Why Hand-Scraped Flooring?

So many types of flooring possibilities exist on the market, so why hand-scraped hardwood and why now? Trends for hardwoods come and go. In recent years, the demand for exotic species has grown, and even more closer to the present, requests for hand-scraped flooring are also increasing. As a result, nearly all species are available hand-scraped, but walnut, hickory, cherry, and oak are the most popular.

In the past, parquet was a popular style of flooring, and while seldom seen in the present, parquet was characterized by an angular style and contrasting woods. Not relying on color, hand-scraped flooring instead goes for texture. The wood is typically scraped by hand, creating a rustic and unique look for every plank. But rather than be exclusively rough, some hand-scraped products have a smoother sculpted look, such as hand-sculpted hardwood, and this flooring is often considered "classic."

Texture, as well, makes the flooring have additional visual and tactile dimensions. Those walking on the floor may just want to run their hands over the surface to feel the knots, scraping, and sculpted portions. However, tastes for hand-scraped flooring vary by region. According to top hardwood manufacturer Armstrong, the sculpted look is more requested in California, while a rustic appearance of knots, mineral streaks, and graining is more common in the Southwest. The Northeast, on the other hand, is just catching onto this trend.

There's no one look for hand-scraped flooring. Rather, hardwood is altered through scraping or brushing, finishing, or aging; a combination of such techniques may also be used.

Scraped or brushed hardwoods are sold under names "wire brushed," which has accented grain and no sapwood; "hand-sculpted," which indicates a smoother distressed appearance; and "hand hewn and rough sawn," which describes the roughest product available.

Aged hand-scraped products go by "time worn aged" or "antique." For both of these, the wood is aged, and then the appearance is accented through dark-colored staining, highlighting the grain, or contouring. A lower grade of hardwood is used for antique.

A darker stain tends to bring out the look of hand-scraped flooring. For woods that have specifically been stained, "French bleed" is the most common. Such a product has deeper beveled edges, and joints are emphasized with a darker color stain.

No matter the look for hand-scraped flooring, the hardwood is altered by hand, generally by a trained craftsman, such as an Amish woodworker. As a result, every plank looks unique. However, "hand-scraped" and "distressed" are often used interchangeably, but not all "distressed" products are altered by hand. Instead, the hardwood is distressed by machine, which presses a pattern into the surface of the wood.

Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/home-improvement-articles/why-hand-scraped-flooring-5488704.html

Damaged Or Affected Information Providers By Web Scraping Service

Data Scraping Services and computer hardware to grow. How is this possible? It's really simple. Computer systems installed and set in metal boxes and cabinets are a combination of electronic circuit cards. Conductive metal of choice because steel is very strong and affordable. Steel is often plated to prevent oxidation and corrosion.

Galvanizing material of choice because it is still relatively cheap, conductive, and provides a well finished appearance. Many computer enclosures are galvanized rack shelf supports, rails and other structural elements. Data Scraping Services are everywhere, they are not visible? Remember that Data Scraping Services thinner than a human hair and about You are looking for them to find them. Look for them to grow together.

Data Scraping Services exposed bridges and shorts of the circuit is still the potential to wreak havoc on a system. Remain important clues about what happens when the memory bus clock cycles during the installation of the latch is shorted? Maybe the data is corrupted. Perhaps the corruption will be detected and corrected by the error correction algorithms. Affect the data processor is actually an instruction

He logged on to various system disorders - are not logged in or track. If a reset clears the event, problem quickly annoying, but not - as significant is rejected. Often this is not the floor fixed management visibility. If the device must be set and they'll say: "Ask an IT manager ... No, why questions" Ask the operator to reset the equipment needs to be done and they will respond "... Of course, all the time why ask "

So if the Data Scraping Services are everywhere and are instruments to influence how it is not common knowledge? Most users of personal experience or get their information from reliable sources. If personal experience is unforgettable, it's human nature to discount and discard. If a jammed machine reset by filling a cup of coffee is memorable, it is not missed. Popping a diet is unusual and unforgettable. Clicking on the button is not. Data Scraping Services affected or influenced almost all providers.

