text:
For decades, blogger Joseph Donnelly saw few improvements for urban cyclists like himself in New Orleans, so he used the title of a website he started five years ago as a call to arms: "How To Start A Revolution In An Unfriendly Bike City."
But a push by the city to use Hurricane Katrina recovery money to make the roads more accommodating has left him with little choice but to scrap the label in favor of something more prosaic. The top of the blog now reads: "Bicycling New Orleans: Practical Survival Tips for Cyclists in NOLA."
"A lot of my gripes have been resolved," said Donnelly, who started cycling in the 1970s and ditched his last car for good in 1989. "When I started the blog in 2006, there was not a single bicycle lane anywhere in New Orleans. Before Katrina, the roads were dangerous for everyone."
Since 2007, the city has used about $100 million in federal rebuilding dollars to lay 56 miles of new asphalt on 55 heavily used streets, transforming potholed boulevards into smooth blacktops ideal for bike riding. Under the city's Submerged Roads Program, bike lanes have also been painted on 15 streets, giving the city about 40 miles of bike-friendly pathway. There are plans to pave 26 more streets.
The city is also poised to spend $7 million in federal aid to turn a wide 3-mile stretch of an abandoned railroad easement between the French Quarter and City Park into a greenway that will be known as the Lafitte Corridor.
Ridership has also grown. In 2010, New Orleans ranked 12th in the number of bicycle commuters among American cities, an 84 percent increase in bike commuters since 2005, according to the latest Census data.
New Orleans-based urban planner Robert Tannen said an increase in cycling has many benefits. "It slows down traffic. People are more cautious. It makes for a far more pedestrian-friendly city; bikers are also walkers. And it increases the health and overall well-being of citizens," Tannen said. "It increases the number of people who patronize local stores and smaller shops rather than the malls."
The progress has bike enthusiasts dreaming: Can New Orleans, with its flat terrain, warm weather and tightly-knit neighborhoods, rival the nation's best cycling cities like Seattle, Portland, Ore., and Boulder, Colo.? This summer New Orleans was named a "bicycle friendly community" by the League of American Bicyclists, but it still has further to go to attain the league's top-tier "platinum" status.
By comparison, Portland has 180 miles of bike lanes. Nearly 6 percent of workers there commute to work, according to the league's database, compared to about 2 percent of commuters in New Orleans.
Still, the city has come a long way. Bicycle shop mechanic and bike activist Tim Eskew said groups plodded along for years in obscurity and tried to drum up interest in cycling mostly through schools. He said it took about seven years to get city buses to include bike racks.
"Our biggest brick wall was that we all worked full-time jobs," Eskew said.
A confluence of forces after Katrina helped change things _ the prominence of New Urbanism (in other words, a return to compact cities) in rebuilding plans, a flood of newcomers and the city's native sense for European aesthetics. Also, former Mayor Ray Nagin and the urban planner he brought in after Katrina to lead the rebuilding, Ed Blakely, get some credit. After arriving in New Orleans from Australia, Blakely liked to ride his bicycle through the city.
Challenges persist, though. Despite the push to pave roads, there remain potholes galore, missing stop signs, broken up sidewalks, streets covered in glass and intersections where cyclists have to take a deep breath and hope to make it across. In other words, New Orleans is just like most other American cities _ hardly the kind of place where the cyclist comes first.
Randy Bibb, a French Quarter walking tour guide, knows the problems in New Orleans all too well. He's been a bicycle commuter ever since a tree fell on his car during Katrina.
He said he contends with bad traffic, bad drivers and bike thieves.
"There need to be more bike racks," he said. "Since Katrina, this is my seventh bike. I've had six bikes stolen. There's no bike lock they can't get through."
Charlie Doerr, the owner of Bayou Bikes along the proposed Lafitte Corridor greenway, still worries that money will dry up as Congress struggles to deal with the recession. He has pushed for the trail for years.
"The faster they get it started, the more likely it will happen," he said, looking out the back of his shop where the trail would go. "What scares me is that that money has a deadline and it won't get used. It's happened before."
The city's enthusiasm for cycling is on display every Thursday night when the dozens of costumed participants in the NOLA Social Ride pick a new neighborhood to roll through.
