Home Improvement Can Do Wonders For You

You can make your dream home a reality

Your home's value will increase by simply upgrading your appliances. Getting matching appliances or replacing broken parts will increase the value of your home, too.

Identify low points on your property, particularly around your foundation. Soil should be added to these areas to stop pooled water from eating away at your yard. Water which gets into your home can cause wood rot, electrical problems, and even foundation concerns.

Start gathering ideas now, if you are planing to improve your house in the future. You should begin searching for home ideas so that you will come up with more ideas before you have to decide. When trying to decide on the perfect color palette, rushing through your decision is the last thing you want to do.

Use your outdoor space. Your backyard can make a wonderful extension to your indoor living area. It is the perfect area for barbecuing or simply relaxing after a long day at work.

A great way to set alcoves or niches apart from surrounding walls is to add wallpaper, or even better, to paint those alcoves and niches with an eye-popping accent color. You don't have to purchase a whole gallon of accent paint, either; a sample container is usually enough for a modestly-sized niche.

A good tip is to put some insulation on your plumbing, so that your water will stay hot in the lines and will not freeze during winter weather. Weatherizing tape is readily available at any store and it's easy to install. This will keep plumbing lines from freezing and having to be replaced if they burst.

A great way to lower the cost of your electric bill is to use a motion sensor light instead of a regular porch light. These types of lights can be manually turned on and the sensitivity can also be adjusted.

You should always focus on the exterior of your home first when doing renovations in order to sell the house. A dingy or shabby exterior will make it harder to sell your house at the price you want.

Keep children safe and improve your home by putting pads on sharp furniture. You can protect sharp furniture edges by using foam tape or buying specific child safety corner protectors. Another thing you can try is to tape dangerous wiring down that could be harmful to your children.

Use an asphalt sealer to keep your driveway looking new. The sun and wet weather can both damage your driveway, especially if water seeps into cracks, then freezes and thaws. A sealant can give your driveway the protection it needs to maintain its appearance through even the harshest weather conditions.

Be sure to have your contractor listen to what you have to say. Contractors have good insight but they also need to listen to any insights that you might have, they are working for you after all. If your contractor isn't acknowledging your opinion, then you may not get what you want. Be sure that you and your contractor are communicating well.

Try to group your tools by project in different toolboxes for better organization. For example, put your plumbing tools into one toolbox. Another box could be used for electric projects, and might include items such as fuses, zip ties, or electrical tape. This will make it easy to find the tools you need for your project.

Make sure you get copies of everything for a file that contains, the permits themselves, the inspection reports and the permit applications. This should be a question you ask before you hire a contractor.

If the space that you've designated as a laundry room isn't quite big enough to house both a washer and dryer, think about getting a combination unit. A lot of combo units are as small as a dishwasher. You can use the machine to both wash and dry your clothes.

You've read the tips in this article, so now you should be prepared to get started on that list of home improvements you've been dreaming about. You can make your dream home a reality, take care of your own maintenance issues, and deal with any home-related crisis, if you just learn a little about it.

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Source: http://www.contentcaboodle.com/home-and-family/home-improvement-can-do-wonders-for-you.html

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Galaxy Note II KIRF edition makes a quick appearance, shows no remorse

It was only a matter of time before we'd see this one, right? As has been the case with many, many other gadgets, Samsung's Galaxy Note II is the latest one to join the "Keepin' it Real Fake" revolution. Formally dubbed Star S7180, this phablet clone, as you can imagine, doesn't come even close to matching the genuine Note II's mighty spec sheet, with this 5.5-inch KIRF device said to be only boasting a dual-core MT6577 CPU with 1GB RAM, 4GB of internal storage and an 8-megapixel cam on the back -- but, hey, at least there's some Jelly Bean to go with that. According to GizChina, you'll have to shell out about $150 for the Star S7180, which, all in all, isn't too bad a deal -- that's if you don't mind taking the faux route, of course. At any rate, you'll find additional eye candy after the break, and, judging by the looks, it may just be Mr. Blurrycam's best work yet.

Continue reading Galaxy Note II KIRF edition makes a quick appearance, shows no remorse

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

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Via: MobileGeeks

Source: GizChina

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/12/14/samsung-galaxy-note-ii-kirf/

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Tims New Construction ? Blog Archive ? Remodel California Homes ...

Also providing a home with extra living area, home additions can be a terrific investment. Although, before venture on structure a home totaling, or other large residence remodel projects, there are a # of important items that should be considered first. These matter contain nearest residence advertise value, residence totaling expenses, architectural scheme, financing, timetable for achievements, and your personal disruption threshold and sweat impartial commitment level. Added contractors specializes in original and second tale house extra and assembly your home added seem as if it were constantly part of your original home. We are a master residence remodeler that surpass at resizing and expanding obtainable house while maintain or improving the curb attract and inner usability. Our construction and renovation expertness means your latest house adding or remodel plan will turn out superior than you constanly imagined. We are constantly looking for new products to advance your home plan. We are expert at force efficient solution problem solving solution normally connected with main home improvement, additions, renovation, expansion and added. For practiced} precise} for you. We {provide general contractor work you can depend on, count on our contractor. We recommend excellent remodel and renovation work, included house maintenance and post-construction clean-up service. Our register and licensed contractor are the finest for their especial district. Whether you?re look for interior or exterior work or required a small of both, our team of professional is here to help you decide which change and upgrades are accurate for you. We supply repair, remodel and construction service for residential and profitable property owners, including house additions, bathroom remodeling, kitchen reconstruct, green remodeling, force effectiveness planning and improvement, floor, roofing, violation corrections, between other services. From miniature maintenance to remodel your kitchen, your bathroom, inner or external of your home or you need to intend and arrangement the entire services for a population, our business is dedicated to exceed our cosumer prospect.

Remodel California Homes Woodland Hills California 91364

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This entry was posted on Friday, December 14th, 2012 at 1:25 PM and is filed under General Contractors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

Source: http://timsnewconstruction.com/Blog/2012/12/14/remodel-california-homes-woodland-hills-ca-8/

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UMass student death challenges university's right to restrict ...

by Steve Fox Published Dec. 14, 2012 10:59 am Updated Dec. 14, 2012 7:55 pm

On Nov. 16, Sydne Jacoby, a sophomore at the University of Massachusetts was walking with a group of friends near campus when she tripped and fell just before midnight. It?s a pretty well-traveled street for party revelers on a Friday night and Amherst officials would later confirm that alcohol was involved in the accident.

Three days later, Jacoby died from injuries suffered in the fall.

Yet, it wasn?t until 10 days later, in a story in The Daily Hampshire Gazette, that the university community and larger Amherst community were informed of the death.

In that initial report, UMass spokesman Edward Blaguszewski said?Jacoby was not identified by university officials based on the wishes of her family and privacy considerations. And in this case the university also chose not to send around an e-mail announcing the student death ? standard operating procedure since I began teaching here five years ago.

My first thought: What else don?t we know? Is it legitimate for university officials to withhold information from the public based on privacy concerns?

Blaguszewski said the decision to hold back information on the Jacoby death was a ?balancing of interests? between the public?s right to know and the family?s right to privacy.

?It?s not uncommon to not send out an email with a student death,? said Blaguszewski.? ?It?s happened many times when students have died.?

The journalistic purpose of reporting on deaths

As a journalist, there are few stories more difficult to cover than the death of a young person. Making the call to get comments from the family is never an easy task. Yet we do it because it is part of the mission of journalists to get information ? good and bad ? out to the public. We tell the stories of the living and the dead. And when young people die under tragic circumstances, we report and write in the hopes that the story may do some good.

?I was surprised that the university bowed to the family?s request,? said Larry Parnass, the editor of the Daily Hampshire Gazette.

?I felt there is an information need to be served. I wonder how they?ll handle future incidents. Can any family put a stop to news of legitimate interest to the entire UMass community by citing privacy? Under what circumstances does community interest override that??

Deaths on university campuses are sensitive. Students have rights, but on public campuses such as the University of Massachusetts the public has a right to know if students are dying ? and how they are dying. In this case, many private efforts were made to help students, yet where were the public efforts?

In this case, university officials privately contacted housing staff, faculty members and others impacted by Jacoby?s death to make sure they were aware of counseling services. Yet, in deciding not go to public with its information, university officials violated the social contract it has with its community.

?The UMass community has a right to know when it loses one of its members,? said Karen List, director of the UMass Journalism Program.? ?It?s important to mark every student?s passing in that way?and a disservice to all of us not to do it.?

There has?always been a certain amount of tension between journalists and the world of officialdom. At a public university it gets even trickier as officials balance the public?s right to know with putting the best face on the university. And, in a news environment that now includes Facebook, Twitter and citizen journalists, it?s rare that information doesn?t get out. In the Jacoby case, The Gazette did not publish her name because the only confirmation of her identity and the role of alcohol came from social media.

