before 2006. But since 2006 there has been top preservation and now this park is an high-quality area to have a look at. This high-quality park backdrop the Atlanta Skyline is honestly exceptional in every manner. Loose interesting and thrilling concerts at some point of the yr, inner sports website hosting, canine park and many alike without difficulty accomplish this park a should visit.

Atlanta Botanical Garden:

This is a fantastic location and could help you get an excellent revel in. There are a few gardens placed in this location and it has the Japanese Garden, Iciness Lawn, and Desert House. In truth, the indoor Garden is also the quite outstanding region.

Oakland Cemetry: Normally, Cemetry isn’t always an area for tourist appeal, However Oakland Cemetry is. inside the 12 months 1976 this changed into declared as the historical landmark. It has a lot of greenery around and Garden location too.

Fernbank Museum:

This isn’t always pretty old. It turned into created inside the 12 months 1992. This area has stunning dinosaurs’ statues and skeletons. There may be a massive gallery in this area or even the movies on nature which can be proven inside the theater are pretty popular.

Michael Carlos Museum: This museum has stunning historic arts series. This is well worth a watch. If you are here in Atlanta then don’t omit this. The Michael C. Carlos Museum is one of the oldest Museum in Atlanta, the museum’s collections date again to 1876. From the primitive to the contemporary international, this museum of Emory College brings the Atlanta community treasured treasures plotting a top notch place of ancient cultures, customs, and traditions.

Taj Mahal Is a Hindu Temple Reveals the Book ‘World Vedic Heritage’

The e-book below overview ‘International Vedic History – A History of Histories’ is written by means of an amazing research student P.N.Alrightafter years of studies in this problem.

This changed into written way again in 1984 and I’ve examined it lengthy returned with marvel. Some of the subjects like Taj Mahal changed into a Hindu Temple, Vedic stanzas are in Koran, Aurangazeb’s grave is in a Goddess Temple-Yard and many others. Attracted me very lots. While I am reading this e-book now, nevertheless it fascinates me.

Despite the fact that the topics are arguable, the writer has given sufficient authoritative evidence for the readers.

The writer says that the dome of the Taj Mahal in Agra, near New Delhi, the capital of India, has lotus petals. The lotus petals in inlay-work girding its base, the inverted lotus on pinnacle of the dome and the trident top are all Hindu, Vedic functions indicating that the fifth technology Mogul emperor, Shahjahan handiest requisitioned the Tejo Mahalaya Shiva Temple.

Maximum of the area in round the principle building is under Archaelogical Department’s control and no tourist is allowed there. Very wellsays that there’s sufficient proof to prove his point in the one’s regions.

The book has ninety-two chapters in 1312 pages.

The Vedic tradition in the East, Vedic beyond of Japan, China, Korea and Manchuria, West Asia etc. Are dealt in the element with the aid of the author. Assisting his principle, the writer has given fifty-six photographs also in the e-book.

The ebook makes an thrilling analyzing. It’s far argued in the e-book that the primary on the spot response to a massive section of the general public on analyzing an unprecedented thesis of the sort expounded on this ebook is likely to be one in every of shock, disbelief and rejection. But the cogency of the argument, the continuity of the thread of the History and the comprehensive evidence are probable to be persuasive elements which may in the long run make the topic greater agreeable and perfect.

A detailed bibliography is also attached to the stop of the book quoting 114 resources.

The reader can also draw his own conclusion after digesting all of the data placed forth within the ebook. Ultimately, after going through the contents of this e-book, one gets the impression that the Indian Records have to surely be re-written successfully.

[luv-engineering]

4.0 out of 5 stars Pretty good....

