This post isn't about adventures or crazy stories. And you won't learn how to convert a van neither. This article is just me and my thoughts.
Now, one and a half years after moving to Mexico I can say it was the best decision I've ever made! And it definitely paid off to take the risk.
To be down here in México with my soulmate Peter and my beautiful dogs Mérida and Ikarus, is probably the best thing that ever happened to me!! It has opened up a whole new world for me! I met so many amazing and interesting people! And now I'm getting the chance to do what I love. Traveling around the globe and being creative! Finally for the first time in my life everything feels absolutely right!


This pretty much sums up my feelings about gardening. As a kid, I happily planted succulents donated by neighbors thinning their beds, and bought more with my allowance. I planted vegetables and pulled up a carrot or radish each day to see if they were big enough to eat (needless to say, the eventual harvest was small!). Many years later, when I moved to Claremont in 1982, the first thing I did was look for a garden club to join. Alas, there was none. For the last 30 years, I've wished there was one, and now there is! Thanks to a group of enthusiastic volunteers, the Sustainable Claremont Garden Club emerged from the soil, as it were, in September. At the first meeting, over 60 people from Claremont and the surrounding area came to hear Bob Perry talk about designing waterwise residential gardens. This is a topic near and dear to my heart. If we are to have sustainable gardens, we need to reduce water use, but there is no reason that a waterwise garden has to be covered in gravel or include only local native plants (although I like these very much). Creative planning can let us "have our cake and eat it too" as it were. However, for most people, some help from experts and other gardening enthusiasts is needed to do it well and this is the intent of Garden Club talks. We are also arranging field trips. Our first was to two waterwise gardens, and the second was to the seed bank and nursery at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden (where you can buy plants at their Fall Planting Festival 11/3/12). Both of these were lots of fun, informative, and very well-attended!
So, how about feeding the daffodils referenced above? Have you ever wondered why civilization isn't buried in dead and dying plant matter? Why it doesn't just accumulate and suffocate us all? Fortunately for us, a host of organisms breaks down dead stuff and recycles the goodies, replenishing the soil. Most people rake and prune and weed and toss all this organic matter in the trash, but it's pretty easy to decompose this stuff on site and use it as a natural fertilizer in your garden. Although composting can seem like magic to the uninitiated, we plan to "demystify" it at the November 14, 2012 Garden Club meeting. You can learn how to get the most out of your kitchen and garden waste, including how to use worms to do the heavy lifting for you—or share your expertise if you are already a dab hand at converting waste into garden gold! We'll take a trip to some working compost and vermiculture setups later in the month.
Man does not live by daffodils alone tho, so future topics will cover pruning, vegetable gardening, irrigation, local native plants, and more. We hope the Garden Club will provide all kinds of help and a place for gardeners to meet and schmooze and exchange information, as well as swap plants. Judging by the number of questions at the first two meetings, this is definitely a niche needing to be filled! There is a talk followed by Q and A and a break for refreshments (such as yummy acorn-shaped cookies), followed by time for members to ask each other for information on various and sundry topics: last meeting these included a request for info about good landscape installers, suggestions for a drought-tolerant hedge plant that would go with blue hibiscus, and what, if anything, to do about a plethora of spiders in the garden. Then there's time to chat in small groups and peruse the offerings on the swap table, which have ranged from packets of squash seeds to strawberry sets to a 2 gallon Toyon.
The Garden Club is free and open to everyone with an interest in any kind of gardening, from food to ornamental. Meetings are at 7pm on the second Wednesday of most months at the Napier Center, 660 Avery Rd, in Pilgrim Place. Field trips are usually on the last weekend of the month. You are cordially and enthusiastically invited to join us (and to bring offerings for the swap table if you have any).


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Document accessibility software automates remediation and increases compliance
By Ernie Crawford
Visual impairment or "legal blindness" affects a sizable 4.2 million Americans. That number is expected to double by 2029, when the youngest baby boomers turn 65. As more Americans require assistive technology to access government information -- tax documents, benefits and other important documents -- government agencies must meet rising demand to serve this population, improve user experience and avoid legal action for failing to comply with accessibility requirements.
