Archive for August, 2011

The Traditional Queenslander Home

To some people, Queensland’s familiar wood and tin homes gave Brisbane, and other Queensland cities and rural areas, a particular temporary, insubstantial air. Known as 'The Queenslander’, they seemed so much less solid and permanent than those built of brick or stone. Many Queensland houses were placed high in the air on tall stumps, as the supporting pillars were always known as, and it was fancied they seemed likely to simply fly away.

The Queensland house was comparatively cost-effective when wood was plentiful, easy to move from place to place, and, in a relatively benign climate, single skin, unlined walls were all that were thought to be necessary to protect dwellers~people~the dwellers within} from the cold. Strong corrugated iron roofs withstood heavy tropical rain and could be re-used if dislodged by cyclonic winds.

Verandahs sheltered people from the burning sun and also caught any breeze that may have been passing in the steamy summers. Covers over window openings meant that windows didn’t need to be quickly shut when humidity brought rain. Clever little revolving tin cylinders on the roofs removed hot air that filled ceiling spaces through decorative fretwork openings.

Although timber isn’t a particularly effective insulator for either heat or cold, air could flow through the long central hallways in a typical Queensland house and across the house from an open window on one side through open doors to the open window on the opposite side. Some exteriors were painted, others were simply oiled. Some verandahs were decorated with elaborate and expensive iron lace; others made do with simple timber frames and carved timber decoration in pediments over the front entrance.

Despite the impression of apparent impermanence, the Queensland house has survived since its first appearance in the mid-nineteenth century. However, it has evolved. The simple two-room or four-room cottage has given way to much larger, sprawling homes. The pattern of the Queenslander home can be translated into early types of kit-set homes.

Many were manufactured by companies in Brisbane and transported long distances as flat-packs on trains. Collections of verandahs, tongue and groove boards for walls and sheets of corrugated iron for roofs were ready at the destination for assembly. The public housing movement that produced workers dwellings adapted the ingredients to various shapes and sizes suitable for lower-cost housing.

After the war, the Queenslander seemed out of date in a world of modem architecture. Brick houses, American ranch style residences and other imported styles began to populate new suburbs. However, Brisbane is a hilly city and even modem designs often adapted the idea of stumps so that houses could be close to the ground near the top of a rising allotment and high where the ground sloped away. In the late twentieth century, the old materials, tin and timber, were given new currency by innovative architects to create distinctly modem, light and airy Queensland houses.

In the 1970s and 1980s, when a drift back to the inner suburbs attracted a new generation, old Queenslanders were discovered by younger owners. They painted them lovingly and added various renovations to bring an old favourite into the modem era.

However they originated, whether from sugar planters houses in the West Indies, bungalows in India or high houses in Malaysia, the Queenslander still distinguishes Brisbane from other Australian capital cities.

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RGB verses CMYK Colours

For the colour printing of your digital files, you must supply the graphics and images in the correct colour mode. Most of the software programs will allow you to work with RGB colour or CMYK colour mode. RGB colours or Red-Green-Blue colours are known as the primary colours of the light. This combination is represented on your tv or computer monitors. Digital cameras and scanners also make pictures with Red-Green-Blue colour combinations. Red-Green-Blue colour mode should be in use when taking photos that have to be seen on the monitor, or by emails or CD.

All colours of the light spectrum are formed from primary colours, but monitors can display only a limited colour range from the spectrum able to be seen. Light is emitted from the monitors, and the printing ink recognises only a certain wavelength of colours. All three primary colours are combined together to create white colour. If the three primary colours are absent, the light will appear as black. By combining various intensities of RGB colours, each mixture produces differing colours. A monitor of a tv or a computer consists of small units called pixels. Every pixel contains three units of light, and each unit represents red, green and blue.

We can’t see the individual pixels with the naked eye because they are too tiny. But every pixel is developed by applying correct values of RGB, as without the proper values of the colour units, you will not see any image displayed on the monitor. The values of RGB colours are calculated mainly by three methods. The first method is to set them with the help of different numeric values. The numeric values used for this purpose are the values from 0 to 255, and this is the best method of the three.

The second method is by using hexadecimal notations. This method is mainly used for HTML and other languages of the computer. These notations follow a logical pattern. The hexadecimal notation consists of six characters, with these characters being divided into three. The first pair represents the red, the second pair green and the third pair as blue. Each pair is represented by a hexadecimal number (0-9) and the letters (A-F). The third method is the percentage in which a certain percentage represents each colour. The program translates these percentages into suitable values ranges from 0-255.

CMYK colours or Cyan-Magenta-Yellow colours are subtractive colours, whereas RGB colours are additive colours. Additive colours are referring to light, whereas subtractive colours refer to inks, paint or pigment. CMYK mode is used for printing as all kind of printers use subtractive colours to result in different colours. When three additive colours are combined, the combination will produce white colour. But when three subtractive colours are combined, the combination produces black. This difference results in a great diversity between the print and the screen display. Additive colour projects the light from the monitor, and if more light is projected from a specific pixel, it will be closer to the pure light. In the case of printer inks, they will absorb light and reflects only the wavelengths of light that is associated with the colour of the ink.

The inks of the printer are subtracting the non-essential wavelengths from the light that falls on the ink. The remaining light will return to our eyes, giving the impression of a variety of colours. If you are mixing even more colours, then more light will be absorbed by the ink and a lesser amount of light will be reflected to your eyes, which results in darker colour. Black ink produced by the CMYK colours isn’t the strong black. You must add some black ink to get the best results for printing true black. To receive a stronger tone of a colour, you need to add black in CMYK mode.

What about the lighter shade of colours? Because white ink cannot be created using CMYK colours, you have to work with the hypothesis that you are printing colour on a white paper. As small dots of ink are used to print images the inks are used in lower percentage to receive lighter shades so that more white colour is visible among the dots. The values of CMYK colours are calculated using four different percentages. The values of each percentage should be between 0 and 100 so that the total percentage of the ink values can be up to 400%. However, when the total percentage does reach 400%, the ink takes more time to dry. And so, the total percentage of the ink shouldn’t be more than 300% in CMYK mode.

Both of the colour modes have limitations. Images created using RGB mode can’t be converted smoothly into CMYK mode due to the brightness of RGB colours. Similarly, CMYK colours can’t be translated into RGB mode because the sharp look of RGB colours is missing in CMYK mode online. This is the reason why RGB colours are used in monitors and CMYK colours are used in printers.

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Moodle Learning Management System (LMS)

Moodle is a learning management system (LMS), a piece of software designed using sound educational principles, to help people create effective web-based learning experiences. Moodle has a large and diverse user community with over 1,000,000 registered users on the Moodle Community site, speaking over 75 languages in 200 countries.

This group includes developers, educators, system administrators and business users. Validated registration statistics indicate there are more than 35 million end-users of Moodle software, across the world.

Moodle is provided freely as Open Source software. This means Moodle is copyrighted, but the software can be edited and customised to suit your organisational needs. Due to this, Moodle has an active web community of developers who contribute additional functionality to the software as requested by educators, administrators and business. The benefits of Moodle include:

1. Promotion of social constructionist pedagogy through learning activities such as blog, chat, comments, forums, messaging, rss, tags and wiki;
2. Enables web-based user activity monitoring, assessment, feedback and grade book functionality;
3. Suitable for 100% online education as well as endorsing a blended learning approach by supplementing face-to-face classes;
4. Simple, lightweight, efficient, flexible, scalable and highly compatible;
5. The software is open source. This means no licensing costs or vendor lock-in. Therefore lowering the total cost of ownership and enabling your organisation to invest resources to ensure a successful deployment.

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Can Marriage Counselling help you recover from an Affair? Perspectives from Gold Coast to Melbourne, Australia.

