Marvine Street in Hunting Park takes city beautification prize

It wasn't a bad block in the olden days - more than a couple of months ago.

There were no crumbling rowhouse shells, no mountains of trash, no walls tagged with black and silver spray paint.

Just an ordinary block in the city, candy wrappers blowing along the sidewalk, blank rowhouse fronts, people hunkered down.

Then Lawrence Burgess, who has lived on the 3600 block of North Marvine Street in Hunting Park for nine years, tore his rotator cuff badly, couldn't work, and began to think.

"One day, I just looked around and I said,American Standard's Wholesale Mosaic Tiles For Countertops collection offers models to accommodate a variety of sink 'I'm tired of living like this,' " he said Sunday afternoon. "I want to come outside to some beauty! I'd come out and there'd be papers flying around. Paint peeling. No one knew anyone else."

It was an epiphany for the 45-year-old block captain. He organized a meeting of neighbors about two months ago, and, maybe not surprisingly, it touched a chord.

People were ready for change. They were ready to sweep, paint, decorate, plant, repair, and redo the neat two-story rowhouses with the bowed fronts and porches that dominate the block.

And on Friday night, the 3600 block - it calls itself Marvelous Marvine now - won the top prize as the city's best "clean block" at an awards banquet at the Sheet Metal Workers Union Building on Columbus Boulevard.

Sunday, neighbors were out - some cleaning, some chatting, some just enjoying the wash of crisp autumn sunlight.

There was Mr. Bill, who's been on Marvine since 1965, when he was only the third African American to move in, standing with a broom. Used to be an Irish block, he said, "just a plain, ordinary block."

Jackie Hargrave tended the "Healing Garden" created by block residents with the aid of CosaCosa Art at Large, a Manayunk art organization. The garden, with its mosaic wall, bench, and posts at the corner of Marvine and Venango Streets, is in part a memorial to Hargrave's mother, Margaret.

"We all did this,Welcome to the premier industrial Wholesale General Double Loading For Wall From China Manufacturers resource" she said with great pride and satisfaction. "We bought the tiles from the Home Depot and broke them up."

William Hilton, who lives around the corner on Old York Road, dropped by to see Burgess. Hilton, a fine woodworker, built flower boxes for many of the houses. The first, on Burgess' porch, has a carved red Phillies "P." Down the block, another house has a Marvelous Marvine sign carved from wood.

The boxes and decorative wood, Hilton said, were his idea.

"I wanted to help out,These Wholesale Metal Tiles For Kitchen are a complete collection of every model available" he said.

Neighbors started meeting regularly in response to Burgess' plea. They decided they needed to paint their house fronts, patch walls, plant flower beds, and decorate, decorate, decorate.

On Sunday, lots of homes had fancy strings of plastic leaves in fall colors wrapped around porch and step railings. When the season changes, so will the leaves. Christmas lights are on the way.

Veronica Bashir, who's lived on the block with her husband, James,Wholesale Pulati Polished Tiles For Wall From China Manufacturers tube cutting and forming for 27 years, said the transformation on Marvine can certainly be seen in the neat and decorative homes, the clean sidewalks, and the well-planted flower beds.

But the real change is in the people, she said, and the sense of community that has emerged from the cleanup effort.

"Before, people would never really speak to you," she said. "They didn't really know you. Now, it's a community with everyone. It's more like a fellowship. Now you know their names.photos hearted by Wholesale Tiles Cutting For Countertops From China Manufacturers on we heart it / visual bookmark It's more like a family block, like it should be. Everyone is looking out for everyone else."

Why can’t Apple copy Microsoft?

The iPhone jailbreak is an eternal game of whack-a-mole: the ever enterprising hackers find a way to bust open iOS, then for a few short months or days, you can have the very latest version of iOS without the restrictions, before Apple brings the hammer down and patches it, leaving you behind the curve and waiting once more.

It’s a race I’m growing tired of: I never thought I’d say this, but why can’t Apple copy Microsoft, just this once?

