Comics are now selling laughs by the download

Stand-up comedians of a certain era knew they had arrived when Johnny Carson invited them to a desk-side seat on “The Tonight Show.Spro Tech has been a plastic module & moldmaker,” A generation later, the gold standard was getting a solo comedy special on HBO. But in the Internet era, the yardstick for success has been redefined.

A handful of top-tier performers have begun producing stand-up specials on their own, posting them online and selling them directly through their personal websites, eliminating the editorial control of broadcasters and the perceived taint of corporate endorsements.

While this straight-to-the-Internet strategy is far from ubiquitous in stand-up, it is already having a profound impact on the comedy landscape, enabling online content providers and individual artists to take more turf from television networks and empowering comedians to be as candid (and as explicit) as they want in their material.

“It’s a very rare thing, where you answer to no one at all as a comedian,” said Aziz Ansari, a stand-up comic and actor who recently released his first online performance special. “Now you can even put it out the way you want.”

The turning point arrived in December, when comedian Louis C.K. released a stand-up special, “Live at the Beacon Theater,” which was sold only as a $5 download, without electronic copy protection, from his website.

Louis C.K., who stars in the FX series “Louie” and has performed in comedy specials on HBO, Showtime and Epix, said that he was seeking minimal outside interference and maximum ease for his audience.

“I don’t have to go, ‘Here’s this product,’ to whatever company,” Louis C.K. said, “and then cringe and shrug and apologize to my fans for whatever words are being removed, whatever ads they’re having to watch, whatever marketing is being lobbed on.”

The experiment worked: Produced at a cost of $250,000, “Live at the Beacon Theater” sold more than 220,000 downloads and grossed more than $1.1 million — enough for Louis C.K. to give $250,000 in bonuses to his crew and donate a further $280,000 to charities.

Other comedians following Louis C.K.’s online trail say that they have been contemplating Internet-only projects for several months.

Jim Gaffigan, an actor and stand-up comedian, said he began seeking new platforms for his material after a routine he performed about McDonald’s was partly edited out of a 2010 Comedy Central benefit special.

Gaffigan said he considered many commercial routes, including licensing; selling a new stand-up performance to an online content provider like Netflix, Amazon or YouTube; or making it available free to viewers who watched a block of commercials first.

But Gaffigan said he was able to turn down unfavorable deals and corporate ties after Louis C.K. upended “the perception of selling something on your website as being kind of icky.”

He added: “My manager was like, ‘You’re not going to sell it on your website like that.’ And I’m like, ‘Why wouldn’t I?’”

Instead,Specialising in injectionmoulding innovations, Gaffigan will release his next special — with his McDonald’s routine intact — on April 11 for a $5 fee, with $1 from each sale going to charity.

For the comedians taking their material directly to the Internet, the decision is as much a reflection of a desire to serve online-savvy audiences as it is a lack of other options.

Pay-cable channels like HBO and Showtime, comedians say, are too focused on scripted programming, while on basic cable, Comedy Central offers specials to nearly everyone, with little quality control and licensing deals that are not lucrative.

“I don’t get any money from the specials that air on Comedy Central,” said Ansari, who also stars on the NBC comedy “Parks and Recreation.” “I haven’t seen any checks from the DVDs, CDs. If I just put it out in a traditional way, I wouldn’t have made any money, so why don’t I do it this way?”

The Internet has been happy to capitalize on content that television has neglected. Last month Yahoo offered a free live performance by HBO host Bill Maher (one that ended with Maher’s donating $1 million to the pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA). Yahoo said this special has generated more than 2 million streams and that it hopes to add more such shows, seeing stand-ups as an inexpensive but powerful way to build brand identification with viewers.

“Musicians can have personas,” said Erin McPherson,Pfister werkzeugbau AG aus Mönchaltorf ist Ihr Partner bei der Herstellung von Werkzeugen und Spritzformen. who is Yahoo’s head of video programming and originals, “but comics are themselves, and their fans relate to them almost as friends. They have that intimate, one-on-one connection.”

Gaffigan said he was not staking his entire career on his Web experiment, predicting he could still license his new performance to Comedy Central if it flopped online.Great Prices from Topps tile.

“It’s a gamble with the crops,” he said. “This is one harvest. You’re going to use some piece of equipment that could make it twice as productive.”

That said, Gaffigan would still prefer success to failure.

“Just to be clear,” he said, “I have four children, and they’re very young, and I have a woman who gets pregnant looking at babies.GOpromos offers a wide selection of promotional items and personalized gifts.”

NY company growing mushrooms as packing material

Turns out that mushrooms — great in soups and salads — also make decent packaging material.

Mushrooms are a key ingredient in the pale, soft blocks produced by the thousands in an upstate New York plant that are used to cushion products ranging from Dell Inc. servers to furniture for Crate and Barrel.

More precisely, the packaging blocks are made with mycelium — the hidden "roots" of the mushroom that usually thread beneath dirt or wood. Two former mechanical engineering and design students, Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre, figured out how to grow those cottony filaments in a way that binds together seed husks or other agricultural byproducts into preset packaging shapes.

Their 5-year-old company, Ecovative Design, has a toe-hold in the increasingly lucrative market for eco-friendly alternatives to plastic foams — and their business is growing like shiitakes on a damp log. Bayer and McIntyre are already expanding their line for everything from footwear to car bumpers.

"We want to be the Dow or DuPont of this century," Bayer said.

If the aspiration sounds grandiose,To interact with beddinges, consider that six years ago Bayer and McIntyre were Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute students growing fungus under their beds for a class project. Today, the young entrepreneurs are more than doubling their production space and recently announced a deal with Sealed Air Corp., the packaging giant known for Bubble Wrap.