4.0 out of 5 stars The name says it all If you are looking for a book about car drawing, skip this one. As the name says, its about design. There are many insights on what designers search when sketching a car, but very few tips on how to actually draw it by yourself (as it was already commented, you can find the tutorials in the internet - for free). That said, this is a very good book. It depicts the creative process behind the design, it teaches you how to see a car, and shows how some of the greatests (read Patrick Le Quement) do it themselves. It is nicely organized, with enough pictures so you won't need your imagination to understand what they are talking about. Not perfect, but surely very good. Strongly recommended.If you want to get the whole pack, design+drawing, I recommend buying this book together with "How to draw cars like a pro", like I did. Ýou won't regret doing so. Go to Amazon

3.0 out of 5 stars Not Really a How To Ok, so I bought this book to be able to learn how to draw and sketch cars. It only covers about 3 sections on how to draw a car and that's about it. The rest of the book goes into detail about different car designers, how they think on when they are designing a car and towards the end it gets into actually how to draw the cars. The book is nice in material and has a very nice weight to it and the pictures are also printed nicely.This book is good if you want to learn about the thought of designing, but not a how to draw cars book.I was hoping for more details on parts of the body of the vehicles and the terminology when drawing the vehicles, more explanations on what parts do, and also on how to draw it in detail and not just in sketch mode.All in all, the book is designed well, looks good, has good information on the designing thought behind the designers of some of the cars we see on the road today and it has a directory on the back with several schools one can go to for learning to design vehicles and also all of the different car companies.Not a bad read, but not a how to learn to draw cars book. Go to Amazon

5.0 out of 5 stars " I hate to break it to you I teach a conceptual art class for film and video games at a university.Our purposes isn't to actually create a working engine etc. We just want to design the visual aspect of it in an engaging way.This book is exactly what I needed. It breaks down the very basic elements of how to draw a car and then gives a wide variety of historical/landmark examples—with the author's (subjective) opinions on why they work (or don't work).To all the people who complain that it doesn't cover engine mechanics: yes, the title could also be interpreted to mean scientific design. But, thanks to amazon's ability to let you look inside and sample the book (especially via kindle), you should know what you're getting into.To all the people complaining about how it doesn't go into more detail about "how to draw a car," I hate to break it to you, but after this book there are really only two steps: personal study...and practice. Go to Amazon

1.0 out of 5 stars A total letdown. STYLE only, no design. I bought this book because I am designing a car from the ground up, a serious project. This book should be titled "How to STYLE cars like a Pro". It is about styling ONLY. There is no useful info on engineering, dimensions, passenger packaging, power and speed, structures, or any of the other things needed for a car to work. Near zero engineering, and plenty of the author's opinions that I often do not agree with. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and some of his favorite cars are far from mine.This book is ONLY about looks, and is directed to STYLISTS only. It is written from the viewpoint of someone who is well paid to draw impractical cars that will most likely never be built. If that is your goal in life, get it. But the job opportunites in that field are limited. While it is certainly useful as a history of automobile styling,and has lots of "pretty pictures", it touches on only ONE aspect of car design.I bought this because I got it cheap. Looking through other Amazon reviews and previews, my money would have been VERY much better spent getting the book "H-point", which I will do shortly. Go to Amazon

1.0 out of 5 stars THE TITLE IS WRONG This book is about artists not design engineers, the disparaging comments on the early Jaguars and writing off the iconic EType as an abberattion (possibly because it was designed by by an aeronautical engineer) was a guide to the content as a self promoting of the automitive artists creating the look alike dealings that proliferate the car world Go to Amazon

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New Post has been published on Webpostingpro

New Post has been published on https://webpostingpro.com/how-beauty-lovers-in-atlanta-can-book-a-consultation/

How beauty lovers in Atlanta can book a consultation

Girls seeking out advice on splendor trends will find no shortage of records online. splendor influencers, as YouTube stars are recognized, have quick come to be the brand new makeup moguls.

This week Forbes released its inaugural listing of “Top Influencers” which blanketed Top beauty vloggers like Zoe Sugg, the British blogger who has 11 million YouTube subscribers, a bestselling line of splendor merchandise and a set of hit novels, Michelle Phan and Huda Kattan.

