GIVEN the destination, I suppose there's something appropriate about a recent trip to Brittany prompting a degree of deja vu on arrival. I had been told to expect a degree of similarity between the landscape that greeted us and the one we left behind in north county Dublin less than 90 minutes earlier, but as our Air France CityJet broke cloud cover and banked in over Brest airport, the scenes of green-tinted pastoral splendour below could have doubled as some sort of surreal attempt at cloning the Irish countryside. 

The good news to report is that I hadn't dozed off and missed a mid-flight emergency that resulted in us having to return to Dublin. The even better news to report is that reliable Gallic je ne sais quoi that makes France such a captivating travel destination, kicked in as soon as we landed. Despite hearing many great things about both the backdrop and the Breton people, I hadn't travelled to this part of north-western France previously, so I was looking forward to getting the opportunity to hit the by-roads. 

It's fair to say they didn't disappoint. Think the west coast of Ireland though sometimes with better weather and you're well on the way to imagining the visual mood music to this slightly wind-swept wonderland. 

Our first port of call was the town of Quimper, an idyllic bolthole of about 50,000 people nestled at the meeting of two rivers, the Steir and the Odet. No less an authority than Flaubert referred to Quimper as "this charming little place". Take a stroll through the quaint warren of narrow streets and picture perfect medieval squares C and it's easy to see why. 

We stayed at the centrally located Hotel Kregenn on rue des Reguaires, and found it to be the perfect base for absorbing that uniquely French ambience. The acoustics ensure that the atmospheric street music echoes up to your window shutters in a way that is not intrusive, and if the sounds of scooters and French accents doesn't have you humming the Marseillaise on the inside, dinner at the appropriately titled Le Cosy restaurant certainly will. 

For many visitors to France, "it's the gastronomy, stupid", and at 30 for a veritable feast that included Breton mainstays such as fresh-caught fish and shellfish, it set a tone of gastronomic excellence that was maintained for the duration of our three-day stay. 

Fiercely nationalistic and quick to champion their Celtic ethnicity, Bretons are proud of their heritage and preserving it is a priority that pervades their attitude to attracting visitors. Authenticity is always the aspiration, and a visit to the tiny coastal island of Ile de Sein, encapsulates this sense of a magical land that has all the mod cons yet remains almost frozen by time. Accessible from the mainland by a short ferry trip, this tiny island comes highly recommended for those who yearn to get even further away from the madding crowd. 

The neighboring districts of Jobar and Qaboun on the east and northeast edges of Damascus are the areas under dispute. A Syrian government official claimed that forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad had recaptured 60 percent of Jobar,Get the led fog lamp products information, find Shun Stone Interior Decoration Products, manufacturers on the hot channel. which lies just south of Qaboun. 

On Sunday, the Information Ministry organized a tour of Jobar for reporters. The Associated Press reported on widescale destruction that pointed to heavy fighting in the district. Entire factories that manufactured marble tiles had been razed to the ground, with holes knocked in walls. The military officers on the tour warned reporters of opposition snipers in the area. 

Separately, opposition groups claimed that 200 civilians were trapped in the basement of a mosque in the neighboring district of Qaboun as fighting continued outside. "There is a siege because regime snipers are posted on the outskirts of Qaboun and this makes any attempt to leave difficult," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based anti-government rights group, said on Sunday. 

"Violent clashes are under way between regime forces and rebels in Qaboun," the Observatory announced. "The area has also been bombed by the army," it reported.The opposition Syrian Coalition called on the United Nations to send "a strong warning" to al-Assad that he "must immediately release" the civilians trapped in the Qaboun mosque. 

Meanwhile, The New York Times has reported that Israel had targeted Russian-made missiles near Syria's principal port city of Latakia in an airstrike on July 5.Speaking on "Face the Nation," on the American television network CBS on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to confirm or deny Israeli involvement. He said Israel's policy "is to prevent the transfer of dangerous weapons to Hezbollah and other terror groups." 

Autodesk recently released the latest version of 3ds Max.The g-sensor high brightness Shun Stone Landscape Stone is designed with motorcyclist safety in mind. This latest version, called 3ds Max 2014, is available as both Standard and Design versions. The new version includes a host of new features and several clever improvements to the existing tools. 

Among my favorite new features are the Populate tool, which can instantly add crowds of people to the current scene.Are you still hesitating about where to buy Shun Stone Tools Products? I'm also quite taken with the new mParticles added to the Particle Flow interface. Other new features and improvements include a set of enhanced menus, an interactive search command feature, vector maps, a great new Perspective Matching tool, support for DirectX 11 and an automatic Mesh Inspector for making sure that saved data files are free of errors. 

Although I typically frown on changes to a software's user interface, especially in the menus, but the new enhanced menus in 3ds Max 2014 are implemented as a new workspace that you can switch to. If you want to keep the old menus, then they are still there as another workspace and switching between the two is easy. 

The new enhanced menus are better organized and they include icons and fewer submenus. As an example of the better organization, there is a new Objects menu that has all the different objects you can add to a scene in one convenient place. You can also pull any submenu away from the menu bar and make it free standing and instantly accessible. 
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