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• Recommended approval of the request of Syd Hedrick for a zone change from R-3 Two- and- Three-Family Residential District to a relatively new single-family residential zoning classification for Clarksville — R-6 District.
The request encompasses multiple parcels south of Crossland Avenue, north and south of West High Street and west of Charlotte Street.
Hedrick told planners, "R-3 zoning is an antiquated zoning which is ambiguous as to its use regarding single-family, duplex and triplex.
"Some of the lots meet the criteria for triplex, some for duplex and the rest, single-family," Hedrick said. "Although there is a duplex nearby, the area has a single-family residential feel.
"The R-6 zoning will help to engender urban life, especially when the (city of Clarksville's) Upland Trail is completed and the residents can use the amenities to their fullest potential," he said.
• Recommended approval of the request of Jeffrey Morrison for a zone change from C-2 General Commercial District to R-2 District, for property at the northwest corner of the River Road and Morrison Court intersection.
Morrison says his daughter wants to build a house there. The County Commission has final authority on the request.
• Recommended approval of the request of Gary Harmon and Ben Stanley for a zone change from RM-1 Single Family Mobile Home Residential District to R-4 District, for parcels south of Britton Springs Road, north and west of Center Road. The County Commission has final authority.
• Recommended approval of the request of Donnie and Debbie Plaster for a zone change from AG District to R-1A Single Family Residential District, for a parcel fronting on the south frontage of Trough Springs Road, 460 feet east of the Trough Springs and Edinburgh Way intersection. The County Commission has final authority.
In the year that marks the worldwide celebration of the 250th anniversary of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s birth, audiences of the 16th Credomatic Music Festival can be sure this year’s concerts will include compositions by the Austrian music genius. According to festival director and founder Jordi Antich, though the festival will not adhere exclusively to a Mozart theme, his music will be “the thread that unites almost all concerts” at the event sponsored by financial institution Credomatic.
The annual festival, which brings well-known national and international musicians to different venues across the country, will run Aug. 4-20 this year.
Antich told journalists during a press conference at one of the festival’s venues, Hotel Monterrey Del Mar in Playa Esterillos, on the central Pacific coast.
The performers from 10 European, South American and North American countries will include the Moscow Trio, an ensemble of violin, cello and piano, the Clair Obscur saxophone quartet from Germany and Camerata Klaipeda chamber orchestra from Lithuania, among other talented groups and soloists.
National artists this year include three violinists whose careers have taken them outside the country: Luis Diego Piedra, who lives in the U.S. city of Chicago; Caterina Tellini, who lives in Mexico; and Marcela Chavarría, who resides in the Netherlands. They will be incorporated to Divertimento Orchestra, led by Swiss conductor Jan Dobrzelewski.
Antich referred to the National Theater in downtown San José as the central axis of the festival, describing it as a European theater amid the chaotic beauty of the tropics.
However, he said he is proud that this year the festival has moved down the country’s central Pacific coast, with two new host locations: Esterillos’ Monterrey Del Mar and, farther south, Hotel Cristal Ballena, near the popular beach destination of Dominical.
“Little by little the festival is covering more territory around the country,” he said.
In the Central Valley, concerts will be held at sites including the National Biodiversity Institute’s INBioparque and Hotel Tirol, both in Heredia, north of the capital, and the Gran Hotel Costa Rica, in downtown San José. Free concerts will be held at the churches of San Ramón and Grecia, both in the Alajuela province, northwest of San José, and for the first time at a San José church, in a southern suburb at the Church of Hatillo 6.
Outside the Central Valley, concerts will be held at the luxurious Hotel Villa Caletas, near Jacó on the central Pacific coast; Hacienda Pinilla, in the northwestern province of Guanacaste; and Hotel Villa Alegre in Tamarindo, also in Guanacaste.
