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No where is off limits to St Petersburg's young roofers: The Hermitage Museum. Photo: AFP

Saint Petersburg has long been a tourist favourite, but if this band of young Russian thrill-seekers is to be believed, the best way to see the country's imperial capital is by hopping roof to roof.

Perched atop an officers' barracks in the heart of the city are Edik, 20, Alyona, 18, Dima, 28, and Nikolai, 35.

They chat breezily, laugh, smoke and take photos from their roost, dozens of metres above the street.

To get there they had to break into a nearby attic and hop across several roofs - nothing terribly complicated for experienced "roofers" such as themselves. "The roofs, they are for those who want to see another Saint Petersburg, to see how beautiful it is," says Edik, who has been roofing since he was 14.

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The pastel palaces and golden-domed churches of Russia's former royal city have become the roofers' elevated playground. Locked attics don't stand in their way.

The prize for those who scale rain gutters and pipes is an unsurpassed panorama of the city of the tsars - and the chance to post a trophy photo on favourite social media sites.

Daniel Netorte, 23, is a highly experienced roofer who rattles off Saint Petersburg landmarks like a mountain climber listing the peaks he has bagged: the golden spire of the Peter and Paul Cathedral, a cupola of Church of the Saint Saviour on Spilled Blood located on the picturesque Griboyedova Canal, the Winter Palace of the tsars where the Hermitage Museum is now located, even the local headquarters of the FSB, the successor to the KGB security service.

Roofing "is for me a way to explore the city, to have a bit of adventure, to test myself," says Daniel, a medical student at the University of Saint Petersburg.

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'Roofing': The best way to see Saint Petersburg

When I'm reading for fun and not sitting up in my ivory tower reviewing books for NPR, I generally gravitate toward two kinds of stories: science fiction and procedurals. In both cases, I like my books grimy and lived-in. I have no love for utopias, shiny spaceships where nothing is ever broken, or Teflon detectives who don't come with baggage. If there isn't a bullet hole in someone or something before the story starts, there'd better be one put there within the first couple of pages.

But crossing those streams creating a science fiction procedural is almost always a bad idea. By nature, your garden-variety procedural has to start with a bang that drops you not into the world, but into the middle of a mystery. And in science fiction, all but the best (or trickiest) authors have to front-load their stories with exposition and world-building that roots you in a place, but not necessarily in the action. Thus, the conundrum: Right from page one, the author either has to short the action or short the world. So it's a good thing that John Scalzi seems to have missed that memo.

Lock In is a cop story first. It begins with a neat and effective free fall into the near-future world in which the story is set, laying out in dry, almost academic terms the history of Haden's Syndrome, a global, meningitis-like pandemic that, in addition to killing lots of people, also left a certain percentage of them completely paralyzed. This paralysis is called "lock in."

The world has been irrevocably altered by it socially, politically, culturally and technologically. Those suffering from lock in get around using robots or by renting time in the bodies of nonparalyzed Haden's survivors called integrators. Right now (or in the "right now" of the story, anyway), the United States is on the brink of another massive upheaval, as generous government subsidies to Haden's sufferers are about to end. And Scalzi knocks all this out in a tidy, seven-paragraph frontispiece, complete with convenient bolded highlights, attributed to the (fictional) HighSchoolCheatSheet.com a brilliant way to root his fiction in a believable reality.

Then the book actually starts. There is blood, a body, a couch pushed out a hotel room window from a high floor. There is Chris Shane, rich son of a real estate bajillionaire (and a locked in Haden's survivor) reporting for his second day as a rookie FBI agent and meeting for the first time with his partner, a veteran investigator named Leslie Vann who comes with enough baggage to satisfy Dashiell Hammett. She drinks, she smokes, she sleeps around. She's got tragedy baking off her like radiation, and with that, Scalzi hits all the required tropes like checking items off a form a body, a mystery, a damaged investigator, even a robot partner (because Agent Shane spends almost all his page time tooling around in, and repeatedly destroying, a variety of robot bodies).

Once he's gotten past the tricky part of building a near-future world and putting a dead body in it without getting bogged down in the details of either, the rest is all cake and hand grenades.

