Sevilla Sevilla Sevilla

Sevilla is the most successful club in Andalusia, winning a national league title in 1945–46, and five Copas del Rey. On the European level, it has won two consecutive UEFA Cups (2006 and 2007) and the 2006 UEFA Super Cup. Sevilla have competed 67 seasons in the First Division and 13 in Second, a record which places as the seventh-best team in the history of Spanish league football.^[3] They were designated by the International Federation of Football History & Statistics as the best club in the World in 2006 and 2007, currently the only team that has achieved this distinction in consecutive years. Sevilla's main rivalry is with their cross-city rivals Real Betis in the Seville derby.

pictures of spanisch supporters from Sevilla in the centre of Eindhoven, prior to the UEFA cub final

The UEFA Cup is a football competition for European club teams. It was founded on April 18, 1955 as the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup. It is the second most important European competition for club teams, the first being the UEFA Champions League.

The competition was traditionally open to the runners-up of domestic leagues, but in 1999, the competition was merged with the Cup Winners' Cup. Since then the winners of domestic cup 

 

competitions have also entered the UEFA Cup.

 

Rope-making

A rope is a length of fibres, twisted or braided together to improve strength for pulling and
connecting. It has tensile strength but is too flexible to provide compressive strength (i.e. it can be used for pulling, but not pushing). Rope is thicker and stronger than similarly constructed cord, line, string, and twine.

PABLO

The Museo Picasso Málaga is a museum in Málaga, the city where artist Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born. It opened in 2003 in the Buenavista Palace, and has 285 works donated by members of Picasso's family.
Christine Ruiz-Picasso, widow of the artist's eldest son Paul Ruiz-Picasso, worked with Málaga to help put on the exhibitions Picasso Clásico in 1992 and Picasso, primera mirada, This led in 1996 to rekindling the idea of a major Picasso museum in Málaga.
The collection ranges from early academic studies to cubism to his late re-workings of Old Masters. Many additional pieces are on long-term loan to the museum.
There is also a library and archive including over 800 titles on Picasso, as well as relevant documents and photographs.

 

Castillo

The magnificent Castillo de Gibralfaro sits on a high hill overlooking Malaga city and port, and dates back to the 10th century. The image of Gibralfaro is well known: you can see it in both Malaga city and province's seal and flag.
The hill where the Gibralfaro is situated forms part of the Montes de Malaga mountain range, located to the east and north of Malaga city - this land is protected by the Montes' natural park status.

Panoramic of Malaga

On rare occasions, 360° panoramic movies have been constructed for specially designed display
spaces—typically at theme parks, world's fairs, and museums. Starting in 1955, Disney has created
360° theaters for its parks and the Swiss Transport Museum in Lucerne, Switzerland, features a
theatre that is a large cylindrical space with an arrangement of screens whose bottom is several
metres above the floor. Panoramic systems that are less than 360° around also exist. For example,
Cinerama used a curved screen and IMAX Dome / OMNIMAX movies are projected on a dome abov
the spectators

Dutch state-museum

The Rijksmuseum (English: State Museum) is a Dutch national museum dedicated to arts and history in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. The museum is located at the Museum Square in the borough Amsterdam South, close to the Van Gogh Museum, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, and the Concertgebouw.
The Rijksmuseum was founded in The Hague in 1800 and moved to Amsterdam in 1808, where it was first located in the Royal Palace and later in the Trippenhuis. The current main building was designed by Pierre Cuypers and was originally opened in 1885, but was closed for renovation from 2003 to 2013. On 13 April 2013, the main building was reopened by Queen Beatrix after the ten year renovation which cost € 375 million.

The museum has on display 8,000 objects of art and history, from their total collection of 1 million objects from the years 1200–2000, among which are some masterpieces by Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and Johannes Vermeer. The museum also has a small Asian collection which is on display in the Asian Pavilion.

