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Thursday, February 7, 2013

In West Bank, a space for tutus and pirouettes

Ramallah Ballet Center owner Shyrine Ziadeh decided not to leave the West Bank to study dance, but instead opened a space to cultivate talent and hope among local youth.

By Chelsea Sheasley,?Contributor / February 4, 2013

Shyrine Ziadeh leads one of her three classes at the Ramallah Ballet Center, which she opened in December 2011 with the help of her family.

Christa Case Bryant/The Christian Science Monitor

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The Ramallah Ballet Center, where girls in white tights and pink tutus twirl in front of a long mirror, seems a world away from the street below, where butchered lambs hang for sale, resentment lingers from the last intifada, and horns blare as cars snake dangerously close to each other in the narrow streets.?

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Hoping for more boys

Another challenge Ziadeh hopes to overcome is gender. Her classes have been predominately female, but she thinks it?s important to involve boys as well because of the impact dance can have on them. She hopes that boys will start to enroll if she offers hip-hop classes.

?The problem is not with the Arab culture,? she says, citing a friend who teaches more boys than girls in the Egyptian royal ballet. ?I think it?s here, the boys want to be more tough.?

Being ready for an intifada is a prominent part of how boys are raised, she says. ?[They say] ?how can I dance when I have to defend my country?? But they can defend the country by dancing,? Ziadeh says.

Fadia Othman, the mother of one of Ziadeh?s students, says the classes help her 6-year-old daughter to be calmer in school.

Hadeel Kamil, a German-Palestinian gum surgeon who also has a daughter in the class, praises the decision of people like Ziadeh who stay in the Palestinian territories, sharing their talents locally instead of moving to a potentially easier and more lucrative life abroad.

"Palestine deserves people who know how to think," Ms. Kamil says.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/csmonitor/globalnews/~3/3ipoxDPwvUw/In-West-Bank-a-space-for-tutus-and-pirouettes

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WISE space telescope feels the heat from Orion's sword

Feb. 5, 2013 ? The tangle of clouds and stars that lie in Orion's sword is showcased in a new, expansive view from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE.

Orion, the famous hunter, is visible in evening skies throughout the world from about December through April. The constellation appears tranquil and still to the naked eye, but lying in its sword, at what appears to be a slightly fuzzy star, is a turbulent cauldron of stellar birth.

WISE scanned the whole sky in infrared light, capturing this vast view of the dynamic region, called the Orion nebula. The telescope picked up the infrared glow from dust heated by newborn stars. The colors green and red highlight this warmed dust, while the white regions are the hottest. Massive stars burned through the dust, carving out cavities, the largest of which is seen at the center of the picture.

Astronomers think that our sun was probably born in a similar cloud some five billion years ago. Over time, the cloud would have dispersed and the stars would have drifted apart, leaving us more isolated in space. The crowded newborn stars in the Orion nebula are less than 10 million years old -- billions of years from now, they will likely spread out.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages, and operated, WISE for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The spacecraft was put into hibernation mode in 2011, after it scanned the entire sky twice, completing its main objectives. Edward Wright is the principal investigator and is at UCLA. The mission was selected competitively under NASA's Explorers Program managed by the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan, Utah. The spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

More information is online at http://www.nasa.gov/wise and http://wise.astro.ucla.edu and http://jpl.nasa.gov/wise

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/6dmhft6WsBw/130205152257.htm

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Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Promoting Birmingham's history

Convention and Visitors Bureau teams with other agencies to market the city to tourists in 2013.

The Greater Birmingham Convention and Visitors Bureau is working with multiple local organizations to attract people from around the country to Civil Rights-based commemorations going on throughout the community this year.

Marketing of the city?s upcoming events began in 2011 with brochures directed at tour planners across the country, mainly because they often plan trips a couple of years in advance. Those planners who work with group bus tours became one of the primary target audiences for the commemoration and have already begun increasing their bookings into Birmingham. The tourist brochures show locations significant to the movement and events that would potentially fit their needs and interests.

They?ve targeted not only those who travel by ground, but also by air. ?In 2012 we also began running ?awareness? ads in Southwest?s in-flight magazine, Spirit,? said Dilcy Hilley, V.P. of Marketing for the CVB. Plans have been made to buy updated ads in future issues of Spirit and other periodicals with wide distribution.

During the nationally syndicated Tom Joyner Morning Show, the CVB has produced 60-second radio spots that promote traveling to Birmingham for the events. Website banners are also part of the bureau?s plan.

