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Because Outdoor Lighting Perspectives is a full service outdoor lighting company our systems come with piece of mind. Warranty covered repairs even include light bulbs the first year, be it residential outdoor lights or commercial lights. Our affordable Annual Maintenance Plan keeps your low voltage landscape lighting design in perfect working order, from well lights to garden lighting.

Whatever your architectural lighting or landscape lighting design needs, we offer a free nighttime demonstration so you can see how your outdoor lighting will look before you make a commitment to garden lighting, patio lights, deck lights and other outdoor lights. We are proud to serve New Jersey including but not limited to:

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New Jersey Outdoor Lighting - New Jersey Landscape & Patio ...

Thursday, January 30th, 2014 Issue 05, Volume 18.

NORTH COUNTY The arrival of warmer weather can easily renew a homeowners vigor for various home improvement projects, and many have grand plans for interior and exterior renovations as they prep their living spaces for comfort, beauty and entertaining opportunities. While there are many worthy projects to pursue, adding outdoor lighting to a home can help increase its value and make the home safer and more attractive in the evening hours.

According to the American Lighting Association (ALA), with a few updates to outside lighting, families can make even better use of their homes at night. Adding outdoor lighting is easier and less expensive than many homeowners may know, allowing them to transform an existing patio, deck or pool area into an enjoyable nighttime retreat. Pool parties, dinners on the patio or barbecues with neighbors become even more memorable when outdoor lighting is added or improved. But homeowners who want to install or upgrade their outdoor lighting should consider the following tips, courtesy of ALA.

Improve navigation. Lighting is typically layered into a room or outdoor space in three ways: overhead, task and ambient. Even outdoors, where there are no typical boundaries and borders, those three layers are necessary. Outdoor overhead lighting should improve visibility on steps, paths and walking surfaces, especially where theres a bend or an intersection. Task lighting can be used around cooking orgardening areas. Ambient light will cast a comforting glow around any outdoor space.

Enhance security. To improve visibility and security, combine a motion detector with a sconce to illuminate dark corners or entryways. Be sure to aim lights away from the door to improve visibility. Lanterns on either side of the door can give a home a warm, welcoming appearance and improve the safety of entryways.

Create outdoor rooms. Advertisement [ Christ the King Lutheran Church ] Outdoor lighting at the borders of a space is a great way to create barriers, both vertically and horizontally. Lights in a tree create something akin to a chandelier hung in the middle of the sky, and even accent lights in the general area of the edge of a patio, deck or porch will shine across the space and provide enough of a comfort level for people to understand where things are.

Reduce glare. Outdoor lighting that casts a glare can be blinding, as can light thats too bright. Lighting along paths should be cast downward, with fixtures that are hooded. A variety of lighting options will create layers, allowing the homeowner to add or subtract as necessary. Exterior-safe dimmers also can provide flexible control over the level of light, as can movable fixtures added to a patio or porch.

Add decorative elements. Just as arbors, pergolas, patios and other outdoor elements help to enhance the style of an outdoor space, so, too, can lighting contribute to a well-designed landscape. Lighting should play up decorative features of a yard and add the ambience that homeowners desire. Step lights make passage safe while also highlighting molding or trim details. An outdoor chandelier can make for a wonderful accent during dinnertime on the deck or under a pergola. Patio lights provide atmosphere as well as illumination for cooking outside.

Enhance views from inside. Outdoor lighting can make the view from inside pleasant and enjoyable. Use a variety of lights, including spotlights on trees, lights dotted along pathways and accent lights on unique landscape features, to create an idyllic landscape visible from inside the home.

Outdoor lighting enhances functionality of yards and landscapes while making such areas safer for homeowners and their guests once the sun has gone down.

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Lighting can set the stage for outdoor fun

(MENAFN - Muscat Daily) An Omani techie has tracked down and rescued his runaway maid who was lured away by another man who offered her more money but then forced her into prostitution.

