New hotel breaks the New Hampshire mould

If we think of Ivy League universities, we imagine serious academic halls in patrician communities, all steeped in history. The venerable town of Hanover, N.H., founded in the 1760s and home to Dartmouth College, fits the bill, but a new establishment, Six South Street, breaks tradition.

Six South Street is a stylish boutique hotel with minimalist lines, striking, postmodern interiors and lots of user-friendly features for its plugged-in clientele. Everything is bright, airy and semi-open, with guests flowing smoothly from the lobby to the media room to the Bistro at Six.

"We definitely broke the mould," said general manager Donald Bruce, "and not only for Hanover, but our contemporary look and feel might be unique in the state of New Hampshire.

"We're often compared to a W Hotel, although not quite as big-city. We're more like a less glitzy, Ivy League W."

Once you toss your keys to the valet parker, you enter glass doors and glide over glossy stone floors. The small welcome lounge - a boutique lobby - is a design standout, with cranberry velvet sofas and large windows. A media room is available to travelling salespeople, students and anyone else who needs guest computers and the handy mini-offices that are equipped with video screens and chairs set up for presentations.

The Bistro at Six serves casual fare with a southwestern accent in dishes like grilled shrimp with lime or black bean salad with cilantro dressing, plus there are burgers, pastas, classic main courses of chicken, fish and meat. On Friday and Saturday nights, the big draw is the prime rib special.

The 69 guest rooms and suites are fresh and unfussy, decked out with white cotton duvet covers, honey-colour furniture and contemporary art. Functionality is important at this modern hotel, so rooms have flat-screen televisions, working desks with ergonomic chairs, iPod docks and extra bedside outlets so you can conveniently recharge all your mobile devices.

Because it is a totally new building, Six South was able to go green in a big way. It has LED lighting, a structural frame of recycled steel, geothermal heating and cooling, low-energy operating systems and an innovative laundry system that uses cold water and ozone to replace traditional chemicals. The hotel is covered with a "cool roof," a white synthetic membrane that reduces energy costs and pollution. Even the staff uniforms are made of recycled yarns created from discarded recycled plastic bottles.

Another thing that sets Six South apart from many establishments in small New England towns is its international clientele. If you linger over coffee in the breakfast room or spend cocktail hour in the lounge, you'll overhear the conversations of people from around the world. Dartmouth is a major draw for visiting students, professors, researchers and consultants.

Six South Street is steps from Hanover's charming Main Street and Dartmouth's Green, the main campus bordered by ivy-draped brick buildings. The most prominent establishment in Hanover since the college opened in 1769, Dartmouth is the smallest of the eight Ivy League schools with about 6,000 students.

Cree's new LED troffers aim to eliminate fluorescents

The firm says its new products are capable of replacing antiquated fluorescent technology in new or retrofit commercial and industrial settings.

The firm has also changed its pricing to drive even faster payback for building contractors, designers and owners.

Cree says its CR series offers payback-friendly pricing and a no-compromise alternative to fluorescent lighting; its LED equivalents consume nearly 50 percent less energy than a comparable linear fluorescent and deliver more than twice the lifetime.

With an estimated payback of less than a year in a typical new office installation, Cree says its troffers provide superior performance and greater energy savings over fluorescent options.

The new troffers now address three times the number of applications, including surface-mount, in-ceiling retrofits and suspended light engine luminaires.

The CR24 and CR22 troffers are available to ship directly from stock to accommodate high demand and jump-start end-user payback.

"Pricing for 0-10V dimming control to five-percent is significantly reduced, which means daylight harvesting has never been more affordable", says Cree.

"In my 28 years in the electrical industry, I have never had as much excitement and success with a product line as I have with the Cree CR series LED troffers," comments David Fredd, manager lighting business development, Graybar.

"No other lighting manufacturer offers this level of energy saving performance and colour quality - Cree CR series troffers deliver a combination of performance, pricing and efficacy that is truly untouchable."

The CR series has expanded three-fold by offering CR24 upgrade kits, a standalone light engine and SMK Series surface mount kits. The CR24 UPKIT provides a quick upgrade solution to replace existing, outdated fluorescent luminaires while leaving the ceiling intact.

The light engine, CR-LE, is now available as a standalone luminaire and offers an economical alternative to replacing fluorescent strips in "back-of-the-house" lighting applications.

The entire CR Series of troffers and light engines can now be installed in surface mount applications. This extends payback beyond T-bar ceilings. All of these solutions are built on the CR troffer and are available in the new 3000K colour temperature for retail and hospitality applications demanding beautiful, warm light.

Cree CR troffers, CR24 UPKIT and CR-LE products are also now available with an integrated LED battery pack. The 1400 lumen battery pack eliminates the cumbersome task of rewiring a fixture just to change the battery.

"Cree changed the indoor lighting industry one year ago when we introduced the first affordable LED troffer series," says David Elien, vice president, Cree lighting. "The CR Series is now the industry's best-selling LED troffer. With this success, Cree announces major extensions and says thank you by making our CR Series even more affordable to drive faster payback."

CGI University Gets Involved: Microscholarships, Hens For Haiti, WaterWheels, And More

How many students does it take to screw in a compact fluorescent lightbulb? Tony Anderson, Morehouse College '08, can answer that.

Together with college friend Marcus Penny, they founded Retrofit A Million (LRAM) for the purpose of capturing and replacing 1 million incandescent light bulbs with compact florescent bulbs in homes in low-income neighborhoods. So far, 1,000 student volunteers from several universities have screwed in 40,000 bulbs.

The bonus is that these student volunteers have also installed water-efficiency devices, including shower heads, low-flow toilets, and bathroom and kitchen sink aerators. "Having spent just over $78,000, LRAM has achieved over $7 million in energy and water savings," Anderson said in an interview. "That's an 89:1 return on investment."

Anderson launched LRAM with the award that he received at the first annual Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U), led by President Clinton in 2008. Each year at CGI U, college students from around the world compete in presenting practical solutions to address global challenges. This weekend, CGI U convenes its fifth annual event bringing together 1,000 students from 250 schools from around the world. 

Here are a few more of the 3,000 commitments to action made by students, universities, and youth groups.

Matt Severson conceived his project during a trip to Tanzania when he completed high school in 2007. It was then that Severson met elementary school student John Medo (pictured above, with Severson), whose lifetime aspiration to become president was limited by the prohibitive expense of $150 for high-school tuition. Severson's encounter with Medo inspired him to think bigger than merely helping the one young Tanzanian student.

While attending Brown University in 2009, Severson and his friends Roxana Moussavian and Andrew Perrault established The School Fund. They leveraged their 2011 CGI U award to raise more than $100,000 from nearly 750 individuals to fund high school education, supplies, and uniforms for 353 school years for 213 students. Now that Severson and his friends have graduated and are working in full-time jobs, The School Fund continues to be staffed primarily by 33 student volunteers from several universities.

With corporate and foundation grants funding The School Fund's limited expenses, all online contributions go entirely toward student tuition and supplies. Check out The School Fund to see just how easy and fun it is to contribute. You'll see photos of the students, their interests, aspirations, favorite books, and profiles. The students interact with donors and with each other. The School Fund is now scaling via partnerships with organizations in the key communities where The School Fund is most active.

The exuberance conveyed by these CGI U alumni in their interviews and emails with me was absolutely infectious. I encourage you to check out these great websites and consider how you might participate.

