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Up to 55% off Smart Destinations the cost of separate tickets on Go Orlando Card gets you into over 46 top Orlando attractions
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Coupon Details
Smart Destinations Promo Code: The Go Orlando Card® features unlimited admission to 35 popular Orlando attractions including LEGOLAND® Florida, Gatorland, Boggy Creek Airboats, and Kennedy Space Center. It also includes a convenient 3 day I-Ride Trolley pass, as well as admission to top I-Drive attractions such as WonderWorks, Ripley's Believe it or Not! Go Orlando Card® holders can also enjoy a number of scenic tours and cruises, explore Orlando's vibrant arts scene, and study the fascinating ecosystem of the Florida Everglades. As an added value, Go Orlando Card®customers can purchase a "Good Any Day" ticket to SeaWorld Orlando for a special price of only $80, a $15 savings over retail admission price. Smart Destinations' Sea World tickets even allow customers to skip the ticket line at the park. With its flexibility and convenient, instant delivery, the SeaWorld ticket from Smart Destinations is a high-value option for all travele
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subset: commoncrawl


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North, south, east or west, the route your house faces makes your house light, darkish, sizzling, chilly, dry or damp. My mum threw somewhat family tea celebration later in the afternoon and we all gathered collectively for cake, together with Molly, who stole a whole slice right off the dining room desk. If I had been you I'd write to the Council (write, not phone) and level out to themm that there's three' of water below the ground and that this may lead to structural issues in the home. Recent funding in urban regeneration has caused a lot enchancment in poorer areas in and across the metropolis, but the property prices remain a number of the UK's lowest. A civilized area" around the house included a garden extending roughly twenty toes around the home and a perennial garden that continued the thrust of the south-going through porch.
Since we know the house has misplaced worth since we bought it, we agreed to have it appraised and break up the difference between what it appraised for and what we owe so they might refinance the house for much less and my title may come off the title. Actually, right here as in different areas I've investigated, there was a big rise in house costs at the decrease finish of the dimensions, as purchase-to-letters seek out contemporary territories, and first-time-buyer schemes assist more folks onto the property ladder. We listed the condominium to promote and I had 2 different contracts (at different instances) on the condo for the sale. I advised the DCCC , I informed the House leadership, they usually gave me a nervous chortle. I was so mad and upset I went to the home to begin to remove issues I knew needed to be eliminated. As for the house itself, it is a mid-century fashionable with vaulted ceilings on a giant corner lot.
Thanks Beth and yes there's something in the mortgage that we might battle however will value me a lot of money and hard to combat them and takes a number of time and the house will nonetheless go into foeclouser.I have on the most as much as 18 mons to 2 years in my home hire free and in that time I'll get monetary savings and transfer someplace cheaper and will have cash once more as a substitute of being house broke.
In my book of essays, From the Home of Edward, there's a piece I wrote one cold evening during a Christmas season several years ago when I couldn't sleep. Interior decoration is all about making the home to house and workplace into a beautiful office. I would never seen him earlier than then, however he and his friend had come back to the party afterwards, as had a variety of different folks. Here is a worksheet where college students have to jot down about their favourite room of their house.
The village of Princetown has its origins in 1785, when Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt, Secretary to the Prince of Wales, leased a big portion of Dartmoor from the Duchy of Cornwall property, with the intention of farming it. Quickly other individuals got here to dwell within the space and it was recommended that a prison be built there to accommodate the 1000's of captives of the Napoleonic Wars.


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Part 2: What Makes Custom Channels Different From My Current Music Service?
Posted by Dave on February 24th, 2011
In my earlier blog post, I listed many ways that Custom Channels is different from the current in-store music service you may be using. Benefits like our bigger music library of licensed songs, our real time updates, our professional music selection and scheduling process, and our exceptional audio quality.
One reason that really cuts through with many of our clients is this: we're not Muzak!
Nothing against Muzak – they've been around forever. They're well respected, they're huge, and their name has been synonymous with background music worldwide for decades. Muzak is likely a solid choice for 90% of businesses out there. At Custom Channels, we've decided to focus on the other 10%.
Why might a brand go with Custom Channels instead of Muzak? Well, in addition to the music and delivery advantages listed in part one of this blog, it's probably more of an image thing. Most of our Custom Channels clients are rather independent and very entrepreneurial in spirit and they like that about us as well. We're a small, music-oriented, tech savvy, forward-thinking company, newer than Muzak, focused on providing a fun service to a select group of music-conscious clients. Many of our clients are growing a business, most under 100 locations. If a restaurant, retail store or a salon is trying to present a "we're different" image to the world, using Muzak doesn't seem very different.
At Custom Channels, we seek out clients who aren't afraid to try something new and fresh, yet still want it dependable and cost effective.Share this:


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Accepted Papers.
- Time Hierarchies for Sampling Distributions
Thomas Watson (UC Berkeley)
- Learning Mixtures of Spherical Gaussians: Moment Methods and Spectral Decompositions
Daniel Hsu (Microsoft Research) and Sham M. Kakade (Microsoft Research)
- Low-Weight Halfspaces for Sparse Boolean Vectors
Philip M. Long (NEC Labs) and Rocco A. Servedio (Columbia)
- Learning and Incentives in User-Generated Content: Multi-Armed Bandits with Endogenous Arms
Arpita Ghosh (Cornell) and Patrick Hummel (Google Inc.)
- Adversary Lower Bound for the k-sum Problem
Aleksandrs Belovs (University of Latvia) and Robert Špalek (Google, Inc.)
- Space-Bounded Communication Complexity
Joshua Brody (Aarhus), Shiteng Chen (Tsinghua), Periklis Papakonstantinou (Tsinghua), Hao Song, (Tsinghua), and Xiaoming Sun (Chinese Academy of Sciences)
- Runtime Guarantees for Regression Problems
Hui Han Chin (CMU), Aleksander Mądry (EPFL), Gary Miller (CMU), and Richard Peng (CMU)
- Instance-Sensitive Robustness Guarantees for Sequencing with Unknown Packing and Covering Constraints
Nicole Megow (TU Berlin) and Julián Mestre (University of Sydney)
- On the Possibilities and Limitations of Pseudodeterministic Algorithms
Oded Goldreich (Weizmann Institute), Shafi Goldwasser (MIT and Weizmann Institute) , and Dana Ron (Tel-Aviv University)
- H-wise Independence
Ishay Haviv (Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yaffo) and Michael Langberg (Open University of Israel)
- Is Privacy Compatible with Truthfulness?
David Xiao (LIAFA, CNRS, Université Paris 7)
- Parametric Digital Auctions
Pablo Daniel Azar (MIT) and Silvio Micali (MIT)
- Active Self-Assembly of Algorithmic Shapes and Patterns in Polylogarithmic Time
Damien Woods (Caltech), Ho-Lin Chen (National Taiwan University), Scott Goodfriend (Caltech), Nadine Dabby (Caltech), Erik Winfree (Caltech), and Peng Yin (Harvard Medical School)
- Massive Online Teaching to Bounded Learners
Brendan Juba (Harvard) and Ryan Williams (Stanford)
- Sparse Extractor Families for All the Entropy
Andrej Bogdanov (Chinese University of Hong Kong) and Siyao Guo (Chinese University of Hong Kong)
- On the Power of Conditional Samples in Distribution Testing
Sourav Chakraborty (Chennai Mathematical Institute), Eldar Fischer (Technion), Yonatan Goldhirsh (Technion), and Arie Matsliah (IBM Haifa Research Labs and Technion)
- New Affine-Invariant Codes from Lifting
Alan Guo (MIT), Swastik Kopparty (Rutgers), and Madhu Sudan (Microsoft Research)
- Barriers in Cryptography with Weak, Correlated and Leaky Sources
Daniel Wichs (IBM Research)
- A Characterization of Approximation Resistance for Even k-Partite CSPs
Per Austrin (Aalto University and KTH Stockholm) and Subhash Khot (NYU and University of Chicago)
- Reachability in Graph Timelines
Jakub Łącki (University of Warsaw) and Piotr Sankowski (University of Warsaw)
- Evasiveness Through Circuit Lens
Raghav Kulkarni (Center for Quantum Technologies, Singapore)
- Competing Provers Protocols for Circuit Evaluation
Gillat Kol (Weizmann Institute) and Ran Raz (Weizmann Institute)
- Fast Reductions from RAMs to Delegatable Succinct Constraint Satisfaction Problems
Eli Ben-Sasson (Technion and MIT), Alessandro Chiesa (MIT), Daniel Genkin (Technion), and Eran Tromer (Tel Aviv University)
- Stronger Methods of Making Quantum Interactive Proofs Perfectly Complete
Hirotada Kobayashi (National Institute of Informatics), Francois Le Gall (The University of Tokyo), and Harumichi Nishimura (Nagoya University)
- Characterizing the Sample Complexity of Private Learners
Amos Beimel (Ben-Gurion University), Kobbi Nissim (Ben-Gurion University and Harvard), and Uri Stemmer (Ben-Gurion University)
- Pseudo-partitions, Transversality and Locality: A Combinatorial Characterization for the Space Measure in Algebraic Proof Systems
Ilario Bonacina (Università di Roma La Sapienza) and Nicola Galesi (Università di Roma La Sapienza)
- On the Power of Many One-Bit Provers
Per Austrin (Aalto University and KTH Stockholm), Johan Håstad (KTH Stockholm), and Rafael Pass (Cornell)
- Resource-based Corruptions and the Combinatorics of Hidden Diversity
Juan Garay (AT&T Labs -- Research), David Johnson (AT&T Labs -- Research), Aggelos Kiayias (University of Athens), and Moti Yung (Google Inc.)
- The Garden-Hose Model
Harry Buhrman (CWI and University of Amsterdam), Serge Fehr (CWI), Christian Schaffner (University of Amsterdam and CWI), and Florian Speelman (CWI and University of Amsterdam)
- Sorting Noisy Data with Partial Information
Konstantin Makarychev (Microsoft Research), Yury Makarychev, (TTI-Chicago), and Aravindan Vijayaraghavan (CMU)
- Approaching Utopia: Strong Truthfulness and Externality-Resistant Mechanisms
Amos Fiat (Tel Aviv University), Anna Karlin (University of Washington), Elias Koutsoupias (University of Oxford and University of Athens), and Angelina Vidali (Duke)
- Towards An Optimal Query Efficient PCP?
Subhash Khot (NYU and University of Chicago), Muli Safra (Tel Aviv University), and Madhur Tulsiani (TTI-Chicago)
- Welfare Maximization and the Supermodular Degree
Uriel Feige (Weizmann Institute) and Rani Izsak (Weizmann Institute)
- Robust Optimization in the Presence of Uncertainty
Joachim M. Buhmann (ETH Zurich), Matúš Mihalák (ETH Zurich), Rastislav Šrámek (ETH Zurich), and Peter Widmayer (ETH Zurich)
- Learnability of DNF with Representation-Specific Queries
Liu Yang (CMU), Avrim Blum (CMW), and Jaime Carbonell (CMU)
- Catch Them If You Can: How to Serve Impatient Users
Marek Cygan (University of Warsaw), Matthias Englert (University of Warwick), Anupam Gupta (CMU), Marcin Mucha (University of Warsaw), and Piotr Sankowski (University of Warsaw)
- Noninteractive Timestamping and Publicly Verifiable Proofs of Work
Mohammad Mahmoody (Cornell), Tal Moran (IDC Herzliya), and Salil Vadhan (Harvard)
- On the Optimality of Relaxations for Average-Case and Generalized Constraint Satisfaction Problems
Boaz Barak (Microsoft Research), Guy Kindler (Hebrew University), and David Steurer (Cornell)
- Differentially Private Analysis of Social Networks via Restricted Sensitivity
Jeremiah Blocki (CMU), Avrim Blum (CMU), Anupam Datta (CMU), and Or Sheffet (CMU)
- An Energy Complexity Model for Algorithms
Swapnoneel Roy (University at Buffalo), Atri Rudra (University at Buffalo), and Akshat Verma (IBM Research)
- An Equational Approach to Secure Multi-Party Computation
Daniele Micciancio (UC San Diego) and Stefano Tessaro (MIT)
- Multiplicative Updates in Coordination Games and the Theory of Evolution
Erick Chastain (Rutgers), Adi Livnat (Virginia Tech), Christos Papadimitriou (UC Berkeley), and Umesh Vazirani (UC Berkeley)
- Can Theories Be Tested? A Cryptographic Treatment of Forecast Testing
Kai-Min Chung (Cornell), Edward Lui (Cornell), and Rafael Pass (Cornell)
- On the Convergence of the Hegselmann-Krause System
Arnab Bhattacharyya (DIMACS), Mark Braverman (Princeton), Bernard Chazelle (Princeton and Collège de France), and Huy L. Nguyen (Princeton)
- Streaming Computations With a Loquacious Prover
Hartmut Klauck (Center for Quantum Technologies, Singapore) and Ved Prakash (Center for Quantum Technologies, Singapore)
- Properties and Applications of Boolean Function Composition
Avishay Tal (Weizmann Institute)
- Making Evolution Rigorous - The Error Threshold
Nisheeth K. Vishnoi (Microsoft Research)
- A Classical Leash for a Quantum System: Command of Quantum Systems Via Rigidity of CHSH Games
Ben Reichardt (USC), Falk Unger (Knight Capital Group), and Umesh Vazirani (UC Berkeley)
- On the Power of Nonuniformity in Proofs of Security
Kai-Min Chung (Cornell), Huijia Lin (MIT and Boston University), Mohammad Mahmoody (Cornell), and Rafael Pass (Cornell)