The senior IT professional spoke to Muscat Daily in detail about the incident which happened after his family along with the maid returned to their home in Mawaleh on January 8 after a New Year holiday in Malaysia.

When the maid disappeared a day later, Mahmoud (name changed) said he was 'surprised and angered'. But then, the maid's phone data usage and contacts helped him track her down in five days.

''It was concern and a sense of responsibility that motivated me. Although she betrayed our trust and love, I thought that she may have been trapped,'' said Mahmoud.

According to him, the 28 year old maid said that an Asian man in his 30s lured her with 'better pay and a better life' but forced her into prostitution. The maid said she knew him for four months during which the two remained in constant touch through texts and phone calls.

While tracking her down, Mahmoud first gathered information from other maids known to her. Using the photo of a man he found on her phone, he took help from shopkeepers, delivery boys and barbers in the area to locate him.

''Once I had collected enough information, I learnt a bit of his language and tracked him down with the help of a barber in the locality he lived.''

Mahmoud said he initially met the man posing as a customer, but then 'sensed danger and escaped'. ''The next time, I took help from another person and caught him,'' he said.

Mahmoud said the maid was repentant upon finding out the truth about the man. ''He made false promises about getting me several part-time jobs to earn more than what my sponsor paid me,'' he quoted the maid as saying.

''The man pursued me for four months and I would talk to him while shopping for groceries and essentials or while out throwing trash. He would visit me whenever the family was not at home and give me money. I liked him and was tempted by the money.''

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Omani techie tracks down runaway maid, saves her from prostitution

Im far from the greed and emotion of Wall Street and able to conduct the kind of independent thinking that keeps us ahead of the pack, not chasing it. I love my job and consider it a stewardship of other peoples hard-earned money. I want to do this the rest of my life.

-Jeff Auxier (Trades, Portfolio)

Jeff Auxier (Trades, Portfolio) is one of the favored gurus followed by GuruFocus. He is the president and chief executive officer at Auxier Asset Management and is in charge of the Auxier Focus Fund. The fund manager comes to the industry with 30 years of experience and in that time has mustered up quite a track record as well as insight into nearly every market bump or bubble.

Biography and Career

According Auxier Assets website,Jeff Auxier (Trades, Portfolio) got his start in finance at the early age of 11, when he had a job mowing the long-time Georgia Pacific CEO Robert Pamplins lawn. He learned quite a bit from the CEO including what he considers to be a very important factor to running a business: Mr. Pamplin always put his shareholders first and believed business should be transparent. Moving on from these early years Auxier went on to graduate from the University of Oregon with a degree in Finance and an emphasis in accounting, and from then on Auxier went on working towards making connections with financial savants such as Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio).

Jeff Auxier (Trades, Portfolio) began his professional career in 1982 at Foster Marshall-American Express, or what is now known as Smith Barney, in Portland. Because of his connections and ties to Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio) and the likes, Auxier really connected with and made sense of Value Investing, so in the late 80s he assisted his company in creating the Portfolio Management Advisory Board which created policies that were aimed at better serving client and shareholder interests.

It was in 1998 when Auxier realized what he actually wanted to do for a living. The guru left Smith Barney to start his own investment fund, Auxier Asset Management, and not long after he began the Auxier Focus Fund. Auxier says that he wanted to start a fund where the manager is held highly accountable, so he put his money where his mouth is and remains one of the Auxier Focus Funds largest shareholders. Jeff owns over 166,000 shares of this fund, the entirety of his personal retirement fund, and he promised not to sell a single share until he is no longer manager. Not only is his money tied up in the fund but his familys assets are also included in the money management portion of Auxier Asset Management, and not only that but members of the Auxier Asset Management team also maintain large percentages of their own net worth locked up in the Focus Fund.

Jeff Auxier (Trades, Portfolio) and his family live rather far away from the hustle of Wall St., maintaining a large farm on the outskirts of Portland as well as massive ranch in the high desert of Central Oregon.

