December, 2009

If you are interested in ultralight aviation, you have probably spent some time thinking how to simplify your flying. Most of the ultralight enthusiasts meet various problems to achieve their dream.

The price of the ultralight airplanes is relatively low, but still not for everyone’s pocket. Then you have to add costs for obtaining a license, hangaring, fuel and flying permits.

On the other side are the paragliders. They need literally nothing except wind. The problem is you depend on the wind way too much.

I guess some smart guy have realized that many of us need the best of both world. Thus the powered paraglider was born.

How is it different?

The powered paragliders can fly and pick up on their own, not matter if there are appropriate wind conditions or not. They have a very simple engine sitting on the back on the pilot and allow very easy flying.

The powered paragliders are cheaper than the ultralight airplanes and do not require a pilot license.

You can even buy your powered paraglider online and receive it in few days.

Safety of powered paragliders

Typically the powered paragliders are considered safer than their unpowered cousins, because you have greater control on the flight itself.

If you have experience flying a “normal” paraglider, you will be able to use the same knowledge about safety that you have acquired before.

How to start?

If you feel interested, there are several things you need to do:

- Think about your education. If you have no experience flying a paraglider, it’s highly recommended to attend a flying course

- Plan your finances. The powered paragliders are one of the cheapest way to fly, but still you will need several thousands dollars to do it safely

- Research new and used market of powered paragliders. There are a lot of options, but some pilots prefer to build their own motorized paraglider. It’s easy!

- Buy, pack, get trained and start flying

There is just one step from powered paragliding and flying a real ultralight airplane. Some pilots prefer to stay with the paragliders, other want to grow further. Whichever you choose, paragliding is an excellent way to start.

Every consumer in America has the right to a free credit report once every year by law as of September 2005. But since that law has passed there has been nothing but confusion.

The web sites that say they are offering this so called free credit report, are asking us to give them our credit card information. Does that sound like a free credit report to you?

You may have even given your credit card number to these companies to sign up for a thirty day trial for a credit service that has almost nothing to do with getting your free credit report.

In all fairness, you can cancel this service after thirty days. But how many people do you think forget and end up with monthly or even annual credit card charges?

In fact, these companies are counting on you forgetting about the thirty day trial and charging that fee on your credit card. But if the law says you get a free report, what’s the deal?

A lot of people are confused about these free credit reports because of how some companies are marketing the free credit report. Hopefully, this information will clear a few things up for you.

For people who just want the bottom line, a free credit report is available at http://www.AnnualCreditReport.com and this is the only official site that helps consumers to obtain their annual free credit report.

This site’s security protocols are excellent with physical and technological security and encryption. That’s important for identity theft purposes because the information on your credit report should be seen by your eyes only.

So if this site is readily available and anyone can get a free credit report once a year, what’s the catch? Here is the catch: the credit report you get from http://www.AnnualCreditReport.com does not have any credit scores.

Now you may be asking, “Then what good is getting this free credit report without a credit score?” There are a few good reasons why you may want to look at your credit report even without a credit score.

Did you know that more than forty percent of all credit reports have errors? If you spot these errors, you can get them cleared up before it affects your credit score. If you contact a credit bureau about an error, they have to clear it up or remove it after thirty days by law.

If you monitor and review your credit report, you can check to be sure that you are not a victim of identity theft. If someone takes over your accounts and charges up thousands of dollars in debt, they can destroy your credit score in a matter of hours.

These are just a couple of good reasons why you want to get your free credit report once a year and inspect it just to be sure everything looks like it should. You can get your free credit report online at http://www.AnnualCreditReport.com or by phone or through the mail.

So where do you get your credit score from? This is where the confusion comes in and here is the answer. The law Congress passed did not say anything about a credit score just one free credit report a year per consumer.

You have to pay a service to get your credit score and some companies are confusing people with the way they are marketing this. They offer you a free credit report and score and many consumers believe it’s their annual free credit report.