The bureau is currently working on the production of the spring edition of the Birmingham Tourist Guide, which will feature a section, about 8-10 pages long, on different events and the city?s civil rights history.

Travel journalists have been increasingly ?requesting tours of the city and especially of civil rights related sites,? Hilley told Weld via email. A segment on The Today Show named Birmingham one of the six places across the globe to visit in 2013 and USA Today recently published an article on the commemoration. This coverage resulted from the ongoing cooperative efforts of the CVB and the city of Birmingham?s Office of Public Information.

Working with the Alabama Tourism Department, the CVB plans to sponsor tours specifically for the media between May and September, the months when many of the most important events occurred back in 1963.

For those who are already in the city, the visitors bureau created a free audio tour of Kelly Ingram Park. ?The tour, accessible by cell phone, guides visitors through the historical significance of the park?s sculptures and provides a timeline of events as they unfolded in the park and around the city,? said Hilley. Funded by a state tourism grant, visitors can listen to the audio guide by calling 205-307-5455, then pressing any number between 1 and 9.

The state tourism department released its own brochure last year filled with notable places to visit across the state, and accounts of ?the personalities and events that reshaped the nation.? They invite readers to experience the ?wide range of ceremonies, plays, musical programs and lectures? that await them from Montgomery, to Selma, to Birmingham, and places in between. The brochure can be found here.

Both the city of Birmingham and CVB are working with other cities in creating a national civil rights trail highlighting cities including Selma, Montgomery, Memphis, Jackson, Mississippi, Columbia, and Washington D.C.

The website 50 Years Forward is the city?s main promotional tool for locals and potential tourists alike to discover what the commemoration has to offer. Originally the responsibility of GBCVB, the city is now at the helm. The website still links to GBCVB when looking for specific travel information (such as accommodations, dining, and attractions).

?Birmingham has never before experienced a citywide anniversary of this magnitude, so we have nothing by which to measure [how many visitors the city projects the events will bring in],? said Hilley. But according to 2011 figures, Jefferson County had more than four million overnight visitors, which led to over $1.5 billion in tourist spending. The CVB estimates that those numbers will increase because of the expected rise in visitation.

?I expect we will have anecdotal evidence of increased tourism as we go through the year,? said Hilley.

Source: http://weldbham.com/blog/2013/02/05/promoting-birminghams-history/

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Biased Review

It's a sad, sad day when companies start reviewing their own products. Today is a sad, sad day. Nokia has just posted their review of the Lumia 620 budget Windows phone to the Nokia Conversations blog. Guess what! Author Adam Fraser had only good things to say about the little mid-range Lumia. He just so happens to be a "Writer and Reporter at Nokia Conversations Blog", who "has owned more Nokia handsets than he can count", but just ignore that bit. I'm sure he's totally objective about the whole thing.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/---zHz1BLKE/

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How to Watch and Record Live TV on Your XBMC Media Center

How to Watch and Record Live TV on Your XBMC Media Center Building a media center is a killer way to watch or stream your favorite movies and TV shows, but if you miss being able to watch live TV?and record it so you can watch it later?you can turn your XBMC box into a personal video recorder (PVR) with just a bit of setup. Here's what you need to do.

XBMC 12 Frodo finally brought official PVR support to our favorite media center software, and it integrates very nicely. It still takes a bit of setup to get running though, so we're here to detail all the steps involved for your XBMC media center. If you don't have one yet, check out our guide to building one and setting everything up before continuing.

The Advantages (and Disadvantages) of Turning Your Media Center into a PVR

First things first: putting together a DIY PVR can be useful, but it won't be quite the same as having a TiVo or other commercial DVR in your house.

The main advantage of adding PVR functionality to your media center is that you can then do anything you want with your recordings. You can add them to your regular XBMC library, put them on your phone or tablet for watching later, or do anything else you so desire. It can also much cheaper than buying a separate DVR, depending on what you're recording (cable users will probably have to spend more). You can also customize your list of channels, which is nice, so you don't have to see channels you don't like if you don't want to.

The disadvantage to setting up a PVR this way is that it just doesn't work as well as a dedicated product. There are a lot of different TV tuners and PVR applications out there, but your experience won't be quite as smooth and seamless as it would be on a dedicated product. For example, on our main test machine, things worked fairly well, but changing channels is noticeably slower than on a regular TV, picture quality can vary a lot (depending on your device and the codecs you use), and you may even experience the occasional freeze or crash. PVR support in XBMC is still very young, so this will definitely improve over time, but it's unlikely you're going to get the same experience you do on a device made for PVR.