If the  Services are plentiful, there are no problems?

Research has shown that Data Scraping Services to be reasonably attached to the host surface. Until a certain length, Data Scraping Services rub and rub until they are released by mechanical means such as related. After reaching a certain length, not only freedom from direct mechanical means is possible, but also as a more passive mode of vibration or air flow. Once expelled, Data Scraping Services are free to migrate within the environment.

Data Scraping Services need not be catastrophic failures. Bit errors, soft faults and other defects can be attributed to Data Scraping Services.

What is the treatment for Data Scraping Services?

In general, the accepted treatment to remove Data Scraping Services and is a pure version of the original source material. This tool is not suitable for every bad piece of the place, either a logistical or financial perspective. Does not mean that the problem should be ignored. . Will continue to grow Data Scraping Services. As they are today, they are potentially harmful.

Data Scraping Services through management training, all employees and visitors to the zinc whisker behavior are needed to sign the pledge. The promise Data Scraping Services staff and visitors are forced to treat seriously and will take no action that would aggravate the problem take. Their actions will reflect the best interests of users and reliable computing.

Conclusion

Data Scraping Services are more common than previously believed and accepted. At the same time we can keep up with Data Scraping Services can enjoy fairly reliable operation. But it is important to recognize and manage the situation - not ignore. Living with a chronic infectious disease is a useful model for operations.

Once a surface is the source of zinc whisker, it will always be a source of zinc whisker. Left alone, reliable operation can continue. When the need to interact with the surface, the material does not reveal the need for zinc whisker position.

Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/outsourcing-articles/damaged-or-affected-information-providers-by-web-scraping-service-5549982.html

Data Mining for Dollars

The more you know, the more you're aware you could be saving. And the deeper you dig, the richer the reward.

That's today's data mining capsulation of your realization: awareness of cost-saving options amid logistical obligations.

According to global trade group Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM), fewer than 25% of organizations in North America and Europe are currently utilizing captured data as part of their business process. With high ease and low cost associated with utilization of their information, this unawareness is shocking. And costly.

Shippers - you're in prime position to benefit the most by data mining and assessing your electronically-captured billing records, by utilizing a freight bill processing provider, to realize and receive significant savings.

Whatever your volume, the more you know about your transportation options, throughout all modes, the easier it is to ship smarter and save. A freight bill processor is able to offer insight capable of saving you 5% - 15% annually on your transportation expenditures.

The University of California - Los Angeles states that data mining is the process of analyzing data from different perspectives and summarizing it into useful information - knowledge that can be used to increase revenue, cuts costs, or both. Data mining software is an analytical tool that allows investigation of data from many different dimensions, categorize it, and summarize the relationships identified. Technically, data mining is the process of finding correlations among dozens of fields in large relational databases. Practically, it leads you to noticeable shipping savings.

Data mining and subsequent reporting of shipping activity will yield discovery of timely, actionable information that empowers you to make the best logistics decisions based on carrier options, along with associated routes, rates and fees. This function also provides a deeper understanding of trends, opportunities, weaknesses and threats. Exploration of pertinent data, in any combination over any time period, enables you the operational and financial view of your functional flow, ultimately providing you significant cost savings.

With data mining, you can create a report based on a radius from a ship point, or identify opportunities for service or modal shifts, providing insight regarding carrier usage by lane, volume, average cost per pound, shipment size and service type. Performance can be measured based on overall shipping expenditures, variances from trends in costs, volumes and accessorial charges.

The easiest way to get into data mining of your transportation information is to form an alliance with a freight bill processor that provides this independent analytical tool, and utilize their unbiased technologies and related abilities to make shipping decisions that'll enable you to ship smarter and save.

Source:http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Mining-for-Dollars&id=7061178

Scraping Fantasy Football Projections from the Web

In this post, I show how to download fantasy football projections from the web using R.  In prior posts, I showed how to scrape projections from ESPN, CBS, NFL.com, and FantasyPros.  In this post, I compile the R scripts for scraping projections from these sites, in addition to the following sites: Accuscore, Fantasy Football Nerd, FantasySharks, FFtoday, Footballguys, FOX Sports, WalterFootball, and Yahoo.

