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A novel Pattern Accumulated Vector(PAV) method implemented by CAM-based architecture has been proposed for character recognition in license plate recognition(LPR). Instead of comparing all the pattern blocks, the PAV method adopts the principal pattern blocks as feature vectors so that the computation complexity is highly reduced. Furthermore, the PAV method adopts the extended templates for the character recognition and is proved to have higher recognition rate when dealing with license plates consisting inclined characters. Finally, the CAM architecture is used to further reduce the processing time and makes the PAV method more efficient for real-time LPR systems.
54 IJCSNS International Journal of Computer Science and Network Security, VOL.9 No.1, January 2009 A CAM-Based Pattern Accumulated Vector Method for Real-Time Character Recognition of License Plates Yon-Ping Chen, Tien-Der Yeh, Feng-Chou Ni and Chung-Hsien Chang Electrical and Control Engineering, National Chiao Tung University,, 1001 Ta Hsueh Rd., Hsinchu / Taiwan, ROC Abstract A novel Pattern Accumulated Vector(PAV) method implemented by CAM-based architecture has been proposed for character recognition in license plate recognition(LPR). Instead of comparing all the pattern blocks, the PAV method adopts the principal pattern blocks as feature vectors so that the computation complexity is highly reduced. Furthermore, the PAV method adopts the extended templates for the character recognition and is proved to have higher recognition rate when dealing with license plates consisting inclined characters. Finally, the CAM architecture is used to further reduce the processing time and makes the PAV method more efficient for real-time LPR systems. Key words: Content Addressable Memory(CAM), Pattern Accumulated Vector(PAV), License Plate Recognition(LPR), Character Recognition, principal pattern blocks. I. INTRODUCTION The license plate recognition, or LPR in short, has been a popular research topic for several decades [4] [20] [28]. Up to now, an LPR system still faces some problems concerning various light condition, image deformation, and processing time consumption [20] [28]. In general, there are three fundamental steps required for the process of an LPR system, including the license plate extraction, the character segmentation, and the character recognition. Since many methodologies have been well developed for the first two steps, the license plate extraction and the character segmentation [1][4], this paper will only focus on the third step, the character recognition, especially for inclined images[20]. To deal with the problems caused by inclined images, a novel method called the Pattern Accumulated Vector(PAV) method is proposed; besides, the Content Addressable Memory(CAM) [5]-[8] technique is adopted for implementation. The proposed PAV method is mainly based on a feature vector called the pattern accumulated vector, which is obtained by decomposing each input character image into a series of 3×3 pattern blocks, and then executes the character recognition by comparing the feature vectors between the input character image and the templates. If all the pattern blocks are used in comparison, it will cost a large amount of processing time. In order to save the processing time as well as to retain a high recognition rate, the PAV method neglects the pattern blocks useless in character recognition and only includes the so-called principal pattern blocks. As a result, the processing time is highly reduced since the principal pattern blocks are found less than 1/20 of all the pattern blocks. Meanwhile, a special methodology to determine the principal pattern blocks from all the pattern blocks is also proposed. To further save the processing time, the well-known parallel comparison technique, called Content Addressable Memory(CAM), is employed to implement the comparison of principal pattern blocks. Therefore, the CAM technique applied to the PAV method is evidently useful for real-time license plate recognition systems, not only to save the processing time but also to reduce the power consumption. To demonstrate that the PAV method with CAM is suitable for the character recognition of inclined images, two sets of templates, standard and extended, are used in the experiment for comparison. From the experiment with standard templates, the recognition rate is decreased due to inclined character images, which often happen due to sidewise camera locations. Such drawback can be improved by the extended templates which further add the information of inclined character images into the standard templates. Significantly, with the extended templates, the recognition rate is high around 99.56% for physical character images, normal or inclined. As for the processing time, the experiment is designed to compare the CAM-based and RAM-based architectures. From the experiment results, the