text:
Chapter 1
Introduction [#]
Software documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; and when it is bad, it is better than nothing. (Anonymous.)
There are two ways of constructing a software design: one way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies; the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. (C.A.R. Hoare)
A computer language is not just a way of getting a computer to perform operations but rather that it is a novel formal medium for expressing ideas about methodology. Thus, programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute. (The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, H. Abelson, G. Sussman and J. Sussman, 1985.)
If you try to make something beautiful, it is often ugly. If you try to make something useful, it is often beautiful. (Oscar Wilde)1
GATE is an infrastructure for developing and deploying software components that process human language. GATE helps scientists and developers in three ways:
- by specifiying an architecture, or organisational structure, for language processing software;
- by providing a framework, or class library, that implements the architecture and can be used to embed language processing capabilities in diverse applications;
- by providing a development environment built on top of the framework made up of convenient graphical tools for developing components.
The architecture exploits component-based software development, object orientation and mobile code. The framework and development environment are written in Java and available as open-source free software under the GNU library (or lesser) licence2. GATE uses Unicode throughout [Unicode Consortium 96, Tablan et al. 02], and has been tested on a variety of Slavic, Germanic, Romance, and Indic languages [Maynard et al. 01, Gambäck & Olsson 00, McEnery et al. 00].
From a scientific point-of-view, GATE's contribution is to quantitative measurement of accuracy and repeatability of results for verification purposes.
GATE has been in development at the University of Sheffield since 1995 and has been used in a wide variety of research and development projects [Maynard et al. 00]. Version 1 of GATE was released in 1996, was licensed by several hundred organisations, and used in a wide range of language analysis contexts including Information Extraction ([Cunningham 99b, Appelt 99, Gaizauskas & Wilks 98, Cowie & Lehnert 96]) in English, Greek, Spanish, Swedish, German, Italian, French, Bulgarian, Russian, and a number of other languages. Version 4 of the system is available from http://gate.ac.uk/download/.
This book describes how to use GATE to develop language processing components, test their performance and deploy them as parts of other applications. In the rest of this chapter:
- section 1.1 describes the best way to use this book;
- section 1.2 briefly notes that the context of GATE is applied language processing, or Language Engineering;
- section 1.3 gives an overview of developing using GATE;
- section 1.4 describes the structure of the rest of the book;
- section 1.5 lists other publications about GATE.
Note: if you don't see the component you need in this document, or if we mention a component that you can't see in the software, contact email@example.com – various components are developed by our collaborators, who we will be happy to put you in contact with. (Often the process of getting a new component is as simple as typing the URL into GATE; the system will do the rest.)
1.1 How to Use This Text [#]
It is a good idea to read all of this introduction (you can skip sections 1.2 and 1.5 if pressed); then you can either continue wading through the whole thing or just use chapter 3 as a reference and dip into other chapters for more detail as necessary. Chapter 3 gives instructions for completing common tasks with GATE, organised in a FAQ style: details, and the reasoning behind the various aspects of the system, are omitted in this chapter, so where more information is needed refer to later chapters.
The structure of the book as a whole is detailed in section 1.4 below.
1.2 Context [#]
GATE can be thought of as a Software Architecture for Language Engineering [Cunningham 00].
'Software Architecture' is used rather loosely here to mean computer infrastructure for software development, including development environments and frameworks, as well as the more usual use of the term to denote a macro-level organisational structure for software systems [Shaw & Garlan 96].
Language Engineering (LE) may be defined as:
…the discipline or act of engineering software systems that perform tasks involving processing human language. Both the construction process and its outputs are measurable and predictable. The literature of the field relates to both application of relevant scientific results and a body of practice. [Cunningham 99a]
The relevant scientific results in this case are the outputs of Computational Linguistics, Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence in general. Unlike these other disciplines, LE, as an engineering discipline, entails predictability, both of the process of constructing LE-based software and of the performance of that software after its completion and deployment in applications.
Some working definitions:
- Computational Linguistics (CL): science of language that uses computation as an investigative tool.
- Natural Language Processing (NLP): science of computation whose subject matter is data structures and algorithms for computer processing of human language.
- Language Engineering (LE): building NLP systems whose cost and outputs are measurable and predictable.
- Software Architecture: macro-level organisational principles for families of systems. In this context is also used as infrastructure.
- Software Architecture for Language Engineering (SALE): software infrastructure, architecture and development tools for applied CL, NLP and LE.
(Of course the practice of these fields is broader and more complex than these definitions.)
In the scientific endeavours of NLP and CL, GATE's role is to support experimentation. In this context GATE's significant features include support for automated measurement (see section 13), providing a 'level playing field' where results can easily be repeated across different sites and environments, and reducing research overheads in various ways.
1.3 Overview [#]
1.3.1 Developing and Deploying Language Processing Facilities [#]
GATE as an architecture suggests that the elements of software systems that process natural language can usefully be broken down into various types of component, known as resources4. Components are reusable software chunks with well-defined interfaces, and are a popular architectural form, used in Sun's Java Beans and Microsoft's .Net, for example. GATE components are specialised types of Java Bean, and come in three flavours:
- LanguageResources (LRs) represent entities such as lexicons, corpora or ontologies;
- ProcessingResources (PRs) represent entities that are primarily algorithmic, such as parsers, generators or ngram modellers;
- VisualResources (VRs) represent visualisation and editing components that participate in GUIs.
These definitions can be blurred in practice as necessary.
Collectively, the set of resources integrated with GATE is known as CREOLE: a Collection of REusable Objects for Language Engineering. All the resources are packaged as Java Archive (or 'JAR') files, plus some XML configuration data. The JAR and XML files are made available to GATE by putting them on a web server, or simply placing them in the local file space. Section 1.3.2 introduces GATE's built-in resource set.
When using GATE to develop language processing functionality for an application, the developer uses the development environment and the framework to construct resources of the three types. This may involve programming, or the development of Language Resources such as grammars that are used by existing Processing Resources, or a mixture of both. The development environment is used for visualisation of the data structures produced and consumed during processing, and for debugging, performance measurement and so on. For example, figure 1.1 is a screenshot of one of the visualisation tools
(displaying named-entity extraction results for a Hindi sentence).
The GATE development environment is analogous to systems like Mathematica for Mathematicians, or JBuilder for Java programmers: it provides a convenient graphical environment for research and development of language processing software.
When an appropriate set of resources have been developed, they can then be embedded in the target client application using the GATE framework. The framework is supplied as two JAR files.5 To embed GATE-based language processing facilities in an application, these JAR files are all that is needed, along with JAR files and XML configuration files for the various resources that make up the new facilities.
1.3.2 Built-in Components [#]
GATE includes resources for common LE data structures and algorithms, including documents, corpora and various annotation types, a set of language analysis components for Information Extraction and a range of data visualisation and editing components.
GATE supports documents in a variety of formats including XML, RTF, email, HTML, SGML and plain text. In all cases the format is analysed and converted into a single unified model of annotation. The annotation format is a modified form the TIPSTER format [Grishman 97] which has been made largely compatible with the Atlas format [Bird & Liberman 99], and uses the now standard mechanism of 'stand-off markup'. GATE documents, corpora and annotations are stored in databases of various sorts, visualised via the development environment, and accessed at code level via the framework. See chapter 6 for more details of corpora etc.
A family of Processing Resources for language analysis is included in the shape of ANNIE, A Nearly-New Information Extraction system. These components use finite state techniques to implement various tasks from tokenisation to semantic tagging or verb phrase chunking. All ANNIE components communicate exclusively via GATE's document and annotation resources. See chapter 8 for more details. See chapter 5 for visual resources. See chapter 9 for other miscellaneous CREOLE resources.
1.3.3 Additional Facilities [#]
Three other facilities in GATE deserve special mention:
- JAPE, a Java Annotation Patterns Engine, provides regular-expression based pattern/action rules over annotations – see chapter 7.
- The 'annotation diff' tool in the development environment implements performance metrics such as precision and recall for comparing annotations. Typically a language analysis component developer will mark up some documents by hand and then use these along with the diff tool to automatically measure the performance of the components. See section 13.
- GUK, the GATE Unicode Kit, fills in some of the gaps in the JDK's6 support for Unicode, e.g. by adding input methods for various languages from Urdu to Chinese. See section 3.37 for more details.
And by version 4 it will make a mean cup of tea.
1.3.4 An Example [#]
This section gives a very brief example of a typical use of GATE to develop and deploy language processing capabilities in an application, and to generate quantitative results for scientific publication.
Let's imagine that a developer called Fatima is building an email client7 for Cyberdyne Systems' large corporate Intranet. In this application she would like to have a language processing system that automatically spots the names of people in the corporation and transforms them into mailto hyperlinks.
A little investigation shows that GATE's existing components can be tailored to this purpose. Fatima starts up the development environment, and creates a new document containing some example emails. She then loads some processing resources that will do named-entity recognition (a tokeniser, gazetteer and semantic tagger), and creates an application to run these components on the document in sequence. Having processed the emails, she can see the results in one of several viewers for annotations.
The GATE components are a decent start, but they need to be altered to deal specially with people from Cyberdyne's personnel database. Therefore Fatima creates new "cyber-" vesions of the gazetteer and semantic tagger resources, using the "bootstrap" tool. This tool creates a directory structure on disk that has some Java stub code, a Makefile and an XML configuration file. After several hours struggling with badly written documentation, Fatima manages to compile the stubs and create a JAR file containing the new resources. She tells GATE the URL of these files8, and the system then allows her to load them in the same way that she loaded the built-in resources earlier on.
Fatima then creates a second copy of the email document, and uses the annotation editing facilities to mark up the results that she would like to see her system producing. She saves this and the version that she ran GATE on into her Oracle datastore (set up for her by the Herculean efforts of the Cyberdyne technical support team, who like GATE because it enables them to claim lots of overtime). From now on she can follow this routine:
- Run her application on the email test corpus.
- Check the performance of the system by running the 'annotation diff' tool to compare her manual results with the system's results. This gives her both percentage accuracy figures and a graphical display of the differences between the machine and human outputs.
- Make edits to the code, pattern grammars or gazetteer lists in her resources, and recompile where necessary.
- Tell GATE to re-initialise the resources.
- Go to 1.
To make the alterations that she requires, Fatima re-implements the ANNIE gazetteer so that it regenerates itself from the local personnel data. She then alters the pattern grammar in the semantic tagger to prioritise recognition of names from that source. This latter job involves learning the JAPE language (see chapter 7), but as this is based on regular expressions it isn't too difficult.
Eventually the system is running nicely, and her accuracy is 93% (there are still some problem cases, e.g. when people use nicknames, but the performance is good enough for production use). Now Fatima stops using the GATE development environment and works instead on embedding the new components in her email application. This application is written in Java, so embedding is very easy9: the two GATE JAR files are added to the project CLASSPATH, the new components are placed on a web server, and with a little code to do initialisation, loading of components and so on, the job is finished in half a day – the code to talk to GATE takes up only around 150 lines of the eventual application, most of which is just copied from the example in the sheffield.examples.StandAloneAnnie class.
Because Fatima is worried about Cyberdyne's unethical policy of developing Skynet to help the large corporates of the West strengthen their strangle-hold over the World, she wants to get a job as an academic instead (so that her conscience will only have to cope with the torture of students, as opposed to humanity). She takes the accuracy measures that she has attained for her system and writes a paper for the Journal of Nasturtium Logarithm Encitement describing the approach used and the results obtained. Because she used GATE for development, she can cite the repeatability of her experiments and offer access to example binary versions of her software by putting them on an external web server.
And everybody lived happily ever after.
1.4 Structure of the Book [#]
The material presented in this book ranges from the conceptual (e.g. 'what is software architecture?') to practical instructions for programmers (e.g. how to deal with GATE exceptions) and linguists (e.g. how to write a pattern grammar). This diversity is something of an organisational challenge. Our (no doubt imperfect) solution is to collect specific instructions for 'how to do X' in a separate chapter (3). Other chapters give a more discursive presentation. In order to understand the whole system you must, unfortunately, read much of the book; in order to get help with a particular task, however, look first in chapter 3 and refer to other material as necessary.
The other chapters:
Chapter 4 describes the GATE architecture's component-based model of language processing, describes the lifecycle of GATE components, and how they can be grouped into applications and stored in databases and files.
Chapter 5 describes the set of Visual Resources that are bundled with GATE.
Chapter 6 describes GATE's model of document formats, annotated documents, annotation types, and corpora (sets of documents). It also covers GATE's facilities for reading and writing in the XML data interchange language.
Chapter 7 describes JAPE, a pattern/action rule language based on regular expressions over annotations on documents. JAPE grammars compile into cascaded finite state transducers.
Chapter 8 describes ANNIE, a pipelined Information Extraction system which is supplied with GATE.
Chapter 9 describes CREOLE resources bundled with the system that don't fit into the previous categories.
Chapter 10 describes processing resources and language resources for working with ontologies.
Chapter 11 describes a machine learning layer specifically targetted at NLP tasks including text classification, chunk learning (e.g. for named entity recognition) and relation learning.
Chapter 13 describes how to measure the performance of language analysis components.
Chapter 14 describes the data store security model.
Appendix A discusses the design of the system.
Appendix B describes the implementation details and formal definitions of the JAPE annotation patterns language.
Appendix D describes in some detail the JAPE pattern grammars that are used in ANNIE for named-entity recognition.
1.5 Further Reading [#]
Lots of documentation lives on the GATE web server, including:
- the concise application developer's guide (with emphasis on using the GATE API);
- movies of the system in operation;
- the main system documentation tree;
- JavaDoc API documentation;
- HTML of the source code;
- parts of the requirements analysis that version 3 is based on.
For more details about Sheffield University's work in human language processing see the NLP group pages or A Definition and Short History of Language Engineering ([Cunningham 99a]). For more details about Information Extraction see IE, a User Guide or the GATE IE pages.
A list of publications on GATE and projects that use it (some of which are available on-line):
- [Cunningham 05]
- is an overview of the field of Information Extraction for the 2nd Edition of the Encyclopaedia of Language and Linguistics.
- [Cunningham & Bontcheva 05]
- is an overview of the field of Software Architecture for Language Engineering for the 2nd Edition of the Encyclopaedia of Language and Linguistics.
- [Li et al. 04]
- (Machine Learning Workshop 2004) describes an SVM based learning algortihm for IE using GATE.
- [Wood et al. 04]
- (NLDB 2004) looks at ontology-based IE from parallel texts.
- [Cunningham & Scott 04b]
- (JNLE) is a collection of papers covering many important areas of Software Architecture for Language Engineering.
- [Cunningham & Scott 04a]
- (JNLE) is the introduction to the above collection.
- [Bontcheva 04]
- (LREC 2004) describes lexical and ontological resources in GATE used for Natural Language Generation.
- [Bontcheva et al. 04]
- (JNLE) discusses developments in GATE in the early naughties.
- [Maynard et al. 04a]
- (LREC 2004) presents algorithms for the automatic induction of gazetteer lists from multi-language data.
- [Maynard et al. 04c]
- (AIMSA 2004) presents automatic creation and monitoring of semantic metadata in a dynamic knowledge portal.
- [Maynard et al. 04b]
- (ESWS 2004) discusses ontology-based IE in the hTechSight project.
- [Dimitrov et al. 04]
- (Anaphora Processing) gives a lightweight method for named entity coreference resolution.
- [Kiryakov 03]
- (Technical Report) discusses semantic web technology in the context of multimedia indexing and search.
- [Tablan et al. 03]
- (HLT-NAACL 2003) presents the OLLIE on-line learning for IE system.
- [Wood et al. 03]
- (Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing 2003) discusses using parallel texts to improve IE recall.
- [Maynard et al. 03a]
- (Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing 2003) looks at semantics and named-entity extraction.
- [Maynard et al. 03b]
- (ACL Workshop 2003) describes NE extraction without training data on a language you don't speak (!).
- [Maynard et al. ]
- (EACL 2003) looks at the distinction between information and content extraction.
- [Manov et al. 03]
- (HLT-NAACL 2003) describes experiments with geographic knowledge for IE.
- [Saggion et al. 03a]
- (EACL 2003) discusses robust, generic and query-based summarisation.
- [Saggion et al. 03c]
- (EACL 2003) discusses event co-reference in the MUMIS project.
- [Saggion et al. 03b]
- (Data and Knowledge Engineering) discusses multimedia indexing and search from multisource multilingual data.
- [Cunningham et al. 03]
- (Corpus Linguistics 2003) describes GATE as a tool for collaborative corpus annotation.
- [Bontcheva et al. 03]
- (NLPXML-2003) looks at GATE for the semantic web.
- [Dimitrov 02a, Dimitrov et al. 02]
- (DAARC 2002, MSc thesis) discuss lightweight coreference methods.
- [Lal 02]
- (Master Thesis) looks at text summarisation using GATE.
- [Lal & Ruger 02]
- (ACL 2002) looks at text summarisation using GATE.
- [Cunningham et al. 02]
- (ACL 2002) describes the GATE framework and graphical development environment as a tool for robust NLP applications.
- [Bontcheva et al. 02b]
- (NLIS 2002) discusses how GATE can be used to create HLT modules for use in information systems.
- [Tablan et al. 02]
- (LREC 2002) describes GATE's enhanced Unicode support.
- [Maynard et al. 02a]
- (ACL 2002 Summarisation Workshop) describes using GATE to build a portable IE-based summarisation system in the domain of health and safety.
- [Maynard et al. 02c]
- (Nordic Language Technology) describes various Named Entity recognition projects developed at Sheffield using GATE.
- [Maynard et al. 02b]
- (AIMSA 2002) describes the adaptation of the core ANNIE modules within GATE to the ACE (Automatic Content Extraction) tasks.
- [Maynard et al. 02d]
- (JNLE) describes robustness and predictability in LE systems, and presents GATE as an example of a system which contributes to robustness and to low overhead systems development.
- [Bontcheva et al. 02c], [Dimitrov 02a] and [Dimitrov 02b]
- (TALN 2002, DAARC 2002, MSc thesis) describe the shallow named entity coreference modules in GATE: the orthomatcher which resolves pronominal coreference, and the pronoun resolution module.
- [Bontcheva et al. 02a]
- (ACl 2002 Workshop) describes how GATE can be used as an environment for teaching NLP, with examples of and ideas for future student projects developed within GATE.
- [Pastra et al. 02]
- (LREC 2002) discusses the feasibility of grammar reuse in applications using ANNIE modules.
- [Baker et al. 02]
- (LREC 2002) report results from the EMILLE Indic languages corpus collection and processing project.
- [Saggion et al. 02b] and [Saggion et al. 02a]
- (LREC 2002, SPLPT 2002) describes how ANNIE modules have been adapted to extract information for indexing multimedia material.
- [Maynard et al. 01]
- (RANLP 2001) discusses a project using ANNIE for named-entity recognition across wide varieties of text type and genre.
- [Cunningham 00]
- (PhD thesis) defines the field of Software Architecture for Language Engineering, reviews previous work in the area, presents a requirements analysis for such systems (which was used as the basis for designing GATE versions 2 and 3), and evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of GATE version 1.
- [Cunningham 02]
- (Computers and the Humanities) describes the philosophy and motivation behind the system, describes GATE version 1 and how well it lived up to its design brief.
- [McEnery et al. 00]
- (Vivek) presents the EMILLE project in the context of which GATE's Unicode support for Indic languages has been developed.
- [Cunningham et al. 00d] and [Cunningham 99c]
- (technical reports) document early versions of JAPE (superceded by the present document).
- [Cunningham et al. 00a], [Cunningham et al. 98a] and [Peters et al. 98]
- (OntoLex 2000, LREC 1998) presents GATE's model of Language Resources, their access and distribution.
- [Maynard et al. 00]
- (technical report) surveys users of GATE up to mid-2000.
- [Cunningham et al. 00c] and [Cunningham et al. 99]
- (COLING 2000, AISB 1999) summarise experiences with GATE version 1.
- [Cunningham et al. 00b]
- (LREC 2000) taxonomises Language Engineering components and discusses the requirements analysis for GATE version 2.
- [Bontcheva et al. 00] and [Brugman et al. 99]
- (COLING 2000, technical report) describe a prototype of GATE version 2 that integrated with the EUDICO multimedia markup tool from the Max Planck Institute.
- [Gambäck & Olsson 00]
- (LREC 2000) discusses experiences in the Svensk project, which used GATE version 1 to develop a reusable toolbox of Swedish language processing components.
- [Cunningham 99a]
- (JNLE) reviewed and synthesised definitions of Language Engineering.
- [Stevenson et al. 98] and [Cunningham et al. 98b]
- (ECAI 1998, NeMLaP 1998) report work on implementing a word sense tagger in GATE version 1.
- [Cunningham et al. 97b]
- (ANLP 1997) presents motivation for GATE and GATE-like infrastructural systems for Language Engineering.
- [Gaizauskas et al. 96b, Cunningham et al. 97a, Cunningham et al. 96e]
- (ICTAI 1996, TITPSTER 1997, NeMLaP 1996) report work on GATE version 1.
- [Cunningham et al. 96c, Cunningham et al. 96d, Cunningham et al. 95]
- (COLING 1996, AISB Workshop 1996, technical report) report early work on GATE version 1.
- [Cunningham et al. 96b]
- (TIPSTER) discusses a selection of projects in Sheffield using GATE version 1 and the TIPSTER architecture it implemented.
- [Cunningham et al. 96a]
- (manual) was the guide to developing CREOLE components for GATE version 1.
- [Gaizauskas et al. 96a]
- (manual) was the user guide for GATE version 1.
- [Humphreys et al. 96]
- (manual) desribes the language processing components distributed with GATE version 1.
- [Cunningham 94, Cunningham et al. 94]
- (NeMLaP 1994, technical report) argue that software engineering issues such as reuse, and framework construction, are important for language processing R&D.
- [Dowman et al. 05b]
- (World Wide Web Conference Paper) The Web is used to assist the annotation and indexing of broadcast news.
- [Dowman et al. 05a]
- (Euro Interactive Television Conference Paper) A system which can use material from the Internet to augment television news broadcasts.
- [Dowman et al. 05c]
- (Second European Semantic Web Conference Paper) A system that semantically annotates television news broadcasts using news websites as a resource to aid in the annotation process.
- [Li et al. 05a]
- (Proceedings of Sheffield Machine Learning Workshop) describe an SVM based IE system which uses the SVM with uneven margins as learning component and the GATE as NLP processing module.
- [Li et al. 05b]
- (Proceedings of Ninth Conference on Computational Natural Language Learning (CoNLL-2005)) uses the uneven margins versions of two popular learning algorithms SVM and Perceptron for IE to deal with the imbalanced classification problems derived from IE.
- [Li et al. 05c]
- (Proceedings of Fourth SIGHAN Workshop on Chinese Language processing (Sighan-05)) used Perceptron learning, a simple, fast and effective learning algorithm, for Chinese word segmentation.
- [Aswani et al. 05]
- (Proceedings of Fifth International Conference on Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing (RANLP2005)) It is a full-featured annotation indexing and search engine, developed as a part of the GATE. It is powered with Apache Lucene technology and indexes a variety of documents supported by the GATE.
- [Li et al. 05c]
- (Proceedings of Fourth SIGHAN Workshop on Chinese Language processing (Sighan-05)) a system for Chinese word segmentation based on Perceptron learning, a simple, fast and effective learning algorithm.
- [Wang et al. 05]
- (Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence (WI 2005)) Extracting a Domain Ontology from Linguistic Resource Based on Relatedness Measurements.
- [Ursu et al. 05]
- (Proceedings of the 2nd European Workshop on the Integration of Knowledge, Semantic and Digital Media Technologies (EWIMT 2005))Digital Media Preservation and Access through Semantically Enhanced Web-Annotation.
- [Polajnar et al. 05] (University of Sheffield-Research Memorandum CS-05-10) User-Friendly Ontology Authoring Using a Controlled Language.
- [Aswani et al. 06] (Proceedings of the 5th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC2006)) In this paper the problem of disambiguating author instances in ontology is addressed. We describe a web-based approach that uses various features such as publication titles, abstract, initials and co-authorship information.
1These were, at least, our ideals; of course we didn't completely live up to them…
2This is a restricted form of the main GNU licence, which means that GATE can be embedded in commercial products if required.
3Follow the 'support' link from the GATE web server to subscribe to the mailing list.
4The terms 'resource' and 'component' are synonymous in this context. 'Resource' is used instead of just 'component' because it is a common term in the literature of the field: cf. the Language Resources and Evaluation conference series [LREC-1 98, LREC-2 00].
5The main JAR file (gate.jar) supplies the framework, built-in resources and various 3rd-party libraries; the second file (guk.jar, the GATE Unicode Kit) contains Unicode support (e.g. additional input methods for languages not currently supported by the JDK). They are separate because the latter has to be a Java extension with a privileged security profile.
6JDK: Java Development Kit, Sun Microsystem's Java implementation. Unicode support is being actively improved by Sun, but at the time of writing many languages are still unsupported. In fact, Unicode itself doesn't support all languages, e.g. Sylheti; hopefully this will change in time.
7Perhaps because Outlook Express trashed her mail folder again, or because she got tired of Microsoft-specific viruses and hadn't heard of Netscape or Emacs.
8While developing, she uses a file:/… URL; for deployment she can put them on a web server.
9Languages other than Java require an additional interface layer, such as JNI, the Java Native Interface, which is in C.


