He investors include Idinvest Partners, Qualcomm Ventures, and Nokia Growth Partners. To date, the company has raised more than $16 million.“We are impressed with Grand Cru’s team of mobile gaming veterans. They have created a great title and combined it with unique in-house developed technology,” said Walter Masalin of Nokia Growth Partners in a statement. “Growth in mobile gaming is accelerating and we are excited to be part of it.”
The company is starting to show off Supernauts, a 3D creative social game in which players build and share their own, unique worlds. The characters travel to a flooded Earth to rescue humans. The game was inspired by Minecraft and other casual sandbox games. In the game, each player gets a customizable, semi-private space where they can create and craft blocks and materials such as clay, bricks, concrete, wood, and tile. They can then use those materials to build structures. It has more than 50 levels in a variety of cities on Earth. Each level has 3D physics puzzles where the player has to rescue Earthlings by getting them to safety by building bridges, clearing paths, and Ceramic tile.
“At Grand Cru, our name derives from our ultimate goal of delivering outstanding products that raise the bar on quality, and our commitment has been recognized and bolstered by these strategic investments from partners such as Idinvest, Qualcomm Ventures and Nokia Growth Partners.,” said Markus Pasula, the cofounder and CEO of Grand Cru. “Our soon-to-be-released first title, Supernauts, is a mass-market world-building game for iOS that is truly social, allowing players to solve puzzles and create shareable worlds, brick-by-brick.”
Pasula and five other Finnish game veterans formed the company to make games with the potential for broad appeal. Grand Cru has more than 20 employees. The company is headquartered in the bohemian district of Helsinki called Kallio, which has the most bars per capita in Finland.
You will wait for a table, as you always have, even though the new Franny's has double the capacity of the old one. On a recent Sunday afternoon, when nine empty two-top tables were set and ready for customers, a smiling hostess said we would be seated in 10 to 15 minutes. Only farm-to-table is ingrained in this restaurant's culture, not people to table.
It's been almost 10 years since Franny's opened in Brooklyn, a five-minute walk down Flatbush Ave. from its present location. Crowds gathered. Nothing much has changed, although now you can reserve for parties of eight to 12. Come to think of it, that's a lot that has changed.
Franny's is a spiritual cousin to Alice Waters's Chez Panisse, the Berkeley restaurant that more than 40 years ago changed how people thought about sustainable and seasonal food. Franny's is so principled and so cherished that NYC health inspectors genuflect upon entering.
When the original opened, people on this coast were just beginning to think about these concepts. These days everybody knows about that stuff, the organics and biodynamics, the buying locally and eating healthfully. While such passions have been matched by similarly themed establishments, Franny's remains the flagship. If its ideals aren't quite so revelatory any more, they remain as alluring as ever to those who mob the place.
The new Franny's has a bar, several dining areas, and a lot of inexpensive-looking wood-and-metal shelving stacked with cordwood for the pizza ovens, which are illogically but intriguingly bedecked with Mexican-style tiles. The walls are mostly white subway tile. My guest insisted that the blond-wood chairs where we finally were seated resembled the ones she was assigned in elementary school. She said the hard banquette where I sat reminded her of the bench in her childhood bedroom, which had a seat that flipped up so toys could be stored underneath.
Franny's has never been lovely. That hasn't changed. The black matte finish out front—what rappers call "murdered out" when they see it on automobiles—seems poorly chosen, but perhaps Franny's is out to attract a new generation of diners with fast cars.
On that first visit, during the 10-15 minute wait at the bar, my friend attracted substantial attention from a guy sitting on the other side of her. He even offered her a taste of his drink. That seemed a little racy for a wholesome spot like Franny's. Maybe the new generation has already arrived.
Should you not wish to drink while awaiting a table, I can suggest ways to pass the time. Walk downstairs to one of the rest rooms and count the rolls of toilet paper stacked there. Mine had 88. Or try deciphering the exceedingly ambitious, highly curated, all-Italian wine list.
It might be the geekiest list in America, incomprehensible to normal human life forms. I know something about wine, but I was lost amidst unknown names and unhelpful organization.
On visit three I brought a wine director for a restaurant group with me. She looked at the list and said, "I need an hour to figure this out." Franny's has no sommelier on the floor. The waiters try to assist, but they're overmatched. I asked one of them how diners navigate this, and she replied, "Fake it, ask for help, or order the cheapest bottle on the list."
Fear not. You can triumph. Transport your mind to a world beyond Pinot Grigio. Ignore vintage dates unless you're looking for a red over $100, and there are few of those. Look for a grape you might recognize—vermentino, kerner, dolcetto, nebbiolo. There's even Chardonnay. The 2009 Scaglione Barbera is a simple red of perfect clarity.
Click on their website http://www.tilees.com/.
2013年7月29日星期一
Scrabbling to the top
Last year was a bad year for competitive Scrabble. The 2012 USA National Scrabble Championship, which took part in Orlando, Florida, was hit by scandal. One player, a wunderkind of 13 years old, was exposed after a suspicious opponent noticed that he kept appearing to draw the prized blank tiles from the tile bag. It emerged that the little sneak was palming the blanks before each game and then pretending to draw them from the bag when it suited him. Max Karten, a former champion, complained to The Atlantic that cheating of this kind was degrading competitive Scrabble.
Nonetheless, the outcome – a judge was called, the tiles were counted, and the cheat expelled – was less dramatic than the way scenes might have unfolded at the World Scrabble Championships in 2011. There a Thai player demanded that his British opponent be strip-searched in the toilet, accused of hiding the letter “G”. The judges ruled that such a search would be undignified, and replaced the missing G tile with a new one. The Brit went on to win the game by just one point.
“Scrabble is a game of personal honour; opponents police themselves and each other,” a compelling Sports Illustrated feature stated in 1995. “As a result it is rife with feuds and imagined slights and Floor tiles. Players are as sensitive as flowers to any sign of ‘coffeehousing’ – the practice of trying to throw off an opponent by slurping a drink.”
South Africa’s newly-crowned Scrabble champion, Llewellin Jegels, says that these kinds of intimidation attempts are routine. “Absolutely, it happens all the time,” Jegels told the Daily Maverick. Competitive Scrabble sounds… intense. “Social players are quite shocked to see how we play,” Jegels agrees. “There’s a chess clock, it’s one-on-one, the game has to be finished in 50 minutes.”
The story goes that Scrabble was invented during the Great Depression by an unemployed architect called Alfred Butts. With a name like that, Mr Butts was surely no stranger to the power of word-play. Butts wanted to create a vocabulary-based game which nonetheless had an element of chance, and he called it the infinitely less-marketable ‘Criss-Cross Words’.
Butts was no linguist, but he hit on a cunning way to determine how frequently different letters should appear on Scrabble tiles: analysing the front page of the New York Times to see which were the most-used vowels and consonants in the English language. He deliberately limited the appearance of ‘S’ (just four per game) to deter plural words which would make the game too easy. A marketing partner suggested he change the name to ‘Scrabble’ after initial attempts to sell the game failed, and trademarked it in 1948. The rest is history – or at least, it was after the popular department store Macy’s began to stock the game, according to legend.
There’s a widespread notion that the people who work with language the most – writers, linguists – would be the best at Scrabble. Although Jegels himself is a writer and publisher, he says this idea simply doesn’t hold. “Many good Scrabble players are mathematicians. They seem to understand the probability of certain sets of tiles being picked. What is the probability of picking the word ‘retained?’ Very high; we’ve computed that.”
Scrabble players often rely on extremely obscure words to win their games. Jegels sends a photograph of the board after he’d won his final game at Nationals. The majority of words on it are unfamiliar: yag? Zoril? Qats?
“We don’t learn the meanings of all the words,” he explains. “It’s an extra memory burden to us. You just need to know that the word is there. As competitive players, the words represent opportunities to crush opponents with porcelain tiles. They’re like chess pieces.”
Like most competitive Scrabble players, Jegels learns lists of hundreds of thousands of words off by heart. Players take new words and re-arrange them alphabetically, to learn. Then, when the tiles are in front of the player, hopefully the memory prompt will supply the underlying word.