CAM-based architecture is faster around 40% comparing to the RAM-based architecture. II. The PAV Method for Character Recognition A novel methodology called Pattern Accumulated Vector (PAV) method suitable for the character recognition of license plates is proposed in this paper. This section starts from introducing the fundamentals of the PAV method, such as the basic elements "pattern block", the decomposition process, and the character recognition by calculating distances of the feature vectors. Then the so-called principal pattern blocks (PPBs) will be introduced to replace all the 512 pattern blocks in the feature vector to reduce computation complexity in vector comparison. Meanwhile, the recursive selection method to Manuscript received January 5, 2009 Manuscript revised January 20, 2009 IJCSNS International Journal of Computer Science and Network Security, VOL.9 No.1, January 2009 select the principal pattern blocks is also proposed to ensure high recognition rate is retained by the selected candidates. Finally, the PAV method applied to the extended templates is proposed in Section II-C to further deal with inclined characters. A. The Fundamentals of the PAV Method The fundamental element in PAV is called the pattern block, an l-by-l square binary image, so there are 2l×l types of pattern blocks totally. Since the size of the pattern block chosen for the proposed PAV technique is 3-by-3, there are 23×3 = 512 types of pattern blocks as shown in Table I. Each pattern block is denoted by a serial number, S.N. = (a1 a2 a3) where ai ∈ {0, 1, 2, …, 7}, for i = 1, 2, 3, and ai is determined from the order of the pixels in the i-th column. For example, the pattern block of No.511 has a serial number (677), which means it contains pixels (1, 1, 0), (1, 1, 1), and (1, 1, 1) in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd columns, respectively. All the 512 pattern blocks are collected in the set 55 Fig. 1. The binary standard templates. Pall = {(0,0,0 ), (1,0,0 ), (2,0,0 ),..., (7,7,7 )} Each template is fixed at size 15×30 and decomposed into (15-2)×(30-2)=364 pattern blocks. The decomposition process is explained by an example of B2 in Fig.2, the binary template of character "2". Its top three rows are decomposed into thirteen 3-by-3 pattern blocks in a way of shifting one column by one column. Next by shifting one row down, i.e., from row1, row2, row3 change to row2, row3, row4, the same process applies to the next 3 rows to obtain the other thirteen 3-by-3 pattern blocks. (2.1) (2.1) TABLE I TYPES OF PATTERN BLOCKS. 1 4 7 Pixel order 2 5 8 3 6 9 ₍ 1 2 3 … 511 512 Fig. 2. The pattern blocks in the top three rows of the template "2" Pattern Block Type No. in order Serial Number (a1a2a3) By shifting one row by one row, the whole procedure of decomposition creates 364 pattern blocks as given in Fig.3, which shows that the pattern blocks combination of template "2" has 91 pattern blocks of (000), 11 pattern blocks of (100), … and 94 pattern blocks of (777). 000 100 200 … 677 777 Fig. 3. The pattern blocks combination of the template "2" There are 36 binary templates shown in Fig.1 for the license plate characters, "0" to "9" and "A" to "Z", denoted as B0 to B35 in order, extracted from clear, non-distorted license plates. Templates B0 to B35 are called standard templates There are 36 different feature vectors generated from the templates B0 to B35 and the n-th one is denoted as un. The un is a 512-by-1 vector with entries (2.2) un (i ) = λ(a1a2a3 ),n , 0 ≤ i ≤ 511 where λ (a a a ),n is the number of occurrence of the pattern 1 2 3 block (a1a2a3) in Bn. Viewing from Fig.3 of template B2, its feature vector is u2 = [91, 11,…,94]T. Table II shows the combinations of all the pattern blocks of B0 to B35. 56 IJCSNS International Journal of Computer Science and Network Security, VOL.9 No.1, January 2008 candidates of PPBs. C1. Delete the pattern block (a1a2a3) if λ ( a a a ), n = 0 1 2 3 TABLE II: THE COMBINATION OF 512 PATTERNS FOR THE 36 TEMPLATES. Template s Serial Number of Pattern Block B 0 B1 B 2 0 1 2 … B9 B10 B11 9 A B … B34 B35 Y Z for all the binary templates Bn, n = 0,1,…,35. Each of the remaining pattern blocks will be further checked by condition C2 and then C3 to determine whether it can be a candidate of the PPBs or not. C2. Let λ(a a a ) = max λ (a a a 1 2 3 (000) (100) (200) 73 85 91 … 76 50 73 … 132 107 1 0 0 0 11 … 0 … 1 0 2 0 2 0 … … 2 0 7 0 ( 1 2 3 ),n1 −λ (a1a 2a 3 ),n 2 ) for n1 ≠ n2. (2.4) A pattern block (a1a2a3) is chosen as a candidate of the PPBs if λ(a a a ) ≥ 5 , which implies the pattern 1 2 3 (773) 5 0 14 … 5 5 6 … 4 9 block (a1a2a3) is useful to distinguish the binary templates Bn1 and Bn2. C3. Let (677) (777) total 7 2 13 … 8 5 7 … 2 9 N (a1a2a3 ) = ∑ σ λ(a1a2a3 ),n , n =0 35 ( ) (2.5) 126 211 94 … 98 125 135 … 78 112 364 364 364 … 364 364 364 … 364 364 where After the decomposition of the templates, the input character image for recognition, also called the test character, will be decomposed by the same process. The feature vector of the test character, denoted as ut, is then compared with each of un by determining all the Euclidian distances as 2 T (2.3) d t,n = ut − un = (ut − un ) (ut − un ) , 0 ≤ n ≤ 35 , (2.6) ⎩ 0 , λ (a1a2a3 ),n = 0 A pattern block (a1a2a3) not satisfying C2, is chosen as a candidate of the PPBs if it satisfies N (a a a ) ≤ 2 . 