Although venues are luxurious, one of the goals of the festival is to make the music accessible to all Costa Ricans, Antich said, pointing out that concerts will either be free or modestly priced. Tickets at the National Theater will cost ¢2,000-11,000 ($3.90-21.40), while INBioparque will charge ¢5,000 ($9.75). According to Antich, hotel prices will vary and may include package deals with meals and overnight stays. See the Calendar section for a full listing of concert times and locations.
The father of Calgary Flames forward Jiri Hudler passed away in the Czech Republic on Monday.
Jiri Hudler Sr. died at the age of 50 in Olomouc, a town roughly 175 miles south and east of Prague. According to a team release, his funeral is scheduled for Friday. A report in the Calgary Herald on Tuesday indicated there is no timetable for his son's return to the team.
"Our thoughts and prayers are with Jiri and his family, and as he grieves his loss our Flames family will be here to support him," said Flames general manager Jay Feaster.
The younger Hudler bolted Detroit as an unrestricted free agent and was signed by the Flames in July to a four-year deal worth $16 million.
Hudler posted 25 goals and 25 assists in 81 games for the Red Wings last season, adding two goals in five playoff contests.
The 29-year-old veteran had spent his entire eight-year NHL career in the Motor City, recording 87 goals and 214 points in 409 regular-season games. He contributed 12 goals and 33 points over 66 postseason tilts, winning a Stanley Cup with the franchise in 2008.
Calgary opens its truncated 2013 season on Sunday, hosting the San Jose Sharks.
Two months after unleashing Windows 8 upon the world, Microsoft’s back with the latest step toward the release of the company’s next operating system: the Windows 8 Release Preview. The new version was supposed to be released the first week in June, but Microsoft is apparently ahead of its development schedule — though that hasn’t stopped the leaks from coming fast and furious. The Release Preview isn’t nearly the upgrade the Consumer Preview was, but it’s a clear move toward a stable, feature-complete operating system. We got to spend some time with the Release Preview on a Samsung Series 9 laptop, checking out the new features and trying to figure out whether Windows 8 will be equally well suited to touch and non-touch devices.
The basic look and feel of Windows 8 hasn’t changed — even Aero is still present, though it’ll be gone before RTM — but performance has definitely been improved. There weren’t major problems with the Consumer Preview, but it now feels like things move a little smoother and a beat faster, especially as you flip between apps.
Multiple monitor support has been improved, too, and as we flipped through a few screens or disconnected and reconnected a tablet things worked perfectly and automatically. Apps can now be opened and closed on any monitor, and hot corners are extended to all your screens.
From a hardware standpoint, we were curious to see how Windows 8 does on a device without touch capabilities. We’d primarily used the Consumer Preview on tablets, and spending some time using a mouse and keyboard showed us how much time Microsoft has spent making the OS work well with any input — there are keyboard shortcuts and hot corners everywhere you look. The company’s also working with Synaptics and other companies on creating software drivers that add some of the Windows 8 gestures to a laptop’s trackpad, so that if you swipe from the right on your trackpad it’ll still bring up the Charms menu. Our device was running an alpha build of the drivers, and there were plenty of bugs and problems, but having the gestures available made it much easier to switch from a tablet to a laptop.
The gestures can be hard to figure out, though, and using Windows 8 is a little clunky until you know them. So we asked Microsoft reps how the company would help new users figure out Windows 8, and the answer was essentially that they’re working on it. Gabe Aul, a director of program management for Windows, said that the company’s research and testing showed that within an hour, most people (intentionally or otherwise) figured out most of the gestures, and even those that didn’t were able to navigate the OS without any trouble.
The other frustrating thing about Windows 8 is how often we’re still forced to jump between the Metro interface and the standard Desktop look, because a setting or an app only ran in Desktop mode. The onus for solving that, of course, lies with developers, who will be called upon to build the Metro equivalents of everything from Notepad to Photoshop to Diablo III. The store expanded today alongside Release Preview, and we got to take a look at a few new apps ahead of time, like drink-making app Cocktail Flow, which gives you a database of beautiful and clever drink recipes. Wikipedia also built a Metro app, which is really beautiful and intuitive — you can also search Wikipedia from anywhere, which is pretty great. The full store just went live today, and there are plenty more Metro apps to wade through in Release Preview; all are currently free, too.
