Prevent Car Theft With Glass Etching

Phoenix, Arizona, achieves #4 in the list of top 10 cities with the highest vehicle theft! (2004 National Insurance Crime Bureau [NICB])

In 2002, Arizona had the highest car theft rate in the United States, with the vast majority occurring in Maricopa and Pima Counties. According to the Arizona Automobile Theft Authority (AATA), ?a vehicle theft occurs every nine minutes and 16 seconds.? This causes an estimated economic loss of $3.7M to residents of Arizona in 2002 alone!

Don?t be another statistic!

Help to deter theft by etching your auto glass with traceable numbers. This procedure is highly recommended by the NICB, police departments and insurance companies for effectiveness. Although vehicle manufacturers mark some parts, it's not enough. By permanently installing visible VIN and serial numbers into your vehicle's glass, you can greatly reduce auto theft and aid in recovery.

You can visit your local auto dealership or window tinting/glass repair facility; or you can do it yourself with an etching kit found on many different websites. In addition to glass etching, the NICB also recommends other popular visible or audible devices such as audible alarms, steering-column collars and locks, wheel locks, theft-deterrent decals and ID markers on the car.

Auto glass etching entails chemically marking the automobile with its own unique vehicle identification number (VIN) on all windows, including sunroofs and T?-Tops. The chemical process of etching involves using a mild acid that reacts only to the glass. Etching all the glass windows makes the vehicles less wanted by car thieves. The actual etching is small and does not mark or deface the window, but is one of the first details most car thieves see before attempting to steal a vehicle.

The recommended areas to be etched include the following:

• Front Windshield - drivers side in lower corner by factory VIN number.
• Side Windows - lower corner, near door lock or handle.
• Rear Window - driver?s side in lower corner or towards the middle, lower edge.

These are the following steps for the glass etching kit for those handy, do-it-yourself types:

1. Clean area to be etched with glass cleaner - Remove the blue stencils from the white backing paper and apply to the outside of window glass in the desired locations. With fingertips, gently "pat" the stencil to ensure that it is in full contact with glass, paying specific attention to the area where the VIN number has been cut into the stencil.
2. Apply a film of etch cream - brush both left and right completely covering all characters.
3. After etching cream has been on for 5 to 7 minutes: Carefully remove and discard all stencils into a plastic bag or container. Spray etched area with plain water or glass cleaner and wipe dry with paper towel. Repeat process for all windows.
4. Warning decals - Apply to inside of windows in conspicuous locations. Suggested location: near handles on front doors.
5. Complete the Insurance "Proof of Etch" certificate.

However, it is recommended to have this done by a licensed professional as this process requires a very steady hand and must be done under optimum conditions.For example; do not etch glass in direct sunlight on very hot days, when the temperature is below 45 degrees Fahrenheit, or in very windy or wet conditions.

SunTec Auto Glass is a family-owned business in Arizona specializing in Phoenix windshield replacement, windshield repair, window tinting and glass etching. Contact us to handle those chips and breaks in your line of vision at 480-QUALITY or http://www.SunTecAutoGlass.com

How To Start With Stretching Exercise

In our modern society it may be difficult for you to find time for exercise. This is such a shame because stretching has so many great benefits. It gives you energy, it removes health problems, it assists you reduce unneeded fat, and it degrades stress. The only thing to do this is looking for a way to put exercise in your daily procedure without you having to completely rearrange your schedule to match it. You could go on to do this with just doing some basic exercises within your day or find small break to match it. By adding stretching into your procedure of every day, you can get a lot of the benefits of exercise. Stretching exercise for only ten minutes a day may not assist you lose weight, but it will reduce stress, reduce back pain and body aching, help reduce health problems, help bettering your mood, and provide you with more energy.