“We also have to learn all the anagrams of the words,” Jegels says. This allows players to choose the more obscure option, in order to make it more difficult for the next player to build off it. “Say you could play either RADIANT or INTRADA,” Jegels says.
Before tournaments, Jegels will play Scrabble intraday, every day. Sometimes he’ll have a flesh-and-blood training partner, he says, but more often than not he uses a software programme which analyses moves based on their potential score.
The computer programme he’s talking about is called “Quackle”, a seldom-heard word meaning “to choke”. In November 2006 it became the first piece of software to beat a Scrabble world champion in a best-of-5 match. “For competitive Scrabble players,” the Journal of Experimental Psychology noted, “the defeat of human intelligence by artificial intelligence is a watershed event comparable to the May 1997 win by IBM’s computer programme Deep Blue in a chess match against the reigning champion Gary Kasparov”.
The comparison between chess and Scrabble comes up several times during a conversation with Jegels, who loves playing chess as well. He acknowledges that Scrabble currently lacks the status or prestige of chess. “In time, that will come, but it will take a while because of its association with family fun,” he says. Jegels thinks one of the biggest misconceptions about Scrabble held by non-players is the role of luck.
Nonetheless, the outcome – a judge was called, the tiles were counted, and the cheat expelled – was less dramatic than the way scenes might have unfolded at the World Scrabble Championships in 2011. There a Thai player demanded that his British opponent be strip-searched in the toilet, accused of hiding the letter “G”. The judges ruled that such a search would be undignified, and replaced the missing G tile with a new one. The Brit went on to win the game by just one point.
“Scrabble is a game of personal honour; opponents police themselves and each other,” a compelling Sports Illustrated feature stated in 1995. “As a result it is rife with feuds and imagined slights and Floor tiles. Players are as sensitive as flowers to any sign of ‘coffeehousing’ – the practice of trying to throw off an opponent by slurping a drink.”
South Africa’s newly-crowned Scrabble champion, Llewellin Jegels, says that these kinds of intimidation attempts are routine. “Absolutely, it happens all the time,” Jegels told the Daily Maverick. Competitive Scrabble sounds… intense. “Social players are quite shocked to see how we play,” Jegels agrees. “There’s a chess clock, it’s one-on-one, the game has to be finished in 50 minutes.”
The story goes that Scrabble was invented during the Great Depression by an unemployed architect called Alfred Butts. With a name like that, Mr Butts was surely no stranger to the power of word-play. Butts wanted to create a vocabulary-based game which nonetheless had an element of chance, and he called it the infinitely less-marketable ‘Criss-Cross Words’.
Butts was no linguist, but he hit on a cunning way to determine how frequently different letters should appear on Scrabble tiles: analysing the front page of the New York Times to see which were the most-used vowels and consonants in the English language. He deliberately limited the appearance of ‘S’ (just four per game) to deter plural words which would make the game too easy. A marketing partner suggested he change the name to ‘Scrabble’ after initial attempts to sell the game failed, and trademarked it in 1948. The rest is history – or at least, it was after the popular department store Macy’s began to stock the game, according to legend.
There’s a widespread notion that the people who work with language the most – writers, linguists – would be the best at Scrabble. Although Jegels himself is a writer and publisher, he says this idea simply doesn’t hold. “Many good Scrabble players are mathematicians. They seem to understand the probability of certain sets of tiles being picked. What is the probability of picking the word ‘retained?’ Very high; we’ve computed that.”
Scrabble players often rely on extremely obscure words to win their games. Jegels sends a photograph of the board after he’d won his final game at Nationals. The majority of words on it are unfamiliar: yag? Zoril? Qats?
“We don’t learn the meanings of all the words,” he explains. “It’s an extra memory burden to us. You just need to know that the word is there. As competitive players, the words represent opportunities to crush opponents with porcelain tiles. They’re like chess pieces.”
Like most competitive Scrabble players, Jegels learns lists of hundreds of thousands of words off by heart. Players take new words and re-arrange them alphabetically, to learn. Then, when the tiles are in front of the player, hopefully the memory prompt will supply the underlying word.
“We also have to learn all the anagrams of the words,” Jegels says. This allows players to choose the more obscure option, in order to make it more difficult for the next player to build off it. “Say you could play either RADIANT or INTRADA,” Jegels says.
Before tournaments, Jegels will play Scrabble intraday, every day. Sometimes he’ll have a flesh-and-blood training partner, he says, but more often than not he uses a software programme which analyses moves based on their potential score.
The computer programme he’s talking about is called “Quackle”, a seldom-heard word meaning “to choke”. In November 2006 it became the first piece of software to beat a Scrabble world champion in a best-of-5 match. “For competitive Scrabble players,” the Journal of Experimental Psychology noted, “the defeat of human intelligence by artificial intelligence is a watershed event comparable to the May 1997 win by IBM’s computer programme Deep Blue in a chess match against the reigning champion Gary Kasparov”.
The comparison between chess and Scrabble comes up several times during a conversation with Jegels, who loves playing chess as well. He acknowledges that Scrabble currently lacks the status or prestige of chess. “In time, that will come, but it will take a while because of its association with family fun,” he says. Jegels thinks one of the biggest misconceptions about Scrabble held by non-players is the role of luck.
2013年7月24日星期三
Kanawha shelter inundated with dogs
A sudden influx of dogs at the Kanawha-Charleston Humane Association's shelter could lead to dogs being euthanized to free up space.Over the past year, shelter officials and volunteers have greatly reduced the number of dogs put to death. Since the beginning of the year, shelter officials said they've only had to euthanize sick dogs for the most part. As of Monday morning there were 136 dogs in the shelter. Every kennel - even those in the overflow areas - was full. Several cages housed more than one.
And the steady stream of incoming homeless canines wasn't expected to let up any time soon. With no vacancies, and some dogs having been housed at the shelter since early this year, few options remained.Chelsea Staley, who co-founded rescue advocacy organization Dog Bless last year, began working at the shelter as a rescue coordinator and spokeswoman in May. Although summer is always a busy time for animal shelters, she said recent renovations to the facility were partly to blame for the sudden space crunch.
In early June, shelter officials acted on the advice of an outside expert and replaced all of the ceiling tiles in the dog kennel areas.The old ceiling tiles were made of soft, porous material. But the kennels are a warm and humid place, and that made the tiles "a breeding ground for disease," Staley said.During the renovations, the shelter continued to accept stray dogs picked up by humane officers. It's contractually obligated to always accept strays, Staley said.
The YMCA unveiled the court Wednesday as summer campers played hockey, Pickleball and soccer inside the boards. The ice at the rink — one of six in the country inside a YMCA — usually rests on top of dull-gray concrete, which can be unforgiving and slick. But the new court is built out of 17,000 rubber-plastic tiles, giving the surface grip, give and upping safety for users."The surface wasn't conducive to that type of Floor tiles," Bethlehem YMCA Executive Director Derek Martin said. "If we had kids from the high school play lacrosse and make cuts on the concrete, they could run the risk of blowing a knee out. This surface is safe and conducive to any sport."
The $47,000 court was put in in time for the start of the Y's annual summer camp, and Martin said it will be used for other child and adult activities, such as Zumba and roller hockey. The court allows for multiple activities at once and offers an area for floor and roller hockey (both at one end of the rink and across the entire NHL-regulation surface), two full-size basketball courts, an area for games like Pickleball (a racquet sport hybrid) and a space for small-size indoor soccer games.
The court is set to be taken apart with the help of maker Mateflex each hockey season, which runs from the end of August to the end of March. While in use, some tiles could chip and will be replaced with ones from a stock of extras, Martin said. He also said the court is under a 15-year warranty.
Michael Losavio, 10, said what sets the sport court apart from a gym floor is that it is set up for multiple sports all the time. The summer camper said he enjoys playing floor hockey on the same space he plays ice hockey in the winter. Given the choice, he said he likes playing on both.
But this summer, the regulation-size rink is bright with whitish-blue light reflecting off a new light-blue sport court, the first of its kind in the Capital Region.The YMCA unveiled the court Wednesday as summer campers played hockey, Pickleball and soccer inside the boards. The ice at the rink — one of six in the country inside a YMCA — usually rests on top of dull-gray concrete, which can be unforgiving and slick. But the new court is built out of 17,000 rubber-plastic tiles, giving the surface grip, give and upping safety for users.