1 2 3 σ (λ(a a a ),n )= ⎧ ⎨ 1, λ (a1a2a3 ),n > 0 1 2 3 It implies the pattern block (a1a2a3) is special and then potentially able to distinguish some binary templates. Now, let's discuss the recursive selection method in Fig.4 to select the desired PPBs. The major process in Fig. 4 can be divided into two steps. The step one of Fig.4 is made up of the three conditions C1-C3 and outputs the candidates of the PPBs, which will be further filtered by step two to find the PPBs for the recognition process. A selection cycle is started by inputting a pattern block out of the 512 to step one and is terminated by either step one, if the pattern block is disqualified, or step two, if the insignificant pattern blocks are removed. The whole process stops after all the pattern blocks have been checked. In step one, a pattern block is disqualified if it can't meet the requirement in C1-C3; otherwise it is left to be a candidate of PPBs and added into the candidate set P. Before the completion of step one, it is necessary to perform character recognition to obtain the recognition rate r(P) by recognizing the 36 standard templates for next step. In step two, the insignificant candidates in set P will be filtered out and only those useful for the recognition rate can be kept in P. Let the candidate set P after step one is (2.7) P = {Pi i = 0,1,2, L , h − 1}, [ ] where dt,n can be used as similarity indices between the test character and Bn. Then, the test character will be identified as the character of the template image with minimum distance. If the total number of test characters is N1, and N2 out of N1 are identified correctly, then we get the recognition rate r(Pall) = N2 / N1 where Pall is the set of all the pattern blocks as (2.1) and is what the feature vectors are composed of. B. Selecting the Principal Pattern Blocks If all the 512 pattern blocks are used to compose feature vectors as Section II-A, the dimension of the feature vectors will be very large and thus requires a large amount of processing time. In order to reduce the computation complexity and processing time consumption, it is necessary to delete the insignificant pattern blocks and keep those useful ones, called the principal pattern blocks or PPBs in short, for the character recognition. These PPBs will be determined by the recursive selection method shown in Fig. 4. The following three conditions are used to filter out the insignificant pattern blocks to collect the IJCSNS International Journal of Computer Science and Network Security, VOL.9 No.1, January 2009 where P i = (a1 a2 a3 )i is the i-th candidate and h is the total number of the candidates. The decision procedure is designed in a one-by-one strategy from P0 to Ph 1. First, delete P0 and form a new candidate set P~0, which contains P1 to Ph-1, then find the recognition rate r(P~0). If r(P~0)< r(P), i.e., P0 is not an insignificant pattern block since the recognition rate is reduced without it, then P0 is kept in the candidate set, otherwise it is taken away from the candidate set. 57 As in Table III, the PPBs are listed and the number of the PPBs is 12. TABLE III 12 PPBS FOR 36 STANDARD TEMPLATES. PPB number Pattern S.N. Amount of recognized characters Data of recognized characters 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 077 770 773 677 333 666 740 731 764 467 137 047 16 15 14 14 12 11 9 7 7 7 6 5 1, 3, 7, A, C, D, E, H, J, M, N, R, V, W, Y, Z 0, 1, 4, 7, 9, B, D, H, J, K, L, Q, U, V, W 0, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, B, F, L, N, Q, W, X, Z 0, 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, B, H, N, O, S, W, X, Z 5, 6, 7, 8, E, F, H, I, P, R, T, Z 2, 3, 5, 6, B, E, G, J, L, S, Z 0, 3, 8, A, I, K, N, S, X 2, 3, 6 , C, J, O, Q 5, 9, G, L, P, S, Y 0, 2, 8, 9, M, O, U 0, 2, 6, B, O, S 4, A, O, U, Z Fig. 4. The recursive selection of the PPBs. There are three threshold values adopted in the step one in Fig. 4, which are λ (a a a ),n = 0 , λ(a a a ) ≥ 5 and 1 2 3 1 2 3 N (a1a2a3 ) ≤ 2 . These values are determined from experiment Following the same procedure for P1 to Ph-1, the candidates kept in set P are all significant and the cycle is finished. If all the pattern blocks have been checked by the recursive selection method, the desired PPBs are obtained as the last candidate set P, which has m candidates. And the new feature vector is rewritten as (2.8) vn (i ) = λ( P ), n , 0 ≤ i ≤ m − 1 . i which executes character recognition and records the distribution of successful recognition cases in Table IV. From