Auxier Asset Management

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"I'm far from the greed and emotion of Wall Street" - A Look at the Patience and ...

Landscape Architecture: It Is Not Gardening - Corthan Bearder
Landscape architecture is the design of outdoor public areas, landmarks, and structures to achieve environmental, social-behavioral, or aesthetic outcomes. I...

By: Corthan Bearder

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Landscape Architecture: It Is Not Gardening - Corthan Bearder - Video

National Artist for Architecture Ildefonso Santos. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO/Cultural Center of the Philippines

MANILA, PhilippinesThe Cultural Center of the Philippines will pay tribute to National Artist for Architecture Ildefonso P. Santos, Jr. in a necrological ceremony on Sunday, February 2 at 9 a.m. at the CCP Tanghalang Nicanor Abelardo lobby (Main Theater lobby). Interment will follow at the Magallanes Crypt.

Santos passed away on January 29 due to multiple organ failure. He was 84.

Santos was a pioneer in landscape architecture in the Philippines and known as the Father of Philippine Landscape Architecture. He had a distinguished career that spanned more than 40 years and was responsible for the creation of hundreds of parks, plazas, gardens, and outdoor sites that have become a part of modern day Filipino life.

Proclaimed National Artist for Architecture in 2006, he was cited for designs that took inspiration from the Filipino celebration of free-flowing, positive, maaliwalas space. He understood and accommodated Filipino physiological, behavioural and social needs in providing shade, providing opportunities for close seating and the sharing of food and laughter in his public spaces.

The National Artist Award also recognized his contributions to the professionalization of the field of landscape architecture. Santos helped established the first university programs in landscape architecture and advocated for the recognition of the art and profession by the government and allied fields. He also organized the Philippine Association of Landscape Architects.

Among Santos well-known projects were Loyola Memorial Park in Manila, the Eternal Gardens Memorial Park in Caloocan City, the Caliraya Lake Resort in Laguna, the Batulao Village Club in Batangas, the Imus town plaza in Cavite and the Rain Tree Sports Club in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Santos was awarded the Patnubay ng Sining at Kalinangan Award by the City of Manila in 1972 and named Outstanding Landscape Architect by the United Garden Clubs of the Philippines in 1986.

Santos held two degrees in Architecture from the University of Santo Tomas (1954) and the University of Southern California (1956), where he also earned his masters degree. From 1955 to 1963, He worked in Los Angeles with Cornell, Bridges and Troller, and then later established his own firm in the Philippines. He oversaw projects in Malaysia, Hong Kong, Guam, Thailand, Singapore, Taipei and Bahrain. Santos was president of the Philippine Association of Landscape Architects from 1977 to 1986 and was a member of the Board of Examiners for Landscape Architecture of the Professional Regulation Commission from 1982 to 1986.

Santos was born September 5, 1929 to Ildefonso Santos and Asuncion Paez. RELATED STORIES

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CCP holds necro rites for National Artist for Architecture Ildefonso Santos

The mid-point of the 2013-14 scholastic season has come and gone, and much has happened in the high school wrestling landscape. This includes the development of Aaron Pico no longer being part of the scholastic wrestling pool. Pico is going to focus exclusively on an international wrestling career, and then move onto mixed martial arts. Since he is no longer wrestling scholastically, or in college, Pico will no longer be evaluated in the grade rankings. As a result, Mark Hall moves into the No. 1 slot for the Class of 2016. The other four No. 1 positions remain unchanged: Kyle Snyder (Good Counsel, Md./USOTC) leads the 2014 group, Lance Benick (Totino Grace, Minn.) is best in the 2015 class, Spencer Lee (Franklin Regional, Pa.) is tops among the Class of 2017, while Cade Olivas (California) is the top junior high wrestler.

