This is a practical guide to insulating and draughtproofing your home, as well as improving ventilation. It is a guide to the different kinds of insulation materials available, including loose-fill, blanket and slab insulation, and how to fit them correctly. How to draughtproof your home to eliminate cold air coming through doors, windows, floorboards and letter boxes. It includes techniques for ventilating your home, such as fitting ceiling, window and wall extractor fans, and adding airbricks for extra circulation of air. It shows how to recognize different types of damp, whether from condensation or from penetrating or rising damp, and how to find a remedy. Overcoming common problems such as damp, condensation, dry rot and wet rot. Energy efficiency is an important issue today, and no one wants to waste money by losing heat from their roofs, walls or windows. With this practical guide, you will find out the different ways of insulating doors, windows, floors, walls and roofs, as well as reducing heat loss by protecting your home against currents of air and preventing condensation by adequate ventilation.

This is a practical instructive guide to building shelves and storage facilities in your home. How to fit a wide variety of shelves, brackets and shelf supports on walls and in alcoves. It provides storage ideas for different rooms in the house, and how to make useful projects such as a double shelf wall unit. It includes woodwork projects for more advanced do-it-yourselfers, such as a folding magazine rack, a white oak bookshelf and a sloping cherry wood CD rack. It is a guide to tools, fixtures, nails, screws and drill bits, and advice on which materials to use. It features step-by-step instructions for making freestanding shelving units, cabinets and drawer kits, fitting built-in wardrobes and creating clothes organizers. Whether you want to hide belongings away, store them accessibly or simply want to display them, tailor-made storage is the answer. This book helps you decide what type of storage you need, then sets about showing you how to make it. With inspirational ideas for every type of storage, you will have the satisfaction of making a more efficient and tidy place to live in.

Inside the Android OS is the first comprehensive guide and reference for developers who want to customize and integrate Android into their own embedded devices. Replete with code examples, it encourages you to create your own working code versions as you read -- whether for your own personal insight or for a workplace project in the fast-growing marketplace for non-phone Android devices. G. Blake Meike responds to the real-world needs of embedded and IoT developers moving to Android, providing indispensable information without becoming obscure or too specialized. Meike teaches through a book-length project that covers everything developers need to know to create their own custom Android service. You'll find approachable yet precise coverage of:

* Why Android is becoming a pervasive embedded platform

* Using Android's four-tier architectural model in embedded devices

* Setting up a build platform, downloading the AOSP source, and building an Android image

* Walking through system startup on a running Android system

* Running native services on embedded systems

* Using Android's Native Development Kit (NDK) and HAL to link interpreted Java with native C/C++ code

* Taking a deep dive into the seminal Zygote application and its Dalvik interpreter

* Quickly building Java system services

* Working with Binder, Android's heart and the root of its security and access control models

* Establishing permissions and access control

* Enabling apps to use the services you've created

* Building SDKs that allow third-party developers to code for your device

* And much more

If you're a software professional who wants to construct or maintain a successful Android-based product, this is the book you've been searching for.

20 years ago, bridge writer Mike Lawrence published a series of short pamphlets for intermediate players with advice on various aspects of bidding and card play. Long unavailable, this material has now been revised, updated, and republished in three anthology volumes, each comprising about 10 of the original booklets. The topics here include: defence, including opening leads, signalling and third hand play, declarer play including endplays, simple squeezes, loser on loser plays, and timing. There is also a general discussion of the mistakes we all make in cardplay but need to avoid. This is the third volume in a three-volume series, 'Mike Lawrence Bridge Tips', based on bridge tips for intermediate players first published twenty years ago.

This is a practical illustrated guide to tiling surfaces in the house, using ceramic, vinyl, cork and lino tiles. It includes expert advice for tiling walls, splashbacks, floors, borders and worktops. It offers detailed information on how to lay a wide range of tiles, including ceramic, quarry, vinyl, lino, cork and mosaic tiles. It includes techniques for preparing surfaces, cutting tiles, and applying grout and adhesive. It covers all the materials and equipment needed for tiling in the home. It includes clear step-by-step photographs, diagrams and charts for instant reference. You can learn effective ways to use tiles creatively for borders, or try hand-made tiles for a dramatic result. For decorating floors, worktops or walls, tiles are the ideal material. This book explains how to achieve the best result with ceramic, as well as vinyl, cork and mosaic tiles. Clear photographs help you every step of the way, from the equipment you need, preparation, cutting, applying adhesive and grouting. Once you have mastered the basics, advice is given on creative designs.

Each chapter takes a principle, helps the reader understand it, and gives examples, plus a quiz on the subject. A great help if you seem to guess right half the time or less when playing the dummy.