the table, there are 416 types of pattern blocks which are useless since they belong to none of the characters to be recognized. As a result, the threshold λ (a a a ),n = 0 is 1 2 3 used to delete the pattern blocks that match none of the templates. The second threshold value is λ(a a a ) ≥ 5 , where 1 2 3 Note the number of entries is reduced from 512 to the last m which is generally less than 20, and thus will highly reduce the computation complexity of the whole process. λ(a a a ) 1 2 3 is defined in (2.4). The major purpose of this 58 IJCSNS International Journal of Computer Science and Network Security, VOL.9 No.1, January 2008 threshold value is to find out the pattern blocks (a1a2a3) which are significant to distinguish two templates as described in C2. According to the experiment result shown in Table III, it is found that λ(a a a ) is chosen to be 5 for 1 2 3 TABLE V 16 EPPBS OBTAINED FROM EXTENDED TEMPLATES best discrimination efficiency since a smaller λ(a a a ) often decreases the significance of the pattern block (a1a2a3) in distinguishing certain templates. The final threshold value is N (a a a ) ≤ 2 or 1 2 3 PPB number Pattern S.N. Amount of recognized characters Data of recognized characters 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 077 770 773 677 333 666 740 731 764 467 137 047 066 660 330 033 16 15 13 13 12 11 9 7 7 7 6 5 4 3 2 2 1, 3, 7, A, C, D, E, H, J, M, N, R, V, W, Y, Z 0, 1, 4, 7, 9, B, D, H, J, K, L, Q, U, V, W 0, 2, 5, 6, 8, B, F, L, N, Q, W, X, Z 0, 2, 4, 8, 9, B, H, N, O, S, W, X, Z 5, 6, 7, 8, E, F, H, I, P, R, T, Z 2, 3, 5, 6, B, E, G, J, L, S, Z 0, 3, 8, A, I, K, N, S, X 2, 3, 6 , C, J, O, Q 5, 9, G, L, P, S, Y 0, 2, 8, 9, M, O, U 0, 2, 6, B, O, S 4, A, O, U, Z 7, C, G, S 2, F, X 5, X 9, Y N (a1 a 2 a 3 ) = {1, 2}, which implies the pattern block (a1a2a3) is special and then potentially able to distinguish some binary templates, as described in C3. From Table IV, it shows that there are 11 and 31 types of pattern blocks could be associated to recognize 1 and 2 characters, respectively. The reason to further include the pattern blocks of N (a a a ) = {1, 2} , not of N (a a a ) = { 1} or 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 N (a1a2a3 ) = {1, 2,3} , is based on the experiment that adding the pattern blocks of recognition rate than N (a a a ) = {1} and N (a a a ) = {1, 2,3}. 1 2 3 1 2 3 N (a1a2 a3 ) = {1, 2} results in better TABLE IV THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE AMOUNT OF SUCCESSFUL RECOGNITION CASES. Number of pattern blocks 416 11 31 26 7 7 2 3 3 1 1 2 1 1 Sum : 512 Characters can be recognized 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 9 11 12 14 15 16 C. The PAV Method Applied to the Extended Templates Since the PPBs in Section II-B are obtained from standard templates, they are not suitable for characters with an inclined angle, which frequently occurs in LPR systems caused by factors such as sidewise camera locations. In practical situation, the inclined angle of a test character is often smaller than 30 degree. To resolve the problems of those inclined characters, the 36 standard templates are extended to 108 templates, which are partitioned into 3 groups as below: G1: Standard templates shown in Fig.1, including 36 templates, "0" to "9" and "A" to "Z". G2: Templates obtained by inclining G1 in 30 degrees clockwise(+30°) as in Fig. 5. IJCSNS International Journal of Computer Science and Network Security, VOL.9 No.1, January 2009 G3: Templates obtained by inclining G1 in 30 degrees counterclockwise(-30°) as in Fig. 6. With the same PAV method proposed in Section II-B, the PPBs for extended templates G1, G2 and G3 will be different from the PPBs for standard templates G1. For convenience, the PPBs for extended templates G1, G2 and G3 are called the extended PPBs, or EPPBs in short. In table V, the number of EPPBs=16 is different from the number of PPBs=12 in previous section. Later, it will be found that experiment result with EPPBs has better recognition rate(99.56%) than PPBs(93.83%) for practical license plates. 59 Fig. 5. The binary templates with +30° inclined angle Fig. 6. The binary templates with -30° inclined angle In the next section, the way to implement the PAV method by CAM-based architecture will be introduced. In order to demonstrate its advantage, the PAV method is also implemented by the conventional RAM-based architecture [9]. Later, it will be found from the experimental results that the CAM-based architecture is indeed much better than the RAM-based architecture in processing time. Contention Logic, and the Output Register. The Memory Array provides the storage containing the associative words with contents relative to its address, which is an exceptional feature of the CAM. The Comparand Register stores the input data, which is the pattern to be compared with the words in the Memory Array. The Mask Register masks off the "don't care" bits in the input