1930s grade II-listed The Lime Works six-bedroom house in Norton, Kent
When we first spotted this 1930s grade II-listed The Lime Works six-bedroom house in Norton, Kent, it was on the market for £3,750,000. It’s now up for a lot less.
1930s grade II-listed The Lime Works six-bedroom house in Norton, Kent
That’s despite The Lime Works, which is on the outskirts of Faversham, being the star of Channel 4′s Gadget Man of late. Maybe TV fame doesn’t guarantee you a house sale. Anyway, this is a conversion of two water towers, which have been made into an art deco-inspired contemporary home. The building, which is grade II-listed, was built in the early 1930s and was a functioning water softening plant until 1942. The current owners acquired the property in 2005, converting it into the stunning house you see now.
1930s grade II-listed The Lime Works six-bedroom house in Norton, Kent
According to the agent, the owners have ‘sympathetically converted, restored and refurbished the building’, with the emphasis on ‘attention to detail and specification’. There’s no denying that the end product is a design you can’t ignore.
1930s grade II-listed The Lime Works six-bedroom house in Norton, Kent
Plenty of space and plenty of luxury too. The accommodation is arranged over four floors, with the ground floor offering floor to ceiling windows for plenty of light, while a series of spiral staircases lead to the leisure facilities on the first floor and the bedrooms (six in total) and bathrooms (six of those) on the second floor. The master bedroom suite occupies the entire fourth floor while two roof terraces, one of which has a heated pool, offer plenty of entertaining opportunities.
1930s grade II-listed The Lime Works six-bedroom house in Norton, Kent
Outside space (beyond the electric wrought iron gates and gravel driveway) is a large parking area, double underground garage, lawns and eight acres of grounds. There’s also a large storage area at the side of the house.
As for the luxury, pool and design aside, the house also has a dining room with with triple height void, hand crafted concrete beds and baths, gym suite, including sauna and plunge pool, an integral cinema room and motion sensor lighting. Works are apparently ‘still ongoing at the property’ with the purpose of bringing the house to 90% completion which will allow the buyer to design and specify the final 10% by way of arrangement with the current construction company or with the buyer appointing their own designer and contractors. In short, you can do your own finish.
As we said, the price was initially £3,750,000, but according to the updated listing, this place is now for sale with a guide price of £2,000,000. Ok, it still isn’t cheap, but that’s almost half the original price, which is a massive discount.
Back at Wesleyan, Cardinal Ravasi and Francis the Hipster Pope had a band called Cold in Alaska, named for the chorus in the 1968 Velvets song "Stephanie Says."
Cropped to square orientation. The owl itself is unsharpened, and I have used feathered Gaussian blur (5.5) on the background, to reduce noise, which gives the image a much smoother feel.
Chowhounder hyperbowler made it easy to find cheap eats near you via a Google map. (Scroll down for the interactive version.)
Earlier this month, the San Francisco Chronicle came out with its 2013 Bargain Bites guide featuring restaurants offering low-priced eats across 19 different cuisines. Inside Scoop created a handy overview of the categories, which include everything from fried chicken and pizza to tacos, dumplings and “anything goes.” What was missing, however, was a visual way to see the winners at a glance. One Chowhounder, named hyperbowler, set out to remedy this by creating a Google map of the victors, which one fan described as “the best post ever on Chowhound.”
The map is particularly handy for East Bay residents who want to pick out winners on this side of the bridge quickly without having to peruse the Chron’s list to identify nearby cities. There are 17 spots around Berkeley, Oakland and Alameda, and many others farther afield. The interactive map appears below. If you have recommendations for these spots, or any favorites the Chron missed, we invite you to add them in the comments.
One hundred years ago next week, the water came to Los Angeles. On November 5, 1913, civic dignitaries gathered at the north end of the arid, undeveloped San Fernando Valley for the opening of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, a marvel of both engineering and chicanery. Five years in the making, the aqueduct pumped the water out of the Owens River Valley (to which the spring runoff from the melting snows of the Sierra Nevada descended) and carried it over 223 miles of mainly desert to the L.A. suburb. Raising his voice to be heard over the noise of both the crowd and the water cascading downhill, the project’s chief engineer, William Mulholland, proclaimed with epic succinctness: “There it is—take it!”
And the city did.
When the project was first announced in 1905, with the city council’s recommendation of a $25 million bond measure that L.A. voters subsequently authorized, no one argued that Los Angeles didn’t have enough water to meet its current needs. The 1900 census had turned up a mere 102,479 Angelenos. But the purpose of the aqueduct was to provide the water for the city’s growth, and grow the city most certainly did: By the time of the 1930 census, L.A.’s population had increased more than ten-fold, to 1,238,438.