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Digi ConnectPort TS 8 Terminal Server
Price: $1,35999
DIGI ConnectPort TS 8 MEI - Terminal server - 8 ports - 10Mb LAN, 100Mb LAN, RS-232, RS-422, (70002329)Item#: YYS2-4331249 | Model#: 70002329
- Price:
- $1,359.99
- Shipping:
- Currently out of Stock (Details)
Digi ConnectPort TS 8 Terminal Server Product Details
- ConnectPort TS 8 Terminal Server
- RJ-45 Diagnostic Loop Back
- Brick Power Supply
- Software CD
- Power Cord
ConnectPort TS 8/16 serial servers provide secure, easy integration of virtually any serial device into wired Ethernet networks. They are ideal for use in IPv4/IPv6 United States Government Department of Defense networks and for applications requiring COM/TTY ports, serial tunneling or TCP/UDP functionality.
The built-in Python development environment enables application customization. This easy-to-use, universal programming language allows complete control of device connections, data manipulation and event based actions.
Manufactured by: Digi International
Warranty provided by: Digi International
UPC No: 663072937218
Mfg Part No: 70002329
Box Size:
( Length:11, Width:8, Depth:4)
Shipping Weight: 2.6900 pound(s)
Click here for full warranty and support information
- Digi International logos are registered trademarks of Digi International. All others trademarks and copyrights mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.


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I am back after an extended absence from this website. It has been over two years since I last sat at my computer and created a post for the EMS Soapbox. In those two years I have learned a lot, and I would like to share some of my newRead more
Latest Posts
Paramedic Self-Regulation: What's in it for me? Part III – The Big Picture
In Part I of this discussion, we talked about what defines a profession. Part II dealt with the requirement for a robust Continuing Professional Development program. In this final piece, I would like to review the organisational requirements of a College, and the overall implications of Paramedic Self-Regulation for theRead more
Passive Oxygenation or Positive Pressure Ventilation?
This article arose from a discussion at my workplace surrounding the use of passive oxygenation during the initial stages of cardiac arrest. It was suggested that we would not be using this technique until it becomes a North American or specifically a Canadian standard of care. I suspect that whatRead more
A Few of My Favorite Things – with apologies to Rodgers and Hammerstein
In this post I would like to share with you a few of my favorite videos and podcasts. These are all presentations that I have watched at least twice and sometimes more. A few of them I have incorporated into my own teaching. Some are emotional, some are entertaining, someRead more
Self-Regulation: what's in it for me? Part II Continuing Professional Development
One of the biggest challenges we will face as Paramedics in Manitoba move towards self-regulation will be in the area on education; specifically Continuing Professional Development. So in this post, I would like to explore what CPD means, and how the requirements for CPD will affect us. I will presentRead more
Doubling Down on Defibrillation
Your patient is a 54 year old male, who had a witnessed cardiac arrest with immediate bystander CPR. On arrival, you are told they have used an AED and delivered 3 shocks. When you attached your monitor/defibrillator and pause for a rhythm check, you see ventricular fibrillation, so you immediatelyRead more
Paramedic Self-Regulation; what's in it for me? Part 1
I was recently asked by a colleague to outline the benefits of self-regulation for Paramedics in Manitoba. Feeling confident that I could respond in an eloquent fashion, I launched into my sermon. When I was finished, he said I had provided him with some interesting points to ponder, and weRead more
Welcome to the EMS Soapbox
Hello, and welcome to the EMS Soapbox. This first posting will be an introduction. I will tell you a bit about who I am, why I am doing this, and what you can expect to find when you visit this site. Who am I? My name is Mike MacKenzie, anRead more


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TIFF 2013: Rigor Mortis (Juno Mak)
It's pretty hard to make a movie about vampires who bounce around like someone doing the Thriller dance at a 50s sock hop. But somehow, the Mr. Vampire movies did it entertainingly enough in the 80s. And Hong Kong-based director Juno Mak finds some success doing the same with Rigor Mortis.
Part of that success might come from the fact that Rigor Mortis isn't entirely about hopping vampires. It's actually a pastiche of various Asian genre tropes, crawling with long-haired ghosts and creepy kids. The film follows a faded movie star (Chin Siu-Ho) who checks into a dilapidated apartment building to kill himself. After he fails—incidentally, it appears that when you almost die, Nine Inch Nail's Hurt video flashes before your eyes backwards—he finds himself entangled in various supernatural crises.
Now, it must be said that unlike Mr. Vampire, Rigor Mortis is all about atmosphere and fear, not gory laughs. And it does reasonably well at that, at times. A lot of the visuals are unsettling; the vampire, for example, looks a bit like its been stuffed in a blender with car parts and photos from BMEzine. But there's far too much going to really latch onto to something to fear, someone to care about. So the result is creepy but cacophonous, like two hours of Rob Zombie yelling incoherently. The confusion prevents the film from really getting going, which is a shame, because Mak shows a lot of promise and making the ridiculous frightening.
Rigor Mortis plays at the Toronto International Film Festival tomorrow (Wednesday) at 23:59 PM (Ryerson Theatre), Thursday at 12:45 PM (TIFF Bell Lightbox) and Friday at 18:00 (Scotiabank). For more information, visit www.tiff.net.


