The parts in quotes are the bits from Kelly’s original post of excellent advice for writers (HERE), which I herein Fisk (The original is posted in a no-comment zone.):
You are home writing a book but you have not proven yourself.
“First, the way you should feel about whatever book or story you are writing this very minute, is that it is absolutely your best work ever and will be irresistable to readers.” Call to adventure!
“Second, whatever book or story you are revising or getting critiqued at this very moment, is a solid piece of work that can and will be improved if you work at it and learn from comments.” Initiation and trial!
“Third, whatever work you have just finished, is ready to go out to agents or editors and you’re excited to get it in the mail.” Return home!
“Fourth, whatever work has been bought or is being shopped around, no longer exists until and unless a decision is called for on your part.” The Magic Fight!
“Fifth, whatever work has been published or set aside is complete and an example of your work at the time, not something that reflects the writer you are now.” Rescue!
“Sixth, whatever work you are going to embark on next will be made better by what you will learn from the completion of what you are working on now. So much so that once you have finished the current work, this new project will be the best thing you have ever written, bar non.” The return threshold, you are the master of two worlds, you have the freedom to live!
This is a movie, narrated by Jodie Foster, produced by Robert Redford, directed by Pamela Green and Jarik van Sluijs, about the first woman director ever. She made the first narrative film ever. She also invented movie stars. Oh, and the thing where you have sound? She was the first to use synchronized sound. She did a lot of things first, and no one has ever heard of her. Many of her films were destroyed, others misattributed to others. This is one of the most amazing stories of modern culture I’ve ever seen. Can’t wait ’till the actual film comes out.
The number one distribution was, as usual Ubuntu. But, Ubuntu only got 16 percent, with Debian coming in second at 14.1 percent. So, one could say that Debian is strong since Ubuntu is based on Debian. One could also say that Ubuntu is surprisingly weak. One would think it would be higher. One possibility is that Linux Journal readers are pretty hard core, and might often eschew Ubuntu for other distributions that cause more pain. Face it. Real Linux users like to wear hair shirts.
I myself voted for Ubuntu when the poll came around even though at the time I was following Shawn Powers dangerous advice and had installed one of the original Unix desktops on my laptop. I totally messed up the workings of my computer and managed to simulate a recurring hardware glitch that was really just a software conflict involving the power management system. I fixed that by putting Ubuntu with Unity on a fresh install and things have been working fine since then. It was a fun trip, though, totally worth it.
The point is, I don’t like Unity, I’m unhappy with Ubuntu, but Ubuntu is the system that first got me to have a working Linux box (all prior efforts failed) and even if the Unity interface and Ubuntu’s business model compete with each other for Most Annoying Thing in the Universe I still think Ubuntu is the distribution that keeps Linux afloat at the moment. Based on Debian.
The nature of the Linux Journal Reader is revealed by examining the next few distributions in line that have numbers nearly as strong as the first two: Arch Linux at 10.8%, Linux Mint at 10.5%, Fedora at 6.9% and openSuse at 5.2 %. Remembering that Debian is pretty pure geek (I’d love to know what percentage of users compiled their own kernel) this is a list that seems to demonstrate the duality of Linux at the cutting edge. Love-hate Ubuntu, favor and use other more geeked–out distributions but there are so many Ubuntu rises to the top by default. There are, by the way, 30 distributions on the list.
Linux Journal didn’t used to give the full list of candidates and percentages, but we can look back at some old issues and see how things have changed.
During the late middle ages, in 2003, the top three distributions were, in order, something called “Debian GNU/Linux” (that’s Debian spelled PC), Mandrakelinux (one word) and Gentoo. The first incarnation of Ubuntu was 2004, and the 2005 awards have it on top already, with CentOS and Fedora Core in second and third. By 2009 Ubuntu was number one with 45%, with Debian getting an honorable mention at 10%. So, in that year, Ubuntu was far ahead of the pack with all other distributions coming in at or below 10%. That’s interesting
I don’t have the percentages for 2010 (I think you can get them somewhere) but Ubuntu is selected as best distro, with honorable mention/runner up being PCLinuxOS, with third, fourth and fifth place going to Debian, Fedora and Pardus. The following year (2011) it was Ubuntu with Debian as the runner-up. In 2012 we have the first all-data listing and that year has Ubuntu at 30.1 percent, with Debian at 14.7 followed by Mint, Arc, Fedora and so on with only Debian and Mint getting above 10%.
