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On the fence about buying a Fernbank Museum membership? Here are five excellent ways to make the most out of your membership:
5. Have lunch in The Fernbank Café. Members save 10%
4. Treat yourself or buy a gift in the Museum Store. Members save 10%
3. Host a prehistoric birthday party. Members receive discounts on birthday party packages. Members receive discounts on birthday party packages.
2. See a film on the biggest screen in town. Members pay just $8 for IMAX® tickets.
1. Enjoy unlimited Museum admission, including family adventure days. Members always free.
Bonus! Become a member today and take advantage of free admission to 5 special exhibitions during your 12-month membership, including: Searching for the Queen of Sheba (opens Sept. 26), Women of Vision (opens Sept. 26), Winter Wonderland (opens Nov. 21), Wild Music (opens Feb 2016), and Creatures of Light (opens March 2016).
Family memberships start at $120. We can help you choose the level that's right for you. Contact us at 404.929.6340 or firstname.lastname@example.com.
I hope to see you at the Museum soon!
—Allison Trice, Director of Member and Volunteer Services
Join us Saturday, June 6 for a chance to learn more about Disney * Pixar's new film Inside Out, presented as part of the Brain: The Inside Story Opening Day Celebration.
Learn about a variety of emotions including joy, anger, sadness and fear through hands-on activities. Then tour the special exhibition Brain: The Inside Story for even more insight into the inner workings of the most complex and fascinating biological structure—the human brain.
Guests at the Opening Day Celebration will also have a chance to win Inside Out prizes and screening tickets!
Activities will be available 10am – 2pm. All activities are subject to change and prizes are available while supplies last.
—Deanna Smith, Director of MarketingDisney * Pixar's Inside Out opens nationwide June 19.
Fernbank's Annual Volunteer Awards Ceremony is a celebration of the invaluable support we receive from our volunteers. Here are a few photos from this year's event on April 19, 2015.
Fernbank staff work the event as greeters and buffet attendees.
Despite the rainy weather, the bright colors decorating the Great Hall really livened things up!
This year, the brunch was bigger and better than ever, hosting more than two hundred volunteers and their families.
The brunch is a great opportunity for volunteers whom might not normally work together, to have a chance to socialize.
Many volunteers were recognized for reaching a certain number of hours or years of service, but the brunch is also meant to show our appreciation for every volunteer, regardless of their individual commitment.
A highlight of the event—recognizing 20,000 hours of service (that's equivalent to 10 years of full-time work!) donated by John Thompson.
Steve Place's incredible work founding the forest restoration program was also recognized.
The ceremony provides an opportunity to say farewell to FUN volunteers that are graduating out of the program this year. Though, we never miss an opportunity for all of our FUN volunteers to show off their best RAWR pose!
We had a wonderful time and are so grateful for our volunteers. See additional photos from the event here.
A special thanks to The Fernbank Café for a delicious brunch and to staff for donating their time to help make our volunteers feel special.
—Kate Naylor, Member and Volunteer Services Coordinator and Deanna Smith, Director of Marketing; photos by Marisa Crissey, Communications Design Director and Kaden Borseth, Education Program Manager–Earth Science
Continuing our series of "poisonous recipes" inspired by Fernbank's Dangerously Delicious Tasting Events, here's a sweet treat from Laura Heiman, Grants and Sponsorship Coordinator. Laura graciously shared a batch of these with staff and I can attest to their deliciousness!
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies 1 cup sugar1 cup pumpkin½ cup vegetable oil1 egg2 cups all-purpose flour½ t. salt1 teaspoon cinnamon2 teaspoons baking powder1 teaspoon baking soda1 teaspoon milk1 teaspoon vanilla1 ½ cups chocolate chips½ cup nuts (optional)
Do you have a "poisonous recipe" you'd like to share? Send to email@example.com.
—Deanna Smith, Director of Marketing
Fernbank Museum is thrilled to be hosting the special exhibit Whales: Giants of the Deep (on view through August 24). It is absolutely breathtaking, and really allows viewers to understand the vastness of these massive creatures and their cultural significance to people of the South Pacific.
That said, perhaps the best part about this exhibit is the significance that it holds for the indigenous people of New Zealand, the Maori.
The Maori and the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa worked closely together to create this exhibit from artifacts that have long belonged to the Maori people. This exhibit introduces visitors to these magnificent animals, as well as the importance of whales to so many of the people in the South Pacific.
Patrons looking at Maori artifacts
It has been an honor for the employees here at Fernbank to experience such a huge part of the Maori culture. In fact, when the exhibit first came to us, we all got the chance to meet the Maori collections manager, Mark Sykes.
Sykes was an integral part of the installation process, but he also came to say a prayer over all of the objects in the exhibit. He has met the whales at many of their museum stops, his purpose is to make sure the spirits of the wales, and other exhibit pieces, are at peace.
Fernbank and Te Papa employees working hard to assemble the skeletons
At each museum, before the exhibit is broken down for travel, a Maori collection manager has come out to say a blessing over the whales that allows their spirits to rest as employees begin the long process of breaking down the exhibit. As the objects from the exhibit arrive at their next stop, Skyes says another blessing to wake them up and introduce them to their new temporary home.
The Evolution of Whales
Fernbank employees were allowed the privilege of participating in the blessing of the whales as they arrived at our Museum. It's safe to say that everyone left with a deeper understanding of how important these creatures are to the Maori people. What may look like skeletons to the rest of us, embodies the spirit of the very culture that the Maori hold so dear.
58-foot-long Sperm Whale Skeleton
As you come visit this special exhibit, keep in mind the cultural significance that is so deeply engrained in these majestic creatures.
—Brittany Loggins, Marketing & Public Relations Coordinator


