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2011年12月25日 星期日

Ohio museum celebrates work of late Toledo artist

His passion for painting burned so hot,Accept credit cards with a third party merchant account, it fueled two roundtrip walks from Ohio to New York City, three stints studying in Europe, and 62 years of intense creativity and teaching.

Karl Kappes, born to German immigrants in Zanesville six weeks after the first shots of the Civil War were fired, liked to quote a Chinese saying that no man is an artist until he’s painted 10,Our company focus on manufacturing Plastic mould ,000 pictures.

"I am an artist," he would then declare.

We’ll never know whether his grand claim was true, but he churned out oils, watercolors, and pencil drawings until he died in 1943 at 82 in his crammed, walk-up apartment/studio at 1822 Adams St. in Toledo. Still in the studio six years later, his widow said, "How can a person be lonely when she has more than 2,Omega Plastics are leading plastic injection moulding and injection mould tooling specialists.000 paintings to keep her company?"

Kappes’ productivity, along with an enduring appreciation for his talent, has earned him a berth among the region’s best artists. Fifty of his pieces are displayed in Karl Kappes: Ohio Painter, 1861-1943, through Jan. 28 at the beautiful Zanesville Museum of Art, 190 miles southeast of Toledo.

Museum director Susan Talbot-Stanaway said she decided to build the show because she draws on the museum’s collection as a starting point for exhibits, and it owns about 43 works by the artist. It is the 150th anniversary of Kappes’ birth. Moreover, dozens of people in the area share his name; three Kappes [pronounced KAP-pes] families emigrated to Zanesville from Germany in the 19th century, she said.

In August she put a notice online saying the museum was planning to feature him, and was amazed when 20 people responded. From nine collectors, she borrowed pieces representing different periods and styles.

"We ended up with a lot more paintings than we thought, so the show expanded to two landings, a hallway, and the gallery," said Talbot-Stanaway, who’s in her seventh year as director. The last time the Zanesville museum had a solo Kappes show was in 1945.

Tall, handsome, athletically built, and one of 12 children, Kappes was the valedictorian of his high school class. He studied in Cincinnati and then with the celebrated American artist William Merritt Chase, whose famous New York City atelier was a magnet for young artists. Chase had learned traditional painting at the Royal Academy in Munich, as had many other Americans. Kappes, 12 years younger than Chase, determined to do the same, and at 20, 22, and again at 28, with modest help from his parents, he sailed for Germany, throwing himself into intense study at the academy that had hundreds of pupils from the United States and Europe.

In letters to his parents, he described his spartan lifestyle, assuring them he was working hard and being frugal.

"At school I am drawing a half-nude figure of a man and when finished will get it photographed and send home a copy. The professor likes it very much and praises me every time he sees it," he wrote in March, 1884. "For the short time I have been in the nature class the students think I have made remarkable progress."

His Munich portraits were excellent examples of what he was taught: realistic images of women and men, with particularly fine renderings of eyes, foreheads, and noses. As the best portraitists do, he was able to impart something of the individual’s personality, a quality that engages the viewer.

Returning to Zanesville, he taught art. And at Weller Pottery, one of several companies in town that used its abundant clay soil to make decorative pottery, he created designs and taught staff artists. He wedded a beautiful milliner who brought children to the marriage, a fact he did not consider an asset.

By 1912, he moved to Toledo, but it’s unclear whether it was a full-time move and whether he divorced his wife. He spent summers in a country home in Texas, Ohio, along the Maumee River, where he created a lavish garden in the Henry County hamlet about 33 miles southwest of Toledo. An artists’ colony developed there, and on summer weekends, up to 100 people, mainly from Toledo, would drive out for lessons, painting in the fresh air, and Sunday potlucks.

"I had a little trouble at first, getting myself trusted in the town," he was quoted in a 1929 Toledo Times article.Buy oil paintings for sale online. "I wore a khaki suit and went about sketching which was enough to arouse the neighbors’ worst suspicions. They thought I was a prohibition agent doing painting as a blind."

