The Madcap Laughs is the debut solo album by the English singer-songwriter Syd Barrett. It was recorded after Barrett had left Pink Floyd in April 1968. The album had a chequered recording history, with work beginning in mid-1968, but the bulk of the sessions taking place between April and July 1969, for which five different producers were credited − including Barrett, Peter Jenner (1968 sessions), Malcolm Jones (early-to-mid-1969 sessions), and fellow Pink Floyd members David Gilmour and Roger Waters (mid-1969 sessions). Among the guest musicians are Willie Wilson from (Gilmour's old band) Jokers Wild and Robert Wyatt of the band Soft Machine.
The Madcap Laughs, released in January 1970 on Harvest in the UK, and on Capitol Records in the US, enjoyed minimal commercial success on release, reaching number 40 on the UK's official albums chart, while failing to hit the US charts. It was re-released in 1974 as part of Syd Barrett (which contained The Madcap Laughs and Barrett). The album was remastered and reissued in 1993, along with Barrett's other albums, Barrett (1970) and Opel (1988), independently and as part of the Crazy Diamond box set. A newly remastered version was released in 2010.
Feel is first album released by a Polish pop rock band Feel. The album has earned Diamond certification in Poland.
"Feel" (stylized as feel) is a smooth R&B song by Japanese singer and songwriter Kumi Koda. For the song, she worked closely with composer Hitoshi Shimono, who had composed the instrumental. The single is Kumi's sixth single in her 12 Singles Collection and charted at #1 on Oricon with 39,110 copies sold within the first week. As with some of the other singles released in the collection, feel was limited to 50,000 copies.
The song also became Koda Kumi's second song to have a chorus completely in English (first being 24, which was also written and composed by Hitoshi Shimono).
The music video for the single tied into the four others in the storyline: Candy feat. Mr. Blistah, you, Lies and Someday/Boys♥Girls.
The love interest in the music video was played by Shugo Oshinari. Shugo Oshinari is best known for his portrayals of Teru Mikami in the Death Note TV series and Takuma Aoi in Battle Royale II: Requiem.
As with the other 11 singles in this collection, this single cover represents a stylized version of a traditional dress from a culture; this time it draws its inspiration from Spain and the costume of matadors.
Swatch Internet Time (or beat time) is a decimal time concept introduced in 1998 by the Swatch corporation as part of their marketing campaign for their line of "Beat" watches.
Instead of hours and minutes, the mean solar day is divided up into 1000 parts called ".beats". Each .beat is equal to one decimal minute in the French Revolutionary decimal time system and lasts 1 minute and 26.4 seconds (86.4 seconds) in standard time. Times are notated as a 3-digit number out of 1000 after midnight. So, @248 would indicate a time 248 .beats after midnight representing 248/1000 of a day, just over 5 hours and 57 minutes.
There are no time zones in Swatch Internet Time; instead, the new time scale of Biel Meantime (BMT) is used, based on Swatch's headquarters in Biel, Switzerland and equivalent to Central European Time, West Africa Time, and UTC+01. Unlike civil time in Switzerland and many other countries, Swatch Internet Time does not observe daylight saving time.
Swatch Internet Time was announced on October 23, 1998, in a ceremony at the Junior Summit '98, attended by Nicolas G. Hayek, President and CEO of the Swatch Group, G.N. Hayek, President of Swatch Ltd., and Nicholas Negroponte, founder and then-director of the MIT Media Lab. During the Summit, Swatch Internet Time became the official time system for Nation1, an online country (supposedly) created and run by children.
"BEAT" is the fourth single from Japanese pop singer Kaela Kimura. It was released as the second single from her album, Circle, on October 5, 2005. It peaked at #7 on the Oricon charts.
In police terminology, a beat is the territory and time that a police officer patrols. Beat policing is based on traditional policing (late 19th century) and utilises the close relationship with the community members within the assigned beat to strengthen police effectiveness and encourage cooperative efforts to make a safer community. Beat police typically patrol on foot or bicycle which provides more interaction between police and community members.
Before the advent of personal radio communications, beats were organised in towns and cities to cover specific areas, usually shown on a map in the police station and given some sort of name or number. Officers reporting on duty would be allocated a beat by their sergeant and sometimes given a card indicating that the officer should be at a particular point at set times, usually half an hour, or forty-five minutes apart. The points would usually be telephone kiosks, police pillars or boxes, or perhaps public houses where it would be possible to phone the officer should he be needed to respond to an incident. The officer would remain at the point for five minutes and then patrol the area gradually making his way to the next point.
Semantic Technology Institute (STI) International is an association of global experts in semantics and services, located in Austria. It has members mostly from Europe, but also from South Korea, Malaysia, and Singapore.
STI International is governed by an executive board, and has an board of representatives of all members, plus several STI Fellows: Michael Brodie, Guus Schreiber, Jim Hendler, Mark Greaves, and Rudi Studer.
STI International is the organizer of several annual international conferences in semantic technologies and the future of the internet: the Extended (previously called European) Semantic Web Conference (ESWC) along with the ESWC Summer School on semantic technologies, and the Future Internet Symposium (FIS). The institute also initiates and organizes smaller events and symposia in Austria and worldwide.
The association owns a spin-off company, STI International Consulting und Research GmbH, which pursues the interests of the members in research (under the name STI Research) and in education/training (under the name Semsphere).