Twelfth Night, or What You Will (mobi) Get it now!

i thought it was a good story. it was not more than i expected, and it was not less. it was the same sort of shakespearian writing, and folger does a pretty good job of defining terms. as usual, i loved how folger put famous quotes at the end of the book, because i find that quoting shakespeare is a lot of fun. the story wasn't actually that interesting, though. kind of boring, since the reader can sort of guess the ending to the play. i agree with critics that this wasn't one of shakespeare's best plays. my favorite quote is the love rhyme that cesario does for olivia.Get more detail about Twelfth Night, or What You Will (mobi).

The Dramatic Writer's Companion: Tools to Develop Characters, Cause Scenes, and Build Stories Buy Now

I'm currently working my way through the exercises in this book. While it's geared toward playwrights and screenwriters rather than musical writers, I've found it very
valuable in helping me through places in my project where I've felt snagged- or where I feared I'd written myself into a brick wall. I've done 9 of the 66 exercises so far, and each one opened up new character insights and ideas for dramatic action for me. I feel like my story is alive again, and I've made some discoveries about it that are surprising to me. The exercises are simple, and most of them can be done in about 15 minutes. Amazing that 15 minutes following a few targeted questions can shift my perception about what I'm working on. I highlight a lot, and flag pages that I find helpful, and my copy of this book has a lot of color and fringe.Get more detail about The Dramatic Writer's Companion: Tools to Develop Characters, Cause Scenes, and Build Stories.

The Ballet Companion: A Dancer's Guide to the Technique, Traditions, and Joys of Ballet Order Now

I purchased this book as a new dancer, looking to have tips and pointers that many of the students had learned after years of practice and, mainly, just a glossary of the ballet terms and their meaning. I ended up purchasing three books, this being the best book by far. This book included much helpful information from a historical perspective, quick tips, and further information on ballet whether you are an aspiring dancer or just a viewer. This makes the perfect gift for the young and old girl/boy who is interested in the dance world.

For reference: It is about 8 by 9.5 inches, very beautiful thick silk pages, has a ballet pink ribbon for a bookmark. Perfect gift that could pass off as collector's edition.Get more detail about The Ballet Companion: A Dancer's Guide to the Technique, Traditions, and Joys of Ballet.

Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 Classroom in a Book Decide Now

Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 CIB

I have used Premiere infrequently over the years since version 5 and it was time for a refresher and to become acquainted with the new features. The last Premiere CIB book I purchased was 5.0 (1998).

The book touches on a wide range of key features in a concise manner. If greater depth is needed, the book refers the reader to additional resources. I felt that the range of topics covered and the depth of treatment was good. This book is targeted at beginning and intermediate Premiere users and is not intended to make anyone an expert.

I completed almost all of the exercises and felt that the book fulfilled its mission and was well worth the cost and the time/effort.

I recommend that when copying the DVD to your hard drive, you place it in the recommended location. I have a separate Books & Training folder on my D: drive and copied the DVD there. Every time I opened a project for the first time the "Where is file" dialog opened. Also, this non-standard location caused some Dynamic Link exercises to produce unsatisfactory results and display the red Media Offline image.

Re the complaints by some of the early reviewers regarding the files on the DVD, I recall only one switch setting (p. 262, noted below) which was incorrect. I received my copy March 9, 2010.

While some may quibble whether all of the items below are errata, my frustration was sufficient to knock off one star for the book. When the Adobe software is brought into the mix, my frustration would cause me to knock off two stars.

I have submitted my errata list to Adobe Press.
=================
Errata

The AdobePress & Peachpit errata list contains only one item (this was already corrected in my printing [ISBN-13: 978-0-321-57385-8, 9 8 7 6 5 4 3]):

Page 252: Step 2 should read "Open the Lesson 13-2 Working sequence."

My errata list:

p. 34, Retakes: "Add Shot Placeholder" -> "Add Take Placeholder"

p. 104, step 2 (at top of page): The image should show the gap after writers2.avi, which was created by p. 102, step 8. Either that or Ripple Delete needs to be applied to the gap.

p. 191, Order counts: "works from bottom to top" -> "are applied top to bottom"

....Explanation: Either the statement is incorrect as written or I am misinterpreting what "works from" is supposed to mean.

p. 242, step 12: (See errata for p.263)

p. 262, step 5: In the Practice sequence of Lesson 14-2.prproj the Toggle Track Output of the Audio 1 track has been set (unintentionally) to not output the track (i.e., the Toggle is blank rather than displaying a speaker icon). It is necessary to click Toggle Track Output to hear the track.

p. 262, step 6: To duplicate the image shown below Step 6: Note that to keep the audio panned to the right after the second keyframe you will have to change it to a Hold keyframe. The alternative is to create a third keyframe at the end of the clip. Otherwise, the pan will return to center by the end of the clip.

p. 263: Note (in margin): An alternative cause of not hearing all 6 channels is that Edit > Preferences > Audio Hardware > Default Device needs to be set to something other than Premiere Pro WDM Sound.