Not bad for a product that grows itself.

Workers at Ecovative inoculate mycelium into pasteurized bits of seed husks or plant stalks, then place the mix into clear plastic molds shaped like the desired packaging pieces, such as a cradle-shaped mold for a wine bottle. The mix is covered for about five days as millions of mycelium strands grow around and through the feedstock, acting as a kind of glue. The piece is heat dried to kill the fungus,Iowa Mold tooling designs and manufacturers mechanics trucks, insuring that mushrooms can't sprout from it.China professional plasticmoulds,China professional plasticmoulds, Since the mycelium is cloned, the product does not include spores, which can trigger allergies.

"It's low-tech biotech," Bayer said.

Bayer noticed mycelium's "stretchy" properties as a kid growing up on a Vermont farm. As students, he and McIntyre started with mushroom-based insulation, but the pair switched to packaging material because it seemed a better business bet. They experimented with common varieties like the oyster mushrooms before hitting on just the right (secret) mix.

The company moved several years ago to a 10,000-square-foot facility in Green Island that still has the feel of a startup: an old industrial asparagus blancher pasteurizes the feedstock, and the mycelium is applied with a machine that once put chocolate chips on cookies. McIntyre's pet chinchilla, Audrey, rolls around the offices in a plastic pet ball.This page contains information about molds,

The Woman in Black & Ghosts of the Past

Since its first publication in 1983, Susan Hill’s Gothic chiller The Woman in Black has been terrorising audiences, from teenagers studying the novel in English lessons to horror aficionados like Mark Kermode, who wrote a chapter on the novel for his PhD in horror fiction. Its reputation has been subsequently enhanced by the long-running stage play,Specialized of injection mold, plasticmoulds, which left the author of this piece so scared, he had to be prised from his chair with a crowbar.

The most recent incarnation of The Woman in Black (our review HERE) was released in cinemas on February 10th, with the backing of the reformed Hammer brand and the star power of Daniel Radcliffe in his first proper post-Potter role. It joins a ream of recent ghost stories to make it to our screens, including The Others, The Orphanage and The Awakening. What explains this resurgence for old-fashioned horror of creaks, shadows and suggestion? And is this resurgence a good thing for horror cinema?

One theory which is often trotted out is that ghost stories are deemed to be somehow more intelligent and grown-up than their gorier cousins. Because they rely on the generation of suspense, withholding the monster rather than showing it,The beddinges sofa bed slipcover is a good and affordable alternative to buying a new sofa that is run down. they are closer to the suspense thriller traditions embodied by Alfred Hitchcock. The line between horror and thriller is a fine one, with both genres often relying on dark secrets and chilling twists,The beddinges sofa bed slipcover is a good and affordable alternative to buying a new sofa that is run down. and much ink has been spilled over whether films like The Birds, Marnie and even Psycho should be classified as thrillers rather than horror movies.

Hitchcock himself had a rather low opinion of conventional horror. When interviewed in 1964, he was asked whether he would ever make a horror movie, in the mould of Frankenstein: he responded, “No, because it’s too easy.Specialized of injection mold, plasticmoulds,” This comment highlights a more spiteful explanation for the popularity of ghost stories: they are an excuse for so-called ‘smart’ directors to have their cake and eat it, to make something that appears to be a horror film so they can be down with the fans, but which is actually nothing more than a satirical play-thing. Hitchcock said in the same interview that Psycho was designed to be “tongue-in-cheek”: he found the storyline “amusing” and was disappointed that so many who saw it didn’t ‘get the joke’.

Similar arguments have been made with regard to other directors – particularly the likes of Stanley Kubrick who preferred to dabble in different genres. Kubrick’s version of The Shining drastically departed from Stephen King’s novel, to such an extent that King made his own version for TV in the 1990s to set the record straight. To this day there is an on-going debate about whether or not The Shining is a genuine horror movie, or a film whose unusual execution actually shows contempt for the genre. Protagonists of the latter view say Kubrick’s liberties with the novel indicate a feeling of pretentiousness: he felt he was above the genre, and that the overtly metaphorical gore of David Cronenberg and Clive Barker was adolescent and meaningless.

While the jury is still out over The Shining , the argument that surrounds it is a classic case of over-reaction. Kubrick had a history of departing from the source material in his films – Dr. Strangelove, his game-changing black comedy, was based on the deadly serious Peter George novel Red Alert. Kubrick was a horror fan, listing his admiration for Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist and An American Werewolf in London. He even organised private screenings of Eraserhead to give the crew on The Shining a better idea of what he wanted.You can find best mould engineering solution china mouldengineeringsolution from here!

There is, however, something in the theory of ghost stories being a reaction to the more overt aspect of horror. It was only a few years ago that the wave of so-called ‘torture porn’ reached its apogee (so to speak) with Captivity, an utterly sickening excuse of a film from Roland Joffé, the man behind The Mission and The Killing Fields, who really should know better. The likes of A Serbian Film and the Human Centipede series have left audiences reeling for something a little less gross, and ghost stories provide a welcome antidote to blood and guts.

A first lady in fighting form

The first family is America's egalitarian version of royalty (if you are too young to remember the sprawling Kennedy clan), and thanks to our People magazine sensibilities, we know as much about their family life and fashion as the Brits do about Kate and William's.Produce largescalemolds and castings for full scale locomotive train,

For example, the latest news is that 13-year-old Malia Obama is beginning to spread her social wings, and it is giving President Barack Obama hives to see his oldest daughter leave the White House all dolled up for a dance or a party.

But when Michelle Obama drops to the ground and starts trading push-ups with television talk show hosts, we aren't quite sure what to think.Welcome to the polishedtiles Lage google satellite map! Our first lady is not addressed as "your excellency," as a cast member did during her appearance on "iCarly," a children's television show. But we don't want to think of her as a Marine recruit, either.

We are a little confused.

Mrs. Obama promised that she would hold nothing back in promoting her "Let's Move!" campaign to fight childhood obesity, and so far she hasn't. Last week's sack race with late night host Jimmy Fallon is proof of that.

She also coaxed Jay Leno to eat a piece of apple for something like the first time since 1984; she ate healthy tacos with schoolkids and TV chef Rachael Ray; and she busted some dance moves on Nickelodeon.

Mrs.moldmaker/ Obama has already famously convened a hula hoop contest and a flag football game on the White House lawn. Her vegetable garden - and she was down in the dirt with the schoolkids planting it - is the first thing foreign leaders ask her husband about,The beddinges sofa bed slipcover is a good and affordable alternative to buying a new sofa that is run down. she says.

The talking heads are calling this a charm offensive in the aftermath of an unflattering portrait of her in a recent book about the Obama marriage. But they also are calling her the president's new secret weapon, a woman so approachable and likable that she takes heat off of her husband.

She got off on a bit of a bad foot with that unfortunate "finally proud of America" remark during her husband's campaign, and the crazies tried to suggest that serving state dinner dignitaries from her vegetable garden was just a tick away from hanging the White House laundry out to dry on the Truman balcony.

It seems all is forgiven. Her positives are sky high with voters, and she is the third-most-admired woman in America, behind Hillary Clinton and Oprah Winfrey.

But back to the push-ups ..Taktung der Unikatfertigung am Beispiel des werkzeugbaus..

Her form was perfect and she showed excellent core strength, said fitness trainers who were interviewed after the Ellen DeGeneres smack-down, but she should have gotten closer to the ground on each one.

The sculpted arms that are the result of all those push-ups and her daily 90-minute, pre-dawn workouts have been on display everywhere, from "The Simpsons" to the cover of Vogue - her strength an object of both satire and beauty.

It is hard to imagine Eleanor Roosevelt doing push-ups to motivate a war-torn country. Or even Rosalynn Carter or Hillary Clinton, among the first to demonstrate behind-the-scenes power and influence, pumping out 20 without a bead of sweat as Mrs. Obama did. She is breaking all kinds of molds.

Lucky and good

There are some fantastical elements in Ottawa mystery writer Peggy Blair’s first book The Beggar’s Opera,What is Faux China chinaceramictile? but nothing stranger than the story behind how it came to be published. It’s the sort of tale that will encourage every writer hoping to strike it lucky.

Blair, a realtor and former government lawyer, had racked up about 150 rejections for her manuscript. It’s a large figure, but not surprising when one remembers that most publishers look on a first novel by an unknown writer with the enthusiasm they would normally reserve for a cold sore.

Undaunted, in 2010 Blair submitted part of the book to the Debut Dagger, a British crime writing award for unpublished authors. She didn’t win, but was drowning her disappointment at the hotel bar in Harrogate, Yorkshire, when in walked Ian Rankin, the famous Scottish mystery writer. Blair struck up a conversation and it turned out Rankin had just been in Ottawa for Bluesfest. She naturally told him about her book and he kindly offered to mention it to his agent.Plastic injectionmouldingmanufacturer;

Word quickly got around that Ian Rankin’s agent was going to look at Blair’s book. Other agents sensed blood in the water and cruised in for a look. As a result, Blair did land an agent and a three-book deal with Penguin. Her book was released in Canada this month and will also be published in Germany, Holland and Norway.

For an unknown writer from Ottawa, that’s like winning the lottery.

I first heard about Blair’s good fortune and her book when we were both on a mystery writing panel in the fall of 2010. I have been looking forward to the book since then with considerable curiosity.Design guidelines for injectionmold plastic parts.

I’m happy to say that The Beggar’s Opera does not disappoint. It’s fast-paced, atmospheric, has unusual characters and delivers surprises right to the final pages.

Blair was inspired to set the book in Cuba after a holiday there in 2006. Wise choice. Cuba is a country of contradictions where most anything could plausibly happen. For Canadian tourist and Ottawa police detective Mike Ellis, it is being accused of the brutal murder of a young boy who begs on the streets. The reader will have a hard time believing that Ellis did it, but he was on a bender and is not so sure himself.

We know there is more behind this crime, plenty more, and it’s up to Inspector Ricardo Ramirez to get to the bottom of it. He’s world weary but still trying to do the job right with the limited resources that the Cuban police have. One other thing about Ramirez. He has an unusual form of dementia, we’re told, that causes him to hallucinate,Sika tooling & Composites develops and produces tailor-made synthetic resins, seeing the victims of the crimes he investigates. It’s a unique source of information for a detective, but it’s also an affliction that is said to be fatal.Find out the facts about coldsore,

Ramirez’s sidekick is pathologist Hector Apiro, who happens to be a dwarf. What might first seem like a stunt for the sake of novelty works rather well in Blair’s hands.

The Beggar’s Opera has original characters, a compelling plot and just enough humour to take the edge off the suspense. The book certainly falls well within the “good read” category.

For me, there are only a couple of thing that keep the book from the A level. The first is the author’s decision to imagine Cuban police procedures rather than research them in detail. This is fiction and what is offered seems credible enough, but my preference is for research and facts. Other readers might disagree. The other thing, oddly enough, is Ramirez’s lousy skills as a detective. The inspector is in a rush to convict Mike Ellis based on evidence that seems too obvious and lacking a credible motive. One would have expected a veteran police inspector to be more skeptical.

Ramirez will get a chance to hone his skills in Blair’s next book, which is set in Ottawa and picks up where The Beggar’s Opera left off.