Microsoft’s Bing team also created Sports, Travel, and News apps, Flipboard-like Metro apps that style text for your particular screen, offer big images, and make it easy to flip through a lot of content. The apps look great, with easy sorting by category, news source, or your favorite team. They’re solid examples of how Metro apps should work and look, and should be good examples for developers to follow.
Most of the core apps haven’t really been changed beyond some stability and reliability improvements. The Photos app has a new splash screen, with a big image and icons for your various albums — Windows 8 continues to be all about full-screen content. You can now pin a particular inbox, so you can get notifications for that particular account on the Start Screen. The People app has also been changed a bit, so you can now see a Facebook-style feed of what your friends are up to.
Zune Pass also now comes integrated into the Music app, which adds a nice subscription music service to the device — you get 30 days free when you first install Windows 8. Since Microsoft is clearly phasing out the Zune branding, we can’t help but wonder if this is the Woodstock music service we’d heard about, but at least until E3 it remains a Zune device. You can play Zune music, along with videos or photos, on your Xbox through the Xbox Companion app, though the app’s not installed by default on this version.
Windows 8 Release Preview feels very close to a finished product. Microsoft assured us that there are plenty of surprises left for the final, RTM version of the operating system, but even in its current state it feels like something you could install and use full-time. It’s fast and stable, and with the store open has plenty of new apps for users to explore. There are still some kinks to work out — we don’t ever want to be taken to Desktop unless we go there on purpose — but it’s clear that Windows 8 isn’t far from ready for prime time.
Vivendi Universal is struggling through a financial storm. Big loans are coming due. Assets are on the block. Who's running what isn't exactly clear. Blustery CEO Jean-Marie Messier got the ax. His successor is looking to stop the bleeding.
But deep inside the company, the TV unit is humming along under the guidance of a Briton who has been keeping a low profile. "It hasn't felt like a storm from where we sit," says Universal Television Group Chairman Michael Jackson in a rare interview in his Manhattan office. "Sometimes it feels like a comic opera. But we get on with our jobs and make progress."
Progress indeed. "Michael is doing a fine job in every area," says Jackson's boss, Vivendi Universal Entertainment Chairman Barry Diller. "USA is back, Sci Fi is achieving its highest ratings, and Universal Television has more projects on the air than ever before."
and Dead Zone. After the loss of pro wrestling and a string of original-programming flops, USA was deflated. Now, prime time ratings are up single digits. More importantly, USA has its image back, with advertisers and producers interested in doing business.
over 10 consecutive weeknights (two hours a night). The net's prime time ratings are at all-time highs, up 29% in October compared with the year before and up 13% in the third quarter.
"The product has improved. The sales organization has improved. The perception has improved," says Andrew Donchin, vice president and director of national broadcast at Carat North America.
Diller lured Jackson here from the UK, where he headed Channel Four, to run USA Entertainment. When Vivendi acquired USA Entertainment for $10 billion last May, Jackson took the helm of the newly created UTG. In addition to USA, Sci Fi and Universal Television, UTG operates domestic and international syndication units, the Sundance Channel and a brace of digital cable networks.
Universal Television, cobbled together from Vivendi's merger with Seagram and the subsequent acquisition of USA Entertainment, is a well-armed operation. It boasts television studios (Universal Network Television and Reveille), USA and Sci Fi cables nets, digital networks, a syndication operation, and an international distribution arm. And across the Universal lot, corporate cousin Universal Studios offers its vast library and the promise of new releases.