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Hi, I have a site at http://junkiesrising.com that I tried to install the Bookings plugin into a couple days ago. Installation said "successful" but a few error codes sprouted at the top of my dashboard. I then attempted to uninstall, only to get a message saying "deletion unsuccessful because of errors." Now, though, when I go into my Plugins list, Bookings is gone. My site appears to be ok, but then it's hard to test every little thing. I don't understand the errors... I assumed I'd be able to attach a screenshot, to show you specifically what they are, but I don't see a way to do that. If showing them in public is ok, I can post them to FB or instagram and link, if that would help someone help me figure this out.
I'm about to switch hosts and do not want to transfer a broken site. I was hoping to use the BackupCreator plugin I bought, but that doesn't seem to be working on the new host either so I may be stuck with this installation with the errors that I can't seem to locate or correct.
Brandi H

subset: commoncrawl


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Are you Jing Huang?Claim your profile
Publications (29)26.7 Total impact
Conference Paper: State of the art discriminative training of subspace constrained Gaussian mixture models in big training corpora[Show abstract] [Hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: Discriminatively trained full-covariance Gaussian mixture models have been shown to outperform its corresponding diagonal-covariance models on large vocabulary speech recognition tasks. However, the size of full-covariance model is much larger than that of diagonal-covariance model and is therefore not practical for use in a real system. In this paper, we present a method to build a large discriminatively trained full-covariance model with large (over 9000 hours) training corpora and still improve performance over the diagonal-covariance model. We then reduce the size of the full-covariance model to the size of its baseline diagonal-covariance model by using subspace constrained Gaussian mixture model (SCGMM). The resulting discriminatively trained SCGMM still retains the performance of its corresponding full-covariance model, and improves 5% relative over the same size diagonal-covariance model on a large vocabulary speech recognition task.
Conference Paper: Affine invariant sparse maximum a posteriori adaptation[Show abstract] [Hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: Modern speech applications utilize acoustic models with billions of parameters, and serve millions of users. Storing an acoustic model for each user is costly. We show through the use of sparse regularization, that it is possible to obtain competitive adaptation performance by changing only a small fraction of the parameters of an acoustic model. This allows for the compression of speaker-dependent models: a capability that has important implications for systems with millions of users. We achieve a performance comparable to the best Maximum A Posteriori (MAP) adaptation models while only adapting 5% of the acoustic model parameters. Thus it is possible to compress the speaker dependent acoustic models by close to a factor of 20. The proposed sparse adaptation criterion improves three aspects of previous work: It combines ℓ0 and ℓ1 penalties, have different adaptation rates for mean and variance parameters and is invariant to affine transformations.
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ABSTRACT: Feature-space transforms such as feature-space maximum likelihood linear regression (FMLLR) are very effective speaker adaptation technique, especially on mismatched test data. In this study, we extend the full-rank square matrix of FMLLR to a non-square matrix that uses neighboring feature vectors in estimating the adapted central feature vector. Throughoptimizing an appropriateobjective function we aim to filter out and transform features through the correlation of the feature context. We compare to FMLLR that just consider the current feature vector only. Our experiments are conducted on the automobile data with different speed conditions. Results show that context filtering improves 23% on word error rate over conventional FMLLR on noisy 60mph data with adapted ML model, and 7%/9% improvement over the discriminatively trained FMMI/BMMI models.
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ABSTRACT: Maximum A Posteriori (MAP) adaptation is a powerful tool for building speaker specific acoustic models. Modern speech applications utilize acoustic models with millions of parameters, and serve millions of users. Storing an acoustic model for each user in such settings is costly. However, speaker specific acoustic models are generally similar to the acoustic model being adapted. By imposing sparseness constraints, we can save significantly on storage, and even improve the quality of the resulting speaker-dependent model. In this paper we utilize the ℓ1 or ℓ0 norm as a regularizer to induce sparsity. We show that we can obtain up to 95% sparsity with negligible loss in recognition accuracy, with both penalties. By removing small differences, which constitute "adaptation noise", sparse MAP is actually able to improve upon MAP adaptation. Sparse MAP reduces the MAP word error rate by 2% relative at 89% sparsity.
Conference Paper: Improved Decision Trees for Multi-stream HMM-based Audio-Visual Continuous Speech Recognition[Show abstract] [Hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: HMM-based audio-visual speech recognition (AVSR) systems have shown success in continuous speech recognition by combining visual and audio information, especially in noisy environments. In this paper we study how to improve decision trees used to create context classes in HMM-based AVSR systems. Traditionally, visual models have been trained with the same context classes as the audio only models. In this paper we investigate the use of separate decision trees to model the context classes for the audio and visual streams independently. Additionally we investigate the use of viseme classes in the decision tree building for the visual stream. On experiments with a 37-speaker 1.5 hours test set (about 12000 words) of continuous digits in noise, we obtain about a 3% absolute (20% relative) gain on AVSR performance by using separate decision trees for the audio and visual streams when using viseme classes in decision tree building for the visual stream.
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ABSTRACT: We present a fall classification and detection system to distin- guish falls from other noise in the home environment using only a far-field microphone. We propose modeling each fall or noise segment using a GMM supervector, whose Euclidean distance measures the pairwise difference between audio seg- ments. A Support Vector Machine built on a kernel between GMM supervectors is used to classify audio segments into falls and various types of noise. Experiments on the Netcarity fall dataset show that the proposed fall modeling and clas- sification approach improves fall segment F-score to 67%, from 59% achieved by a standard GMM classifier. We also demonstrate that the proposed approach effectively improves fall detection accuracy by re-classifying confusable labels in the output of dynamic programming using the standard GMM classifier.
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ABSTRACT: Smart homes for the aging population have recently started attracting the attention of the research community. One of the problems of interest is this of monitoring the activities of daily living (ADLs) of the elderly, in order to help identify critical problems, aiming to improvetheir protection and gen- eral well-being. In this paper,we reporton ourinitial attempts to recognize such activities, based on input from networks of far-field microphones distributed inside the home. We pro- pose two approaches to the problem: The first models the en- tire activity, which typically covers long time spans, with a single statistical model, for example a hidden Markov model (HMM), a Gaussian mixture model (GMM), or GMM super- vectors in conjunction with supportvector machines (SVMs). The second is a two-step approach: It first performs acoustic event detection (AED) to locate distinctive events, character- istic of the ADLs, and it is subsequently followed by a post- processingstage thatemploysactivity-specificlanguagemod- els (LMs) to classify the output sequences of detected events into ADLs. Experiments are reported on a corpus contain- ing a small number of acted ADLs, collected as part of the Netcarity Integrated Project inside a two-room smart home. Our results show that SVM GMM supervector modeling im- proves six-class ADL classification accuracy to 76%, com- pared to 56% achieved by the GMMs, while also outperform- ing HMMs by 8% absolute. Preliminary results from LM scoring of acoustic event sequences are comparable to those from GMMs on a three-class ADL classification task.
