It’s that time of year again, when cupid draws back his bow, and florists quadruple their prices.

As St. Valentine’s day rapidly approaches, it’s time to start thinking about who your special someone might be. And whilst the rest of the population buys cards for loved ones, as designers we’re in the enviable position of being able to create our own messages of love.

So if you really want to win the heart of someone special this year, or perhaps send yourself a card that no one thinks is from your mom, you need this great free valentines vector set.

The vector file is designed by freepik.com, the search engine that helps designers locate bitmap and vector files for projects. Their bots crawl the web constantly looking for the best free files available to download, ranking them in the process. They’ve got tons of great resources, including even more Valentine’s clip art.

Packed with all kinds of vector graphics, from traditional love hearts to elegant ribbons, from a less conventional baseball shoe to illustrations of the fat little cherub himself; you’re sure to find something that will express just what you want to say.

You can download the file beneath the preview:

Who will you be sending a Valentine’s day card to this year? Will you be making it yourself? Let us know in the comments.

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The HTML Working Group has updated a Candidate Recommendation, published two Last Call Working Drafts, updated a Working Draft and a Working Group Note today:

• Updated Candidate Recommendation of HTML5. This specification defines the 5th major revision of the core language of the World Wide Web: the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). In this version, new features are introduced to help Web application authors, new elements are introduced based on research into prevailing authoring practices, and special attention has been given to defining clear conformance criteria for user agents in an effort to improve interoperability.
• Last Call Working Draft of Polyglot Markup: A robust profile of the HTML5 vocabulary. A document that uses polyglot markup is a document that is a stream of bytes that parses into identical document trees (with some exceptions, as noted in the Introduction) when processed either as HTML or when processed as XML. Polyglot markup that meets a well-defined set of constraints is interpreted as compatible, regardless of whether it is processed as HTML or as XHTML, per the HTML5 specification. Polyglot markup uses a specific DOCTYPE, namespace declarations, and a specific case—normally lower case but occasionally camel case—for element and attribute names. Polyglot markup uses lower case for certain attribute values. Further constraints include those on void elements, named entity references, and the use of scripts and style. Comments are welcome through 25 February 2014.
• Last Call Working Draft of W3C DOM4. DOM defines a platform-neutral model for events and document nodes. Comments are welcome through 4 March 2014.
• Updated Working Draft of HTML 5.1. This specification defines the 5th major version, first minor revision of the core language of the World Wide Web: the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). In this version, new features continue to be introduced to help Web application authors, new elements continue to be introduced based on research into prevailing authoring practices, and special attention continues to be given to defining clear conformance criteria for user agents in an effort to improve interoperability.
• Working Group Note of W3C HTML Ruby Markup Extensions. The ruby markup model currently described in the HTML specification is limited in its support for a number of features, notably jukugo and double-sided ruby, as well as inline ruby. This specification addresses these issues by introducing new elements and changing the ruby processing model. Specific care has been taken to ensure that authoring remains as simple as possible.

Learn more about the HTML Activity.

The cutting putdown has been a handy weapon of choice for many successful politicians and pundits.

Winston Churchill, considered one of the most cutting in the business, once famously described British Prime Minister Clement Attlee as

A sheep in sheep’s clothing.

Today, with all the high octane partisan rhetoric flying around Washington, there are more jabs being thrown than ever before.

To help us parse the slaps from the sneers, Harvard Law Professor Cass Sunstein has put together a useful Consumer Guide to Political Snark.

 As a former administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Sunstein has heard the battlefield of bluster up close.

He describes the 7 tools of the master mocker from Absurdity to Elitism.

It is worth a read… whether you are trying to fathom our partisan political follies or hoping to further refine your personal snark skills.

Her research focuses on the 19th-century Baltimore Quaker philanthropist Joseph Townsend. She works on-campus as an assistant at the Albin O. Kuhn Library Special Collections and she is a member of the UMBC Catholic Retrievers and of the History Student Council and National Society of Collegiate Scholars.

Is this your first independent research project?
No; this project actually grew out of a research position with the Baltimore Equitable Insurance Company, who were looking in the summer of 2012 for students to do research on their early directors, including Joseph Townsend. This translated into an Independent Study course in the Fall of 2012, and I've been continuing this work through the Spring and look to finish compiling my research during the Summer of 2013.

How did you know this was the project you wanted to do?
I had been researching Townsend along with several other Baltimore businessmen for my work with Baltimore Equitable, but I became particularly interested in Townsend once I began learning about his life. He was a key player in several of Baltimore's major historical events, and was even involved in a few scandals, and yet no one seems to know him. I knew once I had learned so much about his life through my BEI research that I could not leave this fascinating subject alone; I wanted to learn more about how he fit into Baltimore society and how he came to leave the legacy that he did.

How did you find your mentor for your research?
Dr. Kars was instrumental in helping me connect with Baltimore Equitable when they were looking for students to research their early history. She has helped me with my research from the beginning, and was my mentor in Fall 2012 when my research became an Independent Study course. She has helped me so much during my time working with Baltimore Equitable, and so it was only natural that I ask her to be my mentor for this project, which has grown out of that work.

What has been the hardest part about your research?
For my research, it has been difficult just to sift through all the information available to me. Living so close to Baltimore and having access to the Baltimore Equitable Collection and other collections at the Maryland Historical Society, as well as the Arnold Maryland History Collection at the UMBC Special Collections, and many of College Park's libraries, there is certainly no dearth of information for me to find! The trouble is finding the most useful or most interesting pieces of information and fitting them together - making an engaging story out of the mountains of facts.

What else are you involved in on campus?
I am a student assistant at our Library's Special Collections, and am very proud member of the UMBC Catholic Retrievers, as well as of the History Student Council and National Society of Collegiate Scholars.

What is your advice to other students about getting involved in research?
Trust me - there is room for it! I was worried going into my research that I wouldn't be able to handle it with a full course load and a job, but it has been really fulfilling, and I would encourage any student considering pursuing a research project not to be intimidated with the thought of extra work. It's well worth it, and is a great way to break out of the routine of classes and create new scholarship in addition to studying others!

Read her abstract here...

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of CSS Backgrounds and Borders Module Level 3 for the purpose of updating the previous Candidate Recommendation. This module replaces two earlier drafts: CSS3 Backgrounds and CSS3 Border. CSS is a language for describing the rendering of structured documents (such as HTML and XML) on screen, on paper, in speech, etc. This draft contains the features of CSS level 3 relating to borders and backgrounds. It includes and extends the functionality of CSS level 2, which builds on CSS level 1. The main extensions compared to level 2 are borders consisting of images, boxes with multiple backgrounds, boxes with rounded corners and boxes with shadows. Comments are welcome through 3 March 2014. Learn more about the Style Activity.