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JACK RUSSELL TERRIERS, Pros & Cons
If you fell in love with Uggie, the dog who stole the movie, The Artist, it's easy to see why Jack Russell Terriers are such a popular breed. But, they are not for everyone! Here are a few pros & cons of the Jack Russell Terrier:
Pro: Jack Russells are cute, happy things. I mean, who can resist this contented little guy?
Con: If you think your Jack Russell Terrier is going to be doing much sleeping, think again. They are an active breed that need lots of exercise. Jack Russells are not suited to a confined, sedentary living.
Pro: The Jack Russell is a small breed. Perfect to travel with and take on exciting outdoor adventures.
Con: Many Jack Russel terriers have a Napoleon complex. They will often give attitude to other dogs. (No prizes for guessing who's the boss in this picture.)
Pro: Jack Russells are funny and playful. They are agile ball-chasing, Frisbee catching jesters.
And they can fly! (Well, almost…)
Con: Jack Russell terriers often bark and love to dig. So if you value those beautiful primroses you just planted, buy a gnome.
Pro: The Jack Russell is a breed known for its intelligence and movie star good looks.
Con: Sometimes a dumb dog is better. Jack Russell terriers just seem able to figure things out. Like escaping. And possibly Facebook.
Pro: Bred for hunting, Jack Russells are known for being determined, gutsy and fearless.
Con: Another word for determined is 'ignores everything you say when they feel like it.' Don't trust your little terrier off leash. And watch out for your pet hamster. This breed can have a high prey drive for smaller animals – even though they look so innocent and charming.
Ultimately, Jack Russell terriers are a working breed and probably not suitable for many novice pet parents. It's really not good for your self-esteem to be outsmarted by your dog! So, do your research to see if this breed is right for you.
If you DO decide that a Jack Russell Terrier is your perfect match remember…
Adopt! Don't shop!
You can check Dogster.com, and Russelrescue.com. Or visit your local shelters and rescues.
My Jack Chi's are EXCELLENT barkers. Too bad 99% of the population doesn't appreciate it though… lol
I have 2 "Jack Chis" – Jack Russell/Chihuahua who I rescued 3 years ago. Let me tell you how spot on this article is – and hilarious. They have attitude that won't quit and add in the chihuhua – oh boy. I take them on "big dog" hikes and they are still not tired. They are so funny and smart. A handful though. Definitely not for a novice!
Great article and pictures! If our neighbor, Jake, was any indication, they're also pretty good barkers. But I think he had even our doxies beat for gutsy – this guy had swagger oozing out of every fiber. He seemed somewhat "hyper" and totally focused on dogs rather than people. Jake was one of the cutest little guys I ever met.


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& after…IT'S A GIRL!!!
Here she is: Gwendolyn Carol Lesue
Born: Wednesday, September 20th, 1:13pm
Weighing in at 6lbs. 13 ozs., 21.5 inches long
After only 13 hours of labor(much better than 46 hours like it was with Nezzie!), and about 15 minutes of pushing.
We were pleasantly surprised she turned out to be a girl…I kept thinking it was a boy for some reason.
Inez is excited to be a big sister, so far. We'll see how she does once we come home from the hospital with baby Gwen.


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|Android 2.0 and up
Today I want to share a great andriod game that name is Fish Live (latest version) Andriod Game.
Fish Live is the game for all fish lovers! Raised a fish lately? Play Fish Live and raise, feed and breed your own lovable fishes! By playing this game you may find yourself hopelessly addicted to feeding and caring for adorable fishes, decorating your tanks with exotic tropical plants, and inviting others to view them in your own glorious tank. Furthermore you can mix and match your fishes to make your own special fishes, e.g. ORANGESWING + YELLOWFEST =? GAME FEATURES
- Dozens of adorable fishes to raise including sharks
- Fish come alive in your tank with awesome 3D animations
- Let your imagination run wild with hundreds of decorations, plants and backgrounds
- Simple and easy-to-use tap interface
- Beautiful and detailed graphics
- Visit, clean, feed your friends fishes and level up to become top neighbors Note: Network connections is required.
Game Features:
No change log.
Download Fish Live Modded APK
- Download the file.
- If the file is archived (rar or zip) to extract data.
- Install the Fish Live.apk and place the "com.baileyz.aquarium" folder in sdcard/Android/obbacted folder.
- Launch the app 100% offline compatible google play installation and online data verification is not required.


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Nimit Malavia – Her sing song to bring about oblivion
'Her sing song to bring about oblivion'
Mixed media, 15″ x 18″ (framed)
New work by Nimit Malavia will be on display at Black Maria Gallery as a part of 'The Kids are Alright' Tour, curated by Beau Basse, Director of LeBasse Projects.
The Kids are Alright at Black Maria Gallery
July 18th through August 8th, 2009
Opening Reception: Saturday, July 18th, 7:00-10:30pm
If you're in the LA area, please come check out the show!
Also please visit nimitmalavia.com for more work, and nimit-malavia.blogspot.com for the latest updates .


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Currently 2.81/512345 Rating: 2.8/5 (Total votes: 32)
Rating: 2.8/5 (Total votes: 32)
RaceChrono is a GPS based lap timing software for Windows Mobile. It can be used to measure lap times on almost any vehicle and track. It can be used to measure laptimes for example for motorbikes, bicycles, cars, water jets and quadbikes.
What's New in This Release:
· Much better looking user interface.
· Better and simplified touchscreen usage. Non-touchscreen usage remains the same.
· Support for RaceLogger hardware product
· NMEA and DL-1 importing (+ removed the incomplete G2x import)
· Standing start feature for lap timing. New standing start trap type is added for better Hillclimb and Rally starts.
· Previous sessions list will now show lap count and best lap time
· Key lock can be enabled now in Live Timer too (Symbian Touchscreen phones only).
· Separate build for Windows Mobile touchscreen phones with WIDCOMM Bluetooth Stack (for example HTC HD2).
· OBD-II time gauge in Live Timer is now relative to the current GPS time. This is to verify that the GPS/OBD clock sync works properly.
· Removed "add trap here" in route view (you add traps in "Browse traps" instead).
· Slightly modified performance testing standing start algorithm
· GPS input file is now selectable when GPS type is set to "Input file"
· Improved file selection dialog (for importing)
· Sessions recorded with OBD-II reader and be now resumed without OBD-II and vise versa. Remember to turn off "Use OBD speed" in performance testing sessions if you do that.
· Removed unmaintained track import feature
· Return of support for S60 2nd edition phones
· Fixed: Not enough space for selection rows on small resolutions
· Fixed: Support for importing NMEA files generated by iBlue 747 data logger.
· Fixed: Support for NMEA where RMC or GGA is less frequent than the other.
· Fixed: Do not show drive selection in file browsing dialog, if there is only one drive to select from.
· Fixed: Windows and Windows Mobile date calculation (lap date and GPX export date calculation was invalid).
· Fixed: Various minor export bugs in all formats.
· Fixed: Wrong units in .CSV export OBD-II channels
· Fixed: Bearing decimals were truncated in Performance Box session import. This made Lateral-G calculation very bad.
· Fixed: Lateral G-force calculation from GPS data were wrong. The calculated values were half of the correct value. The new algorithm is now checked against Race Technology and Racelogic software.
· Fixed: Time/date was displayed for the composed Optimal Lap
· Fixed: GPS and OBD time display stopped when day changed.
· Fixed: Sometimes invalid date was imported from Performance Box and VBox files
· Fixed: Importing file selection did not work for files with lowercase extension
· Fixed Symbian: Crash in data logging mode on some certain phones with certain language pack (Polish E71).
· Fixed Symbian: Freeze crash on Samsung symbian phones when backlight turns off.
· Fixed Symbian: Left side softkeys bugs (N93, N93i)
· Fixed Symbian: Could not enter decimal separator, if it is other than dot in phone's reginal settings (Atleast Nokia E61 and 5800).
· Fixed Symbian: Edit box did not scroll properly
· Fixed WM: OBD-II did not work with Internal GPS setting
· Fixed WM Professional: Soft Input Panel button was not hidden when switching from another application
· Fixed WM Standard: Shortcut keys '*' and '#' did not work
· Fixed Windows: Removed Lock keys menu option which was not even supposed to work
» show more


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Volume 2012, Article ID 896473, 8 pages
Undecomposed Twigs in the Leaf Litter as Nest-Building Resources for Ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) in Areas of the Atlantic Forest in the Southeastern Region of Brazil
1Laboratório de Mirmecologia, Universidade de Mogi das Cruzes, 08701-970 Mogi das Cruzes, SP, Brazil
2Museu de Zoologia da Universidade de São Paulo, Avenida Nazaré 481, Ipiranga, 04263-000 São Paulo, SP, Brazil
Received 12 June 2012; Revised 15 September 2012; Accepted 17 September 2012
Academic Editor: Diana E. Wheeler
Copyright © 2012 Tae Tanaami Fernandes et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
In tropical forests, the leaf-litter stratum exhibits one of the greatest abundances of ant species. This diversity is associated with the variety of available locations for nest building. Ant nests can be found in various microhabitats, including tree trunks and fallen twigs in different stages of decomposition. In this study, we aimed to investigate undecomposed twigs as nest-building resources in the leaf litter of dense ombrophilous forest areas in the southeastern region of Brazil. Demographic data concerning the ant colonies, the physical characteristics of the nests, and the population and structural of the forest were observed. Collections were performed manually over four months in closed canopy locations that did not have trails or flooded areas. A total of 294 nests were collected, and 34 ant species were recorded. Pheidole, Camponotus, and Hypoponera were the richest genera observed; these genera were also among the most populous and exhibited the greatest abundance of nests. We found no association between population size and nest diameter. Only tree cover influenced the nest abundance and species richness. Our data indicate that undecomposed twigs may be part of the life cycle of many species and are important for maintaining ant diversity in the leaf litter.
1. Introduction
Ants represent only 2% of the described insect fauna; however, they constitute more than 50% of the animal biomass of tropical forests, savannas, fields, and other important habitats [1, 2]. The majority of ant species inhabit the soil and/or leaf litter [3]. In tropical forests, approximately 50% of the ant fauna may be associated with the leaf litter [4], but the factors that structure these communities are poorly understood [5, 6], especially for communities that live in the leaf litter of the Brazilian Atlantic Rainforest. One fundamental goal of ecology is to understand the structure and maintenance of diverse tropical assemblages [7].
Studies of the diversity of leaf-litter ants are relatively abundant [8, 9], and several studies have been conducted in the Atlantic Rainforest sites selected for the present study (see [10–12]). The ant fauna that inhabits the leaf litter is rich in terms of taxonomy, morphology, and function [13–15], and its high diversity [5, 14, 16] has been associated with vegetation structure and the biotic and abiotic characteristics of the habitat [17, 18].
In the leaf litter, ants have access to food resources, locations for nest building, and a favorable microclimate [17, 19–23]. The variation in nest-building locations among species is a prerequisite for the maintenance of leaf-litter ant species diversity [24]. Despite a reasonable amount of ecological knowledge, the biology of the majority of leaf-litter species is still largely unknown [25].
Litter-nesting ants are a particularly useful group for community-level comparisons because litter can be exhaustively searched to provide accurate data on nest density and species richness, regardless of weather [6]. Ant nests in the leaf litter are located among interstices, in the interior of fruits, between leaves, or in branches and trunks at various stages of decomposition [26]. Among the resources provided by the leaf litter, twigs/trunks are essential for ant nests to occur [27].
Small ants and those with little dispersal ability, such as species of Myrmicinae and the tribe Dacetini or species of Ponerinae, can be found by breaking pieces of branches and twigs that have fallen in the leaf litter or by looking in rotten trunks [28]. However, fallen trunks are colonized by few species [29]; twigs are important for the nesting of a higher number of species, especially twigs in stages of decomposition [27]. This preference may be related to the ants' access to the inside, as digging is easier [27], or to moisture, which is the limiting factor for leaf-litter ants [5].
In the present study, we investigated in detail the ant species that use twigs that are still undecomposed, a subset of twigs that is less exploited by ants [27]. Furthermore, to investigate the determinants of community organization, we collected measurements related to twig characteristics, colony structure (workers, alates, and immature ants), canopy cover, and litter depth.
2. Methods
2.1. Study Area and Sampling
The colonies were collected in 10 dense ombrophilous forest fragments [30] located in the Upper Tietê Hydrographic Basin in the state of São Paulo, Brazil (Table 1). The sampling expeditions were only conducted once during the experimental period. The samples were collected between September and December of 2010 (approximately one sampling per week), spanning the region's rainy season [31]. Each sampling expedition was conducted one day after rain in locations without trails, without flooded areas and under a closed canopy. The vegetation of the collection areas was similar and composed of trees that were 2 to 20 m in height with trunks that had a diameter at chest height that was equal to or greater than 20 cm.
Six 16 m2 parcels were delimited in each area along a linear transect. The plots were separated by 50 m to ensure the independence of the samples [16, 32].
The sampling effort for each plot was constant (collection time = 30 minutes, and number of collectors = 3 per plot). All of the undecomposed twigs with lengths of 10 to 30 cm and containing ants were manually collected and individually placed in plastic bags for later identification. This twig size was selected because smaller twigs were generally decomposing in the sampling areas. Furthermore, the selected size was the approximate size of most of the ant-colonized twigs [27]. Only the twigs that were found on the surface were collected because they are the most recent resources in the leaf litter.
The number of twigs with nests was recorded (=the density of the nests), and the ants were identified to the genus level using identification keys. The species were identified by comparison with the examples deposited in the reference collection of the Zoological Museum of the University of São Paulo (Museu Zoologia da Universidade de São Paulo) (MZSP). The taxonomic scheme proposed by [33] was used. Vouchers are deposited in the collection of the Myrmecology Laboratory of the University of Mogi das Cruzes (Universidade de Mogi das Cruzes) and the MZSP.
2.2. Characterization of the Nests, Demographic Data, Canopy Cover, and Litter Depth
Using a digital pachymeter, the total diameter of the twigs that contained colonies was measured; five measurements were conducted on each twig. The counts of immature ants (eggs, larvae, and pupae) and workers were performed using a manual counter.
The canopy cover was recorded at the center and at the vertices of each of the 16 m2 plots using a Nikon D80 digital camera with a fish-eye objective. The Gap Light Analyzer (GLA) application version 2.0 was used to analyze the images [34].
The litter depth was measured using calipers at the corners and in the center of each 1 m2 parcel. These small parcels were randomly marked within each 16 m2 parcel. The average of five values was used to define the stratum depth.
2.3. Data Analysis
Comparisons among the collection sites were made using the number of occurrences of the species (presence and absence data). The ant richness was compared using accumulation curves based on the number of species that occurred. The expected number of species was determined using the Chao2 richness estimator, which is based on incidence and uses the number of "uniques" (species found in only one sample) and "duplicates" (species found in only two samples) [35]. The curves were obtained using the EstimateS program version 8.2 [35].
We used Spearman correlations to analyze the relationship between the total number of immature ants and workers and the twig diameter, excluding rare species (those with a number of records <10 nests) [27]. The relationships between species richness and tree cover and leaf-litter depth were identified using scatter plots and Pearson correlations. The same analyses were performed for nest abundance. All of the analyses were preceded by the Lilliefors test to verify data normality. The BIOESTAT 5.0 software [36] was used for both of the tests with a 5% significance level.
3. Results
In 960 m2 of leaf litter, there was a total of 294 nests (0.31 nests/m2), seven subfamilies, 15 genera, and 34 species. The species density was 0.03 species/m2. A total of 264 nests (89%) were immature. Eleven species (32%) occupied ≥10 twigs, especially Pheidole sp.13, with 56 recorded nests (Table 2). Each twig was inhabited exclusively by one species (we did not observe the cooccurrence of species in individual twigs). The richness curve did not stabilize, but the estimated curve of the number of species reached a stable level (Figure 1).
Myrmicinae was the richest subfamily both in terms of the number of nests (56%) and the number of species (41%). Ectatomminae was the least rich subfamily, with only one species (Gnamptogenys striatula Mayr) being observed, but it was among the subfamilies with the greatest abundance of nests. Pheidole was the richest genus in terms of species followed by Camponotus. Species of Pheidole, Solenopsis, Myrmelachista, Camponotus and Linepithema represented the greatest numbers of nests and were also the most populous species; the number of workers ranged from 165 to 458 and of immature ants from 108 to 1,317 among these species (Table 2).
The nest abundance ranged from 3.16 (±2.85) to 7 (±2.44) among the dense ombrophilous rainforest fragments, and species richness ranged from 2.33 (±1.79) to 4.66 (±2.16). The tree cover spanned 8.02 (±1.89) to 18.33 (±1.89) %, and leaf litter depth ranged from 2.99 (±0.76) to 12.82 (±5.5) cm (Figure 2). Canopy cover influenced the nest abundance (; ; Figure 3(a)) and species richness (; ; Figure 3(b)). The leaf-litter depth was not related to the nest abundance (; ) or species richness in twigs (; ).
The twig diameter ranged from 10.77 (±4.48) to 39.61 (±3.66) mm, and these twigs were occupied by Camponotus sp.9 and Hypoponera sp.10, respectively (Table 2). We did not detect a relationship between the twig diameter and the size of the colonies (workers, immature ants and workers + immature ants) (), except for Pheidole sp.13, for which there was a relationship between the size of the worker population and the twig diameter (; ).
We recorded 17 species with queens, 12 with alates and 8 with queens and alates. We found that more than one queen coexisted in the same twig for five species: L. neotropicum Wild (one nest with five queens), Brachymyrmex incisus Forel (one nest with two queens), Crematogaster sp.1 (one nest with three queens), Pheidole sp.13 (one nest with two queens), and Pheidole sp.43 (one nest with two queens and one with three queens) (Table 3).
4. Discussion
The results presented in this paper indicate that undecomposed twigs are an important nest-building resource used by many leaf-litter ant species and by several arboreal ant species, as reported in other studies [8, 10, 37, 38]. Specifically in the case of arboreal ants, twigs in the leaf litter may represent external nests, as already reported for Azteca [39, 40] and Crematogaster torosa Mayr [41]. This microhabitat probably originated from trees near the site where colonies resided that fell, bringing the eggs, larvae, alates, and adults to the ground [38]. In silk-nesting Camponotus, entire colonies frequently fall, especially during the rainy season [42].
In our study sites, many nests can be characterized as temporary because only workers and immature ants were found. This result suggests the presence of satellite nests, as observed for C. brasiliensis Mayr [27] and Pachycondyla villosa (Fabricius) [43]. The existence of satellite nests increases the chances of defending a given territory and increases the survival of the colony itself, which is at the greatest risk of predation when concentrated in one place [42, 44–46]. When the nest is not centralized, the search for food can be completed by workers found in all of the nest locations, thereby increasing the foraging capacity of the colony [42, 47] and reducing the distance to the food supply [48].
Alternatively, we cannot exclude the polyatomic species hypothesis without the presence of queens (see [41]). In the leaf litter of tropical forests, approximately 1/3 of the species are polydomic [5]. Although the causes of polydomy are uncertain [41], polydomy may be related to the occupation of new areas [45], increased foraging area [42, 47], or increased food supply [41]; there may be yet another cause found for certain arboreal ant species, which have larger colonies, in compensating for restricted space in twigs [27]. Polydomy is also observed in polygynous species, such as C. pygmaea Forel [49] and M. schumanni Emery [50, 51]. Polydomy may be the case for 29% of the nests determined to have more than one queen, especially for Pheidole.