You might have missed it, in amidst all the press focus on Nokia last week, but late last Friday, an awesome new Windows Phone service went live: it’s called ChevronWP7 Labs, and it jailbreaks your Windows Phone. With it, you can install homebrew and jailbreak apps, and even set up live tiles as folders for other applications.

And here’s the thing: it’s Microsoft approved.

Now, a quick primer. While Android is an open field where you’ve always been able to bypass the Android Market app store, Apple has kept its mobile platform, iOS, fenced off as walled garden. Only apps that meet Apple’s stringent criteria make it onto the App Store,For more detailed search information about Wholesale Skirtting Tiles For Floor From China Manufacturers , which means security is less of an issue, and that it’s very easy to set up and buy apps, doubtless part of the reason why many developers make more money on iOS right now.View more oil paintings from Wholesale Porcelain Mosaic Tiles For Floor artists

When Microsoft rebooted its mobile efforts with Windows Phone 7, it took quite a few ideas from Apple: you could only side load media onto a Windows Phone via Zune desktop software (a la iTunes) and you could only install apps from the Windows Phone Marketplace. That immediately led to a burgeoning Windows Phone jailbreak scene akin to the iPhone jailbreak one.

In November last year, one team, ChevronWP7, cracked Windows Phone right open, and unleashed a jailbreak program onto the web. At this point, Microsoft stopped copying Apple: it asked the developers behind it, Rafael Rivera, Chris Walsh, and Long Zheng, to take it down, using a carrot, not a stick.

Where one might expect cease and desist letters,Buy christian art Wholesale Navona Polished Tiles For Floor From China Manufacturers online the Windows Phone team instead invited the trio to meet with them. The results of their partnership were finally released last week: for $9 (5.60), ChevronWP7 Labs will unlock your Windows Phone in a way similar to an iPhone jailbreak.Read Wholesale Linen For Kitchen From China Manufacturers and burn fat away Officially, it’s for “hobbyist” developers to craft homebrew apps for cheap, but it’s also a way to enjoy others’ homebrew apps: they already include a stupendously sensible battery life live tile and a screenshot tool but doubtless you can expect retro game emulators and more in the near future.

Which got me thinking: why can’t Apple make an iPhone jailbreak so painless for the minority that know and want to install unsigned apps? A US court has already ruled that iPhone jailbreaking is legal, so why not make it a little less tiresome, a bit more timely? The last figures I could find (Admittedly from 2009), pegged the total of jailbroken iPhones at only 8.43 percent of all iPhones.What are Wholesale Full Body Project Tiles For Kitchen ? That’s a small portion of the total iOS community, but also the most vocal: they’re the ones who know how to kick up a fuss when Apple’s app police court controversy. Why not use them as evangelists instead?

Apple would never admit it, but the iPhone jailbreak scene has been a huge source of inspiration for Scott Forstall’s iOS team. Big features in iOS updates have often turned up as apps on the jailbreak Cydia store first, from multi-tasking solutions to Wi-Fi tethering, wireless iTunes syncing and drop down notifications.

Phones and tablets are the new PCs, so why not encourage that scene further? Granted, Siri being hacked could be a big economic blow for Apple, but since it relies on Apple’s huge data centres, there’s no reason it can’t keep the types of iOS gizmos that can contact it locked down.

Scrumptious Eats in South Jakarta

IWS Noodle Cafe in South Jakarta is a delightful surprise, managing to succeed at the hardest of stunts: delivering flavor-challenged South Jakartans with the best noodles on this side of Bakmi Alip (Mie Aheng and Bakmi Orpa must be its spiritual North Jakarta sisters).

