Home Builder Developer - Interior Renovation and Design

Fellow humans, pay heed: We are nearing the Singularity long promised by futurist Ray Kurzweilthe day when technology exceeds human capability and elevates existence to a hyper-efficient state that may or may not have room for mere mortals.

Witness: the iRobot Looj 330 Robotic Gutter Cleaner.

Set on two wee tank treads and sporting a rotating set of blades and brushes, the Looj is a simple contraption. Set it in your gutter, turn it on, and it will churn through all those dead leaves, gunk and squirrel droppings that humans, in more barbaric times, would have been expected to dig out with theirgasphands. Granted, you still have to climb up a ladder and point a remote control at it, but now you can hold a cup of coffee or stare into space while doing so.

According to the Home Depot websitethe Looj is an online-only productthis innovation is either a stunning leap forward, or a complete let-down. From the reviews: It was great! Ive long been a fan of robotics, and this task is great for one!; I knew going in that it was a gamble on whether or not it would work..and it didnt. Not even close.

Like the future, the Looj is uncertainand at $300, it is a gamble indeed. But we wont get to the Singularity without lazy people willing to shell out hard-earned cash to facilitate further laziness. Ask yourself: What would Ray Kurzweil do?

homedepot.com $299.99

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iRobot Looj 330 Robotic Gutter Cleaner

(WDEF) Gutter cleaning isn't glamorous, but it's one of the most important jobs on any fall to-do list. Angie Hicks of Angie's List said, "Your gutters should not be ignored because leaves will gather there which will lead to mold as well as bugs, even ice damming in the winter. And if you're like some people, you might actually get a garden growing in your gutters which can be pretty embarrassing. So, taking care of them can lead to better health of your home, especially your roof." Whether you do it yourself or hire a pro, don't neglect the downspouts when cleaning. Elden Foltz works as a handyman. He said, "You also want to make sure that all of your gutters are actually nailed in properly and look at your gutter boards and make sure that they are sealed." Once your gutters are clear, turn your attention to sealing drafts around windows and doors. Walk through your home with a lit candle or stick of incense to see where cold air is seeping in. Foltz added, "You can't take caulking and put caulking over top of it because all it's going to do is peel and break off. And it's not going to provide a good seal for that house." Finally, Angie's List says you should focus on your lawn. Angie Hicks of Angie's List said, "Many people think this time of the year, 'Oh, I'm done with the lawn. I don't even want to mow anymore.' But the treatments you give your lawn, the fertilizing, this time of the year is the most important fertilizing you'll have. So, you if you're looking to have a great lawn next spring, don't skip out on the fall lawn care." If you're not comfortable fertilizing your own lawn, consider hiring a professional lawn care company. Expect to pay about $60 per application.

Originally posted here:
Angie's List Report: Fall Chores You Shouldn't Ignore

The lawn is the Atlas of our times, bearing its keepers and their children, dogs, cats and, if mine is any measure, whole armies of squirrels and chipmunks.

The lawn can bear this burden, with some periodic help, but it has also had to support a much tougher load that of societys conflicting expectations.

Up and down the land, local ordinances enshrine the front yard as a place where neatly mown lawns framed with low or no fences could speak of a communal respectability, openness and uniformity. With suburbia came and remains an enforced neighborliness. There was a time when every block had at least one greensward hobbyist, usually male, in unbridled pursuit of the trophy lawn. This mania probably has dissipated now that we inhabit Screen World.

To other eyes, the lawn is no trophy but a throwback to a time when its symbolic probity came at a cost not only to our individuality but to the health of the planet.

For a generation at least, environmentalists have been railing against the lawn for its addiction to scarce water, to polluting fertilizers and to life-killing pesticides.

My view? In our watery part of the world, the lawn is a welcome feature in many (though not all) gardens, but as one considered element of a landscape. Cultivated with care and knowledge, the lawn is a net environmental asset in its ability to check storm water, filter pollutants and generally cool the heat island.

Others might not regard the turf as kindly, and the debate lingers, but the lawn itself has moved on: Better practices and improved grass varieties now enable greater success with this ubiquitous land form. That is the central message of a living exhibition, Grass Roots, that opened this month at the National Arboretum and will be around for a few years.

Anyone with a lawn in these parts should make a point to see it for the simple reason that we live in a climatic cusp that makes turf cultivation particularly challenging.