The $47,000 court was put in in time for the start of the Y's annual summer camp, and Martin said it will be used for other child and adult activities, such as Zumba and roller hockey. The court allows for multiple activities at once and offers an area for floor and roller hockey (both at one end of the rink and across the entire NHL-regulation surface), two full-size basketball courts, an area for games like Pickleball (a racquet sport hybrid) and a space for small-size indoor soccer games.
It was there that he began feeding the homeless in 1985, a 700-night odyssey, as the story goes, that led this former apparel executive, now 69, to start the Doe Fund.He named the organization, a career and life-skills counseling program in its 28th year, after Mama Doe, a homeless woman who died of pneumonia on Christmas Eve in Vanderbilt Hall, the former waiting room that the homeless, who used to congregate on the benches there, called “the living room.” Mr. McDonald still leads a candlelight service for Mama Doe in the main hall every year on Christmas Eve.
It was there, too, that he met his wife, Harriet Karr-McDonald, now 62, who was a screenwriter and actress in 1987 when she spent a week in the terminal with a teenage runaway named April Savino, researching a script about Ms. Savino’s life.
Yet it was almost by accident that he found himself in late 2010 wandering through a family home embellished with the same flourishes. The Tile House, its local nickname, is an eccentric, Moorish-looking brick folly on the south shore of Long Island, built by Rafael Guastavino Jr., the son of the architect Rafael Guastavino Sr., who developed the tile-vaulting system used in the Oyster Bar, the Whispering Gallery and in hundreds of other spaces, including Carnegie Hall and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
Begun in 1912, when the younger Guastavino was working on Grand Central, the house is a riot of tile work: his own instantly recognizable herringbone arches, supplemented with European tiles he brought back from a honeymoon tour. When he died in 1950, he left the place to his daughter, Louise, who died in 2004. By 2005, it was on the Preservation League of New York State’s “Seven to Save” list. A doctor bought it, but never moved in. “The wife didn’t want to live in Bay Shore is what I heard,” Mr. McDonald said. “It’s not the Hamptons or the East End.”
Read the full products at http://www.tilees.com/.
And the steady stream of incoming homeless canines wasn't expected to let up any time soon. With no vacancies, and some dogs having been housed at the shelter since early this year, few options remained.Chelsea Staley, who co-founded rescue advocacy organization Dog Bless last year, began working at the shelter as a rescue coordinator and spokeswoman in May. Although summer is always a busy time for animal shelters, she said recent renovations to the facility were partly to blame for the sudden space crunch.
In early June, shelter officials acted on the advice of an outside expert and replaced all of the ceiling tiles in the dog kennel areas.The old ceiling tiles were made of soft, porous material. But the kennels are a warm and humid place, and that made the tiles "a breeding ground for disease," Staley said.During the renovations, the shelter continued to accept stray dogs picked up by humane officers. It's contractually obligated to always accept strays, Staley said.
The YMCA unveiled the court Wednesday as summer campers played hockey, Pickleball and soccer inside the boards. The ice at the rink — one of six in the country inside a YMCA — usually rests on top of dull-gray concrete, which can be unforgiving and slick. But the new court is built out of 17,000 rubber-plastic tiles, giving the surface grip, give and upping safety for users."The surface wasn't conducive to that type of Floor tiles," Bethlehem YMCA Executive Director Derek Martin said. "If we had kids from the high school play lacrosse and make cuts on the concrete, they could run the risk of blowing a knee out. This surface is safe and conducive to any sport."
The $47,000 court was put in in time for the start of the Y's annual summer camp, and Martin said it will be used for other child and adult activities, such as Zumba and roller hockey. The court allows for multiple activities at once and offers an area for floor and roller hockey (both at one end of the rink and across the entire NHL-regulation surface), two full-size basketball courts, an area for games like Pickleball (a racquet sport hybrid) and a space for small-size indoor soccer games.
The court is set to be taken apart with the help of maker Mateflex each hockey season, which runs from the end of August to the end of March. While in use, some tiles could chip and will be replaced with ones from a stock of extras, Martin said. He also said the court is under a 15-year warranty.
Michael Losavio, 10, said what sets the sport court apart from a gym floor is that it is set up for multiple sports all the time. The summer camper said he enjoys playing floor hockey on the same space he plays ice hockey in the winter. Given the choice, he said he likes playing on both.
But this summer, the regulation-size rink is bright with whitish-blue light reflecting off a new light-blue sport court, the first of its kind in the Capital Region.The YMCA unveiled the court Wednesday as summer campers played hockey, Pickleball and soccer inside the boards. The ice at the rink — one of six in the country inside a YMCA — usually rests on top of dull-gray concrete, which can be unforgiving and slick. But the new court is built out of 17,000 rubber-plastic tiles, giving the surface grip, give and upping safety for users.
The $47,000 court was put in in time for the start of the Y's annual summer camp, and Martin said it will be used for other child and adult activities, such as Zumba and roller hockey. The court allows for multiple activities at once and offers an area for floor and roller hockey (both at one end of the rink and across the entire NHL-regulation surface), two full-size basketball courts, an area for games like Pickleball (a racquet sport hybrid) and a space for small-size indoor soccer games.
It was there that he began feeding the homeless in 1985, a 700-night odyssey, as the story goes, that led this former apparel executive, now 69, to start the Doe Fund.He named the organization, a career and life-skills counseling program in its 28th year, after Mama Doe, a homeless woman who died of pneumonia on Christmas Eve in Vanderbilt Hall, the former waiting room that the homeless, who used to congregate on the benches there, called “the living room.” Mr. McDonald still leads a candlelight service for Mama Doe in the main hall every year on Christmas Eve.
It was there, too, that he met his wife, Harriet Karr-McDonald, now 62, who was a screenwriter and actress in 1987 when she spent a week in the terminal with a teenage runaway named April Savino, researching a script about Ms. Savino’s life.
Yet it was almost by accident that he found himself in late 2010 wandering through a family home embellished with the same flourishes. The Tile House, its local nickname, is an eccentric, Moorish-looking brick folly on the south shore of Long Island, built by Rafael Guastavino Jr., the son of the architect Rafael Guastavino Sr., who developed the tile-vaulting system used in the Oyster Bar, the Whispering Gallery and in hundreds of other spaces, including Carnegie Hall and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
Begun in 1912, when the younger Guastavino was working on Grand Central, the house is a riot of tile work: his own instantly recognizable herringbone arches, supplemented with European tiles he brought back from a honeymoon tour. When he died in 1950, he left the place to his daughter, Louise, who died in 2004. By 2005, it was on the Preservation League of New York State’s “Seven to Save” list. A doctor bought it, but never moved in. “The wife didn’t want to live in Bay Shore is what I heard,” Mr. McDonald said. “It’s not the Hamptons or the East End.”
Read the full products at http://www.tilees.com/.
Your Expert Guide to Buying Safer Flooring
The good news is that industry is introducing a new standard for high-traction backing on consumer floor mats. So, if you buy them, look for "NFSI-Certified" on the label. This means the mat has been independently tested and found not to slide when you step on it. The most slip-resistant material remains rubber, by the way. But black rubber on vinyl can cause permanent stains, so the consumer needs to select products that are labeled by the manufacturer to be non-staining.
The main thing is to look for the labels, which are starting to appear in the United States and Canada. It doesn't cost you anything to be informed, and you can use your buying power to bring safer products to the market. Manufacturers will come around.
If you're installing new tile, or any type of flooring for that matter, it is important to select the right type of product for a given location. Just because a certain flooring material will work indoors does not mean it will be suitable for outdoor applications. Ceramic tile is a good example of this. Most ceramic tile is designed to perform within a narrow temperature range and if exposed to freezing temperatures will crack, break or become loose, thus leading to a potential slip or trip hazard. So, make sure to check that the tile you buy is intended for your use.
After that, one option is to shrink the size of the tiles and add more grout lines. That reduces the potentially slippery surface and increases the rough, higher-traction surface. Of course, it also raises another issue -- smaller tiles and more grout lines mean more maintenance. So, whatever size of tile you choose, look for greater slip resistance and a higher static coefficient of friction.
