The inside and outside of the home are spaces that are traditionally decorated to feel physically and mentally isolated from each other. Thankfully this narrow point-of-view is falling out of fashion and new home remodeling trends are emerging. Instead, homeowners are embracing an “indoor-outdoor flow” approach to exterior design and remodeling. This philosophy brings living room outside, and the backyard into the dining area.

Want your home to feel larger and more inviting? Use these five tips to make this home remodeling trend work for you!

Add A Deck Or Patio

One of the easiest ways to remodel your home to reflect an indoor-outdoor flow is by adding a deck or patio. You might prefer a deck if you live on uneven terrain, as they would be easier to install than a patio. A deck can also significantly raise the resale value of your home. A patio works best if it’s built on relatively level ground. It’s also the more affordable of the two options.

Whichever choice you go with, it will represent an ideal starting point for creating a living space that easy flows together.

Decorate Using A Common Theme

In addition to using living room furniture outside, why not use a similar color theme? Color can be one of the easiest ways to psychologically join two areas together. Using similar furniture and colors makes it feel as if an area of the house naturally, rather than ending abruptly, when you head into the adjacent outdoor area.

Build An Outdoor Kitchen

Many homeowners think of cooking in the backyard as something limited to grilling during summer months. But building an outdoor kitchen makes this a practical activity no matter what the occasion. Some of the more well-thought-out additions work as a second kitchen area. Make sure to hire an experienced room addition contractor for your home in order to make this “outside kitchen” a favorite spot in your house.

Keep Weather In Mind

One of the biggest reasons for an indoor-outdoor disconnect is one space involves weather concerns the other typically lacks. Still, it’s possible to remodel while making the elements work in your favor. An east-facing deck will make breakfast a pleasantly warm affair and provide a shady getaway during the much-hotter afternoon. It’s also best to opt for indoor-looking furniture that holds up to wind and rain.

Add Special Doors To Bring The Outside In

The most effective tool for adding indoor-outdoor flow is making use of special doors. Whereas a traditional door further divides outside and inside spaces, these doors are created with this particular construction style mind. Popular choices include bi or tri-fold doors, glass sliding doors, and also rolling blinds.

Think of your entire home space as one unified living area Indoor-outdoor flow is easiest to achieve when you think of the whole home as a unified space. When planning your new remodeling project, you should consider hiring a contractor who has experience with this new trend. Many general contractors throughout the country are well educated in this new home remodeling trend and can answer whatever renovation concerns you might have. Choose the one who specializes in room additions for your construction needs.

All around the world ISPs have discovered that Bit Torrent is taking a toll on their networks, and have started to restrict the traffic, especially during peak times. What this means for the average user that uses torrents is that downloads could be slow or even worse stop all together during peak times. It also means that you may not be able to watch your favorite TV show when you want to. There is an alternative: watch TV online via streaming technology.

What is shaping, exactly?

Shaping, put simply, is the restriction of certain traffic. This may occur during peak times or all the time. How ISPs do this depends on their technical people, but they target the items that are putting the most load on their network, and Bit Torrent is at the top of the list at present, since it is putting the most load on networks. As an example, Comcast in the United States, still allows torrent users to download shows but they do not allow seeding. Whereas Atlantic Broadband restricts Bit Torrent bandwidth, effectively slowing down downloads. They are well within their rights to do this, because they have to cater for all users and during peak periods, especially, they could restrict certain traffic.

How do you get around shaping?

There are a couple of ways to get around shaping, actually. The first way is the encrypt your torrent to fool the ISP. You have to be cluey to do this, but it is possible. The other way is to find an alternative way of getting the data to your computer.

Streaming and why the ISP’s see it as different.

Without getting too technical, to an ISP video streaming looks like normal traffic. The computer language it uses, known as Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP), is very similar to HTTP protocol which most websites use in one form or another. Because it is so similar they don’t focus on it the way they do with Bit Torrent. For all intensive purposes streaming is invisible to the ISPs and it therefore flies under the radar.

What are the disadvantages?

There are some disadvantages to using streaming, as there are with any alternative technologies. During peak periods, the same time the ISPs are madly shaping their traffic, it is possible that the image will be jerky or lower in quality. During off peak periods this shouldn’t be an issue.

How can I use streaming to watch TV online?