That looks like a big change, from 2012 to 2013, but it is partly a matter of how the counting is done. The 2012 number for Ubuntu includes all flavors, but the 2013 numbers break them down. So, Ubuntu-presumably-with-Unity gets 16, Kubuntu 2.8, Xubunto 2, Server 1.6 adding up to 23.9%
So it has been a complex horse race among various distributions post-dating 2004, with Ubuntu always on top and generally with a strong lead and other distros moving around in the lower slots. However, despite methodological changes in the polling, it does seem that Ubuntu is weakening. A separate category for best distro for netbooks or other baby hardware put Ubuntu with Unity on top with Android second, but by a nose (10.6 vs 10.4%)
Now, skipping past all the categories that I am not interested in…
The best distribution for high performa computing award is an interesting category, especially because I was thinking about doing some of that. I’m not completely sure what it is but it sounds cool. The top distros with percentages are CentOS (11.4), Other (8.6), Gentoo (7.3), Mint (7.2) and so on. This sounds like a lot of people randomly guessing to me. In any event, I’m sure the best distribution for high performance computing is the one where you compile the kernel yourself. Right?
There is a category for best desktop (as opposed to overall) distro and it runs like this: Ubuntu (23.3), Mint (16), Fedora (8.6), Debian (8.1), and so on.
The next category of interest is important. This is the best desktop environment. In some ways it is hard to separate this category from best distro because some of the distros are distinct because of their desktop (i.e, Kubuntu vs. Ubuntu with Unity). But it is a distinct category, of course. To me the most important question is where is Unity on this list. Turns out KDE is first at 17.9% with Unity running close behind at 12.9%
But there’s a catch. The third place desktop is KDE Plasma with 12.7 percent, and then, the next named desktops on the list are mostly variants of old fashioned Gnome, including Xfce, Gnome 3, Cinnamon and Gnome 2. In other words, even though Ubuntu’s Unity (which is billed as though it only runs on Ubuntu, which is funny) is just a tiny bit behind KDE, combining the desktops realistically gives us this:
KDE: 30.6
Gnomish Not Unity or KDE: 25.2
Gnome 3 cuz it’s not Unity even though it looks like Unity: 14.1
Unity: 12.9
(Other had 4.5 percent and I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that “other” would fit into “Gnomish Not Unity” bringing it nearly tied with KDE.)
The Raspberry Pi was, naturally, the best gadget with nearly 70% and nobody cares about the other gadgets mainly because many of them, like the Amazon Kindle or the Roku, are not gadgets. System 76 came in as the best Linux Laptop Vender. I’d like one of those. Lenovo held second place by a tiny margin.
The best Linux Friendly hardware vendor is a strange category because what the heck is a hardware vendor? First place is Intel, second place Raspberry, third place System76 (which makes desktops and laptops), third place AMD, fourth place, Lenovo, etc. This category is a bit like the “Best Vehicle” category where number one is a Leer jet, number two is a Subaru, number three is a company that makes mountain bikes and number four is NASA’s Space Shuttle division. This category may need some reworking.
For web browsers, Firefox came in first place at 52.8 while Chrome/Chromium took second with 35.4 percent and all other browsers maxed out below 5% each. So there are two Linux browsers. Firefox is the default browser on many desktop distros, so that probably helps keep it in the lead. I stopped using Firefox years ago and I’ve not checked it out. I wonder if it still sucks compared to Chrome?
This is one worth going into the past for. In 2004, the top browser was “Mozilla” which you can think of as Firefox if you want. Second and third were Konqueror and Opera. In 2005 one and two were Mozilla Firefox and Konqueror. So, the one that was default in Gnome was first and the one that was default with KDE was second, in the old days.
Firefox (“Mozilla” label dropped) had an amazing 87% of the vote in 2009, was number one with “Chrome” in second place in 2010. The editors note that
We suggested last year that by awards time in 2010, you should “look for an inevitable battle royale if Google can deliver a polished Chrome for Linux in time for you to give it a test-drive”. Well, folks, that battle has ensued, and the era of unchallenged Firefox supremacy is over. Chrome leaped from a barely perceptible 0.35% of the vote in 2009 to 24% this year.
By 2012 Firefox had 50.3% of the votes and Chromium had 40.8%. So we seem to have reached a two year long equilibrium. Or, maybe, Firefox has improved a little and I haven’t noticed that but others have. I’ll probably build a version from source for my High Performance Computing Machine and see how it flies.
