Cosplay Girls

Because I love them. More Cosplay Girls. Enjoy.

R.I.P.: Neil Armstrong

NEIL ARMSTRONG (August 5, 1930 – August 25, 2012)

Neil Alden Armstrong (August 5, 1930 – August 25, 2012) was an American astronaut, test pilot, aerospace engineer, university professor and United States Naval Aviator. He was the first person to walk on the Moon. Before becoming an astronaut, Armstrong was a United States Navy officer and had served in the Korean War. After the war, he served as a test pilot at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics High-Speed Flight Station, now known as the Dryden Flight Research Center, where he logged over 900 flights. He graduated from Purdue University and the University of Southern California.

A portrait of Armstrong taken November 20, 1956, while he was a test pilot at the NACA High-Speed Flight Station at Edwards Air Force Base, California.

A participant in the U.S. Air Force’s Man In Space Soonest and X-20 Dyna-Soar human spaceflight programs, Armstrong joined the NASA Astronaut Corps in 1962. His first spaceflight was the NASA Gemini 8 mission in 1966, for which he was the command pilot, becoming one of the first U.S. civilians in space. On this mission, he performed the first manned docking of two spacecraft with pilot David Scott.

Neil Armstrong in 1969

Armstrong’s second and last spaceflight was as mission commander of the Apollo 11 moon landing in July 1969. On this mission, Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended to the lunar surface and spent 2½ hours exploring, while Michael Collins remained in orbit in the Command Module. Armstrong was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Richard Nixon along with Collins and Aldrin, the Congressional Space Medal of Honor by President Jimmy Carter in 1978, and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2009.

The Apollo 11 crew portrait. Left to right are Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin.

On August 25, 2012, Armstrong died in Cincinnati, Ohio, at the age of 82 due to complications from blocked coronary arteries.

“That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind”

Text and Photos: Wikipedia. Read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Armstrong

FLY ME TO THE MOON

“Fly Me to the Moon” is a popular standard song written by Bart Howard in 1954. It was originally titled “In Other Words”, and was introduced by Felicia Sanders in cabarets. The song became known popularly as “Fly Me to the Moon” from the first line of the B verse, and after a few years the publishers changed the title to that officially.

Quincy Jones presents platinum copies of “Fly Me to the Moon” to Senator John Glenn and Apollo 11 Commander Neil Armstrong.

Frank Sinatra’s 1964 recording was played by the astronauts of Apollo 10 on their lunar-orbital mission and again on the moon itself by the astronaut Buzz Aldrin during the Apollo 11 landing.

Sing it again, Frank!

Famous Faces

German company teNeues published a book called “Famous Faces”, with the concept of its images made by Takkoda, an English shop which markets various types of gifts where pets are protagonists. The referent are great personalities of History, music, movies and television. Fun trying is to connect some famous to an image.

The End of Multiply as We Know It

WHAT IS MULTIPLY (OR WHAT IT WAS…)
Multiply was a social networking service with an emphasis on allowing users to share media – such as photos, videos and blog entries – with their “real-world” network. The website was launched in March 2004 and is privately held with backing by VantagePoint Venture Partners, Point Judith Capital, Transcosmos, and private investors. Multiply has over 11 million registered users. The company was headquarterd in Boca Raton, Florida but moved to Jakarta, Indonesia early in 2012 and recently announced intentions to switch to e-commerce, dropping the social networking aspect entirely. Quantcast estimates Multiply has 3.5 million monthly U.S. unique visitors.

On Multiply, a user’s network was made up of their direct contacts, as well as others who are closely connected to them through their first-degree relationships. Additionally, users were encouraged to specify the nature of their relationship with one another, making it possible to share content with their entire network of closely related people, or subsets thereof including friends, family, professional contacts, and so on.

Multiply Announces Closure of Social Networking Sites

An official announcement by Multiply’s CEO, Stefan Magdalinski, was made on August 9, 2012, that the social networking portion of Multiply would be discontinued, including hosted blogs, videos, photos and messaging, in order to focus solely on e-commerce. From Wikipedia: Multiply.