pattern. For example, if the input pattern is 01001101, but only the least four bits (bit 3 ~ bit 0) are needed for searching, then the Mask Register is enabled and set as 11110000. The Word Select Register contains n-bit data and is used to select which associative word in the Memory Array is active. When the associate word is active, it will be compared with the pattern output from Mask Register. The Responder And Contention Logic is capable for simultaneously receiving all the matched results from Memory Array and indicate the success or failure by setting or resetting the matched flag. If more than one word in the Memory Array is matched, the Responder And Contention Logic can resolve the contention among them and then send out the matched flag and matched address sequentially. As for the Output Register, it is employed to read out the matched data in the Memory Array. The proposed PAV method is implemented by CAM-based architecture according to following description: load a 15×30 test character into CAM, each 3×3 pattern block of the character is transformed into a 1×9 word and stored into the Memory Array sequentially as in Fig. 8. As a result, a 15×30 test character will occupy 364 associate words. For easy implementation the Memory Array is made by 512 words and 148 of them will not be used. The Mask Register is set to be "000000000" since the comparison doesn't contain any "don't-care" bits. The Word Select Register selects the address range from 0 to 363 of the associate words occupied by the test character, not the total range from 0 to 512. Input the first pattern block of the 16 EPPBs into the Comparand Register and it will compare with all the Associate Words simultaneously. Then start the Responder And Contention Logic to generate the Matched Flag sequentially. The number of Matched Flag is accumulated externally as the matching number related to the first EPPB, and the matching number is stored in external memory. Note that the Matched Addresses are ignored since they are not used in the proposed PAV method. III. Implement by CAM Architecture The typical architecture of Content Addressable Memory (CAM) is shown in Fig. 7 [9] [13], including the Comparand Register, the Memory Array, the Mask Register, the Word Select Register, the Responder And 60 IJCSNS International Journal of Computer Science and Network Security, VOL.9 No.1, January 2008 faster about 50.4s, almost 40% improved in processing time. Besides, it is clear that both architectures have the same recognition rate. Moreover, the PAV method with EPPBs has a better recognition rate 99.56% when comparing to the recognition rate 93.83% of the case with PPBs. Fig. 8.: The pattern blocks stored in CAM. Fig. 7.: The typical architecture of CAM. Following the same procedure for the other 15 EPPBs, the matching numbers related to the 16 EPPBs are obtained and put in order as the PAV of the test character. Compare the PAV of the test character with all the PAVs of the extended templates, G1, G2 and G3, to find the best one with shortest distance. Then the test character is recognized as the best one in the extended templates. This finishes the recognition process. Compare the PAV of the test character with all the PAVs of the extended templates, G1, G2 and G3, to find the best one with shortest distance. Then the test character is recognized as the best one in the extended templates. This finishes the recognition process. TABLE VI EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS OF CAM-BASED AND RAM-BASED SYSTEMS. Architecture CAM-based RAM-based Average Processing Time 77.998μs 128.367μs Recognition rate Using Templates by PPBs 93.83% 93.83% Using Templates by EPPBs 99.56% 99.56% IV. Experimental Results Besides the proposed CAM-based architecture, a general RAM-based architecture is also made for comparing the difference of processing time. To keep the same experimental environments, both architectures are established and tested on the same development board (EP20K1500EBC652-1X) at the same clock frequency 25MHz. Besides, both architectures use the same database of characters from license plates for the experiment. The database of license plates contains 1800 test characters and the experimental results are given in Table VI. From the table, the average processing time for the CAM-based system is 77.998s and for the RAM-based system is 128.367s. Evidently, the CAM-based system is The reason for the EPPBs to have a better recognition rate is because they are extracted from not only the standard templates but also the additional 2 groups of inclined templates, G2 and G3. But the PPBs are extracted from the standard templates only. It can be concluded that the PAV method with EPPBs implemented by CAM-based architecture is the best choice for both recognition rate and processing time. V. Conclusion This paper presents a novel CAM-based PAV method for character recognition in LPR systems. After choosing the principal pattern blocks by the recursive selection method, the computation complexity of the PAV method can be highly simplified since the dimension of the feature vectors is reduced. Besides, in order to deal with inclined character in physical license plates, the standard templates are replaced by the extended templates. From the experiment result, the success of the PAV method with the IJCSNS International Journal of Computer Science and Network Security, VOL.9 No.1, January 2009 extended templates is verified from the high character recognition rate up to 99.56%. 