This is a question I’ve heard so many times from all my cooking friends. We exchange ideas and recipes, and sometimes we invite each other to a delicious meal, so we can prove our kitchen talents. I like to cook and to share cooking tips and experiences, but I never thought that I might start a cooking blog.
However, I managed to involve my best friend, Ella, into this blogging stuff (remember, this is how I’ve got the idea of this group writing project), so recently she launched JoinThem!, a blog where she gives us her best recipes, and her best travel tips. She didn’t travel too much, so there are only a few tips for travellers to Paris so far, but she has cooked a lot, so the blog focuses mostly on cooking. And believe me, I’ve been eating a lot of great stuff at Ella’s: my favourites are by far this delicious vegetarian dish recipe (which we call “ghiveci” in Romanian) and the stuffed vegetable marrows, which can make you eat until you cannot move anymore.
While doing some research for Ella’s blog, I was amazed to discover how many great blogs about food and cooking recipes exist. For example, Simply Recipes is simply mouth watering, the turkey tacos with cranberries salsa made me reconsider the use I give to meat leftovers, and the cranberry relish recipe reminded me of childhood.
JoinThem! is updated once a day, so if you want to get fresh cooking ideas, please consider subscribing to Ella’s feed, or, if you want her recipes delivered directly in your inbox, Subscribe to Join Them! by Email. I know at least one of you who will be happy to subscribe (do I hear you, Bes?) as he is a real gourmand. Comments are welcome and highly appreciated (JoinThem! is a Do-follow blog), you can ask Ella about any cooking-related details, and be sure she will be glad to share with you her kitchen secrets.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Tell Me What You Wanna Cook And I’ll Tell You Where To Look
Do You Like Ping Pong? Play It On Your Door!
While browsing the net for fun, I discovered the Ping Pong Door, which reminded me of my childhood, when I used to play ping pong with my brother on the dining table, causing our mother to go crazy. If we only had such a door, like this one designed by Tobias Franzel, everybody would have been happier: us, our mother and our table (which got severe damages from all those hits):
The only drawbacks of this table-door are that it is a little bit too narrow to play double, and you have to decorate one of the rooms to match its green side (green being the color I sincerely hate).
Would you like to join me for a ping-pong game through the doorway?
How to Learn Foreign Languages by Association
Did you ever experience the frustration of visiting a foreign country and not understanding the language at all? Luckily, English is pretty much international these days. However, when I visited China I had the surprise that many people did not speak anything but Chinese, so my knowledge of three languages was rather useless, as long as I was not able to speak, read or even understand a single Chinese word.
No Language, No Fun
I felt so frustrated in the beginning, because I always like to talk to people in foreign countries I visit, I enjoy conversation, I want to feel the spirit of places, and for this, I need at least to understand the basics of the language spoken by those people. On my way from the airport to the hotel, I started to pay attention to pictures and signs, and as some of them were bilingual, Chinese-English, one hour later I was able to recognize the Chinese word Beijing, even when it was not accompanied by the English spelling.
No Language, Lots of Fun
That was the beginning of the most amusing game I played for three weeks, the duration of my Chinese experience. I looked at things, pointed at them and my host was telling me their Chinese names. Then I repeated until I managed to pronounce correctly. Every now and then, we reversed the roles: my Chinese friend pointed at things and I had to name them back in Chinese. I was astonished to discover that I could remember almost everything: it seems like association is the natural learning way of the brain (indeed, children learn their native tongue by making associations).
Why Learning a Foreign Language Naturally Works Best
Back home, I gave it a thought and this is my explanation of my unexpected evolution:
* all progress was made on the spot, with no translation or memorization required
* I had immediate feedback on all attempts: my friend rated my prononciation on the spot and made the eventual corrections, sol I always knew where I stood
* the learning process was continuous and gradual: we played the game all day round, I never know when she’s going to ask me something, and the topics were more and more difficult every day
It is also true that I’m clever ;) Now I’m going to learn Turkish, but this time I want to make it a little bit faster, so I’m going to open an online account with Rosetta Stone
, because they use the same natural way of learning that worked so well in my case.
Their free demo convinced me to give it a try, and the 6 months money back guarantee with no questions is the longest I’ve seen so far. (Special note: Europe residents interested in trying the free online demo of Rosetta Stone, please follow this link: Rosetta Stone Language Software
How to Learn Foreign Languages by Association
Did you ever experience the frustration of visiting a foreign country and not understanding the language at all? Luckily, English is pretty much international these days. However, when I visited China I had the surprise that many people did not speak anything but Chinese, so my knowledge of three languages was rather useless, as long as I was not able to speak, read or even understand a single Chinese word.