A notable mover in the senior class is Dylan Milonas (Blair Academy, N.J.), who is now No. 18 after winning titles at the Ironman and Beast of the East. An additional positive mover in that group is Zeke Moisey (Bethlehem Catholic, Pa.) up to No. 21 after winning titles at both the Beast of the East and the Escape the Rock Tournament.

Among juniors the notable mover is Ke-Shawn Hayes (Park Hill, Mo.), who is now No. 4 overall after winning titles at both the Walsh Ironman and Kansas City Stampede.

A newcomer to the junior high top 15 is Theorius Robinson (Colorado), who won a title at the Tulsa Nationals earlier this month.

InterMat Platinum is required to view all the rankings.

Class of 2014 | Class of 2015 | Class of 2016 | Class of 2017 | Class of 2018+

Sneak Peek

Below is a sneak peek at the top wrestlers in each grade.

Class of 2014 (Top Ten): 1. Kyle Snyder (Good Counsel, Md.) 2. Chance Marsteller (Kennard Dale, Pa.) 3. Bryce Brill (Mount Carmel, Ill.) 4. Nick Nevills (Clovis, Calif.) 5. Bo Nickal (Allen, Texas) 6. Micah Jordan (St. Paris Graham, Ohio) 7. Jason Nolf ( Kittanning, Pa.) 8. Joey McKenna (Blair Academy, N.J.) 9. Thomas Haines (Solanco, Pa.) 10. Sam Stoll (Kasson-Mantorville, Minn.)

Class of 2015 (Top Five): 1. Lance Benick (Totino-Grace, Minn.) 2. Logan Massa (St. Johns, Mich.) 3. Anthony Valencia (St. John Bosco, Calif.) 4. Ke-Shawn Hayes (Park Hill, Mo.) 5. Myles Martin (McDonogh, Md.)

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Grade rankings updated; Hall now No. 1 sophomore

If homing pigeons wonder why humans are always driving them to faraway spots and leaving them behind, they dont hold it against us. They just keep coming back, providing prize money for pigeon racers and new data for scientists studying the navigational powers of an avian brain. Now those scientists have discovered a new trick in pigeons homing toolkit: the birds learn best when traveling near a boundary.

A homing pigeon thats looking for its loft can use many kinds of clues. It may navigate by the sun, the earths magnetic field, or the smell of a nearby chocolate factory. It might use visual landmarks, too. The birds seem to return well to the spires in the center of Oxford, for example, says Uppsala University mathematics researcher Richard Mann. However, Mann says, What has been missing is a direct link from something we can measure about [any] landscapeto a measurable change in the birds navigational behavior.

So Mann and his colleagues studied the flight paths of 31 homing pigeons, recorded by tiny GPS devices the birds wore on their backs. Each pigeon flew home 20 times from one of four different sites around Oxford. The birds had never been released at these sites before the study began.

Using an aerial photograph of the landscape around Oxford, the researchers calculated how simple or complex the birds-eye view was from one pixel to the next. They did this using edges, or changes in intensity in the image, Mann explains. You get a lot in cities and in forests, while an open field has fewer.

Left: Paths to the pigeons home loft from each of the release sites, ranging from 5 to 10.6 kilometers away. Right: The same aerial image filtered to show edges, or complexity. Boundaries between dark and light areas were where the birds learned best.

Then they calculated how similar each flight was to the flight taken right before it. As a bird repeated the same trip over and over, how quickly did it memorize the route it would stick to?

A birds faithfulness to one route, the scientists saw, depended on the complexity of the landscape it was flying over. Very complex spaces with lots of edgeslike the middle of the city, or dense areas of forestwerent ideal. (Previous studies have found that its hard to teach pigeons a route over a city, and that the birds avoid flying over certain patches of woodland.) But empty spaces werent great either.

There seemed to be a kind of Goldilocks landscape, not too dense and not too open, over which the pigeons learned best. Mann says you can picture this ideal scenery as a view that was half open field, half houses or dense trees. In other words, a boundary between an open area and a city or a forest. I think it is likely that the pigeons are [using] these large-scale boundaries as landmarks, Mann says, when they navigate their way home.