....Explanation: For my Creative Audigy 2 I had to set the Default Device to Creative ASIO. Win7 64-bit.

p. 265, step 2: "...by clicking Channel Volume." -> "...by clicking Volume:Level."
p. 265, step 3: "Select Left." -> "Select Left from the Channel Volume entry."

p. 338, steps 4-6: Player controls may be missing from Adobe Reader on Vista x64 or Win7 x64. Apparently there is a bug related to Adobe Reader/Quicktime/Windows_x64.

....Details as of March 25, 2010: I found references to this problem starting in November 2008, but I gave up researching/testing fixes because I do not intend to use Clip Notes anyway. My config: Win7 x64, Adobe Reader 9.3.1 (the latest), and Quicktime 7.6.5 (the latest).

p. 342, step 5: If you didn't copy the CIB DVD files in the recommended folder, you will encounter the red "Media offline" image. Click the Project panel, press ~ to make it full screen, and you will see that the media is offline (also indicated by the file icon). Right-click on the file icon for each of the three offline files and select "Link media.." as was discussed in a previous lesson. Press ~ again to return to normal view.

p. 357, step 5: "...select the lower third/ae_practice composition..." -> "...select the lower third composition..."

....Explanation: The "/ae_practice" suffix appears in the Project panel after import, but not in the Import Composition dialog box.

p. 360, step 4, second paragraph: "You may need to render the sequence in Adobe Premiere Pro to set it play back smoothly." -> "You will probably need to render..."

....Explanation: As originally written this seems a little disingenuous. Maybe if you perform the playback on a supercomputer you will not have to render it to see it play smoothly. It took 4 minutes 22 seconds to render the 29 seconds of the DV-quality sequence. My config: Asus P6X58D motherboard, stock i7-920 2.67GHz (4 actual processors; 8 virtual processors), 12GB 1600 memory, no RAID 0. I am considering the purchase a 1920x1080 camcorder but render times like this for DV make me question the wisdom of doing so.

p. 365, step 3: "Adobe Premiere Pro offers nine export options..." -> "Adobe Premiere Pro offers at least five export options..."

p. 369, step 6: "The export will be added to Adobe Media Encoder." -> "An Export Frame dialog box will open with the frame number appended to the file name. Click OK."
p. 369, step 7: Delete this step.

p. 372, step 1: "To begin, open the Format menu..." -> "Export the same sequence as in the previous exercise. To begin, open the Format menu..."

p. 374, step 5: "...is selected and click OK." -> "...is selected."
p. 374, step 6: "Name the file and click Save." -> "Name the file and click OK."

p. 374, steps 7-10: (bugs in Adobe Media Encoder or Device Central?) The video was frozen at the first frame while the audio played correctly. The player controls did not work. Note that selecting Fullscreen Mode in step 8 will rotate the video but not the phone so you need to click the CCW rotation icon near the bottom of the window.

p. 382, step 3: "Name this chapter marker Dixie." -> "Double-click on the marker icon or, if the Current Time Indicator is still over the marker icon, press * on the numeric keypad to open the Marker dialog box. Name this chapter marker Dixie and press OK."

....Explanation: While creating numbered markers was presented earlier in the book, I don't recall any training on opening and using the Marker dialog.

p. 389, step 5: If you didn't copy the CIB DVD files in the recommended folder, you will encounter the red "Media offline" image. Unlike Premiere, Encore does not have a feature to locate assets missing from a Premiere project.

p. 391, step 3. Encore hung while switching to Blu-Ray. Switched to Premiere to shut it down and it hung. Windows Task Manager would not start so I could not shut down Encore and Premiere down. Had to perform a hardware reset. My system has been very reliable so I suspect that Dynamic Link is fragile and that going back and forth between Premiere/AfterEffects/Encore in the preceding lessons had pushed it too far. Rather than re-doing the entire Encore chapter from scratch I gave up with one page of the book to go.

With the frequent errors toward the end of the book I got the impression that either a different writer worked on those chapters or the testers were getting weary or sections were extracted from a previous version of CIB.