I asked the experts behind the exhibit, Scott Aker and Geoffrey Rinehart, to rattle off some of the most common lawn blunders. You may know them already, but theyre worth repeating:

Mowing too short: If you mow cool-season grasses too short, youre inviting disaster. The grass will become stressed and die back, and the void will be filled with weeds. Keep your mower at its highest setting.

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National Arboretums Grass Roots: A brighter future for the lawn

Published on October 29, 2014

Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in Kansas: Immerse yourself in a vanishing landscape

STRONG CITY, Kan. - Stand here in a field of tall, windblown grass and wildflowers, and twirl around like a child. It's like being inside a prairie snow globe: You're surrounded by a sea of green, brown and yellow grass, with a blue-sky dome above.

The Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in Kansas is one of just a few places in the country where you can immerse yourself in this serene but vanishing landscape. Tallgrass prairie once covered 140 million acres of North America, including much of the Midwest. But only 4 per cent of that ecosystem remains, wiped out by more than 150 years of human settlement, cattle-grazing and farming.

The Tallgrass Preserve here in the Flint Hills is one of the last tracts left, consisting of 11,000 acres mostly owned by the Nature Conservancy and managed with the National Park Service. There are miles of trails here to explore, but the Southwind Nature Trail is an easy-to-walk loop trail just under 2 miles (3.2 kilometres) that offers a sublime sense of what the landscape felt and looked like when it was covered with tallgrass and wildflowers across the region.

The preserve is also home to a historic site a late 19th-century ranch with outbuildings, along with a one-room schoolhouse used from 1882 to 1930. A free cellphone tour provides details on each structure, including a barn bigger than the house, an icehouse, carriage house, chicken coop with a sod roof (using plants as insulation, way ahead of its time), and outhouse with three holes. (Not that three people would have used it at once, mind you: one seat was for a child, and the other two were likely rotated in use.)

A prosperous cattleman, Stephen F. Jones, lived here on the Spring Hill/Z Bar Ranch with his wife and daughter in the 1880s. Limestone was easily quarried from the layers of rock beneath the rich prairie soil, allowing Jones to build an elegant mansion and stone fencing around his vast property.

But once you're on the Southwind Nature Trail, away from the ranch, you can almost suspend your disbelief and pretend you're experiencing this extraordinary landscape before settlers arrived, when the only destruction faced by the tallgrass was from a natural cycle of lightning-sparked fire, rainfall and grazing bison.

The park is open daily, year-round, and each season offers a different experience of weather, colours, flora and fauna. On a visit in early autumn, the trail was lined with fields of tall yellow flowers dancing in the breeze, punctuated by bursts of other purple, red and white wildflowers amid the grasses. Tiny lizards, a snake and grasshoppers darted across the path. Rabbits, prairie chickens and other birds and other creatures live here, too. The trail meanders gently into higher ground and over a brook, then finally to the school, still furnished with a woodstove, wooden desks and benches, along with portraits of George Washington and Abe Lincoln.

As you walk back toward the ranch house to the parking lot, you travel a path parallel to a road where the occasional car zips by. It's a good reminder of the human factor that led to the prairie's demise.

Continued here:
Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in Kansas: Immerse yourself in a vanishing landscape

This hexagonal gazebo/smoking shelter blends well with the garden. 9.3K+

An outdoor dining Gazebo at an hotel, under a bespoke slate roof, with side fence panels, all in a delightful shade of cream. 19K+

A faux-lead roofed Smoking Gazebo, including internal ceiling, at an exclusive Club in Pall Mall, London. 13K+

Our display Gazebo at the RHS Tatton Park Flower Show a few seasons ago. It has a faux-lead roof above the lattice columns and side panels. 13K+

One of our standard faux-lead Gazebos, elegantly standing in acres of parkland in Suffolk. 10.5K+

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A delightful bespoke Veranda addition to a very lovely home. Glass roof, 6 pillar with lattice style detailing.

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Gazebos, Faux Lead Roofs | The Traditional Verandah Company

Published on October 29, 2014

An age-friendly park, complete with walking trails, benches, green spaces, gazebos, a tobogganing hill, and a community garden was officially opened in Clarenville today.

Kevin Curley

Ribbon cutting at the official opening of the Clarenville Age Friendly Park

Community leaders joined Clyde Jackman, Minister of Seniors, Wellness and Social Development, and Ross Wiseman, Minister of Finance and MHA for Trinity North, to mark the completion of a project three years in the making.