No Language, No Fun
I felt so frustrated in the beginning, because I always like to talk to people in foreign countries I visit, I enjoy conversation, I want to feel the spirit of places, and for this, I need at least to understand the basics of the language spoken by those people. On my way from the airport to the hotel, I started to pay attention to pictures and signs, and as some of them were bilingual, Chinese-English, one hour later I was able to recognize the Chinese word Beijing, even when it was not accompanied by the English spelling.
No Language, Lots of Fun
That was the beginning of the most amusing game I played for three weeks, the duration of my Chinese experience. I looked at things, pointed at them and my host was telling me their Chinese names. Then I repeated until I managed to pronounce correctly. Every now and then, we reversed the roles: my Chinese friend pointed at things and I had to name them back in Chinese. I was astonished to discover that I could remember almost everything: it seems like association is the natural learning way of the brain (indeed, children learn their native tongue by making associations).
Why Learning a Foreign Language Naturally Works Best
Back home, I gave it a thought and this is my explanation of my unexpected evolution:
* all progress was made on the spot, with no translation or memorization required
* I had immediate feedback on all attempts: my friend rated my prononciation on the spot and made the eventual corrections, sol I always knew where I stood
* the learning process was continuous and gradual: we played the game all day round, I never know when she’s going to ask me something, and the topics were more and more difficult every day
It is also true that I’m clever ;) Now I’m going to learn Turkish, but this time I want to make it a little bit faster, so I’m going to open an online account with Rosetta Stone
, because they use the same natural way of learning that worked so well in my case.
Their free demo convinced me to give it a try, and the 6 months money back guarantee with no questions is the longest I’ve seen so far. (Special note: Europe residents interested in trying the free online demo of Rosetta Stone, please follow this link: Rosetta Stone Language Software
Blog Emotions: 5 positives, 3 negatives
I’ve been tagged by Vivien, at InspirationBit (don’t tell me you don’t read it! are you living under a rock on Mars, or what?), to give you my 8 bits of blog emotions: 5 things I enjoy + 3 things I hate.
The 5 things I enjoy in blogging:
1. Checking statistics. Don’t laugh, I have charts and spreadsheets to monitor my monthly progress, I have planned the traffic (I’m a little bit behind schedule here, you could tell your friends to start reading this blog before it’s too late), I know how much money I am going to make until the end of this year, and I know what I’m going to spend it on.
2. Seeing my pages on the first results page in Google, for so many keywords. This was the initial intention with All Tips And Tricks: to be found in SERPs. I had no idea at that time that there are other ways people can find you on the net. How did you find me, by the way?
3. My readers. When I first discovered Feedburner, and I found out that you can know how many loyal readers you have, I could not believe my eyes: I had 16 readers. That was the day I gave up writing with researched keywords and I started to pay more attention to my articles (thus, I never got the chance to write about mesothelioma lawyers and make money, $70 at a time).
4. Blogging-generated dreams. Yes, I dream a lot and I remember my dreams. I’ll share one with you: in that dream, I was going to the Elite Retreat, and I was supposed to share the room with Wendy, the emomsathome.com artisan. She gave me a welcome present: a very nice pajamas (I appreciated that, because I had forgotten mine at home). Then someone killed one of the main speakers (I believe it was Shoemoney, or Darren Rowse), and we were like in an Agatha Christie novel, wondering who the killer might have been. I suspected John Chow (he branded himself so well, that for me he is top of mind when I think of evil) . Seth Godin was assuring me that John is clean, because they were having a drink together during the time of the crime. I don’t know to this day if John was the murderer, because I woke up too soon. Enough with the dreams, let’s move on!
5. Writing. If only I could write as fast as I think! I like to write, and I like to read what I wrote. I feel good when the article is ready, when I find a nice, representative picture to use with it, and when I do the final corrections. This must be a “left over” from my short happy life as a magazines publisher.
The 3 things I hate in blogging:
1. We are all equal in front of time. Then why can’t I be many of myself? Have you read Luigi Pirandello’s “One, No One and 100,000“? I’d like to be 100,000 of myselves, living 100,000 overlapped lives. I’m so sorry for my other blog, Questallia, which was based on a great idea, and which was supposed to be my serious side of blogging. I had to put it on hold, because I don’t have resources to promote more than one blog at a time (especially that I have to mobilize myself and find some clients before I run out of everything).
2. If you have a great idea, don’t Google it; just write about it! Otherwise, you’ll find out that all interesting topics have already been tackled. There are so many great writers on the web, that if you dare to Google your favorites, you’ll end up in misery, with no subjects for your stories.
3. The A bloggers list. You’ll say now, that’s because I’m not in it. Fair enough. How about the blogging advices we encounter on many of those blogs? Let’s take one: “comment on other blogs! keep the conversation going!” How many A bloggers did you see commenting on your blog? Or even on other A bloggers blogs? Is it true that one hand’s fingers are enough to count them? Here’s a bet I announce now: if I’ll ever see one comment from an A blogger here, I’ll write for him 100 articles for free, on topics at his/her choice (the only string attached here is the author cassette to be published with the articles).