Simply put, Jackson says, "being part of something bigger has been great."
ticks all the boxes," he says.
also touch multiple UTG bases. It is produced by Universal Network Television, and, after premiering on NBC, episodes are repurposed on USA Network.
Jackson says creative deals like these are the future, regardless of any pieces that come in or out of Universal Television due to the Vivendi troubles. "You have to think clever," he says. "Don't be traditional, be smart."
movie could later be adapted for Sci Fi.
"It's invaluable to have library at your disposal," says Initiative Media's Senior Vice President of Research Stacey Lynn Koerner. "Otherwise, you're working from scratch all the time."
For now, Jackson's newness may be his biggest shortcoming. He has run Universal Television for only about a year now—not long enough for some in the TV industry. In that time, says UBS Warburg media analyst Chris Dixon, "he's been given an enormous amount of air cover with the tremendous amount of noise given to the Vivendi restructuring."
In the U.S. television industry, Jackson is still relatively unknown. "Diller is in the line of fire, and [USA Network President Doug] Herzog gets a lot of the credit," says one cable industry executive. "Jackson is under the radar."
In Britain, Jackson held a string of high-profile posts. Before Channel Four, he headed the BBC1 and also was controller of the BBC2. Recently, his name popped up for the top spot at Britain's ITV network.
Jackson says he's staying put at Universal. And, although American viewers don't always warm to British television, Jackson says they will like his product.
"The art of programming is understanding the brand and understanding the audience," he said. "Great television travels well."
and, in his BBC days, worked on Trading Spaces.
There's no formula for hits, Jackson says. "You have to deliver on something that is genuinely dramatic, funny or watchable."
But Universal Television's future is in limbo. Vivendi is weighing options to sell or spin off the entertainment group.
One possibility, analysts say, could have minority investor Liberty Media taking a bigger stake and folding in some of its assets, like Starz Encore. Diller is certain to hold a major stake in any outcome.
Getting out from under Vivendi could make the business stronger. If Liberty partners its Starz Encore pay service with Universal Studio, USA Network and Sci Fi Channel, "it gives them all more clout, more power and more relationships," said Kaufman Bros. analyst Paul Kim.
Universal execs want to talk about the present, not the future, declining to discussing possible deals.
"Whether it's going to be consolidated [or] restructured, the components of that group—whatever they turn out to be—we're going to make that work," Jackson says.
Universal Studios President Ron Meyer is more pointed about options. "None of them are realities. We have to live with what we have and, at the moment, we're doing that quite well."
At Universal Television, Jackson runs a broad TV empire. The suffering syndication market and negotiation of carriage deals with cable operators are now his problems, too. And like any top executive, Jackson has had to learn how to survey and delegate.
USA chief Herzog, who met Jackson only once before he came to the U.S., says his boss was aptly advertised as a "hands-off guy. He dove in pretty deep when he first got here, but that turned out to be a fact-finding mission. Michael likes to take a 10,000-foot view."
Jackson sometimes surprises. He'll unexpectedly takes tapes home to screen and edit scripts. "He loves TV, and he loves the process," Herzog adds.
Before passing judgment, many are waiting to see Jackson pass two more benchmarks: his second cable upfront market and the next programming slate for USA Network and Sci Fi.
Continued success means we might hear and see more of Jackson. "My job is not to be in the papers every day," he says. "It's to do the job and talk about things when we have a story to tell."
BOULDER — In my Wednesday story about Colorado’s freshman linebacker phenom, Addison Gillam, I wrote that he’s fourth nationally in tackles with 12.3 a game.
What I didn’t have room is the national leader is Keith Smith (16.0) of San Jose State, the same Keith Smith whom new Colorado coach Mike MacIntyre started as a true freshman three years ago and blossomed into argably the best defensive player in the Mountain West.
MacIntyre says Gillam reminds him of Smith.
I asked Gillam about the seemingly easy adjustment he has made from Foothill High in Palo Cedro, Calif., to college.