Sampling of ant nests from twigs at different stages of decomposition resulted in abundance measurements of 7.43 nests/m2 in tropical wet forest (Costa Rica) [16], 0.22 nests/m2 in the central Amazonian rainforest (Brazil) [27] and 0.88 nests/m2 in lowland rainforest (Ecuador) [6]. Thus, the density of undecomposed twigs with nests recorded in areas of Atlantic Rainforest in southwestern Brazil may be considered high because these twigs represent only a portion of the twigs available in the leaf litter and are probably less attractive for ants due to low moisture [27]. Moisture is a limiting factor for ant recruitment in leaf litter, and nest recolonization, and recovery in artificially disturbed parcels is slower, as observed by [5]. In contrast, the observed species density was relatively similar to that of the Amazon rainforest, with 0.02 species/m2 being recorded [27], and the density was similar to that observed in other studies [16, 29]. However, the observed species curve indicates that rare species were not fully sampled.
When using a 1 m2 sampling unit of dense ombrophilous rainforest, we found that the species richness in fallen twigs on the soil was much lower than that in the leaf litter [8, 15]. Many species that nest in twigs may be limited by high mortality during alate dispersion or during relocation of colonies from one twig to the next. Changing colonies is a relatively constant factor because twigs are ephemeral [16], and this relocation may be one of the factors regulating the richness of species that use twigs as resources.
Another factor regulating species richness may be the limited space within twigs. The structure of the ant colonies found in the interiors of twigs and trunks in the leaf litter is relatively simple, due to space limitations [44]. However, independent of the twig's dimensions, colonies of L. neotropicum Wild, M. catharinae Mayr, M. ruszkii Forel, Pheidole spp., and Solenopsis spp. had many workers and immature ants. In dense ombrophilous rainforest, records of populous colonies of M. catharinae and M. ruszkii in fallen twigs in the leaf litter seem common and are unrelated to the diameter of the twig where the colony is housed [38].
The presence of a more closed canopy has been associated with habitats richer in resources for ants [23, 44]. The relationship between the structural complexity of the canopy and the higher number of nests observed in our study also suggests that the canopy can be a determinant of the community structure of the species that use twigs in the leaf litter. Our results also show that leaf-litter depth is not one of these factors. Reference [6] did not find a relationship between tree cover and nest abundance or leaf-litter depth and suggested that predation, prey density, or plant diversity may be responsible for the observed patterns. The ants that build nests in leaf litter do not show preferences for twigs of specific plant species [5, 16], but a high species richness of twigs can favor ant species diversity [22].
Our results expand the current knowledge of ant species that use undecomposed twigs as a nest-building resource in dense ombrophilous forest and show that this habitat has an important role in the biology of certain species, especially those species for which the entire colony development cycle may occur within twigs. Furthermore, our findings suggest that undecomposed twigs, despite containing a low density of species compared to the leaf litter, represent a resource for nest building and consequently are part of the set of structural elements that maintain the diversity of the ants that forage in this layer of tropical forests. Our study also confirms the dominance of the genus Pheidole [27] along with Camponotus and Hypoponera in ant communities that use twigs as a resource in the leaf litter of dense ombrophilous rainforests.
The authors thank the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico—CNPq) for the scholarships granted to M. S. C. Morini (Grant 301151/2009-1), the São Paulo Research Foundation (Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo—FAPESP) (Grants 10/50294-2 and 10/50973-7) for financial support, and Dr. RM Feitosa for useful discussions.
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More Comfort Zone Email Newsletters
November 2011: Comfort Zone ONLINE
This will be brief; it's a busy time of year. It's a review of a book, maybe a holiday gift for yourself, and the description of a practice, perhaps to begin in the New Year.
In the last few issues I have been writing about our spirituality. In the first installment I discussed religion a bit, including thoughts on those of you who are seeking spiritual experiences outside of, or in addition to, an established religion. In Part II, I wrote about the idea of individuation as described by Carl Jung--how it can be developed as a potential aspect of anyone's spiritual life, and how individuation work includes using dreams and active imagination to gain more understanding of our large Self or psyche. In Part III, I focused on our need for personal experience of the sacred and the unique lens through which we each approach the sacred.
This article, Part IV, is one next step in that it discusses a specific method of personal experience, "ally work," that makes use of active imagination. Active imagination is a method of having contact with the unconscious without having to wait for a dream to come along. Carl Jung began doing active imagination spontaneously during a crisis in his life, and if you have heard of his Red Book, that was the result.
I will say more about active imagination another time. I've taught how to do it in The Undervalued Self and in the paper issue of CZ, February 1998, Vol. III, Issue 1, and of course the book I'm about to suggest teaches it. Ally work is a good way to begin active imagination, in that it is almost always a positive experience, and once you know your ally, whatever happens during an active imagination you can always call on your ally for help.
The term "ally" is found in shamanism, but the book I am recommending, Jeffrey Raff's The Practice of Ally Work (Nicholas-Hays, 2006), has its roots more in Sufism, the Kabbalah, and alchemy. The key idea is that "an ally is a divine being, a face of God that is unique to each human being. Every one of us has an ally with whom we could live, but of course most people are not aware of this fact...." (p. 3)
That is, you need not feel alone in this world. Ever. If you think this is possible, or you are at least curious, read on. I know some of you will be skeptical. But ally work does not require you to believe that your ally is always infallible or that you should act on how it answers, or even that you believe that it is anything more than something you are imagining, although Raff will give you a new perspective on what imagination really is. So you might want to bracket your skeptical self, which may be nothing more than a defense against past painful experiences of trusting and being bitterly disappointed.
Ally Work, its Broadest Meaning
Raff sees himself as providing something not found within organized religion, but those of you already well-anchored in a spiritual tradition may also enjoy this book if you can do some mental editing. Although Raff might not approve--I don't know--when I read his book, thanks to my upbringing I could not help but think of Jesus. My beloved, very religious aunt and uncle would certainly see Jesus as their ally. I imagine others would see Muhammad or one of the bodhisattvas as their ally.
Does the ally of my aunt or uncle fit the above definition? Is it unique? Definitely, if unique means they have all of their ally's love, time, and allegiance. But an ally is supposed to have a unique name, form, and personality, whereas Jesus is a single, fixed face of God. Well, I'm sure that if my aunt has a mental image of Jesus, a felt sense of his personality, or were to ask him questions about himself, none of this would be the same as my uncle's or anyone else's experience of Jesus. Only the name would be the same.
Religious dogma always struggles with how much room there should be for unique personal experiences--religion must provide some opportunities for these, and yet also avoid a cacophony of variations from the essential original message, otherwise called heresies. If we do not insist that our experience is the only correct one, perhaps there is room for more variation and personal uniqueness in our experience of religious figures than we allow ourselves.
Indeed, the Sufis, a mystical branch of Islam, and also traditional Judaism, see each individual's uniqueness as an important spiritual truth, and therefore Sufis hold that each of us should develop that uniqueness, including spiritual uniqueness. If God made us spiritually unique, it would follow that each of us would need and have unique spiritual experiences. To them, the only universal truth or religious revelation is that all revelation is unique. This permission to allow and even invite a revelation from God, the one that is right for you, is the heart of ally work.
Then would ally work be any different for my aunt and uncle than prayer? The Practice of Ally Work provides specific activities for deepening one's relationship with one's ally, and I would imagine that these would work wonderfully well to deepen prayer and any relationship one already has with a spiritual figure. (Some of you will wonder how this relates to having a guardian angel or similar figure. Raff does discuss this, but it seemed complicated, so I will not try to repeat it.)
The Essence of Ally Work is Love
Raff insists that you will know your ally by his or her love for you. You feel it, and feel your own intense love for the ally. (By the way, you do not have to know your ally when you begin the book. Raff assures us that our unique ally exists and will show itself eventually, and he is very helpful with this.)
Here I have to add that what I discussed in Part III applies here in an important way: If you have an insecure adult attachment style, it will be more difficult to feel or feel certain of this love. If you are an avoidant, you may doubt that this whole approach will work for you or scoff at it (but you are still reading), especially now that I have mentioned love! If you are the anxious insecure type, you may intensely desire this relationship, but fear it will let you down in some way. Those with insecure attachment styles will have to face deep inner resistance to ally work, even though an attachment figure that is inside and always with you might seem like the answer to all your relationship needs. (It is not. Sorry. Your spiritual evolution also requires human relationships--a topic for another article.)
Raff insists that you can trust your ally, so you will simply have to trust Raff on this, who has his own ally and met and talked to many others who have had the same experience with allies. Especially you can completely trust its love for you, Raff says, but in other ways your ally will not be perfect. The ally actually comes to you imperfect and is transformed by your attention and love. Its ability to guide you will increase as you work with it. You can treat it as a source of wisdom and guidance, but not the only one. Still, "you should look forward to growing with the ally in love and wisdom, knowing that there will come a time for extraordinary experiences. Yet the goal is not the extraordinary but the relationship itself." (pp. 48-49)
Focus, Intention, and Perception
"Ally work is the conscious effort to form and maintain a relationship with your ally" (p. 22). Even if it takes some time to find your ally, you can begin immediately to develop your ability to work in the imaginal realm, which involves giving your attention to this realm, holding an intention, focusing on a figure within the imagination, and then perceiving it as fully as possible. This may mean seeing or hearing it, but also having a "felt sense" for when an imaginal figure is present and what its intentions are. Once you have it in your awareness, you dialogue with it, using active imagination, and Raff provides detailed instructions on how to do that. Even if your experiences are frustratingly vague or uncertain at first ("I just made this all up"), with time, Raff assures his readers, you will have very "real," objective-feeling experiences.
After 50 pages of introducing his ideas about the imaginal realm and the principles of ally work, the rest of this book's 200 pages is devoted to 12 activities for developing your relationship with the imaginal realm, mainly with the ally. The results depend entirely upon how much time you give it. I would not bother to buy this book if you know you cannot devote 30 minutes to it 3 or 4 days a week. If you might, however, let Raff talk you into it. As he says, it is "work," but playful, creative work, and I would add that this work is all about strengthening the qualities and skills that are most unique to highly sensitive people. It's worth a try.
If You Want to Read More About Raff's Philosophy
I have reviewed two previous books by Raff, both of which are much more philosophical and less user-friendly. I wrote about them back in the days of the paper Comfort Zone (Nov. 2001, Vol VI, Issue 4 and August 2003, Vol. VIII, Issue 3) so they are not in the Comfort Zone on-line archives at this website, but you can buy them in the website store. I'm also not sure that he still holds all of the same views, but I have put one of the reviews (from August 2003) here because it brings up deeper issues that some of you will want to think about.
Reprinted from August 2003 Comfort Zone:
November 2011 Articles:
November 2011 Articles:


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An OBEY locket pendant - given to me (straight off the neck of OBEY ladies designer: Erin Wignall, in NYC 2008!).
I've always loved lockets, there's something really sweet about carrying a beloved's picture or, as the Victorians did, a lock of hair.
Maybe it's all the Alice In Wonderland buzz, but I'm really loving all the Victoriana coming out of this site! XO


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Guest Post – Choosing a Title:
For me, coming up with a title is one of the most difficult parts of the writing process. I never have a clear title in mind until I'm almost done writing a book. Often, I finish the book and I still don't have a title!
Sometimes, if I'm lucky, the perfect title just comes to me. That's what happened with Drawn Together. I was about halfway through writing the book, and there it was: the title I'd been hoping for. I'm especially proud of this one. It plays on the fact that Cody and Hailey have always been attracted to each other AND that their friendship developed during four years of high school art class.
If a title doesn't magically come to me, I have a few techniques I use to help me come up with a title. First, I usually scour the story for a memorable moment or piece of dialogue that can be twisted into a short and snappy title. If that doesn't work, I head over to Amazon or Goodreads and browse other romance books looking for inspiration. It usually helps to look at a diverse grouping of titles to help pull me out of a book naming rut.
Currently, I'm writing the sequel to Drawn Together. The story has five or six working titles, and I'm not very fond of any of them. I'm not worried, though. No matter what, I always end with a name for all my books!
Thanks for hosting!
Choosing a Title was my favorite part of this post. I enjoy learning about each author's process.


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Downtown Marion Inc. is a 501(c)(3) Not-for-Profit organization. Donations to Downtown Marion Inc. are tax deductible to the fullest extent permitted by law.
You can donate by sending checks or money orders to:
Downtown Marion Inc.
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You can also donate online. Just click the button below and put in the amount you would like along with your information. Donating online is quick and completely secure.


text: Today the Sears Tower has officially been renamed as the Willis Tower. This news may be a shock for many since the "Sears Tower" is one of the most iconic skyscrapers in the world and a huge part of Chicago and American culture. Sears Roebuck & Co., the original tenant occupied the building from 1973 to 1992. The British insurance company, Willis Group Holdings is now the largest tenant and secured naming rights as part of the lease agreement. Even though, the Willis Group plans to bring hundreds of jobs to Chicago, several Chicagoans are refusing to acknowledge the change and say they will continue to refer to the tower as the "Sears Tower." Willis Group Holdings chief executive Joe Plumeri said, "If we're good corporate citizens and do what we should, hopefully Willis and the tower and Chicago will all become synonymous." We will have to wait and see what affect the Willis Tower will have on the Sears Tower legacy.


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Portaferrissa Luxury E (2151)
- Apartment
- 4 Guests
- 2 Bedrooms
- 1 Bathroom
Ideally located at the very heart of the city centre, this apartment offers a welcome retreat for you and your companions. Enhanced by an array of authentic features, such as wooden floors, brick walls and beautifully exposed ceiling beams, the apartment oozes a sense of charm and character yet still manages to create a modern atmosphere with its stylish décor and fashionable furnishings.See more
Beaming with an abundance of natural light and providing the perfect place in which to relax and unwind, the living room consists of a large sofa, a coffee table and a flatscreen television. The elegantly designed kitchen is fully equipped with all the necessary appliances needed in order to prepare a home cooked meal, which can be enjoyed together in comfort at the attractive breakfast bar/dining table.
With two cosy single beds, a comfy double bed and plenty of storage space between them, the apartment's two bright and airy bedrooms ensure that everyone has a tranquil haven in which to rest and appreciate a good night's sleep following a busy day of exploring the sights and attractions of Barcelona. Completing this contemporary abode is the refreshing bathroom, which is fitted with a toilet, sink and shower enclosure.
his fully renovated 55 sqm. two bedroom apartment has a subtle blend of contemporary and casual cool. The relaxing colours and spaces flooding with light, convey a sweet serenity which makes this apartment a haven in the city centre. Featuring classic details, combined with a modern finish, the Portaferrissa E apartment has been thoughtfully decorated for your convenience and pleasure.The master bedroom is fitted with a double bed, the second bedroom features two comfortable single beds.This apartment can accommodate up to four guests.
For your entertainment there is a Flat Screen TV. The dining table for six is next to the kitchen, equipped with a stove, microwave-oven, dishwasher, coffee maker, kettle and all the necessary kitchen utensils to prepare your own meals. The bathroom is modern and fresh. Staying cool on hot days will be no issue as an air conditioning is standard in this apartment.
- Capacity: 4
- Bedrooms: 2
- Bathrooms: 1
- Beds: 3
Included services
- Air conditioning
- Heating
- Soap & Shampoo
- Kitchen
- Internet
- Terrace
- Elevator in Building
To make your stay as comfortable and as peaceful as you wish, we offer a series of on-demand services that you can purchase once your booking is accepted.
To purchase any of these services call at +34 915 947 106 or send us an email to firstname.lastname@example.com. Learn more
- Transfer
- Wi Mate
- Food delivery
- Restaurant reservations
- Tickets for shows
- Daily cleaning
House rules
- Check-in 15:00
- Check-out 11:00
- Tourist License: HUTB-012205
- Cancellation: 7 days If the Guest cancels at least 7 day before the check-in date, 50% of the Total Price will be refunded after deduction of the Be Mate Fees and any applicable taxes.
The host
SS GROUP BARCELONA 98 properties


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EA has been working hard on their new campaign of giving away free games to all individuals. Yes, You are reading this right and you can also download EA games for free just by installing their software on your PC to download EA top games for free.
As part of their monthly free gift program, EA will be sponsoring open door to download and install the smash hit survival scary video game, Dead Space, for all those that certify with the claimed prerequisites.
Dead Room supplies the thrilling encounter of game components obtained from top marketing video games such as BioShock, Halo, and Citizen Misery.
The "On The Home" device of sponsoring the initial Dead Space game can really be a marketing system by EA to make the players checkout the brand-new titles that will be available with Beginning in the coming days.
Very first timers should sign up for an EA Beginning account and afterwards proceed with the setup of Beginning application on their Windows PC in order to get this deal. The catch here is that there seems to be no limitation on the amount of folks can in fact download this software.
Merely get your preferred title by going to Origin's "On The Residence" project right here.
F.A.Qs of this campaign :
If you missed out Dead Space video game at release or just would like to replay the video game severely then head over to Beginning at once and take advantage of EA's charitable offer, or stand by up until following month hoping for something better. Hurry up now download all games before 8th May'14


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Collection of Indian Clubs
Original Indian clubs, circa 1940s. Originally used as exercise equipment for developing strength, the so-called Indian clubs were in fact created in the Near East. British colonists first came across the clubs in India, and erroneously referred to them as "Indian clubs" despite their Middle Eastern origin. Repurpose them today as decorative objects with a history.


