LiveJournal

LiveJournal / LJ or Zhivoy Zhurnal (Russian: Живой Журнал)/ZheZhe (Russian: ЖЖ) in Russia, is a social networking service based in San Francisco, California, where Internet users can keep a blog, journal or diary. A wide variety of political pundits also use the service for political commentary, particularly in Russia, where it partners with the online newspaper Gazeta.ru. As with many other social networks, a wide variety of public figures use the network.

LiveJournal was started on April 15, 1999 by American programmer Brad Fitzpatrick as a way of keeping his high school friends updated on his activities. In January 2005, blogging software company Six Apart purchased Danga Interactive, the company that operated LiveJournal, from Fitzpatrick. Six Apart sold LiveJournal to Russian media company SUP Media in 2007, but continued to develop the site by the San Francisco-based company LiveJournal, Inc. In January 2009 LiveJournal laid off some employees and moved product development and design functions to Russia.

Beyond the Black Stump (comic strip)

Beyond the Black Stump is an Australian comic strip written by Sean Leahy. It debuted in 1988 and won the "Best Comic Strip" at the 2003 National Coffs Harbour Cartoon Awards and the "Comic Strip Cartoonist of the Year" at the Australian Cartoonist's Association's Stanley Award the same year.

The strip follows a cast of Australian wildlife who deal with the day-to-day stresses of marriage, parenting and friendship.

Characters

Frank (band)

HIDDEN ERROR: Usage of "Members" is not recognizedHIDDEN ERROR: Usage of "Instruments" is not recognized

Frank was the girl group from Channel 4's comedy drama series Totally Frank. Frank consisted of lead singer Lauren Blake (born 1984), guitarist Bryony Afferson (born 1983), keyboard player Helena Dowling (born 1983) and drummer Hayley Angel Wardle (born 1983). In the show Totally Frank, the girls played fictional characters Tasha (Lauren), Charlie (Bryony), Flo (Helena) and Neve (Hayley). The band used their real names outside of the show.

Their debut single "I'm Not Shy" was released on 31 July 2006 and reached #40 in the UK Singles Chart. Their debut album Devil's Got Your Gold was released on 7 August 2006. The album featured tracks from the television show including "Money In My Pocket", "Never Left A Girl", "Silence", "Don't Wait Up", "All I Ever Do", the second series theme tune; "Turn It Up", and the first series theme tune "Complicated". New tracks included "If The Devil's Got Your Gold", "Wake Up" and "Palm Of Your Hand".

Von (album)

Von (Icelandic pronunciation: [ˈvɔːn], Hope) is the debut album of Icelandic post-rock band Sigur Rós.

The production of the album took a long time, and the end result sounded significantly different from the original recordings. The band considered scrapping the final result and starting all over again, but decided not to because it would have made the process too long. In exchange for recording time, Sigur Rós painted the studio they recorded in.

Von was originally released in Iceland to moderate critical acclaim, but went relatively unnoticed abroad. In the first year following the release, Von sold only 313 copies in Iceland. Following the band's popular international releases, Ágætis byrjun and ( ), it was re-released in the United Kingdom in September 2004, and in the United States a month later. In December 2005, Von and Ágætis byrjun were declared platinum albums in Iceland, signifying domestic sales of over 5,000.

The sixth track consists of 18 seconds of silence, and gave name to Sigur Rós's official website, 'eighteen seconds before sunrise'. The last track starts with six minutes and fifteen seconds of silence, then consists of a portion of "Myrkur" played backwards, hence the name of "Rukrym."

Unsū

Unsu (雲手), literally "cloud hands", is the most advanced kata found in the Shotokan, Shito-Ryu and karate styles and is generally taught to karateka at the 3rd to 4th Dan. It contains many intricate hand techniques, such as the ippon-nukite (one finger strike) in the opening sequence. Unsu also contains a 360-degree spinning double-kick with a double-leg take down at the same time, landing on the floor face-down before continuing. Because of this, it is a very common kata in tournaments.

Per Bruce Clayton in his book, 'Shotokan's Secret', Unsu was created by Seisho Arakaki sometime around 1860-1870. Arakaki was a Japanese and Chinese language interpreter to the Shuri court, and a master of monk fist and white crane styles. It is somewhat a condensation of other katas (e.g., Bassai, Kanku, Jion, Empi, Jitte and Gankaku), hence it is essential to have mastered these before practicing Unsu.

The movement, Unsu, or hands in the cloud, is used to sweep away the hands of the opponent and is said to signify the gathering clouds in a thunderstorm.

Uniform national swing

Uniform national swing, or UNS is a system for translating opinion polls, which give overall vote proportions, to expected eventual parliamentary seats in a constituency based first past the post system, as in the UK general elections. Under the uniform national swing, changes in the vote proportions (swing) since the previous election are assumed to be constant across all constituencies. By applying this change to the previous per-constituency based vote proportions, a prediction for which party would have the most votes in each constituency may be made, which is then counted and totalled for a final seat count.

Alternative methods exist, such as the proportional national swing system. However, UNS has proven acceptably accurate in the past, and so is commonly used in UK media for seat count predictions.

External links