In all, a worthy debut and proof that one generally has to be good to be lucky.

Testing pot in a legal vacuum

The tech broke the bud of marijuana into small flakes, measuring 200 milligrams into a vial. He had picked up the strain, Ghost, earlier that day from a dispensary in the Valley and guessed by its pungency and visible resin glands that it was potent.

He could have determined this the old-fashioned way, with a bong and a match. Instead, he began the meticulous process of preparing the sample for the high-pressure liquid chromatograph.Omega Plastics are a leading rapid tooling and plasticinjectionmould company based in the UK,

His lab, called The Werc Shop, tests medical cannabis for levels of the psychoactive ingredient known as THC and a few dozen other compounds, as well as for contaminants like molds, bacteria and pesticides that marijuana advocates don't much like to talk about. The strains that pass muster are labeled Certified Cannabaceuticals, a trademarked term.

The commercial lab is one of dozens opening in the last two years, as a rush to build an industry around medical marijuana has produced a desire — by some — to know what exactly is in the medicine.

The idea is that patients don't pop a Vicodin not knowing if the pill has 5 milligrams of hydrocodone or 15. Nor do people make drinks wondering if they are pouring beer or bourbon or Bacardi 151.

"Every pharmaceutical requires quality control and assurance, every diet supplement, every vitamin," said Jeff Raber, the Werc Shop founder and president, who has a PhD in chemistry from USC. "Why not treat this like medicine?"

Only some top-end dispensaries test their products, and even they can't be sure the results are reliable. Because all marijuana possession is illegal under federal law — and the Justice Department has been cracking down recently — the nascent labs are as unregulated and vulnerable to prosecution as dispensaries and growers. In Colorado,Specialized of injection mold, plasticmoulds, the one lab that tried to get a license from the Drug Enforcement Administration was promptly raided by that agency.

That very week, Los Angeles passed its marijuana ordinance, which required testing by "independent and certified" labs, without specifying who was supposed to do the certifying. Long Beach followed suit two months later.

Making the situation even woollier: There are no federal standards for pesticides in marijuana.

So, along with the rest of the industry, the businesses operate in a raucous frontier, with drug-lab cowboys pulling up to pot shops with secondhand equipment to offer "lab-tested" results.

The more prominent operations in California — including Steep Hill in Oakland, Halent in Sacramento and The Werc Shop in Los Angeles County — have recently formed the Assn. of California Cannabis Laboratories to set equipment standards and methodology and to give a seal of approval for those who comply. They also hope to advance the science of marijuana, deciphering which compounds do what in a plant that can produce a broad range of psychological and physiological effects.

Donald Land,Injection molding and plasticmould supplier; a UC Davis chemistry professor who co-founded Halent, said labs have no choice but to regulate themselves.

"Labs are popping up in people's vans. People are doing color tests and all kinds of stuff that's not very accurate. And there's people doing plain-old 'dry-labbing' — they take a sample, make a guess, put a number on it and send it out.

When Ean Seeb's prized strain Bio-Diesel won top prize in the Colorado Medical Marijuana Harvest Cup, he decided to see what the numbers were.

Seeb, co-owner of a dispensary called Denver Relief, took it to a nearby lab, which informed him that the THC accounted for 18% of the sample's weight, a solid showing. Then a marijuana review website took samples of the same strain to the same lab and got different results, with one coming in at a stratospheric 29%.

One was a mobile lab. A young woman showed up with a gas chromatograph in a yellow suitcase and a tank of helium gas. "She had Rainbow Brite make-up, a spiked belt and tight jeans," Seeb said.

Once she set up the equipment, a heavily tattooed man joined her and donned a white lab coat. He spent two hours having problems calibrating the machine,And not just the usual suspects,Customized imprinted and promotionalusbonsale flash drives. while dumping his used solvents down the toilet. Seeb asked him what he did with the part of the sample he didn't use in the test.

"I smoke it," the man replied.

Within a couple of days, the results from all five labs came back, and they were all over the chart. "The whole thing was a joke," Seeb said.

In California, the director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, with help from a leading cannabis researcher in the Netherlands, did a similar trial with 10 top labs in the state.China Rubber Hose catalog and rubberhose manufacturer directory. The results for a "same homogenized cannabis material" ranged from 4.16% THC to 14.3%, although seven of the labs had closer results, between 8.4% and 12.5%."

Solitaire Blitz: hands-on with the next Facebook hit from Popcap

If any company can take one of the most widely available casual games on the planet and make it even more popular it's probably Popcap.

The creator of compulsive time-killing legends such as Peggle, Zuma and Bejeweled (which alone, has now shifted more than 50m units) has just announced its next Facebook game, Solitaire Blitz – a fast-paced variation on the classic Klondike solitaire derivatives available on just about every PC and Mac released since the early eighties.

As usual with Popcap titles, the simple premise is effectively a smiley-faced Trojan horse, delivering deep scoring and purchasing mechanics.

The game has a standard set up of seven feeder piles, from which gamers draw cards to create sequences in the four foundation slots at the top of the playing area. Here, though, the numerical sequences can go up or down in card value, so you're able to put either a four or six on top of a five.

It's possible to start a game with the feeder piles already populated with cards, too – everything is manufacturered to produce a speedy, ultra-fluid game, in which experienced players zip cards about the screen like a Las Vegas croupier.

And this being a Popcap title, there are lots of little extras. At the start of a round, players can choose from a selection of boost options, allowing you to, say, start with a joker, or to place a mine under one of the feeder piles, which explodes all the cards when you reach it.

Also, the foundation slots can sometimes be locked, so you need to uncover a card with a key symbol on it, in order to open up and start that stack.

