Lecture Description

Professor Merriman lists the books on the syllabus, and offers a brief précis of each of them. Three of the principal themes of the course will be national identity, linguistic identity, and the consequences of the two world wars. Although the course will consider some well-known historical figures, such as Hitler and de Gaulle, it will also examine the individual histories of ordinary people.
Course Description

This course covers the emergence of modern France. Topics include the social, economic, and political transformation of France; the impact of France's revolutionary heritage, of industrialization, and of the dislocation wrought by two world wars; and the political response of the Left and the Right to changing French society.

Your bathroom should reflect your personality as much as any other room in your home. Think about the sort of person you are and your favourite colours and materials. Think about what you want from your bathroom because, unlike other rooms in the house, once the fixtures and fittings have been installed there is no going back.
One of the most important things to remember is to keep your bathroom as clutter-free as possible. Nothing compares to the calming influence of clear floors and clutter-free surfaces. Keep toiletries to minimum and store them properly.
A bathroom should be functional. Once you have decided on a style, you are ready to begin the makeover. If the project entails a change or additional fixtures and amenities: sink, toilets, tub, steam-shower units or custom cabinets; visit supplier web- sites, trade magazines, and tour showrooms and building centers before buying anything. Do your research.
You have many options in style, products, price and suppliers. Custom options are also available. Hand-made glass sinks, tiled shower units and antique chests transformed into sink cabinets are just a few of the options.
Begin your bathroom makeover from the floor. Go for thick terry bath mats. Next, it needs furniture and accessories.
Lighting in a bath is one of the most important design elements. It is imperative to have good lighting to make the space more functional. The mirror area should have ample light. Mood lighting is also necessary for those quite times when we need comfort and tranquility. Install a dimmer switch and be sure to accessorise the bath area with candles.
For maximum impact, you can also experiment with different colours. A small powder room can be more dramatic. Since this space is used only for short functional visits you can be more daring and creative. The size of the space also allows us to use different materials such as expensive wallpapers, custom painted faux walls or even fabric or metal panelled walls. Darker colours create personality and impact.
In a bathroom that is used by home owners and guests for daily grooming, makeup application and shaving, colour needs to be carefully selected. Wall colour reflects onto your skin therefore it is better to use neutral shades. You can choose from peach, mango, taupe to gray, or soft yellow.
The next step in your bathroom makeover is the detailing-small touches that provide efficient storage space. If there is room in your bath for a bench or chair, go for it. A ‘seat’ provides a place to sit and remove socks and shoes. Go for creative upholstery such as plush wild animal print.
If you enjoy lounging in the tub, but hate to miss the morning news, install a wall mounted television set, or a shower radio. A clock is also an important and most often overlooked bathroom accessory. Warming drawers and towel heaters are other excellent, albeit expensive, additions to the bath.
Display baskets of scented soaps, bath crystals, oils, natural sea sponges on shelves. They add a visually appealing touch. They also keep the bathroom scented. Drop a little scented oil onto the sponge and your bathroom will stay fragrant for a long time. Use baskets, glass shelves installed above the toilet and bottle holders to store extra towels and bottles of shampoos, conditioners, and bath oils.
So go ahead. Create your own luxurious home spa with a little style, imagination, creativity and a few simply sensational ideas!

If you post a lot of photos online it can sometimes be hard to keep track of them all.

Polar Rose is a service offering a centralised album for all your online photos. Until now Flickr and 23hq.com were supported but now the most popular photo sharing service of all has been added – Facebook. The key feature here is the way it aids the tagging of people in photos using face recognition.

After linking up to your account through Facebook Connect the service sucks in all your photos. Similar to the face recognition in many compact digital cameras, the service identifies the faces in each picture with a small box. It’s probably a little over-sensitive, occasionally marking creases in clothes as a face (as you can see in the photo below), but in general it’s quick, easy and accurate.

Manually helping it with faces that it’s not sure of only takes a few seconds. While it can take quite a long time to do this for a big collection of photos, each time you’re helping the system learn for the future. The downside, annoyingly, is that when you tag someone the service announces the fact on the Facebook news feed. There’s no way to turn this off, the app simply won’t start unless you grant publishing access to this feed-spamming promotional feature.

Could Polar Rose take off? It’s certainly useful for people with lots of disorganised photos. Most people tend not to tag their Flickr photos as religiously as they do their Facebook ones, so having a service to tag them and keep them viewable in one central location could be useful. The service has a social element, allowing you to view friends’ photo albums and share individual photos on Facebook, Twitter and Digg.

Polar Rose’s main competitor is Face.com, which also offers face recognition-based tagging for Facebook. Despite its far less memorable name, Polar Rose has the upper hand thanks to Flickr and 23hq.com support as well as its central, aggregated photo album.

It’s surprising that Facebook hasn’t brought face recognition technology in-house yet. Given its usefulness this seems a likely development for the future, leaving services like Polar Rose and Face.com on shaky ground.

wow.......amazing