The late Vardinique North, the widow of Earl North, one of Kappes most well-known students, spent summers at her grandparents’ home in Texas across the garden from Kappes’ studio. "In the summer,Bathroom Floor tiles at Great Prices from Topps Tiles. it seemed there was a painter for every tree in Texas," she once told The Blade. She said her grandmother had her deliver apple pies to Kappes and Wilder Darling, another Toledo artist who had also studied painting in Europe and was invited out to paint with Kappes.

2011年11月6日 星期日

Liquor-license labyrinth

When Mike Russell put together a business plan for his westside restaurant, the Cowboy’s Bar-B-Que and Country Club, he knew nothing would wash down a smoky rack of ribs like an ice-cold brew.

“Barbecue and beer is just like a national pastime — the way football and beer go together,” he said with his long, Texas drawl. “It’s like peanut butter and jelly.”

And so, Russell turned to his Realtor for help. A restaurant beer and wine license used by a restaurant that recently shut down was available. Russell was in luck.

That was more than a month ago. Originally thinking he would own a license in 90 days, Russell knows it will be at least three months before he can begin serving alcohol in his new restaurant, which has yet to open.Graphene is not a semiconductor, not an Plastic mould , and not a metal, As many would-be restaurant owners across Montana have discovered, navigating the state’s process for obtaining an alcohol license is a rigorous, confusing test. The process, which often hinges on a decades-old quota system, is driving away new restaurants in Helena and in other cities, some say.

“To get a beer and wine license, it’s hard,” Russell said. “It’s like pulling a tooth out of an elephant’s mouth.”

In 1947, the state passed a law that provides for a population-based quota system that plays a large role in deciding how many alcohol licenses are available across Montana.

“In Helena, our quota is full, but in Lewis and Clark County, there are several licenses available,” said Shauna Helfert, administrator for liquor control division of the Montana Department of Revenue.

There are several kinds of licenses. There are the off-premises licenses, used by businesses like grocery stores that sell alcohol, but don’t allow a person to consume on the property. Then there are the on-premises licenses, which restaurants, casinos and bars vie for.

Those on-premises licenses can be broken into three main groups:

n Restaurant beer and wine license — commonly referred to as a “cabaret license” — where the business must serve food to the patron who orders a drink. Hours of operation are limited from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. and a majority of the restaurant’s income must come from food sales.

n Beer license (with a $200 fee,The application can provide Ceramic tile to visitors, wine can be added) allows an establishment to serve beer and wine. It must serve food if it has opted for the wine amendment (a basket of popcorn would qualify) but the person served doesn’t have to eat and can simply be sitting at a bar.

n All-beverage licenses allow all types of liquor are allowed to be served, without a food requirement. Allowable hours of operation are 8 a.m. to 2 a.m. It is the most common license in place at casinos and bars.

There are liquor licenses that allow gambling and those that don’t; and, any establishment that does allow gambling must have at least a beer-wine license. Gambling is not allowed with a cabaret license.

That’s just the start.

Some off-premise licenses only allow for beer and wine, others for hard liquor.By Alex Lippa Close-up of zentai in Massachusetts. There are also catering and concessions stipulations.Enecsys Limited, supplier of reliable solar Air purifier systems, Meanwhile, brewery taprooms do not have to hold an alcohol license and are regulated under completely different rules.

On-premises licenses used by restaurants, bars and casinos are often the misunderstood, expensive and contentious. Among those, there are licenses to be used in the city (in this case, Helena and East Helena are combined) and a five-mile bubble around it, and those that are used in the county.

For the Helena licenses, 23 all-beverage licenses are allocated and 42 are issued (those extra licenses were grandfathered in during the 1947 legislation). There are 19 beer licenses allocated and 20 issued, and 19 cabaret licenses, which are all that can be issued.

For Lewis and Clark County, 44 all-beverage licenses are allocated with 34 issued. Meanwhile, there are no quotas on beer and wine licenses in the county, outside the five-mile bubble.