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Audi RS6 beats the S6? This former wisdom is now almost rendered obsolete by ABT Sportsline, which launches a performance package putting the sporty S6 near the same level as its supersporty cousin. "With ABT Power New Generation we much raise the pulse and the Avant or limo's performance, too," says a pleased CEO Hans Jürgen Abt. Instead of 450 hp (331 kW) and 550 Nm, we now have 550 hp (404 kW) and 680 Nm. Fun? Almost unlimited! And now wonder, as the Vmax was raised to 290 kph. Incidentally,
Tag Archives: Audi
Audi Takes to The Race Track With The Sportiest Piloted Driving Car in The WorldPosted in Audi
Audi has developed the world's sportiest piloted driving car. At the German Touring Car Masters (DTM) season finale, the Audi RS 7 piloted driving concept car will demonstrate its dynamic potential and driving capabilities for the first time on the Hockenheimring – at racing speed, without a driver.
New Audi A7 Sportback Range Champions EfficiencyPosted in Audi
A new range of Audi A7 Sportback models, including a 60mpg V6 TDI ultra, becomes available in the UK this week, further enriching the blend of grand tourer elegance and executive car versatility already offered by the acclaimed 'five-door coupe'. Priced from £45,875 OTR, the latest, simplified A7 Sportback line-up combines enhanced EU6-compliant engines with styling revisions, new LED headlights and tail lights including 'sweeping' indicators, further improved interior decor and upgraded infotainment. The first examples are set to arrive with UK customers in the last quarter of 2014.
The Blue Wonder by MR RacingPosted in Audi
Even though its more conventional brothers with the "even" type designations, the A4, A6 and A8, are much more popular, the Audi A7, a rather exotic car for road use, is without doubt the most elegant model in the Ingolstadt car builders' portfolio at the moment. The most noticeable, and visually most dominant, feature of the Bavarian top-class model is its slightly slanted Sportback tail, which gives the A7 a coupé-like silhouette in spite of its four doors, quoting the shapes of its ancestor, the Audi 100 Coupé S, which was built between 1970 and 1976.
The styling experts from MR Racing in Eschweiler, near Aachen, recognised the A7 Sportback as the ideal basis for developing an elegant but extroverted project vehicle.
Audi R8 – Camouflage Fighter by mbDESIGNPosted in Audi
Car wrapping is definitely THE discovery of the past years that accounts for a true revolution in the tuning scene. No more expensive painting but a mere endless array of colors, samples, surfaces and design options to choose from. It's all a freaky affair with this Audi R8 at mbDESIGN because it was here that the agency "raum22" performed a full wrapping in the design of the F16 Arctic Aggressor fighter jet.
To match the aggressive looks, exclusive mbDESIGN KV1 rims in dull gray with camouflage rim bed rotate in the wheelhouses of the sports car from Ingolstadt; in the format 9×20 inches ET34 with 235/30ZR20 in front and 12×20 inches ET42 with 305/25ZR20 Dunlop Sport Maxx GT tires in the rear. Practical: There is a TÜV parts expertise for this wheel/tire combination to facilitate smooth registration in the vehicle documents. While the "normal" concave version of the KV1 is used on the front axle, the "deep concave" variation provides an impressive disposition on the rear axle with its particularly distinctive concavity. In any case, the KV1 perfectly matches the exterior wrapping of the sports car. The chassis is lowered through a GT coil-over kit which finally beams a perfect light on the wheelhouses.
2014 MTM Audi RS Q3 2.5 TFSI QuattroPosted in Audi
Originally the Audi Q3 wasn't the sort of car that took to the streets to dislocate people's necks. It tended to be sober, was a good family friend and endowed with all the ingredients which mobile man does not wish to be without when travelling by car. Then the Q3 caught the attention of interested parties who don't like to do without performance as a matter of principle. It was for this clientèle that Audi created the RS Q3 2.5 TFSI quattro. The powerful five-cylinder engine generates 310 hp, and that was the end of the steady old friend, guardian of hearth and home. Its image is now more akin to the road-going go-getter than the mother-in-law's blue-eyed boy.