Conference Paper: Combined discriminative training for multi-stream HMM-based audio-visual speech recognition[Show abstract] [Hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: In this paper we investigate discriminative training of models and feature space for a multi-stream hidden Markov model (HMM) based audio-visual speech recognizer (AVSR). Since the two streams are used together in decoding, we propose to train the parameters of the two streams jointly. This is in contrast to prior work which has considered discriminative training of parameters in each stream independent of the other. In experiments on a 20-speaker one-hour speaker independent test set, we obtain 22% relative gain on AVSR performance over A/V models whose parameters are trained separately, and 50% relative gain on AVSR over the baseline maximum-likelihood models. On a noisy (mismatched to training) test set, we obtain 21% relative gain over A/V models whose parameters are trained separately. This represents 30% relative improvement over the maximum-likelihood baseline.
Chapter: Automatic Speech Recognition[Show abstract] [Hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: Automatic speech recognition (ASR) is a critical component for CHIL services. For example, it provides the input to higher-level technologies, such as summarization and question answering, as discussed in Chapter 8. In the spirit of ubiquitous computing, the goal of ASR in CHIL is to achieve a high performance using far-field sensors (networks of microphone arrays and distributed far-field microphones). However, close-talking microphones are also of interest, as they are used to benchmark ASR system development by providing a best-case acoustic channel scenario to compare against.
Conference Paper: Far-Field Multimodal Speech Processing and Conversational Interaction in Smart Spaces[Show abstract] [Hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: Robust speech processing constitutes a crucial component in the development of usable and natural conversational interfaces. In this paper we are particularly interested in human-computer interaction taking place in "smart" spaces - equipped with a number of far- field, unobtrusive microphones and camera sensors. Their availability allows multi-sensory and multi-modal processing, thus improving robustness of speech-based perception technologies in a number of scenarios of interest, for example lectures and meetings held inside smart conference rooms, or interaction with domotic devices in smart homes. In this paper, we overview recent work at IBM Research in developing state-of-the-art speech technology in smart spaces. In particular we discuss acoustic scene analysis, speech activity detection, speaker diarization, and speech recognition, emphasizing multi-sensory or multi-modal processing. The resulting technology is envisaged to allow far-field conversational interaction in smart spaces based on dialog management and natural language understanding of user requests.
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ABSTRACT: We present the IBM systems for the Rich Transcription 2007 (RT07) speaker diarization evaluation task on lecture meeting data. We first overview our baseline system that was developed last year, as part of our speech-to-text system for the RT06s evaluation. We then present a number of simple schemes considered this year in our effort to improve speaker diarization performance, namely: (i) A better speech activity detection (SAD) system, a necessary pre-processing step to speaker di- arization; (ii) Use of word information from a speaker-independent speech recognizer; (iii) Modifications to speaker cluster merging criteria and the underlying segment model; and (iv) Use of speaker models based on Gaussian mixture models, and their iterative refinement by frame-level re-labeling and smoothing of decision likelihoods. We report development experiments on the RT06s evaluation test set that demonstrate that these methods are effective, resulting in dramatic performance improvements over our baseline diarization system. For example, changes in the cluster segment models and cluster merging methodology result in a 24.2% rel- ative reduction in speaker error rate, whereas use of the iterative model refinement process and word-level alignment produce a 36.0% and 9.2% speaker error relative reduction, respectively. The importance of the SAD subsystem is also shown, with SAD error reduction from 12.3% to 4.3% translating to a 20.3% relative reduction in speaker error rate. Unfor- tunately however, the developed diarization system heavily depends on appropriately tuning thresholds in the speaker cluster merging process. Possibly as a result of over-tuning such thresholds, performance on the RT07 evaluation test set degrades significantly compared to the one ob- served on development data. Nevertheless, our experiments show that the introduced techniques of cluster merging, speaker model refinement and alignment remain valuable in the RT07 evaluation.
Conference Paper: Improving speaker diarization for CHIL lecture meetings.
Conference Paper: Detection, diarization, and transcription of far-field lecture speech[Show abstract] [Hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: Speech processing of lectures recorded inside smart rooms has recently attracted much interest. In particular, the topic has been central to the Rich Transcription (RT) Meeting Recognition Evaluation campaign series, sponsored by NIST, with empha- sis placed on benchmarking speech activity detection (SAD), speaker diarization (SPKR), speech-to-text (STT), and speaker- attributed STT (SASTT) technologies. In this paper, we present the IBM systems developed to address these tasks in preparation for the RT 2007 evaluation, focusing on the far-field condition of lecture data collected as part of European project CHIL. For their development, the systems are benchmarked on a subset of the RT Spring 2006 (RT06s) evaluation test set, where they yield significant improvements for all SAD, SPKR, and STT tasks over RT06s results; for example, a 16% relative reduction in word error rate is reported in STT, attributed to a number of system advances discussed here. Initial results are also pre- sented on SASTT, a task newly introduced in 2007 in place of the discontinued SAD. Index Terms: speech processing, speech recognition, speaker diarization, speech activity detection, lectures, smart rooms.
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ABSTRACT: The paper describes the IBM systems submitted to the NIST Rich Transcription 2007 (RT07) evaluation campaign for the speech- to-text (STT) and speaker-attributed speech-to-text (SASTT) tasks on the lecture meeting domain. Three testing conditions are considered, namely the multiple distant microphone (MDM), single distant micro- phone (SDM), and individual headset microphone (IHM) ones - the lat- ter for the STT task only. The IBM system building process is similar to that employed last year for the STT Rich Transcription Spring 2006 eval- uation (RT06s). However, a few technical advances have been introduced for RT07: (a) better speaker segmentation; (b) system combination via the ROVER approach applied over an ensemble of systems, some of which are built by randomized decision tree state-tying; and (c) development of a very large language model consisting of 152M n-grams, incorporating, among other sources, 525M words of web data, and used in conjunction with a dynamic decoder. These advances reduce STT word error rate (WER) in the MDM condition by 16% relative (8% absolute) over the IBM RT06s system, as measured on 17 lecture meeting segments of the RT06s evaluation test set, selected in this work as development data. In the RT07 evaluation campaign, both MDM and SDM systems perform competitively for the STT and SASTT tasks. For example, at the MDM condition, a 44.3% STT WER is achieved on the RT07 evaluation test set, excluding scoring of overlapped speech. When the STT transcripts are combined with speaker labels from speaker diarization, SASTT WER becomes 52.0%. For the STT IHM condition, the newly developed large language model is employed, but in conjunction with the RT06s IHM acoustic models. The latter are reused, due to lack of time to train new models to utilize additional close-talking microphone data available in RT07. Therefore, the resulting system achieves modest WERs of 31.7% and 33.4%, when using manual or automatic segmentation, respectively.
