Last of the Summer Wine is a British sitcom. It ran longer than any other comedy show in the UK and longer than any other sitcom in the world. It airs on the television channel BBC One. Roy Clarke writes the show and Alan J. W. Bell produces and directs it. It started as an episode of the television show "Comedy Playhouse" and originally aired on 4 January 1973. The first series of episodes started airing on 12 November 1973. The show just finished showing its 29th series and a 30th series is in production.
"Last of the Summer Wine" was filmed in and around Holmfirth, West Yorkshire, England. It features three older men who never get old and act like they are children. The three originally were Norman Clegg (Peter Sallis), Cyril Blamire (Michael Bates), and Compo Simmonite (Bill Owen). After two years, Blamire left the show. In his place, Brian Wilde joined as Foggy Dewhurst. The current cast is Russ Abbot as Hobbo Hobdyke, Burt Kwouk as Entwistle, and Brian Murphy as Alvin Smedley.
Some think the show is not as good as it used to be. Many people continue watching it, though, and praise it for portraying older people well and for its family-friendly humour. Members of the British Royal Family enjoy the show. The show has been nominated for some awards and won the National Television Award for Most Popular Comedy Programme in 1999. There have been many holiday specials, two television movies, and a documentary movie about the series. "Last of the Summer Wine" has inspired other adaptations, including a television prequel, several novelisations, and a stage adaptation.
Free Software Foundation
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a movement which tries to promote the universal freedom to distribute and modify computer software without restriction. The FSF was started in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, United States of America.
From its founding (when it started) until the 1990s, FSF's funds were mostly used to employ software developers to write free software for the GNU Project. Since the mid-1990s, the FSF's employees and volunteers have mostly worked on legal and structural issues for the free software movement and the free software community.
The FSF holds the copyrights on many important pieces of the GNU system, such as the GCC. As a copyright holder, it has the power to enforce the GNU General Public License (GPL) when copyright infringement occurs on that software. While other copyright holders of other software systems used the GPL as their license, FSF was the only organization to regularly assert its copyright interests on software licensed under the GPL until Harald Welte created gpl-violations.org in 2004.
In late 2001, Bradley M. Kuhn (then Executive Director), with the help of Moglen, David Turner, and Peter T. Brown, turned these efforts into FSF's GPL Compliance Labs. From 2002-2004, high profile GPL enforcement cases, such as those against Linksys and OpenTV, became frequent. GPL enforcement and educational campaigns on GPL compliance was a major focus of the FSF's efforts during this period.
In March 2003, SCO filed suit against IBM alleging(saying) that IBM's contributions to some free software, including FSF's GNU, violated SCO's rights. While FSF was never a party to the lawsuit, FSF was subpoenaed on November 5, 2003. During 2003 and 2004, FSF put a lot of advocacy effort into responding to the lawsuit and removing its negative impact on the adoption and promotion of free software.
The FSF maintains a list of "high priority projects" where the Foundation says that ""there is a vital need to draw the free software community's attention"". The FSF says these projects are""important because computer users are continually being seduced into using non-free software, because there is no adequate free replacement.""
ITS 90
The ITS 90 is the international temperature scale, published in the year 1990. It mainly is a set of fixed temperatures and instructions how to realise a practical temperature scale, being as close to the thermodynamical temperature scale as current knowledge allows.
The first international temperature scale was established in 1927. An improved version came in 1948. In 1968 the IPTS 68 was issued. Note the letter P, which stands for practical. In 1975 the very low side of the scale (below 1 Kelvin) was added. Since 1990 the ITS 90 is in use.
A list of fixed temperatures is given. This list has been produced by national laboratories from all over the world. It has been approved by the B.I.P.M. (Bureau Internationale des Poids et Mesure) in Paris. Temperatures between the fixed points can be measured, using a platinum resistance thermometer (up to 660 °C). This thermometer, however, has to be calibrated first. This is being done at a number of fixed temperatures, covering the desired range. Procedures and formulae for defining an interpolating thermometer are given as well.
Say we need a calibrated thermometer in the range from room temperature to 400 °C. A triple point of water is to be realised for 0.01 °C. For 231.928 °C there is the freezing point of tin. At 419.527 °C it is the freezing point of zinc, which serves the goal.
After having measured the electrical resistance of this thermometer at the given temperatures, the data is being fed into a prescribed formula, giving the deviation coefficients for the range from 0 to 420 °C. So, from now on we have a thermometer with which we can perform accurate measurements according to the ITS 90.
This type of calibration is called primary calibration. With the thermometer we just calibrated we can perform a secondary calibration. Then another thermometer is to be calibrated against ours. This derived calibration, of course, is a little less accurate, but can take place at any suitable temperature within the range, since our thermometer interpolates between the fixed temperatures.
For more information see the official site of BIPM
Nude photography
Nude photography is a style of photography which shows the naked human body as a form of art. This is different form erotic photography, and pornography which focus on sexual arousal.
For many photographers, nude photography is a study of the human body, much like some paintings did.
Photographing a named person is called portraiture. Nude photography focuses on showing the human body, and often the face is not visible.
In general, nude photography is a "planned image", not a snapshot. Nude photography wants to show a stylised depiction of the human body. Photographers sometimes use extremes of light and shadow, oiled skin, and shadows falling across the body to show the texture and structure of the body.
Early photographers often showed the nudity of women like the one we see here by Félix-Jacques Moulin. Many, like Edward Weston, Jean-Christophe Destailleur, Augustao de Luca, Ruth Bernhard and Jerry Avenaim, preferred to show the lines of a body as a piece of art. They used the terms "art nude" and "figurenude" from painting to avoid suggestions that their works were meant to be erotica or pornography.
Laval (Mayenne)
Laval is a commune and the prefecture of the French department of Mayenne. The people that live there are called "Lavallois".
Laval is a medieval city and was first mentioned during the 11th century.
Laval is twinned with:
Erotic photography
Erotic photography is a style of photography, between nude photography and pornography. Erotic photography wants to show the more or less naked human body in a sexual context. It can be difficult to make a difference between erotic photography and pornography - in general erotic photography wants to arouse or stimulate the viewer.