Yard (land)

A yard is an area of land immediately adjacent to a building or a group of buildings. It may be either enclosed or open. The word comes from the same linguistic root as the word garden and has many of the same meanings.

A number of derived words exist, usually tied to a particular usage or building type. Some may be archaic or in lesser use now. Examples of such words are: courtyard, barnyard, hopyard, graveyard, churchyard, brickyard, prison yard, railyard, junkyard and stableyard.

Word origin

The word "yard" came from the Anglo-Saxon geard, compare "garden" (German Garten), Old Norse garðr, Russian gorod = "town" (originally as an "enclosed fortified area"), Latin hortus = "garden" (hence horticulture and orchard), from Greek χορτος (hortos) = "farm-yard", "feeding-place", "fodder", (from which "hay" originally as grown in an enclosed field). "Girdle," and "court" are other related words from the same root.

In areas where farming is an important part of life, a yard is also a piece of enclosed land for farm animals or other agricultural purpose, often referred to as a cattleyard, sheepyard, stockyard, etc. In Australia portable or mobile yards are sets of transportable steel panels used to build temporary stockyards.

Yard (sailing)

A yard is a spar on a mast from which sails are set. It may be constructed of timber or steel or from more modern materials like aluminium or carbon fibre. Although some types of fore and aft rigs have yards, the term is usually used to describe the horizontal spars used on square rigged sails. In addition, for some decades after square sails were generally dispensed with, some yards were retained for deploying wireless (radio) aerials and signal flags.

Parts of the yard

Note that these terms refer to stretches of the same spar, not to separate component parts.

Controlling the yard

The yard can rotate around the mast to allow the direction of the vessel to be changed relative to the wind. When running directly downwind the yards are 'squared', pointing perpendicular to the ship's centre line. As the ship is steered closer to the wind the yards are braced round using the braces. When further rotation is obstructed by other bits of rigging (typically the shrouds), the yard is said to be braced "hard round" or "sharp up", as in "sharp up to port". This angle (normally about 60 degrees) limits how close to the wind a square rigged ship can sail.

Cubic yard

A cubic yard is an Imperial / U.S. customary (non-SI non-metric) unit of volume, used in the United States, Canada, and the UK. It is defined as the volume of a cube with sides of 1 yard (3 feet, 36 inches, 0.9144 metres) in length.

Symbols

There is no universally agreed symbol but the following are used:

Cubic yard per second

There is no universally agreed symbol but the following are used:

Cubic yard per minute

There is no universally agreed symbol but the following are used:

Conversions

See also

Windows DreamScene

Windows DreamScene is a utility that allows videos and .gif and other optimized animations to be used as desktop wallpapers. It is one of the Windows Ultimate Extras. Prior to its official announcement, DreamScene was rumored to be in creation under the names Motion Desktop and Borealis. After several months of testing, the final version was released on September 25, 2007.

Rendered content included with DreamScene (such as an animated realization of the Windows Aurora background) was produced by Stardock, while photographic content was provided by the Discovery Channel. Third-party video content in MPEG or WMV format may also be used. In addition, AVI files can be played by altering the file extension.

One of the purported advantages of DreamScene over previous methods of desktop animation is that it makes use of the GPU for display instead of the CPU, leaving the latter free to perform user tasks. To what extent this is achieved is not specified. When a full-screen program is run, such as a game or any window that is maximized, the video will automatically stop since the video will not be seen; this means it uses less GPU and CPU. The video can also be stopped manually. Content encoders need to strive for a balance between compression and file size; decompression requires the CPU, but larger files take up more memory and may cause the disk to be accessed more frequently.

Dream (musical)

Dream is a musical revue based on the songs of Johnny Mercer. The book is by Jack Wrangler and co-producer Louise Westergaard. The show ran on Broadway in 1997.

Production

The revue opened on Broadway on April 3, 1997 at the Royale Theatre after twenty-four previews. Directed and choreographed by Wayne Cilento, the costumes are by Ann Hould-Ward, lighting by Ken Billington and sets by David Mitchell. The cast featured Lesley Ann Warren, John Pizzarelli, Margaret Whiting, Jessica Molaskey and Brooks Ashmanskas.

It closed on July 6, 1997 after 109 performances.

Songs

All lyrics by Johnny Mercer

Awards and nominations

References

External links

Dream (TV series)

Dream (Hangul: 드림) is a 2009 South Korean television series that follows the lives of a sports agent and K-1 fighters. Starring Joo Jin-mo, Kim Bum and Son Dam-bi (in her acting debut), it aired on SBS from July 27 to September 29, 2009 on Mondays and Tuesdays at 21:55 for 20 episodes.

Plot

Nam Jae-il is a successful sports agent with some famous clients, but when one of his baseball stars gets involved in a drug case, he loses everything. But when the miserable Nam befriends former pickpocket and aspiring K-1 fighter Lee Jang-seok, and tomboyish taebo instructor Park So-yeon, he decides to regain his glory by making Lee a star.

Cast