Love Reading Books

A portrait that sold at Christie's auction house for just $21,000 is thought by some scholars to be a lost work by Leonardo da Vinci. The portrait, which surfaced in 1998, appears to have come from a 500-year-old book titled "Sforziad."

That's according to British art historian Martin Kemp, who has made the da Vinci claim. Live Science reports:

The [portrait] appears to have come from a 500-year-old book containing the family history of the Duke of Milan. Art historian Martin Kemp, of the University of Oxford, believes the mystery [work], which appeared in 1998, is a portrait of the duke's daughter, created by da Vinci for her wedding book. …

The portrait is made on vellum, a specially prepared skin normally used for writing and printing. no work by da Vinci has been found on vellum before, though it was frequently used in books. Researchers believe the portrait came from a book, because three stitch holes are visible on the portrait's left margin. …

"The chance of identifying the vellum book it came from was pretty small, a needle in the haystack, one would say," Kemp told LiveScience. That was, until American art historian D.R. Edward Wright of the University of South Florida suggested that Kemp look at a set of books titled the "Sforziad."

Of the four copies of "Sfiorziad," one in Warsaw's National Library seemed to be missing this page, Kemp says, which was probably removed during a rebinding. Evidence that it comes from this book include the similarity of the page to the vellum of neighboring pages and the binding holes in the portrait — and da Vinci was an artist in the duke's residence from 1481-1499.

Other scholars say there is not compelling evidence to attribute the chalk-and-ink portrait to da Vinci. he has no known works on vellum, and a Vienna gallery that examined the piece concluded that it was created in the 19th century.

More about the artwork appears in the revised edition of Martin Kemp's book "Leonardo," coming in November from Oxford University Press.

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Photo: The portrait in question. Credit: LiveScience

Microsoft is urging businesses still stuck on Windows XP not to wait for Windows 8 and instead make the move toWindows 7 now.

In a blog posted Monday, Microsoft’s Rich Reynolds explained the need for companies to move to Windows 7 as Windows XP will no longer be supported after April 2014.

Though 2014 sounds like a long ways off, businesses typically need a fair amount of time for any type of major migration. Planning, testing, user training, and the actual rollout can easily chew up the better part of a year or sometimes more.

The ending of full support for XP means that Microsoft will no longer provide security fixes or other updates for the OS, leaving companies vulnerable to malware. And come 2014, it’s a safe bet that many a malware writer will specifically target holes in Windows XP knowing that the OS is no longer being patched.

Assuming Windows 8 is released by the end of 2012, that would give companies running XP a little more than a year to plan and deploy an entire migration to the new operating system, which could be cutting it very close.

To back up its advice, Microsoft cited a Gartner report called “Don’t Change your Windows 7 Plans because of Windows 8,” which urged companies now running XP to concentrate on their migrations to Windows 7 and not wait to switch to Windows 8.

Windows XP is 10 years old, yet it still holds a lot of traction among both individual and corporate users.

Recent stats from Net Applications show that although XP’s grip has loosened over the years, it continues to be the leading flavor of Windows with around a 50 percent market share. Microsoft also concedes that a fair number of users are hanging tight with XP.

“While more than 90 percent of you have said you’re committed to Windows 7 and Office 2010, many of you have many of your PCs still running Windows XP and Office 2003,” said Reynolds in the blog.” Moving to Windows 7 and Office 2010 today enables you to embrace the way we work today versus the way we worked 10 years ago.”

To help large businesses plan the leap to Windows 7 Microsoft offers a variety of online resources, including the TechNet Springboard series, the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, and the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack.

Despite its push to convince companies to jettison XP, Microsoft may still find a lot of holdouts. A survey of IT pros conducted in November found that half of them plan to stick with XP even after support is turned off in another two and a half years.

If you have been watching sports games such as Superbowl, you may have seen those huge ads that have been attached to fences. they may not be as animated as those that you see on screens, yet they still have the ability to create some impact to the owners of those businesses. After all, every time cameras roll and move across the benches, these ads on fences shall be seen.

When you get to see a fence, do not think that it will not be able to help you generate the kind of money and market growth for your business. in fact, you have a number of options that you can select:

1. get a tarpaulin. if you have a huge banner or a tarpaulin, you can use it for your fence advertising. All you need to do is to create holes on ends and tie these marketing materials right into the fences. You just need to make sure that you can successfully secure your banners, so they do not end up getting blown away immediately by the wind.

2. go for fence wraps. one of the most successful and popular fence advertising methods is the fence wrap. This is because it is very flexible. You can use it in different areas-from arenas down to construction sites. You can also pattern the fence wrap according to the shape of the fence itself. Fence can also cover the entire fence, which means you can have a very huge ad. your brand will then become very visible to a lot of pedestrians and even commuters. it will be hard for them to ignore your message.

