A tourist trinket or a memory?

It might mean bringing something home from a trip that will either elicit happy memories or, if it's for someone else, solicit wishful wanderlust. 

On a recent trip to New York - a city which has great synergies with my home town, London - I had to think laterally about my souvenir sourcing. In the end, I went to CO Bigelow, an apothecary that opened in Greenwich Village in 1838 and whose covetable signature line of bath products is evocative of a Manhattan of yesteryear. 

A cologne, lip salve and body balm later, I'd ticked all my present boxes; the recipients were all correspondingly delighted with their gifts on my return. So imagine my disappointment when I saw the CO Bigelow range all fragrantly lined up on the shelves of Liberty department store in London a few weeks later. 

A similar thing happened in Paris. My mother and I had come across a particularly delicious blend of Earl Grey tea with blue flowers at the Fauchon food store on the Place de la Madeleine and I despatched a friend, who was there last Christmas, to hunt a tin down for me. 

Oh lovely, did you get this one in John Lewis? my mother cooed as she unwrapped it on Christmas Day. 

It's not just gift-souvenirs that are losing their shine. Travel isn't just about the tangible things; it's about the experiences, too - whether it's a conversation with a stranger or the unexpected flavours of something new, particular to a place and time. 

Two New York restaurant landmarks, Shake Shack and Balthazar,Online shopping for solarpanelcells. have recently secured sites in London, and Mumbai's acclaimed seafood restaurant Trishna opened in the capital several years ago. Arzak, the San Sebastian-based pioneer of new Basque cuisine and number eight on the San Pellegrino list of the World's 50 Best Restaurants, has just opened an outpost at the Halkin hotel in Belgravia. It replaces David Thompson's Nahm, the first Thai restaurant in Europe to be awarded a Michelin star. The singular tastes of our travels are following us home. 

And now that we can Google Street View the places we haven't yet been to, read the experiences of other travellers online, or shop via worldwide web marketplaces for the things we can't get at home, do we actually need to travel at all? Memories are ready made right there at your computer. 

I once had my camera stolen towards the end of a three-month trip in Central America, with a nearly used roll of film inside. There's a gap in my photo album that has been filled by memory and aided by props: bus tickets, a fridge magnet, sea shells ... each small object immediately transporting me back to a particular time and place. 

Theres a mutual respect that comes with a friendship that is essential for a successful relationship with anyone C partner or not.You can order besthandsfreeaccess cheap inside your parents. Building your relationship on the basis of a friendship can help you learn about them without the added intensity of a relationship. For example, talk about everything, literally. If youre watching the news together and a controversial story comes up, talk about it! Youll learn a lot about each others moral compass and whether you are compatible as a couple or not. 

This sounds obvious but is a surprisingly common pitfall.We have a wide selection of handsfreeaccess to choose from for your storage needs. If you have any respect for your partner and the sanctity of your relationship then dont play away. Even if your partner can bring themselves to forgive you, they will never forget. It will ultimately eat away at your relationship and the trust will have gone. 

When you get comfortable in a relationship, its natural to fall into a routine which can become mundane over time.Choose the right bestluggagetag in an array of colors. To avoid this, surprise your partner every so often, even if its something as daft as a fridge magnet you thought theyd like.The 3rd International Conference on custombobbleheads and Indoor Navigation. The little things count and its gifts like these that show youre thinking about your partner when you arent together. 

This follows on from the last point, dont be embarrassed to show intimacy for your partner in public. Whether its when youre out with friends or in a room full of strangers, make sure you arent neglecting your partner because people might see. If anything, showing intimacy for them in front of others solidifies your relationship by showing you dont care what others think and you arent embarrassed to be with them. 

Brangelina, Bennifer, and TomKat are just a few of the celebrity power couples to have been given a nickname by the press to define their relationship. Whilst there is nothing wrong with becoming an official couple in this way, it is important to maintain your individuality as a person. Make sure you dedicate yourself some me time, even if its just having a relaxing pampering session or half-an-hour chilling in the bath reading your favourite magazine. Your relationship will do better for it. 