But if you have to sign up for a credit service they offer for a 30 day trial period, does that sound free? What these companies are counting on is you forgetting about the 30 day trial and charging a fee on your credit card once that trial period is over.

It’s in the fine print, but how many people actually read that. So here is a good common sense rule of thumb. Any time you have to give your credit card information, ask yourself, “is this really free?”

Many of you probably know this is happening because you have been trapped with this kind of marketing tactic. But for those of you that just want your annual free credit report, you can at least be aware as to what is really going on and have a no nonsense way to get it.

Copyright

“Have you seen Billy Elliott? 9 to 5? Dirty Dancing?” These questions raise a counter question: “The movie or the musical?” There is no longer a strong line between the film and stage. We’re seeing numerous stories crossing the line between the silver screen and the boards of Broadway. There has always been a unification between the arts: literary, visual, graphic, performing. Theatre and film have always incorporated all of these.

Musical movies have been around since Gordon McRae and Shirley Jones first expressed their love for each other in both Oklahoma! and Carousel. Musical films may have gotten a little darker with the advent of Chicago, Rent, and Sweeney Todd, but they still capture the interest of moviegoers. Why is there such a fascination with the silver tones of the silver screen? What makes a musical movie worthy? Is it the book?

It’s not just the big screen that has developed the musical element.

Shows have introduced musical episodes. Buffy, Scrubs, Daria, Xena has two musical episodes, and let’s not forget the numerous musical numbers to be found on the Simpsons, South Park, and Family Guy, some of which are taken directly from Broadway itself.

Musicals have often taken their stories from books. That practice has continued through to more recent shows such as the widely popular show, Wicked, which is based on the book of the same name by Gregory Maguire. Books, however, have taken a backseat to movies as the basis for new musicals. 9 to 5 and Billy Elliott are on Broadway, Dirty Dancing is on tour, and Sister Act is onstage in London. All of these musicals started as movies. Now, granted, there are many movies that are also based upon books: Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, My Sister’s Keeper, etc. Even Lord of the Rings enjoyed time as an onstage musical.

The youthful world has captured the stage as well. Disney got a foothold in the Broadway scene when they introduced Beauty and the Beast. Now, they’re firmly established with The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, and Mary Poppins. The Grinch Who Stole Christmas is a holiday show that appears every December. Oh, and let’s not forget Shrek. Children’s theatre has hit the big time.

Actors have also crossed over from stage to screen and back. Ana Gasteyer, Amy Spanger, John Stamos, Chandra Wilson, Kristin Chenoweth, Alison Janney, Brian Stokes Mitchell, and others dance around the line, appearing at the Emmys, the Oscars, and the Tonys.

Why is there such an influx of movies to the Broadway stage? Have writers simply lost the desire to come up with original ideas? I don’t think so. I think that it’s strongly affected by the economy. In an attempt to get more people to attend Broadway theatre, shows have been streamlined into recognizable formats with names that people can relate to. They know Alison Janney, John Stamos, and Chandra Wilson. Parents are more willing to take their children to see shows based on movies that they grew up with and love. People are excited to see a musical based on a movie, even if it’s just to find out how closely it adheres to the original. It’s easier to adapt the movie to the stage than it is to adapt the book because a lot of the elements have already been provided.

I do think, however, that it is harder to translate the movie to the stage because there are certain expectations. People are very critical when a well-loved movie is changed for the stage. This is the same of books, but the visual element is removed. A character may not necessarily look the way you pictured them to look, but that was your own interpretation, so you are more willing to accept it. With a movie, you’ve seen the character and you’ve heard the lines delivered a certain way. You’re on the lookout for that same delivery. It’s like a drug; you expect the same high you feel when you watch the movie.

Still, I think that movies titles will always have a pull for those attending the theatre because of the known factor. It’s familiar. It’s safe. You may not get what you expected, but at least you had expectations to begin with. Going to see a show that you’ve never heard of in another forum is taking a chance. Sometimes, it’s worth the risk, but most people are unwilling to do so at + a seat.