Romans & romans

If film was the most influential medium, Hollywood was the most influential image maker. Hollywood films reached a global audience through big budget productions, and equally big distribution and advertising channels. Hollywood adapted works of the Romanticism movement to the screen, seamlessly forging a bridge between Romanticized historical novels, operas, paintings, and music of the 19th century onto film in the 20th. The ideals of the Romantics were fully realized
on the screen in such influential works as Ivanhoe (1952) and El Cid (1961) which belong to the same late Romantic culture in their music, imagery and themes.

 

Spanish clippings

Clip culture
The widespread popularity of video clips, with the aid of new distribution channels, has evolved into 'clip culture'. It is compared to 'lean-back' experience of seeing traditional movies, refers to the Internet activity of sharing and viewing a short video, mostly less than 15 minutes. The culture began with the development of broadband Internet service, and has seen a boom since 2005 when websites for uploading clips emerged on the market.
Such video clips often show moments of significance, humour, oddity, or prodigy performance. Sources for video clips include news, movies, music video and amateur video shot. In addition to clips recorded by high-quality camcorders, it has become more common to produce clips with digital cameras, webcams, and mobile phones.

Toreador, shame or fame?

Bullfighting is a traditional spectacle of Spain, Portugal, southern France, in which one or more bulls are baited, and then killed in a bullring for the entertainment of the audience. As such, it is often called a blood sport by its detractors, but followers of the spectacle regard it as a 'fine art' and not a sport, as there are no elements of competition in the proceedings. In Portugal, it is now illegal to kill a bull in the arena, so it is removed and either professionally butchered or, in exceptional cases, treated and released into its owners'.

Supporters of bullfighting argue that it is a culturally important tradition and a fully developed art form on par with painting, dancing and music, while animal rights advocates hold that it is a blood sport resulting in the suffering of bulls and horses.
Spanish-style bullfighting is normally fatal for the bull, but it is also dangerous for the matador. Matadors are usually gored every season, with picadors and banderilleros being gored less often. With the discovery of antibiotics and advances in surgical techniques, fatalities are now rare, although over the past three centuries 533 notable professional bullfighters have died in the ring or from injuries sustained there.

 

Alcazabar de Malaga

An alcazaba is a Moorish fortification in Spain and Portugal. The word derives from the Arabic word .al-qasbah), a walled-fortification in a city.
According to architect restorer, Leopoldo Torres Balbás, the Alcazaba of Málaga is the prototype of military architecture in the Taifa period, with its double walled and many fortifications.

The names of numerous historical buildings are Hispanic versions of Arabic terms. In this case, Alcazaba refers to Al-Qasbah, which means citadel. The Spanish countryside is decorated with similar structures in Spain, for instance in Almeria, Badajoz and Malag

Sick of lemonade

The Orkest Zonder Naam (Nameless Orchestra) was the orchestra of the catholic broadcasting corporation KRO during the pillarization of Dutch society. Their 1952 song Naar de speeltuin is a Dutch evergreen, which sold 25,000 copies.

The port of Malaga

The Port of Malaga is situated in the south of the Iberian Peninsula, on the southern coast of the Mediterranean, sheltered by a natural bay, at 4o 25’ W and 36o 43’ N. The dominant S and SE winds are generally low in speed. It has a flotation area of 7,095 hectares and a current land surface area of 1,150,884 square meters.

The port’s main activity is importation, where we can highlightthe bulks of clinker, cereals, cement and petroleum coke as the main unloaded products, and dolomite and olive oil as the main exported goods. Other traditional but equally important traffic in the Port of Málaga comprises cabotage traffic of general goods, vehicles and passengers, ferried by regular lines with Ceuta and Melilla.
A special mention must be made of tourist cruises traffic, since Málaga is the Iberian peninsula’s second most important cruise ship port, as shown by the regular presence of the world’s leading cruise lines.

Natural Playspace

Playscape is the term used by landscape architects and designers who specialize in designing and building playspaces that look and feel like a natural environment.
For a playground to be considered a "playscape" the space should be as natural as possible, with as little man made components as possible. Using native plants, rolling hills, lots of trees; playscapes represent a natural place such as a forest. Playscapes are designed with the intent of bringing children and people back to nature. Playscapes offer a wide range of open-ended play options that allow children to be creative and use their imagination. Playscapes offer a wide range of developmental benefits to children, rehabilitation programs and all people in general.