For example, companies and college teams can find out more here about engaging in Retrofit A Million's five-hour bulb installation projects. Additionally, since 60% of the organization's funding goes toward lightbulbs, companies seeking to make product contributions can get in touch as well. "If we can do this with such few resources, imagine how much more is possible," said Anderson. "We've got the model. Replacing a million lightbulbs is well within reach."

Future of SSL LED lighting is not dim, but it's flickering

Congresswoman Bachmann, former Republican presidential hopeful, has led a campaign for several years in defense of the historic Tom Edison-style incandescent lightbulb, against government pressure for consumers to adopt new, more energy-efficient lighting solutions.

Michael Poplawski, meanwhile, has led one of the government's teams – at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory – seeking to solve issues that currently hobble the widespread deployment of LED (Light Emitting Diode) technology, which remains both more expensive and far more efficient than Rep. Bachmann's beloved tungsten-filament vacuum tube.

"Complicated," was the commonest word from Poplawski, senior energy engineer at the Portland, Oregon national lab, as he spoke to a session at the DESIGN West conference here Tuesday. He cited numerous complications in the effective use by consumers of LED lighting, and obstacles to reducing costs for the technology.

One of the points Poplawski stressed was that every LED light is a solid-state (SSL) electronic device, while a lightbulb is just, well, a lightbulb. In a presentation that exceeded its planned duration by some 30 minutes, Poplawski dwelt on four problems that his group is working to resolve: flicker, dimmability, power quality, and lifetime limitations linked to "driver reliability."

Flicker, for example, is not just a relative of the yellow-bellied sapsucker.

Flicker is inherent in every form of electric lighting and it affects everyone differently, according to individual levels of visual sensitivity. "A good chunk of people," said Poplawski, with a measure of awe, "are seeing things (flicker) at upwards of a thousand hertz." Flicker's biggest moment in the limelight occurred in the film, "The Andromeda Strain," when the stroboscopic flashing of a laboratory light caused one of the characters to suffer an epileptic seizure.

Poplawski mentioned the danger of seizures, and added other side-effects of flicker, including headaches, fatigue, blurred vision, eye strain, reduced visual task performance and distraction on the job.

The good news about LED lighting is that it can reduce flicker, especially compared to standard fluorescent lights. The bad news is a determination by researchers that flicker – which is consistent and predictable in current lighting systems – is more "complicated" in SSL. It tends to vary substantially, both in amplitude and frequency, in various LED bulbs.

Among the solutions Poplawski's national lab is exploring is the development of LED solutions with minimal flicker, which requires researchers to identify and measure qualitatively (in terms of human reaction) the presence of flicker. In the end, flicker must be measurable in a way that its level can be reported to consumers in a way they'll understand it.

Among other issues with which Poplawski's team is wrestling is dimmability. Many homes are equipped with dimmers, virtually all of them designed to dim conventional incandescent and fluorescent lights. The difficulties of designing LED bulbs that react to existing dimming technologies required Poplawski 20 minutes to explain. The adaptation is not easy. Poplawski boiled it down to the fact that consumers don't know what will happen when they use their twentieth-century dimmer to soften the glare from a post-millenial high-tech bulb.

Church's mock raid leaves teen traumatized

The men burst into the church classroom and ordered the 15 teens in the youth group to the floor.

They covered the teens' heads with pillowcases and bound their hands. One man waved an unloaded gun, and another yelled, his face daubed with camouflage paint.

The kids gathered at the Glad Tidings Assembly of God Church and had planned to partake in youth ministry activities at 7 p.m. Wednesday.

Instead, they found themselves face down, hugging the linoleum floor, said the Rev. John Lanza, who described what happened. If they listened, they wouldn't get hurt, their assailants said.

It sounds terrifying, but there's a catch: The raid was fake, staged to show the teens the perils faced by Christian missionaries in the world's trouble spots, Lanza said.

Yet it traumatized one 14-year-old girl so badly that her mother filed a report with the police, claiming her daughter suffered a busted lip and bruised knees.

Neither the mother nor teen has been identified. Lanza did not wish to provide their names. Dauphin County District Attorney Edward M. Marsico Jr. said police are questioning those involved to determine if charges are warranted. No charges have been filed.

The experience did provide a whiff of terror. After bursting in on the youth group without warning, the raiders prodded the hooded kids into a church van and drove across the parking lot to the pastor's house.

They led the teens through the garage, past the pastor's motorcycle with crucifixes painted on its gas tank to an interrogation room in a dark corner of the musty basement.

Dust and loose insulation covered the floor beneath a single-bulb painter's light suspended from the ceiling. It illuminated a lone chair.

The men questioned each teen for 30 seconds in the room, raising their voices to invoke fear, before releasing them, Lanza said.

He said the teen who claims she was traumatized by the bogus raid was a relative newcomer to the youth group. She started attending meetings four weeks earlier at the request of a friend.

"They heard me crying," the unidentified girl told WHTM-TV in Harrisburg. "Why not right then and there tell us it was a joke, when you see me crying?"

"Now we know what we have to do in the future," Lanza said. He said he doesn't plan to shy away from the practice, which he called a valuable learning tool.

"This is to give students a sense of the constant threat brought against missionaries everywhere," he said.

The mock raid came on the heels of the terrorist slaying in Yemen of a Lancaster County man, Joel Shrum, who was killed by two gunmen on a motorcycle in the city of Taiz on March 18.

Shrum was learning Arabic and teaching English, according to his family. A group linked to al-Qaida claimed responsibility for his murder, saying Shrum was proselytizing.

Neither she nor the other teens in the group knew the raid was coming, Lanza said. He said church officials didn't notify their parents, either.

Toshiba Qosmio X775-Q7170 Review: Is 'Entry-Level Desktop Replacement' an Oxymoron?

The Qosmio X775-Q7170 is the entry-level model of the Qosmio X770 series of desktop replacement laptops. The Q7170 sports the same snazzy design as other laptops in the series: a 17.3-inch widescreen, a red-backlit keyboard, and a fade-to-red color scheme. However, it comes packed with some less-impressive hardware components and no 3D display.

Our review model, priced at $1150 , has an Intel Core i5-2450M processor, 6GB of DDR3 memory, a 640GB hard-disk drive spinning at 7200 rpm, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 560M graphics card. Since the graphics card doesn't support 3D Vision, Toshiba offers a tray-loading DVD-SuperMulti drive in lieu of a Blu-ray disc player. The X775-Q7170 has built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 3.0, and it runs 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium.

The X775-Q7170 earned a score of 82 on our new WorldBench 7 benchmark tests, which means that it was approximately 18 percent slower than our baseline configuration, which has an i5-2500K processor, 8GB of RAM, a 1TB hard drive, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti graphics card. This score isn't stellar for a desktop replacement laptop, but it's not bad for the price.

The Qosmio looks like its brothers in the X770 family, which is a good thing if you favor the chunky, plastic, super-polished gaming rig look. The chassis is almost entirely dressed in striated gray plastic, except for the very bottom of the lid (when the computer is open), and the very top of the keyboard deck, where the gray gives way to shiny metallic red. My colleague Jon L. Jacobi likens the Qosmio's casing to a tricked-out street racing car, and that's exactly what it looks like: shiny, fast, and a little tacky.

Toshiba also slaps the Qosmio logo on the lid of the machine in red mirrored plastic, which only serves to make the entire thing look cheaper and more garish.

In case you couldn't tell, I'm not a fan of the Qosmio's overall look. But if you like gaming rigs with lots of shine and pretty lights, this may be the machine for you. The X775-Q7170 has a large keyboard with red backlights.