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ABSTRACT: We describe the IBM systems submitted to the NIST RT06s Speech-to-Text (STT) evaluation campaign on the CHIL lecture meet- ing data for three conditions: Multiple distant microphone (MDM), single distant microphone (SDM), and individual headset microphone (IHM). The system building process is similar to the IBM conversational tele- phone speech recognition system. However, the best models for the far- field conditions (SDM and MDM) proved to be the ones that use neither variance normalization nor vocal tract length normalization. Instead, feature-space minimum-phone error discriminative training yielded the best results. Due to the relatively small amount of CHIL-domain data, the acoustic models of our systems are built on publicly available meeting corpora, with maximum a-posteriori adaptation applied twice on CHIL data during training: First, at the initial speaker-independent model, and subsequently at the minimum phone error model. For language modeling, we utilized meeting transcripts, text from scientific conference proceed- ings, and spontaneous telephone conversations. On development data, chosen in our work to be the 2005 CHIL-internal STT evaluation test set, the resulting language model provided a 4% absolute gain in word error rate (WER), compared to the model used in last year's CHIL evaluation. Furthermore, the developed STT system significantly outperformed our last year's results, by reducing close-talking microphone data WER from 36.9% to 25.4% on our development set. In the NIST RT06s evaluation campaign, both MDM and SDM systems scored well, however the IHM system did poorly due to unsuccessful cross-talk removal.
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ABSTRACT: In this paper, we describe the IBM system submitted to the NIST Rich Transcription Spring 2006 (RT06s) evaluation campaign for automatic speech activity detection (SAD). This SAD system has been developed and evaluated on CHIL lecture meeting data using far-field microphone sensors, namely a single distant microphone (SDM) config- uration and a multiple distant microphone (MDM) condition. The IBM SAD system employs a three-class statistical classifier, trained on fea- tures that augment traditional signal energy ones with features that are based on acoustic phonetic likelihoods. The latter are obtained using a large speaker-independent acoustic model trained on meeting data. In the detection stage, after feature extraction and classification, the resulting sequence of classified states is further collapsed into segments belonging to only two classes, speech or silence, following two levels of smoothing. In the MDM condition, the process is repeated for every available mi- crophone channel, and the outputs are combined based on a simple ma- jority voting rule, biased towards speech. The system performed well at the RT06s evaluation campaign, resulting to 8.62% and 5.01% "speaker diarization error" in the SDM and MDM conditions respectively.
Conference Paper: Improving lip-reading with feature space transforms for multi-stream audio-visual speech recognition[Show abstract] [Hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: In this paper we investigate feature space transforms to improve lip-reading performance for multi-stream HMM based audio-visual speech recognition (AVSR). The feature space transforms include non-linear Gaussianization transform and feature space maximum likelihood linear regression (fMLLR). We apply Gaussianization at the various stages of visual front-end. The results show that Gaussianizing the final visual features achieves the best performance: 8% gain on lip-reading and 14% gain on AVSR. We also compare performance of speaker-based Gaussianization and global Gaussianization. Without fMLLR adaptation, speaker-based Gaussianization improves more on lip-reading and multi-stream AVSR performance. However, with fMLLR adaptation, global Gaussianization shows better results, and achieves 18% over baseline fMLLR adaptation for AVSR.
Conference Paper: Discriminatively trained features using fMPE for multi-stream audio-visual speech recognition[Show abstract] [Hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: fMPE is a recently introduced discriminative training technique that uses the Minimum Phone Error (MPE) discriminative criterion to train a feature-level transformation. In this paper we investigate fMPE trained audio/visual features for multi-stream HMM-based audio-visual speech recognition. A flexible, layer-based implementation of fMPE allows us to combine the the visual information with the audio stream using the discriminative training process, and dispense with the multiple stream approach. Experiments are reported on the IBM infrared headset audio-visual database. On average of 20-speaker 1 hour speaker independent test data, the fMPE trained acoustic features achieve 33% relative gain. Adding video layers on top of audio layers gives additional 10% gain over fMPE trained features from the audio stream alone. The fMPE trained visual features achieve 14% relative gain, while the decision fusion of audio/visual streams with fMPE trained features achieves 29% relative gain. However, fMPE trained models do not improve over the original models on the mismatched noisy test data.
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ABSTRACT: It is well known that frontal video of the speaker's mouth region contains significant speech information that, when combined with the acoustic signal, can improve accuracy and noise robustness of automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems. However, extraction of such visual speech information from full-face videos is computationally expensive, as it requires tracking faces and facial features. In addition, robust face detection remains challenging in practical human–computer interaction (HCI), where the subject's posture and environment (lighting, background) are hard to control, and thus successfully compensate for. In this paper, in order to bypass these hindrances to practical bimodal ASR, we consider the use of a specially designed, wearable audio-visual headset, a feasible solution in certain HCI scenarios. Such a headset can consistently focus on the speaker's mouth region, thus eliminating altogether the need for face tracking. In addition, it employs infrared illumination to provide robustness against severe lighting variations. We study the appropriateness of this novel device for audio-visual ASR by conducting both small- and large-vocabulary recognition experiments on data recorded using it under various lighting conditions. We benchmark the resulting ASR performance against bimodal data containing frontal, full-face videos collected at an ideal, studio-like environment, under uniform lighting. The experiments demonstrate that the infrared headset video contains comparable speech information to the studio, full-face video data, thus being a viable sensory device for audio-visual ASR.
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A new fire fighting tool arrives in the early morning hours to its new home in Zanesville.
Three firefighters and a city maitenance worker drove the new fire engine all the way from Wisconsin to the Epply Avenue Station where it will be housed.
The new Engine 2, a 2013 Pierce Velocity Pumper, cost $480,000. The new Engine 2 replaces the current Engine 2, which has been in service for over 15 years.
"We had to repair the frame on it twice. The frame has gone bad a few...