The best time to begin your stretching is first thing in the morning. If it is possible to arise ten minutes earlier than normal just to do stretching you will reap more benefits. Pick a spot in your home where you can do the stretching. If you have a spot close to your bed that will work, this will make it easy to scuttle out of bed and start. Go up with a few stretching routine to do everyday that includes stretching your arms, legs, back, and neck. By taking this time in the morning to do some stretching, you will find out that you get more energy in the morning and are able to get started faster and with a more positive mind-set on the day.

No matter what you do, it is significant that you try to stop once an hour for a couple of minutes to stretch out your body. You may be able to go on with some stretches that you can even do from a sitting position if you spend much of your time in lectures or meetings. When you first go on with some exercises to do, make sure that you aren't causing any pain to your body. If you feel ache, you are either stretching too far or are doing it incorrectly. You should stretch yourself just far enough to feel a little pulling on your muscles. In the course of the time you will find it easier to stretch a little farther as your body will become more flexible. Just keep in mind that stretching is something that will give you a lot of benefits for your body and mind. Since it takes only a little time to do, you needn't feel guilty for spending this time to yourself.

Diane Winter share information that gives you a lot of tips and ideas on how to get started with stretching. Check out her website to learn more about the benefits of stretching exercise

The Best Stretching Exercises For Your Body

With beginning daily stretching exercises you can have a lot of wonderful benefits for your body. Typically by setting aside about ten minutes a day you can get in enough stretching to begin impacting your body in a favorable way. The matter that a lot of people have a hard time with is figuring out which stretching exercises are most beneficial for their body and for the effects they want. Fortunately, doing any type of stretching will give you positive results. But if you want to go on with a effective stretching exercise practice, you might ask for some assistance.

There are several wonderful places that you can go to that will serve you design a good stretching routine totally free. The best place to begin is on the web. At that place you'll find further information about stretching exercises than you'll ever need. You can find out what you need quickly and easily. As you begin looking online search for a number of different websites. That way you'll get the positions of several people and get additional variety in the cases of stretching exercises. Try out each stretching exercise at least once before completing a stretching routine. You might find out that your body has difficulty with certain stretches or that you do not feel the stretch the way you are supposed to. Many times you would get fine stretching tips on these websites too, as if how long to hold each position and how many repetitions to do.

As well consider looking at books that center on stretching. Some books will feature pages of different stretching exercises to try with good illustrations and steps that are easy to realize. Make sure that you take a book that displays stretches for a lot of various parts of the body, instead a book that only centers on upper legs or body. The most giving advantage to having a book of stretching exercises is that if you forget how to do a stretch or if you desire to vary your routine, you can forever look back at the book rather than taking time searching for the necessary information.

So have in mind to check out a number of sources when searching for stretching exercises and get a book that features pictures and easy to understand steps. If you find out the stretches on the web, add it to your favorites where you've found out the information, so that you can go back to it whenever you need to. Also, look up safety rules on stretching so that you don't overstretch and hurt yourself.

Diane Winter writes articles that gives you a lot of tips and information about great stretching exercises for your body. If you want learn more about the benefits try visiting her website about fitness and exercise to get a healthy body.

Using web fetching to create novel websites

Collecting information from a website and presenting it to your visitors in a different, more useful/interesting format can be a valuable service. It can help attract new visitors and get existing visitors coming back for more.

The best way to collect data from a website is to use their web service if they provide one. Google, Yahoo, MSN, amazon, ebay, technorati and numerous others all offer web services. These are well documented interfaces through which you can easily collect data. The problems come when you want to collect data from a site that doesn't provide a web service.

If a site doesn't offer a web service or some other well structured version of their data then the only option remaining is web scraping. This can be messy, often requires extensive testing and debugging, and will break if ever the target website changes its design. With all these problems it should only ever be a last resort.

The reason it is so difficult is that you are collecting the data you need from the html used to display the website to each visitor. Each site is unique. Each web scraper is also unique.

If the site we are interested in doesn't offer a web service, no rss feed and we can't get the data we need from anywhere else then how do we go about building a web scraper?

The process can be broken down into three parts: get the html of the page, extract the data we need, and then do something with that data.