Most outdoor falls take place on un-level surfaces such as cobblestones or patio stones, because of holes or raised nails in wooden patio decks, and so on. The most common -- believe it or not -- are trips over parking stops like those used in retail shopping centers. Ice and snow are also a problem but most elderly people tend to either avoid going out under such conditions or take great effort in reducing their stride and walk more slowly as to reduce the risk of falling.
The commercial world of stores and businesses has more square footage and higher traffic, so it uses a lot of tile-type floors. Still, just like you do in your own home, business owners have to maintain the flooring, provide adequate lighting, and remove clutter and cords.
The thing that's different at home is that a dog might be around the corner. It is common for people to trip over their pets. Professionals in the assisted living industry recommend putting a bright colored pet sweater, vest or collar on pets to make them more recognizable, especially when they are sleeping on the floor. A collar bell or jingly pet tags can help to provide audible cues as to the location of a pet as well.
"Grid ceiling systems are commonly used in commercial buildings, schools, and other interior structures. Such ceiling systems are created by suspending a T-bar grid from the building's structural ceiling and filling the T-bar grid with ceiling tiles. The T-bar grid is made up of interconnected T-bars that form grid openings for the ceiling tiles, which, when dropped into the grid openings, are supported on the T-bars' bottom horizontal T-walls. The most common dimensions for the grid openings are the two foot by two foot and four foot by four foot for supporting similarly sized ceiling tiles, however, other grid opening dimensions are possible for accommodating different ceiling tile sizes, for example five foot by five China Porcelain tile. Ceiling tiles used in grid ceilings are typically acoustic tiles for enhancing the acoustical environment of the interior space below the grid ceiling.
"Customarily, luminaires are provided in the grid ceiling system for general illumination. Luminaires adapted for this use are called troffers, and are typically fluorescent luminaires having fluorescent light sources, however, other light sources, such as incandescent and HID lamps are sometimes used. Troffers are sized in correspondence with the grid openings of the T-bar grid and are mounted in selected grid openings instead of a ceiling tile. (The number and distribution of the troffers on the grid ceiling depend on the type of troffer used and the general lighting requirements of the space.) Parabolic troffers and lens troffers are currently the most common luminaires designed for T-bar grid mounting; however, other types of troffers are commercially available, for example, troffers with a secondary perforated reflector under the lamps.
"The physical dimensions of the lamps, lamp sockets, and optical components used in conventional troffers require that the troffer have a minimum height. While the height of commercially available troffers varies, most have a height of at least three inches. Thinner troffers have been designed for T-5 fluorescent lamps, which have a relatively small diameter, but the component dimensions of such troffers would still impose a lower limit on the height on the troffer. Generally, troffer heights less than about 11/2 inch would be difficult to achieve.
"The height of a troffer can have important implications in the shipment, installation, use, and ultimately the disposal of the troffers. For example, the height of the troffer determines its volume and the greater the volume the greater space and packaging material that will be needed to ship the troffers. The presence of the troffers in the grid ceiling must also be taken into account when determining the space required between the grid ceiling system and the building's overhead structural ceiling. The space between the top of the troffers and the structural ceiling has to be adequate to accommodate HVAC and fire alarm systems, sprinkler piping, and other utilities in the building. Use of conventional troffers, which have a depth that causes the troffers to protrude significantly above the grid ceiling, adds to this space requirement.
This added space requirement can be meaningful in terms of building construction costs. For example, a reduction of three inches in the requirement for the space above the grid ceiling will translate to three inches less in the requirement for the separation between the building's structural floors and structural ceilings. This can, in turn, result in less material required to construct the building due to a reduction in overall building height. Or it can possibly allow for an additional floor being added to a high rise building. For example, a three inch saving in the space above the grid ceiling will allow a floor to be added to a 40-story high rise building normally having a structural floor to structural floor dimension of 10 feet."
The main thing is to look for the labels, which are starting to appear in the United States and Canada. It doesn't cost you anything to be informed, and you can use your buying power to bring safer products to the market. Manufacturers will come around.
If you're installing new tile, or any type of flooring for that matter, it is important to select the right type of product for a given location. Just because a certain flooring material will work indoors does not mean it will be suitable for outdoor applications. Ceramic tile is a good example of this. Most ceramic tile is designed to perform within a narrow temperature range and if exposed to freezing temperatures will crack, break or become loose, thus leading to a potential slip or trip hazard. So, make sure to check that the tile you buy is intended for your use.
After that, one option is to shrink the size of the tiles and add more grout lines. That reduces the potentially slippery surface and increases the rough, higher-traction surface. Of course, it also raises another issue -- smaller tiles and more grout lines mean more maintenance. So, whatever size of tile you choose, look for greater slip resistance and a higher static coefficient of friction.
Most outdoor falls take place on un-level surfaces such as cobblestones or patio stones, because of holes or raised nails in wooden patio decks, and so on. The most common -- believe it or not -- are trips over parking stops like those used in retail shopping centers. Ice and snow are also a problem but most elderly people tend to either avoid going out under such conditions or take great effort in reducing their stride and walk more slowly as to reduce the risk of falling.
The commercial world of stores and businesses has more square footage and higher traffic, so it uses a lot of tile-type floors. Still, just like you do in your own home, business owners have to maintain the flooring, provide adequate lighting, and remove clutter and cords.
The thing that's different at home is that a dog might be around the corner. It is common for people to trip over their pets. Professionals in the assisted living industry recommend putting a bright colored pet sweater, vest or collar on pets to make them more recognizable, especially when they are sleeping on the floor. A collar bell or jingly pet tags can help to provide audible cues as to the location of a pet as well.
"Grid ceiling systems are commonly used in commercial buildings, schools, and other interior structures. Such ceiling systems are created by suspending a T-bar grid from the building's structural ceiling and filling the T-bar grid with ceiling tiles. The T-bar grid is made up of interconnected T-bars that form grid openings for the ceiling tiles, which, when dropped into the grid openings, are supported on the T-bars' bottom horizontal T-walls. The most common dimensions for the grid openings are the two foot by two foot and four foot by four foot for supporting similarly sized ceiling tiles, however, other grid opening dimensions are possible for accommodating different ceiling tile sizes, for example five foot by five China Porcelain tile. Ceiling tiles used in grid ceilings are typically acoustic tiles for enhancing the acoustical environment of the interior space below the grid ceiling.
"Customarily, luminaires are provided in the grid ceiling system for general illumination. Luminaires adapted for this use are called troffers, and are typically fluorescent luminaires having fluorescent light sources, however, other light sources, such as incandescent and HID lamps are sometimes used. Troffers are sized in correspondence with the grid openings of the T-bar grid and are mounted in selected grid openings instead of a ceiling tile. (The number and distribution of the troffers on the grid ceiling depend on the type of troffer used and the general lighting requirements of the space.) Parabolic troffers and lens troffers are currently the most common luminaires designed for T-bar grid mounting; however, other types of troffers are commercially available, for example, troffers with a secondary perforated reflector under the lamps.
"The physical dimensions of the lamps, lamp sockets, and optical components used in conventional troffers require that the troffer have a minimum height. While the height of commercially available troffers varies, most have a height of at least three inches. Thinner troffers have been designed for T-5 fluorescent lamps, which have a relatively small diameter, but the component dimensions of such troffers would still impose a lower limit on the height on the troffer. Generally, troffer heights less than about 11/2 inch would be difficult to achieve.
"The height of a troffer can have important implications in the shipment, installation, use, and ultimately the disposal of the troffers. For example, the height of the troffer determines its volume and the greater the volume the greater space and packaging material that will be needed to ship the troffers. The presence of the troffers in the grid ceiling must also be taken into account when determining the space required between the grid ceiling system and the building's overhead structural ceiling. The space between the top of the troffers and the structural ceiling has to be adequate to accommodate HVAC and fire alarm systems, sprinkler piping, and other utilities in the building. Use of conventional troffers, which have a depth that causes the troffers to protrude significantly above the grid ceiling, adds to this space requirement.
