On This Day

 
 
908 – Emperor Zhu Wen of Later Liang has Li Zhu, the last Tang Dynasty emperor, poisoned.
Emperor Taizu of Later Liang (後梁太祖), personal name Zhu Quanzhong (朱全忠) (852–912), né Zhu Wen (朱溫), name later changed to Zhu Huang (朱晃), nickname Zhu San (朱三, literally, “the third Zhu”), was a Jiedushi (military governor) and warlord who in 907 overthrew the Tang dynasty and established the Later Liang as its emperor, ushering in the era of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms. The last two Tang emperors, Emperor Zhaozong of Tang and Emperor Ai of Tang, who “ruled” as his puppets from 903 to 907, were both murdered by him.

Zhu Wen initially served as a general under the rebel Huang Chao, but wisely defected to the weakened Tang dynasty in 882. Taking advantage of the total chaos in the wake of Huang Chao’s defeat, Zhu Wen was able to conquer much of central China after destroying warlords like Qin Zongquan, Shi Pu, Zhu Xuan, and Zhu Jin, although most of Shaanxi, Shanxi, and Hebei remained outside his reach, controlled by rival states Qi, Jin, and Yan respectively. Most of his later campaigns were directed at the Shatuo-ruled Jin state (later to become the Later Tang) based in Shanxi, but they mostly ended in failure due to the resourcefulness of the Jin leaders, Li Keyong and his son Li Cunxu. Due to his emphasis on unifying the north Taizu was not able to make any inroads into southern China, which came to be controlled by about seven different states, although the rulers in the south largely were nominally submissive to him with the exception of Yang Wu and Former Shu.

An outstanding micromanager, Zhu Wen used a combination of strict enforcement, ruthless violence and solicitation to ensure his officers stayed loyal to him. Zhu Wen was also a notorious sexual predator who raped not only the wives of his officers Yang Chongben and Zhang Quanyi, but also his own daughters-in-law. Zhu Wen’s reign came to an end in 912 when he was murdered in his palace by his son Zhu Yougui, whom he begot with a prostitute.

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Born On This Day

 
 
1633 – Mary Beale, British artist (d. 1699)
Mary Beale (née Cradock; late March 1633 – 8 October 1699) was one of the most successful professional female Baroque-era portrait painters of the late 17th century due to her perseverance of her business. Praised by Richard Gibson and court painter Peter Lely, she is considered as successful as Joan Carlile.[citation needed] Joan Carlile was also an English portrait painter, who was one of the first women to practise painting professionally. Mary Beale managed to be the financial provider for her family through her professional portrait business. Her book Observations, though never officially published, was one of the first instructional books ever written by a woman, and boldly announced her authority on painting. Mary Beale stood apart from other women due to her outspokenness and successful business that allowed her to be the breadwinner of the family.

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FYI

 
 
Vector’s World: Confusion at the pumps; Night Train and more ->
 
 
 
 
Leafly: 7 Women Writers From History You Didn’t Know Liked Cannabis
 
 
 
 
The Rural Blog: 9 in 10 new jobs since recession are in major metros; rural areas haven’t recovered the jobs they’ve lost since 2007; Lack of staff, structure at HUD agency slows hurricane aid and more ->
 
 
 
 
By Elizabeth Llorente: Oklahoma settles with OxyContin maker for $270 million
 
 

Recipes

On This Day

 
 
1995 – WikiWikiWeb, the world’s first wiki, and part of the Portland Pattern Repository, is made public by Ward Cunningham.
The WikiWikiWeb is the first-ever wiki, or user-editable website. It was launched on 25 March 1995 by its inventor, programmer Ward Cunningham, to accompany the Portland Pattern Repository website discussing software design patterns. The name WikiWikiWeb originally also applied to the wiki software that operated the website, written in the Perl programming language and later renamed to “WikiBase”. The site is frequently referred to by its users as simply “Wiki”, and a convention established among users of the early network of wiki sites that followed was that using the word with a capitalized W referred exclusively to the original site.

History
The software and website were developed in 1994 by Cunningham in order to make the exchange of ideas between programmers easier. The concept was based on the ideas developed in HyperCard stacks that Cunningham built in the late 1980s.[1][2][3] On March 25, 1995, he installed the software on his company’s (Cunningham & Cunningham) website, c2.com. Cunningham came up with the name WikiWikiWeb because he remembered a Honolulu International Airport counter employee who told him to take the Wiki Wiki Shuttle, a shuttle bus line that runs between the airport’s terminals. “Wiki Wiki” is a reduplication of “wiki”, a Hawaiian language word for “quick”.[4] Cunningham’s idea was to make WikiWikiWeb’s pages quickly editable by its users, so he initially thought about calling it “QuickWeb”, but later changed his mind and dubbed it “WikiWikiWeb”.