text: Edit profile Classic editor History Please do not edit my personnal sandbox This user plays as a member of the Horde. This user has reached level 70. This user plays as an orc hunter. This user is dedicated, but not hardcore. This user has too many alternate characters. Retrieved from "http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/User:Malusz?oldid=2104225"


text: A new survey on Americans' health care reveals some interesting information about patient health. According to a survey from Gfk Roper, the average patient's health is dependent on a minimum of 200 pieces of paper in about 19 different locations. And the average doctor's appointment takes 13 pages to document on paper. On average, Americans will see 18 different doctors throughout their life. Patients older than age 65 will see more than 28, the study found.


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Sex. Obviously. I encourage you to tease you friends using this phrase... especially around their family. See also Sex.
A euphimism meaning turn on the television. P stands for Panasonic.
See also Sex.
Also known as navel or belly button, the latter only used by vulgarians according to My Very Proper Southern Mother. See also Body, Sophomoric.
See also Sex.
Kind sir, might you lend a hand and add a funny euphemism?
Also known as braces. See also Teenagers.
Aka, missing a period, aka pregnant. See also Sex.
It's what my dad would ask if my fly was open.
Aka CTD, a hospital term for a dying patient. See also Medicine.
A man's girlfriend that will never leave his side. Unless both of his arms get cut off in a freak accident.


text:
Create a free account to check out faster, store multiple shipping addresses, view and track your orders in your account, and much more.
Please enter your password to continue.
My boyfriend loves pomade and wax hair products, but they always left a lot of residue, which made him look like he had dandruff. Not okay! He loves this product, and he doesn't need to use that much of it for a nice hold without looking like there's too much product.5
I have now ordered this for the second time and close to reordering again. I am particular about my hair as my appearance matters in front of customers. The amazing thing is how long the product lasts with a little run of some wet fingers through it for a refresh. It keep hold but doesn't feel stiff and crunchy5
This is probably my favorite product in the Hanz de Fuko line, and I own all six of their current clays (as of 12.12.15). It may not be the highest in hold, but the smell is great and it acts to boost the volume of my hair.
I would caution that there is a max profit to this product - too much is not good. A happy medium of an amount has served me well, and I've learned that overcompensating will leave my hair feeling heavy and greasy. The right finger-sized doloop gives my hair the shine HdF promises.
I usually use this product to give some extra hold and shine after using there quicksand product as a pre styler, it gives a real nice natural shine without making your hair look or feel all greasy. i would recommend this product to people with darker shades of hair who want to achieve a more textured look.4


text: New stories Upcoming Incoming 20° Putting a price on trust 14m ago - EA states they want to "regain the trust" of gamers, but in reality just want to sell you somethi... | Culture Comments (0) Source 20° Attack on Titan Gets 15 Minutes of PS4 Gameplay from the Story Mode Played by Mikasa's Voice Actress 24m ago - Koei Tecmo released a new video showcasing fifteen minutes of PS4 gameplay from the story mode of... | PS3 Comments (0) Source Ad Guess N4G Game of the Year Winners, win a $300 Amazon Gift Card Now - Also enter for a chance to win a gift card for writing a user blog, writing a user review, or being a top contributor for the month. | Promoted post Read More SiteBot 20° PS4 Exclusive Valkyria: Azure Revolution Gets Official Demo Videos, New Character Screenshots & Art 42m ago - Sega just released two official playthrough videos of the Valkyria: Azure Revolution demo, giving... | PS4 Comments (0) Source 20° Original Ty the Tasmanian Tiger Coming to Steam 59m ago - It's hard not to feel nostalgic when looking at the box art for Ty the Tasmanian Tiger. Coming ou... | PC Comments (0) Source 20° Unravel Impressions: A Wooly World For Xbox & PlayStation Fans 1h ago - When EA unveiled Unravel to the world last year during E3 Broken Joysticks Staff wasn't exactly e... | PS4 Comments (0) Source


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Rating: R
Characters: Kurt/Blaine, Lauren Zizes, Emma Pillsbury, Rachel Berry
Summary: After the debacle with Chandler, Blaine feels like he needs to be as honest as possible with Kurt about what he needs, no matter how uncomfortable.
Contents you should be aware of: Lots of discussion of BDSM; cultural appropriation aided and abetted by Rachel Berry
Notes: This started as a random thing I wrote in ten minutes and threw up on Tumblr as a response to 3.17 (hence if the opening looks familiar). Now it's a finished fic.
( By the time they're done singing with the rest of the Glee club, Blaine sitting sweetly on the piano bench and gazing up at Kurt perched on top of the piano, Kurt's ready to take Blaine home and worship him, because wow, Kurt really, really needs to show his boyfriend his appreciation about now.Collapse )