Turning the keyboard light on doesn't just light up the keyboard; it also lights up a strip across the top of the touchpad and six of the seven touch buttons located above the keyboard. I admit that the red lights look pretty cool when the entire machine lights up.

Aside from the full-size keyboard with ten-key number pad, the Qosmio's keyboard deck contains a large touchpad (with two discrete buttons and an on/off switch), and seven touch buttons (Eco Mode toggle, Wi-Fi toggle, Keyboard Light toggle, Play/Pause, Mute, Volume Down, and Volume Up). On either side of the touch buttons are two Harman/Kardon stereo speakers (Toshiba also supplies a bottom-mounted woofer for extra audio kick).

The keyboard's Chiclet-style keys are smallish, but they provide good feedback and are less stiff than smaller keys tend to be. The touchpad has a slightly rough texture, which seemed to trip up the smoothness and precision of my typing. The touchpad's large buttons are composed of shiny plastic and feel a little flimsy, as though they might break within a year. Since this is a desktop replacement, I suggest using an external mouse.

This desktop replacement sports a glossy, 17.3-inch LED-backlit display with a native resolution of 1600 by 900. The screen generally looks good, with bright colors, good contrast, and decent off-axis viewing angles, but it falls short of full HD, and that fact is noticeable on such a large display. You can distinguish individual pixels, which makes content--including images, video, and text--look slightly fuzzy. At the desktop replacement level, this is definitely a bummer.

Obamacare Versus the U.S. Constitution

In a nation where Congress has already determined how much water your toilet tank can hold and whether you can purchase a 100-watt incandescent light bulb, the assertion of federal power is now so great and so unbounded that a case concerning the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), brought by 26 states will decide whether, in fact, there are any rights or powers left to the states.

What many Americans do not know is that the United States of America is composed of separate and sovereign republics, each with its own constitution. What has occurred, however, has been the erosion of states' rights and with that, the gradual distortion of the nation's central instrument of governance, the Constitution, to mean anything Congress wants it to say.

At the very heart of the Obamacare case the Supreme Court will hear Monday through Wednesday, March 26 through March 28, is the question of whether the federal government can coerce the states under the threat of withholding funds—in this case for Medicaid.

Obamacare vastly expands Medicaid, but it should also be noted that Medicaid has been expanded over the years without evoking this kind of organized resistance. Over a million Americans descended on Washington, D.C. on March 20, 2010 to demand that it not be passed. They were dismissed by the White House that bribed and pressured members of Congress who, it turns out, never even read the law before voting on it.

Created in 1965, Medicaid was intended to ensure that low-income individuals and families secure medical care. Obamacare represents that largest expansion in its history. As the largest federal-state funding program, in 2010 it represented some $401.4 billion. Predictions of what Obamacare will cost are over the moon.

At present, some 60 million Medicaid beneficiaries include one in four children, severely disabled people, many nursing home residents, and low-income pregnant women. Children's and trauma hospitals heavily rely on Medicaid funding. Under Obamacare, if ruled constitutional, more than 30 million more people are expected to gain health coverage through Medicaid.

The likelihood is that a federally administered health care system will destroy what is widely regarded as the best private sector health system in the world. It will put the government squarely between the physician and his patient, determining who receives treatment and the amount and cost of that treatment.

The issue of contention for many Constitutional scholars and others is Obamacare's demand that everyone either purchase a health insurance program or pay a fine for not doing so. Congress asserts this under the Commerce Clause, Article I, Section 8, Clause 3, that says it shall have the power "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with Indian Tribes."

The early Supreme Court led by the fourth Chief Justice John Marshall (serving from 1801 to 1835) broadly interpreted these powers, extending federal jurisdiction over a number of aspects of intrastate and interstate commerce. In more recent times, under Justice William Rehnquist, (serving 1986 to 2005) the Court restricted interpretation of the Clause to allow states more control over business conducted within its borders.

The tensions between the states and the central government have always been part of the life of the nation and the Civil War was the ultimate test of whether states can secede from the Union if they feel their rights are being trampled upon. Under the many progressive social justice programs instituted since the 1930s, federal programs have acquired the power to coerce states to do its bidding simply by threatening to withhold billions in funding.

LEED Casino Gambles On Embracing Sustainability

From their round-the-clock flashing lights to their all-you-can-eat (or throw away) buffets, casinos aren't exactly known as paragons of green virtue. But as LEED certification now seems to have penetrated to the outer reaches of the known universe, it was only a matter of time until we had a LEED-certified casino, and here it is: Rivers Casino in Des Plaines, Ill., the newest casino in the Chicagoland area, has been awarded green certification at the Gold level by the U.S. Green Building Council.

Located "steps away" from the O'Hare International Airport near downtown Chicago, Rivers Casino was designed with a sustainability plan to achieve LEED certification for energy, lighting, water and material use, as well as a variety of other sustainable elements.  The casino opened in July 2011, and it would appear that its developers have made good on their green aims for the building, claiming the title as the first casino in the world to achieve LEED Gold certification.

"Achieving LEED Gold was challenging and expensive, but in the long run, the effort will improve the environment and reduce our operating costs," Neil Bluhm, chairman of Midwest Gaming and Entertainment, said in a statement. We imagine he's not kidding when he alludes to the costs involved, as the casino features a 44,000-square-foot gaming floor with nearly 1,050 slots and 48 table games.

The casino's green features include the usual suspects in terms of energy and water conservation, such as LED light fixtures; skylights and Clerestory windows (increasing access to natural daylight, not a typical focus of casinos); low-flow plumbing fixtures and sensor-controlled faucets; occupant sensor-controlled lighting; onsite stormwater treatment; native and drought tolerant landscaping; a white roof, and concrete (rather than asphalt) parking lots, to reduce the heat-island effect; and 90 percent locally sourced building materials.

Additionally, the project diverted nearly 90 percent of its construction debris from the landfill via reuse or recycling, and features a green, living wall to improve what we imagine is already pretty good indoor air quality, as low-VOC paints and adhesives were used throughout. The casino offsets 70 percent of its electricity demand with Renewable Energy Credits, and is located close to public transportation for easy access to Chicagoland residents. (Alternately, green-minded visitors with electric vehicles are welcome to use the casino's complimentary charging station.)

Founded in 2007 as the Global Lighting Forum, the new association represents the same members but with a renewed focus and commitment to shaping how the world is illuminated, the organization said. Its goal is to share information, within the limits of competition law, on scientific, social, environmental, political and business issues related to the industry.

"The rejuvenation of the Global Lighting Association comes at a time when the lighting industry is undergoing massive transformation toward LEDs," said Jan Denneman, president. "This new technology provides tremendous new opportunities, and our mission is to promote the use of sustainable, energy-efficient light solutions."

Restaurant review: 86, Fulham Road, Chelsea

After enjoying the last mouthful of a stunning starter of scallops and pork belly, I headed to the lavatory in 86 already feeling rather delighted with life. And then, like a manna from heaven, David Attenborough came into my world, his unmistakable tones wafting into the cubicle through a speaker. It was the most soothing pee I've ever had and was infinitely more pleasant than the nasty elevator music that normally accompanies nature's call in smart restuarants.

It was a simple, yet genius touch from a venue that simply oozes class, and which has a substance to its food that matches the almost outrageously ornate style of its decor.

Opened in 2010, 86 quickly gained favour among west London's high-rollers for its sumptuous cocktails, getting the Royal thumbs-up from the Middleton sisters, no less. Food, served on the second of three floors within a Georgian townhouse, originally seemed to take a back seat, but with chef Simon Levy joining from Koffman's, it has gone up a gear, with classical French cooking constructed with a contemporary overtone.