It is interesting to see LibreOffice holding supreme in the Office Suit area at 71.8%. Google drive is 11.8 percent. That makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is that Apache is only at 6.7%, even though I get the impression Apache has more current and quicker updates. LibreOffice surpassed OpenOffice in 2011, probably because of a perception that OpenOffice had gone evil. But I’m pretty sure the Evil Empire thing is over now and it is OK to use OpenOffice. If you can get LibreOffice uninstalled from your Ubuntu distribution, that is. Good luck with that… it is installed using unholy links so you may need a priest. Another one to build from scratch for my new supercomputer.
Interestingly Nvidia took a strong first place for best video chipset, despite this:
For the cloud, Dropbox came in with a strong first at 35.5% and Ubuntu One at a weak 7.1% Your doing it wrong, Ubuntu, though I’m not sure what it is your are doing wrong exactly. I do know that the one time I tried to install Ubuntu One it simply didn’t work, and the first time I tried to install Dropbox it did.
The best package management tool was voted as apt-get with 38.5%, second best as Synaptic at 13.7. You know this is a lie, in a way. Synaptic is a graphical-ish front end for apt-get and probably gets more use. But, the truth is, you use apt-get when you want to do it quick and dirty, and either one of two things applies: You totally know exactly what you want or you totally have no clue what you want. You can use apt-get to specify the installation of a particular package you know about, or you can just guess that there might be a package out there that does a certain thing and has a certain name!
Git killed Subversion 78.3 to 11.8.
One of the most important of categories is, of course, best text editor. This is the number one thing I do on any computer. In some ways it is more important than the operating system. Here’s how that one broke down. 90.4% of those polled are going to hell. 9.6% are true believers.
What I’m waiting for is a Linux Port of BBEdit. I’ll pay for it.
File systems are important. Best Journaling Filesystem went to ext4, by a large margin. I would say don’t bother with anything else. I will be using it with my new high-powered supercomputer.
Linux file managers reached a peak with an earlier version of Nautilus and have been ruined since then. I’m seriously thinking of giving up GUI file manager totally. Anyway, Dolphin won with Nautilus close behind. But check this out:bash had 10.4% (and took third place), the Command line got 10.34 percent, Midnight Commander got 7.9% and Emacs got 1.4 %. Clearly, the majority of Linux Journal readers are unhappy with GUI file management systems in Linux at this time. But is anyone listening? ARE THEY?
The best Linux Journal Column was Shaw Powers’ “The Open-Source Classroom,” and that’s appropriate. The best Linux/OSS advocate was Linus Torvalds followed by a fair margin by a piece of software and with Richard Stallman in third place. For some reason I am not on that list.
The Worst Idea Ever award went to Gnome 3, naturally. Second, “Creating a new distro instead of a new application” and fourth Mir. Not the space station, but rather, the esoteric inner working of the computer system thingie. But since “Ubuntu going it alone” and “Ubuntu” (just by itself) adds up to a greater amount, Ubuntu is actually in third place in this important category . The LibreOffice fork is on the list, by the way. Just sayin’
Sadly, Raspberry Pi won the best new open source project for the year. Why is this sad? Because “Open Source Project” should be software and there should be a separate category for “Open Source Hardware Project.” Also sad because there is hardly anything new going on in the software area. Firefox came in second and a bunch of other stuff I never heard of is on the list.
The “Product of the Year” went to Raspberry Pi, which is perfect, then a thing called Jolla/Sailfish which is a phone, then Firefox, then a bunch of other stuff. The Roku is on that list, which I think is legit.
Beyond that the only thing I’m really interested in is the graphics stuff, and I do think this category should be broken down more. Gimp came in first with Inkscape second and Blender third, but those three applications are entirely different and do entirely different, mostly unrelated things.
Go check it out. There are a gazillion other categories that I did not mention but that you will want to know about.
It occurs to me that many of you may not know this because you don’t live in the Twin Cities or are not Facebook Friends of the Mayor of Minneapolis, but the guy is very funny and creative and produces a lot of poetry, especially this time of year.
In Minneapolis, there is an arcane system of plowing snow that I will not even attempt to explain. (I come from New York and Boston where the system for removing snow from the city streets makes perfect sense.) The point is, if you mess up they tow your car to a sort of automotive dungeon and it costs a lot of money to get it back.