?We believe in putting sources on the record,? said Parnass. ?The best that we got from UMass news office was that there had been a death and the school had not notified the community at the family?s insistence.?

Information wants to be shared

Social media kicked in days after The Gazette?s report came out when citizen journalist Larry Kelley posted Jacoby?s name on his blog ?Only In the Republic of Amherst,? and questioned why the university had not been more forthcoming in releasing information surrounding the tragedy, asking whether the role of alcohol played a part in the silence.

?Obviously alcohol played a role in this terrible tragedy,? wrote Kelley. ?Obviously UMass doesn?t want people to know that. Question is who ? or what ? are they trying to protect??

Student journalists at The Massachusetts Daily Collegian used Facebook when conducting their reporting. Senior journalism student Katie Landeck reported the story for The Collegian and was able to find Alison Lynch, a friend who was with Jacoby that night, through Facebook.

The story was not an easy one for Landeck to report. She hesitated in calling the family, knowing their desire for privacy. But, she did it anyway. In the end, The Collegian reporters and editors thought of the public?s right to know and published what they knew.

?The thing is?alcohol?was a contributing factor and therefore the detail that she had been drinking is important to the story, and it was the big question everyone was going to ask themselves, so I felt it had to be in there,? said Landeck.

?It?s my job to answer those questions. But the most important thing, and [the] thing that drove this story for me, is that I don?t think the fact that she was drinking when she fell should rob her of her identity. She should be remembered by the UMass community as Sydne Jacoby, not just the drunk girl who tripped.?She deserved a name, a face and for her story to be told, and I didn?t want to further punish her by denying her that.?

In the end, the attempt to control the flow of information by the family and the university ended up bringing more attention to Jacoby?s death. It?s not the first time we?ve seen that happen. That?s why transparency is usually the better course. But, what I?ve found on this campus (and others) is a shocking lack of media literacy. University officials and faculty truly do not understand how the media operates or what information is public ? or should be.

These restrictive behaviors are the last thing we should be seeing on university campuses. University officials at UMass and elsewhere would be well-served to conduct annual media training sessions and seminars for faculty and administrators.

On college campuses, where the exchange of ideas is valued, so should the free flow of information.

Tags: College journalism

Source: http://www.poynter.org/how-tos/journalism-education/198173/umass-student-death-challenges-universitys-right-to-restrict-information/

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Merry*Death on a Bike!: Wait...There Are Other Sports Besides ...

Wait...There Are Other Sports Besides Cycling?

Last Sunday?s epic conditions at Badger Cross made for a terrifying ride home.? What should have normally taken four hours turned into a six-and-a-half-hour, white-knuckle drive through wind, snow, and dark on the deteriorating interstate.? As we neared the Twin Cities the number of cars in the ditch increased with each mile, and the snow just kept coming.? Monday morning we woke to a good twelve inches of the white stuff. The upside of the bad roads, icy sidewalks and dreaded shoveling duties?? Nordic skiing!? You can?t live happily in Minnesota without having at least one true outdoor winter sport in your rotation: hockey, fat-bike riding, alpine skiing, skijoring, ice skating, broomball, snowshoeing...if you aren?t motivated to do one of them, what is the point of enduring the darkness and cold? And, no, I do not include ice fishing in the list of winter sports ? sorry, but to all appearances ice fishermen are just looking for an excuse to drink. Thankfully, I live in a state where Nordic skiing is beloved.? By Monday there were already trail reports up on Skinny Ski, and various parks and recreation departments got their trail grooming equipment up and running.? I spent Tuesday evening getting my skis ready ? a new coat of base wax and a couple of layers of blue Fast Wax.
We hit Battle Creek on Wednesday ? definitely not the best course for the first ski of the year with all of the hills, but it is close and well groomed.? The first ski of the year is always one to just get through.? You are guaranteed to be completely uncoordinated, fall unexpectedly, and the fronts of your shins will be screaming because you forgot what good form is.? I took one nasty tumble going down a hill ? the Spouse was so traumatized by watching my contortions that he fell three times in getting down to me ? and I now have a wrenched knee to remind me of my first day out. Still, I love skiing ? it is so very different from the bike.? You can never feel more fully physically engaged in an activity as you are when skiing.? While the first few moments are awkward, it doesn?t take long before you are skating through the forest, the sun at a low angle on the horizon, and all your worries and nagging thoughts have been replaced by one simple idea: shift, glide, shift, glide, shift, glide?

