As you can see in the picture above, he put a lego on the front of the cap and a lego on his camera strap. This way the lens cap easily snaps on to the strap when not attached to the lens for quick and simple storage. Another alternative? Velcro?but it's not as fun.
Use Lego To Keep Your Lens Cap Safe | DIY Photography
Melissa Rycroft mega millions Cyber Monday Deals 2012 Sasha McHale Boy Meets World elizabeth taylor cam newton
Despite a historic low in interest rates (some as low as 3% on a 30 year fixed), the number of new loan applications is lower than you would expect. ?Core Logic, a mortgage data firm, is reporting?an uptick in refinancings in 2012, yet the number is lower than in past booms.
From their?January Pulse?report:
CoreLogic?(NYSE: CLGX), a leading provider of information, analytics and business services, today released its January MarketPulse report. The report indicates the CoreLogic Home Price Index (HPI?), which is based on repeat sales, increased 7.5 percent in 2012, the largest increase since 2006. In 2013, CoreLogic projects home prices to rise 6 percent due to greater affordability fueling steady demand, a lower level of real estate owned (REO) sales and a low inventory of unsold homes.
Despite improvements and a positive outlook for the coming year, uncertainty remains on the impact of qualified mortgage and qualified residential mortgage requirements.
Kiplinger?reports that part of it is due to people feeling like they just refinanced and are content with a 5%. ?Also:
But a lot of borrowers face serious obstacles to lowering their rate. Six years after the housing bust, mortgage lenders are still skittish about making loans. Even the biggest banks, now enjoying record profits, worry that if their loans default, the agencies that guarantee them?Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration?will find errors in underwriting and force the lenders to buy back the loans and swallow any losses.
And as we?ve?mentioned before, there will be new rules and regulations for mortgage loan approval. ?It?s this uncertainty of what the Government may do that is leading to mortgage companies creating stiffer requirements of their own. ?And despite increases in home prices, approximately 20% of all homeowners are still underwater and can?t?refinance unless they qualify for the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) or FHA Streamline.
So what?s this mean for you?
Also from the Kiplinger?report on Yahoo Homes:
You?ll need at least 5% to 10% equity in your home to get past the application process. (You can find a rough estimate of the market value of your home at Zillow.com. Even better, ask a real estate agent, who may get your business down the road, to provide a market valuation of your home based on recent comparable sales.) To make a refi worthwhile, you must keep your house long enough for the savings in monthly payments to cover the closing costs (closing costs average 2% of the loan amount, according to Bankrate.com). Beef up your credit profile if you can, and prepare to fork over heaps of documentation.
Also, double check your credit report and score from all three reporting agencies. ?As we talked about prior, it?s a good idea to?clean your report?(if needed) at least 3-6 months before you apply for a loan so that all of the changes can have time to filter through.
More from the Kiplinger report:
To meet standards set for refis by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, lenders expect you to have a FICO credit score of at least 660 to 680, a housing-debt-to-income ratio of no more than 28% and a total debt-to-income ratio of 36% or less. Your likelihood of nabbing the best rate and lowest closing costs goes up with a high credit score, an unblemished credit history, low debt and a high percentage of equity in your home. It also helps if the home is your primary residence, you take a shorter term (15 or 20 years) and you have sufficient financial reserves.
One thing that could disqualify you immediately is your mortgage payment history, says Ramez Fahmy, of Caliber Funding, in Bethesda, Md. For example, recent mortgage payments that were late by 30 days or more will give a lender pause. If you have a second mortgage or line of credit, that lender will have to agree to ?resubordinate? its right to repayment behind the new first-mortgage lender if you default.
If your credit is less than stellar, it pays to check out smaller banks, credit unions and mortgage brokers who can help you find a loan program. Multiple credit checks won?t diminish your credit score if they occur within a three-week period, but Nicol suggests that you add a buffer by completing the task in two weeks.