So, when the snow flakes start flying RT starts rhyming, as a public service. Like this:
On snow emergency routes:
Here’s your motto
By nine o’clock tonight
Please move your auto
Here in Fun City
Rock out, wine and dine
But from snow emergency routes
Move your car by nine
You ain’t so groovy
You ain’t no playa
If you can’t move your car
Without a poem from da Maya
The mayor will be replaced in January, but we are hoping he will stay on as Poet Laureate of the City of Lakes.
This makes total sense. Physics was unable to deliver us our flying cars or jet packs. But what were we going to do with them anyway? Well, go to the bookstore, of course! Alas, in the absence of advanced space age technology we are forced to drive, or even walk, to the bookstore.
But not any more, because Jeff Bezos at Amazon has promised us … promised … the new “Amazon Prime Air” service. This is where the books (and other stuff we order from Amazon.com) fly to us, encased in small brightly colored boxes that apparently we get to keep after the delivery. They fly attached to the underbelly of a robotic helicopter.
Here it is happening, for real:
Amazing.
There may be a few holes in this story though. For one thing, why are humans packing the brightly colored boxes? I would think that the first thing you’d do if you were creating a robotic delivery system is to replace those humans with much more efficient robots. For another thing, why is the flying robot, which Mr. Bezos has, in a brilliant moment of marketing genius called a “Drone,” dropping the object in the middle of the driveway? My driveway is also a thoroughfare for dozens of middle and high school students going to and from school. That would not work for me. Maybe we need to have tiny heliports on our roofs. For another thing, what about big things, or orders where multiple packages will be delivered at once? Do these flying robots scale up? Will they cooperate when flying in flocks? Also, having delivery of potentially essential items taken out of the hand of the post office for whom “neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds” with different rules, like airlines have, about flying … I am not sure that I am comfortable with this.
(Below is the 60 minutes segment on which the Drone was announced.)
This is all well and good. Well, actually it is disturbing and evil. Anyway, I’m sticking with my original contention regarding Amazon: It has become, effectively, a public good (for better or worse) like roads and canals and such, but it is a public good owned by some guy. Those things, roads canals and such, were often originally created and maintained by private corporations licensed by the government, until society realized that that would not do. Proper free market competition and fair play (to the extent that those two things sometimes work together) can only happen if the infrastructure is a public good and that which uses the infrastructure mostly isn’t. Jeff Bezos has made clear, explicitly, that he wants Amazon to sell everything to everyone. And, they hold patents to do that sort of thing. And now they intend to take over the sky. Aren’t there rules about that?
Nature editor and author Henry Gee has produced his Christmas list in which he describes his three wishes as an editor at a scientific journal; he enumerates the scientific discoveries that sit at the top of his professional “bucket list.”
Henry Gee. Not a Leprechaun.I started to write a comment on Henry’s blog post, here, but it turned into a blog post of my own, here:
Henry: As you know, I address in a fictional context in “Search for Sungudogo” (now only 99 cents on Amazon) all three of your wishes, the discovery of life elsewhere in the universe, the discovery of intelligent life somewhere, and the documentation of non-human hominids in recent times (including the present) like, but later than, the “Hobbit” at Flores. (Drop me a line for a review copy.) In the revised version of the novella I also explain the origin of Penn and Teller. But I digress.
The chance of the existence of Homo notspaiens at present must be zero, unfortunately. But I do like the idea of proto-historical or historical cases. “Like” as in how a TV detective “likes” a particular suspect for a particular crime. Maybe it is just a hunch. A re-examination of all those cases in the sepia literature of little people or not-quite-humans thought to be imagination, serious confusion, or out and out racism may be necessary.
I’d like to put a finer point on the prediction though. The hominid needs to have existed after some key point in time (which may be hard to identify on the ground but that could be fairly easily defined as an archaeological or historical transition). For example, post first writing or post settled horticulture. Flores already fits the obvious next oldest criterion of post Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). Also, and this is not a requirement but it would be way cool, I would like them to have existed at the same time as and in the same region as the Wrangle Island Mammoths because then tiny people-like creatures could have hunted, or ridden, or otherwise lived among, tiny furry elephants.