Overall, I'd say my experience has definitely been a positive one though. I bought a very cheap TV tuner and have been able to watch and record TV right from my home theater PC for much less than any other device, which is pretty awesome, and being able to have everything available from the XBMC interface is pretty great. The more you experiment with different programs and setups, though, the better experience you're going to get, so let's get started.

Step One: Install a TV Tuner Card

How to Watch and Record Live TV on Your XBMC Media Center In order to get live TV on your home theater PC, you'll need to install a TV tuner card. We've talked about this before, so we won't go into a ton of detail here, but do a little shopping and then poke around the forums for the different PVR apps to see which ones will work best for your needs. In our box, we're using the simple and cheap Hauppauge HVR-1250. It isn't the most feature-filled around, but it works well for watching and recording simple over-the-air signals (though it can only do one at a time). Once you've bought your TV tuner, install it into your computer and be sure to download the latest drivers before you continue.

Step Two: Install Your PVR Backend

You'll need two different pieces of software to run your PVR: a backend and a frontend. In this case, our frontend?the program from which we watch live TV and control our recordings?is going to be XBMC via an add-on. The backend is the program that actually interfaces with your TV tuner, decodes the signal, and does the recording. Some backends come with their own frontends built-in, but allow you to use another frontend instead, like XBMC. You have a lot of choices depending on your operating system, but here are the instructions for two of the easier backends around.

Windows Users: NextPVR

For Windows, we recommend NextPVR because it's easy to setup, and comes highly recommended. Here's what you need to do:

Download and install NextPVR. You'll also want to download the latest patch files from here to ensure everything runs smoothly?just drag the files into your NextPVR program files folder.
Start up NextPVR. Right-click anywhere in the window to access its settings.
In the left-hand sidebar, click on Devices, then select the one you want to use (for example, your ATSC tuner if you're using an antenna, or your QAM tuner if you're using cable). Click the Configure button.
Click Scan and wait for it to find all your channels. When it's done, it'll say "Scan Complete" and you should have a full list of available channels.
Go to "Recording" in the left sidebar and set the folder where you want recordings to be stored. You can also tweak other settings here. We recommend checking the "Background Recording" box as well.
Go to Misc in the sidebar and set your Live TV buffer folder.

That should be everything you need to get started. Head to "Live TV" to try watching TV. If you don't get any picture or sound, you likely need to use a different decoder to get things working well.

How to Watch and Record Live TV on Your XBMC Media Center To change your decoder, open up NextPVR's settings and go to "Decoders." The decoders you want to worry about will depend on your device. For example, my HVR-1250 uses MPEG-2 and AAC to stream and record TV, so the MPEG-2 and AAC codecs are the ones I needed to change. You may find other codecs in the respective dropdown menus on this settings pane, but if you don't (or if none of the available ones work well), you'll need to download a new one and try it out.

This is the more arduous part of the process. Different codecs are going to work well for different people, so you'll have to experiment. A good place to start would be the SAF codec pack for NextPVR, though you can install and try other codecs too (check the NextPVR forums for suggestions based on your equipment). Keep trying different codecs until you find one that gets you the picture quality, smoothness, and sound that you want, and then continue to step three.

Linux Users: Tvheadend

Tvheadend is a simple backend for Linux that is very easy to install, and can be managed from a web interface?which means you can manage your recordings from any computer in the house, without even entering XBMC. Here's how to install it on an Ubuntu-based system:

Run the following three commands, one after the other, to install Tvheadend:
sudo add-apt-repostory ppa:adamsutton/tvheadend
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install tvheadend
As Tvheadend installs, it will prompt you to create a username and password for its web interface (which you'll use to manage the program). Create one as instructed and continue the installation.
When it's done, open up your browser and head to http://localhost:9981. Alternatively, you can access it from another computer by heading to http://192.168.0.11:9981 (where 192.168.0.11 is the IP address of the machine on which Tvheadend is installed). Enter your username and password when prompted.
You should be greeted with the Tvheadend web interface. First, click the Configuration tab, then click the TV Adapters tab under that. From the dropdown menu on the left, pick your TV tuner.
Click the "Add DVB Network by Location" button. Choose your location and the type of signal you're looking for. For example, if you're hooked up to an over-the-air antenna, you would choose the ATSC option, and if you have cable, try the Cable Standard option.
Click the "Add DVB Network" button on the left to continue. Now, look to the box on the right. At the bottom, you should see a line that says "Muxes Awaiting Initial Scan." This will slowly drop to 0 as it scans channels. When it finds channels, the number under "Services" will increase.
When "Muxes Awaiting Initial Scan" reaches 0, you should have a number of Services scanned and ready to go (if not, try a different signal type or make sure your tuner is working). Click "Map DVB Services to Channels" to finish the channel scanning process.