Why Scrape Projections?

Scraping projections from multiple sources on the web allows us to automate importing the projections with a simple script.  Automation makes importing more efficient so we don’t have to manually download the projections whenever they’re updated.  Once we import all of the projections, there’s a lot we can do with them, like:

•    Determine who has the most accurate projections
•    Calculate projections for your league
•    Calculate players’ risk levels
•    Calculate players’ value over replacement
•    Identify sleepers
•    Calculate the highest value you should bid on a player in an auction draft
•    Draft the best starting lineup
•    Win your auction draft
•    Win your snake draft

The R Scripts

To scrape the projections from the websites, I use the readHTMLTable function from the XML package in R.  Here’s an example of how to scrape projections from FantasyPros:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8    

#Load libraries

library("XML")

#Download fantasy football projections from FantasyPros.com

qb_fp <- readHTMLTable("http://www.fantasypros.com/nfl/projections/qb.php", stringsAsFactors = FALSE)$data

rb_fp <- readHTMLTable("http://www.fantasypros.com/nfl/projections/rb.php", stringsAsFactors = FALSE)$data

wr_fp <- readHTMLTable("http://www.fantasypros.com/nfl/projections/wr.php", stringsAsFactors = FALSE)$data

te_fp <- readHTMLTable("http://www.fantasypros.com/nfl/projections/te.php", stringsAsFactors = FALSE)$data

view raw FantasyPros projections hosted with ❤ by GitHub

The R Scripts for scraping the different sources are located below:

1.    Accuscore
2.    CBS - Jamey Eisenberg
3.    CBS – Dave Richard
4.    CBS – Average
5.    ESPN
6.    Fantasy Football Nerd
7.    FantasyPros
8.    FantasySharks
9.    FFtoday
10.    Footballguys – David Dodds
11.    Footballguys – Bob Henry
12.    Footballguys – Maurile Tremblay
13.    Footballguys – Jason Wood
14.    FOX Sports
15.    NFL.com
16.    WalterFootball
17.    Yahoo

Density Plot

Below is a density plot of the projections from the different sources:Calculate projections

Conclusion

Scraping projections from the web is fast, easy, and automated with R.  Once you’ve downloaded the projections, there’s so much you can do with the data to help you win your league!  Let me know in the comments if there are other sources you want included (please provide a link).

Source:http://fantasyfootballanalytics.net/2014/06/scraping-fantasy-football-projections.html

Extractions and Skin Care

As an esthetician or skin care professional, you may have heard some controversy over the matter of performing extractions during a routine facial service. What may seem like a relatively simple procedure can actually raise great controversy in the world of esthetics. Some estheticians regard extractions as a matter of providing a complete service while others see this as inflicting trauma to the skin. Learning more about both sides of the issue can help you as a professional in making an informed decision and explaining the issue to your clients.

What is an extraction?

As a basic review, an extraction is removing impurity (plug of dead skin or oil) from a pore or pimple. It is the removal of both blackheads and whiteheads from the skin. Extractions occur after the skin has been thoroughly cleansed, exfoliated and sometimes steamed to soften the area prior to extraction.

Why Do It?

Extractions are considered a "must" by many estheticians when performing a routine facial because they want to leave their clients skin looking and feeling it's best. When done correctly, a simple extraction should be quick and relatively painless. As a trained esthetician it is important to know if your client has sensitive skin which would make them more prone to the damage that can be caused by extractions.

Why Not?

Extractions should only be performed by a trained esthetician and should not be done in excess. Extractions can cause broken capillaries or sin irritations that can lead to more (not less) breakouts. Extractions can also cause discomfort for your client when done incorrectly so you should seek their permission before performing any type of extraction during their facial. Remember your client has the right to know any product or procedure being performed on their skin and make an informed choice.

Who Decides?

