High (David Hallyday song)
"High" is a 1988 song recorded by French artist David Hallyday. It was the second of the four singles from his debut studio album True Cool. Released in November 1988, the song was a hit in France, becoming David Hallyday's first number-one single.
Song information
The song was composed by Lisa Catherine Cohen and the music composed by the singer himself. As for the rest of the album, lyrics are in English-language. The music video was shot in a church, Hallyday playing the organ, while a chorus composed of women chanted 'high' during the refrains. With this vigorous song, Hallyday presents "a musical style at the joint of Californian rock and pop".
In France, the single debuted on the singles chart at #45 on November 19, 1988, climbed quickly and entered the top ten in its fourth week. It topped the chart for five consecutive weeks, then almost didn't stop to drop on the chart and totaled 15 weeks in the top ten and 23 weeks in the top 50. Although it was not certified by the SNEP, the French certifier, its sales made the song the 440th best-selling single of all time in France. The song was the most successful from the album True Cool and the second one in Hallyday's career, behind "Tu ne m'as pas laissé le temps".
High (The Blue Nile album)
High is the fourth studio album by Scottish band The Blue Nile, released on 30 August 2004 on Sanctuary Records. A single, "I Would Never", was released one week prior to the album: a second song, "She Saw the World", was made available as a promotional single, but never released officially.
"Soul Boy" had already been recorded by former Spice Girl Melanie C for her album Reason the previous year.
Critical reception
The album received generally favourable reviews, with many critics considering High to be a stronger album than their previous effort Peace at Last. AllMusic said "the Blue Nile have returned with a more balanced album [than Peace at Last] and Buchanan is broken-hearted again, thank the stars. He's been struggling with fatigue and illness and as selfish and inconsiderate as it sounds, it's brought the spark back to his writing... given the time to sink in, the album fits well in their canon."The Guardian believed that with High "the emotional commitment of Peace at Last is combined with the observational detachment of the earlier work... In pop, most people do their best work within five or six years. How extraordinary, then, that after more than two decades of activity, the Blue Nile remain on course, their range expanded, their focus more refined, unshaken in their determination to proceed at their own measured pace."
High (Knut Anders Sørum song)
"High" was the Norwegian entry in the Eurovision Song Contest 2004, performed in English by Knut Anders Sørum.
The song is a dramatic ballad, with Sørum expressing his desire to bring an unnamed person "high". The lyrics suggest that this person has been beset by problems, and that Sørum believes he can go some way to curing them.
As Norway had finished the Eurovision Song Contest 2003 in the top 10, the song was pre-qualified for the final. Here, it was performed third, following Austria's Tie Break with "Du bist" and preceding France's Jonatan Cerrada with "À chaque pas". At the close of voting, it had received 3 points, placing 24th (last) in a field of 24, thus requiring Norway to qualify through the semi-final at the next Contest.
The low score, and long wait before Norway scored any points at all, led Australian commentator Des Mangan to jokingly offer money for anyone prepared to vote for the country. Initially, this was "a thousand bucks", later climbing to "ten thousand bucks and my house". Mangan explained during this commentary that he did not want Norway to further extend its unwanted record of failing to record a point on the most occasions.
Affinity
Affinity may refer to:
Commerce, finance and law
Religion and belief
Science and technology
Johnny Alegre Affinity
The Johnny Alegre AFFINITY is a jazz group originating from the Philippines. It is led by self-taught Philippine guitarist-composer Johnny Alegre, together with bassist Colby de la Calzada, drummer Koko Bermejo, pianist Elhmir Saison and saxophonist Tots Tolentino. The ensemble first gathered in May 2002 at Manila’s Pink Noise Studios for Alegre’s composition, “Stones of Intramuros”, for inclusion in the jazz anthology CD, Adobo Jazz Vol. 1, and thereafter carried on as a working unit.
The band’s first public appearance in October of the same year for the Adobo Jazz album launch at the Monk’s Dream Jazz Bar heralded the AFFINITY’s reputation –as described by aficionados in the ensuing reviews— as “Manila’s Jazz Superband”, with a power trio at its core. For the remainder of the year, the group emerged in various guises and personnel variations, manned by a who’s who of luminaries from the Philippine jazz scene.
Affine transformation
In geometry, an affine transformation, affine map or an affinity (from the Latin, affinis, "connected with") is a function between affine spaces which preserves points, straight lines and planes. Also, sets of parallel lines remain parallel after an affine transformation. An affine transformation does not necessarily preserve angles between lines or distances between points, though it does preserve ratios of distances between points lying on a straight line.
Examples of affine transformations include translation, scaling, homothety, similarity transformation, reflection, rotation, shear mapping, and compositions of them in any combination and sequence.
If 
and 
are affine spaces, then every affine transformation 
is of the form 
, where 
is a linear transformation on and 
is a vector in . Unlike a purely linear transformation, an affine map need not preserve the zero point in a linear space. Thus, every linear transformation is affine, but not every affine transformation is linear.
