text:
Nampa Man Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy to Distribute Meth
Eleven Co-defendants Set for Trial on April 17
BOISE – Juventino Lara-Plancarte, 42, of Nampa, Idaho, pled guilty today in United States District Court in Boise to conspiracy to distribute in excess of 500 grams of methamphetamine, U.S. Attorney Wendy J. Olson announced. The charge carries a mandatory minimum penalty of ten years to life in prison, a $4 million fine, and a term of supervised release of five years. Lara-Plancarte is scheduled to be sentenced on June 11, 2012, before U.S. District Judge Edward J. Lodge at the federal courthouse in Boise.
According to the plea agreement, between September 2009, and January 16, 2011, Lara- Plancarte and several other individuals entered into conspiracy to distribute in excess of 500 grams of methamphetamine. Lara-Plancarte admitted that he was aware that methamphetamine was being distributed and also admitted that he supplied another person with methamphetamine for further distribution. According to the plea agreement, Lara-Plancarte also admitted to possessing in excess of three pounds of methamphetamine found at his residence on January 14, 2011, with the intention of distributing it to others.
Thirteen people were charged in the federal indictment filed on February 2011 on numerous charges, including conspiracy to distribute controlled substances, employment of people under age 18 in drug operations, distributing methamphetamine, using a telephone to commit drug trafficking crimes, possession of controlled substances with intent to distribute, possession of firearms in furtherance of drug trafficking, and illegal re-entry.
Trial for eleven co-defendants, Jose Ramon Escobedo Gonzalez, Lourdes Muro-Garcia, Fabian Nunez-Garcia, Jorge Luis Cardoza, Victor Chavez-Garcia, Antony Alegria Zedeno, Ronald Garcia, Randi Leann Atkisson, Diego Gomez-Lara, Benjamin Prieto, and Lindsay Stilwell, all of Nampa, is scheduled to begin on April 17 before U.S. District Judge Edward J. Lodge at the federal courthouse in Boise. One co-defendant is deceased.
The Organized Crime/Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) case, named "Operation Flamethrower," is the result of a year-long, multi-agency investigation. It included the cooperative law enforcement efforts of the Nampa Police Department, Drug Enforcement Administration, Canyon County Sheriff's Office, Canyon County SWAT team, Metro Violent Crime Task Force, Idaho State Police, Caldwell Police Department, Ada County Sheriff's Office, Boise Police Department, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).
The OCDETF program is a federal multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional task force that supplies supplemental federal funding to federal and state agencies involved in the identification, investigation, and prosecution of major drug trafficking organizations.


text:
In case you didn't see Sherlock Holmes this weekend or catch the French version of this video, Warner Bros has released an English, high-resolution trailer for Christopher Nolan's Inception. The studio has kept details surprisingly secret for the science fiction story, so please pardon the lack of explanation for the eyegasm of random images and confusing dialogue. I honestly have no idea what's happening either. I can't wait to find out.
If I didn't know any better I'd think Christopher Nolan is taking quae's from Terry Gilliam because this trailer makes no sence and that would be Gillian's territory. I sure the Dark Knight director can't do any wrong at least until his next movie doesn't make a zillion dollars. I'm pretty sure Inception won't be that movie people will go to see it because of Christopher is directiong Leonardo DiCaprio is staring in it. Hay at least the Trailer is in english
Filed under: Inception, Movie | Tagged: Christopher Nolan, iception, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ken Watanabe, Legendary Pictures, Leonardo DiCaprio, Marion Cotillard, Syncopy, warner bros | Leave a comment »

