Secret Of Hawaiian Health | Pua Aloalo | Pua Aloalo Health Benefits

The beautiful Hawaiian Haibiscus flower,Pua Aloalo has long been revered by the Hawaiian people.

The hibiscus, all colors and varieties, was the official Territorial Flower, adopted in the early 1920s. At statehood in 1959, the first state legislature adopted many of Hawaii's symbols as part of the Hawaii Revised Statutes (HRS, state laws). It wasn't until 1988, however, that the yellow hibiscus (pua aloalo) which is native to the islands was selected to represent Hawaii.

The most popular way to ingest Hibiscus flowers for their healing properties is through boiling in hot water, making a hibiscus flower tea.

Hibiscus tea is known to:

• Control High Blood Pressure
• Lower High Cholesterol
• Strengthen the immune system (rich in vitamin C)

Hibiscus is often found in sour tea, red zinger tea, and sorrel tea.

Credits to AHJ

Demi Moore | Tosh.0 | NSFW Photo

On Tosh.0 last night, Daniel Tosh sent viewers on a NSFW Google scavenger hunt for pictures of Mrs. Kutcher, Demi Moore.

Coyly instructing viewers to Google permutations of “Demi Moore” and variations on George Bush, Tosh lead viewers to what appears to be a vintage nude pic of Moore from the terrifying good old days when Brazilian waxing was not de rigueur.

Is the pic real? Holy hell, I hope not. I used to do bikini waxing and that is a nightmare-inducing, 200% gratuity situation right there. While I won’t link to the pic in question, I will tell you if you follow Tosh’s instructions, it’s first in the Google results. And it is pretty alarming.

The Tosh.0 clip can be found here. With apologies to Demi Moore and Mr. Bush.

This is a little weird, I see that one of the top Google trends is about Demi Moore having gone to see George W Bush. Or maybe Demi Moore has gone to see George Bush Senior?

Whichever, there seems to be a lot of activity about Demi Moore Bush, so I assume that this is what is indeed being talked about.

What's that you say? It's actually all about Demi Moore bush? As in whether Ashton Kuchner's wife has a hirsute pudenda or not, that type of Demi Moore bush?

OK everyone, back on your heads. Back to normal, it does indeed seem to be all about whether Demi Moore's bush, not her possible meeting with either of the Bushes.

There seems to be a photo out there, a photo of some vintage it has to be said, proving the point but you can go and look that up for yourselves.

Credits to : Inquisitr, Timworstall

Vista SP1 vs SP2

 

So… Service Pack 2 arrived with not a lot of celebration, not much has been really mentioned about it at all anywhere. Being who I am though I like to know things, so I decided to run a whole bunch of tests before and after the upgrade and compare them to see just what, if anything, might have changed.

 


According to Microsoft here’s what’s in Service Pack 2:

Windows Vista‌ Service Pack 2 (SP2) is an important update that includes support for new types of hardware and emerging hardware standards, and it also includes all the updates that have been released since SP1. You’ll find information about the specific changes and improvements included in SP2 below. For more information about installing SP2, see Learn how to install Windows Vista Service Pack 2 (SP2). 

Here are some of the improvements in SP2: 

-Program compatibility. Microsoft works to ensure that your programs work seamlessly on Windows Vista. We also work with our partners to improve the reliability and compatibility of non-Microsoft programs. So, SP2 includes previously released updates that are available to you when you use Windows Update, and it also includes new compatibility fixes for individual programs. 

-Hardware support. Among other improvements, SP2 provides you with additional support for Bluetooth wireless technology and improved performance for Wi-Fi connections after the computer resumes from sleep mode. Additionally, you can now record data to Blu-ray Disc media 

- General operating system updates. SP2 includes Windows Search 4.0, which has improved indexing and searching capabilities. SP2 also includes fixes that can improve recording TV using Windows Media Center. 

You can find more information with more links HERE

As you can see not much has really changed overall… The addition of Blu-ray burning is nice, if you can afford a Blu-ray burner and the media. Improved indexing and searching can be a nice thing as well, I know I use the search quite often as I’m always forgetting where things are. Media Center improved TV recording, I think most people have DVRs at this point, but fro those of us that don’t it’s a nice feature I guess. The description really doesn’t tell us about that many changes made the the operating system, one way to find out if anything changed is of course test it, and that’s what I spent all day doing… fun-fun

Service Pack 2 weighed in at 577Mb when I got it, so it’s rather small for a ‘Service Pack’ , to me a service pack is a major upgrade, but this doesn’t seem to be really.