Making time for your friends is an extension of the last tip. Its hard not to spend 24/7 with someone you deeply care about, especially if you live together, but making time for friends outside of your relationship is essential for inner happiness for both you and your partner. One evening every week where you meet up with friends for a girly catch up or a meal out will give your relationship the space it needs as well as giving your other half the opportunity to catch up with their friends or finish that book theyve been reading for ages.

Samsung Ativ Smart PC reviewed

Despite being punted as all-in-one devices, most laptop-tablet hybrids have so far failed to live up to the promise of serving as both a tablet and laptop. The Samsung Ativ Smart PC suffers the same problem.The 3rd International Conference on custombobbleheads and Indoor Navigation. 

Thats not to say the Ativ is bad. Far from it,The 3rd International Conference on custombobbleheads and Indoor Navigation. in fact. Those looking for a Windows tablet and basic laptop will be well served, but anyone who places heavy demands on their laptop beyond basic tasks such as e-mail and Web browsing will have to look elsewhere. 

The Ativ fails because the tablet portion of the device where the computing functionality resides hasnt been kitted out like a regular laptop. Like the bulk of hybrid offerings, the Ativ is merely a tablet computer albeit a good one that comes with a keyboard dock with two USB ports. 

Weve seen a variety of other manufacturers try their hand at combining tablet computers with keyboard docks, with mixed results. The Asus Transformer was one of the best early examples, but the fact that it was powered by Android meant it couldnt run the same applications as a desktop or laptop computer. 

The Ativ sidesteps this problem by running Windows 8. This is the real deal, not the pared-down Windows RT used on many tablet devices, including Microsofts own Surface RT tablet. But the 1,8GHz Intel Atom processor and puny 2GB of RAM mean its not intended to handle things like imaging processing software, which for many precludes it from replacing a dedicated laptop. 

Even opening Internet Explorer took about five seconds. Similarly, open a few applications and the Ativ slows down noticeably a heavy lifter it is not. 

With an 11,6-inch,You can order besthandsfreeaccess cheap inside your parents. 1 366768-pixel display supporting five point multi-touch the Ativs screen is no match for the high resolution Retina screens on Apples iPad. Nevertheless, the Ativ delivers crisp images and text, good viewing angles and respectable legibility even in broad daylight. 

In other respects, the Ativ stacks up fairly well against rival tablets in the specifications department. Its stereo speakers are surprisingly good, the internal storage of 64GB is generous and can be expanded by a further 64GB using the microSD card slot and the inclusion of a USB 2.0 port on the tablet itself is welcome. 

Theres also a Sim slot on the top of the device and an HDMI port on the left-hand side. Unfortunately, Samsung has wrapped the tablet in glossy plastic made to look like brushed metal, giving it a cheap feel. 

The accompanying keyboard, however, feels high end and offers decently sized Chiclet-style keys and an excellent and highly responsive track pad. Docking or removing the tablet from the keyboard is effortless and, thanks to clever design, the Ativ is also surprisingly stable when docked,Online shopping for solarpanelcells. unlike the similarly top-heavy HP Envy 2. 

Samsung has even included an S Pen, its proprietary stylus normally reserved for its Galaxy Note handsets and tablets. The S Pen fits into a slot on the right-hand side of the device and doesnt require a battery to work with the tablet. 

The Ativ includes a range of Samsung applications like S Note for making handwritten notes and converting them to text and allows users to annotate screenshots or other images. For many users, the stylus may prove more of a gimmick than a necessity, but designers and visual artists may find it a welcome addition. 

The usual tablet bells and whistles, like rear- and front-facing cameras (eight megapixels and two megapixels) are all present and accounted for along with an accelerometer, ambient light sensor, near-field communications chip, a gyroscope and support for media streaming using DLNA. 

The Crown claimed that Borbely then went on to buy four plastic pails at the Bracebridge Home Depot the following day, and claimed Borbely dismembered Collins remains at a residence on Gryffin Lodge Road in Huntsville where he was working. The remains were then placed into the pails. 