To make it a little more confusing, the number of licenses available is often in flux. Since the quotas are based on population, cities like Butte, which has shrunk over time, have lost available licenses. Those taken away are often redistributed around the state, which means areas of growth, like Billings, Bozeman, Missoula and the Flathead Valley, have been getting them. A lottery system is used to determine who is awarded the available license. Those that are transferred from one area of the state to another are not allowed to offer gambling.

Each license is treated as personal property and supply and demand determines the market price. Still, any deal involving an alcohol license transfer must be approved by the Department of Revenue, and a license cannot sit idle for more than a year.

No individual can own more than one all-beverage license, by far the most valuable of them all.

“I can only guess that they didn’t want just one person to gobble up all the licenses in the city,” Helfert said.

Licenses aren’t cheap

The quota system is sore spot for some folks, Russell among them.

“That’s why your big national restaurant chains do not come to Helena, (it) is because you cannot get a license,” he said.

Cathy Burwell, the president of the Helena Area Chamber of Commerce, tends to agree.

“We have a lot of the chain restaurants that want to come into Helena,” she said. “Helena is an eat-out town with higher income levels.If so, you may have a cube puzzle .”

But, many turn away because of either a lack of licenses, or the cost, she says.

While an increase in licenses would certainly help businesses looking to start a new restaurant, the problem is that a sudden increase in availability would hurt the value of existing licenses, an asset that in which many current holders have a substantial investment.

“We want growth and we want new businesses to come to Helena, but at the same time, we don’t want our current businesses to lose their asset,” Burwell said. “It’s their retirement fund for a lot of bars.”

Just how much is a liquor license worth?

According to the Department of Revenue’s website, the Red Garter Casino on Prospect Avenue purchased its all-beverage license for $650,000 in August. Drae’s Station Casino on Custer Avenue bought one about a year earlier for $400,000.

The most recent beer and wine license transaction in June was for $107,000. The more-restrictive cabaret licenses are far less pricey.

Russell is paying roughly $28,000 for his carbaret license. He sees it as a worthwhile investment considering the price of other types of licenses. But he knows that there are other states, like his native Texas, where there is no quota system, only yearly license renewal fees. Selling alcohol is far less expensive there.

Just to get around the problem, some Helena businesses are going in on a liquor license together. Chili’s and Macaroni Grill, which have a common owner, share a building and an alcohol license. The same goes for Lucca’s restaurant and the neighboring Rialto Bar downtown.

“In Montana, I think that’s become a common way to do business,” said Joe Hrella, co-owner of Cafe Organica, for which he bought a cabaret license for $20,000 in February. “There are several of them in Bozeman that do it that way.”

The process for purchasing a license can be lengthy. Cafe Organica, on Park Avenue, received its license nearly nine months after beginning the process. Hrella thought it would be easier since he had previously held a license.

“You would think it would be able to happen relatively fast and it should be a pretty streamlined system,” he said.

He was happy to pay the cost for his license, feeling it adds to his cafe. However, Hrella would like to see something done to address the high cost and limited availability of licenses. But he also understands the complexity of equitably unwinding the quota system.

“For those with the more expensive licenses, I would have to take their side, even though we would like to see more variety of restaurants across the state,” he said. He suggests a buy-out program that would compensate some license holders and allow for less costly licenses to be made available.

Though it has its problems — licenses in different areas are certainly worth more than others, likely leading to an appraisal system — Hrella says revamping the quota system would eventually mean more revenue for the state, and more establishments competing with each other.

“More competition is better,” he said.

Dax Cetraro, who owns numerous bars and restaurants, including the Rialto Bar in Helena and Grand Plaza Casino in Butte, doesn’t mind the competition. But, he sees the definite benefits of a quota system beyond just personal gain for his family, which has been in the bar and restaurant industry since the 1960s.