The balance established in the first pages of Lock In serves Scalzi well throughout most of the rest of the book. He moves the story along from clue to clue and suspect to suspect, dropping out of the flow only occasionally to build neat little additions to the world he's playing in. There's an expository dinner scene at the home of Agent Shane's rich parents that drags on a bit (until it's interrupted by something blowing up), and a distractingly heavy use of coincidence. (What? You mean the perfect person to move the plot along just happens to be Agent Shane's new roommate? What are the odds?) But seriously, by the time any of this matters, the bodies are stacking up, there are ninjas leaping out of the kitchen, and Scalzi has the pot boiling in exactly the way you're supposed to in a proper procedural.

And that's not to say it's formulaic, but just that he knows the book he's writing. Once he's gotten past the tricky part of building a near-future world and putting a dead body in it without getting bogged down in the details of either, the rest is all cake and hand grenades. It's about laying down the pieces for an end game the murder solved, the bad guys brought to justice, all the things you expect.

Which is, of course, where Scalzi plays his second neat trick: Pulling off a half-twist ending that couldn't work anywhere but in this world and yet, at the same time, is so perfectly cop-story-esque that it could've been ripped right from a 1940s pulp novel. It is satisfying in that it's the resolution you expect, but it catches a spark from the postmodern sense that Scalzi and all his characters seem to know precisely what they're doing. They understand that the story is coming to a close, too, and can't help being proud of themselves for the clever job they've done.

Jason Sheehan is an ex-chef, a former restaurant critic and the current food editor of Philadelphia magazine. But when no one is looking, he spends his time writing books about spaceships, aliens, giant robots and ray guns. Tales From the Radiation Age is his newest book.

Read more here:
'Lock In': A Cop Story For Robot Lovers, A Robot Story For Cop Lovers

Robert Griffin III wont be handing off to him on Thursday night, but Chris Thompson needs to do something positive when he gets the ball. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)

The Washington Redskins on Thursday play their final game of the preseason, and for many players, its crunch time. Team officials and coaches will use Thursdays performances to help solidify their opinions of players in advance of the final roster cuts that will take place Friday and Saturday.

Coach Jay Gruden has opted not to play his starters, to spare them from risk of injury. He had considered playing his offensive starters after their unit struggled so mightily last week against Baltimore.

But Gruden decided instead that one series or two against Tampa Bay wouldnt make much of a difference, and that the risk of a season-ending injury to key players was too great. He also believed the need to further evaluate players battling for roster spots carried greater importance.

Let the backups play so, we can solidify those roles, very important, Gruden said explaining his decision. I think we have our starters. In general, we feel pretty good about who they are and now we need to find the key backups and who they are and make sure they get the ample reps to make the football team and show what they can do on the field.

Indeed, Washington does have uncertainty hovering over a number of impending decisions on key reserve/rotational players. Gruden hopes things sort themselves out Thursday night.

Heres a look at five story lines to follow against the Bucs.

1.) Thompsons last shot? Coaches dont hide their excitement about the potential second-year running back Chris Thompson boasts. Hes fast and elusive, he would provide a game-changing element to the backfield behind Pro Bowl workhorse Alfred Morris. But Gruden also hasnt hid the fact that there are serious concerns about Thompsons durability. Seriously injured as a junior and senior in college, and as a rookie in the NFL, Thompson again had a bout with injury bug this preseason, missing the past two preseason games with a low-ankle sprain. Finally healthy again, Gruden and his assistants want to see what Thompson can do in games, and they want to see that he can emerge from this contest uninjured. Thompson understands the urgency of the moment. Practice wasnt good enough. I did good enough at practices, but Ive got to go out there and show it on Thursday, that I can translate into a game. Its very important for me. Ive just got to show them I can make it through some games, and I will show them that. Thompson has Evan Royster, Lache Seastrunk and Silas Redd all vying for the same roster spot. All have had their bright spots while hes beensidelined. Now he needs a big night.