As of May 2015, the WikiWikiWeb’s WelcomeVisitors page contained the following description:

Welcome to WikiWikiWeb, also known as Ward’s wiki or just Wiki. A lot of people had their first wiki experience here. This community has been around since 1995 and consists of many people. We always accept newcomers with valuable contributions. If you haven’t used a wiki before, be prepared for a bit of CultureShock. The beauty of Wiki is in the freedom, simplicity, and power it offers. This site’s primary focus is PeopleProjectsAndPatterns in SoftwareDevelopment. However, it is more than just an InformalHistoryOfProgrammingIdeas. It started there, but the theme has created a culture and DramaticIdentity all its own. All Wiki content is WorkInProgress. Most of all, this is a forum where people share ideas! It changes as people come and go. Much of the information here is subjective. If you are looking for a dedicated reference site, try WikiPedia; WikiIsNotWikipedia!

Hyperlinks between pages on WikiWikiWeb are created by joining capitalized words together, a technique referred to as camel case. This convention of wiki markup formatting is still followed by some more recent wiki software, whereas others, such as the MediaWiki software that powers Wikipedia, allow links without camel case.

In December 2014, WikiWikiWeb came under the attack of vandals, and is now in a read-only state.[5] On February 1, 2015 Cunningham announced that the Wiki had been rewritten as a single-page application and migrated to the new Federated Wiki.[6]

See also
History of wikis

Born On This Day

 
 
1760 – Louisa Finch, Countess of Aylesford, English naturalist and botanical illustrator (d. 1832)
Louisa Finch, Countess of Aylesford (née Thynne; 25 March 1760 – 28 December 1832) was an English naturalist and botanical illustrator who made studies and paintings of the plants, algae, and fungi from the Warwickshire area.

Life
The eldest daughter of the politician Thomas Thynne, 1st Marquess of Bath, in 1781 she married Heneage Finch, 4th Earl of Aylesford and upon settling in Warwickshire took to studying the region’s flora. She produced over 2,800 botanical watercolour drawings was a correspondent of botanists such as William Withering, W. T. Bree, and George Don.[1][2] Additionally, she documented about 30 first records of plants from Warwickshire.[3] She also amassed an extensive collection of minerals, which was acquired by Henry Heuland after her death.[4] She had 12 children, and died at the age of 72 at the family home of Packington Hall. Her plants are collected in Oxford University, and her minerals and manuscripts in the Natural History Museum.[5]

Art Work
Christie’s (British auctioneer) notes Louisa Finch’s works in their historic sales of art auctions:

“Two albums of original watercolours of mushrooms, toadstools and other fungi. [dated: 8 October 1792-1797]. 2 volumes, 2° (498 x 380mm). 2 leaves of manuscript indices at the front of each volume, 299 original watercolours by Louisa Finch (340 x 235mm. and smaller), 152 in vol.I, 147 in vol.II, mounted one to a sheet within an ink and wash border, all numbered, all with identifying title and a note of the place where they were drawn (‘Packington’) inscribed on the mount in ink in a single hand, many with a reference number, most with dates.” [6]

Christies also states, “Intelligence as well as artistic ability have been applied to creating the albums, and they show Louisa to have been not only an accomplished draughtswoman but also a keen student of botany.”[6]

An image of a 1792 yellow flower watercolour is available here at the British Museum Website.

FYI

 
 
By Associated Press: Scott Walker, Walker Brothers singer, dead at 76
 
 
Scott Walker (born Noel Scott Engel; January 9, 1943 – March 22, 2019)[1][2][3][4] was an American-born British singer-songwriter, composer and record producer. Walker was known for his distinctive baritone voice and an unorthodox career path which took him from 1960s teen pop icon to 21st-century avant-garde musician.[5][6] Walker’s success was largely in the United Kingdom, where his first three solo albums reached the top ten. He lived in the UK from 1965 and became a British citizen in 1970.[7]

First coming to fame in the mid-1960s as frontman of the pop music trio The Walker Brothers, Walker began a solo career with 1967’s Scott, moving toward an increasingly challenging baroque pop style on late ’60s albums such as Scott 3 (1969) and Scott 4 (1969).[8][9] His solo work did not sell well, leading him to reunite with The Walker Brothers in the mid-1970s.[5][6] From the mid-1980s, Walker revived his solo career while moving in an increasingly avant-garde direction[9][10][11] that The Guardian likened to “Andy Williams reinventing himself as Stockhausen.”[6]

Walker continued to release solo material until his death, and was last signed to 4AD Records. As a record producer or guest performer, he worked with a number of artists including Pulp, Ute Lemper, Sunn O))) and Bat for Lashes.

