The 36th AVENUE | 15 DIY Home Improvement Projects

Sometimes you don?t need heavy tools and a contractor to make a home improvement.

Sometimes small DIY projects can change amazingly the look and feel of your home.

I am sharing today 15 Home Improvement Projects that will show you just that.

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Let?s start with the kitchen!

Remodelando la casa gave her kitchen an amazing makeover by painting her cabinets.

You won?t believe the before and after pictures!

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If you think you need new barstools you may stop first by Lolly Jane and check out what they did with theirs.

I love the new rustic look of these wood barstools.

Amazing job Kristi!

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I think these DIY Stackable Fruit Crates by The Wood Grain Cottage are brilliant!

Super cute and functional.

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What about if I tell you that you can build your own dining table?

That?s exactly what Carissa Miss did!

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Moving on? Build a small office area.

This little space by Shabby Love is adorable and full of charming ideas.

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Here is another small working area by House by Hoff.

The table has a chalkboard finish, so fun for the little ones!

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This is such a fun Mini Mudroom by Nalle?s House.

I love the clean modern lines of this small space.

The floating bench is pure awesomeness. Great tutorial by the way!

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Create a bold focal point with curtains.

This striped curtain tutorial by Blooming Homestead is extraordinary.

Well done Marie!

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Paint can give an old piece of furniture a completely new look.

I love how The Weathered Door combined the old and the new together.

Contemporary at its best!

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Here is another similar piece with a more classic look by the Weathered Door.

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If you have some fabric scraps around your house follow what Ahna from Easier than I thought did and frame them.

What a clever and affordable way to create art.

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It is pretty amazing how a bit of spray paint can bring a bunch of different items together.

This little jewelry station by fancy frugal life would be a great addition to any girl?s room.

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Who said that cross stitch is for fabric?

Dear Emmeline brought the classic design to this beautiful dresser.

I am in love!

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My dear friend Tausha from Sassy Style gave this China Cabinet an amazing makeover

using Annie Sloan Chalk Paint. I love the two tone choice.

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Pillows are another easy way to give a home a quick fresh makeover.

Fancy Frugal is sharing the tutorial of how she stenciled and made her pillows.

They are so fun!

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?Make some DIY Transparent Displays.

I love this project by monsterscircus.

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Ottomans makeover by Urbane Jane.

Pretty amazing what a little fabric can do for you!

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For more amazing DIY projects check out these 60 Furniture makeovers.

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These amazing clever ideas for the kitchen are here.

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And sometimes all a home needs is a little tender love.

Here are the best 15 Cleaning tips. Trust me, they will change your life!

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Now I better go and do some cleaning myself!

Besos

Desir?e

Hi! I am Desir?e, the heart behind The 36th Avenue . I am a thrifty shopper, a fabric lover, a paint brush best friend and a never ending makeover believer. Hmmmm, yep... that sounds like me!

Thank you so much for linking up to the party! I'm featuring today over 15 DIY fantastic projects for the home.... http://t.co/tLu9jS9H - 4 hours ago

Source: http://www.the36thavenue.com/2013/02/15-diy-home-improvement-projects.html

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Israel's settlers dig in ahead of Obama visit

Uriel Sinai / Getty Images, file

A donkey roams at a Bedouin camp in the E1 area at the Israeli settlement of Maale Adumimin in the West Bank.

By John Ray, Correspondent, NBC News

EAST JERUSALEM -- To the outsider, it looks like a poor piece of land to fight over: A sand and scrub hillside where, on a winter?s day, a chill wind whips over the boulders and blows through to the bone.

On one side stand the minarets of Arab East Jerusalem, hemmed in by Israel?s security wall. Ahead, across a valley, lies the Jewish settlement of Ma?aleh Adumim, a sprawling suburb of neat streets and anonymous housing blocks.

Between the two feels like a bleak no-man?s land despite the presence of many Bedouin families.

But that is deceptive: No patch of ground in the Israeli-occupied West Bank is more bitterly contested, or more important to White House hopes of restarting peace talks.

At the heart of the dispute is Israel?s policy of building homes for Jewish settlers building communities built on land that the Palestinians feel is vital to a future state.

?We are a force to be reckoned with,? said Yigal Dilmony, deputy general manager of the Yesha Council which represents 360,000 Jews who have settled in East Jerusalem and the West Bank (what they call Judea and Samaria). ?The reality on this territory is that we can?t be ignored.?