The Clarenville Age-Friendly Park, located near Clarenville High School, was built with funding from the provincial and municipal levels of government, in cooperation with the Random Age-Friendly Community Board, and local community partners.

Its designed to be a space where people can just sit and chat, or participate in recreational activities.

The World Health Organization's Age-Friendly Communities Program is an international effort to address the environmental and social factors that contribute to active and healthy aging.

The program helps communities become more supportive of older people by addressing their needs across eight dimensions: the built environment, transport, housing, social participation, respect and social inclusion, civic participation and employment, communication, and community support and health services.

The Town of Clarenville has been onboard with the concept of building an age-friendly community since day one. We were committed to finding a space for the Clarenville Age-Friendly Park which suited the needs of all citizens, and with the location on Hibernia Drive, we have a space that is near to both Clarenville High School and a seniors' housing complex, and is easily accessible to all residents, added Mayor Frazer Russell.

The rest is here:
Age Friendly Park opens in Clarenville

By Priscilla Lister Special to the U-T1:04 p.m.Oct. 29, 2014

Thomas Bros. Map: Page 1310, H-2.

Before you go: Download a copy of the trail map at Chula Vistas pages on its citywide Greenbelt Trail,

chulavistaca.gov/city_services/development_services/planning_building/Planning/documents/Greenbelt_Trail_Map.pdf.

You can also download a trail map at the citys parks pages on Rohr Park,

chulavistaca.gov/city_services/community_services/public_works_operations/parks/ParksInfo/rohr.asp.

Trailhead: From Interstate 5 heading south, exit onto CA-54 East. In about 4.4 miles, exit at Briarwood Road and turn right (south) onto Briarwood. Where the road stops at Sweetwater Road, turn right (west) onto Sweetwater. Rohr Park will be on your left.

Distance/difficulty: The entire loop is 3.3 miles; very easy.

SOUTH BAY Heres an easy loop around a green golf course where the bonus is birds.

Rohr Park in Chula Vista is one of the prettiest parks in that South Bay city, complete with gazebos, playgrounds, picnic areas and even a model railroad track. The park sits next to the Chula Vista Municipal Golf Course. A 3.3-mile loop trail winds around that golf course and through the park.

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Easy loop around South Bay golf course

Monroeville council is scheduled to vote Nov. 11 on whether to grant zoning changes so that a Hindu temple can expand.

After more than two hours of testimony from administrators, residents and representatives of the Sri Shirdi Sai Baba Temple, council last week voted to table action on the temples conditional use requests. Councilman Jim Johns recused himself from the vote.

Monroeville solicitor Bruce Dice said council must act on the matter within 45 days of the Oct. 14 meeting.

Councilman Rob Harvey made the motion to table the matter to take advantage of the time to analyze the information we received.

Sri Shirdi Sai Baba Temple requested conditional use approval to cut and fill nearly 25,000 cubic yards of earth near its present location on Abers Creek Road.

Officials of the temple want to construct a 13,410-square-foot, two-story building; a 1,466-square-foot addition; and a 264-square-foot connecting wing and four gazebos. The addition would contain new worship facilities, an office, meditation areas and a kitchen.

The proposed addition would be situated in the S Conservancy and R-2 single-family zoning districts. If approved, the project is expected to take five years to complete.

Tom Ayoob, attorney for the temple, said at the hearing that the municipalitys zoning ordinance allows as a conditional use a church and school, as well as major excavation. He added the municipalitys planning commission recommended approval with conditions.

Mr. Ayoob said the temple has been in its Monroeville location since 1991 and the building itself is nearly 100 years old. Sri Shirdi Sai Baba was among the first Shirdi temples in the United States, according to its website.

It needs to be upgraded, Mr. Ayoob said.

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Hindu Temple in Monroeville wants to expand

Lana Kourieh Interview on Al Arabiya About Feng Shui On 23 10 2014
Lana Kourieh (Feng Shui Expert) Business Bay Abraj Street - Lake Central Building P.O.Box 27996 Dubai - United Arab Emirates Tel. +971-56-1371378 Fax.+971-4-4493068 e-mail: ...

By: Lana Kourieh

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Lana Kourieh Interview on Al Arabiya About Feng Shui On 23 10 2014 - Video

Change your life with Feng Shui - Testimonial from Jenny
A short and sweet testimonial from Jenny right after she had finished my "Change your life with Feng Shui" workshop.

By: FeelGoodGroup

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Change your life with Feng Shui - Testimonial from Jenny - Video