This is a practical and useful guide to laying floors for any room in the house, using a variety of different materials. It includes practical tips for laying floorboards, wood panels, woodstrip, parquet, mosaics, vinyl, lino, cork and carpet. It is a useful guide to choosing the right flooring tools and materials for different rooms in the house. It includes preparation techniques for every surface. It shows how to remove old floor coverings, and how to sand, paint and varnish wooden floorboards. It highlights common flooring problems, such as cracks, uneven surfaces and damp, and how to solve them. It includes decorative variations, such as distressed floorboards, rubber flooring and chequerboard effects. It shows techniques such as fitting around corners. The right design and style of flooring can dramatically change the appearance of any room. This book will help you choose appropriate materials for your floors that will harmonize with other furnishings, as well as advise on preparation, the equipment you will need and the technique to lay your particular floor. Clear step-by-step photographs show you the way.

20 years ago, bridge writer Mike Lawrence published a series of short pamphlets for intermediate players with advice on various aspects of bidding and card play. Long unavailable, this material has now been revised, updated, and republished in three anthology volumes, each comprising about 10 of the original booklets. Mike Lawrence is acknowledged as one of the two or three best writers in the world for intermediate players, and there will be a ready audience for this series in its new format. The second volume in a three-volume series, 'Mike Lawrence Bridge Tips', based on bridge tips for intermediate players first published twenty years ago. All the material has been completely revised and updated.

With step-by-step practical techniques and projects, this book is aimed at everyone, from the novice home decorator to the experienced enthusiast. It includes practical instruction on home maintenance and repairs, painting, paperhanging, tiling, laying floor coverings, bedding, soft furnishings, curtains, insulation, storage, and building features and fittings. Every home needs repainting, updating or repair work to keep it looking fresh, stylish and in good condition. This book explains how best to assess the existing decor and condition of your home, and how to plan the work and choose new decorating materials. There are chapters on every room of the house, each with step-by-step photographs and instructions, charts, checklists and explanatory diagrams. Every technique is easy to follow, and there is also expert advice on materials, tools and equipment. Aimed at everyone from the novice home decorator to the experienced enthusiast, the book will help you to make the very best of your home.

This is the definitive book on the oldest - and most useful - convention in bridge, the takeout double. Originally published in 1994 (Magnus Books, 978 0963753 31 1), this book quickly became recognized as a 'must-read' for any would-be bridge expert, and has never been out of print. Now, almost twenty years later, the author has revised and updated the text to take into account modern developments in competitive bidding, one of the most rapidly changing parts of the game, not least in the new and varied uses of doubles.

Originally published in 1989, this book quickly became recognized as a 'must-read' for any would-be bridge expert, and has never been out of print. Now, more than 20 years later, the author has revised, updated and expanded it to take into account modern developments in the theory and practice of competitive bidding.

Originally published in 1980, this book quickly became recognized as a 'must-read' for any would-be bridge expert, and has never been out of print. Now, almost 30 years later, the author has revised, updated and expanded it to take into account modern developments in the theory and practice of competitive bidding. Anyone serious about improving their game needs to own a copy of this book. Alfred Sheinwold's review of the original edition: 'If you read only one bridge book this year, this should be it.'

Douglas Kane, an American politician and economist, offers readers a straightforward, personal account of what it is like to run for and hold public office-the demands, conflicts, temptations, and rewards created by political, economic, and social forces. Throughout the book, Kane references Illinois and Wisconsin politics. The campaigns of his wife, Kathleen Vinehout, and her years in the Wisconsin senate show that the centralization of political power, the structure of campaign organizations, and the policy decisions that Kane experienced as an Illinois legislator are not unique to any one state. Our Politics is different from the typical political memoir in that its primary focus is on the forces that have shaped and continue to shape politics. Kane outlines personal and public perceptions of politics and politicians in Illinois; explores the fundamental contradictions underlying the concept of democracy and how they must be dealt with by every politician; and describes the essential nature of politics and how and why the political power structure has shifted. He explores the personal experiences of being a legislator: how a politician decides which way to vote; their relationship to party leaders, fellow legislators, the governor, and voters in their district; and the possibility of change, how it might happen, and the steps that candidates, political parties, activists, and others might take to better our politics with results more to our liking. While many journalists record politics from the outside, and numerous political memoirs focus on personalities and what happened to whom and when, this book gives an insider's view of politics at the level of state government. This book is not about those politicians but about our politics, which together we have created and together we must deal with.

The end of the Cold War has affected debates about maritime strategy, doctrine, operations and technology. What has emerged is an intellectual reconsideration of the theory and practice of maritime power. This volume focuses on the implications for western navies of shifts in strategic thinking, maritime doctrine, technology and naval roles.

The end of the Cold War has affected debates about maritime strategy, doctrine, operations and technology. What has emerged is an intellectual reconsideration of the theory and practise of maritime power. This volume addresses these themes in a systematic and over-arching way, and brings together contributions from internationally renowned scholars. It focuses on the implications for western navies of shifts in strategic thinking, maritime doctrine, technology and naval roles.