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Knots and Crosses
See all items in
Hard-boiled Crime Fiction
Mystery and Crime
Hard-boiled Crime Fiction
Mystery and Crime
London: The Bodley Head, 1987. First Edition. INSCRIBED by the author on the title page: "To Duke / Cheers! / Ian Rankin" along with his trademark knots-and-crosses drawing. Fine and unread in a Fine dust jacket, with absolutely none of the usual fading at the spine panel. Rankin's second book, and the first Rebus novel.
[Book #124062]
Price: $1,850.00


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18 Homemade Christmas Decorations: How to Make Christmas Decorations
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Holiday Tree Centerpiece
By: STYROFOAM Brand Foam
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Decorate your tables with a beautiful Holiday Tree Centerpiece this season. Use scrapbook paper and ornaments to create easy Christmas crafts that can be reused year after year. This is a great project for parents and kids to work on together. In fact, it's so easy, you won't believe it's real. If you're looking for home decor ideas this Christmas, you'll fall in love with this quick and easy craft project. Best of all, the materials used in this project are inexpensive and easy to find, so you won't have to spend an arm and a leg or search high and low for supplies.
- STYROFOAM™ Brand Cones: 12" X 4" and 9" X 4"
- 2 small silver ornaments
- Green scrapbook paper, four - five 12" X 12" sheets
- Foam-safe spray adhesive
- Straight pins (optional)
- Low-temp glue gun and glue sticks or thick, white craft glue
- Pattern
- Use patterns to cut cone coverings from scrapbook papers. Papers will need to be pieced together to cover the cones.
- Spray foam cone with adhesive; wrap cone with paper cut in Step 1. If needed, spot glue and pin edges in place. Let dry completely. Repeat with second cone.
- Glue silver ornament to top of each cone
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Okay, it was a beautiful sunshiney day here. It is now nearly 10pm and I haven't even gotten dressed yet. I have been on some form of bbc for most of the day. How sad is that!
My kids still have not finished the dishes yet either (they started around 2pm).
I am very cranky today and want to enjoy the day but have spent it all right here. What a waste. I did read some good posts though.


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McCartney Performs Where Beatles Made US TV Debut
Updated: 07/17/2009 - Forty-five years after the Beatles' American TV debut at the Ed Sullivan Theater, Paul McCartney got back — with a concert on top of the marquee.
Updated: 07/17/2009 - Forty-five years after the Beatles' American TV debut at the Ed Sullivan Theater, Paul McCartney got back — with a concert on top of the marquee.
Posted: 07/16/2009 - Items left outside Motown Museum will be buried.
Updated: 07/16/2009 - The European Union is teaming up with music channel MTV to raise awareness among teens about the dangers of climate change.
Posted: 07/14/2009 - Some final thoughts are coming from George Carlin.
Posted: 07/14/2009 - Actress Maura Tierney says she's having surgery to remove a tumor in her breast.
Posted: 07/13/2009 - One of Farrah Fawcett's closest friends, Alana Stewart, is publishing a diary she kept as the actress battled cancer and then died last month.
Posted: 07/13/2009 - More than any news program in recent memory, NBC's "The Wanted" comes with a reputation preceding it. And it isn't good.
Posted: 07/13/2009 - Jackie Chan will play the wise kung-fu master in a Hollywood-Chinese remake of the 1984 hit "The Karate Kid".
Posted: 07/13/2009 - Did the festival deliver an economic impact?
Posted: 07/10/2009 - Jim Carrey is going to be a grandfather.
Posted: 07/09/2009 - David Arquette is going to sleep in a box in New York City to raise money for the hungry.
Posted: 07/09/2009 - Michael Moore's latest documentary now has a title — and a theme that resonates with recession-weary audiences.
Posted: 07/07/2009 - Actor Benicio del Toro met with convicts inside a Puerto Rican prison Monday, offering encouragement to a jailhouse theater group.
Updated: 07/07/2009 - The public memorial service for Michael Jackson has concluded in Los Angeles.
Posted: 07/07/2009 - 30,000-plus attend, 88 arrested at Rothbury fest.
Updated: 07/06/2009 - The hype around the festival and why so many refuse to let the economy ruin their fun.
Updated: 07/07/2009 - Fans picking up tickets to Jackson memorial
Posted: 07/03/2009 - 17,500 free tickets for this Tuesday's public memorial for Michael Jackson will be made available, through on-line registration.
Updated: 07/06/2009 - Briton Ben Southall said he'll miss his mom's Sunday roast as he began what's been dubbed the "Best Job in the World"
Posted: 07/01/2009 - Adoring fans and dozens of news crews crowded around Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch, only to learn that no funeral was planned there.
Posted: 07/01/2009 - The life of "Charlie's Angels" star Farrah Fawcett was celebrated Tuesday at a private funeral in the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels.
Updated: 07/06/2009 - Michael Jackson's will gives guardianship over his children to the singer's mother and leaves all his assets in a trust fund, a person with knowledge of the document told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
Posted: 06/29/2009 - Guitarist Billy McLaughlin was at the top of his game a decade ago, a fingerstyle player noted for his technique of tapping on strings, when he began having problems controlling his left hand.
Posted: 06/29/2009 - Free concert planned.
Posted: 06/29/2009 - Michael Jackson's parents file papers to administer Jackson estate