Annoying Orange

Het lidmaatschap van het Republikeins Genootschap is het doel ervan.
Het genootschap heeft geen statuten of plannen.
De deelnemers aan het genootschap bevorderen individueel of collectief
de discussie over de Nederlandse staatsvorm,
totdat de volksgunst voor het erfelijk koningsschap voldoende zal zijn
afgenomen om de republiek op vreedzame wijze te herstellen.
Het bestaan van het genootschap is een signaal dat op den duur tot bezinning zal leiden.

 

Alora.es

Álora is a municipality in southern Spain which is part of the province of Málaga (Andalusia). Located c. 40 km from Málaga, on the right bank of the river Guadalhorce and on the Córdoba-Málaga high- speed rail line, within the comarca of Valle del Guadalhorce. It is a typical pueblo

blanco, a whitewashed village nestled between three rocky spurs topped by the ruins of the castle.
The municipality covers an area of 169 km2 that covers a wide territory in which large landforms of Malaga are located. The hills are occupied by cereal, olive and oak trees and orchards of fruit and vegetables that cover the valley floor

China from Delft

Delftware, or Delft pottery, denotes blue and white pottery made in and around Delft in the Netherlands and the tin-glazed pottery made in the Netherlands from the 16th century.
Delftware in the latter sense is a type of pottery in which a white glaze is applied, usually decorated with metal oxides. Delftware includes pottery objects of all descriptions such as plates, ornaments and tiles.
The earliest tin-glazed pottery in the Netherlands was made in Antwerp in 1512. The manufacture of painted pottery may have spread from the south to the northern Netherlands in the 1560s. It was made in Middelburg and Haarlem in the 1570s and in Amsterdam in the 1580s. Much of the finer work was produced in Delft, but simple everyday tin-glazed pottery was made in places such as Gouda, Rotterdam, Amsterdam and Dordrecht.

The use of marl, a type of clay rich in calcium compounds, allowed the Dutch potters to refine their technique and to make finer items. The usual clay body of Delftware was a blend of three clays, one local, one from Tournai and one from the Rhineland.
From about 1615, the potters began to coat their pots completely in white tin glaze instead of covering only the painting surface and coating the rest with clear ceramic glaze. They then began to cover the tin-glaze with clear glaze, which gave depth to the fired surface and smoothness to cobalt blues, ultimately creating a good resemblance to porcelain.

 

Vaya con Dios in Malaga

Religious epics

Grand-scale films involving Jesus, Moses or other religious figures have been called religious or Biblical epics. This genre was popular in the 1950s and was often associated with towering budgets and such stars as Charlton Heston. Notable examples include Quo Vadis (1951), The Ten
Commandments (1956), and Ben-Hur (1959). The 1960s brought the first attempt by a major studio to produce a religious epic in which the Christ Event was its singular focus. MGM released King of Kings in 1961, inspired by a Cecil B. DeMille film of the same title from 1927. Four years later, The Greatest Story Ever Told, directed by George Stevens, was completed for $25 million. A recent example is the 2004 Mel Gibson film The Passion of the Christ. While the term "Biblical epics" is used to describe films based on Judeo-Christian stories, other films may be based in other religious traditions, such as The Mahabharata, which is based on Hindu mythology, and The Message, which is based on Islamic history.

 

Malaga markets and shops

Viral marketing: free distribution of trailers on movie-oriented websites and video user-generated- content websites, and rapid dissemination of links to this content by email and blogs. Includes alleged leakage of supposed "rushes" and "early trailers" of film scenes. Sometimes, the efforts go further such as in the lead time to the successful premiere of the film.