There are two main ways you can use streaming to watch a TV show online. The first is via the network’s website, if you are in the country of origin for the show. The other way is to use a client, which is actually very similar to using a client to download via Bit Torrent. Once the client is on your computer you can pick the channel you wish to watch. The great advantage in going with a client is that you can watch TV shows online in real time, and you aren’t restricted to the country of origin. Be careful, though, there are two types of clients, on type uses torrenting methods and is known as Peer to Peer TV or P2PTV, and the other is a streaming client. The one you are after is the latter, because it’s the one that gets around shaping.

Streaming is most probably the best way around ISP shaping if you want to watch TV online. If your ISP does restrict traffic, consider this alternative, and I’m sure you’ll soon be back to watching the TV shows you want to watch.

Planning a new room? Before you make too many design or decorating decisions, think about the ceilings. Some options are:

1. Stretch fabric:

Stretch fabric ceilings give a rather dramatic effect and so tend to be reserved for big venue events. One can get very creative with stretch fabric ceilings. Possible uses can range from colour, fabric type, using the ceiling as a projection screen and displaying video or photos. Fabric can be installed in a variety of ways to give the room a three-dimensional effect.

2. Wooden beam:

Wooden beams on a ceiling can give any home or space a grand and country feel. Beams can be independent of the ceiling itself, hanging a bit beneath it, or they can be attached right onto it. Beams can be slanted on an angle or straight, they can be rectangular and smooth or they can look a lot like imperfect logs. For a very attractive look it’s always nice to have dark beams on a white ceiling.

3. Slanted:

Slanted ceilings are often seen in attics or what they call ‘cathedral’ style rooms. They are very attractive and give a room a very warm feeling, almost as if they hug the contents of the room and bring it all closer together, including the people in it. A disadvantage is that they make the room a little bit smaller. This is less of an issue when the ceilings are high, but when they are low, people can often bash their heads, can’t store as much stuff etc.

4. Industrial:

It’s been a bit of a hot trend for some time now to have industrial looking ceilings in lived/worked in buildings. This of course is mores so the case for properties such as lofts, warehouse, design firms and other edgy businesses. The whole idea with industrial ceilings is that everything is exposed, including piping, fans, vents, even wires, depending on the owners style.

5. Textured:

Textured ceilings are a good alternative to plain painted ones. They add a bit of dimension to the room while keeping it simple and relatively basic. Stucco is a popular choice amongst those looking for a bit of a textured ceiling. Others prefer a pattern of some kind. This might be craved right into the wet plaster or even stuck on with some sort of stencil or thick paper.

Ceilings can have a big impact on a room. High ceilings make a room feel bigger, slanted ones cosier, beams, rustic, and industrial urban. What type of ceilings will you choose for your new room?

Most savvy internet marketers will know how important it is to have fresh content added to their sites on a daily basis but the problem sometimes is to find the time and/or content. Adding an RSS feed is a good way to add fresh content to a site, but the problem again is that most of them only get updated on a weekly basis.

I have been wracking my brains trying to find a semi- automated way to do this to make my life a little bit easier. The search engines are always looking for fresh content – adding random RSS feeds seemed to be the answer!

So I did so some searches on the Internet to see what is available. A search for “add random content to site” sure enough brought up a bevy of links – most of which went to sites that wanted to sell me their products for hundreds of dollars!

Having been on the Internet for quite a while I know by now that most of the information that is on sale can most times be found with just a little bit of work. So I refined my searches somewhat and I found a gem that I would like to share with you for…. You guessed it – free! It will take a bit of work from your side to tweak the script a bit, but it’s worth it, right?

First you will have to head over to: http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex17/randomiframe.htm and copy the available java script. This displays a little content box 130×130. Go on, before they decide to start selling it!

Paste the script into your favourite editor and make the following changes:

To change it to display your content you will have to make the box a little bigger. To achieve that you have to change this piece of code:

width=130 height=130

I have mine set to width=500 height=800 but you should change it to fit your content. Play around with it a bit and change the width or height where necessary. If you do not want a frame around your content, change this piece of code:

frameborder=”1″ to frameborder=”0

To display your content, you will have to create html pages for it. For now, just create a blank html page, I will show you later where to get the content for it.