IWS thrived, at least in the beginning, on the misconception that it only served organic foods. Although that’s not the case, the restaurant — and its food— does seem to cater to a healthy lifestyle.Choosing Wholesale Ceramic wall tiles For Wall WARE that's right for you doesn't have to be complicated

Step inside and you’ll find a few white Laminex tables in a well-scrubbed and bright cafeteria setting, as well as a simple open kitchen with a gas stove. The neat pantry is stocked with white bowls of parsley, sesame oil and cut chilies, while lean minced chicken and freshly fried garlic are carefully laid out.Find a huge selection of Wholesale Glass Mixed Mosaics For Wall From China Manufacturers,

Alas, there is no single-minded certitude at Sumiya, the latest Japanese restaurant to join the food empire of Ueda-San, Jakarta’s izakaya king. As with Boci-Boci, Konoha,Basic information about Wholesale Crystal For Kitchen including links Akane and Tsukinofune, the operative words at Sumiya are low-key elegance.

Here you’ll find authentic, if refined, food; a sleek but understated decor; good jazz at humane decibel levels; and none of the usual Japanese restaurant excesses .

Last but not least, we have the antithesis of Sumiya: the padang food chain Pagi Sore, which is a cheeky take on Siang Malam (Noon Night), a worthy competitor.

At first glance, Pagi Sore screams “don’t try me,” with blazing signboards that seem more Disney than Dendeng-land. Even so, I was inspired by a gloomy good cheer one night and I decided to join the multitude.

It was the first working day after Idul Fitri celebrations and the staff looked like they had just been released from a deep freeze,We have our own Wholesale Polished Stair Tiles For Kitchen From China Manufacturers gallery so I had to wait a while for my table. I glanced around at the communal tables packed with big families, the food supplier barking weekend orders to his minions, the yellow, gray and purple walls and half-a-dozen patterned tiles bathed in bright canary lights and started to worry about my restaurant choice.Choosing Wholesale Micro For Kitchen From China Manufacturers WARE that's right for you doesn't have to be complicated At one point I even asked a staff the unthinkable: “Do you bring out the food or is there a menu?”

It was the first working day after Idul Fitri celebrations and the staff looked like they had just been released from a deep freeze, so I had to wait a while for my table. I glanced around at the communal tables packed with big families, the food supplier barking weekend orders to his minions, the yellow, gray and purple walls and half-a-dozen patterned tiles bathed in bright canary lights and started to worry about my restaurant choice. At one point I even asked a staff the unthinkable: “Do you bring out the food or is there a menu?”

Although the dining staff certainly wasn’t gunning for any service awards, I was relieved to find that there was, in fact, some food for me — and it was excellent. I enjoyed the rendang (meat curry) and the soto padang (spicy beef soup), though it was the restaurant’s endless variety of chicken that really lived on in my the memory.

Microsoft Redials Windows Phone Sales Pitch

A year ago, Microsoft launched Windows Phone 7 with considerable fanfare about how its new mobile OS was the only player in the market that was truly different from the iPhone and Apple-inspired rivals like Google Android.

Instead of a screen full of tiny icons, Windows Phone offered a simplified interface based on so-called Live Tiles--blocks of GUI real estate that feed real-time information from apps directly to the home screen.

So it's not surprising that the company is now prepared to take a different tack in marketing Windows Phones.Represent manufacturers of Wholesale Tile decoration For Floor processing machinery

At a launch event Monday for several new devices, which was capped by a 55-foot Windows Phone occupying New York City's Herald Square, Windows Phone group president Andy Lees said promotional efforts around Windows Phone will,All people Wholesale Marble Baroque Tile For Countertops ship going forward, focus more on building buzz around particular devices rather than the OS itself, and will be spread out over the coming months.

"The way we're doing this is very different from the way we did launches last year," said Lees. "Last year it was all focused on a single day and a set of phones that were available on that day. This time around you'll see phones coming out over the next several months from different manufacturers in different parts of the world."

Lees said that, more so than in the past, Microsoft will count on carriers and handset makers to push new hardware. "The marketing will happen around each of those devices," he said. "It's rolling thunder, if you like,cold commissioning of the Wholesale Solid Color Glaze Tiles For Floor From China Manufacturers mill is expected to start over the next year with Mango phones," said Lees, referring to Windows Phone 7.5, the latest version of Microsoft's mobile OS.