Creation of Internet Marketing campaign using Paid Advertisement and Social Media Marketing

Film promotion is the practice of promotion specifically in the film industry. As with all business it is an important part of any release because of the inherent high financial risk; film studios will invest in expensive marketing campaigns to maximize revenue early in the release cycle. Marketing budgets tend to equal anywhere between half or three times the production budget. Publicity is generally handled by the distributor and exhibitors.

El amor el amor

With the spread of Internet global accessing(fastest Internet broadband connection of TCP with accumulator cables and semi fast connection), video clips have become very popular online. By mid-2006 there were tens of millions of video clips available online, with new websites springing up focusing entirely on offering free video clips to users and many established and corporate sites adding video clip content to their websites. With the spread of broadband Internet access, video clips have become very popular online. Whereas most of this content is non-exclusive and available on
competing sites, some companies produce all their own videos and do not rely on the work of outside companies or amateurs.

Music and silent-movie

Showings of silent films almost always featured live music, starting with the pianist at the first public projection of movies by the Lumière Brothers on December 28, 1895 in Paris. From the beginning, music was recognized as essential, contributing to the atmosphere and giving the audience vital emotional cues. Small town and neighborhood movie theatres usually had a pianist. Beginning in the mid-1910s, large city theaters tended to have organists or ensembles of musicians.

Film scores for early silent films were either improvised or compiled of classical or theatrical repertory music. Once full features became commonplace, however, music was compiled from photoplay music by the pianist, organist, orchestra conductor or the movie studio itself, which included a cue sheet with the film. These sheets were often lengthy, with detailed notes about effects and moods to watch for. Starting with the mostly original score composed by Joseph Carl Breil for D. W. Griffith's groundbreaking epic The Birth of a Nation (USA, 1915) it became relatively common for the biggest- budgeted films to arrive at the exhibiting theater with original, specially composed scores

 

Fireworks New Years eve

Filming fireworks:

    •    Find a good position where people won't get in the way.
    •    A tripod is a good idea if you are planning on shooting for more than 5 or 10 minutes. You will also be able to enjoy the display yourself more if you have a tripod.
    •    Wide-angle shots usually work best.
    •    If there is a lot of fireworks happening, don't try to chase them all. Concentrate on the main area of action.
    •    Don't worry too much about normal framing rules (such as the rule of thirds) unless you are framing the fireworks with something else, such as a stadium or staging area. Mostly the display will look fine if it just fills up the frame.

see also: Enclave

Arcos de la Frontera

A recent study from BBC Earth and UC-Berkeley has shown that watching nature documentaries can inspire "significant increases in feelings of awe, contentedness, joy, amusement and curiosity" and conversely "reduce feelings of tiredness, anger and stress." In short, they can engender what the authors of the study call ‘

real happiness’ – a kind of happiness that leads to actual improvement in individuals’ health and wellbeing,

Tipple

Cinematography can not only depict a moving subject but can use a camera, which represents the audience's viewpoint or perspective, that moves during the course of filming. This movement plays a considerable role in the emotional language of film images and the audience's emotional reaction to the action. Techniques range from the most basic movements of panning to dollying tracking craning and combinations of the above.
Cameras have been mounted to nearly every imaginable form of transportation.
Most cameras can also be handheld, that is held in the hands of the camera operator who moves from one position to another while filming the action. Personal stabilizing platforms came into being in the late 1970s through the invention of Garrett Brown, which became known as the Steadicam. The Steadicam is a body harness and stabilization arm that connects to the camera, supporting the camera while isolating it from the operator's body movements.

False notes

Digital8 was is a consumer digital recording videocassette for camcorders based on the 8 mm video format developed by Sony, and introduced in 1999.

The Digital8 format is a combination of the older Hi8 tape transport with the DV codec. Digital8 equipment uses the same videocassettes as analog recording Hi8 equipment, but differs in that the signal is not analog audio/analog video, but is encoded digitally (using the industry-standard DV codec.) Since Digital8 uses the DV codec, it has identical digital audio and digital video specifications. Most Digital8 camcorders with analog playback also can simultaneously digitize the analog footage, sending the converted signal through the camcorder's FireWire interface to a computer with video capturing HW and SW. Such a conversion will have similar Video8/Hi8 audio and video quality to the original, but being digitized can be edited and used as video files or converted to DVDs.

Bus turistico Malaga

Malaga boasts pretty streets, leafy boulevards and lush gardens. Find out why the City's Cathedral is called 'La Manquita' - the one armed lady! Hear all about the old palace fortress and its 2 rings of walls and of course you can't miss the Picasso Museum! You'll get the chance to see all of this on your City Sightseeing bus tour of Malaga. Enjoy panoramic views of the city as City Sightseeing highlights all of the best attractions and features that Malaga has to offer. With your 24 hour valid ticket you can hop on and off at your leisure at stops conveniently located along the route. Hop off at The Teatro Romano which is the result of excavation work and re-construction work of an ancient structure. The amphitheatre itself has not been used since 3rd century and the Moors used some of the stones to build their fortification, the Alcazaba. The nearby Alcazaba also offers a museum, pleasant gardens and fantastic views. While in the vicinity, visit Castillo de Gibralfaro for a look at the ramparts and more breath-taking views.

Moving images in the museum

The film preservation, or film restoration, movement is an ongoing project among film historians, archivists, museums, cinematheques, and non-profit organizations to rescue decaying film stock and preserve the images which they contain. In the widest sense, preservation nowadays assures that a movie will continue to exist, as close to its original form as possible. 90 percent of all American silent films and 50 percent of American sound films made before 1950 are lost films.
For many years the term “preservation” used to be a synonym of “duplication” only. The preservationist’s goal was to create a durable copy without significant loss of quality. Film preservation now holds the concepts of handling, duplication, storage, and access. The archivist seeks to protect the film and share the content with the public.

Malaguena

Malagueñas is one of the traditional styles of Andalusian music (flamenco), derived from earlier types of fandango from the area of Málaga, classified among the Cantes de Levante. Originally a folk-song type, it became a flamenco style in the 19th century. It is not normally used for dance, as it is generally interpreted with no regular rhythmic pattern, as a "cante libre". It has a very rich melody with virtuous flourishes and use of microtones. Its guitar accompaniment is normally played in open position first inversion giving E for the tonic, which can be transposed by using a capo.

Wintertime/Fuengirola

In the 1960s Fuengirola started to become a leading tourist centre, eventually having the expected facilities for eating, sleeping, and entertainment. The town has broad beaches along a promenade extending east and west from the town, that includes smaller adjacent villages.
Of the approximately 72,000 permanent inhabitants registered in the municipality, 25% come from other countries, mainly European (England, Ireland, Scotland, Finland and Sweden, among others), and also from Morocco and Argentina. In the summer especially, the town plays host to throngs of visitors both Spanish and foreign, but in particular British. The English-speaking community in particular is large enough to support a fully developed programme of activities and local groups.
The town is largely urban in character, with many high-rise blocks of flats near the seafront and elsewhere. There are some narrow streets with many low-rise villas. Considerable commercial and housing development is underway further inland. 

 

Panorama of Cordoba

In cinematography, a wide-angle lens refers to a lens whose focal length is substantially smaller than the focal length of a normal lens for a given film plane. This type of lens allows more of the scene to be included in the photograph, which is useful in architectural, interior and landscape photography where the photographer may not be able to move farther from the scene to photograph it.

Another use is where the photographer wishes to emphasise the difference in size or distance between objects in the foreground and the background; nearby objects appear very large and objects at a moderate distance appear small and far away.

A wide angle lens is also one that projects a substantially larger image circle than would be typical for a standard design lens of the same focal length. This large image circle enables either large tilt & shift movements with a view camera, or a wide field of view.

Shiny discs

In 1974, an initiative was taken within the Philips Corporation in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. A seven-person project group was formed to develop an optical audio disc with a diameter of 20 cm with a sound quality superior to that of the large and vulnerable vinyl record. It wasn't until 1977 that the directors of the group decided to establish a laboratory with the mission of creating a small optical digital audio disc and a small player. They chose the term "compact disc" in line with another Philips product, the compact cassette. Rather than the original 20 cm size, the diameter of this compact disc was set at 11.5 cm, the diagonal measurement of a compact cassette.

Thirty years later, on March 6, 2009, Philips received an IEEE Milestone award with the following citation: "On 8 March 1979, N.V. Philips' Gloeilampenfabrieken demonstrated for the international press a Compact Disc Audio Player. The demonstration showed that it is possible by using digital optical recording and playback to reproduce audio signals with superb stereo quality. This research at Philips established the technical standard for digital optical recording systems."
Sony executive Norio Ohga, who later became the CEO and chairman of Sony, was convinced of the format's commercial potential and pushed further development despite widespread skepticism.

 

Balcon de Europa

The Balcón de Europa, a mirador or viewpoint which gives stunning views across the sea, is in the centre of the old town. Its name is popularly believed to have been coined by King Alfonso XII, who visited the area in 1885 following a disastrous earthquake and was captivated by the scene. Local folklore says that he stood upon the site where the Balcón now stands, and said "This is the balcony of Europe". Local archive documents are said to show that its name predated this visit, but this has not prevented the authorities from placing a life-sized (and much photographed) statue of the king standing by the railing.

The Balcón area was originally known as La Batería, a reference to the gun battery which existed there in a fortified tower. This emplacement and a similar tower nearby were destroyed during the Peninsular War. In May 1812, the British vessels Hyacinth, Termagant and Basilisk supported Spanish guerrillas on the coast of Granada, against the French. On 20 May, Termangant or Hyacinth opened fire and the forts were destroyed. Two rusty guns positioned at the end of the Balcón are reminders of these violent times. 

 

 

Google glass new camera

Google Glass is a wearable computer with head mounted display and wearable camera that can do augmented reality. It is being developed by Google as Project Glass in research and development.
Google Glass displays information in a smartphone-like format hands-free, and can interact with the Internet via natural language voice commands.

Google Glass takes a step further toward ubiquitous computing, which is the idea that the Internet and computers will be accessible anywhere at any time without having to use your hands.

Google Glass has the ability to take photos and record 720p HD video. While video is recording, a recording light is displayed above the eye, which is unnoticeable to the wearer.

In general, reception for Google Glass has been positive in the technology industry.Concerns have been raised regarding intrusion of privacy. Advocates of privacy are worried that Glass wearers may be able to use facial recognition for illegitimate purposes such as identifying strangers in public. Google Glass may also be used to record and broadcast private conversations or meetings. The device may also further promote rude behaviors such as email checking during conversations.

In November 2012, Glass received recognition by Time Magazine as one of the "Best Inventions of the Year 2012".

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Costa del Sol /tingelingeling

The Costa del Sol "Coast of the Sun") is a region in the south of Spain, in the autonomous community of Andalusia, comprising the coastal towns and communities along the Mediterranean coastline of the Province of Málaga. The Costa del Sol is situated between two lesser known costas: Costa de la Luz and Costa Tropical. Formerly made up only of a series of small, quiet fishing settlements, the region has been completely transformed during the latter part of the 20th century into a tourist destination of world renown.

Nerja

Nerja has a long history, evidenced by the primitive paintings found in its famous Nerja caves, discovered in 1959. These caves are now believed to be just one entrance to a linked series of potholes stretching many miles into the mountains between Nerja and Granada, and which may yet prove to be one of the most extensive unexplored systems in Europe. Visitors to the caves will be able to view the remains of one of the ancient inhabitants of Nerja.
The Romans built here three settlements, including Detunda, of which now large remains can be seen. The area was later taken over by the Arabs in the early 8th century. Under the Moors, the town was known as Narixa, which means "abundant spring", from which the present name derives.