Across Australia, there are between 22-40% of married men and between 11-25% of married women who have been involved in an affair at least once. On the Gold Coast, with a large population and a glittery lifestyle on offer, the estimated figures are considerably higher.

Secrecy and minimisation are what it’s all about when an affair is happening, so if it’s discovered, the betrayal of the trust in the relationship is the most difficult issue for a partner to come to terms with.

Can a relationship or marriage survive an affair? Yes, a marriage or relationship can definitely be repaired after an affair, but it does take a lot of work by both partners, particularly the partner who has cheated. Marriage Counselling over at least the medium term is essential in order to restore the trust and the relationship.

Relationship counselling needs to look at the following five issues in order to fully recover from an affair:

1. The affair must end. The partner involved in the extra relationship must commit to having no more contact, in any form, if the marriage is to survive and rebuild.

2. The partner who has been deceived must be given the chance to express their emotions while it is necessary for the affair partner to listen, accept and validate those feelings, and also to reassure their partner that he or she does want and value their relationship.

3. The partner who has been involved in the affair must take on the responsibility to rebuild trust by being honest and accountable. This means comings and goings are knowable at any time and they are willing to have phone and emails checked at any time. This will need to continue for as long as it takes for the partner to feel that the trust has been rebuilt, often up to about 6 months.

4. Uncover the underlying cause. Both partners do need to explore why the affair happened so that it doesn’t reoccur in the future.

5. Forgive. For this to occur, the partner who has had the affair needs to feel deeply sorry for what he or she has done, as well as feel true empathy for the hurt the partner has been put through.

In addition, there must be a commitment and planning for a better future together. Only then is it possible for the other partner to be able to forgive completely.

Looking for marriage counselling in your city? For marriage counselling Gold Coast or marriage counselling Melbourne, contact Hart Relationship Counselling today. HRC16AUG2011

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Blood in Crime Scene Investigation

At the scene of a violent crime, the examining officer will likely find blood and evidence of other bodily fluids. These can tell a lot about what happened, not only about how the crime was committed, but also about the persons involved.

These days, nearly everyone knows his or her blood type, and whether it is A, B, AB, or 0, and Rhesus negative or positive. This categorising of blood into types was first done by Austrian physiologist Karl Landsteiner at the end of the 19th century. In his experiments, he took small amounts of blood and separated the red cells from the liquid, which is called serum. He achieved this by spinning the blood at high speed in a centrifuge. Then he took the serum and added red cells from different people. They acted in two different ways: either the cells mixed with the serum, or they clumped together (clotted), which is called ‘agglutination’.

Numerous attempts at blood transfusion had been made in the past, but this observation explained for the first time why so many had failed. When the blood was not of precisely the same type as that in the body, it resulted in the clumping of red cells, and the patient died. Tests of blood samples to discover whether agglutination will occur is now made prior to a transfusion being made.

DIVIDING BLOOD INTO GROUPS
Red blood cells carry substances called antigens. These help make antibodies that fight infection and disease. Landsteiner thought that his experiment showed the presence of two specific antigens, which he labeled A and B. The discovery of these antigens enabled him to divide human blood into 4 basic groups:

Group A: antigen A present; antigen B absent
Group B: antigen A absent; antigen B present
Group AB: both antigens A and B present
Group 0: both antigens absent

The particular blood group of each person depends on the genetic inheritance from both parents. Known as ABO typing, it has been used, for example, to help identify the biological father in paternity cases. How common each group is can vary from one national population to another. In the United States, for example, the relative proportions of ABO groups are roughly 39 percent A, 13 percent B, 43 percent 0, and 5 percent AB.