This added space requirement can be meaningful in terms of building construction costs. For example, a reduction of three inches in the requirement for the space above the grid ceiling will translate to three inches less in the requirement for the separation between the building's structural floors and structural ceilings. This can, in turn, result in less material required to construct the building due to a reduction in overall building height. Or it can possibly allow for an additional floor being added to a high rise building. For example, a three inch saving in the space above the grid ceiling will allow a floor to be added to a 40-story high rise building normally having a structural floor to structural floor dimension of 10 feet."
2013年7月22日星期一
Passaic County man is charged
A 42-year-old warehouse worker was arrested Monday and charged with attempting to arrange sexual encounters with children over the Internet, Passaic County Sheriff Richard H. Berdnik said.The suspect, Dewayne Stewart, was arrested at a tile store on Route 46 in Totowa, where he is an employee, Berdnik said.
The sheriff said the arrest followed an undercover investigation that began late last year after the sheriff’s department received two separate complaints of an adult trying to meet children on the Internet. Stewart was caught in a sting operation in which an undercover detective posed as a 14-year-old girl, Berdnik said.Stewart, using the screen name BobbyBrown58, engaged in sexually explicit chats and attempted to arrange meetings to have sex, Berdnik said.
He was originally tracked to an address in Clifton, but was believed to have moved or to have stayed at as many as three different addresses in Passaic County during the course of the investigation, the sheriff said. Stewart’s last known permanent address is in Wayne, Berdnik said.Stewart was charged with attempted sexual assault of a minor, attempted endangering the porcelain tiles of a minor, attempted sexual contact of a minor and attempted luring and enticing a minor. He was being held on $100,000 bail at the Passaic County Jail in Paterson pending an initial court appearance.
I keep waiting for the news that the Peace House mural is being torn down. It could happen any day now, since Peace House has officially moved into its new home. The organization is going to be in a much better building that fits its needs, and in the space where the rather dilapidated building stands now, there will be nice new affordable housing units, so all in all, everybody’s happy—except maybe the people, including me, who love that mural.
I pass Angela Carlson Talle’s glittering mosaic several times a week. When the sun is setting, it sparkles with color and light. It makes me happy. I’m going to be really sad when it’s gone.After returning to the Twin Cities from Philadelphia, Talle decided that the raggedy looking building “needed some love,” and after getting permission and input from Peace House, raised the money herself, getting tile donations from local glass and tile shops. She knew there was a possibility of a new development there, but she went and made the mosaic anyway. And of course it was worth it, even if the mural can’t be preserved, because it gave us—anyone who took joy in it—a piece of beauty for the short time that it has existed.
As someone with a background in theater, I should know this. Theater exists in the ephemeral. Theater companies spend weeks, months, even years (well, in Europe anyway) creating a performance, which is over in an instant. Even a show has a long run is unique each night. No two performances are ever exactly the same. Does that mean that it’s not worth doing? Of course not. It’s worth it to create something beautiful, to create something that inspires, that moves, that haunts people, even if just for a moment.
Muralists and graffiti artists understand this. Last month, street artist CAW made a mural for the Greenway Glow, a fundraiser for the Midtown Greenway Coalition, and a Hennepin County crew painted over the mural because the artists hadn’t secured a permit. (The artists had permission from the owner of the adjoining building, but the wall itself is in the county's jurisdiction, and the cleaning crew was unaware of the mural's origin and purpose.) The obscuring was only partly accomplished, with some of the mural left intact, so CAW transformed the mural into a long-necked dragon creature complete with website address.
I think at heart, artists share a drive to always create, and if the product doesn’t last forever? Well, we wish that we could preserve as much of the good stuff as we can. But sometimes, you have to just appreciate a beautiful thing for what it is for as long as you have it.As for me, I’ve been taking deep breaths each time I pass the Peace House mural, soaking it in, holding onto the memory for when it’s gone. I’ve resisted the urge to jump the fence and grab some of the tiles, as others have. I think the tiles belong with the people who spent time at the Peace House.
“ProColor Plus is the first of several new grout lines planned for the ProSpec ProColor brand and is part of a focused effort to broaden our line of tile and stone setting products,” said Paul Henning, Chief Operating Officer for ProSpec. “ProColor Plus offers many of the features we have heard contractors need in a high-performance grout such as color consistency, efflorescence-free and a quick return to service.”
The new grout is offered in 20 of the most popular colors found in the ProSpec ProColor Grout line. It incorporates proprietary ProSpec technologies, Rapid Cure Technology for high strength and Glossy floor tile, and Expansion Stabilization Technology for improved crack and shrink resistance.
Its rapid-setting formula can be opened to foot traffic within three to four hours, shower use within 24 hours and water immersion within seven days. Its low absorptivity will provide increased stain resistance compared to a portland cement grout. It can be used both indoors and outdoors and in residential, light commercial and heavy-duty commercial installations due to its durability.
Now, I forget which it is: are we, as a culture, at the point where we’re past the whole “zed” thing thanks to a glut of undead-themed artistry, or was it that we’re past the whole “being past the whole ‘zed’ thing” thing thanks to a glut of critics railing against an assumed glut of undead-themed artistry? Brain… hurt…
Point being, the base Zombies digital game is identical to the cardboard one, mechanically speaking. Players are survivors rushing towards a helicopter escape via the rotted streets of some Smalltown, Anywhere. The twist is that those streets aren’t laid out from the start: each turn a player draws a tile and chooses where to place it, and the very last tile is the helipad. The map is built as the game progresses and, barring some probabilistic fluke or unimaginative friends, is never the same.
This is big. While Zombies has other mechanics that pull the appropriate genre-conscious strings–players can scavenge health and bullets which help in fights with deadies, and every turn affords the opportunity to play some gruesome trick out of a hand of event cards–it’s the evolving, unpredictable map that really evokes the surreal panic of a zombie apocalypse. You can run, but where to? Will your pal put the hospital down next to you, with all it’s life saving medicine? Or will he block off your road with, ugh, the friggin’ gardening shop.
There’s opportunities for dickery with the events cards, too, specials you can play once per turn. Some are just location specific bonuses to combat, or allow for extra moves in a turn. Others let you swarm a player’s location with zeds or prevent said player from moving, the latter being deadly effective in a game where movement and scavenging are key to survival. The coveted “Alternative Food Source” stops all combat until your next turn, great for making a run at the helipad, or for delaying another player’s attempt at a combat victory.
The sheriff said the arrest followed an undercover investigation that began late last year after the sheriff’s department received two separate complaints of an adult trying to meet children on the Internet. Stewart was caught in a sting operation in which an undercover detective posed as a 14-year-old girl, Berdnik said.Stewart, using the screen name BobbyBrown58, engaged in sexually explicit chats and attempted to arrange meetings to have sex, Berdnik said.
He was originally tracked to an address in Clifton, but was believed to have moved or to have stayed at as many as three different addresses in Passaic County during the course of the investigation, the sheriff said. Stewart’s last known permanent address is in Wayne, Berdnik said.Stewart was charged with attempted sexual assault of a minor, attempted endangering the porcelain tiles of a minor, attempted sexual contact of a minor and attempted luring and enticing a minor. He was being held on $100,000 bail at the Passaic County Jail in Paterson pending an initial court appearance.
I keep waiting for the news that the Peace House mural is being torn down. It could happen any day now, since Peace House has officially moved into its new home. The organization is going to be in a much better building that fits its needs, and in the space where the rather dilapidated building stands now, there will be nice new affordable housing units, so all in all, everybody’s happy—except maybe the people, including me, who love that mural.
I pass Angela Carlson Talle’s glittering mosaic several times a week. When the sun is setting, it sparkles with color and light. It makes me happy. I’m going to be really sad when it’s gone.After returning to the Twin Cities from Philadelphia, Talle decided that the raggedy looking building “needed some love,” and after getting permission and input from Peace House, raised the money herself, getting tile donations from local glass and tile shops. She knew there was a possibility of a new development there, but she went and made the mosaic anyway. And of course it was worth it, even if the mural can’t be preserved, because it gave us—anyone who took joy in it—a piece of beauty for the short time that it has existed.
As someone with a background in theater, I should know this. Theater exists in the ephemeral. Theater companies spend weeks, months, even years (well, in Europe anyway) creating a performance, which is over in an instant. Even a show has a long run is unique each night. No two performances are ever exactly the same. Does that mean that it’s not worth doing? Of course not. It’s worth it to create something beautiful, to create something that inspires, that moves, that haunts people, even if just for a moment.