Depending on how the site you are fetching information from is set up fetching the html could be really very easy or exceedingly complicated. At its simplest all you will need to do is open up a file just as you would a file located on your local server. If you don't need to log in to view the data you want on the site then it may well be this easy. For your sake I hope it is this simple.

If you need to log in to the site to access the data you need then things can get complicated . . . really complicated. I'm currently trying to collect/develop scripts to fetch the contact lists from webmail services such as hotmail. Here the obstacles you must face include cookies and variables in the URL. These problems can be overcome but you'll need plenty of time.

Once you have the html for the page you need to clean it up so that you have just the data you need with no extra text. The best way to do this is with regular expressions. By defining patterns for the data you want you can cut out the chaff and just keep what you need. Unless you are extremely comfortable with regular expressions you may find it easier to use several simpler patterns one after each other. Your script may take a little longer to run but it will be far easier to develop.

Finally you want to do something with the data you gather. This may be as simple as storing it in a text file or displaying it immediately to a visitor to your site. You may also decide to do some more complex tasks with the data. The important thing is that once you have the data you have the choice of what to do with it.

Web scraping isn't easy but the benefits can be considerable. If a web service is available though save yourself some time and use that instead.

TorrentialWebDev focuses on developing the tools to build and promote Web Applications

Stretching and Flexibility: How Stretching Improves Quality Of Life

It is common knowledge that stretching is important for maintaining and improving flexibility and proper flexibility helps keep muscles functioning and feeling well. Unfortunately, while most people know flexibility is important, few people take the time to adequately stretch their muscles.

As a result, I wrote this article to explain why stretching is so important and how it will improve your quality of life. There are also some basic stretching recommendations to get you started. My hope is this information will encourage you to make stretching part of your everyday routine.

Maintaining sufficient flexibility is important for preventing muscle stiffness, tightness, pain, and injuries. When muscles are not stretched on a regular basis, they will become tighter, shorter, and ultimately decrease in range of motion. When muscles are kept in a shortened position for an extended period of time, they require stretching to return to their original length.

For example, it is common for people sit for many hours every day and the hip flexors are kept in a shortened position during this time. If these muscles are not stretched on occasion, they will stay in a partially shortened position. If this happens over a long period of time, you will actually lose parts of your muscle, called sarcomeres, which are responsible for the contraction of the muscle. When this occurs, the muscle will maintain a shortened position and intensive stretching will be required to regain the lost sarcomeres and return the muscle to it?s original resting length.

This may not sound too bad, but when a muscle is kept in a shortened position, it has drastic effects on the body. The most common symptoms are increased soreness, stiffness, and pain. Short muscles are not as effective as optimal length muscles and they often develop knots and become overworked. When a muscle is chronically tight or overworked, you can experience pain any time the muscle contracts. Eventually, this may become so bad that the muscles stays contracted and you will feel almost constant pain.

To make matters worse, your body will try to compensate for the overworked muscle activating other muscles to do the work that the fatigued muscle is unable to perform. This leads to additional overuse of the muscles trying to help out. Going back to the sitting example, when hip flexors become too tight, they will cause the low back muscles to become overworked. Put simply, sitting for many hours without stretching is one of the main causes of lower back pain.

This is just one common example of how tight muscles cause everyday pain, but there are many others. The good news is that many instances of muscle and joint pain can be improved, completely relieved, or avoided altogether by a good stretching routine. Unfortunately most people do not realize the importance of stretching until they already develop significant muscle problems and then it becomes much more difficult to correct the problem.

There are many different types of stretching (dynamic, ballistic, PNF, etc.), but this article will only discuss static stretching. Static stretching is the most commonly used form of stretching and is considered very safe and effective for increasing flexibility. You are probably familiar with this type of stretching, which involves holding a particular stretch for a certain amount of time with minimal movement and no bouncing.