Mann has mostly moved on from navigation research and is now studying collective behavior in birds, fish, and humans. In homing pigeons, he and scientists at Oxford are now trying to find out how flocks of birds can pool their knowledge to navigate as a group. Mann has also published a paper about the best strategy for a game of Battleshipa problem that, compared to navigating home from an unfamiliar place, is more suited to a feeble human brain.

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Homing Pigeons Like to Live on the Edge

Landscape architect Len Zickler, a principal in the Spokane office of Tacoma-based AHBL Inc., says the company is seeing more requests to design environmentally friendly infrastructure to manage stormwater drainage.

He expects this approach, called low-impact development, to increase in demand.

Since 2010, he says the AHBL office has worked on four Spokane projects with significant environmental sustainability features. The latest design work is for an upcoming $2.5 million project to replace an asphalt median ditch between lanes on Country Homes Boulevard with a mile of buried pipe covered by soils and native plants to absorb much of the runoff from storms.

I believe in the next 10 years well see a significant shift toward the application of these technologies, says Zickler, who during his 23-year AHBL tenure has consulted with more than 40 cities and counties in Washington state on how to apply low-impact development techniques.

One problem we see at the outset is there arent many people familiar with the concepts, but expertise is on the rise, Zickler adds. Were seeing more contractors and developers who are getting more familiar with the concepts and asking for them. Fortunately, more individual engineers in Spokane are familiar with low-impact development, and more are beginning to embrace it.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency defines low-impact development, or green infrastructure, as building techniques that work environmentally to manage stormwater as close to its source as possible. Zickler says the most effective approach is distributing clusters of stormwater management techniques across a property.

The techniques do a much better job if they are smaller scale and distributed, he says.

Largely, the practices include installing drainage systems designed with specific plants and soils to absorb runoff more effectively. Other methods include installing rooftop gardens, pervious pavement areas that enable water to percolate into gravel underneath, and container collection systems to capture precipitation for eventual irrigation use. Additionally, properties can have clusters of small storm gardens with plants and soils to filter runoff, as well as plant-soil bioretention swales that are similar in function to traditional grassy swales.

While AHBL isnt involved in Greenstone Corp.s ongoing Kendall Yards mixed-use development northwest of downtown, Zickler applauds that project for applying a number of green infrastructure techniques, including a drainage system to handle stormwater with park-like open spaces.

He contends that consumers who want to live in such neighborhoods and cities with sustainable features also are affecting the trend here and in other parts of the state.

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Low-impact development said to be in higher demand

BERKELEY

In post-apocalyptic films featuring the fight-to-the-finish Thunderdome, an audience chants the arenas guiding principle, Two men enter, one man leaves. In many ways, the ongoing Thunderdome Debates initiated last fall at the University of California, Berkeleys College of Environmental Design (CED) borrow from the movies, but theres no steel cage. And if anyone is left behind, its only figuratively.

The Thunderdome Debates stake out their own special purposes and rules. Theres no blood, just verbal sparring by two leading minds in landscape architecture and environmental planning one man and one woman who face off in Wurster Hall in front of an audience comprised mostly of well-mannered students looking for more than the typical and too-often-sleepy expert presentations.

My take-over-the-world goal is to re-position Berkeley at the center of debates in this field, since theres broad interest in the big topics well discuss, quipped Kristina Hill, an associate professor of landscape architecture and environmental planning and Thunderdome Debates mastermind.

Kristina Hill

Moderator Kristina Hill to Julie Bargmann:

What pisses you off about starting with form instead of process?

Bargmann: Thats actually why I left sculpture. I was making objects, and gravitated more and more towards making installations it is just that kind of, you know, object-making. Objectification. Thats the thing that burns my ass

Kristina Hill to Walter Hood:

Are there aspects of all this process stuff that piss you off?

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Open for debate: teaching Thunderdome style