Definitions:
“A Blogger” = Technorati Top 100 (counting by the number of links, not favorites)
“Article” = more than 400 words, at least one picture, organized in a meaningful manner, with the purpose to produce a coherent image about a given topic in the readers’ minds (and eventually, some diggs, slashdots, reddits or similar).
What if all 100 A bloggers leave a comment on my blog? I’ll have to write 10,000 articles! By the time I finish, I’ll become an encyclopedia, don’t you think so?
Back to reality again, I now tag Shaun Carter and StartUp Princess to tell us their 5+3 emotions of blogging.
Amazing Trick Contest Winners
Now it’s the time to announce the winners of the Amazing Trick contest, which ended on April 30th. Many thanks to those of you who sent their (more or less) lucky guesses, or knowledge bits. Not all of them were correct, but even the wrong ones were rewarded, because this blog uses the DoFollow plugin, thus offering commenters SEO accountable links to their sites.
The following entries qualified:
· Mihaï
the air is hot around the flame, when putting the glass, a lot of hot air is captured
a time after the candle extinguishes, the air get cold down, as the volume and mass remain the same, the pressure inside goes down too
the pressure inside will be less than the pressure outside, and the water is pushed inside by the outside pressure
· Julie
The hot air inside the glass is less dense (and thus at a lower pressure) than the cooler outside air. The difference creates suction, which pulls the water inside the glass.
· Susan
The basic premise is the change in air pressure. When the open end of the cup is submerged in the water it creates a type of water seal preventing additional air from entering the space. When the candle is lit it begins to heat up the air around it, burning the oxygen up and according to Boyle’s law, when a gas (air) is heated its density is reduced. (This is the motive “force” behind hot air balloons by the way). The reduced density of the hot air in a closed container creates a vacuum.
The air pressure being exerted on the water outside of the jar is greater than that being exerted inside the jar so the water moves towards the path of less resistance and pushes itself inside. Technically if there were enough water and the candle was allowed to burn itself out, the water would fill approximate 1/5th of the volume available inside the jar since air is almost 20% oxygen.
· Scott
Synopsis (I’d copy and paste but don’t want the duplicate content penalty )
1) Jar holds a finite amount of air
2) Candle heats up air
3) PV=nRT dictates that under finite volume hotter air increases pressure
4) High pressure air bubbles out of the jar
5) Candle burns out => air cools down
6) Air pressure in jar decreases
7) Water in jar rises until the pressure difference between the jar and the atmosphere equals the height of the column of water * density of water * gravity
All four entries are correct. Many thanks to all participants, and here we have the winners:
- One year free hosting for a domain: Mihai, Susan and Steve
- One free link to All Tips And Tricks plus one free review of her blog: Julie
The choice was made taking into consideration that Julie did not fully respect the terms of the contest (she did not link back to this site). However, because I liked her answer, I decided to give her the free review of her blog, as a consolation prize.
Congratulations to the winners! I’ll contact you via e-mail over the next few days, to arrange the details of your hosting accounts. You must have the domain names already bought, as the prize includes only the hosting.
More contests are coming soon! If you don’t want to miss them, make sure you subscribe to my feed.
Take photos deep in water with polarization filters
Out of all kinds of photo filters, one makes it possible to photograph water in its depth: the circular polarizing filter. Polarizing filters allow only direct light waves to pass through, stopping the reflected waves, thus filtering the dispersed light. Not only do they reduce reflections on water or glass surface, but they also enhance the colors. Additionally, such filters reduce exposure with up to three diaphragms, so you can obtain better photos even in the burning noon sunlight. You can see below two photos: the first one is taken without any filters, while for the second one, the circular polarization filter has been used. The difference is obvious, in the second photo the water has much more clarity, offering great visibility and stronger colors.
Both photos were taken with a FujiFilm 6500 camera, and they were not further processed in Photoshop. I wonder if the circular polarisation filter has the same effect on an underwater camera, but I don’t have the required gear for making this experiment.
The Muddy Volcanoes: unique in Europe
Would you like to take some good Martian or Lunar pictures? I’m not sending you in space, don’t worry! There is a spectacular place in Romania, at Berca, nearby Buzau, called the Muddy Volcanoes. This is a natural reservation very scarce in vegetation, where the soil is made of dried mud coming out from small volcanoes mouths. The land is soft, but it is possible to walk on it. Yet, in some parts you have the strange sensation that it will collapse and you’ll end up swallowed by the mud.