2.) Strong safety candidates Brandon Meriweathers suspension now sends coaches scrambling to find the player most capable of filling in at strong safety for the first two weeks of the regular season. Bacarri Rambo gets the first crack. Coaches see him as much improved as atackler. The second-year pro, who as a rookie was quickly benched because of tackling woes, actually ranks among the team leaders this preseason. He also has a forced fumble to his credit. Phillip Thomas would contend for this job, but instead, hes sidelined with injury again. Meanwhile, third-year pro Trenton Robinson and undrafted rookie Akeem Davis aim to make strong cases for themselves when their numbers are called at this position.

3.) Kicking battle Kai Forbath and rookie Zack Hocker get one last faceoff after two even performances in preseason outings 2 and 3. Hocker has shown great poise, which is uncommon at this position for a rookie, as well as leg strength. Forbath has displayed improved leg strength on kickoffs. But has he done enough to make coaches forget about his misses (one nullifiedbecause of a penalty) in the preseason opener?

The rest is here:
Redskins Blog: Redskins vs. Bucs: Five story lines to monitor in Thursdays preseason finale

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Double Hung Replacement Windows Monroe OH | (513) 795-1222 - Video

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Published: 28 Aug 2014 07:300 comments

AN Innerleithen pensioner has been waiting for more than four months to have her broken window replaced.

And frail Sarah Scott could be living in the fire hazard for many more weeks as her social landlord hasnt accepted her neighbours complaints.

The disabled 86-year-old reported problems with her window to Eildon Housing at the start of April.

But several botched repair jobs later her Aitken Bank living room window still cant be opened properly.

Near neighbour and Innerleithen Community Council member Nelson Johnstone told the Peeblesshire News: It was 17 weeks ago when workmen came to try and fix the windows locking system but the timber broke.

Eildon Housing Associations joiner was told to put a strip of wood across the bottom and screw it up so the window would not open.

Im led to believe the window would be one of the exits in the event of a fire, as you could previously open it right up.

As temperatures soared during early summer the pensioner, who suffers from ill health, was unable to ventilate her living room.

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Window of distress for disabled pensioner

Recently, I tried explaining the air conditioning process on the radio on two separate occasions. Both times we were flooded with calls asking for clarification. Thats when I went to some trusted air conditioning technicians and we simplified it to this: Air conditioning is simply a matter of moving heat from point A to point B.

Im getting excited about the wave of new equipment and technology making its way to the consumer with the potential to greatly reduce the cost of staying comfortable in our desert summers. Heres whats happening:

--Geothermal cooling systems Usually called ground source heat pumps, these systems use the relatively constant temperature of the earth to cool or heat air in your house.

There are several ways to do this, including some involving groundwater. But in Arizona, it is often a closed loop system of pipes underground in vertical rows. Workers drill wells near the house. These are dry wells that hold pipes for the heat transfer underground.

A heat pump located inside a house or garage will circulate a solution of about 30 percent ethylene glycol mixed with water through the underground pipes. In the summertime, a heat exchanger transfers heat between refrigerant in the heat pump and the solution in the closed loop. In winter, the same system can heat the house. In retrofits, existing ductwork in the house can often be used.

It gets more expensive in Phoenix because you have to drill deeper into the ground to reach the right cooling level. The ground temperature at 15 feet down in Phoenix is 80 degrees as opposed to 70 degrees in Central Arizona or even less than that in Northern states.

And anywhere in Arizona now, it is not cheap to install a ground source heat pump. A system for an existing home of about 3,000 square feet would cost about $50,000 to $70,000, mainly due to drilling, according to Jeremy Rushton of Yavapai. In a new house, it might cost about 15 to 20 percent less. There is a federal tax credit of 30 percent for geothermal devices available through 2016.

There can be big savings on heating and cooling with this system. The heat pump uses electricity, but not as much as a traditional air conditioner. A system can also be solar powered to avoid using electricity at all. You can also use your system to heat your hot water.

nMini-split air conditioners Mini-splits are small, individual air conditioners that can be easily installed to cool an individual room. They can hang from a ceiling or on a wall. There are also floor-standing models. These systems include an indoor evaporator connected to an outdoor condensing unit.