text:
People are so desperate to win an award that they regularly resort to even buying listings in those books of "Who's Who" that folks publish. I get dozens of notices each week offering me the opportunity to be listed in one Who's Who or another. For only a minimal cost, of course.
The pitch is alluring, be listed in a Who's Who, build your reputation and achieve higher income.
This morning, I got received my daily dose of press releases (where do you think I find all this stuff?) and again, there were two or three press releases for some local in Punxatawney who was listed in some grand sounding book of Who's Who. Every single one of them looking to be mentioned in their own local media.
[bctt tweet="The pitch is alluring, be listed in a Who's Who, build your reputation and achieve higher income.
" via="no"]
Thing is, even with these hokey paid for listings, local media is quick to pick up on an award or listing of a local resident. For the media, it's an easy way to build their own reputation in the community as someone who cares about local happenings.
Recently, I wrote several posts about the "Awards Season" the folks at EY, PwC, KPMG and Deloitte were going through with their own spate of awards. Awards they were giving to local businesses and individuals. I wrote these posts when I realized that the awards ceremonies actually benefited the award givers as much as, if not more, than the award recipient.
A quick analysis made me realize that when an award to a local business or individual was given, a multitude of things happened at once.
First of all, the obvious. The local business or individual was recognized and honored, and their reputation was enhanced and solidified.
But then secondly, I recognized that the award recipient would have developed a sense of loyalty and devotion to the person or organization that gave them the award. Indirectly, they became proponents, or evangelists for the award giver.
And, of course, the third value was the publicity and recognition that the award giving firm received in the community, from the media, and all of the other participants who were nominated and could say that they were 'runner ups' in the award contest.
[bctt tweet="A quick analysis made me realize that when an award to a local business or individual was given, a multitude of things happened at once." via="no"]
Speaking of which, as we learn from this experience, our friend Chris Groote and I are developing a complete Awards System that make the entire system easy and understandable by local practitioners, and we're making it available to you.
But, before we release the system, we want to know if there is any interest. so, if you're interested in a low cost way to generate tons of free publicity in your community and attract dozens of new small business or individual accounting or tax clients, here's your chance to get in early. We'll be rolling this out as a "Done For You" program in time for the annual "Awards Season" just in time to get you off to a good new year.
So, if you're looking to score some easy clients, and do it on a regular basis, just note in the comment section below and let us know what you're looking for. The manual isn't quite finished, so it could be your chance to have a program designed especially for you.
Join us here at Practice Builder Publishing and become a part of the community, whether you become a contributing author, a peer recruiter, or merely a raving devotee of the Practice Builder Publishing resources, I'll work with you personally so you can reach the goals you set.
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subset: commoncrawl