At first sight, you would think that the volcanoes are hot, but if you have the curiosity to put a finger inside the mud, you’ll be surprised to see that they are cold. If you are more curious and dare to taste the mud, you’ll notice it is salty. The phenomenon is based on the natural gasses eruptions in that area.
As the natural gasses erupt from 3 km deep towards the surface, they push up underground salty water and clay, so that they overflow through the craters of the volcanoes, while the gas emerges as bubbles. The mud dries off at the surface, creating volcano-like, solid, cone-shaped structures.
The expelled mud is cold from the very beginning, as it comes from inside the Earth’s continental crust layers, and not from the mantle. The place stinks a little bit like sulfur, but it is not unbearable, and after a few minutes you won’t even notice the smell anymore. There are no dwellings in the proximity, so the area is very quiet. All you can hear are the birds singing and the blurbs of the small volcanoes.
The reservation is unique in Europe, with similar phenomena being observed in Siberia and Australia. If you consider going to the Muddy Volcanoes, you can do it as one-day trip from Bucharest (it’s a three hours drive).
Amazing trick which can bring you one year free hosting
If you ever worked for a big company, then maybe you know those “team building” sessions which consisted mainly of playing all kind of games, more or less stupid, followed by wise debriefings, meant to consolidate the team and to make its members to better know each other. Yet, there was a series of games that I found interesting: the ones in which you are given several items and you have to complete a task using only those items.
This is one example of smart game (the best part comes at the end):
Get that coin out of the water without getting yourself wet and without moving the plate
Items given:
- one plate containing a small quantity of water
- one coin, on the bottom of the plate, covered by water
- one candle (this can come from your own candle making production, if you have this hobby)
- one glass
- one lighter
Briefing: you are not allowed to move the plate.
If you want to try it for yourself, stop reading. If you just want to see how it’s done, then here you are:
Step 1: put the candle in the water, not very close to the coin, and light it.
Water experiment 2
Step 2: Put the glass upside down over the lit candle.
Water experiment 3
Step 3: Wait. The candle extinguishes after the oxygen in the glass is burnt, then you will see the water level slowly raising inside the glass. Soon all the water in the plate gets sucked inside the glass, so you can safely take the coin.
Water experiment 4
For making sure you don’t get in touch with water, you can wait a few minutes until the plate and the coin get dry.
If you want to amaze your friends with this trick, try it before, in order to adjust the amount of water you need to use.
The best part comes now: you are challenged!
Contest:
Three of the readers who guess what is the phenomenon that makes this happen and blog about it linking to this post with the anchor phrase cool tips and tricks win one year free hosting with Dreamhost for a domain, with MYSQL database included. I reserve myself the right to choose the winning answers. The other participants who answer correctly will get a free link from this site (PR5).
The contest starts now and it ends on April 30th at midnight (your timezone).
Good luck everybody, and remember the rules:
1. know the answer
2. blog about it
3. link to this post with the anchor text “cool tips and tricks”
4. leave a comment on this page, so I know that you are in
Practice 115 foreign languages online with native speakers
If you ever tried to learn a foreign language, then you know how difficult it is to remember things when you don’t have the chance to practice. It is the normal way our brain functions: connections that are not used get loose and disappear, while connections used a lot tend to get stronger. But how to strengthen your connections, when nobody around you speaks that foreign language you have worked so much to learn and you see now vanishing more every day? Of course you can ask a friend to have conversations with you only in that foreign language, but don’t tell me that you don’t start to laugh after the few 2-3 minutes! I tried it myself: it was really good fun, but awful language skills improvement.
Now you can practice online the foreign language of your choice. MyLanguageExchange is the best place to do it: you choose a partner who wants to practice your native language and who is native speaker of the language you want to learn. Then you can have e-mail exchanges, text chat and even voice conversations.
This is how the MyLanguageExchange guys describe their services:
We provide free, helpful guidelines and tips on how to do a language exchange, as well as free lesson plans designed by an expert in language exchange learning. The activities are fun so you can easily “break the ice” with your new learning partner and get effective practice.
[eminimall]
MyLanguageExchange uses the Cormier language exchange method:
Following the Cormier method, you will practice with native speakers of the language you’re learning, in small mixed groups of speakers of the two languages – ideally, between 2 and 4 people. Half the time, you will be speaking in the language you’re practicing, and half the time in your own language – to give your exchange partners a chance to practice too.
During your practice, you should use the lesson plans in the Chat Companion. This will provide the structure and activities needed in your language exchange. It is the next best thing to having an actual qualified teacher facilitate your practice session. But unlike in the typical teacher-led conversation class, you will totally forget the idea of grammar and instead practice using what you know – what you’ve studied before. The activities you will do and the way you will do them will help your listening comprehension, pronunciation and vocabulary. Your grammar will improve on its own with practice. In addition, depending on the lesson plan you use, you will work on other communication and conversation skills.