 

For my testing I used the standard stuff, Cinebench10, 2dMark06, CrystalMark and SiSoft Sandra 2009 SP3, and I also threw in some benchmarks from Crysis Warhead as well just to round things off a bit.

First off here’s my basic system specs:

-Intel C2Q9650 at 3ghz

-EVGA NF680i motherboard

-8 gigs of OCZ Fatal1ty DDR2 PC2-6400 Ram

-Diamond 4870 1gig video card

-Vista Ultimate X64

 

CrystalMark 2004R3

CrystalMark 2004R3 is a 32bit total benchmark software.

Crystalmark might seem old but it’s a nice suite of tests to get an idea of the performance of your computer, both separate components and overall. Yes I run Vista X64 and this is for 32bit, but the majority of the stuff we run on X64 is still 32bit.

Here’s the overall scores of both service packs compared:

 

As you can see the overall score actually dropped a bit when moving to Service Pack 2.

Here’s the individual scores:

  

Across the board everything dropped except for the ALU CPU benchmark, not sure what happened there. 


Cinebench10 

CINEBENCH is a real-world test suite that assesses your computer’s performance capabilities. MAXON CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more. 

MAXON CINEBENCH runs several tests on your computer to measure the performance of the main processor and the graphics card under real-world circumstances. The benchmark application makes use of up to 16 CPUs or CPU cores and is available for Windows (32-bit and 64-bit) and Macintosh (PPC and Intel-based). 

I used the 64bit version of Cinebench of course.

 

 

Like Crystalmark we see a drop in the CPU performance when going from SP1 to Sp2, but the OpenGL performance went up a tiny bit. 

For a drop across both single core and multiple core rendering something had to change obviously, even though nothing was listed among changes to the core of the operating system.

SP2 release notes mentions ‘Hardware Support. Among other improvements.’ I’m guessing this has something to do with that, something is a bit off with how the OS handles my CPU now.

 

3DMark06 

Don’t think this needs much of an introduction. Yes it’s an older benchmark, but it has it’s place especially for CPU intensive testing, and of course graphical testing as well.


Here we see an increase in performance, yes not much, but it’s an increase either way.

 

Crysis Warhead

-Resolution: 1680×1050

-2x AA

-Gamer Settings

-3 runs averaged out

-DX10

-Catalyst 9.5

 

 

With Crysis Warhead you can see we dropped a bit for the average and maximum frame rates when moving to SP2, the average though is still more than playable. We see the minimum frame rate went up just a teeny bit, nothing that would even be noticeable in gameplay I’m sure…


SiSfot Sandra 2009 SP3 

Now I’ve got SiSoft Sandra 2009 SP3 testing with many of the included benchmarks for memory, video and CPU processing, let’s see how it looks now.

 

Processor Arithmetic 

Benchmarks the ALU and FPU processor units. Shows how your processors handle arithmetic and floating point instructions in comparison to other typical processors. 

Results Interpretation 
Dhrystone (MIPS) - higher results are better, i.e. better integer performance. 
Whetstone (MFLOPS) - higher results are better, i.e. better floating-point performance.

 

 

Here again we see a drop in processor performance when moving to service pack 2, a very slight drop but still a drop. That’s one thing nice about Sandra, it can see very small differences between tests. Would this small difference be felt in the real world? probably not..

 

 

Processor Multi-Media 

Benchmark the (W)MMX(2), SSE(2/3/4), AVX processor units. Shows how your processors handle multi-media instructions and data in comparison to other typical processors. 

Such operations are used by more specialized software, e.g. image manipulation, video decoders/encoders, games. 

Results Interpretation 
Multi-Media Integer (Pixels/s) - higher results are better, i.e. better integer performance. 

Multi-Media Single/Double Float (Pixels/s) - higher results are better, i.e. better floating-point performance.

 

 

There’s no doubt that our lives are very multi-media centric, we love our TV, movies and games, and this test is an important one for all of us I think.

Here we actually see a jump in scores when moving to service pack 2, this is a good thing of course, but again it’s so small that you most likely will never notice it in the real world.

 

 

Multi-Core Efficiency 

Benchmark the multi-core efficiency of the processors. Shows how efficient the processor cores and their inter-connects are .

