![]() ![]() A lot of Eragon’s sins got forgiven because Paolini was nineteen when the book came out and he’d started writing it at fifteen. But To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is annoying in such a specific way that I couldn’t pass it up: this is the most arrogant book I’ve ever read, and the arrogance is so utterly unearned that it’s kind of shocking. And I generally don’t write reviews of books I didn’t like. I’ve read a good number of objectively worse books this year. I admit it I bought it because I was morbidly curious about it. And then Paolini didn’t release another book for, like, nine years until this one appeared on the shelves. I liked Eragon a lot when I read it the first time and by the end of the series I was completely done with it. This is, in case you don’t know, the guy behind the “Inheritance Cycle,” the series of books that started with Eragon and got longer and shittier with each successive book. Before you even open the book, you know the main thing you need to know: Christopher Paolini is super fucking important. If I had bought the book from a bookstore, I very well might have put it back on the shelf, because this offends me to a degree that I’m honestly kind of surprised by. This is the only book I own that does not have the name of the book on the spine. Books by people far more important and far more successful than Christopher Paolini. It is a massive book.Īnd the spine, which Amazon tells me is 1.74 inches wide, features the word PAOLINI on it in the largest font possible and nothing else other than the publisher’s mark. Now, understand this: Stars is eight hundred and twenty-five pages of story with another 53 pages of (utterly unnecessary) appendices, a glossary, a timeline, and author’s notes tacked onto the end. Seriously, stare at it for a while it’s probably the best thing about the book. I’ll start with something positive: take a look at that cover, and bask in its gorgeousness for a moment. Gird your loins and adjust your expectations as necessary, because this is going to end up more as a review of Christopher Paolini than a review of his new book.
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![]() Microsoft said they wanted not just to license the image for use as XP's default wallpaper, but to buy all the rights to it. "Were they looking for an image that was peaceful? Were they looking for an image that had no tension?" Another image of O'Rear's titled Full Moon over Red Dunes, known as Red moon desert in Windows XP, was also considered as the default wallpaper, but was changed due to testers comparing it to buttocks. "I have no idea what were looking for," he recalls. In 2000, Microsoft's Windows XP development team contacted O'Rear through Corbis, which he believes they used instead of larger competitor Getty Images, also based in Seattle, because the former company is owned by Microsoft founder Bill Gates. He also submitted a vertical shot, which was available at the same time. Since it was not pertinent to the wine-country book, O'Rear made it available through Westlight (transferred to Corbis after its acquisition) as a stock photo, available for use by any interested party willing to pay an appropriate licensing fee. According to O'Rear, the image was not digitally enhanced or manipulated in any way. He took four shots and got back into his truck. "Everything was changing so quickly at that time." "I think that if I had shot it with 35 mm, it would not have nearly the same effect." While he was setting up his camera, he said it was possible that the clouds in the picture came in. "It made the difference and, I think, helped the Bliss photograph stand out even more," he said. O'Rear credits that combination of camera and film for the success of the image. To take the photo, O'Rear used a Mamiya RZ67 medium-format camera on a tripod, choosing Fujifilm's Velvia, a film often used among nature photographers and known to saturate some colors. He stopped near the Napa– Sonoma county line (approximately at 38☁4′58″N 122☂4′36″W / 38.2494400°N 122.4099124°W / 38.2494400 -122.4099124 ( Approximate location where Charles O'Rear pulled off the road to take the photo of Bliss) ) and pulled off the road. "There it was! My God, the grass is perfect! It's green! The sun is out there's some clouds," he remembered thinking. ĭriving along the Sonoma Highway ( California State Route 12 and 121) he saw the hill, free of the vineyards that normally covered the area they had been pulled out a few years earlier following a phylloxera infestation. He was particularly alert for a photo opportunity that day, since a storm had just passed over and other recent winter rains had left the area especially green. He was working with Irwin on a book about the wine country. Helena, California, in the Napa Valley north of San Francisco, to visit his girlfriend, Daphne Irwin (whom he later married), in the city, as he did every Friday afternoon. In January 1996, former National Geographic photographer O'Rear was on his way from his home in St. Microsoft chose the image because "it illustrates the experiences Microsoft strives to provide customers (freedom, possibility, calmness, warmth, etc.)." ĭue to the market success of Windows XP, over the next decade it was claimed to be the most viewed photograph in the world during that time. ![]() The image also became part of Microsoft's $200 million "Yes You Can" advertising campaign to promote their software, and has been the subject of many parodies. The image would eventually be chosen as the default wallpaper, resulting in the company acquiring the image and renaming it to Bliss. Two years following the acquisition, Microsoft's design team selected images to be used as wallpapers in Windows XP. Westlight was bought by Corbis in 1998, who digitized its best selling images. He sold it to Westlight for use as a stock photo titled Bucolic Green Hills. While it was widely believed later that the image was manipulated or even created with software such as Adobe Photoshop, O'Rear says it never was. Overview įormer National Geographic photographer Charles O'Rear, a resident of the nearby Napa Valley, took the photo on film with a medium-format Mamiya RZ67 camera while on his way to visit his girlfriend in 1996. It is estimated that billions of people have seen the picture, possibly making it the most viewed photograph in history. Charles O'Rear took the photo in January 1996 and Microsoft bought the rights in 2000. It is a virtually unedited photograph of a green hill and blue sky with white clouds in the Los Carneros American Viticultural Area of California's Wine Country. ![]() More basic features will be continuously added.Lock a backup to keep it safe from auto deletion.Optimized for Web Hosting/Shared Web Hosting.The pro version also supports Wasabi, pCloud, Backblaze and more are coming soon. 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WPvivid Backup Plugin offers backup, migration, and staging as basic features, and is integrating more and more elegant features, such as unused images cleaner, database snapshots etc.Ĭreate a staging site on a subdirectory to safely test WordPress, plugins, themes and website changes.Ĭlone and migrate a copy of WP site to a new host (a new domain), schedule backups, send backups to leading remote storage, clean unused images before backup and migration. ![]() Here are just some of the things you’ll learn about on my training course: Some of the topics listed below won’t be done in part 3 but it’s essential you can do them for when you start teaching. Many trainers and schools focus so much on getting you through the test that they forget to teach you important things you’ll need to know when you start working as a driving instructor. I’m going to teach you how to be a successful driving instructor. I’m not just going to teach you how to pass the part 3 exam. It’s not all bad though and you can pass, just don’t expect it to be easy and be sure to take plenty of good quality training. If it really goes badly then you will collapse, the pupil goes into meltdown and the members of the public will be shouting at you – all at once! I have known tests go like that. I heard of a pupil that was on a standards check and got so stressed that they stopped the car and marched off, leaving the door open and the instructor and examiner just sitting there! Pupils that can normally drive well suddenly start doing everything wrong and your whole lesson plan goes flying out of the window and sailing down the river! With experience, you can handle this but it’s tough when you’re new. You’ll see this a lot on driving tests but it’s the same in part 3. Then add the fact that learners can go into a meltdown when an examiner is sitting in the car. Your entire future, house and financial security depend on this test. See all my standards check videos (this page has everything!)Īs well as what’s listed above, add the pressure of knowing that you’ve spent thousands of pounds getting to this point.To help increase your chances of passing I’ve spent hours making many free part 3 videos. It’s not unusual to take at least 100 hours of tuition, spend hundreds of hours practising as a trainee and still fail your part 3. The reality is that 40 hours is nowhere near enough to be teaching. The DVSA set a minimum of 40 hours of training required (signed off by an ADI) before they’ll consider you for a trainee licence. I failed my first attempt and only just scraped through with the lowest grade on my second attempt. Those 800 hours came from working as a trainee instructor for roughly 6 hours a day, 6 days a week for 6 months. When I took my part 3 test I had done 60 hours with my trainer, spent 40 hours watching videos and had done over 800 hours of lessons with real learners. This is where you find out that becoming a driving instructor isn’t easy! The main reason people fail is that it’s very difficult to teach people to drive up to the standard required by the DVSA. See official DVSA ADI part 3 pass figures here. The part 3 test is very hard and the pass rate for it in Birmingham in 2020 was 27.9%. |