Their rendezvouses are a slow, beery, roll on two wheels; they zig-zag down back streets, wave at folks sitting on front porches, glide past shotgun houses, old mansions and slave quarters, wobbling into the night aglow in the little lights on their bikes.
Ritchie Jordan, who organizes the NOLA Social Ride, is a funky Jackson Square artist who came to New Orleans from Boulder, Colo., in 2007. He said the popularity of the weekly romp by bike is growing quickly.
"Even in Boulder I needed a car," Jordan said. "Not here. We stopped having a car. Coaster brake, it is the most preferred way to travel in this town."


text:
« All Events
"I have never had so many good ideas day after day as when I worked in the garden."
"In gardens, beauty is a by-product.
The main business is sex and death. "
~Sam Llewelyn
We sat in the garden,
I indolently reading…
We had the best display
of flowers yet seen—
wall flowers in profusion, columbines, phlox, and …huge scarlet poppies.
Click for directions.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Wednesday, May 31, 2017
It's been such a lovely start to the farming season. Thanks to a great combination of rain, sun, and hard working volunteers, the crops are absolutely thriving. We've been harvesting rhubarb, green onions, arugula, asparagus, and green garlic since mid-May. Meanwhile, the salad greens, kale, chard, broccoli, parsley, cabbage, beets, and carrots are all not far behind. The heat-lovers (tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, etc) are in the ground and starting to take root. AND THE GARLIC! More info on this below. In short...The Cutting Veg crops and people are flourishing!
How Parenting Has Made Me a Better Farmer
No parent likes it when their kids kvetch (whine), but last week I heard the best-kvetch-of-all-time! My four-year-old-daughter, in her whiniest voice: "Daddy, I want to plant." Yup, my daughter Ayla is ready for her first farm bed of her own. Yay! Parenting has forced me to become a better farmer in ways I didn't anticipate. Why? I simply don't have the same amount of time to manage my crops that I did in the past. And so, I have had to become smarter and more efficient. This spring, more than ever, I have abandoned my planting schedule, and planted when rains are anticipated. Sure enough, all my crops are thriving, and 9 weeks into the farming season, I have yet to water once. Less time watering = more time with family. And I better keep learning how to farm better and smarter....because we've got another baby on the way, due June 26th!
Garlic Update
We planted 45,000 cloves of garlic last October, and they are looking amazing this spring! The nice mix of rain and sun we've had on the farm, in combination with our amazingly rich sandy loam soil, has our garlic crop on track to be the most robust ever. We are growing 23 varieties in total this year. 14 of them will be available to the community, including Persian Star, Sicilian Gold, Northern Quebec, and the stunning Rose de Lautrec. Coming soon: Cuban Purple, Guatemalan, Transylvanian, Japanese, and Tibetan! We will be in touch when we start taking orders in June.
Volunteer Opportunities
Interested in getting your hands in the soil? Our farm is in Sutton, ON, approximately 1 hour from Toronto. Our primary volunteer day is Sundays, from 7:30am-3:30pm (flexible). Volunteer activities include a combination of planting, weeding, harvesting, preparing veg for market, plant care, etc. Helping out on the farm is a great opportunity to learn practical growing skills, and to meet wonderful like-minded folks. No commitment necessary -- come as frequently or infrequently as you like. Email email@example.com for more info.
Hope to see you on the farm soon. Until then, Keep Livin' on the Veg!
Farmer D
Posted by Daniel Hoffmann at 3:09 AM
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)


text:
The Indian Automobile Component Industry has emerged as a sunrise sector of the Indian manufacturing industry and a key stakeholder in the global automobile manufacturing industry.
The Automotive Industry in India is estimated to be a 145 billion dollars segment in the year 2016 and will contribute to about 10% of India's GDP. The Indian auto components industry is one of the fastest growing manufacturing sectors which is both forward and backward integrated with other engineering and manufacturing divisions in the country.
In the eve-changing ever-growing and competitive marketplace, it is very important for Automotive manufacturers gain operation excellence. To sustain the current growth trajectory and face the increasing competition in the global and domestic markets, the Indian auto component firms will have to create a new set of competitive advantages based on value-capture rather than cost reduction. IT is a key enabler for the Indian auto component firms to achieve these aspirations
Auto component manufacturers face challenges when they require Quick access to reliable business information as the auto component firms possess disparate systems including manual paper-based processes that lead to disconnect amongst the supply chain constituents which impedes real-time decision-making and secondly, it results in creation of ad-hoc sources of information, which in turn leads to problem of non-accurate data.