Also, I’ll offer a prediction of where the hominid would have lived. It is most likely to be in an area where the landscape has two distinct habitats that are long term and well defined. One is a habitat likely to be inhabited long term by regular humans and the other where regular humans are likely to forage or visit only now and then, but where this second, marginal, habitat is livable. Also, it is more likely at the outer edge of post-LGM expansion, and in a region where human population would not have been dense prior to the great Exchange of Horticultural Products that began in the 15th century. (In fact if I were to pick the most likely local date formula for the extinction of Homo notsapiens globally, if there were a bunch of them, it would be the introduction of yams, manioc, maize, taro, or other staple plant brought in from the other side of the planet to grow locally.) This means the Flores hominid may have chipped its last rock when cassava or corn were first planted in the region, which would be very late and easily meet your criteria. I assume people are looking vigorously.
Yes, I just described Flores, but that’s the point. Those are the characteristics that allowed for the Indonesian Leprechaun. We might look at regions covered by the last glacial ice mass, regions far to the east of Africa, dense tropical rain forest, etc.
This also predicts that stories of “the little people” (or “the big people” depending) would be distributed more commonly in a certain region of the world’s map. Like this, maybe (and roughly):
Where to look for Leprechauns or Bigfoots.
I’ve ruled out the new world simply because. Bad reason, I know. It is entirely possible that the New World was thickly inhabited by Taltos and Leprechauns, the only really solid argument against that being a complete lack of evidence…
I apologize for the fact that this turns out to be an ad. Terminate at 1:40 to avoid that part, but it is relatively harmless, and the product being advertised does a great job at solving one of the most pressing First World Problems suffered by cat owners.
Did you know that a fox’s tail is called a “brush”?
There are 12 species of fox, but 37 different dogish animals are called fox. But somewhere along the line we figured out what true fox is, and there are only 12 of them. These are member of the genus “Vulpes.” Vulpes is Latin for … wait for it … fox. Something that is fox-like is “vulpine.”
What does the fox say? They bark (sort of), scream, and sometimes they howl.
Here’s a red fox screaming. May not be work safe, depending on where you work:
In the case of the television network, FOX, the fox says “bla bla bla” and no one quite knows why. Or what it means.
A Russian scientist named Belyaev ran a series of experiments that included breeding foxes that had somewhat tame behavior (i.e., the pups tended to bite less) and in so doing invented a dog. It wasn’t really a dog, but it was dog like in some interesting ways, and it barked more.
h3>One Hiroshima, Two Hiroshimas, Three Hirosimas, Four
On August 6th, 1945, the United States military detonated what was to date the largest and most terrible bomb ever created by humanity in the city of Hiroshima Japan. Since that time, the word “Hiroshima” has come to mean awesome power. In fact, the energy released by this bomb is beyond comprehension by the average person. Aside from the unbelievable power associated with that one human made machine, we also think, when we think of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, of horrible consequences arising from human activity. It does not matter what one thinks today of whether or not that bomb should have been dropped or how the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki influenced the end of World War II in the Pacific; the war was a horrible thing, and in both Germany and Japan and their captured territories the loss of human life and destruction of property needed to end the fascist regimes that controlled those countries was beyond measure.
For these reasons it seems appropriate to describe what humans are now doing with many of their other machines to the planet and by extension to themselves with the virtually unchecked alteration of the chemistry of the Earth’s atmosphere in terms of Hiroshimas. And when we do this, the result is astounding. The addition of extra greenhouse gases to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels causes the atmosphere to retain more heat than it otherwise would. This has enormous consequences. A huge amount of the world’s water is normally trapped in glaciers, and these glaciers are melting. The ocean absorbs about 90% of this extra heat, which causes it to expand in size. Between the melting of the glaciers into the sea and the expansion of size from heat, unchecked emission of greenhouse gas will eventually cause sea level rise to the extent that most of the world’s large settlements will be inundated, and huge expanses of cropland that supply our food will be ruined. Accelerated melting of the Arctic has caused a change in weather patterns that causes “stalling” and “blocking” events to occur many times a year instead of now and then. These events cause huge floods in some areas and “flash droughts” in other areas. The additional energy added by this accidental and catastrophic transformation of our planet to the atmosphere and the sea has caused an increase in the frequency of major storms and has increased the strength of these storms on average, and in addition, tropical storms of a given magnitude have more severe effects because of sea level rise. And more problems beyond this have happened and will happen in the future.
So, how do we describe this awesome (and I use the term “awesome” with its more traditional definition, not as a good thing) increase in energy in terms of “Hiroshimas” … how many atomic bombs per unit time is equivalent to the increase in additional, unwanted energy in our atmosphere?
One a year?
Ten a year?
Two a month?
One a day?
Ten a day?