And the other major key will be your home valuation. ?We talked before about how to improve your appraisal. ?If you don?t, you can look into PMI. ?We will discuss this and how to refinance when your home is underwater in a future post. ?Please post any specific questions so we can be sure to address them.
?
Source: http://www.landoverblog.com/the-new-rules-of-refinancing/
taio cruz taio cruz Winter Olympics 2014 powerball numbers freddie mercury Horshack Beady Eye
A report that showed the U.S. economy unexpectedly contracted in the fourth quarter cut short oil's first foray above $98 a barrel in four months on Wednesday.
Benchmark oil for March delivery was little changed in afternoon trading, down 8 cents to $97.50 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It rose as high as $98.24 in the morning but fell back after the government said the U.S. economy shrank from October through December, the first quarterly drop since 2009.
The government also said that crude oil supplies rose by 5.9 million barrels last week, more than twice what analysts expected, as imports increased. The rise in inventories could also indicate less demand. Still, oil maintained some of the momentum that has pushed up the price by about $6 a barrel this year.
The Federal Reserve concludes a two-day meeting later Wednesday. Investors will study the Fed's statement for clues about the outlook for the economy and interest rates.
At the pump, the national average for a gallon of gas jumped 3 cents overnight to reach $3.39 for the first time since Dec. 1.
Brent crude, used to price international varieties of oil, gained 37 cents to $114.73 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange in London.
In other energy futures trading on Nymex:
? Wholesale gasoline rose 6 cents to $3.03 per gallon.
? Natural gas rose 6 cents to $3.32 per 1,000 cubic feet.
? Heating oil was up 5 cents at $3.11 a gallon.
___
Pamela Sampson in Bangkok and Pablo Gorondi in Budapest contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/oil-little-changed-us-economy-contracts-184236542--finance.html
sundance film festival the flintstones etta james ufc on fox evans vs davis fast times at ridgemont high fast times at ridgemont high
As Facebook looks for new ways to make money, it disclosed during its Q4 2012 earnings call today that its Gifts product and promoted user posts functionality accounted for less than $5 million of Facebook’s overall revenue. In fact, these earnings were labeled as revenue “outside of games.” Payments revenue was flat, overall, in the quarter. While this isn’t the worst thing in the world, it does show that Facebook’s slow rollout at the end of last year might have hurt its overall revenue. Slowly rolling it out was the right move for users and its product’s longterm health, but it does look like Gifts didn’t get the Christmas boom that the company had hoped for. When Facebook Gifts launched, our own Josh Constine discussed how the product could eventually earn upwards of $1B annually for the company. When I’ve used the products, I noticed that it’s difficult for people to accept their gifts, especially if they’re not a hardcore Facebook user. We’re told that this is an “early product” so we expect that the user experience will get better, and there will be more types of gifts available this year. We noted that Facebook has put the emphasis on buying someone a gift over leaving a note on someone’s Timeline for their birthday, and that is in hopes of kickstarting the product. It hasn’t happened; people are tight with their wallets and purses. As far as promoted posts from users, it’s something that nobody really understood why Facebook introduced it. It seems odd to want to pay money to “promote” your status update to people who are already your friends. As Facebook’s News Feed gets harder to follow, asking people to pay $7 is a bit of a stretch. To many, this seemed like a test just to see what would happen. [Photo credit: Flickr]Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/0TxNMq50yTY/
bachelor pad bachelor pad Green Coffee Bean Extract september 11 9/11 Memorial 911 masterchef
It looks like you can soon expect some changes to the way photos and videos are handled on Twitter. The company announced today that it's begun rolling out a new feature that will let you view a larger version of a photo without going to a separate page (as pictured above), as well as another addition that will see videos from Vine, YouTube, Vimeo and others added to media galleries. It's also slightly tweaked the conversation view to display more replies.
Source: Twitter
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/y2MnXOPcjWc/
etta james ufc on fox evans vs davis fast times at ridgemont high fast times at ridgemont high soylent green phil davis
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Women carrying BRCA mutations tied to breast and ovarian cancer may hit menopause a few years earlier than other women, according to a new study.