In 1927, Landsteiner found two other antigen types, labelling their occurrence as M, N, and MN. In 1940, working in the United States, he and A.S. Wiener discovered the Rhesus factor, named after the Rhesus monkeys they used in their investigations. Since then, other researchers have introduced more than a dozen further group systems. Different proteins and enzymes associated with specific blood groups have also been identified.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR FORENSICS
The ability to identify blood type is an excellent tool for revealing crucial evidence in a forensic investigation. If, for example, a victim’s ABO type is 0, and remains of blood of this type are found on the clothing of a suspect whose type is A, there is a likelihood that they have come from the victim.

Making use of the many other blood typing systems now available, this probability is increased greatly. If blood of type 0 occurs in 43% of the population, the substance haptoglobin-2 in 36 percent of these, and the enzyme PGM-2 in five percent, then the probability of an individual having these three blood types together is 43 x 36 x 5 = 7,740 in one million. In other words, around 8 people in every thousand will have this specific type of blood. It is still not enough to obtain a conviction on this evidence alone, but it can help to reduce the number of suspects.

In 1925, another important discovery occurred. Around 80% of people are ’secretors’. This means their saliva, urine, perspiration, and semen contain the same substances as their blood, and are able to be used for typing in much the same way. In 1940, two British researchers discovered that it was possible to distinguish between female and male body cells, particularly the white blood cells and those of the lining of the mouth. Blood typing has now become so precise that recently one scientist showed that he could distinguish between the blood of his twin daughters, who were genetically identical, because one had had chicken pox and the other had not.

SPLASHES OF BLOOD
At the scene of a violent homicidal attack, blood may be present in great quantities. Not only will it be found on the victim, but also on the weapon and the surroundings. Indoors, the floors, walls, and even the ceilings may be splashed. Careful observation of these bloodstains can provide valuable clues about what took place. Bloodstains and splashes are classified into six basic types.

Round drops are found on horizontal surfaces; depending on the height from which they fell, they can spray out into a starlike shape. Splashes of blood are shaped like an exclamation mark; they show that blood has flown through the air and hit a surface at an angle. While a victim is still alive, spurts of blood result from the pumping action of the heart. A major artery can spray blood a great distance.

Pools form around the body of a bleeding victim. If there is more than one pool, he either crawled, or was dragged, from one spot to another before dying. Smears will also be found if this happens. Trails are left when a bloody corpse is moved. There will be drops found if the body was carried, and smears if it was dragged.

If you are looking for a Sydney Criminal Lawyer, contact Go to Court. Our Sydney Criminal Lawyer is here to help. BS14082011SCL

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Uniforms and Promotional Clothing

Uniforms are the standard set of clothing worn by members of an organisation while participating in an activity. Commonly known are school uniforms, which many academic institutions require students and even staff to don. They are considered to be equalisers that remove differences among the wearers. Other types of uniforms are for office workers. Because a professional appearance vital to the corporate image and reputation of a company, uniforms are required in order to make the company look orderly and professional.

Sports uniforms are a familiar image. Uniforms are almost universally worn during sporting events and tournaments. And, although it’s important that a sports team is seen as orderly and even professional as with the previous types of uniforms, athletic uniforms are focused on providing comfort to the players. They must allow them to move freely.

Things to consider when using Sports Uniforms for Promotions
One of the things to be considered when using Sports Uniforms for promotions is the particular fabric used. It’s important that the fabric be lightweight and comfortable. They also need to be created of fabrics that are breathable and provide protection against skin complications. The materials must also cope with any movement and lunging stretches. And it also must be durable enough that it won’t shred.

You can find athletic uniforms that have company logos. These tell us that these companies support unity and teamwork. Uniforms oftentimes become a symbol of togetherness and source of pride to each member of a team.

Uniforms as Promotional Tools
Companies often provide corporate events, team-building exercises, and even sporting events. These times can be the perfect opportunity for employers and employees to relax and enjoy every activity. It’s also a wonderful time to promote a business. The company may take advantage of this chance to build team spirit through the use of Sports Uniforms. They can be provided to staff as casual sportswear. They may be simple gifts, but can be appreciated by your employees.