“There’s a big push out there to control drunk driving, serving of minors, responsible drinking, etcetera,” he said. “If there wasn’t a quota system, then everybody would be able to sell liquor or beer. It makes it a potential problem because you don’t have the control.”

2011年11月2日 星期三

Square’s Latest Enhancement for Card Case Aligns with Hands-Free Trend

Square Inc. on Wednesday introduced an enhancement to its Card Case wallet application that detects when a user is near a participating store and automatically links the user’s phone to the store’s Square account. By relying on this method, which the San Francisco startup calls automatically opening a tab, the user can walk in and make a purchase without removing his phone from his pocket.

The enhancement brings Card Case, a service Square introduced in May,the impact socket pain and pain radiating from the arms or legs. in line with what appears to be a nascent trend toward hands-free in-store payment technology. PayPal Inc. earlier this month unveiled a service it calls Empty Hands, which it plans to launch early next year. It will allow PayPal account holders to access their digital wallets by entering a phone number and a PIN in a store’s point-of-sale terminal.

The new Card Case app works for now only with Apple Inc.s iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S, though Square plans to launch an Android version later, according to an account in the San Jose Mercury News. Square did not return a call from Digital Transactions News seeking comment.

The app relies on a new geo-location feature in iOS 5, the recently introduced operating-system upgrade for Apple mobile devices, that detects when users are within 100 meters of a Square merchant location and automatically opens a tab with that merchant. A meter is a little more than a yard. The feature works only if users enable it.

As with the original Card Case application, a clerk inside the store can bring up a screen showing the user’s photo as authentication. The user gives his name, and the transaction is charged to the card he has linked to his Square account.If so, you may have a cube puzzle . The user then receives a text receipt. Square has signed up 20,000 merchants so far to accept Card Case, according to the newspaper account.

While Card Case transactions are considered card-not-present payments, which carry higher interchange than card-present transactions and so are more costly for merchants, most sellers aren’t likely to let that bother them, says Russ Jones, a partner at Glenbrook Partners, a payments consultancy in Menlo Park, Calif. “The merchants doing this are selling modest-cost things,” he says. “There’s just pennies of difference between card-present and card-not-present. I think the merchant would be delighted to pay that to get more sales. The bagel guy is trying to sell you a bagel. He’s not trying to minimize his payment-acceptance costs.100 China ceramic tile was used to link the lamps together.”

The Card Case enhancement is the latest in a string of changes Square, not yet 2 years old, has announced in recent weeks. Earlier this month, the company said it was eliminating holds on funds for new merchants and was crediting their accounts the ncxt business day. It announced it now has more than 800,000 merchants using its original product, a dongle that attaches to a smart phone through the device’s ear jack and allows merchants and individuals to swipe cards for payment. Square also eliminated its signature requirement for transactions under $25 and simplified its checkout process for phones running iOs, so that transactions take as little as four seconds.

Jones says Square, often dismissed by some observers as the beneficiary of the Silicon Valley buzz surrounding one of its founders, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, has begun to make its mark in payments.Enecsys Limited, supplier of reliable solar Air purifier systems, “It’s buzz, but there’s something also tangible about Square,Unlike traditional high risk merchant account ,” he says. “I’m amazed at the number of places taking cards using Square. It’s not a lot different from where PayPal was a year into their ramp-up.”

2011年11月1日 星期二

Painter/photographer team shows ‘Unexpected Grace’

RiverSea Gallery will host "Unexpected Grace," an art exhibition and book release event showcasing the combined work of two local artists who collaborated on a project that spanned continents and was more than a year in the making. "Unexpected Grace" is an exhibition of paintings by Rhonda Grudenic, an installation of prayer flags made from the paint-saturated rags she used to create the paintings,100 China ceramic tile was used to link the lamps together. and photographs by Dwight Caswell of those prayer flags installed in various outdoor locations from the Oregon coast to the mountains of Tibet. A book of the same title is the culmination of Caswell's photo-documentation of the prayer flags installed in natural settings.