When performing static stretches, you should feel a moderate stretch, but you should never push the stretch to the point of pain. Overstretching a muscle can result in injury instead of improvement. Stretches are generally held between 15 and 30 seconds and performed 1 to 3 times. Usually the second and third times stretching a muscle will result in a larger stretch (without additional discomfort) than the first stretch.

Of course tighter muscles that need to be lengthened need to be stretched more than healthy muscles that just need to retain their normal length. Healthy muscles probably only need to be stretched once per day, while tight muscles should be stretched at least 2 or 3 times per day.

If you exercise, the most important time to perform static stretching is after your workout. Exercising is incredibly good for you, but it can cause muscles to become very tight and if they are not stretched they will remain in a shortened position. This will likely cause unnecessary stiffness, soreness, delays in recovery, decreased flexibility, or even muscle imbalances.

Stretching after exercise is also beneficial, because your muscles will still be warmed up. This allows the muscle to be more pliable and you will be able to stretch further without discomfort. It is a good idea to do something to warm up your muscles before any stretching and you should avoid stretching a cold (not warmed up) muscle whenever possible. You do not have to do activity before stretching; even a hot bath or shower can significantly improve the quality of your stretches and decrease the chances of overstretching or injury.

I am not going to recommend specific stretches, because there are too many different options and everyone responds differently to various stretches. There are however some general rules to follow. Most importantly, if a stretch does not feel comfortable or you are not feeling a decent stretch, find a different stretch. It is also a good idea to make minor changes in your body position at the beginning of the stretch to find the position that causes the best stretch. This is the position you should maintain during the duration of the stretch.

You are probably familiar with the expression "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" and this statement is certainly true when it comes to stretching. Incorporating stretching into your daily routine will help improve your current muscle and joint problems, as well as stop future problems before they start. Start today and learn first hand how much stretching can improve your quality of life.

Ross Harrison, CSCS, NSCA-CPT is a certified personal trainer, strength and conditioning specialist, and nutritional consultant who teaches people how to lose weight, get in shape, and improve their quality of life with exercise and nutrition. For more information or to sign up for his free health and fitness newsletter, visit http://precisionhealth-fitness.com.

Etched Glass: Etching Beauty

Etched glass is a wonderful gift to give those that you love. The method of actually etching the glass can be done by you or by a professional. No matter who does it, by digging into the first layer of the glass, a shine and detail can be added to the glass, transforming it from a simple gift into something truly beautiful. But, why should you add etched glass to your list of things to purchase and give? There are actually several ways that this type of method can dress up your gifts and create a very unique and special look.

Etching can be done on many types of glass and other materials. For example, if you want to dress up the look of a mirror, you can etch the glass in a pattern. In a circle framed mirror, etch an intertwining vine long the edge of the frame, leaving the center completely open for viewing. It adds texture and depth to the look so that you get a more interesting piece to hand on your wall.

Etched glass can also be an ideal way to add element to your framed pictures. You can use etching to dedicate a picture or message. Or, you can use etching as a way to communicate with others the date and time of what happens in the photo. You can etch a poem onto the glass that is only visible if you really look for it. These things can help to transform an average piece of glass and an average frame into a meaningful, beautiful sentiment to the memory being depicted.

You can find professionals that sell ready made etched glass products. You can also find a number of different products on the market to purchase to help you to create your own etching. Whatever you do, find a way to create a beautiful image with the help of etching. You will adore all that it can provide to you.

Chad Baker has worked for many years as a photographer and has written amazing articles on picture frames, poster frames, photo gifts and many other useful topics related to photos and how to make them look more beautiful.

You can read more of Chad's articles about picture frames at http://www.pictureframesplanet.com

Digital Camera LED Laser Etching Trick

It’s a common scene no matter where you go, everyone is taking pictures with their digital cameras. Part of the intrigue of digital photography is the instant feedback; after all, with a digital camera you can check and see if you need to re-take the photo. You might even feel a little creative and start changing some of your cameras setting to reflect your inner artist. That’s what makes digital camera so much fun; you can experiment and witness the results instantly.