Sponsoring Sports Uniforms is also becoming a clever means of advertising and promotion of company brand and logo. You may have noticed that on various parts of the uniform are logos of sponsoring companies. Just like many other promotional apparel, sports uniforms have logos that depict a certain company. Since athletic uniforms are costly, it’s cost-effective to allow companies to sponsor their uniforms in exchange for the logo items printed on them. During matches, uniforms are used thus the logos are exposed.

Companies oftentimes volunteer to sponsor uniforms, obviously especially to winning teams. This causes them to be associated with successful teams, and that is beneficial for the image of the corporation. It creates an idea that they are both winners in their own fields.

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What is a Shade Sail?

In A Nutshell A piece of material suspended between fixed points offering shelter from the sun.

A little more detail Shade Sails are made from strong, shade cloth -which is a material (ideally a mix of high density polyethylene with a filler thread or tape), which has a stainless steel wire sewn into the perimeter. Shade Sail’s are suspended between posts or roof/wall fixings and provide protection from the sun. Shapes are based on ‘sails’ from ships, and are able to be made in almost any shape but are usually seen as triangles or variations of rectangles/squares.

Ancient History
The ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans were the first recorded people to use large pieces of fabric to provide shade. The Colosseum in Rome was shaded with hundreds of large canvas ‘sails’ which were pulled into place by Roman sailors.

Recent History
The modern Shade Sail was developed to a commercial level in Australia in the 1980s, when experimentation brgeoned with people using different shade cloth fabrics and installation methods.

Although the concept of a shade sail is simple, differences in design, components and manufacturing processes can greatly affect your resulting product.

If you are looking for a quote on shade sails in brisbane or shade structures in Brisbane, make sure you contact Metroshade. Metroshade has been in the shade sail business for over 19 years.

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New Website yChatter.com Links Renters with Rental Properties in Sydney

yChatter.com offers a new way for those looking for a flatmate to get in touch with prospective roommates and find rental properties in Sydney. The site offers total privacy to both renters and owners while creating a way for them to communicate directly.

The newest site you are able to find share accommodation in Sydney is yChatter.com, which blends social networking with real estate in a new way that brings property owners, flatmate finders and renters together. Owners or those looking for a housemate or roommate simply create a listing for their property, and then those looking for rental properties in Sydney can browse those listings. Renters create a profile, listing specifications for what they need in a share accommodation or rental property. They are then able to sort the rental properties on yChatter.com according to those specifications, or look at what else is available. Flatmate finders can do the same with the share accommodation listings on the site.

When flatmate finders or renters find a share accommodation or rental property they are interested in, they are able to put it on their watch list. This allows them to send a message to the property owner or potential roommate through yChatter.com. They can ask questions about the rental properties, book a viewing of their favourite share accommodation and more.

Cheryl Aitken, co-founder of yChatter.com, says, “It’s never been easier to find rental properties in Sydney. yChatter.com is a great way for renters and flatmate finders to communicate with owners without having to reveal their contact information until they are ready.”

On social networking sites, people connect by linking to friends and sharing photos with themselves and yChatter.com uses this feature to help renters find the best share accommodation or rental properties that have what they need. Having a photo on the site makes a renter seven times more likely to win the rental properties they want and property owners who upload photos of their rental properties are also more likely to find a great renter.

Managers at yChatter.com recommend looking at several rental properties because it can take just a few days or an entire month to find the right share accommodation. Flatmate finders who don’t post a picture of themselves are going to spend even more time looking.

Property owners also have the opportunity to use the free service from yChatter.com to see who is looking at their rental properties. They can send offers to renters they think would be a good fit. Renters or flatmate finders can then decline or accept the offers right through the yChatter website, making it very easy to indicate their intentions to the owners without having to call them.

yChatter.com is owned and operated by Premium IT Solutions Pty Ltd. The site is an online neighbourhood that allows renters and property owners to interact socially online.