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Album Summary
- Nicola Boud (Clarinet)
Notes & Reviews:
Playing on historical instruments, the Edding Quartet continues to surprise us with their beautiful sound and distinctive yet natural style. This time they bring us two major works by Mozart and introduce us to Nicola Boud, the brilliant young Australian clarinet player.Notes & Reviews:
Recording information: Leut, Belgium (06/15/2009-06/17/2009).
ReviewsThere are currently no reviews, be the first one!
Also Purchased
The Artistry of Christopher Parkening
Vivaldi: Ercole Sul Termodonte / Biondi, Villazon
Villa-Lobos: Complete Works for Guitar / Bungarten
Rachmaninov: Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom
Mendelssohn: Music for Piano for 2 and 4 hands
Janacek: Complete String Quartets / Mandelring
Handel: Water Music / Minkowski
Schubert Live, Vol. 3 / Imogen Cooper
Beethoven: Symphony No 4; Egmont Overture For Pia
Works DetailsMozart, Wolfgang Amadeus : Quintet for Clarinet and Strings in A major, K 581
- Performer: Nicola Boud (Clarinet)
- Notes: Leut, Belgium (06/15/2009-06/17/2009)
- Running Time: 30 min. 22 sec.
- Period Time: Classical
- Form: Chamber Music
- Written: 1789
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus : Quartet for Strings no 15 in D minor, K 421 (417b)
- Notes: Leut, Belgium (06/15/2009-06/17/2009)
- Running Time: 29 min. 59 sec.
- Period Time: Classical
- Written: 1783


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MAJOR X1,2 Solar Flare & CME - A Giant "WAVE" of Plasma Heading for Earth
- Uploaded by Conspiritor on Jan 8, 2014
- Views: 134
Major X1,2 Solar Flare Detected + CMEA major solar flare measuring was detected on Tuesday afternoon peaking at 18:30 UTC. The source of the eruption was region 1943, with interaction between sunspot 1944. Because the flare appears to be long in duration, a coronal mass ejection is possible (see below). The blast site is in a great geoeffective position for Earth directed eruptions. Solar Dyanamics Observatory (SDO) captures a "wave" of plasma racing away from the blast siteGeomagnetic Storm Category G2 PredictedHighest Storm Level Predicted by Day:Jan 08: None Jan 09: G2 (Moderate) Jan 10: G1 (Minor)HUGE SUNSPOT TARGETS EARTH: One of the biggest sunspots in years is crossing the center of the solar disk, putting Earth in the way of potential eruptions. pictures are from NASA, and Were taken from the AIA instrument of the satellite SDO (Solar Dynamics Observatory), with a wavelength of 304 Angstroms. This movie was produced by helioviewer


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Book your room at Hotel Vista Hermosa
Deluxe Room, 1 Double BedMax Occupancy: 2 guests (up to 1 child, 1 infant)
Executive Room, 1 King BedMax Occupancy: 2 guests (up to 1 child, 1 infant)
Superior Room, 2 Double BedsMax Occupancy: 4 guests (up to 3 children, 1 infant)
Get an overview of this hotelClothing optional Guadalajara hotel in Downtown Guadalajara, walk to Metropolitan Cathedral
Hotel Vista Hermosa is in the heart of Guadalajara, walking distance from Parque Revolucion and Biblioteca Octavio Paz.
This family-friendly hotel is within close proximity of Corona Market and Metropolitan Cathedral.
Make yourself at home in one of the 48 air-conditioned rooms featuring LED televisions. Complimentary wireless Internet access keeps you connected, and cable programming is available for your entertainment. Private bathrooms with showers feature rainfall showerheads and complimentary toiletries. Conveniences include phones, as well as safes and desks.
Take in the views from a rooftop terrace and a terrace and make use of amenities such as complimentary wireless Internet access. This Art Deco hotel also features concierge services, babysitting/childcare (surcharge), and wedding services.
Satisfy your appetite at the hotel's restaurant, which serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Dining is also available at a coffee shop/café, and room service (during limited hours) is provided. Quench your thirst with your favorite drink at a bar/lounge.
Featured amenities include a business center, a computer station, and dry cleaning/laundry services. This hotel has 4 meeting rooms available for events. Free valet parking is available onsite.Information missing or incorrect? Tell us!Opens in a new window
Hotel Amenities
Hotel Amenities
The hotel offers a restaurant and a coffee shop/café. A bar/lounge is on site where guests can unwind with a drink. Business-related amenities at this 3-star property consist of a business center and meeting rooms.
A computer station is located on site and high-speed wireless Internet access is complimentary. 4 meeting rooms are available. This Art Deco hotel also offers a rooftop terrace, a terrace, and multilingual staff. Onsite valet parking is complimentary. A total renovation of this property was completed in September 2013.
Hotel Vista Hermosa is a smoke-free property.
- 24-hour front desk
- Babysitting or childcare (surcharge)
- Supervised childcare/activities (surcharge)
- Total number of rooms - 48
- Number of floors - 8
- Bar/lounge
- Breakfast available (surcharge)
- Business center
- Coffee shop or café
- Concierge services
- Dry cleaning/laundry service
- Elevator/lift
- Computer station
- Free WiFi
- Laundry facilities
- Meeting rooms
- Multilingual staff
- Free valet parking
- Rooftop terrace
- Terrace
- Porter/bellhop
- Luggage storage
- Restaurant
- Number of meeting rooms - 4
- Year Built 1981
- Smoke-free property
- Number of buildings/towers - 1
- Wedding services
Family Friendly Amenities
- Family Hotel
- Free Wi-Fi
- Laundry facilities
- Babysitting or childcare (surcharge)
- In-room childcare (surcharge)
Available in all rooms: Free WiFi
Available in some public areas: Free WiFi
Free valet parking
Room Amenities
- Premium TV channels
- Premium bedding
- Air conditioning
- Climate control
- Phone
- Free bottled water
- Daily housekeeping
- Turndown service
- Private bathroom
- Free toiletries
- Hair dryer
- Shower only
- Rainfall showerhead
- In-room childcare (surcharge)
- Iron/ironing board (on request)
- In-room safe
- Desk
- Blackout drapes/curtains
- Cable TV service
- Free WiFi
- Room service (limited hours)
- Individually furnished
- Individually decorated
- Connecting/adjoining rooms available
Where to Eat
Full breakfasts are available for a surcharge and are served each morning between 7 AM and noon.
Chaquira sugar - This bar specializes in Mexican cuisine and serves breakfast, lunch, dinner, and light fare. Open daily.
Late night fare is available from room service (during limited hours).
Nearby Things to Do
The recreational activities listed below are available either on site or nearby; fees may apply.
- Bicycle rentals nearby
To make requests for specific accessibility needs, complete the "Special or Accessibility Requests" section of "Trip Preferences" when you book your hotel.
- Accessible bathroom
- In-room accessibility
Hotel Policies
Check-in time starts at 3 PM
Minimum check-in age is 18
Check-in time ends at Midnight
Check-out time is Noon
Payment types
You need to know
Extra-person charges may apply and vary depending on hotel policy.
Government-issued photo identification and a credit card or cash deposit are required at check-in for incidental charges.
Special requests are subject to availability upon check-in and may incur additional charges. Special requests cannot be guaranteed.
No rollaway/extra beds available
No pets or service animals allowed
Parking height restrictions apply
- Resort fee
Optional extras
- Fee for full breakfast: MXN 126.00 per person (approximately)
Hotel Name
- Hotel Vista Hermosa
- Hotel Vista Hermosa Guadalajara
- Vista Hermosa Guadalajara
We should mention
Clothing is optional at this property. A resort fee is included in the total price displayed. Up to 2 children 10 years old and younger stay free when occupying the parent or guardian's room, using existing bedding. The property has connecting/adjoining rooms, which are subject to availability and can be requested by contacting the property using the number on the booking confirmation. No pets and no service animals are allowed at this property.