subset: commoncrawl


text:
- Details
- Category: News
- Published: Tuesday, 25 September 2018 13:18
- Written by Jack Wilbur
- Hits: 824
(Salt Lake City) 'ÄďThe U.S> Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced this week that more than $72 million in Specialty Crop Block Grants have been awarded nationwide for fiscal year 2019 to support farmers growing specialty crops, including fruits, vegetables, tree nuts, and nursery crops. States use the Specialty Crop Block Grant Program (SCBGP) to fund research, agricultural extension activities and programs to increase demand for agricultural goods of value to farmers in the state.¬†
In Utah, seven projects were selected that total just over $330,000. The projects selected are:
- Demonstration of the Feasibility of production Service Berry (Saskatoon) in Cache Valley, UT
- Sustaining Green Industry Production Through Irrigation Management by Low-cost Microcontrollers
- Developing the Four Corners Potato for Market
- Enhancing Specialty Food Product Producers Sourcing Local Produce for Products
- Using Weather Data to Predict Orchard Crop Development
- Urban & Small Farm Specialty Crop Hydroponic/Aquaponic Feasibility Study & Demonstration
- Piute County Specialty Crops Awareness and Utilization to Address Intergenerational Poverty and Food Deserts
The Utah projects address a variety of specialty crop issues and cover a large portion of the State, from the Four Corners region and Piute County in the South, to Cache Valley in the North.


text:
Sleep Appliances
A common disorder is not getting the oxygen needed while you sleep. Known as Sleep Apnea, when a patient's air passage is blocked while they sleep, the patient then experiences a dip in oxygen waking them just enough to disturb their rest. If this occurs multiple times in the night, the patient is not getting the rest they need and is experiencing dips and surges that your heart doesn't need. At Kooning Family Dentistry in Lake Oswego OR, Dr. Kooning can help you breathe easier with a customized appliance.
Why do I Have Sleep Apnea?In most situations, the patient is suffering from Sleep Apnea because their tongue is sliding back in their mouth while they sleep causing the air passage to be blocked. Snoring is often a sign of this because snoring indicates blockage, though some patients may be suffering from sleep apnea without snoring. Sleep appliances that have been customized to fit you can help pull your lower jaw, and therefore your tongue, forward, opening up that space.
Sleep Apnea can cause a domino effect of other problems. Patients with sleep apnea frequently note a problem with exhaustion and the multiple effects that come with not getting enough rest.They are waking multiple times a night, disrupting their REM sleep, even if they are not aware of the constant waking. Sleep Apnea has also been found to have direct relation to cardiovascular problems, as the brain responds to dips in oxygen with surges to your heart to protect it. The long term problems of continued, untreated sleep apnea can be dangerous.
No Sleep Study NeededA frustration for most of our Lake Oswego, OR patients is the need for a sleep study. We want to remove all frustrations so that you will get the rest you need. At Kooning Family Dentistry, we offer take-home sleep tests to aid in the diagnosis of sleep related breathing disorders.This eliminates the patient needing to schedule time at a sleep study clinic and allows them to take the test in the comfort of their own home.
Sleep Apnea TreatmentsThe two main sleep appliances we are using at this time are the Herbst appliance, as well as a Respire Blue appliance. Our office has a pharyngometer to measure the patency of the airway in different mandibular positions as well as a rhinometer to detect any possible nasal blockages. This equipment allows us to fabricate sleep appliances with a much higher degree of accuracy and efficacy than offices that do not possess this technology.
Herbst® Sleep ApplianceThe Herbst system pulls your lower jaw forward, allowing for adjustments. If you do not initially find this appliance to be doing the trick, we can make tiny adjustments to find the right positioning for you.
Respire Blue Sleep ApplianceThe Respire Blue Series places the patient's jaw in a position that helps them have an open airway while they sleep by preventing the lower jaw from falling back and then closing the airway. With the Respire Blue appliance, the patient is able to inhale more air with each breath leading to a better night's sleep.
Schedule Your Sleep Apnea VisitFor more information on Sleep Apnea, and getting the rest that you need, contact Christopher D. Kooning DMD, PC at our Lake Oswego, OR 97035 office for more information: (503) 675-4594.