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Impressionism

Impressionism was an important artistic movement, originally in painting and then in music, that developed chiefly in France during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Impressionist painting comprises the work produced between about 1867 and 1886 by a group of artists who shared a set of related methods and styles. The most obvious characteristic of Impressionism was an attempt to realistically and objectively record visual reality in terms of moving effects of light and colour. The principal Impressionist painters were Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Berthe Morisot, Armand Guillaumin, and Frédéric Bazille, who collaborated together, influenced each other, and exhibited together and alsoindependently. Edgar Degas and Paul Cézanne also worked in an Impressionist style for a time in the early 1870s. The established painter Édouard Manet, whose work in the 1860s influenced Monet and others of the group, himself took up the Impressionist approach about 1873.

These artists became dissatisfied earlier in their careers with academic teaching’s emphasis on painting an historical or mythological subject matter with literary or anecdotal overtones. They also rejected the conventional imaginative or idealising treatments of academic painting. By the late 1860s, Manet’s art reflected a new aesthetic—which was to be a leading force in Impressionist work—in which the importance of the traditional subject matter was downgraded and attention was shifted to the artist’s depiction of colour, tone, and texture as ends in themselves. In Manet’s work the subject became the vehicle for the artful composition of sections of flat colour, and perspectival depth was reduced so that the viewer would look at the surface patterns and relationships of the painting rather than into the illusory three-dimensional space it created. At about the same time, Monet was influenced by the revolutionary painters Eugene Boudin and J.R. Jongkind, who created fleeting effects of sea and sky by means of highly coloured and texturally varied modes of paint application. The Impressionists also used Boudin’s practice of working entirely out-of-doors while looking at the actual scene, instead of completing the paintings from drawings in the studio, as was the established practice.

In the late 1860s Monet, Pisarro, Renoir, and others began painting landscapes and river scenes in which they began to realistically paint the colours and forms of objects as they appeared in daylight at a given time. These artists abandoned the traditional landscape palette of muted greens, browns and grays and instead painted in a lighter, sunnier, more brilliant palette. They started by copying the play of light upon water and the reflected colours of ripples, attempting to copy the many and motion effects of sunlight and shadow and of direct and reflected light that they observed. In their efforts to reproduce actual visual impressions as registered on the retina, they gave up on the use of grays and blacks in shadows as inaccurate and used complementary colours instead. More importantly, they learned to build up objects out of discrete flecks and dabs of pure harmonizing or contrasting colour, thereby evoking the broken-hued brilliance and the variations of shade resulting from sunlight and its reflections. Forms in their pictures no longer were with clear outlines and became softer, shimmering and vibrating in a re-creation of actual outdoor conditions. Ultimately, traditional formal compositions were abandoned in favour of a realistically casual and less contrived positioning of objects within the painting. The Impressionists extended their newfound techniques to paint landscapes, trees, houses, and even urban street scenes and famous buildings such as railroad stations.

In 1874 the group held its first show, separate from the official Salon of the French Academy, which had regularly rejected almost all of their works. Monet’s painting “Impression: Sunrise” (1872; Musée Marmottan, Paris) earned them the initially mocking name “Impressionists” from the journalist Louis Leroy who wrote of them in the satirical magazine Le Charivari in 1874. The artists themselves quickly adopted the name because it perfectly desribed their intention to accurately convey visual “impressions.” They held seven following exhibitions, the last in 1886. During that time they continued to develop their own personal and individual styles. All of them, however, affirmed in their work the principles of freedom of technique, a personal rather than a conventional approach to subject matter, and the truthful reproduction of nature.

By the mid-1880s the Impressionist group had begun to disperse as each painter increasingly pursued his own aesthetic interests and principles. In a short time, however, it had accomplished a revolution in the study of art, providing a technical starting point for the post-impressionist artists Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Georges Seurat and freeing subsequent Western art from narrow techniques and approaches to subject matter.

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