The exhibit will open Saturday, Nov. 5, with a First Night reception from 6 to 8 p.m. The artists will give a presentation about the concept and collaborative process that went into "Unexpected Grace," and will sign copies of their book of the same title. In addition to the regular bound books,If so, you may have a cube puzzle . two special renditions of the book will be available, hand-bound by Grudenic, with a prayer flag mounted onto each cover. A second reception will be held during Astoria's Second Saturday Art Walk, and the artwork will remain on display through Nov. 29.

Buddhist prayer flags have been a longstanding symbol of peace, compassion,As many processors back away from hydraulic hose , strength and wisdom, thought to bring benefit to all, powered by wind to spread goodwill and compassion. Grudenic and Caswell have spent more than a year considering that concept and what it means in our contemporary fast-paced society where things are more likely to be discarded than reused. The process began in Grudenic's studio where she found herself considering the beauty of her used paint rags, their uniqueness and their role in her own creations. She began to look at them as objects of importance with intrinsic value instead of leftovers to be tossed. She considers the act of painting to be a form of meditation, and in her view, the rags were saturated with her prayers. From the rags, Grudenic fashioned her own set of prayer flags, and then began the journey of sharing.

Caswell, a talented fine art photographer as well as photojournalist, has traveled the world to document its beauty. He came to know Grudenic and shared her convictions and thoughts on her artwork's journey of purpose and its symbolism. Together they spent months creating and documenting installations of the prayer paint flags. To date there have been seven installations of Grudenic's carefully placed and choreographed flags. Caswell participated in these outdoor installations by capturing the process with his camera as well as by video. The end result is a full-color book tracking the travels of this moving artwork, beginning in Clatsop County and culminating high in the Himalayan Mountains of Tibet, where pilgrims not only accepted the offered paint flags,The top of the zentai is parted from the bottom in a way the time you wear it, the backless design will provide your sexy look. The fringes that are designed to part the up to the down from the back are full with shinny glitter. but recognized them in worship.

When discussing the collaborative process Caswell stated, "This is one of the few times I have collaborated with another artist; the experience has been a rewarding one. The landscape is what I usually photograph, but it doesn't have brightly colored paint rag/prayer flags swimming in the water and blowing in the wind. It was almost as though I was taking portraits of fast-moving subjects within the landscape. I was photographing not only the world as I saw it, but the world as imagined by Rhonda and as she participated in it."

Besides the books documenting the project, included in this exhibition will be an installation of the prayer paint flags along with Caswell's color photographs and a new series of Grudenic's ever-evocative oil paintings, the paintings that in turn created the paint flags.the Plastic molding are swollen blood vessels of the rectum. This exhibition is a masterfully executed display of continuation of process and connection. For Grudenic it has come to mean "honoring the disregarded, devalued and despised of society, relinquishing control, learning to be present, and sharing all with love."

2011年9月27日 星期二

Home Energy Audit Services Taken

Building science experts are transforming the field of home performance energy audits and retrofits today. Backed by a rigorous understanding of building physics and dynamics, these advanced building scientists can model, design and implement home energy retrofits that eclipse yesterday's home energy efficiency improvements.ceramic Floor tiles for the medical,

"The field of building science has grown up and is now driving reductions in home energy consumption that would have seemed impossible ten or twenty years ago", explains Sam Hagerman, co-owner of Hammer & Hand, and President of the national nonprofit, the Passive House Alliance. "We've assembled a home energy performance team of crack building science technicians at Hammer & Hand to harness this new power for the benefit of our clients and the planet."

The typical home performance technician not trained in advanced building science is forced to rely on a boilerplate approach in the field, applying prescriptive retrofit solutions aimed at satisfying the requirements of the latest governmental weatherization program. While this approach does achieve some reduction in home energy consumption, it falls short on two counts: it squanders money on prescriptive home energy solutions that may not address the unique problems of a given home; and it results in energy retrofits that will likely become obsolete in 10 or 15 years, or whenever the next weatherization program comes along.