Muralists and graffiti artists understand this. Last month, street artist CAW made a mural for the Greenway Glow, a fundraiser for the Midtown Greenway Coalition, and a Hennepin County crew painted over the mural because the artists hadn’t secured a permit. (The artists had permission from the owner of the adjoining building, but the wall itself is in the county's jurisdiction, and the cleaning crew was unaware of the mural's origin and purpose.) The obscuring was only partly accomplished, with some of the mural left intact, so CAW transformed the mural into a long-necked dragon creature complete with website address.
I think at heart, artists share a drive to always create, and if the product doesn’t last forever? Well, we wish that we could preserve as much of the good stuff as we can. But sometimes, you have to just appreciate a beautiful thing for what it is for as long as you have it.As for me, I’ve been taking deep breaths each time I pass the Peace House mural, soaking it in, holding onto the memory for when it’s gone. I’ve resisted the urge to jump the fence and grab some of the tiles, as others have. I think the tiles belong with the people who spent time at the Peace House.
“ProColor Plus is the first of several new grout lines planned for the ProSpec ProColor brand and is part of a focused effort to broaden our line of tile and stone setting products,” said Paul Henning, Chief Operating Officer for ProSpec. “ProColor Plus offers many of the features we have heard contractors need in a high-performance grout such as color consistency, efflorescence-free and a quick return to service.”
The new grout is offered in 20 of the most popular colors found in the ProSpec ProColor Grout line. It incorporates proprietary ProSpec technologies, Rapid Cure Technology for high strength and Glossy floor tile, and Expansion Stabilization Technology for improved crack and shrink resistance.
Its rapid-setting formula can be opened to foot traffic within three to four hours, shower use within 24 hours and water immersion within seven days. Its low absorptivity will provide increased stain resistance compared to a portland cement grout. It can be used both indoors and outdoors and in residential, light commercial and heavy-duty commercial installations due to its durability.
Now, I forget which it is: are we, as a culture, at the point where we’re past the whole “zed” thing thanks to a glut of undead-themed artistry, or was it that we’re past the whole “being past the whole ‘zed’ thing” thing thanks to a glut of critics railing against an assumed glut of undead-themed artistry? Brain… hurt…
Point being, the base Zombies digital game is identical to the cardboard one, mechanically speaking. Players are survivors rushing towards a helicopter escape via the rotted streets of some Smalltown, Anywhere. The twist is that those streets aren’t laid out from the start: each turn a player draws a tile and chooses where to place it, and the very last tile is the helipad. The map is built as the game progresses and, barring some probabilistic fluke or unimaginative friends, is never the same.
This is big. While Zombies has other mechanics that pull the appropriate genre-conscious strings–players can scavenge health and bullets which help in fights with deadies, and every turn affords the opportunity to play some gruesome trick out of a hand of event cards–it’s the evolving, unpredictable map that really evokes the surreal panic of a zombie apocalypse. You can run, but where to? Will your pal put the hospital down next to you, with all it’s life saving medicine? Or will he block off your road with, ugh, the friggin’ gardening shop.
There’s opportunities for dickery with the events cards, too, specials you can play once per turn. Some are just location specific bonuses to combat, or allow for extra moves in a turn. Others let you swarm a player’s location with zeds or prevent said player from moving, the latter being deadly effective in a game where movement and scavenging are key to survival. The coveted “Alternative Food Source” stops all combat until your next turn, great for making a run at the helipad, or for delaying another player’s attempt at a combat victory.
Debris still plague coastal lakes
Superstorm Sandyslammed New Jersey's coastal lakes, saddling many with sand and debris, but eight months after the storm they remain a lower priority than beaches, according to environmental advocates.At least 15 scenic lakes still need sand, debris or fallen trees removed, and many pose flood threats to neighboring homes. Several lakes have overflowed during heavy rainstorms in recent weeks.
"The coastal lakes have been mostly forgotten," said Edward Bonanno, chairman of the Avon Environmental Commission and a former environmental crimes bureau chief in the state Attorney General's Office. "We hope there will be a solution for all the coastal lakes, a plan for porcelain tiles, for storm water management and for shoreline restoration" with restored habitats, Bonanno said.
The lakes are key elements of their communities, and it's unfortunate that lake restoration is getting less attention than other Jersey Shore restoration efforts, said President Stephen J. Souza of Princeton Hydro, a Ringoes, N.J.-based environmental consulting firm.
"It's been going much slower than what you see happening along the coastal areas, the boardwalks repairs and things like that," said Souza, a consultant to the Deal Lake Commission.For decades, coastal lakes in Monmouth and Ocean counties have served as giant receptacles for polluted stormwater runoff and sediment from their heavily developed watersheds.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has received few requests for Sandy relief money to restore coastal lakes in the two counties and the Army Corps of Engineers eventually may study lakes, according to officials.
The federal Natural Resources Conservation Service had received 37 applications from across the state for Emergency Watershed Protection Program money after Hurricane Sandy. Proposed projects ranged from debris removal to bulkhead repair, according to Carrie Mosley, state conservationist in the agency. But some of the applications were ineligible.
The Army Corps will conduct a $2.5 million study of Wreck Pond in Spring Lake and Sea Girt, N.J., focusing on how to reduce flooding and pollution. But the study will take several years to complete. Every year, rainfall triggers numerous ocean swimming bans at four beaches near the pond.
The state Department of Environmental Protection is seeking more information from communities about flooding, debris, sand and damage to storm water infrastructure, according to spokesman Larry Hajna. The agency will use the information to develop restoration strategies and is looking into possible sources of financing.
Federal officials have approved $59.7 million in grants to the state for contractors to remove sand and sediment debris from navigable waterways following Sandy. But officials had not determined whether any of the money would go toward dredging and cleaning up coastal lakes, according to spokesman Larry Ragonese of the Department of Environmental Protection.The surge affected about 100 named lakes in New Jersey. In general, Monmouth County had the worst damage, said Jill Lipoti, director of the Department of Environmental Protection's Division of Water Monitoring and Standards.
Before Sandy struck the Jersey Shore, officials lowered several lakes, including Silver Lake and Lake Como in Belmar, in an unsuccessful effort to prevent flooding.Nearly 25 years ago, the Monmouth County Health Department found generally poor water quality in nine lakes in the county.Erosion since the early 1900s has led to large amounts of glazed porcelain tile, sand and silt washing into the coastal lakes, according to a 2009 study by Monmouth University researchers and Souza. Stream banks were stripped of vegetation, flood plains were filled and tidal areas paved over, causing more flooding and worsening erosion in lake tributaries.
In February, Monmouth University hosted a Coastal Lakes Summit that focused partly on Sandy's effect on the 11 coastal lakes in Monmouth County and four in Ocean County.The Leap Motion Controller is a motion-sensor for your computer -- think of it as a tiny Kinect that works with a Windows PC or Mac. The Controller tracks your hands -- all 10 fingers, plus joints -- in 3D space, with far more precision than you’d expect: up to 1/100th of a millimeter accuracy, according to Leap Motion.
Put it down in front of your computer, in front of the keyboard or your laptop, and the space above it becomes a zone where you can use your hands to control stuff on your computer. Its sensory field, however, is limited to a narrow dome that extends above and around the tiny unit -- 2 feet above the controller, 2 feet wide, and 2 feet deep -- 8 cubic feet. It effectively covers a good chunk of your desktop space between you and your computer screen.
For people wondering what you can "do" with the Leap Motion Controller, the answer so far is: a lot, but not much that's useful. The Controller is compatible with Windows PCs and Macs, but it mostly works with software from the Airspace Store, an app store that's specifically designed for the unit. I tried the Controller on a MacBook Air, on an HP Elitebook Revolve, and on a bigger-screen Dell XPS 18. I played with about a dozen or so apps, and tried navigating Windows 8 and OS X with it.