Tvheadend doesn't have its own frontend for watching TV like many backends do, so to test if your setup worked, you'll have to continue to step 3 and try it out in XBMC.

All Users: Experiment

We've picked these two options because they make good choices for beginners due to their easy setup. However, every backend program is different, and there's very little consensus over which is "best" or even the most stable (just search for any two backends on the XBMC forums and you'll find much debate). So, if you don't like the first one you try, download another one and see if it works better for you. It's a long process of trial and error, but the more you experiment, the more likely you are to find something that works for you.

Step Three: Set Up XBMC's PVR Add-On

Once you've ensured your backend is running correctly, it's time to integrate it with XBMC. This step is pretty easy. Make sure you're running the latest version of XBMC (known as 12, or "Frodo"), and then:

How to Watch and Record Live TV on Your XBMC Media Center

Open up XBMC and head to Settings > Add-Ons > Disabled Add-Ons. Head to PVR Clients, and select the one for your program (in this case, either NextPVR or Tvheadend). Choose Enable.
Next, go to Configure. Most of the default settings should work fine here, but if your backend has a username or password, type those in now. If your backend supports Timeshifting (rewinding or pausing live TV), enable it under the "Advanced" tab.
Go back to XBMC's Settings and choose Live TV. Under General, check the Enabled box, and tweak any other settings you want here. I generally like to go to Playback and uncheck Start Playback Minimized.
If you go back to the main menu, you should see a new section called "Live TV" where you can watch shows, see an episode guide, and set up recordings. Congratulations! You've got XBMC working as a PVR.

You may still have to do some experimentation here to find out the settings that work best for your specific hardware and software, but for the most part, you should be good to go. Try watching or recording a show from XBMC, tweak your episode list from the Live TV settings, and enjoy.

Going Further

This is a pretty basic setup, but you can do a lot more with your PVR once you get it set up, such as:

How to Watch and Record Live TV on Your XBMC Media Center Find a Better Programming Guide: The electronic programming guide (or EPG for short) you start with is probably pretty lacking at this stage. The best way to improve it is by setting up an EPG grabber, which will download a high quality episode guide and save it as an XMLTV file to which you can point your backend. Schedules Direct comes very highly recommended, and is only $25 a year (well worth the price), but what you use will depend on your country. Check out NextPVR's EPG section in the wiki for more info, and if you're using Tvheadend, poke around the forums for more information on how to set up an episode guide.

Skip and Remove Commercials: You may also want to download a program like Comskip that automatically finds and skips commercials for you. Check out this page on the NextPVR wiki or this page on Tvheadend's wiki for more information on how to set that up. You can even set it up to remove commercials from your video files altogether.

Again, this is just the beginning. There are a lot of cool things you can do with your DIY PVR, so once you're all set up, check out the XBMC forums (as well as the forums for your respective backend) for more ideas and support. But for now, kick back with a cold one and enjoy some live TV. You've earned it.

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/t1iMedssRAM/how-to-watch-and-record-live-tv-on-your-xbmc-media-center

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Microsoft Surface: From Idea To Pro

When it comes to designing new hardware, most companies are pretty quiet about the design process. Microsoft, with its Surface tablets, is taking a far more open approach than many other companies. Just a few days ahead of the launch of the Intel-powered Surface Pro, I got a chance to sit down with Ralf Groene, Microsoft's Director of Industrial Design, earlier this week to talk about the history and the design process that eventually led to the Surface project as we know it today.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/5cA_3CKQJcw/

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Sunday, February 3, 2013

Berlusconi: if I win, Italians get home tax back

Former Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi delivers his speech at a gathering of supporters in Milan, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 3, 2013. Berlusconi is promising Italians if they vote him back into office that he will not only abolish an unpopular tax on primary residences, but he'll refund property taxes Premier Mario Monti's government made them pay in 2012. Berlusconi abolished the tax when last elected premier in 2008, but Monti, who replaced him in 2011 as Italy sunk into the Eurozone debt crisis, revived it to help fill state coffers. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)