But the properly that means advice of these on-line experts can be taking Women down the incorrect route when it comes to their beauty exercises.

“There are such a lot of Instagram and YouTube tendencies that Ladies blindly follow however it doesn’t work for all of us,

Said Lena Koro, Worldwide Creative Director for NARS cosmetics. “It can look truly heavy. makeup shouldn’t take over your face. Your makeup shouldn’t appearance lovely, you should look beautiful.”

Koro, who began her career as the first assistant to the brand’s founder François Nars and has worked with various celebrities inclusive of Jennifer Lopez and Salma Hayek, is making a rare personal appearance in Atlanta on Friday, April 14.

The event, which is open to the general public,

Will be held at the NARS boutique inside the Shops Buckhead Atlanta. It gives locals the opportunity to work one-on-one with Koro to update and remake their splendor routines. Consultations are by means of appointment most effective from 11 a.M. – 6 p.M. And price $one hundred which can be used towards the purchase of merchandise.

As the global Inventive director, Koro travels the arena operating backstage at fashion shows which include Prada, Marc Jacobs, and Valentino similarly to participating with Pinnacle style publications. Here’s a video of Koro operating her magic in a current video from Cleo Thailand:

The Difference Between A Model And A Beauty Queen

There’s a huge difference between splendor pageants and modeling. Competition youngsters are added make-up believing that the spotlight is all approximately them; how they appearance, what they are able to do and the way they come across as an individual. They may be taught to sell themselves. Regrettably, in the real style world, it’s miles all approximately the product and promoting the product. Although fashion and runway fashions do want to have specific aesthetic qualities and certain competencies, their major reason is to make a product look top, excite the purchaser and lead them to want to buy.

Competition moms are known for being extraordinarily aggressive.

They all need to be at the pinnacle of the sport, understanding the maximum about the enterprise, winning the maximum titles and crowns and having the most stunning, gifted, international-peace loving child inside the entire complete world. However what those moms do not realize is that They’re selling their children fake wish after they promise them that, sooner or later, all the late rehearsals, dance instructions, American history classes and hair tugging might be well worth it. This isn’t always the case. So many younger Festival princesses desires are crushed when they discover that all those years of excessive schooling; skipping rhythmically down the runway, smiling all enamel bared and cutely flipping their hair as they wink and flirt with the audience, has absolutely moulded them into precisely what a style organisation is not looking for in a high-style version.

A huge amount of time, attempt and money are placed into beauty pageants.

Quite a few Competition moms will lease Pageant coaches and dance coaches, each at a first-rate cost. They’ll then spend a fortune on clothes for every of the distinctive rounds. Elaborate, custom-made ball gowns, one among a type swimming gear portions, costumes, props and degree furniture for the skills display, crowning gowns and many others. Then there’s the foot excessive, 30-inch length hair pieces, custom molded dental flippers to cover any child/imperfect enamel, copious pairs of diamond encrusted footwear, fake lashes, jar after jar and tube after tube of bright pink blusher, thick degree foundation, lipstick, and glitter. All of that is used to decorate the Competition princess’ capabilities, body, and universal image and make them look as un-life like as possible, all within the hope of being topped Queen of Pageant.

Style designers will also make investments an significant amount of time, attempt and cash right into a style show for his or her garb. This money can be spent on lighting fixtures, sound engineers, level guide makeup, models, stylists, and hair and artists, all geared toward making sure that their clothes entice the target market of buyers and celebrities.

Some Popular Attractions in Atlanta: Get Information About It

Atlanta Records-Middle: This is a big building and you will find more than one artwork stuff right here. There’s a sports activities museum, special Olympic Games museum, Atlanta Records Museum and so on. This place has wealthy Records and so there is a lot you would like to understand about this town. The region additionally has 6 ancient gardens which make this region a destination for tourist’s attraction.