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Top 25 Fared
Updated: February 25, 2013, 9:10 PM ETAssociated Press
1. Indiana (24-3) did not play. Next: at Minnesota, Tuesday.
2. Gonzaga (27-2) did not play. Next: at BYU, Thursday.
3. Duke (24-3) did not play. Next: at Virginia, Thursday.
4. Michigan (23-4) did not play. Next: at Penn State, Wednesday.
5. Miami (22-4) did not play. Next: vs. Virginia Tech, Wednesday.
6. Kansas (23-4) at Iowa State. Next: vs. West Virginia, Saturday.
7. Georgetown (21-4) did not play. Next: at UConn, Wednesday.
8. Florida ...
Read full story
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The Colorado State Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People on Saturday stated formal opposition to Amendment 62, the so-called Personhood Amendment, that would grant constitutional rights to a human being "at the beginning of biological development.
This is the first time the NAACP State Conference has taken a public position on an initiative involving reproductive health, according to "No 62" campaign spokeswoman Cara DeGette.
"This is not about morality, the right and wrong; this is about upholding the Constitution, a woman's constitutional right to choose," said NAACP State Conference President Beatrice Madison at its conference in Colorado Springs.


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With a stay at Gentofte Hotel in Gentofte (Copenhagen North), you'll be close to Gentofte Stadium and Deer Park. This eco-friendly hotel is within close proximity of Oregaard Museum and Ordrupgaard.
Stay in one of 98 guestrooms featuring flat-screen televisions. Complimentary wired and wireless Internet access keeps you connected, and satellite programming provides entertainment. Bathrooms have complimentary toiletries and hair dryers. Conveniences include desks, housekeeping is provided daily, and irons/ironing boards can be requested.
Rec, Spa, Premium Amenities
Enjoy recreation amenities such as bicycles to rent or take in the view from a terrace. This hotel also features complimentary wireless Internet access, concierge services, and tour/ticket assistance.
Satisfy your appetite at the hotel's restaurant, which serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner, or stay in and take advantage of room service (during limited hours). Quench your thirst with your favorite drink at a bar/lounge.
Business, Other Amenities
Featured amenities include a computer station, express check-out, and complimentary newspapers in the lobby. Free self parking is available onsite.
Simple hotel with comfortable room, good food and free internet
The doors open out and several people nearly hit me coming out of their rooms.
Service exceptionally professional and personal. As a guest you feel like home.
Good restaurant. Suited me personally location wise. very nice breakfast.
The room comfort
Limited choice of alternative reaturant, limited working time of the restaurant on Suday evening (9pm)
excellent service, very nice and comfortable room. Very good dining and breakfast and good location to Copenhagen city center at a reasonable price.
Well located, renovated rooms
Terrible bath room . Noise of renovation making by workers at 7 AM
The waiter serving me my dinner had a personal hygeine issue - basically he needed to use deodiderant.
the whole environment, the restaurant, the pizzeria in the neighborhood, the easy access to the railway station, the kindness of the staff and so on I liked my stay in Gentofte Hotel
the TV set, a newer one is needed in the new rooms
Limited menu, limited staff.


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As the seasons change, so does the name of the property located 1.5 miles from the Arboretum's entrance gates. The SummerHouse becomes the AppleHouse, but is still worth the (minor) road trip out to Chaska. Over the coming weeks more than 50 varieties of apples will be available for purchase. Early pickings will feature the Zestars! (yes, the exclamation point is necessary), but later on Honeycrisps, SweeTango, and Snowsweets will be bagged as well. Stop in at the gift shop and pick up locally made jams, fudge, gardening tools, and other produce from corn to potatoes to zucchini to take home. Proceeds from the shop benefit the University's research program. Looking for a specific apple? Call the hotline at 952.443.1409 before you visit to ensure availability. (Image by Abhijit Tembhekar)
Sept. 1-Nov. 24, 10 a.m.-6 p.m., 2010
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Greg Leake has been at it again. He has emerged from his lab with the latest results of benchmark testing of Windows Server AppFabric Caching vs. IBM eXtreme Scale and the results are something you definitely want to see.
Microsoft® Windows® Server AppFabric vs. IBM® WebSphere® eXtreme Scale 7.1 Benchmark Report
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