In this two-part series, we'll explore how document accessibility software allows governments to make any document, delivered via any channel, accessible to those who are blind or partially sighted. This first article will focus on the process of making transactional documents -- such as tax bills, account notices and payment confirmations -- accessible. We will wrap up the series with a look at static documents -- those items often housed on a website like tax codes, building codes, rate sheets, and forms -- as well as where document accessibility technology is headed in the future.
Given how many Americans depend on assistive technology to access important information, providing accessible documents is unquestionably the right thing to do. For many government agencies, it's also the law. Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act requires all government entities and contractors that receive federal funding to comply with its provisions and provide documents to constituents in a form they can utilize. For individuals who are blind or partially sighted, accessible formats may include PDF or HTML5, braille, large print, e-text and audio files.
While most government agencies already comply with these requirements, the Department of Justice has stepped up prosecutions against non-compliant organizations. In addition, private litigation for discrimination is on the rise. Costs of non-compliance include legal expenses, fines and loss of federal funding; some courts provide timelines for compliance that can increase these costs. Given the high price of non-compliance, government agencies have good reason to voluntarily adopt measures before the DOJ or a constituent takes them to court.
Non-compliance can be expensive, but using manual processes to tag and reformat documents for accessibility is also time-consuming and labor-intensive, making compliance a monumental challenge for agencies that lack the budget or personnel to manage thousands of documents, some of which run to hundreds of pages. Adopting accessibility software and automating processes can increase compliance by dramatically reducing the amount of time and effort it takes to convert and remediate documents.
So, what exactly is this technology and how does it work? When we talk about document accessibility solutions, we are referring to software that converts documents into media that can be consumed by individuals who are blind, partially sighted or have cognitive impairments. The process starts with a template and set of business rules that create an accessible version of the original document. For PDF and HTML documents, this involves tagging the content for identification by assistive technology. The next step is to properly define elements such as headings, list elements, table and landing page links. Agencies must also correctly set the reading order so that it makes sense to the reader and add alternate text to graphics so that people with visual impairments can understand the images others see. Another important step is to mark as "artifacts" any elements not needed by the recipient, so they will be ignored by assistive technology.
Worried about security? Document accessibility solutions are no more vulnerable to attack than other software. Typically, the accessibility software runs behind the firewall and is a part of either the document creation process or in the portal that serves up the documents to users.
However, the real benefits of document accessibility software become apparent when considering the amount of time it takes -- days or even weeks -- to remediate documents manually. Government agencies that fail to provide accessible documents in a timely manner can be sued for discrimination, so these delays can be particularly costly. Furthermore, manual remediation itself can be expensive, ranging from $5 to $30 per page, depending on the complexity of the document. Factoring in the high cost of non-compliance, the expense of manual remediation and the time it takes to do it, adopting document accessibility software is well worth the investment.
Although this technology has significant advantages over manual remediation, agencies must still build templates for each type of document, which can take anywhere from several hours to several weeks. They may also experience a very slight increase in the time it takes to process documents (approximately 50-100 milliseconds per document). In most cases, this increase can be mitigated by remediating documents simultaneously with other standard document assembly processes. Where concurrent processing isn't possible, batch processing that occurs offline can minimize disruptions to the workflow.
When selecting document accessibility software, agencies should look for a solution with a graphical user interface that is optimized to create business rules for converting documents into accessible formats. The software should provide automation capabilities to simplify complex field identification and table layout and trigger business rules. It should also allow users to create rules for adding alternate text and setting the reading order.
With demand for accessible documents expected to double within this decade, government agencies can meet the needs of constituents and avoid costly penalties by voluntarily remediating their documents. Adopting document accessibility software that automates the process can greatly reduce the amount of time it takes to remediate documents. More importantly, making documents accessible is the right thing to do for millions of Americans who rely on this information to manage their affairs and live independent lives.
Ernie Crawford is president/CEO and founder of Crawford Technologies.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl