Stephen

Stephen or Steven /ˈstiːvən/ is a masculine first name, derived from the Greek name Στέφανος (Stéfanos), in turn from the Greek word "στέφανος", meaning "wreath, crown, honour, reward", literally "that which surrounds or encompasses". In ancient Greece, a wreath was given to the winner of a contest (from which the crown, symbol of rulers derived). The use of the noun was first recorded in Homer's Iliad. The name is significant to Christians: according to the Book of Acts in the New Testament, Saint Stephen was a deacon who was stoned to death and is regarded as the first Christian martyr. The name has many variants, which include Stephan, Stevan, Stefan and Stevon.

In Middle English, the name Stephen or Stephan was pronounced as a bi-syllabic word — Step-hen or Step-han — much like a Scandinavian surname. Steve was pronounced as it is in Modern English. This etymological usage began a decline in the mid-19th century.

Steve is the common short form, while various diminutives such as Stevie and Ste are also used. Many family names are derived from Stephen: the most common are Stephens/Stevens and Stephenson/Stevenson (others include Stephen, Stephan, Staphan, Stefan, Stevin and Stever).

Adam and Joe (radio show)

Adam and Joe is a Sony Award winning radio show on BBC Radio 6 Music presented by Adam and Joe - comedians Adam Buxton and Joe Cornish. The show began in October 2007 and ran for three hours in a Saturday morning slot, originally from 9:00am to 12:00pm before moving to 10:00am to 1:00pm. After a hiatus from 26 December 2009, the series returned for three months on 2 April 2011 on BBC Radio 6 Music. The show also briefly returned in late 2012 with Edith Bowman replacing Joe Cornish as Adam's co-presenter.

History

Filling in for Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington, Adam and Joe first appeared on the London-only radio station XFM in 2003, leading to a series of popular podcasts. They remained at the station for three years, with their final show broadcast on Christmas Eve 2006.

In August 2007, they presented the BBC Radio 6 Music weekday morning slot for two weeks, filling in for Shaun Keaveny. This led to their own Saturday breakfast show, starting 27 October 2007, signed for a 1-year contract. In October 2008, their contract was extended for another year.

Stephen (surname)

Stephen is a surname of Scottish and German origin. It is a reasonably common surname, but is usually found as a first name. The German variant is thought to have originated from the German-speaking world as (Von) Stephan.

Stephen is the 3,845 most common surname in the USA.

MacStèaphain (Scottish Gaelic) Stephen is a sept of the clan MacTavish. It is believed that Stephens from North East Scotland (Morayshire, Banffshire, and Aberdeenshire) south of the Moray Firth are descended from a Viking named Tarben whose longship landed in Banffshire in the late 10th century CE. His name was Christianized to Stephen.

Notable people with the surname

Bone (surname)

People with the surname Bone include:

Shades of white

Shades of white are colors that differ only slightly from pure white. Variations of white include what are commonly termed off-white colors, which may be considered part of a neutral color scheme.

In color theory, a shade is a pure color mixed with black (or having a lower lightness). Strictly speaking, a “shade of white” would be a neutral gray. This article is also about off-white colors that vary from pure white in hue, and in chroma (also called saturation, or intensity).

Colors often considered "shades of white" include, cream, eggshell, ivory, Navajo white, and vanilla. Even the lighting of a room, however, can cause a pure white to be perceived as off-white.

Off-white colors were pervasively paired with beiges in the 1930s, and especially popular again from roughly 1955 to 1975.

Whiteness measures the degree to which a surface is white in colorimetry.

Web colors

Below is a chart showing the computer web color shades of white. An achromatic white is a white color in which the red, green, and blue codes are exactly equal. The web colors white and white smoke are achromatic colors. A chromatic shade of white is a white color in which the red, green, and blue codes are not exactly equal, but are close to each other, which is what makes it a shade of white.

Flexi disc

The flexi disc (also known as a phonosheet or Soundsheet, a trademark) is a phonograph record made of a thin, flexible vinyl sheet with a molded-in spiral stylus groove, and is designed to be playable on a normal phonograph turntable. Flexible records were commercially introduced as the Eva-tone Soundsheet in 1962, and were very popular among children and teenagers and mass-produced by the state publisher in the Soviet government.

History

Before the advent of the compact disc, flexi discs were sometimes used as a means to include sound with printed material such as magazines and music instruction books. A flexi disc could be moulded with speech or music and bound into the text with a perforated seam, at very little cost and without any requirement for a hard binding. One problem with using the thinner vinyl was that the stylus's weight, combined with the flexi disc's low mass, would sometimes cause the disc to stop spinning on the turntable and become held in place by the stylus. For this reason, most flexi discs had a spot on the face of the disc for a coin, or other small, flat, weighted object to increase the friction with the turntable surface and enforce consistent rotation. If the turntable's surface is not completely flat, it is recommended that the flexi disc be placed on top of a full sized record.