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Last week we completed our third and final challenge with Canon PIXMA. It was to:
Print your favourite family photo stored on Facebook for your desk/photo album, via PIXMA Cloud Link, using the PIXMA Printing Solutions App
Technology is so brilliant these days. It still amazes me that I can send photos that I've just taken on my phone back to my printer at home, even when I'm a million miles away!
The PIXMA Printing Solutions App (a free app, available on iPhone and Android) makes printing photos directly from the internet super easy. Printers that have the Cloud Link also allow you to view and print direct from the printer screen which is pretty cool (you can print remotely from your mobile device as I've done here too).
The photo I chose to print is one of me and the girls (a selfie of course!) which I took back in the Spring (LOOK! I'm still a blondie!!). It's a silly one but I love it.
The Canon PIXMA MG7150 really is so clever, and I'm so glad I was asked to work with Canon on this project. Having a printer at home has been incredibly useful over the past few months - and not just for our day to day printing requirements either. We have been printing photographs left, right and centre - for ourselves, our parents and our grandparents (all of whom have LOVED them) and the Creative Park software has been a godsend now that the weather has turned and we're spending more time indoors.
By the way, as I have now finished this series of printer related posts, I have to add that the Canon PIXMA has been brilliant for printing out my Instagram photos. Although they are square, and photo paper isn't available in a square aspect just yet, printing onto the 4x6 is easy and just means you have to trim off the excess paper. I've done this at photo printing shops before and for some reason the quality has always been really bad. The PIXMA print outs are perfect, the resolution doesn't seem to deteriorate at all. Hurray! xo
The Canon PIXMA MG7150 retails at around £150 and is available from all good stores, such as Argos, Amazon and John Lewis.
DISCLAIMER: We were sent a printer to enable us to take part in three printing challenges. All thoughts and comments are true and my own.


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Pro-lifers took to the streets of London on Saturday for the March for Life UK, the first time the march has come to the British capital.
American singer Joy Villa led the march through Trafalgar Square to Parliament Square, where Clare McCullough of the Good Counsel Network addressed the crowd and denounced the decision by Ealing Council to set up a so-called "buffer zone" around an abortion clinic.
A small counter-demonstration greeted the march at Parliament Square, but the event passed without incident.
Ooh March for Life London with the amazing @Joy_Villa #LifeDeservesLove #LifeFest18 pic.twitter.com/X9wBmDWLiV
— March4LifeUK (@March4LifeUK) May 5, 2018
Bishop John Keenan of Paisley and Bishop John Wilson, an auxiliary of Westminster, also addressed the marchers. Bishop Keenan urged pro-lifers to consider going into public life, but warned they would face significant challenges.
"You have no idea of the galvanising effect your courage will have if you stand up before the British media courageously, even under attack, and be pro-life. You're setting the seeds of the next generation," the bishop said.
"We will win this battle by truth, but we will win it even more by courage."
The UK March for Life takes place each year around the time that that 1967 Abortion Act came into effect. The march started in 2012 as an initiative of a small group of pro-life activists in Birmingham. The annual event grew so much that organisers decided to move it to London for the first time this year.
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Full Immersion
How augmented and virtual reality are shaping the tourism industry.
Often associated with gaming and 3-D movies, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are carving out a place in the tourism industry with their ability to immerse travelers in a destination—even before they arrive. Augmented reality overlays virtual content atop the real world and virtual reality is entirely simulated, with no distinction between what's virtual and what's real.
One example of a travel brand embracing these new technologies: Airline brand Lufthansa has used VR-enabled headsets to give customers the opportunity to immerse themselves in the company's flight experience. "What if traveling is not to get from [point] A to B but the experiences you have at the end of the day," Tortsen Wingenter, head of digital innovations at Lufthansa, said at the OMMA SXSW panel earlier this year in Austin, Texas. Wingenter said that VR helps to better illustrate the company's value to those who have never flown with Lufthansa before.
AR/VR is currently a $5.2 billion industry and revenue is expected to more than triple by 2020, according to the International Data Corporation. AR/VR technology is rolling out to mainstream travelers in a variety of formats, including software, apps and headsets. Resorts can begin to take advantage of augmented reality by using panoramas and software such as Kolor to produce high-quality virtual reality video tours. These virtual tours can be viewed on desktop computers, smartphones and tablets—and, even better, users don't have to download these tours to their devices. And with the recent support of 3-D video on Facebook and YouTube, watching the videos will be a first port of call when travelers are planning and purchasing trips.
Currently, AR/VR technology is the most immersive way for people to experience a resort, spa, restaurant or activity without having to actually be there—and providing these resources creates a new entry point for resorts to reach owners and guests.
Image credit: iStockphoto


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In this computerized Read more [...]
Vital Things You Must Know About MOT Test
Place Category: Beaches
If you are living in the UK and own a more than three-year-old car or vehicle then MOT is must for you. So as to ensure better functioning of the car and safety during the drive, you must perform MOT test on your vehicle. Once your car passes the MOT test, it will prove to be roadworthy and safe for driving. Once your car or vehicle gets three years old, you need to conduct MOT test on it each year so as to confirm that it meets all road safety and environmental standards. You need to find authorized Coventry MOT centre where the professional will perform dozens of inspection on different parts of the car such as fuel system, brakes, mirrors, lights, windscreen wipers, seatbelts, exhaust system, and so on.
You should also know that there are only 21,000 accredited MOT test centres across the UK. You can confirm the authenticity of the MOT centre by checking their license or official blue sign having three white triangles. Usually, MOT test takes in between 45 and 60 minutes, however, there are several factors that can expand the time. If the car fails to pass the test or need some kind of repairing then MOT completion would take longer time. If the car fails in MOT then you will not be allowed to drive the car until all problems are solved. The MOT station may ask you to drop the car off and collect it when ready. You need to ensure to get MOT done before your previous MOT expires. And to avoid the last moment hustle to find the authorized MOT centre, it would be better for you to book the MOT test Coventry online. You should search for the MOT garage that offers online booking facility for getting MOT.
MOT DRS is one such centre where you will get the convenience of online MOT booking. According to your date and time convenience, you can book the MOT. MOT DRS is one of the eminent garages in Coventry offering finest MOT and car repair services. They have appointed highly experienced professionals in an attempt to deliver superior quality service to the customers. All of their services are quite affordable and efficient. They make sure to conduct the MOT test flawlessly and recover all issues in a professional manner.
About MOT DRS:
MOT DRS is one of the top MOT garages well-known for providing the best MOT Coventry and car repair service.
For more details, visit https://www.carmotservice.com/
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Here it comes. While the rest of us engage in the long process of getting a piece of bicycle infrastructure put onto place, politicians meet in private and then when they realize they don't like something, the resort to law suits. The Brooklyn Paper reports on the latest developments in the battle for the Prospect Park West bike lane.
Mean Streets:
Here it comes — the inevitable Prospect Park West bike lane lawsuit!
BY NATALIE O'NEILL
The politically connected group that opposes the controversial Prospect Park West bike lane is poised to sue the city — at the risk of a marital rift between cycling advocate Sen. Charles Schumer and his lane-hating wife.
Read more here.


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This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. The author will award a $25 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.
Working closely with the obstinate-yet-sexy Brady is not an attractive idea to Rachel—although she has to admit that Brady himself is pretty damned attractive.
Rachel doesn't have to run for office to keep her judgeship, but Brady does. He draws a formidable opponent, Hannah Davenport, a wealthy co-owner of Old Garnet Distillery, where some of the finest Kentucky bourbon is crafted north of town along Old Crow Creek and near the historic springs which gave the town its unique name.
And Hannah just happens to be Rachel's best friend.
As the judicial race heats up, so does the relationship between the judges—so they decide to keep it a secret.
But can any secret be kept in little Bourbon Springs, Kentucky?
SECRET BLEND is the first book in the Bourbon Springs Series, an upcoming nine-book series of smooth, sensual, sexy, slow-burn contemporary romances set amidst the lush and rolling Land of Bourbon and Bluegrass of central Kentucky.
Enjoy an excerpt:
Upon a glimpse of his shorts, she saw the reason for Brady's sudden affinity for standing in a freezer and pressed her lips together, trying not to laugh.
"Maybe you should go in the back of the store," she suggested. "I think they have the big freezers back there."
"I'd rather stay here," he said in a low voice. "The view's better." Brady's eyes raked over Rachel's body.
"I'm pretty sure you've seen an even better one."
"Indeed I have," he said. "And recently. Very recently."
"And would you like to see that view again?" she asked. She saw him swallow and knew she'd gotten the better of him.
He leaned forward and whispered. "I happen to know that if we weren't in the middle of the grocery store, Judge Richards, I'd be looking at that view right this very minute."
She sucked in a breath but soon recovered. "I would think," she said, "that you'd be doing more than simply looking, Judge Craft." She put a finger to her chin and looked up. "How do I put this? I think you'd be enjoying. But I'm not talking about merely the view."
He moved closer to her.
"If I had you back where we were—" he looked at his watch "—eight hours ago, Judge Richards, we'd both be enjoying ourselves. I'd certainly enjoy the view of you writhing under me again as I—"
"Judge Richards, Judge Craft," said a voice from nearby.
Brady and Rachel fell away from each other and looked to see the Commonwealth Attorney, Eleanor Giles, standing and staring at them.
About the Author:
Buy the book at Barnes and Noble OR Amazon.
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12 Feb 2017 01:20

Just believe about it. Say you have two hundred friends on encounter guide, that two hundred possible buyers just by putting your link on your wall, and within hrs you will receive comments asking about your new company. Other easy ways to place your link are free ads.