Source: http://merrydeathonabike.blogspot.com/2012/12/waitthere-are-other-sports-besides.html

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New NIST document offers guidance in cryptographic key generation

Public release date: 13-Dec-2012
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Contact: Chad Boutin
boutin@nist.gov
301-975-4261
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

Protecting sensitive electronic information in different situations requires different types of cryptographic algorithms, but ultimately they all depend on keys, the cryptographic equivalent of a password. A new publication* from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) aims to help people secure their data with good keys no matter which algorithm they choose.

NIST Special Publication (SP) 800-133 offers guidance on generating the cryptographic keys that are needed to employ algorithms that provide confidentiality and integrity protection for data. Even if adversaries know what algorithm is used, they cannot gain access to the data unless they also have the proper key. SP 800-133 will be helpful to anyone who needs the specifics on how to generate these keys successfully, whether for secure data transmission or storage of sensitive information, to give two examples of their use.

SP 800-133 is primarily a high-level document that refers readers to other documents that contain details on generating the various types of keys. However, it does offer specific details for one type of key generation: the keys used in symmetric-key algorithms, in which the same key is used, for example, to both encrypt and decrypt data. Symmetric-key algorithms operate quickly, and the keys must be kept secret. These algorithms are used to protect sensitive information, including other keys, for which the algorithm is iterated as many times as needed to protect the information.

Another type of algorithman asymmetric-key algorithmuses two keys: a public key that may be known by anyone, and a private key that is known by only one party and must be kept secret. Asymmetric-key algorithms are generally slower than symmetric-key algorithms and are used in cases where only a single operation of the algorithm is required, such as the generation of a digital signature or the encryption of a key to be used later with a symmetric-key algorithm. Details on the generation of keys for asymmetric-key algorithms are not offered in SP 800-133, but the document references others containing the key generation specifications.

###

The publication is part of a group of documents concerning cryptographic key management, namely SP 800-57 (parts one, two and three), SP 800-130, SP 800-152, and the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 186 Digital Signature Standard.

Available at: http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-133/sp800_133.pdf.

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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Public release date: 13-Dec-2012
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Chad Boutin
boutin@nist.gov
301-975-4261
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

Protecting sensitive electronic information in different situations requires different types of cryptographic algorithms, but ultimately they all depend on keys, the cryptographic equivalent of a password. A new publication* from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) aims to help people secure their data with good keys no matter which algorithm they choose.

NIST Special Publication (SP) 800-133 offers guidance on generating the cryptographic keys that are needed to employ algorithms that provide confidentiality and integrity protection for data. Even if adversaries know what algorithm is used, they cannot gain access to the data unless they also have the proper key. SP 800-133 will be helpful to anyone who needs the specifics on how to generate these keys successfully, whether for secure data transmission or storage of sensitive information, to give two examples of their use.

SP 800-133 is primarily a high-level document that refers readers to other documents that contain details on generating the various types of keys. However, it does offer specific details for one type of key generation: the keys used in symmetric-key algorithms, in which the same key is used, for example, to both encrypt and decrypt data. Symmetric-key algorithms operate quickly, and the keys must be kept secret. These algorithms are used to protect sensitive information, including other keys, for which the algorithm is iterated as many times as needed to protect the information.

Another type of algorithman asymmetric-key algorithmuses two keys: a public key that may be known by anyone, and a private key that is known by only one party and must be kept secret. Asymmetric-key algorithms are generally slower than symmetric-key algorithms and are used in cases where only a single operation of the algorithm is required, such as the generation of a digital signature or the encryption of a key to be used later with a symmetric-key algorithm. Details on the generation of keys for asymmetric-key algorithms are not offered in SP 800-133, but the document references others containing the key generation specifications.

###

The publication is part of a group of documents concerning cryptographic key management, namely SP 800-57 (parts one, two and three), SP 800-130, SP 800-152, and the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 186 Digital Signature Standard.

Available at: http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-133/sp800_133.pdf.

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-12/nios-nnd121312.php

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Stellar Data Recovery releases Stellar's Volume Repair | MacTech

Jungle Rumble Review By Jennifer Allen on December 12th, 2012 Our Rating: :: ENDLESS RUMBLINGiPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad Jungle Rumble is a simple idea, tied into a major reality TV show, but it... | Read more ?

Source: http://www.mactech.com/2012/12/12/stellar-data-recovery-releases-stellars-volume-repair

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