text:
- Guaranteed for 2 full months
- Pay by PayPal or Credit Card
- Instant Digital Download
Perhaps one of the most important things we do as portrait photographers is preserve memories. While the digital era and its ever-evolving technology have made it easier to ensure that the photos we take today will last longer than their analog counterparts, there are still things we can do to help preserve memories captured before the advent of the pixel. Several years ago, I came across a sizable collection of very old family photos and started scanning them. Unfortunately, some had already been damaged to one degree or another. Fading, creasing, staining, and tearing had all left their marks, and the fact that some of these photos were close to 100 years old did not help their cause. At first I wasn't sure what to do about them, but closer inspection made it clear that restoring many of these photos would not be as difficult as I initially thought. With the help of only three or four Photoshop tools, I was able to bring this photo of my great grandparents back to life.
Once the image has been scanned, open it in Photoshop to assess the damage and formulate a plan. A good rule of thumb when editing any sort of photo is to tackle your global edits first, before worrying about specific target areas. I like to make overall tonal adjustments first. If I clean up dust, rips, and creases first, I run the high risk of those imperfections reappearing later when I adjust tone and contrast to the entire image.
As with almost everything in Photoshop, there are so many ways of doing just about everything. When I first started doing this kind of work I used the Levels adjustment. I prefer using the Curves adjustment, though, because it lets me set the levels and adjust the contrast from within the same dialog. By using the droppers below the graph, you can do a quick Levels adjustment, bringing the tone of the image back under control. Using the black dropper, I click on what I see as one of the darkest points in the image. You'll see an immediate improvement in the overall appearance of the photo. For purposes of fixing this photo, I don't need the white or gray droppers. Once I've adjusted the levels by setting the black point, I tweak the contrast of the entire image by creating a slight "S" curve. Don't panic if you push the adjustment too far. You can turn the "Cancel" button into a "Reset" button in any Photoshop dialog box by holding down the ALT/OPTION key.
As far as global adjustments go, this particular image really only needed a small levels and curves adjustment. Once that's been addressed, we can zoom in on the image and start addressing the details. For this photo, the next step is dealing with that big tear at the top. For this part of the repair I'm relying on the Clone Stamp tool (keyboard shortcut: S). Be sure to zoom in kind of tight to make sure you have a good view of the area. You'll be using the tool to sample similar nearby pixels to copy and fill in the damaged area. Start with the edges and work your way in towards the middle and then up towards the top. Be sure to change your sample area as you cover more of the tear in order to ensure that the tones and shading are consistent. Don't worry about keeping a straight edge at the top of the photo. We'll be cropping that out later.
Now it's time to zoom in really tight and deal with small things like dust, scratches, stains, and creases. In earlier versions of Photoshop, the best tool for this part of the job was the Clone Stamp, and in some situations that might still be your best bet. Ever since the introduction of the Spot Healing Brush, however, cleaning up dust and scratches has never been easier. The spot healing brush reads the surrounding pixels and uses that information to cover up and repair minor damage. As with all detail adjustments, be sure to zoom in pretty tight. This will let you make the repair with fewer and– more importantly– less noticeable clicks.
Once we've addressed the damage we'll zoom back out and use the Marquee tool to crop out the extraneous edges of the original scanned photo, creating new, clean edges.
Rescuing a memory is always gratifying. I never knew the people in this photo, but I know that without them I wouldn't be here. That alone makes the time spent restoring this photo well worth it. With a little practice, edits like this will become a streamlined process. Don't be afraid to try it.
I used Adobe Photoshop Elements for a long time, then I found a copy of Microsoft Digital Image Pro 9. This, to me, is a much better photo-editing software than Photoshop Elements. It allows me to do more, and is much more user friendly.