As an esthetician it may be entirely up to you or it may be a procedure within your salon to do or not do extractions. It is important to check the guidelines of your employer and know their policies before performing any procedure. Remember to explain extractions and their benefits and possible complications to your client. Trust is an important part of any relationship and your client needs to know you are being open and honest with them. The last thing you want as a professional is a reputation for inflicting unnecessary and unwanted procedures or damage to your client's skin.

Bellanina Institute's owner and director, Nina Howard, is a multi-talented, forward-thinking entrepreneur who has built the Bellanina brand form the ground up to a successful million-dollar spa, spa training business, and skin care product line. Nina is a Licensed Esthetician with Para-Medical studies, Massage Therapist, Polarity Therapist, Skin Care Educator, Artist, and Professional Interior Designer.

Source:http://ezinearticles.com/?Extractions-and-Skin-Care&id=5271715

Benefits of Predictive Analytics and Data Mining Services

Predictive Analytics is the process of dealing with variety of data and apply various mathematical formulas to discover the best decision for a given situation. Predictive analytics gives your company a competitive edge and can be used to improve ROI substantially. It is the decision science that removes guesswork out of the decision-making process and applies proven scientific guidelines to find right solution in the shortest time possible.

Predictive analytics can be helpful in answering questions like:

•    Who are most likely to respond to your offer?
•    Who are most likely to ignore?
•    Who are most likely to discontinue your service?
•    How much a consumer will spend on your product?
•    Which transaction is a fraud?
•    Which insurance claim is a fraudulent?
•    What resource should I dedicate at a given time?

Benefits of Data mining include:

•    Better understanding of customer behavior propels better decision
•    Profitable customers can be spotted fast and served accordingly
•    Generate more business by reaching hidden markets
•    Target your Marketing message more effectively
•    Helps in minimizing risk and improves ROI.
•    Improve profitability by detecting abnormal patterns in sales, claims, transactions etc
•    Improved customer service and confidence
•    Significant reduction in Direct Marketing expenses

Basic steps of Predictive Analytics are as follows:

•    Spot the business problem or goal
•    Explore various data sources such as transaction history, user demography, catalog details, etc)
•    Extract different data patterns from the above data
•    Build a sample model based on data & problem
•    Classify data, find valuable factors, generate new variables
•    Construct a Predictive model using sample
•    Validate and Deploy this Model

Standard techniques used for it are:

•    Decision Tree
•    Multi-purpose Scaling
•    Linear Regressions
•    Logistic Regressions
•    Factor Analytics
•    Genetic Algorithms
•    Cluster Analytics
•    Product Association

Should you have any queries regarding Data Mining or Predictive Analytics applications, please feel free to contact us. We would be pleased to answer each of your queries in detail.

Source:http://ezinearticles.com/?Benefits-of-Predictive-Analytics-and-Data-Mining-Services&id=4766989

Do blog scraping sites violate the blog owner's copyright?

I noticed that my blog has been posted on one of these website scraping sites. This is the kind of site that has no original content, but just repeats or scrapes content others have written and does it to get some small amount of ad income from ads on the scraping site. In essence the scraping site is taking advantage of the content of the originating site in order to make a few dollars from people who go to the site looking for something else. Some of these websites prey on misspelling. If you accidentally misspell the name of an original site, you just may end up with one of these patently commercial scraping sites.

Google defines scraping as follows:

•    Sites that copy and republish content from other sites without adding any original content or value
•    Sites that copy content from other sites, modify it slightly (for example, by substituting synonyms or using automated techniques), and republish it
•    Sites that reproduce content feeds from other sites without providing some type of unique organization or benefit to the user

My question, as set out in the title to this post, is whether or not scraping is a violation of copyright. It turns out that the answer is likely very complicated.  You have to look at the definition of a scraping site very carefully. Let me give you some hypotheticals to show what I mean.

Let's suppose that I write a blog and put a link in my blog post to your blog. Does that link violate your copyright? I can't imagine that anyone would think that there was problem with linking to another website on the Web. In this case, there is no content from the originating site, just a link.