Doctors already discuss with those women whether they want immediate surgery to remove their ovaries and breasts, or if they want to start a family first and hold off on ovary removal.
"Now they have an additional issue to deal with," said Dr. Mitchell Rosen, who worked on the new study at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center.
An estimated one in 600 U.S. women carries the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutation.
Those mutations greatly increase the risk of breast and ovarian cancer. According to the National Cancer Institute, a woman's chance of getting breast cancer at some point in her life increases from 12 to 60 percent with a BRCA mutation, and ovarian cancer from 1.4 percent to between 15 and 40 percent.
What has been less well studied is whether those mutations also affect a woman's egg stores and her chance of getting pregnant.
For the new study, the researchers surveyed 382 California women who carried the BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation and another 765 women who weren't known carriers. The study team focused specifically on women who went through menopause naturally - and not those who had their ovaries removed before menopause.
Women with the genetic mutations said they'd stopped getting their periods at age 50, on average, compared to age 53 for other women. The youngest natural menopause, at age 46, came for women with a BRCA mutation who were also heavy smokers, Rosen and his colleagues reported Tuesday in the journal Cancer.
Their study only included white women, so it's unknown whether the findings apply to other racial and ethnic groups. It's also not clear whether mutation carriers had any trouble conceiving - although it's more likely, the researchers said.
"The earlier you go into menopause, the more likely you are to not be able to have kids," Rosen told Reuters Health.
?HUGE BURDEN'
Ellen Matloff, director of cancer genetic counseling at the Yale Cancer Center in New Haven, Connecticut, said she didn't want BRCA mutation carriers to be overly worried about the new findings.
Those women are already advised to get their ovaries taken out by age 40, which puts a "huge burden" on them to find a partner and start a family, she said.
"This study does not mean that you can't have children, and it doesn't mean that you have less time than you thought you did," Matloff, who wasn't involved in the research, told Reuters Health.
"I don't think anything I read in this study would suggest that (mutation carriers) need to move their plans up."
Because past studies haven't suggested high rates of infertility in carriers - and her clinic also hasn't noticed that trend - Matloff said more research will be needed to confirm these findings and their impact, if any.
Almost all women who carry the mutations have their ovaries removed surgically before going through natural menopause anyway, she added.
Still, Rosen said, BRCA mutation carriers should be counseled about fertility issues along with cancer ones.
Freezing eggs or embryos is one option for women who are worried about infertility, he said. It also gives doctors a chance to test embryos to see if they're positive for the genetic mutations.
"Any BRCA carrier that was coming in, I would really encourage it," Rosen said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/Vn9T8b Cancer, online January 29, 2013.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/cancer-gene-mutation-linked-earlier-menopause-205024862.html
gladys knight private practice deion sanders creutzfeldt jakob disease the lone ranger yu darvish mad cow
While thoes of you in New Orleans are dealing with all the fun that come with Super Bowl, I will be in Memphis (most likely freezing) and participating in the Blues Society's Internation Blues Challenge.
The 2013 International Blues Challenge will be the 29th year of Blues musicians from around the world competing for cash, prizes, and industry recognition. The Blues Foundation will present the 29th International Blues Challenge January 29-February 2, 2013 in Memphis, TN. The world's largest gathering of Blues acts represents an international search by The Blues Foundation and its Affiliated Organizations for the Blues Band and Solo/Duo Blues Act ready to take their act to the international stage. In 2012, 119 bands and 86 solo/duo acts entered, filling the clubs up and down Beale Street for the quarter-finals on Wednesday and Thursday, the semi-finals on Friday and the finals at the Orpheum Theater on Saturday. We will have at least that many in 2013.
Have a super weekend and I will see you next week
?
Source: http://www.wwoz.org/blog/213119?utm_source=wwozfeed&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feeds
peyton manning broncos mexico city earthquake stand your ground law dancing with the stars season 14 david garrard michael bay ninja turtles san antonio weather