Not having a scanner presents its own problems. Recently, several elderly residents in our Senior apartment building asked me to copy some old pictures of their parents and other older relatives. They wanted to send them back to the Ukraine to their siblings. So I laid their prints down on black poster board and shot a picture of their pictures. Surprisingly enough, the shots came out fairly well, were easy (sort of) to edit, and resulted in some decent prints. My fellow residents were happy about them. Btw, one of the prints looked like your example - that was the hardest one to work with.
@ Mark Wolfe: thanks, I was thinking the same thing, light reflections from textured paper. Changing the DPI hasn't made any difference on the spots, just the quality of details in the picture itself, which provides some corroboration. Using the Photoshop filter remove dust and scratches eliminates the majority of them and then spot healing in Lightroom easily gets rid of the rest. It's just a pain to spend 10-30 minutes/ photo removing them when they look brand new in physical form.
Jeff is there any less expensive software you recommend that can do the same photo repairs as Photoshop?
@ nathan c : first of all, unless you are planning to enlarge the photos, you don't need to scan at 1200 dpi. If you're keeping them at the original size then 300 dpi should be fine. Sometimes scanning at very high resolution adds to problems that wouldn't otherwise be so bad. I know some might disagree, but that's what I've found to be the case. By the way, I am a professional custom picture framer who does photo restoration as an added service (and I sell some of my original photography as well.) Although I wouldn't say I'm an expert. There's always more to learn.
As far as the "tons of white spots", I have a feeling the photos you are scanning are printed on a textured photo paper. When you look at the photo with the naked eye, your mind sort of ignores the texture and just sees the image. But when the scanner light hits the hills and valleys of the texture, then you get white spots or dark spots or both. I"ve been surprised by that when working on a customer's photo. It's like "where did all these spots come from?" One thing to try (of course you first make a duplicate layer and do your work on that, not on the original background layer, just an fyi. I usually make a new duplicate layer for each major thing that I do to a photo. The screen shots here look like the work was done on the background layer.) You can try blurring the photo just barely enough to get rid of the white spots and then sharpen it back up again. It usually won't end up as sharp as you would like it to be, but it's a compromise that's better than having a ton of white spots. And some photos work better than others. Hope that helps.
Great post. I have several old damage photographs. I'll follow your tutorial to restore all of them. Thanks for the share.
That's kind of a new one to me, Nathan. Does your scanner allow to select different resolution settings? If so, see what happens if you adjust it down to 300 dpi.
Do you have any issues with spots appearing from the scanning process?
I've been trying to scan in old photos that are in fine shape, but the colors are fading. There is no dust or scratches on the photos themselves. The scanner is a HP business class multifunction, brand new. I don't see any dust on either side of the glass scanner bed. But when the photos are scanned in, they have tons of white spots, which are annoying to remove on every single photo. I think they were scanned in with photographic paper settings @ 1200 dpi. Any recommendations for getting more accurate scans?
For those of us who do not have Photoshop there is an app for the MAC called Inpaint that really does a great maybe even better job than Photoshop. The app is very user friendly with a quick learning curve.
I use an Epson Perfection 4490 Photo scanner. Does a great job on 35mm and oldee type like from Brownie. This model is about 6 years old I made my own holder for family photo from 1900 and did a good job on them as well. I'm sure the new modeks can do even more. I paid approx. 200.00 when I purchased.
I don't really have a recommendation for a specific model of scanner, but you certainly want to find something with high resolution. Scanners on the whole are one of those peripherals that have been seeing great improvements in quality while actually coming down in price. If this is strictly for personal use you should have no problem finding something affordable with high-quality output. I'd also stick with a name you know.
Do you have a recommendation for a scanner? I'm preferably looking for one that will work for both photos and negatives/slides. Certainly don't need pro level, but I'd like to digitize old photos of my grandparents, as well as some of my better film shots.


text:
Risk Assessment and
Risk Management:
Improving policy and practice within government departments.
The second category relates to societal concerns or the risks or threats from the hazard which impact on society as a whole. This type of concern is often associated with hazards that give rise to risks which, were they to be realised, could provoke a socio/political response, eg risk of events causing widespread or large scale detriment. Typical examples relate to nuclear power generation, railway travel, or the genetic modification of organisms;
Building up within Departments the Necessary Capacity to Improve Cross- Departmental Co-ordination


text:
I took a trip up to the nature reserve at Al Barouk today. It's predominantly a site dedicated to the preservation of the Lebanese Cedar (Cedrus Libani to all you arborphiles out there). It appears on the national flag of Lebanon and, to my experience, holds a special place in the hearts of most Lebanese.
In a country that so often fails to maintain its natural environment, or its history, it's always a pleasure to see somewhere like Barouk. Given that I've ranted about preservation before, it's only fair I share the good side too.
Before entering the reserve proper, I couldn't help but laugh at the following sign:
Talk about highlighting the negatives
Here are a series of shots from Barouk:
No, this is not going to turn into a photo blog, have no fear.
On the way out, I saw something that sparked my interest:
Divided, but still going
Apt, no?


text:
Put your feet into the spotlight!
Easy to use - only one single application needed
Footner Exfoliating Socks - total callus removal
Footner Exfoliation Socks – Total Callus Removal
Footner Exfoliating Socks is the award winning solution to unwanted callus formation.
Footner Exfoliating Socks activate the skin's pealing effect causing the upper layer of the skin to peel off, thereby removing the hard callus build up. The exfoliation process begins 5-10 days after wearing the socks and lasts for a total of 5-10 days. After just one60-minute application of the socks, your feet will exfoliate the hard callused skin and leave you with baby soft feet.
Say Goodbye to unwanted callus formation.
Exfoliating process with the use of Footner Exfoliating Socks


text:
One-on-One Coaching
Are you an online biz entrepreneur or creative? Do you want hands-on, practical, knowledge in photography and/or video content creation that will take you from where you are, to where you want to be?
One-on-one photography and video coaching is ideal if you want to fast-track your learning or you don't want to wait for a group workshop, so you can start taking photos and making video RIGHT NOW to get you clients! I provide highly customised coaching sessions that are exactly the right fit for you and your individual business and situation.
What you can learn:
- take great quality photos to use for your blog and website.
- how to shoot quality video, with the right light and make it sound good to use in your vlogs, marketing promos, online courses and more.
- feel confident recording Facebook Live sessions and videos for Facebook, to engage your community or followers.
- how to edit your videos, make them look professional with titles, and logos, and upload them to your website, YouTube and other social media platforms.
- learn to use Canva for marketing design, so you can create Facebook, Linkedin and Youtube covers, Instagram posts and more without having to be a graphic designer.
- how to make and upload audio recordings to your website, or to use for voice-overs.
- affordable equipment options to suit your budget and objectives.
- how to write video scripts that hook your audience and keep them engaged from start to finish.
- how to write and tell you story and keep it relevant for your audience.
- plus more of WHAT YOU WANT to learn and do!
Are you confused about where to even start? When working with my coaching clients, the first place that I recommend to start is to work on your STRATEGY. This will give you incredible clarity about a starting point, what steps you need to take and in what order, and what gear you need to get started, saving you time and money. It will also provide valuable insight about your message.
Why One-on-One Coaching?
- Learning schedule is customised for you.
- You set the outcomes.
- You learn, apply, can ask questions and get immediate feedback.
- Step-by-step guidance to cement your understanding.
- We simplify the detailed, technical stuff so you don't get into overwhelm.
- Learn how to use the camera, device and equipment you have, plus get practical advice on what else you may need.
- We make the complex, simple to understand and easy to apply.
Book Your Session
- Local to Brisbane? Either an In-Person or Online Workshop is suitable
- Distance Client? Our Online Workshop is ideal for you
1/2 DAY IN-PERSON COACHING: $395 (4 hrs)
2HR ONLINE COACHING: $149 (Zoom)