For the last 7 years and half I used the social services of Multiply to build a personal site – mkenobi.multiply – and a Discussion Group of Cinema Cult – cultmovies.multiply – there, both in Portuguese because I’m from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I spent thousand of hours of work online posting in these two Multiply pages, I made some friends on there and I have a fluent social network too. I chose to use Multiply and not Facebook, Twitter or Orkut, because the tools offered by Multiply are amazing, like the possibility to manipulated the HTML of the page as you wish. Now, came a Mister from nowhere to tell me and to my buddies that all of that is to be finished at December 1st. What do you do if someone from hell tells you that Facebook, Twitter, MSN or Orkut will be closed forever???

You can read the full stab letter below, if you wish:

“Hello. Stefan here, writing you from Multiply HQ in Jakarta, Indonesia.

As most of you are probably aware, Multiply’s mission has evolved over the past year and a half to become the biggest and most beloved ecommerce marketplace in two very exciting markets, Indonesia and the Philippines. As our focus has shifted, we have reviewed all of our operations, and made some decisions that will affect everyone here.

From December 1st, we will unfortunately no longer be able to support Multiply in its current form – notably we will be removing the social networking and content sharing part of Multiply (photos, videos, blogs, social messaging, etc.). We have decided to discontinue providing and hosting these services, as we have concluded that other Internet sites who are committed to social networking services will do a better job serving you than we can.

For our existing users of social networking features, we will be providing easy ways for you to either download your stuff (photos, blogs, content, etc), or migrate it to other online services. We’ll announce the precise details shortly. It will be your choice whether to download, migrate or just let your content lapse (and get deleted).
For our existing ecommerce users (both buyers and sellers) in Indonesia and the Philippines, there will be no action required.

Regarding any existing Multiply Premium subscriptions we will refund any unused balance, and apologize for any inconvenience this will cause. Please contact customer service to request a refund. Note that this is for Multiply Premium, not the ecommerce related Multiply Trust product.

I am aware of how disruptive this news may be, and understand the disappointment that it may cause. Ultimately this was a business decision, critical to our to success moving forward. Instead, we are excited to pursue our own mission to give the 350 million consumers in Indonesia and the Philippines a great way to buy and sell items online. Our singular focus now is for Multiply to retain its status as a vibrant e-commerce destination in Southeast Asia in the years ahead.

I suspect that many of you will not like this news, and am sorry to have to deliver it now. I hope that you will be able to understand the reasons for our decision and thank you for being a part of the Multiply community over the past eight years.

Stef”

Now You can read my two comments about this disappointing news, published there:

“What the hell… I believed on you for the last 8 years, I chose Multiply and not Orkut, Twitter or Facebook… and now you came here to say all of these bullshit? All friends, time, posts that I made and published here will be lost like tears in rain? What a miss of time… Please, change this decision. And migrate? Migrate for where??? All you there are out of mind…”

“I’ve downloaded and saved all the things that I posted on my site http://mkenobi.multiply.com and my created group http://cultmovies.multiply.com in my PC, and I have two blogs on WordPress under the same nick here. All these contents will be posted on WordPress soon. By me, you Stefan and all your stupid crew can go to hell with the Multiply new format. You are shooting in your own feet and will make a lot of shit, but who cares with you??? I’ll see you in Hell.”