Weimar visit

A cult film, also commonly referred to as a cult classic, is a film that has acquired a cult following. Cult films are known for their dedicated, passionate fanbase, an elaborate subculture that engage in repeated viewings, quoting dialogue, and audience participation. Inclusive definitions allow for major studio productions, especially box office bombs, while exclusive definitions focus more on obscure, transgressive films shunned by the mainstream. The difficulty in defining the term and subjectivity of what qualifies as a cult film mirror classificatory disputes about art. The term cult film itself was first used in the 1970s to describe the culture that surrounded underground films and midnight movies, though cult was in common use in film analysis for decades prior to that.

Weimar and BAUHAUSE hereVideo link to BAUHAUSE

 

Dutch organ

A typical webcast, streaming in an embedded media player
Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a provider. Its verb form, "to stream", refers to the process of delivering media in this manner; the term refers to the delivery method of the medium rather than the medium itself.

Dutch maritime memories

The Dutch East India Company was a chartered company established in 1602, when the States- General of the Netherlands granted it a 21-year monopoly to carry out colonial activities in Asia. It is often considered to have been the first multinational corporation in the world and it was the first company to issue stock.

Statistically, the VOC eclipsed all of its rivals in the Asia trade. Between 1602 and 1796 the VOC sent almost a million Europeans to work in the Asia trade on 4,785 ships, and netted for their efforts more than 2.5 million tons of Asian trade goods. By contrast, the rest of Europe combined sent only 882,412 people from 1500 to 1795, and the fleet of the English East India Company, the VOC’s nearest competitor, was a distant second to its total traffic with 2,690 ships and a mere one-fifth the tonnage of goods carried by the VOC. The VOC enjoyed huge profits from its spice monopoly through most of the 17th century.
Having been set up in 1602, to profit from the Malukan spice trade, in 1619 the VOC established a capital in the port city of Batavia (now Jakarta). Over the next two centuries the Company acquired additional ports as trading bases and safeguarded their interests by taking over surrounding territory. It remained an important trading concern and paid an 18% annual dividend for almost 200 years.

 

Canal-Belt amsterdam

Amsterdam, capital of the Netherlands, has been called the "Venice of the North" for its more than one hundred kilometres of canals, about 90 islands and 1,500 bridges.
 The three main canals, Herengracht, Prinsengracht, and Keizersgracht, dug in the 17th century during the Dutch Golden Age, form concentric belts around the city, known as the Grachtengordel. Alongside the main canals are 1550 monumental buildings. The 17th-century canal ring area, including the Prinsengracht, Keizersgracht, Herengracht and Jordaan, were placed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2010.
Much of the Amsterdam canal system is the successful outcome of city planning. In the early part of the 17th century, with immigration at a height, a comprehensive plan was put together, calling for four main, concentric half-circles of canals with their ends resting on the IJ bay.

Mirror image

A flipped image or reversed image, the more formal term, is a static or moving image that is generated by a mirror-reversal of an original across a horizontal axis (a flopped image is mirrored across the vertical axis.
Many large format cameras present the image of the scene being photographed as a flipped image through their viewfinders. Some photographers regard this as a beneficial feature, as the unfamiliarity of the format allows them to compose the elements of the picture properly without being distracted by the actual contents of the scene. The technique is meant to bypass or override the brain's visual processing which normally sees what is expected rather than what is there.
Flipping is occasionally used as a trompe l'oeil effect in scenes which incorporate reflections in a body of water. The image is deliberately inverted so that people slowly discern that something is 'not quite right' with the picture, and come to notice that it is upside down.

Dive devil

Today, the small size of fully automatic camcorders with large view screens and long-life rechargeable batteries has reduced the housing size and made underwater videography an easy, fun activity for the diver. Low-cost wide-angle lens add-ons are available for many cameras and some can even be fitted outside the camera housing for versatile use. This lets the photographer get closer and make the subject clearer and also with fewer focusing and depth of field problems.
Today cameras are more sensitive to low light conditions and make automatic color balancing adjustments. Nevertheless, deeper water videography still needs auxiliary light sources to bring out colors filtered out of sunlight by the distance it has travelled through water. The longest wavelengths of light are lost first (reds and yellows) leaving only a greenish or blue cast in deep water. Even a hand light will help show off some of the magnificent colors of a coral reef or other marine life if used during recording.