As they do not provide any kind of facilitation, you need to do some preparatory work, in order to get the best out of your language exchange experience.
The community is quite big, with members from 133 countries, covering 115 languages. If you are not satisfied with MyLanguageExchange, you can check out the comprehensive list of similar services from Wikipedia.
How to make a solar compass
You need a watch, a needle (or a tiny stick) and this drawing, named BUSO by its inventor:
buso
* Place BUSO horizontally (very important!)
* Place the needle (or stick) vertically on the drawing, on the spot corresponding to the current time (hour)
* Rotate BUSO until the needle’s shadow overlaps the intersection spot between the mark corresponding to the current month of the year and the vertical axis of BUSO
* This is the North-South axis. You can now place the map accordingly. Even better, you can stick the BUSO drawing onto your map, with the N mark aligned with the north on the map.
* The drawing is presented in real size.
* Have fun with BUSO!
How to check if your photo camera can take infrared photos
Infrared photography has many applications, such as cosmic photos, recovering texts of water damaged documents, quality checks for hidden material flaws, surveillance and public safety, or aesthetic purposes.
You would imagine that you need special equipment to take infrared photos. Well, for the “far” infrared spectrum (thermal light), indeed, you need it. But for the “near” infrared, all you need is a digital camera that doesn’t have a filter that blocks infrared light, and an infrared filter.
How to test your camera for IR capability: check if it can see beams emitted from a common infrared remote control (point it towards your camera and press any button). The beams should appear white in the LCD screen.
photo camera IR check
If your camera does not have an LCD screen, take a picture of the remote control while pressing one of its buttons. In this photo you should see the beam, as illustrated:
IR beam
Otherwise, it means that your camera has the IR blocking filter. Probably it can be removed, but I would not suggest you do that, because it may void your warranty, or you may never manage to put the camera together and functioning again.
If your camera passed the test, and you are looking forward to see your future IR pictures, take a look at these examples of infrared photography.
How to convert your audio CDs to mp3 fast and free
When it comes about music, we tend to prefer more and more the mp3 format. The main reason is convenience: mp3 files are detected as data files, thus allowing us to exploit at maximum the capacity of CDs. One CD can store up to 80 minutes of music, if written as such. This leaves more than 90% of the CD’s capacity not used. So if we can fool the CD to interpret the music tracks as data files, we could store 10 times more music on the same space. This is why we need mp3.
If you are like me, you have some hundreds of music CDs in your bookcase, wondering how to find some more space for new ones. There are many software programs which can convert audio into mp3 files, but the most convenient is iTunes, the well-known music player.
[eminimall]
This is how to convert your music into mp3, step by step:
* Install iTunes
* Launch the application
* go to File, and then select Preferences
* go to Advanced tab
* in the Advanced screen, go to Import tab
* at “On CD insert”, choose “Import CD and Eject”
* at “Import using”, choose “MP3 encoder”
* the remaining settings can be as you wish
* insert an audio CD in the CD player
* iTunes should automatically convert all files into mp3 and store them in iTunes library
* you can find the mp3 files in My Computer/My Music/iTunes/iTunes Music
Publish yourself in 10 steps
Having your own site is now a children’s play. Moreover, you can build your own brand online, by buying a domain name which represents you. There are a few steps to follow in order to create your presence on Internet:
1. Choose your domain name. You have two options: either you buy your own, or you use a free domain. Free services, such as blogger.com, offer you a domain like yourname.blogspot.com, with free hosting, so you can really start blogging in about 10 minutes. Yet, if later on you decide to get your own domain, moving your site will be a real pain and you’ll lose all your links, so it’s better to figure out from the beginning what you want to achieve with your site.
2. If you go with your own domain name, you need to choose a web hosting company. Inform yourself as well as you can, and remember that cheapest is not always the best. I did the mistake to go for the cheapest and I had to move in three months time, due to lots of annoying interruptions of service. I’m now with Dreamhost and I’m happy. It is not cheap, but I did not have any problem ever since. If you decide to go with Dreamhost, use the promo code ATT2007 and you’ll get 50$ discount for one year hosting plans. If for some reason you don’t like Dreamhost, another option could be Hostgator (aff). Whatever company you choose, make sure you ask your friends and check on forums and blogs, to find references about it.
3. Build your site. If you don’t know any programming language and you want to keep things simple, use a content management application. Among the most used are Wordpress, Moveable Type, Drupal.
4. Improve your site’s functionality: if you choose Wordpress as the platform for your site, take a look at the available plugins and install the ones which are most suitable for you.
5. Customize your site: if you are not so much of a photographer, you still can have gorgeous photos for your site. Daily Kos has published a great review of free photos available resources.