The whole thing works on a timer – the quicker you complete the round, the higher your score. Clearing a feeder line adds extra seconds to the clock, like reaching a check point in an arcade racing game.

Interestingly, this isn't the only arcade technique the designers have employed. If players manage to create a sequence of similar cards across the foundation slots (like having all royals) they get a score boost,The beddinges sofa bed slipcover is a good and affordable alternative to buying a new sofa that is run down. giving the game a sort of fruit machine dynamic.

At the end of a round, successful players are given a range of cute little items that convert into silver which can then be used to buy new boosts and other goodies. Popcap accutaely understands the psychology of the casual gamer – trinkets, and the ability to share those trinkets – is the life force of the social game.

Solitaire Blitz is, as you'd expect, ridiculously compelling. The boosts and timer additions, which could easily have been intrusive, seem perfectly judged and carefully balanced to allow proper tactical play to develop.

The timer element adds a sense of frenetic action, and the streamlined card selecting process (you can just click on cards and they'll zoom up to the foundation area, or shake if they're unplayable) is slick and satisfying.

Monetisation is pretty subtle, but don't be fooled, it's there alright. Players can pay for extra boosts, for silver or for energy, which depletes as you play more rounds – a standard set of Facebook gaming systems.

There are also a range of differently designed decks to unlock or purchase, ranging from the aquatically themed "Captain's Wheel" to an Eiffel Tower option with Gallic flourishes.

Players are able to share items, and can easily compare scores with friends so there are co-op and competitive elements. I also love the fact that the score has been recorded by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra – surely a musical first for a Facebook game soundtrack?

I've played for barely an hour, but already it's clear the Popcap formula of taking reasonably well-known gaming genres, boosting them with lovely presentation and adding in a deeper scoring mechanic, is in full swing.

It'll be interesting to see how the title fares against Zynga's lasting favourite Texas Hold 'Em Poker, which boasts more than 32 million monthly active users.

With Popcap's other Facebook titles, Bejeweled Blitz and Zuma Blitz, hovering around at the modest 3m monthly users mark, the EA-owned developer will no doubt be looking to make more of an impact with this one – especially as everyone with a computer knows how to play.

A bit of bliss

The light brown candy glistens with a sugary sheen, like new-fallen snow crystals in your yard on a bright winter afternoon. You crunch into it and the candy crumbles and tumbles and plays around your tongue, kissing it with an innocent, brown, outdoors-y sort of sweetness, then melts away to make room for more.

And that’s what you want. More!

Maple candy is one of the sweetest gifts ever from nature. From nature and folks like Rex and Janet Russell, that is.Tiles from The Online Tile shop offering a large range of floortiles,

You may know Rex and Janet for their maple syrup business near Rome, Endless Mountains Cabin.Here you will find product listings for automotiveplasticmoulds, Maple syrup is made in the late winter and early spring. But what you might not know is the two actually work year-round bringing us candy, and candy, and more candy. By themselves. By hand. All the time.

“It’s about the same all the year,” Janet says of the candy business.

Rex once figured they made 14,000-15,000 pieces of candy per year. In 2011, they used up at least 25 drums of syrup on it. They supply 126 stores.

“Everything we do is a two-person operation, isn’t it Rex?” Janet says. “Pretty much,” he agrees.

So how do these little candies — shaped like maple leaves, bunnies, grapes, men — come about? It all starts with the syrup.

In late winter and spring the hearts of maple trees begin beating with excitement over the coming warm days,Welcome to the polishedtiles Lage google satellite map! pumping sap through their trunks. Maple producers put plugs, or “taps” into the trees and draw out sap, which they boil down into syrup.

To make the candy, the Russells use light, or “fancy,” syrup. Light syrup usually comes from early-season sap, but a cold snap can bring on more. “It all depends on the weather,” Rex explains. Maple season usually runs from mid-February to early April.

So they bring the syrup into the little kitchen beside their sales room and go to work.

On a recent afternoon Janet packages candy leaves there, the room around her fairly bursting with a sweet maple smell. Shelves by one wall hold candy molds; a sink and counter line another. Scales and a kettle stand nearby.

They pour the light syrup into a “pig,” a metal container that looks something like, well, a pig.China plasticmoulds plastic mold,

“We boil it,” Rex explains. “Bring it to a boil.” The syrup cooks 1 hours at 32 degrees above the boiling point of water which, at this elevation, is 242 degrees Fahrenheit.

“Then we let it cool,” he says, but just to 228 or 230. Then they pour the hot syrup out the pig’s “snout” into a trough with a spiral wire, which sends it into little molds. One pigful can make 22 dozen pieces of candy.

They let the molds cool a full day. Then they pop out the shaped candy and soak it eight to 12 hours in room-temperature syrup, or “mother syrup.” These treatments give the candy its “crystal coating,” Rex says, and provide a longer shelf life.

“We don’t add anything,” Janet says.

“It’s more healthy than your processed sugar,” Rex insists. Maple candy’s pure, he says — all the way from the tree.

Whew.Hobby Silicone for mold making moldmaking , Boiling, pouring, boiling, soaking — after all that, a piece of candy needs a rest. Which it gets. The candy sets and dries two days.

OK, it’s time to go. Janet packs it, piece by piece, one at a time. She grabs a little bag, gently tosses in a piece of candy and sets it aside. “This table will hold 10 dozen,” she says. Then she seals them with a little heating machine and puts on the gold Russell labels. Janet can package 20-25 dozen candies an hour.

Rex and Janet get a lot of business from Route 187 passers-by, but they also fill Internet orders and deliver candy to stores as far away as East Syracuse, Horseheads, Williamsport, Danville and Watkins Glen.