When you are thinking of using a fence wrap, you may want to pick one that is made of a polystretch material. This way, it will not create a heavier wind load into the fence. The material also makes it easier for you to attach a logo and makes sure that it stays there for a long time. The colors can go through into the material. You do not have to worry about setting up fence wraps, as they are very easy to set up.

3. Print cloth. You can also make use of a cloth fabric, which you are going to attach directly into the fence. The good thing about it is that it’s considered to be less costly than fence wraps, and yet the effects are ultimately the same.

To add an image and text into the cloth, you may have to devise a procedure known as screen printing. This is considered as more economical, if you’re thinking of producing a lot of them. The quality produced is also better than those materials with digitally modified formats.

Regardless of the options you have picked, it’s important that you get to work with professionals only. choose a printing company that can be able to satisfy your fence advertising requirements while making sure that you don’t go beyond what is mandated by city and state laws on construction.

In Medieval Times knights would weir helmets into battle to protect their heads from oncoming blows.

The closed helmet covers the entire head and was seen mostly during the crusades. the closed helmet outdated the barbute in the 14th, or 15th Century. the closed helmet completely covered the head, and was usually seen with chainmail attached to the bottom of the helmet for further protection of the neck. the helmet normally had holes made on the front of the helmet while still being smelted, and as well as additional holes were made on the lower front of the helmet for breathing through the mouth. In 1120, the Order of the Temple adopted the closed helmet as one of the basic pieces of armor for the Knights Templar of the faction. -Wikipedia

Knights would also dawn a breastplate, weighing approximately 50 pounds. Although many of the breast plates were brutal pieces of brass put together, some breastplates designed for Kings were intricately designed.

A breastplate is a device worn over the torso to protect it from injury, as an item of religious significance, or as an item of status. a breastplate is sometimes worn by mythological beings as a distinctive item of clothing. -Wikipedia

Designed to be held in hand, the shield was made to protect blows that couldn’t be reached by the sword. So far, the heaviest medieval sword found was 22 pounds. Shields could be anything from a shrewd pieces of wood to yet another piece of brass.

A shield is a type of personal armor, meant to intercept attacks, either by stopping projectiles such as arrows or redirecting a blow from a sword, mace or battle axe to the side of the shield-bearer.

Shields vary greatly in size, ranging from large panels that protect the user’s entire body to small models (such as the buckler) that were intended for hand-to-hand-combat use. Shields also vary a great deal in thickness; whereas some shields were made of relatively deep, absorbent, wooden planking to protect soldiers from the impact of spears and crossbow bolts, others were thinner and lighter and designed mainly for deflecting blade strikes.

In prehistory and during the era of the earliest civilizations, shields were made of wood, animal hide, woven reeds or wicker. In classical antiquity, the Migration Period and the Middle Ages, they were normally constructed of poplar, lime or another split-resistant timber—covered in some instances with leather and/or reinforced with a metal boss, rim or banding—and carried by foot soldiers, knights and cavalry.

Shape wise, depending on time and place, shields could be round, oval, square, rectangular, triangular or scalloped. sometimes they took on the form of kites, flatirons or figures-of-eight, or had rounded tops on a rectangular base with perhaps an eyehole inserted. the shield was held by a central grip or by straps which went over or around the user’s arm

Often shields were decorated with a painted pattern or an animal representation and these designs developed into systematized heraldic devices during high-medieval times for purposes of battlefield identification. Even after the introduction of gunpowder and firearms to the battlefield, shields continued to be used by certain groups. In the 18th century, for example, Scottish Highland fighters liked to wield small shields (known as a targe), and as late as the 19th century, some non-industrialized peoples employed them (such as Zulu warriors) when waging war.

In the 20th and 21st century, shields have been used by military and police units that specialize in anti-terrorist actions, hostage rescue, riot control and siege-breaking. the modern term usually refers to a device that is held in the hand or attached to the arm, as opposed to an armored suit or a bullet-proof vest. -Wikipedia

these plain looking shoes did more than meets the eyes. having leather soles these shoes protected soldiers from the enemy of the land as much as the enemy.

Without a sword a knight could very well have been slaughtered because he had nothing to protect himself with.

A sword is a bladed weapon (edged weapon) used primarily for cutting or thrusting. the precise definition of the term varies with the historical epoch or the geographical region under consideration. In the most narrow sense, a sword consists of a blade with two edges, a hilt, and a crossguard. but in some cases the term may also refer to weapons without crossguard, or with only a single edge (backsword).

The basic principles of swordsmanship have remained fairly constant through the centuries, but the actual techniques vary among cultures and periods as a result of the differences in blade design and purpose. the names given to many swords in mythology, literature, and history reflect the high prestige of the weapon and the wealth of the owner.[1] As the sword has historically been a weapon of high prestige, it has become symbolic of warfare or state power. -Wikipedia

Some fun Medieval Fiction books you might enjoy:

Waterfall by Lisa T. Bergren

Cascade by Lisa T. Bergren

Torrent by Lisa T. Bergren