The city’s population explosion, and the huge economic growth that accompanied it, proved very lucrative to the handful of rich Angelenos who had the foresight, or inside information (accounts differ), to buy up huge tracts of the San Fernando Valley before the city council announced that an aqueduct was in the works. Harrison Gray Otis and Harry Chandler, who together owned the Los Angeles Times, railroad magnates Henry Huntington and E.H. Harriman, and a few other wealthy locals were tipped off before the project was publicly announced, and afterwards funded the campaign that persuaded city voters to approve the bond measure. The real loser in the deal was the Owens River Valley, which quickly became as barren as the San Fernando Valley had been. If this story sounds vaguely familiar, that’s because it provided the basis for the great Roman Polanski-Robert Towne film Chinatown—the work of art that most closely approximates a Los Angeles creation epic, and one that recognizes that without the water, there’d be no L.A.
But even as Los Angeles got its water, it lost its river. Beginning in the Valley, curving around downtown, and then flowing south to the sea, the Los Angeles River provided 51 miles of fresh-water fishing and riverbank wildlife. After a couple of devastating floods in the 1930s, however, Los Angeles asked the Army Corps of Engineers to save the city from future inundations. The Corps had never handled a flood-control project before, and its solution was to pave over 41 miles of riverbed with concrete embankments. For decades thereafter, a chain-link fence kept Angelenos from accessing the river—not just the 80 percent that was concrete, but also the 20 percent that was still a river, however neglected it may have been. Hollywood studios staged car chases down the embankments, but that was the extent of locals’ ability to use the river for anything but containing the rain.
In 1986, that began to change. Lewis MacAdams, a local poet, and a couple of his performance artist buddies, snipped the fence that walled off the non-concrete portion of the river (called the Glendale Narrows), walked the riverbed clear to downtown, and announced—initially, just to themselves—the formation of Friends of the Los Angeles River (FoLAR). The organization set as its goal the restoration of as much of the river as safety allowed, and the transformation of the land surrounding that part of the river into accessible parkland and wildlife sanctuaries. In time the artists were joined by environmentalists, city planners, scientists, elected officials, and the Environmental Protection Agency. In time, and as a result of a FoLAR lawsuit, both the city and county of Los Angeles devised revitalization plans for the river. In time, the poets, enviros, and scientists persuaded even the Army Engineers that flood control and river restoration weren’t mutually exclusive.
Last month, the Corps released several alternative plans for restoring the river, a project to be substantially funded out of the Corps’ budget. This week, L.A.’s new mayor, Eric Garcetti, sundry other elected officials, and that most persistent of riparian activists, MacAdams, have come to Washington to lobby the Corps to adopt the most far-reaching of its plans. Even if the Corps chooses a less ambitious option, MacAdams has written, Los Angeles will still be “on the way to a far more vibrant river for the city.”
One hundred years ago, Los Angeles was a vast arid tract through which a river nonetheless ran. It got the water. Now, it just may get its river back.
President Obama was poised to order the ban in response to a deepening diplomatic crisis over reports that the National Security Agency had for years targeted the cellphone of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany.
President Barack Obama is scheduled to swoop into Boston on Wednesday, according to a White House pool report.
Obama's arrival -- deemed for "political events" -- comes as he embarks on a series of nationwide fundraisers, starting today in New York. He'll headline at least nine events before the end of next month, according to the Associated Press, and is scheduled to make stops in Dallas, Miami, Philadelphia and Los Angeles in the coming weeks.
con: traps you into comcast internet "pro": the city of cambridge already traps me into comcast internet
No cable, no problem. The rumors that Comcast is going to let you pay for HBO like you pay for Netflix are true. Comcast is now the first company to let you have HBO without being trapped in a basic cable plan.
GIFs have been sold before, but until recently, the file format has been marooned online. Now, a Kickstarter-backed pair of designers are bringing the meme-enabling moving pictures into the physical plane using a method invented in the 1940s.
Lenticular technology was developed more than 70 years ago
Sha Hwang and Rachel Binx have started a company called Gifpop! and are using lenticular film to print GIFs. You'll likely recognize lenticular film from the front of childhood notebooks and stationery: it's a ridged plastic surface that, when tilted, produces a moving image. It's not particularly high-tech stuff — The New York Times reports that lenticular technology was developed during World War II — but advances in fidelity have meant that Gifpop! will be able to produce cards that display a GIF-like range of motion.
