Aage Llievang tried explaining to his mother, but she shook her head. "Now, Aage. Really. Your own car? A car? What would the other co-op members think?" "Mom, this is a classic! 1952 MG-TD. It's even--" "British Racing green... yes, Aage. I know. Your father knows. Your grandmother knows. We all know about the car." "But Mom, look." He waved his Handy at her. The MG glowed on its small screen. "There's one up for auction on carsforsale.com and I'm too young to bid. You've got to help me." "Aage!" She put her hands on her hips and shook her head. "Your age is not the problem. You can't even afford it." "I'd pay you back." How could he explain his fascination with the Vehicular Age to her? The seductive sheen, the rumble, the combustive power of automobiles called to him like a siren at sea. He coveted the sense of possibility inherent in the turn of a key. And the MG-TD held a place high in his list of hope. British Racing Green, wood dashboard and a four-stroke engine. He had only seen one MG-TD, when he'd gone on holiday with his folks to the U.K. They had been walking down the street in downtown London. Most of the traffic had been pedestrian or cyclist. The occasional fuel-cell car glided by like a ghostly leftover from the Vehicular Age. Double-decker biodiesel buses roared past regularly, trailing the odor of fish and chips after them. And then it came down the street toward them. A car that purred as its rounded lines soaked up the sun with a green so deep it was almost black. It pulled into the valet parking of a grand hotel and two people got out. Aage barely noticed them. He stared inside the car, where chrome and brass gleamed against a burled wood dashboard. The doors of the car shut with the heavy thunk of real metal. A valet pulled the car out of the parking circle and Aage never saw it again. Question: The conversation between Aage and his mother most likely lasted: Options: - Several minutes - not enough information - Many days - A week === The correct answer is
Several minutes
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This week I shot my Interview with Claire Bridge. Myself and Riah travelled, I would say all the way out too Wheelers Hill, but it's really not that far away, unless you live on the North side, which we both do. Riah and I carried our gear on two trains and 1 bus to get to Claire's studio out in Wheelers Hill. I can see why Claire lives here as it's a pretty beautiful place, it's still suburban but there are trills, hills and birds everywhere, and for someone that's passionate about the environment I can see why she lives here. Meeting Claire was awesome, after having spoken via phone or email for so long, it was nice to speak to her in person. The filming of the interview went extremely smoothly, I'd put this down to having planned out everything, such as all the questions I was going to ask prior to the interview. By this stage I had helped Riah film as well as Elise and it was noticeable how much smoother Riah's interview went because she had pre-planned her questions. Rather than spending an hour asking various questions that you might not use anyway, it's much more efficient to spend 20 minutes covering exactly what you want to cover. By this stage I'd also had practise setting up lights, doing sound and getting camera shots for people's portraits so I already knew everything I wanted to shoot. Our setup was pretty simple, two large lights, one on Claire's front right and one on Claire's front left, two Canon EOS 60D DSLR's at different positions (one straight on, one to the side), a Sony H2N handy recorder and a lapel mic. Everything ran super smoothly, we did the interview first then myself and Riah shot various things in Claire's studio. Whilst shooting various things in Claire's studio we also got a chance to both speak to her which was nice, discussing what it is like to be a woman in Melbourne's art scene and finding out who some of her favourite artists were. Overall the experience was also, I have a lot of friends who are artists so I hope to do more artist portraits in the future. Question: Who is Stephen? Options: - Riah's husband - Elise's assistant - Claire's Boyfriend - not enough information === The correct answer is
not enough information
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With the growth of the Internet and the ease of publishing content, more and more creative minds are coming online to share videos, music, software, products, services, opinions, and more. While the technology has empowered a generation to build new audiences and share interesting things, an unfortunate side-effect has been a culture in which some consumers of this content have provided feedback in a form that is personalized, mean-spirited, disrespectful, and in some cases, malicious. We have all seen itthe trolls, the haters, the comment boxes filled with venom and vitriol, typically pointed at people just trying to do good and interesting things. Unfortunately, this conduct can be jarring for many people, with some going as far to give up sharing their creative endeavours so as not to deal with the "wrath of the Internet". As some of you will know, this has been bothering me for a while now. While there is no silver bullet for solving these issues, one thing I have learned over the years is how to put negative, anti-social, and non-constructive comments and feedback into perspective. To help others with this I have written a free book called Dealing With Disrespect. Dealing With Disrespect is a short, simple to read, free book that provides a straight-forward guide for handling this kind of challenging feedback, picking out the legitimate criticism to learn from, and how to not just ignore the haters, but how to manage them. The book helps put all communication, whether on or offline, into perspective and helps you to become a better communicator yourself. My goal with the book is that when someone reads something anti-social that demotivates them, a friend can recommend 'Dealing With Disrespect' as something that can help put things in perspective. Question: How long did it probably take the narrator to write his book? Options: - 5 days - 10 minutes - not enough information - A year === The correct answer is
A year
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