As you can see, the script calls the pages like this:

randomcontent[0]=”random1.htm” – change the “random” to whatever you want to call your created html page – e.g. successstory1.htm.

You can basically display unlimited pages with this script. To add more pages to display, just add:

e.g. randomcontent[4]=”random5.htm”, randomcontent[5]=”random6.htm” etc.

You can now add the script to any page that you want to display random content on.

To get free rss content to rotate, head on over to http://www.goarticles.com They also have literally thousands of free articles that you can use for fresh content on your site. Add the code for the rss scripts to the blank html pages that you have created (or an article if you so prefer) then upload all your pages to your server.

Make sure that the page that you are calling them from (the page with the randomizer java script) and your content pages are in the same directory, otherwise you will have to change the path to the pages in the java script code!

If you would like to get more rss feeds, just do a search for “free rss feeds” on any of the search engines.

So, there you have it. Randomized rss content for your site without having to pay a cent.

Enjoy your fresh content and the increased traffic!

This is something that was a bit of a mystery to me in my early

days.

I would hear people talking about the grain on the green and how

the ball would go fast if the grain was leaning towards the hole

and how the ball would not reach the hole if one was putting

against the grain unless this factor was taken into account.

Well here is a bit about grain in case you, like I did, find this

subject a bit of a mystery.

When the grass grows, it grows in a particular direction.

The grass on greens is a special type of grass and lies flat on the surface.

There are bent grasses that lie flat because it is the nature of

the grass to bend at ground level and grow horizontally, hence the

name.

There are other types of grass are cut very short and tend to grow a bit

horizontally.

Luckily all the grass grows in the same direction.

If you can imagine the grass a little longer but still lying horizontally, you

can see that if it is lying towards the direction of the put, that

there will be very little resistance to the roll of the ball.

However, if it is growing towards you and away from the direction

of the put, every blade of grass acts as a prod as it were to stop

the ball rolling.

Hence the ball will be held up a bit and will not

roll as far.

This prodding effect is called the grain.

It represents the direction in which the grass is growing.

One way to determine which way it is growing is to look at the

grass.

If it has a slight sheen, or looks light then it is growing away from you.

If you hit a ball along this path it is called hitting with the grain.

If it is dark, then this is because you are looking at the tips of the

grass and the dark part between the blades of grass and the ground.

This means the grass is growing towards you.

Hitting a put along this path is called hitting against the grain.

Certain things determine in which direction the grass will grow,

and these can be taken into account if you are in doubt.

Most grasses will grow towards the nearest water.

They will also grow in the direction of drainage,

Often they grow towards the setting sun.

Teaching teens about the reproductive system can be the most difficult discussion a parent can have. Many fear that talking about sexual subjects with their teens will lead to further experimentation and promiscuity but nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, not knowing the information leads to more curiosity, and above all else-danger. Teaching teens about the reproductive system can indeed be difficult but it is the most important discussion you will ever have with your child.

The best approach is to let them know that it is as uncomfortable for you as it is for them. It is okay to be human and let your teenager know that even though it embarrasses you it is something you feel strongly about. Teaching teens about the reproductive system and sexual relationships and the dangers surrounding promiscuity helps them to make informed intelligent decisions when the situations that WILL arise happen. Knowing that you have given them the information they need to stand up to the pressures that exist today will make talking about the subject much easier for you.

You might be surprised once you get past the initial embarrassment that your teen is anxious to talk to you about the issues that trouble them regarding sex, relationships, peer pressure, and other issues related to the reproductive system. Many kids want to talk to their parents but are just as uncomfortable broaching the subject as you are. The fact is they need help navigating the world we live in today. Sexual experiences are out in the open and still remain shrouded in mystery and pressure more than ever before. Knowing that they can talk to you about these subjects will give them a place to turn when the pressures become too tough to handle alone and the ability to make the right decisions with your guidance.

As you settle in to begin teaching teens about the reproductive system use familiar examples from TV, movies, and even friends and family to highlight your points. Let them know the seriousness of sexually transmitted diseases just as much as various aspects of how their bodies work. Keep a sense of humor, that is the best way to get past the nerves and anxiety of such sensitive subjects and never get angry or upset over questions your teen may have on the subjects.

