A window washer works on the logo for Daiwa Securities Co. outside the company's branch in Tokyo. Daiwa Securities Group Inc. topped Mizuho Financial Group Inc. as the biggest manager of Samurai bond sales as the cheapest yen funding costs relative to dollars in almost two years prompted record sales by Korean companies.
A team of window washers work their way down the National Bank Towers on Queen St in Auckland. The building has twin towers of 17 and 22 levels with a refurbished podium lobby.
Amputee wins £160k compensation from Richmond Council: A grandfather who needed to have his fractured leg amputated after he fell into a hole in a park has won £160,000 in compensation. Edward Tuffrey, 67, was walking his dog in Suffolk Road Recreation Ground, Barnes, when he suffered the life-changing accident. The former window cleaner went through years of agony when medics discovered a metal plate in his leg had snapped and caused an infection. Mr Tuffrey, who lived in Barnes Avenue, Barnes, said he cried when doctors broke the news they needed to amputate. He said he was pleased with the financial settlement from Richmond Council, but added: “I would rather have my leg back. “It has been traumatic. What price do you put on a body part?” He fell in the 10in hole and fractured his leg in three places as his dog played in the park on May 21, 2006.
Doctors inserted a metal plate but it later broke, causing huge complications. Mr Tuffrey said he had nine pins in his leg for nine months and then had it in plaster for a year, but it did not heal and the hospital decided three years ago to amputate. The father-of-two, who now has an artificial limb, said: “It was terrible for my wife as she had to put up with it as well. “I’ve always been an active sort of bloke. I worked for myself as a window cleaner for 25 years. “It’s been going on for five-and-a-half years and we’d just had enough. As you get older there’s only so much you can stand with the stress. “Money doesn’t compensate for the trauma we’ve been through but we want it to finish so we can get on with our lives.” Mr Tuffrey, who has now moved to West Sussex, said he and his neighbours had repeatedly complained to Richmond Council about holes in the park. He was shocked to find them still there when he visited this week.
Brisbane businesses warn against group buying: It's the latest and greatest craze in online shopping but Brisbane businesses are warning that group buying deals and online coupon sites are sending businesses broke, and driving customers away. Group Buying: it's one of Australia's fastest growing industries estimated to be worth $400 million by the year's end, but the unregulated industry has both consumers and businesses off side. The sales pitch to businesses is that their business is guaranteed exposure and new customers through the door, and consumers get discounted goods and services. Win, win right? Wrong. With the endless supply of discounted services available on group buying coupon websites, it might seem like the consumer can't lose but burnt Brisbane businesses say the fast growing group buying industry is sending local businesses broke with dodgy marketing strategies and high pressure selling techniques.
A local window cleaning business owner, who wished to remain anonymous because he's still honouring customers for a deal that may send him out of business, says he's increasingly concerned for his livelihood after signing up to one of the smaller deals sites earlier this year. "My business is only 3 years old and we have never run an overdraft or borrowed money from the bank except for the loan on our work vehicle and were very proud of the fact that we started with nothing to create a small business that was steadily growing, but over the last few months I have watched our bank account empty as we service these deals over full paying customers. "We participated in a deal with a company in May this year and under their guidance, foolishly sold 300 deals for a two hour window cleaning service at $49 each. Of that, we received I think $35.63.
He says the deal company used high pressure sales techniques, pushing him to agree to sell as many as possible. "From start to finish the process was wrapped up in a couple of days by their team with the emphasis being on the urgency of this deal needing to go live by a set date or missing out for months. He says the most frustrating part as a business owner in the transaction was having no clear communication with the company throughout the process. Although his deal expires this week, the business owner is continuing to honour the voucher sold to customers into the New Year, hoping that he will retain some ongoing customers from the experience, but he remains on edge about the state of his business. "With a wife on maternity leave, a 3 month old, looming mortgage and all the business expenses, closing and going down to the Centrelink office is a very real possibility for me. His warning to new businesses considering coupon and discount deals through the various sites is "if something sounds too good to be true, it usually is."
According to another local business, the experience is fast becoming more common than not. She says knows of several Brisbane businesses that have closed down after offering the services. "What a lot of people don't know that these voucher companies are owned by multi-corporations and in my opinion it's the big businesses way of making small businesses slash their prices to a stage where it hurts them so much that it's driving them out of business. "I've heard of at least four or five other businesses that have closed down after offering these services. Ms Stephenson says the sales pitch to small businesses is pushy, and small business can often fall into the trap of not knowing what they're signing up for. "I get phone calls from these places (online group buying sites) and they tell you the deal you're offering isn't good enough, and you've got until the end of the day to make a decision. "I know at the end of the day it will return about $4 an hour to my company and you can' even pay staff with that, let alone the cost of the service. "A lot of the companies being approached don't know that.
Tributes have poured in for a ‘fun loving family man’ who lost his fight against cancer at the age of 41. Craig Hudson, known to his many friends as Ken, died in Kirkwood Hospice after a long fight against liver and pancreatic cancer. His family and friends have spoken fondly of a man who would always put others before himself, and loved nothing more than a Saturday night spent with his wife Erica, stepson Sam, 14, son Annan, six, and three-year-old Jess. “He was a real hands-on dad and a family man,” Erica said. “He loved being at home with me and the kids, chopping wood for the fire.”
Oliver Shaw, friend of more than 15 years, met Craig in his younger days when he enjoyed travelling up and down the country to attend ‘raves’. “He lived life to the full. He was a different person when I met him but he met Erica at the right time when he was ready to settle down,” he said. “I will remember the way he would stop whatever he was doing to help anyone and he would never ask for anything back.” Craig was diagnosed with liver and pancreatic cancer in July this year. The pain forced him to leave the construction trade, so he started his own window cleaning business covering Upper Batley and Tingley. After his diagnosis, Craig’s friends and family rallied around and raised an astonishing £16,000 to pay for alternative therapy at a clinic in Southampton. He was also involved in fundraising efforts for fellow cancer sufferer Bev Dransfield. Craig died at the hospice on October 21 and his funeral was attended by 400 people.
Canned goods for clean windows: A Marquette business is trying to make the sunshine a little brighter while helping to feed a hungry neighbor. The Window Store on Washington Street is giving away their own brand of window cleaner. Simply bring in 10 non-perishable items for the TV6 Canathon and you can get a can for yourself. The cleaner works for glass of all varieties, including for your home, car and even camera lenses. Employees say they're just doing their part to get people into the store and donate some food. "I think it's important that we get people out to help people in times of need. The holiday season is a great time, and food pantries do great things for the local community," said Window Store president, David Martin. You can drop off your cans and get your free window cleaner through the end of the month.
Sonya Thomas, a 5-foot-5 Korean woman who recently ate 183 chicken wings in 12 minutes, proudly hoisted her trophy after consuming 5.25 pounds of turkey. A 10-pound roasted turkey sat in front of each eater. Ten minutes to binge. At the end, the turkey would be weighed. The winner would take home $1,581, a belt and a bronze turkey trophy with a removable cleaver. No formal blessing was said prior to the dinner bell. But "Crazy Legs Conti," (pictured center) a window washer, nude model and sperm donor from the East Village, said he felt blessed to be a competitive eater. He's ranked 20th in the major league eating circuit and is currently the reigning sweet corn champion. At a recent contest in Singapore, he ate 115 wontons in eight minutes, falling short to the Black Widow's winning number of 130. "This is a communal meal," Conti said as he practiced yoga on the sidewalk in front of The TimesCenter on West 41st Street, minutes before the competition. "Thanksgiving, it's one of the few times you sit down for the express purpose of eating and the company. These are my favorite people in the world. I am fortunate." Conti and Booker delivered 81 turkeys to the City Harvest charity on behalf of sponsor Wild Turkey. Conti grew up in Boston, and he said he admired Jim Rice and Carl Yastrzemski for their charitable efforts. "The fact that Major League Eating has hit the point where Badlands and I were on a truck, driving around to donate 81 turkeys to families that needed them, it was awesome," Conti said.
HOUSTON: This is the 54th night Houston occupiers have stood their ground. They claim there are between 50 and 100 of them every night. A day after a shooting there, two days before Thanksgiving and weeks before it likely gets really uncomfortable outside, we wanted to know just who they are. By his account, JJ Freeman was the only thing on Monday afternoon between the gunman and the Occupy Houston camp he calls home. "I keep everything I own in this crate. This is my daughter Padme," Freeman said, showing us photos. "She turned 14 months old today. And last night, what happened -- I honestly thought I was never going to see her again." Freeman is an unemployed cook and security guard protesting out of frustration that he hasn't been able to find work for more than a year. "I was doing professional window cleaning," protester Jamin Stocker (pictured) said. A month ago, Stocker had two jobs. "The work dried up," he said. Since then, he's been here. He's content to occupy a park, even though he has family in Houston he could stay with and jobs he could get.
Winds fling window 100m: Strong winds blew a large window 100 metres out of an office building into a nearby carpark this afternoon. The MetService today issued a severe weather warning for the Wellington region with gales expected to continue until nightfall. The window, which was approximately 1m squared, came from the 10th floor of Education House on Willis St. It flew out in a southerly direction and landed about 100 metres away in a carpark behind 190 Willis St. The fire service attended and cleaned up the glass. Natalie Ferguson, who works on the fifth floor of 190 Willis St, saw the window flying and said she was very relieved that no-one was injured in the carpark where it landed. Darrell Ward, assistant secretary for the New Zealand Educational Institute, which owns the building, said: "We're very concerned by this incident and looking into it with a view to making sure this sort of thing never happens again."