The ability of the cores to process data blocks and pass them to another core for processing (producer-consumer paradigm) of different sizes and different chain sizes is measured. The efficiency of the inter-connect between cores is thus benchmarked; however, the number of cores (and processors) also counts as more data buffers can be processed simultaneously (aka "in flight"). 

True multi-core processors that have shared L2/L3 caches will thus perform much better than cores that have separate caches and are connected by the traditional FSB.

 

Here we see no difference at all..

 

Video Rendering 

Benchmark the graphics performance of the video adapters (GFXs). Shows how your graphics processors handle rendering in comparison to other typical graphics processors. 

Such operations are used by all graphics software, image manipulation, video decoders/encoders, games and modern operating systems. 

Results Interpretation 
Float Shaders (Pixels/s) - higher results are better, i.e. better single (32-bit) floating-point performance. 

Double Shaders (Pixels/s) - higher results are better, i.e. better double (64-bit) floating-point performance.

 

 

Here we go again with one related to multi-media things, but this is more graphics card related.

Got a mixed bag this time, with some going up and some going down, but again the differences as so small there’s likely to be no impact on the real world performance.

 

 

Graphics (GPGPU) Processing 

Benchmark the graphics performance of the graphics processors (GPGPUs). Shows how your graphics processors handle instructions and data in comparison to other typical graphics processors. 

Such operations are used by specialised software, e.g. scientific software, image manipulation, video decoders/encoders, games that make GPU performance pretty important. 

Results Interpretation 
Processing Float (Pixels/s) - higher results are better, i.e. better single (32-bit) floating-point performance. 

Processing Double (Pixels/s) - higher results are better, i.e. better double (64-bit) floating-point performance.

 

 

Here’s another Graphics card based test, here we see the scores going up when we move to SP2, but not by any real discernible amount.

 

Graphics (GPGPU) Bandwidth 

Benchmark the bandwidth of the memory of the graphics processors (GPGPUs) and the bandwidth of the bus that connects them to your computer. Shows how your graphics processors’ memory bandwidth compare to other video sub-systems in terms of bandwidth. 

The speed at which the data can be sent to the GPGPUs, internally processed and the results sent back is as important as the processing power of the GPGPUs. The benchmark is based on the well-known STREAM memory benchmark, as implemented by the CPU memory benchmarks. 

Results Interpretation 
Internal Memory Bandwidth (MB/s) - higher results are better, i.e. faster internal memory bandwidth. 

Data Transfer Bandwidth (MB/s) - higher results are better, i.e. faster data transfer between the GPU and computer.

 

So we have the last graphics test, this one is how it handles the graphics memory, and we see a slight drop actually when going to SP2. Again it’s not really relevant to much of anything in the real world..

 

The last two test I have are memory related test, I did them just to see what the differences might be if any..

Memory Bandwidth 

Benchmark the memory bandwidth of your computer. Shows how your memory sub-systems compare to other computers in terms of bandwidth. 

The benchmark is based on the well-known STREAM memory benchmark. 

Results Interpretation 
Integer Memory Bandwidth (MB/s) - higher results are better, i.e. faster memory bandwidth. 

Float Memory Bandwidth (MB/s) - higher results are better, i.e. faster memory bandwidth. 

 

hmm.. looks the same to me…

 

Memory Latency 

Benchmark the latency (response time) of processors’ caches and memory. Shows how your processors’ caches and memory sub-systems compare to other computers in terms of latency. 

The latency of caches is measured in processor clocks (i.e. how many clocks it takes for the data to be ready) as it is dependent on the processor clock speed. 

The latency of memory is measured in nanoseconds as it is typically independent on processor clock speed.

Latency is lower = better

Speed Factor is higher = better

 

again look about the same….. oh well, satiated my curiosity anyway..

 

 

So, what have we learned here today? 

Well I learned really that I think I wasted a good 20 hours messing with this stuff…

I’ve also learned that not much changed in terms of performance really between service pack 1 and service pack 2. Sure there are drops in performance in a lot of the tests, but they’re so small that the average user will never notice any difference. The tests that improve with the move to SP2 are the same way, they’re negligible differences really.

Is it worth it to upgrade to service pack 2?

That depends, most likely yes it is worth it for the hardware and software compatibility improvements, and of course any security benefits as well and the few new additions.