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Neil Jamieson
Managing Director
Wireless Innovation
Neil Jamieson offers over 15 years of experience in the satellite communications arena through Africa, Middle East, Europe and Asia. Neil's depth of experience enables him to produce specialised solutions for the L Band satellite product portfolio in Australia. Neil has pioneered the Satellite PTT technologies in Australia with a focus on public safety and integration into existing p25 Core networks.
Wednesday 2 May 4.00pm-4.30pm: Is satellite able to fill the gap?


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Celery Bags 7 X 17 High Clarity
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Bring oceans to life with colored chalk drawings.
LA: Explain the relationships or interactions between two or more individuals, events, ideas, or concepts in a historical, scientific, or technical text based on specific information in the text.
LA: Integrate information from several texts on the same topic in order to write or speak about the subject knowledgeably
LA: Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas and information clearly.
LA: Summarize a written text read aloud or information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally.
MATH: Know relative sizes of measurement units within one system of units including km, m, cm; kg, g; lb, oz.; l, ml; hr, min, sec. Within a single system of measurement, express measurements in a larger unit in terms of a smaller unit.
SCI: Obtain and share information on the role of the ocean in supporting a variety of ecosystems and organisms, shaping landforms, and influencing climate.
VA: Intentionally take advantage of the qualities and characteristics of art media, techniques, and processes to enhance communication of experiences and ideas.
VA: Select and use the qualities of structures and functions of art to improve communication of ideas.
VA: Use subjects, themes, and symbols that demonstrate knowledge of contexts, values, and aesthetics that communicate intended meaning in artworks.
Possible classroom resources include: The Four Oceans by Wil Mara; Oceans: Dolphins, sharks, penguins, and more! by Johnna Rizzo; Ocean Life From A to Z Book and DVD by Cynthia Stierle; Eye Wonder: Ocean by Sue Thornton
Organize a field trip to a local aquarium for students. Prior to the visit, students brainstorm what they already know and what they would like to learn more about during the visit. After the trip, students post learning to a class blog.
Students investigate similarities and differences between fresh-water and salt-water habitats. What are the various types of life found in each? How does the water quality differ? Where are salt water bodies found on Earth? Where is fresh water found? Document these areas on a student-created map of the world. Label each area with the appropriate name.
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Olive oil was used for many purposes throughout the history of mankind. Today, in addition to food, this precious oil is used in medicine, pharmaceuticals and personal hygiene.
The high level of monounsaturated fats (particularly oleic acid) and other antioxidants present in the oil do superfood. In fact, because of the numerous health benefits, olive oil is also called Mediterranean miracle.
There are two types of olive oil
The two most commonly used types of this oil is virgin or VOO and extra virgin olive oil, or EVOO. Extra virgin olive oil is obtained by finely grinding and squeezing the fruit of olives and olive oil is obtained from the second pressing. Extra virgin olive oil is the highest quality. It also retains the highest levels of natural minerals and vitamins. Since it is the purest, it has the lowest point for tolerance to heat treatment, so it is best to use for salad or eaten raw. Consider what can be achieved if every morning consumed a spoonful of olive oil.
Anticarcinogenic properties of EVOO
Extra virgin olive oil has anti carcinogenic properties which have been shown to be effective against several types of cancer. Both forms of cancer most tested were those associated with the digestive system and breast cancer.
EVOO contains oleic acid, which is believed that it stimulates apoptosis (cell destruction) and interferes with cell proliferation of cancer cells. It is also rich in phenolic antioxidants such as squalene and terpenoids, which have anti-cancer properties.
EVOO & Dementia
One of the causes of Alzheimer's disease is the excessive accumulation of β-amyloid within the brain. The team of experts from the University of Louisiana at Monroe found that oleocanthal, a compound found in extra virgin olive oil has the ability to control the level of Aβ and significantly increase clean. In addition, natural phenols in extra virgin olive oil also help reduce neuro-inflammation. Phenol compounds shown in him reversible oxidation.
Blood glucose and EVOO
Extra olive oil shows the ability to reduce the incidence of diabetes. One study from USA university was made on the impact of the incorporation of EVOO in the diet of people at risk of cardiovascular disease. The result was a reduction in the incidence of diabetes in more than half. Aarhus University Hospital found promising effects from the addition of extra virgin olive oil in the diet of patients with type 2 diabetes in patients,reduce levels of blood sugar, and blood pressure regulation. University of Medical Sciences in UK conducted a study to determine the effectiveness of using a topical treatment with olive oil in patients with type 2 diabetes who had wounds on his legs. The difference was remarkable between those treated with typical olive oil and those treated with traditional procedures for wound care. This is another important finding which suggests that olive oil has the ability to help in the treatment of type 2 diabetes, inside and out.
For blood pressure
A study published in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine found that participants with treatment for high blood pressure, have been able to reduce the quantity of drugs when applied extra-virgin olive oil (about 30-40 grams per day) in their diet. Incorporation of extra virgin olive oil in your daily diet is scientifically proven that it can prevent, treat and even prevent many negative effects of different health conditions.


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Freund 01670050 Dead Blow Soft Faced Hammer 50mm. The hammer has a polished finish, lacquered, curved hickory handle. The head of the hammer is shock-resistant nylon. Made in Germany.
This Freund Soft-Faced Dead Blow Hammer features a curved hickory handle with a metal head frame and shock resistant nylon striking faces. It is perfect for finish forming soft metals such as copper and zinc. Also available in a smaller size. The head of the hammer is 4 1/2 inches long and 2 inches (50mm) wide. The handle of the hammer is 14 1/2 inches long and an 1 1/4 wide.
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This is something I made right before coming back to Malaysia. It's quite a hit thing in many bread cookbooks and bakeries. It's called a bread cake. Usually made in a loaf pan but I've used my chiffon pan for it.
Made it the night before and kept it in my new bought cake carrier. With the amount of potlucks we do and birthdays we have, I think this is rather a good investment. Had it for breakfast, plain, dipped in coffee, smeared with peanut butter (not me, Aaron!) and nutella, endless possibility.
Having baked this, I realise I could actually submit this for my Monthly Mingle. Yes...It's Monthly Mingle again. This time around, hosted by Jamie of Life's a Feast.
The theme is Chocolate & Bread. Now, is that beautiful or what? Tessa Kiros has a beautiful chocolate bread custard and another chocolate loaf in her Apples for Jam. I settled with Agnes Chang's book and baked a bread cake from her book, 'I Can Bake'.
This is a bread cake literally. One part chocolate bread, one part pandan cake, all parts delicious! Eat them however you may, cake first followed by bread or vice versa. It's a great texture when you eat them together. It's light in texture from the fluffy cake and slightly chewy and soft when you sink your teeth in the chocolate bread layer.
The fragrance of pandan is there. I've cheated and use pandan paste diluted in water. I would have blended pandan leaves with water but hey, did anyone tell you what you'd get if you blend frozen pandan leaves with a splash of water? You get grey water people! Freakish looking and totally uninviting colour of grey. Yes, presentation matters to me and I'd rather die from preservative and additives rather than producing a grey looking pandan cake. Oh, you have a problem with that? Sue me.
You think the above click looks like a pandan chiffon cake? I think it does, and a very successful one too! Look again below. This is so good eaten plain but I'm no plain Jane. Maximize the orgasm by smearing peanut butter and melted chocolate on the bread. Yes people, I have issues with peanut butter and chocolates. I guess it's the withdrawal symptom I'm in now from the previous chocolate and peanut butter overdose.
I'm gonna keep this short and crisp and send you off to the recipe. Try it. This is something I grew up with too you know. You can get this from La Boheme, King's Confectionery's or Baker's Cottage. They're sold cheap and nice. Those were the days before I start getting picky about what cupcakes I'll eat and have the luxury to make my own cakes and breads.
I made two rings of bread cake with this one recipe. My chiffon pan is 18cm in diameter each.
Bread Cake
(makes one loaf and adapted and modified from Agnes Chang's book, I Can Bake)
Bread Ingredients:
200g bread flour
1.5 tbsp cocoa powder, passed through a tea strainer
1/2 tsp salt
5.5 tbsp castor sugar
1 tsp instant dry yeast
1/2 cup + 1 tbsp water
40g butter
Sift A into a mixing bowl (yes, the cocoa powder will be sifted twice this way!), add in B and whisk well to mix. Slowly pour in water from C and use low speed to knead the dough until smooth. Add butter from C and continue to knead until the dough is fully developed and can be stretched to a thin membrane sheet without tearing.
Remove dough from mixing bowl and shape into a smooth ball and place it in a lightly greased mixing bowl. Cover with a damp cloth and leave to rise until it double in bulk. Punch the dough down with knuckles to release air and knead again until smooth. Rest it for 15 mins, covered with the damp cloth to prevent skin from drying out.
Roll the dough into a rectangular shape and then roll it up tightly. Place the dough now in a loaf tin (this is the loaf tin you'll be baking from, so make sure you grease it well!) and leave to rise until it doubles in bulk. If you're using chiffon pan,weigh the dough into two parts and poke a hole through it. Let it proof in the well-greased pan. You can also use a large chiffon pan. Only pour in the cake batter when the chocolate bread dough has doubled in size like in the below pic.
Get on with the cake part and preheat your oven to 180°C now.
Cake Ingredients:
20g plain flour, sifted
20g cornflour, sifted
2 tbsp castor sugar
3 egg yolks
2 tbsp canola oil
2 tbsp water
Drops of pandan paste
3 egg whites (I use four, just wanna use up the leftover eggwhite from glazing pineapple tarts)
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
2.5 tbsp castor sugar
Mix A in a mixing bowl until smooth. If you're using pandan paste, you might wanna add a bit more since the colour will get lighter with the addition of egg white.
Whisk egg whites and cream of tartar from B until slightly foamy. Add in sugar from B gradually and continue beating until it reaches stiff peak like in the pic below.
Having said that, the egg white peaks should also defy gravity like this:
Dollop a little egg white batter from B into A and whisk to combine. When you get them to approximately the same kind of texture, your folding in process will be a lot easier. Now, pour the fluffed up A mixture into B and gently fold in with a spatula until well-combined. Pour cake mixture over the risen dough and gently level the top with a spatula.
Bake it in the oven until golden browned and cooked through, about 30 to 40 minutes. Cool completely, slice and serve plain or dolloped with peanut butter and melted chocolate.
Note: 1 tbsp = 15ml and 1 up = 250ml
Thanks Meeta and Jamie for organizing and hosting the event! It gave me a reason to bake and get creative yet again!