Tube the movie

Tube or The Tube Open Movie is a computer animated short film currently in-production. It is based on the ancient Epic of Gilgamesh poem, and is being directed by Bassam Kurdali, whose prior work includes Elephants Dream. Like his previous film, Tube is being created exclusively with free and open-source software, including Blender, GIMP, Krita, MyPaint, and Ardour. However, unlike Elephants Dream, Tube is being produced independent of the Blender Foundation. The film and its assets are being released under a creative commons license, allowing them to be re-used by others.
Animation with substance. The crowd funds it, the crowd owns it. Tube is the experimental production of a 3D animated short about the dream and failure and achievement of immortality. It's also a love letter to free software and open culture that marks their convergence with independent filmmaking.

 

From Saudi-Arabia Wadjda

Wadjda is the first film to have been entirely filmed within Saudi Arabia, by that country’s first female director, no less. It tells the story of this ten-year-old schoolgirl

Like one of the great Italian neorealist films, it centres on a child and a bicycle. All Wadjda wants is a bike so she can race against the little boy who lives next door, but her mother (Reem Abdullah) refuses to buy her one: in Saudi Arabia, little girls do not ride bicycles. After careful consideration of the matter Wadjda cannot see the logic in this, so she takes matters into her own hands and decides to raise the money for a bicycle herself.

Al Mansour reveals in the film’s production notes that she often had to direct from her production van via walkie-talkie when filming in more conservative areas, but Wadjda offers the hope that for the next generation of Saudi women, things might be different. Modest as it may look, this is boundary- pushing cinema in all the best ways, and what a thrill it is to hear those boundaries creak.

Canalview

The historic urban ensemble of the canal district of Amsterdam was a project for a new ‘port city’ built at the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th centuries. It comprises a network of canals to the west and south of the historic old town and the medieval port that encircled the old town and was accompanied by the repositioning inland of the city’s fortified boundaries, the Singelgracht. This was a long-term programme that involved extending the city by draining the swampland, using a system of canals in concentric arcs and filling in the intermediate spaces. These spaces allowed the development of a homogeneous urban ensemble including gabled houses and numerous monuments. This urban extension was the largest and most homogeneous of its time. It was a model of large-scale town planning, and served as a reference throughout the world until the 19th century.

The Beemster: polder

the Beemster is the first so-called polder in the Netherlands that was reclaimed from a lake, the water being extracted out of the lake by windmills. The Beemster Polder was dried during the period 1609 through 1612. It has preserved intact its well-ordered landscape of fields, roads, canals, dykes and settlements, laid out in accordance with classical and Renaissance planning principles. A grid of canals parallels the grid of roads in the Beemster. The grids are offset: the larger feeder canals are offset by approximately one kilometer from the larger roads. Because of its historical relevance, and because the original structure of the area is still largely intact, the Beemster was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage Site list in 1999. Justification for Inscription is as follows: The Beemster Polder is a masterpiece of creative planning, in which the ideals of antiquity and the Renaissance were applied to the design of a reclaimed landscape. The innovative and intellectually imaginative landscape of the Beemster Polder had a profound and lasting impact on reclamation projects in Europe and beyond .

Forbidden love

Tomb of the Lovers of Teruel

Since many people came across Spain to see the Lovers of Teruel, the mummies were exhumed and put into two new tombs that were sculpted by Juan de Ávalos. The tombs are carved out of marble and bear the family shields of Marcilla and Segura, but the most attractive part of the tombs are the lids. The lids are exquisitely carved: one features the strong and handsome Diego, his one arm outstretched, reaching for his love Isabel – his hand comes close to touching her, but because of religious piety they do not touch (since Isabel was married). The lid for Isabel is radiant and most beautiful. According to 'professor' Antonio Beltrán, the legend grew when two mummies were found in San Peter’s Church (Teruel, Aragón, Spain), in 1555; and it was believed that they were Diego Marcilla and Isabel Segura, the lovers.