Blender (software)

Blender is a professional free and open-source 3D computer graphics software product used for creating animated films, visual effects, art, 3D printed models, interactive 3D applications and video games. Blender's features include 3D modeling, UV unwrapping, texturing, raster graphics editing, rigging and skinning, fluid and smoke simulation, particle simulation, soft body simulation, sculpting, animating, match moving, camera tracking, rendering, video editing and compositing. Alongside the modeling features it also has an integrated game engine.

History

The Dutch animation studio Neo Geo developed Blender as an in-house application, with the primary author being software developer Ton Roosendaal. The name Blender was inspired by a song by Yello, from the album Baby. When Neo Geo was acquired by another company, Tod Roosendaal and Frank van Beek founded Not a Number Technologies (NaN) in June 1998 to further develop Blender, initially distributing it as shareware until NaN went bankrupt in 2002.

Minor Passions characters

The following are minor but notable fictional characters on the NBC/DirecTV soap opera Passions whose connections to the four major families are either weak or non-existent.

Norma Bates

For the character from the Psycho franchise, see Norma Bates (Psycho). Marianne Muellerleile (January 22, 2001 - August 5, 2008)

Norma Bates was introduced as the owner of a motel in 2001 that Tabitha Lenox and her companion, Timmy, fled to in order to escape the backlash from the release of Hidden Passions, a collection of Tabitha's memories that Timmy had compiled into a novel. Norma told Tabitha and Timmy that no one ever stopped at their hotel anymore, the reason for which the witch and doll later discovered — Norma was insane. She attempted to kill Tabitha with an axe while she showered, and the two later discovered that her father, with whom she had been conversing earlier, was dead — Norma had left his skeleton, dressed in his clothes, in a rocking chair. Timmy accidentally destroyed the skeleton, with only the skull surviving, and Norma swore to kill Timmy for hurting "Daddy". Tabitha and Timmy fled the motel.

Vulcano

Vulcano (Sicilian: Vurcanu) is a small volcanic island in the Tyrrhenian Sea, about 25 km (16 mi) north of Sicily and the southernmost of the eight Aeolian Islands. It is 21 km² (8 sq mi) in area, rises to 499 m (1,637 ft) above sea level, and contains several volcanic centers, including one of four active non-submarine volcanoes in Italy.

History

The Romans used the island mainly for raw materials, harvesting wood and mining alum and sulfur. This was the principal activity on the island until the end of the 19th Century.

When the Bourbon rule collapsed in 1860 (see Francis II of the Two Sicilies) a British man named James Stevenson bought the northern part of the island, built a villa, reopened the local mines and planted vineyards for grapes that would later be used to make Malmsey wine. Stevenson lived on Vulcano until the last major eruption on the island, in 1888. The eruption lasted the better part of two years, by which time Stevenson had sold all of his property to the local populace, and never returned to the island. The villa is still intact.

Volcano (1950 film)

Volcano (Italian title Vulcano) is a 1950 Italian drama film by the director William Dieterle and starring Anna Magnani. It was filmed on location on Salina Island, in the Aeolian Islands, and in Messina, Sicily, Italy.

The film is seen by some as a vehicle of revenge by Magnani against her estranged lover, the director Roberto Rossellini who had chosen Ingrid Bergman to star in his film series about marriage over her. Rossellini filmed his film Stromboli on the nearby volcanic island of Stromboli at the same time as Volcano was being made on Salina.

Both films were shot in similar locales in the Aeolian Islands only 12 miles apart; both actresses played independent-minded roles in a neorealist fashion; and both films were shot simultaneously. Life magazine wrote, "... in an atmosphere crackling with rivalry... Reporters were accredited, like war correspondents, to one or the other of the embattled camps.... Partisanship infected the Via Veneto (boulevard in Rome), where Magnaniacs and Bergmaniacs clashed frequently." However, Magnani still considered Rossellini the "greatest director she ever acted for".

Vulcano (band)

Vulcano is an extreme metal band from Santos, São Paulo, Brazil. Founded in 1981, it is one of the first Brazilian heavy metal bands of note; with reference to their influence on the South American black metal scene, Terrorizer reported that "many believe that Vulcano not only kick-started musical blasphemy in Brazil, but throughout the whole of Latin America". Vulcano is noted as an influence on Sepultura.

History

An extreme metal scene started developing in Brazil, eventually including bands such as Vulcano as well as bands like Sepultura and Sarcófago that became much better known internationally in the 1990s. However, unlike the development of extreme metal scenes in Europe and the United States, Brazil's extreme metal scene did not develop out of much of an existing metal scene, so musicians of early bands like Vulcano had to build a network to promote and support their live performances from scratch. It was also difficult to acquire standard performing equipment.

It was in this environment that Zhema Paul Magrão, Carli Cooper formed Vulcano in 1981. Due to their early date of formation, Vulcano was one of the first black metal / death metal bands in all of Latin America. Their first record "Om Pushne Namah", was released in 1983, and is different from most early extreme metal in that the lyrics were sung in Portuguese, not English. The release of this album also marks the departure of Jose Piloni (drums) from the band. In this early period, it was very difficult to secure live performances, and the band had to produce their own shows, and promotion was limited to pasting up posters, but Vulcano persevered, and moved forward in 1984 to release the demo Devil on My Roof.