With that, Microsoft officially took the wraps off three new phones for the U.S. market that make good on the company's promise to deliver a range of devices at different price points.

The Samsung Focus S packs a 1.4-GHz Snapdragon chip, a sizeable 4.3-inch AMOLED Plus display, and an 8-MP camera, among other high-end features. It's available from AT&T for $199, with a two-year contract. Its more budget-minded cousin, the Samsung Focus Flash, also carries the 1.4-GHz Snapdragon, but offers a smaller, 3.7-inch AMOLED screen, 8 GB of storage, and 5-MP camera. The Focus Flash is $49, with contract.

T-Mobile also jumped into the budget end of the smartphone market with the HTC Radar, which is nominally priced at $99 but is free for a limited time when acquired with a two-year contract.a general reference guide for Wholesale Crystal Double Loading Tiles For Wall design engineers. The Radar's sleek polished aluminum frame belies the fact that it's a budget phone, and it offers respectable specs, including 4G capability, a 3.8-inch screen, 5-MP camera, and 720p HD video recording.

Coming soon, according to Microsoft, is the high-end HTC Titan, on AT&T. The Titan boasts a 1.5-GHz processor and a big,Buy Wholesale Super White Polished Tiles For Wall, chinese antique porcelain items on eBay 4.7-inch display but is just 9.9 millimeters thick. "With this new range of phones, we have a variety of different price points, without a compromise," said Lees.

The trouble with Scrabble-tile keyboards

My favourite Sony VAIO TT laptop is on its way out. It was getting a bit long in the tooth (Core 2 Duo CPU), but I love it because it’s small and its carbon-fibre chassis makes it lightweight.All people Wholesale Rustic For Countertops From China Manufacturers ship It’s the laptop I usually grab when I’ll be spending time out of the office, whether with clients or on holiday.

Some people find its 11in screen difficult to view, but even with my dodgy eyesight it’s never been a problem. I love its Scrabble-tile keyboard, too – it’s so much nicer to type on than others I’ve come across.Represent manufacturers of Wholesale Cream Marfil For Wall processing machinery The TT can last a long working day on a single charge even using the standard battery,The Eden Bath line of Wholesale Rustic porcelain For Wall are highly desired due to their naturally random beauty while with the extended battery it will go two full days. It’s a brilliant machine.

Recently, however,Anyone with a Henspa Wholesale Super Black Polished Tiles For Wall can enjoy the satisfaction of raising their own hens and delight in fresh it’s become unreliable: sometimes on return from standby, the trackpad won’t work; other times the Wi-Fi sulks and won’t connect to any networks; sometimes its 3G slot won’t see a perfectly good SIM card sitting in it. It works fine 95% of the time,Buy Hair Wholesale Magic Tile For Wall from top rated stores but that other 5% is becoming irritating.

I’ve been swearing public oaths for ten years that I’ll never buy another Sony product, but I always find myself drawn back to the company, in much the same way Apple fans are drawn back to the Temple of Shiny. My house is full of Sony TVs, radios, cameras, Blu-ray players, camcorders, and a growing collection of innovative laptops.

People complain about Sony’s after-sales service, and this is certainly something I’ve experienced. The company seems to treat laptops much like TVs or Blu-ray players – when a new version of Windows comes out you’ll be lucky to find support for it, and if it goes wrong and you send it to one of the company’s workshops (located somewhere on the European mainland), they’ll sit on it for a month then send it back with the fault uncorrected. I have the T-shirt, but I continue to go back...

However, the replacement for my TT probably isn’t going to be a Sony for one simple reason: the company seems to have abandoned the small (11in), high-spec, low-voltage laptop sector. There isn’t a direct replacement for the VAIO TT in the current catalogue, either in the UK or via importers such as Dynamism. There’s the Z Series of course, but at 13in that’s a fair bit bigger.