The indoor section of one in my offices is about a yard long, less than a foot tall, and several inches in depth. The evaporator is connected to the condenser by copper tubing and wiring that passes through a small hole in the wall.

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Hot new ideas for cooling your home are in works

28.08.2014 / 07:28

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Corporate News

2G Energy AG: Successful commissioning of 3.12 MW CHP system for Merck for production in Darmstadt

- Merck utilizing CHP system for ongoing process heat requirements in manufacturing

- Total efficiency of around 87% represents high standard for industrial applications

- 2G receives order from brewery Krombacher to install a 2 MW CHP system

Heek, August 28, 2014 - 2G Energy AG (ISIN DE000A0HL8N9), one of the leading manufacturers of combined heat and power (CHP) systems, has transferred a CHP system with electric output of 3.12 MW to Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, following a four and a half month construction period. The natural gas driven system consists of two CHP units each with 1.56 MW electric and 1.58 MW thermal output. The system supplies pharmaceutical production and research at the Darmstadt site with electricity that is fed into the plant grid, as well as with thermal output in the form of heating, and also with cold water through an absorption cooling machine. The 2G system is set up so that it can also be operated as a grid replacement if required, so that if electricity supplies fail, important areas of the Darmstadt company can continue to be supplied with electricity.

With this investment in its own energy centers, Merck, in its own words, is "securing the long-term generation of electricity, heating and cooling for the manufacturing of its pharmaceutical and chemical high-tech products." Merck entrusted 2G with the complete planning of the CHP system, including installation and connecting to the already existing infrastructure for electricity, natural gas and heating, as well as project management. It also included the construction of a 48 meter steel chimney.

Ludger Holtkamp, COO of 2G Energy AG, commented on the project's model character as follows: "The Merck project is exemplary in showing how CHP systems can offer highly varied thermal output that can be utilized very efficiently by the chemical industry and in the pharmaceutical sector. Economic efficiency is secured through the plant's demand for electricity, and especially through continuous process heat demand, as well as utilization possibilities for cooling and steam. Total efficiencies of 87 %, as is the case with Merck, or more, are delivered as a consequence. These are significantly higher than is the case with the separate generation of electricity, heating and cooling. This performance level shows that investments in CHP systems remain attractive for many industrial operations, also after the 2014 amendment to the German Renewable Energies Act."

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DGAP-News: 2G Energy AG: Successful commissioning of 3.12 MW CHP system for Merck for production in Darmstadt

PRESS RELEASE: 2G Energy AG: Successful commissioning of 3.12 MW CHP system for Merck for production in Darmstadt

DGAP-News: 2G Energy AG / Key word(s): Incoming Orders/Incoming Orders 2G Energy AG: Successful commissioning of 3.12 MW CHP system for Merck for production in Darmstadt

28.08.2014 / 07:28

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Corporate News

2G Energy AG: Successful commissioning of 3.12 MW CHP system for Merck for production in Darmstadt

- Merck utilizing CHP system for ongoing process heat requirements in manufacturing

- Total efficiency of around 87% represents high standard for industrial applications

- 2G receives order from brewery Krombacher to install a 2 MW CHP system

Heek, August 28, 2014 - 2G Energy AG (ISIN DE000A0HL8N9), one of the leading manufacturers of combined heat and power (CHP) systems, has transferred a CHP system with electric output of 3.12 MW to Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, following a four and a half month construction period. The natural gas driven system consists of two CHP units each with 1.56 MW electric and 1.58 MW thermal output. The system supplies pharmaceutical production and research at the Darmstadt site with electricity that is fed into the plant grid, as well as with thermal output in the form of heating, and also with cold water through an absorption cooling machine. The 2G system is set up so that it can also be operated as a grid replacement if required, so that if electricity supplies fail, important areas of the Darmstadt company can continue to be supplied with electricity.

Go here to read the rest:
PRESS RELEASE: 2G Energy AG: Successful commissioning of 3.12 MW CHP system for Merck for production in Darmstadt

Kitchen Remodeling in Redmond
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Kitchen Remodeling in Redmond - Video