Micro-sculptor Willard Wigan is launching a new exhibition. The Birtish sculptor is known all around the world for his miniature sculptures that are invisible to the naked eye. Willard uses tiny homemade tools and paints with a hair plucked from a housefly’s back and carves microscopic figures from grains of rice or sand or sugar. The sculptures, which often take months to complete, are then mounted on pin heads or needles.

Curiosity cat

Pictured is a miniature sculpture of the US President Barack Obama and his family

A big part in history, but scaled down in size…. Henry VIII and his six wives

The Incredible Hulk rips apart the head of the needle……

Former South African president Nelson Mandela perched in the eye of a needle….

Marilyn Monroe in a classic pose on a diamond…..

The prestigious Oscar statuette…..

Homer strangles Bart in a classic scene from the The Simpsons…..

A Dressage rider sits elegantly on top of a needle……

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No….. it’s Superman! A very small Superman that is…..

A detailed Statue of Liberty……

Dwarfed… Snow White and her Seven Dwarfs

The Last Supper…..

Dorothy and her friends on the yellow brick road in a scene from The Wizard of Oz..

Born in 1957 in Birmingham, Willard Wigan began his artistic life at a tender age. Suffering from dyslexia and learning difficulties, he struggled at school, finding solace in creating art of such minute proportions that it virtually could not be seen with the naked eye.

“It began when I was five years old,” says Willard. “I started making houses for ants because I thought they needed somewhere to live. Then I made them shoes and hats. It was a fantasy world I escaped to where my dyslexia didn’t hold me back and my teachers couldn’t criticise me. That’s how my career as a micro-sculptor began.”

Willard’s micro-sculptures have become so minute that they are only visible through a microscope. Each piece commonly sits within the eye of a needle, or on a pin head.

The personal sacrifice involved in creating such wondrous, yet scarcely believable, pieces is inconceivable to most. Willard enters a meditative state in which his heartbeat is slowed, allowing him to reduce hand tremors and sculpt between pulse beats. Even the reverberation caused by traffic outside can affect Willard’s work. He often works through the night when there is minimal disruption.

Willard’s work is described as “the eighth wonder of the world”. One of the specifically commissioned works includes the replica of the iconic Lloyds of London Building. This piece was later auctioned by Eric Knowles of Bonhams. Willard was subsequently honoured with receiving an MBE from HRH Prince Charles for his services to art.

Unsurprisingly, Willard’s life is now attracting significant attention from the literary and film industries alike, each eager to secure his life story.

You can see Willard Wigan’s work at 40a Museum Street, Bloomsbury, London, WC1A 1LU

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Highlights

• New drag-and-drop widgets admin interface and new widgets API
• Syntax highlighting and function lookup built into plugin and theme editors
• Browse the theme directory and install themes from the admin
• Allow the dashboard widgets to be arranged in up to four columns
• Allow configuring the number of items to show on management pages with an option in Screen Options
• Support timezones and automatic daylight savings time adjustment
• Support IIS 7.0 URL Rewrite Module
• Faster loading of admin pages via script compression and concatenation

Last year Hitwise highlighted the massive growth in UK Internet traffic to Polish websites, noting how the increase in visits reflected the growth of the Polish immigrant population in the UK (over a million). Things have changed significantly since then; and one theory is that many Polish workers are returning home to escape the recession in the UK.

Estimates as to the number of Polish people in the UK range from half a million to over a million. Mass immigration from Central and Eastern Europe has led to a rush for the ‘Polish Pound’, with everyone from multinational banks to independent grocers getting in on the act. One of the great things about Hitwise is that we can use Internet data to illustrate changes such as these. As you can see from the chart below, UK Internet traffic to a Hitwise custom category consisting of the top 100 Polish language and community websites increased nine-fold between January 2006 and January 2008.

This year the wind has seemingly changed direction:

While statistics from the Home Office indicate that the number of Eastern European migrants has fallen since the economic downturn started to bite, it is less clear whether there has been a net reduction on the number of Polish and other ‘new Europe’ citizens living in the UK. Maybe Hitwise stats might provide some evidence: if Polish Internet usage in the UK increased during the period of net immigration, surely the opposite trend would imply net migration? Well, looking at the chart below, it’s certainly the case that Polish Internet usage is declining in the UK for the first time.

Top 10 Polish websites in the UK, ranked by market share of Internet visits to the Polish sites custom category during April 2009

1. Nasza Klasa (22.8%)
2. Google Poland (15.7%)
3. Onet.eu (14.3%)
4. Wirtualna Polska (9.8%)
5. Interia.pl (4.6%)
6. poczta.wp.pl (4.5%)
7. www.o2.pl (3.2%)
8. Polish Wikipedia (1.8%)
9. Peb (1.4%)
10. Wizz Air (1.3%)

Nasza Klasa, as highlighted in our recent post Top 20 Websites and Search Engines in the UK, in the 9th most popular Social Media website in the UK, above websites like Gumtree.com with a respectable 0.63% of the overall traffic.

It’s seems like Firebox.com have a brand new website. It’s wider, it’s orange and at first glance a nice designed site. Technically the build leaves much room for improvement with inline css styles and incorrect semantics being used.

New Firebox website

Old Firebox website

Thoughts?

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