Late last year, the Israeli government announced it would speed up the start of construction of around 3,500 homes for settlers, connecting Ma?aleh Adumim to Jerusalem in an area known as E1 on the planners? maps.?

The settlers? progress appeared unstoppable. But in 2013, the political landscape at home and abroad shifted.

Shifting balance
In December, in a rare public show of unity, every member of the United Nations Security Council except the United States condemned the expansion plans. In January, U.N, human rights investigators said Israel must stop settlement expansion and remove all Jewish settlers from the occupied West Bank, saying that its practices could be subject to prosecution as possible war crimes.

Ariel Schalit / AP, file

A Palestinian man works at a new housing development in the Jewish West Bank settlement of Maaleh Adumim.

President Barack Obama?s impending visit to Israel and the West Bank in March will only highlight the issue of the legality of settlements.

And within Israel, January?s elections saw the balance of politics shift, if not decisively then certainly significantly, toward the center and away from reflexively supporting the settlements.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is still struggling to knit these disparate strands into a governing alliance, but it is likely he will need to bring together his traditional right-wing supporters and the new more moderate voices.

And few issues divide the Israeli establishment more than that of settlements.

Here?s the outgoing Deputy Prime Minister, Dan Meridor, speaking on Israeli radio on Feb. 7:

"There is a discrepancy between our claim that we are willing to accept a two-state solution and the fact that we don't limit the construction in the settlements to the settlement blocs.?

Meridor is a member of Netanyahu?s Likud party who failed to win re-election. But his voice has always tended toward the pragmatic.

"I'm not saying we should stop construction in Jerusalem and in the settlement blocs, but we must not build beyond them, because by doing so we promote a very dangerous situation to Zionism, of one state from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, which endangers us more than anything else," he said.

Israeli media cite anonymous sources in Netanyahu?s office to say he?s not planning another freeze on settlements. On Monday he reiterated his support for two state-solution, albeit unenthusiastically.

The battle over settlements centers around mutually exclusive visions of Israel?s future ? a two-state solution versus an Israel decisively laying claim to land captured in the 1967 war with Egypt, Jordan and Syria.

Clouds gathering
For Palestinians, settlements and an eventual Palestinian state cannot be seen as separate issues. E1, the plot of land near East Jerusalem, is a vital corridor without which their territory would be severed, north from south.?

Abir Sultan / EPA, file

A Bedouin shepherd puts a newborn lamb in a bag on his donkey in the E1 area between Jerusalem and the West Bank.

The construction of the thousands of homes would render impractical if not impossible the foundation of a meaningful state of their own.

?My family has been here for 80 years,? said an Arab farmer tending his sheep and chickens on the disputed parcel of land known as E1.

?This is our land but they?ve told us we?ll have to go,? said the farmer, who preferred his name not be used. ?I don?t know what will happen to us.?

So upon this seemingly barren corridor rests America?s chances of reviving a peace process that has been comatose for two years.

Leaders of the settler movement see clouds gathering as Obama?s visit draws closer. But they remain defiant.

"We understand that Obama as a second term president is much more dangerous to the settlements than the first term Obama and we need to keep our eyes wide open,?? Dilmony said.

"When he comes here he should meet us, the settlers, and see the situation for himself,? Dilmony said.

On only point is Dilmony likely to be in agreement with the US administration.

?Peace can only come from the people who live here,?? he said.

Related:

Israel faces European backlash over decision to expand settlements

US slams Israel's decision to expand settlements

UN panel's report: Israel must withdraw all settlers from West Bank

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Source: http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/16/16975361-force-to-be-reckoned-with-israels-settlers-dig-in-ahead-of-obama-visit?lite

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England: Church delight as end to 'Misery Making' scrap metal trade becomes law

Posted On : February 13, 2013 3:08 PM | Posted By : Webmaster
Related Categories: England

The Church of England has today warmly welcomed the passing of the Scrap Metal Dealers Bill, which cleared its final legislative hurdle in the House of Lords on February 12 and now goes forward for Royal Assent.?

The Chair of the Church of England?s Cathedral and Church Buildings Council, Mrs Anne Sloman, OBE, said: ?

?This has been a long battle. We are absolutely delighted that this two year campaign, led by the CofE?s Cathedrals and Church Buildings Council, will now become law. We are thankful that the deleterious and misery making unregulated trade in scrap metal might now be brought to an end through proper regulation leading to a reduction in crime for communities across the country.?