We were led up the winding staircase to our table, which gave a bird's-eye view of the mixologists strutting their stuff downstairs. The restaurant is dimly lit but glows warmly with the dark gold-hued furnishings and rails and exposed, oversized copper light bulbs. Narcissists can get their fill by looking up at the myriad of mirrors on the ceiling, while the gilded walls are adorned with classic portraits, made a little crazy with the super-imposition of various animal heads.

The restaurant, private dining room, almost has the feel of a private members' club, but the happy jazz music, buzz of conversation from downstairs and friendly staff ensure stuffiness is far from the agenda. I took a friend but could easily have imagined a wooing a woman or putting the world to rights with the old man.

After a venison pasty amuse-bouche came the scallop starter, which was finished with a decoration of squid ink and butternut squash puree. It was a painting on a plate, and tasted better. The soft creamy and pure scallops got a rustic kick from the soupcon of pork belly, and the duo were pleasantly sweetened with the puree and ink. Friend said the mac and cheese with snails, bacon and garlic croutons, served in a ramekin on an 86-branded wooden board, was earthy, rich, filling and fantastic.

We were led up the winding staircase to our table, which gave a bird's-eye view of the mixologists strutting their stuff downstairs. The restaurant is dimly lit but glows warmly with the dark gold-hued furnishings and rails and exposed, oversized copper light bulbs. Narcissists can get their fill by looking up at the myriad of mirrors on the ceiling, while the gilded walls are adorned with classic portraits, made a little crazy with the super-imposition of various animal heads.

The restaurant, below the third floor private dining room, almost has the feel of a private members' club, but the happy jazz music, buzz of conversation from downstairs and friendly staff ensure stuffiness is far from the agenda. I took a friend but could easily have imagined a wooing a woman or putting the world to rights with the old man.

Subic Firm Makes Lighting Solutions

A Subic-registered company is now producing cost-efficient and environment-friendly energy and lighting solutions touted to address growing concerns of rising energy costs and degraded environment.

BandaSolar, which traces its roots to Bandacorp PI Inc. that was established here in 2006, is now offering Filipino consumers the benefits of renewable energy with its solar panels and light emitting diode (LED) lamps that could cut down power bills by more than 50 percent.

This has prompted Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) Chairman Roberto V. Garcia to call for a study on the installation of solar panels for all street lights in the free port and the use of 250-watt LED lamps instead of the standard 1,000-watt halogen lamps.

Bob Silvers, president of BandaSolar, said that his company addresses the concerns of consumers on the seemingly relentless power rate hikes, and seeks to meet growing demand

for solar solutions in the Philippines, as well as internationally.

"The first question in the mind of Filipinos is 'How am I going to cut on my power bills?' And the answer is: turn to sun and use its energy," Silvers said during an exhibit of products here. "Solar energy will cut your electric bills up to half or more," he added.

Silvers said that historically, the use of solar power was limited only to those living in remote locations with no other choice but to device a solar power generator with a cost equivalent to P100 per watt, or P100,000 per kilowatt, enough to light a small house.

Having an average of a 25-year lifetime, solar panels are being sold mostly in China, Japan, India, Australia and South Korea, which accounted for 3.3 gigawatts of demand in 2011, with Japan and China leading in the Southeast Asian region.

"But that was before the solar panels were in mass production in such a volume where it became part of the energy economy competing with more expensive petroleum and other forms of energy," Silvers pointed out.

Specifically, LED street lights that will brighten dark corners; lights with motion detectors for yards and dangerous alleys and porch lights for individual homes.

Lilac Street in Newhallville will be first in the neighborhood to have new lights installed along its two blocks, thanks to a collaboration among churches that wanted to close the chasm between one poor city neighborhood and its richer neighbors over the Prospect Street hill in East Rock.

'I Will If You Will'
Meanwhile, Garganta also urged youths to join the parallel "I Will If You Will" campaign, which was launched by Earth Hour lead advocates on February 14.

Meant to jumpstart preparations for this year's Earth Hour, the interactive campaign encourages individuals to do cument their personal pledges on YouTube. The pledges include recycling, switching to energy-efficient light bulbs, turning off your mobile charger, and signing up for paperless banking.

The ECY joined the campaign with the statement "the ECY will change its office light bulbs to compact fluorescent lights if you will switch off your lights on March 31, join the 'I Will If You Will' campaign, and share these two with your community."

"This campaign empowers people to share to the world their own personal contribution on how they can willingly do ways to save Mother Earth," Garganta said.

The campaign was created to empower people to "share a personal dare with the world by asking everyone, 'what are you willing to do to save the planet?'"

It aims to connect individuals or groups to a 'promise', while posing a'challenge' to their friends, family, customers or members. The goal is to unite them behind the common goal of creating a positive environmental outcome.

The WWF gives examples like "I will stop using plastic bags if you will pledge to switch off your lights for an hour on March 31, 8:30 pm," but participants have gotten creative with the campaign, which has spread through social media.

IWIYW challenges include a promise from a Guinness World Record holder to play a streamed non-stop 8-hour piano concert if 5,000 people commit to recycling and reusing paper, a grandma's promise to get a tattoo if 10,000 people commit to start recycling, and some firefighters taking their shirts off in exchange for 5,000 people agreeing to leave their cars at home for a week.

Last year, the Philippines was the global leader in Earth Hour participation for the third year in a row, with a record-breaking 1,661 cities and towns in the country joining the one-hour lights switch-off campaign. Earth Hour in 2011 was the biggest yet, with 135 countries and 5251 cities participating. The year 2010 had 126 countries and over 4,000 cities, and 2009 had 88 countries and 4,159 cities.

"We are elated to clinch the top spot for the third year in a row," said Earth Hour National Director Atty. Gia Ibay on the Earth Hour Pilipinas website. "More than the numbers though, Earth Hour espouses the importance of our actions beyond the hour," she said.

Going beyond the hour is the real goal, agreed many eco groups including 350.org, a global grassroots movement to solve the climate crisis. Named for the goal of reducing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere from its current level of 392 parts per million (ppm) to the ideal below 350 ppm, the group released last year a list of actions that will help build "low-carbon, resource-efficient, and socially-inclusive economies."

Bright Galaxies with Black Hole Hearts Caught Bending Light Into Cosmic Lens

The intense gravity from extra-bright galaxies with huge black holes at their cores is bending light to create cosmic magnifying glasses, astronomers say.

Using the Hubble Space Telescope, researchers identified the signatures of this curved and twisted light around three galaxies known as quasars, which shine brightly with light emitted from mass falling into their central black holes.

The discoveries are some of the first examples of quasars causing an effect called gravitational lensing, in which light is warped by the gravity of very massive objects. This effect, predicted by Einstein's general theory of relativity, can magnify the light of distant galaxies that would otherwise be too faint to see.

Quasars are dominated by supermassive black holes in their centers that contain the mass of millions of suns. As matter falls into these black holes, it releases powerful radiation that we can see from across the universe, often outshining the rest of the quasar galaxy.

In the past, the light of distant quasars was detected after it was gravitationally lensed by passing near a massive object in the foreground. But only once before have researchers identified a quasar actually causing the lensing of another object in the background.

"This paper shows three more, and with better data," researcher George Djorgovski of Caltech told SPACE in an email. "As far as I know, there are no other known cases of quasar host galaxies lensing background galaxies."

Djorgovski and his colleagues, led by Frederic Courbin of Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland, compiled a catalogue of 23,000 quasars observed by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which takes measurements called spectra that spread the light of astronomical objects into its constituent wavelengths.