I’m very sad about it but life must go on. Even the virtual life…

Re-Post: The Search for Afghan Girl

NOTES FOR THE RE-POST:
I don’t use to re-post, but this is one of my favourites of all time here. I love the History of the Afghan Girl since when I saw her picture in the 80’s. The videos posted on YouTube were blocked, but I was able to import them from YouTube to my Multiply account, by the URL of the videos. After took the video to Multiply, I opened the Firefox and downloaded the 4 videos using the Mozilla Download Helper to my PC. At next, I upload the 4 videos to my account on Vimeo and posted the URL on this blog. Was hard but sucessfully. That’s a beautiful History of life that must be known. Sharbat Gula aka “the Afghan Girl”…

Original post date 31 January 2012: https://marciokenobi.wordpress.com/2012/01/31/the-afghan-girl/

SHARBAT GULA, THE AFGHAN GIRL

Front cover of the June 1985 issue of National Geographic Magazine

Sharbat Gula (born ca. 1972) is an Afghan woman who was the subject of a famous photograph by journalist Steve McCurry. Gula was living as a refugee in Pakistan during the time of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan when she was photographed. The image brought her recognition when it was featured on the cover of the June 1985 issue of National Geographic Magazine at a time when she was approximately 12 years old.

In 1984 journalist Steve McCurry photographed 12-year old Sharbat Gula in the Nasir Bagh refugee camp in Pakistan.

Pashtun by ethnicity, Sharbat Gula was orphaned during the Soviet Union’s bombing of Afghanistan and sent to the Nasir Bagh refugee camp in Pakistan in 1984. Her village was attacked by Soviet helicopter gunships sometime in the early 1980s. The Soviet strike killed her parents — forcing her, her siblings and grandmother to hike over the mountains to the Nasir Bagh refugee camp in neighboring Pakistan. She married in the late 1980s and returned to Afghanistan in 1992. Sharbat Gula had three daughters: Robina, Zahida, and Alia. A fourth daughter died in infancy. Sharbat Gula has expressed the hope that her girls will receive the education she was never able to complete.

Gula was known throughout the world simply as “the Afghan Girl” until she was formally identified in early 2002.

At the Nasir Bagh refugee camp in 1984, Sharbat Gula’s photograph was taken by National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry on Kodachrome color slide film, with a Nikon FM2 camera and Nikkor 105mm F2.5 lens. The pre-print photo retouching was done by Graphic Art Service, based in Marietta, Georgia. Sharbat Gula was one of the students in an informal school within the refugee camp; McCurry seized a rare opportunity to photograph Afghan women and captured her image.

Although her name was not known, her picture, titled “Afghan Girl”, appeared on the June 1985 cover of National Geographic. The image of her face, with a red scarf draped loosely over her head and with her piercing sea-green eyes staring directly into the camera, became a symbol both of the 1980’s Afghan conflict and of the refugee situation worldwide. The image itself was named “the most recognized photograph” in the history of the magazine. The identity of the Afghan Girl remained unknown for over 17 years; Afghanistan remained largely closed to Western media until after the removal of the Taliban government by American troops and local allies in 2001. Although McCurry made several attempts during the 1990s to locate her, he was unsuccessful.

Sharbat Gula, April 2002

In January 2002, a National Geographic team traveled to Afghanistan to locate the subject of the now-famous photograph. McCurry, upon learning that the Nasir Bagh refugee camp was soon to close, inquired of its remaining residents, one of whom knew Sharbat Gula’s brother and was able to send word to her hometown.

The team finally located Sharbat Gula, then around the age of 30, in a remote region of Afghanistan; she had returned to her native country from the refugee camp in 1992. Her identity was confirmed using biometric technology, which matched her iris patterns to those of the photograph with almost full certainty. She vividly recalled being photographed — she had been photographed on only three occasions: in 1984 and during the search for her when a National Geographic producer took the identifying pictures that led to the reunion with Steve McCurry.

Sharbat had never seen her famous portrait before it was shown to her in January 2002.

The Photographer Steve McCurry. Official Site: http://stevemccurry.com/

Source:
National Geographic
Wikipedia
Thanks to my buddy Tormendadepedos for sharing the photo sharbat-gula-2

YOUTUBE IS BLOCKING A LOT OF VIDEOS LIKE THESE, BUT YOU CAN SEE “THE SEARCH FOR THE AFGHAN GIRL” ON VIMEO:
PART 1/4:

PART 2/4:

PART 3/4:

PART 4/4: