english cut: bespoke savile row tailors
In an ideal world you’ve got yourself a good week’s supply of bespoke clothing. I say this not to keep tailors like me in beer money, but to let you know how to get the very best from your bespoke wardrobe. If you’re new to bespoke and have recently got your first suit, this often when caring problems arise.
You see, if your tailor has done a good job, your first bespoke will now be your favourite in the wardrobe, and you’ll want to wear it all the time. Wonderful, but the problem is you’ll end up wanting to wear it too much. As I’ve said before, a proper bespoke suit can easily last ten or fifteen years. But they need a rest, just like the rest of us. So the most important key to success is to rotate your wardrobe.
English Cut is a refreshingly personal blog by one of the tailors on the legendary Savile Row.
I’ll be visiting London for the next week or so. If I have the time, I’ll try to squeeze in a visit to Savile Row. I like the idea of tailored clothes (or bespoke clothing as it is usually referred to), but unfortunately bespoke clothing is often automatically associated with a certain very traditional style that I haven’t always felt comfortable with.
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Nankyoku Monogatari (”South Pole Story”; released in the U.S. as Antarctica) is a 1983 Japanese movie starring Ken Takakura about the February 1958 Japanese scientific expedition to the South Pole, and the party’s dramatic rescue from the impossible weather conditions they encounter on the return journey. It focuses on the relationship between the scientists and their loyal and hard-working Sakhalin Huskies, particularly the lead dogs Taro and Jiro who, without human leadership or assistance, complete the journey back to the base to summon a rescue party. The film features a score by Vangelis released worldwide (including Japan) as Antarctica.
Disney has recently released a remake of a japanese film called Nankyoku_Monogatari. The remake is called Eight Below. I haven’t seen the original japanese version, but Eight Below is actually a decent flick. I don’t know what it is with these dog movies, but they seem to remain popular generation after generation. There must be the same type of speculation about the next Lassie as there is about the next James Bond. The current Lassie is Lassie number 10 (all from the same line of dogs apparently).
I wonder when they will start cloning the most succesful dog movie stars. The first cloned pet has already been sold. It is a cat though.
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Paradise, at a price - World - smh.com.au
“Fiji has been famous in America since Raymond Burr bought Naitouba in 1968, and it grows and grows,” said Morrison. “It would have to be in the top three most sought-after island areas in the world.”
Chiefs sold Gibson’s Mago Island, for instance, and removed its villagers after their conversion by Christian missionaries in the mid-19th century.
The most recent owner, Japan’s Tokyu Corporation, bought it in 1985 for $US6.15 million. Gibson has reportedly installed a bowling alley. Locals told the Herald he intended to keep it as a private getaway and that his son lives there as a caretaker. This week, moguls and magnates can pick up the 90-hectare Blue Lagoon Island, said to have inspired the book and film of the same name, for $US25 million ($33 million) or the boutique 19-hectare Natewa Bay Island for $US8 million.
“Unlike Mago Island purchased by Mel Gibson,” says the listing at luxuryrealestate.com, “Blue Lagoon was never permanently inhabited, thus when it was declared freehold in the 1860s, no native population was displaced”. That selling point provides a clue to the problem of what real estate agents call “alienated freehold” islands: as land values have climbed, so has discontent among nationalists and landless Fijians. Some form of compensation, says the land rights activist Francis Waqa Sokonobogi, is needed to stop the natives from becoming restless again.
Naitouba is currently owned by Adi Dam a.k.a Da Free John. He is a sort of cult leader. While visiting Fiji I met a friendly fellow from San Francisco who said he was a second generation “practicioner”. He was on his way to the private island of the religion.
An island like that is a bit like a miniature nation. You have your own infrastructure, eco-system and in some cases (as in the case of Naitouba), your own culture and beliefs. I spent this morning reading about the celebrity scientologists (John Travolta, Tom Cruise and, gasp, even Beck!). It seems that once you get succesful and rich enough, you start thinking about buying your own tropical island. They are the ultimate symbols of success in the world of the jet set.
Global warming may cause severe problems for paradises like that though. Even if the islands won’t be washed away by the raising sea level, the fresh water may get salinated and there may be major flooding.
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Christopher Molloy has kindly published The 10 Bushcraft books by Richard Graves on the web. They are a collection of excellent tips for camping and survival using primitive technology. Although Mr. Graves is australian, a lot of the tips can be adapted to various other climates and natural environments.
As you may or may not know, I’m one of those “couch survival experts” or “textile outdoorspeople” who like to spend a considerable time reading and preparing for all kinds of outdoor adventures. Sadly, I’m living in a big city and I seldom get a chance to actually go to the wilderness and spend longer periods of time with the nature. I’ve done it a few times over the past couple of years and I intend to go out and actually do it a lot more frequently in the coming years. I just ordered Mountain Walking in Austria to prepare for our trip to Austria next Spring.