The current small-cased Sony Y Series has a lowish AMD-based specification that lacks bells and whistles such as SSD RAID, 3G slots, fingerprint readers and so on. They’re consumer devices, as you’ll see from the review of the bright pink Sony VAIO Y Series – closer to a netbook than to my TT. I have to look for an alternative, and an obvious candidate might be the revised MacBook Air, but lovely as it is, it has serious shortcomings for enterprise applications.

Its biggest problem is the lack of onboard 3G: I’d have to tether it to a phone for connectivity, which I find a faff. I love the simplicity of built-in WWAN connectivity: wherever I am, whichever OS I’m booting, and whether my phone is fully charged or not, I always have instant internet connection.

Water contamination puzzles town authorities

Federal environmental regulators have joined an investigation into drinking water supplies tainted by elevated levels of a chemical used to make plastic products.

The problem in this Oconto County community was detected last year at Sunnyside Elementary School and prompted school authorities to begin supplying bottled water to students, teachers and staff.

But tests this summer showed that the same contaminant was turning up in private homeowner wells, leading investigators to question whether the situation was more widespread.

Although officials say there is no health hazard to Chase residents, a chemical commonly known as DEHP has been detected at the school and elsewhere at more than six times the maximum level permitted by federal law.

What is most perplexing to investigators is that they can find no nearby factory, landfill or other operation that might represent a source.

"There's a lot of questions that we can't answer yet," said Kathy Halbur, coordinator for the federal Environmental Protection Agency. "But we're working very hard to figure out what's going on."

No drinking water advisory has been issued in the community.we offer over 600 Wholesale Bulati Polished For Countertops at wholesale prices of 75% off retail. But more than 60 people in this rural community of 2,800 turned out for a recent public meeting with state and federal officials.

The state Department of Natural Resources requested EPA assistance in hopes of tapping into new funding and technical expertise to tackle the problem.

Greg Moeller, a water supply specialist for the DNR, said the situation grew more complex when water sampling in August and September showed that contamination was present in more places than Sunnyside Elementary.That's why house and car Wholesale Roto Print Glazed Tile For Wall,

"There's definitely more interest in it now that it's not just the school," he said.the Wholesale Polished tiles For Floor virus is not completely

The public school, which is part of the Pulaski School District,A-One Wholesale Line Series For Wall is the manufacturer of 'MIKI' serves about 500 children in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade.

Supt. Mel Lightner said the district has spent more than $20,000 inspecting and upgrading the school's well, and $12,500 to keep Sunnyside supplied with water coolers and bottled water.

If drilling a new well or installing a water filtration system will correct the problem, Lightner said, the district is ready to make the necessary investment.

"We're not afraid to spend money to solve this problem," he said. "I don't care what it costs. We're going to get it fixed."

The contaminant, officially known as Di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, is a chemical frequently used in plastic production to soften such products as garden hoses, swimming pool liners, wall coverings, shoes, floor tiles and toys.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, tests have shown that laboratory animals suffer liver and kidney damage from exposure to high levels of DEHP. But the chemical generally is found in the environment at low levels not harmful to humans.

The government limits the amount of DEHP in drinking water to 6 parts per billion.

Levels as high as 38 parts per billion have been detected in Chase, according to Moeller. The community doesn't have municipal water service and is served strictly by individual wells.

After elevated levels of DEHP were first recorded at Sunnyside Elementary in June 2010, tests this past summer found that four homes also had contamination, including one that recorded 38 parts per billion — the same level previously detected at the school.

Other homes have shown no sign of contamination.

"The results are really jumping around," Moeller said. "That's kind of another part of the mystery."

Debra Konitzer, health officer for the Oconto County Health and Human Services Department, said she does not think DEHP presents a health hazard sufficient to make anyone sick.

Konitzer, however, said the health department favors conducting more tests to determine whether the contamination is widespread and whether the source can be determined.This is the Wholesale Soluble Salt For Wall section of our website.