The Fox Theatre: This Theatre was built within the 12 months 1920 and whilst it turned into built

It becomes created because of the Yaarab Temple Shrine. Now, it’s far the theater for performances. But it has varied Records and it’s miles positioned at 660 Peachtree Road. It is not most effective on the National ancient Register, However also taken into consideration as one of the maximum cherished landmarks inside the metropolis owing to its authentic memory maker for the human beings of Atlanta.

Piedmont Park: That is one among the largest parks within the town location. It did no longer have many centers before 2006. But since 2006 there has been top preservation and now this park is an high-quality area to have a look at. This high-quality park backdrop the Atlanta Skyline is honestly exceptional in every manner. Loose interesting and thrilling concerts at some point of the yr, inner sports website hosting, canine park and many alike without difficulty accomplish this park a should visit.

Atlanta Botanical Garden:

This is a fantastic location and could help you get an excellent revel in. There are a few gardens placed in this location and it has the Japanese Garden, Iciness Lawn, and Desert House. In truth, the indoor Garden is also the quite outstanding region.

Oakland Cemetry: Normally, Cemetry isn’t always an area for tourist appeal, However Oakland Cemetry is. inside the 12 months 1976 this changed into declared as the historical landmark. It has a lot of greenery around and Garden location too.

Fernbank Museum:

This isn’t always pretty old. It turned into created inside the 12 months 1992. This area has stunning dinosaurs’ statues and skeletons. There may be a massive gallery in this area or even the movies on nature which can be proven inside the theater are pretty popular.

Michael Carlos Museum: This museum has stunning historic arts series. This is well worth a watch. If you are here in Atlanta then don’t omit this. The Michael C. Carlos Museum is one of the oldest Museum in Atlanta, the museum’s collections date again to 1876. From the primitive to the contemporary international, this museum of Emory College brings the Atlanta community treasured treasures plotting a top notch place of ancient cultures, customs, and traditions.

Taj Mahal Is a Hindu Temple Reveals the Book ‘World Vedic Heritage’

The e-book below overview ‘International Vedic History – A History of Histories’ is written by means of an amazing research student P.N.Alrightafter years of studies in this problem.

This changed into written way again in 1984 and I’ve examined it lengthy returned with marvel. Some of the subjects like Taj Mahal changed into a Hindu Temple, Vedic stanzas are in Koran, Aurangazeb’s grave is in a Goddess Temple-Yard and many others. Attracted me very lots. While I am reading this e-book now, nevertheless it fascinates me.

Despite the fact that the topics are arguable, the writer has given sufficient authoritative evidence for the readers.

The writer says that the dome of the Taj Mahal in Agra, near New Delhi, the capital of India, has lotus petals. The lotus petals in inlay-work girding its base, the inverted lotus on pinnacle of the dome and the trident top are all Hindu, Vedic functions indicating that the fifth technology Mogul emperor, Shahjahan handiest requisitioned the Tejo Mahalaya Shiva Temple.

Maximum of the area in round the principle building is under Archaelogical Department’s control and no tourist is allowed there. Very wellsays that there’s sufficient proof to prove his point in the one’s regions.

The book has ninety-two chapters in 1312 pages.

The Vedic tradition in the East, Vedic beyond of Japan, China, Korea and Manchuria, West Asia etc. Are dealt in the element with the aid of the author. Assisting his principle, the writer has given fifty-six photographs also in the e-book.

The ebook makes an thrilling analyzing. It’s far argued in the e-book that the primary on the spot response to a massive section of the general public on analyzing an unprecedented thesis of the sort expounded on this ebook is likely to be one in every of shock, disbelief and rejection. But the cogency of the argument, the continuity of the thread of the History and the comprehensive evidence are probable to be persuasive elements which may in the long run make the topic greater agreeable and perfect.

A detailed bibliography is also attached to the stop of the book quoting 114 resources.

The reader can also draw his own conclusion after digesting all of the data placed forth within the ebook. Ultimately, after going through the contents of this e-book, one gets the impression that the Indian Records have to surely be re-written successfully.