Be sure to ask them if they have any questions regarding the subject and if you do not know the answer don’t feel the need to bluff. Tell them you don’t know, and look up the answer. Better yet, look up the answer together and discuss the material available with each other. If you are seriously unable to communicate when teaching teens about the reproductive system leave books that are appropriate for your child’s age in places they are sure to see them. Curiosity will guide them to pick them up and read. Not only will that help to provide information to them, it can open up the lines of communication between you and make it easier to discuss any questions they may have on the material.

Whatever you do, and how you do it, teaching teens about the reproductive system should be a priority for you as your child enters puberty. Your help will get them through the difficult teenage years successfully and happily and you will be able to look upon your young adult with pride and accomplishment of a job well done.

Real estate in Dominica is the stuff of which tropical daydreams during harsh northern winters are manufactured. It is often referred to as the island of unspoiled beauty, because much of the island’s 291 square mile area is sparsely inhabited and unspoiled by man. That, of course, will not last since the tourist trade has already begun to flock to the verdant shores of this small island in the Lesser Antilles.

For those who have the means to buy here now, the investment will undoubtedly pay off handsomely in the years to come. Many, of course, will be interested in purchasing Dominica with a view toward preserving the natural wonder of the island. Others, of course, will be motivated to invest in Dominica for sale in hopes developing the uninhabited regions to create the next big tourist hot spot in the Caribbean. It is to be hoped, for the sake of the people and the beauty of this small island, that those who choose to follow the latter course will undertake their development with an eye for preserving the country’s the natural beauty.

Some consider this island to be the northernmost of the Windward Islands, while others hold that it is the southernmost of the Leeward archipelago. Either way you look at it, in Dominica is ideally situated and has any number of exotic and more well-known tropical neighbors including: Martinique, Montserrat, Antigua, St. Lucia and more. The terrain is covered with a lush tropical rain forest and his home to many endangered species, as well as some other exotic geographical features including over 360 rivers and an immense area of soft sand beaches in the northeastern part of the country. It also has a large national park and any Dominica real estate bordering that nature preserve will likely prove to be most valuable in years to come.

Unlike more developed countries in the Caribbean, Dominica seems to be just on the verge of finding itself. Those fortunate enough to be able to invest in a bit of Dominica today will be investing in some of the last natural beauty left in the heart of the sun-loving tropics. While some development is bound to occur, if done with taste and care for the fragile eco-systems, many foresee this small island becoming an environmental model for the area, showing that man and nature can peacefully coexist on a small island in a bright blue sea. If you want to be part of that slow evolution, then check out offerings for Dominica in your favorite international listings.

Cabochons are commonly used in jewelry to make decorative necklaces, earrings, bracelets and more. They are non-faceted gemstones found mainly in oval and dome shapes. Due to the fact that there are numerous ways to incorporate cabochons into jewelry products they typically do not come pre-drilled. In order to be able to customize a cabochon, or drill the hole where you want it, you are going to need to master the drilling technique. It make take a few trial runs before you are able to master drilling holes in cabochons, or cabs, but it is not too difficult of a technique to learn.

First and foremost safety is important when dealing with any heavy-duty machinery, such as drills, as well as when the item you are working with can splinter or shard and end up in your eyes or being inhaled. Find a pair of comfortable safety glasses that do not limit your vision and you are ready to get started. If you are concerned about the dust or debris that comes from the cabochon when you are drilling you can find simple masks at any hardware or craft store.

Another important tip for drilling holes into or substance, or actually just using a drill in general, is to remember that the drilling process itself creates friction, which creates heat. Drill bits can get so hot during a drilling process that they break; if you are spending a decent amount of money on jewelry sized specialty drill bits you definitely are not going to want them to break every single time you try to drill a hole in something. To ensure that what you are working on stays cool enough, hold the cabochon under water, a glass bowl will work, while you are drilling it. Be sure that if you’re using an electrical drill that you do not get any of the motorized parts wet since that could either short out your entire drill or electrocute yourself. One other nice thing about drilling in a bowl of water is that the dust and debris that comes from the drilling is not sent into the air and also makes it easier to clean up when you are finished.