Concept Cars – The Way Forward?Posted in Concept Cars
Toyota FT-1 concept car, 2014
It's fascinating, if you're interested in cars, to look back at concept cars from days gone by. Though they never make it to market in exactly the same form as the concept itself, they've often been important pointers towards what consumers can expect in the next few years. The real beauty of them is that they allow the minds of the designers to run wild, unfettered by considerations of cost, marketability, and in some cases, sanity.
Today's concept cars, while still leaning towards futuristic fantasy, have to have an eye on the fact that the internet is changing the way people interact with their cars. Instant access to GPS based maps is now a given, and the future of in-car entertainment is going to be one in which cars are built with superfast broadband connections and WLAN hotspots. The development cycle for cars is much longer than that for electronics (simply because they're more expensive), so a degree of future-proofing is necessary.
Audi RS6 AS Enhanced By HPerformancePosted in Audi
Audi RS6 AS by HPerformance features all the powerful characteristics of the iconic Audi model, but also boasts some new enhancements. They are due to the work done by the specialists at HPerformance, a company in based in Germany. The third generation Audi RS6 not only exudes more powerful image but also offers more horsepower.
First, the weight of the vehicle was reduced by about 200 lb, making the combined average fuel consumption beneath 10 liters. Then the tuners added HPerformance 70 mm double pipe exhaust system with two controllable exhaust valves. This system can be monitored optionally or pneumatically via an overpressure or electric ways using MMI. The result is astonishing sound.

subset: commoncrawl


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Pricing & Reservations - call 24 hours 800-242-1715
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The office staff was very friendly and professional. The storage unit area is very clean and pleasant. The area feels extremely secure, which I appreciate since most times I come alone. Having the carts available makes moving items very easy for me, which I greatly appreciate. I'm a new customer, and so far I love Uncle Bob's!Gina from Scottsdale, AZ
June 28, 2015
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June 25, 2015
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March 5, 2015
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September 2, 2014
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August 28, 2014
The manager, Christina, went over and above to provide customer service. --She provided 4 one-gallon jugs of water for the 3 movers and me when our items were being moved in. --She saved me money by informing me that my cost could be pro-rated as long as I paid by the 5th of the month, which gave me time to decide if we would be vacating early in the month or at the end of the month (based on when we could move into our rental home). --She even said she would take care of any sweeping that might be needed once we did move out, which saved me a trip back to the facility on the day we moved. She is fantastic!Dennis from Mesa, AZ
August 27, 2014
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July 23, 2014


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Astros reportedly in "serious" discussions with Michael Morse
Dec 11, 2013, 8:45 PM EDT
FOX Sports' Ken Rosenthal reports that the Astros are in "serious discussions" with free agent Michael Morse. If he goes to Houston, he'll be reunited with Bo Porter, who was the third base coach during his time with the Nationals.
Morse, who turns 32 in March, batted .215/.270/.381 with 13 home runs and 27 RBI over 88 games this past season between the Mariners and Orioles. He missed time with a quad injury and a left wrist injury which required surgery after the season, so the Astros are presumably looking at him as a buy-low option for first base/DH.
ESPN's Buster Olney reported earlier this week that Morse is looking for a one-year deal in the range of $7-8 million. The Giants and Rockies are among the other teams who have reportedly expressed interest this offseason.
- karlkolchak - Dec 12, 2013 at 9:41 AM
What a shame for Mickey M to have his stock fall so quickly because of injury just two years after he finally proved he could hit if given the chance. Love to see him bouce back, but with his age and injury history that seems doubtful.
- nymets4ever - Dec 11, 2013 at 9:08 PM
Yo, nobody cares about your blog.
- President Charles Logan - Dec 11, 2013 at 9:16 PM
Kind of like how nobody cares about your bottom feeding Muts?
Top Posts
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- Calf injury sends Miguel Cabrera to the disabled list for the first time in his career 7
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This feels like a silly question, but I run into it dozens of times every day.
If I'm looking at the upstream repository, i.e. someone else's repository from which I have created a personal fork, what is the easiest/best/fastest/most efficient way to navigate to my own fork? This is important if, e.g., I want to create a new pull request.
The best I've come up with is to directly change the URL in the browser bar, but that's neither a one-click nor a low-effort approach:
https://github.com/upstream/repository -> https://github.com/myusername/repository
I wouldn't be terribly surprised if there's a link that I just overlook every time I open the page.