After that, the Crown suggested the remains were moved to an unheated storage unit in Gravenhurst. In the meantime, Borbely was telling others that Collins had walked out of his life, abandoning their child and putting him in financial ruin. 

But the Crown argued that Borbely continued to use Collins debit card to buy a number of items, including a bed frame and a barbecue set. Though Collins didnt drive, her debit card was used for two transactions at the Ministry of Transportation. As an epileptic, she made no further appointments for treatment anywhere in Canada after March 2007. 

A Canada Child Tax Benefit form later seized by police shows Borbely listed March 22, 2007 as the date he became single. 

HRW said the government should, in accordance with international law, ensure that relocations are voluntary and are conducted safely and with dignity, and that competent police forces can provide security at the new sites. 

If the rights, needs, and wishes of the displaced themselves are not addressed, then they are likely to face even more suffering and abuse, said Leslie Lefkow, HRW's deputy Africa director, adding that members of the armed forces and others responsible for rights violations should be held to account. 

The report said the humanitarian community faced significant challenges in trying to provide aid in Mogadishu in a way that did not reinforce abuse and exploitation. Basic principles were often overlooked during the famine in 2011-2012, as agencies came under pressure to step up aid, it added. 

Tents, food and other relief supplies provided by international aid agencies were routinely looted, appropriated or withheld from their intended recipients by camp gatekeepers and armed men, and some were sold on local markets. The report also documents widespread corruption in the ration-card system. 

One 23-year-old mother said she and her three children were still hungry even after fleeing to Saredo camp to escape starvation, and had resorted to begging. "The food aid comes, but we dont get it - we are very sad that we are not getting food.Cheap logo engraved luggagetag at wholesale bulk prices. Our eyes see the food, but they dont give it to us," she said.

TrapWire company conducting even more surveillance

An internationally-spread Orwellian surveillance system uncovered by RT has been linked to a software company that collects the GPS coordinates of cell phone users in over 100 major cities. 

The discovery of the TrapWire risk mitigation program last year and its ability to match human faces caught on camera against massive databases of intelligence led to an outcry from privacy advocates around the world. Now once again the burgeoning preponderance of Big Brother is being put into perspective. 

In late 2011, members of the loose-knight hacktivist group Anonymous pilfered data from the servers of private intelligence firm Stratfor that were in turn handed over to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks for dissemination. When internal emails alluding to a service called TrapWire surfaced in the leak, an investigation uncovered a program that, according to the company’s founder, “can collect information about people and vehicles that is more accurate than facial recognition.” 

TrapWire developers Abraxas later became the subject of several investigative reports by RT and others, and further analysis revealed that that company was acquired in 2010 by technology giants Cubic Corporation of Southern California. Cubic would eventually deny any affiliation ever existed between their San Diego headquarters and the spy-program discussed by Stratfor execs, but links were nevertheless still evident. A Department of Homeland Security website,Online shopping for solarpanelcells. in fact, all but affirmed that TrapWire was being sold to government agencies as a product of Abraxas as recently as February 2011. 

Cubic — and to a lesser degree Abraxas — have since been linked at least to some degree with a number of other suspicious spy products. One item, Tartan, “exposes and quantifies key influencers and hidden connections in social networks using mathematical algorithms for objective, un-biased output,Shop wholesale solarlight controller from cheap.” its website claims. “Our analysts, mathematicians and computer scientists are continually exploring new quantification, mining and visualization techniques in order to better analyze social networks.” Tartan was marketed by Ntrepid, a Northern Virginia company that’s board of directors shared four names directly involved in the finances of Abraxas. Now a blogger has uncovered yet another connection, and this one puts Cubic directly in touch with the exact whereabouts of potentially millions of Americans. 