The researchers then narrowed down their list to select quasars with spectra that also indicated another galaxy lay in the background at the same position. The astronomers then took follow-up observations of these targets with the Keck telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, and Hubble, to confirm which ones were actually causing gravitational lensing.

They ended up with three cases, which they report in a paper published recently in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. There are also more candidates that the scientists hope to confirm with future observations.

"Quasars are fairly rare, and lenses are very rare, so you're dealing with two fairly rare populations," said another team member, Daniel Stern of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

The discoveries could help scientists understand more about the relationship between the mass galaxies, and the mass of the central black holes inside them. While astronomers have been able to measure these figures for some nearby galaxies, it's much harder to do for distant galaxies seen when the universe was young.

"Gravitational lensing is great way to measure the mass of the lensing galaxy," Stern told SPACE. "Those Hubble images get you really accurate masses. It lets us probe that black hole-galaxy relation out to earlier in the universe."

Evluma 50W LED Retrofits Included in Avista Commercial Lighting Incentives Program

There are two new ways for Avista customers to save money when installing Evluma LED Retrofits. Evluma 50W LED Clearlights qualify for Avista's 2012 Commercial Lighting Incentives and also qualify for Custom Project Proposals. Only products that are pre-qualified by the Lighting Design Lab (LDL), or Design Lights Consortium (DLC) qualify for Avista rebates.Evluma Clearlights are qualified by the LDL. Avista's Commercial Lighting Incentives program includes multiple retrofit categories from T12 up to 1000W HID. According to the Outside Prescriptive Worksheet, the Evluma exchange is for 250W HID exterior dusk-till-dawn fixtures.

Avista customers can swap out an existing 250 Watt HID bulb for a 50W Evluma Clearlight and receive a $200.00 incentive per unit after filling out the Commercial Lighting Incentive Agreement for the Interior and Exterior Lighting Program. "This is a great opportunity where mounting height and application are appropriate for our 50W Clearlight Beacon," said David Tanonis, VP of Sales and Marketing at Evluma. Rebates are issued against the cumulative cost of materials, labor and disposal of the old bulb. The form can be filled out up to 90 days after the project is complete, but must include , a picture of the old lamp number, sample of fixture or fixture removed and; before and after photos of the project.

Avista customers that want to replace an existing 150W HPS or 175W MV bulb with either the 40W or 50W Clearlight can fill out a Custom Project Form and submit it to their regional Avista Account Executive prior to performing the exchange. An Avista Engineering team reviews the project before install to see if the project qualifies for an incentive. Custom Projects are site specific and the incentive may not exceed 50% of the total project cost. Contact your Avista Account Executive to obtain the correct forms.

"Incentives like the rebates offered by organizations such as Avista, BPA, Tri-State and Efficiency Vermont reinforce the importance of energy efficiency to the future," said David. "Clearights can be used to retrofit traditional dusk-till-dawn fixtures, but can also be used to retrofit Ballast-in-Arm fixtures, which are popular in the Northwest." Avista rebates are re-evaluated every year and are subject to change.

Intematix intends implementing the recent investments to meet the challenges faced by the LED industry. It includes increasing the production of ChromaLit remote phosphor products and phosphor products, facility expansion, and working capital.

The Chief Financial Officer for Intematix, Maurice Carson says that LED technology holds major potential in the lighting industry, which can be backed by Intematix phosphors and remote phosphors serving as chief components. The new investment will allow the company to further expand its capabilities as it caters to the light quality demands existing in the general lighting and display markets.

Despite the increasing efficiency achieved with lighting LEDs, it faces certain limitations with its small form-factors such as color quality and thermal management. Intematix phosphors offers white light similar to conventional sources and ChromaLit remote phosphor systems have been demonstrated to deliver more efficient cooling, thereby contributing to compact light bulb solutions.

CDA seeks loan for LED project

The Capital Development Authority (CDA) plans to acquire a loan for execution of the long-pending Light Emitting Diodes (LED) project to replace the existing streetlights system for energy saving purposes.

Rs 6.5 billion are needed for the implementation of the LED lights project.

The official said the Authority is planning to launch the project by taking a Cash Development Loan (CDL) after consulting the Ministry of Finance.

A firm named Oslo has shown interest in providing loan amounting to Rs 4.9 billion to CDA to launch the project, while the authority would take another loan from the federal government to pay its part of Rs 1.6 billion, the official said.

In a recently held CDA board meeting, a three-member committee headed by Planning Member, has been asked to compile, once again, a detailed report on the project and present it to the board in the upcoming meeting.

The official said CDA is exploring the options to conserve electricity and decrease the huge cost incurred on operating streetlights in the federal capital.

Replacement of the existing conventional lights with LED lights would save 52 percent of the Authoritie’s energy requirements, which will reduce a load of 8.32 MW on the national grid. Earlier, the CDA chairman, engineer Farkhand Iqbal said that the current energy shortage in the country either increasing the energy production or reduce consumption.

CDA is managing around 65,000 conventional streetlights in Islamabad, adding a load of 16MW on the national grid and incurring an annual expense of over Rs 1.2 billion, which is growing every year.

Iqbal said that as per figures, electricity cost has increased by 29 percent over the last three years and the trend is expected to continue.

The chairman has said that the life of proposed LED lights is more than 20 years and the project, if implemented, will reduce by 52 percent the Authority’s energy requirement every year, which will reduce a load of 8.32MW on the national grid and will save about 42,263MW per annum. The electricity savings and savings from repairs and maintenance on existing lighting infrastructure, of first 10 years will be used to repay the investment.

Once upon a marriage

A glimpse inside close friends' marriage stirs in me a desire to tell the world about it, and they agreed, under the condition of anonymity. Maybe their story will mean something to another couple struggling with life, then again, maybe not. See what you think.

He was the first guy she met in college that she didn't try to impress. For one thing, he was all but engaged and, for another, she was painfully aware that her plain features were not enhanced by chlorine-soaked hair and an old sweatshirt, so why waste the effort?

Maybe this unstrained relationship proved the climate for romance to bloom. Or maybe it was the differences between them that first sparked the interest that led to love.

He was an "older" man, all of 23, whose four years in the Air Force had put the finish on a self-reliance which was well-rooted in a somewhat unsupervised childhood.

She was 18 and virginal in both the traditional sense and in her social inexperience, the result of a religious rural home.

He was profane and irreverent, she articulate and impressionable. He smoked and drank the occasional beer. She had never tasted table wine until she was a guest in his parents' home.

He appreciated music but could not hum a tune. Her mastery of the piano enchanted him. She was baffled by any mechanical project more complex than changing a light bulb, and watched, awestruck, as he repaired pocket watches and elderly Studebakers with ease.

His engagement fizzled and the two began to date. She couldn't believe it when the thin young man with James Dean cheekbones and far-away blue eyes told her he was falling in love with her. He was taken aback when she told him she had never been in love and would not say, "I love you, too," until she was sure.

Two weeks later she was sure, and in less than a year, they were married. Neither family really approved. His mother thought the bride too "country" for her son, and her father regarded the groom as unstable.

But they gave their blessing and early one Spring Sunday, a Scottish Presbyterian minister supervised the exchange of plain gold rings.

I wish I could say, "and they lived happy ever after," but this is a true story. In the young, emotions run deep, and their ardor for each other was sometimes matched by their anger with each other as selfishness warred with selflessness. She told me one day that she wept for fear that 50 years would not be long enough to love him, and the next day wondered how she could have tied herself to such an insensitive beast.