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Why people are vegetarian
Reading through Suite101.com's Vegetarian section led me to this article covering why people become vegetarian.
A few of the comments bothered me, but most of them came from this paragraph:
Some people have tried a vegetarian diet and decided it wasn't for them. Jodi wrote, "I tried leading a vegetarian life, and felt utterly unsatisfied with tofu burger substitutes and unfilling vegetables. Veggie living was not for me. I missed the steaks and trips to McDonald's. Being a vegetarian, and doing it right, is hard work. And if you're not educated about proper food substitution, you can become malnourished and ill. I admire those who commit themselves fully to the vegetarian lifestyle. For me, the decision to try out vegetarian living had nothing to do with animal rights (and I think you can wholeheartedly support animal rights and still eat meat), it was for curiosity's sake. I tried it, and it wasn't for me. Eating out became a chore (and for someone like me who doesn't cook, eating out is a must). In smaller towns, like the one I'm from, it's hard to find restaurants that cater to non-meat-eaters, and I became frustrated. I didn't give up, I opted out. And though I still don't eat a lot of meat, I do enjoy the occasional burger or steak."
"Being a vegetarian, and doing it right, is hard work." Yes, and so are most things worth doing. But I also agree with a quote later in the article from Karen: "I think being a vegetarian is really easy, but being vegan is harder."
"And if you're not educated about proper food substitution, you can become malnourished and ill." I'd bet that being not educated about proper eating is even more dangerous if you do eat meat. Few people die from an excess of fruits and vegetables.
"I didn't give up, I opted out" Nonsense, Jodi. You did give up; vegetarianism isn't a mailing list. If you're from a small town and find the restaurants you go out to don't have many options, then here's the solution: eat in. Make your own dinners.
"I think you can wholeheartedly support animal rights and still eat meat" Sure you can, but aren't you just sweeping animal rights issues under the carpet as you chomp on your Big Mac?
As I've said before, I don't look down on meat-eaters. Vegetarianism is a personal choice and I'm not going to shove it down anyone's throat. But people like Jodi are the type that say they "tried being vegetarian" but then try to discount it with lame excuses like the ones listed above. If you've tried it and it's not for you, fine, but look at your reasons and make sure they're not just empty justifications.
Another quote I had problems with:
I, too, heard many arguments on what defines a vegetarian or vegan. Susan considers herself a vegetarian but does eat fish. "I read somewhere that what I really am is a 'pescatarian'," she wrote, "but I still consider myself a vegetarian."
for reasons I've stated before, but also was a bit discomforted by this one:
Laura, a very strict vegan, wrote, "If you eat sugar, which is processed through animal bones, you are not vegan, nor vegetarian. If you eat eggs you are in absolutely no way a vegetarian – ovo-vegetarian is a ridiculous term! Eggs are basically unborn chickens – if you eat them, you eat meat and that's that. As for dairy eaters, where do you think milk comes from? An animal. It's an animal product and again, if you eat animal products you aren't vegetarian. If you wear leather, fur or wool, please don't even try to call yourself a vegetarian. It's insulting to those of us who are. I don't know what you should be called, but I know what you shouldn't."
This quote is reflective of the problems that Dr. Sapon discusses here of the vegan-vegetarian rift.


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I tend to wear a lot of black and neutral outfits during the fall. So what better way to add colour to my look than dying my hair. Although purple was my first choice, I was a little bit afraid to commit to such a bright colour, so I leaned towards the Garnier Color Styler in Bronze. I immediately saw results with the bronze dye. The result from dark hair to bronze was such a subtle transition.(Read More)➞ Posted October 15, 2015
When I was very generously offered a cut by John Frieda Canadian creative consultant Dante Perrone this week, I eagerly accepted the offer. Even though I'm always on top of my colour, my hair was in desperate need of a cut (I've been sporting a shaggy grown-out lob for far too long).(Read More)➞ Posted September 25, 2015
I'm a city gal through and through. From a young age, I loathed camping, and even to this day I shudder at the mention of cottaging. Mosquitoes are in love with me and the washroom situation can be dicey in the wilderness. Normally, there's no way I would agree to camping, but when an opportunity to test out luxurious cottages and lodges in the Quebec countryside arises a girl can be swayed.(Read More)➞ Posted September 24, 2015
As someone whose natural sebum production can only be described as "accelerated," dry shampoo has always been my desert-island-can't-live-without-it beauty crutch. I was an early adopter and I've tried 'em all but like most beauty discoveries, I stumbled upon my personal dry shampoo "hack" entirely by accident.(Read More)➞ Posted September 10, 2015
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Need a refresher course on fall dressing? Study up! From get-in-my-closet-now coats and thigh-grazing boots to textured accessories, take a master class in layering inspired by the rugged Yukon and this season's '70s silhouettes.(Read More)➞ Posted August 20, 2015


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Digital Learning
A summary of my understanding of Digital Learning, informed by several course readings.
Educational resources and processes are changing at a phenomenal rate due to technological developments. Educators must consider these changes very deliberately and choose best practices while avoiding popular 'fads' that are not supported by research. Brown (2001) describes many shifts that are taking place with digital learners. He describes the "evolving nature of literacies" (p. 70). Information literacy provided by professional librarian instructors becomes more important in an increasingly complex environment. Brown claims that "web-smart kids" (p. 71) are adept at navigating through online resources. However, this claim ignores recent research that while today's students may be digital natives, they do not have quality searching, research, or evaluation skills which are key to being information literate. (Thompson, 2011). Another shift described by Brown is moving from authority to discovery pedagogy. I agree this is an important consideration, however, Ertmer and Newby (1993) make an important point that a student's ability to learn, and therefore the pedagogical strategy that should be employed, changes as the learner learns. Indeed, Tapscott (1998) also points out that the decision about whether to use Discovery pedagogy "depends on the subject" (paragraph 3.2). Prensky (2005) discusses the use of resources students are familiar with such as Google for search. My role as a librarian teaching information literacy is to scaffold this skill into using more appropriate resources and advanced research skills such as PubMed MeSH headings for medical literature. Digital tools should be assessed along with the content (Presnky, 2005). In essence, digital learning needs to take into account timeless pedagogical constructs of learning outcomes and instructional design, while fully utilizing the benefits and differences that digital learning brings. "We need to incorporate into our classrooms the same combination of desirable goals, interesting choices, immediate and useful feedback, and opportunities to…improve that engage kids in their favorite complex computer games." (Prensky, 2005, p. 11).
Brown, J. (2001). Learning in the digital age. Retrieved from http://www.johnseelybrown.com/learning_in_digital_age-aspen.pdf
Ertmer, P. A., & Newby, T. J. (1993). Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism: Comparing Critical Features from an Instructional Design Perspective. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 6(4), 50–72. doi:10.1111/j.1937-8327.1993.tb00605.x
Prensky, M. (2005). Listen to the Natives. Educational Leadership, 63(4), 8–13.
Tapscott, D. (1998). Growing Up Digital. Retrieved from http://www.ncsu.edu/meridian/jan98/feat_6/digital.html
Thompson, C. (2011). Clive Thompson on Why Kids Can't Search. Wired. Retrieved from http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/11/st_thompson_searchresults/