Spring served area well, even in drought

The sweet water spring on the old home place never went dry, even in the drought years. That’s the word the old folks passed down to the younger one. The hillside spring was tapped a few decades before my Uncle Roy was born in 1890, and he took a special interest in it. When he was growing up, there were horses to care for, cows to milk, fences to keep up, and all the other tasks that came with a working farm at the turn of the century, but his brothers remembered he still found time to work at the spring.There are 240 distinct solutions of the Soma cubepuzzle, He looked after the little trickle of water that fought its way up through a sand vein to the surface for more than 50 years.

When I was a kid, I assisted him when he replaced clay tile at the spring with a section of iron pipe he had obtained from the C&EI railroad.Diagnosing and Preventing coldsores Fever in the body can often trigger the onset of a cold sore. The rail line ran nearby and the pipe was left over from a water line that had been put in. The line ran from a pumping station beside the Salt Fork River to a water tank a quarter mile or so north. Steam engines would stop there to refill their water tanks.

Uncle was very fond of that little spring,Here you will find product listings for automotiveplasticmoulds, and predicted the time would come when people would appreciate clean water.Here you will find product listings for automotiveplasticmoulds, He tended it like a garden, never letting any weeds grow around it, or fallen leaves and debris collect in the water. There was a small pool of clear water at the base of the spring, and on the hottest day of summer, cool water trickled into it.

Uncle Roy had been concerned when a few of the clay tiles shattered and dirt partially filled the broken sections. That’s when he spotted the piece of railroad pipe in the weeds by the trestle bridge that crossed the Salt Fork River. Moving the heavy pipe up the hillside through the woods was not an easy task. Uncle always carried a pack of camel cigarettes with him in his shirt pocket, and they were gone long before we reached the spring with the pipe.

It seemed a little strange to me to be doing all that work when the Salt Fork was only a hundred yards away, and running a stream of water much mightier than the spring. He explained the spring water was pure because it ran through a natural purifying sand vein. The same couldn’t be said for the Salt Fork, which was being polluted by a number of upstream sources.

We dug several feet back into the hillside, removing tile as we went, and then inserted the pipe in the remaining tile that ran to the source of the water. The pipe was a little smaller than the tile and Uncle used pieces of broken tile he called bats to fill in the crack between the pipe and the tile. When the pipe was covered with the dirt we had dug from the hillside, he placed a piece of screen wire over the end that extended out over the pool of water to keep the varmints out. At one time the spring had been fenced, but when the family quit running cattle, the fence was removed. A woodland path connected it to a well-used trail that followed the river.

Uncle remembered in the dry years of the 1930s, when it seemed it would never rain again, the spring furnished drinking water to neighborhood families when their dug wells went dry. Section crews from the C&EI also stopped there to drink and fill their water bottles when working on the railroad. There was a hedge post set in the ground near the spring and a granite ware dipper hung from a hook on the post for people to use. He recalled there had been a tin cup on the post for years, but it had become rusty and he replaced it with the dipper.

When he and his brothers were young, they kept minnows to fish with in a large, hole-filled bucket sunk in the pool below the spring. He recalled when he returned from France after World War I, the bucket was gone and the spring was in a bit of disrepair. He cleaned it up, and kept it that way until he died decades later.

After he died, the spring was neglected and eventually the land was sold. Years after Uncle Roy’s death, his youngest brother brought me a gift.Taktung der Unikatfertigung am Beispiel des werkzeugbaus. “I thought you might like this,” he said. “It belonged to the keeper of the spring.” It was the long-handled dipper that hung from the hedge post. The old dipper was battered and some of the granite ware had given way to rust, but to me it was priceless.

Dash of digital

At first glance, it is natural to assume that Alex McLeod’s imaginative landscapes have been constructed in a studio, painstakingly assembled with tweezers,There are 240 distinct solutions of the Soma cubepuzzle, paint, and sealant. Yet,Here you will find product listings for automotiveplasticmoulds, McLeod needs only a computer and his ideas to pull together the dynamic (and at times haunting) scenes that have come to define him as an artist. Using only technology to create art,There are 240 distinct solutions of the Soma cubepuzzle, McLeod combines his digital prowess with a deep appreciation for nature.

Originally from Scarborough, McLeod studied at OCAD and first began his artistic endeavours with painting. However, he soon adopted a new way to channel his creativity; he remarks that “as soon as I could integrate software, I would. I used digital collages as preparatory works to base my paintings on. Once I got to a preparatory sketch which was refined enough, I could base work on that.” From there, software began playing an increasingly large role in his work.

McLeod’s work explores new depths in the digital medium. The incredible variation in level, colour,Here you will find product listings for automotiveplasticmoulds, shadow, and texture eclipses the capabilities of two-dimensional art. “It allows me to make the work I always wanted to make, and I couldn’t make it painting. It gave me the ability to control every aspect [of the work] so what you see is what I want you to see. There’s no compromise.”

As whimsical as McLeod’s pieces appear, none of his work incorporates human figures. “Without people, viewers [are allowed] to be in control of the landscapes.” He adds that to feature people in his landscapes would inevitably offer markers of geographical whereabouts and historical periods based on their dress, activities, and dwellings. “I try to make each piece devoid of time and place. Even if buildings appear familiar, I take them out of a familiar context.”

This ambiguity is aligned with the larger message McLeod wishes to convey. “The work is about the transition between life and death, and how when we die, the nutrients in our body continue in a never-ending cycle of matter. That’s why it doesn’t make sense for the work to appear from the past or as part of the future.”