As for me, I’m still waiting for Harry Potter: The Musical Series.

Sometimes it happens that you have to scan the documents and you really get disappointed when you discover that you are unable to change the contents of your scanned document. But, OCR software has solved this problem and you can convert almost every image format to an editable format. OCR software is integrated with optical character recognition technology that enhances it to read each and every word in the document. OCR software is currently enhanced to read almost 40 languages.

OCR software also provides the facility to secure and protect your files from unauthorized access. With this feature, you can simply implement password to our files and make them secure. If you are worried about distribution then you can also pace watermark in your documents to prevent unauthorized distribution. The user interface of OCR software is very friendly and you don’t need to get basic understandings about the functionality of OCR software. Whenever you like to convert a file then you simply need to specify the desired images containing text and then press the convert button after selecting the desired extension. The whole conversion process will take approximately 5 seconds.

OCR software has capability read and recognize up to 40 languages. So you don’t need to worry about languages other than English as OCR software will automatically recognize and convert them within seconds. It means that if your document contains any of the supported language it is automatically recognized by optical character recognition algorithm of OCR software. Images, pdf and scanned documents in any supported language can be converted back to the original language text completely with all language fonts and styles.

It does not matter either the images are taken from digital cameras or from scanners, OCR software understands them and after detecting the errors, it automatically fixes them. If the source image contains text, tables, images and layouts in single or multi page, they are converted without any change to text, html, pdf or word format. OCR software automatically corrects orientation, skew and tilt errors. This tool is very handy for those people who make eBooks as they can easily convert their word format documents to PDF format by using OCR software.

Remember that old Donnie and Marie Osmond song, “I Was Country, When Country Wasn’t Cool”? I know, I’m dating and embarrassing myself all in one fell swoop. I loved their variety show when I was a kid. Weird as it may seem, that song comes to mind when I think of Rural Housing loans. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) offers a home loan guaranty program in Tennessee that is truly affordable and beneficial for moderate to low income families/borrowers. The only catch is you have to be on the right part of the map. Rural areas only, please. But you’d be surprised as to what constitutes “rural”. Did you think Powell was rural?

I think this program is often overlooked because lenders forget that some properties qualify for it. And it’s super easy to figure out. If you go to www DOT rurdev DOT usda DOT gov, you can click on a link that allows you to determine if a specific property address is eligible. Lately, I’ve been happy to discover this program is available for more of my customers than I would have initially guessed.

Why are Rural Housing loans so cool? First and foremost, they allow for 100% financing. Yep, the elusive 100% financing still exists (at least in some counties). Another very attractive feature is the program allows you to finance Rural Housing’s 2% guarantee fee (required) into the loan amount as well. So if you buy a $100K home, you can borrow $102K. And perhaps the most exciting feature? You have no monthly mortgage insurance with this product. That’s right, no monthly mortgage insurance. Now you see what makes this product so affordable.

Of course, you have to be able to qualify. You obviously can’t be making a ton of money and qualify for this type loan. It varies from county to county, but for example, in Knoxville, a 2 person family can’t earn more than $56,600 a year. You have to have been on the job or have recently produced a professional/educational degree or certification during the past two years. And it goes without saying these days, you need a clean credit history. You can’t buy a McMansion or anything. Your loan size is limited by what you can afford. As a general rule of thumb don’t expect to go over $150K.

The seller can pay all of your closing costs or you can get a gift from a family member to pay your closing costs. You can’t buy an investment property-you need to plan to live in the house. And although it’s a terrific product for first time homebuyers, you don’t have to be one to qualify. However, if you are a first time homebuyer, chances are you can fund this loan through Tennessee Housing Development Agency (THDA). That’s a double whammy. You see, THDA offers a fabulous interest rate for first time homebuyers.

So dust off your blue jeans and drive around the county roads with your realtor. You may just find your dream home nestled down at the end of a country lane. Now, wouldn’t that be cool?