Familiar apps like Google Maps and games like Cut the Rope have been Leap-enabled, and there were a host of other games and exploratory educational apps in the Airspace Store that were fun to noodle around with -- some even delivered a magic moment or two. But make no mistake: the Leap Motion Controller is a hobby accessory. No matter how cool it could be, or occasionally is, it won’t replace your touch pad, mouse, keyboard, and touch screen. It’s an experience more than an essential tool. For the most part, though, it works. And if the right apps were made available for it, it could get interesting.
An included “Orientation” tutorial you go through when you install the device shows you that virtual space and how your fingers are tracked. Immediately, you can see that it can sense subtle movements like a little finger waggle or rapid air-writing.
Once you’re done with the tutorial, you’re sent to Airspace Home, Leap Motion’s app launcher and gateway to the Airspace Store, where Leap Motion-compatible apps are sold. You need to set up an Airspace account; while the Leap Motion Controller could run apps outside the Airspace Store ecosystem (Google Earth 7.1 is one of them), the store’s a cleanly laid-out way to discover what apps are out there already, and a good chunk of them are free.
"The coastal lakes have been mostly forgotten," said Edward Bonanno, chairman of the Avon Environmental Commission and a former environmental crimes bureau chief in the state Attorney General's Office. "We hope there will be a solution for all the coastal lakes, a plan for porcelain tiles, for storm water management and for shoreline restoration" with restored habitats, Bonanno said.
The lakes are key elements of their communities, and it's unfortunate that lake restoration is getting less attention than other Jersey Shore restoration efforts, said President Stephen J. Souza of Princeton Hydro, a Ringoes, N.J.-based environmental consulting firm.
"It's been going much slower than what you see happening along the coastal areas, the boardwalks repairs and things like that," said Souza, a consultant to the Deal Lake Commission.For decades, coastal lakes in Monmouth and Ocean counties have served as giant receptacles for polluted stormwater runoff and sediment from their heavily developed watersheds.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has received few requests for Sandy relief money to restore coastal lakes in the two counties and the Army Corps of Engineers eventually may study lakes, according to officials.
The federal Natural Resources Conservation Service had received 37 applications from across the state for Emergency Watershed Protection Program money after Hurricane Sandy. Proposed projects ranged from debris removal to bulkhead repair, according to Carrie Mosley, state conservationist in the agency. But some of the applications were ineligible.
The Army Corps will conduct a $2.5 million study of Wreck Pond in Spring Lake and Sea Girt, N.J., focusing on how to reduce flooding and pollution. But the study will take several years to complete. Every year, rainfall triggers numerous ocean swimming bans at four beaches near the pond.
The state Department of Environmental Protection is seeking more information from communities about flooding, debris, sand and damage to storm water infrastructure, according to spokesman Larry Hajna. The agency will use the information to develop restoration strategies and is looking into possible sources of financing.
Federal officials have approved $59.7 million in grants to the state for contractors to remove sand and sediment debris from navigable waterways following Sandy. But officials had not determined whether any of the money would go toward dredging and cleaning up coastal lakes, according to spokesman Larry Ragonese of the Department of Environmental Protection.The surge affected about 100 named lakes in New Jersey. In general, Monmouth County had the worst damage, said Jill Lipoti, director of the Department of Environmental Protection's Division of Water Monitoring and Standards.
Before Sandy struck the Jersey Shore, officials lowered several lakes, including Silver Lake and Lake Como in Belmar, in an unsuccessful effort to prevent flooding.Nearly 25 years ago, the Monmouth County Health Department found generally poor water quality in nine lakes in the county.Erosion since the early 1900s has led to large amounts of glazed porcelain tile, sand and silt washing into the coastal lakes, according to a 2009 study by Monmouth University researchers and Souza. Stream banks were stripped of vegetation, flood plains were filled and tidal areas paved over, causing more flooding and worsening erosion in lake tributaries.
In February, Monmouth University hosted a Coastal Lakes Summit that focused partly on Sandy's effect on the 11 coastal lakes in Monmouth County and four in Ocean County.The Leap Motion Controller is a motion-sensor for your computer -- think of it as a tiny Kinect that works with a Windows PC or Mac. The Controller tracks your hands -- all 10 fingers, plus joints -- in 3D space, with far more precision than you’d expect: up to 1/100th of a millimeter accuracy, according to Leap Motion.
Put it down in front of your computer, in front of the keyboard or your laptop, and the space above it becomes a zone where you can use your hands to control stuff on your computer. Its sensory field, however, is limited to a narrow dome that extends above and around the tiny unit -- 2 feet above the controller, 2 feet wide, and 2 feet deep -- 8 cubic feet. It effectively covers a good chunk of your desktop space between you and your computer screen.
For people wondering what you can "do" with the Leap Motion Controller, the answer so far is: a lot, but not much that's useful. The Controller is compatible with Windows PCs and Macs, but it mostly works with software from the Airspace Store, an app store that's specifically designed for the unit. I tried the Controller on a MacBook Air, on an HP Elitebook Revolve, and on a bigger-screen Dell XPS 18. I played with about a dozen or so apps, and tried navigating Windows 8 and OS X with it.
Familiar apps like Google Maps and games like Cut the Rope have been Leap-enabled, and there were a host of other games and exploratory educational apps in the Airspace Store that were fun to noodle around with -- some even delivered a magic moment or two. But make no mistake: the Leap Motion Controller is a hobby accessory. No matter how cool it could be, or occasionally is, it won’t replace your touch pad, mouse, keyboard, and touch screen. It’s an experience more than an essential tool. For the most part, though, it works. And if the right apps were made available for it, it could get interesting.
An included “Orientation” tutorial you go through when you install the device shows you that virtual space and how your fingers are tracked. Immediately, you can see that it can sense subtle movements like a little finger waggle or rapid air-writing.
Once you’re done with the tutorial, you’re sent to Airspace Home, Leap Motion’s app launcher and gateway to the Airspace Store, where Leap Motion-compatible apps are sold. You need to set up an Airspace account; while the Leap Motion Controller could run apps outside the Airspace Store ecosystem (Google Earth 7.1 is one of them), the store’s a cleanly laid-out way to discover what apps are out there already, and a good chunk of them are free.
2013年7月18日星期四
Sweltering weather keeps pressure
The nearly 90-degree temperature made for a tough fight against a fire that gutted an abandoned home in Deer Isle on Thursday morning.Four companies — from Deer Isle, Brooklin, Sedgwick and Stonington — were necessary to provide adequate manpower, said Jim Foley, assistant fire chief in Deer Isle.
The large numbers of firefighters were needed so that each crew could work in 15-minute rotations, Foley said. While one crew fought the fire, which burned the second floor and roof of an abandoned house on Sunset Crossroad, the others received food and water from paramedics, who monitored each firefighter’s vitals before they went back to work.With turnout gear and air packs, fire crews risked health problems if they stayed in the hot building much longer than 15 minutes, Foley said.
“As soon as you get hot, you can stop functioning so well,” Foley said. “We didn’t want anyone to get hurt.”The fire was reported by Michael Kovac, who lives in a mobile home just a stone’s throw away from the home that burned. Kovac said he saw the fire and smoke around 10 a.m.“I went out to check the mail and smoke a cigarette,” he said. “I just saw tons of smoke and fire coming out of the roof, so I called 911.”
Firefighters knocked down the bulk of the blaze within about 15 minutes, Foley said, but additional flare-ups kept sparking in “void” spaces, between walls and above ceiling tiles. Because the fire had burned through the floor of the second story, crews had to punch holes the roof and attack from above.Kovac and his girlfriend, Meranda Smith, said they suspected a bolt of lightning from Wednesday night’s storm caused the fire. Smith said that around 3 a.m., the couple was awakened by the storm, and said she thought she smelled something burning at that China Porcelain tile.
Foley said firefighters could see no obvious natural cause of the blaze, and wouldn’t speculate. An investigator from the Office of the Maine State Fire Marshal was scheduled to arrive Thursday afternoon to begin probing for the fire’s origin.
Stunning 1 bedroom 1 bathroom apartment in elevator building with 18' high ceilings, floor-to-ceiling south facing windows for plenty of natural light, and private balcony. This condo rental features all the modern amenities you need for maximum comfort: central AC and heat, energy efficient vented washer/dryer, Bosch dishwasher, microwave, Caesarstone countertops, stainless steel Fisher Paykel appliances, deep soaking tub, rainfall shower with separate body shower, tankless dual flush toilets, and radiant heating on the bathroom floors so you never have to step onto cold tiles again. 25-year tax abatement through 2033.