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It requires a great deal of time to search for a house or condominium. And I know it is a great deal of enjoyable to surf for houses from the comfort of your sofa. Addicting even. But following a while you just become overwhelmed with the options that are out there. Not to point out the fact that most numerous listing service websites aren't the quickest web portals on the planet. Allow your Realtor spend their time going through all the Sell online. All you have to do is give them your criteria.

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Now allow's say you've determined to place in five Classifieds a day. What I recommend you do is; each time you get to the web page exactly where you enter your ad details that you duplicate the URL to that web page and keep it submitted on your desktop. Following one month of performing this you will have about one hundred fifty URLS that take you straight to the Add YOUR Post page of 150 classified websites. This will also give you a fast marketing system.

Do you want to know how to work at home and make a great deal of money? Of program you do. Everybody does. There are a lot of expensive ideas and programs accessible to anybody who has the cash to invest in them that may function. But people who begin looking for methods to make money at home generally do so simply because they are broke and need to make cash. They do not have the cash to invest.

It has become a reality that more sellers are turning to the FSBO technique. This cuts expenses for everyone involved. This site provides beneficial information for these who are considering of using this technique to sell and it also assists the buyer. If you are looking into buying from an individual this is a must see website! It is a win-win situation. I actually discovered it extremely informative and fun to browse the Sell online in my own region.

You merely can't wait for phrase of mouth to occur. Rather, you have to telephone up fifty individuals or go to 50 businesses or get out there and discover 50 potential customers and by some means out of that numerous, get three to five sales or commissions. Give them a 10 percent break if they will say some thing nice about you.

The bad factor about online entry jobs is that there are a quantity of blacklisted and fraudulent employers. They just post their required occupation on numerous Classifieds web sites and trap harmless entry clerks and experts. So, there are a couple of things you require to consider in purchase to get a reputable information entry occupation.


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As mentioned in my intro page, the first dinosaur
toy I ever got was by Tootsietoy. Since about the 1970s, Tootsietoy has made plastic dinosaurs in two varieties (that I know
of, anyway): 1) larger scale, hollow figures and 2) smaller scale, solid party-favor type figures.
First up we have the hollow figures. The Dinosaur Collector describes them as "hollow and toothy" and "a favorite sandbox toy to this day." Me, I personally never played with them in
sandboxes (I hated sandboxes because I knew cats peed in them). But anyhow, back to the review...
According to the Dinosaur Collector, these guys are still being made
(or at least as far as he knows they are). I long to complete my collection of them, so if you happen to stumble across this
page and know where the heck to get a hold of them, drop me a line!
I still have mine, which were acquired in the very early 1980s at a local
Ben Franklin (back when BF was a cool, funky dime store and carried stuff like this). They seem to have come in the following
array of colors: Blue, white, red, yellow, and green. I thought I saw a light brown one in an auction on Ebay, but I could
have been hallucinating.
Here is a shot of the Tootsietoy hollow dinos I have. Like a brightly
colored row of parked cars, here they are in all their glory:
Once again, we have the "open-mouthed Godzilla-look"
as I like to lovingly refer to this style as. In the 70s and 80s, I guess dinosaur-toy makers were obsessed with making these
guys look like they are roaring. Or laughing...or screaming...you make the call.
At any rate, it appears that TT gave realism a shot. I mean, these are,
by no means, museum quality figures, but at least they represent actual species of dinosaurs and aren't some contrived creatures
(like you'd see in a monster movie). These guys are actually labeled on their tails as to what they are.
Let's take a look at them one by one...
First up is Stegosaurus. He looks like one mean mamma-jamma, don't he?
Not bad...until you get to the head. It is a might bit large. To me it looks like someone spliced a Mosasaurus head onto a
Stegosaurus body. Way too carnivore-looking for me.
But hey--the kids playing with these bad boys aren't looking for realism,
I'll wager. I wasn't.
Next in line, here is the faaaabulous Triceratops.
He's a lovely shade of bright green, and yes, showing off his choppers too. Still, he isn't quite as far-out looking as Stego.
Here's T-Rex with an interesting hunkering-over posture...
Brontosaurus; a real old-school portrayal
here. A green one would be the spittin' image of the Sinclair Logo Dino...
Fifth in line is Moschops (I just
love that name!). An albino one, apparently. I really like this one because this species is rarely represented in dinosaur-toy-form.
Moschops technically was not a dinosaur, by the way--he was a Therapsid (ancestor of mammals) that lived in the late
Permian period.
Last but not least is the pelycosaur Dimetrodon.
He's really upset about something. Or maybe really happy. It's anyone's guess.
And there they are...
If you'd like to see another review of these
by the trusty Dinosaur Collector, you can go here.
According to the DC's site, there was a line of prehistoric mammals called
Giant Mighty Monsters. Sadly, I missed these, and I have a feeling they are no longer available. I don't remember seeing
these in stores anywhere back when I got the above dinos, either. Recently, I found some on Ebay, but they are evidently rare
(the bidding got otrageous on these babies!). Yanno, this is a nice hobby and all, but I don't want to have to take out a
second mortgage on my house to complete a collection, know what I mean?
Perhaps one day, I will get lucky and some flea market'll have them (and
not realize what they are). Hope!!
Smaller Scale Dinos
Recently, I ran across these guys at a Hobby Lobby Store. I have seen
them in various dimestores as well. The dinosaurs you get in a bag can vary; one bag I bought had Plateosaurs in it, but no
T-Rexes. The second bag I bought was just the reverse. Another thing I noticed is that the Dimetrodon comes in two varieties:
one has a base, and the other doesn't.
The bags come with 21 dinosaurs, all in very bright colors (not unlike
their larger cousins, shown above). Maybe this is what they looked like after that meteor hit...
Click the thumbnails below to enlarge.
Read More Reviews
Cretaceous Central Home


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Homeless dogs, cats search for furever homes at the PSPCA
FOX 29's Thomas Drayton has some furry friends at the PSPCA who are searching for furever homes! For more information, check out PSPCA.org or call 215-426-6300.
Latest Videos
Chemical gas canisters stolen in Northeast Philadelphia
Officials are expressing concerns over how the stolen canisters could be used.
Philadelphia police officer charged after confrontation with protesters
Police Staff Inspector Joseph Bologna also has been charged with reckless endangerment and possession of an instrument of crime.
New Jersey resident still without power days after powerful storms impact region
FOX 29's Alex George reports.
FOX 29 Weather Authority: 7-Day Forecast (Friday UPDATE)
FOX 29's Scott Williams has the forecast.
Good Day PhiladelphiaView More
Options for cutting the cable cord
Tech expert Anthony Mongeluzo joins Good Day.
Whatcha Makin?: Arts and crafts from around the Delaware Valley
Good Day viewers send Sue Serio their most creative quarantine arts and crafts creations.
Quarantine cuisine: Honey French baked chicken
Alex Holley whips up Honey French baked chicken.
Camden County police earn national praise for marching with protesters
Camden County police chief Joe Wysocki and march organizer Yolanda Deaver join Good Day.
FOX 29 Originals
Coatesville teacher gives students reason to smile
A Chester County teacher is using the power of water ice to help heal and to show her students she's still there for them. FOX 29's Bill Anderson has this
Coatesville teacher gives students reason to smile
A Chester County teacher is using the power of water ice to help heal and to show her students she's still there for them. FOX 29's Bill Anderson has this For Goodness' Sake: Heroes report.
Vineland residents hold 'March for Peace'
Anger. Frustration. Tired. Sad. Those are just a few of the emotions described when people talk about the death of George Floyd. In Vineland, N.J., some gathered to say enough is enough and to start a real dialogue between neighbors.
Northeast Philadelphia stores begin to board their stores to prevent looting
FOX 29's Hank Flynn reports on Northeast stores that are starting to board up their stores to prevent more looting.