The next step is to mark the cab where you want to drill. Be sure when you are marking that you do not drill too close to the edge of the cabochon. This can cause the piece you are working with to splinter or break in half entirely. The next step is to select the drill bit you are going to use. I would recommend using a diamond drill bit, just because they are high quality and cut just about anything with ease. Other jewelry bits work just as well though. Find a bit that is of an appropriate size for the hole you are trying to drill.

Finally you are ready to start drilling. You can use either a hand drill or a drill attached to a stand (these tend to be stable and can reduce drilling errors). I would suggest drilling a small amount and then pulling the drill out before repeating the process as many times as it takes to get a nice clean cut all the way through the hole. This gives both the bit and the cabochon a chance to cool off as well as eases the pressure. Rinse off the cabochon and you are finished!

Most of today’s companies are maximizing their travel budgets and communication requirements by making smart use of videoconferencing as an alternative to face-to-face meetings. With this decision to implement enterprise-level videoconferencing comes a requirement for bandwidth solutions which are reliable and cost effective.

Videoconferencing can leverage the existing public telephone network, a private IP network or the Internet. The target bandwidth for interactive video communications is in the 300K to 400K bit/sec per stream range. This includes audio and video as well as control signaling.

The H.323 protocol does not require that two or more endpoints in a session send the same data rate they receive. A low-powered endpoint may only be able to encode at a rate of 100K bit/sec, but, because decoding is less processor-intensive, it could decode a 300K bit/sec videostream.

Nevertheless, in videoconferencing, bandwidth is assumed to be symmetrical. In full-duplex networks such as ISDN, Ethernet, ATM and time division multiplexed networks, capacity is expressed as bandwidth in one direction, though equal bandwidth is available for traffic in the opposite direction.

You need to estimate the number of simultaneous sessions your network needs to support, and figure out if your network has bandwidth end-to-end.

A T-1 bandwidth circuit offers 1.5M bit/sec in each direction and would be ample bandwidth for two 512K bit/sec or three 384K bit/sec videoconferences, depending on the amount of simultaneous traffic on the network. Also, make sure that you have 10/100 switched Ethernet throughout the LAN segments where videoconferencing traffic is expected.

Multipoint conference bandwidth (with which three or more locations can see and hear one another) is calculated separately from point-to-point sessions. Multipoint can be conducted in either IP or ISDN environments, and some conferencing units will support both network types.

Multipoint conferencing products may be software-based or accelerated with special hardware, and their configuration can produce different bandwidth consumption patterns as well as different user experiences. For example, when an endpoint is used to host a multipoint conference, the maximum bandwidth for any single participant is the bandwidth allocated to that host divided by the number of locations participating. When you need to have more than four locations on a call at the same time, network-based products are recommended.

If you decide that your IP network can’t handle the additional traffic associated with live video sessions in a merged or converged network deployment, your options are to rely on circuit switched networks or to deploy additional IP bandwidth capacity. To assist in determining and acquiring the exact bandwidth to meet your requirements…it’s strongly recommended to make use of a free technical consultation service such as via DS3-Bandwidth.com. Also, an excellent guideline resource for video conferencing set-up and management is available from “Video Conferencing Solutions”.

Q1. What is classless IP address?

Answer: Classless is also called IP subnetting. It divides classful network addresses into smaller networks (subnet). The rules are simple: – In classful addressing scheme, a 32 bit address is divided into Network ID and Host ID in 8-bIt boundary:

Class Network_ID Host_ID Examples……………..Leftmost_byte_range(a.b.c.d)

A……….8 bit……. 24 bit…..1.1.1.1, 100.4.5.6…………0~127

B………16 bit…… 16 bit……128.1.1.1, 150.1.2.3…..128~191

C……. 24 bit……… 8 bit…… 192.1.1.1, 222.1.2.3…192~223

– Classless IP allows more left bits for network ID (and fewer bits for host ID). The number of bits used by

network ID is called network mask. For example, a.b.c.d/m says “network ID is the leftmost m bit.” – Examples of classful and classless addresses:

IP address Mask Class? Network address Network ID Host ID Number of hosts in this network 100.4.5.6/8 /8 class A 100.0.0.0/8 100 4.5.6 16,777,216 100.4.5.6/16 /16 classless 100.4.0.0/16 100.4 5.6 65,536 100.4.5.6/24 /24 classless 100.4.5.0/24 100.4.5 6 256 100.4.5.6/25 /25 classless 100.4.5.0/25 100.4.5.0 6 128

Q2. Why classless?