Located on a quiet street in Prospect Heights/Crown Heights north on the edge of Park Slope, Clinton Hill, and Ft Greene, this exclusive community of 6 buildings will have everything you need at your front door. Shared amenities include a business and entertainment suite with wi-fi, screening room, billiards and game room, children's playroom, and also available soon are an indoor pool, gym, and sauna. Hundreds of highly rated restaurants and charming cafes abound, many featuring top chefs and if nobody's cooking beats yours then you have several grocery options nearby or you can visit the weekly Farmer's Market at Grand Army Plaza by Prospect Park. With the iconic Brooklyn Museum, Botanic Gardens, and Brooklyn Zoo nearby there is something for everyone. Located just 1.5 blocks from the C train at Clinton/Washington, and a short distance to the 2/3, 4/5, B/Q, and G trains, 3 avenues to the Atlantic Terminal for the LIRR, you're just 10 minutes to Manhattan.
Police officers were dispatched to the 900 block of West Exchange Street July 6 on reports of a man pointing a gun at someone. Officers stopped the vehicle of a 26-year-old man who lived nearby, and drugs and loaded guns were found, according to officers. The man was charged with possession of marijuana, trafficking in marijuana, possession of criminal tools and carrying a concealed weapon (three counts).
A 53-year-old Biruta Avenue man was charged with disseminating matter harmful to juveniles July 8. According to officers, the man was drinking, using drugs and watching pornography. Though he paused the movie when a 12-year-old girl entered the room, she could still see the images on the television, according to the police report. The man also was charged with possession of drug paraphernalia.
A 19-year-old Stow man was charged with possession of heroin and possession of drug abuse instruments July 8. Stopped at Copley Road and Storer Avenue for a traffic violation, officers found heroin and a syringe on his person.
A 19-year-old Oakdale Avenue man reported he answered the door July 9 to two unknown black males between 17 and 25 in gray hoodies and masks. They ordered him to the floor and hit him in the back of the head, causing minor injuries, before leaving with a TV, video game system and games and smartphone, according to the police report.
A 29-year-old Dominion Drive man was charged with having weapons under disability, carrying a concealed weapon, improper handling of a firearm in a motor vehicle and receiving stolen property July 9 after being stopped at North Hawkins Avenue and Cliffside Drive. The man, who has a previous felony conviction, was in possession of a loaded .45-caliber handgun, according to officers.
A 40-year-old Mull Avenue man was apprehended and charged with two counts of aggravated robbery and possession of marijuana and booked into the Summit County Jail July 12. Around 10:30 p.m. that evening, the man allegedly confronted a 25-year-old woman stopped at a traffic light at North Main and Olive streets by walking up to her car, stating he had a gun and ordering the female out of her car. When she refused, he slammed her head against the headrest several times, according to the police report. She took her keys out of the ignition and fled out the passenger side door, according to the report. The same evening, a 29-year old-male reported he also was approached at the same intersection by a man who said he had a gun and wanted the victim’s car, but he was able to put his car in reverse and drive off.
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The large numbers of firefighters were needed so that each crew could work in 15-minute rotations, Foley said. While one crew fought the fire, which burned the second floor and roof of an abandoned house on Sunset Crossroad, the others received food and water from paramedics, who monitored each firefighter’s vitals before they went back to work.With turnout gear and air packs, fire crews risked health problems if they stayed in the hot building much longer than 15 minutes, Foley said.
“As soon as you get hot, you can stop functioning so well,” Foley said. “We didn’t want anyone to get hurt.”The fire was reported by Michael Kovac, who lives in a mobile home just a stone’s throw away from the home that burned. Kovac said he saw the fire and smoke around 10 a.m.“I went out to check the mail and smoke a cigarette,” he said. “I just saw tons of smoke and fire coming out of the roof, so I called 911.”
Firefighters knocked down the bulk of the blaze within about 15 minutes, Foley said, but additional flare-ups kept sparking in “void” spaces, between walls and above ceiling tiles. Because the fire had burned through the floor of the second story, crews had to punch holes the roof and attack from above.Kovac and his girlfriend, Meranda Smith, said they suspected a bolt of lightning from Wednesday night’s storm caused the fire. Smith said that around 3 a.m., the couple was awakened by the storm, and said she thought she smelled something burning at that China Porcelain tile.
Foley said firefighters could see no obvious natural cause of the blaze, and wouldn’t speculate. An investigator from the Office of the Maine State Fire Marshal was scheduled to arrive Thursday afternoon to begin probing for the fire’s origin.
Stunning 1 bedroom 1 bathroom apartment in elevator building with 18' high ceilings, floor-to-ceiling south facing windows for plenty of natural light, and private balcony. This condo rental features all the modern amenities you need for maximum comfort: central AC and heat, energy efficient vented washer/dryer, Bosch dishwasher, microwave, Caesarstone countertops, stainless steel Fisher Paykel appliances, deep soaking tub, rainfall shower with separate body shower, tankless dual flush toilets, and radiant heating on the bathroom floors so you never have to step onto cold tiles again. 25-year tax abatement through 2033.
Located on a quiet street in Prospect Heights/Crown Heights north on the edge of Park Slope, Clinton Hill, and Ft Greene, this exclusive community of 6 buildings will have everything you need at your front door. Shared amenities include a business and entertainment suite with wi-fi, screening room, billiards and game room, children's playroom, and also available soon are an indoor pool, gym, and sauna. Hundreds of highly rated restaurants and charming cafes abound, many featuring top chefs and if nobody's cooking beats yours then you have several grocery options nearby or you can visit the weekly Farmer's Market at Grand Army Plaza by Prospect Park. With the iconic Brooklyn Museum, Botanic Gardens, and Brooklyn Zoo nearby there is something for everyone. Located just 1.5 blocks from the C train at Clinton/Washington, and a short distance to the 2/3, 4/5, B/Q, and G trains, 3 avenues to the Atlantic Terminal for the LIRR, you're just 10 minutes to Manhattan.
Police officers were dispatched to the 900 block of West Exchange Street July 6 on reports of a man pointing a gun at someone. Officers stopped the vehicle of a 26-year-old man who lived nearby, and drugs and loaded guns were found, according to officers. The man was charged with possession of marijuana, trafficking in marijuana, possession of criminal tools and carrying a concealed weapon (three counts).
A 53-year-old Biruta Avenue man was charged with disseminating matter harmful to juveniles July 8. According to officers, the man was drinking, using drugs and watching pornography. Though he paused the movie when a 12-year-old girl entered the room, she could still see the images on the television, according to the police report. The man also was charged with possession of drug paraphernalia.
A 19-year-old Stow man was charged with possession of heroin and possession of drug abuse instruments July 8. Stopped at Copley Road and Storer Avenue for a traffic violation, officers found heroin and a syringe on his person.
A 19-year-old Oakdale Avenue man reported he answered the door July 9 to two unknown black males between 17 and 25 in gray hoodies and masks. They ordered him to the floor and hit him in the back of the head, causing minor injuries, before leaving with a TV, video game system and games and smartphone, according to the police report.
A 29-year-old Dominion Drive man was charged with having weapons under disability, carrying a concealed weapon, improper handling of a firearm in a motor vehicle and receiving stolen property July 9 after being stopped at North Hawkins Avenue and Cliffside Drive. The man, who has a previous felony conviction, was in possession of a loaded .45-caliber handgun, according to officers.
A 40-year-old Mull Avenue man was apprehended and charged with two counts of aggravated robbery and possession of marijuana and booked into the Summit County Jail July 12. Around 10:30 p.m. that evening, the man allegedly confronted a 25-year-old woman stopped at a traffic light at North Main and Olive streets by walking up to her car, stating he had a gun and ordering the female out of her car. When she refused, he slammed her head against the headrest several times, according to the police report. She took her keys out of the ignition and fled out the passenger side door, according to the report. The same evening, a 29-year old-male reported he also was approached at the same intersection by a man who said he had a gun and wanted the victim’s car, but he was able to put his car in reverse and drive off.
Click on their website http://www.tilees.com/.
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