The auto component manufacturers incur high costs in inventory due to lack of visibility of the stock in work-in-progress stage. An insight on the inventory in WIP stage can help the companies plan their production more efficiently towards meeting the delivery schedules.
A well implemented ERP gives visibility into strategic information at every juncture .An ERP solution Improves business processes and enhances collaboration. With visibility throughout the operation and embedded support for a wide variety of manufacturing processes – including make-to-stock, make-to-order, configure-to-order, engineer-to-order, just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing and materials control , and lean operations, ERP for Automotive helps gain operational excellence. Some of the other benefits of an ERP implementation are elucidated below .
* Increase Operational efficiency
* Gain Business Visibility
* Improve Customer Relationship
* Streamline Production
* Monitor & Control Expenses
* Reduce errors
* Get accurate, timely information
* Global reach, better inventory visibility, reduced distribution costs
For automotive suppliers, it is critical that they have a capability to integrate information and processes within the company, as well as between themselves and their customers and suppliers, so that they can deal automatically with changes of whatever nature and pass information on to the required area to take action. By implementing collaborative processes, component manufacturers can establish long-term contractual relationships with their trusted partners
Given the increasingly complex world in which automotive suppliers operate, it is hard to see how better business practices can be instituted effectively without appropriate technology. In order to achieve their goals, automotive suppliers need to consider ERP systems that provide an integrated view of various processes.
Sage India offers ERP solutions for Auto component industry in India, you can visit http://www.sagesoftware.co.in


text:
Grammarly in contrast to the other Grammar Checking Tools is pretty accurate with regards to the technical aspect of proofreading, and it can readily detect almost all spelling errors.
As soon as Grammarly evaluates your copy, the software supplies a list of actionable corrections for the mistakes. The tool points out contextual spelling errors, grammatical slips, improper punctuation, sentence structure, and style problems.
The premium model bestows upon you an advanced grammar, contextual spelling and punctuation checker and additionally suggests various fixes to improve your article.
Regularly employing the writing enhancement option included in the software program tremendously strengthens your writing and helps you make a better impression.
Spell Check is among the most basic options granted by Grammarly, which can assist in ensuring you are not using improperly spelled phrases.
The Best Way to Check Grammar
Grammarly is a highly efficient instrument, and it is an easy online grammar checking tool that highlights errors and supplies recommendations.
The software determines the most suitable options for correcting the faults, so you can just select the best one.
However, Grammarly often exhibits notifications if a phrase appears not to fit the context correctly, but, keep in mind that Grammarly is not 100% accurate, so you will still need to use some of your better judgment.
This online grammar checker device does help significantly with utilizing good syntax and supplies you with extraordinary examples which can help you enhance your written communications immensely.
Good proofreading software is ordinarily produced to improve your overall writing quality but, Grammarly takes this a few steps further.
Grammarly actually helps you learn as you go, and in my opinion, this is what makes Grammarly possibly the most useful Grammar checker tool on-line. It literally teaches you as you go.
This app is also a godsend if English isn't your native language and you need to write as if it was.
As mentioned above, this checker queries your text against hundreds of grammatical guidelines and also comes equipped with the ability to check for plagiarism and lets you know just exactly how original your content is.
By employing Grammarly on a regular basis, I have now improved my writing skills and have learned about several copywriting mistakes like wordiness, colloquial speech, punctuation between and inside a clause, and other intricacies that made my old writing style less than stellar.
Grammarly shouldn't be viewed as the final phase of proofing your work, but it certainly is a helpful assistant along the way for getting you a much more polished final product.
Even just using the free Grammarly Lite version browser app or add-on for Microsoft Word can help you catch a majority of the frequently made mistakes.
Based on my real life utilization of this product, I have discovered that this software is super easy to use and has the power to verify nearly all the fundamental errors accurately.
However, it will not replace a human proofreader, but, it will make the proofreader's job much easier. And as bloggers, we should make the effort to write fresh content that is easy to read and understand plus also be free from grammatical and syntax errors.
So I am recommending that you click the button below and get started using Grammarly today. You will not be disappointed.