Gifpop!'s Kickstarter launched yesterday and was funded almost immediately. The GIF is more than 26 years old and is still the best medium for showing frolicking dogs, but it's also rapidly becoming the file format of choice for internet artists. Some of Hwang and Binx's first lenticular cards feature works created by GIF artists including mr div, davidope (above), and 89-A. The Atlantic reports the two designers were inspired in their venture by Cards Against Humanity, another card-based Kickstarter success. Hwang imagined a Cards Against Humanity-style game played with reaction GIF cards: "One card would say, ‘My face when I see my ex with her new boyfriend,' and then players would put reaction GIF cards down."
Gifpop! still has 25 days of its Kickstarter campaign to go and hopes to ship its first custom cards to backers in November. Its stretch goals include using Instagram and Vine in addition to GIFs to create lenticular cards.
Riker? I hardly know her. Looking for a goofy afternoon web toy? Play with Scroll Down to Riker, a bit of smile-inducing silliness by Sam Strick and featuring Star Trek: TNG's Number One.
"The 5-story, nearly 100-foot-tall structure was started in 1993 by Minister Horace Burgess, who says he was inspired to build it after receiving instructions from God."
The Minister’s Tree House is an incredibly massive 80-room tree house in the outskirts of the small town of Crossville, Tennessee. The 5-story, nearly 100-foot-tall structure was started in 1993 by Minister Horace Burgess, who says he was inspired to build it after receiving instructions from God. The house is supported by seven trees and includes a bell tower and sanctuary (it is meant to double as a church). Once a popular site for tourists, the tree house was closed by the local fire marshal in 2012.
via firehose ("probably explains why he's making new strips")
Achewood devotees were excited in February when cartoonist Chris Onstad revealed on his rarely updated blog that he was heading to Los Angeles to pitch an animated series based on his incredibly popular webcomic. Unfortunately, the network meetings didn’t go well — but Onstad remains undeterred. In fact, he says he was reinvigorated by the [...]
The Senate Conservatives Fund endorsed retired Air Force Colonel Rob Maness in the Republican primary for Sen. Mary Landrieu's (D-LA) Senate seat.
Maness is running against Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) in the primary.
"Colonel Rob Maness is a constitutional conservative with a remarkable record of service to our country," Senate Conservatives Fund Executive Director Matt Hoskins said in a statement on Monday "He understands the value of our freedoms and will fight to repeal Obamacare and stop the massive spending, bailouts, and debt that are bankrupting our country. He offers voters a compelling choice over Senator Mary Landrieu because he's not a Washington insider. Colonel Maness is a principled leader who will make Louisiana proud."
My start-down is called “Blake”—after the founder, me, Blake. If you’re unfamiliar with start-downs, no problem, everyone’s here to learn. Really, the only difference between a start-down and the traditional Silicon Valley “start-up” is the process. Rather than having an idea, pitching it to investors, and working tirelessly to see that idea come to life, a start-down begins with everything: a great education, tons of money, and endless opportunity. The start-down then joins an established company and runs it right into the ground through manipulation, negligence and greed. Some people say it’s better than a start-up. Not a ton of people, but some.
Have you ever heard of Garret? It was a small start-down out of Denver—somewhat of a legend in the industry. Garret convinced a bunch of people they could afford to buy a home when he knew, in the long run, they couldn’t. His start-down was so successful that it became a major player in creating a seemingly irreversible downward trend in the global economy. Classic start-down stuff.
Chip is another good one. He’s no Garret, but it’s still a really fun start-down based in Houston. Chip sells 401(k) plans but instead of investing the money he keeps it for himself. It’s like, how has no one thought of that before? I don’t think his bosses have any idea. It just goes to show that the best ideas are the simplest ones. I have a good feeling about Chip.
Every start-down has a different story. We can’t all be Garrets. Blake began 33 years ago in a wealthy suburb outside of Baltimore. I was always a bit of a dreamer, a big picture kind of guy. I wanted more for myself—but in the most literal interpretation of that expression. I attended a prestigious academy high school. From there I went to a prestigious university. During that time I landed a couple of internships through family friends. Things were going great—but I didn’t want to just be an employee, a cog in the capitalism machine—I wanted to make a difference, a really, really bad difference. So when my internship turned into a full-time job, I started Blake. Ever since then I’ve been putting my ideas to work, taking things one day at a time, and doing my best to destroy America from within.