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Tonight, President Barack Obama will be throwing out the first pitch at the 2009 MLB All Star Game. Â Last night, ESPN ran an entertaining package in which this year's All Stars provided tips and pointers for President Obama, with the consensus being the most obvious point of all: don't bounce it (like this guy did).
It made me think about just how much pressure is on people of President Obama's stature when they step onto the mound to throw the first pitch. Â I know, I know…what he deals with in the White House and as The Most Powerful Man in the World is far more important and pressure-packed over the long haul. Â Still, this 'aint reading off a teleprompter. Â This is a physical action, one that is relatively difficult, which is being done in front of millions. Â And as the President, you have an image of greatness to uphold.
Bouncing a ceremonial pitch certainly does not project an image of greatness.
I expect President Obama to do well tonight, mainly because this isn't his first rodeo (as "we" say down here in Texas). Obama threw out a first pitch during the 2005 playoffs, and seems to have the right mindset about the whole process:
Obama is no stranger to the pitching mound. Â In 2005, his first year as a senator from Illinois, Obama threw out a first pitch at a White Sox playoff. Â The devout Sox fan admitted afterwards that he was feeling the pressure.
"Had I thrown a one-hop, I think, whatever aspirations I had, they would have shown that clip over and over again," he said in an interview with the Springfield State Journal-Register that year.
"I was more nervous than I was before the Democratic National Convention" the year before, he said.
So he understands the importance of not bouncing the ball, which is his first step to success. Â Now he just needs to warm himself up properly and do his best Mark Buehrle impression and exhibit pinpoint control. Â (Actually, he doesn't even need to be pinpoint…just somewhere in the area of Albert Pujols' mit. He could settle for John Danks' control.)
Update: Well, he didn't bounce it…but he came close. It was a nice save by Albert Pujols. Follow the link to watch the video of Barack Obama throwing out the first pitch at the 2009 MLB All Star Game.
But any president throwing out a first pitch will always, for me, harken back to the greatest single presidential first pitch of all time. Â And I'd imagine that nearly everyone reading this knows exactly which first pitch I'm talking about, even if the headline and pitcture didn't give it away at a glance.
Back in 2001, not long after the horrors of 9/11, George Bush threw a perfect strike in Yankee Stadium before Gam3 of the World Series. Â This was, almost undoubtedly, one of the high points of his 8-year term in office. Â
I'm not trying to get political here, just stating facts: as a nation, we all were behind President Bush then, and his steely resolve in the face of the terrorist attacks inspired a nation. His ability to throw a perfect strike before Game 3, with the world watching and with admitted nerves, was a symbol of his ability to be a steadying and rallying force in the months after 9/11.
What happened in the ensuing years is for everyone to have their own opinions on, but what happened that night proved that George Bush was capable of Rivera-like clutchness at a time when our nation needed it, even if only symbolically. Â And it's fitting that such a moment would come for Bush on the baseball field. Â He used his tenure with the Texas Rangers to propel himself into the Texas Governer's mansion, and we have never had a more unabashed baseball fanatic in the White House. Â
So forget politics for a moment and just watch the video below. Â It's a great behind-the-scenes look at the build-up to Bush's first pitch at the 2001 World Series, and the strike he fired with the lights shining bright. Â
Now hopefully President Obama can do White Sox fans and America proud tonight by piping one similarly…right down the middle.
And now some other links from around the web to carry you through the rest of this beautiful Tuesday afternoon. Then it's back to work for me, then to the airport to pick up KVB, who will be spending a week down here in Dallas. Â Get ready for a podcast…
Who Will Shoot the Three? — (by The Zoner at Pippen Ain't Easy)
Senator Hatch Wants BCS Investigated — (The World According to MoonDog)
15 Horrible Places to Be High — (Hail Mary Jane)
Top Ten Reasons Tony Romo Split from Jessica Simpson — (Gunaxin)
Tribute to Cinema's Best Slugging — (Screen Junkies)
MLB All Star Game: Making Memories — (Josh Q. Public)
Browns, Maiava Agree to Deal — (Orange & Brown Report)
Former UT Kicker James Wilhoit is now Coach Wilhoit — (SEC Rivals)
A.I.: Memphis or Miami? — (My Sports Rumors)
How moods trigger the panties your GF wears — (Regretful Morning)
The Future for Ric Bucher — (Zoner Sports)
Really Interesting Bob Gibson Take — (Sharapova's Thigh)
Why the AL West is better than people think — (Dallas Sports Fans)
ESPN's New Ombudsman: Don Ohlmeyer — (Real Clear Sports)
Bob Costas Didn't Think Judge Sotomayor Was an All Star — (Hugging Harold Reynolds)
'Cause it's root, root, root for that guy's girlfriend — (Great Moments in Christory)
Thoughts and Observations on Cubs' 1st Half — (The Friendly Blogfines)
* – George Bush photo credit: ESPN.com


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Saving Fear
Release Date: September 6, 2017
Welcome to Weird Science DC Comics, the DC Comics site for the common man and woman. We're not high falutin, just a bunch of dummies who love comics just like you...we just spend an insane amount of time working on this site for no pay. I told you...dummies! So, sit a spell and read our Reviews, News and Articles and if you are really brave, listen to the Weird Science DC Comics Podcast. We triple dog dare you!
I liked this a lot more than that but I don't have the Lanterns issues with it that you do. To me it almost felt like Parallax willingly went with Supes to get the F away from Sinestro, who's clearly power mad, why I'm not sure, but it worked for me enough. Hey I don't read the Lantern titles and want to see what happens w Parallax so they got me there at least 7.5ishReplyDelete


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Happy Halloween!
What are you up to this Halloween?
Haha - oh my! Well, looks adorable! :-)
This is so cute Erika! Here's hoping that whatever you guys get up to that you all have a lot of fun, hot chocolate sounds nice on a Winter's day like this, Happy Halloween!
Bless her, that is precious xx
Haha, I just love these pictures of your darling girl! I saw these types of costumes for sale today but am trying to make myself create SOMEthing before I buy anything. My daughter would look darling in a ladybug or elephant get-up, though... and so easy...!
She still looks so sweet!
Awww she is so adorable! <3 Happy Halloween! I am just heading to my folks to day after work and going to hand out candy there because my dad does the house up with fog machines, black lights, skeletons... etc... its intense, and really gets you into the Halloween mood <3 Have fun trick or treating :)
Hehe, oh my goodness!!
Poor Nora! She still looks cute even while crying.
Awwww, poor thing! She still looks adorable though :) I hope you guys had a good Halloween!
She is soooo cute! Love the costume! I hope you had a lovely Halloween with lots of hot chocolate:)


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Tuesday was my birthday and I wanted to make something yummy for my birthday. That is right, I am made my own birthday dessert (I know that my fellow food bloggers will understand this quite well). Now my first thought (of course) was to make a super fun cupcake that I hadn't tried yet, but then I remembered these delicious mini cheesecakes that I made this past fall, and I knew that was what I wanted. The ones I made in the fall were raspberry, but for some reason I have been on a lime kick lately, so I came up with the idea of a key lime flavored cheesecake. I knew that someone somewhere had created one already and I was right. I found a recipe at Smitten Kitchen and low and behold she even made them mini like I was looking for! In her blog I also noticed she had a neat mini cheesecake pan. I had never seen one of these before and was immediately fascinated so I hopped on my favorite gadget buying site, eBay, and found one for a good deal! This pan is adorable, that is if a pan can be adorable, and it makes adorable little bite sized desserts. How perfect is that? I digress…on to the recipe.
The original recipe from Gormet, May 2002 was made for a full cheesecake and our friends over at Smitten Kitchen used half the recipe to make 12 mini cheesecakes. The recipe that I show below has been reduced and will yield 12 mini cheesecakes (with a little bit extra), that is why some of the measurements are a little odd. The original recipe also called for lime soaked mangoes to garnish the tops of the cakes, however I am not a big fan of mango so I decided to go with coconut. After reading the Smitten Kitchen blog she put the "lime in the coconut" song in my head and I couldn't get it out. I even played the song and sang it a lot while I was baking these. That song is addicting! I also used cinnamon gram crackers in the crust as this is my favorite way to make a cheesecake crust (my super fabulous cousin Hallie gave me the idea).
These cheesecakes were fantastic! They were exactly what I had imagined a key lime flavored cheesecake would taste like. They have the perfect tangy lime flavor and the cheesecake is soft and smooth. I loved these so much I think next time I will make the whole big cheesecake! 🙂Mini Key Lime Cheesecakes Printer Friendly Version
For crust
3/4 cups fine cinnamon graham cracker crumbs
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
For filling
1 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese at room temperature
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoons sugar
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons fresh key lime juice (strained from about 1 1/2 lb Key limes) or bottled if you can find it
1/4 cup sour cream
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon all-purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 large egg and 1 egg yolk
For topping
1/2 cup chilled heavy cream
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 cup shredded coconut
Make crust: Preheat oven to 350°F. This recipe can be made in a mini cheesecake pan or in a muffin pan with or without papers.
Stir together crumbs and butter in a bowl with a fork until combined well, divide the crumb mixture into the 12 holes of your mini cheesecake pan (or muffin cups) then press evenly onto bottom of each hole of the pan. Bake crust in middle of oven for 4-5 minutes and cool in pan on a rack.
Make filling: Reduce oven temperature to 325°F.
Beat cream cheese with an electric mixer at medium speed until fluffy, then beat in sugar. Add lime juice, sour cream, and vanilla and beat until smooth. Mix in flour and salt at low speed, scraping down side as needed, until just incorporated, then add eggs all at once and mix just until incorporated.
Pour filling onto the crusts in each hole of the pan. Bake cakes in the middle of the oven until set in center, about 25-30 minutes (be sure to watch your mini cheesecakes as they can over cook very since they are small). Cool completely in pan on a rack. (Cake will continue to set as it cools.)
Run a thin knife around edge of each cake and push up to remove from the pan.
Make topping: Place the shredded coconut in a saute pan and heat over medium heat on the stove until lightly toasted (it is important that you watch it closely as it can burn very quickly).
Beat cream with sugar in a bowl with electric mixer until it just holds stiff peaks, then spread or pipe on top of each cheesecake. Then place the toasted coconut on top of the whipped cream and enjoy your bite sized treat!
Adapted from: Smitten Kitchen