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Where's The Reset Button?
Thanks for listening
Thanks for listening
Blue skies and safe travels.
I'm not sure which is worse …
Breathing in nature, even in the dead of winter … have to or I'll go crazy … just bundle up.
Winter is the time of promise because there is so little to do – or because you can now and then permit yourself the luxury of thinking so. ~Stanley Crawford


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Health Insurance
Student Health Insurance Policy
Dominican University requires all full-time undergraduate students (taking 12 hours of more) to document their health insurance or they will be enrolled in and charged for the Student Health Insurance Plan. If you have existing health insurance coverage, medicaid, county care or another plan for paying your medical expenses, you must complete the Waiver Form. Please note: Existing coverage will be verified.
Students studying on a F1 or J1 visa are automatically enrolled in the student health insurance plan unless they waive coverage by documenting comparable coverage.
Graduate and Undergraduate students taking 6 or more hours are eligible to voluntarily enroll.
If you do not have existing coverage, Dominican University you will be enrolled in the Student Health Insurance Plan. The plan is customized to balance affordability with coverage that will help most students manage their health care needs while in college.
Dominican's student health insurance plan provides great coverage for a very reasonable price. This plan is rated as compliant with the Affordable Care Act and is an important asset for college students.
All care at the Wellness Center is covered 100%.
Enroll or complete the waiver process.
If you have any questions, please call Dominican University's customer service team at (800) 452-5772 for help with enrollment or the waiver process.
You may review and enroll in the Student Accident and Sickness Plan one of three ways:
- Enroll online
- Call AIP at 1-800-452-5772, tell them you are from Dominican University and enroll over the phone.
- Download and print the enrollment form or come to the Wellness Center for a published brochure, complete the enrollment form on a hard copy. If you plan to pay through your student account, this is the method you must use.
Students enrolling in the Accident and Sickness plan must be under 65 years of age and taking 6 or more credit hours.
How to use credit from your student account to pay for health insurance
Complete the print enrollment form or in the brochure available in the Wellness Center. (If you wish to enroll in Dental or Vision, call 1-800-452-5772 and ask for the forms to be mailed to you).
Take your completed forms to the Student Accounts office. They will verify your account has sufficient credit. They will help you complete a check request that can be taken to the business office where a check will be cut and sent to the insurance company.


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Recently, they received a call from a man who suffers from epilepsy and was saved after his Hövding inflated during a seizure.
For her part, Kay seems to have worried as much as any mother whose son had epilepsy.
This video kicks off with a seizure warning for viewers with epilepsy.
1570s, from Middle French epilepsie (16c.), from Late Latin epilepsia, from Greek epilepsia "seizure," from epi "upon" (see epi-) + lepsis "seizure," from leps-, future stem of lambanein "take hold of, grasp" (see analemma).
Earlier was epilencie (late 14c.), from Middle French epilence, with form influenced by pestilence. The native name was falling sickness.
epilepsy ep·i·lep·sy (ěp'ə-lěp'sē)
Any of various neurological disorders characterized by sudden, recurring attacks of motor, sensory, or psychic malfunction with or without loss of consciousness or convulsive seizures.
A disorder of the brain characterized by sudden, recurring attacks of abnormal brain function, often resulting in convulsions or seizures. The seizures associated with epilepsy can sometimes be controlled by medication.


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SendOutCards 2015 The Magic Begins With You Annual Convention
- Business & Professional
- 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA, 92802
Aliso Viejo Chamber's Coffee Talk with Assemblywoman Diane Harkey
Aliso Viejo Chamber of Commerce with Renaissance ClubSport
Friday, November 16, 2012 from 7:45 AM to 9:00 AM (PST)
Join Aliso Viejo Chamber for an informal discussion of "Cap and Trade" with Assemblywoman Diane Harkey from 7:45-9:00 am at Renaissance ClubSport, 50 Enterprise Way, Aliso Viejo, CA 92656. FREE for Aliso Viejo Chamber members and guests. Complimentary coffee, tea, fruit and bagels hosted by Renaissance ClubSport.
Please RSVP by making reservations to email@example.com or calling 949.243.7042.
The mission of Aliso Viejo Chamber of Commerce is to encourage economic prosperity within the community and be an effective bridge between its businesses and the city – and we hope that you will feel welcome to join us as we work together to promote and serve the community of Aliso Viejo. This is your opportunity to be a CHARTER MEMBER of Aliso Viejo Chamber of Commerce!
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