The years do funny things to people, and in the process of growing together they may also grow apart. Eventually both became deeply committed to their church and to their responsibility to their children. They shared their delight in classical music, nature, good books, and complement each other's do-it-yourself skills, evident in the old Dutch  Colonial they restored.

But when the children were grown she channeled her time and energy into public service. Always outgoing and trusting, she involved herself with people and their needs. And he was torn between pride and possessiveness.

Energy Grants Boost Research, from Fuels to Batteries

These ideas are a few of the dozens being funded by the Obama administration as part of a little-known program that encourages "high risk, high value" energy innovation that swings for the fences.

They were spotlighted in a recent, gee-whiz showcase, complete with high-powered lasers and microscopic transmitters, hosted near Washington, D.C., by the Department of Energy's ARPA-E (Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy). The program is modeled after the Defense Department's larger, decades-old DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), which says it invented the Internet.

Yet the third annual Energy Innovation Summit came amid debate about the federal government's role in funding clean technology. Critics, including many Republicans, cite the DOE's half-billion-dollar loan guarantee to bankrupt solar manufacturer Solyndra and its $10 million L Prize last August to Philips Lighting for developing an "affordable," efficient, made-in-America LED light bulb -- that costs $50.

"The government does not have a good track record of funding research for commercial development," says David Kreutzer, an energy economist at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. He says it should fund only basic research and leave more commercial ideas to venture capitalists. If something is promising enough, such as advanced batteries, he says, the marketplace will take it.

Not necessarily so, ARPA-E's supporters say. Energy Secretary Steven Chu says the program, established by a bipartisan 2007 law, gives small, two- to three-year grants so researchers can get over the development hump and attract private funding.

ARPA-E, which received $400 million in Recovery Act funds and $275 million in fiscal 2012, acts as a sort of matchmaker by introducing scientists to investors and manufacturers. It's separate from the loan guarantee program that funded Solyndra.

Citing the rise in gasoline prices, Chu says innovation is essential for weaning the USA off its dependence on fossil fuels. He says it's also vital for mitigating climate change.

"We're looking at America's sweet spot," Chu told reporters, citing the nation's strengths in innovation and manufacturing. He touted ARPA-E's innovations:

Lithium batteries. California-based Envia Systems, which received a $4 million grant in March 2010, announced last month that its lithium-ion battery has broken the world Relevant Products/Services's record for energy density at 400 watt-hours per kilogram -- more than double today's batteries.

Tobacco fuel. The DOE's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory received in January a $4.9 million, three-year grant to re-engineer tobacco plants so they use energy from sunlight to produce fuel molecules in their leaves, which are then crushed so the fuel can be extracted.

"Just imagine, if they're successful, you'd have Big Oil and Big Tobacco coming together to save the world," ARPA-E's director Arun Majumdar quipped at the summit.

Nighttime eelpout frenzy saves slow day of fishing

The fishing, to be blunt, hadn't been very good when Peter Howard and I decided to shift gears and try something different that gray afternoon during a recent ice fishing and snowmobiling excursion to the Northwest Angle on Lake of the Woods.

It was Feb. 29, and we had spent most of the afternoon fishing "the mud" in 27 feet of water off the base of a rock reef south of Oak Island. We'd marked plenty of fish, but they weren't much interested in biting, and we had only a 15-inch walleye, a small sauger and a couple of missed opportunities to show for our efforts.

Without getting too specific, I'd learned of a spot several years ago where eelpout stage to spawn. These freshwater cod, widely known as the "ish of fish," spawn from late January to mid-March depending on the body of water and are the only species in Minnesota to spawn under the ice.

Spawning eelpout also go on a feeding rampage at dark, and so our timing was perfect.

The "pout hole," as we dubbed the spot, is located in a current area between two islands, and the ice conditions were treacherous. Where the rest of the lake had 3 feet of ice, the pout hole had 18 inches, and there was open water less than 40 yards from where we set up the portable shelter.

This was my first trip to the pout hole, so I didn't know what to expect. It also was a first for Howard, who was making his inaugural ice fishing trip to the Northwest Angle.

He'd never caught an eelpout, but that soon would change.

Daylight was fading when we dropped heavy jigging spoons tipped with minnow heads into 14 feet of water and began pounding the bottom.

We hadn't been fishing more than a few minutes when something glommed on to the end of my line. It felt like a snag, but I knew it wasn't, so I set the hook.

Several years ago, I did a story on two fishermen from the Bemidji area who targeted eelpout during the late-winter spawning frenzy. They had a tradition where every time they hooked into an eelpout, they had to holler "Pout!"

We might have struggled to catch walleyes and saugers by day, but the eelpout were in a fighting mood by night. If anyone had been there to listen, they would have heard the cries of "Pout!" resonating through the darkness.

Doubles and laughs were common as the hefty fish peeled line off our reels.

The frenzy was in full swing when I discovered the LED lights I'd installed in my portable before the trip didn't work, even though they'd worked fine when I tested them the previous day. Trying to land and unhook slimy, writhing eelpout in pitch darkness eventually became too much, so I made a quick trip back to the cabin to round up some light.

I also wanted to see what was causing large bubbles to float to the top of the holes every few seconds, producing loud "blooping" sounds. We had plenty of ice below us, but I still found the bubbles unsettling.

One-Shot Wonder

Fred Feddersen makes a rifle barrels, and now he’s on a mission to do something that's never been done before: create a barrel for commercial-grade weapon that can shoot successive bullets through the same hole, using an inexpensive semiautomatic rifle, not a bolt-action Olympic race gun.

To do this, Feddersen first had to accomplish several equally challenging feats of metalworking. He developed new ideas in gun drill design to achieve greater straightness. He invented and patented a new whip-guide stabilizer for gun drills and reamers. He push-reams small-diameter holes with his proprietary tool design, capable of 0.0001-in. accuracy. He uses proprietary carbide formulations for his rifling buttons. And, he is using the world's most advanced tube hone from Sunnen Products to impart accuracy-enhancing bore geometry and diameter , with a fine finish of 3-8 microinch Ra that sheds fouling and copper bullet-jacket residue. The hone's servo-spindle also serves as a quality check on reaming, with its extreme sensitivity to spindle load detecting – and correcting – tight and loose spots that escape most air gages, Feddersen says.

Feddersen has ample evidence of his success in a binder full of targets with near single-hole, five-shot groups fired from 50 yards using a semiautomatic Ruger .22 magnum rifle equipped with his barrels. Shooters familiar with this rifle and cartridge "know" this accuracy is not normal, but Feddersen takes barrel making beyond what's known After a decade of development, he is also experiencing excellent uptake from firearm OEMs. More important, his company's capabilities have earned it a role as supplier of choice for barrels used on.50-caliber BMG and .338 Lapua magnum versions of U.S. military sniper rifles.

Fred Feddersen is a design engineer and inventor with boundless curiosity and drive who does not accept current limits on any technology, whether it is welding or bottle blowmolding. His varied interests and career moves have led him to learn Morse code, pass the FCC exam, earn seven welding certifications, and become a CNC programmer and CAD/CAM engineer. Some of his most widely used inventions and patents were developed for blowmolding PET bottles. After notable success in that industry, he sensed a market opportunity about 10 years ago to make ultra-accurate rifle barrels on a volume basis for military and commercial use.