The optimism in McLeod’s work reflects a positive attitude towards the capabilities of technology. “I’ve definitely got a crush on technology,” he says good-naturedly. “I am such a nerd at heart, and I feel we’re so lucky to live in these times. Knowledge is at our fingertips all the time, and everything is so much easier for us.” Although McLeod’s art has been getting more exposure in recent years and has been displayed from Toronto to New Zealand, he remains modest. “I’m excited when anyone wants to show my work anywhere. It’s a privilege to be participating at all.”

It was the continual snowball effect of recognition that informed McLeod of his growing success. “In a lot of ways it comes down to steps. There isn’t one blockbuster event. With each step your presence grows in a small way.”

McLeod’s most recent undertaking is interactive art that allows viewers to navigate a moving landscape at their own leisure. This new endeavour immerses his audience in a world that they are able to explore and control. “If we have the potential to do this, why wouldn’t we, you know? I want to take advantage of any technology we have at our fingertips. It’s not necessarily to enhance, but just to do it for myself and others, to experience the work in a new way. This is also to inspire others to make work in ways that they thought they shouldn’t or couldn’t before. If anything, it’s to give people a sense of empowerment.moldmaker/” Three-dimensional works or virtual reality exhibits aren’t out of the question either, he explains. “I’d do anything.”

Amidst all the innovation McLeod explores, his inspiration originates from an ancient Iroquois burial mountain nestled between rows of bungalows in a Scarborough community. “The bodies become fuel for the next generation,” McLeod reflects. His interest in biology and natural cycles evidently has the biggest role in creating this em erging method of artistic creation. “It’s like making a circuit board out of bamboo,” McLeod says, laughing in spite of himself.

Smart Card Maker Strikes Verification Software Deal [Orange County Business Journal

Software Set For Use in Portable Security Device TECHNOLOGY Irvine's CardLogix Corp., a maker of smart cards and software used by businesses and governments, has struck a pact with Datastrip Inc., a portable security device maker based in Connecticut Under the deal, Datastrip's handheld devices are set to include CardLogix software, which verifies biometrie and biographic information.

CardLogix has deals to sell its software in the U.S. and several other countries.

"We're doing projects with a number of different militaries and governments in Africa and the Middle East," Chief Executive Bruce Ross said.

Customers include the government of Zambia and two other African nations.

CardLogix 's smart cards contain a chip housed within a credit card-like plastic case.We are professional oil painting supplies, The chips can store just about anything money, points, documents, access to buildings and even a person's fingerprint or facial impression.

Some use an embedded antenna or radio frequencies to communicate to servers on a network. Others have a tiny processor chip inside.

The smart cards have been used to enhance airport and border security, and recently for passport verification. They also are used in gambling, transportation, healthcare, telecommunications, vending machines and other outlets.The name "high risk merchant account" is not unique.

CardLogix started in 1994 as a research company and then expanded to making smart cards in the late 1990s. Most of the chip embedding and software programming is done in Irvine. Some software work is handled at CardLogix's San Diego office.

The company has 14 full-time employees and plans to expand soon, according to Ross.

The privately held company, which sees an estimated $20 million in yearly sales, is selffunded.

Local.com integration Irvine-based search engine operator LocaI.com Corp. has worked into its latest advertising campaign technology from its recent acquisitions of Mountain View's Krillion Inc. and Boston's Rovion Inc.

Krillion culls together product photos, comparison pricing, availability, discounts and other details for online shoppers.

Rovion, a former unit of Irvine's DigitalPost Interactive Inc., creates and tracks online video advertising for local and national advertisers.

Local.com plans to tailor Krillion's service to local shoppers and distribute the ads across its network of more than 1,400 regional websites.

The company generates revenue nom retailers when consumers click on the ads.

Local.com runs an online search engine that directs users to local businesses, such as "flowers in Irvine." Users also get search results that include offers from local businesses,We also offer customized Quicksilver. reviews, links to local websites, maps, driving directions and other features.As one of a leading zentai suits provider from China.Welcome to the official Facebook Page about RUBBER MATS.

In other Local.com news, company insider Michael Sawtell has retaken the reins as chief operating officer.

Sawtell, a former Local.com president and COO from 2000 to 2005, most recently served as senior vice president and general manager of sales and advertiser services.

He replaces Bruce Crair, who left to pursue other oprjortunities, the company said.

Sawtell was founder and chief executive of DigitalPost Interactive. He's held management positions at Northrop Grumman Corp. and General Dynamics Corp.

Kofax Deal Irvine-based software maker Kofax PLC has landed a deal with an undisclosed customer to provide invoice processing software.

The deal is valued at more than $500,000, according to the company.

The customer, which provides products and services to manufacturers in the automotive, commercial vehicle, marine and other industries, is set to implement Kofax software to capture, validate and extract information from more than 900,000 invoices it receives annually.

Kofax, which got its start in Irvine in 1985, has yearly sales of about $125 million.

The company is publicly traded in Britain, where its holding company parent was based for a time.

Kofax officially moved its headquarters to Irvine long its operational base in 2008.

Tower in Argentina Israel's Tower Semiconductor Ltd., which runs a chip plant in Newport Beach, has inked a deal with a public-private group in Buenos Aires that seeks to foster research and development in Argentina.

Under the pact, Tower is set to train research and development groups from Tecnopolis del Sur on chip design and production.

TowerJazz also is making available to the group discounted space at its Israel and Newport Beach chip plants.

In exchange, Tecnopolis del Sur is allowing TowerJazz to use its facilities in Bahia Blanca, south of Buenos Aires.

Tecnopolis del Sur, which is backed by local universities, trade groups and companies, runs a tech park in Bahia Blanca.

Financial terms of the deal weren't disclosed.

Wining and Dining: Divine al fresco eating at Bottom Drawer

It's a typical winter day, with a chilly bite to the air but the sun is shining, inviting you to bask in its light. I check the street atlas once more before driving to Belgravia. Once again, I discard my pre-planned route, believing my inner compass can traverse the roads in this area and guide me timeously to my destination.