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By WFAN.com: Baseball Writers, Players Remember Longtime Reporter Marty Noble
 
 
 
 
By Bruce Haring: Larry Cohen Dies: Creator Of ‘Branded,’ ‘The Invaders’ And Horror Classic ‘It’s Alive’ Was 77
 
 
 
 
By James LaPorta: Remembering Becket – A mother’s search for answers
 
 
 
 
This Day in History March 24, 1989 Exxon Valdez crashes, causing one of the worst oil spills in history
 
 
 
 
By Savannah Tanbusch: Blog Profiles: Train Blogs
 
 
 
 
By Sarah Midkif: This Is What Gloria Steinem Was Doing At Your Age
 
 
 
 
by Associated Press: Bingo and bongs: More seniors turn to pot for age-related aches
 
 
 
 
By Sum Lok-kei: Aviation authority investigates why Cathay Pacific allowed pilot with measles to fly seven times in four days as Hong Kong tackles growing outbreak of the disease
 
 
 
 

One bullet each.
By Morgan Winsor: Slain police officer targeted because he was Hispanic: Police

“In an act of cowardice, Mr. Jackson went to get a gun to settle this petty dispute, which resulted in him murdering the first Hispanic man that he came in contact with,” Johnson said.

At that time, Rivera was leaving a club with another off-duty officer and several friends, police said. As Rivera and his friends got into their car, three suspects approached their car and one suspect fired multiple rounds into the car, police said.

“When shots were fired, Rivera leaned over and shielded his girlfriend with his body from the gunfire,” Chicago Police Department spokesman Anthony Guglielmi tweeted.
 
 
 
 
By Chris Isidore, CNN Business: Krispy Kreme owners admit to family history of Nazi ties
The Reimann family, which owns the controlling stake in JAB Holdings and is reportedly one of the richest families in Germany, will donate €10 million, or $11 million, to a yet-undisclosed charity after a three-year investigation that it commissioned discovered details of their ancestors’ behavior.
 
 
 
 
By Pia Christensen: Conference panelists invite your input on their sessions
 
 
 
 
By Associated Press: Key Greenland glacier growing again after shrinking for years, NASA study shows “That was kind of a surprise.”
 
 
 
 
Open Culture: Journalism Under Siege: A Free Course from Stanford Explores the Imperiled Freedom of the Press; Watch Seder-Masochism, Nina Paley’s Animated, Feminist Take on the Passover Holiday: It’s Free and in the Public Domain; Does Playing Music for Cheese During the Aging Process Change Its Flavor? Researchers Find That Hip Hop Makes It Smellier, and Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” Makes It Milder and more ->
 
 
 
 

Nieman Lab: The long, complicated, and extremely frustrating history of Medium, 2012–present; Instead of helping Canadian news startups, a new government subsidy will only prop up failed models; After New Zealand, is it time for Facebook Live to be shut down? And more ->
 
 
 
 
GlacierHub – Newsletter 03/25/2019: Iago Otero and Emmanuel Reynard describe the launch of the Interdisciplinary Center for Mountain Research; The 800-mile-long Antarctica Peninsula is one of the fastest warming regions on the planet. Mongolia’s grasslands are being degraded by climate change and heavy goat populations, driven by global cashmere demand. More ->
 
 
 
 
MessyNessy 13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. CCCXLV): Europe’s First Underwater Restaurant; A Perfect New Life in Newfoundland, For Sale; This Performance Art; The Woman Charlie Chaplin Fell in love with “at first sight”; The Story Behind the Only Known Photo of Marilyn Monroe and John F. Kennedy (and Robert Kennedy) Together; Playing with Food in 1957 and more ->
 
 
 
 
The Passive Voice: Melville House Will Make the Mueller Report Its First Mass Market Title; Everyone’s a Copywriter. Right?; Fantasy; Make Your Ego Porous; Baby Shark Copyright Attack
 
 
 
 

Ideas

 
 
Jody Harris Tutorial Team Shelton, WA: Privacy Plus a Garden Area!
 
 
By mjrovai: Colorizing Old B&W Photos and Videos With the Help of AI
This project is based on a research work developed at the University of California, Berkeley by Richard Zhang, Phillip Isola, and Alexei A. Efros. Colorful Image Colorization.

The idea of this tutorial will be to develop a fully automatic approach that will generate realistic colorizations of Black & White (B&W) photos and by extension, videos. As explained in the original paper, the authors, embraced the underlying uncertainty of the problem by posing it as a classification task using class-rebalancing at training time to increase the diversity of colors in the result. The Artificial Intelligent (AI) approach is implemented as a feed-forward pass in a CNN (” Convolutional Neural Network”) at test time and is trained on over a million color images.
 
 
By charlesglorioso: StreetWriter
 
 
By Ruud van Koningsbrugge: Ghostly Goldfish
 
 

Recipes

 
 
By In The Kitchen With Matt: Caramel Rose Apple Pie