Welten

Welten is a village in Heerlen, still retaining its village like appearance.

A couple of landmarks remain in Welten, including a church dating back to the 11th century though restored in the 19th century, and the Weltermolen (Weltermill), a watermill powered by the Geleenbeek.

The Weltermolen dates back to at least the 14th century.

Coordinates: 50°52′26″N 5°57′54″E / 50.87389°N 5.96500°E / 50.87389; 5.96500

Daniel Schmidt

Daniel Schmidt is a composer and builder of American gamelan. He currently teaches gamelan and instrument building at Mills College. He is also a long-time collaborator with Paul Dresher.

Schmidt has helped build many American gamelans, including Si Darius/Si Madeleine with Lou Harrison and Bill Colvig, and the aluminum gamelan that is used by Gamelan Pacifica in Seattle. He is currently working on an aluminum gamelan, "Gift", in collaboration with students at Mills College. "Gift" uses the same tuning and extended range as the instruments Si Darius/Si Madeleine, and finished instruments are used in performance with Si Darius/Si Madeleine.

Recording, vinyl, "In My Arms, Many Flowers" will be released in the spring of 2016.

References

Nick Hornby

Nicholas Peter John "Nick" Hornby (born 17 April 1957) is an English novelist, essayist, lyricist, and screenwriter. He is best known for his novels High Fidelity and About a Boy. Hornby's work frequently touches upon music, sport, and the aimless and obsessive natures of his protagonists. His books have sold more than 5 million copies worldwide as of 2009.

Early life and education

Hornby was born in Redhill, Surrey, the son of Sir Derek Peter Hornby, the chairman of London and Continental Railways, and Margaret Audrey Hornby (née Withers). He was brought up in Maidenhead, and educated at Maidenhead Grammar School and Jesus College, Cambridge, where he read English. His parents divorced when he was eleven.

Career

Hornby published his first book in 1992, a collection of essays about American Writers such as Tobias Wolff and Ann Beattie, titled Contemporary American Fiction. Hornby's second book, Fever Pitch, also published in 1992, is an autobiographical story detailing his fanatical support for Arsenal Football Club. As a result, Hornby received the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award. In 1997, the memoir was adapted for film in the UK, and in 2005 an American remake was released, following Jimmy Fallon's character's obsession with the Boston Red Sox, a baseball team. With the book's success, Hornby began to publish articles in the Sunday Times, Time Out and the Times Literary Supplement, in addition to his music reviews for the New Yorker.

Cube World

Cube World is an open world RPG video game in development by Picroma for Microsoft Windows. Wolfram von Funck began developing the game in June 2011, and was later joined by his wife Sarah von Funck. An early alpha version of the game was released on July 2, 2013. However, as of July 2015, the game is unavailable for purchase and has not received any updates since July 23, 2013. A significant lack of communication by the developer about the game's current development has fueled speculation about its future. In October 2015, Von Funck tweeted that he was currently adding music to Cube World.

Gameplay

In Cube World, the player explores an endlessprocedurally generated "voxel-like" world. This world contains randomly generated dungeons, including underground caverns and over-world castles, as well as separate biomes including grasslands, snowlands, deserts, and oceans. Players can use items such as hang gliders and boats to traverse the world more quickly.

Players can create multiple characters, with character creation, which involves the player first choosing a race then customizing the look of the character. The player then chooses one of four classes: warrior, rogue, ranger, or mage. The world is populated with monsters and creatures which can be killed for experience, which results in stronger statistics and abilities and allows players to choose specializations which best suit their in-game aims. These specialization choices include warriors being able to choose between focusing on damage or defensive abilities, or mages focusing on damage or healing abilities. Players can also tame animals, such as sheep or turtles, which fight alongside them, or, in some cases, can be ridden by them to travel more quickly.

John Crowley

John Crowley /ˈkraʊli/ (born December 1, 1942) is an American author of fantasy, science fiction and mainstream fiction. He studied at Indiana University and has a second career as a documentary film writer.

He is best known as the author of Little, Big (1981), which received the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel and has been called "a neglected masterpiece" by Harold Bloom and his Ægypt series of novels which revolve around the same themes of Hermeticism, memory, families and religion.

Crowley writes the bi-monthly "Easy Chair" essay in Harper's Magazine.

Biography

John Crowley was born in Presque Isle, Maine, in 1942; his father was then an officer in the US Army Air Corps. He grew up in Vermont, northeastern Kentucky and (for the longest stretch) Indiana, where he went to high school and college. He moved to New York City after college to make movies, and did find work in documentary films, an occupation he still pursues. He published his first novel (The Deep) in 1975, and his 17th volume of fiction (Four Freedoms) in 2009. Since 1993 he has taught creative writing at Yale University. In 1992 he received the Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.