I’ve also been keenly watching the various wilderness tv shows… Ray Mears Bushcraft, Survivorman and a more recent find, the glitzy Man Vs. Wild. Especially Survivorman is highly recommended.
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Vectrex 1982-1984
The Vectrex was a completely vector graphics based system, hence its name. Vector graphics are the kind of graphics used in such popular games as Asteroids, Battlezone, Space War, and Tempest. Most videogames use raster graphics, which utilize pixels. In this type of display, the beam inside your television or monitor scans across horizontally from the top down, drawing each row of pixels. Vector graphics, on the other hand, draw to exact coordinates - using x/y or “vector” values. Vectors graphics are very sharp and allowed the Vectrex to produce some outstanding visual effects such as scaling and rotation. To produce its special graphics, the Vectrex had its own nine by eleven-inch monochrome monitor (color vectors would have been very difficult and expensive to produce).
The Vectrex had it’s origins at Western Technologies/Smith Engineering, when some of the engineers wanted to find a way to use a bunch of the cheap cathode ray tubes (CRT’s) they had just purchased. An all in one vector gaming system was decided, and the rest is history.
Light pens, 3d goggles with spinning colored discs as accessories. No wonder new games for this system are still being released. Check out the Vectrex game database
I believe the Motorola 68A09 processor used in Vectrex had a floating point performance of about 300 FLOPS. For comparison the PS3 has a theoretical floating point performance of about 2 180 000 000 000 FLOPS (2.18 Teraflops). You could give a Vectrex to every living person on earth to get the same kind of processing power as in a single Playstation 3.
Consider this: A Playstation generation generally has a lifespan of about 10-15 years. I wouldn’t be surprised if you could give a PS3 to 7000 million persons in year 2030 to get the processing power of a single PS5.
Posted by api at 23:02 - 1 Comment »
I’m not a big fan of Jack Black, but little birds told me that I should go and see Nacho Libre. Well, I finally had a chance to see it and it was a real delight. The film is wonderfully absurd. There is a strange mix of cheekiness and seriousness with a very humane overall mood. Farce is one of the most difficult forms of comedy. One of the easiest ways to spoil it is to underline every single joke so much that it’s no longer funny. Fortunately Jack Black, Héctor Jiménez and the rest of cast manage to maintain subtlety in their performances.
I admire the filmmakers for balancing so finely between slapstick and traditional story telling. Jared and Jerusha Hess have done an excellent job with the script. If you can watch and enjoy a random episode of the Simpsons and Zardoz in one go, you’ll probably love Nacho Libre as well. My verdict is four and a half stars out of five.
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The photo above is in the Flick Mid Air pool. I found it via DanielN’s brilliant Flight Center set.
As you may notice, I’m getting slightly restless as the Winter is approaching.. just like Snufkin in the Moomin books. The song of the sirens is echoing through the mountains.
Van Halen: Jump (Lyrics):
Owwww!
I get up, and nothin’ gets me down
You got it tough, I’ve seen the toughest around
And I know, baby, just how you feel
You got to roll with the punches and get to what’s real
Ah, can’t ya see me standin’ here
I got my back against the record machine
I ain’t the worst that you’ve seen
Ah, can’t ya see what I mean?
Ah, might as well jump. Jump!
Might as well jump
Go ahead an’ jump. Jump!
Go ahead and jump
Ow-oh! Hey, you! Who said that? Baby, how you been?
You say you don’t know, you won’t know until you begin
So can’t ya see me standing here
I got my back against the record machine
I ain’t the worst that you’ve seen
Ah, can’t ya see what I mean?
Ah, might as well jump. Jump!
Go ahead and jump
Might as well jump. Jump!
Go ahead and jump
Jump!
(Guitar Solo)
Might as well jump. Jump!
Go ahead and jump
Get it in, jump. Jump!
Go ahead and jump
Jump! Jump! Jump! Jump!
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Death Notification
The standard form sent by the British War Office to next of kin to notify them of the death of a member of the army.
My grandfather was killed by an enemy grenade near the end of Winter War. Curiously, my father is also a war veteran. He volunteered to army as a teenager just like one of our former presidents, Mauno Koivisto.
Mauno Koivisto once noted: “”When you have taken part in a game in which your own life is at stake, all other games are small after that experience”.”
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Water
binary compound that occurs at room temperature as a clear colorless odorless tasteless liquid; freezes into ice below 0 degrees centigrade and boils above 100 degrees centigrade; widely used as a solvent
Wind
Air in motion relative to the surface of the earth. Almost exclusively used to denote the horizontal component.
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