One an hour?
Ten an hour?
One a second?
No. None of those numbers. The actual amount of energy added to our atmosphere because of the effects of human-caused changes in its chemistry is four. Four Hiroshimas per second.
The Hiroshima Widget
There is now a widget you can put on your blog, or if you like, use as a Facebook or iPhone app, that demonstrates the addition of energy into our atmosphere in terms of Hiroshima’s. From the creators of the widget:
Our climate is absorbing a lot of heat. When scientists add up all of the heat warming the oceans, land, and atmosphere and melting the ice, they find our climate is accumulating 4 Hiroshima atomic bombs worth of heat every second.
This warming is due to more heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The burning of fossil fuels means we are emitting billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide every year. This is the main contributor to global warming.
To communicate the sheer amount of heat our planet is accumulating, we have created this widget, embeddable on blogs and also available as a Facebook app, an iPad app, and an iPhone app. To help get the word out on just how much global warming our planet is experiencing, add the widget to your own blog or use the widget on Facebook, like it and share it.
To get the iPhone or iPad app, visit this site on your device and use the big “Get…” button to get instructions. The app is not available through the Apple App Store.
Hopefully he was drunk, because if he wasn’t, he might be a bit of a moron. This is the Competitive Enterprise Internet (as it looks on the Intertoobs):
This is Fred, the founder, encountering a justifiably annoyed bikeist in Washington DC.
The US Postal Service has issued stamps depicting people who are not American many times. The US Postal Service has issues stamps with people who are not real. So far, though, no wizards have been venerated in this place of honor to my knowledge. This makes me wonder why the former head stamp collector at the American Philatelic Society complained that “Harry Potter is not American. It’s foreign, and it’s so blatantly commercial it’s off the charts.”
Clearly, the Dark Lord who shall not be named is behind this.
The Harry Potter films brought J.K. Rowling’s magical world to the screen, giving physical shape to the characters, creatures, and places that had lived in readers’ imaginations since publication of the first book. The U.S. Postal Service celebrates that magic with a 20-stamp souvenir booklet featuring stills from the award-winning Warner Bros. movies.
The folded booklet has five pages. The front cover features the title Harry Potter, with an image of Harry playing Quidditch, the beloved wizarding sport. The back cover has a picture of a young Harry in class, taking notes with his quill; the title Harry Potter is centered under the picture. When the booklet is opened, an illustration of Hogwarts covers two pages on the back, and selvage text appears on the last page. Inside there are five groupings of four stamps, each grouping set on its own page. Each set of four stamps, featuring stills from the Warner Bros. movies, surrounds the red wax seal of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
Harry Potter’s story begins when he receives a letter and a visitor that change his life. He learns that he is the orphaned son of two wizards and possesses unique magical powers of his own. Invited to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Harry embarks on an adventure he never could have imagined.
The stamps capture the magic of Harry’s world, with photographs of a few of the brave heroes, fearsome villains, and extraordinary creatures that he encounters throughout his adventures.
Best friends since first meeting on the Hogwarts Express, Harry, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger face new challenges each year they attend Hogwarts. The first set of stamps shows the friends in action.
The second stamp set includes photos of four of the amazing creatures that will one day come to Harry’s aid-Hedwig, Harry’s pet owl; Fawkes the phoenix; Dobby the house-elf; and Buckbeak the Hippogriff.
At Hogwarts, the friends receive support and guidance from many of their professors, among them the four depicted on the third set of stamps-Rubeus Hagrid, Professor Minerva McGonagall, Headmaster Albus Dumbledore, and Professor Severus Snape.
Their fellow students-including Fred and George Weasley, Luna Lovegood, and Ginny Weasley, featured on the fourth group of stamps-fight bravely alongside Harry, Hermione, and Ron in the Battle of Hogwarts.
Harry and friends encounter frightening villains, none more terrifying than Lord Voldemort, considered to be the most evil wizard of all time. He is featured alongside two of his fanatic followers-the sinister Bellatrix Lestrange and devious Draco Malfoy-on the fifth set of stamps, which also includes a photo of Harry during his final, epic battle with Voldemort.
The art directors for the Harry Potter Stamp Collection were William J. Gicker and Greg Breeding. Breeding designed the souvenir booklet using images from the Warner Bros. Harry Potter movies.
The Harry Potter stamps are being issued as Forever® stamps. Forever stamps are always equal in value to the current First-Class Mail® one-ounce rate.