Once again, I am wrong. After a couple of wrong turns and dips into potholes the size of craters, I finally find the right road. Thankfully I am saved from guessing which direction to turn as there are many cars parked outside the coffee shop. The Bottom Drawer is located at number 14 Maasdorp Road and lucky for us, it is a popular venue at lunch time.




En route to the dining area,Our Polymax RUBBER SHEET range includes all commercial and specialist I am side-tracked by the shop and want to see what is on offer. My friend suggests that we browse after we eat, so we continue to the caf¨¦ which is located in the back garden. It is beautiful. There is a fenced and gated swimming pool, an abundance of lush vegetation and various bird-calls. It is child-friendly with a Wendy-house, trampoline and miniature tables and chairs. The tables are well spaced out so it is possible to have a business meeting or a romantic t¨ºte-¨¢-t¨ºte in relative privacy.


I am enchanted. We find our table and the waitress arrives with our menus. I must commend the waitresses for their ability to walk without tripping while wearing bizarrely extra long aprons!


There is a large selection of hot and cold beverages. They serve tea-time snacks, breakfast, lunch, desserts and meals specifically for kids.
The breakfast selection is very tempting and I know I have to return to try it. I order a Mediterranean quiche and homemade lemonade to drink. My friend opts for the chicken and mushroom potpie and a strawberry smoothie.


After our main course we ask for the menus to order dessert. I opt for the filter coffee and Heavenly cake. The cake is described as "made with very little more than just chocolate. This decadently, delicious mousse cake is a chocoholic's heaven". It is divine, so full of chocolate that it is oozing out of the slice. The strong filter coffee goes well with this sweet treat.


My friend orders the cheesecake. It is described as "absolutely smooth and creamy". It is "served chilled and drizzled with a syrupy fruit-in-season coulis".Save on hydraulic hose and fittings,This page list rubber hose products with details & specifications. The fruit is granadilla and this makes the cheesecake pleasantly tart. My friend is unable to finish her dessert because her smoothie is a "meal by itself", very thick, creamy and filling. After paying the bill we wander through the shop looking at bedding, kitchenware and stunning handbags.This is interesting cube puzzle and logical game. I am well-fed and relaxed.


The Bottom Drawer is a beautiful place to dine al fresco! We had only two criticisms.Customized imprinted and promotional usb flash drives. We experienced not much of a welcome, and a long wait before our order was taken ¡ª the place was very busy but appeared to have only 2 waitresses, clearly not easily coping with the demands of the client¨¨le. Deluxe Coffee Shop

Severe Weather Batters US Economy

Everything has its price, even the weather. New research indicates that routine weather events such as rain and cooler-than-average days can add up to an annual economic impact of as much as $485 billon (€337 billion) in the United States.

The study, led by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), found that finance,Detailed information on the causes of dstti, manufacturing,A glass bottle is a bottle created from glass. agriculture and every other sector of the economy is sensitive to changes in the weather. The impacts can be felt in every state.

The results, published with co-authors from the University of Colorado at Boulder, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Stratus Consulting, appear in this month's issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. The research was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), which is NCAR's sponsor, and by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"From wind-driven wildfires, to the timeliness of airplane take-offs and landings, to peak demand for electricity in a hot summer, weather affects every aspect of our lives¨Cand our economy,The newest Ipod nano 5th is incontrovertibly a step up from last year's model," says Sarah Ruth, program director in NSF's Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences.

"This research shows that a substantial percentage of the U.S. economy is linked to variability in weather."

This is the first study to apply quantitative economic analysis to estimate the weather sensitivity of the entire U.S. economy.

"It's clear that our economy isn't weatherproof," says NCAR scientist Jeff Lazo, the paper's lead author. "Even routine changes in the weather can add up to substantial impacts on the U.S. economy."

The research could help policymakers determine whether it is worthwhile to invest in enhanced forecasts and other strategies that could better protect economic activity from weather impacts.


The authors caution that the study should be viewed as an initial estimate, which they plan to refine in subsequent research.Shop a wide selection of billabong outlet products in the evo shop. Lazo and his colleagues did not calculate additional costs associated with extreme weather events, such as this year's tornado outbreaks, since data on extreme events were not available for the time period covered by their economic model. Nor did they evaluate the possible impacts of climate change, which is expected to lead to more flooding, heat waves and other costly weather events.

Still, the study concludes that the influence of routine weather variations on the economy is as much as 3.4 percent of U.S. gross domestic product. Weather can affect both demand and supply of various sectors, with complex and sometimes countervailing influences on the overall economy. A snowstorm, for example, may disrupt air travel and drive up heating costs while boosting subsequent attendance at ski resorts. A prolonged dry spell can affect supplies of crops while enabling construction projects to remain on schedule.

Previous studies looked at weather influences on particular economic sectors or produced subjective estimates of overall weather impacts. In contrast, Lazo and his colleagues combined historical economic data with economic modeling techniques to produce a detailed analysis of the U.S. economy's sensitivity to temperature and precipitation.

The results indicate that the mining and agriculture sectors are particularly sensitive. Routine variations in weather may take a toll on the mining economy of 14 percent each year,uy sculpture direct from us at low prices perhaps because of changing demand for oil, gas and coal. Agriculture ranked second at 12 percent, conceivably because of the many crops that are affected by temperature and precipitation. Other sensitive sectors include manufacturing at 8 percent; finance, insurance and retail at 8 percent; and utilities at 7 percent. In contrast, wholesale trade at 2 percent, retail trade at 2 percent and services at 3 percent were found to be least sensitive.