Source : Kristofer Brozio

TN implements sixth pay commission recommendations

May 31 About 12 lakh Tamil Nadu Government employees will receive a 30 per cent hike in wages with the government deciding to adopt the recommendations of the Sixth Pay Commission. The revised pay scales will be implemented with immediate effect and employees will get the revised pay next month, State Finance Secretary K Gnanadesikan told reporters here today. The Government would incur additional expenditure of Rs 5,155.79 crore per annum due to the revised scales which will hike salaries of the employees by 30 per cent, he said." Currently Rs 14,000 crore has been incurred by government on salaries per annum while for pensioners it is at Rs 7,000 crore totalling a sum of Rs 21,000 crore. After the revised pay, it will be Rs 26,155.79 crore", he said Giving some salient features of the revision, he said,"emoluments like House Rent Allowance and City Compensatory Allowance will be doubled, while the same are granted for the first time to all employees on Special Time Scales of Pay including the noon meal workers". As part of accepting the long pending request of employees, pensioners and family pensioners, the existing Medical Allowance has been revised from Rs 50 to Rs 100 per month. Stating that ceiling limit of Death-cum-Retiring Gratuity has been enhanced from Rs 3.5 lakh to Rs 10 lakh on par with Central government, he said arrears in the pay revision after adjustment of interim arrears will be paid in three equal instalments. Daily allowance has also been doubled.

The thin line between art and design

Fine arts seniors exhibit final design pieces after months of preparation

Elizabeth Moskowitz/The Daily Texan

Caleb Miller/The Daily Texan

As the sun was setting, the last few rays of light sparkled off the brilliant pink and purple hair windswept into her face. Delicately scrawling a number “2” into my reporter’s notebook with an art pen, Sarah Hood described why she was so fascinated with typography.

“I fell in love with ITC Tiffany Heavy,” Hood said while sketching the number in her favorite font with careful trepidation. “For me, everything needs to be as ornate as possible. My whole senior project and thesis was about stimulation. I need something that’s constantly stimulating — bright lights, color, crazy noises. So simple, clean, sleek fonts — they’re lovely and well-designed — but they can’t keep my attention for very long.

Where to draw the line?

Hood, who will soon graduate with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in design, is among 17 seniors exhibiting their work this weekend at the Creative Research Lab. The program itself, Design in Conversation, is an attempt to transform the works of these design students into person-to-person dialogue. The CRL, normally reserved for art exhibitions, will have a dedicated space for design students’ work — but don’t call the designers “artists.”
“Oh no,” Hood said, “Don’t ever call a designer an artist. That’s a huge debate in the design community right now: Where do we draw the line between artist and designer?”
Yet Hood’s work in the exhibit seems to border on the abstract. In one piece, a video shows the process of melting ice cream, Bomb Pops popsicles and whipped cream, with each medium shaped in the form of a font. Hood said the aim of her work was to stimulate an almost perverse perspective for people watching the video.

“I melted Bomb Pops down into molds, re-froze them and videotaped them melting,” Hood said, grinning with enthusiasm. “It’s making you sit down and watch the melting process from beginning to end, and it’s kind of masochistic and sadistic. You rush home from the grocery store because you don’t want your ice cream to melt, for example, but sitting down and watching a video of the process, you’re like, ‘Oh no no don’t melt.’ It’s enjoying to watch, like a kid with a magnifying glass on ants.”

Cult typography

As she finished scrawling the “2,” Hood described why she is drawn to psychological stimulation in her design pieces.

“I need something to distract me and keep me busy,” Hood said. “I was always the one in class who didn’t do everything black and white, sleek, minimal — I’m so the opposite of that. As I got more into typography, it helped me realize how I want to design — to be mature but with more personality.”

At a South by Southwest screening of the horror film “A Haunting In Connecticut,” audiences were ecstatic and genuinely frightened. A movie that would have probably received a standing ovation ended with credits typed in Papyrus font — causing audience members to groan and scoff in disapproval. One man, who had previously been jumping in fright at quick cut-scenes throughout the film, called out “amateur!” when the credits rolled. That kind of impact, Hood affirms, is why she was drawn to typography in the first place.

“There are whole cults behind fonts, like huge petitions to ban Comic Sans,” Hood said with a laugh. “There’s always typography drama. Like, if a design student goes to the mall and sees a business sign in a bad font, they wonder who would pay money to see that.”

Designers get ready

Rachel Tepper, exhibit committee head for the program, said the goal of the show is to inspire discussion about the designers’ work.