British Columbia has introduced a bill to expand mental stress coverage under the Workers Compensation Act. Bill 14 would amend the act to expand compensation for mental stress arising from the course of the worker’s employment to go beyond the current requirement of “an acute reaction to a sudden and traumatic event” and include: the reaction to one or more traumatic events, the reaction to a significant work-related stressor & the reaction to a cumulative series of significant work-related stressors. Stress resulting from employment decisions like discipline, termination or a change in working conditions will continue to be excluded from coverage. To be eligible for mental stress compensation in B.C., a recognized diagnosis will be required, according to the government. “Just as we wouldn’t expect a window washer who sustains physical injuries to go it alone, we shouldn’t expect workers who experience mental health problems as a result of their job to fend for themselves,” said Bev Gutray, CEO of the Canadian Mental Health Association’s B.C. division.
Up on the rooftop . . . pros will install your holiday decorations: Decorating for the holidays is such a fun activity that some people plan parties and family traditions around it, with crowds of people helping to trim the tree amid a house full of music and laughter. Taking down the decorations, however, is a lonely, unheralded and even dreaded chore. "Who wants to go out in January when it's 20 degrees out and remove lights?" asked George Wimmer, owner of My Personal Gardener Inc., a landscaping company that offers holiday decorating services in the Indianapolis and Carmel areas.
Many local landscapers, roofers and window washers pull double duty during the holiday season and offer decorating help for homeowners who want to avoid the hassle -- and the dangers -- associated with hanging lights. About 12,000 homeowners nationwide make a trip to a hospital emergency room each year because of holiday-related decorating accidents, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. Not all of those accidents are related to falls. Electrical- and fire-related injuries are also to blame. "There's not only the height factor, but the factor of dealing with electricity and knowing how much lighting you can put on one outlet," said Mike van de Bossche, owner of Earth-Wood Arts in Indianapolis.
Most professional decorator services include providing the decorations, putting them up, taking them down and storing them for the homeowner to use again the next year. The cost can vary, but most experts say to expect to pay from $800 to $1,500 the first year for a professional decorating job. The upfront costs are more because you have to invest in the materials. The average job for holiday decorating last year cost about $1,400 according to Angie's List reports. "We can get higher on rooflines and peaks that they can't reach," Wimmer said. "And we can usually make it look a little better and be a little safer. It's more of a luxury of time. They can enjoy the holidays instead of dealing with the lights. And they don't have to worry about cluttering their garage with boxes and Christmas lights all year."
Most decorators offer a choice between incandescent and LED lights. "It's more expensive to buy LED, but down the road, you don't have issues with the lights going out, and it does use less energy," van de Bossche said. "The coloration of LED lights has also improved. They used to have a bluish glow on them, but that's been improved upon and is no longer the case. LEDs look good, too." Before you hire a professional holiday decorator, meet in person to share ideas and ask to see photos of past work. Ask how the company charges, if they determine price by the square foot or by the hour. Never let just anyone up on your roof to hang holiday lights. Check that the company has liability insurance and worker's compensation.
An attention getting tree: If you are heading west on the Spokane Street Viaduct and look south in the evening you are likely to see a very large lit Christmas tree. Standing approximately 80 feet tall this glowing holiday symbol near West Marginal Way is accomplishing what it was meant to: get some attention for the business that did it, Fleming's Holiday and Event Lighting(FHL). The West Seattle based business employs 30 people who are all about Christmas lighting but there's more to what they do than climb trees.
The owner, Ryan Fleming is a serial entrepreneur. At the age of 12 he got his first business idea when he saw his dad attempt to put up Christmas lights and fall off the ladder. He reasoned, "People should be able to hire someone to do that," and while it would take him a few years, he made it a reality. Before that business was formed however, after graduation from college he formed a car detailing business and shortly there after a couple of other businesses.
When he started seriously doing the lighting it was all residential but people noticed. The business grew rapidly and as it did he began to take on some commercial clients. Then that business grew to the point that Fleming and his crew found themselves doing the inside and outside lighting for Bellevue Square, Tacoma Mall and Alderwood Mall. "I'm a small businessman and I understand where I fit in society but I have big ambitions in life," Fleming said. The tree in West Seattle was decorated by one guy, Phillip who works for FHL and it required 40 hours. That tree is lit with 192 sets of LED mini lights each 25 feet long with 50 bulbs in each string. "It's not enough," said Fleming who cautions however that you can overdo holiday lighting. "There's a fine line," he said. "I've always wanted to decorate that tree," Fleming said and promised more lights for it are likely.