After studying the art and science of custom barrel making, closely examining the industry's best barrels and acquiring high-quality machine tools, Feddersen established RFour Inc. During the first years, he spent much of his time and effort pushing past the known limits of barrel manufacturing technology to achieve his goal, starting with improvements in gun drilling and reaming. He stressed that what he's learned about barrels applies to similar tube-type products that require very small holes (down to 2 mm) to be reamed or honed. These include stents or water-jet cutting nozzles. The latter must be free of internal surface micro cracks, so it can be honed down to base metal in a process similar to what is used for high-pressure diesel fuel rails.

Students at Whitcomb Continuation High School get glimpse

Every professional needs their tools and at Whitcomb Continuation High School's Career Day, a variety of guest speakers demonstrated the tools of their trade on Feb. 28.

For Owen's Bistro executive chef James Kelly, his chef's knife is his most important tool.

"I use this for almost everything," Kelly said. "I like this and a serrated knife."

The self-taught chef and owner of the Chino restaurant spoke to the students about his journey in the food industry, which began when he was a kid growing up around his grandparents' Italian restaurant in Chicago. The family moved to Covina when Kelly was in fifth grade and he cut his teeth as a busboy at the Velvet Turtle in Covina.

"I actually applied as a waiter but they only gave me a job as a busboy," Kelly said. "I thought, OK well I'll just go in there and show them I can work hard and they'll raise me up, and that's what I did."

At 21, the budding chef teamed up with his sister to open a sandwich shop in Chino. For 14 years the siblings worked 12-hour days making soups, salads and sandwiches by hand.

"I cut every slice of meat, I had a giant muscled shoulder from doing all the slicing," Kelly said. "As we got busier I started hiring some people but it was a struggle for a while."

Working hard was key to his success, he emphasized. Without his early efforts and sacrifices, Kelly said he never could have built Brown Bag It Cafe up to be the king of lunchtime in Chino, which led to him being invited to open a fine dining restaurant in downtown Chino.

The chef's message of hard work was reinforced as he told the students about the staff he hires and mentors. "I really enjoy training people that are dedicated, that are hardworking.

"One of my most important cooks in my kitchen right now, he didn't go to culinary school," Kelly continued. "What he did was he rode his bike and stopped by the restaurant every day and he would ask my wife, `So you need any help today?' and she'd say no, and he'd come back the next day.

"After a week of this she broke down and I met him. He was nice and respectful, so I said, `OK, I'll try you out for a couple of days, washing dishes and cutting potatoes.'

"He's been with us ever since."

In a nearby classroom, Glendora Police Department officer Marty Barrett impressed the teenagers with a description of the former obstacle course in the physical agility portion of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's SWAT team qualifier.

"It was designed by a doctor to completely oxygen-deprive your body," Barrett explained. "You ran 100 yards, climbed a 70-foot brick wall, climbed down a manhole into the ground, crawled through an 8-foot tube, came up through a manhole, crossed monkey bars, dragged a 200-pound dummy 15 feet, climbed through the upper window and back down a lower window on a wall, climbed a 10-foot chain link fence, ran a quarter mile, redid the whole obstacle course again, ran another quarter mile and, at the end, climbed on top of a 5-foot wall and balanced on the top of the wall across 50 feet.

Mike Isabella Seizing Momentum to Open Bandolero

Nine months after opening his first restaurant, Graffiato, Chef Mike Isabella is forging ahead with his Georgetown restaurant, Bandolero. This, his second restaurant, will fill the space at 3241 M St. vacated by Hook after a fire in summer 2011.

In a recent interview with Georgetown Patch, Isabella said about the decision to create his second restaurant so soon after his first, "The momentum keeps me going. ... I need to be kind of put in situations where I'm constantly busy and stressed out." Opening two restaurants in high-traffic neighborhoods  within a year of one another fits that need.

While Graffiato, the Penn Quarter home of his first venture, caters to Italian flavors, Bandolero will be entirely Mexican-inspired. Both honor a commitment to source locally as many ingredients as possible.

The former Top Chef star said of his future Georgetown spot when he saw it years before it was his own, "I thought this was one of the most prime spots in D.C. Period."

Isabella said he feels "lucky" to have happened upon the opportunity to take over the space after the fire. He was walking down M Street after setting up an appointment at Jinx Proof to work on his latest tattoo — he aims to have a tattoo inspired by each of his restaurants — when he happened upon Jonathan Umbel. Suddenly having a Georgetown space of his own became a reality.

"I have a couple of concepts in my pocket that I’ve been waiting to roll out," he said. "This one came a little sooner than I planned."

Isabella cannot seem to stand still as he describes how the space, currently very much under construction, will soon transform into the concept he has envisioned.

One minute he is hurrying down a flight of stairs to what he plans to have as an informal lounge area for those waiting for a table. The next he is back up the stairs and already in the kitchen talking about removing refrigerators, replacing skylights and installing new ranges.

His enthusiasm continues to build as he describes his design scheme, his concept for the space.

"When you go around the city like Rosa , Oyamel, you go to New York: everything is colorful," he said.
That's not for him. "I really wanted to go old world. I wanted to go day of the dead. [When] you think day of the dead, you think cemetery."

He plans to have cemetery gates suspended from the ceiling, black decor, low-lighting, candles, mismatched light fixtures and more.

But he's not entirely disguising the historic Georgetown building. In the process of renovation, he discovered a brick wall with the logo of a hardware store that once stood next to his soon-to-be restaurant.

When asked if he'd be leaving the wall and its ad exposed, he said definitively, "Ohhh yeah."

"I wanted to give it a little Graffiato feel, with the old brick walls with the paint on them" to maintain some consistency, he explained.

Other similarities between Bandolero and Graffiato? Prosecco on tap and hand-made tables. Isabella's father-in-law will make several of the tables at Bandoloero just as he did in Penn Quarter.

"He does it for a hobby," the chef said. "I think he’ll probably build them for most of my restaurants."

He hopes to have as many as 180 seats in the more than 5,000 square-foot space. Guests can look forward to a wall of tequila lighting the back of the bar with a "golden" tint. The drink menu will include at least 10 different margaritas, many tequila-based drinks and a variety of other cocktails.

As for hours, Isabella brags, "It’ll never shut down. You can get tacos, margaritas all day long."

He hopes to cater to tourists, college students, neighbors and industry people alike.

Having scoped out the local dining options, Isabella knew almost immediately that Mexican-inspired was the way to go for his Georgetown venture.

Bandolero does not have an estimated opening date or even month, but Georgetowners with a penchant for Mexican can hope that spring 2012, really means spring 2012.

Oak soaked in Greyton

It was Fugard's writings that first enticed me to experience that most pleasant of Karoo outings: walking through a small village's deserted streets in the "late frost-sharp hour", looking to the trees for "companionship".

"The sense of them alive and awake, their huge black presences magnified still further by faint starlight, is quite awesome."

So, it was reminiscing of the acacia, ash and pepper-treed streets of my previous hometown (Aberdeen) in the Karoo that I set off with my girlfriend down the oak avenues of Greyton, late on a Friday night.

Hand in hand, we wandered the dirt tracks, accompanied by soft green verges, post and rail fences and the tinkling of the stream on our right. With trails of steam surrounding his head, a friendly horse whinnied a greeting to us as we passed. But it was the sky and its firmament of stars, seen through the network of naked oak-tree branches, that got most of our attention. Even leafless, these ponderous old giants evoke a stout vitality and a brooding sense of wisdom.

It seems that oaks were planted in Greyton as early as 1795 by Martin Theunissen, owner of the farm Weltevrede. Apparently he received the saplings from the neighbouring mission village of Genadendal, who in turn received them from the Castle in Cape Town to decorate their "werf". With oak trees planted along the road all the way up to his front door, it is thought that Theunissen probably copied the example set by the Cloetes of Groot Constantia.