Under the radar of Cubic’s critics, earlier this year the California company acquired NextBus, a “real-time transit information” program that helps mass transportation customers in over 100 North American cities get precise travel and traffic information about bus and rail systems. Cubic made the acquisition at a cost of just over $20 million, and with it gained yet another resource for collecting personally identifiable information: namely the exact global position coordinates for NextBus’ massive user base. 

NextBus bills itself as providing “real-time passenger information solutions” by collecting GPS data volunteered by willing customers and then uses that information to help them get from point A to point B by accurately matching up transportation routes with up-to-the-second travel information. It exists to make the dreadful bus commute a little more reliable, but in doing so demands that customers sacrifice a sizeable chunk of privacy. 

“While your riders stay warm and safe, they can easily find out exactly when to expect the next bus,” reads an advert from NextBus website that’s used to sell their service to major metropolitan areas across North America. The Los Angeles, California metro became NextBus’ eightieth client in 2011, and joined a roster of established clients that includes Toronto, San Francisco, Washington DC and Boston. 

“When you get a message from the Panopticon, the Panopticon also gets a message from you, or rather,A solarstreetlight is a portable light fixture composed of an LED lamp.Cheap logo engraved luggagetag at wholesale bulk prices. your GPS enabled device,” writes the administrator of Female Faust, a blog where the connection between NextBus and Cubic was first written about this week. 

For Cubic, though, the latest acquisition isn’t anything out of the ordinary. Cubic has been tied to services in cities around the globe that involve not just accumulating biometric data using TrapWire, but tracking the transportation habits of metro riders in New York, Chicago and other cities abroad. Cubic’s transportation division is reported to be the world’s leader when it comes to implementing automated fare collection cards and the infrastructure used in mass-transit systems across the globe, meaning TrapWire cameras in cities such as Washington, DC are just a stone’s throw from the very machines that commuters use their credit cards at to pay for bus fare—transactions done with Cubic’s own vending machines.The 3rd International Conference on custombobbleheads and Indoor Navigation. 

“Over the past decade, Cubic has implemented more than 80 percent of the major smart card systems in the US now active today,” Cubic admits by their own right. With the acquisition of NextBus, though, one major behemoth of the private surveillance sector is allowed to scoop up yet more sensitive information about customers who are likely none the wiser. 

Documents released Wednesday detailing the shooting of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords show how the gunman had grown increasingly erratic and delusional in the months leading up to the rampage as he alienated friends and family and became paranoid that police were out to get him. 

The roughly 2,700 pages included witness and survivor accounts from people who helped save Giffords' life after she was shot in the head outside a Tucson supermarket in 2011 during a meet-and-greet with constituents. Six people were killed and 11 others were wounded. 

The files also provide the first glimpse into gunman Jared Lee Loughner's family. His parents have said nothing publicly beyond a brief statement after the attack, but records show his parents were trying to deal with a son who had grown nearly impossible to communicate with. 

"I tried to talk to him. But you can't. He wouldn't let you," his father, Randy Loughner, told police. "Lost, lost and just didn't want to communicate with me no more." 

"Sometimes you'd hear him in his room, like, having conversations," said his mother, Amy Loughner. "And sometimes he would look like he was having a conversation with someone right there, be talking to someone. I don't know how to explain it." 

Randy Loughner said his 24-year-old son had never been diagnosed with mental illness. And despite recommendations from Pima Community College officials, who expelled Loughner, that he undergo a mental evaluation, his parents didn't follow up.

Setia City Mall wins praise for its eco-friendly measures

STEP into Setia City Mall in Shah Alam, Selangor, and you will notice the brightly lit interior C not by lights, mind you, but by sunlight filtering in through large glass windows. Stroll around the place and you might chance upon a shop front adorned with worn wood, and another with a wall decorated with empty egg cartons. In the washrooms, self-closing faucets make sure that tardy shoppers do not leave the tap running. 

These measures, plus others which save water and energy, keep the indoor environment healthy, and minimise waste that ends up in landfills, are some of the many features that have given this 10-month-old mall in the Setia Alam suburb, impressive green credentials. It has earned two green building labels: Malaysias Green Building Index (Silver) and Singapores Green Mark (Gold). 