?I am grateful for the number of organisations and individuals whose hard work has led to the successful passage of this Bill, not least the Bishop of London, Lord Faulkner of Worcester and the Second Church Estates Commissioner Sir Tony Baldry MP.??

The Bill, introduced to the House of Commons as a Private Members Bill by Richard Ottaway MP and to the Lords by Baroness Browning, will introduce effective regulation of the Scrap Metal Trade and finally ends anonymous access to cash for scrap metal.?

In March 2011 a report to the Home Office from the Church Buildings Council called for new regulation of scrap yards to regulate the trade effectively and take away the incentive for metal theft. The regulation called for has been given in the Act, consolidating cashless trading, a licensing system, a national register of scrap yards and compulsory taking of identification at the point of sale. The police will have powers of entry to enforce the new regulations and to close yards where illegal activity is suspected.??

More information from?

Steve Jenkins????????????????????????????????????
Church of England Communications Office
Church House
Great Smith Street
London SW1P 3AZ ?
Direct Dial Telephone: 020 7898 1326
Out-of-hours Telephone: 07774 800212

Source: http://www.aco.org/acns/digest/index.cfm/2013/2/13/England-Church-delight-as-end-to-Misery-Making-scrap-metal-trade-becomes-law

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Obama's cybersecurity order explained

Suzanne Choney , NBC News ? ? ? 5 hrs.

The president's executive order on cybersecurity is being praised by many because it says that ? in the event of a digital breach that could affect the nation's telecommunications, electrical, water, utility and other key infrastructure operations ? government agencies must share data with private industry as soon as they can.

Previously, government agencies were encouraged to do so, but this order on improving critical infrastructure cybersecurity requires it.

"Our enemies are also seeking the ability to sabotage our power grid, our financial institutions, and our air traffic control systems," President Barack Obama said in his State of the Union address Tuesday. "We cannot look back years from now and wonder why we did nothing in the face of real threats to our security and our economy."

'Near real-time sharing'
The order can broken down into two components. First, it expands what have been considered "voluntary" efforts to share information by federal agencies when there's been a breach or hack, to doing so in "near real-time sharing of cyber-threat information to assist participating critical infrastructure companies," such as utilities or telecommunications companies "in their cyber-protection efforts."

"The order says there shall be no cult of secrecy regarding security threats," Bart A. Lazar, data privacy and security attorney with Seyfarth Shaw LLC, told NBC News Wednesday.

"So, for example, if the federal government discovers, or becomes aware, that U.S. government facilities and computer systems are being hacked, or (there are) attempted hacks, in a particular way, they should let private industry members of the nation's critical infrastructure know so they can defend themselves properly."

A recent "zombie alert" practical joke highlights the importance of the systematic cooperation, says James Barnett, a retired U.S. Navy admiral and former chief of public safety and homeland security for the Federal Communications Commission. Hackers cracked the Emergency Alert System in Montana, warning citizens of attacking zombie hordes. Though it was not an act of terrorism, the false message, which spread to other states, demonstrates a real risk.

"Somebody hacked in and did a very good job of making it sound real," Barnett told NBC News. "The problem was bad computer hygiene. [Admins] didn't change the passwords, so it was easy for someone to break into it."

Better, stronger securitystandards
The second initiative in the president's mandate directs the National Institute of Standards and Technology, part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, to work with "critical infrastructure stakeholders" for the "development of a framework of cybersecurity practices to reduce cyber-risks to critical infrastructure."

The first thing NIST will take on will be gathering information from organizations on "their current risk management practices," including " standards, guidelines and best practices; and other industry practices," the agency said in a release Wednesday.

NIST will hold workshops "over the next several months to collect additional input and will complete the framework within one year."

What it doesn't mean
The executive order doesn't mean you'll personally be getting an alert when a government website has been hacked or information stolen from it.

"For the average American, some of this will run in the background," said Barnett, who is now with the Venable law firm, which specializes in intellectual property and regulatory affairs.

Evidence of a security breach "might show up as their computer running slow. Or maybe an individual gets contacted by their bank saying 'We need to send you a new debit or credit card because this one's been breached,'" he said.

The president's order also does not mandate companies that operate the nation's infrastructure to participate in kind by reporting breaches to the federal government. That issue is a contentious one, because it raises privacy concerns.