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Clarity Enhanced Diamonds
On the market today there are diamonds which are also known as "clarity enhanced" diamonds. While there are numerous ways to enhance a diamonds clarity only one form of enhancement has really only become known called "fracture filling". In this chapter we'll discuss both forms and familiarize you with what you need to know about them and answer most questions on the subject.
What are "Clarity Enhanced" diamonds?
Clarity enhanced diamonds are diamonds that, more than often are diamonds that "had" eye visible imperfections. Meaning they are usually stones that were I1, I2 or I3 in clarity, and being that no one wants a diamond with "eye visible" inclusions, a jeweler or a person with that stone will have the inclusion(s) "treated" to be made invisible to the naked eye. The treatment is similar to the idea like if you've ever cracked a windshield, instead of replacing the entire windshield, the repairman just "fills the crack". Clarity enhanced diamonds are also known as "fracture filled" diamonds. In the graphic below is a great example of precisely what I'm talking about. The image on the left is a photomicrograph of a diamond we had acquired and had a rather large eye visible imperfection. After filling the imperfection and having it treated the inclusion became invisible to human vision.
How can I know if a diamond has been "clarity enhanced"?
This is something that the jeweler should disclose to the consumer at the point of sale. Actually ... let me change that ... THIS IS SOMETHING THAT THE JEWELER SHOULD DISCLOSE to you BEFORE THE POINT OF SALE. If the deal sounds too good to be true, don't be afraid to ask if the diamond has been enhanced. Many jewelers who are selling these diamonds are not quick to disclose that info to you. "GIA" will not issue lab reports for clarity enhanced diamonds but "EGL" will and if it was an I2 that was made into an SI2 after enhancement, EGL will put SI2 on the certificate with a footnote that it's been enhanced. If this has been done to any diamonds on our website it will be published in plain language right on its web page.
If I have to trust the jeweler to tell me whether the diamond has been enhanced, how do they determine whether it's been enhanced?
Good question. There have already been jewelers who have bought these and weren't aware of it. I have already sold clarity enhanced diamonds (I knew it and so did the customer) and some appraisers who looked at the diamond didn't know it was enhanced. The best way to detect "fracture filled" or "clarity enhanced" diamonds is under a gemological microscope. The filling generally leaves a faint or strong neon color in the stone, which when observed face up is either invisible or could easily be mistaken for the spectral colors that are observed when looking at a stone face up. When the diamond is observed face down under a scope, however, the neon colors distinctly stand out. Here are some pics of clarity enhanced diamonds under the scope and what we see. The purple/pink flash is what gives it away.
Should I consider purchasing a clarity enhanced diamond for an engagement ring?
It depends on your circumstance. Many people buy clarity enhanced diamonds and are "very" happy. The ones who probably aren't happy are the ones who bought them and weren't told. There are many jewelers and people within the industry who frown on "clarity enhanced" diamonds, especially other diamond dealers. Why? Because this invention has brought less expensive, good looking diamonds to the consumer (considering the other 3C's are good too) and this is taking business away from them. If you are a guy looking to get the biggest diamond for the money and don't have all the cash to shell out for that 1, 1½, or 2-carat diamond but still want to get your girl a decent size rock, I would suggest considering a clarity enhanced diamond. If you do have the bucks, then you may not even want to consider it. It is nice to have the choice even if you do choose not to purchase one. For diamond stud earrings, it allows the consumer to get a notably larger diamonds for their dollar.
Does "clarity enhancement" reduce the value of the diamond?
No and here's why. If a person buys a clarity enhanced diamond, they are in essence paying for the quality that the stone was "before" enhancement plus the labor it costs to make it enhanced. Say we took a 2-carat diamond that was an I1 in clarity with an eye-visible inclusion right under the table and the stones street value was 8-10 thousand. Now there aren't too many people who want a 2 carat stone with a big inclusion staring them in the face. But take that same exact stone, make the inclusion "invisible" to the naked eye and you have an eye clean 2 carat stone for 8-10 thousand dollars. To the guy who's shelling out 15-20 thousand dollars for the same "looking" thing, this doesn't sound too bad. So while the stone after enhancement may look like an SI (under the scope), you are still paying for the Imperfect. Here's a face-up view of a clarity enhanced diamond under the scope. The very faint feather under the table is where the enhancement was done.
What are the guarantees with a clarity enhanced diamond?
The inventor of the process, Zvi Yehuda and the families business, Yehuda Diamond Company, guarantees that the diamond will never become "unfilled" or "un-enhanced" for the life of the stone. This is not to say that it couldn't happen, but if it does, Yehuda Diamonds will retreat the stone at no cost to you. Pretty strong guarantee. Below is a video published by them explaining their product and service.
What could cause the diamond's filling to come out?
The Gemological Institute of America (GIA) has put these stones through the most rigorous of tests. They found only 3 things that could cause the filling to come out.
- Exposure to fire.
- Exposure to boiling acid.
- Re cutting. If the diamond had to, for some reason be re-cut the re-cutting process could cause the filling to come out.
When you get down to it, a jewelers torch and jewelers boiling acid are all you need to beware of. If you are letting a jeweler work on the ring, simply make them aware that the diamond is clarity enhanced either by telling them or handing them the guarantee card. Then you'll be sure to avoid the fire and boiling acid thing. As for re-cutting. You'll probably never have it done.
You mentioned two different types of enhancement. What's the other?
The other is laser treatment. While filled diamond can, under unusual circumstances become "unfilled", laser treatment is permanent. While filling will be primarily done on eye-visible feathers within a diamond, laser drilling will be done on eye-visible black inclusions in a diamond. Here are before and after shots of a marquise diamond with black crystals. One was laser drilled.
When we zoom in and examine under reflected light we can make out the laser drill hole that penetrated the surface of the diamond and the resultant "tunnel leading to the crystal. Once the intensity of the laser hit the black crystal it immediately neutralized the color of it from black to transparent.
Two very important facts you want to keep in mind about laser treated diamonds is this.
- GIA will issue lab reports for laser treated diamonds whereas they will not for filled diamonds.
- Legally, according to the FTC, a jeweler does not have to disclose to you that a diamond has been laser treated.
And once again, it doesn't hurt for you to "ask".
Under the next chapter on "Clarity Tips" I'll be giving you a reminder of questions to ask before you purchase.
Why will GIA Issue Lab Reports for Laser Drilled Diamonds and not Filled Diamonds?
The primary reason is because GIA is not able to accurately determine the grade of the diamond before enhancement and imperfections after enhancement, which can sometimes be obvious under magnification (qualifying it for the Imperfect grade) is still "eye clean" (qualifying it for most SI grades).
If a diamond is laser drilled, how is it detected?
Some laser drilling can be very obvious to see under the scope while some can be very difficult. It really depends on how deep they drilled into the stone and the location of the drilling. It can be almost virtually impossible to see when the diamond is observed face up, as the drilling is typically done perpendicular to the facet on which the black inclusion is. Face up, the laser drill hole is so tiny it looks like a pinpoint inclusion. When you tilt the diamond on a slant you make out, not only the laser drill hole but also the canal or tunnel the laser made from the surface of the diamond to the black inclusion. Here are some examples of what this looks like under the microscope. If the diamond was not tilted you wouldn't see it. Here is the same marquise example from above and photomicrographed at about 60x magnification. Impossible to see the laser drill hole and it's a resultant tunnel leading to the interior crystal.
Since laser drilling is permanent and GIA will grade these diamonds, are they "better" or "more valuable" than filled clarity enhanced diamonds?
Better? Not necessarily.
More valuable? Not necessarily either.
The fact that GIA issues Lab Reports on drilled diamonds is good however the "SI" clarity you may be purchasing that's laser drilled may in fact have been just as good an I1 as the filled "SI" that they wouldn't grade and since filled, clarity enhanced diamonds are guaranteed by the inventors one isn't necessarily "better" or "more valuable" than the other. Each diamond must be examined and stand or fall on its own merits.
Bottom line with lasered diamonds:
If all other aspects (color, cut, carat weight) are excellent on the stone and it is an eye clean clarity grade, don't let the fact that the diamond has been lasered discourage your decision. Of course, you should expect a better price, but all things being, lasered diamonds are traded every day and most of them without your knowledge. I think it's good to know as this can be used as a bargaining chip, but I wouldn't let it discourage your purchasing decision.
Bottom line with clarity enhanced (filled) diamonds:
If you are a guy who is under the gun for a decent looking diamond that is out of your price range (ie. a 1-carat diamond that is less than $5,000), a 1½ct that is less than $8,000 etc.) you should definitely consider a clarity enhanced diamond. They are guaranteed for life and if all other aspects are good on the stone will help you get the size you want. Here at Good Old Gold, you will never purchase a diamond sight unseen, so we'll be able to show you good ones verse the not so good ones.
Lets take a look at some different types of inclusions that are present in diamonds on our Gallery of Inclusions page.