Did your alma mater make the list?
Fun fact: The University of Alabama is home to one of the top 10 most-winning football teams in NCAA history. Roll tide!
Fun fact: Psst, you just might see the Northern Lights from your dorm room.
Fun fact: Once called the Arkansas State Teacher's College, UCA was historically the number one educator of teachers in the state.
Fun fact: The campus prides itself on its lush greenery, including its orange trees, birds of paradise, and other foliage. Best of all, students are allowed and encouraged to pick from the rose garden when flowers are in bloom.
Fun fact: A skiers paradise, CU Boulder has a dedicated ski bus that transports students from campus to the surrounding slopes of Breckenridge, Beaver Creek, and Vail.
Fun fact: Some of Yale's most notable alumni include George W. Bush, Meryl Streep, Hillary Clinton, Anderson Cooper, and James Franco. Talk about a stacked house.
Fun fact: Three of the original 10 class members who studied at the University of Delaware went on to sign the Declaration of Independence.
Fun fact: At the center of campus is the former luxury hotel, the Ponce de Leon, built in the Spanish Renaissance style.
Fun fact: With the largest contiguous campus in the country, parts of Berry College's 27,000 acres contain hiking, cycling, and horseback riding trails.
Fun fact: Sister school to BYU, located in Provo, Utah, this Hawaii-based institution is owned and operated by the Mormon Church.
Fun fact: One of the most beautiful spots on campus (and the best place to de-stress during finals period) is what's known as "Tree City." It's a 65-acre arboretum and botanical garden featuring gardens, ponds, and trees from around the world.
Fun fact: This prestigious university's motto is "Let knowledge grow from more to more; and so be human life enriched," but you'll probably be more likely to remember the unofficial motto: "Where fun goes to die."
Fun fact: The famous Golden Dome, which tops the university's main building, is gilded in 23.9-karat gold leaf. In fact, the very same same gold flake is used to paint the Notre Dame football helmets.
Fun fact: This tiny liberal arts college about halfway between Iowa City and Des Moines is one of the most selective and best value colleges in the whole country, according to U.S. News & World Report.
Fun fact: The on-campus KSU Dairy Bar is home to what's arguably the best ice cream in the state: the iconic Purple Pride blueberry ice cream (and the recipe is kept secret).
Fun fact: The university's medical school is credited with some pretty amazing breakthroughs, including the first artificial heart transplant and the first successful hand transplant.
Fun fact: True to the Creole culture in the state, LSU's French department offers an undergraduate Cajun studies program.
Fun fact: Bowdoin's mascot is the polar bear, in honor of Robert Peary, a naval officer and alumni who led the first expedition to the North Pole.
Fun fact: If there's a lacrosse capital of the US, it's probably JHU. In fact, the campus is home to the Lacrosse Museum and National Hall of Fame.
Fun fact: This small liberal arts college in New England has an impressive list of alumni, including seven Pulitzer Prize winners, a Nobel Prize Laureate, over 50 US representatives, 18 governors, and former US president James Garfield.
Fun fact: While Ann Arbor is one of America's most beloved college towns today, the University of Michigan was originally in Detroit. It moved to its current location in Ann Arbor in 1837.
Fun fact: Founded by a group of Norwegian immigrants, St. Olaf is named after the patron saint of Norway, and its motto is actually an old Norse war chant.
Fun fact: In 1885, Ole Miss hired Sarah McGehee Isom, making her the first female professor at a co-ed institute for higher learning in the entire South. Today, Mississippi's Center for Women and Gender Studies bears her name.
Fun fact: WashU has hosted more presidential and vice-presidential debates than any other institution in US history, including the first televised three-person debate among President George H. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ross Perot.
Fun fact: One of Carroll College's residence halls houses a boulder wall, which is open for all students to practice their rock climbing.
Fun fact: Creighton offers a scholarship for students who serve as the school mascot, Billy Bluejay.

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