6. Measure your progress: install a good analytics program, which would allow you to see who your visitors are, how many visits your site gets, which are the best days of the weeks in terms of traffic, which are your best referrers, and much more. Two excellent free such programs are Google Analytics and 103bees. Statcounter is also good, but the free version tracks the details of only the last 100 visits. If you want to see where people are going when they leave your site, you can install Addfreestats. Besides the common statistics, it has an option to display the exit links. If you run AdSense on your site, this means that you can see which site they visited when clicking on an ad from a certain page, so you can filter it in case of very low cost per click coming from that link.
7. Promote your site: your work is in vain if nobody sees it. If you want to know what to do, or where to start your promotion activities, a good resource is problogger.net. Browse through the archives, and you’ll find many golden nuggets of information which can help you achieve great results.
8. Write interesting and useful content. Keep the dialog alive. Learn how to put your ideas in words, make your headlines eye-catchy, induce readers the desire to comment on your articles. Copyblogger is a great resource where you can learn how to write better. Digital Point forum is also a great place where you can learn a lot.
9. Look at other people’s progress and learn from them. Steve Pavlina has an excellent article about his blog’s evolution in terms of traffic and revenue, and he is not the only one. Steve Olson tells the story of his blog attracting 100000 visitors in the first 30 days.
Dan Raine takes us through the adventure of the 15k challenge: he made a bet with his friends that he can make $15000 from a completely new internet business, in one month time, with $150 starting capital. He was very close to winning the bet, and he tells the whole story, step by step. It is quite a lesson of creativity and hard work.
10. Connect with people. Make friends. Go social. Choose the social networks that fit you best. You can find a comprehensive list of such sites on Wikipedia. If you want an example of the power of social networking, you can read about my experience with StumbleUpon.
Online DVD Rental or Pay-Per-View
The newer system of online DVD rental has its upsides and downsides. This arrangement is for avid movie fans. In this system you more often than not do not pay for each DVD but instead pay a monthly fee for the DVD delivery service. With some plans as low as $9.99 a month with no late fees, you can rent about any movie delivered to your door in one business day. When you are done with that DVD rental, you simply mail it back to receive an alternative. This can be done as many times as you desire in one month; however, there is typically a limit of how many DVDs you can have in your custody at one time (depending on how costly your monthly plan is).
The major issue with DVD rentals is the waiting. You have to arrange at least one day ahead of what movie you want to view which means no Friday late night movie rushes. On top of that, you have to be renting at least 2-3 movies a month to make this worth your time and money compared to your local rental store. If you view a lot of movies and do not object to the wait, the internet DVD rental system may not be a bad decision for you.
Tip! Some online DVd rental stores would give you discounted fees if you rent more DVD at once. That can often save you several dollars per day.
Pay-Per-View
Pay-per-view has the immediate benefit that the internet DVD movie rental system doesn’t acquire. With pay-per-view, at any time you decide you want to view a DVD, you just order it, sit down and watch it. Another advantage with pay-per-view is that you don’t have to be concerned about scratched or skipping discs. Companies such as I-Satellite offer 33 pay-per-view channels and 13 sports pay-per-view channels with fees as low as $1.99 to watch a movie. This is certainly a more easier way of doing things. However, it can start to tally up if you are an enthusiastic movie watcher. With pay-per-view you do not acquire access to the same “bonus features” that you get with the DVD movies.
With the options of renting movies from the store, online DVD rentals, and pay-per-view it is definitely easy to get your movie fix in one way or another. All three approaches of receiving current blockbusters have their benefits and downfalls in which you will have to choose from. Personally, I like the convienance of internet rental clubs. It allows me to watch a number of newer releases, but I also have the choice of selecting classic titles as well. If you stick with the standard 3 at at time monthly rental plan, you should not have any problems with receiving your rentals on time, all the time. The top online rental services today are Netflix and Blockbuster Online. These services along with Intelliflix, if you have anyone in the family that plays video games, will surely keep you and your family entertained for days to come
Unbiased Expert Reviews of the Top Movie Rental Clubs in the US.
http://MovieRentalClubGuide.com/Reviews.php
10 Feng Shui Certification Tips
Feng Shui certification became a real fashion these days. There are more and more people who take it into account when they build or renovate a house. Feng Shui interior design certified expert advice is more and more wanted. Some of the Feng Shui principles are easy to implement, but others are almost impossible when changing the configuration of your house is not possible. The following article sheds a light over the Feng Shui certification possibilities and tips for making it a successful business.
Ever walked into a house that felt like home? Ever reminisced about the best year of your life, and wondered why everything came together for you? It could be Feng Shui.
Simply put, Feng Shui is about creating a harmonious environment. It’s the ancient Chinese Science and Art of placement, intended to improve our health, harmony, longevity, career and wealth.