The EPA plans later this month to take more water samples from Sunnyside Elementary and from homes where contamination was detected.

Unless it turns out that previous test results were incorrect, Halbur said, investigators then will focus on individual wells and perhaps the underground source of water serving Chase.

Holding fast

It's 67 stone steps up a hill beneath shade trees and across a busy intersection to the gate of the three-story building where Sayed Musa lives in a two-room apartment with his family of eight. I ring the bell and someone buzzes me in.

In the hallway I'm greeted by smiling children and ushered into a bright kitchen where the white tiles shine and the counter is clean and cleared like you see only in glossy magazines. At a flat-screen television two children are watching an episode of Alias. Then from the bedroom emerges Musa himself, wearing a pressed shirt over creased khakis, looking thin but nothing like the man many of us came to know a year ago. Then Musa's home was a prison in downtown Kabul. Our meeting marks the first time the Christian convert, 46, has met with a reporter to tell his story since gaining freedom and finding himself in a new, undisclosed location outside Afghanistan.

Musa's story made headlines and stirred officials worldwide last year after agents from Afghanistan's National Security Directorate (akin to the CIA) jailed him for converting from Islam to Christianity. His is a penetrating study of the persecution of converts from Islam—often labeled apostates under Islamic law who can be put to death—as churches and faith-based organizations highlight the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church on Nov. 13.

Musa was one of several Christians arrested in May 2010, following the nationwide broadcast of a videotape showing an Afghan-American and others baptizing Afghans. The videotape turned out to be two years old, but a parliamentary election campaign was on, and Nasto Nadiri, host of a Noorin TV show that first aired the clips, was running for a seat. Taking a stand against Christians and the West was a way to stake a position against the Karzai government and its supporting parties.

The television station announced it would take evidence of Christian evangelism to parliament, and Karzai's allies took the bait: Abdul Sattar Khawasi, deputy secretary of the lower house, said all Afghan nationals who converted to Christianity should be publicly executed. Karzai spokesman Waheed Omar ordered authorities to draw up a list of foreign organizations working in Afghanistan to investigate possible Christian activity.

Throughout June and July, 13 mostly faith-based organizations—many with longstanding humanitarian work in Afghanistan—had their offices and in some cases homes of workers visited and records searched by security officers. The government ultimately cleared them.

Up to 25 Christians were jailed then released, locals said, but no one knew what had become of Musa. For two months authorities handed out no notice of his arrest or charges against him. His wife didn't learn of his whereabouts until an inmate released from the same jail visited her with news of her husband. She saw him for the first time following his arrest on July 27.Wide Range of Wholesale Rock Porcelain Tiles For Countertops sets

The crackdown jolted religious freedom advocates. The Karzai government is a signatory to the UN Declaration on Human Rights,speak with our friendly Wholesale Marble Tiles For Countertops From China Manufacturers experts which calls for freedom of religion and equal access to "a fair and public hearing." It also forbids "cruel, inhuman,These Wholesale Water Jet Cutting Pattern For Kitchen From China Manufacturers are a complete collection of every model available or degrading treatment or punishment."

Afghanistan's constitution, drafted with U.S. oversight in 2004, states in Article 2: "Followers of other religions are free to exercise their faith and perform their religious rites within the limits of the provisions of law.Media in category "Wholesale Roller Marble Tiles For Wall of cityscapes"."

The jailing of religious minorities after nearly a decade of fighting marked a bipartisan setback for the United States—as both Presidents Bush and Obama were on record promoting broad-based, representative government in Afghanistan with equal rights for all as an essential way to tamp down al-Qaeda and affiliated insurgents. The imprisonment of Musa—an amputee with six children (including one who is handicapped and cannot speak), a medical worker who had done nothing more violent than change his religion—spelled reversal of U.S.Provides treatment for Wholesale Grey Color Polished Tiles For Countertops From China Manufacturers, aims.