But let's carry the hypothetical a little further. What if I put a link to your site and quote some of your content? Does this violate copyright law? If you are acquainted with any of the terminology of copyright law; think fair use. The issue here is whether or not the "quoted" material is a substantial reproduction of the entire original content? I would have the opinion that duplicating an entire blog post either with or without attribution would be a violation of the originator's copyright.

So is the scraping website protected by the "fair use" doctrine? Does the fact that the motivation for listing the original websites is to make money have anything to do with how you would decide if there was or was not a violation of the originator's copyright? By the way, the copyright does not make a distinction between a commercial and non-commercial use of the original constituting or not constituting a violation of copyright. The fact that the reproducing (scraping) party does not make money from the reproduction is not a factor in the issue of violation, although it may ultimately be an issue as to the amount of damages assessed.

Does the fact that the actions of the scraper annoy me, make any difference? I would answer, not in the least. Whether or not you are annoyed by the violation of the copyright makes no difference as to whether or not there is a violation. Likewise, you have no independent claims for your wounded feelings because of the copied content. Copyright is a statutory action (i.e. based on statutory law) and unless the cause of action is recognized by the law, there is no cause of action. Now, in an outrageous case, you may have  some kind of tort (personal injury) claim, but that is way outside of my hypothetical situation.

So what is the answer? Does scraping violate the originator's copyright? If only a small portion of the blog is copied (scraped) then I would have to have the opinion that it is not. Essentially, no matter what the motivation of the scrapper, there is not enough content copied to violate the fair use doctrine. Now, that is my opinion. Your's might differ. That is what makes lawsuits.

Do I think there are other reasons why scraping websites are objectionable? Certainly, but those reasons have nothing to do with copyright and they are probably the subject of another different blog post. So, if you are reading this from scraping website, bear in mind that there may be a serious problem with that type of website.

Source:http://genealogysstar.blogspot.in/2013/05/do-blog-scraping-sites-violate-blog.html

Local ScraperWiki Library

It quite annoyed me that you can only use the scraperwiki library on a ScraperWiki instance; most of it could work fine elsewhere. So I’ve pulled it out (well, for Python at least) so you can use it offline.

How to use
pip install scraperwiki_local
A dump truck dumping its payload

You can then import scraperwiki in scripts run on your local computer. The scraperwiki.sqlite component is powered by DumpTruck, which you can optionally install independently of scraperwiki_local.

pip install dumptruck
Differences

DumpTruck works a bit differently from (and better than) the hosted ScraperWiki library, but the change shouldn’t break much existing code. To give you an idea of the ways they differ, here are two examples:

Complex cell values
What happens if you do this?
import scraperwiki
shopping_list = ['carrots', 'orange juice', 'chainsaw']
scraperwiki.sqlite.save([], {'shopping_list': shopping_list})
On a ScraperWiki server, shopping_list is converted to its unicode representation, which looks like this:
[u'carrots', u'orange juice', u'chainsaw']
In the local version, it is encoded to JSON, so it looks like this:
["carrots","orange juice","chainsaw"]


And if it can’t be encoded to JSON, you get an error. And when you retrieve it, it comes back as a list rather than as a string.

Case-insensitive column names
SQL is less sensitive to case than Python. The following code works fine in both versions of the library.

In [1]: shopping_list = ['carrots', 'orange juice', 'chainsaw']
In [2]: scraperwiki.sqlite.save([], {'shopping_list': shopping_list})
In [3]: scraperwiki.sqlite.save([], {'sHOpPiNg_liST': shopping_list})
In [4]: scraperwiki.sqlite.select('* from swdata')

Out[4]: [{u'shopping_list': [u'carrots', u'orange juice', u'chainsaw']}, {u'shopping_list': [u'carrots', u'orange juice', u'chainsaw']}]

Note that the key in the returned data is ‘shopping_list’ and not ‘sHOpPiNg_liST’; the database uses the first one that was sent. Now let’s retrieve the individual cell values.

In [5]: data = scraperwiki.sqlite.select('* from swdata')
In [6]: print([row['shopping_list'] for row in data])
Out[6]: [[u'carrots', u'orange juice', u'chainsaw'], [u'carrots', u'orange juice', u'chainsaw']]

The code above works in both versions of the library, but the code below only works in the local version; it raises a KeyError on the hosted version.