Blake is a start-down with the heart of a start-up. At Blake, we’re all about connectivity: bringing people, information and ideas together in one place. That place is what’s known as “hypothetical condominiums.” They’re hypothetical only in the sense that they don’t exist. You see, I work for a large, publicly traded development firm. And this project is definitely affiliated with them. Yes, that’s their logo right there on the bottom of the page. But enough about them. I’m here to get you in on the ground floor. Here are some pictures—well, drawings, actually, but you get the idea. With your help and money we can make these condos a reality. Not only will they be unaffordable, Blake also promises to only get halfway finished with construction before I’m on the other side of the world—leaving you without a cent to your name and leaving your community with the rusty exoskeleton of a high-rise condominium. It’s Blake’s little way of giving back.
Ladies and gentlemen, everyone has a dream. I just want you to pay to see mine come true. Now who’s in? All of you? Great!
This 9 lb, 1-foot-diameter "multi tool" was designed as a calling card by the F.W. Holler Company of Solingen, Germany, who were seeking to make a name for German knife manufacturers in Solingen (who had a centuries-long reputation for knifemaking) among the emerging market for Swiss Army Knives. It has 100 "blades," including a .22 revolver. And a straight razor.
It’s hard to tell by photos alone, but this multi-tool is much larger than your typical Swiss Army knife. Its handle is about 10 inches long, 6 inches wide and 4 inches deep, which makes a lot of sense when you realize how many different types of blades have to fit into it. To start, there’s two dagger blades, a serrated bread knife, a few pairs of shears, a couple of saw blades, a corkscrew, a lancet (for boils?), button hooks, a cigar cutter (hey, why not!), mechanical pens and pencils, and even a piano tuning fork (whew). Really, the only thing the knife is missing is a bottle opener, since the bottle cap we know today wasn’t invented until 1892.
The tool weighs in at around 9 pounds, and with everything fully extended, the object reaches about a foot in diameter, which makes this much more a suitcase knife than a pocket knife. Miller says it takes about 25 minutes to fully open the gadget, and even when you take your time, it’s a dangerous task. “I’ve cut myself on that darn straight razor,” he says. The Smithsonian acquired the knife in 1986 after it was donated by James F. Parker. While alive, Parker was well known in knife collection circles—he owned his own cutlery company and served as the first president of the Knife Collectors Association. Miller says the first time he saw the object he couldn’t believe it was real. “I was particularly impressed with the revolver,” he recalls. “If you bring this knife to a gunfight, you’re OK.”
You might think that if the National Security Agency were tapping the phones of dozens of world leaders, President Obama would be aware of this fact. Apparently not—according to a Wall Street Journal report last night, the NSA's spy operations are so extensive that not even the president of the United States knows about all of them.
Based on interviews with US officials, the paper said that "President Barack Obama went nearly five years without knowing his own spies were bugging the phones of world leaders. Officials said the NSA has so many eavesdropping operations under way that it wouldn’t have been practical to brief him on all of them."
NSA monitoring of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and 34 other world leaders was revealed to the White House after an internal Obama administration review that started this summer. The NSA stopped its spying of some world leaders, but it's not clear how many.
A recent question posted to the Portland subreddit under the headline, "Homeowners: How do you keep local sous chefs from harvesting urban edibles on your property?” has drawn 200 comments and counting.
German Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst has been suspended by Pope Francis after reports about lavish spending on renovations at his residence in Limburg. Now, the home he spent tens of millions of dollars on may be put to use as a refugee center or soup kitchen.
The fungal infection causes dark scabby lesions on the leaves and skin of the apple, which leaves the flavor unaffected, but does effectively make it unsalable.
“It’s a huge issue,” says Peter Wagner, owner of Applecrest Farm Orchards, a 110-acre orchard in southeast New Hampshire. “Thirty years ago, you were allowed to have a scab on your apple that was probably 10 millimeters, or half the size of a dime, without a problem at all. Now you can’t put any of that in the apple pack, so it renders the apple unmarketable.”
Apple scab is less of an issue in drier regions, such as Washington state. But in places like New York, New Hampshire, Vermont or Massachusetts, apple scab is the number one pathogen and apple farmers’ primary concern.
In recent decades, researchers have made strides in understanding the fungus’s life cycle, so farmers are spraying less than they used to, with better results. Some farmers even use predictive models, such as the Dutch program RIMpro to forecast the best spraying times. But apple scab is still a persistent battle, and it’s especially difficult – if not nearly impossible – for organic farmers to grow a scab-free crop.
So researchers at the University of New Hampshire are working on a new tool for fighting apple scab: Drones.
Researchers Matthew Wallhead and Kirk D. Broders stand with the prototype apple scab drone.
“When you think about apple production now, a grower needs to walk through his orchard every day to make sure he sees any new insect pests or any new disease pests that come into an orchard,” says plant pathologist Kirk D. Broders, an assistant professor at UNH. “But when you’re talking about a 10, 20, 100-acre orchard, your ability to do that on a daily basis is almost impossible.”