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Google's struggling Google TV service has been given an added boost with a new Android app allowing iPhones to stream devices via AirPlay
Two of tech's biggest rivals Apple and Google have been brought together in relative harmony with a new Android application allowing iPhone users to remotely control their Google TV boxes from their handsets.
Syncing the two entertainment and media devices the newly launched AirTight app is available from the Android Market enabling iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad owners to stream content from their iOS devices to their Google TV connected televisions via Apple's AirPlay functionality.
Whilst the Google TV platform has failed to take off to its expected levels the arrival of the new Airplay enabling application shows promise of continued support for the internet connected TV with non-DRM movies easily ported from Apple's hugely popular portable devices.
Still in its infancy and without Apple sanctioning the AirTight app is missing a couple of key features with music streaming currently unavailable and mirroring yet to be added.
Have you snapped up a Google TV set already, would the introduction of Airplay compatibility enhance your user experience or tempt you into buying Google's television service? Let us know via the comments box below.
Via: GeekyGadgets


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When it comes to major life events, I'm a clear-one-hurdle-at-a-time kind of girl. When important events or deadlines pile up in quick succession, I get a little breathless. The only way I can manage them is to take one event at a time, subdividing my attention only when absolutely necessary.
This may sound hyper-focused but, in fact, I'm a global thinker. I love big-picture planning. Details drive me crazy, and the fear of missing an important one causes me to procrastinate feverishly. And it means I do best when I focus on one big detail (hurdle) at a time.
I don't remember the source behind my introduction to global vs. detail-oriented thinking, but I do know that the initial assessment surprised me a little, and it took some real-world events (and teasing from my colleagues) to get me to the point where I nodded knowingly, accepting this style, which involves equal parts planning and procrastination.
These days, I embrace my globalness, just as I embrace my I need to see it/drop and run styles. Now, I can shake my head and laugh at my big-picture focus, and even defend it most of the time. I know it's part of what makes me event-avoidant, but I'm also able to tackle things head-on when necessary, provided I use strategies that work for me.
What strategies, you may ask? Here are three of them.
Allow plenty of time.
For global thinkers, procrastination is often the "default setting" when planning something big and/or important. Overwhelmed by the task, we vacillate from unrealistic, enormous plans to the bare bones basics, finally landing somewhere in the middle. When we give ourselves enough time to work through the process, this vacillating can actually work to our advantage, leaving us with a multi-faceted plan.
Make lists.
Incrementally, if necessary. As an I need to see it person, I struggle tremendously when everything I need to do is on one list, so I often create lists by category. For my daughter's graduation party, for example, I made lists for decorations, lists for food and grocery lists — on three separate pages. My detail-oriented husband wasn't the least bit intimidated by putting it all on the same page, but for me, seeing all of that information on one page would have made the whole thing seem insurmountable.


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Minimalist Living Spaces
The Images Publishing Group
Territory: World excluding Japan, South Korea, North Korea, and South East Asia
Size: 305 mm x 250 mm
Pages: 280
Illustrations: 400 colour, 48 b&w
- Offers an in-depth look at minimalism, a design trend with increasing influence worldwide
Because of its elegant simplicity, minimalism is becoming ever more popular in interior design all over the globe. Minimalist Living Spaces brings together 48 examples of minimalist homes, exhibiting the sheer variety in minimalism despite using such a limited colour palette. Not only does this book prove that less is more, Minimalist Living Spaces shows how to make 'less' a captivating reality. Readers can learn more about this design field through the cases presented in this book. At the same time, this book will provide an excellent reference for designers, teachers and students in related industries.
Contents: Experiencing the Purity of Space; Case studies; Index.


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1. Shannon at Johalla Projects
Work by recent graduates of the Yale MFA Photography Program: Marzena Abrahamik, Endia Beal, Elizabeth Bick, Johanna Case-Hofmeister, Tommy Kha, Michael Marcelle, Sophie Ruspoli, Justin Schmitz, Sadie Wechler, and Rick Yribe.
Johalla Projects is located at 1821 W. Hubbard St. Reception Friday, 7-10pm.
2. New Nature at Public Works Gallery
Work by Plural.
Public Works Gallery is located at 1539 N. Damen Ave. Reception Friday, 7-10pm.
3. KKK – KIN KILLIN' KIN at DuSable Museum of African American History
Work by James Pate.
DuSable Museum of African American History is located at 740 E. 56th Pl. Exhibition begins Saturday.
4. Tender Anatomy at Packer Schopf Gallery
Work by Vesna Jovanovic.
Packer Schopf Gallery is located at 942 W. Lake St. Reception Friday, 6-9pm.
5. Paintings and Neon at Bert Green Fine Art
Work by Morgan Sims.
Bert Green Fine Art is located at 8 S. Michigan Ave. Suite 1220. Reception Saturday, 5-8pm.
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Business Valuation
In the context of business valuation we provide services as independent financial advisors, evaluating market or fair value, or as financial advisors for sell-side and buy-side transactions and M&As. Our advisory services consist of assessment of various bases (types) of value for buyers or sellers, including the assessment of synergy value and investor value.
Business valuations are prepared in accordance with the International Valuation Standards and can be used for a range of different purposes, such as:
- Company sale or acquisition
- Capital increase
- Merger
- Financial reporting in accordance with the IFRS (determining fair value measurement or examination of impairment of assets)
- Squeeze-out of minority shareholders
- Setting the price in a takeover procedure
- Determining payments to the exiting partners
- Tax procedures
- Management buyouts/leveraged buyouts
- Determining the optimal capital structure and as a tool for strategic planning (D/E and E/D, SWAPs…)


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If you're shopping for an used oxygen concentrator online and you find a very low retail price, you may get excited. However, it is probably too good to be true. Oxygen concentrators on websites like Craigslist™ or eBay™ provide no guarantees because any individual can post an advertisement on those sites.
Before you buy, make sure you understand the risk of purchasing from an unauthorized dealer. Below are the key reasons for Why You Should Not Purchase an Oxygen Concentrator from Unaccredited Sellers on Third Party websites like Craigslist™ or eBay™.
They Do Not Offer Highly Trained Oxygen Specialists
An oxygen concentrator is an expensive medical device, and you really want it to work as intended.
We find many customers think they want or need one machine and realize it is not the ideal fit for their oxygen and lifestyle needs. An authorized dealer will help make sure you are getting a unit that will meet your needs as well as have a return/exchange program.
They Can Not Offer a Warranty
Oxygen concentrators are complicated medical devices and as such do require repair and maintenance. Purchasing a unit second hand from third party will invalidate any warranty. Repairing a unit out of warranty is often $800 - $1500. All warranty repair work must be done through the authorized retailer that sells the unit and there is no support from manufacturers for repairing broken units from unauthorized sellers.
They May Not Clean and Sanitize the Unit Properly
When purchasing a used unit, you want to make sure the unit is cleaned and sanitary. Some bacteria can remain active for relatively long periods of time. Purchasing from an authorized reseller ensures the unit has been appropriately cleaned and disinfected.
They Do Not Offer Customer Support
Research shows over 70% of customers have questions or need additional help over the time they are using the product. Peace of mind knowing that there is help available should any question arise, is beneficial in the operation of medical equipment.
They Do Not Offer Factory Trained Inspections
It is not possible to determine if an oxygen concentrator is functioning correctly without specialized equipment. A unit can "appear" to be running and not delivering medical grade oxygen. In many areas, it is difficult to even find a business with the appropriate equipment to measure oxygen purity. It would be unfortunate to purchase an expensive concentrator and not have it delivering medical grade oxygen.
They Are Not Follow FDA Prescription Guidelines
The FDA requires a prescription for the sale of oxygen concentrators. While one may argue with this requirement, the intention is to protect a consumer and ensure that a reputable dealer is making sure a patient is provided the appropriate equipment. Since it is technically illegal to sell oxygen machine over auction sites (without a prescription), a consumer's remedy should something go wrong is minimal.
Buying a used oxygen concentrator does not have to be difficult, but it does require research to ensure that you are buying from a company that is a Manufacturer Authorized Seller who can provide warranty support and customer support. By following the steps above, you can potentially avoid making a purchase you would regret.
If you have any questions about purchasing a Used Concentrator, please call us at 877.774.9271


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- Best of 2011
- Charity Events
- Chicago
- Cooking
- Dining
- Florida
- France
- Hotels
- Las Vegas
- Los Angeles
- Orange County, CA
- Radio Interviews
- Showbiz
- Top Chef TV Show
- Video Interviews
- Wine
With Actor Jim Belushi
on March 06th, 2012Print This Post
Where a better place to celebrate "Windy City West" in Los Angeles than at two of Chicago-based Lettuce Entertain You's restaurants Stella Rossa Pizza Bar and M Street Kitchen — the two spots are next to each other on Main street in Santa Monica. The pizzas, created by chef Jeff Mahin, at Stella Rossa Pizza Bar are so good that the restaurant is on GAYOT.com Top 10 Pizza Restaurants in the US.
Tonight was the 25th anniversary of the informal annual get together for fellow Chicagoans in the entertainment industry in LA to swap stories around good food. Founder and Chairman of the Board of Lettuce Entertain You Rich Melman, along with his son/partner RJ, and president and CEO Kevin Brown made the trip from Chicago to honor Chicago Cubs Chairman Tom Ricketts, and present him with the 2012 Windy City West "Man of the Year" award, recognizing his many contributions to Chicago sports and commerce.
You can click on each photo to enlarge.
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Congratulations! You survived pregnancy and delivery and have entered the world of motherhood. The diaper bag is now a permanent part of your look, as are milk stains and undereye circles.
As a new mom myself, I've been taking notes on all the daily habits I now exhibit, some of which no one warned me about during pregnancy.
For instance, you know you're a new mom if ...
1. You've straight-up traded the purse for the diaper bag. Abandoning your cosmetic bag (really, who has time for makeup?), you now shove your wallet, keys, and cell phone in with those diapers and wipes.
2. You're constantly looking for your keys, wallet, and cell phone ... and you're probably holding them.
3. You find yourself asking what it was you were about to do before baby pooped, spit up, cried, or had a new expression on her face that got your overly excited.
4. You have several bathrobes in heavy rotation.
5. You wake up cradling the air and breathlessly ask, "Where's the baby?"
6. You smell a fart on the subway or something else foul on the street and have the sudden urge to change a diaper.
7. You see someone carrying a dog or a small package and are convinced they've stolen your child.
8. You hear screaming even when there is none.
9. A non-bathrobe outfit consists of leggings and the top you wore yesterday.
10. At least half of your hair, if you're lucky, has been under a blowdryer sometime in the last week.
Help me add to the list! YOU know you're a new mom if ...