==================
Premiere Pro CS4 bugs/inconveniences which you may encounter (version PP4.2.1 on Win7 x64):

o Checkbox "Display only exact filename matches" in the "Where is the file" dialog box has no effect. Works correctly on XP x32.

o The Effects Control panel does not honor the standard keyboard shortcut of entering time from the numeric keypad. If you want to go to a specific time in the Timeline, Program Monitor, Source Monitor, or Reference Monitor you can simply enter the time (no punctuation (e.g., ; or .) needed). But this does not work when the Effects Control panel has focus. (Note that if one or more clips are selected when using this technique, the clips are moved so that the in point of the first clip aligns with the entered time.)

o Activating the Effects panel does not place the cursor in the search field. This is probably a minor issue if you select the Effects panel with the mouse, but it is more of an inconvenience if you got there via Shift+7.

o The image on External Devices (Program Monitor > Playback Settings) is not updated real time while manipulating an effect in Effect Controls while the Program Monitor > Display Mode is set to one or more of the Vectorscope/waveform monitors. The work around is to leave the Program Monitor set to Composite Video and set the Reference Monitor (Window > Reference Monitor) to display the Vectorscope/waveform monitors.

o Applying the Reverb effect to a 5.1 submix only outputs to the Front Left and Front Right channels, that is, only the two leftmost VU columns in the mixer display for the Master bus display activity. (I tried a variation on Lesson 14-5: add a 5.1 submix, direct Audio 6 and Audio 7 to that new submix, and add the Reverb effect. With Reverb bypassed everything is fine; with Reverb enabled, there is no output. Maybe Premiere is using the stereo version of Reverb rather than the 5.1 version.).


Get more detail about Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 Classroom in a Book.

Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste (33 1/3) Right now

Conversational and contemplative, this book inspired so many wonderful conversations between my girlfriend that we fired our couples' therapist and became Carl Wilson's Facebook friends instead. With Let's Talk About Love, Wilson has brought me and my gal closer and helped me to better explain my soft spot for certain Celine Dion songs. Highly recommended!Get more detail about Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste (33 1/3).

Lowest Price Basilica: The Splendor and the Scandal: Building St. Peter's

The book is a great romp through 200 critical years of European history using the building of St. Peter's as the focus. It is entirely readable, entertaining, and revelatory.

Ms. Scotti gets the basics right as implied in her subtitle, "The Splendor and The Scandal." Her story leaves us with the question, "How can we divorce ethics from beauty?"

Whether or not the building of St. Peter's caused the Protestant Reformation, the author counterposes the absolute corruption responsible for the construction of the Basilica. While she correctly states that modern historians are kinder to the Renaissance popes than were critics of their own day (such as Erasmus), she leaves no doubt about the immense personal ambition and lust for power that motivated the construction of St. Peter's.

The book gives us a good insight into the unbelievable scale of corruption of the Renaissance Church, with its clergy brazenly using spiritual powers for material and personal gain. For example, Ms. Scotti gives us a brief but vivid picture of Pope Julius II leading his troops and an army of cardinals and clergy in his military campaign to re-take the Papal States, brandishing threats of excommunication and interdict.

I first visited St. Peter's in 1980 as a Catholic priest, suspended for publishing my book, The Human Church, which called for the democratization of the Church. In the book I argued that there was no theological reason why the Church had to be set up on monarchical lines like the Roman government. Democracy would be much more amenable to its purpose and mission. As history has repeatedly shown, the monarchical, top-down, structure is both corrupt and corrupting.

I found St. Peter's immense and awesome, but I did not find it beautiful. That, and all the fountains and monuments around Rome constructed by popes, I saw as tribute to their quest for personal power and empire. Their breathtaking arrogance is reflected in the inscription across the facade of St. Peter's: "IN HONOR OF THE PRINCE OF THE APOSTLES PAUL V BORGHESE BY NAME SUPREME ROMAN PONTIFF 1612 SEVENTH YEAR OF HIS PONTIFICATE."

The popes whose portraits Ms. Scotti paints are often larger-than-life people of often immense energy and brilliance who used the project of St. Peter's, not only as an answer to the Protestants, but also as the focus of building of a new Rome, which had been devastated by neglect and the sack of the city in 1527. While they may have been effective as CEOs, we have to ask, as Luther asked, "Is that really their job?"

The fact that St. Peter's still functions as the symbol of the Roman Church shows there is much more reform that remains to be done.
Get more detail about Basilica: The Splendor and the Scandal: Building St. Peter's.

Low Price Canon 50D: From Snapshots to Great Shots

Nice book really helps to improve your experience with 50D. Comes in addition to Canon official user's manual - needs a lot of reading. Healpful!Get more detail about Canon 50D: From Snapshots to Great Shots.