Sphere (band)

Sphere is the name of the following musical groups:

Sphere (1998 film)

Sphere is a 1998 science fiction psychological thriller film directed and produced by Barry Levinson. It stars Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone, and Samuel L. Jackson. Sphere was based on the 1987 novel of the same name by Michael Crichton. The film was released in the United States on February 13, 1998.

Plot

An alien spacecraft is discovered on the floor of the Pacific Ocean, estimated to have been there for 300 years. A team of experts, including marine biologist Dr. Beth Halperin, mathematician Dr. Harry Adams, astrophysicist Dr. Ted Fielding, psychologist Dr. Norman Goodman, and U.S. Navy Capt. Harold Barnes, are assembled and taken to the Habitat, a state-of-the-art living environment located near the spacecraft.

On examination of the spacecraft, they determine that it is actually an American spacecraft from the future, apparently having fallen back through time after entering a black hole, an "unknown event" in the ship's computer logs. The logs do not give any indication of how far in the future it came, but that its mission was to collect objects from across the galaxy. This includes a large perfect fluid sphere that hovers a few feet above the floor in the ship's cargo bay. They cannot find any way to probe the inside of the sphere, and the surface is impenetrable; the crew find it odd that the surface of the sphere reflects its surroundings except for humans.

Robin DiMaggio

Robin DiMaggio (born 1971) is a drummer and classical/world percussionist based out of Los Angeles. He has performed/recorded with artists as diverse as Steve Vai, Paul Simon, Diana Ross, and Dr. Dre. He has also worked as a producer/songwriter and a composer/arranger, and produced the albums Road to Forever (2012) by Don Felder of The Eagles and Be Here Then (2014) by Stephen Bishop.

Music career

As a drummer and percussionist, DiMaggio has performed/recorded with a variety of artists including Paul Simon, David Bowie, Jackson Browne, Diana Ross, Tupac, Dr. Dre, Luther Vandross, Lil Jon, Martina McBride, Daft Punk, Johnny Cash, and Chris Isaak, among others, as well as sitarist/composer Ravi Shankar and violin maestro L. Shankar.

On September 9, 2013, DiMagio took the role of Musical Director and drummer for the late night TV show the Arsenio Hall Show on CBS. He has since performed with Nelly, Flo Rida, R. Kelly, Billy Ray Cyrus, Gladys Knight, and Earth Wind and Fire, among others. Prior to Arsenio, he was the house band drummer on the CW's hit game show Oh Sit and TBS' Lopez Tonight, hosted by George Lopez. In the latter he played with guests such as Slash, Carlos Santana, Jamie Foxx, Puff Daddy, Emilio Estefan, Hector Elizondo, Andrew Dice Clay, Andy Garcia, Lucrecia, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Steel Magnolias, David Guetta, Charlie Wilson, Beth Hart, Los Lobos, George Clinton and Justin Bieber, John Legend, Sergio Mendez, 50 Cent, P. Diddy, and Snoop Dogg. Robin is currently serving as Musical Director to the PGA Gala 67th 68th 69th session at the General Assembly and also serving as Musical Director for the South South Awards year during the General Assembly in Sept at the Majestic Waldorf Astoria N.Y. He has received his re occurring title as musical Director to the United Nations in 2015. Robin also collaborated with legendary Joe Satriani as co Writer and Producer to the new earthsong, Music without Words due out in September 2015.

Keynote (presentation software)

Keynote is a presentation software application developed as a part of the iWork productivity suite by Apple Inc. Keynote 6.0 was announced on October 23, 2013 and is the most recent version for the Mac. On January 27, 2010, Apple announced a new version of Keynote for iPad with an all new touch interface.

History

Keynote began as a computer program for Apple CEO Steve Jobs to use in creating the presentations for Macworld Conference and Expo and other Apple keynote events. Prior to using Keynote, Jobs had used Concurrence, from Lighthouse Design, a similar product which ran on the NeXTSTEP and OpenStep platforms.

The program was first sold publicly as Keynote 1.0 in 2003, competing against existing presentation software, most notably Microsoft PowerPoint.

In 2005 Apple began selling Keynote 2.0 in conjunction with Pages, a new word processing and page layout application, in a software package called iWork. At the Macworld Conference & Expo 2006, Apple released iWork '06 with updated versions of Keynote 3.0 and Pages 2.0. In addition to official HD compatibility, Keynote 3 added new features, including group scaling, 3D charts, multi-column text boxes, auto bullets in any text field, image adjustments, and free form masking tools. In addition, Keynote features three-dimensional transitions, such as a rotating cube or a simple flip of the slide.

Database index

A database index is a data structure that improves the speed of data retrieval operations on a database table at the cost of additional writes and storage space to maintain the index data structure. Indexes are used to quickly locate data without having to search every row in a database table every time a database table is accessed. Indexes can be created using one or more columns of a database table, providing the basis for both rapid random lookups and efficient access of ordered records.

An index is a copy of select columns of data from a table that can be searched very efficiently that also includes a low-level disk block address or direct link to the complete row of data it was copied from. Some databases extend the power of indexing by letting developers create indices on functions or expressions. For example, an index could be created on upper(last_name), which would only store the upper case versions of the last_name field in the index. Another option sometimes supported is the use of partial indices, where index entries are created only for those records that satisfy some conditional expression. A further aspect of flexibility is to permit indexing on user-defined functions, as well as expressions formed from an assortment of built-in functions.

Key (music)

In music theory, the key of a piece is the tonic note and chord that provides a subjective sense of arrival and rest. Other notes and chords in the piece create varying degrees of tension, resolved when the tonic note or chord returns. The key may be major or minor, although major is assumed in a phrase like "this piece is in C." Popular songs are usually in a key, and so is classical music during the common practice period, about 1650–1900. Longer pieces in the classical repertoire may have sections in contrasting keys.

Methods that establish the key for a particular piece can be complicated to explain, and vary over music history. However, the chords most often used in a piece in a particular key are those that contain the notes in the corresponding scale, and conventional progressions of these chords, particularly cadences, orient the listener around the tonic.

The key signature is not a reliable guide to the key of a written piece. It does not discriminate between a major key and its relative minor; the piece may modulate to a different key; if the modulation is brief, it may not involve a change of key signature, being indicated instead with accidentals. Occasionally, a piece in a mode such as Mixolydian or Dorian is written with a major or minor key signature appropriate to the tonic, and accidentals throughout the piece.