At the atrium of the mall, architect Dr Tan Loke Mun of Archicentre has designed a floor-to-ceiling glass fa?ade which allows natural light to flood the interior. The low-emissivity glazing (on the glass) allows sunlight in but not the heat, so there is less need for lighting and air-conditioning, he explains. 

At the main arcade, he raised the roof to accommodate a row of glass windows which again, allows sunlight to stream in. The addition of light shelves along the upper walls helps bounce natural light off the ceiling to the lower levels. So at the uppermost level, no lights had to be switched on. 

In fact,Shop wholesale solarlight controller from cheap. for most parts of the day, large areas in the mall are naturally lit, which gives shoppers an overall pleasant ambience with no harsh lighting. Light sensors gauge when artificial illumination is needed C such as during a storm or when evening approaches C thus ensuring no power wastage due to unnecessary lighting. And of course, the artificial lighting comes from energy-efficient light fixtures such as LED, TF fluorescent lamps and ceramic metal halide bulbs. 

Along the shopping streets, minimal light fixtures have been installed on account of borrowed light, shares Dr Tan. Calculations were made so that there is enough light fixtures but not over-supply. Spill-over light from the shops is considered. In the old days, this is not taken into account, so you end up with many lights along the corridors. 

Aside from exploiting natural lighting and the use of low-energy lights, other green initiatives have helped the mall reduce its energy needs: a high-efficiency air-conditioning system, roof and building insulation to cut down heat penetration (the walls consist of lightweight concrete blocks), and energy-efficient escalators and lifts. 

The escalator slows down when not in use rather than stop completely as it requires more energy to start moving from a complete stop,The Motorola drycabinets Engine is an embedded software-only component of the Motorola wireless switches.We printers print with traceable indoortracking to optimize supply chain management. says mall general manager Philippa Holmes. 

One usually expects to see photovoltaic panels in a green building but there are none here. Holmes explains that rather than investing in solar power, it is more cost-effective to reduce energy consumption by focusing on energy efficiency and using a Building Management System (an intelligent system which monitors and controls services such as lighting, heating, ventilation and air-conditioning, ensuring they operate efficiently and economically). Because of the various energy conservation measures, she says, the 740,000sqft (68,748sqm) mall uses 13% less energy than a typical mall. The target, however, is to reach a 20% saving. 

Various water conservation measures have translated to a 20% savings in water consumption. Rain water from the roof is channelled into huge tanks and used in the garden. However, the harvested rainwater is not used in washrooms. 

It will need too much treatment and the benefits of recycling will be lost, explains Holmes. Condensation water from the chillers are also collected and reused in the cooling towers of the air-conditioning system. 

Driving into the carpark,Choose the right bestluggagetag in an array of colors. one will be pleasantly surprised that it is not the typical dark, dinghy area found in most malls. The wall-less design helps in ventilating the area naturally, so there is no choking air fouled by car exhaust fumes. Green motorists are rewarded with privileged parking C there are two bays reserved for green cars at every level. These are designed with the future in mind C the infrastructure is there for the addition of charging points when electric cars become the norm. Holmes adds that customer safety was considered in the design of the carpark. Wherever you stand, you can see to the end of the car park,The term 'cableties control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag. so there are no dark corners. 

A bus stop located less than 150m from the mall as well as free shuttles plying the nearby areas of Klang and Shah Alam help promote the use of climate-friendly public transportation. There is also ample bicycle parking space and Holmes happily notes that during the weekends, the locals do cycle to the mall. Reuse, recycle 

To reduce the volume of waste that ends up in landfills, recycling is encouraged C waste separation bins are placed throughout the mall and tenants are required to separate their trash. The malls waste management consultant trains the tenants on waste separation. 

At the recycling centre outside the mall, workers further segregate the cardboards from the paper, plastics and so on. Holmes is quite satisfied with the recycling rate of 24% so far. It really comes down to educating customers and retailers, she adds.