Pronounced, “Fung Shway”, it was a jealously guarded secret for thousands of years. Now, the benefits of Feng Shui can be enjoyed by anyone. In fact, Feng Shui is a part of everyday life for many Australian businesses, home owners, decorators, and architects.
June from June Turner Designs and Lifestyles has been an expert Feng Shui practitioner for 13 years. “Feng Shui can be simple or involved – whatever you’re comfortable with. Decorate a room or buy a home that is perfect for your family.”
The key is energy (or Qi “Chee”). June offers ten quick tips that can improve the flow, transformation, and containment of Qi in your life:
1) Remove shoes before entering a home. Don’t take your problems in with you.
2) Cook at least one meal a day and eat at the table as a family.
3) Never have knives on show – even in a block.
4) Always sit or stand facing the door (or its reflection).
5) Keep the toilet lid down and bathroom and laundry doors closed.
6) Don’t sleep under white blankets or doonas.
7) Don’t sleep with your feet facing the bedroom door.
8) Don’t sleep next to the wall that has the metre box on it.
9) If your front door is in line with a tree or the door of the house opposite, place a Ba Gua mirror above the outside of the door.
10) Never have a Ba Gua mirror in the house. They are far too powerful.
It’s no coincidence that some of these tips are just common sense. You’ve probably been practising Feng Shui for years without even knowing it!
According to June, “this is just the tip of the iceberg. Just a few little changes can make the world of difference. But most solutions are specific to the individual.”
Jokes and Riddles | How To Write Them
Just listening to or reading jokes and riddles may “wake up” your brain, but it is creating them that really exercises your brainpower. The process requires you to use both logical and lateral thinking skills. How do you do it, then?
Jokes and riddle don’t come to mind randomly. In fact, after watching how many comedians create their routines, I am convinced that they use what I call “humor algorithms”, even if they do so unconsciously. You can learn to do the same, but consciously, and as an interesting brain exercise.
Joke And Riddle Algorithms
One systematic and creative humor algorithm involves starting with a word or a subject, and then fitting it into various joke and riddle “types.” For an example, I’ll start with “chair.” (I really am doing this as I write, so forgive the weak humor that is sure to result.)
The first thing I do is systematically think of all the types of chairs I can, and write them down. After that, I write down a few types of jokes, such as “puns,” “misdirection,” “differences,” and “similarities.” As I do this, it occurs to me that an electric chair might have the most potential for humor (all serious things do). Here is what I could come up with in thirteen minutes:
Tip! Writing humor isn’t necessarily easy, but it is great brain exercise. Whether it is easy or not, by using these ‘algorithms,’ anyone can write jokes and riddles.
Differences: What is the difference between a toilet and a chair? I’m sorry, but if you don’t know, I can’t invite you over to my house!
Misdirection: Why did Charlie hate the chair they gave him for his birthday? Because they gave him the electric chair!
Similarities: What does my dog have in common with a chair? He has four legs and an IQ of zero.
Pun: Why did the customer at the motor vehicles department start rearranging seats after waiting for hours? Because he was the “chair-man of the bored.”
The-Jokes.com Archive of clean, mature, and adult jokes, magic, pranks, quizzes and tests, and joke of the day.
Writing humor isn’t necessarily easy, but it is great brain exercise. Whether it is easy or not, by using these “algorithms,” anyone can write jokes and riddles. Why not give it a try?
Steve Gillman has been studying brainpower and related topics for years. For more humor algorithms, visit the page on writing Jokes and Riddles, and get the Brain Power Newsletter at: http://www.IncreaseBrainPower.com
6 or more reasons not to climb a mountain for fun
Did you ever ask yourself what is so funny in mountain trips? Not professional mountain climbing – this is something else. I’m talking here about peaceful weekend hikes in the mountains, when you take a map of the area on Friday night, you look over the possible paths, their length, the difficulty degree, the special recommendations, then you decide for a 4-6 hours walk which would lead you in the top of a mountain, then back again, in a circular trait.
If you don’t know, you can try to do it yourself, but be aware of the following:
1. The mountain map is not the territory. It often happens that what seems to be a nice, smooth path on a map turns out to be an up and down nightmare in the field, because you cannot go in straight line (unless you dig a tunnel through the mountain). Even if your map shows the level curves, it is not relevant, as you can’t figure out how the path looks like (if any). So be prepared and expect hard times to come.
2. Mountain animals are not on the map. But they sure are in the forests. Nevertheless, when you hear roaring from behind the trees, don’t forget to check the sky for planes, as in such special circumstances, the noise of a plane sounds exactly as the roar of a bear. Actually, every noise in a mountain forest sounds like bear roaring. Be aware that bears climb trees very well, so this is not a viable escape.