But it is possible with a small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), or drone, carrying an infrared camera that takes multispectral images of the orchard. A computer program crunches the wavelengths in each pixel, making it possible to hone in on colors and temperatures – and locate apple scab.
“If you had a UAV that had the capacity to go up once a day, take a digital image or multiple digital images – both in infrared and then in normal spectrum — you could actually monitor your orchard using a $2,000 UAV,” says Broders.
Graduate student Matthew Wallhead is leading the project at UNH, and built the first such system this summer for about $2,400. It includes a low-cost surveillance drone from a Massachusetts startup called Rotary Robotics – though Wallhead prefers the term UAV as “the term ‘drone’ has traditionally implied a weaponized system,” he says — and two point-and-shoot digital cameras. Wallhead removed the infrared filters from the cameras using an online tutorial.
‘People that are just now beginning to understand what these unmanned aerial vehicles are capable of doing.’
“We converted a $100 camera into the equivalent of what a $4,000 camera will give you, so that’s exciting,” says Wallhead. “This season has been largely focused on tuning it and learning to fly the aircraft effectively.”
Broders says the ultimate goal is to develop an orchard-monitoring UAV system that could be sold to growers for under $2,500, though he estimates they’re five years away from an actual product.
It’s not the first time that multispectral imaging has been used in agriculture. Researchers have analyzed plants using lab equipment, and large farming operations can hire airplanes to fly over and take multispectral images of large swaths of corn or soybeans to monitor crop health.
“What we are trying to do is develop a system that allows us to do things in-between – so not at the single-plant lab scale, and not at the airplane several-fields-at-a-time scale,” Broders said. “We’re trying to develop a low-cost system that could actually be used by either individual researchers or individual growers.”
At Applecrest Farm, Peter Wagner calls the prospect of an affordable infrared imaging system that could be used daily, “pretty awesome.”
“I think that’s a great endeavor – no question – particularly the fact that most scab that we don’t eradicate usually occurs at the top of the tree,” Wagner said. “In the old days with big trees, you could climb up and look around – which is time consuming – but now with the new plantings, the trees are younger, smaller, and it’s harder to climb because the limbs aren’t as strong.”
Wallhead and Broders envision apple growers using the drone-camera system in conjunction with the predictive models for apple scab – the real-time data that tell farmers when to spray.
Matthew Wallhead charts out a hypothetical autopilot course for the drone.
“The UAV is really only one tool we’re using to manage apple scab, because apple scab is so difficult to control,” Broders said. “We’re using our predictive model to improve application of organically-certified compounds. We’re using the UAV for early detection. And then whenever possible, we’re utilizing resistant varieties to also help us reduce fungicide inputs and provide better control.”
One scab-resistant variety growing in the experimental research orchard at UNH’s Woodman Farm is Crimson Crisp, the product of collaboration among Purdue University, Rutgers and University of Illinois.
While apple scab is the main concern in the eastern U.S., the multispectral data can also be used to detect other problems – from insect damage to nitrogen deficiency. Pinpointed applications of fertilizer, pesticides and fungicides mean growers are using less, which is better for the environment and consumers – as well as the farmer’s bottom line.
The drones could even be used to monitor forest health, scanning for disease or invasive beetles.
“I think it has applications even beyond agriculture,” Broders said. “And I think there are a number of people that are just now beginning to understand what these unmanned aerial vehicles are capable of doing.”
"First reports indicated furniture on the porch had ignited and spread to the building, but later, after the fire was extinguished, a student told Hampshire College Police he had dried a sweater in a microwave oven."
Fire started on front porch deck and climbed strait up
A brisk but peaceful New England Sunday suddenly became energetic when a box alarm alerted Amherst Fire Department to a structure fire at Greenwich Dorm, Hampshire College around 4:13 PM.
Smoke screen after water hit fire
First reports indicated furniture on the porch had ignited and spread to the building, but later, after the fire was extinguished, a student told Hampshire College Police he had dried a sweater in a microwave oven.
Engine 2, the Quint, arrives and starts extending her 75 foot ladder
The sweater caught fire, was doused with water and placed outside, thinking the fire was safely out. It wasn't.
Quint extended ladder to second floor window
Firefighters ventilate above where the fire started
One police officer was transported to Cooley Dickinson Hospital by Northampton FD (mutual aid) as a precautionary measure after he suffered smoke inhalation going through the building to make sure everyone was safely out. Give that man a medal.
And a warm thanks to the men and women of AFD ... just doing their public safety job: keeping The Beast at bay.
Students and staff of Hampshire College watch from a safe distance