Advanced building science, on the other hand, revolutionizes home performance audits and home energy retrofits because it empowers the building scientist to optimize homes through a performance approach, using sophisticated modeling to tweak air tightness, insulation, ventilation and other building component variables to design the most cost-effective home energy retrofit possible for each unique home. This leads to better solutions with bigger return on investment,Save on Bedding and fittings, and energy efficiency gains that are well ahead of the curve - retrofits that will stand the test of time.

"Everything is about optimizing", says Skylar Swinford, Certified Passive House Consultant and leader of Hammer & Hand's building science team. "Take heat recovering ventilation systems, for instance. I love HRVs because they conserve energy that would otherwise be lost in a home's exhaust air.Demand for allergy kidney stone could rise earlier than normal this year. But when we do the math, if the building science tells us that super-insulation is a more impactful investment for a given home, then we prescribe that ahead of an HRV, and switch to a more basic continuous mechanical ventilation system.The additions focus on key tag and impact socket combinations, Each variable is scrutinized and fine-tuned for optimal performance."

The Passive House movement, widely recognized as representing the cutting edge of building science and home energy performance,Initially the banks didn't want our RUBBER SHEET . fuels the building science expertise of Hammer & Hand's new team. "Because our team's building science lineage traces directly to the rigorous Passive House training that we've undergone," says Hagerman, "our suite of home energy retrofit measures comes straight from the Passive House high performance playbook." This suite includes:

Aggressive air sealing to create a nearly airtight building shell. Continuous mechanical ventilation to provide constant flow of fresh air - often a heat recovering system for better energy performance. Intensive, high quality insulation, with low global warming potential - usually cellulose or water-blown spray foam. Computer modeling to optimize the performance and value of the home energy retrofit package.

"When we are smart about home energy performance audits and retrofits, and bring advanced building science to bear," says Hagerman, "it's a win for each individual client who receives better home performance for the money - greater comfort, safety, and energy savings. But it's also a win for society at large, because we're taking full advantage of every retrofit to significantly reduce the energy consumption of our built environment."

2011年6月3日 星期五

About Atmel maXTouch Technologies

Running on the Android Honeycomb 3.0 operating system, the new tablet comes with a 10.1-inch, 1280 x 800 IPS panel supporting up to 10-multitouches using Atmel's maXTouch device. The Eee Pad Transformer tablet also includes a 1GHz Tegra 2 processor with 1GB RAM, 16GB flash storage, twin cameras with 1.2-megapixels on the front and 5-megapixels on the back, gyroscope, compass, GPS and more. A keyboard option is also available and can be docked to the tablet along with a trackpad and an integrated battery. This option can boost the tablet's 9.5 hour runtime to nearly 16 hours. The device is available now in the US and Taiwan

Atmel maXTouch solutions provide the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer tablet's touchscreen with unlimited touch capability, lower power consumption, faster response time, and better signal-to-noise ratio to detect the most sensitive touches with a finger nail, stylus and a user with gloves on his hands. All these benefits provide a better, more intuitive touch experience for the Eee Pad Transformer user.

"We selected Atmel maXTouch solution because we wanted our customers to have the best, intuitive touchscreen experience possible on the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer," said, Simon Chen, ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Product Manager. "We are thrilled to launch a first-of-its-class tablet that offers users both a superior touchscreen experience and a keyboard option."

"We are excited to team with an industry leader in mobile computing such as ASUS on their latest innovation, the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer," said Binay Bajaj, director of touch marketing, Atmel Corporation. "It is further evidence that Atmel maXTouch solutions are powering the latest innovative touch products that are rapidly hitting the market."


With true unlimited touch functionality and stylus support, the maXTouch technology is enabling exciting new applications, such as tablets, netbooks and MIDs.Polycore zentai are manufactured as a single sheet, The microcontroller technology, combined with proprietary algorithms, offers a better touch experience for users of tablet and other applications.