Answer: Using fixed boundary to allocate bits for network ID and hosts ID results side effects: IP address starvation. Consider this example: A network has 100 computers to be connected to Internet. They are using a class C network 200.1.2.0/24. Then the network grows to 500 computers. It needs a class B network, say 150.1.0.0/16. However, 150.1.0.0/16 covers 65,536 class B IP addresses. This network only uses 500 of them. 65,036 IP addresses are wasted. This causes the shortage of IP address due classful addressing scheme’s fixed networ/host boundary. This problem can be solved by classless addressing. For example, 150.1.0.0/23 allows 512 host ID. It covers addresses 150.1.0.0~150.1.1.255).

Q3. How to subnetting and creates network ID crossing byte boundary?

Answer: Subnetting uses network mask to allocate leftmost bits for network ID. The rules are simple: – Start with a classful address (class A, B, or C). – Add more bits to the classful network ID bits. Class B uses leftmost 16 bits for network ID. Its mask is /16. With classless addressing, the network mask for class B derived network can be /16~.31. – For example,

150.1.0.0 is a class B network address. Its default mask is /16. It covers 65,536 addresses.

150.1.2.0/24 is a classless subnet derived from class B network. Its mask is /24 and contains 256 addresses.

150.1.2.128/25 is a classless subnet derived from a class B network. Its mask is /25 and has 128 addresses. The table below presents classful and classless addresses in binary form:

Network ID/Mask Binary form (32 bits) Network ID/class Number of host ID and range

– 150.1.0.0/16 is a class B address, network ID 150.1 (16 bit), contains 65,356 hosts, (150.1.0.0~150.1.255.255), Its binary presentation is 10010110. 00000001.00000000.00000000

– 150.1.2.0/24 is classless derived from class B, network ID 150.1.2 (24 bits), contains 256 host addresses (150.1.2.0~150.1.2.255 ). Its binary form is 10010110. 00000001.00000010.00000000.

– 150.1.2.128/25 is classless derived from class B, network ID is 150.1.2.128 (25 bit), contains 128 host addresses (150.1.2.128~150.1.2.255). its binary form is 10010110. 00000001.00000010.10000000

Q4. Can we subnetting to create 150.1.2.3/14? Answer: No. Subnetting starts with classful address scheme. 150.1.2.3 is a class B address (150 is within class B range: 128~191). Class B network mask is /16. Subnetting a class B network address can only use masks to reduce the size of network, or increase the mask. /16~/21 are allowed. /1~/15 are not allowed.

Q5. How does a router lookup a classless IP address?

Answer: Let’s use examples to explain router’s operations: 1) When R1 receives ping sent by Jack, it compares ping’s destination IP address (150.1.2.3/25) with destination networks listed in routing table.

– 100.0.0.0/8. 150.1.2.3/25’s left most 8 bit is 150, not 100. Not a match.

– 150.1.0.0/16. 150.1.2.3/25’s left most 16 bit is 150.1. It’s a match. R1 forwards ping to 150.1.0.0/16. 2) When R2 receives ping, it compares ping’s destination IP address (150.1.2.3/25) with routing table’s destination networks. -150.1.0.0/24: 150.1.2.3/25’s left most 24 bit is 150.1. 2, not 150.1.0. Not a match.

-150.1.1.0/24: 150.1.2.3/25’s left most 24 bit is 150.1. 2, not 150.1.1. Not a match.

-150.1.2.0/24: 150.1.2.3/25’s left most 24 bit is 150.1. 2. It’s a match. R2 forward ping to 150.1.2.0/24 network 3) When R3 receives ping, it compares ping’s destination IP address (150.1.2.3/25) with routing table. -150.1.2.128/25: 150.1.2.3/25’s left most 25 bit is 150.1.2.0 2, not 150.1.2.128, Not a match.

– 150.1.2.0/25: 150.1.2.3/25’s left most 25 bit is 150.1.2.0. A match. R3 forwards ping to Rose.

Note: This example is more clear if read together with topology from the companion simulation.

This article is the FAQ of an interactive simulation. You may get more clear concepts by playing the simulation with visualized topology, packets, table. It is located under External links.