Former Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, foreground, sits in front of Northern League party's leader Roberto Maroni, in Milan, Italy, Sunday, Jan. 27, 2013. Silvio Berlusconi says Benito Mussolini did much good, except for dictator's regime's anti-Jewish laws. Berlusconi also defended Mussolini for siding with Hitler, saying the late fascist leader likely reasoned that German power would expand so it would be better for Italy to ally itself with Germany. He was speaking to reporters Sunday on the sidelines of a ceremony in Milan to commemorate the Holocaust. When Germany's Nazi regime occupied Italy during World War II, thousands from the tiny Italian Jewish community were deported to death camps. In 1938, before the war's outbreak, Mussolini's regime passed anti-Jewish laws, barring them from universities and many professions, among other bans. Berlusconi called the laws Mussolini's "worst fault" but insisted that in many other things, "he did good." (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)

ROME (AP) ? Media mogul Silvio Berlusconi on Sunday promised Italians that if they vote him back into office, he will abolish an unpopular tax on primary residences and refund property taxes Premier Mario Monti's government made them pay in 2012 as a key austerity measure to rescue the country from the eurozone debt crisis.

Berlusconi abolished the tax in 2008, when he was elected for a third term as premier, to fulfill a campaign promise. But the tax was immediately revived when Monti, an economist and former European Union commissioner, replaced him in 2011 as Italy sunk deeper into the debt crisis.

Berlusconi is a 76-year-old populist trying for a political comeback despite a recent criminal conviction for tax fraud and other judicial woes, including a trial in which he is charged with paying for sex with an underage teenage girl. He claims he is the innocent victim of prosecutors he contends sympathize with the left.

He told a gathering of applauding supporters in Milan that the property tax so spooked Italians that they cut back on buying consumer goods, and quit investing, aggravating the economic crisis in recession-mired Italy.

"This tax caused Italian families worry, anxiety, fear of the future," Berlusconi said, contending that tax so depressed the real estate market that 360,000 people become unemployed, including bricklayers, artisans, locksmiths and electricians.

He insisted the revenue lost by reimbursing homeowners the ?4 billion ($5.4 billion) they paid in property taxes could be compensated by eliminating state financing for political parties, raising taxes on non-essential goods like cigarettes and lottery tickets, and taxing Italians' financial instruments' income in Switzerland.

Cost-cutting measures to compensate the lost revenue would also include halving the number of legislators, a proposed reform that has gone nowhere including during Berlusconi's tenure in the premier's office.

The populist's center-right forces trail a center-left coalition in opinion polls before Feb. 24-25 elections. Monti, heading a centrist ticket, trails even farther back, but his forces could prove to hold the key to forming a coalition since no one ticket is expected to get enough seats in Parliament to govern alone.

Berlusconi didn't mention that his Freedom People legislators in Parliament approved nearly all of Monti's austerity measures, including the same property tax he is now vowing to eliminate at his first Cabinet meeting should he be victorious at the ballot box.

With the economy stagnant, unemployment rising and Italians growing weary of sacrifices imposed by the government, Berlusconi withdrew his party's support for Monti late last year, forcing elections to be called about two months ahead of time.

Monti sarcastically commented on Berlusconi's promise to reimburse property owners for the tax paid last year. "He's magnificent," Monti told reporters. "Berlusconi governed for so many years and maintained none, any of his promises," including one to reduce income taxes.

"What's more, he created many problems, so much so that he had to leave" office, Monti added. While Berlusconi is trying to be elected premier for the fourth time, "Italians have good memories, I believe," Monti said.

Berlusconi has been coy on whether he would be premier again should his forces should win the election. On Sunday, he added a new twist, saying he would be economy minister, joking that he would hold that post if his top aide "would let him."

Front-runner Pier Luigi Bersani has seen a slight drop in support in the polls for his center-left campaign coalition, possibly because of fallout from a widening scandal involving an Italian bank whose board included some backers from his Democratic Left Party. Running third in some polls and ahead of Monti is a comic and political agitator, Beppe Grillo.

The same polls have found that roughly a third of eligible voters saying they are either undecided or won't vote.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-02-03-Italy-Berlusconi/id-76220f5a1d684cb2a09d3351893aba15

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