The next morning, we woke with a bang. Well, technically we were already awake, but probably not fully compos mentis when I decided to light the gas fire to ward off the chill. The plan was to thaw out in front of the hearth with a cup of coffee before unleashing ourselves on Greyton's extensive and eclectic range of shops and eateries.

I'd followed the instructions carefully, but after twiddling the relevant knobs, nothing happened. I was giving the lighting procedure a third try, when "Whum!", the fire exploded into life with the force of a napalm bomb and my heart lodged firmly in my throat. I made a mental note to have one less cappuccino on our high-street excursion.

One of the first shops we visited was A Little Bizarre - trinkets and treasures it advertised. We came away with some exotic eastern stockings, some beautiful costume jewellery and armloads of incense. Next was The Inside Story, with antiques, collectables, décor items and artworks. We got talking to the owner, Carol Gibbs, veteran shopkeeper, artist and raconteur, and were fascinated by her stories of her recent travels to the East. She said she'd decided one day: "I'm not getting any younger, I'm going to blow my pension and travel India." And, judging from the glint in her eye and her effervescent demeanor, she made the right decision.

Paul Leger's Snob's Guide to Budget Getaways talks of the Oak and Vigne restaurant as "the flavour of the day amongst the Greyton trendset". He may be right, but I think of it as a charming place to sit under the oaks and watch the passing parade on a summer's day; or to lunch on fine food in front of the fire inside during winter.

Choosing the latter, we snuggled up near the fire and drank cappuccinos with whisky, a perfect way to unwind after a morning of browsing and shopping in this one-of-a-kind Overberg village.

Some think Greyton is too chichi for a country village, that it's lost its authenticity. I call it the very best of both worlds.

Hot properties on sale worldwide

Cunana is situated on the Mornington Peninsular, which is called the Hamptons of the Southern hemisphere because of its reputation as the ultimate holiday enclave for moneyed mischief. It scores top points for beautiful weather, sheltered location, world-renowned boutique wineries with great restaurants, gourmet shops, championship golf courses, stunning walking trails over undulating hills, surf beaches and equestrian facilities.

On the market in excess of AUD 120 million; Cunana was designed by award-winning architect Alfred de Bruyne of SJB Architects; with SJB Interiors complementing the interiors. It is clear that the discerning eye of a perfectionist team that lays great store in minute details, was hard at work in the design and construction department.

The property sleeps 14 people, including a master-suite with a dressing room and two self-contained apartments. Five kitchens and two large terraces offer endless opportunities for entertainment. An indoor pool, gym, a games room complete with arcade machines and a private cinema keep even the most energetic guests engaged.

Klarenbeek is a classic 19th century Dutch Manor house, surrounded by 2.5 hectares of landscaped gardens. Built in 1840 by a famous waterways construction architect as his private residence, it was recently renovated into a comfortable and stylish home that retains many of its original features and stylised details.

On the ground floor, a lofty entrance hall opens to the library-an intimate, comfortable room with a fireplace. A bright eat-in kitchen leads to the cold pantry, which in turn leads to the larder and of course, the exceptional wine cellar.

The family dining room, which has a fireplace, is adjacent to the formal dining room, which is ideal for entertaining. The drawing room is situated in the extension on the ground floor: it is an elegant and bright room brimming with natural light, and features a historical fireplace with benches on either side and antique engravings on the wooden partitions.

Also on offer, a cosy wood-paneled family room with a fireplace. Original wooden floors and stained glass windows depicting historical scenes blend cleverly with antique and contemporary furnishings to lend both warmth and elegance to an extraordinary setting.

A once in a lifetime opportunity to acquire the freehold of one of the last grand residences to be built on this scale in Central London. Located between Kensington Palace and Holland Park, this wonderful mansion enjoys a grand outlook over its own private walled one-acre garden and includes a detached staff cottage, extensive parking and even space for a lavish tennis court.

The mansion was built in 1915 by the celebrated pre-war architect Edward P. Warren (1856-1937) who was famous for designing many of the most prestigious college buildings at both Oxford and Cambridge. The grounds are entered by driving through the main gates past the guardhouse, and up a carriage driveway.

The planning permission allows for a total of 3,000 square metres of built-up area including a main house with eight guest bedroom suites and two staff bedrooms. There are three bedrooms in the separate staff cottage, a tennis court, and a garden pavilion.

The proposed entertainment areas include several living rooms as well as a spa, a 25-metre swimming pool, a bar, gym, sauna, steam room, cinema, squash courts, wine cellar, wine tasting room and much more. There is no property in central London that can offer the same scale of luxury and facilities. Work has yet to begin on this property so the new owner can personally design the interiors to be as whimsical or functional as desired.

WINTER 'CAMPING' adventure in the shadow of Mount Katahdin

Snow-covered Mount Katahdin is hard to ignore, right there across Millinocket Lake from our perch in the River Driver’s Pub. There’s no prettier dining spot in Maine.

The restaurant is at Twin Pine Camps, part of Matt and Wendy Polstein’s New England Outdoor Center, a North Woods destination offering a range of accommodations and great food. Combining amazing outdoor adventures in all seasons with fine dining and luxurious accommodations, Matt and Wendy have created the type of facility you would more commonly associate with Maine’s thriving coastal tourism industry.

The only difference is that they have created their dream destination 10 miles west of Millinocket — the perfect location if you enjoy the outdoors as much as we do.

I used to think Matt Polstein was crazy — trying to create a world-class destination on the edge of Maine’s 10-million acre northern forest. But he and Wendy have done it.
I’ve visited great lodges in Montana, Alaska and Quebec on fishing adventures  — and Twin Pines ranks right up there with the best — at a fraction of the cost.

Sitting one morning in one of the six new environmentally-friendly cabins scattered along the shore of Millinocket Lake, I am reminded of a presentation by a national environmental group a few years ago, reporting that tourists seek amenity-filled accommodations on the edge of the wilderness where they can recreate each day before returning to their luxurious cabins and a fine dinner. Bingo. That’s the very definition of Twin Pines.

We arrived in the early afternoon in time to snowshoe from our cabin to Hammond Ridge, following the tracks of two coyotes on the upper trail, enjoying stunning views of Millinocket Lake and Mount Katahdin, and getting two hours of solid exercise.

We needed that in preparation for a wonderful dinner. River Drivers used to be east of Millinocket, and moved just last September to this new location where it continues to be the best restaurant in the region. I’ve eaten at River Driver’s Pub quite a few times over the years, so this assessment is not based only on this recent visit.

Consistently good food, well-prepared and creative, at reasonable prices  — that was how I rated the restaurant in its old location. In its new location at Twin Pines, with two-story windows offering jaw-dropping views of Mount Katahdin, the restaurant now gets all the stars I can award.

A creature of habit, I ordered the Haddock Roulade for our first dinner, my favorite entrée at the old location. It is soooo good, with fresh haddock with Maine crab stuffing and covered in a lobster cream sauce.

For our second dinner, I found a new favorite, the Pork Osso Bucco, cut-with-a-fork, falling-off-the-bone pork on top of creamy mashed potatoes covered in pan jus. Fantastic!

On both nights, Lin and I enjoyed the unique River Driver Salad with two dressings and warm mushrooms.  The first night we shared a crab cake, continuing our search for the best in Maine, and this presentation is near the top — mostly fresh crabmeat in the cake, with a very tasty roasted tomato pesto aioli. It’s good to know they can get fresh seafood way up here.