In [7]: print(data[0]['Shopping_List'])
Out[7]: [u'carrots', u'orange juice', u'chainsaw']

Here’s why. In the hosted version, scraperwiki.sqlite.select returns a list of ordinary dictionaries. In the local version, scraperwiki.sqlite.select returns a list of special dictionaries that have case-insensitive keys.

Develop locally

Here’s a start at developing ScraperWiki scripts locally, with whatever coding environment you are used to. For a lot of things, the local library will do the same thing as the hosted. For another lot of things, there will be differences and the differences won’t matter.

If you want to develop locally (just Python for now), you can use the local library and then move your script to a ScraperWiki script when you’ve finished developing it (perhaps using Thom Neale’s ScraperWiki scraper). Or you could just run it somewhere else, like your own computer or web server. Enjoy!

Source:https://blog.scraperwiki.com/2012/06/local-scraperwiki-library/

A quick guide on web scraping: Why and how

Web scraping, which is the collection and cleaning of online data, is the first step in any
data-driven project. Here’s a short video that explains what scraping is, and how to create
automated scraping jobs using a digital tool.

This is a 15-minute video created by an instructor at Ohio State University. In the first six
minutes, the instructor talks about why we need web scraping; he then shows how to use a
scraping tool, OutWit Hub, to collect data scattered in a large database.

FYI: read reviews by Reporters’ Lab of OutWit Hub and other web scraping tools.

Source: http://www.mulinblog.com/quick-guide-web-scraping/

Scraping and Analyzing Angel List Syndicates: Kimono Labs + Silk

Because we use Silk to tell stories and visualize data, we are always looking for interesting ways to pull data into a Silk. Right now that means getting data into the CSV format. Fortunately, a wave of new and powerful visual webscraping tools and services have emerged. These make it very simple for anyone (no technical skills required) to scrape data from a website and export that data into a CSV which we can quickly upload into a Silk.

Cool New Scraping Tools

One of the tools we love in this new space is Kimono Labs. Backed by Y Combinator, Kimono combines a visual scraping editor with the ability to do very granular code-inspector level editing to scraping paths. Saved scrapes can be turned into APIs and exported as JSON. Kimono also lets you save time-series versioning of scrapes.

Data from angel-list-syndicates.silk.co

Like many startups, we watch the goings on at AngelList very closely. Syndicates are of particular interest. Basically, these are DIY venture capital pools that allow a qualified investor to serve as a syndicate leader and aggregate small investments from other qualified investors who are members of AngelList. The idea of the syndicates is to democratize the VC process and make it easier and less risky for individuals to participate.

We used Kimono to scrape information on the Top 25 Syndicates ranked by dollars backing each round. Kimono makes it very easy to visually designate which parts of a page to scrape and how many rows there are on a page. (Here you can see me highlighting the minimum dollar investment). We downloaded the information as a CSV and did a quick scrub to get it ready for upload to Silk. The process took no more than 15 minutes.

We could tell by eyeballing the numbers beforehand that a serious Power Law was in effect. And the actual data analysis on Silk bore this out. We chose to use a pie chart to show distribution. Three syndicates control nearly two-thirds of all the committed capital by Angel.co members in the syndicate program. One of the top three - Tim Ferriss - has no background as a venture capitalist or building technology companies but is rapidly becoming a force in startup investing. The person with the largest committed syndicate pool, Gil Penachina, is someone who is a quiet mover and shaker in Silicon Valley but he clearly packs a huge punch.

The largest syndicate in terms of likely commitments of deals per year is Foundry Group Angels, a group led by Brad Feld (@bfeld). While they put in less per deal, they are planning to back over 50 deals per year - a huge number. Trailing far behind those three was media impresario and Launch conference mogul Jason Calacanis, who is one of the most visible people in the startup space.

Source: http://blog.silk.co/post/83501793279/scraping-and-analyzing-angel-list-syndicates