"The executive order certainly does not exclude a flow of information the other way, although it seems to maintain it as a voluntary thing," Jeffrey Hermes, director of the Digital Media Law project at the Harvard-based Berkman Center for Internet & Society, told NBC News.

Some legislation required
Gen. Keith Alexander, head of the U.S. Cyber Command, told reporters Wednesday that he considers the executive order "only a down payment on what we need to address the threat," and that it's "not a substitute for legislation."

But which legislation? Perhaps it's the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), re-introduced Wednesday by Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., and Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., but that may not pass easily.

According to a press release announcing the bill, the legislation aims to:

• "Allow the Federal government to provide classified cyber threat information to the private sector to help American companies better protect themselves from advanced cyber threats;
  
• "Empower American businesses to share cyber threat information with others in the private sector and enable the private sector to share information with the government on a purely voluntary basis, all while providing strong protections for privacy and civil liberties;
  
• "Provides (sic) liability protection for companies acting in good faith to protect their own networks or share threat information."
  

Yet while the bill does seem to share certain goals outlined in the president's mandate, CISPA was shot down previously over privacy concerns, and is likely to meet fierce opposition again.

"CISPA once again allows companies to share sensitive and personal American Internet data with the government, including the National Security Agency and other military agencies," said American Civil Liberties Union legislative counsel Michelle Richardson, whose group nevertheless praises the president's executive order.

While it's perhaps easy for a president to mandate that government agencies report problems for the benefit of companies, the notion that companies should report problems for the benefit of the government comes with far more challenges and concerns.

Check out Technology, GadgetBox, DigitalLife and InGame on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Suzanne Choney.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/new-rules-cybersecurity-obamas-executive-order-explained-1C8349895

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Animal bite force: Size of lunch dictates force of crunch

Feb. 12, 2013 ? Even in the same animal, not all bites are the same. A new study finds that because the force in a muscle depends on how much it is stretched, an animal's bite force depends on the size of what it is biting. The finding has direct implications for ecology and evolution.

Many animals prefer food -- snails, nuts, etc. -- that must be cracked and crushed. Scientists have measured the maximum force of their impressive bites before, but a new study introduces a significant subtlety: bite force depends not only on the size and strength of the eater, but also the size of the eatee. That insight has important implications in the lives of predators and prey.

"Everybody measures bite force as one value," said Nicholas Gidmark, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Brown University and lead author of the new study published Feb. 14, 2013, in Biology Letters. "There's a lot more nuance to it than that."

The nuance comes from a well-understood phenomenon of physiology that had never before been measured in terms of a living animal's bite force: The force a muscle can exert depends on how long that muscle gets preparing for the chomp.

Gidmark and his co-authors hypothesized that the length-force relationship could have culinary consequences. For an individual animal, too much stretch (for a big piece of food) or too little stretch (for a small piece of food) would weaken the bite compared to the stretch required to crush an optimally sized morsel. To test this idea they conducted a series of experiments with black carp, which normally dine on fresh escargot and have conveniently simple jaws.

The stakes are quite high for the carp, which is why the study matters to their evolution as predators.

"You have to break a snail in order to eat it," Gidmark said. "If you don't have enough bite force to break that snail, you get nothing from it."

Crunch time

The scientists started out by training carp of three different sizes to eat not snails but food-stuffed ceramic tubes, which had standardized and easily measured diameters and strength. Gidmark's team had coated some of the tubes with various amounts of polyurethane to create a variety of strengths for each diameter. Tests with a piston-activated crushing device allowed them to measure how much force was required to crack them.

On each fish, the scientists then inserted tiny metal balls into strategic locations on the jaws to act as x-ray markers of jaw position and muscle length. Once the fish recovered from the implants, Gidmark and his colleauges methodically fed each one tubes of different diameters and strength. They recorded X-ray videos of the chewing and noted which tubes the fish could crush and which they could not.

After the feeding trials, the scientists then dissected the fish to make more direct measures of muscle force and muscle length. Keeping the jaw muscles alive, they stimulated them so that they would chomp down. The jaw, meanwhile, was connected to a force transducer that measured the bite.

Finally, Gidmark and his team fed the jaw bone position data into a 3-D animated computer model of the fish jaws. That gave the researchers an even richer set of measures of muscle stretch.

"What the animation lets us do is actually reconstruct the positions of the whole bone relative to the whole skull," Gidmark said. "What that shows us is the whole surface of muscle attachment on the jaw and the whole surface of muscle attachment on the skull and how those move relative to each other."