Make sure and visit our site using the link at the bottom of the article. You'll be able to see photo examples!

Our digital camera LED Laser Etching Trick is super EASY to do and will create some truly creative photos. We’ve used it many times and each time people look at the photos with a bewildered look trying to figure out how the photo was created.

To the rational mind this type of photo tends to violate our sense of order. Cameras record objects, whether they are moving or stationary. Once we press the shutter our brains are fully prepared to see whatever we took the picture of, frozen in time. What our brains are NOT prepared for is to see a photo where the camera has frozen AND recorded the “track” of an object, which in this case is a simple LED light.

I have even had experienced digital camera owners look at an LED Laser Etching Trick and ask, “So you didn’t use video to do this?” When it comes to digital photos most people think in a linear manner and the LED Laser Etching Trick is cool because it forces our brains to think dimensionally.

If you try to explain the trick to someone without showing them an example they’ll act like they understand, but in reality, they really don’t. On the other hand, if you show someone an LED Laser Etching photo, they will be INSTANTLY intrigued, no matter what level of photographic experience they might have.

You see the fun part here is when you show someone an LED Laser Etching Trick you don’t need to say anything; the response is ALWAYS the same…

Wow, how cool!

And the next question is always…

How did you do that?

In fact I was at a party the other day and I pulled out my compact digital camera and then handed a small LED light to one of the guys and just said, would you help me with a trick? I gave him a cursory explanation and he was simply not impressed, period.

You see in his brain it was going to be a stupid photo of him standing there pointing the LED at the camera, big deal. That’s because his brain has been conditioned to the idea of how digital cameras work, no mystery here.

Until…

I showed him a photo that looked as though he had etched it in the air with a laser beam.

OK, so here’s a guy that initially was less than interested…

Now he’s running back and forth to the camera to see his latest laser etching creation.

This guy went nuts! Once he saw how cool it was he wanted to try all sorts of LED laser etching designs. Smiley faces, Christmas trees, the legendary Zorro “Z”, a crown, he went on and on. In the mean time more and more people were aware of what was going on and after a while literally EVERYONE wanted in on the fun.

Here’s the trick

I used a point-and-shoot digital camera and a cheap LED key ring light, or in other words, no fancy equipment.

My camera was set to “Fireworks” and since I didn’t have a tripod I winged it and just held the camera as steady as possible.

Note: For more consistent results it would be best to have secured my camera on a tripod.

Next, I went into a room that was fairly dark and handed the guy the LED light told him to point the LED at my camera and for a test just do a bunch of “squiggles” in the air. This was to give him an idea of how much time he had to “write in the air.” Since this was a basic point-and-shoot digital camera the only control I had was to set it on “fireworks.” No manual controls, nothing, just a plain old digital camera.

However, I knew with the “fireworks” setting the cameras lens would stay open longer than usual, long enough to record the LED light moving through the air. Now I know there are going to be people say that because it was hand held for so long the background AND the guy were going to be blurry.

Hey, all I was after was a neat looking creative photo; I really didn’t care if everything in the background was blurry.

I just wanted to record the motion of the LED light.

Then I held the camera up, told the guy to get ready, took a deep breath, pressed the shutter, and told the guy, GO.

Remember no flash, just nice and dark.

It took a couple of test shots for the guy to see just how much time he had to write. As I said though, once he saw the results he wanted to try all sorts of designs.

Ideas to try:

• Use two different colors of LED lights at the same time.
• Have 2 or 3 people with multiple lights at the same time.
• Use a larger standard LED flashlight.

In Summary

This technique is for standard point-and-shoot digital cameras with basic settings. If you own camera that has manual settings you can hold your shutter open for much longer periods of time for more creative flexibility.

Either way, auto or manual control this is just a fun trick and impresses absolutely everyone, give it a go!

http://www.digitalcamerau.com/2006/12/26/digital-camera-led-laser-etching-trick/