Fleming is out to decorate a lot more large trees. Not for money or really for marketing, but rather to add some holiday beauty during the longest nights of the year. I'm interested in talking to people about lighting trees of that size in some key locations around the area. One he has in mind is a large Blue Spruce tree near the top of the hill as you enter West Seattle. "My goal is to try and get the person that lives right next to that, to allow me to tap into their power so that my company can decorate it. It would be really cool." He has his eyes on trees just off Hwy 520 on either side just off the bridge and any just off I-90 as well. "I want to find trees that are in cool locations that will impact hundreds of thousands of people on a daily basis during the holiday season so that it spreads a little more holiday cheer to everyone. If we can see these monstrous trees decorated it would be really cool."
FHL does far more than just light up the night. They work year round offering business consulting, event, wedding, and landscape lighting, window washing/gutter cleaning/pressure washing. It's how he keeps his staff busy and keeps money coming in. If it seems like he is a busy man that would be accurate. But when inspiration strikes he goes for it. When he gets an idea and thinks it has merit he says, "I'll make it happen. that's my mentality. That's what I want to do. That's what I want to have in my life. I want to make things happen."
Myths were busted when dozens of Portlanders filled a community centre to find out about local preparations for the 2012 Games. The first of three public drop-in sessions taking place across the borough and Dorchester amazed organisers with its popularity, when people queued up to get in the Community 2000 centre in Easton – 40 people turned up in the first half hour alone. It followed revelations in the Echo, that proposals for Weymouth during Games-time include closing seafront roads to cars from 10am until 10pm, introducing special ‘gold paper’ parking permits for residents and businesses and ‘hard checkpoints.’Window cleaner Michael Hartley, of Southwell, said: “There’re a lot of rumours including residents needing a pass to get back on to Portland. “Also I work in Weymouth town centre, will I need a gold ticket to get parked on the seafront?” Mr Fooks dismissed the first rumour as false and said local businesses requiring access to the seafront would be accommodated. County council director for environment Miles Butler added: “We’ve just got to make sure the people who have necessary journeys can do them but the people who don’t can use the park and ride, public transport, cycle or walk.”
 |
| The Tailless Timing Belt Climbing Platform robot is nowhere near as strong in terms of grip, and doesn’t display the same agility as a gecko. |
If you’ve ever encountered a gecko you may have noticed it climbing just about any surface effortlessly. It doesn’t matter how smooth a surface is, a gecko can climb it, even a vertical sheet of glass. The key to this climbing skill is the toe pads on their feet. They are covered in little hairy growths called setae, each of which has thousands of micron-thin structures covering them called spatulae. While other animals use suction, natural glue, or claws to climb, the gecko uses the spatulae to cling to a surface using molecular attraction (known as Van der Waals forces). Each spatulae has a weak attraction to the molecules of a surface. Put many thousands of them close together on a surface, as each gecko foot does, and you have a very strong attraction. For some gecko, that attraction is so strong it is thought they could carry the weight of a human without losing their grip.
Obviously scientists want to take advantage of such an ability. Being able to grip any vertical surface and move along it without leaving a residue or requiring any power has many potential uses, e.g. window cleaning skyscrapers using a robot that can climb glass. Mimicking the gecko feet in man-made form has proved tough, but a research team at Simon Fraser University have recently made a significant breakthrough. They’ve managed to create a robot tank that scales vertical surfaces in the same way a gecko does using molecular attraction. Video
here.
The Future of Solar Power: Up until now solar panels have fallen a little flat, literally. Whether they're on a house or an industrial solar field in the desert, solar panels have always been one shape: flat. But the world's not and there's no reason why our solar panels should be either. Inspired by the way trees spread their leaves to capture sunlight, MIT Engineering Professor Jeffery Grossman wondered how efficient a three-dimensional shape covered in solar cells could be. It turns out that it has the potential to be quite efficient, even on an overcast, rainy day in Boston. That's where we found Professor Grossman and his team, on the roof of their research lab at MIT with a desk covered in miniature 3D solar panels.
You might think doing a solar panel demonstration on an overcast day is pointless, but not so with 3D solar panels. Typically, grey skies are like kryptonite for solar power, but Professor Grossman found that 3D panels can actually pick up almost as much electricity on a cloudy day as it can when it's sunny out. That efficiency, created by the dynamic shapes inspired by tree leaves, is what's really impressive about Professor Grossman's design. Not only are they less impacted by bad weather, their vertical shape allows them to pick up more direct sunlight and generate more electricity than flat panels using the same amount of ground space. The team doesn't want their designs hidden away on rooftops either. Rachelle Villalon, the teams architect envisions a day when you'll find 3D solar panels placed around cities like statues, becoming urban icons, instead of simple flat panels hidden on a roof.