In all, what they found is that for each fish, bite force depended heavily on tube size and that bite force peaked at an optimal amount of muscle stretch. Too much or too little lengthening led to profound reductions in bite force. A stretch of either about 85 percent or 115 percent of the optimal value led to bite force that was only about half as strong as at the optimal stretch.

The strongest carp bite was about 700 Newtons, or 157 pounds, of force. That allowed the biggest carp to crush strong tubes that happened to be the right size, even when it couldn't crush weaker tubes that were too big or too small.

"Successfully crushed intermediate-sized 'prey' were stronger than larger and smaller 'prey' that were uncrushable, indicating a performance optimum at intermediate prey sizes," the authors wrote.

Ecology and evolution

Were snails in an ecosystem's population to begin growing larger or smaller, in other words, carp could gain or lose the ability to eat them. Small carp might have to stretch too far to crush bigger snails, for example, but larger carp might find that those larger snails had evolved right into their biting sweet spot.

"Depending on how prey is defending itself, whether it is getting big or strong or both, it will have an important impact on those relationships between predators and prey," Gidmark said.

The muscle-length bite-strength relationship likely holds for humans, Gidmark said, but probably very few people depend on crushing hard, co-evolving foods for daily sustenance. Still, Gidmark said he is eager to determine how the findings might extend to other species and their ecology.

"There is variable bite-force with gape," he said. "The implications of that are all over the place. This really sets the ground for a lot of cool ecology and predator-prey interaction studies."

In addition to Gidmark, the study's co-authors are Nicolai Konow, Eric LoPresti, and Elizabeth Brainerd.

Support for the research came from The American Society for Ichthyology and Herpetology, Sigma Xi, the W.M. Keck Foundation, the National Science Foundation (grant: 0840950) and the Bushnell Graduate Research and Education Fund.

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_science/~3/2bs-UAbOl-E/130212210116.htm

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Is the Mac Pro still a viable platform for Apple?

The Mac Pro,?Apple's only computer with expansion slots and bays, is on its last legs.?

Apple last updated?its venerable tower PC?in July 2010 (adding?12 cores and SSDs)?more than 2.5 years ago,?932 days?to be exact. While the Mac Pro received a minor CPU speed bump in June 2012, it didn't receive critical upgrades to technologies like Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 that pros need.?

While there have been some hints of a new Mac Pro?(1,?2,?3) there has been no official word from Cupertino short of a vaguely worded email from Tim Cook last summer, saying that "we?re working on something really great for later next year." If Apple does upgrade the Mac Pro, it might even make it in the United States.

My question is: who needs a Mac Pro anyway??

I understand that video professionals and major pixel pushers need as much horsepower as possible. This often includes copious amounts of RAM (the current Mac Pro can support up to 64GB of RAM), four drive bays, a discreet GPU, and of course, slots.?

The iMac maxes out at 32GB of RAM, has an anemic GPU, no bays and no expansion slots. However, as my colleague David Morgenstern points out, an iMac can be expanded with "JBOP" (Just a Bunch of Peripherals). It can support PCIe expansion cards via a breakout box connected to its Thunderbolt port. While not as elegant as a spacious tower, it can be done.?

So, while use cases exist for high-power Macs loaded to the gills with drives and cards, what percentage of Mac users actually buy them? I suspect that most professional Mac users that got tired of waiting for a new Mac Pro upgraded to either a retina MacBook Pro, an iMac JBOP, and/or a Mac mini connected to a massive storage array like the new Drobo 5D.?

You: Apple CEO

Put yourself in Tim Cook's shoes. Would you invest the R&D time necessary to create a new Mac Pro? Or would you put those resources on more profitable product lines??

Apple could probably squeeze another year of life out the current Mac Pro ("cheese grater") form factor and simply release an invisible upgrade with support for the latest Intel chips, Thunderbolt and USB 3.0, but that's not really Apple's style. Apple likes to go big with hardware re-designs and the Mac Pro is overdue.

Enough people have complained about the lack of a new Mac Pro that Apple will probably have to act. If Apple releases a new Mac Pro I would vote for a new enclosure that works as a tower but could also be rack mounted. This would get pro users back into the fold and potentially delight enterprise users as well.

While we anxiously await Apple's decision, here are some Mac Pro concepts from?Scott Richardson to drool over:

Further reading:

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zdnetaustralia/~3/MUVpooGsZ9s/

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