3. Weather forecasts don’t help. Mountain weather can suffer sudden changes; a warm and sunny day can turn into a serious rain in no time. Make sure you have a raincoat with you, although you might be overloaded like a donkey. If you are caught by a storm, don’t sit under the trees, don’t stand in open fields, don’t go nearby the edge of the path… Thanks God breathing is allowed… and there is a cure for pneumonia. Yet, be aware that there is no cure for lightning strikes.
4. There no such thing as an optimum group size. Going alone is best in terms of choices you can make on the path (you can stop by your own desire, you can eat when you want and you can walk in your own pace) but it is the worst in terms of unexpected: if you slip and break a leg, then what? Maybe somebody else will pass through over the next couple of hours. Or maybe not. So it’s better to have some company. Then you’ll have to wait for Mary to pick flowers at every corner, you’ll have to speed up to catch John who is running like an engine or you’ll have to look all over the place for Steve, who went behind a tree about ten minutes ago and he’s not showing up. Funny, isn’t it?
5. Top of the mountain does not equal top of civilization. OK, you got there, you are on top. If you are lucky, the sky is clear, you have magnificent panorama and you take some great photos. If not, you don’t. Then what? Then you might want to drink or eat something. The best situation is when the top of the mountain has a chalet on it. You can drink there an awful juice (which costs three times more than in the city, but it is the only brand available and they had to transport it up there). Or you can eat some strange tasteless foods, wondering how those guys wash the dishes, since there is no running water there, except that small spring behind the chalet, nearby the toilets.
6. Going up there gives you a reason to get down. This is the ugliest part of all. You always have to go down again. This makes you wonder why did you wish to go up so high in the first place. Only to have from where to get down? Now you start to figure out that the answer is yes, but it is already too late, you have to take the path down. And now you are already exhausted from the very beginning, so a little bit of tiredness more does not count, does it?
Did you find so much fun in climbing the mountain? Please take into consideration that luck factors were omitted from all above. Luck factors meaning getting lost, being caught by the darkness fall, finding out after three hours that the mountain was affected by a ground slide and you have to go back because the path is destroyed.
If you still enjoy mountain climbing, you must be either a fearless, adventurous spirit or you must hate yourself very much.
10 ways to lose traffic
Everybody strives to gain traffic for their sites, the faster, the better, if possible overnight. Every beginner blogger dreams of the day when his blog will reach a million users per month or per day or per minute or per second or per split second or… You know already the recipe for success, as there are millions of sites giving you the same advice and mentioning patience and perseverence above all. But did it ever occur to you to think how to proceed to lose traffic? If there was a contest of the fastest traffic loser of all with a very high prize for the winner?
A ten steps scenario would look like this:
1. delete all META tags from your pages
2. take out the keywords from titles and headlines
3. make sure your site loads in more than 60 seconds: use high quality pictures, with size over 1Mb
4. make sure your links lead nowhere, or to sites that are no longer active, or to sites not related to the subject
5. if somebody dares to leave a comment on your site, answer him that he should go study some more, then open his mouth to speak.
6. organize weekly contests, let people in, then announce in the last day that you changed your mind and the contest is off
7. stuff your articles with lots of grammar mistakes
8. make ads fly all over the screen and let no possibility of making them disappear
9. make your pages jump automatically from one to another at intervals of 5 seconds
10. make all your pages black and forget all 9 steps above
Why gaming social sites is not worth the pain
Did it happen to you, in your childhood, to wish to be big for at least one day, to see how it felt like?
This is the story of a small site, wanting to take a look into the future and see how it is to be big for one day. This is the game and its results.
Day one: the site asks a bunch of friends to vote for him in a popular social site (it doesn’t matter which one). The friends did so, our little site was promoted to the first page and during 48 hours, it got almost 2200 page views. If we take out the 400 page views representing the normal traffic of two days, the 1800 additional page views came from this trick and we should count them for 24 hours, because this is how long a story stays on the first page.
Day two: disappointed by the result, our site tries harder to make a better plan.
Day three: a new post is out there, but now the friends were asked to vote for it at a particular time (which was immediately after posting). The friends helped the little site again and this time, another bunch of people voted for this story (which was neither great nor the dumbest of all). It goes on the first page and it gets 5200 page views in 48 hours. We take out the usual 400 and we get 4800 page views earned via this little trick.
Graph traffic
Conclusions:
1. It feels good to be big, the site is now determined to get there honestly
2. Gaming social sites does not bring in so much benefit to be worth trying. As you can see from the graph, the traffic dropped immediately to its usual value. So, if you are a small site, this does not help you to grow at all. If you are big, why should you care about some additional 5000 page views earned in one day, when you have at least this kind of traffic each day? Be sure that you cannot repeat the trick more than twice before you get banned. So was our little hero, but at least he is happy with the conclusions and determined to take it easy and grow naturally. No more steroids, that’s for sure!