“We spend the entire semester preparing for the show,” Tepper said. “I think it’s important to know that our program is a liberal-arts approach to design, so we take design theory and history classes and ground our work in thinking, not just design. We took action words like ‘provoke’ and ‘explore’ and grouped our work under these categories to trigger conversations, to make people think about why does this provoke or how does this explore.”

Tepper, a designer herself, also focused on typography but was more interested in the history behind fonts. Her work centers on revisiting and updating a font originally created by Elizabeth Friedlander, a Holocaust refugee who was forced to leave Germany in the 1930s. Friedlander never received credit for the typeface she created, so Tepper decided to pay homage to her legacy by transforming the font into Sans Friedlander, a sans serif font.

“I like to create pieces that are very thorough, with a light, soft touch,” Tepper said while averting her eyes and smiling. “I think that I design well that way because it kind of reflects my shyness. It’s understated.”

Design in Conversation

Opening reception: Saturday, 6 p.m.
Exhibit: May 9-May 30; noon-5 p.m.
Creative Research Lab
2832 E. MLK Blvd.

Spelling Bee 2009: Kavya Shivashankar Wins on Laodicean

Kavya Shivashankar, an eighth grader from Olathe, Kansas, correctly spelled L-a-o-d-i-c-e-a-n to win the 2009 Scripps National Spelling Bee Thursday night. Kavya won at the end of a championship round in which runner-up Tim Ruiter was eliminated on "maecenas" and third-place finisher Aishwarya Pastapur was eliminated on "menhir."

Making her fourth appearance in the national bee, Kavya looked calm and collected throughout, never wavering as she spelled words like "phoresy" in the championship round. (The other championship round words that were spelled correctly were antonomasia, bouquiniste, oriflamme, guayabera, isagoge and sophrosyne.)

In earlier rounds, Kavya effortlessly rattled off seemingly challenging words like "hydrargyrum," "blancmange" and "baignoire."

Having finished in the Top 10 each of the last three years, Kavya was considered one of the favorites entering the bee. A student at California Trail Junior High School, Kavya enjoys playing the violin, bicycling, swimming, and learning Indian classical dance. She plans to become a neurosurgeon.

Spelling Bee Photos

South Florida Cake Boutique Featured on CNBC's 'The Oprah Effect'

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., May 25 /PRNewswire/ -- On Thursday, May 28th at 9PM ET & 10PM PT, We Take The Cake will be one of the businesses featured on the CNBC special titled "The Oprah Effect." Carl Quintanilla explores the secrets of getting on Oprah, the impact on businesses of being featured by Oprah and how this so-called Oprah Effect transforms brands into big business.

We Take The Cake, a boutique bakery located in Ft. Lauderdale Florida, was fortunate enough to have had its Gourmet Key Lime bundt cake selected as one of "Oprah's Favorite Things" in 2004. The impact of having had a product or business featured on Oprah has since become known as "The Oprah Effect." "People are fascinated by 'The Oprah Effect,'" said Lori Karmel, We Take The Cake's owner. "Nobody can put a company on the map the way Oprah Winfrey can."

Lori Karmel purchased We Take The Cake, a sleepy cake business, in 2002. Karmel knew the business because she had bought her son's birthday cake there. The business struggled after 9/11 and made its first modest profit of $19 in June of 2004. Then came "the call" from The Oprah Winfrey Show. The bakery's gourmet Key Lime Bundt Cake with key lime cream cheese frosting was being considered by Oprah as one of her Favorite Things. When the cake made the final cut for the show, "It was like winning the lottery," said Karmel. Karmel had no idea what would happen when the "Oprah's Favorite Things Show" aired. The impact was immediate and within hours We Take The Cake's website was overwhelmed.

Almost 5 years later, We Take The Cake is still thriving. Its gourmet cakes have been featured on The Food Network's "Challenge," "Unwrapped" and "Road Tasted." This past December, In Style Magazine selected We Take The Cake's Prize-Winning Chocolate Layer Cake as one of "the best mail order cakes." Now their beautifully decorated cupcakes are available for national shipping too.

We Take The Cakes' gourmet items can be found on-line at www.wetakethecake.com, at all Florida Whole Foods Markets, at NeimanMarcus.com, NormThompson.com and Field of Flowers stores. We Take The Cake will also soon begin testing a new "cupcake and ice cream" creation at ten Kilwin's confectionery shoppes.

    We Take The Cake
   1021 N. Federal Highway
   Fort Lauderdale, Florida
   33304
   888-901-2253

www.wetakethecake.com

SOURCE We Take The Cake